13574	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 13574-h.htm or 13574-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/3/5/7/13574/13574-h/13574-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/3/5/7/13574/13574-h.zip) KEEPING FIT ALL THE WAY How to Obtain and Maintain Health, Strength and Efficiency by WALTER CAMP Illustrated with Many Photographs Taken under the Direction of the Author 1919 [Illustration: THREE PIONEERS IN SENIOR SERVICE WORK Left to right: Colonel Ullman, President, Chamber of Commerce, New Haven, Connecticut; Ex-President William H. Taft, and Walter Camp.] TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION AN AMERICAN CITIZEN'S CREED PART I. KEEPING FIT ALL THE WAY CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI PART II. THE DAILY DOZEN CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII INTRODUCTION The number of men who "keep fit" in this country has been surprisingly few, while the number of those who have made good resolutions about keeping fit is astonishingly large. Reflection upon this fact has convinced the writer that the reason for this state of affairs lies partly in our inability to visualize the conditions and our failure to impress upon all men the necessity of physical exercise. Still more, however, does it rest upon our failure to make a scientific study of reducing all the variety of proposals to some standard of exceeding simplicity. Present systems have not produced results, no matter what the reason. Hence this book with its review of the situation and its final practical conclusions. AN AMERICAN CITIZEN'S CREED I believe that a nation should be made up of people who individually possess clean, strong bodies and pure minds; who have respect for their own rights and the rights of others and possess the courage and strength to redress wrongs; and, finally, in whom self-consciousness is sufficiently powerful to preserve these qualities. I believe in education, patriotism, justice, and loyalty. I believe in civil and religious liberty and in freedom of thought and speech. I believe in chivalry that protects the weak and preserves veneration and love for parents, and in the physical strength that makes that chivalry effective. I believe in that clear thinking and straight speaking which conquers envy, slander, and fear. I believe in the trilogy of faith, hope, and charity, and in the dignity of labor; finally, I believe that through these and education true democracy may come to the world. Part I KEEPING FIT ALL THE WAY CHAPTER I It has long been a startling fact regarding Americans that so soon as their school-days were over they largely abandoned athletics; until, in middle life, finding that they had been controverting the laws of nature, they took up golf or some other form of physical exercise. The result of such a custom has been to lower the physical tone of the race. Golf is a fine form of exercise, but in an exceedingly mild way. No one claims that it will build up atrophied muscles nor, played in the ordinary way, that it will induce deep breathing; nor, except in warm weather, that it will produce any large amount of skin action. Hence it is easy to imagine the condition of the man who at the end of his 'teens gave up athletics, and then did nothing of a physically exacting nature until he took up golf. Now if in addition to his pastime and relaxation he will do something in the way of setting-up exercises to open up his chest and make his carriage erect, thus enabling his heart and lungs to have a better chance, he will more than double the advantages coming from his golf. He will then walk more briskly and will gain very much in physical condition. NATURE A HARD MISTRESS One thing that our middle-aged men, and in fact many of us who have not yet reached that way mark, have entirely forgotten is that Nature is very chary of her favors. Our primal mother is just and kind, but she has little use for the man who neglects her laws. When a man earns his bread by the sweat of his brow she maintains him in good physical condition. When he rides in a motor-car instead of walking she atrophies the muscles of his legs, hangs a weight of fat around his middle, and labels him "out of the running." If he persists in eating and not physically exerting himself, she finally concludes that he is cumbering the earth, and she takes him off with Bright's or diabetes. It does not do him any good to tell her that he was too busy to walk and so had to ride, or that he had no time for exercising; she simply pushes him off to make way for a better man. THE VICIOUS CIRCLE Nature has given man two ways (outside of the action of the bowels) of getting rid of impurities, one by means of the skin and the other by means of the kidneys. It is like a motor-car with two cylinders. If one stops the other will run on for a time, but its wear is increased. When a man stops exercising and ceases to carry off by means of his skin some of these impurities, he throws an additional load on his kidneys. When a man goes without exercise and begins to accumulate fat, that fat gradually deposits itself and not alone about the waist; it invades the muscular tissue all over his body even to his heart. As this accumulation grows there come with it a muscular slackness and a disinclination to exercise. The man is carrying greater weight and with less muscular strength to do it. No wonder that when he tries to exercise he gets tired. He is out of condition. Hence he begins to revolve in a vicious circle. He knows that he needs exercise to help take off the fat, but exercise tires him so much, on account of the fat, that he becomes exhausted; usually he gives it up and lets himself drift again. As his abdomen becomes more pendulous his legs grow less active. As his energy wanes his carriage becomes more slack. He shambles along as best he can, if he is positively obliged to walk. His feet trouble him. Altogether he is only comfortable when riding. When he has reached this state the insurance companies regard him as a poor risk, and instead of enjoying the allotted threescore and ten years of real life he falls short by a decade; and even then the last ten years are but "labor and sorrow." AS THE YEARS GO ON The first thing that a man begins to lose through the inroads of age is his resistive power. He may seem in perfect health so long as there is no special change of conditions, but when he is placed in a position where he needs his resistive forces to throw off disease, he finds that he cannot command them. Still another change is continually taking place; as the man goes on in life, little by little the control of his muscles leaves him. Instead of running about as does the youth, recklessly and with never a thought of being tired, he begins to favor himself by walking in the easiest possible way, until soon he is balancing on one foot and then tilting forward on the other, making no muscular effort and preferring the motor-car or the trolley whenever it is at hand. As an inevitable result, some of the muscles atrophy, and even those that do not deteriorate speedily discover that they have no master, and they act when and how they please. The man who is continually giving orders to subordinates and having other men do things for him, soon finds that he is unable to accomplish things for himself; then, if he is thrown on his own resources, he is helpless. Take a group of men, executives, who for a dozen years have been ordering other men about instead of obeying orders, and you will find that for the most part these captains of industry have lost 50 per cent. of their muscular control. On the other hand, the man who is taking orders retains command over all his muscles, for he is daily and hourly training them to instant obedience. A group of privates will snap into "attention" at the word of command with splendid muscular control; the same number of officers would find great difficulty in doing this. Now as the man loses muscular control he loses poise and carriage. His head rolls about in a slack way on his neck, and has a tendency to drop forward; the muscles of the neck and the upper part of the back grow soft from lack of use and control and he begins to become round-shouldered; his chest falls in as the shoulders come forward and the chest cavity is reduced. This means a gradual cramping of lungs, heart, and stomach. By way of compensation he lets out a hole or two in his belt and starts in to carry more weight there. In other words, he exchanges muscle for fat, and as the fat increases he has less and less muscular strength to carry it. It is as though in a motor-car one added hundreds of pounds of weight to the body and reduced the horse-power of the engine. Pretty soon the man becomes so heavy around the waist that he notices his discomfort, and it produces exhaustion; now he becomes more and more averse to exercise, and the facia, or fat, having the better of the battle, begins to penetrate even the fiber of the muscles. THE REMEDY The heart is a muscle, like all the others in the body, and fat may accumulate there. When this condition comes about the man is perforce obliged to be careful, for the heart muscle has lost its strength. As stated, the situation becomes a vicious circle: as the man adds fat he becomes more and more averse to exercise, and the less he exercises the fatter he gets. And yet all this can be prevented; nor is it necessary to take up any violent system of training, or to engage in tremendous gymnastic exercise. If the patient is willing to take reasonable physical training along scientific lines, a few hours a week will keep him in respectable shape, so that he may preserve not only his figure, but also his activity. It should be remembered that all the members of the body partake of the slackness that is apparent externally. Thus organs that should be active in changing fat into energy lose their tone, and with that goes their ability to carry on their proper functions. The best work of the man himself is co-ordinated with the proper performance of the bodily activities. Growth and strength depend upon and react upon the tissues, and while this process is less active as age comes on, it can be stimulated to the great advantage of both mind and body. WHAT WORRY DOES Every man who has reached a high place in his community or who has become a leader of note knows that executive work has a tremendous effect upon the nerves and body. If the man becomes run-down the smallest decision gives him difficulty; it seems weighted with enormous possibilities of disaster. A problem, which under normal conditions he would turn over with equanimity to his assistant, takes on, in his nervous state, a seriousness that leads to hours of worry. And yet if he goes away on a vacation he returns to find that nine-tenths of these troublesome things have been well taken care of during his absence. Moreover, now that he has come back in a state of physical health and with nerves that are normal, he sees that these awful problems were simply exaggerated in his own mind by his overwrought physical condition. Few people realize the effect of worry upon the digestion. An experiment was once tried upon a cat, which was fed a dish of milk, stroked until it purred, and played with for half an hour. The animal was then killed and the stomach examined; the milk was perfectly digested. Another cat was taken and given a similar saucer of milk; then its fur was rubbed the wrong way and it was teased and annoyed as much as possible for half an hour. Upon examining the stomach of the second cat it was found that not a step in the process of digestion had taken place. AMERICANITIS It is wise to study the condition that we might almost call "Americanitis." The American youth, as shown in the Olympic games, is not only a match in speed, strength, and stamina for the youth of other nations, but when it comes to the individual specialist even then the American-trained boy is his superior. We smash records regularly. We have been doing this for a decade with hardly a break. Even those who criticize our tendency to develop individuals are obliged to admit that this continual advance in athletic prowess fosters the spirit of emulation among the masses. Moreover, we are improving in the way of distributing our efforts, and more and more men in schools and colleges come out for physical training and development. We have not by any means perfected the system, but it is on the way. Supplementing this general athletic development comes now the introduction into the curriculum of military drill. Finally compulsory military education or at least the compulsory physical part of it, throughout the country will set up the youth of the coming race in a way hitherto unthought of. It is safe to say that the next decade will see our youth, and men up to the age of forty, in far better physical condition than is the case to-day. THE PRICE OF SUCCESS The men of this country, with their forcefulness and their ambition, their stern desire to succeed quickly and to work furiously if necessary to obtain that success, are apt to forget that Nature meant man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow; and that just so far as he departs from this primal method of supporting himself and his family he must pay toll. Almost before he realizes it the American youth is a staid man of business. Only yesterday he was a boy at play, and to-day he finds himself known by his first name or nickname only to a few old classmates whom he sees at his college reunions. He is Judge This or Honorable That. He has had no time to realize that somewhere he has lost fifteen or twenty years in this wild rush for fortune and fame. Now in some hour of enforced reflection during a temporary illness he begins to count the cost, to think how little he has in common with that growing boy of his. But still he does no more than wish that he might have more time for play and could see his way to longer and less interrupted vacations. Perhaps on his next period of relaxation he plunges into an orgy of physical exercise--plays to the point of exhaustion--enjoys it, too, and sleeps like a log. Oh, this is the life once more! When he returns to town he determines to take more time for exercise; he will keep up his tennis or golf. But once back at work, he must make up for lost time. He returns with an improved appetite and he indulges it. Soon his vacation benefits have worn off, together with his vacation tan. The muscles slacken again, the waist-line increases. He feels a little remorse over the way he has broken his good resolutions, but of course he cannot neglect his business. Then, after a hard week, followed by some carelessness or exposure, he thinks that he has the grip or a cold. He is lucky if he stays at home and calls in his physician. He does not pick up. Now, for the first time, he hears from the doctor words that he has caught occasionally about men far older than himself--"blood pressure." But he he is under fifty! The doctor says he must go slower. Now begins a dreary round indeed! He has never learned to go slow! He is an old man at fifty. If lucky, he has made money. But what is the price? He has found precious little fun in those fifteen or twenty years since he was a boy. Of course he has had his high living, his motor, his late hours. His cigars have been good, but he has never enjoyed them so much as he did the old pipe at camp. His dinners and late suppers can't compare with the fish and bacon of the woods. What a fool he has been! Perhaps he has caught himself in time. If so he is in luck and Nature may partially forgive him and give him a chance to "come back." He is well scared and he means to be good. But the scare wears off, and then, too, "business" presses him on again. And finally, still well this side of sixty, perhaps, Nature taps him on the shoulder and says, "Stop!" "But," he pleads, "I'll be good!" "You are in the way," she replies, "and the sooner you make place for wiser men the better I shall have my work done." But it is not alone the business world that is full of these untimely breakdowns. We lose many a man in the professional ranks with ten years of his best work before him, the man of ripened intellect, with his store of reading and experience--stopped oftentimes in the very midst of that masterpiece whose volumes would be read by future generations. Executives whose value to corporations is increasing in a compound degree suddenly receive notice that the continually bent bow is cracking; almost immediately they lose their ambition and initiative, they become prematurely aged. These are indeed expensive losses! And all this could be saved at an expenditure of a few paltry hours a week devoted to the repair of the physical man; given that and we may safely promise that he shall round out the full measure of his mental labors. The men of this country are going the pace at a far more reckless rate than that of any other nation. Philosophers like Prof. Irving Fisher are sounding the warning. Shall we heed it? CHAPTER II When Dr. D.A. Sargent, of Harvard University, makes the charge that, "More than one-half of the male population between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years are unable to meet the health requirements of military service, and that, of the largest and strongest of our country folk pouring into our cities, barely one of their descendants ever attains to the third generation," it becomes a pretty serious charge. We are already familiar with the forgetfulness of physical condition by men over forty, but we had prided ourselves considerably over the belief that the majority of our youth would compare favorably with those of other countries. When one comes to sift the statement, he should remember that many disabilities for which the military examiners might reject a man are not so serious, after all, and that nothing has been said about the splendid physique of the large number of men who are accepted. The writer visited recently many of the training-camps, both military and naval; and when he came away he was quite prepared to agree with those who praise the flower of the flock as being superior to that they have seen on the other side. The point is that Doctor Sargent is absolutely right in asserting that we ought not to have had so many rejections. It is time for us to realize that a man who is out of balance physically should be looked after. Moreover, men should not become out of balance. The truth of the matter is that our mechanical devices have gone so far toward taking the place of manual labor that we only have one line of physical development--our athletic sports. If, therefore, these are not made broad enough and thorough enough and accessible enough, we are likely to have just what is happening now--namely, a slump when it comes to measuring up to the standard instituted by the military authorities. Our young men do flock to the cities and city life means crowded conditions, lack of outdoor exercises, vitiated atmosphere, and a minimum of sunshine and of the other elements that go to perfecting and keeping up a robust and enduring physique. THE VALUE OF EXERCISE Now exercise is the most important factor toward counteracting these unnatural conditions. Air, bathing, and diet aid, but we must have exercise in order to get the energetic contraction of the larger muscles of the body which goes so far toward regulating the physical tone. We must have what are called compensatory exercises, beginning as far down as the grammar-schools and continuing right through the universities and professional schools into general business and civic life. This war has opened our eyes; it should be a warning, and it ought to result in a far broader comprehension of what physical condition and physical education really mean. It is in this way only that we can meet the demands of modern civilization without an accompanying deterioration of the physical condition of our people. No one has set a finer example in this respect than President Wilson himself, who, realizing the enormous strain that was coming upon him, has systematically and conscientiously prepared for it. Early every morning, long before most Washingtonians are so much as turning over for their pre-getting-up nap, the President is out and off around the golf-course. Also Doctor Grayson has prepared a system of exercises for his use when outdoor work is impossible. PREPARING FOR EMERGENCIES In the summer of 1917 several members of the Cabinet formed themselves into a club, with other prominent officials in Washington, and kept themselves fit throughout the season by consistent morning exercise, four days a week. So far so good, only we should have realized more than a year ago the strain that was coming upon our men and taken measures to meet it, as Germany did. Dr. William C. Woodward, who is chairman of the District Police Board in Washington, did not overstate the matter when he said that the draft officers were weary, that the strain had begun to threaten their efficiency, and that they were thoroughly undermining their bodies in the effort to accomplish their tremendous task. Every community has seen the same thing happen, and several of them can agree with Doctor Woodward that this has come close to being a really serious business calamity throughout the country. All these men should have been prepared by thirty or sixty days of physical training for this extra strain. Again, the Equitable Life Assurance Society, in its September Bulletin, calls attention to the fact that, out of approximately 1,300,000 men who volunteered for the army and navy, only 448,859 were acceptable. Furthermore, the Equitable notes that these physical impairments not only will not correct themselves, but that they will get worse, and that a large percentage of our vast horde of physically sub-standard, low-priced men will drift into sickness and meet premature death because their power to resist disease is rapidly declining. The Equitable calls, on this convincing evidence, for a thorough and permanent system of health education in our schools, saying: "With all of our wealth and intelligence and scientific knowledge in the field of health conservation, we are allowing a large proportion of our children to pass out of the schools into adult life physically below par." The Equitable concludes with the remark: "Some day we will give all American school children thorough physical training and health education. Why not commence now?" FROM A FAMOUS PHYSICIAN'S NOTE-BOOK Dr. S. Weir Mitchell says: All classes of men who use the brain severely, and who have also--and this is important--seasons of excessive anxiety or grave responsibility, are subject to the same form of disease; and this is why, I presume, that I, as well as others who are accustomed to encounter nervous disorders, have met with numerous instances of nervous exhaustion among merchants and manufacturers. My note-books seem to show that manufacturers and certain classes of railway officials are the most liable to suffer from neural exhaustion. Next to these come merchants in general, brokers, etc.; then, less frequently, clergymen; still less often, lawyers; and, more rarely, doctors; while distressing cases are apt to occur among the overschooled young of both sexes. Here is a day's list: Charles Page Bryan, former ambassador to Japan, died in Washington of heart failure at the age of sixty-one. Judge Arthur E. Burr, Judge of Probate for Suffolk County, dropped dead in the court-house at the age of forty-eight. Hiram Merrick Kirk, Municipal Court Justice, New York, died in the forty-seventh year of his age. Lieut. William T. Gleason dropped dead in the railroad station, Salt Lake City, as he stepped from a railroad train, at the age of forty. Indeed, it is not only the men of military age who drop off under this strain, but the very vital strong men behind the lines. THE ROAD TO EFFICIENCY It is an extraordinary thing that the people in this country, many of them coming from the most vigorous ancestry, should be willing to compress all their athletic enthusiasm into a very small period of their school and college life, and then to forget to take any exercise (except vicariously) until warned, sometime after forty, that Nature will exact a price for such folly. It is certainly a puzzle to understand how men can willingly slip into fatness and flabbiness or nervous indigestion, forget entirely what a pleasure physical vigor is, fold their hands contentedly, with the statement that they haven't time for physical culture, and so, gradually, by way of the motor-car and the dinner-table, slide into physical decadence and a morbid condition of mind and body. And yet three or four hours a week, less than an hour a day, with the assistance of fresh air and water, and within a sixty-or ninety-day period, will start these people on the road to recovered health and vigor. All that is necessary is to get the proper action of the lungs, of the heart, and of the skin, and, finally, of the digestion; then the results will follow fast. A WINTER VACATION The first time a good conservative New England business or professional man, who has worked hard all his life and who has attained a commanding position in the community, determines to break away and take a vacation in the winter--a thing he has heard about and sometimes wondered how other people could manage to do it--he meets with the surprise of his life. After boarding a train and traveling for twenty-four hours toward the South and sunshine, he begins to lose a little the feeling that he is playing "hookey" and is liable to be dragged home and birched. But he does wonder a little whether he won't have hard work in finding somebody to play with him. When, however, he disembarks from his train at his destination--we will say Pinehurst--he has already begun to realize, through noting the other bags of golf-clubs on the train, that possibly he will be able to get some partners. When he arrives at the hotel, although it is early breakfast-time, he is astounded at the number of people there, and he is inclined to think that he has happened upon an unusual week or that this is the one place in the South where golfers congregate. By the time he has spent a day or two there and has found that, in spite of the three courses open, it is wise to post his time the day before or he is likely to kick his heels around the first tee for a couple of hours before he can get away, and when he looks over the crowded dining-room at night--well, he comes to the conclusion that most of the school have deserted and are playing truant, too! THE GOSPEL OF FRESH AIR A generation ago the people who preached the good gospel of fresh air were still viewed askance, although the new doctrine had begun to make some impression. The early settlers in this country lived an outdoor life perforce, and undoubtedly found all the excitement of a football game in fighting the Indians; consequently, they attained proper physical development. The descendants of these settlers still retained a good deal of the outdoor habit, but in the third generation the actual drift city-ward began. This meant the absence of incentives to outdoor exercise, so far as life and the pursuit of happiness were concerned. Hence, it became necessary to preach the gospel of fresh air. "Oh, the joy with which the air is rife," sang Adams Lindsay Gordon, one of the early preachers of this doctrine, and to-day thousands and tens of thousands are appreciating the truth of the saying. Not alone the boy at school or college with his football, baseball, and rowing, but the middle-aged man with his golf and tennis, and the old man tramping through the woods with the rod and gun, as he used to do thirty years ago, and as he will do to the end--all these know what fresh air means. Sunshine, through the medium of golf, has come to the life of thousands of middle-aged wrecks formerly tied to an office chair. No one can estimate the number of lives, growing aged by confinement in close rooms, by lack of exercise, and by the want of cheerful interest in something beside the amassing of dollars and cents, that have been saved and rendered happy through the introduction of this grand sport whose courses now dot the country from Maine to California, from the top of Michigan to the end of Florida. Twenty years ago in this country a man who came to his office in a golf suit would have been regarded as demented, to say the least. To-day the head of the house in many a large business refuses to permit anything to interfere with his Saturday on the links. And this means that he and all the officers in the departments under him, instead of viewing with concern the interest of the men in outdoor sports--their devotion to baseball and football, to tennis, golf, and track athletics--are glad and willing that the great outdoors should have a real place in their lives. It is good business policy. Something must make up to the later generations for the loss of the open air and outdoor work which the exigencies of the olden times demanded of our ancestors, and that something has come in the shape of physical exercise. But golf and long vacations are for the comparatively rich. They are makeshifts rendered possible only by circumstances. UNLEARNED LESSONS If a man determined, because his horse or his dog showed exceptional intelligence, that he would endeavor to develop that intelligence by setting the animal at mental tasks, and so gave it only the exercise that would come from moving about the room, and no fresh air or sunshine, no road-work or hunting--well, we are all quite familiar with what the result would be. If a parent had a child who showed unusual mental precocity and thereupon forced the brain of that child, with no outdoors, no fresh air, no sunshine, and even to late hours, we all recognize that such action would be criminal. Yet probably 50 per cent, of our best executives, in their efforts to aid in the present emergency, are doing just what we are ready to condemn in the hypothetical cases given above. Some of these men, while still able to whip up their will into going on from day to day with the same exhausting program, finally conclude that unless they take a vacation they are going to break down. The doctor tells them so and they know it. Whereupon they rush off for a week or ten days; some of them enter upon an orgy of exercise, others relax into a somnolent state of lying around and thanking their stars that they can rest at last. They certainly do feel better and do improve, but they come back to work merely to begin the same old vicious round. They have had their lesson, but they have not learned it. CHAPTER III This is a young nation. It began with the great gods of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. And it fought a good fight in the War of Independence for Freedom and Equality. Then came the lesser gods of material success. They broke the nation apart. But it survived. Since the Civil War we have grown rich and fat, flaccid and spineless. We are like a great, careless boy with a rich father; our crops and material resources symbolize the rich father who is able to pay for all his son's foolishness. And so the youth has never stopped to think. But underneath that careless exterior there are muscle and character. For what is the history of Youth? If the youth is to become a real man he cannot be curbed to the extent of forgetting courage in an excess of caution. And the rush of our youth to the service showed this. THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH An Englishman once writing of the tendency of the elders to blot out all the fire of youth with restrictive legislation, said, "It is a fearful responsibility to be young, and none can bear it like their elders." How can a youth whose blood is warm within sit like his grandsire carved in alabaster? He cannot and he will not, and that is the salvation of the race. It is the old story of the stag in the herd. He will see no other usurp his rights until he is too old to have any. Let me tell you something of the history of these attempts by the elders to curb the everlasting spirit of youth. At one time they would have eliminated all the sports. But we didn't let croquet become the national game! You ask what this nation of ours will become, and in reply I ask you what will you make of your boys? Statisticians tell us that 90 per cent. of the men who go into business fail. Do you want your boy to fold his hands and say that because the chances are against him he will not try at all? Are you going to let him get such a maximum of old man's caution that he reduces to a minimum the young man's courage? Make him strong and well, just as you wish the nation to be strong and sound. There will always be plenty of middle-aged failures to preach caution. Teach your boy fair play and may the best man win. Teach him that the true sportsman "boasts little, crows gently when in luck, puts up, pays up, and shuts up when beaten"; that he should be strong in order to protect his country. A boy may over-emphasize his sports, but he will get over that. They tell us about the good old times when boys at college spent all their time in study and loved one another. There never were any such times. The town-and-gown riots took the place of sports, that's all. ECONOMIC LOSSES We are all of us very much interested in the life of an automobile tire, and it seems to speak to us in terms we can readily understand. But only the particularly wise and successful men of our generation know and appreciate how valuable the life of a man is when expressed in those same terms of good hard dollars. Many manufacturers in the last two or three years have awakened to the fact that when, they put in a man and he stayed with them only two or three months, or even, in the case of executives, two or three years and then dropped out, either to go elsewhere or on account of ill health, it was a very distinct loss. In other words, they had put a certain investment into the man and that investment should have been growing more valuable to them all the time. Germany's General Staff, previous to this war, was working overtime, just as our Cabinet and National Board of Defense are doing now--namely, till midnight and beyond. But the German General Staff was taken out into the Thiergarten in the morning for from one to two hours of exercise as a beginning of the day. It therefore sifts itself down to this: If we had an ordnance officer who fired a gun, that was tested for but two hundred rounds without heating, five hundred times and thus cracked it, he would probably be discharged. If the superintendent in a factory doubled the number of hours he was running his automatic machinery, and instead of doubling the amount of oil actually cut it in half and thus ruined the machines, he would be regarded as a fool. Yet we are letting our men, high in executive positions, heads of departments in the government, and leaders of manufacturing, transportation, and commercial interests, do this very thing. Is it possible that we regard them as less valuable to us in this emergency than machines and guns, that we should burn them out for lack of lubricant and rest or physical conservation? WARNING EXAMPLES A railroad president not long ago said that he had not the time to take exercise or rest, that his salary was fifty thousand dollars a year, and that his company had just given him a bonus of fifty thousand; hence he could not shirk his responsibilities. He paid the full measure and was buried in six months from the time of the warning. In one issue of the New York _Evening Post_ the following deaths were noted: President Hyde, formerly of Bowdoin, fifty-nine years of age. Capt. Volney Chase, of the Navy, fifty-six years of age. Capt. Campbell Babcock, fifty years old. Colonel Deshon, fifty-three years old. Our Cabinet officers and executives and the members of the Council of National Defense are likely to forget, in the excess of their patriotism and loyalty, that there is one edict higher than that of the greatest government in the world. When Nature gives an order there is no appeal to a higher court, and the excuse that a man has not the time to obey, or is doing something that his country most urgently needs, has no weight in that court. When Nature touches a man on the shoulder and says, "Stop!" he stops. The penalty of frayed nerves, overworked brains, and underworked bodies is failure of body and mind. The premonitory symptoms are irritability, quarreling, depression, fierceness and inefficiency of effort, and finally complete breakdown. Three to four hours a week physical exercise under a scientifically tested plan and arrangement will keep these men fit. Is the price in this emergency too high to pay? PHYSICAL FITNESS A VITAL FACT Up to the time when this world conflagration started, a man's physical fitness was merely a matter of individual interest. The general health of the community was important, but that fact was not sufficiently pressing to do much more than attract the attention of the health boards, and perhaps a few recently organized and semi-philanthropic bodies. But suddenly there flamed out a war in Europe, and at once the countries involved found that upon the physical fitness of the people would depend their lives and freedom. It was no longer an academic question. It became an immediate and vital fact. In September of 1914 the writer placed the following suggestion on the top of his syndicate athletic article: AMERICANS AWAKE! Guard your shores and train your men, Teach your growing youth to fight; Make your plans ere once again Ships of foes appear in sight. Teach new arts until you hold In your bounds all things you need. Then you can't be bought or sold; From commercial bonds be freed! If Manhattan rich you'd save, If your western Golden Gate-- Train a field force, rule the wave. Every day you're tempting fate! Build the ships and train to arms, Make your millions fighting strength That shall frighten war's alarms Ere they reach a challenge length. He was immediately assailed as a militarist, and yet, had we but taken those preparatory steps, millions of lives might have been saved. CHAPTER IV And thus we approach one of the problems which this book is designed to solve. There are eight million men in this country between the ages of forty-five and sixty-four. Probably we may count upon another million from the men of sixty-four to seventy who would be "prospects," as the mining-men say. These men represent nine-tenths of the financial and executive strength of the United States. THE SENIOR SERVICE CORPS When I started the experiment of the Senior Service Corps at New Haven, in the spring of 1917, all my men were over forty-five, and several of them had passed the seventy mark; yet all found increased health and efficiency from the prescribed regime. There was a distinct gain, not only in health, but in spirits and in temper. Nerves that had been at high tension relaxed to normal. Effort that had seemed exhaustive became pleasurable. The ordinary problems of business or finance, once so apt to be vexatious, lost their power to produce worry. In fact, these men had renewed their youth; they had altered the horizon-line of advancing age, across which only clouds of doubt and apprehension could be seen, to that of youth, radiant with the sunshine of hope and the promise of accomplishment. [Illustration: INITIAL HIKE OF FIRST SENIOR SERVICE CORPS] This war has started some new thoughts and has given emphasis to others that may not be new but which have never been forced home. One of these is the value of physical efficiency. A social scientist said some twenty years ago that the "greatest nation of the future would be the one which could send the most men to the top of the Matterhorn." Nations now realize that in such a time as this all men up to forty may be required for the firing-line; and this means that all the men from forty to seventy must be rendered especially efficient and physically fit in order to stand back of the fighting forces as a dependable reserve--money, power, and brains. [Illustration: HIKE OF A SENIOR CORPS] [Illustration: THESE MEN, ALTHOUGH OVER FORTY-FIVE YEARS OF AGE, MARCHED FOR OVER FOUR HOURS WITHOUT DISCOMFORT] THE BASIC IDEA This was the idea of the development of the Senior Service Corps--to take men who are over military age and make them physically fit for whatever strain may come. It has resulted in not only making them physically fit, but in practically renewing their youth. The experimental (New Haven) company of a hundred, varying in age from forty-five to over seventy, in weight from 114 to 265 pounds, and in height from 5 ft. 4 in. to 6 ft. 4 in., after just completing ninety days' training, marched at the dedication of the Artillery Armory over four and one-half hours without physical discomfort. Now, war or no war, the man of over military age would like to be fit, would like to feel that glow of youth which comes even to the man of fifty when he is physically in condition. Nine-tenths of the men over forty-five can accomplish this, and they can do it by the expenditure of only three or four hours a week if they will follow with absolute care the rules demonstrated by a scientific experiment upon a company of one hundred men over a period of ninety days. This company of New Haven professional and business men included the president of the Chamber of Commerce, the editor of the largest evening newspaper, the dean of Yale University, the director of the gymnasium, the president of Sargent & Company, the owner of the Poli Theater Circuit, the ex-mayor of the city, two judges, the treasurer of the savings-bank, the registrar of Yale University, four professors, three doctors, and many leading corporation officials. At the end of this period these men were not only able to march for over four hours without discomfort, but without losing a man. Moreover, they all gained in spirits, recovered their erect carriage, and found themselves enjoying their tasks. COMMUNITY PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT The plan developed by the National Security League, under its committee on physical reserve, of assuring physical fitness for the nation, is capable of endless possibilities in application and development. The plan treats each as a separate unit and allows it to adapt the physical-fitness scheme to local conditions, favoring the appointment of neighborhood groups for instruction in physical drill and the "Daily Dozen Set-up," assuring such conditions and applications of diet and hygiene as are particularly demanded by the individual community's conditions and demands. Every individual detail and local development is left to the committee which each mayor or town or borough official appoints, on invitation of the league. [Illustration: WALTER CAMP, PRESIDENT, AND JOSEPH C. JOHNSON, SECRETARY, OF THE ORIGINAL SENIOR SERVICE CORPS ESTABLISHED IN NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, IN THE SPRING OF 1917] The ideal toward which every community is working is the establishment, as an integral part of it, of a local fitness plant. This includes first, playgrounds laid out for all recreational sports, in their season. The ideal playground system will have enough room in walks and landscape-gardening for park development--sufficient to meet the community's maximum needs. Community physical-fitness centers are growing up in which an adjacent lake or river provides facilities for rowing, canoeing, and recreational enjoyment through breathing the fresh air, while taking regular physical, conditioning exercises. Such an ideal community plant has proven by no means a vision incapable of realization. To-day men and women realize painfully the need for one in their home community and are prevented from the fulfilment of their dream by only two obstacles--lack of funds and adequate organization of the plan. This work and these centers offer the greatest possibilities in the Americanization scheme, perfection of which is a paramount duty for this country. [Illustration: SETTING-UP WORK OF A COMPANY OF ONE HUNDRED] [Illustration: DOCTOR ANDERSON LEADING A GROUP IN THE YALE GYMNASIUM] Not only do such plants transpose the astonishingly large percentage of the physically unfit of our foreign and domestic population and reclaim those whose physical imperfections have either become evident through the draft, or which are not known, but it affords the surest possible means of interesting this large element of our population in American institutions, of attracting them to the soundest and most beautiful features of American life, and of convincing them of their comradeship in the strength and sinew of American manhood; in short, of building the foundations of democracy on a base as stable as the eternal granite hills. AN OUTLINE OF THE SYSTEM The Senior Service program starts with setting-up exercises which open the chest, gently stimulate the heart, and start the blood coursing through the system, and follows with progressive walking, a little hill-climbing, and, later in the development, with some weight-carrying exercises. The system renews the resistive force of the body, tones up the muscles, opens the chest cavity so that the heart and lungs have more room and the breath is deeper and better, gives general exercise to the various muscles which have become more or less atrophied from disuse, and brings about a marked improvement in the mental outlook and in the animal spirits. The system is a combination of setting-up exercises with outdoor work, all carefully and precisely laid out after twenty years of experience in conditioning men. It should be followed absolutely, not partially or occasionally. It is far from severe. Its strength lies in the cumulative effect rather than in any special effort at any one time. It should be said that a mental effort is requisite in this course as well as the physical one. The correlation between mind and muscle must be re-established. The man must become master of his body once more and retain that mastery. Certain suggestions are also given specifically as to living--none of them irksome, but quite essential if the full result of the work is to be attained. This was the first experiment of its kind, and hence it has proven of especial interest. There are plenty of cases of individuals taking up exercise in one form or another and benefiting somewhat by it; but when twenty to one hundred men in a group have engaged in this Senior Service work, the result has proven remarkable in every instance. The question seems to be simply this: If you are over military age and wish to renew your youth, and are willing to pay the price by devoting some three or four hours a week to a scientifically tested system, and can secure a score of other men to do it with you, you can be absolutely assured of success. Well, isn't it worth it? INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP ACTION Thousands of men are beginning to realize what all this means. My mail for the last six months has been full of the inquiry. Men of forty are rapidly awakening and are eager to devote these few hours to the task of keeping fit, and so increasing their efficiency. At the same time they are preventing these horrible and untimely punishments at the hand of Mother Nature. Now there are two methods by which a man may still be young at sixty. One is an exceedingly hard route for most men to travel--namely, the individual practice of this scientifically tested formula and patient persistence in it. The other is by group action. The latter is far easier and its results are doubly effective. However, as in some cases group action may be impossible, this book furnishes the data for individual practice as well. All the exercises described are possible for the individual as well as for the group. Should a man determine to follow them out alone, he must make up his mind that there shall be no interference with his carrying out his program with regularity and exactness. He must not for a moment believe that he can miss the exercises one day and then make up for the lapse by doubling them the next day. He must always follow the setting-up exercises with his walk and not do the setting-up in the morning and then wait till afternoon for his walk. It is the combination that produces the most effective results. [Illustration: EFFECT OF THIRTY DAYS OF TRAINING UPON A COMPANY. THESE MEN ARE CARRYING IRON BARS WEIGHING NINE POUNDS EACH] [Illustration: PRACTISING AND MARCHING WITH IRON BARS WEIGHING NINE POUNDS EACH] In a group the leader constantly cautions the men as to carelessness or slackness. The individual having no leader must always keep his mind fixed upon the exact way in which his exercises should be performed. When he puts his hands behind his head in "Neck Firm" or "Head" he must keep his elbows back and his head up, while the chest should be arched. When he bends forward in the prone position he must not allow his head to droop. When he raises his knees in alternate motions he must bring his knees well up. When he does the exercise of leaning up against the wall, by means of the extended arm and hand, he must keep the distance far enough from the wall to bring about a certain amount of real effort by the hand, arm, and shoulder. And so it goes. It is for this reason that all the exercises are so carefully described and the method and manner of walking, marching, or "hiking" receive so much attention. WORK AND HYGIENE In a book recently published by one of the highest authorities on hygiene in the country, the following statements are made, statements which would prove of especial interest to those of us who have had the pleasure of being members of that "exclusive official Washington club," or of the Senior Service: The problem of the mental worker is to get sufficient physical exercise to keep the mind and body at its maximum efficiency. This problem gets more and more acute as he gets older. The amount of work necessary to keep the man of sedentary habits in good condition is about 100 to 150 foot-tons. Five hundred foot-tons is the amount of work a soldier would perform by marching twenty miles at three miles an hour on a level road. It is a fallacy to think that sufficient exercise can be taken once a week. In order to be efficient exercise must be regular and at relatively short intervals. All exercise should tend toward using all of the muscles of the body. In fatigue a person has lost control over his muscles. The process of getting into condition, therefore, is directed more toward strengthening the nervous system in its control work over the muscles rather than in increasing sheer muscular strength. Pure creative mental work, although requiring no out-put of physical energy, is perhaps the most productive of fatigue. The brain gets more blood during physical activity and waste products are much better removed. The effects of exercise are particularly apparent in the lungs. More fresh air is brought to the lungs and the waste products are driven off. An attainable minimum for the average adult person might well consist of taking simple exercises in his room, and to get out of doors once a day and walk rapidly for at least half an hour. In addition, it is desirable for any one up to fifty years of age to take some kind of moderately violent exercise at least once a week. This should be sufficiently strenuous to induce perspiration. This is important for several reasons. In the first place, there is an old saying, which happens to be true, "Never let your blood-vessels get stiff." In addition we should call on the tremendous reserve which Nature gives to us, at least once in a while. [Illustration: "COUNTING OFF" A COMPANY IN THE YALE GYMNASIUM] [Illustration: "HEAD" POSITION. GROUP OF ONE HUNDRED, SENIOR CORPS] WATER, WALKING, AND FOOD Water plays a very important part in the life of man, for without it a person can live for only a short time. Its importance is shown by experimental fasts lasting for thirty days where only water was taken, and when we consider that the body is composed of from 60 to 70 per cent, of water and that the amount which it throws off as waste has to be replaced through nutrition, we realize the value of water to life. The average person, therefore, should take from two to four quarts of water a day. [Illustration: RESULT OF SIXTY DAYS' TRAINING IN CARRIAGE. THE TWO MEN IN FRONT WEIGH 265 AND 230 POUNDS RESPECTIVELY] [Illustration: LOOK AND DETERMINATION ON FIRST DAY'S MARCH, DURING WHICH THE MEN CARRIED IRON BARS WEIGHING NINE POUNDS EACH] At middle age it is natural for most people to put on weight, unless they are especially active in their daily life. For, having acquired a habit of consuming a certain amount of food, it is absolutely essential to exercise and thereby offset the tendency of this food to make fat and increase the weight. Walking can be enjoyed by everybody, and a four-or five-mile "hike" daily makes your credit at the bank of health mount up steadily. We should all learn that when we rob the trolley company of a nickel by walking we add a dime to our deposit of health. Food, of course, is one of the main factors in one's general health, and we hear on all sides the opinions of people as to the causes of indigestion and the general ailments connected with eating. One thing is certain, however, and that is that pleasure has a favorable effect on the digestion. Pleasant company at a meal, the dainty serving of the viands, and the attractiveness of the food combinations pave the way to a satisfactory repast, eaten with enjoyment and completely assimilated. A MODEL DIETARY Because diet is a real aid to physical well-being, the following table is offered as a rough suggestion for a typical dietary for a man leading a more or less sedentary life. But it will never replace exercise. BREAKFAST Approximate Calories Orange or grapefruit.................... 100 Two eggs................................ 166 Two Vienna rolls........................ 258 Butter.................................. 119 Coffee with milk and sugar.............. 100 Total................................... 743 LUNCHEON Approximate Calories Twelve soda crackers.................... 300 One pint milk........................... 325 --- Total................................... 625 DINNER Approximate Calories Soup (consomme)......................... 14 Roast beef.............................. 357 Potato.................................. 145 String beans or peas.................... 13 Bread................................... 100 Butter.................................. 119 Apple pie............................... 352 Glass of milk........................... 157 ---- Total.................................. 1257 Many people have adopted a so-called vegetarian diet, believing that it is better for the health than eating meat. Undoubtedly food from the vegetable kingdom is a great benefit to the human system, but strict vegetarianism is not recommended by our medical men. Nature apparently intended us to be omnivorous, and, in addition, vegetarianism may run too close to the dangers of carbohydrate excess. As man progresses after middle life he can unquestionably diminish materially the amount of meat in his diet. In recent years there has been a revival of the theory of prolonged mastication of a limited amount of food. This theory is sound in so far as it tends to overcome the bolting of food and over-eating, but there is a belief among our practitioners that there is little basis in science or experience for the extremes of this character. HYGIENIC CURE-ALLS Among recent fads is the so-called buttermilk or sour milk diet as advocated by Metchnikoff. The original theory was interesting and was, in part, that the bacteria derived from soured milk would drive out of the intestinal canal all the harmful germs. Quite possibly there may be something in the theory, especially if large quantities of milk are taken with the lactic acid bacilli, but the beneficial effect of this change of bacteria is not convincingly of great consequence. FRESH AIR It is now generally known that an abundant supply of moving, pure, fresh air is the proper and simple solution of the problem of the hygiene of the air. Oxygen is the element of the air which sustains life. We inhale about seven pounds per day, two pounds of which are absorbed by the body. The air becomes dangerous, or infected, when the oxygen in the air is decreased to only 11 or 12 per cent., and when the oxygen reaches 7 per cent. death occurs from asphyxiation. The human body requires about three thousand cubic feet per hour, and the great problem of ventilation is to give this amount of pure air, moving, and with the proper amount of moisture. It is a common belief that with each breath we take we are filling our lungs with fresh air. This is not the case, for we never do get our lungs filled with fresh air. What really happens is that we ventilate a long tube which has no intercommunication whatever with the blood. Most of the time our lungs are filled with impure air, and we simply exchange a part of it for fresh air. THE VALUE OF DEEP BREATHING Deep breathing is undoubtedly extremely beneficial. Most of us, due largely to the fact that Nature leaves a considerable margin of safety, are able to carry on our ordinary activities without the requisite ventilation of the lungs, especially if we do not exercise. This, however, is injurious to the lungs, for it allows the blood to stagnate in them. Exercise is Nature's method of compelling ventilation in the lung area. Deep breathing may be used as a substitute, but the other beneficial effects of exercise are lost. The skin and the various glands connected with it form a complex organism, the functions of which play a very important part in the work which the body has to do. The skin aids the lungs in their work of respiration; and, like the lungs, it throws off water and carbon dioxide and absorbs oxygen. The respiratory work of the skin, however, is only a minute fraction of that which the lungs do. The skin is a heat regulator, and in this, its most important work, it is aided by the two million or more sweat-glands which are distributed over almost the entire surface of the body. The skin and the sweat-glands work together to keep the blood at an even temperature, either by giving off heat or in preventing this process in case the outside air is too cool. The body temperature, as a rule, is higher than that of the outside air, so that heat is generally being given off by the skin. We are perspiring constantly, but usually to such a slight extent that the fact is hardly noticeable. The amount of heat which is thrown off at any time is proportional to the amount of the tissue burned up by muscular action. CHAPTER V Health, strength, and efficiency! Surely every man in this great Republic of ours wants to be healthy, strong, and efficient, but how is he to obtain and maintain this threefold blessing? It has been stated that scientific physical exercise, preferably taken in group association, will accomplish it. Now to consider some of the practical details involved. THE ORGANIZATION The organization may be composed of any number from sixteen to one hundred men, and about the smallest unit that should be undertaken is that of sixteen men. On the other hand, when the number gets above one hundred (or preferably ninety-six, in order that it may be divided into four companies of twenty-four each) it is better to start a second group under a separate leader. The first thing to do in the organization is to enroll at least one physician, who becomes the surgeon of the company. His name, together with that of the secretary of the unit, should be filed with the Senior Service Corps, of New Haven, Connecticut, or with the National Security League, of New York City, in order that any additional information or directions may be forwarded promptly. The division of labor in the work should be from ten to fifteen minutes of the setting-up exercises, and from forty-five to fifty minutes of the outdoor work. It has been found upon scientific test that this is the best division, and the outdoor work should follow the setting-up exercises immediately, since the men are then in condition to benefit from the fact that they have opened up their chest cavity and are taking in more fresh air and oxygen. The best way to start a unit is to get ten or a dozen leaders together at dinner or luncheon and organize; then pick out other men who are of importance in the community and add them to the charter number. The editors of the local papers are usually very glad to lend their powerful assistance toward the project. It is not necessary to have the outdoor work partake of the nature of military drill, but a certain amount of this, added after the second or third week, lends interest and also produces excellent results in muscular control. In order to understand the various prescribed movements and exercises the following explanations should be carefully studied, of course, in connection with the illustrative photographs. TO THE LEADER It is particularly necessary that the leader should thoroughly familiarize himself with the movements and positions, for many of the men will not take the trouble to study the manual by themselves, or they may be unable to spare time for anything but the actual drill. It is the leader's business to instruct, and the progress of his squad or company will be in direct proportion to his knowledge and capacity to inspire real interest in and enthusiasm for the work. Each movement must be executed perfectly and exactly or the benefit therefrom will not be fully assured. Much depends upon the leader; a man should be selected who has the gift of leadership. GIVING THE COMMANDS In giving the commands care should be taken to discriminate between the explanatory and executive parts of the order, making a decided pause between. For example, in "Forward March!" "Forward" is the explanatory or warning word; then, after a perceptible pause, the executive word "March!" should be given in a crisp, decisive tone of voice. The command "Attention!" is but one word, but it is the custom to divide it syllabically, thus, "Atten-shun!" All other commands taken from the military manuals have their proper warning and executive words; for example: "Count--Off!" "About--Face!" "Right--Face!" "Company--Halt!" "To the Rear--March!" "Double Time--March!" etc. The exceptions are the commands, "Rest!" "At Ease!" and "Fall Out!" The orders for the exercise movements may be standardized by first giving the name of the movement, "Arms Cross," and then adding the words: "Ready--Cross!" to indicate the second or executive part of the command. For example: "Arms Cross. Ready--Cross!" the men taking the "cross" position at the last word. In this way the members of the squad are first warned as to just what they are expected to do; then, at the executive word, they all act together. The leader should see to it that the over-eager men do not anticipate the executive command. The only purely military formation used in this manual is that of the squad. Nowadays, when military training is so universal, the meaning of the term is well known; there is sure to be some one in the company who can supply the necessary information about forming the squad and the simple movement of "Squads Right." To put it into untechnical language, it may be said that the squad consists of eight men, lined up four abreast in two ranks. The men should be arranged in order of height, the tallest being No. 1, front rank. No. 4 of the front rank acts as corporal of the squad. [Illustration: EYES RIGHT!] "Squads Right" looks like a complicated maneuver when studied according to the diagrams in the manuals, but it is not particularly difficult in practice. Its use is to get the company out of the double line formation into a column of four men abreast, the usual marching formation. At the executive command, "March!" No. 1 front rank acts as the pivot, and makes a right-angled turn to the right, marking time in that position until the three other men in the front rank have executed a right-oblique movement and have come up on the new line. The rear-rank men follow suit, but Nos. 2 and 1 have to turn momentarily to the left in order to get behind the front-rank pivot men--to put it more simply, they follow No. 2 in single file. It sounds confusing, but any old National Guardsman can explain the movement in very short order. So soon as "Squads Right" has been completed the whole column takes up the march without further word of command. STEPS AND MARCHINGS All steps and marchings executed from a halt (except Right or Left Step) begin with the left foot. The length of the full step in "Quick (or ordinary) time" is 30 inches, measured from heel to heel, and the cadence is at the rate of 120 steps to the minute. The length of the full step in "Double Time" is 36 inches; the cadence is at the rate of 180 steps to the minute. FORWARD--MARCH! At the warning command, "Forward!" shift the weight of the body to the right leg, left knee straight. At the command, "March!" move the left foot forward 30 inches from the right; continue with the right and so on. The arms swing freely. DOUBLE TIME--MARCH! The arms are raised to a position horizontal with the waist-line, fingers clenched. The run is as natural as possible. TO THE REAR--MARCH! At the command, "March!" given as, the right foot strikes the ground, advance and plant the left foot, turn to the right-about on the balls of both feet, and immediately step off with the left foot. COMPANY--HALT! At the command, "Halt!" given as either foot strikes the ground, plant the other foot as in marching; raise and place the first foot by the side of the other. If in "Double Time," drop the hands by the sides. MARK TIME--MARCH! At the command, "March!" given as either foot strikes the ground, advance and plant the other foot; bring up the foot in the rear and continue the cadence by alternately raising each foot about two inches and planting it on line with the other. Being at a halt, at the command, "March!" raise and plant the feet in position as prescribed above. CHANGE STEP--MARCH! At the command, "March!" given as the right foot strikes the ground, advance and plant the left foot; plant the toe of the right foot near the heel of the left and step off with the left foot. The change as the left foot strikes the ground is similarly executed. RIGHT--FACE! Raise slightly the left heel and right toe; face to the right, turning on the right heel, assisted by a slight pressure on the ball of the left foot; place the left foot by the side of the right. "Left Face" is executed on the left heel in a corresponding manner. ABOUT--FACE! Carry the toe of the right foot about half a foot-length to the rear and slightly to the left of the left heel (without changing the position of the left foot); face to the rear, turning to the right on the left heel and right toe; place the right heel by the side of the left. There is no left "About Face." COUNT--OFF! At this command all except the right files (the two men forming the extreme right end of the company as drawn up in two lines) execute "Eyes Right"; then, beginning on the right, the men in each rank count one, two, three, four--one, two, three, four, etc. As each man calls off his squad number he turns head and eyes to the front. THE SETTING-UP EXERCISES Attention! This is the regular military position. Heels together, the feet at an angle of forty-five degrees; hands at the sides, thumbs along seam of the trousers; neck back, chin in, chest out. (See Fig. 1.) [Illustration: FIG. 1.--ATTENTION] The movement calls for prompt control of the muscles; in fact, the expression is often used of "snapping into attention," meaning that the man comes into this position quickly and easily and with a distinct click of the heels. In the "Daily Dozen" referred to later in this book, this position is called "Hands." Arms Cross (Ready-Cross!) This movement is taken from the position of "Attention" by raising the arms from the sides and turning the palms down; it may be varied by turning the palms up. Holding the arms in this position, at the same time turning the hands and keeping the neck straight and the chest arched, will develop all the muscles over the shoulder. (See Fig. 2.) [Illustration: FIG. 2.--ARMS CROSS On the "Cross" position the arms should be straight out horizontally from the body, with the elbows locked. At the same time, resistance should be placed against the head and neck coming forward at all. These should be held in exactly the same position as at "Attention." The tendency is either to let the arms bend a little or to let them drop below the horizontal, or even to hold them slightly above the level.] From this position "shoulder-grinding" may be practised. This is executed by keeping the arms extended, turning the whole arm in a circle in the shoulder socket, and forcing the shoulder-blades back and together as the arms go back. The circle made by the hands should be about twelve inches in diameter. Arms Stretch (Ready-Stretch!) In this exercise the arms are raised to a position straight up above the head, with the hands extended. The palms may be together or facing front. (See Fig. 3.) [Illustration: FIG. 3.--ARMS STRETCH] Hips Firm! (This order is given, "Hips-Firm!") The hands are placed on the hips, with thumbs back and fingers forward. The chest should be arched, the shoulders and elbows kept well back, and the neck pushed hard against the collar. (See Fig. 4.) Also the hips should be kept well back and the abdomen in. This gives the same poise as the "Attention" position, but it puts more work on the shoulder muscles and so gives greater opportunity for arching the chest. In the "Daily Dozen" this position is called simply, "Hips." [Illustration: FIG. 4.--HIPS FIRM] Neck Firm! (This order is given, "Neck-Firm!") Maintaining the same position as in "Hips Firm," the hands are quickly raised and put against the back of the head (the finger-tips slightly interlaced) just where it joins the neck, exerting some pressure; at the same time the head and neck are forced well back. (See Fig. 5.) [Illustration: FIG. 5.--NECK FIRM] The elbows should not be allowed to come forward, but should be kept back and the chest should be arched. This gives extra work for the muscles of the neck, as well as for those of the arms and shoulders. In the "Daily Dozen" this is called simply, "Head." (See Fig. 6.) [Illustration: Fig. 6--INCORRECT POSITION OF SHOULDERS IN NECK FIRM] Arms Reach (Ready-Reach!) While maintaining an erect position, the arms are stretched out forward parallel to each other, the shoulders being kept back and the chest not cramped. If the shoulders are allowed to come forward the exercise is valueless. (See Fig. 7.) [Illustration: FIG. 7.--ARMS REACH] Arms Bend (Ready-Bend!) In this position the arms are bent at the elbows, with the hands partially clenched, and brought up about to the point of the shoulders. The shoulders are held back firmly and the neck is pressed against the collar, while the chest is arched (Fig. 8). From this position the following movements are made with the hands clenched: Arms Cross (Ready-Cross)![1] [Illustration: FIG. 8.--ARMS BEND] A good exercise in rhythmic time may be developed by going through the following round of movements: "Arms Bend, Arms Cross, Arms Bend, Arms Stretch, Arms Bend, Arms Reach, Arms Bend, Arms Down." Body Prone (Ready-Bend!) Assuming the position of "Neck Firm," press the hands against the back of the neck and bend body at the waist forward, at the same time keeping the head in line with the spinal column and the eyes up; then back again to the erect position. (See Fig. 6a, Chapter XI.) This gives excellent exercise for the muscles of the neck, and, if performed slowly, some exercise for the back. Assuming the same position of "Neck Firm," bend the body slightly at the waist. This exercise should not be carried to an extreme, especially in the case of men who have reached middle age. In the "Daily Dozen" this is called "Grasp." Balancing (Ready-Balance!) Assume the position of "Attention," then, standing on the right foot and keeping the knees straight, advance the left foot forward about two feet from the ground. Hold this position while balancing on the right foot, then back to "Attention" again. (See Fig. 9.) [Illustration: FIG. 9.--BALANCING] Make the same motion, standing on the left foot. Now standing on the right foot, advance the left foot and, instead of bringing it to the ground, swing it back and extend it at the same height to the rear, still balancing on the other foot. Hold this position for a moment. After some practice this movement can be executed by standing on one foot and putting the other leg first forward and then back for several times. This exercise gives control over the muscles of the leg and balancing powers, and increases the ability to adjust the muscles so as to maintain the equilibrium. Stride Position (Ready-Stride!) This position calls for the separation of the feet sideways about a foot and a half apart (Fig. 10). Now assume the "Arms Cross" attitude, and then, turning the body at the hips, bring first the right hand down to touch the floor, at the same time bending the right knee and keeping the left knee straight. Come back to the regular position again. [Illustration: FIG. 10.--STRIDE, FIRST POSITION] Now bend the left knee, put down the left hand and touch the ground, turning the body at the hips. (See Fig. 11.) [Illustration: FIG. 11.--STRIDE, FINAL POSITION] In both of these movements keep the other arm extended backward. This produces a graceful exercise which is excellent work for the muscles of the body and shoulders. In the "Daily Dozen" this is called "The Weave." Assuming the "Stride Position," advance the right foot about a foot; then, with the arms in "Cross" position once more, bend the forward knee and touch the ground with the hand, at the same time keeping the other arm extended backward. Reverse this. This movement is also excellent for the muscles of the body and back. Wall Balance (Ready-Bend!) Stand sideways to the wall about two feet and a half away; now extend both arms in the "Cross" position, and then lift the foot that is farthest away from the wall and lean over until the extended fingers of the other hand touch the wall; push back into original position. Move out a little farther from the wall and repeat. Do this until the distance is as far as can comfortably be recovered by pushing the hand against the wall. Reverse this exercise, so as to do it with the other arm. This is an excellent workout for the shoulder muscles as well as for the forearms, and gives some exercise to the body. Stepping (Ready-Step!) Standing erect at "Attention," step to the right with the right foot about six inches, merely touching the toe to the ground, and bring the foot back to the "Attention" position. The object of this movement is to give control of the muscles of the leg in addition to the balancing of the body. Care should be taken to keep the body absolutely motionless while the exercise is in progress. The toe is only touched to the ground and the foot is brought immediately back into position. This movement has a quieting effect after more violent exercising. It can be done either sideways, forward, or back. Running in Place (Mark Time--March!) Beginning with "Marking Time!" Now raise the feet alternately from the ground, a little higher each time, until the knees come up practically to a level with the waist. Then perform this same motion on the toes and shift into a run while still holding the same position--that is, while going up and down on the toes. Men who have considerable weight around the waist-line should place their hands on the abdomen when performing this exercise. Body-turning (Ready-Cross! Ready-Turn!) This movement consists in turning the body at the hips while keeping the feet and legs in the original position. It may be done from almost any of the positions already outlined, and is moderate work for the muscles of the waist. Do it first with the arms in "Cross" position, turning to the right as far as possible; then back to the "Front," or original, position; then to the left as far as possible, and back to the "Front," or original, position, taking pains that the turning is executed above the hips while the legs and feet hold their original position. A more pronounced method is given in the "Daily Dozen" in "Wave" and "Weave." Heel-raising (Ready-Rise!) Standing on both feet at "Attention," raise the heels, and hold the position for a moment; then drop the heels again. Repeat this. Now, standing in "Stride Position," go up onto the toes again. Drop the heels and repeat. This is an excellent exercise for the muscles of the calf. GROUP EXERCISES No. 1. Attention! (or "Hands!") Hips: Same position, but hands on hips, elbows back. Neck (or "Head"): Same position, but hands on back of neck, elbows back. Cross: Same position, but arms extended full length out from body, palms down. Grind: Maintaining the "Cross" position, turn palms up, and then make ten circles with hands, the diameter of the circle to be one foot (Fig. 12). In doing this keep the arms horizontally out from the body, and on the backward sweep try to make the shoulder-blades almost meet at the back. (See Fig. 4, Chapter XI.) Rest ten seconds. Deep breathing with hands on hips. [Illustration: FIG. 12.--"GRIND," SHOWING HOW THE PALMS OF HANDS ARE TURNED UP IN THIS EXERCISE] No. 2. Attention! Stretch: Lift arms straight up above head, palms out. Reach: Bring arms down, extending them straight out in front. Palms in, but keep shoulders back. Fling: Bend elbows out and bring hands in to chest, palms down. Then to "Cross," back to "Fling" again, and so on ten times. (See Fig. 13.) [Illustration: FIG. 13.--FLING. CORRECT POSITION] Wave: Assume "Reach" position. Now bend the arms sharply at wrists and just let the fingers interlock. Bring the inside of elbow close to head, keeping head up. Then, by turning the body at the hips and keeping the back straight, cause the hands to make a complete circle of the diameter of a foot (Fig. 14). Do this five times, and then reverse for five times. (See Fig. 12, Chapter XIII.) Rest ten seconds. Then deep breathing, lifting arms on inhalations and crossing them on exhalations. [Illustration: FIG. 14.--WAVE. EXCELLENT DEMONSTRATION] No. 3. Attention! Stride: Separate the feet by taking a step to right, bringing the feet about eighteen inches apart. [Illustration: WEAVE--Common fault of not keeping shoulders and arms in line.] Weave: Turn the body at the hips while keeping the arms horizontally extended and bending the right knee slightly. Bring the right hand down to the ground midway between the feet and let the left arm go up, keeping its horizontal position from the body, the spine doing the turning. Hold this position five seconds; then up to "Cross" position and turn the body the reverse way, bending left knee and bringing left hand to ground. Hold five seconds, then up. Repeat five times for each hand. (See Fig. 14, Chapter XIII.) Curl: From "Cross" position, clench the fists and bring arms in slowly to the side and up into the armpits, at the same time bending the body and head backward (Fig. 15). The fists should be clenched and the wrists bent, bring the hands in toward the chest, the elbows out, and inhaling. (See Fig. 9, Chapter XII.) [Illustration: FIG. 15.--"CURL" POSITION. EXCELLENT DEMONSTRATION EXCEPT THAT THE ELBOWS SHOULD BE THROWN BACK] Forward: From the above position, gradually bring the body up to an erect position, extending the hands to a "Reach" position, and slowly bend the body forward at the hips, exhaling at the same time, and letting the hands go back past the hips and as high behind the back as possible, keeping the head up and the eyes looking directly forward, not down. Go down about to the level of the wrist, then back to "Cross" position again, and repeat this backward and forward movement five times. No. 4. Attention! (Cross-Crawl!) Assume the "Cross" position. Crawl: While still keeping the neck back, the chin, and the chest arched, slowly lift the right hand and arm until it points directly upward, then curl in right arm over the head, at the same time dropping the left shoulder and sliding the left hand and arm down along the side of the left leg until the fingers reach directly to the knee, or as far as comfortable. Now come back from this position. (See Figs. 7 and 8, Chapter XII.) "Cross" once more and raise the other arm in similar fashion. Repeat this five times on each side. No. 5. Attention! (Cross-Crouch!) Crouch: Assume the "Cross" position of the arms and "Stride" stand, feet about eighteen inches apart. Now, keeping the head up and the neck back and back straight, bend the knees and come down slowly, not too far (Fig. 16), until fully accustomed to it, and up again. Repeat this five times. (See Fig. 10, Chapter XII.) [Illustration: FIG. 16.--"CROUCH," SHOWING ERECT POSITION OF BODY AND BACK] No. 6. Attention! Heel-raising: Lift the heels from the floor, maintain the position on the toes for a second, then back onto the heels once more. Repeat some ten times, then take the "Stride" stand and repeat ten times in this position. No. 7. Attention! Wing-work: Raise the arms to the "Cross." Then lift arms straight over head, inhaling; then, bending body forward and keeping the neck straight, swing the arms backward at the shoulder, exhaling, and come forward until the body is about level with the waist; then up again (Fig. 17). Picture the arms as looking like a bird's wings. Repeat this five times in each direction. (See Figs. 15, 15a, Chapter XIII.) Final deep breathing, with arm lifting as before. [Illustration: FIG. 17.--"WING" POSITION, ALSO BACK POSITION OF "CURL." FACE SHOULD, HOWEVER, BE TURNED UP] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: This is the same movement as in the ordinary "Cross" position, except that the hands are kept clenched.] CHAPTER VI A TEN-DAY PROGRAM FIRST DAY Attention! Hips Firm Neck Firm Arms Bend Arms Cross Arms Stretch Arms Reach Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Attention! Stepping Heels Raise Deep Breathing (At "Arms Stretch") Hike or Outdoor Work Walk half-mile on level, each man at his own stride. [Illustration: CORRECT POSITION OF NECK AND SHOULDERS IN ALL REACH EXERCISES] Walk in pairs--column of twos; the shorter men should be in front. SECOND DAY Attention! Hips Firm Neck Firm Body Prone Hips Firm Stride Stand Body Bend (Side to left and right) Attention! Arms Bend Arms Cross Balancing (On one foot--to right and left) Arms Stretch Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Attention! Heels Raise Stepping Deep Breathing Hike or Outdoor Work Walk three-quarters of a mile, column of twos, keeping step. Starting at command, "Forward--March!" beginning with left foot. Leader calls "Company--Halt!" three or four times, and then "Forward--March!" again. Leader commands occasionally, "Change Step--March!" THIRD DAY Attention! Arms Bend Arms Cross Stride Stand Turn Body (On hips--right and left) Attention! Neck Firm Body Prone Body Backward Bend Attention! Balancing (On one foot--to right and left) Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Stride Stand Heels Raise Deep Breathing Hike or Outdoor Work [Illustration: STOOPING. INCORRECT POSITION, LETTING THE HEAD FALL FORWARD] Walk a mile, column of twos, keeping step. Last half-mile command men to stand up and keep their necks pressed back against their collars, chins in. FOURTH DAY Attention! Arms Bend Arms Stretch Palms Front Bring Arms Downward and Backward Attention! Arms Bend Arms Cross Balancing (On one foot--to right and left) Stride Stand (Foot advanced) Bend Knee and Touch Floor with Hand (Right and left) Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Stepping Deep Breathing Hike or Outdoor Work Walk a mile, marching step, column of twos, shorter men in front, but try to get them up to a thirty-inch stride. Make a portion of the march slightly up-hill, and last half-mile with necks back, chin in, chest out. [Illustration: Letting shoulders come forward; common fault] [Illustration: Incorrect position of neck and shoulders; very common fault] [Illustration: ARMS BEND] FIFTH DAY Attention! Arms Bend Arms Cross Shoulder-grinding (Moving hands in circle and backward) Attention! Stride Stand Arms Cross Balancing (On one foot--to right and left) Crouch (Quarter-bend) Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Faster Attention! Stepping Deep Breathing Hike or Outdoor Work Walk a mile and a quarter, column of twos. Insist on thirty-inch stride, but put shorter men in front. Make a little stiffer grade. No more talking in ranks. Insist upon necks back, chins in, and chests out all the way. SIXTH DAY [Illustration: STOOPING. INCORRECT POSITION, LETTING THE BACK BOW UP AND SHOULDERS DROP] Attention! Arms Bend Arms Wing Arms Fling Arms Cross Shoulder-grinding Attention! Stride Stand Arms Cross Balancing (On one foot--to right and left) Body-turning Crouch (Quarter-bend) Attention! Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Faster Running in Place Stepping Deep Breathing Hike or Outdoor Work Bring men into company line and "count off." Explain "squad" formation. March mile and a quarter in column of squads. Take a stiffer grade. No talking in ranks. Keep to thirty-inch stride and give it a regular beat. No sloppiness. Make it a firm, steady march, and keep urging the men to breathe deeply and steadily. SEVENTH DAY Attention! Right Face Left Face About Face Repeat Attention! Balancing (On one foot--to right and left) Stride Stand Heel-raising Body-bending Sideways Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Faster Running in Place Stepping Deep Breathing Hike or Outdoor Work Company formation. Count off. "Squads Right--March!" Mile and a quarter. Silence in ranks. Erect carriage. Hips back. Deep breathing. Steady thirty-inch stride. Stiff incline. No lagging, but take it much the same as on the level. On the way, in some five minutes after the grade has been covered, give them "Double Time" for about twenty steps. [Illustration: EFFECT OF THESE EXERCISES, SHOWING EVEN MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT] EIGHTH DAY Attention! Right Face Left Face About Face Repeat Attention! Arms Cross Balancing (On one foot--to right and left) Stride Stand Crouch (Quarter-bend) Attention! Arms Cross Arms Stretch Palms Front Bring Arms Downward and Backward Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Faster Running in Place Stepping Deep Breathing Hike or Outdoor Work Company formation. Count off. "Squads Right--March!" While marching explain to them "To the Rear--March," and have them do it three or four times. Distance mile and a half, with same hill work as before. Give them "Double Time" for twenty steps twice during the march. NINTH DAY Attention! Forward--March (Three steps and come to "Attention!") Same Steps Backward Same Steps Sideways Make Complete Square (Three steps forward, three to the right, three backward, and three to the left) Hips Firm Neck Firm Body Prone Body Backward Bend Body Sideways Bend Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Faster Running in Place Stepping Deep Breathing Hike or Outdoor Work Get some bars of iron, one inch in diameter and three feet long. They should cost fifty cents apiece, and weigh about eight pounds. Give half the company these bars to carry, and at the middle of the hike transfer them to the other half to bring home. Distance mile and a half. No "Double Time." Carry the bars by the middle in the hands, and then for a time behind the back and through the elbows, with the hands in front. TENTH DAY Attention! Arms Cross Body and Knee Bend, turning on Hips and touching Floor with Hand (First one and then the other. The right hand on bending right knee and the left hand on bending left knee). Attention! Hips Firm Neck Firm Body Prone Body Backward Bend Attention! Stride Stand Arms Cross Balancing (On one foot--to right and left) Crouch (Quarter-bend) Attention! Mark Time Mark Time on Toes Faster Running in Place Attention! Stepping Deep Breathing Hike or Outdoor Work Carry bars, distance mile and a quarter, every man carrying his bar all the way. "Double-time" them once during march for twenty steps. Insist on erect carriage all the way, with neck back against collars. Part II THE DAILY DOZEN A CONDENSED SYSTEM OF EITHER GROUP OR INDIVIDUAL SETTING-UP EXERCISES CHAPTER VII We may now consider the question of time-saving for those who may be obliged to largely forego pleasurable exercise and who yet desire to keep fit and well in spite of this deprivation. There are two divisions in this class, as may be shown in the case of the present world war. The first class embraces all the men in active service, with two subdivisions--officers who are over forty and officers and privates who are under that age. The second class comprises the men (and women, too, for that matter) who, unable to do service at the front, must support the troops in various ways behind the lines. It is said that it takes five men behind the line to support one man at the front, and, judging from the pressure that already has come upon our people, this is manifestly not an incorrect statement. These reserves must be kept in good physical condition, and with this end in view the writer has prepared a modified form of setting-up exercises which has been tested out with large numbers in actual practice. These exercises are intended to prepare the younger men for the more strenuous training which they are to undergo later; in the case of the older men, they are to be used before entering upon the ordinary day of business routine. After a great deal of study a system has been devised which answers the needs in both cases; it is not too strenuous for the older men, and it will add suppleness, vitality, and endurance to the physical assets of the younger men. A MODERN PHYSICAL SYSTEM We know how, in the stress of affairs brought about by war, not only individuals, but nations are suddenly awakened to the fact that what may have been good enough even a year ago is antiquated and out of date to-day. Under the pressure of war we are driven, whether we wish it or not, to put to immediate test virtually every fact of our daily lives. We find that almost every machine and well-nigh every method may be improved--in fact, that it must be improved. Boats, aeroplanes, guns, industrial processes, even the actual business of living itself, all are being submitted to the test of emergency and are being made over upon new lines. So it is with our setting-up exercises. We can no longer afford to waste time or motion or effort. We are teaching on an intensive scale and we must take nothing out of a man in preparation; rather we must add to his store of vitality and energy. Perhaps we find that the routine of his ordinary work will strengthen sufficiently his legs and arms. This is astonishingly true. What we must now do is to supple him, to quicken his co-ordination, to improve his poise, and to put his trunk and thorax into better shape. We must give him endurance, quickness of response, and resistive force. This, therefore, being our problem, we eliminate the arm and leg exercises and go directly for the trunk and thorax. We must quicken co-ordination and improve the man's rapidity of response to command. And standing out above all is this major principle: "No vitality should be taken out of a man by these setting-up exercises; he should not be tired out, but rather made ready for the regular work of the day." OUT-OF-DATE IDEAS This war in which we are engaged has brought to our people some all-compelling truths. And the greatest of these is that our men, the flower of our racial stock, are deficient physically when put to the test before examining-boards. When one sees some two thousand men examined by draft boards to secure two hundred men for our army, as happened in some cases, when one reads that in a physical examination for the sanitary police force in Cleveland thirty-seven out of forty-two women passed and only twenty-two men out of seventy-two, one is ready indeed to believe that we have failed to produce men who can be called upon when the need arises to defend our country. [Illustration: INCORRECT POSITION, SHOWING HOW MOST MEN SLACK IN SWEDISH EXERCISES BY LETTING THE BACK BEND] Our athletic sports have produced the right spirit, as the rush of athletes to the service has shown. But our calisthenics, our general building-up exercises have apparently failed in the physical development of our youth. They are antique. Permit me to illustrate. Only recently Professor Bolen, the authority on Swedish exercises, died and left behind him the record of his work. After twenty-five years of study he had decided that setting-up exercises were unnecessary in the case of a man's legs or arms or pectoral muscles, and that the attention should be devoted to the trunk--that is, to the engine itself. OLD-TIME FALLACIES Here is what was once considered to be a reasonable morning "setting-up" exercise, and which, if coupled with a five-mile rapid walk and hopping first on one foot and then on the other for a half-mile, would prepare a man for his day's work. On rising, let him stand erect, brace his chest firmly out, and, breathing deeply, curl dumbbells (ten pounds each for a 165-pound man) fifty times without stopping. Then placing the bells on the floor at his feet, and bending his knees a little and his arms none at all, let him rise to an upright position with them fifty times. After another minute's rest, standing erect, let him lift the bells fifty times as far up and out behind him as he can, keeping the elbows straight and taking care, when the bells reach the highest point behind, to hold them still there a moment. Next, starting with the bells at the shoulders, let him push them up high over the head and lower them fifty times continuously. Is it any wonder that we abandoned such "setting-up"? Again, it was pointed out how, by special exercises, a man might increase his biceps two or three inches in a year and the calves of his legs an inch or two! Now what was the average man to do this for? What was the object? To admire himself in the mirror? Or did he intend to make of himself a professional weightlifter? Practically the only real good in all this was the deep breathing, and that would not be lasting except in so far as a part of the exercises tended to open up the chest. How many of us have heard that fairy-tale that if we practised deep breathing for a few minutes daily our lungs would acquire the habit and we should continue it unconsciously when seated at our desks! A PERFECTLY USELESS STUNT Just to show what we are _not_ attempting to do, here is a quotation illustrating perfectly the old-fashioned idea that health depends upon extraordinary muscular development: At our suggestion he began practising this simple raising and lowering of the heels. In less than four months he had increased the girth of each calf one whole inch. When asked how many strokes a day he averaged, he said that it was from fifteen hundred to two thousand, varied some days by his holding in each hand, during the process, a twelve-pound dumbbell, and then only doing one thousand or thereabouts. The time he found most convenient was in the morning on rising, and just before retiring at night. The work did not take much time; seventy strokes a minute was found a good ordinary rate, so that fifteen minutes at each end of the day was all he needed. We new recognize how silly are such exercises taken for the mere sake of adding an inch or two to an already serviceable muscle. PENNY-WISE AND POUND-FOOLISH It is poor gymnastics when the main object is to expend a certain number of foot-pounds of energy to secure increase in cardiac and pulmonary activity, without care being taken that these organs are in a favorable condition to meet the increased demand put upon them. It is poor gymnastics if we desire to astound the world by nicely finished and smoothly gliding combinations of complex movements fit to be put into the repertoire of a juggler, or by exhibitions of strength vying with those of a Sandow, if we do not take into consideration the effects upon the vital functions. "Look at these fellows," said the physician, "built like giants and rotten inside!" True, he was speaking of a lot of big negroes, but he found the same condition in others--men with stiff muscles and slow movements, men with shoulders pulled forward and no chest expansion, breathing wholly with their abdomens. As he put it, "Those men will to-morrow be the recruits for another army, the one which fills the tuberculosis hospitals." NATURE'S PROCESS What we want is suppleness, chest expansion, resistive force, and endurance; and these do not come from great bulging knots of muscle nor from extraordinary feats of strength. Rapid shifts from severe training to a life of ease and indulgence is not Nature's process. It is not the way in which she carries on her work. Every step she makes is a little one. She seems never to reckon time as an essential in her economy. We should heed the lesson. The man who eats, drinks, and neglects all care of himself for a year, and then rushes madly into a period of severe physical exercise and reduction, may at the end of the month, if he possesses sufficient vitality, come out feeling fine. But if he repeats the process of letting himself go, Nature puts on the fat more and more and a second severe reduction becomes necessary. And it is only a question of time as to the exhaustion of any man's vitality through these extremes. TIME THE GREAT ELEMENT Any one who has had the opportunity of talking with the men in authority who are bearing the burden of fitting a nation for the present emergency cannot fail to be impressed with the fact that time is the great element. We must really prepare our men, we must make them fit in the shortest space of time that will accomplish the result. And we must conserve our man-power. It is no longer a question of putting on such severe work as shall weed out all but the physical giants; we are not trying (as seemed to be the idea in the first Plattsburg camps, before the war) to make the going so stiff as to leave us only 50 per cent. of hardened men. We want every man who can be brought along rapidly into condition, and not the strongest only. Hence the problem takes on a new phase. We all recognize that the quality and previous training of the men this country is sending into service have a very potent bearing upon the length of time required to make fighters of them. For, after all, the man whose training and discipline have been along a kindred line becomes serviceable much earlier than the man who has to acquire the necessary spirit and quality. No one who has listened to the coaches of our various college teams, or who has read either the preliminary prospects of a game or the account of it afterward, but must have been impressed with the continual repetition of emphasis upon the "fighting spirit." Hence, when our athletes flock almost _en masse_ to the colors, it means that we are enlisting a large number of picked men who have been in training both mentally and physically, and who, under discipline, will make obedient, courageous, and enthusiastic fighters. But a large number of these have been out of college or out of strenuous athletics a year or two, or longer, and they need physical conditioning to get back. There is thus a new idea of considerable importance involved in these condensed setting-up exercises. For the world does move, and those who thought themselves up to date on boats, aeroplanes, drill, and the like have found even within a year that they must make acquaintance with advanced theories and new and improved methods. ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES Probably the most vital point is that the setting-up exercises should not "take it out of the men." If we find a man exhilarated and made eager to work at the end of his setting-up we have accomplished far more than if we tire him out or exhaust any of his store of vitality. If, in addition to this, we can reduce the amount of time occupied in these setting-up exercises and yet obtain results, we have saved that much more time for other work. Because they did take it out of the men, the old-time conventional setting-up exercises were shirked and the leaders were unable to detect this shirking; men went through the motions, but slacked the real work. Furthermore, all these systems tended to take a longer period of time than was necessary to accomplish the desired results, and made "muscle bound" the men who practised them. It has been found in sports and athletic games that over-developed biceps, startling pectoral muscles, and tremendously muscled legs are a disadvantage rather than an advantage. The real essential is, after all, the engine, the part under the hood, as it were--lungs, heart, and trunk. Finally, if we give a man endurance and suppleness he becomes more available in time of need. Another point of equal importance is that the setting-up exercises should be rendered as simple as possible. If we are obliged to spend a considerable period of time in teaching the leader so that he can handle setting-up exercises, extension of the number of leaders is rendered increasingly difficult. If, therefore, we can make this leadership so simple that a long course of instruction is not necessary, we save here, in these days of necessarily rapid preparation, a very material amount of time. Still, further, it is found that many of the present setting-up exercises made an extraordinarily wide variation of effort between heavy and light men. The light man would put in only a small amount of muscular effort, whereas the heavy man, in the same length of time and under the same exercise, would be taxed far more than he could comfortably stand. Again, in the point of age, similar variations necessarily exist. Naturally it is out of the question to assume that the youth from eighteen to twenty-five and the man of fifty-five to sixty can take the same amount and the same kind of exercise. On the other hand, if we consider the work each is required to do in his daily routine, we can, so far as the setting-up exercises are concerned, bring the two points nearer together, especially if we regard these setting-up exercises in the proper light--a mere preparation for the more onerous tasks that are to follow. MODERN PHYSICAL EDUCATION Bearing all these points in mind, we test out the setting-up exercises so that we may obtain a set answering the following requirements: First--Reduce them to a period of eight or ten minutes once or twice a day. Second--Make them simple for leaders to learn. Third--Eliminate movements that, on account of the daily work, are unnecessary. Fourth--Render them more difficult of evasion or shirking. Fifth--Direct them specifically in the line of increased resisting power, endurance, and suppleness. Sixth--Make them of value in establishing co-ordination, muscular control, and more prompt response to command. Seventh--Equalize them for use by both heavy and light men. Eighth--Select the exercises in such a way that the set may be of nearly equal value to both enlisted men and officers, as well as to executives behind the lines. SLACKING IN SETTING-UP DRILLS Many of us have seen setting-up drills of various kinds. Moving pictures of such drills show in a very striking way how much of the work not only could be slacked, but _is_ being slacked right along. In fact, high officers in our service have become so disgusted with the setting-up exercises as to consider abandoning them altogether. In some stations or cantonments a great many men were tired out with the setting-up exercises; so much so that they had neither life nor vitality for some little time for other work. For the sake of illustration, let us examine one particular movement. It consists of the men lying flat on the ground or floor; then, with straight back, lifting themselves by the arms; finally, giving a jump with the arms and clapping the hands together once, and then coming back to the original position. The non-commissioned officer who was leading this exercise weighed about 138 pounds. It is easy to imagine the contrast between his doing this stunt and a heavy man of 180 or 190 pounds attempting it. It is unnecessary to describe in detail the parts of the setting-up exercise which tend to develop members which are already pretty thoroughly exercised in the daily routine of work and drill. The average man of the service needs expansion of chest capacity, which adds to his resistive power; a stronger, better-developed back; and suppleness and quickness and mobility of trunk. To develop these qualities we must have exercises which may be continued on board ship or near the front, and which can be carried on without apparatus. [Illustration: LEG-RAISING] [Illustration: SIDE-FALLING. THIS ARM AND BODY WORK PLACES A HANDICAP ON A HEAVY MAN] The ordinary system of setting-up exercises has been growing out of favor for some time. Athletic trainers have come to look with considerable suspicion upon the gymnasium-made candidate with big biceps and large knots of muscles. It was also found that, outside of weight-lifting and inordinate "chinning" and apparent great strength on the parallel bars, these men were not so valuable as the lesser muscled but more supple candidates. To put it briefly, it was found in actual practice that what was under the ribs was of more value than what lay over them. A CALL FOR WORK THAT WILL COUNT Even at the risk of repetition, some facts should be driven home. We are now working under conditions that should especially emphasize the fact of time-saving. We must take ourselves seriously, whether we are in the lines or behind the lines. In the eight million men in this country between the ages of forty-five and sixty-four are the country's greatest executives and financiers. We can no longer give these executives and financiers two months in the South in the winter and a long summer vacation. We can no longer let a Plattsburg camp be a strenuous sifting out, a mere survival of the physically fittest. We need every man whom we can make available, and we need him with his vitality fully preserved and his endurance appreciably heightened. Some are stronger, naturally, than others. In football parlance we are no longer trying to pick a team out of a squad of two hundred men; we are trying to get a hundred and seventy-five out of the two hundred that can stand a fair pace and have enough left to fight with when they get there. Any one who has been in touch with affairs in Washington, any one who has been engaged in our munition-plants and in our factories, any one who has worked upon Liberty Bond drives or Red Cross fund-raising, knows that if we are to support our boys on land and sea, these men who are trying to solve the problems of executive management, and who have the task of raising funds in thousandfold increased volume, must be also carefully conserved. For, after all, even though we spell Patriotism with a capital P and Government with a capital G, even though army and navy orders take precedence, there is one great mistress of all, Dame Nature! And when she taps a man on the shoulder and says, "Quit!" that man stops; and when he offers the excuse that he has done it out of patriotism and loyalty she merely says: "I don't care why you did it, you have finished!" And there is no appeal to Washington from her verdict. THE BIG PROBLEM We shall soon hear the call for more men, men to fight and men to support the men who fight. The game is on. We are all in it now, either on the field or on the side-lines. We need to train for it fast and we have no time to waste. For, after all, it is condition that tells. It is the man who can stay, who can work at highest efficiency, and who can hold out the longest who is going to be most valuable. If we save even ten minutes a day in the setting-up exercises, we save, with a hundred thousand men, 16,666 hours daily toward perfecting their other knowledge. If we can make an able officer or a competent executive last a year longer or even six months under the increased strain, it gives us a year or six months more in which his understudy can gather the necessary experience to take up his task. [Illustration: ARM AND BODY WORK. THIS EXERCISE PLACES A HANDICAP ON A HEAVY MAN] [Illustration: ALTERNATE LEG-RAISING] Millions of our youth are going out to fight, but disease and exhaustion will kill more of them than will the guns of the enemy. Thousands of men of the best brain-power in this country are going into committee-rooms and conferences every day from nine in the morning till twelve at night to devise better and more efficacious means of stopping the progress of the Hun. If these men's brains are of value, and we know they are, then the more clearly they act and the longer they last, the better for the country. THE NEED FOR A CONDENSED SYSTEM OF CALISTHENICS The demonstration, with a group of busy business executives and professional men, of the possibility of physical fitness at a small expenditure has been already mentioned. This idea has spread and many units of the Senior Service Corps have been organized. The writer's services were later on drafted into national work. At the call of the Secretary of the Navy, he was asked to take a position on the Naval Commission to develop athletic sports and games and physical fitness in our men at the various naval stations. In one week alone requests came from over four hundred communities to establish units of this work among business and professional men. Finding that it was impossible to answer all these calls, the writer devoted himself personally to a class in Washington, consisting of several Cabinet members, officials of the Federal Reserve Board, and others, and these men profited extremely from the work. But this should be done on a far larger scale. The Hon. Daniel C. Roper, who was a member of the original class in Washington, requested the writer to come down and spend a month or six weeks in Washington, to organize drill groups in the various departments, several of them, like the Department of the Interior, having received requests to the number of three hundred or four hundred from men who wished to make themselves better fit physically for the work of these strenuous days. This, together with the demands from so many communities throughout the country, show that we are all now awake to the necessity of this cardinal feature of the nation's welfare, the physical fitness and stamina of its youth and men. This new gospel cannot be spread by one individual missionary, although there is little doubt that, wherever the story is told, thousands of our overworked and under-exercised men are glad to avail themselves of the opportunity. [Illustration: EXTRA LEG WORK. THIS EXERCISE PLACES A HANDICAP ON A HEAVY MAN] This is the reason why the author has been led to devise a set of exercises that can be put in small compass, as regards both instruction and time required. Here follows a brief syllabus of the plan, in the hope of placing it within reach of men who can afford but little time for anything outside of their pressing office duties. We can no longer take delightful vacations of indefinite length to restore our waning vitality. The country needs every man and needs him at the best of his power. A REASONABLE PROGRAM No matter how driven a man may be, it seems only reasonable to think that he should be able to spend ten minutes twice a day on a condensed system, or setting-up exercise, adding to it an outdoor walk of half an hour. By this means he can keep himself physically fit to bear the burdens which are falling more and more heavily upon the shoulders of us all. The men who are going to the front first should have every chance of conserving their vitality and increasing their resistive forces. Those of us who must do work behind the lines should be kept equally fit for that larger work without which the machine must inevitably break down. The method is scientific and it has been tested on men of all ages from eighteen to seventy. It embodies the elimination of all wasted effort and concentration upon points of approved and essential worth. It is as much a man's duty to make himself fit and to keep himself in that condition as it is to carry on any other part of his work. This method should be adopted not only in every department at Washington, but throughout the country; it should be taught in our schools and colleges, and so thoroughly that never again in a world-wide crisis shall we find ourselves physically unprepared. CHAPTER VIII Vacillation and doubt are poison to the nerves. This is the reason why it is advisable to teach co-ordination, prompt response to the command of the brain over the muscles, and the general sense of self-control which comes to a man when he has only to think in order to turn that thought into quick action. One of the penalties of the executive position is that, although the man begins as a disciplined private, when he goes up higher and gradually reaches the point where he gives commands only, and never has any practice in obeying them, he gets the habit of pushing buttons to make other people jump, while there are no buttons pushed to make him jump. WORRY AND FEAR Now as to worry. It has been said, and not untruly, that one of the very largest causes of worry is bodily weakness. And in more than a majority of cases this weakness comes from poor physical condition. A good digestion and proper elimination seem to make the organism move smoothly, not alone with muscles, but with nerves. Hence if we get the engine right, the lungs doing their duty, the skin acting as it should, and the bowels and kidneys taking off the waste products, we generally find a robust man, little given to that most expensive habit, "worry." Fear is the forerunner of illness. There is nothing quite so effective in producing a bad condition of the human system as fear, and this fear is what worry develops into; later it becomes pure, downright cowardice. Worry makes cowards. If a man has enough worry and anxiety, fear follows in its wake, and then the man becomes a mental and moral and often a physical coward. THE FATAL MISTAKE The average man, when he is pressed to overwork, thinks that by cutting out some of his exercise and devoting that extra time to his work he can accomplish more. There never was a greater mistake; in the long run this method is the most expensive of all. No factory manager would think of running his automatic machines twice as long with half the amount of oil, and yet that is just what the man is trying to do in this case. The result is that he gradually piles up the various toxic products within himself until self-poisoning is inevitable. All his organs struggle to eliminate these poisons, but, being given no assistance, they gradually become less and less efficient, and then begins the payment of the penalty, for Nature never forgives this kind of treatment. From a practical, useful running machine he retrogrades into something fit only for the scrap-heap. The history is the same in all cases, although it may be more or less prolonged. The discomfort, occasional slight illnesses, the gradual loss of effective thought and power to concentrate, lack of appetite, unreasonable temper, insomnia, nerve diseases, and perhaps a complete nervous and physical breakdown if the conditions are not recognized in time, are the varying punishments inflicted by Nature. [Illustration: ARCH WORK] I have referred to Nature's order, "You must earn your bread by the sweat of your brow." Almost every one, in these modern days of civilization, is earning his bread in some other way; well, he must make up for this by some kind of exercise or else Nature will surely take her toll. When men were earning their bread by the sweat of their brows they were not always sure of getting a surplus of it, and that was not a half-bad thing. In fact, it was far better for the race than present conditions under which so many men have given up physical work altogether. But instead of cutting down on their food they double up on it. SOMETHING OUT OF A BOTTLE The usual temporary panacea for these ills of the flesh is to get some so-called "specific" in the form of a medicine and gobble it religiously. Thousands of men and women, who are unwilling to take five or ten minutes' exercise two or three times a day, will swallow something out of a bottle on a spoon before each meal, with a splendid satisfaction and confidence. Perhaps temporarily it produces improved results. At any rate, it gives a sense of mental satisfaction, and that something stands off the trouble for a while. There is still another method which has some show of reason in it, although, after all, it does not compare with the wiser, saner course. A man or woman is persuaded that if he or she will only give up some particularly attractive self-indulgence the result will be increased health and vigor. For instance, there is a common belief that tea or coffee is the cause of many ills. Perhaps this is true, but the giving up of tea or coffee will never cure the ills that come from lack of exercise, loss of fresh air, over-eating, and over-indulgence. The mere fact that a person is giving up something that he likes does not make him immune to the penalties which he incurs day after day by other offenses against the laws of Nature. CONSERVING THE PRESIDENT'S HEALTH Rear-Admiral Carey T. Grayson, personal physician and health director to President Wilson, says: "You may make the statement, in so many words, that physical exercise has been the means of making a normal, physically perfect man of the President. And when a man is in a normal condition he is in perfect health and physical trim. That was the initial intention in this case, just to make the President physically fit, and to keep him so." Richard M. Winans says: "The Admiral told me that when he first took charge of the President, Mr. Wilson was not a little averse to taking any sort of exercise. However, Doctor Grayson early succeeded in impressing upon Mr. Wilson that good health was an absolutely important factor in dealing with the grilling duties which would face him during the coming four years, and that his physical well-being was vital not only to himself, but to the welfare of the entire country." The President has a dislike almost akin to abhorrence for mechanical appliances intended to exercise the muscles of the body. There is not a dumbbell, or an Indian club, nor a medicine-ball, nor a punching-bag, nor a turning-bar, nor a trapeze, nor a lifting or pulling apparatus, nor a muscle--exercising machine of any sort or description in the White House. The only mechanical device used by the President is a simple, unoffending golf-club. [Illustration: SPRING WORK.] Aside from his work in the open air, Mr. Wilson takes a number of physical exercises indoors, very few of which have ever been described in print. Some of these exercises are taken as a substitute for outdoor recreations at times when weather conditions are too extreme. But the major part of them, and especially the more unusual of these exercises, are regularly practised as a part of his daily routine. As a matter of fact, they are pretty closely dove-tailed in with his office work. FLEXING EXERCISES However, if the President really has a favorite among his various physical exercises, it is said to be that of "flexing." This he employs almost entirely as an indoor exercise, and it perhaps is the one he practises more often than any other. "Flexing," as Doctor Grayson put it into its simplest every-day term, is nothing more nor less than just good, old-fashioned "stretching" expressed in a scientific and systematized form of exercise. It is the most generally and commonly executed muscular exercise, and it is practised by nearly all the animal kingdom. President Wilson uses his flexing movements with a careful regard to system, and a great deal more regularly and frequently than any other of his varied physical exercises. Particularly during his periods of concentration, when at work at his desk in the preparation of his messages to Congress or in the drafting of notes to foreign governments, the President, at short intervals, will either settle back in his chair and flex his arms and hands and the muscles across his back and chest, or he will rise and stand erect for a more thorough practice of the flexing movements for a period of a minute or more. At these times he will throw his body into almost every conceivable posture--twisting, turning, bending, stooping, the arms down, forward, back, and over his head, the muscles of the limbs and entire body flexed almost to the point of tremor, the fingers spread, and the muscles rigidly tensed. In the opinion of Doctor Grayson, if business and professional men, particularly those who work at high tension in the cities, would pause in their work at frequent intervals during the day and give a few seconds of their time to the energetic practice of the flexing or stretching exercises, there would soon come to be not only less, but, possibly in time, no cases reported of this or that noted man, the famous lawyer, merchant, or financier, dropping dead at his desk or in his home or in the street, on account of apoplexy caused by hardened arteries. One of Mr. Wilson's principal physical movements is that of body-twisting. With the toes at a slight outward angle, the heels touching and the body erect, he begins the movement by twisting the body a little more than half-way around; then swinging back in an arc, at the same time bending at the hips, until he has completed the circle and reached a hip-bending position, with the fingers of one hand touching the floor, the other extended vertically. This gives a stretching movement to all of the muscles of the torso, side, back, and abdomen, as well as considerable play to the muscles of the legs and arms. THE UNPLEASANT SELF-AWAKENING We as a nation, through the revelation of the draft, have been suddenly thrown upon the public screen as physically deficient. And that, too, when the echoes of the Eagle screaming over successes in the world Olympic games had hardly done sounding in our satisfied ears. Naturally, we don't like it. Deep down in our consciousness we are not only dissatisfied with the picture, but we feel that somehow it is distorted; we are hoping to prove that even a photograph does not always tell the truth, at least not the whole truth. Yet in this search for the truth there are some facts that we must face and admit. The first of these is that as a race--blended, if you please, but still the people of a nation--we are ambitious and hurried. We act a great deal more than we think. Cricket is too slow for us; only baseball has the fire and the dash we like. We haven't quite enough time even for that, and so we begin to leave the stands before the game is over, craning our necks as we walk along toward the exits for a last glimpse, and then rushing madly to get on the first car out. All this is typical of our life. We have had a measure of benefit from our athletics. They are a spur toward physical development as long as they last. But no sooner are school-days drawing to an end than we begin the mad rush--toward what? To see how fast we can make money or name or position. We take a final look backward at the last inning of these sports of ours, and then we rush out into the world of American hustle. The lucky ones prolong their playtime a little by a college course, but they, too, finally abandon sport in favor of business and let themselves go slack until they lose condition. A week or two in the summer, a fort-night's orgy of exercise, and then back to the grind of factory or desk. How can this way of living keep even a young man fit? Golf has been a godsend to the older man whose pocket-book can stand it, but what about the youth? And when pressure comes on the older man he quickly gives up his golf at the demand of business. [Illustration: ARM AND BODY WORK. THIS PLACES A HANDICAP ON A HEAVY MAN.] [Illustration: HIGH-STRIDE STOOP FALLING.] WHY MEN DON'T KEEP FIT Men who have really kept themselves fit are few. Those who have conscientiously started in to do this and then abandoned it are a host. There are valid reasons for this lamentable state of affairs. First--Because the antiquated systems under which these men have attempted the task have (1) Occupied too much time; (2) Left men tired instead of refreshed; (3) Exercised muscles which get all they need in a man's ordinary pursuits. Secondly--Because the instructors who have taught these systems have laid stress upon (1) Mere increase in size of the muscles; (2) Ability to do "stunts" which are of no practical use to a man; (3) Unnecessary use of apparatus. Thirdly--Because they made necessary the services of a teacher to (1) Lead the exercises; (2) Keep track of their number and variety; (3) Give special treatment to produce results. But these mistakes are in the past. Let us look toward a brighter, saner, and more productive future. CHAPTER IX The following chapters give a set of exercises carefully tested upon thousands of men, and these exercises will be fully explained so that any individual reader may practise them daily and secure their full benefit. To each chapter are appended a few health hints, couched in language that is brief and to the point, in order that they may be readily remembered. The object is to make an efficient working-machine of the man without useless effort, to increase that man's resistive force against disease, to add to his suppleness and endurance, to give him poise and balance, and to develop co-ordination or control over his muscles. By doing this his power to work will be augmented, and at the same time any work that he does will be accomplished more readily and with less effort. Finally his cheerfulness will be increased, and those who work with him or under him or about him will be spared the disagreeable experiences that accompany association with a man whose irritability and irascibility have become part of his daily habit. A SHORTHAND METHOD We call this system the "Daily Dozen Set-up." It is a shorthand system of setting-up exercises for use on any and all occasions. The "Daily Dozen Set-up" consists of twelve exercises which, for ease in memorizing, are divided into four groups of three exercises each. Each exercise or movement is given a name, and the names of all the movements of a group commence with the same letter, thus: GROUP I GROUP II GROUP III GROUP IV 1. Hands 4. Grind 7. Crawl 10. Wave 2. Hips 5. Grate 8. Curl 11. Weave 3. Head 6. Grasp 9. Crouch 12. Wing These exercises are not difficult nor exhausting, and do not demand great strength for their proper execution. They are designed, both from a scientific and a practical point of view, to give exactly the right amount of exercise to every muscle of the body. They are intended to promote suppleness, and especially to strengthen those muscles which are seldom brought into play in ordinary daily life. A conscientious fifteen minutes a day with the "Daily Dozen" will soon do more for a man than any amount of skilled physical feats or "strong-man stunts." When one first practises these movements their effect will be felt on the little-used muscles of the neck, back, and stomach; yet they will not leave the pronounced muscular fatigue which follows the ordinary exercises and which does more harm than good. HEALTH MAXIMS Dress to be cool when you walk and warm when you ride. Clean skin, clean socks, clean underwear every day. Getting mad makes black marks on the health. Sleep woos the physically tired man; she flouts the mentally exhausted. Nature won't stand for overdrafts any more than your bank. In a squad it is the job of each individual to make himself fit, for it is his example that helps the rest. The leader may be no better than you, but some one must give the orders and set the pace. Two things are essential to a clean skin; one is bathing and a rub-down, but the other is still more important, and that is perspiration. Food, water, and oxygen are the fuel for running the human machine. You never saw a dog fill his mouth with food and then take a drink to wash it down. CHAPTER X Any setting-up exercises should be preparatory--that is, they should make men ready for the serious work of their day, and in no way exhaust any portion of their vitality. This modern "shorthand" method of setting-up leaves men in an exhilarated condition, and, instead of taking anything out of them, it prepares the body for any kind of work that may be required. Each exercise starts from the position of "Attention," which is thus described in the army manual: Heels on the same line and as near each other as the conformation of the man permits. Feet turned out equally and forming with each other an angle of about sixty degrees. Knees straight without stiffness. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--HANDS The description of this exercise is the same as that given for the military command of "Attention," and the following points should be carefully noted: It is not difficult to acquire a certain amount of accuracy in this position, but one of the easiest ways of getting men to assume it properly is to tell them to push their necks back. This seems more effective than to speak of holding the chin in with the head erect, or anything of that kind. If a man stands naturally and then forces the back of his neck back against his collar, he comes into very nearly the desired position of "Attention" so far as his head and neck are concerned. The shoulders should be rolled a little downward and back, for that is the sensation which comes when one speaks of the shoulders being square. The chest should be arched and the abdomen drawn in somewhat. The effect is that of a man standing erect and feeling himself a little taller than usual.] Body erect on hips, inclined a little forward; shoulders square and falling equally. Arms and hands hanging naturally, backs of the hands outward; thumbs along the seams of the trousers; elbows near the body. Head erect and straight to the front, chin slightly drawn in without constraint, eyes straight to the front. (See Fig. 1.) Each movement, with the exception of the "Speed Test" (a catch exercise with which any man may test his rapidity of action and co-ordination), should be executed in a slow and measured manner. These exercises do not depend upon snap for their effect, but upon the steady, deliberate, but not extreme stretching of the muscles. Any tendency toward hurried, careless execution should be avoided in favor of uniformity of movement. GROUP I Hands: This is the same position as "Attention." (See Fig. 1.) [Illustration: FIG. 2.--HIPS The position called "Hips" is that of "Attention" with the hands placed on the hips, the fingers forward and the thumbs back, at the same time keeping the shoulders and elbows well back.] Especial care should be taken to see that whenever, throughout the exercises, this position is taken--as at the completion of each movement--full control is retained over the arms; the hands should not be allowed to slap against the sides audibly. It is not difficult to acquire a certain amount of accuracy in this position, but one of the easiest ways of getting men to assume it properly is to tell them to "push their necks back." This seems more effective than to speak of holding the chin in with the head erect, or anything of that kind. If a man stands naturally and then forces the back of his neck back against his collar, he comes into very nearly the desired position of "Attention," so far as his head and neck are concerned. The shoulders should be rolled a little downward and back, for that is the sensation which comes when one speaks of the shoulders being square. The chest should be arched and the abdomen drawn in somewhat. The effect is that of a man standing erect and feeling himself a little taller than usual. Hips: The hands are placed on the hips, with shoulders, elbows and thumbs well back. (See Fig. 2.) The position of "Hips" is that of "Attention" with the hands placed on the hips, the fingers forward and the thumbs back, at the same time keeping the shoulders and elbows well back. Head: The hands are placed behind the neck, index finger-tips just touching and elbows forced back. (See Fig. 3.) [Illustration: FIG. 3.--HEAD In the position called "Head" the body is still in the position of "Attention," the neck pushed well back, the fingers and the hands just touching behind the neck, and the elbows not allowed to push forward but kept as far back as the shoulders.] In the position called "Head" the body is still in the position of "Attention," the neck pushed well back, the fingers and the hands just touching behind the neck, and the elbows not allowed to push forward but kept as far back as the shoulders. Speed Test: The above three exercises, "Hands, Hips, Head," should be executed but a few times each, being preparatory to the "Speed Test." For this the pupil should concentrate his thought on running through the above set as rapidly as possible, at the same time making each position correct. HEALTH MAXIMS Success comes from service. Don't make excuses. Make good. If you feel tired, remember so does the other man. After a hearty meal, stand up straight for fifteen minutes. Your squad is only as good as the poorer ones. Don't be one of those. The success of the drill depends upon the concentration of each man of the squad. If you have a stake in life, it is worth playing the game for all there is in it. The man who gets things is the one who pulls up his belt a hole tighter and goes out after them. If you will save your smoke till after luncheon, you'll never have smoker's heart. A bath, cold if you please, hot if you must, with a good rub, starts the day right. CHAPTER XI GROUP II Grind: (The order is "Shoulder Grind. Ready--Cross. Balance Turn. Grind!") Assume the "Cross"[2] position. (See Fig. 2, Chapter V.) The palms are then turned up, with the backs of the hands down and the arms forced back as far as possible. (See Fig. 4.) [Illustration: FIG. 4.--GRIND In the "Grind" special precaution should be taken not to let the center of the circle, that the hands are making, come in front of the shoulders; an attempt should almost be made to make the shoulder-blades meet. This is particularly necessary on the reverse.] Then to a measured counting--"One, two, three, four, five," up to ten--circles of twelve-inch diameter are described with the finger tips, the latter moving forward and upward, the arms remaining stiff and pivoting from the shoulders. On the backward movement of the circle the arms should be forced back to the limit. A complete circle should be described at each count. Then reverse, going through the same process, the circles being described in the opposite direction. In the "Grind" exercises special precaution should be taken not to let the center of the circle, that the hands are making, come in front of the shoulders; it should be straight out in the horizontal position; moreover, as the arm goes backward an attempt should be made to make the shoulder-blades almost meet. This is particularly necessary on the reverse--that is, when the hands are coming forward--for here the tendency, unless men keep the shoulders back, is to contract the chest. Grate: (The order is "Shoulder Grate. Ready--Cross. Grate!") Assume the "Cross" position. Then at a count of "One" the arms are slowly raised, as a deep inhalation is taken, to an angle of forty-five degrees from horizontal; at the same time the heels are raised till the weight of the body rests on the balls of the feet. (See Fig. 5.) [Illustration: FIG. 5.--GRATE The caution in the "Grate" position is not to let the arms drop, even a fraction of an inch, below the horizontal, and not to let them go up above the angle of forty-five degrees, for in either of these cases there is a distinct rest given to the shoulder muscles. Most of the ordinary exercises of this kind carry the arms above the head; this always releases the effort of the shoulder muscle and is therefore nearly valueless as an exercise for these members. Another fault in this exercise is letting the head come forward. The neck should be kept back all the time.] At "Two" the arms are slowly returned to "Cross" as all air is exhaled and the heels are lowered to a normal position. Care should be taken to see that the arms are not allowed to drop below the level of the shoulders or to rise more than forty-five degrees. The arms should be raised and lowered ten times. The caution in the "Grate" position is not to let the arms drop, even a fraction of an inch, below the horizontal, and not to let them go up above the angle of forty-five degrees, for in either of these cases there is a distinct rest given to the shoulder muscles. Most of the ordinary exercises of this kind carry the arms above the head; this always releases the effort of the shoulder muscle and is therefore nearly valueless as an exercise for these members. Another fault in this exercise is letting the head come forward. The neck should be kept back all the time. [Illustration: FIG. 5 A.--SECOND POSITION OF GRATE] Grasp: (The order is "Head Grasp. Ready--Cross. Grasp!") Assume the "Cross" position. Then place the hands behind the head. With head up and eyes front, and in time with the counting, "One, two, three, four," the body is bent forward from the waist as far as possible. (See Fig. 6.) [Illustration: FIG. 6.--GRASP In the "Grasp" position it is not necessary to go to extremes on the backward movement; only so far as is really comfortable. In the forward movement the body should come down practically at right angles to the hips, but the head should not be allowed to drop forward. The head should be kept up, with the elbows back and the eyes looking to the front.] The body is returned to the upright in the same number of counts, and at an unusually slow "One" it is bent as far back as comfortable only from the waist, being returned to the upright at "Two." Care should be taken to see that this motion is slow and not jerky. The entire movement should be repeated five times. In the "Grasp" position it is not necessary to go to an extreme on the backward movement; only so far as is really comfortable. In the forward movement the body should come down practically at right angles to the hips, but the head should not be allowed to drop forward. The head should be kept up, with the elbows back and the eyes looking to the front. HEALTH MAXIMS Vacillation and doubt are poison to the nerves. Fear is the forerunner of illness. "Eyes in the boat" is as good a maxim at drill as in a shell. When drinking a glass of water stand erect and take a full breath first; then drink with chest out and hips back and head up. The men who chase the golf-ball don't have to pursue the doctor. Two hours of outdoor exercise by the master never yet made him over-critical of the cook. [Illustration: FIG. 6 A.--FORWARD POSITION OF GRASP] Nature never punished a man for getting his legs tired. She has punished many for getting their nerves exhausted. The best record in golf is the record she has made of restored health to the middle-aged. See how high you can hold your head and deeply you can breathe whenever you are out of doors. Six to eight glasses of water a day, none with meals, will make you free of doctors. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: On the "Cross" position, the arms should be straight out horizontally from the body, with the elbows locked. At the same time every resistance should be placed against the head and neck coming forward at all. These should be held in exactly the same position as at "Attention." The tendency is either to let the arms bend a little, or to let them drop a little below the horizontal, or even to hold them slightly above the level.] CHAPTER XII GROUP III Crawl: (The order is "Crawl. Ready--Cross. Crawl!") Assume the "Cross" position. The left palm is then turned up, and on a count of "One, two, three, four" the left arm is raised and the right arm is lowered laterally until at "Four" the right arm should be in a position of "Hands," while the left arm should be extended straight up, with the palm to the right. (See Fig. 7.) [Illustration: FIG. 7 CRAWL, FIRST POSITION] [Illustration: CRAWL In the "Crawl" position it is not necessary, in the beginning of the exercise, to slide the hand down the hip any farther than is perfectly comfortable. But this distance should be gradually increased, and it will be found quite easy to do this as the muscles of the side become more and more supple.] Then on the count of "One, two, three, four" the body is slowly bent sideways from the waist, the right hand slipping down the right leg to or beyond the knee, and the left arm bending in a half-circle over the head until the fingers touch the right ear. (See Fig. 8.) At "Four" the position of "Cross" is quickly resumed, and at "Two" of the next counting the right palm is turned up and the exercise is completed in the opposite direction. [Illustration: FIG. 8 CRAWL, SECOND POSITION] In the "Crawl" position it is not necessary, in the beginning of the exercise, to slide the hand down the hip any farther than is perfectly comfortable. But this distance should be gradually increased, and it will be found quite easy to do this as the muscles of the side become more and more supple. Curl: (The order is "Curl. Ready--Cross. Curl!") Assume the "Cross" position. In this movement, at "Cross" the feet are spread until the heels are about twelve inches apart. The left foot remains stationary, the right foot being moved to accomplish this. On a count of "One, two, three, four," at the same time inhaling slowly, the fists and lower arms are bent down from the elbows, which are kept pressed back, and the fists are slowly curled up into the armpits. This position should be reached at "Three," when the head and shoulders should be forced back rather strongly, reaching the limit of motion at "Four." (See Fig. 9.) Again on the count of "One, two, three, four," at "One" the arms are extended straight forward from the shoulders, with the palms down, and exhalation is begun. [Illustration 9. CURL. In the "Curl" position the head and shoulders should be thrown well back and the fists should go well up into the armpits. Keep the elbows back so that the entire thorax is lifted forward and up; at the same time take a deep inhalation.] At "Two" the arms begin to fall and the body bends forward from the waist, head up and eyes front, until, at "Four," the body has reached the limit of motion and the arms have passed the sides and have been forced back and up (as the trunk assumes a horizontal position) as far as possible. At this point the abdomen should be well drawn in at the finish of exhalation. (Note that in this figure the feet are together, an incorrect position for this exercise.) For a third time, on a count of "One, two, three, four" the body is straightened, reaching an upright position, with arms straight forward at "Three." "Cross" is assumed at "Four." As the body is straightened from the "Wing" position, a full breath should be taken, the lungs being filled, slowly, to the maximum as "Curl" is finally reached. This breath should be retained and then exhaled as the "Wing" position is taken. Inhale through the nose. [Illustration: CRAWL. AT THIS POINT THE RAISED ARM SHOULD BE CURVED OVER THE HEAD] The entire movement should be repeated five times. In the "Curl" position the head and shoulders should be thrown well back and the fists should go well up into the armpits. Keep the elbows back so that the entire thorax is lifted forward and up; at the same time take a deep inhalation. Crouch: (The order is "Crouch. Ready--Cross. Crouch!") Assume the "Cross" position. In this movement, at "Cross" the feet are spread until the heels are about twelve inches apart. The left foot remains stationary, the right foot being moved to accomplish this. On a count of "One" the knees are bent, and, with the weight on the toes, the body is lowered nearly to the heels, keeping the trunk as nearly erect as possible. (See Fig. 10.) [Illustration 10. Crouch. The "Crouch" is intended for the acquisition of balance and poise, but is also good exercise for the legs. The back is kept straight and the balance preserved throughout.] This is done at "One," and at "Two" the upright position is resumed. The entire movement should be repeated ten times. The "Crouch" position is intended for the acquisition of balance and poise; at the same time it is good exercise for the legs. The back should be kept straight and the balance preserved as the body goes up and down. This will be a little difficult at first, but will soon become natural. HEALTH MAXIMS Worry makes cowards. Happiness comes from health, not from money. Co-operation with others is the life of the squad. Drill is a mental as well as a physical discipline. Work will take your mind off most of your ills. Obesity comes from overloading the stomach and underworking the body. Nine-tenths of the "blues" come from a bad liver and lack of outdoor exercise. Wearing the same weight underclothing the year around will save you a lot of colds. Your nose, not your mouth, was given you to breathe through. Short shoes and shoes that don't fit cost a lot in the long run. Blood pressure does not come to the men who walk a lot out of doors; instead it looks for those who sit and eat a lot indoors. Two men in an eight-oared shell may be able to go faster than the other six, but they never win the race that way. CHAPTER XIII GROUP IV Wave: (The order is "Wave. Ready--Cross. Arms up. Wave!") Assume the "Cross" position. The arms are then stretched straight above the head, the fingers interlaced and the arms touching the ears. (See Fig. 11.) [Illustration: FIG. 11.--CORRECT POSITION, START OF WAVE] On a count of "One, two, three, four" a complete circle, of about twenty-four inches in diameter, is described with the hands, the body bending only at the waist. The trunk should be bent as far backward as forward, and as far to one side as to the other. (See Fig. 12.) [Illustration 12. Wave. In the "Wave" the tendency is to go too far forward and not far enough back, the result being an unsymmetrical motion. It is very easy to go forward, but more difficult to make the motion to the side and back. Care should be taken that the arms are kept squarely against the ears. The motion should be like waving the mast of a ship, the hips representing the deck and the trunk, head, and arms up to the top of the hands, the mast.] The body should be forward at "One," to the right at "Two," backward at "Three," and to the left at "Four." The motion should be steady and not in jerks. At "Reverse" the same movement should be repeated in the opposite direction--i.e. to the left. As the movement is completed for the fifteenth time the body should be brought to an erect position, stretching the arms up as far as possible; and at "Rest" the arms should drop slowly, laterally, to a "Hands" position. Five circles should be described in each direction. In the "Wave" the tendency is to go too far forward, and not far enough back, the result being an unsymmetrical motion. It is very easy to go forward, but more difficult to make the motion to the side and back. Care should be taken that the arms are kept squarely against the ears. The motion should be like waving the mast of a ship, the hips representing the deck, while the trunk, head, and arms up to the top of the hands, represent the mast. This movement, like the others, should not be extreme at first, but gradually increased after a week or so. Weave: (The order is "Weave. Ready--Cross. Weave!") Assume the "Cross" position. In this movement, at "Cross" the feet are spread until the heels are about twelve inches apart. The left foot remains stationary, the right foot being moved to accomplish this. On a count of "One, two, three, four" the body is turned to the left from the hips, the arms maintaining the same relation to the shoulders as at "Cross," until at "One" the face is to the left, the right arm pointing straight forward (in relation to the feet) and the left arm straight backward. (See Fig. 13.) [Illustration: FIG. 13.--WEAVE, FIRST POSITION] At "Two" the body is bent from the waist so that the right arm goes down and the left up; and at "Three" the fingers of the right hand touch the ground midway between the feet. The left arm should then be pointing straight up, with the face still to the left. The right knee must be slightly bent to accomplish this position. (See Fig. 14.) [Illustration: FIG. 14.--WEAVE In the "Weave" care should be taken that the arms and shoulders are kept in one line. The turn begins with the arms horizontal until they are nearly at right angles to the "Cross" position. Then the knee commences to bend and the body bends at the trunk, the hip turning in until the finger tips touch the floor. At that time the arms and shoulders should still be in the same relative position as at the start--namely, in "Cross" position.] At "Four" the position of "Cross" is resumed, and on a count of "One, two, three, four" the same movement is repeated, this time with the left hand touching the ground. Throughout the exercise care should be taken that the arms remain in the same straight line, making no separate movement, but changing their position only as the trunk and shoulders are moved and carry the arms along. After this exercise has been thoroughly mastered, the turning and bending movements made on the counts "One" and "Two" should be combined--_i.e._, instead of making the entire turn, as described above, turn and bend simultaneously. The entire movement should be repeated ten times. In the "Weave" care should be taken that the arms and shoulders are kept in one line. The turn begins with the arms horizontal until they are nearly at right angles to the "Cross" position. Then the knee commences to flex and the body bends at the trunk, the hip turning in until the finger-tips touch the floor. At that time the arms and shoulders should still be in the same relative position as at the start--namely, in "Cross" position. Wing: (The order is "Wing. Ready--Cross. Arms up. Wing!") This is a finishing exercise consisting of deep breathing and is performed slowly. On a count of "One, two, three, four" the arms are raised laterally until they are extended straight upward at "One" and a full inhalation is reached. (See Fig. 15.) At "Two" the arms begin to fall forward and downward, and the body bends forward from the waist up, and eyes front, until, at "Four" the body has reached the limit of motion and the arms have passed the sides and have been forced back and up (as the trunk assumes a horizontal position) as far as possible. (See Fig. 15a.) [Illustration: FIG. 15.--WING In the "Wing" position, which is a final breathing exercise, the breath should be taken well in as the arms are raised over the head; then exhaled as the body and arms swing forward, with a final crowding out of some of the residual air by forcing in the abdomen as the arms are raised over the back. Start the inhalation again as the arms come forward.] [Illustration: FIG. 15A.--END OF WING] On a count of "One, two, three, four" the body is straightened, reaching an upright position, with arms vertically extended, at "Three." At "Four" the arms are lowered to a "Cross" position, but with palms up and arms and shoulders forced hard back. Very slow counting is essential to the correct execution of this exercise. All air should be forced from the lungs as the body bends forward to the "Wing" position, and they should be filled to capacity as the body is straightened and the arms brought down. Inhale through the nose. The entire movement should be repeated five times. HEALTH MAXIMS Preparedness is nine-tenths physical strength and endurance. If you take more food than the digestion can handle, you not only tire the stomach, but the whole system. Envy, jealousy, and wrath will ruin any digestion. You'll never get the gout from walking. Tennis up to the thirties, but golf after forty. Tight shoes have sent many a man to bed with a cold. Leg weariness never yet produced brain fag. Whenever you walk, stand up, with chin in, hips back, and chest out, and think how tall you are. Courage and concentration will conquer most obstacles. The hurry of half a squad never brought the whole troop home. The army must have sound lungs and a good stomach quite as much as arms and ammunition. 
17367	----	[Illustration: PLATE I THE CIRCULATION] FIRST BOOK IN PHYSIOLOGY AND HYGIENE BY J.H. KELLOGG, M.D. MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION, SOCIÉTÉ D'HYGIÈNE OF FRANCE, BRITISH AND AMERICAN ASSOCIATIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, MICHIGAN STATE BOARD OF HEALTH, ETC. _ILLUSTRATED_ NEW AND REVISED EDITION NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY Copyright, 1887, by HARPER & BROTHERS. Copyright, 1888, by HARPER & BROTHERS _All rights reserved._ W.P. 7 TO THE TEACHER. This book is intended for children. The special objects which the author has aimed to accomplish in the preparation of the work have been: 1. To present as fully as possible and proper in a work of this character a statement of the laws of healthful living, giving such special prominence to the subject of stimulants and narcotics as its recognized importance and the recent laws relating to the study of this branch of hygiene demand. 2. To present in a simple manner such anatomical and physiological facts as shall give the child a good fundamental knowledge of the structure and functions of the human body. 3. To present each topic in such clear and simple language as to enable the pupil to comprehend the subject-matter with little aid from the teacher; and to observe in the manner of presentation the principle that the things to be studied should be placed before the mind of the child before they are named. A natural and logical order has been observed in the sequence of topics. Technical terms have been used very sparingly, and only in their natural order, and are then fully explained and their pronunciation indicated, so that it is not thought necessary to append a glossary. 4. To present the subjects of Physiology and Hygiene in the light of the most recent authentic researches in these branches of science, and to avoid the numerous errors which have for many years been current in the school literature of these subjects. There is no subject in the presentation of which object-teaching may be employed with greater facility and profit than in teaching Physiology, and none which may be more advantageously impressed upon the student's mind by means of simple experimentation than the subject of Hygiene. Every teacher who uses this book is urgently requested to supplement each lesson by the use of object-teaching or experiments. A great number of simple experiments illustrative of both Physiology and Hygiene may be readily arranged. Many little experiments are suggested in the text, which should invariably be made before the class, each member of which should also be encouraged to repeat them at home. It is also most desirable that the teacher should have the aid of suitable charts and models. In conclusion, the author would acknowledge his indebtedness for a large number of useful suggestions and criticisms to several medical friends and experienced teachers, and especially to Prof. Henry Sewall, of the University of Michigan, for criticisms of the portions of the work relating to Physiology. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE TO THE TEACHER iii I. THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN 1 II. A GENERAL VIEW OF THE BODY 5 III. THE INSIDE OF THE BODY 7 IV. OUR FOODS 11 V. UNHEALTHFUL FOODS 14 VI. OUR DRINKS 19 VII. HOW WE DIGEST 27 VIII. DIGESTION OF A MOUTHFUL OF BREAD 35 IX. BAD HABITS IN EATING 39 X. A DROP OF BLOOD 46 XI. WHY THE HEART BEATS 48 XII. HOW TO KEEP THE HEART AND THE BLOOD HEALTHY 56 XIII. WHY AND HOW WE BREATHE 63 XIV. HOW TO KEEP THE LUNGS HEALTHY 75 XV. THE SKIN AND WHAT IT DOES 81 XVI. HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE SKIN 88 XVII. THE KIDNEYS AND THEIR WORK 91 XVIII. OUR BONES AND THEIR USES 93 XIX. HOW TO KEEP THE BONES HEALTHY 100 XX. THE MUSCLES, AND HOW WE USE THEM 105 XXI. HOW TO KEEP THE MUSCLES HEALTHY 109 XXII. HOW WE FEEL AND THINK 115 XXIII. HOW TO KEEP THE BRAIN AND NERVES HEALTHY 126 XXIV. BAD EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE BRAIN AND NERVES 130 XXV. HOW WE HEAR, SEE, SMELL, TASTE; AND FEEL 138 XXVI. ALCOHOL 154 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 170 FIRST BOOK OF PHYSIOLOGY AND HYGIENE. CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN. ~1. Object of this Book.~--The object of this book is to tell the little boys and girls who read it about a wonderful house. You have all seen some very beautiful houses. Perhaps they were made of brick or stone, with fine porches, having around them tall shade trees, smooth lawns, pretty flower-beds, walks, and sparkling fountains. ~2.~ Perhaps some of you live in such a house, or have visited some friend who does. If so, you know that the inside of the house is even more beautiful than the outside. There are elegant chairs and sofas in the rooms, rich carpets and rugs on the floors, fine mirrors and beautiful pictures upon the walls--everything one could wish to have in a house. Do you not think such a house a nice one to live in? ~3. The Body is Like a House.~--Each of us has a house of his own which is far more wonderful and more curious than the grandest palace ever built. It is not a very large house. It has just room enough in it for one person. This house, which belongs to each one of us, is called the body. ~4. What is a Machine?~--Do you know what a machine is? Men make machines to help them work and to do many useful things. A wheelbarrow or a wagon is a machine to carry loads. A sewing-machine helps to make garments for us to wear. Clocks and watches are machines for keeping time. ~5. A Machine has Different Parts.~--A wheelbarrow has a box in which to carry things, two handles to hold by, and a wheel for rolling it along. Some machines, like wheelbarrows and wagons, have but few parts, and it is very easy for us to learn how they work. But there are other machines, like watches and sewing-machines, which have many different parts, and it is more difficult to learn all about them and what they do. ~6. The Body is Like a Machine.~--In some ways the body is more like a machine than like a house. It has many different parts which are made to do a great many different kinds of work. We see with our eyes, hear with our ears, walk with our legs and feet, and do a great many things with our hands. If you have ever seen the inside of a watch or a clock you know how many curious little wheels it has. And yet a watch or a clock can do but one thing, and that is to tell us the time of day. The body has a great many more parts than a watch has, and for this reason the body can do many more things than a watch can do. It is more difficult, too, to learn about the body than about a watch. ~7.~ If we want to know all about a machine and how it works, we must study all its different parts and learn how they are put together, and what each part does. Then, if we want the machine to work well and to last a long time, we must know how to use it and how to take proper care of it. Do you think your watch would keep the time well if you should neglect to wind it, or if you should break any of its wheels? ~8.~ It is just the same with the human machine which we call the body. We must learn its parts, and what they are for, how they are made, how they are put together, and how they work. Then we must learn how to take proper care of the body, so that its parts will be able to work well and last a long time. ~9.~ Each part of the body which is made to do some special kind of work is called an _organ_. The eye, the ear, the nose, a hand, an arm, any part of the body that does something, is an organ. ~10.~ The study of the various parts of the body and how they are put together is _anatomy_ (a-nat´-o-my). The study of what each part of the body does is _physiology_ (phys-i-ol´-o-gy). The study of how to take care of the body is _hygiene_ (hy´-jeen). SUMMARY. 1. The body is something like a house. It has an outside and an inside; it has hollow places inside of it, and there are many wonderful things in them. 2. The body is also like a wonderful machine. 3. It is necessary to take good care of the body in order to keep it well and useful, just as we would take good care of a machine to keep it from wearing out too soon. 4. The body has many different parts, called organs, each of which has some particular work to do. 5. In learning about the body, we have to study anatomy, physiology, and hygiene. 6. The study of the various parts of the body, how they are formed and joined together, is anatomy. Physiology tells us what the body does, hygiene tells us how to take care of it. CHAPTER II A GENERAL VIEW OF THE BODY. ~1. Parts of the Body.~--What do we call the main part of a tree? The trunk, you say. The main part of the body is also called its _trunk_. There are two arms and two legs growing out of the human trunk. The branches of a tree we call limbs, and so we speak of the arms and legs as _limbs_. We sometimes call the arms the _upper extremities_, and the legs the _lower extremities_. At the top of the trunk is the head. ~2. Names of the Parts.~--Now let us look more closely at these different parts. As we speak the name of each part, let each one touch that part of himself which is named. We will begin with the head. The chief parts of the head are the _skull_ and the _face_. The _forehead_, the _temples_, the _cheeks_, the _eyes_, the _ears_, the _nose_, the _mouth_, and the _chin_ are parts of the face. ~3.~ The chief parts of the trunk are the _chest_, the _abdomen_ (ab-do´-men), and the _backbone_. The head is joined to the trunk by the _neck_. ~4.~ Each arm has a _shoulder_, _upper-arm_, _fore-arm_, _wrist_, and _hand_. The _fingers_ are a part of the hand. ~5.~ Each leg has a _hip_, _thigh_, _lower leg_, _ankle_, and _foot_. The _toes_ are a part of the foot. ~6.~ Our hands and face and the whole body are covered with something as soft and smooth as the finest silk. It is the _skin_. What is it that grows from the skin on the head? and what at the ends of the fingers and the toes? We shall learn more about the skin, the hair, and the nails in another lesson. ~7.~ The body has two sides, the right side and the left side, which are alike. We have two eyes, two ears, two arms, etc. We have but one nose, one mouth, and one chin, but each of these organs has two halves, which are just alike. SUMMARY. 1. The body has a head and trunk, two arms, and two legs. 2. The parts of the head are the skull and face. The forehead, temples, cheeks, eyes, ears, nose, mouth and chin are parts of the face. 3. The parts of the trunk are, the chest, abdomen, and backbone. The neck joins the head and trunk. 4. Each arm has a shoulder, upper-arm, fore-arm, wrist, and hand. The fingers belong to the hand. 5. Each leg has a hip, thigh, lower leg, ankle, and foot. The toes belong to the foot. 6. The whole body is covered by the skin. 7. The two sides of the body are alike. CHAPTER III. THE INSIDE OF THE BODY. ~1.~ Thus far we have taken only a brief look at the outside of the body, just as if we had looked at the case of a watch, and of course we have found out very little about its many wonderful parts. Very likely you want to ask a great many questions, such as, How does the inside of the body look? What is in the skull? What is in the chest? What is in the abdomen? Why do we eat and drink? Why do we become hungry and thirsty? What makes us tired and sleepy? How do we keep warm? Why do we breathe? How do we grow? How do we move about? How do we talk, laugh, and sing? How do we see, hear, feel, taste, and smell? How do we remember, think, and reason? All these, and a great many more interesting questions, you will find answered in the following lessons, if you study each one well. ~2.~ When we study the inside of the body, we begin to understand how wonderfully we are made. We cannot all see the inside of the body, and it is not necessary that we should do so. Many learned men have spent their whole lives in seeking to find out all about our bodies and the bodies of various animals. ~3. The Bones.~--If you take hold of your arm, it seems soft on the outside; and if you press upon it, you will feel something hard inside. The soft part is called _flesh_. The hard part is called _bone_. If you wish, you can easily get one of the bones of an animal at the butcher's shop, or you may find one in the fields. ~4. The Skeleton.~--All the bones of an animal, when placed properly together, have nearly the shape of the body, and are called the _skeleton_ (skel´-e-ton). The skeleton forms the framework of the body, just as the heavy timbers of a house form its framework. It supports all the parts. ~5. The Skull.~--The bony part of the head is called the _skull_. In the skull is a hollow place or chamber. You know that a rich man often has a strong room or box in his fine house, in which to keep his gold and other valuable things. The chamber in the skull is the strong-room of the body. It has strong, tough walls of bone, and contains the _brain_. The brain is the most important, and also the most tender and delicate organ in the whole body. This is why it is so carefully guarded from injury. ~6. The Backbone.~--The framework of the back is called the _backbone_. This is not a single bone, but a row of bones arranged one above another. Each bone has a hole through it, about as large as one of your fingers. A large branch from the brain, called the _spinal cord_, runs down through the middle of the backbone, so that the separate bones look as if they were strung on the spinal cord, like beads on a string. ~7. The Trunk.~--The trunk of the body, like the skull, is hollow. Its walls are formed partly by the backbone and the ribs and partly by flesh. A fleshy wall divides the hollow of the trunk into two parts, an upper chamber called the _chest_, and a lower called the _abdomen_. ~8. The Lungs and Heart.~--The chest contains a pair of organs called the _lungs_, with which we breathe. It also contains something which we can feel beating at the left side. This is the _heart_. The heart lies between the two lungs, and a little to the left side. ~9. The Stomach and Liver.~--In the abdomen are some very wonderful organs that do different kinds of work for the body. Among them are the _stomach_, the _bowels_, and the _liver_. There are, also, other organs whose names we shall learn when we come to study them. ~10. Care of the Body.~--We have only begun to study the beautiful house in which we live, and yet have we not learned enough to show us how great and wise is the Creator who made us and all the wonderful machinery within our bodies? If some one should give you a beautiful present, would you treat it carelessly and spoil it, or would you take good care of it and keep it nice as long as possible? Ought we not to take such care of our bodies as to keep them in that perfect and beautiful condition in which our kind and good Creator gave them to us? SUMMARY. 1. The body has a framework, called the skeleton. 2. The skeleton is made up of many different parts, each of which is called a bone. 3. The bones are covered by the flesh. 4. The bones of the head form the skull, which is hollow and contains the brain. 5. A row of bones arranged in the back, one above another, forms the backbone. The backbone has a canal running through it lengthwise, in which lies the spinal cord. 6. The trunk is hollow, and has two chambers, one called the cavity of the chest, and the other the cavity of the abdomen. 7. The chest contains the two lungs and the heart. 8. The abdomen contains the stomach, liver, and many other very important organs. 9. Is it not our duty to take good care of our bodies as we would of some nice present from a friend? CHAPTER IV. OUR FOODS. ~1.~ We all know very well that if we do not eat we shall rapidly lose in weight, and become very weak and feeble. Did you ever think how much one eats in the course of a lifetime? Let us see if we can figure it up. How much do you suppose a boy eats in a day? Let us say two pounds. How much does he eat in a year? There are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year; 365 multiplied by 2 equals 730. So a boy eats a good many times his own weight in a year. How much would a person eat in fifty years? ~2.~ Our bodies are composed of what we eat. If we eat bad food, our bodies will be made out of poor material, and will not be able to do their work well. So you see how important it is to learn something about our foods. We ought to know what things are good for us to eat, and what will do us harm. ~3. Foods and Poisons.~--Foods are those substances which nourish the body and keep it in good working order. ~4.~ Our foods are obtained from both animals and plants. All food really comes from plants, however, since those animals which we sometimes use as food themselves live upon the vegetables which they eat. For example, the ox and the cow eat grass and furnish us beef and milk. Chickens eat corn and other grains, and supply us with eggs. ~5.~ The principal animal foods are milk, cheese, eggs, and the different kinds of flesh--beef, mutton, pork, fish, fowl, and wild game. We obtain a great many more kinds of food from plants than from animals. Most plant foods are included in three classes--_fruits_, _grains_, and _vegetables_. ~6.~ _Fruits_ are the fleshy parts of plants which contain the seeds. Our most common fruits are apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, and various kinds of nuts. Perhaps you know of some other kinds of fruits besides those mentioned. Your teacher will tell you that tomatoes, watermelons, and pumpkins are really fruits, though they are not generally so called. ~7.~ The seeds of grass-like plants are known as _grains_, of which we have wheat, rye, barley, corn, and rice. There are a few seeds that grow in pods, such as pease and beans, which somewhat resemble grains. ~8.~ We eat the leaves, stems, or roots of some plants, as cabbages, celery, turnips, and potatoes. Foods of this kind are called _vegetables_. ~9.~ There are other things, which, if we eat or drink them, will make us sick or otherwise do us harm. These are called _poisons_. Only such food as is pure and free from poisons is good or safe for us to use. ~10. Narcotics and Stimulants.~--There are a number of substances known as narcotics and stimulants, which, from their effects upon the body, may be classed as poisons. Tobacco, opium, alcohol, and chloral are included in this class. Death has often been caused by taking small quantities of any of these poisonous drugs. We shall learn more of the effects of tobacco and alcohol in future lessons. SUMMARY. 1. Our bodies are made of what we eat. 2. Things which will help us to grow strong and well, if we eat them, are foods. 3. We get foods from plants and animals. 4. There are several kinds of animal foods, and three classes of plant foods--fruits, grains, and vegetables. 5. Things which make us sick when we eat them, are poisons. CHAPTER V. UNHEALTHFUL FOODS. ~1.~ Most persons eat many things which are not good for them. Some people do not stop to think whether what they eat is good for them or likely to do them harm. Sometimes, without knowing it, we eat things which are harmful to us. Do you not think that we should try to learn what is good to eat and what is not good, and then be very careful not to eat anything which is likely to do us harm? ~2. Diseased Foods.~--When a person is sick, he is said to be diseased. Animals are sometimes sick or diseased. Vegetables are also sometimes diseased. Animals and vegetables that are diseased are not good for food. Dishonest men, however, sometimes sell them to those who do not know that they are unfit to be eaten. ~3.~ Pork, the flesh of the hog, is more likely to be diseased than any other kind of animal food. ~4.~ Beef and mutton may be diseased also. Sheep and cattle are sometimes sick of diseases very much like those which human beings have. Meat which is pale, yellowish, or of a dark red color, is unhealthful, and should not be eaten. Meat should never be eaten raw. It should always be well cooked. ~5. Unripe Foods.~--Most vegetable foods are unfit to be eaten when green or unripe, especially if uncooked. Sometimes persons are made very sick indeed by eating such articles as green apples or unripe peaches. ~6. Stale or Decayed Foods.~--Food which has been allowed to stand until it is spoiled, or has become _stale_, _musty_, or _mouldy_, such as mouldy bread or fruit, or tainted meat, is unfit to be eaten, and is often a cause of very severe sickness. Canned fish or other meats spoil very quickly after the cans are opened, and should be eaten the same day. ~7. Adulterated Foods.~--Many of our foods are sometimes spoiled or injured by persons who put into them cheap substances which are harmful to health. They do this so as to make more money in selling them. This is called _adulteration_. The foods which are most likely to be injured by adulteration are milk, sugar, and butter. ~8.~ Milk is most often adulterated by adding water, though sometimes other things are added. Sometimes the water is not pure, and people are made sick and die. The adulteration of milk or any other food is a very wicked practice. ~9.~ Butter is sometimes made almost wholly from lard or tallow. This is called _oleomargarine_ or _butterine_. If the lard or tallow is from diseased animals, the false butter made from it may cause disease. ~10.~ A great deal of the sugar and syrups which we buy is made from corn by a curious process, which changes the starch of the corn into sugar. Sugar which has been made in this way is not so sweet as cane sugar, and is not healthful. ~11. Condiments or Seasonings.~--These are substances which are added to our food for the purpose of giving to it special flavors. Condiments are not foods, because they do not nourish the body in any way, and are not necessary to preserve it in health. ~12.~ The most common condiments are, mustard, pepper, pepper-sauce, ginger, cayenne-pepper, and spices. All these substances are irritating. If we put mustard upon the skin, it will make the skin red, and in a little time will raise a blister. If we happen to get a little pepper in the eye, it makes it smart and become very red and inflamed. When we take these things into the stomach, they cause the stomach to smart, and its lining membrane becomes red just as the skin or the eye does. ~13.~ Nature has put into our foods very nice flavors to make us enjoy eating them. Condiments are likely to do us great harm, and hence it is far better not to use them. ~14. Tobacco.~--Most of you know that tobacco is obtained from a plant which has long, broad leaves. These leaves are dried and then rolled up into cigars, ground into snuff, or prepared for chewing. [Illustration: Tobacco-Plant.] ~15.~ Tobacco has a smarting, sickening taste. Do you think it would be good to eat? Why not? ~16.~ You know that tobacco makes people sick when they first begin to use it. This is because it contains a very deadly poison, called _nicotine_. ~17.~ If you give tobacco to a cat or a dog, it will become very sick. A boy once gave a piece of tobacco to a monkey, which swallowed it not knowing what a bad thing it was. The monkey soon became sick and died. ~18.~ Many learned doctors have noticed the effects which come from using tobacco, and they all say it does great harm to boys, that it makes them puny and weak, and prevents their growing up into strong and useful men. If tobacco is not good for boys, do you think it can be good for men? Certainly you will say, No. SUMMARY. 1. Both animals and plants are sometimes diseased. Flesh obtained from sick or diseased animals is unfit for food. 2. Unripe, stale, and mouldy foods are unfit to be eaten and likely to cause severe illness. 3. Foods are sometimes spoiled by having things mixed with them which are not food, or which are poisonous. 4. The foods most liable to be adulterated in this way are milk, sugar, and butter. 5. Tobacco, while not actually eaten, is thought by some persons to be a food, but it is not. It is a poison, and injures all who use it. 6. Boys who use tobacco do not grow strong in body and mind. CHAPTER VI. OUR DRINKS. ~1.~ Water is really the only drink. It is the only substance which will satisfy thirst. All other fluids which we drink consist mostly of water. Thus, lemonade is lemon-juice and water. Milk is chiefly water. Wine, beer, cider, and such liquids contain alcohol and many other things, mixed with water. ~2. Why we Need Water.~--If we should wet a sponge and lay it away, it would become dry in a few hours, as the water would pass off into the air. Our bodies are losing water all the time, and we need to drink to keep ourselves from drying up. ~3.~ Water is also very necessary for other purposes. It softens our food so that we can chew and swallow it, and helps to carry it around in the body after it has been digested, in a way about which we shall learn in future lessons. ~4.~ Still another use for water is to dissolve and wash out of our bodies, through the sweat of the skin, and in other ways, the waste and worn-out particles which are no longer of any use. ~5. Impure Water.~--Most waters have more or less substances dissolved in them. Water which has much lime in it is called hard water. Such water is not so good to drink, or for use in cooking, as soft water. That water is best which holds no substances in solution. Well-water sometimes contains substances which soak into wells from vaults or cesspools. Slops which are poured upon the ground soak down out of sight; but the foul substances which they contain are not destroyed. They remain in the soil, and when the rains come, they are washed down into the well if it is near by. You can see some of the things found in bad water in the illustration given on opposite page. ~6.~ It is best not to drink iced water when the body is heated, or during meals. If it is necessary to drink very cold water, the bad effects may be avoided by sipping it very slowly. ~7. Tea and Coffee.~--Many people drink tea or coffee at their meals, and some persons think that these drinks are useful foods; but they really have little or no value as foods. Both tea and coffee contain a poison which, when separated in a pure form, is so deadly that a very small quantity is enough to kill a cat or a dog. This poison often does much harm to those who drink tea or coffee very strong for any great length of time. [Illustration: A DROP OF IMPURE WATER MAGNIFIED.] ~8. Alcohol~ (al´-co-hol).--All of you know something about alcohol. Perhaps you have seen it burn in a lamp. It will burn without a lamp, if we light it. It is so clear and colorless that it looks like water. The Indians call it "fire-water." Alcohol differs very much from foods. It is not produced from plants, as fruits and grains are; neither is it supplied by Nature ready for our use, as are air and water. ~9. Fermentation.~--When a baker makes bread he puts some yeast in the dough to make it "rise," so the bread will be light. The yeast destroys some of the sugar and starch in the flour and changes it into alcohol and a gas. The gas bubbles up through the dough, and this is what makes the bread light. This is called _fermentation_ (fer-men-ta´-tion). The little alcohol which is formed in the bread does no harm, because it is all driven off by the heat when the bread is baked. [Illustration: FERMENTATION.] ~10.~ Any moist substance or liquid which contains sugar will ferment if yeast is added to it, or if it is kept in a warm place. You know that canned fruit sometimes spoils. This is because it ferments. Fermentation is a sort of decay. When the juice of grapes, apples, or other fruit is allowed to stand in a warm place it "works," or ferments, and thus produces alcohol. Wine is fermented grape-juice; hard cider is fermented apple-juice. ~11.~ Beer, ale, and similar drinks are made from grains. The grain is first moistened and allowed to sprout. In sprouting, the starch of the grain is changed to sugar. The grain is next dried and ground, and is then boiled with water. The water dissolves the sugar. The sweet liquid thus obtained is separated from the grain, and yeast is added to it. This causes it to ferment, which changes the sugar to alcohol. Thus we see that the grain does not contain alcohol in the first place, but that it is produced by fermentation. ~12.~ All fermented liquids contain more or less alcohol, mixed with water and a good many other things. Rum, brandy, gin, whiskey, and pure alcohol are made by separating the alcohol from the other substances. This is done by means of a still, and is called _distillation_. [Illustration: DISTILLATION.] ~13.~ You can learn how a still separates the alcohol by a little experiment. When a tea-pot is boiling on the stove and the steam is coming out at the nozzle, hold up to the nozzle a common drinking-glass filled with iced water, first taking care to wipe the outside of the glass perfectly dry. Little drops of water will soon gather upon the side of the glass. If you touch these to the tongue you will observe that they taste of the tea. It is because a little of the tea has escaped with the steam and condensed upon the glass. This is distillation. ~14.~ If the tea-pot had contained wine, or beer, or hard cider, the distilled water would have contained alcohol instead of tea. By distilling the liquid several times the alcohol may be obtained almost pure. ~15. Alcohol kills Animals and Plants.~--Strong alcohol has a deadly effect upon all living things. Once a man gave a dog a few tablespoonfuls of alcohol, and in a little while the dog was dead. If you should pour alcohol upon a plant it would die very soon. ~16.~ A man once made a cruel experiment. He put some minnows into a jar of water and then poured in a few teaspoonfuls of alcohol. The minnows tried very hard to get out, but they could not, and in a little while they were all dead, poisoned by the alcohol. A Frenchman once gave alcohol to some pigs with their food. They soon became sick and died. ~17. Alcohol not a Food.~--There are some people who imagine that alcohol is good for food because it is made from fruits and grains which are good for food. This is a serious mistake. A person can live on the fruits or grains from which alcohol is made, but no one would attempt to live upon alcohol. If he did, he would soon starve to death. In fact, men have often died in consequence of trying to use whiskey in place of food. ~18.~ We should remember, also, that people do not take alcohol as a food, but for certain effects which it produces, which are not those of a food, but of a poison. ~19.~ Many people who would not drink strong or distilled liquors, think that they will suffer no harm if they use only wine, beer, or cider. This is a great mistake. These liquids contain alcohol, as do all fermented drinks. A person will become drunk or intoxicated by drinking wine, beer, or cider--only a larger quantity is required to produce the same effect as rum or whiskey. ~20.~ Another very serious thing to be thought of is that if a person forms the habit of drinking wine, cider, or other fermented drinks, he becomes so fond of the _effect they produce_ that he soon wants some stronger drink, and thus he is led to use whiskey or other strong liquors. On this account it is not safe to use any kind of alcoholic drinks, either fermented or distilled. The only safe plan is to avoid the use of every sort of stimulating or intoxicating drinks. ~21.~ It has been found by observation that those persons who use intoxicating drinks are not so healthy as those who do not use them, and, as a rule, they do not live so long. ~22.~ This is found to be true not only of those who use whiskey and other strong liquors, but also of those who use fermented drinks, as wine and beer. Beer drinkers are much more likely to suffer from disease than those who are strictly temperate. It is often noticed by physicians that when a beer-drinker becomes sick or meets with an accident, he does not recover so readily as one who uses no kind of alcoholic drinks. ~23.~ Alcoholic drinks not only make people unhealthy and shorten their lives, but they are also the cause of much poverty and crime and an untold amount of misery. SUMMARY. 1. Water is the only thing that will satisfy thirst. 2. In going through our bodies, water washes out many impurities. We also need water to soften our food. 3. The purest water is the best. Impure water causes sickness. 4. Good water has no color, taste, or odor. 5. Tea and coffee are not good drinks. They are very injurious to children, and often do older persons much harm. 6. Alcohol is made by fermentation. 7. Pure alcohol and strong liquors are made by distillation. 8. Alcohol is not a food, it is a poison. It kills plants and animals, and is very injurious to human beings. 9. Even the moderate use of alcoholic drinks produces disease and shortens life. CHAPTER VII. HOW WE DIGEST. ~1.~ Did you ever see a Venus's fly-trap? This curious plant grows in North Carolina. It is called a fly-trap because it has on each of its leaves something like a steel-trap, by means of which it catches flies. You can see one of these traps in the picture. When a fly touches the leaf, the trap shuts up at once, and the poor fly is caught and cannot get away. The harder it tries to escape, the more tightly the trap closes upon it, until after a time it is crushed to death. [Illustration: VENUS'S FLY-TRAP.] ~2.~ But we have yet to learn the most curious thing about this strange plant, which seems to act so much like an animal. If we open the leaf after a few days, it will be found that the fly has almost entirely disappeared. The fly has not escaped, but it has been dissolved by a fluid formed inside of the trap, and the plant has absorbed a portion of the fly. In fact, it has really eaten it. The process by which food is dissolved and changed so that it can be absorbed and may nourish the body, is called _digestion_ (di-ges´-tion). ~3.~ The Venus's fly-trap has a very simple way of digesting its food. Its remarkable little trap serves it as a mouth to catch and hold its food, and as a stomach to digest it. The arrangement by which our food is digested is much less simple than this. Let us study the different parts by which this wonderful work is done. [Illustration: THE DIGESTIVE TUBE.] ~4. The Digestive Tube.~--The most important part of the work of digesting our food is done in a long tube within the body, called the _digestive tube_ or _canal_. ~5.~ This tube is twenty-five or thirty feet long in a full-grown man; but it is so coiled up and folded away that it occupies but little space. It begins at the mouth, and ends at the lower part of the trunk. The greater part of it is coiled up in the abdomen. ~6. The Mouth.~--The space between the upper and the lower jaw is called the _mouth_. The lips form the front part and the cheeks the sides. At the back part are three openings. One, the upper, leads into the nose. There are two lower openings. One of these leads into the stomach, and the other leads to the lungs. The back part of the mouth joins the two tubes which lead from the mouth to the lungs and the stomach, and is called the _throat_. The mouth contains the _tongue_ and the _teeth_. [Illustration: THE TEETH.] ~7. The Teeth.~--The first teeth, those which come when we are small children, are called _temporary_ or _milk teeth_. We lose these teeth as the jaws get larger and the second or _permanent_ teeth take their place. There are twenty teeth in the first set, and thirty-two in the second. Very old persons sometimes have a third set of teeth. [Illustration: SALIVARY GLANDS.] ~8. The Salivary~ (sal´-i-vary)~ Glands.~--There are three pairs of _salivary glands_. They form a fluid called the _saliva_ (sa-li´-va). It is this fluid which moistens the mouth at all times. When we eat or taste something which we like, the salivary glands make so much saliva that we sometimes say the mouth waters. One pair of the salivary glands is at the back part of the lower jaw, in front of the ears. The other two pairs of glands are placed at the under side of the mouth. The saliva produced by the salivary glands is sent into the mouth through little tubes called _ducts_. ~9. The Gullet.~--At the back part of the throat begins a narrow tube, which passes down to the stomach. This tube is about nine inches long. It is called the _gullet_, _food-pipe_, or _oesophagus_ (e-soph´-a-gus). ~10. The Stomach.~--At the lower end of the oesophagus the digestive tube becomes enlarged, and has a shape somewhat like a pear. This is the _stomach_. In a full-grown person the stomach is sufficiently large to hold about three pints. At each end of the stomach is a narrow opening so arranged that it can be opened or tightly closed, as may be necessary. The upper opening allows the food to pass into the stomach, the lower one allows it to pass out into the intestines. This opening is called the _pylorus_ (py-lo´-rus), or gate-keeper, because it closes so as to keep the food in the stomach until it is ready to pass out. ~11.~ In the membrane which lines the stomach there are many little pocket-like glands, in which a fluid called the _gastric juice_ is formed. This fluid is one of the most important of all the fluids formed in the digestive canal. [Illustration: GASTRIC GLAND.] ~12. The Intestine~(in-tes´-tine).--At the lower end of the stomach the digestive canal becomes narrow again. This narrow portion, called the _intestine_, is about twenty-five feet long in a grown person. The last few feet of the intestine is larger than the rest, and is called the _colon_. This long tube is coiled up and snugly packed away in the cavity of the abdomen. In the membrane lining the intestines are to be found little glands, which make a fluid called _intestinal juice_. ~13. The Liver.~--Close up under the ribs, on the right side of the body, is a large chocolate-colored organ, called the _liver_. The liver is about half as large as the head, and is shaped so as to fit snugly into its corner of the abdomen. The chief business of the liver is to make a fluid called _bile_, which is very necessary for the digestion of our food. ~14.~ The bile is a bitter fluid of a golden-brown color. It is carried to the intestine by means of a little tube or duct, which enters the small intestine a few inches below the stomach. When the bile is made faster than it is needed for immediate use, it is stored up in a little pear-shaped sac called the _gall-bladder_, which hangs from the under side of the liver. ~15.~ The liver is a very wonderful organ, and does many useful things besides making bile. It aids in various ways in digesting the food, and helps to keep the blood pure by removing from it harmful substances which are formed within the body. ~16. The Pancreas~(pan´-cre-as).--The _pancreas_ is another large and very important gland which is found close to the stomach, lying just behind it in the abdominal cavity. The pancreas forms a fluid called the _pancreatic juice_, which enters the small intestine at nearly the same place as the bile. ~17. The Spleen.~--Close to the pancreas, at the left side of the body, is a dark, roundish organ about the size of the fist, called the _spleen_. It is not known that the spleen has much to do in the work of digestion, but it is so closely connected with the digestive organs that we need to know about it. ~18.~ Please note that there are five important organs of digestion. The mouth, the stomach, the intestines, the pancreas, and the liver. ~19.~ Also observe that there are five digestive fluids, saliva, gastric juice, bile, pancreatic juice, and intestinal juice. SUMMARY. 1. The process of dissolving and changing the food so that it may be absorbed and may nourish the body is digestion. 2. The work of digestion is chiefly done in the digestive tube or canal, which is about thirty feet in length. 3. The mouth contains the teeth, and has three pairs of salivary glands connected with it, which make saliva. 4. The gullet leads from the mouth to the stomach. 5. The stomach is pear-shaped, and holds about three pints. 6. It has an upper and a lower opening, each of which is guarded by a muscle, which keeps its contents from escaping. 7. The lower opening of the stomach is called the pylorus. 8. The stomach forms the gastric juice. 9. The intestines are about twenty-five feet long. They form the intestinal juice. 10. The liver lies under the ribs of the right side. It is about half as large as the head. It makes bile. 11. When not needed for immediate use, the bile is stored up in a sac called the gall-bladder. 12. The pancreas is a gland which lies just back of the stomach. It makes pancreatic juice. 13. The spleen is found near the pancreas. 14. There are five important digestive organs--the mouth, the stomach, the intestines, the liver, and the pancreas. 15. There are five digestive fluids--saliva, gastric juice, intestinal juice, bile, and pancreatic juice. CHAPTER VIII. DIGESTION OF A MOUTHFUL OF BREAD. ~1.~ Let us suppose that we have eaten a mouthful of bread, and can watch it as it goes through all the different processes of digestion. ~2. Mastication.~--First, we chew or masticate the food with the teeth. We use the tongue to move the food from one side of the mouth to the other, and to keep the food between the teeth. ~3. Mouth Digestion.~--While the bread is being chewed, the saliva is mixed with it and acts upon it. The saliva moistens and softens the food so that it can be easily swallowed and readily acted upon by the other digestive juices. You have noticed that if you chew a bit of hard bread a few minutes it becomes sweet. This is because the saliva changes some of the starch of the food into sugar. ~4.~ After we have chewed the food, we swallow it, and it passes down through the oesophagus into the stomach. ~5. Stomach Digestion.~--As soon as the morsel of food enters the stomach, the gastric juice begins to flow out of the little glands in which it is formed. This mingles with the food and digests another portion which the saliva has not acted upon. While this is being done, the stomach keeps working the food much as a baker kneads dough. This is done to mix the gastric juice with the food. ~6.~ After an hour or two the stomach squeezes the food so hard that a little of it, which has been digested by the gastric juice and the saliva, escapes through the lower opening, the pylorus, of which we have already learned. As the action of the stomach continues, more of the digested food escapes, until all that has been properly acted upon has passed out. ~7. Intestinal Digestion.~--We sometimes eat butter with bread, or take some other form of fat in our food. This is not acted upon by the saliva or the gastric juice. When food passes out of the stomach into the small intestine, a large quantity of bile is at once poured upon it. This bile has been made beforehand by the liver and stored up in the gall-bladder. The bile helps to digest fats, which the saliva and the gastric juice cannot digest. ~8.~ The pancreatic juice does the same kind of work that is done by the saliva, the gastric juice, and the bile. It also finishes up the work done by these fluids. It is one of the most important of all the digestive juices. ~9.~ The intestinal juice digests nearly all the different elements of the food, so that it is well fitted to complete the wonderful process by which the food is made ready to enter the blood and to nourish the body. ~10.~ While the food is being acted upon by the bile, the pancreatic juice, and intestinal juice, it is gradually moved along the intestines. After all those portions of food which can be digested have been softened and dissolved, they are ready to be taken into the blood and distributed through the body. ~11. Absorption.~--If you put a dry sponge into water, it very soon becomes wet by soaking up the water. Indeed, if you only touch a corner of the sponge to the water, the whole sponge will soon become wet. We say that the sponge absorbs the water. It is in a somewhat similar way that the food is taken up or absorbed by the walls of the stomach and intestines. When the food is absorbed, the greater part of it is taken into the blood-vessels, of which we shall learn in a future lesson. ~12. Liver Digestion.~--After the food has been absorbed, the most of it is carried to the liver, where the process of digestion is completed. The liver also acts like an inspector to examine the digested food and remove hurtful substances which may be taken with it, such as alcohol, mustard, pepper, and other irritating things. ~13. The Thoracic Duct.~--A portion of the food, especially the digested fats, is absorbed by a portion of the lymphatic vessels called _lacteals_, which empty into a small vessel called the _thoracic duct_. This duct passes upward in front of the spine and empties into a vein near the heart. SUMMARY. How a mouthful of food is digested: 1. It is first masticated--that is, it is chewed and moistened with saliva. 2. Then it is swallowed, passing through the oesophagus to the stomach. 3. There it is acted upon, and a part of it digested by the gastric juice. 4. It is then passed into the small intestine, where it is acted upon by the bile, the pancreatic fluid, and the intestinal juice. 5. The digested food is then absorbed by the walls of the stomach and intestines. 6. The greater portion of the food is next passed through the liver, where hurtful substances are removed. 7. A smaller portion is carried through the thoracic duct and emptied into a vein near the heart. CHAPTER IX. BAD HABITS IN EATING. ~1. Eating too Fast.~--A most common fault is eating too fast. When the food is chewed too rapidly, and swallowed too quickly, it is not properly divided and softened. Such food cannot be easily acted upon by the various digestive juices. ~2. Eating too Much.~--A person who eats food too rapidly is also very likely to injure himself by eating too much. The digestive organs are able to do well only a certain amount of work. When too much food is eaten, none of it is digested as well as it should be. Food which is not well digested will not nourish the body. ~3. Eating too Often~--Many children make themselves sick by eating too often. It is very harmful to take lunches or to eat at other than the proper meal-times. The stomach needs time to rest, just as our legs and arms and the other parts of the body do. For the same reason, it is well for us to avoid eating late at night. The stomach needs to sleep with the rest of the body. If one goes to bed with the stomach full of food, the stomach cannot rest, and the work of digestion will go on so slowly that the sleep will likely be disturbed. Such sleep is not refreshing. ~4.~ If we wish to keep our digestive organs in good order, we must take care to eat at regular hours. We ought not to eat when we are very tired. The stomach cannot digest well when we are very much fatigued. ~5. Sweet Foods.~--We ought not to eat too much sugar or sweet foods, as they are likely to sour or ferment in the stomach, and so make us sick. Candies often contain a great many things which are not good for us, and which may make us sick. The colors used in candies are sometimes poisonous. The flavors used in them are also sometimes very harmful. ~6. Fatty Foods Hurtful.~--Too much butter, fat meats, and other greasy foods are hurtful. Cream is the most digestible form of fat, because it readily dissolves in the fluids of the stomach, and mixes with the other foods without preventing their digestion. Melted fats are especially harmful. Cheese, fried foods, and rich pastry are very poor foods, and likely to cause sickness. ~7. Eating too many Kinds of Foods.~--Children should avoid eating freely of flesh meats. They ought also to avoid eating all highly-seasoned dishes, and taking too many kinds of food at a meal. A simple diet is much the more healthful. Milk and grain foods, as oatmeal, cracked wheat, graham bread, with such delicious fruits as apples, pears, and grapes, are much the best food for children. ~8. Avoid Use of Cold Foods.~--We ought not to take very cold foods or liquids with our meals. Cold foods, ice-water, and other iced drinks make the stomach so cold that it cannot digest the food. For this reason it is very harmful to drink iced water or iced tea, or to eat ice-cream at meals. These things are injurious to us at any time, but they do the greatest amount of harm when taken with the food. ~9. Things sometimes Eaten which are not Foods.~--Things which are not foods are often used as foods, such as mustard, pepper, and the various kinds of seasonings. Soda, saleratus, and baking-powders also belong to this class. All of these substances are more or less harmful, particularly mustard, pepper, and hot sauces. ~10. Common Salt.~--The only apparent exception to the general rule that all condiments and other substances which are not foods are harmful is in the case of common salt. This is very commonly used among civilized nations, although there are many barbarous tribes that never taste it. It is quite certain that much more salt is used than is needed. When much salt is added to the food, the action of the digestive fluids is greatly hindered. Salt meats, and other foods which have much salt added to them, are hard to digest because the salt hardens the fibres of the meat, so that they are not easily dissolved by the digestive fluids. ~11. Care of the Teeth.~--The teeth are the first organs employed in the work of digestion. It is of great importance that they should be kept in health. Many persons neglect their teeth, and treat them so badly that they begin to decay at a very early age. ~12.~ The mouth and teeth should be carefully cleansed immediately on rising in the morning, and after each meal. All particles of food should be removed from between the teeth by carefully rubbing both the inner and the outer surfaces of the teeth with a soft brush, and rinsing very thoroughly with water. A little soap may be used in cleansing the teeth, but clear water is sufficient, if used frequently and thoroughly. The teeth should not be used in breaking nuts or other hard substances. The teeth are brittle, and are often broken in this way. The use of candy and too much sweet food is also likely to injure the teeth. ~13.~ Some people think that it is not necessary to take care of the first set of teeth. This is a great mistake. If the first set are lost or are unhealthy, the second set will not be as perfect as they should be. It is plain that we should not neglect our teeth at any time of life. ~14. Tobacco.~--When a person first uses tobacco, it is apt to make him very sick at the stomach. After he has used tobacco a few times it does not make him sick, but it continues to do his stomach and other organs harm, and after a time may injure him very seriously. Smokers sometimes suffer from a horrible disease of the mouth or throat known as cancer. ~15. Effects of Alcohol upon the Stomach.~--If you should put a little alcohol into your eye, the eye would become very red. When men take strong liquors into their stomachs, the delicate membrane lining the stomach becomes red in the same way. Perhaps you will ask how do we know that alcohol has such an effect upon the stomach. More than sixty years ago there lived in Michigan a man named Alexis St. Martin. One day he was, by accident, shot in such a way that a large opening was made right through the skin and flesh and into the stomach. The good doctor who attended him took such excellent care of him that he got well. But when he recovered, the hole in his stomach remained, so that the doctor could look in and see just what was going on. St. Martin sometimes drank whiskey, and when he did, the doctor often looked into his stomach to see what the effect was, and he noticed that the inside of the stomach looked very red and inflamed. ~16.~ If St. Martin continued to drink whiskey for several days, the lining of the stomach looked very red and raw like a sore eye. A sore stomach cannot digest food well, and so the whole body becomes sick and weak. What would you think of a man who should keep his eyes always sore and inflamed and finally destroy his eyesight by putting pepper or alcohol or some other irritating substance into them every day? Is it not equally foolish and wicked to injure the stomach and destroy one's digestion by the use of alcoholic drinks? Alcohol, even when it is not very strong, not only hurts the lining of the stomach, but injures the gastric juice, so that it cannot digest the food well. ~17. Effects of Alcohol upon the Liver.~--The liver, as well as the stomach, is greatly damaged by the use of alcohol. You will recollect that nearly all the food digested and absorbed is filtered through the liver before it goes to the heart to be distributed to the rest of the body. In trying to save the rest of the body from the bad effects of alcohol, the liver is badly burned by the fiery liquid, and sometimes becomes so shrivelled up that it can no longer produce bile and perform its other duties. Even beer, ale, and wine, which do not contain so much alcohol as do rum, gin, and whiskey, have enough of the poison in them to do the liver a great deal of harm, and to injure many other organs of the body as well. SUMMARY. {Eating too fast. {Eating too much. {Eating too frequently. {Eating irregularly. 1. CAUSES OF INDIGESTION. {Eating when tired. {Eating too much of sweet foods. {Eating too many kinds of food at a meal. {Using iced foods or drinks. 2. Irritating substances and things which are not foods should not be eaten. 3. The teeth must be carefully used and kept clean. 4. Tobacco-using does the stomach harm, and sometimes causes cancer of the mouth. 5. Alcohol injures the gastric juice, and causes disease of the stomach and the liver. CHAPTER X. A DROP OF BLOOD. ~1. The Blood.~--Did you ever cut or prick your finger so as to make it bleed? Probably you have more than once met with an accident of this sort. All parts of the body contain blood. If the skin is broken in any place the blood flows out. ~2.~ How many of you know what a microscope is? It is an instrument which magnifies objects, or makes them look a great deal larger than they really are. Some microscopes are so powerful that they will make a little speck of dust look as large as a great rock. ~3. The Blood Corpuscles.~--If you should look at a tiny drop of blood through such a microscope, you would find it to be full of very small, round objects called _blood corpuscles_. ~4.~ You would notice also that these corpuscles are of two kinds. Most of them are slightly reddish, and give to the blood its red color. A very few are white. ~5. Use of the Corpuscles.~--Do you wonder what these peculiar little corpuscles do in the body? They are very necessary. We could not live a moment without them. We need to take into our bodies oxygen from the air. It is the business of the red corpuscles to take up the oxygen in the lungs and carry it round through the body in a wonderful way, of which we shall learn more in a future lesson. ~6.~ The white corpuscles have something to do with keeping the body in good repair. They are carried by the blood into all parts of the body and stop where they are needed to do any kind of work. They may be compared to the men who go around to mend old umbrellas, and to do other kinds of tinkering. It is thought that the white corpuscles turn into red ones when they become old. ~7.~ The corpuscles float in a clear, almost colorless fluid which contains the digested food and other elements by which the body is nourished. SUMMARY. 1. The blood contains very small objects called blood corpuscles. 2. There are two kinds of corpuscles, red and white. 3. The red corpuscles carry oxygen. 4. The white corpuscles repair parts that are worn. 5. The corpuscles float in a clear, almost colorless fluid, which nourishes the body. CHAPTER XI. WHY THE HEART BEATS. ~1.~ If you place your hand on the left side of your chest, you will feel something beating. If you cannot feel the beats easily, you may run up and down stairs two or three times, and then you can feel them very distinctly. How many of you know the name of this curious machine inside the chest, that beats so steadily? You say at once that it is the heart. [Illustration: THE HEART.] ~2.~ The Heart.--The heart may be called a live pump, which keeps pumping away during our whole lives. If it should stop, even for a minute or two, we would die. If you will place your hand over your heart and count the beats for exactly one minute, you will find that it beats about seventy-five or eighty times. When you are older, your heart will beat a little more slowly. If you count the beats while you are lying down, you will find that the heart beats more slowly than when you are sitting or standing. When we run or jump, the heart beats much harder and faster. ~3. Why the Heart Beats.~--We have learned in preceding lessons that the digested food is taken into the blood. We have also learned that both water and oxygen are taken into the blood. Thus the blood contains all the materials that are needed by the various parts of the body to make good the wastes that are constantly taking place. But if the blood were all in one place it could do little good, as the new materials are needed in every part of the body. There has been provided a wonderful system of tubes running through every part of the body. By means of these tubes the blood is carried into every part where it is required. These tubes are connected with the heart. When the heart beats, it forces the blood through the tubes just as water is forced through a pipe by a pump or by a fire-engine. ~4. The Heart Chambers.~--The heart has four chambers, two upper and two lower chambers. The blood is received into the upper chambers, and is then passed down into the lower chambers. From the lower chambers it is sent out to various parts of the body. [Illustration: THE INSIDE OF THE HEART.] ~5. The Blood-Vessels.~--The tubes through which the blood is carried are called _blood-vessels_. There are three kinds of blood-vessels. One set carry the blood away from the heart, and are called _arteries_ (ar´-te-ries). Another set return the blood to the heart, and are called _veins_. The arteries and veins are connected at the ends farthest from the heart by many very small vessels. These minute, hairlike vessels are called _capillaries_ (cap´-il-la-ries). ~6. The Arteries.~--An artery leads out from the lower chamber of each side of the heart. The one from the right side of the heart carries the blood only to the lungs. The one from the left side of the heart carries blood to every part of the body. It is the largest artery in the body, and is called the _aorta_. Soon after it leaves the heart the aorta begins to send out branches to various organs. These divide in the tissues again and again until they become so small that only one corpuscle can pass through at a time, as shown in the colored plate. (Frontispiece.) ~7. The Veins.~--These very small vessels now begin to unite and form larger ones, the veins. The small veins join to form larger ones, until finally all are gathered into two large veins which empty into the upper chamber of the right side of the heart. The veins which carry blood from the lungs to the heart empty into the upper chamber of the left side of the heart. ~8. What is Done in the Blood-Vessels.~--While the blood is passing through the small blood-vessels in the various parts of the body, each part takes out just what it needs to build up its own tissues. At the same time, the tissues give in exchange their worn-out or waste matters. The red blood corpuscles in the capillaries give up their oxygen, and the blood receives in its stead a poisonous substance called carbonic-acid gas. ~9. Red and Blue Blood.~--While in the arteries the blood is of a bright red color; but while it is passing through the capillaries the color changes to a bluish red or purple color. The red blood is called _arterial blood_, because it is found in the arteries. The purple blood is called _venous blood_, because it is found in the veins. The loss of oxygen in the corpuscles causes the change of color. ~10. Change of Blood in the Lungs.~--Exactly the opposite change occurs in the blood when it passes through the lungs. The blood which has been gathered up from the various parts of the body is dark, impure blood. In the lungs this dark blood is spread out in very minute capillaries and exposed to the air. While passing through the capillaries of the lungs, the blood gives up some of its impurities in exchange for oxygen from the air. The red corpuscles absorb the oxygen and the color of the blood changes from dark purple to bright red again. The purified blood is then carried back to the upper chamber of the left side of the heart through four large veins. The blood is now ready to begin another journey around the body. ~11. The Pulse.~--If you place your finger on your wrist at just the right spot, you can feel a slight beating. This beating is called the _pulse_. It is caused by the movement of the blood in the artery of the wrist at each beat of the heart. The pulse can be felt at the neck and in other parts of the body where an artery comes near to the surface. ~12. How much Work the Heart Does.~--The heart is a small organ, only about as large as your fist, and yet it does an amount of work which is almost beyond belief. Each time it beats, it does as much work as your arm would do in lifting a large apple from the ground to your mouth. It beats when we are asleep as well as when we are awake. When we run we know by the way in which it beats that it is working very fast. Do you know how much a ton is? Well, in twenty-four hours the heart does as much work as a man would do in lifting stones enough to weigh more than one hundred and twenty tons. ~13. The Lymphatics.~--While the blood is passing through the capillaries, some of the white corpuscles escape from the blood-vessels. What do you suppose becomes of these runaway corpuscles? Nature has provided a way by which they can get back to the heart. In the little spaces among the tissues outside of the blood-vessels very minute channels called _lymph channels_ or _lymphatics_ (lym--phat´-ics) begin. The whole body is filled with these small channels, which run together much like the meshes of a net. In the centre of the body the small lymphatics run into large ones, which empty into the veins near the heart. This is the way the stray white blood corpuscles get back into the blood. ~14. The Lymph.~--In the lymph channels the white corpuscles float in a colorless fluid called _lymph_. The lymph is composed of the fluid portion of the blood which has soaked through the walls of the small vessels. The chief purpose of the lymphatics is to carry the lymph from the tissues back to the heart. ~15. Lymphatic Glands.~--Here and there, scattered through the body, are oval structures into each of which many lymphatic vessels are found to run, as shown in the illustration. These are called _lymphatic glands_. [Illustration: LYMPH GLAND AND VESSELS.] ~16.~ The heart and blood-vessels are among the most wonderful structures in the body. It is no wonder, then, that alcohol, tobacco, and other narcotics and stimulants produce their most deadly effects upon these delicate organs. What these effects are we shall learn more fully in the next chapter. SUMMARY. 1. The heart beats to circulate the blood. 2. The heart has four chambers, two upper and two lower. 3. There are tubes called blood-vessels which carry the blood to all parts of the body. 4. These tubes are connected with the heart. 5. The vessels which carry blood away from the heart are called arteries, and those which carry blood back to the heart are called veins. 6. The arteries and veins are connected by small tubes called capillaries. 7. The blood found in the arteries is red; that in the veins is dark blue or purple. 8. The color of the blood changes from red to blue in going through the capillaries. The change is due to the loss of oxygen. 9. In the circulation of the lungs, the blood in the arteries is blue, that in the veins, red. 10. The change from blue to red takes place while the blood is passing through the capillaries of the lungs. The change is due to the oxygen which the corpuscles of the blood take up in the lungs. 11. The pulse is caused by the beating of the heart. 12. The heart does a great deal of work every day in forcing the blood into different parts of the body. 13. Some of the white blood corpuscles escape from the blood-vessels through the thin walls of the capillaries. 14. These corpuscles return to the heart through small vessels called lymph channels or lymphatics. 15. The lymphatics in many parts of the body run into small roundish bodies called lymphatic glands. 16. The object of the lymphatics is to remove from the tissues and return to the general circulation the lymph and white blood corpuscles which escape through the walls of the capillaries. CHAPTER XII. HOW TO KEEP THE HEART AND THE BLOOD HEALTHY. ~1.~ The heart is one of the most important of all the organs of the body. If we take good care of it, it will do good service for us during a long life. Let us notice some ways in which the heart is likely to be injured. ~2. Violent Exercise.~--Did you ever run so hard that you were out of breath? Do you know why you had to breathe so fast? It was because the violent exercise made your heart beat so rapidly that the blood could not get out of the lungs as fast as the heart forced it in. The lungs became so filled with blood that they could not do their work well. Sometimes, when a person runs very fast or takes any kind of violent exercise, the lungs become so filled with blood that a blood-vessel is broken. The person may then bleed to death. It is very unwise to overtax the heart in any way, for it may be strained or otherwise injured, so that it can never again do its work properly. ~3. Effects of Bad Air.~--Bad air is very harmful to the heart and to the blood also. We should always remember that the blood of the body while passing through the lungs is exposed to the air which we breathe. If the air is impure, the blood will be poisoned. In churches and in other places where the air becomes foul, people often faint from the effects of the impure air upon the heart. It is important that the air of the rooms in which we live and sleep should be kept very pure by good ventilation. ~4. Effects of Bad Food.~--The blood is made from what we eat, and if we eat impure and unwholesome food, the blood becomes impure. We ought to avoid the use of rich or highly-seasoned foods, candies, and all foods which are not nutritious. They not only injure the blood by making it impure, but they cause poor digestion. ~5. Plenty of Sleep Necessary.~--If we should take a drop of blood from the finger of a person who had not had as much sleep as he needed, and examine it with a microscope, we should find that there were too few of the little red-blood corpuscles. This is one reason why a person who has not had sufficient sleep looks pale. ~6. Proper Clothing.~--We should be properly clothed, according to the weather. In cold weather we need very warm clothing. In warm weather we should wear lighter clothing. Our clothing should be so arranged that it will keep all parts of the body equally warm, and thus allow the blood to circulate properly. The feet are apt to be cold, being so far away from the heart, and we should take extra pains to keep them warm and dry. ~7. Effects of Excessive Heat.~--In very hot weather, many persons are injured by exposing themselves to the sun too long at a time. Persons who drink intoxicating liquors are very often injured in this way, and sometimes die of sunstroke. ~8. Effects of Anger.~--When a person gets very angry, the heart sometimes almost stops beating. Indeed, persons have died instantly in a fit of passion. So you see it is dangerous for a person to allow himself to become very angry. ~9. Effects of Alcohol upon the Blood.~--If you should take a drop of blood upon your finger, and put it under the microscope, and then add a little alcohol to it, you would see that the corpuscles would be quickly destroyed. In a few seconds they would be so shrivelled up that no one could tell that they had ever been the beautiful little corpuscles which are so necessary to health. When alcohol is taken as a drink, it does not destroy the corpuscles so quickly, but it injures them so that they are not able to do their work of absorbing and carrying oxygen well. This is one reason why the faces of men who use alcoholic drinks often look so blue. ~10. Alcohol Overworks the Heart.~--Dr. Parkes, a very learned English physician, took the pains to observe carefully the effects of alcohol upon the heart of a soldier who was addicted to the use of liquor. He counted the beats of the soldier's pulse when he was sober; and then counted them again when he was using alcohol, and found that when the soldier took a pint of gin a day his heart was obliged to do one fourth more work than it ought to do. ~11. Effects of Alcohol upon the Blood-Vessels.~--If you put your hands into warm water, they soon become red. This is because the blood-vessels of the skin become enlarged by the heat, so that they hold more blood. Alcohol causes the blood to come to the surface in the same way. It is this that causes the flushed cheeks and the red eyes of the drunkard. Sometimes, after a man has been using alcohol a long time, the blood-vessels of his face remain enlarged all the time. This makes his nose grow too fast, and so in time it gets too large, and then he has a rum-blossom. ~12. Effects of Tobacco on the Heart and the Blood.~--When a boy first tries to use tobacco, it makes him feel very sick. If you should feel his pulse just then, you would find it very weak. This means that the heart is almost paralyzed by the powerful poison of the tobacco. Tobacco also injures the blood corpuscles. ~13.~ _Tea_ and _coffee_ also do their share of mischief to the heart. Those who use them very strong often complain of palpitation, or heavy and irregular beating of the heart. ~14. Taking Cold.~--People usually "catch cold" by allowing the circulation to become disturbed in some way, as by getting the feet wet, being chilled from not wearing sufficient clothing, sitting in a draught, and in other similar ways. It is very important for you to know that a cold is a serious thing, and should be carefully avoided. ~15. Hemorrhage~ (hem´-or-rhage) ~or Loss of Blood.~--A severe loss of blood is likely to occur as the result of accidents or injuries of various sorts, and it is important to know what to do at once, as there may not be time to send for a doctor before it will be too late to save the injured person's life. Here are a few things to be remembered in all such cases: ~16.~ If the blood from a cut or other wound flows in spurts, and is of a bright red color, it is from an artery. If it is dark-colored, and flows in a steady stream, it is from a vein. ~17. How to Stop the Bleeding of Wounds.~--If the bleeding vessel is an artery, apply pressure on the side of the wound next to the heart. If the bleeding is from a vein, apply it on the opposite side. It is generally best to apply pressure directly over the wound or on both sides. The pressure can be made with the thumbs or with the whole hand. Grasp the part firmly and press very hard, or tie a handkerchief or towel around the wounded part and twist it very tight. If an arm or limb is the part injured, the person should be made to lie down, and the injured part should be held up. This is of itself an excellent means of stopping hemorrhage. ~18. Nose-Bleed.~--For nose-bleed a very good remedy is holding one or both hands above the head. The head should be held up instead of being bent forward, and the corner of a dry handkerchief should be pressed into the bleeding nostril. It is well to bathe the face with very hot water, and to snuff hot water into the nostril if the bleeding is very severe. If the bleeding is very bad or is not readily stopped, a physician should be called. SUMMARY. 1. Violent exercise is likely to injure the heart. 2. Bad air makes the blood impure and disturbs the action of the heart. 3. Unwholesome food produces bad blood. 4. Too little sleep makes the blood poor. 5. Proper clothing is necessary to make the blood circulate equally in different parts of the body. 6. Violent anger may cause death by stopping the beating of the heart. 7. Alcohol injures the blood. 8. Alcohol overworks the heart. 9. Alcohol enlarges the blood-vessels. 10. Tobacco injures the blood. 11. Tobacco weakens the heart and makes the pulse irregular. 12. The use of strong tea and coffee causes palpitation of the heart. 13. A cold is caused by a disturbance of the circulation. A cold should never be neglected. 14. When an artery is wounded, the blood is bright red and flows in spurts. 15. When a vein is wounded, the blood is purple and flows in a steady stream. 16. To stop bleeding from an artery, press on the side of the wound towards the heart, or on both sides of the wound. 17. When a vein is wounded, press on the side away from the heart. CHAPTER XIII. WHY AND HOW WE BREATHE. ~1. An Experiment.~--Let us perform a little experiment. We must have a small bit of candle, a fruit jar, or a bottle with a large mouth, and a piece of wire about a foot long. Let us notice carefully what we are about to do and what happens. ~2.~ We will fasten the candle to the end of the wire. Now we will light it, and next we will let it down to the bottom of the jar. Now place the cover on the top of the jar and wait the results. Soon the candle burns dimly and in a little time the light goes out altogether. ~3.~ What do you think is the reason that the candle will not burn when shut up in a bottle? A candle uses air when it burns. If shut up in a small, tight place, it soon uses up so much air that it can burn no longer. Try the experiment again, and when the candle begins to burn dimly, take it out quickly. We see that at once the light burns bright again. ~4.~ Suppose we shut the stove draught tight, what is the result? The fire will burn low, and after a time it will probably go out. Why is this? Evidently the stove needs air to make the wood or coal burn, just as the candle needs air to make it burn. ~5. Animals Die without Air.~--If you should shut up a mouse or any other small animal in a fruit-jar, its life would go out just as the light of the candle went out. The little animal would die in a short time. A child shut up in a close place would die from the same cause in a very little time. In fact, many children are dying every day for want of a sufficient supply of pure air. ~6. Oxygen.~--The reason why animals need air, and why the fire will not burn without it, is that the air contains _oxygen_, and it is the oxygen of the air which burns the wood or coal and produces heat. So it is the oxygen that burns in our bodies and keeps us warm. ~7.~ When wood and coal are burned, heat is produced; but some parts of the fuel are not made into heat. While the fire burns, smoke escapes through the pipe or chimney; but a part of the fuel remains in the stove in the form of ashes. Smoke and ashes are the waste parts of the fuel. ~8. Poison in the Breath.~--The burning which takes place in our bodies produces something similar to the smoke and ashes produced by the fire in a stove. The smoke is called _carbonic-acid gas_,[A] an invisible vapor, and escapes through the lungs. The ashes are various waste and poisonous matters which are formed in all parts of the body. These waste matters are carried out of the body through the skin, the kidneys, the liver, and other organs. ~9. Another Experiment.~--We cannot see the gas escape from our lungs, but we can make an experiment which will show us that it really does pass out. Get two drinking-glasses and a tube. A glass tube is best, but a straw will do very well. Put a little pure water into one glass and the same quantity of lime-water into the other glass. Now put one end of the tube into the mouth and place the other end in the pure water. Breathe through the tube a few times. Look at the water in the glass and see that no change has taken place. Now breathe through the lime-water in the same way. After breathing two or three times, you will notice that the lime-water begins to look milky. In a short time it becomes almost as white as milk. This is because the lime-water catches the carbonic-acid gas which escapes from our lungs with each breath, while the pure water does not. ~10. Why we Breathe.~--By this experiment we learn another reason why we breathe. We must breathe to get rid of the carbonic-acid gas, which is brought to the lungs by the blood to be exchanged for oxygen. There are two reasons then why we breathe: (_a_) to obtain oxygen; (_b_) to get rid of carbonic-acid gas. ~11. How a Frog Breathes.~--Did you ever see a frog breathe? If not, improve the first opportunity to do so. You will see that the frog has a very curious way of breathing. He comes to the top of the water, puts his nose out a little, and then drinks the air. You can watch his throat and see him swallowing the air, a mouthful at a time, just as you would drink water. ~12.~ If you had a chance to see the inside of a frog you would find there a queer-shaped bag. This is his air-bag. This bag has a tube running up to the throat. When the frog comes to the surface of the water he fills this bag with air. Then he can dive down into the mud out of sight until he has used up the supply of air. When the air has been changed to carbonic-acid gas, he must come to the surface to empty his air-bag and drink it full again. ~13. The Lungs.~--We do not drink air as the frog does, but like the frog we have an air-bag in our bodies. Our air-bag has to be emptied and filled so often that we cannot live under water long at a time, as a frog does. We call this air-bag the lungs. We have learned before that the lungs are in the chest. We need so much air and have to change the air in our lungs so often that we would not have time to swallow it as a frog does. So nature has made for us a breathing apparatus of such a kind that we can work it like a pair of bellows. Let us now study our breathing-bellows and learn how they do their work. ~14. The Windpipe and Air-tubes.~--A large tube called the _windpipe_ extends from the root of the tongue down the middle of the chest. The windpipe divides into two main branches, which subdivide again and again, until the finest branches are not larger than a sewing-needle. The branches are called _bronchial tubes_. At the end of each tube is a cluster of small cavities called _air-cells_. The air-tubes and air-cells are well shown on the following page. ~15. The Voice-box.~--If you will place the ends of your fingers upon your throat just above the breast-bone, you will feel the windpipe, and may notice the ridges upon it. These are rings of cartilage, a hard substance commonly called gristle. The purpose of these rings is to keep the windpipe open. Close under the chin you can find something which feels like a lump, and which moves up and down when you swallow. [Illustration: AIR-TUBES AND AIR-CELLS.] This is a little box made of cartilage, called the voice-box, because by means of this curious little apparatus we are able to talk and sing. Two little white bands are stretched across the inside of the voice-box. When we speak, these bands vibrate just as do the strings of the piano. These bands are called the _vocal cords_. ~16. The Epiglottis.~--At the top of the voice-box is placed a curious trap-door which can be shut down so as to close the entrance to the air-passages of the lungs. This little door has a name rather hard to remember. It is called the _epiglottis_ (ep-i-glot´-tis). The cover of the voice-box closes whenever we swallow anything. This keeps food or liquids from entering the air passages. If we eat or drink too fast the voice-box will not have time to close its little door and prevent our being choked. Persons have been choked to death by trying to swallow their food too fast. Do you not think this is a very wonderful door that can open and shut just when it should do so without our thinking anything about it? ~17. The Nostrils and the Soft Palate.~--The air finds its way to the lungs through the mouth or through the two openings in the nose called the _nostrils_. From each nostril, three small passages lead backward through the nose. At the back part of the nasal cavity the passages of the two sides of the nose come together in an open space, just behind the soft curtain which hangs down at the back part of the mouth. This curtain is called the _soft palate_. Through the opening behind this curtain the air passes down into the voice-box and then into the lungs. ~18. The Pleura.~--In the chest the air tubes and lung of each side are enclosed in a very thin covering, called the _pleura_. The cavity of the chest in which the lungs are suspended is also lined by the pleura. A limpid fluid exudes from the pleura which keeps it moist, so that when the two surfaces rub together, as the lungs move, they do not become chafed and irritated. ~19. Walls of the Chest.~--The ribs form a part of the framework of the chest. The ribs are elastic. The spaces between them are filled up with muscles, some of which draw the ribs together, while others draw them apart. Can you tell any reason why the walls of the chest are elastic? The lower wall or floor of the chest cavity is formed by a muscle called the _diaphragm_, which divides the trunk into two cavities, the chest and the abdomen. ~20. How we Use the Lungs.~--Now let us notice how we use the lungs and what takes place in them. When we use a pair of bellows, we take hold of the handles and draw them apart. The sides of the bellows are drawn apart so that there is more room between the sides. The air then rushes in to fill the space. When the bellows are full, we press the handles together and the air is forced out. ~21.~ It is in just this way that we breathe. When we are about to take a long breath, the muscles pull upon the sides of the chest in such a way as to draw them apart. At the same time the diaphragm draws itself downward. By these means, the cavity of the chest is made larger and air rushes in through the nose or mouth to fill the space. When the muscles stop pulling, the walls of the chest fall back again to their usual position and the diaphragm rises. The cavity of the chest then becomes smaller and the air is forced out through the nose or mouth. This process is repeated every time we breathe. ~22.~ We breathe once for each four heart-beats. Small children breathe more rapidly than grown persons. We usually breathe about eighteen or twenty times in a minute. ~23. How Much the Lungs Hold.~--Every time we breathe, we take into our lungs about two thirds of a pint of air and breathe out the same quantity. Our lungs hold, however, very much more than this amount. A man, after he has taken a full breath, can breathe out a gallon of air, or more than ten times the usual amount. After he has breathed out all he can, there is still almost half a gallon of air in his lungs which he cannot breathe out. So you see the lungs hold almost a gallon and a half of air. ~24.~ Do you think you can tell why Nature has given us so much more room in the lungs than we ordinarily use in breathing? If you will run up and down stairs three or four times you will see why we need this extra lung-room. It is because when we exercise vigorously the heart works very much faster and beats harder, and we must breathe much faster and fuller to enable the lungs to purify the blood as fast as the heart pumps it into them. ~25. The Two Breaths.~--We have learned that the air which we breathe out contains something which is not found in the air which we breathe in. This is carbonic-acid gas. How many of you remember how we found this out? We can also tell this in another way. If we put a candle down in a wide jar it will burn for some time. If we breathe into the jar first, however, the candle will go out as soon as we put it into the jar. This shows that the air which we breathe out contains something which will put a candle out. This is carbonic-acid gas, which is a poison and will destroy life. ~26. Other Poisons.~--The air which we breathe out also contains other invisible poisons which are very much worse than the carbonic-acid gas. These poisons make the air of a crowded or unventilated room smell very unpleasant to one who has just come in from the fresh air. Such air is unfit to breathe. ~27. The Lungs Purify the Blood.~--We have learned that the blood becomes dark in its journey through the body. This is because it loses its oxygen and receives carbonic-acid gas. While passing through the capillaries of the lungs, the blood gives out the carbonic-acid gas which it has gathered up in the tissues, and takes up a new supply of oxygen, which restores its scarlet hue. ~28. How the Air is Purified.~--Perhaps it occurs to you that with so many people and animals breathing all the while, the air would after a time become so filled with carbonic-acid gas that it would be unfit to breathe. This is prevented by a wonderful arrangement of Nature. The carbonic-acid gas which is so poisonous to us is one of the most necessary foods for plants. Plants take in carbonic-acid gas through their leaves, and send the oxygen back into the air ready for us to use again. ~29.~ We have already learned that the oxygen taken in by the lungs is carried to the various parts of the body by the little blood corpuscles. The effect of strong liquors is to injure these corpuscles so that they cannot carry so much oxygen as they ought to do. For this reason, the blood of a drunkard is darker in color than that of a temperate person, and contains more carbonic-acid gas. The drunkard's lungs may supply all the air he needs, but his blood has been so damaged that he cannot use it. Excessive smoking has a similar effect. SUMMARY. 1. Our bodies need air, just as a candle or a fire does. 2. A small animal shut up in a close jar soon dies for want of air. We need the oxygen which the air contains. 3. Oxygen causes a sort of burning in our bodies. 4. The burning in our bodies keeps us warm, and destroys some of the waste matters. 5. The breathing organs are the windpipe and bronchial tubes, the voice-box, the epiglottis, the nostrils, the soft palate, the lungs, the air-cells, the pleura, the diaphragm, and the chest walls. 6. When we breathe we use our lungs like a pair of bellows. 7. A man's lungs hold nearly one and a half gallons of air. 8. In ordinary breathing we use less than a pint of air, but when necessary we can use much more. 9. The air we breathe out contains carbonic-acid gas and another invisible poison. 10. A candle will not burn in air which has been breathed, and animals die when confined in such air. 11. The lungs purify the blood. While passing through the lungs, the color of the blood changes from purple to bright red. 12. Plants purify the air by removing the carbonic-acid gas. 13. Alcohol and tobacco injure the blood corpuscles so that they cannot take up the oxygen from the air which the lungs receive. CHAPTER XIV. HOW TO KEEP THE LUNGS HEALTHY. ~1. Pure Air Necessary.~--A person may go without eating for a month, or without drinking for several days, and still live; but a strong man will die in a few moments if deprived of air. It is very important that we breathe plenty of pure air. There are many ways in which the air becomes impure. ~2. Bad Odors.~--Anything which rots or decays will in so doing produce an unpleasant odor. Bad odors produced in this way are very harmful and likely to make us sick. Many people have rotting potatoes and other vegetables in their cellars, and swill barrels, and heaps of refuse in their back yards. These are all dangerous to health, and often give rise to very serious disease. We should always remember that bad odors caused by decaying substances are signs of danger to health and life, and that these substances should be removed from us, or we should get away from them, as soon as possible. ~3. Germs.~--The chief reason why bad odors are dangerous is that they almost always have with them little living things called _germs_. Germs are so small that they cannot be seen by the naked eye: it takes a strong microscope to enable us to see them, but they are so powerful to do harm that if we receive them into our bodies they are likely to make us very sick, and they often cause death. ~4. Contagious Diseases.~--You have heard about diphtheria and scarlet fever and measles, and other "catching diseases." When a person is sick with one of these diseases, the air about him is poisoned with germs or something similar, which may give the same disease to other persons who inhale it. So when a person is sick from one of these diseases, it is very important that he should be put in a room by himself and shut away from every one but the doctor and the nurse. It is also necessary that all the clothing and bedding used by the sick person, and everything in the room, as well as the room itself, should be carefully cleansed and disinfected when the person has recovered, so as to wipe out every trace of the disease. The writer has known many cases in which persons who have been sick with some of these diseases were careless and gave the disease to others who died of it, although they themselves recovered. Do you not think it very wrong for a person to give to another through carelessness a disease which may cause his death? ~5.~ Unhealthful vapors and odors of various sorts arise from cisterns and damp, close places under a house. Rooms which are shaded and shut up so closely that fresh air and sunshine seldom get into them should be avoided as dangerous to health. ~6. Breath-Poisoned Air.~--The most dangerous of all the poisons to which we are exposed through the air are those of the breath, of which we learned in a preceding lesson. We need plenty of fresh air to take the place of the air which we poison by our breath. Every time we breathe, we spoil at least _half a barrelful of air_. We breathe twenty times a minute, and hence spoil ten barrels of air in one minute. How many barrels would this make in one hour? We need an equal quantity of pure air to take the place of the spoiled air, or not less than ten barrels every minute, or _six hundred barrels every hour_. ~7. Ventilation.~--The only way to obtain the amount of fresh air needed, when we are shut up in-doors, is to have some means provided by which the fresh air shall be brought in and the old and impure air carried out. Changing the air by such means is called _ventilation_. Every house, and especially every sleeping-room, should be well ventilated. School-houses, churches, and other places where many people gather, need perfect ventilation. Ask your teacher to show you how the school-room is ventilated; and when you go home, talk to your parents about the ventilation of the house in which you live. ~8.~ Many people ventilate their houses by opening the doors and windows. This is a very good way of ventilating a house in warm weather, but is a very poor way in cold weather, as it causes cold draughts, and makes the floor cold, so that it is difficult to keep the feet warm. It is much better to have the air warmed by a furnace or some similar means, before it enters the rooms. There ought also to be in each room a register to take the foul air out, so that it will not be necessary to open the windows. This register should be placed at the floor, because when the pure air enters the room warm, it first rises to the upper part of the room, and then as it cools and at the same time becomes impure, it settles to the floor, where it should be taken out by the register. ~9. How to Breathe.~--We should always take pains to expand the lungs well in breathing, and to use the entire chest, both the upper and the lower part. Clothing should be worn in such a way that every portion of the chest can be expanded. For this reason it is very wrong to wear the clothing tight about the waist. Clothing so worn is likely to cause the lungs to become diseased. ~10. Bad Habits.~--Students are very apt to make themselves flat-chested and round-shouldered by leaning over their desks while writing or studying. This is very harmful. We should always use great care to sit erect and to draw the shoulders well back. Then, if we take pains to fill the lungs well a great many times every day, we shall form the habit of expanding the lungs, and shall breathe deeper, even when we are not thinking about doing so. ~11. Breathing through the Nose.~--In breathing, we should always take care to draw the air in through the nose, and not through the mouth. The nose acts as a strainer, to remove particles of dust which might do harm if allowed to enter the lungs. It also warms and moistens the air in cold weather. The habit of breathing through the mouth often gives rise to serious disease of the throat and lungs. ~12. Effects of Alcohol and Tobacco upon the Lungs.~--Both alcohol and tobacco produce disease of the breathing organs. Smoking injures the throat and sometimes causes loss of smell. Serious and even fatal diseases of the lungs are often caused by alcohol. ~13.~ Many people suppose that the use of alcohol will save a man from consumption. This is not true. A man may become a drunkard by the use of alcohol, and yet he is more likely to have consumption than he would have been if he had been a total abstainer. "Drunkard's consumption" is one of the most dreadful forms of this disease. SUMMARY. 1. Pure air is as necessary as food and drink. 2. Anything which is rotting or undergoing decay causes a bad odor, and thus makes the air impure. 3. Foul air contains germs which cause disease and often death. 4. Persons sick with "catching" diseases should be carefully avoided. Such persons should be shut away from those who are well, and their rooms and clothing should be carefully cleansed and disinfected. 5. The breath poisons the air about us. Each breath spoils half a barrelful of air. 6. We should change the air in our houses, or ventilate them, so that we may always have pure air. 7. We should always keep the body erect, and expand the lungs well in breathing. 8. The clothing about the chest and waist should be loose, so that the lungs may have room to expand. 9. Always breathe through the nose. 10. Tobacco causes disease of the throat and nose. 11. Alcohol causes consumption and other diseases of the lungs. CHAPTER XV. THE SKIN AND WHAT IT DOES. ~1. The Skin.~--The skin is the covering of the body. It fits so exactly that it has the precise shape of the body, like a closely fitting garment. If you will take up a little fold of the skin you will see that it can be stretched like a piece of india-rubber. Like rubber, when it is released it quickly contracts and appears as before. ~2. The Bark of Trees.~--Did you ever peel the bark off of a young tree? If so, you have noticed that there were really two barks, an outer bark, as thin as paper, through which you could almost see, and an inner and much thicker bark, which lay next to the wood of the tree. You can peel the outer bark off without doing the tree much harm. Indeed, if you will notice some of the fruit or shade trees in the yard, at home, you will see that the outer bark of the tree peels itself off, a little at a time, and that new bark grows in its place. If you tear off the inner bark, however, it will injure the tree. It will make it bleed, or cause the sap to run. The sap is the blood of the tree. The bark is the skin of the tree. When the bare place heals over, an ugly scar will be left. ~3. The Cuticle.~--Our bodies, like trees, have two skins, or really one skin with an outer and an inner layer. When a person burns himself so as to make a blister, the outer skin, called the _cuticle_, is separated from the inner by a quantity of water or serum poured out from the blood. This causes the blister to rise above the surrounding skin. If you puncture the blister the water runs out. Now we may easily remove the cuticle and examine it. The cuticle, we shall find, looks very much like the skin which lines the inside of an egg-shell, and it is almost as thin. ~4.~ The cuticle is very thin in most parts of the body, but in some places, as the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, it is quite thick. This is because these parts of the skin come in contact with objects in such a way as to be liable to injury if not thus protected. The cuticle has no blood-vessels and very few nerves. With a fine needle and thread you can easily take a stitch in it without making it bleed or causing any pain. ~5. The Pigment.~--The under side of the cuticle is colored by little particles of pigment or coloring matter. The color of this pigment differs in different races. In the negro, the color of the pigment is black. In some races the pigment is brown. In white persons there is very little pigment, and in some persons, called albinos, there is none at all. ~6. The Inner or True Skin.~--The inner skin, like the inner bark of a tree, is much thicker than the outer skin. It is much more important, and for this reason is sometimes called the _true skin_. It contains nerves and blood-vessels. [Illustration: SKIN OF PALM OF HAND MAGNIFIED.] ~7. The Sweat Glands.~--If you look at the palm of the hand you will see many coarse lines, and by looking much closer you will see that the palm is completely covered with very fine ridges and furrows. Now, if you examine these ridges with a magnifying-glass, you will find arranged along each ridge a number of little dark spots. Each of these points is the mouth of a very small tube. This is called a _sweat duct_. These ducts run down through both the outer and inner layers of the skin. At the under side of the true skin the end of the tube is rolled up in a coil, as you can see by looking at the illustration on the following page. The coiled parts of the tubes are called _sweat glands_, because they separate from the blood the fluid which we call sweat or perspiration. ~8. The Oil Glands.~--There are other little glands in the skin which make fat or oil. The oil is poured out upon the skin to keep it soft and smooth. [Illustration: THE STRUCTURE OF THE SKIN.] ~9. The Hair.~--There are some curious little pockets in the skin. Out of each of these pockets grows a hair. On some parts of the body the hairs are coarse and long; on other parts they are fine and short. ~10.~ Many of the ducts leading from the oil glands open into the pockets or pouches from which the hairs grow. The oil makes the hair soft and glossy. Nature has thus provided an excellent means for oiling the hair. ~11.~ The hair is chiefly useful as a protection. It is also an ornament. ~12. The Nails.~--The nails of the fingers and the toes grow out of little pockets in the skin just as the hairs do. Both the hair and the nails are really parts of the outer skin, which is curiously changed and hardened. The nails lie upon the surface of the true skin and grow from the under side as well as from the little fold of skin at the root of the nail. They are made to give firmness and protection to the ends of the fingers and toes. The nails of the fingers are also useful in picking up small objects and in many other ways. ~13. Uses of the Skin.~--The skin is useful in several ways: (1) _It Removes Waste._--The sweat glands and ducts are constantly at work removing from the blood particles which have been worn out and can be of no further use. If we get very warm, or if we run or work very hard, the skin becomes wet with sweat. In a little while, if we stop to rest, the sweat is all gone. What becomes of it? You say it dries up, which means that it has passed off into the air. Sweating is going on all the time, but we do not sweat so much when we are quiet and are not too warm, and so the sweat dries up as fast as it is produced, and we do not see it. Nearly a quart of sweat escapes from the skin daily. (2) _Breathing through the Skin._--We breathe to a slight extent through the skin. There are some lower animals which breathe with their skins altogether. A frog can breathe with its skin so well that it can live for some time after its lungs have been removed. Breathing is an important part of the work of the skin, and we should be careful, by keeping it clean and healthy, to give it a good chance to breathe all that it can. (3) _The Skin Absorbs._--The skin absorbs many substances which come in contact with it, and hence should be kept clean. If the foul substances which are removed in the sweat are allowed to remain upon the skin, they may be taken back into the system and thus do much harm. (4) _The Skin has Feeling._--When anything touches the skin we know it by the feeling. We can tell a great many things about objects by feeling of them. If we happen to stick a pin into the skin we feel pain. We are also able to tell the difference between things which are hot and those which are cold. Thus the sense of feeling which the skin has is very useful to us. (5) _The Skin Protects the Body._--The skin is a natural clothing which protects us much better than any other kind of clothing could. It is so soft and pliable that it cannot hurt the most delicate part which it covers, yet it is very strong and tough. SUMMARY. 1. The skin is the covering of the body. It has two layers, the outer, called the cuticle, and the inner, called the true skin. 2. A substance called pigment is found between the two skins. This gives the skin its color. 3. The true skin has blood-vessels and nerves, but the cuticle has no blood-vessels and very few nerves. 4. In the true skin are glands which produce sweat, and others which make fat, or oil. 5. The nails are really a part of the skin. They are firm and hard, and protect the ends of the fingers and the toes. 6. The hair grows from the true skin. The hair is made soft and glossy by oil from the oil glands of the skin. 7. The skin is a very useful organ. It removes waste matters, it breathes, it absorbs, it has feeling, and it protects the body. CHAPTER XVI. HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE SKIN. ~1. Uses of the Pores of the Skin.~--Many years ago, at a great celebration, a little boy was covered all over with varnish and gold leaf, so as to make him represent an angel. The little gilded boy looked very pretty for a short time, but soon he became very sick, and in a few hours he was dead. Can you guess what made him die? He died because the pores of his skin were stopped up, and the sweat glands could not carry off the poisonous matter from his body. ~2. Cleanliness.~--Did you ever know of a boy who had his skin varnished? Not exactly, perhaps; but there are many boys who do not have their skins washed as often as they ought to be, and the sweat and oil and dead scales form a sort of varnish which stops up the little ducts and prevents the air from getting to the skin, almost as much as a coat of varnish would do. ~3. The Sweat Glands.~--The sweat glands and ducts are like little sewers, made to carry away some of the impurities of the body. There are so many of them that, if they were all put together, they would make a tube two or three miles long. These little sewers drain off almost a quart of impurities in the form of sweat every day. So you see that it is very important for the skin to be kept clean and healthy. ~4. Bathing.~--A bird takes a bath every day. Dogs and many other animals like to go into the water to bathe. Some of you have seen a great elephant take a bath by showering the water over himself with his trunk. To keep the skin healthy we should bathe frequently. ~5.~ When we take a bath for cleanliness it is necessary to use a little soap, so as to remove the oil which is mixed up with the dry sweat, dead scales, and dirt which may have become attached to the skin. ~6.~ It is not well to take hot baths very often, as they have a tendency to make the skin too sensitive. Bathing in cool water hardens the skin, and renders one less likely to take cold. ~7. The Clothing.~--The skin should be protected by proper clothing, but it is not well to wear more than is necessary, as it makes the skin so sensitive that one is liable to take cold. ~8. The Proper Temperature of Rooms.~--It is also very unwise for a person to keep the rooms in which he lives too warm, and to stay too much in-doors, as it makes him very liable to take cold when he goes out-of-doors. One who is out of doors in all kinds of weather seldom takes cold. ~9. Care of the Hair and the Nails.~--The scalp should be kept clean by thorough and frequent washing and daily brushing. Hair oils are seldom needed. If the skin of the head is kept in a healthy condition, the hair requires no oil. ~10.~ The habit of biting and picking the fingernails is a very unpleasant one, and keeps the nails in a broken and unhealthy condition. The nails should be carefully trimmed with a sharp knife or a pair of scissors. ~11. Effects of Narcotics and Stimulants upon the Skin.~--Alcohol, tobacco, opium, and all other narcotics and stimulants have a bad effect upon the skin. Alcohol often causes the skin to become red and blotched, and tobacco gives it a dingy and unhealthy appearance. SUMMARY. 1. If the pores of the skin are closed, a person will die. 2. We should bathe often enough to keep the skin clean. 3. We should not keep our rooms too warm, and should avoid wearing too much clothing. 4. Alcohol, tobacco, and other stimulants and narcotics injure the skin. CHAPTER XVII. THE KIDNEYS AND THEIR WORK. ~1. The Kidneys.~--The kidneys are among the most important organs of the body. They are in the cavity of the abdomen, near the back-bone, up under the lower border of the ribs. Perhaps you have seen the kidneys of a sheep or a hog. If you have, you know very nearly how the kidneys of our own bodies appear. [Illustration: KIDNEY.] ~2. The Work of the Kidneys.~--The work of the kidneys is to separate from the blood certain very poisonous substances, which would soon cause our death if they were not removed. It is very important to keep these useful organs in good health, because a person is certain to die very soon when the kidneys are in any way seriously injured. ~3. How to Keep the Kidneys Healthy.~--One way of keeping the kidneys in good health is to drink plenty of pure water, and to avoid eating too much meat and rich food. Pepper, mustard, and other hot sauces are very harmful to the kidneys. ~4. Importance of Keeping the Skin Clean.~--The work of the kidneys is very similar to that of the skin; and when the skin does not do its full duty, the kidneys have to do more than they should, and hence are likely to become diseased. For this reason, persons who allow their skins to become inactive by neglecting to bathe frequently are apt to have disease of the kidneys. ~5. Effects of Alcohol and Tobacco upon the Kidneys.~--A piece of beef placed in alcohol soon becomes dry and hard, and shrivels up as though it had been burned. The effect upon the kidneys of drinking strong liquor is almost the same. Beer and hard cider also do the kidneys harm, sometimes producing incurable disease of these important organs. SUMMARY. 1. The kidneys somewhat resemble the skin in their structure and in their work. 2. The kidneys remove from the blood some poisonous substances. 3. To keep the kidneys healthy we should drink plenty of water, avoid irritating foods and drinks, and keep the skin in health by proper bathing. 4. The drinking of strong liquors often causes incurable disease of the kidneys. CHAPTER XVIII. OUR BONES AND THEIR USES. ~1. The Bones.~--In an earlier chapter we learned something about the bones. This we must try to recall. You will remember that we called the bones the framework of the body, just as the timbers which are first put up in building a house are called its frame. ~2. The Skeleton.~--All the bones together make up the _skeleton_. (See page 95.) There are about two hundred bones in all. They are of many different shapes. They vary in size from the little bones of the ear, which are the smallest, to the upper bone of the leg, which is the largest in the body. ~3.~ The skeleton is divided into four parts: the _skull_, the _trunk_, the _arms_, and the _legs_. We must learn something more about the bones of each part. ~4. The Skull.~--The _skull_ is somewhat like a shell. It is made of a number of bones joined together in such a way as to leave a hollow place inside to hold the brain. The front part of the skull forms the framework of the face and the jaws. In each ear there are three curious little bones, which aid us in hearing. ~5. The Trunk.~--The bones of the trunk are, the _ribs_, the _breast-bone_, the _pelvis_, and the _back-bone_. The bones of the trunk form a framework to support and protect the various organs within its cavities. ~6. The Ribs.~--There are twelve _ribs_ on each side. The ribs join the back-bone at the back. They are connected by cartilage to the breast-bone in front. They look somewhat like the hoops of a barrel. With the breast-bone and the back-bone they form a bony cage to contain and protect the heart and the lungs. ~7. The Pelvis.~--The pelvis is at the lower part of the trunk. It is formed by three bones, closely joined together. The large bones at either side are called the hip-bones. Each hip-bone contains a deep round cavity in which the upper end of the thigh-bone rests. ~8. The Back-bone.~--The _back-bone_, or spinal column, is made up of twenty-four small bones, joined together in such a way that the whole can be bent in various directions. The skull rests upon the upper end of the spinal column. The lower end of the back-bone forms a part of the pelvis. [Illustration: SKELETON OF A MAN.] ~9. The Spinal Canal.~--Each of the separate bones that make up the back-bone has an opening through it, and the bones are so arranged, one above another, that the openings make a sort of canal in the back-bone. By the connection of the spinal column to the head, this canal opens into the cavity of the skull. Through this canal there passes a peculiar substance called the _spinal cord_, of which we shall learn more at another time. ~10. The Arms.~--Each of the arms has five bones, besides the small bones of the hand. They are the _collar-bone_, which connects the shoulder to the breast-bone, the _shoulder-blade_, at the back of the shoulders, the _upper arm-bone_, between the shoulder and the elbow, and the two _lower arm-bones_, between the elbow and the wrist. There are eight little bones in the wrist, five in that part of the hand next to the wrist, and fourteen in the fingers and thumb. ~11. The Legs.~--The bones of the leg are the _thigh_ or _upper leg-bone_, the _knee-pan_ or _knee-cap_, which covers the front of the knee, the two bones of the _lower leg_, the _heel-bone_ and six other bones in the _ankle_, five bones in that part of the foot next to the ankle, and fourteen bones in the _toes_. ~12. Use of the Bones.~--The skeleton is not only necessary as a framework for the body, but it is useful in other ways. Some of the bones, as the skull, protect delicate parts. The brain is so soft and delicate that it would be very unsafe without its solid bony covering. The spinal cord also needs the protection which it finds in the strong but flexible back-bone. The bones help to move our hands and arms, and assist us in walking. ~13. The Joints.~--The places where two or more bones are fastened together are called _joints_. Some joints we can move very freely, as those of the shoulder and the hip. Others have no motion at all, as those of the bones of the skull. ~14. Cartilage.~--The ends of bones which come together to form a joint are covered with a smooth, tough substance, which protects the bone from wear. This is called _gristle_ or _cartilage_. You have, no doubt, seen the gristle on the end of a "soup-bone" or on one of the bones of a "joint of beef." ~15.~ The joint contains a fluid to oil it, so that the ends of the bones move upon each other very easily. If the joints were dry, every movement of the body would be very difficult and painful. ~16.~ The bones are held together at the joints by means of strong bands called _ligaments_. ~17. How the Bones are Made.~--The bones are not so solid as they seem to be. The outside of most bones is much harder and firmer than the inside. Long bones, like those of the arms and the legs, are hollow. The hollow space is filled with _marrow_, in which are the blood-vessels which nourish the bone. ~18. An Experiment.~--If you will weigh a piece of bone, then burn it in the fire for several hours, and then weigh it again, you will find that it has lost about one third of its weight. You will also notice that it has become brittle, and that it seems like chalk. ~19. Why the Bones are Brittle.~--The hard, brittle portion of a bone which is left after it has been burned contains a good deal of chalk and other earthy substances, sometimes called bone-earth. It is this which makes the bones so hard and firm that they do not bend by the weight of the body. When we are young, the bones have less of this bone-earth, and so they bend easily, and readily get out of shape. When we get old, they contain so much bone-earth that they become more brittle, and often break very easily. ~20.~ A person's height depends upon the length of his bones. The use of alcohol and tobacco by a growing boy has a tendency to stunt the growth of his bones, so that they do not develop as they should. SUMMARY. 1. There are about two hundred bones in the body. 2. All together they are called the skeleton. 3. The skeleton is divided as follows: _a._ The skull. { Ribs. _b._ The trunk. { Breast-bone. { Pelvis. { Back-bone. { Collar-bone. { Shoulder-blade. { Upper arm-bones. _c._ The arms. { Lower arm-bones. { Wrist. { Hand and fingers. { Thigh. { Knee-pan. _d._ The legs. { Lower-leg bones. { Ankle, including heel-bone. { Foot and toes. 4. The bones are useful for support, protection, and motion. 5. The place where two bones join is called a joint. 6. The tough substance which covers the ends of many bones is called cartilage or gristle. 7. The joints are enabled to work easily by the aid of a fluid secreted for that purpose. 8. The ends of the bones are held together in a joint by means of ligaments. 9. Bones are about two thirds earthy matter and one third animal matter. 10. The use of alcohol and tobacco may prevent proper development of the bones. CHAPTER XIX. HOW TO KEEP THE BONES HEALTHY. ~1. Composition of the Bones.~--Our bones, like the rest of our bodies, are made of what we eat. If our food does not contain enough of the substances which are needed to make healthy bone, the bones will become unhealthy. They may be too soft and become bent or otherwise misshapen. This is one of the reasons why bread made from the whole grain is so much more healthful than that made from very fine white flour. In making fine white flour the miller takes out the very best part of the grain, just what is needed to make strong and healthy bones. Oatmeal is a very good food for making healthy bones. ~2. Bones of Children.~--Sometimes little children try to walk before the bones have become hard enough to support the weight of the body. This causes the legs to become crooked. In some countries young children work in factories and at various trades. This is wrong, because it dwarfs their growth, and makes them puny and sickly. ~3. Improper Positions.~--The bones are so soft and flexible when we are young that they are very easily bent out of shape if we allow ourselves to take improper positions in sitting, lying, or standing. This is the way in which flat and hollow chests, uneven shoulders, curved spines, and many other deformities are caused. [Illustration: IMPROPER POSITION.] ~4.~ In sitting, standing, and walking, we should always take care to keep the shoulders well back and the chest well expanded, so that we may not grow misshapen and deformed. Many boys and girls have ugly curves in their backbones which have been caused by sitting at high desks with one elbow on the desk, thus raising the shoulder of that side so high that the spine becomes crooked. The illustrations on this and the following page show good and bad positions and also the effects of bad positions. [Illustration: PROPER POSITION.] ~5. Seats and Desks.~--The seats and desks of school-children should be of proper height. The seats should be low enough to allow the feet to rest easily upon the floor, but not too low. The desk should be of such a height that, in writing, one shoulder will not be raised above the other. If a young person bends the body forward, he will, after a time, become round-shouldered and his chest will become so flattened that the lungs cannot be well expanded. [Illustration: DESK TOO HIGH.] ~6.~ Standing on one foot, sitting bent forward when reading or at work, sleeping with the head raised high upon a thick pillow or bolster, are ways in which young persons often grow out of shape. [Illustration: SEAT TOO HIGH.] ~7. The Clothing.~--Wearing the clothing tight about the waist often produces serious deformities of the bones of the trunk, and makes the chest so small that the lungs have not room to act properly. Tight or high-heeled shoes also often deform and injure the feet and make the gait stiff and awkward. ~8. Broken Bones.~--By rough play or by accident the bones may be broken in two just as you might break a stick. If the broken parts are placed right, Nature will cement them together and make the bone strong again; but sometimes the bones do not unite, and sometimes they grow together out of proper shape, so that permanent injury is done. ~9. Sprains.~--In a similar manner the ligaments which hold the bones together, in a joint, are sometimes torn or over-stretched. Such an accident is called a sprain. A sprain is a very painful accident, and a joint injured in this way needs to rest quite a long time so that the torn ligaments may grow together. ~10. Bones out of Joint.~--Sometimes the ligaments are torn so badly that the ends of the bones are displaced, and then we say they are put out of joint. This is a very bad accident indeed, but it often happens to boys while wrestling or playing at other rough games. ~11.~ Children sometimes have a trick of pulling the fingers to cause the knuckles to "crack." This is a very foolish and harmful practice. It weakens the joints and causes them to grow large and unsightly. ~12.~ When a man uses alcohol and tobacco, their effects upon the bones are not so apparent as are the effects upon the blood, the nerves, and other organs; but when the poisonous drugs are used by a growing boy, their damaging influence is very plainly seen. A boy who smokes cigars or cigarettes, or who uses strong alcoholic liquors, is likely to be so stunted that even his bones will not grow of a proper length and he will become dwarfed or deformed. SUMMARY. 1. To keep the bones healthy they must have plenty of healthful food. 2. The whole-grain preparations furnish the best food for the bones. 3. Walking at too early an age often makes the legs crooked. 4. Hard work at too early an age stunts the growth. 5. Bad positions and tight or poorly-fitting clothing are common causes of flat chests, round shoulders, and other deformities. 6. Tight or high-heeled shoes deform the feet and make the gait awkward. 7. The bones may be easily broken or put out of joint, or the ligaments may be torn by rough play. 8. Alcohol prevents healthy growth. CHAPTER XX. THE MUSCLES AND HOW WE USE THEM. ~1. The Muscles.~--Where do people obtain the beefsteak and the mutton-chops which they eat for breakfast? From the butcher, you will say; and the butcher gets them from the sheep and cattle which he kills. If you will clasp your arm you will notice that the bones are covered by a soft substance, the flesh. When the skin of an animal has been taken off, we can see that some of the flesh is white or yellow and some of it is red. The white or yellow flesh is fat. The red flesh is lean meat, and it is composed of muscles. ~2. The Number of Muscles.~--We have about five hundred different muscles in the body. They are arranged in such a way as to cover the bones and make the body round and beautiful. They are of different forms and sizes. ~3.~ With a very few exceptions the muscles are arranged in pairs; that is, we have two alike of each form and size, one for each side of the body. ~4. How a Muscle is Formed.~--If you will examine a piece of corned or salted beef which has been well boiled, you will notice that it seems to be made up of bundles of small fibres or threads of flesh. With a little care you can pick one of the small fibres into fine threads. Now, if you look at one of these under a microscope you find that it is made of still finer fibres, which are much smaller than the threads of a spider's web. One of these smallest threads is called a _muscular fibre_. Many thousands of muscular fibres are required to make a muscle. [Illustration: MUSCULAR FIBRES.] ~5.~ Most of the muscles are made fast to the bones. Generally, one end is attached to one bone, and the other to another bone. Sometimes one end is made fast to a bone and the other to the skin or to other muscles. ~6. The Tendons.~--Many of the muscles are not joined to the bones directly, but are made fast to them by means of firm cords called _tendons_. If you will place the thumb of your left hand upon the wrist of the right hand, and then work the fingers of the right hand, you may feel these cords moving underneath the skin. ~7. What the Muscles Do.~--With the left hand grasp the right arm just in front of the elbow. Now shut the right hand tightly. Now open it. Repeat several times. The left hand feels something moving in the flesh. The motion is caused by the working of the muscles, which shorten and harden when they act. ~8.~ All the movements of the body are made by means of muscles. When we move our hands, even when we close the mouth or the eyes, or make a wry face, we use the muscles. We could not speak, laugh, sing, or breathe without muscles. ~9. Self-acting Muscles.~--Did you ever have a fit of sneezing or hiccoughing? If you ever did, very likely you tried hard to stop but could not. Do you know why one cannot always stop sneezing or hiccoughing when he desires to do so? It is because there are certain muscles in the body which do not act simply when we wish them to act, but when it is necessary that they should. The muscles which act when we sneeze or hiccough are of this kind. The arm and the hand do not act unless we wish them to do so. Suppose it were the same with the heart. We should have to stay awake all the while to keep it going, because it would not act when we were asleep. The same is true of our breathing. We breathe when we are asleep as well as when we are awake, because the breathing muscles work even when we do not think about them. ~10.~ The stomach, the intestines, the blood-vessels, and many other organs within the body have this kind of muscles. The work of these self-acting muscles is very wonderful indeed. Without it we could not live a moment. This knowledge should lead us to consider how dependent we are, each moment of our lives, upon the delicate machinery by which the most important work of our bodies is performed, and how particular we should be to keep it in good order by taking proper care of ourselves. SUMMARY. 1. The flesh, or lean meat, is composed of muscles. 2. There are five hundred muscles in the body. 3. Muscles are composed of many small threads called muscular fibres. 4. Many of the muscles are joined to the bones by strong white cords called tendons. 5. Muscular fibres can contract so as to lessen their length. It is in this way that the muscles perform their work. 6. All bodily motions are due to the action of the muscles. 7. Most of the muscles act only when we wish them to do so. Some muscles, however, act when it is necessary for them to do so, whether we will that they should act or not, and when we are asleep as well as when we are awake. CHAPTER XXI. HOW TO KEEP THE MUSCLES HEALTHY. ~1. How to Make the Muscles Strong.~--With which hand can you lift the more? with the right hand or with the left? Why do you think you can lift more with the right hand than with the left? A blacksmith swings a heavy hammer with his right arm, and that arm becomes very large and strong. If we wish our muscles to grow large and strong, so that our bodies will be healthy and vigorous, we must take plenty of exercise. ~2. Effects of Idleness.~--If a boy should carry one hand in his pocket all the time, and use only the other hand and arm, the idle arm would become small and weak, while the other would grow large and strong. Any part of the body which is not used will after a time become weak. Little boys and girls who do not take plenty of exercise are likely to be pale and puny. It is important that we should take the proper amount of exercise every day, just as we take our food and drink every day. ~3. Healthful Exercise.~--Some kinds of play, and almost all kinds of work which children have to do, are good ways of taking exercise. A very good kind of exercise for little boys and girls is that found in running errands or doing chores about the house. ~4. Food and Strength.~--A great part of our food goes to nourish the muscles. Some foods make us strong, while others do not. Plain foods, such as bread, meat, potatoes, and milk, are good for the muscles; but cakes and pies, and things which are not food, such as mustard, pepper, and spices, do not give us strength, and are likely to do us harm. ~5. Over-Exertion.~--We ought not to exert ourselves too much in lifting heavy weights, or trying to do things which are too hard for us. Sometimes the muscles are permanently injured in this way. ~6. The Clothing.~--We ought not to wear our clothing so tight as to press hard upon any part of the body. If we do, it will cause the muscles of that part to become weak. If the clothing is worn tight about the waist, great mischief is often done. The lungs cannot expand properly, the stomach and liver are pressed out of shape, and the internal organs are crowded out of their proper places. ~7. Tight Shoes.~--People are often made very lame from wearing tight shoes. Their muscles cannot act properly, and their feet grow out of shape. ~8.~ In China, it is fashionable for rich ladies to have small feet, and they tie them up in cloths so that they cannot grow. The foot is squeezed out of shape. Here is a picture of a foot which has been treated in this way. It does not look much like a human foot, does it? A woman who has such feet finds it so difficult to walk that she has to be carried about much of the time. Do you not think it is very wrong and foolish to treat the feet so badly? You will say, "Yes;" but the Chinese woman thinks it is a great deal worse to lace the clothing tight about the body so as to make the waist small. [Illustration: FOOT OF CHINESE WOMAN.] ~9. Effects of Alcohol upon the Muscles.~--When an intemperate man takes a glass of strong drink, it makes him feel strong; but when he tries to lift, or to do any kind of hard work, he cannot lift so much nor work so hard as he could have done without the liquor. This is because alcohol poisons the muscles and makes them weak. ~10. Effects of Drunkenness.~--When a man has become addicted to strong drink, his muscles become partly paralyzed, so that he cannot walk as steadily or speak as readily or as clearly as before. His fingers are clumsy, and his movements uncertain. If he is an artist or a jeweller, he cannot do as fine work as when he is sober. When a man gets very drunk, he is for a time completely paralyzed, so that he cannot walk or move, and seems almost like a dead man. ~11.~ If you had a good horse that had carried you a long way in a carriage, and you wanted to travel farther, what would you do if the horse were so tired that he kept stopping in the road? Would you let him rest and give him some water to drink and some nice hay and oats to eat, or would you strike him hard with a whip to make him go faster? If you should whip him he would act as though he were not tired at all, but do you think the whip would make him strong, as rest and hay and oats would? ~12.~ When a tired man takes alcohol, it acts like a whip; it makes every part of the body work faster and harder than it ought to work, and thus wastes the man's strength and makes him weaker, although for a little while his nerves are made stupid, so that he does not know that he is tired and ought to rest. ~13.~ When you grow up to be men and women you will want to have strong muscles. So you must be careful not to give alcohol a chance to injure them. If you never taste it in any form you will be sure to suffer no harm from it. ~14. Effects of Tobacco on the Muscles.~--Boys who smoke cigars or cigarettes, or who chew tobacco, are not likely to grow up to be strong and healthy men. They do not have plump and rosy cheeks and strong muscles like other boys. ~15.~ The evil effect of tobacco upon boys is now so well known that in many countries and in some states of this country laws have been made which do not allow alcohol or tobacco to be sold or given to boys. In Switzerland, if a boy is found smoking upon the streets, he is arrested just as though he had been caught stealing. And is not this really what a boy does when he smokes? He robs his constitution of its vigor, and allows tobacco to steal away from him the strength he will need when he becomes a man. ~16. Tea and Coffee.~--Strong tea and coffee, while by no means so bad as alcohol and tobacco, may make us weak and sick. A person who drinks strong tea or coffee feels less tired while at work than if he had not taken it, but he is more tired afterwards. So you see that tea and coffee are also whips, small whips we might call them, and yet they really act in the same way as do other narcotics and stimulants. They make a person feel stronger than he really is, and thus he is led to use more strength than he can afford to do. SUMMARY. 1. We must use the muscles to make them grow large and strong. 2. Exercise should be taken regularly. 3. Exercise makes the muscles strong, the body beautiful, the lungs active, the heart vigorous, and the whole body healthy. 4. Things we ought not to do: To run or play hard just before or after eating; to strain our muscles by lifting too heavy weights; to exercise so violently as to get out of breath; to lie, sit, stand, or walk in a cramped position, or awkward manner; to wear the clothing so tight as to press hard upon the muscles. 5. Good food is necessary to make the muscles strong and healthy. 6. Alcohol makes the muscles weak, although at first it makes us feel stronger. 7. A boy who uses tobacco will not grow as strong and well as one who does not. 8. The use of strong tea and coffee may injure the muscles. CHAPTER XXII. HOW WE FEEL AND THINK. ~1. How we Think.~--With what part of the body do we think? You will at once say that we think with the head; but we do not think with the whole head. Some parts of the head we use for other purposes, as the mouth to eat and speak with, and the nose to smell and breathe with. The part we think with is inside of the skull, safely placed in a little room at the top and back part of the head. Do you remember the name of this organ which fills the hollow place inside of the skull? We learned some time ago that it is called the _brain_. It is with the brain that we study and remember and reason. So the brain is one of the most important organs in our body, and we must try to learn all we can about it. ~2. The Brain.~--You cannot see and examine your own brain because it is shut up in the skull; but perhaps you can find the brain of a sheep or a calf at the meat market. The brain of one of these animals looks very nearly like your own. ~3. The Large Brain and the Small Brain.~--In examining a brain we should notice first of all that there are really two brains, a _large brain_ and a _small brain_. The large brain is in the top and front of the skull, and the small one lies beneath the back part of the larger one, If we look again we shall see that each brain is divided in the middle into a right and a left half. Each half is, in fact, a complete brain, so that we really have two pairs of brains. [Illustration: THE BRAIN.] ~4. Brain Cells.~--The brain is a curious organ of a grayish color outside and white inside. It is soft, almost like jelly, and this is why it is placed so carefully in a strong, bony box. If we should put a little piece of the brain under a microscope, we should find that it is made up of a great number of very small objects called _nerve_ or _brain cells_. In the illustration you can see some of these brain cells. [Illustration: BRAIN CELLS.] ~5. The Nerves.~--Each cell has one or more branches. Some of the branches are joined to the branches of other cells so as to unite the cells together, just as children take hold of one another's hands. Other branches are drawn out very long. ~6.~ The long branches are such slender threads that a great number of them together would not be as large as a fine silk thread. A great many of these fine nerve threads are bound up in little bundles which look like white cords. These are called _nerves_. ~7.~ The nerves branch out from the brain through openings in the skull, and go to every part of the body. Every little muscle fibre, the heart, the stomach, the lungs, the liver, even the bones--all have nerves coming to them from the brain. So you see that the brain is not wholly shut up in the skull, because its cells have slender branches running into all parts of the body; and thus the brain itself is really in every part of the body, though we usually speak of it as being entirely in the skull. ~8. The Spinal Cord.~--There are a number of small holes in the skull through which the nerves pass out, but most of the nerves are bound up in one large bundle and pass out through an opening at the back part of the skull and runs downward through a long canal in the backbone. This bundle of nerves forms the _spinal cord_. The spinal cord contains cells also, like those of the brain. It is really a continuation of the brain down through the backbone. [Illustration: BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD.] ~9. Nerves from the Spinal Cord.~--The spinal cord gives off branches of nerves which go to the arms, the chest, the legs, and other parts. One of the branches which goes to the hand runs along the back side of the arm, passing over the elbow. If we happen to strike the elbow against some sharp object, we sometimes hit this nerve. When we do so, the under side of the arm and the little finger feel very numb and strange. This is why you call this part of the elbow the "funny" or "crazy bone." The cells of the spinal cord also send out branches to the body and to other cells in the brain. ~10. How we Feel.~--If we cut or burn ourselves we suffer pain. Can you tell why it hurts us to prick the flesh with a pin, or to pinch or burn or bruise it? It is because the flesh contains a great many nerve-branches from the brain. When we hurt the skin or the flesh, in any way, these nerves are injured. There are so many of these little nerves in the flesh and skin that we cannot put the finest needle into the flesh without hurting some of them. ~11. The Use of Pain.~--It is not pleasant for us to have pain, but if the nerves gave us no pain when we are hurt we might get our limbs burned or frozen and know nothing about it until too late to save them. ~12. Nerves of Feeling.~--We have different kinds of nerves of feeling. Those we have learned about feel pain. Others feel objects. If you take a marble or a pencil in the hand you know what it is by the feeling of the object. This kind of feeling is called the sense of touch. ~13.~ There are other nerves of feeling by means of which we are able to hear, see, taste, and smell, of which we shall learn in another lesson. Besides these we have nerves which tell us whether objects are cold or hot, and heavy or light. Nerves of feeling also tell us when we are hungry, or thirsty, or tired, and when we need more air to breathe. ~14. Nerves of Work.~--There are other nerves which are made just like the nerves of feeling, but which do not feel. These nerves have a very different use. They come from cells in the brain which have charge of the different kinds of work done in the body, and they send their branches to the parts which do the work; hence we call them _nerves of work_. ~15.~ One set of cells sends nerves to the heart, and these make it go fast or slow as is necessary. Another sends nerves to the liver, stomach, and other digestive organs, and causes them to do their part in the digestion of the food. Other cells send branches to the muscles and make them act when we wish them to do so. Thus you see how very useful the brain and nerves are. They keep all the different parts of the body working together in harmony, just like a well-trained army, or a great number of workmen building a block of houses. Without the brain and nerves the body would be just like an army without a commander, or a lot of workmen without an overseer. ~16. How we Use the Nerves.~--If you happen to touch your hand to a hot stove, what takes place? You will say that your arm pulls the hand away. Do you know why? Let us see. The nerves of feeling in the hand tell the nerve cells in the brain from which they come that the hand is being burned. The cells which feel cannot do anything for the hand, but some of their branches run over to another part of the brain, which sends nerves down to the muscles of the arm. These cells, through their nerve branches, cause the muscles to contract. The cells of feeling ask the cells which have charge of the muscles to make the muscles of the arm pull the hand away, which they do very quickly. ~17.~ So you see the nerves are very much like telegraph or telephone wires. By means of them the brain finds out all about what is happening in the body, and sends out its orders to the various organs, which may be called its servants. ~18. An Experiment.~--A man once tried an experiment which seemed very cruel. He took a dove and cut open its skull and took out its large brain. What do you think the effect was? The dove did not die at once, as you would expect. It lived for some time, but it did not know anything. It did not know when it was hungry, and would not eat or drink unless the food or water was placed in its mouth. If a man gets a blow on his head, so hard as to break his skull, the large brain is often hurt so badly that its cells cannot work, and so the man is in the same condition as the poor dove. He does not know anything. He cannot think or talk, and lies as though he were asleep. ~19.~ By these and many other facts we know that the large brain is the part with which we remember, think, and reason. It is the seat of the mind. We go to sleep because the large brain is tired and cannot work any longer. We stop thinking when we are sound asleep, but sometimes we do not sleep soundly, and then the large brain works a little and we dream. ~20. What the Little Brain Does.~--The little brain[B] thinks too, but it does not do the same kind of thinking as the large brain. We may use our arms and legs and many other parts when we wish to do so; and if we do not care to use them we may allow them to remain quiet. This is not the case with some other organs. It is necessary, for example, that the heart, the lungs, and many other organs of the body should keep at work all the time. If the large brain had to attend to all of these different kinds of work besides thinking about what we see, hear, and read, and other things which we do, it would have too much work to do, and would not be able to do it all well. Besides, the large brain sometimes falls asleep. So the large brain lets the little brain do the kinds of work which have to be attended to all the time, and the little brain keeps steadily at work when we are asleep as well as when we are awake. ~21. What the Spinal Cord Does.~--If you tickle a person's foot when he is asleep, he will pull it up just as he would if he were awake, only not quite so quickly. What do you suppose makes the muscles of the leg contract when the brain is asleep and does not know that the foot is being tickled? And here is another curious fact. When you were coming to school this morning you did not have to think about every step you took. Perhaps you were talking or looking over your lessons; but your legs walked right along all the time, and without your thinking about them. Can you tell how? ~22.~ It would be too much trouble for the large brain to stop to think every time we step, and the little brain has work enough to do in taking care of the heart and lungs and other organs, without keeping watch of the feet when we are asleep, so as to pull them up if some mischievous person tickles them. So Nature puts a few nerve cells in the spinal cord which can do a certain easy kind of thinking. When we do things over and over a great many times, these cells, after a time, learn to do them without the help of the large brain. This is the way a piano-player becomes so expert. He does not have to think all the time where each finger is to go. After the tunes have been played a great many times, the spinal cord knows them so well that it makes the hands play them almost without any effort of the large brain. SUMMARY. 1. The part of the body with which we think is the brain. 2. The brain is found filling the hollow place in the skull. 3. There are two brains, the large brain and the small brain. 4. Each brain is divided into two equal and complete halves, thus making two pairs of brains. 5. The brain is largely made up of very small objects called nerve or brain cells. 6. The nerve cells send out very fine branches which form the nerves. 7. The nerve branches or fibres run to every part of the body. They pass out from the brain to the rest of the body through a number of openings in the skull. 8. Most of the nerve branches pass out through a large opening at the back of the skull, in one large bundle called the spinal cord. 9. The spinal cord runs down through a canal in the backbone, and all along gives off branches to the various parts of the body. 10. It gives us pain to prick or hurt the flesh in any way, because when we do so we injure some of the little nerve branches of the brain cells. 11. When we suffer, we really feel a pain in the brain. We know this because if a nerve is cut in two, we may hurt the part to which it goes without giving any pain. 12. We have different kinds of nerves of feeling. 13. There are other nerves besides those of feeling. These are nerves of work. 14. The nerves of work have charge of the heart, the lungs, the muscles, the liver, the stomach, and every part of the body which can work or act. 15. The brain and nerves control the body and make all the different parts work together in harmony, just as a general controls an army. 16. The brain uses the nerves very much as a man uses the telephone or telegraph wires. 17. With the large brain we remember, think, and reason. 18. The little brain does the simple kind of thinking, by means of which the heart, lungs, and other vital organs are kept at work even when we are asleep. 19. The spinal cord does a still more simple kind of work. It enables us to walk and to do other familiar acts without using the large brain to think every moment just what we are doing. CHAPTER XXIII. HOW TO KEEP THE BRAIN AND NERVES HEALTHY. ~1. Uses of the Brain.~--What do you think a boy or girl would be good for without any brain or nerves? Such a boy or girl could not see, hear, feel, talk, run about, or play, and would not know any more than a cabbage or a potato knows. If the brain or nerves are sick, they cannot work well, and so are not worth as much as when they are healthy. ~2. The Brain Sympathizes with Other Organs.~--Did you ever have a headache? Did you feel happy and good-natured when your head ached hard, and could you study and play as well as when you are well? It is very important that we should keep our brain and nerves healthy, and to do this we must take good care of the stomach and all other organs, because the brain sympathizes with them when they are sick. ~3. We must have Pure Air.~--How do you feel when the school-room is too warm and close? Do you not feel dull and sleepy and so stupid that you can hardly study? This is because the brain needs good, pure blood to enable it to work well. So we must always be careful to have plenty of pure air to breathe. ~4. We should Exercise the Brain.~--What do we do when we want to strengthen our muscles? We make them work hard every day, do we not? The exercise makes them grow large and strong. It is just the same with our brains. If we study hard and learn our lessons well, then our brains grow strong, and study becomes easy. But if we only half study, and do not learn our lessons perfectly, then the study does not do our brains very much good. ~5. We should Take Muscular Exercise.~--When you get tired of study, an hour's play, or exercise of some sort, rests you and makes you feel brighter, so that you can learn more easily. This is because exercise is necessary to make the blood circulate well. It will then carry out the worn-out particles and supply the brain and nerves with fresh, pure blood. So the same exercise which makes our muscles strong makes our brains healthier also. ~6. We should be Careful of our Diet.~--We ought to eat plenty of good, simple food, such as milk, fruits, grains, and vegetables. It is not well for children to eat freely of meat, as it is very stimulating and likely to excite the brain and make the nerves irritable. Mustard, pepper, and all hot sauces and spices have a tendency to injure the brain and nerves. ~7. We should Allow the Brain to Rest at the Proper Time.~--When we are tired and sleepy we cannot think well, and cannot remember what we learn if we try to study. If we have plenty of sleep, free from bad or exciting dreams, we awake in the morning rested and refreshed, because while we have been asleep Nature has put the brain and nerves in good repair for us. We ought not to stay up late at night. We should not eat late or hearty suppers, as this will prevent our sleeping well. ~8. We Ought Not to Allow Ourselves to Become Angry.~--When a person flies into a passion he does his brain and nerves great harm. It is really dangerous to get angry. Persons have dropped dead instantly in a fit of anger. ~9. We should Shun Bad Habits.~--Bad habits are very hard to give up, and hence we should be careful to avoid them. When a child learns to swear, or to use slang phrases, the brain after a while will make him swear or use bad words before he thinks. In a similar manner other bad habits are acquired. SUMMARY. 1. A person without a brain or nerves would be of no more account than a vegetable. 2. When the brain or nerves are sick they cannot perform their duties properly. 3. To keep the brain and nerves in good health, we must take good care of the stomach and all other important organs of the body. 4. There are many things which we may do to keep the brain and nerves strong and well. 5. The brain needs pure blood, and so we must be careful to breathe pure air. 6. The brain gets strength by exercise, just as the muscles do. Hence, study is healthful, and makes the brain strong. 7. A good memory is very necessary, but we should not try to remember everything. 8. It is very important that we learn how to observe things closely. 9. Exercise in the open air rests and clears the brain by helping the blood to circulate. 10. Plenty of wholesome and simple food is necessary to keep the brain and nerves in good health. Spices, condiments, and rich foods in general are stimulating and harmful. 11. Plenty of sleep is needed to rest the brain and nerves. 12. It is dangerous as well as wicked to become very angry. 13. We should be careful to avoid forming bad habits of any sort, as they are hard to break, and often adhere to one through life. CHAPTER XXIV. BAD EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE BRAIN AND NERVES. ~1. Drunkenness.~--Did you ever see a man who was drunk? If you live in a city it is very likely that you have. How did the drunken man behave? Perhaps he was noisy and silly. Perhaps he was angry and tried to pick a quarrel with some one. ~2.~ What made the man drunk? You say whiskey, but it may have been wine, or beer, or hard cider that he drank. Anything that contains alcohol will make a man drunk, for it is the alcohol which does all the mischief. ~3. The Whiskey Flush.~--You can almost always tell when a man has been drinking, even when he has not taken enough to make him drunk. You know by his flushed face and red eyes. When a man's face blushes from the use of alcohol, his whole body blushes at the same time. His muscles, his lungs, and his liver blush; his brain and spinal cord blush also. ~4.~ When a man has taken just enough alcohol to make his face blush a little, the extra amount of blood in the brain makes him think and talk more lively, and he is very jolly and gay. This makes many people think that alcohol does them good. But if we notice what a man says when he is excited by alcohol, we shall find that his remarks are often silly and reckless. He says very unwise and foolish things, for which he feels sorry when he becomes sober. ~5. Alcohol Paralyzes.~--How does a drunken man walk? Let us see why he staggers. When a man takes a certain amount of alcohol his small brain and spinal cord become partly paralyzed, so that they cannot do their duty well; and so, when he tries to walk he reels and stumbles along, often falling down, and sometimes hurting himself very much. The fact is that the alcohol has put his spinal cord and small brain to sleep so that he cannot make his legs do what he wants them to do. Now, if still more alcohol is taken the whole brain becomes paralyzed, and then the man is so nearly dead that we say he is "dead drunk." It is exceedingly dangerous to become dead drunk, as the brain may be so completely paralyzed that it will not recover. ~6.~ A small amount of alcohol does not make a man dead drunk, but it poisons and paralyzes his brain and nerves just according to the quantity he takes. ~7.~ If a person holds a little alcohol in his mouth for a few moments, the tongue and cheeks feel numb. This is because the alcohol paralyzes them so that they cannot feel or taste. When taken into the stomach it has much the same kind of effect upon the nerves of the whole body. ~8. Alcohol a Deceiver.~--A hungry man takes a drink of whiskey and benumbs the nerves of his stomach so that he does not feel hungry. Alcohol puts to sleep the sentinels which Nature has set in the body to warn us of danger. A man who is cold takes alcohol and feels warm, though he is really colder. He lies down in his false comfort and freezes to death. A tired man takes his glass of grog and feels rested and strong, though he is really weaker than before. A poor man gets drunk and feels so rich that he spends what little money he has. The alcohol paralyzes his judgment and steals away his good sense. Thus alcohol is always a deceiver. ~9. Delirium Tremens.~ (De-lir´-i-um Tre´-mens.)--When a man takes strong liquors regularly he very soon injures his brain and nerves so that they do not get quiet, as they should, at night, and he does not sleep well. He has frightful dreams. He sees all sorts of wild animals and horrid shapes in his dreams. Perhaps you have sometimes had such dreams from eating late suppers or indigestible food. ~10.~ Did you ever have a dream when you were awake? If a man drinks a great deal he is likely to have a terrible disease known as _delirium tremens_, in which he sees the same frightful things when he is wide awake that he dreams about when he is asleep. This is one of the terrible effects of alcohol upon the brain and nerves. ~11. Alcohol Paralysis.~--You have seen how a drunken man staggers when he walks. Did you ever see a man who walked just as though he were drunk when he was really sober? This is because a part of the brain or spinal cord has been permanently injured or paralyzed. Alcohol is not the only cause of this disease, and so you must not think every person who staggers is or has been a drunkard; but alcohol is a very frequent cause of paralysis. ~12. Effects of Alcohol upon the Mind and Character.~--When a man is under the influence of alcohol is his character good or bad? Is a man likely to be good, or to be bad, when he is drunk or excited by drink? Most men behave badly when they are drunk, and after they have been drunk a great many times they often behave badly all the time. A great many of the men who are shut up in prisons would not have been sent there if they had never learned to drink. ~13. A Legacy.~--Do you know what a legacy is? If your father should die and leave to you a fine house or farm, or money in the bank, or books, or horses, or any other kind of property to have for your own, it would be a legacy. When a person gets anything in this way from a parent we say that he inherits it. ~14.~ We inherit a great many things besides houses and lands and other kinds of property. For instance, perhaps you remember hearing some one say that you have eyes and hair the same color as your mother's, and that your nose and chin are like your father's. So you have inherited the color of your hair and eyes from your mother and the shape of your chin and nose from your father. ~15. The Alcohol Legacy.~--The inside of a boy's head is just as much like his parents' as the outside of it. In other words, we inherit our brains just as we do our faces. So, if a man spoils his brain with alcohol and gets an alcohol appetite, his children will be likely to have unhealthy brains and an appetite for alcohol also, and may become drunkards. Is not that a dreadful kind of legacy to inherit? ~16.~ A child that has no mind is called an idiot. Such a child cannot talk, or read, or sing, and does not know enough to take proper care of itself. This is one of the bad legacies which drunken parents sometimes leave to their children. ~17. Effects of Tobacco on the Brain and Nerves.~--The effects of tobacco upon the brain and nerves are much the same as those of alcohol. Tobacco, like alcohol, is a narcotic. It benumbs and paralyzes the nerves, and it is by this means that it obtains such an influence over those who use it. ~18.~ The hand of a man or boy who uses tobacco often becomes so unsteady that he can scarcely write. Do you know what makes it so unsteady? It is because the cells which send nerves to the muscles of the hand are diseased. When a person has a trembling hand you say he is nervous. If you feel his pulse you will find that it does not beat steadily and regularly as it ought to do. The heart is nervous and trembles just the same as the muscles do. This shows that the tobacco has poisoned the cells in the brain which regulate the heart. ~19.~ Wise physicians will tell you that one reason why tobacco is bad for boys is that it hurts their brains so that they cannot learn well, and do not become as useful and successful men as they might be. ~20.~ Students in the naval and military schools of this country are not allowed to use tobacco on account of its bad effects upon the mind. In France the use of tobacco is forbidden to all students in the public schools. ~21. Tobacco Leads to Vice.~--Boys who use tobacco are more liable to get into company with boys who have other bad habits, and so are apt to become bad in many other ways. The use of tobacco often makes men want strong drink, and thus leads to drunkenness. If you wish to grow up with a steady hand, a strong heart, and a good character you will never touch tobacco. ~22. Effects of Tea and Coffee on the Nerves.~--People who use strong tea and coffee are often inclined to be nervous. This shows that strong tea and coffee, like alcohol and tobacco, are very injurious to the nerves. ~23. Opium, Chloral, etc.~--There are several drugs which are given by physicians to relieve pain or to produce sleep. They are sometimes helpful, but their use is very dangerous. Opium and chloral belong to this class of medicines. The danger is that, after a person has used the medicine a little while, he will continue to use it. If a person takes a poisonous drug every time he has a little pain, he will soon form the habit of using it, and may never break it off. There are many thousands of people who use opium all the time, and they are very much injured by it in mind and body. The mind becomes dull and stupid and the body weak and feeble. No medicine of this sort should ever be taken unless prescribed by a physician. SUMMARY. 1. In order to be well and useful we must keep the brain and nerves healthy. 2. To keep the brain healthy we need plenty of pure air to breathe; proper exercise of the brain by study; sufficient exercise of the muscles in play and work; plenty of good food to make pure blood; a proper amount of rest and sleep. 3. There are several things we ought not to do. We should not read or study too much. We should not allow ourselves to become excited or angry. We should avoid learning bad habits. 4. Alcohol paralyzes the brain and nerves. 5. Alcohol deceives a person who takes it by making him feel strong when he is weak; warm when he is cold; rich when he is poor; well when he is sick. 6. Alcohol makes men wicked. Most men who commit crimes are men who use liquor. 7. The effects of tobacco upon the brain and nerves are much the same as those of alcohol. Tobacco is very injurious to the mind. 8. Tobacco-using often leads boys to drunkenness and other vices. 9. The use of opium and chloral produces even worse effects than the use of alcohol or tobacco. CHAPTER XXV. HOW WE HEAR, SEE, SMELL, TASTE, AND FEEL. ~1. The Senses.~--We have five senses--_hearing_, _seeing_, _smelling_, _tasting_, and _feeling_. These are called special senses because they are very different from each other. They also differ from the general sense of feeling by means of which we feel pain when any part is hurt. ~2. Organs of the Special Senses.~--Each of the special senses has a special set of nerves and also special cells in the brain which have charge of them. We say that we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, feel with our fingers, etc.; but, really, we see, hear, taste, and smell in the brain just as we feel in the brain. The eyes, ears, nose, and other organs of the special senses are the instruments by means of which the brain sees, hears, smells, etc. ~3. Sound and the Vibrations which it Causes.~--All sounds are made by jars or vibrations of objects. Sounds cause objects to vibrate or tremble. A loud sound sometimes jars a whole house, while other sounds are so gentle and soft that we cannot feel them in the same way that we feel loud sounds. But Nature has made for us an ingenious organ by means of which we can feel these very fine vibrations as well as loud ones. We call this organ the _ear_. ~4. The Ear.~--The part of the ear which we can see is shaped somewhat like a trumpet. The small opening near the middle of the ear leads into a _canal_ or tube which extends into the head about an inch. At the inner end there is a curious little chamber. This is called the _drum_ of the ear, because between it and the canal of the ear there is stretched a thin membrane like the head of a drum. The ear-drum is also called the _middle ear_. [Illustration: THE EAR.] ~5. Bones of the Ear.~--Within the drum of the ear there are three curious little bones which are joined together so as to make a complete chain, reaching from the drum-head to the other side of the drum. The last bone fits into a little hole which leads into another curious chamber. This chamber, which is called the _inner ear_, is filled with fluid, and in this fluid the nerve of hearing is spread out. A part of the inner ear looks very much like a snail shell. [Illustration: THE INSIDE OF THE EAR.] ~6. How we Hear.~--Scratch with a pin upon one end of a long wooden pole. Have some one listen with the ear placed close against the other end of the pole. He will tell you that he hears the scratching of the pin very plainly. This is because the scratching jars the ear and especially the drum-head, which vibrates just as the head of a drum does when it is beaten with a drum-stick. When the drum-head vibrates it moves the bones of the ear, and these carry the vibration to the nerves of hearing in the inner chamber. We hear all sounds in the same way, only most sounds come to the ear through the air. The snail-shell of the inner part of the ear hears musical sounds. The rest of the inner ear hears ordinary sounds or noises. ~7. How to Keep the Ears Healthy.~--The ears are very delicate organs and must be carefully treated. The following things about the care of the ears should never be forgotten: (1.) Never use a pin, toothpick, or any other sharp instrument to clean out the ear. There is great danger that the drum-head will be torn, and thus the hearing will be injured. Neither is it ever necessary to use an ear-spoon to remove the wax. Working at the ear causes more wax to form. (2.) Do not allow cold water to enter the ear or a cold wind to blow directly into it. (3.) If anything accidentally gets into the ear, do not work at it, but hold the head over to one side while water is made to run in from a syringe. If an insect has gone into the ear, pour in a little oil. This will kill the insect or make it come out. (4.) Never shout into another person's ear. The ear may be greatly injured in this way. (5.) Boxing or pulling the ears is likely to produce deafness, and ought never to be done. ~8. The Eye.~--The eye is one of the most wonderful organs in the whole body. It enables us to know what is going on at some distance from us, and to enjoy many beautiful things which our sense of hearing and other senses can tell us nothing about. It also enables us to read. Let us learn how this wonderful organ is made. ~9. The Eyeball.~--Looking at the eye, we see first a round part which rolls in different directions. This is the _eyeball_. We see only the front side of the eyeball as it fits into a hollow in the skull. Being thus in a safe place, it is not likely to get hurt. [Illustration: THE EYE.] The eyeball is mostly filled with a clear substance very much like jelly. It is so clear that the light can shine through it just as easily as it can shine through water. ~10. The Pupil.~--If you look sharply at the eyeball you will see a small black hole just in the centre. This is a little window which lets the light into the inside of the eyeball. We call this the _pupil_. Just around the pupil is a colored ring which gives the eye its color. We say a person has blue or brown or gray eyes according as this ring is blue or brown or gray. This colored ring is a kind of curtain for the window of the eye. ~11.~ If you observe the pupil closely, you will see that it is sometimes larger and sometimes smaller. If you look at the light the pupil is small; if you turn away from the light the pupil grows larger at once. This is because the curtain closes when in a bright light and opens in the darkness. It does this of itself without our thinking about it. In this way the eye is protected from too strong a light, which would do it great harm. ~12.~ If you look a little sidewise at the eyeball, you will see that the curtain has something in front of it which is clear as glass. It is about the shape of a watch crystal, only very much smaller. This is to the eye what the glass is to the windows of a house. It closes the opening in the front of the eyeball and yet lets the light shine in. ~13. The White of the Eye.~--The white of the eye is a tough, firm membrane which encloses the eyeball and keeps it in a round shape. ~14. The Lens.~--Do you know what a lens is? Perhaps you do not know it by this name, but you are familiar with the spectacles which people sometimes wear to help their eyes. The glasses in the spectacle frames are called lenses. Well, there is something in the eye almost exactly like one of these lenses, only smaller. It is also called a _lens_. If some one will get the eye of an ox for you, you can cut it open and find this part. The lens is placed in the eyeball just behind the pupil. (See picture.) [Illustration: THE INSIDE OF THE EYE.] ~15. The Nerves of Sight.~--But a person might have an eyeball with all the parts we have learned about and yet not be able to see. Can you tell what more is needed? There must be a nerve. This nerve comes from some little nerve cells in the brain and enters the eyeball at the back of the eye; there it is spread out on the inside of the black lining of the white of the eye. ~16. The Eyelids.~--Now we know all that it is necessary for us to learn about the eyeball, so let us notice some other parts about the eye. First there are the eyelids. They are little folds of skin fringed with hairs, which we can shut up so as to cover the eyeball and keep out the light when we want to sleep or when we are in danger of getting dust or smoke into the eye. The hairs placed along the edge of the lids help to keep the dust out when the eyes are open. ~17. The Eyebrows.~--The row of hairs placed above the eye is called the eyebrow. Like the eyelids, the eyebrows catch some substances which might fall into the eye, and they also serve to turn off the perspiration and keep it out of the eyes. ~18. The Tear Gland.~--Do you know where the tears come from? There is a little gland snugly placed away in the socket of the eye just above the eyeball, which makes tears in the same way that the salivary glands make saliva. It is called the _tear gland_. The gland usually makes just enough tears to keep the eye moist. There are times when it makes more than enough, as when something gets into the eye, or when we suffer pain or feel unhappy. Then the tears are carried off by means of a little tube which runs down into the nose from the inner corner of the eye. When the tears are formed so fast that they cannot all get away through this tube, they pass over the edge of the lower eyelid and flow down the cheek. ~19. Muscles of the Eyes.~--By means of little muscles which are fastened to the eyeball, we are able to turn the eye in almost every direction. ~20. How we See.~--Now we want to know how we see with the eye. This is not very easy to understand, but we can learn something about it. Let us make a little experiment. Here is a glass lens. If we hold it before a window and place a piece of smooth white paper behind it, we can see a picture of the houses and trees and fences, and other things out-of-doors. The picture made by the lens looks exactly like the view out-of-doors, except that it is upside down. This is one of the curious things that a lens does. The lens of the eye acts just like a glass lens. It makes a picture of everything we see, upon the ends of the nerves of sight which are spread out at the back of the eyeball. The nerves of sight tell their nerves in the brain about the picture, just as the nerves of feeling tell their cells when they are touched with a pin; and this is how we see. ~21.~ Did you ever look through a spyglass or an opera-glass? If so, you know you must make the tube longer or shorter according as you look at things near by or far away. The eye also has to be changed a little when we look from near to distant objects. Look out of the window at a tree a long way off. Now place a lead pencil between the eyes and the tree. You can scarcely see the pencil while you look sharply at the tree, and if you look at the pencil you cannot see the tree distinctly. ~22.~ There is a little muscle in the eye which makes the change needed to enable us to see objects close by as well as those which are farther away. When people grow old the little muscles cannot do this so well, and hence old people have to put on glasses to see objects near by, as in reading. Children should not try to wear old persons' glasses, as this is likely to injure their eyes. ~23. How to Keep the Eyes Healthy.~--(1.) Never continue the use of the eyes at fine work, such as reading or fancy-work, after they have become very tired. (2.) Do not try to read or to use the eyes with a poor light--in the twilight, for instance, before the gas or lamps are lighted. (3.) In reading or studying, do not sit with the light from either a lamp or a window shining directly upon the face. Have the light come from behind and shine over the left shoulder if possible. (4.) Never expose the eyes to a sudden, bright light by looking at the sun or at a lamp on first awaking in the morning, or by passing quickly from a dark room into a lighted one. (5.) Do not read when lying down, or when riding on a street car or railway train. (6.) If any object gets into the eye have it removed as soon as possible. (7.) A great many persons hurt their eyes by using various kinds of eye-washes. Never use anything of this kind unless told to do so by a good physician. ~24. How we Smell.~--If we wish to smell anything very strongly, we sniff or suddenly draw the air up through the nose. We do this to bring more air to the nerves of smell, which are placed at the upper part of the inside of the nose. [Illustration: INSIDE OF THE NOSE.] ~25.~ Smelling is a sort of feeling. The nerves of smell are so sensitive that they can discover things in the air which we cannot taste or see. An Indian uses his sense of smell to tell him whether things are good to eat or not. He knows that things which have a pleasant smell are likely to be good for him and not likely to make him sick. We do not make so much use of the sense of smell as do the savages and many lower animals, and hence we are not able to smell so acutely. Many persons lose the sense of smell altogether, from neglecting colds in the head. ~26. How we Taste.~--The tongue and the palate have very delicate nerves by means of which we taste. We cannot taste with the whole of the tongue. The very tip of the tongue has only nerves of touch or feeling. ~27.~ The use of the sense of taste is to give us pleasure and to tell us whether different substances are healthful or injurious. Things which are poisonous and likely to make us sick almost always have an unpleasant taste as well as an unpleasant odor. Things which have a pleasant taste are usually harmless. ~28. Bad Tastes.~--People sometimes learn to like things which have a very unpleasant taste. Pepper, mustard, pepper-sauce, and other hot sauces, alcohol, and tobacco are harmful substances of this sort. When used freely they injure the sense of taste so that it cannot detect and enjoy fine and delicate flavors. These substances, as we have elsewhere learned, also do the stomach harm and injure the nerves and other parts of the body. ~29. The Sense of Touch.~--If you put your hand upon an object you can tell whether it is hard or soft, smooth or rough, and can learn whether it is round or square, or of some other shape. You are able to do this by means of the nerves of touch, which are found in the skin in all parts of the body. If you wished to know how an object feels, would you touch it with the elbow, or the knee, or the cheek? You will say, No. You would feel of it with the hand, and would touch it with the ends of the fingers. You can feel objects better with the ends of the fingers because there are more nerves of touch in the part of the skin covering the ends of the fingers than in most other parts of the body. ~30.~ The sense of touch is more delicate in the tip of the tongue than in any other part. This is because it is necessary to use the sense of touch in the tongue to assist the sense of taste in finding out whether things are good to eat or not. The sense of touch is also very useful to us in many other ways. We hardly know how useful it really is until we are deprived of some of our other senses, as sight or hearing. In a blind man the sense of touch often becomes surprisingly acute. ~31. Effects of Alcohol and Tobacco on the Special Senses.~--All the special senses--hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling--depend upon the brain and nerves. Whatever does harm to the brain and nerves must injure the special senses also. We have learned how alcohol and tobacco, and all other narcotics and stimulants, injure and sometimes destroy the brain cells and their nerve branches, and so we can understand that a person who uses these poisonous substances will, by so doing, injure the delicate organs with which he hears, sees, smells, etc. ~32.~ Persons who use tobacco and strong drink sometimes become blind, because these poisons injure the nerves of sight. The ears are frequently injured by the use of tobacco. Smoking cigarettes and snuff-taking destroy the sense of smell. The poison of the tobacco paralyzes the nerves of taste so that they cannot detect flavors. Tea-tasters and other persons who need to have a delicate sense of taste do not use either alcohol or tobacco. SUMMARY. 1. We have five special senses--hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. 2. The ear is the organ of hearing, and has three parts, called the external ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. The inner ear contains the nerve of hearing. 3. The middle ear is separated from the external ear by the drum-head. The drum-head is connected with the inner ear by a chain of bones. 4. Sounds cause the drum-head to vibrate. The ear-bones convey the vibration from the drum-head to the nerve of hearing. 5. To keep the ear healthy we must avoid meddling with it or putting things into it. 6. The eye is the organ of sight. The chief parts of the eye are the eyeball, the socket, and the eyelids. 7. In the eyeball are the pupil, the lens, and the nerve of sight. 8. The eyeball is moved in various directions by six small muscles. 9. The eye is moistened by tears from the tear-gland. 10. When we look at an object the lens of the eye makes a picture on the nerve of sight, at the back part of the eyeball. 11. To keep the eyes healthy we should be careful not to tax them long at a time with fine work, or to use them in a poor light. 12. The nerves of smell are placed in the upper part of the inside of the nose. 13. "Colds" often destroy the sense of smell. 14. The nerves of taste are placed in the tongue and palate. 15. Many things which we think we taste we really do not taste, but smell or feel. 16. Objects which have a pleasant taste are usually healthful, while those which have a bad taste are usually harmful. 17. Pepper, mustard, etc., as well as alcohol and tobacco, have an unpleasant taste, and are not healthful. If we use them we shall injure the nerves of taste as well as other parts of the body. 18. We feel objects by means of the sense of touch. 19. The sense of touch is most acute at the tip of the tongue and the ends of the fingers. CHAPTER XXVI. ALCOHOL. ~1.~ As we learned in the early part of our study of this subject, alcohol is produced by _fermentation_. It is afterwards separated from water and other substances by _distillation_. We will now learn a few more things about alcohol. ~2. Alcohol Burns.~--If alcohol is placed in a lamp, it will burn much like kerosene oil. Indeed, it does not need a lamp to help it burn as does oil. If a few drops of alcohol are placed upon a plate, it may be lighted with a match, and will burn with a pale blue flame. Thus you see that alcohol is a sort of burning fluid. ~3.~ The vapor of alcohol will burn also, and under some circumstances it will explode. On this account it is better not to try any experiments with it unless some older person is close by to direct you, so that no harm may be done. Alcohol is really a dangerous substance even though we do not take it as a drink. ~4. An Interesting Experiment.~--We have told you that all fermented drinks contain alcohol. You will remember that wine, beer, ale, and cider are fermented drinks. We know that these drinks contain alcohol because the chemist can separate the alcohol from the water and other substances, and thus learn just how much alcohol each contains. ~5.~ If we should remove all the alcohol from wine, no one would care to drink it. The same is true of beer and cider. It is very easy to remove the alcohol by the simple process of heating. This is the way the chemist separates it. The heat drives the alcohol off with the steam. If the heating is continued long enough, all the alcohol will be driven off. The Chinaman boils his wine before drinking it. Perhaps this is one reason why Chinamen are so seldom found drunken. ~6.~ By a simple experiment which your parents or your teacher can perform for you, it can be readily proven that different fermented drinks contain alcohol, and also that the alcohol may be driven off by heat. Place a basin half full of water upon the stove where it will soon boil. Put into a glass bottle enough beer or cider so that when the bottle stands up in the basin the liquid in the bottle will be at about the same height as the water in the basin. Now place in the neck of the bottle a closely fitting cork in which there has been inserted a piece of the stem of a clay pipe or a small glass tube. Place the bottle in the basin. Watch carefully until the liquid in the bottle begins to boil. Now apply a lighted match to the end of the pipe-stem or glass tube. Perhaps you will observe nothing at first, but continue placing the match to the pipe-stem, and pretty soon you will notice a little blue flame burning at the end of the stem. It will go out often, but you can light it again. This is proof that alcohol is escaping from the liquid in the bottle. After the liquid has been boiling for some time, the flame goes out, and cannot be re-lighted, because the alcohol has been all driven off. [Illustration: Alcohol experiment.] ~7. The Alcohol Breath.~--You have doubtless heard that a person who is under the influence of liquor may be known by his breath. His breath smells of alcohol. This is because his lungs are trying to remove the alcohol from his blood as fast as possible, so as to prevent injury to the blood corpuscles and the tissues of the body. It is the vapor of alcohol mixed with his breath that causes the odor. ~8.~ You may have heard that sometimes men take such quantities of liquor that the breath becomes strong with the vapor of alcohol and takes fire when a light is brought near the mouth. These stories are probably not true, although it sometimes happens that persons become diseased in such a way that the breath will take fire if it comes in contact with a light. Alcohol may be a cause of this kind of disease. ~9. Making Alcohol.~--It may be that some of our young readers would like to find out for themselves that alcohol is really made by fermentation. This may be done by an easy experiment. You know that yeast will cause bread to "rise" or ferment. As we have elsewhere learned, a little alcohol is formed in the fermentation of bread, but is driven off by the heat of the oven in baking, so that we do not take any of it into our stomachs when we eat the bread. If we place a little baker's yeast in sweetened water, it will cause it to ferment and produce alcohol. To make alcohol, all we have to do is to place a little yeast and some sweetened water in a bottle and put it away in a warm place for a few hours until it has had time to ferment. You will know when fermentation has taken place by the great number of small bubbles which appear. When the liquid has fermented, you may prove that alcohol is present by means of the same experiment by which you found the alcohol in cider or wine. (See page 160.) ~10.~ Alcohol is made from the sweet juices of fruits by simply allowing them to ferment. Wine, as you know, is fermented grape juice. Cider is fermented apple juice. The strong alcoholic liquor obtained by distilling wine, cider, or any kind of fermented fruit juice, is known as brandy. ~11. How Beer is Made.~--Beer is made from grain of some sort. The grain is first moistened and kept in a warm place for a few days until it begins to sprout. The young plant needs sugar for its food; and so while the grain is sprouting, the starch in the grain is changed into sugar by a curious kind of digestion. This, as you will remember, is the way in which the saliva acts upon starch. So far no very great harm has been done, only sprouted grain, though very sweet, is not so good to eat as grain which has not sprouted. Nature intends the sugar to be used as food for the little sproutlet; but the brewer wants it for another purpose, and he stops the growth of the plant by drying the grain in a hot room. ~12.~ The next thing the brewer does is to grind the sprouted grain and soak it in water. The water dissolves out the sugar. Next he adds yeast to the sweet liquor and allows it to ferment, thus converting the sugar into alcohol. Potatoes are sometimes treated in a similar way. ~13.~ By distilling beer, a strong liquor known as whiskey is obtained. Sometimes juniper berries are distilled with the beer. The liquor obtained is then called gin. In the West Indies, on the great sugar plantations, large quantities of liquor are made from the skimmings and cleanings of the vessels in which the sweet juice of the sugar-cane is boiled down. These refuse matters are mixed with water and fermented, then distilled. This liquor is called rum. ~14.~ Now you have learned enough about alcohol to know that it is not produced by plants in the same way that food is, but that it is the result of a sort of decay. In making alcohol, good food is destroyed and made into a substance which is not fit for food, and which produces a great amount of sickness and destroys many lives. Do you not think it a pity that such great quantities of good corn and other grains should be wasted in this way when they might be employed for a useful purpose? ~15. The Alcohol Family.~--Scientists tell us that there are several different kinds of alcohol. Naphtha is a strong-smelling liquid sometimes used by painters to thin their paint and make it dry quickly. It does not have the same odor as alcohol, but it looks and acts very much like it. It will burn as alcohol does. It kills animals and plants. It will make a person drunk if he takes a sufficient quantity of it. Indeed, it is so like alcohol that it really is a kind of alcohol. ~16.~ There are also other kinds of alcohol. Fusel-oil, a deadly poison, is an alcohol. A very small amount of this alcohol will make a person very drunk. Fusel-oil is found in bad whiskey. (All whiskey is bad, but some kinds are worse than others.) This is why such whiskey makes men so furiously drunk. It also causes speedy death in those who use it frequently. There are still other kinds of alcohol, some of which are even worse than fusel-oil. So you see this is a very bad family. ~17.~ Like most other bad families, this alcohol family has many bad relations. You have heard of carbolic acid, a powerful poison. This is one of the relatives of the alcohol family. Creosote is another poisonous substance closely related to alcohol. Ether and chloroform, by which people are made insensible during surgical operations, are also relatives of alcohol. They are, in fact, made from alcohol. These substances, although really useful, are very poisonous and dangerous. Do you not think it will be very wise and prudent for you to have nothing to do with alcohol in any form, even wine, beer, or cider, since it belongs to such a bad family and has so many bad relations? ~18.~ Some persons think that they will suffer no harm if they take only wine or beer, or perhaps hard cider. This is a great mistake. A person may get drunk on any of these drinks if a sufficient amount be taken. Besides, boys who use wine, beer, or cider, rarely fail to become fond of stronger liquors. A great many men who have died drunkards began with cider. Cider begins to ferment within a day or two after it is made, and becomes stronger in alcohol all the time for many months. ~19. "Bitters."~--There are other liquids not called "drinks" which contain alcohol. "Bitters" usually contain more alcohol than is found in ale or wine, and sometimes more than in the strongest whiskey. "Jamaica ginger" is almost pure alcohol. Hence, it is often as harmful for a person to use these medicines freely as to use alcoholic liquors in any other form. ~20.~ Alcoholic liquors of all kinds are often adulterated. That is, they contain other poisons besides alcohol. In consequence of this, they may become even more harmful than when pure; but this does not make it safe to use even pure liquor. Alcohol is itself more harmful than the other drugs usually added in adulteration. It is important that you should know this, for many people think they will not suffer much harm from the use of alcohol if they are careful to obtain pure liquors. ~21. Some Experiments.~--How many of you remember what you have learned in previous lessons about the poisonous effects of alcohol? Do people ever die at once from its effects? Only a short time ago a man made a bet that he could take five drinks of whiskey in five seconds. He dropped dead when he had swallowed the fourth glass. No one ever suffered such an effect from taking water or milk or any other good food or drink. ~22.~ A man once made an experiment by mistake. He was carrying some alcohol across a lawn. He accidentally spilled some upon the grass. The next day he found the grass as dead and brown as though it had been scorched by fire. ~23.~ Mr. Darwin, the great naturalist, once made a curious experiment. He took a little plant with three healthy green leaves, and shut it up under a glass jar where there was a tea-spoonful of alcohol. The alcohol was in a dish by itself, so it did not touch the plant; but the vapor of the alcohol mixed with the air in the jar so that the plant had to breathe it. In less than half an hour he took the plant out. Its leaves were faded and somewhat shrivelled. The next morning it appeared to be dead. Do you suppose the odor of milk or meat, or of any good food, would affect a plant like that? Animals shut up with alcohol die in just the same way. ~24. A Drunken Plant.~--How many of you remember about a curious plant that catches flies? Do you remember its name? What does the Venus's fly-trap do with the flies after it catches them? Do you say that it eats them? Really this is what it does, for it dissolves and absorbs them. In other words, it digests them. This is just what our stomachs do to the food we eat. ~25.~ A few years ago Mr. Darwin thought that he would see what effect alcohol would have upon the digestion of a plant. So he put a fly-catching plant in a jar with some alcohol for just five minutes. The alcohol did not touch the plant, because the jar was only wet with the alcohol on the inside. When he took the plant out, he found that it could not catch flies, and that its digestion was spoiled so that it could not even digest very tender bits of meat which were placed on its leaves. The plant was drunk. ~26.~ Mr. Darwin tried a great many experiments with various poisons, and found that the plants were affected in much the same way by ether and chloroform, and also by nicotine, the poisonous oil of tobacco. Sugar, milk, and other foods had no such effect. This does not look much as though alcohol would help digestion; does it? ~27. Effects of Alcohol on Digestion.~--Dr. Roberts, a very eminent English scientist, made many experiments, a few years ago, to ascertain positively about the effect of alcohol upon digestion. He concluded that alcohol, even in small doses, delays digestion. This is quite contrary to the belief of very many people, who suppose that wine, cider, or stronger liquors aid digestion. The use of alcohol in the form of beer or other alcoholic drinks is often a cause of serious disease of the stomach and other digestive organs. ~28. Effects of Alcohol on Animal Heat.~--A large part of the food we eat is used in keeping our bodies warm. Most of the starch, sugar, and fat in our food serves the body as a sort of fuel. It is by this means that the body is kept always at about the same temperature, which is just a little less than one hundred degrees. This is why we need more food in very cold weather than in very warm weather. ~29.~ When a person takes alcohol, it is found that instead of being made warmer by it, he is not so warm as before. He feels warmer, but if his temperature be ascertained by means of a thermometer placed in his mouth, it is found that he is really colder. The more alcohol a person takes the colder he becomes. If alcohol were good food would we expect this to be the case? It is probably true that the alcohol does make a little heat, but at the same time it causes us to lose much more heat than it makes. The outside of the body is not so warm as the inside. This is because the warm blood in the blood-vessels of the skin is cooled more rapidly than the blood in the interior of the body. The effect of alcohol is to cause the blood-vessels of the outside of the body to become much enlarged. This is why the face becomes flushed. A larger amount of warm blood is brought from the inside of the body to the outside, where it is cooled very rapidly; and thus the body loses heat, instead of gaining it, under the influence of alcohol. This is not true of any proper food substance. ~30. Alcohol in the Polar Regions.~--Experience teaches the same thing as science respecting the effect of alcohol. Captain Ross, Dr. Kane, Captain Parry, Captain Hall, Lieutenant Greely, and many other famous explorers who have spent long months amid the ice and snow and intense cold of the countries near the North Pole, all say that alcohol does not warm a man when he is cold, and does not keep him from getting cold. Indeed, alcohol is considered so dangerous in these cold regions that no Arctic explorer at the present time could be induced to use it. The Hudson Bay Company do not allow the men who work for them to use any kind of alcoholic liquors. Alcohol is a great deceiver, is it not? It makes a man think he is warmer, when he is really colder. Many men are frozen to death while drunk. ~31. Alcohol in Hot Regions.~--Bruce, Livingstone, and Stanley, and all great African travellers, condemn the use of alcohol in that hot country as well as elsewhere. The Yuma Indians, who live in Arizona and New Mexico, where the weather is sometimes much hotter than we ever know it here, have made a law of their own against the use of liquor. If one of the tribe becomes drunk, he is severely punished. This law they have made because of the evil effects of liquor which they noticed among the members of their tribe who used to become intoxicated. Do you not think that a very wise thing for Indians to do? ~32. Sunstroke.~--Do you know what sunstroke is? If you do not, your parents or teacher will tell yow that persons exposed to the heat of the sun on a hot summer day are sometimes overcome by it. They become weak, giddy, or insensible, and not infrequently die. Scores of people are sometimes stricken down in a single day in some of our large cities. It may occur to you that if alcohol cools the body, it would be a good thing for a person to take to prevent or relieve an attack of sunstroke. On the contrary, it is found that those who use alcoholic drinks are much more liable to sunstroke than others. This is on account of the poisonous effects of the alcohol upon the nerves. No doctor would think of giving alcohol in any form to a man suffering with sunstroke. ~33. Effects of Alcohol upon the Tissues.~--Here are two interesting experiments which your teacher or parents can make for you. _Experiment 1._ Place a piece of tender beefsteak in a saucer and cover it with alcohol. Put it away over night. In the morning the beefsteak will be found to be shrunken, dried, and almost as tough as a piece of leather. This shows the effect of alcohol upon the tissues, which are essentially like those of lower animals. _Experiment 2._ Break an egg into a half glassful of alcohol. Stir the egg and alcohol together for a few minutes. Soon you will see that the egg begins to harden and look just as though it had been boiled. ~34.~ This is the effect of strong alcohol. The alcohol of alcoholic drinks has water and other things mixed with it, so that it does not act so quickly nor so severely as pure alcohol; but the effect is essentially the same in character. It is partly in this way that the brain, nerves, muscles, and other tissues of drinking men and women become diseased. Eminent physicians tell us that a large share of the unfortunate persons who are shut up in insane asylums are brought there by alcohol. Is it not a dreadful thing that one's mind should be thus ruined by a useless and harmful practice? SUMMARY. 1. Alcohol is produced by fermentation, and obtained by distillation. It will burn like kerosene oil and other burning fluids. 2. The vapor of alcohol will burn and will sometimes explode. 3. Alcohol may be separated from beer and other fermented liquids by boiling. 4. Brandy is distilled from fermented fruit juice, whiskey and gin from beer or fermented grains, rum from fermented molasses. 5. Alcohol is the result of a sort of decay, and much good food is destroyed in producing it. 6. Besides ordinary alcohol, there are several other kinds. Naphtha and fusel-oil are alcohols. 7. All the members of the alcohol family are poisons; all will burn, and all will intoxicate. The alcohol family have several bad relations, among which are carbolic acid, ether, and chloroform. 8. Cider, beer, and wine are harmful and dangerous as well as strong liquors. "Bitters" often contain as much alcohol as the strongest liquors, and sometimes more. 9. Alcoholic liquors are sometimes adulterated, but they usually contain no poison worse than alcohol. Pure alcohol is scarcely less dangerous than that which is adulterated. 10. Death sometimes occurs almost instantly from taking strong liquors. 11. Alcohol will kill grass and other plants, if poured upon them or about their roots. 12. Mr. Darwin proved that the vapor of alcohol will kill plants; also that plants become intoxicated by breathing the vapor of alcohol. 13. Alcohol, even in small quantities, hinders digestion. 14. Alcohol causes the body to lose heat so rapidly that it becomes cooler instead of warmer. 15. The danger of freezing to death when exposed to extreme cold is greatly increased by taking alcohol. 16. Stanley, and other African explorers, say that it is dangerous to use alcoholic drinks in hot climates. 17. In very hot weather, persons who use alcoholic drinks are more subject to sunstroke than those who do not. 18. Beefsteak soaked in alcohol becomes tough like leather. An egg placed in alcohol is hardened as though it had been boiled. 19. The effect of alcohol upon the brain, nerves, and other tissues of the body is much the same as upon the beefsteak and the egg. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW. CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN.--What is the body like? Does the body resemble anything else besides a house? How is it like a machine? Name the different parts of the body. What is anatomy? physiology? hygiene? CHAPTER II. A GENERAL VIEW OF THE BODY.--What are the main parts of the body? Name the different parts of the head; of the trunk; of each arm; of each leg. What covers the body? CHAPTER III. THE INSIDE OF THE BODY.--What is the name of the framework of the body? What is the skull? How is the back-bone formed? Name the two cavities of the trunk. What does the chest contain? the abdomen? CHAPTER IV. OUR FOODS.--Of what are our bodies made? What are foods? Where do we get our foods? Name some animal foods; some vegetable foods. What are poisons? CHAPTER V. UNHEALTHFUL FOODS.--Is the flesh of diseased animals good for food? What can you say about unripe, stale, or mouldy foods? What is adulteration of foods? What foods are most likely to be adulterated? Are pepper, mustard, and other condiments proper foods? What about tobacco? What is the effect of tobacco upon boys? CHAPTER VI. OUR DRINKS.--What is the only thing that will satisfy thirst? Why do we need water? How does water sometimes become impure? What is the effect of using impure water? What are the properties of good water? Are tea and coffee good drinks? How is alcohol made? Give familiar examples of fermentation. How are pure alcohol and strong liquors made? Is alcohol a food? Why do you think it is a poison? Do you think moderate drinking is healthful? CHAPTER VII. HOW WE DIGEST.--What is digestion? What is the digestive tube? Name the different digestive organs. How many sets of teeth has a person in his lifetime? How many teeth in each set? How many pairs of salivary glands? What do they form? What is the gullet? Describe the stomach. What is the gastric juice? How long is the intestinal canal? What fluid is formed in the intestines? Where is the liver found, and how large is it? What does the liver produce? What is the gall-bladder, and what is its use? What does the liver do besides producing bile? What and where is the pancreas? What does the pancreas do? Where is the spleen? How many important organs of digestion are there? How many digestive fluids? CHAPTER VIII. DIGESTION OF A MOUTHFUL OF BREAD.--Name the different processes of digestion [mastication, action of saliva, swallowing, action of stomach and gastric juice, action of bile, action of pancreatic juice, action of intestines and intestinal juice, absorption, liver digestion]. Describe the digestion of a mouthful of bread. Where is the food taken after it has been absorbed? What are the lacteals? What is the thoracic duct? CHAPTER IX. BAD HABITS IN EATING.--What is indigestion? Mention some of the causes of indigestion. How does eating too fast cause indigestion? Eating too much? too frequently? Irregularly? when tired? How do tea and coffee impair digestion? Why is it harmful to use iced foods and drinks? Why should we not eat pepper and other hot and irritating things? How should the teeth be cared for? How does tobacco-using affect the stomach? What dreadful disease is sometimes caused by tobacco? How does alcohol affect the gastric juice? the stomach? the liver? CHAPTER X. A DROP OF BLOOD.--What does the blood contain? How many kinds of blood corpuscles are there? What work is done for the body by each kind of corpuscles? CHAPTER XI. WHY THE HEART BEATS.--Where is the heart? Why does the heart beat? How many chambers has the heart? What are the blood-vessels? How many kinds of blood-vessels are there? Name them. What is the difference between venous blood and arterial blood? What change occurs in the blood in the lungs? What is the pulse? How much work does the heart do every twenty-four hours? What are the lymphatics? What do they contain, and what is their purpose? What are lymphatic glands? CHAPTER XII. HOW TO KEEP THE HEART AND BLOOD HEALTHY.--Name some things likely to injure the heart or the blood. What is the effect of violent exercise? of bad air? of bad food? of loss of sleep? of violent anger? What can you say about clothing? What is the effect of alcohol upon the blood? the heart? the bodily heat? What is the effect of tobacco upon the heart? the pulse? the blood? What is the effect of tea and coffee upon the heart? What is a cold? In a case of bleeding from a wound, how can you tell whether a vein or an artery is cut? How would you stop the bleeding from an artery? from a vein? How would you stop nose-bleed? CHAPTER XIII. WHY AND HOW WE BREATHE.--What happens to a lighted candle if shut up in a small, close place? to a mouse? Why is air so necessary for a burning candle and for animals? How is the heat of our bodies produced? Name the principal organs of breathing. Describe each. How do we use the lungs in breathing? How much air will a man's lungs hold? How much air do we use with each breath? What poisonous substance does the air which we breathe out contain? Will a candle burn in air which has been breathed? What happens to animals placed in such air? What change takes place in the blood as it passes through the lungs? How do plants purify the air? CHAPTER XIV. HOW TO KEEP THE LUNGS HEALTHY.--What is the thing most necessary to preserve life? Name some of the ways in which the blood becomes impure. Why is bad-smelling air dangerous to health? What are germs? Why are some diseases "catching"? Name some such diseases. What should be done with a person who has a "catching" disease? What is the effect of the breath upon the air? How much air is poisoned and made unfit to breathe by each breath? How much air do we spoil every minute? every hour? How much pure air does each person need every minute? every hour? How do we get fresh air into our houses? Why are windows and doors not good means of ventilating in cold weather? How should a room be ventilated? How should we use the lungs in breathing? What about the clothing in reference to the lungs? Why is it injurious to breathe habitually through the mouth? What is the effect of alcohol upon the lungs? What is the effect of tobacco-using upon the throat and nose? CHAPTER XV. THE SKIN AND WHAT IT DOES.--How many layers in the skin? What is each called? To what is the color of the skin due? What glands are found in the true skin? What are the nails and what is their purpose? How does the hair grow? Name the different uses of the skin? CHAPTER XVI. HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE SKIN.--What happened to the little boy who was covered with gold leaf? Why did he die? What is the effect of neglecting to keep the skin clean? What is the effect of wearing too much clothing and living in rooms which are too warm? How should the hair be cared for? the nails? What is the effect of alcohol, tobacco, and other narcotics upon the skin? CHAPTER XVII. THE KIDNEYS AND THEIR WORK.--What is the work of the kidneys? How may we keep these organs healthy? What is the effect of alcohol upon the kidneys? CHAPTER XVIII. OUR BONES AND THEIR USES.--How many bones in the body? What are the bones called when taken all together? Name the principal parts of the skeleton. Name the bones of the trunk, of the arms, of the legs. What are the uses of the bones? What is a joint? What is cartilage? By what are the bones held together? Of what are the bones largely composed? CHAPTER XIX. HOW TO KEEP THE BONES HEALTHY.--What sort of bread is best for the bones? Why? If a child tries to walk too early why are its legs likely to become crooked? What are the effects of sitting or lying in bad positions? Of wearing tight or poorly-fitting clothing? Of tight or high-heeled shoes? What injuries are likely to happen to the bones and joints by accident or rough play? CHAPTER XX. THE MUSCLES AND HOW WE USE THEM.--How many muscles in the body? Of what are the muscles composed? How are many of the muscles connected to the bones? To what are all bodily movements due? How do the muscles act? What causes the muscles to act? Do all muscles act only when we will to have them act? CHAPTER XXI. HOW TO KEEP THE MUSCLES HEALTHY.--What makes the right arm of the blacksmith stronger than the left one? How should exercise be taken? Mention some things in relation to the use of the muscles which we ought not to do, and state the reasons why. What is the effect of alcohol upon the muscles? of tobacco? of tea and coffee? CHAPTER XXII. HOW WE FEEL AND THINK.--With what part of the body do we think? How many brains does a man have? How is each brain divided? Of what is the brain largely composed? Where do the nerves begin? What is the spinal cord? Why does it cause pain to prick the finger? How many kinds of nerves are there? (_Ans._ Two; nerves of feeling and nerves of work.) Name some of the different kinds of nerves of feeling? Name some of the different kinds of work controlled by the nerves of work. Of what use to the body are the brain and nerves? How does the brain use the nerves? Of what use is the large brain? What does the little brain do? Of what use is the spinal cord? CHAPTER XXIII. HOW TO KEEP THE BRAIN AND NERVES HEALTHY.--Mention some things which we need to do to keep the brain and nerves healthy. Mention some things which we ought not to do. CHAPTER XXIV. BAD EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE BRAIN AND NERVES.--What is the effect of alcohol upon the brain and nerves? Does alcohol produce real strength? Does it produce real warmth? Does alcohol make people better or worse? What is the effect of tobacco upon the brain and nerves? Does the use of tobacco lead to other evil habits? What about the effect of opium and other narcotics? CHAPTER XXV. HOW WE HEAR, SEE, SMELL, TASTE, AND FEEL.--How many senses have we? What is the ear? Name the three parts of the ear. How do we hear? How should we treat the ear? Name the principal parts of the eye? What are found in the eyeball? How is the eyeball moved in the socket? How is the eye moistened? Of what use is the lens of the eye? Of what use is the pupil of the eye? How may we preserve the eyesight? Where are the nerves of smell located? Of what use is the sense of smell? Where are the nerves of taste found? How is the sense of taste sometimes injured or lost? What do we detect with the sense of taste? Of what use to us is the sense of taste? With what sense do we feel objects? In what parts of the body is this sense most delicate? Upon what do all the special senses depend? Does anything that injures the brain and nerves also injure the special senses? What is the effect of alcohol and tobacco upon the sense of sight? How is the hearing affected by tobacco-using? The sense of smell? The sense of taste? CHAPTER XXVI. ALCOHOL.--How is alcohol produced? In what respect is alcohol like kerosene oil? Is alcohol a dangerous thing even if we do not drink it? How can you prove that there is alcohol in wine, beer, cider, and other fermented drinks? Can you tell by the odor of his breath when a person has been drinking? Why? Does the breath ever take fire? May alcohol be a cause? From what is brandy made? How are whiskey, gin, and rum made? Is alcohol a result of growth, like fruits and grains, or of decay? Is there more than one kind of alcohol? Mention some of the members of the alcohol family. In what ways are the members of this family alike? Name some of the bad relations. Are cider and beer, as well as whiskey, dangerous? Why? Mention some other things, besides drinks, which contain alcohol. Are alcoholic drinks adulterated? Is pure alcohol safe? Is instant death ever produced by alcohol? Will alcohol kill plants? Describe Mr. Darwin's experiment which proved this. Can plants be made drunk by alcohol? Describe the experiment which proves this. What has Dr. Roberts proven concerning the influence of alcohol upon digestion? How are our bodies kept warm? Explain how alcohol makes the body cooler? Do Arctic explorers use alcohol? Why not? Does the use of alcohol prevent sunstroke? What do Stanley and Livingstone say about the use of alcohol in Africa? What is the effect of using alcohol upon meat and eggs? What is the effect of alcohol upon the brain and other tissues of the body? Does alcohol cause insanity and other diseases of the brain and nerves? FOOTNOTES: [A] More properly _Carbonic dioxid_. [B] For the sake of brevity and clearness the author has included under the term "little brain" the _medulla oblongata_ as well as the _cerebellum_. THE END. Aids to Field and Laboratory Work in Botany _Apgars' Plant Analysis._ By E.A. and A.C. APGAR. Cloth, small 4to, 124 pages 55 cents A book of blank schedules, adapted to Gray's Botanies, for pupils' use in writing and preserving brief systematic descriptions of the plants analyzed by them in field or class work. Space is allowed for descriptions of about one hundred and twenty-four plants with an alphabetical index. An analytical arrangement of botanical terms is provided, in which the words defined are illustrated by small wood cuts, which show at a glance the characteristics named in the definition. By using the Plant Analysis, pupils will become familiar with the meaning of botanical terms, and will learn how to apply these terms in botanical descriptions. _Apgar's Trees of the Northern United States_ Their Study, Description, and Determination. For the use of Schools and Private Students. By AUSTIN C. APGAR. Cloth, 12mo, 224 pages. Copiously Illustrated $1.00 This work has been prepared as an accessory to the study of Botany, and to assist and encourage teachers in introducing into their classes instruction in Nature Study. The trees of our forests, lawns, yards, orchards, streets, borders and parks afford a most favorable and fruitful field for the purposes of such study. They are real objects of nature, easily accessible, and of such a character as to admit of being studied at all seasons and in all localities. Besides, the subject is one of general and increasing interest, and one that can be taught successfully by those who have had no regular scientific training. _Copies of either of the above books will be sent, prepaid, to any address on receipt of the price by the Publishers:_ American Book Company NEW YORK · CINCINNATI · CHICAGO * * * * * STORER AND LINDSAY'S ~Elementary Manual of Chemistry~ By F.H. STORER, S.B., A.M., and W.B. LINDSAY, A.B., B.S. Cloth, 12mo, 453 pages. Illustrated. Price, $1.20 This work is the lineal descendant of the "Manual of Inorganic Chemistry" of Eliot and Storer, and the "Elementary Manual of Chemistry" of Eliot, Storer and Nichols. It is in fact the last named book thoroughly revised, rewritten and enlarged to represent the present condition of chemical knowledge and to meet the demands of American teachers for a class book on Chemistry, at once scientific in statement and clear in method. The purpose of the book is to facilitate the study and teaching of Chemistry by the experimental and inductive method. It presents the leading facts and theories of the science in such simple and concise manner that they can be readily understood and applied by the student. The book is equally valuable in the class-room and the laboratory. 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APGAR Author of "Trees of the Northern United States," etc. Cloth, 12mo, 415 pages, with numerous illustrations. Price, $2.00 The object of this book is to encourage the study of Birds by making it a pleasant and easy task. The treatment, while thoroughly scientific and accurate, is interesting and popular in form and attractive to the reader or student. It covers the following divisions and subjects: PART I. A general description of Birds and an explanation of the technical terms used by ornithologists. PART II. Classification and description of each species with Key. PART III. The study of Birds in the field, with Key for their identification. PART IV. Preparation of Bird specimens. The descriptions of the several species have been prepared with great care and present several advantages over those in other books. They are short and so expressed that they may be recalled readily while looking at the bird. They are thus especially adapted for field use. The illustrations were drawn especially for this work. Their number, scientific accuracy, and careful execution add much to the value and interest of the book. The general Key to Land and Water Birds and a very full index make the book convenient and serviceable both for the study and for field work. _Apgar's Birds of the United States will be sent, prepaid, to any address on receipt of the price by the Publishers:_ American Book Company NEW YORK · CINCINNATI · CHICAGO 
15435	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 15435-h.htm or 15435-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/4/3/15435/15435-h/15435-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/4/3/15435/15435-h.zip) Practical Work in the School Room Series. Part I OBJECT LESSONS ON THE HUMAN BODY A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City Pupils' Edition (Revised) New York: Parker P. Simmons, Successor to A. Lovell & Company 1904 AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THE PUPIL This book has been prepared to help you in learning about "the house you live in," and to teach you to take care of it, and keep it from being destroyed by two of its greatest enemies,--Alcohol and Nicotine. As you study its pages, be sure to find out the meaning of every word in them which you do not understand; for, if you let your tongue say what your mind knows nothing about, you are talking _parrot-fashion_. And do not forget that you must pay for all the knowledge you obtain, whether you are rich or poor. Nobody else can pay for you. You, your own self, must _pay attention_ with your own mind, through your own eyes and ears, _or do without knowledge_. Be wise: gain all the knowledge you can concerning everything worth knowing, and use it for the good of yourself and other people. "KNOWLEDGE IS POWER." [Illustration: A, the heart; B, the lungs; light cross lines, arteries; heavy lines, veins.] PART I. FORMULA FOR INTRODUCTORY LESSONS. 1. My body is built of bones covered with flesh and skin; the blood flows through it, all the time, from my heart. I breathe through my nose and mouth, and take the air into my lungs. 2. The parts of my body are the head, the trunk, the limbs. 3. My head. The crown of my head. The back of my head. The sides of my head. My face. My forehead. My two temples. My two eyes. My nose. My two cheeks. My mouth. My chin. My two ears. My neck. My two shoulders. My two arms. My two hands. My trunk. My back. My two sides. My chest. My two legs. My two knees. My two feet. I am sitting erect. * * * * * QUESTIONS FOR THE FORMULA. 1. Tell about your body. 2. Name the parts of the body. 3. Name the parts of the head, trunk, and limbs. * * * * * THE NOSE AND THE MOUTH. Be sure to keep your mouth closed when you are not talking or singing, especially when you are walking, running, or _asleep_. The two nostrils are outside doors, always open to admit the air, and inside of the upper part of the nose there are two other openings, through which it passes into the throat. Air which goes this way is warmed, cleansed, and moistened, but that which is breathed directly through the mouth is not so well prepared for its work in the lungs. Do not use your mouth as a box or a pin-cushion; the pin, or whatever yon have put into it, may slip into your throat and cause your death. * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE INTRODUCTORY LESSONS. Of what is the body built?--"Of bones." What covers the bones?--"Flesh." What covers the flesh?--"Skin." What flows through the body?--"Blood." Where does the blood flow from?--"The heart." When does the blood flow from the heart?--"Every time the heart beats." Show with your hand how the heart beats. When does the heart beat?--"All the time." What happens when the heart stops beating?--"We die." What do you see on the back of your hand, beneath the skin?--"Veins" What is in the veins?--"Bad blood." What are the veins?--"Pipes for the bad blood to pass through." Where do the veins carry the bad blood?--"To the heart." Where does the heart send the bad blood?--"To the lungs." What happens to the bad blood when in the lungs?--"It is made pure." What makes the bad blood pure?--"The air." How does the air get into the lungs?--"Through my nose, mouth, and windpipe." What is breathing?--"Letting the air into and out of my lungs, through my nose, mouth, and windpipe." When do you breathe?--"All the time." What do you breathe?--"Air." What do you breaths through?--"My nose, mouth, and windpipe." Where do you get the air?--"Everywhere." Where do the lungs send the pure blood?--"To the heart." Where does the heart send the pure blood?--"All through the body." How does the heart send the pure blood through the body?--"Through pipes called arteries." What kind of blood passes through the arteries?--"Pure blood." What kind of blood passes through the veins?--"Impure blood." What carries the pure blood through the body?--"The arteries." What carries the impure blood through the body?--"The veins." What makes blood?--"Food and drink." What is food?--"Anything good to eat." What is drink?--"Anything good to drink." Name some kinds of wholesome food.--"Meat, potatoes, oranges, apples, etc." Name some kinds of wholesome drink.--"Water, milk, lemonade, etc." What do you mean by wholesome food?--"Food that will make good blood." What do you mean by wholesome drink?--"Drink that will make good blood." What does the blood make?--"Bones, flesh, skin, hair, nails, and cartilage." What use is the blood to the body?--"It makes the body grow, and keeps it alive." Name some kinds of poisonous drinks.--"Rum, brandy, ale, cider, etc." What do you mean by poisonous drinks?--"Drinks which hurt or poison the body." Why do you say that rum and the other drinks you have named are poisonous?--"Because they do harm to every part of the body." Which part do they hurt most?--"The head or brain." What harm do they do to the brain?--"They make it unfit to do its work." What work does the brain do?--"Thinking." Then what harm do rum, brandy, wine, and these other drinks do to the brain?--"They make it unfit to think." What other poison do some people use?--"Tobacco." When do children use tobacco?--"When they chew tobacco; when they smoke cigars or cigarettes." How much does tobacco poison hurt children?--"More than it hurts anybody else." In what way does it hurt children?--"It keeps children from growing fast; from being strong and healthy; and from learning as well as they ought." How does it do all this mischief to children?--"It poisons their lungs, their heart and blood, and their brain." * * * * * PART II. FORMULA FOR THE PARTS AND JOINTS OF THE BODY: 1. My limbs are my two arms and my two legs. 2. My arm has two parts: my upper arm, my fore-arm; and three joints: my shoulder joint, my elbow joint, my wrist joint. 3. My hand is used in holding, throwing, catching, and feeling: the palm of my hand, the back of my hand, my fingers, my thumb, my forefinger, my middle finger, my ring finger, my little finger, my knuckles, my finger joints, my nails, the tips of my fingers, the veins, the ball of my thumb, and the lines where the flesh is bent. 4. My leg has two parts: my thigh, and my lower leg; and three joints: my hip joint, my knee joint, my ankle joint. 5. My foot is used in standing, walking, running, skating, and jumping: my instep, my toes, the sole of my foot, the ball, the hollow, the heel, my toe joints, and my toe nails, which protect my toes. * * * * * QUESTIONS FOR THE FORMULA. 1. Which are your limbs? 2. Tell about your arm. 3. Tell about your hand. 4. Tell about your leg. 5. Tell about your foot. * * * * * [Illustration: THE ELBOW JOINT. (A hinge joint.)] [Illustration: THE HIP JOINT. (A ball-and-socket joint.)] Some joints, as those of the skull, are immovable; some, as those of the spine, may be moved a little; and others more or less freely, as those of the limbs. In machines, the parts which move upon each other need to be oiled, to keep them from wearing out; but the joints of our bodies oil themselves with a thin fluid, called _synovia_. This fluid resembles the white of an egg, and comes from a smooth lining inside of the joints. The ends of the bones which form joints are covered by gristle or _cartilage_, and are fastened together by very strong, silvery white bands, called _ligaments_. A sprain is caused by overstretching or tearing some of these ligaments. * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE LIMBS AND JOINTS OF THE BODY. What is the trunk of your body?--"All the body but the head and limbs." Which are your limbs?--"My two arms and my two legs." How many limbs have you?--"Four." How many parts has your arm?--"Two parts: my upper arm and my fore-arm." How many parts has your leg?--"Two parts: my thigh and my lower leg." How many joints has your arm?--"Three joints: my shoulder joint, my elbow joint, my wrist joint." How many joints has your leg?--"Three joints: my hip joint, my knee joint, my ankle joint." What are joints?--"Bending places." How many kinds of joints have you?--"Two: hinge joints, and ball-and-socket joints." What kind of a joint is the shoulder joint?--"A ball-and-socket joint." Why do you call the shoulder joint a ball-and-socket joint?--"Because at the shoulder the arm may move in any direction." Tell how the shoulder joint is made.--"The upper end of the bone of the upper arm is rounded and fastened in a hollow place called a socket." Which of the joints of the arm and hand are hinge joints?--"The elbow joint, the wrist joint, the thumb joint, the finger joints." Which of the joints of the leg and foot are hinge joints?--"The knee joint, the ankle joint, the toe joint." Which of the joints of the leg is a ball-and-socket joint?--"The hip joint." Where is the heel?--"At the back part of the foot." Where is the ball of the foot?--"On the sole of the foot, behind the great toe." Where is the hollow of the foot?--"In the middle of the sole of the foot." Where is the sole of the foot?--"On the bottom of the foot." Where is the instep?--"Between the ankle joint and the toes." Where is the lower leg?--"Between the knee joint and the ankle joint." Where is the thigh?--"Between the hip joint and the knee joint." Where is the upper arm?--"Between the shoulder joint and the elbow joint." Where is the fore-arm?--"Between the elbow joint and the wrist joint." Where are the toe joints?--"Between the parts of the toes." Where are the finger joints?--"Between the parts of the fingers." Where is the ankle joint?--"Between the lower leg and the foot." Where is the knee joint?--"Between the thigh and the lower leg." Where is the hip joint?--"Between the trunk and the thigh." Where is the wrist joint?--"Between the fore-arm and the hand." Where is the elbow joint?--"Between the upper arm and the fore-arm." Where is the shoulder joint?--"Between the trunk and the upper arm." Where are the tips of the fingers?--"At the ends of the fingers." Where is the ball of the thumb?--"On the palm of the hand, below the thumb." Where is the palm of the hand?--"On the inside of the hand, between the wrist and fingers." * * * * * [Illustration: THE SKELETON.] 1. The skull. 2. The spine. 3. The ribs. 4. The breastbone. 5. The shoulder blades. 6. The collar bones. 7. The bone of the upper arm. 8. The bones of the forearm. 9. The bones of the wrist. 10. The bones of the fingers. 11. The bones of the thigh. 12. The bones of the lower leg. 13. The bones of the ankle. 14. The bones of the toes. 15. The kneepan. 1. The skull. 2. The spine. 3. The ribs. 4. The breastbone. 5. The shoulder blades. 6. The collar bones. 7. The bone of the upper arm. 8. The bones of the forearm. 9. The bones of the wrist. 10. The bones of the fingers. 11. The bones of the thigh. 12. The bones of the lower leg. 13. The bones of the ankle. 14. The bones of the toes. 15. The kneepan. * * * * * PART III. FORMULA FOR THE LESSON ON THE BONES OF THE BODY. 1. My bones are hard; they make my body strong. There are about two hundred bones in my body. 2. The bones of my head are my skull and my lower jaw; my face has fourteen bones; my ear has four small bones; at the root of my tongue is one bone. 3. The bones of my trunk are my spine, my ribs, my breastbone, my two shoulder blades, and my two collar bones. 4. My upper arm has one bone; my fore-arm has two bones; my wrist has eight bones; from my wrist to my knuckles are five bones; my thumb has two bones; each finger has three bones, making nineteen bones in my hand. 5. My thigh has one bone; my lower leg has two bones; my knee-pan is the cap which covers and protects my knee; in my foot, near my heel, are seven bones; in the middle of my foot are five bones; my great toe has two bones; each of my other toes has three bones; making twenty-six bones in my foot. * * * * * QUESTIONS FOR THE FORMULA. 1. Tell about your bones. 2. Tell about the bones of the head. 3. Tell about the bones of the trunk. 4. Tell about the bones of the arm and hand, beginning with the upper arm. 5. Count the bones of the hand. 6. Tell about the bones of the leg and foot, beginning with the thigh. * * * * * [Illustration: FIG. A. 1, 2, 3, 4, the upper row of the bones of the wrist. 5, 6, 7, 8, the lower row of the bones of the wrist. 9, 10, the lower ends of the bones of the fore-arm. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, the upper ends of the bones of the palm of the hand. The bones of the wrist are so firmly fastened together that they are seldom put out of place. The upper row joins with the bones of the fore-arm, the lower with those of the palm of the hand.] [Illustration: FIG. B. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, the bones of the palm of the hand. 6, 7, the bones of the thumb. 8, 9, 10, the bones of the first or fore-finger. 11, 12, 13, the bones of the second or middle finger. 14, 15, 16, the bones of the third or ring finger. 17, 18, 19, the bones of the fourth or little finger.] * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE BONES. How many bones in the body?--"About two hundred." Of what use are the bones to the body?--"They make the body strong; they form the framework of the body." How many bones in the face?--"Fourteen." How many bones in the ear?--"Four small bones." How many bones at the root of the tongue?--"One." How many bones in the upper arm?--"One." How many bones in the fore-arm?--"Two." How many bones between the wrist and the knuckles?--"Five." How many bones in the thumb?--"Two." How many bones in each of the fingers?--"Three." How many bones in the whole hand?--"Nineteen." How many bones in the hand and arm?--"Thirty." How many bones in the thigh?--"One long bone." How many bones in the lower leg?--"Two." How many bones in the heel?--"Seven." How many bones in the middle of the foot?--"Five." How many bones in the great toe?--"Two." How many bones in each of the other toes?--"Three." How many bones in the whole foot?--"Twenty-six." How many bones in the foot and leg?--"Thirty." How many bones in two arms and two hands?--"Sixty." How many bones in two legs and two feet?--"Sixty." How many bones in the limbs?--"One hundred and twenty." Where is the knee-pan?--"Over the knee joint." Where is the longest bone of the body?--"In the thigh." Where are the smallest bones of the body?--"In the ear." Point to the collar bones. Point to the shoulder blades. How many collar bones have you?--"Two." How many shoulder blades have you?--"Two." Point to the spine. Point to the breastbone. Point to the skull. * * * * * EXERCISE FOR COUNTING THE BONES OF THE HAND. FOR PRIMARY CLASSES. I. 1. Close both hands. 2. Raise the forefinger of the right hand, as the index or pointing finger. 3. Place the index finger upon the lower thumb joint of the left hand. 4. Draw the index finger down to the wrist, over the bone between the thumb knuckle and the wrist, and count "One." 5. Place the index finger on the knuckle of the first finger. 6. Draw the index finger down to the wrist, over the bone leading from the first finger to the wrist, and count "Two." 7. So on, for each of the three other bones of the hand. Repeat until no mistake is made in touching or counting. II. 1. Raise the thumb, and place the index finger of the right hand on the middle of the upper part of the thumb for bone "Six"; then 2. On the lower part of the thumb for bone "Seven." Repeat from the beginning, until the children can touch and count each bone properly. III. 1. Keep the thumb erect; raise the first finger of the left hand. 2. Place the index finger on the bone between the tip and the first joint of the first finger for bone "Eight." 3. Between the first and middle joint for bone "Nine." 4. Between the middle and third joint for bone "Ten." Review, from the beginning, until the class can touch and count every bone as directed. IV. 1. Keep the thumb and forefinger erect; raise the second finger and touch, as in the lesson on the first finger bones, "Eleven," "Twelve," and "Thirteen." Review. 2. Proceed in the same manner for the third and fourth fingers, always beginning with the bone nearest the tip of the finger, and touching that at the lowest part last. If the exercise has been properly performed, every child will say "Nineteen" as its index finger touches the lowest bone of the little finger, and all the fingers of every left hand will be outspread. * * * * * THE BONES OF THE HEAD: Skull 8 Face, including the lower jaw 14 Tongue 1 Ears 8 ---- 31 OF THE TRUNK: Spine 24 Ribs 24 Breastbone 8 Shoulder blades 2 Collar bones 2 ---- 60 OF THE UPPER LIMBS: Upper arms 1 x 2 = 2 Fore-arms 2 x 2 = 4 Wrists 8 x 2 = 16 Hands 19 x 2 = 38 ---- 60 OF THE LOWER LIMBS: Thighs 1 x 2 = 2 Knee-pans 1 x 2 = 2 Lower legs 2 x 2 = 4 Feet 26 x 2 = 52 ---- 60 Total, 211, not including the teeth.[1] We teach the children to say "about two hundred," because there is not always the same number of bones in the body. In some parts two or three bones unite and form one bone. For example: the breastbone of a child is made up of eight pieces; some of these unite as it becomes older, so that when fully grown it has but three pieces in this bone. [1] The teeth are not bone, but a kind of soft, bone-like substance, called _dentine_. Common ivory is dentine. * * * * * PART IV. FORMULAS FOR THE LESSONS ON THE ORGANS OF SENSE. 1. _The Eyes._--My eyes are to see with. My eye is like a ball in a deep, bony socket. The black circle in the centre is the pupil or window of my eye; the colored ring is the iris or curtain; the white part is the eyeball. My upper and lower eyelids cover and protect my eyes. My eyebrows are for beauty, and keep the perspiration from rolling into my eyes. My eyes are washed by teardrops every time I wink my eyelids. 2. _The Ears._--My ears are to hear with: the rim of my ear, the flap of my ear, the drum of my ear. The drum of my ear is protected by a fence of short, stiff hairs, and by a bitter wax about the roots of these hairs. 3. _The Nose._--My nose is to smell and breathe with; it is in the middle of my face: my two nostrils, the bridge of my nose, the cartilage, the tip of my nose. My nostrils lead to a passage back of my mouth through which I breathe. The cartilage separates my nose into two parts. 4. _The Mouth._--My mouth is to speak, eat, and breathe through: my upper lip, my lower lip. In my mouth are: my tongue, my lower teeth, my upper teeth, my lower teeth, and my upper and lower jaws, covered with flesh called _gum_. 5. _The Teeth._--My teeth are used in eating and talking. My teeth are made of a soft kind of bone, covered with enamel. I have three kinds of teeth: cutting teeth, tearing teeth, grinding teeth. A young child has twenty teeth, ten in each jaw. A grown person has thirty-two teeth, sixteen in each jaw. 6. To preserve my teeth: I must keep them clean. I must not scratch the enamel. I must not eat or drink anything very hot or very cold. I must not use them for scissors or nut-crackers. I must not burn them with tobacco or cigars. 7. _About Eating._--When I eat I move my lower jaw only. My tongue brings the food between my teeth, the cutters cut it, the tearers tear it, the grinders grind it, the saliva moistens it, and my tongue helps me to swallow it. * * * * * QUESTIONS FOR THE FORMULAS. 1. Tell about your eyes. 2. Tell about your ears. 3. Tell about your nose. 4. Tell about your mouth. 5. Tell about your teeth. 6. What is necessary if you would preserve your teeth? 7. Tell about eating. * * * * * [Illustration 1, the muscle which raises the upper eyelid. 2, the upper oblique muscle. 7, the lower oblique muscle. The oblique muscles roll the eye inward and downward. 4, 5, 6, three of the _four_ straight muscles. Two of the straight muscles roll the eye up and down; the other two move it right and left. 3, the pulley through which the upper oblique muscle plays.] * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE DESCRIPTION OF THE EYES. Of what shape is the eye?--"It is round like a ball." In what is it placed?--"In a deep, bony socket." What is a socket?--"A hollow place." Why is the eye placed in a deep, bony socket?--"To keep it from getting hurt." Why would not an eye shaped like a cube do for us?--"It would not look well; it could not be rolled about." Why would not an eye shaped like a cone or cylinder do for us?--"It could not be rolled in every direction." Why is the ball-shape best for the eye?--"It looks best, and may be rolled in every direction." What part of the eye do we see through?--"The black spot in the centre." What is it called?--"The pupil." What shape is the pupil?--"Round like a circle." What color is the pupil?--"Black." Of what use is the pupil?--"To let light into the eye; to see through." What is around the pupil?--"A colored ring." What is the colored ring called?--"The iris." Of what use is the iris?--"It acts like a curtain to the eye; it lets in and keeps out light from the pupil." Of what shape is the iris?--"Round like a ring." Of what color is the iris?--"Sometimes blue, sometimes brown, sometimes gray." Does the iris always appear the same in size?--"It does not: sometimes it looks large, sometimes small." When is it the largest?--"When it rolls over the pupil to keep out the strong light." When is it the smallest?--"When it rolls backward, to let light into the pupil." When is the pupil the largest?--"When we are in the dark." When is the pupil the smallest?--"When we are in a bright light." What color is the eyeball?--"White." What shape is the eyeball?--"Round like a ball." How is the eyeball held in its socket?--"By cords made of flesh." Where are the eyebrows?--"Above the eyelids." Of what use are the eyebrows?--"To keep the perspiration from rolling into the eyes." Where are the eyelids?--"Over the eyes." Of what use are they?--"They cover the eyes and keep them from getting hurt." Where are the eyelashes?--"On the edges of the eyelids." Of what use are the tears?--"They keep the eyes clean; they make the eyes move easily in their sockets." Where are the tears made?--"Back of the eyebrows." When do the tears wash the eyes?--"Every time we wink our eyelids." * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE EARS. Name the parts of the ear. Where are your ears?--"On the sides of my head." Which is the rim of the ear?--"The edge of the ear." Which is the flap of the ear?--"The lower part of the ear." Where is the drum of the ear?--"Inside of the ear." How is the drum protected?--"By stiff hairs and a bitter wax at its entrance." * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE NOSE. Where is the nose?--"In the middle of the face." Name the parts of the nose. Where is the tip of the nose?--"At the end of the nose." Where is the bridge of the nose?--"At the top of the nose, between the eyes." Where is the cartilage?--"In the middle of the inside of the nose." Of what use is the nose?--"To smell and breathe through." What are the nostrils?--"The openings inside of the nose." Of what use are the nostrils?--"To let the air into and out of the opening back of the mouth." * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE MOUTH, ETC. Where is the mouth?--"In the lower part of the face, between the nose and the chin." Of what use is the mouth?--"To breathe, speak, and eat through." What is in the mouth?--"My tongue, my upper teeth, my lower teeth, and my upper and lower jaws." What covers the jaws?--"Red flesh, called _gum_." Of what are the jaws composed?--"Of bones." Of what are the teeth made?--"Of dentine, covered with enamel." See note, p. 19. What is enamel?--"A smooth, white substance, harder than bone." Of what use are the teeth?--"To eat and talk with." What kinds of teeth have you?--"Cutting teeth, tearing teeth, grinding teeth." Describe the cutting teeth.--"The cutting teeth have broad and flat edges." Describe the tearing teeth.--"The tearing teeth are sharp and pointed." Describe the grinding teeth.--"The grinding teeth are the thick, back teeth." Which jaw is moved in eating?--"The lower jaw." What work do the teeth perform?--"They cut, tear, and grind the food." How many teeth has a child in a full set?--"Twenty teeth: ten in each jaw." How many teeth has a grown person in a full set?--"Thirty-two: sixteen in each jaw." What does the tongue do in eating?--"It rolls the food between the teeth, and helps in swallowing." What is the saliva?--"A kind of liquid, sometimes called _spit_." Of what use is it in eating?--"It wets and softens the food." What do you mean by preserve?--"To keep from injury." What do you mean by injury?--"Hurt." How do you preserve your teeth? See Formula. How do very hot or very cold drinks hurt the teeth?--"They crack the enamel." What happens if the enamel is cracked?--"The teeth decay." Then what must you do to preserve your teeth?--"I must try to keep the enamel from being cracked or injured in any way." * * * * * PART V. FORMULA FOR DESCRIPTION OF THE BONES. 1. My skull is formed of several bones united, like two saws with their toothed edges hooked into each other. 2. My spine extends from the base of the skull behind, down the middle of my back. It is composed of twenty-four short bones, piled one upon the other, with cartilage between them. These bones are fastened together, forming an upright and flexible column, which makes me erect and graceful. 3. My ribs are curved, strong, and light; there are twenty-four of them, twelve on each side; they are fastened at the back to my spine, in front to my breastbone, forming a hollow place for my heart, lungs, and stomach. 4. My shoulder blades are flat, thin, and like a triangle in shape; they are for my arms to rest upon. 5. My collar bones are fastened to my shoulder blades and my breastbone; they keep my arms from sliding too far forward. 6. The bones of old people are hard and brittle; those of children soft and flexible; so I must sit and stand erect, that mine may not be bent out of shape. I must not wear tight clothing, or do anything that will crowd them out of their places. 7. My bones are made from my food, after it has been changed into blood; so I must be careful to eat good, wholesome food, that they may be strong and healthy. 8. I must not breathe impure air, because impure air makes bad blood, and bad blood makes poor bones. 9. The body of every person is changing all the time, because the skin, flesh, and bones are always wearing out, and the blood is always repairing and building them again. * * * * * QUESTIONS FOR THE FORMULA. 1. Tell about the skull. 2. Tell about the spine. 3. Tell about the ribs. 4. Tell about the shoulder blades. 5. Tell about the collar bones. 6. Tell about the difference between the bones of old people and those of children. 7. Of what are your bones made? 8. If you wish your bones to be strong, why should you not breathe impure air? 9. What have you learned about the change which is always taking place in the body? * * * * * [Illustration: THE JOINTS OF THE SKULL.] * * * * * A little girl was looking at some pictures of ladies in fashionable dresses. While admiring the beautiful styles and bright colors of the garments, she pointed to the waist of one, and exclaimed, "_That means trouble_." The waist was too small for a grown person, and could only have been made so by _tight-lacing_. The child had been taught that dresses, corsets, coats, vests, bands, or anything fastened tightly around the waist, press upon the ribs and crowd them out of place, preventing the heart, lungs, and other inside organs from working as they should, causing headache, dyspepsia, shortness of breath, and often ending in some incurable disease, so she knew that _tight clothing means trouble_ to the wearer. [Illustration: FIG. 1. Deformed by tight-lacing.] [Illustration: FIG. 2. A natural, well-shaped chest.] * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE DESCRIPTION OF THE BONES. Point to the skull. Of what is it made?--"Several bones united together." How are the skull bones united?--"Like two saws with their toothed edges hooked into each other." What do you mean by _toothed_?--"Having points, like teeth." What covers the skull?--"Flesh, skin, and hair." Of what use is the skull?--"It protects the brain." What is the brain?--"That part of my body in which the thinking is done." Where is the spine?--"It extends from the base of my skull behind, down the middle of my back." What do you mean by _extends_?--"Goes from." What do you mean by _base_?--"The lower part of anything." Of what is the spine made?--"Of about twenty-four short bones, with cartilage between them." What is cartilage?--"An elastic substance, harder than flesh, but softer than bone." How are the bones of the spine placed?--"They are piled one upon the other." What do you mean by _forming_?--"Making." What do you mean by _upright_?--"In a vertical position." What do you mean by _flexible_?--"Easily bent." What do you mean by _column_?--"A pillar." What do you mean by _erect_?--"In a vertical position." Why is cartilage placed between the bones of the spine?--"To make the spine flexible; to keep the brain from injury when we walk or run." What do you mean by _elastic_?--"Springing back after having been stretched, squeezed, twisted, or bent." Tell about your ribs.--"My ribs are curved, strong, and light." Where are your ribs?--"On each side of my trunk." How many ribs have you?--"Twenty-four; twelve on each side." How are your ribs fastened?--"At the back to my spine; in front to my breastbone." What do your ribs form?--"A hollow place for my heart, lungs, and stomach." Where are your shoulder blades?--"In the upper part of my back." What shape are they?--"Flat, thin, and like a triangle." Of what use are your shoulder blades?--"For my arms to rest upon." Point to your collar bones. Where are they fastened?--"To my shoulder blades and my breastbone." Of what use are your collar bones?--"They keep my arms from sliding too far forward." Of what are your bones made?--"Of food after it has been changed into blood." Why should you eat wholesome food?--"That my bones may be strong and healthy." How does impure air hurt the bones?--"Impure air makes bad blood, and bad blood makes poor bones." Why should you sit and stand erect?--"Because my bones are easily bent out of shape; if I do not sit and stand erect, they will grow crooked." Why is it wrong to wear tight clothing?--"Because tight clothing crowds the bones out of shape." Whose bones are the more brittle, those of a child, or those of an old person?--"Those of an old person." What do you mean by _brittle_?--"Easily broken." Whose are the more flexible?--"Those of a child." What do you mean by _flexible_?--"Easily bent." What repairs the worn out bones, flesh, and skin of the body?--"The blood." What do you mean by _repairs_?--"Mends." What causes the bones, flesh, and skin of your body to change often?--"The bones, flesh, and skin are always wearing out, and the blood is always building and repairing them again." What are alcoholic liquors?--"Liquors which have alcohol in them." Name some alcoholic liquors.--"Beer, wine, rum, etc." Whose bones mend the more easily when broken, the bones of those who drink alcoholic liquors, or those of the people who do not use these poisons?--"The bones of those who _do not_ use alcoholic liquors." What other poison hurts the bones?--"Tobacco." How do alcohol and tobacco hurt the bones?--"They make bad blood, and bad blood makes poor bones." * * * * * [Illustration: FRONT VIEW OF THE MUSCLES OF THE BODY.] * * * * * PART VI. FORMULA FOR THE LESSON ON THE MUSCLES. 1. Muscles are the red, elastic bands and bundles of thread like substance, called flesh, which cover the bones and make the eyeballs, the eyelids, the tongue, the heart, the lungs, and various other parts of the body. 2. There are about four hundred and fifty muscles in my body. 3. The work of the muscles is to support and move my bones, and different parts of the body. 4. The muscles may be named the muscles of my head, the muscles of my trunk, the muscles of my limbs. 5. The muscles of my head cover and move the parts of my head and face. The muscles of my trunk cover and move the parts of my neck and trunk. The muscles of my limbs cover and mote the parts of my arms and legs. 6. Those muscles are the weakest which I use least; those muscles are the strongest which I exercise most in work or play. 7. If I would be strong and healthy, my muscles must be used, my muscles must be rested, my muscles must be supplied with good blood. I must exercise in work and play to make them strong; I must sleep, or change my kind of work or play, to give them rest, when they are tired; I must breathe pure air, take wholesome food and drink, and live in the sunlight, to supply them with good blood; I must not weaken them by using alcohol or tobacco. * * * * * QUESTIONS FOR THE FORMULA. 1. Tell about the muscles. 2. How many muscles have you in your body? 3. Of what use are the muscles? 4. How may the muscles be named? 5. Tell about the muscles of the head, trunk, and limbs. 6. Which muscles are the weakest, and which are the strongest? 7. What is necessary if you would have strong and healthy muscles? * * * * * CLASSES AND WORK OF THE MUSCLES. The muscles are divided into two great classes: those which we may move as we choose, called _voluntary_ muscles, and those over which we have no power, called _involuntary_ muscles. Some muscles support and move the various parts of the body, others have different work to do. The heart, the great involuntary muscle, acts like an engine to drive the blood throughout the body; the lungs draw in and throw out the air in breathing; the stomach helps to churn and change food into blood; the tongue is used in speaking and eating. * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE MUSCLES. What are the muscles?--"The lean flesh of the body; bands and bundles of fleshy threads which cover the body." Of what use are the muscles to the body?--"They cover the bones; they support and move the bones and different parts of the body." Name some parts of the body which are made of muscles.--"The eyeballs, the eyelids, the tongue, the heart, the lungs." What color are the muscles?--"Red." How do the muscles move the bones?--"By shortening or lengthening themselves according to the way the bones are to be moved." Tell how the muscles move your arm at the elbow.--"The muscles in the front part of the arm shorten themselves, to draw my fore-arm toward the shoulder; when I wish to stretch out the fore-arm these muscles lengthen, while another set of muscles shorten, to draw the fore-arm away from the upper arm." What do you say about the muscles because they have the power to shorten and lengthen themselves?--"They are elastic." About how many muscles are there in your whole body?--"About four hundred and fifty." How may these be divided as you study about them?--"They may be divided into the muscles of my head, the muscles of my trunk, and the muscles of my limbs." Of what use are the muscles of your head?--"They cover and move the parts of my head and face." Of what use are the muscles of your trunk?--"They move the parts of my neck and trunk." Of what use are the muscles of your limbs?--"They move the parts of my arms and legs." How can you make your muscles strong?--"By using them." How can you make your muscles weak?--"By not using them." What is necessary to make your muscles strong and healthy?--"They must be used; they must be rested when tired; they must be supplied with pure blood." How should the muscles be used?--"They should be exercised in work or play." How may they be rested?--"I may rest my muscles by changing position; by changing my kind of work or play; or by going to sleep." Explain what you mean by changing your position.--"If I am standing, I must sit or lie down to rest them; if they are tired, because I have been sitting too long, I must rest them by standing, walking, or running." What do you mean by changing the kind of work or play?--"If, in my work or play, my arms become tired, I must do something in which my arms may rest, though other parts of my body may be in exercise." How may you help supply your muscles with good blood?--"By breathing pure air; by taking wholesome food and drink; and by living in the sunlight." How does drinking alcoholic liquors hurt the muscles?--"It makes them weak, and unfit to move the parts of the body." What wonderful muscle moves without your will?--"The heart." How does alcohol hurt the heart?--"It makes it beat too fast." How does "beating too fast" hurt the heart?--"It makes it tired, and sometimes wears it out." See Appendices on Alcohol and Tobacco. * * * * * [Illustration: THE SKIN (very highly magnified).--(From Walker's _Physiology_, 1884.)] A, arteries; V, veins; N, nerves; F, fat cells; E, the outer skin; CL, the color layer; D, the true skin; PT, a perspiratory tube; HF, a hair and hair sac; EP, muscles; SG, oil glands; TC, tactile corpuscles; CT, connective tissue. * * * * * PART VII. FORMULA FOR THE LESSON ON THE SKIN. 1. My skin covers my body. 2. It is thin, elastic, flexible, porous, and absorbent. 3. I have two skins; the inner skin is the true skin. 4. My true skin is elastic, and like a net-work of blood-vessels and nerves. My true skin is covered with a jelly-like substance which gives color to my skin. 5. My outside skin is not the same thickness over my whole body. In some parts, as on the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet, it is very thick and tough. 6. If my outside skin be destroyed, it will grow again; if the jelly-like substance be destroyed, it will re-appear; but if my true skin be destroyed, it will never be perfectly renewed. 7. More than half of the waste substance of my body passes from it through the pores of the skin, in the form of perspiration. 8. If I would have a healthy skin, I must perspire freely all the time, I must keep my body clean, I must wear clean clothing, I must breathe pure air, and live in the sunlight. * * * * * QUESTIONS FOR THE FORMULA. 1. Where is your skin? 2. Tell about the skin. 3. How many skins have you? 4. Tell about the true skin. 5. What difference is there in the thickness of your outside skin? 6. What happens if the different skins be destroyed? 7. What passes through the pores of the skin? 8. What is necessary if you would have a healthy skin? * * * * * DIRECTIONS FOR BATHING. Bathe the whole body at least twice every week. Do not bathe when tired or after a hearty meal. After bathing _rub well_ with a coarse towel. * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE SKIN. Of what use is the skin?--"It covers the muscles of the body." What can you tell about it?--"It is flexible, elastic, porous, and absorbent." Why do you say it is flexible?--"Because it is easily bent." Why do you say it is porous?--"Because it is full of little holes, or pores." Why do you say it is elastic?--"Because it will spring back after it is stretched, squeezed, twisted, or bent." Why do you say it is absorbent?--"Because it will soak up liquids." How many skins have you?--"Two; an outside skin, and an inner skin." Which is the true skin?--"The inner skin." Of what is the inner skin composed?--"Of blood-vessels and nerves." How do you know that the outer skin has no blood-vessels?--"Because if I put a pin through the outer skin the blood does not flow out, as it would if I had cut a blood-vessel." How do you know the outer skin has no nerves?--"Because if I put a pin through my outer skin it does not make me suffer pain, as it would if I had touched a nerve." What gives color to the skin?--"A jelly-like substance between the inner and the outer skin." What have you learned about the true skin?--"That it is of the same color in people of every nation." What difference is there in the thickness of the outer skin? [See Formula.] What passes through the pores of the skin? [See Formula.] What is this waste called when it comes from the surface of the skin?--"Perspiration." When does the perspiration flow through the pores of the skin?--"All the time, if the skin is healthy." Why do we not always see the perspiration which passes through the pores?--"Because it does not always form drops on the surface of the skin; it generally passes off in very fine particles." What becomes of the fine or minute portions of perspiration which pass from the body?--"Some of these portions are absorbed by the clothing; some pass into and mix with the air around us." What effect does the perspiration produce on the air and the clothing?--"It soon makes the air unfit to be breathed, and the clothing unfit to be worn." What is necessary if you would have a healthy skin? [See Formula.] Why must you wear clean clothing?--"That there may be nothing impure in the clothing for the pores of the skin to absorb." Why should you breathe pure air?--"Because air purifies the blood, and pure blood is necessary to make a healthy skin." How does drinking alcoholic liquors hurt the skin?--"It makes the blood impure, and impure blood makes unhealthy skin." In what other way does drinking these liquors hurt the skin?--"It gives the skin too much work to do." How does it give it too much work to do?--"It makes more waste substance to pass from it through the pores, in the form of perspiration." In what other way does drinking alcoholic liquors hurt the skin?--"It makes it a bad color." How does it make the skin a bad color?--"It stretches the little blood-vessels of the skin, and makes them too full of blood." See Appendix. * * * * * [Illustration: THE HEART.] A, the right ventricle; B, the left ventricle; C, the right auricle D, the left auricle; E, the aorta; F, the pulmonary artery. * * * * * PART VIII. FORMULA FOR THE LESSON ON THE HEART AND THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. 1. My heart is shaped like a cone, and placed in my chest near my breastbone, with its apex pointing downward to my left side. It beats about seventy times a minute, sending out about two ounces of blood at every beat. 2. The blood when pure is of a bright red color; it is a liquid made from food and drink. 3. It passes from my heart to all parts of my body, through pipes called arteries; these arteries spread out through the body like branches from a tree. 4. As the blood flows from the heart, through the arteries, it gives nourishment to every part of the body, and carries away the impurities it meets, which makes it black and thick; when it comes through the veins, back to the heart, it is not fit to be used, so it goes to the lungs to be purified by the fresh air; then it returns to the heart to be sent again throughout the body; this happens once in from three to eight minutes, and is called the circulation of the blood. 7. If I would be healthy, my blood must be pure and circulate freely all the time. 8. It will not circulate freely, if I wear tight clothing, if I do not exercise in work or play, if I do not keep my body warm. 9. It will be impure, if I breathe bad air, if I eat unwholesome food, if I drink alcoholic liquors, if I snuff, smoke, or chew tobacco. * * * * * QUESTIONS FOR THE FORMULA. 1. Tell about the heart and where it is placed. 2. Tell about the blood and of what it is made. 3. Where does the good blood pass after it is sent out from the heart? 4. Tell what the blood does as it flows through the body. 5. What is this flowing of the blood to and from the heart called? 6. How often does it happen? 7. What is necessary if you would have pure blood? 8. When will the blood not circulate freely? 9. When will the blood be impure? * * * * * HOW TO TREAT A WOUND. If it is only a flesh-wound or slight cut, wash it with cold water and bandage it with a clean, white rag. The edges of a deep cut should be drawn together and held in place by narrow strips of adhesive plaster, fastened across the wound from side to side. If the cut is very deep, and the blood flows very freely, send for a doctor. While you wait for him, knot a handkerchief, or suspender, or towel, in the middle, and twist it very tightly _over the cut artery, above the wound_. If a vein has been severed, twist the knotted handkerchief _below the wound_. If the blood continues to flow, tie a bandage both above and below the hurt part. * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE HEART AND THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. Of what shape is your heart?--"My heart is shaped like a cone." Where is it placed?--"In the chest, pointing toward my left side." What bone is it near?--"It is near my breastbone." Of what use is the heart?--"It contains the blood and sends it to the different parts of the body." How much blood is sent from the heart at each beat?--"About two ounces." What is the blood?--"A liquid made from food and drink." Of what color is the blood?--"Bright red, when pure; dark red, when impure." How does the heart send the blood through the body?--"Through pipes called arteries." What do the arteries resemble in the way they are arranged?--"The branches of a tree." What makes the blood impure?--"As the blood flows, it gives nourishment to every part of the body; this makes it poor. It also takes up the old worn-out particles; this makes it impure." Where do the arteries carry the impure blood?--"To the veins." Where do the veins carry the impure blood?--"To the heart." Where does the heart carry the impure blood?--"To the lungs." What happens to the impure blood in the lungs?--"It is made pure." What makes it pure?--"Pure air." Where do the lungs send the blood after it is made pure?--"Back to the heart." Where does the heart send the pure blood?--"Throughout the body." What is the journey of the blood to and from the heart to the different parts of the body called?--"The circulation of the blood." What is the circulation of the blood?--"The circulation of the blood is its journey from the heart to the different parts of the body, and from the different parts of the body back to the heart." How often does this circulation take place?--"Once in from three to eight minutes, according as the heart beats fast or slowly." What kind of blood is necessary to health?--"Pure blood." How should the blood circulate?--"Freely, all the time." What do you mean by freely?--"Without anything to hinder." What is necessary for the free circulation of the blood?--"I must wear clean clothing; I must exercise in work or play; I must keep my body warm." How does tight clothing hinder the free circulation of the blood?--"By pressing upon the arteries and veins; and when about the waist, causing the ribs and other parts of the body to press upon the heart." How does exercise help the free circulation of the blood?--"Exercise makes the heart beat faster, which causes the blood to more faster through the arteries and veins." Why does keeping the body warm help the circulation of the blood?--"Because the blood moves faster when it is warmest; cold chills the blood, and makes it move slowly." What harm do alcoholic liquors do to the heart?--"They make it tired, and sometimes wear it out." In what way do they make it tired?--"They make it beat too fast." Why does it beat too fast?--"Because it is hurrying to drive the alcohol out of the body." In what other way do alcoholic liquors hurt the heart?--"They produce disease in it." Tell one way by which the heart becomes diseased through alcoholic liquors?--"Alcohol softens the fibres of the muscles of the heart, and fills them with fat." What harm does this do to the heart?--"It makes it too weak to do its work, which is to pump the blood through the body." What sometimes happens when the heart is thus weakened?--"It stops beating, which causes sudden death." What harm does alcohol do to the blood?--"It uses up the water of the blood; it destroys the goodness of the red part; it makes the blood thin, impure, and unfit to do its work." See Appendices on Alcohol and Tobacco. * * * * * [Illustration: THE LUNGS.] 1, 2, the larynx, the upper part of the windpipe. 3, the windpipe, or trachea. 4, where the windpipe divides to right and left lungs. 5, the right bronchial tube. 6, the left bronchial tube. 7, outline of the right lung. 8, outline of the left lung. 9, the left lung. 10, the right lung. * * * * * PART IX. FORMULA FOR THE LESSON ON THE LUNGS AND RESPIRATION. 1. My lungs are the bellows or breathing machines of my body. 2. They are composed of a soft, fleshy substance, full of small air-cells and tubes. They are porous and spongy when healthy, but in some diseases become an almost solid mass, through which the air cannot pass. 3. I breathe by drawing the air through my windpipe, along the tubes into the cells of my lungs, swelling them out, and causing my chest to expand; then the chest contracts, and the impure vapor in my lungs is pressed out through the same tubes, windpipe, nose, and mouth, into the atmosphere. 4. I cannot live without breathing, because if the air does not go down into my lungs, the dark blood in them is not changed into pure red blood, and goes back through my body dark blood, which cannot keep me alive. 5. If I would have healthy lungs, I must breathe pure air, I must live in the sunlight, I must keep my body clean, I must wear loose clothing, I must wear clean clothing, I must sit and stand erect, I must keep all parts of my body warm, I must not change my winter clothing too early in the spring, I must avoid draughts of cool air, I must not rush into the cold when I am in a perspiration, I must not poison my lungs with alcohol or tobacco. * * * * * QUESTIONS FOR THE FORMULA. 1. What are the lungs? 2. Describe the lungs. 3. How do you breathe? 4. Why can you not live without breathing? 5. What is necessary if you would have healthy lungs? * * * * * THE AIR AND THE LUNGS. The air which enters through the nose and mouth passes into a tube of muscles and ring-like pieces of cartilage. The upper part of this tube is the voice-box or _larynx_, covered by a spoon-shaped lid which closes when we swallow; the lower part is the _trachea_, and the two parts are the windpipe. The trachea divides into two branches, _the bronchial tubes_, one for each lung. These tubes divide again and again like the branches of a tree, and end in exceedingly small sacs or bags. The air in these sacs, or air-cells, gives _oxygen_ to the blood in the tiny blood-vessels of the lungs and takes from them the poison, _carbonic-acid gas_, water, and impurities, which it carries back through the windpipe into the outside air. * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE LUNGS AND RESPIRATION. Of what are the lungs composed?--"Of a soft, fleshy substance, full of small air-cells and tubes." Of what use are the lungs?--"They are the breathing machines of the body." How do the lungs appear when healthy?--"Porous and spongy." How does the air get into the lungs?--"The air flows through the nose and mouth, into the windpipe and along the air-tubes, into the air-cells of the lungs." What does the air do in the lungs?--"It swells the lungs and causes the chest to expand." What do you mean by expand?--"To increase in size." How is the air expelled from the lungs?--"The chest contracts and sends the impure air through the tubes and windpipe, the nose and mouth, into the atmosphere." What do you mean by contracts?--"Becomes smaller." What do you mean by atmosphere?--"The air." Of what use is the air when it is in the lungs?--"It makes the blood pure." Why can you not live without breathing?--"Because, if I do not breathe, pure air cannot get into the lungs to make the bad blood pure, and I cannot live if the dark, impure blood is sent back again through my body." Why must you live in the sunlight?--"Because the sunlight helps to purify the blood and strengthen the body." Why must you wear loose clothing?--"Because tight clothing stops the circulation of the blood." Why must you avoid tight-lacing?--"Because tight-lacing crowds the ribs against the lungs, so that the lungs cannot move freely." Why should you wear clean clothing?--"That nothing impure may pass into the body through the pores of the skin." Why should you keep the body clean?--"That the pores of the skin may not be closed, but remain open to let the perspiration pass through." What has the cleanliness of the body to do with the health of the lungs?--"If the body is not kept clean, the perspiratory pores become clogged." What happens when the perspiratory pores are clogged?--"The impure particles which should pass through them stay in the body, and cause disease in the lungs or other parts." Why should you sit and stand erect?--"Because, if I am in the habit of stooping, my lungs will be crowded, and will not have enough room to move freely." Why should you keep all parts of the body warm?--"Because chilling any part of the body causes the blood to chill in that part, and thus hinders its circulation." Why should you not change your winter clothing too early in the spring of the year?--"I may take cold if not warmly clothed during the cool days of early spring." Why should you avoid draughts of cool air?--"Because the cool air blows upon some parts of the body and closes the pores of the skin, checking the perspiration, and hindering the circulation of the blood." Why should you not rush suddenly from a warm to a cool place?--"Because when warm the pores of the skin are open; if I rush suddenly into the cool air, these pores are closed too quickly." Why does stopping the perspiration hurt the lungs more or less?--"The impurities it ought to carry away remain in the body, make the blood impure, and produce disease in some part; very often that part is the lungs." What harm does alcohol do in the lungs?--"It fills the lungs with impure blood." What harm does it do to the air-cells?--"It hardens the walls of the air-cells of the lungs." What harm is done by the hardening of these air-cells?--"1. The lungs cannot take in enough of the gas called oxygen to purify the blood perfectly. 2. The gases or vapors in the lungs cannot pass freely through the hardened air-cells." What happens from this?--"The lungs become diseased." From what disease do some hard drinkers suffer?--"Alcoholic consumption, for which there is no cure." See Appendices on Alcohol and Tobacco. * * * * * [Illustration: THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS.] 1. The upper jaw. 2. The lower jaw. 3. The tongue. 4. The roof of the mouth. 5. The food-pipe. 6. The windpipe. 7, 8. Where the saliva is made. 9. The stomach. 10. The liver. 11. Where the bile is made. 12. The duct through which the bile passes to the small intestine. 13. The upper part of the small intestine. 14. Where the pancreatic juice is made. 15. The small intestine. 16. The opening of the small into the large intestine. 17-20. The large intestine. 21. The spleen. 22. The spinal column. * * * * * PART X. FORMULA FOR THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS AND DIGESTION. 1. When my food is chewed, it is rolled by my tongue into the oesophagus, or food-pipe, which is back of my windpipe, and leads from my mouth down along the side of my spine, to the left and upper end of my stomach. 2. My stomach is an oblong, soft, and fleshy bag, extending from my left to my right side, below my lungs and heart. 3. It is composed of three coats or membranes, and resembles tripe. 4. The _outer coat_ is smooth, thick, and tough. It supports and strengthens the stomach. 5. The _middle coat_ is fibrous. Its fibres have the power of contracting, sometimes pressing upon the food, and sometimes pushing it along toward the opening which leads out of the stomach. 6. The _inner coat_ is soft, thick, spongy, and wrinkled. It prepares a slimy substance and a fluid. The slimy substance prevents the stomach from being irritated by the food. The fluid dissolves the food. 7. Food passes through several changes after it enters the mouth. 8. It is changed into pulp in the _mouth_, by the action of the teeth and the saliva. This is called _mastication_. It is changed in the _stomach_, by the action of the stomach and the gastric juice, into another kind of pulp called _chyme_. The chyme is changed by the bile and another kind of juice, called _pancreatic_ _juice_; these separate the nourishing from the waste substance. The nourishing, milk-like substance is called _chyle_. The waste substance passes from the body. The chyle is poured into a vein behind the collar bone, and passes through the heart to the lungs, where it is changed into blood. 9. If I would have a healthy stomach, I must be careful what kind of food I eat, I must be careful how much I eat, I must be careful how I eat, I must be careful when I eat. 10. I must eat wholesome food, good bread, ripe fruits, rather than rich pies or jellies. 11. I must eat enough food, but not too much. 12. I must eat slowly, I must masticate my food thoroughly, I must masticate and swallow ray food without drinking 13. I must take my food regularly but not too often, I must rest before and after eating, if possible, I must not eat just before bedtime. 14. I must breathe pure air, I must sit, stand, and walk erect, I must not drink alcoholic liquors, I must not snuff, smoke, or chew tobacco. * * * * * QUESTIONS FOR THE FORMULA. 1. Describe the process of eating.[2] See page 21. 2. Where does the food go after it is chewed? 3. Describe the stomach. 4. Of what is the stomach composed? 5. Describe the outer coat of the stomach, and tell its use. 6. Describe the middle coat of the stomach, and tell its use. 7. Describe the inner coat of the stomach, and tell its use. 8. What happens to the food after it enters the mouth? 9. Tell about these changes. 10. What is necessary if you would have a healthy stomach? 11. What kind of food must you eat? 12. How much food must you eat? 13. How must you eat? 14. When must you eat? 15. What other rules must you obey? [2] See Formula 7 on the Organs of Sense. * * * * * "EAT TO LIVE, NOT LIVE TO EAT." There is pleasure in eating, because God has given us the sense of taste, that we may enjoy our food. But not everything which pleases this sense is good for the body, so we should learn what things are wholesome and choose them for our food and drink, refusing everything which is unwholesome. Those who obey these rules "_eat to live_" and never become drunkards or gluttons. * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS AND DIGESTION. What happens to the food after it is chewed?--"It is rolled by my tongue into the oesophagus or food-pipe." Where is the oesophagus or food-pipe?--"It passes from the mouth down the left side of the spine." What is the stomach?--"A fleshy bag which receives and changes the food we eat." Where is the stomach?--"In the front part of the chest, below the heart and lungs." Of what is the stomach composed?--"Of three coats or membranes." What do you mean by composed?--"Made of." What do you mean by membrane?--"A thin skin." What are the coats of the stomach called?--"The outer coat, the middle coat, the inner coat." Describe the outer coat of the stomach.--"The outer coat is smooth, thick, and tough." Of what use is the outer coat of the stomach?--"It strengthens and supports the stomach." What do you mean by supports?--"Holds." Describe the middle coat of the stomach.--"The middle coat is composed of fleshy fibres, which have the power of making themselves long or short." What do you mean by fibrous?--"Composed of threads." What do you mean by fibres?--"Threads." Of what are the fibres of the stomach composed?--"Of flesh." Of what use are the fibres of the stomach?--"They press upon the food, and push it toward the opening which leads out of the stomach." Describe the inner coat of the stomach.--"The inner coat is soft, thick, spongy, and wrinkled." Of what use is the inner coat of the stomach?--"It prepares a slimy substance and a fluid." Of what use is the slimy substance?--"It prevents the stomach from being irritated by the food." Of what use is the fluid?--"It dissolves the food." What do you mean by slimy?--"Soft, moist, and sticky." What do you mean by irritate?--"To produce unhealthy action." What do you mean by dissolves?--"Melts." Where is the food changed after it is taken into the mouth?--"First it is changed in the mouth; second, it is changed in the stomach; third, it is changed after leaving the stomach; fourth, it is changed in the lungs." By what is it changed in the mouth?--"By the action of the teeth and the saliva." By what is it changed in the stomach?--"By the action of the stomach and a kind of fluid called gastric juice." By what is it changed after leaving the stomach?--"By the action of the bile and the pancreatic juice." By what is it changed in the lungs?--"Nobody knows." Into what is it changed in the mouth?--"Into pulp." Into what is it changed after leaving the stomach?--"Into chyle and waste substance." Into what is it changed in the lungs?--"Into blood." What is the change in the mouth called?--"Mastication, or chewing." What is the change in the stomach called?--"Chymification, or chyme-making." What is the change after leaving the stomach called?--"Chylification, or chyle-making." What is necessary, if you would have a healthy stomach?--"I must be careful what kind of food I eat; how much I eat; and when I eat." What kind of food must you eat?--"Wholesome food, etc." See Formula. How much must you eat?--"Enough, but not too much." How must you eat?--"Slowly." How should your food be masticated?--"Thoroughly." When must you eat?--"Regularly, but not too often." When should you avoid eating?--"Just before bedtime." What kind of air should you breathe?--"Pure air." How should you sit, stand, and walk?--"Erect." Why should you not eat too much food?--"Because, if I eat too much food, my stomach will have too much work to do in changing it into chyme." Why should you eat slowly?--"That I may have time to masticate the food thoroughly." Why should you masticate your food thoroughly?--"That it may be well prepared to enter the stomach." Why should the food be well prepared to enter the stomach?--"Because, if it is not well prepared in the mouth, the stomach will have too much work to change it into chyme." Why should you eat regularly, but not too often?--"Because the stomach needs rest, which it cannot have, if I eat too often." Why should you avoid eating just before bedtime?--"Because, while I am asleep, the stomach cannot do the work of changing the food as it ought to be changed; because the stomach should rest with the other parts of the body." Why should you breathe pure air?--"Because pure air helps to make pure blood, which the stomach needs to make it strong and healthy." Why should you sit, stand, and walk erect?--"That the stomach may not be crowded out of its place, or pressed upon by other parts of the body." In what way does tobacco hurt the stomach?--"It poisons the saliva and prevents it from preparing the food to enter the stomach." What harm does tobacco do inside the stomach?--"It weakens the stomach and makes it unfit to change the food into chyme." How will wise children treat tobacco?--"Let it alone. They will not chew, snuff, or smoke the vile weed." Is alcohol food or poison?--"It is poison." How do we know it is not food?--"Because it cannot be changed into blood." How has this been proved?--"Alcohol has been found in the brain, and other parts of drunkards, with the same smell and the same power to burn easily which it had when it was taken into the mouth." How do you know it is a poison?--"Because it does harm to every part of the body, beginning in the stomach." What harm does alcohol do in the stomach?--"It hinders the stomach from doing its work; it burns the coats of the stomach; it destroys the gastric juice; it hardens the food, so that it cannot be dissolved by the gastric juice." What does the stomach do with alcohol?--"Drives it out as soon as possible." Where does the stomach send it?--"Into the liver." Where does the liver send it?--"To the heart; and the heart sends it to the lungs." What do the lungs do with the alcohol?--"They drive it out as soon as they can." Where do the lungs send some of it?--"Through the nose and mouth, into the air." What harm does the alcohol do in the breath?--"It poisons the air; it tells that some kind of alcoholic liquor has been taken into the stomach." From what you have learned about alcohol, what do you think is the only safe rule to obey concerning cider, beer, wine, and all alcoholic liquors?--"I must not drink them, if I wish to have a strong and healthy stomach." * * * * * [Illustration: THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.--(From Walker's _Physiology_.)] 1. The large brain. 2. The small brain. 3. The spinal cord. 4, 5. Nerves. * * * * * PART XI. FORMULA FOR THE LESSON ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 1. My brain is a soft gray-and-white mass resembling marrow. 2. It is placed in a bony box called the skull; it is covered and held together by three coats or membranes. 3. The outer membrane is thick and firm; it strengthens and supports the brain. 4. The middle membrane is thick, and somewhat like a spider's web in appearance. 5. The inner membrane is a network of blood-vessels. 6. From the brain, white or reddish gray pulpy cords, called nerves, pass to all parts of the body. These nerves are of two kinds: nerves of feeling, and nerves of motion. 7. If I prick my finger, a nerve of feeling carries the message to my brain; if I wish to move my finger, a nerve of motion causes my finger to obey my will. 8. Twelve pairs of nerves pass from the base of the brain: the first pair, called the nerves of smell, to my nose; the fourth pair, called the nerves of sight, to my eyes; the fifth pair, called the nerves of taste, to my mouth, tongue, and teeth. One pair pass to my face; another to my ears. The ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth pairs to my tongue and parts of my throat and neck.[3] 9. The spinal cord is a bundle of nerves extending from the base of my brain, down through the whole length of my spine, or backbone. It is the largest nerve in my body. 10. From the spine, thirty-one pairs of nerves, called _spinal nerves_, pass to different parts of my body; some to the lungs, some to the heart, some to the stomach, some to the bones, and some to the muscles and skin. 11. If a nerve be destroyed it cannot carry messages to and from the brain. Before filling a tooth, the dentist sometimes destroys its nerve. 12. If a nerve be pressed upon too long it cannot perform its duty. If I press upon the nerve passing to my foot, I stop it from communicating with the brain; the foot loses its feeling, or, as I say, "is asleep." 13. If I drink alcoholic liquors, or snuff, smoke, or chew tobacco, my brain and nerves cannot do their work well; because alcohol and nicotine are very poisonous to the brain and nerves. 14. The brain must be supplied with good blood; The brain must be used; The brain must be rested; I must drink wholesome drink, eat wholesome food, take enough exercise, and breathe pure air, that my brain may be supplied with pure blood; I must study and think, that my brain may grow and be strong for work; I must rest my brain when it is tired, either by changing my employment, or by going to sleep; I must not poison my brain with alcohol or tobacco. [3] NOTE.--_A fuller description of the Nerves of the Brain_: Twelve pairs of nerves pass from the base of the brain; the first pair, called the nerves of smell, to my nose; the second pair, called the nerves of sight, to my eyes; the third, fourth, and sixth pairs to the muscles of my eyes; the fifth pair to my forehead, eyes, nose, ears, tongue, teeth, and different parts of my face; the seventh pair to different parts of my face; the eighth pair, called the nerves of hearing, to the inner part of my ear; the ninth pair to my mouth, tongue, and throat; the twelfth pair to my tongue; the eleventh pair to my neck; the tenth pair to my neck, throat, lungs, stomach, and different parts of my body. * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE FORMULA. 1. Describe the brain. 2. Where is the brain placed? 3. Describe the outer membrane of the brain. 4. Describe the middle membrane of the brain. 5. Describe the inner membrane of the brain. 6. Tell about the nerves. 7. Tell about the use of the two kinds of nerves. 8. Tell about the nerves which pass from the brain. 9. Tell about the spinal cord. 10. Tell about the nerves which pass from the spinal cord. 11. What happens if a nerve be destroyed? 12. What happens if a nerve be pressed upon too long? 13. What happens if you drink alcoholic liquors, or snuff, smoke, or chew tobacco? 14. What is necessary if you would have a healthy brain? * * * * * THE BRAIN AND ITS WORK. The brain is egg-shaped, and of two parts, the large brain (_cerebrum_), and the little brain (_cerebellum_). These are composed of a white and gray substance, which in the large brain is so folded and wrinkled that it looks like the meat of an English walnut; in the little brain it is so arranged that it resembles a tree, and is called _arbor vitae_, tree of life. The mind does its thinking through the large brain, and controls its muscles through the little brain. A drunken man can not walk straight because alcohol has hurt the little brain; he can not think straight because it has poisoned the large brain. * * * * * [Illustration: THE BRAIN AND THE SPINAL CORD.] C, the large brain (_cerebrum_). B, the small brain (_cerebellum_). S, a portion of the spinal cord. * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. Where is your brain?--"In my skull." What color is the brain?--"Gray and white." What does the brain resemble?--"Marrow." How is the brain protected?--"By three coats or membranes." What may you name these membranes?--"The outer membrane, the middle membrane, and the inner membrane." Describe the outer membrane. See Formula. Describe the middle membrane. See Formula. What are the nerves?--"White ashen-gray pulpy cords, which are found in the brain." Where do they go from the brain?--"To every part of the body." How many kinds of nerves have you?--"Two." What names are given to the two kinds of nerves?--"Nerves of motion and nerves of feeling." Which is the largest nerve in the body?--"The spinal cord." Where is the spinal cord?--"It extends from the brain throughout the whole length of the backbone." How may you describe the spinal cord?--"It is a bundle of nerves, etc." See Formula. Where are the spinal nerves?--"They pass from the spinal cord to different parts of the trunk and limbs." How many pairs of nerves pass from the base of the brain?--"Twelve." Where do the first pair go?--"To the nose." What are they called?--"The nerves of smell." Where do the second pair go?--"To the eyes." What are the second pair called?--"The nerves of sight." Which move the muscles of the eyes?--"The third, fourth, and sixth pairs." Where do the fifth pair go?--"To the forehead, eyes, nose, ears, tongue, teeth, and different parts of the face." The seventh pair?--"To the different parts of the face." The eighth pair?--"To the inner ear." What are the eighth pair called?--"The nerves of hearing." Where do the ninth pair go?--"To the mouth, tongue, and throat." Where do the twelfth pair go?--"To the tongue." Where do the eleventh pair go?--"To the neck." Where do the tenth pair go?--"To the neck, throat, lungs, stomach, and different parts of the body." What happens if a nerve be destroyed?--"It cannot carry messages to the brain." What happens if a nerve be pressed upon too long?--"It cannot carry messages to the brain." What is necessary if you would have a strong, healthy brain?--"My brain must be used; my brain must be rested; my brain must be supplied with pure blood." How must you use your brain?--"In thinking and studying." How may the brain be rested?--"By sleep." In what other way may the brain be rested?--"By thinking of something different from that which made it tired." What two brain-poisons have you learned about?--"Alcohol and tobacco."[4] With what may you show the harm done by alcohol to the gray part of the brain?--"With alcohol and the white of an egg." How could you show it with these?--"I would pour the alcohol upon the white of the egg." What would then happen?--"The white of the egg would harden as if it had been boiled." What is in the white of an egg?--"Water and albumen." Where else may we find albumen?--"In some seeds, and in the gray part of the brain and the nerves." What harm does alcohol do to the nerves?--"It takes away their moisture and hardens them." What harm does this do to them?--"It paralyzes them, or makes them lose their power." What happens when nerves are paralyzed?--"They lose their power over the muscles; they are unfit to carry messages to and from the brain." What harm does alcohol do to the gray part of the brain?--"It hardens it, as it hardens the white of an egg." What harm does this do to the brain?--"It paralyzes it, or makes it lose its power." What then happens?--"It cannot properly do its work of thinking, and cannot control the nerves." What disease is sometimes caused by this hardening of the brain by alcohol?--"Paralysis, which often ends in death." What harm does alcohol do to the blood-vessels of the brain?--"It fills them with impure blood." What disease is caused by the blood-vessels of the brain being filled with impure blood?--"Congestion of the brain, or apoplexy, which ends in death." What else frequently happens to those who drink alcoholic liquors?--"They become crazy, or insane." If you wish to have a strong, healthy brain, what should you do about these liquors?-- "Never put them into my mouth, To steal away my brains." Tell of what dreadful disease people die who are bitten by a mad dog.--"Of hydrophobia." Of what dreadful disease do people sometimes die who are bitten by the serpent in alcoholic liquors?--"Of delirium tremens." Which is the more dreadful, hydrophobia or delirium tremens?--"One is as dreadful as the other." How can you be sure never to have delirium tremens?--"By drinking nothing which has alcohol in it." Will a little beer or wine hurt you?--"Yes, it may make me love the taste of alcohol." What harm is there in loving the taste of alcohol?--"I may love it so much as to become a drunkard." Tell once more how you should treat alcoholic liquors.--"I should never drink a drop of them." [4] See Appendices. * * * * * ALCOHOL. THE STORY ABOUT ALCOHOL. Several hundred years ago many people were trying to discover something that would keep them young and strong, and prevent them from dying. It is said by some that a man named Paracelsus, in making experiments, discovered _alcohol_. He called it "the water of life," and boasted that he would never be weak and never die; so he went on drinking alcoholic liquors until at last he died in a drunken fit. What is this alcohol which has done and is doing so much mischief in the world? I will show you some. What does it look like?--"Water." Yes; and if you were to smell it you would say it has a somewhat pleasant odor; if you were to taste it, that it has a hot, biting taste, _i.e._, is pungent. If you put a lighted match to it you would notice that it burns easily, and with a flame, and may therefore be said to be combustible and inflammable. What does it come from? Is it one of the drinks God has given us? Some of the class think it is; we will try to learn whether this answer is correct or not. If we study about it very carefully we shall discover that it is not a natural drink, that it is not found except where it has been made from decayed or rotten fruits, grains, or vegetables. If you take some apples, and squeeze the juice out of them, you will find it sweet and pleasant; let that juice stand for several days and what will happen to it?--"It will get bad." Yes; or, as grown people say, it will _work_ or _ferment_; that is, the sugary part of the juice will be separated into a kind of gas and a liquid. The gas is called _carbonic acid gas_; the liquid is _alcohol_. Both the gas and the liquid are poisonous. Alcohol may also be obtained from other fruits, as grapes, and from some grains and vegetables. But all these must first become rotten before alcohol will come out of them. This is one reason why we think that God, who gives us good, wholesome food, did not intend alcohol to be a drink for man, else He would have put it into the delicious ripe fruit, and not made it impossible to get until they decay. Now let us put upon the blackboard something which will help us remember what we have learned about ALCOHOL. DISCOVERED BY DESCRIPTION. MADE FROM Paracelsus. Water-like; with a Fruits, Grains, or pleasant odor; a Vegetables. CALLED hot, biting taste; "The water of life." and will burn with a flame. * * * * * USES OF ALCOHOL. We put some sugar into water; the children see that it melts; then some glue or shellac is placed in the same liquid; they see that this is not melted, but that, when alcohol is used instead of water, the glue or shellac is dissolved. From this experiment they learn that alcohol is used in making varnishes. Some water is poured into one saucer, and alcohol into another; a lighted match is applied to each; the class notices that the alcohol takes fire and burns, while the water does not. Next, we fill a lamp with alcohol, and put a wick into it; when the wick becomes wet with the fluid it burns steadily and without smoke, as may be seen by holding a clean white saucer over the flame. This shows why jewellers and others, who wish to use a lamp to make things very hot, prefer alcohol to kerosene, which, as the children know, smokes lamp-chimneys, or anything else, so easily. We show a thermometer; the children are told its use if they are not already familiar with the instrument; we talk about the quicksilver in the tube, about its rising or falling according to the degree of heat or cold; then we inform the class that in some countries where it is very cold quicksilver freezes; for this reason alcohol, which does not freeze, is colored red and put into the thermometer tube to be used in these Arctic regions. Another use for alcohol is to keep or preserve substances. This we illustrate by placing a piece of meat into some alcohol. We explain that the water in the meat is that which causes it to decay. Alcohol has the power to take up or _absorb_ water; so when meat is put into this liquid the water from the meat is absorbed by it, and the meat does not become bad. Those who wish to preserve insects a long time, and doctors who desire to keep any portion of a human body after death, put these into alcohol, in which they may be kept for a long time. Lastly, we let the children smell cologne or other perfumery, and tell them this is made from different oils mixed with alcohol. At the close of this lesson the class is ready to help us make the following BLACKBOARD OUTLINE. FACTS ABOUT ALCOHOL. GOOD USES OF ALCOHOL. It melts gums. To melt gums. Burns with a flame. To make varnishes. Burns without smoke. To burn in lamps. Will not freeze. To make camphene, etc. Likes water. To put into thermometer Mixes with oils. tubes. To preserve meats, etc. To make perfumery. In making jewelry. * * * * * USES OF ALCOHOL--_concluded_. You see alcohol is very useful for some purposes; but do people ever drink it? Some of the children think not, and we grant that no one is foolish enough to drink _raw_ alcohol, because it is too strong. It would take only a little to make them drunk, and only a few ounces to kill them instantly. We ask the pupils if they have ever seen a drunken person, and what made that person drunk? We soon obtain an answer, and place upon the board "Rum, gin, whiskey, brandy," as the names of drinks which will take away the good sense of those who drink them. To these are added "Wine, beer, ale, lager, and cider." We explain that all these have alcohol in them, as may be known by smelling them, or by smelling the breath of those who have drunk even a little of them; and that because they contain alcohol they are called _alcoholic liquors_. If a person drinks any one of them he will be poisoned, more or less, according to how much he takes. The children are astonished at the word _poisoned_, but we explain that the very word, _intoxicated_, means poisoned. So a drunken man is a poisoned man. If enough alcohol, or alcoholic liquor, is drunk by anyone, he will drop down dead as quickly as if he were shot by a cannon ball. When told that alcohol is not a food, but a poison, the class readily understands what we mean, and we have no difficulty in having the following statements prepared and memorized: * * * * * FOOD. That which makes the body grow, and helps to keep it alive. POISON. That which hurts the body, and makes it die. ALCOHOL. QUALITIES. GOOD USES. Water-like, _looks like To melt gums. water_. To make varnishes. Transparent, _may be seen To burn in lamps. through clearly_. To make camphene, etc. Odorous, _has a smell_. To put in thermometer Pungent, _has a hot, biting tubes. taste_. To preserve meats, insects, Liquid, _will flow in etc. drops_. To make perfumery. Poisonous, _hurts the In making jewelry. body_. Intoxicating, _takes away the BAD USE. senses; makes drunk_. To drink. Absorbent, _takes up or absorbs water_. Inflammable, _burns with a flame_. Uncongealable, _will not freeze_. Innutritious, _not good for food_. * * * * * ABOUT FERMENTATION AND FERMENTED LIQUOR. _ALCOHOL._--Alcohol may be obtained from any substance which contains sugar or starch, or both sugar and starch, as apples, pears, grapes, potatoes, beets, rice, barley, maple, honey, etc. Alcohol can be obtained only by _fermentation_. By fermentation we mean the change which takes place when a juice containing sugar decays, or goes to pieces. You know decay always makes things fall to pieces. You ask, what pieces is sugar made of? Very, very little pieces, called _atoms_. There are different kinds of sugar. In that made from grapes, called _grape sugar_, there are six atoms of carbon, twelve of hydrogen, and six of oxygen. What are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen? Oxygen is the kind of gas which keeps animals alive, and makes things burn. Hydrogen is another kind, which you have smelled perhaps when water has been spilled on a hot stove; the gas burned in street-lamps is hydrogen that has been driven out of coal. Carbon you see in charcoal and soot; the black lead of your lead-pencils is mostly composed of carbon and iron; lamp-black is pure carbon, without form or shape. We will let these circles of colored paper stand for the atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in grape sugar,--the largest, which are red, for the oxygen; the second size, which you notice are black, will represent atoms of carbon; while the little blue ones will make you think of hydrogen. If you remember that it takes one atom of carbon and two of oxygen to make carbonic acid gas; also, that two atoms of carbon, one of oxygen, and six of hydrogen to form alcohol, you can easily find that two atoms of carbonic acid gas and two atoms of alcohol may be formed from an atom of sugar. So the more sugar a juice contains the more alcohol may be formed from it. _CIDER._--Cider is made by pressing the juice out of apples. This sweet cider ferments, and the sugar part of it changes into carbonic acid gas and alcohol. People who do not understand this go on drinking cider, not knowing that it makes drunkards of those who drink much of a beverage which seems so pleasant and harmless. _WINES._--Wines are made from the juices of fruits which have sugar in them, especially grapes. Sometimes people have what they call _home-made wines_, which they make from blackberries, currants, elderberries, gooseberries, cherries, or other fruits. They may ask you to take some, saying, "This will do you no harm; we did not put any alcohol into it." They do not know what you have learned, that alcohol is always formed in fermented juices which contain sugar. It does not wait to be put into the home-made wines; it quietly comes in as they are getting made, at home or any other place, and will make people drunk as surely as when it is found in brandy or any other liquor. Some of the wines in the stores are made from grape juice, but many more are made by mixing hurtful and poisonous things together to make the liquor strong, and give it what is called a fine color and good taste. _BEER AND ALES._--These are made from grains and hops, which contain no sugar, it is true, but are composed of starch, which may be changed into sugar. When a seed of grain is put into the ground and begins to grow, the starch in it becomes sugar, which feeds the young plant. When a brewer wishes to make beer, he takes some grain, puts it in a dark place, wets it, and leaves it to sprout, or begin to grow. Then he puts it into an oven to dry it, and make it stop growing. This makes what is called _malt_. The malt is mashed and soaked in warm water to get the sugar out of it; this forms a liquid called _sweet wort_. The wort is separated from the mashed grain and boiled; yeast is mixed with it to help it to ferment more quickly; it soon becomes changed; a dirty yellow scum filled with bubbles comes to the top, which we know is the poisonous carbonic acid gas; the other poison, alcohol, stays in the liquid and makes the beer taste good to those who like it. Liquors made from grain are called _malt liquors_. Lager beer, and all kinds of ales and porters, are malt liquors. They make people dull, sluggish, and stupid who drink much of them. They do much mischief in the body, though it takes a larger quantity of any one of them to make a person drunk than it does of whiskey or brandy. AN ATOM OF GRAPE SUGAR. CARBONIC ACID GAS. ALCOHOL. Carbon, 6 atoms. Carbon, 1 atom. Carbon, 2 atoms. Oxygen, 6 atoms. Oxygen, 2 atoms. Oxygen, 1 atom. Hydrogen, 12 atoms. Hydrogen, 6 atoms. SUB-FERMENTED GRAPE SUGAR MAKES 2 atoms of carbonic acid gas and 2 atoms of alcohol. ALCOHOLIC LIQUORS MADE FROM FRUITS. GRAINS. _Cider._ _Wines._ _Beer, Ales, etc._ Apples. Grapes, Gooseberries, Barley, Oats, _Perry._ Currants, Elderberries, Wheat, Peas, etc. Pears. Blackberries, Cherries, etc. Corn, (with hops). * * * * * DISTILLATION. How does the sugar in grapes and other fruits become alcohol?--"By fermenting." Yes, and liquors made by fermenting are called _fermented liquors_. What other alcoholic drinks have you heard about beside cider, wines, beer, and ales?--"Gin, whiskey, brandy, rum." These are stronger than the fermented liquors, that is, they contain more alcohol; they are made by what is called _distillation_. If you boil water, and let the steam from it fall upon a cold plate, the steam will change back into liquid and become _distilled_ water. Making a liquid boil, catching the vapor or steam and cooling it, is what we mean by distillation. If two or more liquids are mixed together, the one that boils with the least heat will be drawn off first. The alcohol of beer, cider, and wines is mixed with water; it boils at a lower heat than water, so can be drawn off from it very easily. This does not make more alcohol, it only makes the alcohol stronger by separating it from the water. When beer or any other alcoholic liquor is to be distilled, it is poured into a large copper boiler, called a _still_, and boiled. A tube carries the vapor from the boiler into a cask filled with cold water. This tube is coiled like a spiral line or worm through the cask; it is called _the worm of the still_, and the cask is _the worm-tub_. As the vapor passes through the tube, it cools and drops out at the end into the worm-tub, changed into a liquid stronger in alcohol than that from which it was drawn or distilled. In this way gin is made from beer, brandy from wine, and rum from fermented molasses. These are very strong drinks, and only hard drinkers like them. But very few people begin by taking these; they first learn to like alcohol by drinking cider, beer, or wine, and end with gin, whiskey, or rum when they have become drunkards. DEFINITIONS. _DISTILLATION._ Drawing the vapor from a boiling liquid and cooling it. _STILL._ Machinery for distilling; the boiler which holds the liquid. _THE WORM OF THE STILL._ The tube which passes from the still to a cask, in which it coils like a worm. _WORM-TUB._ The cask which holds the tube or worm, and receives the distilled liquid. _DISTILLED LIQUID._ A liquid formed by cooled steam. _DISTILLED LIQUORS._ Liquors made by distilling alcoholic liquors. _FERMENTED._ Changed by decay. _FERMENTED LIQUORS._ Liquors which have been fermented or changed by decay, and contain alcohol. _UNFERMENTED._ Not decayed. _UNFERMENTED LIQUORS._ Liquors which contain no alcohol. KINDS OF LIQUORS [5]UNFERMENTED. FERMENTED. DISTILLED. Grape juice, Hard cider, Gin, Sweet cider, (Malt liquors) Brandy, Root beer, Beer, Whiskey, Ginger beer. Lager beer, Rum. Perry. Ale, Porter, Wine. [5] These soon become fermented; they then contain alcohol. * * * * * HARM DONE BY ALCOHOL IN VARIOUS PARTS OF THE BODY. Raw alcohol does not do much harm to people because it is too strong for them to drink much of it; but the alcohol hidden in cider, ale, wine, whiskey, and other alcoholic drinks kills not less than _sixty thousand_ persons in this country every year, besides those who die from its use in other parts of the world. There is great excitement when there is a mad dog around; and, if any one is bitten and dies from the dreadful hydrophobia, people are ready to destroy all the dogs of the neighborhood; but when a drunkard dies from delirium tremens or alcohol craziness, how few take any notice of the cause of his death, or do all they can to wage war against the use of alcoholic liquors. But why do we say such hard things against these liquors which some people love so well and think so harmless? In what way do they hurt and kill people? Let us see. Where does what we drink go after it has been put into the mouth?--"Into the stomach." If it were the right thing to go into the stomach, into what would it be changed?--"Into something which helps to make good blood." Learned men, who have examined and carefully studied about these things, tell us that _the stomach is hurt_ by alcohol, because the fiery fluid is not food, but poison which makes the stomach very sore, and gives it hard work to do. The veins of the stomach take it up and send it into the liver. The liver, which is a large organ weighing about four pounds, lies on the right side below the lungs; its work is, to help make the blood pure. It can do nothing with alcohol, so it drives it along to the heart; the heart sends it to the lungs; the lungs throw some of it out through the breath, which smells of the vile stuff that has been poisoning every part it has passed through since it entered the mouth. Some of the alcohol does not get out of the lungs through the breath, but goes with the blood back to the heart, and from the heart is sent through the arteries to every part of the body. No part of the body wants it. _The Skin_ drives some of it out, through its little pores, with the perspiration. _The Kidneys_, which lie in the back below the waist, on each side of the spine, send off some of the poison. Yet some of it gets into _the brain_, and there does very much mischief, of which you will learn more by and by. You know, if the brain is hurt, the mind cannot do its work of thinking properly; thus, alcohol does great _harm to the mind_ through the brain. _The muscles_ and _the bones_ are hurt by not being supplied with pure blood; _the heart_ gets tired out with overwork, and _the lungs_ become diseased through this same terrible alcohol. Therefore, if you would be strong and healthy, have nothing to do with alcoholic liquors; for ALCOHOL POISONS The stomach, The liver, The blood, The heart, The lungs, The brain, The bones, The muscles, The skin, And every part of the body. * * * * * IN THE STOMACH. Children who have learned the Lesson on Digestion, and know about the coats of the stomach, about mastication and chyme-making, are easily made to understand why anything which has alcohol in it is unfit to go into the stomach. If we touch a drop of alcohol to the eye, it will make it sore; so alcohol in the stomach irritates its coats and makes them sore. Alcohol poisons the gastric juice. If we get some of this juice from the stomach of a calf which has just been killed, and mix alcohol with it, the alcohol will separate the watery part from the _pepsin_ or white part. This is what alcohol does in the stomach. It takes up water from the gastric juice, which prevents the pepsin from mixing well with the food, and hinders the change of the food into chyme, which cannot take place without pepsin. The children have already learned that alcohol keeps meat from decaying, or going to pieces. We explain that food in the stomach must go to pieces to prepare it to make blood; when mixed with alcohol, it is preserved, and the gastric juice cannot melt or dissolve it. Thus the stomach is hindered from doing its work until it gets rid of the alcohol. A true story we have read will help you to remember how troublesome alcohol is to the stomach. Some men in Edinburgh were paid their wages, one Saturday, soon after they had eaten their dinner. They got drunk and remained so till the next day at noon. When they became sober they had a headache and were so ill that they sent for a doctor; he gave them some medicine which brought up their Saturday's dinner just as it had gone down into the stomach. The poor stomach could do nothing with dinner mixed with whiskey or rum, because these liquors are half alcohol. You have already learned that the stomach hurries to drive out the alcohol into the liver; the liver sends it with the blood into the heart; the heart pours it into the lungs; the lungs breathe it out through the nose and mouth, and tell that some kind of alcoholic liquor has been taken into the stomach. Remember, that the alcohol which comes out in the breath is a part of that which _went into the mouth_. It could not be changed. It did nothing but mischief in its journey, which shows that it is not food, but poison. God, who created the body, has not given any part of it power to change alcohol into blood. People sometimes take ale or wine because they think it gives them an appetite. This is a great mistake. When any alcoholic liquor goes into the stomach, there is such hard work to get it out that the pain of hunger is not felt; when it is out, the stomach is tired and does not tell the brain that it is hungry. When alcohol is poured into it, day after day, it loses its desire for good, wholesome food, _and wants more and more alcoholic liquor_. It has an appetite for alcohol. Alcohol makes the stomach sore and full of disease; people who take much of it in liquors always suffer much from dyspepsia. So, if the stomach could speak, it would say: "Don't pour any alcohol into me, though you mix it and call it ale, cider, wine, or any other name that makes folks think it will do me no harm. You cannot deceive me. I know alcohol as soon as it comes down, and it always makes me suffer." * * * * * BLACKBOARD OUTLINE. ALCOHOL-- Burns or inflames the coats of the stomach. Spoils the gastric juice. Makes the food hard to be dissolved. Makes the stomach tired and weak. Takes away the appetite for wholesome food. Makes an appetite for alcoholic liquors. Causes disease in the stomach and other digestive organs. * * * * * QUESTION ON BLACKBOARD OUTLINE. What harm does alcohol do in the stomach? * * * * * TO THE BONES, MUSCLES, AND SKIN. _TO THE BONES._--You have already learned that the bones require to be supplied with good blood to make them strong and healthy, and that alcohol does not make good blood, so we need spend no time in deciding that alcoholic liquors do injury to the bones, and that the bones of those who drink these liquors are less likely to heal, when broken, than those of persons whose blood has not been poisoned by alcohol. _TO THE MUSCLES._--The muscles, as you know, cover and move the bones; good blood makes them grow, and keeps them healthy and strong. People like to have plenty of good muscle, for this not only gives them strength, but makes them look plump and well. Alcohol poisons the blood by killing many of the very little, round, red parts in it, called by a long name, which you can learn if you try. This hard name is _corpuscles_ [kor'pussls]; _corpuscle_ means _a little body_. These little bodies float in the fluid portion of the blood, and go to every part of the body to help keep it alive and healthy. When alcohol hurts them, they turn into a poor kind of fat, like suet, and cannot do any good. They stay in different parts and do much harm. Sometimes they lodge between the muscles, and make a person look strong because plump; but he is not strong, for his muscles are filled with fat. Sometimes the liver or the heart, which are only large muscles, become so heavy and soft with fat that they cannot do their work properly; they become weak and diseased, wear out, and cause the death of their owner, who has poisoned them with ale, wine, or other alcoholic drink. _TO THE SKIN._--Alcohol hurts the skin also, by feeding it with poisoned blood, by giving the pores extra work in carrying off some of the alcohol in the perspiration, and by making the little blood-vessels larger than they should be in a way you will learn more about by and by. These little blood-vessels become very full of blood, and cause the red face and blue nose which mark the drinker of alcoholic liquors. This redness of the skin tells of the mischief which alcohol is doing inside of the body. It is the danger-signal which warns against the use of the fiery poison. ALCOHOL HURTS THE BONES, THE MUSCLES, THE SKIN, By supplying them with By supplying them with By supplying it with bad blood. bad blood; bad blood; By loading them with By over-working the fat which makes them perspiratory pores. weak. * * * * * TO THE BLOOD, THE LUNGS, AND THE HEART. _TO THE BLOOD._--The wonderful fluid which is the life of the body consists of a water-like liquid in which floats millions of the very little, circle-shaped, red particles which you have been taught to call _corpuscles_. You have also been told that alcohol kills these little bodies, and thus takes some of the life out of the blood, and fills it with useless, suet-like fat. The blood, you know, flows everywhere through the body, giving its goodness to make every part grow and live, and carrying away the worn-out particles it meets. Blood, when poisoned with alcohol, goes through the body, giving disease and death instead of health and life. So, if you want good, red blood, do not let alcohol get into it. _TO THE HEART._--When alcohol comes with the blood from the liver, the heart begins to beat fast to get rid of the firewater; this makes it very tired, for it always has enough to do in carrying bad blood to the lungs, and pumping good blood into the arteries, without having the extra trouble of driving out alcohol. Wise people will not give it this extra work to do. Besides, we told you, in the talk about the harm done by alcohol to the muscles, that the heart,--which is only a large muscle, or rather many muscles fastened together so as to make a pear-shaped organ about the size of your fist,--is hurt in another way by alcohol. It gets too much of the poor kind of fat from the blood, which fills between the muscles, and after awhile makes the walls of the heart so soft and weak, that we could almost push through them with a finger, if we could get at them. Very often the tired, overworked, weakened heart suddenly stops beating, and the person who would keep on drinking beer, wine, brandy, or rum falls down dead. "Died from heart disease," people say, when the truth is, _died from drinking alcoholic liquors_. _TO THE LUNGS._--What are the lungs?--"The breathing-machines of the body." What do they throw out?--"Bad air." What do they take in?--"Fresh air." In pure air there is a good kind of gas which is necessary to keep us alive; this gas is called _oxygen_. When air is taken into the lungs, the oxygen mixes with the blood in them and makes it pure. If alcohol is in the lungs, it hardens the walls of their air-cells, and keeps out the oxygen or good gas; at the same time it keeps in the impure gas, called _nitrogen_, which ought to come out through the nose and mouth into the air. Thus the blood in the lungs cannot be properly purified, and goes back to the heart impure blood which is unfit to be used. The lungs are also obliged to work faster when alcohol is in them, because with the heart they are striving to drive out the enemy. This makes the lungs tired, sore, and inflamed. They are not as strong to do their work, and are more likely to breathe in any contagious disease than are the lungs of people who do not drink alcoholic liquors. Some people go on drinking these poisons for many years, and seem not to be hurt by them; but at last they suffer from what is called Alcoholic Phthisis, a kind of consumption which doctors cannot cure. HARM DONE BY ALCOHOL TO THE HEART. BLOOD-VESSELS. LUNGS. Overworks it. Hurries the blood through Makes them work too Makes it tired. them. fast. Loads it with fat. Stretches the small Heats and inflames Softens and destroys arteries and makes them them. it. unfit to work. Hardens the walls of Poisons the blood in the their air-cells. hair-like blood-vessels Keeps in the poisonous (capillaries). gas. Keeps out the good gas (oxygen). Weakens them and makes them diseased. * * * * * THE BLOOD ("The life ... is in the blood") Consists of A colorless liquid (plasma), and Little, red, circle-shaped bodies (corpuscles). * * * * * ALCOHOL (a blood-poison) Mixes with the colorless liquid, and takes away some of its goodness. Makes some of the corpuscles Smaller. Change shape. Lose color. Lose oxygen. Die, and change into useless fat * * * * * TO THE BRAIN AND NERVES. Where is your brain?--"In my skull." What color is it?--"Gray and white." What does it resemble?--"Marrow." What work is done in the brain?--"The work of thinking." You may repeat what you have learned about the membranes of the brain. (See Formula for the Lesson on the Nervous System.) You say "the inner membrane is a net-work of blood-vessels." If these are blood-vessels in the membranes, what fills them?--"Blood." Do you think alcohol can get into the brain?--"Yes." How can it get there?--"It goes there with the blood." How can we know that alcohol does mischief in the brain? You cannot answer? Did you never see a drunken man? Now tell me how you might know his brain has been hurt by alcohol.--"He talks funny; he acts strangely; he is very cross; he does not know what he is doing; he walks crookedly; he falls down; sometimes he falls asleep, and is almost like a dead man; he is dead drunk." Let us study to learn why the drunken man does such strange things. The alcohol in this bottle, and this egg which you see, will help us find the cause of the mischief. You may tell what is in the egg.--"A white liquid and a yellow liquid." How could they be made hard?--"By making the egg hot; by boiling." We will try what alcohol will do to the white part. You see when it is poured upon the white of the egg it hardens this part as boiling would harden it. This white portion is composed of water and something called _albumen_. The alcohol dries up the water and thickens the albumen. Albumen is found not only in eggs but in some seeds, as beans, peas, corn, etc., also in the gray part of the brain and in the nerves. We will talk first of the harm alcohol does to the nerves. You know they are the grayish-white cords which pass from the brain and the spine to every part of the body. What do they act like in the kind of work they do?--"Like telegraph wires." What is their work?--"To carry messages to and from the brain." What kinds of nerves have you learned about?--"Nerves of feeling and nerves of motion." When alcohol touches a nerve, it draws away the moisture or water from it, and hardens the white part or albumen; this makes the nerve shrivel as if it had been burned; it loses its power to feel and move, or, to use a long word, is _paralyzed_. Alcohol paralyzes all the nerves it touches. It makes them so stupid that they cannot understand what the brain says to them, and they do not carry the right messages back to it. For instance: when the nerves of the stomach are poisoned by the alcohol in beer, wine, etc., they do not feel the pain of hunger as much as they otherwise would, and they let the brain think the stomach is satisfied and does not need any more food, when it is only stupefied by these liquors. Again, it is the work of some nerves to tell the muscles of the small arteries to tighten, or contract, when too much blood is coming into them. Alcohol so paralyzes these nerves that they do not carry their message; the arteries let in the blood, and become swollen and enlarged. They tell the mischief done to them, by causing the skin to be red or flushed. If people drink much of any intoxicating liquor, and often, their skin is always a bad color, or, as grown folks say, becomes permanently discolored. All this because the nerves have been made unfit to do their duty by alcohol poison. The nerves also lose power over the muscles of the limbs. This is plainly seen in the trembling of the hands and the unsteady walking of the drunkard; but is equally true of those who drink only a little now and then. Their nerves are not as strong and wide-awake to control the machinery of the body as they would be if no alcohol were troubling them. Sometimes the nerves of hearing and sight tell the brain queer stories, and the poor brain believes them all, for it, too, is stupefied by the same fire-water which has hurt the nerves. Indeed, the harm done by alcohol to the brain is greater than that done to any other part of the body. It takes the water from the albumen, and makes the white part of the brain hard, as if it had been cooked. It kills the little, circle-shaped, red parts of the blood--the corpuscles; these collect in the blood-vessels of the brain, and keep the blood from flowing as fast as it ought, which causes disease and very often death. Sometimes the brain is so much injured by the poison that the drinker becomes crazy, and is a great deal of trouble to himself and everybody else. Since all this is true, wise children will let cider, lager, ale, wine, and every other kind of alcoholic drink alone, and never, NEVER, "Put an enemy into their mouths, To steal away their brains." * * * * * HARM DONE BY ALCOHOL TO THE NERVES. BRAIN. Takes away their moisture, and Fills or congests its paralyzes them. blood-vessels with impure Takes away their power to blood. control the muscles. Collects in it, and paralyzes Makes them unfit to carry it. messages to and from the Hardens its albumen. brain. So hurts it as to cause craziness (insanity) and death. * * * * * MORE ABOUT THE HARM DONE BY ALCOHOL. In the lessons you have learned you have been taught about the harm done by alcohol to the body and the mind; can you tell, from what you have seen of drunken people, in what other way alcoholic liquors hurt them?--"They make people waste their money; they make them waste their time; they make them cross; they make them fight; they make them say silly and wicked words; they sometimes make fathers and mothers hurt their children; they make people lose their good name; they often make them do things for which they are sent to prison." Yes, this is only some of the mischief done by alcohol. If you could fly around the world and see everybody who has been hurt in any way by this terrible poison, what a sad, sad sight you would behold! At least half the trouble in the world comes from strong drink. Are _you_, little girl, little boy, going to join the army of drunkards? No, indeed! you think; but probably no one who has become a drunkard ever intended to do so. They all began with one glass, a few drops of some alcoholic liquor,--cider, wine, or beer perhaps,--and thus learned to love the taste of alcohol, and soon became its slaves. For this poison has the strange power of making those who drink it want more and more of itself, though they know it is doing them harm. The only safety is in letting alcoholic liquors alone, forever. BLACKBOARD OUTLINE. ALCOHOLIC LIQUORS HURT The body, The mind, and The soul; AND MAKE PEOPLE WASTE LOSE UNFIT TO UNFIT TO SERVE Money, Strength, Think, or Themselves, Talents, and Health, and Work. Their neighbor, Time. Good name. or GOD. * * * * * STORIES ABOUT THE HARM DONE BY ALCOHOL.[6] A YOUNG BEGINNER.--The hardest drinker I ever knew commenced on cider when he was only five years old. He would go to the barrel of cider in the cellar, which had been put there to make vinegar, and, getting a straw, would suck all the cider he wanted; and then, after he had played awhile, he would go back and get more. He kept on drinking alcoholic liquors of some kind, until he died a drunkard. CIDER DELIRIUM.--Dr. J.H. Travis, of Masonville, N.Y., was once called to a child six years old, who was raving in the wildest delirium. His symptoms were so peculiar that he questioned the family closely, and found that the day previous, at a raising, the child had drank freely of cider. After the men left he had procured a straw and gone to the barrel and drank till he was senseless, and after this the delirium came on. He exhibited undoubted symptoms of delirium tremens. Cider was the common beverage of the family. Dr. Travis has been called to several other cases of delirium tremens from the use of cider.--_Mrs. E.J. Richmond._ A CAUTION TO MOTHERS.--One of the first literary men in the United States said to a temperance lecturer: "There is one thing which I wish you to do everywhere; entreat every mother never to give a drop of strong drink to a child. I have had to fight as for my life all my days to keep from dying a drunkard, because I was fed with spirits when a child. I thus acquired an appetite for it. My brother, poor fellow, died a drunkard." A GIRL DRUNKARD.--A young girl of eighteen, beautiful, intelligent, and temperate, the pride of her home, was recommended to take a little gin for some chronic ailment. She took it; it soothed the pain; she kept on taking it; it created an artificial appetite, and in four years she died a drunkard.--_Medical Temperance Journal._ "A LITTLE WON'T HURT HIM."--I was the pet of the family. Before I could well walk I was treated to the sweet from the bottom of my father's glass. My dear mother would gently chide with him, "Don't, John, it will do him harm." To this he would smilingly reply, "This little sup won't hurt him." When I became a school-boy I was ill at times, and my mother would pour for me a glass of wine from the decanter. At first I did not like it; but, as I was told that it would make me strong, I got to like it. When I became an apprentice, I reasoned thus: "My parents told me that these drinks are good, and I cannot get them except at the public-house." Step by step I fell.... I have grown to manhood, but my course of intemperance has added sin to sin. My days are now nearly ended. Hope for the future I have none.--_Dying Drunkard._ DANGER.--In one of Mr. Moody's temperance prayer meetings at Chicago, a reformed man attributed a former relapse of drunkenness wholly to a physician's prescription to take whiskey three times a day! KILLED BY THE POISON.--Many years ago, when stage coaches were in use in England, during a very cold night, a young woman mounted the coach. A respectable tradesman sitting there asked her what induced her to travel on such a night, when she replied that she was going to the bedside of her mother, of whose illness she had just heard. She was soon wrapped in such coats, etc., as the passengers could spare, and when they stopped the tradesman procured her some brandy. She declined it at first, saying she had never drank spirits in her life. But he said, "Drink it down; it won't hurt you on such a bitter night." This was done repeatedly, until the poor girl fell fast asleep, and when they arrived in London she could not be roused. She was stiff and cold in death, and the doctor, on the coroner's inquest, said that she had been killed by the brandy.--_Mrs. Balfour._ IN CASE OF SHIPWRECK.--In the winter of 1796 a vessel was wrecked on an island of the Massachusetts coast, and five persons on board determined to swim ashore. Four of them drank freely of spirits to keep up their strength, but the fifth would drink none. One was drowned, and all that drank spirits failed and stopped, and froze one after another, the man that drank none being the only one that reached the house at some distance from, the shore, and he lived many years after that. IT EXHAUSTS STRENGTH.--Concerning one cold winter when there were very severe snow-storms in the Highlands of Scotland, James Hogg, the poet, says: "It was a received opinion all over the country that sundry lives were lost, and a great many more endangered, by the administration of ardent spirits to the sufferers _while in a state of exhaustion_. A little bread and sweet milk, or even bread and cold water, proved a much safer restorative in the fields. Some who took a glass of spirits that night never spoke another word, even though they were continuing to walk and converse when their friends joined them. One woman found her husband lying in a state of insensibility; she had only sweet milk and oatmeal cake to give him, but with these she succeeded in getting him home and saving him."--_Bacchus._ SHIPMASTER OF THE KEDRON.--"I was brought up in a temperance school, and when I shipped before the mast I stuck to my principles, though everyone else on board drank excepting two boys whom I persuaded to abstain. In a very severe storm off a lee-shore, when it was so cold they had to break the icicles off the ropes to tack the ship, all drank but myself and these two boys. The men would work very well for a few minutes, and then slack off and take another drink, until they were all keeled up, and we three boys had all we could do to keep the ship from going ashore. If we had drank with the rest, all would have been lost, for the men were too drunk to save themselves. Providentially, the storm abated before morning, and we were saved. Now, for many years I have been captain of my own ship, and I never give out one drop of liquor."--_Captain Brown._ ON THE PLAINS.--Twenty-six men, travelling on one of the great Western plains in the United States, were overtaken by cold and night. They had food, clothing, and whiskey, but no fire. They were warned not to drink whiskey or they would freeze. Three did not drink a drop, and though they felt cold they did not suffer nor freeze. Three more drank a little, and though they suffered much they did not freeze. Seven others that drank a good deal had their toes and fingers frozen. Six that drank pretty strong were badly frozen and never got over it. Four that got very boozy were frozen so badly that they died three or four weeks afterward. Three that got dead drunk were stiff dead by daylight. They all suffered just in proportion to the amount of whiskey they took. They were all strong men, and had about the same amount of clothing and blankets; the whiskey was all that made the difference. THE RED RIVER EXPEDITION in Canada, in 1870, is often quoted as one of the most laborious on record, 1200 troops travelling 1200 miles through a very dense wilderness, and having all their supplies to carry. They were ninety-four days out, and none of them had liquor. They were constantly wet through, sometimes for days together, and all the while at the severe labor of rowing, poling, tracking, and portaging, yet they were always well and cheery, and there was a total absence of crime. IN AFRICA it is far safer to do without intoxicating drink. Livingstone says that he lived without it for twenty years. Stanley performed his wonderful journey without it. Bruce said more than one hundred, years ago: "I laid down as a positive rule of health that spirits and all fermented liquors should be regarded as poisonous. Spring, or running water, if you can find it, is to be your only drink." WATERTON, the great naturalist, who travelled so much in South America, says: "I eat moderately, and never drink wine, spirits, or any fermented liquors in any climate. This abstemiousness has proved a faithful friend." He died by accident at the age of eighty-three. MR. HUBER, who saw 2160 perish of cholera in twenty-five days in one town in Russia, says that "Persons given to drinking are swept away like flies. In Tiflis, containing 20,000 inhabitants, every drunkard has fallen." Of 204 cases of cholera in the Park Hospital, New York, there were but six temperate persons, and these recovered. In Albany, where cholera prevailed with severe mortality for several weeks, only two of the 5000 members of temperance societies became its victims. In Montreal, where the victims of the disease were intemperate, it usually cut them off. In Great Britain, those who have been addicted to spirituous liquors and irregular habits have been the greatest sufferers from cholera. In some towns the drunkards are all dead.--_Bacchus._ MALT LIQUORS, under which title are included all kinds of porters and ales, produce the worst species of drunkenness. The effects of malt liquors are more stupefying than those of ardent spirits, and less easily removed. In a short time they render dull and sluggish the gayest disposition.--_Anatomy of Drunkenness._ GINGER-BEER.--A man who has been a temperance-worker for forty-five years, says that there is often alcohol in ginger-beer. He told of a case known to him of a reformed man who, after drinking some, felt strongly drawn to the bar-room, where he drank until he brought on delirium tremens. The beer will sometimes ferment enough in a few hours to produce alcohol--if it answers the conditions--a sweet liquid and a ferment. DANGER TO THE REFORMED.--A lady who had become a drunkard through taking alcoholic drinks as medicines, at length, after many efforts, succeeded in breaking away from the power of the appetite, and for a long time she seemed to be saved. At length she went to visit her mother, and that mother put brandy peaches on the table for tea. They aroused the slumbering appetite, the victim fell again, became worse than ever, and died a miserable drunkard. [6] From _Juvenile Temperance Manual_, by Julia Colman. * * * * * STORIES ABOUT THE RIGHT WAY TO TREAT ALE, BEER, Etc. THE RIGHT SIDE.--"Boys, which is the right side of the public house? Can you tell me?"--"Yes, sir, the outside." THE GOAT AND THE ALE.--Many years ago, when everybody drank freely, a Welsh minister named Rees Pritchard was at the ale-house drinking, when he took it into his head to offer some ale to a large tame goat. The animal drank till he fell down drunk, and the minister drank on till he was carried home drunk. The next day he was sick all day, but on the third day he went again to the ale-house, and began to drink. The goat was there, and he offered him more ale, but the animal would not touch it. The minister, seeing the animal wiser than himself, was ashamed, and gave up drinking, and became a worthy minister. HOW THE MONKEY WAS CURED.--A monkey named Kees had been taught to drink brandy. At dinner every day he had his share like his more manly (?) neighbors, only that his was given to him in a plate. One day, as he was about to drink it, his master set it on fire, and he ran off frightened and chattering. No inducement could afterward make him drink brandy. We have many stories of animals who would never drink again after they had once experienced its effects. THE KEEN MARKSMAN does not poison his nerves and brain with alcohol. Angus Cameron, a Highlander, at the age of twenty, took the Queen's prize for the best marksmanship, and when he was twenty-two (in 1869), he won in the same way a cup worth $1000. He made the best shot each time that ever had been made in the contest, and neither of them has been beaten by anyone else. Angus is a slight, modest, unassuming young man, who had been a Band of Hope boy. When he was announced as the winner, and all the friends made an ado over him, and offered him a generous glass of champagne, he quietly refused their mistaken kindness, and kept his pledge. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, when a printer boy in London, would drink no beer, and his companions called him the water American, and wondered that he was stronger than they who drank beer. His companion at the press drank six pints of beer every day, and had it to pay for. He was not only saved the expense, but he was stronger than they, and better off in every way. If he had gone to drinking beer at that time, like the other printer boys, it is likely we should never have heard of him. OATMEAL DRINK.--"In Boulton and Watts' factory we saw an immense workman at the hottest and heaviest work, wielding a ponderous hammer, and asked him what liquor he drank. He replied by pointing to an immense vessel filled with water and oatmeal, to which the men went and drank as much as they liked." This is made by adding one pound fine oatmeal to each gallon of water, and is much used in factories and at heavy work of all kinds in Government works, instead of the old rations of alcoholic liquors. Iron puddlers, glass blowers, and athletic trainers, all do their work now better without alcoholic liquors. A CHANGE IN AFFAIRS.--A poor boy was once put as an apprentice to a mechanic; and, as he was the youngest, he was obliged to go for beer for the older apprentices, though he never drank it. In vain they teased and taunted him to induce him to drink; he never touched it. Now there is a great change. Every one of those older apprentices became a drunkard, while this temperance boy has become a master, and has more than a hundred men in his employ. So much for total abstinence. BOOKS BETTER THAN BEER.--An intelligent young mechanic stood up in a temperance meeting and said: "I have a rich treat every night among my books. I saved my beer money and spent it in books. They cost me, with my book-case, nearly $100. They furnish enjoyment for my winter evenings, and have enabled me, by God's blessing, to gain much useful knowledge, such as pots and pipes could never have given me." A LITTLE DRUMMER-BOY was a favorite among the officers, who one day offered him a glass of strong drink. He refused it, saying that he was a Cadet of Temperance. They accused him of being afraid; but that did not move him. Then the major commanded him to drink, saying: "You know it is death to disobey orders." The little fellow stood up at his full height, and fixing his clear blue eyes on the face of the officer, he said: "When I entered the army I promised my mother on bended knees that, by the help of God, I would not taste a drop of rum, and I mean to keep my promise. I am sorry to disobey orders, sir, but I would rather suffer than disgrace my mother, and break my temperance pledge." He was excused from drinking. * * * * * TOBACCO. INTRODUCTORY LESSON. You have been learning about the poison alcohol, and what mischief is done by it; we will now study about another poison which thousands of persons are using every day. It is rolled in cigars and cigarettes, and hidden in snuff and pieces of tobacco, and does more harm to children and young people who use these things than to grown persons. Perhaps you know how a person feels who takes tobacco or smokes a cigar for the first time; if not, we will tell you. He begins to be dizzy, to tremble, to become faint, and to vomit; his head aches, and he is so sick for hours, often for several days, that he scarcely knows what to do. Why is he so sick? Because tobacco poison has been taken into his lungs; also, some has mixed with the saliva and gone down into his stomach; and each part it has reached is striving to drive it out, and is saying, by the pain it causes, "You have given me poison; do not give me any more." If he had taken enough it would have killed him. He recovers from this sickness and tries chewing or smoking again and again, until he becomes accustomed to the poison and can chew or smoke and it does not hurt him; so he thinks, but he is very much mistaken. Tobacco is a poison, and hurts everybody who uses it every time they do so, although it does its evil work very slowly, unless taken in large quantities. To understand more about this we will try to learn how tobacco is obtained, what poison is in it, and in what way it harms people. * * * * * THE STORY ABOUT TOBACCO. _HOW IT CAME TO BE USED._--Tobacco is the leaves of the tobacco plant, a native of America. It was used by the Indians of this country before Columbus came here in 1492. Some of the Spaniards who were with him on his second visit took some of it back with them to Portugal, and told the people they had discovered a wonderful medicine. From Spain tobacco seed was sent to France by Jean Nicot, in 1560. It is said that Sir Walter Raleigh carried it to England in 1586, when Elizabeth was queen. In a few years many civilized people were snuffing, chewing, and smoking tobacco, like the wild Indians, although it cost them a great deal of money to do so. King James does not seem to have liked it very much, for he said, "It is a custome loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs." He called the smoke "stinking fumes." _THE TOBACCO PLANT._ This plant belongs to the same family as the deadly nightshade, henbane, belladonna, thorn-apple, Jerusalem cherry, potato, tomato, egg-plant, cayenne pepper, bitter-sweet, and petunia. Most of the plants of this Nightshade family have more or less poison in their leaves or fruit. Tobacco is supposed to have been named from the pipe used by the Indians in smoking its leaves. The common tobacco plant grows from three to six feet high, and has large, almost lance-shaped, leaves growing down the stems; its flowers are funnel-shaped and of a purplish color. When fresh the leaves have very little odor or taste. _HOW TOBACCO IS USED._--When the plants are ripe, they are cut off above the roots and placed where they will become dry, sometimes in a building made for this purpose, called "a tobacco house." After a short time they begin to smell strong and taste bitter. They are then stripped from the stems very carefully and sorted. The leaves nearest the root are considered the poorest, those at the top generally the best. The different sorts are packed in separate hogsheads, and sent away to be sold to manufacturers of cigars, snuff, etc. The manufacturer has some leaves rolled into cigars, some pressed into cakes for chewing, or into little pieces to be smoked in a pipe; while some are ground for snuff. While the dried leaves are being rolled, pressed, or ground, various substances are mixed with them to give them an agreeable odor and pleasant taste. Yet, however pleasant the manufacturer may make them as he rolls, presses, or grinds, he cannot take the poison out of them. It remains in its brown covering to do much harm to those who may smoke the cigars, use the snuff, or chew the tobacco. BLACKBOARD OUTLINE. THE TOBACCO PLANT. NATIVE OF FOUND BY TAKEN TO GROWS IN THE America. Columbus, 1492. Portugal, Torrid and 1496. temperate zones. France, 1560. (About 50 species.) England, 1586. DESCRIPTION. FAMILY _Height_, 3 to 6 feet. _The same as the_ Jerusalem Cherry, _Leaves,_ lance-ovate, and running Petunia, down the stem. Potato, _Stem,_ hairy and sticky. Tomato, _Flowers,_ funnel-shaped and Egg-plant, purplish. Red pepper, etc. HOW MADE READY FOR USE. (1) (2) Cut-off above the roots. Flavored and scented. Dried. Rolled for cigars. Stripped; sorted. Pressed for chewing. Packed, and sold to the Ground for snuff. manufacturers. * * * * * THE POISON IN TOBACCO AND THE HARM IT DOES. _THE POISON._--What is the poison in fermented liquors?--"Alcohol." In distilled liquors?--"Alcohol" True; and the strongest poison in tobacco is _nicotine_, named from the man who first sent it to France, Jean Nicot. Beside this it contains several others, some of which we shall tell you about when we make up our blackboard outline. Tobacco, like alcohol, is a narcotic; that is, it soothes pain and produces sleep. Alcohol acts first upon the nerves; tobacco upon the muscles, which it weakens and causes to tremble. It often causes palpitation of the heart. If the skin is scratched or punctured, and tobacco poison put into the wound, it will do the same harm as if it were taken into the stomach. Tobacco is so dangerous that physicians do not use it much as a medicine. _HARM DONE IN THE STOMACH._--You remember that after alcohol has been swallowed, the little mouths of the stomach take it up and carry it to the liver, which sends it with the blood to different parts of the body. Tobacco, as we have already told you, poisons more slowly. People do not swallow it purposely, yet some of it goes down, accidentally, into the stomach with the saliva, and makes trouble there, causing nausea and vomiting when taken for the first time. By and by the stomach seems to take the poison without being hurt, but it really suffers from dyspepsia or other diseases, and often loses its appetite for wholesome food. _HARM DONE IN THE MOUTH, THROAT, AND LUNGS._--The mouth takes in some of the poison through the pores of the membrane, or skin, which lines it; those who smoke, sometimes have what is called "smokers' sore throat"; besides this, the senses of taste and smell arc more or less injured by nicotine and the other poisons in tobacco. The fumes, or smoke, from the weed fills the air with poisonous vapor which irritates the lungs, not only of the smoker, but of all who are where they must breathe the same atmosphere. Lungs thus irritated are liable to become diseased. Cigarettes are still more injurious than cigars because of the smoke from their paper coverings; also, because from the way they are made, more of the tobacco poison goes into the lungs. The cheap cigarette which boys use is made from cast-away cigar stumps and other filthy things. _HARM DONE IN THE BRAIN AND NERVES._--The smoker feels so rested and comfortable, after his cigar, and his brain is so rested, that he does not think about the mischief that is going on among its blood-vessels and nerves; perhaps he has never heard that tobacco, snuffed, chewed, or smoked hurts the brain, and does not learn about it until he finds he is losing his memory, that his mind is not so strong to think as it should be, and his will too weak to help him conquer his love for the snuff, tobacco, or cigar, when he wishes to stop using it. He has become the slave of tobacco, and it is not easy to get free from his cruel enemy. The nerves also lose their power, or become more or less paralyzed by nicotine and the other tobacco poisons. _MORE ABOUT THE HARM DONE BY TOBACCO._--Some persons who continue to use tobacco are strong enough to throw off the poison through the lungs, the skin, and in other ways; but how much better it would be if they were not obliged to employ their strength in getting rid of that which does them no good, which only gives a little pleasure to nobody but themselves, and often makes those suffer who are compelled to remain where they are having "a good smoke." Beside, their breath and clothing have the tobacco odor, which not only makes the air impure, but is disagreeable to most people. If this be true of smoking, what shall we say about the filthy habit of chewing, and the utterly useless and disgusting practice of taking snuff, which injures the voice as well as the senses of taste and smell? And what about spitting tobacco juice on the floors of cars, steamboats, churches,--any place where it is convenient for the man or boy who has lost his common politeness in his love for tobacco? We must not forget that cigars, etc., cost money. No one who smokes, chews, or snuffs would throw away dollars and cents which might be put into the savings bank, or used in buying something worth having for himself or somebody else. Lastly, we would have you know that tobacco causes thirst, and this often leads to drinking alcoholic liquors. Some one who has studied this subject, says that "nine out of ten of the boys and young men who become drunkards have first learned to smoke or chew tobacco." A New York daily paper gave a list of 294 cases of insanity caused by drinking, in 246 of which the whiskey drinking followed tobacco chewing. Tobacco and alcohol make thousands of wretched homes, and send a great many people to prison or to the insane asylum; so we entreat you to turn from beer, wine, and all alcoholic liquors as you would from a serpent, and say No, when tempted to smoke a cigar or use tobacco in any form. Do this all the more decidedly because, as we have told you before, alcohol and tobacco hurt children and young persons in every way more than they injure any one else. If you have begun to use these poisons, give them up this very day, before the habit of using them becomes too strong for you to break. * * * * * QUESTIONS ON THE USE OF TOBACCO. Of what poison beside alcohol have you been studying?--"Tobacco." How is tobacco used?--"Some take it in snuff; some chew it; some smoke it in a pipe; some smoke it in cigars or cigarettes." What is the name of the strongest poison in tobacco?--"Nicotine." What harm does tobacco poison do to the body?--See Blackboard Outline. What harm does it do to the mind?--See Blackboard Outline. Whom does it harm most?--"Those who begin to use it when they are children or very young." What happens to children or young people if they use tobacco in any way?--"They are not healthy; they are not strong; they do not grow fast; they look pale and sickly." How does the tobacco poison hurt their minds?--"They cannot learn fast; they often forget what they have learned." What often makes tobacco-chewers, snuffers, and smokers disagreeable to clean people?--"Their breath smells of tobacco; their clothes smell of tobacco; they poison the air with tobacco-fumes; some have the filthy habit of spitting tobacco-juice wherever they happen to be." What other harm does the use of tobacco do to people?--"It makes them waste time and money; it leads some to drink alcoholic liquors and to go with bad company." If you are wise how will you treat tobacco?--"I will let it alone." If you have begun to use it what had you better do?--"Give it up to-day." Why to-day?--"Because the longer I use it the harder it will be for me to give it up." If you keep on using it what will you be?--"A tobacco slave." * * * * * BLACKBOARD OUTLINE. TOBACCO. POISONS IN TOBACCO SMOKE. EFFECTS OF THE POISONS. Carbonic acid Causes sleepiness and headache. Carbonic oxide Causes trembling of the muscles and heart. Ammonia Bites the tongue; makes too much work for the salivary glands. Nicotine See below. NICOTINE IS CAUSES Odorous, Weakness, Pungent, Nervousness, Emetic, Dizziness, Poisonous, Nausea, Pain-soothing, Faintness, Sleep-producing, _i.e._ Narcotic. Loss of strength, Stupor, _If taken in large quantities_ Convulsions and Death. SOME OF THE HARM DONE BY TOBACCO TO THE BODY. TO THE MIND, ETC. Poisons the saliva. Makes the memory poor. Injures the sense of smell, taste, Lessens the power to think. sight, and hearing. Weakens the will. Causes "smokers' sore-throat." Makes people grow in selfishness Injures the stomach, causing and impoliteness. dyspepsia, etc. Makes people waste time and Often takes away the appetite for money. wholesome food. Often leads to drunkenness and bad Irritates the air-cells of the company. lungs. Sometimes causes insanity. Causes palpitation of the heart. Weakens the muscles, causing trembling. Injures the eyes. Excites, then stupefies and paralyzes the brain and the nerves. * * * * * OPIUM AND OTHER NARCOTICS. _OPIUM._--Opium is the juice obtained from the seed-vessels of the white poppy before they are ripe; this is dried, and smoked in a pipe or chewed. It makes a person feel very pleasant and happy for a little while, then so horribly wretched that he takes more of the poison to forget his misery. So he keeps on until mind and body are a complete wreck. Now and then an opium slave gets free from the dreadful habit which has mastered him, but usually the slavery ends only in death. _LAUDANUM AND MORPHINE._--These soothe pain and cause sleep; but beware of them; they are made from opium, and like it, though more slowly, hurt mind and body. Beware also of _chloral hydrate_ and _chloroform_, which physicians give to ease suffering and produce sleep. _Endure pain_ rather than form the habit of using these narcotics. _HASHISH, ETC._--This is prepared from the hemp plant growing in hot countries, and is a terribly exciting poison. The _areca nut_, the seed from a kind of palm, pear-shaped, and resembling a nutmeg, is mixed with quick-lime and wrapped in a betel-leaf, which grows on a vine belonging to the pepper family. This mixture reddens the saliva and lips, and blackens the teeth. It is chewed by millions of people in India. The leaves of the _coca_, also of the _thorn apple_, are smoked or chewed by the South American Indian. ALL these poisons mean the same thing,-- _A little pleasure_, DISEASE, and DEATH. * * * * * Practical Work in the School-Room. BY SARAH F. BUCKELEW & MARGARET W. LEWIS. Part I.--THE HUMAN BODY. TEACHERS' EDITION. A TRANSCRIPT OF LESSONS GIVEN IN THE PRIMARY DEPARTMENT OF GRAMMAR SCHOOL NO. 49, NEW YORK CITY. This work was prepared especially to aid Teachers in giving oral instructions in Physiology to Primary and Intermediate Classes. It is, perhaps, the only Physiology published that is suitable for these grades. Considerable attention is paid to the subject of Alcohol and Narcotics. "First is given _a model lesson_; second, _a formula_, embodying the principal facts given during the development and teaching; third, _questions for the formula_; fourth, _directions for teaching_; and fifth, _questions on the lesson_. These last are important. A full plan of lessons is given for each week for five months, in each of six grades, showing exactly how much work ought to be attempted. No book could be made more helpful to teachers. To the thousands who are asking, 'Tell us how to teach,' here are full, minute, and correct instructions. Even the answers expected are given, blackboard outlines are arranged, and nothing is wanting to make the book as useful to teachers as it is possible for any book to be. It ought to have a large sale. No book published during the last ten years will do more to drive away routine from the school-room and introduce thought than this, _if only the teachers will use it_. Its introduction displaces nothing but the old-fashioned monotonous recitations. Let them go; we welcome this book as an important aid in hastening along the good time of better teaching. It is excellently printed, with good paper and binding."--_The New York School Journal._ Illustrated. Price by mail, 75 cents. * * * * * DEVELOPMENT LESSONS. BY PROF. E.V. DEGRAFF & MISS M.K. SMITH. IN FIVE PARTS. I. FIFTY LESSONS ON THE SENSES, SIZE, FORM, PLACE, PLANTS, AND INSECTS. These lessons are presented objectively with a view to showing how elementary work in natural science may be done. II. QUINCY SCHOOL WORK. III. LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE AND ART OF TEACHING. Specific instruction is given on how to teach Reading, Spelling, Phonics, Language, Geography, Arithmetic, etc. IV. SCHOOL GOVERNMENT. V. "THE NEW DEPARTURE IN THE SCHOOLS OF QUINCY." By CHAS. FRANCIS ADAMS. DR. A.D. MAYO says, in the _New England Journal of Education_: "Although we have given place in our book-notice column to an appreciative mention of the volume, 'Development Lessons,' a new reading seems to call for a new commendation of this admirable guide to teachers. Mr. DeGraff needs no special 'boom' as a first-class institute man, and his extracts of lectures in Part III. sparkle with valuable suggestions. In no published work is Col. Parker really seen to such advantage as in the 'reports of conversations' with him in Part II., which can be studied with profit by every teacher. But perhaps the most complete portion of this admirable book is the 178 pages of lessons on the Senses, Size, Form, Place, Plants, and Insects, by MISS M.K. SMITH, now Teacher of Methods in the State Normal School at Peru, Neb." Handsomely Bound and Illustrated. 300 pages. Price by mail, $1.50. 
19762	----	HOW TO EAT A CURE FOR "NERVES" ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "Whosoever wishes to eat much must eat little." Cornaro, in saying this, meant that if a man wished to eat for a great many days--that is, desired a long life--he must eat only a little each day. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- HOW TO EAT A CURE FOR "NERVES" By THOMAS CLARK HINKLE, M.D. RAND McNALLY & COMPANY CHICAGO--NEW YORK ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright, 1921, by RAND McNALLY & COMPANY ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE CONTENTS PAGE I. WHERE THE TROUBLE LIES 13 II. HOW TO OVERCOME THE TROUBLE 31 III. RIGHT AND WRONG DIET FOR NERVOUS PEOPLE 55 IV. VALUE OF OUTDOOR LIFE AND EXERCISE 79 V. EFFECT OF RIGHT LIVING ON WORRY AND UNHAPPINESS 109 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "Nature, desirous to preserve man in good health as long as possible, informs him herself how he is to act in time of illness; for she immediately deprives him, when sick, of his appetite in order that he may eat but little." --CORNARO ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE INTRODUCTION This author-physician's cure for "nerves" vividly recalls the simplicity of method employed in the complete restoration to health of one of olden time whose story has come ringing down the ages in the Book of Books. Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, a mighty man of valor and honorable in the sight of all men, turned away in a rage when Elisha, the prophet of the Most High, prescribed for his dread malady a remedy so simple that it was despised in his eyes. But "his servants came near and said ... 'If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it?'" In "How to Eat" the author offers the sufferer from "nerves" a remedy as simple as that Elisha offered Naaman. He gives him an opportunity to profit by his well-tested knowledge that overeating and _rapidity_ in eating are ruinous to health and shorten life. It is seldom that there emanates from the pen of a doctor a book which, concerning any physical disorder, minimizes the efforts of the medical practitioner. While this author-physician gives full credit to the conscientious physician for the great service he is able to render in all other spheres of his profession, he wholly denies the necessity for medical care in cases of nervous breakdown, and discounts liberally the benefits to be derived from professional advice except in so far as the doctor is the patient's counselor and dictator as to what and how and how much he shall eat and drink, and the way he shall employ his time. Any discourse is valuable which incites a man having a marked tendency to depressing, morbid ideas, to rid himself of them. Dr. Hinkle helps the sufferer to gain that confidence and cheer which result from knowledge of certain immunity from dreaded ills and positive assurance of recovery by mere regulation of food or employment along the lines of simple, everyday living. But that alone is not sufficient. It is made quite clear that no one thing by itself will insure a cure of "nerves." The cure must come through common sense exerted along several related avenues of endeavor. No matter how steadfastly one may adhere to directions as to abstaining from harmful food and injurious methods of partaking of those foods which are beneficial, if he spends the larger portion of his time idly rocking in a convenient arm chair, exerting neither body nor mind nor will, that which might be gained by proper nutrition is largely nullified by lack of physical exercise and mental activity. That this little book may serve as a spur to the bodily self-denial and self-repression and the intellectual and spiritual uplift which make for character-building, is the very evident goal of its writer. From self-analysis and self-cure he has worked out a philosophy--a system or _art_--by which those afflicted with nervous breakdown may be healed. And by putting into print the result of his practical experiments in diet and exercise he has broadened immeasurably the scope of his helpfulness to all nervebound sufferers by placing within their reach the simplest of measures by which release is secured from a condition which wholly incapacitates for active service or even for quiet, everyday usefulness. It is because the things Dr. Hinkle advises are so commonplace, and because the doing of them day after day, year in and year out, is so monotonous, that people will be tempted to disregard or make light of their helpfulness. But the commonplace things which make up life are all important, as Susan Coolidge has so aptly expressed in these lines which fittingly illustrate the author's thought: "The commonplace sun in the commonplace sky Makes up the commonplace day. The moon and the stars are commonplace things, And the flower that blooms and the bird that sings; But dark were the world, and sad our lot If the flowers failed, and the sun shone not; And God, who studies each separate soul, Out of commonplace lives makes his beautiful whole." It therefore behooves the sufferer from "nerves" and that great host of others who are in danger of a nervous breakdown if they do not speedily mend their ways of eating and living, to heed the kindly admonitions and follow the precepts of this author who practices what he preaches. By persistently doing commonplace things in the most commonplace way, keeping ever in mind the great objects to be attained thereby--good health, good cheer, and increased usefulness throughout a long life--the reader of this little treatise will find it worth many, many times its size, weight, and bulk. And heeding the author's admonition, "Go thou and do likewise," he will not shorten his life or lose it altogether in fruitless quests for the strength and nerve vigor which constantly elude him because of lack of self-control and failure to persist in the simple but efficacious measures of relief here outlined. M. F. S. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- HOW TO EAT A CURE FOR NERVES I. WHERE THE TROUBLE LIES "What we leave after making a hearty meal does us more good than what we have eaten." --CORNARO It is now over twenty years since I had my first nervous breakdown. About ten years later I had another, far worse than the first one. The first lasted six months; the second a little more than two and one half years. Doubtless if I had not in the strangest way in the world found out how to cure myself it would have lasted until now, unless death in the meantime had come to my relief. But right here I want to say that if you are looking for some new or miraculous treatment for such unfortunate people you might as well close the book now, for you will be disappointed. There is a cure for "nerves" but the cure is as old as the world. The trouble with poor deluded mortals--doctors included--is, we are constantly looking for a miracle to cure us, but if we look back on all the real cures that we have ever heard about, we shall find they were as simple as the sun or the rain. And in the name of common sense let me ask: what is the difference _how_ we are cured if we _are_ cured and are _happy_ as a result of it? Isn't that enough? Most certainly it is. And now, as we journey along through the pages of this book, I want you to know that these words have been written by one who has nothing to offer you except human experience. As we proceed you will notice that every statement is tremendously positive. When a man has been through this literal hell of "nerves" he knows all about it and what can be done for it. And so when I tell you the things you must do to get well and _stay well_, I want you to understand that I know. There is absolutely no theory to be found in these pages. If you put your finger in the fire you burn it. You don't have to take your finger out of the fire, call in a lot of learned gentlemen and say to them: "Now tell me your candid opinion about my finger. Is it burned or is it not?" And I am just as positive about my cure of "nerves" as you could be that fire burned your finger. That brings me to what I want to say about the so-called "rest cures" at the sanitariums. It is a well-known fact that if a case of "nerves" is pronounced cured at a sanitarium the cure is only temporary. Sooner or later every one of these patients goes down hill again. And remember I am talking about people who have nervous breakdowns THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN. I have no time to spare for the person who has brought on his own trouble. I am chiefly concerned with that host of children in America--and there is a host, I am sorry to say--born of what I choose to call "pre-nervous" parents. The girls of such parents frequently break down in high school. And many of the finest boys that I know have this dreadful "thing" fastened firmly upon them just at the very beginning of their lifework. You may think I am a little vehement, but to me one of the most damnable and disgusting things in the world is that the medical profession remains so ignorant concerning the _real cure_ for such cases. I believe the late Sir William Osler was the greatest physician of his generation. He was not only a man of talent, he was a genius, and his knowledge of medicine almost passes understanding. Yet Osler himself was as much in the dark concerning the _real_ cure for so-called _neurasthenia_ as the physicians who read his works on practice. If one wants to find out how ignorant the whole profession is on the subject of a permanent cure, let the thing get hold of him, and then let him make the rounds of the physicians, follow out their advice, and see where he comes out! I have said that even the sanitariums of this country--and for that matter I might have said of any other country--do not _permanently cure_ these people. I have ample proof of this statement. I have met these people everywhere and no doubt you have, too. Quite recently the subject was brought up anew to me. I had written an article on the subject for one of the magazines, a magazine having a large circulation. In a very short time my mail was literally flooded with letters. Every incoming mail brought great numbers of them. They came from physicians of the regular school, and from physicians of many other schools, too. I won't mention any of them, for this is a treatise on a dreadful affliction and how one may get rid of it; it is not intended as a criticism of anyone. I have no desire to criticize and I haven't time. I am stating facts interwoven with my own life. If the cure is real, the people will find it out after they have tried it; if it is not, they will also find that out. In fact, it's exactly as Gamaliel, the teacher of Paul, said to the men of Israel when they would have slain the apostles for teaching Christ's sayings, "Refrain from these men and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to naught: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it." And it's exactly the same way with this healing art. The very fact that physicians of all schools of medicine--physicians who were sufferers from "nerves"--wrote me, shows plainly that they could not heal themselves. I have many letters from people who have been in sanitariums for years and who still have "nerves." The sanitariums do some people a lot of good, but they cannot remove the _cause_ of nervousness. I am certain that the very best rest cure for women is the one Dr. Weir Mitchell first used. But such women are sure to go down again and again and still again if that is _all_ that is done for them. Now frankly, if Christian Science could cure such cases and make them _stay_ cured I should want a practitioner of this cult to treat them. But Christian Science simply cannot cure them because the underlying cause of this trouble is _physical_, not _mental_. In other words, the mind becomes ill because the body is made ill by certain poisons, and the nature of the disease is so peculiar that most of these miserable sufferers will not even try a thing unless some one brings them overwhelming evidence of its having wrought a cure. Or, if they do try it, they usually quit the treatment before nature has had time to do her work and set their bodies right. I have the most profound sympathy for such people. I want to speak directly to them. That is the task that I have set myself in this work. I want to talk directly to those of you who are sufferers from "nerves." I see you in every state, in every city, in every village, and throughout the farming districts of this country. I have received letters from many farmers who are suffering with this "thing." To them let me say, I know just how you feel, and from the very bottom of my heart I pity you. I know the horrible suffering of each one of you. I don't care what your ambition has been or is. I don't care what your situation in life may be. I don't care how rich or how poor you are. I don't care how much trouble you have had, or the nature of it. I want you to know these words are being written by one who knows more about your sufferings than you can imagine. I want you to believe this, because it is true. If you have longed and prayed for death, remember that the one who is writing these words also has longed and prayed for death. But one thing you must be sure to remember: while you are waiting and trying to get well you must have _patience_. I recollect one beautiful day in early spring when traveling in Nebraska I passed a little cemetery. How sweet and restful the place seemed, and as I looked out over those little white stones I prayed silently that the great God who made me would not hold me much longer on earth, that He would soon grant me the rest and peace which I believed was to be found only in death and the grave. But _remember this_: In those dark days never for a moment did I think of taking my own life! These words may reach some one who has had such a thought. If so, I say to you that to take one's life is the most cowardly thing a human being can do. This is the only place where I feel like being severe with you people. Shame on the man or woman who will not go on to the end fighting honorably! And now if you have ever given thought to such a thing, blot it from your mind forever. I can see how these miserable people might long for death, as I did. But no matter how we may long for release through death, the God of nature must be the judge of our time of going. Now this brings me to what I want to say about such sufferers going insane. Believe me, they never do! Remember this always. You won't become insane. You couldn't if you tried! In letter after letter among the flood of them I have had from all over this country and Canada, I read how the poor sufferer feared he or she might be going insane. I know, poor souls, just how you feel. That feeling is, I think, the most dreadful of all things connected with "nerves." I suffered from it for years. It is a dreadful feeling, but there is not the least bit of danger of such a thing happening to you. You will _not_ go insane. Such persons can't. Do you really get me? Such persons cannot go insane. This disease is nothing but what we call a functional nervous trouble. And so forget about the danger of insanity for all time. You can be cured, but you will make your return to health just that much slower by harboring this fear. And it would be simply foolish for you to go on thinking it possible after I--let me say it again--after I have told you that it cannot happen. For the value of this treatise lies in the "I." Its value is just like that of the treatise by Cornaro. He lived it. And so likewise have I lived it. I have been laid low with this malady. I have staggered in black despair with staring eyes and bleeding feet and crying soul along this road strewn with thorns and stones. I know what it is to lie awake all night and cry like a baby, with none to know and none to tell me what to do. I know what it is to be tremendously ambitious. Ambition! Ambition! Ah, God of Heaven! How a poor soul suffers who beyond everything else, craves to be able to do something big in this world because he knows he should, yet is held down by this dreadful thing, "nerves!" And how little, how unspeakably little, do physicians, even the greatest of them, know, actually know, how we suffer, unless indeed there be one in whose own body the fiend has sunk deep its talons. After I had my first breakdown I made up my mind to study medicine because something told me that I was one of those "peculiar" people who just _think_ there is something the matter with them. Is it not strange that with all the advance that has been made in general medicine, little or nothing has been done for the relief of the people born with this curse hanging over them? I wish this book could be put into the hands of every nervous parent for, think as you may, all nervous parents beget nervous children. But does it follow that such children should have a nervous breakdown almost before they are out of their teens? No, decidedly not; and what is more, they never should and never would break down, if they had proper food. I look back with horror on the many nights of my childhood when I suffered with "night terrors." And right here let me say: no child will _ever have night terrors_ if he is given just what he should eat, and is kept from overeating. And now a few words about the _first_ great point concerning the prevention as well as the cure of "nerves." Nervous people, and many others as well, eat too much. That, you say, is nothing new. But that is just where the dreadful wrong begins; and why there has been tragedy after tragedy, and why even while this is being written there will be many more tragedies. You will hear lecturers say--I myself have said it, and to large audiences: "You people eat too much." But if that's all that is said, people straightway go away and say: "Oh, yes, he's right, of course. We all eat too much." And there it ends. Until recently people did not know--most of them don't know yet--that each day they are actually bringing the grave nearer by overeating. Not long ago the great life insurance companies of this country held a notable convention in the city of New York. Now after everything had been said and done, after every phase of life insurance had been discussed, what do you suppose was the great outstanding statement from that remarkable body of men who know more about why people die than any other body of people on earth? It was this: "The average American _man or woman_ dies at the age of 43 because he eats what he wants to eat rather than what he should eat." That means, of course, that practically all Americans overeat. They are all like the child who says, "I'm not hungry for bread and butter. I'm hungry for cake." And I find that most of these poor deluded nervous sufferers eat what they want under the supposition that it is good for them because they crave it. I myself used to do so. I would eat candy by the pound. And it is odd but quite true that nervous people crave the very things that hurt them most. But there is no more sense in eating what you crave because you crave it than there is in the man who is addicted to alcohol, drinking alcohol because he craves it. I once used tobacco; I craved it, but I did not need it just because I craved it. It is true the body naturally needs some fats, some carbohydrates; in fact, a balanced ration, as we shall see later. But I want to make it mighty plain here that never was there a greater error than that of supposing you need chocolates or sweets just because you crave them. And you don't need to overeat, and keep on doing it, just because you must eat. II. HOW TO OVERCOME THE TROUBLE "He who pursues a regular course of life need not be apprehensive of illness, as he who has guarded against the cause need not be afraid of the effect." --CORNARO We have now come to the second step in the cure of "nerves"--eating the right food in the right way. You must chew all food until it is of the consistency of cream, and you must also sip all liquids slowly. And now, as you read these things that I have set down, I want you to remember this: doing any one thing--and doing that alone--will not cure this malady. No, it is doing a number of things at the right time. I know this is true because I have tried it. For a time I chewed my food to a cream, but that was the only thing I did in an endeavor to get well. I was doing none of the other things that are absolutely necessary for a cure. This is one great trouble with all such people. They will Fletcherize for a time and then say there is nothing to that because it does not cure them. Well, as I've said, that alone will not, and I want to dwell at length on this because nobody knows as well as I do, what harm such a belief does the nervous sufferer. Trying out Fletcherizing alone, which I say must be done together with other things if you want to get well and stay well, is like taking the handle of an axe and going out into the woods to cut down a tree. Now with Fletcherizing you have a perfectly good handle, but you know very well that you can't cut a tree down with only an axe handle. But that is not the fault of the handle. The fault is obviously your own. Now suppose you get the axe and fit the handle to it. You can then cut the tree down if you work hard enough at the task. Again, suppose you cut the tree half way through and quit. Will the axe keep on until the work is done? You know it will not, and you very well know if you wish to be cured you must keep on doing your part of the work or dieting will be of no value whatever to you. Now suppose a man comes along and tells you that the axe you have is no good and therefore it is no use for you to keep on trying to use it. That is exactly what some physicians still say about Fletcherizing. But you say, "I must cut this tree down. Nobody will do it for me; how shall I get it down? Can you give me an axe that will cut it down?" "Oh, no," he replies, "but anyway there's no use fooling with that one." Then, if you are determined to do the work, you say, "I have to cut the tree down. You have no other axe to offer me, so I'm going to try the one I have." And you go ahead and cut down the tree. Then just as you have finished, the man comes your way again, and in great delight you call out to him: "Come and see! I cut this tree down with the axe you said was no good!" The man comes over to you and says, "Where's the tree? I don't see it!" You are astonished and you tell him, "There it lies on the ground right before your eyes! Can't you see it?" But he turns and walks away saying: "There is no tree there; it is all in your mind." This is exactly what people with "nerves" have been told again and again by physicians, by relatives, and by most other people who have never had "nerves." I tell you these things so that when you begin to eat sparingly and chew your food to a cream you may fortify yourself against well-meaning but mistaken friends and relatives. And, oddly enough, it does seem that the individual with "nerves" has more friends and relatives than any other person in the world. Remember you must not only chew your food to the consistency of cream for one or two months, you must make this practice a lifelong habit. If you cannot take time to eat a meal in this way, you had much better go hungry. To people who travel and must frequently take their meals in railroad eating houses, I would say, get some bread and butter sandwiches and eat them slowly while on the train. There is always a chance to secure all you need to eat, too. You may not always be able to sit an hour at the table--the time we should give to a meal if we eat as we should. I know many object to this rule on the ground that if we followed it we should get nothing else done. But that is nonsense. Did not the Master of us all say, "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" Then can we not devote three of the twelve to our food? If we have nine hours in which we are at our highest efficiency, is it not good sense, if we eat three meals a day, to give three hours to these meals? There is only one sane answer to the question; we should take an hour for a meal. Every now and then some magazine writer will state that the chewing of food to a cream does not help anybody. He will tell you that you can swallow your food any old way and it will not hurt you in the least. In fact, I actually saw an article in one of our leading periodicals containing just such statements. We should, I suppose, have only pity for an editor who would give space to such stuff, and should also pity the poor wretch who by writing it is striving to attain notoriety. At any rate there is one excellent thing about such lies, they do harm for only a little while. When people find out that a thing is harmful to them, they usually quit it, no matter how many notoriety seekers are urging and encouraging them to keep on. Usually the sufferer with "nerves" is the only one in the household who will eat sparingly and chew his food slowly. But now and then I find an intelligent, sympathetic man who will do so because it is helpful to his wife. He sympathizes with her infirmity, and with fine self-denial eats as she does. And note this: he usually derives benefit from so doing. Time after time when I have put a nervous woman under this regimen, and then her husband elected to go along with her, I have had the man come to me and say: "Well, doctor, I declare I'm feeling a whole lot better myself! I don't get sleepy any more during the daytime, and that pain I used to have in the region of my liver is gone!" And so on and on. The fact is just this: anybody who follows the rules that I learned to apply in my own case cannot fail to be benefited. And although those not inclined to "nerves" can eat a greater variety of food, it's greatly to be desired when there is a nervous person in a household of grownups that all other members of the family enter together into this thing. It could not fail to help every one of them. To be truthful, in the beginning you will all find it mighty hard to persist in chewing all your food to a cream. Mouthful after mouthful of food will get away from you when you are not thinking. This just goes to show how we are in the habit of bolting our food. At first people who Fletcherize or chew their food perfectly, usually lose weight. I most certainly did. I lost about twenty pounds because of it, but I was so well and felt so good I could almost have jumped over the North Star. I know that, unfortunately, a lot of people with "nerves" have started to chew their food carefully and to eat sparingly, but the minute they found themselves losing weight they were frightened and quit. They went on carrying that ten or twenty or thirty pounds of flesh and all the time suffering the tortures of the damned just in order that they might keep it. But of what benefit are a certain number of extra pounds of flesh and how can a man explain such a senseless action? The astonishing thing is that many physicians are willing to condemn a cure just as soon as they find the patient has lost a pound of beef. But as I said before, the primary mission of man in this world is not to raise beef. I do not find fault with the raising of beef in the feeding yards, but if beef must be raised let us confine the industry to the cattle pens and stock yards. Let us not worship it to the degree that we would rather live in hell than part with a few extra pounds that overload our own bodies. Now just here I want it distinctly understood, as I have said before, that this text is primarily for _functional nervous cases_. Tubercular people belong to an entirely different class. They should live out of doors day and night and should, if possible, be treated at outdoor institutions established for such cases. But the individual with "nerves" will find what he needs and will find it abundantly if he has enough determination to take hold of it and keep at it. On the part of many it will take all the determination they have to chew their food to a cream and always eat sparingly. In regard to the amount of food taken, judgment must of course be used. We all know that it is possible to eat too little. But you should always quit eating while you still feel you would like a little more. I know of no better guide than this to offer you. But I have observed that the person who eats slowly and chews his food to a cream never eats as much food as he would if he bolted it. It is just like letting a thirsty horse drink water. I remember, as a boy on the farm, when I led a very thirsty horse from the field to the water tank how rapidly he would swallow. If my father were with me, after the horse had drunk a while he would say, "Make him hold his head up." Frequently when I did so the horse would draw a long breath and drink no more. Had he gone right on drinking, as a thirsty horse will if you permit him to do so, he might have drunk twice as much as was good for him. And that's the way people eat. As a result the horse that drinks and drinks and drinks when he is very thirsty sometimes dies in a few hours. I have seen a horse die from drinking too much water and I have also seen people die in a few hours after a terrible gorge that they could not get rid of. Do you know that most nervous people have a way of sitting down to the table and eating until they are literally full? If you could take out the stomach of such a person and look at it, the sight would frighten you. And with good reason. For as a result of this habit many nervous people have dilated stomachs. But if they would correct their manner of eating there is usually enough tone in the muscular walls of the stomach to get it back to normal. I marvel again and again over how miraculously nature restores herself even after she has been terribly abused, if only she is given a chance. I am certain that all human beings would be more efficient if they chewed all solid food to a cream and sipped all liquids slowly. The late Professor William James, the great Harvard psychologist, testified to the value of such a habit, as did a number of other distinguished Harvard professors. I regret that some physicians still hold out in their belief that it does no good although the evidence stands out as clearly before them as a tree along the roadside. But they are like the physician who some years ago declared that bathing was bad for people. I recall how hard we all bore down upon him, as he richly deserved, and how the Journal of the American Medical Association printed a short poem ridiculing him. I am quite certain that the members of the Regular school of medicine have progressed infinitely farther toward the cure of diseases than members of all the other schools combined. I do not say this simply because I happen to be a physician of the Regular school; I say it because a candid survey of what has been accomplished, and by whom, proves it. But as to diet, we have done little compared with what we should do. We have made no greater progress along this line because so many of us have been blinded by prejudice--the curse of the human race. With regard to chewing all food to a cream, most modern writers on dietetics, while acknowledging that this super-mastication is useful, maintain that it does not increase the value of the food. But they err greatly in this, as we can prove in a very few words: If a certain amount of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates is bolted by a nervous man suffering from a breakdown, it will cause intestinal toxemia as a result of the bolted food, but if he chews the food to a cream it will be digested in a normal manner and will not cause gas in the stomach or intestines. The proper amount of food is absorbed and nourishes the man as it should. Now did not the thorough mastication of that food increase the value of the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates? The thing is a self-evident fact. In the first case a man takes food which quickly turns to a loathsome poison. In the second instance the same kind of food is so thoroughly mixed with the ptyalin in the saliva that whatever is eaten becomes of value as protein or fat or some other food element. After many years of sad experience with this malady we call "nerves" I am convinced that the reason why people have this disease is because they are literally "food drunk." I have treated men who had been on an alcohol debauch and I know how terribly depressed they are after such a spree is over. It is exactly the same way with the pre-nervous people that break down. They sit down to a big meal and overeat. There is a temporary stimulus, just as in the case of the person who takes intoxicants, followed by that terrible mental depression that all who have suffered from "nerves" know. And because the individual with the "nerves" is overeating two or three times each day, he stays drunk with the poisons that form in his stomach and intestines. Such people over-assimilate the poisonous products of proteins, especially of sugars. Of course this may seem oddly stated because we would not want any absorption of the poisons in the intestines, but it is probable that nature can and does take care of a little of it there in the healthy individual. It is perfectly absurd to say, as some physicians still continue to say, that no poisonous matter is ever absorbed in the intestinal tract. Give a child something that causes intestinal indigestion and see how quickly he has a rise in temperature. This fever is the direct result of poisons absorbed in the intestines. In the case of the nervous adult, however, this poison does not as often result in fever as it does in a horrible mental depression and a complete inability to perform any sort of work. And so there seems no question but that this terrible malady we call "nerves," or a nervous breakdown in any of its many forms, is in a majority of cases the result of the wrong eating habits of the individual. The chewing of all food to a cream will go far toward curing the trouble, but in most cases this alone will not effect a cure. It would not have done so in my own case, although I did see much improvement as a result of that practice alone. And here I want to say this: There are many who say they cannot eat acid fruits because of the distress they cause. Now if such people would always chew an apple, a pear, or other fruit to a cream, no distress would result from eating fresh fruit. But such people must follow in detail the diet I shall give farther on. Now, facts cannot be stated too strongly. It is certain acid fruits will cause distress if you do not chew them to a cream. I would swell up like a toad if I ate only one apple hurriedly. I don't dare think what might happen to me if I ate three or four in that way. I might possibly find myself transformed into a human balloon and float away into space. But I don't eat apples that way--not now. Some who read these pages may think it very strange, yet it is quite true that there really are persons suffering with "nerves" who have not gumption enough to follow this simple rule of chewing all food to a cream. I despair of ever helping those people. They still continue to dispose of a big meal in fifteen minutes, and then insist they have chewed all their food carefully. I have had that thing happen right before my own eyes. Then think of their complaining that they cannot eat apples because they cause so much gas in the stomach! One reason why a large number of such people are troubled with gas, even though they do chew their food to a cream, is because they immediately follow a meal with one or two cups of tea or coffee. Now please remember this: An individual afflicted with "nerves" has no business drinking either tea or coffee. He should let them both alone. Plain hot water is the very best drink in the world for a nervous person. If you want a drink after your meal drink a cup of plain hot water. And you should also drink a cup of hot water half an hour before breakfast. If you do not care for breakfast, and feel you do not need this meal, drink the hot water anyway. The victim of "nerves" should never drink during the meal but after it, if he must drink anything at all. He should also drink a pint or more of cold water between meals every day. Now, another thing with regard to chewing all solid food to a cream. It has been proved over and over again in my own case and in that of many others, that in doing this the brain and muscles are both made stronger and keener for work, that those who chew their food in this way have much greater endurance, both mental and physical, than those who do not. Today if I should relax my vigilance in respect to chewing my food I should soon go down again. But with this aid, which I now so easily employ, combined with exactly the right things to eat, I find I need have no fear. It has been ten years since my last breakdown and in that interval I have done the very best work and by far the hardest brain work of a lifetime. I do not believe people break down from overwork. You may think that a perfectly absurd statement. But I have good grounds upon which to base my belief. If nervous people would eat sparingly and chew their food to a cream, eating the foods I shall mention later on, I am confident they would rarely, if ever, break down. It is certain that in the last ten years, with the greatest mental strain on me, I should have gone down again, and perhaps more than once, if I had not found what caused "nerves" and how to prevent it. In the meantime I have written ten or more books, and every writer, at least, knows what a nerve-racking profession writing is. In addition to all this mental labor I have gone right ahead with my medical practice. Surely there is balm in this particular Gilead. But if you will not chew your food to a cream you need not expect to win the entire reward. And you must do this not only one day or one week or one month or one year, but all the days, weeks, months, and years that you may live. And, alas! I know only too well all the trouble well-meaning but deluded people who sit at the table with a nervous individual will make him when they discover how much time he is taking to chew his food. At first, because of the length of time I spent at a meal, such people thought I must be eating as much as a horse. But, here and there, for I was in many places, when people found out what I was doing, they would only courteously deride me for being so gullible about what they termed fads. We are all well aware that the vast majority of Americans do not chew their food to a cream or anything like it. And there are those, therefore, who advance as an argument that because the majority do not there must be something wrong with the minority who do. Well, let us follow this out a little: Not so many hundred years ago everybody believed the world was _flat_. But their theory did not make it flat. And so, even though thousands of people who crowd our eating houses do bolt their food, that does not prove there is no danger in the practice. And they who do it are digging their graves with their teeth. _Chew your food!_ III. RIGHT AND WRONG DIET FOR NERVOUS PEOPLE "He who leads a sober and regular life, and commits no excess in his diet, can suffer but little from disorders of any kind." --CORNARO People who are the offspring of nervous parents and who have had a nervous breakdown should not eat commercial sugar, eggs, or animal food of any kind whatever. These statements may seem wholly unimportant to some people, but I realize what a tremendous bomb I throw into the camps of others when they read them. You see, for centuries people have believed meat and eggs to be the best of all foods; so when I make a statement like the foregoing, the effect is not unlike that which followed Columbus' statement that no matter what people believed, the fact was that the earth was round, not flat. From the very beginning it has not made a single bit of difference as to what physicians or anybody else thought; facts count. And no matter what we may think or how long we have thought it, facts go right on being facts just the same. Sometimes, even after twenty years' experience, about once in two or three months--because there is nothing else at hand--I find myself eating a small bit of meat. This usually happens when I am on a lecture tour. But if I eat only a small slice of bacon at the evening meal I dream bad dreams and the next morning feel drowsy, heavy, and sluggish. Animal foods as well as eggs and commercial sugar poison all those born of nervous parents. I have proved the truth of this by my own case and by several years' observation of other cases. Do your children have "night terrors"? You answer, yes. Well, let me tell you how to stop these horrors in the little ones. If you give them meat--and remember you should never give them pork--let them have a very small piece at noon, never at night. And they should never be permitted to have it for breakfast. Give the child his one small bit of meat at noon. For the evening meal give him some cereal with milk or cream, but no sugar. Give him all he wants of this special dish, but nothing else at that meal, and you will find his "night terrors" and moaning will cease. I look back on most of the nights of my childhood with horror, for until I became a man I talked in my sleep and had the most horrible dreams. I used also to get up in my sleep and walk about the room. My parents were well aware of the fact that all of their eight children were poor sleepers, and of them all I was by far the worst. And, although it was innocently done, the food they were giving us was poisoning us. You don't need to think that in order to take poison you must have strychnine or arsenic. No, indeed you don't. We were fed exactly as hundreds and thousands of poor little ones are being fed now as this is being written. We were fed on meat, eggs, and fats, and when we became ill, friends round about us thought they were doing something real kind when they sent in a nice piece of fried rabbit or some celebrated golden brown fried chicken. But we vomited at the sight of the food--which was really our salvation. I have two boys of my own. The elder, a sturdy chap not yet ten years of age, has to have clothes for a fourteen-year-old boy, and he is much stronger than any boy of his age he has ever met. The younger boy is now seven and his physical development is wonderful for a child of that age. Now these boys hardly know what an egg is. They never eat one. As to meat, I am certain that since they were born they have not eaten it on an average of once a week. They have eaten a little, but you will admit that eating meat not more than once a week, and often going weeks without a bit of it, certainly is eating very little. There have been times when they have not seen meat for three months. Now, I don't eat as I do and have my children eat as they do just for a fad. I think nothing is more stupid and silly than for people to do certain things just because somebody else does them. We should all have good sound reasons for our actions in this world. We should all try our very best to use sound common sense. That's why I say that people who are the offspring of nervous parents should not eat animal food of any kind after they are twenty-one, and they should never at any time eat eggs. It would be far better for them if they did not eat commercial sugar. But I do admit that when some of these people get well by dieting, they are able to eat sparingly of all these things and still keep well. But some people can never eat them and I am one of the number. I remember one summer about two years ago I was on a lecture tour for a Chautauqua Bureau, and it seemed that surely I got into the very worst eating places that summer that I ever had in my life. For three or four days I ate only eggs, as they seemed to be about the only food I could get besides bread and butter. At the end of the third day--I remember the time very well--when night came I could not sleep, and just as when I had one of my nervous breakdowns, that old feeling of inexpressible gloom began to settle over me. I knew instantly the cause of it, because twice before when I had purposely experimented with eating eggs I had had similar experiences. I immediately took a heavy cathartic and after having thoroughly rid myself of the poison I again slept well. But I am not alone in this fight against the use of eggs for nervous people. John Burroughs said that eggs poisoned him, and I have talked with men of great wealth and great business ability who have reached the top by their own efforts, who have told me that eggs poisoned them. Now I have found that for these nervous people animal food is a slow poison. Sooner or later it will do its work. And just here I wish to say that there are some people who seemingly can eat almost anything and not suffer from so doing. Last summer I talked with Count Ilya Tolstoy, son of Leo Tolstoy, the celebrated Russian writer. The Count, who is also a lecturer, told me that he was obliged to have eggs and that he had eaten them all his life. He said his appetite was never satisfied unless he ate eggs. He is now past sixty, and apparently is strong and rugged. Now eggs no doubt are good for him. But right here is where infinite harm can be done to nervous people like myself. People who can eat everything--and among physicians seemingly there are many who can do so--will say to these poor sufferers: "Why, it's all nonsense about things hurting you! Eat anything you want and all you want and then forget about it." Physicians have said that to me and during the past twenty years I have heard them say it thousands of times to others. Personally I do not believe in Christian Science--physicians of the Regular school do not believe in it; but do you know that when a physician says to a sufferer from "nerves," "It's all nonsense about what you eat hurting you; eat anything you want and then forget about it," that physician is fully endorsing Christian Science. He is telling the person to whom he is talking that there is no such thing as physical suffering. Of course, such a physician is nothing but a fool. Yet that's why so many of these people turn to Christian Science. Yes, that is exactly why they try it. It bolsters up a sufferer for a time just as contact with a magnetic and hopeful personality may for a time bolster one up. But such persons almost always go back to the sanitariums. "Nerves" is not a mental disease; that is, the seat of the trouble is not mental but physical, and the mental phase of "nerves" is only a symptom, or rather one of the symptoms of the disease. We people who have gone down into the dark valley have experienced a million, more or less, different kinds of feelings. I fully believe one half of the American people are the offspring of nervous parents. This means that there are fifty-five million of this nervous type of Americans. This type includes people all the way from the man in an office who gets angry quickly, to the individual who is in a state of complete collapse. And the man who is afflicted with nothing more than a quick temper, or is living under high nervous tension, is liable to beget children who will suffer from the malady in a far worse degree than ever he will, unless, indeed, he eats only the things he should eat and observes a number of other rules besides the two I have already laid down. Now, the ideal diet for nervous people is a slightly modified vegetarian diet. To be specific, it is a Lacto-vegetarian diet minus eggs. There are, however, two things included in this diet that I would warn one in the beginning to eat of sparingly. These are bananas and cooked cabbage. If they agree with you, well and good; but if they do not, let them strictly alone. Eat all kinds of vegetables, both fresh and cooked. Eat all kinds of fruits, especially fresh fruits. There is an old saying and a good one, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." There are a thousand ways to prepare vegetables and fruits for the table, and there are a number of books that give good recipes. If a nervous individual has never yet had a breakdown I believe he can safely eat most of the vegetarian dishes that have eggs in them, but it would be a serious mistake to select the special dishes that contain eggs and live on those just because they contain eggs. I believe, too, that after a nervous person is restored to health, if he strictly observes the rules of eating sparingly and of chewing all food to a cream, he may safely try out such courses as are found in _Bardsley's Recipes for Food Reformers_ or _Broadbent's Forty Vegetarian Dinners_. It may seem odd, but there are people who for some reason or other lack the instinct, or whatever is needed, to know that a certain thing they eat hurts them. I have had men and women sit in my office and say with the utmost sincerity that they were certain that it wasn't anything they ate that hurt them because they never had any pain in the abdomen. Sometimes these people were in a dreadful state of nervous breakdown. So you see the danger that lies here. If you know, you can always tell what special thing disagrees with you. For example, I know eggs disagree with me, and like John Burroughs and many others, I know when they harm me. Therefore, after you have recovered you might try being your own physician. But if you are not sure as to what disagrees with you, you would much better stick to a vegetarian diet and go without eggs the remainder of your days. Commercial sugar also is the cause of many breakdowns among the people of this country. And is it not strange how these poor suffering people crave sweets--the very thing they should not have. They will argue with themselves--and some physicians will agree with them--that they should go right on eating candy because they want it. But, as I have already said, there is just as much sense in saying a man should have whiskey because he craves it or that a young man should have tobacco because he craves it, as to say that any one should have candy because he craves it. There is absolutely no sense in such an argument. If you are suffering from a nervous breakdown, for sixty days quit eating candy and everything sweet except honey, and follow the other rules I have already laid down. It may be that you will have to stick to this diet for three months. But try it. That is exactly what cured all my bodily ills and brought my soul out of the dark and gloomy night after everything else had failed. I do not mean to say that this diet alone cured me, but I do say it was the biggest factor in the cure. There are, however, some other things that it would be worse than folly to ignore. This I shall come to later. But just here I want to have it understood that this thing of eating--how you eat, and how much you eat, and what you eat--is of transcendent importance in the cure. Of course, under some circumstances connected with cases of breakdown, nothing but the good judgment of friends will avail. For example, the question of how much one shall eat is something that not all the books in the world nor all the physicians in the world can determine. I say, always quit while you want a little more. I cannot say more or less than that. So many have written me recently asking just what I eat, that it may be a help to some of them if I set down here just what I ate today. I ate no breakfast at all. Sometimes I go for weeks without eating breakfast. This is especially apt to be the case if I am engaged in writing a magazine article or a book. I find my brain is much clearer and that I can work much better when I eat no breakfast. But I do drink one or two cups of very weak tea. I use just enough tea to color the water. Now I do not advise everybody to go without breakfast. Some people tell me that they have a headache unless they eat something. And some writers say that if they do not eat a little breakfast they cannot write so well. Thus you see where the question of common sense and using your own judgment comes in. There are always a few things you will have to decide for yourselves. At noon I ate about two handfuls of corn flakes with milk and cream but no sugar, finishing with about four ounces of bread pudding that had a little brown sugar in it. Now, in mid-afternoon, as I write this, I am not hungry. Tonight I shall eat another dish of corn flakes and some buttered toast and three or perhaps four good-sized apples, I usually eat three or four apples a day. If I want a piece of pie for lunch, I eat it, but I eat nothing else. I live on the plainest of plain foods. Apples used to create a lot of gas in my stomach, but now they do not because I chew them to a cream. Milk used to make me constipated, but it does not when I chew the cereal with it carefully and eat a number of apples. Most nervous people are constipated. But apples are really the salvation of nervous people. If you are constipated, drink, or rather, sip, a glass of hot water half an hour before breakfast, then eat nothing for breakfast but apples; eat two big ones and chew them slowly to a cream. Go to stool regularly every morning. This habit is half the cure of constipation. Apples, of all things I know, are the finest things for the liver. If you take a patient ill from chronic indigestion, whose stools are clay colored, and put him on a diet of apples, if he chews properly, in less than twenty-four hours the stools will be of the regulation dark brown color, as they should be when the liver is working in a normal, healthful manner. And eating apples will work in exactly the same way with children as with adults. Apples, apples, apples! Eat them no matter what the price. You remember how good Adam found the apple--or at least we presume it was an apple that he found so good--and I can think of no other single thing that would tempt a man to make all the trouble he did. If he had to sin, then I'm for Adam every time, for I think had I been in his place and Eve had offered me a big juicy red apple, I should have taken it and eaten it. I don't know but that I might even have eaten it without the invitation. I think that Adam's great mistake was not so much in eating the apple as in trying to lay the blame on the woman. Nobody should ever apologize for having eaten an apple. Now, generally speaking, there is one thing a nervous parent--or any other kind of parent for that matter--should never say to a child. Never tell him he is nervous. If we realize that our children are the offspring of nervous parents, it is, as I have already suggested, much better for all concerned, for we cannot avoid a danger unless we know what or where the danger is. When we know the child is nervous we should plan carefully, leaving out of his diet all pastries and rich greasy foods, and keep him largely on a vegetarian diet. But, as I have already suggested, we do not need to diet a nervous child as strictly as we do a nervous adult where infinite harm has already been done. Give the nervous child meat only a part of the time, and if he goes without eggs it will be all the better for him. I wish from the bottom of my heart that I had never tasted an egg! What a fine thing it would be if we so trained our children that they would never suffer from "nerves"! And usually it could be done. The belief that because nervous parents have broken down their children sooner or later must break down, is our greatest curse. But such a belief is absurd, for if dieting, outdoor exercise, and a few other simple rules are observed, there is no danger that it will happen. To be sure, these rules must be definitely understood and strictly adhered to. If we treat this misfortune in the manner I shall mention later, we can make our lives more successful and infinitely happier than the lives of those who have never learned self-control. For instance, I am far healthier than men all around me who seem to be able to eat three Christmas dinners each day. They sit at the table and boast about being "good feeders," then later they come to me for pills, saying, "There is nothing the matter with me, doctor, but I thought I had better take a little medicine so I won't get ill." But they don't fool me. I know exactly what is the matter with them. They are so full of pork they can't think. To tell the truth, we people who have suffered from a nervous breakdown or some illness akin to it, and have learned that we must eat right or die, are of all people the most fortunate. Every now and then I hear some good old sister, with a face like a full moon and jowls like a bloodhound, say, as she finishes her third piece of mince pie,--her waist line having extended accordingly,--"Isn't it too bad about poor brother Jones! He looks so terribly thin! They say he has fallen away from one hundred and sixty pounds to only a hundred and fifty. And they do say he can't eat meat and eggs at all! The poor man!" But the real facts of the case are that brother Jones is able to walk ten miles any day, and the possibility is that in the not distant future he will read in his morning paper that sister Sue Portly has been operated on for gall stones and the number reported is almost unbelievable, about three hundred, in fact. And so, all the time sister Portly was feeling sorry for lithe, energetic brother Jones, she was a walking stone quarry, as it were, and yet didn't know it. So don't worry because you have to diet or because after reading these lines you determine that you must begin to diet. For, whoever you are, and wherever you may be, you belong to a most fortunate class of people. And now I wish to say some things about what nervous people should do besides dieting, and especially do I wish to say these things to those now suffering from a nervous breakdown. Much of it at least will apply to children of nervous parentage. You will observe as you go along that I keep mentioning "these children." I do so always with the thought in mind that there is absolutely no need for them ever to break down if these common sense rules are followed. I take it that not any one of us or a number of us, but that all of us love our children more than we love ourselves. Admitting the truth of this, then we should all be interested in this system for them as well as for ourselves, for as their nerves are so shall their success be. IV. VALUE OF OUTDOOR LIFE AND EXERCISE "Better to hunt in fields for health unbought. The wise for cure on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend." --DRYDEN People in this country are now beginning to get away from the idea that a man or woman who is past sixty is getting "old." When the Rev. John Wesley, the itinerant preacher and author, was eighty-eight years old--please note the eighty-eight--he walked six miles to keep a preaching appointment. When asked if the walk tired him, he laughed and said: "Why, no! Not at all! The only difference I can see in my endurance now and when I was twenty is that I cannot run quite so fast." I know there are calamity-howlers who say: "Oh, well, some people are born to success and long life and some are not!" The individual who permits himself to get into that frame of mind is doomed and no one can help him. Such reasoning is of course all nonsense. John Wesley was always a spare eater. Yet he lived an active outdoor life, often traveling forty and even sixty miles a day on horseback. He never failed to keep an appointment on account of the weather. And he was a tireless worker, often preaching four and five times a day. At the same time he read and wrote every spare moment, turning out a large amount of literary work. Dr. Eliot, ex-President of Harvard College, a constant writer and speaker, and among the greatest of American educators--now nearer 90 than 80 years of age--is also a moderate eater. He says, "I have always eaten moderately of simple food in great variety. This practice is probably the result, first, of a natural tendency, and then of confirmed habit and much experience under varying conditions of work and play. From much observation of eating habits of other people, both the young and the mature, I am convinced that moderation, simplicity, and variety in eating are more important than any other bodily habit towards maintaining good health, power of work, and, barring accidents, attaining to enjoyable old age." It is interesting to note what that eminent lawyer, legislator, and orator, Chauncey M. Depew, had to say on the occasion of his eighty-seventh birthday about a simple diet and reaching the century mark. "The true philosophy of life is this: The more you like a thing the more reason there is for giving it up if you find it is not good for you. If you treat nature properly, nature will adjust herself to you. "My diet is very simple. I have the same breakfast every day in the year, and it consists of an orange, one four-minute egg, one half of a corn muffin, and a cup of coffee which is mainly hot milk. I have this at half past eight. My hour of rising is seven every morning. "For luncheon I partake principally of vegetables, with no meat, and a glass of water. This is at one o'clock. At dinner I skip most of the courses and enjoy small portions of vegetables, fish, and fowl. I never eat between meals and consume now less than half I did at fifty." The vigor and long life of Bishop Fallows of Chicago are mainly due to his living and mental habits and to his simple diet. He is well over 85 years of age, but few men of three-score years can do as much work, the year round. There are two or three sermons and several public addresses each week, and the work of a large parish--from marriages and christenings to funerals and parish visitings--which is never slighted. An active Grand Army man and Civil War veteran, he is asked to address countless military and patriotic gatherings, and his energy seems as tireless as his spirit is willing. His ability to meet these demands can be traced back to simple living and simple eating. The Bishop is temperate in all things, and refuses to worry. He neither drinks nor smokes. In regard to his diet he says, "I eat very little meat, but take plenty of fruit, cereals and vegetables. I take regularly before breakfast a cup of hot grape juice. I use it frequently at other times. I take buttermilk daily." Night and morning he takes simple physical exercises, and always walks at least a couple of miles each day. The Bishop's ancestors were long-lived. His great grandfather lived to be 96; his grandfather, 91; his eldest brother, 93. His father's death from a fall occurred at the age of 81. He has a brother who is 92. This in itself is evidence that he comes of a family in which right living--which means simple living--has prevailed until its effects have shown in each succeeding generation. The world-renowned American inventor, Thomas A. Edison, now in his 75th year, has today a mind as brilliant and ingenious, and a skill as remarkable for inventing things that are of practical use, as when at 21 he invented his automatic repeater which did so much for telegraphy. And Edison is another spare eater. What he ate at the three meals of the day on which he wrote the following letter, is characteristic of the small amount he eats every day in the year. And you will learn that this is true of every man or woman who has lived long and is still doing active brain work. And so, once for all, let us think right about this matter. We get out of ourselves just about what we put into ourselves or do for ourselves in the way of food and exercise. [Transcriber's Note: The following is the text of a letter from Mr. Edison that was included as an illustration in the book.] From the Laboratory of Thomas A. Edison, Orange, N.J. March 2, 1921. Dr. Thomas Clark Hinkle Cawker City, Kansas. Dear Sir: Your letter of February 25th was received. My food for the one day on which your letter was received, was as follows: BREAKFAST Cup coffee 1/2 milk, 1/2 coffee. Two pieces toast, 2-1/2" � 4", 1/4" thick. Another piece toast with two small sardines on it. MIDDAY MEAL Glass milk. Two pieces of dry toast. EVENING MEAL Two glasses milk. Three pieces very thin dry toast. Small piece steak, 1-1/2" wide, 3/8" thick, 3" long. Small baked potato. One piece nut chocolate. Yours very truly, Thos A Edison [Transcriber's Note: This additional note was handwritten on the typewritten letter being reproduced in this section.] Weight 185 lbs Can diminish this diet without loss of weight E [Transcriber's Note: End of letter.] Most people do not take enough systematic outdoor exercise. And exercise, I would have you understand, is another essential in the cure of one who has "nerves." But I am quite sure that a lot of bad advice has been given women sufferers along this line. I find that as a rule, women make better progress, at least at first, with complete rest or as much rest as they can possibly get. I have seen great harm come from telling a woman afflicted with "The Mysterious Disease"--as it is often called--to take long walks. I am always extremely careful about telling such a woman to indulge in vigorous exercise. Some women, of course, are much stronger than others. My advice to a woman is to walk in the open air unless she is so ill she cannot walk at all without becoming very weak. And here again each person must use common sense and decide the matter herself. But no person with a nervous breakdown should ever work at any task or take any kind of exercise to the point of exhaustion. I well remember a man who came to me some years ago suffering from this malady. He had been trying to get well by doing heavy stunts in a gymnasium. He was very muscular, in fact he was an athlete, and was still under twenty-five years of age. His cheeks were ruddy, and to the ordinary observer he appeared to be in the pink of condition. But he had that peculiar expression of the eyes that flashed his story to me as plainly as if blazoned forth by the letters of an electric sign. I told him at once that he could never hope to cure his nerves by such violent exercises. And right here let me advise men in this condition not to run. I receive many letters of inquiry from young men with broken-down nerves who tell me they are taking long walks and finishing with a run. To all such I say: Do not run. I know all about it for I have tried it. I was on my university football team. And all my life I have been fond of athletics. I am still fond of this kind of life and always expect to be, but exercise is frequently overdone by nervous people. Usually, the physically strong man who breaks down with "nerves" thinks at once of physical training. But strange as it may seem, you can make such a man's muscles as hard as iron but that alone will not cure him. And it is true that many people in this condition do not seem nervous for they are not at all shaky, as some think an individual should be if he is the victim of a nervous breakdown. I well remember that one day when at my worst I could not work nor concentrate my mind on anything. I chanced to be in Topeka, Kansas, and passed a shooting gallery. I was a good rifle shot and I had been taking long walks and shooting Kansas jack rabbits. I went in, picked up one of the rifles, and started firing at the biggest target. I rang the bell twice on that target in succession, and then aimed at the finest target there and rang the bell twice in succession on that. The proprietor was very much surprised, saying it was remarkably good shooting; and yet I was down and out with "nerves." I have seen many athletes who, to the untrained observer, looked well, but who in reality were nervous wrecks. Outdoor exercise alone will not cure such people, or if seemingly it does--and this is important--sooner or later the individual is sure to go down again. You have first to remove the cause, and that is largely wrong diet. Now of course it is only reasonable to say that if such an individual does not get out of doors at all he cannot get well. That is one trouble with many of our women today. They will go on a diet and stick to it, but they will not get out of doors. If they do go out, they ride a little distance in a street car or in an automobile to do some shopping. Or they go to a store and spend a good deal of time there--indoors, mind you--and then are whirled home again. Some of them seem to think that is taking outdoor exercise, but of course it is not. So many times they have said to me, "Why, I do get out!" Yes, they do get out, but they immediately go indoors again. The nervous individual, unless the collapse is so severe that the first few weeks must be spent in bed, should get out of doors at least three or four hours a day, every day in the week. This is a general rule that should be observed by everyone. It takes genuine courage, I know, for a man or woman to spend this much time out of doors. And I know that those who are compelled to work for a living cannot take three hours all at one time. But labor conditions in this country are such that I am sure the vast majority of our people could spend this much time outdoors in wholesome recreation if they would make up their mind to do so. And remember this: After the nervous person is cured he should never let anything prevent him from continuing such outdoor exercise. I am constantly trying to make this point--when you get well you should stay well. One breakdown is bad enough; don't have another. And you will not have another if you will change the habits of a lifetime as you are advised to do. Among farmers there are many, the offspring of nervous parents with bad eating habits, who suffer from nervous breakdowns. So you see exercise out of doors alone will not cure such cases. Sometimes a farmer will tell me he fears to give up eating meat because he will grow weak as a result. But just here I wish to call your attention to the fact that there are nations that have for ages lived on this lacto-vegetarian diet. I myself have not eaten meat or eggs for ten years. At least I have not eaten them except the few times mentioned. And every time I did break the rule I was harmed far more than I was benefited. I am very sure the farmer who chooses this lacto-vegetarian diet will thrive on it. Members of our profession discovered not very long ago that at an advanced age the peasants of Bulgaria are a wonderfully preserved people both mentally and physically. Foolishly a great number of the profession immediately jumped to the conclusion that buttermilk alone did the miracle for these people. The drinking of buttermilk became such a fad that some of the largest of our physicians' supply houses began and are still making "buttermilk tablets." And physicians, many of them, are credulous enough to prescribe them. They might just as well prescribe chalk. While buttermilk tablets are harmless, they are of no benefit whatever. How easily fooled people--physicians included--may be! Bulgarian peasants are strong and rugged and live to a great age not because they drink buttermilk, but because they live on milk and fruits and vegetables and stay out of doors. Buttermilk is a good healthful drink, but it is only a minor reason for the health and strength of the Bulgarian peasant. Now, really, could you think of anything more absurd than to prescribe buttermilk or buttermilk tablets as the fountain of youth when the patient is breaking all the laws of health, as most buttermilk laymen and physicians are doing? It seems almost impossible that people--physicians in particular--should for a moment believe such things. But they do. Barnum said there was a "sucker" born every minute, and this certainly seems to be true. No, there is no royal road to health. The buttermilk-tablet route will not take you there. If you will live out of doors as Bulgarian peasants do, and if you will eat as they do,--as man is expected to eat,--you will live just as long as they do, and you will get a great deal more out of life and be much more helpful to others. When the "time" comes round for your next buttermilk tablet, do not take it. Instead, do as those peasants do--leave off eating meat and take a two-hour walk in the sunshine. Then when nine o'clock comes, like the Bulgarian, go to bed and stay there until morning. If the person afflicted with "nerves" expects to get well and stay well, he must go to bed at an early hour and get eight or nine hours of sleep not only some nights but every night in the week. When one begins dieting and taking outdoor exercise he should go to bed regularly at an early hour even though he has not been sleeping well. No matter how many sleepless nights he has experienced before beginning this regime, he should retire early just the same, because, sooner or later, sleep will come and the relaxed body is resting even if the individual does not sleep. Now I have been through all this lying awake at night, so I know from experience that it is best to go to bed early and at a regular hour. If you can, you should sleep nine hours. Nervous people need more sleep than others. Sleep is a better restorer of nerves than anything else we can try. I do not believe that ten or even eleven hours' sleep would be harmful to a nervous adult, because very often I have seen such a person benefited by it. Children should have all the sleep they want up to ten or twelve hours. But after a child has wakened in the morning he should be permitted to get up. It is not good for him to lie in bed after he wishes to rise, for nature is calling him to get up and exercise. The nervous individual not only should exercise systematically out of doors but he should play some game. You remember when we were children how much we loved to play? Well, to give up play when we grow up is all nonsense. And just because people quit playing is the reason they have wrinkles and frowns. Did you ever notice how often people laugh when at play? There is something about play that compels one to laugh. And what all people need, nervous people and others as well, is to get into the habit of laughing more. And it is not hard to find something to play. I like to play at basket ball with a child, and I can enjoy tossing a ball for an hour if the child will stick to the game that long. Playing basket ball in the open air on a sunshiny day is one of the very finest exercises in the world. If you are suffering from "nerves" and are able to be out of doors at all,--I mean if you are well enough to be out, and at least nine out of ten sufferers are,--get a basket ball and get some one to play with you. If at first you are poor at catching the ball you will with practice improve. Gradually toss the ball a little higher and a little higher until you have difficulty in catching it. Any woman or girl can stand this sort of open air exercise. If the weather is cold, no matter; wrap up and play anyway. But enter into the game with spirit. Playing the regular game of basket ball is too violent exercise for the nervous person. The victim of "nerves" should always keep in mind that it is mild outdoor exercise that will do him good. Tennis is too violent an exercise for people who have had nervous trouble. Anyway, there is no use in one's doing anything that will make his heart beat like a trip-hammer. A women can toss a basket ball and laugh and get rosy cheeks and grow younger and prettier as easily as when playing tennis. Golf is also good exercise, but a large number of people who work for a living and suffer from "nerves" would have little chance for exercise if golf were all that could be offered them. Furthermore golf is practically only a summer game, and an individual belonging to the pre-nervous class needs outdoor exercise every day in the year. But golf is excellent exercise, and there is nothing better if one has the time to give to it and has access to links. Bicycling is splendid exercise for nervous people, but automobiles are so numerous that it is now considered almost dangerous to ride a wheel on any of our main traveled roads. Mountain climbing, I believe, is not to be recommended for most people suffering from "nerves." I have known such people to go to Colorado and spend some time climbing mountains, and then come back much worse than when they went away. My advice to the nervous person who goes to the mountains is to be out of doors all the time he can, but to take things easy. It would be better for such a person to walk about slowly on the level ground through some of the towns or along the foothills. Let leisure be your watchword in a hill country. I know I injured my nerves out in Colorado one summer because I was ill advised. Mountain air is good for you, but the mountains will do you more good if you simply look at them. If you think you must go to the top, take a burro. You will find that the burro will give you a lesson in how to do things in a leisurely way. Do not get out of patience with him and whip him. Remember that the burro is smarter than you are in regard to the business of mountain climbing. He has never had a nervous breakdown, and if you will let him have his own way he never will have. It will do you good to let him have his way; he affords a tremendous lesson in patience. Patience, that's just what we need, and we need it badly. Walking slowly in the open air for two or three hours is the best exercise for man. Fortunately, like the water we drink, it is free to the poor as well as the rich. For the nervous man who is able to do it, I know of nothing better to build up muscles and keep the liver and other internal organs in good shape than sawing wood. Don't scorn this sort of exercise because you have been told that the ex-Kaiser is taking it. That is not to be laid up against the wood or the exercise, for, quite fortunately, the wood does not care who saws it. Get some wood, then, and a buck saw, and saw wood for your own benefit. You can do this morning and evening. Wood sawing brings into play every muscle in the body, and the exercise is just enough to make a man comfortably tired without doing him harm. Many people who go to sanitariums for a cure pay from fifty to seventy-five dollars per week for the privilege of sawing wood, and you can take this exercise just as well and at considerably less expense at home, sawing your own wood instead of that of the sanitarium. Another splendid diversion for a man with "nerves," if he can have it, is a small workshop where he can make just any old thing out of boards and nails. If one is apt in this line, he can make things that will interest children. This sort of work requires a certain kind of concentration that is most excellent for the nervous sufferer. This suggestion would of course apply to a woman, too, if she cared to try such an experiment. Sewing, and especially fine needlework, is very trying to a woman's nerves, and if she has broken down under that kind of work she should quit it and do something else. If she has to make her living in that way, she of all people should observe the outdoor rules as well as rules for dieting. I am sure nervous people profit by frequenting all possible outdoor games. If a number of people afflicted with "nerves" could get together and take daily walks and at the same time determine that their conversation should always have a humorous slant, it would help all of them wonderfully. Riding in an automobile is beneficial if the machine is driven slowly and the patient is kept out of doors from three to four hours. But the fast driving that is generally done is bad for these people. They come back from a ride worse than when they started. It may be set down as a general rule that any form of outdoor exercise or play is good for the nervous person if it is not violent. Nervous people should, if possible, take a vacation once a year and get into new surroundings. I am certain, however, that it does not make any difference where one lives. A man is just as likely to have a breakdown in one part of the world as another. While on these vacations he should stick to his rules just as rigidly as when he is at home. I have had letters from people in Canada and from others in Florida who have suffered nervous breakdowns. In California some go to pieces. I have had many letters from people living there who have broken down. People also break down in Colorado and in New York; in fact, in every state in the Union. Climate does not seem to make any difference so far as this trouble is concerned, with the exception that in high altitudes I have observed nervous people are inclined to be more restless than elsewhere. Some years ago I went up Pike's Peak, to the Summit House. I went to bed and spent the night there, but I do not say I slept, for in reality I slept only about half an hour. I was not at all sick at the stomach, as so many are who climb up there; I had prevented this by eating a very light breakfast and chewing my food to a cream. But I was extremely nervous. I have found a great many other nervous people who do not feel quite right when in a high altitude. As a general rule, sea level is as good a place as a nervous individual can find to live. But people break down there, too. The diet, you see, is the big thing. And when I say "diet" I mean the way food is eaten and the amount eaten quite as much as I do the kind of food eaten. And once more let me say, systematic outdoor exercise also counts, and you can't keep fit if you exercise only one, two, or three days a week. Some people who take long walks in the country on Sunday think that will suffice. But it will not. You must have exercise every day and must have some play along with it. Gymnasium work is of very little value as compared to outdoor exercise. In the summertime, gardening is a splendid form of exercise. And so is the care of a small flock of chickens, which is possible for those living in the smaller towns. It is always better, when taking outdoor exercise, to have something definite to do. When walking it is a good plan, if you can, to have some definite place to go. And if you have an agreeable companion to keep up a rapid-fire talk, that will help also. All these things are mentally stimulating. Then, if possible, sleep the year round on a sleeping porch. If you don't possess a porch, then, have all the windows in your sleeping room wide open day and night. If for a time you have to take physic, it is best to take some hot mineral water half an hour before breakfast. But adhering to dieting and exercise, and eating enough apples, usually overcomes constipation. Now, there are some things about which a person must use his own good judgment. For instance, if you have any bad teeth you should at once go to a good dentist and have them attended to. Nobody with bad teeth can have good health. Again, if your tonsils have become mere pus sacs you will have to go to a good nose and throat specialist and have them removed before you can expect to have good health. This, however, applies to all people, whether nervous or not. The same thing is true with regard to your eyes. If you are suffering from eye strain because you need glasses, you cannot hope to get well of "nerves" until your eyes are properly fitted to glasses by some reliable eye specialist. These are things that each individual must discover and do for himself. He should consult a dentist, an oculist, an aurist, or other specialist according to his particular need. V. EFFECT OF RIGHT LIVING ON WORRY AND UNHAPPINESS "Neither melancholy nor any other affection of the mind can hurt bodies governed with temperance and regularity." --CORNARO A very sad thing about some nervous people is the fact that in their lives there are domestic or other troubles which no physician can overcome. Some of them live in depressing surroundings, but for all these there is hope. There is no doubt that if we can restore the brain to a perfectly normal, healthful state the human being can bear more suffering than when the brain is affected. Perhaps when speaking of the spirit we had better call it that, rather than the brain, for that mysterious something we call spirit does make its home in the brain of man. This has been proven scientifically. So then, in this life the temple of the spirit, or soul, does affect the mind. And when I say this life, I take the opportunity to say here that I not only believe in the immortality of the soul, but now, at 45, I am as certain of it as I am of my own existence. But for some reason--although as yet no one understands why it should do so--when this temple in which the spirit dwells is out of condition, it affects the soul or spirit. So, you see, if we can make the physical man or woman well, we most certainly can help the spirit that dwells within the body. And so I recommend dieting, temperance in eating, and the careful chewing of food to all those sufferers who unfortunately live in depressing surroundings and cannot get away from them. When referring to the many pitiful letters I have received from poor human beings thus situated, I realize that I am treading on sacred ground. Such things are written, of course, to a physician in confidence and the confidence must therefore be forever sacred. I have not only had letters from these unfortunate people, but have repeatedly come in contact with many of them in their every day life. I know well what added suffering such conditions bring to them. I know of nothing in this world more pitiful than a noble, high-spirited, ambitious woman, pure and clean of heart, who marries a man and becomes the mother of his children and is then condemned to live the life of a mere animal. And all too frequently the opposite also obtains. Sometimes a man of high, pure purpose finds that he has chosen as the mother of his children a coarse, sensual woman. Now why in the world were these two people attracted to each other? This is one of life's biggest puzzles to those who have thought much along this line. In many instances extreme youth is the reason given. While youth is mating time, it also is the time of bad judgment. Thousands of young people have made this dreadful mistake simply because they married too young. On the other hand, youth is not altogether to blame. When people, young or old, are courting, each individual endeavors to appear at his or her best before the other. Without being actually aware of it, under such circumstances both man and woman are doing all that lies in their power to deceive one another. If people would do their courting in everyday clothes, and if the girl would go about her housework while the man looked on, or better still, if he helped her with it for one or two years, they would undoubtedly become better acquainted. But, after all, except, perhaps, in unusual cases, there is absolutely nothing by which people know that they are going to be properly mated. If a man with a tendency to neurasthenia breaks down and is tied to a nagging wife, that is usually the last straw in the way of his recovery. This is just as true of the woman who breaks down and has a nagging husband. There are, I regret to say, thousands of such cases all over the country. On the other hand I have had a man come to me and say that he was willing to do anything on earth to aid his wife, but he could not get her to diet or even to make a serious attempt to get well. I am always tremendously sorry for such a man because he has a mighty heavy burden to bear. Such a wife should try to get well as much for the man's sake as for her own. She should understand that she is needlessly torturing the one best friend she has on earth. A woman of this kind should remember that, no matter how much she may suffer, she is hopelessly selfish if she will not do all in her power to diet and to obey other necessary rules that will enable her to get rid of the malady. Sometimes when a physician puts this before her kindly but firmly it results in her making a beginning and by and by getting well. I have seen this happen many times. And I wish to say right here that while I believe I was born with some natural tact, yet if I had not gone through all this horrible suffering myself I should not, I know, be able to say the things that would induce these people to do that which it is their duty to do. And here is one big difficulty I have always had to contend with. Some of these people have tried so many so-called nonsense cures--eating buttermilk tablets, for instance--and have had no benefit from them, that they are unwilling to try the one and only thing that will cure them--the thing that will cure them as sure as the sun shines. I wonder why it is that since the time of Christ people are always looking for a sensational or miraculous cure. Our life and everything pertaining to it is miracle enough, if we only had the sense to see it. The woman or the man with "nerves" is not going to get well eating buttermilk tablets or taking patent dope while lying on a couch and shut in a house. You must bestir yourself. You must get out of doors, and above all, you must eat right. Today thousands of these people are languishing in hospitals and sanitariums, and most of them will come out only to go back again and again. The institutional treatment is good for the beginning of the cure, but if an individual with "nerves" is going to get well and stay well he must change his lifelong habits. And I want to say again, that any person, man or woman, in the midst of depressing conditions can triumph over them if he will eat as he should and live as he should. There is something about the human soul, if it is pure and fine, and if proper attention is given to right living, that will enable a person to meet great sorrow and triumph over it. In fact, no amount of sorrow can defeat a person who keeps his heart and body right. And I would have you all realize that there is something far more to us than mere bones and veins and nerves. I know the terrible tendency of the one with "nerves" to get angry. But lay fast hold of yourself. Fight anger as you would poison, because in reality it is poison to your nerves. Anger will hurt you; it will hurt anybody. But no matter how hard you find it at first, get control of your temper. If you succeed in doing this in a year you will have won one of the greatest victories man can win in this world. I would rather meet a so-called plain man who has perfect control over his physical and mental faculties, and sit and talk quietly with him, than to meet the Prime Minister of England or the President of the United States if either lacked this control. For I say to you that no matter what others may say, the true measure of success does not rest in the position you occupy but in your having complete control of yourself. If you are to gain this control it means that each day you are confronted by a mighty big task, but if finally successful, you will have accomplished the greatest thing a man can do in this life. Now, here is something for you to take hold of, you who all these years have believed that your life ambition has been thwarted. But your ambition, let me tell you, has not been thwarted. Perhaps you have not done just what you wanted to do. But it's quite possible that you had no business trying to do that special thing anyway. Most of us, I find, can be greatly mistaken about what we think we want to do. At any rate, we can never be happy unless we gain entire control of ourselves. This is something the person afflicted with "nerves" most certainly can do, and he can use this terrible "thing" as I myself and thousands of others have used it as a ladder to climb to the sunlit peaks where worry and clouds and storms cannot trouble. And, after all, no matter who we are, no matter how poor or how rich we are, and no matter where we live, life holds about the same general possibilities for all of us. I mean by this that life affords to all the same opportunities for real happiness. I know very well that there are those who will be quite unwilling to grant this, but it is as true as the life we live. Many people in this old world still hold the notion that those who roll in wealth are the happy ones. But I say to you this notion is all wrong, and from knowledge gained through experience I know that in their hearts many of these wealthy people are dissatisfied and not one whit happier than you are. The most restless people, the most unhappy people, and the most thoroughly dissatisfied people that I have ever met have been people who had everything that riches could give them. Andrew Carnegie said he had noticed that after a man had accumulated a million dollars smiles were seldom seen on his face. I cannot understand why people insist on going through life making themselves and all those they really love miserable just because they do not happen to have riches. And a great many high-strung sensitive men are utterly cast down because they have failed to acquire wealth by the time they are forty-five or fifty years of age. I wish I could make all such poor, afflicted people see what goes to make up happiness and learn the only way to be happy. In order to get well the thing we have to do is to follow nature's simple rules--rules our Creator gave to us. We must get control not only of our appetites but of all such passions as anger, hate, and envy, which poison our bodies. And let us also cast suspicion out of our minds. This is a good rule to observe: Never suspect folks. It is useless, anyway, for by and by what they are or what they do is always bound to come to the surface. By gaining perfect control over yourself--and most certainly to do so is worth every effort you may make--you will also gain patience, and that is, I think, one of the crowning virtues. Sometimes I think it the greatest of all virtues. Certainly it stands very high in the perfecting of character. To the sufferer with "nerves" I would say: Have the courage to believe that you are going to get well. Then you can do it. No matter how depressing or discouraging your surroundings, do the very best you can every day. Then, no matter what your ideas of success may have been, you are really succeeding wonderfully! See that you keep right on doing it! If you are a mother and have children, live for them. Or if you are a father and have children, and have met with disappointments, live for those children! Do everything in your power to make them happy, high of heart, and gallant of soul. Do not live for yourself, live for your children. If you have no children of your own, look about and get interested in some other person's children. You will find a lot of children all around you--blessed little beings--that you can help to make happy. Get your mind off yourself and your troubles and on the children of this world, and keep it there. When you were a child no doubt you had many happy days. Some of us had a very happy childhood, while others may have been denied what their hearts desired. But if we did not have a happy childhood that is all the more reason why we should be glad to help some other little ones have a happy one. More and more each year I live I come to believe that it depends entirely upon grown people whether in this world children are happy or not happy. If you had a happy childhood--and most people had--do you not recall the glorious times you had? I know you do, for we all do. And I know, too, how much people affected with nerves dwell on those memories, and how much they wish they might go back to those blessed days when the sun was always shining and the birds were always singing and the streams always beckoning them to play along their sands. Do you realize that you can live in those days again? I do, and I go back and dwell in them more and more the older I get. I do not mean that I am not looking forward, for I am, tremendously. How stupid we poor miserable creatures of this world become after we leave our childhood days behind us! We really should never lose sight of them. I have said that the person afflicted with "nerves" should not run. I did not quite mean all that implies. After such a man has recovered, if he has a good heart, he should run a little. I run; I can't help it. I feel so good I have to run a little now and then to work off steam. But you know very well when most people see a man running they at once think a house is afire somewhere. It is almost unbelievable that we should actually surround ourselves with so many utterly senseless customs that tend to nothing but misery and unhappiness. We should dress for comfort, and we should have the courage to live in a youthful world where all may be happy. "If the blind lead the blind," so the Bible tells us, "both shall fall into the ditch." We need so to live and act that we shall not fail to be happy. Happiness really is what everybody is chasing, but how very far away from it most people are getting! Go back to the memories of your childhood. Be with children and play with them all you possibly can. If you are a mother, begin this very day to exercise more patience with your children, recalling over and over again that when you were a child you were just as they are. And remember, for it is only too true, that the day is fast coming when your little boy will no longer be a little boy, he will be a man, and will have gone away from you. Then many times you will wish him back, and you will look back on those days when you thought your nerves were being ruined, and feel a great swelling in your breast, and breathing a sigh, whisper to yourself, "Dear God, I hope I did all I ought to have done for him while he was little." I know that any one can live with children and find happiness in being one with them, and I know of no better thing to do. After we have hold of ourselves with a firm grip we should endeavor to do this. I have had people suffering with "nerves" tell me they had lost a little boy or a little girl, and that it seems impossible to get over this loss. I cannot tell you how much I long to help such people. But I always urge them to go right on playing with other children and to remember, for to me it is certain truth, that they will meet that little child again. There should be nothing to grieve about in such a loss. To find compensation, the one who has had such a grief has only to keep on playing the part of a true man or true woman. Childhood with all its pains and pleasures is everywhere about us. And childhood is only the beginning of immortality. Late one night, a number of years ago, I was sitting in a little restaurant in a western town, and was feeling very lonely and miserable. Sorrow weighed heavily upon me that night and the world never seemed blacker, yet I think my belief in the immortality of the soul had never been more certain. I looked up and high on the smoke-stained wall hung a painted picture of an old-time ship with many sails set. This painting pictured the ship sailing through the darkness of night. But through the dark, seemingly restless clouds the moon gleamed brightly on the white canvas of the sails. I had never before been so powerfully impressed by any picture. It seemed fairly to speak to me. I took an envelope from my pocket and set down the verses given here. These verses were afterwards published in one or two metropolitan papers. Mr. James Bryce, then English Ambassador at Washington, saw them and wrote me a beautiful letter about them, in which he said, "Your little poem 'The Last Journey' attracts me very much." You see he was beginning to grow old, and I knew that was the reason these lines of mine had made an appeal to him. Not very long after this I also had a letter about the verses from Dr. Osler, then Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford. In it he said, "I have read your little poem 'The Last Journey' with unusual interest." And again I knew why. You see, it does not matter very much what our rank or our station here, no matter whether a human being is a king or what his station in life may be, he still is a human being. We are all reaching out after the same great thing. The fine thing about the sentiment of these little verses is that although you wish to and may not believe it, it is coming true anyway. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE LAST JOURNEY One night when in a youthful dream, I saw a moonlit sea, And sailing o'er its dark expanse, A ship of mystery. The lonely traveler seemed to be On some great mission bound, As o'er the darkened waters It sailed without a sound. Long years have passed; old age has come: The fire of life is low. Again I think of that strange dream Of youth so long ago. And in the ship that swiftly sailed That silent moonlit sea, I seem to see a storm-tossed soul Bound for eternity. Now to my mind this sweet dream comes, A peaceful memory, For soon I'll be A YOUTH again, With Immortality! 
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19208	----	VITALITY SUPREME By Bernarr Macfadden PREFACE The war cry of to-day in peace no less than in war is for efficiency. We need stronger, more capable men; healthier, superior women. Force is supreme-the king of all mankind. And it is force that stands back of efficiency, for efficiency, first of all, means power. It comes from power, and power either comes directly from inheritance or it is developed by an intelligent application of the laws that control the culture of the physique. The value of efficiency is everywhere recognized. The great prizes of life come only to those who are efficient. Those who desire capacities of this sort must recognize the importance of a strong, enduring physique. The body must be developed completely, splendidly. The buoyancy, vivacity, energy, enthusiasm and ambition ordinarily associated with youth can be maintained through middle age and in some cases even to old age. If your efforts are to be crowned with the halo of success, they must be spurred on by the pulsating throbbing powers that accompany physical excellence. These truly extraordinary characteristics come without effort to but few of us, but they can be developed, attained and maintained. Why not throb with superior vitality! Why not possess the physical energy of a young lion? For then you will compel success. You will stand like a wall if need be, or rush with the force of a charging bison towards the desired achievements. This book sends forth a message of paramount importance to those who need added efficiency. Adherence to the principles laid down herein will add to the characteristics that insure splendid achievements. They will increase the power of your body and mind and soul. They will help each human entity to become a live personality. They will enable you to live fully, joyously. They will help you to feel, enjoy, suffer, every moment of each day. It is only when you are thus thrilled with the eternal force of life that you reach the highest pinnacle of attainable capacities and powers. Hidden forces, sometimes marvelous and mysterious, lie within nearly every human soul. Develop, expand and bring out these latent powers. Make your body splendid, your mind supreme; for then you become your real self, you possess all your attainable powers. And men thus developed possess a capital that can not be financially measured. It is worth infinitely more than money. Within the pages of this volume the pathway leading to these gratifying rewards is clearly described. Adhere to the principles set forth and a munificent harvest of physical, mental and spiritual attainments will surely be yours. --Bernarr Macfadden CONTENTS PREFACE I. VITALITY--WHAT IS IT? II. FUNCTIONAL ACTIVITY-THE SECRET OF POWER III. THE PROPER BODILY POSTURE IV. STIMULATING THE SOURCE OF STAMINA AND VITALITY V. STRAIGHTENING AND STRENGTHENING THE SPINE VI. CLEANSING AND STIMULATING THE ALIMENTARY CANAL VII. EXERCISE FOR VITALITY BUILDING VIII. HOW TO BREATHE IX. OUTDOOR LIFE X. STRENGTHENING THE STOMACH XI. PRESERVING THE TEETH XII. HOW TO EAT XIII. WHAT TO EAT XIV. FOODS IN THE CURE OF CONSTIPATION XV. PRESSURE MOVEMENTS FOR BUILDING INNER STRENGTH XVI. BLOOD PURIFICATION XVII. HINTS ON BATHING XVIII. SOME FACTS ABOUT CLOTHING XIX. SUGGESTIONS ABOUT SLEEP XX. MIND--THE MASTER-FORCE FOR HEALTH OR DISEASE XXI. THE LAUGH CURE XXII. SINGING-THE GREAT TONIC XXIII. THE DAILY REGIMEN CHAPTER I: Vitality--What is it? Vitality first of all means endurance and the ability to live long. It naturally indicates functional and organic vigor. You cannot be vital unless the organs of the body are possessed of at least a normal degree of strength and are performing their functions harmoniously and satisfactorily. To be vital means that you are full of vim and energy, that you possess that enviable characteristic known as vivacity. It means that you are vibrating, pulsating with life in all its most attractive forms. For life, energy, vitality-call it what you wish-in all its normal manifestations, will always be found attractive. A vital man is at all times thoroughly alive. The forces of life seem to imbue every part of his organism with energy, activity and all characteristics opposed to things inanimate. A vital man is naturally enthusiastic. He can hardly avoid being ambitious. And consequently success, with all its splendid rewards, comes to such a man in abundance. Life to such a man should be resplendent with worthy achievements. No one belittles the importance of success. Everyone is guided to a large extent by the desire to succeed. When a child toddles off to school the training which he secures there is given for the single purpose of bringing success, but this goal cannot possibly be reached without throbbing vitality. In fact, you are not yourself in every sense unless you possess vitality of this sort. The emotions and instincts that come to one when thoroughly developed, with the vital forces surging within, are decidedly different from those which influence one when lacking in stamina. Many who have grown beyond adult age are still undeveloped, so far as physical condition and vigor is concerned, and this lack of physical development or vitality means immaturity-incompleteness. It means that one is short on manhood or womanhood. This statement, that one's personality, under such circumstances, is not completely brought out, may seem strange to some; but careful reasoning will soon verify its accuracy. Success of the right sort, therefore, depends first of all upon intelligent efforts that are guided day after day, with a view, first of all, of developing the physical organism to the highest possible standard, and maintaining it there. In other words, it is our first duty to be men, strong and splendid, or women, healthy and perfect, if we are desirous of securing life's most gratifying prizes. Many actually go through life only half alive. They are, to a certain extent, doped by their physical deficiencies. They have been handicapped by a lack of the energy that comes with physical development. They need to be stirred by the regular use of the physical powers of the body. When the body is complete in all of its various parts it is truly a marvelous organism. Throbbing vitality stirs the imagination, gives one courage and capacity, thrills one with the possibilities of life, fires the ambitions. The efforts involved in one's daily duties, be they ever so important, then become mere play. To such a man inactivity is impossible. Every day must be filled with active, interesting duties, and progress in such cases is inevitable. Such a man grows, he improves, he ascends. He becomes a positive dominating force in the world. Can pulsating, vibrating, vitality of this kind be developed? Can one who lacks enthusiasm and organic vigor obtain these valuable forces? If you have failed up to the present to become a complete man, or a splendid woman, can you achieve these extraordinary rewards in the future? You can rest assured that if the necessary efforts are made a revolution can be wrought in your physical and mental powers. You, too, can feel these throbbing vital forces stirring your every nerve, thrilling your very soul. Go to work, in an intelligent manner, realizing that fundamentally the attainment of these great rewards comes from the development of the highest degree of physical excellence. You must have strength of body. You cannot have too much strength. The more nearly you feel like a strong man the more you can achieve in the desired direction. All successful men are, and have been, men of tremendous energy. Their achievements have been simply the expression of the vitality and nerve force which can no more be repressed than the power of an engine when it has been once liberated. Success is due to the dynamic quality of energy. It is true that physical energy and bodily strength are not sufficient for success in all fields. One must have aptitude for his chosen work. Your energy must be directed in the proper channels, but without this energy and vitality you can accomplish virtually nothing. Take the one particular characteristic known as vivacity. How we envy those who possess in abundance this great gift! No matter how irregular one's features may be, even though they repel, if a smile shows vivacity associated with a keen, intelligent personality, one cannot be otherwise than attractive. John Bunny, with features rough, unchiseled, ugly, almost uncouth, yet possessed a personality that spread its contagious good humor to millions of people in all quarters of the world who mourned his recent death as that of a personal acquaintance. On the other hand, even though a man or woman possess regular features, the lack of animated expression, of vivacity, causes the person to be regarded as "cold" and "repellent." Speaking in the vernacular, it puts you in the class of the "dead ones." One may say that magnetism and all the desirable qualities that draw others to us are closely associated with the supreme development of the forces of life. No vivacity, then no personality. The average individual goes through life without living. In other words, he scarcely exists. He has never felt the throbbing exultation of a keen joyous moment. Nor on the other hand has he ever suffered the tortures that are supposed to be associated with the damned, for we must remember that the power to enjoy carries with it a corresponding power to suffer. But we should also remember that the possession of these extremes, the ability to enjoy or to suffer, indicates the attainment of what might be termed the most complete human development. If we wish to find a perfect picture of the phlegmatic temperament, we can study a pig to advantage. And yet there are many human beings incapable of manifesting life-forces equal to those of this humble animal. But why not be alive, vital, vivacious? Why not be alert, keen, energetic, enthusiastic, ambitious, bubbling over with fiery ardor? The possession of these pulsating, vibratory forces proves that one's physical development has closely approached to perfection. To such vital individuals life opens up opportunities that are almost countless. But those who have never lived in this "world" of fiery ambitions and throbbing powers, who have never been stirred by the keen, satisfying joys that go with these extraordinary, vital qualities, may ask if these invaluable powers can be developed. Are these stirring, vital forces the possession of favored classes only, or may they be obtained by anyone and everyone? In other words, can they be cultivated or developed? My reply, in nearly all cases, would be in the affirmative. There may be exceptions. There is a limit to the development of the physical force, but health is attainable by the majority. So long as there is life you should be possessed of sufficient vitality to attain a normal degree of health. It really takes more power to run a defective machine than it does to operate one in which all parts are working in harmony, and the same can be said of the body and its parts or organs. Therefore, if you have vitality enough to continue to live even though diseased, rest assured that you have enough to acquire health if you conform to Nature's enactments. And this kind of health usually brings a physical and mental exaltation that is truly beyond description. It is my purpose in these pages to help the reader to solve the problems associated with the attainment of vitality and health at its best. By following out the suggestions which you will find in this volume, by stimulating the life-forces in connection with the thyroid gland, by straightening and strengthening the spine, by toning up the alimentary canal, and by adopting other suggestions set forth in these pages, you should be insured the attainment of vital vigor really beyond price. Do not be satisfied with an existence. If life is worth anything, it is worth living in every sense of the word. The building up of one's physical assets should be recognized as an imperative duty. CHAPTER II: Functional Activity-The Secret of Power Vitality means normal functioning. When the organs of the body are all performing their duties satisfactorily, you can practically be sure of a plentiful supply of vitality. So it can truly be said that proper functioning is the secret of power. The most important of all functional processes begins in the stomach. There is where the blood-making process commences, and, since a man is what the blood makes of him, you can realize the tremendous importance of this particular function. If the digestion is carried on properly, and the blood is made rich in those elements that add to life, health and strength, then the functions of the stomach are being properly performed. Strength of this organ, therefore, is absolutely indispensable in vitality building. This blood-making work is then continued by the small intestines, where a large part of the elements of nourishment essential to life are assimilated, taken up and carried to the portal circulation, thence to the lungs and heart, and finally throughout the entire body. It is absolutely impossible for one to enjoy the possession of a high degree of vitality, or of the general good health upon which vitality depends, unless the intestinal tract is in a healthy and vigorous condition, so that the functions of this particular part of the body- machine may be performed without a flaw. The entire digestive system may be compared to a boiler supplying the energy by which the engine does its work. Then consider the heart itself. One cannot underestimate the functional importance of this organ. It is commonly regarded as the most vital spot in the body, the very center of life-indeed the poets have made it the seat of love and the emotions in general. If anything, the brain and nervous system should be regarded as the real center of life, but the function of the heart, the marvelous muscle-pump, is so vital and indispensable that the world is accustomed to thinking of it as the organ of first importance. And so it is. Should it cease its efforts for a few moments even, life becomes extinct, and you are no longer an animate being. A strong heart, therefore, is if anything even more important than a strong stomach. But you must remember that the strength of the heart to a large extent depends upon the cooperation of a strong stomach, or at least upon the proper digestion of food. For the muscles and tissues of the heart, like those of all other organs of the body, are fed by the blood, which depends for its life-giving and life- sustaining qualities upon the food, which is first acted upon by the stomach and thus made available for use by the cell structures in all parts of the body. The heart is truly a wonderful organ, the one set of muscles which apparently never rest, but work on night and day, year after year, throughout our entire life. Furthermore, the part played by the lungs in the maintenance of life and health cannot be underestimated. Impaired functioning of the lungs has an immediate and vital effect upon every other part of the body. It is through this channel that we secure the oxygen, without which the processes of life would terminate almost instantaneously. It is through this channel also that the elimination of carbonic acid gas is accomplished. Without the continuous and thorough elimination of carbonic acid our tissues would become choked up and poisoned in such a way that all cell activity and bodily function would come to an abrupt end. If the lungs are sound and healthy in every respect the supply of oxygen is abundant, and the elimination of carbonic acid, which may be regarded as the "smoke" of the human system, is carried on perfectly. Breathing is only one of the various functions that must be continuously carried on, but it is of such importance as to require special attention in building vitality. In the work of eliminating impurities and keeping the system clean the kidneys are to be classed with the lungs, although they have to do with poisonous wastes of a different type. Insufficient functioning of the kidneys is not so immediately fatal as the failure of the lungs to do their work, but proper action of the kidneys is none the less important. If the poisons which are normally eradicated from the system in this way are allowed to remain or to accumulate, they poison the body as truly as any external toxic element that could be introduced. Insufficient activity of the kidneys leads to the accumulation of those poisons, bringing on convulsions of the most serious nature, and unless the condition is relieved there will be fatal results. The requirements of health, therefore, demand that the kidneys should be strong and active, and that their functional capacity should be maintained at the highest degree of efficiency. In supplementing the work of the kidneys and the lungs, the excretory function of the skin is only secondary in importance. The skin has various functions. It is one of our chief organs of sense, the sense of touch being hardly second to those of sight and hearing. It is likewise a wonderful protective structure, and at the same time is a channel of elimination which cannot be ignored with impunity. To interfere with the eliminative function of the skin by absolutely clogging the pores for a period of several hours means death. One may say that we really breathe through the skin. The importance of all these functions of elimination is vital. Pure blood depends upon the perfect and continuous excretion of the wastes formed in the body through the processes of life, and without keeping the blood pure in this manner the body rapidly becomes poisoned by its own waste products, with the result that health, vitality and even life are lost. Health is entirely a question of pure blood, and, while the blood depends first upon the building material supplied through the digestive system, it also depends equally as much upon functional activity in the matter of elimination. The liver, which enjoys the distinction of being the largest organ in the body, is designed for the performance of a multiplicity of functions. It not only produces the bile, which has such an important part to play in the work of digestion, but it has a very important work in the changing of foods absorbed into such material as may be assimilated or used by the cells of the various tissues throughout the body. For instance, it is part of the function of the liver to bring about chemical changes in albuminous foods which make it possible for the tissues to assimilate these. It also has much to do with bringing about certain chemical changes in sugar or dextrose. Furthermore, the liver has an important function in connection with the excretion of broken-down bodily tissue, converting this dead matter into a form in which it can be filtered out of the blood by the kidneys. Failure of the liver to perform its work satisfactorily will upset the digestive and functional system, or may lead to an accumulation of uric acid in the body, possibly resulting in rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, disturbances of circulation and other evils. When your liver "goes on strike" you may expect trouble in general. A normal condition of the entire body depends upon perfect and continuous functioning of the liver in cooperation with all the other vital organs. The same may be said of the pancreas, spleen, the thyroid gland and other organs which have a special function to perform. The body is really a combination of all these various parts and functions, and without strength and activity in all of them, simultaneous and harmonious, not one of these interdependent parts could do its work, and the body as a whole would be thrown into a state of disease. Strength of the internal organs is infinitely more important than mere muscular strength, if one could properly make a comparison. How, therefore, shall we build this internal, functional strength? Can our organs be made to function more satisfactorily? How may we promote their greater activity? It will be the purpose of the succeeding chapters in this volume to point out how the vital organs may be strengthened and the sum total of one's vitality thereby increased. It is true that internal strength is more important than external muscular strength, but the fact is that they go together. As a general thing, by building muscular strength one is able at the same time to develop internal strength. The influence of exercise in purifying the blood and in promoting activity in all the internal organs really strengthens the "department of the interior" at the same time that it develops the muscles concerned. Muscular stagnation means organic stagnation, to a very large degree. To be thoroughly alive and to enjoy the possession of unlimited vitality it is necessary to be both muscularly and functionally active. The requirements of Nature, or what are more commonly termed the "laws of Nature," in reference to all these bodily functions must be strictly observed, for it is only under such conditions that life and health can be maintained at their best. The body may be regarded as a machine. Why not make it a strong machine, and as perfect as possible? Its efficiency means everything. If you had an engine, a motorcycle, a sewing machine or a printing press that was a very poor machine, you would like to exchange it for a better one, would you not? You would even spend large sums of money to secure a better machine to take the place of the poor one. But if your body is imperfect, inefficient, weak, rusty and clogged up with grit, dirt and all the waste products due to the "wear" in the bodily structures, you seem nevertheless entirely satisfied. You go on from day to day and from year to year without thinking of the possibility of getting a better physical equipment. But why not consider the body in the same light as any other machine that is of value to you. Your body is the thing that keeps you alive. If it is a poor instrument, then it is more important that you should get a better one than that you should buy a new engine or new printing-press or new sewing-machine. The only difference is, that it is within your power to get a better body machine by building up the one that you have. You can repair it, you can add to its vitality, you can strengthen the functional system, you can make it more perfect and efficient. You can make it a high-power machine that will be of real value in any undertaking that you may wish to carry out. You can make it strong instead of weak, and you can thus enjoy that superabundant vitality without which life is hardly worth the living. CHAPTER III: The Proper Bodily Posture The very great value of maintaining the body in a proper position cannot be too strongly emphasized. Man is the only animal that walks erect. He is the only animal in whom old age brings a forward bending of the spine. The hanging head, which is the attitude of hopelessness, and which is caused to a very large extent by the mental attitude that goes with approaching old age, no doubt does a great deal to quicken physical decline. Therefore it would be wise to remember the very grave importance of a straight, erect spine. Each day of your life should be to a certain extent a fight for the best that there is in life and a struggle to hold the spine as nearly erect as possible. If you are sitting in a chair, sit up straight, head back, chin in. If you are walking or standing, the same rule should apply. The more nearly you can assume the position which is sometimes criticized by the sarcastic statement that "He looks as though he had swallowed a poker," the more nearly you will approximate the ideal position. As will be shown in the succeeding chapter, it is not necessary to make extraordinary efforts to hold the shoulders back or to arch the chest. The one idea-chin in, down and backward-will accomplish all that is needed. The chest and shoulders will naturally take care of themselves. Furthermore, it is well to remember that this attitude in itself has a tremendous influence upon both the physical and mental organism. The mind, for instance, is affected to an extraordinary degree by this position. It quickens the reasoning capacity, helps to clear the brain of "cobwebs" and unquestionably adds to one's courage. The man who is afraid hangs his head. He who is void of fear holds his head erect, "looks the world in the face!" There is no question that if a man without fear were to assume the position of fear, with hanging head and shrinking body, he would quickly find himself stirred by the emotions associated with such a posture. He would soon "get scared!" In fact, the attitude of the body has so much to do with one's mental and emotional state that the question of self-confidence or lack of confidence may often be decided simply by throwing your head up and back and assuming the general bodily posture that goes with confidence. It not only expresses confidence: it also develops confidence. There is a great truth here that psychologists and those who write "character building" books have not sufficiently understood or emphasized. And when you feel discouraged, the best way to overcome the sense of depression is to "brace up" physically. It will help you to "brace up" mentally. Try it. Then there are the definite physiological results of maintaining an erect spine. The mechanical arrangement of the spine itself is such that if it is held erect the important nerves that radiate to all parts of the body from this central "bureau" are able more perfectly to perform their functions. Where there is pressure on these nerves there is bound to be imperfect functioning. The affected organ will work lazily, indifferently. In fact, the entire science of the osteopaths and chiropractors is based almost wholly upon the value of spinal stimulation and the remedying of spinal defects. There is another way in which an erect carriage has a direct physical influence, namely, in maintaining the proper position of the vital organs. When the body is held erect the chest is full, round and somewhat expanded, affording plenty of room for the heart and lungs. This, in itself, is conducive to vitality as compared with the flat- chested attitude. The stomach, liver, spleen, pancreas and intestines all tend to drop or sag below their normal position when the body bends forward. In maintaining an erect position all these organs are drawn upward and held in their natural position, and this means greater vigor and better functioning on the part of each. This particular consideration is of special importance in the case of women. It all goes to show the truly wonderful value of maintaining the spine in a properly erect attitude. The sitting position usually assumed is far from what it should be in order to insure health. As a rule, we sit humped forward, with a decided bend in the spine, ultimately developing splendid examples of what we call round shoulders. The spine, while sitting, should be held as nearly straight as possible. The position of the head, to a very large extent, determines the general posture of the body. As nearly as possible the chin should be held inward, downward and backward. I will admit that this position is almost impossible when one is using the ordinary type of chair. An extraordinary effort is required to sit properly in the conventional chair. Furniture of this sort should be made to fit the body in the same way as our clothing does. The back of a chair should be made to fit the backs of those who are to occupy the chair. The chair-back should, at least to a reasonable extent, approximate the normal shape of the spine. If the chair, throughout its entire back, cannot be thus shaped, then it should be cut off even with the waist line of the occupant. Such a low-back chair will usually allow one to sit erect without serious discomfort. There has been much criticism of American men on the ground that they are inclined to sit down on the small of the back. They slide forward in the chair, with the back bent over and the shoulders humped forward. But the fault really lies with the construction of the chair. The back of a chair does not fit the human back, and the seat is not at the right angle to rest the body. Why is it that men commonly like to tilt a chair backward on the hind legs? Even when they do not place their feet on a convenient table they are prone to tip the chair back and partly balance it on the hind legs. Why do people instinctively prefer a rocking chair as a source of comfort, even when they do not rock? The fact is that it is not the rocking that makes a rocking chair comfortable, but the position of the seat of the chair, with its downward slope toward the back. The rocking chair is comfortable for just the same reason that the ordinary dining chair is made more comfortable when a man tilts it back upon its hind legs. The reason is that in this position one does not tend to slide forward off the chair, the weight of the body naturally carrying the hips to the back of the chair, where it is supported naturally. In order to avoid the "sliding down the cellar door" character of the conventional chair a change should be made in the incline of the seat similar to that found in the ordinary rocking chair and in the chair when tipped back in the manner I have described. The photograph which has been reproduced on the preceding page illustrates the point I wish to make. In this particular instance I have used an ordinary chair to show what can be done to improve the chairs in the ordinary home. Both of the back legs of this chair were sawed off some three or four inches-thus elevating the front part of the chair and lowering the back part, giving the seat an incline toward the rear which more comfortably accommodates the body. This position approximates that of the ordinary swivel desk chair tilted back by business men when they are not leaning forward over their desks. This suggestion can be adopted very easily and cheaply in almost any home, for any ordinary chair treated in this manner will be very greatly improved, and far greater comfort will be experienced as a result of the change. Civilized men and women spend such a very large part of the time in a sitting position that the bodily posture when sitting down is a very great factor in the bodily welfare and health. Special thought and study, therefore, should be given the question of the sitting posture. Unfortunately, this particular subject seems to have been ignored absolutely for hundreds of years in the making of our chairs. It is just as harmful to sit all humped over as it is to stand in such a position. The nervous system cannot be maintained at its best unless the spine is held reasonably erect. Whether sitting or standing, therefore, it is important that you should make a never-ending struggle for a straight spine. If the back of the chair in which you sit is not properly made then it is better, in most cases, to ignore the back altogether. Sit slightly forward from the back and maintain an erect position, with the chin held in, downward and backward. In this position you should sit well balanced, as it were. The chest should occupy the same relative position as when standing erect. If you will hold the head in the position I have indicated it will help you to keep the chest and back in the right position. As a general thing, it is a much more simple matter to maintain this erect position when sitting, if either one foot, or both feet, are drawn back under the chair. When both feet are stretched out forward upon the floor a person is inclined to sag backward in a partially reclining position upon the chair. By holding one foot underneath the chair in such a manner that you could rise to a standing position, if desired, without lurching forward, you will find it easy to maintain a well balanced and erect posture. If at any time you find yourself slumping forward or slouching in your seat, it is good to stretch your arms high above the head, or to expand the chest and draw your shoulders backward in the position commonly assumed when yawning and stretching. Either of these stretching movements will give you an erect position, and you can maintain this thereafter by keeping the head in the right position-chin inward, downward and backward. These stretching movements will be equally effective for improving the carriage when standing. The same complaint that I have made against the ordinary chair can be registered with special force against the desks used in the schoolrooms. There is no question that a great deal of spinal curvature in childhood, to say nothing of round shoulders and flat chests, are directly the result of the improper sitting posture in the schools which is enforced upon the children because of the unsuitable character of their seating arrangements. Thus we practically begin life hampered by an unsatisfactory environment, so far as our sitting posture is concerned. The chair back or the desk chair should fit the human back. It. should favor and not hamper one in assuming a normal and straight position of the spine. When you get up in the morning, exercise yourself a little in straightening the spine, chin in, downward and backward. When you walk to business or when you go about your duties, keep the same thought in mind. Force the head back. Take the exercises which you will find in the next chapter, referring to the thyroid gland, at very frequent intervals during the day. Remember that in fighting for a straight spine you are fighting for youth and health and life and energy and courage and enthusiasm. You are fighting for everything that is best in life, and you should strive and struggle with all the energy you possess to win the rewards associated therewith. Each day of your life will bring difficulties, worries. Life at its best is not a bed of roses. All these various influences are inclined to make you hang your head. You may have moments when you are hopeless, when life seems forbidding and cheerless. Fight against such inclinations with all the power you possess. Struggle against such discouragements with all your might and main, not only through your mental attitude but through your determination to maintain an erect spine. Hold your head up and look the world in the face. Don't shirk your duty. Don't deviate from the path along which your best impulses and highest ideals would lead you. Life is worth while. It is filled with glorious opportunities. Reach out and grasp them as they come up. Hold your head up and be a man or a woman to the fullest extent of your abilities. CHAPTER IV: Stimulating the Source of Stamina and Vitality This is an age of short cuts. Any devious routes to the accomplishment of an object should be avoided. If you want vitality, and the vivacity, energy and enthusiasm with which it is associated, you naturally search for a method which will bring certain and quick improvements. The reasonableness and general prevalence of this demand was in my mind when I began experimentation with a view to discovering a method for stimulating what I term the source of vital power. Scientific men while delving into the marvelous secrets of physiology, have learned that the thyroid gland in some peculiar manner possesses an extraordinary influence upon vital stamina and virility. This mysterious gland is located in front of the neck, about half way between the so-called "Adam's apple" and the top of the sternum or breast-bone, where it adheres to each side of the front of the trachea, or windpipe, in a flattened form, something like the wings of a butterfly, with a connecting "isthmus." It is a "ductless" gland, its secretions apparently being taken up by absorption into the lymph, and from that into the blood. While the functions of this little organ are not yet very clearly understood, there is nothing more definitely known than its tremendous importance in the bodily economy. Without it there can be no such thing as healthy development. Thyroid deficiency in children gives rise to a form of idiocy, bodily malformation and degeneracy known as cretinism, while in adult life it is associated with a similar disorder known as myxedema. Goiter is the most common disorder of the thyroid gland; though not very serious in minor cases, it is capable of becoming very dangerous, assuming such malignant forms as exophthalmic goiter, which is marked by palpitation of the heart, nervous symptoms and protrusion of the eyes. It is thought by some authorities that the thyroid gland has to do with the control of the excretion of the waste products from nitrogenous foods, for it has been found that a meat diet or a high-proteid diet is extremely harmful in disorders of this organ. It has been found that dogs fed on meat after the thyroid gland has been removed invariably die in a few days, but that they can be kept alive for a long time if fed on a diet very low in proteids. It is found as a rule that those suffering from thyroid troubles do very well on a milk diet. Some students of the subject conclude that the function of the thyroid gland is to destroy poisonous products formed by the decomposition of proteid food substances. It is believed by others that it also has a defensive action against other poisons in the body, including alcohol and poisonous drugs. In other words, it is thought to have an "antitoxic" action. It has also been held that this organ has much to do with the supply of iodine in the system, being particularly affected by the lack of iodine in the food. Again, it is said that when the thyroid gland has degenerated there ensues a condition of auto- intoxication, followed by a degeneration of other organs which destroy and eliminate poisons in the blood. It is claimed that in many cases of thyroid deficiency, as in cretinism, good results have been obtained by the use of thyroid extract, thus supplying the body with the secretion which normally should have been obtained from this gland. But, whatever may be the function of this remarkable little organ, the fact remains that it is of tremendous importance to health, being undeniably endowed with extraordinary influence on virility, physical strength and mental vigor. Now these facts were in mind when I commenced the experiments which, as I have said, led to the discovery of a method of stimulating the vital forces of the body. The problem seemed simple in some respects. If the thyroid gland has such a definite effect upon bodily health, the query as to how it can be strengthened and stimulated to perform its work more satisfactorily, assumed unusual importance and I was strongly moved to discover the answer. The problem, however, was not by any means an easy one. A long time elapsed before a satisfactory solution presented itself. The first thought that naturally occurs to one when endeavoring to stimulate the activities of any part of the body is to find some means of increasing the circulation to that part. Ordinary massage will usually accomplish this purpose to a limited degree, though massage to my mind is a superficial agent in many cases. It will increase local circulation, but it does not facilitate tissue changes to the same extent as exercise which directly affects the structures concerned, or the mechanical movements of the parts themselves that are brought about through active use of them in some way. I have known of cases in which pressure and massage applied to the region of the thyroid gland have been followed by harmful effects, such as fainting, and certainly no one with a weak heart should attempt to stimulate this organ in this manner. Therefore, in endeavoring to find a satisfactory means of stimulating this important gland, I did not give massage serious thought. And I might as well say that I finally "stumbled" upon the important truth which is the basis of the method that I am presenting. For many years I have been a student of vocal culture, having taken up the study of this art chiefly as a recreation, with no thought of ever publicly using any ability I might acquire, though I might mention that the additional vocal strength obtained as a result of this training assisted me greatly in public speaking. While giving my attention to this particular study, I was greatly impressed by the extreme importance of maintaining an erect spine, holding the chin down, inward and backward, and keeping the shoulders back and the chest expanded. I found, however, like many others who become "slack" in bodily posture, that a considerable effort was required to maintain a proper position at all times. I therefore began a series of special exercises intended really to force myself to assume a properly erect position. While experimenting with these exercises for the purpose mentioned, I noted a marked effect upon my general vital vigor. Not only was this made apparent by an increase in physical strength and stamina, but it was marked in an equal degree by additional mental energy and capacity. My mind was clearer, and I could surmount difficulties presented in business enterprises in which I was interested with far more ease than before. I could make decisions more easily and quickly. In addition, a decided gain in weight was noted-not by any means in the form of mere fatty tissue, but of firm, substantial flesh. These very pleasing results induced me to go more carefully into the causes underlying this remarkable improvement. I carried on an elaborate series of careful experiments with a view to proving the conclusions to which I had come in the course of these exercises. It was quite apparent that a full development of the back part of the upper spine was necessary in order to maintain the strength essential to extreme vigor and vitality. And it became quite plain to me that this development could not be achieved without stimulating to an unusual degree the thyroid gland. Reasoning along this line, I called to mind the appearance of various animals noted for their great strength and there I found my conclusions verified with remarkable emphasis. The arched neck of the stallion, the huge development of the back of the neck of the domestic bull, the same character in even more pronounced form in the case of the bull buffalo and the musk-ox, and in varying degrees in other animals conspicuous for their vitality and energy-all this seemed to indicate that I was on the verge of a remarkable discovery. When you think of a fiery steed, in every instance you bring to mind the arched appearance of the neck. The tight reins that are sometimes used to give a horse a pleasing appearance, are based upon the same ideal, showing a more or less subconscious recognition of the idea that this particular development is associated with tremendous animal vigor. After giving consideration to various methods that could be used for the purpose of stimulating this little organ, the thyroid gland, I finally concluded as the result of prolonged experimentation that the exercises illustrated in this chapter can most thoroughly be depended upon for producing results. All movements here described have proved effective in imparting to the neck a full, arched, well developed appearance, but I have given especial attention to the active use of the muscles on the back of the neck. Nearly every movement which to a certain extent develops these muscles is inclined to stimulate the thyroid gland. The more special movements for this purpose are indicated in the various illustrations accompanying this chapter. This development of the back of the neck always indicates great vitality, because definite proof is thereby given that the spine is unusually strong and is maintained in a position favorable to the functioning of all the organs of the body. Many of the movements illustrated are but slight in character, but they are the more adaptable because of this. No matter where you may be, whether walking along the street, conversing with a friend, or sitting at a desk, they can be practiced quietly without attracting attention. Furthermore, it is absolutely essential that an erect position of the spine be kept in mind continually. You should begin every morning to hold the spine straight and erect, and each day should represent an increment of success in the struggle finally to maintain involuntarily this position of the body. On arising in the morning, practice some of the exercises illustrated in this chapter for stimulating the thyroid gland, being careful to perform them just as instructed in each illustration. Whenever you are unoccupied during the day, it is a good plan to practice these movements occasionally, as they will assist you materially in maintaining the spine in that erect position which I found so important at the beginning of my vocal studies. The most important movement is to bring the chin downward, inward, and backward as far as possible, endeavoring to arch as much as you can the back of the neck. You may have to practice a long while before you notice an outline that will in any way resemble an arch in the back of your neck, but all this work you can be assured will be of decided benefit to you. And, whether or not you attain the desired arch, you can be assured of benefits that will be worth all your efforts. When you make these movements properly, there is no necessity for trying to bring the chest out or the shoulders far back. The simple movements of the neck alone as described, if properly performed, will fulfill all requirements. For these movements tend mechanically to raise and arch the chest and to throw the shoulders far backward. Remember also the necessity, when taking these movements, of keeping the abdominal region expanded as fully as possible. Do not draw in the waist line. The importance of this admonition cannot be too strongly emphasized. If you maintain a full abdomen, thyroid-stimulating movements seem to tone up, increase in size, and strengthen all the vital organs lying in the gastric region. In further proof of the value of the exercises described in this work as a means of building unusual vital vigor, note the remarkable stamina and virility of men possessing an unusual development of the neck. Where the neck is broad and well filled out at the back, you can depend absolutely upon the possession of great vital vigor. It is quite plain, therefore, that by merely adopting some method of developing this part of the spine you will have accomplished a great deal towards obtaining a high degree of vital stamina. Some of the strongest men in the world can be found among professional wrestlers. Many of those following this profession retain their athletic ability a great many years beyond the athletic life of men in other branches of sport. In fact, champion wrestlers sometimes retain their championship honors for a score of years beyond the age at which champion boxers and runners retire. It is a well known fact that wrestling requires extraordinary strength of the upper spine. Some of the most strenuous wrestling holds use the muscles of the upper back and neck in a very vigorous and violent manner. Consequently wrestlers are noted for what are often termed bull necks, thus plainly indicating the exceptional degree of vital vigor which they possess. Accordingly it is well to remember in connection with these exercises that many movements which assist in the development of the neck muscles also serve to stimulate the activities of the thyroid gland. You cannot go through the process of training for a wrestling match without stimulating this organ to an exceptional degree. Therefore, in following the suggestions which are given in this chapter, you are securing the full benefit of a vitality-stimulating process that ordinarily can be obtained only by going through a prolonged course of wrestling. There is no necessity for you to develop a "bull neck," but you should make the most strenuous efforts to acquire a sufficient development of the back of the neck to give it an arched appearance. The more nearly you can approximate a development of this character, the more vital will you become. And along with this superior power will come a similar improvement in every other capacity, mental as well as physical. That there may be no mistake, let me reiterate: That the spine must be held erect at all times when sitting or standing. That frequently during the day when sitting or standing the chin should be brought down and in with a backward movement, the head being turned at times far either to the right or left side, with a vigorous twist of the strongly tensed muscles. That on every occasion when this movement is made, the abdomen must be fully expanded-not held in or drawn upward. That great emphasis must be given to the importance of bringing the chin slowly but vigorously downward against the chest before the inward and backward movement is begun. This insures a proper stimulation of the thyroid gland. CHAPTER V: Stimulating, Straightening and Strengthening the Spine The human spine bears the same relation to the body as a whole as the trunk of a tree does to the rest of the tree. If the trunk is strong the entire tree is sturdy and vigorous. If the spine is strong the body as a whole possesses a similar degree of strength. Therefore, the necessity for a strong spine is readily apparent. This strength is necessary not only because the spine is what may be termed the foundation for our entire physical structure but also because therein are located the nerves that radiate to each organ and every minute part of the body. These spinal nerves control the functional processes of all our bodily tissues and structures. If the spine possesses a proper degree of strength, if the bony structure is properly proportioned, and if the alignment of all the vertebrae is everything that can be desired, you are then practically assured of the pulsating vitality which is a part of superb health. It is an interesting fact that the spine is the central and fundamental structure of all the higher organisms on this earth. In the course of the evolution of life on this planet there developed from the very simplest forms of animal organisms two different higher forms of life--on the one hand the vertebrate animals, possessing an internal skeleton, and on the other hand the insects, clams, crustaceans and other creatures that have their skeletons on the outside, as one may say, in the form of shells. The legs of an insect, for instance, are small tubes with the muscles inside. The limbs of vertebrate animals, on the other hand, have the muscle outside the bone. Invertebrates commonly have the main nerve trunk in front, or underneath, instead of at the back, and likewise often have their brains in their abdomens. Some of them, such as the grasshopper, even hear with their abdomens. But all vertebrata have the great nerve trunk at the back, contained in the spine and with a bulb on the front or upper end constituting the brain. In fact, a vertebrate animal is primarily a living spine, and all other parts of the body are in the nature of appendages. The limbs, for instance, and in the higher animals the ribs and other parts of the skeleton, are simply attached to the spine, or are offshoots from it. In the fishes these limbs take the shape of fins. In the higher developments of life they assume the form of legs. All the higher animals, as we know, have evolved from the fishes and reptiles, and all in common possess a spine which in its fundamental characteristics is very much the same now as when it was first evolved. In other words, the spine is a bodily structure as old as the rock-ribbed hills. It has stood the test of time, and therefore must be regarded as the most highly perfected mechanical structure in the body. Its strength combined with its flexibility and its perfect adjustment as a container for the central nervous system, makes it perhaps the most wonderful structure in the body outside of the brain and the spinal cord itself. While other organs and features of the body have been changed and modified to such an extent in the various species which have been evolved that they can hardly be recognized as having a common origin, yet the spine has remained substantially the same. It is true that the spine has been shortened in many species as the result of the loss of the tail, but this means only the dropping off of a part of it and does not greatly alter its fundamental character. The human spine, however, differs from that of other animals in respect to its suitability for the erect posture. Man is the only animal in the world who can straighten his body and stand perfectly erect. Even the anthropoid apes when standing on their feet assume a somewhat oblique position. The vertebral column in animal life was first developed on the horizontal plane, and so, naturally, when man was evolved and adopted the erect position, certain modifications of the spine were necessary. A new strain developed on the vertebral column which was due to the new position, and so there came about certain changes in its structure. For one thing the spine became less flexible and gained in stability, especially in the lower sections. The sacrum, for instance, is created by the fusing together of several vertebrae into one bone for the sake of greater strength and stability. The sacrum in man is much broader than in animals, for it must supply solidity and strength to the lower part of the spine, thus adapting it to the vertical position, and in the same way the lower vertebrae generally are comparatively broader and heavier, gradually decreasing in size and tapering toward the top of the spine like the trunk of a tree. This particular feature of the human backbone is worthy of special consideration because it is the upper section of the spine, in which the vertebrae are smaller and tapering, that weakness is most likely to exist. It is in this upper section of the spine that strength is most needed in order to preserve it in perfect alignment, and keep the body properly erect. And it is for this reason, as the reader will see, that exercises affecting the upper parts of the spine are most important. Therefore I have given them special attention. The curves in the human spine are characteristic, illustrating in another way the modification of the vertebral column that has been made necessary by the erect position. The new-born baby has a backbone that is almost straight, and in this respect it bears a strong resemblance to that of many of the lower animals. The typical human curves, however, begin to take form as soon as the child learns to sit up, and they become more marked as he learns to walk and run. These curves are essential to maintaining the balance of the body in the erect position. There are really three curves in the human backbone, the cervical curve being convex, the dorsal concave, and the lumbar convex, when each is regarded from the forward aspect. If we consider the sacrum and coccyx, there is really a fourth curve, this being concave, although in animals generally the coccyx curves backwards and is extended to form the tail. In some of the lower animals the spine is nearly straight, while in some cases it virtually forms a complete arch from one end to the other. These curves of the spine are generally more marked in the civilized white races than among the black and savage races, and as a rule they are more pronounced among women than among men. For instance, in comparing the sexes we find that in a woman the lumbar curve is more marked and extends slightly higher than in a man, and that the broad sacrum characteristic of the human race is even wider, being thus adapted to the broader hips and wider pelvic cavity of the child- bearing sex. Now, the maintenance of a strong and erect spine, and especially of the normal curves of youth is most important. With the weakness of advancing age the curves, particularly in the upper part of the spine, tend to become more pronounced. The more accentuated these curves are the greater is the weakness of the spine and of the muscles of the back that is indicated. It is said that a man is as old as his spine, since the deterioration of the spine means the loss of elasticity and supporting power in the disk-like cartilages between the vertebrae, and also the loss of strength in the muscles and ligaments of the back which tend to hold the spinal vertebrae in place. It is usually found that vigorous old men who are mentally and physically active at eighty or ninety years are those who have maintained an erect bearing until late in life, who have kept their spines straight and strong instead of allowing them to bend over and double up. In other words, the deterioration of the spine means a general loss of bodily vigor and a decline in the nervous energy or vitality. With the flattening down of the cushiony disks or cartilages between the vertebrae, and also with the dislocation even in the slightest degree of these vertebrae, there is brought about more or less interference with the free action of the spinal cord itself and of the spinal nerves. The pinching of these nerves naturally interferes with the supply of energy to the organs controlled by them, and causes more or less serious derangement of the bodily functions. If one can keep his spine straight and strong the central nervous system will likewise be healthy and vigorous, and all organs will be supplied with a normal amount of energy and vitality. The special exercises for the spine which I have recommended for years have the general effect not only of maintaining the proper alignment of the vertebrae and thus promoting the health and welfare of the central nervous system, but also of strongly stimulating the nervous system, and thus toning up the entire bodily organism. All movements of the spine, whether of a twisting or bending character, naturally influence the spinal cord and the spinal nerves in a mechanical way. The result is something akin to a massage of these nerve structures, and in this way, as I have long contended, it is possible directly to stimulate the source of energy and vitality. I am convinced for this reason that muscular exercise for the back is infinitely more important than for any other part of the body, important as it is for all parts. If one has only very little time each day to devote to exercise, then it would pay him best to give that time to movements which will strengthen and stimulate the spine. The various movements that I am presenting in this chapter have been devised especially to accompany the hot-water regimen that will be described in the following chapter. They are intended not only to add to the strength of the backbone itself, but have been devised with a view to stimulating to an unusual degree the nerve centers located in the spine. As I have already said, the spinal nerves control the functions of all the vital organs, and when the activity of these organs is stimulated not only through increased nerve force but also by the increased supply of blood that will result from the hot water- drinking regimen referred to, then indeed will we have a combination of stimulating forces which will bring about vital changes, in very many cases, little short of astounding in character. Each of these exercises should be taken until a feeling of fatigue has been noticed, after which you may rest a few moments, breathing fully and deeply with expanded abdomen. You should then be ready to begin the next exercise. There is little danger of soreness from taking these movements when they are combined with hot water-drinking, as recommended in Chapter VI, The water seems to cleanse the tissues of the waste products which ordinarily cause soreness when one begins the practice of exercises to which one is not accustomed. If one possesses unusual vigor, then to the exercises illustrated in this chapter may be added those movements appearing in the following chapter. All of the exercises given in this chapter are designed exclusively for the stimulation of the spine and nerve centers. Those illustrated in the next chapter are intended chiefly to accelerate the circulation throughout the chest, arms, legs and body as a whole, for when going through a treatment of this character it is naturally advisable for one to arouse the activity of all the functions associated with tissue changes throughout all parts of the body. Although these exercises have not been devised especially for corrective purposes in cases of spinal curvature, yet they will be of exceptional value in all such cases, or at least, where there is no radical mechanical deformity of the vertebral column. Curvatures may be prevented in all cases, or may be decreased, or even reduced entirely by exercise of this type. Incidentally the practice of exercises for improving the spine and giving one the proper erect carriage has a very marked effect upon the chest. An erect position always means expanded chest walls, with plenty of room for the free activity of the heart and lungs. CHAPTER VI: Cleansing and Stimulating the Alimentary Canal The alimentary canal has been rightly termed the human fire-box. It is there that the energy is created which runs the human machine. The importance of cleanliness in this part of the physical organism cannot be too greatly emphasized. Nearly all diseases have their beginning in the stomach or some other part of the alimentary canal. Defective digestion and imperfect assimilation represent the beginning of many incurable and deadly diseases. In seeking methods for building unusual vigor and vitality, one of the first requirements is definite information on the care of the alimentary canal. Mere regularity of the bowels does not in all cases indicate a healthy condition of the stomach and bowels. A movement in order to be of the right sort should be so thorough that it leaves one with a feeling of emptiness and cleanliness. In other words, you should feel that the colon has been evacuated thoroughly. Many who have regular bowel movements do not have this satisfying sensation afterwards. When the movement is satisfactory in every way little or no straining is necessary. The colon simply empties itself thoroughly, and the evacuation is then complete. However, few have movements of the bowels that are satisfactory to this extent. There should be at least one bowel movement of this kind each day. Two movements of this character would be better, but one is sufficient if thorough. Do not acquire the idea that the bowels must move at a certain time each day with unintermitted regularity, for they are subject to the same extent as the appetite to what might be termed idiosyncrasies, according to environment and other influences. For instance, you are not always hungry at meal-time. Occasionally you eat very little or skip one or more meals, and it would be a serious mistake to goad your appetite with some stimulant or to eat a meal without an appetite. One can hardly say that to force a bowel movement when its necessity is not naturally indicated is as harmful as to eat a meal when it is not craved, but unquestionably it is of advantage to have the bowels move of their own accord, as the result of a natural impulse. Movements that do not come through the call of an instinct for relief are rarely satisfactory, and, though we strongly emphasize the necessity of regularity of the bowels, it is not absolutely necessary that this call should come at a certain time during each day; and though it is undoubtedly of some advantage if such is the case, yet so long as there is one evacuation each day of the satisfactory sort described, you can be assured that your alimentary canal is in a normal and healthy condition. However, should the bowels fail to move at the regular time this need not cause concern if you are feeling "up to the mark," and there are no other symptoms that would indicate possible trouble. I mention this alimentary peculiarity to enable my readers to avoid the slavish idea that it is impossible to be in health unless the bowels move at certain times with clock-like regularity. Naturally when the contents of the alimentary canal are allowed to accumulate for a considerable period and there is sluggishness throughout the various parts of the small and large intestines, poisons of all kinds are generated and absorbed into the circulation, thus creating conditions ranging all the way from a feeling of lethargy to a condition of weakness and disease that confines one to an invalid's bed. Regardless of the attention that you may give to the other information in this book, it is extremely important that you should realize the necessity for active elimination. It is necessary in the maintenance of alimentary health to avoid a slavish adherence to the theory of definitely regular movements of the bowels and still not to make the mistake of allowing them to become chronically sluggish or irregular. As a rule you should depend upon having regular movements each day, though if occasionally a day is missed you should not allow this deviation to worry you. Recognizing as I do the great importance of a healthy alimentary canal I have given a vast amount of attention to the various methods which have been suggested from time to time by students of natural healing for assisting to regulate the functional processes of this important part of our organism. The flushing of the lower bowel for instance has been widely recommended, and it is unquestionably of value in some cases. However, it cleanses only the lower part of the alimentary canal, that is to say, the colon. It assists the small intestines no doubt by giving their contents free access to the colon, but yet this aid cannot directly affect them. If you have in view the cleansing of the entire alimentary canal from stomach to rectum, the enema is often of indifferent value. The use of various laxative foods can be recommended in most instances, though even these sometimes fail to bring about satisfying results, and then again there are cases where they provide a remedy for only a short period, after which the bowels resume their old state of chronic torpidity. Naturally we cannot consider cathartics of any kind, notwithstanding their power to produce temporary results. In all cases the after effects of their use are seriously destructive to the delicate nerves controlling the alimentary canal and its functions in general. Cathartics invariably make the real condition more obstinate and serious. It is well to remember that the real cause of constipation in virtually every instance, is the want of vital vigor of the structures and tissues involved. Digestion, though to a certain extent a chemical process, is very largely mechanical. The muscles of the stomach "churn" the food in the beginning of the digestive process, after which the circulatory muscle fibers of the small intestines continue the work. If these muscles are lacking in tone, if they are relaxed, prolapsed and weak, then they cannot properly perform their functions. In attempting to strengthen this important part of the bodily organism the necessity for increasing the vigor of the muscular tissues must invariably be definitely recognized. Strong muscles for carrying on the work required of these blood-making organs are of far more importance than strength of the external muscles. For this reason when the system is toned up by any means a beneficial change in the alimentary functions and excretions will always be noted. During a careful study extending over at least a quarter of a century of all health-building methods, I have acquainted myself with numerous theories and remedies which have been applied in accelerating alimentary activity. I am, in this chapter, presenting a new system or combination of means for strengthening and stimulating the alimentary functions which experience has proved to be of extraordinary value. This method has the advantage of directly affecting the organs involved, and results can be obtained speedily in virtually every instance. This system of alimentary stimulation can be roughly described as a combination of hot-water-drinking and a nerve-center-stimulating process. The best time for giving this method a thorough trial is immediately upon arising in the morning. It should not be attempted at any other time of the day, for it is especially important that the stomach should be free of any recently ingested food. All that is required to carry out this treatment is one or two quarts of boiling water, a minute quantity of salt, and a cup that will hold from one-half a pint to one pint of water. The second phase of this treatment is exercise and comprises the series of movements illustrated in this work. Wherever possible these nerve-stimulating exercises should be taken out-of-doors or before an open window. If the weather is cold, you should wear enough clothing to maintain a satisfactory degree of warmth; if the weather is warm, the less clothing worn the better. If the skin is especially inactive, or if it is suffering from a disease in which the eliminating process ordinarily accelerated by a Russian or Turkish bath is of value, then wear heavy warm clothing while taking the treatment. A thick sweater is advantageous under such circumstances. A profuse perspiration will result, indicating a purifying process that is of special value when the system needs to be cleansed of the accumulated poisons which are the direct cause of nearly all diseases. If you are capable of taking about two quarts of water in the course of the exercise then each cup should contain nearly a pint, but if you cannot drink over one quart each cup should contain not more than half a pint. Before beginning the nerve-stimulating exercise drink the first cup of hot water, putting a pinch of salt in the bottom of the cup to take away the flat taste of the hot water. Pour the cup half full of boiling water and then add cold water until it is sufficiently cool to be rapidly swallowed. Drink the water as hot as possible without sipping it. Now take exercises 11, 12 and 14. Continue each one of these movements until a feeling of fatigue is noticed, after which you are ready for a second cup of hot water. Don't hurry. Don't continue any movement to exhaustion, though a feeling of local fatigue in the particular muscles concerned is desirable. This feeling, however, should entirely disappear after a rest of one or two minutes. After the second cup of hot water you are ready for exercises 13, 7 and 8, whereupon you may take a third cup of hot water. You may then take exercises 15, 16 and 9, followed by another cup of hot water, and then exercises 17, 6 and 10, and so on. While this is suggested as a general plan, it is not imperative that this order be followed strictly, for your individual requirements might be better suited by minor variations; for instance, by two or four exercises between the intervals of hot-water-drinking. If you find your capacity is unequal to the quantity of hot water suggested, then simply take as much as you can without inconvenience or discomfort. Each day, however, while following this method you will find your hot-water-drinking capacity will increase, though as a rule, a person of average weight and height can take from one to two quarts without serious inconvenience. The hot-water- drinking together with the exercise will naturally very greatly increase the pulse, and where there is heart disease or any weakness of the heart this treatment must be taken with unusual care. In virtually every case this method will materially increase the strength of a weak heart, though there is naturally the possibility of strain, and the treatment should be adapted to your strength in the beginning and very gradually increased week by week. Temporary attacks of constipation, where severe enough to need attention, can usually be ready for exercises 13, 7 and 8, whereupon you may take a third cup of hot water. You may then take exercises 15, 16 and 9, followed by another cup of hot water, and then exercises 17, 6 and 10, and so on. While this is suggested as a general plan, it is not imperative that this order be followed strictly, for your individual requirements might be better suited by minor variations; for instance, by two or four exercises between the intervals of hot-water-drinking. Temporary attacks of constipation, where severe enough to need attention, can usually be quickly remedied by this hot-water- drinking, nerve-stimulating method. Usually, if there is need for a movement of the bowels an instinctive and compelling desire will appear while taking the treatment or very shortly thereafter. If, however, you feel there is a necessity for such a movement and it does not appear, you can rest assured that the treatment has brought about sufficient benefit to excite the activity of the organs involved and that the desire will come later. In some very obstinate cases of constipation, or in serious temporary attacks of this difficulty, where a movement of the bowels is desired quickly, from one-quarter to one-half a level teaspoonful of salt can be added to each cup of hot water. This will in nearly all cases insure a speedy and satisfactory bowel movement. This, however, is not advised unless absolutely necessary. It is well to point out that this treatment in its extreme form can hardly be used with complete satisfaction by those who are below average strength. In any case, however, the drinking of a small amount of hot water can be attempted and the exercises illustrated can be used, if one is careful not to make his efforts too severe. The hot-water- drinking process as well as the exercise must, however, be adapted to the requirements of each individual, and it may be well in most cases to experiment two or three times before following all of these suggestions in detail. Where one is lacking in vital strength a beginning can be made by taking only two cups of hot water, using exercises 7, 8 and 9, which can be taken in a reclining position. One may continue in this way for a week or two, after which a third cup of hot water might be added. In this way one can gradually increase the amount of water consumed and the vigor and the amount of the exercise taken. Where there is a tendency toward rheumatism, gout, neuritis, neuralgia, or where there are any other symptoms indicating the accumulation of poisons or impurities in the system, it is advisable to use distilled water, though if this cannot be secured ordinary boiled water will be satisfactory. At least be sure to boil your water before using if it is heavily charged with mineral matter, since boiling tends to precipitate lime salts. In other words, hard water is not desirable in such cases. The hot-water-drinking regimen in itself has a decidedly beneficial effect upon the stomach and intestines. But much better results, especially in the case of constipation, are secured when the special nerve-stimulating exercises recommended are taken in connection with it. By this combination we obtain results that cannot be secured in any other way. In fact, stiffness, soreness and rheumatic "twinges" in various parts of the body are often removed with astounding rapidity through the help of this particular treatment. The cleansing and eliminating functions are stimulated to an extraordinary extent by combining these two blood-purifying forces: hot-water-drinking and the stimulation of the nerve centers. This regimen is also a splendid means of increasing the weight in cases of defective assimilation. It seems to tone up the entire vital and functional system, in addition to directly influencing the digestive organs. The hot water alone tends to cleanse and empty very thoroughly the stomach and intestines, also to stimulate the secretion of the digestive juices. Those who are below normal weight chiefly because of poor assimilative powers are especially advised to give this method a thorough trial for a period of a few weeks. Again, if your complexion is sallow, dull, and "muddy," a remarkable improvement will speedily appear as a result of this treatment. In a recent case I observed a surprising change at the end of one week in a complexion that had been sallow and lifeless. The complexion in this instance not only assumed an improved color, but the tissues of the face were also filled out considerably, and when improvement is thus manifested on the surface you can well realize that the internal changes are even more pronounced. The devitalized condition of the various glands and structures in this part of the body is gradually remedied by the improvement in the circulation that comes with what might be termed a stimulating supply of liquids, and the same good result is accomplished, so far as the general circulation is concerned, in the welfare of the body as a whole. Those suffering from high blood pressure will find this treatment of unusual value, though great care should, of course, be taken to avoid any movements that are in any way exhausting or violent. When the blood is in a thick or viscous condition the use of the hot water adds to its fluidity, and it can then be forced more easily through the capillaries, thus greatly lessening the blood pressure. It is well known that a low blood pressure is conducive to endurance and to general health. And when these exercises especially advised for stimulating the nerve centers and for strengthening and vitalizing the spine are combined with a liberal use of hot water, the blood is forced through all the tissues, with the general effect of thoroughly cleansing all parts, in addition to immediately cleansing the alimentary canal. It is customary among athletes to use massage, or what is commonly called a "rub down," following their exercise. The purpose of this is to increase the circulation and thereby to carry out of the muscles the fatigue-poisons that have accumulated therein during the exercise. Now if a large amount of hot water is used in connection with movements such as we are illustrating, this purpose will be even more thoroughly accomplished during the exercise itself, as the muscular and other tissues are virtually flushed out owing to the more fluid character of the blood and its more ready and perfect circulation through all parts. One who feels stiff from severe exercise, or finds his tissues sore for other reasons, should be able to overcome this stiffness and gain a sense of refreshment through this method. Referring to the subject of elimination in the case of fatigue, I might say that some students have ascribed the feeling of fatigue at the end of the day's work to an accumulation of deposits within the walls of the arteries and veins, which deposits are ordinarily carried off during sleep. If this theory is true I can think of no simpler or more satisfactory method of removing this waste matter in the blood-vessels than this system of flushing them. For producing immediate results of any kind there is no other method so far as I know which is so effective as this if one has sufficient strength properly to use it. I have known cases in which a headache has been cured in a few minutes by sprinting or other violent exercise, and cases in which neuralgic toothaches and other pains have yielded to vigorous exercise continued for a prolonged period. I have also known the same relief to be obtained by drinking a liberal quantity of hot water, but in all such instances results would be more quickly and certainly secured through a combination of these stimulating forces. To repeat for clearness and emphasis, the method outlined consists of the following: A combination of hot-water-drinking and specially adapted movements for stimulating the nerve centers. Half a pint to a pint of hot water-as hot as can be drunk-to be taken on beginning the treatment immediately on arising in the morning. An additional quantity of hot water to be taken each five to ten minutes thereafter until from one to two quarts have been consumed. A large amount of clothing to be worn if profuse perspiration is desired, though where an increase of weight is of advantage and no actual disease exists in the system, no more clothing should be worn than is necessary to maintain warmth. When a bowel movement is definitely needed, a complete and perfectly satisfactory evacuation is often brought about while taking this treatment. The cleansing process, however, will result in a clearer brain and an improved physical as well as mental capacity, whether or not the bowels act immediately, and one can nearly always depend upon a satisfactory movement later. When there is suffering from temporary attacks of constipation and immediate relief is desired, add from one-quarter to one-half a level teaspoonful of salt to each cup of hot water. Speedy results can be depended upon in virtually every case. Another method of accomplishing the same thing is to continue the hot-water-drinking even beyond the two quarts suggested, adding no more than a small pinch of salt to each cup, as previously suggested. No harm will come from this excessive water-drinking if one is possessed of a normal amount of vigor. If one is athletic, jumping one to two hundred times, as when jumping a rope, just previous to moving the bowels is often of value in inducing a natural desire that in nearly all cases brings satisfactory results. Where it is difficult to take the amount of water prescribed, take as much as you conveniently can, gradually increasing the quantity each day. This hot-water-drinking regimen is not necessarily recommended as a permanent measure to be continued every day for an indefinite period. When you feel that your physical status is satisfactory in every way, you can drop the method for a few days, after which it can be resumed as desired, though it would be of advantage to continue taking the exercises each day, and if even one or two glasses of hot water are taken beneficial results would accrue. CHAPTER VII: Exercise for Vitality Building Inactivity is non-existence. It means death. Our bodily powers and organs were given to us for a definite purpose. Failure to use them brings serious penalties. There can be no real health with physical stagnation. To be sure, we may point to some men possessing extraordinary vitality who, apparently, have lived without exercise. But a study of their habits of life will usually bring to light some form of muscular activity, even if it be nothing more than a moderate amount of walking. In some cases, such extraordinary vitality may be possessed that health laws can be broken with apparent impunity, but it will usually be found that a vigorous constitution was developed in early youth from plenty of exercise. However, the failure to observe these important bodily requirements invariably means trouble before reaching the period at which old age begins. Though the average of human life has been greatly increased through the decline in infant mortality, the death rate among men of middle age has more than doubled in the past thirty years. And even if those of exceptional vitality can neglect their physical requirements without suffering, the man of limited energy, who is trying to build vitality, certainly cannot afford to do so. We ought to take a reasonable amount of exercise at intervals, regular or otherwise, in order to keep fully alive. It is not a case of exercise for the sake of muscular strength alone, but for the sake of health and life. There are many people who labor under the delusion that they are living without exercise, but existing does not mean living. To live in the full sense of the word means that you are thoroughly alive, and you positively cannot be thoroughly alive unless all the physical processes involved in the various functions of the body are active. Functional activity means pure blood, of superior quality, and when one fails to give the muscular system its proper use, the functions stagnate, the blood is filled with impurities of various sorts, and under such circumstances the body is not really alive. When the body is harboring an excessive number of dead cells and other waste material one cannot say that he is entirely alive. Under such conditions you are literally half dead and half alive. It is well known that the body is dying at all times. Minute cells that constitute the bodily tissues lose their vitality and life, and are taken up by the venous blood and carried to the various organs which take part in the work of elimination. Now these dead cells and minute corpuscles linger in the tissues if one lives an inactive life. Therefore it is literally true that you are half dead if you do not give the muscular system its proper use. Physically the muscular system is such an important part of the body that failure to keep it in good condition by failure to keep it active seriously affects all other parts. The greater part of the food we eat is consumed by the muscles. Most of the heat produced by the body is generated in the muscles. Therefore to neglect this part of our organism means to disorganize, to a large extent, the workings of all other parts. The appetite, under such conditions, fails and the entire functional system loses tone. In fact, I may say that exercise is the first and most important of all the methods of building functional strength. When the muscles are exercised the vital, organs are energized and the activity of the entire functional system greatly increased-all clearly indicating that in taking physical exercise the internal organs are aroused and stimulated. Gigantic strength is not especially needed. It is not necessary for one to strive to eclipse the feats of famous strong men. Unusual muscular development is of no great value in this age, but a normal degree of strength is absolutely necessary in the struggle for health and vitality. No one should be satisfied with less than what might be regarded as a normal degree of strength, and this, when once developed, can usually be retained by a moderate amount of exercise each day. Now it is not necessary to adopt some complicated system of exercise for giving the muscles the required activity. Your exercise can take the form of play. It may preferably be taken out-of-doors. But you must keep definitely in mind that the body was given you for active use, and some regular method must be adopted that will insure the activity required. The exercises referred to in the chapter on Outdoor Life may first of all be recommended. If you have no bodily defects any one of these outdoor sports will probably give your muscles all the exercise needed, but if you are suffering from defects of any kind and you are desirous of remedying them some special exercises adapted to your individual needs should be taken with religious regularity. If you have a flat or sunken chest, if you are round-shouldered, if there is one shoulder higher than the other, if there is a spinal curvature, or if the muscles of the stomach or abdomen are weak, it will be necessary to give special attention to such parts through systematic movements intended to have a corrective influence. In another part of this volume various exercises have been illustrated that are especially recommended to those who are already in possession of ordinary strength. In this chapter I am illustrating a series of movements that have a similar object in view, but which will be found far easier to perform. The exercises in this chapter are especially adapted to those who are weak or ailing. They are designed, however, for the purpose of stimulating and strengthening the spine, which, as I have previously suggested, is the central source of vitality. The hot- water-drinking regimen referred to in the chapter on Cleansing the Alimentary Canal can also be used in connection with these exercises, though naturally if one is weak but a small quantity of water can be taken. CHAPTER VIII: How to Breathe Volumes have been written upon the value of breathing exercises. Many exaggerated statements have been made as to what can be accomplished through deep breathing. Nevertheless, it must be definitely understood that full, deep breaths, which expand the lungs to their fullest capacity, and are taken at frequent intervals, are of great value. Almost any vigorous exercise will enforce deep breathing, and there is no question as to the benefit of the involuntary or spontaneous inhalation and exhalation thus induced. Running and wrestling are types of very vigorous athletic exercises that will compel one to breathe deeply and fully, and will insure a full lung development without special breathing exercises. And this is more especially true if much exercise of this character is taken regularly, day after day, all the year round. But where the occupation and surroundings are such that one cannot indulge in such active pastimes, or where the time for such exercises is necessarily limited, frequent voluntary deep-breathing exercises can be highly commended. About the best example of the proper use of the diaphragm and the natural movement of the abdominal and dorsal region in correct breathing is illustrated in a small child. In nearly all cases an active healthy child will breathe properly, and by studying the movement of his abdomen in both standing and reclining positions you will find that as the breath is inhaled the abdominal region will expand. When the breath is exhaled this part of the body will contract or be drawn inward. This demonstrates very conclusively that the movement or expansion of the body in natural breathing is abdominal, and that the bony framework of the chest should not be involved except when taking full deep breaths, or when breathing hard from the effects of very vigorous exercise. It is not at all necessary to go through a complicated system in order to learn proper methods of breathing, since this is comparatively simple if you are willing to make persistent efforts day after day until you are fittingly rewarded. If you simply acquire the habit of drawing in a deep full breath, at frequent intervals during the day, expanding first in the abdominal region, you will soon be able to breathe properly. A correct position of the body is very important, for if you have the proper erect posture, and have no constricting clothing about the waist and abdominal region, you will almost instinctively be inclined to breathe diaphragmatically, or abdominally, as we call it. Furthermore, when going out in the open air you will find as a result of this practice that you are unconsciously expanding in the proper manner as suggested. In fact, you will be more inclined to breathe freely and deeply at all times if a proper position is maintained. It is hardly necessary to mention the necessity for breathing pure air, and especially when taking deep-breathing exercises, if you wish the very greatest results. Take these deep breaths when in the open air, or else before an open window. It is a good plan, for instance, when rising in the morning to stand before an open window and inhale perhaps a dozen full, complete breaths. This will help greatly to brush the cobwebs from your brain and brighten you up for the day's duties and responsibilities. All of these suggestions apply with equal force to both sexes. Because of the fashions of dress usually in vogue the breathing of women is much more restricted than that of men. Furthermore, they are generally less inclined to athletic pursuits involving exercise which compels deep breathing. The method of breathing recommended for women is absolutely identical with that suggested for men. It is a curious fact that until recent years the world generally, the medical profession included, held the opinion that there is a fundamental difference between men and women in breathing. Observation of the natural breathing of boys and girls would soon prove the absurdity of this opinion. Owing to the universal use of the corset, thoracic breathing, or chest breathing, the result of the artificial constriction of the body at and below the waist line, appeared to be the natural method of breathing for women, whereas diaphragmatic breathing was recognized as proper and natural for men. Only in recent years have medical authorities recognized that this difference was really due only to artificial methods of dress and that natural breathing in women and men is absolutely the same. Recent fashions have permitted the enlargement of the waist line in women, but unfortunately there is still too much constriction of this important part of the body. When the world becomes more truly civilized and our methods of dress are based upon common sense and an intelligent understanding of the physical requirements of the body, we may hope that the dress of women will be such as to permit entire freedom in the matter of breathing, and the easy expansion of the body at the waist line. Some day women will learn the value of suspending skirts, stockings, etc., from the shoulders instead of relying upon the restriction at the waist as a means of support. If you wish to ascertain more exactly whether or not your breathing is entirely satisfactory, stand up, take a deep breath, and observe not only the expansion in the region of the stomach and abdomen but also at the sides and in the back. If you place the palms of your hands upon the lower ribs in the back, just above the waist line, you should feel the expansion of the body in this part pressing upward through the action of the diaphragm as a deep breath is inhaled. Also by pressing the hands upon the lower ribs at the sides, just above the waist line, you will feel the lateral expansion in this region at the same time that the expansion is noted in the front of the body. You will therefore realize that there should be an expansion of the lower ribs at the back and at the sides along with the expansion in the region of the stomach and abdomen. Of course, when a very full breath is taken there will also be an expansion of the chest following the filling up of the lower part of the lungs. CHAPTER IX: Outdoor Life Civilized man is an indoor animal. We no longer live in tree-tops nor even in caves, but in houses, and a great many of us spend the larger part of every year in close, ill-ventilated, overheated rooms. From a health viewpoint the cave-dweller would no doubt have the advantage over the average American who follows a sedentary occupation. The steam-heated apartments of our great cities are thoroughly aired only on rare intervals, and consequently those who reside therein often dry up in mind, soul and body along with the furniture. In order to live in every sense of the word we must become a part of the great outdoors. Outdoor life adds to one's vitality and vigor. It increases one's energies and enthusiasms. You cannot be ambitious or vivacious, you cannot really amount to anything in life, if you are confined to an overheated flat. If there is any hobby that is worth while it is one that takes us out- of-doors. What the attractive features of your hobby may be, is not of very great importance provided this object is secured. You must be lured away from your stuffy living rooms and encouraged to breathe the fresh, pure air of the open. There are out-of-door exercises of all sorts which are of great value, but even a seat in a motor car wherein your exercise is confined principally to increased respiration through the pleasure that comes with fast riding, is at least of some value. The health of the nation, as a whole, has been greatly improved by the automobile through its encouragement of the outdoor life. But if you can join with your outdoor life some active exercise which will use all the muscles of the body the benefits will be much greater. There are various open-air pastimes that can be made unusually vigorous, and so can be highly recommended if one is possessed of ordinary strength. Football is perhaps one of the most strenuous of outdoor games, and is to be especially advised where one has the vitality and endurance which fits him for an exercise of this character. Golf is an example of a milder outdoor pastime that is particularly suited to middle-aged and elderly persons, although young men and women are benefited by it, too. It affords excellent exercise in walking, and the swinging of the golf clubs affords more exercise for the chest, arms and back than is usually supposed. One who is not accustomed to the game will usually find the muscles of the arms, shoulders and chest sore or at least stiff from the unusual exercise when first attempting to play this game. Tennis furnishes a vigorous exercise that is especially commendable for adding to one's vitality. It is a good endurance builder. Tennis can be made as fast and energetic, or as leisurely and moderate as one wishes, depending entirely upon the skill, strength and ability of the player. Tennis is a safe and sane pastime that is growing in popularity, and can be universally recommended for both sexes and all ages. Rowing, running, cross-country work, track athletics, lacrosse, handball, hockey and polo are all splendid and vigorous games, well calculated to develop the best type of physical stamina. For those possessing the requisite strength they can all be highly recommended, though as a rule it is best not to specialize in any one of them but to secure as much variety as possible. Specializing in athletics may win championships and may stimulate interest in sports, but for the average man or woman specialization is not desirable. Even if you are only a "dub" instead of a champion in each of these games, it is better to play them all, since you will thereby secure a well-rounded physical development, and also obtain the maximum of "fun." For those who are less rugged but who on that very account are all the more in need of open-air exercise there is a great variety of other less strenuous pastimes. Cycling and horseback riding can be particularly recommended as enjoyable forms of outing in combination with a certain amount of exercise. Skating is an ideal pastime for the colder weather as it requires no special strength and adds to the vigor of the heart, lungs and other vital organs; besides this, the brisk, cold air of the winter months is a tonic of great value. Snowshoeing, yachting, rope-skipping, canoeing, archery, croquet, coasting and various similar pastimes are all to be commended. Swimming is of great value, both as a means of physical development and as a health builder, but if your vitality is limited do not stay in the water too long. Swimming may be made mild or very strenuous. If you swim with the skill of an expert, only a very moderate exertion is required, though some of the new racing strokes tax the strength and endurance of the strongest athlete. Swimming combines the pleasures of bathing and exercise, and under proper conditions is invaluable. Those who are "fleshy" can stay in the water a long time, but if you are "thin" take care lest you lose weight by too much bathing. The slender man or woman may take a daily swim for its tonic effect. It may even cause one to gain in weight if the exercise is not prolonged, but persons of this type usually lose weight in the course of a season of too much bathing. There is one point of special importance in connection with our exercise and that is to cultivate the play spirit. You will never fully enjoy your sports and you will never obtain all possible benefit from them until you lose your dignity and learn how to play. Try to be glad that you are alive and able to play these games. One great drawback to American sports is the tendency to take them too seriously. There is too much of strained effort involved in the desire to win the game at any price. Keep yourself in a state of mind where you "see the fun." Though "playing to win" may be commended, the real purpose of any game is the fun and benefit that is secured therefrom whether you win or lose. There have been cases when members of a boat crew or a football team have actually cried over a lost game. Imagine the nerve strain involved in taking athletics so seriously! It is splendid to win, but it should also be pleasurable to lose to a worthy antagonist. Do not take your games too seriously, but make them a laughing matter. Only by assuming this attitude can you get the greatest possible benefits that can be derived from games. The nature of your exercise does not matter so long as there is that increased activity of the heart, lungs and other organs which tends to improve the circulation throughout the entire body. The exercise must insure deep breathing, and if a certain amount of perspiration is induced it will be advantageous. First of all get out-of-doors; find some exercise that appeals, some alluring attraction which will take you away from the confinement of your home. Live as much as you can in the open. If possible, try sleeping out-of-doors. Men and women of today may be aptly compared to sensitive plants. We are the devitalized product of the universal custom of coddling, and the less we live within four walls, and the more we breathe the free outdoor air, the stronger, healthier and more capable we become. There is one outdoor exercise that we can all take without expense, and it is by far the best when everything is considered. At least this statement is true so far as the building of vitality and endurance is concerned. I refer to walking. This is an exercise that can be made decidedly vigorous if desired. And no matter what health-building regimen you may follow, a certain amount of walking is essential to maintaining the highest degree of physical vigor. Walking is a tonic of very great value to every one of the organic functions. It stimulates the activities of the purifying organs to an unusual degree. It is a remedy of great efficacy in overcoming constipation. It can be highly recommended for strengthening the heart, for stimulating the liver and kidneys, and it will tone up the physical organism throughout. Furthermore, this exercise is of unusual value as a mental stimulant. It clears the "cobwebs" from the brain. If you are bothered with vexing problems put them aside until you can take a long walk. With the improved quality of the blood and the more active circulation of this functional tonic, your mental efficiency will be greatly increased. You will think more quickly; your conclusions will be clearer, more definite and more dependable. I know a successful novelist who depends very largely upon his long walks for working out the themes and plots of his stories. I have frequently followed the same plan in connection with my own work. I know of other writers who depend upon this method of gaining inspiration. I have been told that chopping wood is mentally stimulating, and also that horseback riding and cycling are sometimes helpful in this direction, but walking is without doubt the most effective mental stimulant to be found out-of- doors. It accelerates the circulation, and seems to arouse the vital forces of the body, but does not require such an expenditure of energy as to prevent the brain from being exceptionally active. Now to secure the real benefits that come from walking there should be no laziness about it. Do not walk as though you were on a fashion parade. The Sunday afternoon stroll on the city streets may be very alluring, but you cannot under such circumstances secure the real benefits that may be found in walking. If possible go out on the country roads or walk across the fields. Put a certain amount of energy into your every step. Walk briskly and as though you enjoyed it, and you will discover that you do enjoy it. Even if your first few steps require an unusual effort on your part, "step lively" just the same, and you will shortly find that you feel lively, too. A walk of this sort into which you put real energy in every step is a tonic of amazing value. It will stir up your entire organism. It will insure an active functioning, and make you feel and be thoroughly alive. If you have the added advantage that comes from pure country air you are to be envied. But even without these superior advantages, even if your route is confined to city streets, some benefit will still result from taking the walk tonic. While walking give special attention to my suggestions concerning breathing. Breathe deeply and fully at frequent intervals. Expand the body in the abdominal region. If you like, you can carry your breathing still farther and allow this expansion to extend to the chest walls, though as a rule, this is not necessary. No doubt one of the most valuable suggestions for strength and vitality building while walking is to take at frequent periods several movements which are referred to in the chapter on Thyroid Stimulation, namely, the chin-in-downward- and-backward motion while holding a full breath with abdomen fully expanded. In fact this idea, if carried out until the muscles of the back of the neck are fatigued at the completion of the walk, will energize you mentally and physically. A suggestion that I have often offered in various articles upon this subject is to practice what I may term harmonious or rhythmic breathing, which I regard as of exceptional value. By this I mean taking the same amount of time to draw in the breath as you do to exhale it, keeping time with a certain number of steps. For instance, while taking eight steps, draw in a breath and exhale during the next eight steps. You may make this six, eight, ten or twelve steps if you like. If you have some piece of music in mind that carries with it a rhythm that accommodates itself to your steps while walking, and if each inhalation and exhalation takes up an even number of steps, you will find that you are swinging along with a sense of harmony and pleasure that will make distances pass away and cause you to be unconscious of the length of your walk. This rhythmic or harmonious breathing is an excellent means of cultivating the deep-breathing habit. Another exercise is of material value in connection with the practice of deep breathing while walking, serving especially to stimulate the digestive and other internal organs. This consists in holding a fairly full breath for a series of four, six or eight steps, and at the same time expanding the body still further in the region of the stomach. This is accomplished largely through the action of the diaphragm and the muscles across the front of the body in the region of the stomach. This should be executed with a sort of pumping motion, that is to say by a series of alternate contractions and relaxations rapidly following each other. Expand the region of the stomach by this muscular effort for an instant, relax, repeat, and continue in that way several times during the course of the six or eight steps during which you hold the breath. Then exhale freely and after one or two breaths repeat. This has the effect of massaging, as it were, the internal organs, and is of material value in bringing about improved functioning, as well as strengthening these parts. If you can find an opportunity to go camping there is no better way in which to spend a vacation. Everyone knows that a term of two or three weeks in the woods or by the side of a lake, living out-of-doors to some extent after the manner of primitive man, and getting a certain amount of pleasurable exercise with the continuous fresh air, will work wonders. But if camping for a short period is beneficial, then a part of each day in the open air during the summer is well worth while; therefore try to "camp out" for two or three hours each evening. If you are through work at five o'clock, for instance, enjoy a picnic dinner in the open, instead of a regular supper in the dining-room of your home. It is daylight until almost eight o'clock during most of the summer, and this plan would yield two or three hours of open-air life. Or take advantage of part of this time, before supper, to go rowing, or swimming, to play some game, such as tennis, or to do anything else that will occupy you pleasantly for an hour or two in the open air. At least you can always take a good walk. If you go to bed at a reasonable hour you can probably rise early enough to permit a walk of one or two hours, or some other open-air activity, before going to work. If your work is in an office where you will be confined all day this advice is especially important. When your office hours begin at eight or nine o'clock in the morning you should imbibe as much fresh air as possible before work, if only by walking part or all the way to your place of business. Be in the open air as much as you can. Many people think they are too busy for this. They make the plea of lack of time, but when illness appears they have plenty of time to stay in bed. The open-air man or woman "side-steps" sickness. Since superabundant vitality can be obtained through open-air life, spend as much time as you can out-of-doors. Cultivate the outdoor habit. It will increase your efficiency so that you will do better work in less time. CHAPTER X: Strengthening the Stomach One of the first requirements in vitality building is strengthening the stomach. Within the stomach we find the beginning of all vital blood- making processes. Here is where the food first passes through the changes essential to create the life-building fluid called the blood. We therefore cannot exaggerate the importance of strength to this important organ. When referring to a strong stomach, I do not mean strength in the abdominal muscles lying immediately in front of the stomach; I mean strength of the muscles within the walls of the stomach itself, which, to a large extent, actually constitute the stomach. These layers of muscular fibers which assist in carrying on important parts of the digestive processes must be strong if digestion is to be satisfactory in every way. Now the work of strengthening the stomach does not, by any means, consist wholly of exercise. The stomach in order to be strengthened must have a due amount of intelligent consideration at all times. For instance, you cannot make a garbage can of your stomach and expect to increase the strength of the organ. It is really necessary, if you are seriously desirous of securing the best results in vitality building, to learn at least the fundamental facts relating to rational dietetics; and, after acquiring this knowledge, to apply it to your individual use throughout every day of your life. The suggestions that I have offered in the chapter on Cleansing and Stimulating the Alimentary Canal are truly of extreme importance in these strengthening processes. In fact in every instance this plan will increase the assimilative strength, and will enable you to create a better quality of blood; and this result in turn naturally aids in strengthening the stomach itself as well as all other parts of the body. Furthermore, this is a method for cleansing directly not only the organ itself but the various glands which furnish the digestive juices. Therefore, if difficulties are frequently presented in connection with the functions of this organ, special attention should be given to the elemental cleansing and strengthening processes as outlined in the chapter referred to. There are various special exercises which will have a certain influence upon the stomach because of their mechanical stimulation of this organ. All bending and twisting movements of the trunk of the body will naturally stimulate the action of the stomach because of their direct mechanical effect. All movements of this sort are naturally valuable under the circumstances, though for a short time after a meal any exercise that is so severe as to interfere with digestion should be avoided. Such interference results when the muscles are used to such an extent that they require greatly increased quantities of blood at a time when a plentiful supply is needed by the stomach to carry on the work of digestion. All my readers no doubt already understand the necessity for giving the digestive organs every opportunity to carry on their processes for at least one hour after a hearty meal. Bending and body-twisting movements are valuable one hour or more after a meal for strengthening the stomach, but they interfere with digestion if taken immediately thereafter. For increasing the vigor of this most important organ I would especially recommend the method already referred to for cleansing the alimentary canal and also the exercises which are given in connection therewith in the same chapter. If one is not in possession of a fair amount of strength I would suggest merely the exercises illustrated in Chapter VII to be taken in conjunction with the morning hot-water-drinking regimen. It should be remembered, however, that for the strengthening of the stomach one must really depend most of all upon a proper diet and the care of the stomach generally, rather than upon any system of exercises intended to invigorate this organ. To build up a strong stomach a daily plan of life must be followed which requires of the entire body a normal amount of activity, thus demanding and using a fairly liberal supply of nourishment. An active life is always favorable to good digestion, and especially so if it is an out-of-door life for at least a large part of each day, for then an appetite is created demanding of the stomach that healthy activity essential to strength building; in other words, an active and normal life generally is essential to the maintenance of a strong and healthy stomach. The body must be regarded not as an aggregation of parts, but as one complete unit, and anything that affects all parts affects each separate part. It is quite true that when the stomach is weakened from any cause, it is not wise to overtax it by the ingestion of foods that are difficult to digest. But at the same time a policy of using predigested foods, or others that are suited only to a weak stomach, is not likely to develop a vigorous digestion. It is essential that one should use a proper supply of natural and wholesome foods properly prepared. If this is done and the general rules of rational dietetics are observed, there is no reason why any one should not enjoy the possession of a strong stomach and a vigorous digestion. I cannot, however, place too much emphasis upon the value of outdoor life and general activity and the constitutional benefits that go with them for improving the stomach as well as all other parts of the body. CHAPTER XI: Preserving the Teeth Health to a large extent depends upon the teeth. Food can not be properly masticated without sound molars. The modern tendency of teeth to decay early in life clearly proves that something is wrong with our dietetic or chewing habits. Like any other part of the body, the teeth must be exercised in order to be properly preserved. Our foods are so frequently macerated to a fine consistency and they are so often cooked to a mush before they are eaten, that the teeth have little to do. They decay and become soft or brittle because of lack of use. It is necessary to give the teeth a reasonable amount of regular use. Cultivate the habit of eating zwieback, hard crackers or other hard food substances that require real vigorous chewing. If this is difficult, then make a habit of exercising the teeth in some way. The idea suggested in the illustrations accompanying this chapter will be found of value, though any method can be recommended that serves the same purpose. Do not, however, depend upon the chewing of gum for hours each day as a means of exercising the teeth. Chewing a hard gum for a few minutes after a meal might be of advantage, but continual gum- chewing wastes and weakens the digestive elements of the saliva. In other words, if you sit down to a meal after chewing gum for two or three hours, the saliva that you mix with your food will not have the normal digestive elements. One might say that the "strength" of the saliva has been lost while chewing gum. If your teeth are decayed the offending members should be removed or the cavities filled. It is always wise to retain every tooth you can until extraction is practically compulsory. Decayed teeth should be filled promptly. As long as a tooth can be filled it should not be extracted. A good dentist should be consulted at frequent intervals. If tartar has collected on the teeth, it should be removed by a competent dentist. One good method of keeping the teeth free from tartar is to rub the gums and teeth daily with table salt containing considerable grit. Dampen the finger, place a quantity of table salt thereon and then rub the teeth where they meet the gums. Make the process sufficiently vigorous to rub off any tartar that may have accumulated. The mouth should be rinsed with moderately warm water immediately after this process to remove the salt. Any good tooth wash that is sold in the form of paste can be used instead of salt for this same purpose. This rubbing process is of more value to strengthen the gums and to cleanse the teeth than brushing the teeth with an ordinary tooth brush. Tooth brushes, however, are valuable and should be used morning and evening. In caring for the teeth the following plan is suggested: Soon after rising rinse the mouth out thoroughly with a mild antiseptic tooth wash; soap, or salt and water, is fairly good if nothing better can be obtained. Plain water will also serve the purpose. Lemon juice to which considerable water has been added, also makes a good mouth wash. Orange juice can also be recommended. It may be said that most of the standard tooth powders and tooth pastes on the market at the present time are fairly reliable and satisfactory, particularly those of which the formula is printed on the wrapper. When brushing the teeth, avoid using a brush with the bristles too hard. A medium- or even a soft-bristle brush is preferable. The lateral action of the tooth brush, commonly used, is of limited value. One should use a vertical or up-and-down movement, so that the bristles will reach the crevices between the teeth. It is the spaces between the teeth that particularly need cleaning and the brush should be used in such a way as to reach these. It is here that decay usually begins. After having brushed the teeth then rub them in the manner previously described. Spend two or three or even four or five minutes at this rubbing process. If the teeth are free from tartar do not use the salt more than once or twice weekly, though any good tooth paste could be used daily to advantage, not for brushing the teeth, mind you, but for rubbing the gums and teeth. For removing accumulated food substances from between the teeth silk or linen floss can be recommended. Holding the thread between the fingers of each hand force it down between two teeth and bring it back and forth. If you have no regular dental floss, use any white silk thread for the purpose. It does not do one much good to brush the teeth if he does not remove decaying and acid-forming matter from between the teeth. The use of dental floss is fully as important as the use of a tooth brush. Where Rigg's disease, or pyorrhea, is present, an antiseptic can be used to advantage two or three times daily after rubbing or washing the teeth. Massage of the gums may prove helpful, if gently applied, though in a serious case of pyorrhea a fasting and general blood-purifying regimen is advisable. The condition of the teeth is influenced to a large extent by the state of the stomach. Where the digestion is perfect, the breath free from all foul odors, the teeth are less liable to decay and tartar rarely accumulates. Where there is any stomach disorder, however, very great care must be taken to avoid a number of unpleasant symptoms associated with the gradual deterioration of the teeth. If the various suggestions I have made in this volume for maintaining superior health are followed with a reasonable amount of care, and the tooth brush is used regularly, in addition to proper attention being given to thorough mastication, the teeth should be retained as long as there is use for them. Remember, however, the very important suggestion made in another chapter in reference to the value of fruit acid in cleansing the mouth and teeth. If you will rinse the mouth out at frequent intervals with the juice of an orange or eat part or all of an orange, you will be surprised at the cleansing influence of this acid fruit. Almost any acid fruit will be of value, but the orange is perhaps the best for this purpose. The free use of water to insure alimentary cleanliness together with the acid fruit habit will form a very superior insurance for our teeth. Finally, and of not least importance, the character of the diet has a great influence on the teeth. You cannot keep the teeth sound and strong if the foods you eat do not contain the material out of which teeth are built. If the food elements that build teeth and bone are lacking, you cannot expect the teeth to last long. A great hue and cry has been raised about the poor teeth of the school children of to-day, and an effort is being made to teach the children to brush their teeth. Of course this is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far when the children are fed upon a diet that is defective. When you find the child of a poor family given a diet of little more than white bread and coffee you can absolutely depend upon it that his teeth are crumbling and decaying. No other result is possible, no matter if the greatest of care is used to keep the teeth well brushed and clean. Therefore, my remarks in another chapter upon the influence of refined foods will apply particularly in the case of the teeth. A satisfactory supply of lime in the diet is especially necessary for building teeth and bone. Whole-wheat bread will supply the material for building sound teeth, while oatmeal and other whole grain foods are almost equally satisfactory for this purpose. Some women lose their teeth rapidly as a result of pregnancy, because the diet upon which they live is really a starvation diet so far as these important elements are concerned. Eggs are rich in lime and elements required for building strong teeth, while vegetables and fruits in their natural state are valuable in this way. Good milk is of value for its supply of lime and other organic minerals in the case of young children. Furthermore, all natural foods that provide good exercise for the teeth through the necessity for mastication are valuable on this account for strengthening the teeth, as I have already said. Dentistry is one of our most useful professions. But there would be need for few dentists if the suggestions given in this chapter were closely followed by men, women and children the whole country over. One may have strong teeth in practically every instance, as a result of proper care and suitable diet, just as he may have strong muscles, strong organs and strong nerves. CHAPTER XII: How to Eat Civilization has brought with it a train of evils unknown in the natural life. There is no need, for instance, to tell a wild animal what to eat; his life is planned for him in advance. His food is supplied by Nature and not superabundantly, so he is compelled to eat it in a manner to secure the greatest amount of vital vigor therefrom. Hunger controls his eating, and therefore he always enjoys his food. If we were to eliminate many of the mechanical processes involved in the preparation of our foods, there would be little or no necessity for instruction in eating, for, if we ate our food in a natural state, we would be compelled to masticate it, and this is the fundamental requirement of healthy digestion. Just here let me point out the importance of appetite. A food cannot possibly be of benefit unless it is thoroughly enjoyed. It must taste good. The more delicious a food tastes the more quickly and advantageously it will digest. The idea is frequently advanced that dieting must necessarily be unpleasant, for many think that a "diet" must consist of food that cannot possibly be eaten with enjoyment. This is a great mistake. Diet of this character would indeed bring about harmful results in nearly every instance. The diet which will be of the most value is that which you can enjoy, confining your selection, of course, to wholesome articles of food. I cannot emphasize too strongly the extreme necessity for the enjoyment of your meals. Do not under any circumstance ignore the demands of your taste in selecting your diet. Your food must be thoroughly masticated as well as thoroughly enjoyed. This chewing should continue until the food becomes a liquid and actually passes down your throat involuntarily. Food should never be swallowed hastily. Swallowing should be an unconscious process associated with enjoyment; with a view to prolonging the pleasure of eating, each mouthful should be retained in the mouth until it is swallowed before you realize it. Thorough mastication is absolutely necessary to the attainment of the very important requirements connected with the complete enjoyment of foods. Now note the effect of prolonged enjoyment of food upon the digestive processes. When one is masticating an appetizing meal the digestive system is being prepared for the reception of this meal. The various glands of the stomach that perform such important work in digestion begin to pour their juices into the stomach; consequently when the food reaches this organ everything is ready for its reception. To begin with, as a result of thorough mastication and the action of the saliva, the food is already partly digested, and the stomach is ready to continue the process. The work is easy and satisfactory under such circumstances, and digestion continues unconsciously. You do not realize that you have a stomach. How often one hears a healthy man say that he has no conscious knowledge of the possession of such an organ! In other words, he has never had a pain or other unpleasant symptom located in its region. It is said on the other hand that the dyspeptic is so continuously and unpleasantly aware of the existence of this organ that he often thinks he is "all stomach." Remember also the importance of a suitable mental attitude at meal-time. Your mind should be occupied almost entirely with the pleasure of the meal itself. You should not be seriously diverted in any way. If for instance you are reading a newspaper or carrying on an engrossing conversation you are directly interfering with the digestive processes; for, as I have already said, a thorough enjoyment of the food is necessary to arouse to their greatest activity the glands which furnish the digestive juices. Therefore, when meal-time comes around, devote yourself to the one single purpose of getting as much enjoyment as possible out of your food. If you are desirous of catching a train, do not make the mistake of bolting a meal. Eat when you arrive at your destination, or eat on the train, when you can have the leisure to enjoy your food. Remember that, with eating as with work, it is not how much but how well. If your time is limited it is better to eat only a small amount, and eat it properly, than to attempt to eat a large meal hurriedly. Especially do not eat when you are angry or worried; do not allow anything to distract you at meal-time. If anything comes up that seriously mars your ability to enjoy your food it is far better to delay your meal or wait until the next meal, or until you can eat in accordance with these requirements. There can be no objection to light conversation, which requires no special amount of mental energy or concentration; in other words, any deviation can be recommended which does not seriously interfere with the enjoyment of your meal. Music, for instance, if it is of a gentle, soothing character, or entertainment of any kind that is relaxing, is a helpful form of recreation. The "cabaret," if not carried to an extreme, is therefore a natural, well-founded institution. Congenial company is also naturally advantageous in helping one to enjoy his meals. There has been much controversy as to whether or not one should drink during a meal. I have at all times condemned the usual habit of drinking at meal-time for the purpose of washing down food that is eaten hastily. For instance, it is not at all unusual with many people to take three or four mouthfuls of food, hastily swallow them, and then find a certain amount of liquid essential to avoid choking. I cannot too emphatically condemn a habit of this sort. I do, however, recommend the use of liquids during a meal when they are necessary to satisfy thirst. Furthermore, it is of considerable importance to take some liquid during a meal if one is not in the habit of drinking freely of water between meals, since a certain amount of liquid is necessary to carry on the digestive process. When there is any digestive difficulty or when there is merely a weak digestion, hot water can be used to great advantage fifteen minutes or a half-hour before the meal. Taking hot water in this manner cleanses the stomach and adds materially to the digestive capacity by stimulating the glands of the stomach. The quantity of water taken in this way may range from half a pint to a quart, depending upon one's physical condition. The amount of liquid taken during a meal must also be regulated by one's needs. For instance, if you are poorly nourished and apparently need more weight properly to round out your body, then an additional amount of liquid will often be of advantage, provided you do not take so much as actually to interfere with digestion. Where increased bodily tissue is needed, therefore, in virtually every instance the free use of water during the meal will be of decided value; though one should always keep in mind the necessity of drinking these liquids warm or even hot if taking any quantity. The use of a large amount of cold water at meal-time is likely to be detrimental. There is a wide-spread custom of drinking ice-water during the meal. This is one of the most pernicious of all dietetic errors, since chilling of the stomach invariably retards digestion and favors dyspepsia. Even water that is very cold, though not iced, is not desirable, unless used in very small amounts. Also the use of ice- water or extremely cold water between meals is inadvisable, since because of its low temperature one cannot comfortably drink enough of it to satisfy completely his bodily requirements. Water that is only moderately cold or cool can be used liberally, and is always to be preferred in the case of overheating through violent exercise. It is usually advisable to drink water at the temperature that is most pleasant to you, though large quantities of cold water should always be avoided. And, as I have said, at meal-time, especially, if much water or other liquids are used they should be either warm or hot. Without question, the greatest of all dietetic errors is to eat without appetite. It is nothing less than a crime against the stomach, and yet this practice is one of the most common of all those which contribute to the prevalence of dyspepsia in civilized communities. No animal, the human race excepted, would attempt to eat without the relish that absolutely depends upon the possession of a keen appetite. Many thousands of people attempt to eat their meals regularly without regard to the demands of hunger merely because it is "meal-time." Eating in such cases has only the excuse of habit, although frequently it is regarded as a duty. Eating should never be regarded as a duty, nor should it be allowed to become a habit, for when not pleasurable it is not beneficial. One will often, hear the remark that one must "eat to keep up his strength." While this advice is fundamentally sound in a large sense under normal conditions and when a true appetite is present, yet there never was a greater delusion when it is applied to forced eating when the appetite is lacking. Eating under such conditions does not keep up one's strength, but on the contrary actually impairs it by burdening the digestive system with food that cannot be properly assimilated. It is not what you eat but what you assimilate that keeps you strong, and digestion depends upon appetite and the enjoyment associated therewith. The question of enjoyment is really a question of appetite, and if you are not hungry and cannot relish the food keenly when meal-time comes it is certainly best to wait until the next meal or until you are hungry. Every wild animal has sense enough to follow its natural inclination in this respect, but thousands of human beings go to the table because it is dinner-time, and force themselves to eat food that they do not desire simply because of the stupid delusion that continual and frequent eating is necessary for strength. The discussion of appetite brings up the question of the number of meals that is proper for each day. The prevailing system of three meals per day is a custom surviving from a time in which early rising and hard physical labor throughout a long day was the rule, especially in connection with out-of-door work. This does not mean, however, that three meals is always the best plan for civilized life in sedentary occupations. There are some wild races that eat only two meals per day, and there have been instances of hunters and even whole populations following the one-meal-per-day plan. Naturally at the present time the occupation and the requirements of the individual would have much to do with the question. If one does hard work, has an appetite for three meals per day, and seems to thrive on that plan, it is the preferable one. If, however, you are a sedentary worker, and especially if you do not have an appetite for three meals per day and cannot thoroughly enjoy them, the two-meal-per-day plan would be much better. The two-meal- per-day plan has often proven beneficial even when associated with the strenuous physical training required for athletic competition in racing, wrestling, boxing, Marathon running and other vigorous sports. It is entirely a question of appetite. If you have no appetite for breakfast then follow the two-meal-per-day plan. I will say, however, that in many cases one can enjoy and profit by a breakfast of fruit. The question of how to eat is closely related to the question of how many meals one should take. Overeating is a very prevalent failing. There is no question that large numbers eat themselves, as it were, into a condition of stupor. Their energies are required for the disposal of the excessive quantity of food ingested, and they have no energy left for mental work or for physical activity. They are, so to speak, "food drunk." I am personally satisfied that the best cure for overeating is food in less frequent meals and the practice of masticating the food thoroughly in the manner that I have suggested. In a case of this kind the two-meal-per-day plan is also to be recommended. Actual experience shows that those inclined to overeat do not eat any more at one meal when eating two meals than when eating three meals-they may possibly eat less, because of the more normal condition of the stomach. Another good plan to pursue is the use of uncooked foods, or at least the adoption of a diet consisting in part of uncooked foods. It is entirely possible to eat too little of nourishing food, just as it is to eat too much. But one who lives a natural and active life, especially if out-of-doors a fair part of the time, is not likely to lack a good appetite nor to eat less than the required amount. Good general health always brings with it a normal appetite. Overeating, however, is no doubt in many cases due very largely to the inadequate character of the foods consumed. I am satisfied that if all our foods were eaten in their natural condition and if they perfectly supplied the needs of the body there would be no tendency toward overeating. The great trouble is that conventional methods of food preparation have such a destructive effect upon the nutritive value of the foods in common use that a healthy body often craves large quantities of diverse foods in order to get a sufficiency of certain elements which are lacking. The use of white bread is a case in point, for, as stated in another chapter, the best part of the wheat has been eliminated in the process of milling. Furthermore, to a large extent the mineral salts are removed from our vegetables in the process of boiling; that is to say, when the water in which they were boiled is thrown away. The polishing of rice, the use of white flour in manufacturing macaroni, the refining of our sugar, and many other processes, are directly responsible for the almost universal habit of overeating. Certain elements are taken out of the food, the body craves these elements, and in trying to secure adequate nourishment, one eats an excessive amount of the refined defective foods. CHAPTER XIII: What to Eat The suggestions offered in the previous chapter concerning the necessity for the enjoyment of food, give one a fairly clear idea as to what he should eat. In other words, he should select those foods that he thoroughly enjoys, keeping in mind the necessity of using only those that are at least reasonably wholesome. If you have a large variety from which to select, this will be to your advantage, provided you do not include too many foods at one meal. It is a good plan to get your variety from meal to meal and from day to day, but without including too many dishes at any one meal. One of the most remarkable cases of longevity with which I have ever come in contact proved in a very pointed way the value of this suggestion. This was a woman who had lived to be over eighty years of age. During the last forty years of her life she was as agile, as clear- headed and as capable as a young woman in the heyday of her youth. I am satisfied that to a large extent the unusual vitality possessed by this woman was due to her habit of eating but one article of food two meals each day, although occasionally she would eat only one. Her meals were taken irregularly, because she would eat only when she was hungry. When she had a definite appetite it would nearly always indicate to her the particular food that she wanted. She would then prepare a meal of this food and thoroughly satisfy her appetite with it. Nothing else was eaten at that meal. This woman naturally went through some very severe trials before she adopted this diet-indeed, a terrible lesson of some sort seems necessary to compel one to follow a strict dietetic regimen. At the age of forty she was a physical wreck, having been for years tortured with rheumatism. Having vainly tried every other remedy, she finally became interested in diet, and through it finally overcame her difficulty. It might also be of interest in this connection to know that she never used salt, pepper, or condiments of any sort with her meals, and it would be well to emphasize that it is important to avoid the too free use of condiments and stimulating foods. We have used salt so long that our bodies seem adapted to it, and it is usually considered essential to the welfare of domestic stock; therefore it is a moot question as to whether it is advisable for human beings to avoid it altogether. Yet the excessive use of it to which we are prone is certainly harmful. How is this to be avoided? If we eat our food in a hand, I have found that the longer you are without it the more you long for it, until the craving becomes much more intense than is the hunger of a man who fasts (the symptoms are those of a disease rather than of being hungry). Among the uncivilized Eskimos the dislike of salt is so strong that a saltiness imperceptible to me would prevent them from eating at all. This fact was often useful to me, and when our Eskimo visitors threatened to eat us out of house and home we could put in a little pinch of salt, and thus husband our resources without seeming inhospitable. A man who tasted anything salty at our table would quickly bethink him that he had plenty of more palatable fare in his own house. On the score of what to eat I would reiterate what I have said about the use of foods in their natural condition. The refinement of various foods has made them entirely unfit for human consumption. Of first importance without doubt is the use of the whole grain of the wheat for flour. Wheat, as produced by the Almighty, is practically a perfect food, containing all the elements required by the human body and in a proportion not very far from that found in the body. In modern methods of milling, however, the effort is made to eliminate everything in the wheat grain except the pure starch, which naturally makes a fine, smooth, white flour. The miller is not absolutely successful in his endeavor, but he does succeed in robbing the product of the natural state, that is in an uncooked form, salt can be more easily avoided, but cooking in many instances modifies the flavor to such an extent that salt seems necessary. I am not prepared to admit that it is a necessity, for I know of many who avoid the use of salt altogether and who have maintained unusual vital vigor. I have known of others, however, who have tried to eliminate salt from their diet and the results have been unsatisfactory. We may therefore say that in most cases the moderate use of salt can be recommended. One of the most interesting expressions of opinion on the subject of salt that I have seen was a statement by Stefanson, the Arctic explorer, in his "My Quest in the Arctic," in which he discusses the diet of the Eskimos and their constitutional aversion to salt. "Most people are in the habit of looking upon the articles of our customary diet, and especially upon salt, as necessities. We have not found them so. The longer you go without green foods and vegetables the less you long for them. Salt I have found to behave like a narcotic poison; in other words, it is as hard to break off its use as it is hard to stop the use of tobacco. But after you have been a month or so without salt you cease to long for it, and after six months I have found the taste of meat boiled in salt water positively disagreeable. In the case of such a necessary element of food as fat on the other hand, I have found that the longer you are without it the more you long for it, until the craving becomes much more intense than is the hunger of a man who fasts (the symptoms are those of a disease rather than of being hungry). Among the uncivilized Eskimos the dislike of salt is so strong that a saltiness imperceptible to me would prevent them from eating at all. This fact was often useful to me, and when our Eskimo visitors threatened to eat us out of house and home we could put in a little pinch of salt, and thus husband our resources without seeming inhospitable. A man who tasted anything salty at our table would quickly bethink him that he had plenty of more palatable fare in his own house." On the score of what to eat I would reiterate what I have said about the use of foods in their natural condition. The refinement of various foods has made them entirely unfit for human consumption. Of first importance without doubt is the use of the whole grain of the wheat for flour. Wheat, as produced by the Almighty, is practically a perfect food, containing all the elements required by the human body and in a proportion not very far from that found in the body. In modern methods of milling, however, the effort is made to eliminate everything in the wheat grain except the pure starch, which naturally makes a fine, smooth, white flour. The miller is not absolutely successful in his endeavor, but he does succeed in robbing the product of the larger part of its food value, until it is absolutely incapable of sustaining life, and this serious mistake is without question the prime cause of the prevalence of constipation. The refining of rice by removing the coating, which contains organic salts, is another process by which is produced a food that is almost pure starch. The disease beriberi is now recognized as being due to a diet of polished rice. Where the natural unpolished rice is used this disease is both prevented and cured. In refining our sugar a similar denaturing process 'is carried on. The same is true in the grinding of corn, and in preparing a whole host of other foods. The practice of "refining" is the great food crime of the age. In addition to this the average housewife adds to our difficulties when preparing vegetables and other foods, by "draining" off the water in which they are cooked, thus throwing away the invaluable mineral elements which have been dissolved in the liquor during the process of cooking. The ultimate result of these crimes of the manufacturer and mistakes of the cook, is that the people are to a large extent starved, as far as mineral salts are concerned, in spite of the enormous food supply and the payment of the highest prices. Though bread is supposed to be the "staff of life," it might reasonably be termed the "staff of death" when it is made entirely from white flour and is depended upon exclusively for nourishment. It is well to point out also that bread of all kinds should be avoided in some cases of weak digestion. Under such circumstances it often irritates the lining of the stomach and intestines. When symptoms of this kind are noticed bread must not be used-more especially when made with yeast. When the bread is made without yeast and is masticated very thoroughly it may do no harm. There are instances also in which there is a Strong craving for white bread and when graham or whole-wheat bread is not appetizing. When one has an abundant variety of foods and the alimentary canal is unusually active the desire for white bread can be satisfied without harmful results. In fact when the diet is varied by numerous articles of food at one meal considerable white bread can be used if it is appetizing. Those taking the treatment for constipation recommended in this book often stimulate the alimentary canal to such an extent that graham or whole-wheat products are slightly irritating in their effect. As long as such symptoms exist white bread can be used. Remember, however, that whenever there is the slightest sign of constipation white flour products of all kinds should immediately be eliminated from the diet. As nearly as possible foods should be used in their natural condition. Those that can be enjoyed when uncooked are more valuable when eaten without cooking. When cooking is necessary the food should be cooked in such a way that there is no waste nor loss of the natural elements. Steaming and baking are both preferable in many cases to boiling; cooking in a double boiler may be especially recommended in the case of vegetables, as these are in such a case cooked in their own juices. Therefore my most important suggestions on what to eat would be: first, to select only natural foods; and second, to avoid too much variety at one meal. As to what sort of a diet one should adopt, I might say that the proper answer to a question of this kind depends largely upon one's individual condition and requirements. Unquestionably a perfect diet is furnished by nuts and fruits. From a theoretical standpoint this would appear to be ideal. I would say, however, that very few persons can be thoroughly nourished on a limited diet of this sort, and therefore it cannot be universally recommended. Perhaps the next diet that closely approximates perfection would be a raw or uncooked diet. This would include all the foods that can be made palatable without cooking, such as nuts and fruits of all kinds, vegetable salads, cereals and dairy products. A diet of this sort can be continued indefinitely in some cases, and where one can be thoroughly nourished on this regimen it can be highly recommended. Foods in their raw state possess a tremendous amount of vitality-building elements. They are live foods, consequently they give one life, energy, vivacity. One can usually fast longer with a smaller loss of weight and energy after a raw than after a cooked diet. But in many instances this diet does not maintain the weight and the bodily energies at high-water mark; consequently in such cases it often proves unsatisfactory, even where its first effects are pleasing to an unusual degree. Nearly all restrictive diets are valuable for a short period where there is evidence of overeating. On this account many enthusiasts who adopt a restricted diet and who note their improved appearance and general increase of energy for a time, will be profoundly impressed with the idea that at last they have found a perfect diet. On account of their enthusiasm they will often continue such a strict dietetic regimen until it is productive of seriously harmful results. It should be kept in mind that any diet which is really adequate for all requirements will maintain your normal weight and your energy. In other words, you should feel well and look well, if your diet is as it should be. This is an invariable test, and can be depended upon absolutely. Probably the next diet that can be recommended in many cases would be a meatless or vegetarian diet. There is absolutely no question as to the superiority of this plan over a regimen that includes meat, provided again that you can be fully nourished and that you feel energetic and capable. A vegetarian diet will usually make a better quality of tissue; you will have more endurance, and there is but little doubt that a healthy vegetarian will outlive a meat-eater, since his vital organs remain in a healthier condition for a longer period than those of one accustomed to a free use of meat. We must admit, however, that many cannot maintain their weight and keep their full allowance of energy on a vegetarian diet. Where you find a vegetarian whose skin is white, whose lips are colorless, who is thin and seemingly in need of nourishment, you can rest assured that the diet is not agreeing with him. Such persons in virtually every instance need animal food of some sort. It is therefore wise, if you are searching for a diet that is capable of developing in you the greatest degree of mental and physical efficiency, to make a careful study of your individual condition and requirements. After you have acquired sufficient knowledge on the subject it might even be well to do some experimenting, and in that way determine what particular diet is best suited to your needs. It is extremely difficult, however, for one to adopt a regimen which is radically different from that of those with whom he associates. You may have sufficient enthusiasm for a time to subsist on a nut-and-fruit diet or on an uncooked diet, but when your own family and friends are using other foods at all times the temptation to vary your own diet is sometimes too strong to resist, consequently you will be inclined gradually to resume the general regimen of those with whom you live. One can, however, maintain good health without being what might be termed a dietetic crank. To be sure, where one is suffering from a disease or is definitely in need of some special diet in order to secure certain results, a very rigid diet is of great importance and should be adhered to strictly. After such results have been achieved, however, and after normal health is regained, you can secure at almost any well supplied table a selection of foods which will furnish satisfactory nourishment. Some intelligence in selection, however, is necessary. There are a few articles of food that it would always be well to avoid. For instance, nearly all white-flour products are to be condemned. This means not only bread but biscuits, cakes, crackers, and pastries made of white flour. Unquestionably, if one is using meat freely, white-flour products are not nearly so harmful as when taken with a vegetarian diet. The meat supplies some of the deficiencies, though not all. At one time I had an experiment made which proved in a striking manner the defective character of white flour as a food. The subject tested the results of a fast of two weeks. He weighed himself before and after the fast and several times during its progress. He accurately determined his strength at all times, before, during, and at the completion of the fast. A considerable time thereafter he experimented with a diet of white-flour products for the same period of two weeks, eating white flour as commonly prepared, in the form of bread, cakes, etc. The result showed that he lost more weight and more strength while following the white-flour regimen than he had while fasting absolutely. This would seem to indicate that, in this case, at least, white-flour products were not a food, but a slow- acting poison. Among foods especially valuable I would call attention to green salads. If possible one should eat some food of this kind each day, more especially during warm weather. They are of great value as blood purifiers and they supply to a very large extent the mineral salts. Various combinations can be used in the form of salads, and the most satisfactory dressing is probably a combination of olive oil and lemon juice. I do not recommend vinegar partly because it is seldom pure, and one never can tell what combination of chemicals it contains. Lemon juice is preferable even to the best vinegar for the purpose of salad dressing. Celery, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, water-cress, parsley, cucumbers, and other foods of this character are suitable for salad purposes. Spinach, dandelion leaves, and other greens can be recommended in their cooked form, and it is unnecessary to add that virtually all cooked vegetables are of value. Fruits of all kinds can be recommended for the same reasons that make the green salads so useful to the body. They are of the very greatest value where there is any tendency toward biliousness. In many cases of this kind where it is undesirable to undertake an absolute fast as a means of setting the stomach right and where there is a lack of appetite, a fruit fast can be highly recommended. This is simply an exclusive diet of fresh acid fruits, such as oranges, grapefruit, grapes, cherries, apples and other fresh fruits in season. It is especially important to know in such a case that these fruits should be eaten in their strictly natural condition, properly ripened and without the addition of sugar. As a general thing a sufficient allowance of fruit and green salads will so balance the diet that one is not likely to have any trouble even if he eats heartily of the foods served at the ordinary table. It would be well also to remember that acid fruits have valuable antiseptic (cleansing) qualities. They keep the mouth and teeth as well as the alimentary canal in a wholesome state. In fact the frequent use of acid fruit, more especially the orange, is of great value in counteracting the effects of digestive difficulties on the mouth and teeth. If a small piece of orange is taken whenever there is an unpleasant taste in the mouth it will destroy the germ life that is being rapidly propagated under such circumstances, though such symptoms indicate also the need of acid fruit of some sort by the stomach. Especially is this required if there is a craving for fruit of this sort. In such cases the rule against eating between meals may be disregarded. Whenever you have a strong desire for acid fruits between meals you are usually safe in using them. In fact they are often sorely needed under such circumstances to assist in digesting a meal that may have been eaten some hours previously. Indigestion which leaves the mouth with a foul, unpleasant taste is often noticed on awakening at night after a hearty meal the evening before. On such occasions a few swallows of water, or whatever is needed to satisfy thirst, and a small quantity of acid fruit, like the orange, are of great value. They should be well mixed and moved about in the mouth until the acid comes in contact with every part of the mouth and teeth. When there is the slightest sign of digestive difficulties I would advise that each meal be completed with a small quantity of fruit. If you stop your meal at a time when you can enjoy the taste of acid fruit it is usually a definite proof that you have not overeaten. Remember too that the orange, lemon and any fruit with a strong acid flavor is a splendid tooth or mouth wash, and it need not be ejected as an ordinary wash. It can be enjoyed and swallowed after mouth and teeth have been cleansed. Therefore the frequent use of oranges as a dentifrice is a habit of great value. Use them on retiring and on rising and the results will be unusually pleasing. What foods can be used as substitutes for meat? This is a question that assumes considerable importance to those desirous of testing the vegetarian diet. I may say that almost any food that is wholesome and hearty in character and which is craved by your appetite will make a satisfactory meat substitute. Those containing a large percentage of protein are particularly desirable for this purpose. The following list will give one a general idea as to the nature of these foods: Cereals of all kinds, either in the whole grain or in the form of flaked grain, contain a fair percentage of protein and may be recommended for the purpose, although refined flour or polished grains are of no value in this way. Bread made from the whole wheat or any of the whole grains may be recommended. The "war bread" used in Europe since the outbreak of the great war is of this type. The pumpernickel and "black breads" used in various parts of Europe are so valuable from a nutritive standpoint that one can live on them entirely. Many of the farming and peasant classes of Europe live almost exclusively on breads of this type. Nearly all the prepared foods ordinarily referred to as breakfast foods, and which are made up of whole grains of wheat, corn, oats or barley would come under this class. No breakfast food made of only a part of the wheat would be recommended for this purpose. All kinds of beans are splendid meat substitutes, including navy beans, lima beans and kidney beans. They are what one may call hearty foods and as a rule one should lead a fairly active life to enjoy and digest them satisfactorily. The same may be said of dried peas. Lentils belong in the same class and are very similar to the bean in its nourishing elements. Beans, peas and lentils form a class known as the legumes, and contain a high percentage of protein. Nuts of all kinds make splendid meat substitutes, though they may sometimes be found rich for a weak stomach. They need to be used in small quantities and should be eaten only at meal-time. Peanuts really belong to the legume family, but are quite as good as any kind of nuts. The only mistake in their use lies in the habit of eating them between meals. Peanut butter and nut butters are of value. When nuts are easily digested they are satisfactory in every way. Perhaps the most popular meat substitute is the egg. Do not, however, entertain the idea that you are not eating any meat products when eggs are included in your diet. Eggs must be classed as animal food, but they are very nourishing. They contain a good supply of lime, sulphur, iron, phosphorus and other mineral salts in addition to their protein and fats. It may also be said that milk should be classed as animal food, though it is of special value from a nutritive standpoint. Milk, cheese and other milk products naturally make good substitutes for meat. Butter is a practically pure fat and will not take the place of meat in supplying protein, although it will take the place of the fatty portions of the meat. Cheese is often appropriately placed at the last part of the meal, and the statement that it will to a certain extent help to digest a hearty meal if but a small quantity is taken has been proven accurate in numerous cases. As a milk product buttermilk may be particularly recommended as a meat substitute if one uses a considerable quantity of it. We should distinguish, however, between real buttermilk and the fermented milk or sour milk which is often sold in cities under the name of buttermilk. Fermented milk is highly recommended for all food purposes and is undoubtedly conducive to health, but from the standpoint of nutrition it has practically the same value as fresh milk. The true buttermilk, however, from which the fat-forming elements have been extracted in the form of butter, is a more purely protein product. If you use sufficient buttermilk, that is to say, two quarts or more a day, you can rest assured that you will not crave meat. CHAPTER XIV: Foods in the Cure of Chronic Constipation Constipation is probably the beginning of nearly all human ailments. There are a few exceptions but not many. It is a tremendous foe to vitality. Pure blood is absolutely impossible when one is suffering from this complaint. Active functioning of the alimentary canal is absolutely essential if the blood stream is to contain those elements essential to superior vital vigor. The regimen which I suggested in the chapter on Cleansing and Stimulating the Alimentary Canal will undoubtedly be sufficient to overcome any trouble of this character provided there are not dietetic causes that are serious in nature. Where the disorder is chronic, and especially when it has extended over a term of many years, a comprehensive dietetic regimen may be necessary in addition to the adoption of measures previously suggested. The direct cause of constipation is a relaxed and weakened condition of the muscular walls of the stomach and intestines. A certain degree of strength of these muscular structures is essential properly to facilitate digestion, assimilation and elimination. The lack of tone in these muscles is chiefly due in nearly all cases to what might be termed a concentrated diet. Our foods have been too much refined. As previously stated they are not eaten as they were created, but have been put through a prolonged milling process or other method of preparation which not only eliminates many elements of nourishment but also breaks up the food into the most minute particles, thus eliminating the rough, coarse and fibrous material in the food which ordinarily arouses what is known as the peristaltic activity of the bowels. Our methods of food preparation also materially lessen the necessity for prolonged and thorough mastication. The habit of hurriedly swallowing our food undoubtedly lessens its vitality-building possibilities, besides materially affecting the strength and general hardiness of the teeth. Constipation is also caused in numerous instances by a lack of liquids. Men and women do not use sufficient water. One frequently loses what might be termed the water-drinking habit, usually as a result of sedentary occupations. The method of remedying constipation referred to in Chapter VI pointedly illustrates the amazing value of water in remedying conditions of this kind. It is well, however, to remember the necessity for using at least a reasonable quantity of water throughout the entire day. If you do not drink water quite freely between meals then it is advisable and actually necessary to use a certain quantity with your meals. Those who drink tea and coffee freely seem to recognize the need of this instinctively. The choice of these beverages, however, is distinctly bad. Tea and coffee are destructive to both nerves and health, but aside from these stimulating drinks one can use almost any wholesome beverage at meal-time in order to supply his cravings in this direction. Fruit drinks are excellent. I have referred to this question in a previous chapter. Diet naturally has a tremendous influence on alimentary activity. White bread and white-flour products constitute the most serious cause of constipation. This defective food is lacking in the elements necessary to give life and vitality to the body, because the valuable covering of the grain has been removed in the milling process, while the life germ of the wheat has also been eliminated. The bran, which consists of several minute layers covering the wheat berry, has a distinct value in stimulating peristaltic action, and when it is removed, the resulting white flour must be a defective food. One of the first dietetic changes required in remedying constipation, therefore, is to eliminate white-flour products from the diet. Graham bread, or that made from the whole wheat, or any of the whole grains, rye, oats, barley, corn, is a satisfactory article of diet, and will often remedy constipation without resort to any other dietetic change. What might be termed waste products, or fibrous material in food, are found especially valuable in promoting digestion and active functioning of the bowels. The woody fiber found in vegetables is most valuable. It is sometimes suggested that one should simply consume the juice of his foods but not the pulp. This pulp or fibrous matter, however, is especially important. Following this requirement of bulk or waste in our food, we find such remedies as sand, refined coal oil, a mineral product that passes through the alimentary canal without change, and ordinary black dirt, which is usually taken in its dried form. When using sand, it should be sterilized, and the grains should be rounded and worn smooth by the action of waves or running water. Do not use that in which the grains are sharp-edged. One or more of these products are valuable as a laxative and the devitalizing after-effects of a drug cathartic will be absent. They are, however, not by any means as pleasant as food laxatives, and remedies of this sort should not be employed except as a temporary expedient. Whole grains of various kinds, wheat, rye, oats and barley, simmered in hot water for a long time until properly softened, not only afford a high degree of nourishment, but will be found of special value as a means of remedying constipation. They are best if used in their natural state, just as they come from the farm. They are more valuable when eaten raw with fruit or cream, or in some other palatable form, than when cooked. When flaked or crushed, as in the case of ordinary oatmeal, they may be used with figs, dates, raisins and a little cream, or they may be eaten with a little honey. One bowl of this class of food, either raw or cooked, each day, is very effective in overcoming constipation. Salads of various kinds not only have great value by way of supplying food for the nerves, but they are also worth while for their mild laxative effect. I would recommend all forms of uncooked green food, chiefly to be used in the form of salads, such as lettuce, tomatoes, onions, celery, radishes, cucumbers, cold slaw, water-cress, parsley, and the like. All cooked green vegetables such as spinach, asparagus, string beans, fresh green peas, Brussels sprouts, dandelion leaves, greens, cabbages, mushrooms and other foods of this sort will likewise be helpful. Fruits are of even greater value for their laxative qualities. One should use them freely for ordinary health building, but especially when suffering from this complaint. Apples, oranges, grapefruit, peaches, plums, grapes, and various berries are exceptionally good for increasing alimentary activity, though all kinds of fruit are valuable. Prunes and figs are particularly recommended. Such acid fruits as lemons, oranges and grapefruit are valuable not only for their stimulating qualities in connection with constipation, but also because of their antiseptic influence. Cheese is very constipating to those inclined in this direction. All forms of cheese and food combinations containing it should be avoided. Spaghetti and macaroni prepared in this way are especially inadvisable, though it may be said that even when served without cheese spaghetti and macaroni are constipating. Rice in the ordinary polished form, as usually sold, is practically a pure starch and should be avoided. The same applies to tapioca, sago and foods of this character. Needless to say white crackers, cookies and cakes are to be classed with white bread. One should use brown sugar in place of white wherever possible, or use the pure New Orleans molasses. It is often difficult to secure this, however, inasmuch as most of the molasses on the market is made up chiefly of glucose or corn syrup, and often contains harmful chemical preservatives. It is best to avoid sugar altogether and to use honey for all purposes of sweetening, as honey is less inclined to fermentation. Milk in some cases is inclined to produce constipation when used in connection with the ordinary diet. An exclusive and full diet of milk, is rarely constipating except during the first few days of the diet, but when milk is added to the ordinary foods, it frequently has a tendency in this direction. Buttermilk or fermented milk can often be used to advantage if sweet milk should prove constipating to the patient. Muscular weakness and defective circulation are prominent causes of constipation in many cases. This accounts for this disorder being found so frequently among sedentary workers. Inactivity, the cause of many ills, is particularly prominent in contributing to this trouble. Therefore muscular exercise is perhaps a most effective means of permanently remedying constipation. Exercise has a direct mechanical influence upon the entire alimentary canal. The contraction of the abdominal muscles and the bending or other movements of the trunk of the body produce a certain amount of movement in and pressure upon the digestive organs in a direct mechanical way. Walking, for instance, is of extraordinary value in remedying this difficulty because of its stimulating influence upon the entire functional system, and the slight jar of each step without doubt has a direct mechanical effect. Walking furthermore is a tremendous factor in the building of vitality and this helps indirectly in remedying constipation. But there are also various special exercises that particularly affect the alimentary canal. Bending forward and backward and from side to side and also various twisting movements of the trunk have a special influence in this direction. They actually massage the internal organs, and this means a great deal where there is any digestive weakness or lack of activity in the bowels. What I term inner-strength exercises, or as they may also be called, pressure movements, are also of considerable value. An example of this type of exercise will be found in placing the right forearm across the stomach, grasping the right wrist with the left hand, and then with the strength of both arms pressing vigorously inward upon the stomach for a moment. Now relax and repeat. Bringing up the right knee and left knee alternately, with strong pressure, using vigorously the strength of the arms against the abdominal region, is also a good example of this type of exercise, which has proven very effective in numerous cases. Other exercises of this kind ( see Chapter XV) can be applied to all parts of the upper body with great advantage to the inner organs, since such movements are of remarkable value in stimulating alimentary activity. In line with exercise of this kind, massage and percussion treatment of the abdominal region is likewise effective. The massage should be deep and may be administered by the closed fist. A wide circular movement is advantageous for this purpose, the hand being moved in the direction of the hands of a clock, that is to say, up the right side, across, down the left side and continuing around in that manner. Rolling a baseball around in the same manner, pressing deeply though without strain, will afford an excellent form of massage for this particular purpose. The percussion treatment that I have suggested consists in alternate tapping or striking this region of the body with both hands. A chopping movement, using the outside edge of the hands, is very effective, and if you are very vigorous, the closed fist may be used. Striking repeatedly and alternately with the two fists, go over the entire region of the stomach and abdomen. This can be done gently or vigorously, according to your condition, and it is an invaluable and effective means of stimulating peristalsis and functional vigor. Mechanical vibration may also be suggested. Cathartics are always to be condemned. The ordinary cathartic or laxative acts by reason of its irritating qualities. As a rule it abstracts the water from the intestinal walls, and the adjacent tissues, and the ultimate effect is to leave one in worse condition than before. Those who have been accustomed to the drug treatment of constipation, usually find the condition growing continuously more stubborn. Larger and larger doses of the cathartic must be taken to secure results until the function is practically paralyzed. There could be no greater mistake. If some laxative is required and sand cannot be used, the best remedy is ordinary table salt. Stir up a level teaspoonful in a glass of water and drink it. This has a mild laxative action. Or take daily two to four tablespoonfuls of ordinary bran in a glass of water. This bran may also be stirred into soups and cereals or mixed with whole-wheat flour when making bread. Olive oil also should be used freely. As an emergency treatment, however, the enema is most satisfactory, and when employed it is best to do it thoroughly. I do not advocate the regular and continuous use of this measure. One should not come to depend upon it. A natural action is desirable, and this can invariably be brought about by a proper diet, as above suggested, by exercise and by a sufficient amount of water. The enema or colon- flushing should be used only when absolutely necessary, though in case of acute disease, where rapid purification is essential, the enema is imperatively demanded, and no household should be without an outfit for giving this treatment. To some the continuous use of the colon-flushing treatment is inclined to be debilitating and in rare cases complaints have been made that it dilates the colon and weakens its muscular structures. This is occasionally true in the case of the hot enema. A fairly cool enema is less objectionable, while a cold enema has a decided tonic effect in contracting and strengthening the peristaltic muscles. The cold enema is less effective as a cleansing agent, as it does not have the relaxing effect of the hot enema. In most cases an enema of neutral temperature, or at about that of the body, may be suggested, though if one has been using this treatment very much it would be better to use either a cool or cold enema, if strong enough, in order to secure its contracting and tonic effect. If the cold water causes cramps one should modify the temperature. Usually it is best to use plain water for the enema. In a case of illness where quick and radical results are required, a hot soap-suds enema may be suggested, but you should remember that this always has the effect of removing the natural oils and is inclined to leave the colon in an irritated condition. A saline solution is to be especially commended where there is a serious catarrhal condition of the intestines, or where there is much inflammation or irritation, such as might be manifested in extreme cases by bloody stools. For a normal saline solution use one teaspoonful of ordinary salt to a quart of water, or four teaspoonfuls to a four-quart enema. Glycerin is frequently suggested, but it is not to be generally recommended. If one follows these methods persistently, constipation, even in its most aggravated forms, can be overcome. In some instances almost any one of the suggestions offered will bring about the results desired, but in a chronic case one should depend not on one but on a combination of all of these various remedial measures. The improvement in the condition of your skin, in the purity of your blood, and in the degree of energy that you will enjoy will more than repay you for your efforts in following the various suggestions made for cleansing, strengthening, and vitalizing the alimentary canal. CHAPTER XV: Pressure Movements for Building Inner Strength Several years ago I discovered a unique and very effective means of strengthening the heart, lungs, stomach and other internal organs. I arranged a system of lessons, consisting of various pressure movements, which I termed an Inner Strength Course. As my experience with this course had been limited, I refrained at the time from presenting its fundamental theories to the general public. I issued the course in a series of four lessons, and the strength of each applicant was ascertained through questions before the course was sent to him. The experience with several hundred students, however, has so thoroughly confirmed the value of this method of internal vitality building that I am now in a position where I can present the ideas upon which it is based to the general public. The usual price of this course was five dollars, and several thousand courses were sold at this price, each student naturally receiving a certain amount of personal attention. The same ideas, however, are presented in this chapter, with the warning that those who use the pressure exercises recommended must take care to avoid pressing upon the internal organs beyond their resisting power. The various forms of pressure movements recommended are clearly illustrated and those who are not especially strong should begin with a very mild pressure and with the open hand placed upon the abdomen or chest, though where ordinary or unusual strength is possessed, the side of the open or closed hand could be used. These exercises are especially valuable for strengthening the heart where the pressure movements are used very freely near this particular organ. They can be highly recommended for strengthening the stomach though they should not be used immediately after a meal. I referred to their value in the chapter on constipation in connection with the treatment of this ailment. After a long trial this system of increasing the internal strength is highly recommended, and will be found of special value as a means of varying the health-building methods that may be adopted for securing throbbing vitality. They are not a necessary part of the plan of body building especially recommended in this volume, but are presented merely as a valuable means of varying your efforts in working for increased vitality. It is an interesting fact that in some forms of athletics, the body is subjected to a certain amount of internal stimulation similar to that which I have systematized in these movements. This is especially true in wrestling, where the vital organism is often compelled to endure a great deal of pressure of this kind. The same is true of American football, although this is too violent for those who are not in an unusually vigorous condition. To suit these varying degrees of strength I have arranged these movements so that the first series (A) is comparatively mild. Those who are not already vigorous can probably use the advanced form of treatment, but in most cases it will be best to take them up gradually. In cases of rupture, or where the abdominal region is weak, there is a possibility of injury if one makes the movements too vigorous. The first series, however, in which the open palm of the hand is used, is quite safe in all cases, if reasonable care is used. In each of these pressure movements remember that the pressure should be applied for one moment only, and then relaxed, repeating the pressure and moving the position of the hands in accordance with the directions accompanying each photograph. When a feeling of pain or great tenderness is noted in pressing upon any part of the body, this should be regarded as a warning that the pressure is not to be repeated. If there is only a feeling of uneasiness you can usually continue with the treatment and the discomfort will disappear in practically every instance. And while an acute sense of pain indicates the necessity for avoiding pressure on that particular part, yet it is sometimes a good plan to exert the pressure upon adjacent or surrounding parts, thereby influencing the circulation, and continuing the treatment until the inflammation which is the cause of the pain gradually disappears. One should be careful to exercise moderation in all cases, however. The second series (B) in which the closed hand is used is somewhat more vigorous, and this is made still more energetic by grasping the first hand with the other so that the pressure may be applied with the strength of both the arms. As the student progresses, the number of times that pressure is applied at each part of the body may be increased, so that at the conclusion of the treatment he may feel thoroughly tired, thus showing that he is making good progress toward the goal in view. The third series (C) includes movements especially intended for stimulating the functional regions from the back of the body, and should be given close attention. They are especially valuable for strengthening the kidneys. The last and most vigorous of the movements (series D ) are especially powerful in their influence upon the organs lying within the chest as well as upon those beneath the diaphragm. The heart and lungs will be very effectually stimulated and strengthened in this way. In chronic bronchitis, coughs and colds on the lungs these movements applied to the chest will be very helpful, besides directly strengthening these parts. You can absolutely depend upon it that when you have reached a condition in which you can exert the most vigorous pressure upon all of these parts, and do it with comfort and pleasurable results, your "department of the interior" is in a strong and healthy condition. You will find a radical change in the entire internal organism. You will find that the abdominal organs feel more solid and substantial, while the muscular walls of this region are far stronger. You will have a sense of strength in this region, and this is absolutely the case in so far as the external muscles of this part of the body are concerned. But the more valuable gain will be in the strength of the organs themselves. These organs are partly muscular in character, and they are firm and strong, or soft and flaccid, in accordance with the intelligent consideration that they receive and the amount of exercise given them. Before long you should be able to use almost your entire strength in exerting pressure, and feel nothing but beneficial results. But when doing this it may be well to change the position of the hand slightly for each application of pressure, rather than to repeat such strenuous treatment so many times in one spot. The idea is to exert pressure throughout the entire region of the abdomen, chest, sides and back. It may occur to the reader that this form of exercise for the vital organs has a certain distant similarity to some features of massage treatment, known as deep massage. However, this method is much more vigorous than any form of massage, and is of a character to build a degree of real internal strength that cannot be attained through massage of any kind. And it has the advantage of being convenient for self-application. After a time you may be able to originate pressure movements of your own. One of my friends writes that he has used a similar idea associated with a vibratory motion. He slightly agitates the hand in different directions while pressing inwards. This is well worth a trial, and it partakes very much of the nature of massage. Another good practice is to inhale a deep breath and then while holding this breath apply pressure all along the central portion of the abdominal region, from the breastbone downwards, from ten to twenty times. Then, without exhaling the breath, draw in all the additional air you can and repeat the pressure movements six to twelve times, after which you may be able to take in still more air. One should be careful not to carry this holding of the breath too far. At the first signs of discomfort the breath should be exhaled quickly. CHAPTER XVI: Blood Purification If one could maintain his blood in absolute purity disease would be virtually impossible. The blood is the life. You are what you are through the influence of the blood that circulates throughout your entire body. Now, a proper supply of pure blood, as previously stated, depends first of all upon proper digestion and assimilation. This involves naturally a strengthening diet with a supply of foods that contain all of the elements required by the body and which will permit of a pure and perfect condition of the blood. Next in importance are the chemical changes which take place in this life-giving fluid as it passes through the lungs. Following this, the purity of the life stream depends upon the various organs that have to do with elimination; that is to say, the throwing off from the blood of the various accumulated wastes and poisons that are inimical to life. Now you might call this the blood- purifying process. The removal of these various waste elements from the blood depends entirely upon the proper activity of the depurating organs. I have already referred to the great importance of an active alimentary canal. You might say that the lower part of the alimentary canal is the sewer of the body. It removes a large amount of the impurities. In some cases of fasting that I have personally supervised, there has been a daily action of the bowels merely from the waste matter that has accumulated. The debris that is removed from the body in this way does not by any means consist entirely of the remains of food that is not absorbed by the circulatory system. The blood is purified to a large extent by the various waste elements that seek the alimentary canal for an outlet. If these waste products were allowed to remain in the circulation they would produce seriously injurious results. Therefore, in the general scheme of blood purification an active alimentary canal is of first importance. I may say that proper breathing, together with the facilitation of this function through active exercise, is the next feature of importance in blood purification. Following this we can without doubt reasonably maintain that a certain amount of activity of the kidneys is desired. This will nearly always be accomplished if one drinks the amount of water which is essential to satisfy a natural thirst. Remember, however, that modern habits are often inclined partially to eliminate or entirely to destroy what one might call a natural thirst. For instance, there are various sedentary occupations in which one becomes so absorbed in his work that the desire for water will be ignored, and where this mistake is made for a long period, one acquires the habit of going without water, and consequently the natural desire is to a large extent lost. In such cases, it is even important to bring back the appetite for water. Have a glass of water at hand and take a few swallows now and then. Or, what would be better yet, carry out the suggestion which I have given in a former chapter on the drinking of hot water. That will usually supply the system with the proper amount of liquid necessary to insure normal activity of the kidneys. The next means of blood purification is one which rarely receives a great amount of attention. I refer to the eliminative function of the skin. We have more definite control over and can more easily influence this particular channel of elimination than any other. The skin unquestionably throws off a tremendous amount of impurities. Where but little attention is given it, where one bathes at infrequent intervals and to a large extent smothers the skin with a surplus amount of clothing, the activity of the eliminative function of the skin is greatly reduced. There are various means at hand for stimulating the activity of the skin which are of unusual value in connection with blood purification. One of the simplest methods both of improvising the texture of the skin and accelerating its functional processes is found in dry friction. This friction can be applied with the palm of the hand, with a rough towel, or with friction brushes. In order to secure the greatest advantages of a friction bath it is advisable to brush or rub the surface of every part of the body until it assumes a pinkish glow from the increased peripheral circulation induced by the friction. Where the skin is rough or covered with pimples this suggestion is of especial value. When using friction brushes for this purpose one should not attempt to use very stiff brushes in the beginning, for they will scratch too much. Soft, fair skins usually cannot stand such rough treatment as well as can a thicker skin, or one which is oily in character. In many cases a dry Turkish bath towel will answer the purpose splendidly. If the skin is rather tender it suffices to use the palms of both hands. After becoming accustomed to the friction, however, you will find that you will be able to enjoy stiffer brushes and I would suggest using a fairly stiff brush so long as it is not too uncomfortable. You will find that as you become accustomed to the treatment the skin will become softer and smoother as a result. Also it will become more active. This dry friction bath may be taken each morning following your exercises. If you take a cold bath it should follow the friction. First exercise, then employ the friction rub, and then bathe. I would suggest that from five to ten minutes at least be devoted to this friction. It will furnish some exercise in connection with the rubbing, will quicken the general circulation, and will give you that warmth of body which makes the cold bath desirable and delightful. Air baths are likewise valuable as a means of promoting activity in the eliminative function of the skin. Primitive man, living in a state of Nature, was not burdened with clothing. There was nothing to interfere with the healthy activity of his epidermis. There can be no question that the smothering of the skin by our clothing has much to do with defective elimination of wastes, and the more nearly we can avoid clothing, or the less clothing we can wear, the better. When possible, therefore, and especially in warm weather, it is advisable to remove all clothing and let the air come in contact with the surface of the body. This not only has a pronounced effect upon the purification of the blood but it likewise has a tonic effect upon the nervous system. In the same way the friction rub has a stimulating effect upon the nerves. This is due to the fact that in the skin are located a million or more of tiny nerve endings or so-called "end organs" of the nerves. These peripheral nerve endings are naturally influenced by all conditions that affect the skin, whether in the form of friction, air baths, cold baths, or baths of other temperatures. The air bath, therefore, has a splendid tonic effect and may be particularly recommended for those suffering with "nerves." Sun baths are especially effective as a means of stimulating activity of the skin, and promoting elimination. Sun baths likewise have a very powerful influence upon the entire organism inasmuch as they stimulate metabolism or cell-activity. They directly affect the circulation and promote the formation of red corpuscles. The sun is the centre of all energy and life upon this earth. It is our great vitalizing and life-giving principle, both in the realms of animal life and plant life. It is only natural, therefore, that sun baths should have a profound influence upon the body. A word of caution, however, is required because of the tremendous power of the sun and its powerful chemical effect when sun bathing is carried too far. Those of very fair skins particularly need to be careful. Brunettes, with considerable pigment of the skin can stand a great deal of sunlight without harm, but light-skinned persons, while needing a certain amount of sunlight, should not expose themselves for too long a time to the midday sun in summer, or at least not until they have gradually become sufficiently tanned to do so. Everyone knows the painful character of a sunburn. This only illustrates the powerful chemical effect of the sun's rays. In taking sun baths one should very gradually accustom himself to the sunshine until he is so tanned that the pigment in his skin will protect him. The short or chemical rays of the sun are actually destructive to white men in the tropics. In May, June and July they have a pronounced chemical effect even in our own latitude. They are stimulating up to a certain point, but beyond that point one should be careful. I may say, therefore, that brunettes in summer may take sun baths even at noon, but blondes should take them preferably before nine or ten o'clock in the morning or after three o'clock in the afternoon. In winter, however, when the sun's rays are more slanting, the sun baths can be taken even by the blondes at any time. And because of the more limited amount of sunlight in winter, special attention should be given to sun bathing during that season. Everyone needs a certain amount of sunlight, and if you cannot take a sun bath regularly every day you should at least wear clothing of a character that will permit the light-rays of the sun to penetrate. I will refer to this again, however, in the chapter on the subject of clothing. After all that we can say in regard to these various methods of stimulating the skin there is really nothing so effective as active exercise for those who are strong enough to take a sufficient amount of it. Exercise, so far as function of the skin is concerned, is valuable because of the copious perspiration which is induced when one gets enough of it. In these days great numbers of people no longer "earn their bread by the sweat of their brow," and their health suffers in consequence. If you do not have to perform such an amount of physical labor as will promote free perspiration, then for the sake of acquiring the very purest quality of blood your special exercise should be sufficiently active and continuous to bring about free perspiration. There is really nothing so effective as a good old-fashioned "sweat" for rapidly purifying the blood. Anyone who perspires each and every day as a result of physical activity, and whose habits are fairly satisfactory in other respects, can depend upon enjoying absolutely pure blood, or a condition which is not far from it. It does not matter what form of physical activity is employed to bring about this result. It may take the form of work that is useful and productive in character, or it may be play that is sufficiently active to cause deep, free breathing and bring out the perspiration. For those who are vigorous enough, cross-country running, wrestling, boxing, tennis and other games which involve real muscular effort continued for some time, will all prove satisfactory for this purpose. If you are anxious to purify your blood in cold weather it might be well to wear a good heavy sweater while taking such exercise in order to maintain a marked degree of warmth and thus bring out the perspiration in plentiful quantities. It is always well to avoid becoming chilled too quickly after exercise of this kind. It is not alone in stimulating the eliminative function of the skin that exercise has a blood-purifying effect; it accelerates all the functions of the body, it stimulates greater activity of the lungs and of the kidneys. It promotes such an active circulation through all the minute structures of the body that accumulations of waste and dead matter are taken up and swept on to be thrown out through the natural channels of elimination. Under conditions of physical stagnation, when the circulation is less active, much of this waste matter tends to remain in the tissues of the body, accumulating and interfering with cell activity and normal functioning in general. The vigorous circulation of the blood induced by exercise gradually has the effect of flushing out all of the bodily tissues, and in that way has an internal cleansing effect that cannot be attained by any other means. In another chapter I have referred to the powerful influence of the drinking of hot water in connection with exercise as a means of promoting a more free circulation, but exercise under any circumstances tends to the same result, and for this reason as well as because of the perspiration brought about, exercise must be regarded as perhaps the most important of all measures for blood purification. No man can be continuously healthy without exercise. No man or woman can be internally clean, in the strictist sense, without a proper amount of daily exercise. However, for those who are not strong enough to take a large amount of exercise, and who cannot in this way bring about free perspiration, other methods of accelerating the activity of the pores of the skin may be employed. I have already referred to the influence of air baths, friction baths and sun baths. Remember that through these agencies the pores may be made very active without any apparent result in the form of liquid perspiration, for under ordinary conditions perspiration evaporates and the body may not become wet. It is only when one perspires very rapidly that perspiration is manifested in the moistening of the skin. When taking your air baths there may be marked activity of the skin without any appearance of "sweat." Various forms of bathing have the effect of inducing rapid elimination. Russian and Turkish baths are commonly used for this purpose, and every "man about town" knows the value of Russian and Turkish baths as a means of clearing his system and even of "clearing his head" through the profuse perspiration induced by the treatment. There is no question that these baths are effective in this direction, though it may be said that they are only a poor substitute for daily exercise as a blood-purifying measure. The man who neglects his requirements in the way of physical activity may strive to make up for it by a Turkish bath, but cannot get the same results, although it is true he can accomplish a great deal in this way. The great objection to Turkish and Russian bath establishments is to be found in the unsatisfactory ventilation usual in such places. As a rule the Russian or vapor bath is to be preferred to the Turkish, or dry, hot air. Especially if one is not very strong the steam bath is preferable. If one is vigorous, however, and has a strong heart, the dry hot air room will be very effective. Naturally the "rubbing" and other adjunctive treatment in the Turkish bath establishment are all beneficial. The influence of these measures (the Russian and Turkish baths) in purifying the blood may be secured at home through the agency of other baths. A cabinet bath in the home will be equally effective in providing either a steam bath or a dry, hot-air bath. Naturally, a shower, or at least a quick sponging with cold water, should follow all such baths. If there is no bath cabinet in the home beneficial results can be secured by means of a hot-water bath. Hot water has a profound influence upon the elimination of wastes and impurities through the skin. In cases of kidney disease, where the kidneys are unable to perform their work, it is often possible to keep one alive by making the skin do the work of the kidneys through frequent hot baths. The tub should be filled with hot water at a temperature of from 105 up to 112 or 115 degrees Fahrenheit, that is to say, as hot as it can be endured, and one should remain in this bath from ten to twenty minutes, or as long as one's condition will permit. It may be a good plan to get into the water at a lower temperature, for instance, starting with water at 102 to 104 degrees, then afterwards adding hot water so as to raise the temperature to 108 or 112 degrees, or even higher. It is really necessary to use a bath thermometer (they can be obtained at a cost of ten or fifteen cents in any drug store) to regulate the temperature of the water. Sufferers from any derangement of the heart or those handicapped by serious vital depletion should not use the water too hot. In such cases it may be well to limit the temperature to 103 to 105 degrees and to limit the duration of the bath to five or ten minutes. In such cases it will be necessary to take the bath more frequently, perhaps each evening, in order to secure results in the way of active elimination. If one is strong enough, however, and merely wishes to purify the blood one may be able to stay in the water from twenty to thirty minutes and to raise the temperature of the bath to 115 degrees or more. The hot bath is much used in Japan and the natives there almost parboil themselves, using water at a temperature as high as 120 degrees. But it is not necessary to go to such extremes. It is most important that one should leave the bath immediately upon feeling any sense of weakness, dizziness or discomfort of any sort. If you feel oppressed by a sense of overheating, do not linger in the water but get out of it immediately. You will usually find that your face will perspire freely within a few minutes after being in the bath. This indicates its rapid eliminative effect. Such a bath will not accomplish exactly the same work as a cabinet or Turkish bath, but good results can be secured therefrom. The hot bath when used for perspiration purposes should be followed by a quick sponging with cold water or by a cold shower. An excellent plan is to have conveniently at hand what is called a hand spray, attached to a long rubber tube. By attaching this to the faucet and turning on the cold water one may quickly spray all parts of the body while standing in the tub of hot water. Finally, the feet may be sprayed with cold water on getting out of the tub. Rub dry quickly and thoroughly with a rough towel, after which wrap up warmly so that you may continue to perspire. It is most essential that one should not cool off too quickly and certainly that one should not become chilled after a bath of this sort. This hot bath is rather strenuous treatment, but it is effective, if one is strong vitally, for rapidly purifying the blood and eliminating the poisons in the body in any toxemic condition. It will be found valuable in the case of grippe or of a bad cold, in syphilis, or in any other disease characterized by a poisoned condition of the system and in which there is no fever present. In the case of fever, which also invariably involves a toxemic condition of the body, the elimination of the poisons through the skin should be accomplished by methods which do not involve the external use of heat in this manner. Wet-sheet packs, both of the entire body and of parts of the body, are among the most effective of rapid blood-purifying measures. Frequently where one is confined to bed a hot-blanket pack will answer the same purpose as the hot bath just described. Where there is high fever a cold wet-sheet pack may be employed. This will relieve the high temperature to a marked extent, and will also eliminate the poisons of the body in a most remarkable way. The sheet pack is applied by first wringing one or two sheets out of cold water and then wrapping them completely around the naked patient, with the exception of the head. If a single sheet is used the flap on one side may be wrapped around the body under the arms and the flap from the other side passed over the outside of the arms. The patient should then be wrapped up thoroughly with warm blankets, fastened with safety pins. He will quickly react with warmth, although if the vitality is low it may be well to place hot irons at the feet to insure quick recuperation with warmth. One may remain in such a pack for two or three hours, or if it is applied in the evening one may remain in it all night, provided sleep follows and no discomfort is noticed. Where the recuperative powers are weak a wet-sheet pack which covers the entire body, may tax the vitality too much and under such circumstances a chest and abdominal pack may be used. This is really a partial sheet pack covering the trunk of the body from the hips and abdomen to the line running round the chest just under the arms. A hot pack of this kind is in itself very effective, although where there is fever the pack should be applied cold. In all such packs it is well to lay several blankets on your couch first, then quickly place the wet sheet upon it so that after the sheet has been wrapped around the body the sides of the blanket can be pulled over so as completely to envelop the patient. These methods are all suggested because of their effectiveness in stimulating the activity of the skin where one is not able to bring this about through exercise and perspiration. In all chronic conditions, however, in which it is essential to purify the blood, the daily practice of dry friction or air baths is particularly advised. Do not overlook the value of the hot-water-drinking regimen in combination with exercise, which I offered in the chapter on Cleansing and Stimulating the Alimentary Canal. It is especially important to guard against constipation if there is any tendency in that direction, and above all things, daily muscular activity is absolutely essential. Inasmuch as many foods have great value in the purification of the blood, I have referred to this particular aspect of the question in the chapter on What to Eat. Before leaving this subject it should be said that where there is any necessity for a rapid, thorough and effective cleansing of the entire system there is nothing that will accomplish this result as effectually as fasting. Fasting is the greatest of all methods of purification. Where there is any derangement of the system, with temporary loss of appetite, it is usually advisable to fast until the appetite returns and a short fast of from one to three days is usually sufficient. Where there is any serious disorder and it is necessary to undergo an extensive course of blood purification a prolonged fast of many days or even several weeks may be required. Fasting is such an important subject in itself that I can-. not give any detailed suggestions in regard to it in this volume. Before fasting one should make a comprehensive study of its physical effects and especially should one be informed on proper methods of breaking a fast. During a fast all of the eliminative functions of the body are exceedingly active. If there is any surplus material the body consumes it during the fast. Owing to the complete rest of the digestive system the energy which ordinarily is required in the digestion of food is free to be diverted to the work of elimination. It would seem that under these circumstances all of the functions of the body are especially active in the blood-purifying processes. You should remember, however, that even a fast will naturally be made much more effective by the general blood-purifying methods which I have given in this chapter. The measures suggested for increasing the activity of the skin will all be especially valuable if employed as adjuncts to the fast. The free drinking of water and especially the hot- water-drinking plan, together with the colon-flushing treatment, will likewise help to facilitate the cleansing and blood-purifying action of the fast. Pure blood is the all-important factor in health. If the blood is not pure it can be made pure by the methods which I have suggested. Remember that this purity depends first upon pure food and functional strength, in order that a good quality of blood may be produced; and secondly, upon active elimination of wastes, poisons and impurities in general. CHAPTER XVII: Hints on Bathing I have already referred to the value of accelerating the activity of the functions of the skin. The ordinary practice of bathing is of great importance in this connection. Many diseases would be prevented if the skin were thoroughly cleansed with due regularity. Probably a weekly soap-and-water bath is all that is absolutely essential for cleanliness if one follows a daily regimen which will maintain a condition of internal cleanliness. In fact, the cleansing of the external body is not required with such frequency if one secures sufficient muscular exercise and follows a dietetic and general regimen that will guarantee sufficient activity of all the eliminative functions; but if one neglects to employ other measures that help to maintain the purity of the blood and the activity of the skin, then more frequent baths are required to insure cleanliness. It has been my custom to recommend a hot soap-and-water bath once or twice a week, depending upon the individual requirements, and a daily cold bath. The hot bath is to be used as a cleansing agent while the cold bath is a tonic exclusively. A regimen of this sort will usually be satisfactory where one is taking a general system of exercise nearly every day which will insure a certain amount of internal functional activity. Note, however, that the cold bath, though of some value, is not necessary, when following the hot-water-drinking regimen. There has been much controversy as to whether or not cold baths are really beneficial, since in some cases they have proved harmful. Under such circumstances the failure to secure good results may have been due to ignorance of the principles involved and to the lack of vitality essential to reaction from the shock of the cold water. A great deal depends upon the manner in which the cold bath is taken and the physical condition of the individual taking it. A cold bath is a strong stimulant to the entire circulatory system, provided one can recuperate with a feeling of warmth immediately thereafter. If this feeling of warmth does not follow, if you feel cold, uncomfortable, nervous and trembling for some time after the bath, the shock has been too severe and is not of advantage. Under such circumstances it is better either to avoid the bath altogether or else take more exercise in order more thoroughly to warm the body before taking the bath. Usually if one is warm before bathing and if the cold bath is taken in a warm room it is easy to recuperate from it. Another good suggestion in a case of this kind is to decrease the duration of the bath. Do not stay in the water too long. In some cases what is sometimes called a hand bath may be advantageous. This bath is taken by merely wetting the hands several times in the water and applying the moist palms to all parts of the body. The familiar sponge bath, so-called, using either a sponge or a washcloth, is often advised, although the hand bath just mentioned is even easier to take. I have also frequently recommended the use of the dry friction bath, following exercise, as a means of preparing the body for a cold bath. I have already referred to these dry friction rubbings as a means of accelerating the activity of the skin. This friction bath will, in nearly all cases, warm the skin sufficiently to enable one thoroughly to enjoy the cold water. In fact, this friction is to a cold bath what appetite is to eating. You should enjoy your meals and you should enjoy your cold bath. It is only when the cold bath is a pleasure that it is a benefit. If you dread it, if the mere thought of taking a cold bath brings a shudder, it will not be of benefit to you. You should feel sufficiently vigorous and vital really to enjoy it. A friction bath will put your skin in a condition where the cold water will "feel good." Exercise that thoroughly warms the body will naturally have the same effect. The statement has often been made that to take a cold bath when overheated is dangerous just as it would be to drink a large amount of very cold water when overheated. It is said that one should wait until he cools off before taking the cold drink or cold plunge. To a limited extent there is wisdom in this advice, especially as it applies to getting into cold water when overheated and then remaining there until you have cooled off. Such quick cooling is certainly dangerous, just as drinking too much very cold water is dangerous. On the other hand, a short quick cold bath under such circumstances is not dangerous but highly advisable. The danger in such cases lies in remaining in the water until chilled. As a matter of fact, when one is overheated he can thoroughly enjoy the cold water. You will recuperate quickly under such conditions and you can better afford to take a cold bath when very hot than when chilled. Do not attempt cold bathing when you have "goose flesh" or when your hands and feet are cold. Under such circumstances the hand bath is preferable. It is always best when overheated to cool off gradually, and after the bath taken under such circumstances to use a sweater or bath robe or other covering to insure the desired result. When one is overheated, it is best to drink water lukewarm or hot or only moderately cool. If you drink lukewarm water when overheated you can take any quantity desired. As previously stated, however, I would like to point out that if you are carrying out the regimen of hot-water-drinking and exercise previously referred to, a daily cold bath is not at all necessary. It might be taken with benefit if you are vigorous, but by flushing the body with a large amount of liquid according to the plan I have suggested virtually all functions of the body, including that of the skin itself, are accelerated in their activities. Under such circumstances less bathing is required, at least for the purpose of maintaining proper circulation and functional activity. Therefore the question may be left open for each individual to determine. One may take a cold bath or not, just as he may desire, while following the regimen referred to. Many who enjoy a cold bath are inclined to stay in the water too long. In this way one may deprive himself of some of the benefits that might be derived therefrom. It is safer to limit the cold bath to a short period. The chief value lies in the reaction. If this is secured then all is well. The first effect of the cold water is to contract the tissues at the surface of the body, including the blood vessels, thus forcing the blood away from the skin. In the reaction the blood is brought back to the surface in large quantities, producing the glow that is noticed after a successful cold bath. After a short plunge or quick shower this reaction should be secured. By staying in the water too long one may overtax his vitality and become chilled. When taking a plunge simply allow the water to come in contact with all parts of the body; then immediately get out. If the recuperative powers are defective you should not use cold water, though the hand bath as described should be satisfactory. In such cases, however, by maintaining the warmth of the feet you can recuperate quickly and easily. If you will stand with your feet in hot water while taking the hand bath, or sponge bath, or when using a hand spray in the bathtub, recuperation will be easier. When the feet are warm the circulation is more easily maintained. Following a hot bath, the hand spray can be used for the shower, applying the water quickly to all parts of the body before getting out of the tub. One should always use a cold sponge, spray, or shower, after a hot bath to close the pores. Then rub dry quickly and vigorously with a Turkish towel. A sitz bath is recommended instead of a full tub bath, as it is a tonic of great value through its effect upon certain sympathetic nerve centers. This bath consists in immersing only the central part of the body, namely, the hips and abdomen. Special sitz tubs are manufactured, but one can use an ordinary wash tub. An ordinary bathtub will serve if filled with water about six to ten inches deep. Put the feet on the edge of the tub and lower the hips down into the water. This bath is especially valuable as a means of stimulating functional activity. The colder the water for the sitz bath the better, although if one is lacking in vitality, it should not be below 70 degrees Fahrenheit. A hot sitz bath may sometimes be suggested for inflammatory and painful conditions in the pelvic region. In inflammation of the bladder, for instance, it is valuable. When taking hot baths for cleansing purposes the soap used is of some importance; especially so if the skin is thin or too dry. In such cases strong soaps are injurious, although their effect may be overcome to some extent by rubbing the body after the bath with a very little bit of olive oil. I would suggest, however, the use of a pure vegetable oil soap, such as castile, which is one of the best examples of a vegetable soap. This soap may be suggested in all cases, but it is particularly important when the skin is thin or dry. Very frequently dryness of skin is noticed in those of very light complexion. In the preceding chapter on Blood Purification I referred to a hot bath for the purpose of rapidly eliminating poisons and wastes in the body. An ordinary warm bath for cleansing purposes need not be taken at such a high temperature. In other words a soap-and-water bath will be perfectly satisfactory at a temperature of 103 to 105 degrees F. and need not occupy more than a very few minutes, whereas the hot bath referred to for the special purpose of blood purification may be of longer duration and of a much higher temperature, running up to 110 or 115 degrees Fahrenheit. There is another type of warm bath, however, which is of special value in many cases. This is what I have sometimes termed a neutral bath, inasmuch as it is neither hot nor cold. This is a bath at about the temperature of the body, that is to say, 95 to 98 degrees Fahrenheit. One should use a bath thermometer to be sure of the right temperature. This neutral bath has a sedative or quieting effect upon the nerves through its effect upon the innumerable nerve endings in the skin. It is neither hot nor cold, neither stimulating nor weakening, and one could remain in such a bath for hours without harm. It has a quieting effect upon the nerves and reference has been made to it in the chapter on Sleep as a means of overcoming excitement or nervousness. In attacks of mania it is especially valuable, and is now extensively used in all insane asylums because of its wonderful effect in quieting the nerves. This bath at 98 degrees is also especially commended in the case of severe burns covering a large surface. It is about the only way in which a person suffering from such an extensive burn can be made comfortable. It is also one of the most perfect forms of treatment in a case of that kind. The serious character of the burn depends not so much upon the severity as upon the extent of the surface involved. Therefore, one who has been seriously burned could remain immersed in a bath at 98 degrees F. for many days continuously, or until the skin has had a chance to heal. Immersion in water is a natural condition, for there was a time away back when all the animal life of the earth was found in the water. It was only through special variation in the character of evolution that certain forms of life finally became adapted to a life outside of the water. Therefore, immersion in water, except for the head, is not entirely an unnatural condition. CHAPTER XVIII: Some Facts About Clothing The statement is often heard that a man is made or marred by the clothes he wears. This is frequently said with a view to emphasizing the importance of being presentably appareled, but it has a meaning beyond this. To a certain extent we are really made, or we may more properly say marred, by the clothes we wear. Civilized costumes have become what they are through the dictation of the creators of style, the clothing manufacturers. Every year the styles change through the commands of those whose profits are increased by this continual variation in the fashions. It is said that a woman would rather be out of the world than out of style. Therefore, each year she discards her old-style costumes and buys the latest modes. We have to recognize, however, that clothing is a necessary evil at this period of human progress, so-called. There was a time when clothing was worn entirely as a matter of protection or as a means of adding warmth to the body. There was no thought given to the necessity for covering the body, for every part of the human anatomy was as commonplace as nose, fingers and toes. But now clothing is commanded as a means of hiding our bodily contour. Prudery has come in and branded the human anatomy as indecent and consequently it must be covered. Now in considering what we should wear we are compelled to adhere, at least to a reasonable extent, to what we call style, but beyond this our first thought must be for bodily comfort. And in speaking of comfort we mean not only the warmth essential to this but also the ability to use every part of our bodily structure with as little restraint as possible. If we could wear a costume which would permit us to feel just as free and untrammeled in our movements as we do when without clothing such a form of dress would be ideal. Our movements should not be restricted by our clothing any more than is absolutely unavoidable. The ordinary skirt, supposed to be a necessary part of feminine apparel, Is in its nature an evil of first importance. Every step taken by a woman wearing such a garment is hampered; she is continuously handicapped by her skirt. If a man were compelled to walk through tall, heavy grass all his life he would get some idea of the extent to which the feminine skirt interferes with the freedom of woman. Numerous other defects of our costumes interfere with bodily freedom. Take our tight and ungainly shoes. Here is an abominable instance of our slavery to style. In most instances the foot is made to fit the shoe, and the suffering that is endured by many so-called stylish people for the purpose of making the foot fit the shoe would be difficult to describe. A shoe should fit the foot. The more nearly you approximate the same freedom when walking in a shoe as you do when barefooted the more perfect the shoe. The toes should not be squeezed out of shape. The great toe should follow the straight line of the inside of the foot instead of being bent over to the position normally occupied by the middle toe. All the toes should be allowed to spread out in the shoe, at least to a reasonable extent. Furthermore, a shoe that really fits should feel comfortable the first time it is put on. There should be no necessity for "breaking in" a shoe. The artificial heel added to the ordinary shoe is another curious freak of fashion. If the Almighty in perfecting the human foot had found a high heel necessary it would have been provided. The artificial heel, especially the very high heel commonly used on shoes worn by women, is an insult to Nature, to the Creator. Some day, when we are really civilized, high heels will be unknown. I am convinced that the Omnipotent Creator knew his business thoroughly when he created the human foot, that the sole of the human foot, heel included, was made for locomotion, and that it is impossible for human ingenuity to improve upon the foot. In other words, if you can secure footwear that will enable you to walk with the same freedom that you can enjoy when barefooted, you will then have attained perfection in foot covering. Sandals and moccasins allow the feet the same freedom as one enjoys when barefooted. The sole of these forms of footwear has the same freedom in gripping the ground and adapting itself to the requirements of every step as the bare foot, and it is a curious and yet significant fact that whereas more or less foot trouble is the rule rather than the exception among civilized peoples, yet those races who wear moccasins or sandals, or go barefooted, never have flatfoot, broken arches, bunions or other defects of this type. Passing to the other extreme of the body, our tight hats should be condemned. Hats should be as light as possible and should not be so tight as to interfere with the circulation of the scalp. Many bald headed men owe their loss of hair to tight hats. The stiff collars worn everywhere at the present time mar the natural contour of the neck, make an erect position more difficult, and are one cause of the round shoulders that are so common everywhere to-day. The suspenders worn by men have also an influence of this sort. They are inclined to pull the shoulders forward and make it more difficult to maintain an erect position. The flat-chested man will not feel his suspenders, but the man with a full round chest, properly carried, is under continuous pressure from his suspenders. If I were to select an ideal costume for men I am inclined to think that I would go back to the Roman toga, to the flowing drapery of the Greeks, or to the Scottish kilt. The kilt is undoubtedly better suited than the robe to the colder weather of Northern Europe and America. These costumes not only allow a reasonable amount of freedom for all bodily movements, encouraging rather than discouraging the correct position of the body, but they also allow free circulation of air to the central portions of the body. As a hygienic feature this is of tremendous value. The air coming in contact with the skin is of value at all times, but it is especially required in these important parts of the bodily organism. Many weaknesses are brought about through the unhealthful covering and restriction of these parts. Trousers are not by any means an ideal garment. To be sure, they are a vast improvement over the long skirt, but they are not by any means equal in healthfulness to the costume of the Scottish Highlanders. In feminine apparel corsets are perhaps productive of more injury than any other part of the costume. The injury wrought by tight lacing is now everywhere understood, and in recent years large waists have become stylish. This tendency of the times will ultimately mean the elimination of the corset. When fully clothed we should have the same freedom of movement as when unclothed. The most perfect costume is our "birthday clothing," the clothing with which we came into the world, the human skin. To be sure, in cold climates bodily covering is necessary for warmth a part of the year, though in warm climates, or warm seasons, the more nearly we avoid restrictive apparel, the more happy and more healthy we are. The ideal costume in warm weather, therefore, would be no costume, but conventions demand that we cover our nakedness, and this command should be followed in a manner that will restrain our movements as little as possible. The question of color is an important factor in clothing. This is especially true in summer when exposure to the sun makes it especially necessary to consider our comfort. All dark-colored clothing absorbs the heat and the sun becomes very oppressive to the wearer. Then, too, black and dark-colored coverings shut out the light, another objectionable feature. In my reference to sun baths in the preceding chapter on Blood Purification I placed special emphasis upon the value of light as a vitalizing and stimulating factor in life and health. Ordinarily we not only smother our skins so far as the air is concerned, but we also shut out the light, hiding our bodies in a cellar, so to speak. Our bodies need light as well as air and for this reason dark colored clothing cannot be recommended. For warmth when in the sunshine during the winter, black is very effective. When out of the sunshine black is cooler in winter than light-colored fabrics because it quickly radiates the body heat. It is well known that a black stove radiates the heat much faster than a nickel-plated or brightly polished stove. White or light-colored garments are advised in summer, both because they are cooler and because they permit the light to reach the skin. The Arabs, Bedouins and others who live in unforested countries where they are much exposed to the tropical sun use turbans and flowing robes of white as a means of keeping cool. Pure white is often unserviceable, because it quickly becomes soiled, and therefore gray and tan- colored garments are recommended. It is easily possible to absorb too much sunshine, especially in the lower latitudes. The various races of the earth enjoy a degree of pigmentation of the skin corresponding to the intensity of the sunlight in the latitude to which they have become accustomed through the course of evolution. Equatorial races are black, far-northern races are blonde with very fair skin, and those occupying mean latitudes are either brown or olive-hued. Brunettes or fairly dark-complexioned white men can stand more sunshine than the blue-eyed, fair-skinned types of Scotland, Norway and Sweden. Where the latter are exposed to intensely strong sunshine in latitudes further south than their natural home, and especially when visiting the tropics, where the sun's rays are nearly vertical, some special protection from the excessive light is necessary. Then the upper or outer clothing should be white or light-colored, but an undergarment of some opaque or dark-colored material should be used to shut out the light. In the case of tropical animals Nature provides a light-colored or tawny growth of hair, with an underlying black or heavily pigmented skin. The white man when in the tropics or when subject to the chemical rays of the sun in midsummer would do well to follow Nature's example, wearing light clothing outside with black- or orange-colored or other opaque underwear. The hat should be white or tan or light-colored on top, but with a dark-colored lining extending under the brim. Blonde types spending the summer in a latitude like that of Texas or Mexico would do well to consider these suggestions. Sunlight is essential to life. Sun baths are invaluable and ordinarily our clothing should be such as to permit the light to reach the skin. But when the sun's rays are nearly vertical fair-skinned persons may easily protect themselves and maintain comfort by following this suggestion. As a general thing, during both winter and summer, one should wear no more clothing than necessary, and that should be of a type to permit easy access of air to the skin. For this reason the character of one's underwear is important. Wool is undoubtedly warmer and more or less suitable for exceptionally cold weather; yet for most purposes linen is to be preferred because of its more porous character. Linen permits of free circulation of the air, and when the underwear is woven with an open mesh it is especially satisfactory. Next to linen cotton is to be preferred, being likewise porous. The question of underwear is one to be determined largely by individual taste and requirements, but always it should be understood that one should wear underwear as light as is consistent with warmth and as porous as possible. This principle should also apply in the matter of shoes. Air-tight foot coverings are highly detrimental as well as uncomfortable. Leather in its natural state is porous and therefore a healthful foot covering. Patent- leather shoes, however, have been made air-tight by a special process, and are very hot, uncomfortable and unsanitary. The sole of the shoe should consist of nothing but plain leather. So-called waterproofing processes, making the shoe air-tight as well as waterproof, should be avoided. Patented, waterproof soles are highly objectionable. If you can have your shoes made to order see to it that the sole consists of nothing but leather-indeed a single layer of good sole leather is most satisfactory. Although such shoes will absorb water they will dry readily, and the disadvantage of wet feet on occasions is more than offset by the benefits gained from a porous foot covering the rest of the time. Anyway, wet feet are unimportant if the feet are warm. A word about winter clothing. Heavy underclothing is entirely unsuited to the temperatures maintained inside our houses during the winter. We usually have a summer temperature indoors in winter and should wear summer clothing. It is true that we require warmer clothing out-of-doors in winter, but this should be used only when out-of-doors; we should not wear heavy, warm garments both indoors and out. Therefore, while the farmer who spends the day in the open would probably need heavy warm underwear, the city man should dress approximately the same as in summer when indoors, and add the garments necessary for additional warmth when going out. Sweaters, gaiters and overcoats should be depended on when going out-of-doors instead of heavy undergarments. Clothing, as I have said, is a necessary evil. So far as possible it should not hamper our movements and should not deprive our bodies of light and air. Since it is necessary to wear clothing, I would strongly emphasize the importance of taking air baths at frequent intervals. When spending the evening in the privacy of your own room, studying or writing letters, you have a good opportunity to enjoy an air bath during the entire evening. And furthermore, when at home you should lay aside your coat and use no more bodily covering than is necessary. If you cannot take sun baths at a special hour each day, then I would advise that when taking your walk out-of-doors in the sunshine you wear clothing of such a character as to admit the rays of the sun, thus enabling you to enjoy a sun bath during your walk. A special suit of clothes, made of natural-colored linen, with a thin light shirt, light- colored socks and no underwear, would answer all purposes admirably. CHAPTER XIX: Suggestions About Sleep Sleep is one of the first essentials in maintaining or in building vitality. There are differences of opinion as to how much sleep may be necessary to health, but that sufficient sleep is required if one wishes to maintain the maximum of energy no one can question. Sleep is far more necessary than food. One can fast for many days, or many weeks if necessary, and without any special disadvantage if he is well nourished before beginning the fast and has a satisfactory food supply after ifs conclusion, but no one can "fast" from sleep for more than a few days at a time without experiencing ill effects. One can scarcely endure an entire week of absolute sleeplessness. It has been found that dogs kept awake even though sufficiently fed, suffer more than when deprived of food and permitted to sleep. When kept awake continuously they die in four or five days. Man can endure the strain a little longer than the dogs, but five or six days usually marks the limit of human life under such conditions. In early English history condemned criminals were put to death by being deprived of sleep, and the same method has been employed in China. Enforced sleeplessness, in fact, has been used as a form of torture by the Chinese, being more feared than any other. The men subjected to this frightful ordeal always die raving maniacs. These facts illustrate only too well the imperative necessity for sleep. Unfortunately "late hours" prevail, especially in large cities. Manifestly, if complete lack of sleep is fatal, late hours and partial lack of sleep is at least devitalizing and detrimental to health. The late hours kept by large numbers of people in civilized countries undoubtedly contribute very largely to neurasthenia and allied diseases. Improvements in artificial lights have contributed largely toward the increase of the evil of late hours, injurious not only through the loss of sleep entailed, but also because of the eye-strain incidental to strong artificial lights and the drain on the nervous system. If civilized man would follow the example of primitive man and of many of the birds and animals in retiring to bed with the coming of darkness and arising with the appearance of daylight, this one change would revolutionize the health of the whole human race. How much sleep do we need? This is a question that cannot be answered arbitrarily as applying in all cases. Individuals differ. Without doubt, some require more sleep than others. Thomas A. Edison, who is an extraordinary man, not only in respect to his vitality but in every other characteristic as well, has frequently been quoted as saying that most men and women sleep too much. Mr. Edison himself claims to maintain the best of health with from three to five hours' sleep out of every twenty-four. We have heard of other cases too, of men and women with exceptional vitality, who have seemed to thrive on four or five hours' sleep. It is possible that this small allowance of sleep may be sufficient in such cases, but if so, it is undoubtedly due to the exceptionally powerful organism which these particular persons have inherited. No definite rule can be laid down as to the amount of sleep required by different individuals, for those possessing the greatest amount of vitality and the strongest organisms will require less sleep than those of limited vitality and weak functional powers. Those possessing a strong functional system and great vitality are able to build up energy during sleep and recuperate from the exertions of the preceding day more rapidly than can those less favored in this respect. In other words, a very strong man can be quickly rested. His system can more rapidly than that of a weak man repair the wear and tear of his daily work. The man or woman with limited strength and a less vigorous functional system would require a longer time in which to recuperate. Therefore, what would hold good in the case of such an extraordinary man as Mr. Edison cannot be depended upon in the case of the average man or woman, and certainly will not meet the needs of those who are debilitated and striving to build vitality. Generally speaking, therefore, I maintain that most people at the present day sleep too little rather than too much. I would not stipulate any special number of hours for sleeping but I would advise everyone to secure as much sleep as he requires. It has often been said that if you sleep too much you will be stupid as a result. Such results are usually brought about by sleeping in unsatisfactory environment, particularly in stuffy rooms in which the air is vitiated and really unfit to breathe. I cannot imagine one feeling stupid as a result of oversleeping when sleeping out-of-doors, or when the supply of air is absolutely fresh. Excessive heat would probably be conducive to restlessness, but this is purely a detail which I shall take up later. Under natural and healthful conditions one will rarely sleep too much. If you sleep until you wake up naturally there is little danger of your sleeping too much. Without doubt most people need from seven to eight hours' sleep; some of them need more, particularly women and children, who in many cases require from nine to ten hours' sleep or even more. These are general statements. Individual exceptions will be many, but, as I have said, it will be found that those who need less sleep are men and women of extraordinary vitality. The quality of sleep is really more important than the duration of sleep. It is quality or depth of sleep that is really what counts, and to secure this it is necessary that certain healthful conditions be observed. The first of these is a normal condition of physical or muscular fatigue. This is easily distinguished from nervous fatigue or exhaustion in which the entire system is more or less upset. Abnormal states of this sort arise from excitement, excessive mental work, or other conditions involving severe nerve strain. This nervous fatigue is not usually conducive to sleep, but a tired condition of the muscles of the body generally, as a result of natural physical activity, is always favorable to sleep. Many who complain of insomnia, therefore, would often be able to remedy their trouble by the simple expedient of a long walk, covering sufficient distance to bring about the physical fatigue which makes sleep possible. Conditions of air, temperature and bed covering are also important factors in connection with the quality of sleep. If you are a sound sleeper it may be possible for you to secure more benefit from three to four hours' sleep than a shallow sleeper may secure in eight hours of a lighter degree of sleep. This extreme depth of sleep means complete rest for the brain, absolute loss of consciousness, and, to a certain extent, loss of sensibility in respect to our senses. In the lighter degree of sleep certain parts of the brain may be at rest, while others are more or less active. Dreaming represents a state of partial consciousness rather than a condition of complete rest, inasmuch as various parts of the brain are active. One may thus be conscious of his dreams. There is no doubt, however, that in other cases various parts of the brain may be active though we may not be conscious of their activity. We have all heard of instances where mathematical problems appear to have been worked out during sleep, and we have heard of musical compositions and poems being produced during sleep. All these phenomena represent a condition in which one is partly asleep and partly awake; in other words, some parts of the brain are active and others are asleep. In extreme depth of sleep when all the mental faculties are at rest, the energies are relaxed, and the activities of the body are at a low ebb; it is such sound sleep that makes for rapid recuperation. The deepest sleep generally occurs within the first few hours after falling to sleep, and it gradually becomes lighter and lighter in degree until consciousness is reached. Dreams, therefore, represent partial consciousness and usually appear in the earlier hours of the morning. When one states that he dreams all night he is invariably mistaken. One may seem to live over periods of days and even years in a dream, the actual duration of which may be measured in minutes. The chances are that the dreamer enjoyed a sound sleep before his dreaming commenced. Although I have said that depth of sleep is more important than the duration of sleep, yet it is true that when one sleeps very soundly he usually sleeps longer. In other words, when one reaches great depth of sleep the transition to the period of wakefulness is only gradual, and it requires a longer time to complete the sleep and wake up than it would if one did not sleep so deeply, or, as we would say, so soundly. It will be found that healthy children, who unquestionably sleep very soundly, also sleep for many hours at a time. They may have dreams but these occur in the later hours of sleep, as every mother has observed. The man or woman well advanced in years who can secure the same depth of sleep that a vigorous child en joys will undoubtedly spend the bigger part of the night in sleep and will acquire exceptional vitality as a result. Bodily rest, even without sleep, is undoubtedly of great value for purposes of recuperation. To a certain extent such rest, especially if associated with a state of very complete relaxation of the muscles, will make it possible to take less sleep without serious devitalizing results. The man or woman who suffers from insomnia should learn that he can recuperate to a considerable extent through simple physical relaxation without the unconsciousness of sleep. Undoubtedly the physical inactivity common among civilized races has much to do with their ability to keep late hours. But of course this involves more or less nerve strain. The brain does not get sufficient rest, and the loss of sleep involves such an expenditure of energy through the brain as to constitute a serious drain upon the nervous system. Even though rest for the body during consciousness is of certain value, it cannot go very far in taking the place of true sleep. To the higher centers of the brain and nervous system an opportunity must be given for the complete relaxation that comes only with the entire loss of consciousness. As I have already said, those who are lacking in vitality and who are trying to build strength need more sleep than those who are already strong. Especially those who find it difficult to sleep need additional nervous strength and should carefully observes rules that will promote sleep. One will often hear sufferers from insomnia complain that they never sleep! They are convinced that night after night and week after week passes without their being able to close their eyes in slumber. They are deluded in every case, because they could not maintain life for more than five or six days if this were true. The fact is that they drop off to sleep and then awaken without being conscious that they have been asleep. At the same time, in all such conditions, it is necessary to improve the quality of sleep so that it will be truly refreshing. I have already referred to the influence of good healthy muscular fatigue as a means of enabling one to sleep. Walking and out-of-door life will in almost every case make the nervous man or woman sleep like a child. One should not be too fatigued, but sufficiently so to thoroughly enjoy the sensation of lying down. One cannot truly enjoy sleep except when he has reached this condition of bodily fatigue. To induce this, I would recommend a walk in the evening before going to bed, covering several miles. Although walking for health should ordinarily be brisk enough to stimulate breathing and arouse an active circulation, thus strengthening the internal organs, for the purpose of promoting drowsiness the last mile or two of the evening walk should preferably be very slow. Fast movements are stimulating to mind and nerves. Slow movements have a sedative effect. By walking very slowly as if one were tired the desired effect of fatigue is more satisfactorily secured. One imagines the need of rest under such conditions. The quality of the air is another important factor, though I need not dwell upon that here. The air you breathe during sleep should be especially fresh and pure, particularly so because of the more shallow character of the breathing. If you are in a room, all the windows should be open as wide as possible. If you have a covered balcony or porch, or if you can avail yourself of a flat roof, it is always advisable to sleep out-of-doors. The increased vitality will more than repay you for your trouble. There is something about out-of-door sleeping that vitalizes, energizes, and refreshes one to an unusual extent. Circulation is another important factor in sound sleep, especially for nervous persons. Many of those who complain of an inability to sleep suffer more or less from congestion of blood in the brain; also they complain of cold feet or cold hands and feet. In such instances, warm feet will often bring a solution of the problem. In some instances drinking a half cup of hot milk or hot water before going to bed will draw the blood from the brain and enable one to sleep. A hot foot bath before going to bed will do the same thing, or one may use a hot-water bag or hot flatiron wrapped up in flannels, or even a hot brick treated in the same way, to keep the feet warm when in bed. In extreme cases it might be advisable to apply cold packs to the head while applying heat to the feet or when taking the hot foot bath. Another measure of special value for nervous persons is a bath at the temperature of the body, to be taken for a half-hour before going to sleep. In cases of extreme excitement, anger or nervousness this bath is invaluable. Fill the tub with water at 96 degrees Fahrenheit or 98 degrees Fahrenheit. You can remain in this bath for several hours without harm, for it is neither weakening nor stimulating. It has a soothing effect upon the nerves and is even valuable in preventing attacks of hysteria or other nervous difficulties. This particular bath is so effective in hospitals for the insane that it has frequently obviated the use of padded cells and straight jackets. It is just as effective for the nervous person who wishes to overcome the excitement that is preventing sleep. A half-hour bath should be sufficient for ordinary purposes. Another remedy of great value for soothing the nerves is the air bath. I have referred to this in another part of this volume, but it is extremely valuable for quieting the nerves in cases of insomnia. If the room is comfortably warm, an air bath can be advantageously taken for half an hour before going to bed. One of the most valuable remedies for those suffering from sleeplessness is to lie in an air bath during the entire night. This idea can be carried out very easily by raising the bed covering in such a way as to remove its weight from the body, thus providing what we might call a chamber of air in which to sleep. With the aid of a large safety-pin or a horse-blanket safety-pin, the bed clothing may be kept thus suspended. The safety-pin is pinned through all the coverings in the centre of the bed and then by means of a string passing through the safety-pin and running from the top of the head of the bed to the top of the foot of the bed the bed covering can easily be raised to the desired height. The appearance of the bed is then somewhat like that of a small tent. One may not feel warm immediately after entering, if the weather is cold, but if the covering is thick enough and the air is entirely excluded, a perfect air bath, warm and comfortable, can be enjoyed during the entire night. The head, of course, will keep its usual position outside of the covers. No underclothing or night clothing should be worn when attempting to carry out this idea. The problems associated with covering are of considerable importance. Many people are unable to sleep because of cold feet and many are overheated by an excess of covering. It should not be necessary to bury one's self underneath a heavy load of covers in order to keep the feet warm. Use as little covering as possible and still maintain the bodily warmth. Eider-down bed covers are very valuable because of their light weight and great warmth-retaining qualities. Overheating during sleep produces restlessness and robs one of the sense of refreshment on awakening. The question of cold feet I have already dealt with. The difficulty, in most cases, is one of defective circulation before going to bed. If one will be sure that his feet are warm and his circulation good before retiring to bed he will invariably have no trouble of this kind, even during winter time. I do not mean that one should be chilled by insufficient bedding, but I certainly would advise as little covering as is compatible with a comfortable degree of warmth. The feather beds, much used in Europe, are undesirable, as they are unsanitary and are too warm for nearly all seasons of the year. It is always best to sleep between clean linen sheets. For purposes of warmth, however, bear in mind that cotton is of very little value, whereas animal-product covers such as wool and down, or feathers, are exceptionally warm. Cotton comforters in cold weather are very heavy, but cold, whereas woolen blankets, wool-filled comforters or down- filled comforters are warm, but light. "A warmth without weight" should be the chief consideration in cold weather. And in using woolen coverings you can get sufficient warmth without much weight and with the very least quantity of covering. In summer use only a single woolen blanket or a light cotton coverlet over the sheet. When the nights are hot and sultry it would be well to use no covering of any kind. For warmth in winter special attention should be given to warm fabrics underneath the lower sheet as well as the coverings. One may become chilled from underneath if lying upon a thin mattress or an uncovered mattress. A wool-filled comforter, or double woolen blanket, placed over the mattress and under the sheet will contribute greatly to one's warmth. If the mattress is of proper thickness one can be comfortable with less covering and therefore less weight. However, I would suggest as a better plan the one that I have presented of sleeping in a virtual air bath the whole night through. The use of a pillow is necessary in nearly all cases. When one is sleeping on his back a pillow is certainly an objectionable feature. It tips the head forward and is conducive to round shoulders. A pillow is of value when sleeping on the side or in the partial face-downward position, as indicated in the illustration. The accompanying illustration shows a special position that I can recommend for securing restful sleep and for insuring deeper respiration. In this position you sleep with the body tipped forward partly upon the chest, and on the forearm, with one elbow just back of the body and hand under the waist. The knee of the upper leg will be drawn up somewhat. While this is a very comfortable position its chief advantage lies in the effect upon the respiration. It will be noted that in this position the organs lying below the diaphragm are placed in a suspended position, so to speak. The stomach and other organs by their own weight pull downward from the diaphragm, thus naturally allowing more space in the lungs, and particularly in the lower part of the lungs. Through the simple effect of gravitation, therefore, this position allows one to breathe a larger amount of air through the entire night. One may turn from one side to the other in order to change the position, as it will be equally comfortable on right or left sides. In cases where there is weakness of the heart the left-side position can not be recommended if discomfort of any sort is noticed. One often hears a reference to beauty sleep and is often asked: "Is it really true that an hour of sleep before midnight is equal to two hours after midnight?" There are many writers who claim that the time when you sleep matters but little if you secure a sufficient amount of sleep. It is doubtful, however, if this view is absolutely correct. I am inclined to lean towards the old-fashioned view as to the good effect of early retiring on beauty development that is based on health building. In one sense, it is reasonable to conclude that an hour of sleep before midnight is worth more than an hour thereafter. I am satisfied that there is greater exhaustion of the body from late than from normal hours, and it is difficult to get the full benefit from sleep when going to bed after midnight. At least the nerve strain of artificial light tends to produce a certain degree of vital depletion that one would not experience if his waking hours included only the daylight. Then again, there is probably some mysterious influence that we do not fully comprehend which makes sleep at night more restful than sleep during the daylight. Those who go to bed at midnight or thereafter use several hours of daylight in the early morning for sleeping. I realize that there are nocturnal animals and that the human race has developed nocturnal habits to a certain extent, but the human race and the animal life of the world generally have followed the habit through the ages of sleeping at night. Without doubt a revolutionary change in this habit has more or less effect upon the restful character of our sleep. Perhaps the mere question of light has much to do with it. Daylight is stimulating. Light has a chemical action and tends to stimulate animal metabolism. Darkness, or the lack of light, tends to a restful condition. Without doubt this question of light has much to do with the supposed benefits of sleep before midnight. The old saying that "early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" may not hold true in the matter of wisdom and wealth in all cases, but there is no doubt it has much to do with the development of health and vitality. CHAPTER XX: Mind-The Master-force for Health or Disease We hear of many miraculous achievements in the building of health and the cure of disease through mental influence. The mind is unquestionably a master-force. I will not go so far as to say it is limitless, for certainly a hungry man cannot imagine he is eating a dinner and secure the same benefits that he would from the meal itself. Nor can a man who is passing away into the other world, through a definite vital defect, bring back life through mental force. But we should remember that many diseases are to a great extent imaginary. And some of those not actually imaginary may at least be brought about through fears that are the results of abnormal delusions. And where such diseases are combated by mental forces of the right sort, a cure can be effected in many instances. In numerous cases, also, it is well to remember that the mental state is the actual cause of disease. You become blue, hopeless and to a certain extent helpless. You see nothing in the future. Life is dull. Ambition, enthusiasm, have all disappeared. It would not be at all difficult for this state of mind to bring about disease in some form. Health, strength, vitality of the right sort, should radiate all the elements and forces associated with life's most valuable possessions. Happiness and health are close friends. It is very difficult to be gloomy and miserable if you are healthy. It is perhaps even more difficult to be healthy if you are gloomy and mentally ugly. Therefore it is a wise precaution to cultivate a hopeful spirit. If the day is gloomy, if the sun is obscured by clouds, then develop the sunshine in your own spirit. Try to radiate good cheer. By seeking to cheer up others you will cheer yourself up, for always when we help others, we inevitably help ourselves, though this should not be our main purpose in the action. When we try to build up the characters, improve the morals and add to the mental and physical stability of others our efforts develop our own powers. Therefore, the best way to help yourself is to help others. We have a remarkable exemplification of the value of mental influence in what is known as Christian Science. Even the most prejudiced enemy of this cult will admit that many remarkable cures have been accomplished through the principles it advocates. These cures alone indicate clearly that the mind is a dominating force that works for good or for evil. They prove that your thoughts are building up or tearing down your vital forces; that to a certain extent "Thoughts are things," that good thoughts are a real tangible influence for developing mental or physical force, and-that bad thoughts have an opposite influence. It is well for each one of us to determine clearly whether the thoughts that fill our minds each day are constructive or destructive in nature. Your thoughts can actually destroy you. They can kill you as unerringly as a bullet fired from a rifle. Keep this fact very definitely before you, and try to make your thoughts each day the means of adding to your life forces. There are many emotions that are harbored on occasions, which are devitalizing and destructive. We are all, to a certain extent, slaves of habit, whether good or bad. For instance, there is the worrying habit, for worry is really a habit. Therefore, it is a splendid plan to become slaves of good habits. One who has acquired the chronic habit of worrying needs a mental antiseptic. Worry never benefited anyone; it has brought thousands to an untimely grave. To give prolonged and grave thought to a problem that may come into your life, with the view of forming an intelligent conclusion, should not be called worry, but anxiety. There is a very great difference between worry and concentrated study of a vexing problem. The characteristic of worry is a tendency to brood anxiously over fancied troubles. The typical worrying mind will take mere trifles and magnify them until they become monumental difficulties. Many acquire the habit of going over and over again, and still again, the various unpleasant experiences which they have passed through during life. This inclination is baneful in its influence, To such persons I would say, eliminate the past. Try the forgetting habit, cultivate health and along with it good cheer. Make your mind a blank so far as the past is concerned, and fill it with uplifting thoughts for the present and the future. Worry is a mental poison, the toxic element produced in the mind by retention of waste matter, thoughts of the dead past that should have been eliminated with the passing of out-worn periods of existence. Self-pity is another evil. It is closely allied to worry. There are many who cultivate a mental attitude of this sort because of the sorrows through which they have passed. Such individuals find their chief delight in portraying, in vivid details, the terrific sufferings which they have had to endure. No one has suffered quite so much as they have. They harrow their friends by going over frequently and persistently the long, gruesome details of their "awful" past. This habit is destructive to an extreme degree. Why harbor past experiences that only bring sorrows to mind? Why add to the bitterness of your daily life by dragging up the lamentable past? Why pass along to your friends and acquaintances pain, sorrow and gloom? Each human entity is a radiating power. You have the capacity of passing around pain or happiness. As a rule, when you ask a friend to "have something with you" your offer is supposed to bring good cheer. You surely would not ask a friend to have pain with you, or share with you the gall of bitter, experiences through which you have lived. Therefore, if you are the victim of self-pity and if your own past sufferings discolor your every pleasant thought, at least do not taint the minds of your friends. At least keep your direful broodings to yourself if you are determined to retain them. It is, however, far wiser and manlier to avoid such thoughts, in which case your memory of these torturing experiences will gradually fade away. Live in the future and forget the past. The man or woman who lives in the future, and for the future, will invariably be optimistic and cheerful. It is a good habit to cultivate. Then there is a mental poison called anger. Avoid it as you would a venomous snake. It has indeed been said by scientists that the venom of the snake is developed through anger, induced by impure circulation, for in reptiles the pure arterial blood mixes in the imperfectly formed heart with the impure venous blood. Scientists have also stated that anger produces a poison in the perspiration that emanates from the human body. This may or may not be true, but there is no question, however, about anger being a mental poison. It represents a tremendous waste of nervous energy. To be sure, there may be occasions when anger is justified, when it is actually desirable, but such occasions are rare. Learn to master such emotions. Get control of your feelings and mental states. Avoid useless anger definitely and finally. It usually indicates a lack of mental control, and should be recognized as a destructive force to be carefully avoided. Hate is, to a certain extent, synonymous with anger. One may call it anger in a chronic form. Hate and the personal enmities associated with it develop emotions and characteristics that unquestionably have a destructive influence. Why hate anybody? Why waste your nervous energies by trying to "get even" with a fancied enemy? A tremendous amount of human energy is wasted in this manner. You may be impressed with the idea that someone has wronged you. You lie awake at night forming plans for "getting even." Every mental effort spent in this direction is not only destructive to body, mind and character, but it represents a waste of nervous energy. One's life should be so filled with useful activities that no time will be left for a waste of this sort. Show me a man who spends his time and efforts trying to "get even" with his supposed enemies, and I will show you a shining example of failure. No man can succeed who wastes his nervous forces in this manner. Then there is the poison of avarice. Financial gain seems to be the one end and aim of many ambitious men. They struggle day after day and year after year in the whirlpool of perverted enthusiasm, looking continuously for wealth and still more wealth. But there is something more in life than money. Health, for instance, is worth a thousand times, and self-respect should be rated a million times, more than money. Do not allow a struggle of this sort to enslave you. Do not allow pursuits of any sort to interfere with the development and maintenance of those powers that indicate superior manhood and womanhood. It is also well to avoid the complaining and critical spirit. You will find frequent references in the Good Book to what might be termed the thankful spirit. It commands us to be thankful for what we have received. And whether or not the tenets of theology appeal to you, the thought presented is of the greatest value. If you can be thrilled each day with gladness because of the remembrance of pleasures that you have enjoyed the previous day the mental influence will be invaluable. Being thankful for what you have received does not necessarily indicate that you should not strive for more and better things. Dissatisfaction or discontent is not always necessary to spur one on to added powers and responsibilities. Avoid the complaining spirit, which will add gloom and despair to your life, no matter what may be your environment. Be thankful for the favors and opportunities that may have come to you, be they large or small, and your mental attitude in this respect will represent a potent health-building influence. Envy is another evil it will be well to avoid, largely because it is inspired by selfish attributes. Do not envy others the joy of possessions that may be theirs. Happiness, after all, is worth but little if it comes unearned. Life's greatest pleasures are secured only through intelligent and diligent efforts. They come as the results of hard work. A man who inherits great wealth secures little or no benefit from it. It adds but little to his pleasure in life, for the greatest possible happiness comes from the pursuit rather than the attainment of an object. More happiness comes from the pursuit of wealth or pleasure than from its actual attainment. Let the attainment of truth be your aim. Truth is magnificent. It is tremendously weighted with power. Whatever your ambitions or hopes in life may be, seek for the truth. In some cases the road that leads to this goal may be devious and hard to follow. Dangers of all sorts may beset you, as you struggle along the rugged pathway that leads to truth, but the rewards will amply repay you for every effort. Don't be a leaner. Try to stand alone. Be yourself. Bring out your own personal characteristics, do not be a stereotype, a parrot, a copy. Let others live their own lives, but you see to it that you live yours. Many of our public schools are turning out factory-made human beings; each pupil, as far as possible, a duplicate of every other. They are educational brick factories tuning out their products stamped exactly alike. Individuality is crushed out. Now the child is not so much like clay to be molded into any form, as it is like a precious crystal, that must be shaped with regard to its original nature. Each human soul is an uncut diamond. It often has within it capacities and powers which, if developed, might achieve results which we now expect only from exceptional human beings. Therefore; be yourself. Hold up your head, throw back your shoulders; remember that the earth and all that is thereon belongs to you. Anyway, it is well to be inspired by such a thought. It is the proper mental attitude. Life is a hard battle, and the rewards are to the strong and courageous. Be inspired by the dominating determination to get all there is in your life. Develop all your capacities and powers to their utmost limit, and then you can rest assured, that every thought that stirs your soul will be upbuilding rather than destructive in nature. CHAPTER XXI: The Laugh Cure The physiological effects of the mechanical and mental processes involved in laughing are not generally understood and appreciated. The "laugh cure" is a reality, for it is a remedy of very great value. Many a man, placed in a trying situation, would have been saved from tragical consequences if he could have found some means of arousing the emotions expressed in a good hearty laugh. Naturally there may be times in life when a laugh is utterly impossible, or may seem so. Nevertheless the inclination to stimulate the emotions associated with laughter and good humor should be encouraged at every opportunity. There is no question that laughter has valuable vitalizing qualities. It undoubtedly adds to one's stamina. It gives one a hopeful spirit. It leads one to look upon the bright side of life. When you can laugh, the sun is shining regardless of how many clouds obscure the sky. No matter what other efforts you may be making to build strength and vitality, do not allow the serious aide of life to occupy you continuously. Each day should have its laughing time, or its many laughing times. It is barely possible, of course, that laughing, like any other emotional expression, would become tiresome if overdone, but I am inclined to doubt the possibility of harmful effect under any circumstances. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," and the relaxation and recuperation that go with laughing should be sought with a certain amount of regularity. If you cannot find recreation of this kind through any other source, then attend a "funny show." Go to a theatre where merriment is supreme. On such occasions at least I would avoid tragedies or dramas that are inclined too much toward the sorrowful side of life. Personally, I have never had much use for plays of this sort. There are slough serious experiences in life without searching for recreation in the sorrows of others, which are, after all, only the expression of the imagination of some brooding dramatist. Some abnormal characters find pleasure in misery. I have heard some women say that "they enjoyed a good cry so much," and that "crying dramas were just grand." But I have been unable to discover anything rational in such sentiments. I may say, however, that in a sense there is a certain basis for this sentiment under certain circumstances. For crying, like laughter, has the physiological effect of producing a relaxation of tense nerves. There is a fundamental basis for crying, but this applies only to exceptional instances in which there is too much nervous tension. When nerves are strained to the "breaking point," crying will bring about a state of relaxation, and one will feel better. If there are times of strain when laughter is utterly impossible, then crying might even be beneficial. The effect on the breathing is very much the same in both cases, and there is a curious similarity in the action of the diaphragm and the mechanical character of the expulsion of the breath. Looking tat a person from behind, one cannot tell whether he is laughing or crying. Both produce relaxation of the nerves, both increase the activity of the lungs, and both involve a form of gymnastics for the diaphragm and entire breathing apparatus. But, while crying offers relief from extreme tension or grief, it does not justify crying for the so-called pleasure derived from it. Laughter is a pleasure, in itself, as well as a symptom of merriment. It is the expression of keen, bounding joy. It is an emotive manifestation that stirs one's whole nature and vitalizes every part of the body. There is a sound, physiological basis for amusements that make us laugh. Taking the world over, incalculable sums of money are spent for amusements that make us laugh, and it is money well spent. It is a sound and healthy instinct that leads the tired business man or the tired laborer to seek for mirth-provoking recreations. Professional "funny men" like John Bunny and Charles Chaplin undoubtedly add to the health of the human race, and they add to the vitality of those in whom they stimulate laughter. I feel sorry for anyone who has lost the power to laugh freely and heartily. When a man has brooded so much over the sorrows and miseries of life that he can no longer laugh, his condition is indeed serious. "Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone," is one of the truest things that Ella Wheeler Wilcox ever said. For a laugh that is spontaneous and heartfelt is truly contagious, and in your little world, the circle of your friends, laughing brings a rich reward in increasing your own happiness as well as theirs. The bodily expression and mechanical efforts that go with happiness will often induce the feelings and emotions associated therewith. To prove the accuracy of this statement, some morning when you are feeling especially gloomy and unpleasant, look into your mirror and go through the process of trying to make yourself smile. Screw up your features in such a manner as to force the required contractions of the facial muscles. If you continue your efforts long enough you will surely be rewarded by a real smile, and with the sense of good cheer that a smile will bring. You will make the surprising discovery at it is no longer an effort, for you will smile spontaneously. To go even further try the laugh cure in the following manner. First of all assume a laughing position, in order to laugh properly and to secure the best results. Stand with feet far apart, and with the knees slightly bent. Now bring the palms of both hands down and "slap" them vigorously on the legs just above the knees, and then swing your bent arms overhead, making a noise as nearly as possible like laughing. Yes, you are quite right, it will sound very much like a cold stage laugh at first, and you will have to force it, but as you go on with the experiment it will gradually become more natural. Continue this long enough and I defy anyone to differentiate the emotions aroused from those associated with a real, spontaneous laugh. In fact, if you have company while you are going through this process, I will guarantee that they will soon be "guffawing" loudly and violently. This experiment is an excellent one to thy on a company that is especially dull and in need of something unusual to awaken the spirit of good cheer. CHAPTER XXII: Singing-The Great Tonic Singing was designed by the Creator as a means of giving vent to joyous emotions. When one is overflowing with happiness it is entirely natural for him to break forth into song. Therefore when you sing the bodily mechanical efforts associated therewith are naturally inclined to arouse the mental attitude of joy, delight and allied emotions. I have already explained the tremendous value of certain bodily positions and mechanical efforts as a means of influencing the mental attitude. If singing is naturally the expression of joy, then by forcing oneself to sing when mentally downcast one encourages, and at times actually produces, happiness and good cheer. But it is not only for its influence upon the mind that singing is valuable. It is a physical exercise requiring considerable effort. It wakes up the diaphragm. It promotes active circulation. It improves digestion. Therefore it has a double value for stimulating the physical as well as the mental functions. I would by all means encourage every inclination towards physical efforts of this sort. Remember that the cultivation of the singing voice especially requires the expansion of the lungs. It means that breathing exercises of unusual value will be practiced diligently and persistently on every occasion that you exercise your vocal powers. It not only affects the lungs but the action of the diaphragm involved, and serves to massage, stimulate and invigorate the internal organs lying underneath. There is no need to dilate upon the value of exercise of this sort, for I have referred to this aspect of the question in a previous chapter. If you have no special knowledge or training in the use of the singing voice, then simply do your best. Sing at every opportunity. If there is no music in your voice do not allow this to discourage you. Follow out the idea that singing is an exercise pure and simple. Let your friends understand that you are not impressed with your vocal ability, but that it is simply a form of exercise you take with religious regularity. Naturally if you can secure the opportunities associated with a musical education you are to be congratulated, and musical training largely devoted to vocal culture is far more valuable in its influence upon physical and mental powers than when limited to instrumental work. Even apart from singing a good voice represents capital of great value. Any efforts that you make with a view to developing the singing voice will improve the speaking voice to a similar degree. Effective speakers do not always have musical voices, but all good singers possess good speaking voices. Therefore the work that you may do with a view to improving your singing voice will surely add to your vocal capital. Furthermore, all the time spent in the development of your voice should be looked upon as a recreation. If you can make voice culture a hobby, so much the better. There is really no better means of taking one "away from oneself." You will find no more effective means of diversion from exhausting mental responsibilities, since you cannot think of something else while devoting your entire attention to singing. Your mental attitude makes considerable difference in the results. Singing, as I have previously explained, is an expression of joy. To sing properly you should really be influenced by joyous emotions, and, though your musical efforts may be forced and mechanical in the beginning, you will usually find that the delight ordinarily associated with vocal expression will soon appear as a result of the physical and mechanical efforts involved in the training of the voice. Naturally it is advisable to use the singing voice in the most advantageous manner, if possible, and it would therefore be well to secure the advice of competent instructors if you can, or at least to gain what helpful information there is in books on the subject. It is, of course, impossible to give any detailed advice in this short chapter, but I may say that I am engaged in the preparation of a book on vocal culture which will deal with the subject in an unusually practical manner. Voice culture, in many instances, is a mysterious and intricate study that even many of its teachers do not seem to understand in every detail. It is a notorious fact that many so-called vocal instructors, including some of the highest-priced members of the profession, frequently ruin magnificent voices by wrong methods of instruction. It is a simple matter to build up a good voice, but it is also a simple matter to ruin one by unnatural methods of training. It is therefore well to learn to use the voice in a strictly natural manner, and without any straining or forcing of the tone. For instance, it is advisable to avoid any constriction of the muscles of the throat; that is to say, there should be no tension in the throat when singing. One should learn how to "place" the voice. Resonance is all-important. Many really good teachers differ as to the proper methods of using the voice. Although there may be a reasonable excuse for a difference on some of the minor details of voice culture, yet there are certain fundamental principles upon which there should be a definite agreement, and it is these basic principles which will be presented in the book to which I have just referred. At all events, whether or not you desire to take up vocal culture in a serious way, at least you should make it a point to sing at every opportunity. Break forth into song whenever the slightest excuse appears. If your voice is harsh, unpleasant and reminds your friends of a carpenter filing a saw, do not be discouraged. Every vocal artist had to make a beginning. No matter how bad your efforts may be you can probably recall voices that are still worse. Remember also that all voices improve with training. It is a matter of common agreement among instructors that anyone who possesses a speaking voice can also learn to sing. Anyway, at the worst, your hours of practice can be so arranged as to avoid annoying other people, or you can adopt a method that I have often used. For instance, when you are on a train, or in a busy centre of the city in which there is a combination of noises which will drown your own voice, you can then sing or hum to your heart's content without annoying others. Remember that humming, if you carry it out with sufficient breath to produce real resonance, is practically as good as singing for the training of the voice. There is one particular point of special value, and that is the advantage of singing when the stomach is empty. Vocal artists commonly refuse to sing immediately after eating. Your voice is free and full and clear when the stomach is empty. A few minutes of singing before each meal would enable one to digest his food far more satisfactorily. It would also establish the mental attitude best suited to perfect digestion. Whenever you find responsibilities crowding upon you beyond your power to bear them, or when you realize that your mental attitude is sour, crabbed and pessimistic, then is the time to break forth into song. Nothing will bring about a pleasing change more quickly. Hum a tune. Sing some popular song. Put your soul into your efforts as much as possible, and you will literally be amazed at the value of this suggestion. CHAPTER XXIII: The Daily Regimen Following is a brief summary of the suggestions in this volume which may be incorporated in the daily regimen: Rise from six to eight o'clock. Drink a cup of hot or cold water immediately upon arising. Take the thyroid-stimulating exercises. Follow by spine-strengthening movements in combination with the hot-water-drinking. Following these exercises a dry friction bath may be taken, if desired; also a cold bath. The latter is not necessary to the same extent while following the hot-water-drinking regimen as under ordinary circumstances. The bath may be varied from time to time by taking a cold sitz bath instead of a complete bath. Before breakfast indulge in a good laugh or a little singing. Eat a light breakfast-preferably consisting chiefly of acid fruits, such as oranges, apples, pears, grapefruit, grapes, etc. Throughout the day while following your daily duties remember the suggestions in reference to proper position. Make a continuous and never-ending fight to keep a straight spine. Hold the chin in, down and backward, with spine erect as nearly as possible, whether sitting or standing. Be hopeful, be cheerful, but cultivate the fighting spirit. You cannot have too much will power, determination. Eat your first hearty meal between twelve and two o'clock, depending upon the time at which you had breakfast. From five to six hours should elapse between meals to insure perfect digestion. Masticate thoroughly. Enjoy your food as much as possible. Do not eat without a keen appetite. Try to take a walk some time during the day. Remember during this walk to practice the thyroid-stimulating exercise-chin inward, downward and backward while holding a deep full breath, with the abdomen expanded. Do not forget the necessity of using liquids freely. Have water close at hand so that your thirst can easily be satisfied. Some time during the day, if possible, take some form of outdoor exercise which will compel deep full breathing similar to that induced by running. Try to get a good laugh or do a little singing before your evening meal. Your evening meal should be taken between six and eight o'clock, depending upon the time of breakfast and lunch. Do not forget my suggestion for closing the meal with a little acid fruit. A few spinal exercises, a walk or a short run before retiring can be highly recommended. During the evening, if convenient, take an air bath. Take a combination sun bath and air bath in the morning or at any time during the day that is convenient. If you cannot take a regular sun bath wear light-colored clothing and walk on the sunny side of the street when outdoors to get the sun's rays through your clothing. Take a hot soap-and-water bath once or twice a week. Retire early enough to awake thoroughly refreshed at proper rising time without the warning of an alarm clock. THE END 
22005	----	HOW TO ADD TEN YEARS TO YOUR LIFE AND TO DOUBLE ITS SATISFACTIONS by S. S. CURRY, Ph.D., Litt.D. Can you wake as wake the birds? In their joy and singing share? Stretch your limbs as do the herds, And drink as deep the morning air? Quick as larks on upward wing, Can you shun the demon's wiles, Promptly as the robins sing, Can you change all frowns to smiles? Can you spurn fear's coward whine, Meet each day with joyous song? Then will angels guard your shrine, Joys be deep and life be long. Boston School of Expression Book Department Pierce Bldg., Copley Square Copyright by S. S. Curry 1915 To Those Who Loyally Responded to The Dream And to Those Who By Thought, Word or Act Will Aid The School of Expression To Perform Its Important Function In Education. QUI TRANSTULIT SUSTINET As ancient exile at the close of day, Paused on his country's farthest hills to view Those valleys sinking in the distant blue Where all the joys and hopes of childhood lay; So now across the years our thoughts will stray To those whose hearts were ever brave and true, Who gave the hope and faith from which we drew The strength to climb thus far upon our way. As he amid the rocks and twilight gray, Saw rocks and steeps transform to stairs, and knew He wandered not alone; so may we too See this, our tentless crag where wild winds play A Bethel rise, and we here wake to know That down and upward angels come and go. CONTENTS Page Why and Wherefore 7 I. Significance of Morning 11 II. Supposed Secrets of Health and Long Life 24 III. What is an Exercise? 43 IV. Program of Exercises 54 V. How to Practice the Exercises 84 VI. Actions of Every Day Life 102 VII. Work and Play 109 VIII. Significance of Night and Sleep 122 WHY AND WHEREFORE When over eighty years of age, the poet Bryant said that he had added more than ten years to his life by taking a simple exercise while dressing in the morning. Those who knew Bryant and the facts of his life never doubted the truth of this statement. I have made inquiries lately among men who are eighty years of age, as to their method of waking up. Almost without exception, I find that they have been in the habit of taking simple exercise upon rising and also before retiring. While studying voice in Paris, over thirty years ago, my teacher was so busy that he had to take me before breakfast at an hour which, to a Parisian, was a very early one. "Vocal exercises may be more difficult at this time," he said, "but it is the best time. If we can start the day with the right exercise of the voice, the use of it all through the day will be additional right practice." Later, when I studied with the elder Lamperti in Italy, I requested and secured an early hour in the morning for my lessons. In teaching I have always urged students to take their exercises the first thing in the morning. Those who have taken my advice have later been grateful for the suggestion. If my own morning exercises are neglected, I feel as if I had missed a meal or had lost much sleep. I was never what is called physically strong; in fact, physicians have continually prophesied my downfall, yet all my life I have performed about three men's work, and by the use of a few exercises have probably doubled the length of my life. The subject of human development has always been of great interest to me. I have tried to investigate the various systems of gymnastics in all countries; and, teaching, as I have, about ten thousand the use of the voice and body in expression, I have studied training from a different point of view from that of most men. I have discovered that the voice cannot be adequately trained without also improving the body; that the improvement of the voice can be doubly accelerated if the body is considered a factor. I have also found, what is more important, that true exercises are all mental and emotional and not physical, and that both body and voice can never be truly improved except by right thinking and feeling. I, therefore, long ago came to certain conclusions which are not in accordance with common views. My convictions, however, have been the result, not only of experience, but of wide study and investigation. This book embodies a few points about health; without going deeply into the principles involved, a short programme is given, the practice of which has already accomplished marvelous results. The book embodies my own experiences, and obeys the scientific principles involved in training. It is meant to be a guide for home study and practice. The principles are applicable to everyone. It requires at first, patience, perseverance, and resolution at that moment in the day when we are most liable to be indifferent and negative, if not irresolute and discouraged. Whoever resolutely undertakes to obey the suggestions will never regret doing so. In fact, it is not too much to claim that he will not only lengthen his life but double its satisfactions. Every reader of the book is requested to become a member of the Morning League, and whosoever does so and makes a report or writes to me fully about special weaknesses, habits, "besetting sins," or conditions will receive a letter of suggestions. This book and its companion, "The Smile," are published as a part of the great work undertaken by the friends of the School of Expression; the net receipts from the sale will go to the Endowment Fund of the institution. HOW TO ADD TEN YEARS TO YOUR LIFE I SIGNIFICANCE OF MORNING "The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven-- All's right with the world!" Song from "Pippa Passes" Robert Browning Browning's "Pippa Passes" is a parable or allegory of human life. Though called a drama by its author, it embodies, like all plays of the highest type, other than dramatic elements. In exalted poetry the allegoric, lyric, epic and dramatic seem to be blended. An effort to separate them often seems academic and mechanical. Pippa, a poor little silk-winding girl, who has never known father or mother, opens the poem. It is the early morning and she wakes with joyous anticipation of her holiday, her only one. She goes forth, and we hear her singing and we see her influencing, from her humble position in the background, "Asolo's four happiest ones," who are brought by the action of the drama into the foreground. Her character and that of the other persons of the play are well-defined; but the real theme of the poem is the unconscious influence that she exerts upon others. The primary element of dramatic art is the meeting of people and the influence they exert upon each other. There is no direct influence seemingly exerted upon Pippa herself save at one point and even that is scarcely a conscious one. We feel that she is a type of the human soul. Specific scenes, though intensely dramatic, are entirely separated from one another. Accordingly if it is a drama, it is a drama of an unusual type. It regards the events of only one day; still that day is not literal; it is a symbol of the life of everyone. It is New Year's Day, but every day is the beginning of a new year. It is a holiday, yet all life, when normally lived, is dominated by love and sympathetic service, and is full of happiness. Pippa sings as everyone should sing with the spirit of thanksgiving and love. She welcomes the day with joy as everyone should welcome life and its opportunities. She lies down to sleep at night, as we all do; her sun drops into a "black cloud" and she knows nothing of what she has really accomplished or of the revelation that is coming on the morrow. Moreover, observe that the link of unity in the play is found in the songs of Pippa. One might easily conceive her beautiful character as embodying the very soul of lyric poetry. Hence, in reading the poem, we are impressed from the first with allegoric, lyric and epic, as well as dramatic elements. Observe more closely her awakening. Note the beautiful description, the gradually lengthening lines, indicative of the coming morning. [See page 16.] She expresses joy as she meditates over her New Year's hymn. Into this devotional lyric Browning has breathed the spirit of all true life and service. "Now wait!--even I already seem to share In God's love: what does New-year's hymn declare? What other meaning do these verses bear? All service ranks the same with God: If now, as formerly he trod Paradise, his presence fills Our earth, each only as God wills Can work--God's puppets, best and worst, Are we; there is no last nor first. Say not "a small event!" Why "small"? Costs it more pain that this, ye call A "great event," should come to pass, Than that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in, or exceed! And more of it, and more of it! oh, yes-- I will pass each, and see their happiness, And envy none--being just as great, no doubt, Useful to men, and dear to God, as they! A pretty thing to care about So mightily, this single holiday! But let the sun shine! Wherefore repine? --With thee to lead me, O Day of mine, Down the grass path grey with dew, Under the pine-wood, blind with boughs, Where the swallow never flew Nor yet cicala dared carouse-- No, dared carouse!" From "Pippa Passes" Robert Browning As Pippa leaves her room in the full spirit of this hymn, full of joy, hope and love, she passes into the street. We hardly catch a glimpse of her until the close of the day, when she comes back and lies down to sleep: but we hear her songs and see the influence which she unconsciously exerts. This is the real theme of the poem. Browning's poetic play reveals to us in four scenes the other side of life, the happier people to whom Pippa referred in her soliloquy. We look first into the interior of the old house of which Pippa has spoken with a kind of awe, and see the proud Ottima who owns the mills where Pippa is but a poor worker. In the dark gloom of one of the rooms Ottima has become the sharer in a murder, and, under the influence of Pippa's song, which is heard outside, she and her companion realize their guilt and are overcome with remorse. At noon we are introduced to a young artist, Jules, who is just bringing home his bride, Phene, whom he has married thinking her a princess, but who is really a poor, ignorant child. She has been employed unconsciously, to herself, and innocently used by some degraded artists as a means of rebuking the idealist, Jules. By this cruel trick they mean to crush him and reduce him to their own sensual level. Even letters which Jules has received from the supposed princess have been written by these perversions of human beings--who call themselves artists. In her lovely innocence Phene is thrilled by Jules' tenderness. Her intuition tells her that something is wrong as she falters in rendering the lines the cruel painters have given her to read to Jules. We see the blow fall upon the young dreamer as he makes the fearful discovery. In the agony of his disappointment he is about to renounce Phene forever as the artists, waiting outside to sneer at him, expect. The poor, innocent being, in whom his kindness and tenderness have stirred to life for the first time her womanly nature, is about to be cast out to a life of degradation and misery, when Pippa passes, singing. Her song awakens Jules to a higher feeling, to a more human and heroic determination; and the painters, waiting outside, are disappointed. In the evening Pippa passes Luigi, an Italian patriot. He is meditating over the afflictions of his country and upon a plan to help it, while his mother is trying to dissuade him from the daring undertaking. The police and spies are waiting outside. If he goes he will not be arrested; if he stays they have orders to arrest him at once. At the moment of his wavering, when he is almost ready to obey his mother, Pippa's song arouses anew his patriotic being, and he resolutely goes forth to do a true heroic deed for his country. Thus Pippa saves him from imprisonment and death. Night brings the last scene in the dramatic events of the world influenced by Pippa's songs. A room of the "palace by the Dome," of which Pippa seems to stand in so much awe, opens before us. Here we look into the face of the Monsignor, for whom she expressed reverence in the morning, and we find that the Monsignor and the dead brother whose home he comes to bless, are in reality Pippa's own uncles. The poor little girl, with only a nickname, is a child of an older brother and the real heir to the Palace, though of this she has never had the remotest dream. We see an insinuating villain tempting the Monsignor to allow him to do away with Pippa in a most horrible manner, and thus leave the Monsignor in sole possession of his brother's property. During an intense moment Pippa passes and her singing outside causes her uncle to throttle the villain and call for help. Then we see, at the close of the day, the little girl, unconscious of her share in the life of others, come back to her room and fall asleep murmuring her New Year's hymn which, in spite of appearances, she still trusts. We are left with the hope that she will awaken next day to realize who she is and come into her own. Thus journey we all through life often forgetting that there is nothing small, that "there is no last nor first." We are conscious of noble aims, but oblivious of the real work we are doing and of our own identity. What, do you ask, has such a poetic drama to do with such a commonplace subject as health or the prolonging of life? The question implies a misconception. Human development is not a material thing but is poetic and exalted. It has to do not merely with physical conditions but primarily with spiritual ideals. Let us observe more closely how Browning wakes Pippa up. When she comes to consciousness she utters a cry of joy and thanksgiving; "Day! Faster and more fast, O'er night's brim, day boils at last." The joyous thanksgiving of this first moment is the key to Pippa's life and to her influence through the whole day. Such was the right beginning to her day and such is the right beginning for us all to every day of our lives. Her faith and her hymn revealed the true ideals of this strange journey we call life. There is an old proverb: "Guard beginnings." If a stream is poisoned at its head it will carry the deadly taint through its whole course. The most significant moment of life is the moment of awakening. The importance of morning has been more or less realized in the instinct of the human heart in every age. Many of the myths of the early Greeks refer to the miracle of the morning. Aurora mirrors to us in a mystic way the significance of this hour to the Greeks. Athene was born by the stroke of the hammer of Hephæstus on the forehead of Zeus, and thus the stroke of fire upon the sky became the symbol or myth of all civilization. Even Daphne, pursued by Apollo, and turned into a tree, is doubtless the darkness fleeing before dawn until the trees stand out clearly defined in the morning light. The dawn of day has always been considered a prophecy of the time when all ignorance will vanish before the light of truth. When we remember that men of the early ages had no other light but that of the sun, we can see how naturally the coming of morning impressed primitive peoples, and it is not much wonder that they adored and worshiped the dawn and the rising sun. We still speak of the dawn of a new civilization. Morning is still the most universal figure of progress, the type of a new life. More than all other natural occurrences it is used as a symbol of something higher. May we not, accordingly, discover that from a psychological as well as a physiological point of view, for reasons of health and development, morning is the most significant and important time of the day! No human being at the first moment of awakening is gloomy or angry. Everyone awakes in peace with all the world. It is a time of freedom. A moment later memory may bring to the mind some scene or picture that leads to good or bad thought, followed by emotion. This first moment of consciousness is the critical and golden moment of human life. How often has it been said to a child: "You must have gotten out of the wrong side of bed this morning." Even animals and birds feel the significance of morning. Who has not, at early dawn, heard a robin or some other bird begin to sing--"at first alone," as Thomas Hardy says, "as if sure that morning has come, while all the others keep still a moment as if equally sure that he is mistaken." Soon, however, voice after voice takes up the song until the whole woodland is ringing with joyous tones. Who, in such an hour, has not been deeply moved with the spirit and beauty of all life and the harmony and deep significance of all of nature's processes? If we observe the awaking of birds and animals more carefully, however, we find something besides songs. All the higher animals go through certain exercises on first waking. There seems a universal instinct which teaches that certain stretches, expansions and deep breathings are necessary at this time. In fact, these actions are so deeply implanted in the instinct of animals that they seem a kind of sacred acceptance of life, a species of thanksgiving for all that life brings. If we accept "Pippa Passes" as a parable of human life and Pippa as a typical human being, may we not in her awakening find an example of this universal instinct? May we not find her first thoughts and feelings worthy of study and her example one to be followed? Do we not, in fact, find here a beautiful illustration of the proper mode of meeting the sacredness of dawn? As a matter of fact, how do we actually greet the morning? Do we awake as Pippa did, with a joyous song of praise? Do we pour out our hearts in gratitude that it brings a new day, a new life? Do we give thanks for the new opportunities given us, the new possibilities of enjoyment, the new share in the life of the world? Usually we have no thought about these things. Most of us entirely forget the significance of the way or "the side we get out of bed." Attention is rarely paid to the spirit in which we awaken children. It is often by means of an angry demand or an indulgent whine. They rise with the impression that it is a sin to awaken them and they begin the day with the feeling that the world is cruel. If we could spend the first few moments of every morning as Pippa spent her first moments, the character of the whole life would be determined. It is the most important time of every day. Is it not also the time when we are most apt to be tempted? Has not man seemingly lost the significance of this sacred hour? Why do so many, on waking up, begin to worry over the difficulties of the day? How many look back with regret to the preceding day and forward with a frown to the one newly born! Why not smile as Pippa smiled and meet our blessings with thanksgiving? There are certain physiological reasons why people feel so sluggish on first awaking:--the position in bed is cramped, the limbs are contracted, the circulation is impeded and the breathing is greatly hindered. When lying down, all the functions of the vital organs are lessened. Many people are entirely too careless regarding the air of the room. It needs to be even purer and fresher during one's hours of repose than in those of waking. Certain simple movements are taken by practically every animal on awaking under normal conditions. Among these are yawning, deep breathing, expansion and stretching. These exercises form a part of the process of awaking. It is the change from the position of lying down to that of standing up. But we find that man rarely takes these exercises. Between the moment of awakening and standing erect man possibly takes more time, whines more and does less than any other animal. Of all the provisions of nature to meet this crucial moment in animal life the stretch seems to be most important. Why men neglect the stretch is curious. Man seems to lack something of the vigor of the animal instinct on awakening. He lives a more rational life, and it is necessary for him at this time to make certain decisions and exert firmness and resolution. Science has carefully explained the stretch, but men seem to refuse to take the lesson. The stretch extends the body so that the veins, where congestion is most liable to take place and where pressure of blood is weakest, are so elongated that the blood flows more easily from the arteries, where the pressure is strongest, through the veins back to the heart and circulation is equalized and stimulated. The beneficial effects of the stretch can be felt by anyone who will take the pains on waking up in the morning to stretch easily, for a few minutes, then rest a few moments and note the effect. He will feel a great exhilaration all through the body. He will feel a sense of harmony. Thanksgiving seems to arise from every cell at the fresh blood and life. The yawn is similar to the stretch. The yawn is a stretch of the lungs as the stretch is a yawn of the muscles. Both of these exercises express a hunger for oxygen. Whenever anyone is sitting in a cramped position or even in one position for a long time, the stretch or yawn is instinctive. The extension of the muscles of the body as illustrated in the stretch is one of the most necessary steps in normal adjustment. To speak of only one point: when a man sits his knees are bent, and the muscles in front of the leg are elongated and the muscles back of the knee are shortened. A stretch means simply the extension of these shortened muscles. All over the body we find a tendency to elongate certain muscles too much. This is true in the chest; true also of the face, at the corners of the mouth. The active use of the too elongated muscles will produce extension in those that are too much shortened. By doing this we bring about certain normal conditions and relations of parts. Again we find that the stretch is activity of the extensor muscles. It is the action of the extensor muscles upon which health especially depends. At any rate, the extensor muscles are much more important to bring about the right relation of all parts and the right balance of sensitive muscles and the equalization of circulation than the activity of the flexor muscles. Normal emotions, as we shall find later, are expressed through activity of the extensor muscles. Abnormal emotions, such as anger, affect the flexor muscles of the body more. Since nature has provided the stretch seemingly as the antidote for abnormal position, and especially abnormal position during sleep, in the programme of exercises it would seem most necessary to centre around some careful and scientific use of stretches. Have you ever noticed a dog or cat wake up? Observe their instinctive movements: the gradual but vigorous stretch in every direction, the deep breathing, the sympathetic extension and staying of the limbs at the climax, then the gradual giving up of the activity and the moment of restful satisfaction. Stretching in this way is one of the primitive instincts in all animals. He who will observe the animals will feel that the time for practicing the exercises is on awakening, and the primary exercise to be taken is the stretch. How can we best occupy a part at least of the half hour or more that is usually wasted in worrying and fretting or in sluggish indifference, between the time when we first awake and the time we begin to dress? With all the knowledge of the human organism which has been revealed to us by modern science, with our truer understanding of the nature of men, of the effect of the mind upon the body, with our observation of the instinctive actions of the animals at such an hour, why can we not so occupy a few of these most precious moments of the day as to add to our vitality and enjoyment? At this moment of awakening, when your mind is free, you can so direct your attention as to receive joy instead of gloom, love instead of hate. You can exclude the thought of evil or you can yield and allow the tempter to desecrate your shrine. Whichever choice you make, these first moments of your day's living will color the whole course of the coming hours. The feeling first accepted and welcomed will more or less continue and form a background to all your ideas and determine your point of view toward human events. The chief aim of this book is to present a simple programme giving, not only some exercises for this hour, but certain explanations which will inspire a sense of the importance of this hour and these movements. Most people have no conception of the possibilities of human nature, of the fact that progress is the highest characteristic of a human being. No matter how old we are, we can always begin to climb upward; the main thing is our willingness to climb. Do we understand how to use the least actions and the most neglected movements for the development of character and the satisfactions of life? The principles and exercises advocated in this book are not extravagant. Again and again their benefits have been proven and many thereby have doubled life's satisfactions and its length. II SUPPOSED SECRETS OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE Before laying down a simple programme which will give one a common sense method of keeping well, living long, and making the very most of life, it may be well to study some of the innumerable theories regarding long life. If all the discussions upon health and long life, from the earliest time to the present, could be adequately chronicled they would form an interesting, if not an amusing history. In many of these, however, we should find the same serious thoughts which we may well consider and find by comparison a few points in which all agree as to what is necessary to health, happiness and length of days. Note the theories that have been seriously advocated and which have had vogue among certain classes for a time,--such as the use of cold water every day as a remedy for all diseases. The cold water cure advocated wet sheet packs for fevers, and water, in some form, for all ailments. To live long some physicians have advised sleeping on the right side, others have advocated the use of raw food or food that has been cooked very slightly. Some have contended that scientific food is the complete food found in Nature, such as nuts; still others have advocated whole wheat bread! In our own time a method has been emphasized which has been called "Fletcherizing." This, of course, is taken from the name of the gentleman, who has made it so illustrious by his books and his discussions of the subject. Mr. Fletcher's principle consists in holding or masticating the food until it is in a fluid form; even a liquid must be held in the mouth until it is of the same temperature as that of the body. Many consider that the chief advantage of Fletcherizing is that it makes a person eat less. This may be a part of the advantage. I once had the honor of sitting at dinner by the side of Mr. Fletcher and observed his methods. He did not eat more than one-third of the amount, for example, of ice-cream that the rest ate, but he stopped when the others did, and said, with a smile:--"I have had enough; what I have eaten will give me more nourishment than a larger amount would and it will not give me any trouble." There is great truth in some of these theories. We should eat less meat and more grain. We should not bolt the best food elements out of wheat; we should not bleach rice and take out its nutritious element. Certainly, our lives are very unscientific. Most men live merely by accident. The shortness of life is not surprising to one who understands how irrationally most of us live. Others say, breathe deeply, naturally and constantly. Still others have urged active life out of doors or an active participation in business. It is a well-known fact that many men have not lived long after retiring from their occupations. Andrew Carnegie said recently that he attributed his long life, health and strength to his activity. The story is told that he walked the floor of his room with deep anxiety and consternation the night after his offer was accepted to sell the Carnegie Steel Works. He had not thought it possible that his price would be accepted, and he kept speaking to his old friend about the amount of money paid and the greatness of the responsibility. Fortunately he did not retire, as most men do, but took an interest in every phase of modern life. He has used his money, as a sacred trust, according to his own best judgment, building libraries and giving organs, pensioning teachers who have given their lives for truth rather than for making money, and has furthered many other causes. One of the most common opinions is that long life depends upon "our constitution,"--upon what we receive from our ancestors. That is, long life is a gift, not an attainment. And we are in the habit of blaming our ancestors, near and remote, for our lack of strength and vitality. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes once made the remark that if one wished to live a long life he should be afflicted with some incurable disease. This was thought to be merely a joke, but it has foundation in fact. Many men with poor constitutions live to a very advanced age. They study themselves and live simply. They realize that they are not strong and they do not indulge themselves, but reach out for health and strength in all ways. Among all the practices which men have adopted through different ages for prolonging life we find many which are universally believed, though possibly not practiced. Some discussion of these may give us courage and enable us to realize how unscientifically, how carelessly, most men live, and how indifferent we really are to our well-being. And yet we find wide-spread doubt as to the advisability of being too fastidious. Some of the extravagant ideas have naturally given rise to such scepticism. On hardly any subject have men had such extreme views as they have regarding health or the prolongation of their own lives. I know one lady who ate a raw carrot every morning because it was yellow, and, as yellow is a spiritual color, this practice, it was advocated, would free one from materiality and, consequently, from all disease. I have known others who condemned all attention to proper food, exercise, and even to expression, because such attention would lead to faith in material means. Webster said, "Truth is always congruous, and agrees with itself; every truth in the universe agrees with every other truth in the universe; whereas falsehoods not only disagree with truth but usually quarrel among themselves." In accordance with this principle as a rule the untruthfulness of any view is seen in its failure to recognize anything else as true. No one will advocate any extreme and irrational habit. Too much attention to food, too much attention to the care of the body and exercise will degrade even character. The morning exercises which are here recommended should be taken even as one washes his hands, as a matter of course. Man is spiritual, and character is developed spiritually, and mere attention to the body does not secure health and strength. There is a great and easily demonstrated truth in the fact that people who believe in a spiritual life have endured untold hardships and have faced all kinds of conditions without injury. The power of mind over body, of spirit over matter, is too well attested to be doubted. However, man is slow and progress must be made gradually. The first step must be taken before the last can be taken. Extravagant and wrong views prevent a great many people from doing anything. If we examine all the rules for securing health and the leading secrets of long life, we find that one of the earliest is temperance. A noted instance is Socrates. During the great plague, when at least one-third of the population of Athens died, Socrates went about with impunity. This was no doubt due to the cheerfulness and temperance of his life. We know of his cheerfulness from accounts by Zenophon and Plato. Possibly the most illustrious example, which has been recounted of the preservation of health and the prolonging of life through temperance, is Luigi Cornaro, who was born in Venice in 1464. After having, according to Gamba, wasted his youth, his health was so broken and his habits so fixed that "upon passing the age of thirty-five he had nothing left to hope for but that he might end in death the suffering of a worn-out life." This man, by resolution and temperance, battled with his perverted habits and became strong and vigorous and happy, and lived to be over one hundred years of age. "The good old man," said Graziani, "feeling that he drew near the end, did not look upon the great transit with fear, but as though he were about to pass from one house into another. He was seated in his little bed--he used a small and very narrow one--and, at its side, was his wife, Veronica, almost his equal in years. In a clear and sonorous voice he told me why he would be able to leave this life with a valiant soul.... Feeling a little later the failure of vital force, he exclaimed, 'Glad and full of hope will I go with you, my good God!' He then composed himself; and having closed his eyes, as though about to sleep, with a slight sigh, he left us forever." A new edition of Cornaro's discourses on the temperate life, by William F. Butler of Milwaukee, has recently been issued under the title of "The Art of Living Long." The first of these discourses was written at the age of eighty-three, the second at eighty-six, the third at ninety-one, and the fourth at ninety-five. His treatises have been popular for all these centuries. He held that the older a man grows the wiser he becomes and the more he knows; and if he will, by temperance and regularity of life and exercise, preserve his strength, his powers of enjoyment will grow, as his own did, every year until the end. "Men are, as a rule," says Cornaro, "very sensual and intemperate, and wish to gratify their appetites and give themselves up to the commission of innumerable disorders. When, seeing that they cannot escape suffering the unavoidable consequences of such intemperance as often as they are guilty of it, they say--by way of excuse--that it is preferable to live ten years less and to enjoy life. They do not pause to consider what immense importance ten years more of life, and especially of healthy life, possess when we have reached mature age, the time, indeed, at which men appear to the best advantage in learning and virtue--two things which can never reach their perfection except with time. To mention nothing else at present, I shall only say that, in literature and in the sciences, the majority of the best and most celebrated works we possess were written when their authors had attained ripe age, and during these same ten latter years for which some men, in order that they may gratify their appetites, say they do not care." We see not only in this passage but in many other places evidence of the fact that Cornaro lived a cheerful, contented life. The reform was evidently not merely in his eating and drinking but fully as much in the inner thought of his life. This is shown in many passages from his discourses. He says: "Although reason should convince them that this is the case, yet these men refuse to admit it, and pursue their usual life of disorder as heretofore. Were they to act differently, abandoning their irregular habits and adopting orderly and temperate ones, they would live to old age--as I have--in good condition. Being, by the grace of God, of so robust and perfect a constitution, they would live until they reached the age of a hundred and twenty, as history points out to us that others--born, of course, with perfect constitutions--have done, who led the temperate life. "I am certain I, too, should live to that age had it been my good fortune to receive a similar blessing at my birth; but, because I was born with a poor constitution, I fear I shall not live much beyond a hundred years." According to the census of the United States not one man in twenty thousand attains the age of one hundred years. If we figure out carefully from these statistics, we find the average is only about one-third of this period of life. One of the social customs is that we must eat an extraordinary meal,--far more than we need, as if life's enjoyment depended on the low sense of taste,--as if every contract or matter of important business must have this as an introduction. Theoretically speaking, many people believe in low living and high thinking, but it is very rare that we find one who practices it. The two simple rules of Cornaro deserve our attention: to eat only what he wanted, that is, what he actually needed for the sustenance of his body, and to eat only those things which really agreed with him, that is, those which were really helpful to the sustenance of his life. If we should consider eating merely as a means and not an end, Cornaro's idea that the normal age of a human being was one hundred and twenty years would not be such a wild dream. Another almost universally recognized requisite is exercise in the open air, or regular, systematic, simple and vigorous activity of some kind. The necessity of thoroughly pure air must be emphasized from first to last. Some think that the dullness felt by many people in the early morning is due to the impure air of cities, and to the failure to open windows. A lady once said to me, "When I am in the country I always sleep out of doors. Then I have not the slightest disinclination to get up. I do it as naturally and as gladly as the animals." It is to be hoped that the rapid transit and the automobile will enable people to live farther out in the country, farther from air poisoned by smoke and gases. Even in cities, however, one may have open windows and greater circulation of air than is common. Some have gone so far as to place exercise over against temperance in eating, saying that if you take enough exercise you may eat and drink what you please. While there is some truth in this there is really no antagonism between them; in fact, they are usually found together. Another view almost universally advocated, is to avoid drugs. The importance of this and its union with right exercise have been demonstrated in the impressive language of fable. "There is a story in the 'Arabian Nights' Tales'," says Addison, "of a king who had long languished under an ill habit of body, and had taken abundance of remedies to no purpose. At length, says the fable, a physician cured him by the following method: he took a hollow ball of wood, and filled it with several drugs; after which he closed it up so carefully that nothing appeared. He likewise took a mallet, and, after having hollowed the handle and that part which strikes the ball, he inclosed in them several drugs after the same manner as in the ball itself. He then ordered the sultan, who was his patient, to exercise himself early in the morning with these rightly prepared instruments, till such time as he should sweat; when, as the story goes, the virtue of the medicaments perspiring through the wood, had so good an influence on the sultan's constitution, that they cured him of an indisposition which all the compositions he had taken inwardly had not been able to remove. "This Eastern allegory is finely contrived to show us how beneficial bodily labor is to health, and that exercise is the most effectual physic." Another illustration is furnished us by Sir William Temple:-- "I know not," he says, "whether some desperate degrees of abstinence would not have the same effect upon other men, as they had upon Atticus; who, weary of his life as well as his physicians by long and cruel pains of a dropsical gout, and despairing of any cure, resolved by degrees to starve himself to death; and went so far, that the physicians found he had ended his disease instead of his life." Of all the methods advocated, possibly one of the most universally recognized is joyousness,--a hopeful attitude toward life, a cheerful, kindly relationship with one's kind. According to Galen, Æsculapius wrote comic songs to promote circulation in his patients. "A physician," says Hippocrates, "should have a certain ready wit, for sadness hinders both the well and the sick." We know, too, that Apollo was not only the god of music and poetry but also of medicine. The poet, John Armstrong, has explained this: "Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, Expels disease, softens every pain; And hence the wise of Ancient days adored One power of physic, melody and song." Sir Charles Clark, one of the greatest physicians of modern times, exercised a most exhilarating influence over his patients by his cheerfulness and jollity. It was probably one of the chief means of his wonderful success. "Cheerfulness," says Sir John Byles, "is eminently conducive to health both in body and mind." A recent writer says of Professor Charles Eliot Norton that he was "not of a rugged constitution, yet he did an enormous amount of work and lived to a beautiful old age." This is attributed to the fact that he was never "blue." The cheerful kindliness of his face, his genial smile and kind words were sources of great inspiration to me when a teacher at Harvard, and to all who met him. The more we investigate the theories of long life the more do we become impressed with a universal longing for a length of days. We find a deep, underlying instinct "that men do not live out half their days." Everywhere, too, we find a certain expectation of "finding the fountain of youth," a hope in some way to conquer sickness and death. This desire is normal and natural. It may, sometime in future history, be realized. As we examine these theories we find, however wild they may seem at first, certain common sense views at the heart of all of them. No one need make a hobby of any one of them. Temperance, regularity, repose, patience, and above all, cheerfulness, do not exclude each other, they rather imply one another. In many instances one can hardly be practiced without some of the others. The practice of one would unconsciously bring up the others. If we study carefully these theories, and especially if we study the lives of those who have not only professed theories but have faithfully practiced their principles and attained great health and age, we always find a combination of various methods. There is no doubt, for example, that Cornaro completely reformed his life. The character of Socrates was the secret of his good health. Temperance to the Greek did not mean total abstinence. It meant lack of extravagance; it meant what we mean by patience, by an unruffled temper,--it meant the right use of all the faculties and powers. What new hobby, you may ask, is the theme of this book? Nothing that will interfere with the fundamental elements of the best ideas of all ages. First of all it is advocated that we go down deeper into all theories. Temperance should not be applied merely to food and drink but must cover self-control, repose of life, purity and depth of thought, and a harmonious development of human nature. The book tries to draw attention to many important things which are usually overlooked or not considered necessary to health and life. The study of expression, to choose only one example, reveals to us, the necessity of a right poise of the body. One of the leading teachers of science in this country, after fighting tuberculosis for three years, changing climates and using all the help that science has provided, determined at last to go back to his work and to do his best even though he lost his life. Making a constant and careful study of himself he again began his life as a teacher. He met with one with great knowledge of the human body, one who had studied it from many points of view. He was surprised when that expert said to him:--"Your dieting will not do you much good, that is not your trouble. You do not sit right nor stand right, your chest is too low, it not only cramps your breathing but what is still more important, it cramps your stomach and all the other vital organs." The scientist eagerly asked what he could do to recover his strength, and he received a few valuable suggestions, which he followed, and in six months he was stronger than ever. As a student and teacher of human expression for nearly forty years, I have found most important connections between man's mind, body and voice. The right use of the voice is next to impossible unless a man stands properly. There are certain inter-relations between the simple conditions and actions of the body, and the conditions and the true use of the voice are determined by the way a man thinks and feels. A man must not only have right feeling but must express it. He cannot get right expression without right thinking. Health, itself, is one of man's mental and emotional conditions. This book is an endeavor to study human unfoldment from an all-sided observation of the whole nature of man. Man is a unity, and an endeavor to establish health from a mere material point of view has always failed. Expression is a study from a higher point of view. The organism is studied from the point of view of its mental function. Expression implies the subordination of the body to the actions of the mind. This gives a truer point of view for an all-sided human development. It also implies a study of the especial significance and use of certain primary acts of our lives:--such as the way we wake up in the morning and certain movements which are taken at that time by animals and normal beings. The stretches, yawnings and breathings, peculiar to that moment, are never lost by animals, but human beings, with their higher possibilities but greater power of perversion, lose the significance and helpfulness of this primarily instinctive movement. The study of expression also reveals to us that certain emotions are normal or positive and develop health and strength, while certain other emotions are negative and destructive of vitality as well as of manhood. We also find that the emotions we choose to express become our own and, therefore, we should choose normal conditions of mind and emotions, and express these consciously and deliberately, especially at the most negative time in the morning, when we first wake up. Expression is one of the necessary elements of human development. We control emotions and control their expression. We welcome noble thoughts or noble feelings, and that which we welcome we become. This book shows the smile, laughter, the taking of breath and the simple stretch as most important exercises which are to be regularly taken. It also implies a deeper study into human co-ordinations; it tries to show a universal necessity of rhythm and is an endeavor to establish the higher principles of training in a way that makes them applicable to the most simple of human actions. The student is requested to study himself, to make a demonstration of every claim and of more than is claimed. The exercises are so simple that anyone can try and prove them, only let the trial be one continued long enough to be a real test. The moment you awake center attention upon a pleasant thought or take an attitude of joy, thanksgiving and love for all the world. Have courage and confidence that all evils will vanish; express some normal feelings at once by the expansion of the chest, a deep full breath, an inward laugh or chuckle and an increased harmonious stretch of the whole body. Everyone will be tempted to say that he cannot control his thoughts. He may say he does not wish to be a hypocrite and try to excuse himself for brooding over gloomy thoughts or the fear that he will not get through the day. Such lack of courage, lack of faith, lack of thanks for the beauties of life are sins which cannot be too strongly condemned. We can and must at once put ourselves in a positive attitude of mind. We must begin our day with a song, with a smile. We must look upward, not downward. We must reject every discordant thought and accept accordant ones regarding the coming day. It is a new day which brings new life, new joys, new duties, it may be new trials, but these, instead of being accepted as obstacles, may be turned into opportunities. The indulgence of negative thoughts in the morning may become a habit. A great battle may have to be fought at first, but perseverance and promptness can correct such evil tendencies. It is at this time that the demon of regret and of disappointment is apt to lay hold of us; the blackest thought in our lives likely to meet us. Observe that this was so of Pippa. Though she awoke with joy, and is held up as an ideal, as she goes on thinking the darkest shadow of her life comes to her. "If I only knew What was my mother's face--my father, too!" This thought, however, she puts out of her mind by resolution, by turning, as we always should turn at such an hour, to the Source. "Nay, if you come to that, best love of all Is God's; then why not have God's love befall Myself as, in the palace by the Dome, Monsignor?--who to-night will bless the home Of his dead brother." Here must begin the heroic endeavor to live. Effort will be required for a time till the habit is formed. Instantly control the attention and express it by action. Give a positive welcome to the day and the light; express positive thanksgiving for the thought that you have strength and that you have the joy of work to do. It is in the morning that we should begin to live a new life, a simple life; it is then that we should eliminate all whines and abnormal desires and open our hearts to receive the strength of a new day. Life, growth and development respond to joy. Every flower seems to smile to meet the sun, and the little bird sings in the midst of its duties. Some scientists are hoping to discover the germ of old age, and by destroying this to prolong life. The real germ, however, of old age is found in the doubt and worry which we allow to enter the holy of holies of the heart at the holiest hour of the day. If we guard the sacred shrine of thought and consciousness from impure, unkind and discouraging ideas at the moment of awaking it may be truly said that the enjoyments of life as well as its length will be doubled. The primary acts that express this joy are: first, expansion; second, taking a deep breath; third, stretching of the body; fourth, a smile or inward laugh. Sometimes these take place so rapidly as to seem to be simultaneous, but close examination will reveal a sequence, though rapid. As in life we have to live a truth to know or understand it, so an act of expression embodies the emotion. True enjoyment is also always expansive. Anger and negative emotions cause constrictions, while joy and love increase expansion. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." It is the mind that makes the man. When we reject a negative thought and accept a positive one we begin the real battle of life. Negative emotion, every moment it is expressed becomes stronger, and gradually takes complete possession of us. Prof. James says that everyone should do something disagreeable every day, but there is great danger in accepting anything as disagreeable. We must not only do something disagreeable, but we must accept and do it as if it were an agreeable thing. This is most important. The attitude toward life makes all the difference. Another great teacher has said, "When a wrong thought comes in, say, Out of my house, you don't belong here!" Remember that the field of consciousness is a sacred shrine. From it banish everything that is not full of joy and praise and comfort, that does not give you strength and courage. Do as Pippa did. Do not let the devil take possession, as he is always ready to do at this time. This battle must be fought at once. There must be no delay. Idea will link itself to idea by the law of association of ideas, and we shall soon form a habit of negative thoughts in the morning. The great point to note is that we should live rational lives, that we should give our attention and apply our own scientific knowledge and reason to the every-day duties of life, and not disregard the duty we owe to ourselves. Men are continually doing something which they know to be wrong. They indulge in thoughts which they know will poison their minds and characters. They eat food which they know is not good for them. They pour into their stomachs stimulants which they know will dull their higher faculties and powers. Some tell us that life is a continuous battle. It may be looked at in that way, but if we look at it from a more rational point of view it is a continual reaching up for higher enjoyment. Every day and every hour we must be on our guard; our theories must be a rule of life to be really obeyed and lived. Therefore, to apply our own knowledge to the restoration or maintenance of life demands that we avoid that which is injurious, and that we joyously, gladly accept that which is helpful. Life is a sacred gift, a privilege, and an opportunity to be enjoyed, it is to be lifted up, and filled with high experiences. To accomplish all these ends, we should study those moments when we are in greatest danger,--those moments which are most important and when we are best able to control our attention and to command our feelings. The one supreme hour is the hour of awakening. If we can occupy a few minutes of this time in right thoughts, and right movements scientifically directed and as simple as those of the animals, the effect will be astonishing. To come down to a few specific things that everyone should practice in order to be stronger, to be more efficient, to enjoy more and to live longer, let us summarize a few general points. (1) Express joy first with laughter. If you cannot laugh aloud, laugh with an inner chuckle. It is not enough to have joy, it must be actively expressed to have an effect upon the organism. (2) Maintaining the joy and laughter, express, therefore, all harmonious extensions of the body, that is, all simple stretches. Maintaining the laughter and the extension of the body, expand the chest and torso as much as possible. (3) On waking up, take a thought of joy, of courage, of love toward all mankind, toward the day and its work. (4) Maintaining all previous conditions, take a full, deep breath. (5) Set free with the simplest movements every part of the body. (6) Co-ordinate the parts of the body concerned in every-day work, and sustain them with primary and normal activities. (7) Bring all the parts of the body into normal rhythm by alternative activity of the parts and in other ways. To have good health we must rejoice, laugh, extend, expand, breathe, co-ordinate the primary parts of the body, act rhythmically, set free all the parts of the body and all the primary activities of function. In short, this book tries to move everyone to study the simplest things, the simplest actions, the most normal duties of a human being, and to assert these and to exercise them the very first thing in the morning. III WHAT IS AN EXERCISE? On account of the many misconceptions of the nature of human development, will it not be well, before beginning our program to consider seriously--What is training? What are some of its principles? What can we do with ourselves by obeying nature's laws? Or, if these questions are too serious, too difficult for a short answer, should we not, at least, try to realize what is an exercise? To many persons, any kind of movement, any jerk or chaotic action, is an exercise. They think that the more effort put forth, the better. Thus some teachers of voice contend that, to be an exercise, there must be muscular effort in producing tone. On the contrary, many movements are injurious; unnecessary effort will defeat some of the most important exercises. The exercise must obey the laws of nature. It must fulfill nature's intentions, stimulate nature's processes, awaken normal, though slumbering activity. An exercise is of fundamental importance to all human beings. Man comes into the world the feeblest of all animals. He has the least power to do anything for himself, but he comes with possibilities of higher love and union with his fellow-men. He comes into the world with a greater possibility of unfolding than any other created being. Accordingly an exercise is a means of progress, a simple action which a man must use for his own unfoldment. An exercise is a conscious step toward an ideal. Man is given the prophetic power to realize his own possibilities. We can hardly imagine an exercise independent of the conscious sense of the highest and best attainments, of thereby making ourselves stronger and in some way better. This ideal is instinctive, even on the part of animals, in fact, the animal instinctively regards its own preservation, its own unfoldment and the reaching of its ideal type. A tree will cover up its wound and reach out its branches freely, spontaneously in the direction of the light and toward the attainment of its own type. With man the ideal is a matter of higher realization. We have the lower instincts in common with the animals but we have also something higher. There is inborn in us a conception that man transcends all present conditions. An exercise is a step towards the attainment of a chosen end. Accordingly we have high exercises and low exercises; exercises on a mental and on a physical plane; exercises that may train men down to an abnormal type; exercises also that are intellectual, imaginative and spiritual. Everywhere in nature there is a low and a high. In animals of a high order of unfoldment there is specific functioning of every part but in those of a low order the functions are confused. The organs are not so well differentiated. Even in human beings, in the process of degeneracy a man loses a greater variety of his powers, and his very voice and body lose some of those characteristics which belong to the ideal member of the race. A true exercise always brings sound and specific parts into action. Part is differentiated from part. All parts are made more flexible and more capable of discharging a function distinct from all other parts of the body. A true action of the hand cannot be performed by the foot nor can a foot become a hand except by a process of degeneracy. An exercise implies a struggle upward over against a drift downwards. An exercise is an aspiration. An exercise is a demonstration, it reveals a man's best to himself. It is a process of translating his dreams into reality. It is the only proof of himself, his intuitive language. An exercise is not physical but mental. Never regard your exercises as merely physical. The expression "physical training" is a misnomer. All training is the action of mind. It may manifest itself in a physical direction, but training itself,--the putting forth,--is mental. It is the emotion we feel more than the movement that accomplishes results. No matter who laughs, consider your morning exercises sacred to you. Make them a part of your very life and habits, and put into them your thought and the attitude of your mind toward your fellow-beings. You will be tempted to regard such movements as merely mechanical and artificial. You will be tempted to think they are just the ideas of some crank. Put all this aside. Begin your exercises joyously and happily, for the very pleasure of the action. Remember that you are not a body in which you have a soul; you are a soul and have a body. The cause of everything, even of health, is in our minds. Our awakening is not a physical matter. There is no power in the material body to move a finger. An exercise is bringing a mental action into manifestation. However physical an action may appear, its only significance is as an act of mind. An exercise is an expression. It is an act of being, not of body; it is activity of being in action of body. There is no such thing as physical expression. Expression is not merely a reflex action. It is the emanation of activity. It is the union of thinking, feeling and willing. An exercise implies that we can choose what we are to express. It implies also that we can consciously regulate, guide or accentuate our mental, imaginative and emotional activities. Here we find the importance also of expression as an educational view. Repression and suppression may be injurious to health. Expression is necessary even for the proper functioning of the vital organs. Impression implies the conscious use of an impulse. It implies the ability to share our ideas, feelings or experiences with others. An exercise is a means of turning an impulse in a higher direction. It implies also the curbing of abnormal impulses. Exercise implies stimulation of normal functioning. It is an endeavor, but one in accordance with principle. Thus, an exercise is an expression of an aspiration. Exercise implies many things. It implies that a man may be low down but that he can rise; it implies that if he begin early and work patiently enough he can control, soon or late, his nature. He can control the expression of his being and every manifestation of life if he will only come close enough to the fountain-head of thinking and feeling. He must be willing to demonstrate on an humble plane, and, while striving for the highest ideal, take the simplest exercise as the first step of the ladder. An exercise localizes function. Every part of the body, even every muscle has certain functions to discharge. Awkward men use the wrong part to perform a certain action; part interferes with part. A true exercise will train each part to discharge its own function and bring it into harmonious co-ordination with other parts. It will stimulate both growth and development but make growth precede development. While aspiration is universal it becomes conscious in a human being. We have definite ideals and not only instincts for their attainment, but we can adopt rational methods for their realization. We have not only an instinctive consciousness of what is normal but a deep intuition that we can improve every power of our being, every agent of our body and every tone of the voice. A simple, a most commonplace action, when done with aspiration becomes an exercise. In fact, everything that man does is part of the training. A true list of exercises must reflect the spirit of all life. A normal man can distinguish between a wrong and a right exercise, between that which will lift him upward and that which will cause degeneracy. When men give up to their lower appetites they strengthen the downward impulses, but the mind can be awakened and every little step will become a demonstration of higher possibilities. An exercise is a demonstration to a man of his possibilities. Sometime the science of sciences will be that of training and education. All over the organic world we find tendencies toward degeneracy or downward; and we find everywhere aspirations or activities upward. Every bird, every rose, every blade of grass is trying to reach an ideal. This universal upward tendency or process we call by some big words which confuse our minds and obscure the facts. An exercise is not only mental but emotional, not only expressive of thought but of normal emotion. The wise doctor looks at his patient. He does this not only to recognize the patient's condition but to see how much courage he has, how much joy, how gladly he accepts life. An exercise demands accentuation of extension. Muscles should have a certain normal length and the power of relaxation to take a certain length. On account of abnormal positions, such as obtain during sleep, certain muscles become unduly elongated and others too short. To restore the balance of proper proportions those shortened need extension and the elongated need shortening. Accordingly the so-called extensor muscles of the body need frequent action. The effect of these stretches is to harmonize the vital forces. When a man lies upon his bed, as has been said, he breathes less, the circulation is more or less impeded; hence, the dull feeling and unwillingness to rise. The stretch also equalizes the circulation. It affects the veins where the pressure of blood is weakest, where there is a more immediate indication of congestion, so that the bad blood flows away, and the good blood from the arteries where the pressure of blood is strong, flows in, and the processes of life go on with more decision. There is still another explanation why the stretch is so important. It is primarily activity of the extensor muscles and is vitally connected with all true expansion. The flexor muscles on account of the position in sitting and because of a lack of expansive activity, often become too short. They can be extended only by activity of the extensor muscles. The stretch is the special and instinctive action of the extensor muscles in response to a distinctive demand for freedom of the organs, or harmony of the whole myological mechanism. It is also, as has been said, closely connected with the circulation, and the activity of the vital organs. There is no more important exercise than stretching. Its neglect is one of the strange things in training. One who wishes to be stronger, to have the normal possession of all his faculties, powers and organs, can be initiated and secure the result most rapidly, by the use of this simple and elemental exercise. An exercise is an act of expansion. The action of man's body consists of expansion, contraction and modulation, the latter being the union of the other two. True energy expresses itself primarily by expansion. Life expands and any increase of new life and all positive emotions cause an increase of expansive activity in the body. The study of expansion reveals to us the fact that expansion and contraction furnish the many elements of all human action, but that expansion is first, that expansion expresses joy, exhilaration, animation in life, and that contraction, aside from its co-ordination with expansion in causing control in intensity, expresses antagonism, hate, anger, pain. Accordingly this book assigns certain fundamental expansions, which everyone should practice and does practice if he obey his own deep instincts. Negative emotions, such as fear, despondency, or antagonism, cause contraction and tend to constrict the vital organs. It can, of course, be seen at once that expansion is due to the activity of the extensor muscles. The stretch is, in the main, an expansion. At any rate, it is always associated, co-ordinated, when properly performed, with expansion. Moreover, if we observe the action of animals and all true spontaneous actions in a human being, we observe that the activity of expansion begins in the centre of the body. It is at this point that we should initiate our expression. The actions in the middle of the body are more conditional than those in the feet, hands, or limbs, but the awakening of conditions should precede modulation. A certain activity of expansion and diffusion is the very basis of all conditions. All exercises should naturally begin with expansion. A true exercise means an increase of activity. Moreover, not only does life expand, but all positive emotions, such as joy, love, courage, cause activity of the extensor muscles. These emotions, as is universally known, improve health. If we observe the structure of the torso, we find that the chest has no prop from below; that the ribs are placed at an angle with the spine, sloping downwards as low as forty-five degrees, while at times they may be lifted seventy-five or eighty degrees or more. The expansion of the chest lifts the ribs. If we study a skeleton, we see that it must be suspended, that it cannot be propped up. Man, accordingly, stands and walks primarily on account of the active expansion of his whole chest. He is the one animal that has levitation, as will be shown later. We find that under the ribs in the torso are all the vital organs. The lungs, the heart, the stomach, all these depend for their normal position, their normal action upon the expansion of the chest. When a man stands, the tendency for the chest is to sag. There are no bones to elevate it. Man has levitation as well as gravitation, and the expansion and elevation of the chest lie at the basis of all good position in standing, sitting and also walking. There are certain co-ordinate curves, beautiful, spiral, rhythmic, in a normal and healthy human being. These curves depend upon this expansion of the chest. All the best gymnastic exercises centre in the development of activity in the muscles concerned in keeping the chest elevated and harmoniously expanded. When we study the expression of this part, we find that it reveals energy and courage and all the noble, positive emotions of a human being. A passive chest expresses indifference, inactivity, fear, discouragement, a sense of weakness, unwillingness to awake and rise up to meet emergencies. A sunken chest, accordingly, is an indication of a tendency to disease, simply because it expresses a negative mental state or one favorable to the reception of abnormal conditions. The expansion of the chest, on the contrary, reveals that happy acceptance of life, that active, energetic determination to control abnormal conditions which will ward off all disease and eliminate all failure. This expansion of the chest, as we can see, is one of the most elemental actions of expansion of the human being. We shall observe later that this activity is directly concerned with erect posture. All actions in a normal condition co-operate or co-ordinate. This expansion frees the respiratory muscles and all the vital organs, gives man command of the elemental action of his body as a whole; that is, his erectness expresses higher emotions and experiences. An exercise implies co-ordination. An organism exists only by virtue of certain co-ordination of parts. Training improves and extends this co-ordination. Co-ordination is the simultaneous union of many different elements or actions in different parts of the body. An exercise is rhythmic. When exercises are performed in obedience to the law of rhythm, better results will follow. Rhythm is a law of man's being. Action and reaction imply a human being doing his little part and then accepting the greater work out of the heart of the universe. Action and reaction, activity and passivity, the giving and the receiving, everything natural is rhythmic. Absence of rhythm is death. An exercise is simple. The best exercise is the simplest in its movements. It is not the spectacular actions of an exercise that make it the best. As every exercise is a struggle upward it must necessarily be an emphasis of something elemental and normal. Any movement is normal when it is part of the discharge of an elemental or distinctive action of any agent or part. The difference between accidental and elemental needs more discussion. Working upon accidentals secures weak results, perverts and interferes with free function. Working upon elementals brings freedom, power. IV PROGRAM OF EXERCISES As all training is a reaching upward towards an ideal so an exercise is a single step and the first exercise should be the most primary action. The primary condition of all growth is a certain joyous awakening, an expansive enjoyment of life. Take a joyous thought and express it in active laughter. No matter how dull or weary you feel when you first awake, joyously accept the new day. Use the following exercises and actions as you would a cold wet towel on your face or hands. Look on the sunny side at once and laugh. We can possess a feeling only by expressing it; we enter into possession of the day only by using it. It is easy to look at the light, easy to breathe, easy to stretch, to expand, easy to remember something joyous, easy to smile and easy to laugh. If your body feels weak and sluggish, and you have great indifference to movement there is all the more reason for promptness. If you will joyously extend your arms, expand, breathe deeply and laugh, you welcome life and joy and give them a chance to take possession of your being and body and you will soon feel courageous instead of gloomy, strong instead of weak, rested instead of weary. None of these exercises require a great expenditure of vitality. Performed, as many of them are, lying down, however energetically you may do them they will bring little or no weariness. Though the exercises do not require much vitality they should be practiced vigorously to accomplish the best results. 1. PRIMARY EXPANSION AND EXTENSION On waking, take a courageous, joyous attitude of mind. Chuckling deeply, actively expand the whole body, take a deep breath and co-ordinate harmoniously as many parts as can be brought into sympathetic activity. Stretch the arms upward and the feet downward as far as possible, and repeat at least twenty times. An old writer gave dilatation as one of the primary characteristics of life. A certain distention of all parts of the body is the beginning of the renewal of energy and a primary manifestation of life. We must give room to the life forces, feel the diffusion of energy into every part. The sense of constriction, due to lying in a cramped position, can be easily removed by this primary exercise. The chief elements in this primary distention of the body are found in the stretch and expansion of the torso, in deeper, fuller breathing, in the sense of diffusion of life, in greater satisfaction and in laughter. These elements should be practiced on waking up. The stretch should be in the nature of an indulgence, an instinctive longing on first awaking, a longing in common with all animals. It ought to be enjoyable and a help to sustain the laughter. Count one for the active movement, or stretch, two for the staying of the active conditions, three for the gradual release of activity, and four for complete relaxation. The exercise, as most of the others, should be repeated twenty to twenty-five times, counting four for each of the preceding movements. This will require eighty to one hundred counts. Each of the four actions of the muscles should be carefully distinguished and accentuated. Counting four in this way for an exercise and for each of the first steps obeys the law of rhythm, accentuates all the elemental actions of the muscles and establishes primary conditions of healthful activity in all the vital organs. The simultaneous elements or actions in this first exercise are of such importance that it is well to practice each one separately, either before or after the general exercise. This distinct practice prevents the slighting of any of these elemental conditions, restores harmony and stimulates normal functioning of all organs. In fact, all these actions are really necessary conditions and should be present as elements of all exercises. The following exercises (2-5) are important, individual accentuations of the essential actions of this general exercise, and the conditions of all exercises. The student should carefully study his tendencies to omit or slight any one of these elements and accentuate carefully not only every step separately, but observe with especial care the one most needed. 2. INITIATORY EXHILARATION Sustaining the extension and full breath, laugh heartily, with little or no noise, chuckle to yourself persistently for several minutes. Centre the laughter in the breathing and the torso. Joy and laughter must be considered the first condition of all exercise. The reasons have been explained. If you are still sceptical, observe and experiment. Everything that is truly scientific can be proved or in some way demonstrated. As this is one of the basic principles of this book and its companion volume, "The Smile," and as joy and laughter are met as the first exercise of our program, it may be well to summarize some of the arguments: Exercise in laughter sets free the vital organs and brings all parts into harmonious, normal activity, stimulates the circulation, quickens the metabolism of the cells and causes elimination. Each of these topics might receive many pages of discussion. You will be tempted to omit the practice of the chuckle, but it should be especially emphasized. It expresses and accentuates the permanent possession of the joyous thought. No other exercise can so stimulate a right attitude toward life, as well as restore the normal condition of the vital organs. It has also, as have all of these exercises, a beneficial effect upon the voice. In fact, all good exercises tend to improve the voice. This is one of the most important tests of an exercise,--does it affect easily, naturally and normally the vocal organs? 3. HARMONIC EXPANSION Sustaining laughter and extension, sympathetically and joyously elevate and expand the chest as far as possible. Feel the breast bone separate farther from the spine, easily and naturally as in the expression of joyous courage. Expand slowly, sustain the expansion, gradually release, then rest, that is to say, perform the exercise in the same quadruple rhythm of the harmonic extension. In this exercise you should feel a deepening of the chest chamber. It is well at first, until you get the exercises correctly, to place one hand at the back, the other on the chest, and in expanding to feel the two hands separate. This expansion should be sustained for several seconds. The release should follow gradually. There should be a repetition of the expansion; you should feel a sympathetic activity all through the chest and torso. Sudden collapses should at all times be avoided, and they should especially be avoided in exercises of the chest and of the central organs. The free, expansive facility of the whole chest is the measure of the health, strength, grace and normal actions of a human being. It is of primary importance. 4. RESPIRATORY ACCENTUATION Keeping the body extended, the chest well expanded, take a deep, full breath, hold it a moment and gradually release it, then wait a second without greatly lessening the expansion of the chest In this exercise be sure to accentuate the four elemental parts of an exercise. Taking breath, the active stay of the breath, the gradual release and then the complete surrender of the direct respiratory muscles: that is, accentuate the four steps or elements as in most exercises and avoid the temptation to jerk and to exaggerate minor parts or actions. Constrictions, inharmonious and unrhythmic jerks are always out of place in any exercise. The best results can be obtained only by observance of principles. Do not force the breath out. Allow it to pass out easily and normally. Increase the inspiration rather than the expiration. The air will tend to pass out too quickly, reserve it and allow it to pass out steadily and regularly. We find that the taking of breath is associated with the result of expansion and vitally connected with the conception of impressions and expression, and so is a necessary part. The expanding of the chest causes greater room in the thoracic chamber and breath flows in naturally. This exercise, however, implies that we should consciously and deliberately accentuate expansion and the taking of breath. It aids in the realization of life and the diffusion of activity. Man breathes over twenty-five thousand times in twenty-four hours. He can get along very well on two or three meals of food and six or eight glasses of water, but with as low as fourteen thousand breaths a day, he is flat on his back and has hardly enough power to move hand or foot. We live on air. This is one reason why the expansion of the chest is so important. It gives room for breath. In fact, in breathing we do not suck breath into the lungs. Air presses fifteen pounds to the square inch to get into the lungs. Expansion is, therefore, the primary element in breathing. We should, however, at times not only expand fully but consciously draw in breath. We can expand the chest while sustaining it and drink breath into the very depths of our lungs. Thus the exercise requires us to take as much breath as possible, to retain it a moment, then slowly give it up and at last to relax completely the diaphragm, all the time sustaining the chest expansion. Preserve still the quadruple rhythm. Of course the exercise can be done with dual rhythm, and it will be helpful, but the accentuation of all four of the primary actions will accomplish more than double the beneficial results not only for health but for the voice. It develops the retental action of the breath. A true use of the voice demands a full chest. This exercise strengthens the muscles that reserve the breath and support the tone. The process of respiration is most directly necessary to all the actions of the human organs. It is an essential part of circulation. The breath we take meets the blood. The blood is carried from the heart through the lungs and back to the heart, then out through every organ of the body and back again to the heart. The whole circulation is a mighty process by which the blood receives sustenance, bears this to every organ of the body and carries back the refuse which is oxidized and given out by the lungs. The blood, according to the earliest tradition, is the life. All ancient writers on long life "regard the control of the breath as a fundamental sign." A person with little control of his breathing is doomed to a short life. Nature has so constituted us that at the moment of some excitement, or the reception of some impression, or the instant we try to do something unusual, we take a greater amount of breath. In any exercise, always allow the breathing to act freely. Observe that breathing is the initiatory act or condition of all human effort. It is a sign of the reception of an impression and is thus one of the conditional acts of expression. Breathe deeply and freely at all times. A deliberative breathing exercise, such as the preceding, strengthens all the respiratory muscles and corrects abnormal tendencies. 5. PRIMARY CO-ORDINATION IN LEVITATION Simultaneously lift and expand the summit of the chest as you actively extend the balls of the feet downwards. The opposition between the lifting of the chest and extending the balls of the feet takes place in all good positions in standing and walking. This exercise initiates or accentuates the co-ordination of the muscles used in standing. It tends also to harmonize and bring into unity all the conditions so far attained, and gives practical application to those parts of the body which are active all day, in standing, walking and in sitting. All exercises must be performed rhythmically. There are many elements in rhythm, one is activity and passivity, and another is the alternation of parts:--one limb is active and this helps alternation or rhythm. 6. HARMONIC AND RHYTHMIC EXTENSION Lift the chest and extend the right foot downward, then lift the chest with the downward extension of the left foot, rhythmically alternating from one to the other. This is the first step in the development of rhythm. This alternation is still more akin to the action of the body in standing and walking. Allow the hip to extend outward on the same side which is being extended. Co-ordination, that is a simultaneous and sympathetic union of many parts in one action or a harmonious variation of a primary response in many parts, is one of the primary characteristics of the organism. It can be secured by a certain feeling that the whole nature shares in the exercise, that the whole body responds to the whole being of man. It is a direct expression of joy and sympathy. In an involuntary performance there is always less co-ordination than in a sympathetic motion. These are feelings vitally necessary to co-ordination and we must not only have and feel them, we must express them in the body. The alternation of exercises introduces rhythm, which has been found to be one of the most fundamental elements in training. Rhythm consists of proportion in time. This proportion is in alternation: alternation of activity and passivity, and in alternation of one part with another, as in walking. Rhythm is the continuity of co-ordinations. Co-ordinations cannot be properly preserved without rhythm nor can there be rhythm without co-ordinations. The exercises 2 to 6 should all be included in No. 1. They should also be individually practiced in order to accomplish the best results and to avoid the omission of any of these primary elements which should be present in and co-ordinate every true exercise. After being practiced individually, exercise No. 1 should be practiced several times with a greater co-ordinating union of all the elements. The feeling of satisfaction and joy should be realized at once. 7. CO-ORDINATION OF PRIMARY CONDITIONS Repeat Exercise No. 1; stretch first the right arm and also the leg, bend the left arm and left leg and so on in alternation. Preserve all the movements. The difference between this exercise and No. 1 is the stretching of each side in alternation. The same elements should be included. 8. PRIMARY CO-ORDINATE VOICE CONDITIONS Sustaining all the foregoing conditions; extension, expansion and diffusion of feeling, the retention of the breath and the simultaneous openness and relaxation of the throat, laugh low but heartily:--ha ha, he he, etc. The tone should be soft and pure. The softer the better. If there is any danger of waking or disturbing someone the exercise should not be omitted but practiced softly. Joy must not only be felt, it must be expressed. This series of exercises is based upon the fact that the greatest exercises are expressive movements. The smile on the face and active laughter should be used as direct exercises, not only for the body but also for the voice. This exercise implies some understanding of the fundamental elements of vocal training. The primary co-ordination of voice conditions, that is, the sympathetic, harmonious and elastic retention of the breath causing the co-ordinate passivity at the throat has been explained in "Mind and Voice." This was my discovery and the mastery of it has helped thousands out of ministerial sore throats and other abnormal conditions, and, to my mind, is proved as a fundamental principle. It is of the utmost importance that this little exercise should be practiced in accordance with the principle. The great point of the exercise is the elastic, sympathetic retention of the greatest possible amount of breath and the simultaneous passivity and openness of the throat. The study of laughter or the best possible tone anyone can make will enable him to realize this deep but simple principle. The effect of this exercise is to centre the breath and to harmonize the activities of the whole man. The central organs should always be exercised before the organs of the surface. The laughter must be sincere, genuine, hearty and natural. No one can imagine what wonderful effects can be brought to the voice by such simple exercises as these. The voice is an index, not only to mental and emotional conditions but to health. The voice cannot improve truly without improving health. We reserve breath and have a certain sympathetic fullness due to retention of the breath in the middle of the body. Simultaneously there is an openness of the whole throat and tone passage. All the organs of voice are thus brought into right conditions. When this condition is violated there is a misuse of the voice. Vocal training consists in the use of such simple exercises as will establish all these conditions that have been mentioned, especially the last. The conditions of voice must be co-ordinated, the vocal organs must respond to thinking and feeling. We cannot ignore, we must demonstrate on every plane. Man is given the greatest opportunity for progress. It is an opportunity he must take. There is no growth, no advance without labor. The labor may not be voluntary, it may not be hard, but man has his work to do. It is a joyous work. Man has an instinctive desire for right exercise which will enable him to really unfold his faculties and demonstrate his powers. 9. FREEDOM OF VITAL ORGANS Lying as before, placing both hands flat upon the stomach, keeping the body extended and expanded, breathing full and free, manipulate in a circular, triple rhythm or backward and forward, in dual rhythm, all the vital organs. The thumbs may be placed up under the floating ribs. This exercise is usually given first in Swedish medical gymnastics. It is especially for the stomach, though it has a vital action upon the liver and other organs. Such manipulations are beneficial to a dyspeptic or to one suffering from congestion of the liver, or from constipation. It is a very important exercise and stimulates all the parts so that they will receive more benefit from the following exercises. When any particular part, such as the stomach or liver, is found a little tender or sore, special attention should be given to this spot. 10. FREEDOM OF THE TORSO Preserving primary conditions, turn the hips vigorously as far as possible one way and then the other. This gives a vigorous twist through the centre of the body. It affects the stomach, liver and all the vital organs, and if the chest is kept expanded and a full breath is retained, it greatly affects the diaphragm and action of the respiratory muscles. These movements may be taken also with dual and with quadruple rhythm. If done slowly and steadily, in true rhythm and sequence, they will accomplish surprising results, and bring about a deep harmony. If there is congestion the exercise should be performed twenty or twenty-five times. This exercise frees the torso and makes it flexible. It strengthens the diaphragm and, obeying one of the fundamental laws, exercises the central muscles of the body. Do not give sudden jerks or sudden collapses, but steadily, definitely and vigorously pivot the hip. In many people, there are tendencies to congestion in the stomach, and in the neck and throat. This rotary action tends to remove these constrictions and to develop a certain flexibility in the whole torso. 11. FREEDOM OF NECK AND THROAT Knead with both hands the whole throat and neck, moving every part and eliminating any soreness or stiffness. The night gown should be unbuttoned and the breast bare. The fingers should be used and also the palm of the hand and the thumb so that every part of the neck and throat shall be set free. In most persons spots will be found that have some tenderness or soreness, especially if there is any cold or sore throat, and these parts should receive careful attention and manipulation, which should be continued until the soreness is removed. Persevere until the whole throat feels perfectly free and relaxed. It is often the case that some gland is weak and can be strengthened by this massage. This exercise and that of the manipulation of the stomach, as well as the exercises which follow, have a wonderful effect upon the voice. 12. FREEDOM OF NECK AND HEAD Pivot the head as far as possible to the right and then as far as possible to the left. This exercise is also best practiced in quadruple rhythm. The hands may be around the back of the neck. Knead deeply and remove any congestion. The efficiency of this exercise may be increased by placing the hands on the neck so that at the moment of extreme pivot the hand may knead the parts. This action of the hand increases the effect and tends, in cases of congestion around the throat or ears, to give great assistance towards the elimination of all abnormal conditions. The other exercises for the manipulation of the throat tend to correct catarrhal conditions. 13. ELEVATION AND EXTENSION OF LOWER LIMBS Observing all the conditions, lift the right foot, knee straight, as high as possible, then slowly release it, then lift the left in the same way. The movement should also be done in quadruple rhythm. The lift should be slow, and there should be a decided staying of the activity, and then a very slow release; then complete rest. The effect of this exercise is to accentuate further the idea of rhythm; that is, it requires alternate activity and passivity in sequence or a continuity of co-ordinations. In performing this exercise almost an ache may be felt at the back of the legs, especially at the back of the knees. This is due to the fact that these muscles become too short in sitting and therefore need extension. This exercise gives extension to these muscles. Similar aches will always indicate a lack of extension and call for special help and practice of the opposing muscles. Of course, it can be seen that whenever parts of the body, such as the knees, are kept bent, the muscles at the front of the limb will grow too long and those at the back of it, too short. Hence, when a man stands up there is a tendency to stand with the knee bent. Old men have a lack of firm backward spring in the knee. It is the aim of several of the exercises to cure this. 14. EXTENSION OF THE BACK With the body well expanded, kept straight, breathing free and full, lift the hips bearing the weight upon the back of the shoulders and the heel. This exercise needs to be practiced with quadruple rhythm slowly. It gives wonderful exercise to the central muscles and organs of the torso. 15. ELEVATION OF LOWER LIMBS With the body well extended and all conditions sustained, lift both legs, knees straight, hold, slowly release, then completely rest. This exercise is the best help that can be given for a hollow back. It also brings activity into all the abdominal muscles. It will strengthen the muscles concerned in the support of the voice. If the chest is kept well expanded and the lungs full of breath, the exercise will have a wonderful effect upon the diaphragm and the respiratory mechanism. It will strengthen and deepen the breathing and make it more central and reposeful. 16. RHYTHMIC ALTERNATION IN EXTENSION Combine the last two exercises and give them in alternation. First, lift the body, then rest, then lift both feet, then the body, and so on. This alternate movement will bring great relief. The muscles are more or less opposed; at any rate, the activity concerned in each exercise will receive a rest during the other action. This, of course, uses rhythm as an aid. True, natural rhythm is always helpful and should be introduced whenever possible. 17. ROTARY ACTION OF THE FEET With the heels resting upon the bed carry the balls of the feet in the widest possible circle. This exercise may be omitted, but it is very important for one who is lacking in freedom in the feet or who suffers from cold feet. It also brings into action the lower extremities and tends to further equalize the circulation. 18. MOBILITY OF THE FACE Rest a moment and feel a sense of satisfaction and then smile and place both hands upon the face, covering it as far as possible and knead the muscles, so as to eliminate every constriction and allow the diffusion of the smile to go into every part. Do not laugh at this exercise but observe the effect. This exercise, however, should be practiced in union with the smile. Pay especial attention to any part of the face where there are constrictions or tendencies to constriction, and especially any part that may seem to droop. Where there has been a good deal of suffering or whining, or both, certain parts of the face, especially the corners of the mouth, are turned downward. This habitual action causes the muscles that lift the corners of the mouth to become too long while the corresponding muscles that draw the mouth down become abnormally short. Kneading is, primarily, to give extension to the muscles that have become too short, and the laughter at the same time is to give exercise to the muscles that have become too extended or elongated. All parts of the face will be brought into proportion. Crows' feet will be eliminated and the beauty and expression of the countenance greatly increased. Where there seems to be no muscle between the skin and bone, as sometimes in the forehead, there must be manipulation, exercise of the weak muscles. In the case of the face we have to bring in so-called secondary motions. We have to use the hands in the way indicated to get any effect. Of course, the effect will be temporary unless the disposition is changed. The mental and emotional actions are always the primary cause, but frequently the condition of the muscles has become such that it will take a long time to effect a change. The exercises, accordingly, are a wonderful help. If one-tenth of the power of this exercise to help the countenance were realized, it would not be neglected. One of my students opened a room and secured quite a following in facial massage by using these exercises. Some cruder than this one were used, though good results were accomplished. This exercise, as here suggested, can be done by anyone alone. If people use it who have constricted countenances, they should carefully emphasize the smile. That has not been done and hence the best results have not been secured. The faithful practice of such an exercise and especially the study of the significance of the smile and the practice of laughter, in union with other exercises for the stimulation of vitality, will work wonders in the expressive mobility and beauty of the countenance. It is worth ten times all the cosmetics as a beautifier. It would banish "Beauty Parlors." It is not, however, for the restoration of beauty of the countenance, but to bring blood into parts that are not used. It has good effect upon catarrh, headaches and neuralgia. While resting the larger muscles of the body these two important exercises may be introduced, or they may be introduced as the last of the first series, while lying on the back. 19. FREEDOM OF THE SCALP Placing the hands upon the head move the whole scalp freely and easily in all directions. This is really the only effective remedy for imperfection at the roots of the hair, falling hair, or baldness. It will cause natural and rich growth of hair. It is well, also, to pull the hair. One specialist gives this as the only remedy to prevent it from falling out. Not only will such exercises improve the hair by improving the circulation around the roots, but it will make the muscles of these parts more flexible. 20. EXTENSION AND FREEDOM OF THE VITAL ORGANS Turn over, face downward, with the body well extended, bearing the weight upon the toes and the elbows, with the upper arm vertical, lift the hips and torso till the body is extended in a straight line. Be sure that the upper arms are vertical and the fore-arms parallel with each other. Try to keep the body as straight as possible and get the sense of extension. This may seem to be a severe exercise, but it is not dangerous. In fact, more than any other exercise it tends to correct abnormal conditions in the central portions of the body. It allows the vital organs to be suspended from another angle, rests them, and tends to restore all to normal conditions. This exercise should be performed in quadruple rhythm, steadily, and slowly. Attention should be given to the complete rest at the climax. Practice it a few times at first until the strength is sufficient to repeat it many times. It is an unusually important exercise in case of any constrictions. It strengthens also certain muscles of the torso which are apt to be neglected. This making a bridge of the body, supporting it by the upper arms which should be vertical, and the feet which should also be vertical, has a great effect upon all the internal organs of the torso. It affects any sort of displacement and any kind of congestion. The exercises may be practiced slowly, rising and then staying the activity for a little while, and then allowing the body slowly to descend. Take a good rest as the exercise is rather vigorous for some persons, especially those who have any weakness through the torso. Those whom the exercise taxes are they who especially need it. It should be repeated several times. 21. PIVOTAL ELEVATION OF THE HEAD Pivot the head as far as possible to the right, and then lift it backward. Release and carry to the left, and lift it backward as far as possible. This exercise tends to strengthen the muscles at the back of the neck. It helps the extension of the chest, and strengthens those muscles which hold the head erect. 22. ACTIVITY OF THE ROYAL MUSCLE Lift the head as far back as possible, then slowly draw the chin in lifting the back of the head high. This exercise develops what sculptors call the royal muscle. This muscle is active, causes an erect head and gives a certain dignity to the carriage of the body and is usually associated with a properly expanded body. Of course, it alone is not sufficient for a dignified carriage because there must be an expanded chest and the whole body must be normally erect. This muscle, however, plays an important part. It is at the summit of the line of gravity and affects not only the carriage of the head but has a sympathetic effect on the chest. When it is strong and vigorous it tends to make the whole body erect and to bring into sympathetic co-ordination all the muscles used in standing. 23. EXTENSION OF HIPS AND ABDOMEN With the body well extended lift the right foot, knee straight, as far backward and upward as possible. Then release, and lift the left foot in the same way. This exercise should be used alternately and given a good deal of activity. The heels may be extended or stretched downward as they are lifted. This will give greater extension to the muscles at the back of the leg. This exercise causes extension of certain muscles which are kept short when sitting. It is also beneficial for the back. 24. ROTATION OF RIGHT SHOULDER Turn over to the left side. Vigorously rotate the right shoulder, carrying it in as wide a circle as possible. This rotary action of the shoulders may be repeated several times in different positions of the body. The exercise is important for the freeing of the whole torso. The shoulders of most people are rather weak. They should be strong and vigorous especially in brain workers because their action tends to affect the circulation of the blood toward the head. It has also an effect upon the summit of the lungs and certain regions which need freedom. The rotary action of the shoulders may be given best when lying on the side. The action of the shoulders, however, should not be neglected as it brings a harmonious circulation in the region of the throat. The exercise tends also to affect the whole summit of the chest. The active shoulder expresses animation and ardor in passion. A good strong shoulder is also an indication of vitality. The circular and rotary action of the shoulders, the feet, and the hips, is best performed with triple rhythm,--first, upward and forward; second, backward; third, release. The release may be quick and firm. Triple rhythm has a very sympathetic and stimulating effect. The run is more of a triple rhythm, while the walk is dual. All forms of rhythm, all of the metres should be introduced into the various exercises. 25. ROTATION OF LEFT SHOULDER Turn over to the right side, and rotate the left shoulder in the same way. Whenever an exercise is taken for one side it should also be given for the other unless there is special reason for remedying some condition of one-sidedness. Exercises for the centre of the body should always be given the preference. There should be as far as possible a series of exercises. Thus far, the exercises are all used lying down. They may be taken in bed but, of course, it would be better if the bed were firm and not too soft, not too yielding and as level as possible. The exercises would often be more helpful if taken on the hard floor. It is better to sleep on a narrow cot as Cornaro did. This prevents our doubling up the body and contracting the vital organs. Everyone should lie down to sleep tall, or long, and as expanded as possible. Another reason for sleeping on a cot is that there are no hindrances to lifting the arms behind the head in some of the first exercises. If we sleep on a bed, when we exercise, the body should be placed more or less across it so as to give more freedom to the arms, or the arms may be stretched out straight at the side although this is not so good. 26. ELEVATION OF CHEST AND BREATHING Sit erect, as tall as possible. Expand the chest fully, carry the arms forward, then backward, gripping the hands almost under the shoulders, chest out as far as possible, taking a deep breath. Repeat this rhythmically many times, sustaining as far as possible the expansion of the chest. It will be observed that there will come naturally a desire to sit up. It may be well before sitting up to turn on the back and rest a moment and feel the enjoyment of the actions that have been in the body. If the exercises have been properly practiced, there will be a sense of ease and satisfaction. 27. PIVOTAL FLEXIBILITY OF CHEST Sitting as erect as possible with actively expanded chest, pivot the shoulders and upper part of the torso as far as possible, first to the right and then to the left. This exercise may be performed to advantage with quadruple rhythm. This movement exercises almost the opposite muscles from Exercise No. 10. It also has the same beneficial results in the extension of the chest, the removal of constrictions or interferences with the diaphragm, and has a beneficial effect also upon the stomach and all the vital organs. It is an important exercise for strengthening the muscles of breathing and deepening respiration. It should be repeated many times. 28. EXTENSION OF MUSCLES OF THE BACK Stand, stretch arms upward as far as possible, then carry them in the widest possible circle. Relax the back and all parts of the body so that the fingers come to the floor or near it. Then return and carry the fingers as far back as possible. This exercise brings extension into all the muscles of the back. Frequently, it is the best possible exercise to develop the chest since the extension of a muscle also stimulates its right contraction. The elbows and knees should be kept as straight as possible in this exercise. The wide circle should be made not only in coming down but in going back forward and over backward. This exercise causes great extension of the muscles. The muscles from the heel all up the back of the legs and even of the arms are affected. Then in getting back the muscles of all the body receive a similar extension. This action is very helpful for the development of erectness of the body. It also causes alternation of the muscles and has a good effect upon the health. 29. EXTENSION OF MUSCLES AT THE SIDE Standing erect carry the hip out over the right foot, surrendering the whole body to the left side. Allow the weight to be carried out over the left foot, the left hip being widely extended. This exercise tends to get freedom for muscles at the side and the hip so that the hip upon which the person stands will naturally sway out to the side, and the free hip will be surrendered, bringing the body very naturally into its spiral curves. 30. CO-ORDINATION IN STANDING Standing erect, expand the chest in opposition to the balls of the feet, and allow the body slowly to be lifted seemingly from the summit of the chest upward. Allow it to return very slowly and steadily and to sink to the heels. Repeat many times. This exercise should also be practiced upon each foot separately. It establishes right co-ordinations of the body in standing and helps in establishing accordant poise. All the muscles in the body which tend to bring the summit of the chest and the balls of the feet into right co-ordination are brought into sympathetic activity. It is really an important exercise for the development of a correct bearing and posture of the body. In going upward, be sure that the chest reaches upward and that the body is lifted by a species of levitation. Keep the body as straight as possible from the heel to the centre of the neck, preserving a sympathetic expansion of the chest at all times. This exercise acts upon the whole body, tending to bring all parts into normal relationship. 31. EXTENSION OF CHEST Placing your hands against the sides of a narrow door way, allow your weight to come forward upon the hands, the knees straight. Take a full breath, then carry the body back by action of the arms. This presses the shoulders back and causes expansion of the chest, and a deep breath should, of course, be taken. The exercise should be repeated many times. This exercise, as well as all others, should be practiced where the air is pure. Observe that this exercise can be made more severe by placing the feet farther back from the door so that the weight of the body will fall more upon the hands. In this case the hands may be lower. They should be placed slightly below the shoulders. 32. HARMONY OF RESPIRATION AND CIRCULATION Lift the arms as high as possible and grasp a pole which has been placed so that it can barely be grasped on tiptoe, and let your weight rest upon the hands, and endeavor to touch the floor with the heels. One can easily have a pole placed upon hooks as high as possible inside a closet. This exercise frees all the muscles of the back and carries the blood away from the head. It is an exercise especially recommended by Baron Posse for brain workers. After the exercises take a sponge bath, or if preferred, rub the chest and throat vigorously with a rough cloth with cold water. Some people prefer an entire bath, but getting into very cold water often has a bad effect upon the circulation and breathing. The water should not be too cold at first until one becomes accustomed to the unusual stimulation. Rub till dry and warm. Injury may follow if there is not reaction. This program may be lengthened or shortened to suit individual needs. Many exercises can be added by each one according to instinct. Some, for example, those turning to the side, except possibly the relaxing of the shoulders, may be shortened. The exercises may be lengthened also by practicing one a longer period of time, making repetitions of a hundred or more. They may be shortened, too, by giving each movement a shorter period. Each student must study himself and adapt the exercises according to need. Feelings of enjoyment, however, are not a safe guide. We are so apt to let the dull and stupid feeling take possession in the morning and omit the exercises for the day. It takes resolution to perform them but in a few minutes the reward comes in a feeling of satisfaction and rest. The exercises are usually the best means of removing the feeling of dullness. That, indeed, is one of their chief aims. Co-ordinating the performance and the joyous attitude of man will soon cause the exercises to be developed into a habit and one will feel the need of them as much as he feels the need of food. The exercises demand joy, expansion, extension, stretching, deep breathing, co-ordination of various parts and the specific accentuation of the movements and harmonious as well as rhythmic alternation. In general, a person can arrange from this program, shorter ones of from five minutes to thirty, according to individual needs. The principles underlying the exercises should be carefully considered. This will enable students to remember more easily and more correctly to practice the successive exercises. Moreover, in the practice of the exercises, as has been said, the aim should be always kept in mind. Thus the simplest action may be turned into the most important exercise by being practiced in accordance with principles and for a specific aim. To aid those who wish a shorter program, one that will not take over ten minutes, the following may serve as a helpful guide. 1. Combine all exercises from one to seven:--laugh, expand the chest, breathe deeply, co-ordinating the balls of the feet with the chest, and stretch. Emphasize all of these exercises. It may be wise to count say six specific, successive steps: 1, the expansion of the chest; 2, deep breathing; 3, laughter; 4, stretch; 5, gradual relaxation; 6, complete release. One should be sure that each of these elements is practiced correctly. It is wise at first to individualize them until they are normal and then such a combination becomes efficient and may be in fact advisable as a step in progress. 2. Combine exercises nine and ten:--that is, knead the stomach in combination with the pivot of the hips. 3. Exercises eleven and twelve in a similar way combine the kneading of the neck and throat with the pivotal action of the head. 4. Sixteen may be practiced in a way to unite fourteen and fifteen. 5. Eighteen and nineteen may be practiced as one. The movements, however, should be separated and may be alternated by passing from the face to the head. 6. Exercise twenty, as many others, should always be practiced individually and separately. 7. Twenty may be combined, but not so well with eleven and twelve. 8. All the sitting exercises may be omitted or combined with the standing exercises taken before the exercises on the pole. V HOW TO PRACTICE THE EXERCISES Since exercises are primarily mental it can be seen that it is not merely the movement but the mental and emotional attitude toward that movement, in short, the conditions of its practice, upon which the accomplishment of right results most depend. An exercise performed with a feeling of antagonism, gloom, or perfunctorily without thought, will not accomplish nearly as much as one practiced with sympathy and joy. Only thinking and feeling will establish the co-ordinations. Mere perfunctory performance of an exercise or a mechanical use of the will may produce certain local effects, and in this way may actually do harm, while the same exercise practiced with a feeling of joy and exhilaration will bring into co-ordination various parts, and, in fact, affect the whole organism. Practice the exercises accordingly for the fun of the thing; laugh, feel a joyous exultation. Joyous normal emotion acts expansively. The circulation is quickened and the vital organs are stimulated to normal action. Without the awakening or enjoyment of life the vital forces show little response. If anyone will examine himself in a state of anger he will feel that it is the lower part of his nature that is dominating him. He can realize that his muscles and vital organs are constricted and cramped. Who has not felt a deep feeling of bitterness, almost of poison, after a fit of anger? Who has not felt a certain depression, at times even of sickness, after antagonism or giving up to despondency? There is also a feeling above negative emotions of certain dormant possibilities, certain affections and a better nature in the background. In all true exercises this sub-conscious, better self should be the very centre of the endeavor. So universally is true training and even the nature of an exercise misunderstood that it may be well to summarize a few points to secure intelligent practice. 1. Practice with your whole nature. Do not regard the performance of movements as a mere matter of will. Expression requires a unity of the whole life of our being. Regard an exercise as a means of bringing all your powers into life and unity. Let practice be a means of demonstrating your own abilities, spontaneous and deliberative activities to yourself. 2. Practice with an ideal in mind. The accomplishment of an endeavor implies the reaching or attainment of an ideal. Practicing with no end in view accomplishes nothing. The goal must be an ideal. There is a universal intuition in an ideal man. There is an intuition deep in ourselves of our higher possibilities. The feeling that better things are possible inspires all human endeavor. Movement merely for the sake of movement, mere haphazard practice, without an ideal, accomplishes but little. We want not only an instinctive ideal but we want one which is the result of thought and study. 3. Practice hopefully and joyfully. That is to say, there should not only be thought and imagination in practice, there should be feeling,--a normal and ideal emotion. The realization of the possibility of attaining an ideal brings joy, hope, courage and confidence. 4. In every exercise feel a sympathetic expansion of the torso. It is not only necessary to feel joy, we must express it, and the primary expression of joy is expansion. Expansion is needed not only as one of the exercises; it is more than this. It is a conditional element of all exercise. From first to last, in every movement, feel also a certain expansion of the chest. 5. In every exercise feel exhilaration of the breathing. Increase of the activity of breathing in direct co-ordination with expansion is a part of the expression, not only of joy but courage, resolution, endeavor and all normal emotions. Taking a full breath is given as one of the exercises, but here again we have a condition for all exercises. This is the reason why we should give attention to exalted emotion. It will diffuse through the whole body causing expansion and also quickening all the vital functions. Respiration is the central function of the body. All the vital operations depend upon it. Perfunctory exercises which do not stimulate breathing are useless and injurious. 6. Accentuate the extension of the muscles of the body in all exercises possible. The kneading of the face helps the parts as well as being important in itself. If we rub the muscles while whining we tend to confirm the condition in the parts at the time. Thus we may develop whines and frowns. It is very important, therefore, that there should be a cheery smile on the face during the manipulation, if the looks are to be improved by the exercise. In kneading the stomach and the diaphragm if we have a full chest, as in laughter, the manipulation will produce a far better effect upon the diaphragm than if we have little breath. In practicing an exercise, therefore, it is not only necessary to study which part most needs development or which muscle is weak, but it is just as necessary to notice which muscles need extension. 7. Practice harmoniously. We should exercise all parts of the body in a similar way. If we exercise, for example, the action of the feet it is well also to practice rotary action of the arms, or at any rate, of the head. We should see to it that when we practice one part of the body the corresponding part of the body should be equally exercised. We should not give more exercise to one side or part, except when there are congested conditions. We should not give much more to the arms than to the legs unless we have to walk a great deal. 8. Practice in such a way that every movement affects the central parts of the body. Hence the program takes first the expansion of the chest and breathing and chuckling, also the transverse action of the torso. We should be cautious about performing violent exercises with the arms, or even with the feet, without simultaneous expansion of the torso because this is a central action which is conditional to all proper action of the limbs. Contraction of the torso while working upon the limbs may draw vitality from the vital organs. Gymnasts, as a class, die early because they are always performing feats. Other dangers are found in the gymnasium, such as practicing exercises perfunctorily, using quick jerks and too heavy and labored movements which affect only the heavy muscles. The absence of rhythm and co-ordination, the presence of too antagonistic movements, the desire to make a show, too much work upon the superficial muscles are also frequent faults. Another reason for the beginning of the day's exercise with joy is the fact that the positive emotions affect a man in the centre of his body. They are all expressed by sympathy and right expansion of the torso. This is not only central in expression, it is also central in training. The muscles affecting the more central organs should in every exercise in some sense cause co-ordinate actions in various parts. The expansive action of the chest is one of the chief exercises because it not only frees the vital organs but co-ordinates the normal actions of a man in standing and walking. Observe that harmony demands that all parts be equally exercised, but unity demands that we begin our exercises at the center. The organic centrality of the whole body is of first importance. We should not only feel expansion of the chest in all exercises, but we should begin with exercises for the torso rather than with exercises for the limbs. We want to reach the deepest vital organs as a part of all exercises. Sometimes a man goes into a gymnasium and works for the muscles of the arm, for example, while the muscles of his chest and around his stomach and diaphragm are weak. In this case the central muscles may grow weaker. Exercises, not properly centred, will decrease harmony. I have found many people with lack of support of the voice and weakness of the diaphragm and the muscles relating to the retention of breath, but I have found very strong muscles in the arms, while the muscles in the center of the body were surprisingly weak. In following "external measurements" too much attention is often given to the muscles of the limbs that can be measured. It is easy to discover the fact that the lower limbs have more muscular development than the arms, but this is of little consequence compared with the weakness of internal and hidden muscles like the diaphragm. It cannot be too often emphasized that an organism necessarily is one. The parts sympathize with each other, and the higher the organism the more is this true. The voice expresses the whole being and body, and it not only calls for great activity of the central muscles, such as the diaphragm, but every part of the body seems to share in voice conditions. A human being with his legs cut off can never sing or speak as well as he could before he lost them. 9. As far as possible, always feel in all the muscles a sympathetic action with certain opposite parts that support or naturally co-operate with these. Specific exercises must be directed to central and harmonious effects. For example, expanding the chest and extending the balls of the feet downward as far as possible co-ordinates the parts that are used in standing, though in a different way. It gives extension to the parts; and to extend muscles is often the best way to bring activity into them. Formerly a horse was fed in a high trough in order to make him hold his head high, but no horse carries his head so high or has such a beautiful arch to the neck as the wild horse, that feeds on the ground. Weak muscles may often be improved by giving them extension. This eliminates constrictions and brings more rhythm or balanced activity in opposition to other muscles or in union with them. The co-ordination must be felt. When there are co-ordinations there will be a sense of satisfaction in the vital organs. The exercises will not weary. They will not be a strain or tax the strength. They accumulate vitality rather than waste it. Co-ordination must especially be studied and used consciously and deliberatively with reference to the chest. In the start of every exercise there should be, as has been said before, something of an increase of activity in the chest and the breath. 10. Practice all exercises as rhythmically as possible. Rhythm and co-ordination are the deepest lessons of life and are necessary to each other. Activity and passivity must alternate in proportion as far as possible in all exercise. Observe also that the active exertion of an exercise should determine the amount of the reaction. We should go as slowly in the recoil or eccentric contraction as we do in the concentric contraction. Nature is always rhythmic. Notice the beating of the heart, going on constantly for eighty or a hundred years. It acts and then re-acts. Observe, too, the rhythm of the peristaltic action of the stomach. An exercise must obey this universal law of nature. Jerks should never be permitted; but all be easy and gradual. Even the surrender of a movement should be gradual. The eccentric action which results is more important in many cases than the concentric. For example, in the diaphragm we make voice by an eccentric action of the inspiratory muscles. We take breath by a concentric action of the diaphragm, we give out breath in making voice by eccentric contraction. Rhythm, therefore, means primarily that there should be a rest after each exercise. If we feel very weary we should especially emphasize this rest. It is lack of this rest that causes strain and weariness and makes a person nervous. The normal effect of the exercises when practiced rhythmically, is to eliminate fatigue, correct nervousness and weakness. Rhythmic movements accomplish ten times more than unrhythmic ones, even if unrhythmic movements do not produce unhealthy and abnormal results. Observe that nature always responds to rhythm. The body will respond to rhythm. Let the exercise be taken vigorously and definitely. Let also the reactions or rests be equally definite and decided. Vigor should never lead to constrictions or to great labor. If we lie on our back and stretch one side and then the other it is easier and we accomplish better results as a rule than we do by stretching both arms and feet simultaneously. It is hard to explain the sympathetic union of co-ordination and rhythm. I have never found any explanation or even reference to this. Even Dalcroze, who has so many good ideas regarding rhythm, has not grasped the principles of co-ordination of different parts of the body and especially the relation of co-ordination to rhythm. Awkward people lack both co-ordination and rhythm and the two are vitally connected. By establishing co-ordinations we begin to establish rhythm, and by establishing rhythm we help in the co-ordinations. The principle of rhythm applies to all our human actions. We should walk rhythmically, and we should stand allowing all the rhythmic curves of the body to have their normal relationship. We shall always have the right rhythmic curves if we have the right centrality and co-ordinations. One of the greatest effects of music is due to the rhythm. All movements, however, have a rhythm of their own. 11. Use in every exercise, as far as possible, all the primary actions of the muscles. We can distinguish four actions of the muscles. First, active contraction, shortening of the muscles sometimes called concentric contraction; secondly, we can stay the tension of the muscles at a certain point. This is called static contraction. Third, we can allow the muscle gradually to release its contraction, that is, allow it to slowly lengthen. This is called eccentric contraction. Fourth, we can take the will entirely out of a muscle and allow its complete quiescence. Rhythm demands the presence of all these actions; and also all these elements in proportion. And in the practice of all exercises it is well to accentuate all four of these elements by counting. In the stretch for the whole body, for example, we can extend the limbs slowly as far as possible, and there will be a contraction of the extensor muscles. Then we can stay the body when stretched to the fullest extent. Then we can gradually release the action of these muscles and then completely rest. Some of the exercises can be practiced with dual movements, first with activity and then release, but by varying the climactic action for a moment and gradually releasing, that is, by giving these a quadruple rhythm, we can accomplish better results than in the dual. In dual rhythm we are apt to collapse suddenly after a movement. In fact, it is harder to control the release of the contraction of the muscles than to control the gradual increase of their contraction. This is illustrated in the difficulty of retaining breath. Breath is normally retained by sustaining the activity of the diaphragm, that is, its eccentric contraction. However, the body needs occasionally the complete surrender of muscles, but this should not be too sudden or jerky. The gradual surrender brings greater control and the higher type of development. When we use what are known as secondary movements, that is, when we use the hands to manipulate the stomach or when somebody else rubs us, we should restfully and completely give up the muscles and manipulate them or let them be manipulated in a state of rest. At times it may be well to manipulate a muscle when at full tension. When there seems to be a tendency to great constriction it may be well to manipulate a muscle during both contraction and relaxation and to test its relaxation. Again if a muscle does not seem to act as far as possible the opposing one may be found too short and may be manipulated to allow greater extension. 12. Practice thoughtfully. That is to say, study yourself. Observe your needs. For example, stand against some perfectly straight post or door, with the heels and back of the head against it. Where the back curves most, there will be room for the hand. Now where do you feel the most constriction? Give attention to such parts. Even when lying on your back, by stretching the limbs and expanding the chest such wrong tendencies or faults in standing can be corrected. The chest can be set free when it is constricted. When it is carried too low you can directly separate the breast-bone from the spine. By sympathetic expansions of the torso and by manipulating with the hands the parts that are especially constricted, curvatures, even in the back, can be improved. In all cases in practicing expansion we should be careful that there is no increase in the curvature of the spine. The back should remain normal, or become more nearly normal if we find any perversions. A hollow back, as is well known, is more difficult to correct than a hollow chest, though both of them are abnormal. A hollow back can best be corrected by the lifting of the feet, and the extension of the muscles of the back. If the hand is placed under the back where there is the greatest curvature there will be felt a normal action upon this curve of the spine. One point which has been discussed is whether training can affect the bones, or only the muscles. The whole body can be affected by training if the right methods are used. In correcting something like a hollow back, which has been of long duration, not only the balance of the muscles but the very articulations and ligaments and even bones may be affected by patient and persevering practice. If there is congestion in the region of the throat, the pivotal action of the head is important, but the hands can be made to do a great deal of work also during the pivotal actions. Such manipulation is one of the best remedies for sore throat, and also for dizziness, unless the dizziness is caused by a wrong condition of the stomach or liver, in which case the pivotal actions of the torso should be vigorously performed, with kneading by the hands, of the abdomen. If one limb is weaker than its mate it should be given more practice until balance is restored. If there is any muscle weak in any part of the body, we should find an exercise to strengthen it harmoniously. It can hardly be emphasized too often that the central muscles should be stronger than the surface muscles. Whenever we find, for example, a weak diaphragm, we should use a greater number of exercises for it and be careful not to give too much attention to the arm muscles. It is not mere strength to lift a heavy weight that measures the degree of vitality or indicates length of life, but rather the harmony of all parts working together. The muscles connected with breathing should be stronger in proportion than the superficial muscles of the arms or lower limbs. People who perform one particular movement a great deal, such as a blacksmith in hammering, should study and use exercises for the parts that are habitually neglected. A little thought can correct every abnormal condition, even stiff joints and headache. By practicing patiently such tendencies may be practically eliminated. 13. Practice progressively. Exercises are often taken intemperately. The student begins with enthusiasm, feels uncomfortable results from the extravagance, and then gives up the exercises. Begin carefully. Patiently practice the movement at first ten or twenty times, counting four with each step and accentuating the stretches, each day increasing a little, and after a week or two the results will be surprising. Let there be regularity even in the increasing of the exercises. We must take steps slowly, and gradually add others until we have the number which the normal condition of our system demands. Study your own strength and the effects of the exercises upon you. There are many ways by which an exercise may be made progressive. First, by gradually increasing the vigor of the movement. For example, lifting the feet from the bed, one foot may be lifted at a time, which is easier, or both may be lifted only a few inches at first. Second, the exercise may be performed more slowly and more vigorously. Third, by repeating the exercise a greater number of times. Fourth, by the addition of a greater number and variety of exercises. Sometimes a person is lame from practice. This is usually due to the breaking of small, delicate fibres. These fibres may have grown together by monotony of movement and by extending them suddenly or violently they may have been wrenched apart too suddenly. Muscular fibres should move freely. They will do so if we practice gradually, but violent practice may strain unused muscles and thus cause soreness. In general, the actions of muscles should be as varied as possible, but should be easily, progressively developed. Every successive day, exercises should receive a little more vigor until normal conditions are established. Some kinds of exercises may be omitted at first. We may leave out all the exercises sitting or those lying on the side. A few of the standing exercises may also be omitted. You will be tempted, however, to omit too much as a rule and then some special day to practice too many. Even if you do get a little sore or lame or feel a little as if you had overdone it is better than under-doing, and nature will soon correct the abnormal condition. The next time you practice the exercise you can eliminate the bad effects of your former practice. In all cases of sickness, or weakness from any cause, special care must be given to gentle stretches and manipulation. The movements should be slow and steady. Do not leave yourself in a state of pain but of enjoyment. Remember that growth in nature is slow. The stronger the organism, like the oak, the slower the growth. A weed may grow almost in a night. Be patient, therefore, do not worry,--be persevering and regular in all the habits of life. Some constitutions need more exercise than others. Those who are growing fleshy need quick, vigorous exercises, while those who are growing thin and emaciated need slow, steady ones, as do those who are nervous. 14. Establish periodicity. All development in nature proceeds in a regular and continuous sequence. There are certain alternations and variations, but these take place at specific periods. The organism will adapt itself to regular periods. Thus, if we take our meals regularly, we get hungry at the same time every day. We should go to bed at a regular hour; at that time the system demands rest and we become sleepy. Parents are so anxious that their children have a good time that they frequently cultivate irregular habits and thus lay the foundation of future failure. Health is greatly dependent upon regular hours for both work and recreation. Anything that interferes with periodicity in the human body interferes with vital functioning. Observe how regularly we breathe. There is a normal respiration, circulation, and beating of the heart which are practically the same for everyone. Any variation from these regular rhythms is serious. This principle of periodicity applies to exercises as well as to anything else. Some men have the habit of going to a gymnasium once a week. They take the exercises one day and neglect them for several days, then try to make up for lost time. The exercises in such cases are not enjoyed. They will be performed mechanically, if not perfunctorily: at any rate, satisfactory results will not follow. If we take exercises every day at about the same time, say upon waking in the morning and on going to bed at night, the system will come to long for them just as the stomach craves food. Nature does not grow a little one day and then stop for a while; she does not grow a limb on one side and then another on the other side. All growth is continuous. Of course, this continuity is rhythmic. There is a different action day and night, but this in itself is a form of periodicity. In the same way we have summer and winter. The tree feeds itself in summer and during the winter the life remains hidden at the root while the process of making the texture firm proceeds with rhythmic alternation. All phases of life and growth are periodic. If, for any reason, there is an unusually severe winter the plants are killed. If there is a long period of drought vegetation dies. A certain normal amount of rain as of air, food, or soil is necessary to the growth of the plant. One reason for practicing in the early morning is the fact that it will connect exercise with the natural habits of the individual. The time of waking up should be periodic and will be so if we retire regularly. The practice of exercises on first awakening or retiring will also tend to help the normal time and amount of sleep. If we take exercises on first waking, as suggested, we shall awake about the same time and with greater enjoyment. The system will come to expand naturally; every cell will leap like a dog that prances with joy when it sees its master getting ready to go for a walk. 15. Practice regularly. Not only should the time be regular, the amount of exercise also should be about the same each day. We should not give a half hour or an hour one day and neglect it entirely the next any more than we should eat one extraordinary meal and then go without anything to eat for two or three days. The same is true also regarding the kind of exercise. It may be helpful to change some of the exercises, but we should have exercises for all parts of the body. If we substitute one exercise for another we should take care to exercise all the parts equally. We may change the kind of food, but the degree of sustenance it contains should not greatly vary. 16. Practice patiently. Do not expect great results to come in a day, though you ought to feel some effect very quickly, yet it may take weeks, especially if there is any unusual weakness or abnormal condition. The slower and more varied the practice the better, other things being equal, because conditions are more important than the exercise and the normal adjustment of the various parts of the body is much more important than strengthening any local part. 17. Practice slowly but decidedly and vigorously. The more slowly an exercise is practiced the deeper the effect. The lifting of the feet very slowly, for example, will have more effect upon the diaphragm than if done quickly. The holding of the chest high while lifting the feet slowly, causes wonderful action of the diaphragm and of the stomach and vital organs. Slowness, however, does not mean hesitation, indifference, nor laziness. Mere lazy, indifferent practice will accomplish nothing. Let the movements be done slowly but decidedly and definitely. One should be careful if there is any particular part that causes pain. We should bring in secondary or kneading movements, with the hands. If the action is thoughtfully directed to the right part, if it is truly rhythmic and sympathetic, abnormal conditions will be removed. 18. Exercise as well as sleep in the purest air possible. Sleep with your windows open. Let the air circulate across your room though not across your bed. Let the air be as pure as that out of doors. Perform your exercises in bed with your windows open and with but little covering. The vigorous exercises will bring greater warmth and you will feel the desire to throw off the blanket. Some of the exercises, of course, as lifting the legs, cannot be performed so well without removing the covering. The method of practicing the exercises as well as the amount, number and character of them, depends greatly upon the health and the vitality of the individual, but there must be a continual advance in the vigor and the number of the exercises. VI ACTIONS OF EVERY-DAY LIFE The benefit of exercises must be tested by the help they give to the actions of every-day life. The human body must perform certain movements which are continually necessary. These exercises enable us to do these movements with more grace and ease, with more pleasure to ourselves, with greater saving of strength and vitality, and in a way to give greater pleasure to others. 1. HOW TO STAND "Man is the only animal," says Sir William Turner, "with a vertical spine." The bird stands upon two feet but the spine is not vertical. Strictly speaking no animal stands erect except man. The primary aim of all true exercise for the improvement of health and the prolonging of life must affect the erectness of the human body and the counterpoise curves of the spine. The axis of the spine must be vertical. Nearly all the exercises from the very first tend to accomplish this result. The expansion of the chest, the pivotal flexing of the torso, the lifting of the feet, the stretching, the co-ordinate action between the summit of the chest and the balls of the feet, and the exercises in sitting and standing, all tend to establish this most important condition. There must be activity at the summit of the chest. The head and the chest are the first to give up and sag. We can see that the skeleton has no bones below the breast bone to support it. The lower ribs are floating ribs and the other ribs have an angle downward. Everything is arranged with reference to the expansion of the chest. This is the central activity in standing properly. We can see, as has been shown, that man is held up seemingly from above. Man comes into stable equilibrium only when the body is supported from the summit of the chest. Levitation opposes gravitation. It will be observed that the first exercises concern the expansion of the chest and when the exercises are properly performed, this expansion of the chest is indirectly sustained through them all. If we observe a person standing properly, we find that a line dropped through the centre of the ear will fall through the centre of the shoulder, the centre of the hip, and the centre of the arch of the foot. The things that cause bad positions are: the chest inactive, the hips sinking forward, the head hanging downward or lolling to the side, the body sinking to the heel, and weak knees; but all of these seem to be corrected when the chest is properly expanded and elevated. To stand well, therefore, one should stand upright; the chest well expanded so as to bring all parts into co-ordination and establish a true centrality in the body. In a certain sense, there seems to be an axis of the body by which it rests easily upon one foot while the other leg and hip are perfectly free. The body is also perfectly free to pivot and to pass the weight to the other foot. The recommendation to "stand tall" is more or less helpful, but there must be some qualification. Stand tall, but not with rigidity or stiffness. The body must be elastically and sympathetically tall, and also sympathetically expanded, man must stand as if held up from above rather than from below, expanded and elevated by feeling and thought rather than by mere will. The centrality, ease and harmony of the poise are of more importance than the tallness. When one stands properly on one foot a spiral line from the top of the head to the foot is developed. The head inclines slightly toward the side that bears the weight, the torso slightly inclines in opposition and the active lower limb takes a slightly opposite inclination. This line which has been called the line of beauty is very common in nature. It is found all over the human body. When the face is animated with joy and gentleness, such spiral curves appear in all directions. The presence of this line is an element of a beautiful face and of a graceful body. The beneficial effects of such a poise are seen at once. The breathing is free. When a person stands in bad poise there is constriction of the respiratory muscles so that he is uneasy, he shifts from foot to foot. But when one stands in stable equilibrium, he stands restfully, easily and gracefully, and can move in any direction freely. His body also becomes expressive and acts under the dominion of feeling. 2. HOW TO WALK The character of a person's position in standing will determine the character of the walk. If one has learned to stand in stable equilibrium he will walk suggesting repose. If he stand in a discordant poise he will walk in a discordant chaotic way and will be continuously fighting to stand up. When a person stands in an accordant poise the walk is a progression forward and a levitation upward rhythmically and freely, the spiral lines alternating with every step. Every line of the body acts rhythmically. There is not only rhythmical alternation of the lower limbs and of the movements of the weight from foot to foot but all the lines of the body alternate rhythmically. A good walk is the carrying out of a man's purpose. Accordingly there is an attraction forward and upward at the summit of the chest. There are some abnormal walks where men seem to be drawn by the head, some walk as if drawn by the nose or chin, by the hips or by the knees or even the feet. The gravitation of the body forward toward the carrying out of one's purpose should be from the centre of gravitation and should be upward. "Onward and upward, true to the line." Man in his very walking seems to be a progressive being. To climb a declivity, he seems to move forward and upward. In a bad walk a man seems drawn downward. The poise of the body in standing and walking is most affected by this series of exercises. The co-ordination between the summit of the chest and the feet in rhythmic alternation, the simultaneous activity of the chest in all movements or exercises develop good positions in standing and natural actions of the body in walking. The extensions especially when in alternation bring the body also into the normal spiral lines and tend also to extend the muscles especially at the side so that the shoulder does not seem to be drawn down toward the hip, but acts with the torso freely. When exercises are practiced properly the whole bearing of the body will begin to improve. 3. HOW TO SIT Badly as people stand, they sit possibly worse. Most people sit in the most unhealthful as well as in the most ungraceful way. Generally there is a complete "slumping" of the chest, the spine is brought into a wide, single curve instead of its counterpoise curves. All the exercises from the very first, have a bearing upon the establishment of the normal conditions of the spine. If the exercises are well practiced, especially the elevation and expansion of the chest, the spine is strengthened and its normally proportioned curves are established. Bad positions in sitting are extremely common. Book-keepers, editors, seamstresses and children in school need careful attention. Special exercises should be given, such as the "harmonious expansion of the chest" in sitting and the use of the arms to develop the uprightness of the torso. Bad positions in sitting are often due to a false sense of rest. Muscles not acting harmoniously tend to completely collapse. Many people sit without true rest, and are continually shifting their position in a vain search for rest. What is rest? The chief rest comes through the alternation of activity and passivity, that is, through rhythm. Passivity alternating with activity brings rest to the human heart and is the best mode of rest. Rest also results from normal functioning. A person can sit or stand in true poise, giving freedom to breathing, and be able to rest much more truly than in an unnatural, abnormal, collapsed condition. This can be well illustrated by the fact that when a person starts out to walk with the chest slumped, the head hung down and with all the vital organs cramped, he comes back more weary than rested. In walking we should, as has been shown, keep the chest well expanded, the body elevated, co-ordinating all the normal relations of parts. If we walk in this way it tends to rest rather than to weary us. Therefore stand sympathetically expanded and easily tall. Walk in the same way and sit in the same way. Let there be a certain exhilaration and a sense of satisfaction. 4. HOW TO LIE DOWN Dr. Lyman Beecher said that one should always assume a horizontal posture in the middle of the day. The heart, he said, had less difficult work to pump the blood horizontally than vertically. Henry Ward Beecher attributed his power to do a great deal more work than ordinary men to this habit of his life of always resting in the middle of the day. He justified his habit by quoting from his father, using even his father's antique pronunciation of "poster." There is no doubt truth in this. To one very active and who performs a great deal of work it brings a variety of positions and greater rhythm. It rests the vital organs. It brings a harmonious repose and relation of parts. Even in lying down, we find abnormal conditions. Some men cramp and constrict themselves. The chest is allowed to collapse and the whole body tends to be drawn together. Grief or any negative emotion of feeling or condition destructive to health tends to act in this way. People, therefore, should lie down properly. They should lie down, as has been said, sympathetically and expansively long. They should directly manifest courage rather than shrinking, joy rather than sadness, with thankful animation rather than in a despairing state of mind. By the expression of joy and courage and peaceful repose and with a deep sense of the acceptance and realization of the good of life lying down will mean more. Express this in the body by normal position, by expansion, no matter what attitude the body may occupy. Man, whether he chooses or not, always expresses the state of his mind in the action of his body. And by cultivating the right mood and expressing the right feeling and so exercising the parts of his body as to express normally and more adequately that mood, men will develop not only health, strength and long life; but will also develop a nobler and stronger personality and more heroic and courageous endurance. The exercises, accordingly, should be applied to the simplest movements of every-day life. They must not be taken as something separate from life, but as an essential part of it, as necessary to life as a smile is to the face. VII WORK AND PLAY "Blessed," says Carlyle, "is the man who has found his work. Let him seek no other blessing." A man out of work is one of the saddest of all sights. There possibly is a sadder one, the man who has lost the power to play. The child in whom the spirit of play has been crushed out is saddest of all. Work is natural. One who does not love to work is greatly to be pitied. Fortunately, such people are rare. When a man finds his work and becomes actively occupied with it he is happy. He, however, often overdoes it and the difficulty is not to work but to play. Usually it is thought that there is antagonism between work and play. On the contrary, they are more alike than most people think. According to William Morris, "Art is the spirit of play put into our work." The union of work and play is absolutely necessary to human nature. By work we generally mean something that comes as a duty, something which we are compelled to do or something which we must do from necessity in order to win a livelihood. Play is usually regarded as something that is pure enjoyment and spontaneous. A recent cartoon pictured a boy complaining because his mother had asked him to carry a small rug up to the top of the house, then portrayed the same boy, after a ten-mile trudge, climbing a steep hill with a load of golf sticks, the perspiration streaming down his face, saying, "This is fine!" The same task may therefore be regarded as work or play according to the point of view. The difference is the degree of enjoyment, the attitude or feeling toward the thing to be done. We can control our attention, we can look for interesting things in almost any effort. In either work or play we require a rhythmic alternation between enjoyment and resolute endeavor. The principles advocated in this book and its companion, "The Smile," should prepare a man for the work and the play of life. Exercises taken at any time should serve as a remedy for the evil effects of hard work of any kind. The exercises give the best preparation for work and because many of them are taken lying down they do not exhaust but accumulate energy. They also stimulate and develop a harmony and activity of man's whole being. The shortest and best answer that can be made to the question "How to work" is, to work rhythmically. This is the way Nature works. There is action and reaction. The law of rhythm, which has already been explained, must be obeyed in our every-day tasks. It applies to every step we take. One of the best results of these exercises is that they develop a sense of rhythm. There are many violations of rhythm. One is continuing along one line too long. Work can be so arranged as to be varied. We can work at one thing several hours and then we can deliberately drop it until the next day and take up some other phase of work. Without rhythm, work becomes drudgery. A more specific violation of rhythm is a failure to relax and to use force only when needed. The greatest effect of force comes through action and reaction. Sometimes a man uses unnecessary parts and uses them continually. That, of course, will cause weariness. There are hundreds of questions regarding such discussions in as many books in our day. Mr. Nathaniel J. Fowler, Jr., in "The Boy," a careful book which is a treasure house of information, has gathered answers to leading questions from two hundred and eighty-three prominent men. Many of these, in fact, most of them, advise a boy, when he is not satisfied with his work and is pretty sure that he is not adapted to it, to change his occupation. It is a difficult point upon which to give advice, but other things being equal, work should be enjoyed. When not enjoyed there should be a serious study of the man himself, a study of his attitude toward life, a study of his possibilities, a study of his opportunities, and also a study of what he is best fitted for, and an endeavor to find this. It is surprising, however, how far men can adapt themselves, even change their very nature in accomplishing a work which is laid upon them as a duty. One of the greatest artists of New England took care of his brothers and sisters and his father's farm, at a crisis, and kept a little shed outside the house where he painted at odd moments. He had an avocation as well as a vocation. He gave up his trip to study in Europe as he wished to study; he did a vast amount of work which was regarded by many as drudgery, and he was compelled to study his art only at odd moments. Despite all this, George Fuller became one of the most illustrious and original of American artists. Today his pictures are in all the leading museums, and command a high price. What is drudgery? Dr. James Freeman Clark defined it as "work without imagination." Anything can be made drudgery. A man can study art, or sing, paint pictures, edit newspapers, or write books and make his work drudgery. Drudgery is working perfunctorily. It is work without aspiration, work without an ideal. No man can do anything well in life, without an ideal. If a man undertakes a certain work he must begin it by awakening and realizing the importance of that work in the world's life. He must form a definite ideal of the best possible way of doing that work and of its relation to the world. In short, no man can accomplish anything in a negative, indifferent attitude toward his work. He must look upon it from the side of its importance, the side of its beauty, the side that is interesting to him, the side that shows its influence and helpfulness toward the world. Play, to the little child--and also to the hard working man--is more serious than work. When work begins to be perfunctory, play is the only remedy. In such a case a man is in a dangerous rut and must adopt a new rhythm. "All work, and no play, makes Jack," or any other donkey, "a dull boy." The first principle of play must be to obey our higher impulses. To play means the ability to change our occupation. It means the ability to obey other impulses than perfunctory ones. Some men regard play as something low. On the contrary, notwithstanding the "recapitulation" theory, play should be a new aspiration, a deeper assertion of freedom, a higher opportunity for suppressed energies. To play, certain feelings and conceptions of our nature must be awakened. Play reveals character even more than work because it shows the latent impulses of the man. Therefore, if in college, in school, or in childhood, in playing with companions, the right associations are brought to bear, the right persons are received as mates, then the very sympathy and contact with others will cause higher aspirations, deeper enjoyments, more spontaneous endeavor, and renewal of life. Play is sub-conscious, it is giving way in some sense, to instinct; but it is deliberatively giving up. It implies enjoyment but it does not necessarily imply the gratification of low desire. Something can be said in favor of athletics. A story is told of a gentleman who visited his nephew in a large private school. He went around the athletic field and asked the trainers about his relative. Then the uncle found the boy in his room, digging. He said, "What are you doing here? None of the trainers see anything of you. What is the trouble?" The student answered, "I have been sick and I have been working hard to catch up." "Get out of this," replied the uncle, "I went to preparatory school and to college to find friends, to get enjoyment, to learn how to play, to come in contact with men. That is the serious business of school and college." There are some who consider this the very worst of heresies. I used to think so myself; but contact with students in colleges and universities has enabled me at least to see the point of view of this gentleman. Many times I have met men who were not getting the most out of their college or university course though you could not tell that from their scholarship or so-called "standing." They lacked the spirit of enjoyment, the power of initiative. They lacked the power of sympathetic touch with other men that makes greatly for success in life. To my mind there are some games which bring no sympathetic touch among men. Mere games are not always worthy of the name of play. They become drudgery, and they cause certain constrictions. They fetter the whole life. They call for perfect silence, call for the exercise of great mechanical skill. Frequently we find men playing games which are analogous, if not identical, with their work. Games should be different from work. They should bring sympathetic enjoyment. They should bring exultation. A noted physiologist sent by his government to examine into the physical training of other countries visited a leading school in England and found the pupils one morning, during the best hours of the day, at play. Approaching one of the boys, he asked for the principal, and was conducted very politely to the master. The visitor was greatly impressed by the boys. He asked the principal why it was that his boys were playing during the best part of the day. "Ah," said the principal, "that is part of our method. We want the best time in the day to be devoted to their outdoor exercises and sports. We take the utmost care that the boys shall come into the most sympathetic spirit with each other, and anything that happens wrong on the playground is to us fully as serious as what happens in their studies." There is a universal conception that play is not serious. Children are allowed to do just as they please. This is a mistake. Froebel has taught the true spirit and importance of play. Some people consider his explanations as being purely speculative, if not insane; but the great majority of those who have really studied child life agree with him. It is important what games the child is given. The play must be enjoyed. It should awaken creative energy. It should appeal to the imagination and feelings and not be a purely mechanical exercise of will. It is absolutely necessary for the unfoldment of character that the child come into touch with other minds, and also into contact with things. Someone has summed up the whole principle in a sentence: "Bring such objects before the child as will stimulate spontaneous activity." The objects may be animals, birds, leaves, flowers, balls, sticks, anything which can awaken human faculties or be turned into a tool. Arts are given us rather for avocations, for our enjoyment, as a test of our ability to appreciate the different points of view. Each art, as I have often tried to say, expresses something that no other art can say, and he is a cultivated human being who can read all the arts and enjoy them. The aim of art is to guide our energies in higher directions, and to stimulate our ideals. Art develops attention and trains us to become interested in a great variety of directions. As a proof of this observe the great beauty of nature. We are stirred to go out of doors, to go into the woods and note the beautiful scene and the music of the pines that calls us. Nature everywhere seems at play, seems to invite men to come out into her unlimited playground, the playground of universal principles and fullness of life. The poet, Schiller, explained all art as being derived from the play instinct. It has been said that play is the overflow of life. Life, love, joy, all noble ideals, must awaken spontaneity or they will not grow. All parts of man's nature must have expression and not be repressed. Play is given to stimulate and to express the spontaneous in us, to manifest emotion and imagination and a sense of freedom. Freedom is a necessity of all unfoldment. Even the flower must bloom spontaneously from the energy within. The sun that calls forth the leaves on all the trees does so by warming the roots in the tree and bringing the gentle south winds which fan the waving branches into activity and cause the unfolding buds to be filled with spontaneous life. The whole world is full of joy and love. It is human ambition and jealousies that bring the hindrances. The rhythmic alternation and the necessary relation of work and play to each other can be seen in the very constitution of man. Play alone may develop obedience to lower impulses; while work alone tends to repress the higher aspirations and spontaneous energies. Even a man's health and strength as well as success depend upon the rhythmic alternation of work and play. While reading over the copy for this book for the last time, when in that agonizing state which some writers know, undecided whether to throw it into the fire or send it to the printers, I read at the suggestion of a friend, Eleanor H. Porter's little book, "Pollyanna." That simple, wholesome story has given me courage. The fundamental lesson in it is that we should find always something about which to be glad, no matter how severe the trial or how disappointing the event. Goethe gave as rules for a life of culture:--"Every day see some beautiful picture, hear some beautiful piece of music, read some beautiful poem." These might develop culture in a narrow sense, but to broaden and deepen our lives we need every day to see something beautiful in nature, and in the lives and characters of our fellow beings. Dr. Howard Crosby once remarked that by giving ten minutes to the telegrams of the newspapers any man should be able to keep in touch with the life of mankind. The Boy Scouts and the Campfire Girls are emphasizing some important phases of education and life which have been too often overlooked. One of the Boy Scout rules implies that every day a boy should perform some kindly act for others. The importance of a boy's stepping up to an elderly lady looking for an electric car and giving her assistance, or carrying a lot of bundles for someone cannot be too highly emphasized. These boys take no "tips." They are trained to serve for the sake of the serving. These suggestions and services awaken the higher nature of the boy or girl. Such movements should be universally supported. One of the most important helps to the boys should not be overlooked. In offering their services they are led to express their best selves. It is important that they should learn to approach strangers with polite confidence and courage when offering assistance. I gave my seat once to a woman in a street car and at first I felt a little resentful because not by look or word did she express gratitude. As I glanced at the woman, however, I saw that she really desired to thank me but was embarrassed. She did not know how to do so. How few are taught the languages! If the Boy Scouts and the Campfire Girls do nothing else than to learn to express their willingness to serve they have made a wonderful gain for active, useful and successful lives. Of course, the primary aim is the good deed, but are not the kind tone, word and polite bow fully as necessary? Are they not the entering wedge and do they not appeal to the higher nature in the same way that the thought of being of service inspires the boy or girl? While doing is the great thing, yet it is necessary to say in union with doing. There is really no antagonism between expression in kind looks, tones or words, and acts. They are inseparably connected. These same principles apply also to the Campfire Girls. They must not only be trained to do things but trained to realize their own personalities and to draw out the best in others. Then the actions will begin to be more expressive of the real personality of the boy or the girl and the seeing, doing and becoming will form an organic unity. Someone has said that the great law of education is, first, to know; second, to do; third, to become. The doing implies not only action, but expression. Certainly we do not become what we know till we do or express through word, tone and action. The most successful men in the world have certain principles to guide their every-day life. If we could only smile instead of frown, when people criticize or condemn us, how much more successful would be our lives! Every day we can discover something interesting in our fellow-men. We can learn to listen. We should work when we work and play when we play. We should not play in a half-hearted way worrying about our work; and when we work we should do so with all our might. We ought to have regular periods of rest; we ought to avoid unpleasant topics in conversation. Everyone should have a vocation as well as an avocation. May we not summarize all these suggestions into a few statements which will enable us to co-ordinate work and play, and aid us in our daily lives to obey the principles that should govern us from our first waking moments? Every Day: 1. Smile when tempted to frown; look for and enjoy the best around you. 2. See, hear or read, that is, receive an impression from something beautiful in nature, art, music, poetry, literature or your fellow-men. 3. Think, feel or realize something in the direction of your ideals and in some way unite your dreams with your every-day work and play. 4. Express the best that is in you and awaken others to express the best in them. 5. Serve some fellow-being by listening, by kind word or deed. 6. Share in some of the great movements of the race. All these refer to an important point--that we should be teachable and should receive right impressions. This is of primary importance. Breathing means the taking of breath. We should begin the day with joyous and glad acceptance of life and all that it brings. A spirit of thankfulness and acceptance is the true spirit of life. We, however, need active expression. As breathing implies not only taking breath but giving it out, so impression and expression are necessary elements of the rhythm of life. Hence even these six things are incomplete. We should also exercise our higher faculties and powers, especially those we are not habitually using in our work. Our whole nature should be active if we are truly to live. Our higher faculties should not be regarded as concerned only in mere dreaming. Our ideals should be connected with our daily work and contact with mankind if we are to cease drudging or working without imagination. Accordingly by word, thought or act, we should express every day the best that is in us. Moreover, fully as important as these, we should every day come into sympathetic touch with our fellow-beings and call forth the best in them. Expression implies a neighbor,--some other being with whom we can communicate. Do not think for a moment that such expression is empty. Of course, we must go on and endeavor every day to serve someone by a kind act, but a kind word must not be despised. How many hearts are over burdened because they lack a sympathetic listener! To be a polite listener is one of the beautiful things in human life. Remember, also, that many who have seen an opportunity and desired to do a kind act have failed from inability to express the wish by word, smile or bow. Expression is not separate from impression. We must receive our impressions from every source, then we must express to others the best that is in us and become such sympathetic listeners that others will unfold the best in themselves and thus come into that plane where we can sympathetically participate in the lives of others. VIII SIGNIFICANCE OF NIGHT AND SLEEP Anyone who wishes for improvement in health, strength, grace, ease, or vitality, or, in fact, in anything, must realize especially the significance of the law of rhythm. Rhythm is a law of the whole universe. The music of the spheres is no fable. Observe, too, the rhythm of the seasons. Everywhere there is a co-ordination of the finite and the infinite, the individual and the universal,--a unity of forces acting in a sequence of natural co-ordinations. Of all the illustrations of rhythm one of the most important is the alternation of day and night. Every plant awakes and rejoices with the sun and it recognizes the sunset and goes to sleep as the darkness comes. The few exceptions only prove the rule, and even these simply reverse day and night and are equally rhythmic. The value of day and night to man is well known. When there is a continuous work to be done it has been proven scientifically that those who work at night cannot accomplish so much as those who work by day. The very same man cannot do the same amount and grade of work in a night that he can do in a day. The human system is built up by various rhythms like that of day and night. There is a natural call for rest, for recuperation and the surrendering of all our voluntary energies that the spontaneous activities may have their turn. The Psalmist, after he has gone all over the beauties of the world exclaims, "Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening." Here he pauses, for the beauties of the evening seem to awe him for a moment into silence, and then he breaks forth into a universal paean of praise: "O, Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all." Night is a part of the normal rhythm of nature. Every plant and every bird welcomes night as well as morning. Serious and abnormal, indeed, is the state of one who cannot sleep. Next to the importance of a right awakening in the morning is the peaceful, restful retirement at night. Edison boasts of how little sleep he needs, and claims that sometime man will cease to sleep. He says that sleep is only a habit. As a matter of fact, by working rhythmically through all the hours of the day, by obeying the law of rhythm at all times, a man may possibly need less sleep, but the repose of unconsciousness seems a part of the Creator's economy. "He giveth His beloved sleep." By living in obedience to the law of rhythm and especially by taking some rhythmic exercises before lying down, we can sleep better. Almost innumerable are the suggestions, rules, or recipes on how to go to sleep. One says, "Keep counting until you fall asleep." Another says, "Watch a flock of sheep jumping over a fence, counting each one as it jumps." A third says, "Watch a bird sailing around in the sky. Keep the mind upon it and watch it as it steadily sails until you are asleep." Someone says, "Repeat the Twenty-third Psalm over and over, the more rhythmic, the better." Another says, "Think of the sky. Keep the mind upon its expanse." Still another, "Think of the Infinite and Eternal Source of the universe." Among all these suggestions we can find some truth. Nearly all of them imply concentration of the mind. If attention can be focused and held at a point, the excited activity of thinking may be stopped and the body consequently brought into a state of acquiescence. They succeed, if they do succeed, because attention is turned from worries to something besides the antagonism, excitements and duties of the day. Another element in the suggestions is their regularity. Watching the sheep jump over a fence and counting one at a time, for example, affects the breathing and all the vital forces of the body. This causes rhythmic co-ordination of all the elements and the unity of this will, of course, bring sleep. The sense of harmony and rhythm and self-control should be gained; all antagonistic, chaotic and exciting thoughts and all worry should be eliminated as far as possible before lying down. When we lie down, we should turn our attention away from the excitements of the world to something calm and reposeful. Accordingly there is nothing better than to repeat some of the exercises of the morning. These stretchings, practiced slowly and rhythmically, will equalize the circulation, the taking of deep breaths, very rhythmically, will tend to restore respiratory action and the other exercises will tend to eliminate constriction from local parts. Observe the necessity once more of harmonious thought and positive emotion, for here again there will be a temptation to dwell upon the failures of the day. It is so hard to forget some unkind word, some failure on our part to grasp a situation at the right time. We can easily remember the wrong word we ourselves spoke and deeply regret our failure to enter into sympathetic touch with someone. In such an excited frame of mind, with the nerves wrought up at the thought of the day's work and with all these discordant pictures thronging into our consciousness, sleep becomes impossible. Sometimes one is too weary to go to sleep, or sinks into a deep slumber which is not normal. The taking of breath is short and the giving up of the breath more sudden. This sleep will not be refreshing. Nine times out of ten such a one will wake up in the morning feeling more weary than when he lay down at night. Of course, if a man could sleep for an unusual number of hours, nature might in time restore him. The excitement of our civilization prevents normal conditions and therefore we must aid nature. Man must understand the laws of life and so use them as to find rest properly. We need harmony in our thoughts, to let them dwell on what is sacred and beautiful that our sleep may be normal and that we may enter into the world of slumber with sympathetic conditions. We must, also, laughingly throw off negative thoughts and feelings and allow expansion and stretching to equalize the circulation. All the vital functions must be harmonized. As we perform these exercises once more we find various congestions that have resulted from the one-sidedness of our day's work,--congestions around the throat, parts of the body are weary, constricted, and cramped. By stretching ourselves we can harmoniously adjust the activities of our breathing and circulation. All parts can be restored to harmony and we can rest properly. After all, what is rest? It is not a mere slumping into inactivity. It is allowing the involuntary rhythm of our being, the sympathetic co-ordination of all the forces of our body to act normally. The rhythm of our volitional activities must be given up to the rhythm of the unconscious and involuntary life. Before this rhythm can reign we must remove all constrictions from any part of the body. After taking these exercises we should feel the sympathetic enjoyment of all the cells of our bodies, then sleep will be refreshing, the rhythm of breathing will be normal and the circulation and vital processes will proceed easily and rhythmically. What are the differences in the practicing of exercises in the morning and evening? In the first place the exercises in the evening should be more steady, more regular, more harmonious, slower and more rhythmic. Every exercise must soothe the excited nerves, the agitated brain, and the weary respiratory muscles, the heart, and all the circulatory system. Release needs to be especially emphasized. After every stretch, for example, every part of the body must be relaxed. The reaction will take more time on account of the greater activity through the day. We should, therefore, take especial pains to accentuate the recovery or recoil of the muscles into sympathetic passivity and rest. The object is now not to stimulate as much as in the morning, but to allay all excitement, harmonize the co-ordination of all parts, remove all local activities in the different parts of the body, establish centrality of the vital functioning and the diffusion of blood and feeling into every part. It is well to practice the exercises on a hard floor before getting into bed. The more violent exercises should of course be omitted unless there has been a one-sided position during the day. For example, standing exercises will be beneficial for a person who has been sitting all day. We must practice intelligently, and carefully apply such exercises as are needed. Harmony means the removing of constrictions and over-activity in certain parts which one finds upon exercising. These often need to be vigorously exercised so as to restore the harmonious condition. On lying down on the floor feel in stretching as if the body weighed a ton,--feel the weight of the arms, legs and head. Often we lie down but soon the excitement of a thought brings us to our feet before we know it. Eliminate all such exciting ideas, then let the stretch reach every part. Let it be slow and steady and let the release be gradual. There should be a complete rest for quite a little period before the next activity. Other things being equal, the activity should be less than one-third of the surrender not only in time but in attention. Just before going to sleep it is well to practice a few stretches and to give full expansion to the chest and to take a few deep breaths slowly and rhythmically so as to establish a vigorous and normal rhythm, equalize circulation and bring all parts into harmonious freedom. In order to emphasize the rhythm in our evening exercises we should accentuate and prolong especially the passive rest between the movements. We should not only more gradually give up the actions of the movements, accentuating the static and eccentric contraction, but we should also feel more sense of surrender at the end of each movement. That is, we should feel a sense of weight and of rest at the end of each action, breathing easily, steadily and freely, all the time. The time of this rest at the end of the exercising should be prolonged more and more especially after we are in bed and have felt the satisfactory feeling all through the body of harmonious diffusion of energy and the removal of constrictions. This sense of satisfaction through all the body is fundamental and necessary in order to bring healthful and normal sleep. The harmonious extension of all parts of the body should be emphasized. All stretches are truly conducive to sleep. They allow life to permeate through the whole body. The exercises, before going to sleep, should be less rigorous unless there are constrictions and these should be removed by simultaneous and sympathetic co-ordination of all parts of the body rather than by vigorous movements. After any local movement the stretch should be renewed and the affirmation made of some thoughtful and beautiful idea--as love, joy, peace. It will be surprising how quickly help will come and weariness disappear. The entire body, in every cell, will be soothed and enjoy sweet repose. The affirmation of confidence, love, trust, and peace should follow as well as precede the evening exercises. We should make the going to sleep a sacred part of our lives. In giving up our consciousness we should be sure to surrender it to the positive forces of the universe. This is not an idle dream, nor a mere mystical fancy. Even from a psychological point of view the emotion with which we go to sleep is apt to remain with us and get in its good or evil work in the unconscious, involuntary metabolism that takes place in all the cells. We must lie down to rest in peace. "Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the West Riding Asylum in England," according to Professor James in "Memories and Portraits," "said last year to the British Medical Association that the best sleep-producing agent which his practice had revealed to him, was prayer. I say this," he added [I am sorry to say here that I must quote from memory], "purely as a medical man. The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves. "But in few of us are functions not tied up by the exercise of other functions. Relatively few medical and scientific men, I fancy, can pray. Few can carry on any living commerce with God. Yet many of us are well aware of how much freer and abler our lives would be, were such important forms of energizing not sealed up by the critical atmosphere in which we have been reared. There are in everyone potential forms of activity that actually are shunted out from use. Part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can thus be easily explained." Have a few simple sentences full of thanksgiving, of peace and rest. The best are found in the Bible. The words to Moses, "My presence shall go with thee and I will give thee rest," may be given and repeated many times with a realization of their deep meaning and a personal application to the individual. Not only repeat phrases, lines, and verses, full of beautiful thought, but change these into your own words. Learn to articulate your own convictions and apply them to your own needs,--even paraphrase, for example, such a phrase as "He restoreth my soul" in the twenty-third Psalm. For the word "soul" we can substitute anything according to the specific needs of the hour. We should, however, use nothing that is not in accordance with universal love and the highest spiritual ideals of man and of our conceptions of the universe. We must always remember that truth is universal. We can change "soul" also to "health," "strength" or "life," to "joy," to "success," to "confidence," to the body or any part of the body which may seem to be afflicted. There are in this Psalm other good affirmations on going to sleep. Take individual clauses and repeat them many times, such as "I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." One of the best affirmations is found in the first of the twenty-seventh Psalm. "The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom [or of what] shall I be afraid? One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord [in a consciousness of His presence] all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple [to commune with Him in the sacred temple of my own soul]. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee." Everyone should find his own, should find it in his experience, find it by personal investigation and study of the Bible and through spiritual realization. We should live in peace with all men, be able to rejoice evermore, "to pray without ceasing"; that is, we should always be in an attitude to receive that which is good and never admit that which is negative;--hate, antagonism or fear,--but we should welcome love and that which we know expresses the "Infinite Presence." Antagonism, hate, discords prevent us from living our hundred years. "Certain classes of men shall not live out half their days." The last moment before going to sleep should be one of peaceful rest. Say "Not my will but Thine" and give up everything to the Infinite and Eternal. My own best help is thanksgiving and praise. When I cannot give up the thoughts and conflicts of the day, I can bring my whole being into reposeful rhythm best by expressing thanks that I can be awake and that I have shared in the life of a day. I praise the Infinite Presence that I can know beauty when I see it, that I can understand truth and know that two times three are not seven and that I can participate in the goodness of the universe. Then, before I know it, I have laid aside the conflicts of the day and have passed into peaceful and harmonious rest. This method of thanksgiving especially applies to those times when I wake up in the middle of the night. * * * * * Returning to Pippa, we find her retirement to her own room and her method of going to sleep no less suggestive as an example than her awakening. She met the first wakening moment with joy and praise as she resolutely put aside the dark thought of her life and went singing all through the day with the same spirit of thanksgiving and love for all mankind. Now she comes back to her room weary and discouraged, as we nearly all do. She knows nothing of what her songs have accomplished, nothing of the wonderful influence that has been exercised. In her disheartened moment she sees the sunset in the dark cloud and thinking over the day she would like to know what she really has done. Yet she checks herself and returns to her morning hymn and keeps her faith and trust. "Results belong to the Master, Thou hast no need to measure them." She becomes very humble, willing, and submissive to the hard task of the morrow. Little she dreams of the revelation that will come of the secrets of her own life and family. "We know not what we shall be." Each of us at the close of life lies down without realizing our relation to the Infinite, without realizing that we are children and heirs. Blessed is he who feels that his hymn is also "True in some sense or other," that life is true and that each one performs some work and it is not for us to say whether it is great or small. They who wrought but one hour received the same wages as they who wrought the whole day. Deeply symbolical, allegorical, and typical in the poetic sense of human life is Pippa's closing thought as she lies down to sleep. "Oh what a drear dark close to my poor day! How could that red sun drop in that black cloud? Ah, Pippa, morning's rule is moved away, Dispensed with, never more to be allowed! Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's. Oh, lark, be day's apostle To mavis, merle and throstle, Bid them their betters jostle From day and its delights! But at night, brother howlet, over the woods, Toll the world to thy chantry; Sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods Full complines with gallantry; Then, owls and bats, Cowls and twats, Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods, Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry! Now, one thing I should like to really know: How near I ever might approach all these I only fancied being, this long day: --Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so As to ... in some way ... move them--if you please, Do good or evil to them some slight way. For instance, if I wind Silk to-morrow, my silk may bind And border Ottima's cloak's hem. Ah, me, and my important part with them, This morning's hymn half promised when I rose! True in some sense or other, I suppose. God bless me! I can pray no more to-night. No doubt, some way or other, hymns say right. All service ranks the same with God, With God, whose puppets, best and worst: Are we; there is no last nor first." [She sleeps] * * * * * The Morning League of the School of Expression is a band of the students, graduates and friends of the School of Expression who are trying to keep their faces toward the morning. If you wish to join, when you wake GET UP OUT OF THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BED, that is, stretch, expand, breathe deeply and laugh. Fill with joyous thoughts and their active expressions the first minutes of the day. Note the effect, and consider yourself initiated. Try as far as possible EVERY DAY to realize the League's UNFOLDMENT SUGGESTIONS 1. SMILE whenever tempted to frown; look for and enjoy the best around you. 2. THINK, feel or realize something in the direction of your ideals and, in some way, unite your ideals with your every-day work and play. 3. SEE, hear or read, i. e., receive an impression from something beautiful in nature, art, music, poetry, literature or the lives of your fellow-men. 4. EXPRESS the best that is in you and awaken others to express the best in them. 5. SERVE some fellow being by listening, by kind look, tone, word or deed. 6. SHARE in some of the great movements for the betterment of the race. That is, use your principles of expression to help in such movements as: 1. Expression in Life (text book, "The Smile"); 2. Expression and Health (text book, "How to Add Ten Years to Your Life"); 3. Expression and Education in the Nursery; Mothers' Clubs; 4. Voice in the Home; 5. Reading in the Public Schools; 6. Speaking in High Schools and Colleges; 7. Speaking Clubs; 8. Browning Clubs (text book, "Browning and the Dramatic Monologue"); 9. Dramatic Clubs; 10. Religious Societies; 11. Boy Scouts; 12. Campfire Girls; 13. Peace Movements; 14. Women's Clubs; and Suffrage Organizations; 15. Reforms; 16. Teachers' Clubs; 17. School of Expression Summer Terms; 18. Preparation for the School of Expression; 19. Home Studies; 20. Advanced Steps of the School of Expression. Send your name and address with ten nominations for members with $1.50 for the two League text books, "The Smile" and "How to Add Ten Years to Your Life," and you will be recorded a member. One set of books will do for a family, other books at teachers' or introductory prices. There are no fees. The entire net returns from the League books will be devoted to the endowment of the School of Expression, the Home of the League. Write frankly and freely asking any counsel, and making any suggestions to the President of the League. Dr. S. S. CURRY, 307 Pierce Bldg. Copley Square, Boston, Mass. * * * * * MORNING LEAGUE QUESTIONS FOR REPORT Text-books--"The Smile" and "How to Add Ten Years to Your Life" After a week's exercise for a few minutes either on waking up or on retiring, write out a report of your experiences or answer the following questions. It is not necessary to repeat the questions, simply use figures. These questions follow the first series, published at the close of "The Smile." 22. Do you practice the exercises on waking in the morning? 23. What exercises do you usually take? How long? 24. What are some of the effects of these exercises? 25. How many times do you repeat each exercise? 26. Do you practice exercises in dual, triple, or quadruple rhythm? 27. Can you keep your chest expanded and laugh at the same time? 28. Can you keep your chest fully expanded and pivot the torso? 29. Do you feel great satisfaction after stretching? 30. What constrictions or congestions have you found? a. In the region of the stomach b. Chest c. Neck d. Face e. Scalp f. Back 31. Do you find any special weaknesses? 32. Do you walk with expanded chest? 33. Do you walk rhythmically? 34. Can you keep your chest well expanded during the stretch? 35. Do you practice exercises standing at an open doorway? 36. Have you a pole from which you swing in your closet? 37. Do you sleep well? 38. What exercises do you take on retiring? 39. Do you relax completely in the middle of the day? 40. What chaotic movements have you discovered in your standing? In sitting? In walking? In lying down? 41. Do you breathe through your nose or through your mouth, especially when asleep? 42. Do you sleep with your windows wide open? 43. Can you laugh out a tone? 44. Taking a full breath and laughing, do your feel your throat passive? 45. Can you co-ordinate an open throat and active retention of breath in laughing out a tone? 46. After walking a short distance do you feel exhilaration or depression? 47. Do you use soft gentle tones in every day conversation? 48. When talking to someone who speaks in a high pitch can you act in the opposite way, and speak in your softest tones? 49. Can you make tone as easily as you smile? For other questions, see "The Smile." Province Of Expression. Principles and method of developing delivery. An Introduction to the study of the natural languages, and their relation to art and development. By S. S. Curry, Ph.D., Litt.D. $1.50; to teachers, $1.20, postpaid. Your volume is to me a very wonderful book,--it is so deeply philosophic, and so exhaustive of all aspects of the subject.... No one can read your book without at least gaining a high ideal of the study of expression. You have laid a deep and strong foundation for a scientific system. And now we wait for the superstructure.--Professor Alexander Melville Bell. It is a most valuable book, and ought to be instrumental in doing much good.--Professor J. W. Churchill, D.D. A book of rare significance and value, not only to teachers of the vocal arts, but also to all students of fundamental pedagogical principle. In its field I know of no work presenting in an equally happy combination philosophic insight, scientific breadth, moral loftiness of tone, and literary felicity of exposition.--William F. Warren, D.D., LL.D., of Boston University. Lessons in Vocal Expression. The expressive modulations of the voice developed by studying and training the voice and mind in relation to each other. Eighty-six definite problems and progressive steps. By S. S. Curry, Ph.D., Litt.D. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid. It ought to do away with the artificial and mechanical styles of teaching.--Henry W. Smith, A.M., Professor of Elocution, Princeton University. Through the use of your text-book on vocal expression, I have had the past term much better results and more manifest interest on the subject than ever before.--A. H. Merrill, A.M., late Professor of Elocution, Vanderbilt University. The subject is handled in a new and original manner, and cannot fail to revolutionize the old elocutionary ideas.--Mail and Empire, Toronto. It is capital, good sense, and real instruction.--W. E. Huntington, LL.D., Ex-President of Boston University. Imagination and Dramatic Instinct. Function of the imagination and assimilation in the vocal interpretation of literature and speaking. By S. S. Curry, Litt.D. $1.50; to teachers, $1.20, postpaid. Dr. Curry well calls the attention of speakers to the processes of thinking in the modulation of the voice. Every one will be benefited by reading his volumes.... Too much stress can hardly be laid on the author's ground principle, that where a method aims to regulate the modulation of the voice by rules, then inconsistencies and lack of organic coherence begin to take the place of that sense of life which lies at the heart of every true product of art. On the contrary, where vocal expression is studied as a manifestation of the processes of thinking, there results the truer energy of the student's powers and the more natural unity of the complex elements of his expression.--Dr. Lyman Abbott, in The Outlook. Address: Book Dept., School of Expression, 306 Pierce Bldg., Copley Square, Boston, Mass. Mind and Voice. Principles underlying all phases of Vocal Training. The psychological and physiological conditions of tone production and scientific and artistic methods of developing them. A work of vital importance to every one interested in improving the qualities of the voice and in correcting slovenly speech. 456 pages. By S. S. Curry, Litt. D. $1.50, postpaid. To teachers, $1.25, postpaid. It is indeed a masterly and stimulating work.--Amos R. Wells, Editor Christian World. It is a book that will be of immense help to teachers and preachers, and to others who are using their vocal organs continuously. As an educational work on an important theme, the book has a unique value.--Book News Monthly. There is pleasure and profit in reading what he says.--Evening Post (Chicago). Fills a real need in the heart and library of every true teacher and student of the development of natural vocal expression.--Western Recorder (Louisville). Get it and study it and you will never regret it.--Christian Union Herald (Pittsburg). Foundation of Expression. Fundamentals of a psychological method of training voice, body, and mind and of teaching speaking and reading. 236 problems; 411 choice passages. A thorough and practical text-book for school and college, and for private study. By S. S. Curry, Litt. D. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid. It means the opening of a new door to me by the master of the garden.--Frank Putnam. Mastery of the subject and wealth of illustration are manifest in all your treatment of the subject. Should prove a treasure to any man who cares for effective public speaking.--Professor L. O. Brastow, Yale. Adds materially to the author's former contributions to this science and art, to which he is devoting his life most zealously.--Journal of Education. May be read with profit by all who love literature.--Denis A. McCarthy, Sacred Heart Review. It gets at the heart of the subject and is the most practical and clearest book on the important steps in expression that I have ever read.--Edith W. Moses. How splendid it is; it is at once practical in its simplicity and helpfulness and inspiring. Every teacher ought to be grateful for it.--Jane Herendeen, Teacher of Expression in Jamaica Normal School, N. Y. Best, most complete, and up-to-date.--Alfred Jenkins Shriver, LL.B., Baltimore. Public speakers and especially the young men and women in high schools, academies, and colleges will find here one of the most helpful and suggestive books by one of the greatest living teachers of the subject, that was ever presented to the public.--John Marshall Barker, Ph.D., Professor in Boston University. Address: Book Dept., School of Expression, 306 Pierce Bldg., Copley Square, Boston, Mass. Browning and the Dramatic Monologue. Nature and peculiarities of Browning's poetry. How to understand Browning. The principles involved in rendering the monologue. An introduction to Browning, and to dramatic platform art. By S. S. Curry, Litt. D., $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid. It seems to me to attack the central difficulty in understanding and reading Robert Browning's poetry.... It opens a wide door to the greatest poetry of the modern age.--The Rev. John R. Gow, President of the Boston Browning Society. A book which sheds an entirely new light on Browning and should be read by every student of the great master; indeed, everyone who would be well informed should read this book, which will interest any lover of literature.--Journal of Education. Spoken English. A method of co-ordinating impression and expression in reading, conversation, and speaking. It contains suggestions on the importance of observation and adequate impression, and nature study, as a basis to adequate expression. The steps are carefully arranged for the awakening of the imagination and dramatic instinct, right feeling, and natural, spontaneous expression. 320 pages. By S. S. Curry, Litt. D., Ph.D. Price, $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid. Every page had something that caught my attention. You certainly have grasped the great principle of vocal expression.--Edwin Markham. Those who aim at excelling in public utterance and address may well possess themselves of this work.--Journal of Education. The specialist in reading will wish to add it to his book-shelf for permanent reference.--Normal Instructor. A masterly presentation of ideas and expression as applied in a wide range of excellent selections.--The World's Chronicle. Little Classics for Oral English. A companion to Spoken English. The problems correspond by sections with Spoken English. The books may be used together or separately. The problems are arranged in the form of questions which the student can answer properly only by rightly rendering the passages. It is a laboratory method for spoken English, to be used by the first year students in High School or the last years of the Grammar School. 384 pages. By S. S. Curry, Litt. D. Price, $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid. I am using Little Classics for Oral English in two classes and believe it is the most satisfactory text that I have used. The students seem to be able to get easily the principles from your questions and problems.--Elva M. Forncrook, St. Nor. Sch., Kalamazoo, Mich. A fine collection of fine things especially suited to young people. Every teacher of reading and English in our secondary schools ought to have the book.--Prof. Lee Emerson Bassett, Leland Stanford University, Cal. Address: Book Dept., School of Expression, 306 Pierce Bldg., Copley Square, Boston, Mass. * * * * * What Students and Graduates Think of the School of Expression "We know that there is something BIG here. If only we can get it out to the world."--Caroline A. Hardwick (Philosophic Diploma), Instructor in Reading and Speaking, Wellesley College. "At no other institution is it possible to secure the training one secures at the School of Expression. It is far broader than a mere training for speaking. It is a fundamental training for life."--Florence E. Lutz (Philosophic Diploma), Instructor in Pantomime, New York City. "The School of Expression taught me how to LIVE. I think its training of the personality is its greatest work."--F. M. Sargent (Dramatic Artist's Diploma). "I feel deeply indebted to the School for some of the best and most lasting inspiration I have received for my own work as a teacher of my fellow-men."--Luella Clay Carson, Pres. of Mills College. "The success I have attained in my profession as a reader, I owe directly to the advanced methods of the School of Expression."--Caroline Foye Flanders (Artistic Diploma), Public Reader, Manchester, N. H. "The School of Expression of Boston is the most thorough and best in the country. It is different from all other schools. I wish I could talk to any who intend taking a course of study.--I would say, Go to the School of Expression and if there is anything in you, they will bring it out; they will teach you to know yourself; they will show you what you are in comparison with what you may become, and they will begin with the cause and start from the bottom."--Hamilton Colman, Member Richard Mansfield Co. "When I was your student you held before me intellectual and ethical ideals which I am still trying to realize."--Charles L. White, D.D., Ex-President Colby College. "The same principles of education which have installed manual training in public schools are even more applicable to the training of men's souls to rational self-expression. Dr. Curry will some day be recognized to have been an educational philosopher for having championed principles no less true of the spoken word than of every form of creative self-expression."--Dean Shailer Mathews, University of Chicago. "The whole world ought to learn about the School of Expression and your discoveries."--Rev. J. Stanley Durkee (Speaker's Diploma), Boston. * * * * * BOOKS BY S. S. CURRY, Ph.D., Litt.D. More than any man of recent years, Dr. Curry has represented sane and scientific methods in training the Speaking Voice.--Dr. Shailer Mathews, University of Chicago. Of eminent value.--Dr. Lyman Abbott. Books so much needed by the world and which will not be written unless you write them.--Rev. C. H. Strong, Rector St. John's Church, Savannah. Foundations Of Expression. A psychological method of developing reading and speaking. 236 practical problems. 411 choice passages adapted to classes in reading and speaking. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid. Lessons in Vocal Expression. The expressive modulations of the voice developed by studying and training the voice and mind in relation to each other. Definite problems and progressive steps. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid. Imagination and Dramatic Instinct. Function of imagination and assimilation in the vocal interpretation of literature and speaking. $1.50; to teachers, $1.20, postpaid. Mind and Voice. Principles and Methods in Vocal Training. 456 pp. $1.50; to teachers, $1.20 postpaid. Browning and the Dramatic Monologue. Nature and peculiarities of Browning's poetry. Principles involved in rendering the monologue. Introduction to Browning, and to dramatic platform art. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid. Province Of Expression. Principles and Methods of developing delivery. An introduction to the study of natural languages, and their relation to art and development. $1.50; to teachers $1.20, postpaid. Vocal and Literary Interpretation of the Bible. Introduction by Prof. Francis G. Peabody, D. D., of Harvard University. $1.50; students' edition, $0.60, postpaid. Classics for Vocal Expression. Gems from the best authors for voice and interpretation. In use in the foremost schools and colleges. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid. Spoken English. A psychological method of developing reading, conversation and speaking. A book for junior students or teachers. 320 pages. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid. Little Classics for Oral English. Companion to Spoken English. Introductory questions and topics. May be used with Spoken English or separately. Questions and topics correspond. Fresh and beautiful selections from best authors. 384 pages. $1.25; to teachers, $1.10, postpaid. The Smile. Introduction to action through an example. $1.00. To members of The Morning League, $0.75, postpaid. How to Add Ten Years to Your Life. Nature of training with short, practical program. $1.00. To members of The Morning League, $0.75, postpaid. Write to Dr. Curry about the Morning League; Summer Terms; Home Studies; School of Expression; new books, or for advice regarding your life work. Address: Book Department, School of Expression, 308 Pierce Bldg., Copley Square, Boston, Mass. 
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19594	----	Transcriber's note: A few typographical errors have been corrected: they are listed at the end of the text. [Illustration: Eugenics Hath Its Own Reward] The Eugenic Marriage A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies By W. GRANT HAGUE, M.D. College of Physicians and Surgeons (Columbia University), New York; Member of County Medical Society, and of the American Medical Association In Four Volumes VOLUME I New York THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY 1916 Copyright, 1913, by W. GRANT HAGUE Copyright, 1914, by W. GRANT HAGUE * * * * * [i] INDEX OF THE FOUR VOLUMES NOTE--The Roman numerals I, II, III and IV indicate the volume; the Arabic figures 1, 2, 3, etc., indicate the page number. Accidents and emergencies, IV, 629. Accouchement Beds, how to prepare, I, 65. Acne, IV, 576. Adenoids, IV, 519; how to tell when child has, IV, 520; treatment of, IV, 521. Adentitis, acute, IV, 558; causes of, IV, 558; symptoms of, IV, 558; treatment of, IV, 558. Advice to young wives, III, 357. After-birth, expulsion of, I, 101. After-pains, I, 103. Age at which to marry, III, 331. Albumen water, II, 245. Alcohol, in patent medicines, III, 455. Alcoholic drunkenness, I, 44; Dr. Branthwaite on, I, 45; Dr. Sullivan on, I, 44. Amenorrhea, causes, II, 192; absence of menstruation, II, 191; treatment of, II, 192. Anemia, severe, IV, 567; simple, IV, 565; treatment of various forms, IV, 567. Anesthetics, new, IV, 654; use of in confinements, I, 112. Angina, IV, 508. Anti-meningitis, serum, IV, 656. Aperient waters, abuse of in constipation, III, 326. Appendicitis, IV, 546; treatment of, IV, 546. Appetite, loss of, II, 287; poor, II, 286; treatment for loss of, II, 288. Arrest of hemorrhage, IV, 635. Artificial Food, II, 249; formulæ for, II, 253; mistakes in preparing, II, 267. Aseptic surgery, IV, 653. Baby, amusing the, II, 217; bathing the, II, 213; care of eyes, II, 215; care of genital organs, II, 216; care of mouth and teeth, II, 215; care of newly-born, II, 210; care of skin, II, 216; clothing of, II, 214; constipation in bottle-fed, II, 309; food for first year, II, 261; fresh air for, II, 232; how it gets nourishment in womb, II, 183; how long it should sleep, II, 236; how to weigh, II, 220; hygiene and development of, II, 209; intervals of feeding, II, 225; night-clothes of, II, 215; overfeeding the, II, 224; proper way to lay in bed, II, 235; what to prepare for the coming, II, 209; why it cries, II, 237. Baby's comforter, II, 241. Bacteria, what happens if we inhale, III, 410. Barley gruel, II, 244. Barley water, II, 244, 256. [ii] Bath, bran, IV, 591; cold, for reducing fever, IV, 590; cold sponge or shower, IV, 592; during pregnancy, I, 76; hot air or vapor, IV, 591; hot, IV, 591; mustard, IV, 590; tepid, IV, 592; various kinds of, IV, 590. Bathing, the baby, II, 213. Bed, proper way to lay baby in, II, 235. Bed-wetting, IV, 580. Beef juice, II, 262. Beef or meat pulp, II, 244. Bichloride of mercury solution, IV, 627. Binder, how to apply, I, 66. Birth, management of, I, 99. Birth-chamber, the, I, 61. Birth marks, I, 128. Bites, dog, IV, 638. Blackheads, IV, 576. Blood, children suffering from poor, IV, 566; poor, IV, 565. Boils, IV, 559. Boracic Acid, solution of, IV, 626. Bottle-feeding, method of, II, 256; what a mother should know about, II, 264. Bowels, daily movement necessary, II, 307; how to wash out, IV, 586; importance of clean, II, 306. Boy, building of, II, 139; chancre, the, II, 145; gonorrhea or "clap," II, 142; sex-hygiene for, II, 139; social evil, II, 141; sources of immorality, II, 141; syphilis or "pox," II, 144. Brain, complications of in syphilis, II, 146. Bran, as a food, II, 292; bath, IV, 591; muffins, recipe for, II, 311. Branthwaite, Dr., on alcoholic drunkenness, I, 45. Bread, II, 273. Breasts, care of when weaning, I, 125; colostrum in, I, 108; how long should baby stay at, II, 225; putting baby to after labor, I, 108. Bronchitis, IV, 511; chronic, IV, 515; diet for, IV, 513; drugs in, IV, 514; external applications for, IV, 514; inhalations for, IV, 513; in older children, IV, 512; symptoms of in infants, IV, 512; treatment of IV, 512. Broncho-Pneumonia, acute, IV, 516; symptoms of, IV, 516; how to tell when child has, IV, 517; treatment of child with, IV, 517. Bruise, or contusion, IV, 633. Burbank, Luther, on education, I, 24. Burning Clothing, how to extinguish, IV, 641. Burns, and scalds, IV, 641. Calomel, II, 297; how to take, II, 297. Cancer, in women, III, 442; what every woman should know about, III, 442. Carron oil, solution of, IV, 627. Castor oil, II, 295; how to give dose of, II, 296. Catarrh, acute nasal, IV, 500; symptoms of, IV, 500. Catarrh powders, III, 458. Cathartics, calomel, II, 295; castor oil, II, 295; citrate of magnesia, II, 298; how to give children, II, 295. Cereals, II, 273. Chancre, the, II, 145. Change of life, conduct during, III, 446; the menopause, III, 443; symptoms of, III, 444. Cheerful wife and mother, III, 400. Chicken broth, II, 244. [iii] Chicken-pox, IV, 606; symptoms of, IV, 607. Child, the delicate, II, 281; diet of sick, II, 279; most helpless living thing, II, 279; rate of growth of, II, 221; sick, should be in bed, II, 277; washing mouth and eyes after birth, I, 102. Child-Birth, I, 61; fear of, I, 111. Children, acute intestinal diseases of, IV, 529; constipation in, II, 303; hysterical, II, 293; rheumatism in, IV, 569; temperature in, II, 217; with whom milk does not agree, IV, 535. Cholera infantum, IV, 540. Chlorosis, IV, 566; symptoms of, IV, 566. Chronic Nasal catarrh, IV, 503; treatment of, IV, 504. Circumcision, should it be advised, II, 169. Citrate of magnesia, II, 295; how to take, II, 298. Clap, or gonorrhea, II, 142. Clothing, baby's, II, 214. Coddled egg, II, 245. Cold-pack, IV, 589. Colds, catching, IV, 497. Colic, IV, 544; symptoms of, IV, 545; treatment of, IV, 545. Colitis, chronic, IV, 538. Colon, irrigation of, IV, 587. Colostrum, uses of, I, 108. Condensed milk feeding, II, 227; objections to, II, 257. Confinement, choice of physician, I, 69; convalescing after, I, 131; domestic problem following first, I, 131; how to calculate date of, I, 66; how to prepare bed for, I, 65; lacerations during, I, 116; how long woman should stay in bed after, I, 114; position and arrangement of bed for, I, 64; preparations for, I, 61; selection of a nurse, I, 70; use of anesthetics in, I, 112; what to provide for, I, 62. Confinement chamber, presence of friends in, I, 113; presence of relatives in, I, 113. Constipation, II, 315; abuse of cathartics and aperient waters, II, 326; always harmful, II, 321; chief cause of, II, 315; cost of, II, 317; diseases of women and, II, 320; during pregnancy, I, 84; in bottle-fed infants, II, 309; in breast-fed infants, II, 308; in girls between 16 and 20, II, 321; in children over two years old, II, 309; in infants and children, II, 303; lack of bulk in food, II, 326; lack of exercise and, II, 325; lack of water, II, 325; negligence of, II, 324; pregnancy and, II, 321; significance of, II, 305; social exigencies and, II, 319; treatment of, II, 323; treatment of obstinate, II, 311. Consumption cure, III, 461. Consumptives, information for and those living with, III, 421. Contagious diseases, IV, 599; conduct and dress of nurse for, IV, 600; convalescence after, IV, 603; rules to be observed in treatment, IV, 599; what isolation means, IV, 600. Contusion, or bruise, IV, 633. Convulsions, IV, 577; treatment of child with, IV, 579. Cord, cutting, the, I, 102; dressing the, II, 210. Cough, treatment of, IV, 505; nervous or persistent, IV, 504. [iv] Cream, for constipation in infants, II, 309. Croup, false, IV, 506; treatment of false, IV, 507; spasmodic, IV, 507; treatment of spasmodic, IV, 507. Deaf and dumb, I, 37. Detention, symptoms of, II, 219; treatment of, II, 219. Desserts, II, 273. Diarrhoea, inflammatory, IV, 535; summer, IV, 539; symptoms of summer, IV, 540; treatment of inflammatory, IV, 537; treatment of summer, IV, 541. Diet, of nursing mother, I, 121; of the pregnant woman, I, 77; of sick child, II, 279; for constipated child, II, 310; older children, II, 271. Dinner, the first after labor, I, 109. Diphtheria, IV, 610; symptoms of, IV, 611; treatment of, IV, 613. Disease, how we catch, III, 409; tendency to, III, 416; vice and, I, 4; of womb, ovaries or fallopian tubes, II, 199. Disinfecting, Clothing and linen, IV, 601; mouth and nose, IV, 602; sick chamber, IV, 604. Dislocations, IV, 640. Dog-bites, IV, 638. Douche, how to give after labor, I, 108; the use of when pregnant, I, 76. Draw-sheet, the, I, 65. Dried bread, II, 245. Dusting and cleaning, II, 391. Dysentery, cause of, IV, 535; symptoms of, IV, 536. Dysmenorrhea, II, 193. Ear, foreign bodies in, IV, 631; inflammation of, IV, 556; method of removing foreign bodies, IV, 632; treatment of inflammation, IV, 556. Earache, IV, 555. Ears, do not box, IV, 554; do not pick, IV, 554; let them alone, IV, 554. Eczema, IV, 562; of the face, IV, 563; rubrum, IV, 563. Education, and the educator, I, 29; eugenics and, I, 4; Dr. C. W. Saleeby on, I, 22; Dr. Helen C. Putnam on, I, 27; Havelock Ellis on, I, 33; Herbert Spencer on, I, 35; Luther Burbank on, I, 24; Wm. D. Lewis on, I, 25; true province of, I, 35; what place sex hygiene will find in, II, 162; Ella Wheeler Wilcox on, I, 22. Educational systems, difficulty in devising, I, 27; inadequate, I, 22. Efficiency, requisites of, III, 346. Egg, coddled, II, 245; white of, II, 262. Ellis, Havelock, on Education, I, 33. Emergencies and accidents, IV, 629. Enema, High, IV, 588; hot, 586. Enteritis, cause of, IV, 535; symptoms of, IV, 536. Entero-colitis, IV, 535. Enuresis, IV, 580. Environment, I, 3. Eruptions of the skin, II, 145. Establishing toilet habits, II, 240. Eugenic clubs, mother's, I, 54. Eugenic idea, the, I, 9. Eugenic principle, I, 10. Eugenics, I, 12; definition of, I, 12; education and, I, 21; and history, I, 5; husband and, I, 19; marriage and, I, 11; motherhood and, I, 16; [v] parenthood and, I, 15; the unfit and, I, 37; what every mother should know about, I, 47. Exercise enough for husband, III, 347; lack of and constipation, III, 347. Eye, foreign bodies in, IV, 630; method of removing foreign bodies from, IV, 631. Fake medical treatment, for venereal diseases, II, 167. Father and the boy, II, 163. Fault-finding, III, 350. Feeble-minded, the, I, 37; Dr. John Punton on, I, 42; Dr. Max Schlapp on, I, 39; segregation and treatment of, I, 42. Feeding, artificial, II, 249; artificial from birth to twelfth month, II, 254; the delicate child condition which will justify artificial, II, 266; during second year formulæ for artificial, II, 253; how to prepare milk mixtures, II, 259; intervals of, II, 225; overfeeding, II, 223; regularity of, II, 227; what a mother should know about, II, 264; why regularity is important, II, 228. Felon, run-around, or whitlow, IV, 640; treatment of, IV, 641. Female, beginning of, disease, III, 434; chief cause of diseases, III, 436; diseases are avoidable, III, 439; generative organs, II, 178; weakness cures, III, 470; what woman with disease should do, III, 441. Fermentation, of the stomach, II, 304. Fertility, conditions which affect women, II, 196. Fever, cold packs for, IV, 589; cold sponging for reducing, IV, 589; ice cap for reducing, IV, 589; methods of reducing, IV, 589. Finger, biting the nails, IV, 585. Fit, the, only shall be born, I, 10. Fits, IV, 577. Fly, dangerous house, IV, 645; to kill, IV, 648. Fomentations, hot, IV, 593. Food, allowable during first year, II, 261; bran as a, II, 292; formulæ for baby, II, 243. Foodstuffs, IV, 647. Foreign bodies, in nose, IV, 632; in throat, IV, 633. Formative period, the, III, 339. Fraudulent testimonials, III, 467. Friends, choosing your, III, 367; your husband's, III, 363. Fruits, II, 273. Garbage, IV, 647. Gastric indigestion, acute, IV, 527; treatment of, IV, 527. Gastro duodenitis, IV, 547. Generative organs, female, II, 178. Genital organs, care of, II, 26. Girl, what a mother should tell her little, II, 173. Glands, swollen, IV, 558; treatment of swollen, IV, 558. Gleet, II, 143 Gonorrhea, symptoms of in a man, II, 142; wife infected with, II, 147. Good health, requirements of, II, 316. Government investigation of patent medicines, IV, 486. [vi] Habits, of delicate child, II, 285. Hair, falls out in syphilis, II, 146. Headache, IV, 585; during pregnancy, I, 83; remedies, III, 457; treatment of, IV, 585. Heartburn, during pregnancy, I, 84. Hemorrhage, arrest of, IV, 635; nasal, IV, 522. Heredity, I, 3; and eugenics, I, 16; function of education, I, 32. Hiccough, IV, 523. High School, system fallacious, I, 29. Hives, IV, 559; cause of, IV, 559; treatment of, IV, 559. Home, good housekeeper, III, 389; owning a, III, 400; the ideal, III, 393; what makes the, III, 394. Honeymoon, the, III, 335; marital relations during, III, 336. Hot pack, IV, 589. Housefly, dangerous, IV, 645. Housekeeper, what constitutes an efficient, III, 390. Husband, and home, III, 404; is he to blame, II, 151; the, and eugenics, I, 19. Hysterics, and children, II, 293; treatment of, II, 294. Ice-cap, for reducing fever, IV, 589. Ileo-colitis, chronic, IV, 538; treatment of, IV, 539. Imperial Granum, II, 245. Incontinence, IV, 580. Indigestion, acute gastric, IV, 527; acute intestinal, IV, 532; symptoms of acute intestinal, IV, 532; treatment of acute gastric, IV, 527; treatment of acute intestinal, IV, 533. Infants, constipation in bottle-fed, II, 309; jaundice in, IV, 547; mortality of, I, 2; records of, II, 222. Infection, direct, IV, 499. Infectious diseases, IV, 599. Inflammatory diarrhea, IV, 535. Influenza, IV, 608; symptoms of, IV, 608; treatment of, IV, 609. Injections, oil, II, 312. Insane, care of, I, 43. Insomnia, during pregnancy, I, 86. Interior organs, complications of in syphilis, II, 146. Intermittent fever, IV, 571. Intestinal diseases of children, IV, 529. Intestinal Indigestion, acute, IV, 532; symptoms of acute, IV, 532; treatment of, IV, 533. Intestinal worms, IV, 548. Jaundice, catarrhal, IV, 547; in infants, IV, 546; in older children, IV, 547. Junket, II, 244. Kelly pad, the, I, 65. Knowledge, two ways of gaining, III, 377. Labor, after-pains, I, 103; beginning of, I, 95; clothing during, I, 95; conduct during second stage of, I, 96; conduct immediately following, I, 103; douching after, I, 107; first breakfast after, I, 105; first dinner after, I, 109; first lunch after, I, 109; first stage of, I, 96; importance of emptying bladder after, I, 106; the Lochia, or discharge after, I, 104; management of, I, 93; putting baby to breast after, I, 108; second stage of, I, 96. Lacerations during confinement, I, 116. [vii] La Grippe, IV, 608; treatment of, IV, 609. Laryngitis, acute catarrhal, IV, 506; treatment of, IV, 507. Leucorrhea, cause of sterility, II, 201; in girls, II, 190. Lewis, Wm. D., on education, I, 25. Life and insurance, III, 400. Lithia water, III, 458. Lochia, or discharge after labor, I, 104. Lunch, the first after labor, I, 109. Malaria, intermittent fever, IV, 571; serum for, IV, 656; treatment of, IV, 571. Malformation, II, 201. Man, building a, II, 151. Marital relations, when they are painful, III, 337; when they should be suspended, III, 337. Marriage, and motherhood, I, 2; best age for, III, 331; certificate and vice, I, 15; certificate, utility of, I, 13; evils of early, III, 333; failures in, I, 2. Mastitis, in infancy, IV, 553; in young girls, IV, 554. Masturbation, or self-abuse, II, 157. Meats, medical essentials of good, III, 393; preparation and selection of, III, 390. Measles, IV, 616; complications in, IV, 618; Koplik's spots in, IV, 617; rules of department of health, IV, 619; symptoms of, IV, 616; treatment of, IV, 618. Medical, letter brokers, III, 482; reliable advice, III, 486. Medicine chest, contents of family, IV, 629. Medicine concern run by women, III, 475. Menstruation, II, 187; irregular, II, 187; painful, II, 193; should not be accompanied with pain, II, 189; symptoms of, II, 189; treatment for painful, II, 194; why it occurs every 28 days, II, 180. Milk, children with whom it does not agree, IV, 535; difference between human and cows, II, 252; mixture, how to prepare, II, 259; peptonized, II, 262. Mind, training the, III, 360. Miscarriage, II, 202; after treatment of, II, 205; causes of, II, 203; course and symptoms of, II, 204; what to do when threatened with, II, 204; tendency to, II, 206; womb displacement in, II, 198. Mosquitoes, regarding, IV, 572; rules of Department of Health, IV, 574. Mother, the cheerful, III, 400; education of the, II, 277; existence of the average, III, 437; what she should know about eugenics, I, 47; what she should tell her little girl, II, 173; what she should tell her daughter, II, 173. Motherhood, eugenics and, I, 16; function of, I, 17; preparing for, II, 187. Mothers, eugenic clubs, I, 54; girls must not become, II, 184. Moths, IV, 648. Mouth, how to disinfect, IV, 601; sore, IV, 523; treatment for ulcers in, IV, 525; treatment of sore, IV, 524. Mucous patches, and ulcers, II, 145. Mumps, IV, 605; symptoms of, IV, 605. Mustard bath, IV, 590. Mustard paste, how to make, IV, 593. [viii] Mustard pack, how to prepare and use, IV, 594. Mutton Broth, II, 244. Napkins, sanitary, I, 66. Nasal discharge, chronic, IV, 502. Nausea, during pregnancy, I, 80. Nettle-rash, IV, 559; cause of, IV, 559; treatment of, IV, 559. Night losses, or "wet dreams," II, 158. Nightmare or night terrors, IV, 583; treatment of, IV, 581. Nipples, care of, I, 121; cracked, I, 122; tender, I, 122; treatment of cracked, I, 122; what mother should know about bottle and, II, 264. Normal salt, solution of, IV, 627. Nose, chronic discharge of, IV, 503; complications of in syphilis, II, 146; foreign bodies in, IV, 632. Nose-bleeds, IV, 522. Nosophobia, or the dread of disease, III, 380. Nursery maid, qualifications of, I, 129. Nursing mothers, I, 121; diet of, I, 121; mastitis in, I, 122; nervous, I, 126. Oatmeal water, for constipation in infants, II, 309. Oat-water, II, 244. Obstetrical outfits, ready to purchase, I, 63. Oil injections, II, 312. Oiled silk, IV, 594; what it is and why it is used, IV, 594. Orange juice, II, 262; for constipation in infants, II, 309. Organs, transplanting from dead to living, IV, 655. Otitis, acute, IV, 556. Ovaries, disease of, II, 199; function of, II, 179. Overeating, II, 289; III, 327; symptoms of, II, 290. Overfeeding the baby, II, 223. Parents, and the Boy, II, 153; a word to, II, 161; eugenics and, I, 15. Parotitis, epidemic, IV, 605. Patent Medicines, and education, III, 493; and eugenics, III, 494; and the newspaper, III, 484; conspiracy against freedom of press, III, 483; dangers of, III, 489; fraudulent testimonials, III, 467; intoxicating effects of, III, 453; government investigation of, III, 486; pure food and drug act, III, 452, 490. Patent Medicine Evil, III, 451, 489; and the duty of mothers III, 489; what mothers should know about the, III, 451. People, two kinds of, III, 363. Peptonized milk, II, 262. Physicians, what they are doing, IV, 649. Pimples, IV, 576. Pneumonia, IV, 516. Poultices, IV, 593. Pox, or syphilis, II, 144. Precautions to be observed, IV, 647. Pregnancy, avoidance of drugs during, I, 90; clothing during, I, 77; constipation during, I, 84; headache during, I, 83; heartburn during, I, 84; hygiene of, I, 75; insomnia during, I, 86; minor ailments of, I, 76; morning nausea, I, 80; sexual intercourse during, I, 76; social side of, I, 79; undue nervousness during, I, 82; vagaries of, I, 90; vaginal discharge, I, 88; varicose veins, cramps and neuralgia during, I, 85. [ix] Pregnant, few ailing women become, III, 435; conduct of woman, I, 75; diet of woman, I, 77; mental state of woman, I, 78; when woman should first call upon physician, I, 68. Prickly Heat, IV, 560; treatment of, IV, 560. Principle, differences of, III, 344. Privy Vaults, IV, 647. Procreative Function, abuse of, II, 153; III, 440. Procreative Power, period of, II, 155. Puberty, age of, II, 179; period of in the female, II, 178. Pulse, rate in children and adults, II, 221. Punton, Dr. John, on feeble-minded, I, 42. Pure Food and Drug Act, III, 452, 490. Putnam, Dr. Helen C., on education, I, 27. Quacks, how they dispose of confidential letters, III, 481. Quarrel, the first, III, 349. Quinsy, IV, 523. Race Culture, I, II. Radium, IV, 652. Rashes, of childhood, IV, 574; other, IV, 575; treatment of, IV, 576. Records, Infant, II, 222. Rectal Irrigations, to reduce fever, IV, 590. Reproductive Organs, changes in, II, 178; function of the, II, 179. Resolves, making, III, 371. Rest and recreation, III, 398. Rest and sleep, III, 347. Rheumatism, in children, IV, 569; treatment of acute attack, IV, 570; treatment of tendency to, IV, 570. Rhinitis, chronic, IV, 503. Rice water, II, 244. Ringworm, of the scalp, IV, 561. Rubbers, practice of wearing needs consideration, IV, 498. Run-around, or felon, IV, 640; treatment of, IV, 641. Rupture, IV, 551. Saleeby, Dr. C.W., on education, I, 22. Sanitary napkins, how to prepare, I, 66. Santonin, for worms, IV, 549. Scalds and burns, IV, 641. Scalp, ringworm of, IV, 561; wounds of, IV, 640. Scarlet Fever, IV, 620; complications in, IV, 621; eruptions, IV, 621; measures to prevent spread of, IV, 621; treatment of, IV, 622. Scarlatina, IV, 620. Scientific Dressing, III, 427. Schlapp, Dr. Max, on the feeble-minded, I, 39. Self-abuse or Masturbation, II, 155. Self-culture, young wife's incentive to, III, 379. Serum, Anti-meningitis, IV, 656; for malaria, IV, 656. Sexual excesses, II, 159; treatment of, II, 160. Sexual intercourse, during pregnancy, I, 76. Shock, the condition of, IV, 637. Sitz bath, during pregnancy, I, 87. "606," IV, 655. Skin, care of, II, 216; care of in contagious diseases, IV, 602; eruptions of, II, 145. Sleeplessness, causes of, IV, 583; treatment of, IV, 583. Social Evil, what parents should know about, II, 161. Solutions, normal salt, IV, 627; various, IV, 626. Soothing syrup, III, 458. Sore Mouth, IV, 523; treatment of, IV, 524. [x] Sore throat, IV, 508. Sowing wild oats, II, 167. Spasms, IV, 577. Spencer, Herbert, on education, I, 35. Spermatozoa, functions of the, II, 181; the male, or papa egg, II, 181. Sprains, IV, 639. Sprue, IV, 525; treatment of, IV, 525. Stables, IV, 646. Sterility, II, 195; causes of, in women, II, 198. Sterilizing, food for day's feeding, II, 260. Stomach, diseases of, IV, 527; fermentation of, II, 304; function of the, II, 304. Stomach bitters, alcohol in, III, 455. Stomatitis, IV, 523. Story, Dr. Thomas A., on education, I, 26. Study habit, the, III, 374. Sullivan, Dr., on alcoholic drunkenness, I, 44. Success, attainment of, III, 345; formula of, III, 373. Summer Diarrhea, IV, 539; symptoms of, IV, 540; treatment of, IV, 541. Summer diseases of intestines, IV, 529. Surgery, aseptic, IV, 653. Syphilis, or the "pox," II, 144. Tape worms, IV, 551. Teeth, care of the, II, 219; how they come, II, 218. Temperature, in children, II, 217. Thiersch's solution, IV, 627. Thought, bad habits of, III, 360; what is a, III, 359. Thread worm, IV, 549. Throat, foreign bodies in, IV, 633; sore, IV, 508. Thrush, IV, 525; treatment of, IV, 525. Thumb-sucking, IV, 585. Tonsilitis: Angina, "sore throat," IV, 508; treatment of acute, IV, 510. Transplanting organs of dead to living, IV, 655. Tuberculosis, best treatment for, III, 418; facts about, III, 414. Turpentine stupe, the, IV, 594. Typhoid, how to keep from spreading, IV, 625; how to prevent getting, IV, 624; symptoms of, IV, 623; vaccine in, IV, 654. Ulcers, in mouth, IV, 525; mucous patches and, II, 144. Vacant lots, IV, 647. Vaccination, method of, II, 299; symptoms of successful, II, 299; time for, II, 299; treatment, II, 300. Vaccine in typhoid fever, IV, 654. Vapor bath, IV, 591. Varicella, IV, 606. Varicose veins, during pregnancy, I, 85. Vegetables, II, 272. Venereal Diseases, fake medical treatment for, II, 167; ten million victims of, I, 11. Vomiting, of children between feedings, II, 226; significance of after feeding, II, 230. Washing dishes, III, 391. Water, drink plenty of, III, 429. Weaning, I, 123; care of breasts when, I, 125; menstruation and, I, 124; methods of, I, 123; rapid, when it is necessary, I, 124; when to start, I, 124. Wedding night, its medical aspect, III, 334. What to eat and wear in hot weather, III, 426. When delays are dangerous, III, 423. Whey, II, 244. Whitlow, or felon, IV, 640. [xi] Whooping Cough, IV, 613; symptoms of, IV, 614; treatment of, IV, 615. Wife, her part, III, 353; the cheerful, III, 400; the indifferent, III, 401; what she owes to herself, III, 357. Wifehood, first weeks and months of, III, 336. Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, on education, I, 23. Womb, function of, II, 180; how baby gets nourishment in, II, 183; how held in place, II, 189. Women, ailing, are inefficient, III, 434; diseases of, III, 433; who don't want children, III, 439; medicine concern run by, III, 475; most popular, III, 365; use of patent medicines in diseases, III, 473. Work, must be interesting, III, 351. Working for something, III, 395. Worms, intestinal, IV, 548; round, IV, 548; symptoms of tape, IV, 551; symptoms of thread, IV, 549; tape, IV, 551; thread, IV, 549; treatment of round, IV, 549. Worry, freedom from, III, 348. Wound, cleaning a, IV, 637; closing and dressing a, IV, 637; removal of foreign bodies from, IV, 636. Wounds, IV, 634; of the scalp, IV, 640. X-Ray, treatment and diagnosis, IV, 652. * * * * * VOLUME I * * * * * [xv] TABLE OF CONTENTS EUGENICS. RACE CULTURE CHAPTER I CONDITIONS WHICH HAVE EVOLVED THE SCIENCE OF EUGENICS Infant mortality--Marriage and motherhood--Heredity--Environment--Education--Disease and vice--History--Summary ... PAGE 1 CHAPTER II THE EUGENIC IDEA The value of human life--The eugenic principle--"The fit only shall live"--Eugenics and marriage--The venereal diseases--The utility of marriage certificates--The marriage certificates and vice--Eugenics and parenthood--The principle of heredity--Eugenics and motherhood--Eugenics and the husband ... PAGE 9 CHAPTER III EUGENICS AND EDUCATION The present educational system is inadequate--Opinions of Dr. C.W. Saleeby, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Luther Burbank, William D. Lewis, Elizabeth Atwood, Dr. Thomas A. Story, William C. White, Dr. Helen C. Putnam--Difficulty in devising a satisfactory educational system--Education an important function--The function of the high school--The high school system fallacious--The true function of education ... PAGE 21 CHAPTER IV EUGENICS AND THE UNFIT The deaf and dumb--The feeble-minded--A New York magistrate's report--Report of the Children's Society--The segregation and treatment of the feeble-minded--What the care of the insane costs--The alcoholic--Drunkenness ... PAGE 37 CHAPTER V WHAT EVERY MOTHER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT EUGENICS PAGE 47 [xvi] CHILD-BIRTH CHAPTER VI PREPARATIONS FOR THE CONFINEMENT The birth chamber--What to provide for a confinement--Ready to purchase obstetrical outfits--Position and arrangement of the bed--How to properly prepare the accouchement bed--The Kelly pad--The advantages of the Kelly pad--Should a binder be used--Sanitary napkins--How to calculate the probable date of the confinement--Obstetrical table--When should a pregnant woman first call upon her physician--Regarding the choice of a physician--How to know the right kind of a physician for a confinement--The selection of a nurse--The difference between a trained and a maternity nurse--Duties of a confinement nurse--The requisites of a good confinement nurse--The personal rights of a confinement nurse--Criticizing and gossiping about physicians ... PAGE 61 CHAPTER VII THE HYGIENE OF PREGNANCY Daily conduct of the pregnant woman--Instructions regarding household work--Instructions regarding washing and sweeping--Instructions regarding exercise--Instructions regarding passive exercise--Instructions regarding toilet privileges--Instructions regarding bathing--Instructions regarding sexual intercourse--Clothing during pregnancy--Diet of pregnant women--Alcoholic drinks during pregnancy--The mental state of the pregnant woman--The social side of pregnancy--Minor ailments of pregnancy--Morning nausea, or sickness--Treatment of morning nausea, or sickness--Nausea occurring at the end of pregnancy--Undue nervousness during pregnancy--The 100% baby--Headache--Acidity of the stomach, or heartburn--Constipation--Varicose veins, cramps, neuralgias--Insomnia--Treatment of insomnia--Ptyalism, or excessive flow of saliva--Vaginal discharge, or leucorrhea--Importance of testing urine during pregnancy--Attention to nipples and breasts--The vagaries of pregnancy--Contact with infectious diseases--Avoidance of drugs--The danger signals of pregnancy ... PAGE 75 CHAPTER VIII THE MANAGEMENT OF LABOR When to send for the physician in confinement cases--The preparation of the patient--The beginning of labor--The first pains--The meaning of the term "labor"--Length of the first stage of labor--What the first stage of [xvii] labor means--What the second stage of labor means--Length of the second stage--Duration of the first confinement--Duration of subsequent confinements--Conduct of patient during second stage of labor--What a labor pain means--How a willful woman can prolong labor--Management of actual birth of child--Position of woman during birth of child--Duty of nurse immediately following birth of child--Expulsion of after-birth--How to expel after-birth--Cutting the cord--Washing the baby's eyes immediately after birth--What to do with baby immediately after birth--Conduct immediately after labor--After pains--Rest and quiet after labor--Position of patient after labor--The Lochia--The events of the following day--The first breakfast after confinement--The importance of emptying the bladder after labor--How to effect a movement of the bowels after labor--Instructing the nurse in details--Douching after labor--How to give a douche--"Colostrum," its uses--Advantages of putting baby to breast early after labor--The first lunch--The first dinner--Diet after third day ... PAGE 93 CHAPTER IX CONFINEMENT INCIDENTS Regarding the dread and fear of childbirth--The woman who dreads childbirth--Regarding the use of anesthetics in confinements--The presence of friends and relatives in the confinement chamber--How long should a woman stay in bed after confinement--Why do physicians permit women to get out of bed before the womb is back in its proper place?--Lacerations, their meaning, and their significance--The advantage of an examination six weeks after the confinement--The physician who does not tell all of the truth ... PAGE 111 CHAPTER X NURSING MOTHERS The diet of nursing mothers--Care of the nipples--Cracked nipples--Tender nipples--Mastitis in nursing mothers--Inflammation of the breasts--When should a child be weaned?--Method of weaning--Nursing while menstruating--Care of breasts while weaning child--Nervous nursing mothers--Birthmarks--Qualifications of a nursery maid ... PAGE 121 CHAPTER XI CONVALESCING AFTER CONFINEMENT The second critical period in the young wife's life--The domestic problem following the first confinement ... PAGE 131 * * * * * [xix] INTRODUCTION Despite the fact that much has been written during the past two or three years with reference to Eugenics, it is quite evident to any one interested in the subject that the average intelligent individual knows very little about it so far as its scope and intent are concerned. This is not to be wondered at, for the subject has not been presented to the ordinary reader in a form that would tend to encourage inquiry or honest investigation. The critic and the wit have deliberately misinterpreted its principles, and have almost succeeded in masking its supreme function in the garb of folly. The writer has yet to meet a conscientious mother who fails to evince a reasonable degree of enthusiastic interest in eugenics when properly informed of its fundamental principles. The eugenic ideal is a worthy race--a race of men and women physically and mentally capable of self-support. The eugenist, therefore, demands that every child born shall be a worthy child--a child born of healthy, selected parents. No one can successfully assail the ethics of this appeal. It is morally a just contention to strive for a healthy race. It is also an economic necessity as we shall see. The history of the world informs us that there have been many civilizations which, in some respects, equalled our own. These races of people have all achieved a certain success, and have then passed entirely out of existence. Why? _And are we destined to extinction in the same way?_ We know that the cause of the decline and ultimate extinction of all past civilizations was due primarily to the moral decadence of their people. Disease and vice gradually sapped their vitality, and their continuance was impossible. [xx] It would seem to be the destiny of a race to achieve material prosperity at the expense of its morality. When conditions render possible the fulfilment of every human desire, the race exhausts its vitality in a surfeitment of caprice. The animal instincts predominate, and the potential vigor of the people is exhausted in contributing to its own amusement. Each succeeding civilization has reached this epochal period, and has fallen, victim of the rapacity of stronger and younger invading antagonists, _themselves to succumb to the same insidious process_. The present civilization has reached this epochal--this transition--period. In one hundred years from now we shall either have accomplished what no previous civilization accomplished, or we shall have ceased to exist as a race. Our success depends on the response of the people to the eugenic appeal. Few appreciate the responsibility involved. It is not necessary, however, to combat or deplore the evils of the past. Civilization has failed in the task of race-maintenance; it failed, however, in ignorance. We cannot plead the same excuse. We are face to face with conditions that we must solve quickly or our destiny will be decreed before we apply the remedy. A function of the eugenist is to gather and attest statistics, and to establish conclusions based on these statistics. It has been conclusively demonstrated that, if the race continues to progress as it exists now--that is, if conditions remain the same, and our standard of enlightenment, so far as racial evolution is concerned, does not prompt us to adopt new constructive measures--_every second child born in this country, in fifty years, will be unfit; and, in one hundred years, the American race will have ceased to exist_. We mean by this that every second child born will be born to die in infancy, or, if it lives, will be incapable of self-support during its life, because either of mental degeneracy or physical inefficiency. This appalling situation immediately becomes a problem of civilization. No state can exist under these conditions. If these statistics are reliable--and we know they are true and capable of verification by any individual who will go to the trouble of [xxi] investigating them--it is self-evident that a radical change must immediately be instituted to obviate the logical consequences that must follow as a sequence. The eugenic demand, that "every child born shall be a worthy child," is, therefore, the solution of the problem. This does not imply, however, that the eugenist must solve the elementary problem of how the state will ensure its own salvation by guaranteeing worthy children. Worthy children can come only from fit and worthy (clean and healthy) parents. It becomes the imperative function of the state--the function on which the very life of the state depends--to see that every applicant for marriage is possessed of the qualities that will ensure healthy, worthy children. We must, therefore, sooner or later devise a system of scientific regulation of marriage, and it is at this point we stumble against the problem that has prompted the ebullitions of the wit and the sarcasm of the critic. A casual reference to the science immediately suggests to the layman an impossible or quixotic system of marriage by force. Even the word "eugenics" is associated in the minds of many otherwise estimable old ladies, and others who should know better, with a species of malodorous free love, and their hands go up in holy horror at the intimation of a scientific regulation of this ancient function. Unfortunately, the popular mind has received the impression that this incident constitutes the sum total of the eugenic idea, while the truth is that the eugenist is only slightly concerned with its modus operandi. This feature has been so magnified by widely published disingenuous discussion that it has assumed the aspect of a test problem, a judgment on which shall decide the utility of the science itself. Should this decision be unfavorable, it would seem, according to its exponents, that it would not be worth while promulgating the doctrines of the science beyond this point. It is as though we were asked to deny ourselves the inspiration and pleasure of a trip abroad because the morning of the day on which the ship sailed happened to be cloudy. It is certainly no part of the function of the eugenist to uproot [xxii] instinct, or to trample into the dust age-long rights, though the instinct is simply the product of an established habit, based on an erroneous hypothesis, and the so-called rights simply acquired privileges, because the intelligence that would have builded differently was not awakened. Eugenic necessity will render imperative the state's solution of this fundamental problem, for the reason that civilization will be driven to demand its just inheritance--the right to exist. The eugenist will not be compelled to open the door; it will be opened for him. We can afford, therefore, to wait with supreme confidence, because the good sense of the people will not always submit to the tactics of the jester when it needs a saviour. The eugenist does not seek to interfere with the liberties of the rising generation: a boy may choose whom he will; the girl may select the one who appeals to her most, and they may enjoy all the vested rights and romance that custom has decreed the lover; but, when they resolve to marry, _the state must decide their qualifications for parenthood_. This must be the crucial test of the future. The life of the state depends on it. The continuance of the race must be the supreme object of all future constructive legislation. We must recognize that "life is the only wealth," and that every other criterion of an advanced civilization must measure its success according to its wealth in worthy parenthood. The eugenist does not even dictate what the test for parenthood shall be. Common sense, however, suggests that it will assume some form that will eliminate those physically or mentally diseased. He believes that, when the people are sufficiently educated to appreciate the object in view, they will devise a system that will meet with universal approval. Eugenics concerns itself with problems on which the destiny of the race depends. It must not, therefore, be limited to questions relative to mating and breeding. Every factor that contributes to the well-being and uplifting of the race, every subject that bespeaks physical or mental regeneration, that aids moral and social righteousness and salvation, and promises a greater social happiness and contentment, has a eugenic [xxiii] significance. So long as there exists an unsupported mother or a suffering child; so long as we rely on hospitals and prisons, penitentiaries and the police, to minister to the correction and regeneration of the unfit and degenerate; so long as we tolerate grafting politicians and deprive the poor of breathing spaces, sanitary appliances, and a hygienic environment; so long as war and pestilence deprive posterity of the best of the race for parenthood; so long as we emphasize rescue rather than prevention, so long must the eugenist strive unceasingly to preach his propaganda of race regeneration. The scope of eugenics is too far-reaching in its beneficent purpose to be fettered by the querulous triflings of the ancient or intellectual prude; nor should it be belittled by the superficial insight of the habitual scoffer. It is not a fantasy nor an idle dream. It is not even an inspiration. The destiny of the race has brought us face to face with conditions unparalleled in the history of this civilization, and the very existence of the race itself may be wholly dependent on the foresight of the minds that have made the science of eugenics possible. A brief consideration of the conditions that actually exist, with which we are face to face, and which certainly justify the existence of a science whose function it should be to demand serious investigation of methods of race regeneration, may help the reader to an intelligent and practical understanding of the tremendous importance of the subject. It has been already remarked that, at the present rate of decrease, the birth-rate will be reduced to zero within a century. If the birth-rates in England, Germany, and France should continue to decrease as they have since 1880, there would be no children born, one hundred years hence, in these countries. While we do not assert, and probably none of us believes that either or all of these nations will actually be out of existence in a hundred years--unquestionably because we feel, at least we hope, that our methods will be so changed in that time that the necessary modification will ensure a continuance of the race, nevertheless, the fact remains that _the inevitable result of continuing along present lines will be [xxiv] that, within the period of one hundred years, these peoples will cease to perpetuate themselves_. It is not necessary to enquire closely into the various causes for this unparalleled situation. The falling birth-rate in itself is not the prime cause. Even admitting that there are enough babies born, too many of them are born only to die in infancy. We need no further proof of the urgent need for conscientious inquiry, call it by what name you please. The science of common sense is all-sufficient. The seemingly intelligent individual who can only find material for ribaldry in this connection is a more serious buffoon than he imagines. It is apparent that our methods are wrong. Any constructive effort to correct them is commendable. When it is stated that 20 per cent. of the American women are unable to bear children, and that 25 per cent. of all the others are unwilling to assume the burden and responsibility of motherhood, we partly realize the gravity of the case. On the other hand, statistics show that the majority of men have acquired disease before they marry, and that a very large percentage of these men convey contagion to their wives. This condition, to a very large extent, accounts for the inefficiency of women as mothers. It is responsible for at least 75 per cent. of the sterility that exists. The effect of this deplorable condition is directly responsible, also, for the ill health that afflicts women and that renders necessary the daily operations of a serious nature that are conducted in every hospital in every city in the civilized world. As a result of the dissemination of this poison, children are born blind, or are born to die, or, if they live, they are compelled to carry all through their helpless lives the stigma of disease and degeneration. It would surely seem that the individual to whom God has given intelligence and a conscience cannot think of these, the saddest facts in human experience, without resentment and humility. _Surely the time has arrived when every boy should know, from his earliest youth, that there is here on earth an actual punishment for vicious living as frightful as any that the mind of man can conceive._ [Page xxv] When we inquire into the cause of this trend toward race degeneracy, we find that poverty and the inability of the workingman to support large families, luxurious living, and the life of ease and amusement on the part of the women of wealth; the fact that an increasingly large number of women have entered professions that prevent motherhood, and that the number of apartment-houses where children are not wanted are on the increase, all play their part. In this age of intense living, it is not to be wondered at that many shrink from the responsibility of rearing children, and the same conditions that contribute to this decadent ideal intensifies sex-hunger, and it is this dominating passion that tolerates and makes possible the most frightful crime of the age--infanticide. Greece and Rome paved the way for their ultimate annihilation when their beautiful women ceased to bear children and their men sought the companionship of courtesans. Baby contests have demonstrated that only one child in ten was found to be good enough to justify a second examination. In a test examination in the public schools, only eight in five thousand were competent to qualify in all the tests. One of these eight was a Chinese boy and another an American-born son of a native Greek. Of the twenty million school-children in the United States, not less than 75 per cent. need immediate attention for physical defects. While man has been assiduously improving everything else, he has neglected to better his own condition. Every animal that man has taken from its native haunts and domesticated, he has efficiently improved. He has even produced more marvelous results by the application of the same principles to the vegetable kingdom. In his haste to civilize himself, however, he has failed to apply the principles that are essential to self-preservation. It is regrettable, also, to know that, while the government has spent many thousands of dollars in sending out literature to the farmers, instructing them how to raise profitable crops and to breed prize horses and pigs, absolutely none of the public money has been used in instructing American mothers how to raise healthy children. [Page xxvi] A distinguished insurance expert has proved that there was an increase of nearly 100 per cent. in the mortality from degenerative diseases in the United States between 1880 and 1909. The growing prevalence of these diseases indicates a falling-off in the vitality of the race. It means that the diseases of old age are invading the younger ranks. The Life Extension Institute, of New York City, in its recent report, states that "forty of every hundred men and women employed in the Wall Street district require medical attention; twenty of the forty need it immediately, and ten of the forty must have it to avert serious results." There are from one-quarter to three-quarters of a million of preventable deaths every years in this country. That number of individuals could have been saved with proper care and attention to health in the early stages of disease, or before it gained a start. Practically all the diseases that carry business men off prematurely are curable in the early stages. Of the percentage of Wall Street men who need medical attention immediately, most have kidney or heart disease. The others are victims of typical unhygienic habits, such as fast, gluttonous eating, neglect of exercise, too much tobacco and liquor, and bad posturing in the office. The business man considers these trifles, but they count heavily. Business efficiency is greatly increased, first, by selecting men physically fit for work, and, second, by keeping them in that condition. There is a tremendous waste from inefficiency constantly going on, due to impaired health. Wall Street has an astonishing corps of neurasthenics. We need a broader interpretation of the term Eugenics, so that we may gain a more sympathetic and tolerant audience. The remedy does not lie in an academic discussion of these problems; to continue the debate behind closed doors will not lead anywhere: the public must be educated to a just appreciation of existing conditions and the remedy must be the product of effort on its part. Any condition that fundamentally means race deterioration must be [xxvii] rendered intolerable. The prevalant dancing craze is an anti-eugenic institution, as is the popularity of the delicatessen store. No sane person can regard with complacency the vicious environment in which the future mothers of the race "tango" their time, their morals, and their vitality away. We do not assume to pass judgment on the merits of the dance; we do, however, emphatically condemn the surroundings. The moving-picture shows, vaudeville entertainments, dancing carnivals, the ease of travel, the laxity of laws, the opportunities for promiscuous interviews, all tend to give youth a false impression of the reality of life and to make the path of the degenerate easy and attractive. The history of civilization is, curiously enough, the story of masculine brutality, self-indulgence, and vice. The history of the world also proves that woman's sphere has been to submit patiently and silently to injustice and imposition. _Practical eugenics is the first worthy effort in the history of all time to hold men and women responsible for their mode of living._ It is a mighty problem. There is no greater nor more difficult one to be solved. It has taken eons to bring men to the point of questioning their right to do as they please; it will take time to compel them to realize their disgrace and acknowledge their duty. When we consider that there are eighty thousand women condemned to professional moral degradation in the City of London, and that every so-called civilized city on the globe contributes its pro rata share to this army of potential mothers, we begin to appreciate the vastness of the task. Eugenics has already accomplished what no other movement has ever accomplished: it has created the spirit that gave birth to the thought of men's responsibility, and it has taught us that the female of the race has rights. We can now speak without fear; the light is no longer hidden. Women must realize, however, that they have contributed, and continue to contribute, to race degeneracy. We hear and read much about the double standard of morals. As long as woman are willing to marry their daughters to reformed rakes, providing they have money and social position, [xxviii] so long shall we have a double standard. So long as young society women go into hysterics over pedigreed dogs and horses and then marry men reeking in filthy unfitness for parenthood, mothers cannot expect any other standard of morals. So long as one marriage in twelve ends in divorce, the ethics of the female need enlightenment. We shall not get another standard of morals until women themselves demand it and insist on it. If they lend themselves to breaking down the conspiracy of silence, the women may solve the marriage problem by refusing to marry rakes. We need a more liberal construction of the intent of eugenics in order to clarify the obtuse minds so that its propaganda of education may be easily and justly comprehended. There is no field for speculation in the analysis of right living. It conforms to the law of cause and effect. It is positively concrete in substance. A recital of the life history of Jonathan Edwards, in comparison with that of the celebrated "Jukes" family, emphasises this assumption with a degree of positiveness that is tragic in its significance. Jonathan Edwards was born in England in Queen Elizabeth's time. He was a clergyman and he lived an upright life. So did his wife. His son came to the United States, to Hartford, Connecticut, and became an honorable merchant. His son, in turn, also became a merchant, upright and honored. His son, again, became a minister, and so honored was he that Harvard University conferred two degrees on him on the same day; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. This learned man again had a son, and he became a minister. Jonathan Edwards was his name. Now let us see, in 1900, what this one family, started by a man in England who lived an upright life and gave that heritage to his children, produced: 1,394 descendants of this man have been traced and identified; 295 were college graduates; 13 were college presidents; 65 were professors; 60 were physicians; 108 were clergymen; 101 were lawyers; 30 were judges; 1 was Vice-President of the United States; 75 were Army and Navy officers; [xxix] 60 were prominent authors; 16 were railroad and steamship presidents; and in the entire record not one has been convicted of a crime. Twelve hundred descendants have been traced from the one man who founded the "Jukes" family. This record covers a period of seventy-five years; out of these, 310 were professional paupers, who spent an aggregate of two thousand three hundred years in poorhouses; 50 were evil women; 7 were murderers; 60 were habitual thieves; and 130 were common criminals. It has been estimated that this one family was an economic loss to the state, measured in terms of potential usefulness wasted; costs of prosecution; expenses of maintenance in jails, hospitals and asylums; and of private loss through thefts, and robberies, of $1,300,000 in seventy-five years, or more than $1,000 for each member of the family. _It would seem to be worth while to be well born, after all._ In order to succeed in the regeneration of the race, we must believe that race regeneration is possible, and, that it is worth while. We must preach its principles as we would a religion. The power of knowledge is a mighty lever. We are living in a period of transition, but we are nearer the future than the past. We are told by the average individual that it will be impossible to arouse the public to an intelligent appreciation of the scope of race regeneration. When the writer conceived the happy phrase, "Better Babies," a few years ago, he builded better than he knew. It has become the slogan of splendid achievement already, and there are a multitude of signs and tokens that the propaganda is established on a sure foundation. If the annihilation of all past civilizations was due to the refusal of its members to breed for posterity, may we not reasonably assume that we have, according to our statistics, reached the same crisis? If this is logical reasoning, and every factor warrants this conclusion, have we not reached the time when the perpetuation of the race is the most serious question of our times? Is it not a problem for the enthusiastic and immediate [xxx] support of every statesman, politician, teacher, and preacher alike? Can any question be of more importance? What will our marvelous material splendor avail if the race is destined to immediate extinction? We need the assistance of every intelligent citizen, we need most, the awakening impulse of the mothers of the race. We who are alive are responsible for environment and nurture, and we must believe that the purpose to be achieved is of supreme importance. Every mother, through the power of knowledge, may become a practical eugenist. It is to aid her in an intelligent appreciation of the practical intent of the science that this work is presented. W. GRANT HAGUE, M.D. New York City. * * * * * [1] THE EUGENIC MARRIAGE CHAPTER I "Nations are gathered out of nurseries." CHARLES KINGSLEY. "To be a good animal is the first requisite to success in life, and to be a nation of good animals is the first condition of national prosperity." HERBERT SPENCER. CONDITIONS WHICH HAVE EVOLVED THE SCIENCE OF EUGENICS INFANT MORTALITY--MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD--HEREDITY--ENVIRONMENT--EDUCATION--DISEASE AND VICE--HISTORY--SUMMARY. There has been evinced during recent years a desire to know something more definite about the science of eugenics. Eugenics, simply defined, means "better babies." It is the art of being well born. It implies consideration of everything that has to do with the well-being of the race: motherhood, marriage, heredity, environment, disease, hygiene, sanitation, vice, education, culture,--in short, everything upon which the health of the people depends. If we contribute the maximum of health to those living, it is reasonable to assume that the future generation will profit thereby, and "better babies" will be a direct consequence. We are frequently told that we must take the world as we find it. This has been aptly termed, "the motto of the impotent and cowardly." "Life is what we make it," is the more satisfying assertion of the optimist, and most [2] of us seem to be trying to make existence more tolerable and more happy. It is encouraging to know that intelligent men and women to-day seek an opportunity to devote serious consideration to the betterment of the race, while yet the pursuit of wealth and pleasure are enticing and strenuous occupations. It would be superfluous in a book of this character to enter into any lengthy explanation as to how the science of eugenics proposes to work out its problems. We hope only to excite the interest of mothers in the subject, and to instruct them in its rudiments and principles. It will be of distinct advantage, however, first to briefly consider the conditions,--which are known to all of us,--which have led up to the present status of the subject. INFANT MORTALITY.--No elaborate argument is necessary to prove that the present infant mortality, in every civilized country, is too high. It is conceded by every authority interested in the subject, no matter what explanation he offers, or what system he advances as a solution of the problem. MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD.--Every intelligent person knows that most young girls enter into the marriage relationship without a real understanding of its true meaning, or even a serious thought regarding its duties or its responsibilities. We know that their home training in domestic science is generally not adequate, and that their educational equipment is inefficient. We also know that economic necessity has deprived them of the tutelage essential to social progress and physical health, and has endowed them with temperamental characteristics undesirable in the mothers of the race. Maternity is thrust upon these physically and mentally immature young wives, and they assume the principal rôle in a relationship that is onerous and exacting. We know that the duties of wife and mother require an intelligence which is rendered efficient only by maturity and experience. We know that many, if not most, young wives acquire habits which undermine their health and their morals unwittingly, and we also know that the product of this inefficiency results in the decadence and the [3] degeneration of the race. HEREDITY.--Much remains inexplicable at the present time regarding this intensely interesting department of science. We do know, however, that its truths are being investigated and tabulated. Our present knowledge of its principles has demonstrated the existence of laws from which we can ethically deduce explanations of conditions which were, in the past, not amenable to any classification. These relate to individual and racial characteristics. We are beginning to learn that we can modify these characteristics by proper selection, by environment, and by education. This process will, to an eminent degree, redound to the permanent advantage of mankind. We may reasonably aspire to a system of race-culture which will eliminate the undesirable or unfit, and conserve all effort in the propagation of the desirable or fit. This is a consummation to be desired, and if by any system of eugenics the promise of the future is realized it is deserving of the intelligent interest and the active coöperation of every aspiring mother. ENVIRONMENT.--By environment we mean the provision of suitable surroundings in its largest sense. A child to be fit and efficient must be born of selected parentage, the home surroundings must be desirable, the educational possibilities must be advantageous, the sanitary and hygienic conditions must be suitable, opportunities for physical and spiritual culture must be provided, and the State must ensure justice and the right to achieve success. We know that--generally speaking--these conditions do not exist. We know that the dregs of the human species--the blind, the deaf-mute, the degenerate, the imbecile, the epileptic, the criminal even,--are better protected by organized charity and by the State than are the deserving fit and healthy. We know that in the slums thousands of desirable children waste their vitality in the battle for existence, and we know that, though philanthropy and governmental supervision and protection are afforded the deaf, the dumb, the blind and degenerate child, no helping hand is held out to save the healthy and efficient child, who must pay in disease and inefficiency the price of his normality in degrading toil, [4] in factory and pit, where child labor is tolerated. We need the awakening which is the promise of the eugenist, that these wrongs will be righted, not by the statesmanship which believes that empires are founded and maintained by the power of material might, but by a process which will ennoble selected motherhood and give to every child born its due and its right. EDUCATION.--The present system of education is one of the great reflections on the intelligence of the human race. One of the greatest of contemporary writers has characterized it as "a curse to modern childhood and a menace to the future." Even the humblest of us--who would willingly believe the system efficient, who have no desire to invite criticism as to our opinion--are forced to acknowledge that there is something wrong with the educational system now in vogue. The writer is disposed to believe, however, that the fault is not wholly one of art. The conditions with which education has to contend are essentially hypothetical. It may be that the laws of heredity and psychology, when fixed, will evolve, at least, a more rational and a more ethical hypothesis. So far as eugenics is concerned with education, its limitation is defined and fixed. If the innate ability is not possessed by the child, no system of instruction, and no art of pedagogy, will ever draw it out. When the proper material is supplied by an adequate system of race culture, science may probably supply the requisite complementary data which will ensure an educational system that will really educate. DISEASE AND VICE.--The eugenic idea is more directly concerned with disease which tends to deteriorate the racial type. The average parent has no means of adequately estimating the significance of this type of disease. It has been estimated that one-half of the total effort of one-third of the race is expended in combating conditions against which no successful effort is possible. Think what this means. The struggle of life is a real struggle, even with success as an incentive and as a possible reward. It becomes a tragedy when we think of the wasted years, the hopeless prayers and the anguish of those who fight the battle which is predestined to end in [5] apparent failure. We are disposed to doubt the justice of the Omnipotent Mind who created us and left us seemingly alone--derelicts in the eddies of eternity. This is but a finite fault, however. The truth is that the scheme of the universe is unalterable, we are but part of the whole and must share in the evolution of the process. An apparent failure is not necessarily a discreditable one. Most lives are failures, if appraised by human estimate. Take for example the life of a young wife who marries a man with disease in his blood. She begins her wedded life with certain commendable ideals. She is young, enthusiastic, ambitious, strong, and she inherently possesses the right to aspire to become an efficient home-maker and a good mother. She gives birth to a child, conceived in love, and during her travail she beseeches her Creator to help her and to help her baby, as all women do at such a time. Her baby is born blind and it is a weak and puny mite. The mother recovers slowly, but she is never the same vigorous and ambitious woman. Later her strength fades away, her enthusiasm falters, the home is blighted and seems a desecrated spot. The baby is a constant worry, it is always sick, it needs expensive care and it exhausts the physical remnant of its mother's health. It finally dies and is laid away, not forgotten, but a sad, sad memory. The ailing and dispirited mother is informed that she must submit to an operation if she desires to regain her health, if not to save her life. She returns from the hospital--not a woman--a blighted thing, an unsexed substitute for what once was a happy, sunny, healthy, innocent girl. This is not an overdrawn tale,--it is a true story, a common, every-day story. Who was to blame? Why were her prayers not heard? Why, indeed? One might as well ask why seemingly splendid civilizations decayed into forgotten dust, or why empires rotted away. The answer is the same. HISTORY.--From the eugenists' standpoint history is prolific only in negation. A correct interpretation of its pages teaches us that it has not taught the lesson of the "survival of the fittest," but rather the survival of the strongest. That the strongest is not always the "fittest" needs [6] no commentary. That the fit should survive is the genetic law of nature, and it has been strictly obeyed by biology and humanity when these sciences have adhered to, and have been under the jurisdiction of the natural law. When religious schisms swayed the world, the stronger party, in material strength or in actual numbers, massacred the weaker, which was frequently the fitter from the standpoint of desirability as progenitors of the race. Thus posterity was deprived of what probably was the representative, potential strength of generations. At a later date religious schism changed her _modus operandi_ but accomplished the same pernicious purpose, as the following shows: "Whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature that fitted him or her to deeds of charity, to meditation, to literature or to art, the social condition of the time was such that they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church. But the Church chose to preach and exact celibacy, and the consequence was that these gentle natures had no continuance, and thus, by a policy, was brutalized the breed of our forefathers." When religion was not the dominating power, mankind was ruled by militant tyrants. The non-elect were slaves,--uneducated, uncivilized, debased and diseased. The elect were licentious and indolent. Neither class practised any domestic virtues, or respected the institution of motherhood. The process of the selection of the fittest for survival for the purpose of parentage, and for the consummation of the evolutionary gradation, through which the human race is apparently destined to pass, was again in abeyance for a series of generations. In our own times, the fate of nations and the destiny of their people would seem to depend upon the size of the fighting force and the efficiency of the ships we build; our ability to dicker and barter, to gain a questionable commercial supremacy, and the loquaciousness of our politicians. This, at least, is the criterion upon which the modern statesman estimates the quality of present-day civilization. He is not [7] apparently interested in the story of the ages. The progress of God's supernal scheme through æons of bigotry and darkness neither suggests nor inspires in him a loftier constructive analysis. He is content to leave the destiny of nations to tons of material, tons of men and tons of talk. Nowhere do we find any reference to the quality of the blood-stream of the people. Nor does it seem to have been discovered by those who wield authority, that the glory of a nation depends upon its brains, not its bulk; nor do they apprehend that the greatness of a people is not in its past history, but in its ever-existing motherhood; and that its battles, in the future, must be fought, not on battlefields, but in its nurseries. When we judge our national worth and wealth by the quality of our maternal material, and estimate our greatness and our glory by the record of our infant mortality, we will have carved an enduring niche in the celestial scheme that will be unchangeable and for all time. There are in Britain to-day over a million and a quarter females of marriageable age in excess of the number of marriageable males. A war between Britain and Germany would unquestionably be the bloodiest war in all history, and it probably would be the last one, because it would only end in the dominance of one power over all the others. If we concern ourselves only with Britain--from the eugenic standpoint--who would dare compute the ratio of marriageable females over the males after the war was over? The consequence of such a war on posterity would be tragic. It would mean the annihilation of the fittest for fatherhood for generations. Only the unfit would be left from which to begin a new breed. The multitude of females who would necessarily be left unable to participate in the highest function of womanhood would have to be self-supporting. The economic problem would, therefore, have a far-reaching influence and even if solved adequately as an economic problem, it could never be solved satisfactorily as a sociological, or as a problem in eugenics. Infant mortality is too high. Apart from the statistical proof which [8] shows it, we may rightly construe as further proof of it, the widespread effort being made in every civilized country in the world to ameliorate the condition. The laws and ethics of marriage are inadequate. Its true purpose is frustrated and racial and individual injustice and imperfection are the products of existing conditions. Motherhood, in its every aspect is not, and has not in the past, been elevated to the plane which a true estimate of its supreme importance to the race justifies. Heredity as a scientific principle is undeveloped, and because of maladministration in past generations, the present generation is endeavoring to do the work, the fruits of which it should be enjoying. Environment in its highest sense is impossible because of inadequate laws, imperfect hygienic and sanitary knowledge, incomplete education, vice and disease. If there was not some supremely important, cardinal error somewhere, it is reasonable to suppose that in one or other of the departments of human effort we would have reached the summit of idealism. The State, as an institution, would have evolved a perfection which would enable it to exist as an independent mechanism, complete and ideal in all its ramifications. We have had no such state, however. The highest type of empire has been ludicrously dependent upon the minor exigencies of individual human existence. Science would have evolved the superman, but history, as we have seen, has persistently deprived science of the material wherewith to contribute him. The institution of marriage would have been a fixed and an inviolable guarantee of the happiness of the home, but human wisdom has erred and the solution is as yet apparently undiscovered. Investigation into every field of human effort shows that the ultimate aim in view, if any, was something other than the welfare of the race, as a race or as individuals. * * * * * [9] CHAPTER II "The public health is the foundation on which reposes the happiness of the people and the power of a country. The care of the public health is the first duty of a statesman." LORD BEACONSFIELD. THE EUGENIC IDEA THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE--THE EUGENIC PRINCIPLE--"THE FIT ONLY SHALL LIVE"--EUGENICS AND MARRIAGE--THE VENEREAL DISEASES--THE UTILITY OF MARRIAGE CERTIFICATES--THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATES AND VICE--EUGENICS AND PARENTHOOD--THE PRINCIPLE OF HEREDITY--EUGENICS AND MOTHERHOOD--EUGENICS AND THE HUSBAND. The eugenist believes the cardinal error of the past has been a failure to recognize the worth or value of human life. In the past human lives have counted for absolutely nothing. As we have seen, each generation has practically deprived posterity of the best of its breed, and we shall see, when we consider the facts which affect the present vitality of the race, that the same preposterous conditions still exist. It is not necessary to waste the reader's time in an effort to prove, simply from an argumentative standpoint, the logic of the eugenic idea. There is no existing economic problem that has established itself so firmly in the hearts of the people who understand it, as has the study of race culture. It is not the subject, but its scope of application, that is new. Biologically, we see the manifestations of eugenics on every side. In the flower garden we breed for beauty, in the orchard for quality. In the poultry yard and on the stock farm the same process weeds out the unfit and cultivates the desirable. The value of the eugenic idea is most strikingly illustrated in the cultivation, or breeding, of the horse from a primitive creature into the splendid animals which represent the various types of equine present-day perfection. It has taken generations of the most [10] painstaking intelligence to understand the traits which had to be evolved in scientific mating to reach the present standard. If the same rules, or lack of rules, applied to the mating of horses as applied to ourselves, there would be few, if any, "thoroughbreds" among them. The principle which we must recognize is that "Life is the only wealth." Progress and efficiency will be ensured and of an enduring character, when all human effort is consecrated to this fundamental principle as a basic law, and not till then. To cultivate the human race on prescribed scientific principles will be the supreme science of all the future, the object and the final goal of all honest governmental jurisprudence, and the ultimate judge of all true constructive legislation. THE EUGENIC PRINCIPLE The eugenic principle is, that "the fit only shall live." This does not mean that the unfit must die, but that only the fit shall be born. Occasionally, as a product of bad environment, or faulty training, or eccentricity, a horse gives evidence of vicious traits, but the scientific breeder never mates him. He is allowed to die out. If he were permitted to father a race, his progeny would develop murderous characteristics that would retard the type for generations. THE FIT ONLY SHALL BE BORN.--This implies the exclusion of those, as parents, who are incapable of creating fit children. Fit children are children who are physically and mentally healthy. Parents who are unfit to create physically and mentally healthy children are those diseased in body or mind, especially if the disease is of the type which science has proved to be transmissible, or which directly affects the vitality of the child. In such a category we place those who are deaf, dumb, blind, epileptic, feeble-minded, insane, criminal, consumptive, cancerous, haemophilic, syphilitic, or drunkards, and those known to be victims of disease of [11] any other special type. It must not be inferred that the above classification is made arbitrarily. There are many arguments which may be advanced limiting the eugenic applicability of certain of these diseased conditions. These, however, do not directly come within the province of the mother. They may be safely left to special state regulation. We simply make the assertion that no mother would willingly, or designedly, ally her offspring with any member of society afflicted with any of the diseases enumerated. EUGENICS AND MARRIAGE.--The eugenic idea, practically applied to the institution of marriage, means that no unfit person will be allowed to marry. It will be necessary for each applicant to pass a medical examination as to his, or her, physical and mental fitness. This is eminently a just decree. It will not only be a competent safeguard against marriage with those obviously diseased and incompetent, but it will render impossible marriage with those afflicted with undetected or secret disease. Inasmuch as the latter type of disease is the foundation for most of the failures in marriage, and for most of the ills and tragedies in the lives of women, it is essential to devote special consideration to it in the interest of the mothers of the race. It is estimated that there are more than ten million victims of venereal disease in the United States to-day. In New York City alone there are two million men and women--not including boys and girls from six to twelve years of age--actively suffering from gonorrhea and syphilis. Eight out of every ten young men, between seventeen and thirty years of age, are suffering directly or indirectly from the effects of these diseases, and a very large percentage of these cases will be conveyed to wife and children and will wreck their lives. No one but a physician can have the faintest conception of the far-reaching consequences of infection of this character. The great White Plague is merely an incident compared to it. These diseases are largely responsible for our blind children, for the feeble-minded, for the degenerate and criminal, the incompetent and the insane. No other [12] disease can approximate syphilis in its hideous influence upon parenthood and the future. The women of the race, and particularly the mothers, should fully appreciate the real significance of the situation as it applies to them individually. That they do not appreciate it is well known to every physician and surgeon. It is first necessary to state certain medical facts regarding these diseases. They exist for years after all symptoms have disappeared; no evidences exist even to suggest to the patient that he, or she, is not entirely cured. After the germs have been in the patient for some time they lose a certain degree of their virility, and a condition of immunity is established. In other words the tissue ceases to be a favorable medium for the development, or activity, of the germs. If these germs, however, are conveyed to another person, who has never had the disease, or whose tissue is not immune, they will immediately resume their full activity and virulence, and will establish the disease, frequently in its most violent form, in the person so infected. The startling deduction which we must draw from these facts is, that a man may infect his wife, and may thereby be the direct cause of wrecking her entire life, and may, in addition, as a consequence of the infection, cause a child to be born blind, without even remotely suspecting that he is in any way responsible for it. In the light of this knowledge, what is the percentage risk a young girl takes when she selects a husband, remembering that eight out of every ten husbands bring these germs to the marriage bed? Reread the true story of the young woman on page five, accept my assurance that there are thousands and thousands of such cases, and ask yourself, who is to blame? We may certainly assure ourselves that no man living would wilfully desecrate his bride. He did not know,--did not even suspect that the disease he had years ago was still in his system. Society is to blame--you and I--the laxity of the law is the culprit. Had he been compelled to pass a physical examination before marriage he would have been told the truth. It is a notorious fact, that in every civilized city in the world, the number of operations that are daily performed on women, is increasing [13] appallingly. Every surgeon knows that nine-tenths of these operations are caused, directly or indirectly, by these diseases, and in almost every case in married women, they are obtained innocently from their own husbands. It is rare to find a married woman who is not suffering from some ovarian or uterine trouble, or some obscure nervous condition, which is not amenable to the ordinary remedies, and a very large percentage of these cases are primarily caused by infection obtained in the same way. When a girl marries she does not know what fate has in store for her, nor is there any possible way of knowing under the present marriage system. If she begets a sickly, puny child,--assuming she herself has providentially escaped immediate disease,--she devotes all her mother love and devotion to it, but she is fighting a hopeless fight, as I previously explained when I stated that one-half of the total effort of one-third of the race is expended in combating conditions against which no successful effort is possible. Even her prayers are futile, because the wrong is implanted in the constitution of the child, and the remedy is elsewhere. These are the tragedies of life, which no words can adequately describe, and compared to which the incidental troubles of the world are as nothing. So long as these conditions exist need we not tremble for the future of the race? Is not this future welfare a personal issue, or can we trust the future of our daughters to the same indiscriminate fate that has written the pages of history in the past? This problem has been debated from every possible angle without our reaching any seemingly practical solution. The promise of emancipation, however, came with the dawn of eugenics. It is the only solution that gives promise of immediate and reasonable success. For that reason alone it should receive the active support of every good mother in all lands. THE UTILITY OF MARRIAGE CERTIFICATES.--There would seem to be no question as to the utility of marriage certificates. We must remember, however, that there is a distinction between marriage and parenthood, and that [14] eugenics is concerned only with parenthood. It is interested in the institution of marriage to the extent only that it may, by some system of regulation, be a positive and fixed factor in the production of exclusively healthy children. The eugenist demands fit children. If society can ensure fit children, as a consequence of any marriage system which may or may not include medical certification, the eugenic aim is fully met. At the present time the giving of a marriage certificate, which is really a permit to marry, would seem to be the most practical way promptly to accomplish the eugenic purpose. We should promptly question the honor of any prospective husband disposed to evade the examination simply because he was not compelled to obey by a legislative enactment. We believe that when the public is educated to the truth and intent of eugenics, there need be no compulsory examination. Men and women will, of their own accord, desire to know if their marriage will jeopardize the race. There will be questions of heredity to elucidate, questions of inherited insanity, poison taints, of blindness and deafness, or it may be of drunkenness. Further, marriage certificates, or permits, must be considered in regard to the future conduct of those to whom we refuse permits to marry. A refusal of the permission to marry will not change the desire to marry. Many, of course, to whom a permit is refused, will accept the situation, will be thankful to be possessed of the knowledge of their incompetency in order that they may seek medical aid. These individuals will remain under medical supervision until their ailments are cured and their competency established. In this way the eugenic aim is materially furthered. Others may not abide by the decree which forbids marriage. It would wholly defeat the eugenic idea if the unfit children were to continue to be born illegitimately. These individuals will comprise the few--probably the present unfit members of society--and the final solution of the matter must remain a question of education and evolution. When public opinion is educated to the degree necessary to establish a system of eugenic self-protection, we shall be provided with a race of children whose [15] culture will achieve the ideal of parenthood by a process of education rather than legislation. THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE AND VICE.--If a prenuptial examination were made compulsory there is no doubt of the very prompt and salutory effect it would have on present-day vice. It has often been said that "You cannot legislate virtue or sobriety into a people." We are familiar too with the maxim that "You can lead a horse to the well, but you cannot make him drink." You can lead a horse to the well, however, and lo! he drinks. If you lead him at the right time he will always drink. If we legislate at the psychological moment we can legislate virtue and sobriety into a people. A very large percentage of existing vice is the immediate product of ignorance, and the larger percentage of the remainder is the result of propinquity and the idea that it will never be found out. Very little of it is the outcome of innate degeneracy. It is an acquired degeneracy we must guard against, and that is the special educational motive of eugenics. Young men will be taught the truth about vice, and if they have been victims in the past, they will willingly submit themselves to a _competent_ investigation of their fitness for marriage. If they are still pure, the desire to remain so, in order to be eligible for parenthood, will guard them against the risk of contamination. This will not only result in a distinct improvement of the moral tone, but the potential possibilities to posterity will be incalculable. Legislation might therefore be the vehicle through which eugenic education could enlighten and evolve a fit race. EUGENICS AND PARENTHOOD If the supreme end is a better race we must recognize that the great need for society to-day is to educate for parenthood. History teaches that a civilization that dissipates its virility in profligacy or spends its energy in political and commercial trickery, and gives no thought to the character of the men and women it produces, is destined to total failure. Parenthood and birth--in these we have the eugenic instruments of the [16] future. The only permanent way to cure the ills of the world is to prevent the multiplication of people below a certain standard. The elevation and the actual preservation of the race depends upon rendering it impossible for the unfit coming into existence at all. In other words the unfit or unworthy must be rejected, not necessarily as individuals, but as parents. Eugenics is allied to the principle of heredity,--the principle that enables us to modify conditions so as to ensure the right children being born. The propaganda against infant mortality is directed only toward the provision of a good environment,--so that children, when born, may survive and attain the maximum of their hereditary promise. The two campaigns are essentially complementary. The one applies only before birth, the other after birth. The statistics of infant mortality unfortunately show that it is not a process that extinguishes the unfit only. The healthy succumb to unfavorable environment and it was to amend this condition that the campaign against infant mortality was undertaken. The two campaigns appeal to the same creed: that parenthood is the supreme function of the race, that it must not be indifferently undertaken; that it demands the most careful preparation; that it is a duty which can only be carried out eugenically by the highest attainable health of body and mind and emotions. EUGENICS AND MOTHERHOOD.--Any plan or scheme which has for its object race regeneration must concern itself with the health, the education, and the psychology of woman; the environment which shall surround her period of motherhood, and her selection of the fathers of the future. Society must safeguard her in all her relations. The race to-morrow are the babies of to-day. The wealth of a nation therefore is the type of baby that will constitute its civilization from generation to generation, and absolutely nothing else counts. We hear much about race suicide, but is it not monstrous to cry for more babies when we do not know how to keep alive those we have? It is a fact that everywhere the birth rate of the Caucasian people is on the decline. Our birth rate as a whole, however, is ample;[17] it is the death rate that is significant and appalling. When we remember that one-third of all the babies born die before they reach the age of five years; and that the deaths of babies under one year of age comprise about one-fourth of the total death-roll; and that fully one-half of all these deaths are needless and unnecessary, wherein is the wisdom of working for a higher birth rate if it is merely that more may die? The majority of babies are born physically healthy, but because of our destructive process, we proceed to annihilate hundreds of thousands of them yearly, and because of defective environment and education we render thousands of others, including the fit and unfit, inefficient and incompetent as propagating factors. It is to remove this disastrous stigma on our intelligence that we have been forced to study the conditions which the eugenic idea represents. When these principles are understood and believed, and when they are acted upon, infant mortality will cease to exist. It was the design of the Creator that human motherhood should be an exalted occupation. He placed in her care to nurture and to love, the most helpless living thing. Few have regarded a baby from this viewpoint and fewer still understand its supreme significance. That it is the most utterly helpless thing possessing life is a self-evident fact, and that it should be destined to be King of all mammalian tribes as well as Lord of all the earth is a superlative paradox. Because of its utter inability to care for itself it is more in need of care than any other representative of the animal world. It is not only in need of immediate care, but it demands care longer than the young of any other species. It stands to reason, therefore, that the function of motherhood must be reckoned with in any scheme of race regeneration; that it must be provided with the most favorable environment; and that it must be relieved of any condition which would materially retard the meeting of the obligation to its fullest possible extent. In an ideal eugenic sense the state must ensure sustenance to those deprived of ample food and raiment, and [18] science must continue to solve the problem of a fitter sanitary and hygienic environment for the congested and densely populated zones of habitation. Philanthropy must not continue to be wholly misdirected, it must extend its aid to the deserving healthy and fit, as well as to be exclusively the protecting agency of the diseased and unfit. If life is the only wealth, and the preservation of childhood the highest duty of society and the state,--which it would seem to be, since the continuance and preservation of the race is obviously essential to the continuance of the state itself,--the life of every child must be considered an economic as well as a moral trust. If, therefore, every child is sacred, every mother is equally sacred. If every child is to be cared for, every mother must be cared for. If the state cannot afford to provide for what is imperatively essential to its own continuance, it might as well go out of existence, as it inevitably will in the end on any other basis, and as all preceding states have done. Mothers must not be dependent upon their children's labor for their maintenance, because if children are compelled to work, they will not be able to work in the future,--and adult efficiency is necessary to the well-being of the individual, the race, and the state. No mother should work, because in the care of her children she is already doing the supreme work. The proper care of children is so continuous and exacting a task, and of such importance to posterity, that it must be regarded as the highest and foremost work--and adequate in itself--and its efficiency must not be hampered by mothers having to do anything else. Motherhood must not be financially insecure, because this would defeat its eugenic purpose. Society, therefore, as a matter of self-preservation, must ensure to woman her mental and economic security. Civilization's margin is large enough to provide this. We spend large amounts on luxuries and evils which are contrary to the genesis of self-preservation, while motherhood is its basic necessity. When public opinion is educated in the essentials of eugenics much of this can be, and will be diverted to a nobler purpose. The total cost necessary to ensure the adequate care of dependent [19] motherhood would be a mere fraction of the national expenditure, and not a tithe of what we spend in pension allowances yearly. The latter is regarded as an honorable debt and is at best the direct product of a decadent ideal, while motherhood constitutes the very germ of the only altruistic idealism for all the future. We concede, therefore, that the children and the mothers must be provided for, not only as a product of the true construction of the ethics of sociology, but in obedience to the fundamental law of a moral system of eugenics. We must go further and assert that children must be cared for through the mother. It has been the practice to divorce the improvident mother from her dependent children. This has been demonstrated to be not only an altruistic fallacy. It has proved to be an economic blunder. There is another type of evil which largely menaces the eugenic ideal of motherhood. It is those cases where married women who have children are compelled to be the bread winners of the family as well as its mothers. No woman can earn support for herself and children outside of her home and competently assume the responsibilities of motherhood at the same time. Whatever aid a mother renders to the state, as a result of effort in factory or shop, is of infinitely less value, from an economic standpoint, than her contribution as mother in caring for her own children in her own home. A careful study of infant mortality, and the conditions of child life, so far as survival value is concerned, condemns in the strongest and most vital sense this whole practice. The preservation of the race is the essential requisite, and it is the vital industry of any people. Any seeming economic necessity which destroys that industry is one that will contribute largely to the downfall of the people as a race. EUGENICS AND THE HUSBAND.--The question of the husband's moral and parental obligation, as dictated by the marriage institution and constitution, may be left out of this discussion. We may assert, however, that we do not believe the eugenic principle intends, in devising ways and means for [20] the adequate protection, in its completest sense, of motherhood, to relieve the father of any of his moral or parental obligations. These obligations will be justly defined, and as previously stated, will be the subject of special state legislation. No legislation of an economic character can detract from the performance of a moral obligation, and by no process of sophistication can modern statesmanship accomplish the dethronement of motherhood. The duty of the father is to support his children and the mother of his children, and the duty of the state is to see that this is done. The fundamental law of the eugenist must be to recognize that fatherhood is a deliberate and responsible act, for which a fixed accountability must be maintained. Whatever legislation is undertaken in this connection must be with the object in view of strengthening the efforts of the right kind of father and husband, and of rendering more difficult the path of the irresponsible father and husband. If the supreme duty of a state is the maintenance of justice, its whole effort in the future will be to legislate in harmony with the eugenic principle. * * * * * [21] CHAPTER III "I hope to live to see the time when the increased efficiency in the public health service--Federal, State and municipal--will show itself in a greatly reduced death rate. The Federal Government can give a powerful impulse to this end by creating a model public health service." EX-PRESIDENT TAFT. EUGENICS AND EDUCATION THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS INADEQUATE--OPINIONS OF DR. C. W. SALEEBY, ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, LUTHER BURBANK, WILLIAM D. LEWIS, ELIZABETH ATWOOD, DR. THOMAS A. STORY, WILLIAM C. WHITE, DR. HELEN C. PUTNAM--DIFFICULTY IN DEVISING A SATISFACTORY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM--EDUCATION AN IMPORTANT FUNCTION--THE FUNCTION OF THE HIGH SCHOOL--THE HIGH SCHOOL SYSTEM FALLACIOUS--THE TRUE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION. The fundamental law of eugenics demands that all education be exerted for parenthood. We have proved that the child is not only essential to the life of the state, but is the state. Consequently any function other than parenthood is a non-essential so far as organic existence is dependent upon it. Education can, therefore, have no higher or more righteous motive than as a contributory agency in the perpetuation of the function upon which all existence depends. If the only function of education is to make one a worthy citizen, or to make him, or her, self-supporting, or able to bear arms in defense of his country, rather than a perfect link in the complete chain of enduring life, its purpose is being perverted. It is not sufficient to provide a girl, for instance, with an exclusive environment which regards her simply as a muscular entity, as is the tendency in some of the "best" girls' schools to-day; nor to fit her as a domestic or society ornament; nor must she be regarded simply as an intellectual machine, as is done under the system styled "the higher education of women." Any one of these is an example of misdirected excess and is [22] only part of the whole. None of these systems strives to develop the emotional side of the complex female character, and any educational system which ignores the emotions is not only inadequate but reprehensible in the highest degree. The ideal which will strive for education for ultimate parenthood will more completely solve the question of complete (eugenic) living. THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS INADEQUATE.--There is no question that education, as conducted at the present time, is one of the most disastrous institutional fallacies of modern civilization. In support of this contention, we are prompted to quote at length from various authorities bearing on this subject. Dr. C. W. Saleeby, an international authority on education, writes as follows: "A simple analogy will show the disastrous character of the present process, which may be briefly described as 'education' by cram and emetic. It is as if you filled a child's stomach to repletion with marbles, pieces of coal and similar material incapable of digestion--the more worthless the material the more accurate the analogy--then applied an emetic and estimated your success by the completeness with which everything was returned, more especially if it was returned 'unchanged,' as the doctors say. Just so do we cram the child's mental stomach, its memory, with a selection of dead facts of history and the like (at least when they are not fictions) and then apply a violent emetic called an examination (which like most other emetics causes much depression) and estimate our success by the number of statements which the child vomits onto the examination paper--if the reader will excuse me. Further, if we are what we usually are, we prefer that the statements shall come back 'unchanged'--showing no sign of mental digestion. We call this 'training the memory.' The present type of education is a curse to modern childhood and a menace to the future. The teacher who cannot tell whether a child is doing well without formally examining it, should be heaving bricks, but such a teacher does not exist. In Berlin they are now learning that the depression caused by these [23] emetics (examinations) often lead to child suicide--a steadily increasing phenomenon mainly due to educational overpressure and worry about examinations. "Short of such appalling disasters, however, we have to reckon with the existence of this enormous amount of stupidity, which those who fortunately escaped such education in childhood have to drag along with them in the long struggle towards the stars. This dead weight of inertia lamentably retards progress. "If you have been treated with marbles and emetics long enough, you may begin to question whether there is such a thing as nourishing food; if you have been crammed with dead facts, and then compelled to disgorge them, you may well question whether there are such things as nourishing facts or ideas." The gifted writer, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in an editorial in the _New York American_, expressed herself recently in the following terms: "A wave of dissatisfaction is sweeping over the country regarding our school system. And eventually this will cause a change to be made. The larger understanding of mothers regarding education will result in the personal element entering into the training of children. "When women have a voice in the affairs of the nation there will be more teachers, larger salaries, fewer pupils in each department, and more attention will be given to the temperaments and varying dispositions of children by their instructors. "Instead of regarding the little ones who enter public schools as machines which must be taught to go according to one rule, each child will be studied as a threefold being, and his mind, body and spirit will be cared for and developed according to his own peculiar needs. All this will come slowly, but it will come. "Before children enter the public schools there should be a great sifting process under the direction of a national board of scientific men. The brain equipment of each child, the tendencies given it at birth, should be tested; then the nervous, hysterical and erratic minds ought to be [24] placed in a school by themselves, under the care of men and women who know the law of mental suggestion. "Quiet, loving, wholesome rules, followed day after day and month after month, would bring these children out into the light of self-control and concentration. The hurried, crowding, exciting methods of the public schools are disastrous to fully half of the unformed minds sent into the intellectual maelstrom which America provides under the name of Public Schools. "For the well-born, normal-minded, healthy-bodied child, who has wise and careful guardians or parents to assist in his mental guidance, the public school forms a good basis on which to build an education. For the average American child of excitable nerves and precocious tendencies, it is like deep surf swimming for the inexperienced and adventurous bather. "The great foundation of education--character--is not taught in the public schools. There is no systematized process of developing a child's power of concentration; there is not time for this in the cramming process now in vogue and with the enormous pressure placed on teachers. No teacher can do justice to more than fifteen children through the school hours. In many of our public schools there are fifty and sixty children under one instructor. This is fatal to the nervous system of the teacher and deprives the pupils of that personal sympathy which is of such vital importance." Luther Burbank, the famous California horticulturist, declares that the great object and aim of his life is to apply to the training of children those scientific ideas which he has so successfully employed in working transformation in plant life. In an editorial, entitled, "Teaching Health," the _New York Globe_ states, "Anatomy and physiology are reasonably exact sciences, and nine-tenths of the hygienic abuses against which the doctors are preaching would be prevented if the laity had an elementary knowledge of physiology. Such an educational reform could be carried out without causing any clash whatever between the warring medical sects." [Page 25] William D. Lewis, Principal of the William Penn School, Philadelphia, in an article entitled: "The High School and the Girl," in a recent issue of the _Saturday Evening Post_, wrote in part as follows: ... "The first thing that society wants of our girl is good health. This is the first essential for her efficient service and personal happiness in shop, office, store, school or home. The future of the race so far as she represents it, depends upon her health. What is the high school doing to improve the girl's health? In the overwhelming majority of cases absolutely nothing. On the other hand, it is subjecting her to a regimen planned for boys, without the slightest consideration of the physical and functional differences between the sexes. "It pays no attention to the curvature of the spine developed by the exclusively sit-at-a-desk-and-study-a-book type of education bequeathed to the girlhood of the nation by the medieval monastery: It ignores the chorea, otherwise known as St. Vitus' dance developed by overstudy and underexercise; it disregards the malnutrition of hasty breakfasts, and lunches of pickles, fudge, cream-puffs and other kickshaws, not to mention the catch penny trash too often provided by the janitor or concessionaire of the school luncheon, who isn't doing business for his health or for anybody else's; it neglects eye-strain, unhygienic dress, uncleanly habits, anemia, periodic headaches, nervousness, adenoids, and wrong habits of posture and movements.... If you believe that the high school is a social institution with a mission of public service, regardless of the relation of that service to Latin or Algebra, then you must agree that it should look after what everyone recognizes as the foremost need of the adolescent girl. "One fact that every educator in both camps knows is that the home is not attending to the health of the adolescent girl. This problem is pressing upon us now largely because of the revolutions in living conditions that has come within the last quarter of a century." In a report of a recent Conference on the Conservation of School [26] Children held at Lehigh University by the American Academy of Medicine, the following items appear. Four great reasons why medical inspection in schools is needed were brought out by Dr. Thomas A. Story of New York, who spoke from the educator's standpoint: "The first reason is concerned with communicable diseases, and the second with remediable incapacitating physical defects. It was reported in 1906 that over twenty per cent. of the children in the schools of New York City had defective vision, and over fifty per cent. had defective teeth. These defective conditions are amenable to treatment whereby the functional efficiency of the pupil is improved. He is capable of better work and the school efficiency is advanced. "The third reason is concerned with irremediable physical defects. The cripples, the deformed and the delinquents whose incapacitating defects are permanent should be found and classified. This enables special instruction and opens up educational possibilities otherwise unattainable, besides removing retarding factors in the progress of the normal pupil. "The fourth reason is concerned with the development of hygienic habits in the school child, and through the child, of the community. Medical inspection which influences the health habits of the masses is a matter of supreme importance. The teacher will have pupils of cleaner habits and healthier, with fewer interruptions and disturbances from absences. "To make medical inspection successful physical examinations should uncover the anatomic, physiologic, and hygienic conditions. Every piece of advice given to a pupil that can be followed up should be followed up and the result recorded. No system of medical inspection in schools can be complete and permanently successful which does not eventually educate the parent and child to a sympathetic and coöperative relationship with the system. Medical inspection is a force working for a better general education in personal hygiene and should coördinate with the class room instruction. Hence it must be a system in sympathetic relationship with the general [27] management of the school, and should be under the same responsible control. Since it is an educational influence and so directly related to the success of the school, it ought to be a part of the school organization." A paper was read by Dr. Helen C. Putnam of Providence, R. I., on "The Teaching of Hygiene for Better Parentage." She said: "Life is a trust from fathers and mothers beginning before history; to be guarded and bettered in one's turn, and passed along to children's children. A definite conception of this trust is essential to right living. Educators are finding that well directed correlation of human life, with phenomena of growing things in school gardens and nature studies, develops a wholesome mental attitude. Since tens of millions of our population have only fractions of primary schooling, there is where the teaching must begin. These primary years are the time to lay foundations before a wrong bias is established. "Education for parenthood cannot be completed at this early age. The strategic years for making it most effective are from sixteen to twenty-four, when home-making instincts are waking and strongest. We have 15,000,000 young people of these ages in no schools, and eligible for such instruction. All state boards of education were recently petitioned by the American Association for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality to urge the appointment of commissions on continuation schools of home-making, to investigate conditions and needs in their respective states and to report plans for meeting them effectively through such continuation schools or classes." DIFFICULTY IN DEVISING A SATISFACTORY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.--It will be observed that each of these authoritative writers criticises the system of education now in vogue. The criticism is not, nor could it justly be, specialized. It is simply an expression, from different viewpoints, of the feeling that we are not doing ourselves justice as yet, we are groping after something better. It may be, as I have previously stated, that no[28] satisfactory system of education will be evolved until the laws of kindred sciences, which have organic relationship to what we understand as education, are fixed and better understood. We are just beginning to appreciate the true meaning of environment. We know little about heredity, but enough to appreciate its vital importance. Psychology is a realm of much hope, but we have only tasted of its surface promise and know little of the mysteries it may unfold. Eugenics, the infant giant of science, promises to establish the race on an enduring foundation. These sciences have laws which we do not yet understand; they relate to that part of human evolution which mind dominates. The quality of the mind's dominion depends upon the mind's education and environment, and since the laws of these sciences, upon which a perfect system of education depends, have not been revealed, it is quite evident that all past systems of education have been more or less deficient. It is further evident that evolution has suffered as a result of the mind's imperfect education,--a condition that is manifest all around us. It must be appreciated, however, that we are discussing a large subject. If we understood all there is to know about environment; if we knew the laws of heredity, and psychology, and eugenics, and then could apply them, and educate the product of this combination of forces, we would be very near to the super-man. One must have a sober mental horizon to evolve the picture which would be the product of the above solution and then to estimate its meaning on human happiness and progress. We are approaching the ethics of right living,--of justice and truth,--the divine in man. At no time in the history of man has civilization been so near a solution of life's supreme problem as at the present moment. Education is an important function in life's scheme, and while we may regret that it is not possible to formulate a system that would be perfect and capable of immediate application, we can continue to work patiently and hopefully, with assurance that in the near future the problem will be satisfactorily solved. When heredity, psychology, and eugenics combine [29] to dictate the system, we shall doubtless find, that, in the beginning, it will be a system of individualization. In the interest of health and of justice, and consequently of efficiency, this would seem to be the natural and the logical lead. So long as human nature is as it is, we must meet conditions as they exist. We know as parents, and some of us know as physicians, that a task easily performed by one individual, without any apparent harmful results, will tax the capacity of another individual to the very utmost. Any educational system which does not recognize this law, is vicious. Yet such is the system in vogue to-day in America. We must adapt the burden to the endurance of the pupil. The administration of an educational machinery must solve this problem from the individual standpoint. In the departmental work in our public schools there seems to be no system. Each teacher prescribes home work without any knowledge of what others of the same grade do, and without any apparent consideration in favor of the individual pupil. The result is that the total amount for each night is absurdly in excess of the capacity of the ordinary, or for that matter the extraordinary, pupil. This engenders nervousness and irritability, and is contrary to the ethics of education,--the fundamental law of which should be the preservation of good health. We must have regard for the physical and mental health of each pupil, and as the capacity of each pupil is different, the system is committing an egregious wrong by sacrificing the weaker instead of adapting the burden according to the strength and endurance of the bearer. THE HIGH SCHOOL SYSTEM FALLACIOUS.--Even the high schools do not seem to be wisely availing themselves of their opportunity from the eugenic or economic standpoint. According to the report of the Commissioner of Education of the United States the percentage of pupils studying some of the more important subjects in the year 1909-1910 is stated as follows:[30] Latin, French and German 83 per cent. Algebra and Geometry 88 " " English Literature 57 " " Rhetoric 57 " " History 55 " " Domestic Economy,--including sewing, cooking and household economies 4 " " If only barely four per cent. of the girls in our high schools are studying subjects which directly contribute to their efficiency as home-makers, what are the prospects for worthy parenthood in the light of the fact that seventy-five per cent. of all women between the ages of twenty and twenty-four are married? The function of the high school, so far as girls are concerned, is to conserve health, to train for domestic efficiency and motherhood, and if necessary for economic independence. It must also furnish the stimulus for mental culture and direct a proper aspiration for social enlightenment. The curriculum should include biology, hygiene, psychology, home beautifying, the story-telling side of literature, music and a few other studies tending to make woman more like woman than she is to-day. When we have this, teaching for mothercraft will be more nearly realized. From the eugenic standpoint the present system of education is not satisfactory. To attain our end it is essential to devise other means of education. It must be remembered, however, that no system of education alone can ever enable us to achieve our end, no matter how perfect the system may be. Education can only draw out what is in the child; it cannot draw out what is not there. What the child is, depends upon its heredity. The pedagogic ability of the school-master will never make a genius. A child's mind may be likened to a block puzzle, each block representing a part of a picture, which can only be completed when they are all arranged in their correct places. Each block is an ancestral legacy,--the child's heritage--and to find its proper place in order to complete the [31] character picture--to solve the riddle of the jumbled blocks,--is the duty of the educator. He can only manipulate what is there, and the test of his system will depend upon his ability to solve the puzzle of the ancestral blocks. We must divorce ourselves from the idea that a child's mind, at the beginning, is an empty space, to be filled in with knowledge according to the ability of the teacher; or that it is like a sheet of paper, to be written upon. Education, and the educator, is absolutely limited to "drawing out" what heredity put there. Education frequently is given credit which rightly belongs to nature. A child cannot do certain things until nature intends that it should. A baby cannot possibly walk until the nervous mechanism which controls the function of walking is developed. Many children walk at the first attempt, simply because they did not make the first attempt until after nature had perfected the mechanism and the innate ability to walk was already there. Suppose we tried to teach that baby to walk a month before nature was ready; each day we patiently coax it to "step out," we guide it from support to support, and we protect it from stumbling. Some day it walks, and we congratulate ourselves on the victory, when as a matter of fact, we not only had nothing to do with it but were impertinent meddlers, not instructors. Nature was the teacher and she was quite capable of completing the task without our aid. It is reasonable also to assume that any effort to force a natural function is quite likely to do much harm. We have found this to be so in various departments of education when the system was wrongly conceived. In physical culture this principle has been demonstrated over and over again. If our ancestral legacy is a good one, our picture blocks will be numerous and it will be possible for the proper system of education, aided by a suitable environment, to arrange them into many designs. If, on the other hand, our heredity did not endow us abundantly the number of our picture blocks may be limited to three or four, and they will be easily arranged so as to form a simple picture. The one represents a child whom heredity has richly endowed, the other one whom it has meagerly supplied with innate[32] possibilities. Heredity therefore dictates the function of education; and the school-master can only fashion the picture put there. If the ancestral blocks are not there with which to make an elaborate picture he must content himself with what is there,--he or his art cannot create others. When he congratulates himself on achieving a wonderful result in graduating a particularly brilliant student, he is taking to himself unmerited honors. If his individual ability is responsible in one instance, why not apply the same system to all pupils? If this system is responsible for the brilliancy of one pupil, why does not the same system make all brilliant? The reader knows the answer,--because heredity did not endow them equally. Men are not born equal, despite the Declaration of Independence. The school-master is not responsible for the apt and the inapt pupil. He is responsible for his system which dictates how he will differentiate between the apt and the inapt pupil, in order to achieve the best results without injustice to either. The inefficient teacher is a dangerous equation in the school system. I mean by inefficiency, the quality of being temperamentally unsuited to the profession. There are a large number of anemic, hysterical young women teaching in the public schools of our cities who should not be there. They should not be there in justice to themselves, nor should they be there in justice to their pupils. A strict, yearly medical examination should be made of the teachers to decide their physical and psychical fitness to fill their positions adequately. One teacher, physically or psychically inefficient, can do an inconceivable amount of harm in one school term. We cannot afford to experiment along this line. It means too much, and even at the price of one unhappy child it is too much to pay. The teacher who feels that she is not suited to the work; who has constantly to hold herself and her temper under control; whose nerves are such that she cannot do justice to herself, whose sense of justice is capable of perversion on purely sentimental grounds; or who has lost--or never possessed--the gift of maintaining discipline, should promptly find another position. She is [33] earning her salary under false pretenses, and that alone condemns her. I believe, that a large percentage of the inefficiency of the New York Schools is due, not to the academic or scholastic inability of the average teacher, but to the average female teacher's physical, and especially her psychical unfitness to teach. We must concede, however, that in many instances the teacher's unfitness is a direct product of the pernicious system itself. [Illustration: _From "The Village of a Thousand Souls," Gesell, American Magazine_ Evidence of a Feeble Mind A dirty shack in a mud hole in the country is merely another reflection of the same condition that causes the slums of the city. In our glowing spirit of humanity we cry out to raise up "the submerged tenth." Rather, should we not stamp them out of existence--treat them as a menace, and not as a thing of pity? Men, in general, rise; their minds are subjectively or objectively educated to their mental limit. They cannot go beyond it. "The submerged tenth" exists because its mental limit is low--often close to the upper margins of feeble-mindedness--and because it is mentally incapable of rising to anything else.] [Illustration: _From "The Village of a Thousand Souls," Gesell, American Magazine_ Evidence of a Vigorous Mind The family that is vigorous, healthy in mind and body, "up and coming," reflects itself in a hundred different ways. Small matter whether or not it is "an old family," has wealth, social position, a college education. A daughter's or a son's happiness, the real, deep-down-inside happiness that is worth while, may be more certainly insured by marrying with an eye to mentality and stock than by a marriage into a so-called "first family." Eugenics hath its reward.] Under an ideal system of education the child would be left absolutely free until the age of seven. We do not believe that the physical apparatus of the mind is prepared for educational interference before that age, and we know that the growth of the brain, physiologically and anatomically, is not complete until after the seventh year. The greater portion of a child's education necessarily depends upon its environment. Heredity and environment, therefore, are the two factors which determine the characters of any living thing. Heredity gives to the child its potential greatness,--its promise of greatness. Whether these potential qualities ever become real depends upon environment. A child may have the hereditary (innate) ability to become a Shakespeare, but if his environment is not suitable to the development of this potential greatness, he will never realize his hereditary promise. In other words, the innate qualities which he has, and which will make of him a Shakespeare are never "drawn out" or educated. Hence he can never become great until environment furnishes the means to him. Environment, including education, does not add to the potential qualities of inheritance. Education can only educate what heredity gives; it can give or add nothing itself; it simply educates what is there already. There is plenty of material, but it is not the right material. What educators want is the right kind of material--the material which the eugenists will eventually supply. Or as Mr. Havelock Ellis has expressed it: "Education has been put at the beginning, when it ought to have been put at the end. It matters comparatively little what sort of education we give[34] children; the primary matter is what sort of children we have to educate. That is the most fundamental of questions. It lies deeper even than the great question of Socialism versus Individualism, and indeed touches a foundation that is common to both. The best organized social system is only a house of cards if it cannot be constructed with sound individuals; and no individualism worth the name is possible unless a sound social organization permits the breeding of individuals who count. On this plane Socialism and Individualism move in the same circle." Education, then, as an exclusive factor, cannot achieve our ideal of race-culture. In order that education may achieve a large measure of success, it must have the proper material, and the right material can only come as a result of the working out of the eugenic principle. Then--in the aftertime--our educational efforts will not be wasted and misdirected, as they are almost wholly to-day. If we could transmit our acquired characteristics, education would have a relatively smaller, and a much more fixed function in the "general scheme," but we cannot. We can only transmit what was inherent in us when created. This simply means that, at the moment of conception, the child is created,--it is a completed whole,--what it is to be is fixed at that moment, its inherent capacities are formed. Nothing can affect it, in this sense, after that moment. No act of either parent can have any influence on it. Whatever ability the father or mother possessed of an innate character is transmitted to the child at the instant of conception and that innate legacy constitutes the working instrument of the child for all time. It cannot be added to by education, or by environment, but both of these may have a large influence in deciding whether it will be developed to its highest possible limit of attainment. Education, mental, moral and physical, is limited by this inability to transmit acquired character to the persons educated. Each generation must, therefore, begin, not where their parents left off, but at the point [35] where they began. The same difficulties and the same problems must be met at the beginning of each generation. THE TRUE PROVINCE OF EDUCATION.--Education may justly be the instrument, however, which will educate public opinion to a true appreciation of the function of race culture. In this way the cause of the eugenist will greatly prosper, and the race will profit through the effort which will further the conservation of the best and most fit specimens for parenthood. So also may education, through the molding of public opinion, create sound opinion,--when each individual will be a center of eugenic enthusiasm. Especially does this responsibility fall upon parents and those who are in charge of childhood. The young must be taught the supreme sanctity of parenthood. They must be instructed in eugenic principles in a way that will impart to them the definite knowledge that it is the highest and holiest science. The eugenic education of children is the real beginning at the beginning, the indispensable necessity, if race culture is to assume its transcendent role in modern civilization. It is urgently necessary for both sexes but more especially for girls. "Urgently necessary," because, though Herbert Spencer wrote the following criticism nearly fifty years ago, the conditions are much the same to-day:-- ... "But though some care is taken to fit youth of both sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for the position of parents. While it is seen that, for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of children, no preparation whatever is needed. While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the chief value is that it constitutes 'the education of a gentleman'; and while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties; not an hour is spent by either in preparation for that gravest of all responsibilities--the management of a family. Is it that this responsibility is but a remote contingency? On the contrary, it is sure to develop on nine out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly not. Of all functions which the adult has to fulfill, this is the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self-instruction to [36] fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No; not only is the need for such self-instruction unrecognized, but the complexity of the subject renders it the one of all others in which self-instruction is least likely to succeed." It must be our highest educational aim to cultivate or create the eugenic sense. In this way, and in this way only, may we feel satisfied that the foundation, upon which shall be erected the generations that are yet to come, will be of an enduring character. * * * * * [37] CHAPTER IV "It is only because we are accustomed to this waste of life and are prone to think it is one of the dispensations of Providence that we go on about our business, little thinking of the preventive measures that are possible." CHARLES E. HUGHES. EUGENICS AND THE UNFIT THE DEAF AND DUMB--THE FEEBLE-MINDED--A NEW YORK MAGISTRATE'S REPORT--REPORT OF THE CHILDREN'S SOCIETY--THE SEGREGATION AND TREATMENT OF THE FEEBLE-MINDED--WHAT THE CARE OF THE INSANE COSTS--THE ALCOHOLIC--DRUNKENNESS. In order to achieve success in eugenics we must strive to encourage the parenthood of the worthy or fit, and to discourage the parenthood of the unworthy or unfit. The unfit are those, as previously explained, who, because of mental or physical disability, are unable to create fit or healthy children. THE DEAF AND DUMB.--The condition known as deaf-mutism is due to innate defect in about half of all cases. Deaf children have one or two deaf parents or grandparents. There may be two or three such children in a family. That the deaf should not marry is generally conceded by those who work amongst them. It should be our aim to discourage the intimate association of the adolescent deaf and dumb in institutions. It has been found that such intimate association frequently results in marriage. They should be educated and instructed in the knowledge that they cannot marry. When they understand the eugenic principle upon which this social law is constructed they will be amenable to reason. No process of suasion will be necessary, however, if their intimate association is prevented. THE FEEBLE-MINDED.--This includes the criminal, the imbecile, the insane, and the epileptic. The feeble-minded, technically speaking, belong to the degenerate class. They enter life mentally deficient, not necessarily [38] diseased. They should, therefore, be regarded as fit subjects for educational modification rather than for penal correction or punishment. It is conservatively estimated that there are five million feeble-minded people in the United States to-day and not one-eighth of them are receiving adequate treatment or education. Recent statistics, from various countries, show that the percentage of deficient or feeble-minded children is decidedly on the increase. According to a bulletin issued by the United States Bureau of Education (August, 1912) there are 15,000,000 school children suffering from physical defects which need immediate attention and which are prejudicial to health. It would seem as though the time had passed for anything other than radical measures in the interest of the race. Apart from the eugenic fact that these feeble-minded children are not fit subjects for parenthood, they are a constantly contaminating influence on society morally, and are a detriment and a hindrance to social and economic advancement. One illustration of this contaminating process, which is of serious eugenic import, is the presence of these deficient children in our public schools. By reason of their lack of attention and concentration, their mental or psychic insufficiency, their moral delinquency, and uncontrollable instincts and impulses, they are a menace to the well-being and to the progress of the normal or fit pupils; they retard and undermine the discipline of the schoolroom, and they affect the efficiency of the teachers. They are allowed to stay in school because of the indifference of the authorities, or because of the influence and social standing, or political "pull" of the parents, despite the recognition of the injustice done. Many of the parents of these children seek medical advice but, because of absurdly inadequate civic or state provision for such cases, the physician is practically helpless. Most of these irresponsible children are allowed to wander through the years unrestrained and unprotected. They easily become the victims of vice and crime, and eventually they become degenerates and end their lives in insane institutions. Because of the stigma of degeneration these feeble-minded individuals fall into the [39] hands of the law and are thereby robbed of the medical assistance which society should afford them in the early years when improvement is yet possible. The following report which recently appeared in one of the daily papers is interesting and suggestive in this connection. One of the New York City Magistrates, in his annual report, said: "There is growing up in this city a menacing army of boys and young men who are the most troublesome element we have to deal with.... From the ranks of these rowdies that are organized in bands, or bound up with chums or pals, come most of the crop of burglars, truck thieves, holdup men, gun-bearers, so-called 'bad men' and other criminals and dangerous characters. Without reverence for anything, subject to no parental control, cynical, viciously wise beyond their years, utterly regardless of the rights of others, firmly determined not to work for a living, terrorizing the occupants of public vehicles and disturbing the peace of the neighborhoods, they have no regard for common decency." But it is to the records of the Children's Society that one must go for reliable statistics of the potential criminal, as there the only systematic study of their conditions is made and recorded by one of the greatest neurologists in the country, Dr. Max Schlapp, of New York. As a specialist in nervous diseases he has been connected with the Children's Society and the Children's Court, where he has had wide opportunities for observing the relation between delinquence and mental defectiveness. In cases of viciousness or feeble-mindedness exhaustive studies have been made by Dr. Schlapp. And the extent to which society is daily at the mercy of uncontrolled potential criminality is alarming. "Feeble-minded children and feeble-minded men," says Dr. Schlapp, "are roaming about the streets of New York to-day as free agents. Parents are not compelled by law to put a feeble-minded child in custody. Yet that feeble-minded child unsuspected as such, amiable and care-free as he usually is, is potentially a criminal, and at any moment may commit a crime. That child is permitted to grow up without restraint, except [40] such as the parents exercise, and this has no effect whatever in these cases. The child is allowed to marry and bring forth children of his own kind, more feeble-minded and more dangerous. There is no system designed to pick out from the community persons so afflicted, and no law whatever to prevent their untrammelled movements. "The city street is a recruiting ground for the gangster because it is full of defective children, mental and moral, who are potential criminals. This question has never been seriously considered. When brought under corrective restraint it has hitherto long been the custom to herd all the cases together while serving time. But in 1894 the German Government woke up to the fact that 3 to 7 per cent. of city children and those of isolated rural communities contain the 'moron,' or intellectually defective type, together with the moral imbecile." Investigation showed recently that in a reformatory near Berlin 63 per cent. of the inmates were abnormal, while over 50 per cent. were seriously defective or menaces to society. This has since been shown to exist in all the leading nations--England, France, Italy, where, by the way, the Camorrist type is the equivalent for our New York gangster. In the Elmira Reformatory 38 per cent. are, as a rule, feeble-minded and consist of types that repeat their offense against society or commit some other crime. There is only one way to prevent these types from becoming a menace. Restrain them while they are still developing; keep them from becoming free agents in the community they menace. Types continually come up in the Children's Society and the Children's Court. They are carefully studied. From the actions of the child, from his parents and family history, from the frequency with which he repeats some offense particularly pleasing to him, and by virtue of psychological tests and careful medical examinations the examiners are able to pick out children who should receive scientific care and treatment. "The characteristics of the feeble-minded are usually deceiving. One expects to find them with low brows and furtive looks and more or less vicious in appearance after they develop criminal tendencies. One would[41] expect them to show stupidity at a glance. On the contrary, they are sometimes bright on the surface, amiable, good-tempered under trying conditions, and almost likeable for their external social side. This is particularly true of the high grade defectives. The lower order may be taciturn, gloomy and retiring, and these traits may be noticed almost from infancy. But as they grow up their social nature may be developed, and they too may give the appearance of amiableness. One notable thing about them is their pose of frank innocence. In this they are engaging, and almost convincing. "The street type that makes a gangster is practically the same if cruder in development. These children usually exhibit absolutely no sign of affection for their parents, no sympathy, and are notably cruel toward animals. One boy we had in the Children's Society persistently killed all the dogs and cats his family kept. Finally, when they ceased keeping the animals he got at the canary cage and killed the bird by pulling the feathers out singly. He had no compunction about lying, and looked you right in the eye when he lied. Otherwise he was charming and natural." While moral insanity is hereditary, yet it can be produced in one generation. An alcoholic man with clean antecedents may leave tainted descendants. The only way to combat these conditions in the city is to have strict registration of all feeble-minded and insane. The state should discover them, examine them through public officials, and segregate them. Not only physicians, but school teachers and officials in public institutions should detect them. There should be in each state an institution for feeble-minded delinquents. The history of the average "gangster" shows a taint of alcoholism. This is further aggravated by living under immoral surroundings, where petty crimes like stealing and lying are considered "smart." This is the starting point of the New York "gangster." He is handicapped, and under ancestral disabilities and the disadvantages of environment that is pernicious, he cannot get very far. A boy usually qualifies with a gang on his own [42] personality and tastes. He will often wander from one gang to another until he has found his particular atmosphere. The best will never find any one gang congenial enough to hold him, and he finally emerges a decent citizen. It is all a process of finding himself. The aim of the police should be to discount as much as possible any swaggering and false hero worship. The time has come when this great nation should take national cognizance of this problem. There should be a national institution on some isolated island. Civilization is coming to recognize such a necessity. With a close eye on the tide of immigration and a careful segregation of these defective types, we should soon rid ourselves of what is now growing to be a serious menace to the home and the nation. THE SEGREGATION AND TREATMENT OF THE FEEBLE-MINDED.--Dr. John Punton, of Kansas City, Mo., in an able and exhaustive article on "The Segregation and Treatment of the Feeble-Minded," writes as follows: "Your attention is directed to a recent report issued by Wentworth E. Griffin, Chief of Police of Kansas City, Mo., in which he claims that recently within six months' time no less than 2,480 juveniles were arrested charged with crimes ranging from vagrancy to murder and that the majority of these boys and girls were not normal children, but degenerates who required medical rather than penal treatment. 'Boys and girls,' says he, 'should not receive correction in the city jails, the work house or reformatories. These should be the last resort. To correct a boy you must have an idea of his mental processes. It is natural that the parents understand something of the child and use that knowledge to make a good boy out of him. Certainly it cannot be done in the reformatories, for although the authorities there are competent, they are hardly medical psychologists. In my opinion, if any progress is to be made it is the parent and the doctor that must do the work, not the police and the courts.' "That our Chief of Police deserves credit for not only publishing this report, but also for the advanced position he takes in recognizing the appropriate care and treatment of the juvenile offender, is certain, [43] for he understands the fact that the parents are often the chief culprits in the child's delinquency and that medical rather than penal treatment is more often indicated than is at present allowed or practiced. "When we come to inquire into the cause of feeble-mindedness, alcoholic heredity, syphilitic heredity, and consanguineous marriages are found to be the chief etiological factors. Bourneville claims that 48 per cent. of the idiots and imbeciles are the offspring of alcoholic parents.... Acute and chronic diseases in the parents, fright, shock, injuries, parental neglect, faulty education, poverty, malnutrition, social dissipation and lack of proper control are all well-known factors in the production of feeble-mindedness. "Segregation of the feeble-minded is advocated by medical authority the world over, and when this is done they can be made under appropriate medico-pedagogic treatment to become largely self-supporting. "As an economical as well as a humane measure, the various States can well afford to make such provision, more especially for the large body of feeble-minded who are now without any medical care whatever. Moreover, where it is possible, laws prohibiting the marriage of such as well as all other defectives should be passed and enforced." WHAT THE CARE OF THE INSANE COSTS.--The total cost of the care of the insane, in this country, has been estimated to be $165,000,000 a year. In estimating the cost of the insane we must take into account the value or worth of each adult to the State. This value has been computed to be $700 a year. If, upon this basis, we count the adult membership of the insane class between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, we find that their worth is roughly about $132,000,000. The cost of maintenance in the various insane institutions is about thirty-three millions of dollars a year. It would be quite possible to justly increase this total by estimating the worth of the help whose whole time is devoted to the care of the insane. If these individuals worked at some other trade or profession, their time would. be of value to the [44] state in general--not to a class who should be non-existent. The cost to the state of the potential criminal is not included in this estimate. From the above figures it may be observed that it costs more to simply maintain the insane each year than it costs to work the Panama Canal; or to pay for the total cost of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial departments of our government. The total cost is more than the entire value of the wheat, corn, tobacco, and dairy and beef products exported each year from this country. ALCOHOLIC DRUNKENNESS.--Alcoholism is a sign and a symptom of degeneracy and is a distinct indication of unfitness for parenthood. The only cure for alcoholism is to prohibit parenthood. It has been proved that alcohol taken into the stomach can be demonstrated in the testicle or ovary within a few minutes, and, like any other poison, may injure the sperm or the germ element therein contained. As a result of this intoxication of the primary elements, children may be conceived and born who become idiots, epileptics or feeble-minded. It is asserted that 48 per cent. of all the idiots and imbeciles are the offspring of alcoholic parents. Recent experiments show that parental alcoholism alone can determine degeneration. Mr. Galton quoted the case of a man who, "after begetting several normal children became a drunkard and had imbecile offspring"; and another case has been recorded of a healthy woman who, when married to a drunkard, had five sickly children, dying in infancy, but in a later union with a healthy man bore normal and vigorous children. Dr. Sullivan found on inquiry that: .... "Of 600 children born of 120 drunken mothers 335 died in infancy or were still-born, and that several of the survivors were mentally defective, and as many as 4.1 per cent. were epileptic. Many of these women had female relatives, sisters or daughters, of sober habits and married to sober husbands. On comparing the death rate amongst the children of the sober mothers with that amongst the children of the drunken women of the same stock, the former was found to be 23.9 per cent., the latter 55.2 per cent., or nearly two and a half times as much. It was further observed [45] that in the drunken families there was a progressive rise in the death rate from the earlier to the later born children." Dr. Sullivan cites as a typical alcoholic family one in which the first three children were healthy, the fourth was of defective intelligence, the fifth was an epileptic idiot, the sixth was dead born, and finally the productive career ended with an abortion. The nervous systems of many children of alcoholic parents are wrecked for life; many die in convulsions as infants. Many, however, who do not die, live as epileptics. This action of alcohol on the health and vitality of the race is the most serious of the evils that intemperance brings on the community. The tendency of all children of alcoholics is toward nervous disorders of a grave type. Statistics show a very high rate of still-births and abortions among the children of drunken mothers, show that drunken women must not be permitted to become mothers. Dr. Branthwaite in a lecture stated: "In my judgment, habitual drunkenness, so far as women are concerned, has materially increased, during the last twenty-five years, which I have spent entirely amongst drunkards and drunkenness. These people are not in the least affected by orthodox temperance efforts; they continue to propagate drunkenness, and thereby nullify the good results of temperance energy. Their children, born of defective parents, and educated by their surroundings grow up without a chance of decent life, and constitute the reserve from which the strength of our present army of habitual drunkards is maintained. Truly we have neglected in the past, and are still neglecting, the main source of drunkard supply--the drunkard himself; crippled that and we should soon see some good results from our work." Dr. Fleck, another authority, says: "It is my strong conviction that a large percentage of our mentally defective children, including idiots, imbeciles and epileptics, are the descendants of drunkards." Therefore the chronic inebriate must not become a parent. * * * * * [47] CHAPTER V "The real undermining of health is not seen. It is done in an insidious way. It has to be carefully ferreted out." DR. HARVEY W. WILEY. WHAT EVERY MOTHER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT EUGENICS In the preceding pages we have written about eugenics as a science; it is our intention now to point out briefly in just what way eugenics directly concerns the mothers of to-day. In the first place let us try to appreciate what it will mean to the race if "the fit only are born." "Fit" children, it will be recalled, means children born healthy of healthy, selected parents, parents with a good ancestral history, conveying to their offspring a reasonably adequate legacy. If the "fit only are born" we start with a healthy stock. What a significant and tremendous advantage this is. At once we rid the world of the potential inefficients--the feeble-minded, the insane, the criminal, the deaf-mute, the drunkard. If we are correct in assuming that the reason why all former civilizations have failed and passed away, was because they bred a race of people physically and mentally unfit to survive, the demand of the eugenist that only "fit children shall be born" will strike at the very root of this evil. If we uproot the cause of racial degeneration we begin the building of a race that should not degenerate. If we establish a race that will not degenerate, it must gain strength and virility with each generation. This assumption is logically correct, but we must do more than breed "fit" children. We must take care of them after they are born. We must furnish them with a good environment (see page 3). Heredity without favorable environment counts for very little,--we must never forget that. Heredity and environment are the two important determining factors in the life of every child born. If eugenics furnishes the heredity by ensuring the [48] birth of the "fit" only, it depends upon the mothers of the race to provide the environment. Every mother must know how to take the best care of herself and of her child. This book is devoted to instructing her in the details of this duty. We cannot hope, however, to reach this high altruistic plane by simply taking the first step in the right direction. We who are alive to-day must begin the work, and leave it to posterity to carry forward. We must do our part. Every mother must become an enthusiastic eugenist. If she begins to teach, and preach, and practise its principles now, she will contribute to the heredity of unborn generations. To those of us who are alive to-day, environment is the vastly more important consideration, for our heredity is fixed and beyond the power of control. The question of eugenics for the present generation, therefore, is a question of environment. All our efforts must be directly in developing what heredity gives our children. We are wholly responsible for that. We must feed and clothe them properly; we must provide air spaces and playgrounds for exercise; we must educate them, and protect them from disease; and we must safeguard the birth of future generations by keeping our race stream pure. This is no small task, and the only way it will ever be satisfactorily accomplished is for each mother to realize her individual trust. The average individual does not realize the actual conditions that prevail. When recently the question of the public health was investigated by competent authorities, and the report furnished to the United States Senate, it caused a tremendous sensation. If that is possible in a body composed of men who are supposed to be intelligent and wide-awake to existing conditions, how much more significant and appalling it should be to the average mother whose interest is centered in her own home. According to the statistics and statements given in that document the annual financial loss from needless deaths and accidents alone amounted to $3,000,000,000. [Page 49] Acute diseases are held responsible for a large part of the loss. Chronic diseases are responsible for the greatest part of the waste of life, and they are believed to be increasing in their ravages. Minor ailments, believed to be nine-tenths preventable, are now costing the nation many dollars through incapacitation of persons and through leading to serious illness. Industrial accidents, largely preventable, are also exacting a heavy toll annually. That this great waste of life and health and the national economic loss that results can be modified by national action is asserted. Here are to be found the reasons advanced for a great national department of health. The work of this department would be varied. It would include direct work in promoting health on the part of the government, such as administering the food and drug act; aiding the healing and educational agencies, both city and State; obtaining information concerning the cause and prevention of diseases, and disseminating scientifically proved information on all health subjects. It is maintained that the movement for the conservation of health is the most momentous of the conservation movements in this country, and that of all the national wastes which are to be condemned, this waste of health is the gravest. Many startling statements are set forth in the document. Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles, of the United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Services, declares that "The United States is seven times dirtier than Germany and ten times as unclean as Switzerland." He declares that: "Lack of interest in preventive measures against diseases is slaughtering the human race." He takes the position that the real trouble is not so much race suicide as race slaughter, and that it is rather that too many children are allowed to die than that not enough children are born. It is estimated that tuberculosis, a preventable disease, costs the nations $1,000,000,000 annually. Typhoid fever is estimated by Dr. George M. Kober, dean of the medical department of Georgetown University, to cost over $300,000,000 annually. [Page 50] In connection with acute diseases this statement is made: "The loss from tuberculosis has been reduced to half of what it was thirty years ago. Nevertheless, of the 90,000,000 people now living in the United States at least 5,000,000 will be lost through this disease because adequate effort is not made to prevent it. Besides the economic waste through deaths from any disease, the waste through sickness from the same disease is also colossal." Great as are the reductions in the rates of infant mortality by improved milk and water supplies and by educational campaigns, the present rate is still enormous. "If some witch or wizard could conjure up the unnecessary babies' funerals annually occurring in this country it would be found that the little hearses would reach from New York to Chicago. If we should add the mourning mothers and friends, it would make a cortége extending across the continent." While the death rates from acute diseases have been greatly reduced, the rates from chronic diseases have been steadily increasing. Cancer is one of the chronic diseases apparently on the increase. That the annual death toll and the 3,000,000 constant sick beds could be reduced from one-fourth to one-half by proper measures is asserted. In other words, there might be saved every day, as many lives as perished on the _Titanic_, with the consequent enormous economic saving. These are surely impressive statements. It would seem as though it should be a simple task to pass a Public Health Bill, establishing a bureau in Washington, with a representative in the cabinet, whose sole duty it would be to preserve the public health. It has proved rather the reverse, however. We have been able to inaugurate various species of conservation,--of lands, of forests, of water,--but the conservation of human life is not important enough. Even though states and empires depend upon their people for their very existence, our statesmen feel that human life is too cheap, too common, to take immediate steps in this direction. If women--especially mothers--would devote themselves to the eugenic [51] end of legislation, men would soon obey. The application of eugenics to the human species, coming, almost in the spirit of an inspiration, at the time when women are about to be enfranchised, is significant. It may be that destiny has decreed that the one shall be the complement of the other; it is certainly beyond contradiction that in eugenics the women of the earth have a divine weapon with which to wage a righteous and an awaking propaganda of truth. A mother should be interested in every phase of the subject. Her daughter's success in marriage should intimately concern her. Her health and her happiness in that sphere should elicit her deepest maternal consideration. She may rightly hope to be proud of her daughter's offspring, and to find pleasure in the society of her grandchildren. She should, therefore, devote all her efforts to ascertain the truth, with reference to the physical and mental equipment of her future son-in-law; his ability adequately to support a family; his sobriety, his disposition, associates, etc., should all be carefully considered and pondered over. This is not going far enough, however; we must know positively that he is not diseased,--that he is not a victim of gonorrhoea or syphilis. When parents weigh in the balance the possibility of a wrecked life, of destroying the right to have children, or of bringing them into the world blind or diseased; of permanently destroying the hope of happiness, peace, and success, no combination of advantages in a son-in-law is deserving of the slightest consideration. We are treating of the sacred things of life--of life itself. If parents combine to crucify and betray their daughters--to sell them body and soul into bondage for social or other advantages; if they preserve silence when they should speak and thereby take all the sunshine, for all eternity, out of one existence; then, if on their death-beds these daughters should accuse them, the guilty knowledge that they were responsible will be the sting that will blast their hope of peace and forgiveness here and in the worlds to come. When mothers realize that, every day, in every large hospital in every city in the civilized world some woman (a daughter of some mother) is being [52] unsexed because of these unjustly obtained diseases, surely their voices shall speak in no uncertain way. Another eugenic suggestion that should deeply concern every good mother is, that the mother's milk is the private property of the babe, and whoever deprives the babe of this, the sole right it possesses, is not only a thief but a scoundrel. A curious and significant fact was discovered by investigators when studying the question of infant mortality a few years ago. It was found from a mass of statistics that there were two recent instances when the death rate of infants decreased suddenly and quite decidedly. The first instance was when the Civil War in this country caused a cotton famine in England. As a result of the famine the factories of Lancashire were all closed and the employees being then without work remained at home. As a large percentage of the workers were married women with children they had the time and the opportunity to nurse their children regularly. Despite the fact that these women were starved and badly clad and deprived of the comforts of home, the death rate of the infants dropped steadily to an unprecedently low mark. A number of years later, when the German army surrounded Paris during the Franco-Prussian War the besieged inhabitants of the capital suffered from hunger and disease. The death rate of the adult population increased enormously while the death rate of the infants dropped markedly. The explanation of this curious phenomenon was simply that while times were normal the women labored outside of their homes and as a consequence the babies were not fed regularly and when fed were not fed mothers' milk. It demonstrated a truth that we are apt to lose sight of, that mothers' milk, even the milk from badly-nourished, poverty-stricken mothers is infinitely better than an abundant supply of artificial food combined with neglect. In view of the fact that there is a distinct tendency to evade this maternal duty these facts should be suggestive and important. It is the duty of the mother with any eugenic sense to preach and to practise this gospel. [53] Paris learned the lesson of the siege because though she has the smallest birth-rate to-day, she nevertheless has the smallest infant death-rate of any large city in Europe. The writer believes that in eugenics the women of the race have the instrument wherewith to save the world. He is assured that it is the supreme potential agency for the betterment of the race, and that mankind will never be inspired with a holier cause. He believes that through all the ages the human race has been growing better, coming nearer the truth, and that as a result of this patient progress, there has been evolved the eugenic idea that is to solve the problems of the human family. If the "fit only are born" think of the possibilities of education and of environment. Each child is born with a great potential promise, and endowed with a reasonably good heredity, the whole effort of that child will be toward a higher moral attainment. If the effort of the individuals of the race is to achieve a high moral success, the quality of the civilization of future generations will be far superior to the type with which we are familiar. Eugenics gives to women the supreme civilizing instrument of the future. It places the burden of the morality of the home and of the race on their shoulders. If we deny the writing on the wall it does not render the warning negative. The signs of the times are epochal. The great political parties are realizing, for the first time in history, that new and important issues concerning the family, the home, and the children, in other words the nation's manhood and womanhood, must be considered and included in their platforms. They know that the time has gone when statesmen will exclusively decide what shall be done with the sons and daughters which women bring into the world. They know that the mothers of the race must have a voice in deciding for peace or war since they create every soldier that will lie dead when war is over. Women will help decide the question of taxation by government and by trusts, because they know that it comes out of their incomes and they need it all for their children. Women know that their cause is the cause of freedom, and freedom is the[54] cause of the eugenist. They know that the function of government should be justice and no code of justice can have higher ethics than the ethics of eugenism. MOTHERS' EUGENIC CLUBS.--There should be established in every community a mothers' eugenic club. The object of the club should be to further the eugenic idea. Papers should be prepared, read, and discussed on subjects having a eugenic interest. One of the main aims of these clubs should be to interest the local Congressman and the member of the State Legislature in eugenics. In all probability they will know nothing specific about race-culture--unless they are exceptional men--in which case it will be the duty of the members of the club to educate them. The object of such education of course would be to ensure that they will act intelligently when any legislative proposal is made having a eugenic interest. Find out what they know about the public health as contained in the report on page 48, and if they will vote in favor of a Public Health Bureau. You should know how your representatives stand on the Pure Food and Drugs Act; if they really appreciate the significance of the measure; if they would be in favor of pensioning mothers and widows who have children depending upon them; what their views are regarding compulsory marriage licenses; the reporting of venereal diseases to the local health authorities; if they would favor the segregation of the feeble-minded and their maintenance and treatment by the state; if they endorse the eugenic principle that "the fit only shall be born," and if they really understand just what that means. If the mothers in every community would take this step, they could control the legislation affecting such subjects in a comparatively short time. If the various States concede to women the right to vote--as they will sooner or later--such mothers' clubs would have a large and intelligent share in educating the women's votes on questions which directly concern their own immediate and remote welfare. The question of education would concern these clubs and much could be done by mothers to direct the authorities as to just what is needed to educate for [Page 55] parenthood, along the lines suggested elsewhere in this book. A mothers' eugenic club would rightly become an instrument for good in all local sociological interests. It could maintain a trained nurse to care for the sick and helpless, to teach the people how to live, and how to care for their homes and their children. The members themselves could visit the poor, the needy, and the sick. There are so many people in the world who are near the brink of failure,--so many who need a little hope infused into their lives,--and so many who are really deserving of help and sympathy and inspiration. The women who do this work for the work's sake are amply repaid by the good they find to do. The doing of such work is a consecration and an education. Life means more, and the whole temperament reflects a truer sympathy and a stronger purpose. There are many mothers, for example, who are willing to do what is essential in the interest of their children, but they do not know what should be done. These people cannot afford a physician or a nurse to teach them, nor do they even know that their methods are wrong or that they need any instruction. We must carry the information and the explanation to them. We must show them the need for a change of methods. This is the work for those charitably disposed women who desire some worthy purpose in life, who really wish to do some genuine good. All the equipment they need is good common sense. They will explain why it is essential to pasteurize the milk before feeding it to the baby because most of the milk used by the poor is unfit for use as a baby food. They will show how to keep the nipples and the bottles clean, and they will give them lessons on how to prepare the food to the best advantage. They will instruct them how to dress the baby in hot weather, and they will explain why it is necessary to provide the baby with all the fresh air possible. They will gain the confidence of these mothers and they will tell them all they know, in tactful and diplomatic and common-sense language so that they may appreciate the eugenic reasons for everything they do regarding the care and well-being of the baby. In every city in the country this work is needed and is [56] waiting for the missionaries who will volunteer. To teach mothers the need for boiled water as a necessary drink for baby and older children is alone a worthy avocation. To impress upon one of these willing but ignorant mothers the absolute necessity for washing her hands before preparing baby's food, that she must keep a covered vessel in which the soiled napkins are placed until washed, that she should frequently sponge her baby in hot weather,--and explain thoroughly why these are important details,--is a work of true religious charity. They should be taught to rid their houses of flies, and especially to keep them from the baby and from its food, bottles, and nipples. They should be instructed to discontinue milk at the first sign of intestinal trouble, to give a suitable dose of castor oil, and to put the child on barley water as a food until the danger is passed. They should be taught to know the serious significance of a green watery stool, that it is the one danger signal in the summer time that no mother can ignore without wilfully risking the life of her baby. They should be shown how to prepare special articles of diet when they are needed. If every mother were educated to the extent as indicated in the above outline the appalling infant mortality would fall into insignificance. It is not a difficult task, nor would it take a long time to carry out; it is the work for willing women who have time and who perhaps spend that time in less desirable but more dramatic ways. It is education that is needed, and it is education that is willingly received, as all mothers are ready to devote their time in the acquirement of knowledge that will help them save their offspring. This is the eugenic opportunity and it is an opportunity that should devolve upon the women of the race. Such a mothers' club would receive the willing financial support of the men of the community. It should be placed upon a sound financial basis because, to be successful, it would have to bestow much material aid. I know of clubs that are self-supporting, however. Each club needs a leader to begin it; will the reader be that one in her Community? A Mothers' Eugenic Club would of course discuss the practical side of [57] the eugenic question: the proper feeding and clothing of children; hygiene, sanitation, housekeeping and homemaking, and the efficiency and health of each member of the home, and all other topics of interest to every wife and mother. The writer believes that in the very near future we shall have a Mothers' Eugenic Club in every community in the United States; that these clubs will be guided by, and be an instrument of, a National Eugenic Bureau, composed of women, that will coöperate and harmonize the work as a whole, so that the conservation of human life will be effected to its maximum extent; that the excessive infant mortality will be overcome, because ignorant and incompetent mothers--the greatest cause of infant mortality--will be educated and instructed in the rudiments of eugenics and will consequently, to a large extent, cease to be ignorant and incompetent; that the desecration of young wives will stop, and stop forever, because vice and disease will be branded and exposed; that the feeble-minded, the deaf-mute, the imbecile, and the insane, will no longer be allowed to propagate their kind, to the permanent detriment of the race. When such clubs are established, and when all mothers do their individual duty in the interest of the race, we shall begin to see the dawn of a promise that will achieve its supreme success in the generations that will people the earth in the eugenic aftertime. * * * * * [61] CHILD-BIRTH CHAPTER VI "Solicitude for children is one of the signs of a growing civilization. To cure is the voice of the past; to prevent, the divine whisper of to-day." KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN. PREPARATIONS FOR THE CONFINEMENT THE BIRTH CHAMBER--WHAT TO PROVIDE FOR A CONFINEMENT--READY TO PURCHASE OBSTETRICAL OUTFITS--POSITION AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE BED--HOW TO PROPERLY PREPARE THE ACCOUCHMENT BED--THE KELLY PAD--THE ADVANTAGES OF THE KELLY PAD--SHOULD A BINDER BE USED?--SANITARY NAPKINS--HOW TO CALCULATE THE PROBABLE DATE OF THE CONFINEMENT--OBSTETRICAL TABLE--WHEN SHOULD A PREGNANT WOMAN FIRST CALL UPON HER PHYSICIAN--REGARDING THE CHOICE OF A PHYSICIAN--HOW TO KNOW THE RIGHT KIND OF A PHYSICIAN FOR A CONFINEMENT--THE SELECTION OF A NURSE--THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TRAINED AND A MATERNITY NURSE--DUTIES OF A CONFINEMENT NURSE--THE REQUISITES OF A GOOD CONFINEMENT NURSE--THE PERSONAL RIGHTS OF A CONFINEMENT NURSE--CRITICIZING AND GOSSIPING ABOUT PHYSICIANS. THE BIRTH CHAMBER The room in which the confinement is to take place should be selected with care. In many cases there will be no choice for the reason that there will be only one suitable bedroom available. Where practicable however a room having the following accessories, or as many of them as is possible, should be given the preference. 1.--Good light, and a southern exposure. 2.--Capable of being well ventilated and well heated if necessary. 3.--Running water if plumbing is modern. 4.--Fairly large size (not a hallroom). 5.--A quiet room, free from street noises. If the house is a private one the room should be on the second floor. If the home is in an apartment house the confinement chamber should be as [62] far removed from the living-room as circumstances will permit,--especially if there are other children who will make more or less continuous noise. All unnecessary furniture, pictures and draperies should be taken out of the room a few days before the confinement is due; the room itself, and everything left in it, should be thoroughly cleaned and aired. A small table for holding instruments, sterilizing basins, etc., should be provided and in readiness. WHAT TO PROVIDE FOR A CONFINEMENT.--The following articles should be in readiness at all confinements:-- 1.--Douche pan. 2.--Bed pan. 3.--Douche bag (fountain syringe) with glass douche tube. 4.--One rubber sheet 1½ yards square. 5.--Two bed pads, one yard square, made of absorbent cotton or old clean cloths, covered with washed cheese cloth and stitched here and there to hold in place. 6.--One dozen clean towels. 7.--One-half dozen clean sheets. 8.--A hot water bottle. 9.--One pound absorbent cotton (good quality). 10.--Five yards sterile gauze. 11.--Four quarts of hot, and as much cold water, that has been boiled. 12.--One-half dozen papers assorted safety pins. 13.--One box sanitary pads. 14.--Four pieces of unbleached cotton or muslin, one and one-quarter yards long. 15.--Four ounces powdered boracic acid. 16.--Four ounces of brandy or whisky. 17.--One jar of white vaseline (unopened). 18.--One cake of castile soap. 19.--Two or three agate or china hand basins. 20.--One slop jar. 21.--One pan under bed for after birth. The physician will direct that certain additional articles be provided according to his individual taste and custom. These will include an [63] antiseptic and ergot; any other requisite found necessary can be sent for, or the physician can supply it, as he invariably has in his bag whatever may be required in complicated cases or in an emergency. All the items enumerated in the above list are absolutely essential, they may not all be used but it would not be safe to undertake a confinement without providing the essential requisites. Many maternity outfits are prepared ready for use and can be obtained at the larger drug stores, costing from $10 to $25. The articles in the above list can be bought for about $6, not including those articles which the patient is assumed to have. The following are samples of the ready-to-purchase outfits: READY-TO-PURCHASE OBSTETRICAL OUTFITS OUTFIT NO. 1 1 Sterilized Bed Pad (30 inches square). 2 dozen Sterilized Vulva Pads. 2 Sterilized Mull Binders (18 inches wide). 5 yards Sterilized Gauze. 1 pound Sterilized Absorbent Cotton (½ pound). Rubber Sheet, 1½ yards by 2 yards, Sterilized. Douche Pan, Sterilized. 1 Tube K-Y Lubricating Jelly. Sterilized Nail Brush. Boric Acid, Powdered. Tinct. Green Soap. Bichloride Tablets. Lysol. Tube Sterilized Tape. PRICE $10.00. OUTFIT NO. 2. 2 Sterilized Bed Pads (30 inches square). 2 dozen Sterilized Vulva Pads. 2 Sterilized Mull Binders (18 inches wide). 6 Sterilized Towels. 10 yards Sterilized Gauze. [Page 64] 1 pound Sterilized Absorbent Cotton (½ pound). Rubber Sheet, 1 yard by 1½ yards, Sterilized. Rubber Sheet, 1½ yards by 2 yards, Sterilized. 4 quart Sterilized Douche Bag with glass nozzle. Douche Pan, Sterilized. Sterilized Nail Brush. 2 Agate Basins, Sterilized. Safety Pins. 2 Tubes Sterilized Petrolatum. 1 Tube K-Y Lubricating Jelly. Boric Acid, Powdered. 100 grms. Chloroform (Squibb's). Fl. Ext. Ergot. Tinct. Green Soap. Bichloride Tablets. Lysol. Tube Sterilized Tape. Sterilized Soft Rubber Catheter. Sterilized Glass Catheter. Stocking Drawers, Sterilized. Talcum Powder. Bath Thermometer. PRICE $19.50. These materials, being cleansed and sterilized, are ready for use at any time. These complete outfits are packed in neat boxes, thus enabling the contents to be kept intact until needed. THE POSITION AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE BED.--The bed should be a substantial single bed. If a double one is used, prepare the side for the confinement which will permit the physician to use his right hand,--that will be the right side of the patient as she lies in bed. One objection to a double bed is its tendency to sag. This tendency can be obviated however by placing an ironing board under the spring from side to side, or by using shelves from a book case. This expedient will support the mattress, thereby rendering the bed firm and free from any sagging tendency. The position of the bed in the room should be such that the patient will not directly face the window light, nor be in a direct draught between the window and the door. It [65] should be so arranged that the nurse can get easily to either side, consequently it must not be pushed against the wall. HOW TO PREPARE THE ACCOUCHMENT BED.--Over the mattress place the rubber sheet so that its center will be exactly under the hips of the patient. Pin with large safety pins each corner of the rubber sheet to the mattress; now put the sheet on exactly as you do when making an ordinary bed. On top of the sheet, and in the middle of the bed (again where the patient's hips will rest), place a draw sheet. A draw sheet is a sheet folded once, placed across the bed, and pinned tightly with large safety pins to the mattress at each side. The advantage of this sheet is, that it can be removed when necessary, leaving the original clean sheet on the bed, without disturbing the patient. Be particular not to have the top of the draw sheet higher than the middle of the patient's back. Place the pad,--previously prepared for the purpose,--on the draw sheet and level with the top of the draw sheet. Most physicians carry with them to all confinements a _Kelly pad_. A Kelly pad is a rubber pad with inflated sides, which is put under the patient's hips, and which retains all the discharges incident to a confinement so that when it is removed the bed is clean and fresh. The advantage of the Kelly pad is twofold; first, it ensures a clean, compact, systematic confinement; second, its use subjects the patient to the least necessary movement at a time when movement is distressing, painful, and frequently dangerous. If a Kelly pad is not used, it is desirable to place under the pad (between the pad and the draw sheet) a piece of oil cloth or rubber sheeting, or a number of newspapers will do. This will prevent, to a considerable degree, the discharges from soaking through the pad on to the draw sheet and sheet and mattress below. After the confinement is over and the patient is clean, remove the Kelly pad, and the pad below if necessary, or the pad and newspapers if these are used,--place a clean pad under the patient and you are ready to place the binder on if a binder is to be used. [Page 66] SHOULD A BINDER BE USED?--Medically a binder is not necessary, neither is it objectionable from a medical standpoint. It is supposed to hold the flaccid, empty womb in place. This it does not do and we are of the opinion, that it, in many instances, according to how it is put on, compresses the womb out of place. The binder is certainly appreciated by most patients because of its snug, comfortable feeling; and in cases when the abdominal wall is fat and the muscles soft, it holds them together in a way that is impossible by the use of any other device. To claim that the binder prevents hemorrhages is absurd. Our personal rule is to put one on if the patient wants one, or if she has previously had one. To be effective, in any sense, the binder should extend from the waist line down to halfway between the hips and knees and should be snugly, but not too tightly pinned. SANITARY NAPKINS.--These can be purchased already prepared in most drug stores, or they can be made in the following manner: Take an ordinary grade of cheese cloth, wash it, and when dry, cut it into half yard squares. In the center of each square place a strip, six or eight inches long, of absorbent cotton and fold the gauze lengthwise over it so as to make a pad. These can be used as napkins, and after they are soiled can be burned. It is absolutely wrong to use rags or any old cloths for napkins, as the patient can be infected and made seriously sick by this procedure. HOW TO CALCULATE THE PROBABLE DATE OF THE CONFINEMENT.--The duration of pregnancy extends for 280 days from the end of the last menstruation. Add seven days to the date of the last menstruation, and from that date count ahead nine months, or backward three months and you may have the probable date of the confinement. Should you pass this time you will probably go on for two additional weeks. The reason for this is that the most susceptible time for conception to occur is either during the week following menstruation or a few days before menstruation. If, therefore, you pass the above probable date which was calculated from the end of the last menstruation, it shows that conception did not take place during the [67] week following that menstruation; and the assumption will be that it took place a few days before the next menstruation, which will be about two weeks later than the date as calculated above. If, for example, a pregnant woman was last sick from January 1st to 5th we add seven days to the 5th, which is the 12th, to which we add nine months, which will give us, as the probable date of confinement, October 12th. Should she go a few days over the 12th, the probability is that the confinement will take place on October 26th. TABLE FOR CALCULATING THE DATE OF CONFINEMENT ----------------------------------------------------------------- JAN. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 OCT. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ----------------------------------------------------------------- JAN. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 OCT. 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NOV. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FEB. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 NOV. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FEB. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 NOV. 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 DEC. ----------------------------------------------------------------- MAR. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 DEC. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 ----------------------------------------------------------------- MAR. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 DEC. 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 JAN. ----------------------------------------------------------------- APR. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 JAN. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 ----------------------------------------------------------------- APR. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 JAN. 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 FEB. ----------------------------------------------------------------- MAY. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 FEB. 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 ----------------------------------------------------------------- MAY. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 FEB. 25 26 27 28 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 MAR. ----------------------------------------------------------------- JUNE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 MAR. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ----------------------------------------------------------------- JUNE 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 MAR. 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 APR. ----------------------------------------------------------------- JULY 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 APR. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 ----------------------------------------------------------------- JULY 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 APR. 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 MAY ----------------------------------------------------------------- AUG. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 MAY 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ----------------------------------------------------------------- AUG. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 MAY 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 JUNE ----------------------------------------------------------------- SEPT. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 JUNE 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ----------------------------------------------------------------- SEPT. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 JUNE 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 JULY ----------------------------------------------------------------- OCT. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 JULY 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ----------------------------------------------------------------- OCT. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 JULY 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 AUG. ----------------------------------------------------------------- NOV. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 AUG. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ----------------------------------------------------------------- NOV. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 AUG. 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 SEPT. ----------------------------------------------------------------- DEC. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 SEPT. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 ----------------------------------------------------------------- DEC. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 SEPT. 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 OCT. ----------------------------------------------------------------- [68] The foregoing table affords us a handy means of finding the probable date of confinement at a glance. Find the date of the last day of the last menstrual period in the upper row; the date immediately below it is the probable date of confinement. For example if the last menstrual period was from Jan. 1st to 5th, we find January 5th and below it we note October 12th as the probable date of confinement. WHEN SHOULD A PREGNANT WOMAN FIRST CALL UPON HER PHYSICIAN?--The earliest indication of pregnancy is the interruption of menstruation. When menstruation fails to appear at its regular time in a young married woman whose past menstrual history is good,--i.e., she has been sick every month regularly and without pain since she began menstruating as a girl,--the assumption would naturally be that she was pregnant. Menstruation may however "miss" one month for other reasons than pregnancy just at this time, as is explained elsewhere, so it is wise to defer a positive assumption on such an important matter. When the second menstruation does not appear, and there are no specific reasons for its failure to appear, it may be safely assumed that pregnancy has taken place. A visit to the family physician one week after the second menstruation should have appeared, or at least long enough to feel absolutely certain that the sickness is not coming around, is not only necessary, but is the essential and correct step to take for a number of very good reasons. If a woman for example has not had a baby, how does she know she can have one? It is quite possible to become pregnant and yet it may be wholly impossible to give birth to a child. It is necessary to be constructed normally, or as near what is regarded as normal as is possible, in order safely to assume the responsibility of carrying a pregnancy to a successful completion. No one but a physician, who is skilled and familiar in the knowledge of what constitutes the proper size, and shape, and quality, and relations, one with another, of your bones, and ligaments, and muscles, can tell [69] whether you can safely be permitted to carry a pregnancy to term or not. If the anatomical conditions are not just right; if circumstances from a medical standpoint are not favorable; if your personal risk is too hazardous; if, in other words, medical science should decide that you are one of the very few women who cannot have a baby, is it not of very great importance that you should know this as soon as possible? Does not that fact alone render your early call upon your physician imperative? A physician can bring out facts, relating to the personal and family history, and habits, of the prospective mother, which will enable him to formulate advice which will prove of the highest value from the very beginning of pregnancy. Instructions carried into effect at this early date, as to personal conduct, exercise, diet, etc., will have a distinctly beneficial influence, not only on the patient's health and the character of her confinement, but on the physical vitality of the coming baby. REGARDING THE CHOICE OF A PHYSICIAN.--This is a matter that should receive the most careful consideration. While it is just to admit that every physician is capable of successfully conducting maternity cases, there are certain characteristics in the individual temperament that would seem to indicate that some physicians are better adapted to this special work. Trustworthiness is an imperative essential in a physician who assumes the responsibility of confinement engagements. He must be clean in his personal habits as well as morally. He should possess the virtue of patience and be tactful, and above all he should be made to feel that he has your implicit confidence. If you will analyze these qualifications you will understand just what they imply. The physician who has the reputation of having the largest practice is not necessarily the man you want, nor does it imply that he is the best fitted to conduct your case to your satisfaction. The fact that he is a very busy man may be distinctly detrimental to your best interests. If the physician has the reputation of being an excellent doctor, but, "You can't always depend on him,--he may be out of town, or he may send his assistant, or substitute," you don't want him; it is too [70] important an event to you to take a chance with. Rely rather upon the man who, though his charge may be a little higher, is known to be trustworthy; who will take a personal interest in you, and is known to be patient and capable. THE SELECTION OF A NURSE.--A choice must be made between having a trained nurse and what is known as a maternity, or monthly, nurse. The choice may be dictated by the financial means of the patient. A trained nurse is paid from $25 to $30 per week, while a maternity nurse usually gets $15 per week. A trained nurse is a graduate from a hospital where she has successfully completed a course of training. She is to be preferred, if she can be afforded, for the reason that she has been trained to obey absolutely the orders of a physician, and because she has the requisite knowledge to detect emergencies, and the necessary skill and experience to enable her to act intelligently of her own initiative in any emergency. The maternity nurse, on the other hand, has not had an adequate training and is absolutely helpless, so far as medical knowledge is concerned, in a real emergency. Her experience is limited to what she has picked up in the various cases she has had. She, as a rule, has chosen this means of obtaining a living as a result of some domestic financial affliction. She does not understand the laws of sterilization and has not been trained to obey, without question, the instructions of a physician. The maternity nurse follows a routine which she is incapable of modifying to suit the particular case. She has old-fashioned ideas and notions which she carries out as a matter of course, and she overestimates the great importance of her experience to the extent of wholly disregarding the advice of the physician. She assumes the care of the patient and baby, and regards this as her right, and as a result she is frequently responsible for much injury to the mother and child. Despite these objections we have worked with many of these nurses who were to be preferred to trained nurses. It is the individual after all that counts, and if a maternity nurse, though technically untrained, is adaptable, tactful, and will consent to be [71] instructed to the extent of obeying without argument, she can become invaluable, and her skill and experience will carry her creditably over many trying incidents. The objection of the medical profession to an untrained nurse is based, not so much on her lack of ability, as upon her propensity to indiscriminate and indiscreet talk,--they have not been trained to know the value of professional silence, nor have they had the necessary education which would have enabled them to acquire through their experience the knowledge that "silence is golden" at all times. A trained nurse possesses the requisite knowledge, but may have an objectionable individuality. An untrained nurse may have sufficient knowledge, and what she lacks she may make up for in being congenial and adaptable. While the trained nurse strictly attends exclusively to the mother and the baby, a maternity nurse as a rule attends to the household duties in addition. She cooks the meals of the entire family, and dresses and cares for the other children if there is no one else to do it. The duties of a maternity nurse can be specified and agreed upon, and the terms arranged when she is engaged. The duties of a trained nurse are fixed by nursing laws and medical rules and cannot be changed or modified by private agreement. These laws and rules, however, are not sufficiently arbitrary to make it impossible for the nurse to be obliging, courteous, and sincere,--qualifications which every patient has a right to expect, and a right to insist upon from every graduate nurse. The selection of a nurse should receive careful consideration. She should be known to be honest, honorable, competent, healthy, and personally clean in habits and dress, and she should be tactful, obliging, and she should attend to her own affairs strictly. She should not be a gossip; she should not shirk her work or pry into family affairs that do not concern her; and she should not drag into the conversation her own personal or family secrets. The nurse has certain rights which the patient should willingly recognize. She is entitled to a comfortable bed, sufficient sleep, good food, and exercise in the open air every day. These are essential in order that [72] she maintain her own health, as well as keep at the highest point of efficiency. When you select your physician consult with him regarding your nurse. If you know personally a capable nurse, there is no objection to selecting her, and no physician will oppose this procedure if you assume the responsibility of her capability. There are many advantages, however, in permitting the physician to provide a nurse. He assumes the responsibility of the nurse's capability, and it is safe to assume he will not recommend one whom he knows to be personally objectionable, or professionally incapable. Every physician acquires certain individual methods in the conduct of maternity cases, which experience has taught him to be successful. A competent knowledge of these methods by the nurse greatly facilitates the details and ensures a harmonious conduct of the entire case,--facts which accrue to the comfort and the well-being of the patient. It is not out of place here to warn a young wife against being advised by a neighbor or a busybody, as to whom she should select as physician or nurse. You must not depend upon the gossip of the neighborhood. The physician or nurse whom you are told by one of these irresponsible individuals not to take, may be the one above all others whom you should take. When you hear a gossiping woman decry a physician, depend upon it, she owes him something,--most often it is a bill, but it may only be a grudge. There is no class of men in any community who are maligned and abused so much as are physicians. They seem to be the choice victims of the enmity and spite of every malicious feminine tongue. A woman should think twice before she utters a criticism regarding the work of a physician. She would, if she but knew how quickly she brands and advertises herself as irresponsible and lacking in ordinary courtesy and good breeding, as she is not qualified to criticise the professional capability of a physician, nor is she qualified to estimate the extent of the wrong she perpetrates. There is no class of men who do more conscientious work, day after day, than do physicians, [73] and there is no class of men who are more deserving of the commendation of the entire community than the thousands of self-sacrificing, underpaid members of the medical profession. Be suspicious therefore when you hear a criticism, and be very, very sure before you utter one,--rather give him the benefit of the doubt and you will do no wrong, and it may be at some future date you will be thankful you did not criticise. * * * * * [75] CHAPTER VII THE HYGIENE OF PREGNANCY. DAILY CONDUCT OF THE PREGNANT WOMAN--INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING HOUSEHOLD WORK--INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING WASHING AND SWEEPING--INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING EXERCISE--INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING PASSIVE EXERCISE--INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING TOILET PRIVILEGES---INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING BATHING--INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING SEXUAL INTERCOURSE--CLOTHING DURING PREGNANCY--DIET OF PREGNANT WOMEN--ALCOHOLIC DRINKS DURING PREGNANCY--THE MENTAL STATE OF THE PREGNANT WOMAN--THE SOCIAL SIDE OF PREGNANCY--MINOR AILMENTS OF PREGNANCY--MORNING NAUSEA, OR SICKNESS--TREATMENT OF MORNING NAUSEA, OR SICKNESS--NAUSEA OCCURRING AT THE END OF PREGNANCY--UNDUE NERVOUSNESS DURING PREGNANCY--THE 100 PER CENT. BABY--HEADACHE--ACIDITY OF THE STOMACH, OR HEARTBURN--CONSTIPATION--VARICOSE VEINS, CRAMPS, NEURALGIAS--INSOMNIA--TREATMENT OF INSOMNIA--PTYALISM, OR EXCESSIVE FLOW OF SALIVA--VAGINAL DISCHARGE, OR LEUCORRHEA--IMPORTANCE OF TESTING URINE DURING PREGNANCY--ATTENTION TO NIPPLES AND BREASTS--THE VAGARIES OF PREGNANCY--CONTACT WITH INFECTIOUS DISEASES--AVOIDANCE OF DRUGS--THE DANGER SIGNALS OF PREGNANCY. CONDUCT OF THE PREGNANT WOMAN The young wife will arrange her daily routine according to the physician's instructions, which, by the way, she should faithfully carry out. If you are one of the fortunate many who enjoy reasonably good health, you have doubtless been told to follow a plan very similar to the one we shall now briefly outline. For the first six months she can safely continue to do her household work. It is to her advantage to do so for many reasons, but especially because it helps to keep her physically in good condition, and because it keeps her mind engaged, thus avoiding a tendency to nervous worry. After the sixth month it is desirable to give up the heavier part of the work. Washing and sweeping should be absolutely prohibited. Moving furniture or heavy trunks must not be done by the prospective mother, but all light work can and [76] should be indulged in to the very end. Find time to spend at least one hour and a half in the open air every day. Unless there is a medical reason against active exercise there is nothing so beneficial to the pregnant woman as walking, nor is there any substitute for it. A drive or motor ride into the country, or a car ride around town, is an excellent device against ennui and is highly desirable during this time, but not as a substitute for the daily long walk. A pregnant woman must keep her muscles strong and in good tone if she hopes to do her share toward having a short and easy confinement. She must keep active to ensure perfect action of all her organs--the stomach must digest; the bowels and kidneys must act perfectly; the heart, and lungs, and nerves must be supplied with good blood and fresh air; the appetite must be keen, and the sleep sound. Walking in the open air will do all this and nothing else can, to the same satisfactory degree. Light passive exercise at home is desirable to those very few who cannot walk in the open air, but at best it is a poor substitute. It is necessary to avoid any exercise or any labor of the following character from the very beginning of pregnancy: stretching, lifting, jarring, jumping, the use of the sewing machine, bicycling, riding, and dancing. She should continue to employ the same toilet privileges she has been accustomed to except the use of the vaginal douche, which must be stopped from the date of the first missed menstrual period. This is the only safe rule to follow and no exception should be made to it except upon the advice of a physician. Bathing during the entire course of pregnancy is a highly necessary duty. It is particularly advantageous during the later months because it relieves the kidneys at a time when they are called upon to perform an excess of work. The temperature of the bath should be warm and rapidly cooled at the finish. Brisk rubbing with a course towel will ensure the proper reaction. Sexual intercourse must be restricted during pregnancy; and it should be wholly abstained from during what would have been the regular menstrual periods, if pregnancy had not occurred, for the reason that abortion is[77] apt to take place. It is most harmful during the early and late months of pregnancy. Sexual intercourse is distasteful to most and harmful to every pregnant woman. CLOTHING DURING PREGNANCY.--The clothing should be so constructed as to relieve any undue pressure on the breasts or abdomen. For this reason it should be suspended from the shoulder. When it is appreciated that clothing supported by the waist crowds the growing womb, and exerts pressure upon the kidneys, and is responsible for many of the kidney complications that occur during pregnancy, no further reason need be given for discarding all clothing, except very light garments, that are not held by some device whose support is from the shoulders. A specially constructed linen waist is made and sold for this purpose. It is fashioned so that all the lower garments and the garters can be fastened to, and supported by it. Corsets should be absolutely discarded from the very first day of pregnancy. In a large woman with a lax abdomen, a properly made abdominal support will not only be a great comfort but of real advantage. It should exert a support upward by lifting the abdomen, not by constricting it. It should therefore be obtained from a reliable dealer and be made and applied to effect the above object,--otherwise it may do more harm than good. DIET OF PREGNANT WOMEN.--Some degree of digestive disturbance and loss of appetite is the rule early in pregnancy. By the fourth month these conditions invariably cease, and the appetite and the ability to digest will greatly improve. The diet from the very beginning of pregnancy should be plain and easily digested. It is not possible to formulate an absolute table of what or what not to eat, as the same foods do not agree equally well with all patients. The individual taste should be catered to within, reason, and the meals should be taken at regular intervals. Articles of diet that experience shows do not agree with the patient should be rigidly excluded from the menu. A varied diet of nutritious character is essential during pregnancy in order to ensure good blood, health, and strength. A monotonous diet, or a diet composed largely of stale tea, coffee, and [78] cake, is not permissible, and may do untold harm. Pastries and desserts of all kinds should be excluded. In the later weeks of pregnancy, because of the large size of the womb, the diet should be cut down as the stomach is interfered with in the process of digestion. Should the patient at any time during pregnancy experience a loss of appetite, or an actual disgust for food as sometimes occurs, it is preferable to suggest a change of scene and surroundings rather than the use of medicine. A short vacation, a change of table, new scenery, will promptly effect a cure. This condition is mental rather than physical; the patient allows herself to become introspective; the daily routine becomes monotonous and stale; hence a change of a few days will be all that is necessary. If it is not possible for the patient to obtain a change of scene, a complete change of diet for a few days will often tide over the difficulty. We have known patients to take kindly to an exclusive diet of kumyss, or matzoon, or predigested foods, with stale toast or zwieback, to which can be added stewed fruits. Alcoholic drinks should be left out entirely. THE MENTAL STATE OF THE PREGNANT WOMAN.--The coming baby should be the text of many interesting, spontaneous talks between the young couple from the time when it is first known that a new member of the family is on its way. The husband should feel that he is a party to the successful consummation of the little one's journey. He can contribute enormously to this end. It should be his duty, born of a sincere affection and love, to formulate the programme of events which has for its main object the wife's entire mental environment. He should encourage her to live up to the physician's instructions, and arrange details so that she will obtain the proper exercise daily. He should read to her in the evening, and arrange his own business affairs so that he will be with her as much as is possible. In many little ways he can impress upon her the fact that they both owe something to the unborn babe and that each must sacrifice self in its behalf. His principal aim, of course, will be that she will not worry or have cause to worry. He will so direct her mental attitude that she will dwell only upon the bright side of the picture; she will thus strive to[79] realize the hope that the baby will be strong and healthy, and she will, prompted by his encouragement and devotion, try to do her duty faithfully. Working together in this way, much can be done that means far more than we know of, and in the end the little one comes into the world a welcome baby, created in love and born into the joy of a happy, harmonious, contented home. THE SOCIAL SIDE OF PREGNANCY.--The social side of the question should not be overlooked or neglected at this time. Here again the imperative necessity arises to warn the young wife against certain individuals who seem to have a predilection toward recounting all the terrible experiences they have heard regarding confinements. It is astonishing to learn how diversified a knowledge some women burden themselves with in this connection. They can recount case after case, with the harrowing details of a well-told tale, and seem to delight in so doing. Every physician has met these women. The young wife must not permit or encourage any reference to her condition. Simply refusing to discuss the question is the only sure method of preventing its discussion. She will find among her friends a few who have her best interests at heart, and these few will strive sincerely to be of real usefulness to her. If she will keep in mind that the most important element in the success of the whole period, and consequently the degree of her own health, happiness, and comfort, as well as that of her unborn baby, is the character of her own thoughts from day to day, and month to month, she will be complete master of the situation. By constantly dwelling on happy thoughts, reading encouraging and inspiring books, admiring and studying good pictures, working with cheerful colors in sunny rooms, exercising, dieting, and sleeping in a well-aired room, she will have no cause to regret her share in the task before her, or the kind of baby she will bring into the world. MINOR AILMENTS OF PREGNANCY.--There are certain minor ailments which it would be well to be familiar with lest a little worry should creep into the picture. Maternity is not only a natural physiological function, but it is a [80] desirable experience for every woman to go through. The parts which participate in this duty have been for years preparing themselves for it. Each month a train of congestive symptoms have taxed their working strength; pregnancy is therefore a period of rest and recuperation,--a physiological episode in the life history of these parts. If any ailment arises during pregnancy it is a consequence of neglect, or injury, for which the woman herself is responsible,--it is not a natural accompaniment of, or a physiological sequence to pregnancy. Find out, therefore, wherein you are at fault, rectify it, and it will promptly disappear. MORNING NAUSEA OR SICKNESS.--So-called morning nausea or sickness is very frequently an annoying symptom. It is present as a rule during the first two or three months of pregnancy. How is it produced and how can it be remedied? It is produced most frequently by errors in diet. It may be caused by an unnatural position of the womb or uterus, by nervousness, constipation, or by too much exercise or too little exercise. The physician should be consulted as soon as it is observed to be a regular occurrence. He will eliminate by examination any anatomical condition which might cause it; or will successfully correct any defect found. When the cause is defined his instructions will help you to avoid any error of diet, constipation, or exercise. Many cases will respond to a simple remedy,--a cup of coffee, without milk, taken in bed as soon as awake will often cure the nausea. The coffee must be taken while still lying down,--before you sit up in bed. If coffee is not agreeable any hot liquid, tea, beef tea, clam bouillon, or chicken broth, or hot water may answer the purpose, though black coffee, made fresh, seems to be the most successful. Ten drops of adrenalin three times daily is a very certain remedy in some cases, though this should be taken with your physician's permission only. If the nausea occurs during the day and is accompanied with a feeling of faintness, take twenty drops of aromatic spirits of ammonia in a half glass of plain water or Vichy water. Sometimes the nausea is caused by the gradual increase of the [81] womb itself. This is not usually of a persistent character and disappears as soon as the womb rises in the abdominal cavity at the end of the second month. Nausea frequently does not occur until toward the end of pregnancy. In these cases the cause is quite different. Because of the size of the womb at this time the element of compression becomes an important consideration. The function of the kidneys, bowels, bladder, and respiration may be more or less interfered with, and it may be desirable to use a properly constructed abdominal support, or maternity corset. These devices support and distribute the weight, and prevent the womb from resting on or compressing, and hence interfering with, the function of any one organ. If the womb sags to one side, thereby retarding the return circulation of the blood in the veins from the leg, it may cause cramps in the leg, especially at night, or it may cause varicose veins, or a temporary dropsy. The correct support will prevent these troublesome annoyances; a properly constructed maternity corset is often quite effective. The diet should receive some special attention when these conditions exist. Any article of diet which favors fermentation (collection of gas) in the stomach or bowel should be excluded. These articles are the sugars, starches, and fats. It can readily be understood that if the bowels should be more or less filled with gas, or if they should be constipated, it will cause, not only great distress, but actual pain. Regulation of the diet, therefore, and exercise (walking best of all) will contribute greatly to the avoidance of these unnecessary sequelae. It must be kept in mind that the entire apparatus of the body is accommodating a changed condition, and though that condition is a natural one, it requires perfect health for its successful accomplishment. This means a perfect physical and mental condition,--a condition that is dependent upon good digestion, good muscles, healthy nerves, clean bowels, and so on. The slightest deviation from absolute health tends to change the character of the body excretions, the quality of the blood, etc. If the excretions are not properly eliminated, the blood becomes impure, and so we sometimes get itching of the body surfaces, especially of the abdomen [82] and genitals; neuralgias, especially of the exposed nerves of the face and head; insomnia and nervousness. These are all amenable to cure, which again means, as a rule, correct diet and proper exercise as the principal remedial agencies. UNDUE NERVOUSNESS DURING PREGNANCY.--This is very largely a matter of will power. Some women simply will not exert any effort in their own behalf. They are perverse, obstinate, and unreasonable. The measures which ordinarily effect a cure, they refuse to employ. It is useless to argue with them; drugs should never be employed; censure and affection are apparently wasted on them; they cannot even be shamed into obedience. The maternal duty they owe to the unborn child does not seem to appeal to them. We do not know of any way to handle these women and to our mind they are wholly unfit to bring children into the world. Fortunately these women are few in number. The maternal instinct will, and does, guide most women into making sincere efforts to restrain any undue nervous tendency, and to be obedient and willing to follow instructions. There is nothing so beneficial in these cases as an absolutely regulated, congenial, daily routine, so diversified as to occupy their whole time and thought to the exclusion of any introspective possibility. Frequent short changes to the country or seashore to break the monotony, give good results in most of these cases. The domestic atmosphere must also be congenial and the husband should appreciate his responsibility in this respect. Women of this type should have their attention drawn to the following facts in this connection: While the most recent investigations of heredity prove that a woman cannot affect the potential possibilities of her child, she can seriously affect its physical vitality. The following illustration may render our meaning clear: suppose your child had the inborn qualities necessary to attain a 100 per cent. record of achievement in the struggle of life; anything you may or may not do cannot affect these qualities--the child will still have the ability to achieve 100 per cent. Inasmuch, however, as a mother can affect the health or physical qualities of her[83] child she is directly responsible, through her conduct, as to whether her child will ever attain the 100 per cent. record, or if it does, she is responsible for the character of its comfort, its health, its enjoyment, all through its life's struggle toward the 100 per cent. achievement record. She may so compromise its physical efficiency that it will succumb to disease as a consequence of the ill health with which its mother unjustly endowed it, even though it possess the ability to attain the 100 per cent. if it lived. We often see brilliant children who are nervous and physically unfit, and we see others of more ordinary mental achievement who are healthy and robust animals. The one is the offspring of parents possessing unusual mental qualities but who are physically unable or unwilling to render justice to their progeny; the other parents may be less gifted mentally, but they are healthy and they are willing to give their best in conduct and in blood to their babies. Many of these brilliant children never achieve their potential greatness because they fall by the wayside owing to physical inability, while the healthy little animals achieve a greater degree of success because of the physical vitality which carries them through. To achieve a moderate success and enjoy good health is a better eugenic ideal than the promise of a possible genius never attained because of continuous physical inefficiency. The nervous and willful mother should therefore consider how much depends upon her conduct. It cannot be too frequently reiterated and emphasized that every mother should do her utmost to guard and retain her good health. Good health means blood of the best quality and this is essential to the nourishment of the child. To keep in good health does not mean to obey in one respect and fail in other essentials. It means that you must obey every rule laid down by your physician, willingly and freely in your own interest and in the interest of your unborn babe. In no other way may you hope to creditably carry out the eugenic ideal that "the fit only shall be born." HEADACHE.--This is a symptom of great importance. If it occurs [84] frequently, without apparent cause, the physician should be consulted at once, as it may indicate a diseased condition of the kidneys, and necessitate immediate treatment. Headaches may, of course, be caused in many ways and most frequently they do not have any serious significance, but they must always be brought to the attention of the physician. As a rule they are caused by errors of diet,--too much sugar, candy, for instance, late and indigestible suppers, indiscriminate eating of rich edibles, etc.,--or they may be products of nervous excitement (too little rest), as shopping expeditions, strenuous social engagements, late hours, etc. ACIDITY OF THE STOMACH, AND SO-CALLED HEARTBURN.--These are sometimes in the early months of pregnancy annoying troubles. The following simple means will relieve temporarily: A half-teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda or baking soda in a glass of water or Vichy water; or a half teaspoonful of aromatic spirits of ammonia in Vichy, or plain water; or a tablespoonful of pure glycerine. The best remedy is one tablespoonful of Philip's Milk of Magnesia taken every night for some time just before retiring. Heartburn is the result of eating improper food, or a failure to digest the food taken. Starchy foods should be avoided. Meats and fats should be taken sparingly. Avoid also the et ceteras of the table, as pickles, sauces, relishes, gravies, mustard, vinegar, etc. Good results follow dry meals,--meals taken without liquids of any kind. Live on a simple, easily digested, properly cooked diet. Chew the food thoroughly, take plenty of time and be cheerful. CONSTIPATION DURING PREGNANCY.--Most women are as a rule more or less constipated during pregnancy. It is caused by failure to take the proper amount of outdoor exercise, to take enough water daily, to live on the proper diet, to live hygienically, or because of wrong methods of dress. It is most important that the bowels should move thoroughly every day. Pregnancy no doubt aggravates constipation by diminishing intestinal activity. Consequently there is a greater need for activity on the part of the woman, and open air exercise is the best way to accomplish this. [85] She should eat fruits, fresh vegetables, brown or Graham bread, or bran muffins, figs, stewed prunes, and any article of diet which she knows from experience works upon her bowel. She should drink water freely; a glass of hot water sipped slowly on arising every morning or one-half hour before meals, is good. Mineral waters, Pluto, Apenta, Hunyadi, or one teaspoonful of sodium phosphate, or the same quantity of imported Carlsbad salts in a glass of hot water one-half hour before breakfast, answers admirably. If the salts cannot be taken a three- or five-grain, chocolate-coated, cascara sagrada tablet, may be taken before retiring, but other cathartics should not be taken unless the physician prescribes them. Rectal injections should be avoided as a cure of constipation during pregnancy. They are very apt to irritate the womb and if taken at a time when the child is active, they may annoy it enough to cause violent movement on its part, and these movements may cause a miscarriage. See article on "Constipation in Women." VARICOSE VEINS, CRAMPS, AND NEURALGIA OF THE LIMBS.--When cramps or painful neuralgia occur repeatedly in one or both legs, some remedial measures should be tried. Inasmuch as the cause of this condition is a mechanical one, it would suggest a mechanical remedy. The baby habitually seeks for the most comfortable position, and having found it stays there until conditions render it uncomfortable. He does not consult you in the matter, but he may be subjecting you to untold misery and pain. The child may rest on the mother's nerves or blood-vessels as they enter her body from her lower limbs. If the pressure is sufficient, it can interfere quite seriously with the return blood supply, because veins which carry back to the heart the venous or used blood, are vessels with thin, soft, compressible walls, while arteries which carry blood away from the heart cannot be compressed easily, because their walls are hard and tense. The condition therefore is that more blood is being sent into the limb than is being allowed to return; in this way are produced varicose veins. If these varicose veins burst or rupture we have ulcers, which may quickly heal,[86] or they may refuse to heal, and become chronic. A dropsical condition of the leg may follow, and because of interference with the circulation of the blood we get cramps and neuralgias. How can we remedy this painful condition? Sometimes we don't succeed, but at least we can try. So long as the cause exists, it is self-evident that rubbing the limb with any external application, will not give any permanent relief, though it is well to try. When rubbing, to relieve cramps at night, always rub upward. It is not a condition that calls for medicine of any kind, while hot baths and hot applications will only make the trouble worse. The remedy that promises the quickest and longest relief is for the patient to assume the knee-chest position for fifteen minutes, three times a day, till relief is permanently established. The patient rests on her knees in bed, and bends forward until her chest rests on the bed also. The incline of the body in this position is reversed; hips are highest, the head lowest. The baby will seek a more comfortable position and this new position may relieve the pressure and cure the condition. Doing this three times daily for fifteen minutes gives relief to the leg by reestablishing a normal blood circulation, and very soon the baby finds a new position that does not interfere with its mother's blood supply, and the cramps, and neuralgia and dropsy, and maybe the varicose veins will soon show improvement. Wearing the proper kind of abdominal support may help, as explained on page 77. If the varicose veins are bad, it is desirable to wear silk rubber stockings or to bandage the limbs. INSOMNIA DURING PREGNANCY.--Insomnia or sleeplessness is sometimes a vexatious complication during pregnancy. It seldom if ever becomes of sufficient importance or seriousness to interfere with the pregnancy or the health of the patient. Nevertheless, a period of sleeplessness lasting for two or three weeks is not a pleasant experience to a pregnant woman. It is most often met with during the latter half of pregnancy. There can be no question that every case of insomnia has definite cause, and can be relieved if we can find the cause. The only way to find it [87] is to systematically take up the consideration of each case, and this is best done by the physician. He must have patience and tact; you must answer each question truthfully and fully. Your diet, personal conduct, exercise, condition of bowels, mental environment, domestic atmosphere, everything, in fact, which has any relation to you or your nerves, must be inspected with a magnifying glass. Some little circumstance, easily overlooked, of seemingly no importance, may be the cause of the trouble. You may need more outdoor exercise, or you may need less outdoor exercise. You may need more diversion, more variety, or you may need less. You may need a sincere, honest, tactful, patient confidant and friend, or you may need to be saved from your friends. You may be exhausting your vitality and fraying your nerves by social exigencies,--those empty occupations which fill the lives of so many fussy, loquacious females,--echoless, wasted, babbling moments, of supreme important to the social bubbles who ceaselessly chase them but of no more interest to humanity than the wasted evening zephyrs that play tag with the sand eddies on the surface of the dead and silent desert. You may have wandered from the narrow limitations of the diet allowable in pregnancy, or you may be the victim of an objectionably sincere relation who pesters you with solicitous inquiries of a needless character. Whatever it is, rectify it. A good plan to follow on general principles is to take a brisk evening walk with your husband just before bedtime, and at least two hours after the evening meal. Follow this with a sitz bath as soon as you return from the walk. A sitz bath is a bath taken in the sitting position with the water reaching to the waist line. It should last about fifteen minutes and the water should be comfortably hot. It is sometimes found that this form of bath creates too much activity on the part of the child and defeats the purpose in view. This is apt to be the case in very thin women when the abdomen is not covered by a sufficient layer of fatty tissue. These women will find it advisable to take, in place of the sitz bath, a sponge bath in a warm room, using the water rather cool than hot but in a warm room. Rub your skin [88] briskly but waste no time in getting into bed. A glass of hot milk, before going to bed, or when wakeful during the night, may serve as a preventive. When these measures fail the physician should be called upon to advise and prescribe. PTYALISM, OR AN EXCESSIVE FLOW OF SALIVA.--This is a common condition in pregnancy, but cannot be prevented. It is of no importance other than that it is a temporary annoyance. Itching of the abdomen can usually be allayed by a warm alcohol rub, followed by gently kneading the surface of the abdomen with warm melted cocoa butter, just before retiring. A VAGINAL DISCHARGE.--Soon after pregnancy has taken place the woman may notice a discharge. It may be very slight or it may be quite profuse. In some cases it does not exist at all during the entire period. As a rule the discharge is more frequent and more profuse toward the end of pregnancy. If the discharge exists at any time,--and it is no cause for worry or alarm if it does exist,--inform your physician. He will advise you what to do, because it is not wise for you to begin taking vaginal douches or injections without his knowledge, and at a time when they may do you serious harm. Should itching occur as a result of any vaginal discharge the following remedial measures may be employed: A solution of one teaspoonful of baking soda to a douche bag of tepid water may be allowed to flow over the parts, or cloths saturated with this mixture may be laid on the itching part. A solution of carbolic acid in hot water (one teaspoonful to one pint of hot water), is also useful, or a wash followed by smearing carbolic vaseline over the itching parts. If your physician should suggest a mild douche for itching of the vagina as the result of a discharge, it may be promptly relieved by using Borolyptol in the water. Buy a bottle and follow directions on the label. TESTING URINE IN PREGNANCY--IMPORTANCE OF.--One of the most important duties, if not the most important, of both the physician and the patient is to have the urine of the pregnant woman examined every month during the[89] first seven months and every two weeks during the last two months. The urine examined during the first seven months should be the first urine passed on the day it is sent for examination. During the last two months of pregnancy the patient should pass all her water into a chamber for an entire day, and take about three ounces of this mixed water for examination. She should measure the total quantity passed during these days and mark it with her name on the label of the bottle. The physician will thus have an absolute record and guide of just how the kidneys are acting, and as they are the most important organs to watch carefully during every pregnancy, the greatest care should be taken to see that failure to note the first symptom of trouble does not take place. ATTENTION TO NIPPLES AND BREAST.--The physician should inspect the breasts and nipples of every pregnant woman when she first visits his office. Frequently the nipples are found to have been neglected, probably subjected to pressure by badly fitting corsets or too tight clothing. Instructions gently to pull depressed nipples out once daily, if begun early, will result in marked improvement by the end of pregnancy. During the latter part of pregnancy the breasts should be carefully and thoroughly bathed daily in addition to the daily bath. This special bath should be with a solution of boric acid (one teaspoonful to one pint of water). After the bath apply a thin coating of white vaseline to the nipples. It may be necessary to resort to the following mixture to harden the nipples and to make them stand out so that the child can get them in its mouth: Alcohol and water, equal parts into which put a pinch of powdered alum; this mixture should be put in a saucer and the nipples gently massaged with it twice daily. A depressed nipple may also be drawn out by means of a breast pump. If the nipples are not pulled out the child will be unable to nurse. It may then be necessary to put the child on the bottle and when the nipples are ready he may not take them after being used to the rubber nipple. The breasts may become caked and as a caked breast is a very painful and serious ailment it is wise to attend to this matter in [90] time. THE VAGARIES OF PREGNANCY.--Certain foolish, old-fashioned ideas, have crept into the minds of impressionable people regarding pregnancy, which are aptly termed vagaries. It is believed by some that if the pregnant woman is the victim of fright, or is badly scared, or witnesses a terrifying or tragic sight, her child will be, in some way, affected by it. If the incident is not of sufficient gravity to cause an abortion or a miscarriage it will not, in any way mark, or affect the shape of the child in the womb. It is believed by some that a child can be marked by reason of some event occurring to the mother while carrying it. This is not so; a child cannot be marked by any experience or mental impression of the mother. Some believe that the actual character of a child can be changed by influences surrounding the mother while carrying it. The character of a child cannot be changed one particle after conception takes place, no matter how the mother spends her time in the interim. It should be carefully understood that the character of the baby is entirely different from the physical characteristics of the baby. Were this not so it would be futile on the part of the mother to discipline or sacrifice herself in the interest of her baby. The baby's character will reflect the qualities of the combined union of mother and father. The baby's physical characteristics will largely depend upon the treatment accorded it by the mother during its intro-uterine life. Hence we lay down rules of conduct, diet and exercise in order to produce a good, sturdy animal, while the character or mind of the animal is a part of the fundamental species already created. In other words, no matter how much care you bestow upon a rose bush, its flower will still be a rose,--it may be a better rose, a stronger, sturdier rose, a better smelling and a more beautiful rose, but it is still a rose. CONTACT WITH INFECTIOUS DISEASES.--The pregnant woman should be warned against the danger of coming in contact with any person suffering from any infectious or contagious diseases. To become the victim of one of these[91] diseases near the time of labor would be a dangerous complication not only to the mother, but to the child. A woman is more liable to catch one of these diseases during the last month of pregnancy than at any other time. The most dangerous diseases at this period are Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria, Erysipelas, and all diseased conditions where pus is present. AVOIDANCE OF DRUGS.--It is a safe rule during pregnancy to avoid absolutely the taking of all medicines unless prescribed by a physician. THE DANGER SIGNALS OF PREGNANCY.--The following conditions may be of very great importance and may be the danger signals of serious coming trouble. They must not therefore be neglected or lightly considered. When any of them make their appearance send for the physician who has charge of your case, at once, and follow his advice whatever it may be. 1. Any escape of blood from the vagina, whether in the form of a sudden hemorrhage or a constant leaking, like a menstrual period. 2. Headache, constant and severe. 3. Severe pain in the stomach. 4. Vertigo or dizziness. 5. Severe sudden nausea and vomiting. 6. A fever, with or without a chill. * * * * * [93] CHAPTER VIII THE MANAGEMENT OF LABOR WHEN TO SEND FOR THE PHYSICIAN IN CONFINEMENT CASES--THE PREPARATION OF THE PATIENT--THE BEGINNING OF LABOR--THE FIRST PAINS--THE MEANING OF THE TERM "LABOR"--LENGTH OF THE FIRST STAGE OF LABOR--WHAT THE FIRST STAGE OF LABOR MEANS--WHAT THE SECOND STAGE OF LABOR MEANS--LENGTH OF THE SECOND STAGE--DURATION OF THE FIRST CONFINEMENT--DURATION OF SUBSEQUENT CONFINEMENTS--CONDUCT OF PATIENT DURING SECOND STAGE OF LABOR--WHAT A LABOR PAIN MEANS--HOW A WILLFUL WOMAN CAN PROLONG LABOR--MANAGEMENT OF ACTUAL BIRTH OF CHILD--POSITION OF WOMAN DURING BIRTH OF CHILD--DUTY OF NURSE IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING BIRTH OF CHILD--EXPULSION OF AFTER-BIRTH--HOW TO EXPEL AFTER-BIRTH--CUTTING THE CORD--WASHING THE BABY'S EYES IMMEDIATELY AFTER BIRTH--WHAT TO DO WITH BABY IMMEDIATELY AFTER BIRTH--CONDUCT IMMEDIATELY AFTER LABOR--AFTER PAINS--REST AND QUIET AFTER LABOR--POSITION OF PATIENT AFTER LABOR--THE LOCHIA--THE EVENTS OF THE FOLLOWING DAY--THE FIRST BREAKFAST AFTER CONFINEMENT--THE IMPORTANCE OF EMPTYING THE BLADDER AFTER LABOR--HOW TO EFFECT A MOVEMENT OF THE BOWELS AFTER LABOR--INSTRUCTING THE NURSE IN DETAILS--DOUCHING AFTER LABOR--HOW TO GIVE A DOUCHE--"COLOSTRUM," ITS USES--ADVANTAGES OF PUTTING BABY TO BREAST EARLY AFTER LABOR--THE FIRST LUNCH--THE FIRST DINNER--DIET AFTER THIRD DAY. WHEN TO SEND FOR THE PHYSICIAN IN CONFINEMENT CASES.--The physician should be notified just as soon as it is known that labor has begun. The adoption of this course is necessary for a number of reasons. It is only just that he should have an opportunity to arrange his work so that he may be at liberty to give his whole time to your case when he is wanted. He may not be at home at the moment, but can be notified, and can arrange to be on hand when your case progresses far enough to need his personal attention. It will relieve your mind to be assured that he will be with you in plenty of time. [Page 94] Don't worry unnecessarily if he does not come immediately when you notify him, provided you notify him at the beginning of labor. There is plenty of time. You have a lot of work to do before he can be of any help. Many women entertain the idea that a physician can immediately perform some kind of miracle to relieve them of all pains at any stage in labor. This is a mistaken idea. No physician can hasten, or would if he could, a natural confinement. He waits until nature accomplishes her work, and he simply watches to see that nature is not being interfered with. If something goes wrong, as it does now and again; or if the pains become too weak, or if the proper progress is not being made, he may help nature or take the case out of her hands and complete the confinement. If it is thought best to do this, there will be plenty of time. THE PREPARATION OF THE PATIENT AND THE CONDUCT OF ACTUAL LABOR.--It is assumed that the patient has adhered to the instructions of the physician given during the early days of her pregnancy. These instructions included directions as to exercise, diet, bathing, etc. Having calculated the probable date of the confinement, it is the better wisdom to curtail all out-of-door visiting, shopping, social engagements, etc.,--everything in fact out-of-doors except actual exercise, for two weeks previous to the confinement date. The usual walk in the open air should be continued up to the actual confinement day. The daily bath may be taken, and it is desirable that it should be taken, up to and on the confinement day. THE MEANING OF THE TERM "LABOR."--By labor is meant, the task or work involved in the progress by means of which a woman expels from her womb the matured ovum or child. After the child has been carried in the womb for a certain time (estimated to be 280 days) it is ripe, or fully matured, and is ready to be born. The womb itself becomes irritable because it has reached the limit of its growth and is becoming overstretched. Any slight jar, or physical effort on the part of the patient, or the taking of a cathartic, is apt to set up, or begin the contractions which nature has devised as the process of "labor" by which the womb empties itself. [95] THE BEGINNING OF LABOR.--When the first so-called pains of actual labor begin they are not always recognized as such. The explanation of this seeming paradox is that the "pains" are not always painful. A woman will experience certain undefined sensations in her abdomen; to some, the feeling is as if gas were rumbling around in their bowels; to others, the feeling is as if they were having an attack of not very painful abdominal colic; while others complain of actual pain. The fact that these sensations continue, and that they grow a little worse; and that the day of the confinement is due, or actually here, impresses them that something unusual is taking place; then, and not till then, does the knowledge that labor is really approaching dawn upon them. In due time one of these new sensations, which constitute the first stage of labor, will be more emphatic; there will be a little actual pain so that she will feel like standing still, holding her breath and bearing down. That is the first real labor pain and marks the beginning of the second stage of labor, and may be the first absolute sign that will leave no doubt in her mind that labor has begun. The nurse will now inquire into the condition of the patient's bowels. If they have not already moved freely that day, she will give the patient a rectal injection of one pint of warm soap suds into which one teaspoonful of turpentine is put. After the bowels have been thoroughly cleansed, the patient will be made ready for the confinement. The clothing necessary consists of dressing gown, night gown, stockings and slippers. These are worn as long as the patient is out of bed, when all but the night gown will be discarded. The entire body of the patient, from the waist line to the knees, should be thoroughly cleansed, paying particular attention to the private parts; first with warm water and castile soap, and then rendered aseptic by washing with four quarts warm boiled water into which has been put one teaspoonful of Pearson's Creolin. A soft napkin is then wrung out of water that has been boiled and cooled to a suitable temperature, and laid over the genital region, and held in place by a dry clean napkin, [96] and allowed to remain there until the physician takes personal charge of the case. LENGTH OF THE FIRST STAGE OF LABOR.--There is no definite or even approximate length of time for the first stage of labor,--that, you may recall, was the more or less painless stage, or as it has been termed, the "getting-ready" stage. Inasmuch as it is an unimportant and practically painless stage, most patients do not mind it. They continue to be up and around and work as usual. The first stage of labor is utilized by nature in opening the mouth of the womb. The second stage of labor is utilized by nature in expelling the child into the outer world. LENGTH OF THE SECOND STAGE OF LABOR.--After the second stage has begun, the length of time necessary to end the labor, assuming everything is normal, depends upon the strength and frequency of the pains. The stronger and more frequent the pains, the quicker it will be over. First confinements necessarily take longer, because the parts take more time to open up, or dilate, to a degree sufficient to allow the child to be born. In subsequent confinements, these parts having once been dilated yield much easier, thus shortening the time and the pains of this, the most painful, stage of labor. The average duration of labor is eighteen hours in the case of the first child, and about twelve hours with women who have already borne children. The time, however, is subject to considerable variation, in individual cases, as has been pointed out. CONDUCT OF THE PATIENT DURING THE SECOND STAGE OF LABOR.--She should remain up, out of bed, as long as she possibly can. The object of this is because experience shows that the labor pains are stronger, and more frequent, when in the upright position. Even though this procedure would seem to invite more constant suffering, it must be remember that labor is a physiological, natural process, that there is nothing to fear or dread; and if the patient is in good health, it is to her advantage to have it over soon, rather than to encourage a long drawn out, exhausting labor. When the pains come [97] she should be told to hold on to something, to hold her breath as long as possible, and to bear down. A good plan is to roll up a sheet lengthwise, and throw it over the top of an open door and let her grasp both ends tightly and bear down; or she can put her arms over the shoulders of the nurse and bear down. Instruct her to hold her breath as long as she can, bearing down all the time, and when she can't hold it any longer, tell her to let up, and then take a quick deep breath and bear down again, repeating this programme until the pain ceases. Tell her specifically to be sure to keep bearing down till the end of the pain, because the most important time, and the few seconds during which each pain does most of its work during the second stage of labor, is at the very end of each pain. When a woman understands that these instructions are for her good, and that they are given with the one purpose of saving her pain, and shortening the length of labor, she will try to obey. Each pain is intended by nature to do a certain amount of work, and each pain will accomplish that work if the woman does not prevent it; and if she does prevent it, she is only fooling herself, because the next pain will have to do what she would not allow the former to do, and so on according to how she acts. THE CARRIERS OF HERITAGE [Illustration: Here is the actual bridge from this generation to the next. Into these two little bodies--the larger not over one-twenty-fifth of an inch in diameter--is condensed the multitude of characteristics transmitted from one generation to another. The vital part of the _Ovum_ is the _Nucleus_, which contains the actual bodies that carry heritage--the little grains that are the mother's characteristics--_Chromosomes_. This nucleus is nourished by oils, salts and other inclusions, known as _Cytoplasm_. Floating in the cytoplasm may be found a tiny body known as the _Centrosome_, which acts as a magnet in certain phases of cell development. Around this whole mass is a _Cell Wall_, more or less resisting and protective. The _Spermatozoan_ is structurally much different from the ovum, but it also has its nucleus and chromosomes, which carry to the child the transmittable characteristics of the father. The ovum is usually comparatively large and stationary, and whatever motion is therefore necessary to bring it into contact with the male cell devolves upon the latter, which possesses what is known as a _locomotor tail_. In addition there are usually many sperms to one ovum, so that the chances are that at least one male cell will reach the egg and effect fertilization, and the beginning of a new life. The diagrams on the opposite page show the actual steps by which the spermatozoan unites with the ovum. It is the very first stage of the process of cell multiplication that results in the offspring.] THE FORMATION OF A NEW LIFE [Illustration: _Reproduced by permission from "Genetics," Walters, The Macmillan Co._] HOW A WILLFUL WOMAN CAN PROLONG LABOR.--For a certain time, during the second stage of labor, a willful, unreasonable woman, can work against nature and save herself a little pain by prolonging the issue; but there will come a time when, the head having reached a certain position, the expulsive pains will be so great that she won't be able to control them and nature then seems to take her revenge. So if a woman holds back, and begins to cry, and scream, when she feels a pain coming, she renders the pain to a large degree negative, she prolongs her labor, adds to the total number of pains, exhausts herself, and endangers the life of her child. It must, however, be remembered in all justice that this is a time when it is much easier to preach than to practice. Every confinement is a new experience; no matter how many a physician may have seen, there are no two alike. It is one of the interesting [98] psychological problems in medicine to observe the conduct of women during their first confinement. Some are calm, exhibiting a degree of self-control that is admirable. They are willing to be instructed, and they recognize that the advice is given for their benefit. They conscientiously try to obey suggestions, and they make praiseworthy efforts to keep themselves under control. They are stoics. Others collapse at once; they go to pieces under the slightest excuse, and frequently without as much as an excuse. As soon as the pain begins, they willfully ignore all the instructions given and desperately and foolishly try to escape what they cannot escape. In this unreasonable selfishness they resent advice, and at the same time they implore you to "do something" for them. There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of conduct; and any prospective mother who, because of a willful trait in her disposition, refuses to profit by the kindly professional advice of her physician or nurse, should at least have some consideration for her unborn babe. It may seem unkind to criticise the conduct of any woman at such a time. It is not prompted by a lack of patience or justice however. These women permit, in spite of every assurance to the contrary, an unreasonable fear to overwhelm them; and because of this fear they refuse to be guided into a path of conduct that will save them suffering and shorten the pains which they complain of. It is our conviction that if a woman would try to follow the advice of the physician at this time, at least half of all the seeming suffering would be avoided. We are glad to be able to truthfully state that this type of woman is vastly in the minority. When the second stage has advanced far enough, the patient will decide to go to bed. It may be necessary to put her in bed earlier, if her pains are very strong, as there is always a possibility of suddenly expelling the child under the influence of a strong pain. She will, as previously stated, discard all clothing, except her night gown, which can be folded up to her waist line and let down as far as necessary after the confinement is over. The obvious advantage of this arrangement is that the gown remains [99] unsoiled, and saves what would be needless trouble if it proved necessary to change the night gown at a time when the tired-out patient needs rest. Much aid may be afforded the woman at this stage by twisting an ordinary bed sheet and putting it around one of the posts or bars of the foot of the bed. The patient may then pull on the ends during the pain; she may also find much comfort and aid by bracing her feet on the foot of the bed while pulling. It is desirable to instruct the nurse to press on the small of the back during these pains. Some women appreciate a hot water bottle in this region. If the pains are hard the patient may perspire freely; it is always refreshing occasionally to wipe the face and brow off with a cloth wrung out of cold water. Cramps of the limbs may be relieved by forcibly stretching the leg and pulling the foot up toward the knee. From this time until the child and after-birth are born the physician will take active charge of the case. THE MANAGEMENT OF THE ACTUAL BIRTH OF THE CHILD.--Near the end of the second stage of labor it will be observed that the pains have grown strong, expulsive, and more frequent. Very soon the advancing head will begin to push outward the space between the front and back passage; the rectum is pushed outward and the lips of the vagina open. If an anesthetic is to be used these are the pains that call for it. A few drops may be dropped singly on a small clean handkerchief held up by the middle over the nose, its ends falling over the face. A few drops will just take the edge off the pains, and render them quite bearable. As soon as the pain is over the patient should rest, relax completely, and not fret and exhaust herself worrying about the pains to come. It is astonishing how much actual rest a woman can get between pains if she will only try; and it is astonishing how much concentrated mischief a willful, unreasonable woman can do in the same time. She will not try to rest, but cries and moans and pleads for chloroform, until she succeeds in giving everyone except the physician and nurse the impression that she is suffering unnecessarily. Her husband or her mother, whichever is present, gets nervous; they begin to wonder [100] if the physician is really trying to help; assume a long, sad, serious face! forget their promise to look cheerful, and mayhap offer sympathy to the woman. It is a trying moment and needs infinite patience and tact. The physician attends strictly to his duty, which will now be to guard the woman against exerting too great a force during the last few pains. About this time, or before it in many instances, the "waters will break." This means simply that the bag or membrane in the contents of which the child floated burst because of the pressure of a pain. This is a perfectly natural procedure and should not cause any worry: simply ignore it as if it had no bearing on the labor in any way. As soon as the oncoming head has dilated the passage sufficiently, so that the edges of the entrance to the vagina will slip over the head without tearing, the physician allows the head to be born. It takes some time to do this, and he must hold the head back until just the right moment. It is best not to let the head slip through at the height of a pain, or rupture is sure to occur. Wait till it will slip through as a pain is dying out, and if you have waited long enough and handled the head skillfully, the conditions will be just right at a certain moment to permit this without tearing the parts. There are some cases where a tear, and a good tear, is impossible to guard against. It is not a question of patience, or tact, or skill; it is a combination of conditions which patience, tact, and skill are powerless against. POSITION OF WOMAN DURING BIRTH OF CHILD.--The position of the woman is a matter of choice and is not contributory to the results at all. She can lie on her back, which is the ordinary way, or on her side, as the physician or the patient prefer. As soon as the head is born the physician should see that the cord is not round the child's neck; if it is, release it. The shoulders will most likely be born with the next or succeeding pain. The physician will permit the lower shoulder to slip over the soft parts first; this is done by retarding the upper shoulder by pushing it gently behind the pubic bone of the mother. When the shoulders are through, the rest[101] of the body of the child slips out without effort. DUTY OF NURSE IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING BIRTH OF CHILD.--As soon as the child is born the nurse should sit by the side of the mother and hold the womb until the after-birth is expelled. The womb can be easily felt in the lower part of the woman's abdomen as a hard mass. It feels about the size of an extra large orange. The object of holding it is to prevent the possibility of an internal hemorrhage. It can be readily appreciated that the interior of a womb, immediately after a child is born, is simply a large bleeding wound. So long as the womb remains firmly contracted there is very little chance for an extensive bleeding to take place. As a rule the womb remains sufficiently contracted to preclude a hemorrhage until the after-birth is out. After the after-birth is expelled, the womb usually closes down firmly and the liability to bleed is very much reduced. Because there is a distinct chance or tendency for the womb to bleed freely during the time the after-birth remains in, it is customary, as stated above, to watch it closely and to hold it securely. It is best held with the right hand. The fingers should surround the top of the womb and exert a slight downward pressure. Should it show any tendency to dilate or fill with blood, get it between the fingers and the thumb and squeeze it, pushing downward at the same time. EXPULSION OF AFTER-BIRTH.--The after-birth is usually expelled in about twenty minutes after the child is born. Great care should be experienced in its expulsion. It should not be pulled at any stage of its expulsion. If it does not come easily give it a longer time,--it takes time for the womb to detach itself from the after-birth; and some after-births are very firmly attached. Eventually it will come out with a little encouragement in the way of frictional massage of the womb through the abdominal walls. If the membranes remain in the womb after the body of the after-birth is out, do not pull on them. Take the after-birth up in the palm of your hand and turn or twist it around, and keep turning it around gently, thereby loosening the membranes from the womb instead of pulling them, which would surely break them, leaving the broken ends in the womb, and, as a result, the[102] chance of developing serious trouble. The patient should now be given one teaspoonful of the fluid extract of ergot, which should be repeated in an hour. Should there be an excessive flow of blood after this period it may be again repeated at the third hour. CUTTING THE CORD.--As soon as the child is born, and of course long before the after-birth is expelled, the physician will tie the cord. This is best done at two places, one about two inches from the child, and the other two or three inches nearer the mother. Cut the cord about one-half inch beyond the first ligature, which will be between the two ligatures. The cord should be tied with sterile tape made for the purpose, or heavy twisted ligature silk, or a narrow, ordinary, strong tape, previously boiled. It should be tied firmly and inspected a number of times within one hour of its birth. It is possible for a baby to lose enough blood from a cord badly tied to cause its death. A very good way to ensure against such an accident is to cut the cord one inch from the ligature nearest the baby, then turn this inch backward and retie with the same ligature, thus making a double tie at the same spot. Cut the cord with scissors that have been boiled and reserved for this purpose. WASHING BABY'S EYES AND MOUTH IMMEDIATELY AFTER BIRTH.--As soon after birth as is practicable, wash the baby's eyes with a saturated solution of boracic acid. Immediately after the eyes have been washed the physician will drop into them a solution of silver nitrate, three drops of a two per cent. solution in each eye, or argyrol, three drops 20 per cent. solution. This precaution is taken against possible infection during labor and, as explained elsewhere, it is a preventive against certain diseased conditions which, if present, would result in blindness. The physician should then wind a little sterile cotton round his moistened little finger, dip it in the boracic solution, and holding the baby up by the feet head down, insert this finger into the throat, thus clearing it of mucus. The tongue and mouth may be gently washed with the same [103] solution. After the baby has cried lustily as an evidence of life and strength, he should be wrapped up in a warm blanket quickly, and immediately put in a cozy basket in a warm place, and left there undisturbed, with his eyes shaded from the light until the nurse is ready to attend to him. The baby should be laid on his right side. CONDUCT IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING LABOR.--As soon as the physician is satisfied that the patient is well enough to be left in care of the nurse or attendant, every effort should be made to favor a long, refreshing sleep. Nothing will contribute to the patient's well-being so much as a quiet, restful sleep after labor. The nurse will therefore take the baby into another room, fix the mother comfortably, and give her a glass of warm milk,--draw the shades or lower the light and tell the tired-out mother to go to sleep. As a rule she will sleep easily, as she is sore and exhausted. AFTER-PAINS.--In women who have had children the womb does not as a rule contract down as firmly as after the first confinement. This condition permits of slight relaxation of the muscular wall, at which times there is a slight oozing of blood. This blood collects and forms clots in the uterine cavity which acts as irritants, exciting contractions in the effort to expel them. These contractions cause what are commonly known as "after-pains." These pains last until the womb is free from blood-clots. They may be severe the first twenty-four hours and then gradually die out during the following two or three days. Ordinarily in uncomplicated confinements they rarely annoy the patient longer than a few hours. It is a rare exception to observe them after the first confinement. REST AND QUIET AFTER LABOR.--Sometimes the birth chamber is the rendezvous for all the inquisitive ladies in the neighborhood. No one should be permitted in the lying-in chamber until the patient is sitting up, except the husband and the mother. This should be made an absolute rule in every confinement. This is a period that demands the maximum of uninterrupted rest and repose. The world and all its concerns should remain a blank to a woman during the whole period of her confinement. This is the only successful means of obtaining mental rest. The husband and mother [104] should be instructed to present themselves just often enough to demonstrate their interest in the welfare of the patient and the baby. POSITION OF THE PATIENT AFTER LABOR.--After delivery a woman should be instructed to lie on her back, without a pillow, for the first night. On the following morning she may have a pillow, but she must remain on her back for the first week. Sometimes an exception may be made to this rule by letting the patient move around on the side, with a pillow supporting the back, on the fourth day. These exceptional cases are those whose womb has contracted firmly, as shown by the quick change in the amount and color of the lochia. Women should be told why they must remain on their backs as explained in the chapter: "How long should a woman remain in bed?" THE LOCHIA.--The discharge which occurs after every labor is called the lochia. Its color is red for the first four or five days; for the succeeding two or three days it is yellow; for the remainder of its existence it is of a whitish color. It lasts from ten days to three weeks. The odor of the lochia is at first that of fresh blood; later it has the odor peculiar to these parts. If at any time the odor should become foul or putrid it is a danger signal to which the nurse should immediately draw the physician's attention. If the amount of the lochia should be excessive it should be investigated. THE EVENTS OF THE DAY FOLLOWING LABOR.--We will assume that the patient enjoyed a long sleep and wakes up refreshed, and with a thankful feeling that all is over and that baby is safely here. She will want to see and caress baby, of course. Lay the baby down in bed beside her and let her love and mother it. Tell her not to lift it, for the strain might injure her, then quietly steal away for ten or fifteen minutes, for these are precious, sacred moments. Motherhood--that angel spirit, whose influence every human heart has felt--that guards and guides the world in its sheltering arms--is born in its divine sense, into the heart of every woman for the first time, as she gazes in ecstasy and wonder at her [105] first-born. She feels that she has begotten a trust,--a trust direct from her Creator, and she makes a silent resolve, as she gently and timidly feels the softness of baby's cheek, that she will watch over it, and guide it, and do all a mother can for it, with God's help. It is good for the race that mothers do feel this way: and it is good for all concerned that they be given the opportunity to be so inspired. Just as gently take the baby away at the expiration of the allotted time. Take it with a cheerful, smiling word, and do not comment upon mother's happy, thoughtful face, she will quickly collect herself and enter into the spirit of quiet congratulation that should now permeate the home. THE FIRST BREAKFAST AFTER LABOR.--If the patient has passed a comfortable night, feels well, and is free from temperature, and has a normal pulse, breakfast will consist of a cup of warm milk, or a cup of cocoa made with milk, a piece of toasted bread, and a light boiled egg; or if preferred a cereal with milk and toasted bread. This will be the breakfast for the two following days also. The milk, or the cocoa (whichever is taken), must be sipped, while the attendant supports the patient's head. The cereal, or the egg (whichever is taken), must be fed to the patient out of a spoon. The patient must not make any physical effort to help herself; she must remain relaxed. Even when she sips her milk, or cocoa, she must not make any effort to raise her head; the nurse must support its entire weight. This will be the absolute routine of every meal until the physician gives permission to change the procedure. It is a waste of time to formulate rules only to disobey them. Shortly after breakfast the patient's toilet should be attended to. She should have her hair combed, and her face and hands washed. The hair on the right half of her head should be combed while the head rests on the left side, and vice versa. The water used for washing the hands and face should be slightly warmed. It is best to keep the hair braided and to consult the wishes of the patient as to the frequency of combing it. [Page 106] THE IMPORTANCE OF EMPTYING THE BLADDER AFTER LABOR.--An effort should be made now to have the patient urinate. This is very important at this time, as it is not an uncommon experience to find that the abdominal muscles are so worn out and overstrained with the fatigue of labor that they refuse to act when an effort is made to urinate. As a consequence the bladder becomes distended and may have to be emptied by other means. This condition is a temporary and a painless one, and will rectify itself in a day or two; meantime, if this accident has occurred, it is essential that the bladder should be emptied from time to time until the patient can do it herself. To test this function place the patient on the bed pan into which a pint of hot water has been put, and give her a reasonable time to make the effort to pass her water. Should she fail, take an ordinary small bath towel and wring it out of very hot water, just as hot as she can tolerate, and spread it over the region of the bladder and genitals: if there is running water in the room, turn it on full and let it run while the towel is in position as above. If the bladder is full, there is a peculiar, irresistible desire to urinate when one hears running water. If this effort fails, report the fact to the physician when he makes his daily call; he will draw the urine and it will be part of his daily duty to give specific instructions regarding this function until nature reëstablishes it. No particular attention need be paid to the bowels for the first two days. On the morning of the third day, if they have not acted of their own accord, the physician will give the necessary instructions to move them. The means necessary to accomplish the first movement after a confinement is a matter of choice. The old-time idea was to use castor oil, and while other remedies are now more or less fashionable, castor oil is still an excellent agent. Enemas are frequently used, but their use is questionable in this instance, inasmuch as a movement has not taken place for three days, the object is to clean out the whole length of the intestinal tract, and an enema is limited to part of the large intestine only,--according to how it is given. If the small intestines are not thoroughly emptied, [107] particles of food may remain there, and if so, they will putrify and the patient runs the risk of developing gas,--sometimes to an enormous extent. This affliction is painful, and dangerous, and nearly always unnecessary. It is always, therefore, more safe, and more desirable, to use some agent by the mouth, and we know of no better one than castor oil; and as castor oil can be so masked as to be practically tasteless at any drug-store soda fountain there can be small objection to it. My custom is to send the nurse or husband with an empty glass to the drug store to have the mixture made there and brought back ready for use. We have frequently obtained it in this way and given it to the patient without her knowing what it was. The best time to give castor oil is two hours after a meal, and two hours before the next meal--i.e., on an empty stomach. It works quicker and does not nauseate when the stomach is empty. INSTRUCTING THE NURSE IN DETAILS.--The nurse will attend to the patient's discharges by changing the napkins frequently. The bruised parts should be washed twice daily, for the first three or four days. If the nurse is a trained graduate nurse a few directions will suffice. If she is not a trained nurse the physician should be explicit in his instructions. It would be better if he actually showed her just how he wanted this work done. The best way to cleanse the vulvæ or privates is to take an ordinary douche bag at the proper height (about three feet) and allow the solution (1 to 2,000 bichlorid) to run over the parts into the douche pan, but do not touch any part of the patient with the nozzle of the douche bag. While she is directing the water with the left hand she should have a piece of sterile cotton in the right hand with which she will gently mop the parts. This method ensures disengaging any clotted blood and is aseptic. Dry the parts afterwards with a soft sterile piece of gauze and apply a clean sterile napkin. DOUCHING AFTER LABOR.--A nurse should never give a vaginal douche without instructions from the physician. Douches are not necessary in the convalescence of ordinary uncomplicated confinement cases. When it is [108] necessary to give vaginal douches after a confinement, there are good reasons why they should be given, and it is therefore absolutely essential that they should be given properly, and with the highest degree of aseptic precautions. If these rules are not observed, the danger of causing serious trouble is very great, and as the physician is directly responsible for the conduct of the case, he should in justice to himself and his patient, do the douching himself. HOW TO GIVE A DOUCHE.--The proper way to give a vaginal douche after a confinement, when the parts are bruised and lacerated, and when, as a consequence, the possibility of infection is very great, is as follows: Instruct the nurse to boil and cool about two quarts of water and have another kettle of water boiling. Boil the douche bag and its rubber tubing and the glass douche tube (do not use the hard rubber nozzle that comes with the ordinary douche bag). Drain off the water after it has boiled for ten minutes, but instruct the nurse not to touch the bag or tube, to leave them in the pan, covered, till the physician uses them. When the physician calls, place the patient on a clean warm douche pan while he is sterilizing his hands and making the solution ready. While he is douching the patient the nurse will hold the bag. The bag should not be held higher than two feet above the level of the patient. ADVANTAGES OF PUTTING BABY TO THE BREAST EARLY AFTER BIRTH.--The patient can now take, and will likely be ready for, an hour's nap. After the rest it is desirable to put the baby to the nipple, first carefully cleaning the nipple with a soft piece of sterile gauze dipped in a saturated solution of boracic acid. The reasons for this are as follows: 1st. There is in the breasts of every woman after confinement a secretion known as "colostrum" which has the property of acting as a laxative to the child, in addition to being a food. 2nd. It is advisable that the child's bowels should move during the first twenty-four hours and the colostrum was put there partly for that purpose. 3rd. The act of suckling has a well-known influence on the womb, in [109] that it distinctly aids in contracting it, and thereby expelling blood-clots and small shreds of the after-birth which might cause trouble if left in. 4th. By nursing the colostrum out of the breasts, it will favor and hasten the secretion of milk. 5th. It is frequently easier for the baby to get the nipple before the breast is full of milk, and having once had the nipple it will be easier to induce him to take it again when it is more difficult to get. THE FIRST LUNCH AFTER LABOR.--Lunch will be next in order, and that should consist of a clear soup,--chicken broth, mutton broth, beef broth with a few Graham wafers or biscuits, and a cup of custard or rice pudding. This will be the lunch for the two following days also. The same precautions are to be observed in giving this as were observed with breakfast and as will be observed with all other meals as clearly stated before, and repeated again, so that no mistake may be made. In the middle of the afternoon the patient can take a cup of beef tea or a cup of warm milk. THE FIRST DINNER AFTER LABOR.--Dinner will consist of more broth, or a plate of clear consomme with a dropped egg, or a cereal, a little boiled rice with milk, and stewed prunes, or a baked apple. After the bowels have moved, on the third day, and provided the temperature and pulse have been normal since the confinement, the patient can be put on an ordinary mixed diet, particulars regarding which are given on page 121 under the heading "Diet for the nursing mother." * * * * * [111] CHAPTER IX CONFINEMENT INCIDENTS REGARDING THE DREAD AND FEAR OF CHILDBIRTH--THE WOMAN WHO DREADS CHILDBIRTH--REGARDING THE USE OF ANESTHETICS IN CONFINEMENTS--THE PRESENCE OF FRIENDS AND RELATIVES IN THE CONFINEMENT CHAMBER--HOW LONG SHOULD A WOMAN STAY IN BED AFTER A CONFINEMENT?--WHY DO PHYSICIANS PERMIT WOMEN TO GET OUT OF BED BEFORE THE WOMB IS BACK IN ITS PROPER PLACE?--LACERATIONS, THEIR MEANING AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE--THE ADVANTAGE OF AN EXAMINATION SIX WEEKS AFTER THE CONFINEMENT--THE PHYSICIAN WHO DOES NOT TELL ALL OF THE TRUTH REGARDING THE MORE OR LESS PREVALENT DREAD OR FEAR OF CHILDBIRTH.--Much has been written, and much more could be written upon this subject. Inasmuch as this book is largely intended for prospective mothers to read and profit thereby, and is not for physicians and nurses whose actual acquaintance with confinement work would render such comments superfluous, it will not be out of place to consider this phase of the subject briefly, from a medical standpoint. When one considers that "a child is born every minute" as the saying goes, and which is approximately true, and at the same time remembers that statistics prove, as near as can be estimated, that there is only one death of a mother in twenty thousand confinements, it would really seem as though we were "looking for trouble" to even regard the subject as worthy of the smallest consideration. It is much more dangerous to ride five miles on a railroad, or on a street car, or even take a two-mile walk,--the percentage possibility of accident is decidedly in your favor to stay at home and have a baby. Almost any disease you can mention has a higher, a much higher fatality percentage than the risks run by a [112] pregnant woman. The real justification for actual fear of serious trouble is so small that it barely exists. These are facts that cannot be argued away by any specious if or and. Why, therefore, should there be any real fear? Did you ever hear of the remarks made by a famous philosopher who was given a dinner by his friends in celebration of his 85th birthday? In replying to the eulogisms of his friends he said in part: "As I look back into those blessed years that have faded away, I can recall a lot of troubles and many worries as well as much happiness and pleasure, and thinking of it all this evening I can truthfully say my worst troubles and worries never happened." So it is with the woman who for weeks or months has made her own life wretched, and possibly the life of her husband and friends, the same in imagining all kinds of dreadful things that never take place. It is undoubtedly an exhibition of weakness, an evidence of failure in the development of self-control. Childbirth is a natural process,--there is nothing mysterious about it. If you do your part you have no cause to fear,--the very fact, however, that you entertain a dread of it, shows that you are not doing your part. One of the saddest parts of life, one of the real tragedies of living, is the fact that most of us have to live so long before we really begin to profit by our experiences. Could we only be taught to learn the lesson of experience earlier, when life is younger and hope stronger, we would have so much more to live for and so many more satisfied moments to profit by. One of the most valuable lessons experience can teach any human being is not to worry and fret about the future. You can plant ahead of yourself a path of roses and be cheerful, or you can plant a bed of thorns and reap a thorny reward. Cultivate the spirit of contentment, devote all your energy to making the actual present comfortable. Don't fret about what is going to bother you next week, because, as the philosopher said, most of the troubles we anticipate and worry about never occur, but the worry kills. REGARDING THE USE OF ANESTHETICS IN CONFINEMENTS.--Anesthetics are as a rule given in all confinements that are not normal. To make this [113] statement more plain it may be said, that, when it is necessary to use instruments, or to perform any operation of a painful character, it is the invariable rule to give anesthetics. As to the wisdom of giving an anesthetic when labor is progressing in a normal and satisfactory manner, there is a difference of opinion. Much depends upon the disposition of the patient and the viewpoint of the physician in charge of the case. It is a fact that a large number of confinements are easy and are admitted to be so, by the patients themselves, and in which it would be medically wrong to give an anesthetic. In a normal confinement, however, when the pains are particularly severe and the progress slow, there is no medical reason why an anesthetic could not be given to ease the pain. In these cases it is not necessary to render the patient completely unconscious. Sufficient anesthetic to dull each pain is all that is necessary, and as this can be accomplished with absolute safety by the use of an anesthetic mixture of alcohol, ether and chloroform, there can be no possible objection to it. The use of an anesthetic, however, is a matter that must be left entirely to the judgment of the physician as there are frequently good reasons why it should not be given under any circumstances. THE PRESENCE OF FRIENDS AND RELATIVES IN THE CONFINEMENT CHAMBER.--It is a safe rule to exclude every one from the confinement room during the later stages of labor. Sometimes it is desirable to make an exception to this rule in the interest of the patient, by permitting the mother or husband to remain. If this exception is made, however, they must be told to conduct themselves in a way that will tend to keep the patient in cheerful spirits. They must not sympathize, or go around with solemn, gloomy faces. Cheerfulness and an encouraging word will tide over a trying moment when the reverse might prove disastrous. Practically the same rule applies to the entire period of convalescence during which time the patient is confined to bed. This is a very important episode in a woman's life and the consequences may be serious if it is misused in any way. Friends and relatives do not appreciate the [114] absolute necessity of guarding the patient from small talk and gossip, and an unwitting remark may cause grave mental distress, which may retard the patient's convalescence and disastrously affect the quality and quantity of her milk, thereby injuring the child. HOW LONG SHOULD A WOMAN STAY IN BED AFTER A CONFINEMENT?--To answer this question by stating a specific number of days would be wrong, because, few women understand the need for staying in bed after they feel well enough to get up. If any answer was given, it should be at least fourteen days, and it would be nearer the truth medically to double that time. Let us consider what is going on at this period. The natural size of the unimpregnated womb is three by one and three-quarter inches, and its weight is one to two ounces. The average size of the pregnant womb just previous to labor is twenty by fourteen inches, and its weight about sixteen ounces. We have, therefore, an increase of about 600% to be got rid of before it assumes again its normal condition. This decrease cannot be accomplished quickly by any known medical miracle. Nature takes time and she will not be hurried: she will do it in an orderly, perfect manner if she is allowed to. The womb will again find its proper location and will resume its work, in a painless, natural way, in due time, if all goes well. The uterus or womb is held in its place by two bands or ligaments, one on either side, and is supported in front and back by the structures next to it. These bands keep the womb in place in much the same way as a clothes pin sits on a clothes line, and it will retain its proper place provided everything is just right. After labor, it is large and top heavy. If you put a weight on the top of a clothes pin as it sits on a clothes line, what will take place? It will tilt one way or the other, and if the weight is heavy, it will turn completely over. So long as the woman lies in bed the womb will gradually shrink back to its proper size and place; if she sits up or gets out of bed too soon, the weight of the womb, being top heavy, will cause it to tilt and sag out of its true position. As soon as it does this the weight of the bowels and other structures above will push and crowd it further out [115] of place. This crowding and tilting interferes with the circulation in the womb and its proper contraction is interfered with, and thus is laid the foundation for the multitude of womb troubles that exist. It is a mechanical as well as a medical problem. Being partly mechanical, it is subject to the rules that govern mechanical problems. The importance of this dual process will be appreciated by considering the following fact. Many medical conditions tend to cure or rectify themselves because nature is always working in our behalf if we give her a chance. Take for example an ordinary cold. You can have a very severe cold and you can neglect it, and in spite of your neglect you will get well. It is not wise to neglect colds, nevertheless, it is true that nature will cure, unaided, a great many diseased conditions, if she has half a chance. This, to a very large extent, is the secret of Christian Science, yet the principle is known to everyone. A mechanical condition, on the other hand, has absolutely no tendency to get well of its own accord, or without mechanical aid. This is why Christian Science cannot cure a broken leg. It is this principle that makes diseases of the womb so persistent, and so stubborn of cure. When a womb once becomes slightly displaced, the tendency always is for it to grow worse and never to cure itself. The longer it lasts the worse it gets. Its cure depends upon mechanically putting it back in place and holding it long enough there to permit nature to reëstablish its circulation, and by toning and strengthening it so that when the mechanical support is taken away it will retain its position. There is no other possible way of doing it. Now since it has been proved that nature takes many days to contract a pregnant womb, a woman is taking a risk, and inviting trouble by getting out of bed before that time. WHY DO PHYSICIANS PERMIT WOMEN TO GET UP BEFORE THE WOMB IS BACK IN ITS PROPER PLACE?--Without offering the excuse that a woman will not stay in bed as long as a physician knows she should, there is, however, a large degree of truth in this excuse. And we are of the opinion that, if a physician made it a rule to keep all his confinement cases in bed for one month, [Page 116] he would very soon find himself without these patients. Experience has taught us, however, that it is safe, under proper restrictions, and in uncomplicated confinements, to allow patients to sit up in bed on the 12th and in certain cases on the 10th day, and to get out of bed on the 12th or 14th day. When the patient is allowed to sit up, out of bed, it should not be for longer than one or two hours, and during that time she should sit in a comfortable rocking or Morris chair, which should be placed by the side of the bed. Each day the time can be lengthened, and the distance of the chair from the bed increased. This procedure gives her the opportunity to walk a little further each day, thereby to test her strength and ability to use her limbs. On the fourth day, if all has gone well, she may stay up all day and she may walk more freely about the room. She should be just to herself, however. As soon as she is fatigued she should not make any effort to try to "work it off." When a feeling of fatigue appears she should rest completely. If she has any pain or distress she should acquaint the physician with it at once. She should not try to hide anything on the mistaken idea that "it isn't much." She does not know, and she is not supposed to know what the pain may mean; it may be exceedingly significant. Many women have saved themselves needless suffering, and their husbands unnecessary expenditure of money, by calling the physician's attention to conditions, which in time would have been serious, and would have necessitated long, expensive treatment. LACERATIONS DURING CONFINEMENT, THEIR MEANING AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE.--The only interest a laceration or a tear has to a physician, is whether the laceration or tear is of sufficient importance to need surgical interference. The laceration can take place at the mouth of the womb, or on the outside, between the vagina and rectum. Those of the mouth of the womb always take place, in every confinement, to some degree. They are never given any attention at the time of the confinement, unless under extraordinary circumstances, such as a more or less complete rupture of the womb, and this is such a rare accident [117] that most physicians practice a lifetime and never see or hear of one single case. Those on the outside are always attended to immediately after labor, or should be, unless they are very extensive and the patient is not in condition to permit of any immediate operative work. In such a case it is best to leave it alone until the patient is in condition to have it operated on at a later date. It is distinctly preferable to have it attended to immediately after labor when it is possible, and it is possible in a very large percentage of the cases. The explanation of this is because it is practically painless then, owing to the parts having been so stretched and bruised that they have little or no feeling. If it is left for a day or two and then repaired, it will be more painful, because the parts will have regained their sensitiveness. Another good reason in favor of immediate repair is that a much better and quicker union will take place than if postponed. When a patient is torn, but not to the degree necessary to stitch, it is to her advantage to be told to lie on her back and keep her knees together for twelve hours, thus keeping the torn edges together and at rest, thereby favoring quick and healthy repair of the tear. Some physicians go as far as to bind the patient's knees together so she cannot separate them during sleep. It is the custom of every conscientious physician to request every woman he confines to report at his office six or eight weeks after labor. The reason for this is to find out by examination the character and extent of the lacerations of the mouth of the womb. No physician can tell at the time of labor just how much damage has been done, because the mouth of the womb, at the time of labor, is so stretched and thinned out, that it is impossible to tell. After the womb has contracted to about its normal size, it is a very simple matter for any physician to tell exactly the character and extent of the lacerations. Most of these tears need absolutely no attention; there are a few however that do. This is a very important matter for two very good reasons. 1st. Every woman should know, and is entitled to know, just what [118] condition she is in, because if she has been torn to an extent that needs attention, and is left in ignorance of it, her physical health may be slowly and seriously undermined and the cause of it may not be understood or even guessed at. A woman who becomes nervous and irritable, loses vim and vitality, has headaches, backaches and anemia, and no symptoms, or few, that point to disease of the womb, will suffer a long time before she seeks relief of the right kind, and will be astonished and outraged when she is told that it all results from a bad tear of her womb that she knew nothing about. 2nd. A physician should in justice to himself insist on this late examination, because if a woman is told, at some subsequent time, by another physician that she is badly torn, and she was not told of it by the physician who confined her, she is very apt to form an unjust opinion of his work and to entertain an unfriendly feeling toward him as a man. Some physicians also, to their discredit, are not slow in permitting an unjust opinion of a colleague to be spread around, by preserving a silence, when an explanation would result in an entirely different opinion by the patient. They permit it to be inferred that the physician was responsible for the tear, when such is not the case. No physician on earth can prevent a tear of the mouth of the womb and this should be explained to the patient. Where the physician is at fault is in the failure to examine his patients when it is possible to tell that a tear of any consequence exists. If such an examination is made, he is in a position to state that a tear exists of sufficient extent to justify careful attention. Immediate operation is seldom necessary, and if the patient is comparatively young, it may not be wise to operate, because if pregnancy takes place within a reasonable time the womb will again tear. She should be told, however, that should she not become pregnant during the next three years she should be examined from time to time, and if the condition of her womb, or her health suggest it, she should have the tear attended to. If after this explanation she neglects herself she must blame herself, she will at least have no[119] cause to harbor any resentment against her physician who has done all any physician is called upon to do under the circumstances. Another important reason for finding out the character of the laceration is because these lacerations of the mouth of the womb frequently cause sterility. * * * * * [121] CHAPTER X NURSING MOTHERS THE DIET OF NURSING MOTHERS--CARE OF THE NIPPLES--CRACKED NIPPLES--TENDER NIPPLES--MASTITIS IN NURSING MOTHERS--INFLAMMATION OF THE BREASTS--WHEN SHOULD A CHILD BE WEANED?--METHOD OF WEANING--NURSING WHILE MENSTRUATING--CARE OF BREASTS WHILE WEANING CHILD--NERVOUS NURSING MOTHERS--BIRTH MARKS--QUALIFICATIONS OF A NURSERY MAID. THE DIET OF NURSING MOTHERS.--A nursing mother should eat exactly the same diet as she has always been accustomed to before she became pregnant. If any article of diet disagrees with her she should give up that particular article. She should not experiment; simply adhere to what she knows agreed with her in the past. More, rather than less, should be taken, especially more liquids as they favor milk-making. It is sometimes advisable to drink an extra glass of milk in the mid-afternoon and before retiring. If milk disagrees, or is not liked, she may take clear soup or beef tea in place of it. In a general way milk in quantities not over one quart daily, eggs, meat, fish, poultry, cereals, green vegetables, and stewed fruit constitute a varied and ample dietary to select from. Every nursing mother should have one daily movement of the bowels; she should get three or four hours' exercise in the open air every day; and she should nurse her child regularly. The diet of the nursing mother during the period immediately after confinement is given elsewhere. Alcohol, of all kinds, should be absolutely avoided during the entire period of nursing. Drugs of every variety, or for any purpose, should never be taken unless by special permission of her physician. CARE OF THE NIPPLES.--As soon as the mother has had a good sleep after the confinement the nipples should be washed with a saturated solution of [122] boracic acid, and the child allowed to nurse. The milk does not come into the breast for two or three days, but the child should nurse every four hours during that time. There is secreted at this time a substance called colostrum. This is a laxative agent which nature intends the child should have as it tends to move the bowels and at the same time it appeases the hunger of the infant. It also accustoms the child to nursing and gradually prepares the nipples for the work ahead of them. After each nursing the nipples should be carefully washed with the same solution and thoroughly dried. CRACKED NIPPLES.--Cracked nipples often result from lack of care and cleanliness. If they are not cared for as described above they are very apt during the first few days to crack. They should never be left moist. They should be washed and dried after every feeding. If the breasts are full enough to leak they should be covered with a pad of sterile absorbent gauze. Nursing mothers should guard against cracked nipples, as they are exceedingly painful; frequently necessitating a discontinuance of nursing; and may produce abscess of the breast. TREATMENT OF CRACKED NIPPLES.--In addition to washing the nipples, drying them thoroughly, and placing a pad of dry gauze over them after each feeding, they should be painted with an 8 per cent. solution of nitrate of silver twice daily. Before the next feeding, after the silver has been used, they should be washed with cooled boiled water. If the cracks are very bad it may be necessary to use a nipple-shield over them while nursing for a few days. TENDER NIPPLES.--Many women complain of the pain caused by the baby when it is first put to the breast. These nipples are not cracked, they are simple hypersensitive. They should be thoroughly cleansed and dried as above and painted with the compound tincture of benzoin. They should be washed off with the boracic acid solution before each feeding. After a few days under this treatment the tenderness will leave them. MASTITIS IN NURSING MOTHERS.--When inflammation of the breast takes [123] place in a nursing mother it is the result of exposure to cold, or it may result from injury. If infection occurs and an abscess develops, it results from the entrance, through the nipples, or cracks, or fissures in the nipple, of bacteria into the breast. There is fever, with chills and prostration, and very soon it is impossible to nurse the child because of the pain. Nursing should be immediately discontinued, the breast supported by a bandage and the milk drawn, with a breast pump, at the regular nursing intervals. An ice-bag should be constantly applied to the painful area and the bowels kept freely open with a saline laxative. When the fever and the pain subside nursing may be resumed. If the gland suppurates in spite of treatment it must be freely opened and freely drained. WEANING WHEN TO WEAN THE BABY.--Medically there is no exact time at which the baby should be weaned. Certain conditions indicate when it should be undertaken. It is desirable to wean the baby between the tenth and twelfth months. A month or two one way or another will not make much difference if the mother and child are in good condition. It should be weaned between the periods of dentition rather than when it is actively teething. The time of year is important. It would be better to wean it before the hot weather if it is strong and has been accustomed to taking other food than the breast milk. On the other hand it would be decidedly better to defer the weaning until the fall, rather than risk weaning at the tenth or twelfth months if these fall during the height of the hot weather. METHODS OF WEANING.--The best way to wean is to do it gradually. It is not desirable to take the mother's milk away suddenly unless there is a very good reason for it. The child should be fed small portions of suitable other food at the beginning of the tenth month. By the end of the tenth month he should be taking a feeding two or three times a day of food other than the breast milk. This feeding may be given in a bottle. In some [124] cases the mother may be able to feed the child with a spoon instead of the bottle. The substitute feedings allowable at this age are given in another chapter. TIMES WHEN RAPID WEANING IS NECESSARY.--There are times when the child must be weaned suddenly, as, for example, at the death of the mother, serious sickness of the mother, or in cases where for any cause the mother suddenly loses her milk. In these cases it is best to wean at once. If an infant refuses to take the bottle under such circumstances, the best plan to adopt, and the wisest one in the long run, is to starve the child into submission. If he gets absolutely nothing but the bottle he will shortly take it without protest. If a meddling individual attempts to feed the child some other food and tries to coax it to take the bottle in the meantime, much harm may result; it is safe only to fight it out for a day or two and win than to half starve the child and lose in the end. The child should be weaned if it is not gaining in weight. This may indicate a deficient quality of the mother's milk, or it may indicate a lack of proportion between the child and mother. If a robust child is depending upon the nourishment furnished by a mother who is not in good physical condition the milk may not be adequate in quality and quantity. The child will not therefore develop normally and it may be necessary to wean it. If the mother becomes pregnant it will be necessary to wean, because pregnancy invariably affects the quality of the milk. It is a very good habit to accustom the child to take its daily supply of water from a bottle from a very early age. This procedure will make it easier to wean at any time. Menstruation is not an indication for weaning as has been explained. If, however, the return of menstruation affects the milk so that it disagrees with, or fails to satisfactorily nourish the child, it may be necessary to wean, but not unless. The best reason for weaning a child at the twelfth month is that a mother's milk after that time is not adequate in quality for a child of that age. A child at one year of age has grown beyond the capability of its mother[125] to nurse it: nature demands a stronger and a more substantial food than any mother can supply. A mother who nurses her child beyond that period is not only injuring herself, but she is cheating her child. The exception to this rule is, as has been explained, the second summer. The child will evidence its dissatisfaction with the breast supply if it is not enough; it will not gain in weight, it will be irritable and fretful, it will tug long and tenaciously at the nipple, it will be unwilling to cease nursing after it should have finished, and it will drop the nipple frequently with a dissatisfied cry. These are all signs of insufficient nourishment, and to the observant mother they will at once indicate that the child must be weaned and fed upon a mixed diet. CARE OF BREASTS WHILE WEANING CHILD.--The process of weaning should cause little or no discomfort. If the weaning is gradual it is necessary to press out enough milk to relieve the tension from time to time. It usually takes three or four days. If it is necessary to wean abruptly, as it is occasionally, there may be considerable distress. In these cases it is necessary to massage the breasts completely,--until all the milk is out, or as much as it is possible to get out,--then rub the breasts with warm camphorated oil, and bind them firmly. When the breasts are massaged for any reason, the rubbing should be toward the nipple and it should be done gently. If there are any hard lumps, or caked milk, in the breasts, they must be massaged until soft, and the binding renewed. It may be necessary to repeat this process for a number of days. In binding the breasts use a large wad of absorbent cotton at the sides, under the arms, to support the breasts, and another wad between the breasts. This renders the binding more effective; permits the binder to be put on tighter; and prevents it from cutting into the skin. When weaning has to be done quickly the patient should absolutely abstain from all liquids. A large dose of any saline, Pluto, Apenta, or Hunyadi Water, or Rochelle salts, or Magnesium Citrate, should be given every morning for four or five days. [Page 126] If the weaning is gradually undertaken the child should be allowed to nurse less frequently. One less nursing every second day until two nursings daily are given. Keep the two daily nursings up for one week and then discontinue them, after which the above measures may be adopted. To dry the milk up, the breasts may be anointed with the following mixture: Ext. Belladonna, 2 drams; Glycerine, 2 ounces; Oil of Wintergreen, 10 drops. NERVOUS NURSING MOTHERS.--Nervousness, considered not as the product of a diseased condition, but as a temperamental quality, is an unfortunate affliction in some nursing mothers. Let us illustrate just how this characteristic is detrimental to the helpless baby. A mother was instructed to give her baby a half teaspoonful of medicine one-half hour after each feeding. She was told how to give it, and how to hold the baby when giving it. She was also told that the baby would not like it, and would try to eject it from its mouth rather than swallow it, and that when it did swallow it, it would make a little choking noise in its throat, but not to mind these, to go ahead and give it, as the baby could not strangle or choke. It was essential to give the baby this medicine, and hence the physician explicitly instructed her in these details. What was the result? On the following day when the physician called, and found the baby much worse, the mother said: "Oh, doctor! I couldn't give the medicine, the baby wouldn't take it, she nearly strangled to death when I tried to give it." The physician asked for the medicine and placing the baby over his knee, gave it without the slightest trouble, much to the mother's amazement. The servant girl who was a hard-headed, cool, Scotch girl, was instructed and shown how to give the medicine, which she did successfully. The mother was temperamentally nervous, was easily excited and became helpless the moment the baby objected, though she was a strong, robust, healthy woman. Another mother was carefully instructed to drop into the eye of her baby two drops of medicine every four hours. She was told and apparently appreciated the urgent necessity of the medication as her baby's eye [127] was badly infected. She was further told that if she did exactly as shown, the eye would be better in two or three days, and if she did not, the other eye would become infected, and blindness might result. She undertook to carry out the directions faithfully. She absolutely failed, however, to carry out the instructions. Her husband informed the physician on the following day that she became so nervous and excited that she utterly failed to treat the eye once, and when he and a sister offered their assistance she became so unreasonable in her fear that "they might hurt the baby" that it was impossible to do anything with her. Her sister was finally shown how to do it and carried the case through quite successfully. Inasmuch as this book is intended to convey helpful instruction to every mother, the author would suggest to those of this type the necessity of resisting this tendency. It is a matter of will power, just make up your mind not to be silly and if you find that you cannot trust yourself to follow instructions, let someone else do it. When the physician tells you a certain thing must be done, and that no harm can result, do it, and don't imagine all kinds of impossible happenings. So much anguish and annoyance is caused in this world by imagining and anticipating trouble, that half the pleasure of life is denied us. You cannot do your whole duty by a helpless baby if you do not reason and act upon sound judgment. Many babies are lost by mothers being afraid to do what should be done, and what they know should be done. It is not what the doctor does that brings a baby through a dangerous sickness; it is the faithfulness of the nurse in carrying out his instructions that is responsible for the outcome. A timid, halting, doubting nurse can quickly undo all a physician hopes to accomplish; while a prompt, faithful nurse, with initiative, and good judgment, can save a little life in a crisis, even in the absence of the physician. Follow instructions implicitly, even though the carrying out of the instructions seem to cause the baby pain and suffering,--it is for the baby's best interest. [128] BIRTH MARKS.--Much has been written on this subject which a later study of biology and eugenics have shown to be utterly false. Let us consider the actual facts. The baby is already a baby, floating in a fluid of its own manufacture. It has absolutely no connection with its mother except by means of its umbilical cord,--which is composed of blood vessels. The blood in these vessels is the child's blood and never at any time does it even mix with the blood of the mother. It is sent along these vessels into the placenta, or after-birth, in which it circulates in small thin vessels, so close to the mother's blood that their contents can be interchanged. Yet the two streams never actually mix. The carbonic acid and waste products, in the child's blood, are taken up by the mother's blood, and given in exchange oxygen and food, which is returned to nourish the child. There is absolutely no nervous connection between the mother and the child. How then is it possible for the mother to affect her child in any way except insofar as the quality of its nourishment is concerned? Nor can a mother affect her child in any other sense. If the intermingling of blood could affect a child's education we would frequently resort to surgery. In the article on Eugenics, under the heading, "Education and Eugenics," it is explained that the child is "created" at the moment of conception; that absolutely nothing can affect it after it is created; that no influence of the mother or father can in any way affect it for better or worse. A mother cannot create in her child any quality which she may desire no matter how she conducts herself. It was formerly thought that a mother could for example create a musical genius by devoting all her time to the study of music while she carried the unborn child; or that she could make a historian of it if she studied history; or an artist if she studied paintings. We now know this to be wholly wrong and for very excellent reasons. The mother must realize that the only aid she can bestow upon her unborn child is to give it the best possible nourishment. She must provide good blood because the quality of the maternal blood stream bespeaks a healthy or unhealthy, a fit or unfit, child. Whatever the child is to be is [129] already fixed, its innate characteristics art part of itself. Whether it will have the vitality to develop its inherent possibilities depends, to a great degree, upon its intra-uterine environment,--and its intra-uterine environment depends upon the health of its mother and the quality of the blood she is feeding it upon. After birth its health, its success, its efficiency, depends upon the care it gets and the quality of its mother's milk. A mother therefore must be in good physical and mental health if she hopes to do her full duty as a mother. QUALIFICATIONS OF A NURSERY MAID.--When a helper, or maid, is employed to aid in caring for the baby, much precaution should be exercised in selecting her. The association of the nursery maid and the child, is necessarity an intimate one, and she should be willing to submit to a medical examination to prove her physical fitness. Her lungs should be examined thoroughly, so also should the condition of her mouth, throat and nose be known. An observant and tactful mother will also find out if there are any other objectionable conditions existing, which would render her unfit for the position. A nursery maid should be naturally fond of children, she should be industrious, and sensible; of quiet tastes and good disposition. Her work should be a pleasure not a task. * * * * * [131] CHAPTER XI CONVALESCING AFTER CONFINEMENT THE SECOND CRITICAL PERIOD IN THE YOUNG WIFE'S LIFE--THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM FOLLOWING THE FIRST CONFINEMENT. The first three or four months following the first confinement is the second important period in the young wife's life. In one sense it is the most critical period. The first important period you will remember we stated to be the first few months after marriage. During these months the young wife passed through the period of adaptation. She found out that matrimony was not all sunshine and happiness. She learned that her husband was not the paragon she had idealized. She discovered his human side. She met daily trials and annoyances incident to domestic life. She found her level, and, in finding it, she discovered herself. She is not very safely anchored yet but she is trying to succeed and the future promises well. Some day she awakes to the knowledge that she is pregnant and a multitude of new speculations enter into the situation. She finds she must go on striving and hoping and praying that she may have the strength and courage to do her part. Time passes, and if she is an ordinary woman she scarcely does justice to herself. Her duties are exacting, and her physical condition is not given the study and care which she ought to give it. She does not understand the importance of the hygiene of pregnancy, and the day of the confinement finds her more or less exhausted, and worn out. She passes through the crisis of maternity, however, and spends the customary ten days in bed. At the end of that period the nurse and physician leave her to face the most important problem of life alone. She is a mother, and has in her exclusive charge a human life. Let us exactly understand what the real situation is. It would not further the object of this book or help in the solution of the problem the author has in mind to depict a false situation. We must concede the following[132] facts to be true, if we understand the subject: 1. That the mothers of the human race are, in the vast majority, the poor. 2. That they are uneducated in the sense that they are not versed in the science of hygiene and sanitation, and consequently health preservation. 3. That even the fairly well educated are innocently ignorant of the science of heredity, environment, hygiene, sanitation and health preservation. 4. That to benefit the majority we must depict conditions as they exist among the poor, and reason from that standard. Such books as have been written on this subject have based their facts upon too high a plane. Their remedies are beyond the means and the understanding of the average poor mother. Their analogies are based upon conditions that exist among the better class. The average poor housewife gets no practical assistance or help from their deductions, because her environment precludes any utilization of the data furnished; the data is not practical in her particular case. Our young mother is in all probability a physically and mentally immature girl. She most likely entered the marriage relationship without a real understanding of its true meaning, or even a serious thought regarding its duties or its responsibilities. She was not taught the true meaning of motherhood before actual maternity was thrust upon her. She has probably innocently acquired habits which are detrimental to her health and her morals; and she has no conception of the fundamental duties of a homemaker. Yet into the keeping of this woman a human life has been given. Her home surroundings are not such as to inspire confidence or from which to elicit encouragement. It has been a struggle to make ends meet; to keep the peace; to be hopeful and cheerful. If she has succeeded in keeping her home neat and clean and comfortable, it has been at the expense of her not too robust constitution. If she has made efforts to observe the amenities of life, to be true as wife, companion and confidant, it has taxed her[133] nerves, her courage and her vitality. She has frequently been at the breaking point but she has kept up because she felt it was her duty, and because there was nothing else to do. As she rests from her weary labor during the first long days after getting out of bed, the loneliness of it all crushes her. She is weak, nervous, and discouraged, and her white, wan face, with its tired, appealing eyes, bespeaks her anemic and hopeless condition. She is only a child herself, yet fate has crowned her with the holy diadem of motherhood. There are thousands of such mothers and yet posterity need not despair. This is just the beginning, and from such beginnings have sprung the heroes of the race. If the reader has carefully read the chapter on Heredity she will understand that the temporary condition of this mother is not important so far as the destiny of the child is concerned. The really important question is, How will this mother develop? The environment of the child depends upon the conditions with which its mother surrounds it. If she is a failure, the child's environmental influences will be unfavorable; if she proves worthy of her trust, if she progresses and masters her difficulties; if she is a good mother and a good homemaker the child's surroundings and influences will be favorable to the full development of its hereditary endowment. But it must be remembered that even an unfavorable environment need not prevent the hereditary promise from dominating the life of the individual. To return to our girl mother, upon whose slender shoulders the weight of a great responsibility rests,--we wish to concede that her burden is great. Her home duties are rendered more onerous because of her physical weakness and disability. The strain of nursing her fretful child is taxing her vitality and her nerves to the limit. Her disposition is imposed upon by the exactions of an uncomprehending husband. She is inclined to fretfulness and melancholia by the seeming uncharitableness of fate and fortune. Her moments of introspection are almost bitter. It is a critical period,--she has reached the breaking point. [Page 134] Such moments are apt to be epochal. The turning of the wheel of fortune will decide the destiny of a human soul. It may be a friend who will supply the needed inspiration that will revitalize hope, and courage, and the determination to succeed. Or it may be a prayer, breathed in the silence of despair that will inspire the courage to fight on, and change the complexion of life. Once again we would advise such a young wife to calmly think matters over; to find out "what she is working for"; to assemble her ideals and to "know what she wants." There is nothing organically wrong. It is a condition, not a disease. She is discouraged, despondent, nervous and weak. The discouragement, despondency, and nervousness is a result of reduced physical vitality and lack of system. She is not efficient because she is not a trained worker. She is easily discouraged because anemia or bloodlessness fails to supply the oxygen necessary to a fight. There is no period in a woman's life when she is more apt to fall into a rut than at this time. Every element, spiritual and physical, which is necessary to stagnation and indifference is present, and it will take a bold and brave effort to resist the temptation to failure which has encompassed her. How can we suggest a remedy? She must first regain her health. She has simply a condition to combat, not a disease, and a definite system, a well laid out plan strictly adhered to will effect the result. She must regain her health, because, without health, she cannot hope to be efficient in work or agreeable in disposition, and she owes both to herself, to her husband and to her child. She must get out of doors. She must walk in the open air. There is absolutely nothing in life that will effect so miraculous a transformation in a discouraged, tired, weary and sick woman, as systematic daily walks in the open air. She must walk briskly, however, and she must desire to get well. We cannot get well if we do not wish to get well. One who walks with a purpose will walk erect, firmly and briskly; she will hold her chest up, and will breathe deeply, and she will drink in hope, and health, and happiness. It takes time to regain strength [135] after the strain of pregnancy and labor. Many women complain that they feel weak and do not regain strength quickly, but they make no effort. They must make a beginning. Sitting around waiting for it to come will not bring it. If they cannot walk a mile, they must walk half that distance to begin with; the five mile walk will follow in time. Many young mothers get into the habit of taking baby out in his carriage for an airing, and regard this as exercise for themselves. They join the baby brigade and parade up and down the block, or select a sunny spot where there are others on a like quest, and sit around exchanging confidences. These outings usually degenerate into gossiping parties and are a dangerous and questionable practice. They are no doubt good for the baby, but they are morally and physically bad for the young mother. This daily habit is called exercise, but it is in no sense physical exercise. The young mother should select a certain time each day, immediately after a nursing when baby is likely to sleep, and devote this period to walking. One hour each day will accomplish much in regaining and establishing health and strength, and appetite for the mother. No indoor work can take the place of a walk out of doors. It is a duty on the part of the nursing mother to do this. It will enable her to supply better milk; it will banish her tendency to nervousness; it will ensure a good appetite, good spirits, and sound sleep. It will make her a better mother and a better wife. Many young wives sow the first seeds of discontent, and ultimate failure during the natural depression that follows maternity. She must adopt system in the performance of her household duties. A good plan is to set aside a certain definite time for meals, when to begin cooking and when to end washing the dishes. Then arrange regarding the general household duties. Make a schedule for a week devoting each day to a certain task so that at the end of the week all the essential work will have been completed. By systematizing work in this way a great deal of ground can be covered and as time passes it will become easier, as many helpful ways will suggest themselves whereby time will be economized. [136] Adopt a system with the baby. Many mothers are worn-out, nervous wrecks for no other reason than a lack of system in the management of the daily life of their offspring. If system is not adopted in feeding and caring for an infant it becomes irritable. To a sick, tired, weary mother an irritable child is an unspeakable torture. Begin right. Give it adequate, but no unnecessary attention. Nurse it every two hours, and at no other time. Wake it to nurse at its regular time. It will in a few days acquire the habit of feeding regularly and will sleep between feedings. Do not overfeed it. Remember babies never die from starvation, but many do by overkindness, and overfeeding is the most prolific cause of infant mortality known. Read the article on "How long should a baby nurse?" Keep the baby clean, comfortable and happy and you will not have a fretful child, but one that will be a constant inspiration and incentive to you. Find time to rest, take a mid-day nap. Get off occasionally to the country or the sea shore for a day or two. Keep up your interest in your personal appearance, be neat and clean, and invite the attention of your husband during the evening hour. Don't let him grow away from you. Be cheerful, encourage him to tell of his hopes and plans, and show an interest in his health and in his work. Do not forget the dominating influence on your efficiency, and on your happiness which the study habit possesses. Interest yourself in some art, cultivate your mind, and soon, sooner than you think, you will have forgotten your troubles and you will have regained your health. There is no other way to do it. There is no royal way in which it can be done which is not open to the poorest mother. An ocean voyage, a trip to Europe, a society Doctor, a professional masseur, beauty experts and miracle workers cannot accomplish more than you can in your poor apartment, if you "go about it in the right way and in the right spirit." Keep in mind always, that: "failure exists only in acknowledging it." Every task that is worth while is won by self-sacrifice, by self-abnegation, by patient, persistent, enthusiastic effort, and in no other way. The joy of consummation is reward enough for all human sacrifice. * * * * * Corrections made to printed original. Index: Constipation, in breast-fed infants: 'in-infants' (line-break) in original Ibid.: Gleet; Mucous patches; Pox; Vol II: Vol I. in original Ibid.: Sanitary napkins; I, 66: I, 63 in original Ibid.: Sexual intercourse; I, 76: I, 78 in original Page 23: whether there is such a thing: 'think' (hand-corrected) in original Page 40: recruiting ground for the gangster: 'ganster' in original Page 65: incident to a confinement: 'confiement' in original Ibid.: The advantage of the Kelly pad: 'paid' in original Page 89: the patient should pass: 'pateint' in original Page 93: Advantages of Putting Baby to Breast: 'Adantages' in original Page 127: anguish and annoyance: 'anoyance' in original 
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13444	----	SEARCHLIGHTS ON HEALTH THE SCIENCE OF EUGENICS * * * * * A Guide to Purity and Physical Manhood Advice to Maiden, Wife and Mother Love, Courtship, and Marriage * * * * * By PROF. B.G. JEFFERIS, M.D., PH. D. and J.L. NICOLS, A.M. _With Excerpts from Well-Known Authorities_ REV. LEONARD DAWSON DR. M.J. SAVAGE REV. H.R. HAWEIS DR. PANCOAST DR. STALL DR. J.F. SCOTT DR. GEORGE NAPHEYS DR. STOCKHAM DR. T.D. NICHOLLS DR. R.L. DUGDALE DR. JOHN COWAN DR. M.L. HOLBROOK * * * * * Published by J.L. NICHOLS & COMPANY Naperville, Illinois, U.S.A. 1920 AGENTS WANTED "Vice has no friend like the prejudice which claims to be virtue."--_Lord Lytton._ "When the judgment's weak, the prejudice is strong."--_Kate O'Hare._ "It is the first right of every child to be well born." * * * * * COPYRIGHTED 1919, BY J.L. NICHOLS & CO. OVER 1,000,000 COPIES SOLD * * * * * TABLE OF CONTENTS. [Transcriber's Note: This Table of Contents does not appear in the original book. It has been added to this document for ease of navigation.] Knowledge is Safety, page 3 The Beginning of Life, page 5 Health a Duty, page 7 Value of Reputation, page 9 Influence of Associates, page 11 Self-Control, page 12 Habit, page 17 A Good Name, page 18 The Mother's Influence, page 21 Home Power, page 23 To Young Women, page 26 Influence of Female Character, page 30 Personal Purity, page 31 How To Write All Kinds of Letters, page 34 How To Write a Love Letter, page 37 Forms of Social Letters, page 39 Letter Writing, page 43 Forms of Love Letters, page 44 Hints and Helps on Good Behavior at All Times and at All Places, page 49 A Complete Etiquette in a Few Practical Rules, page 52 Etiquette of Calls, page 56 Etiquette in Your Speech, page 57 Etiquette of Dress and Habits, page 58 Etiquette on the Street, page 59 Etiquette Between Sexes, page 60 Practical Rules on Table Manners, page 63 Social Duties, page 65 Politeness, page 70 Influence of Good Character, page 73 Family Government, page 76 Conversation, page 79 The Toilet or The Care of the Person, page 84 A Young Man's Personal Appearance, page 86 Dress, page 88 Beauty, page 91 Sensible Helps to Beauty, page 95 How to Keep the Bloom and Grace of Youth, page 97 Form and Deformity, page 98 How to Determine a Perfect Human Figure, page 99 The History, Mystery, Benefits and Injuries of the Corset, page 101 Tight-Lacing, page 104 The Care of the Hair, page 107 How to Cure Pimples or Other Facial Eruptions, page 111 Black-Heads and Flesh Worms, page 112 Love, page 114 The Power and Peculiarities of Love, page 118 Amativeness or Connubial Love, page 122 Love and Common Sense, page 123 What Women Love in Men, page 126 What Men Love in Women, page 129 History of Marriage, page 132 Marriage, page 134 The Advantages of Wedlock, page 135 The Disadvantages of Celibacy, page 138 Old Maids, page 140 When and Whom to Marry, page 144 Choose Intellectually--Love Afterward, page 148 Love-Spats, page 154 A Broken Heart, page 159 Former Customs and Peculiarities Among Men, page 162 Sensible Hints in Choosing a Partner, page 165 Safe Hints, page 170 Marriage Securities, page 174 Women Who Make the Best Wives, page 178 Adaptation, Conjugal Affection, and Fatal Errors, page 181 First Love, Desertion and Divorce, page 185 Flirting and Its Dangers, page 190 A Word to Maidens, page 192 Popping the Question, page 194 The Wedding, page 200 Advice to Newly Married Couples, page 201 Sexual Proprieties and Improprieties, page 206 How to Perpetuate the Honey-Moon, page 209 How to Be a Good Wife, page 210 How to Be a Good Husband, page 211 Cause of Family Troubles, page 217 Jealousy--Its Cause and Cure, page 219 The Improvement of Offspring, page 222 Too Many Children, page 229 Small Families and the Improvement of the Race, page 232 The Generative Organs, page 234 The Female Sexual Organs, page 235 The Mysteries of the Formation of Life, page 238 Conception--Its Limitations, page 240 Prenatal Influences, page 244 Vaginal Cleanliness, page 246 Impotence and Sterility, page 248 Producing Boys or Girls at Will, page 252 Abortion or Miscarriage, page 253 The Murder of Innocents, page 256 The Unwelcome Child, page 258 Health and Disease, page 263 Preparation for Maternity, page 266 Impregnation, page 269 Signs and Symptoms of Pregnancy, page 270 Diseases of Pregnancy, page 274 Morning Sickness, page 282 Relation of Husband and Wife During Pregnancy, page 283 A Private Word to the Expectant Mother, page 284 Shall Pregnant Women Work?, page 285 Words for Young Mothers, page 286 How to Have Beautiful Children, page 288 Education of the Child in the Womb, page 292 How to Calculate the Time of Expected Labor, page 295 The Signs and Symptoms of Labor, page 297 Special Safeguards in Confinement, page 299 Where Did the Baby Come From?, page 303 Child Bearing Without Pain, page 304 Solemn Lessons for Parents, page 312 Ten Health Rules for Babies Cut Death Rate in Two, page 314 The Care of New-Born Infants, page 315 Nursing, page 317 Infantile Convulsions, page 319 Feeding Infants, page 319 Pains and Ills in Nursing, page 321 Home Lessons in Nursing Sick Children, page 325 A Table for Feeding a Baby on Modified Milk, page 329 Nursing [Intervals Table], page 329 Schedule for Feeding Healthy Infants During First Year [Table], page 329 How to Keep a Baby Well, page 330 How to Preserve the Health and Life of Your Infant During Hot Weather, page 332 Infant Teething, page 336 Home Treatments for the Diseases of Infants and Children, page 338 Diseases of Women, page 348 Falling of the Womb, page 350 Menstruation, page 351 Celebrated Prescriptions for All Diseases and How to Use Them, page 354 How to Cure Apoplexy, Bad Breath and Quinsy, page 365 Sensible Rules for the Nurse, page 366 Longevity, page 367 How to Apply and Use Hot Water in All Diseases, page 368 Practical Rules for Bathing, page 371 All the Different Kinds of Baths and How to Prepare Them, page 372 Digestibility of Food, page 374 How to Cook for the Sick, page 375 Save the Girls, page 380 Save the Boys, page 390 The Inhumanities of Parents, page 396 Chastity and Purity of Chracter, page 400 Exciting the Passions in Children, page 404 Puberty, Virility, and Hygenic Laws, page 406 Our Secret Sins, page 409 Physical and Moral Degeneracy, page 414 Immorality, Disease, and Death, page 416 Poisonous Literature and Bad Pictures, page 421 Startling Sins, page 423 The Prostitution of Men, page 427 The Road to Shame, page 430 The Curse of Manhood, page 433 A Private Talk to Young Men, page 437 Remedies for the Social Evil, page 440 The Selfish Slaves of Doses of Disease and Death, page 441 Object Lessons of the Effects of Alcohol and Smoking, page 445 The Destructive Effects of Cigarette Smoking, page 449 The Dangerous Vices, page 451 Nocturnal Emissions, page 457 Lost Manhood Restored, page 459 Manhood Wrecked and Rescued, page 461 The Curse and Consequence of Secret Diseases, page 464 Animal Magnetism, page 470 How to Read Character, page 473 Twilight Sleep, page 479 Painless Childbirth, page 479 The Diseases of Women, page 480 Remedies for Diseases of Women, page 483 Alphabetical Index, page 486 * * * * * HE STUMBLETH NOT, BECAUSE HE SEETH THE LIGHT. [Illustration: "Search Me. Oh Thou Great Creator."] * * * * * KNOWLEDGE IS SAFETY. 1. The old maxim, that "Knowledge is power," is a true one, but there is still a greater truth: "KNOWLEDGE IS SAFETY." Safety amid physical ills that beset mankind, and safety amid the moral pitfalls that surround so many young people, is the great crying demand of the age. 2. CRITICISM.--This work, though plain and to some extent startling, is chaste, practical and to the point, and will be a boon and a blessing to thousands who consult its pages. The world is full of ignorance, and the ignorant will always criticise, because they live to suffer ills, for they know no better. New light is fast falling upon the dark corners, and the eyes of many are being opened. 3. RESEARCHES OF SCIENCE.--The researches of science in the past few years have thrown light on many facts relating to the physiology of man and woman, and the diseases to which they are subject, and consequently many reformations have taken place in the treatment and prevention of diseases peculiar to the sexes. 4. LOCK AND KEY.--Any information bearing upon the diseases of mankind should not be kept under lock and key. The physician is frequently called upon to speak in plain language to his patients upon some private and startling disease contracted on account of ignorance. The better plan, however, is to so educate and enlighten old and young upon the important subjects of health, so that the necessity to call a physician may occur less frequently. 5. PROGRESSION.--A large, respectable, though diminishing class in every community, maintain that nothing that relates exclusively to either sex should become the subject of popular medical instruction. But such an opinion is radically wrong; ignorance is no more the mother of purity than it is of religion. Enlightenment can never work injustice to him who investigates. 6. AN EXAMPLE.--The men and women who study and practice medicine are not the worse, but the better for such knowledge; so it would be to the community in general if all would be properly instructed on the laws of health which relate to the sexes. 7. CRIME AND DEGRADATION.--Had every person a sound understanding on the relation of the sexes, one of the most fertile sources of crime and degradation would be removed. Physicians know too well what sad consequences are constantly occurring from a lack of proper knowledge on these important subjects. 8. A CONSISTENT CONSIDERATION.--Let the reader of this work study its pages carefully and be able to give safe counsel and advice to others, and remember that purity of purpose and purity of character are the brightest jewels in the crown of immortality. [Illustration: BEGINNING RIGHT.] * * * * * THE BEGINNING OF LIFE. 1. THE BEGINNING.--There is a charm in opening manhood which has commended itself to the imagination in every age. The undefined hopes and promises of the future--the dawning strength of intellect--the vigorous flow of passion--the very exchange of home ties and protected joys for free and manly pleasures, give to this period an interest and excitement unfelt, perhaps, at any other. 2. THE GROWTH OF INDEPENDENCE.--Hitherto life has been to boys, as to girls, a dependent existence--a sucker from the parent growth--a home discipline of authority and guidance and communicated impulse. But henceforth it is a transplanted growth of its own--a new and free power of activity in which the mainspring is no longer authority or law from without, but principle or opinion within. The shoot which has been nourished under the shelter of the parent stem, and bent according to its inclination, is transferred to the open world, where of its own impulse and character it must take root, and grow into strength, or sink into weakness and vice. 3. HOME TIES.--The thought of home must excite a pang even in the first moments of freedom. Its glad shelter--its kindly guidance--its very restraints, how dear and tender must they seem in parting! How brightly must they shine in the retrospect as the youth turns from them to the hardened and unfamiliar face of the world! With what a sweet sadly-cheering pathos they must linger in the memory! And then what chance and hazard is there in his newly-gotten freedom! What instincts of warning in its very novelty and dim inexperience! What possibilities of failure as well as of success in the unknown future as it stretches before him! 4. VICE OR VIRTUE.--Certainly there is a grave importance as well as a pleasant charm in the beginning of life. There is awe as well as excitement in it when rightly viewed. The possibilities that lie in it of noble or ignoble work--of happy self-sacrifice or ruinous self-indulgence--the capacities in the right use of which it may rise to heights of beautiful virtue, in the abuse of which it may sink to the depths of debasing vice--make the crisis one of fear as well as of hope, of sadness as well as of joy. 5. SUCCESS OR FAILURE.--It is wistful as well as pleasing to think of the young passing year by year into the world, and engaging with its duties, its interests, and temptations. Of the throng that struggle at the gates of entrance, how many may reach their anticipated goal? Carry the mind forward a few years, and some have climbed the hills of difficulty and gained the eminence on which they wished to stand--some, although they may not have done this, have kept their truth unhurt, their integrity unspoiled; but others have turned back, or have perished by the way, or fallen in weakness of will, no more to rise again; victims or their own sin. 6. WARNING.--As we place ourselves with the young at the opening gates of life, and think of the end from the beginning, it is a deep concern more than anything else that fills us. Words of earnest argument and warning counsel rather than of congratulation rise to our lips. 7. MISTAKES ARE OFTEN FATAL.--Begin well and the habit of doing well will become quite as easy as the habit of doing badly. "Well begun is half ended," says the proverb: "and a good beginning is half the battle." Many promising young men have irretrievably injured themselves by a first false step at the commencement of life; while others of much less promising talents, have succeeded simply by beginning well, and going onward. The good, practical beginning is to a certain extent, a pledge, a promise, and an assurance of the ultimate prosperous issue. There is many a poor creature, now crawling through life, miserable himself and the cause of sorrow to others, who might have lifted up his head and prospered, if, instead of merely satisfying himself with resolutions of well-doing, he had actually gone to work and made a good, practical beginning. 8. BEGIN AT THE RIGHT PLACE.--Too many are, however, impatient of results. They are not satisfied to begin where their fathers did, but where they left off. They think to enjoy the fruits of industry without working for them. They cannot wait for the results of labor and application, but forestall them by too early indulgence. * * * * * HEALTH A DUTY. Perhaps nothing will so much hasten the time when body and mind will both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief that the preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and acts imply that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please. Disorder entailed by disobedience to nature's dictates they regard as grievances, not as the effects of a conduct more or less flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their descendents and on future generations are often as great as those caused by crime, they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true that in the case of drunkenness the viciousness of a bodily transgression is recognized; but none appear to infer that if this bodily transgression is vicious, so too is every bodily transgression. The fact is, all breaches of the law of health are physical sins. When this is generally seen, then, and perhaps not till then, will the physical training of the young receive all the attention it deserves. Purity of life and thought should be taught in the home. It is the only safeguard of the young. Let parents wake up on this important subject. [Illustration: GLADSTONE.] * * * * * VALUE OF REPUTATION. 1. WHO SHALL ESTIMATE THE COST.--Who shall estimate the cost of a priceless reputation--that impress which gives this human dross its currency--without which we stand despised, debased, depreciated? Who shall repair it injured? Who can redeem it lost? Oh, well and truly does the great philosopher of poetry esteem the world's wealth as "trash" in the comparison. Without it gold has no value; birth, no distinction; station, no dignity; beauty, no charm; age, no reverence; without it every treasure impoverishes, every grace deforms, every dignity degrades, and all the arts, the decorations and accomplishments of life stand, like the beacon-blaze upon a rock, warning the world that its approach is dangerous; that its contact is death. 2. THE WRETCH WITHOUT IT.--The wretch without it is under eternal quarantine; no friend to greet; no home to harbor him, the voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril, and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge, a buoyant pestilence. But let me not degrade into selfishness of individual safety or individual exposure this individual principle; it testifies a higher, a more ennobling origin. 3. ITS DIVINITY.--Oh, Divine, oh, delightful legacy of a spotless reputation: Rich is the inheritance it leaves; pious the example it testifies; pure, precious and imperishable, the hope which it inspires; can there be conceived a more atrocious injury than to filch from its possessor this inestimable benefit to rob society of its charm, and solitude of its solace; not only to out-law life, but attain death, converting the very grave, the refuge of the sufferer, into the gate of infamy and of shame. 4. LOST CHARACTER.--We can conceive few crimes beyond it. He who plunders my property takes from me that which can be repaired by time; but what period can repair a ruined reputation? He who maims my person effects that which medicine may remedy; but what herb has sovereignty over the wounds of slander? He who ridicules my poverty or reproaches my profession, upbraids me with that which industry may retrieve, and integrity may purify; but what riches shall redeem the bankrupt fame? What power shall blanch the sullied show of character? There can be no injury more deadly. There can be no crime more cruel. It is without remedy. It is without antidote. It is without evasion. [Illustration: GATHERING WILD FLOWERS.] * * * * * INFLUENCE OF ASSOCIATES. If you always live with those who are lame, you will learn to limp.--FROM THE LATIN. If men wish to be held in esteem, they must associate with those who are estimable.--LA BRUYERE. 1. BY WHAT MEN ARE KNOWN.--An author is known by his writings, a mother by her daughter, a fool by his words, and all men by their companions. 2. FORMATION OF A GOOD CHARACTER.--Intercourse with persons of decided virtue and excellence is of great importance in the formation of a good character. The force of example is powerful; we are creatures of imitation, and, by a necessary influence, our tempers and habits are very much formed on the model of those with whom we familiarly associate. Better be alone than in bad company. Evil communications corrupt good manners. Ill qualities are catching as well as diseases; and the mind is at least as much, if not a great deal more, liable to infection, than the body. Go with mean people, and you think life is mean. 3. GOOD EXAMPLE.--How natural is it for a child to look up to those around him for an example of imitation, and how readily does he copy all that he sees done, good or bad. The importance of a good example on which the young may exercise this powerful and active element of their nature, is a matter of the utmost moment. 4. A TRUE MAXIM.--It is a trite, but true maxim, that "a man is known by the company he keeps." He naturally assimilates by the force of imitation, to the habits and manners of those by whom he is surrounded. We know persons who walk much with the lame, who have learned to walk with a hitch or limp like their lame friends. Vice stalks in the streets unabashed, and children copy it. 5. LIVE WITH THE CULPABLE.--Live with the culpable, and you will be very likely to die with the criminal. Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which after the first or second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven in up to the head, the pinchers cannot take hold to draw it out, which can only be done by the destruction of the wood. You may be ever so pure, you cannot associate with bad companions without falling into bad odor. 6. SOCIETY OF THE VULGAR.--Do you love the society of the vulgar? Then you are already debased in your sentiments. Do you seek to be with the profane? In your heart you are like them. Are jesters and buffoons your choice friends? He who loves to laugh at folly is himself a fool. Do you love and seek the society of the wise and good? Is this your habit? Had you rather take the lowest seat among these than the highest seat among others? Then you have already learned to be good. You may not make very much progress, but even a good beginning is not to be despised. 7. SINKS OF POLLUTION.--Strive for mental excellence, and strict integrity, and you never will be found in the sinks of pollution, and on the benches of retailers and gamblers. Once habituate yourself to a virtuous course, once secure a love of good society, and no punishment would be greater than by accident to be obliged for half a day to associate with the low and vulgar. Try to frequent the company of your betters. 8. PROCURE NO FRIEND IN HASTE.--Nor, if once secured, in haste abandon them. Be slow in choosing an associate, and slower to change him; slight no man for poverty, nor esteem any one for his wealth. Good friends should not be easily forgotten, nor used as suits of apparel, which, when we have worn them threadbare, we cast them off, and call for new. When once you profess yourself a friend, endeaver to be always such. He can never have any true friends that will be often changing them. 9. HAVE THE COURAGE TO CUT THE MOST AGREEABLE ACQUAINTANCE.--Do this when you are convinced that he lacks principle; a friend should bear with a friend's infirmities, but not with his vices. He that does a base thing in zeal for his friend, burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together. * * * * * SELF-CONTROL. "Honor and profit do not always lie in the same sack."--GEORGE HERBERT. "The government of one's self is the only true freedom for the individual."--FREDERICK PERTHES. "It is length of patience, and endurance, and forbearance that so much of what is called good in mankind and womankind is shown."--ARTHUR HELPS. 1. ESSENCE OF CHARACTER.--Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character. It is in virtue of this quality that Shakespeare defines man as a being "looking before and after." It forms the chief distinction between man and the mere animal; and, indeed, there can be no true manhood without it. [Illustration: RESULT OF BAD COMPANY.] 2. ROOT OF ALL THE VIRTUES.--Self-control is at the root of all the virtues. Let a man give the reins to his impulses and passions, and from that moment he yields up his moral freedom. He is carried along the current of life, and becomes the slave of his strongest desire for the time being. 3. RESIST INSTINCTIVE IMPULSE.--To be morally free--to be more than an animal--man must be able to resist instinctive impulse, and this can only be done by exercise of self-control. Thus it is this power which constitutes the real distinction between a physical and a moral life, and that forms the primary basis of individual character. 4. A STRONG MAN RULETH HIS OWN SPIRIT.--In the Bible praise is given, not to a strong man who "taketh a city," but to the stronger man who "ruleth his own spirit." This stronger man is he who, by discipline, exercises a constant control over his thoughts, his speech, and his acts. Nine-tenths of the vicious desires that degrade society, and which, when indulged, swell into the crimes that disgrace it, would shrink into insignificance before the advance of valiant self-discipline, self-respect, and self-control. By the watchful exercise of these virtues, purity of heart and mind become habitual, and the character is built up in chastity, virtue, and temperance. 5. THE BEST SUPPORT.--The best support of character will always be found in habit, which, according as the will is directed rightly or wrongly, as the case may be, will prove either a benignant ruler, or a cruel despot. We may be its willing subject on the one hand, or its servile slave on the other. It may help us on the road to good, or it may hurry us on the road to ruin. 6. THE IDEAL MAN.--"In the supremacy of self-control," says Herbert Spencer, "consists one of the perfections of the ideal man. Not to be impulsive, not to be spurred hither and thither by each desire that in turn comes upper-most, but to be self-restrained, self-balanced, governed by the joint decision of the feelings in council assembled, before whom every action shall have been fully debated, and calmly determined--that it is which education, moral education at least, strives to produce." 7. THE BEST REGULATED HOME.--The best regulated home is always that in which the discipline is the most perfect, and yet where it is the least felt. Moral discipline acts with the force of a law of nature. Those subject to it yield themselves to it unconsciously; and though it shapes and forms the whole character, until the life becomes crystallized in habit, the influence thus exercised is for the most part unseen and almost unfelt. 8. PRACTICE SELF-DENIAL.--If a man would get through life honorably and peaceably, he must necessarily learn to practice self-denial in small things as well as in great. Men have to bear as well as to forbear. The temper has to be held in subjection to the judgment; and the little demons of ill-humor, petulance, and sarcasm, kept resolutely at a distance. If once they find an entrance to the mind, they are apt to return, and to establish for themselves a permanent occupation there. 9. POWER OF WORDS.--It is necessary to one's personal happiness, to exercise control over one's words as well as acts: for there are words that strike even harder than blows; and men may "speak daggers," though they use none. The stinging repartee that rises to the lips, and which, if uttered, might cover an adversary with confusion, how difficult it is to resist saying it! "Heaven, keep us," says Miss Bremer, in her 'Home', "from the destroying power of words! There are words that sever hearts more than sharp swords do; there are words the point of which sting the heart through the course of a whole life." 10. CHARACTER EXHIBITS ITSELF.--Character exhibits itself in self-control of speech as much as in anything else. The wise and forbearant man will restrain his desire to say a smart or severe thing at the expense of another's feeling; while the fool blurts out what he thinks, and will sacrifice his friend rather than his joke. "The mouth of a wise man," said Solomon, "is in his heart; the heart of a fool is in his mouth." 11. BURNS.--No one knew the value of self-control better than the poet Burns, and no one could teach it more eloquently to others, but when it came to practice, Burns was as weak as the weakest. He could not deny himself the pleasure of uttering a harsh and clever sarcasm at another's expense. One of his biographers observed of him, that it was no extravagant arithmetic to say that for every ten jokes he made himself a hundred enemies. But this was not all. Poor Burns exercised no control over his appetites, but freely gave them the rein: "Thus thoughtless follies laid him low, And stained his name." 12. SOW POLLUTION.--Nor had he the self-denial to resist giving publicity to compositions originally intended for the delight of the tap-room, but which continued secretly to sow pollution broadcast in the minds of youth. Indeed, notwithstanding the many exquisite poems of this writer, it is not saying too much that his immoral writings have done far more harm than his purer writings have done good; and it would be better that all his writings should be destroyed and forgotten, provided his indecent songs could be destroyed with them. 13. MORAL PRINCIPLE.--Many of our young men lack moral principle. They cannot look upon a beautiful girl with a pure heart and pure thoughts. They have not manifested or practiced that self-control which develops true manhood and brings into subordination evil thoughts, evil passions, and evil practices. Men who have no self-control will find life a failure, both in a social and in a business sense. The world despises an insignificant person who lacks backbone and character. Stand upon your manhood and womanhood; honor your convictions, and dare to do right. 14. STRONG DRINK.--There is the habit of strong drink. It is only the lack of self-control that brings men into the depths of degradation; on account of the cup, the habit of taking drink occasionally in its milder forms--of playing with a small appetite that only needs sufficient playing with to make you a demon or a dolt. You think you are safe; I know you are not safe, if you drink at all; and when you get offended with the good friends that warn you of your danger, you are a fool. I know that the grave swallows daily, by scores, drunkards, every one of whom thought he was safe while he was forming his appetite. But this is old talk. A young man in this age who forms the habit of drinking, or puts himself in danger of forming the habit, is usually so weak that he does not realize the consequences. [Illustration: LOST SELF-CONTROL.] * * * * * HABIT. It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his Errors as his Knowledge.--COLTON. There are habits contracted by bad example, or bad management, before we have judgment to discern their approaches, or because the eye of Reason is laid asleep, or has not compass of view sufficient to look around on every quarter.--TUCKER. 1. HABIT.--Our real strength in life depends upon habits formed in early life. The young man who sows his wild oats and indulges in the social cup, is fastening chains upon himself that never can be broken. The innocent youth by solitary practice of self-abuse will fasten upon himself a habit which will wreck his physical constitution and bring suffering and misery and ruin. Young man and young woman, beware of bad habits formed in early life. 2. A BUNDLE OF HABITS.--Man, it has been said, is a bundle of habits; and habit is second nature. Metastasio entertained so strong an opinion as to the power of repetition in act and thought, that he said, "All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself." Evil habits must be conquered, or they will conquer us and destroy our peace and happiness. 3. VICIOUS HABITS.--Vicious habits, when opposed, offer the most vigorous resistence on the first attack. At each successive encounter this resistence grows fainter and fainter, until finally it ceases altogether and the victory is achieved. Habit is man's best friend and worst enemy; it can exalt him to the highest pinnacle of virtue, honor and happiness, or sink him to the lowest depths of vice, shame and misery. 4. HONESTY, OR KNAVERY.--We may form habits of honesty, or knavery; truth, or falsehood; of industry, or idleness; frugality, or extravagance; of patience, or impatience; self-denial, or self-indulgence; of kindness, cruelty, politeness, rudeness, prudence, perseverance, circumspection. In short, there, is not a virtue, nor a vice; not an act of body, nor of mind, to which we may not be chained down by this despotic power. 5. BEGIN WELL.--It is a great point for young men to begin well; for it is the beginning of life that that system of conduct is adopted which soon assumes the force of habit. Begin well, and the habit of doing well will become quite easy, as easy as the habit of doing badly. Pitch upon that course of life which is the most excellent, and habit will render it the most delightful. * * * * * A GOOD NAME. 1. THE LONGING FOR A GOOD NAME.--The longing for a good name is one of those laws of nature that were passed for the soul and written down within to urge toward a life of action, and away from small or wicked action. So large is this passion that it is set forth in poetic thought, as having a temple grand as that of Jupiter or Minerva, and up whose marble steps all noble minds struggle--the temple of Fame. 2. CIVILIZATION.--Civilization is the ocean of which the millions of individuals are the rivers and torrents. These rivers and torrents swell with those rains of money and home and fame and happiness, and then fall and run almost dry, but the ocean of civilization has gathered up all these waters, and holds them in sparkling beauty for all subsequent use. Civilization is a fertile delta made by the drifting souls of men. 3. FAME.--The word "fame" never signifies simply notoriety. The meaning of the direct term may be seen from its negation or opposite, for only the meanest of men are called infamous. They are utterly without fame, utterly nameless; but if fame implied only notoriety, then infamous would possess no marked significance. Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but who bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals and follows them to the grave. 4. LIFE-MOTIVE.--So in studying that life-motive which is called a "good name," we must ask the large human race to tell us the high merit of this spiritual longing. We must read the words of the sage, who said long centuries ago that "a good name was rather chosen than great riches." Other sages have said as much. Solon said that "He that will sell his good name will sell the State." Socrates said, "Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds." Our Shakespeare said, "He lives in fame who died in virtue's cause." 5. INFLUENCES OF OUR AGE.--Our age is deeply influenced by the motives called property and home and pleasure, but it is a question whether the generation in action today and the generation on the threshold of this intense life are conscious fully of the worth of an honorable name. 6. BEAUTY OF CHARACTER.--We do not know whether with us all a good name is less sweet than it was with our fathers, but this is painfully evident that our times do not sufficiently behold the beauty of character--their sense does not detect quickly enough or love deeply enough this aroma of heroic deeds. 7. SELLING OUT THEIR REPUTATION.--It is amazing what multitudes there are who are willing to sell out their reputation, and amazing at what a low price they will make the painful exchange. Some king remarked that he would not tell a lie for any reward less than an empire. It is not uncommon in our world for a man to sell out all his honor and hopes for a score or a half score of dollars. 8. PRISONS OVERFLOWING.--Our prisons are all full to overflowing of those who took no thought of honor. They have not waited for an empire to be offered them before they would violate the sacred rights of man, but many of them have even murdered for a cause that would not have justified even an exchange of words. 9. INTEGRITY THE PRIDE OF THE GOVERNMENT.--If integrity were made the pride of the government, the love of it would soon spring up among the people. If all fraudulent men should go straight to jail, pitilessly, and if all the most rigid characters were sought out for all political and commercial offices, there would soon come a popular honesty just as there has come a love of reading or of art. It is with character as with any new article--the difficulty lies in its first introduction. 10. A NEW VIRTUE.--May a new virtue come into favor, all our high rewards, those from the ballot-box, those from employers, the rewards of society, the rewards of the press, should be offered only to the worthy. A few years of rewarding the worthy would result in a wonderful zeal in the young to build up, not physical property, but mental and spiritual worth. 11. BLESSING THE FAMILY GROUP.--No young man or young woman can by industry and care reach an eminence in study or art or character, without blessing the entire family group. We have all seen that the father and mother feel that all life's care and labor were at last perfectly rewarded in the success of their child. But had the child been reckless or indolent, all this domestic joy--the joy of a large group--would have been blighted forever. 12. AN HONORED CHILD.--There have been triumphs at old Rome, where victors marched along with many a chariot, many an elephant, and many spoils of the East; and in all times money has been lavished in the efforts of States to tell their pleasure in the name of some general; but more numerous and wide-spread and beyond expression, by chariot or cannon or drum, have been those triumphal hours, when some son or daughter has returned to the parental hearth beautiful in the wreaths of some confessed excellence, bearing a good name. 13. RICH CRIMINALS.--We looked at the utter wretchedness of the men who threw away reputation, and would rather be rich criminals in exile than be loved friends and persons at home. 14. AN EMPTY, OR AN EVIL NAME.--Young and old cannot afford to bear the burden of an empty or an evil name. A good name is a motive of life. It is a reason for that great encampment we call an existence. While you are building the home of to-morrow, build up also that kind of soul that can sleep sweetly on home's pillow, and can feel that God is not near as an avenger of wrong, but as the Father not only of the verdure and the seasons, but of you. [Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN DANCER.] * * * * * THE MOTHER'S INFLUENCE. Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you, Many a Summer the grass has grown green, Blossomed and faded, our faces between; Yet with strong yearning and passionate pain, Long I to-night for your presence again. --_Elizabeth Akers Allen._ A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive. --_Coleridge._ There is none, In all this cold and hollow world, no fount Of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within A mother's heart. --_Mrs. Hemans._ And all my mother came into mine eyes, And gave me up to tears. --_Shakespeare._ 1. HER INFLUENCE.--It is true to nature, although it be expressed in a figurative form, that a mother is both the morning and the evening star of life. The light of her eye is always the first to rise, and often the last to set upon man's day of trial. She wields a power more decisive far than syllogisms in argument or courts of last appeal in authority. 2. HER LOVE.--Mother! ecstatic sound so twined round our hearts that they must cease to throb ere we forget it; 'tis our first love; 'tis part of religion. Nature has set the mother upon such a pinnacle that our infant eyes and arms are first uplifted to it; we cling to it in manhood; we almost worship it in old age. 3. HER TENDERNESS.--Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother's tenderness while living. How heedless are we in youth of all her anxieties and kindness! But when she is dead and gone, when the cares and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts, when we experience for ourselves how hard it is to find true sympathy, how few to love us, how few will befriend us in misfortune, then it is that we think of the mother we have lost. 4. HER CONTROLLING POWER.--The mother can take man's whole nature under her control. She becomes what she has been called "The Divinity of Infancy." Her smile is its sunshine, her word its mildest law, until sin and the world have steeled the heart. [Illustration: A PRAYERFUL AND DEVOTED MOTHER.] 5. THE LAST TIE.--The young man who has forsaken the advice and influence of his mother has broken the last cable and severed the last tie that binds him to an honorable and upright life. He has forsaken his best friend, and every hope for his future welfare may be abandoned, for he is lost forever, if he is faithless to mother, he will have but little respect for wife and children. 6. HOME TIES.--The young man or young woman who love their home and love their mother can be safely trusted under almost any and all circumstances, and their life will not be a blank, for they seek what is good. Their hearts will be ennobled, and God will bless them. [Illustration: HOME AMUSEMENTS.] * * * * * HOME POWER. "The mill-streams that turn the clappers of the world arise in solitary places."--HELPS. "Lord! with what care hast Thou begirt us round! Parents first season us. Then schoolmasters Deliver us to laws. They send us bound To rules of reason."--GEORGE HERBERT. 1. SCHOOL OF CHARACTER.--Home is the first and most important school of character. It is there that every human being receives his best moral training, or his worst, for it is there that he imbibes those principles of conduct which endure through manhood, and cease only with life. 2. HOME MAKES THE MAN.--It is a common saying, "Manners make the man;" and there is a second, that "Mind makes the man;" but truer than either is a third, that "Home makes the man." For the home-training includes not only manners and mind, but character. It is mainly in the home that the heart is opened, the habits are formed, the intellect is awakened, and character moulded for good or for evil. 3. GOVERN SOCIETY.--From that source, be it pure or impure, issue the principles and maxims that govern society. Law itself is but the reflex of homes. The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries, and they who hold the leading-strings of children may even exercise a greater power than those who wield the reins of government. 4. THE CHILD IS FATHER OF THE MAN.--The child's character is the nucleus of the man's; all after-education is but superposition; the form of the crystal remains the same. Thus the saying of the poet holds true in a large degree, "The child is father of the man;" or as Milton puts it, "The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day." Those impulses to conduct which last the longest and are rooted the deepest, always have their origin near our birth. It is then that the germs of virtues or vices, of feelings or sentiments, are first implanted which determine the character of life. 5. NURSERIES.--Thus homes, which are nurseries of children who grow up into men and women, will be good or bad according to the power that governs them. Where the spirit of love and duty pervades the home, where head and heart bear rule wisely there, where the daily life is honest and virtuous, where the government is sensible, kind, and loving, then may we expect from such a home an issue of healthy, useful, and happy beings, capable as they gain the requisite strength, of following the footsteps of their parents, of walking uprightly, governing themselves wisely, and contributing to the welfare of those about them. 6. IGNORANCE, COARSENESS, AND SELFISHNESS.--On the other hand, if surrounded by ignorance, coarseness, and selfishness, they will unconsciously assume the same character, and grow up to adult years rude, uncultivated, and all the more dangerous to society if placed amidst the manifold temptations of what is called civilized life. "Give your child to be educated by a slave," said an ancient Greek "and, instead of one slave, you will then have two." 7. MATERNAL LOVE.--Maternal love is the visible providence of our race. Its influence is constant and universal. It begins with the education of the human being at the outstart of life, and is prolonged by virtue of the powerful influence which every good mother exercises over her children through life. When launched into the world, each to take part in its labors, anxieties, and trials, they still turn to their mother for consolation, if not for counsel, in their time of trouble and difficulty. The pure and good thoughts she has implanted in their minds when children continue to grow up into good acts long after she is dead; and when there is nothing but a memory of her left, her children rise up and call her blessed. 8. WOMAN, ABOVE ALL OTHER EDUCATORS, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart of humanity; he its judgment, she its feeling; he its strength, she its grace, ornament and solace. Even the understanding of the best woman seems to work mainly through her affections. And thus, though man may direct the intellect, woman cultivates the feelings, which mainly determine the character. While he fills the memory, she occupies the heart. She makes us love what he can make us only believe, and it is chiefly through her that we are enabled to arrive at virtue. 9. THE POOREST DWELLING, presided over by a virtuous, thrifty, cheerful, and cleanly woman may thus be the abode of comfort, virtue and happiness; it may be the scene of every enobling relation in family life; it may be endeared to man by many delightful associations; furnishing a sanctuary for the heart, a refuge from the storms of life, a sweet resting-place after labor, a consolation in misfortune, a pride in prosperity and a joy at all times. 10. THE GOOD HOME IS THUS THE BEST OF SCHOOLS, not only in youth but in age. There young and old best learn cheerfulness, patience, self-control, and the spirit of service and of duty. The home is the true school of courtesy, of which woman is always the best practical instructor. "Without woman," says the Provencal proverb, "men were but ill-licked cubs." Philanthropy radiates from the home as from a center. "To love the little platoon we belong to in society," said Burke, "is the germ of all public affections." The wisest and best have not been ashamed to own it to be their greatest joy and happiness to sit "behind the heads of children" in the inviolable circle of home. [Illustration] [Illustration: DAY DREAMING.] * * * * * TO YOUNG WOMEN. 1. TO BE A WOMAN, in the truest and highest sense of the word is to be the best thing beneath the skies. To be a woman is something more than to live eighteen or twenty years; something more than to grow to the physical stature of women; something more than to wear flounces, exhibit dry goods, sport jewelry, catch the gaze of lewd-eyed men; something more than to be a belle, a wife, or a mother. Put all these qualifications together and they do but little toward making a true woman. 2. BEAUTY AND STYLE are not the surest passports to womanhood--some of the noblest specimens of womanhood that the world has ever seen have presented the plainest and most unprepossessing appearance. A woman's worth is to be estimated by the real goodness of her heart, the greatness of her soul, and the purity and sweetness of her character; and a woman with a kindly disposition and well-balanced temper is both lovely and attractive, be her face ever so plain, and her figure ever so homely; she makes the best of wives and the truest of mothers. 3. BEAUTY IS A DANGEROUS GIFT.--It is even so. Like wealth, it has ruined its thousands. Thousands of the most beautiful women are destitute of common sense and common humanity. No gift from heaven is so general and so widely abused by woman as the gift of beauty. In about nine cases in ten it makes her silly, senseless, thoughtless, giddy, vain, proud, frivolous, selfish, low and mean. I think I have seen more girls spoiled by beauty than by any other one thing, "She is beautiful, and she knows it," is as much as to say that she is spoiled. A beautiful girl is very likely to believe she was made to be looked at; and so she sets herself up for a show at every window, in every door, on every corner of the street, in every company at which opportunity offers for an exhibition of herself. 4. BEWARE OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN.--These facts have long since taught sensible men to beware of beautiful women--to sound them carefully before they give them their confidence. Beauty is shallow--only skin deep; fleeting--only for a few years' reign; dangerous--tempting to vanity and lightness of mind; deceitful--dazzling of ten to bewilder; weak--reigning only to ruin; gross--leading often to sensual pleasure. And yet we say it need not be so. Beauty is lovely and ought to be innocently possessed. It has charms which ought to be used for good purposes. It is a delightful gift, which ought to be received with gratitude and worn with grace and meekness. It should always minister to inward beauty. Every woman of beautiful form and features should cultivate a beautiful mind and heart. 5. RIVAL THE BOYS.--We want the girls to rival the boys in all that is good, and refined, and ennobling. We want them to rival the boys, as they well can, in learning, in understanding, in virtues; in all noble qualities of mind and heart, but not in any of those things that have caused them, justly or unjustly, to be described as savages. We want the girls to be gentle--not weak, but gentle, and kind and affectionate. We want to be sure, that wherever a girl is, there should be a sweet, subduing and harmonizing influence of purity, and truth, and love, pervading and hallowing, from center to circumference, the entire circle in which she moves. If the boys are savages, we want her to be their civilizer. We want her to tame them, to subdue their ferocity, to soften their manners, and to teach them all needful lessons of order, sobriety, and meekness, and patience and goodness. 6. KINDNESS.--Kindness is the ornament of man--it is the chief glory of woman--it is, indeed, woman's true prerogative--her sceptre and her crown. It is the sword with which she conquers, and the charm with which she captivates. 7. ADMIRED AND BELOVED.--Young lady, would you be admired and beloved? Would you be an ornament to your sex, and a blessing to your race? Cultivate this heavenly virtue. Wealth may surround you with its blandishments, and beauty, and learning, or talents, may give you admirers, but love and kindness alone can captivate the heart. Whether you live in a cottage or a palace, these graces can surround you with perpetual sunshine, making you, and all around you, happy. 8. INWARD GRACE.--Seek ye then, fair daughters, the possession of that inward grace, whose essence shall permeate and vitalize the affections, adorn the countenance make mellifluous the voice, and impart a hallowed beauty even to your motions. Not merely that you may be loved, would I urge this, but that you may, in truth, be lovely--that loveliness which fades not with time, nor is marred or alienated by disease, but which neither chance nor change can in any way despoil. 9. SILKEN ENTICEMENTS OF THE STRANGER.--We urge you, gentle maiden, to beware of the silken enticements of the stranger, until your love is confirmed by protracted acquaintance. Shun the idler, though his coffers overflow with pelf. Avoid the irreverent--the scoffer of hallowed things; and him who "looks upon the wine while it is red;" him too, "who hath a high look and a proud heart," and who "privily slandereth his neighbor." Do not heed the specious prattle about "first love," and so place, irrevocably, the seal upon your future destiny, before you have sounded, in silence and secrecy, the deep fountains of your own heart. Wait, rather, until your own character and that of him who would woo you, is more fully developed. Surely, if this "first love" cannot endure a short probation, fortified by "the pleasures of hope," how can it be expected to survive years of intimacy, scenes of trial, distracting cares, wasting sickness, and all the homely routine of practical life? Yet it is these that constitute life, and the love that cannot abide them is false and must die. [Illustration: ROMAN LADIES.] * * * * * INFLUENCE OF FEMALE CHARACTER. 1. MORAL EFFECT.--It is in its moral effect on the mind and the heart of man, that the influence of woman is most powerful and important. In the diversity of tastes, habits, inclinations, and pursuits of the two sexes, is found a most beneficent provision for controlling the force and extravagance of human passion. The objects which most strongly seize and stimulate the mind of man, rarely act at the same time and with equal power on the mind of woman. She is naturally better, purer, and more chaste in thought and language. 2. FEMALE CHARACTER.--But the influence of female character on the virtue of men, is not seen merely in restraining and softening the violence of human passion. To her is mainly committed the task of pouring into the opening mind of infancy its first impressions of duty, and of stamping on its susceptible heart the first image of its God. Who will not confess the influence of a mother in forming the heart of a child? What man is there who can not trace the origin of many of the best maxims of his life to the lips of her who gave him birth? How wide, how lasting, how sacred is that part of a woman's influence. 3. VIRTUE OF A COMMUNITY.--There is yet another mode by which woman may exert a powerful influence on the virtue of a community. It rests with her in a pre-eminent degree, to give tone and elevation to the moral character of the age, by deciding the degree of virtue that shall be necessary to afford a passport to her society. If all the favor of woman were given only to the good, if it were known that the charms and attractions of beauty and wisdom, and wit, were reserved only for the pure; if, in one word, something of a similar rigor were exerted to exclude the profligate and abandoned of society, as is shown to those, who have fallen from virtue,--how much would be done to re-enforce the motives to moral purity among us, and impress on the minds of all a reverence for the sanctity and obligations of virtue. 4. THE INFLUENCE OF WOMAN ON THE MORAL SENTIMENTS.--The influence of woman on the moral sentiments of society is intimately connected with her influence on its religious character; for religion and a pure and elevated morality must ever stand in the relation to each other of effect and cause. The heart of a woman is formed for the abode of sacred truth; and for the reasons alike honorable to her character and to that of society. From the nature of humanity this must be so, or the race would soon degenerate and moral contagion eat out the heart of society. The purity of home is the safeguard to American manhood. [Illustration] * * * * * PERSONAL PURITY. "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power."--Tennyson 1. WORDS OF THE GREAT TEACHER.--Mark the words of the Great Teacher: "If thy right hand or foot cause thee to fall, cut it off and cast it from thee. If thy right eye cause thee to fall, pluck it out. It is better for thee to enter into life maimed and halt, than having two eyes to be cast into hell-fire, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." 2. A MELANCHOLY FACT.--It is a melancholy fact in human experience, that the noblest gifts which men possess are constantly prostituted to other purposes than those for which they are designed. The most valuable and useful organs of the body are those which are capable of the greatest dishonor, abuse, and corruption. What a snare the wonderful organism of the eye may become, when used to read corrupt books, or to look upon licentious pictures, or vulgar theater scenes, or when used to meet the fascinating gaze of the harlot! What an instrument for depraving the whole man may be found in the matchless powers of the brain, the hand, the mouth, or the tongue! What potent instruments may these become in accomplishing the ruin of the whole being, for time and eternity! 3. Abstinence.--Some can testify with thankfulness that they never knew the sins of gambling, drunkenness, fornication, or adultery. In all these cases abstinence has been, and continues to be, liberty. Restraint is the noblest freedom. No man can affirm that self-denial ever injured him; on the contrary, self-restraint has been liberty, strength and blessing. Solemnly ask young men to remember this when temptation and passion strive as a floodtide to move them from the anchorage and peace of self-restraint. Beware of the deceitful stream of temporary gratification, whose eddying current drifts towards license, shame, disease and death. Remember how quickly moral power declines, how rapidly the edge of the fatal maelstrom is reached, how near the vortex, how terrible the penalty, how fearful the sentence of everlasting punishment! 4. FRANK DISCUSSION.--The time has arrived for a full and frank discussion of those things which affect the personal purity. Thousands are suffering to-day from various weaknesses, the causes of which they have never learned. Manly vigor is not increasing with that rapidity which a Christian age demands. Means of dissipation are on the increase. It is high time, therefore, that every lover of the race should call a halt, and inquire into the condition of things. Excessive modesty on this subject is not virtue. Timidity in presenting unpleasant but important truths has permitted untold damage in every age. 5. MAN IS A CARELESS BEING.--He is very much inclined to sinful things. He more often does that which is wrong than that which is right, because it is easier, and, for the moment, perhaps, more satisfying to the flesh. The Creator is often blamed for man's weaknesses and inconsistencies. This is wrong. God did not intend that we should be mere machines, but free moral agents. We are privileged to choose between good and evil. Hence, if we perseveringly choose the latter, and make a miserable failure of life, we should blame only ourselves. 6. THE PULPIT.--Would that every pulpit in the land might join hands with the medical profession and cry out with no uncertain sound against the mighty evils herein stigmatized! It would work a revolution for which coming society could never cease to be grateful. 7. STRIVE TO ATTAIN A HIGHER LIFE.--Strive to attain unto a higher and better life. Beware of all excesses, of whatever nature, and guard your personal purity with sacred determination. Let every aspiration be upward, and be strong in every good, resolution. Seek the light, for in light there is life, while in darkness there is decay and death. [Illustration: THE FIRST LOVE LETTER.] [Illustration] * * * * * HOW TO WRITE ALL KINDS OF LETTERS. 1. From the President in his cabinet to the laborer in the street; from the lady in her parlor to the servant in her kitchen; from the millionaire to the beggar; from the emigrant to the settler; from every country and under every combination of circumstances, letter writing in all its forms and varieties is most important to the advancement, welfare and happiness of the human family. 2. EDUCATION.--The art of conveying thought through the medium of written language is so valuable and so necessary, a thorough knowledge of the practice must be desirable to every one. For merely to write a good letter requires the exercise of much of the education and talent of any writer. 3. A GOOD LETTER.--A good letter must be correct in every mechanical detail, finished in style, interesting in substance, and intelligible in construction. Few there are who do not need write them; yet a letter perfect in detail is rarer than any other specimen of composition. 4. PENMANSHIP.--It is folly to suppose that the faculty for writing a good hand is confined to any particular persons. There is no one who can write at all, but what can write well, if only the necessary pains are practiced. Practice makes perfect. Secure a few copy books and write an hour each day. You will soon write a good hand. 5. WRITE PLAINLY.--Every word of even the most trifling document should be written in such clear characters that it would be impossible to mistake it for another word, or the writer may find himself in the position of the Eastern merchant who, writing to the Indies for five thousand mangoes, received by the next vessel five hundred monkies, with a promise of more in the next cargo. 6. HASTE.--Hurry is no excuse for bad writing, because any one of sense knows that everything hurried is liable to be ruined. Dispatch may be acquired, but hurry will ruin everything. If, however, you must write slowly to write well, then be careful not to hurry at all, for the few moments you will gain by rapid writing will never compensate you for the disgrace of sending an ill-written letter. 7. NEATNESS.--Neatness is also of great importance. A fair white sheet with handsomely written words will be more welcome to any reader than a blotted, bedaubed page covered with erasures and dirt, even if the matter in each be of equal value and interest. Erasures, blots, interlineations always spoil the beauty of any letter. 8. BAD SPELLING.--When those who from faulty education, or forgetfulness are doubtful about the correct spelling of any word, it is best to keep a dictionary at hand, and refer to it upon such occasions. It is far better to spend a few moments in seeking for a doubtful word, than to dispatch an ill-spelled letter, and the search will probably impress the spelling upon the mind for a future occasion. 9. CARELESSNESS.--Incorrect spelling will expose the most important or interesting letter to the severest sarcasm and ridicule. However perfect in all other respects, no epistle that is badly spelled will be regarded as the work of an educated gentleman or lady. Carelessness will never be considered, and to be ignorant of spelling is to expose an imperfect education at once. 10. AN EXCELLENT PRACTICE.--After writing a letter, read it over carefully, correct all the errors and re-write it. If you desire to become a good letter writer, improve your penmanship, improve your language and grammar, re-writing once or twice every letter that you have occasion to write, whether on social or business subjects. 11. PUNCTUATION.--A good rule for punctuation is to punctuate where the sense requires it, after writing a letter and reading it over carefully you will see where the punctuation marks are required, you can readily determine where the sense requires it, so that your letter will convey the desired meaning. [Illustration] 12. CORRESPONDENCE.--There is no better school or better source for self-improvement than a pleasant correspondence between friends. It is not at all difficult to secure a good list of correspondents if desired. The young people who take advantage of such opportunities for self-improvement will be much more popular in the community and in society. Letter writing cultivates the habit of study; it cultivates the mind, the heart, and stimulates self-improvement in general. 13. FOLDING.--Another bad practice with those unaccustomed to corresponding is to fold the sheet of writing in such a fantastic manner as to cause the receiver much annoyance in opening it. To the sender it may appear a very ingenious performance, but to the receiver it is only a source of vexation and annoyance, and may prevent the communication receiving the attention it would otherwise merit. 14. SIMPLE STYLE.--The style of letter writing should be simple and unaffected, not raised on stilts and indulging in pedantic displays which are mostly regarded as cloaks of ignorance. Repeated literary quotations, involved sentences, long-sounding words and scraps of Latin, French and other languages are, generally speaking, out of place, and should not be indulged in. 15. THE RESULT.--A well written letter has opened the way to prosperity for many a one, has led to many a happy marriage and constant friendship, and has secured many a good service in time of need; for it is in some measure a photograph of the writer, and may inspire love or hatred, regard or aversion in the reader, just as the glimpse of a portrait often determine us, in our estimate, of the worth of the person represented. Therefore, one of the roads to fortune runs through the ink bottle, and if we want to attain a certain end in love, friendship or business, we must trace out the route correctly with the pen in our hand. [Illustration] * * * * * HOW TO WRITE A LOVE LETTER. 1. LOVE.--There is no greater or more profound reality than love. Why that reality should be obscured by mere sentimentalism, with all its train of absurdities is incomprehensible. There is no nobler possession than the love of another. There is no higher gift from one human being to another than love. The gift and the possession are true sanctifiers of life, and should be worn as precious jewels, without affectation and without bashfulness. For this reason there is nothing to be ashamed of in a love letter, provided it be sincere. 2. FORFEITS.--No man need consider that he forfeits dignity if he speaks with his whole heart: no woman need fear she forfeits her womanly attributes if she responds as her heart bids her respond. "Perfect love casteth out fear" is as true now as when the maxim was first given to the world. 3. TELLING THEIR LOVE.--The generality of the sex is, love to be loved; how are they to know the fact that they are loved unless they are told? To write a sensible love letter requires more talent than to solve, with your pen, a profound problem in philosophy. Lovers must not then expect much from each other's epistles. 4. CONFIDENTIAL.--Ladies and gentlemen who correspond with each other should never be guilty of exposing any of the contents of any letters written expressing confidence, attachment or love. The man who confides in a lady and honors her with his confidence should be treated with perfect security and respect, and those who delight in showing their confidential letters to others are unworthy, heartless and unsafe companions. 5. RETURN OF LETTERS.--If letters were written under circumstances which no longer exist and all confidential relations are at an end, then all letters should be promptly returned. 6. HOW TO BEGIN A LOVE LETTER.--How to begin a love letter has been no doubt the problem of lovers and suitors of all ages and nations. Fancy the youth of Young America with lifted pen, thinking how he shall address his beloved. Much depends upon this letter. What shall he say, and how shall he say it, is the great question. Perseverance, however, will solve the problem and determine results. 7. FORMS OF BEGINNING A LOVE LETTER.--Never say, "My Dearest Nellie," "My Adored Nellie," or "My Darling Nellie," until Nellie has first called you "My Dear," or has given you to understand that such familiar terms are permissible. As a rule a gentleman will never err if he says "Dear Miss Nellie," and if the letters are cordially reciprocated the "Miss" may in time be omitted, or other familiar terms used instead. In addressing a widow "Dear Madam," or, "My Dear Madam," will be a proper form until sufficient intimacy will justify the use of other terms. 8. RESPECT.--A lady must always be treated with respectful delicacy, and a gentleman should never use the term "Dear" or "My Dear" under any circumstances unless he knows it is perfectly acceptable or a long and friendly acquaintance justifies it. 9. HOW TO FINISH A LETTER.--A letter will be suggested by the remarks on how to begin one. "Yours respectfully," "Yours truly," "Yours sincerely," "Yours affectionately," "Yours ever affectionately," "Yours most affectionately," "Ever yours," "Ever your own," or "Yours," are all appropriate, each depending upon the beginning of the letter. It is difficult to see any phrase which could be added to them which would carry more meaning than they contain. People can sign themselves "adorers" and such like, but they do so at the peril of good taste. It is not good that men or women "worship" each other--if they succeed in preserving reciprocal love and esteem they will have cause for great contentment. 10. PERMISSION.--No young man should ever write to a young lady any letter, formal or informal, unless he has first sought her permission to do so. 11. SPECIAL FORMS.--We give various forms or models of love letters to be _studied, not copied._ We have given no replies to the forms given, as every letter written will naturally suggest an answer. A careful study will be a great help to many who have not enjoyed the advantages of a literary education. [Illustration] * * * * * FORMS OF SOCIAL LETTERS. _1.--From a Young Lady to a Clergyman Asking a Recommendation._ Nantwich, May 18th, 1915 Reverend and Dear Sir: Having seen an advertisment for a school mistress in the Daily Times, I have been recommended to offer myself as a candidate. Will you kindly favor me with a testimonial as to my character, ability and conduct while at Boston Normal School? Should you consider that I am fitted for the position, you would confer a great favor on me if you would interest yourself in my behalf. I remain, Reverend Sir, Your most obedient and humble servant, LAURA B. NICHOLS. _2.--Applying for a Position as a Teacher of Music._ Scotland, Conn., January 21st, 1915 Madam, Seeing your advertisement in The Clarion of to-day, I write to offer my services as a teacher of music in your family. I am a graduate of the Peabody Institute, of Baltimore, where I was thoroughly instructed in instrumental and vocal music. I refer by permission to Mrs. A.J. Davis, 1922 Walnut Street; Mrs. Franklin Hill, 2021 Spring Garden Street, and Mrs. William Murray, 1819 Spruce Street, in whose families I have given lessons. Hoping that you may see fit to employ me, I am, Very respectfully yours, NELLIE REYNOLDS. _3.--Applying for a Situation as a Cook._ Charlton Place, September 8th, 1894. Madam: Having seen your advertisement for a cook in to-day's Times, I beg to offer myself for your place. I am a thorough cook. I can make clear soups, entrees, jellies, and all kinds of made dishes. I can bake, and am also used to a dairy. My wages are $4 per week, and I can give good reference from my last place, in which I lived for two years. I am thirty-three years of age. I remain, Madam, Yours very respectfully, MARY MOONEY. _4.--Recommending a School Teacher._ Ottawa, Ill., February 10th, 1894. Col. Geo. H. Haight, President Board of Trustees, etc. Dear Sir: I take pleasure in recommending to your favorable consideration the application of Miss Hannah Alexander for the position of teacher in the public school at Weymouth. Miss Alexander is a graduate of the Davidson Seminary, and for the past year has taught a school in this place. My children have been among her pupils, and their progress has been entirely satisfactory to me. Miss Alexander is a strict disciplinarian, an excellent teacher, and is thoroughly competent to conduct the school for which she applies. Trusting that you may see fit to bestow upon her the appointment she seeks, I am. Yours very respectfully, ALICE MILLER. _5.--A Business Introduction._ J.W. Brown, Earlville, Ill. Chicago, Ill., May 1st, 1915 My Dear Sir: This will introduce to you Mr. William Channing, of this city, who visits Earlville on a matter of business, which he will explain to you in person. You can rely upon his statements, as he is a gentleman of high character, and should you be able to render him any assistance, it would be greatly appreciated by Yours truly, HAIGHT LARABEE. _6.--Introducing One Lady to Another._ Dundee, Tenn., May 5th, 1894. Dear Mary: Allow me to introduce to you my ever dear friend, Miss Nellie Reynolds, the bearer of this letter. You have heard me speak of her so often that you will know at once who she is. As I am sure you will be mutually pleased with each other, I have asked her to inform you of her presence in your city. Any attention you may show her will be highly appreciated by Yours affectionately, LIZZIE EICHER. _7.--To a Lady, Apologizing for a Broken Engagement._ Albany, N.Y., May 10th, 1894. My Dear Miss Lee: Permit me to explain my failure to keep my appointment with you this evening. I was on my way to your house, with the assurance of a pleasant evening, when unfortunately I was very unexpectedly called from home on very important business. I regret my disappointment, but hope that the future may afford us many pleasant meetings. Sincerely your friend, IRVING GOODRICH. _8.--Form of an Excuse for a Pupil._ Thursday Morning, April 4th Mr. Bunnel: You will please excuse William for non-attendance at school yesterday, as I was compelled to keep him at home to attend to a matter of business. MRS. A. SMITH. _9.--Form of Letter Accompanying a Present._ Louisville, July 6, 1895 My Dearest Nelly: Many happy returns of the day. So fearful was I that it would escape your memory, that I thought I would send you this little trinket by way of reminder, I beg you to accept it and wear it for the sake of the giver. With love and best wishes. Believe me ever, your sincere friend, CAROLINE COLLINS. _10.--Returning Thanks for the Present._ Louisville, July 6, 1894. Dear Mrs. Collins: I am very much obliged to you for the handsome bracelet you have sent me. How kind and thoughtful it was of you to remember me on my birthday. I am sure I have every cause to bless the day, and did I forget it, I have many kind friends to remind me of it. Again thanking you for your present, which is far too beautiful for me, and also for your kind wishes. Believe me, your most grateful, BERTHA SMITH. _11.--Congratulating a Friend Upon His Marriage._ Menton, N.Y., May 24th, 1894. My Dear Everett: I have, to-day received the invitation to your wedding, and as I cannot be present at that happy event to offer my congratulations in person, I write. I am heartily glad you are going to be married, and congratulate you upon the wisdom of your choice. You have won a noble as well as a beautiful woman, and one whose love will make you a happy man to your life's end. May God grant that trouble may not come near you but should it be your lot, you will have a wife to whom you can look with confidence for comfort, and whose good sense and devotion to you will be your sure and unfailing support. That you may both be very happy, and that your happiness may increase with your years, is the prayer of Your Friend, FRANK HOWARD. * * * * * LETTER WRITING. Any extravagant flattery should be avoided, both as tending to disgust those to whom it is addressed, as well as to degrade the writers, and to create suspicion as to their sincerity. The sentiments should spring from the tenderness of the heart, and, when faithfully and delicately expressed, will never be read without exciting sympathy or emotion in all hearts not absolutely deadened by insensibility. DECLARATION OF AFFECTION. Dear Nellie: Will you allow me, in a few plain and simple words, respectfully to express the sincere esteem and affection I entertain for you, and to ask whether I may venture to hope that these sentiments are returned? I love you truly and earnestly and knowing you admire frankness and candor in all things, I cannot think that you will take offense at this letter. Perhaps it is self-flattery to suppose I have any place in your regard. Should this be so, the error will carry with it its own punishment, for my happy dream will be over. I will try to think otherwise, however, and shall await your answer with hope. Trusting soon to hear from you, I remain, dear Nellie. Sincerely Yours, J.L. Master To Miss Nellie Reynolds, Hartford, Conn. [Illustration] * * * * * FORMS OF LOVE LETTERS. _12.--An Ardent Declaration._ Naperville, Ill., June 10th, 1915 My Dearest Laura: I can no longer restrain myself from writing to you, dearest and best of girls, what I have often been on the point of saying to you. I love you so much that I cannot find words in which to express my feelings. I have loved you from the very first day we met, and always shall. Do you blame me because I write so freely? I should be unworthy of you if I did not tell you the whole truth. Oh, Laura, can you love me in return? I am sure I shall not be able to bear it if your answer is unfavorable. I will study your every wish if you will give me the right to do so. May I hope? Send just one kind word to your sincere friend. HARRY SMITH. _13.--A Lover's Good-bye Before Starting on a Journey._ Pearl St., New York, March 11th, 1894. My Dearest Nellie: I am off to-morrow, and yet not altogether, for I leave my heart behind in your gentle keeping. You need not place a guard over it, however, for it is as impossible that it should stay away, as for a bit of steel to rush from a magnet. The simile is eminently correct for you, my dear girl, are a magnet, and my heart is as true to you as steel. I shall make my absence as brief as possible. Not a day, not an hour, not a minute, shall I waste either in going or returning. Oh, this business; but I wont complain, for we must have something for our hive besides honey--something that rhymes with it--and that we must have it, I must bestir myself. You will find me a faithful correspondent. Like the spider, I shall drop a line by (almost) every post; and mind, you must give me letter for letter. I can't give you credit. Your returns must be prompt and punctual. Passionately yours, LEWIS SHUMAN. To Miss Nellie Carter, No. -- Fifth Avenue, New York. _14.--From an Absent Lover._ Chicago, Ill., Sept. 10, 1915 My Dearest Kate: This sheet of paper, though I should cover it with loving words, could never tell you truly how I long to see you again. Time does not run on with me now at the same pace as with other people; the hours seem days, the days weeks, while I am absent from you, and I have no faith in the accuracy of clocks and almanacs. Ah! if there were truth in clairvoyance, wouldn't I be with you at this moment! I wonder if you are as impatient to see me as I am to fly to you? Sometimes it seems as if I must leave business and every thing else to the Fates, and take the first train to Dawson. However, the hours do move, though they don't appear to, and in a few more weeks we shall meet again. Let me hear from you as frequently as possible in the meantime. Tell me of your health, your amusements and your affections. Remember that every word you write will be a comfort to me. Unchangeably yours, WILLIAM MILLER. To Miss Kate Martin, Dawson, N.D. _15.--A Declaration of Love at First Sight._ Waterford, Maine, May 8th, 1915 Dear Miss Searles: Although I have been in your society but once the impression you have made upon me is so deep and powerful that I cannot forbear writing to you, in defiance of all rules of etiquette. Affection is sometimes of slow growth but sometimes it springs up in a moment. In half an hour after I was introduced to you my heart was no longer my own, I have not the assurance to suppose that I have been fortunate enough to create any interest in yours; but will you allow me to cultivate your acquaintance in the hope or being able to win your regard in the course of time? Petitioning for a few lines in reply. I remain, dear Miss Searles, Yours devotedly, E.C. NICKS. Miss E. Searles, Waterford, Maine. _16.--Proposing Marriage._ Wednesday, October 20th, 1894 Dearest Etta: The delightful hours I have passed in your society have left an impression on my mind that is altogether indelible, and cannot be effaced even by time itself. The frequent opportunities I have possessed, of observing the thousand acts of amiability and kindness which mark the daily tenor of your life, have ripened my feelings of affectionate regard into a passion at once ardent and sincere until I have at length associated my hopes of future happiness with the idea of you as a life partner, in them. Believe me, dearest Etta, this is no puerile fancy, but the matured results of a long and warmly cherished admiration of your many charms of person and mind. It is love--pure devoted love, and I feel confident that your knowledge of my character will lead you to ascribe my motives to their true source. May I then implore you to consult your own heart, and should this avowal of my fervent and honorable passion for you be crowned with your acceptance and approval, to grant me permission to refer the matter to your parents. Anxiously awaiting your answer, I am, dearest Etta, Your sincere and faithful lover, GEO. COURTRIGHT. To Miss Etta Jay, Malden, Ill. _17.--From a Gentleman to a Widow._ Philadelphia, May 10th, 1915 My Dear Mrs. Freeman: I am sure you are too clear-sighted not to have observed the profound impression which your amiable qualities, intelligence and personal attractions have made upon my heart, and as you nave not repelled my attentions nor manifested displeasure when I ventured to hint at the deep interest I felt in your welfare and happiness, I cannot help hoping that you will receive an explicit expression of my attachments, kindly and favorably. I wish it were in my power to clothe the feelings I entertain for you in such words as should make my pleadings irresistible; but, after all, what could I say, more than you are very dear to me, and that the most earnest desire of my soul is to have the privilege of calling you my wife? Do you, can you love me? You will not, I am certain, keep me in suspense, for you are too good and kind to trifle for a moment with sincerity like mine. Awaiting your answer, I remain with respectful affection, Ever yours, HENRY MURRAY. Mrs. Julia Freeman, Philadelphia. _18.--From a Lady to an Inconstant Lover._ Dear Harry: It is with great reluctance that I enter upon a subject which has given me great pain, and upon which silence has become impossible if I would preserve my self-respects. You cannot but be aware that I have just reason for saying that you have much displeased me. You have apparently forgotten what is due to me, circumstanced as we are, thus far at least. You cannot suppose that I can tamely see you disregard my feelings, by conduct toward other ladies from which I should naturally have the right to expect you to abstain. I am not so vulgar a person as to be jealous. When there is cause to infer changed feelings, or unfaithfulness to promises of constancy, jealousy is not the remedy. What the remedy is I need not say--we both of us have it in our hands. I am sure you will agree with me that we must come to some understanding by which the future shall be governed. Neither you nor I can bear a divided allegiance. Believe me that I write more in sorrow than in anger. You have made me very unhappy, and perhaps thoughtlessly. But it will take much to reassure me of your unaltered regard. Yours truly, EMMA. [Illustration: HEALTHFUL OUTDOOR EXERCISE.] [Illustration: THE HUMAN FACE, LIKE A FLOWER, SPEAKS FOR ITSELF.] * * * * * HINTS AND HELPS ON GOOD BEHAVIOR AT ALL TIMES AND AT ALL PLACES. 1. It takes acquaintance to found a noble esteem, but politeness prepares the way. Indeed, as ontaigne [Transcriber's note: Montaigne?] says, Courtesy begets esteem at sight. Urbanity is half of affability, and affability is a charm worth possessing. 2. A pleasing demeanor is often the scales by which the pagan weighs the Christian. It is not virtue, but virtue inspires it. There are circumstances in which it takes a great and strong soul to pass under the little yoke of courtesy, but it is a passport to a greater soul standard. 3. Matthew Arnold says, "Conduct is three-fourths of character," and Christian benignity draws the line for conduct. A high sense of rectitude, a lowly soul, with a pure and kind heart are elements of nobility which will work out in the life of a human being at home--everywhere. "Private refinement makes public gentility." 4. If you would conciliate the favor of men, rule your resentment. Remember that if you permit revenge or malice to occupy your soul, you are ruined. 5. Cultivate a happy temper; banish the blues; a cheerful saguine spirit begets cheer and hope. 6. Be trustworthy and be trustful. 7. Do not place a light estimate upon the arts of good reading and good expression; they will yield perpetual interest. 8. Study to keep versed in world events as well as in local occurrences, but abhor gossip, and above all scandal. 9. Banish a self-conscience spirit--the source of much awkwardness--with a constant aim to make others happy. Remember that it is incumbent upon gentlemen and ladies alike to be neat in habits. 10. The following is said to be a correct posture for walking: Head erect--not too rigid--chin in, shoulders back. Permit no unnecessary motion about the thighs. Do not lean over to one side in walking, standing or sitting; the practice is not only ungraceful, but it is deforming and therefore unhealthful. 11. Beware of affectation and of Beau Brummel airs. 12. If the hands are allowed to swing in walking, the are should be limited, and the lady will manage them much more gracefully, if they almost touch the clothing. 13. A lady should not stand with her hands behind her. We could almost say, forget the hands except to keep them clean, including the nails, cordial and helpful. One hand may rest easily in the other. Study repose of attitude here as well as in the rest of the body. 14. Gestures are for emphasis in public speaking; do not point elsewhere, as a rule. 15. Greet your acquaintances as you meet them with a slight bow and smile, as you speak. 16. Look the person to whom you speak in the eye. Never under any circumstances wink at another or communicate by furtive looks. 17. Should you chance to be the rejected suitor of a lady, bear in mind your own self-respect, as well as the inexorable laws of society, and bow politely when you meet her. Reflect that you do not stand before all woman-kind as you do at her bar. Do not resent the bitterness of flirtation. No lady or gentleman will flirt. Remember ever that painful prediscovery is better than later disappointment. Let such experience spur you to higher exertion. 18. Discretion should be exercised in introducing persons. Of two gentlemen who are introduced, if one is superior in rank or age, he is the one to whom the introduction should be made. Of two social equals, if one be a stranger in the place his name should be mentioned first. 19. In general the simpler the introduction the better. 20. Before introducing a gentleman to a lady, remember that she is entitled to hold you responsible for the acquaintance. The lady is the one to whom the gentleman is presented, which may be done thus: "Miss A, permit me to introduce to you my friend, Mr. B."; or, "Miss A., allow me to introduce Mr. B." If mutual and near friends of yours, say simply, "Miss A. Mr. B." 21. Receive the introduction with a slight bow and the acknowledgment, "Miss A., I am happy to make your acquaintance"; or, "Mr. B., I am pleased to meet you." There is no reason why such stereotyped expressions should always be used, but something similar is expected. Do not extend the hand usually. 22. A true lady will avoid familiarity in her deportment towards gentlemen. A young lady should not permit her gentlemen friends to address her by her home name, and the reverse is true. Use the title Miss and Mr. respectively. 23. Ladies should be frank and cordial towards their lady friends, but never gushing. 24. Should you meet a friend twice or oftener, at short intervals, it is polite to bow slightly each time after the first. 25. A lady on meeting a gentleman with whom she has slight acquaintance will make a medium bow--neither too decided nor too slight or stiff. 26. For a gentleman to take a young lady's arm, is to intimate that she is feeble, and young ladies resent the mode. 27. If a young lady desires to visit any public place where she expects to meet a gentleman acquaintance, she should have a chaperon to accompany her, a person of mature years When possible, and never a giddy girl. 28. A lady should not ask a gentleman to walk with her. [Illustration] * * * * * A COMPLETE ETIQUETTE IN A FEW PRACTICAL RULES. _1. If you desire to be respected, keep clean. The finest attire and decorations will add nothing to the appearance or beauty of an untidy person._ _2. Clean clothing, clean skin, clean hands, including the nails, and clean, white teeth, are a requisite passport for good society._ _3. A bad breath should be carefully remedied, whether it proceeds from the stomach or from decayed teeth._ _4. To pick the nose, finger about the ears, or scratch the head or any other part of the person, in company, is decidedly vulgar._ _5. When you call at any private residence, do not neglect to clean your shoes thoroughly._ _6. A gentleman should always remove his hat in the presence of ladies, except out of doors, and then he should lift or touch his hat in salutation. On meeting a lady a well-bred gentleman will always lift his hat._ _7. An invitation to a lecture, concert, or other entertainment, may be either verbal or written, but should always be made at least twenty-four hours before the time._ _8. On entering a hall or church the gentleman should precede the lady in walking up the aisle, or walk by her side, if the aisle is broad enough._ _9. A gentleman should always precede a lady upstairs, and follow her downstairs._ _10. Visitors should always observe the customs of the church with reference to standing, sitting, or kneeling during the services._ _11. On leaving a hall or church at the close of entertainment or services, the gentleman should precede the lady._ _12. A gentleman walking with a lady should carry the parcels, and never allow the lady to be burdened with anything of the kind._ _13. A gentleman meeting a lady on the street and wishing to speak to her, should never detain her, but may turn around and walk in the same direction she is going, until the conversation is completed._ _14. If a lady is traveling with a gentleman, simply as a friend, she should place the amount of her expenses in his hands, or insist on paying the bills herself._ _15. Never offer a lady costly gifts unless you are engaged to her, for it looks as if you were trying to purchase her good-will; and when you make a present to a lady use no ceremony whatever._ _16. Never carry on a private conversation in company. If secrecy is necessary, withdraw from the company._ _17. Never sit with your back to another without asking to be excused._ _18. It is as unbecoming for a gentleman to sit with legs crossed as it is for a lady._ _19. Never thrum with your fingers, rub your hands, yawn or sigh aloud in company._ _20. Loud laughter, loud talking, or other boisterous manifestations should be checked in the society of others, especially on the street and in public places._ _21. When you are asked to sing or play in company, do so without being urged, or refuse in a way that shall be final; and when music is being rendered in company, show politeness to the musician by giving attention. It is very impolite to keep up a conversation. If you do not enjoy the music keep silent._ _22. Contentions, contradictions, etc. in society should be carefully avoided._ _23. Pulling out your watch in company, unless asked the time of day, is a mark of the demi-bred. It looks as if you were tired of the company and the time dragged heavily._ _24. You should never decline to be introduced to any one or all of the guests present at a party to which you have been invited._ _25. A gentleman who escorts a lady to a party, or who has a lady placed under his care, is under particular obligations to attend to her wants and see that she has proper attention. He should introduce her to others, and endeavor to make the evening pleasant. He should escort her to the supper table and provide for her wants._ _26. To take small children or dogs with you on a visit of ceremony is altogether vulgar, though in visiting familiar friends, children are not objectionable._ [Illustration: Children should early be taught the lesson of Propriety and Good Manners.] [Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN BRIDE'S WEDDING OUTFIT.] [Illustration] * * * * * ETIQUETTE OF CALLS. In the matter of making calls it is the correct thing: For the caller who arrived first to leave first. To return a first call within a week and in person. To call promptly and in person after a first invitation. For the mother or chaperon to invite a gentleman to call. To call within a week after any entertainment to which one has been invited. You should call upon an acquaintance who has recently returned from a prolonged absence. It as proper to make the first call upon people in a higher social position, if one is asked to do so. It is proper to call, after an engagement has been announced, or a marriage has taken place, in the family. For the older residents in the city or street to call upon the newcomers to their neighborhood is a long recognized custom. It is proper, after a removal from one part of the city to another, to send out cards with one's new address upon them. To ascertain what are the prescribed hours for calling in the place where one is living, or making a visit, and to adhere to those hours is a duty that must not be overlooked. A gentleman should ask for the lady of the house as well as the young ladies, and leave cards for her as well as for the head of the family. [Illustration: _Improve Your Speech by Reading._] * * * * * ETIQUETTE IN YOUR SPEECH. Don't say Miss or Mister without the person's name. Don't say pants for trousers. Don't say gents for gentlemen. Don't say female for woman. Don't say elegant to mean everything that pleases you. Don't say genteel for well-bred. Don't say ain't for isn't. Don't say I done it for I did it. Don't say he is older than me; say older than I. Don't say she does not see any; say she does not see at all. Don't say not as I know; say not that I know. Don't say he calculates to get off; say he expects to get off. Don't say he don't; say he doesn't. Don't say she is some better; say she is somewhat better. Don't say where are you stopping? say where are you staying? Don't say you was; say you were. Don't say I say, says I, but simply say I said. Don't sign your letters yours etc., but yours truly. Don't say lay for lie; lay expresses action; lie expresses rest. Don't say them bonnets; say those bonnets. Don't say party for person. Don't say it looks beautifully, but say it looks beautiful. Don't say feller, winder, to-morrer, for fellow, window, to-morrow. Don't use slangy words; they are vulgar. Don't use profane words; they are sinful and foolish. Don't say it was her, when you mean it was she. Don't say not at once for at once. Don't say he gave me a recommend, but say he gave me a recommendation. Don't say the two first for the first two. Don't say he learnt me French; say he taught me French. Don't say lit the fire; say lighted the fire. Don't say the man which you saw; say the man whom you saw. Don't say who done it; say who did it Don't say if I was rich I would buy a carriage; say if I were rich. Don't say if I am not mistaken you are in the wrong; say if I mistake not. Don't say who may you be; say who are you? Don't say go lay down; say go lie down. Don't say he is taller than me; say taller than I. Don't say I shall call upon him; say I shall call on him. Don't say I bought a new pair of shoes; say I bought a pair of new shoes. Don't say I had rather not; say I would rather not. Don't say two spoonsful; say two spoonfuls. * * * * * ETIQUETTE OF DRESS AND HABITS. Don't let one day pass without a thorough cleansing of your person. Don't sit down to your evening meal before a complete toilet if you have company. Don't cleanse your nails, your nose or your ears in public. Don't use hair dye, hair oil or pomades. Don't wear evening dress in daytime. Don't wear jewelry of a gaudy character; genuine jewelry modestly worn is not out of place. Don't overdress yourself or walk affectedly. Don't wear slippers or dressing-gown or smoking-jacket out of your own house. Don't sink your hands in your trousers' pockets. Don't whistle in public places, nor inside of houses either. Don't use your fingers or fists to beat a tattoo upon floor desk or window panes. Don't examine other people's papers or letters scattered on their desk. Don't bring a smell of spirits or tobacco into the presence of ladies. Never use either in the presence of ladies. Don't drink spirits; millions have tried it to their sorrow. * * * * * ETIQUETTE ON THE STREET. 1. Your conduct on the street should always be modest and dignified. Ladies should carefully avoid all loud and boisterous conversation or laughter and all undue liveliness in public. 2. When walking on the street do not permit yourself to be absent-minded, as to fail to recognize a friend; do not go along reading a book or newspaper. 3. In walking with a lady on the street give her the inner side of the walk, unless the outside if the safer part; in which case she is entitled to it. 4. Your arm should not be given to any lady except your wife or a near relative, or a very old lady, during the day, unless her comfort or safety requires it. At night the arm should always be offered; also in ascending the steps of a public building. 5. In crossing the street a lady should gracefully raise her dress a little above her ankle with one hand. To raise the dress with both hands is vulgar, except in places where the mud is very deep. 6. A gentleman meeting a lady acquaintance on the street should not presume to join her in her walk without first asking her permission. 7. If you have anything to say to a lady whom you may happen to meet in the street, however intimate you may be, do not stop her, but turn round and walk in company with her; you can take leave at the end of the street. 8. A lady should not venture out upon the street alone after dark. By so doing she compromises her dignity, and exposes herself to indignity at the hands of the rougher class. 9. Never offer to shake hands with a lady in the street if you have on dark or soiled gloves, as you may soil hers. 10. A lady does not form acquaintances upon the street, or seek to attract the attention of the other sex or of persons of her own sex. Her conduct is always modest and unassuming. Neither does a lady demand services or favors from a gentleman. She accepts them graciously, always expressing her thanks. A gentleman will not stand on the street corners, or in hotel doorways, or store windows and gaze impertinently at ladies as they pass by. This is the exclusive business of loafers. 11. In walking with a lady who has your arm, should you have to cross the street, do not disengage your arm and go around upon the outside, unless the lady's comfort renders it necessary. In walking with a lady, where it is necessary for you to proceed singly, always go before her. * * * * * ETIQUETTE BETWEEN SEXES. 1. A lady should be a lady, and a gentleman a gentleman under any and all circumstances. 2. FEMALE INDIFFERENCE TO MAN.--There is nothing that affects the nature and pleasure of man so much as a proper and friendly recognition from a lady, and as women are more or less dependent upon man's good-will, either for gain or pleasure, it surely stands to their interest to be reasonably pleasant and courteous in his presence or society. Indifference is always a poor investment, whether in society or business. 3. GALLANTRY AND LADYISM should be a prominent feature in the education of young people. Politeness to ladies cultivates the intellect and refines the soul and he who can be easy and entertaining in the society of ladies has mastered one of the greatest accomplishments. There is nothing taught in school, academy or college, that contributes so much to the happiness of man as a full development of his social and moral qualities. 4. LADYLIKE ETIQUETTE.--No woman can afford to treat men rudely. A lady must have a high intellectual and moral ideal and hold herself above reproach. She must remember that the art of pleasing and entertaining gentlemen is infinitely more ornamental than laces, ribbons or diamonds. Dress and glitter may please man, but it will never benefit him. 5. CULTIVATE DEFICIENCIES.--Men and women poorly sexed treat each other with more or less indifference, whereas a hearty sexuality inspires both to a right estimation of the faculties and qualities of each other. Those who are deficient should seek society and overcome their deficiencies. While some naturally inherit faculties as entertainers others are compelled to acquire them by cultivation. [Illustration: ASKING AN HONEST QUESTION.] 6. LADIES' SOCIETY.--He who seeks ladies' society should seek an education and should have a pure heart and a pure mind. Read good, pure and wholesome literature and study human nature, and you will always be a favorite in the society circle. 7. WOMAN HATERS.--Some men with little refinement and strong sensual feelings virtually insult and thereby disgust and repel every female they meet. They look upon woman with an inherent vulgarity, and doubt the virtue and integrity of all alike. But it is because they are generally insincere and impure themselves, and with such a nature culture and refinement are out of the question, there must be a revolution. 8. MEN HATERS.--Women who look upon all men as odious, corrupt or hateful, are no doubt so themselves, though they may be clad in silk and sparkle with diamonds and be as pretty as a lily; but their hypocrisy will out, and they can never win the heart of a faithful, conscientious and well balanced man. A good woman has broad ideas and great sympathy. She respects all men until they are proven unworthy. 9. FOND OF CHILDREN.--The man who is naturally fond of children will make a good husband and a good father. So it behooves the young man, to notice children and cultivate the art of pleasing them. It will be a source of interest, education and permanent benefit to all. 10. EXCESSIVE LUXURY.--Although the association with ladies is an expensive luxury, yet it is not an expensive education. It elevates, refines, sanctifies and purifies, and improves the whole man. A young man who has a pure and genuine respect for ladies, will not only make a good husband, but a good citizen as well. 11. MASCULINE ATTENTION.--No woman is entitled to any more attention than her loveliness and ladylike conduct will command. Those who are most pleasing will receive the most attention, and those who desire more should aspire to acquire more by cultivating those graces and virtues which ennoble woman, but no lady should lower or distort her own true ideal, or smother and crucify her conscience, in order to please any living man. A good man will admire a good woman, and deceptions cannot long be concealed. Her show of dry goods or glitter of jewels cannot long cover up her imperfections or deceptions. 12. PURITY.--Purity of purpose will solve all social problems. Let all stand on this exalted sexual platform, and teach every man just how to treat the female sex, and every woman how to behave towards the masculine; and it will incomparably adorn the manners of both, make both happy in each other, and mutually develop each other's sexuality and humanity. [Illustration] [Illustration] * * * * * PRACTICAL RULES ON TABLE MANNERS. 1. Help ladies with a due appreciation; do not overload the plate of any person you serve. Never pour gravy on a plate without permission. It spoils the meat for some persons. 2. Never put anything by force upon any one's plate. It is extremely ill-bred, though extremely common, to press one to eat of anything. 3. If at dinner you are requested to help any one to sauce or gravy, do not pour it over the meat or vegetables, but on one side of them. Never load down a person's plate with anything. 4. As soon as you are helped, begin to eat, or at least begin to occupy yourself with what you have before you. Do not wait till your neighbors are served--a custom that was long ago abandoned. 5. Should you, however, find yourself at a table where they have the old-fashioned steel forks, eat with your knife, as the others do, and do not let it be seen that you have any objection to doing so. 6. Bread should be broken. To butter a large piece of bread and then bite it, as children do, is something the knowing never do. 7. In eating game or poultry do not touch the bones with your fingers. To take a bone in the fingers for the purpose of picking it, is looked upon as being very inelegant. 8. Never use your own knife or fork to help another. Use rather the knife or fork of the person you help. 9. Never send your knife or fork, or either of them, on your plate when you send for second supply. 10. Never turn your elbows out when you use your knife and fork. Keep them close to your sides. 11. Whenever you use your fingers to convey anything to your mouth or to remove anything from the mouth, let it be the fingers of the left hand. 12. Tea, coffee, chocolate and the like are drank from the cup and never from the saucer. 13. In masticating your food, keep your mouth shut; otherwise you will make a noise that will be very offensive to those around you. 14. Don't attempt to talk with a full mouth. One thing at a time is as much as any man can do well. 15. Should you find a worm or insect in your food, say nothing about it. 16. If a dish is distasteful to you, decline it, and without comment. 17. Never put bones or bits of fruit on the table cloth. Put them on the side of your plate. 18. Do not hesitate to take the last piece on the dish, simply because it is the last. To do so is to directly express the fear that you would exhaust the supply. 19. If you would be what you would like to be--abroad, take care that you _are_ what you would like to be--at home. 20. Avoid picking your teeth at the table if possible; but if you must, do it, it you can, where you are not observed. 21. If an accident of any kind soever should occur during dinner, the cause being who or what it may, you should not seem to note it. 22. Should you be so unfortunate as to overturn or to break anything, you should make no apology. You might let your regret appear in your face, but it would not be proper to put it in words. [Illustration: A PARLOR RECITATION.] * * * * * SOCIAL DUTIES. Man In Society is like a flower, Blown in its native bed. 'Tis there alone His faculties expanded in full bloom Shine out, there only reach their proper use. --COWPER. The primal duties shine aloft like stars; The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, Are scatter'd at the feet of man like flowers. --WORDSWORTH. 1. MEMBERSHIP IN SOCIETY.--Many fail to get hold of the idea that they are members of society. They seem to suppose that the social machinery of the world is self-operating. They cast their first ballot with an emotion of pride perhaps, but are sure to pay their first tax with a groan. They see political organizations in active existence; the parish, and the church, and other important bodies that embrace in some form of society all men, are successfully operated; and yet these young men have no part or lot in the matter. They do not think of giving a day's time to society. 2. BEGIN EARLY.--One of the first things a young man should do is to see that he is acting his part in society. The earlier this is begun the better. I think that the opponents of secret societies in colleges have failed to estimate the benefit which it must be to every member to be obliged to contribute to the support of his particular organization, and to assume personal care and responsibility as a member. If these societies have a tendency to teach the lessons of which I speak, they are a blessed thing. 3. DO YOUR PART.--Do your part, and be a man among men. Assume your portion of social responsibility, and see that you discharge it well. If you do not do this, then you are mean, and society has the right to despise you just as much as it chooses to do so. You are, to use a word more emphatic than agreeable, a sneak, and have not a claim upon your neighbors for a single polite word. 4. A WHINING COMPLAINER.--Society, as it is called, is far more apt to pay its dues to the individual than the individual to society. Have you, young man, who are at home whining over the fact that you cannot get into society, done anything to give you a claim to social recognition? Are you able to make any return for social recognition and social privileges? Do you know anything? What kind of coin do you propose to pay in the discharge of the obligation which comes upon you with social recognition? In other words, as a return for what you wish to have society do for you, what can you do for society? This is a very important question--more important to you than to society. The question is, whether you will be a member of society by right, or by courtesy. If you have so mean a spirit as to be content to be a beneficiary of society--to receive favors and to confer none--you have no business in the society to which you aspire. You are an exacting, conceited fellow. 5. WHAT ARE YOU GOOD FOR?--Are you a good beau, and are you willing to make yourself useful in waiting on the ladies on all occasions? Have you a good set of teeth, which you are willing to show whenever the wit of the company gets off a good thing? Are you a true, straightforward, manly fellow, with whose healthful and uncorrupted nature it is good for society to come in contact? In short, do you possess anything of any social value? If you do, and are willing to impart it, society will yield itself to your touch. If you have nothing, then society, as such, owes you nothing. Christian philanthropy may put its arm around you, as a lonely young man, about to spoil for want of something, but it is very sad and humiliating for a young man to be brought to that. There are people who devote themselves to nursing young men, and doing them good. If they invite you to tea, go by all means, and try your hand. If in the course of the evening, you can prove to them that your society is desirable, you have won a point. Don't be patronized. 6. THE MORBID CONDITION.--Young men, you are apt to get into a morbid state of mind, which declines them to social intercourse. They become devoted to business with such exclusiveness, that all social intercourse is irksome. They go out to tea as if they were going to jail, and drag themselves to a party as to an execution. This disposition is thoroughly morbid, and to be overcome by going where you are invited, always, and with a sacrifice of feeling. 7. THE COMMON BLUNDER.--Don't shrink from contact with anything but bad morals. Men who affect your unhealthy minds with antipathy, will prove themselves very frequently to be your best friends and most delightful companions. Because a man seems uncongenial to you, who are squeamish and foolish, you have no right to shun him. We become charitable by knowing men. We learn to love those whom we have despised by rubbing against them. Do you not remember some instance of meeting a man or woman whom you had never previously known or cared to know--an individual, perhaps, against whom you have entertained the strongest prejudices--but to whom you became bound by a lifelong friendship through the influence of a three days' intercourse? Yet, if you had not thus met, you would have carried through life the idea that it would be impossible for you to give your fellowship to such an individual. 8. THE FOOLISHNESS OF MAN.--God has introduced into human character infinite variety, and for you to say that you do not love and will not associate with a man because he is unlike you, is not only foolish but wrong. You are to remember that in the precise manner and decree in which a man differs from you, do you differ from him; and that from his standpoint you are naturally as repulsive to him, as he, from your standpoint, is to you. So, leave all this talk of congeniality to silly girls and transcendental dreamers. 9. DO BUSINESS IN YOUR WAY AND BE HONEST.--Do your business in your own way, and concede to every man the privilege which you claim for yourself. The more you mix with men, the less you will be disposed to quarrel, and the more charitable and liberal will you become. The fact that you do not understand a man, is quite as likely to be your fault as his. There are a good many chances in favor of the conclusion that, if you fail to like an individual whose acquaintance you make it is through your own ignorance and illiberality. So I say, meet every man honestly; seek to know him; and you will find that in those points in which he differs from you rests his power to instruct you, enlarge you, and do you good. Keep your heart open for everybody, and be sure that you shall have your reward. You shall find a jewel under the most uncouth exterior; and associated with homeliest manners and oddest ways and ugliest faces, you will find rare virtues, fragrant little humanities, and inspiring heroisms. 10. WITHOUT SOCIETY, WITHOUT INFLUENCE.--Again: you can have no influence unless you are social. An unsocial man is as devoid of influence as an ice-peak is of verdure. It is through social contact and absolute social value alone that you can accomplish any great social good. It is through the invisible lines which you are able to attach to the minds with which you are brought into association alone that you can tow society, with its deeply freighted interests, to the great haven of your hope. 11. THE REVENGE OF SOCIETY.--The revenge which society takes upon the man who isolates himself, is as terrible as it is inevitable. The pride which sits alone will have the privilege of sitting alone in its sublime disgust till it drops into the grave. The world sweeps by the man, carelessly, remorselessly, contemptuously. He has no hold upon society, because he is no part of it. 12. THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER.--You cannot move men until you are one of them. They will not follow you until they have heard your voice, shaken your hand, and fully learned your principles and your sympathies. It makes no difference how much you know, or how much you are capable of doing. You may pile accomplishment upon acquisition mountain high; but if you fail to be a social man, demonstrating to society that your lot is with the rest, a little child with a song in its mouth, and a kiss for all and a pair of innocent hands to lay upon the knees, shall lead more hearts and change the direction of more lives than you. [Illustration: GATHERING ORANGES IN THE SUNNY SOUTH.] * * * * * POLITENESS. 1. BEAUTIFUL BEHAVIOR.--Politeness has been described as the art of showing, by external signs, the internal regard we have for others. But one may be perfectly polite to another without necessarily paying a special regard for him. Good manners are neither more nor less than beautiful behavior. It has been well said that "a beautiful form is better than a beautiful face, and a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures--it is the finest of the fine arts." 2. TRUE POLITENESS.--The truest politeness comes of sincerity. It must be the outcome of the heart, or it will make no lasting impression; for no amount of polish can dispense with truthfulness. The natural character must be allowed to appear, freed of its angularities and asperities. Though politeness, in its best form, should resemble water--"best when clearest, most simple, and without taste"--yet genius in a man will always cover many defects of manner, and much will be excused to the strong and the original. Without genuineness and individuality, human life would lose much of its interest and variety, as well as its manliness and robustness of character. 3. PERSONALITY OF OTHERS.--True politeness especially exhibits itself in regard for the personality of others. A man will respect the individuality of another if he wishes to be respected himself. He will have due regard for his views and opinions, even though they differ from his own. The well-mannered man pays a compliment to another, and sometimes even secures his respect by patiently listening to him. He is simply tolerant and forbearant, and refrains from judging harshly; and harsh judgments of others will almost invariably provoke harsh judgments of ourselves. 4. THE IMPOLITE.--The impolite, impulsive man will, however, sometimes rather lose his friend than his joke. He may surely be pronounced a very foolish person who secures another's hatred at the price of a moment's gratification. It was a saying of Burnel, the engineer--himself one of the kindest-natured of men--that "spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life." Dr. Johnson once said: "Sir, a man has no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down." 5. FEELINGS OF OTHERS.--Want of respect for the feelings of others usually originates in selfishness, and issues in hardness and repulsiveness of manner. It may not proceed from malignity so much, as from want of sympathy, and want of delicacy--a want of that perception of, and attention to, those little and apparently trifling things, by which pleasure is given or pain occasioned to others. Indeed, it may be said that in self-sacrifice in the ordinary intercourse of life, mainly consists the difference between being well and ill bred. Without some degree of self-restraint in society a man may be found almost insufferable. No one has pleasure in holding intercourse with such a person, and he is a constant source of annoyance to those about him. 6. DISREGARD OF OTHERS.--Men may show their disregard to others in various impolite ways, as, for instance, by neglect of propriety in dress, by the absence of cleanliness, or by indulging in repulsive habits. The slovenly, dirty person, by rendering himself physically disagreeable, sets the tastes and feelings of others at defiance, and is rude and uncivil, only under another form. 7. THE BEST SCHOOL OF POLITENESS.--The first and best school of politeness, as of character, is always the home, where woman is the teacher. The manners of society at large are but the reflex of the manners of our collective homes, neither better nor worse. Yet, with all the disadvantages of ungenial homes, men may practice self-culture of manner as of intellect, and learn by good examples to cultivate a graceful and agreeable behavior towards others. Most men are like so many gems in the rough, which need polishing by contact with other and better natures, to bring out their full beauty and lustre. Some have but one side polished, sufficient only to show the delicate graining of the interior; but to bring out the full qualities of the gem, needs the discipline of experience, and contact with the best examples of character in the intercourse of daily life. 8. CAPTIOUSNESS OF MANNER.--While captiousness of manner, and the habit of disputing and contradicting every thing said, is chilling and repulsive, the opposite habit of assenting to, and sympathizing with, every statement made, or emotion expressed, is almost equally disagreeable. It is unmanly, and is felt to be dishonest. "It may seem difficult," says Richard Sharp, "to steer always between bluntness and plain dealing, between merited praises and lavishing indiscriminate flattery; but it is very easy--good humor, kindheartedness, and perfect simplicity, being all that are requisite to do what is right in the right way. At the same time many are impolite, not because they mean to be so, but because they are awkward, and perhaps know no better." 9. SHY PEOPLE.--Again many persons are thought to be stiff, reserved, and proud, when they are only shy. Shyness is characteristic of most people of the Teutonic race. From all that can be learned of Shakespeare, it is to be inferred that he was an exceedingly shy man. The manner in which his plays were sent into the world--for it is not known that he edited or authorized the publication of a single one of them,--and the dates at which they respectively appeared, are mere matters of conjecture. 10. SELF-FORGETFULNESS.--True politeness is best evinced by self-forgetfulness, or self-denial in the interest of others. Mr. Garfield, our martyred president, was a gentleman of royal type. His friend, Col. Rockwell, says of him: "In, the midst of his suffering he never forgets others. For instance, to-day he said to me, 'Rockwell, there is a poor soldier's widow who came to me before this thing occurred, and I promised her, she should be provided for. I want you to see that the matter is attended to at once.' He is the most docile patient I ever saw." 11. ITS BRIGHT SIDE.--We have thus far spoken of shyness as a defect. But there is another way of looking at it; for even shyness has its bright side, and contains an element of good. Shy men and shy races are ungraceful and undemonstrative, because, as regards society at large, they are comparatively unsociable. They do not possess those elegancies of manner acquired by free intercourse, which distinguish the social races, because their tendency is to shun society rather than to seek it. They are shy in the presence of strangers, and shy even in their own families. They hide their affections under a robe of reserve, and when they do give way to their feelings, it is only in some very hidden inner chamber. And yet, the feelings are there, and not the less healthy and genuine, though they are not made the subject of exhibition to others. 12. WORTHY OF CULTIVATION.--While, therefore, grace of manner, politeness of behavior, elegance of demeanor, and all the arts that contribute to make life pleasant and beautiful, are worthy of cultivation, it must not be at the expense of the more solid and enduring qualities of honesty, sincerity, and truthfulness. The fountain of beauty must be in the heart more than in the eye, and if it does not tend to produce beautiful life and noble practice, it will prove of comparatively little avail. Politeness of manner is not worth much, unless it is accompanied by polite actions. * * * * * INFLUENCE OF GOOD CHARACTER. "Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man! --DANIEL. "Character is moral order seen through the medium of an individual nature--Men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong." --EMERSON. The purest treasure mortal times afford, Is--spotless reputation; that away, Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay, A jewel in a ten-times-barr'd-up chest Is--a bold Spirit in a loyal breast. --SHAKESPEARE. 1. REPUTATION.--The two most precious things this side the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other. A wise man, therefore, will be more anxious to deserve a fair name than to possess it, and this will teach him so to live, as not to be afraid to die. 2. CHARACTER.--Character is one of the greatest motive powers in the world. In its noblest embodiments, it exemplifies human nature in its highest forms, for it exhibits man at his best. 3. THE HEART THAT RULES IN LIFE.--Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of brain power, the latter of heart power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life. Men of genius stand to society in the relation of its intellect as men of character of its conscience: and while the former are admired, the latter are followed. 4. THE HIGHEST IDEAL OF LIFE AND CHARACTER.--Common-place though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic. And though the abiding sense of duty upholds man in his highest attitudes, it also equally sustains him in the transaction of the ordinary affairs of every-day existence. Man's life is "centered in the sphere of common duties." The most influential of all the virtues are those which are the most in request for daily use. They wear the best, and last the longest. 5. WEALTH.--Wealth in the hands of men of weak purpose, or deficient self-control, or of ill regulated passions is only a temptation and a snare--the source, it may be, of infinite mischief to themselves, and often to others. On the contrary, a condition of comparative poverty is compatible with character in its highest form. A man may possess only his industry, his frugality, his integrity, and yet stand high in the rank of true manhood. The advice which Burns' father gave him was the best: "He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne'er a farthing, For without an honest, manly heart no man was worth regarding." 6. CHARACTER IS PROPERTY.--It is the noblest of possessions. It is an estate in the general good-will and respect of men; they who invest in it--though they may not become rich in this world's goods--will find their reward in esteem and reputation fairly and honorably won. And it is right that in life good qualities should tell--that industry, virtue, and goodness should rank the highest--and that the really best men should be foremost. 7. SIMPLE HONESTY OF PURPOSE.--This in a man goes a long way in life, if founded on a just estimate of himself and a steady obedience to the rule he knows and feels to be right. It holds a man straight, gives him strength and sustenance, and forms a mainspring of vigorous action. No man is bound to be rich or great--no, nor to be wise--but every man is bound to be honest and virtuous. [Illustration] [Illustration: HOME AMUSEMENTS.] * * * * * FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 1. GENTLENESS MUST CHARACTERIZE EVERY ACT OF AUTHORITY.--The storm of excitement that may make the child start, bears no relation to actual obedience. The inner firmness, that sees and feels a moral conviction and expects obedience, is only disguised and defeated by bluster. The more calm and direct it is, the greater certainty it has of dominion. 2. FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF SMALL CHILDREN.--For the government of small children speak only in the authority of love, yet authority, loving and to be obeyed. The most important lesson to impart is obedience to authority as authority. The question of salvation with most children will be settled as soon as they learn to obey parental authority. It establishes a habit and order of mind that is ready to accept divine authority. This precludes skepticism and disobedience, and induces that childlike trust and spirit set forth as a necessary state of salvation. Children that are never made to obey are left to drift into the sea of passion where the pressure for surrender only tends to drive them at greater speed from the haven of safety. 3. HABITS OF SELF-DENIAL.--Form in the child habits of self-denial. Pampering never matures good character. 4. EMPHASIZE INTEGRITY.--Keep the moral tissues tough in integrity; then it will hold a hook of obligations when once set in a sure place. There is nothing more vital. Shape all your experiments to preserve the integrity. Do not so reward it that it becomes mercenary. Turning State's evidence is a dangerous experiment in morals. Prevent deceit from succeeding. 5. GUARD MODESTY.--To be brazen is to imperil some of the best elements of character. Modesty may be strengthened into a becoming confidence, but brazen facedness can seldom be toned down into decency. It requires the miracle of grace. 6. PROTECT PURITY.--Teach your children to loathe impurity. Study the character of their playmates. Watch their books. Keep them from corruption at all cost. The groups of youth in the school and in society, and in business places, seed with improprieties of word and thought. Never relax your vigilance along this exposed border. [Illustration: BOTH PUZZLED.] 7. THREATEN THE LEAST POSSIBLE.--In family government threaten the least possible. Some parents rattle off their commands with penalties so profusely that there is a steady roar of hostilities about the child's head. These threats are forgotten by the parent and unheeded by the child. All government is at an end. 8. DO NOT ENFORCE TOO MANY COMMANDS.--Leave a few things within the range of the child's knowledge that are not forbidden. Keep your word good, but do not have too much of it out to be redeemed. 9. PUNISH AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE.--Sometimes punishment is necessary, but the less it is resorted to the better. 10. NEVER PUNISH IN A PASSION.--Wrath only becomes cruelty. There is no moral power in it. When you seem to be angry you can do no good. 11. BRUTISH VIOLENCE ONLY MULTIPLIES OFFENDERS.--Striking and beating the body seldom reaches the soul. Fear and hatred beget rebellion. 12. PUNISH PRIVATELY.--Avoid punishments that break down self-respect. Striking the body produces shame and indignation. It is enough for the other children to know that discipline is being administered. 13. NEVER STOP SHORT OF SUCCESS.--When the child is not conquered the punishment has been worse than wasted. Reach the point where neither wrath nor sullenness remain. By firm persistency and persuasion require an open look of recognition and peace. It is only evil to stir up the devil unless he is cast out. Ordinarily one complete victory will last a child for a lifetime. But if the child relapses, repeat the dose with proper accompaniments. 14. DO NOT REQUIRE CHILDREN TO COMPLAIN OF THEMSELVES FOR PARDON.--It begets either sycophants or liars. It is the part of the government to detect offences. It reverses the order of matters to shirk this duty. 15. GRADE AUTHORITY UP TO LIBERTY.--The growing child must have experiments of freedom. Lead him gently into the family. Counsel with him. Let him plan as he can. By and by he has the confidence of courage without the danger of exposures. 16. RESPECT.--Parents must respect each other. Undermining either undermines both. Always govern in the spirit of love. [Illustration] [Illustration] * * * * * CONVERSATION. Some men are very entertaining for a first interview, but after that they are exhausted, and run out; on a second meeting we shall find them very flat and monotonous; like hand-organs, we have heard all their tunes.--COULTON. He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers, and ceases when he has no more to say, is in possession of some of the best requisites of man.--LAVATER. Beauty is never so lovely as when adorned with the smile, and conversation never sits easier upon us than when we know and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of Laughter, which may not improperly be called the Chorus of Conversation.--STEELE. The first ingredient in Conversation is Truth, the next Good Sense, the third Good Humor, and the fourth Wit.--SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. HOME LESSONS IN CONVERSATION. Say nothing unpleasant when it can be avoided. Avoid satire and sarcasm. Never repeat a word that was not intended for repetition. Cultivate the supreme wisdom, which consists less in saying what ought to be said than in not saying what ought not to be said. Often cultivate "flashes of silence." It is the larger half of the conversation to listen well. Listen to others patiently, especially the poor. Sharp sayings are an evidence of low breeding. Shun faultfindings and faultfinders. Never utter an uncomplimentary word against anyone. Compliments delicately hinted and sincerely intended are a grace in conversation. Commendation of gifts and cleverness properly put are in good taste, but praise of beauty is offensive. Repeating kind expressions is proper. Compliments given in a joke may be gratefully received in earnest. The manner and tone are important parts of a compliment. Avoid egotism. Don't talk of yourself, or of your friends or your deeds. Give no sign that you appreciate your own merits. Do not become a distributer of the small talk of a community. The smiles of your auditors do not mean respect. Avoid giving the impression of one filled with "suppressed egotism." Never mention your own peculiarities; for culture destroys vanity. Avoid exaggeration. Do not be too positive. Do not talk of display oratory. Do not try to lead in conversation looking around to enforce silence. Lay aside affected, silly etiquette for the natural dictates of the heart. Direct the conversation where others can join with you and impart to you useful information. Avoid oddity. Eccentricity is shallow vanity. Be modest. Be what you wish to seem. Avoid repeating a brilliant or clever saying. [Illustration: THINKING ONLY OF DRESS.] If you find bashfulness or embarrassment coming upon you, do or say something at once. The commonest matter gently stated is better than an embarrassing silence. Sometimes changing your position, or looking into a book for a moment may relieve your embarrassment, and dispel any settling stiffness. Avoid telling many stories, or repeating a story more than once in the same company. Never treat any one as if you simply wanted him to tell stories. People laugh and despise such a one. Never tell a coarse story. No wit or preface can make it excusable. Tell a story, if at all, only as an illustration, and not for itself. Tell it accurately. Be careful in asking questions for the purpose of starting conversation or drawing out a person, not to be rude or intrusive. Never take liberties by staring, or by any rudeness. Never infringe upon any established regulations among strangers. Do not always prove yourself to be the one in the right. The right will appear. You need only give it a chance. Avoid argument in conversation. It is discourteous to your host. Cultivate paradoxes in conversation with your peers. They add interest to common-place matters. To strike the harmless faith of ordinary people in any public idol is waste, but such a movement with those able to reply is better. Never discourse upon your ailments. Never use words of the meaning or pronunciation of which you are uncertain. Avoid discussing your own or other people's domestic concerns. Never prompt a slow speaker, as if you had all the ability. In conversing with a foreigner who may be learning our language, it is excusable to help him in some delicate way. Never give advice unasked. Do not manifest impatience. Do not interrupt another when speaking. Do not find fault, though you may gently criticise. Do not appear to notice inaccuracies of speech in others. Do not always commence a conversation by allusion to the weather. Do not, when narrating an incident, continually say, "you see," "you know." Do not allow yourself to lose temper or speak excitedly. Do not introduce professional or other topics that the company generally cannot take an interest in. Do not talk very loud. A firm, clear, distinct, yet mild, gentle, and musical voice has great power. Do not be absent-minded, requiring the speaker to repeat what has been said that you may understand. Do not try to force yourself into the confidence of others. Do not use profanity, vulgar terms, words of double meaning, or language that will bring the blush to anyone. Do not allow yourself to speak ill of the absent one if it can be avoided. The day may come when some friend will be needed to defend you in your absence. Do not speak with contempt and ridicule of a locality which you may be visiting. Find something to truthfully praise and commend; thus make yourself agreeable. Do not make a pretense of gentility, nor parade the fact that you are a descendant of any notable family. You must pass for just what you are, and must stand on your own merit. Do not contradict. In making a correction say, "I beg your pardon, but I had the impression that it was so and so." Be careful in contradicting, as you may be wrong yourself. Do not be unduly familiar; you will merit contempt if you are. Neither should you be dogmatic in your assertions, arrogating to yourself such consequences in your opinions. Do not be too lavish in your praise of various members of your own family when speaking to strangers; the person to whom you are speaking may know some faults that you do not. Do not feel it incumbent upon yourself to carry your point in conversation. Should the person with whom you are conversing feel the same, your talk may lead into violent argument. Do not try to pry into the private affairs of others by asking what their profits are, what things cost, whether Melissa ever had a beau, and why Amarette never got married? All such questions are extremely impertinent and are likely to meet with rebuke. Do not whisper in company; do not engage in private conversation; do not speak a foreign language which the general company present may not understand, unless it is understood that the foreigner is unable to speak your own language. [Illustration: WIDOWER JONES AND WIDOW SMITH.] * * * * * THE TOILET. OR The Care of the Person. IMPORTANT RULES. 1. GOOD APPEARANCE.--The first care of all persons should be for their personal appearance. Those who are slovenly or careless in their habits are unfit for refined society, and cannot possibly make a good appearance in it. A well-bred person will always cultivate habits of the most scrupulous neatness. A gentleman or lady is always well dressed. The garment may be plain or of coarse material, or even worn "thin and shiny," but if it is carefully brushed and neat, it can be worn with dignity. 2. PERSONAL CLEANLINESS.--Personal appearance depends greatly on the careful toilet and scrupulous attention to dress. The first point which marks the gentleman or lady in appearance is rigid cleanliness. This remark supplies to the body and everything which covers it. A clean skin--only to be secured by frequent baths--is indispensable. 3. THE TEETH.--The teeth should receive the utmost attention. Many a young man has been disgusted with a lady by seeing her unclean and discolored teeth. It takes but a few moments, and if necessary secure some simple tooth powder or rub the teeth thoroughly every day with a linen handkerchief, and it will give the teeth and mouth a beautiful and clean appearance. 4. THE HAIR AND BEARD.--The hair should be thoroughly brushed and well kept, and the beard of men properly trimmed. Men should not let their hair grow long and shaggy. 5. UNDERCLOTHING.--The matter of cleanliness extends to all articles of clothing, underwear as well as the outer clothing. Cleanliness is a mark of true utility. The clothes need not necessarily be of a rich and expensive quality, but they can all be kept clean. Some persons have an odor about them that is very offensive, simply on account of their underclothing being worn too long without washing. This odor of course cannot be detected by the person who wears the soiled garments, but other persons easily detect it and are offended by it. 6. THE BATH.--No person should think for a moment that they can be popular in society without regular bathing. A bath should be taken at least once a week, and if the feet perspire they should be washed several times a week, as the case may require. It is not unfrequent that young men are seen with dirty ears and neck. This is unpardonable and boorish, and shows gross neglect. Occasionally a young lady will be called upon unexpectedly when her neck and smiling face are not emblems of cleanliness. Every lady owes it to herself to be fascinating; every gentleman is bound, for his own sake, to be presentable; but beyond this there is the obligation to society, to one's friends, and to those with whom we may be brought in contact. 7. SOILED GARMENTS.--A young man's garments may not be expensive, yet there is no excuse for wearing a soiled collar and a soiled shirt, or carrying a soiled handkerchief. No one should appear as though he had slept in a stable, shaggy hair, soiled clothing or garments indifferently put on and carelessly buttoned. A young man's vest should always be kept buttoned in the presence of ladies. 8. THE BREATH.--Care should be taken to remedy an offensive breath without delay. Nothing renders one so unpleasant to one's acquaintance, or is such a source of misery to one's self. The evil may be from some derangement of the stomach or some defective condition of the teeth, or catarrhal affection of the throat and nose. See remedies in other portions of the book. * * * * * A YOUNG MAN'S PERSONAL APPEARANCE. Dress changes the manners.--VOLTAIRE. Whose garments wither, shall receive faded smiles.--SHERIDAN KNOWLES. Men of sense follow fashion so far that they are neither conspicuous for their excess nor peculiar by their opposition to it.--ANONYMOUS. 1. A well-dressed man does not require so much an extensive as a varied wardrobe. He does not need a different suit for every season and every occasion, but if he is careful to select clothes that are simple and not striking or conspicuous, he may use the garment over and over again without their being noticed, provided they are suitable to the season and the occasion. 2. A clean shirt, collar and cuffs always make a young man look neat and tidy, even if his clothes are not of the latest pattern and are somewhat threadbare. 3. Propriety is outraged when a man of sixty dresses like a youth or sixteen. It is bad manners for a gentleman to use perfumes to a noticeable extent. Avoid affecting singularity in dress. Expensive clothes are no sign of a gentleman. 4. When dressed for company, strive to appear easy and natural. Nothing is more distressing to a sensitive person, or more ridiculous to one gifted with refinement, than to see a lady laboring under the consciousness of a fine gown or a gentleman who is stiff, awkward and ungainly in a brand-new coat. 5. Avoid what is called the "ruffianly style of dress" or the slouchy appearance of a half-unbottoned vest, and suspenderless pantaloons. That sort of affectation is, if possible, even more disgusting than the painfully elaborate frippery of the dandy or dude. Keep your clothes well brushed and keep them cleaned. Slight spots can be removed with a little sponge and soap and water. 6. A gentleman should never wear a high hat unless he has on a frock coat or a dress suit. 7. A man's jewelry should be good and simple. Brass or false jewelry, like other forms of falsehood, is vulgar. Wearing many cheap decorations is a serious fault. [Illustration: THE DUDE OF THE 17TH CENTURY.] 8. If a man wears a ring it should be on the third finger of the left hand. This is the only piece of jewelry a man is allowed to wear that does not serve a purpose. 9. Wearing imitations of diamonds is always in very bad taste. 10. Every man looks better in a full beard if he keeps it well trimmed. If a man shaves he should shave at least every other day, unless he is in the country. 11. The finger-nails should be kept cut, and the teeth should be cleaned every morning, and kept clear from tarter. A man who does not keep his teeth clean does not look like a gentleman when he shows them. [Illustration] * * * * * DRESS. We sacrifice to dress, till household joys And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry, And keeps our larder lean. Puts out our fires, And introduces hunger, frost and woe, Where peace and hospitality might reign. --COWPER 1. GOD IS A LOVER OF DRESS.--We cannot but feel that God is a lover of dress. He has put on robes of beauty and glory upon all his works. Every flower is dressed in richness; every field blushes beneath a mantle of beauty; every star is veiled in brightness; every bird is clothed in the habiliments of the most exquisite taste. The cattle upon the thousand hills are dressed by the hand divine. Who, studying God in his works, can doubt, that he will smile upon the evidence of correct taste manifested by his children in clothing the forms he has made them? 2. LOVE OF DRESS.--To love dress is not to be a slave of fashion; to love dress only is the test of such homage. To transact the business of charity in a silken dress, and to go in a carriage to the work, injures neither the work nor the worker. The slave of fashion is one who assumes the livery of a princess, and then omits the errand of the good human soul; dresses in elegance, and goes upon no good errand, and thinks and does nothing of value to mankind. 3. BEAUTY IN DRESS.--Beauty in dress is a good thing, rail at it who may. But it is a lower beauty, for which a higher beauty should not be sacrificed. They love dresses too much who give it their first thought, their best time, or all their money; who for it neglect the culture of their mind or heart, or the claims of others on their service; who care more for their dress than their disposition; who are troubled more by an unfashionable bonnet than a neglected duty. 4. SIMPLICITY OF DRESS.--Female lovliness never appears to so good advantage as when set off by simplicity of dress. No artist ever decks his angels with towering feathers and gaudy jewelry; and our dear human angels--if they would make good their title to that name--should carefully avoid ornaments, which properly belong to Indian squaws and African princesses. These tinselries may serve to give effect on the stage, or upon the ball room floor, but in daily life there is no substitute for the charm of simplicity. A vulgar taste is not to be disguised by gold or diamonds. The absence of a true taste and refinement of delicacy cannot be compensated for by the possession of the most princely fortune. Mind measures gold, but gold cannot measure mind. Through dress the mind may be read, as through the delicate tissue the lettered page. A modest woman will dress modestly; a really refined and intelligent woman will bear the marks of careful selection and faultless taste. 5. PEOPLE OF SENSE.--A coat that has the mark of use upon it, is a recommendation to the people of sense, and a hat with too much nap, and too high lustre, a derogatory circumstance. The best coats in our streets are worn on the backs of penniless fops, broken down merchants, clerks with pitiful salaries, and men that do not pay up. The heaviest gold chains dangle from the fobs of gamblers and gentlemen of very limited means; costly ornaments on ladies, indicate to the eyes that are well opened, the fact of a silly lover or husband cramped for funds. 6. PLAIN AND NEAT.--When a pretty woman goes by in plain and neat apparel, it is the presumption that she has fair expectations, and a husband that can show a balance in his favor. For women are like books,--too much gilding makes men suspicious, that the binding is the most important part. The body is the shell of the soul, and the dress is the husk of the body; but the husk generally tells what the kernel is. As a fashionably dressed young lady passed some gentlemen, one of them raised his hat, whereupon another, struck by the fine appearance of the lady, made some inquiries concerning her, and was answered thus: "She makes a pretty ornament in her father's house, but otherwise is of no use." 7. THE RICHEST DRESS.--The richest dress is always worn on the soul. The adornments that will not perish, and that all men most admire, shine from the heart through this life. God has made it our highest, holiest duty, to dress the souls he has given us. It is wicked to waste it in frivolity. It is a beautiful, undying, precious thing. If every young woman would think of her soul when she looks in the glass, would hear the cry of her naked mind when she dallies away her precious hours at her toilet, would listen to the sad moaning of her hollow heart, as it wails through her idle, useless life, something would be done for the elevation of womanhood. 8. DRESSING UP.--Compare a well-dressed body with a well-dressed mind. Compare a taste for dress with a taste for knowledge, culture, virtue, and piety. Dress up an ignorant young woman in the "height of fashion"; put on plumes and flowers, diamonds and gewgaws; paint her face, girt up her waist, and I ask you, if this side of a painted and feathered savage you can find anything more unpleasant to behold. And yet such young women we meet by the hundred every day on the street and in all our public places. It is awful to think of. 9. DRESS AFFECTS OUR MANNERS.--A man who is badly dressed, feels chilly, sweaty, and prickly. He stammers, and does not always tell the truth. He means to, perhaps, but he can't. He is half distracted about his pantaloons, which are much to short, and are constantly hitching up; or his frayed jacket and crumpled linen harrow his soul, and quite unman him. He treads on the train of a lady's dress, and says, "Thank you", sits down on his hat, and wishes the "desert were his dwelling place." [Illustration] * * * * * BEAUTY. "She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies: And all that's best of dark and bright Meet her in aspect and in her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies." --BYRON. 1. THE HIGHEST STYLE OF BEAUTY.--The highest style of beauty to be found in nature pertains to the human form, as animated and lighted up by the intelligence within. It is the expression of the soul that constitutes this superior beauty. It is that which looks out of the eye, which sits in calm majesty on the brow, lurks on the lip, smiles on the cheek, is set forth in the chiselled lines and features of the countenance, in the general contour of figure and form, in the movement, and gesture, and tone; it is this looking out of the invisible spirit that dwells within, this manifestation of the higher nature, that we admire and love; this constitutes to us the beauty of our species. 2. BEAUTY WHICH PERISHES NOT.--There is a beauty which perishes not. It is such as the angels wear. It forms the washed white robes of the saints. It wreathes the countenance of every doer of good. It adorns every honest face. It shines in the virtuous life. It molds the hands of charity. It sweetens the voice of sympathy. It sparkles on the brow of wisdom. It flashes in the eye of love. It breathes in the spirit of piety. It is the beauty of the heaven of heavens. It is that which may grow by the hand of culture in every human soul. It is the flower of the spirit which blossoms on the tree of life. Every soul may plant and nurture it in its own garden, in its own Eden. 3. WE MAY ALL BE BEAUTIFUL.--This is the capacity of beauty that God has given to the human soul, and this the beauty placed within the reach of all. We may all be beautiful. Though our forms may be uncomely and our features not the prettiest, our spirits may be beautiful. And this inward beauty always shines through. A beautiful heart will flash out in the eye. A lovely soul will glow in the face. A sweet spirit will tune the voice, wreathe the countenance in charms. Oh, there is a power in interior beauty that melts the hardest heart! 4. WOMAN THE MOST PERFECT TYPE OF BEAUTY.--Woman, by common consent, we regard as the most perfect type of beauty on earth. To her we ascribe the highest charms belonging to this wonderful element so profusely mingled in all God's works. Her form is molded and finished in exquisite delicacy of perfection. The earth gives us no form more perfect, no features more symmetrical, no style more chaste, no movements more graceful, no finish more complete; so that our artists ever have and ever will regard the woman-form of humanity as the most perfect earthly type of beauty. This form is most perfect and symmetrical in the youth of womanhood; so that the youthful woman is earth's queen of beauty. This is true, not only by the common consent of mankind, but also by the strictest rules of scientific criticism. 5. FADELESS BEAUTY.--There cannot be a picture without its bright spots; and the steady contemplation of what is bright in others, has a reflex influence upon the beholder. It reproduces what it reflects. Nay, it seems to leave an impress even upon the countenance. The feature, from having a dark, sinister aspect, becomes open, serene, and sunny. A countenance so impressed, has neither the vacant stare of the idiot, nor the crafty, penetrating look of the basilisk, but the clear, placid aspect of truth and goodness. The woman who has such a face is beautiful. She has a beauty which changes not with the features, which fades not with years. It is beauty of expression. It is the only kind of beauty which can be relied upon for a permanent influence with the other sex. The violet will soon cease to smile. Flowers must fade. The love that has nothing but beauty to sustain it, soon withers away. [Illustration: HAND IN HAND.] 6. A PRETTY WOMAN PLEASES THE EYE, a good woman, the heart. The one is a jewel, the other a treasure. Invincible fidelity, good humor, and complacency of temper, outlive all the charms of a fine face, and make the decay of it invisible. That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit; a beauty that we must intimately know to justly appreciate. 7. THE WOMAN YOU LOVE BEST.--Beauty, dear reader, is probably the woman you love best, but we trust it is the beauty of soul and character, which sits in calm majesty on the brow, lurks on the lip, and will outlive what is called a fine face. 8. THE WEARING OF ORNAMENTS.--Beauty needs not the foreign aid of ornament, but is when unadorned adorned the most, is a trite observation; but with a little qualification it is worthy of general acceptance. Aside from the dress itself, ornaments should be very sparingly used--at any rate, the danger lies in over-loading oneself, and not in using too few. A young girl, and especially one of a light and airy style of beauty, should never wear gems. A simple flower in her hair or on her bosom is all that good taste will permit. When jewels or other ornaments are worn, they should be placed where you desire the eye of the spectator to rest, leaving the parts to which you do not want attention called as plain and negative as possible. There is no surer sign of vulgarity than a profusion of heavy jewelry carried about upon the person. [Illustration] [Illustration] * * * * * SENSIBLE HELPS TO BEAUTY. 1. FOR SCRAWNY NECK.--Take off your tight collars, feather boas and such heating things. Wash neck and chest with hot water, then rub in sweet oil all that you can work in. Apply this every night before you retire and leave the skin damp with it while you sleep. 2. FOR RED HANDS.--Keep your feet warm by soaking them often in hot water, and keep your hands out of the water as much as possible. Rub your hands with the skin of a lemon and it will whiten them. If your skin will bear glycerine after you have washed, pour into the palm a little glycerine and lemon juice mixed, and rub over the hands and wipe off. 3. NECK AND FACE.--Do not bathe the neck and face just before or after being out of doors. It tends to wrinkle the skin. 4. SCOWLS.--Never allow yourself to scowl, even if the sun be in your eyes. That scowl will soon leave its trace and no beauty will outlive it. 5. WRINKLED FOREHEAD.--If you wrinkle your forehead when you talk or read, visit an oculist and have your eyes tested, and then wear glasses to fit them. 6. OLD LOOKS.--Sometimes your face looks old because it is tired. Then apply the following wash and it will make you look younger: Put three drops of ammonia, a little borax, a tablespoonful of bay rum, and a few drops of camphor into warm water and apply to your face. Avoid getting it into your eyes. 7. THE BEST COSMETIC.--Squeeze the juice of a lemon into a pint of sweet milk. Wash the face with it every night and in the morning wash off with warm rain water. This will produce a very beautiful effect upon the skin. 8. SPOTS ON THE FACE.--Moles and many other discolorations may be removed from the face by a preparation composed of one part chemically pure carbolic acid and two parts pure glycerine. Touch the spots with a camel's-hair pencil, being careful that the preparation does not come in contact with the adjacent skin. Five minutes after touching, bathe with soft water and apply a little vaseline. It may be necessary to repeat the operation, but if persisted in, the blemishes will be entirely removed. 9. WRINKLES.--This prescription is said to cure wrinkles: Take one ounce of white wax and melt it to a gentle heat. Add two ounces of the juice of lily bulbs, two ounces of honey, two drams of rose water, and a drop or two of ottar of roses. Apply twice a day, rubbing the wrinkles the wrong way. Always use tepid water for washing the face. 10. THE HAIR.--The hair must be kept free from dust or it will fall out. One of the best things for cleaning it, is a raw egg rubbed into the roots and then washed out in several waters. The egg furnishes material for the hair to grow on, while keeping the scalp perfectly clean. Apply once a month. 11. LOSS OF HAIR.--When through sickness or headache the hair falls out, the following tonic may be applied with good effect: Use one ounce of glycerine, one ounce of bay rum, one pint of strong sage tea, and apply every other night rubbing well into the scalp. * * * * * HOW TO KEEP THE BLOOM AND GRACE OF YOUTH. THE SECRET OF ITS PRESERVATION. [Illustration: MRS. WM. McKINLEY.] 1. The question most often asked by women is regarding the art of retaining, with advancing years, the bloom and grace of youth. This secret is not learned through the analysis of chemical compounds, but by a thorough study of nature's laws peculiar to their sex. It is useless for women with wrinkled faces, dimmed eyes and blemished skins to seek for external applications of beautifying balms and lotions to bring the glow of life and health into the face, and yet there are truths, simple yet wonderful, whereby the bloom of early life can be restored and retained, as should be the heritage of all God's children, sending the light of beauty into every woman's face. The secret: 2. Do not bathe in hard water; soften it with a few drops of ammonia, or a little borax. 3. Do not bathe the face while it is very warm, and never use very cold water. 4. Do not attempt to remove dust with cold water; give your face a hot bath, using plenty of good soap, then give it a thorough rinsing with warm water. 5. Do not rub your face with a coarse towel. 6. Do not believe you can remove wrinkles by filling in the crevices with powder. Give your face a Russian bath every night; that is, bathe it with water so hot that you wonder how you can bear it, and then, a minute after, with moderately cold water, that will make your face glow with warmth; dry it with a soft towel. [Illustration: MALE. FEMALE. Showing the Difference in Form and Proportion.] * * * * * FORM AND DEFORMITY. 1. PHYSICAL DEFORMITIES.--Masquerading is a modern accomplishment. Girls wear tight shoes, burdensome skirts, corsets, etc., all of which prove so fatal to their health. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, our "young ladies" are sorry specimens of feminality; and palpitators, cosmetics and all the modern paraphernalia are required to make them appear fresh and blooming. Man is equally at fault. A devotee to all the absurd devices of fashion, he practically asserts that "dress makes the man." But physical deformities are of far less importance than moral imperfections. 2. DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL.--It is not possible for human beings to attain their full stature of humanity, except by loving long and perfectly. Behold that venerable man! he is mature in judgment, perfect in every action and expression, and saintly in goodness. You almost worship as you behold. What rendered him thus perfect? What rounded off his natural asperities, and moulded up his virtues? Love mainly. It permeated every pore, and seasoned every fibre of his being, as could nothing else. Mark that matronly woman. In the bosom of her family she is more than a queen and goddess combined. All her looks and actions express the outflowing of some or all of the human virtues. To know her is to love her. She became thus perfect, not in a day or year, but by a long series of appropriate means. Then by what? Chiefly in and by love, which is specially adapted thus to develop this maturity. 3. PHYSICAL STATURE.--Men and women generally increase in stature until the twenty-fifth year, and it is safe to assume, that perfection of function is not established until maturity of bodily development is completed. The physical contour of these representations plainly exhibits the difference in structure, and also implies difference of function. Solidity and strength are represented by the organization of the male, grace and beauty by that of the female. His broad shoulders represent physical power and the right of dominion, while her bosom is the symbol of love and nutrition. * * * * * HOW TO DETERMINE A PERFECT HUMAN FIGURE. The proportions of the perfect human figure are strictly mathematical. The whole figure is six times the length of the foot. Whether the form be slender or plump, this rule holds good. Any deviation from it is a departure from the highest beauty of proportion. The Greeks made all their statues according to this rule. The face, from the highest point of the forehead, where the hair begins, to the end of the chin, is one-tenth of the whole stature. The hand, from the wrist to the end of the middle finger, is the same. The chest is a fourth, and from the nipples to the top of the head is the same. From the top of the chest to the highest point of the forehead is a seventh. If the length of the face, from the roots of the hair to the chin, be divided into three equal parts, the first division determines the point where the eyebrows meet, and the second the place of the nostrils. The navel is the central point of the human body, and if a man should lie on his back with his arms and legs extended, the periphery of the circle which might be described around him, with the navel for its center, would touch the extremities of his hands and feet. The height from the feet to the top of the head is the same as the distance from the extremity of one hand to the extremity of the other when the arms are extended. [Illustration: Lady's Dress in the days of Greece.] The Venus de Medici is considered the most perfect model of the female forms, and has been the admiration of the world for ages. Alexander Walker, after minutely describing this celebrated statue, says: "All these admirable characteristics of the female form, the mere existence of which in woman must, one is tempted to imagine, be even to herself, a source of ineffable pleasure, these constitute a being worthy, as the personification of beauty, of occupying the temples of Greece; present an object finer, alas, than Nature even seems capable of producing; and offer to all nations and ages a theme of admiration and delight." Well might Thomson say: So stands the statue that enchants the world, So, bending, tries to vail the matchless boast-- The mingled beauties of exulting Greece. We beg our readers to observe the form of the waist (evidently innocent of corsets and tight dresses) of this model woman, and also that of the Greek Slave in the accompanying outlines. These forms are such as unperverted nature and the highest art alike require. To compress the waist, and thereby change its form, pushing the ribs inward, displacing the vital organs, and preventing the due expansion of the lungs, is as destructive to beauty as it is to health. * * * * * THE HISTORY, MYSTERY, BENEFITS AND INJURIES OF THE CORSET. [Illustration: The Corset in the 18th Century.] 1. The origin of the corset is lost in remote antiquity. The figures of the early Egyptian women show clearly an artificial shape of the waist produced by some style of corset. A similar style of dress must also have prevailed among the ancient Jewish maidens; for Isaiah, in calling upon the women to put away their personal adornments, says: "Instead of a girdle there shall be a rent, and instead of a stomacher (corset) a girdle of sackcloth." 2. Homer also tells us of the cestus or girdle of Venus, which was borrowed by the haughty Juno with a view to increasing her personal attractions, that Jupiter might be a more tractable and orderly husband. 3. Coming down to the later times, we find the corset was used in France and England as early as the 12th century. 4. The most extensive and extreme use of the corset occurred in the 16th century, during the reign of Catherine de Medici of France and Queen Elizabeth of England. With Catherine de Medici a thirteen-inch waist measurement was considered the standard of fashion, while a thick waist was an abomination. No lady could consider her figure of proper shape unless she could span her waist with her two hands. To produce this result a strong rigid corset was worn night and day until the waist was laced down to the required size. Then over this corset was placed the steel apparatus shown in the illustration on next page. This corset-cover reached from the hip to the throat, and produced a rigid figure over which the dress would fit with perfect smoothness. [Illustration: Steel Corset worn in Catherine's time.] 5. During the 18th century corsets were largely made from a species of leather known as "Bend," which was not unlike that used for shoe soles, and measured nearly a quarter of an inch in thickness. One of the most popular corsets of the time was the corset and stomacher shown in the accompanying illustration. 6. About the time of the French Revolution a reaction set in against tight lacing, and for a time there was a return to the early classical Greek costume. This style of dress prevailed, with various modifications, until about 1810 when corsets and tight lacing again returned with threefold fury. Buchan, a prominent writer of this period, says that it was by no means uncommon to see "a mother lay her daughter down upon the carpet, and, placing her foot upon her back, break half a dozen laces in tightening her stays." 7. It is reserved to our own time to demonstrate that corsets and tight lacing do not necessarily go hand in hand. Distortion and feebleness are not beauty. A proper proportion should exist between the size of the waist and the breadth of the shoulders and hips, and if the waist is diminished below this proportion, it suggests disproportion and invalidism rather than grace and beauty. 8. The perfect corset is one which possesses just that degree of rigidity which will prevent it from wrinkling, but will at the same time allow freedom in the bending and twisting of the body. Corsets boned with whalebone, horn or steel are necessarily stiff, rigid and uncomfortable. After a few days' wear the bones or steels become bent and set in position, or, as more frequently happens, they break and cause injury or discomfort to the wearer. 9. About seven years ago an article was discovered for the stiffening of corsets, which has revolutionized the corset industry of the world. This article is manufactured from the natural fibers of the Mexican Ixtle plant, and is known as Coraline. It consists of straight, stiff fibers like bristles bound together into a cord by being wound with two strands of thread passing in opposite directions. This produces an elastic fiber intermediate in stiffness between twine and whalebone. It cannot break, but it possesses all the stiffness and flexibility necessary to hold the corset in shape and prevent its wrinkling. We congratulate the ladies of to-day upon the advantages they enjoy over their sisters of two centuries ago, in the forms and the graceful and easy curves of the corsets now made as compared with those of former times. [Illustration] [Illustration: Forms of Corsets in the time of Elizabeth of England.] [Illustration: EGYPTIAN CORSET.] * * * * * TIGHT-LACING. It destroys natural beauty and creates an unpleasant and irritable temper. A tight-laced chest and a good disposition cannot go together. The human form has been molded by nature, the best shape is undoubtedly that which she has given it. To endeavor to render it more elegant by artificial means is to change it; to make it much smaller below and much larger above is to destroy its beauty; to keep it cased up in a kind of domestic cuirass is not only to deform it, but to expose the internal parts to serious injury. Under such compression as is commonly practiced by ladies, the development of the bones, which are still tender, does not take place conformably to the intention of nature, because nutrition is necessarily stopped, and they consequently become twisted and deformed. [Illustration: THE NATURAL WAIST. THE EFFECTS OF LACING.] Those who wear these appliances of tight-lacing often complain that they cannot sit upright without them--are sometimes, indeed, compelled to wear them during all the twenty-four hours; a fact which proves to what extent such articles weaken the muscles of the trunk. The injury does not fall merely on the internal structure of the body, but also on its beauty, and on the temper and feelings with which that beauty is associated. Beauty is in reality but another name for expression of countenance, which is the index of sound health, intelligence, good feelings and peace of mind. All are aware that uneasy feelings, existing habitually in the breast, speedily exhibit their signature on the countenance, and that bitter thoughts or a bad temper spoil the human expression of its comeliness and grace. [Illustration: NATURAL HAIR.] * * * * * THE CARE OF THE HAIR. 1. THE COLOR OF THE HAIR.--The color of the hair corresponds with that of the skin--being dark or black, with a dark complexion, and red or yellow with a fair skin. When a white skin is seen in conjunction with black hair, as among the women of Syria and Barbary, the apparent exception arises from protection from the sun's rays, and opposite colors are often found among people of one prevailing feature. Thus red-haired Jews are not uncommon, though the nation in general have dark complexion and hair. 2. THE IMPERISHABLE NATURE OF HAIR.--The imperishable nature of hair arises from the combination of salt and metals in its composition. In old tombs and on mummies it has been found in a perfect state, after a lapse of over two thousand years. There are many curious accounts proving the indestructibility of the human hair. 3. TUBULAR.--In the human family the hairs are tubular, the tubes being intersected by partitions, resembling in some degree the cellular tissue of plants. Their hollowness prevents incumbrance from weight, while their power of resistance is increased by having their traverse sections rounded in form. 4. CAUTIONS.--It is ascertained that a full head of hair, beard and whiskers, are a prevention against colds and consumptions. Occasionally, however, it is found necessary to remove the hair from the head, in cases of fever or disease, to stay the inflammatory symptoms, and to relieve the brain. The head should invariably be kept cool. Close night-caps are unhealthy, and smoking-caps and coverings for the head within doors are alike detrimental to the free growth of the hair, weakening it, and causing it to fall out. HOW TO BEAUTIFY AND PRESERVE THE HAIR. 1. TO BEAUTIFY THE HAIR.--Keep the head clean, the pores of the skin open, and the whole circulatory system in a healthy condition, and you will have no need of bear's grease (alias hog's lard). Where there is a tendency in the hair to fall off on account of the weakness or sluggishness of the circulation, or an unhealthy state of the skin, cold water and friction with a tolerably stiff brush are probably the best remedial agents. 2. BARBER'S SHAMPOOS.--Are very beneficial if properly prepared. They should not be made too strong. Avoid strong shampoos of any kind. Great caution should be exercised in this matter. 3. CARE OF THE HAIR.--To keep the hair healthy, keep the head clean. Brush the scalp well with a stiff brush, while dry. Then wash with castile soap, and rub into the roots bay rum, brandy or camphor water. This done twice a month will prove beneficial. Brush the scalp thoroughly twice a week. Dampen the hair with soft water at the toilet, and do not use oil. 4. HAIR WASH.--Take one ounce of borax, half an ounce of camphor powder--these ingredients fine--and dissolve them in one quart of boiling water. When cool, the solution will be ready for use. Dampen the hair frequently. This wash is said not only to cleanse and beautify, but to strengthen the hair, preserve the color and prevent baldness. ANOTHER EXCELLENT WASH.--The best wash we know for cleansing and softening the hair is an egg beaten up and rubbed well into the hair, and afterwards washed out with several washes of warm water. 5. THE ONLY SENSIBLE AND SAFE HAIR OIL.--The following is considered a most valuable preparation: Take of extract of yellow Peruvian bark, fifteen grains; extract of rhatany root, eight grains; extract of burdoch root and oil of nutmegs (fixed), of each two drachms; camphor (dissolve with spirits of wine), fifteen grains; beef marrow, two ounces; best olive oil, one ounce; citron juice, half a drachm; aromatic essential oil, as much as sufficient to render it fragrant; mix and make into an ointment. Two drachms of bergamot, and a few drops of attar of roses would suffice. 6. HAIR WASH.--A good hair wash is soap and water, and the oftener it is applied the freer the surface of the head will be from scurf. The hair-brush should also be kept in requisition morning and evening. 7. TO REMOVE SUPERFLUOUS HAIR.--With those who dislike the use of arsenic, the following is used for removing superfluous hair from the skin: Lime, one ounce; carbonate of potash, two ounces; charcoal powder, one drachm. For use, make it into a paste with a little warm water, and apply it to the part, previously shaved close. As soon as it has become thoroughly dry, it may be washed off with a little warm water. 8. COLORING FOR EYELASHES AND EYEBROWS.--In eyelashes the chief element of beauty consists in their being long and glossy; the eyebrows should be finely arched and clearly divided from each other. The most innocent darkener of the brow is the expressed juice of the elderberry, or a burnt clove. [Illustration: JAPANESE MOUSINE MAKING HER TOILET.] 9. CRIMPING HAIR.--To make the hair stay in crimps, take five cents worth of gum arabic and add to it just enough boiling water to dissolve it. When dissolved, add enough alcohol to make it rather thin. Let this stand all night and then bottle it to prevent the alcohol from evaporating. This put on the hair at night, after it is done up in papers or pins, will make it stay in crimp the hottest day, and is perfectly harmless. 10. TO CURL THE HAIR.--There is no preparation that will make naturally straight hair assume a permanent curl. The following will keep the hair in curl for a short time: Take borax, two ounces; gum arabic, one drachm; and hot water, not boiling, one quart; stir, and, as soon as the ingredients are dissolved, add three tablespoonfuls of strong spirits of camphor. On retiring to rest, wet the hair with the above liquid, and roll in twists of paper as usual. Do not disturb the hair until morning, when untwist and form into ringlets. 11. FOR FALLING OR LOOSENING OF THE HAIR.--Take: Alcohol, a half pint. Salt, as much as will dissolve. Glycerine, a tablespoonful. Flour of sulphur, teaspoonful. Mix. Rub on the scalp every morning. 12. TO DARKEN THE HAIR WITHOUT BAD EFFECTS.--Take: Blue vitriol (powdered), one drachm. Alcohol, one ounce. Essence of roses, ten drops. Rain-water, a half-pint. Shake together until they are thoroughly dissolved. 13. GRAY HAIR.--There are no known means by which the hair can be prevented from turning gray, and none which can restore it to its original hue, except through the process of dyeing. The numerous "hair color restorers" which are advertised are chemical preparations which act in the manner of a dye or as a paint, and are nearly always dependent for their power on the presence of lead. This mineral, applied to the skin, for a long time, will lead to the most disastrous maladies--lead-palsy, lead colic, and other symptoms of poisoning. It should, therefore, never be used for this purpose. [Illustration] [Illustration] * * * * * HOW TO CURE PIMPLES OR OTHER FACIAL ERUPTIONS. 1. It requires self-denial to get rid of pimples, for persons troubled with them will persist in eating fat meats and other articles of food calculated to produce them. Avoid the use of rich gravies, or pastry, or anything of the kind in excess. Take all the out-door exercise you can and never indulge in a late supper. Retire at a reasonable hour, and rise early in the morning. Sulphur to purify the blood may be taken three times a week--a thimbleful in a glass of milk before breakfast. It takes some time for the sulphur to do its work, therefore persevere in its use till the humors, or pimples, or blotches, disappear. Avoid getting wet while taking the sulphur. 2. TRY THIS RECIPE: Wash the face twice a day in warm water, and rub dry with a coarse towel. Then with a soft towel rub in a lotion made of two ounces of white brandy, one ounce of cologne, and one-half ounce of liquor potasse. Persons subject to skin eruptions should avoid very salty or fat food. A dose of Epsom salts occasionally might prove beneficial. 3. Wash the face in a dilution of carbolic acid, allowing one teaspoonful to a pint of water. This is an excellent and purifying lotion, and may be used on the most delicate skins. Be careful about letting this wash get into the eyes. 4. Oil of sweet almonds, one ounce; fluid potash, one drachm. Shake well together, and then add rose water, one ounce; pure water, six ounces. Mix. Rub the pimples or blotches for some minutes with a rough towel, and then dab them with the lotion. 5. Dissolve one ounce of borax, and sponge the face with it every night. When there are insects, rub on flower of sulphur, dry after washing, rub well and wipe dry; use plenty of castile soap. 6. Dilute corrosive sublimate with oil of almonds. A few days' application will remove them. * * * * * BLACK-HEADS AND FLESH WORMS. [Illustration: A REGULAR FLESH WORM GREATLY MAGNIFIED.] This is a minute little creature, scientifically called _Demodex folliculorum_, hardly visible to the naked eye, with comparatively large fore body, a more slender hind body and eight little stumpy processes that do duty as legs. No specialized head is visible, although of course there is a mouth orifice. These creatures live on the sweat glands or pores of the human face, and owing to the appearance that they give to the infested pores, they are usually known as "black-heads." It is not at all uncommon to see an otherwise pretty face disfigured by these ugly creatures, although the insects themselves are nearly transparent white. The black appearance is really due the accumulation of dirt which gets under the edges of the skin of the enlarged sweat glands and cannot be removed in the ordinary way by washing, because the abnormal, hardened secretion of the gland itself becomes stained. These insects are so lowly organized that it is almost impossible to satisfactory deal with them and they sometimes cause the continual festering of the skin which they inhabit. REMEDY.--Press them out with a hollow key or with the thumb and fingers, and apply a mixture of sulphur and cream every evening. Wash every morning with the best toilet soap, or wash the face with hot water with a soft flannel at bedtime. [Illustration: A HEALTHY COMPLEXION.] * * * * * LOVE. But there's nothing half so sweet in life As love's young dream.--MOORE. All love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.--SHELLEY. Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.--SHAKESPEARE. Let those love now who never loved before, Let those that always loved now love the more. 1. LOVE BLENDS YOUNG HEARTS.--Love blends young hearts in blissful unity, and, for the time, so ignores past ties and affections, as to make willing separation of the son from his father's house, and the daughter from all the sweet endearments of her childhood's home, to go out together and rear for themselves an altar, around which shall cluster all the cares and delights, the anxieties and sympathies, of the family relationship; this love, if pure, unselfish, and discreet, constitutes the chief usefulness and happiness of human life. 2. WITHOUT LOVE.--Without love there would be no organized households, and, consequently, none of that earnest endeavor for competence and respectability, which is the mainspring to human effort; none of those sweet, softening, restraining and elevating influences of domestic life, which can alone fill the earth with the glory of the Lord and make glad the city of Zion. This love is indeed heaven upon earth; but above would not be heaven without it; where there is not love, there is fear; but, "love casteth out fear." And yet we naturally do offend what we most love. 3. LOVE IS THE SUN OF LIFE.--Most beautiful in morning and evening, but warmest and steadiest at noon. It is the sun of the soul. Life without love is worse than death; a world without a sun. The love which does not lead to labor will soon die out, and the thankfulness which does not embody itself in sacrifices is already changing to gratitude. Love is not ripened in one day, nor in many, nor even in a human lifetime. It is the oneness of soul with soul in appreciation and perfect trust. To be blessed it must rest in that faith in the Divine which underlies every other motion. To be true, it must be eternal as God himself. 4. LOVE IS DEPENDENT.--Remember that love is dependent upon forms; courtesy of etiquette guards and protects courtesy of heart. How many hearts have been lost irrevocably, and how many averted eyes and cold looks have been gained from what seemed, perhaps, but a trifling negligence of forms. [Illustration: AGE COUNSELING YOUTH.] 5. RADICAL DIFFERENCES.--Men and women should not be judged by the same rules. There are many radical differences in their affectional natures. Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune, for space in the world's thoughts, and dominion over his fellow-men. But a woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her ambition seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked her case is hopeless, for it is bankruptcy of the heart. 6. WOMAN'S LOVE.--Woman's love is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and towers in sublime beauty above the niggardly selfishness of the world. Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick bed; it gives an affectionate concord to the partnership of life and interest, circumstances cannot modify it; it ever remains the same to sweeten existence, to purify the cup of life, on the rugged pathway to the grave, and melt to moral pliability the brittle nature of man. It is the ministering spirit of home, hovering in soothing caresses over the cradle, and the death-bed of the household, and filling up the urn of all its sacred memories. 7. A LADY'S COMPLEXION.--He who loves a lady's complexion, form and features, loves not her true self, but her soul's old clothes. The love that has nothing but beauty to sustain it, soon withers and dies. The love that is fed with presents always requires feeding. Love, and love only, is the loan for love. Love is of the nature of a burning glass, which, kept still in one place, fireth; changed often, it doth nothing. The purest joy we can experience in one we love, is to see that person a source of happiness to others. When you are with the person loved, you have no sense of being bored. This humble and trivial circumstance is the great test--the only sure and abiding test of love. 8. TWO SOULS COME TOGETHER.--When two souls come together, each seeking to magnify the other, each in subordinate sense worshiping the other, each help the other; the two flying together so that each wing-beat of the one helps each wing-beat of the other--when two souls come together thus, they are lovers. They who unitedly move themselves away from grossness and from earth, toward the throne of crystaline and the pavement golden, are, indeed, true lovers. [Illustration: LOVE MAKING IN THE EARLY COLONIAL DAYS.] [Illustration: CUPID'S CAPTURED VICTIM.] * * * * * THE POWER AND PECULIARITIES OF LOVE. LOVE IS A TONIC AND A REMEDY FOR DISEASE, MAKES PEOPLE LOOK YOUNGER, CREATES INDUSTRY, ETC. "All thoughts, all passions, all desires. Whatever stirs this mortal frame, Are ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame." 1. It is a physiological fact long demonstrated that persons possessing a loving disposition borrow less of the cares of life, and also live much longer than persons with a strong, narrow and selfish nature. Persons who love scenery, love domestic animals, show great attachment for all friends; love their home dearly and find interest and enchantment in almost everything have qualities of mind and heart which indicate good health and a happy disposition. 2. Persons who love music and are constantly humming or whistling a tune, are persons that need not be feared, they are kind-hearted and with few exceptions possess a loving disposition. Very few good musicians become criminals. 3. Parents that cultivate a love among their children will find that the same feeling will soon be manifested in their children's disposition. Sunshine in the hearts of the parents will blossom in the lives of the children. The parent who continually cherishes a feeling of dislike and rebellion in his soul, cultivating moral hatred against his fellow-man, will soon find the same things manifested by his son. As the son resembles his father in looks so he will to a certain extent resemble him in character. Love in the heart of the parent will beget kindness and affection in the heart of a child. Continuous scolding and fretting in the home will soon make love a stranger. 4. If you desire to cultivate love, create harmony in all your feelings and faculties. Remember that all that is pure, holy and virtuous in love flows from the deepest fountain of the human soul. Poison the fountain and you change virtue to vice, and happiness to misery. 5. Love strengthens health, and disappointment cultivates disease. A person in love will invariably enjoy the best of health. Ninety-nine per cent. of our strong constitutioned men, now in physical ruin, have wrecked themselves on the breakers of an unnatural love. Nothing but right love and a right marriage will restore them to health. 6. All men feel much better for going a courting, providing they court purely. Nothing tears the life out of man more than lust, vulgar thoughts and immoral conduct. The libertine or harlot has changed love, God's purest gift to man, into lust. They cannot acquire love in its purity again, the sacred flame has vanished forever. Love is pure, and cannot be found in the heart of a seducer. 7. A woman is never so bright and full of health as when deeply in love. Many sickly and frail women are snatched from the clutches of some deadly disease and restored to health by falling in love. 8. It is a long established fact that married persons are healthier than unmarried persons; thus it proves that health and happiness belong to the home. Health depends upon mind. Love places the mind into a delightful state and quickens every human function, makes the blood circulate and weaves threads of joy into cables of domestic love. 9. An old but true proverb: "A true man loving one woman will speak well of all women. A true woman loving one man will speak well of all men. A good wife praises all men, but praises her husband most. A good man praises all women, but praises his wife most." 10. Persons deeply in love become peculiarly pleasant, winning and tender. It is said that a musician can never excel or an artist do his best until he has been deeply in love. A good orator, a great statesman or great men in general are greater and better for having once been thoroughly in love. A man who truly loves his wife and home is always a safe man to trust. 11. Love makes people look younger in years. People in unhappy homes look older and more worn and fatigued. A woman at thirty, well courted and well married, looks five or ten years younger than a woman of the same age unhappily married. Old maids and bachelors always look older than they are. A flirting widow always looks younger than an old maid of like age. 12. Love renders women industrious and frugal, and a loving husband spends lavishly on a loved wife and children, though miserly towards others. 13. Love cultivates self-respect and produces beauty. Beauty in walk and beauty in looks; a girl in love is at her best; it brings out the finest traits of her character, she walks more erect and is more generous and forgiving; her voice is sweeter and she makes happy all about her. She works better, sings better and is better. 14. Now in conclusion, a love marriage is the best life insurance policy; it pays dividends every day, while every other insurance policy merely promises to pay after death. Remember that statistics demonstrate that married people outlive old maids and old bachelors by a goodly number of years and enjoy healthier and happier lives. [Illustration: THE TURKISH WAY OF MAKING LOVE] [Illustration: PREPARING TO ENTERTAIN HER LOVER.] [Illustration: CONFIDENCE.] * * * * * AMATIVENESS OR CONNUBIAL LOVE. 1. MULTIPLYING THE RACE.--Some means for multiplying our race is necessary to prevent its extinction by death. Propagation and death appertain to man's earthly existence. If the Deity had seen fit to bring every member of the human family into being by a direct act of creative power, without the agency of parents, the present wise and benevolent arrangements of husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and neighbors, would have been superseded, and all opportunities for exercising parental and connubial love, in which so much enjoyment is taken, cut off. But the domestic feelings and relations, as now arranged, must strike every philosophical observer as inimitably beautiful and perfect--as the offspring of infinite Wisdom and Goodness combined. 2. AMATIVENESS AND ITS COMBINATIONS constitute their origin, counterpart, and main medium of manifestation. Its primary function is connubial love. From it, mainly, spring those feelings which exist between the sexes as such and result in marriage and offspring. Combined with the higher sentiments, it gives rise to all those reciprocal kind feelings and nameless courtesies which each sex manifests towards the other; refining and elevating both, promoting gentility and politeness, and greatly increasing social and general happiness. 3. RENDERS MEN MORE POLITE TO WOMEN.--So far from being in the least gross or indelicate, its proper exercise is pure, chaste, virtuous, and even an ingredient in good manners. It is this which renders men always more polite towards women than to one another, and more refined in their society, and which makes women more kind, grateful, genteel and tender towards men than women. It makes mothers love their sons more than their daughters, and fathers more attached to their daughters. Man's endearing recollections of his mother or wife form his most powerful incentives to virtue, study, and good deeds, as well as restraints upon his vicious inclinations; and, in proportion as a young man is dutiful and affectionate to his mother, will he be fond of his wife; for, this faculty is the parent of both. 4. ALL SHOULD CULTIVATE THE FACULTY OF AMATIVENESS OR CONNUBIAL LOVE.--Study the personal charms and mental accomplishments of the other sex by ardent admirers of beautiful forms, and study graceful movements and elegant manners, and remember, much depends upon the tones and accents of the voice. Never be gruff if you desire to be winning. Seek and enjoy and reciprocate fond looks and feelings. Before you can create favorable impressions you must first be honest and sincere and natural, and your conquest will be sure and certain. * * * * * LOVE AND COMMON-SENSE. 1. Do not love her because she goes to the altar with her head full of book learning, her hands of no earthly use, save for the piano and brush; because she has no conception of the duties and responsibilities of a wife; because she hates housework, hates its everlasting routine and ever recurring duties; because she hates children and will adopt every means to evade motherhood; because she loves her ease, loves to have her will supreme, loves, oh how well, to be free to go and come, to let the days slip idly by, to be absolved from all responsibility, to live without labor, without care? Will you love her selfish, shirking, calculating nature after twenty years of close companionship? 2. Do you love him because he is a man, and therefore, no matter how weak mentally, morally or physically he may be, he has vested in him the power to save you from the ignominy of an old maid's existence? Because you would rather be Mrs. Nobody, than make the effort to be Miss Somebody? because you have a great empty place in your head and heart that nothing but a man can fill? because you feel you cannot live without him? God grant the time may never come when you cannot live with him. 3. Do you love her because she is a thoroughly womanly woman; for her tender sympathetic nature; for the jewels of her life, which are absolute purity of mind and heart; for the sweet sincerity of her disposition; for her loving, charitable thought; for her strength of character? because she is pitiful to the sinful, tender to the sorrowful, capable, self-reliant, modest, true-hearted? in brief, because she is the embodiment of all womanly virtues? 4. Do you love him because he is a manly man; because the living and operating principle of his life is a tender reverence for all women; because his love is the overflow of the best part of his nature; because he has never soiled his soul with an unholy act or his lips with an oath; because mentally he is a man among men; because physically he stands head and shoulders above the masses; because morally he is far beyond suspicion, in his thought, word or deed? because his earnest manly consecrated life is a mighty power on God's side? 5. But there always has been and always will be unhappy marriages until men learn what husbandhood means; how to care for that tenderly matured, delicately constituted being, that he takes into his care and keeping. That if her wonderful adjusted organism is overtaxed and overburdened, her happiness, which is largely dependent upon her health, is destroyed. 6. Until men give the women they marry the undivided love of their heart; until constancy is the key-note of a life which speaks eloquently of clean thoughts and clean hearts. 7. Until men and women recognize that self-control in a man, and modesty in a woman, will bring a mutual respect that years of wedded life will only strengthen. Until they recognize that love is the purest and holiest of all things known to humanity, will marriage continue to bring unhappiness and discontent, instead of that comfort and restful peace which all loyal souls have a right to expect and enjoy. 8. Be sensible and marry a sensible, honest and industrious companion, and happiness through life will be your reward. [Illustration: A CALLER.] [Illustration] * * * * * WHAT WOMEN LOVE IN MEN. 1. Women naturally love courage, force and firmness in men. The ideal man in a woman's eye must be heroic and brave. Woman naturally despises a coward, and she has little or no respect for a bashful man. 2. Woman naturally loves her lord and master. Women who desperately object to be overruled, nevertheless admire men who overrule them, and few women would have any respect for a man whom they could completely rule and control. 3. Man is naturally the protector of woman; as the male wild animal of the forest protects the female, so it is natural for man to protect his wife and children, and therefore woman admires those qualities in a man which make him a protector. 4. LARGE MEN.--Women naturally love men of strength, size and fine physique, a tall, large and strong man rather than a short, small and weak man. A woman always pities a weakly man, but rarely ever has any love for him. 5. SMALL AND WEAKLY MEN.--All men would be of good size in frame and flesh, were it not for the infirmities visited upon them by the indiscretion of parents and ancestors of generations before. 6. YOUTHFUL SEXUAL EXCITEMENT.--There are many children born healthy and vigorous who destroy the full vigor of their generative organs in youth by self-abuse, and if they survive and marry, their children will have small bones, small frames and sickly constitutions. It is therefore not strange that instinct should lead women to admire men not touched with these symptoms of physical debility. 7. GENEROSITY.--Woman generally loves a generous man. Religion absorbs a great amount of money in temples, churches, ministerial salaries, etc., and ambition and appetite absorb countless millions, yet woman receives more gifts from man than all these combined: she loves a generous giver. _Generosity and Gallantry_ are the jewels which she most admires. A woman receiving presents from a man implies that she will pay him back in love, and the woman who accepts a man's presents, and does not respect him, commits a wrong which is rarely ever forgiven. 8. INTELLIGENCE.--Above all other qualities in man, woman admires his intelligence. Intelligence is man's woman captivating card. This character in woman is illustrated by an English army officer, as told by O.S. Fowler, betrothed in marriage to a beautiful, loving heiress, summoned to India, who wrote back to her: "I have lost an eye, a leg, an arm, and been so badly marred and begrimmed besides, that you never could love this poor, maimed soldier. Yet, I love you too well to make your life wretched by requiring you to keep your marriage-vow with me, from which I hereby release you. Find among English peers one physically more perfect, whom you can love better." She answered, as all genuine women must answer: "Your noble mind, your splendid talents, your martial prowess which maimed you, are what I love. As long as you retain sufficient body to contain the casket of your soul, which alone is what I admire, I love you all the same, and long to make you mine forever." 9. SOFT MEN.--All women despise soft and silly men more than all other defects in their character. Woman never can love a man whose conversation is flat and insipid. Every man seeking woman's appreciation or love should always endeavor to show his intelligence and manifest an interest in books and daily papers. He should read books and inform himself so that he can talk intelligently upon the various topics of the day. Even an ignorant woman always loves superior intelligence. 10. SEXUAL VIGOR.--Women love sexual vigor in men. This is human nature. Weakly and delicate fathers have weak and puny children, though the mother may be strong and robust. A weak mother often bears strong children, if the father is physically and sexually vigorous. Consumption is often inherited from fathers, because they furnish the body, yet more women die with it because of female obstructions. Hence women love passion in men, because it endows their offspring with strong functional vigor. 11. PASSIONATE MEN--The less passion any woman possesses, the more she prizes a strong passionate man. This is a natural consequence, for if she married one equally passionless, their children would be poorly endowed or they would have none; she therefore admires him who makes up the deficiency. Hence very amorous men prefer quiet, modest and reserved women. 12. HOMELY MEN are admired by women if they are large, strong and vigorous and possess a good degree of intelligence. Looks are trifles compared with the other qualities which man may possess. 13. YOUNG MAN, If you desire to win the love and admiration of young ladies, first, be intelligent; read books and papers; remember what you read, so you can talk about it. Second, be generous and do not show a stingy and penurious disposition when in the company of ladies. Third, be sensible, original, and have opinions of your own and do not agree with everything that someone else says, or agree with everything that a lady may say. Ladies naturally admire genteel and intelligent discussions and conversations when there is someone to talk with who has an opinion of his own. Woman despises a man who has no opinion of his own; she hates a trifling disposition and admires leadership, original ideas, and looks up to man as a leader. Women despise all men whom they can manage, overrule, cow-down and subdue. 14. BE SELF-SUPPORTING.--The young man who gives evidence of thrift is always in demand. Be enthusiastic and drive with success all that you undertake. A young man, sober, honest and industrious, holding a responsible position or having a business of his own, is a prize that some bright and beautiful young lady would like to draw. Woman admires a certainty. 15. UNIFORMED MEN.--It is a well known fact that women love uniformed men. The soldier figures as a hero in about every tale of fiction and it is said by good authority that a man in uniform has three more chances to marry than the man without uniform. The correct reason is, the soldier's profession is bravery, and he is dressed and trained for that purpose, and it is that which makes him admired by ladies rather than the uniform which he wears. His profession is also that of a protector. [Illustration] * * * * * WHAT MEN LOVE IN WOMEN. 1. FEMALE BEAUTY.--Men love beautiful women, for woman's beauty is the highest type of all beauty. A handsome woman needs no diamonds, no silks or satins; her brilliant face outshines diamonds and her form is beautiful in calico. 2. FALSE BEAUTIFIERS.--Man's love of female beauty surpasses all other love, and whatever artificial means are used to beautify, to a certain extent are falsehoods which lead to distrust or dislike. Artificial beauty is always an imitation, and never can come into competition with the genuine. No art can successfully imitate nature. 3. TRUE KIND OF BEAUTY.--Facial beauty is only skin deep. A beautiful form, a graceful figure, graceful movements and a kind heart are the strongest charms in the perfection of female beauty. A brilliant face always outshines what may be called a pretty face, for intelligence is that queenly grace which crowns woman's influence over men. Good looks and good and pure conduct awaken a man's love for women. A girl must therefore be charming as well as beautiful, for a charming girl will never become a charmless wife. 4. A GOOD FEMALE BODY.--No weakly, poor-bodied woman can draw a man's love like a strong, well developed body. A round, plump figure with an overflow of animal life is the woman most commonly sought, for nature in man craves for the strong qualities in women, as the health and life of offspring depend upon the physical qualities of wife and mother. A good body and vigorous health, therefore, become indispensable to female beauty. 5. BROAD HIPS.--A woman with a large pelvis gives her a superior and significant appearance, while a narrow pelvis always indicate weak sexuality. The other portions of the body however must be in harmony with the size and breadth of the hips. 6. FULL BUSTS.--In the female beauty of physical development there is nothing that can equal full breasts. It is an indication of good health and good maternal qualities. As a face looks bad without a nose, so the female breast, when narrow and flat, produces a bad effect. The female breasts are the means on which a new-born child depends for its life and growth, hence it is an essential human instinct for men to admire those physical proportions in women which indicate perfect motherhood. Cotton and all other false forms simply show the value of natural ones. All false forms are easily detected, because large natural ones will generally quiver and move at every step, while the artificial ones will manifest no expression of life. As woman looks so much better with artificial paddings and puffings than she does without, therefore modern society should waive all objections to their use. A full breast has been man's admiration through all climes and ages, and whether this breast-loving instinct is right or wrong, sensible or sensual, it is a fact well known to all, that it is a great disappointment to a husband and father to see his child brought up on a bottle. Men love full breasts, because it promotes maternity. If, however, the breasts are abnormally large, it indicates maternal deficiency the same as any disproportion or extreme. 7. SMALL FEET.--Small feet and small ankles are very attractive, because they are in harmony with a perfect female form, and men admire perfection. Small feet and ankles indicate modesty and reserve, while large feet and ankles indicate coarseness, physical power, authority, predominance. Feet and ankles however must be in harmony with the body, as small feet and small ankles on a large woman would be out of proportion and consequently not beautiful. 8. BEAUTIFUL ARMS.--As the arm is always in proportion with the other portions of the body, consequently a well-shaped arm, small hands and small wrists, with full muscular development, is a charm and beauty not inferior to the face itself, and those who have well-shaped arms may be proud of them, because they generally keep company with a fine bust and a fine figure. 9. INTELLIGENCE.--A mother must naturally possess intelligence, in order to rear her children intelligently, consequently it is natural for man to chiefly admire mental qualities in women, for utility and practicability depend upon intelligence. Therefore a man generally loves those charms in women which prepare her for the duties of companionship. If a woman desires to be loved, she must cultivate her intellectual gifts, be interesting and entertaining in society, and practical and helpful in the home, for these are some of the qualifications which make up the highest type of beauty. 10. PIETY AND RELIGION IN WOMEN.--Men who love home and the companionship of their wives, love truth, honor and honesty. It is this higher moral development that naturally leads them to admire women of moral and religious natures. It is therefore not strange that immoral men love moral and church-loving wives. Man naturally admires the qualities which tend to the correct government of the home. Men want good and pure children, and it is natural to select women who insure domestic contentment and happiness. A bad man, of course, does not deserve a good wife, yet he will do his utmost to get one. 11. FALSE APPEARANCE.--Men love reserved, coy and discreet women much more than blunt, shrewd and boisterous. Falsehood, false hair, false curls, false forms, false bosoms, false colors, false cheeks, and all that is false, men naturally dislike, for in themselves they are a poor foundation on which to form family ties, consequently duplicity and hypocrisy in women is very much disliked by men, but a frank, honest, conscientious soul is always lovable and lovely and will not become an old maid, except as a matter of choice and not of necessity. [Illustration] [Illustration] * * * * * HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 1. "It is not good for man to be alone," was the Divine judgment, and so God created for him an helpmate; therefore sex is as Divine as the soul. 2. POLYGAMY.--Polygamy has existed in all ages. It is and always has been the result of moral degradation and wantonness. 3. THE GARDEN OF EDEN.--The Garden of Eden was no harem. Primeval nature knew no community of love; there was only the union of two souls, and the twain were made one flesh. If God had intended man to be a polygamist he would have created for him two or more wives; but he only created one wife for the first man. He also directed Noah to take into the ark two of each sort--a male and female--another evidence that God believed in pairs only. 4. ABRAHAM no doubt was a polygamist, and the general history of patriarchal life shows that the plurality of wives and concubinage were national customs, and not the institutions authorized by God. 5. EGYPTIAN HISTORY.--Egyptian history, in the first ostensible form we have, shows that concubinage and polygamy were in common practice. 6. SOLOMON.--It is not strange that Solomon, with his thousand wives, exclaimed: "All is vanity and vexation of spirit." Polygamy is not the natural state of man. 7. CONCUBINAGE AND POLYGAMY continued till the fifth century, when the degraded condition of woman became to some extent matters of some concern and recognition. Before this woman was regarded simply as an instrument of procreation, or a mistress of the household, to gratify the passions of man. 8. THE CHINESE marriage system was, and is, practically polygamous, for from their earliest traditions we learn, although a man could have but one wife, he was permitted to have as many concubines as he desired. 9. MOHAMMEDANISM.--Of the 150,000,000 Mohammedans all are polygamists. Their religion appeals to the luxury of animal propensities, and the voluptuous character of the Orientals has penetrated western Europe and Africa. 10. MORMONISM.--The Mormon Church, founded by Joseph Smith, practiced polygamy until the beginning of 1893, when the church formally declared and resigned polygamy as a part or present doctrine of their religious institution. Yet all Mormons are polygamists at heart. It is a part of their religion; national law alone restrains them. 11. FREE LOVERS.--There is located at Lenox, Madison County, New York, an organization popularly known as Free Lovers. The members advocate a system of complex marriage, a sort of promiscuity, with a freedom of love for any and all. Man offers woman support and love; woman enjoying freedom, self-respect, health, personal and mental competency, gives herself to man in the boundless sincerity of an unselfish union. In their system, love is made synonymous with sexuality, and there is no doubt, but what woman is only a plaything to gratify animal caprice. 12. MONOGAMY (SINGLE WIFE), is a law of nature evident from the fact that it fulfills the three essential conditions of man, viz.: the development of the individual, the welfare of society and reproduction. In no nation with a system of polygamy do we find a code of political and moral rights, and the condition of woman is that of a slave. In polygamous countries nothing is added to the education and civilization. The natural tendency is sensualism, and sensualism tends to mental starvation. 18. CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION has lifted woman from slavery to liberty. Wherever Christian civilization prevails there are legal marriages, pure homes and education. May God bless the purity of the home. * * * * * MARRIAGE. "Thus grief still treads upon the heel of pleasure, Married in haste we may repent at leisure." --SHAKESPEARE The parties are wedded. The priest or clergyman has pronounced as one those hearts that before beat in unison with each other. The assembled guests congratulate the happy pair. The fair bride has left her dear mother bedewed with tears and sobbing just as if her heart would break, and as if the happy bridegroom was leading her away captive against her will. They enter the carriage. It drives off on the wedding tour, and his arms encircles the yielding waist of her now all his own, while her head reclines on the breast of the man of her choice. If she be young and has married an old man, she will be sad. If she has married for a home, or position, or wealth, a pang will shoot across her fair bosom. If she has married without due consideration or on too light an acquaintance, it will be her sorrow before long. But, if loving and beloved, she has united her destiny with a worthy man, she will rejoice, and on her journey feel a glow of satisfaction and delight unfelt before and which will be often renewed, and daily prove as the living waters from some perennial spring. [Illustration] * * * * * THE ADVANTAGES OF WEDLOCK. 'Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark, Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come. BYRON, DON JUAN 1. Marriage is the natural state of man and woman. Matrimony greatly contributes to the wealth and health of man. 2. Circumstances may compel a man not to select a companion until late in life. Many may have parents or relatives, dependent brothers and sisters to care for, yet family ties are cultivated; notwithstanding the home is without a wife. 3. In Christian countries the laws of marriage have greatly added to the health of man. Marriage in barbarous countries, where little or no marriage ceremonies are required, benefits man but little. There can be no true domestic blessedness without loyalty and love for the select and married companion. All the licentiousness and lust of a libertine, whether civilized or uncivilized, bring him only unrest and premature decay. 4. A man, however, may be married and not mated, and consequently reap trouble and unhappiness. A young couple should first carefully learn each other by making the courtship a matter of business, and sufficiently long that the disposition and temper of each may be thoroughly exposed and understood. 5. First see that there is love; secondly, that there is adaptation; thirdly, see that there are no physical defects, and if these conditions are properly considered, cupid will go with you. 6. The happiest place on all earth is home. A loving wife and lovely children are jewels without price, as Payne says: "'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." 7. Reciprocated love produces a general exhilaration of the system. The elasticity of the muscles is increased, the circulation is quickened, and every bodily function is stimulated to renewed activity by a happy marriage. 8. The consummation desired by all who experience this affection, is the union of souls in a true marriage. Whatever of beauty or romance there may have been in the lover's dream, is enhanced and spiritualized in the intimate communion of married life. The crown of wifehood and maternity is purer, more divine than that of the maiden. Passion is lost--emotions predominate. 9. TOO EARLY MARRIAGES.--Too early marriage is always bad for the female. If a young girl marries, her system is weakened and a full development of her body is prevented, and the dangers of confinement are considerably increased. 10. Boys who marry young derive but little enjoyment from the connubial state. They are liable to excesses and thereby lose much of the vitality and power of strength and physical endurance. 11. LONG LIFE.--Statistics show that married men live longer than bachelors. Child-bearing for women is conducive to longevity. 12. COMPLEXION.--Marriage purifies the complexion, removes blotches from the skin, invigorates the body, fills up the tones of the voice, gives elasticity and firmness to the step, and brings health and contentment to old age. 13. TEMPTATIONS REMOVED.--Marriage sanctifies a home, while adultery and libertinism produce unrest, distrust and misery. It must be remembered that a married man can practice the most absolute continence and enjoy a far better state of health than the licentious man. The comforts of companionship develop purity and give rest to the soul. 14. TOTAL ABSTENTION.--It is no doubt difficult for some men to fully abstain from sexual intercourse and be entirely chaste in mind. The great majority of men experience frequent strong sexual desire. Abstention is very apt to produce in their minds voluptuous images and untamable desires which require an iron will to banish or control. The hermit in his seclusion, or the monk in his retreat, are often flushed with these passions and trials. It is, however, natural; for remove these passions and man would be no longer a man. It is evident that the natural state of man is that of marriage; and he who avoids that state is not in harmony with the laws of his being. [Illustration: AN ALGERIAN BRIDE.] 15. PROSTITUTION.--Men who inherit strong passions easily argue themselves into the belief either to practice masturbation or visit places of prostitution, on the ground that their health demands it. Though medical investigation has proven it repeatedly to be false, yet many believe it. The consummation of marriage involves the mightiest issues of life and is the most holy and sacred right recognized by man, and it is the Balm of Gilead for many ills. Masturbation or prostitution soon blight the brightest prospects a young man may have. Manhood is morality and purity of purpose, not sensuality. * * * * * DISADVANTAGES OF CELIBACY. 1. To live the life of a bachelor has many advantages and many disadvantages. The man who commits neither fornication, adultery nor secret vice, and is pure in mind, surely has all the moral virtues that make a good man and a good citizen, whether married or unmarried. 2. If a good pure-minded man does not marry, he will suffer no serious loss of vital power; there will be no tendency to spermatorrhoea or congestion, nor will he be afflicted with any one of those ills which certain vicious writers and quacks would lead many people to believe. Celibacy is perfectly consistent with mental vigor and physical strength. Regularity in the habits of life will always have its good effects on the human body. 3. The average life of a married man is much longer than that of a bachelor. There is quite an alarming odds in the United States in favor of a man with a family. It is claimed that the married man lives on an average from five to twenty years longer than a bachelor. The married man lives a more regular life. He has his meals more regularly and is better nursed in sickness, and in every way a happier and more contented man. The happiness of wife and children will always add comfort and length of days to the man who is happily married. 4. It is a fact well answered by statistics that there is more crime committed, more vices practiced, and more immorality among single men than among married men. Let the young man be pure in heart like Bunyan's Pilgrim, and he can pass the deadly dens, the roaring lions, and overcome the ravenous fires of passion, unscathed. The vices of single men support the most flagrant of evils of modern society, hence let every young man beware and keep his body clean and pure. His future happiness largely depends upon his chastity while a single man. [Illustration: "MADE IN U.S.A."] [Illustration: I WILL NEVER MARRY.] * * * * * OLD MAIDS. 1. MODERN ORIGIN.--The prejudice which certainly still exists in the average mind against unmarried women must be of comparatively modern origin. From the earliest ages to ancient Greece, and Rome particularly, the highest honors were paid them. They were the ministers of the old religions, and regarded with superstitious awe. 2. MATRIMONY.--Since the reformation, especially during the last century, and in our own land, matrimony has been so much esteemed, notably by women, that it has come to be regarded as in some sort discreditable for them to remain single. Old maids are mentioned on every hand with mingled pity and disdain, arising no doubt from the belief, conscious or unconscious, that they would not be what they are if they could help it. Few persons have a good word for them as a class. We are constantly hearing of lovely maidens, charming wives, buxom widows, but almost never of attractive old maids. 3. DISCARDING PREJUDICE.--The real old maid is like any other woman. She has faults necessarily, though not those commonly conceived of. She is often plump, pretty, amiable, interesting, intellectual, cultured, warm-hearted, benevolent, and has ardent friends of both sexes. These constantly wonder why she has not married, for they feel that she must have had many opportunities. Some of them may know why; she may have made them her confidantes. She usually has a sentimental, romantic, frequently a sad and pathetic past, of which she does not speak unless in the sacredness of intimacy. 4. NOT QUARRELSOME.--She is not dissatisfied, querulous nor envious. On the contrary, she is, for the most part, singularly content, patient and serene,--more so than many wives who have household duties and domestic cares to tire and trouble them. 5. REMAIN SINGLE FROM NECESSITY.--It is a stupid, as well as a heinous mistake, that women who remain single do so from necessity. Almost any woman can get a husband if she is so minded, as daily observation attests. When we see the multitudes of wives who have no visible signs of matrimonial recommendation, why should we think that old maids have been totally neglected? We may meet those who do not look inviting. But we meet any number of wives who are even less inviting. 6. FIRST OFFER.--The appearance and outgiving of many wives denote that they have accepted the first offer; the appearance and outgiving of many old maids that they have declined repeated offers. It is undeniable, that wives, in the mass, have no more charm than old maids have, in the mass. But, as the majority of women are married, they are no more criticised nor commented on, in the bulk, than the whole sex are. They are spoken of individually as pretty or plain, bright or dull, pleasant or unpleasant; while old maids are judged as a species, and almost always unfavorable. [Illustration: "I HAVE CHANGED MY MIND."] 7. BECOMES A WIFE.--Many an old maid, so-called, unexpectedly to her associates becomes a wife, some man of taste, discernment and sympathy having induced her to change her state. Probably no other man of his kind has proposed before, which accounts for her singleness. After her marriage hundreds of persons who had sneered at her condition find her charming, thus showing the extent of their prejudice against feminine celibacy. Old maids in general, it is fair to presume, do not wait for opportunities, but for proposers of an acceptable sort. They may have, indeed they are likely to have, those, but not to meet these. 8. NO LONGER MARRY FOR SUPPORT.--The time has changed and women have changed with it. They have grown more sensible, more independent in disposition as well as circumstances. They no longer marry for support; they have proved their capacity to support themselves, and self-support has developed them in every way. Assured that they can get on comfortably and contentedly alone they are better adapted by the assurance for consortship. They have rapidly increased from this and cognate causes, and have so improved in person, mind and character that an old maid of to-day is wholly different from an old maid of forty years ago. [Illustration: CONVINCING HIS WIFE.] * * * * * WHEN AND WHOM TO MARRY. 1. EARLY MARRIAGES.--Women too early married always remain small in stature, weak, pale, emaciated, and more or less miserable. We have no natural nor moral right to perpetuate unhealthy constitutions, therefore women should not marry too young and take upon themselves the responsibility, by producing a weak and feeble generation of children. It is better not to consummate a marriage until a full development of body and mind has taken place. A young woman of twenty-one to twenty-five, and a young man of twenty-three to twenty-eight, are considered the right age in order to produce an intelligent and healthy offspring. "First make the tree good, then shall the fruit be good also." 2. If marriage is delayed too long in either sex, say from thirty to forty-five, the offspring will often be puny and more liable to insanity, idiocy, and other maladies. 3. PUBERTY.--This is the period when childhood passes from immaturity of the sexual functions to maturity. Woman attains this state a year or two sooner than man. In the hotter climates the period of puberty is from twelve to fifteen years of age, while in cold climates, such as Russia, the United States, and Canada, puberty is frequently delayed until the seventeenth year. 4. DISEASED PARENTS.--We do the race a serious wrong in multiplying the number of hereditary invalids. Whole families of children have fallen heir to lives of misery and suffering by the indiscretion and poor judgment of parents. No young man in the vigor of health should think for a moment of marrying a girl who has the impress of consumption or other disease already stamped upon her feeble constitution. It only multiplies his own suffering, and brings no material happiness to his invalid wife. On the other hand, no healthy, vigorous young woman ought to unite her destiny with a man, no matter how much she adored him, who is not healthy and able to brave the hardships of life. If a young man or young woman with feeble body cannot find permanent relief either by medicine or change of climate, no thoughts of marriage should be entertained. Courting a patient may be pleasant, but a hard thing in married life to enjoy. The young lady who supposes that any young man wishes to marry her for the sake of nursing her through life makes a very grave mistake. [Illustration: LIFE INSURANCE COMPANIES DEMAND PHYSICAL EXAMINATION. WHY NOT MATRIMONY?] 5. WHOM TO CHOOSE FOR A HUSBAND.--The choice of a husband requires the coolest judgment and the most vigilant sagacity. A true union based on organic law is happiness, but let all remember that oil and water will not mix: the lion will not lie down with the lamb, nor can ill-assorted marriages be productive of aught but discord. "Let the woman take An elder than herself, so wears she to him-- So sways she, rules in her husband's heart." Look carefully at the disposition.--See that your intended Spouse is kind-hearted, generous, and willing to respect the opinions of others, though not in sympathy with them. Don't marry a selfish tyrant who thinks only of himself. 6. BE CAREFUL.--Don't marry an intemperate man with a view of reforming him. Thousands have tried it and failed. Misery, sorrow and a very hell on earth have been the consequences of too many such generous undertakings. 7. THE TRUE AND ONLY TEST which any man should look for in woman is modesty in demeanor before marriage, absence both of assumed ignorance and disagreeable familiarity, and a pure and religious frame of mind. Where these are present, he need not doubt that he has a faithful and a chaste wife. 8. MARRYING FIRST COUSINS is dangerous to offspring. The observation is universal, the children of married first cousins are too often idiots, insane, clump-footed, crippled, blind, or variously diseased. First cousins are always sure to impart all the hereditary disease in both families to their children. If both are healthy there is less danger. 9. DO NOT CHOOSE ONE TOO GOOD, or too far above you, lest the inferior dissatisfying the superior, breed those discords which are worse than the trials of a single life. Don't be too particular; for you might go farther and fare worse. As far as you yourself are faulty, you should put up with faults. Don't cheat a consort by getting one much better than you can give. We are not in heaven yet, and must put up with their imperfections, and instead of grumbling at them, be glad they are no worse; remembering that a faulty one is a great deal better than none, if he loves you. 10. MARRYING FOR MONEY.--Those who seek only the society of those who can boast of wealth will nine times out of ten suffer disappointment. Wealth cannot manufacture true love nor money buy domestic happiness. Marry because you love each other, and God will bless your home. A cottage with a loving wife is worth more than a royal palace with a discontented and unloving queen. 11. DIFFERENCE IN AGE.--It is generally admitted that the husband should be a few years older than the wife. The question seems to be how much difference. Up to twenty-two those who propose marriage should be about the same age; however, other things being equal, a difference of fifteen years after the younger is twenty-five, need not prevent a marriage. A man of forty-five may marry a woman of twenty-five much more safely than one of thirty a girl below nineteen, because her mental sexuality is not as mature as his, and again her natural coyness requires more delicate and affectionate treatment than he is likely to bestow. A girl of twenty or under should seldom if ever marry a man of thirty or over, because the love of an elderly man for a girl is more parental than conjugal; while hers for him is like that of a daughter to a father. He may pet, flatter and indulge her as he would a grown-up daughter, yet all this is not genuine masculine and feminine love, nor can she exert over him the influence every man requires from his wife. 12. THE BEST TIME.--All things considered, we advise the male reader to keep his desires in check till he is at least twenty-five, and the female not to enter the pale of wedlock until she has attained the age of twenty. After those periods, marriage is the proper sphere of action, and one in which nearly every individual is called by nature to play his proper part. 13. SELECT CAREFULLY.--While character, health, accomplishments and social position should be considered, yet one must not overlook mental construction and physical conformation. The rule always to be followed in choosing a life partner is _identity of taste and diversity of temperament_. Another essential is that they be physically adapted to each other. For example: The pelvis--that part of the anatomy containing all the internal organs of gestation--is not only essential to beauty and symmetry, but is a matter of vital importance to her who contemplates matrimony, and its usual consequences. Therefore, the woman with a very narrow and contracted pelvis should never choose a man of giant physical development lest they cannot duly realize the most important of the enjoyments of the marriage state, while the birth of large infants will impose upon her intense labor pains, or even cost her her life. [Illustration: EXPLAINING THE NEED OF A NEW HAT.] * * * * * CHOOSE INTELLECTUALLY--LOVE AFTERWARD. 1. LOVE.--Let it ever be remembered that love is one of the most sacred elements of our nature, and the most dangerous with which to tamper. It is a very beautiful and delicately contrived faculty, producing the most delightful results, but easily thrown out of repair--like a tender plant, the delicate fibers of which incline gradually to entwine themselves around its beloved one, uniting two willing hearts by a thousand endearing ties, and making of "twain one flesh": but they are easily torn asunder, and then adieu to the joys of connubial bliss! 2. COURTING BY THE QUARTER.--This courting by the quarter, "here a little and there a little," is one of the greatest evils of the day. This getting a little in love with Julia, and then a little with Eliza, and a little more with Mary,--this fashionable flirtation and coquetry of both sexes--is ruinous to the domestic affections; besides, effectually preventing the formation of true connubial love. I consider this dissipation of the affections one of the greatest sins against Heaven, ourselves, and the one trifled with, that can be committed. 3. FRITTERING AWAY AFFECTIONS.--Young men commence courting long before they think of marrying, and where they entertain no thoughts of marriage. They fritter away their own affections, and pride themselves on their conquests over the female heart; triumphing in having so nicely fooled them. They pursue this sinful course so far as to drive their pitiable victims, one after another, from respectable society, who, becoming disgraced, retaliate by heaping upon them all the indignities and impositions which the fertile imagination of woman can invent or execute. 4. COURTING WITHOUT INTENDING TO MARRY.--Nearly all this wide-spread crime and suffering connected with public and private licentiousness and prostitution, has its origin in these unmeaning courtships--this premature love--this blighting of the affections, and every young man who courts without intending to marry, is throwing himself or his sweet-heart into _this hell upon earth._ And most of the blame rests on young men, because they take the liberty of paying their addresses to the ladies and discontinuing them, at pleasure, and thereby mainly cause this vice. 5. SETTING THEIR CAPS.--True, young ladies sometimes "set their caps," sometimes court very hard by their bewitching smiles and affectionate manners; by the natural language of love, or that backward reclining and affectionate roll of the head which expresses it; by their soft and persuasive accents; by their low dresses, artificial forms, and many other unnatural and affected ways and means of attracting attention and exciting love; but women never court till they have been in love and experienced its interruption, till their first and most tender fibres of love have been frost-bitten by disappointment. It is surely a sad condition of society. [Illustration: MOTHERHOOD.] 6. TRAMPLING THE AFFECTIONS OF WOMEN.--But man is a self-privileged character. He may not only violate the laws of his own social nature with impunity, but he may even trample upon the affections of woman. He may even carry this sinful indulgence to almost any length, and yet be caressed and smiled tenderly upon by woman; aye, even by virtuous woman. He may call out, only to blast the glowing affections of one young lady after another, and yet his addresses be cordially welcomed by others. Surely a gentleman is at perfect liberty to pay his addresses, not only to a lady, but even to the ladies, although he does not once entertain the thought of marrying his sweet-heart, or, rather his victim. O, man, how depraved! O, woman, how strangely blind to your own rights and interests! 7. AN INFALLIBLE SIGN.--An infallible sign that a young man's intentions are improper, is his trying to excite your passions. If he loves you, he will never appeal to that feeling, because he respects you too much for that. And the woman who allows a man to take advantage of her just to compel him to marry her, is lost and heartless in the last degree, and utterly destitute of moral principle as well as virtue. A woman's riches is her virtue, that gone she has lost all. 8. THE BEGINNING OF LICENTIOUSNESS.--Man it seldom drives from society. Do what he may, woman, aye, virtuous and even pious woman rarely excludes him from her list of visitors. But where is the point of propriety?--immoral transgression should exclude either sex from respectable society. Is it that one false step which now constitutes the boundary between virtue and vice? Or rather, the discovery of that false step? Certainly not! but it is all that leads to, and precedes and induces it. It is this courting without marrying. This is the beginning of licentiousness, as well as its main, procuring cause, and therefore infinitely worse than its consummation merely. 9. SEARING THE SOCIAL AFFECTIONS.--He has seared his social affections so deeply, so thoroughly, so effectually, that when, at last, he wishes to marry, he is incapable of loving. He marries, but is necessarily cold-hearted towards his wife, which of course renders her wretched, if not jealous, and reverses the faculties of both towards each other; making both most miserable for life. This induces contention and mutual recrimination, if not unfaithfulness, and imbitters the marriage relations through life; and well it may. 10. UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.--This very cause, besides inducing most of that unblushing public and private prostitution already alluded to, renders a large proportion of the marriages of the present day unhappy. Good people mourn over the result, but do not once dream of its cause. They even pray for moral reform, yet do the very things that increase the evil. 11. WEEPING OVER HER FALLEN SON.--Do you see yonder godly mother, weeping over her fallen son, and remonstrating with him in tones of a mother's tenderness and importunity? That very mother prevented that very son marrying the girl he dearly loved, because she was poor, and this interruption of his love was the direct and procuring cause of his ruin; for, if she had allowed him to marry this beloved one, he never would have thought of giving his "strength unto strange women." True, the mother ruined her son ignorantly, but none the less effectually. 12. SEDUCTION AND RUIN.--That son next courts another virtuous fair one, engages her affections, and ruins her, or else leaves her broken-hearted, so that she is the more easily ruined by others, and thus prepares the way for her becoming an inmate of a house "whose steps take hold on hell." His heart is now indifferent, he is ready for anything. 13. THE RIGHT PRINCIPLE.--I say then, with emphasis, that no man should ever pay his addresses to any woman, until he has made his selection, not even to aid him in making that choice. He should first make his selection intellectually, and love afterward. He should go about the matter coolly and with judgment, just as he would undertake any other important matter. No man or woman, when blinded by love, is in a fit state to judge advantageously as to what he or she requires, or who is adapted to his or her wants. 14. CHOOSING FIRST AND LOVING AFTERWARDS.--I know, indeed, that this doctrine of choosing first and loving afterward, of excluding love from the councils, and of choosing by and with the consent of the intellect and moral sentiments, is entirely at variance with the feelings of the young and the customs of society; but, for its correctness, I appeal to the common-sense--not to the experience, for so few try this plan. Is not this the only proper method, and the one most likely to result happily? Try it. 15. THE YOUNG WOMAN'S CAUTION.--And, especially, let no young lady ever once think of bestowing her affections till she is certain they will not be broken off--that is, until the match is fully agreed upon, but rather let her keep her heart whole till she bestows it for life. This requisition is as much more important, and its violation as much more disastrous to woman than to man, as her social faculties are stronger than his. 16. A BURNT CHILD DREADS THE FIRE.--As a "burnt child dreads the fire," and the more it is burnt, the greater the dread: so your affections, once interrupted, will recoil from a second love, and distrust all mankind. No! you cannot be too choice of your love--that pivot on which turn your destinies for life and future happiness. [Illustration: AFTER THE ENGAGEMENT.] * * * * * LOVE-SPATS. Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. --SHAKESPEARE. "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."--CONGREVE. "Thunderstorms clear the atmosphere and promote vegetation; then why not Love-spats promote love, as they certainly often do?" "They are almost universal, and in the nature of our differences cannot be helped. The more two love, the more they are aggrieved by each other's faults; of which these spats are but the correction." "Love-spats instead of being universal, they are consequent on imperfect love, and only aggravate, never correct errors. Sexual storms never improve, whereas love obviates faults by praising the opposite virtues. Every view of them, practical and philosophical, condemns them as being to love what poison is to health, both before and after marriage. They are nothing but married discords. Every law of mind and love condemns them. Shun them as you would deadly vipers, and prevent them by forestallment."--O.S. Fowler. 1. THE TRUE FACTS.--Notwithstanding some of the above quotations, to the contrary, trouble and disagreement between lovers embitters both love and life. Contention is always dangerous, and will beget alienation if not final separation. 2. CONFIRMED AFFECTIONS.--Where affections are once thoroughly confirmed, each one should be very careful in taking offense, and avoid all disagreements as far as possible, but if disagreements continually develop with more or less friction and irritation, it is better for the crisis to come and a final separation take place. For peace is better than disunited love. 3. HATE-SPATS.--Hate-spats, though experienced by most lovers, yet, few realize how fatal they are to subsequent affections. Love-spats develop into hate-spats, and their effects upon the affections are blighting and should not under any circumstances be tolerated. Either agree, or agree to disagree. If there cannot be harmony before the ties of marriage are assumed, then there cannot be harmony after. Married life will be continually marred by a series of "hate-spats" that sooner or later will destroy all happiness, unless the couple are reasonably well mated. [Illustration: HOME LOVING HEARTS ARE HAPPIEST.] 4. MORE FATAL THE OFTENER THEY OCCUR.--As O.S. Fowler says: "'The poison of asps is under their lips.' The first spat is like a deep gash cut into a beautiful face, rendering it ghastly, and leaving a fearful scar, which neither time nor cosmetics can ever efface; including that pain so fatal to love, and blotting that sacred love-page with memory's most hideous and imperishable visages. Cannot many now unhappy remember them as the beginning of that alienation which embittered your subsequent affectional cup, spoiled your lives? With what inherent repulsion do you look back upon them? Their memory is horrid, and effect on love most destructive." 5. FATAL CONDITIONS.--What are all lovers' "spats" but disappointment in its very worst form? They necessarily and always produce all its terrible consequences. The finer feelings and sensibilities will soon become destroyed and nothing but hatred will remain. 6. EXTREME SORROW.--After a serious "spat" there generally follows a period of tender sorrow, and a feeling of humiliation and submission. Mutual promises are consequently made that such a condition of things shall never happen again, etc. But be sure and remember, that every subsequent difficulty will require stronger efforts to repair the breach. Let it be understood that these compromises are dangerous, and every new difficulty increases their fatality. Even the strongest will endure but few, nor survive many. 7. DISTRUST AND WANT OF CONFIDENCE.--Most difficulties arise from distrust or lack of confidence or common-sense. When two lovers eye each other like two curs, each watching, lest the other should gain some new advantage, then this shows a lack of common-sense, and the young couple should get sensible or separate. 8. JEALOUSY.--When one of the lovers, once so tender, now all at once so cold and hardened; once so coy and familiar now suddenly so reserved, distant, hard and austere, is always a sure case of jealousy. A jealous person is first talkative, very affectionate, and then all at once changes and becomes cold, reserved and repulsive, apparently without cause. If a person is jealous before marriage, this characteristic will be increased rather than diminished by marriage. 9. CONFESSION.--If you make up by confession, the confessor feels mean and disgraced; or if both confess and forgive, both feel humbled; since forgiveness implies inferiority and pity; from which whatever is manly and womanly shrinks. Still even this is better than continued "spats." 10. PREVENTION.--If you can get along well in your courtship you will invariably make a happy couple if you should unite your destinies in marriage. Learn not to give nor take offence. You must remember that all humanity is imperfect at best. We all have our faults, and must keep them in subordination. Those who truly love each other will have but few difficulties in their courtship or in married life. 11. REMEDIES.--Establishing a perfect love in the beginning constitutes a preventive. Fear that they are not truly loved usually paves the way for "spats." Let all who make any pretension guard against all beginnings of this reversal, and strangle these "hate-spats" the moment they arise. "Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath," not even an hour, but let the next sentence after they begin quench them forever. And let those who cannot court without "spats," stop; for those who spat before marriage must quarrel after. [Illustration: "LET NOT THE SUN GO DOWN UPON THY WRATH".] [Illustration: ALONE AND FORSAKEN.] * * * * * A BROKEN HEART. 1. WOUNDED LOVE.--'Tis true that love wields a magic, sovereign, absolute, and tyrannical power over both the body and the mind when it is given control. It often, in case of dissapointment, works havoc and deals death blows to its victims, and leaves many in that morbid mental condition which no life-tonics simply can restore. Wounded love may be the result of hasty and indiscreet conduct of young people; or the outgrowth of lust, or the result of domestic infidelity and discord. 2. FATAL EFFECTS.--Our cemeteries receive within the cold shadows of the grave thousands and thousands of victims that annually die from the results of "broken hearts." It is no doubt a fact that love troubles cause more disorders of the heart than everything else combined. 3. DISRUPTED LOVE.--It has long been known that dogs, birds, and even horses, when separated from their companions or friends, have pined away and died; so it is not strange that man with his higher intuitive ideas of affection should suffer from love when suddenly disrupted. 4. CRUCIFYING LOVE.--Painful love feelings strike right to the heart, and the breaking up of love that cannot be consummated in marriage is sometimes allowed to crucify the affections. There is no doubt that the suffering from disappointed love is often deeper and more intense than meeting death itself. 5. HEALING.--The paralyzing and agonizing consequences of ruptured love can only be remedied by diversion and society. Bring the mind into a state of patriotic independence with a full determination to blot out the past. Those who cannot bring into subordination the pangs of disappointment in love are not strong characters, and invariably will suffer disappointments in almost every department of life. Disappointment in love means rising above it, and conquering it, or demoralization, mental, physical and sexual. 6. LOVE RUNS MAD.--Love comes unbidden. A blind ungovernable impulse seems to hold sway in the passions of the affections. Love is blind and seems to completely subdue and conquer. It often comes like a clap of thunder from a clear sky, and when it falls it falls flat, leaving only the ruins of a tornado behind. 7. BAD, DISMAL, AND BLUE FEELINGS.--Despondency breathes disease, and those who yield to it can neither work, eat nor sleep; they only suffer. The spell-bound, fascinated, magnetized affections seem to deaden self-control and no doubt many suffering from love-sickness are totally helpless; they are beside themselves, irritational and wild. Men and women of genius, influence and education, all seem to suffer alike, but they do not yield alike to the subduing influence; some pine away and die; others rise above it, and are the stronger and better for having been afflicted. 8. RISE ABOVE IT.--Cheer up! If you cannot think pleasurably over your misfortune, forget it. You must do this or perish. Your power and influence is too much to blight by foolish and melancholic pining. Your own sense, your self-respect, your self-love, your love for others, command you not to spoil yourself by crying over "spilt milk." 9. RETRIEVE YOUR PAST LOSS.--Do sun, moon, and stars indeed rise and set in your loved one? Are there not "as good fish in the sea as ever were caught?" and can you not catch them? Are there not other hearts on earth just as loving and lovely, and in every way as congenial; If circumstances had first turned you upon another, you would have felt about that one as now about this. Love depends far less on the party loved than on the loving one. Or is this the way either to retrieve your past loss, or provide for the future? Is it not both unwise and self-destructive; and in every way calculated to render your case, present and prospective, still more hopeless? 10. FIND SOMETHING TO DO.--Idle hands are Satan's workshop. Employ your mind; find something to do; something in which you can find self-improvement; something that will fit you better to be admired by someone else, read, and improve your mind; get into society, throw your whole soul into some new enterprise, and you will conquer with glory and come out of the fire purified and made more worthy. 11. LOVE AGAIN.--As love was the cause of your suffering, so love again will restore you, and you will love better and more consistently. Do not allow yourself to become soured and detest and shun association. Rebuild your dilapidated sexuality by cultivating a general appreciation of the excellence, especially of the mental and moral qualities of the opposite sex. Conquer your prejudices, and vow not to allow anyone to annoy or disturb your calmness. 12. LOVE FOR THE DEAD.--A most affectionate woman, who continues to love her affianced though long dead, instead of becoming soured or deadened, manifests all the richness and sweetness of the fully-developed woman thoroughly in love, along with a softened, mellow, twilight sadness which touches every heart, yet throws a peculiar lustre and beauty over her manners and entire character. She must mourn, but not forever. It is not her duty to herself or to her Creator. 13. A SURE REMEDY.--Come in contact with the other sex. You are infused with your lover's magnetism, which must remain till displaced by another's. Go to parties and picnics; be free, familiar, offhand, even forward; try your knack at fascinating another, and yield to fascinations yourself. But be honest, command respect, and make yourself attractive and worthy. [Illustration: A SURE REMEDY.] * * * * * FORMER CUSTOMS AND PECULIARITIES AMONG MEN. 1. POLYGAMY.--There is a wide difference as regards the relations of the sexes in different parts of the world. In some parts polygamy has prevailed from time immemorial. Most savage people are polygamists, and the Turks, though slowly departing from the practice, still allow themselves a plurality of wives. 2. RULE REVERSED.--In Thibet the rule is reversed, and the females are provided with two or more husbands. It is said that in many instances a whole family of brothers have but one wife. The custom has at least one advantageous feature, viz.: the possibility of leaving an unprotected widow and a number of fatherless children is entirely obviated. 3. THE MORGANATIC MARRIAGE is a modification of polygamy. It sometimes occurs among the royalty of Europe, and is regarded as perfectly legitimate, but the morganatic wife is of lower rank than her royal husband, and her children do not inherit his rank or fortune. The Queen only is the consort of the sovereign, and entitled to share his rank. 4. DIFFERENT MANNERS OF OBTAINING WIVES.--Among the uncivilized almost any envied possession is taken by brute force or superior strength. The same is true in obtaining a wife. The strong take precedence of the weak. It is said that among the North American Indians it was the custom for men to wrestle for the choice of women. A weak man could seldom retain a wife that a strong man coveted. The law of contest was not confined to individuals alone. Women were frequently the cause of whole tribes arraying themselves against each other in battle. The effort to excel in physical power was a great incentive to bodily development, and since the best of the men were preferred by the most superior women, the custom was a good one in this, that the race was improved. 5. THE ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN employed low cunning and heartless cruelty in obtaining his wife. Laying in ambush, with club in hand, he would watch for the coveted woman, and, unawares, spring upon her. If simply disabled he carried her off as his possession, but if the blow had been hard enough to kill, he abandoned her to watch for another victim. There is here no effort to attract or please, no contest of strength; his courtship, if courtship it can be called, would compare very unfavorably with any among the brute creation. 6. THE KALMUCK TARTAR races for his bride on horseback, she having a certain start previously agreed upon. The nuptial knot consists in catching her, but we are told that the result of the race all depends upon whether the girl wants to be caught or not. 7. HAWAIIAN ISLANDERS.--Marriage among the early natives of these islands was merely a matter of mutual inclination. There was no ceremony at all, the men and women united and separated as they felt disposed. 8. THE FEUDAL LORD, in various parts of Europe, when any of his dependents or followers married, exercised the right of assuming the bridegroom's proper place in the marriage couch for the first night. Seldom was there any escape from this abominable practice. Sometimes the husband, if wealthy, succeeded in buying off the petty sovereign from exercising his privilege. 9. THE SPARTANS had the custom of encouraging intercourse between their best men and women for the sake of a superior progeny, without any reference to a marriage ceremony. Records show that the ancient Roman husband has been known to invite a friend, in whom he may have admired some physical or mental trait, to share the favors of his wife; that the peculiar qualities that he admired might be repeated in the offspring. [Illustration] [Illustration: PROPOSING.] [Illustration] Hasty marriage seldom proveth well.--_Shakespeare, Henry VI._ The reason why so few marriages are happy is, because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.--_Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects._ * * * * * SENSIBLE HINTS IN CHOOSING A PARTNER. 1. There are many fatal errors and many love-making failures in courtship. Natural laws govern all nature and reduce all they govern to eternal right; therefore love naturally, not artificially. Don't love a somebody or a nobody simply because they have money. 2. COURT SCIENTIFICALLY.--If you court at all, court scientifically. Bungle whatever else you will, but do no bungle courtship. A failure in this may mean more than a loss of wealth or public honors; it may mean ruin, or a life often worse than death. The world is full of wretched and mismated people. BEGIN RIGHT and all will be right; begin wrong and all will end wrong. When you court, make a business of it and study your interest the same as you would study any other business proposition. 3. DIVORCES.--There is not a divorce on our court records that is not the result of some fundamental error in courtship. The purity or the power of love may be corrupted the same as any other faculty, and when a man makes up his mind to marry and shuts his eyes and grabs in the dark for a companion, he dishonors the woman he captures and commits a crime against God and society. In this enlightened age there should be comparatively few mistakes made in the selection of a suitable partner. Sufficient time should be taken to study each other's character and disposition. Association will soon reveal adaptability. 4. FALSE LOVE.--Many a poor, blind and infatuated novice thinks he is desperately in love, when there is not the least genuine affection in his nature. It is all a momentary passion a sort of puppy love; his vows and pledges are soon violated, and in wedlock he will become indifferent and cold to his wife and children, and he will go through life without ambition, encouragement or success. He will be a failure. True love speaks for itself, and the casual observer can read its proclamations. True love does not speak in a whisper, it always makes itself heard. The follies of flirting develops into many unhappy marriages, and blight many a life. Man happily married has superior advantages both social and financially. 5. FLIRTING JUST FOR FUN.--Who is the flirt, what is his reputation, motive, or character? Every young man and woman must have a reputation; if it is not good it is bad, there is no middle ground. Young people who are running in the streets after dark, boisterous and noisy in their conversation, gossiping and giggling, flirting with first one and then another, will soon settle their matrimonial prospects among good society. Modesty is a priceless jewel. No sensible young man with a future will marry a flirt. 6. THE ARCH-DECEIVER.--They who win the affection simply for their own amusement are committing a great sin for which there is no adequate punishment. How can you shipwreck the innocent life of that confiding maiden, how can you forget her happy looks as she drank in your expressions of love, how can you forget her melting eyes and glowing cheeks, her tender tone reciprocating your pretended love? Remember that God is infinitely just, and "the soul that sinneth shall surely die." You may dash into business, seek pleasure in the club room, and visit gambling hells, but "Thou art the man" will ever stare you in the face. Her pale, sad cheeks, her hollow eyes will never cease to haunt you. Men should promote happiness, and not cause misery. Let the savage Indians torture captives to death by the slow flaming fagot, but let civilized man respect the tenderness and love of confiding women. Torturing the opposite sex is double-distilled barbarity. Young men agonizing young ladies, is the cold-blooded cruelty of devils, not men. 7. THE RULE TO FOLLOW.--Do not continually pay your attentions to the same lady if you have no desire to win her affections. Occasionally escorting her to church, concert, picnic, party, etc., is perfectly proper; but to give her your special attention, and extend invitations to her for all places of amusements where you care to attend, is an implied promise that you prefer her company above all others, and she has a right to believe that your attentions are serious. [Illustration: THE WEDDING RING.] 8. EVERY GIRL SHOULD SEAL HER HEART against all manifested affections, unless they are accompanied by a proposal. Woman's love is her all, and her heart should be as flint until she finds one who is worthy of her confidence. Young woman, never bestow your affections until by some word or deed at least you are fully justified in recognizing sincerity and faith in him who is paying you special attention. Better not be engaged until twenty-two. You are then more competent to judge the honesty and falsity of man. Nature has thrown a wall of maidenly modesty around you. Preserve that and not let your affections be trifled with while too young by any youthful flirt who is in search of hearts to conquer. 9. FEMALE FLIRTATION.--The young man who loves a young woman has paid her the highest compliment in the possession of man. Perpetrate almost any sin, inflict any other torture, but spare him the agony of disappointment. It is a crime that can never be forgiven, and a debt that never can be paid. 10. LOYALTY.--Young persons with serious intentions, or those who are engaged should be thoroughly loyal to each other. If they seek freedom with others the flame of jealousy is likely to be kindled and love is often turned to hatred, and the severest anger of the soul is aroused. Loyalty, faithfulness, confidence, are the three jewels to be cherished in courtship. Don't be a flirt. 11. KISSING, FONDLING, AND CARESSING BETWEEN LOVERS.--This should never be tolerated under any circumstances, unless there is an engagement to justify it, and then only in a sensible and limited way. The girl who allows a young man the privilege of kissing her or putting his arms around her waist before engagement will at once fall in the estimation of the man she has thus gratified and desired to please. Privileges always injure, but never benefit. 12. IMPROPER LIBERTIES DURING COURTSHIP KILL LOVE.--Any improper liberties which are permitted by young ladies, whether engaged or not, will change love into sensuality, and her affections will become obnoxious, if not repellent. Men by nature love virtue, and for a life companion naturally shun an amorous woman. Young folks, as you love moral purity and virtue, never reciprocate love until you have required the right of betrothal. Remember that those who are thoroughly in love will respect the honor and virtue of each other. The purity of woman is doubly attractive, and sensuality in her becomes doubly offensive and repellent. It is contrary to the laws of nature for a man to love a harlot. 13. A SEDUCER.--The punishment of the seducer is best given by O.S. Fowler, in his "Creative Science." The sin and punishment rest on all you who call out only to blight a trusting, innocent, loving virgin's affections, and then discard her. You deserve to be horsewhipped by her father, cowhided by her brothers, branded villain by her mother, cursed by herself, and sent to the whipping-post and dungeon. 14. CAUTION.--A young lady should never encourage the attentions of a young man, who shows no interest in his sisters. If a young man is indifferent to his sisters he will become indifferent to his wife as soon as the honey moon is over. There are few if any exceptions to this rule. The brother who will not be kind and loving in his mother's home will make a very poor husband. 15. THE OLD RULE: "Never marry a man that does not make his mother a Christmas present every Christmas," is a good one. The young lady makes no mistake in uniting her destinies with the man that loves his mother and respects his sisters and brothers. [Illustration] [Illustration: A CHINESE BRIDE AND GROOM.] * * * * * SAFE HINTS. 1. Marry in your own position in life. If there is any difference in social position, it is better that the husband should be the superior. A woman does not like to look down upon her husband, and to be obliged to do so is a poor guarantee for their happiness. 2. It is best to marry persons of your own faith and religious convictions, unless one is willing to adopt those of the other. Difference of faith is apt to divide families, and to produce great trouble in after life. A pious woman should beware of marrying an irreligious man. 3. Don't be afraid of marrying a poor man or woman. Good health, cheerful disposition, stout hearts and industrious hands will bring happiness and comfort. 4. Bright red hair should marry jet black, and jet black auburn or bright red, etc. And the more red-faced and bearded or impulsive a man, the more dark, calm, cool and quiet should his wife be; and vice versa. The florid should not marry the florid, but those who are dark, in proportion as they themselves are light. 5. Red-whiskered men should marry brunettes, but no blondes; the color of the whiskers being more determinate of the temperament than that of the hair. 6. The color of the eyes is still more important. Gray eyes must marry some other color, almost any other except gray; and so of blue, dark, hazel, etc. 7. Those very fleshy should not marry those equally so, but those too spare and slim; and this is doubly true of females. A spare man is much better adapted to a fleshy woman than a round-favored man. Two who are short, thick-set and stocky, should not unite in marriage, but should choose those differently constituted; but on no account one of their own make. And, in general, those predisposed to corpulence are therefore less inclined to marriage. 8. Those with little hair or beard should marry those whose hair is naturally abundant; still those who once had plenty, but who have lost it, may marry those who are either bald or have but little; for in this, as in all other cases, all depends on what one is by nature, little on present states. 9. Those whose motive-temperament decidedly predominates, who are bony, only moderately fleshy, quite prominent-featured, Roman-nosed and muscular, should not marry those similarly formed. 10. Small, nervous men must not marry little, nervous or sanguine women, lest both they and their children have quite too much of the hot-headed and impulsive, and die suddenly. 11. Two very beautiful persons rarely do or should marry; nor two extra homely. The fact is a little singular that very handsome women, who of course can have their pick, rarely marry good-looking men, but generally give preference to those who are homely; because that exquisiteness in which beauty originates naturally blends with that power which accompanies huge noses and disproportionate features. [Illustration: LIGHT. LIFE. HEALTH AND BEAUTY.] 12. Rapid movers, speakers, laughers, etc., should marry those who are calm and deliberate, and impulsives those who are stoical; while those who are medium may marry those who are either or neither, as they prefer. 13. Noses indicate characters by indicating the organisms and temperaments. Accordingly, those noses especially marked either way should marry those having opposite nasal characteristics. Roman noses are adapted to those which turn up, and pug noses to those turning down; while straight noses may marry either. 14. Men who love to command must be especially careful not to marry imperious, women's-rights woman; while those who willingly "obey orders" need just such. Some men require a wife who shall take their part; yet all who do not need strong-willed women, should be careful how they marry them. 15. A sensible woman should not marry an obstinate but injudicious, unintelligent man; because she cannot long endure to see and help him blindly follow his poor, but spurn her good, plans. 16. The reserved or secretive should marry the frank. A cunning man cannot endure the least artifice in a wife. Those who are non-committal must marry those who are demonstrative; else, however much they may love, neither will feel sure as to the other's affections, and each will distrust the other, while their children will be deceitful. 17. A timid woman should never marry a hesitating man, lest, like frightened children, each keep perpetually re-alarming the other by imaginary fears. 18. An industrious, thrifty, hard-working man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives to delve alone is uphill work. [Illustration] [Illustration: FIRESIDE FANCIES.] * * * * * MARRIAGE SECURITIES. 1. SEEK EACH OTHER'S HAPPINESS.--A selfish marriage that seeks only its own happiness defeats itself. Happiness is a fire that will not burn long on one stick. 2. DO NOT MARRY SUDDENLY.--It can always be done till it is done, if it is a proper thing to do. 3. MARRY IN YOUR OWN GRADE IN SOCIETY.--It is painful to be always apologizing for any one. It is more painful to be apologized for. 4. DO NOT MARRY DOWNWARD.--It is hard enough to advance in the quality of life without being loaded with clay heavier than your own. It will be sufficiently difficult to keep your children up to your best level without having to correct a bias in their blood. 5. DO NOT SELL YOURSELF.--It matters not whether the price be money or position. 6. DO NOT THROW YOURSELF AWAY.--You will not receive too much, even if you are paid full price. 7. SEEK THE ADVICE OF YOUR PARENTS.--Your parents are your best friends. They will make more sacrifice for you than any other mortals. They are elevated above selfishness concerning you. If they differ from you concerning your choice, it is because they must. 8. DO NOT MARRY TO PLEASE ANY THIRD PARTY.--You must do the living and enduring. 9. DO NOT MARRY TO SPITE ANYBODY.--It would add wretchedness to folly. 10. DO NOT MARRY BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE MAY SEEK THE SAME HAND.--One glove may not fit all hands equally well. 11. DO NOT MARRY TO GET RID OF ANYBODY.--The coward who shot himself to escape from being drafted was insane. 12. DO NOT MARRY MERELY FOR THE IMPULSE OF LOVE.--Love is a principle as well as an emotion. So far as it is a sentiment it is a blind guide. It does not wait to test the presence of exalted character in its object before breaking out into a flame. Shavings make a hot fire, but hard coal is better for the Winter. 13. DO NOT MARRY WITHOUT LOVE.--A body without a soul soon becomes offensive. 14. TEST CAREFULLY THE EFFECT OF PROTRACTED ASSOCIATION.--If familiarity breeds contempt before marriage it will afterward. 15. TEST CAREFULLY THE EFFECT OF PROTRACTED SEPARATION.--True love will defy both time and space. 16. CONSIDER CAREFULLY the right of your children under the laws of heredity. It is doubtful whether you have a right to increase the number of invalids and cripples. 17. DO NOT MARRY SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU HAVE PROMISED TO DO SO.--If a seam opens between you now it will widen into a gulf. It is less offensive to retract a mistaken promise than to perjure your soul before the altar. Your intended spouse has a right to absolute integrity. [Illustration: GOING TO BE MARRIED.] 18. MARRY CHARACTER.--It is not so much what one has as what one is. 19. DO NOT MARRY THE WRONG OBJECT.--Themistocles said he would rather marry his daughter to a man without money than to money with a man. It is well to have both. It is fatal to have neither. 20. DEMAND A JUST RETURN.--You give virtue and purity, and gentleness and integrity. You have a right to demand the same in return. Duty requires it. 21. REQUIRE BRAINS.--Culture is good, but will not be transmitted. Brain power may be. 22. STUDY PAST RELATIONSHIP.--The good daughter and sister makes a good wife. The good son and brother makes a good husband. 23. NEVER MARRY AS A MISSIONARY DEED.--If one needs saving from bad habits he is not suitable for you. 24. MARRIAGE IS A SURE AND SPECIFIC REMEDY for all the ills known as seminal losses. As right eating cures a sick stomach and right breathing diseased lungs, so the right use of the sexual organs will bring relief and restoration. Many men who have been sufferers from indiscretions of youth, have married, and were soon cured of spermatorrhoea and other complications which accompanied it. 25. A GOOD, LONG COURTSHIP will often cure many difficulties or ills of the sexual organs. O.S. Fowler says: "See each other often spend many pleasant hours together," have many walks and talks, think of each other while absent, write many love letters, be inspired to many love feelings and acts towards each other, and exercise your sexuality in a thousand forms ten thousand times, every one of which tones up and thereby recuperates this very element now dilapidated. When you have courted long enough to marry, you will be sufficiently restored to be reimproved by it. UP AND AT IT.--Dress up, spruce up, and be on the alert. Don't wait too long to get one much more perfect than you are; but settle on some one soon. Remember that your unsexed state renders you over-dainty, and easily disgusted. So contemplate only their lovable qualities. 26. PURITY OF PURPOSE.--Court with a pure and loyal purpose, and when thoroughly convinced that the disposition of other difficulties are in the way of a happy marriage life, then _honorably_ discuss it and honorably treat each other in the settlement. 27. DO NOT TRIFLE with the feelings or affections of each other. It is a sin that will curse you all the days of your life. * * * * * WOMEN WHO MAKE THE BEST WIVES. 1. CONSCIOUS OF THE DUTIES OF HER SEX.--A woman conscious of the duties of her sex, one who unflinchingly discharges the duties allotted to her by nature, would no doubt make a good wife. 2. GOOD WIVES AND MOTHERS.--The good wives and mothers are the women who believe in the sisterhood of women as well as in the brotherhood of men. The highest exponent of this type seeks to make her home something more than an abode where children are fed, clothed and taught the catechism. The State has taken her children into politics by making their education a function of politicians. The good wife and homemaker says to her children, "Where thou goest, I will go." She puts off her own inclinations to ease and selfishness. She studies the men who propose to educate her children; she exhorts mothers to sit beside fathers on the school-board; she will even herself accept such thankless office in the interests of the helpless youth of the schools who need a mother's as well as a father's and a teacher's care in this field of politics. 3. A BUSY WOMAN.--As to whether a busy woman, that is, a woman who labors for mankind in the world outside her home,--whether such an one can also be a good housekeeper, and care for her children, and make a real "Home, Sweet Home!" with all the comforts by way of variation, why! I am ready, as the result of years practical experience as a busy woman, to assert that women of affairs can also be women of true domestic tastes and habits. 4. BRAINY ENOUGH.--What kind of women make the best wives? The woman who is brainy enough to be a companion, wise enough to be a counsellor, skilled enough in the domestic virtues to be a good housekeeper, and loving enough to guide in true paths the children with whom the home may be blessed. 5. FOUND THE RIGHT HUSBAND.--The best wife is the woman who has found the right husband, a husband who understands her. A man will have the best wife when he rates that wife as queen among women. Of all women she should always be to him the dearest. This sort of man will not only praise the dishes made by his wife, but will actually eat them. 6. BANK ACCOUNT.--He will allow his life-companion a bank account, and will exact no itemized bill at the end of the month. Above all, he will pay the Easter bonnet bill without a word, never bring a friend to dinner without first telephoning home,--short, he will comprehend that the woman who makes the best wife is the woman whom, by his indulgence of her ways and whims, he makes the best wife. So after all, good husbands have the most to do with making good wives. [Illustration: PUNISHMENT OF WIFE BEATERS IN NEW ENGLAND IN THE EARLY DAYS.] 7. BEST HOME MAKER.--A woman to be the best home maker needs to be devoid of intensive "nerves." She must be neat and systematic, but not too neat, lest she destroy the comfort she endeavors to create. She must be distinctly amiable, while firm. She should have no "career," or desire for a career, if she would fill to perfection the home sphere. She must be affectionate, sympathetic and patient, and fully appreciative of the worth and dignity of her sphere. 8. KNOW NOTHING WHATSOEVER ABOUT COOKING OR SEWING OR HOUSEKEEPING.--I am inclined to make my answer to this question somewhat concise, after the manner of a text without the sermon. Like this: To be the "best wife" depends upon three things: first, an abiding faith with God; second, duty lovingly discharged as daughter, wife and mother; third, self-improvement, mentally, physically, spiritually. With this as a text and as a glittering generality, let me touch upon one or two practical essentials. In the course of every week it is my privilege to meet hundreds of young women,--prospective wives. I am astonished to find that many of these know nothing whatsoever about cooking or sewing or housekeeping. Now, if a woman cannot broil a beefsteak, nor boil the coffee when it is necessary, if she cannot mend the linen, nor patch a coat, if she cannot make a bed, order the dinner, create a lamp-shade, ventilate the house, nor do anything practical in the way of making home actually a home, how can she expect to make even a good wife, not to speak of a better or best wife? I need not continue this sermon. Wise girls will understand. 9. THE BEST KEEPER OF HOME.--As to who is the best keeper of this transition home, memory pictures to me a woman grown white under the old slavery, still bound by it, in that little-out-of-the-way Kansas town, but never so bound that she could not put aside household tasks, at any time, for social intercourse, for religious conversation, for correspondence, for reading, and, above all, for making everyone who came near her feel that her home was the expression of herself, a place for rest, study, and the cultivation of affection. She did not exist for her walls, her carpets, her furniture; they existed for her and all who came to her She considered herself the equal of all; and everyone else thought her the superior of all. * * * * * ADAPTATION, CONJUGAL AFFECTION, AND FATAL ERRORS. ADVICE TO THE MARRIED AND UNMARRIED. 1. MARRYING FOR WEALTH.--Those who marry for wealth often get what they marry and nothing else; for rich girls besides being generally destitute of both industry and economy, are generally extravagant in their expenditures, and require servants enough to dissipate a fortune. They generally have insatiable wants, yet feel that they deserve to be indulged in everything, because they placed their husbands under obligation to them by bringing them a dowry. And then the mere idea of living on the money of a wife, and of being supported by her, is enough to tantalize any man of an independent spirit. 2. SELF-SUPPORT.--What spirited husband would not prefer to support both himself and wife, rather than submit to this perpetual bondage of obligation. To live upon a father, or take a patrimony from him, is quite bad enough; but to run in debt to a wife, and owe her a living, is a little too aggravating for endurance, especially if there be not perfect cordiality between the two, which cannot be the case in money matches. Better live wifeless, or anything else, rather than marry for money. 3. MONEY-SEEKERS.--Shame on sordid wife-seekers, or, rather, money-seekers; for it is not a wife that they seek, but only filthy lucre! They violate all their other faculties simply to gratify miserly desire. Verily such "have their reward"! 4. THE PENITENT HOUR.--And to you, young ladies, let me say with great emphasis, that those who court and marry you because you are rich, will make you rue the day of your pecuniary espousals. They care not for you, but only your money, and when they get that, will be liable to neglect or abuse you, and probably squander it, leaving you destitute and abandoning you to your fate. 6. INDUSTRY THE SIGN OF NOBILITY.--Marry a working, industrious young lady, whose constitution is strong, flesh solid, and health unimpaired by confinement, bad habits, or late hours. Give me a plain, home-spun farmer's daughter, and you may have all the rich and fashionable belles of our cities and villages. 6. WASP WAISTS.--Marrying small waists is attended with consequences scarcely less disastrous than marrying rich and fashionable girls. An amply developed chest is a sure indication of a naturally vigorous constitution and a strong hold on life; while small waists indicate small and feeble vital organs, a delicate constitution, sickly offspring, and a short life. Beware of them, therefore, unless you wish your heart broken by the early death of your wife and children. [Illustration: UNTIL DEATH US DO PART.] 7. MARRYING TALKERS.--In marrying a wit or a talker merely, though the brilliant scintillations of the former, or the garrulity of the latter, may amuse or delight you for the time being, yet you will derive no permanent satisfaction from these qualities, for there will be no common bond of kindred feeling to assimilate your souls and hold each spell-bound at the shrine of the other's intellectual or moral excellence. 8. THE SECOND WIFE.--Many men, especially in choosing a second wife, are governed by her own qualifications as a housekeeper mainly, and marry industry and economy. Though these traits of character are excellent, yet a good housekeeper may be far from being a good wife. A good housekeeper, but a poor wife, may indeed prepare you a good dinner, and keep her house and children neat and tidy, yet this is but a part of the office of a wife; who, besides all her household duties, has those of a far higher order to perform. She should soothe you with her sympathies, divert your troubled mind, and make the whole family happy by the gentleness of her manners, and the native goodness of her heart. A husband should also likewise do his part. 9. DO NOT MARRY A MAN WITH A LOW, FLAT HEAD; for, however fascinating, genteel, polite, tender, plausible or winning he may be, you will repent the day of your espousal. 10. HEALTHY WIRES AND MOTHERS.--Let girls romp, and let them range hill and dale in search of flowers, berries, or any other object of amusement or attraction; let them bathe often, skip the rope, and take a smart ride on horseback; often interspersing these amusements with a turn of sweeping or washing, in order thereby to develop their vital organs, and thus lay a substantial physical foundation for becoming good wives and mothers. The wildest romps usually make the best wives, while quiet, still, demure, sedate and sedentary girls are not worth having. 11. SMALL STATURE.--In passing, I will just remark, that good size is important in wives and mothers. A small stature is objectionable in a woman, because little women usually have too much activity for their strength, and, consequently, feeble constitutions; hence they die young, and besides, being nervous, suffer extremely as mothers. 12. HARD TIMES AND MATRIMONY.--Many persons, particularly young men, refuse to marry, especially "these hard time," because they cannot support a wife in the style they wish. To this I reply, that a good wife will care less for the style in which she is supported, than for you. She will cheerfully conform to your necessities, and be happy with you in a log-cabin. She will even help you support yourself. To support a good wife, even if she have children, is really less expensive than to board alone, besides being one of the surest means of acquiring property. 13. MARRYING FOR A HOME.--Do not, however, marry for a home merely, unless you wish to become even more destitute with one than without one; for, it is on the same footing with "marrying for money." Marry a man for his merit; and you take no chances. 14. MARRY TO PLEASE NO ONE BUT YOURSELF.--Marriage is a matter exclusively your own; because you alone must abide its consequences. No person, not even a parent, has the least right to interfere or dictate in this matter. I never knew a marriage, made to please another, to turn out any otherwise than most unhappily. 15. DO NOT MARRY TO PLEASE YOUR PARENTS. Parents can not love for their children any more than they can eat or sleep, or breathe, or die and go to heaven for them. They may give wholesome advice merely, but should leave the entire decision to the unbiased judgment of the parties themselves, who mainly are to experience the consequences of their choice. Besides, such is human nature, that to oppose lovers, or to speak against the person beloved, only increases their desire and determination to marry. 16. RUN-AWAY MATCHES.--Many a run-away match would never have taken place but for opposition or interference. Parents are mostly to be blamed for these elopements. Their children marry partly out of sprite and to be contrary. Their very natures tell them that this interference is unjust--as it really is--and this excites combativeness, firmness, and self-esteem, in combination with the social faculties, to powerful and even blind resistance--which turmoil of the faculties hastens the match. Let the affections of a daughter be once slightly enlisted in your favor, and then let the "old folks" start an opposition, and you may feel sure of your prize. If she did not love you before, she will now, that you are persecuted. 17. DISINHERITANCE.--Never disinherit, or threaten to disinherit, a child for marrying against your will. If you wish a daughter not to marry a certain man, oppose her, and she will be sure to marry him; so also in reference to a son. 18. PROPER TRAINING.--The secret is, however, all in a nutshell. Let the father properly train his daughter, and she will bring her first love-letter to him, and give him an opportunity to cherish a suitable affection, and to nip an improper one in the germ, before it has time to do any harm. 19. THE FATAL MISTAKES OF PARENTS.--_There is, however one way of effectually preventing an improper match, and that is, not to allow your children to associate with any whom you are unwilling they should marry. How cruel as well at unjust to allow a daughter to associate with a young man till the affections of both are riveted, and then forbid her marrying him. Forbid all association, or consent cheerfully to the marriage._ 20. AN INTEMPERATE LOVER.--Do not flatter yourselves young women, that you can wean even an occasional wine drinker from his cups by love and persuasion. Ardent spirit at first, kindles up the fires of love into the fierce flames of burning licentiousness, which burn out every element of love and destroy every vestige of pure affection. It over-excites the passions, and thereby finally destroys it,--producing at first, unbridled libertinism, and then an utter barrenness of love; besides reversing the other faculties of the drinker against his own consort, and those of the wife against her drinking husband. * * * * * FIRST LOVE, DESERTION AND DIVORCE. 1. FIRST LOVE.--This is the most important direction of all. The first love experiences a tenderness, a purity and unreservedness, an exquisiteness, a devotedness, and a poetry belonging to no subsequent attachment. "Love, like life, has no second spring." Though a second attachment may be accompanied by high moral feeling, and to a devotedness to the object loved; yet, let love be checked or blighted in its first pure emotion, and the beauty of its spring is irrecoverably withered and lost. This does not mean the simple love of children in the first attachment they call love, but rather the mature intelligent love of those of suitable age. [Illustration: MUSICAL CULTURE LESSON.] 2. FREE FROM TEMPTATIONS.--As long as his heart is bound up in its first bundle of love and devotedness--as long as his affections remain reciprocated and uninterrupted--so long temptations cannot take effect. This heart is callous to the charms of others, and the very idea of bestowing his affections upon another is abhorrent. Much more so is animal indulgence, which is morally impossible. 3. SECOND LOVE NOT CONSTANT.--But let this first love be broken off, and the flood-gates of passion are raised. Temptations now flow in upon him. He casts a lustful eye upon every passing female, and indulges unchaste imaginations and feelings. Although his conscientiousness or intellect may prevent actual indulgence, yet temptations now take effect, and render him liable to err; whereas before they had no power to awaken improper thoughts or feelings. Thus many young men find their ruin. 4. LEGAL MARRIAGE.--What would any woman give for merely a nominal or legal husband, just to live with and provide for her, but who entertained not one spark of love for her, or whose affections were bestowed upon another? How absurd, how preposterous the doctrine that the obligations of marriage derive their sacredness from legal enactments and injunctions! How it literally profanes this holy of holies, and drags down this heaven-born institution from its original, divine elevation, to the level of a merely human device. Who will dare to advocate the human institution of marriage without the warm heart of a devoted and loving companion! 5. LEGISLATION.--But no human legislation can so guard this institution but that it may be broken in spirit, though, perhaps, acceded to in form; for, it is the heart which this institution requires. There must be true and devoted affection, or marriage is a farce and a failure. 6. THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY AND THE LAW GOVERNING MARRIAGE are for the protection of the individual, yet a man and woman may be married by law and yet unmarried in spirit. The law may tie together, and no marriage be consummated. Marriage therefore is Divine, and "whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." A right marriage means a right state of the heart. A careful study of this work will be a great help to both the unmarried and the married. 7. DESERTION AND DIVORCE.--For a young man to court a young woman, and excite her love till her affections are riveted, and then (from sinister motives, such as, to marry one richer, or more handsome), to leave her, and try elsewhere, is the very same crime as to divorce her from all that she holds dear on earth--to root up and pull out her imbedded affections, and to tear her from her rightful husband. First love is always constant. The second love brings uncertainty--too often desertions before marriage and divorces after marriage. 8. THE COQUET.--The young woman to play the coquet, and sport with the sincere affections of an honest and devoted young man, is one of the highest crimes that human nature can commit. Better murder him in body too, as she does in soul and morals, and it is the result of previous disappointment, never the outcome of a sincere first love. 9. ONE MARRIAGE. One evidence that second marriages are contrary to the laws of our social nature, is the fact that almost all step-parents and step-children disagree. Now, what law has been broken, to induce this penalty? The law of marriage; and this is one of the ways in which the breach punishes itself. It is much more in accordance with our natural feelings, especially those of mothers, that children should be brought up by their own parent. 10. SECOND MARRIAGE.--Another proof of this point is, that second marriage is more a matter of business. "I'll give you a home, if you'll take care of my children." "It's a bargain," is the way most second matches are made. There is little of the poetry of first-love, and little of the coyness and shrinking diffidence which characterize the first attachment. Still these remarks apply almost equally to a second attachment, as to second marriage. 11. THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER.--Let this portion be read and pondered, and also the one entitled, "Marry your First Love if possible," which assigns the cause, and points out the only remedy, of licentiousness. As long as the main cause of this vice exists, and is aggravated by purse-proud, high-born, aristocratic parents and friends, and even by the virtuous and religious, just so long, and exactly in the same ratio will this blighting Sirocco blast the fairest flowers of female innocence and lovliness, and blight our noblest specimens of manliness. No sin of our land is greater. [Illustration] [Illustration: A CLASSIC FRIEZE.] [Illustration: HOW MANY YOUNG GIRLS ARE RUINED.] * * * * * FLIRTING AND ITS DANGERS. 1. NO EXCUSE.--In this country there is no excuse for the young man who seeks the society of the loose and the dissolute. There is at all times and everywhere open to him a society of persons of the opposite sex of his own age and of pure thoughts and lives, whose conversation will refine him and drive from his bosom ignoble and impure thoughts. 2. THE DANGERS.--The young man who may take pleasure in the fact that he is the hero of half a dozen or more engagements and love episodes, little realizes that such constant excitement often causes not only dangerously frequent and long-continued nocturnal emissions, but most painful affections of the testicles. Those who show too great familiarity with the other sex, who entertain lascivious thoughts, continually exciting the sexual desires, always suffer a weakening of power and sometimes the actual diseases of degeneration, chronic inflammation of the gland, spermatorrhoea, impotence, and the like.--Young man, beware; your punishment for trifling with the affections of others may cost you a life of affliction. 3. REMEDY.--Do not violate the social laws. Do not trifle with the affections of your nature. Do not give others countless anguish, and also do not run the chances of injuring yourself and others for life. The society of refined and pure women is one of the strongest safeguards a young man can have, and he who seeks it will not only find satisfaction, but happiness. Simple friendship and kind affections for each other will ennoble and benefit. 4. THE TIME FOR MARRIAGE.--When a young man's means permit him to marry, he should then look intelligently for her with whom he expects to pass the remainder of his life in perfect loyalty, and in sincerity and singleness of heart. Seek her to whom he is ready to swear to be ever true. 5. BREACH OF CONFIDENCE.--Nothing is more certain, says Dr. Naphey, to undermine domestic felicity, and sap the foundation of marital happiness, than marital infidelity. The risks of disease which a married man runs in impure intercourse are far more serious, because they not only involve himself, but his wife and his children. He should know that there is nothing which a woman will not forgive sooner than such a breach of confidence. He is exposed to the plots and is pretty certain sooner or later to fall into the snares of those atrocious parties who subsist on black-mail. And should he escape these complications, he still must lose self-respect, and carry about with him the burden of a guilty conscience and a broken vow. 6. SOCIETY RULES AND CUSTOMS.--A young man can enjoy the society of ladies without being a "flirt." He can escort ladies to parties, public places of interest, social gatherings, etc., without showing special devotion to any one special young lady. When he finds the choice of his heart, then he will be justified to manifest it, and publicly proclaim it by paying her the compliment, exclusive attention. To keep a lady's company six months is a public announcement of an engagement. * * * * * A WORD TO MAIDENS. 1. NO YOUNG LADY who is not willing to assume the responsibility of a true wife, and be crowned with the sacred diadem of motherhood, should ever think of getting married. We have too many young ladies to-day who despise maternity, who openly vow that they will never be burdened with children, and yet enter matrimony at the first opportunity. What is the result? Let echo answer, What? Unless a young lady believes that motherhood is noble, is honorable, is divine, and she is willing to carry out that sacred function of her nature, she had a thousand times better refuse every proposal, and enter some honorable occupation and wisely die an old maid by choice. 2. ON THE OTHER HAND, YOUNG LADY, never enter into the physical relations of marriage with a man until you have conversed with him freely and fully on these relations. Learn distinctly his views and feelings and expectations in regard to that purest and most ennobling of all the functions of your nature, and the most sacred of all intimacies of conjugal love. Your self-respect, your beauty, your glory, your heaven, as a wife, will be more directly involved in his feelings and views and practices, in regard to that relation, than in all other things. As you would not become a weak, miserable, imbecile, unlovable and degraded wife and mother, in the very prime of your life, come to a perfect understanding with your chosen one, ere you commit your person to his keeping in the sacred intimacies of home. Beware of that man who, under pretence of delicacy, modesty, and propriety, shuns conversation with you on this relation, and on the hallowed function of maternity. 3. TALK WITH YOUR INTENDED frankly and openly. Remember, concealment and mystery in him, towards you, on all other subjects pertaining to conjugal union might be overlooked, but if he conceals his views here, rest assured it bodes no good to your purity and happiness as a wife and mother. You can have no more certain assurance that you are to be victimized, your soul and body offered up, _slain_ on the altar of his sensualism, than his unwillingness to converse with you on subjects so vital to your happiness. Unless he is willing to hold his manhood in abeyance to the calls of your nature and to your conditions, and consecrate its passions and its powers to the elevation and happiness of his wife and children, your maiden soul had better return to God unadorned with the diadem of conjugal and maternal love than that you should become the wife of such man and the mother of his children. [Illustration: ROMAN LOVE MAKING.] [Illustration: UNIFORMED MEN ARE ALWAYS POPULAR.] * * * * * POPPING THE QUESTION. 1. MAKING THE DECLARATION.--There are few emergencies in business and few events in life that bring to man the trying ordeal of "proposing to a lady." We should be glad to help the bashful lover in his hours of perplexity, embarrassment and hesitation, but unfortunately we cannot pop the question for him, nor give him a formula by which he may do it. Different circumstances and different surroundings compel every lover to be original in his form or mode of proposing. 2. BASHFULNESS.--If a young man is very bashful, he should write his sentiments in a clear, frank manner on a neat white sheet of note paper, enclose it in a plain white envelope and find some way to convey it to the lady's hand. 3. THE ANSWER.--If the beloved one's heart is touched and she is in sympathy with the lover, the answer should be frankly and unequivocally given. If the negative answer is necessary, it should be done in the kindest and most sympathetic language, yet definite, positive and to the point, and the gentleman should at once withdraw his suit and continue friendly but not familiar. 4. SAYING "NO" FOR "YES."-If girls are foolish enough to say "No" when they mean "Yes," they must suffer the consequences which often follow. A man of intelligence and self-respect will not ask a lady twice. It is begging for recognition and lowers his dignity, should he do so. A lady is supposed to know her heart sufficiently to consider the question to her satisfaction before giving an answer. 5. CONFUSION OF WORDS AND MISUNDERSTANDING.--Sometimes a man's happiness, has depended on his manner of popping the question. Many a time the girl has said "No" because the question was so worded that the affirmative did not come from the mouth naturally; and two lives that gravitated toward each other with all their inward force have been thrown suddenly apart, because the electric keys were not carefully touched. 6. SCRIPTURAL DECLARATION.--The church is not the proper place to conduct a courtship, yet the following is suggestive and ingenious. A young gentleman, familiar with the Scriptures, happening to sit in a pew adjoining a young lady for whom he conceived a violent attachment, made his proposal in this way. He politely handed his neighbor a Bible open, with a pin stuck in the following text: Second Epistle of John, verse 5: "And I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that we had from the beginning, that we love one another." She returned it, pointing to the second chapter of Ruth, verse 10: "Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him. Why have I found grace in thine eyes that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?" [Illustration: SEALING THE ENGAGEMENT. From the Most Celebrated Painting in the German Department at the World's Fair.] He returned the book, pointing to the 13th verse of the Third Epistle of John: "Having many things to write unto you, I would not write to you with paper and ink, but trust to come unto you and speak face to face, that your joy may be full." From the above interview a marriage took place the ensuing month in the same church. 7. HOW JENNY WAS WON. On a sunny Summer morning, Early as the dew was dry, Up the hill I went a berrying; Need I tell you--tell you why? Farmer Davis had a daughter. And it happened that I knew, On each sunny morning, Jenny Up the hill went berrying too. Lonely work is picking berries, So I joined her on the hill: "Jenny, dear," said I, "your basket's Quite too large for one to fill." So we stayed--we two--to fill it, Jenny talking--I was still.-- Leading where the hill was steepest, Picking berries up the hill. "This is up-hill work," said Jenny; "So is life," said I; "shall we Climb it each alone, or, Jenny, Will you come and climb with me?" Redder than the blushing berries Jenny's cheek a moment grew, While without delay she answered, "I will come and climb with you." [Illustration: A PERUVIAN BEAUTY.] 8. A ROMANTIC WAY FOR PROPOSING.--In Peru they have a romantic way of popping the question. The suitor appears on the appointed evening, with a gaily dressed troubadour under the balcony of his beloved. The singer steps before her flower-bedecked window, and sings her beauties in the name of her lover. He compares her size to that of a pear tree, her lips to two blushing rose-buds, and her womanly form to that of a dove. With assumed harshness the lady asks her lover: Who are you, and what do you want? He answers with ardent confidence: "Thy love I do adore. The stars live in the harmony of love, and why should not we, too, love each other?" Then the proud beauty gives herself away: she takes her flower-wreath from her hair and throws it down to her lover, promising to be his forever. [Illustration: THE BRIDE.] * * * * * THE WEDDING. 1. THE PROPER TIME.--Much has been printed in various volumes regarding the time of the year, the influence of the seasons, etc., as determining the proper time to set for the wedding day. Circumstances must govern these things. To be sure, it is best to avoid extremes of heat and cold. Very hot weather is debilitating, and below zero is uncomfortable. 2. THE LADY SHOULD SELECT THE DAY.--There is one element in the time that is of great importance, physically, especially to the lady. It is the day of the month, and it is hoped that every lady who contemplates marriage is informed upon the great facts of ovulation. By reading page 244 she will understand that it is to her advantage to select a wedding day about fifteen or eighteen days after the close of menstruation in the month chosen, since it is not best that the first child should be conceived during the excitement or irritation of first attempts at congress; besides modest brides naturally do not wish to become large with child before the season of congratulation and visiting on their return from the "wedding tour" is over. Again, it is asserted by many of the best writers on this subject, that the mental condition of either parent at the time of intercourse will be stamped upon the embryo hence it is not only best, but wise, that the first-born should not be conceived until several months after marriage, when the husband and wife have nicely settled in their new home, and become calm in their experience of each other's society. 3. THE "BRIDAL TOUR" is considered by many newly married couples as a necessary introduction to a life of connubial joy. There is, in our opinion, nothing in the custom to recommend it. After the excitement and overwork before and accompanying a wedding, the period immediately following should be one of _rest_. Again, the money expended on the ceremony and a tour of the principal cities, etc., might, in most cases, be applied to a multitude of after-life comforts of far more lasting value and importance. To be sure, it is not pleasant for the bride, should she remain at home, to pass through the ordeal of criticism and vulgar comments of acquaintances and friends, and hence, to escape this, the young couple feel like getting away for a time. Undoubtedly the best plan for the great majority, after this most eventful ceremony, is to enter their future home at once, and there to remain in comparative privacy until the novelty of the situation is worn off. 4. IF THE CONVENTIONAL TOUR is taken, the husband should remember that his bride cannot stand the same amount of tramping around and sight-seeing that he can. The female organs of generation are so easily affected by excessive exercise of the limbs which support them, that at this critical period it would be a foolish and cosily experience to drag a lady hurriedly around the country on an extensive and protracted round of sight-seeing or visiting. Unless good common-sense is displayed in the manner of spending the "honey-moon," it will prove very untrue to its name. In many cases it lays the foundation for the wife's first and life-long "backache." [Illustration: THE GYPSY BRIDE.] * * * * * ADVICE TO NEWLY MARRIED COUPLES. 1. "BE YE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY" is a Bible commandment which the children of men habitually obey. However they may disagree on other subjects, all are in accord on this; the barbarous, the civilized, the high, the low, the fierce, the gentle--all unite in the desire which finds its accomplishment in the reproduction of their kind. Who shall quarrel with the Divinely implanted instinct, or declare it to be vulgar or unmentionable? It is during the period of the honeymoon that the intensity of this desire, coupled with the greatest curiosity, is at its height, and the unbridled license often given the passions at this time is attended with the most dangerous consequences. 2. CONSUMMATION OF MARRIAGE.--The first time that the husband and wife cohabit together after the ceremony has been performed is called the consummation of marriage. Many grave errors have been committed by people in this, when one or both of the contracting parties were not physically or sexually in a condition to carry out the marriage relation. A marriage, however, is complete without this in the eyes of the law, as it is a maxim taken from the Roman civil statutes that consent, not cohabitation, is the binding element in the ceremony. Yet, in most States of the U.S., and in some other countries, marriage is legally declared void and of no effect where it is not possible to consummate the marriage relation. A divorce may be obtained provided the injured party begins the suit. 3. TEST OF VIRGINITY.--The consummation of marriage with a virgin is not necessarily attended with a flow of blood, and the absence of this sign is not the slightest presumption against her former chastity. The true test of virginity is modesty void of any disagreeable familiarity. A sincere Christian faith is one of the best recommendations. 4. LET EVERY MAN REMEMBER that the legal right of marriage does not carry with it the moral right to injure for life the loving companion he has chosen. Ignorance may be the cause, but every man before he marries should know something of the physiology and the laws of health, and we here give some information which is of very great importance to every newly-married man. 5. SENSUALITY.--Lust crucifies love. The young sensual husband is generally at fault. Passion sways and the duty to bride and wife is not thought of, and so a modest young wife is often actually forced and assaulted by the unsympathetic haste of her husband. An amorous man in that way soon destroys his own love, and thus is laid the foundation for many difficulties that soon develop trouble and disturb the happiness of both. 6. ABUSE AFTER MARRIAGE.--Usually marriage is consummated within a day or two after the ceremony, but this is gross injustice to the bride. In most cases she is nervous, timid, and exhausted by the duties of preparation for the wedding, and in no way in a condition, either in body or mind, for the vital change which the married relation bring upon her. Many a young husband often lays the foundation of many diseases of the womb and of the nervous system in gratifying his unchecked passions without a proper regard for his wife's exhausted condition. 7. THE FIRST CONJUGAL APPROACHES are usually painful to the new wife, and no enjoyment to her follows. Great caution and kindness should be exercised. A young couple rushing together in their animal passion soon produce a nervous and irritating condition which ere long brings apathy, indifference, if not dislike. True love and a high regard for each other will temper passion into moderation. 8. WERE THE ABOVE INJUNCTIONS HEEDED fully and literally it would be folly to say more, but this would be omitting all account of the bridegroom's new position, the power of his passion, and the timidity of the fair creature who is wondering what fate has in store for her trembling modesty. To be sure, there are some women who are possessed of more forward natures and stronger desires than others. In such cases there may be less trouble. 9. A COMMON ERROR.--The young husband may have read in some treatise on physiology that the hymen in a virgin is the great obstacle to be overcome. He is apt to conclude that this is all, that some force will be needed to break it down, and that therefore an amount of urgency even to the degree of inflicting considerable pain is justifiable. This is usually wrong. It rarely constitutes any obstruction and, even when its rupturing may be necessary, it alone seldom causes suffering. There are sometimes certain deformities of the vagina, but no woman should knowingly seek matrimonial relations when thus afflicted. We quote from Dr. C.A. Huff the following: 10. "WHAT IS IT, THEN, THAT USUALLY CAUSES distress to many women, whether a bride or a long-time wife?" The answer is, Simply those conditions of the organs in which they are not properly prepared, by anticipation and desire, to receive a foreign body. The modest one craves only refined and platonic love at first, and if husbands, new and old, would only realize this plain truth, wife-torturing would cease and the happiness of each one of all human pairs vastly increase. 11. THE CONDITIONS OF THE FEMALE organs depend upon the state of the mind just as much as in the case of the husband. The male, however, being more sensual, is more quickly roused. She is far less often or early ready. In its unexcited state the vagina is lax, its walls are closed together, and their surfaces covered by but little lubricating secretion. The chaster one of the pair has no desire that this sacred vestibule to the great arcana of procreation shall be immediately and roughly invaded. This, then, is the time for all approaches by the husband to be of the most delicate, considerate, and refined description possible. The quietest and softest demeanor, with gentle and re-assuring words, are all that should be attempted at first. The wedding day has probably been one of fatigue, and it is foolish to go farther. 12. FOR MORE THAN ONE NIGHT it will be wise, indeed, if the wife's confidence shall be as much wooed and won by patient, delicate, and prolonged courting, as before the marriage engagement. How long should this period of waiting be can only be decided by the circumstances of any case. The bride will ultimately deny no favor which is sought with full deference to her modesty, and in connection with which bestiality is not exhibited. Her nature is that of delicacy; her affection is of a refined character; if the love and conduct offered to her are a careful effort to adapt roughness and strength to her refinement and weakness, her admiration and responsive love will be excited to the utmost. 13. WHEN THAT MOMENT ARRIVES when the bride finds she can repose perfect confidence in the kindness of her husband, that his love is not purely animal, and that no violence will be attempted, the power of her affection for him will surely assert itself; the mind will act on those organs which nature has endowed to fulfil the law of her being, the walls of the vagina will expand, and the glands at the entrance will be fully lubricated by a secretion of mucous which renders congress a matter of comparative ease. 14. WHEN THIS RESPONSIVE ENLARGEMENT and lubrication are fully realized, it is made plain why the haste and force so common to first and subsequent coition, is, as it has been justly called, nothing but "legalized rape." Young husband, Prove your manhood, not by yielding to unbridled lust and cruelty, but by the exhibition of true power in _self-control_ and patience with the helpless being confided to your care. Prolong the delightful season of courting into and _through_ wedded life and rich shall be your reward. 15. A WANT OF DESIRE may often prevail, and may be caused by loss of sleep, study, constant thought, mental disturbance, anxiety, self-abuse, excessive use of tobacco or alcoholic drink, etc. Overwork may cause debility; a man may not have an erection for months, yet it may not be a sign of debility, sexual lethargy or impotence. Get the mind and the physical constitution in proper condition, and most all these difficulties will disappear. Good athletic exercise by walking, riding, or playing croquet, or any other amusement, will greatly improve the condition. A good rest, however, will be necessary to fully restore the mind and the body, then the natural condition of the sexual organs will be resumed. 16. HAVING TWINS.--Having twins is undoubtedly hereditary and descends from generation to generation, and persons who have twins are generally those who have great sexual vigor. It is generally the result of a second cohabitation immediately following the first, but some parents have twins who cohabit but once during several days. 17. PROPER INTERCOURSE.--The right relation of a newly-married couple will rather increase than diminish love. To thus offer up the maiden on the altar of love and affection only swells her flood of joy and bliss; whereas, on the other hand, sensuality humbles, debases, pollutes, and never elevates. Young husbands should wait for an _invitation to the banquet_ and they will be amply paid by the very pleasure sought. Invitation or permission delights, and possession by force degrades. The right-minded bridegroom will postpone the exercise of his nuptial rights for a few days, and allow his young wife to become rested from the preparation and fatigue of the wedding, and become accustomed to the changes in her new relations of life. 18. RIGHTLY BEGINNING SEXUAL LIFE.--Intercourse promotes all the functions of the body and mind, but rampant just and sexual abuses soon destroy the natural pleasures of intercourse, and unhappiness will be the result. Remember that _intercourse_ should not become the polluted purpose of marriage. To be sure, rational enjoyment benefits and stimulates love, but the pleasure of each other's society, standing together on all questions of mutual benefit, working hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder in the battle of life, raising a family of beautiful children, sharing each other's joys and sorrows, are the things that bring to every couple the best, purest, and noblest enjoyment that God has bestowed upon man. [Illustration: A TURKISH HAREM.] * * * * * SEXUAL PROPRIETIES AND IMPROPRIETIES. 1. To have offspring is not to be regarded as a luxury, but as a great primary necessity of health and happiness, of which every fully-developed man and woman should have a fair share, while it cannot be denied that the ignorance of the necessity of sexual intercourse to the health and virtue of both man and woman is the most fundamental error in medical and moral philosophy. 2. In a state of pure nature, where man would have his sexual instincts under full and natural restraint, there would be little, if any, licentiousness, and children would be the result of natural desire, and not the accidents of lust. 3. This is an age of sensuality; unnatural passions cultivated and indulged. Young people in the course of their engagement often sow the seed of serious excesses. This habit of embracing, sitting on the lover's lap, leaning on his breast, long and uninterrupted periods of secluded companionship, have become so common that it is amazing how a young lady can safely arrive at the wedding day. While this conduct may safely terminate with the wedding day, yet it cultivates the tendency which often results in excessive indulgencies after the honey-moon is over. 4. SEPARATE BEDS.--Many writers have vigorously championed as a reform the practice of separate beds for husband and wife. While we would not recommend such separation, it is no doubt very much better for both husband and wife, in case the wife is pregnant. Where people are reasonably temperate, no such ordinary precautions as separate sleeping places may be necessary. But in case of pregnancy it will add rest to the mother and add vigor to the unborn child. Sleeping together, however, is natural and cultivates true affection, and it is physiologically true that in very cold weather life is prolonged by husband and wife sleeping together. 5. THE AUTHORITY OF THE WIFE.--Let the wife judge whether she desires a separate couch or not. She has the superior right to control her own person. In such diseases as consumption, or other severe or lingering diseases, separate beds should always be insisted upon. 6. THE TIME FOR INDULGENCE.--The health of the generative functions depends upon exercise, just the same as any other vital organ. Intercourse should be absolutely avoided just before or after meals, or just after mental excitement or physical exercise. No wife should indulge her husband when he is under the influence of alcoholic stimulants, for idiocy and other serious maladies are liable to be visited upon the offspring. 7. RESTRAINT DURING PREGNANCY.--There is no question but what moderate indulgence during the first few months of pregnancy does not result in serious harm; but people who excessively satisfy their ill-governed passions are liable to pay a serious penalty. 8. MISCARRIAGE.--If a woman is liable to abortion or miscarriage, absolute abstinence is the only remedy. No sexual indulgence during pregnancy can be safely tolerated. 9. It is better for people not to marry until they are of proper age. It is a physiological fact that men seldom reach the full maturity or their virile power before the age of twenty-five, and the female rarely attains the full vigor of her sexual powers before the age of twenty. 10. ILLICIT PLEASURES.--The indulgence of illicit pleasures, says Dr. S. Pancoast, sooner or later is sure to entail the most loathsome diseases on their votaries. Among these diseases are Gonorrhoea, Syphilis, Spermatorrhoea (waste of semen by daily and nightly involuntary emissions), Satyriasis (a species of sexual madness, or a sexual diabolism, causing men to commit rape and other beastly acts and outrages, not only on women and children, but men and animals, as sodomy, pederasty, etc.), Nymphomania (causing women to assail every man they meet, and supplicate and excite him to gratify their lustful passions, or who resort to means of sexual pollutions, which is impossible to describe without shuddering), together with spinal diseases and many disorders of the most distressing and disgusting character filling the bones with rottenness, and eating away the flesh by gangrenous ulcers, until the patient dies, a horrible mass of putridity and corruption. 11. SENSUALITY.--Sensuality is not love, but an unbridled desire which kills the soul. Sensuality will drive away the roses in the cheeks of womanhood, undermine health and produce a brazen countenance that can be read by all men. The harlot may commit her sins in the dark, but her countenance reveals her character and her immorality is an open secret. 12. SEXUAL TEMPERANCE.--All excesses and absurdities of every kind should be carefully avoided. Many of the female disorders which often revenge themselves in the cessation of all sexual pleasure are largely due to the excessive practice of sexual indulgence. 13. FREQUENCY.--Some writers claim that intercourse should never occur except for the purpose of childbearing but such restraint is not natural and consequently not conducive to health. There are many conditions in which the health of the mother and offspring must be respected. It is now held that it is nearer a crime than a virtue to prostitute woman to the degradation of breeding animals by compelling her to bring into life more offspring than can be born healthy, or be properly cared for and educated. 14. In this work we shall attempt to specify no rule, but simply give advice as to the health and happiness of both man and wife. A man should not gratify his own desires at the expense of his wife's health, comfort or inclination. Many men no doubt harass their wives and force many burdens upon their slender constitutions. But it is a great sin and no true husband will demand unreasonable recognition. The wife when physically able, however, should bear with her husband. Man is naturally sensitive on this subject, and it takes but little to alienate his affections and bring discover into the family. 15. The best writers lay down the rule for the government of the marriage-bed, that sexual indulgence should only occur about once in a week or ten days, and this of course applies only to those who enjoy a fair degree of health. But it is a hygienic and physiological fact that those who indulge only once a month receive a far greater degree of the intensity of enjoyment than those who indulge their passions more frequently. Much pleasure is lost by excesses where much might be gained by temperance giving rest to the organs for the accumulation of nervous force. [Illustration] * * * * * HOW TO PERPETUATE THE HONEY-MOON. 1. CONTINUE YOUR COURTSHIP.--Like causes produce like effects. 2. NEGLECT OF YOUR COMPANION.--Do not assume a right to neglect your companion more after marriage than you did before. 3. SECRETS.--Have no secrets that you keep from your companion. A third party is always disturbing. 4. AVOID THE APPEARANCE OF EVIL.--In matrimonial matters it is often that the mere appearance contains all the evil. Love, as soon as it rises above calculation and becomes love, is exacting. It gives all, and demands all. 5. ONCE MARRIED, NEVER OPEN YOUR MIND TO ANY CHANGE. If you keep the door of your purpose closed, evil or even desirable changes cannot make headway without help. 6. KEEP STEP IN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT.--A tree that grows for forty years may take all the sunlight from a tree that stops growing at twenty. 7. KEEP A LIVELY INTEREST IN THE BUSINESS OF THE HOME.--Two that do not pull together are weaker than either alone. 8. GAUGE YOUR EXPENSES BY YOUR REVENUES.--Love must eat. The sheriff often levies on Cupid long before he takes away the old furniture. 9. START FROM WHERE YOUR PARENTS STARTED RATHER THAN FROM WHERE THEY NOW ARE.--Hollow and showy boarding often furnishes the too strong temptation, while the quietness of a humble home would cement the hearts beyond risk. 10. AVOID DEBT.--Spend your own money, but earn it first, then it will not be necessary to blame any one for spending other people's. 11. DO NOT BOTH GET ANGRY AT THE SAME TIME.--Remember, it takes two to quarrel. 12. DO NOT ALLOW YOURSELF EVER TO COME TO AN OPEN RUPTURE.--Things unsaid need less repentance. 13. STUDY TO CONFORM YOUR TASTES AND HABITS TO THE TASTES AND HABITS OF YOUR COMPANION.--If two walk together, they must agree. * * * * * HOW TO BE A GOOD WIFE. 1. REVERENCE YOUR HUSBAND.--He sustains by God's order a position of dignity as head of a family, head of the woman. Any breaking down of this order indicates a mistake in the union, or a digression from duty. 2. LOVE HIM.--A wife loves as naturally as the sun shines. Love is your best weapon. You conquered him with that in the first place. You can reconquer by the same means. 3. DO NOT CONCEAL YOUR LOVE FROM HIM.--If he is crowded with care, and too busy to seem to heed your love, you need to give all the greater attention to securing his knowledge of your love. If you intermit he will settle down into a hard, cold life with increased rapidity. Your example will keep the light on his conviction. The more he neglects the fire on the hearth, the more carefully must you feed and guard it. It must not be allowed to go out. Once out you must sit ever in darkness and in the cold. 4. CULTIVATE THE MODESTY AND DELICACY OF YOUR YOUTH.--The relations and familiarity of wedded life may seem to tone down the sensitive and retiring instincts of girlhood, but nothing can compensate for the loss of these. However, much men may admire the public performance of gifted women, they do not desire that boldness and dash in a wife. The holy blush of a maiden's modesty is more powerful in hallowing and governing a home than the heaviest armament that ever a warrior bore. 5. CULTIVATE PERSONAL ATTRACTIVENESS.--This means the storing of your mind with a knowledge of passing events, and with a good idea of the world's general advance. If you read nothing, and make no effort to make yourself attractive, you will soon sink down into a dull hack of stupidity. If your husband never hears from you any words of wisdom, or of common information, he will soon hear nothing from you. Dress and gossips soon wear out. If your memory is weak, so that it hardly seems worth while to read, that is additional reason for reading. [Illustration: TALKING BEFORE MARRIAGE.] 6. CULTIVATE PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS.--When you were encouraging the attentions of him whom you now call husband, you did not neglect any item of dress or appearance that could help you. Your hair was always in perfect training. You never greeted him with a ragged or untidy dress or soiled hands. It is true that your "market is made," but you cannot afford to have it "broken." Cleanliness and good taste will attract now as they did formerly. Keep yourself at your best. Make the most of physical endowments. Neatness and order break the power of poverty. 7. STUDY YOUR HUSBAND'S CHARACTER.--He has his peculiarities. He has no right to many of them, and you need to know them; thus you can avoid many hours of friction. The good pilot steers around the sunken rocks that lie in the channel. The engineer may remove them, not the pilot. You are more pilot than engineer. Consult his tastes. It is more important to your home, that you should please him than anybody else. 8. PRACTICE ECONOMY.--Many families are cast out of peace into grumbling and discord by being compelled to fight against poverty. When there are no great distresses to be endured or accounted for, complaint and fault-finding are not so often evoked. Keep your husband free from the annoyance of disappointed creditors, and he will be more apt to keep free from annoying you. To toil hard for bread, to fight the wolf from the door, to resist impatient creditors, to struggle against complaining pride at home, is too much to ask of one man. A crust that is your own is a feast, while a feast that is purloined from unwilling creditors if a famine. * * * * * HOW TO BE A GOOD HUSBAND. 1. SHOW YOUR LOVE.--All life manifests itself. As certainly as a live tree will put forth leaves in the spring, so certainly will a living love show itself. Many a noble man toils early and late to earn bread and position for his wife. He hesitates at no weariness for her sake. He justly thinks that such industry and providence give a better expression of his love than he could by caressing her and letting the grocery bills go unpaid. He fills the cellar and pantry. He drives and pushes his business. He never dreams that he is actually starving his wife to death. He may soon have a woman left to superintend his home, but his wife is dying. She must be kept alive by the same process that called her into being. Recall and repeat the little attentions and delicate compliments that once made you so agreeable, and that fanned her love into a consuming flame. It is not beneath the dignity of the skillful physician to study all the little symptoms, and order all the little round of attentions that check the waste of strength and brace the staggering constitution. It is good work for a husband to cherish his wife. [Illustration: TALKING AFTER MARRIAGE.] 2. CONSULT WITH YOUR WIFE.--She is apt to be as right as you are, and frequently able to add much to your stock of wisdom. In any event she appreciates your attentions. 3. STUDY TO KEEP HER YOUNG.--It can be done. It is not work, but worry, that wears. Keep a brave, true heart between her and all harm. 4. HELP TO BEAR HER BURDENS.--Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of love. Love seeks opportunities to do for the loved object. She has the constant care of your children. She is ordained by the Lord to stand guard over them. Not a disease can appear in the community without her taking the alarm. Not a disease can come over the threshold without her instantly springing into the mortal combat. If there is a deficiency anywhere it comes out of her pleasure. Her burdens are everywhere. Look for them, that you may lighten them. 5. MAKE YOURSELF HELPFUL BY THOUGHTFULNESS.--Remember to bring into the house your best smile and sunshine. It is good for you, and it cheers up the home. There is hardly a nook in the house that has not been carefully hunted through to drive out everything that might annoy you. The dinner which suits, or ought to suit you, has not come on the table of itself. It represents much thoughtfulness and work. You can do no more manly thing than find some way of expressing, in word or look, your appreciation of it. 6. EXPRESS YOUR WILL, NOT BY COMMANDS, BUT BY SUGGESTIONS.--It is God's order that you should be the head of the family. You are clothed with authority. But this does not authorize you to be stern and harsh, as an officer in the army. Your authority is the dignity of love. When it is not clothed in love it ceases to have the substance of authority. A simple suggestion that may embody a wish, an opinion or an argument, becomes one who reigns over such a kingdom as yours. 7. SEEK TO REFINE YOUR NATURE.--It is no slander to say that many men have wives much more refined than themselves. This is natural in the inequalities of life. Other qualities may compensate for any defect here. But you need have no defect in refinement. Preserve the gentleness and refinement of your wife as a rich legacy for your children, and in so doing you will lift yourself to higher levels. 8. BE A GENTLEMAN AS WELL AS A HUSBAND.--The signs and bronze and callouses of toil are no indications that you are not a gentleman. The soul of gentlemanliness is a kindly feeling toward others, that prompts one to secure their comfort. That is why the thoughtful peasant lover is always so gentlemanly, and in his love much above himself. 9. STAY AT HOME.--Habitual absence during the evenings is sure to bring sorrow. If your duty or business calls you you have the promise that you will be kept in all your ways. But if you go out to mingle with other society, and leave your wife at home alone, or with the children and servants, know that there is no good in store for you. She has claims upon you that you can not afford to allow to go to protest. Reverse the case. You sit down alone after having waited all day for your wife's return, and think of her as reveling in gay society, and see if you can keep out all the doubts as to what takes her away. If your home is not as attractive as you want it, you are a principal partner. Set yourself about the work of making it attractive. 10. TAKE YOUR WIFE WITH YOU INTO SOCIETY.--Seclusion begets morbidness. She needs some of the life that comes from contact with society. She must see how other people appear and act. It often requires an exertion for her to go out of her home, but it is good for her and for you. She will bring back more sunshine. It is wise to rest sometimes. When the Arab stops for his dinner he unpacks his camel. Treat your wife with as much consideration. [Illustration] [Illustration: TIRED OF LIFE.] * * * * * CAUSE OF FAMILY TROUBLES. 1. MUCH BETTER TO BE ALONE.--He who made man said it is not good for him to be alone; but it is much better to be alone, than it is to be in some kinds of company. Many couples who felt unhappy when they were apart, have been utterly miserable when together; and scores who have been ready to go through fire and water to get married, have been willing to run the risk of fire and brimstone to get divorced. It is by no means certain that because persons are wretched before marriage they will be happy after it. The wretchedness of many homes, and the prevalence of immorality and divorce is a sad commentary on the evils which result from unwise marriages. 2. UNAVOIDABLE EVILS.--There are plenty of unavoidable evils in this world, and it is mournful to think of the multitudes who are preparing themselves for needless disappointments, and who yet have no fear, and are unwilling to be instructed, cautioned or warned. To them the experience of mature life is of little account compared with the wisdom of ardent and enthusiastic youth. 3. MATRIMONIAL INFELICITY.--One great cause of matrimonial infelicity is the hasty marriages of persons who have no adequate knowledge of each other's characters. Two strangers become acquainted, and are attracted to each other, and without taking half the trouble to investigate or inquire that a prudent man would take before buying a saddle horse, they are married. In a few weeks or months it is perhaps found that one of the parties was married already, or possibly that the man is drunken or vicious, or the woman anything but what she should be. Then begins the bitter part of the experience: shame, disgrace, scandal, separation, sin and divorce, all come as the natural results of a rash and foolish marriage. A little time spent in honest, candid, and careful preliminary inquiry and investigations would have saved the trouble. 4. THE CLIMAX.--It has been said that a man is never utterly ruined until he has married a bad woman. So the climax of woman's miseries and sorrows may be said to come only when she is bound with that bond which should be her chiefest blessing and her highest joy, but which may prove her deepest sorrow and her bitterest curse. 5. THE FOLLY OF FOLLIES.--There are some lessons which people are very slow to learn, and yet which are based upon the simple principles of common-sense. A young lady casts her eye upon a young man. She says, "I mean to have that man." She plies her arts, engages his affections, marries him, and secures for herself a life of sorrow and disappointment, ending perhaps in a broken up home or an early grave. Any prudent, intelligent person of mature age, might have warned or cautioned her; but she sought no advice, and accepted no admonition. A young man may pursue a similar course with equally disastrous results. 6. HAP-HAZARD.--Many marriages are undoubtedly arranged by what may be termed the accident of locality. Persons live near each other, become acquainted, and engage themselves to those whom they never would have selected as their companions in life if they had wider opportunities of acquaintance. Within the borders of their limited circle they make a selection which may be wise or may be unwise. They have no means of judging, they allow no one else to judge for them. The results are sometimes happy and sometimes unhappy in the extreme. It is well to act cautiously in doing what can be done but once. It is not a pleasant experience for a person to find out a mistake when it is too late to rectify it. 7. WE ALL CHANGE.--When two persons of opposite sex are often thrown together they are very naturally attracted to each other, and are liable to imbibe the opinion that they are better fitted for life-long companionship than any other two persons in the world. This may be the case, or it may not be. There are a thousand chances against such a conclusion to one in favor of it. But even if at the present moment these two persons were fitted to be associated, no one can tell whether the case will be the same five or ten years hence. Men change; women change; they are not the same they were ten years ago; they are not the same they will be ten years hence. 8. THE SAFE RULE.--Do not be in a hurry; take your time and consider well before you allow your devotion to rule you. Study first your character, then study the character of her whom you desire to marry. Love works mysteriously, and if it will bear careful and cool investigation, it will no doubt thrive under adversity. When people marry they unite their destinies for the better or the worse. Marriage is a contract for life and will never bear a hasty conclusion. _Never be in a hurry_! * * * * * JEALOUSY--ITS CAUSE AND CURE. Trifles, light as air Are to the jealous confirmations strong, As proofs of holy writ.--SHAKESPEARE. Nor Jealousy Was understood, the injur'd lover's hell.--MILTON O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on.--SHAKESPEARE. 1. DEFINITION.--Jealousy is an accidental passion, for which the faculty indeed is unborn. In its nobler form and in its nobler motives it arises from love, and in its lower form it arises from the deepest and darkest Pit of Satan. 2. HOW DEVELOPED.--Jealousy arises either from weakness, which from a sense of its own want of lovable qualities is not convinced of being sure of its cause, or from distrust, which thinks the beloved person capable of infidelity. Sometimes all these motives may act together. 3. NOBLEST JEALOUSY.--The noblest jealousy, if the term noble is appropriate, is a sort of ambition or pride of the loving person who feels it is an insult that another one should assume it as possible to supplant his love, or it is the highest degree of devotion which sees a declaration of its object in the foreign invasion, as it were, of his own altar. Jealousy is always a sign that a little more wisdom might adorn the individual without harm. 4. THE LOWEST JEALOUSY.--The lowest species of jealousy is a sort of avarice of envy which, without being capable of love, at least wishes to possess the object of its jealousy alone by the one party assuming a sort of property right over the other. This jealousy, which might be called the Satanic, is generally to be found with old withered "husbands," whom the devil has prompted to marry young women and who forthwith dream night and day of cuck-old's horns. These Argus-eyed keepers are no longer capable of any feeling that could be called love, they are rather as a rule heartless house-tyrants, and are in constant dread that some one may admire or appreciate his unfortunate slave. 5. WANT OF LORE.--The general conclusion will be that jealousy is more the result of wrong conditions which cause uncongenial unions, and which through moral corruption artificially create distrust than a necessary accompaniment of love. [Illustration: SEEKING THE LIFE OF A RIVAL.] 6. RESULT OF POOR OPINION.--Jealousy is a passion with which those are most afflicted who are the least worthy of love. An innocent maiden who enters marriage will not dream of getting jealous; but all her innocence cannot secure her against the jealousy of her husband if he has been a libertine. Those are wont to be the most jealous who have the consciousness that they themselves are most deserving of jealousy. Most men in consequence of their present education and corruption have so poor an opinion not only of the male, but even of the female sex, that they believe every woman at every moment capable of what they themselves have looked for among all and have found among the most unfortunate, the prostitutes. No libertine can believe in the purity of woman; it is contrary to nature. A libertine therefore cannot believe in the loyalty of a faithful wife. 7. WHEN JUSTIFIABLE.--There may be occasions where jealousy is justifiable. If a woman's confidence has been shaken in her husband, or a husband's confidence has been shaken in his wife by certain signs or conduct, which have no other meaning but that of infidelity, then there is just cause for jealousy. There must, however, be certain proof as evidence of the wife's or husband's immoral conduct. Imaginations or any foolish absurdities should have no consideration whatever, and let everyone have confidence until his or her faith has been shaken by the revelation of absolute facts. 8. CAUTION AND ADVICE.--No couple should allow their associations to develop into an engagement and marriage if either one has any inclination to jealousy. It shows invariably a want of sufficient confidence, and that want of confidence, instead of being diminished after marriage, is liable to increase, until by the aid of the imagination and wrong interpretation the home is made a hell and divorce a necessity. Let it be remembered, there can be no true love without perfect and absolute confidence, jealousy is always the sign of weakness or madness. Avoid a jealous disposition, for it is an open acknowledgment of a lack of faith. [Illustration] * * * * * THE IMPROVEMENT OF OFFSPRING. Why Bring Into the World Idiots, Fools, Criminals and Lunatics? 1. THE RIGHT WAY.--When mankind will properly love AND marry and then rightly generate, carry, nurse and educate their children, will they in deed and in truth carry out the holy and happy purpose of their Creator. See those miserable and depraved scape-goats of humanity, the demented simpletons, the half-crazy, unbalanced multitudes which infest our earth, and fill our prisons with criminals and our poor-houses with paupers. Oh! the boundless capabilities and perfections of our God-like nature and, alas! its deformities! All is the result of the ignorance or indifference of parents. As long as children are the accidents of lust instead of the premeditated objects of love, so long will the offspring deteriorate and the world be cursed with deformities, monstrosities, unhumanities and cranks. 2. EACH AFTER ITS KIND.--"Like parents like children." "In their own image beget" they them. In what other can they? "How can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit?" How can animal propensities in parents generate other than depraved children, or moral purity beget beings other than as holy by nature as those at whose hands they received existence and constitution? 3. AS ARE THE PARENTS, physically, mentally and morally when they stamp their own image and likeness upon progeny, so will be the constitution of that progeny. 4. "JUST AS THE TWIG IS BENT THE TREE'S INCLINED."--Yet the bramble cannot be bent to bear delicious peaches, nor the sycamore to bear grain. Education is something, _but parentage_ is _everything_; because it "_dyes in the wool_" and thereby exerts an influence on character almost infinitely more powerful than all other conditions put together. 5. HEALTHY AND BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN.--Thoughtless mortal! Before you allow the first goings forth of love, learn what the parental conditions in you mean, and you will confer a great boon upon the prospective bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh! If it is in your power to be the parent of beautiful, healthy, moral and talented children instead of diseased and depraved, is it not your imperious duty then, to impart to them that physical power, moral perfection, and intellectual capability, which shall ennoble their lives and make them good people and good citizens? 6. PAUSE AND TREMBLE.--Prospective parents! Will you trifle with the dearest interests of your children? Will you in matters thus momentous, head-long rush "Where angels dare not tread," Seeking only mere animal indulgence?--Well might cherubim shrink from assuming responsibilities thus momentous Yet, how many parents tread this holy ground completely unprepared, and almost as thoughtlessly and Ignorantly as brutes--entailing even loathsome diseases and sensual propensities upon the fruit of their own bodies. Whereas they are bound, by obligations the most imperious to bestow on them a good physical organization, along with a pure, moral, and strong intellectual constitution, or else not to become parents! Especially since it is easier to generate human angels than devils incarnate. 7. HEREDITARY DESCENT.--This great law of things, "Hereditary Descent," fully proves and illustrates in any required number and variety or cases, showing that progeny inherits the constitutional natures and characters, mental and physical, of parents, including pre-dispositions to consumption, insanity, all sorts of disease, etc., as well as longevity, strength, stature, looks, disposition, talents,--all that is constitutional. From what other source do or can they come? Indeed, who can doubt a truth as palpable as that children inherit some, and if some, therefore all, the physical and mental nature and constitutor of parents, thus becoming almost their fac-similes? 8. ILLUSTRATIONS.--A whaleman was severely hurt by a harpooned and desperate whale turning upon the small boat, and, by his monstrous jaws, smashing it to pieces, one of which, striking him in his right side, crippled him for life. When sufficiently recovered, he married, according to previous engagement, and his daughter, born in due time, and closely resembling him in looks, constitution and character, has a weak and sore place corresponding in location with that of the injury of her father. Tubercles have been found in the lungs of infants at birth, born of consumptive parents,--a proof, clear and demonstrative, that children inherit the several states of parental physiology existing at the time they received their physiological constitution. The same is true of the transmission of those diseases consequent on the violation of the law of chastity, and the same conclusion established thereby. 9. PARENT'S PARTICIPATION.--Each parent furnishing at indispensable portion of the materials of life, and somehow or other, contributes parentally to the formation of the constitutional character of their joint product, appears far more reasonable, than to ascribe, as many do, the whole to either some to paternity, others to maternity. Still this decision go which way it may, does not affect the great fact that children inherit both the physiology and the mentality existing in parents at the time they received being and constitution. 10. ILLEGITIMATES OR BASTARDS also furnish strong proof of the correctness of this our leading doctrine. They are generally lively, sprightly, witty, frolicksome, knowing, quiet of perception, apt to learn, full of passion, quick-tempered, impulsive throughout, hasty, indiscreet, given to excesses, yet abound in good feeling, and are well calculated to enjoy life, though in general sadly deficient in some essential moral elements. 11. CHARACTER OF ILLEGITIMATES.--Wherein, then, consists this difference? First, in "novelty lending an enchantment" rarely experienced in sated wedlock, as well as in, power of passion sufficient to break through all restraint, external and internal; and hence their high wrought organization. They are usually wary and on the alert, and their parents drank "stolen waters." They are commonly wanting in moral balance, or else delinquent in some important moral aspect; nor would they have ever been born unless this had been the case, for the time being at least with their parents. Behold in these, and many other respects easily cited, how striking the coincidence between their characters on the one hand, and, on the other, those parental conditions necessarily attendant on their origin. 12. CHILDREN'S CONDITION depends upon parents' condition at the time of the sexual embrace. Let parents recall, as nearly as may be their circumstances and states of body and mind at this period, and place them by the side of the physical and mental constitutions of their children, and then say whether this law is not a great practical truth, and if so, its importance is as the happiness and misery it is capable of affecting! The application of this mighty engine of good or evil to mankind, to the promotion of human advancement, is the great question which should profoundly interest all parents. 13. THE VITAL PERIOD.--The physical condition of parents at the vital period of transmission of life should be a perfect condition of health in both body and mind, and a vigorous condition of all the animal organs and functions. 14. MUSCULAR PREPARATION.--Especially should parents cultivate their muscular system preparatory to the perfection of this function, and of their children; because, to impart strength and stamina to offspring they must of necessity both possess a good muscular organization, and also bring it into vigorous requisition at this period. For this reason, if for no other, let those of sedentary habits cultivate muscular energy preparatory to this time of need. 15. THE SEED.--So exceedingly delicate are the seeds of life, that, unless planted in a place of perfect security, they must all be destroyed and our race itself extinguished. And what place is as secure as that chosen, where they can be reached only with the utmost difficulty, and than only as the peril of even life itself? Imperfect seed sown in poor ground means a sickly harvest. 16. HEALTHY PEOPLE--MOST CHILDREN.--The most healthy classes have the most numerous families; but that, as luxury enervates society, it diminishes the population, by enfeebling parents, nature preferring none rather than those too weakly to live and be happy, and thereby rendering that union unfruitful which is too feeble to produce offspring sufficiently strong to enjoy life. Debility and disease often cause barrenness. Nature seems to rebel against sickly offspring. 17. WHY CHILDREN DIE.--Inquire whether one or both the parents of those numerous children that die around us, have not weak lungs, or a debilitated stomach, or a diseased liver, or feeble muscles, or else use them but little, or disordered nerves, or some other debility or form of disease. The prevalence of summer complaints, colic, cholera infantum, and other affections of these vital organs of children is truly alarming, sweeping them into their graves by the million. Shall other animals rear nearly all their young, and shall man, constitutionally by far the strongest of them all, lose half or more of his? is this the order of nature? No, but their death-worm is born in and with them, and by parental agency. 18. GRAVE-YARD STATISTICS.--Take grave-yard statistics in August, and then say, whether most of the deaths of children are not caused by indigestion, or feebleness of the bowels, liver, etc., or complaints growing out of them? Rather, take family statistics from broken-hearted parents! And yet, in general, those very parents who thus suffer more than words can tell, were the first and main transgressors, because they entailed those dyspeptic, heart, and other kindred affections so common among American parents upon their own children, and thereby almost as bad as killed them by inches; thus depriving them of the joys of life, and themselves of their greatest earthly treasure! 19. ALL CHILDREN MAY DIE.--Children may indeed die whose parents are healthy, but they almost must whose parents are essentially ailing in one or more of their vital organs; because, since they inherit this organ debilitated or diseased, any additional cause of sickness attacks this part first, and when it gives out, all go by the board together. 20. PARENTS MUST LEARN AND OBEY.--How infinitely more virtuous and happy would your children be if you should be healthy in body, and happy in mind, so as to beget in them a constitutionally healthy and vigorous physiology, along with a serene and happy frame of mind! Words are utterly powerless in answer, and so is everything but a lifetime of consequent happiness or misery! Learn and obey, then, the laws of life and health, that you may both reap the rich reward yourself, and also shower down upon your children after you, blessings many and most exalted. Avoid excesses of all kinds, be temperate, take good care of the body and avoid exposures and disease, and your children will be models of health and beauty. 21. THE RIGHT CONDITION.--The great practical inference is, that those parents who desire intellectual and moral children, must love each other; because, this love, besides perpetually calling forth and cultivating their higher faculties, awakens them to the highest pitch of exalted action in that climax, concentration, and consummation of love which propagates their existing qualities, the mental endowment of offspring being proportionate to the purity and intensity of parental love. 22. THE EFFECTS.--The children of affectionate parents receive existence and constitution when love has rendered the mentality of their parents both more elevated and more active than it is by nature, of course the children of loving parents are both more intellectual and moral by nature than their parents. Now, if these children and their companions also love one another, this same law which renders the second generation better than the first, will of course render the third still better than the second, and thus of all succeeding generations. 23. ANIMAL IMPULSE.--You may preach and pray till doomsday--may send out missionaries, may circulate tracts and Bibles, and multiply revivals and all the means of grace, with little avail; because, as long as mankind go on, as now, to propagate by animal impulse, so long must their offspring be animal, sensual, devilish! But only induce parents cordially to love each other, and you thereby render their children constitutionally talented and virtuous. Oh! parents, by as much as you prefer the luxuries of concord to the torments of discord, and children that are sweet dispositioned and highly intellectual to those that are rough wrathful, and depraved, be entreated to "_love one another_." [Illustration: JUST HOME FROM SCHOOL.] * * * * * TOO MANY CHILDREN. 1. LESSENING PAUPERISM.--Many of the agencies for lessening pauperism are afraid of tracing back its growth to the frequency of births under wretched conditions. One begins to question whether after all sweet charity or dignified philanthropy has not acted with an unwise reticence. Among the problems which defy practical handling this is the most complicated. The pauperism which arises from marriage is the result of the worst elements of character legalized. In America, where the boundaries of wedlock are practically boundless, it is not desirable, even were it possible, that the state should regulate marriage much further than it now does; therefore must the sociologist turn for aid to society in his struggle with pauperism. 2. RIGHT PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITIONS OF BIRTH.--Society should insist upon the right spiritual and physical conditions for birth. It should be considered more than "a pity" when another child is born into a home too poor to receive it. The underlying selfishness of such an event should be recognized, for it brings motherhood under wrong conditions of health and money. Instead of each birth being the result of mature consideration and hallowed loves children are too often born as animals are born. To be sure the child has a father whom he can call by name. Better that there had never been a child. 3. WRONG RESULTS.--No one hesitates to declare that if is want of self-respect and morality which brings wrong results outside of marriage, but it is also the want of them which begets evil inside the marriage relation. Though there is nothing more difficult than to find the equilibrium between self-respect and self-sacrifice, yet on success in finding it depends individual and national preservation. The fact of being wife and mother or husband and father should imply dignity and joyousness, no matter how humble the home. 4. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION AMONGST PHYSICIANS.--In regard to teaching, the difficulties are great. As soon as one advances beyond the simplest subjects of hygiene, one is met with the difference of opinions among physicians. When each one has a different way of making a mustard plaster, no wonder that each has his own notions about everything else. One doctor recommends frequent births, another advises against them. 5. DIFFERENT NATURES.--If physiological facts are taught to a large class, there are sure to be some in it whose impressionable natures are excited by too much plain speaking, while there are others who need the most open teaching in order to gain any benefit. Talks to a few persons generally are wiser than popular lectures. Especially are talks needed by mothers and unmothered girls who come from everywhere to the city. 6. BOYS AND YOUNG MEN.--It is not women alone who require the shelter of organizations and instruction, but boys and young men. There is no double standard of morality, though the methods of advocating it depend upon the sex which is to be instructed. Men are more concerned with the practical basis of morality than with its sentiment, and with the pecuniary aspects of domestic life than with its physical and mental suffering. We all may need medicine for moral ills, yet the very intangibleness of purity makes us slow to formulate rules for its growth. Under the guidance of the wise in spirit and knowledge, much can be done to create a higher standard of marriage and to proportion the number of births according to the health and income of parents. 7. FOR THE SAKE OF THE STATE.--If the home exists primarily for the sake of the individual, it exists secondarily for the sake of the state. Therefore, any home into which are continually born the inefficient children of inefficient parents, not only is a discomfort in itself, but it also furnishes members for the armies of the unemployed, which are tinkering and hindering legislation and demanding by the brute force of numbers that the state shall support them. 8. OPINIONS FROM HIGH AUTHORITIES.--In the statements and arguments made in the above we have not relied upon our own opinions and convictions, but have consulted the best authorities, and we hereby quote some of the highest authorities upon this subject. 9. REV. LEONARD DAWSON.--"How rapidly conjugal prudence might lift a nation out of pauperism was seen in France.--Let them therefore hold the maxim that the production of offspring with forethought and providence is rational nature. It was immoral to bring children into the world whom they could not reasonably hope to feed, clothe and educate." 10. MRS. FAWCETT.--"Nothing will permanently offset pauperism while the present reckless increase of population continues." 11. DR. GEORGE NAPHEYS.--"Having too many children unquestionably has its disastrous effects on both mother and children as known to every intelligent physician. Two-thirds of all cases of womb disease, says Dr. Tilt, are traceable to child-bearing in feeble women. There are also women to whom pregnancy is a nine months' torture, and others to whom it is nearly certain to prove fatal. Such a condition cannot be discovered before marriage--The detestable crime of abortion is appallingly rife in our day. It is abroad in our land to an extent which would have shocked the dissolute women of pagan RomeS--This wholesale, fashionable murder, how are we to stop it? Hundreds of vile men and women in our large cities subsist by this slaughter of the innocent." 12. REV. H.R. HAWEIS.--"Until it is thought a disgrace in every rank of society, from top to bottom of social scale, to bring into the world more children than you are able to provide for, the poor man's home, at least, must often be a purgatory--his children dinnerless, his wife a beggar--himself too often drunk--here, then, are the real remedies: first, control the family growth according to the family means of support." 13. MONTAGUE COOKSON.--"The limitation of the number of the family--is as much the duty of married persons as the observance of chastity is the duty of those that are unmarried." 14. JOHN STUART MILL.--"Every one has aright to live. We will suppose this granted. But no one has a right to bring children into life to be supported by other people. Whoever means to stand upon the first of these rights must renounce all pretension to the last. Little improvement can be expected in morality until the production of a large family is regarded in the same light as drunkenness or any other physical excess." 15. DR. T.D. NICHOLLS.--"In the present social state, men and women should refrain from having children unless they see a reasonable prospect of giving them suitable nurture and education." 16. REV. M.J. SAVAGE.--"Some means ought to be provided for checking the birth of sickly children." 17. DR. STOCKHAM.--"Thoughtful minds must acknowledge the great wrong done when children are begotten under adverse conditions. Women must learn the laws of life so as to protect themselves, and not be the means of bringing sin-cursed, diseased children into the world. The remedy is in the prevention of pregnancy, not in producing abortion." * * * * * SMALL FAMILIES AND THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE RACE. 1. MARRIED PEOPLE MUST DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES.--It is the fashion of those who marry nowadays to have few children, often none. Of course this is a matter which married people must decide for themselves. As is stated in an earlier chapter, sometimes this policy is the wisest that can be pursued. 2. Diseased people who are likely to beget only a sickly offspring, may follow this course, and so may thieves, rascals, vagabonds, insane and drunken persons, and all those who are likely to bring into the world beings that ought not to be here. But why so many well-to-do folks should pursue a policy adapted only to paupers and criminals, is not easy to explain. Why marry at all if not to found a family that shall live to bless and make glad the earth after father and mother are gone? It is not wise to rear too many children, nor is it wise to have too few. Properly brought up, they will make home a delight, and parents happy. [Illustration: A WELL NOURISHED CHILD.] 3. POPULATION LIMITED.--Galton, in his great work on hereditary genius, observes that "the time may hereafter arrive in far distant years, when the population of this earth shall be kept as strictly within bounds of number and suitability of race, as the sheep of a well-ordered moor, or the plants in an orchard-house; in the meantime let us do what we can to encourage the multiplication of the races best fitted to invent and conform to a high and generous civilization." 4. SHALL SICKLY PEOPLE RAISE CHILDREN?--The question whether sickly people should marry and propagate their kind, is briefly alluded to in an early chapter of this work. Where father and mother are both consumptive the chances are that the children will inherit physical weakness, which will result in the same disease, unless great pains are taken to give them a good physical education, and even then the probabilities are that they will find life a burden hardly worth living. 5. NO REAL BLESSING.--Where one parent is consumptive and the other vigorous, the chances are just half as great. If there is a scrofulous or consumptive taint in the blood, beware! Sickly children are no comfort to their parents, no real blessing. If such people marry, they had better, in most cases, avoid parentage. 6. WELFARE OF MANKIND.--The advancement of the welfare of mankind is a most intricate problem: all ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for their children; for poverty is not only a great evil, but tends to its own increase by leading to recklessness in marriage. On the other hand, as Mr. Galton has remarked, if the prudent avoid marriage, while the reckless marry, the inferior members will tend to supplant the better members of society. 7. PREVENTIVES.--Remember that the thousands of preventives which are advertised in papers, private circulars, etc., are not only inefficient, unreliable and worthless, but positively dangerous, and the annual mortality of females in this country from this cause alone is truly horrifying. Study nature, and nature's laws alone will guide you safely in the path of health and happiness. 8. NATURE'S REMEDY.--Nature in her wise economy has prepared for overproduction, for during the period of pregnancy and nursing, and also most of the last half of each menstrual month, woman is naturally sterile; but this condition may become irregular and uncertain on account of stimulating drinks or immoral excesses. * * * * * THE GENERATIVE ORGANS. [Illustration: THE MALE GENERATIVE ORGANS AND THEIR STRUCTURE AND ADAPTATION.] 1. The reproductive organs in man are the penis and testicles and their appendages. 2. The penis deposits the seminal life germ of the male. It is designed to fulfill the seed planting mission of human life. 3. In the accompanying illustration all the parts are named. 4. URETHRA.--The urethra performs the important mission of emptying the bladder, and is rendered very much larger by the passion, and the semen is propelled along through it by little layers of muscles on each side meeting above and below. It is this canal that is inflamed by the disease known as gonorrhoea. 5. PROSTATE GLAND.--The prostate gland is located just before the bladder. It swells in men who have previously overtaxed it, thus preventing all sexual intercourse, and becomes very troublesome to void urine. This is a very common trouble in old age. 6. THE PENAL GLAND.--The penal gland, located at the end of the penis, becomes unduly enlarged by excessive action and has the consistency of India rubber. It is always enlarged by erection. It is this gland at the end that draws the semen forward. It is one of the most essential and wonderful constructed glands of the human body. 7. FEMALE MAGNETISM.--When the male organ comes in contact with female magnetism, the natural and proper excitement takes place. When excited without this female magnetism it becomes one of the most serious injuries to the human body. The male organ was made for a high and holy purpose, and woe be to him who pollutes his manhood by practicing the secret vice. He pays the penalty in after years either by the entire loss of sexual power, or by the afflictions of various urinary diseases. 8. NATURE PAYS all her debts, and when there is an abuse of organ, penalties must follow. If the hand is thrust into the fire it will be burnt. * * * * * THE FEMALE SEXUAL ORGANS. 1. The generative or reproductive organs of the human female are usually divided into the internal and external. Those regarded as internal are concealed from view and protected within the body. Those that can be readily perceived are termed external. The entrance of the vagina may be stated as the line of demarcation of the two divisions. [Illustration: ANATOMY OR STRUCTURE OF THE FEMALE ORGANS OF GENERATION.] 2. HYMEN OR VAGINAL VALVE.--This is a thin membrane of half moon shape stretched across the opening of the vagina. It usually contains before marriage one or more small openings for the passage of the menses. This membrane has been known to cause much distress in many females at the first menstrual flow. The trouble resulting from the openings in the hymen not being large enough to let the flow through and consequently blocking up the vaginal canal, and filling the entire internal sexual organs with blood; causing paroxysms and hysterics and other alarming symptoms. In such cases the hymen must be ruptured that a proper discharge may take place at once. [Illustration: Impregnated Egg. In the first formation of Embryo.] 3. UNYIELDING HYMEN.--The hymen is usually ruptured by the first sexual intercourse, but sometimes it is so unyielding as to require the aid of a knife before coition can take place. 4. THE PRESENCE OF THE HYMEN was formerly considered a test of virginity, but this theory is no longer held by competent authorities, as disease or accidents or other circumstances may cause its rupture. 5. THE OVARIES.--The ovaries are little glands for the purpose of forming the female ova or egg. They are not fully developed until the period of puberty, and usually are about the size of a large chestnut. The are located in the broad ligaments between the uterus and the Fallopian tubes. During pregnancy the ovaries change position; they are brought farther into the abdominal cavity as the uterus expands. 6. OFFICE OF THE OVARY.--The ovary is to the female what the testicle is to the male. It is the germ vitalizing organ and the most essential part of the generative apparatus. The ovary is not only an organ for the formation of the ova, but is also designed for their separation when they reach maturity. 7. FALLOPION TUBES.--These are the ducts that lead from the ovaries to the uterus. They are entirely detached from the glands or ovaries, and are developed on both sides of the body. 8. OFFICE OF THE FALLOPIAN TUBES.--The Fallopian tubes have a double office: receiving the ova from the ovaries and conducting it into the uterus, as well as receiving the spermatic fluid of the male and conveying it from the uterus in the direction of the ovaries, the tubes being the seat of impregnation. [Illustration: OVUM.] 9. STERILITY IN FEMALES.--Sterility in the female is sometimes caused by a morbid adhesion of the tube to a portion of the ovary. By what power the mouth of the tube is directed toward a particular portion of an ovary, from which the ovum is about to be discharged, remains entirely unknown, as does also the precise nature of the cause which effects this movement. [Illustration: Ripe Ovum from the Ovary.] * * * * * THE MYSTERIES OF THE FORMATION OF LIFE. 1. SCIENTIFIC THEORIES.--Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, Tyndall, Meyer, and other renowned scientists, have tried to find the _missing link_ between man and animal; they have also exhausted their genius in trying to fathom the mysteries of the beginning of life, or find where the animal and mineral kingdoms unite to form life; but they have added to the vast accumulation of theories only, and the world is but little wiser on this mysterious subject. 2. PHYSIOLOGY.--Physiology has demonstrated what physiological changes take place in the germination and formation of life, and how nature expresses the intentions of reproduction by giving animals distinctive organs with certain secretions for this purpose, etc. All the different stages of development can be easily determined, but how and why life takes place under such special condition and under no other, is an unsolved mystery. 3. OVARIES.--The ovaries are the essential parts of the generative system of the human female in which ova are matured. There are two ovaries, one on each side of the uterus, and connected with it by the Fallopian tubes. They are egg-shaped, about an inch in diameter, and furnish the germs or ovules. These germs or ovules are very small, measuring about 1/120 of an inch in diameter. 4. DEVELOPMENT.--The ovaries develop with the growth of the female, so that finally at the period of puberty they ripen and liberate an ovum or germ vesicle, which is carried into the uterine cavity of the Fallopian tubes. By the aid of the microscope we find that these ova are composed of granular substance, in which is found a miniature yolk surrounded by a transparent membrane called the zona pellucida. This yolk contains a germinal vesicle in which can be discovered a nucleus, called the germinal spot. The process of the growth of the ovaries is very gradual, and their function of ripening and discharging one ovum monthly into the Fallopian tubes and uterus, is not completed until between the twelfth and fifteenth years. 5. WHAT SCIENCE KNOWS.--After the sexual embrace we know that the sperm is lifted within the genital passages or portion of the vagina and mouth of the uterus. The time between the deposit of the semen and fecundation varies according to circumstances. If the sperm-cell travels to the ovarium it generally takes from three to five days to make the journey. As Dr. Pierce says: The transportation is aided by the ciliary processes (little hairs) of the mucous surface of the vaginal and uterine walls, as well as by its own vibratile movements. The action of the cilia, under the stimulus of the sperm, seems to be from without, inward. Even if a minute particle of sperm, less than a drop, be left upon the margin of the external genitals of the female, it is sufficient in amount to impregnate, and can be carried, by help of these cilia, to the ovaries. 6. CONCEPTION.--After intercourse at the proper time the liability to conception is very great. If the organs are in a healthy condition, conception must necessarily follow, and no amount of prudence and the most rigid precautions often fail to prevent pregnancy. 7. ONLY ONE ABSOLUTELY SAFE METHOD.--There is only one absolutely safe method to prevent conception, entirely free from danger and injury to health, and one that is in the reach of all; that is to refrain from union altogether. [Illustration: A EUGENIC BABY.] * * * * * CONCEPTION--ITS LIMITATIONS. 1. A COMMON QUESTION.--The question is often asked, "Can Conception be prevented at all times?" Let us say right here that even if such an interference with nature's laws were possible it is inadmissible, and never to be justified except in cases of deformity or disease. 2. FALSE CLAIMS OF IMPOSTERS.--During the past few years a great deal has been written on the subject, claiming that new remedies had been discovered for the prevention of conception, etc., but these are all money making devices to deceive the public, and enrich the pockets of miserable and unprincipled imposters. 3. THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER.--Dr. Pancoast, an eminent authority, says: "The truth is, there is no medicine taken internally capable of preventing conception, and the person who asserts to the contrary, not only speaks falsely, but is both a knave and a fool." 4. FOOLISH DREAD OF CHILDREN.--What is more deplorable and pitiable than an old couple childless? Young people dislike the care and confinement of children and prefer society and social entertainments and thereby do great injustice and injury to their health. Having children under proper circumstances never ruins the health and happiness of any woman. In fact, womanhood is incomplete without them. She may have a dozen or more, and still have better health than before marriage. It is having them too close together, and when she is not in a fit state, that her health gives way. 5. SELF-DENIAL AND FORBEARANCE.--If the husband respects his wife he will come to her relief by exercising self-denial and forbearance, but sometimes before the mother has recovered from the effects of bearing, nursing and rearing one child, ere she has regained proper tone and vigor of body and mind, she is unexpectedly overtaken, surprised by the manifestation of symptoms which again indicate pregnancy. Children thus begotten cannot become hardy and long-lived. But the love that parents may feel for their posterity, by the wishes for their success, by the hopes for their usefulness, by every consideration for their future well-being, let them exercise caution and forbearance until the wife becomes sufficiently healthy and enduring to bequeath her own rugged, vital stamina to the child she bears in love. 6. A WRONG TO THE MOTHER AND CHILD.--Sometimes the mother is diseased; the outlet from the womb, as a result of laceration by a previous child-birth, is frequently enlarged, thus allowing conception to take place very readily, and hence she has children in rapid succession. Besides the wrong to the mother in having children in such rapid succession, it is a great injustice to the babe in the womb and the one at the breast that they should follow each other so quickly that one is conceived while the other is nursing. One takes the vitality of the other; neither has sufficient nourishment, and both are started in life stunted and incomplete. 7. FEEBLE AND DISEASED PARENTS.--If the parties of a marriage are both feeble and so adapted to each other that their children are deformed, insane or idiots, then to beget offspring would be a flagrant wrong; if the mother's health is in such a condition as to forbid the right of laying the burden of motherhood upon her, then medical aid may safely come to her relief. 8. "THE DESIRABILITY AND PRACTICABILITY of limiting offspring," says Dr. Stockham, are the subject of frequent inquiry. Fewer and better children are desired by right-minded parents. Many men and women, wise in other things of the world, permit generation as a chance result of copulation, without thought of physical or mental conditions to be transmitted to the child. Coition, the one important act of all others, carrying with it the most vital results, is usually committed for selfish gratification. Many a drunkard owes his lifelong appetite for alcohol to the fact that the inception of his life could be traced to a night of dissipation on the part of his father. Physical degeneracy and mental derangements are too often caused by the parents producing offspring while laboring under great mental strain or bodily fatigue. Drunkenness and licentiousness are frequently the heritage of posterity. Future generations demand that such results be averted by better prenatal influences. The world is groaning under the curse of chance parenthood. It is due to posterity that procreation be brought under the control of reason and conscience. 9. "IT HAS BEEN FEARED THAT A KNOWLEDGE of means to control offspring would, if generally diffused, be abused by women; that they would to so great an extent escape motherhood as to bring about social disaster. This fear is not well founded. The maternal instinct is inherent and sovereign in woman. Even the prenatal influences of a murderous intent on the part of parents scarcely ever eradicate it. With this natural desire for children, we believe few woman would abuse the knowledge of privilege of controlling offspring. Although women shrink from forced maternity, and from the bearing of children under the great burden of suffering, as well as other adverse conditions, it is rare to find a woman who is not greatly disappointed if she does not, some time in her life, wear the crown of motherhood. "An eminent lady teacher, in talking to her pupils once said, 'The greatest calamity that can befall a woman is never to have a child. The next greatest calamity is to have one only.' From my professional experience I am happy to testify that more women seek to overcome causes of sterility than to obtain knowledge of limiting the size of the family or means to destroy the embryo. Also, if consultation for the latter is sought, it is usually at the instigation of the husband. Believing in the rights of unborn children, and in the maternal instinct, I am consequently convinced that no knowledge should be withheld that will secure proper conditions for the best parenthood." 10. THE CASE OF THE JUKE FAMILY.--We submit the following case of the Juke family, mostly of New York state, as related by Dr. R.L. Dugdale, when a member of the prison Association, and let the reader judge for himself: "It was traced out by painstaking research that from one woman called Margaret, who, like Topsy, merely 'growed' without pedigree as a pauper in a village of the upper Hudson, about eighty-five years ago, there descended 673 children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, of whom 200 were criminals of the dangerous class, 280 adult paupers, and 50 prostitutes, while 300 children of her lineage died prematurely. The last fact proves to what extent in this family nature was kind to the rest of humanity in saving it from a still larger aggregation or undesirable and costly members, for it is estimated that the expense to the State of the descendants of Maggie was over a million dollars, and the State itself did something also towards preventing a greater expense by the restrain exercised upon the criminals, paupers, and idiots of the family during a considerable portion of their lives." 11. MODERATION.--Continence, self-control, a willingness to deny himself--that is what is required from the husband. But a thousand voices reach us from suffering women in all parts of the land that this will not suffice; that men refuse thus to restrain themselves; that it leads to a loss of domestic happiness and to illegal amour, or it is injurious physically and morally; that, in short, such advice is useless because impracticable. 12. NATURE'S METHOD.--To such we reply that nature herself has provided to some extent, against overproduction. It is well known that women, when nursing, rarely become pregnant, and for this reason, if for no other, women should nurse their own children, and continue the period until the child is at least nine months or a year old. However, the nursing, if continued too long, weakens both the mother and the child. 13. ANOTHER PROVISION OF NATURE.--For a certain period between her monthly illness, every woman is sterile. Conception may be avoided by refraining from coition except for this particular number of days, and there will be no evasion of natural intercourse, no resort to disgusting practices, and nothing degrading. * * * * * PRENATAL INFLUENCES. 1. DEFINITION.--By prenatal influences we mean those temporary operations of the mind or physical conditions of the parents previous to birth, which stamp their impress upon the new life. 2. THREE PERIODS.--We may consider this subject as one which naturally divides itself into three periods: the preparation which precedes conception, the mental, moral and physical conditions at the time of conjunction, and the environment and condition of the mother during the period of gestation. 3. PROMINENT AUTHORITIES.--A.E. Newton says: "Numerous facts indicate that offspring may be affected and their tendencies shaped by a great variety of influences, among which moods and influences more or less transient may be included." Dr. Stall says: "Prenatal influences are both subtle and potent, and no amount of wealth or learning or influence can secure exemption from them." Dr. John Cowan says upon this subject: "The fundamental principles of genius in reproduction are that, through the rightly directed wills of the father and mother, preceding and during antenatal life, the child's form or body, character of mind and purity of soul are formed and established. That in its plastic state, during antenatal life, like clay in the hands of the potter, it can be molded into absolutely any form of body and soul the parents may knowingly desire." 4. LIKE PARENTS, LIKE CHILDREN.--It is folly to expect strong and vigorous children from weak and sickly parents, or virtuous offspring from impure ancestry. Dr. James Foster Scott tells us that purity is, in fact, the crown of all real manliness; and the vigorous and robust, who by repression of evil have preserved their sexual potency, make the best husbands and fathers, and they are the direct benefactors for the race by begetting progeny who are not predisposed to sexual vitiation and bodily and mental degeneracy. 5. BLOOD WILL TELL.--Thus we see that prenatal influences greatly modify, if they do not wholly control, inherited tendencies. Is it common sense to suppose that a child, begotten when the parents are exhausted from mental or physical overwork, can be as perfect as when the parents are overflowing with the buoyancy of life and health? The practical farmer would not allow a domestic animal to come into his flock or herd under imperfect physical conditions. He understands that while "blood will tell," the temporary conditions of the animals will also tell in the perfections or imperfections of the offspring. 6. HEALTH A LEGACY.--It is no small legacy to be endowed with perfect health. In begetting children comparatively few people seem to think that any care of concern is necessary to insure against ill-health or poverty of mind. How strange our carelessness and unconcern when these are the groundwork of all comfort and success! How few faces and forms we see which give sign of perfect health. It is just as reasonable to suppose that men and women can squander their fortune and still have it left to bequeath to their children, as that parents can violate organic laws and still retain their own strength and activity. 7. RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS.--Selden H. Tascott says: "Ungoverned passions in the parents may unloose the furies of unrestrained madness in the minds of their children. Even untempered religious enthusiasm may beget a fanaticism that can not be restrained within the limits of reason." In view of the preceding statements, what a responsibility rests upon the parents! No step in the process of parentage is unimportant. From the lovers first thought of marriage to the birth of the child, every step of the way should be paved with the snow-white blossoms of pure thought. Kindly words and deeds should bind the prospective parents more closely together. Not mine and thine, but ours, should be the bond of sympathy. Each should be chaste in thought and word and deed as was Sir Galahad, who went in search of the Holy Grail, saying: "My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure." [Illustration: DR. HALL'S SYRINGE. No. 1 Gives a Whirling Spray and No. 2 Also Whirling Spray. Price of No. 1 is $1.50 and of No. 2, $3.00. To readers of this book the publishers will send No. 1 for $1.20 and No. 2 for $2.25 postpaid. Dr. Hall's is larger and made of highest grade red rubber and its action is very effective.] * * * * * VAGINAL CLEANLINESS. 1. The above syringes are highly recommended by physicians as vaginal cleansers. They will be found a great relief in health or sickness, and in many cases cure barrenness or other diseases of the womb. 2. CLEANLINESS.--Cleanliness is next to godliness. Without cleanliness the human body is more or less defiled and repulsive. A hint to the wise is sufficient. The vagina should be cleansed with the same faithfulness as any other portion of the body. 3. TEMPERATURE OF THE WATER.--Those not accustomed to use vaginal injections would do well to use water milk-warm at the commencement; after this the temperature may be varied according to circumstances. In case of local inflammation use hot water. The indiscriminate use of cold water injections will be found rather injurious than beneficial, and a woman in feeble health will always find warm water invigorating and preferable. 4. LEUCORRHOEA.--In case of persistent leucorrhoea use the temperature of water from seventy-two to eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit. 5. THE CLEANSER will greatly stimulate the health and spirits of any woman who uses it. Pure water injections have a stimulating effect, and it seems to invigorate the entire body. 6. SALT AND WATER INJECTIONS.--This will cure mild cases of leucorrhoea. Add a teaspoonful of salt to a pint and a half of water at the proper temperature. Injections may be repeated daily if deemed necessary. 7. SOAP AND WATER.--Soap and water is a very simple domestic remedy, and will many times afford relief in many diseases of the womb. It seems it thoroughly cleanses the parts. A little borax or vinegar may be used the same as salt water injections. (See No. 6.) 8. HOLES IN THE TUBES.--Most of the holes in the tubes of syringes are too small. See that they are sufficiently large to produce thorough cleansing. 9. INJECTIONS DURING THE MONTHLY FLOW.--Of course it is not proper to arrest the flow, and the injections will stimulate a healthy action of the organs. The injections may be used daily throughout the monthly flow with much comfort and benefit. If the flow is scanty and painful the injections may be as warm as they can be comfortably borne. If the flowing is immoderate, then cool water may be used. A woman will soon learn her own condition and can act accordingly. 10. BLOOM AND GRACE OF YOUTH.--The regular bathing of the body will greatly improve woman's beauty. Remember that a perfect complexion depends upon the healthy action of all the organs. Vaginal injections are just as important as the bath. A beautiful woman must not only be cleanly, but robust and healthy. There can be no perfect beauty without good health. [Illustration] [Illustration: Trying On a New Dress.] * * * * * IMPOTENCE AND STERILITY. 1. Actual impotence during the period of manhood is a very rare complaint, and nature very unwillingly, and only after the absolute neglect of sanitary laws, gives up the power of reproduction. 2. Not only sensual women, but all without exception, feel deeply hurt, and are repelled by the husband whom they may previously have loved dearly, when, after entering the married state, they find that he is impotent. The more inexperienced and innocent they were at the time of marriage, the longer it often is before they find that something is lacking in the husband; but, once knowing this, the wife infallibly has a feeling of contempt and aversion for him though there are many happy families where this defect exists. It is often very uncertain who is the weak one, and no cause for separation should be sought. 3. Unhappy marriages, barrenness, divorces, and perchance an occasional suicide, may be prevented by the experienced physician, who can generally give correct information, comfort, and consolation, when consulted on these delicate matters. 4. When a single man fears that he is unable to fulfill the duties of marriage, he should not marry until his fear is dispelled. The suspicion of such a fear strongly tends to bring about the very weakness which he dreads. Go to a good physician (not to one of those quacks whose advertisements you see in the papers; they are invariably unreliable), and state the case fully and freely. 5. Diseases, malformation, etc., may cause impotence. In case of malformation there is usually no remedy, but in case of disease it is usually within the reach of a skillful physician. 6. Self-abuse and spermatorrhoea produce usually only temporary impotence and can generally be relieved by carrying out the instructions given elsewhere in this book. 7. Excessive indulgences often enfeeble the powers and often result in impotence. Dissipated single men, professional libertines, and married men who are immoderate, often pay the penalty of their violations of the laws of nature, by losing their vital power. In such cases of excess there may be some temporary relief, but as age advances the effects of such indiscretion will become more and more manifest. 8. The condition of sterility in man may arise either from a condition of the secretion which deprives it of its fecundating powers or it may spring from a malformation which prevents it reaching the point where fecundation takes place. The former condition is most common in old age, and is a sequence of venereal disease, or from a change in the structure or functions of the glands. The latter has its origin in a stricture, or in an injury, or in that condition technically known as hypospadias, or in debility. 9. It can be safely said that neither self-indulgence nor spermatorrhoea often leads to permanent sterility. 10. It is sometimes, however, possible, even where there is sterility in the male, providing the secretion is not entirely devoid of life properties on part of the husband, to have children, but these are exceptions. 11. No man need hesitate about matrimony on account of sterility, unless that condition arises from a permanent and absolute degeneration of his functions. 12. Impotence from mental and moral causes often takes place. Persons of highly nervous organization may suffer incapacity in their sexual organs. The remedy for these difficulties is rest and change of occupation. 13. REMEDIES IN CASE OF IMPOTENCE ON ACCOUNT OF FORMER PRIVATE DISEASES, OR MASTURBATION, OR OTHER CAUSES.--First build up the body by taking some good stimulating tonics. The general health is the most essential feature to be considered, in order to secure restoration of the sexual powers. Constipation must be carefully avoided. If the kidneys do not work in good order, some remedy for their restoration must be taken. Take plenty of out-door excercise avoid horseback riding or heavy exhaustive work. 14. FOOD AND DRINKS WHICH WEAKEN DESIRE.--All kinds of food which cause dyspepsia or bring on constipation, diarrhea, or irritate the bowels, alcoholic beverages, or any indigestible compound, has the tendency to weaken the sexual power. Drunkards and tipplers suffer early loss of vitality. Beer drinking has a tendency to irritate the stomach and to that extent affects the private organs. 15. COFFEE.--Coffee drank excessively causes a debilitating effect upon the sexual organs. The moderate use of coffee can be recommended, yet an excessive habit of drinking very strong coffee will sometimes wholly destroy vitality. 16. TOBACCO.--It is a hygienic and physiological fact that tobacco produces sexual debility and those who suffer any weakness on that source should carefully avoid the weed in all its forms. 17. DRUGS WHICH STIMULATE DESIRE.--There are certain medicines which act locally on the membranes and organs of the male, and the papers are full of advertisements of "Lost Manhood Restored", etc., but in every case they are worthless or dangerous drugs and certain to lead to some painful malady or death. All these patent medicines should be carefully avoided. People who are troubled with any of these ailments should not attempt to doctor themselves by taking drugs, but a competent physician should be consulted. Eating rye, corn, or graham bread, oatmeal, cracked wheat, plenty of fruit, etc. is a splendid medicine. If that is not sufficient, then a physician should be consulted. 18. DRUGS WHICH MODERATE DESIRE.--Among one of the most common domestic remedies is camphor. This has stood the test for ages. Small doses or half a grain in most instances diminishes the sensibility of the organs of sex. In some cases it produces irritation of the bladder. In that case it should be at once discontinued. On the whole a physician had better be consulted. The safest drug among domestic remedies is a strong tea made out of hops. Saltpeter, or nitrate of potash, taken in moderate quantities are very good remedies. [Illustration] 19. STRICTLY SPEAKING there is a distinction made between; _impotence_ and _sterility._ _Impotence_ is a loss of power to engage in the sexual act and is common to men. It may be imperfection in the male organ or a lack of sufficient sexual vigor to produce and maintain erection. _Sterility_ is a total loss of capacity in the reproduction of the species, and is common to women. There are, however, very few causes of barrenness that cannot be removed when the patient is perfectly developed. Sterility, in a female, most frequently depends upon a weakness or irritability either in the ovaries or the womb, and anything having a strengthening effect upon either organ will remove the disability. (See page 249.) 20. "OVER-INDULGENCE in intercourse," says Dr. Hoff, "is sometimes the cause of barrenness; this is usually puzzling to the interested parties, inasmuch as the practices which, in their opinion, should be the source of a numerous progeny, have the very opposite effect. By greatly moderating their ardor, this defect may be remedied." 21. "NAPOLEON AND JOSEPHINE.--A certain adaptation between the male and female has been regarded as necessary to conception, consisting of some mysterious influence which one sex exerts over the other, neither one, however, being essentially impotent or sterile. The man may impregnate one woman and not another, and the woman will conceive by one man and not by another. In the marriage of Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine no children were born, but after he had separated from the Empress and wedded Maria Louisa of Austria, an heir soon came. Yet Josephine had children by Beauharnais, her previous husband. But as all is not known as to the physical condition of Josephine during her second marriage, it cannot be assumed that mere lack of adaptability was the cause of unfruitfulness between them. There may have been some cause that history has not recorded, or unknown to the state of medical science of those days. There are doubtless many cases of apparently causeless unfruitfulness in marriage that even physicians, with a knowledge of all apparent conditions in the parties cannot explain; but when, as elsewhere related in this volume, impregnation by artificial means is successfully practised, it is useless to attribute barrenness to purely psychological and adaptative influences." * * * * * PRODUCING BOYS OR GIRLS AT WILL. 1. CAN THE SEXES BE PRODUCED AT WILL?--This question has been asked in all ages of the world. Many theories have been advanced, but science has at last replied with some authority. The following are the best known authorities which this age of science has produced. 2. THE AGRICULTURAL THEORY.--The agricultural theory as it may be called, because adopted by farmers, is that impregnation occurring within four days of the close of the female monthlies produces a girl, because the ovum is yet immature; but that when it occurs after the fourth day from its close, gives a boy, because this egg is now mature; whereas after about the eighth day this egg dissolves and passes off, so that impregnation is thereby rendered impossible, till just before the mother's next monthly.--_Sexual Science._ 3. QUEEN BEES LAY FEMALE EGGS FIRST, and male after wards. So with hens; the first eggs laid after the tread give females, the last males. Mares shown the stallion late in their periods drop horse colts rather than fillies.--_Napheys._ 4. IF YOU WISH FEMALES, give the male at the first sign of heat; if males, at its end.--_Prof. Thury._ 5. ON TWENTY-TWO SUCCESSIVE OCCASIONS I desired to have heifers, and succeeded in every case. I have made in all twenty-nine experiments, after this method, and succeeded in every one, in producing the sex I desired.--_A Swiss Breeder._ 6. THIS THURY PLAN has been tried on the farms of the Emperor of the French with unvarying success. 7. CONCEPTION IN THE FIRST HALF of the time between the menstrual periods produces females, and males in the latter.--_London Lancet._ 8. INTERCOURSE in from two to six days after cessation of the menses produces girls, in from nine to twelve, boys.--_Medical Reporter._ THE MOST MALE POWER and passion creates boys; female girls. This law probably causes those agricultural facts just cited thus: Conception right after menstruation give girls, because the female is then the most impassioned; later, boys, because her wanting sexual warmth leaves him the most vigorous. Mere sexual excitement, a wild, fierce, furious rush of passion, is not only not sexual vigor, but in its inverse ratio; and a genuine insane fervor caused by weakness; just as a like nervous excitability indicates weak nerves instead of strong. Sexual power is deliberate, not wild; cool, not impetuous; while all false excitement diminishes effectiveness.--_Fowler._ [Illustration: HEALTHY CHILDREN.] * * * * * ABORTION OR MISCARRIAGE. 1. ABORTION OR MISCARRIAGE is the expulsion of the child from the womb previous to six months; after that it is called premature birth. 2. CAUSES.--It may be due to a criminal act of taking medicine for the express purpose of producing miscarriage or it may be caused by certain medicines, severe sickness or nervousness, syphilis, imperfect semen, lack of room in the pelvis and abdomen, lifting, straining, violent cold, sudden mental excitement, excessive sexual intercourse, dancing, tight lacing, the use of strong purgative medicines, bodily fatigue, late suppers, and fashionable amusements. 3. SYMPTOMS.--A falling or weakness and uneasiness in the region of the loins, thighs and womb, pain in the small of the back, vomiting and sickness of the stomach, chilliness with a discharge of blood accompanied with pain in the lower portions of the abdomen. These may take place in a single hour, or it may continue for several days. If before the fourth month, there is not so much danger, but the flow of blood is generally greater. If miscarriage is the result of an accident, it generally takes place without much warning, and the service of a physician should at once be secured. 4. HOME TREATMENT.--A simple application of cold water externally applied will produce relief, or cold cloths of ice, if convenient, applied to the lower portions of the abdomen. Perfect quiet, however, is the most essential thing for the patient. She should lie on her back and take internally a teaspoonful of paregoric every two hours; drink freely of lemonade or other cooling drinks, and for nourishment subsist chiefly on chicken broth, toast, water gruel, fresh fruits, etc. The principal homeopathic remedies for this disease are ergot and cimicifuga, given in drop-doses of the tinctures. 5. INJURIOUS EFFECTS.--Miscarriage is a very serious difficulty, and the health and the constitution may be permanently impaired. Any one prone to miscarriage should adopt every measure possible to strengthen and build up the system; avoid going up stairs or doing much heavy lifting or hard work. 6. PREVENTION.--Practice the laws of sexual abstinence, take frequent sitz-baths, live on oatmeal, graham bread, and other nourishing diet. Avoid highly seasoned food, rich gravies, late suppers and the like. [Illustration] [Illustration: AN INDIAN FAMILY. THE SAVAGE INDIAN TEACHES US LESSONS OF CIVILIZATION.] * * * * * THE MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS. 1. MANY CAUSES.--Many causes have operated to produce a corruption of the public morals so deplorable; prominent among which may be mentioned the facility with which divorces may be obtained in some of the States, the constant promulgation of false ideas of marriage and its duties by means of books, lectures, etc., and the distribution through the mails of impure publications. But an influence not less powerful than any of these is the growing devotion of fashion and luxury of this age, and the idea which practically obtains to so great an extent that pleasure, instead of the health or morals, is the great object of life. 2. A MONSTROUS CRIME.--The abiding interest we feel in the preservation of the morals of our country, constrains us to raise our voice against the daily increasing practice of infanticide, especially before birth. The notoriety that monstrous crime has obtained of late, and the hecatombs of infants that are annually sacrificed to Moloch, to gratify an unlawful passion, are a sufficient justification for our alluding to a painful and delicate subject, which should "not even be named," only to correct and admonish the wrong-doers. 3. LOCALITIES IN WHICH IT IS MOST PREVALENT.--We may observe that the crying sin of infanticide is most prevalent In those localities where the system of moral education has been longest neglected. This inhuman crime might be compared to the murder of the innocents, except that the criminals, in this case, exceed in enormity the cruelty of Herod. 4. SHEDDING INNOCENT BLOOD.--If it is a sin to take away the life even of an enemy; if the crime of shedding innocent blood cries to heaven for vengeance; in what language can we characterize the double guilt of those whose souls are stained with the innocent blood of their own unborn, unregenerated offspring? 5. THE GREATNESS OF THE CRIME.--The murder of an infant before its birth, is, in the sight of God and the law, as great a crime as the killing of a child after birth. 6. LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY.--Every State of the Union has made this offense one of the most serious crimes. The law has no mercy for the offenders that violate the sacred law of human life. It is murder of the most cowardly character and woe to him who brings this curse upon his head, to haunt him all the days of his or her life, and to curse him at the day of his death. 7. THE PRODUCT OF LUST.--Lust pure and simple. The only difference between a marriage of this character and prostitution is, that society, rotten to its heart, pulpits afraid to cry aloud against crime and vice, and the church conformed to the world, have made such a profanation of marriage respectable. To put it in other words, when two people determine to live together as husband and wife, and evade the consequences and responsibilities of marriage, they are simply engaged in prostitution without the infamy which attaches to that vice and crime. 8. OUTRAGEOUS VIOLATION OF ALL LAW.--The violation of all law, both natural and revealed, is the cool and villainous contract by which people entering into the marital relation engage in defiance of the laws of God and the laws of the commonwealth, that they shall be unencumbered with a family of children. "Disguise the matter as you will," says Dr. Pomeroy, "yet the fact remains that the first and specific object of marriage is the rearing of a family." "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth," is God's first word to Adam after his creation. 9. THE NATIONAL SIN.--The prevention of offspring is preeminently the sin of America. It is fast becoming the national sin of America, and if it is not checked, it will sooner or later be an irremediable calamity. The sin has its roots in a low and perverted idea of marriage, and is fostered by false standards of modesty. 10. THE SIN OF HEROD.--Do these same white-walled sepulchres of hell know that they are committing the damning sin of Herod in the slaughter of the innocents, and are accessories before the fact to the crime of murder? Do women in all circles of society, when practicing these terrible crimes realize the real danger? Do they understand that it is undermining their health, and their constitution, and that their destiny, if persisted in, is a premature grave just as sure as the sun rises in the heavens? Let all beware and let the first and only purpose be, to live a life guiltless before God and man. 11. THE CRIME OF ABORTION.--From the moment of conception a new life commences; a new individual exists; another child is added to the family. The mother who deliberately sets about to destroy this life, either by want of care, or by taking drugs, or using instruments, commits as great a crime, and is just as guilty as if she strangled her new-born infant or as if she snatched from her own breast her six months' darling and dashed out its brains against the wall. Its blood is upon her head, and as sure as there is a God and a judgment, that blood will be required of her. The crime she commits is murder, child murder--the slaughter of a speechless, helpless being, whom it is her duty, beyond all things else, to cherish and preserve. 12. DANGEROUS DISEASES.--We appeal to all such with earnest and with threatening words. If they have no feeling for the fruit of their womb, if maternal sentiment is so callous in their breasts, let them know that such produced abortions are the constant cause of violent and, dangerous womb diseases, and frequently of early death; that they bring on mental weakness, and often insanity; that they are the most certain means to destroy domestic happiness which can be adopted. Better, far better, to bear a child every year for twenty years than to resort to such a wicked and injurious step; better to die, if need be, of the pangs of child-birth, than to live with such a weight of sin on the conscience. * * * * * THE UNWELCOME CHILD.[Footnote: This is the title of a pamphlet written by Henry C. Wright. We have taken some extracts from it.] 1. TOO OFTEN THE HUSBAND thinks only of his personal gratification; he insists upon what he calls his rights(?); forces on his wife an _unwelcome child_, and thereby often alienates her affections, if he does not drive her to abortion. Dr Stockham reports the following case: "A woman once consulted me who was the mother of five children, all born within ten years. These were puny, scrofulous, nervous and irritable. She herself was a fit subject for doctors and drugs. Every organ in her body seemed diseased, and every function perverted. She was dragging out a miserable existence. Like other physicians, I had prescribed in vain for her many maladies. One day she chanced to inquire how she could safely prevent conception. This led me to ask how great was the danger. She said: 'Unless my husband is absent from home, few nights have been exempt since we were married, except it may be three or four immediately after confinement.' "'And yet your husband loves you?' "'O, yes, he is kind and provides for his family. Perhaps I might love him but for this. While now--(will God forgive me?)--_I detest, I loathe him_, and if I knew how to support myself and children, I would leave him.' "'Can you talk with him upon this subject?' "'I think I can.' "'Then there is hope, for many women cannot do that. Tell him I will give you treatment to improve your health and if he will wait until you can respond, _take time for the act, have it entirely mutual from first to last_, the demand will not come so frequent.' "'Do you think so?' "'The experience of many proves the truth of this statement.' "Hopefully she went home, and in six months I had the satisfaction of knowing my patient was restored to health, and a single coition in a month gave the husband more satisfaction than the many had done previously, that the creative power was under control, and that my lady could proudly say 'I love,' where previously she said 'I hate.' "If husbands will listen, a few simple instructions will appeal to their _common sense_, and none can imagine the gain to themselves, to their wives and children, and their children's children. Then it may not be said of the babes that the 'Death borders on their birth, and their cradle stands in the grave.'" 2. WIVES! BE FRANK AND TRUE to your husbands on the subject of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Interchange thoughts and feelings with them as to what nature allows or demands in regard to these. Can maternity be natural when it is undesigned by the father or undesired by the mother? Can a maternity be natural, healthful, ennobling to the mother, to the child, to the father, and to the home, when no loving, tender, anxious forethought presides over thee relation in which it originated?--when the mother's nature loathed and repelled it, and the father's only thought was his own selfish gratification; the feelings and conditions of the mother, and the health, character and destiny of the child that may result being ignored by him. Wives! let there be a perfect and loving understanding between you and your husbands on these matters, and great will be your reward. 3. A WOMAN WRITES:--"There are few, vary few, wives and mothers who could not reveal a sad, dark picture in their own experience in their relations to their husbands and their children. Maternity, and the relation in which it originates, are thrust upon them by their husbands, often without regard to their spiritual or physical conditions, and often in contempt of their earnest and urgent entreaties. No joy comes to their heart at the conception and birth of their children, except that which arises from the consciousness that they have survived the sufferings wantonly and selfishly inflicted upon them." 4. HUSBAND, WHEN MATERNITY is imposed on your wife without her consent, and contrary to her appeal, how will her mind necessarily be affected towards her child? It was conceived in dread and in bitterness of spirit. Every stage of its foetal development is watched with feeling of settled repugnance. In every step of its ante-natal progress the child meets only with grief and indignation in the mother. She would crush out its life, if she could. She loathed its conception; she loathed it in every stage of its ante-natal development. Instead of fixing her mind on devising ways and means for the healthful and happy organization and development of her child before it is born, and for its post natal comfort and support, her soul may be intent on its destruction, and her thoughts devise plans to kill it. In this, how often is she aided by others! There are those, and they are called men and women, whose profession is to devise ways to kill children before they are born. Those who do this would not hesitate (but for the consequences) to kill them after they are born, for the state of mind that would justify and instigate _ante-natal_ child-murder would justify and instigate _post-natal_ child-murder. Yet, public sentiment consigns the murderer of post-natal children to the dungeon or the gallows, while the murderers of antenatal children are often allowed to pass in society as honest and honorable men and women. 5. THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXTRACT from a letter written by one who has proudly and nobly filled the station of a wife and mother, and whose children and grandchildren surround her and crown her life with tenderest love and respect: "It has often been a matter of wonder to me that men should, so heedlessly, and so injuriously to themselves, their wives and children, and their homes, demand at once, as soon as they get legal possession of their wives, the gratification of a passion, which, when indulged merely for the sake of the gratification of the moment, must end in the destruction of all that is beautiful, noble and divine in man or woman. I have often felt that I would give the world for a friendship with man that should show no impurity in its bearing, and for a conjugal relation that would, at all times, heartily and practically recognize the right of the wife to decide for herself when she should enter into the relation that leads to maternity." 6. TIMELY ADVICE.--Here let me say that on no subject should a man and woman, as they are being attracted into conjugal relations, be more open and truthful with each other than on this. No woman, who would save herself and the man she loves from a desecrated and wretched home, should enter into the physical relations of marriage with a man until she understands what he expects of her as to the function of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. If a woman is made aware that the man who would win her as a wife regards her and the marriage relation only as the means of a legalized gratification of his passions, and she sees fit to live with him as a wife, with such a prospect before her, she must take the consequences of a course so degrading and so shameless. If she sees fit to make an offering of her body and soul on the altar of her husband's sensuality, she must do it; but she has a right to know to what base uses her womanhood is to be put, and it is due to her, as well as to himself, that he should tell beforehand precisely what he wants and expects of her. Too frequently, man shrinks from all allusion, during courtship, to his expectations in regard to future passional relations. He fears to speak of them, lest he should shock and repel the woman he would win as a wife. Being conscious, it may be, of an intention to use power he may acquire over her person for his own gratification, he shuns all interchange of views with her, lest she should divine the hidden sensualism of his soul, and his intention to victimize her person to it the moment he shall get the license. A woman had better die at once than enter into or continue in marriage with a man whose highest conception of the relation is, that it is a means of licensed animal indulgence. In such a relation, body and soul are sacrificed. 7. ONE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTIC of a true and noble husband is a feeling of manly pride in the physical elements of his manhood. His physical manhood, as well as his soul, is dear to the heart of his wife, because through this he can give the fullest expression of his manly power. How can you, my friend, secure for your person the loving care and respect of your wife? There is but one way: so manifest yourself to her, in the hours of your most endearing intimacies, that all your manly power shall be associated only with all that is generous, just and noble in you, and with purity, freedom and happiness in her. Make her feel that all which constitutes you a man, and qualifies you to be her husband and the father of her children, belongs to her, and is sacredly consecrated to the perfection and happiness of her nature. Do this, and the happiness of your home is made complete Your _body_ will be lovingly and reverently cared for, because the wife of your bosom feels that it is the sacred symbol through which a noble, manly love is ever speaking to her, to cheer and sustain her. 8. WOMAN IS EVER PROUD, and justly so, of the manly passion of her husband, when she knows it is controlled by a love for her, whose manifestations have regard only to her elevation and happiness. The power which, when bent only on selfish indulgence, becomes a source of more shame, degradation, disease and wretchedness, to women and to children than all other things put together, does but ennoble her, add grace and glory to her being, and concentrate and vitalize the love that encircles her as a wife when it is controlled by wisdom and consecrated to her highest growth and happiness, and that of her children. It lends enchantment to her person, and gives a fascination to her smiles, her words and her caresses, which ever breathe of purity and of heaven, and make her all lovely as a wife and mother to her husband and the father of her child. _Manly passion is to the conjugal love of the wife like the sun to the rose-bud, that opens its petals, and causes them to give out their sweetest fragrance and to display their most delicate tints; or like the frost, which chills and kills it ere it blossoms in its richness and beauty._ 9. A DIADEM OF BEAUTY.--Maternity, when it exists at the call of the wife, and is gratefully received, but binds her heart more tenderly and devotedly to her husband. As the father of her child, he stands before her invested with new beauty and dignity. In receiving from him the germ of a new life, she receives that which she feels is to add new beauty and glory to her as a woman--a new grace and attraction to her as a wife. She loves and honors him, because he has crowned her with the glory of a mother. Maternity, to her, instead of being repulsive, is a diadem of beauty, a crown of rejoicing; and deep, tender, and self-forgetting are her love and reverence for him who has placed it on her brow. How noble, how august, how beautiful is maternity when thus bestowed and received! 10. CONCLUSION.--Would you, then, secure the love and trust of your wife, and become an object of her ever-growing tenderness and reverence? Assure her, by all your manifestations, and your perfect respect for the functions of her nature, that your passion shall be in subjection of her wishes. It is not enough that you have secured in her heart respect for your spiritual and intellectual manhood. To maintain your self-respect in your relations with her, to perfect your growth and happiness as a husband, you must cause your _physical_ nature to be tenderly cherished and reverenced by her in all the sacred intimacies of home. No matter how much she reverences your intellectual or your social power, if by reason of your uncalled-for passional manifestations you have made your physical manhood disagreeable, how can you, in her presence, preserve a sense of manly pride and dignity as a husband? [Illustration] * * * * * HEALTH AND DISEASE. Heredity and the Transmission of Diseases. 1. BAD HABITS.--It is known that the girl who marries the man with bad habits, is, in a measure, responsible for the evil tendencies which these habits have created in the children; and young people are constantly warned of the danger in marrying when they know they come from families troubled with chronic diseases or insanity. To be sure the warnings have had little effect thus far in preventing such marriages, and it is doubtful whether they will, unless the prophecy of an extremist writing for one of our periodicals comes to pass--that the time is not far distant when such marriages will be a crime punishable by law. 2. TENDENCY IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.--That there is a tendency in the right direction must be admitted, and is perhaps most clearly shown in some of the articles on prison reform. Many of them strongly urge the necessity of preventive work as the truest economy, and some go so far as to say that if the present human knowledge of the laws of heredity were acted upon for a generation, reformatory measures would be rendered unnecessary. 3. SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES.--The mother who has ruined her health by late hours, highly-spiced food, and general carelessness in regard to hygienic laws, and the father who is the slave of questionable habits, will be very sure to have children either mentally or morally inferior to what they might otherwise have had a right to expect. But the prenatal influences may be such that evils arising from such may be modified to a great degree. 4. FORMATION OF CHARACTER.--I believe that pre-natal influences may do as much in the formation of character as all the education that can come after, and that the mother may, in a measure, "will" what that influence shall be, and that, as knowledge on the subject increases, it will be more and more under their control. In that, as in everything else, things that would be possible with one mother would not be with another, and measures that would be successful with one would produce opposite results from the other. 5. INHERITING DISEASE. Consumption--that dread foe of modern life--is the most frequently encountered of all affections as the result of inherited predispositions. Indeed, some of the most eminent physicians have believed it is never produced in any other way. Heart disease, disease of the throat, excessive obesity, affections of the skin, asthma, disorders of the brain and nervous system, gout, rheumatism and cancer, are all hereditary. A tendency to bleed frequently, profusely and uncontrollably, from trifling wounds, is often met with as a family affection. 6. MENTAL DERANGEMENTS.--Almost all forms of mental derangements are hereditary--one of the parents or near relation being afflicted. Physical or bodily weakness is often hereditary, such as scrofula, gout, rheumatism, rickets, consumption, apoplexy, hernia, urinary calculi, hemorrhoids or piles, cataract, etc. In fact, all physical weakness, if ingrafted in either parent, is transmitted from parents to offspring, and is often more strongly marked in the latter than in the former. 7. MARKS AND DEFORMITIES.--Marks and deformities are all transmissible from parents to offspring, equally with diseases and peculiar proclivities. Among such blemishes may be mentioned moles, hair-lips, deficient or supernumerary fingers, toes, and other characteristics. It is also asserted that dogs and cats that have accidentally lost their tails, bring forth young similarly deformed. Blumenbach tells of a man who had lost his little finger, having children with the same deformity. 8. CAUTION.--Taking facts like these into consideration, how very important is it for persons, before selecting partners for life, to deliberately weigh every element and circumstances of this nature, if they would insure a felicitous union, and not entail upon their posterity disease, misery and despair. Alas! in too many instances matrimony is made a matter of money, while all earthly joys are sacrificed upon the accursed altars of lust and mammon. [Illustration: Outdoor Sports Good Training For Morals As Well As Health.] * * * * * PREPARATION FOR MATERNITY. 1. WOMAN BEFORE MARRIAGE.--It is not too much to say that the life of women before marriage ought to be adjusted with more reference to their duties as mothers than to any other one earthly object. It is the continuance of the race which is the chief purpose of marriage. The passion of amativeness is probably, on the whole, the most powerful of all human impulses. Its purpose, however, is rather to subserve the object of continuing the species, than merely its own gratification. 2. EXERCISE.--Girls should be brought up to live much in the open air, always with abundant clothing against wet and cold. They should be encouraged to take much active exercise; as much, if they; want to, as boys. It is as good for little girls to run and jump, to ramble in the woods, to go boating, to ride and drive, to play and "have fun" generally, as for little boys. 3. PRESERVE THE SIGHT.--Children should be carefully prevented from using their eyes to read or write, or in any equivalent exertion, either before breakfast, by dim daylight, or by artificial light. Even school studies should be such that they can be dealt with by daylight. Lessons that cannot be learned without lamp-light study are almost certainly excessive. This precaution should ordinarily be maintained until the age of puberty is reached. 4. BATHING.--Bathing should be enforced according to constitutions, not by an invariable rule, except the invariable rule of keeping clean. Not necessarily every day, nor necessarily in cold water; though those conditions are doubtless often right in case of abundant physical health and strength. 5. WRONG HABITS.--The habit of daily natural evacuations should be solicitously formed and maintained. Words or figures could never express the discomforts and wretchedness which wrong habits in this particular have locked down upon innumerable women for years and even for life. 6. DRESS.--Dress should be warm, loose, comely, and modest rather than showy; but it should be good enough to Satisfy a child's desires after a good appearance, if they are reasonable. Children, indeed, should have all their reasonable desires granted as far as possible; for nothing makes them reasonable so rapidly and so surely as to treat them reasonably. 7. TIGHT LACING.--Great harm is often done to maidens for want of knowledge in them, or wisdom and care in their parents. The extremes of fashions are very prone to violate not only taste, but physiology. Such cases are tight lacing, low necked dresses, thin shoes, heavy skirts. And yet, if the ladies only knew, the most attractive costumes are not the extremes of fashion, but those which conform to fashion enough to avoid oddity, which preserve decorum and healthfulness, whether or no; and here is the great secret of successful dress--vary fashion so as to suit the style of the individual. 8. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.--Last of all, parental care in the use of whatever influence can be exerted in the matter of courtship and marriage. Maidens, as well as youths, must, after all, choose for themselves. It is their own lives which they take in their hands as they enter the marriage state, and not their parents; and as the consequences affect them primarily it is the plainest justice that with the responsibility should be joined the right of choice. The parental influence, then, must be indirect and advisory. Indirect, through the whole bringing up of their daughter; for if they have trained her aright, she will be incapable of enduring a fool, still more a knave. 9. A YOUNG WOMAN AND A YOUNG MAN HAD BETTER NOT BE ALONE TOGETHER VERY MUCH UNTIL THEY ARE MARRIED.--This will be found to prevent a good many troubles. It is not meant to imply that either sex, or any member of it, is worse than another, or bad at all, or anything but human. It is simply the prescription of a safe general rule. It is no more an imputation than the rule that people had better not be left without oversight in presence of large sums of other folks' money. The close personal proximity of the sexes is greatly undesirable before marriage. Kisses and caresses are most properly the monopoly of wives. Such indulgences have a direct and powerful physiological effect. Nay, they often lead to the most fatal results. 10. IGNORANCE BEFORE MARRIAGE.--At some time before marriage those who are to enter into it ought to be made acquainted with some of the plainest common-sense limitations which should govern their new relations to each other. Ignorance in such matters has caused an infinite amount of disgust, pain and unhappiness. It is not necessary to specify particulars here; see other portions of this work. [Illustration: A HEALTHY MOTHER.] * * * * * IMPREGNATION. 1. CONCEPTION OR IMPREGNATION.--Conception or impregnation takes place by the union of the male sperm and female sperm. Whether this is accomplished in the ovaries, the oviducts or the uterus, is still a question of discussion and investigation by physiologists. 2. PASSING OFF THE OVUM.--"With many women," says Dr. Stockham in her Tokology, "the ovum passes off within twenty-four or forty-eight hours after menstruation begins. Some, by careful observation, are able to know with certainty when this takes place. It is often accompanied with malaise, nervousness, headache or actual uterine pain. A minute substance like the white of an egg, with a fleck of blood in it, can frequently be seen upon the clothing. Ladies who have noticed this phenomenon testify to its recurring very regularly upon the same day after menstruation. Some delicate women have observed it as late as the fourteenth day." 3. CALCULATIONS.--Conception is more liable to take place either immediately before or immediately after the period, and, on that account it is usual when calculating the date at which to expect labor, to count from the day of disappearance of the last period. The easiest way to make a calculation is to count back three months from the date of the last period and add seven days; thus we might say that the date was the 18th of July; counting back brings us to the 18th of April, and adding the seven days will bring us to the 25th day of April, the expected time. 4. EVIDENCE OF CONCEPTION.--Very many medical authorities, distinguished in this line, have stated their belief that women never pass more than two or three days at the most beyond the forty weeks conceded to pregnancy--that is two hundred and eighty days or ten lunar months, or nine calendar months and a week. About two hundred and eighty days will represent the average duration of pregnancy, counting from the last day of the last period. Now it must be borne in mind, that there are many disturbing elements which might cause the young married woman to miss a time. During the first month of pregnancy there is no sign by which the condition may be positively known. The missing of a period, especially in a person who has, been regular for some time, may lead one to suspect it; but there are many attendant causes in married life, the little annoyances of household duties, embarrassments, and the enforced gayety which naturally surrounds the bride, and these should all be taken into consideration in the discussion as to whether or not she is pregnant. But then, again, there are some rare cases who have menstruated throughout their pregnancy, and also cases where menstruation was never established and pregnancy occurred. Nevertheless, the non-appearance of the period, with other signs, may be taken as presumptive evidence. 5. "ARTIFICIAL IMPREGNATION".--It may not be generally known that union is not essential to impregnation; it is possible for conception to occur without congress. All that is necessary is that seminal animalcules enter the womb and unite there with the egg or ovum. It is not essential that the semen be introduced through the medium of the male organ, as it has been demonstrated repeatedly that by means of a syringe and freshly obtained and healthy semen, impregnation can be made to follow by its careful introduction. There are physicians in France who make a specialty of "Artificial Impregnation," as it is called, and produce children to otherwise childless couples, being successful in many instances in supplying them as they are desired. * * * * * SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF PREGNANCY. 1. THE FIRST SIGN.--The first sign that leads a lady to suspect that she is pregnant is her ceasing-to-be-unwell. This, provided she has just before been in good health, is a strong symptom of pregnancy; but still there must be others to corroborate it. 2. ABNORMAL CONDITION.--Occasionally, women menstruate during the entire time of gestation. This, without doubt, is an abnormal condition, and should be remedied, as disastrous consequences may result. Also, women have been known to bear children who have never menstruated. The cases are rare of pregnancy taking place where menstruation has never occurred, yet it frequently happens that women never menstruate from one pregnancy to another. In these cases this symptom is ruled out for diagnotic purposes. 3. MAY PROCEED FROM OTHER CAUSES.--But a ceasing-to-be-unwell may proceed from other causes than that of pregnancy such as disease or disorder of the womb or of other organs of the body--especially of the lungs--it is not by itself alone entirely to be depended upon; although, as a single sign, it is, especially if the patient be healthy, one of the most reliable of all the other signs of pregnancy. [Illustration: EMBRYO OF TWENTY DAYS, LAID OPEN: _b_, the Back; _a a a_ Covering, and pinned to Back.] 4. MORNING SICKNESS.--If this does not arise from a disordered stomach, it is a trustworthy sign of pregnancy. A lady who has once had morning-sickness can always for the future distinguish it from each and from every other sickness; it is a peculiar sickness, which no other sickness can simulate. Moreover, it is emphatically a morning-sickness--the patient being, as a rule, for the rest of the day entirely free from sickness or from the feeling of sickness. 5. A THIRD SYMPTOM.--A third symptom is shooting, throbbing and lancinating pains in, and enlargement of the breasts, with soreness of the nipples, occurring about the second month. In some instances, after the first few months, a small quantity of watery fluid or a little milk, may be squeezed out or them. This latter symptom, in a first pregnancy, is valuable, and can generally be relied on as fairly conclusive of pregnancy. Milk in the breast, however small it may be in quantity, especially in a first pregnancy, is a reliable sign, indeed, we might say, a certain sign, of pregnancy. 6. A DARK BROWN AREOLA OR MARK around the nipple is one of the distinguishing signs of pregnancy--more especially of a first pregnancy. Women who have had large families, seldom, even when they are not pregnant, lose this mark entirely; but when they are pregnant it is more intensely dark--the darkest brown--especially if they be brunettes. 7. QUICKENING.--Quickening is one of the most important signs of pregnancy, and one of the most valuable, as at the moment it occurs, as a rule, the motion of the child is first felt, whilst, at the same time, there is a sudden increase in the size of the abdomen. Quickening is a proof that nearly half the time of pregnancy has passed. If there be liability to miscarry, quickening makes matters more safe, as there is less likelihood of a miscarriage after than before it. A lady at this time frequently feels faint or actually faints away; she is often giddy, or sick, or nervous, and in some instances even hysterically; although, in rare cases, some women do not even know the precise time when they quicken. 8. INCREASED SIZE AND HARDNESS OF THE ABDOMEN.--This is very characteristic of pregnancy. When a lady is not pregnant the abdomen is soft and flaccid; when she is pregnant, and after she has quickened, the abdomen; over the region of the womb, is hard and resisting. [Illustration: EMBRYO AT THIRTY DAYS _a_, the Head; _b_, the Eyes; _d_ the Neck; _e_, the Chest; _f_, the Abdomen.] 9. EXCITABILITY OF MIND.--Excitability of mind is very common in pregnancy, more especially if the patient be delicate; indeed, excitability is a sign of debility, and requires plenty of good nourishment, but few stimulants. 10. ERUPTIONS ON THE SKIN.--Principally on the face, neck, or throat, are tell-tales of pregnancy, and to an experienced matron, publish the fact that an acquaintance thus marked is pregnant. 11. THE FOETAL HEART.--In the fifth month there is a sign which, if detected, furnishes indubitable evidence of conception, and that is the sound of the child's heart. If the ear be placed on the abdomen, over the womb, the beating of the foetal heart can sometimes be heard quite plainly, and by the use of an instrument called the stethoscope, the sounds can be still more plainly heard. This is a very valuable sign, inasmuch as the presence of the child is not only ascertained, but also its position, and whether there are twins or more. [Illustration: Baby Elizabeth, Brought Into the World by the "Twilight Sleep" Method. It Robs Child Bearing of Most of Its Terrors.] * * * * * DISEASES OF PREGNANCY. 1. COSTIVE STATE OF THE BOWELS.--A costive state of the bowels is common in pregnancy; a mild laxative is therefore occasionally necessary. The mildest must be selected, as a strong purgative is highly improper, and even dangerous. Calomel and all other preparations of mercury are to be especially avoided, as a mercurial medicine is apt to weaken the system, and sometimes even to produce a miscarriage. Let me again urge the importance of a lady, during the whole period of pregnancy, being particular as to the state of her bowels, as costiveness is a fruitful cause of painful, tedious and hard labors. 2. LAXATIVES.--The best laxatives are caster oil, salad oil, compound rhubarb pills, honey, stewed prunes, stewed rhubarb, Muscatel raisins, figs, grapes, roasted apples, baked pears, stewed Normandy pippins, coffee, brown-bread and treacle. Scotch oatmeal made with new milk or water, or with equal parts of milk and water. 3. PILLS.--When the motions are hard, and when the bowels are easily acted upon, two, or three, or four pills made of Castile soap will frequently answer the purpose; and if they will, are far better than any other ordinary laxative. The following is a good form. Take of: Castile Soap, five scruples; Oil of Caraway, six drops; To make twenty-four pills. Two, or three, or four to be taken at bedtime, occasionally. 4. HONEY.--A teaspoonful of honey, either eaten at breakfast or dissolved in a cup of tea, will frequently, comfortably and effectually, open the bowels, and will supersede the necessity of taking laxative medicine. 5. NATURE'S MEDICINES.--Now, Nature's medicines--exercise in the open air, occupation, and household duties--on the contrary, not only at the time open the bowels, but keep up a proper action for the future; her--their inestimable superiority. 6. WARM WATER INJECTIONS.--An excellent remedy for costiveness of pregnancy is an enema, either of warm water, or of Castile soap and water, which the patient, by means of a self-injecting enema-apparatus, may administer to herself. The quantity of warm water to be used, is from half a pint to a pint; the proper heat is the temperature of new milk; the time for administering it is early in the morning, twice or three times a week. 7. MUSCULAR PAINS OF THE ABDOMEN.--The best remedy is an abdominal belt constructed for pregnancy, and adjusted with proper straps and buckles to accomodate the gradually increasing size of the womb. This plan often affords great comfort and relief; indeed, such a belt is indispensably necessary. 8. DIARRHEA.--Although the bowels in pregnancy are generally costive, they are sometimes in an opposite state, and are relaxed. Now, this relaxation is frequently owing to there having been prolonged constipation, and Nature is trying to relieve herself by purging. Do not check it, but allow it to have its course, and take a little rhubarb or magnesia. The diet should be simple, plain, and nourishing, and should consist of beef tea, chicken broth, arrow-root, and of well-made and well-boiled oatmeal gruel. Butcher's meat, for a few days, should not be eaten; and stimulants of all kinds must be avoided. 9. FIDGETS.--A pregnant lady sometimes suffers severely from "fidgets"; it generally affects her feet and legs, especially at night, so as to entirely destroy her sleep; she cannot lie still; she every few minutes moves, tosses and tumbles about--first on one side, then on the other. The causes of "fidgets" are a heated state of the blood; an irritable condition of the nervous system, prevailing at that particular time; and want of occupution. The treatment of "fidgets" consists of: sleeping in a well-ventilated apartment, with either window or door open; a thorough ablution of the whole body every morning, and a good washing with tepid water of the face, neck, chest, arms and hands every night; shunning hot and close rooms; taking plenty of out-door exercise; living on a bland, nourishing, put not rich diet; avoiding meat at night, and substituting in lieu thereof, either a cupful of arrow-root made with milk, or of well-boiled oatmeal gruel. 10. EXERCISE.--If a lady, during the night, have the "fidgets," she should get out of bed; take a short walk up and down the room, being well protected by a dressing-gown; empty her bladders turn, her pillow, so as to have the cold side next the head; and then lie down again; and the chances are that she will now fall asleep. If during the day she have the "fidgets," a ride in an open carriage; or a stroll in the garden, or in the fields; or a little housewifery, will do her good, and there is nothing like fresh air, exercise, and occupation to drive away "the fidgets." 11. HEARTBURN.--Heartburn is a common and often a distressing symptom of pregnancy. The acid producing the heartburn is frequently much increased by an overloaded stomach. An abstemious diet ought to be strictly observed. Great attention should be paid to the quality of the food. Greens, pastry, hot buttered toast, melted butter, and everything that is rich and gross, ought to be carefully avoided. Either a teaspoonful of heavy calcined magnesia, or half a teaspoonful of carbonate of soda--the former to be preferred if there be constipation--should occasionally be taken in a wine-glassful of warm water. If these do not relieve--the above directions as to diet having been strictly attended to--the following mixture ought to be tried. Take of: Carbonate of Ammonia, half a drachm; Bicarbonate of Soda, a drachm and a half; Water, eight ounces; To make a mixture: Two tablespoonfuls to be taken twice or three times a day, until relief be obtained. 12. WIND IN THE STOMACH AND BOWELS.--This is a frequent reason why a pregnant lady cannot sleep at night. The two most frequent causes of flatulence are, first, the want of walking exercise during the day, and second, the eating of a hearty meal just before going to bed at night. The remedies are, of course, in each instance, self-evident. 13. SWOLLEN LEGS FROM ENLARGED VEINS (VARICOSE VEINS.)--The veins are frequently much enlarged and distended, causing the legs to be greatly swollen and very painful, preventing the patient from taking proper walking exercise. Swollen legs are owing to the pressure of the womb upon the blood-vessels above. Women who have had large families are more liable than others to varicose veins. If a lady marry late in life, or if she be very heavy in pregnancy carrying the child low down she is more likely to have distention of the veins. The best plan will be for her to wear during the day an elastic stocking, which ought to be made on purpose for her, in order that it may properly fit the leg and foot. 14. STRETCHING OF THE SKIN OF THE ABDOMEN. This is frequently, in a first pregnancy, distressing, from the soreness it causes. The best remedy is to rub the abdomen, every night and morning, with warm camphorated oil, and to wear a belt during the day and a broad flannel bandage at night, both of which should be put on moderately but comfortably tight. The belt must be secured in its situation by means of properly adjusted straps. 15. BEFORE THE APPROACH OF LABOR.--The patient, before the approach of labor, ought to take particular care to have the bowels gently opened, as during that state a costive state greatly increases her sufferings, and lengthens the period of her labor. A gentle action is all that is necessary; a violent one would do more harm than good. 16. SWOLLEN AND PAINFUL BREASTS. The breasts are, at times, during pregnancy, much swollen and very painful; and, now and then, they; cause the patient great uneasiness, as she fancies that she is going to have either some dreadful tumor or a gathering of the bosom. There need, in such a case, be no apprehension. The swelling and the pain are the consequences of the pregnancy, and will in due time subside without any unpleasant result. For treatment she cannot do better than rub them well, every night and morning, with equal parts of Eau de Cologne and olive oil, and wear a piece of new flannel over them; taking care to cover the nipples with soft linen, as the friction of the flannel might irritate them. 17. BOWEL COMPLAINTS. Bowel complaints, during pregnancy, are not unfrequent. A dose either of rhubarb and magnesia, or of castor oil, are the best remedies, and are generally, in the way of medicine, all that is necessary. 18. CRAMPS. Cramps of the legs and of the thighs during the latter period, and especially at night, are apt to attend pregnancy, and are caused by the womb pressing upon the nerves which extend to the lower extremities. Treatment. Tightly tie a handkerchief, folded like a neckerchief, round the limb a little above the part affected, and let it remain on for a few minutes. Friction by means of the hand either with opodeldoc or with laudanum, taking care not to drink the lotion by mistake, will also give relief. 19. THE WHITES. The whites during pregnancy, especially during the latter months, and particularly if the lady have had many children, are frequently troublesome, and are, in a measure, occasioned by the pressure of the womb on the parts below, causing irritation. The best way, therefore, to obviate such pressure is for the patient to lie down a great part of each day either on a bed or a sofa. She ought to retire early to rest: she should sleep on a hair mattress and in a well ventilated apartment, and should not overload her bed with clothes. A thick, heavy quilt at these times, and indeed at all times, is particularly objectionable; the perspiration cannot pass readily through it as through blankets, and thus she is weakened. She ought to live on plain, wholesome, nourishing food; and she must abstain from beer and wine and spirits. The bowels ought to be gently opened by means of a Seidlitz powder, which should occasionally be taken early in the morning. [Illustration: A PRECIOUS FLOWER.] 20. IRRITATION AND ITCHING OF THE EXTERNAL PARTS.--This is a most troublesome affection, and may occur at any time, but more especially during the latter period of the pregnancy. Let her diet be simple and nourishing; let her avoid stimulants of all kinds. Let her take a sitz-bath of warm water, considerably salted. Let her sit in the bath with the body thoroughly covered. 21. HOT AND INFLAMED.--The external parts, and the passage to the womb (vagina), in these cases, are not only irritable and itching, but are sometimes hot and inflamed, and are covered either with small pimples, or with a whitish exudation of the nature of aphtha (thrush), somewhat similar to the thrush on the mouth of an infant; then, the addition of glycerine to the lotion is a great improvement and usually gives much relief. 22. BILIOUSNESS[Footnote: Some of these valuable suggestions are taken from "Parturition Without Pain," by Dr. M.L. Holbrook.] is defined by some one as piggishness. Generally it may be regarded as _overfed_. The elements of the bile are in the blood in excess of the power of the liver to eliminate them. This may be caused either from the superabundance of the materials from which the bile is made or by inaction of the organ itself. Being thus retained the system is _clogged_. It is the result of either too much food in quantity or too rich in quality. Especially is it caused by the excessive use of _fats and sweets_. The simplest remedy is the best. A plain, light diet with plenty of acid fruits, avoiding fats and sweets, will ameliorate or remove it. Don't force the appetite. Let hunger demand food. In the morning the sensitiveness of the stomach may be relieved by taking before rising a cup of hot water, hot milk, hot lemonade, rice or barley water, selecting according to preference. For this purpose many find coffee made from browned wheat or corn the best drink. Depend for a time upon liquid food that can be taken up by absorbents. The juice of lemons and other acid fruits is usually grateful, and assists in assimilating any excess in nutriment. These may be diluted according to taste. With many, an egg lemonade proves relishing and acceptable. 23. DERANGED APPETITE.--Where the appetite fails, let the patient go without eating for a little while, say for two or three meals. If, however, the strength begins to go, try the offering of some unexpected delicacy; or give small quantities of nourishing food, as directed in case of morning sickness. 24. PILES.--For cases of significance consult a physician. As with constipation, so with piles, its frequent result, fruit diet, exercise, and sitz-bath regimen will do much to prevent the trouble. Frequent local applications of a cold compress, and even of ice, and tepid water injections, are of great service. Walking or standing aggravate this complaint. Lying down alleviates it. Dr. Shaw says, "There is nothing in the world that will produce so great relief in piles as fasting. If the fit is severe, live a whole day, or even two, if necessary, upon pure soft cold water alone. Give then very lightly of vegetable food." 25. TOOTHACHE.--There is a sort of proverb that a woman loses one tooth every time she has a child. Neuralgic toothache during pregnancy is, at any rate, extremely common, and often has to be endured. It is generally thought not best to have teeth extracted during pregnancy, as the shock to the nervous system has sometimes caused miscarriage. To wash out the mouth morning and night with cold or lukewarm water and salt is often of use. If the teeth are decayed, consult a good dentist in the early stages of pregnancy, and have the offending teeth properly dressed. Good dentists, in the present state of the science, extract very few teeth, but save them. 26. SALIVATION.--Excessive secretion of the saliva has usually been reckoned substantially incurable. Fasting, cold water treatment, exercise and fruit diet may be relied on to prevent, cure or alleviate it, where this is possible, as it frequently is. 27. HEADACHE.--This is, perhaps, almost as common in cases of pregnancy as "morning sickness." It may be from determination of blood to the head, from constipation or indigestion, constitutional "sick headache," from neuralgia, from a cold, from rheumatism. Correct living will prevent much headache trouble; and where this does not answer the purpose, rubbing and making magnetic passes over the head by the hand of some healthy magnetic person will often prove of great service. 28. LIVER-SPOTS.--These, on the face, must probably be endured, as no trustworthy way of driving them off is known. 29. JAUNDICE.--See the doctor. 30. PAIN ON THE RIGHT SIDE.--This is liable to occur from about the fifth to the eighth month, and is attributed to the pressure of the enlarging womb upon the liver. Proper living is most likely to alleviate it. Wearing a wet girdle in daytime or a wet compress at night, sitz-baths, and friction with the wet hand may also be tried. If the pain is severe a mustard poultice may be used. Exercise should be carefully moderated if found to increase the pain. If there is fever and inflammation with it, consult a physician. It is usually not dangerous, but uncomfortable only. 31. PALPITATION OF THE HEART.--To be prevented by healthy living and calm, good humor. Lying down will often gradually relieve it, so will a compress wet with water, as hot as can be borne, placed over the heart and renewed as often as it gets cool. 32. FAINTING.--Most likely to be caused by "quickening," or else by tight dress, bad air, over-exertion, or other unhealthy living. It is not often dangerous. Lay the patient in an easy posture, the head rather low than high, and where cool air may blow across the face; loosen the dress if tight; sprinkle cold water on the face and hands. 33. SLEEPLESSNESS.--Most likely to be caused by incorrect living, and to be prevented and cured by the opposite. A glass or two of cold water drank deliberately on going to bed often helps one to go to sleep; so does bathing the face and hands and the feet in cold water. A short nap in the latter part of the forenoon can sometimes be had, and is of use. Such a nap ought not to be too long, or it leaves a heavy feeling; it should be sought with the mind in a calm state, in a well-ventilated though darkened room, and with the clothing removed, as at night. A similar nap in the afternoon is not so good, but is better than nothing. The tepid sitz-bath on going to bed will often produce sleep, and so will gentle percussion given by an attendant with palms of the hand over the back for a few minutes on retiring. To secure sound sleep do not read, write or severely tax the mind in the evening. * * * * * MORNING SICKNESS. 1. A pregnant woman is especially liable to suffer many forms of dyspepsia, nervous troubles, sleeplessness, etc. 2. MORNING SICKNESS is the most common and is the result of an irritation in the womb, caused by some derangement, and it is greatly irritated by the habit of indulging in sexual gratification during pregnancy. If people would imitate the lower animals and reserve the vital forces of the mother for the benefit of her unborn child, it would be a great boon to humanity. Morning sickness may begin the next day after conception, but it usually appears from two to three weeks after the beginning of pregnancy and continues with more or less severity from two to four months. 3. HOME TREATMENT FOR MORNING SICKNESS.--Avoid all highly seasoned and rich food. Also avoid strong tea and coffee. Eat especially light and simple suppers at five o'clock and no later than six. Some simple broths, such as will be found in the cooking department of this book will be very nourishing and soothing. Coffee made from brown wheat or corn is an excellent remedy to use. The juice of lemons reduced with water will sometimes prove very effectual. A good lemonade with an egg well stirred is very nourishing and toning to the stomach. 4. HOT FOMENTATION on the stomach and liver is excellent, and warm and hot water injections are highly beneficial. 5. A little powdered magnesia at bed time, taken in a little milk, will often give almost permanent relief. 6. Avoid corsets or any other pressure upon the stomach. All garments must be worn loosely. In many cases this will entirely prevent all stomach disturbances. * * * * * RELATION OF HUSBAND AND WIFE DURING PREGNANCY. 1. MISCARRIAGE.--If the wife is subject to miscarriage every precaution should be employed to prevent its happening again. Under such exceptional circumstances the husband should sleep apart the first five months of pregnancy; after that length of time, the ordinary relation may be assumed. If miscarriage has taken place, intercourse should be avoided for a month or six weeks at least after the accident. 2. IMPREGNATION.--Impregnation is the only mission of intercourse, and after that has taken place, intercourse can subserve no other purpose than sensual gratification. 3. WOMAN MUST JUDGE.--Every man should recognize the fact that woman is the sole umpire as to when, how frequent, and under what circumstances, connection should take place. Her desires should not be ignored, for her likes and dislikes are--as seen in another part of this book--easily impressed upon the unborn child. If she is strong and healthy there is no reason why passion should not be gratified with moderation and caution during the whole period of pregnancy, but she must be the sole judge and her desires supreme. 4. VOLUNTARY INSTANCES.--No voluntary instances occur through the entire animal kingdom. All females repel with force and fierceness the approaches of the male. The human family is the only exception. A man that loves his wife, however, will respect her under all circumstances and recognize her condition and yield to her wishes. * * * * * A PRIVATE WORD TO THE EXPECTANT MOTHER. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in a lecture to ladies, thus strongly states her views regarding maternity and painless childbirth: "We must educate our daughters to think that motherhood is grand, and that God never cursed it. And this curse, if it be a curse, may be rolled off, as man has rolled away the curse of labor; as the curse has been rolled from the descendants of Ham. My mission is to preach this new gospel. If you suffer, it is not because you are cursed of God, but because you violate His laws. What an incubus it would take from woman could she be educated to know that the pains of maternity are no curse upon her kind. We know that among the Indians the squaws do not suffer in childbirth. They will step aside from the ranks, even on the march, and return in a short time to them with the new-born child. What an absurdity then, to suppose that only enlightened Christian women are cursed. But one word of fact is worth a volume of philosophy; let me give you some of my own experience. I am the mother of seven children. My girlhood was spent mostly in the open air. I early imbibed the idea that a girl was just as good as a boy, and I carried it out. I would walk five miles before breakfast or ride ten on horseback. After I was married I wore my clothing sensibly. Their weight hung entirely on my shoulders. I never compressed my body out of its natural shape. When my first four children were born, I suffered very little. I then made up my mind that it was totally unnecessary for me to suffer at all; so I dressed lightly, walked every day, lived as much as possible in the open air, ate no condiments or spices, kept quiet, listened to music, looked at pictures, and took proper care of myself. The night before the birth of the child I walked three miles. The child was born without a particle of pain. I bathed it and dressed it, and it weighed ten and one-half pounds. That same day I dined with the family. Everybody said I would surely die, but I never had a relapse or a moment's inconvenience from it. I know this is not being delicate and refined, but if you would be vigorous and healthy, in spite of the diseases of your ancestors, and your own disregard of nature's laws, try it." * * * * * SHALL PREGNANT WOMEN WORK? 1. OVER-WORKED MOTHERS.--Children born of over-worked mothers, are liable to a be dwarfed and puny race. However, their chances are better than those of the children of inactive, dependent, indolent mothers who have neither brain nor muscle to transmit to son or daughter. The truth seems to be that excessive labor, with either body or mind, is alike injurious to both men and women; and herein lies the sting of that old curse. This paragraph suggests all that need be said on the question whether pregnant women should or should not labor. 2. FOOLISHLY IDLE.--At least it is certain that they should not be foolishly idle; and on the other hand, it is equally certain that they should be relieved from painful laborious occupations that exhaust and unfit them for happiness. Pleasant and useful physical and intellectual occupation, however, will not only do no harm, but positive good. 3. THE BEST MAN AND THE BEST WOMAN.--The best man is he who can rear the best child, and the best woman is she who can rear the best child. We very properly extol to the skies Harriet Hosmer, the artist, for cutting in marble the statue of a Zenobia; how much more should we sing praises to the man and the woman who bring into the world a noble boy or girl. The one is a piece of lifeless beauty, the other a piece of life Including all beauty, all possibilities. [Illustration] * * * * * WORDS FOR YOUNG MOTHERS. The act of nursing is sometimes painful to the mother, especially before the habit is fully established. The discomfort is greatly increased if the skin that covers the nipples is tender and delicate. The suction pulls it off leaving them in a state in which the necessary pressure of the child's lips cause intense agony. This can be prevented in a great measure, says Elizabeth Robinson Scovil, in _Ladies' Home Journal_, if not entirely, by bathing the nipples twice a day for six weeks before the confinement with powdered alum dissolved in alcohol; or salt dissolved in brandy. If there is any symptom of the skin cracking when the child begins; to nurse, they should be painted with a mixture of tannin and glycerine. This must be washed off before the baby touches them and renewed when it leaves them. If they are very painful, the doctor will probably order morphia added to the mixture. A rubber nipple shield to be put on at the time of nursing, is a great relief. If the nipples are retracted or drawn inward, they can be drawn out painlessly by filling a pint bottle with boiling water, emptying it and quickly applying the mouth over the nipple. As the air in the bottle cools, it condenses, leaving a vacuum and the nipple is pushed out by the air behind it. When the milk accumulates or "cakes" in the breast in hard patches, they should be rubbed very gently, from the base upwards, with warm camphorated oil. The rubbing should be the lightest, most delicate stroking, avoiding pressure. If lumps appear at the base of the breast and it is red swollen and painful, cloths wrung out of cold water should be applied and the doctor sent for. While the breast is full and hard all over, not much apprehension need be felt. It is when lumps appear that the physician should be notified, that he may, if possible, prevent the formation of abscesses. While a woman is nursing she should eat plenty of nourishing food--milk, oatmeal, cracked wheat, and good juicy, fresh meat, boiled, roasted, or broiled, but not fried. Between each meal, before going to bed, and once during the night, she should take a cup of cocoa, gruel made with milk; good beef tea, mutton broth, or any warm, nutritive drink. Tea and coffee are to be avoided. It is important to keep the digestion in order and the bowels should be carefully regulated as a means to this end. If necessary, any of the laxative mineral waters can be used for this purpose, or a teaspoonful of compound licorice powder taken at night. Powerful cathartic medicines should be avoided because of their effect upon the baby. The child should be weaned at nine months old, unless this time comes in very hot weather, or the infant is so delicate that a change of food would be injurious. If the mother is not strong her nurseling will sometimes thrive better upon artificial food than on its natural nourishment. By gradually lengthening the interval between the nursing and feeding the child, when it is hungry, the weaning can be accomplished without much trouble. A young mother should wear warm underclothing, thick stockings and a flannel jacket over her night dress, unless she is in the habit of wearing an under vest. If the body is not protected by warm clothing there is an undue demand upon the nervous energy to keep up the vital heat, and nerve force is wasted by the attempt to compel the system to do what ought to be done for it by outside means. [Illustration] * * * * * HOW TO HAVE BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN. 1. PARENTAL INFLUENCE.--The art of having handsome children has been a question that has interested the people of all ages and of all nationalities. There is no longer a question as to the influence that parents may and do exert upon their offspring, and it is shown in other parts of this book that beauty depends largely on the condition of health at the time of conception. It is therefore of no little moment that parents should guard carefully their own health as well as that of their children, that they may develop a vigorous constitution. There cannot be beauty without good health. 2. MARRYING TOO EARLY.--We know that marriage at too early an age, or too late in life, is apt to produce imperfectly developed children, both mentally and physically. The causes are self-evident: A couple marrying too young, they lack maturity and consequently will impart weakness to their offspring; while on the other hand persons marrying late in life fail to find that normal condition which is conducive to the health and vigor of offspring. 3. CROSSING OF TEMPERAMENTS AND NATIONALITIES.--The Crossing of temperaments and nationalities beautifies offspring. If young persons of different nationalities marry, their children under proper hygienic laws are generally handsome and healthy. For instance, an American and German or an Irish and German uniting in marriage, produces better looking children than those marrying in the same nationality. Persons of different temperaments uniting in marriage, always produces a good effect upon offspring. 4. THE PROPER TIME.--To obtain the best results, conception should take place only when both parties are in the best physical condition. If either parent is in any way indisposed at the time of conception the results will be seen in the health of the child. Many children brought in the world with diseases or other infirmities stamped upon their feeble frames show the indiscretion and ignorance of parents. 5. DURING PREGNANCY.--During pregnancy the mother should take time for self improvement and cultivate an interest for admiring beautiful pictures or engravings which represent cheerful and beautiful figures. Secure a few good books illustrating art, with some fine representations of statues and other attractive pictures. The purchase of several illustrated an journals might answer the purpose. 6. WHAT TO AVOID.--Pregnant mothers should avoid thinking of ugly people, or those marked by any deformity or disease; avoid injury, fright and disease of any kind. Also avoid ungraceful position and awkward attitude, but cultivate grace and beauty in herself. Avoid difficulty with neighbors or other trouble. 7. GOOD CARE.--She should keep herself in good physical condition, and the system well nourished, as a want of food always injures the child. 8. THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND.--The mother should read suitable articles in newspapers or good books, keep her mind occupied. If she cultivates a desire for intellectual improvement, the same desire will be more or less manifested in the growth and development of the child. 9. LIKE PRODUCES LIKE, everywhere and always--in general forms and in particular features--in mental qualities and in bodily conditions--in tendencies of thought and in habits of action. Let this grand truth be deeply impressed upon the hearts of all who desire or expect to become parents. 10. HEREDITY.--Male children generally inherit the peculiar traits and diseases of the mother and female children those of the father. 11. ADVICE.--Therefore it is urged that during the period of utero-gestation, especial pains should be taken to render the life of the female as harmonious as possible, that her surroundings should all be of a nature calculated to inspire the mind with thoughts of physical and mental beauties and perfections, and that she should be guarded against all influences, of whatever character, having a deteriorative tendency. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY.] * * * * * EDUCATION OF THE CHILD IN THE WOMB. "A lady once interviewed a prominent college president and asked him when the education of a child should begin. 'Twenty-five years before it is born,' was the prompt reply." No better answer was ever given to that question Every mother may well consider it. 1. THE UNBORN CHILD AFFECTED BY THE THOUGHTS AND THE SURROUNDINGS OF THE MOTHER.--That the child is affected in the womb of the mother, through the influences apparently connected with objects by which she is surrounded, appears to have been well known in ancient days, as well as at the present time. 2. EVIDENCES.--Many evidences are found in ancient history, especially among the refined nations, showing that certain expedients were resorted to by which their females, during the period of utero-gestation, were surrounded by the superior refinements of the age, with the hope of thus making upon them impressions which should have the effect of communicating certain desired qualities to the offspring. For this reason apartments were adorned with statuary and paintings, and special pains were taken not only to convey favorable impressions, but also to guard against unfavorable ones being made, upon the mind of the pregnant woman. 3. HANKERING AFTER GIN.--A certain mother while pregnant, longed for gin, which could not be gotten; and her child cried incessantly for six weeks till gin was given it, which it eagerly clutched and drank with ravenous greediness, stopped crying, and became healthy. 4. BEGIN TO EDUCATE CHILDREN AT CONCEPTION, and continue during their entire carriage. Yet maternal study, of little account before the sixth, after it, is most promotive of talents; which, next to goodness are the father's joy and the mother's pride. What pains are taken after they are born, to render them prodigies of learning, by the best of schools and teachers from their third year; whereas their mother's study, three months before their birth, would improve their intellects infinitely more. 5. MOTHERS, DOES GOD THUS PUT the endowment of your darlings into your moulding power? Then tremble in view of its necessary responsibilities, and learn how to wield them for their and your temporal and eternal happiness. [Illustration] 6. QUALITIES OF THE MIND.--The Qualities of the mind are perhaps as much liable to hereditary transmission as bodily configuration. Memory, intelligence, judgment, imagination, passions, diseases, and what is usually called genius, are often very markedly traced in the offspring.--I have known mental impressions forcibly impressed upon the offspring at the time of conception, as concomitant of some peculiar eccentricity, idiosyncrasy, morbidness, waywardness, irritability, or proclivity of either one or both parents. 7. THE PLASTIC BRAIN.--The plastic brain of the foetus is prompt to receive all impressions. It retains them, and they become the characteristics of the child and the man. Low spirits, violent passions, irritability, frivolity, in the pregnant woman, leave indelible marks on the unborn child. 8. FORMATION OF CHARACTER.--I believe that pre-natal influences may do as much in the formation of character as all the education that can come after, and that mothers may, in a measure, "will," what that influence shall be, and that, as knowledge on the subject increases, it will be more and more under their control. In that, as in everything else, things that would be possible with one mother would not be with another, and measures that would be successful with one would produce opposite results from the other. 9. A HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATION.--A woman rode side by side with her soldier husband, and witnessed the drilling of troops for battle. The scene inspired her with a deep longing to see a battle and share in the excitements of the conquerors. This was but a few months before her boy was born, and his name was Napoleon. 10. A MUSICIAN.--The following was reported by Dr. F.W. Moffatt, in the mother's own language, "When I was first pregnant, I wished my offspring to be a musician, so, during the period of that pregnancy, settled my whole mind on music, and attended every musical entertainment I possibly could. I had my husband, who has a violin, to play for me by the hour. When the child was born, it was a girl, which grew and prospered, and finally became an expert musician." 11. MURDEROUS INTENT.--The mother of a young man, who was hung not long ago, was heard to say: "I tried to get rid of him before he was born; and, oh, how I wish now that I had succeeded!" She added that it was the only time she had attempted anything of the sort; but, because of home troubles, she became desperate, and resolved that her burdens should not be made any greater. Does it not seem probable that the murderous intent, even though of short duration, was communicated to the mind of the child, and resulted in the crime for which he was hung? 12. THE ASSASSIN OF GARFIELD.--Guiteau's father was a man of integrity and conquerable intellectual ability. His children were born in quick succession, and the mother was obliged to work very hard. Before this child was born, she resorted to every means, though unsuccessful, to produce abortion. The world knows the result. Guiteau's whole life was full of contradictions. There was little self-controlling power in him; no common sense, and not a vestige or remorse or shame. In his wild imagination, he believed himself capable of doing the greatest work and of filling the loftiest station in life. Who will dare question that this mother's effort to destroy him while in embryo was the main cause in bringing him to the level of the brutes? 13. CAUTION.--Any attempt, on the part of the mother, to destroy her child before birth, is liable, if unsuccessful, to produce murderous tendencies. Even harboring murderous thoughts, whether toward her own child or not, might be followed by similar results. "The great King of kings Hath in the table of His law commanded That thou shall do no murder. Wilt thou, then, Spurn at His edict, and fulfill a man's? Take heed, for He holds vengeance in His hand To hurl upon their heads that break his law." --RICHARD III., _Act I._ [Illustration: The Embryo In Sixty Days.] * * * * * HOW TO CALCULATE THE TIME OF EXPECTED LABOR. 1. The table on the opposite page has been very accurately compiled, and will be very helpful to those who desire the exact time. 2. The duration of pregnancy is from 278 to 280 days, or nearly forty weeks. The count should be made from the beginning of the last menstruation, and add eight days on account of the possibility of it occurring within that period. The heavier the child the longer is the duration; the younger the woman the longer time it often requires. The duration is longer in married than in unmarried women; the duration is liable to be longer if the child is a female. 3. MOVEMENT.--The first movement is generally felt on the 135th day after impregnation. 4. GROWTH OF THE EMBRYO.--About the twentieth day the embryo resembles the appearance of an ant or lettuce seed; the 30th day the embryo is as large as a common horse fly; the 40th day the form resembles that of a person; in sixty days the limbs begin to form, and in four months the embryo takes the name of foetus. 5. Children born after seven or eight months can survive and develop to maturity. [Illustration: DURATION OF PREGNANCY.] DIRECTIONS.--Find in the upper horizontal line the date on which the last menstruation ceased; the figure beneath gives the date of expected confinement (280 days). Jan. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Oct. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Jan. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Oct. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Nov. Feb. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Nov. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Feb. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Nov. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Dec. Mar. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Dec. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Mar. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Dec. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 Jan. Apr. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Jan. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Apr. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Jan. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 Feb. May 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Feb. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 May 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Feb. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mar. June 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Mar. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 June 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Mar. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 Apr. July 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Apr. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 July 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Apr. 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 May Aug. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 May 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Aug. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 May 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 June Sep. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 June 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Sep. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 June 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 July Oct. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 July 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Oct. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 July 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Aug. Nov. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Aug. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Nov. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Aug. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 Sep. Dec. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Sep. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Dec. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Sep. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Oct. [Illustration: If menstruation ceased Oct. 31, the confinement will take place July 18.] * * * * * THE SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF LABOR. 1. Although the majority of patients, a day or two before the labor comes on, are more bright and cheerful, some few are more anxious, fanciful, fidgety and reckless. 2. A few days, sometimes a few hours, before labor commences, the child "falls" as it is called; that is to say, there is a subsidence--a dropping--of the womb lower down the abdomen. This is the reason why she feels lighter and more comfortable, and more inclined to take exercise, and why she can breathe more freely. 3. The only inconvenience of the dropping of the womb is, that the womb presses more on the bladder, and sometimes causes an irritability of that organ, inducing a frequent desire to make water. The wearing the obstetric belt, as so particularly enjoined in previous pages, will greatly mitigate this inconvenience. 4. The subsidence--the dropping--of the womb may then be considered one of the earliest of the precursory symptoms of child-birth, and as the herald of the coming event. 5. She has, at this time, an increased moisture of the vagina--the passage leading to the womb--and of the external parts. She has, at length, slight pains, and then she has a "show," as it is called; which is the coming away of a mucous plug which, during pregnancy, had hermetically sealed up the mouth of the womb. The "show" is generally tinged with a little blood. When a "show" takes place, she may rest assured that labor has actually commenced. One of the early symptoms of labor is a frequent desire to relieve the bladder. 6. She ought not, on any account, unless it be ordered by the medical man, to take any stimulant as a remedy for the shivering. In case of shivering or chills, a cup either of hot lea or of hot gruel will be the best remedy for the shivering; and an extra blanket or two should be thrown over her, and be well tucked around her, in order to thoroughly exclude the air from the body. The extra clothing, as soon as she is warm and perspiring, should be gradually removed, as she ought not to be kept very hot, or it will weaken her, and will thus retard her labor. 7. She must not, on any account, force down--as her female friends or as a "pottering" old nurse may advise--to "grinding pains"; if sue does, it will rather retard than forward her labor. 8. During this stage, she had better walk about or sit down, and not confine herself to bed; indeed, there is no necessity for her, unless she particularly desire it, to remain in her chamber. 9. After an uncertain length of time, the pains alter in character. From being "grinding" they become "bearing down," and more regular and frequent, and the skin becomes both hot and perspiring. These may be considered the true labor-pains. The patient ought to bear in mind then that "true labor-pains" are situated in the back, and loins; they come on at regular intervals, rise gradually up to a certain pitch of intensity, and abate as gradually; it is a dull, heavy, deep sort of pain, producing occasionally a low moan from the patient; not sharp or twinging, which would elicit a very different expression of suffering from her. 10. Labor--and truly it maybe called, "labor." The fiat has gone forth that in "sorrow thou shalt bring forth children." Young, in his "Night Thoughts," beautifully expresses the common lot of women to suffer: "'Tis the common lot; in this shape, or in that, has fate entailed The mother's throes on all of women born, Not more the children than sure heirs of pain." [Illustration] [Illustration: LOVE OF HOME.] * * * * * SPECIAL SAFEGUARDS IN CONFINEMENT. 1. Before the confinement takes place everything should be carefully arranged and prepared. The physician should be spoken to and be given the time as near as can be calculated. The arrangement of the bed, bed clothing, the dress for the mother and the expected babe should be arranged for convenient and immediate use. 2. A bottle of sweet oil, or vaseline, or some pure lard should be in readiness. Arrangements should be made for washing all soiled garments, and nothing by way of soiled rags or clothing should be allowed to accumulate. 3. A rubber blanket, or oil or waterproof cloth should be in readiness to place underneath the bottom sheet to be used during labor. 4. As soon as labor pains have begun a fire should be built and hot water kept ready for immediate use. The room should be kept well ventilated and comfortably warm. 5. No people should be allowed in or about the room except the nurse, the physician, and probably members of the family when called upon to perform some duty. 6. During labor no solid food should be taken; a little milk, broth or soup may be given, provided there is an appetite. Malt or spirituous liquors should be carefully avoided. A little wine, however, may be taken in case of great exhaustion. Lemonade, toast, rice water, and tea may be given when desired. Warm tea is considered an excellent drink for the patient at this time. 7. When the pains become regular and intermit, it is time that the physician is sent for. On the physician's arrival he will always take charge of the case and give necessary instructions. 8. In nearly all cases the head of the child is presented first. The first pains are generally grinding and irregular, and felt mostly in the groins and within, but as labor progresses the pains are felt in the abdomen, and as the head advances there is severe pain in the back and hips and a disposition to bear down, but no pressure should be placed upon the abdomen of the patient; it is often the cause of serious accidents. Nature will take care of itself. 9. Conversation should be of a cheerful character, and all allusions to accidents of other child births should be carefully avoided. 10. ABSENCE OF PHYSICIAN.--In case the child should be born in the absence of the physician, when the head is born receive it in the hand and support it until the shoulders have been expelled, and steady the whole body until the child is born. Support the child with both hands and lay it as far from the mother as possible without stretching the cord. Remove the mucus from the nostrils and mouth, wrap the babe in warm flannel, make the mother comfortable, give her a drink, and allow the child to remain until the pulsations in the cord have entirely ceased. After the pulsations have entirely ceased then sever the cord. Use a dull pair of scissors, cutting it about two inches from the child's navel, and generally no time is necessary, and when the physician comes he will give it prompt attention. 11. If the child does not breathe at its arrival, says Dr. Stockham in her celebrated Tokology, a little slapping on the breast and body will often produce respiration, and if this is not efficient, dash cold water on the face and chest; if this fails then close the nostrils with two fingers, breathe into the mouth and then expel the air from the lungs by gentle pressure upon the chest. Continue this as long as any hope of life remains. 12. AFTER-BIRTH.--Usually contractions occur and the after-birth is readily expelled; if not, clothes wrung out in hot water laid upon the bowels will often cause the contraction of the uterus, and the expulsion of the after-birth. 13. If the cord bleeds severely inject cold water into it. This in many cases removes the after-birth. 14. After the birth of the child give the patient a bath, if the patient is not too exhausted, change the soiled quilts and clothing, fix up everything neat and clean and let the patient rest. 15 Let the patient drink weak tea, gruel, cold or hot water, whichever she chooses. 16. After the birth of the baby, the mother should be kept perfectly quiet for the first 24 hours and not allowed to talk or see anyone except her nearest relations, however well she may seem. She should not get out of bed for ten days or two weeks, nor sit up in bed for nine days. The more care taken of her at this time, the more rapid will be her recovery when she does get about. She should go up and down stairs slowly, carefully, and as seldom as possible for six weeks. She should not stand more than is unavoidable during that time, but sit with her feet up and lie down when she has time to rest. She should not work a sewing machine with a treadle for at least six weeks, and avoid any unusual strain or over-exertion. "An ounce of prevention IS worth a pound of cure," and carefulness will be well repaid by a perfect restoration to health. [Illustration] [Illustration: MY PRICELESS JEWEL. What will be his fate in life?] * * * * * WHERE DID THE BABY COME FROM? Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere into here. Where did you get the eyes so blue? Out of the sky, as I came through. Where did you get that little tear? I found it waiting when I got here. What makes your forehead so smooth and high? A soft hand stroked it as I went by. What makes your cheek like a warm, white rose? I saw something better than anyone knows. Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss? Three angels gave me at once a kiss. Where did you get this pretty ear? God spoke, and it came out to hear. Where did you get those arms and hands? Love made itself into hooks and bands. Feet whence did you come, you darling things? From the same box as the cherub's wings. How did they all come just to be you? God thought of me, and so I grew. But how did you come to us, you dear? God thought about you, and so I am here. --GEORGE MACDONALD. * * * * * CHILD BEARING WITHOUT PAIN. HOW TO DRESS, DIET AND EXERCISE IN PREGNANCY. 1. AILMENTS.--Those ailments to which pregnant women are liable are mostly inconveniences rather than diseases, although they may be aggravated to a degree of danger. No patent nostrums or prescriptions are necessary. If there is any serious difficulty the family physician should be consulted. 2. COMFORT.--Wealth and luxuries are not a necessity. Comfort will make the surroundings pleasant. Drudgery, overwork and exposure are the three things that tend to make women miserable while in the state of pregnancy, and invariably produce irritable, fretful and feeble children. Dr. Stockham says in her admirable work "Tokology:" "The woman who indulges in the excessive gayety of fashionable life, as well as the overworked woman, deprives her child of vitality. She attends parties in a dress that is unphysiological in warmth, distribution and adjustment, in rooms badly ventilated; partakes of a supper of indigestible compounds, and remains into the 'wee, sma' hours,' her nervous system taxed to the utmost." 3. EXERCISE.--A goodly amount of moderate exercise is a necessity, and a large amount of work may be accomplished if prudence is properly exercised. It is overwork, and the want of sufficient rest and sleep that produces serious results. 4. DRESSES.--A pregnant woman should make her dresses of light material and avoid surplus trimmings. Do not wear anything that produces any unnecessary weight. Let the clothing be light but sufficient in quantity to produce comfort in all kinds of weather. 5. GARMENTS.--It is well understood that the mother must breathe for two, and in order to dress healthily the garments should be worn loose, so as to give plenty of room for respiration. Tight clothes only cause disease, or produce frailty or malformation in the offspring. 6. SHOES.--Wear a large shoe in pregnancy; the feet may swell and untold discomfort may be the result. Get a good large shoe with a large sole. Give the feet plenty of room. Many women suffer from defects in vision, indigestion, backache, loss of voice, headache, etc., simply as the result of the reflex action of the pressure of tight shoes. 7. LACING.--Many women lace themselves to the first period of their gestation in order to meet their society engagements. All of this is vitally wrong and does great injury to the unborn child as well as to inflict many ills and pains upon the mother. 8. CORSETS.--Corsets should be carefully avoided, for the corset more than any other one thing is responsible for making woman the victim of more woes and diseases than all other causes put together. About one-half the children born in this country die before they are five years of age, and no doubt this terrible mortality is largely due to this instrument of torture known as the _modern corset._ Tight lacing is the cause of infantile mortality. It slowly but surely takes the lives of tens of thousands, and so effectually weakens and diseases, so as to cause the untimely death of millions more. 9. BATHING.--Next to godliness is cleanliness. A pregnant woman should take a sponge or towel-bath two or three times a week. It stimulates and invigorates the entire body. No more than two or three minutes are required. It should be done in a warm room, and the body rubbed thoroughly after each bathing. 10. THE HOT SITZ-BATH.--This bath is one of the most desirable and healthful baths for pregnant women. It will relieve pain or acute inflammation, and will be a general tonic in keeping the system in a good condition. This may be taken in the middle of the forenoon or just before retiring, and if taken just before retiring will produce invigorating sleep, will quiet the nerves, cure headache, weariness, etc. It is a good plan to take this bath every night before retiring in case of any disorders. A woman who keeps this tip during the period of gestation will have a very easy labor and a strong, vigorous babe. 11. HOT FOMENTATIONS.--Applying flannel cloths wrung out of simple or medicated hot water is a great relief for acute suffering, such as neuralgia, rheumatic pain, biliousness, constipation, torpid liver, colic, flatulency, etc. 12. THE HOT WATER-BAG.--The hot water-bag serves the same purpose as hot fomentations, and is much more convenient. No one should go through the period of gestation without a hot water-bag. 13. THE COLD COMPRESS.--This is a very desirable and effectual domestic remedy. Take a towel wrung from cold water and apply it to the affected parts; then cover well with several thicknesses of flannel. This is excellent in cases of sore throat, hoarseness, bronchitis, inflammation of the lungs, croup, etc. It is also excellent for indigestion, constipation or distress of the bowels accompanied by heat. 14. DIET.--The pregnant woman should eat nutritious, but not stimulating or heating food, and eat at the regular time. Avoid drinking much while eating. 15. AVOID salt, pepper and sweets as much as possible. 16. EAT all kinds of grains, vegetables and fruits, and avoid salted meat, but eat chicken, steak, fish, oysters, etc. 17. THE WOMAN WHO EATS INDISCRIMINATELY anything and everything the same as any other person, will have a very painful labor and suffer many ills that could easily be avoided by more attention being paid to the diet. With a little study and observation a woman will soon learn what to eat and what to avoid. [Illustration: _Nature Versus Corsets Illustrated_ A. The ribs of large curve; the lungs large and roomy; the liver, stomach and bowels in their normal position; all with abundant room. B. The ribs bent almost to angles; the lungs contracted; the liver, stomach and intestines forced down into the pelvis, crowding the womb seriously.] 18. The above cuts are given on page 113; we repeat them here for the benefit of expectant mothers who may be ignorant of the evil effects of the corset. Displacement of the womb, interior irritation and inflammation, miscarriage and sterility, are some of the many injuries of tight lacing. There are many others, in fact their name is legion, and every woman who has habitually worn a corset and continues to wear it during the early period of gestation must suffer severely during childbirth. [Illustration: _"The House We Live In" for nine months: showing the ample room provided by Nature when uncontracted by inherited inferiority of form or artificial dressing._] [Illustration: _A Contracted Pelvis. Deformity and Insufficient Space._] 19. THIS IS WHAT DR. STOCKHAM says: "If women had _common sense_, instead of _fashion sense_, the corset would not exist. There are not words in the English language to express my convictions upon this subject. The corset more than any other one thing is responsible for woman's being the victim of disease and doctors.... "What is the effect upon the child? One-half of the children born in this country die before they are five years of age. Who can tell how much this state of things is due to the enervation of maternal life forces by the one instrument of torture? "I am a temperance woman. No one can realize more than I the devastation and ruin alcohol in its many tempting forms has brought to the human family. Still I solemnly believe that in weakness and deterioration of health, the corset has more to answer for than intoxicating drinks." When asked how far advanced a woman should be in pregnancy before she laid aside her corset, Dr. Stockham said with emphasis: "_The corset should not be worn for two hundred years before pregnancy takes place._ Ladies, it will take that time at least to overcome the ill-effect of tight garments which you think so essential." 20. PAINLESS PREGNANCY AND CHILD-BIRTH.--"Some excellent popular volumes," says Dr. Haff, "have been largely devoted to directions how to secure a comfortable period of pregnancy and painless delivery. After much conning of these worthy efforts to impress a little common sense upon the sisterhood, we are convinced that all may be summed up under the simple heads of: (1) An unconfined and lightly burdened waist; (2) Moderate but persistent outdoor exercise, of which walking is the best form; (3) A plain unstimulating, chiefly fruit and vegetable diet; (4) Little or no intercourse during the time. "These are hygienic rules of benefit under any ordinary conditions; yet they are violated by almost every pregnant lady. If they are followed, biliousness, indigestion, constipation, swollen limbs, morning sickness and nausea--all will absent themselves or be much lessened. In pregnancy more than at any other time, corsets are injurious. The waist and abdomen must be allowed to expand freely with the growth of the child. The great process of _evolution_ must have room." 21. IN ADDITION, we can do no better than quote the following recapitulation by Dr. Stockham in her famous Tokology: "To give a woman the greatest immunity from suffering during pregnancy, prepare her for a safe and comparatively easy delivery, and insure a speedy recovery, all hygienic conditions must be observed. "The dress must give: "1. Freedom of movement; "2. No pressure upon any part of the body; "3. No more weight than is essential for warmth, and both weight and warmth evenly distributed. "These requirements necessitate looseness, lightness and warmth, which can be obtained from the union underclothes, a princess skirt and dress, with a shoe that allows full development and use of the foot. While decoration and elegance are desirable, they should not sacrifice comfort and convenience. 22. "LET THE DIET BE LIGHT, plain and nutritious. Avoid fats and sweets, relying mainly upon fruits and grain that contain little of the mineral salts. By this diet bilious and inflammatory conditions are overcome, the development of bone in the foetus lessened, and muscles necessary in labor nourished and strengthened. 23. "EXERCISE should be sufficient and of such a character as will bring into action gently every muscle of the body; but must particularly develop the muscles of the trunk, abdomen and groin, that are specially called into action in labor. Exercise, taken faithfully and systematically, more than any other means assists assimilative processes and stimulates the organs of excretion to healthy action. 24. "BATHING MUST BE FREQUENT and regular. Unless in special conditions the best results are obtained from tepid or cold bathing, which invigorates the system and overcomes nervousness. The sitz-bath is the best therapeutic and hygienic measure within the reach of the pregnant woman. "Therefore, to establish conditions which will overcome many previous infractions of law, _dress_ naturally and physiologically; _live_ much of the time _out of doors_; have _abundance_ of _fresh air_ in the house; let _exercise_ be _sufficient_ and _systematic_; pursue a _diet of fruit_, rice and vegetables; _regular rest_ must be faithfully taken; _abstain_ from the sexual relation. To those who will commit themselves to this course of life, patiently and persistently carrying it out through the period of gestation, the possibilities of attaining a healthy, natural, painless parturition will be remarkably increased. 25. "IF THE FIRST EXPERIMENT should not result in a painless labor, it without doubt will prove the beginning of sound health. Persisted in through years of married life, the ultimate result will be more and more closely approximated, while there will be less danger of diseases after childbirth and better and more vigorous children will be produced. "Then pregnancy by every true woman will be desired, and instead of being a period of disease, suffering and direful forebodings, will become a period of health, exalted pleasure and holiest anticipations. Motherhood will be deemed the choicest of earth's blessings; women will rejoice in a glad maternity and for any self-denial will be compensated by healthy, happy, buoyant, grateful children." [Illustration] [Illustration: SWAT THE FLIES AND SAVE THE BABIES. LIFE CYCLE OF A FLY EGG STAGE 1 DAY MAGGOT STAGE 5 DAYS PUPA STAGE 5 DAYS 14 DAYS LATER IT BEGINS TO LAY EGGS] [Illustration: JOAN OF ARC.] * * * * * SOLEMN LESSONS FOR PARENTS. 1. EXCESSIVE PLEASURES AND PAINS.--A woman during her time of pregnancy should of all women be most carefully tended, and kept from violent and excessive pleasures and pains; and at that time she should cultivate gentleness, benevolence and kindness. 2. HEREDITARY EFFECTS.--Those who are born to become insane do not necessarily spring from insane parents, or from any ancestry having any apparent taint of lunacy in their blood, but they do receive from their progenitors certain impressions upon their mental and moral, as well as their physical beings, which impressions, like an iron mould, fix and shape their subsequent destinies. Hysteria in the mother may develop insanity in the child, while drunkenness in the father may impel epilepsy, or mania, in the son. Ungoverned passions in the parents may unloose the furies of unrestrained madness in the minds of their children, and the bad treatment of the wife may produce sickly or weak-minded children. 3. The influence of predominant passion may be transmitted from the parent to the child, just as surely a similarity of looks. It has been truly said that "the faculties which predominate in power and activity in the parents, when the organic existence of the child commences, determine its future mental disposition." A bad mental condition of the mother may produce serious defects upon her unborn child. 4. The singular effects produced on the unborn child by the sudden mental emotions of the mother are remarkable examples of a kind of electrotyping on the sensitive surfaces of living forms. It is doubtless true that the mind's action in such cases may increase or diminish the molecular deposits in the several portions of the system. The precise place which each separate particle assumes in the new organic structure may be determined by the influence of thought or feeling. Perfect love and perfect harmony should exist between wife and husband during this vital period. 5. AN ILLUSTRATION.--If a sudden and powerful emotion of a woman's mind exerts such an influence upon her stomach as to excite vomiting, and upon her heart as almost to arrest its motion and induce fainting, can we believe that it will have no effect upon her womb and the fragile being contained within it? Facts and reason then, alike demonstrate the reality of the influence, and much practical advantage would result to both parent and child, were the conditions and extent of its operations better understood. 6. Pregnant women should not be exposed to causes likely to distress or otherwise strongly impress their minds. A consistent life with worthy objects constantly kept in mind should be the aim and purpose of every expectant mother. * * * * * TEN HEALTH RULES FOR BABIES CUT DEATH RATE IN TWO. Ninety-four babies out of every thousand born in New York died last year. Only thirty-eight babies died in Montclair, N.J., out of every thousand born during the same period. Much credit for this low rate of infant mortality in the latter city is given the Montclair Day Nursery which prescribes the following decade of baby health rules: 1. Give a baby pure milk and watch its feeding very closely. 2. Keep everything connected with a baby absolutely clean. Cleanliness in the house accounts for a baby's health. Untidy babies are usually sick babies. 3. Never let a baby get chilled. Keep its hands and feet warm. 4. Regulate a baby's day by the clock. Everything about its wants should be attended to on schedule time. 5. Diminish a baby's food the minute signs of illness appear. Most babies are overfed anyway. 6. Weigh a baby every week until it is a year old. Its weight is an index of its health. 7. Every mother should get daily out-door exercise. It means better health for her babies. 8. Every baby should be "mothered" more and mauled less. Babies thrive on cuddling but they can get along on a lot less kissing. 9. Don't amuse or play with your baby too much. Its regular daily routine is all the stimulation its little brain needs at first. 10. Don't let too many different people take care of the baby. Even members of the same family make a baby nervous if they fuss around him too much. [Illustration] [Illustration: MAN WITH SCALES AND INFANT.] * * * * * THE CARE OF NEW-BORN INFANTS. 1. The first thing to be done ordinarily is to give the little stranger a bath by using soap and warm water. To remove the white material that usually covers the child use olive oil, goose oil or lard, and apply it with a soft piece of worn flannel, and when the child is entirely clean rub all off with a fresh piece of flannel. 2. Many physicians in the United States recommend a thorough oiling of the child with pure lard or olive oil, and then rub dry as above stated. By these means water is avoided, and with it much risk of taking cold. 3. The application of brandy or liquor is entirely unnecessary, and generally does more injury than good. 4. If an infant should breathe feebly, or exhibit other signs of great feebleness, it should not be washed at once, but allowed to remain quiet and undisturbed, warmly wrapped up until the vital actions have acquired a fair degree of activity. 5. DRESSING THE NAVEL.--There is nothing better for dressing the navel than absorbent antiseptic cotton. There needs be no grease or oil upon the cotton. After the separation of the cord the navel should be dressed with a little cosmoline, still using the absorbent cotton. The navel string usually separates in a week's time; it may be delayed for twice this length of time, this will make no material difference, and the rule is to allow it to drop off of its own accord. 6. THE CLOTHING OF THE INFANT.--The clothing of the infant should be light, soft and perfectly loose. A soft flannel band is necessary only until the navel is healed. Afterwards discard bands entirely if you wish your babe to be happy and well. Make the dresses "Mother Hubbard" Put on first a soft woolen shirt, then prepare the flannel skirts to hang from the neck like a slip. Make one kind with sleeves and one just like it without sleeves, then white muslin skirts (if they are desired), all the same way. Then baby is ready for any weather. In intense heat simply put on the one flannel slip with sleeves, leaving off the shirt. In Spring and Fall the shirt and skirt with no sleeves. In Cold weather shirt and both skirts. These garments can be all put on at once, thus making the process of dressing very quick and easy. These are the most approved modern styles for dressing infants, and with long cashmere stockings pinned to the diapers the little feet are free to kick with no old-fashioned pinning blanket to torture the naturally active, healthy child, and retard its development. If tight bands are an injury to grown people, then in the name of pity emancipate the poor little infant from their torture! 7. THE DIAPER.--Diapers should be of soft linen, and great care should be exercised not to pin them too tightly. Never dry them, but always wash them thoroughly before being used again. 8. The band need not be worn after the navel has healed so that it requires no dressing, as it serves no purpose save to keep in place the dressing of the navel. The child's body should be kept thoroughly warm around the chest, bowels and feet. Give the heart and lungs plenty of room to heave. 9. The proper time for shortening the clothes is about three months in Summer and six months in Winter. 10. INFANT BATHING.--The first week of a child's life it should not be entirely stripped and washed. It is too exhausting. After a child is over a week old it should be bathed every day; after a child is three weeks old it may be put in the water and supported with one hand while it is being washed with the other. Never, however, allow it to remain too long in the water. From ten to twenty minutes is the limit. Use Pears' soap or castile soap, and with a sponge wipe quickly, or use a soft towel. [Illustration] * * * * * NURSING. 1. The new-born infant requires only the mother's milk. The true mother will nurse her child if it is a possibility. The infant will thrive better and have many more chances for life. 2. The mother's milk is the natural food, and nothing can fully take its place. It needs no feeding for the first few days as it was commonly deemed necessary a few years ago. The secretions in the mother's breast are sufficient. 3. Artificial Food. Tokology says: "The best artificial food is cream reduced and sweetened with sugar of mill. Analysis shows that human milk contains more cream and sugar and less casein than the milk of animals." 4. Milk should form the basis of all preparations of food. If the milk is too strong, indigestion will follow, and the child will lose instead of gaining strength. WEANING.--The weaning of the child depends much upon the strength and condition of the mother. If it does not occur in hot weather, from nine to twelve months is as long as any child should be nursed. FOOD IN WEANING.--Infants cry a great deal during weaning, but a few days of patient perseverance will overcome all difficulties. Give the child purely a milk diet, Graham bread, milk crackers and milk, or a little milk thickened with boiled rice, a little jelly, apple sauce, etc., may be safely used. Cracked wheat, oatmeal, wheat germ, or anything of that kind thoroughly cooked and served with a little cream and sugar, is an excellent food. MILK DRAWN FROM THE BREASTS.--If the mother suffers considerably from the milk gathering in the breast after weaning the child, withdraw it by taking a bottle that holds about a pint or a quart, putting a piece of cloth wrung out in warm water around the bottle, then fill it with boiling water, pour the water out and apply the bottle to the breast, and the bottle cooling will form a vacuum and will withdraw the milk into the bottle. This is one of the best methods now in use. RETURN OF THE MENSES.--If the menses return while the mother is nursing, the child should at once be weaned, for the mother's milk no longer contains sufficient nourishment. In case the mother should become pregnant while the child is nursing it should at once be weaned, or serious results will follow to the health of the child. A mother's milk is no longer sufficiently rich to nourish the child or keep it in good health. CARE OF THE BOTTLE.--If the child is fed on the bottle great care should be taken in keeping it absolutely clean. Never use white rubber nipples. A plain form of bottle with a black rubber nipple is preferable. CHILDREN should not be permitted to come to the table until two years of age. CHAFING.--One of the best remedies is powdered lycopodium; apply it every time the babe is cleaned; but first wash with pure castile soap; Pears' soap is also good. A preparation of oxide of zinc is also highly recommended. Chafing sometimes results from an acid condition of the stomach; in that case give a few doses of castoria. COLIC.--If an infant is seriously troubled with colic, there is nothing better than camomile or catnip tea. Procure the leaves and make tea and give it as warm as the babe can bear. * * * * * FEEDING INFANTS. 1. The best food for infants is mother's milk; next best is cow's milk. Cow's milk contains about three times as much curd and one-half as much sugar, and it should be reduced with two parts of water. 2. In feeding cow's milk there is too little cream and too little sugar, and there is no doubt no better preparation than Mellin's food to mix it with (according to directions). 3. Children being fed on food lacking fat generally have their teeth come late; their muscles will be flabby and bones soft. Children will be too fat when their food contains too much sugar. Sugar always makes their flesh soft and flabby. 4. During the first two months the baby should be fed every two hours during the day, and two or three times during the night, but no more. Ten or eleven feedings for twenty-four hours are all a child will bear and remain healthy. At three months the child may be fed every three hours instead of every two. 5. Children can be taught regular habits by being fed and put to sleep at the same time every day and evening. Nervous diseases are caused by irregular hours of sleep and diet, and the use of soothing medicines. 6. A child five or six months old should not be fed during the night from nine in the evening until six or seven in the morning, as overfeeding causes most of the wakefulness and nervousness of children during the night. 7. If a child vomits soon after taking the bottle, and there is an appearance of undigested food in the stool, it is a sign of overfeeding. If a large part of the bottle has been vomited, avoid the next bottle at regular time and pass over one bottle. If the child is nursing the same principles apply. 8. If a child empties its bottle and sucks vigorously its fingers after the bottle is emptied, it is very evident that the child is not fed enough, and should have its food gradually increased. 9. Give the baby a little cold water several times a day. * * * * * INFANTILE CONVULSIONS. DEFINITION.--An infantile convulsion corresponds to a chill in an adult, and is the most common brain affection among children. CAUSES.--Anything that irritates the nervous system may cause convulsions in the child, as teething, indigestible food, worms, dropsy of the brain, hereditary constitution, or they may be the accompanying symptom in nearly all the acute diseases of children, or when the eruption is suppressed in eruptive diseases. SYMPTOMS.--In case of convulsions of a child parents usually become frightened, and very rarely do the things that should be done in order to afford relief. The child, previous to the fit, is usually irritable, and the twitching of the muscles of the face may be noticed, or it may come on suddenly without warning. The child becomes insensible, clenches its hands tightly, lips turn blue, and the eyes become fixed, usually frothing from the mouth with head turned back. The convulsion generally lasts two or three minutes; sometimes, however, as long as ten or fifteen minutes, but rarely. REMEDY.--Give the child a warm bath and rub gently. Clothes wrung out of cold water and applied to the lower and back part of the head and plenty of fresh air will usually relieve the convulsion. Be sure and loosen the clothing around the child's neck. After the convulsion is over, give the child a few doses of potassic bromide, and an injection of castor oil if the abdomen is swollen. Potassic bromide should be kept in the house, to use in case of necessity. [Illustration] [Illustration: POOR CHILDREN FROM TENEMENT.] * * * * * PAINS AND ILLS IN NURSING. 1. SORE NIPPLES.--If a lady, during the latter few months of her pregnancy, where to adopt "means to harden the nipples," sore nipples during the period of suckling would not be so prevalent as they are. 2. CAUSE.--A sore nipple is frequently produced by the injudicious custom of allowing the child to have the nipple almost constantly in his mouth. Another frequent cause of a sore nipple is from the babe having the canker. Another cause of a sore nipple is from the mother, after the babe has been sucking, putting up the nipple wet. She, therefore, ought always to dry the nipple, not by rubbing, but by dabbing it with a soft cambric or lawn handkerchief, or with a piece of soft linen rag one or the other of which ought always to be at hand every time directly after the child has done sucking, and just before applying any of the following powders or lotions to the nipple. 3. REMEDIES.--One of the best remedies for a sore nipple is the following powder: Take of Borax, one drachm; Powdered Starch, seven drachms. Mix. A pinch of the powder to be frequently applied to the nipple. If the above does not cure, try Glycerine by applying it each time after nursing. 4. GATHERED BREAST.--A healthy woman with a well-developed breast and a good nipple, scarcely, if ever, has a gathered bosom; it is the delicate, the ill-developed breasted and worse-developed nippled lady who usually suffers from this painful complaint. And why? The evil can generally be traced to girlhood. If she be brought up luxuriously, her health and her breasts are sure to be weakened, and thus to suffer, more especially if the development of the bosoms and nipples has been arrested and interfered with by tight stays and corsets. Why, the nipple is by them drawn in, and retained on the level with the breast countersunk as though it were of no consequence to her future well-being, as though it were a thing of nought. 5. TIGHT LACERS.--Tight lacers will have to pay the penalties of which they little dream. Oh, the monstrous folly of such proceedings! When will mothers awake from their lethargy? It is high time that they did so! From the mother having "no nipple," the effects of tight lacing, many a home has been made childless, the babe not being able to procure its proper nourishment, and dying in consequence! It is a frightful state of things! But fashion, unfortunately, blinds the eyes and deafens the ears of its votaries! 6. BAD BREAST.--A gathered bosom, or "bad breast," as it is sometimes called, is more likely to occur after a first confinement and during the first month. Great care, therefore, ought to be taken to avoid such a misfortune. A gathered breast is frequently owing to the carelessness of a mother in not covering her bosoms during the time she is suckling. Too much attention cannot be paid to keeping the breasts comfortably warm. This, during the act of nursing, should be done by throwing either a shawl or a square of flannel over the neck, shoulders, and bosoms. 7. ANOTHER CAUSE.--Another cause of gathered breasts arises from a mother sitting up in bed to suckle her babe. He ought to be accustomed to take the bosom while she is lying down; if this habit is not at first instituted, it will be difficult to adopt it afterwards. Good habits may be taught a child from earliest babyhood. 8. FAINTNESS.--When a nursing mother feels faint, she ought immediately to lie down and take a little nourishment; a cup of tea with the yolk of an egg beaten up in it, or a cup of warm milk, or some beef-tea, any of which will answer the purpose extremely well. Brandy, or any other spirit we would not recommend, as it would only cause, as soon as the immediate effects of the stimulant had gone off, a greater depression to ensue; not only so, but the frequent taking of brandy might become a habit a necessity which would be a calamity deeply to be deplored! 9. STRONG PURGATIVES.--Strong purgatives during this period are highly improper, as they are apt to give pain to the infant, as well as to injure the mother. If it be absolutely necessary to give physic, the mildest, such as a dose of castor oil, should be chosen. 10. HABITUALLY COSTIVE.--When a lady who is nursing is habitually costive, she ought to eat brown instead of white bread. This will, in the majority of cases, enable her to do without an aperient. The brown bread may be made with flour finely ground all one way; or by mixing one part of bran and three parts of fine wheaten flour together, and then making it in the usual way into bread. Treacle instead of butter, on the brown bread increases its efficacy as an aperient; and raw should be substituted for lump sugar in her tea. 11. TO PREVENT CONSTIPATION.--Stewed prunes, or stewed French plums, or stewed Normandy pippins, are excellent remedies to prevent constipation. The patient ought to eat, every morning, a dozen or fifteen of them. The best way to stew either prunes or French plums, is the following: Put a pound of either prunes or French plums, and two tablespoonfuls of raw sugar, into a brown jar; cover them with water; put them into a slow oven, and stew them for three or four hours. Both stewed rhubarb and stewed pears often act as mild and gentle aperients. Muscatel raisins, eaten at dessert, will oftentimes without medicine relieve the bowels. 12. COLD WATER--A tumblerful of cold water, taken early every morning, sometimes effectually relieves the bowels; indeed, few people know the value of cold water as an aperient it is one of the best we possess, and, unlike drug aperients, can never by any possibility do any harm. An injection of warm water is one of the best ways to relieve the bowels. 13. WELL-COOKED VEGETABLES.--Although a nursing mother ought, more especially if she be costive, to take a variety of well-cooked vegetables, such as potatoes, asparagus, cauliflower, French beans, spinach, stewed celery and turnips; she should avoid eating greens, cabbages, and pickles, as they would be likely to affect the babe, and might cause him to suffer from gripings, from pain, and "looseness" of the bowels. 14. SUPERSEDE THE NECESSITY OF TAKING PHYSIC.--Let me again--for it cannot be too urgently insisted upon--strongly advise a nursing mother to use every means in the way of diet, etc., to supersede the necessity of taking physic (opening medicine), as the repetition of aperients injures, and that severely, both herself and child. Moreover, the more opening medicine she swallows, the more she requires; so that if she once gets into the habit of regularly taking physic, the bowels will not act without them. What a miserable existence to be always swallowing physic! [Illustration: HEALTHY YOUTH AND RIPE OLD AGE.] * * * * * HOME LESSONS IN NURSING SICK CHILDREN. 1. MISMANAGEMENT.--Every doctor knows that a large share of the ills to which infancy is subject are directly traceable to mismanagement. Troubles of the digestive system are, for the most part due to errors, either in the selection of the food or in the preparation of it. 2. RESPIRATORY DISEASES.--Respiratory diseases or the diseases of the throat and lungs have their origin, as a rule, in want of care and judgment in matters of clothing, bathing and exposure to cold and drafts. A child should always be dressed to suit the existing temperature of the weather. 3. NERVOUS DISEASES.--Nervous diseases are often aggravated if not caused by over-stimulation of the brain, by irregular hours of sleep, or by the use of "soothing" medicines, or eating indigestible food. 4. SKIN AFFECTIONS.--Skin affections are generally due to want of proper care of the skin, to improper clothing or feeding, or to indiscriminate association with nurses and Children, who are the carriers of contagious diseases. 5. PERMANENT INJURY.--Permanent injury is often caused by lifting the child by one hand, allowing it to fall, permitting it to play with sharp instruments, etc. 6. RULES AND PRINCIPLES.--Every mother should understand the rules and principles of home nursing. Children are very tender plants and the want of proper knowledge is often very disastrous if not fatal. Study carefully and follow the principles and rules which are laid down in the different parts of this work on nursing and cooking for the sick. 7. WHAT A MOTHER SHOULD KNOW: I. INFANT FEEDING.--The care of milk, milk sterilization, care of bottles, preparation of commonly employed infant foods, the general principles of infant feeding, with rules as to quality and frequency. II. BATHING.--The daily bath; the use of hot, cold and mustard baths. III. HYGIENE OF THE SKIN. Care of the mouth, eyes and ears. Ventilation, temperature, cleanliness, care of napkins, etc. IV. TRAINING OF CHILDREN in proper bodily habits. Simple means of treatment in sickness, etc. 8. THE CRY OF THE SICK CHILD.--The cry of the child is a language by which the character of its suffering to some extent may be ascertained. The manner in which the cry is uttered, or the pitch and tone is generally a symptom of a certain kind of disease. 9. STOMACHACHE.--The cry of the child in suffering with pain of the stomach is loud, excitable and spasmodic. The legs are drawn up and as the pain ceases, they are relaxed and the child sobs itself to sleep, and rests until awakened again by pain. 10. LUNG TROUBLE.--When a child is suffering with an affection of the lungs or throat, it never cries loudly or continuously. A distress in breathing causes a sort of subdued cry and low moaning. If there is a slight cough it is generally a sign that there is some complication with the lungs. 11. DISEASE OF THE BRAIN.--In disease of the brain the cry is always sharp, short and piercing. Drowsiness generally follows each spasm of pain. 12. FEVERS.--Children rarely cry when suffering with fever unless they are disturbed. They should be handled very gently and spoken to in a very quiet and tender tone of voice. 13. THE CHAMBER OF THE SICK ROOM.--The room of the sick child should be kept scrupulously clean. No noise should disturb the quiet and rest of the child. If the weather is mild, plenty of fresh air should be admitted; the temperature should be kept at about 70 degrees. A thermometer should be kept in the room, and the air should be changed several times during the day. This may be done with safety to the child by covering it up with woolen blankets to protect it from draft, while the windows and doors are opened. Fresh air often does more to restore the sick child than the doctor's medicine. Take the best room in the house. If necessary take the parlor, always make the room pleasant for the sick. 14. VISITORS.--Carefully avoid the conversation of visitors or the loud and boisterous playing of children in the house. If there is much noise about the house that cannot be avoided, it is a good plan to put cotton in the ears of the patient. 15. LIGHT IN THE ROOM.--Light has a tendency to produce nervous irritability, consequently it is best to exclude as much daylight as possible and keep the room in a sort of twilight until the child begins to improve. Be careful to avoid any odor coming from a burning lamp in the night. When the child begins to recover, give it plenty of sunlight. After the child begins to get better let in all the sunlight the windows will admit. Take a south room for the sick bed. 16. SICKNESS IN SUMMER.--If the weather is very hot it is a good plan to dampen the floors with cold water, or set several dishes of water in the room, but be careful to keep the patient out of the draft, and avoid any sudden change of temperature. 17. BATHING.--Bathe every sick child in warm water once a day unless prohibited by the doctor. If the child has a spasm or any attack of a serious nervous character in absence of the doctor, place him in a hot bath at once. Hot water is one of the finest agencies for the cure of nervous diseases. [Illustration] 18. SCARLET FEVER AND MEASLES.--Bathe the child in warm water to bring out the rash, and put in about a dessertspoonsful of mustard into each bath. 19. DRINKS.--If a child is suffering with fevers, let it have all the water it wants. Toast-water will be found nourishing. When the stomach of the child is in an irritable condition, nourishments containing milk or any other fluid should be given very sparingly. Barley-water and rice-water are very soothing to an irritable stomach. 20. FOOD.--Mellin's Food and milk is very nourishing if the child will take it. Oatmeal gruel, white of eggs, etc. are excellent and nourishing articles. See "How to cook for the Sick." 21. EATING FRUIT.--Let children who are recovering from sickness eat moderately of good fresh fruit. Never let a child, whether well or sick, eat the skins of any kind of fruit. The outer covering of fruit was not made to eat, and often has poisonous matter very injurious to health upon its surface. Contagious and infectious diseases are often communicated in that way. 22. SUDDEN STARTINGS with the thumbs drawn into the palms, portend trouble with the brain, and often end in convulsions, which are far more serious in infants than in children. Convulsions in children often result from a suppression of urine. If you have occasion to believe that such is the case, get the patient to sweating as soon as possible. Give it a hot bath, after which cover it up in bed and put bags of hot salt over the lower part of the abdomen. 23. SYMPTOMS OF INDIGESTION.--If the baby shows symptoms of indigestion, do not begin giving it medicine. It is wiser to decrease the quantity and quality of the food and let the little one omit one meal entirely, that his stomach may rest. Avoid all starchy foods, as the organs of digestion are not sufficiently developed to receive them. A TABLE FOR FEEDING A BABY ON MODIFIED MILK. 2d week: Top Milk 1-1/2 oz. Milk Sugar 4 teaspoons Barley Gruel 10 oz. Cream 2-3/4 oz. Lime Water 2 oz. 1-1/2 oz. at feeding 10 times a day 3d week: Top Milk 6 oz. Milk Sugar 5-1/2 teaspoons Barley Gruel 18 oz. Lime Water 4 oz. 2 oz. at feeding 10 times a day 4th to 8th week: Top Milk 9 oz. Milk Sugar 8 teaspoons Barley Gruel to make a quart Lime Water 4 oz. 3 oz. at feeding 8 times a day 9th to 12th week: Top Milk 11 oz. Milk Sugar 7-1/2 teaspoons Barley Gruel to make a quart Lime Water 4 oz. 3 oz. at feeding 8 times a day 4th month: Top Milk 13 oz. Milk Sugar 7 teaspoons Barley Gruel to make a quart Lime Water 4 oz. 3 to 4 oz. at feeding 7 times a day 5th to 7th month: Top Milk 15 oz. Milk Sugar 6-1/2 teaspoons Barley Gruel to make a quart Lime Water 4 oz. 4 to 5 oz. at feeding 6 times a day 7th to 9th month: Top Milk 17 oz. Milk Sugar 6 teaspoons Barley Gruel to make a quart Lime Water 4 oz. 6 to 7 oz. at feeding 6 times a day Top Milk--Let your quart of milk stand until the cream has risen, then pour off number of ounces required. Sugar of Milk may be purchased at your local druggist's. Gruel is prepared by cooking one level tablespoon of any good barley flour in a pint of water with a pinch of salt. When partly cooled add to the milk. NURSING. Period: 1st and 2d day Nursing in 24 hours: 4 Interval by day: 6 hrs. Night nursings 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.: 1 Period: 3 days to 4 weeks Nursing in 24 hours: 10 Interval by day: 2 hrs. Night nursings 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.: 1 Period: 4 weeks to 2 mo. Nursing in 24 hours: 8 Interval by day: 2-1/2 hrs. Night nursings 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.: 1 Period: 2 to 5 mo. Nursing in 24 hours: 7 Interval by day: 3 hrs. Night nursings 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.: 1 Period: 5 to 12 mo. Nursing in 24 hours: 6 Interval by day: 3 hrs. Night nursings 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.: 0 SCHEDULE FOR FEEDING HEALTHY INFANTS DURING FIRST YEAR Age: 2d to 7th day Interval between meals by day: 2 hours Night feedings 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.: 1 No. of feedings in 24 hours: 10 Quantity for one feeding: 1 to 1-1/2 ounces Quantity in 24 hours: 10 to 15 ounces Age: 2d and 3d week Interval between meals by day: 2 hours Night feedings 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.: 1 No. of feedings in 24 hours: 10 Quantity for one feeding: 1-1/2 to 3 ounces Quantity in 24 hours: 15 to 30 ounces Age: 4th and 5th weeks Interval between meals by day: 2-1/2 hours Night feedings 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.: 1 No. of feedings in 24 hours: 8 Quantity for one feeding: 2-1/2 to 4 ounces Quantity in 24 hours: 20 to 32 ounces Age: 6th to 9th week Interval between meals by day: 2-1/2 hours Night feedings 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.: 1 No. of feedings in 24 hours: 8 Quantity for one feeding: 3 to 5 ounces Quantity in 24 hours: 24 to 40 ounces Age: 9th week to 5th mo. Interval between meals by day: 3 hours Night feedings 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.: 1 No. of feedings in 24 hours: 7 Quantity for one feeding: 4 to 6 ounces Quantity in 24 hours: 28 to 42 ounces Age: 5th to 9th month Interval between meals by day: 3 hours Night feedings 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.: 0 No. of feedings in 24 hours: 6 Quantity for one feeding: 5 to 7-1/2 ounces Quantity in 24 hours: 30 to 45 ounces Age: 9th to 12th month Interval between meals by day: 4 hours Night feedings 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.: 0 No. of feedings in 24 hours: 5 Quantity for one feeding: 7 to 9 ounces Quantity in 24 hours: 35 to 45 ounces [Illustration: A delicate child should never be put into the bath, but bathed on the lap and kept warmly covered.] * * * * * HOW TO KEEP A BABY WELL. 1. The mother's milk is the natural food, and nothing can fully take its place. 2. The infant's stomach does not readily accommodate itself to changes in diet; therefore, regularity in quality, quantity and temperature is extremely necessary. 3. Not until a child is a year old should it be allowed any food except that of milk, and possibly a little cracker or bread, thoroughly soaked and softened. 4. Meat should never be given to very young children. The best artificial food is cream, reduced and sweetened with sugar and milk. No rule can be given for its reduction. Observation and experience must teach that, because every child's stomach is governed by a rule of its own. 5. A child can be safely weaned at one year of age, and sometimes less. It depends entirely upon the season, and upon the health of the child. 6. A child should never be weaned during the warm weather, in June, July or August. 7. When a child is weaned it may be given, in connection with the milk diet, some such nourishment as broth, gruel, egg, or some prepared food. 8. A child should never be allowed to come to the table until two years of age. 9. A child should never eat much starchy food until four years old. 10. A child should have all the water it desires to drink, but it is decidedly the best to boil the water first, and allow it to cool. All the impurities and disease germs are thereby destroyed. This one thing alone will add greatly to the health and vigor of the child. 11. Where there is a tendency to bowel disorder, a little gum arabic, rice, or barley may be boiled with the drinking water. 12. If the child uses a bottle it should be kept absolutely clean. It is best to have two or three bottles, so that one will always be perfectly clean and fresh. 13. The nipple should be of black or pure rubber, and not of the white or vulcanized rubber; it should fit over the top of the bottle. No tubes should ever be used; it is impossible to keep them clean. 14. When the rubber becomes coated, a little coarse salt will clean it. 15. Babies should be fed at regular times. They should also be put to sleep at regular hours. Regularity is one of the best safeguards to health. 16. Milk for babies and children should be from healthy cows. Milk from different cows varies, and it is always better for a child to have milk from the same cow. A farrow cow's milk is preferable, especially if the child is not very strong. 17. Many of the prepared foods advertised for children are of little benefit. A few may be good, but what is good for one child may not be for another. So it must be simply a matter of experiment if any of the advertised foods are used. 18. It is a physiological fact that an infant is always healthier and better to sleep alone. It gets better air and is not liable to suffocation. 19. A healthy child should never be fed in less than two hours from the last time they finished before, gradually lengthening the time as it grows older. At 4 months 3-1/2 or 4 hours; at 5 months a healthy child will be better if given nothing in the night except, perhaps, a little water. 20. Give an infant a little water several times a day. 21. A delicate child the first year should be oiled after each bath. The oiling may often take the place of the bath, in case of a cold. 22. In oiling a babe, use pure olive oil, and wipe off thoroughly after each application. For nourishing a weak child use also olive oil. 23. For colds, coughs, croup, etc., use goose oil externally and give a teaspoonful at bed-time. [Illustration: FOUND UPON THE DOORSTEP.] * * * * * HOW TO PRESERVE THE HEALTH AND LIFE OF YOUR INFANT DURING HOT WEATHER. _BATHING._ 1. Bathe infants daily in tepid water and even twice a day in hot weather. If delicate they should be sponged instead of immersing them in water, but cleanliness is absolutely necessary for the health of infants. _CLOTHING._ 2. Put no bands in their clothing, but make all garments to hang loosely from the shoulders, and have all their clothing _scrupulously clean_; even the diaper should not be re-used without rinsing. _SLEEP ALONE._ 3. The child should in all cases sleep by itself on a cot or in a crib and retire at a regular hour. A child _always_ early taught to go to sleep without rocking or nursing is the healthier and happier for it. Begin _at birth_ and this will be easily accomplished. _CORDIALS AND SOOTHING SYRUPS._ 4. Never give cordials, soothing syrups, sleeping drops etc., without the advice of a physician. A child that frets and does not sleep is either hungry or ill. _If ill it needs a physician._ Never give candy or cake to quiet a small child, they are sure to produce disorders of the stomach, diarrhoea or some other trouble. _FRESH AIR._ 5. Children should have plenty of fresh air summer as well as winter. Avoid the severe hot sun and the heated kitchen for infants in summer. Heat is the great destroyer of infants. _CLEAN HOUSES._ 6. Keep your house clean and cool and well aired night and day. Your cellars cleared of all rubbish and white-washed every spring, your drains cleaned with strong solution of copperas or chloride of lime, poured down them once a week. Keep your gutters and yards clean and insist upon your neighbors doing the same. _EVACUATIONS OF A CHILD._ The healthy motion varies from light orange yellow to greenish yellow, in number, two to four times daily. Smell should never be offensive. Slimy mucous-like jelly passages indicate worms. Pale green, offensive, acrid motions indicate disordered stomach. Dark green indicate acid secretions and a more serious trouble. Fetid dark brown stools are present in chronic diarrhoea Putty-like pasty passages are due to aridity curdling the milk or to torpid liver. [Illustration] _BREAST MILK._ 7. Breast milk is the only proper food for infants until after the second summer. If the supply is small keep what you have and feed the child in connection with it, for if the babe is ill this breast milk may be all that will save its life. _STERILIZED MILK._ 8. Milk is the best food. Goat's milk best, cows milk next. If the child thrives on this _nothing else_ should be given during the hot weather, until the front teeth are cut. Get fresh cow's milk twice a day if the child requires food in the night, pour it into a glass fruit jar with one-third pure water for a child under three months old, afterwards the proportion of water may be less and less, also a trifle of sugar may be added. Then place the jar in a kettle or pan of cold water, like the bottom of an oatmeal kettle. Leave the cover of the jar loose. Place it on the stove and let the water come to a boil and boil ten minutes, screw down the cover tight and boil ten minutes more, then remove from the fire, and allow it to cool in the water slowly so as not to break the jar. When partly cool put on the ice or in a cool place, and keep tightly covered except when the milk is poured out for use. The glass jar must be kept perfectly clean and washed and scalded carefully before use. A tablespoonful of lime water to a bottle of milk will aid indigestion. Discard the bottle as soon as possible and use a cup which you know is clean, whereas a bottle must be kept in water constantly when not in use, or the sour milk will make the child sick. Use no tube for it is exceedingly hard to keep it clean, and if pure milk cannot be had, condensed milk is admirable and does not need to be sterilized as the above. _DIET._ 9. Never give babies under two years old such food if grown persons eat. Their chief diet should be milk, wheat bread and milk, oatmeal, possibly a little rare boiled egg, but always and chiefly milk. Germ wheat is also excellent. [Illustration] _EXERCISE._ 10. Children should have exercise in the house as well as outdoors, but should not be jolted and jumped and jarred in rough play, not rudely rocked in the cradle, nor carelessly trundled over bumps in their carriages. They should not be held too much in the arms, but allowed to crawl and kick upon the floor and develop their limbs and muscles. A child should not be lifted by its arms nor dragged along by one hand after it learns to take a few feeble steps, but when they do learn to walk steadily it is the best of all exercise, especially in the open air. Let the children as they grow older romp and play in the open air all they wish, girls as well as boys. Give the girls an even chance for health, while they are young at least, and don't mind about their complexion. [Illustration] * * * * * INFANT TEETHING. 1. REMARKABLE INSTANCES.--There are instances where babies have been born with teeth, and, on the other hand, there are cases of persons who have never had any teeth at all; and others that had double teeth all around in both upper and lower jaws, but these are rare instances, and may be termed as a sort of freaks of nature. 2. INFANT TEETHING.--The first teeth generally make their appearance after the third month, and during the period of teething the child is fretful and restless, causing sometimes constitutional disturbances, such as diarrhoea, indigestion, etc. Usually, however, no serious results follow, and no unnecessary anxiety need be felt, unless the weather is extremely warm, then there is some danger of summer complaint setting in and seriously complicating matters. 3. THE NUMBER OF TEETH.--Teeth are generally cut in pairs and make their appearance first in the front and going backwards until all are complete. It generally takes about two years for a temporary set of children's teeth. A child two or three years old should have twenty teeth. After the age of seven they generally begin to loosen and fall out and permanent teeth take their place. 4. LANCING THE GUMS.--This is very rarely necessary. There are extreme cases when the condition of the mouth and health of the child demand a physician's lance, but this should not he resorted to, unless it is absolutely necessary. When the gums are very much swollen and the tooth is nearly through, the pains may be relieved by the mother taking a thimble and pressing it down upon the tooth, the sharp edges of the tooth will cut through the swollen flesh, and instant relief will follow. A child in a few hours or a day will be perfectly happy after a very severe and trying time of sickness. 5. PERMANENT TEETH.--The teeth are firmly inserted in sockets of the upper and lower jaw. The permanent teeth which follow the temporary teeth, when complete, are sixteen in each jaw, or thirty-two in all. 6. NAMES OF TEETH.--There are four incisors (front teeth), four cuspids (eye teeth), four bicuspids (grinders), and four molars (large grinders), in each jaw. Each tooth is divided into the crown, body, and root. The crown is the grinding surface; the body--the part projecting from the jaw--is the seat of sensation and nutrition; the root is that portion of the tooth which is inserted in the alveolus. The teeth are composed of dentine (ivory) and enamel. The ivory forms the greater portion of the body and root, while the enamel covers the exposed surface. The small white cords communicating with the teeth are the nerves. [Illustration] [Illustration] * * * * * HOME TREATMENT FOR THE DISEASES OF INFANTS AND CHILDREN. 1. Out of every 1000 persons that died during the year of 1912, 175 did not reach one year of age, and 244 died under five years of age. What a fearful responsibility therefore rests upon the parents who permit these hundreds of thousands of children to die annually. This terrible mortality among children is undoubtedly largely the result of ignorance as regarding to the proper care and treatment of sick children. 2. For very small children it is always best to use homoeopathic remedies. _COLIC._ 1. Babies often suffer severely with colic. It is not considered dangerous, but causes considerable suffering. 2. Severe colic is usually the result of derangement of the liver in the mother, or of her insufficient or improper nourishment, and it occurs more frequently when the child is from two to five months old. 3. Let the mother eat chiefly barley, wheat and bread, rolled wheat, graham bread, fish, milk, eggs and fruit. The latter may be freely eaten, avoiding that which is very sour. 4. A rubber bag or bottle filled with hot water put into a crib, will keep the child, once quieted, asleep for hours. If a child is suffering from colic, it should be thoroughly warmed and kept warm. 5. Avoid giving opiates of any kind, such as cordials, Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, "Mother's Friend," and various other patent medicines. They injure the stomach and health of the child, instead of benefiting it. 6. REMEDIES.--A few tablespoonfuls of hot water will often allay a severe attack of the colic. Catnip tea is also a good remedy. A drop of essence of peppermint in 6 or 7 teaspoonfuls of hot water will give relief. If the stools are green and the child is very restless, give chamomilla. If the child is suffering from constipation, and undigested curds of milk appear in its faeces, and the child starts suddenly in its sleep, give nux vomica. An injection of a few spoonfuls of hot water into the rectum with a little asafoetida is an effective remedy, and will be good for an adult. _CONSTIPATION._ 1. This is a very frequent ailment of infants. The first thing necessary is for the mother to regulate her diet. 2. If the child is nursed regularly and held out at the same time of each day, it will seldom be troubled with this complaint. Give plenty of _water_. Regularity of habit is the remedy. If this method fails, use a soap suppository. Make it by paring a piece of white castile soap round. It should be made about the size of a lead pencil, pointed at the end. 3. Avoid giving a baby drugs. Let the physician administer them if necessary. _DIARRHOEA._ Great care should be exercised by parents in checking the diarrhoea of children. Many times serious diseases are brought on by parents being too hasty in checking this disorder of the bowels. It is an infant's first method of removing obstructions and overcoming derangements of the system. _SUMMER COMPLAINT._ 1. Summer complaint is an irritation and inflammation of the lining membranes of the intestines. This may often be caused by teething, eating indigestible food, etc. 2. If the discharges are only frequent and yellow and not accompanied with pain, there is no cause for anxiety; but if the discharges are green, soon becoming gray, brown and sometimes frothy, having a mixture of phlegm, and sometimes containing food undigested, a physician had better be summoned. 3. For mild attacks the following treatment may be given: 1) Keep the child perfectly quiet and keep the room well aired. 2) Put a drop of tincture of camphor on a teaspoonful of sugar, mix thoroughly; then add 6 teaspoonfuls of hot water and give a teaspoonful of the mixture every ten minutes. This is indicated where the discharges are watery, and where there is vomiting and coldness of the feet and hands. Chamomilla is also an excellent remedy. Ipecac and nux vomica may also be given. In giving homoeopathic remedies, give 5 or 6 pellets every 2 or 3 hours. 3) The diet should be wholesome and nourishing. _FOR TEETHING._ If a child is suffering with swollen gums, is feverish, restless, and starts in its sleep, give nux vomica. WORMS. _PIN WORMS._ Pin worms and round worms are the most common in children. They are generally found in the lower bowels. SYMPTOMS.--Restlessness, itching about the anus in the fore part of the evening, and worms in the faeces. TREATMENT.--Give with a syringe an injection of a tablespoonful of linseed oil. Cleanliness is also very necessary. _ROUND WORMS._ A round worm is from six to sixteen inches in length, resembling the common earth worm. It inhabits generally the small intestines, but it sometimes enters the stomach and is thrown up by vomiting. SYMPTOMS.--Distress, indigestion, swelling of the abdomen, grinding of the teeth, restlessness, and sometimes convulsions. TREATMENT.--One teaspoonful of powdered wormseed mixed with a sufficient quantity of molasses, or spread on bread and butter. Or, one grain of santonine every four hours for two or three days, followed by a brisk cathartic. Wormwood tea is also highly recommended. SWAIM'S VERMIFUGE. 2 ounces wormseed, 1-1/2 ounces valerian, 1-1/2 ounces rhubarb, 1-1/2 ounces pink-root, 1-1/2 ounces white agaric. Boil in sufficient water to yield 3 quarts of decoction, and add to it 30 drops of oil of tansy and 45 drops of oil of cloves, dissolved in a quart of rectified spirits. Dose, 1 teaspoonful at night. _ANOTHER EXCELLENT VERMIFUGE._ Oil of wormseed, 1 ounce, Oil of anise, 1 ounce, Castor oil, 1 ounce, Tinct. of myrrh, 2 drops, Oil of turpentine, 10 drops. Mix thoroughly. Always shake well before using. Give 10 to 15 drops in cold coffee, once or twice a day. [Illustration] HOW TO TREAT CROUP SPASMODIC AND TRUE. _SPASMODIC CROUP._ DEFINITION.--A spasmodic closure of the glottis which interferes with respiration. Comes on suddenly and usually at night, without much warning. It is a purely nervous disease and may be caused by reflex nervous irritation from undigested food in the stomach or bowels, irritation of the gums in dentition, or from brain disorders. SYMPTOMS.--Child awakens suddenly at night with suspended respiration or very difficult breathing. After a few respirations it cries out and then falls asleep quietly, or the attack may last an hour or so, when the face will become pale, veins in the neck become turgid and feet and hands contract spasmodically. In mild cases the attacks will only occur once during the night, but may recur on the following night. HOME TREATMENT.--During the paroxysm dashing cold water in the face is a common remedy. To terminate the spasm and prevent its return give teaspoonful doses of powdered alum. The syrup of squills is an old and tried remedy; give in 15 to 30 drop doses and repeat every 10 minutes till vomiting occurs. Seek out the cause if possible and remove it. It commonly lies in some derangement of the digestive organs. _TRUE CROUP._ DEFINITION.--This disease consists of an inflammation of the mucous membrane of the upper air passages, particularly of the larynx with the formation of a false membrane that obstructs the breathing. The disease is most common in children between the ages of two and seven years, but it may occur at any age. SYMPTOMS.--Usually there are symptoms of a cold for three or four days previous to the attack. Marked hoarseness is observed in the evening with a ringing metallic cough and some difficulty in breathing, which increases and becomes somewhat paroxysmal till the face which was at first flushed becomes pallid and ashy in hue. The efforts at breathing become very great, and unless the child gets speedy relief it will die of suffocation. HOME TREATMENT.--Patient should be kept in a moist warm atmosphere, and cold water applied to the neck early in the attack. As soon as the breathing seems difficult give a half to one teaspoonful of powdered alum in honey to produce vomiting and apply the remedies suggested in the treatment of diphtheria, as the two diseases are thought by many to be identical. When the breathing becomes labored and face becomes pallid, the condition is very serious and a physician should be called without delay. _SCARLET FEVER._ DEFINITION.--An eruptive contagious disease, brought about by direct exposure to those having the disease, or by contact with clothing, dishes, or other articles, used about the sick room. The clothing may be disinfected by heating to a temperature of 230 [degrees] Fahrenheit or by dipping in boiling water before washing. Dogs and cats will also carry the disease and should be kept from the house, and particularly from the sick room. SYMPTOMS.--Chilly sensations or a decided chill, fever, headache, furred tongue, vomiting, sore throat, rapid pulse, hot dry skin and more or less stupor. In from 6 to 18 hours a fine red rash appears about the ears, neck and shoulders, which rapidly spreads to the entire surface of the body. After a few days, a scurf or branny scales will begin to form on the skin. These scales are the principal source of contagion. HOME TREATMENT. 1. Isolate the patient from other members of the family to prevent the spread of the disease. 2. Keep the patient in bed and give a fluid diet of milk gruel, beef tea, etc., with plenty of cold water to drink. 3. Control the fever by sponging the body with tepid water, and relieve the pain in the throat by cold compresses, applied externally. 4. As soon as the skin shows a tendency to become scaly, apply goose grease or clean lard with a little boracic acid powder dusted in it, or better, perhaps, carbolized vaseline to relieve the itching and prevent the scales from being scattered about, and subjecting others to the contagion. REGULAR TREATMENT.--A few drops of aconite every three hours to regulate the pulse, and if the skin be pale and circulation feeble, with tardy eruption, administer one to ten drops of tincture of belladonna, according to the age of the patient. At the end of third week, if eyes look puffy and feet swell, there is danger of Acute Bright's disease, and a physician should be consulted. If the case does not progress well under the home remedies suggested, a physician should be called at once. _WHOOPING COUGH._ DEFINITION.--This is a contagious disease which is known by a peculiar whooping sound in the cough. Considerable mucus is thrown off after each attack of spasmodic coughing. SYMPTOMS.--It usually commences with the symptoms of a common cold in the head, some chilliness, feverishness, restlessness, headache, a feeling of tightness across the chest, violent paroxysms of coughing, sometimes almost threatening suffocation, and accompanied with vomiting. HOME TREATMENT.--Patient should eat plain food and avoid cold drafts and damp air, but keep in the open air as much as possible. A strong tea made of the tops of red clover is highly recommended. A strong tea made of chestnut leaves, sweetened with sugar, is also very good. 1 teaspoonful of powdered alum, 1 teaspoonful of syrup. Mix in a tumbler of water, and give the child one teaspoonful every two or three hours. A kerosene lamp kept burning in the bed chamber at night is said to lessen the cough and shorten the course of the disease. _MUMPS._ DEFINITION.--This is a contagious disease causing the inflammation of the salivary glands, and is generally a disease of childhood and youth. SYMPTOMS.--A slight fever, stiffness of the neck and lower jaw, swelling and soreness of the gland. It usually develops in four or five days and then begins to disappear. HOME TREATMENT.--Apply to the swelling a hot poultice of cornmeal and bread and milk. A hop poultice is also excellent. Take a good dose of physic and rest carefully. A warm general bath, or mustard foot bath, is very good. Avoid exposure or cold drafts. If a bad cold is taken, serious results may follow. _MEASLES._ DEFINITION.--It is an eruptive, contagious disease, preceded by cough and other catarrhal symptoms for about four or five days. The eruption comes rapidly in small red spots, which are slightly raised. SYMPTOMS.--A feeling of weakness, loss of appetite, some fever, cold in the head, frequent sneezing, watery eyes, dry cough and a hot skin. The disease takes effect nine or ten days after exposure. HOME TREATMENT.--Measles is not a dangerous disease in the child, but in an adult it is often very serious. In childhood very little medicine is necessary, but exposure must be carefully avoided, and the patient kept in bed, in a moderately warm room. The diet should be light and nourishing. Keep the room dark. If the eruption does not come out promptly, apply hot baths. COMMON TREATMENT.--Two teaspoonfuls of spirits of nitre, one teaspoonful paregoric, one wineglassful of camphor water. Mix thoroughly, and give a teaspoonful in half a teacupful of water every two hours. To relieve the cough, if troublesome, flax seed tea, or infusion of slippery-elm bark, with a little lemon juice to render more palatable, will be of benefit. _CHICKEN POX._ DEFINITION.--This is a contagious, eruptive disease, which resembles to some extent small-pox. The pointed vesicles or pimples have a depression in the center in chicken-pox, and in small pox they do not. SYMPTOMS.--Nine to seventeen days elapse after the exposure, before symptoms appear. Slight fever, a sense of sickness, the appearance of scattered pimples, some itching and heat. The pimples rapidly change into little blisters, filled with a watery fluid. After five or six days they disappear. HOME TREATMENT.--Milk diet, and avoid all kinds of meat. Keep the bowels open, and avoid all exposure to cold. Large vesicles on the face should be punctured early and irritation by rubbing should be avoided. _HOME TREATMENT OF DIPHTHERIA._ DEFINITION.--Acute, specific, constitutional disease, with local manifestations in the throat, mouth, nose, larynx, wind-pipe, and glands of the neck. The disease is infectious but not very contagious under the proper precautions. It is a disease of childhood, though adults sometimes contract it. Many of the best physicians of the day consider true or membranous croup to be due to this diphtheritic membranous disease thus located in the larynx or trachea. SYMPTOMS.--Symptoms vary according to the severity of the attack. Chills, fever, headache, languor, loss of appetite, stiffness of neck, with tenderness about the angles of the jaw, soreness of the throat, pain in the ear, aching of the limbs, loss of strength, coated tongue, swelling of the neck, and offensive breath; lymphatic glands on side of neck enlarged and tender. The throat is first to be seen red and swollen, then covered with grayish white patches, which spread, and a false membrane is found on the mucous membrane. If the nose is attacked, there will be an offensive discharge, and the child will breathe through the mouth. If the larynx or throat are involved, the voice will become hoarse, and a croupy cough, with difficult breathing, shows that the air passage to the lungs is being obstructed by the false membrane. HOME TREATMENT.--Isolate the patient, to prevent the spread of the disease. Diet should be of the most nutritious character, as milk, eggs, broths, and oysters. Give at intervals of every two or three hours. If patient refuses to swallow, from the pain caused by the effort, a nutrition injection must be resorted to. Inhalations of steam and hot water, and allowing the patient to suck pellets of ice, will give relief. Sponges dipped in hot water, and applied to the angles of the jaw, are beneficial. Inhalations of lime, made by slaking freshly burnt lime in a vessel, and directing the vapor to the child's mouth, by means of a newspaper, or similar contrivance. Flour of sulphur, blown into the back of the mouth and throat by means of a goose quill, has been highly recommended. Frequent gargling of the throat and mouth, with a solution of lactic acid, strong enough to taste sour, will help to keep the parts clean, and correct the foul breath. If there is great prostration, with the nasal passage affected, or hoarseness and difficult breathing, a physician should be called at once. [Illustration] * * * * * DISEASES OF WOMEN. _DISORDERS OF THE MENSES._ 1. SUPPRESSION OF, OR SCANTY MENSES. HOME TREATMENT.--Attention to the diet, and exercise in the open air to promote the general health. Some bitter tonic, taken with fifteen grains of dialyzed iron, well diluted, after meals, if patient is pale and debilitated. A hot foot bath is often all that is necessary. 2. PROFUSE MENSTRUATION. HOME TREATMENT.--Avoid highly seasoned food, and the use of spirituous liquors; also excessive fatigue, either physical or mental. To check the flow, patient should be kept quiet, and allowed to sip cinnamon tea during the period. 3. PAINFUL MENSTRUATION. HOME TREATMENT.--Often brought on by colds. Treat by warm hip baths, hot drinks (avoiding spirituous liquors), and heat applied to the back and extremities. A teaspoonful of the fluid extract of viburnum will sometimes act like a charm. _HOW TO CURE SWELLED AND SORE BREASTS._ Take and boil a quantity of chamomile, and apply the hot fomentations. This dissolves the knot, and reduces the swelling and soreness. _LEUCORRHEA OR WHITES._ HOME TREATMENT.--This disorder, if not arising from some abnormal condition of the pelvic organs, can easily be cured by patient taking the proper amount of exercise and good nutritious food, avoiding tea and coffee. An injection every evening of one teaspoonful of Pond's Extract in a cup of hot water, after first cleansing the vagina well with a quart of warm water, is a simple but effective remedy. _INFLAMMATION OF THE WOMB._ HOME TREATMENT.--When in the acute form this disease is ushered in by a chill, followed by fever, and pain in the region of the womb. Patient should be placed in bed, and a brisk purgative given, hot poultices applied to the abdomen, and the feet and hands kept warm. If the symptoms do not subside, a physician should be consulted. _HYSTERIA._ DEFINITION.--A functional disorder of the nervous system of which it is impossible to speak definitely; characterized by disturbance of the reason, will, imagination, and emotions, with sometimes convulsive attacks that resemble epilepsy. SYMPTOMS.--Fits of laughter, and tears without apparent cause; emotions easily excited; mind often melancholy and depressed; tenderness along the spine; disturbances, of digestion, with hysterical convulsions, and other nervous phenomena. HOME TREATMENT.--Some healthy and pleasant employment should be urged upon women afflicted with this disease. Men are also subject to it, though not so frequently. Avoid excessive fatigue and mental worry; also stimulants and opiates. Plenty of good food and fresh air will do more good than drugs. * * * * * FALLING OF THE WOMB. CAUSES.--The displacement of the womb usually is the result of too much childbearing, miscarriages, abortions, or the taking of strong medicines to bring about menstruation. It may also be the result in getting up too quickly from the childbed. There are, however, other causes, such as a general breaking down of the health. SYMPTOMS.--If the womb has fallen forward it presses against the bladder, causing the patient to urinate frequently. If the womb has fallen back, it presses against the rectum, and constipation is the result with often severe pain at stool. If the womb descends into the vagina there is a feeling of heaviness. All forms of displacement produce pain in the back, with an irregular and scanty menstrual flow and a dull and exhausted feeling. HOME TREATMENT.--Improve the general health. Take some preparation of cod-liver oil, hot injections (of a teaspoonful of powdered alum with a pint of water), a daily sitz-bath, and a regular morning bath three times a week will be found very beneficial. There, however, can be no remedy unless the womb is first replaced to the proper position. This must be done by a competent physician who should frequently be consulted. [Illustration] * * * * * MENSTRUATION. 1. ITS IMPORTANCE.--Menstruation plays a momentous part in the female economy; indeed, unless it be in every way properly and duly performed, it is neither possible that a lady can be well, nor is it at all probable that she will conceive. The large number of barren, of delicate, and of hysterical women there are in America arises mainly from menstruation not being duly and properly performed. 2. THE BOUNDARY-LINE.--Menstruation--"the periods"--the appearance of the catamenia or the menses--is then one of the most important epochs in a girl's life. It is the boundary-line, the landmark between childhood and womanhood; it is the threshold, so to speak, of a woman's life. Her body now develops and expands, and her mental capacity enlarges and improves. 3. THE COMMENCEMENT OF MENSTRUATION.--A good beginning at this time is peculiarly necessary, or a girl's health is sure to suffer and different organs of the body--her lungs, for instance, may become imperiled. A healthy continuation, at regular periods, is also much needed, or conception, when she is married, may not occur. Great attention and skillful management is required to ward off many formidable diseases, which at the close of menstruation--at "the change of life"--are more likely than at any time to be developed. If she marry when very young, marriage weakens her system, and prevents a full development of her body. Moreover, such an one is, during the progress of her labor, prone to convulsions--which is a very serious childbed complication. 4. EARLY MARRIAGES.--Statistics prove that twenty per cent--20 in every 100--of females who marry are under age, and that such early marriages are often followed by serious, and sometimes even by fatal consequences to mother, to progeny, or to both. Parents ought, therefore, to persuade their daughters not to marry until they are of age--twenty-one; they should point out to them the risk and danger likely to ensue if their advice be not followed; they should Impress upon their minds the old adage: "Early wed, Early dead." 5. TIME TO MARRY.--Parents who have the real interest and happiness of their daughters at heart, ought, in consonance with the laws of physiology, to discountenance marriage before twenty; and the nearer the girls arrive at the age of twenty-five before the consummation of this important rite, the greater the probability that, physically and morally, they will be protected against those risks which precocious marriages bring in their train. 6. FEEBLE PARENTS.--Feeble parents have generally feeble children; diseased parents, diseased children; nervous parents, nervous children;--"like begets like." It is sad to reflect, that the innocent have to suffer, not only for the guilty, but for the thoughtless and inconsiderate. Disease and debility are thus propagated from one generation to another and the American race becomes woefully deteriorated. 7. TIME.--Menstruation in this country usually commences at the ages of from thirteen to sixteen, sometimes earlier; occasionally as early as eleven or twelve; at other times later, and not until a girl be seventeen or eighteen years of age. Menstruation in large towns is supposed to commence at an earlier period than in the country, and earlier in luxurious than in simple life. 8. CHARACTER.--The menstrual fluid is not exactly blood, although, both in appearance and properties, it much resembles it; yet it never in the healthy state clots as blood does. It is a secretion of the womb, and, when healthy, ought to be of a bright red color in appearance very much like the blood from a recently cut finger. The menstrual fluid ought not, as before observed, clot. If it does, a lady, during "her periods," suffers intense pain; moreover, she seldom conceives until the clotting has ceased. 9. MENSTRUATION DURING NURSING.--Some ladies, though comparatively few, menstruate during nursing; when they do, it may be considered not as the rule, but as the exception. It is said in such instances, that they are more likely to conceive; and no doubt they are, as menstruation is an indication of a proneness to conception. Many persons have an idea that when a woman, during lactation, menstruates, her milk is both sweeter and purer. Such is an error. Menstruation during nursing is more likely to weaken the mother, and consequently to deteriorate her milk, and thus make it less sweet and less pure. 10. VIOLENT EXERCISE.--During "the monthly periods" violent exercise is injurious; iced drinks and acid beverages are improper; and bathing in the sea, and bathing the feet in cold water, and cold baths are dangerous; indeed, at such times as these, no risks should be run, and no experiments should, for the moment, be permitted, otherwise serious consequences will, in all probability, ensue. 11. THE PALE, COLORLESS-COMPLEXIONED.--The pale, colorless-complexioned, helpless, listless, and almost lifeless young ladies who are so constantly seen in society, usually owe their miserable state of health to absent, to deficient, or to profuse menstruation. Their breathing is short--they are soon "out of breath," if they attempt to take exercise--to walk, for instance, either up stairs or up a hill, or even for half a mile on level ground, their breath is nearly exhausted--they pant as though they had been running quickly. They are ready, after the slightest exertion or fatigue, and after the least worry or excitement, to feel faint, and sometimes even to actually swoon away. Now such cases may, if judiciously treated, be generally soon cured. It therefore behooves mothers to seek medical aid early for their girls, and that before irreparable mischief has been done to the constitution. 12. POVERTY OF BLOOD.--In a pale, delicate girl or wife, who is laboring under what is popularly called poverty of blood, the menstrual fluid is sometimes very scant, at others very copious, but is, in either case, usually very pale--almost as colorless as water, the patient being very nervous and even hysterical. Now, these are signs of great debility; but, fortunately for such an one, a medical man is, in the majority of cases, in possession of remedies that will soon make her all right again. 13. NO RIGHT TO MARRY.--A delicate girl has no right until she be made strong, to marry. If she should marry, she will frequently, when in labor, not have strength, unless she has help, to bring a child into the world; which, provided she be healthy and well-formed, ought not to be. How graphically the Bible tells of delicate women not having strength to bring children into the world: "For the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth."--2 Kings XIX, 3. 14. TOO SPARING.--Menstruation at another time is too sparing; this is a frequent cause of sterility. Medical aid, in the majority of cases, will be able to remedy the defect, and, by doing so, will probably be the means of bringing the womb into a healthy state, and thus predispose to conception. [Illustration] [Illustration] * * * * * CELEBRATED PRESCRIPTIONS FOR ALL DISEASES AND HOW TO USE THEM. VINEGAR FOR HIVES. After trying many remedies in a severe case of hives, Mr. Swain found vinegar lotion gave instant relief, and subsequent trials in other cases have been equally successful. One part of water to two parts of vinegar is the strength most suitable. THROAT TROUBLE. A teaspoonful of salt, in a cup of hot water makes a safe and excellent gargle in most throat troubles. FOR SWEATING FEET, WITH BAD ODOR. Wash the feet in warm water with borax, and if this don't cure, use a solution of permanganate to destroy the fetor; about five grains to each ounce of water. AMENORRHOEA. The following is recommended as a reliable emmenagogue in many cases of functional amenorrhoea: Bichloride of mercury, Arsenite of sodium, aa gr. iij. Sulphate of strychnine, gr. iss. Carbonate of potassium, Sulphate of iron, aa gr. xlv. Mix and divide into sixty pills. Sig. One pill after each meal. SICK HEADACHE. Take a spoonful of finely powdered charcoal in a small glass of warm water to relieve a sick headache. It absorbs the gasses produced by the fermentation of undigested food. AN EXCELLENT EYE WASH. Acetate of zinc, 20 grains. Acetate of morphia, 5 grains. Rose water, 4 ounces. Mix. FOR FILMS AND CATARACTS OF THE EYES. Blood Root Pulverized, 1 ounce. Hog's lard, 3 ounces. Mix, simmer for 20 minutes, then strain; when cold put a little in the eyes twice or three times a day. FOR BURNS AND SORES. Pitch Burgundy, 2 pounds. Bees' Wax, 1 pound. Hog's lard, one pound. Mix all together and simmer over a slow fire until the whole are well mixed together; then stir it until cold. Apply on muslin to the parts affected. FOR CHAPPED HANDS. Olive oil, 6 ounces. Camphor beat fine, 1/2 ounce. Mix, dissolve by gentle heat over slow fire and when cold apply to the hand freely. INTOXICATION. A man who is helplessly intoxicated may almost immediately restore the faculties and powers of locomotion by taking half a teaspoonful of chloride of ammonium in a goblet of water. A wineglassful of strong vinegar will have the same effect and is frequently resorted to by drunken soldiers. NERVOUS DISABILITY, HEADACHE, NEURALGIA, NERVOUSNESS. Fluid extract of scullcap, 1 ounce. Fluid extract American valerian, 1 ounce. Fluid extract catnip, 1 ounce. Mix all. Dose, from 15 to 30 drops every two hours, in water; most valuable. A valuable tonic in all conditions of debility and want of appetite. Comp. tincture of cinchona in teaspoonful doses in a little water, half hour before meals. ANOTHER EXCELLENT TONIC Tincture of gentian, 1 ounce. Tincture of Columba, 1 ounce. Tincture of Collinsonia, 1 ounce. Mix all. Dose, one tablespoonful in one tablespoonful of water before meals. REMEDY FOR CHAPPED HANDS. When doing housework, if your hands become chapped or red, mix corn meal and vinegar into a stiff paste and apply to the hands two or three times a day, after washing them in hot water, then let dry without wiping, and rub with glycerine. At night use cold cream, and wear gloves. BLEEDING. Very hot water is a prompt checker of bleeding, besides if it is clean, as it should be, it aids in sterilizing our wound. TREATMENT FOR CRAMP. Wherever friction can be conveniently applied, heat will be generated by it, and the muscle again reduced to a natural condition; but if the pains proceed from the contraction of some muscle located internally, burnt brandy is an excellent remedy. A severe attack which will not yield to this simple treatment may be conquered by administering a small dose of laudanum or ether, best given under medical supervision. TREATMENT FOR COLIC Castor oil, given as soon as the symptoms of colic manifest themselves, has frequently afforded relief. At any rate, the irritating substances must be expelled from the alimentary canal before the pains will subside. All local remedies will be ineffectual, and consequently the purgative should be given in large doses until a copious vacuation is produced. [Illustration: THE DOCTOR'S VISIT.] TREATMENT FOR HEARTBURN. If soda, taken in small quantities after meals, does not relieve the distress, one may rest assured that the fluid is an alkali and requires an acid treatment. Proceed, after eating, to squeeze ten drops of lemon-juice into a small quantity of water, and swallow it. The habit of daily life should be made to conform to the laws of health, or local treatment will prove futile. BILIOUSNESS. For biliousness, squeeze the juice of a lime or small lemon into half a glass of cold water, then stir in a little baking soda and drink while it foams. This receipt will also relieve sick headache if taken at the beginning. TURPENTINE APPLICATIONS. Mix turpentine and lard in equal parts. Warmed and rubbed on the chest, it is a safe, reliable and mild counter irritant and revulsent in minor lung complications. TREATMENT FOR MUMPS. It is very important that the face and neck be kept warm. Avoid catching cold, and regulate the stomach and bowels; because when aggravated, this disease is communicated to other glands, and assumes there a serious form. Rest and quiet, with a good condition of the general health, will throw off this disease without further inconvenience. TREATMENT FOR FELON. All medication, such as poulticing, anointing, and the applications of lotions, is but useless waste of time. The surgeon's knife should be used as early as possible, for it will be required sooner or later and the more promptly it can be applied, the less danger is there from the disease, and the more agony is spared to the unfortunate victim. TREATMENT FOR STABS. A wound made by thrusting a dagger or other oblong instrument into the flesh, is best treated, if no artery has been severed, by applying lint scraped from a linen cloth, which serves as an obstruction, allowing and assisting coagulation. Meanwhile cold water should be applied to the parts adjoining the wound. TREATMENT FOR MASHED NAILS. If the injured member be plunged into very hot water the nail will become pliable and adapt itself to the new condition of things, thus alleviating agony to some extent. A small hole may be bored on the nail with a pointed instrument, so adroitly as not to cause pain, yet so successfully as to relieve pressure on the sensitive tissues. Free applications of arnica or iodine will have an excellent effect. TREATMENT FOR FOREIGN BODY IN THE EYE. When any foreign body enters the eye, close it instantly, and keep it still until you have an opportunity to ask the assistance of some one; then have the upper lid folded over a pencil and the exposed surfaces closely searched; if the body be invisible, catch the everted lid by the lashes, and drawing it down over the lower lid, suddenly release it, and it will resume its natural position. Unsuccessful in this attempt, you may be pretty well assured that the object has become lodged in the tissues, and will require the assistance of a skilled operator to remove it. CUTS. A drop or two of creosote on a cut will stop its bleeding. TREATMENT FOR POISON OAK--POISON IVY--POISON SUMACH.--Mr. Charles Morris, of Philadelphia, who has studied the subject closely, uses, as a sovereign remedy, frequent bathing of the affected parts in water as hot as can be borne. If used immediately after exposure, it may prevent the eruption appearing. If later, it allays the itching, and gradually dries up the swellings, though they are very stubborn after they have once appeared. But an application every few hours keeps down the intolerable itching, which is the most annoying feature of sumach poisoning. In addition to this, the ordinary astringent ointments are useful, as is also that sovereign lotion, "lead-water and laudanum." Mr. Morris adds to these a preventive prescription of "wide-open eyes." BITES AND STINGS OF INSECTS.--Wash with a solution of ammonia water. BITES OF MAD DOGS.--Apply caustic potash at once to the wound, and give enough whiskey to cause sleep. BURNS.--Make a paste of common baking soda and water, and apply it promptly to the burn. It will quickly check the pain and inflammation. COLD ON CHEST.--A flannel rag wrung out in boiling water and sprinkled with turpentine, laid on the chest, gives the greatest relief. COUGH.--Boil one ounce of flaxseed in a pint of water, strain, and add a little honey, one ounce of rock candy, and the juice of three lemons. Mix and boil well. Drink as hot as possible. SPRAINED ANKLE OR WRIST.--Wash the ankle very frequently with cold salt and water, which is far better than warm vinegar or decoction of herbs. Keep the foot as cool as possible to prevent inflammation, and sit with it elevated on a high cushion. Live on low diet, and take every morning some cooling medicine, such as Epsom salts. It cures in a few days. CHILBLAINS, SPRAINS, ETC.--One raw egg well beaten, half a pint of vinegar, one ounce spirits of turpentine, a quarter of an ounce of spirits of wine, a quarter of an ounce of camphor. These ingredients to be beaten together, then put in a bottle and shaken for ten minutes, after which, to be corked down tightly to exclude the air. In half an hour it is fit for use. To be well rubbed in, two, three, or four times a day. For rheumatism in the head, to be rubbed at the back of the neck and behind the ears. In chilblains this remedy is to be used before they are broken. HOW TO REMOVE SUPERFLUOUS HAIR.--Sulphuret of Arsenic, one ounce; Quicklime, one ounce; Prepared Lard, one ounce; White Wax, one ounce. Melt the Wax, add the Lard. When nearly cold, stir in the other ingredients. Apply to the superfluous hair, allowing it to remain on from five to ten minutes; use a table-knife to shave off the hair; then wash with soap and warm water. DYSPEPSIA CURE.--Powdered Rhubarb, two drachms: Bicarbonate of Sodium, six drachms; Fluid Extract of Gentian, three drachms; Peppermint Water, seven and a half ounces. Mix them. Dose, a teaspoonful half an hour before meals. FOR NEURALGIA.--Tincture of Belladonna, one ounce; Tincture of Camphor, one ounce; Tincture of Arnica, one ounce; Tincture of Opium, one ounce. Mix them. Apply over the seat of the pain, and give ten to twenty drops in sweetened water every two hours. FOR COUGHS, COLDS, ETC.--Syrup of Morphia, three ounces; Syrup of Tar, three and a half ounces; Chloroform, one troy ounce; Glycerine, one troy ounce. Mix them. Dose, a teaspoonful three or four times a day. TO CURE HIVES.--Compound syrup of Squill, U.S., three ounces; Syrup of Ipecac, U.S., one ounce. Mix them. Dose, a teaspoonful. TO CURE SICK HEADACHE.--Gather sumach leaves in the summer, and spread them in the sun a few days to dry. Then powder them fine, and smoke, morning and evening for two weeks, also whenever there are symptoms of approaching headache. Use a new clay pipe. If these directions are adhered to, this medicine will surely effect a permanent cure. WHOOPING COUGH.--Dissolve a scruple of salt of tartar in a gill of water; add to it ten grains of cochineal; sweeten it with sugar. Give to an infant a quarter teaspoonful four times a day; two years old, one-half teaspoonful; from four years, a tablespoonful. Great care is required in the administration of medicines to infants. We can assure paternal inquirers that the foregoing may be depended upon. CUT OR BRUISE.--Apply the moist surface of the inside coating or skin of the shell of a raw egg. It will adhere of itself, leave no scar, and heal without pain. DISINFECTANT.--Chloride of lime should be scattered at least once a week under sinks and wherever sewer gas is likely to penetrate. [Illustration: THE YOUNG DOCTOR.] COSTIVENESS.--Common charcoal is highly recommended for costiveness. It may be taken in tea- or tablespoonful, or even larger doses, according to the exigencies of the case, mixed with molasses, repeating it as often as necessary. Bathe the bowels with pepper and vinegar. Or take two ounces of rhubarb, add one ounce of rust of iron, infuse in one quart of wine. Half a wineglassful every morning. Or take pulverized blood root, one drachm, pulverized rhubarb, one drachm, castile soap, two scruples. Mix and roll into thirty-two pills. Take one, morning and night. By following these directions it may perhaps save you from a severe attack of the piles, or some other kindred disease. TO CURE DEAFNESS.--Obtain pure pickerel oil, and apply four drops morning and evening to the ear. Great care should be taken to obtain oil that is perfectly pure. DEAFNESS.--Take three drops of sheep's gall, warm and drop it into the ear on going to bed. The ear must be syringed with warm soap and water in the morning. The gall must be applied for three successive nights. It is only efficacious when the deafness is produced by cold. The most convenient way of warming the gall is by holding it in a silver spoon over the flame of a light. The above remedy has been frequently tried with perfect success. GOUT.--This is Col. Birch's recipe for rheumatic gout or acute rheumatism, commonly called in England the "Chelsea Pensioner." Half an ounce of nitre (saltpetre), half an ounce of sulphur, half an ounce of flour of mustard, half an ounce of Turkey rhubarb, quarter of an ounce of powdered guaicum. Mix, and take a teaspoonful every other night for three nights, and omit three nights, in a wineglassful of cold water which has been previously well boiled. RINGWORM.--The head is to be washed twice a day with soft soap and warm soft water; when dried the places to be rubbed with a piece of linen rag dipped in ammonia from gas tar; the patient should take a little sulphur and molasses, or some other genuine aperient, every morning; brushes and combs should be washed every day, and the ammonia kept tightly corked. PILES.--Hamamelis, both internally or as an injection in rectum. Bathe the parts with cold water or with astringent lotions, as alum water, especially in bleeding piles. Ointment of gallic acid and calomel is of repute. The best treatment of all is, suppositories of iodoform, ergotine, of tannic acid, which can be made at any drug store. CHICKEN POX.--No medicine is usually needed, except a tea made from pleurisy root, to make the child sweat. Milk diet is the best; avoidance of animal food; careful attention to the bowels; keep cool and avoid exposure to cold. SCARLET FEVER.--Cold water compress on the throat. Fats and oils rubbed on hands and feet. The temperature of the room should be about 68 degrees Fahr., and all draughts avoided. Mustard baths for retrocession of the rash and to bring it out. Diet: ripe fruit, toast, gruel, beef, tea and milk. Stimulants are useful to counteract depression of the vital forces. FALSE MEASLES OR ROSE RASH.--It requires no treatment except hygienic. Keep the bowels open. Nourishing diet, and if there is itching, moisten the skin with five per cent. solution of aconite or solution of starch and water. BILIOUS ATTACKS.--Drop doses of muriatic acid in a wine glass of water every four hours, or the following prescription: Bicarbonate of soda, one drachm; Aromatic spirits of ammonia, two drachms; Peppermint water, four ounces. Dose: Take a teaspoonful every four hours. DIARRHOEA.--The following prescription is generally all that will be necessary: acetate of lead, eight grains; gum arabic, two drachms; acetate of morphia, one grain; and cinnamon water, eight ounces. Take a teaspoonful every three hours. Be careful not to eat too much food. Some consider, the best treatment is to fast, and it is a good suggestion. Patients should keep quiet and have the room of a warm and even temperature. VOMITING.--Ice dissolved in the mouth, often cures vomiting when all remedies fail. Much depends on the diet of persons liable to such attacts; this should be easily digestible food, taken often and in small quantities. Vomiting can often be arrested by applying a mustard paste over the region of the stomach. It is not necessary to allow it to remain until the parts are blistered, but it may be removed when the part becomes thoroughly red, and reapplied if required after the redness has disappeared. One of the secrets to relieve vomiting is to give the stomach perfect rest, not allowing the patient even a glass of water, as long as the tendency remains to throw it up again. NERVOUS HEADACHE.--Extract hyoscymus five grains, pulverized camphor five grains. Mix. Make four pills, one to be taken when the pain is most severe in nervous headache. Or three drops tincture nux vomica in a spoonful of water, two or three times a day. BLEEDING FROM THE NOSE.--from whatever cause--may generally be stopped by putting a plug of lint into the nostril; if this does not do, apply a cold lotion to the forehead; raise the head and place both arms over the head, so that it will rest on both hands; dip the lint plug, slightly moistened, in some powdered gum arabic, and plug the nostrils again; or dip the plug into equal parts of gum arabic and alum. An easier and simpler method is to place a piece of writing paper on the gums of the upper jaw, under the upper lip, and let it remain there for a few minutes. BOILS.--These should be brought to a head by warm poultices of camomile flowers, or boiled white lily root, or onion root, by fermentation with hot water, or by stimulating plasters. When ripe they should be destroyed by a needle or lancet. But this should not be attempted until they are thoroughly proved. BUNIONS may be checked in their early development by binding the joint with adhesive plaster, and keeping it on as long as any uneasiness is felt. The bandaging should be perfect, and it might be well to extend it round the foot An inflamed bunion should be poulticed, and larger shoes be worn. Iodine 12 grains, lard or spermaceti ointment half an ounce, makes a capital ointment for bunions. It should be rubbed on gently twice or three times a day. FELONS.--One table-spoonful of red lead, and one tablespoonful of castile soap, and mix them with as much weak lye as will make it soft enough to spread like a salve, and apply it on the first appearance of the felon, and it will cure in ten or twelve days. CARE FOR WARTS.--The easiest way to get rid of warts, is to pare off the thickened skin which covers the prominent wart; cut it off by successive layers and shave it until you come to the surface of the skin, and till you draw blood in two or three places. Then rub the part thoroughly over with lunar caustic, and one effective operation of this kind will generally destroy the wart; if not, you cut off the black spot which has been occasioned by the caustic, and apply it again; or you may apply acetic acid, and thus you will get rid of it. Care must be taken in applying these acids, not to rub them on the skin around the wart. WENS.--Take the yoke of some eggs, beat up, and add as much fine salt as will dissolve, and apply a plaster to the wen every ten hours. It cures without pain or any other inconvenience. * * * * * HOW TO CURE APOPLEXY, BAD BREATH AND QUINSY. 1. APOPLEXY.--Apoplexy occurs only in the corpulent or obese, and those of gross or high living. _Treatment_--Raise the head to a nearly upright position; loosen all tight clothes, strings, etc., and apply cold water to the head and warm water and warm cloths to the feet. Have the apartment cool and well ventilated. Give nothing by the mouth until the breathing is relieved, and then only draughts of cold water. 2. BAD BREATH.--Bad or foul breath will be removed by taking a teaspoonful of the following mixture after each meal: One ounce chloride of soda, one ounce liquor of potassa, one and one-half ounces phosphate of soda, and three ounces of water. 3. QUINSY.--This is an inflammation of the tonsils, or common inflammatory sore throat; commences with a slight feverish attack, with considerable pain and swelling of the tonsils, causing some difficulty in swallowing; as the attack advances, these symptoms become more intense, there is headache, thirst, a painful sense of tension, and acute darting pains in the ears. The attack is generally brought on by exposure to cold, and lasts from five to seven days, when it subsides naturally, or an abscess may form in tonsils and burst, or the tonsils may remain enlarged, the inflammation subsiding. _Home Treatment._--The patient should remain in a warm room, the diet chiefly milk and good broths, some cooling laxative and diaphoretic medicine may be given; but the greatest relief will be found in the frequent inhalation of the steam of hot water through an inhaler, or in the old-fashioned way through the spout of a teapot. * * * * * SENSIBLE RULES FOR THE NURSE. "Remember to be extremely neat in dress; a few drops of hartshorn in the water used for _daily_ bathing will remove the disagreeable odors of warmth and perspiration. "Never speak of the symptoms of your patient in his presence, unless questioned by the doctor, whose orders you are always to obey _implicitly_. "Remember never to be a gossip or tattler, and always to hold sacred the knowledge which, to a certain extent, you must obtain of the private affairs of your patient and the household in which you nurse. "Never contradict your patient, nor argue with him, nor let him see that you are annoyed about anything. "Never _whisper_ in the sick room. If your patient be well enough, and wishes you to talk to him, speak in a low, distinct voice, on cheerful subjects. Don't relate painful hospital experiences, nor give details of the maladies of former patients, and remember never to startle him with accounts of dreadful crimes or accidents that you have read in the newspapers. "_Write_ down the orders that the physician gives you as to time for giving the medicines, food, etc. "Keep the room bright (unless the doctor orders it darkened). "Let the air of the room be as pure as possible, and keep everything in order, but without being fussy and bustling. "The only way to remove dust in a sick room is to wipe everything with a damp cloth. "Remember to carry out all vessels covered. Empty and wash them immediately, and keep some disinfectant in them. "Remember that to leave the patient's untasted food by his side, from meal to meal, in hopes that he will eat it in the interval, is simply to prevent him from taking any food at all. "Medicines, beef tea or stimulants, should never be kept where the patient can see them or smell them. "Light-colored clothing should be worn by those who have the care of the sick, in preference to dark-colored apparel; particularly if the disease is of a contagious nature. Experiments have shown that black and other dark colors will absorb more readily the subtle effluvia that emanates from sick persons than white or light colors." * * * * * LONGEVITY. The following table exhibits very recent mortality statistics, showing the average duration of life among persons of various classes: Employment. Years. Judges 65 Farmers 64 Bank Officers 64 Coopers 58 Public Officers 57 Clergymen 56 Shipwrights 55 Hatters 54 Lawyers 54 Rope Makers 54 Blacksmiths 51 Merchants 51 Calico Printers 51 Physicians 51 Butchers 50 Carpenters 49 Masons 48 Traders 46 Tailors 44 Jewelers 44 Manufacturers 43 Bakers 43 Painters 43 Shoemakers 43 Mechanics 43 Editors 40 Musicians 39 Printers 38 Machinists 36 Teachers 34 Clerks 34 Operatives 32 "It will be easily seen, by these figures, how a quiet or tranquil life affects longevity. The phlegmatic man will live longer, all other things being equal, than the sanguine, nervous individual. Marriage is favorable to longevity, and it has also been ascertained that women live longer than men." [Illustration: HOT WATER THROAT BAG.] [Illustration: HOT WATER BAG.] * * * * * HOW TO APPLY AND USE HOT WATER IN ALL DISEASES. 1. THE HOT WATER THROAT BAG. The hot water throat bag is made from fine white rubber fastened to the head by a rubber band (see illustration), and is an unfailing remedy for catarrh, hay fever, cold, toothache, headache, earache, neuralgia, etc. 2. THE HOT WATER BOTTLE. No well regulated house should be without a hot water bottle. It is excellent in the application of hot water for inflammations, colic, headache, congestion, cold feet, rheumatism, sprains, etc., etc. It is an excellent warming pan and an excellent feet and hand warmer when riding. These hot water bags in any variety can be purchased at any drug store. 3. Boiling water may be used in the bags and the heat will be retained many hours. They are soft and pliable and pleasant to the touch, and can be adjusted to any part of the body. 4. Hot water is good for constipation, torpid liver and relieves colic and flatulence, and is of special value. 5. _Caution._ When hot water bags or any hot fomentation is removed, replace dry flannel and bathe parts in tepid water and rub till dry. 6. By inflammations it is best to use hot water and then cold water. It seems to give more immediate relief. Hot water is a much better remedy than drugs, paragoric, Dover's powder or morphine. Always avoid the use of strong poisonous drugs when possible. 7. Those who suffer from cold feet there is no better remedy than to bathe the feet in cold water before retiring and then place a hot water bottle in the bed at the feet. A few weeks of such treatment results in relief if not cure of the most obstinate case. HOW TO USE COLD WATER. Use a compress of cold water for acute or chronic inflammation, such as sore throat, bronchitis, croup, inflammation of the lungs, etc. If there is a hot and aching pain in the back apply a compress of cold water on the same, or it may simply be placed across the back or around the body. The most depends upon the condition of the patient. [Illustration] [Illustration] * * * * * PRACTICAL RULES FOR BATHING. 1. Bathe at least once a week all over, thoroughly. No one can preserve his health by neglecting personal cleanliness. Remember, "Cleanliness is akin to Godliness." 2. Only mild soap should be used in bathing the body. 3. Wipe quickly and dry the body thoroughly with a moderately coarse towel. Rub the skin vigorously. 4. Many people have contracted severe and fatal diseases by neglecting to take proper care of the body after bathing. 5. If you get up a good reaction by thorough rubbing in a mild temperature, the effect is always good. 6. Never go into a cold room, or allow cold air to enter the room until you are dressed. 7. Bathing in cold rooms and in cold water is positively injurious, unless the person possesses a very strong and vigorous constitution, and then there is great danger of laying the foundation of some serious disease. 8. Never bathe within two hours after eating. It injures digestion. 9. Never bathe when the body or mind is much exhausted. It is liable to check the healthful circulation. 10. A good time for bathing is just before retiring. The morning hour is a good time also, if a warm room and warm water can be secured. 11. Never bathe a fresh wound or broken skin with cold water; the wound absorbs water, and causes swelling and irritation. 12. A person not robust should be very careful in bathing; great care should be exercised to avoid any chilling effects. * * * * * ALL THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF BATHS, AND HOW TO PREPARE THEM. THE SULPHUR BATH. For the itch, ringworm, itching, and for other slight irritations, bathe in water containing a little sulphur. THE SALT BATH. To open the pores of the skin, put a little common salt into the water. Borax, baking soda or lime used in the same way are excellent for cooling and cleansing the skin. A very small quantity in a bowl of water is sufficient. THE VAPOR BATH. 1. For catarrh, bronchitis, pleurisy, inflammation of the lungs, rheumatism, fever, affections of the bowels and kidneys, and skin diseases, the vapor-bath is an excellent remedy. 2. APPARATUS.--Use a small alcohol lamp, and place over it a small dish containing water. Light the lamp and allow the water to boil. Place a cane bottom chair over the lamp, and seat the patient on it. Wrap blankets or quilts around the chair and around the patient, closing it tightly about the neck. After free perspiration is produced the patient should be wrapped in warm blankets, and placed in bed, so as to continue the perspiration for some time. 3. A convenient alcohol lamp may be made by taking a tin box, placing a tube in it, and putting in a common lamp wick. Any tinner can make one in a few minutes, at a trifling cost. THE HOT-AIR BATH. 1. Place the alcohol lamp under the chair, without the dish of water. Then place the patient on the chair, as in the vapor bath, and let him remain until a gentle and free perspiration is produced. This bath may be taken from time to time, as may be deemed necessary. 2. While remaining in the hot-air bath the patient may drink freely of cold or tepid water. 3. As soon as the bath is over the patient should be washed with hot water and soap. 4. The hot-air bath is excellent for colds, skin diseases, and the gout. THE SPONGE BATH. 1. Have a large basin of water of the temperature of 85 or 95 degrees. As soon as the patient rises rub the body over with a soft, dry towel until it becomes warm. 2. Now sponge the body with water and a little soap, at the same time keeping the body well covered, except such portions as are necessarily exposed. Then dry the skin carefully with a soft, warm towel. Rub the skin well for two or three minutes, until every part becomes red and perfectly dry. 3. Sulphur, lime or salt, and sometimes mustard, may be used in any of the sponge baths, according to the disease. THE FOOT BATH. 1. The foot bath, in coughs, colds, asthma, headaches and fevers, is excellent. One or two tablespoonfuls of ground mustard added to a gallon of hot water, is very beneficial. 2. Heat the water as hot as the patient can endure it, and gradually increase the temperature by pouring in additional quantities of hot water during the bath. THE SITZ BATH. A tub is arranged so that the patient can sit down in it while bathing. Fill the tub about one-half full of water. This is an excellent remedy for piles, constipation, headache, gravel, and for acute and inflammatory affections generally. THE ACID BATH. Place a little vinegar in water, and heat to the usual temperature. This is an excellent remedy for the disorders of the liver. A SURE CURE FOR PRICKLY HEAT. 1. Prickly heat is caused by hot weather, by excess of flesh, by rough flannels, by sudden changes of temperature, or by over-fatigue. 2. TREATMENT--Bathe two or three times a day with warm water, in which a moderate quantity of bran and common soda has been stirred. After wiping the skin dry, dust the affected parts with common cornstarch. * * * * * DIGESTIBILITY OF FOOD. ARTICLE OF FOOD; CONDITION; HOURS REQUIRED Rice; Boiled; 1.00 Eggs, whipped; Raw; 1.30 Trout, salmon, fresh; Boiled; 1.30 Apples, sweet and mellow; Raw; 1.30 Venison steak; Broiled; 1.35 Tapioca; Boiled; 2.00 Barley; Boiled; 2.00 Milk; Boiled; 2.00 Bullock's liver, fresh; Broiled; 2.00 Fresh eggs; Raw; 2.00 Codfish, cured and dry; Boiled; 2.00 Milk; Raw; 2.15 Wild turkey; Roasted; 2.15 Domestic turkey; Roasted; 2.30; Goose; Roasted; 2.30 Suckling pig; Roasted; 2.30 Fresh Lamb; Broiled; 2.30 Hash, meat and vegetables; Warmed; 2.30 Beans and pod; Boiled; 2.30 Parsnips; Boiled; 2.30 Irish potatoes; Roasted; 2.30 Chicken; Fricassee; 2.45 Custard; Baked; 2.45 Salt beef; Boiled; 2.45 Sour and hard apples; Raw; 2.50 Fresh oysters; Raw; 2.55 Fresh eggs; Soft Boiled; 3.00 Beef, fresh, lean and rare; Roasted; 3.00 Beef steak; Broiled; 3.00 Pork, recently salted; Stewed; 3.00 Fresh mutton; Boiled; 3.00 Soup, beans; Boiled; 3.00 Soup, chicken; Boiled; 3.00 Apple dumpling; Boiled; 3.00 Fresh oysters; Roasted; 3.15 Pork steak; Broiled; 3.15 Fresh mutton; Roasted; 3.15 Corn bread; Baked; 3.15 Carrots; Boiled; 3.15 Fresh sausage; Broiled; 3.20 Fresh flounder; Fried; 3.30 Fresh catfish; Fried; 3.30 Fresh oysters; Stewed; 3.30 Butter; Melted; 3.30 Old, strong cheese; Raw; 3.30 Mutton soup; Boiled; 3.30 Oyster soup; Boiled; 3.30 Fresh wheat bread; Baked; 3.30 Flat turnips; Boiled; 3.30 Irish potatoes; Boiled; 3.30 Fresh eggs; Hard boiled; 3.30 Fresh eggs; Fried; 3.30 Green corn and beans; Boiled; 3.45 Beets, Boiled; 3.45 Fresh, lean beef; Fried; 4.00 Fresh veal; Broiled; 4.00 Domestic fowls; Roasted; 4.00 Ducks, Roasted; 4.00 Beef soup, vegetables and bread Boiled; 4.00 Pork, recently salted; Boiled; 4.30 Fresh veal; Fried; 4.30 Cabbage, with vinegar; Boiled; 4.30 Pork, fat and lean; Roasted; 5.30 * * * * * HOW TO COOK FOR THE SICK. Useful Dietetic Recipes. GRUELS. 1. OATMEAL GRUEL.--Stir two tablespoonfuls of coarse oatmeal into a quart of boiling water, and let it simmer two hours. Strain, if preferred. 2. BEEF TEA AND OATMEAL.--Beat two tablespoonfuls of fine oatmeal, with two tablespoonfuls of cold water until very smooth, then add a pint of hot beef tea. Boil together six or eight minutes, stirring constantly. Strain through a fine sieve. 3. MILK GRUEL.--Into a pint of scalding milk stir two tablespoonfuls of fine oatmeal. Add a pint of boiling water, and boil until the meal is thoroughly cooked. 4. MILK PORRIDGE.--Place over the fire equal parts of milk and water. Just before it boils, add a small quantity (a tablespoonful to a pint of water) of graham flour or cornmeal, previously mixed with water, and boil three minutes. 5. SAGO GRUEL.--Take two tablespoonfuls of sago and place them in a small saucepan, moisten gradually with a little cold water. Set the preparation on a slow fire, and keep stirring till it becomes rather stiff and clear. Add a little grated nutmeg and sugar to taste; if preferred, half a pat of butter may also be added with the sugar. 6. CREAM GRUEL.--Put a pint and a half of water on the stove in a saucepan. Take one tablespoon of flour and the same of cornmeal, mix this with cold water, and as soon as the water in the saucepan boils, stir it in slowly. Let it boil slowly about twenty minutes, stirring constantly then add a little salt and a gill of sweet cream. Do not let it boil after putting in the cream, but turn into a bowl and cover tightly. Serve in a pretty cup and saucer. DRINKS. 1. APPLE WATER.--Cut two large apples into slices and pour a quart of boiling water on them, or on roasted apples; strain in two or three hours and sweeten slightly. 2. ORANGEADE.--Take the thin peel of two oranges and of one lemon; add water and sugar the same as for hot lemonade. When cold add the juice of four or five oranges and one lemon and strain off. 3. HOT LEMONADE.--Take two thin slices and the juice of one lemon; mix with two tablespoonfuls of granulated sugar, and add one-half pint of boiling water. 4. FLAXSEED LEMONADE.--Two tablespoonfuls of whole flaxseed to a pint of boiling water, let it steep three hours, strain when cool and add the juice of two lemons and two tablespoonfuls of honey. If too thick, put in cold water. Splendid for colds and suppression of urine. 5. JELLY WATER.--Sour jellies dissolved in water make a pleasant drink for fever patients. 6. TOAST WATER.--Toast several thin pieces of bread a slice deep brown, but do not blacken or burn. Break into small pieces and put into a jar. Pour over the pieces a quart of boiling water; cover the jar and let it stand an hour before using. Strain if desired. 7. WHITE OF EGG AND MILK.--The white of an egg beaten to a stiff froth, and stirred very quickly into a glass of milk, is a very nourishing food for persons whose digestion is weak, also for children who cannot digest milk alone. 8. EGG COCOA.--One-half teaspoon cocoa with enough hot water to make a paste. Take one egg, beat white and yolk separately. Stir into a cup of milk heated to nearly boiling. Sweeten if desired. Very nourishing. 9. EGG LEMONADE.--White of one egg, one tablespoonful pulverized sugar, juice of one lemon and one goblet of water. Beat together. Very grateful in inflammation of of lungs, stomach or bowels. 10. BEEF TEA.--For every quart of tea desired use one pound of fresh beef, from which all fat, bones and sinews have been carefully removed; cut the beef into pieces a quarter of an inch thick and mix with a pint of cold water. Let it stand an hour, then pour into a glass fruit can and place in a vessel of water; let it heat on the stove another hour, but do not let it boil. Strain before using. JELLIES. 1. SAGO JELLY.--Simmer gently in a pint of water two tablespoonfuls of sago until it thickens, frequently stirring. A little sugar may be added if desired. 2. CHICKEN JELLY.--Take half a raw chicken, tie in a coarse cloth and pound, till well mashed, bones and meat together. Place the mass in a covered dish with water sufficient to cover it well. Allow it to simmer slowly till the liquor is reduced about one-half and the meat is thoroughly cooked. Press through a fine sieve or cloth, and salt to taste. Place on the stove to simmer about five minutes When cold remove all particles of grease. 3. MULLED JELLY.--Take one tablespoonful of currant or grape jelly; beat it with the white of one egg and a little loaf sugar; pour on it one-half pint of boiling water and break in a slice of dry toast or two crackers. 4. BREAD JELLY.--Pour boiling water over bread crumbs place the mixture on the fire and let it boil until it is perfectly smooth. Take it off, and after pouring off the water, flavor with something agreeable, as a little raspberry or currant jelly water. Pour into a mold until required for use. 5. LEMON JELLY.--Moisten two tablespoonfuls of cornstarch, stir into one pint boiling water; add the juice of two lemons and one-half cup of sugar. Grate in a little of the rind. Put in molds to cool. MISCELLANEOUS. 1. TO COOK RICE.--Take two cups of rice and one and one-half pints of milk. Place in a covered dish and steam in a kettle of boiling water until it is cooked through, pour into cups and let it stand until cold. Serve with cream. 2. RICE OMELET.--Two cups boiled rice, one cup sweet milk, two eggs. Stir together with egg beater, and put into a hot buttered skillet. Cook slowly ten minutes, stirring frequently. 3. BROWNED RICE.--Parch or brown rice slowly. Steep in milk for two hours. The rice or the milk only is excellent in summer complaint. 4. STEWED OYSTERS.--Take one pint of milk, one cup of water, a teaspoon of salt; when boiling put in one pint of bulk oysters. Stir occasionally and remove from the stove before it boils. An oyster should not be shriveled in cooking. 5. BROILED OYSTERS.--Put large oysters on a wire toaster Hold over hot coals until heated through. Serve on toast moistened with cream. Very grateful in convalescence. 6. OYSTER TOAST.--Pour stewed oysters over graham or bread toasted. Excellent for breakfast. 7. GRAHAM CRISPS.--Mix graham flour and cold water into a very stiff dough. Knead, roll very thin, and bake quickly in a hot oven. Excellent food for dyspeptics. 8. APPLE SNOW.--Take seven apples, not very sweet ones, and bake till soft and brown. Then remove the skins and cores; when cool, beat them smooth and fine; add one-half cup of granulated sugar and the white of one egg. Beat till the mixture will hold on your spoon. Serve with soft custard. 9. EGGS ON TOAST.--Soften brown bread toast with hot water, put on a platter and cover with poached or scrambled eggs. 10. BOILED EGGS.--An egg should never be boiled. Place in boiling water and set back on the stove for from seven to ten minutes. A little experience will enable anyone to do it successfully. 11. CRACKED WHEAT PUDDING.--In a deep two-quart pudding dish put layers of cold, cooked, cracked wheat, and tart apples sliced thin, with four tablespoonfuls of sugar. Raisins can be added if preferred. Fill the dish, having the wheat last, add a cup of cold water. Bake two hours. 12. PIE FOR DYSPEPTICS.--Four tablespoonfuls of oatmeal, one pint of water; let stand for a few hours, or until the meal is swelled. Then add two large apples, pared and sliced, a little salt, one cup of sugar, one tablespoonful of flour. Mix all well together and bake in a buttered dish; makes a most delicious pie, which can be eaten with safety by the sick or well. 13. APPLE TAPIOCA PUDDING.--Soak a teacup of tapioca in a quart of warm water three hours. Cut in thin slices six tart apples, stir them lightly with the tapioca, add half cup sugar. Bake three hours. To be eaten with whipped cream. Good either warm or cold. 14. GRAHAM MUFFINS.--Take one pint of new milk, one pint graham or entire wheat flour; stir together and add one beaten egg. Can be baked in any kind of gem pans or muffin rings. Salt must not be used with any bread that is made light with egg. 15. STRAWBERRY DESSERT.--Place alternate layers of hot cooked cracked wheat and strawberries in a deep dish; when cold, turn out on platter; cut in slices and serve with cream and sugar, or strawberry juice. Wet the molds with cold water before using. This, molded in small cups, makes a dainty dish for the sick. Wheatlet can be used in the same way. 16. FRUIT BLANC MANGE.--One quart of juice of strawberries, cherries, grapes or other juicy fruit; one cup water. When boiling, add two tablespoonfuls sugar and four tablespoonfuls cornstarch wet in cold water; let boil five or six minutes, then mold in small cups. Serve without sauce, or with cream or boiled custard. Lemon juice can be used the same, only requiring more water. This is a very valuable dish for convalescents and pregnant women, when the stomach rejects solid food. [Illustration] * * * * * SAVE THE GIRLS. 1. PUBLIC BALLS.--The church should turn its face like flint against the public ball. Its influence is evil, and nothing but evil. It is a well known fact that in all cities and large towns the ball room is the recruiting office for prostitution. 2. THOUGHTLESS YOUNG WOMEN.--In cities public balls are given every night, and many thoughtless young women, mostly the daughters of small tradesmen and mechanics, or clerks or laborers, are induced to attend "just for fun." Scarcely one in a hundred of the girls attending these balls preserve their purity. They meet the most desperate characters, professional gamblers, criminals and the lowest debauchees. Such an assembly and such influence cannot mean anything but ruin for an innocent girl. 3. VILE WOMEN.--The public ball is always a resort of vile women who picture to innocent girls the ease and luxury of a harlot's life, and offer them all manner of temptations to abandon the paths of virtue. The public ball is the resort of the libertine and the adulterer, and whose object is to work the ruin of every innocent girl that may fall into their clutches. 4. THE QUESTION.--Why does society wonder at the increase of prostitution, when the public balls and promiscuous dancing is so largely endorsed and encouraged? 5. WORKING GIRLS.--Thousands of innocent working girls enter innocently and unsuspectingly into the paths which lead them to the house of evil, or who wander the streets as miserable outcasts all through the influence of the dance. The low theatre and dance halls and other places of unselected gatherings are the milestones which mark the working girl's downward path from virtue to vice, from modesty to shame. 6. THE SALESWOMAN, the seamstress, the factory girl or any other virtuous girl had better, far better, die than take the first step in the path of impropriety and danger. Better, a thousand times better, better for this life, better for the life to come, an existence of humble, virtuous industry than a single departure from virtue, even though it were paid with a fortune. 7. TEMPTATIONS.--There is not a young girl but what is more or less tempted by some unprincipled wretch who may have the reputation of a genteel society man. It behooves parents to guard carefully the morals of their daughters, and be vigilant and cautious in permitting them to accept the society of young men. Parents who desire to save their daughters from a fate which is worse than death, should endeavor by every means in their power to keep them from falling into traps cunningly devised by some cunning lover. There are many good young men, but not all are safe friends to an innocent, confiding young girl. 8. PROSTITUTION.--Some girls inherit their vicious tendency; others fall because of misplaced affections; many sin through a love of dress, which is fostered by society and by the surroundings amidst which they may be placed; many, very many, embrace a life of shame to escape poverty While each of these different phases of prostitution require a different remedy, we need better men, better women, better laws and better protection for the young girls. [Illustration: A RUSSIAN SPINNING GIRL.] 9. A STARTLING FACT.--Startling as it may seem to some, it is a fact in our large cities that there are many girls raised by parents with no other aim than to make them harlots. At a tender age they are sold by fathers and mothers into an existence which is worse than slavery itself. It is not uncommon to see girls at the tender age of thirteen or fourteen--mere children--hardened courtesans, lost to all sense of shame and decency. They are reared in ignorance, surrounded by demoralizing influences, cut off from the blessings of church and Sabbath school, see nothing but licentiousness, intemperance and crime. These young girls are lost forever. They are beyond the reach of the moralist or preacher and have no comprehension of modesty and purity. Virtue to them is a stranger, and has been from the cradle. 10. A GREAT WRONG.--Parents too poor to clothe themselves bring children into the world, children for whom they have no bread, consequently the girl easily falls a victim in early womanhood to the heartless libertine. The boy with no other schooling but that of the streets soon masters all the qualifications for a professional criminal. If there could be a law forbidding people to marry who have no visible means of supporting a family, or if they should marry, if their children could be taken from them and properly educated by the State, it would cost the country less and be a great step in advancing our civilization. 11. THE FIRST STEP.--Thousands of fallen women could have been saved from lives of degradation and deaths of shame had they received more toleration and loving forgiveness in their first steps of error. Many women naturally pure and virtuous have fallen to the lowest depths because discarded by friends, frowned upon by society, and sneered at by the world, after they had taken a single mis-step. Society forgives man, but woman never. 12. IN THE BEGINNING of every girl's downward career there is necessarily a hesitation. She naturally ponders over what course to take, dreading to meet friends and looking into the future with horror. That moment is the vital turning point in her career; a kind word of forgiveness, a mother's embrace a father's welcome may save her. The bloodhounds, known as the seducer, the libertine, the procurer, are upon her track; she is trembling on the frightful brink of the abyss. Extend a helping hand and save her! 13. FATHER, if your daughter goes astray, do not drive her from your home. Mother, if your child errs, do not close your heart against her. Sisters and brothers and friends, do not force her into the pathway of shame, but rather strive to win her back into the Eden of virtue, an in nine cases out of ten you will succeed. 14. SOCIETY EVILS.--The dance, the theater, the wine-cup, the race-course, the idle frivolity and luxury of summer watering places, all have a tendency to demoralize the young. 15. BAD SOCIETY.--Much of our modern society admits libertines and seducers to the drawing-room, while it excludes their helpless and degraded victims, consequently it is not strange that there are skeletons in many closets, matrimonial infelicity and wayward girls. 16. "'KNOW THYSELF,'" says Dr. Saur, "is an important maxim for us all, and especially is it true for girls. "All are born with the desire to become attractive girls especially want to grow up, not only attractive, but beautiful. Some girls think that bright eyes, pretty hair and fine clothes alone make them beautiful. This is not so. Real beauty depends upon good health, good manners and a pure mind. "As the happiness of our girls depends upon their health, it behoves us all to guide the girls in such a way as to bring forward the best of results. 17. "THERE IS NO ONE who stands so near the girl as the mother. From early childhood she occupies the first place in the little one's confidence she laughs, plays, and corrects, when necessary, the faults of her darling. She should be equally ready to guide in the important laws of life and health upon which rest her future. Teach your daughters that in all things the 'creative principle' has its source in life itself. It originates from Divine life, and when they know that it may be consecrated to wise and useful purposes, they are never apt to grow up with base thoughts or form bad habits. Their lives become a happiness to themselves and a blessing to humanity. 18. TEACH WISELY.--"Teach your daughters that _all life_ originates from a seed a germ. Knowing this law, you need have no fears that base or unworthy thoughts of the reproductive function can ever enter their minds. The growth, development and ripening of human seed becomes a beautiful and sacred mystery. The tree, the rose and all plant life are equally as mysterious and beautiful in their reproductive life. Does not this alone prove to us, conclusively, that there is a Divinity in the background governing, controlling and influencing our lives? Nature has no secrets, and why should we? None at all. The only care we should experience is in teaching wisely. "Yes lead them wisely teach them that the seed, the germ of a new life, is maturing within them. Teach them that between the ages of eleven and fourteen this maturing process has certain physical signs. The breasts grow round and full, the whole body, even the voice, undergoes a change. It is right that they should be taught the natural law of life in reproduction and the physiological structure of their being. Again we repeat that these lessons should be taught by the mother, and in a tender, delicate and confidential way. Become, oh, mother, your daughter's companion, and she will not go elsewhere for this knowledge which must come to all in time, but possibly too late and through sources that would prove more harm than good. 19. THE ORGANS OF CREATIVE LIFE in women are: Ovaries, Fallopian tubes, uterus, vagina and mammary glands. The _ovaries_ and _Fallopian tubes_ have already been described under "The Female Generative Organs." "The _uterus_ is a pear-shaped muscular organ, situated in the lower portion of the pelvis, between the bladder and the rectum. It is less than three inches in length and two inches in width and one in thickness. "The _vagina_ is a membranous canal which joins the internal outlet with the womb, which projects slightly into it. The opening into the vagina is nearly oval, and in those who have never indulged in sexual intercourse or in handling the sexual organs is more or less closed by a membrane termed the _hymen_. The presence of this membrane was formerly considered as undoubted evidence of virginity; its absence, a lack of chastity. "The _mammary glands_ are accessory to the generative organs. They secrete milk, which the All-wise Gatherer provided for the nourishment of the child after birth. 20. "MENSTRUATION, which appears about the age of thirteen years, is the flow from the uterus that occurs every month as the seed-germ ripens in the ovaries. God made the sexual organs so that the race should not die out. He gave them to us so that we may reproduce life, and thus fill the highest position in the created universe. The purpose for which they are made is high and holy and honorable, and if they are used only for this purpose and they must not be used at all until they are fully matured they will be a source of greatest blessing to us all. [Illustration: THE TWO PATHS--WHAT WILL THE GIRL BECOME? AT 13: BAD LITERATURE AT 20: FLIRTING & COQUETTERY AT 26: FAST LIFE & DISSIPATION AT 40: AN OUTCAST AT 13: STUDY & OBEDIENCE AT 20: VIRTUE & DEVOTION AT 26: A LOVING MOTHER AT 60: AN HONORED GRANDMOTHER] 21. "A CAREFUL STUDY of this organ, of its location, of its arteries and nerves, will convince the growing girl that her body should never submit to corsets and tight lacing in response to the demands of fashion, even though nature has so bountifully provided for the safety of this important organ. By constant pressure the vagina and womb may be compressed into one-third their natural length or crowded into an unnatural position. We can readily see, then, the effect of lacing or tight clothing. Under these circumstances the ligaments lose their elasticity, and as a result we have prolapsus or falling of the womb. 22. "I AM MORE ANXIOUS for growing girls than for any other earthly object. These girls are to be the mothers of future generations; upon them hangs the destiny of the world in coming time, and if they can be made to understand what is right and what is wrong with regard to their own bodies now, while they are young, the children they will give birth to and the men and women who shall call them mother will be of a higher type and belong to a nobler class than those of the present day. 23. "ALL WOMEN CANNOT have good features, but they can look well, and it is possible to a great extent to correct deformity and develop much of the figure. The first step to good looks is good health, and the first element of health is cleanliness. Keep clean wash freely, bathe regularly. All the skin wants is leave to act, and it takes care of itself. 24. "GIRLS SOMETIMES GET THE IDEA that it is nice to be 'weak' and 'delicate,' but they cannot get a more false idea! God meant women to be strong and able-bodied, and only by being so can they be happy and capable of imparting happiness to others. It is only by being strong and healthy that they can be perfect in their sexual nature; and It is only by being perfect in this part of their being that you can become a noble, grand and beautiful woman. 25. "UP TO THE AGE of puberty, if the girl has grown naturally, waist, hips and shoulders are about the same in width, the shoulders being, perhaps, a trifle the broadest. Up to this time the sexual organs have grown but little. Now they take a sudden start and need more room. Nature aids the girls; the tissues and muscles increase in size and the pelvis bones enlarge. The limbs grow plump, the girl stops growing tall and becomes round and full. Unsuspected strength comes to her; tasks that were once hard to perform are now easy; her voice becomes sweeter and stronger. The mind develops more rapidly even than the body; her brain is more active and quicker; subjects that once were dull and dry have unwonted interest; lessons are more easily learned; the eyes sparkle with intelligence, indicating increased mental power; her manner denotes the consciousness of new power; toys of childhood are laid away; womanly thoughts and pursuits fill her mind; budding childhood has become blooming womanhood. Now, if ever, must be laid the foundation of physical vigor and of a healthy body. Girls should realize the significance of this fact. Do not get the idea that men admire a weakly, puny, delicate, small-waisted, languid, doll-like creature, a libel on true womanhood. Girls admire men with broad chests, square shoulders, erect form, keen bright eyes, hard muscles and undoubted vigor. Men also turn naturally to healthy, robust, well-developed girls, and to win their admiration girls must meet their ideals. A good form, a sound mind and a healthy body are within the reach of nine out of ten of our girls by proper care and training. Physical bankruptcy may claim the same proportion if care and training are neglected. 26. "A WOMAN FIVE FEET TALL should measure two feet around the waist and thirty-three inches around the hips. A waist less than this proportion indicates compression either by lacing or tight clothing. Exercise in the open air, take long walks and vigorous exercise, using care not to overdo it. Housework will prove a panacea for many of the ills which flesh is heir to. One hour's exercise at the wash-tub is of far more value, from a physical standpoint, than hours at the piano. Boating is most excellent exercise and within the reach of many. Care in dressing is also important, and, fortunately, fashion is coming to the rescue here. It is essential that no garments be suspended from the waist. Let the shoulders bear the weight of all the clothing, so that the organs of the body may be left free and unimpeded. 27. "SLEEP SHOULD BE HAD regularly and abundantly. Avoid late hours, undue excitement, evil associations; partake of plain, nutritious food, and health will be your reward. There is one way of destroying health, which, fortunately, is not as common among girls as boys, and which must be mentioned ere this chapter closes. Self-abuse is practised among growing girls to such an extent as to arouse serious alarm. Many a girl has been led to handle and play with her sexual organs through the advice of some girl who has obtained temporary pleasure in that way; or, perchance, chafing has been followed by rubbing until the organs have become congested with blood, and in this accidental manner the girl discovered what seems to her a source of pleasure, but which, alas, is a source of misery, and even death. 28. "AS IN THE BOY, SO IN THE GIRL, self-abuse causes an undue amount of blood to flow to those organs, thus depriving other parts of the body of its nourishment, the weakest part first showing the effect of want of sustenance. All that has been said upon this loathsome subject in the preceding chapter for boys might well be repeated here, but space forbids. Read that chapter again, and know that the same signs that betray the boy will make known the girl addicted to the vice. The bloodless lips, the dull, heavy eye surrounded with dark rings, the nerveless hand, the blanched cheek, the short breath, the old, faded look, the weakened memory and silly irritability tell the story all too plainly. The same evil result follows, ending perhaps in death, or worse, in insanity. Aside from the injury the girl does herself by yielding to this habit, there is one other reason which appeals to the conscience, and that is, self-abuse is an offence against moral law it is putting to a vile, selfish use the organs which were given for a high, sacred purpose. 29. "LET THEM ALONE, except to care for them when care is needed, and they may prove the greatest blessing you have ever known. They were given you that you might become a mother, the highest office to which God has ever called one of His creatures. Do not debase yourself and become lower than the beasts of the field. If this habit has fastened itself upon any one of our readers, stop it now. Do not allow yourself to think about it, give up all evil associations, seek pure companions, and go to your mother, older sister, or physician for advice. 30. "AND YOU, MOTHER, knowing the danger that besets your daughters at this critical period, are you justified in keeping silent? Can you be held guiltless if your daughter ruins body and mind because you were too modest to tell her the laws of her being? There is no love that is dearer to your daughter than yours, no advice that is more respected than yours, no one whose warning would be more potent. Fail not in your duty. As motherhood has been your sweetest joy, so help your daughter to make it hers." [Illustration: YOUNG GARFIELD DRIVING TEAM ON THE CANAL.] * * * * * SAVE THE BOYS. PLAIN WORDS TO PARENTS. 1. With a shy look, approaching his mother when she was alone, the boy of fifteen said, "There are some things I want to ask you. I hear the boys speak of them at school, and I don't understand, and a fellow doesn't like to ask any one but his mother." 2. Drawing him down to her, in the darkness that was closing about them, the mother spoke to her son and the son to his mother freely of things which everybody must know sooner or later, and which no boy should learn from "anyone but his mother" or father. 3. If you do not answer such a natural question your boy will turn for answer to others, and learn things, perhaps, which your cheeks may well blush to have him know. 4. Our boys and girls are growing faster than we think. The world moves; we can no longer put off our children with the old nurses' tales; even MacDonald's beautiful statement, "Out of the everywhere into the there", does not satisfy them when they reverse his question and ask, "Where did I come from?" 5. They must be answered. If we put them off, they may be tempted to go elsewhere for information, and hear half-truths, or whole truths so distorted, so mingled with what is low and impure that, struggle against it as they may in later years, their minds will always retain these early impressions. 6. It is not so hard if you begin early. The very flowers are object lessons. The wonderful mystery of life is wrapped in one flower, with its stamens, pistils and ovaries. Every child knows how an egg came in the nest, and takes it as a matter of course; why not go one step farther with them and teach the wonder, the beauty, the holiness that surrounds maternity anywhere? Why, centuries ago the Romans honored, and taught their boys to honor, the women in whose safety was bound up the future of their existence as a nation! Why should we do less? 7. Your sons and mine, your daughters and mine, need to be wisely taught and guarded just along these lines, if your sons and mine, your daughters and mine, are to grow up into a pure, healthy, Christian manhood and womanhood. [Illustration] 8.[_Footnote: This quotation is an appeal to mothers by Mrs. P.B. Saur, M.D._] "How grand is the boy who has kept himself undefiled! His complexion clear, his muscles firm, his movements vigorous, his manner frank, his courage undaunted, his brain active, his will firm, his self-control perfect, his body and mind unfolding day by day. His life should be one song of praise and thanksgiving. If you want your boy to be such a one, train him, my dear woman, _to-day_, and his _to-morrow_ will take care of itself. 9. "Think you that good seed sown will bring forth bitter fruit? A thousand times, No! As we sow, so shall we reap. Train your boys in morality, temperance and virtue. Teach them to embrace good and shun evil. Teach them the true from the false; the light from the dark. Teach them that when they take a thing that is not their own, they commit a sin. Teach them that _sin means disobedience of God's laws of every kind_. 10. "God made every organ of our body with the intention that it should perform a certain work. If we wish to see, we use our eyes; if we want to hear, our ears are called into use. In fact, nature teaches us the proper use of _all our organs_. I say to you, mother, and oh, so earnestly: 'Go teach your boy that which you may never be ashamed to do, about these organs that make him _specially a boy_.' 11. "Teach him they are called _sexual organs_; that they are not impure, but of special importance, and made by God for a definite purpose. Teach him that there are impurities taken from the system in fluid form called urine, and that it passes through the sexual organs, but that nature takes care of that. Teach him that these organs are given as a sacred trust, that in maturer years he may be the means of giving life to those who shall live forever. 12. "Impress upon him that if these organs are abused, or if they are put to any use besides that for which God made them and He did not intend they should be used at all until man is fully grown they will bring disease and ruin upon those who abuse and disobey the laws which God has made to govern them. If he has ever learned to handle his _sexual organs_, or to touch them in any way except to keep them clean, not to do it again. If he does he will not grow up happy, healthy and strong. 13. "Teach him that when he handles or excites the sexual organs all parts of the body suffer, because they are connected by nerves that run throughout the system; this is why it is called 'self-abuse.' The whole body is abused when this part of the body is handled or excited in any manner whatever. Teach them to shun all children who indulge in this loathsome habit, or all children who talk about these things. The sin is terrible, and is, in fact, worse than lying or stealing. For, although these are wicked and will ruin their souls, yet this habit of self-abuse will ruin both soul and body. 14. "If the sexual organs are handled, it brings too much blood to these parts, and this produces a diseased condition; it also causes disease in other organs of the body, because they are left with a less amount of blood than they ought to have. The sexual organs, too, are very closely connected with the spine and the brain by means of the nerves, and if they are handled, or if you keep thinking about them, these nerves get excited and become exhausted, and this makes the back ache, the brain heavy and the whole body weak. 15. "It lays the foundation for consumption, paralysis and heart disease. It weakens the memory, makes a boy careless, negligent and listless. It even makes many lose their minds; others, when grown, commit suicide. How often mothers see their little boys handling themselves, and let it pass, because they think the boy will outgrow the habit, and do not realize the strong hold it has upon them. I say to you who love your boys 'Watch!' 16. "Don't think it does no harm to your boy because he does not suffer now, for the effects of this vice come on so slowly that the victim is often very near death before you realize that he has done himself harm. The boy with no knowledge of the consequences, and with no one to warn him, finds momentary pleasure in its practice, and so contracts a habit which grows upon him, undermining his health, poisoning his mind, arresting his development, and laying the foundation for future misery. 17. "Do not read this book and forget it, for it contains earnest and living truths. Do not let false modesty stand in your way, but from this time on keep this thought in mind 'the saving of your boy.' Follow its teachings and you will bless God as long as you live. Read it to your neighbors, who, like yourself, have growing boys, and urge them for the sake of humanity to heed its advice. 18. "Right here we want to emphasize the importance of _cleanliness_. We verily believe that oftentimes these habits originate in a burning and irritating sensation about the organs, caused by a want of thorough washing. 19. "It is worthy of note that many eminent physicians now advocate the custom of circumcision, claiming that the removal of a little of the foreskin induces cleanliness, thus preventing the irritation and excitement which come from the gathering of the whiteish matter under the foreskin at the beginning of the glands. This irritation being removed, the boy is less apt to tamper with his sexual organs. The argument seems a good one, especially when we call to mind the high physical state of those people who have practiced the custom. 20. "Happy is the mother who can feel she has done her duty, in this direction, while her boy is still a child. For those mothers, though, whose little boys have now grown to boyhood with the evil still upon them, and _you_, through ignorance, permitted it, we would say, 'Begin at once; it is never too late.' If he has not lost all will power, he can be saved. Let him go in confidence to a reputable physician and follow his advice. Simple diet, plentiful exercise in open air and congenial employment will do much. Do not let the mind dwell upon evil thoughts, shun evil companions, avoid vulgar stories, sensational novels, and keep the thoughts pure. 21. "Let him interest himself in social and benevolent affairs, participate in Sunday-school work, farmers' clubs, or any organizations which tend to elevate and inspire noble sentiment. Let us remember that 'a perfect man is the noblest work of God.' God has given us a life which is to last forever, and the little time we spend on earth is as nothing to the ages which we are to spend in the world beyond; so our earthly life is a very important part of our existence, for it is here that the foundation is laid for either happiness or misery in the future. It is here that we decide our destiny, and our efforts to know and obey God's laws in our bodies as well as in our souls will not only bring blessings to us in this life, but never-ending happiness throughout eternity." 22. A QUESTION. How can a father chew and smoke tobacco, drink and swear, use vulgar language, tell obscene stories, and raise a family of pure, clean-minded children? LET THE ECHO ANSWER. [Illustration: "SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN, AND FORBID THEM NOT, TO COME UNTO ME: FOR OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN-"--_MATT. 19:14_] * * * * * THE INHUMANITIES OF PARENTS. 1. Not long ago a Presbyterian minister in Western New York whipped his three-year-old boy to death for refusing to say his prayers. The little fingers were broken; the tender flesh was bruised and actually mangled; strong men wept when they looked on the lifeless body. Think of a strong man from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds in weight, pouncing upon a little child, like a Tiger upon a Lamb, and with his strong arm inflicting physical blows on the delicate tissues of a child's body. See its frail and trembling flesh quiver and its tender nervous organization shaking with terror and fear. 2. How often is this the case in the punishment of children all over this broad land! Death is not often the immediate consequence of this brutality as in the above stated case, but the punishment is often as unjust, and the physical constitution of children is often ruined and the mind by fright seriously injured. 3. Everyone knows the sudden sense of pain, and sometimes dizziness and nausea follow, as the results of an accidental hitting of the ankle, knee or elbow against a hard substance, and involuntary tears are brought to the eyes; but what is such a pain as this compared with the pains of a dozen or more quick blows on the body of a little helpless child from the strong arm of a parent in a passion? Add to this overwhelming terror of fright, the strangulating effects of sighing and shrieking, and you have a complete picture of child-torture. 4. Who has not often seen a child receive, within an hour or two of the first whipping, a second one, for some small ebullition of nervous irritability, which was simply inevitable from its spent and worn condition? 5. Would not all mankind cry out at the inhumanity of one who, as things are to-day, should propose the substitution of pricking or cutting or burning for whipping? It would, however, be easy to show that small jabs or pricks or cuts are more human than the blows many children receive. Why may not lying be as legitimately cured by blisters made with hot coals as by black and blue spots made with a ruler or whip? The principle is the same; and if the principle is right, why not multiply methods? 6. How many loving mothers will, without any thought of cruelty, inflict half a dozen quick blows on the little hand of her child and when she could no more take a pin and make the same number of thrusts into the tender flesh, than she could bind the baby on a rack. Yet the pin-thrust would hurt far less, and would probably make a deeper impression on the child's mind. [Illustration] 7. We do not intend to be understood that a child must have everything that it desires and every whim and wish to receive special recognition by the parents. Children can soon be made to understand the necessity of obedience, and punishment can easily be brought about by teaching them self-denial. Deny them the use of a certain plaything, deny them the privilege of visiting certain of their little friends, deny them the privilege of the table, etc., and these self-denials can be applied according to the age and condition of the child, with firmness and without any yielding. Children will soon learn obedience if they see the parents are sincere. Lessons of home government can be learned by the children at home as well as they can learn lessons at school. 8. The trouble is, many parents need more government, more training and more discipline than the little ones under their control. 9. Scores of times during the day a child is told in a short, authoritative way to do or not to do certain little things, which we ask at the hands of elder persons as favors. When we speak to an elder person, we say, would you be so kind as to close the door, when the same person making the request of a child will say, _"Shut the door."_ _"Bring me the chair."_ _"Stop that noise."_ _"Sit down there."_ Whereas, if the same kindness was used towards the child it would soon learn to imitate the example. 10. On the other hand, let a child ask for anything without saying "please," receive anything without saying "thank you," it suffers a rebuke and a look of scorn at once. Often a child insists on having a book, chair or apple to the inconveniencing of an elder, and what an outcry is raised: "Such rudeness;" "Such an ill-mannered child;" "His parents must have neglected him strangely." Not at all: The parents may have been steadily telling him a great many times every day not to do these precise things which you dislike. But they themselves have been all the time doing those very things before him, and there is no proverb that strikes a truer balance between two things than the old one which weighs example over against precept. 11. It is a bad policy to be rude to children. A child will win and be won, and in a long run the chances are that the child will have better manners than its parents. Give them a good example and take pains in teaching them lessons of obedience and propriety, and there will be little difficulty in raising a family of beautiful and well-behaved children. 12. Never correct a child in the presence of others; it is a rudeness to the child that will soon destroy its self-respect. It is the way criminals are made and should always and everywhere be condemned. 13. But there are no words to say what we are or what we deserve if we do this to the little children whom we have dared for our own pleasure to bring into the perils of this life, and whose whole future may be blighted by the mistakes of our careless hands. There are thousands of young men and women to-day groaning under the penalties and burdens of life, who owe their misfortunes, their shipwreck and ruin to the ignorance or indifference of parents. 14. Parents of course love their children, but with that love there is a responsibility that cannot be shirked. The government and training of children is a study that demands a parent's time and attention often much more than the claims of business. 15. Parents, study the problems that come up every day in your home. Remember, your future happiness, and the future welfare of your children, depend upon it. 16. CRIMINALS AND HEREDITY. Wm. M.F. Round was for many years in charge of the House of Refuge on Randall's Island, New York, and his opportunities for observation in the work among criminals surely make him a competent judge, and he says in his letter to the New York Observer: "Among this large number of young offenders I can state with entire confidence that not one per cent. were children born of criminal parents; and with equal confidence I am able to say that the common cause of their delinquency was found in bad parental training, in bad companionship, and in lack of wholesome restraint from evil associations and influences. It was this knowledge that led to the establishing of the House of Refuge nearly three-quarters of a century ago." 17. BAD TRAINING. Thus it is seen from one of the best authorities in the United States that criminals are made either by the indifference or the neglect of parents, or both, or by too much training without proper judgment and knowledge. Give your children a good example, and never tell a child to do something and then become indifferent as to whether they do it or not. A child should never be told twice to do the same thing. Teach the child in childhood obedience and never vary from that rule. Do it kindly but firmly. 18. IF YOUR CHILDREN DO NOT OBEY OR RESPECT YOU in their childhood and youth, how can you expect to govern them when older and shape their character for future usefulness and good citizenship? 19. THE FUNDAMENTAL RULE. Never tell a child twice to do the same thing. Command the respect of your children, and there will be no question as to obedience. * * * * * CHASTITY AND PURITY OF CHARACTER. [Illustration] 1. CHASTITY is the purest and brightest jewel in human character. Dr. Pierce in his widely known _Medical Adviser_ says: For the full and perfect development of mankind, both mental and physical, chastity is necessary. The health demands abstinence from unlawful intercourse. Therefore children should be instructed to avoid all impure works of fiction, which tend to inflame the mind and excite the passions. Only in total abstinence from illicit pleasures is there safety, morals, and health, while integrity, peace and happiness are the conscious rewards of virtue. Impurity travels downward with intemperance, obscenity and corrupting diseases, to degradation and death. A dissolute, licentious, free-and-easy life is filled with the dregs of human suffering, iniquity and despair. The penalties which follow a violation of the law of chastity are found to be severe and swiftly retributive. 2. THE UNION of the sexes in holy Matrimony is a law of nature, finding sanction in both morals and legislation. Even some of the lower animals unite in this union for life and instinctively observe the law of conjugal fidelity with a consistency which might put to blush other animals more highly endowed. It seems important to discuss this subject and understand our social evils, as well as the intense passional desires of the sexes, which must be controlled, or they lead to ruin. 3. SEXUAL PROPENSITIES are possessed by all, and these must be held in abeyance, until they are needed for legitimate purposes. Hence parents ought to understand the value to their children of mental and physical labor, to elevate and strengthen the intellectual and moral faculties, to develop the muscular system and direct the energies of the blood into healthful channels. Vigorous employment of mind and body engrosses the vital energies and diverts them from undue excitement of the sexual desires. _Give your young people plenty of outdoor amusement; less of dancing and more of croquet and lawn tennis. Stimulate the methods of pure thoughts in innocent amusement, and your sons and daughters will mature to manhood and womanhood pure and chaste in character._ 4. IGNORANCE DOES NOT MEAN INNOCENCE.--It is a current idea, especially among our good common people, that the child should be kept in ignorance regarding the mystery of his own body and how he was created or came into the world. This is a great mistake. Parents must know that the sources of social impurity are great, and the child is a hundred times more liable to have his young mind poisoned if entirely ignorant of the functions of his nature than if judiciously enlightened on these important truths by the parent. The parent must give him weapons of defense against the putrid corruption he is sure to meet outside the parental roof. The child cannot get through the A, B, C period of school without it. 5. CONFLICTING VIEWS.--There is a great difference of opinion regarding the age at which the child should be taught the mysteries of nature: some maintain that he cannot comprehend the subject before the age of puberty; others say "they will find it out soon enough, it is not best to have them over-wise while they are so young. Wait a while." That is just the point (_they will find it out_), and we ask in all candor, is it not better that they learn it from the pure loving mother, untarnished from any insinuating remark, than that they should learn it from some foul-mouthed libertine on the street, or some giddy girl at school? Mothers! fathers! which think you is the most sensible and fraught with the least danger to your darling boy or girl? 6. DELAY IS FRAUGHT WITH DANGER.--Knowledge on a subject so vitally connected with moral health must not be deferred. It is safe to say that no child, no boy at least in these days of excitement and unrest, reaches the age of ten years without getting some idea of nature's laws regarding parenthood. And ninety-nine chances to one, those ideas will be vile and pernicious unless they come from a wise, loving and pure parent. Now, we entreat you, parents, mothers! do not wait; begin before a false notion has had chance to find lodgment in the childish mind. But remember this is a lesson of life, it cannot be told in one chapter, it is as important as the lessons of love and duty. 7. THE FIRST LESSONS.--Should you be asked by your four or five-year old, "Mamma, where did you get me?" Instead of saying, "The doctor brought you," or "God made you and a stork brought you from Babyland on his back," tell him the truth as you would about any ordinary question. One mother's explanation was something like this: "My dear, you were not made any more than apples are made, or the little chickens are made. Your dolly was made, but it has no life like you have. God has provided that all living things such as plants, trees, little chickens, little kittens, little babies, etc., should grow from seeds or little tiny eggs. Apples grow, little chickens grow, little babies grow. Apple and peach trees grow from seeds that are planted in the ground, and the apples and peaches grow on the trees. Baby chickens grow inside the eggs that are kept warm by the mother hen for a certain time. Baby boys and girls do not grow inside an egg, but they start to grow inside of a snug warm nest, from an egg that is so small you cannot see it with just your eye." This was not given at once, but from time to time as the child asked questions and in the simplest language, with many illustrations from plant and animal life. It may have occupied months, but in time the lesson was fully understood. 8. THE SECOND LESSON.--The second lesson came with the question, "But _where_ is the nest?" The ice is now broken, as it were; it was an easy matter for the mother to say, "The nest in which you grew, dear, was close to your mother's heart inside her body. All things that do not grow inside the egg itself, and which are kept warm by the mother's body, begin to grow from the egg in a nest inside the mother's body." It may be that this mother had access to illustrations of the babe in the womb which were shown and explained to the child, a boy. He was pleased and satisfied with the explanations. It meant nothing out of the ordinary any more than a primary lesson on the circulatory system did, it was knowledge on nature in its purity and simplicity taught by mother, and hence caused no surprise. The subject of the male and female generative organs came later; the greatest pains and care was taken to make it clear, the little boy was taught that the _sexual organs_ were made for a high and holy purpose, that their office at present is only to carry off impurities from the system in the fluid form called urine, and that he must never handle his _sexual organs_ nor touch them in any way except to keep them clean, and if he does this, he will grow up a bright, happy and healthy boy. But if he excites or _abuses_ them, he will become puny, sickly and unhappy. All this was explained in language pure and simple. There is now in the boy a sturdy base of character building along the line of virtue and purity through knowledge. 9. SILLY DIRTY TRASH.--But I hear some mother say "Such silly dirty trash to tell a child!" It is not dirty nor silly; it is nature's untarnished truth. God has ordained that children should thus be brought into the world, do you call the works of God silly? Remember, kind mother, and don't forget it, if you fail to teach your children, boys or girls, these important lessons early in life, they will learn them from other sources, perhaps long ere you dream of it, and ninety-nine times out of one hundred they will get improper, perverted, impure and vile ideas of these important truths; besides you nave lost their confidence and you will never regain it in these matters. They will never come to mamma for information on these subjects. And, think you, that your son and daughter, later in life will make you their confidant as they ought? Will your beautiful daughter hand the first letters she receives from her lover to mamma to read, and seek her counsel and advice when she replies to them? Will she ask mamma whether it is ever proper to sit in her lover's lap? I think not; you have blighted her confidence and alienated her affections. You have kept knowledge from her that she had a right to know; you even failed to teach her the important truths of menstruation. Troubled and excited at the first menstrual flow, she dashed her feet in cold water hoping to stop the flow. You know the results she is now twenty-five but is suffering from it to this day. You, her mother, over fastidious, _so very nice_ you would never mention "_such silly trash_" but by your consummate foolishness and mock modesty you have ruined your daughter's health, and though in later years she may forgive you, yet she can never love and respect you as she ought. 10. "KNOWLEDGE THE PRESERVER OF PURITY."--Laura E. Scammon, writing on this subject, in the Arena of November, 1893, says: "When questions arise that can not be answered by observation, reply to each as simply and directly as you answer questions upon other subjects, giving scientific names and facts, and such explanations as are suited to the comprehension of the child. Treat nature and her laws always with serious, respectful attention. Treat the holy mysteries of parenthood reverently, never losing sight of the great law upon which are founded all others the law of love. Say it and sing it, play it and pray it into the soul of your child, that _love is lord of all_." 11. CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER.--Observation and common sense should teach every parent that lack of knowledge on these subjects and proper counsel and advice in later years is the main cause of so many charming girls being seduced and led astray, and so many bright promising boys wrecked by _self-abuse or social impurity_. Make your children your confidants early in life, especially in these things, have frequent talks with them on nature, and you will never, other things being equal, mourn over a ruined daughter or a wreckless, debased son. * * * * * EXCITING THE PASSIONS IN CHILDREN. 1. CONVERSATION BEFORE CHILDREN.--The conduct and conversation of adults before children and youth, how often have I blushed with shame, and kindled with indignation at the conversation of parents, and especially of mothers, to their children: "John, go and kiss Harriet, for she is your sweet-heart." Well may shame make him hesitate and hang his head. "Why, John, I did not think you so great a coward. Afraid of the girls, are you? That will never do. Come, go along, and hug and kiss her. There, that's a man. I guess you will love the girls yet." Continually is he teased about the girls and being in love, till he really selects a sweet-heart. 2. THE LOSS OF MAIDEN PURITY AND NATURAL DELICACY.--I will not lift the veil, nor expose the conduct of children among themselves. And all this because adults have filled their heads with those impurities which surfeit their own. What could more effectually wear off that natural delicacy, that maiden purity and bashfulness, which form the main barriers against the influx of vitiated Amativeness? How often do those whose modesty has been worn smooth, even take pleasure in thus saying and doing things to raise the blush on the cheek of youth and innocence, merely to witness the effect of this improper illusion upon them; little realizing that they are thereby breaking down the barriers of their virtue, and prematurely kindling the fires of animal passion! 3. BALLS. PARTIES AND AMUSEMENTS.--The entire machinery of balls and parties, of dances and other amusements of young people, tend to excite and inflame this passion. Thinking it a fine thing to get in love, they court and form attachments long before either their mental or physical powers are matured. Of course, these young loves, these green-house exotics, must be broken off, and their miserable subjects left burning up with the fierce fires of a flaming passion, which, if left alone, would have slumbered on for years, till they were prepared for its proper management and exercise. 4. SOWING THE SEEDS FOR FUTURE RUIN.--Nor is it merely the conversation of adults that does all this mischief; their manners also increase it. Young men take the hands of girls from six to thirteen years old, kiss them, press them, and play with them so as, in a great variety of ways, to excite their innocent passions, combined, I grant, with friendship and refinement--for all this is genteely done. They intend no harm, and parents dream of none: and yet their embryo love is awakened, to be again still more easily excited. Maiden ladies, and even married women, often express similar feelings towards lads, not perhaps positively improper in themselves, yet injurious in their ultimate effects. 5. READING NOVELS.--How often have I seen girls not twelve years old, as hungry for a story or novel as they should be for their dinners! A sickly sentimentalism is thus formed, and their minds are sullied with impure desires. Every fashionable young lady must of course read every new novel, though nearly all of them contain exceptionable allusions, perhaps delicately covered over with a thin gauze of fashionable refinement; yet, on that very account, the more objectionable. If this work contained one improper allusion to their ten, many of those fastidious ladies who now eagerly devour the vulgarities of Dumas, and the double-entendres of Bulwer, and even converse with gentlemen about their contents, would discountenance or condemn it as improper. _Shame on novel-reading women_; for they cannot have pure minds or unsullied feelings, but Cupid and the beaux, and waking of dreams of love, are fast consuming their health and virtue. 6. THEATER-GOING.--Theaters and theatrical dancing, also inflame the passions, and are "the wide gate" of "the broad road" of moral impurity. Fashionable music is another, especially the verses set to it, being mostly love-sick ditties, or sentimental odes, breathing this tender passion in its most melting and bewitching strains. Improper prints often do immense injury in this respect, as do also balls, parties, annuals, newspaper articles, exceptional works, etc. 7. THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER.--Stop for one moment and think for yourself and you will be convinced that the sentiment herein announced is for your good and the benefit of all mankind. [Illustration] [Illustration] * * * * * PUBERTY, VIRILITY AND HYGIENIC LAWS. 1. WHAT IS PUBERTY?--The definition is explained in another portion of this book, but it should be understood that it is not a prompt or immediate change; it is a slow extending growth and may extend for many years. The ripening of physical powers do not take place when the first signs of puberty appear. 2. PROPER AGE.--The proper age for puberty should vary from twelve to eighteen years. As a general rule, in the more vigorous and the more addicted to athletic exercise or out-door life, this change is slower in making its approach. 3. HYGIENIC ATTENTION.--Youths at this period should receive special private attention. They should be taught the purpose of the sexual organs and the proper hygienic laws that govern them, and they should also be taught to rise in the morning and not to lie in bed after waking up, because it is largely owing to this habit that the secret vice is contracted. One of the common causes of premature excitement in many boys is a tight foreskin. It may cause much evil and ought always to be remedied. Ill-fitting garments often cause much irritation in children and produce unnatural passions. It is best to have boys sleep in separate beds and not have them sleep together if it can be avoided. 4. PROPER INFLUENCE.--Every boy and girl should be carefully trained to look with disgust on everything that is indecent in word or action. Let them be taught a sense of shame in doing shameful things, and teach them that modesty is honorable, and that immodesty is indecent and dishonorable. Careful training at the proper age may save many a boy or girl from ruin. 5. SEXUAL PASSIONS.--The sexual passions may be a fire from heaven, or a subtle flame from hell. It depends upon the government and proper control. The noblest and most unselfish emotions take their arise in the passion of sex. Its sweet influence, its elevating ties, its vibrations and harmony, all combine to make up the noble and courageous traits of man. 6. WHEN PASSIONS BEGIN.--It is thought by some that passions begin at the age of puberty, but the passions may be produced as early as five or ten years. All depends upon the training or the want of it. Self-abuse is not an uncommon evil at the age of eight or ten. A company of bad boys often teach an innocent child that which will develop his ruin. A boy may feel a sense of pleasure at eight and produce a slight discharge, but not of semen. Thus it is seen that parents may by neglect do their child the greatest injury. 7. FALSE MODESTY.--Let there be no false modesty on part of the parents. Give the child the necessary advice and instructions as soon as necessary. 8. THE MAN UNSEXED, by Mutilation or Masturbation. Eunuchs are proverbial for tenor cruelty and crafty and unsympathizing dispositions. Their mental powers are feeble and their physical strength is inferior. They lack courage and physical endurance. When a child is operated upon before the age of puberty, the voice retains its childish treble, the limbs their soft and rounded outlines, and the neck acquires a feminine fulness; no beard makes its appearance. In ancient times and up to this time in Oriental nations eunuchs are found. They are generally slaves who have suffered mutilation at a tender age. It is a scientific fact that where boys have been taught the practice of masturbation in their early years, say from eight to fourteen years of age, if they survive at all they often have their powers reduced to a similar condition of a eunuch. They generally however suffer a greater disadvantage. Their health will be more or less injured. In the eunuch the power of sexual intercourse is not entirely lost, but of course there is sterility, and little if any satisfaction, and the same thing may be true of the victim of self-abuse. 9. SIGNS OF VIRILITY.--As the young man develops in strength and years the sexual appetite will manifest itself. The secretion of the male known as the seed or semen depends for the life-transmitting power upon little minute bodies called spermatozoa. These are very active and numerous in a healthy secretion, being many hundreds in a single drop and a single one of them is capable to bring about conception in a female. Dr. Napheys in his "Transmission of Life," says: "The secreted fluid has been frozen and kept at a temperature of zero for four days, yet when it was thawed these animalcules, as they are supposed to be, were as active as ever. They are not, however, always present, and when present may be of variable activity. In young men, just past puberty, and in aged men, they are often scarce and languid in motion." At the proper age the secretion is supposed to be the most active, generally at the age of twenty-five, and decreases as age increases. 10. HYGIENIC RULE.--The man at mid-life should guard carefully his passions and the husband his virile powers, and as the years progress, steadily wean himself more from his desire, for his passions will become weaker with age and any excitement in middle life may soon debilitate and destroy his virile powers. 11. FOLLIES OF YOUTH.--Dr. Napheys says: "Not many men can fritter away a decade or two of years in dissipation and excess, and ever hope to make up their losses by rigid surveillance in later years." "The sins of youth are expiated in age," is a proverb which daily examples illustrate. In proportion as puberty is precocious, will decadence be premature; the excesses of middle life draw heavily on the fortune of later years. "The mill of the gods grinds slow, but it grinds exceedingly fine," and though nature may be a tardy creditor, she is found at last to be an inexorable one. * * * * * OUR SECRET SINS. 1. PASSIONS.--Every healthful man has sexual desires and he might as well refuse to satisfy his hunger as to deny their existence. The Creator has given us various appetites intended they should be indulged, and has provided the means. 2. REASON.--While it is true that a healthy man has strongly developed sexual passions, yet, God has crowned man with reason, and with a proper exercise of this wonderful faculty of the human mind no lascivious thoughts need to control the passions. A pure heart will develop pure thoughts and bring out a good life. 3. RIOTING IN VISIONS.--Dr. Lewis says: "Rioting in visions of nude women may exhaust one as much as an excess in actual intercourse. There are multitudes who would never spend the night with an abandoned female, but who rarely meet a young girl that their imaginations are not busy with her person. This species of indulgence is well-nigh universal; and it is the source of all other forms the fountain from which the external vices spring, and the nursery of masturbation." 4. COMMITTING ADULTERY IN THE HEART.--A young man who allows his mind to dwell upon the vision of nude women will soon become a victim of ruinous passion, and either fall under the influence of lewd women or resort to self-abuse. The man who has no control over his mind and allows impure thoughts to be associated with the name of every female that may be suggested to his mind, is but committing adultery in his heart, just as guilty at heart as though he had committed the deed. 5. UNCHASTITY.--So far as the record is preserved, unchastity has contributed above all other causes, more to the ruin and exhaustion and demoralization of the race than all other wickedness. And we shall not be likely to vanquish the monster, even in ourselves, unless we make the thoughts our point of attack. So long as they are sensual we are indulging in sexual abuse, and are almost sure, when temptation is presented, to commit the overt acts of sin. If we cannot succeed within, we may pray in vain for help to resist the tempter outwardly. A young man who will indulge in obscene language will be guilty of a worse deed if opportunity is offered. 6. BAD DRESSING.--If women knew how much mischief they do men they would change some of their habits of dress. The dress of their busts, the padding in different parts, are so contrived as to call away attention from the soul and fix it on the bosom and hips. And then, many, even educated women, are careful to avoid serious subjects in our presence one minute before a gentleman enters the room they may be engaged in thoughtful discussion, but the moment he appears their whole style changes; they assume light fascinating ways, laugh sweet little bits of laughs, and turn their heads this way and that, all which forbids serious thinking and gives men over to imagination. 7. THE LUSTFUL EYE.--How many men there are who lecherously stare at every woman in whose presence they happen to be. These monsters stare at women as though they were naked in a cage on exhibition. A man whose whole manner is full of animal passion is not worthy of the respect of refined women. They have no thoughts, no ideas, no sentiments, nothing to interest them but the bodies of women whom they behold. The moral character of young women has no significance or weight in their eyes. This kind of men are a curse to society and a danger to the community. No young lady is safe in their company. 8. REBUKING SENSUALISM.--If the young women would exercise an honorable independence and heap contempt upon the young men that allow their imagination to take such liberties, a different state of things would soon follow. Men of that type of character should have no recognition in the presence of ladies. 9. EARLY MARRIAGES.--There can be no doubt that early marriages are bad for both parties. For children of such a marriage always lack vitality. The ancient Germans did not marry until the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year, previous to which they observed the most rigid chastity, and in consequence they acquired a size and strength that excited the astonishment of Europe. The present incomparable vigor of that race, both physically and mentally, is due in a great measure to their long established aversion to marrying young. The results of too early marriages are in brief, stunted growth and impaired strength on the part of the male; delicate if not utterly bad health in the female; the premature old age or death of one or both, and a puny, sickly offspring. 10. SIGNS OF EXCESSES.--Dr. Dio Lewis says: "Some of the most common effects of sexual excess are backache, lassitude, giddiness, dimness of sight, noises in the ears, numbness of the fingers, and paralysis. The drain is universal, but the more sensitive organs and tissues suffer most. So the nervous system gives way and continues the principal sufferer throughout. A large part of the premature loss of sight and hearing, dizziness, numbness and pricking in the hands and feet, and other kindred developments, are justly chargeable to unbridled venery. Not unfrequently you see men whose head or back or nerve testifies of such reckless expenditure." 11. NON-COMPLETED INTERCOURSE.--Withdrawal before the emission occurs is injurious to both parties. The soiling of the conjugal bed by the shameful manoeuvres is to be deplored. 12. THE EXTENT OF THE PRACTICE.--One cannot tell to what extent this vice is practiced, except by observing its consequences, even among people who fear to commit the slightest sin, to such a degree is the public conscience perverted upon this point. Still, many husbands know that nature often renders nugatory the most subtle calculations, and reconquers the rights which they have striven to frustrate. No matter; they persevere none the less, and by the force of habit they poison the most blissful moments of life, with no surety of averting the result that they fear. So who knows if the too often feeble and weakened infants are not the fruit of these in themselves incomplete procreations, and disturbed by preoccupations foreign to the natural act. 13. HEALTH OF WOMEN.--Furthermore, the moral relations existing between the married couple undergo unfortunate changes; this affection, founded upon reciprocal esteem, is little by little effaced by the repetition of an act which pollutes the marriage bed. If the good harmony of families and the reciprocal relations are seriously menaced by the invasion of these detestable practices, the health of women, as we have already intimated, is fearfully injured. 14. CROWNING SIN OF THE AGE.--Then there is the crime of abortion which is so prevalent in these days. It is the crowning sin of the age, though in a broader sense it includes all those sins that are committed to limit the size of the family. "It lies at the root of our spiritual life," says Rev. B.D. Sinclair, "and though secret in its nature, paralyzes Christian life and neutralizes every effort for righteousness which the church puts forth." 15. SEXUAL EXHAUSTION.--Every sexual excitement is exhaustive in proportion to its intensity and continuance. If a man sits by the side of a woman, fondles and kisses her three or four hours, and allows his imagination to run riot with sexual visions, he will be five times as much exhausted as he would by the act culminating in emission. It is the sexual excitement more than the emission which exhausts. As shown in another part of this work, thoughts of sexual intimacies, long continued, lead to the worst effects. To a man, whose imagination is filled with erotic fancies the emission comes as a merciful interruption to the burning, harassing and wearing excitement which so constantly goads him. 16. THE DESIRE OF GOOD.--The desire of good for its own sake--this is Love. The desire of good for bodily pleasure--this is Lust. Man is a moral being, and as such should always act in the animal sphere according to the spiritual law. Hence, to break the law of the highest creative action for the mere gratification of animal instinct is to perform the act of sin and to produce the corruption of nature. 17. CAUSE OF PROSTITUTION.--Dr. Dio Lewis says: "Occasionally we meet a diseased female with excessive animal passion, but such a case is very rare. The average woman has so little sexual desire that if licentiousness depended upon her, uninfluenced by her desire to please man or secure his support, there would be very little sexual excess. Man is strong he has all the money and all the facilities for business and pleasure; and woman is not long in learning the road to his favor. Many prostitutes who take no pleasure in their unclean intimacies not only endure a disgusting life for the favor and means thus gained, but affect intense passion in their sexual contacts because they have learned that such exhibitions gratify men." 18. HUSBAND'S BRUTALITY.--Husbands! It is your licentiousness that drives your wives to a deed so abhorrent to their every wifely, womanly and maternal instinct a deed which ruins the health of their bodies, prostitutes their souls, and makes marriage, maternity and womanhood itself degrading and loathsome. No terms can sufficiently characterize the cruelty, meanness and disgusting selfishness of your conduct when you impose on them a maternity so detested as to drive them to the desperation of killing their unborn children and often themselves. 19. WHAT DRUNKARDS BEQUEATH TO THEIR OFFSPRING.--Organic imperfections unfit the brain for sane action, and habit confirms the insane condition; the man's brain has become unsound. Then comes in the law of hereditary descent, by which the brain of a man's children is fashioned after his own not as it was originally, but as it has become, in consequence of frequent functional disturbance. Hence, of all appetites, the inherited appetite for drunkenness is the most direful. Natural laws contemplate no exceptions, and sins against them are never pardoned. 20. THE REPORTS OF HOSPITALS.--The reports of hospitals for lunatics almost universally assign intemperance as one of the causes which predispose a man's offspring to insanity. This is even more strikingly manifested in the case of congenital idiocy. They come generally from a class of families which seem to have degenerated physically to a low degree. They are puny and sickly. 21. SECRET DISEASES.--See the weakly, sickly and diseased children who are born only to suffer and die, all because of the private disease of the father before his marriage. Oh, let the truth be told that the young men of our land may learn the lessons of purity of life. Let them learn that in morality there is perfect protection and happiness. [Illustration: GETTING A DIVORCE.] [Illustration: THE DEGENERATE TURK.] * * * * * PHYSICAL AND MORAL DEGENERACY. 1. MORAL PRINCIPLE.--"Edgar Allen Poe, Lord Byron, and Robert Burns," says Dr. Geo. F. Hall, "were men of marvelous strength intellectually. But measured by the true rule of high moral principle, they were very weak. Superior endowment in a single direction--physical, mental, or spiritual--is not of itself sufficient to make one strong in all that that heroic word means. 2. INSANE ASYLUM.--many a good man spiritually has gone to an untimely grave because of impaired physical powers. Many a good man spiritually has gone to the insane asylum because of bodily and mental weaknesses. Many a good man spiritually has fallen from virtue in an evil moment because of a weakened will, or a too demanding fleshly passion, or, worse than either, too lax views on the subject of personal chastity." 3. BOYS LEARNING VICES.--some ignorant and timid people argue that boys and young men in reading a work of this character will learn vices concerning which they had never so much as dreamed of before. This is, however, certain, that vices cannot be condemned unless they are mentioned; and if the condemnation is strong enough it surely will be a source of strength and of security. If light and education, on these important subjects, does injury, then all knowledge likewise must do more wrong than good. Knowledge is power, and the only hope of the race is enlightenment on all subjects pertaining to their being. 4. MORAL MANHOOD.--it is clearly visible that the American manhood is rotting down--decaying at the center. The present generation shows many men of a small body and weak principles, and men and women of this kind are becoming more and more prevalent. Dissipation and indiscretions of all kind are working ruin. Purity of life and temperate habits are being too generally disregarded. 5. YOUNG WOMEN.--the vast majority of graduates from the schools and colleges of our land to-day, and two-thirds of the membership of our churches, and three-fourths of the charitable workers, are females. Everywhere girls are carrying off most of the prizes in competitive examinations, because women, as a sex, naturally maintain a better character, take better care of their bodies, and are less addicted to bad and injurious habits. While all this is true in reference to females, you will find that the male sex furnishes almost the entire number of criminals. The saloons, gambling dens, the brothels, and bad literature are drawing down all that the public schools can build up. Seventy per cent. Of the young men of this land do not darken the church door. They are not interested in moral improvement or moral education. Eighty-five per cent. Leave school under 15 years of age; prefer the loafer's honors to the benefit of school. 6. PROMOTION.--the world is full of good places for good young men, and all the positions of trust now occupied by the present generation will soon be filled by the competent young men of the coming generation; and he that keeps his record clean, lives a pure life, and avoids excesses or dissipations of all kinds, and fortifies his life with good habits, is the young man who will be heard from, and a thousand places will be open for his services. 7. PERSONAL PURITY.--Dr. George F. Hall says: "why not pay careful attention to man in all his elements of strength, physical, mental, and moral? Why not make personal purity a fixed principle in the manhood of the present and coming generation, and thus insure the best men the world has ever seen? It can be done. Let every reader of these lines resolve that he will be one to help do it." [Illustration: Charles Dickens' chair and desk.] * * * * * IMMORALITY, DISEASE AND DEATH. 1. THE POLICY OF SILENCE.--there is no greater delusion than to suppose that vast number of boys know nothing about practices of sin. Some parents are afraid that unclean thoughts may be suggested by these very defences. The danger is slight. Such cases are barely possible, but when the untold thousands are thought of on the other side, who have been demoralized from childhood through ignorance, and who are to-day suffering the result of these vicious practices, the policy of silence stands condemned, and intelligent knowledge abundantly justified. The emphatic words of scripture are true in this respect also, "the people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." 2. LIVING ILLUSTRATION.--without fear of truthful contradiction, we affirm that the homes, public assemblies, and streets of all our large cities abound to-day with living illustrations and proofs of the widespread existence of this physical and moral scourge. An enervated and stunted manhood, a badly developed physique, a marked absence of manly and womanly strength and beauty, are painfully common everywhere. Boys and girls, young men and women, exist by thousands, of whom it may be said, they were badly born and ill-developed. Many of them are, to some extent, bearing the penalty of the [transcriber's note: the text appears to read "sins" but it is unclear] and excesses of their parents, especially their fathers, whilst the great majority are reaping the fruits of their own immorality in a dwarfed and ill-formed body, and effeminate appearance, weak and enervated mind. 3. EFFEMINATE AND SICKLY YOUNG MEN.--the purposeless and aimless life of any number of effeminate and sickly young men, is to be distinctly attributed to these sins. The large class of mentally impotent "ne'er-do-wells" are being constantly recruited and added to by those who practice what the celebrated Erichson calls "that hideous sin engendered by vice, and practiced in solitude"--the sin, be it observed, which is the common cause of physical and mental weakness, and of the fearfully impoverishing night-emissions, or as they are commonly called, "wet-dreams." 4. WEAKNESS, DISEASE, DEFORMITY, AND DEATH.--Through self-pollution and fornication the land is being corrupted with weakness, disease, deformity, and death. We regret to say that we cannot speak with confidence concerning the moral character of the Jew; but we have people amongst us who have deservedly a high character for the tone of their moral life--we refer to the members of the Society of Friends. The average of life amongst these reaches no less than fifty-six years; and, whilst some allowance must be made for the fact that amongst the Friends the poor have not a large representation, these figures show conclusively the soundness of this position. 5. SOWING THEIR WILD OATS.--It is monstrous to suppose that healthy children should die just as they are coming to manhood. The fact that thousands of young people do reach the age of sixteen or eighteen, and then decline and die, should arouse parents to ask the question: Why? Certainly it would not be difficult to tell the reason in thousands of instances, and yet the habit and practice of the deadly sin of self-pollution is actually ignored; it is even spoken of as a boyish folly not to be mentioned, and young men literally burning up with lust are mildly spoken of as "sowing their wild oats." Thus the cemetery is being filled with masses of the youth of America who, as in Egypt of old, fill up the graves of uncleanness and lust. Some time since a prominent Christian man was taking exception to my addressing men on this subject; observe this! one of his own sons was at that very time near the lunatic asylum through these disgusting sins. What folly and madness this is! 6. DEATH TO TRUE MANHOOD.--The question for each one is, "In what way are you going to divert the courses of the streams of energy which pertain to youthful vigor and manhood?" To be destitute of that which may be described as raw material in the human frame, means that no really vigorous manhood can have place; to burn up the juices of the system in the fires of lust is madness and wanton folly, but it can be done. To divert the currents of life and energy from blood and brain, from memory and muscle, in order to secrete it for the shambles of prostitution, is death to true manhood; but remember, it can be done! The generous liquid life may inspire the brain and blood with noble impulse and vital force, or it may be sinned away and drained out of the system until the jaded brain, the faded cheek, the enervated young manhood, the gray hair, narrow chest, weak voice, and the enfeebled mind show another victim in the long catalogue of the degraded through lust. 7. THE SISTERHOOD OF SHAME AND DEATH.--Whenever we pass the sisterhood of death, and hear the undertone of song, which is one of the harlot's methods of advertising, let us recall the words, that these represent the "pestilence which walketh in darkness, the destruction that wasteth at noonday." The allusion, of course, is to the fact that the great majority of these harlots are full of loathsome physical and moral disease; with the face and form of an angel, these women "bite like a serpent and sting like an adder;" their traffic is not for life, but inevitably for shame, disease, and death. Betrayed and seduced themselves, they in their turn betray and curse others. 8. WARNING OTHERS.--Have you never been struck with the argument of the Apostle, who, warning others from the corrupt example of the fleshy Esau, said, "Lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau, who for one mess of meat sold his own birthright. For ye know that even afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears." Terrible and striking words are these. His birthright sold for a mess of meat. The fearful costs of sin--yes, that is the thought, particularly the sin of fornication! Engrave that word upon your memories and hearts--"One mess of meat." 9. THE HARLOT'S MESS OF MEAT.--Remember it, young men, when you are tempted to this sin. For a few minutes' sensual pleasure, for a mess of harlot's meat, young men are paying out the love of the son and brother; they are deceiving, lying, and cheating for a mess of meat; for a mess, not seldom of putrid flesh, men have paid down purity and prayer, manliness and godliness; for a mess of meat some perhaps have donned their best attire, and assumed the manners of the gentleman, and then, like an infernal hypocrite flogged the steps of maiden or harlot to satisfy their degrading lust; for a mess of meat young men have deceived father and mother, and shrunk from the embrace of love of the pure-minded sister. For the harlot's mess of meat some listening to me have spent scores of hours of invaluable time. They have wearied the body, diseased and demoralized the mind. The pocket has been emptied, theft committed, lies unnumbered told, to play the part of the harlot's mate--perchance a six-foot fool, dragged into the filth and mire of the harlot's house. You called her your friend, when, but for her mess of meat, you would have passed her like dirt in the street. 10. SEEING LIFE.--You consorted with her for your mutual shame and death, and then called it "seeing life." Had your mother met you, you would have shrunk away like a craven cur. Had your sister interviewed you, she had blushed to bear your name; or had she been seen by you in company with some other whoremaster, for similar commerce, you would have wished that she had been dead. Now what think you of this "seeing life?" And it is for this that tens of thousands of strong men in our large cities are selling their birthright. 11. THE DEVIL'S DECOYS.--Some may be ready to affirm that physical and moral penalties do not appear to overtake all men; that many men known to be given to intemperance and sensuality are strong, well, and live to a good age. Let us not make any mistake concerning these; they are exceptions to the rule; the appearance of health in them is but the grossness of sensuality. You have only carefully to look into the faces of these men to see that their countenances, eyes, and speech betray them. They are simply the devil's decoys. 12. GROSSNESS OF SENSUALITY.--The poor degraded harlot draws in the victims like a heavily charged lodestone; these men are found in large numbers throughout the entire community; they would make fine men were they not weighted with the grossness of sensuality; as it is, they frequent the race-course, the card-table, the drinking-saloon, the music-hall, and the low theaters, which abound in our cities and towns; the great majority of these are men of means and leisure. Idleness is their curse, their opportunity for sin; you may know them as the loungers over refreshment-bars, as the retailers of the latest filthy joke, or as the vendors of some disgusting scandal; indeed, it is appalling the number of these lepers found both in our business and social circles. [Illustration: PALESTINE WATER CARRIERS.] * * * * * POISONOUS LITERATURE AND BAD PICTURES. 1. OBSCENE LITERATURE.--No other source contributes so much to sexual immorality as obscene literature. The mass of stories published in the great weeklies and the cheap novels are mischievous. When the devil determines to take charge of a young soul, be often employs a very ingenious method. He slyly hands a little novel filled with "voluptuous forms," "reclining on bosoms," "languishing eyes," etc. 2. MORAL FORCES.--The world is full of such literature. It is easily accessible, for it is cheap, and the young will procure it, and therefore become easy prey to its baneful influence and effects. It weakens the moral forces of the young, and they thereby fall an easy prey before the subtle schemes of the libertine. 3. BAD BOOKS.--Bad books play not a small part in the corruption of the youth. A bad book is as bad as an evil companion. In some respects it is even worse than a living teacher of vice, since it may cling to an individual at all times. It will follow him and poison his mind with the venom of evil. The influence of bad books in making bad boys and men is little appreciated. Few are aware how much evil seed is being sown among the young everywhere through the medium of vile books. 4. SENSATIONAL STORY BOOKS.--Much of the evil literature which is sold in nickel and dime novels, and which constitutes the principal part of the contents of such papers as the "Police Gazette," the "Police News," and a large proportion of the sensational story books which flood the land. You might better place a coal of fire or a live viper in your bosom, than allow yourself to read such a book. The thoughts that are implanted in the mind in youth will often stick there through life, in spite of all efforts to dislodge them. 5. PAPERS AND MAGAZINES.--Many of the papers and magazines sold at our news stands, and eagerly sought after by young men and boys, are better suited for the parlors of a house of ill-fame than for the eyes of pure-minded youth. A newsdealer who will distribute such vile sheets ought to be dealt with as an educator in vice and crime, an agent of evil, and a recruiting officer of hell and perdition. 6. SENTIMENTAL LITERATURE OF LOW FICTION.--Sentimental literature, whether impure in its subject matter or not, has a direct tendency in the direction of impurity. The stimulation of the emotional nature, the instilling of sentimental ideas into the minds of the young, has a tendency to turn the thoughts into a channel which leads in the direction of the formation of vicious habits. 7. IMPRESSIONS LEFT BY READING QUESTIONABLE LITERATURE.--It is painful to see strong intelligent men and youths reading bad books, or feasting their eyes on filthy pictures, for the practice is sure to affect their personal purity. Impressions will be left which cannot fail to breed a legion of impure thoughts, and in many instances criminal deeds. Thousands of elevator boys, clerks, students, traveling men, and others, patronize the questionable literature counter to an alarming extent. 8. THE NUDE IN ART.--For years there has been a great craze after the nude in art, and the realistic in literature. Many art galleries abound in pictures and statuary which cannot fail to fan the fires of sensualism, unless the thoughts of the visitor are trained to the strictest purity. Why should artists and sculptors persist in shocking the finer sensibilities of old and young of both sexes by crowding upon their view representations of naked human forms in attitudes of luxurious abandon? Public taste may demand it. But let those who have the power endeavor to reform public taste. 9. WIDELY DIFFUSED.--Good men have ever lamented the pernicious influence of a depraved and perverted literature. But such literature has never been so systematically and widely diffused as at the present time. This is owing to two causes, its cheapness and the facility of conveyance. 10. INFLAME THE PASSIONS.--A very large proportion of the works thus put in circulation are of the worst character, tending to corrupt the principles, to inflame the passions, to excite impure desire, and spread a blight over all the powers of the soul. Brothels are recruited from this more than any other source. Those who search the trunks of convicted criminals are almost sure to find in them one of more of these works; and few prisoners who can read at all fail to enumerate among the causes which led them into crime the unhealthy stimulus of this depraved and poisonous literature. [Illustration] [Illustration] * * * * * STARTLING SINS. 1. NAMELESS CRIMES.--The nameless crimes identified with the hushed-up Sodomite cases; the revolting condition of the school of Sodomy; the revelations of the Divorce Court concerning the condition of what is called national nobility, and upper classes, as well as the unclean spirit which attaches to "society papers," has revealed a condition which is perfectly disgusting. 2. UNFAITHFULNESS.--Unfaithfulness amongst husbands and wives in the upper classes is common and adultery rife everywhere; mistresses are kept in all directions; thousands of these rich men have at least two, and not seldom three establishments. 3. A FRIGHTFUL INCREASE.--Facts which have come to light during the past ten years show a frightful increase in every form of licentiousness; the widely extended area over which whoredom and degrading lust have thrown the glamor of their fascinating toils is simply appalling. 4. MORAL CARNAGE.--We speak against the fearful moral carnage; would to God that some unmistakable manifestation of the wrath of God should come in and put a stop to this huge seed-plot of national demoralization! We are reaping in this disgusting center the harvest of corruption which has come from the toleration and encouragements given by the legislature, the police, and the magistrates to immorality, vice and sin; the awful fact is that we are in the midst of the foul and foetid harvest of lust. Aided by some of the most exalted personages in the land, assisted by thousands of educated and wealthy whoremongers and adulterers, we are reaping also, in individual physical ugliness and deformity, that which has been sown; the puny, ill-formed and mentally weak youths and maidens, men and women, to be seen in large numbers in our principal towns and cities, represent the widespread nature of the curse, which has, in a marked manner, impaired the physique, the morality, and the intelligence of the nation. 5. DAILY PRESS.--The daily press has not had the moral courage to say one word; the quality of demoralizing novels such as have been produced from the impure brain and unclean imaginations; the subtle, clever and fascinating undermining of the white-winged angel of purity by modern sophists, whose purient and vicious volumes were written to throw a halo of charm and beauty about the brilliant courtesan and the splendid adulteress; the mixing up of lust and love; the making of corrupt passion to stand in the garb of a deep, lasting, and holy affection--these are some of the hidious seedlings which, hidden amid the glamor and fascination of the seeming "angel of light," have to so large an extent corrupted the morality of the country. 6. NIGHTLY EXHIBITIONS.--Some of you know what the nightly exhibitions in these garlanded temples of whorish incentive are. There is the variety theatre with its disgusting ballet dancing, and its shamelessly indecent photographs exhibited in every direction. What a clear gain to morality it would be if the accursed houses were burnt down, and forbidden by law ever to be re-built or re-opened; the whole scene is designed to act upon and stimulate the lusts and evil passions of corrupt men and women. 7. CONFIDENCE AND EXPOSURE.--I hear some of you say, cannot some influence be brought to bear upon this plague-spot? Will the legislature or congress do nothing? Is the law and moral right to continue to be trodden under foot? Are the magistrates and the police powerless? The truth is, the harlots and whoremongers are master of the situation; the moral sense of the legislators, the magistrates, and the police is so low that anything like confidence is at present out of the question. 8. THE SISTERHOOD OF SHAME AND DEATH.--It is enough to make angels weep to see a great mass of America's wealthy and better-class sons full of zeal and on fire with interest in the surging hundreds of the sisterhood of shame and death. Many of these men act as if they were--if they do not believe they are--dogs. No poor hunted dog in the streets was ever tracked by a yelping crowd of curs more than is the fresh girl or chance of a maid in the accursed streets of our large cities. Price is no object, nor parentage, nor home; it is the truth to affirm that hundreds and thousands of well-dressed and educated men come in order to the gratification of their lusts, and to this end they frequent this whole district; they have reached this stage, they are being burned up in this fire of lust; men of whom God says, "Having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease sin." 9. LAW MAKERS.--Now should any member of the legislature rise up and testify against this "earthly hell," and speak in defence of the moral manhood and womanhood of the nation, he would be greeted as a fanatic, and laughed down amid derisive cheers; such has been the experience again and again. Therefore attack this great stronghold which for the past thirty years has warred and is warring against our social manhood and womanhood, and constantly undermining the moral life of the nation; against this citadel of licentiousness, this metropolitan centre of crime, and vice, and sin, direct your full blast of righteous and manly indignation. 10. TEMPLES OF LUST.--Here stand the foul and splendid temples of lust, intemperance, and passion, into whose vortex tens of thousands of our sons and daughters are constantly being drawn. Let it be remembered that this whole area represents the most costly conditions, and proves beyond Question that an enormous proportion of the wealthy manhood of the nation, and we as citizens sustain, partake, and share in this carnival of death. Is it any wonder that the robust type of godly manhood which used to be found in the legislature is sadly wanting now, or that the wretched caricatures of manhood which find form and place in such papers as "Truth" and the "World" are accepted as representing "modern society?" 11. PURITANIC MANHOOD.--It is a melancholy fact that, by reason of uncleanness, we have almost lost regard for the type of puritanic manhood which in the past held aloft the standard of a chaste and holy life; such men in this day are spoken of as "too slow" as "weak-kneed," and "goody-goody" men. Let me recall that word, the fast and indecently-dressed "things," the animals of easy virtue, the "respectable" courtesans that flirt, chaff, gamble, and waltz with well-known high-class licentious lepers--such is the ideal of womanhood which a large proportion of our large city society accepts, fawns upon, and favors. [Illustration] 12. SHAMEFUL CONDITIONS.--Perhaps one of the most inhuman and shameful conditions of modern fashionable society, both in England and America, is that which wealthy men and women who are married destroy their own children in the embryo stage of being, and become murderers thereby. This is done to prevent what should become one of our chief glories, viz., large and well-developed [Transcriber's note: the text appears to read "home" but it is unclear] and family life. * * * * * THE PROSTITUTION OF MEN. CAUSE AND REMEDY. 1. EXPOSED YOUTH.--Generally even in the beginning of the period when sexual uneasiness begins to show itself in the boy, he is exposed in schools, institutes, and elsewhere to the temptations of secret vice, which is transmitted from youth to youth, like a contagious corruption, and which in thousands destroys the first germs of virility. Countless numbers of boys are addicted to these vices for years. That they do not in the beginning of nascent puberty proceed to sexual intercourse with women, is generally due to youthful timidity, which dares not reveal its desire, or from want of experience for finding opportunities. The desire is there, for the heart is already corrupted. 2. BOYHOOD TIMIDITY OVERCOME.--Too often a common boy's timidity is overcome by chance or by seduction, which is rarely lacking in great cities where prostitution is flourishing, and thus numbers of boys immediately after the transition period of youth, in accordance with the previous secret practice, accustom themselves to the association with prostitute women, and there young manhood and morals are soon lost forever. 3. MARRIAGE-BED RESOLUTIONS.--Most men of the educated classes enter the marriage-bed with the consciousness of leaving behind them a whole army of prostitutes or seduced women, in whose arms they cooled their passions and spent the vigor of their youth. But with such a past the married man does not at the same time leave behind him its influence on his inclinations. The habit of having a feminine being at his disposal for every rising appetite, and the desire for change inordinately indulged for years, generally make themselves felt again as soon as the honeymoon is over. Marriage will not make a morally corrupt man all at once a good man and a model husband. 4. THE INJUSTICE OF MAN.--Now, although many men are in a certain sense "not worthy to unloose the latchet of the shoes" of the commonest woman, much less to "unfasten her girdle," yet they make the most extravagant demands on the feminine sex. Even the greatest debauchee, who has spent his vigor in the arms of a hundred courtesans, will cry out fraud and treachery if he does not receive his newly married bride as an untouched virgin. Even the most dissolute husband will look on his wife as deserving of death if his daily infidelity is only once reciprocated. 5. UNJUST DEMANDS.--The greater the injustice a husband does to his wife, the less he is willing to submit to from her; the oftener he becomes unfaithful to her, the stricter he is in demanding faithfulness from her. We see that despotism nowhere denies its own nature: the more a despot deceives and abuses his people, the more submissiveness and faithfulness he demands of them. 6. SUFFERING WOMEN.--Who can be astonished at the many unhappy marriages, if he knows how unworthy most men are of their wives? Their virtues they rarely can appreciate, and their vices they generally call out by their own. Thousands of women suffer from the results of a mode of life of which they, having remained pure in their thought, have no conception whatever; and many an unsuspecting wife nurses her husband with tenderest care in sicknesses which are nothing more than the consequences of his amours with other women. 7. AN INHUMAN CRIMINAL.--When at last, after long years of delusion and endurance, the scales drop from the eyes of the wife, and revenge or despair drives her into a hostile position towards her lord and master, she is an inhuman criminal, and the hue and cry against the fickleness of women and the falsity of their nature is endless. Oh, the injustice of society and the injustice of cruel man. Is there no relief for helpless women that are bound by the ties of marriage to men who are nothing but rotten corruption? 8. VULGAR DESIRE.--The habit of regarding the end and aim of woman only from the most vulgar side--not to respect in her the noble human being, but to see in her only the instrument of sensual desire--is carried so far among men that they will allow it to force into the background considerations among themselves, which they otherwise pretend to rank very high. 9. THE ONLY REMEDY.--But when the feeling of women has once been driven to indignation with respect to the position which they occupy, it is to be hoped that they will compel men to be pure before marriage, and they will remain loyal after marriage. 10. WORSE THAN SAVAGES.--With all our civilization we are put to shame even by the savages. The savages know of no fastidiousness of the sexual instinct and of no brothels. We are, indeed, likewise savages, but in quite a different sense. Proof of this is especially furnished by our youth. But that our students, and young men in general, usually pass through the school of corruption and drag the filth of the road which they have traversed before marriage along with them throughout life, is not their fault so much as the fault of prejudices and of our political and social conditions that prohibits a proper education, and the placing of the right kind of literature on these subjects into the hands of young people. [Illustration] 11. REASON AND REMEDY.--Keep the youth pure by a thorough system of plain unrestricted training. The seeds of immorality are sown in youth, and the secret vice eats out their young manhood often before the age of puberty. They develop a bad character as they grow older. Young girls are ruined, and licentiousness and prostitution flourish. Keep the boys pure and the harlot would soon lose her vocation. Elevate the morals of the boys, and you will have pure men and moral husbands. [Illustration: SUICIDE LAKE.] * * * * * THE ROAD TO SHAME. 1. INSULT TO MOTHER OR SISTER.--Young men, it can never tinder any circumstances be right for you to do to a woman that, which, if another man did to your mother or sister, you could never forgive! The very thought is revolting. Let us suppose a man guilty of this shameful sin, and I apprehend that each of us would feel ready to shoot the villain. We are not justifying the shooting, but appealing to your instinctive sense of right, in order to show the enormity of this fearful crime, and to fasten strong conviction in your mind against this sin. 2. A RUINED SISTER.--What would you think of a man, no matter what his wealth, culture, or gentlemanly bearing, who should lay himself out for the seduction and shame of your beloved sister? Her very name now reminds you of the purest affection: think of her, if you can bear it, ruined in character, and soon to become an unhappy mother. To whom can you introduce her? What can you say concerning her? How can her own brothers and sisters associate with her? and, mark! all this personal and relative misery caused by this genteel villain's degrading passion. 3. YOUNG MAN LOST.--Another terrible result of this sin is the practical overthrow of natural affection which it effects. A young man comes from his father's house to Chicago. Either through his own lust or through the corrupt companions that he finds in the house of business where he resides, he becomes the companion of lewd women. The immediate result is a bad conscience, a sense of shame, and a breach in the affections of home. Letters are less frequent, careless, and brief. He cannot manifest true love now. He begins to shrink from his sister and mother, and well he may. 4. THE HARLOT'S INFLUENCE.--He has spent the strength of his affection and love for home. In their stead the wretched harlot has filled him with unholy lust. His brain and heart refuse to yield him the love of the son and brother. His hand can not write as aforetime, or at best, his expressions become a hypocritical pretence. Fallen into the degradation of the fornicator, he has changed a mother's love and sister's affection for the cursed fellowship of the woman "whose house is the way to hell." (Prov. VII. 27.) 5. THE WAY OF DEATH.--Observe, that directly the law of God is broken, and wherever promiscuous intercourse between the sexes takes place, gonorrhoea, syphilis, and every other form of venereal disease is seen in hideous variety. It is only true to say that thousands of both sexes are slain annually by these horrible diseases. What must be the moral enormity of a sin, which, when committed, produces in vast numbers of cases such frightful physical and moral destruction as that which is here portrayed? 6. A HARLOT'S WOES.--Would to God that something might be done to rescue fallen women from their low estate. We speak of them as "fallen women". Fallen, indeed, they are, but surely not more deserving of the application of that term than the "fallen men" who are their partners and paramours. It is easy to use the words "a fallen woman," but who can apprehend all that is involved in the expression, seeing that every purpose for which God created woman is prostituted and destroyed? She is now neither maiden, wife, nor mother; the sweet names of sister and betrothed can have no legitimate application in her case. 7. THE PENALTIES FOR LOST VIRTUE.--Can the harlot be welcomed where either children, brothers, sisters, wife, or husband are found? Surely, no. Home is a sphere alien to the harlot's estate. See such an one wherever you may--she is a fallen outcast from woman's high estate. Her existence--for she does not live--now culminates in one dread issue, viz., prostitution. She sleeps, but awakes a harlot. She rises in the late morning hours, but her object is prostitution; she washes, dresses, and braids her hair, but it is with one foul purpose before her. To this end she eats, drinks, and is clothed. To this end her house is hidden and the blinds are drawn. 8. LOST FOREVER.--To this end she applies the unnatural cosmetique, and covers herself with sweet perfumes, which vainly try to hide her disease and shame. To this end she decks herself with dashing finery and tawdry trappings, and with bold, unwomanly mien essays the streets of the great city. To this end she is loud and coarse and impudent. To this end she is the prostituted "lady," with simpering words, and smiles, and glamour of refined deceit. To this end an angel face, a devil in disguise. There is one foul and ghastly purpose towards which all her energies now tend. So low has she fallen, so lost is she to all the design of woman, that she exists for one foul purpose only, viz., to excite, stimulate, and gratify the lusts of degraded, ungodly men. Verily, the word "prostitute" has an awful meaning. What plummet can sound the depths of a woman's fall who has become a harlot? 9. SOUND THE ALARM.--Remember, young man, you can never rise above the degradation of the companionship of lewd women. Your virtue once lost is lost forever. Remember, young woman, your wealth or riches is your good name and good character--you have nothing else. Give a man your virtue and he will forsake you, and you will be forsaken by all the world. Remember that purity of purpose brings nobility of character, and an honorable life is the joy and security of mankind. [Illustration: THE GREAT PHILANTHROPIST.] * * * * * THE CURSE OF MANHOOD. 1. MORAL LEPERS.--We cannot but denounce, in the strongest terms, the profligacy of many married men. Not content with the moderation permitted in the divine appointed relationship of marriage, they become adulterers, in order to gratify their accursed lust. The man in them is trodden down by the sensual beast which reigns supreme. These are the moral outlaws that make light of this scandalous social iniquity, and by their damnable example encourage young men to sin. 2. A SAD CONDITION.--It is constantly affirmed by prostitutes, that amongst married men are found their chief supporters. Evidence from such a quarter must be received with considerable caution. Nevertheless, we believe that there is much truth in this statement. Here, again, we lay the ax to the root of the tree; the married man who dares affirm that there is a particle of physical necessity for this sin, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. Whether these men be princes, peers, legislators, professional men, mechanics, or workmen, they are moral pests, a scandal to the social state, and a curse to the nation. 3. EXCESSES.--Many married men exhaust themselves by these excesses; they become irritable, liable to cold, to rheumatic affections, and nervous depression. They find themselves weary when they rise in the morning. Unfitted for close application to business, they become dilatory and careless, often lapsing into entire lack of energy, and not seldom into the love of intoxicating stimulants. Numbers of husbands and wives entering upon these experiences lose the charm of health, the cheerfulness of life and converse. Home duties become irksome to the wife; the brightness, vivacity, and bloom natural to her earlier years, decline; she is spoken of as highly nervous, poorly, and weak, when the whole truth is that she is suffering from physical exhaustion which she cannot bear. Her features become angular, her hair prematurely gray, she rapidly settles down into the nervous invalid, constantly needing medical aid, and, if possible, change of air. 4. IGNORANCE.--These conditions are brought about in many cases through ignorance on the part of those who are married. Multitudes of men have neither read, heard, nor known the truth of this question. We sympathize with our fellow-men in this, that we have been left in practical ignorance concerning the exceeding value and legitimate uses of these functions of our being. Some know, that, had they known these things in the early days of their married life, it would have proved to them knowledge of exceeding value. If this counsel is followed, thousands of homes will scarcely know the need of the physician's presence. 5. ANIMAL PASSION.--Commonsense teaches that children who are begotten in the heat of animal passion, are likely to be licentious when they grow up. Many parents through excesses of eating and drinking, become inflamed with wine and strong drink. They are sensualists, and consequently, morally diseased. Now, if in such conditions men beget their children, who can affect surprise if they develop licentious tendencies? Are not such parents largely to blame? Are they not criminals in a high degree? Have they not fouled their own nest, and transmitted to their children predisposition to moral evil? 6. FAST YOUNG MEN.--Many of our "fast young men" have been thus corrupted, even as the children of the intemperate are proved to have been. Certainly no one can deny that many of our "well-bred" young men are little better than "high-class dogs" so lawless are they, and ready for the arena of licentiousness. 7. THE PURE-MINDED WIFE.--Happily, as tens of thousands of husbands can testify, the pure-minded wife and mother is not carried away, as men are liable to be, with the force of animal passion. Were it not so, the tendencies to licentiousness in many sons would be stronger than they are. In the vast majority of cases suggestion is never made except by the husband, and it is a matter of deepest gratitude and consideration, that the true wife may become a real helpmeet in restraining this desire in the husband. 8. YOUNG WIFE AND CHILDREN.--We often hear it stated that a young wife has her children quickly. This cannot happen to the majority of women without injury to health and jeopardy to life. The law which rendered it imperative for the land to lie fallow in order to rest and gain renewed strength, is only another illustration of the unity which pervades physical conditions everywhere. It should be known that if a mother nurses her own babe, and the child is not weaned until it is nine or ten months old, the mother, except in rare cases, will not become enceinte again, though cohabitation with the husband takes place. 9. SELFISH AND UNNATURAL CONDUCT.--It is natural and rational that a mother should feed her own children; in the selfish and unnatural conduct of many mothers, who, to avoid the self-denial and patience which are required, hand the little one over to the wet-nurse, or to be brought up by hand, is found in many cases the cause and reason of the unnatural haste of child-bearing. Mothers need to be taught that the laws of nature cannot be broken without penalty. For every woman whose health has been weakened through nursing her child, a hundred have lost strength and health through marital excesses. The haste of having children is the costly penalty which women pay for shirking the mother's duty to the child. 10. LAW OF GOD.--So graciously has the law of God been arranged in regard to the mother's strength, that, if it be obeyed, there will be, as a rule, an interval of at least from eighteen months to two years between the birth of one child and that of another. Every married man should abstain during certain natural seasons. In this periodical recurrance God has instituted to every husband the law of restraint, and insisted upon self-control. 11. TO YOUNG PEOPLE WHO ARE MARRIED.--Be exceedingly careful of license and excess in your intercourse with one another. Do not needlessly expose, by undress, the body. Let not the purity of love degenerate into unholy lust! See to it that you walk according to the divine Word. "Dwelling together as being heirs of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered." 12. LOST POWERS.--Many young men after their union showed a marked difference. They lost much of their natural vivacity, energy, and strength of voice. Their powers of application, as business men, students, and ministers, had declined, as also their enterprise, fervor, and kindliness. They had become irritable, dull, pale, and complaining. Many cases of rheumatic fever have been induced through impoverishment, caused by excesses on the part of young married men. 13. MIDDLE AGE.--After middle age the sap of a man's life declines in quantity. A man who intends close application to the ministry, to scientific or literary pursuits, where great demands are made upon the brain, must restrain this passion. The supplies for the brain and nervous system are absorbed, and the seed diverted through sexual excesses in the marriage relationship, by fornication, or by any other form of immorality, the man's power must decline: that to this very cause may be attributed the failure and breakdown of so many men of middle age. 14. INTOXICATING DRINKS.--By all means avoid intoxicating drinks. Immorality and alcoholic stimulants, as we have shown, are intimately related to one another. Wine and strong drink inflame the blood, and heat the passions. Attacking the brain, they warp the judgment, and weaken the power of restraint. Avoid what is called good living: it is madness to allow the pleasures of the table to corrupt and corrode the human body. We are not designed for gourmands, much less for educated pigs. Cold water bathing, water as a beverage, simple and wholesome food, regularity of sleep, plenty of exercise; games such as cricket, football, tennis, boating, or bicycling, are among the best possible preventives against lust and animal passion. 15. BEWARE OF IDLENESS.--Indolent leisure means an unoccupied mind. When young men lounge along the streets, in this condition they become an easy prey to the sisterhood of shame and death. Bear in mind that evil thoughts precede evil actions. The hand of the worst thief will not steal until the thief within operates upon the hand without. The members of the body which are capable of becoming instruments of sin, are not involuntary actors. Lustful desires must proceed from brain and heart, ere the fire that consumes burns in the member. [Illustration: YOUNG LINCOLN STARTING TO SCHOOL.] * * * * * A PRIVATE TALK TO YOUNG MEN. 1. The most valuable and useful organs of the body are those which are capable of the greatest dishonor, abuse and corruption. What a snare the wonderful organism of the eye may become when used to read corrupt books or look upon licentious scenes at the theatre, or when used to meet the fascinating gaze of the harlot! What an instrument for depraving the whole man may be found in the matchless powers of the brain, the hand, the ear, the mouth, or the tongue! What potent instruments may these become in accomplishing the ruin of the whole being for time and eternity! 2. In like manner the organ concerning the uses of which I am to speak, has been, and continues to be, made one of the chief instruments of man's immorality, shame, disease, and death. How important to know what the legitimate uses of this member of the body are, and how great the dignity conferred upon us in the possession of this gift. On the human side this gift may be truly said to bring men nearer to the high and solemn relationship of the Creator than any other which they possess. 3. I first deal with the destructive sin of self-abuse. There can be little doubt that vast numbers of boys are guilty of this practice. In many cases the degrading habit has been taught by others, e.g., by elder boys at school, where association largely results in mutual corruption. With others, the means of sensual gratification is found out by personal action; whilst in other cases fallen and depraved men have not hesitated to debauch the minds of mere children by teaching them this debasing practice. 4. Thousands of youths and young men have only to use the looking-glass to see the portrait of one guilty of this loathsome sin. The effects are plainly discernible in the boy's appearance. The face and hands become pale and bloodless. The eye is destitute of its natural fire and lustre. The flesh is soft and flabby, the muscles limp and lacking healthy firmness. In cases where the habit has become confirmed, and where the system has been drained of this vital force, it is seen in positive ugliness, in a pale and cadaverous appearance, slovenly gait, slouching walk, and an impaired memory. 5. It is obvious that if the most vital physical force of a boy's life is being spent through this degrading habit--a habit, be it observed, of rapid growth, great strength, and difficult to break--he must develop badly. In thousands of cases the result is seen in a low stature, contracted chest, weak lungs, and liability to sore throat. Tendency to cold, indigestion, depression, drowsiness, and idleness, are results distinctly traceable to this deadly practice. Pallor of countenance, nervous and rheumatic affections, loss of memory, epilepsy, paralysis, and insanity find their principal predisposing cause in the same shameful waste of life. The want of moral force and strength of mind often observable in youths and young men is largely induced by this destructive and deadly sin. 6. Large numbers of youths pass from an exhausted boyhood into the weakness, intermittent fevers, and consumption, which are said to carry off so many. If the deaths were attributed primarily to loss of strength occasioned by self-pollution, it would be much nearer the truth. It is monstrous to suppose that a boy who comes from healthy parents should decline and die. Without a shade of doubt the chief cause of decay and death amongst youths and young men, is to be traced to this baneful habit. 7. It is a well-known fact that any man who desires to excel and retain his excellence as an accurate shot, an oarsman, a pedestrian, a pugilist, a first-class cricketer, bicyclist, student, artist, or literary man, must abstain from self-pollution and fornication. Thousands of school boys and students lose their positions in the class, and are plucked at the time of their examination by reason of failure of memory, through lack of nerve and vital force, caused mainly by draining the physical frame of the seed which is the vigor of the life. 8. It is only true to say that thousands of young men in the early stages of a licentious career would rather lose a right hand than have their mothers or sisters know what manner of men they are. From the side of the mothers and sisters it may also be affirmed that, were they aware of the real character of those brothers and sons, they would wish that they had never been born. 9. Let it be remembered that sexual desire is not in itself dishonorable or sinful, any more than hunger, thirst, or any other lawful and natural desire is. It is the gratification by unlawful means of this appetite which renders it so corrupting and iniquitous. 10. Leisure means the opportunity to commit sin. Unclean pictures are sought after and feasted upon, paragraphs relating to cases of divorce and seduction are eagerly read, papers and books of an immoral character and tendency greedily devoured, low and disgusting conversation indulged in and repeated. 11. The practical and manly counsel to every youth and young man is, entire abstinence from indulgence of the sexual faculty until such time as the marriage relationship is entered upon. Neither is there, nor can there be, any exception to this rule. 12. No man can affirm that self-denial ever injured him. On the contrary, self-restraint has been liberty, strength and blessing. Beware of the deceitful streams of temporary gratification, whose eddying current drifts towards license, shame, disease and death. Remember, how quickly moral power declines, how rapidly the edge of the fatal maelstrom is reached, how near the vortex, how terrible the penalty, how fearful the sentence of everlasting punishment. 13. Be a young man of principle, honor, and preserve your powers. How can you look an innocent girl in the face when you are degrading your manhood with the vilest practice? Keep your mind and life pure and nobility will be your crown. * * * * * REMEDIES FOR THE SOCIAL EVIL. 1. MAN RESPONSIBLE.--Every great social reform must begin with the male sex. They must either lead, or give it its support. Prostitution is a sin wholly of their own making. All the misery, all the lust, as well as all the blighting consequences, are chargeable wholly to the uncontrolled sexual passion of the male. To reform sinful women, _reform the men_. Teach them that the physiological truth means permanent moral, physical and mental benefit, while seductive indulgence blights and ruins. 2. CONTAGIOUS DISEASES.--A man or woman cannot long live an impure life without sooner or later contracting disease which brings to every sufferer not only moral degradation, but often serious and vital injuries and many times death itself becomes the only relief. 3. SHOULD IT BE REGULATED BY LAW?--Dr. G.J. Ziegler, of Philadelphia, in several medical articles says that the act of sexual connection should be made in itself the solemnization of marriage, and that when any such single act can be proven against an unmarried man, by an unmarried woman, the latter be at once invested with all the legal privileges of a wife. By bestowing this power on women very few men would risk the dangers of the society of a dissolute and scheming woman who might exercise the right to force him to a marriage and ruin his reputation and life. The strongest objection of this would be that it would increase the temptation to destroy the purity of married women, for they could be approached without danger of being forced into another marriage. But this objection could easily be harmonized with a good system of well regulated laws. Many means have been tried to mitigate the social evils, but with little encouragement. In the city of Paris a system of registration has been inaugurated and houses of prostitution are under the supervision of the police, yet prostitution has not been in any degree diminished. Similar methods have been tried in other European towns, but without satisfactory results. 4. MORAL INFLUENCE.--Let it be an imperative to every clergyman, to every educator, to every statesman and to every philanthropist, to every father and to every mother, to impart that moral influence which may guide and direct the youth of the land into the natural channels of morality, chastity and health. Then, and not till then, shall we see righteous laws and rightly enforced for the mitigation and extermination of the modern house of prostitution. [Illustration: A TURKISH CIGARETTE GIRL.] * * * * * THE SELFISH SLAVES OF DOSES OF DISEASE AND DEATH. 1. MOST DEVILISH INTOXICATION.--What is the most devilish, subtle alluring, unconquerable, hopeless and deadly form of intoxication, with which science struggles and to which it often succumbs; which eludes the restrictive grasp of legislation; lurks behind lace curtains, hides in luxurious boudoirs, haunts the solitude of the study, and with waxen face, furtive eyes and palsied step totters to the secret recesses of its self-indulgence? It is the drunkenness of drugs, and woe be unto him that crosseth the threshold of its dream-curtained portal, for though gifted with the strength of Samson, the courage of Richard and the genius of Archimedes, he shall never return, and of him it is written that forever he leaves hope behind. 2. THE MATERIAL SATAN.--The material Satan in this sensuous syndicate of soul and body-destroying drugs is opium, and next in order of hellish potency come cocaine and chloral. 3. GUM OPIUM.--Gum opium, from which the sulphate of morphine is made, is the dried juice of the poppy, and is obtained principally in the orient. Taken in moderate doses it acts specially upon the nervous system, deadens sensibility, and the mind becomes inactive. When used habitually and excessively it becomes a tonic, which stimulates the whole nervous system, producing intense mental exaltation and delusive visions. When the effects wear off, proportionate lassitude follows, which begets an insatiate and insane craving for the drug. Under the repeated strain of the continually increasing doses, which have to be taken to renew the desired effect, the nervous system finally becomes exhausted, and mind and body are utterly and hopelessly wrecked. 4. COCAINE.--Cocaine is extracted from the leaves of the Peruvian cocoa tree, and exerts a decided influence upon the nervous system, somewhat akin to that of coffee. It increases the heart action and is said to be such an exhilarant that the natives of the Andes are enabled to make extra-ordinary forced marches by chewing the leaves containing it. Its after effects are more depressing even than those of opium, and insanity more frequently results from its use. 5. CHLORAL.--The name which is derived from the first two syllables of chlorine and alcohol, is made by passing dry chlorine gas in a continuous stream through absolute alcohol for six or eight weeks. It is a hypnotic or sleep-producing drug, and in moderate doses acts on the caliber of the blood vessels of the brain, producing a soothing effect, especially in cases of passive congestion. Some patent medicines contain chloral, bromide and hyoseamus, and they have a large sale, being bought by persons of wealth, who do not know what they are composed of and recklessly take them for the effect they produce. 6. VICTIMS RAPIDLY INCREASING.--"From my experience," said a leading and conservative druggist, "I infer that the number of what are termed opium, cocaine, and chloral "fiends" is rapidly increasing, and is greater by two or three hundred percent than a year ago, with twice as many women as men represented. I should say that one person out of every fifty is a victim of this frightful habit, which claims its doomed votaries from the extremes of social life, those who have the most and the least to live for, the upper classes and the cyprian, professional men of the finest intelligence, fifty per cent. of whom are doctors and walk into the pit with eyes wide open. And lawyers and other professional men must be added to this fated vice." 7. DESTROYS THE MORAL FIBER.--"It is a habit which utterly destroys the moral fiber of its slaves, and makes unmitigated liars and thieves and forgers of them, and even murder might be added to the list of crimes, were no other road left open to the gratification of its insatiate and insane appetite. I do not know of a single case in which it has been mastered, but I do know of many where the end has been unspeakable misery, disgrace, suffering, insanity and death." 8. SHAMEFUL DEATH.--To particularize further would be profitless so far as the beginners are concerned, but would to heaven that those not within the shadow of this shameful death would take warning from those who are. There are no social or periodical drunkards in this sort of intoxication. The vice is not only solitary, unsocial and utterly selfish, but incessant and increasing in its demands. 9. APPETITE STRONGER THAN FOR LIQUOR.--This appetite is far stronger and more uncontrollable than that for liquor, and we can spot its victim as readily as though he were an ordinary bummer. He has a pallid complexion, a shifting, shuffling manner and can't look you in the face. If you manage to catch his eye for an instant you will observe that its pupil is contracted to an almost invisible point. It is no exaggeration to say that he would barter his very soul for that which indulgence has made him too poor to purchase, and where artifice fails he will grovel in abject agony of supplication for a few grains. At the same time he resorts to all kinds of miserable and transparent shifts, to conceal his degradation. He never buys for himself, but always for some fictitious person, and often resorts to purchasing from distant points. 10. OPIUM SMOKING.--"Opium smoking," said another representative druggist, "is almost entirely confined to the Chinese and they seem to thrive on it. Very few others hit the pipe that we know of." 11. MALT AND ALCOHOLIC DRUNKENNESS.--Alcoholic stimulants have a record of woe second to nothing. Its victims are annually marching to drunkards' graves by the thousands. Drunkards may be divided into three classes: First, the accidental or social drunkard; second, the periodical or spasmodic drunkard; and third, the sot. 12. THE ACCIDENTAL OR SOCIAL DRUNKARD is yet on safe ground. He has not acquired the dangerous craving for liquor. It is only on special occasions that he yields to excessive indulgence; sometimes in meeting a friend, or at some political blow-out. On extreme occasions he will indulge until he becomes a helpless victim, and usually as he grows older occasions will increase, and step by step he will be lead nearer to the precipice of ruin. 13. THE PERIODICAL OR SPASMODIC DRUNKARD, with whom it is always the unexpected which occurs, and who at intervals exacts from his accumulated capital the usury of as prolonged a spree as his nerves and stomach will stand. Science is inclined to charitably label this specimen of man a sort of a physiologic puzzle, to be as much pitied as blamed. Given the benefit of every doubt, when he starts off on one of his hilarious tangents, he becomes a howling nuisance; if he has a family, keeps them continually on the ragged edge of apprehension, and is unanimously pronounced a "holy terror" by his friends. His life and future is an uncertainty. He is unreliable and cannot be long trusted. Total reformation is the only hope, but it rarely is accomplished. 14. THE SOT.--A blunt term that needs no defining, for even the children comprehend the hopeless degradation it implies. Laws to restrain and punish him are framed; societies to protect and reform him are organized, and mostly in vain. He is prone in life's very gutter; bloated, reeking and polluted with the doggery's slops and filth. He can fall but a few feet lower, and not until he stumbles into an unmarked, unhonored grave, where kind mother earth and the merciful mantle of oblivion will cover and conceal the awful wreck he made of God's own image. To the casual observer, the large majority of the community, these three phases, at whose vagaries many laugh, and over whose consequences millions mourn, comprehend intoxication and its results, from the filling of the cup to its shattering fall from the nerveless hand, and this is the end of the matter. Would to God that it were! for at that it would be bad enough. But it is not, for wife, children and friends must suffer and drink the cup of trouble and sorrow to its dregs. * * * * * OBJECT LESSONS OF THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL AND CIGARETTE SMOKING. By Prof. George Henkle, who personally made the post-mortem examinations and drew the following illustrations from the diseased organs just as they appeared when first taken from the bodies of the unfortunate victims. [Illustration: THE STOMACH of an habitual drinker of alcoholic stimulants, showing the ulcerated condition of the mucous membrane, incapacitating this important organ for digestive functions.] [Illustration: THE STOMACH (interior view) of a healthy person with the first section of the small intestines.] [Illustration: THE LIVER of a drunkard who died of Cirrhosis of the liver, also called granular liver, or "gin drinker's liver." The organ is much shrunken and presents rough, uneven edges, with carbuncular non-suppurative sores. In this self-inflicted disease the tissues of the liver undergo a cicatrical retraction which strangulates and partly destroys the parenchyma of the liver.] [Illustration: THE LIVER IN HEALTH.] [Illustration: THE KIDNEY of a man who died a drunkard, showing in upper portion the sores so often found on kidneys of hard drinkers, and in the lower portion, the obstruction formed in the internal arrangement of this organ. Alcohol is a great enemy to the kidneys, and after this poison has once set in on its destructive course in these organs no remedial agents are known to exist to stop the already established disease.] [Illustration: THE KIDNEY in health, with the lower section removed, to show the filtering apparatus (Malphigian pyramids). Natural size.] [Illustration: THE LUNGS AND HEART of a boy who died from the effects of cigarette smoking, showing the nicotine sediments in lungs and shrunken condition of the heart.] [Illustration: THE LUNGS AND HEART IN HEALTH.] [Illustration: A section of the diseased Lung of a cigarette smoker, highly magnified.] * * * * * THE DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS OF CIGARETTE SMOKING. Cigarettes have been analyzed, and the most physicians and chemists were surprised to find how much opium is put into them. A tobacconist himself says that "the extent to which drugs are used in cigarettes is appalling." "Havana flavoring" for this same purpose is sold everywhere by the thousand barrels. This flavoring is made from the tonka-bean, which contains a deadly poison. The wrappers, warranted to be rice paper, are sometimes made of common paper, and sometimes of the filthy scrapings of ragpickers bleached white with arsenic. What a thing for human lungs. The habit burns up good health, good resolutions, good manners, good memories, good faculties, and often honesty and truthfulness as well. Cases of epilepsy, insanity and death are frequently reported as the result of smoking cigarettes, while such physicians as Dr. Lewis Sayre, Dr. Hammond, and Sir Morell Mackenzie of England, name heart trouble, blindness, cancer and other diseases as occasioned by it. Leading physicians of America unanimously condemn cigarette smoking as "one of the vilest and most destructive evils that ever befell the youth of any country," declaring that "its direct tendency is a deterioration of the race." Look at the pale, wilted complexion of a boy who indulges to excessive cigarette smoking. It takes no physician to diagnose his case, and death will surely mark for his own every boy and young man who will follow up the habit. It is no longer a matter of guess. It is a scientific fact which the microscope in every case verifies. [Illustration: _Illustrating the shrunken condition of one of the Lungs of an excessive smoker_] [Illustration: INNOCENT YOUTH.] * * * * * The Dangerous Vices. Few persons are aware of the extent to which masturbation or self-pollution is practiced by the young of both sexes in civilized society. SYMPTOMS. The hollow, sunken eye, the blanched cheek, the withered hands, and emaciated frame, and the listless life, have other sources than the ordinary illnesses of all large communities. When a child, after having given proofs of memory and intelligence, experiences daily more and more difficulty in retaining and understanding what is taught him, it is not only from unwillingness and idleness, as is commonly supposed, but from a disease eating out life itself, brought on by a self-abuse of the private organs. Besides the slow and progressive derangement of his or her health, the diminished energy of application, the languid movement, the stooping gait, the desertion of social games, the solitary walk, late rising, livid and sunken eye, and many other symptoms, will fix the attention of every intelligent and competent guardian of youth that something is wrong. [Illustration: GUARD WELL THE CRADLE. EDUCATION CANNOT BEGIN TOO YOUNG.] MARRIED PEOPLE. Nor are many persons sufficiently aware of the ruinous extent to which the amative propensity is indulged by married persons. The matrimonial ceremony does, indeed, sanctify the act of sexual intercourse, but it can by no means atone for nor obviate the consequences of its abuse. Excessive indulgence in the married relation is, perhaps, as much owing to the force of habit, as to the force of the sexual appetite. EXTREME YOUTH. More lamentable still is the effect of inordinate sexual excitement of the young and unmarried. It is not very uncommon to find a confirmed onanist, or, rather, masturbator, who has not yet arrived at the period of puberty. Many cases are related in which young boys and girls, from eight to ten years of age, were taught the method of self-pollution by their older playmates, and had made serious encroachments on the fund of constitutional vitality even before any considerable degree of sexual appetite was developed. FORCE OF HABIT. Here, again, the fault was not in the power of passion, but in the force of habit. Parents and guardians of youth can not be too mindful of the character and habits of those with whom they allow young persons and children under their charge to associate intimately, and especially careful should they be with whom they allow them to sleep. SIN OF IGNORANCE. It is customary to designate self-pollution as among the "vices." I think misfortune is the more appropriate term. It is true, that in the physiological sense, it is one of the very worst "transgressions of the law." But in the moral sense it is generally the sin of ignorance in the commencement, and in the end the passive submission to a morbid and almost resistless impulse. QUACKS. The time has come when the rising generation must be thoroughly instructed in this matter. That quack specific "ignorance" has been experimented with quite too long already. The true method of insuring all persons, young or old, against the abuses of any part, organ, function, or faculty of the wondrous machinery of life, is to teach them its use. "Train a child in the way it should go" or be sure it will, amid the ten thousand surrounding temptations, find out a way in which it should not go. Keeping a child in ignorant innocence is, I aver, no part of the "training" which has been taught by a wiser than Solomon. Boys and girls do know, will know, and must know, that between them are important anatomical differences and interesting physiological relations. Teach them, I repeat, their use, or expect their abuse. Hardly a young person in the world would ever become addicted to self-pollution if he or she understood clearly the consequences; if he or she knew at the outset that the practice was directly destroying the bodily stamina, vitiating the moral tone, and enfeebling the intellect. No one would pursue the disgusting habit if he or she was fully aware that it was blasting all prospects of health and happiness in the approaching period of manhood and womanhood. GENERAL SYMPTOMS OF THE SECRET HABIT. The effects of either self-pollution or excessive sexual indulgence, appear in many forms. It would seem as if God had written an instinctive law of remonstrance, in the innate moral sense, against this filthy vice. All who give themselves up to the excesses of this debasing indulgence, carry about with them, continually, a consciousness of their defilement, and cherish a secret suspicion that others look upon them as debased beings. They feel none of that manly confidence and gallant spirit, and chaste delight in the presence of virtuous females, which stimulate young men to pursue the course of ennobling refinement, and mature them for the social relations and enjoyments of life. This shamefacedness, or unhappy quailing of the countenance, on meeting the look of others, often follows them through life, in some instances even after they have entirely abandoned the habit, and became married men and respectable members of society. In some cases, the only complaint the patient will make on consulting you, is that he is suffering under a kind of continued fever. He will probably present a hot, dry skin, with something of a hectic appearance. Though all the ordinary means of arresting such symptoms have been tried, he is none the better. The sleep seems to be irregular and unrefreshing--restlessness during the early part of the night, and in the advanced stages of the disease, profuse sweats before morning. There is also frequent starting in the sleep, from disturbing dreams. The characteristic feature is, that your patient almost always dreams of sexual intercourse. This is one of the earliest, as well as most constant symptoms. When it occurs most frequently, it is apt to be accompanied with pain. A gleety discharge from the urethra may also be frequently discovered, especially if the patient examine when at stool or after urinating. Other common symptoms are nervous headache, giddiness, ringing in the ears, and a dull pain in the back part of the head. It is frequently the case that the patient suffers a stiffness in the neck, darting pains in the forehead, and also weak eyes are among the common symptoms. One very frequent, and perhaps early symptom (especially in young females) is solitariness--a disposition to seclude themselves from society. Although they may be tolerably cheerful when in company, they prefer rather to be alone. The countenance has often a gloomy and worn-down expression. The patient's friends frequently notice a great change. Large livid spots under the eyes is a common feature. Sudden flashes of heat may be noticed passing over the patient's face. He is liable also to palpitations. The pulse is very variable, generally too slow. Extreme emaciation, without any other assignable cause for it, may be set down as another very common symptom. If the evil has gone on for several years, there will be a general unhealthy appearance, of a character so marked as to enable an experienced observer at once to detect the cause. In the case of onanists especially there is a peculiar rank odor emitted from the body, by which they may be readily distinguished. One striking peculiarity of all these patients is, that they cannot look a man in the face! Cowardice is constitutional with them. HOME TREATMENT OF THE SECRET HABIT. 1. The first condition of recovery is a prompt and permanent abandonment of the ruinous habit. Without a faithful adherence to this prohibitory law on the part of the patient all medication on the part of the physician will assuredly fail. The patient must plainly understand that future prospects, character, health, and life itself, depend on an unfaltering resistance to the morbid solicitation; with the assurance, however, that a due perseverance will eventually render, what now seems like a resistless and overwhelming propensity, not only controllable but perfectly loathsome and undesirable. 2. Keep the mind employed by interesting the patient in the various topics of the day, and social features of the community. 3. Plenty of bodily out of door exercise, hoeing in the garden, walking, or working on the farm; of course not too heavy work must be indulged in. 4. If the patient is weak and very much emaciated, cod liver oil is an excellent remedy. 5. DIET. The patient should live principally on brown bread, oat meal, graham crackers, wheat meal, cracked or boiled wheat, or hominy, and food of that character. No meats should be indulged in whatever; milk diet if used by the patient is an excellent remedy. Plenty of fruit should be indulged in; dried toast and baked apples make an excellent supper. The patient should eat early in the evening, never late at night. 6. Avoid all tea, coffee, or alcoholic stimulants of any kind. 7. "Early to bed and early to rise," should be the motto of every victim of this vice. A patient should take a cold bath every morning after rising. A cold water injection in moderate quantities before retiring has cured many patients. 8. If the above remedies are not sufficient, a family physician should be consulted. 9. Never let children sleep together, if possible, to avoid it. Discourage the children of neighbors and friends from sleeping with your children. 10. Have your children rise early. It is the lying in bed in the morning that plays the mischief. [Illustration: Healthy Semen, Greatly Magnified.] [Illustration: The Semen of a Victim of Masturbation.] * * * * * NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS. Involuntary emissions of semen during amorous dreams at night is not at all uncommon among healthy men. When this occurs from one to three or four times a month, no anxiety or concern need be felt. When the emissions take place without dreams, manifested only by stained spots in the morning on the linen, or take place at stool and are entirely beyond control, then the patient should at once seek for remedies or consult a competent physician. When blood stains are produced, then medical aid must be sought at once. HOME TREATMENT FOR NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS. Sleep in a hard bed, and rise early and take a sponge bath in cold water every morning. Eat light suppers and refrain from eating late in the evening. Empty the bladder thoroughly before retiring, bathe the spine and hips with a sponge dipped in cold water. _Never sleep lying on the back._ Avoid all highly seasoned food and read good books, and keep the mind well employed. Take regular and vigorous outdoor exercise every day. Avoid all coffee, tea, wine, beer and all alcoholic liquors. Don't use tobacco, and keep the bowels free. [Illustration: Healthy Testicle.] [Illustration: A Testicle wasted by Masturbation.] PRESCRIPTION.--Ask your druggist to put you up a good Iron Tonic and take it regularly according to his directions. BEWARE OF ADVERTISING QUACKS. Beware of these advertising schemes that advertise a speedy cure for "Loss of Youth," "Lost Vitality," "A Cure for Impotency," "Renewing of Old Age," etc. Do not allow these circulating pamphlets and circulars to concern you the least. If you have a few _Nocturnal Emissions_, remember it is only a mark of vitality and health, and not a sign of a deathly disease, as many of these advertising quacks would lead you to believe. Use your private organs only for what your Creator intended they should be used, and there will be no occasion for you to be frightened by the deception of quacks. [Illustration: THE TWO PATHS--What Will The Boy Become? At 15: STUDY & CLEANLINESS At 25: PURITY & ECONOMY At 36: HONORABLE SUCCESS At 60: VENERABLE OLD AGE At 15: CIGARETTES & SELF-ABUSE At 25: IMPURITY & DISSIPATION At 36: VICE & DEGENERACY At 60: MORAL-PHYSICAL WRECK] * * * * * LOST MANHOOD RESTORED. 1. RESOLUTE DESISTENCE.--The first step towards the restoration of lost manhood is a resolute desistence from these terrible sins. Each time the temptation is overcome, the power to resist becomes stronger, and the fierce fire declines. Each time the sin is committed, its hateful power strengthens, and the fire of lust is increased. Remember, that you cannot commit these sins, and maintain health and strength. 2. AVOID BEING ALONE.--Avoid being alone when the temptation comes upon you to commit self-abuse. Change your thoughts at once; "keep the heart diligently, for out of it are the issues of life." 3. AVOID EVIL COMPANIONS.--Avoid evil companions, lewd conversation, bad pictures, corrupt and vicious novels, books, and papers. Abstain from all intoxicating drinks. These inflame the blood, excite the passions, and stimulate sensuality; weakening the power of the brain, they always impair the power of self-restraint. Smoking is very undesirable. Keep away from the moral pesthouses. Remember that these houses are the great resort of fallen and depraved men and women. The music, singing, and dancing are simply a blind to cover the intemperance and lust, which hold high carnival in these guilded hells. This, be it remembered, is equally true of the great majority of the theatres. 4. AVOID STRONG TEA, OR COFFEE.--Take freely of cocoa, milk, and bread and milk, or oatmeal porridge. Meats, such as beef and mutton, use moderately. We would strongly recommend to young men of full habit, vegetarian diet. Fruits in their season, partake liberally; also fresh vegetables. Brown bread and toast, as also rice, and similar puddings, are always suitable. Avoid rich pastry and new bread. 5. THREE MEALS A DAY ARE ABUNDANT.--Avoid suppers, and be careful, if troubled with nightly emissions, not to take any liquid, not even water, after seven o'clock in the evening, at latest. This will diminish the secretions of the body, when asleep, and the consequent emissions, which in the early hours of the morning usually follow the taking of any kind of drink. Do not be anxious or troubled by an occasional emission, say, for example, once a fortnight. 6. REST ON A HARD MATTRESS.--Keep the body cool when asleep; heat arising from a load of bed-clothes, is most undesirable. Turn down the counterpane, and let the air have free course through the blankets. 7. RELIEVE THE SYSTEM.--As much as possible relieve the system of urine before going to sleep. On rising, bathe if practicable. If you cannot bear cold water, take the least possible chill off the water (cold water, however, is best). If bathing is not practicable, wash the body with cold water, and keep scrupulously clean. The reaction caused by cold water, is most desirable. Rub the body dry with a rough towel. Drink a good draught of cold water. 8. EXERCISE.--Get fifteen minutes' brisk walk, if possible before breakfast. If any sense of faintness exists, eat a crust of bread, or biscuit. Be regular in your meals, and do not fear to make a hearty breakfast. This lays a good foundation for the day. Take daily good, but not violent exercise. Walk until you can distinctly feel the tendency to perspiration. This will keep the pores of the skin open and in healthy condition. 9. MEDICINES.--Take the medicines, if used, regularly and carefully. Bromide of Potassium is a most valuable remedy in allaying lustful and heated passions and appetites. Unless there is actual venereal disease, medicine should be very little resorted to. 10. AVOID THE STREETS AT NIGHT.--Beware of corrupt companions. Fast young men and women should be shunned everywhere. Cultivate a taste for good reading and evening studies. Home life with its gentle restraints, pure friendships, and healthful discipline, should be highly valued. There is no liberty like that of a well-regulated home. To large numbers of young men in business houses, home life is impracticable. 11. BE OF GOOD CHEER AND COURAGE.--Recovery will be gradual, and not sudden; vital force is developed slowly from within. The object aimed at by medicine and counsel, is to aid and increase nervous and physical vigor, and give tone to the demoralized system. Do not pay the slightest heed to the exaggerated statements of the wretched quack doctors, who advertise everywhere. Avoid them as you would a pestilence. Their great object is, through exciting your fears, to get you into their clutches, in order to oppress you with heavy and unjust payments. Be careful, not to indulge in fancies, or morbid thoughts and feelings. Be hopeful, and play the part of a man determined to overcome. * * * * * MANHOOD WRECKED AND RESCUED. 1. THE NOBLEST FUNCTIONS OF MANHOOD.--The noblest functions of manhood are brought into action in the office of the parent. It is here that man assumes the prerogative of a God and becomes a creator. How essential that every function of his physical system should be perfect, and every faculty of his mind free from that which would degrade; yet how many drag their purity through the filth of masturbation, revel in the orgies of the debauchee, and worship at the shrine of the prostitute, until, like a tree blighted by the livid lightning, they stand with all their outward form of men, but without life. 2. THRESHOLD OF HONOR.--Think of a man like that; in whom the passions and vices have burned themselves out, putting on the airs of a saint and claiming to have reformed. Aye, reformed, when there is no longer sweetness in the indulgence of lust. Think of such loathsome bestiality, dragging its slimy body across the threshold of honor and nobility and asking a pure woman, with the love-light of heaven in her eyes, to pass her days with him; to accept him as her lord; to be satisfied with the burnt-out, shriveled forces of manhood left; to sacrifice her purity that he may be redeemed, and to respect in a husband what she would despise in the brute. 3. STOP.--If you are, then, on the highway to this state of degradation, stop. If already you have sounded the depths of lost manhood, then turn, and from the fountain of life regain your power, before you perpetrate the terrible crime of marriage, thus wrecking a woman's life and perhaps bringing into the world children who will live only to suffer and curse the day on which they were born and the father who begat them. 4. SEXUAL IMPOTENCY.--Sexual impotency means sexual starvation, and drives many wives to ruin, while a similar lack among wives drives husbands to libertinism. Nothing so enhances the happiness of married couples as this full, life-abounding, sexual vigor in the husband, thoroughly reciprocated by the wife, yet completely controlled by both. 5. TWO CLASSES OF SUFFERERS.--There are two classes of sufferers. First, those who have only practiced self-abuse and are suffering from emissions. Second, those who by overindulgence in marital relations, or by dissipation with women, have ruined their forces. 6. THE REMEDY.--For self-abuse: When the young man has practiced self-abuse for some time, he finds, upon quitting the habit, that he has nightly emissions. He becomes alarmed, reads every sensational advertisement in the papers, and at once comes to the conclusion that he must take something. _Drugs are not necessary._ 7. STOP THE CAUSE.--The one thing needful, above all others, is to stop the cause. I have found that young men are invariably mistaken as to what is the cause. When asked as to the first cause of their trouble, they invariably say it was self-abuse, etc., but it is not. _It is the thought._ This precedes the handling, and, like every other cause, must be removed in order to have right results. 8. STOP THE THOUGHT.--But remember, _stop the thought_! You must not look after every woman with lustful thoughts, nor go courting girls who will allow you to hug, caress and kiss them, thus rousing your passions almost to a climax. Do not keep the company of those whose only conversation is of a lewd and depraved character, but keep the company of those ladies who awaken your higher sentiments and nobler impulses, who appeal to the intellect and rouse your aspiration, in whose presence you would no more feel your passions aroused than in the presence of your own mother. 9. YOU WILL GET WELL.--Remember you will get well. Don't fear. Fear destroys strength and therefore increases the trouble. Many get downhearted, discouraged, despairing--the very worst thing that can happen, doing as much harm, and in many cases more, than their former dissipation. Brooding kills; hope enlivens. Then sing with joy that the savior of knowledge has vanquished the death-dealing ignorance of the past; that the glorious strength of manhood has awakened and cast from you forever the grinning skeleton of vice. Be your better self, proud that your thoughts in the day-time are as pure as you could wish your dreams to be at night. 10. HELPS.--Do not use tobacco or liquor. They inflame the passions and irritate the nervous system; they only gratify base appetites and never rouse the higher feelings. Highly spiced food should be eschewed, not chewed. Meat should be eaten sparingly, and never at the last meal. 11. DON'T EAT TOO MUCH.--If not engaged in hard physical labor, try eating two meals a day. Never neglect the calls of nature, and if possible have a passage from the bowels every night before retiring. When this is not done the feces often drop into the rectum during sleep, producing heat which extends to the sexual organs, causing the lascivious dreams and emission. This will be noticed especially in the morning, when the feces usually distend the rectum and the person nearly always awakes with sexual passions aroused. If necessary, use injections into the rectum of from one to two quarts of water, blood heat, two or three times a week. Be sure to keep clean and see to it that no matter collects under the foreskin. Wash off the organ every night and take a quick, cold hand-bath every morning. Have something to do. Never be idle. Idleness always worships at the shrine of passion. 12. THE WORST TIME OF ALL.--Many are ruined by allowing their thoughts to run riot in the morning. Owing to the passions being roused as stated above, the young man lies half awake and half dozing, rousing his passions and reveling in lascivious thought for hours perhaps, thus completely sapping the fountains of purity, establishing habits of vice that will bind him with iron bands, and doing his physical system more injury than if he had practiced self-abuse, and had the emission in a few minutes. Jump out of bed at once on waking, and never allow the thought to master you. 13. A HAND BATH.--A hand bath in cold water every morning will diminish those rampant sexual cravings, that crazy, burning, lustful desire so sensualizing to men by millions; lessen prostitution by toning down that passion which alone patronizes it, and relieve wives by the millions of those excessive conjugal demands which ruin their sexual health; besides souring their tempers, and then demanding millions of money for resultant doctor bills. 14. WILL GET WELL.--Feel no more concern about yourself. Say to yourself, "I shall and will get well under this treatment," as you certainly will. Pluck is half the battle. Mind acts and reads directly on the sexual organs. Determining to get well gets you well; whilst all fear that you will become worse makes you worse. All worrying over your case as if it were hopeless, all moody and despondent feelings, tear the life right out of these organs, whilst hopefulness puts new life into them. [Illustration] [Illustration: INNOCENT CHILDHOOD.] * * * * * THE CURSE AND CONSEQUENCE OF SECRET DISEASES. 1. THE SINS OF THE FATHERS ARE VISITED ON THE CHILDREN.--If persons who contract secret diseases were the only sufferers, there would be less pity and less concern manifested by the public and medical profession. 2. There are many secret diseases which leave an hereditary taint, and innocent children and grandchildren are compelled to suffer as well as those who committed the immoral act. 3. GONORRHOEA (Clap) is liable to leave the parts sensitive and irritable, and the miseries of spermatorrhoea, impotence, chronic rheumatism, stricture and other serious ailments may follow. 4. SYPHILIS (Pox).--Statistics prove that over 30 per cent. of the children born alive perish within the first year. Outside of this frightful mortality, how many children are born, inheriting eruptions of the skin, foul ulcerations swelling of the bones, weak eyes or blindness, scrofula, idiocy, stunted growth, and finally insanity, all on account of the father's early vices. The weaknesses and afflictions of parents are by natural laws visited upon their children. 5. The mother often takes the disease from her husband, and she becomes an innocent sufferer to the dreaded disease. However, some other name generally is applied to the disease, and with perfect confidence in her husband she suffers pain all her life, ignorant of the true cause. Her children have diseases of the eyes, skin, glands and bones, and the doctor will apply the term scrofula, when the result is nothing more or less than inherited syphilis. Let every man remember, the vengeance to a vital law knows only justice, not mercy, and a single moment of illicit pleasure will bring many curses upon him, and drain out the life of his innocent children, and bring a double burden of disease and sorrow to his wife. 6. If any man who has been once diseased is determined to marry, he should have his constitution tested thoroughly and see that every seed of the malady in the system has been destroyed. He should bathe daily in natural sulphur waters, as, for instance, the hot springs in Arkansas, or the sulphur springs in Florida, or those springs known as specific remedies for syphilic diseases. As long as the eruptions on the skin appear by bathing in sulphur water there is danger, and if the eruptions cease and do not appear, it is very fair evidence that the disease has left the system, yet it is not an infallible test. 7. How many bright and intelligent young men have met their doom and blighted the innocent lives of others, all on account of the secret follies and vices of men. 8. PROTECTION.--Girls, you, who are too poor and too honest to disguise aught in your character, with your sweet soul shining through every act of your lives, beware of the men who smile upon you. Study human nature, and try and select a virtuous companion. 10. SYPHILITIC POISON INERADICABLE.--Many of our best and ablest physicians assert that syphilitic poison, once infected, there can be no total disinfection during life; some of the virus remains in the system, though it may seem latent. Boards of State Charities in discussing the causes of the existence of whole classes of defectives hold to the opinion given above. The Massachusetts board in its report has these strong words on the subject: "The worst is that, though years may have passed since its active stage, it permeates the very seed of life and causes strange affections or abnormalities in the offspring, or it tends to lessen their vital force, to disturb or to repress their growth, to lower their standard of mental and bodily vigor, and to render life puny and short." 11. A SERPENT'S TOOTH.--"_The direct blood-poisoning, caused by the absorption into the system of the virus (syphilis) is more hideous and terrible in its effect than that of a serpent's tooth._ This may kill outright, and there's an end; but that, stingless and painless, slowly and surely permeates and vitiates the whole system of which it becomes part and parcel, like myriads of trichinae, and can never be utterly cast out, even by salivation. "Woe to the family and to the people in whose veins the poison courses! "It would seem that nothing could end the curse except utter extermination. That, however, would imply a purpose of eternal vengeance, involving the innocent with the guilty." This disease compared with small-pox is as an ulcer upon a finger to an ulcer in the vitals. Small-pox does not vitiate the blood of a people; this disease does. Its existence in a primary form implies moral turpitude. 12. CASES CITED.--Many cases might be cited. We give but one. A man who had contracted the disease reformed his ways and was apparently cured. He married, and although living a moral life was compelled to witness in his little girl's eye-balls, her gums, and her breath the result of his past sins. No suffering, no expense, no effort would have been too great could he but be assured that his offspring might be freed from these results. 13. PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE.--Here is a case where the old adage, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," may be aptly applied. Our desire would be to herald to all young men in stentorian tones the advice, "Avoid as a deadly enemy any approaches or probable pitfalls of the disease. Let prevention be your motto and then you need not look for a cure." 14. HELP PROFFERED.--Realizing the sad fact that many are afflicted with this disease we would put forth our utmost powers to help even these, and hence give on the following pages some of the best methods of cure. HOW TO CURE GONORRHOEA (Clap). CAUSES, IMPURE CONNECTIONS, ETC. SYMPTOMS.--As the disease first commences to manifest itself, the patient notices a slight itching at the point of the male organ, which is shortly followed by a tingling or smarting sensation, especially on making water. This is on account of the inflammation, which now gradually extends backward, until the whole canal is involved. The orifice of the urethra is now noticed to be swollen and reddened, and on inspection a slight discharge will be found to be present. And if the penis is pressed between the finger and thumb, matter or pus exudes. As the inflammatory stage commences, the formation of pus is increased, which changes from a thin to a thick yellow color, accompanied by a severe scalding on making water. The inflammation increases up to the fifth day, often causing such pain, on urinating, that the patient is tortured severely. When the disease reaches its height, the erections become somewhat painful, when the discharge may be streaked with blood. HOME TREATMENT. First, see that the bowels are loose--if not, a cathartic should be given. If the digestive powers are impaired, they should be corrected and the general health looked after. If the system is in a good condition, give internally five drops of gelseminum every two hours. The first thing to be thought of is to pluck the disease in its bud, which is best done by injections. The best of these are: tinct. hydrastis, one drachm; pure water, four ounces; to be used three times a day after urinating. Zinc, sulphate, ten grains; pure water, eight ounces; to be used after urinating every morning and night. Equal parts of red wine and pure water are often used, and are of high repute, as also one grain of permanganate of potash to four ounces of water. If the above remedies are ineffectual, a competent physician should be consulted. GENERAL TREATMENT.--One of the best injections for a speedy cure is: Hydrastis, 1 oz. Water, 5 oz. Mix and with a small syringe inject into the penis four or five times a day after urinating, until relieved, and diminish the number of injections as the disease disappears. No medicine per mouth need be given, unless the patient is in poor health. SYPHILIS (POX). 1. This is the worst of all diseases except cancer--no tissue of the body escapes the ravages of this dreadful disease--bone, muscle, teeth, skin and every part of the body are destroyed by its deforming and corroding influence. 2. SYMPTOMS.--About eight days after the exposure a little redness and then a pimple, which soon becomes an open sore, makes its appearance, on or about the end of the penis in males or on the external or inner parts of the uterus of females. Pimples and sores soon multiply, and after a time little hard lumps appear in the groin, which soon develop into a blue tumor called _bubo._ Copper colored spots may appear in the face, hair fall out, etc. Canker and ulcerations in the mouth and various parts of the body soon develop. 3. TREATMENT.--Secure the very best physician your means will allow without delay. 4. LOCAL TREATMENT OF BUBOES.--To prevent suppuration, treatment must be instituted as soon as they appear. Compresses, wet in a solution composed of half an ounce of muriate of ammonia, three drachms of the fluid extract of belladonna, and a pint of water, are beneficial, and should be continuously applied. The tumor may be scattered by painting it once a day with tincture of iodine. 5. FOR ERUPTIONS.--The treatment of these should be mainly constitutional. Perfect cleanliness should be observed, and the sulphur, spirit vapor, or alkaline bath freely used. Good diet and the persistent use of alteratives will generally prove successful in removing this complication. RECIPE FOR SYPHILIS. Bin-iodide of mercury, 1 gr. Extract of licorice, 32 gr. Make into 16 pills. Take one morning and night. _LOTION._ Bichloride of mercury, 15 gr. Lime water, 1 pt. Shake well, and wash affected parts night and morning. FOR ERUPTIONS ON TONGUE. Cyanide of silver, 1/2 gr. Powdered iridis, 2 gr. Divide into 10 parts. To be rubbed on tongue once a day. FOR ERUPTIONS IN SYPHILIS. A 5 per cent. ointment of carbolic acid, in a good preparation. BUBO. TREATMENT. Warm poultice of linseed meal, Mercurial plaster, Lead ointment. GLEET (CHRONIC CLAP). 1. SYMPTOMS.--When gonorrhoea is not cured at the end of twenty-one or twenty-eight days, at which time all discharge should have ceased, we have a condition known as chronic clap, which is nothing more or less than gleet. At this time most of the symptoms have abated, and the principal one needing medical attention is the discharge, which is generally thin, and often only noticed in the morning on arising, when a scab will be noticed, glutinating the lips of the external orifice. Or, on pressing with the thumb and finger from behind, forward, a thin, white discharge can be noticed. 2. HOME TREATMENT.--The diet of patients affected with this disease is all-important, and should have careful attention. The things that should be avoided are highly spiced and stimulating foods and drinks, as all forms of alcohol, or those containing acids. Indulgence in impure thoughts is often sufficient to keep a discharge, on account of the excitement it produces to the sensitive organs, thus inducing erections, which always do harm. 3. GENERAL TREATMENT.--The best injection is: Nitrate of silver, 1/4 grain Pure water, 1 oz. Inject three or four times a day after urinating. STRICTURE OF THE URETHRA. SYMPTOMS.--The patient experiences difficulty in voiding the urine, several ineffectual efforts being made before it will flow. The stream is diminished in size, of a flattened or spiral form, or divided in two or more parts, and does not flow with the usual force. TREATMENT.--It is purely a surgical case and a competent surgeon must be consulted. PHIMOSIS. 1. CAUSE.--Is a morbid condition of the penis, in which the glans penis cannot be uncovered, either on account of a congenital smallness of the orifice of the foreskin, or it may be due to the acute stage of gonorrhoea, or caused by the presence of soft chancre. 2. SYMPTOMS.--It is hardly necessary to give a description of the symptoms occurring in this condition, for it will be easily diagnosed, and its appearances are so indicative that all that is necessary is to study into its cause and treat the disease with reference to that. TREATMENT.--If caused from acute gonorrhoea, it should be treated first by hot fomentations, to subdue the swelling, when the glans penis can be uncovered. If the result of the formation of chancre under the skin, they should be treated by a surgeon, for it may result in the sloughing off of the end of the penis, unless properly treated. [Illustration: ILLUSTRATING MAGNETIC INFLUENCES. ANIMAL MAGNETISM IS SUPPOSED TO RADIATE FROM AND ENCIRCLE EVERY HUMAN BEING.] * * * * * ANIMAL MAGNETISM. WHAT IT IS AND HOW TO USE IT. 1. MAGNETISM EXISTING BETWEEN THE BODIES OF MANKIND.--It is rational to believe that there is a magnetism existing between the bodies of mankind, which may have either a beneficial or a damaging effect upon our health, according to the conditions which are produced, or the nature of the individuals who are brought in contact with each other. As an illustration of this point we might consider that, all nature is governed by the laws of attraction and repulsion, or in other words, by positive and negative forces. These subtle forces or laws in nature which we call attraction or repulsion, are governed by the affinity--or sameness--or the lack of affinity--or sameness--which exists between what may be termed the combination of atoms or molecules which goes to make up organic structure. 2. LAW OF ATTRACTION.--Where this affinity--or sameness--exists between the different things, there is what we term the law of attraction, or what may be termed the disposition to unite together. Where there is no affinity existing between the nature of the different particles of matter, there is what may be termed the law of repulsion, which has a tendency to destroy the harmony which would otherwise take place. 3. MAGNETISM OF THE MIND.--Now, what is true of the magnet and steel, is also true--from the sameness of their nature--of two bodies. And what is true of the body in this sense, is also true of the sameness or magnetism of the mind. Hence, _by the laying on of hands_, or by the association of the minds of individuals, we reach the same result as when a combination is produced in any department of nature. Where this sameness of affinity exists, there will be a blending of forces, which has a tendency to build up vitality. 4. A PROOF.--As a proof of this position, how often have you found the society of strangers to be so repulsive to your feelings, that you have no disposition to associate. Others seem to bring with them a soothing influence that draws you closer to them. All these involuntary likes and dislikes are but the results of the _animal magnetism_ that we are constantly throwing off from our bodies,--although seemingly imperceptible to our internal senses.--The dog can scent his master, and determine the course which he pursues, no doubt from similar influences. 5. HOME HARMONY.--Many of the infirmities that afflict humanity are largely due to a want of an understanding of its principles, and the right applications of the same. I believe that if this law of magnetism was more fully understood and acted upon, there would be a far greater harmony in the domestic circle; the health of parents and children might often be preserved where now sickness and discord so frequently prevail. 6. THE LAW OF MAGNETISM.--When two bodies are brought into contact with each other, the weak must naturally draw from the strong until both have become equal. And as long as this equality exists there will be perfect harmony between individuals, because of the reciprocation which exists in their nature. 7. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.--But if one should gain the advantage of the other in magnetic attraction, the chances are that through the law of development, or what has been termed the "Survival of the Fittest"--the stronger will rob the weaker until one becomes robust and healthy, while the other grows weaker and weaker day by day. This frequently occurs with children sleeping together, also between husband and wife. 8. SLEEPING WITH INVALIDS.--Healthy, hearty, vigorous persons sleeping with a diseased person is always at a disadvantage. The consumptive patient will draw from the strong, until the consumptive person becomes the strong patient and the strong person will become the consumptive. There are many cases on record to prove this statement. A well person should never sleep with an invalid if he desires to keep his health unimpaired, for the weak will take from the strong, until the strong becomes the weak and the weak the strong. Many a husband has died from a lingering disease which saved his wife from an early grave. He took the disease from his wife because he was the stronger, and she became better and he perished. 9. HUSBAND AND WIFE.--It is not always wise that husband and wife should sleep together, nor that children--whose temperament does not harmonize--should be compelled to sleep in the same bed. By the same law it is wrong for the young to sleep with old persons. Some have slept in the same bed with persons, when in the morning they have gotten up seemingly more tired than when they went to bed. At other times with different persons, they have lain awake two-thirds of the night in pleasant conversation and have gotten up in the morning without scarcely realizing that they had been to sleep at all, yet have felt perfectly rested and refreshed. 10. MAGNETIC HEALING, OR WHAT HAS BEEN KNOWN AS THE LAYING ON OF HANDS.--A nervous prostration is a negative condition beneath the natural, by the laying on of hands a person in a good, healthy condition is capable of communicating to the necessity of the weak. For the negative condition of the patient will as naturally draw from the strong, as the loadstone draws from the magnet, until both become equally charged. And as fevers are a positive condition of the system "beyond the natural," the normal condition of the healer will, by the laying on of the hands, absorb these positive atoms, until the fever of the patient becomes reduced or cured. As a proof of this the magnetic healer often finds himself or herself prostrated after treating the weak, and excited or feverish after treating a feverish patient. [Illustration: WELL MATED.] * * * * * HOW TO READ CHARACTER. HOW TO TELL DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER BY THE NOSE. 1. LARGE NOSES.--Bonaparte chose large-nosed men for his generals, and the opinion prevails that large noses indicate long heads and strong minds. Not that great noses cause great minds, but that the motive or powerful temperament cause both. 2. FLAT NOSES.--Flat noses indicate flatness of mind and character, by indicating a poor, low organic structure. 3. BROAD NOSES.--Broad noses indicate large passage-ways to the lungs, and this, large lungs and vital organs and this, great strength of constitution, and hearty animal passions along with selfishness; for broad noses, broad shoulders, broad heads, and large animal organs go together. But when the nose is narrow at the base, the nostrils are small, because the lungs are small and need but small avenues for air; and this indicates a predisposition to consumptive complaints, along with an active brain and nervous system, and a passionate fondness for literary pursuits. 4. SHARP NOSES.--Sharp noses indicate a quick, clear, penetrating, searching, knowing, sagacious mind, and also a scold; indicate warmth of love, hate, generosity, moral sentiment--indeed, positiveness in everything. 5. BLUNT NOSES.--Blunt noses indicate and accompany obtuse intellects and perceptions, sluggish feelings, and a soulless character. 6. ROMAN NOSES.--The Roman nose indicates a martial spirit, love of debate, resistance, and strong passions, while hollow, pug noses indicate a tame, easy, inert, sly character, and straight, finely-formed Grecian noses harmonious characters. Seek their acquaintance. DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER BY STATURE. 1. TALL PERSONS.--Tall persons have high heads, and are aspiring, aim high, and seek conspicuousness, while short ones have flat heads, and seek the lower forms of worldly pleasures. Tall persons are rarely mean, though often grasping; but very penurious persons are often broad-built. 2. SMALL PERSONS.--Small persons generally have exquisite mentalities, yet less power--the more precious the article, the smaller the package in which it is done up,--while great men are rarely dwarfs, though great size often co-exists with sluggishness. DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER BY THE WALK. 1. AWKWARD.--Those whose motions are awkward yet easy, possess much efficiency and positiveness of character, yet lack polish; and just in proportion as they become refined in mind will their movements be correspondingly improved. A short and quick step indicates a brisk and active but rather contracted mind, whereas those who take long steps generally have long heads; yet if the step is slow, they will make comparatively little progress, while those whose step is long and quick will accomplish proportionately much, and pass most of their competitors on the highway of life. 2. A DRAGGING STEP.--Those who sluff or drag their heels, drag and drawl in everything; while those who walk with a springing, bouncing step, abound in mental snap and spring. Those whose walk is mincing, affected, and artificial, rarely, if ever, accomplish much; whereas those who walk carelessly, that is, naturally, are just what they appear to be, and put on nothing for outside show. 3. THE DIFFERENT MODES OF WALKING.--In short, every individual has his own peculiar mode of moving, which exactly accords with his mental character; so that, as far as you can see such modes, you can decipher such outlines of character. THE DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER BY LAUGHING. 1. LAUGHTER EXPRESSIVE OF CHARACTER.--Laughter is very expressive of character. Those who laugh very heartily have much cordiality and whole-souledness of character, except that those who laugh heartily at trifles have much feeling, yet little sense. Those whose giggles are rapid but light, have much intensity of feeling, yet lack power; whereas those who combine rapidity with force in laughing, combine them in character. 2. VULGAR LAUGH.--Vulgar persons always laugh vulgarly, and refined persons show refinement in their laugh. Those who ha, ha right out, unreservedly, have no cunning, and are open-hearted in everything; while those who suppress laughter, and try to control their countenances in it, are more or less secretive. Those who laugh with their mouths closed are non-committal; while those who throw it wide open are unguarded and unequivocal in character. 3. SUPPRESSED LAUGHTER.--Those who, suppressing laughter for a while, burst forth volcano-like, have strong characteristics, but are well-governed, yet violent when they give way to their feelings. Then there is the intellectual laugh, the love laugh, the horse laugh, the philoprogenitive laugh, the friendly laugh, and many other kinds of laugh, each indicative of corresponding mental developments. DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER BY THE MODE OF SHAKING HANDS. THEIR EXPRESSION OF CHARACTER.--Thus, those who give a tame and loose hand, and shake lightly, have a cold, if not heartless and selfish disposition, rarely sacrificing much for others, are probably conservatives, and lack warmth and soul. But those who grasp firmly, and shake heartily, have a corresponding whole-souledness of character, are hospitable, and will sacrifice business to friends; while those who bow low when they shake hands, add deference to friendship, and are easily led, for good or bad, by friends. [Illustration: AN EASY-GOING DISPOSITION.] THE DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER BY THE MOUTH AND EYES. 1. DIFFERENT FORMS OF MOUTHS.--Every mouth differs from every other, and indicates a coincident character. Large mouths express a corresponding quantity of mentality, while small ones indicate a lesser amount. A coarsely-formed mouth indicates power, while one finely-formed indicates exquisite susceptibilities. Hence small, delicately formed mouths indicate only common minds, with very fine feelings and much perfection of character. 2. CHARACTERISTICS.--Whenever the muscles about the mouth are distinct, the character is correspondingly positive, and the reverse. Those who open their mouths wide and frequently, thereby evince an open soul, while closed mouths, unless to hide deformed teeth, are proportionately secretive. 3. EYES.--Those who keep their eyes half shut are peek-a-boos and eaves-droppers. 4. EXPRESSIONS OF THE EYE.--The mere expression of the eye conveys precise ideas of the existing and predominant states of the mentality and physiology. As long as the constitution remains unimpaired, the eye is clear and bright, but becomes languid and soulless in proportion as the brain has been enfeebled. Wild, erratic persons have a half-crazed expression of eye, while calmness, benignancy, intelligence, purity, sweetness, love, lasciviousness, anger, and all the other mental affections, express themselves quite as distinctly by the eye as voice, or any other mode. 6. COLOR OF THE EYES.--Some inherit fineness from one parent, and coarseness from the other, while the color of the eye generally corresponds with that of the skin, and expresses character. Light eyes indicate warmth of feeling, and dark eyes power. 6. GARMENTS.--Those, who keep their coats buttoned up, fancy high-necked and closed dresses, etc., are equally non-communicative, but those who like open, free, flowing garments, are equally open-hearted and communicative. THE DISPOSITION AND CHARACTER BY THE COLOR OF THE HAIR. 1. DIFFERENT COLORS.--Coarseness and fineness of texture in nature indicate coarse and fine-grained feelings and characters, and since black signifies power, and red ardor, therefore coarse black hair and skin signify great power of character of some kind, along with considerable tendency to the sensual; yet fine black hair and skin indicate strength of character, along with purity and goodness. 2. COARSE HAIR.--Coarse black hair and skin, and coarse red hair and whiskers, indicate powerful animal passions, together with corresponding strength of character; while fine or light, or auburn hair indicates quick susceptibilities, together with refinement and good taste. 3. FINE HAIR.--Fine dark or brown hair indicates the combination of exquisite susceptibilities with great strength of character, while auburn hair, with a florid countenance, indicates the highest order of sentiment and intensity of feeling, along with corresponding purity of character, combined with the highest capacities for enjoyment and suffering. 4. CURLY HAIR.--Curly hair or beard indicates a crisp, excitable, and variable disposition, and much diversity of character--now blowing hot, now cold--along with intense love and hate, gushing, glowing emotions, brilliancy, and variety of talent. So look out for ringlets; they betoken April weather--treat them gently, lovingly, and you will have the brightest, clearest sunshine, and the sweetest balmiest breezes. 5. STRAIGHT HAIR.--Straight, even, smooth, and glossy hair indicate strength, harmony, and evenness of character, and hearty, whole-souled affections, as well as a clear head and superior talents; while straight, stiff, black hair and beard indicate a coarse, strong, rigid, straight-forward character. 6. ABUNDANCE OF HAIR.--Abundance of hair and beard signifies virility and a great amount of character; while a thin beard signifies sterility and a thinly settled upper story, with rooms to let, so that the beard is very significant of character. 7. FIERY RED HAIR indicates a quick and fiery disposition. Persons with such hair generally have intense feelings--love and hate intensely--yet treat them kindly, and you have the warmest friends, but ruffle them, and you raise a hurricane on short notice. This is doubly true of auburn curls. It takes but little kindness, however, to produce a calm and render them as fair as a Summer morning. Red-headed people in general are not given to hold a grudge. They are generally of a very forgiving disposition. SECRETIVE DISPOSITIONS. 1. A man that naturally wears his hat upon the top or back of the head is frank and outspoken; will easily confide and have many confidential friends, and is less liable to keep a secret. He will never do you any harm. 2. If a man wears his hat well down on the forehead, shading the eyes more or less, will always keep his own counsel. He will not confide a secret, and if criminally inclined will be a very dangerous character. 3. If a lady naturally inclines to high-necked dresses and collars, she will keep her secrets to herself if she has any. In courtship or love she is an uncertainty, as she will not reveal sentiments of her heart. The secretive girl, however, usually makes a good housekeeper and rarely gets mixed into neighborhood difficulties. As a wife she will not be the most affectionate, nor will she trouble her husband with many of her trials or difficulties. * * * * * TWILIGHT SLEEP. Some years ago two German Physicians, Kroenig and Grauss, of the University of Baden, startled the world by announcing: "Dammerschlaf" or "Twilight Sleep," a treatment which rendered childbirth almost painless and free from dangerous complications. A woman's clinic was established at Freiburg where a combination of scopolamine and morphine was given. The muscular activity of the pelvic organs was not lessened, the length of labor was shortened, and instruments were rarely necessary. ABBOTT'S H-M-C is another sedative composed of hyoseine, morphine, and cactoid. It is less dangerous than the other remedy, and accomplishes the same result, hence is greatly preferred. THE UTMOST CAUTION is necessary in the administration of either of these drugs, and the most competent medical supervision is essential to their success. CAUTIONS.--The patient should not be left a moment without medical supervision. The lying in chamber should be darkened, and kept as quiet as possible. * * * * * PAINLESS CHILDBIRTH. WHY SHOULD A WOMAN SUFFER?--Childbirth is a natural function, as natural as eating, sleeping or walking. If the laws of nature are complied with it loses most, if not all, of its terrors. The facts show that Indian women, and those of other uncivilized races have children without experiencing pain, and with none of the so common modern complications. WHAT IS THE REASON?--They live a natural, out of doors life, free from the evils and restrictions of present day civilization in dress and habits of life. A NORMAL LIFE.--The expectant mother should therefore live a perfectly rational life, keeping the stomach and intestines especially healthy and active, and hence the general physical condition good. An abundance of fresh air, hearty exercise, and childbirth will pass over without any abnormal consequences. * * * * * THE DISEASES OF WOMEN. THE WOMAN'S PLACE IS IN THE HOME.--For centuries the world has stuck to this rule. Because the woman has been considered less fit for the struggles of the active workaday world, she has been kept at home, shut in from the air and sunshine, deprived of healthy exercise, and obliged to live a life of confinement and inactivity. WHAT IS THE RESULT?--In connection with menstruation, pregnancy and child bearing a long list of diseases peculiar to woman have arisen, most of which through proper food and exercise could be avoided. In matters so vital to posterity false modesty and ignorance can no longer be tolerated. CHLOROSIS OR ANAEMIA. _Home Treatment_: Plenty of good food and fresh air will do much to restore the blood. Keep the bowels free. Satisfactory results have been brought about by a systematic use of iron as a tonic. DISORDERS OF THE MENSES. RETENTION OF MENSTRUATION. _Treatment_: When due to the condition of the blood, recommend good food, fresh air, and sunshine to improve circulation. If the result of cold and exposure means and appliances for restoring the circulation must be adopted. In either case the bowels should be kept open by injections. VICARIOUS MENSTRUATION. _Treatment_: No attempt should be made to stop the hemorrhage during the monthly period. The discharge is usually light although it occasionally causes great weakness. This disorder is caused by the suppression of the menses, and must be treated accordingly between periods. CESSATION OF THE MENSES. Commonly called "Change of Life." _Treatment_: At this dangerous and trying period in a woman's life she must adopt the utmost regularity in the habits of her existence. Hot baths, taken just before retiring, will relieve the uncomfortable feeling so common at this time of life. DISORDERS OF THE WOMB. CANCER OF THE WOMB. _Treatment_: Call at once a competent physician. DISPLACEMENT OF THE WOMB. _Treatment_: Evacuate the bowels and the bladder by means of injections, and the catheter. Place the fingers in the vagina, locate the mouth of the womb, insert finger into it, and gently pull the organ into its natural position. DROPSY OF THE WOMB. _Treatment_: Use tonics freely together with vapor baths, and frequent hot hip baths. FALLING OF THE WOMB. _Treatment_: Build up the physical condition by an abundance of good food, fresh air and sunshine, with moderate exercise. Astringent injections and vaginal suppositories of oak bark, myrrh, and cocoa-butter will usually bring relief. INFLAMMATION OF THE WOMB. _Treatment_: Apply stimulating liniment to the abdomen. Keep body warm and moist especially at extremities. Add 10-15 drops of carbolic acid to one quart of warm water and use as a vaginal douche. Keep bowels open. Furnish light, nourishing diet, and give tonics. NEURALGIA OF THE WOMB. _Treatment_: Keep feet warm and give injections to the bowels of lobelia, lady slipper, and skullcap. Rub the abdomen with liniment. Absolute quiet, above all else, will bring relief. DISEASES OF THE VAGINA. VAGINITIS, OR INFLAMMATION OF THE VAGINA. _Treatment_: Complete rest. Use distilled sweet clover with a slight infusion of lady slipper warm, three times a day as a vaginal injection. PROLAPSUS OF THE VAGINA. _Treatment_: When the walls of the vagina become folded upon themselves through abortion, rupture during delivery, excessive indulgence, masturbation, etc. it is called prolapsus. Use an astringent suppository or injection. SPASM OF THE VAGINA. _Treatment_: This is nothing more than a nervous condition causing the muscles of the vagina to spasm thus closing the passage, and rendering conception almost impossible. Outdoor exercise, light but nourishing diet, and general attention to the nervous system will bring prompt relief. Intercourse, if attempted, should be quiet and unfrequent. An effort should be made to keep the thoughts on other subjects. DISEASES OF THE EXTERNAL FEMALE GENITALS. INFLAMMATION AND ABSCESS. _Treatment_: Wash the parts often with warm water, distilled witch hazel, and strong infusion of lobelia. Keep the bowels free. In severe cases apply poultices of ground flaxseed, sprinkled over with golden seal and lobelia. After poultices are removed, cleanse parts with warm water, containing a little tincture of myrrh. PRURITIS. _Treatment_: A very mortifying and uncomfortable affliction, accompanied by an almost uncontrollable desire to scratch the parts. The itching is due to uncleanliness, excessive masturbation, violent intercourse, inflammation of the bladder, stomach or liver trouble etc. Bathe the affected parts well with borax water, and apply a wash of equal parts witch hazel, and an infusion of lobelia. Use mild laxatives to keep the bowels open. DISEASES OF THE OVARIES. DROPSY OF THE OVARIES. _Treatment_: An accumulation of fluid in the membranous sack about the ovaries. An operation is necessary and is almost always successful. INFLAMMATION OF THE OVARIES. _Treatment_: In mild cases rub abdomen with liniment and apply hot water bottles. Perfect quiet is essential to an early recovery. TUMORS OF THE OVARIES. _Treatment_: A surgical operation is the only means of cure. * * * * * REMEDIES FOR DISEASES OF WOMEN. AFTER PAINS: Salophen in fifteen grain doses. If necessary take another dose in two hours. Should the pains reappear the next day, repeat the dosage. AMENORRHEA: Tincture chloride of iron, three drams; tincture cantharides, one dram; tincture guaiac ammon., one-half dram; tincture aloe, one-half ounce; syrup enough to make six ounces. Dose: Tablespoonful after meals. CANCER OF THE WOMB: Make a solution and use in douches: Picric acid, two one-half dram; water one and one-half pint; the patient must lie flat on back while fluid runs up into the vagina, hips must be raised; retain the fluid as long as possible. Later on make a cotton tampon, saturated with chloral hydrate, one-half dram; cocaine hydrochloride, one and one-half grain; dissolve in five drams of water. Use injection and tampon morning and night. DYSMENORRHEA: Asafoetida, forty grains; ext. Valerian, twenty grains; ext. Cannabis Indica, five grains; make twenty pills. Dose: One pill after meals. Use the following ointment for the pain in the back: Ext. Hyoscyamus, thirty grains; ext. Belladonna, thirty grains; Adipis, one ounce. Apply locally night and morning. EMMENAGOGUE: Ergotin, twenty grains; ext. cotton root bark, twenty grains; Purified Aloes, twenty grains; Dried Ferrous sulphate, twenty grains; ext. Savine, ten grains. Make twenty pills. Dose: One pill four times a day. ENDOMETRITIS: Ext. Viburnum Prun, forty grains; ext. Hamamelis, twenty grains; Ergotin, ten grains; ext. Nux Vomica, two grains; Hydrastin, one grain. Make twenty pills. Dose: One pill morning and night. FIBROID TUMORS: Chromium Sulphate, four-grain tablets. Dose: One tablet after meals. FISSURE OF NIPPLES: Apply Iodoform, one dram; carbolic acid, twenty grains; white Petrolatum, one ounce. Apply at night; requires thorough washing next morning. HELONIAS COMPOSITION: Helonias, fifteen grains; Squaw wine, sixty grains; Viburnum Opulus, fifteen grains; Caulophyllum, fifteen grains; syrup, two ounces. Dose: Teaspoonful every two hours. LEUCORRHOEA: Ext. Hyoscyamus, one dram; ext. Hamamelis, one dram; tannic acid, one dram; ext. Helonias, one-half dram; Salicylic acid, one dram; Alum, three drams; boric acid, five drams. Dissolve flat teaspoonful in half cup of water, soak a cotton tampon and place way up in the vagina. As a tonic take: Tincture Cinchona comp., two ounces; tincture gentian comp., two ounces. Dose: Dessertspoonful after meals. MENOPAUSE: Ammonium bromide, two drams; Potassium bromide, four drams; aromatii spirits amoniae, six drams; camphor water enough to make six ounces. Dose: One dessertspoonful, three times a day. MENORRHAGIA: Gallic acid, fifty grains; Ergotin, twenty grains; Hydrastin, ten grains. Make twenty pills. Dose: One pill after meals. Another prescription: Calcium chloride, two and one-half drams; syrup, fifteen drams; water, six ounces. Dose: One tablespoonful morning and night. MENSTRUAL IRREGULARITIES: Extracts of cramp bark, forty grains; blue cohosh, ten grains; Squaw wine, forty grains; pokeberry, twenty grains; strychnine, one grain. Make forty pills. Dose: One pill four times a day until relieved. MENSTRUATION, PROFUSE: Extracts of white ash bark, two drams; black haw, two drams; cramp bark, two drams; unicorn root, one dram; Squaw wine, one dram; blue cohosh, one dram. Steep 24 hours in one-half pint of water, add one-half pint of alcohol. Dose: Tablespoonful three times a day. NEURALGIA OF WOMB: Fl. ext. henbane, two drams; Fl. ext. Indian hemp, one dram; Fl. ext. snake root, four drams; spirits of camphor, two drams; compound spirits of ether, three ounces. Dose: One teaspoonful in water three times a day. Medicated hot sitz bath. OVARIAN CONGESTION: Black haw, sixty grains; Golden seal, sixty grains; Jamaica dogwood, thirty grains; syrup and water, four ounces. Dose: One teaspoonful three or four times a day. OVARIAN SEDATIVE: Lupulin, ten grains; ergotin, five grains; scutellarin, ten grains; zinc bromide, two grains. Make twenty pills. Dose: One pill after meals. VAGINISMUS: Strontium bromide, two drams; potassium bromide, two drams; ammonium bromide, two drams; water to make ten ounces. Dose: Tablespoonful morning and night. Make a suppository and insert night: Cocaine hydrochlorate, two grains; ext. Belladonna, one and one-half grains; Strontium bromide, four grains; Oil Theobromat, two drams. Use every night one such suppository, placed high up in the vagina until all signs of the difficulty are gone. VAGINITIS: Resorcine, forty grains; Salicylic acid, eight grains; Betanaphtholis, one grain; add enough water to make it eight ounces. Dose: Add to this mixture one tablespoonful to a quart of warm water and douche vagina in above stated manner. Use also suppository as in Vaginismus. VULVA ITCHING: Apply externally morning and night the following salve: Boric acid, thirty grains; Oxide of zinc, sixty grains. Powdered starch, sixty grains; Petrolatum, one ounce. Apply on cotton and to affected parts. ULCERATIONS OF VAGINA OR WOMB: Insert a suppository each one made of Boric acid, five grains; Powdered alum, five grains. Or the following composition; Black haw, two grains; golden seal, two grains; add enough cocoa butter to make one suppository. Insert and keep in over night after a hot medicated vaginal douche is taken. UTERINE ASTRINGENT: Alum, three drams; zinc sulphate, two drams; morphine sulphate, one grain; tannic acid, two drams; Boric acid, six drams. Mix and use of it one tablespoonful dissolved in pint of warm water. Inject slowly into vagina in recumbent position, retain the douche fluid as long as possible. Later on insert when retiring a vaginal suppository. UTERINE HEMORRHAGES: Take Stypticin tablets according to printed direction on the package. UTERINE TONIC: Helonin, three grains; Caulophyllin, three grains; Macrotin, three grains; Hyoscyamine, three grains. Make twenty pills. Dose: One pill after meals. UTERINE TONIC AND STIMULANT: Take Elixir of Helonias, which can be bought in drug stores, or get the following tinctures and make it at home: Partridge berry, ninety-six grains; unicorn root, forty-eight grains; Blue cohosh, forty-eight grains; cramp bark, forty-eight grains. Steep these for 24 hours in one-half pint of water, add one-half pint of alcohol, then strain and bottle. Dose: One teaspoonful three times a day. WHITES: Dried alum, one-half ounce; Borax, two ounces; boric acid, four ounces; Thymol, ten grains; Eucalyptol, ten grains; Oil of peppermint, two drams. Dissolve, one teaspoonful of the mixture in a pint of hot water and use as a douche morning and night. WOMB SPASMS: Cramp bark, one ounce; skullcap, one ounce; skunk cabbage, four drams. Steep 24 hours in one-half pint of water, add one-half pint of alcohol. Dose: One tablespoonful three times a day. * * * * * [Transcriber's Note: The following "Alphabetical Index" is as it appears in the original book. It is not in alphabetical order.] ALPHABETICAL INDEX. A Abstention, 137 Abstinence, 52 Abuse After Marriage, 202 Abortion or Miscarriage, 253 Abortion, Causes and Symptoms, 253 Abortion, Home Treatment, 254 Abortion, Prevention of, 254 Abortion, The Sin of Herod, 257 Abortion, The Violation of all Law, 256 Absence of Physician, 300 Abraham a Polygamist, 133 A Broken Heart, 159 Aboriginal, Australian, 162 Admired and Beloved, 28 Advantages of Wedlock, 135 Advice to Newly Married Couples, 201 Advice to Married and Unmarried, 181 Advice to Bridegroom, 201 Advice to Young Mothers, 286 Advice to Young Married People, 435 Advice to Young Men, 437 Adultery in the Heart, 409 After Birth, 300 Affectionate Parents, 227 Amenorrhoea, 355 Amativeness or Connubial Love, 122 Animal Passions, 434 Animal Impulse, 227 Apoplexy, 365 Artificial Impregnation, 270 Arms, Beautiful, 131 Assassin of Garfield, 294 Asking an Honest Question, 61 Associates, Influence of, 11 Authority of the Wife, 267 B Bad Company, The Result of, 13 Bad Society, 381 Bad Dressing, 409 Bad Books, 421 Bad Breath, 365 Bathing, Rules for, 371-373 Bath, The, 83 Barber's Shampoos, 107 Bad Breast, 322 Bastards or Illegitimates, 224 Beginning of Life, 5 Begin at Right Place, 7 Begin Well, 17 Beauty and Style, 27 Beauty a Dangerous Gift, 27 Beautiful Women, Beware of, 27 Beauty in Dress, 89 Beauty, 91-92 Beauty Which Perishes Not, 92 Beauty, Sensible Hints to, 95 Beautiful Arms, 131 "Be Ye Fruitful and Multiply", 201 Beautiful Children, How to Have, 288 Birth, Conditions of, 229 Biliousness, 279, 357, 363 Bites and Stings of Insects, 359 Bloom and Grace of Youth, 97 Black-heads, and Flesh Worms, 112 Blue Feelings, 159 Bleeding, 364 Both Puzzled, 77 Bodily Symmetry, 100, 105 Boils, 364 Breath, The, 86 Broad Hips, 130 Breach of Confidence, 191 Bride, The, 199 "Bridal Tour", 200 Breasts, Swelled and Sore, 348 Burns, 13, 355, 359 Busts, Full, 130 Bunions, 364 Bubo Treatment, 468 C Care of the Person, 84 Care of the Hair, 107 Cause of Family Troubles, 217 Calamities of Lust, 416-419 Causes of Sterility, 251 Causes of Divorce, 258-262 Care of New-Born Infant, 315 Cataracts of the Eyes, 355 Causes of Prostitution, 412 Celibacy, Disadvantages of, 138 Chinese Marriage System, 133 Children, Healthy and Beautiful, 222-227 Children, Idiots, Criminals and Lunatics, 222 Children's Condition Depends on Parents, 225 Children, All, May Die, 226 Children, Too Many, 229 Children, Foolish Dread of, 241 Character Lost, 9 Character, Formation of, 11 Character, Essence, 12 Character Exhibits Itself, 15 Character, Beauty of, 18 Child, An Honored, 19 Character, School of, 23 Child, The, is Father of the Man, 24 Character, Female, Influence of, 30 Children, Fond of, 62 Character, Influence of Good, 73 Character is Property, 74 Child Bearing without Pain, 304, 479 Chickenpox, 346, 363 Chapped Hands, 355, 356 Chilblains, 359 Child Training, 396 Chastity and Purity, 400 Character, How to Read, 473 Civilization, 18 Circumcision, 394 Cigarette Smoking, Effects of, 445, 450 Clap--Gonorrhoea, 464 Clap--Gonorrhoea Treatment, 466 Corsets, 101-103 Corset, Egyptian, 104 Coloring for Eyelashes and Eyebrows, 108 Confidence, 122 Connubial Love, 122 Concubinage and Polygamy, 133 Courtship and Marriage, 148 Court Scientifically, 166 Consummation of Marriage, 202 Conception, 239 Conception, Its Limitations, 240 Conceptions and Accidents of Lust, 256 Courtship and Marriage, 267 Control, Self, 12 Coarseness, 24 Correspondence, 36 Conversation, 79 Conception or Impregnation, 269 Conception, The Proper Time for, 289 Colic, 318, 338, 356 Convulsions, Infantile, 319 Constipation, To Prevent, 323, 339 Coughs, Colds, etc., 360 Cold Water for Diseases, 369 Cook for the Sick, How to, 375 Cramps, 277, 356 Croup, How to Treat, 343 Crimping Hair, 109 Criminals and Heredity, 399 Crowning Sin of the Age, 411 Cuts, 358, 360 Cultivate Modesty, 210 Cultivate Personal Attractiveness, 210 Cultivate Physical Attractiveness, 211 Curse of Manhood, The, 433 D Day Dreaming, 26 Dangerous Diseases, 257 Danger in Lack of Knowledge, 403 Deformities, 98 Development of the Individual, 98 Desertion and Divorce, 187 Desire, Stimulated by Drugs, 250 Desire Moderated by Drugs, 250 Deformities, 264 Desire, Want of, 205 Deafness, How to Cure, 362 Devil's Decoys, The, 419 Disadvantages of Celibacy, 138 Diseased, Parents, 144 Disrupted Love, 159 Divorces, 166 Distress during Consummation, 202 Diseases, Heredity and Transmission of, 263 Diseases of Pregnancy, 274 Diseases of Infants and Children, 338 Diarrhoea, 340, 363 Diphtheria, 346 Diseases of Women and Treatment, 349, 480-485 Disinfectant, 360 Digestibility of Food, 374 Dietetic Recipes, 375 Diseases of Women, 483 Dictionary of Medical Terms, 486 Drink, 16 Dress, 88 Dress Affects Our Manners, 90 Drugs which Stimulate Desire, 250 Drugs which Moderate Desire, 250 Drug Habit, The, 441 Dude of the 17th Century, 87 Duration of Pregnancy, 296 Dyspepsia Cure, 360 E Early Marriages, 351, 410 Education of Child in the Womb, 292 Effects of Cigarette Smoking, 445-450 Egyptian Dancer, An, 20 Eruptions on the Skin, 272 Etiquette, Rules on, 49 Etiquette of Calls, 56 Etiquette in Your Speech, 57 Etiquette of Dress and Habits, 58 Etiquette on the Street, 59 Etiquette Between Sexes, 60 Eugenic Baby Party, 75 Eunuchs, 407 Evidence of Conception, 269 Expectant Mother, The, 284 Exciting the Passions in Children, 404 Exposed Youth, 427 Excesses by Married Men, 434 Eye Wash, 355 F Fame, 18 Family Group, Blessing the, 19 Family Government, 76 False Beautifiers, 129 False Appearance, 131 Family Troubles, Cause of, 217 Families, Small, 232 Fallopian Tubes, 237 Fake Medical Advice, 240, 250 Fainting, 281 Falling of the Womb, 350 Fast Young Men, 435 Female Character, Influence of, 30 Female Beauty, 129 Feet, Small, 130 Female Organs, Conditions of, 204 Female Magnetism, 235 Female Sexual Organs, 235 Feeding Infants, 319 Fevers, 327 Feet with Bad Odor, 354 Felon, 358, 364 Female Organs of Creative Life, 385 First Love, 185 First Conjugal Approach, 203 Flirting, 166, 168 Flirting and Its Dangers, 190 Form, Male and Female, 98 Former Customs, 162 Fondling and Caressing, 168 Folly of Follies, 217 Foetal Heart, 273 Follies of Youth, 468 Free Lovers, 133 Frequency of Intercourse, 208 Full Busts, 130 G Garden of Eden, 133 Gathered Breast, 322 Generosity, 126 Generative Organs, Male, 234 Generative Organs, Female, 236 Girls, Save the, 380 Gland, The Penal, 235 Gland, The Prostate, 235 Gladstone, 8 Gleet, Symptoms and Treatment of, 468 Good Character, 73 Gout, 362 Gonorrhoea (Clap), 464 Gonorrhoea (Clap), Remedy for, 466 Grace, 28 Gray Hair, 110 Grave-Yard Statistics, 226 Grossness of Sensuality, 419 H Hawaiian Islands and Marriage, 163 Harlot's Woes, A, 431 Habits, 17 Hair and Beard, 85 Hand in Hand, 92 Hair, The Care of, 107-111 Hate-Spats, 154 Hap-Hazard Marriages, 218 Hair, How to Remove, 360 Harlot's Mess of Meat, The, 418 Harlot's Influence, 431 Health a Duty, 7 Helps to Beauty, 95 Heart, A Broken, 159 Healthy Wives and Mothers, 183 Hereditary Descent, 224 Healthy People--Most Children, 226 Heartburn, 276, 357 Headache, 280, 355, 360, 363 Health Rules for Babies, 314 History of Marriage, 132 Hints on Courtship and Marriage, 148-153 Hints in Choosing a Partner, 162 Hives, 354, 360 Home Ties, 6, 22 Home, The Best Regulated, 14 Honesty or Knavery, 17 Home Power, 23 Home Makes the Man, 23 Home the Best of Schools, 25 Homely Men, 128 Honeymoon, How to Perpetuate, 209 Home Treatment, Diseases of Children, 338 Home Treatment of the Secret Habit, 455 How to Write Letters, 34-47 How to Write Love Letters, 37 How to Write Social Letters, 39 How to Determine Perfect Human Figure, 99 How to be a Good Wife, 210 How to be a Good Husband, 212 How to Calculate Time of Labor, 295 How to Keep a Baby Well, 330-335 How to Cook for the Sick, 375 How Many Girls are Ruined, 190 How to Overcome "Secret Habit", 389 How to Tell a Victim of the "Secret Habit", 451 How to Tell Children the Story of Life, 390-395, 401-403 Hot Water for all Diseases, 368 Husband, Whom to Choose for a, 144 Husband's Brutality, 412 Hymen or Vaginal Valve, 202, 203, 236 Hysteria, 349 I Ignorance, 24 Illicit Pleasures, 207 Illegitimates or Bastards, 224 Illegitimates, Character of, 225 Impulse, 14 Impolite, 70 Improper Liberties, 168 Improvement of the Race, 232 Impotence and Sterility 248 Impotence, Lack of Sexual Vigor, 251 Improper Liberties During Courtship, 267 Impregnation or Conception, 269, 283 Impregnation Artificial, 270 Immorality, Disease and Death, 416 Independence, The Growth of, 6 Influences, 18 Integrity, 19 Influence, The Mother's, 21 Influence of Women, 30 Intelligence, 126-131 Intercourse, Proper, 205 Indulgence, The Time for, 207 Intercourse, Frequency of, 208 Intercourse During Pregnancy, 207, 283 Infanticide, 255 Infantile Convulsions, 319 Indigestion, 328 Infant Teething, 336 Inflammation of Womb, 349 Inhumanities of Parents, 396 Itching of External Parts, 279 J Jealousy, 156 Jealousy--Its Cause and Cure, 219 Juke Family, The, 243 K Kalmuck Tartar and Marriage, 163 Keep the Boys Pure, 429 Kindness, 28 Kissing, 168 Knowledge is Safety, 3 L Ladies' Society, 61 Lady's Dress in Days of Greece, 100 Lacing, 104 Large Men, 126 Lack of Knowledge, 267 Letter Writing, 34-47 Letters, Social, 39 Leucorrhoea, 247, 349 Lessons for Parents, 312 Life Methods, 18 Licentiousness, Beginning of, 151 Limitation of Offspring, 242 Liver-Spots, 281 Love Letters, 37 Love, 114-117 Love, Power and Peculiarities of, 118 Love, Turkish Way of Making, 120 Love and Common Sense, 123 Love-Spats, 154 Love for the Dead, 160 Loss of Desire, 205 Longevity, 367 Loss of Maiden Purity, 404 Low Fiction, 421 Lost Manhood Restored, 459 Lung Trouble, 326 Lustful Eyes, 410 M Marriage Excesses, 208 Matrimonial Infelicity, 217 Male Sexual Organs, 234 Maternity a Diadem of Beauty, 262 Marks and Deformities, 264 Maternity, Preparation for, 266 Marrying Too Early, 288 Marry, Time to, 351 Man Unsexed, 407 Marriage Bed Resolutions, 427 Man's Lost Powers, 436 Man, The Ideal, 14 Masculine Attention, 62 Maternal Love, 24 Manners, Table, 63 Male Form, 98 Marriage, History of, 132 Marriage, 134 Marriages, Too Early, 136-144 Maids, Old, 140-143 Marry, When and Whom to, 144 Marrying First Cousins, 146 Marriage, Hints on, 148 Marriages, Unhappy, 151 Matrimonial Pointers, 171 Marriage Securities, 174 Marrying for Wealth, 181 Marriage, Time for, 191 Marriage and Motherhood, 192 Marriage, Consummation of, 202 Manhood Wrecked and Rescued, 461 Magnetism, 470-472 Men Haters, 62 Membership in Society, 66 Mental Derangements, 264 Menstruation During Pregnancy, 270 Menstruation During Nursing, 352 Measles, 328, 345, 363 Menstruation, 351, 385 Men Demand Purity, 427 Miscarriage, 207, 253, 283 Miscarriage, Causes and Symptoms, 253 Miscarriage Home Treatment, 254 Miscarriage Prevention, 254 Middle Age, 436 Mistakes Often Fatal, 7 Mistakes of Parents, 185 Moderation, 243 Morning Sickness and Remedy, 271, 282 Modified Milk, 329 Moral Degeneracy, 414 Moral Manhood, 414 Moral Lepers, 433 Moral Principle, 16 Mother's Influence, 21 Mother, A Devoted, 22 Mohammedanism, 133 Mormonism, 133 Monogamy (Single Wife), 134 Motherhood, 150 Morganic Marriages, 162 Murder of the Innocents, 255 Mumps, 345, 358 N Name, A Good, 18 Name, An Empty or an Evil, 20 Nature's Remedy, 233 Natural Waist, 105 Newly Married Couples, Advice to, 201 Neuralgia, 356, 360 Need of Early Instruction, 380 Non-Completed Intercourse, 411 Nocturnal Emissions and Home Treatment, 459 Nurseries, 24 Nuptial Chamber, 202-204 Nursing, 321 Nursing Sick Children, 325 Nude in Art, The, 422 O Obscene Literature, 421 Offspring, The Improvement of, 222 Old Maids, 140-143 Ornaments, 94 Our Secret Sins, 409 Ovaries, 237-238 Over-indulgence, 251 Over-Worked Mothers, 285 P Parents Must Obey, 226 Parents, Feeble and Diseased, 241 Palpitation of the Heart, 281 Pains and Ills in Nursing, 321 Parents Must Teach Children, 391 Passions in Children, 404 Passionate Men, 127 Parents, Diseased, 144 Parents' Participation, 224 Penal Gland, 235 Personal Purity, 31, 415 Penmanship, 34 Personality of Others, 70 Person, Care of the, 81 Perfect Human Figure, 99 Penalties for lost Virtue, 432 Physical and Moral Degeneracy, 414 Physical Deformities, 98 Physical Perfection, 99 Physical Relations of Marriage, 192 Phimosis, Symptoms and Treatment, 469 Piles, 280, 362 Pimples or Facial Eruptions, 111 Plea for Purity, A, 380 Plain Words to Parents, 390 Pleasures, Illicit, 207 Population Limited, 232 Poison Ivy, 359 Poison Sumach, 359 Policy of Silence in Sex Matters, 416 Pollution, Sinks of, 12 Pollution, Sow, 15 Politeness, 70 Polygamy, 133-162 Popping the Question, 195 Poisonous Literature, 421 Pox-Syphilis, 464 Pox-Symptoms and Treatment, 467 Prevention of Conception, 233, 239, 240-241 Prevention, Nature's Method, 243 Prenatal Influences, 244 Prostate Gland, 235 Producing Boys or Girls at Will, 252 Preparation for Maternity, 266 Pregnancy Signs and Symptoms, 270 Pregnancy, Diseases of, 274 Pregnancy, Duration of, 296 Prescription for Diseases, 355 Prickly Heat, Cure for, 373 Principle Moral, 10 Prisons, 19 Practical Rules on Table Manners, 63 Prostitution, 137,381 Proposing, A Romantic Way, 198 Proper Intercourse, 205 Pregnancy, Restraint During, 207 Preparation for Parenthood, 225 Prostitution of Men, 427 Private Talk to Young Men, 437 Puberty, Virility and Hygienic Laws, 406 Purity, 62 Puberty, 144 Puritanic Manhood, 425 Pure Minded Wife, 435 Q Quacks and Methods Exposed, 250, 453, 457 Quickening, 271 Quinsy, 365 R Reputation, Value of, 9 Reputation, Selling out Their, 19 Religion in Women, 131 Restraint During Pregnancy, 207 Revelation for Women, 247 Remedies for Sterility, 249 Remedies for Diseases, 355 Recruiting Office for Prostitution, 380 Remedy for "Secret Habit", 394 Rebuking Sensualism, 410 Remedies for the Social Evil, 440 Remedies for Diseases of Women, 483-485 Rival the Boys, 27 Ring Worm, 362 Rights of Lovers, 168 Right of Children to be Born Right, 464 Roman Ladies, 29 Road to Shame, The, 430 Rules on Etiquette, 49-64 Rules on Table Manners, 63 Ruin and Seduction, 152 Rules for the Nurse, 366 Ruined Sister, A, 431 S Save the Girls, 380 Save the Boys, 390 Scientific Theories of Life, 238 Scarlet Fever, 328, 343, 363 Schedule for Feeding Babies, 329 Sexual Passions, 407 Sexual Exhaustion, 411 Secret Diseases, 413 Seeing Life, 419 Sexual Impotency, The Remedy, 461 Secret Diseases, 464 Seed of Life, 225 Sexual Organs, Male, 234 Sexual Organs, Female, 235 Seducer, The, 190 Self Abuse or "Secret Habit", 389 Sex Instruction for Children, 380, 390, 400 Sexual Propensities, 400 Self-Control, 12 Self-Denial, Practice, 15 Selfishness, 24 Self-Forgetfulness, 72 Sensible Helps to Beauty, 95-114 Sexual Excitement, 126 Sexual Vigor, 127 Seduction and Ruin, 152 Seducer, A, 168 Sensuality and Unnatural Passion, 202-208 Sexual Life, Rightly Beginning, 205 Sexual Proprieties and Improprieties, 206 Separate Beds, 206 Sexual Control, 208-241 Shall Sickly People Raise Children, 233 Shall Pregnant Women Work, 285 Shy People, 72 Signs and Symptoms of Labor, 297 Signs of Virility, 408 Signs of Excesses, 410 Sisterhood of Shame, The, 418, 425 Slaves of Injurious Drugs, 441 Sleeplessness, 281 Small Families, 232 Small and Weakly Men, 126 Sore Nipples, 321 Society Evils, 384 Society, Govern, 24 Social Letters, 39 Social Duties, 65 Society, Membership in, 66 Soiled Garments, 85 Soft Men, 27 Solomon and Polygamy, 133 Society Rules and Customs, 191 Sowing Wild Oats, 417 Social Evil, 410 Speech, Improved by Reading, 57 Special Safeguards in Confinement, 299 Sprains, 359 Startling Sins, 423 Sterility in Females, 237 Sterility, 248 Sterility, Remedies for, 249 Sterility common to women, 251 Stomachache, 326 Stabs, 358 Story of Life for Children, 401 Stranger, Silken Enticements of, 28 Style of Beauty, 91 Summer Complaint, 340 Success or Failure, 276 Swollen Legs During Pregnancy, 276 Symptoms of the "Secret Habit", 451 Syphilitic Poison, 465 Syphilis (Pox), 464, 467 Syphilis (Pox) Treatment of, 468 Syphilis, Recipe for, 468 Syringes, Whirling Spray, 246 T Table Manners, 63 Tables for Feeding a Baby, 329 Teeth, 85 Test of Virginity, 202, 237 Teething, 336, 310 Teach Sex Truths to Children, 401, 416 Temples of Lust, 425 Thinking only of Dress, 81 Throat Troubles, 354 Tight Lacing, 104 Time to Marry, 351 Too Many Children, 229 Toothache, 280 True Kind of Beauty, 129 Twins, 205 Twilight Sleep, 479 U Unwelcome Child, 258 Union of the Sexes, The, 400 Unchastity, 409 Unfaithfulness, 423 Unjust Demands, 428 Underclothing, 85 Uniformed Men, 128 Unhappy Marriages, 151 Urethra, 231 Urethra, Stricture of--Symptoms and Treatment, 469 V Vaginal Cleanliness, 246 Vice or Virtue, 6 Virtues, Root of all the, 12 Virtue, A New, 19 Virginity, Test of, 202, 237 Vile Women, 382 Vomiting, 363 Vulgar Desire, 428 Vulgar, Society of the, 11 W Warning, 6 Waist, Natural, 105 Wasp Waists, 181 Warts, Cure for, 364 Wealth, 73 Wedlock, Advantages of, 135 Wedding Rings, 167 Wedding, The Proper Time, 199 Weaning, 318 Wens, 364 What Women Love in Men, 126 What Men Love in Women, 129 When and Whom to Marry, 311 Why Children Die, 226 When Conception Takes Place, 269 Whites, The, 277 What a Mother Should Know, 326 Whooping Cough, 344, 360 Why Girls Go Astray, 381 What is Puberty, 406 When Passion Begins, 407 Wife, How to be a Good, 210 Words, Power of, 15 Woman, The Best Educator, 25 Women, Young, 26 Women, Influence of, 30 Woman Haters, 61 Woman the Perfect Type of Beauty, 92 Woman's Love, 116 Women who Makes Best Wives, 178 Worms and Remedy, 341 Womb, inflammation of, 349 Womb Falling of, 350 Y Young Mothers, Advice to, 286 Young Man's Personal Appearance, 86 Youth, Bloom and Grace of, 97 Youthful Sexual Excitement, 126 [Transcriber's Note: Most probable typos in the original paper book have been retained as printed, e.g. saguine, excercise, diagnotic, attacts. However, two occurrences of "Prostrate" have been changed to "Prostate" when referring to the prostate gland.] 
17437	----	Transcribed from the 1874 W. Isbister & Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk HEALTH AND EDUCATION BY THE REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, F.L.S., F.G.S. CANON OF WESTMINSTER W. ISBISTER & CO. 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 1874 [_All rights reserved_] THE SCIENCE OF HEALTH Whether the British race is improving or degenerating? What, if it seem probably degenerating, are the causes of so great an evil? How they can be, if not destroyed, at least arrested?--These are questions worthy the attention, not of statesmen only and medical men, but of every father and mother in these isles. I shall say somewhat about them in this Essay; and say it in a form which ought to be intelligible to fathers and mothers of every class, from the highest to the lowest, in hopes of convincing some of them at least that the science of health, now so utterly neglected in our curriculum of so-called education, ought to be taught--the rudiments of it at least--in every school, college, and university. We talk of our hardy forefathers; and rightly. But they were hardy, just as the savage is usually hardy, because none but the hardy lived. They may have been able to say of themselves--as they do in a state paper of 1515, now well known through the pages of Mr. Froude--"What comyn folk of all the world may compare with the comyns of England, in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity? What comyn folk is so mighty, and so strong in the felde, as the comyns of England?" They may have been fed on "great shins of beef," till they became, as Benvenuto Cellini calls them, "the English wild beasts." But they increased in numbers slowly, if at all, for centuries. Those terrible laws of natural selection, which issue in "the survival of the fittest," cleared off the less fit, in every generation, principally by infantile disease, often by wholesale famine and pestilence; and left, on the whole, only those of the strongest constitutions to perpetuate a hardy, valiant, and enterprising race. At last came a sudden and unprecedented change. In the first years of the century, steam and commerce produced an enormous increase in the population. Millions of fresh human beings found employment, married, brought up children who found employment in their turn, and learnt to live more or less civilised lives. An event, doubtless, for which God is to be thanked. A quite new phase of humanity, bringing with it new vices and new dangers: but bringing, also, not merely new comforts, but new noblenesses, new generosities, new conceptions of duty, and of how that duty should be done. It is childish to regret the old times, when our soot-grimed manufacturing districts were green with lonely farms. To murmur at the transformation would be, I believe, to murmur at the will of Him without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground. "The old order changeth, yielding place to the new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." Our duty is, instead of longing for the good old custom, to take care of the good new custom, lest it should corrupt the world in like wise. And it may do so thus:-- The rapid increase of population during the first half of this century began at a moment when the British stock was specially exhausted; namely, about the end of the long French war. There may have been periods of exhaustion, at least in England, before that. There may have been one here, as there seems to have been on the Continent, after the Crusades; and another after the Wars of the Roses. There was certainly a period of severe exhaustion at the end of Elizabeth's reign, due both to the long Spanish and Irish wars and to the terrible endemics introduced from abroad; an exhaustion which may have caused, in part, the national weakness which hung upon us during the reign of the Stuarts. But after none of these did the survival of the less fit suddenly become more easy; or the discovery of steam power, and the acquisition of a colonial empire, create at once a fresh demand for human beings and a fresh supply of food for them. Britain, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was in an altogether new social situation. At the beginning of the great French war; and, indeed, ever since the beginning of the war with Spain in 1739--often snubbed as the "war about Jenkins's ear"--but which was, as I hold, one of the most just, as it was one of the most popular, of all our wars; after, too, the once famous "forty fine harvests" of the eighteenth century, the British people, from the gentleman who led to the soldier or sailor who followed, were one of the mightiest and most capable races which the world has ever seen, comparable best to the old Roman, at his mightiest and most capable period. That, at least, their works testify. They created--as far as man can be said to create anything--the British Empire. They won for us our colonies, our commerce, the mastery of the seas of all the world. But at what a cost-- "Their bones are scattered far and wide, By mount, and stream, and sea." Year after year, till the final triumph of Waterloo, not battle only, but worse destroyers than shot and shell--fatigue and disease--had been carrying off our stoutest, ablest, healthiest young men, each of whom represented, alas! a maiden left unmarried at home, or married, in default, to a less able man. The strongest went to the war; each who fell left a weaklier man to continue the race; while of those who did not fall, too many returned with tainted and weakened constitutions, to injure, it may be, generations yet unborn. The middle classes, being mostly engaged in peaceful pursuits, suffered less of this decimation of their finest young men; and to that fact I attribute much of their increasing preponderance, social, political, and intellectual, to this very day. One cannot walk the streets of any of our great commercial cities without seeing plenty of men, young and middle-aged, whose whole bearing and stature shows that the manly vigour of our middle class is anything but exhausted. In Liverpool, especially, I have been much struck not only with the vigorous countenance, but with the bodily size of the mercantile men on 'Change. But it must be remembered always, first, that these men are the very elite of their class; the cleverest men; the men capable of doing most work; and next, that they are, almost all of them, from the great merchant who has his villa out of town, and perhaps his moor in the Highlands, down to the sturdy young volunteer who serves in the haberdasher's shop, country-bred men; and that the question is, not what they are like now, but what their children and grand-children, especially the fine young volunteer's, will be like? And a very serious question I hold that to be; and for this reason: War is, without doubt, the most hideous physical curse which fallen man inflicts upon himself; and for this simple reason, that it reverses the very laws of nature, and is more cruel even than pestilence. For instead of issuing in the survival of the fittest, it issues in the survival of the less fit: and therefore, if protracted, must deteriorate generations yet unborn. And yet a peace such as we now enjoy, prosperous, civilised, humane, is fraught, though to a less degree, with the very same ill effect. In the first place, tens of thousands--Who knows it not?--lead sedentary and unwholesome lives, stooping, asphyxiated, employing as small a fraction of their bodies as of their minds. And all this in dwellings, workshops, what not?--the influences, the very atmosphere of which tend not to health, but to unhealth, and to drunkenness as a solace under the feeling of unhealth and depression. And that such a life must tell upon their offspring, and if their offspring grow up under similar circumstances, upon their offspring's offspring, till a whole population may become permanently degraded, who does not know? For who that walks through the by-streets of any great city does not see? Moreover, and this is one of the most fearful problems with which modern civilisation has to deal--we interfere with natural selection by our conscientious care of life, as surely as does war itself. If war kills the most fit to live, we save alive those who--looking at them from a merely physical point of view--are most fit to die. Everything which makes it more easy to live; every sanatory reform, prevention of pestilence, medical discovery, amelioration of climate, drainage of soil, improvement in dwelling-houses, workhouses, gaols; every reformatory school, every hospital, every cure of drunkenness, every influence, in short, which has--so I am told--increased the average length of life in these islands, by nearly one-third, since the first establishment of life insurances, one hundred and fifty years ago; every influence of this kind, I say, saves persons alive who would otherwise have died; and the great majority of these will be, even in surgical and zymotic cases, those of least resisting power; who are thus preserved to produce in time a still less powerful progeny. Do I say that we ought not to save these people, if we can? God forbid. The weakly, the diseased, whether infant or adult, is here on earth; a British citizen; no more responsible for his own weakness than for his own existence. Society, that is, in plain English, we and our ancestors, are responsible for both; and we must fulfil the duty, and keep him in life; and, if we can, heal, strengthen, develop him to the utmost; and make the best of that which "fate and our own deservings" have given us to deal with. I do not speak of higher motives still; motives which to every minister of religion must be paramount and awful. I speak merely of physical and social motives, such as appeal to the conscience of every man--the instinct which bids every human-hearted man or woman to save life, alleviate pain, like Him who causes His sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust. But it is palpable, that in so doing we must, year by year, preserve a large percentage of weakly persons, who, marrying freely in their own class, must produce weaklier children, and they weaklier children still. Must, did I say? There are those who are of opinion--and I, after watching and comparing the histories of many families, indeed, of every one with whom I have come in contact for now five-and-thirty years, in town and country, can only fear that their opinion is but too well founded on fact--that in the great majority of cases, in all classes whatsoever, the children are not equal to their parents, nor they, again, to their grandparents of the beginning of the century; and that this degrading process goes on most surely, and most rapidly, in our large towns, and in proportion to the antiquity of those towns, and therefore in proportion to the number of generations during which the degrading influences have been at work. This and cognate dangers have been felt more and more deeply, as the years have rolled on, by students of human society. To ward them off, theory after theory has been put on paper, especially in France, which deserve high praise for their ingenuity, less for their morality, and, I fear, still less for their common-sense. For the theorist in his closet is certain to ignore, as inconvenient to the construction of his Utopia, certain of those broad facts of human nature which every active parish priest, medical man, or poor-law guardian has to face every day of his life. Society and British human nature are what they have become by the indirect influences of long ages, and we can no more reconstruct the one than we can change the other. We can no more mend men by theories than we can by coercion--to which, by the by, almost all these theorists look longingly as their final hope and mainstay. We must teach men to mend their own matters, of their own reason, and their own free-will. We must teach them that they are the arbiters of their own destinies; and, to a fearfully great degree, of their children's destinies after them. We must teach them not merely that they ought to be free, but that they are free, whether they know it or not, for good and for evil. And we must do that in this case, by teaching them sound practical science; the science of physiology, as applied to health. So, and so only, can we check--I do not say stop entirely--though I believe even that to be ideally possible; but at least check the process of degradation which I believe to be surely going on, not merely in these islands, but in every civilised country in the world, in proportion to its civilisation. It is still a question whether science has fully discovered those laws of hereditary health, the disregard of which causes so many marriages disastrous to generations yet unborn. But much valuable light has been thrown on this most mysterious and most important subject during the last few years. That light--and I thank God for it--is widening and deepening rapidly. And I doubt not that, in a generation or two more, enough will be known to be thrown into the shape of practical and proveable rules; and that, if not a public opinion, yet at least, what is more useful far, a wide-spread private opinion, will grow up, especially among educated women, which will prevent many a tragedy and save many a life. But, as to the laws of personal health: enough, and more than enough, is known already, to be applied safely and easily by any adults, however unlearned, to the preservation not only of their own health, but of that of their children. The value of healthy habitations, of personal cleanliness, of pure air and pure water, of various kinds of food, according as each tends to make bone, fat, or muscle, provided only--provided only--that the food be unadulterated; the value of various kinds of clothing, and physical exercise, of a free and equal development of the brain-power, without undue overstrain in any one direction; in one word, the method of producing, as far as possible, the mentem sanam in corpore sano, and the wonderful and blessed effects of such obedience to those laws of nature, which are nothing but the good will of God expressed in facts--their wonderful and blessed tendency, I say, to eliminate the germs of hereditary disease, and to actually regenerate the human system--all this is known; known as fully and clearly as any human knowledge need be known; it is written in dozens of popular books and pamphlets. And why should this divine voice, which cries to man, tending to sink into effeminate barbarism through his own hasty and partial civilisation,--"It is not too late. For your bodies, as for your spirits, there is an upward, as well as a downward path. You, or if not you, at least the children whom you have brought into the world, for whom you toil, for whom you hoard, for whom you pray, for whom you would give your lives,--they still may be healthy, strong, it may be beautiful, and have all the intellectual and social, as well as the physical advantages, which health, strength, and beauty give."--Ah, why is this divine voice now, as of old, Wisdom crying in the streets, and no man regarding her? I appeal to women, who are initiated, as we men can never be, into the stern mysteries of pain, and sorrow, and self-sacrifice;--they who bring forth children, weep over children, slave for children, and, if they have none of their own, then slave, with the holy instinct of the sexless bee, for the children of others--Let them say, shall this thing be? Let my readers pardon me if I seem to write too earnestly. That I speak neither more nor less than the truth, every medical man knows full well. Not only as a very humble student of physiology, but as a parish priest of thirty years' standing, I have seen so much unnecessary misery; and I have in other cases seen similar misery so simply avoided; that the sense of the vastness of the evil is intensified by my sense of the easiness of the cure. Why, then--to come to practical suggestions--should there not be opened in every great town in these realms a public school of health? It might connect itself with--I hold that it should form an integral part of--some existing educational institute. But it should at least give practical lectures, for fees small enough to put them within the reach of any respectable man or woman, however poor. I cannot but hope that such schools of health, if opened in the great manufacturing towns of England and Scotland, and, indeed, in such an Irish town as Belfast, would obtain pupils in plenty, and pupils who would thoroughly profit by what they hear. The people of these towns are, most of them, specially accustomed by their own trades to the application of scientific laws. To them, therefore, the application of any fresh physical laws to a fresh set of facts, would have nothing strange in it. They have already something of that inductive habit of mind which is the groundwork of all rational understanding or action. They would not turn the deaf and contemptuous ear with which the savage and the superstitious receive the revelation of nature's mysteries. Why should not, with so hopeful an audience, the experiment be tried far and wide, of giving lectures on health, as supplementary to those lectures on animal physiology which are, I am happy to say, becoming more and more common? Why should not people be taught--they are already being taught at Birmingham--something about the tissues of the body, their structure and uses, the circulation of the blood, respiration, chemical changes in the air respired, amount breathed, digestion, nature of food, absorption, secretion, structure of the nervous system,--in fact, be taught something of how their own bodies are made and how they work? Teaching of this kind ought to, and will, in some more civilised age and country, be held a necessary element in the school-course of every child, just as necessary as reading, writing, and arithmetic; for it is after all the most necessary branch of that "technical education" of which we hear so much just now, namely, the technic, or art, of keeping oneself alive and well. But we can hardly stop there. After we have taught the condition of health, we must teach also the condition of disease; of those diseases specially which tend to lessen wholesale the health of townsfolk, exposed to an artificial mode of life. Surely young men and women should be taught something of the causes of zymotic disease, and of scrofula, consumption, rickets, dipsomania, cerebral derangement, and such like. They should be shown the practical value of pure air, pure water, unadulterated food, sweet and dry dwellings. Is there one of them, man or woman, who would not be the safer and happier, and the more useful to his or her neighbours, if they had acquired some sound notions about those questions of drainage on which their own lives and the lives of their children may every day depend? I say--women as well as men. I should have said women rather than men. For it is the women who have the ordering of the household, the bringing up of the children; the women who bide at home, while the men are away, it may be at the other end of the earth. And if any say, as they have a right to say--"But these are subjects which can hardly be taught to young women in public lectures;" I rejoin,--Of course not, unless they are taught by women,--by women, of course, duly educated and legally qualified. Let such teach to women, what every woman ought to know, and what her parents will very properly object to her hearing from almost any man. This is one of the main reasons why I have, for twenty years past, advocated the training of women for the medical profession; and one which countervails, in my mind, all possible objections to such a movement. And now, thank God, I am seeing the common sense of Great Britain, and indeed of every civilised nation, gradually coming round to that which seemed to me, when I first conceived of it, a dream too chimerical to be cherished save in secret--the restoring woman to her natural share in that sacred office of healer, which she held in the Middle Ages, and from which she was thrust out during the sixteenth century. I am most happy to see, for instance, that the National Health Society, {15} which I earnestly recommend to the attention of my readers, announces a "Course of Lectures for Ladies on Elementary Physiology and Hygiene, by Miss Chessar," to which I am also most happy to see, governesses are admitted at half-fees. Alas! how much misery, disease, and even death, might have been prevented, had governesses been taught such matters thirty years ago, I, for one, know too well. May the day soon come when there will be educated women enough to give such lectures throughout these realms, to rich as well as poor,--for the rich, strange to say, need them often as much as the poor do,--and that we may live to see, in every great town, health classes for women as well as for men, sending forth year by year more young women and young men taught, not only to take care of themselves and of their families, but to exercise moral influence over their fellow-citizens, as champions in the battle against dirt and drunkenness, disease and death. There may be those who would answer--or rather, there would certainly have been those who would have so answered thirty years ago, before the so-called materialism of advanced science had taught us some practical wisdom about education, and reminded people that they have bodies as well as minds and souls--"You say, we are likely to grow weaklier, unhealthier. And if it were so, what matter? Mind makes the man, not body. We do not want our children to be stupid giants and bravos; but clever, able, highly educated, however weakly Providence or the laws of nature may have chosen to make them. Let them overstrain their brains a little; let them contract their chests, and injure their digestion and their eyesight, by sitting at desks, poring over books. Intellect is what we want. Intellect makes money. Intellect makes the world. We would rather see our son a genius than an athlete." Well: and so would I. But what if intellect alone does not even make money, save as Messrs. Dodson & Fogg, Sampson Brass, and Montagu Tigg were wont to make it, unless backed by an able, enduring, healthy physique, such as I have seen, almost without exception, in those successful men of business whom I have had the honour and the pleasure of knowing? What if intellect, or what is now called intellect, did not make the world, or the smallest wheel or cog of it? What if, for want of obeying the laws of nature, parents bred up neither a genius nor an athlete, but only an incapable unhappy personage, with a huge upright forehead, like that of a Byzantine Greek, filled with some sort of pap instead of brains, and tempted alternately to fanaticism and strong drink? We must, in the great majority of cases have the corpus sanem if we want the mentem sanem; and healthy bodies are the only trustworthy organs for healthy minds. Which is cause and which is effect, I shall not stay to debate here. But wherever we find a population generally weakly, stunted, scrofulous, we find in them a corresponding type of brain, which cannot be trusted to do good work; which is capable more or less of madness, whether solitary or epidemic. It may be very active; it may be very quick at catching at new and grand ideas--all the more quick, perhaps, on account of its own secret _malaise_ and self-discontent: but it will be irritable, spasmodic, hysterical. It will be apt to mistake capacity of talk for capacity of action, excitement for earnestness, virulence for force, and, too often, cruelty for justice. It will lose manful independence, individuality, originality; and when men act, they will act, from the consciousness of personal weakness, like sheep rushing over a hedge, leaning against each other, exhorting each other to be brave, and swaying about in mobs and masses. These were the intellectual weaknesses which, as I read history, followed on physical degradation in Imperial Rome, in Alexandria, in Byzantium. Have we not seen them reappear, under fearful forms, in Paris but the other day? I do not blame; I do not judge. My theory, which I hold, and shall hold, to be fairly founded on a wide induction, forbids me to blame and to judge: because it tells me that these defects are mainly physical; that those who exhibit them are mainly to be pitied, as victims of the sins or ignorance of their forefathers. But it tells me too, that those who, professing to be educated men, and therefore bound to know better, treat these physical phenomena as spiritual, healthy, and praiseworthy; who even exasperate them, that they may make capital out of the weaknesses of fallen man, are the most contemptible and yet the most dangerous of public enemies, let them cloak their quackery under whatsoever patriotic, or scientific, or even sacred words. There are those again honest, kindly, sensible, practical men, many of them; men whom I have no wish to offend; whom I had rather ask to teach me some of their own experience and common sense, which has learned to discern, like good statesmen, not only what ought to be done, but what can be done--there are those, I say, who would sooner see this whole question let alone. Their feeling, as far as I can analyse it, seems to be, that the evils of which I have been complaining, are on the whole inevitable: or, if not, that we can mend so very little of them, that it is wisest to leave them alone altogether, lest, like certain sewers, "the more you stir them, the more they smell." They fear lest we should unsettle the minds of the many for whom these evils will never be mended; lest we make them discontented; discontented with their houses, their occupations, their food, their whole social arrangements; and all in vain. I should answer, in all courtesy and humility--for I sympathise deeply with such men and women, and respect them deeply likewise--But are not people discontented already, from the lowest to the highest? And ought a man, in such a piecemeal, foolish, greedy, sinful world as this is, and always has been, to be anything but discontented? If he thinks that things are going all right, must he not have a most beggarly conception of what going right means? And if things are not going right, can it be anything but good for him to see that they are not going right? Can truth and fact harm any human being? I shall not believe so, as long as I have a Bible wherein to believe. For my part, I should like to make every man, woman, and child whom I meet discontented with themselves, even as I am discontented with myself. I should like to awaken in them, about their physical, their intellectual, their moral condition, that divine discontent which is the parent, first of upward aspiration and then of self-control, thought, effort to fulfil that aspiration even in part. For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue. Men begin at first, as boys begin when they grumble at their school and their schoolmasters, to lay the blame on others; to be discontented with their circumstances--the things which stand around them; and to cry, "Oh that I had this!" "Oh that I had that!" But that way no deliverance lies. That discontent only ends in revolt and rebellion, social or political; and that, again, still in the same worship of circumstances--but this time desperate--which ends, let it disguise itself under what fine names it will, in what the old Greeks called a tyranny; in which--as in the Spanish republics of America, and in France more than once--all have become the voluntary slaves of one man, because each man fancies that the one man can improve his circumstances for him. But the wise man will learn, like Epictetus the heroic slave, the slave of Epaphroditus, Nero's minion--and in what baser and uglier circumstances could human being find himself?--to find out the secret of being truly free; namely, to be discontented with no man and no thing save himself. To say not--"Oh that I had this and that!" but "Oh that I were this and that!" Then, by God's help--and that heroic slave, heathen though he was, believed and trusted in God's help--"I will make myself that which God has shown me that I ought to be and can be." Ten thousand a-year, or ten million a-year, as Epictetus saw full well, cannot mend that vulgar discontent with circumstances, which he had felt--and who with more right?--and conquered, and despised. For that is the discontent of children, wanting always more holidays and more sweets. But I wish my readers to have, and to cherish, the discontent of men and women. Therefore I would make men and women discontented, with the divine and wholesome discontent, at their own physical frame, and at that of their children. I would accustom their eyes to those precious heirlooms of the human race, the statues of the old Greeks; to their tender grandeur, their chaste healthfulness, their unconscious, because perfect, might: and say--There; these are tokens to you, and to all generations yet unborn, of what man could be once; of what he can be again if he will obey those laws of nature which are the voice of God. I would make them discontented with the ugliness and closeness of their dwellings; I would make the men discontented with the fashion of their garments, and still more just now the women, of all ranks, with the fashion of theirs; and with everything around them which they have the power of improving, if it be at all ungraceful, superfluous, tawdry, ridiculous, unwholesome. I would make them discontented with what they call their education, and say to them--You call the three Royal R's education? They are not education: no more is the knowledge which would enable you to take the highest prizes given by the Society of Arts, or any other body. They are not education: they are only instruction; a necessary groundwork, in an age like this, for making practical use of your education: but not the education itself. And if they asked me, What then education meant? I should point them, first, I think, to noble old Lilly's noble old 'Euphues,' of three hundred years ago, and ask them to consider what it says about education, and especially this passage concerning that mere knowledge which is now-a- days strangely miscalled education. "There are two principal and peculiar gifts in the nature of man, knowledge and reason. The one"--that is reason--"commandeth, and the other"--that is knowledge--"obeyeth. These things neither the whirling wheel of fortune can change, nor the deceitful cavillings of worldlings separate, neither sickness abate, nor age abolish." And next I should point them to those pages in Mr. Gladstone's 'Juventus Mundi,' where he describes the ideal training of a Greek youth in Homer's days; and say,--There: that is an education fit for a really civilised man, even though he never saw a book in his life; the full, proportionate, harmonious educing--that is, bringing out and developing--of all the faculties of his body, mind, and heart, till he becomes at once a reverent yet a self-assured, a graceful and yet a valiant, an able and yet an eloquent personage. And if any should say to me--"But what has this to do with science? Homer's Greeks knew no science;" I should rejoin--But they had, pre-eminently above all ancient races which we know, the scientific instinct; the teachableness and modesty; the clear eye and quick ear; the hearty reverence for fact and nature, and for the human body, and mind, and spirit; for human nature, in a word, in its completeness, as the highest fact upon this earth. Therefore they became in after years, not only the great colonisers and the great civilisers of the old world--the most practical people, I hold, which the world ever saw; but the parents of all sound physics as well as of all sound metaphysics. Their very religion, in spite of its imperfections, helped forward their education, not in spite of, but by means of, that anthropomorphism which we sometimes too hastily decry. As Mr. Gladstone says in a passage which I must quote at length--"As regarded all other functions of our nature, outside the domain of the life to Godward--all those functions which are summed up in what St. Paul calls the flesh and the mind, the psychic and bodily life, the tendency of the system was to exalt the human element, by proposing a model of beauty, strength, and wisdom, in all their combinations, so elevated that the effort to attain them required a continual upward strain. It made divinity attainable; and thus it effectually directed the thought and aim of man 'Along the line of limitless desires.' Such a scheme of religion, though failing grossly in the government of the passions, and in upholding the standard of moral duties, tended powerfully to produce a lofty self-respect, and a large, free, and varied conception of humanity. It incorporated itself in schemes of notable discipline for mind and body, indeed of a lifelong education; and these habits of mind and action had their marked results (to omit many other greatnesses) in a philosophy, literature, and art, which remain to this day unrivalled or unsurpassed." So much those old Greeks did for their own education, without science and without Christianity. We who have both: what might we not do, if we would be true to our advantages, and to ourselves? THE TWO BREATHS. A LECTURE DELIVERED AT WINCHESTER, MAY 31, 1869. Ladies,--I have been honoured by a second invitation to address you here, from the lady to whose public spirit the establishment of these lectures is due. I dare not refuse it: because it gives me an opportunity of speaking on a matter, knowledge and ignorance about which may seriously affect your health and happiness, and that of the children with whom you may have to do. I must apologize if I say many things which are well known to many persons in this room: they ought to be well known to all; and it is generally best to assume total ignorance in one's hearers, and to begin from the beginning. I shall try to be as simple as possible; to trouble you as little as possible with scientific terms; to be practical; and at the same time, if possible, interesting. I should wish to call this lecture "The Two Breaths:" not merely "The Breath;" and for this reason: every time you breathe, you breathe two different breaths; you take in one, you give out another. The composition of those two breaths is different. Their effects are different. The breath which has been breathed out must not be breathed in again. To tell you why it must not would lead me into anatomical details, not quite in place here as yet: though the day will come, I trust, when every woman entrusted with the care of children will be expected to know something about them. But this I may say--Those who habitually take in fresh breath will probably grow up large, strong, ruddy, cheerful, active, clear-headed, fit for their work. Those who habitually take in the breath which has been breathed out by themselves, or any other living creature, will certainly grow up, if they grow up at all, small, weak, pale, nervous, depressed, unfit for work, and tempted continually to resort to stimulants, and become drunkards. If you want to see how different the breath breathed out is from the breath taken in, you have only to try a somewhat cruel experiment, but one which people too often try upon themselves, their children, and their work-people. If you take any small animal with lungs like your own--a mouse, for instance--and force it to breathe no air but what you have breathed already; if you put it in a close box, and while you take in breath from the outer air, send out your breath through a tube, into that box, the animal will soon faint; if you go on long with this process, it will die. Take a second instance, which I beg to press most seriously on the notice of mothers, governesses, and nurses: If you allow a child to get into the habit of sleeping with its head under the bed-clothes, and thereby breathing its own breath over and over again, that child will assuredly grow pale, weak, and ill. Medical men have cases on record of scrofula appearing in children previously healthy, which could only be accounted for from this habit, and which ceased when the habit stopped. Let me again entreat your attention to this undoubted fact. Take another instance, which is only too common: If you are in a crowded room, with plenty of fire and lights and company, doors and windows all shut tight, how often you feel faint--so faint, that you may require smelling-salts or some other stimulant. The cause of your faintness is just the same as that of the mouse's fainting in the box: you and your friends, and, as I shall show you presently, the fire and the candles likewise, having been all breathing each other's breaths, over and over again, till the air has become unfit to support life. You are doing your best to enact over again the Highland tragedy, of which Sir James Simpson tells in his lectures to the working-classes of Edinburgh, when at a Christmas meeting thirty-six persons danced all night in a small room with a low ceiling, keeping the doors and windows shut. The atmosphere of the room was noxious beyond description; and the effect was, that seven of the party were soon after seized with typhus fever, of which two died. You are inflicting on yourselves the torments of the poor dog, who is kept at the Grotto del Cane, near Naples, to be stupified, for the amusement of visitors, by the carbonic acid gas of the Grotto, and brought to life again by being dragged into the fresh air; nay, you are inflicting upon yourselves the torments of the famous Black Hole of Calcutta; and, if there was no chimney in the room, by which some fresh air could enter, the candles would soon burn blue--as they do, you know, when ghosts appear; your brains become disturbed; and you yourselves run the risk of becoming ghosts, and the candles of actually going out. Of this last fact there is no doubt; for if, instead of putting a mouse into the box, you will put a lighted candle, and breathe into the tube, as before, however gently, you will in a short time put the candle out. Now, how is this? First, what is the difference between the breath you take in and the breath you give out? And next, why has it a similar effect on animal life and a lighted candle? The difference is this. The breath which you take in is, or ought to be, pure air, composed, on the whole, of oxygen and nitrogen, with a minute portion of carbonic acid. The breath which you give out is an impure air, to which has been added, among other matters which will not support life, an excess of carbonic acid. That this is the fact you can prove for yourselves by a simple experiment. Get a little lime water at the chemist's, and breathe into it through a glass tube; your breath will at once make the lime-water milky. The carbonic acid of your breath has laid hold of the lime, and made it visible as white carbonate of lime--in plain English, as common chalk. Now, I do not wish, as I said, to load your memories with scientific terms: but I beseech you to remember at least these two--oxygen gas and carbonic acid gas; and to remember that, as surely as oxygen feeds the fire of life, so surely does carbonic acid put it out. I say, "the fire of life." In that expression lies the answer to our second question: Why does our breath produce a similar effect upon the mouse and the lighted candle? Every one of us is, as it were, a living fire. Were we not, how could we be always warmer than the air outside us? There is a process going on perpetually in each of us, similar to that by which coals are burnt in the fire, oil in a lamp, wax in a candle, and the earth itself in a volcano. To keep each of those fires alight, oxygen is needed; and the products of combustion, as they are called, are more or less the same in each case--carbonic acid and steam. These facts justify the expression I just made use of--which may have seemed to some of you fantastical--that the fire and the candles in the crowded room were breathing the same breath as you were. It is but too true. An average fire in the grate requires, to keep it burning, as much oxygen as several human beings do; each candle or lamp must have its share of oxygen likewise, and that a very considerable one; and an average gas-burner--pray attend to this, you who live in rooms lighted with gas--consumes as much oxygen as several candles. All alike are making carbonic acid. The carbonic acid of the fire happily escapes up the chimney in the smoke: but the carbonic acid from the human beings and the candles remains to poison the room, unless it be ventilated. Now, I think you may understand one of the simplest, and yet most terrible, cases of want of ventilation--death by the fumes of charcoal. A human being shut up in a room, of which every crack is closed, with a pan of burning charcoal, falls asleep, never to wake again. His inward fire is competing with the fire of the charcoal for the oxygen of the room; both are making carbonic acid out of it: but the charcoal, being the stronger of the two, gets all the oxygen to itself, and leaves the human being nothing to inhale but the carbonic acid which it has made. The human being, being the weaker, dies first: but the charcoal dies also. When it has exhausted all the oxygen of the room, it cools, goes out, and is found in the morning half-consumed beside its victim. If you put a giant or an elephant, I should conceive, into that room, instead of a human being, the case would be reversed for a time: the elephant would put out the burning charcoal by the carbonic acid from his mighty lungs; and then, when he had exhausted all the air in the room, die likewise of his own carbonic acid. * * * * * Now, I think, we may see what ventilation means, and why it is needed. Ventilation means simply letting out the foul air, and letting in the fresh air; letting out the air which has been breathed by men or by candles, and letting in the air which has not. To understand how to do that, we must remember a most simple chemical law, that a gas as it is warmed expands, and therefore becomes lighter; as it cools, it contracts, and becomes heavier. Now the carbonic acid in the breath which comes out of our mouth is warm, lighter than the air, and rises to the ceiling; and therefore in any unventilated room full of people, there is a layer of foul air along the ceiling. You might soon test that for yourselves, if you could mount a ladder and put your heads there aloft. You do test it for yourselves when you sit in the galleries of churches and theatres, where the air is palpably more foul, and therefore more injurious, than down below. Where, again, work-people are employed in a crowded house of many storeys, the health of those who work on the upper floors always suffers most. In the old monkey-house of the Zoological Gardens, when the cages were on the old plan, tier upon tier, the poor little fellows in the uppermost tier--so I have been told--always died first of the monkey's constitutional complaint, consumption, simply from breathing the warm breath of their friends below. But since the cages have been altered, and made to range side by side from top to bottom, consumption--I understand--has vastly diminished among them. The first question in ventilation, therefore, is to get this carbonic acid safe out of the room, while it is warm and light and close to the ceiling; for if you do not, this happens--The carbonic acid gas cools and becomes heavier; for carbonic acid, at the same temperature as common air, is so much heavier than common air, that you may actually--if you are handy enough--turn it from one vessel to another, and pour out for your enemy a glass of invisible poison. So down to the floor this heavy carbonic acid comes, and lies along it, just as it lies often in the bottom of old wells, or old brewers' vats, as a stratum of poison, killing occasionally the men who descend into it. Hence, as foolish a practice as I know is that of sleeping on the floor; for towards the small hours, when the room gets cold, the sleeper on the floor is breathing carbonic acid. And here one word to those ladies who interest themselves with the poor. The poor are too apt in times of distress to pawn their bedsteads and keep their beds. Never, if you have influence, let that happen. Keep the bedstead, whatever else may go, to save the sleeper from the carbonic acid on the floor. How, then, shall we get rid of the foul air at the top of the room? After all that has been written and tried on ventilation, I know no simpler method than putting into the chimney one of Arnott's ventilators, which may be bought and fixed for a few shillings; always remembering that it must be fixed into the chimney as near the ceiling as possible. I can speak of these ventilators from twenty-five years' experience. Living in a house with low ceilings, liable to become overcharged with carbonic acid, which produces sleepiness in the evening, I have found that these ventilators keep the air fresh and pure; and I consider the presence of one of these ventilators in a room more valuable than three or four feet additional height of ceiling. I have found, too, that their working proves how necessary they are, from this simple fact:--You would suppose that, as the ventilator opens freely into the chimney, the smoke would be blown down through it in high winds, and blacken the ceiling: but this is just what does not happen. If the ventilator be at all properly poised, so as to shut with a violent gust of wind, it will at all other moments keep itself permanently open; proving thereby that there is an up-draught of heated air continually escaping from the ceiling up the chimney. Another very simple method of ventilation is employed in those excellent cottages which Her Majesty has built for her labourers round Windsor. Over each door a sheet of perforated zinc, some 18 inches square, is fixed; allowing the foul air to escape into the passage; and in the ceiling of the passage a similar sheet of zinc, allowing it to escape into the roof. Fresh air, meanwhile, should be obtained from outside, by piercing the windows, or otherwise. And here let me give one hint to all builders of houses. If possible, let bedroom windows open at the top as well as at the bottom. Let me impress the necessity of using some such contrivances, not only on parents and educators, but on those who employ work-people, and above all on those who employ young women in shops or in work-rooms. What their condition may be in this city I know not; but most painful it has been to me in other places, when passing through warehouses or work-rooms, to see the pale, sodden, and, as the French would say "etiolated" countenances of the girls who were passing the greater part of the day in them; and painful, also, to breathe an atmosphere of which habit had, alas! made them unconscious, but which to one coming out of the open air was altogether noxious, and shocking also; for it was fostering the seeds of death, not only in the present but in future generations. Why should this be? Every one will agree that good ventilation is necessary in a hospital, because people cannot get well without fresh air. Do they not see that by the same reasoning good ventilation is necessary everywhere, because people cannot remain well without fresh air? Let me entreat those who employ women in work-rooms, if they have no time to read through such books as Dr. Andrew Combe's 'Physiology applied to Health and Education,' and Madame de Wahl's 'Practical Hints on the Moral, Mental, and Physical Training of Girls,' to procure certain tracts published by Messrs. Jarrold, Paternoster Row, for the Ladies' Sanitary Association; especially one which bears on this subject, 'The Black-Hole in our own Bedrooms;' Dr. Lankester's 'School Manual of Health;' or a manual on ventilation, published by the Metropolitan Working Classes Association for the Improvement of Public Health. I look forward--I say it openly--to some period of higher civilisation, when the Acts of Parliament for the ventilation of factories and workshops shall be largely extended, and made far more stringent; when officers of public health shall be empowered to enforce the ventilation of every room in which persons are employed for hire; and empowered also to demand a proper system of ventilation for every new house, whether in country or in town. To that, I believe, we must come: but I had sooner far see these improvements carried out, as befits the citizens of a free country, in the spirit of the Gospel rather than in that of the Law; carried out, not compulsorily and from fear of fines, but voluntarily, from a sense of duty, honour, and humanity. I appeal, therefore, to the good feeling of all whom it may concern, whether the health of those whom they employ, and therefore the supply of fresh air which they absolutely need, are not matters for which they are not, more or less, responsible to their country and their God. And if any excellent person of the old school should answer me--"Why make all this fuss about ventilation? Our forefathers got on very well without it"--I must answer that, begging their pardons, our ancestors did nothing of the kind. Our ancestors got on usually very ill in these matters: and when they got on well, it was because they had good ventilation in spite of themselves. First. They got on very ill. To quote a few remarkable instances of longevity, or to tell me that men were larger and stronger on the average in old times, is to yield to the old fallacy of fancying that savages were peculiarly healthy, because those who were seen were active and strong. The simple answer is, that the strong alone survived, while the majority died from the severity of the training. Savages do not increase in number; and our ancestors increased but very slowly for many centuries. I am not going to disgust my audience with statistics of disease: but knowing something, as I happen to do, of the social state and of the health of the Middle and Elizabethan Ages, I have no hesitation in saying that the average of disease and death was far greater then than it is now. Epidemics of many kinds, typhus, ague, plague--all diseases which were caused more or less by bad air--devastated this land and Europe in those days with a horrible intensity, to which even the choleras of our times are mild. The back streets, the hospitals, the gaols, the barracks, the camps--every place in which any large number of persons congregated, were so many nests of pestilence, engendered by uncleanliness, which denied alike the water which was drunk and the air which was breathed; and as a single fact, of which the tables of insurance companies assure us, the average of human life in England has increased twenty-five per cent. since the reign of George I., owing simply to our more rational and cleanly habits of life. But secondly, I said that when our ancestors got on well, they did so because they got ventilation in spite of themselves. Luckily for them, their houses were ill-built; their doors and windows would not shut. They had lattice-windowed houses, too; to live in one of which, as I can testify from long experience, is as thoroughly ventilating as living in a lantern with the horn broken out. It was because their houses were full of draughts, and still more, in the early middle age, because they had no glass, and stopped out the air only by a shutter at night, that they sought for shelter rather than for fresh air, of which they sometimes had too much; and, to escape the wind, built their houses in holes, such as that in which the old city of Winchester stands. Shelter, I believe, as much as the desire to be near fish in Lent, and to occupy the rich alluvium of the valleys, made the monks of Old England choose the river- banks for the sites of their abbeys. They made a mistake therein, which, like most mistakes, did not go unpunished. These low situations, especially while the forests were yet thick on the hills around, were the perennial haunts of fever and ague, produced by subtle vegetable poisons, carried in the carbonic acid given off by rotting vegetation. So there, again, they fell in with man's old enemy--bad air. Still, as long as the doors and windows did not shut, some free circulation of air remained. But now, our doors and windows shut only too tight. We have plate-glass instead of lattices; and we have replaced the draughty and smoky, but really wholesome open chimney, with its wide corners and settles, by narrow registers, and even by stoves. We have done all we can, in fact, to seal ourselves up hermetically from the outer air, and to breathe our own breaths over and over again; and we pay the penalty of it in a thousand ways unknown to our ancestors, through whose rooms all the winds of heaven whistled, and who were glad enough to shelter themselves from draughts in the sitting-room by the high screen round the fire, and in the sleeping-room by the thick curtains of the four-post bedstead, which is now rapidly disappearing before a higher civilisation. We therefore absolutely require to make for ourselves the very ventilation from which our ancestors tried to escape. But, ladies, there is an old and true proverb, that you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. And in like wise it is too true, that you may bring people to the fresh air, but you cannot make them breathe it. Their own folly, or the folly of their parents and educators, prevents their lungs being duly filled and duly emptied. Therefore, the blood is not duly oxygenated, and the whole system goes wrong. Paleness, weakness, consumption, scrofula, and too many other ailments, are the consequences of ill-filled lungs. For without well-filled lungs, robust health is impossible. And if any one shall answer--"We do not want robust health so much as intellectual attainment. The mortal body, being the lower organ, must take its chance, and be even sacrificed, if need be, to the higher organ--the immortal mind:"--To such I reply, You cannot do it. The laws of nature, which are the express will of God, laugh such attempts to scorn. Every organ of the body is formed out of the blood; and if the blood be vitiated, every organ suffers in proportion to its delicacy; and the brain, being the most delicate and highly specialised of all organs, suffers most of all and soonest of all, as every one knows who has tried to work his brain when his digestion was the least out of order. Nay, the very morals will suffer. From ill-filled lungs, which signify ill- repaired blood, arise year by year an amount not merely of disease, but of folly, temper, laziness, intemperance, madness, and, let me tell you fairly, crime--the sum of which will never be known till that great day when men shall be called to account for all deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil. I must refer you on this subject again to Andrew Combe's 'Physiology,' especially chapters iv. and vii.; and also to chapter x. of Madame de Wahl's excellent book. I will only say this shortly, that the three most common causes of ill-filled lungs, in children and in young ladies, are stillness, silence, and stays. First, stillness; a sedentary life, and want of exercise. A girl is kept for hours sitting on a form writing or reading, to do which she must lean forward; and if her schoolmistress cruelly attempts to make her sit upright, and thereby keep the spine in an attitude for which Nature did not intend it, she is thereby doing her best to bring on that disease, so fearfully common in girls' schools, lateral curvature of the spine. But practically the girl will stoop forward. And what happens? The lower ribs are pressed into the body, thereby displacing more or less something inside. The diaphragm in the meantime, which is the very bellows of the lungs, remains loose; the lungs are never properly filled or emptied; and an excess of carbonic acid accumulates at the bottom of them. What follows? Frequent sighing to get rid of it; heaviness of head; depression of the whole nervous system under the influence of the poison of the lungs; and when the poor child gets up from her weary work, what is the first thing she probably does? She lifts up her chest, stretches, yawns, and breathes deeply--Nature's voice, Nature's instinctive cure, which is probably regarded as ungraceful, as what is called "lolling" is. As if sitting upright was not an attitude in itself essentially ungraceful, and such as no artist would care to draw. As if "lolling," which means putting the body in the attitude of the most perfect ease compatible with a fully expanded chest, was not in itself essentially graceful, and to be seen in every reposing figure in Greek bas-reliefs and vases; graceful, and like all graceful actions, healthful at the same time. The only tolerably wholesome attitude of repose, which I see allowed in average school-rooms, is lying on the back on the floor, or on a sloping board, in which case the lungs must be fully expanded. But even so, a pillow, or some equivalent, ought to be placed under the small of the back: or the spine will be strained at its very weakest point. I now go on to the second mistake--enforced silence. Moderate reading aloud is good: but where there is any tendency to irritability of throat or lungs, too much moderation cannot be used. You may as well try to cure a diseased lung by working it, as to cure a lame horse by galloping him. But where the breathing organs are of average health, let it be said once and for all, that children and young people cannot make too much noise. The parents who cannot bear the noise of their children have no right to have brought them into the world. The schoolmistress who enforces silence on her pupils is committing--unintentionally no doubt, but still committing--an offence against reason, worthy only of a convent. Every shout, every burst of laughter, every song--nay, in the case of infants, as physiologists well know, every moderate fit of crying--conduces to health, by rapidly filling and emptying the lung, and changing the blood more rapidly from black to red, that is, from death to life. Andrew Combe tells a story of a large charity school, in which the young girls were, for the sake of their health, shut up in the hall and school-room during play hours, from November till March, and no romping or noise allowed. The natural consequences were, the great majority of them fell ill; and I am afraid that a great deal of illness has been from time to time contracted in certain school-rooms, simply through this one cause of enforced silence. Some cause or other there must be for the amount of ill-health and weakliness which prevails especially among girls of the middle classes in towns, who have not, poor things, the opportunities which richer girls have, of keeping themselves in strong health by riding, skating, archery--that last quite an admirable exercise for the chest and lungs, and far preferable to croquet, which involves too much unwholesome stooping.--Even playing at ball, if milliners and shop-girls had room to indulge in one after their sedentary work, might bring fresh spirits to many a heart, and fresh colour to many a cheek. I spoke just now of the Greeks. I suppose you will all allow that the Greeks were, as far as we know, the most beautiful race which the world ever saw. Every educated man knows that they were also the cleverest of all races; and, next to his Bible, thanks God for Greek literature. Now, these people had made physical as well as intellectual education a science as well as a study. Their women practised graceful, and in some cases even athletic, exercises. They developed, by a free and healthy life, those figures which remain everlasting and unapproachable models of human beauty: but--to come to my third point--they wore no stays. The first mention of stays that I have ever found is in the letters of dear old Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene, on the Greek coast of Africa, about four hundred years after the Christian era. He tells us how, when he was shipwrecked on a remote part of the coast, and he and the rest of the passengers were starving on cockles and limpets, there was among them a slave girl out of the far East, who had a pinched wasp-waist, such as you may see on the old Hindoo sculptures, and such as you may see in any street in a British town. And when the Greek ladies of the neighbourhood found her out, they sent for her from house to house, to behold, with astonishment and laughter, this new and prodigious waist, with which it seemed to them it was impossible for a human being to breathe or live; and they petted the poor girl, and fed her, as they might a dwarf or a giantess, till she got quite fat and comfortable, while her owners had not enough to eat. So strange and ridiculous seemed our present fashion to the descendants of those who, centuries before, had imagined, because they had seen living and moving, those glorious statues which we pretend to admire, but refuse to imitate. It seems to me that a few centuries hence, when mankind has learnt to fear God more, and therefore to obey more strictly those laws of nature and of science which are the will of God--it seems to me, I say, that in those days the present fashion of tight lacing will be looked back upon as a contemptible and barbarous superstition, denoting a very low level of civilisation in the peoples which have practised it. That for generations past women should have been in the habit--not to please men, who do not care about the matter as a point of beauty--but simply to vie with each other in obedience to something called fashion--that they should, I say, have been in the habit of deliberately crushing that part of the body which should be specially left free, contracting and displacing their lungs, their heart, and all the most vital and important organs, and entailing thereby disease, not only on themselves but on their children after them; that for forty years past physicians should have been telling them of the folly of what they have been doing: and that they should as yet, in the great majority of cases, not only turn a deaf ear to all warnings, but actually deny the offence, of which one glance of the physician or the sculptor, who know what shape the human body ought to be, brings them in guilty: this, I say, is an instance of--what shall I call it?--which deserves at once the lash, not merely of the satirist, but of any theologian who really believes that God made the physical universe. Let me, I pray you, appeal to your common sense for a moment. When any one chooses a horse or a dog, whether for strength, for speed, or for any other useful purpose, the first thing almost to be looked at is the girth round the ribs; the room for heart and lungs. Exactly in proportion to that will be the animal's general healthiness, power of endurance, and value in many other ways. If you will look at eminent lawyers and famous orators, who have attained a healthy old age, you will see that in every case they are men, like the late Lord Palmerston, and others whom I could mention, of remarkable size, not merely in the upper, but in the lower part of the chest; men who had, therefore, a peculiar power of using the diaphragm to fill and to clear the lungs, and therefore to oxygenate the blood of the whole body. Now, it is just these lower ribs, across which the diaphragm is stretched like the head of a drum, which stays contract to a minimum. If you advised owners of horses and hounds to put their horses or their hounds into stays, and lace them up tight, in order to increase their beauty, you would receive, I doubt not, a very courteous, but certainly a very decided, refusal to do that which would spoil not merely the animals themselves, but the whole stud or the whole kennel for years to come. And if you advised an orator to put himself into tight stays, he, no doubt, again would give a courteous answer; but he would reply--if he was a really educated man--that to comply with your request would involve his giving up public work, under the probable penalty of being dead within the twelvemonth. And how much work of every kind, intellectual as well as physical, is spoiled or hindered; how many deaths occur from consumption and other complaints which are the result of this habit of tight lacing, is known partly to the medical men, who lift up their voices in vain, and known fully to Him who will not interfere with the least of His own physical laws to save human beings from the consequences of their own wilful folly. And now--to end this lecture with more pleasing thoughts--What becomes of this breath which passes from your lips? Is it merely harmful; merely waste? God forbid! God has forbidden that anything should be merely harmful or merely waste in this so wise and well-made world. The carbonic acid which passes from your lips at every breath--ay, even that which oozes from the volcano crater when the eruption is past--is a precious boon to thousands of things of which you have daily need. Indeed there is a sort of hint at physical truth in the old fairy tale of the girl, from whose lips, as she spoke, fell pearls and diamonds; for the carbonic acid of your breath may help hereafter to make the pure carbonate of lime of a pearl, or the still purer carbon of a diamond. Nay, it may go--in such a world of transformations do we live--to make atoms of coal strata, which shall lie buried for ages beneath deep seas, shall be upheaved in continents which are yet unborn, and there be burnt for the use of a future race of men, and resolved into their original elements. Coal, wise men tell us, is on the whole breath and sunlight; the breath of living creatures who have lived in the vast swamps and forests of some primaeval world, and the sunlight which transmuted that breath into the leaves and stems of trees, magically locked up for ages in that black stone, to become, when it is burnt at last, light and carbonic acid, as it was at first. For though you must not breathe your breath again, you may at least eat your breath, if you will allow the sun to transmute it for you into vegetables; or you may enjoy its fragrance and its colour in the shape of a lily or a rose. When you walk in a sunlit garden, every word you speak, every breath you breathe, is feeding the plants and flowers around. The delicate surface of the green leaves absorbs the carbonic acid, and parts it into its elements, retaining the carbon to make woody fibre, and courteously returning you the oxygen to mingle with the fresh air, and be inhaled by your lungs once more. Thus do you feed the plants; just as the plants feed you; while the great life- giving sun feeds both; and the geranium standing in the sick child's window does not merely rejoice his eye and mind by its beauty and freshness, but repays honestly the trouble spent on it; absorbing the breath which the child needs not, and giving to him the breath which he needs. So are the services of all things constituted according to a Divine and wonderful order, and knit together in mutual dependence and mutual helpfulness.--A fact to be remembered with hope and comfort; but also with awe and fear. For as in that which is above nature, so in nature itself; he that breaks one physical law is guilty of all. The whole universe, as it were, takes up arms against him; and all nature, with her numberless and unseen powers, is ready to avenge herself on him, and on his children after him, he knows not when nor where. He, on the other hand, who obeys the laws of nature with his whole heart and mind, will find all things working together to him for good. He is at peace with the physical universe. He is helped and befriended alike by the sun above his head and the dust beneath his feet: because he is obeying the will and mind of Him who made sun, and dust, and all things; and who has given them a law which cannot be broken. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. The more I have contemplated that ancient story of the Fall, the more it has seemed to me within the range of probability, and even of experience. It must have happened somewhere for the first time; for it has happened only too many times since. It has happened, as far as I can ascertain, in every race, and every age, and every grade of civilisation. It is happening round us now in every region of the globe. Always and everywhere, it seems to me, have poor human beings been tempted to eat of some "tree of knowledge," that they may be, even for an hour, as gods; wise, but with a false wisdom; careless, but with a frantic carelessness; and happy, but with a happiness which, when the excitement is past, leaves too often--as with that hapless pair in Eden--depression, shame, and fear. Everywhere, and in all ages, as far as I can ascertain, has man been inventing stimulants and narcotics to supply that want of vitality of which he is so painfully aware; and has asked nature, and not God, to clear the dull brain, and comfort the weary spirit. This has been, and will be perhaps for many a century to come, almost the most fearful failing of this poor, exceptional, over-organised, diseased, and truly fallen being called man, who is in doubt daily whether he be a god or an ape; and in trying wildly to become the former, ends but too often in becoming the latter. For man, whether savage or civilised, feels, and has felt in every age, that there is something wrong with him. He usually confesses this fact--as is to be expected--of his fellow-men, rather than of himself; and shows his sense that there is something wrong with them by complaining of, hating, and killing them. But he cannot always conceal from himself the fact that he, too, is wrong, as well as they; and as he will not usually kill himself, he tries wild ways to make himself at least feel--if not to be--somewhat "better." Philosophers may bid him be content; and tell him that he is what he ought to be, and what nature has made him. But he cares nothing for the philosophers. He knows, usually, that he is not what he ought to be; that he carries about with him, in most cases, a body more or less diseased and decrepit, incapable of doing all the work which he feels that he himself could do, or expressing all the emotions which he himself longs to express; a dull brain and dull senses, which cramp the eager infinity within him; as--so Goethe once said with pity--the horse's single hoof cramps the fine intelligence and generosity of his nature, and forbids him even to grasp an object, like the more stupid cat, and baser monkey. And man has a self, too, within, from which he longs too often to escape, as from a household ghost; who pulls out, at unfortunately rude and unwelcome hours, the ledger of memory. And so when the tempter--be he who he may--says to him "Take this, and you will 'feel better'--Take this, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil:" then, if the temptation was, as the old story says, too much for man while healthy and unfallen, what must it be for his unhealthy and fallen children? In vain we say to man-- "'Tis life, not death, for which you pant; 'Tis life, whereof your nerves are scant; More life, and fuller, that you want." And your tree of knowledge is not the tree of life: it is, in every case, the tree of death; of decrepitude, madness, misery. He prefers the voice of the tempter--"Thou shalt not surely die." Nay, he will say at last,--"Better be as gods awhile, and die: than be the crawling, insufficient thing I am; and live." He--did I say? Alas! I must say she likewise. The sacred story is only too true to fact, when it represents the woman as falling, not merely at the same time as the man, but before the man. Only let us remember that it represents the woman as tempted; tempted, seemingly, by a rational being, of lower race, and yet of superior cunning; who must, therefore, have fallen before the woman. Who or what the being was, who is called the Serpent in our translation of Genesis, it is not for me to say. We have absolutely, I think, no facts from which to judge; and Rabbinical traditions need trouble no man much. But I fancy that a missionary, preaching on this story to Negroes; telling them plainly that the "Serpent" meant the first Obeah man; and then comparing the experiences of that hapless pair in Eden, with their own after certain orgies not yet extinct in Africa and elsewhere, would be only too well understood: so well, indeed, that he might run some risk of eating himself, not of the tree of life, but of that of death. The sorcerer or sorceress tempting the woman; and then the woman tempting the man; this seems to be, certainly among savage peoples, and, alas! too often among civilised peoples also, the usual course of the world-wide tragedy. But--paradoxical as it may seem--the woman's yielding before the man is not altogether to her dishonour, as those old monks used to allege who hated, and too often tortured, the sex whom they could not enjoy. It is not to the woman's dishonour, if she felt, before her husband, higher aspirations than those after mere animal pleasure. To be as gods, knowing good and evil, is a vain and foolish, but not a base and brutal, wish. She proved herself thereby--though at an awful cost--a woman, and not an animal. And indeed the woman's more delicate organisation, her more vivid emotions, her more voluble fancy, as well as her mere physical weakness and weariness, have been to her, in all ages, a special source of temptation which it is to her honour that she has resisted so much better than the physically stronger, and therefore more culpable, man. As for what the tree of knowledge was, there really is no need for us to waste our time in guessing. If it was not one plant, then it was another. It may have been something which has long since perished off the earth. It may have been--as some learned men have guessed--the sacred Soma, or Homa, of the early Brahmin race; and that may have been a still existing narcotic species of Asclepias. It certainly was not the vine. The language of the Hebrew Scripture concerning it, and the sacred use to which it is consecrated in the Gospels, forbid that notion utterly; at least to those who know enough of antiquity to pass by, with a smile, the theory that the wines mentioned in Scripture were not intoxicating. And yet--as a fresh corroboration of what I am trying to say--how fearfully has that noble gift to man been abused for the same end as a hundred other vegetable products, ever since those mythic days when Dionusos brought the vine from the far East, amid troops of human Maenads and half-human Satyrs; and the Bacchae tore Pentheus in pieces on Cithaeron, for daring to intrude upon their sacred rites; and since those historic days, too, when, less than two hundred years before the Christian era, the Bacchic rites spread from Southern Italy into Etruria, and thence to the matrons of Rome; and under the guidance of Poenia Annia, a Campanian lady, took at last shapes of which no man must speak, but which had to be put down with terrible but just severity, by the Consuls and the Senate. But it matters little, I say, what this same tree of knowledge was. Was every vine on earth destroyed to-morrow, and every vegetable also from which alcohol is now distilled, man would soon discover something else wherewith to satisfy the insatiate craving. Has he not done so already? Has not almost every people had its tree of knowledge, often more deadly than any distilled liquor, from the absinthe of the cultivated Frenchman, and the opium of the cultivated Chinese, down to the bush-poisons wherewith the tropic sorcerer initiates his dupes into the knowledge of good and evil, and the fungus from which the Samoiede extracts in autumn a few days of brutal happiness, before the setting in of the long six months' night? God grant that modern science may not bring to light fresh substitutes for alcohol, opium, and the rest; and give the white races, in that state of effeminate and godless quasi-civilisation which I sometimes fear is creeping upon them, fresh means of destroying themselves delicately and pleasantly off the face of the earth. It is said by some that drunkenness is on the increase in this island. I have no trusty proof of it: but I can believe it possible; for every cause of drunkenness seems on the increase. Overwork of body and mind; circumstances which depress health; temptation to drink, and drink again, at every corner of the streets; and finally, money, and ever more money, in the hands of uneducated people, who have not the desire, and too often not the means, of spending it in any save the lowest pleasures. These, it seems to me, are the true causes of drunkenness, increasing or not. And if we wish to become a more temperate nation, we must lessen them, if we cannot eradicate them. First, overwork. We all live too fast, and work too hard. "All things are full of labour, man cannot utter it." In the heavy struggle for existence which goes on all around us, each man is tasked more and more--if he be really worth buying and using--to the utmost of his powers all day long. The weak have to compete on equal terms with the strong; and crave, in consequence, for artificial strength. How we shall stop that I know not, while every man is "making haste to be rich, and piercing himself through with many sorrows, and falling into foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." How we shall stop that, I say, I know not. The old prophet may have been right when he said, "Surely it is not of the Lord that the people shall labour in the very fire, and weary themselves for very vanity;" and in some juster, wiser, more sober system of society--somewhat more like the Kingdom of The Father come on earth--it may be that poor human beings will not need to toil so hard, and to keep themselves up to their work by stimulants, but will have time to sit down, and look around them, and think of God, and of God's quiet universe, with something of quiet in themselves; something of rational leisure, and manful sobriety of mind, as well as of body. But it seems to me also, that in such a state of society, when--as it was once well put--"every one has stopped running about like rats:"--that those who work hard, whether with muscle or with brain, would not be surrounded, as now, with every circumstance which tempts toward drink; by every circumstance which depresses the vital energies, and leaves them an easy prey to pestilence itself; by bad light, bad air, bad food, bad water, bad smells, bad occupations, which weaken the muscles, cramp the chest, disorder the digestion. Let any rational man, fresh from the country--in which I presume God, having made it, meant all men, more or less, to live--go through the back streets of any city, or through whole districts of the "black countries" of England: and then ask himself--Is it the will of God that His human children should live and toil in such dens, such deserts, such dark places of the earth? Let him ask himself--Can they live and toil there without contracting a probably diseased habit of body; without contracting a certainly dull, weary, sordid habit of mind, which craves for any pleasure, however brutal, to escape from its own stupidity and emptiness? When I run through, by rail, certain parts of the iron-producing country--streets of furnaces, collieries, slag heaps, mud, slop, brick house-rows, smoke, dirt--and that is all; and when I am told, whether truly or falsely, that the main thing which the well-paid and well-fed men of those abominable wastes care for is--good fighting-dogs: I can only answer, that I am not surprised. I say--as I have said elsewhere, and shall do my best to say again--that the craving for drink and narcotics, especially that engendered in our great cities, is not a disease, but a symptom of disease; of a far deeper disease than any which drunkenness can produce; namely, of the growing degeneracy of a population striving in vain by stimulants and narcotics to fight against those slow poisons with which our greedy barbarism, miscalled civilisation, has surrounded them from the cradle to the grave. I may be answered that the old German, Angle, Dane, drank heavily. I know it: but why did they drink, save for the same reason that the fenman drank, and his wife took opium, at least till the fens were drained? why but to keep off the depressing effects of the malaria of swamps and new clearings, which told on them--who always settled in the lowest grounds--in the shape of fever and ague? Here it may be answered again, that stimulants have been, during the memory of man, the destruction of the Red Indian race in America. I reply boldly, that I do not believe it. There is evidence enough in Jaques Cartier's 'Voyages to the Rivers of Canada;' and evidence more than enough in Strachey's 'Travaile in Virginia'--to quote only two authorities out of many--to prove that the Red Indians, when the white man first met with them, were, in North and South alike, a diseased, decaying, and, as all their traditions confess, decreasing race. Such a race would naturally crave for "the water of life," the "usque-bagh," or whisky, as we have contracted the old name now. But I should have thought that the white man, by introducing among these poor creatures iron, fire-arms, blankets, and above all horses wherewith to follow the buffalo-herds which they could never follow on foot, must have done ten times more towards keeping them alive, than he has done towards destroying them by giving them the chance of a week's drunkenness twice a year, when they came in to his forts to sell the skins which, without his gifts, they would never have got. Such a race would, of course, if wanting vitality, crave for stimulants. But if the stimulants, and not the original want of vitality, combined with morals utterly detestable, and worthy only of the gallows--and here I know what I say, and dare not tell what I know, from eye-witnesses--have been the cause of the Red Indians' extinction: then how is it, let me ask, that the Irishman and the Scotsman have, often to their great harm, been drinking as much whisky--and usually very bad whisky--not merely twice a year, but as often as they could get it, during the whole "iron age;" and, for aught any one can tell, during the "bronze age," and the "stone age" before that: and yet are still the most healthy, able, valiant, and prolific races in Europe? Had they drunk less whisky they would, doubtless, have been more healthy, able, valiant, and perhaps even more prolific, than they are now. They show no sign, however, as yet, of going the way of the Red Indian. But if the craving for stimulants and narcotics is a token of deficient vitality: then the deadliest foe of that craving, and all its miserable results, is surely the Sanatory Reformer; the man who preaches, and--as far as ignorance and vested interests will allow him, procures--for the masses, pure air, pure sunlight, pure water, pure dwelling-houses, pure food. Not merely every fresh drinking-fountain: but every fresh public bath and wash-house, every fresh open space, every fresh growing tree, every fresh open window, every fresh flower in that window--each of these is so much, as the old Persians would have said, conquered for Ormuzd, the god of light and life, out of the dominion of Ahriman, the king of darkness and of death; so much taken from the causes of drunkenness and disease, and added to the causes of sobriety and health. Meanwhile one thing is clear: that if this present barbarism and anarchy of covetousness, miscalled modern civilisation, were tamed and drilled into something more like a Kingdom of God on earth: then we should not see the reckless and needless multiplication of liquor shops, which disgraces this country now. As a single instance: in one country parish of nine hundred inhabitants, in which the population has increased only one-ninth in the last fifty years, there are now practically eight public-houses, where fifty years ago there were but two. One, that is, for every hundred and ten--or rather, omitting children, farmers, shopkeepers, gentlemen, and their households, one for every fifty of the inhabitants. In the face of the allurements, often of the basest kind, which these dens offer, the clergyman and the schoolmaster struggle in vain to keep up night-schools and young men's clubs, and to inculcate habits of providence. The young labourers over a great part of the south and east, at least, of England,--though never so well off, for several generations, as they are now--are growing up thriftless, shiftless; inferior, it seems to me, to their grandfathers in everything, save that they can usually read and write, and their grandfathers could not; and that they wear smart cheap cloth clothes, instead of their grandfathers' smock-frocks. And if it be so in the country: how must it be in towns? There must come a thorough change in the present licensing system, in spite of all the "pressure" which certain powerful vested interests may bring to bear on governments. And it is the duty of every good citizen, who cares for his countrymen, and for their children after them, to help in bringing about that change as speedily as possible. Again: I said just now that a probable cause of increasing drunkenness was the increasing material prosperity of thousands who knew no recreation beyond low animal pleasure. If I am right--and I believe that I am right--I must urge on those who wish drunkenness to decrease, the necessity of providing more, and more refined recreation for the people. Men drink, and women too, remember, not merely to supply exhaustion; not merely to drive away care: but often simply to drive away dulness. They have nothing to do save to think over what they have done in the day, or what they expect to do to-morrow; and they escape from that dreary round of business thought, in liquor or narcotics. There are still those, by no means of the hand-working class, but absorbed all day by business, who drink heavily at night in their own comfortable homes, simply to recreate their overburdened minds. Such cases, doubtless, are far less common than they were fifty years ago: but why? Is not the decrease of drinking among the richer classes certainly due to the increased refinement and variety of their tastes and occupations? In cultivating the aesthetic side of man's nature; in engaging him with the beautiful, the pure, the wonderful, the truly natural; with painting, poetry, music, horticulture, physical science--in all this lies recreation, in the true and literal sense of that word, namely, the recreating and mending of the exhausted mind and feelings, such as no rational man will now neglect, either for himself, his children, or his work-people. But how little of all this is open to the masses, all should know but too well. How little opportunity the average hand-worker, or his wife, has of eating of any tree of knowledge, save of the very basest kind, is but too palpable. We are mending, thank God, in this respect. Free libraries and museums have sprung up of late in other cities beside London. God's blessing rest upon them all. And the Crystal Palace, and still later, the Bethnal Green Museum, have been, I believe, of far more use than many average sermons and lectures from many average orators. But are we not still far behind the old Greeks, and the Romans of the Empire likewise, in the amount of amusement and instruction, and even of shelter, which we provide for the people? Recollect the--to me--disgraceful fact; that there is not, as far as I am aware, throughout the whole of London, a single portico or other covered place, in which the people can take refuge during a shower: and this in the climate of England! Where they do take refuge on a wet day the publican knows but too well; as he knows also where thousands of the lower classes, simply for want of any other place to be in, save their own sordid dwellings, spend as much as they are permitted of the Sabbath day. Let us put down "Sunday drinking" by all means, if we can. But let us remember that by closing the public-house on Sunday, we prevent no man or woman from carrying home as much poison as they choose on Saturday night, to brutalise themselves therewith, perhaps for eight-and-forty hours. And let us see--in the name of Him who said that He had made the Sabbath for man, and not man for the Sabbath--let us see, I say, if we cannot do something to prevent the townsman's Sabbath being, not a day of rest, but a day of mere idleness; the day of most temptation, because of most dulness, of the whole seven. And here, perhaps, some sweet soul may look up reprovingly and say--He talks of rest. Does he forget, and would he have the working man forget, that all these outward palliatives will never touch the seat of the disease, the unrest of the soul within? Does he forget, and would he have the working man forget, who it was who said--who only has the right to say--"Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest"? Ah no, sweet soul. I know your words are true. I know that what we all want is inward rest; rest of heart and brain; the calm, strong, self-contained, self-denying character; which needs no stimulants, for it has no fits of depression; which needs no narcotics, for it has no fits of excitement; which needs no ascetic restraints, for it is strong enough to use God's gifts without abusing them; the character, in a word, which is truly temperate, not in drink or food merely, but in all desires, thoughts, and actions; freed from the wild lusts and ambitions to which that old Adam yielded, and, seeking for light and life by means forbidden, found thereby disease and death. Yes; I know that; and know, too, that that rest is found, only where you have already found it. And yet: in such a world as this; governed by a Being who has made sunshine, and flowers, and green grass, and the song of birds, and happy human smiles; and who would educate by them--if we would let Him--His human children from the cradle to the grave; in such a world as this, will you grudge any particle of that education, even any harmless substitute for it, to those spirits in prison, whose surroundings too often tempt them, from the cradle to the grave, to fancy that the world is composed of bricks and iron, and governed by inspectors and policemen? Preach to those spirits in prison, as you know far better than we parsons how to preach: but let them have besides some glimpses of the splendid fact, that outside their prison-house is a world which God, not man, has made; wherein grows everywhere that tree of knowledge which is likewise the tree of life; and that they have a right to some small share of its beauty, and its wonder, and its rest, for their own health of soul and body, and for the health of their children after them. NAUSICAA IN LONDON: OR, THE LOWER EDUCATION OF WOMAN. Fresh from the Marbles of the British Museum, I went my way through London streets. My brain was still full of fair and grand forms; the forms of men and women whose every limb and attitude betokened perfect health, and grace, and power, and a self-possession and self-restraint so habitual and complete that it had become unconscious, and undistinguishable from the native freedom of the savage. For I had been up and down the corridors of those Greek sculptures, which remain as a perpetual sermon to rich and poor, amid our artificial, unwholesome, and it may be decaying pseudo-civilisation; saying with looks more expressive than all words--Such men and women can be; for such they have been; and such you may be yet, if you will use that science of which you too often only boast. Above all, I had been pondering over the awful and yet tender beauty of the maiden figures from the Parthenon and its kindred temples. And these, or such as these, I thought to myself, were the sisters of the men who fought at Marathon and Salamis; the mothers of many a man among the ten thousand whom Xenophon led back from Babylon to the Black Sea shore; the ancestresses of many a man who conquered the East in Alexander's host, and fought with Porus in the far Punjab. And were these women mere dolls? These men mere gladiators? Were they not the parents of philosophy, science, poetry, the plastic arts? We talk of education now. Are we more educated than were the ancient Greeks? Do we know anything about education, physical, intellectual, or aesthetic, and I may say moral likewise--religious education, of course, in our sense of the word, they had none--but do we know anything about education of which they have not taught us at least the rudiments? Are there not some branches of education which they perfected, once and for ever; leaving us northern barbarians to follow, or else not to follow, their example? To produce health, that is, harmony and sympathy, proportion and grace, in every faculty of mind and body--that was their notion of education. To produce that, the text-book of their childhood was the poetry of Homer, and not of--But I am treading on dangerous ground. It was for this that the seafaring Greek lad was taught to find his ideal in Ulysses; while his sister at home found hers, it may be, in Nausicaa. It was for this, that when perhaps the most complete and exquisite of all the Greeks, Sophocles the good, beloved by gods and men, represented on the Athenian stage his drama of Nausicaa, and, as usual, could not--for he had no voice--himself take a speaking part, he was content to do one thing in which he specially excelled; and dressed and masked as a girl, to play at ball amid the chorus of Nausicaa's maidens. That drama of Nausicaa is lost; and if I dare say so of any play of Sophocles', I scarce regret it. It is well, perhaps, that we have no second conception of the scene, to interfere with the simplicity, so grand, and yet so tender, of Homer's idyllic episode. Nausicaa, it must be remembered, is the daughter of a king. But not of a king in the exclusive modern European or old Eastern sense. Her father, Alcinous, is simply "primus inter pares" among a community of merchants, who are called "kings" likewise; and Mayor for life--so to speak--of a new trading city, a nascent Genoa or Venice, on the shore of the Mediterranean. But the girl Nausicaa, as she sleeps in her "carved chamber," is "like the immortals in form and face;" and two handmaidens who sleep on each side of the polished door "have beauty from the Graces." To her there enters, in the shape of some maiden friend, none less than Pallas Athene herself, intent on saving worthily her favourite, the shipwrecked Ulysses; and bids her in a dream go forth--and wash the clothes. {72} "Nausicaa, wherefore doth thy mother bear Child so forgetful? This long time doth rest, Like lumber in the house, much raiment fair. Soon must thou wed, and be thyself well-drest, And find thy bridegroom raiment of the best. These are the things whence good repute is born, And praises that make glad a parent's breast. Come, let us both go washing with the morn; So shalt thou have clothes becoming to be worn. "Know that thy maidenhood is not for long, Whom the Phoeacian chiefs already woo, Lords of the land whence thou thyself art sprung. Soon as the shining dawn comes forth anew, For wain and mules thy noble father sue, Which to the place of washing shall convey Girdles and shawls and rugs of splendid hue. This for thyself were better than essay Thither to walk: the place is distant a long way." Startled by her dream, Nausicaa awakes, and goes to find her parents-- "One by the hearth sat, with the maids around, And on the skeins of yarn, sea-purpled, spent Her morning toil. Him to the council bound, Called by the honoured kings, just going forth she found." And calling him, as she might now, "Pappa phile," Dear Papa, asks for the mule waggon: but it is her father's and her five brothers' clothes she fain would wash,-- "Ashamed to name her marriage to her father dear." But he understood all--and she goes forth in the mule waggon, with the clothes, after her mother has put in "a chest of all kinds of delicate food, and meat, and wine in a goatskin;" and last but not least, the indispensable cruse of oil for anointing after the bath, to which both Jews, Greeks, and Romans owed so much health and beauty. And then we read in the simple verse of a poet too refined, like the rest of his race, to see anything mean or ridiculous in that which was not ugly and unnatural, how she and her maids got into the "polished waggon," "with good wheels," and she "took the whip and the studded reins," and "beat them till they started;" and how the mules "rattled" away, and "pulled against each other," till "When they came to the fair flowing river Which feeds good lavatories all the year, Fitted to cleanse all sullied robes soever, They from the wain the mules unharnessed there, And chased them free, to crop their juicy fare By the swift river, on the margin green; Then to the waters dashed the clothes they bare And in the stream-filled trenches stamped them clean. "Which, having washed and cleansed, they spread before The sunbeams, on the beach, where most did lie Thick pebbles, by the sea-wave washed ashore. So, having left them in the heat to dry, They to the bath went down, and by-and-by, Rubbed with rich oil, their midday meal essay, Couched in green turf, the river rolling nigh. Then, throwing off their veils, at ball they play, While the white-armed Nausicaa leads the choral lay." The mere beauty of this scene all will feel, who have the sense of beauty in them. Yet it is not on that aspect which I wish to dwell, but on its healthfulness. Exercise is taken, in measured time, to the sound of song, as a duty almost, as well as an amusement. For this game of ball, which is here mentioned for the first time in human literature, nearly three thousand years ago, was held by the Greeks and by the Romans after them, to be an almost necessary part of a liberal education; principally, doubtless, from the development which it produced in the upper half of the body, not merely to the arms, but to the chest, by raising and expanding the ribs, and to all the muscles of the torso, whether perpendicular or oblique. The elasticity and grace which it was believed to give were so much prized, that a room for ball-play, and a teacher of the art, were integral parts of every gymnasium; and the Athenians went so far as to bestow on one famous ballplayer, Aristonicus of Carystia, a statue and the rights of citizenship. The rough and hardy young Spartans, when passing from boyhood into manhood, received the title of ball-players, seemingly from the game which it was then their special duty to learn. In the case of Nausicaa and her maidens, the game would just bring into their right places all that is liable to be contracted and weakened in women, so many of whose occupations must needs be sedentary and stooping; while the song which accompanied the game at once filled the lungs regularly and rhythmically, and prevented violent motion, or unseemly attitude. We, the civilised, need physiologists to remind us of these simple facts, and even then do not act on them. Those old half-barbarous Greeks had found them out for themselves, and, moreover, acted on them. But fair Nausicaa must have been--some will say--surely a mere child of nature, and an uncultivated person? So far from it, that her whole demeanour and speech show culture of the very highest sort, full of "sweetness and light."--Intelligent and fearless, quick to perceive the bearings of her strange and sudden adventure, quick to perceive the character of Ulysses, quick to answer his lofty and refined pleading by words as lofty and refined, and pious withal;--for it is she who speaks to her handmaids the once so famous words: "Strangers and poor men all are sent from Zeus; And alms, though small, are sweet" Clear of intellect, prompt of action, modest of demeanour, shrinking from the slightest breath of scandal; while she is not ashamed, when Ulysses, bathed and dressed, looks himself again, to whisper to her maidens her wish that the Gods might send her such a spouse.--This is Nausicaa as Homer draws her; and as many a scholar and poet since Homer has accepted her for the ideal of noble maidenhood. I ask my readers to study for themselves her interview with Ulysses, in Mr. Worsley's translation, or rather in the grand simplicity of the original Greek, {76} and judge whether Nausicaa is not as perfect a lady as the poet who imagined her--or, it may be, drew her from life--must have been a perfect gentleman; both complete in those "manners" which, says the old proverb, "make the man:" but which are the woman herself; because with her--who acts more by emotion than by calculation--manners are the outward and visible tokens of her inward and spiritual grace, or disgrace; and flow instinctively, whether good or bad, from the instincts of her inner nature. True, Nausicaa could neither read nor write. No more, most probably, could the author of the Odyssey. No more, for that matter, could Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, though they were plainly, both in mind and manners, most highly-cultivated men. Reading and writing, of course, have now become necessaries of humanity; and are to be given to every human being, that he may start fair in the race of life. But I am not aware that Greek women improved much, either in manners, morals, or happiness, by acquiring them in after centuries. A wise man would sooner see his daughter a Nausicaa than a Sappho, an Aspasia, a Cleopatra, or even an Hypatia. Full of such thoughts, I went through London streets, among the Nausicaas of the present day; the girls of the period; the daughters and hereafter mothers of our future rulers, the great Demos or commercial middle class of the greatest mercantile city in the world: and noted what I had noted with fear and sorrow, many a day, for many a year; a type, and an increasing type, of young women who certainly had not had the "advantages," "educational" and other, of that Greek Nausicaa of old. Of course, in such a city as London, to which the best of everything, physical and other, gravitates, I could not but pass, now and then, beautiful persons, who made me proud of those "grandes Anglaises aux joues rouges," whom the Parisiennes ridicule--and envy. But I could not help suspecting that their looks showed them to be either country-bred, or born of country parents; and this suspicion was strengthened by the fact, that when compared with their mothers, the mother's physique was, in the majority of cases, superior to the daughters'. Painful it was, to one accustomed to the ruddy well-grown peasant girl, stalwart, even when, as often, squat and plain, to remark the exceedingly small size of the average young woman; by which I do not mean mere want of height--that is a little matter--but want of breadth likewise; a general want of those large frames, which indicate usually a power of keeping strong and healthy not merely the muscles, but the brain itself. Poor little things. I passed hundreds--I pass hundreds every day--trying to hide their littleness by the nasty mass of false hair--or what does duty for it; and by the ugly and useless hat which is stuck upon it, making the head thereby look ridiculously large and heavy; and by the high heels on which they totter onward, having forgotten, or never learnt, the simple art of walking; their bodies tilted forward in that ungraceful attitude which is called--why that name of all others?--a "Grecian bend;" seemingly kept on their feet, and kept together at all, in that strange attitude, by tight stays which prevented all graceful and healthy motion of the hips or sides; their raiment, meanwhile, being purposely misshapen in this direction and in that, to hide--it must be presumed--deficiencies of form. If that chignon and those heels had been taken off, the figure which would have remained would have been that too often of a puny girl of sixteen. And yet there was no doubt that these women were not only full grown, but some of them, alas! wives and mothers. Poor little things.--And this they have gained by so-called civilisation: the power of aping the "fashions" by which the worn-out Parisienne hides her own personal defects; and of making themselves, by innate want of that taste which the Parisienne possesses, only the cause of something like a sneer from many a cultivated man; and of something like a sneer, too, from yonder gipsy woman who passes by, with bold bright face, and swinging hip, and footstep stately and elastic; far better dressed, according to all true canons of taste, than most town-girls; and thanking her fate that she and her "Rom" are no house-dwellers and gaslight-sightseers, but fatten on free air upon the open moor. But the face which is beneath that chignon and that hat? Well--it is sometimes pretty: but how seldom handsome, which is a higher quality by far. It is not, strange to say, a well-fed face. Plenty of money, and perhaps too much, is spent on those fine clothes. It had been better, to judge from the complexion, if some of that money had been spent in solid wholesome food. She looks as if she lived--as she too often does, I hear--on tea and bread-and-butter, or rather on bread with the minimum of butter. For as the want of bone indicates a deficiency of phosphatic food, so does the want of flesh about the cheeks indicate a deficiency of hydrocarbon. Poor little Nausicaa:--that is not her fault. Our boasted civilisation has not even taught her what to eat, as it certainly has not increased her appetite; and she knows not--what every country fellow knows--that without plenty of butter and other fatty matters, she is not likely to keep even warm. Better to eat nasty fat bacon now, than to supply the want of it some few years hence by nastier cod-liver oil. But there is no one yet to tell her that, and a dozen other equally simple facts, for her own sake, and for the sake of that coming Demos which she is to bring into the world; a Demos which, if we can only keep it healthy in body and brain, has before it so splendid a future: but which, if body and brain degrade beneath the influence of modern barbarism, is but too likely to follow the Demos of ancient Byzantium, or of modern Paris. Ay, but her intellect. She is so clever, and she reads so much, and she is going to be taught to read so much more. Ah, well--there was once a science called physiognomy. The Greeks, from what I can learn, knew more of it than any people since: though the Italian painters and sculptors must have known much; far more than we. In a more scientific civilisation there will be such a science once more: but its laws, though still in the empiric stage, are not altogether forgotten by some. Little children have often a fine and clear instinct of them. Many cultivated and experienced women have a fine and clear instinct of them likewise. And some such would tell us that there is intellect in plenty in the modern Nausicaa: but not of the quality which they desire for their country's future good. Self-consciousness, eagerness, volubility, petulance, in countenance, in gesture, and in voice--which last is too often most harsh and artificial, the breath being sent forth through the closed teeth, and almost entirely at the corners of the mouth--and, with all this, a weariness often about the wrinkling forehead and the drooping lids;--all these, which are growing too common, not among the Demos only, nor only in the towns, are signs, they think, of the unrest of unhealth, physical, intellectual, spiritual. At least they are as different as two types of physiognomy in the same race can be, from the expression both of face and gesture, in those old Greek sculptures, and in the old Italian painters; and, it must be said, in the portraits of Reynolds, and Gainsborough, Copley, and Romney. Not such, one thinks, must have been the mothers of Britain during the latter half of the last century and the beginning of the present; when their sons, at times, were holding half the world at bay. And if Nausicaa has become such in town: what is she when she goes to the seaside, not to wash the clothes in fresh-water, but herself in salt--the very salt-water, laden with decaying organisms, from which, though not polluted further by a dozen sewers, Ulysses had to cleanse himself, anointing, too, with oil, ere he was fit to appear in the company of Nausicaa of Greece? She dirties herself with the dirty salt-water; and probably chills and tires herself by walking thither and back, and staying in too long; and then flaunts on the pier, bedizened in garments which, for monstrosity of form and disharmony of colours, would have set that Greek Nausicaa's teeth on edge, or those of any average Hindoo woman now. Or, even sadder still, she sits on chairs and benches all the weary afternoon, her head drooped on her chest, over some novel from the "Library;" and then returns to tea and shrimps, and lodgings of which the fragrance is not unsuggestive, sometimes not unproductive, of typhoid fever. Ah, poor Nausicaa of England! That is a sad sight to some who think about the present, and have read about the past. It is not a sad sight to see your old father--tradesman, or clerk, or what not--who has done good work in his day, and hopes to do some more, sitting by your old mother, who has done good work in her day--among the rest, that heaviest work of all, the bringing you into the world and keeping you in it till now--honest, kindly, cheerful folk enough, and not inefficient in their own calling; though an average Northumbrian, or Highlander, or Irish Easterling, beside carrying a brain of five times the intellectual force, could drive five such men over the cliff with his bare hands. It is not a sad sight, I say, to see them sitting about upon those seaside benches, looking out listlessly at the water, and the ships, and the sunlight, and enjoying, like so many flies upon a wall, the novel act of doing nothing. It is not the old for whom wise men are sad: but for you. Where is your vitality? Where is your "Lebensgluckseligkeit," your enjoyment of superfluous life and power? Why can you not even dance and sing, till now and then, at night, perhaps, when you ought to be safe in bed, but when the weak brain, after receiving the day's nourishment, has roused itself a second time into a false excitement of gaslight pleasure? What there is left of it is all going into that foolish book, which the womanly element in you, still healthy and alive, delights in; because it places you in fancy in situations in which you will never stand, and inspires you with emotions, some of which, it may be, you had better never feel. Poor Nausicaa--old, some men think, before you have been ever young. And now they are going to "develop" you; and let you have your share in "the higher education of women," by making you read more books, and do more sums, and pass examinations, and stoop over desks at night after stooping over some other employment all day; and to teach you Latin, and even Greek. Well, we will gladly teach you Greek, if you learn thereby to read the history of Nausicaa of old, and what manner of maiden she was, and what was her education. You will admire her, doubtless. But do not let your admiration limit itself to drawing a meagre half-mediaevalized design of her--as she never looked. Copy in your own person; and even if you do not descend as low--or rise as high--as washing the household clothes, at least learn to play at ball; and sing, in the open air and sunshine, not in theatres and concert-rooms by gaslight; and take decent care of your own health; and dress not like a "Parisienne"--nor, of course, like Nausicaa of old, for that is to ask too much:--but somewhat more like an average Highland lassie; and try to look like her, and be like her, of whom Wordsworth sang-- "A mien and face In which full plainly I can trace Benignity and home-bred sense, Ripening in perfect innocence. Here scattered, like a random seed, Remote from men, thou dost not need The embarrassed look of shy distress And maidenly shamefacedness. Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear The freedom of a mountaineer. A face with gladness overspread, Soft smiles, by human kindness bred, And seemliness complete, that sways Thy courtesies, about thee plays. With no restraint, save such as springs From quick and eager visitings Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach Of thy few words of English speech. A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife That gives thy gestures grace and life." Ah, yet unspoilt Nausicaa of the North; descendant of the dark tender- hearted Celtic girl, and the fair deep-hearted Scandinavian Viking, thank God for thy heather and fresh air, and the kine thou tendest, and the wool thou spinnest; and come not to seek thy fortune, child, in wicked London town; nor import, as they tell me thou art doing fast, the ugly fashions of that London town, clumsy copies of Parisian cockneydom, into thy Highland home; nor give up the healthful and graceful, free and modest dress of thy mother and thy mother's mother, to disfigure the little kirk on Sabbath days with crinoline and corset, high-heeled boots, and other women's hair. It is proposed, just now, to assimilate the education of girls more and more to that of boys. If that means that girls are merely to learn more lessons, and to study what their brothers are taught, in addition to what their mothers were taught; then it is to be hoped, at least by physiologists and patriots, that the scheme will sink into that limbo whither, in a free and tolerably rational country, all imperfect and ill- considered schemes are sure to gravitate. But if the proposal be a bona fide one: then it must be borne in mind that in the public schools of England, and in all private schools, I presume, which take their tone from them, cricket and football are more or less compulsory, being considered integral parts of an Englishman's education; and that they are likely to remain so, in spite of all reclamations: because masters and boys alike know that games do not, in the long run, interfere with a boy's work; that the same boy will very often excel in both; that the games keep him in health for his work; that the spirit with which he takes to his games when in the lower school, is a fair test of the spirit with which he will take to his work when he rises into the higher school; and that nothing is worse for a boy than to fall into that loafing, tuck- shop-haunting set, who neither play hard nor work hard, and are usually extravagant, and often vicious. Moreover, they know well that games conduce, not merely to physical, but to moral health; that in the playing- field boys acquire virtues which no books can give them; not merely daring and endurance, but, better still, temper, self-restraint, fairness, honour, unenvious approbation of another's success, and all that "give and take" of life which stand a man in such good stead when he goes forth into the world, and without which, indeed, his success is always maimed and partial. Now: if the promoters of higher education for women will compel girls to any training analogous to our public school games; if, for instance, they will insist on that most natural and wholesome of all exercises, dancing, in order to develop the lower half of the body; on singing, to expand the lungs and regulate the breath; and on some games--ball or what not--which will ensure that raised chest, and upright carriage, and general strength of the upper torso, without which full oxygenation of the blood, and therefore general health, is impossible; if they will sternly forbid tight stays, high heels, and all which interferes with free growth and free motion; if they will consider carefully all which has been written on the "half-time system" by Mr. Chadwick and others; and accept the certain physical law that, in order to renovate the brain day by day, the growing creature must have plenty of fresh air and play, and that the child who learns for four hours and plays for four hours, will learn more, and learn it more easily, than the child who learns for the whole eight hours; if, in short, they will teach girls not merely to understand the Greek tongue, but to copy somewhat of the Greek physical training, of that "music and gymnastic" which helped to make the cleverest race of the old world the ablest race likewise: then they will earn the gratitude of the patriot and the physiologist, by doing their best to stay the downward tendencies of the physique, and therefore ultimately of the morale, in the coming generation of English women. I am sorry to say that, as yet, I hear of but one movement in this direction among the promoters of the "higher education of women." {88} I trust that the subject will be taken up methodically by those gifted ladies; who have acquainted themselves, and are labouring to acquaint other women, with the first principles of health; and that they may avail to prevent the coming generations, under the unwholesome stimulant of competitive examinations, and so forth, from "developing" into so many Chinese-dwarfs--or idiots. THE AIR-MOTHERS. "Die Natur ist die Bewegung." Who are these who follow us softly over the moor in the autumn eve? Their wings brush and rustle in the fir-boughs, and they whisper before us and behind, as if they called gently to each other, like birds flocking homeward to their nests. The woodpecker on the pine-stems knows them, and laughs aloud for joy as they pass. The rooks above the pasture know them, and wheel round and tumble in their play. The brown leaves on the oak trees know them, and flutter faintly, and beckon as they pass. And in the chattering of the dry leaves there is a meaning, and a cry of weary things which long for rest. "Take us home, take us home, you soft air-mothers, now our fathers the sunbeams are grown dull. Our green summer beauty is all draggled, and our faces are grown wan and wan; and the buds, the children whom we nourished, thrust us off, ungrateful, from our seats. Waft us down, you soft air-mothers, upon your wings to the quiet earth, that we may go to our home, as all things go, and become air and sunlight once again." And the bold young fir-seeds know them, and rattle impatient in their cones. "Blow stronger, blow fiercer, slow air-mothers, and shake us from our prisons of dead wood, that we may fly and spin away north-eastward, each on his horny wing. Help us but to touch the moorland yonder, and we will take good care of ourselves henceforth; we will dive like arrows through the heather, and drive our sharp beaks into the soil, and rise again as green trees toward the sunlight, and spread out lusty boughs." They never think, bold fools, of what is coming, to bring them low in the midst of their pride; of the reckless axe which will fell them, and the saw which will shape them into logs; and the trains which will roar and rattle over them, as they lie buried in the gravel of the way, till they are ground and rotted into powder, and dug up and flung upon the fire, that they too may return home, like all things, and become air and sunlight once again. And the air-mothers hear their prayers, and do their bidding: but faintly; for they themselves are tired and sad. Tired and sad are the air-mothers, and their garments rent and wan. Look at them as they stream over the black forest, before the dim south-western sun; long lines and wreaths of melancholy grey, stained with dull yellow or dead dun. They have come far across the seas, and done many a wild deed upon their way; and now that they have reached the land, like shipwrecked sailors, they will lie down and weep till they can weep no more. Ah, how different were those soft air-mothers when, invisible to mortal eyes, they started on their long sky-journey, five thousand miles across the sea! Out of the blazing caldron which lies between the two New Worlds, they leapt up when the great sun called them, in whirls and spouts of clear hot steam; and rushed of their own passion to the northward, while the whirling earth-ball whirled them east. So north- eastward they rushed aloft, across the gay West Indian isles, leaving below the glitter of the flying-fish, and the sidelong eyes of cruel sharks; above the cane-fields and the plaintain-gardens, and the cocoa- groves which fringe the shores; above the rocks which throbbed with earthquakes, and the peaks of old volcanoes, cinder-strewn; while, far beneath, the ghosts of their dead sisters hurried home upon the north- east breeze. Wild deeds they did as they rushed onward, and struggled and fought among themselves, up and down, and round and backward, in the fury of their blind hot youth. They heeded not the tree as they snapped it, nor the ship as they whelmed it in the waves; nor the cry of the sinking sailor, nor the need of his little ones on shore; hasty and selfish even as children, and, like children, tamed by their own rage. For they tired themselves by struggling with each other, and by tearing the heavy water into waves; and their wings grew clogged with sea-spray, and soaked more and more with steam. But at last the sea grew cold beneath them, and their clear steam shrank to mist; and they saw themselves and each other wrapped in dull rain-laden clouds. They then drew their white cloud-garments round them, and veiled themselves for very shame; and said, "We have been wild and wayward: and, alas! our pure bright youth is gone. But we will do one good deed yet ere we die, and so we shall not have lived in vain. We will glide onward to the land, and weep there; and refresh all things with soft warm rain; and make the grass grow, the buds burst; quench the thirst of man and beast, and wash the soiled world clean." So they are wandering past us, the air-mothers, to weep the leaves into their graves; to weep the seeds into their seed-beds, and weep the soil into the plains; to get the rich earth ready for the winter, and then creep northward to the ice-world, and there die. Weary, and still more weary, slowly, and more slowly still, they will journey on far northward, across fast-chilling seas. For a doom is laid upon them, never to be still again, till they rest at the North Pole itself, the still axle of the spinning world; and sink in death around it, and become white snow-clad ghosts. But will they live again, those chilled air-mothers? Yes, they must live again. For all things move for ever; and not even ghosts can rest. So the corpses of their sisters, piling on them from above, press them outward, press them southward toward the sun once more; across the floes and round the icebergs, weeping tears of snow and sleet, while men hate their wild harsh voices, and shrink before their bitter breath. They know not that the cold bleak snow-storms, as they hurtle from the black north-east, bear back the ghosts of the soft air-mothers, as penitents, to their father, the great sun. But as they fly southwards, warm life thrills them, and they drop their loads of sleet and snow; and meet their young live sisters from the south, and greet them with flash and thunder-peal. And, please God, before many weeks are over, as we run Westward Ho, we shall overtake the ghosts of these air-mothers, hurrying back toward their father, the great sun. Fresh and bright under the fresh bright heaven, they will race with us toward our home, to gain new heat, new life, new power, and set forth about their work once more. Men call them the south-west wind, those air- mothers; and their ghosts the north-east trade; and value them, and rightly, because they bear the traders out and home across the sea. But wise men, and little children, should look on them with more seeing eyes; and say, "May not these winds be living creatures? They, too, are thoughts of God, to whom all live." For is not our life like their life? Do we not come and go as they? Out of God's boundless bosom, the fount of life, we came; through selfish, stormy youth, and contrite tears--just not too late; through manhood not altogether useless; through slow and chill old age, we return from Whence we came; to the Bosom of God once more--to go forth again, it may be, with fresh knowledge, and fresh powers, to nobler work. Amen. * * * * * Such was the prophecy which I learnt, or seemed to learn, from the south- western wind off the Atlantic, on a certain delectable evening. And it was fulfilled at night, as far as the gentle air-mothers could fulfil it, for foolish man. "There was a roaring in the woods all night; The rain came heavily and fell in floods; But now the sun is rising calm and bright, The birds are singing in the distant woods; Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods, The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters, And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters" But was I a gloomy and distempered man, if, upon such a morn as that, I stood on the little bridge across a certain brook, and watched the water run, with something of a sigh? Or if, when the schoolboy beside me lamented that the floods would surely be out, and his day's fishing spoiled, I said to him--"Ah, my boy, that is a little matter. Look at what you are seeing now, and understand what barbarism and waste mean. Look at all that beautiful water which God has sent us hither off the Atlantic, without trouble or expense to us. Thousands, and tens of thousands, of gallons will run under this bridge to-day; and what shall we do with it? Nothing. And yet: think only of the mills which that water would have turned. Think how it might have kept up health and cleanliness in poor creatures packed away in the back streets of the nearest town, or even in London itself. Think even how country folk, in many parts of England, in three months' time, may be crying out for rain, and afraid of short crops, and fever, and scarlatina, and cattle-plague, for want of the very water which we are now letting run back, wasted, into the sea from whence it came. And yet we call ourselves a civilised people." It is not wise, I know, to preach to boys. And yet, sometimes, a man must speak his heart; even, like Midas' slave, to the reeds by the river side. And I had so often, fishing up and down full many a stream, whispered my story to those same river-reeds; and told them that my Lord the Sovereign Demos had, like old Midas, asses' ears in spite of all his gold, that I thought I might for once tell it the boy likewise, in hope that he might help his generation to mend that which my own generation does not seem like to mend. I might have said more to him: but did not. For it is not well to destroy too early the child's illusion, that people must be wise because they are grown up, and have votes, and rule--or think they rule--the world. The child will find out how true that is soon enough for himself. If the truth be forced on him by the hot words of those with whom he lives, it is apt to breed in him that contempt, stormful and therefore barren, which makes revolutions; and not that pity, calm and therefore helpful, which makes reforms. So I might have said to him, but did not-- And then men pray for rain: My boy, did you ever hear the old Eastern legend about the Gipsies? How they were such good musicians, that some great Indian Sultan sent for the whole tribe, and planted them near his palace, and gave them land, and ploughs to break it up, and seed to sow it, that they might dwell there, and play and sing to him. But when the winter arrived, the Gipsies all came to the Sultan, and cried that they were starving. "But what have you done with the seed- corn which I gave you?" "O Light of the Age, we ate it in the summer." "And what have you done with the ploughs which I gave you?" "O Glory of the Universe, we burnt them to bake the corn withal." Then said that great Sultan--"Like the butterflies you have lived; and like the butterflies you shall wander." So he drove them out. And that is how the Gipsies came hither from the East. Now suppose that the Sultan of all Sultans, who sends the rain, should make a like answer to us foolish human beings, when we prayed for rain: "But what have you done with the rain which I gave you six months since?" "We have let it run into the sea." "Then, ere you ask for more rain, make places wherein you can keep it when you have it." "But that would be, in most cases, too expensive. We can employ our capital more profitably in other directions." It is not for me to say what answer might be made to such an excuse. I think a child's still unsophisticated sense of right and wrong would soon supply one; and probably one--considering the complexity, and difficulty, and novelty, of the whole question--somewhat too harsh; as children's judgments are wont to be. But would it not be well if our children, without being taught to blame anyone for what is past, were taught something about what ought to be done now, what must be done soon, with the rainfall of these islands; and about other and kindred health-questions, on the solution of which depends, and will depend more and more, the life of millions? One would have thought that those public schools and colleges which desire to monopolise the education of the owners of the soil; of the great employers of labour; of the clergy; and of all, indeed, who ought to be acquainted with the duties of property, the conditions of public health, and, in a word, with the general laws of what is now called Social Science--one would have thought, I say, that these public schools and colleges would have taught their scholars somewhat at least about such matters, that they might go forth into life with at least some rough notions of the causes which make people healthy or unhealthy, rich or poor, comfortable or wretched, useful or dangerous to the State. But as long as our great educational institutions, safe, or fancying themselves safe, in some enchanted castle, shut out by ancient magic from the living world, put a premium on Latin and Greek verses: a wise father will, during the holidays, talk now and then, I hope, somewhat after this fashion:-- You must understand, my boy, that all the water in the country comes out of the sky, and from nowhere else; and that, therefore, to save and store the water when it falls is a question of life and death to crops, and man, and beast; for with or without water is life or death. If I took, for instance, the water from the moors above and turned it over yonder field, I could double, and more than double, the crops in that field henceforth. Then why do I not do it? Only because the field lies higher than the house; and if--now here is one thing which you and every civilised man should know--if you have water-meadows, or any "irrigated" land, as it is called, above a house, or even on a level with it, it is certain to breed not merely cold and damp, but fever or ague. Our forefathers did not understand this; and they built their houses, as this is built, in the lowest places they could find: sometimes because they wished to be near ponds, from whence they could get fish in Lent; but more often, I think, because they wanted to be sheltered from the wind. They had no glass, as we have, in their windows; or, at least, only latticed casements, which let in the wind and cold; and they shrank from high and exposed, and therefore really healthy, spots. But now that we have good glass, and sash windows, and doors that will shut tight, we can build warm houses where we like. And if you ever have to do with the building of cottages, remember that it is your duty to the people who will live in them, and therefore to the State, to see that they stand high and dry, where no water can drain down into their foundations, and where fog, and the poisonous gases which are given out by rotting vegetables, cannot drain down either. You will learn more about all that when you learn, as every civilised lad should in these days, something about chemistry, and the laws of fluids and gases. But you know already that flowers are cut off by frost in the low grounds sooner than in the high; and that the fog at night always lies along the brooks; and that the sour moor-smell which warns us to shut our windows at sunset, comes down from the hill, and not up from the valley. Now all these things are caused by one and the same law; that cold air is heavier than warm; and, therefore, like so much water, must run down hill. But what about the rainfall? Well, I have wandered a little from the rainfall: though not as far as you fancy; for fever and ague and rheumatism usually mean--rain in the wrong place. But if you knew how much illness, and torturing pain, and death, and sorrow arise, even to this very day, from ignorance of these simple laws, then you would bear them carefully in mind, and wish to know more about them. But now for water being life to the beasts. Do you remember--though you are hardly old enough--the cattle-plague? How the beasts died, or had to be killed and buried, by tens of thousands; and how misery and ruin fell on hundreds of honest men and women over many of the richest counties of England: but how we in this vale had no cattle- plague; and how there was none--as far as I recollect--in the uplands of Devon and Cornwall, nor of Wales, nor of the Scotch Highlands? Now, do you know why that was? Simply because we here, like those other uplanders, are in such a country as Palestine was before the foolish Jews cut down all their timber, and so destroyed their own rainfall--a "land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills." There is hardly a field here that has not, thank God, its running brook, or its sweet spring, from which our cattle were drinking their health and life, while in the clay-lands of Cheshire, and in the Cambridgeshire fens--which were drained utterly dry--the poor things drank no water, too often, save that of the very same putrid ponds in which they had been standing all day long, to cool themselves, and to keep off the flies. I do not say, of course, that bad water caused the cattle-plague. It came by infection from the East of Europe. But I say that bad water made the cattle ready to take it, and made it spread over the country; and when you are old enough I will give you plenty of proof--some from the herds of your own kinsmen--that what I say is true. And as for pure water being life to human beings: why have we never fever here, and scarcely ever diseases like fever--zymotics, as the doctors call them? Or, if a case comes into our parish from outside, why does the fever never spread? For the very same reason that we had no cattle- plague. Because we have more pure water close to every cottage than we need. And this I tell you: that the only two outbreaks of deadly disease which we have had here for thirty years, were both of them, as far as I could see, to be traced to filthy water having got into the poor folk's wells. Water, you must remember, just as it is life when pure, is death when foul. For it can carry, unseen to the eye, and even when it looks clear and sparkling, and tastes soft and sweet, poisons which have perhaps killed more human beings than ever were killed in battle. You have read, perhaps, how the Athenians, when they were dying of the plague, accused the Lacedaemonians outside the walls of poisoning their wells; or how, in some of the pestilences of the middle ages, the common people used to accuse the poor harmless Jews of poisoning the wells, and set upon them and murdered them horribly. They were right, I do not doubt, in their notion that the well-water was giving them the pestilence: but they had not sense to see that they were poisoning the wells themselves by their dirt and carelessness; or, in the case of poor besieged Athens, probably by mere overcrowding, which has cost many a life ere now, and will cost more. And I am sorry to tell you, my little man, that even now too many people have no more sense than they had, and die in consequence. If you could see a battle-field, and men shot down, writhing and dying in hundreds by shell and bullet, would not that seem to you a horrid sight? Then--I do not wish to make you sad too early, but this is a fact which everyone should know--that more people, and not strong men only, but women and little children too, are killed and wounded in Great Britain every year by bad water and want of water together, than were killed and wounded in any battle which has been fought since you were born. Medical men know this well. And when you are older, you may see it for yourself in the Registrar-General's reports, blue-books, pamphlets, and so on, without end. But why do not people stop such a horrible loss of life? Well, my dear boy, the true causes of it have only been known for the last thirty or forty years; and we English are, as good King Alfred found us to his sorrow a thousand years ago, very slow to move, even when we see a thing ought to be done. Let us hope that in this matter--we have been so in most matters as yet--we shall be like the tortoise in the fable, and not the hare; and by moving slowly, but surely, win the race at last. But now think for yourself: and see what you would do to save these people from being poisoned by bad water. Remember that the plain question is this--The rainwater comes down from heaven as water, and nothing but water. Rainwater is the only pure water, after all. How would you save that for the poor people who have none? There; run away and hunt rabbits on the moor: but look, meanwhile, how you would save some of this beautiful and precious water which is roaring away into the sea. * * * * * Well? What would you do? Make ponds, you say, like the old monks' ponds, now all broken down. Dam all the glens across their mouths, and turn them into reservoirs. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings"--Well, that will have to be done. That is being done more and more, more or less well. The good people of Glasgow did it first, I think; and now the good people of Manchester, and of other northern towns, have done it, and have saved many a human life thereby already. But it must be done, some day, all over England and Wales, and great part of Scotland. For the mountain tops and moors, my boy, by a beautiful law of nature, compensate for their own poverty by yielding a wealth which the rich lowlands cannot yield. You do not understand? Then see. Yon moor above can grow neither corn nor grass. But one thing it can grow, and does grow, without which we should have no corn nor grass, and that is--water. Not only does far more rain fall up there than falls here down below, but even in drought the high moors condense the moisture into dew, and so yield some water, even when the lowlands are burnt up with drought. The reason of that you must learn hereafter. That it is so, you should know yourself. For on the high chalk downs, you know, where farmers make a sheep-pond, they never, if they are wise, make it in a valley or on a hill-side, but on the bleakest top of the very highest down; and there, if they can once get it filled with snow and rain in winter, the blessed dews of night will keep some water in it all the summer through, while the ponds below are utterly dried up. And even so it is, as I know, with this very moor. Corn and grass it will not grow, because there is too little "staple," that is, soluble minerals, in the sandy soil. But how much water it might grow, you may judge roughly for yourself, by remembering how many brooks like this are running off it now to carry mere dirt into the river, and then into the sea. But why should we not make dams at once; and save the water? Because we cannot afford it. No one would buy the water when we had stored it. The rich in town and country will always take care--and quite right they are--to have water enough for themselves, and for their servants too, whatever it may cost them. But the poorer people are--and therefore usually, alas! the more ignorant--the less water they get; and the less they care to have water; and the less they are inclined to pay for it; and the more, I am sorry to say, they waste what little they do get; and I am still more sorry to say, spoil, and even steal and sell--in London at least--the stop-cocks and lead-pipes which bring the water into their houses. So that keeping a water-shop is a very troublesome and uncertain business; and one which is not likely to pay us or any one round here. But why not let some company manage it, as they manage railways, and gas, and other things? Ah--you have been overhearing a good deal about companies of late, I see. But this I will tell you; that when you grow up, and have a vote and influence, it will be your duty, if you intend to be a good citizen, not only not to put the water-supply of England into the hands of fresh companies, but to help to take out of their hands what water-supply they manage already, especially in London; and likewise the gas-supply; and the railroads; and everything else, in a word, which everybody uses, and must use. For you must understand--at least as soon as you can--that though the men who make up companies are no worse than other men, and some of them, as you ought to know, very good men; yet what they have to look to is their profits; and the less water they supply, and the worse it is, the more profit they make. For most water, I am sorry to say, is fouled before the water companies can get to it, as this water which runs past us will be, and as the Thames water above London is. Therefore it has to be cleansed, or partly cleansed, at a very great expense. So water companies have to be inspected--in plain English, watched--at a very heavy expense to the nation, by government officers; and compelled to do their best, and take their utmost care. And so it has come to pass that the London water is not now nearly as bad as some of it was thirty years ago, when it was no more fit to drink than that in the cattle yard tank. But still we must have more water, and better, in London; for it is growing year by year. There are more than three millions of people already in what we call London; and ere you are an old man there may be between four and five millions. Now to supply all these people with water is a duty which we must not leave to any private companies. It must be done by a public authority, as is fit and proper in a free self- governing country. In this matter, as in all others, we will try to do what the Royal Commission told us four years ago we ought to do. I hope that you will see, though I may not, the day when what we call London, but which is really, nine-tenths of it, only a great nest of separate villages huddled together, will be divided into three great self-governing cities, London, Westminster, and Southwark; each with its own corporation, like that of the venerable and well-governed City of London; each managing its own water-supply, gas-supply, and sewage, and other matters besides; and managing them, like Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and other great northern towns, far more cheaply and far better than any companies can do it for them. But where shall we get water enough for all these millions of people? There are no mountains near London. But we might give them the water off our moors. No, no, my boy. "He that will not when he may, When he will, he shall have nay." Some fifteen years ago the Londoners might have had water from us; and I was one of those who did my best to get it for them: but the water companies did not choose to take it; and now this part of England is growing so populous and so valuable that it wants all its little rainfall for itself. So there is another leaf torn out of the Sibylline books for the poor old water companies. You do not understand: you will some day. But you may comfort yourself about London. For it happens to be, I think, the luckiest city in the world; and if it had not been, we should have had pestilence on pestilence in it, as terrible as the great plague of Charles II.'s time. The old Britons, without knowing in the least what they were doing, settled old London city in the very centre of the most wonderful natural reservoir in this island, or perhaps in all Europe; which reaches from Kent into Wiltshire, and round again into Suffolk; and that is, the dear old chalk downs. Why, they are always dry. Yes. But the turf on them never burns up, and the streams which flow through them never run dry, and seldom or never flood either. Do you not know, from Winchester, that that is true? Then where is all the rain and snow gone, which falls on them year by year, but into the chalk itself, and into the greensands, too, below the chalk? There it is, soaked up as by a sponge, in quantity incalculable; enough, some think, to supply London, let it grow as huge as it may. I wish I too were sure of that. But the Commission has shown itself so wise and fair, and brave likewise--too brave, I am sorry to say, for some who might have supported them--that it is not for me to gainsay their opinion. But if there was not water enough in the chalk, are not the Londoners rich enough to bring it from any distance? My boy, in this also we will agree with the Commission--that we ought not to rob Peter to pay Paul, and take water to a distance which other people close at hand may want. Look at the map of England and southern Scotland; and see for yourself what is just, according to geography and nature. There are four mountain-ranges; four great water-fields. First, the hills of the Border. Their rainfall ought to be stored for the Lothians and the extreme north of England. Then the Yorkshire and Derbyshire hills--the central chine of England. Their rainfall is being stored already, to the honour of the shrewd northern men, for the manufacturing counties east and west of the hills. Then come the lake mountains--the finest water-field of all, because more rain by far falls there than in any place in England. But they will be wanted to supply Lancashire, and some day Liverpool itself; for Liverpool is now using rain which belongs more justly to other towns; and besides, there are plenty of counties and towns, down into Cheshire, which would be glad of what water Lancashire does not want. And last come the Snowdon mountains, a noble water-field, which I know well; for an old dream of mine has been, that ere I died I should see all the rain of the Carnedds, and the Glyders, and Siabod, and Snowdon itself, carried across the Conway river to feed the mining districts of North Wales, where the streams are now all foul with oil and lead; and then on into the western coal and iron fields, to Wolverhampton and Birmingham itself: and if I were the engineer who got that done, I should be happier--prouder I dare not say--than if I had painted nobler pictures than Raffaelle, or written nobler plays than Shakespeare. I say that, boy, in most deliberate earnest. But meanwhile, do you not see that in districts where coal and iron may be found, and fresh manufactures may spring up any day in any place, each district has a right to claim the nearest rainfall for itself? And now, when we have got the water into its proper place, let us see what we shall do with it. But why do you say we? Can you and I do all this? My boy, are not you and I free citizens; part of the people, the Commons--as the good old word runs--of this country? And are we not--or ought we not to be in time--beside that, educated men? By the people, remember, I mean, not only the hand-working man who has just got a vote; I mean the clergy of all denominations; and the gentlemen of the press; and last, but not least, the scientific men. If those four classes together were to tell every government--"Free water we will have, and as much as we reasonably choose;" and tell every candidate for the House of Commons,--"Unless you promise to get us as much free water as we reasonably choose, we will not return you to Parliament:" then, I think, we four should put such a "pressure" on government as no water companies, or other vested interests, could long resist. And if any of those four classes should hang back, and waste their time and influence over matters far less important and less pressing, the other three must laugh at them, and more than laugh at them; and ask them--"Why have you education, why have you influence, why have you votes, why are you freemen and not slaves, if not to preserve the comfort, the decency, the health, the lives of men, women, and children--most of those latter your own wives and your own children?" But what shall we do with the water? Well, after all, that is a more practical matter than speculations grounded on the supposition that all classes will do their duty. But the first thing we will do will be to give to the very poorest houses a constant supply, at high pressure; so that everybody may take as much water as he likes, instead of having to keep the water in little cisterns, where it gets foul and putrid only too often. But will they not waste it then? So far from it, wherever the water has been laid on at high pressure, the waste, which is terrible now--some say that in London one-third of the water is wasted--begins to lessen; and both water and expense are saved. If you will only think, you will see one reason why. If a woman leaves a high-pressure tap running, she will flood her place and her neighbour's too. She will be like the magician's servant, who called up the demon to draw water for him; and so he did: but when he had begun he would not stop, and if the magician had not come home, man and house would have been washed away. But if it saves money, why do not the water companies do it? Because--and really here there are many excuses for the poor old water companies, when so many of them swerve and gib at the very mention of constant water-supply, like a poor horse set to draw a load which he feels is too heavy for him--because, to keep everything in order among dirty, careless, and often drunken people, there must be officers with lawful authority--water-policemen we will call them--who can enter people's houses when they will, and if they find anything wrong with the water, set it to rights with a high hand, and even summon the people who have set it wrong. And that is a power which, in a free country, must never be given to the servants of any private company, but only to the officers of a corporation or of the government. And what shall we do with the rest of the water? Well, we shall have, I believe, so much to spare that we may at least do this--In each district of each city, and the centre of each town, we may build public baths and lavatories, where poor men and women may get their warm baths when they will; for now they usually never bathe at all, because they will not--and ought not, if they be hard-worked folk--bathe in cold water during nine months of the year. And there they shall wash their clothes, and dry them by steam; instead of washing them as now, at home, either under back sheds, where they catch cold and rheumatism, or too often, alas! in their own living rooms, in an atmosphere of foul vapour, which drives the father to the public-house and the children into the streets; and which not only prevents the clothes from being thoroughly dried again, but is, my dear boy, as you will know when you are older, a very hot-bed of disease. And they shall have other comforts, and even luxuries, these public lavatories; and be made, in time, graceful and refining, as well as merely useful. Nay, we will even, I think, have in front of each of them a real fountain; not like the drinking-fountains--though they are great and needful boons--which you see here and there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to a great deal of expensive stone: but real fountains, which shall leap, and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle; and fill the place with life, and light, and coolness; and sing in the people's ears the sweetest of all earthly songs--save the song of a mother over her child--the song of "The Laughing Water." But will not that be a waste? Yes, my boy. And for that very reason, I think we, the people, will have our fountains; if it be but to make our governments, and corporations, and all public bodies and officers, remember that they all--save Her Majesty the Queen--are our servants; and not we theirs; and that we choose to have water, not only to wash with, but to play with, if we like. And I believe--for the world, as you will find, is full not only of just but of generous souls--that if the water-supply were set really right, there would be found, in many a city, many a generous man who, over and above his compulsory water-rate, would give his poor fellow-townsmen such a real fountain as those which ennoble the great square at Carcasonne and the great square at Nismes; to be "a thing of beauty and a joy for ever." And now, if you want to go back to your Latin and Greek, you shall translate for me into Latin--I do not expect you to do it into Greek, though it would turn very well into Greek, for the Greeks knew all about the matter long before the Romans--what follows here; and you shall verify the facts and the names, &c., in it from your dictionaries of antiquity and biography, that you may remember all the better what it says. And by that time, I think, you will have learnt something more useful to yourself, and, I hope, to your country hereafter, than if you had learnt to patch together the neatest Greek and Latin verses which have appeared since the days of Mr. Canning. * * * * * I have often amused myself, by fancying one question which an old Roman emperor would ask, were he to rise from his grave and visit the sights of London under the guidance of some minister of state. The august shade would, doubtless, admire, our railroads and bridges, our cathedrals and our public parks, and much more of which we need not be ashamed. But after a while, I think, he would look round, whether in London or in most of our great cities, inquiringly and in vain, for one class of buildings, which in his empire were wont to be almost as conspicuous and as splendid, because, in public opinion, almost as necessary, as the basilicas and temples--"And where," he would ask, "are your public baths?" And if the minister of state who was his guide should answer--"O great Caesar, I really do not know. I believe there are some somewhere at the back of that ugly building which we call the National Gallery; and I think there have been some meetings lately in the East End, and an amateur concert at the Albert Hall, for restoring, by private subscriptions, some baths and wash-houses in Bethnal Green, which had fallen to decay. And there may be two or three more about the metropolis; for parish vestries have powers by Act of Parliament to establish such places, if they think fit, and choose to pay for them out of the rates:"--Then, I think, the august shade might well make answer--"We used to call you, in old Rome, northern barbarians. It seems that you have not lost all your barbarian habits. Are you aware that, in every city in the Roman empire, there were, as a matter of course, public baths open, not only to the poorest freeman, but to the slave, usually for the payment of the smallest current coin, and often gratuitously? Are you aware that in Rome itself, millionaire after millionaire, emperor after emperor, from Menenius Agrippa and Nero down to Diocletian and Constantine, built baths, and yet more baths; and connected with them gymnasia for exercise, lecture-rooms, libraries, and porticos, wherein the people might have shade and shelter, and rest?--I remark, by-the-by, that I have not seen in all your London a single covered place in which the people may take shelter during a shower--Are you aware that these baths were of the most magnificent architecture, decorated with marbles, paintings, sculptures, fountains, what not? And yet I had heard, in Hades down below, that you prided yourselves here on the study of the learned languages; and, indeed, taught little but Greek and Latin at your public schools?" Then, if the minister should make reply--"Oh yes, we know all this. Even since the revival of letters in the end of the fifteenth century a whole literature has been written--a great deal of it, I fear, by pedants who seldom washed even their hands and faces--about your Greek and Roman baths. We visit their colossal ruins in Italy and elsewhere with awe and admiration; and the discovery of a new Roman bath in any old city of our isles sets all our antiquaries buzzing with interest." "Then why," the shade might ask, "do you not copy an example which you so much admire? Surely England must be much in want, either of water, or of fuel to heat it with?" "On the contrary, our rainfall is almost too great; our soil so damp that we have had to invent a whole art of subsoil drainage unknown to you; while, as for fuel, our coal-mines make us the great fuel-exporting people of the world." What a quiet sneer might curl the lip of a Constantine as he replied--"Not in vain, as I said, did we call you, some fifteen hundred years ago, the barbarians of the north. But tell me, good barbarian, whom I know to be both brave and wise--for the fame of your young British empire has reached us even in the realms below, and we recognise in you, with all respect, a people more like us Romans than any which has appeared on earth for many centuries--how is it you have forgotten that sacred duty of keeping the people clean, which you surely at one time learnt from us? When your ancestors entered our armies, and rose, some of them, to be great generals, and even emperors, like those two Teuton peasants, Justin and Justinian, who, long after my days, reigned in my own Constantinople: then, at least, you saw baths, and used them; and felt, after the bath, that you were civilised men, and not 'sordidi ac foetentes,' as we used to call you when fresh out of your bullock-waggons and cattle-pens. How is it that you have forgotten that lesson?" The minister, I fear, would have to answer that our ancestors were barbarous enough, not only to destroy the Roman cities, and temples, and basilicas, and statues, but the Roman baths likewise; and then retired, each man to his own freehold in the country, to live a life not much more cleanly or more graceful than that of the swine which were his favourite food. But he would have a right to plead, as an excuse, that not only in England, but throughout the whole of the conquered Latin empire, the Latin priesthood, who, in some respects, were--to their honour--the representatives of Roman civilisation and the protectors of its remnants, were the determined enemies of its cleanliness; that they looked on personal dirt--like the old hermits of the Thebaid--as a sign of sanctity; and discouraged--as they are said to do still in some of the Romance countries of Europe--the use of the bath, as not only luxurious, but also indecent. At which answer, it seems to me, another sneer might curl the lip of the august shade, as he said to himself--"This, at least, I did not expect, when I made Christianity the state religion of my empire. But you, good barbarian, look clean enough. You do not look on dirt as a sign of sanctity?" "On the contrary, sire, the upper classes of our empire boast of being the cleanliest--perhaps the only perfectly cleanly--people in the world: except, of course, the savages of the South Seas. And dirt is so far from being a thing which we admire, that our scientific men--than whom the world has never seen wiser--have proved to us, for a whole generation past, that dirt is the fertile cause of disease and drunkenness, misery and recklessness." "And, therefore," replies the shade, ere he disappears, "of discontent and revolution; followed by a tyranny endured, as in Rome and many another place, by men once free; because tyranny will at least do for them what they are too lazy, and cowardly, and greedy to do for themselves. Farewell, and prosper; as you seem likely to prosper, on the whole. But if you wish me to consider you a civilised nation: let me hear that you have brought a great river from the depths of the earth, be they a thousand fathoms deep, or from your nearest mountains, be they five hundred miles away; and have washed out London's dirt--and your own shame. Till then, abstain from judging too harshly a Constantine, or even a Caracalla; for they, whatever were their sins, built baths, and kept their people clean. But do your gymnasia--your schools and universities, teach your youth nought about all this?" THRIFT. A LECTURE DELIVERED AT WINCHESTER, MARCH 17, 1869. Ladies,--I have chosen for the title of this lecture a practical and prosaic word, because I intend the lecture itself to be as practical and prosaic as I can make it, without becoming altogether dull. The question of the better or worse education of women is one far too important for vague sentiment, wild aspirations, or Utopian dreams. It is a practical question, on which depends not merely money or comfort, but too often health and life, as the consequences of a good education, or disease and death--I know too well of what I speak--as the consequences of a bad one. I beg you, therefore, to put out of your minds at the outset any fancy that I wish for a social revolution in the position of women; or that I wish to see them educated by exactly the same methods, and in exactly the same subjects, as men. British lads, on an average, are far too ill-taught still, in spite of all recent improvements, for me to wish that British girls should be taught in the same way. Moreover, whatever defects there may have been--and defects there must be in all things human--in the past education of British women, it has been most certainly a splendid moral success. It has made, by the grace of God, British women the best wives, mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, that the world, as far as I can discover, has yet seen. Let those who will sneer at the women of England. We who have to do the work and to fight the battle of life know the inspiration which we derive from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness, and--but too often--from their compassion and their forgiveness. There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a cultivated British woman. But just because a cultivated British woman is so perfect a personage; therefore I wish to see all British women cultivated. Because the womanhood of England is so precious a treasure; I wish to see none of it wasted. It is an invaluable capital, or material, out of which the greatest possible profit to the nation must be made. And that can only be done by thrift; and that, again, can only be attained by knowledge. Consider that word thrift. If you will look at Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, or if you know your Shakespeare, you will see that thrift signified originally profits, gain, riches gotten--in a word, the marks of a man's thriving. How, then, did the word thrift get to mean parsimony, frugality, the opposite of waste? Just in the same way as economy--which first, of course, meant the management of a household--got to mean also the opposite of waste. It was found that in commerce, in husbandry, in any process, in fact, men throve in proportion as they saved their capital, their material, their force. Now this is a great law which runs through life; one of those laws of nature--call them, rather, laws of God--which apply not merely to political economy, to commerce, and to mechanics; but to physiology, to society; to the intellect, to the heart, of every person in this room. The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much work as possible done with the least expenditure of power, the least jar and obstruction, the least wear and tear. And the secret of thrift is knowledge. In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject, you will be able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, successfully; instead of wasting your money or your energies in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, which end in disappointment and exhaustion. The secret of thrift, I say, is knowledge. The more you know, the more you can save yourself and that which belongs to you; and can do more work with less effort. A knowledge of the laws of commercial credit, we all know, saves capital, enabling a less capital to do the work of a greater. Knowledge of the electric telegraph saves time; knowledge of writing saves human speech and locomotion; knowledge of domestic economy saves income; knowledge of sanitary laws saves health and life; knowledge of the laws of the intellect saves wear and tear of brain; and knowledge of the laws of the spirit--what does it not save? A well-educated moral sense, a well-regulated character, saves from idleness and ennui, alternating with sentimentality and excitement, those tenderer emotions, those deeper passions, those nobler aspirations of humanity, which are the heritage of the woman far more than of the man; and which are potent in her, for evil or for good, in proportion as they are left to run wild and undisciplined, or are trained and developed into graceful, harmonious, self-restraining strength, beautiful in themselves, and a blessing to all who come under their influence. What, therefore, I recommend to ladies in this lecture is thrift; thrift of themselves and of their own powers: and knowledge as the parent of thrift. And because it is well to begin with the lower applications of thrift, and to work up to the higher, I am much pleased to hear that the first course of the proposed lectures to women in this place will be one on domestic economy. I presume that the learned gentleman who will deliver these lectures will be the last to mean by that term the mere saving of money; that he will tell you, as--being a German--he will have good reason to know, that the young lady who learns thrift in domestic economy is also learning thrift of the very highest faculties of her immortal spirit. He will tell you, I doubt not--for he must know--how you may see in Germany young ladies living in what we more luxurious British would consider something like poverty; cooking, waiting at table, and performing many a household office which would be here considered menial; and yet finding time for a cultivation of the intellect, which is, unfortunately, too rare in Great Britain. The truth is, that we British are too wealthy. We make money, if not too rapidly for the good of the nation at large, yet too rapidly, I fear, for the good of the daughters of those who make it. Their temptation--I do not, of course, say they all yield to it--but their temptation is, to waste of the very simplest--I had almost said, if I may be pardoned the expression, of the most barbaric--kind; to an oriental waste of money, and waste of time; to a fondness for mere finery, pardonable enough, but still a waste; and to the mistaken fancy that it is the mark of a lady to sit idle and let servants do everything for her. Such women may well take a lesson by contrast from the pure and noble, useful and cultivated thrift of an average German young lady--for ladies these German women are, in every possible sense of the word. But it is not of this sort of waste of which I wish to speak to-day. I only mention the matter in passing, to show that high intellectual culture is not incompatible with the performance of homely household duties, and that the moral success of which I spoke just now need not be injured, any more than it is in Germany, by intellectual success likewise. I trust that these words may reassure those parents, if any such there be here, who may fear that these lectures will withdraw women from their existing sphere of interest and activity. That they should entertain such a fear is not surprising, after the extravagant opinions and schemes which have been lately broached in various quarters. The programme to these lectures expressly disclaims any such intentions; and I, as a husband and a father, expressly disclaim any such intention likewise. "To fit women for the more enlightened performance of their special duties;" to help them towards learning how to do better what we doubt not they are already doing well; is, I honestly believe, the only object of the promoters of this scheme. Let us see now how some of these special duties can be better performed by help of a little enlightenment as to the laws which regulate them. Now, no man will deny--certainly no man who is past forty-five, and whose digestion is beginning to quail before the lumps of beef and mutton which are the boast of a British kitchen, and to prefer, with Justice Shallow, and, I presume, Sir John Falstaff also, "any pretty little tiny kickshaws"--no man, I say, who has reached that age, but will feel it a practical comfort to him to know that the young ladies of his family are at all events good cooks; and understand, as the French do, thrift in the matter of food. Neither will any parent who wishes, naturally enough, that his daughters should cost him as little as possible; and wishes, naturally enough also, that they should be as well dressed as possible, deny that it would be a good thing for them to be practical milliners and mantua-makers; and, by making their own clothes gracefully and well, exercise thrift in clothing. But, beside this thrift in clothing, I am not alone, I believe, in wishing for some thrift in the energy which produces it. Labour misapplied, you will agree, is labour wasted; and as dress, I presume, is intended to adorn the person of the wearer, the making a dress which only disfigures her may be considered as a plain case of waste. It would be impertinent in me to go into any details: but it is impossible to walk about the streets now without passing young people who must be under a deep delusion as to the success of their own toilette. Instead of graceful and noble simplicity of form, instead of combinations of colour at once rich and delicate, because in accordance with the chromatic laws of nature, one meets with phenomena more and more painful to the eye, and startling to common sense, till one would be hardly more astonished, and certainly hardly more shocked, if in a year or two one should pass some one going about like a Chinese lady, with pinched feet, or like a savage of the Amazons, with a wooden bung through her lower lip. It is easy to complain of these monstrosities: but impossible to cure them, it seems to me, without an education of the taste, an education in those laws of nature which produce beauty in form and beauty in colour. For that the cause of these failures lies in want of education is patent. They are most common in--I had almost said they are confined to--those classes of well-to-do persons who are the least educated; who have no standard of taste of their own; and who do not acquire any from cultivated friends and relations: who, in consequence, dress themselves blindly according to what they conceive to be the Paris fashions, conveyed at third-hand through an equally uneducated dressmaker; in innocent ignorance of the fact--for fact I believe it to be--that Paris fashions are invented now not in the least for the sake of beauty, but for the sake of producing, through variety, increased expenditure, and thereby increased employment; according to the strange system which now prevails in France of compelling, if not prosperity, at least the signs of it; and like schoolboys before a holiday, nailing up the head of the weather glass to insure fine weather. Let British ladies educate themselves in those laws of beauty which are as eternal as any other of nature's laws; which may be seen fulfilled, as Mr. Ruskin tells us, so eloquently in every flower and every leaf, in every sweeping down and rippling wave: and they will be able to invent graceful and economical dresses for themselves, without importing tawdry and expensive ugliness from France. Let me now go a step further, and ask you to consider this.--There are in England now a vast number, and an increasing number, of young women who, from various circumstances which we all know, must in after life be either the mistresses of their own fortunes, or the earners of their own bread. And, to do that wisely and well, they must be more or less women of business; and to be women of business, they must know something of the meaning of the words capital, profit, price, value, labour, wages, and of the relation between those two last. In a word, they must know a little political economy. Nay, I sometimes think that the mistress of every household might find, not only thrift of money, but thrift of brain; freedom from mistakes, anxieties, worries of many kinds, all of which eat out the health as well as the heart, by a little sound knowledge of the principles of political economy. When we consider that every mistress of a household is continually buying, if not selling; that she is continually hiring and employing labour in the form of servants; and very often, into the bargain, keeping her husband's accounts: I cannot but think that her hard-worked brain might be clearer, and her hard-tried desire to do her duty by every subject in her little kingdom, might be more easily satisfied, had she read something of what Mr. John Stuart Mill has written, especially on the duties of employer and employed. A capitalist, a commercialist, an employer of labour, and an accountant--every mistress of a household is all these, whether she likes it or not; and it would be surely well for her, in so very complicated a state of society as this, not to trust merely to that mother-wit, that intuitive sagacity and innate power of ruling her fellow-creatures, which carries women so nobly through their work in simpler and less civilised societies. And here I stop to answer those who may say--as I have heard it said--That a woman's intellect is not fit for business; that when a woman takes to business, she is apt to do it ill, and unpleasantly likewise; to be more suspicious, more irritable, more grasping, more unreasonable, than regular men of business would be; that--as I have heard it put--"a woman does not fight fair." The answer is simple. That a woman's intellect is eminently fitted for business is proved by the enormous amount of business she gets through without any special training for it: but those faults in a woman of which some men complain are simply the results of her not having had a special training. She does not know the laws of business. She does not know the rules of the game she is playing; and therefore she is playing it in the dark, in fear and suspicion, apt to judge of questions on personal grounds, often offending those with whom she has to do, and oftener still making herself miserable over matters of law or of business, on which a little sound knowledge would set her head and her heart at rest. When I have seen widows, having the care of children, of a great household, of a great estate, of a great business, struggling heroically, and yet often mistakenly; blamed severely for selfishness and ambition, while they were really sacrificing themselves with the divine instinct of a mother for their children's interest: I have stood by with mingled admiration and pity, and said to myself--"How nobly she is doing the work without teaching! How much more nobly would she have done it had she been taught! She is now doing the work at the most enormous waste of energy and of virtue: had she had knowledge, thrift would have followed it; she would have done more work with far less trouble. She will probably kill herself if she goes on: sound knowledge would have saved her health, saved her heart, saved her friends, and helped the very loved ones for whom she labours, not always with success." A little political economy, therefore, will at least do no harm to a woman; especially if she have to take care of herself in after life; neither, I think, will she be much harmed by some sound knowledge of another subject, which I see promised in these lectures,--"Natural philosophy, in its various branches, such as the chemistry of common life, light, heat, electricity, &c., &c." A little knowledge of the laws of light, for instance, would teach many women that by shutting themselves up day after day, week after week, in darkened rooms, they are as certainly committing a waste of health, destroying their vital energy, and diseasing their brains, as if they were taking so much poison the whole time. A little knowledge of the laws of heat would teach women not to clothe themselves and their children after foolish and insufficient fashions, which in this climate sow the seeds of a dozen different diseases, and have to be atoned for by perpetual anxieties, and by perpetual doctors' bills; and as for a little knowledge of the laws of electricity, one thrift I am sure it would produce--thrift to us men, of having to answer continual inquiries as to what the weather is going to be, when a slight knowledge of the barometer, or of the form of the clouds and the direction of the wind, would enable many a lady to judge for herself, and not, after inquiry on inquiry, disregard all warnings, go out on the first appearance of a strip of blue sky, and come home wet through, with what she calls "only a chill," but which really means a nail driven into her coffin--a probable shortening, though it may be a very small one, of her mortal life; because the food of the next twenty-four hours, which should have gone to keep the vital heat at its normal standard, will have to be wasted in raising it up to that standard, from which it has fallen by a chill. Ladies; these are subjects on which I must beg to speak a little more at length, premising them by one statement, which may seem jest, but is solemn earnest--that, if the medical men of this or any other city were what the world now calls "alive to their own interests"--that is, to the mere making of money; instead of being, what medical men are, the most generous, disinterested, and high-minded class in these realms, then they would oppose by all means in their power the delivery of lectures on natural philosophy to women. For if women act upon what they learn in those lectures--and having women's hearts, they will act upon it--there ought to follow a decrease of sickness and an increase of health, especially among children; a thrift of life, and a thrift of expense besides, which would very seriously affect the income of medical men. For let me ask you, ladies, with all courtesy, but with all earnestness--Are you aware of certain facts, of which every one of those excellent medical men is too well aware? Are you aware that more human beings are killed in England every year by unnecessary and preventable diseases than were killed at Waterloo or at Sadowa? Are you aware that the great majority of those victims are children? Are you aware that the diseases which carry them off are for the most part such as ought to be specially under the control of the women who love them, pet them, educate them, and would in many cases, if need be, lay down their lives for them? Are you aware, again, of the vast amount of disease which, so both wise mothers and wise doctors assure me, is engendered in the sleeping-room from simple ignorance of the laws of ventilation, and in the school-room likewise, from simple ignorance of the laws of physiology? from an ignorance of which I shall mention no other case here save one--that too often from ignorance of signs of approaching disease, a child is punished for what is called idleness, listlessness, wilfulness, sulkiness; and punished, too, in the unwisest way--by an increase of tasks and confinement to the house, thus overtasking still more a brain already overtasked, and depressing still more, by robbing it of oxygen and of exercise, a system already depressed? Are you aware, I ask again, of all this? I speak earnestly upon this point, because I speak with experience. As a single instance: a medical man, a friend of mine, passing by his own school-room, heard one of his own little girls screaming and crying, and went in. The governess, an excellent woman, but wholly ignorant of the laws of physiology, complained that the child had of late become obstinate and would not learn; and that therefore she must punish her by keeping her indoors over the unlearnt lessons. The father, who knew that the child was usually a very good one, looked at her carefully for a little while; sent her out of the school-room; and then said, "That child must not open a book for a month." "If I had not acted so," he said to me, "I should have had that child dead of brain- disease within the year." Now, in the face of such facts as these, is it too much to ask of mothers, sisters, aunts, nurses, governesses--all who may be occupied in the care of children, especially of girls--that they should study thrift of human health and human life, by studying somewhat the laws of life and health? There are books--I may say a whole literature of books--written by scientific doctors on these matters, which are in my mind far more important to the school-room than half the trashy accomplishments, so- called, which are expected to be known by governesses. But are they bought? Are they even to be bought, from most country booksellers? Ah, for a little knowledge of the laws to the neglect of which is owing so much fearful disease, which, if it does not produce immediate death, too often leaves the constitution impaired for years to come. Ah the waste of health and strength in the young; the waste, too, of anxiety and misery in those who love and tend them. How much of it might be saved by a little rational education in those laws of nature which are the will of God about the welfare of our bodies, and which, therefore, we are as much bound to know and to obey, as we are bound to know and obey the spiritual laws whereon depends the welfare of our souls. Pardon me, ladies, if I have given a moment's pain to any one here: but I appeal to every medical man in the room whether I have not spoken the truth; and having such an opportunity as this, I felt that I must speak for the sake of children, and of women likewise, or else for ever hereafter hold my peace. Let me pass on from this painful subject--for painful it has been to me for many years--to a question of intellectual thrift--by which I mean just now thrift of words; thrift of truth; restraint of the tongue; accuracy and modesty in statement. Mothers complain to me that girls are apt to be--not intentionally untruthful--but exaggerative, prejudiced, incorrect, in repeating a conversation or describing an event; and that from this fault arise, as is to be expected, misunderstandings, quarrels, rumours, slanders, scandals, and what not. Now, for this waste of words there is but one cure: and if I be told that it is a natural fault of women; that they cannot take the calm judicial view of matters which men boast, and often boast most wrongly, that they can take; that under the influence of hope, fear, delicate antipathy, honest moral indignation, they will let their eyes and ears be governed by their feelings; and see and hear only what they wish to see and hear: I answer, that it is not for me as a man to start such a theory; but that if it be true, it is an additional argument for some education which will correct this supposed natural defect. And I say deliberately that there is but one sort of education which will correct it; one which will teach young women to observe facts accurately, judge them calmly, and describe them carefully, without adding or distorting: and that is, some training in natural science. I beg you not to be startled: but if you are, then test the truth of my theory by playing to-night at the game called "Russian Scandal;" in which a story, repeated in secret by one player to the other, comes out at the end of the game, owing to the inaccurate and--forgive me if I say it--uneducated brains through which it has passed, utterly unlike its original; not only ludicrously maimed and distorted, but often with the most fantastic additions of events, details, names, dates, places, which each player will aver that he received from the player before him. I am afraid that too much of the average gossip of every city, town, and village is little more than a game of "Russian Scandal;" with this difference, that while one is but a game, the other is but too mischievous earnest. But now, if among your party there shall be an average lawyer, medical man, or man of science, you will find that he, and perhaps he alone, will be able to retail accurately the story which has been told him. And why? Simply because his mind has been trained to deal with facts; to ascertain exactly what he does see or hear, and to imprint its leading features strongly and clearly on his memory. Now, you certainly cannot make young ladies barristers or attorneys; nor employ their brains in getting up cases, civil or criminal; and as for chemistry, they and their parents may have a reasonable antipathy to smells, blackened fingers, and occasional explosions and poisonings. But you may make them something of botanists, zoologists, geologists. I could say much on this point: allow me at least to say this: I verily believe that any young lady who would employ some of her leisure time in collecting wild flowers, carefully examining them, verifying them, and arranging them; or who would in her summer trip to the sea-coast do the same by the common objects of the shore, instead of wasting her holiday, as one sees hundreds doing, in lounging on benches on the esplanade, reading worthless novels, and criticizing dresses--that such a young lady, I say, would not only open her own mind to a world of wonder, beauty, and wisdom, which, if it did not make her a more reverent and pious soul, she cannot be the woman which I take for granted she is; but would save herself from the habit--I had almost said the necessity--of gossip; because she would have things to think of and not merely persons; facts instead of fancies; while she would acquire something of accuracy, of patience, of methodical observation and judgment, which would stand her in good stead in the events of daily life, and increase her power of bridling her tongue and her imagination. "God is in heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few;" is the lesson which those are learning all day long who study the works of God with reverent accuracy, lest by misrepresenting them they should be tempted to say that God has done that which He has not; and in that wholesome discipline I long that women as well as men should share. And now I come to a thrift of the highest kind, as contrasted with a waste the most deplorable and ruinous of all; thrift of those faculties which connect us with the unseen and spiritual world; with humanity, with Christ, with God; thrift of the immortal spirit. I am not going now to give you a sermon on duty. You hear such, I doubt not, in church every Sunday, far better than I can preach to you. I am going to speak rather of thrift of the heart, thrift of the emotions. How they are wasted in these days in reading what are called sensation novels, all know but too well; how British literature--all that the best hearts and intellects among our forefathers have bequeathed to us--is neglected for light fiction, the reading of which is, as a lady well said, "the worst form of intemperance--dram-drinking and opium-eating, intellectual and moral." I know that the young will delight--they have delighted in all ages, and will to the end of time--in fictions which deal with that "oldest tale which is for ever new." Novels will be read: but that is all the more reason why women should be trained, by the perusal of a higher, broader, deeper literature, to distinguish the good novel from the bad, the moral from the immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of art from the sham which hides its shallowness and vulgarity under a tangled plot and melodramatic situations. She should learn--and that she can only learn by cultivation--to discern with joy, and drink in with reverence, the good, the beautiful, and the true; and to turn with the fine scorn of a pure and strong womanhood from the bad, the ugly, and the false. And if any parent should be inclined to reply--"Why lay so much stress upon educating a girl in British literature? Is it not far more important to make our daughters read religious books?" I answer--Of course it is. I take for granted that that is done in a Christian land. But I beg you to recollect that there are books and books; and that in these days of a free press it is impossible, in the long run, to prevent girls reading books of very different shades of opinion, and very different religious worth. It may be, therefore, of the very highest importance to a girl to have her intellect, her taste, her emotions, her moral sense, in a word, her whole womanhood, so cultivated and regulated that she shall herself be able to discern the true from the false, the orthodox from the unorthodox, the truly devout from the merely sentimental, the Gospel from its counterfeits. I should have thought that there never had been in Britain, since the Reformation, a crisis at which young Englishwomen required more careful cultivation on these matters; if at least they are to be saved from making themselves and their families miserable; and from ending--as I have known too many end--with broken hearts, broken brains, broken health, and an early grave. Take warning by what you see abroad. In every country where the women are uneducated, unoccupied; where their only literature is French novels or translations of them--in every one of those countries the women, even to the highest, are the slaves of superstition, and the puppets of priests. In proportion as, in certain other countries--notably, I will say, in Scotland--the women are highly educated, family life and family secrets are sacred, and the woman owns allegiance and devotion to no confessor or director, but to her own husband or to her own family. I say plainly, that if any parents wish their daughters to succumb at last to some quackery or superstition, whether calling itself scientific, or calling itself religious--and there are too many of both just now--they cannot more certainly effect their purpose than by allowing her to grow up ignorant, frivolous, luxurious, vain; with her emotions excited, but not satisfied, by the reading of foolish and even immoral novels. In such a case the more delicate and graceful the organization, the more noble and earnest the nature, which has been neglected, the more certain it is--I know too well what I am saying--to go astray. The time of depression, disappointment, vacuity, all but despair, must come. The immortal spirit, finding no healthy satisfaction for its highest aspirations, is but too likely to betake itself to an unhealthy and exciting superstition. Ashamed of its own long self-indulgence, it is but too likely to flee from itself into a morbid asceticism. Not having been taught its God-given and natural duties in the world, it is but too likely to betake itself, from the mere craving for action, to self-invented and unnatural duties out of the world. Ignorant of true science, yet craving to understand the wonders of nature and of spirit, it is but too likely to betake itself to nonscience--nonsense as it is usually called--whether of spirit-rapping and mesmerism, or of miraculous relics and winking pictures. Longing for guidance and teaching, and never having been taught to guide and teach itself, it is but too likely to deliver itself up in self-despair to the guidance and teaching of those who, whether they be quacks or fanatics, look on uneducated women as their natural prey. You will see, I am sure, from what I have said, that it is not my wish that you should become mere learned women; mere female pedants, as useless and unpleasing as male pedants are wont to be. The education which I set before you is not to be got by mere hearing lectures or reading books: for it is an education of your whole character; a self- education; which really means a committing of yourself to God, that He may educate you. Hearing lectures is good, for it will teach you how much there is to be known, and how little you know. Reading books is good, for it will give you habits of regular and diligent study. And therefore I urge on you strongly private study, especially in case a library should be formed here of books on those most practical subjects of which I have been speaking. But, after all, both lectures and books are good, mainly in as far as they furnish matter for reflection: while the desire to reflect and the ability to reflect must come, as I believe, from above. The honest craving after light and power, after knowledge, wisdom, active usefulness, must come--and may it come to you--by the inspiration of the Spirit of God. One word more, and I have done. Let me ask women to educate themselves, not for their own sakes merely, but for the sake of others. For, whether they will or not, they must educate others. I do not speak merely of those who may be engaged in the work of direct teaching; that they ought to be well taught themselves, who can doubt? I speak of those--and in so doing I speak of every woman, young and old--who exercises as wife, as mother, as aunt, as sister, or as friend, an influence, indirect it may be, and unconscious, but still potent and practical, on the minds and characters of those about them, especially of men. How potent and practical that influence is, those know best who know most of the world and most of human nature. There are those who consider--and I agree with them--that the education of boys under the age of twelve years ought to be entrusted as much as possible to women. Let me ask--of what period of youth and of manhood does not the same hold true? I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who fancies that he has nothing left to learn from cultivated women. I should have thought that the very mission of woman was to be, in the highest sense, the educator of man from infancy to old age; that that was the work towards which all the God-given capacities of women pointed; for which they were to be educated to the highest pitch. I should have thought that it was the glory of woman that she was sent into the world to live for others, rather than for herself; and therefore I should say--Let her smallest rights be respected, her smallest wrongs redressed: but let her never be persuaded to forget that she is sent into the world to teach man--what, I believe, she has been teaching him all along, even in the savage state--namely, that there is something more necessary than the claiming of rights, and that is, the performing of duties; to teach him specially, in these so-called intellectual days, that there is something more than intellect, and that is--purity and virtue. Let her never be persuaded to forget that her calling is not the lower and more earthly one of self-assertion, but the higher and the diviner calling of self-sacrifice; and let her never desert that higher life, which lives in others and for others, like her Redeemer and her Lord. And if any should answer that this doctrine would keep woman a dependant and a slave, I rejoin--Not so: it would keep her what she should be--the mistress of all around her, because mistress of herself. And more, I should express a fear that those who made that answer had not yet seen into the mystery of true greatness and true strength; that they did not yet understand the true magnanimity, the true royalty of that spirit, by which the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. Surely that is woman's calling--to teach man: and to teach him what? To teach him, after all, that his calling is the same as hers, if he will but see the things which belong to his peace. To temper his fiercer, coarser, more self-assertive nature, by the contact of her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice. To make him see that not by blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath, greed, ambition, intrigue, puffery, is good and lasting work to be done on earth: but by wise self-distrust, by silent labour, by lofty self-control, by that charity which hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things; by such an example, in short, as women now in tens of thousands set to those around them; such as they will show more and more, the more their whole womanhood is educated to employ its powers without waste and without haste in harmonious unity. Let the woman begin in girlhood, if such be her happy lot--to quote the words of a great poet, a great philosopher, and a great Churchman, William Wordsworth--let her begin, I say-- "With all things round about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay." Let her develop onwards-- "A spirit, yet a woman too, With household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty. A countenance in which shall meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A creature not too bright and good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. But let her highest and her final development be that which not nature, but self-education alone can bring--that which makes her once and for ever-- "A being breathing thoughtful breath; A traveller betwixt life and death. With reason firm, with temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength and skill. A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort and command. And yet a spirit still and bright With something of an angel light." THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. A LECTURE DELIVERED TO THE OFFICERS OF THE ROYAL ARTILLERY, WOOLWICH. Gentlemen:--When I accepted the honour of lecturing here, I took for granted that so select an audience would expect from me not mere amusement, but somewhat of instruction; or, if that be too ambitious a word for me to use, at least some fresh hint--if I were able to give one--as to how they should fulfil the ideal of military men in such an age as this. To touch on military matters, even had I been conversant with them, seemed to me an impertinence. I am bound to take for granted that every man knows his own business best; and I incline more and more to the opinion that military men should be left to work out the problems of their art for themselves, without the advice or criticism of civilians. But I hold--and I am sure that you will agree with me--that if the soldier is to be thus trusted by the nation, and left to himself to do his own work his own way, he must be educated in all practical matters as highly as the average of educated civilians. He must know all that they know, and his own art beside. Just as a clergyman, being a man plus a priest, is bound to be a man, and a good man, over and above his priesthood, so is the soldier bound to be a civilian, and a highly-educated civilian, plus his soldierly qualities and acquirements. It seemed to me, therefore, that I might, without impertinence, ask you to consider a branch of knowledge which is becoming yearly more and more important in the eyes of well-educated civilians; of which, therefore, the soldier ought at least to know something, in order to put him on a par with the general intelligence of the nation. I do not say that he is to devote much time to it, or to follow it up into specialities: but that he ought to be well grounded in its principles and methods; that he ought to be aware of its importance and its usefulness; that so, if he comes into contact--as he will more and more--with scientific men, he may understand them, respect them, befriend them, and be befriended by them in turn; and how desirable this last result is, I shall tell you hereafter. There are those, I doubt not, among my audience who do not need the advice which I shall presume to give to-night; who belong to that fast increasing class among officers of whom I have often said--and I have found scientific men cordially agree with me--that they are the most modest and the most teachable of men. But even in their case there can be no harm in going over deliberately a question of such importance; in putting it, as it were, into shape; and insisting on arguments which may perhaps not have occurred to some of them. Let me, in the first place, reassure those--if any such there be--who may suppose, from the title of my lecture, that I am only going to recommend them to collect weeds and butterflies, "rats and mice, and such small deer." Far from it. The honourable title of Natural History has, and unwisely, been restricted too much of late years to the mere study of plants and animals. I desire to restore the words to their original and proper meaning--the History of Nature; that is, of all that is born, and grows in time; in short, of all natural objects. If anyone shall say--By that definition you make not only geology and chemistry branches of natural history, but meteorology and astronomy likewise--I cannot deny it. They deal, each of them, with realms of Nature. Geology is, literally, the natural history of soils and lands; chemistry the natural history of compounds, organic and inorganic; meteorology the natural history of climates; astronomy the natural history of planetary and solar bodies. And more, you cannot now study deeply any branch of what is popularly called Natural History--that is, plants and animals--without finding it necessary to learn something, and more and more as you go deeper, of those very sciences. As the marvellous interdependence of all natural objects and forces unfolds itself more and more, so the once separate sciences, which treated of different classes of natural objects, are forced to interpenetrate, as it were; and to supplement themselves by knowledge borrowed from each other. Thus--to give a single instance--no man can now be a first-rate botanist unless he be also no mean meteorologist, no mean geologist, and--as Mr. Darwin has shown in his extraordinary discoveries about the fertilisation of plants by insects--no mean entomologist likewise. It is difficult, therefore, and indeed somewhat unwise and unfair, to put any limit to the term Natural History, save that it shall deal only with nature and with matter; and shall not pretend--as some would have it to do just now--to go out of its own sphere to meddle with moral and spiritual matters. But, for practical purposes, we may define the natural history of any given spot as the history of the causes which have made it what it is, and filled it with the natural objects which it holds. And if anyone would know how to study the natural history of a place, and how to write it, let him read--and if he has read its delightful pages in youth, read once again--that hitherto unrivalled little monograph, White's 'Natural History of Selborne;' and let him then try, by the light of improved science, to do for any district where he may be stationed, what White did for Selborne nearly one hundred years ago. Let him study its plants, its animals, its soils and rocks; and last, but not least, its scenery, as the total outcome of what the soils, and plants, and animals have made it. I say, have made it. How far the nature of the soils and the rocks will affect the scenery of a district may be well learnt from a very clever and interesting little book of Professor Geikie's, on 'The Scenery of Scotland, as affected by its Geological Structure.' How far the plants and trees affect not merely the general beauty, the richness or barrenness of a country, but also its very shape; the rate at which the hills are destroyed and washed into the lowland; the rate at which the seaboard is being removed by the action of waves--all these are branches of study which is becoming more and more important. And even in the study of animals and their effects on the vegetation, questions of really deep interest will arise. You will find that certain plants and trees cannot thrive in a district, while others can, because the former are browsed down by cattle, or their seeds eaten by birds, and the latter are not; that certain seeds are carried in the coats of animals, or wafted abroad by winds--others are not; certain trees destroyed wholesale by insects, while others are not; that in a hundred ways the animal and vegetable life of a district act and react upon each other, and that the climate, the average temperature, the maximum and minimum temperatures, the rainfall, act on them, and in the case of the vegetation, are reacted on again by them. The diminution of rainfall by the destruction of forests, its increase by replanting them, and the effect of both on the healthiness or unhealthiness of a place--as in the case of the Mauritius, where a once healthy island has become pestilential, seemingly from the clearing away of the vegetation on the banks of streams--all this, though to study it deeply requires a fair knowledge of meteorology, and even of a science or two more, is surely well worth the attention of any educated man who is put in charge of the health and lives of human beings. You will surely agree with me that the habit of mind required for such a study as this, is the very same as is required for successful military study. In fact, I should say that the same intellect which would develop into a great military man, would develop also into a great naturalist. I say, intellect. The military man would require--what the naturalist would not--over and above his intellect, a special force of will, in order to translate his theories into fact, and make his campaigns in the field and not merely on paper. But I am speaking only of the habit of mind required for study; of that inductive habit of mind which works, steadily and by rule, from the known to the unknown; that habit of mind of which it has been said:--"The habit of seeing; the habit of knowing what we see; the habit of discerning differences and likenesses; the habit of classifying accordingly; the habit of searching for hypotheses which shall connect and explain those classified facts; the habit of verifying these hypotheses by applying them to fresh facts; the habit of throwing them away bravely if they will not fit; the habit of general patience, diligence, accuracy, reverence for facts for their own sake, and love of truth for its own sake; in one word, the habit of reverent and implicit obedience to the laws of Nature, whatever they may be--these are not merely intellectual, but also moral habits, which will stand men in practical good stead in every affair of life, and in every question, even the most awful, which may come before them as rational and social beings." And specially valuable are they, surely, to the military man, the very essence of whose study, to be successful, lies first in continuous and accurate observation, and then in calm and judicious arrangement. Therefore it is that I hold, and hold strongly, that the study of physical science, far from interfering with an officer's studies, much less unfitting for them, must assist him in them, by keeping his mind always in the very attitude and the very temper which they require. If any smile at this theory of mine, let them recollect one curious fact: that perhaps the greatest captain of the old world was trained by perhaps the greatest philosopher of the old world--the father of Natural History; that Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander of Macedon. I do not fancy, of course, that Aristotle taught Alexander any Natural History. But this we know, that he taught him to use those very faculties by which Aristotle became a natural historian, and many things beside; that he called out in his pupil somewhat of his own extraordinary powers of observation, extraordinary powers of arrangement. He helped to make him a great general: but he helped to make him more--a great politician, coloniser, discoverer. He instilled into him such a sense of the importance of Natural History, that Alexander helped him nobly in his researches; and, if Athenaeus is to be believed, gave him 800 talents towards perfecting his history of animals. Surely it is not too much to say that this close friendship between the natural philosopher and the soldier has changed the whole course of civilisation to this very day. Do not consider me Utopian when I tell you, that I should like to see the study of physical science an integral part of the curriculum of every military school. I would train the mind of the lad who was to become hereafter an officer in the army--and in the navy like wise--by accustoming him to careful observation of, and sound thought about, the face of nature; of the commonest objects under his feet, just as much as of the stars above his head; provided always that he learnt, not at second-hand from books, but where alone he can really learn either war or nature--in the field; by actual observation, actual experiment. A laboratory for chemical experiment is a good thing, it is true, as far as it goes; but I should prefer to the laboratory a naturalists' field club, such as are prospering now at several of the best public schools, certain that the boys would get more of sound inductive habits of mind, as well as more health, manliness, and cheerfulness, amid scenes to remember which will be a joy for ever, than they ever can by bending over retorts and crucibles, amid smells even to remember which is a pain for ever. But I would, whether a field club existed or not, require of every young man entering the army or navy--indeed of every young man entering any liberal profession whatsoever--a fair knowledge, such as would enable him to pass an examination, in what the Germans call _Erd-kunde_--earth-lore--in that knowledge of the face of the earth and of its products, for which we English have as yet cared so little that we have actually no English name for it, save the clumsy and questionable one of physical geography; and, I am sorry to say, hardly any readable school books about it, save Keith Johnston's 'Physical Atlas'--an acquaintance with which last I should certainly require of young men. It does seem most strange--or rather will seem most strange 100 years hence--that we, the nation of colonists, the nation of sailors, the nation of foreign commerce, the nation of foreign military stations, the nation of travellers for travelling's sake, the nation of which one man here and another there--as Schleiden sets forth in his book, 'The Plant,' in a charming ideal conversation at the Travellers' Club--has seen and enjoyed more of the wonders and beauties of this planet than the men of any nation, not even excepting the Germans--that this nation, I say, should as yet have done nothing, or all but nothing, to teach in her schools a knowledge of that planet, of which she needs to know more, and can if she will know more, than any other nation upon it. As for the practical utility of such studies to a soldier, I only need, I trust, to hint at it to such an assembly as this. All must see of what advantage a rough knowledge of the botany of a district would be to an officer leading an exploring party, or engaged in bush warfare. To know what plants are poisonous; what plants, too, are eatable--and many more are eatable than is usually supposed; what plants yield oleaginous substances, whether for food or for other uses; what plants yield vegetable acids, as preventives of scurvy; what timbers are available for each of many different purposes; what will resist wet, salt-water, and the attacks of insects; what, again, can be used, at a pinch, for medicine or for styptics--and be sure, as a wise West Indian doctor once said to me, that there is more good medicine wild in the bush than there is in all the druggists' shops--surely all this is a knowledge not beneath the notice of any enterprising officer, above all of an officer of engineers. I only ask anyone who thinks that I may be in the right, to glance through the lists of useful vegetable products given in Lindley's 'Vegetable Kingdom'--a miracle of learning--and see the vast field open still to a thoughtful and observant man, even while on service; and not to forget that such knowledge, if he should hereafter leave the service and settle, as many do, in a distant land, may be a solid help to his future prosperity. So strongly do I feel on this matter, that I should like to see some knowledge at least of Dr. Oliver's excellent little 'First Book of Indian Botany' required of all officers going to our Indian Empire: but as that will not be, at least for many a year to come, I recommend any gentlemen going to India to get that book, and wile away the hours of the outward voyage by acquiring knowledge which will be a continual source of interest, and it may be now and then of profit, to them during their stay abroad. And for geology, again. As I do not expect you all, or perhaps any of you, to become such botanists as General Monro, whose recent 'Monograph of the Bamboos' is an honour to British botanists, and a proof of the scientific power which is to be found here and there among British officers: so I do not expect you to become such geologists as Sir Roderick Murchison, or even to add such a grand chapter to the history of extinct animals as Major Cautley did by his discoveries in the Sewalik Hills. Nevertheless, you can learn--and I should earnestly advise you to learn--geology and mineralogy enough to be of great use to you in your profession, and of use, too, should you relinquish your profession hereafter. It must be profitable for any man, and specially for you, to know how and where to find good limestone, building stone, road metal; it must be good to be able to distinguish ores and mineral products; it must be good to know--as a geologist will usually know, even in a country which he sees for the first time--where water is likely to be found, and at what probable depth; it must be good to know whether the water is fit for drinking or not, whether it is unwholesome or merely muddy; it must be good to know what spots are likely to be healthy, and what unhealthy, for encamping. The two last questions depend, doubtless, on meteorological as well as geological accidents: but the answers to them will be most surely found out by the scientific man, because the facts connected with them are, like all other facts, determined by natural laws. After what one has heard, in past years, of barracks built in spots plainly pestilential; of soldiers encamped in ruined cities, reeking with the dirt and poison of centuries; of--but it is not my place to find fault; all I will say is, that the wise and humane officer, when once his eyes are opened to the practical value of physical science, will surely try to acquaint himself somewhat with those laws of drainage and of climate, geological, meteorological, chemical, which influence, often with terrible suddenness and fury, the health of whole armies. He will not find it beyond his province to ascertain the amount and period of rainfalls, the maxima of heat and of cold which his troops may have to endure, and many another point on which their health and efficiency--nay, their very life may depend, but which are now too exclusively delegated to the doctor, to whose province they do not really belong. For cure, I take the liberty of believing, is the duty of the medical officer; prevention, that of the military. Thus much I can say just now--and there is much more to be said--on the practical uses of the study of Natural History. But let me remind you, on the other side, if Natural History will help you, you in return can help her; and would, I doubt not, help her, and help scientific men at home, if once you looked fairly and steadily at the immense importance of Natural History--of the knowledge of the "face of the earth." I believe that all will one day feel, more or less, that to know the earth _on_ which we live, and the laws of it _by_ which we live, is a sacred duty to ourselves, to our children after us, and to all whom we may have to command and to influence; aye, and a duty to God likewise. For is it not a duty of common reverence and faith towards Him, if He has put us into a beautiful and wonderful place, and given us faculties by which we can see, and enjoy, and use that place--is it not a duty of reverence and faith towards Him to use these faculties, and to learn the lessons which He has laid open for us? If you feel that, as I think you all will some day feel, then you will surely feel likewise that it will be a good deed--I do not say a necessary duty, but still a good deed and praiseworthy--to help physical science forward; and to add your contributions, however small, to our general knowledge of the earth. And how much may be done for science by British officers, especially on foreign stations, I need not point out. I know that much has been done, chivalrously and well, by officers; and that men of science owe them, and give them, hearty thanks for their labours. But I should like, I confess, to see more done still. I should like to see every foreign station, what one or two highly-educated officers might easily make it, an advanced post of physical science, in regular communication with our scientific societies at home, sending to them accurate and methodic details of the natural history of each district--details 99/100ths of which might seem worthless in the eyes of the public, but which would all be precious in the eyes of scientific men, who know that no fact is really unimportant; and more, that while plodding patiently through seemingly unimportant facts, you may stumble on one of infinite importance, both scientific and practical. For the student of nature, gentlemen, if he will be but patient, diligent, methodical, is liable at any moment to the same good fortune as befel Saul of old, when he went out to seek his father's asses, and found a kingdom. There are those, lastly, who have neither time nor taste for the technicalities, and nice distinctions, of formal Natural History; who enjoy Nature, but as artists or as sportsmen, and not as men of science. Let them follow their bent freely: but let them not suppose that in following it they can do nothing towards enlarging our knowledge of Nature, especially when on foreign stations. So far from it, drawings ought always to be valuable, whether of plants, animals, or scenery, provided only they are accurate; and the more spirited and full of genius they are, the more accurate they are certain to be; for Nature being alive, a lifeless copy of her is necessarily an untrue copy. Most thankful to any officer for a mere sight of sketches will be the closet botanist, who, to his own sorrow, knows three-fourths of his plants only from dried specimens; or the closet zoologist, who knows his animals from skins and bones. And if anyone answers--But I cannot draw. I rejoin, You can at least photograph. If a young officer, going out to foreign parts, and knowing nothing at all about physical science, did me the honour to ask me what he could do for science, I should tell him--Learn to photograph; take photographs of every strange bit of rock-formation which strikes your fancy, and of every widely extended view which may give a notion of the general lie of the country. Append, if you can, a note or two, saying whether a plain is rich or barren; whether the rock is sandstone, limestone, granitic, metamorphic, or volcanic lava; and if there be more rocks than one, which of them lies on the other; and send them to be exhibited at a meeting of the Geological Society. I doubt not that the learned gentlemen there will find in your photographs a valuable hint or two, for which they will be much obliged. I learnt, for instance, what seemed to me most valuable geological lessons, from mere glances at drawings--I believe from photographs--of the Abyssinian ranges about Magdala. Or again, let a man, if he knows nothing of botany, not trouble himself with collecting and drying specimens; let him simply photograph every strange and new tree or plant he sees, to give a general notion of its species, its look; let him append, where he can, a photograph of its leafage, flower, fruit; and send them to Dr. Hooker, or any distinguished botanist: and he will find that, though he may know nothing of botany, he will have pretty certainly increased the knowledge of those who do know. The sportsman, again--I mean the sportsman of that type which seems peculiar to these islands, who loves toil and danger for their own sakes; he surely is a naturalist, ipso facto, though he knows it not. He has those very habits of keen observation on which all sound knowledge of nature is based; and he, if he will--as he may do without interfering with his sport--can study the habits of the animals among whom he spends wholesome and exciting days. You have only to look over such good old books as Williams's 'Wild Sports of the East,' Campbell's 'Old Forest Ranger,' Lloyd's 'Scandinavian Adventures,' and last, but not least, Waterton's 'Wanderings,' to see what valuable additions to true zoology--the knowledge of live creatures, not merely dead ones--British sportsmen have made, and still can make. And as for the employment of time, which often hangs so heavily on a soldier's hands, really I am ready to say, if you are neither men of science, nor draughtsmen, nor sportsmen, why go and collect beetles. It is not very dignified, I know, nor exciting: but it will be something to do. It cannot harm you, if you take, as beetle-hunters do, an india-rubber sheet to lie on; and it will certainly benefit science. Moreover, there will be a noble humility in the act. You will confess to the public that you consider yourself only fit to catch beetles; by which very confession you will prove yourself fit for much finer things than catching beetles: and meanwhile, as I said before, you will be at least out of harm's way. At a foreign barrack once, the happiest officer I met, because the most regularly employed, was one who spent his time in collecting butterflies. He knew nothing about them scientifically--not even their names. He took them simply for their wonderful beauty and variety; and in the hope, too--in which he was really scientific--that if he carefully kept every form which he saw, his collection might be of use some day to entomologists at home. A most pleasant gentleman he was; and, I doubt not, none the worse soldier for his butterfly catching. Commendable, also, in my eyes, was another officer--whom I have not the pleasure of knowing--who, on a remote foreign station, used wisely to escape from the temptations of the world into an entirely original and most pleasant hermitage. For finding--so the story went--that many of the finest insects kept to the tree-tops, and never came to ground at all, he used to settle himself among the boughs of some tree in the tropic forests, with a long-handled net and plenty of cigars, and pass his hours in that airy flower garden, making dashes every now and then at some splendid monster as it fluttered round his head. His example need not be followed by everyone; but it must be allowed that--at least as long as he was in his tree--he was neither dawdling, grumbling, spending money, nor otherwise harming himself, and perhaps his fellow creatures, from sheer want of employment. One word more, and I have done. If I was allowed to give one special piece of advice to a young officer, whether of the army or navy, I would say--Respect scientific men; associate with them; learn from them; find them to be, as you will usually, the most pleasant and instructive of companions: but always respect them. Allow them chivalrously, you who have an acknowledged rank, their yet unacknowledged rank; and treat them as all the world will treat them, in a higher and truer state of civilisation. They do not yet wear the Queen's uniform; they are not yet accepted servants of the State; as they will be in some more perfectly organised and civilised land: but they are soldiers nevertheless, and good soldiers and chivalrous, fighting their nation's battle, often on even less pay than you,--and with still less chance of promotion and of fame, against most real and fatal enemies--against ignorance of the laws of this planet, and all the miseries which that ignorance begets. Honour them for their work; sympathise in it; give them a helping hand in it whenever you have an opportunity--and what opportunities you have, I have been trying to sketch for you to-night; and more, work at it yourselves whenever and wherever you can. Show them that the spirit which animates them--the hatred of ignorance and disorder, and of their bestial consequences--animates you likewise; show them that the habit of mind which they value in themselves--the habit of accurate observation and careful judgment--is your habit likewise; show them that you value science, not merely because it gives better weapons of destruction and of defence, but because it helps you to become clear-headed, large-minded, able to take a just and accurate view of any subject which comes before you, and to cast away every old prejudice and every hasty judgment in the face of truth and of duty: and it will be better for you and for them. But why? What need for the soldier and the man of science to fraternise just now? This need:--The two classes which will have an increasing, it may be a preponderating, influence on the fate of the human race for some time, will be the pupils of Aristotle and those of Alexander--the men of science and the soldiers. In spite of all appearances, and all declamations to the contrary, that is my firm conviction. They, and they alone, will be left to rule; because they alone, each in his own sphere, have learnt to obey. It is therefore most needful for the welfare of society that they should pull with, and not against each other; that they should understand each other, respect each other, take counsel with each other, supplement each other's defects, bring out each other's higher tendencies, counteract each other's lower ones. The scientific man has something to learn of you, gentlemen, which I doubt not that he will learn in good time. You, again, have--as I have been hinting to you to- night--something to learn of him, which you, I doubt not, will learn in good time likewise. Repeat, each of you according to his powers, the old friendship between Aristotle and Alexander; and so, from the sympathy and co-operation of you two, a class of thinkers and actors may yet arise which can save this nation, and the other civilised nations of the world, from that of which I had rather not speak; and wish that I did not think, too often and too earnestly. I may be a dreamer: and I may consider, in my turn, as wilder dreamers than myself, certain persons who fancy that their only business in life is to make money, the scientific man's only business is to show them how to make money, and the soldier's only business to guard their money for them. Be that as it may, the finest type of civilised man which we are likely to see for some generations to come, will be produced by a combination of the truly military with the truly scientific man. I say--I may be a dreamer: but you at least, as well as my scientific friends, will bear with me; for my dream is to your honour. ON BIO-GEOLOGY. AN ADDRESS GIVEN TO THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY OF WINCHESTER. I am not sure that the subject of my address is rightly chosen. I am not sure that I ought not to have postponed a question of mere natural history, to speak to you, as scientific men, on the questions of life and death, which have been forced upon us by the awful warning of an illustrious personage's illness; of preventible disease, its frightful prevalency; of the 200,000 persons who are said to have died of fever alone since the Prince Consort's death, ten years ago; of the remedies; of drainage; of sewage disinfection and utilisation; and of the assistance which you, as a body of scientific men, can give to any effort towards saving the lives and health of our fellow-citizens from those unseen poisons which lurk like wild beasts couched in the jungle, ready to spring at any moment on the unsuspecting, the innocent, the helpless. Of all this I longed to speak: but I thought it best only to hint at it, and leave the question to your common sense and your humanity; taking for granted that your minds, like the minds of all right-minded Englishmen, have been of late painfully awakened to its importance. It seemed to me almost an impertinence to say more in a city of whose local circumstances I know little or nothing. As an old sanitary reformer, practical, as well as theoretical, I am but too well aware of the difficulties which beset any complete scheme of drainage, especially in an ancient city like this; where men are paying the penalty of their predecessors' ignorance; and dwelling, whether they choose or not, over fifteen centuries of accumulated dirt. And, therefore, taking for granted that there is energy and intellect enough in Winchester to conquer these difficulties in due time, I go on to ask you to consider, for a time, a subject which is growing more and more important and interesting, a subject the study of which will do much towards raising the field naturalist from a mere collector of specimens--as he was twenty years ago--to a philosopher elucidating some of the grandest problems. I mean the infant science of Bio-geology--the science which treats of the distribution of plants and animals over the globe, and the causes of that distribution. I doubt not that there are many here who know far more about the subject than I; who are far better read than I am in the works of Forbes, Darwin, Wallace, Hooker, Moritz Wagner, and the other illustrious men who have written on it. But I may, perhaps, give a few hints which will be of use to the younger members of this Society, and will point out to them how to get a new relish for the pursuit of field science. Bio-geology, then, begins with asking every plant or animal you meet, large or small, not merely--What is your name? That is the collector and classifier's duty; and a most necessary duty it is, and one to be performed with the most conscientious patience and accuracy, so that a sound foundation may be built for future speculations. But young naturalists should act not merely as Nature's registrars and census-takers, but as her policemen and gamekeepers; and ask everything they meet--How did you get here? By what road did you come? What was your last place of abode? And now you are here, how do you get your living? Are you and your children thriving, like decent people who can take care of themselves, or growing pauperised and degraded, and dying out? Not that we have a fear of your becoming a dangerous class. Madam Nature allows no dangerous classes, in the modern sense. She has, doubtless for some wise reason, no mercy for the weak. She rewards each organism according to its works; and if anything grows too weak or stupid to take care of itself, she gives it its due deserts by letting it die and disappear. So, you plant or you animal, are you among the strong, the successful, the multiplying, the colonising? Or are you among the weak, the failing, the dwindling, the doomed? These questions may seem somewhat rude: but you may comfort yourself by the thought that plants and animals, though they deserve all kindness, all admiration, deserve no courtesy--at least in this respect. For they are, one and all, wherever you find them, vagrants and landloupers, intruders and conquerors, who have got where they happen to be simply by the law of the strongest--generally not without a little robbery and murder. They have no right save that of possession; the same by which the puffin turns out the old rabbits, eats the young ones, and then lays her eggs in the rabbit burrow--simply because she can. Now, you will see at once that such a course of questioning will call out a great many curious and interesting answers, if you can only get the things to tell you their story; as you always may, if you will cross-examine them long enough; and will lead you into many subjects beside mere botany or entomology. So various, indeed, are the subjects which you will thus start, that I can only hint at them now in the most cursory fashion. At the outset you will soon find yourself involved in chemical and meteorological questions: as, for instance, when you ask--How is it that I find one flora on the sea-shore, another on the sandstone, another on the chalk, and another on the peat-making gravelly strata? The usual answer would be, I presume--if we could work it out by twenty years' experiment, such as Mr. Lawes, of Rothampsted, has been making on the growth of grasses and leguminous plants in different soils and under different manures--the usual answer, I say, would be--Because we plants want such and such mineral constituents in our woody fibre; again, because we want a certain amount of moisture at a certain period of the year: or, perhaps, simply because the mechanical arrangement of the particles of a certain soil happens to suit the shape of our roots and of their stomata. Sometimes you will get an answer quickly enough; sometimes not. If you ask, for instance, _Asplenium viride_ how it contrives to grow plentifully in the Craven of Yorkshire down to 600 or 800 feet above the sea, while in Snowdon it dislikes growing lower than 2000 feet, and is not plentiful even there?--it will reply--Because in the Craven I can get as much carbonic acid as I want from the decomposing limestone: while on the Snowdon Silurian I get very little; and I have to make it up by clinging to the mountain tops, for the sake of the greater rainfall. But if you ask _Polopodium calcareum_--How is it you choose only to grow on limestone, while _Polypodium Dryopteris_, of which, I suspect, you are only a variety, is ready to grow anywhere?--_Polypodium calcareum_ will refuse, as yet, to answer a word. Again--I can only give you the merest string of hints--you will find in your questionings that many plants and animals have no reason at all to show why they should be in one place and not in another, save the very sound reason for the latter which was suggested to me once by a great naturalist. I was asking--Why don't I find such and such a species in my parish, while it is plentiful a few miles off in exactly the same soil?--and he answered--For the same reason that you are not in America. Because you have not got there. Which answer threw to me a flood of light on this whole science. Things are often where they are, simply because they happen to have got there, and not elsewhere. But they must have got there by some means: and those means I want young naturalists to discover; at least to guess at. A species, for instance--and I suspect it is a common case with insects--may abound in a single spot, simply because, long years ago, a single brood of eggs happened to hatch at a time when eggs of other species, who would have competed against them for food, did not hatch; and they may remain confined to that spot, though there is plenty of good food for them outside it, simply because they do not increase fast enough to require to spread out in search of more food. Thus I should explain a case which I heard of lately of _Anthocera trifolii_, abundant for years in one corner of a certain field, and only there; while there was just as much trefoil all round for its larvae as there was in the selected spot. I can, I say, only give hints: but they will suffice, I hope, to show the path of thought into which I want young naturalists to turn their minds. Or, again, you will have to inquire whether the species has not been prevented from spreading by some natural barrier. Mr. Wallace, whom you all of course know, has shown in his 'Malay Archipelago' that a strait of deep sea can act as such a barrier between species. Moritz Wagner has shown that, in the case of insects, a moderately broad river may divide two closely allied species of beetles, or a very narrow snow-range two closely allied species of moths. Again, another cause, and a most common one is: that the plants cannot spread because they find the ground beyond them already occupied by other plants, who will not tolerate a fresh mouth, having only just enough to feed themselves. Take the case of _Saxifraga hypnoides_ and _S. umbrosa_, "London pride." They are two especially strong species. They show that, _S. hypnoides_ especially, by their power of sporting, of diverging into varieties; they show it equally by their power of thriving anywhere, if they can only get there. They will both grow in my sandy garden, under a rainfall of only 23 inches, more luxuriantly than in their native mountains under a rainfall of 50 or 60 inches. Then how is it that _S. hypnoides_ cannot get down off the mountains; and that _S. umbrosa_, though in Kerry it has got off the mountains and down to the sea level, exterminating, I suspect, many species in its progress, yet cannot get across county Cork? The only answer is, I believe: that both species are continually trying to go ahead; but that the other plants already in front of them are too strong for them, and massacre their infants as soon as born. And this brings us to another curious question: the sudden and abundant appearance of plants, like the foxglove and _Epilobium angustifolium_, in spots where they have never been seen before. Are their seeds, as some think, dormant in the ground; or are the seeds which have germinated fresh ones wafted thither by wind or otherwise, and only able to germinate in that one spot, because there the soil is clear? General Monro, now famous for his unequalled memoir on the bamboos, holds to the latter theory. He pointed out to me that the _Epilobium_ seeds, being feathered, could travel with the wind; that the plant always made its appearance first on new banks, landslips, clearings, where it had nothing to compete against; and that the foxglove did the same. True, and most painfully true, in the case of thistles and groundsels: but foxglove seeds, though minute, would hardly be carried by the wind any more than those of the white clover, which comes up so abundantly in drained fens. Adhuc sub judice lis est, and I wish some young naturalists would work carefully at the solution; by experiment, which is the most sure way to find out anything. But in researches in this direction they will find puzzles enough. I will give them one which I shall be most thankful to hear they have solved within the next seven years--How is it that we find certain plants, namely, the thrift and the scurvy grass, abundant on the sea-shore and common on certain mountain-tops, but nowhere between the two? Answer me that. For I have looked at the fact for years--before, behind, sideways, upside down, and inside out--and I cannot understand it. But all these questions, and specially, I suspect, that last one, ought to lead the young student up to the great and complex question--How were these islands re-peopled with plants and animals, after the long and wholesale catastrophe of the glacial epoch? I presume you all know, and will agree, that the whole of these islands, north of the Thames, save certain ice-clad mountain-tops, were buried for long ages under an icy sea. From whence did vegetable and animal life crawl back to the land, as it rose again; and cover its mantle of glacial drift with fresh life and verdure? Now let me give you a few prolegomena on this matter. You must study the plants of course, species by species. Take Watson's 'Cybele Britannica,' and Moore's 'Cybele Hibernica;' and let--as Mr. Matthew Arnold would say--"your thought play freely about them." Look carefully, too, in the case of each species, at the note on its distribution, which you will find appended in Bentham's 'Handbook,' and in Hooker's 'Student's Flora.' Get all the help you can, if you wish to work the subject out, from foreign botanists, both European and American; and I think that, on the whole, you will come to some such theory as this for a general starting platform. We do not owe our flora--I must keep to the flora just now--to so many different regions, or types, as Mr. Watson conceives, but to three, namely: an European or Germanic flora, from the south-east; an Atlantic flora, from the south-west; a Northern flora from the north. These three invaded us after the glacial epoch; and our general flora is their result. But this will cause you much trouble. Before you go a step further you will have to eliminate from all your calculations most of the plants which Watson calls glareal, _i.e_. found in cultivated ground about habitations. And what their limit may be I think we never shall know. But of this we may be sure; that just as invading armies always bring with them, in forage or otherwise, some plants from their own country--just as the Cossacks, in 1815, brought more than one Russian plant through Germany into France--just as you have already a crop of North German plants upon the battle-fields of France--thus do conquering races bring new plants. The Romans, during their 300 or 400 years of occupation and civilisation, must have brought more species, I believe, than I dare mention. I suspect them of having brought, not merely the common hedge elm of the south, not merely the three species of nettle, but all our red poppies, and a great number of the weeds which are common in our cornfields; and when we add to them the plants which may have been brought by returning crusaders and pilgrims; by monks from every part of Europe, by Flemings or other dealers in foreign wool; we have to cut a huge cantle out of our indigenous flora: only, having no records, we hardly know where and what to cut out; and can only, we elder ones, recommend the subject to the notice of the younger botanists, that they may work it out after our work is done. Of course these plants introduced by man, if they are cut out, must be cut out of only one of the floras, namely, the European; for they, probably, came from the south-east, by whatever means they came. That European flora invaded us, I presume, immediately after the glacial epoch, at a time when France and England were united, and the German Ocean a mere network of rivers, which emptied into the deep sea between Scotland and Scandinavia. And here I must add, that endless questions of interest will arise to those who will study, not merely the invasion of that truly European flora, but the invasion of reptiles, insects, and birds, especially birds of passage, which must have followed it as soon as the land was sufficiently covered with vegetation to support life. Whole volumes remain to be written on this subject. I trust that some of your younger members may live to write one of them. The way to begin will be: to compare the flora and fauna of this part of England very carefully with that of the southern and eastern counties; and then to compare them again with the fauna and flora of France, Belgium, and Holland. As for the Atlantic flora, you will have to decide for yourselves whether you accept or not the theory of a sunken Atlantic continent. I confess that all objections to that theory, however astounding it may seem, are outweighed in my mind by a host of facts which I can explain by no other theory. But you must judge for yourselves; and to do so you must study carefully the distribution of heaths, both in Europe and at the Cape; and their non-appearance beyond the Ural Mountains, and in America, save in Labrador, where the common ling, an older and less specialised form, exists. You must consider, too, the plants common to the Azores, Portugal, the West of England, Ireland, and the Western Hebrides. In so doing young naturalists will at least find proofs of a change in the distribution of land and water, which will utterly astound them when they face it for the first time. As for the Northern flora, the question whence it came is puzzling enough. It seems difficult to conceive how any plants could have survived when Scotland was an archipelago in the same ice-covered condition as Greenland is now; and we have no proof that there existed after the glacial epoch any northern continent from which the plants and animals could have come back to us. The species of plants and animals common to Britain, Scandinavia, and North America, must have spread in pre-glacial times, when a continent joining them did exist. But some light has been thrown on this question by an article, as charming as it is able, on "The Physics of the Arctic Ice," by Dr. Brown, of Campster. You will find it in the 'Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society' for February 1870. He shows there that even in Greenland peaks and crags are left free enough from ice to support a vegetation of between 300 or 400 species of flowering plants; and, therefore, he well says, we must be careful to avoid concluding that the plant and animal life on the dreary shores or mountain-tops of the old glacial Scotland was poor. The same would hold good of our mountains; and, if so, we may look with respect, even with awe, on the Alpine plants of Wales, Scotland, and the Lake mountains, as organisms stunted, it may be, and even degraded, by their long battle with the elements; but venerable from their age, historic from their endurance. Relics of an older temperate world, they have lived through thousands of centuries of frost and fog, to sun themselves in a temperate climate once more. I can never pick one of them without a tinge of shame; and to exterminate one of them is to destroy for the mere pleasure of collecting the last of a family which God has taken the trouble to preserve for thousands of centuries. I trust that these hints--for I can call them nothing more--will at least awaken any young naturalist who has hitherto only collected natural objects, to study the really important and interesting question--How did these things get here? Now hence arise questions which may puzzle the mind of a Hampshire naturalist. You have in this neighbourhood, as you well know, two, or rather three, soils, each carrying its peculiar vegetation. First, you have the clay lying on the chalk, and carrying vast woodlands, seemingly primeval. Next, you have the chalk, with its peculiar, delicate, and often fragrant crop of lime-loving plants; and next you have the poor sands and clays of the New Forest basin, saturated with iron, and therefore carrying a moorland or peat-loving vegetation, in many respects quite different from the others. And this moorland soil, and this vegetation, with a few singular exceptions, repeats itself, as I daresay you know, in the north of the county, in the Bagshot basin, as it is called--the moors of Aldershot, Hartford Bridge, and Windsor Forest. Now what a variety of interesting questions are opened up by these simple facts. How did these three floras get each to its present place? Where did each come from? How did it get past or through the other, till each set of plants, after long internecine competition, settled itself down in the sheet of land most congenial to it? And when did each come hither? Which is the oldest? Will any one tell me whether the heathy flora of the moors, or the thymy flora of the chalk downs, were the earlier inhabitants of these isles? To these questions I cannot get any answer; and they cannot be answered without first--a very careful study of the range of each species of plant on the continent of Europe; and next, without careful study of those stupendous changes in the shape of this island which have taken place at a very late geological epoch. The composition of the flora of our moorlands is as yet to me an utter puzzle. We have Lycopodiums--three species--enormously ancient forms which have survived the age of ice: but did they crawl downward hither from the northern mountains, or upward hither from the Pyrenees? We have the beautiful bog asphodel again--an enormously ancient form; for it is, strange to say, common to North America and to Northern Europe, but does not enter Asia--almost an unique instance. It must, surely, have come from the north; and points--as do many species of plants and animals--to the time when North Europe and North America were joined. We have, sparingly, in North Hampshire, though, strangely, not on the Bagshot moors, the Common or Northern Butterwort (_Pinguicula vulgaris_); and also, in the south, the New Forest part of the county, the delicate little _Pinguicula lusitanica_, the only species now found in Devon and Cornwall, marking the New Forest as the extreme eastern limit of the Atlantic flora. We have again the heaths, which, as I have just said, are found neither in America nor in Asia, and must, I believe, have come from some south-western land long since submerged beneath the sea. But more, we have in the New Forest two plants which are members of the South Europe, or properly, the Atlantic flora; which must have come from the south and south-east; and which are found in no other spots in these islands. I mean the lovely _Gladiolus_, which grows abundantly under the ferns near Lyndhurst, certainly wild but it does not approach England elsewhere nearer than the Loire and the Rhine; and next, that delicate orchid, the _Spiranthes aestivalis_, which is known only in a bog near Lyndhurst and in the Channel Islands, while on the Continent it extends from southern Europe all through France. Now, what do these two plants mark? They give us a point in botany, though not in time, to determine when the south of England was parted from the opposite shores of France; and whenever that was, it was just after the Gladiolus and Spiranthes got hither. Two little colonies of these lovely flowers arrived just before their retreat was cut off. They found the country already occupied with other plants; and, not being reinforced by fresh colonists from the south, have not been able to spread farther north than Lyndhurst. Thus, in the New Forest, and, I may say, in the Bagshot moors, you find plants which you do not expect, and do not find plants which you do expect; and you are, or ought to be, puzzled, and I hope also interested, and stirred up to find out more. I spoke just now of the time when England was joined to France, as bearing on Hampshire botany. It bears no less on Hampshire zoology. In insects, for instance, the presence of the purple emperor and the white admiral in our Hampshire woods, as well as the abundance of the great stag-beetle, point to a time when the two countries were joined, at least, as far west as Hampshire; while the absence of these insects farther to the westward shows that the countries, if ever joined, were already parted; and that those insects have not yet had time to spread westward. The presence of these two butterflies, and partly of the stag- beetle, along the south-east coast of England as far as the primeval forests of South Lincolnshire, points--as do a hundred other facts--to a time when the Straits of Dover either did not exist, or were the bed of a river running from the west; and when, as I told you just now, all the rivers which now run into the German Ocean, from the Humber on the west to the Elbe on the east, discharged themselves into the sea between Scotland and Norway, after wandering through a vast lowland, covered with countless herds of mammoth, rhinoceros, gigantic ox, and other mammals now extinct; while the birds, as far as we know; the insects; the fresh- water fish; and even, as my friend Mr. Brady has proved, the _Entomostraca_ of the rivers, were the same in what is now Holland as in what is now our Eastern counties. I could dwell long on this matter. I could talk long about how certain species of _Lepidoptera_--moths and butterflies--like _Papilio Machaon_ and _P. Podalirius_, swarm through France, reach up to the British Channel, and have not crossed it; with the exception of one colony of _Machaon_ in the Cambridgeshire fens. I could talk long about a similar phenomenon in the case of our migratory and singing birds: how many exquisite species--notably those two glorious songsters, the Orphean Warbler and Hippolais, which delight our ears everywhere on the other side of the Channel--follow our nightingales, blackcaps, and warblers northward every spring almost to the Straits of Dover: but dare not cross, simply because they have been, as it were, created since the gulf was opened, and have never learnt from their parents how to fly over it. In the case of fishes, again, I might say much on the curious fact that the Cyprinidae, or white fish--carp, &c.--and their natural enemy, the pike, are indigenous, I believe, only to the rivers, English or continental, on the eastern side of the Straits of Dover; while the rivers on the western side were originally tenanted, like our Hampshire streams, as now, almost entirely by trout, their only Cyprinoid being the minnow--if it, too, be not an interloper; and I might ask you to consider the bearing of this curious fact on the former junction of England and France. But I have only time to point out to you a few curious facts with regard to reptiles, which should be specially interesting to a Hampshire bio- geologist. You know, of course, that in Ireland there are no reptiles, save the little common lizard, _Lacerta agilis_, and a few frogs on the mountain-tops--how they got there I cannot conceive. And you will, of course, guess, and rightly, that the reason of the absence of reptiles is: that Ireland was parted off from England before the creatures, which certainly spread from southern and warmer climates, had time to get there. You know, of course, that we have a few reptiles in England. But you may not be aware that, as soon as you cross the Channel, you find many more species of reptiles than here, as well as those which you find here. The magnificent green lizard which rattles about like a rabbit in a French forest, is never found here; simply because it had not worked northward till after the Channel was formed. But there are three reptiles peculiar to this part of England which should be most interesting to a Hampshire zoologist. The one is the sand lizard (_L. stirpium_), found on Bourne-heath, and, I suspect, in the South Hampshire moors likewise--a North European and French species. Another, the _Coronella laevis_, a harmless French and Austrian snake, which has been found about me, in North Hants and South Berks, now about fifteen or twenty times. I have had three specimens from my own parish. I believe it not to be uncommon; and most probably to be found, by those who will look, both in the New Forest and Woolmer. The third is the Natterjack, or running toad (_Bufo Rubeta_), a most beautifully spotted animal, with a yellow stripe down his back, which is common with me at Eversley, and common also in many moorlands of Hants and Surrey; and, according to Fleming, on heaths near London, and as far north-east as Lincolnshire; in which case it will belong to the Germanic fauna. Now, here again we have cases of animals which have just been able to get hither before the severance of England and France; and which, not being reinforced from the rear, have been forced to stop, in small and probably decreasing colonies, on the spots nearest the coast which were fit for them. I trust that I have not kept you too long over these details. What I wish to impress upon you is that Hampshire is a county specially fitted for the study of important bio-geological questions. To work them out, you must trace the geology of Hampshire, and, indeed, of East Dorset. You must try to form a conception of how the land was shaped in miocene times, before that tremendous upheaval which reared the chalk cliffs at Freshwater upright, lifting the tertiary beds upon their northern slopes. You must ask--Was there not land to the south of the Isle of Wight in those ages, and for ages after; and what was its extent and shape? You must ask--When was the gap between the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Purbeck sawn through, leaving the Needles as remnants on one side, and Old Harry on the opposite? And was it sawn asunder merely by the age-long gnawing of the waves? You must ask--Where did the great river which ran from the west, where Poole Harbour is now, and probably through what is now the Solent, depositing brackish water-beds right and left--where, I say, did it run into the sea? Where the Straits of Dover are now? Or, if not there, where? What, too, is become of the land to the Westward, composed of ancient metamorphic rocks, out of which it ran, and deposited on what are now the Haggerstone Moors of Poole, vast beds of grit? What was the climate on its banks when it washed down the delicate leaves of broad-leaved trees, akin to our modern English ones, which are found in the fine mud-sand strata of Bournemouth? When, finally, did it dwindle down to the brook which now runs through Wareham town? Was its bed sea, or dry land, or under an ice sheet, during the long ages of the glacial epoch? And if you say--Who is sufficient for these things?--Who can answer these questions? I answer--Who but you, or your pupils after you, if you will but try? And if any shall reply--And what use if I do try? What use, if I do try? What use if I succeed in answering every question which you have propounded to-night? Shall I be the happier for it? Shall I be the wiser? My friends, whether you will be the happier for it, or for any knowledge of physical science, or for any other knowledge whatsoever, I cannot tell: that lies in the decision of a Higher Power than I; and, indeed, to speak honestly, I do not think that bio-geology or any other branch of physical science is likely, at first at least, to make you happy. Neither is the study of your fellow-men. Neither is religion itself. We were not sent into the world to be happy, but to be right; at least, poor creatures that we are, as right as we can be; and we must be content with being right, and not happy. For I fear, or rather I hope, that most of us are not capable of carrying out Talleyrand's recipe for perfect happiness on earth--namely, a hard heart and a good digestion. Therefore, as our hearts are, happily, not always hard, and our digestions, unhappily, not always good, we will be content to be made wise by physical science, even though we be not made happy. And we shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only with what we can understand, but, content with what we do not understand--the habit of mind which theologians call--and rightly--faith in God; the true and solid faith, which comes often out of sadness, and out of doubt, such as bio-geology may well stir in us at first sight. For our first feeling will be--I know mine was when I began to look into these matters--one somewhat of dread and of horror. Here were all these creatures, animal and vegetable, competing against each other. And their competition was so earnest and complete, that it did not mean--as it does among honest shopkeepers in a civilised country--I will make a little more money than you; but--I will crush you, enslave you, exterminate you, eat you up. "Woe to the weak," seems to be Nature's watchword. The Psalmist says, "The righteous shall inherit the land." If you go to a tropical forest, or, indeed, if you observe carefully a square acre of any English land, cultivated or uncultivated, you will find that Nature's text at first sight looks a very different one. She seems to say--Not the righteous, but the strong, shall inherit the land. Plant, insect, bird, what not--Find a weaker plant, insect, bird, than yourself, and kill it, and take possession of its little vineyard, and no Naboth's curse shall follow you: but you shall inherit, and thrive therein, you, and your children after you, if they will be only as strong and as cruel as you are. That is Nature's law: and is it not at first sight a fearful law? Internecine competition, ruthless selfishness, so internecine and so ruthless that, as I have wandered in tropic forests, where this temper is shown more quickly and fiercely, though not in the least more evilly, than in our slow and cold temperate one, I have said--Really these trees and plants are as wicked as so many human beings. Throughout the great republic of the organic world, the motto of the majority is, and always has been as far back as we can see, what it is, and always has been, with the majority of human beings, "Every one for himself, and the devil take the hindmost." Over-reaching tyranny; the temper which fawns, and clings, and plays the parasite as long as it is down, and when it has risen, fattens on its patron's blood and life--these, and the other works of the flesh, are the works of average plants and animals, as far as they can practise them. At least, so says at first sight the science of bio-geology; till the naturalist, if he be also human and humane, is glad to escape from the confusion and darkness of the universal battle-field of selfishness into the order and light of Christmas-tide. For then there comes to him the thought--And are these all the facts? And is this all which the facts mean? That mutual competition is one law of Nature, we see too plainly. But is there not, besides that law, a law of mutual help? True it is, as the wise man has said, that the very hyssop on the wall grows there because all the forces of the universe could not prevent its growing. All honour to the hyssop. A brave plant, it has fought a brave fight, and has its just deserts--as everything in Nature has--and so has won. But did all the powers of the universe combine to prevent it growing? Is not that a one-sided statement of facts? Did not all the powers of the universe also combine to make it grow, if only it had valour and worth wherewith to grow? Did not the rains feed it, the very mortar in the wall give lime to its roots? Were not electricity, gravitation, and I know not what of chemical and mechanical forces, busy about the little plant, and every cell of it, kindly and patiently ready to help it, if it would only help itself? Surely this is true; true of every organic thing, animal and vegetable, and mineral, too, for aught I know: and so we must soften our sadness at the sight of the universal mutual war by the sight of an equally universal mutual help. But more. It is true--too true if you will--that all things live on each other. But is it not, therefore, equally true that all things live for each other?--that self-sacrifice, and not selfishness, is at the bottom the law of Nature, as it is the law of Grace; and the law of bio-geology, as it is the law of all religion and virtue worthy of the name? Is it not true that everything has to help something else to live, whether it knows it or not?--that not a plant or an animal can turn again to its dust without giving food and existence to other plants, other animals?--that the very tiger, seemingly the most useless tyrant of all tyrants, is still of use, when, after sending out of the world suddenly, and all but painlessly, many an animal which would without him have starved in misery through a diseased old age, he himself dies, and, in dying, gives, by his own carcase, the means of life and of enjoyment to a thousandfold more living creatures than ever his paws destroyed? And so, the longer one watches the great struggle for existence, the more charitable, the more hopeful, one becomes; as one sees that, consciously or unconsciously, the law of Nature is, after all, self-sacrifice; unconscious in plants and animals, as far as we know; save always those magnificent instances of true self-sacrifice shown by the social insects, by ants, bees, and others, which put to shame by a civilization truly noble--why should I not say divine, for God ordained it?--the selfishness and barbarism of man. But be that as it may, in man the law of self-sacrifice--whether unconscious or not in the animals--rises into consciousness just as far as he is a man; and the crowning lesson of bio- geology may be, when we have worked it out, after all, the lesson of Christmas-tide--of the infinite self-sacrifice of God for man; and Nature as well as religion may say to us-- "Ah, could you crush that ever craving lust For bliss, which kills all bliss, and lose your life, Your barren unit life, to find again A thousand times in those for whom you die-- So were you men and women, and should hold Your rightful rank in God's great universe, Wherein, in heaven or earth, by will or nature, Naught lives for self. All, all, from crown to base-- The Lamb, before the world's foundation slain-- The angels, ministers to God's elect-- The sun, who only shines to light the worlds-- The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers-- The fleeting streams, who in their ocean graves Flee the decay of stagnant self-content-- The oak, ennobled by the shipwright's axe-- The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower-- The flower, which feeds a thousand velvet worms Born only to be prey to every bird-- All spend themselves on others: and shall man, Whose two-fold being is the mystic knot Which couples earth with heaven, doubly bound, As being both worm and angel, to that service By which both worms and angels hold their life, Shall he, whose every breath is debt on debt, Refuse, forsooth, to be what God has made him? No; let him show himself the creatures' Lord By free-will gift of that self-sacrifice Which they, perforce, by Nature's laws endure." My friends, scientific and others, if the study of bio-geology shall help to teach you this, or anything like this; I think that though it may not make you more happy, it may yet make you more wise; and, therefore, what is better than being more happy, namely, more blessed. HEROISM It is an open question whether the policeman is not demoralizing us; and that in proportion as he does his duty well; whether the perfection of justice and safety, the complete "preservation of body and goods," may not reduce the educated and comfortable classes into that lap-dog condition in which not conscience, but comfort, doth make cowards of us all. Our forefathers had, on the whole, to take care of themselves; we find it more convenient to hire people to take care of us. So much the better for us, in some respects: but, it may be, so much the worse in others. So much the better; because, as usually results from the division of labour, these people, having little or nothing to do save to take care of us, do so far better than we could; and so prevent a vast amount of violence and wrong, and therefore of misery, especially to the weak: for which last reason we will acquiesce in the existence of policemen and lawyers, as we do in the results of arbitration, as the lesser of two evils. The odds in war are in favour of the bigger bully; in arbitration, in favour of the bigger rogue; and it is a question whether the lion or the fox be the safer guardian of human interests. But arbitration prevents war: and that, in three cases out of four, is full reason for employing it. On the other hand, the lap-dog condition, whether in dogs or in men, is certainly unfavourable to the growth of the higher virtues. Safety and comfort are good, indeed, for the good; for the brave, the self-originating, the earnest. They give to such a clear stage and no favour wherein to work unhindered for their fellow-men. But for the majority, who are neither brave, self-originating, nor earnest, but the mere puppets of circumstance, safety and comfort may, and actually do, merely make their lives mean and petty, effeminate and dull. Therefore their hearts must be awakened, as often as possible, to take exercise enough for health; and they must be reminded, perpetually and importunately, of what a certain great philosopher called "whatsoever things are true, honourable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report;" "if there be any manhood, and any just praise, to think of such things." This pettiness and dulness of our modern life is just what keeps alive our stage, to which people go to see something a little less petty, a little less dull, than what they see at home. It is, too, the cause of--I had almost said the excuse for--the modern rage for sensational novels. Those who read them so greedily are conscious, poor souls, of capacities in themselves of passion and action, for good and evil, for which their frivolous humdrum daily life gives no room, no vent. They know too well that human nature can be more fertile, whether in weeds and poisons, or in flowers and fruits, than it is usually in the streets and houses of a well-ordered and tolerably sober city. And because the study of human nature is, after all, that which is nearest to every one and most interesting to every one, therefore they go to fiction, since they cannot go to fact, to see what they themselves might be had they the chance; to see what fantastic tricks before high heaven men and women like themselves can play; and how they play them. Well: it is not for me to judge, for me to blame. I will only say that there are those who cannot read sensational novels, or, indeed, any novels at all, just because they see so many sensational novels being enacted round them in painful facts of sinful flesh and blood. There are those, too, who have looked in the mirror too often to wish to see their own disfigured visage in it any more; who are too tired of themselves and ashamed of themselves to want to hear of people like themselves; who want to hear of people utterly unlike themselves, more noble, and able, and just, and sweet, and pure; who long to hear of heroism and to converse with heroes; and who, if by chance they meet with an heroic act, bathe their spirits in that, as in May-dew, and feel themselves thereby, if but for an hour, more fair. If any such shall chance to see these words, let me ask them to consider with me that one word Hero, and what it means. Hero; Heroic; Heroism. These words point to a phase of human nature, the capacity for which we all have in ourselves, which is as startling and as interesting in its manifestations as any, and which is always beautiful, always ennobling, and therefore always attractive to those whose hearts are not yet seared by the world or brutalized by self-indulgence. But let us first be sure what the words mean. There is no use talking about a word till we have got at its meaning. We may use it as a cant phrase, as a party cry on platforms; we may even hate and persecute our fellow-men for the sake of it: but till we have clearly settled in our own minds what a word means, it will do for fighting with, but not for working with. Socrates of old used to tell the young Athenians that the ground of all sound knowledge was--to understand the true meaning of the words which were in their mouths all day long; and Socrates was a wiser man than we shall ever see. So, instead of beginning an oration in praise of heroism, I shall ask my readers to think with me what heroism is. Now, we shall always get most surely at the meaning of a word by getting at its etymology--that is, at what it meant at first. And if heroism means behaving like a hero, we must find out, it seems to me, not merely what a hero may happen to mean just now, but what it meant in the earliest human speech in which we find it. A hero or a heroine, then, among the old Homeric Greeks, meant a man or woman who was like the gods; and who, from that likeness, stood superior to his or her fellow-creatures. Gods, heroes, and men, is a threefold division of rational beings, with which we meet more than once or twice. Those grand old Greeks felt deeply the truth of the poet's saying-- "Unless above himself he can Exalt himself, how poor a thing is man." But more: the Greeks supposed these heroes to be, in some way or other, partakers of a divine nature; akin to the gods; usually, either they, or some ancestor of theirs, descended from a god or goddess. Those who have read Mr. Gladstone's 'Juventus Mundi' will remember the section (cap. ix. section 6) on the modes of the approximation between the divine and the human natures; and whether or not they agree with the author altogether, all will agree, I think, that the first idea of a hero or a heroine was a godlike man or godlike woman. A godlike man. What varied, what infinite forms of nobleness that word might include, ever increasing, as men's notions of the gods became purer and loftier, or, alas! decreasing, as their notions became degraded. The old Greeks, with that intense admiration of beauty which made them, in after ages, the master sculptors and draughtsmen of their own, and, indeed, of any age, would, of course, require in their hero, their godlike man, beauty and strength, manners, too, and eloquence, and all outward perfections of humanity, and neglect his moral qualities. Neglect, I say, but not ignore. The hero, by virtue of his kindred with the gods, was always expected to be a better man than common men, as virtue was then understood. And how better? Let us see. The hero was at least expected to be more reverent than other men to those divine beings of whose nature he partook, whose society he might enjoy even here on earth. He might be unfaithful to his own high lineage; he might misuse his gifts by selfishness and self-will; he might, like Ajax, rage with mere jealousy and wounded pride till his rage ended in shameful madness and suicide. He might rebel against the very gods, and all laws of right and wrong, till he perished in his [Greek text], "Smitten down, blind in his pride, for a sign and a terror to mortals." But he ought to have, he must have, to be true to his name of Hero, justice, self-restraint, and [Greek text]--that highest form of modesty, for which we have, alas! no name in the English tongue; that perfect respect for the feelings of others which springs out of perfect self-respect. And he must have, too--if he were to be a hero of the highest type--the instinct of helpfulness; the instinct that, if he were a kinsman of the gods, he must fight on their side, through toil and danger, against all that was unlike them, and therefore hateful to them. Who loves not the old legends, unsurpassed for beauty in the literature of any race, in which the hero stands out as the deliverer, the destroyer of evil? Theseus ridding the land of robbers, and delivering it from the yearly tribute of boys and maidens to be devoured by the Minotaur; Perseus slaying the Gorgon, and rescuing Andromeda from the sea-beast; Heracles with his twelve famous labours against giants and monsters; and all the rest-- "Who dared, in the god-given might of their manhood Greatly to do and to suffer, and far in the fens and the forests Smite the devourers of men, heaven-hated, brood of the giants; Transformed, strange, without like, who obey not the golden-haired rulers"-- These are figures whose divine moral beauty has sunk into the hearts, not merely of poets or of artists, but of men and women who suffered and who feared; the memory of them, fables though they may have been, ennobled the old Greek heart; they ennobled the heart of Europe in the fifteenth century, at the rediscovery of Greek literature. So far from contradicting the Christian ideal, they harmonised with--I had almost said they supplemented--that more tender and saintly ideal of heroism which had sprung up during the earlier Middle Ages. They justified, and actually gave a new life to, the old noblenesses of chivalry, which had grown up in the later Middle Ages as a necessary supplement of active and manly virtue to the passive and feminine virtue of the cloister. They inspired, mingling with these two other elements, a literature, both in England, France, and Italy, in which the three elements, the saintly, the chivalrous, and the Greek heroic, have become one and undistinguishable, because all three are human, and all three divine; a literature which developed itself in Ariosto, in Tasso, in the Hypnerotomachia, the Arcadia, the Euphues, and other forms, sometimes fantastic, sometimes questionable, but which reached its perfection in our own Spenser's 'Fairy Queen'--perhaps the most admirable poem which has ever been penned by mortal man. And why? What has made these old Greek myths live, myths though they be, and fables, and fair dreams? What, though they have no body, and, perhaps, never had, has given them an immortal soul, which can speak to the immortal souls of all generations to come? What but this, that in them--dim it may be and undeveloped, but still there--lies the divine idea of self-sacrifice as the perfection of heroism; of self-sacrifice, as the highest duty and the highest joy of him who claims a kindred with the gods? Let us say, then, that true heroism must involve self-sacrifice. Those stories certainly involve it, whether ancient or modern, which the hearts, not of philosophers merely, or poets, but of the poorest and the most ignorant, have accepted instinctively as the highest form of moral beauty--the highest form, and yet one possible to all. Grace Darling rowing out into the storm toward the wreck.--The "drunken private of the Buffs," who, prisoner among the Chinese, and commanded to prostrate himself and kotoo, refused in the name of his country's honour--"He would not bow to any Chinaman on earth:" and so was knocked on the head, and died surely a hero's death.--Those soldiers of the 'Birkenhead,' keeping their ranks to let the women and children escape, while they watched the sharks who in a few minutes would be tearing them limb from limb.--Or, to go across the Atlantic--for there are heroes in the Far West--Mr. Bret Harte's "Flynn of Virginia," on the Central Pacific Railway--the place is shown to travellers--who sacrificed his life for his married comrade,-- "There, in the drift, Back to the wall, He held the timbers Ready to fall. Then in the darkness I heard him call,-- 'Run for your life, Jake! Run for your wife's sake! Don't wait for me.' "And that was all Heard in the din-- Heard of Tom Flynn, Flynn of Virginia." Or the engineer, again, on the Mississippi, who, when the steamer caught fire, held, as he had sworn he would, her bow against the bank till every soul save he got safe on shore,-- "Through the hot black breath of the burning boat Jim Bludso's voice was heard; And they all had trust in his cussedness, And knew he would keep his word. And sure's you're born, they all got off Afore the smokestacks fell,-- And Bludso's ghost went up alone In the smoke of the 'Prairie Belle.' "He weren't no saint--but at judgment I'd run my chance with Jim 'Longside of some pious gentlemen That wouldn't shake hands with him. He'd seen his duty--a dead sure thing-- And went for it there and then; And Christ is not going to be too hard On a man that died for men." To which gallant poem of Colonel John Hay's--and he has written many gallant and beautiful poems--I have but one demurrer: Jim Bludso did not merely do his duty, but more than his duty. He did a voluntary deed, to which he was bound by no code or contract, civil or moral; just as he who introduced me to that poem won his Victoria Cross--as many a cross, Victoria and other, has been won--by volunteering for a deed to which he, too, was bound by no code or contract, military or moral. And it is of the essence of self-sacrifice, and, therefore, of heroism, that it should be voluntary; a work of supererogation, at least towards society and man: an act to which the hero or heroine is not bound by duty, but which is above though not against duty. Nay, on the strength of that same element of self-sacrifice, I will not grudge the epithet heroic, which my revered friend Mr. Darwin justly applies to the poor little monkey, who once in his life did that which was above his duty; who lived in continual terror of the great baboon, and yet, when the brute had sprung upon his friend the keeper, and was tearing out his throat, conquered his fear by love, and, at the risk of instant death, sprang in turn upon his dreaded enemy, and bit and shrieked till help arrived. Some would now-a-days use that story merely to prove that the monkey's nature and the man's nature are, after all, one and the same. Well: I, at least, have never denied that there is a monkey-nature in man as there is a peacock-nature, and a swine-nature, and a wolf-nature--of all which four I see every day too much. The sharp and stern distinction between men and animals, as far as their natures are concerned, is of a more modern origin than people fancy. Of old the Assyrian took the eagle, the ox, and the lion--and not unwisely--as the three highest types of human capacity. The horses of Homer might be immortal, and weep for their master's death. The animals and monsters of Greek myth--like the Ananzi spider of Negro fable--glide insensibly into speech and reason. Birds--the most wonderful of all animals in the eyes of a man of science or a poet--are sometimes looked on as wiser, and nearer to the gods, than man. The Norseman--the noblest and ablest human being, save the Greek, of whom history can tell us--was not ashamed to say of the bear of his native forests that he had "ten men's strength and eleven men's wisdom." How could Reinecke Fuchs have gained immortality, in the Middle Ages and since, save by the truth of its too solid and humiliating theorem--that the actions of the world of men were, on the whole, guided by passions but too exactly like those of the lower animals? I have said, and say again, with good old Vaughan-- "Unless above himself he can Exalt himself, how mean a thing is man." But I cannot forget that many an old Greek poet or sage, and many a sixteenth and seventeenth century one, would have interpreted the monkey's heroism from quite a different point of view; and would have said that the poor little creature had been visited suddenly by some "divine afflatus"--an expression quite as philosophical and quite as intelligible as most philosophic formulas which I read now-a-days--and had been thus raised for the moment above his abject selfish monkey-nature, just as man requires to be raised above his. But that theory belongs to a philosophy which is out of date and out of fashion, and which will have to wait a century or two before it comes into fashion again. And now: if self-sacrifice and heroism be, as I believe, identical, I must protest against a use of the word sacrifice which is growing too common in newspaper-columns, in which we are told of an "enormous sacrifice of life;" an expression which means merely that a great many poor wretches have been killed, quite against their own will, and for no purpose whatsoever: no sacrifice at all, unless it be one to the demons of ignorance, cupidity or mismanagement. The stout Whig undergraduate understood better the meaning of such words, who, when asked, "In what sense might Charles the First be said to be a martyr?" answered, "In the same sense that a man might be said to be a martyr to the gout." And I must protest, in like wise, against a misuse of the words hero, heroism, heroic, which is becoming too common, namely, applying them to mere courage. We have borrowed the misuse, I believe, as we have more than one beside, from the French press. I trust that we shall neither accept it, nor the temper which inspires it. It may be convenient for those who flatter their nation, and especially the military part of it, into a ruinous self-conceit, to frame some such syllogism as this--"Courage is heroism: every Frenchman is naturally courageous: therefore every Frenchman is a hero." But we, who have been trained at once in a sounder school of morals, and in a greater respect for facts, and for language as the expression of facts, shall be careful, I hope, not to trifle thus with that potent and awful engine--human speech. We shall eschew likewise, I hope, a like abuse of the word moral, which has crept from the French press now and then, not only into our own press, but into the writings of some of our military men, who, as Englishmen, should have known better. We were told again and again, during the late war, that the moral effect of such a success had been great; that the morale of the troops was excellent; or again, that the morale of the troops had suffered, or even that they were somewhat demoralised. But when one came to test what was really meant by these fine words, one discovered that morals had nothing to do with the facts which they expressed; that the troops were in the one case actuated simply by the animal passion of hope, in the other simply by the animal passion of fear. This abuse of the word moral has crossed, I am sorry to say, the Atlantic; and a witty American, whom we must excuse, though we must not imitate, when some one had been blazing away at him with a revolver, he being unarmed, is said to have described his very natural emotions on the occasion, by saying that he felt dreadfully demoralised. We, I hope, shall confine the word demoralisation, as our generals of the last century would have done, when applied to soldiers, to crime, including, of course, the neglect of duty or of discipline; and we shall mean by the word heroism in like manner, whether applied to a soldier or to any human being, not mere courage; not the mere doing of duty: but the doing of something beyond duty; something which is not in the bond; some spontaneous and unexpected act of self-devotion. I am glad, but not surprised, to see that Miss Yonge has held to this sound distinction in her golden little book of 'Golden Deeds;' and said, "Obedience, at all costs and risks, is the very essence of a soldier's life. It has the solid material, but it has hardly the exceptional brightness, of a golden deed." I know that it is very difficult to draw the line between mere obedience to duty and express heroism. I know also that it would be both invidious and impertinent in an utterly unheroic personage like me, to try to draw that line; and to sit at home at ease, analysing and criticising deeds which I could not do myself: but--to give an instance or two of what I mean-- To defend a post as long as it is tenable is not heroic. It is simple duty. To defend it after it has become untenable, and even to die in so doing, is not heroic, but a noble madness, unless an advantage is to be gained thereby for one's own side. Then, indeed, it rises towards, if not into, the heroism of self-sacrifice. Who, for example, will not endorse the verdict of all ages on the conduct of those Spartans at Thermopylae, when they sat "combing their yellow hair for death" on the sea-shore? They devoted themselves to hopeless destruction: but why? They felt--I must believe that, for they behaved as if they felt--that on them the destinies of the Western World might hang; that they were in the forefront of the battle between civilisation and barbarism, between freedom and despotism; and that they must teach that vast mob of Persian slaves, whom the officers of the Great King were driving with whips up to their lance-points, that the spirit of the old heroes was not dead; and that the Greek, even in defeat and death, was a mightier and a nobler man than they. And they did their work. They produced, if you will, a "moral" effect, which has lasted even to this very day. They struck terror into the heart, not only of the Persian host, but of the whole Persian empire. They made the event of that war certain, and the victories of Salamis and Plataea comparatively easy. They made Alexander's conquest of the East, 150 years afterwards, not only possible at all, but permanent when it came; and thus helped to determine the future civilisation of the whole world. They did not, of course, foresee all this. No great or inspired man can foresee all the consequences of his deeds: but these men were, as I hold, inspired to see somewhat at least of the mighty stake for which they played; and to count their lives worthless, if Sparta had sent them thither to help in that great game. Or shall we refuse the name of heroic to those three German cavalry regiments who, in the battle of Mars La Tour, were bidden to hurl themselves upon the chassepots and mitrailleuses of the unbroken French infantry, and went to almost certain death, over the corpses of their comrades, on and in and through, reeling man over horse, horse over man, and clung like bull-dogs to their work, and would hardly leave, even at the bugle-call, till in one regiment thirteen officers out of nineteen were killed or wounded? And why? Because the French army must be stopped, if it were but for a quarter of an hour. A respite must be gained for the exhausted Third Corps. And how much might be done, even in a quarter of an hour, by men who knew when, and where, and why to die. Who will refuse the name of heroes to these men? And yet they, probably, would have utterly declined the honour. They had but done that which was in the bond. They were but obeying orders after all. As Miss Yonge well says of all heroic persons--"'I have but done that which it was my duty to do,' is the natural answer of those capable of such actions. They have been constrained to them by duty or pity; have never deemed it possible to act otherwise; and did not once think of themselves in the matter at all." These last true words bring us to another element in heroism: its simplicity. Whatsoever is not simple; whatsoever is affected, boastful, wilful, covetous, tarnishes, even destroys, the heroic character of a deed; because all these faults spring out of self. On the other hand, wherever you find a perfectly simple, frank, unconscious character, there you have the possibility, at least, of heroic action. For it is nobler far to do the most commonplace duty in the household, or behind the counter, with a single eye to duty, simply because it must be done--nobler far, I say, than to go out of your way to attempt a brilliant deed, with a double mind, and saying to yourself not only--"This will be a brilliant deed," but also--"and it will pay me, or raise me, or set me off, into the bargain." Heroism knows no "into the bargain." And therefore, again, I must protest against applying the word heroic to any deeds, however charitable, however toilsome, however dangerous, performed for the sake of what certain French ladies, I am told, call "faire son salut"--saving one's soul in the world to come. I do not mean to judge. Other and quite unselfish motives may be, and doubtless often are, mixed up with that selfish one: womanly pity and tenderness; love for, and desire to imitate, a certain incarnate ideal of self-sacrifice, who is at once human and divine. But that motive of saving the soul, which is too often openly proposed and proffered, is utterly unheroic. The desire to escape pains and penalties hereafter by pains and penalties here; the balance of present loss against future gain--what is this but selfishness extended out of this world into eternity? "Not worldliness," indeed, as a satirist once said with bitter truth, "but other-worldliness." Moreover--and the young and the enthusiastic should also bear this in mind--though heroism means the going beyond the limits of strict duty, it never means the going out of the path of strict duty. If it is your duty to go to London, go thither: you may go as much further as you choose after that. But you must go to London first. Do your duty first; it will be time after that to talk of being heroic. And therefore one must seriously warn the young, lest they mistake for heroism and self-sacrifice what is merely pride and self-will, discontent with the relations by which God has bound them, and the circumstances which God has appointed for them. I have known girls think they were doing a fine thing by leaving uncongenial parents or disagreeable sisters, and cutting out for themselves, as they fancied, a more useful and elevated line of life than that of mere home duties; while, after all, poor things, they were only saying, with the Pharisees of old, "Corban, it is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;" and in the name of God, neglecting the command of God to honour their father and mother. There are men, too, who will neglect their households and leave their children unprovided for, and even uneducated, while they are spending their money on philanthropic or religious hobbies of their own. It is ill to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs; or even to the angels. It is ill, I say, trying to make God presents, before we have tried to pay God our debts. The first duty of every man is to the wife whom he has married, and to the children whom she has brought into the world; and to neglect them is not heroism, but self-conceit; the conceit that a man is so necessary to Almighty God, that God will actually allow him to do wrong, if He can only thereby secure the man's invaluable services. Be sure that every motive which comes not from the single eye; every motive which springs from self; is by its very essence unheroic, let it look as gaudy or as beneficent as it may. But I cannot go so far as to say the same of the love of approbation--the desire for the love and respect of our fellow-men. That must not be excluded from the list of heroic motives. I know that it is, or may be proved to be, by victorious analysis, an emotion common to us and the lower animals. And yet no man excludes it less than that true hero, St. Paul. If those brave Spartans, if those brave Germans, of whom I spoke just now, knew that their memories would be wept over and worshipped by brave men and fair women, and that their names would become watchwords to children in their fatherland: what is that to us, save that it should make us rejoice, if we be truly human, that they had that thought with them in their last moments to make self-devotion more easy, and death more sweet? And yet--and yet--is not the highest heroism that which is free even from the approbation of our fellow-men, even from the approbation of the best and wisest? The heroism which is known only to our Father who seeth in secret? The Godlike deeds alone in the lonely chamber? The Godlike lives lived in obscurity?--a heroism rare among us men, who live perforce in the glare and noise of the outer world: more common among women; women of whom the world never hears; who, if the world discovered them, would only draw the veil more closely over their faces and their hearts, and entreat to be left alone with God. True, they cannot always hide. They must not always hide; or their fellow-creatures would lose the golden lesson. But, nevertheless, it is of the essence of the perfect and womanly heroism, in which, as in all spiritual forces, woman transcends the man, that it would hide if it could. And it was a pleasant thought to me, when I glanced lately at the golden deeds of woman in Miss Yonge's book--it was a pleasant thought to me, that I could say to myself--Ah! yes. These heroines are known, and their fame flies through the mouths of men. But if so, how many thousands of heroines there must have been, how many thousands there may be now, of whom we shall never know. But still they are there. They sow in secret the seed of which we pluck the flower and eat the fruit, and know not that we pass the sower daily in the street; perhaps some humble ill-drest woman, earning painfully her own small sustenance. She who nurses a bedridden mother, instead of sending her to the workhouse. She who spends her heart and her money on a drunken father, a reckless brother, on the orphans of a kinsman or a friend. She who--But why go on with the long list of great little heroisms, with which a clergyman at least comes in contact daily--and it is one of the most ennobling privileges of a clergyman's high calling that he does come in contact with them--why go on, I say, save to commemorate one more form of great little heroism--the commonest, and yet the least remembered of all--namely, the heroism of an average mother? Ah, when I think of that last broad fact, I gather hope again for poor humanity; and this dark world looks bright, this diseased world looks wholesome to me once more--because, whatever else it is or is not full of, it is at least full of mothers. While the satirist only sneers, as at a stock butt for his ridicule, at the managing mother trying to get her daughters married off her hands by chicaneries and meannesses, which every novelist knows too well how to draw--would to heaven he, or rather, alas! she, would find some more chivalrous employment for his or her pen--for were they not, too, born of woman?--I only say to myself--having had always a secret fondness for poor Rebecca, though I love Esau more than Jacob--Let the poor thing alone. With pain she brought these girls into the world. With pain she educated them according to her light. With pain she is trying to obtain for them the highest earthly blessing of which she can conceive, namely, to be well married; and if in doing that last, she manoeuvres a little, commits a few basenesses, even tells a few untruths, what does all that come to, save this--that in the confused intensity of her motherly self- sacrifice, she will sacrifice for her daughters even her own conscience and her own credit? We may sneer, if we will, at such a poor hard-driven soul when we meet her in society: our duty, both as Christians and ladies and gentlemen, seems to me to be--to do for her something very different indeed. But to return. Looking at the amount of great little heroisms, which are being, as I assert, enacted around us every day, no one has a right to say, what we are all tempted to say at times--"How can I be heroic? This is no heroic age, setting me heroic examples. We are growing more and more comfortable, frivolous, pleasure-seeking, money-making; more and more utilitarian; more and more mercenary in our politics, in our morals, in our religion; thinking less and less of honour and duty, and more and more of loss and gain. I am born into an unheroic time. You must not ask me to become heroic in it." I do not deny that it is more difficult to be heroic, while circumstances are unheroic round us. We are all too apt to be the puppets of circumstance; all too apt to follow the fashion; all too apt, like so many minnows, to take our colour from the ground on which we lie, in hopes, like them, of comfortable concealment, lest the new tyrant deity, called public opinion, should spy us out, and, like Nebuchadnezzar of old, cast us into a burning fiery furnace--which public opinion can make very hot--for daring to worship any god or man save the will of the temporary majority. Yes, it is difficult to be anything but poor, mean, insufficient, imperfect people, as like each other as so many sheep; and, like so many sheep, having no will or character of our own, but rushing altogether blindly over the same gap, in foolish fear of the same dog, who, after all, dare not bite us; and so it always was and always will be. For the third time I say,-- "Unless above himself he can Exalt himself, how poor a thing is man." But, nevertheless, any man or woman who will, in any age and under any circumstances, can live the heroic life and exercise heroic influences. If any ask proof of this, I shall ask them, in return, to read two novels; novels, indeed, but, in their method and their moral, partaking of that heroic and ideal element, which will make them live, I trust, long after thousands of mere novels have returned to their native dust. I mean Miss Muloch's 'John Halifax, Gentleman,' and Mr. Thackeray's 'Esmond,' two books which no man or woman ought to read without being the nobler for them. 'John Halifax, Gentleman,' is simply the history of a poor young clerk, who rises to be a wealthy mill-owner in the manufacturing districts, in the early part of this century. But he contrives to be an heroic and ideal clerk, and an heroic and ideal mill-owner; and that without doing anything which the world would call heroic or ideal, or in anywise stepping out of his sphere, minding simply his own business, and doing the duty which lies nearest him. And how? By getting into his head from youth the strangest notion, that in whatever station or business he may be, he can always be what he considers a gentleman; and that if he only behaves like a gentleman, all must go right at last. A beautiful book. As I said before, somewhat of an heroic and ideal book. A book which did me good when first I read it; which ought to do any young man good who will read it, and then try to be, like John Halifax, a gentleman, whether in the shop, the counting-house, the bank, or the manufactory. The other--an even more striking instance of the possibility, at least, of heroism anywhere and everywhere--is Mr. Thackeray's 'Esmond.' On the meaning of that book I can speak with authority. For my dear and regretted friend told me himself that my interpretation of it was the true one; that this was the lesson which he meant men to learn therefrom. Esmond is a man of the first half of the eighteenth century; living in a coarse, drunken, ignorant, profligate, and altogether unheroic age. He is--and here the high art and the high morality of Mr. Thackeray's genius is shown--altogether a man of his own age. He is not a sixteenth-century or a nineteenth-century man born out of time. His information, his politics, his religion, are no higher than of those round him. His manners, his views of human life, his very prejudices and faults, are those of his age. The temptations which he conquers are just those under which the men around him fall. But how does he conquer them? By holding fast throughout to honour, duty, virtue. Thus, and thus alone, he becomes an ideal eighteenth-century gentleman, an eighteenth-century hero. This was what Mr. Thackeray meant--for he told me so himself, I say--that it was possible, even in England's lowest and foulest times, to be a gentleman and a hero, if a man would but be true to the light within him. But I will go further. I will go from ideal fiction to actual, and yet ideal, fact; and say that, as I read history, the most unheroic age which the civilized world ever saw was also the most heroic; that the spirit of man triumphed most utterly over his circumstances, at the very moment when those circumstances were most against him. How and why he did so is a question for philosophy in the highest sense of that word. The fact of his having done so is matter of history. Shall I solve my own riddle? Then, have we not heard of the early Christian martyrs? Is there a doubt that they, unlettered men, slaves, weak women, even children, did exhibit, under an infinite sense of duty, issuing in infinite self-sacrifice, a heroism such as the world had never seen before; did raise the ideal of human nobleness a whole stage--rather say, a whole heaven--higher than before; and that wherever the tale of their great deeds spread, men accepted, even if they did not copy, those martyrs as ideal specimens of the human race, till they were actually worshipped by succeeding generations, wrongly, it may be, but pardonably, as a choir of lesser deities? But is there, on the other hand, a doubt that the age in which they were heroic was the most unheroic of all ages; that they were bred, lived, and died, under the most debasing of materialist tyrannies, with art, literature, philosophy, family and national life dying or dead around them, and in cities the corruption of which cannot be told for very shame--cities, compared with which Paris is the abode of Arcadian simplicity and innocence? When I read Petronius and Juvenal, and recollect that they were the contemporaries of the Apostles; when--to give an instance which scholars, and perhaps, happily, only scholars, can appreciate--I glance once more at Trimalchio's feast, and remember that within a mile of that feast St. Paul may have been preaching to a Christian congregation, some of whom--for St. Paul makes no secret of that strange fact--may have been, ere their conversion, partakers in just such vulgar and bestial orgies as those which were going on in the rich freedman's halls: after that, I say, I can put no limit to the possibility of man's becoming heroic, even though he be surrounded by a hell on earth; no limit to the capacities of any human being to form for himself or herself a high and pure ideal of human character; and, without "playing fantastic tricks before high heaven," to carry out that ideal in every-day life; and in the most commonplace circumstances, and the most menial occupations, to live worthy of--as I conceive--our heavenly birthright, and to imitate the heroes, who were the kinsmen of the gods. SUPERSTITION. A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, LONDON. Having accepted the very great honour of being allowed to deliver here two lectures, I have chosen as my subject Superstition and Science. It is with Superstition that this first lecture will deal. The subject seems to me especially fit for a clergyman; for he should, more than other men, be able to avoid trenching on two subjects rightly excluded from this Institution; namely, Theology--that is, the knowledge of God; and Religion--that is, the knowledge of Duty. If he knows, as he should, what is Theology, and what is Religion, then he should best know what is not Theology, and what is not Religion. For my own part, I entreat you at the outset to keep in mind that these lectures treat of matters entirely physical; which have in reality, and ought to have in our minds, no more to do with Theology and Religion than the proposition that theft is wrong, has to do with the proposition that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. It is necessary to premise this, because many are of opinion that superstition is a corruption of religion; and though they would agree that as such, "corruptio optimi pessima," yet they would look on religion as the state of spiritual health, and superstition as one of spiritual disease. Others, again, holding the same notion, but not considering that corruptio optimi pessima, have been in all ages somewhat inclined to be merciful to superstition, as a child of reverence; as a mere accidental misdirection of one of the noblest and most wholesome faculties of man. This is not the place wherein to argue with either of these parties; and I shall simply say that superstition seems to me altogether a physical affection, as thoroughly material and corporeal as those of eating or sleeping, remembering or dreaming. After this, it will be necessary to define superstition, in order to have some tolerably clear understanding of what we are talking about. I beg leave to define it as--Fear of the unknown. Johnson, who was no dialectician, and, moreover, superstitious enough himself, gives eight different definitions of the word; which is equivalent to confessing his inability to define it at all:-- "1. Unnecessary fear or scruples in religion; observance of unnecessary and uncommanded rites or practices; religion without morality. "2. False religion; reverence of beings not proper objects of reverence; false worship. "3. Over nicety; exactness too scrupulous." Eight meanings; which, on the principle that eight eighths, or indeed 800, do not make one whole, may be considered as no definition. His first thought, as often happens, is the best--"Unnecessary fear." But after that he wanders. The root-meaning of the word is still to seek. But, indeed, the popular meaning, thanks to popular common sense, will generally be found to contain in itself the root-meaning. Let us go back to the Latin word Superstitio. Cicero says that the superstitious element consists in "a certain empty dread of the gods"--a purely physical affection, if you will remember three things:-- 1. That dread is in itself a physical affection. 2. That the gods who were dreaded were, with the vulgar, who alone dreaded them, merely impersonations of the powers of nature. 3. That it was physical injury which these gods were expected to inflict. But he himself agrees with this theory of mine; for he says shortly after, that not only philosophers, but even the ancient Romans, had separated superstition from religion; and that the word was first applied to those who prayed all day ut liberi sui sibi superstites essent--might survive them. On the etymology no one will depend who knows the remarkable absence of any etymological instinct in the ancients, in consequence of their weak grasp of that sound inductive method which has created modern criticism. But if it be correct, it is a natural and pathetic form for superstition to take in the minds of men who saw their children fade and die; probably the greater number of them beneath diseases which mankind could neither comprehend nor cure. The best exemplification of what the ancients meant by superstition is to be found in the lively and dramatic words of Aristotle's great pupil, Theophrastus. The superstitious man, according to him, after having washed his hands with lustral water--that is, water in which a torch from the altar had been quenched, goes about with a laurel-leaf in his mouth, to keep off evil influences, as the pigs in Devonshire used, in my youth, to go about with a withe of mountain ash round their necks to keep off the evil eye. If a weasel crosses his path, he stops, and either throws three pebbles into the road, or, with the innate selfishness of fear, lets some one else go before him, and attract to himself the harm which may ensue. He has a similar dread of a screech-owl, whom he compliments in the name of its mistress, Pallas Athene. If he finds a serpent in his house, he sets up an altar to it. If he pass at a four-cross-way an anointed stone, he pours oil on it, kneels down, and adores it. If a rat has nibbled one of his sacks he takes it for a fearful portent--a superstition which Cicero also mentions. He dare not sit on a tomb, because it would be assisting at his own funeral. He purifies endlessly his house, saying that Hecate--that is, the moon--has exercised some malign influence on it; and many other purifications he observes, of which I shall only say that they are by their nature plainly, like the last, meant as preservatives against unseen malarias or contagions, possible or impossible. He assists every month with his children at the mysteries of the Orphic priests; and finally, whenever he sees an epileptic patient, he spits in his own bosom to avert the evil omen. I have quoted, I believe, every fact given by Theophrastus; and you will agree, I am sure, that the moving and inspiring element of such a character is mere bodily fear of unknown evil. The only superstition attributed to him which does not at first sight seem to have its root in dread is that of the Orphic mysteries. But of them Muller says that the Dionusos whom they worshipped "was an infernal deity, connected with Hades, and was the personification, not merely of rapturous pleasure, but of a deep sorrow for the miseries of human life." The Orphic societies of Greece seem to have been peculiarly ascetic, taking no animal food save raw flesh from the sacrificed ox of Dionusos. And Plato speaks of a lower grade of Orphic priests, Orpheotelestai, "who used to come before the doors of the rich, and promise, by sacrifices and expiatory songs, to release them from their own sins, and those of their forefathers;" and such would be but too likely to get a hearing from the man who was afraid of a weasel or an owl. Now, this same bodily fear, I verily believe, will be found at the root of all superstition whatsoever. But be it so. Fear is a natural passion, and a wholesome one. Without the instinct of self-preservation, which causes the sea-anemone to contract its tentacles, or the fish to dash into its hover, species would be extermined wholesale by involuntary suicide. Yes; fear is wholesome enough, like all other faculties, as long as it is controlled by reason. But what if the fear be not rational, but irrational? What if it be, in plain homely English, blind fear; fear of the unknown, simply because it is unknown? Is it not likely, then, to be afraid of the wrong object? to be hurtful, ruinous to animals as well as to man? Any one will confess that, who has ever seen a horse inflict on himself mortal injuries, in his frantic attempts to escape from a quite imaginary danger. I have good reasons for believing that not only animals here and there, but whole flocks and swarms of them, are often destroyed, even in the wild state, by mistaken fear; by such panics, for instance, as cause a whole herd of buffalos to rush over a bluff, and be dashed to pieces. And remark that this capacity of panic, fear--of superstition, as I should call it--is greatest in those animals, the dog and the horse for instance, which have the most rapid and vivid fancy. Does not the unlettered Highlander say all that I want to say, when he attributes to his dog and his horse, on the strength of these very manifestations of fear, the capacity of seeing ghosts and fairies before he can see them himself? But blind fear not only causes evil to the coward himself: it makes him a source of evil to others; for it is the cruellest of all human states. It transforms the man into the likeness of the cat, who, when she is caught in a trap, or shut up in a room, has too low an intellect to understand that you wish to release her; and, in the madness of terror, bites and tears at the hand which tries to do her good. Yes; very cruel is blind fear. When a man dreads he knows not what, he will do he cares not what. When he dreads desperately, he will act desperately. When he dreads beyond all reason, he will behave beyond all reason. He has no law of guidance left, save the lowest selfishness. No law of guidance: and yet his intellect, left unguided, may be rapid and acute enough to lead him into terrible follies. Infinitely more imaginative than the lowest animals, he is for that very reason capable of being infinitely more foolish, more cowardly, more superstitious. He can--what the lower animals, happily for them, cannot--organise his folly; erect his superstitions into a science; and create a whole mythology out of his blind fear of the unknown. And when he has done that--Woe to the weak! For when he has reduced his superstition to a science, then he will reduce his cruelty to a science likewise, and write books like the Malleus Maleficarum, and the rest of the witch-literature of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; of which Mr. Lecky has of late told the world so much, and told it most faithfully and most fairly. But, fear of the unknown? Is not that fear of the unseen world? And is not that fear of the spiritual world? Pardon me: a great deal of that fear--all of it, indeed, which is superstition--is simply not fear of the spiritual, but of the material; and of nothing else. The spiritual world--I beg you to fix this in your minds--is not merely an invisible world which may become visible, but an invisible world which is by its essence invisible; a moral world, a world of right and wrong. And spiritual fear--which is one of the noblest of all affections, as bodily fear is one of the basest--is, if properly defined, nothing less or more than the fear of doing wrong; of becoming a worse man. But what has that to do with mere fear of the unseen? The fancy which conceives the fear is physical, not spiritual. Think for yourselves. What difference is there between a savage's fear of a demon, and a hunter's fear of a fall? The hunter sees a fence. He does not know what is on the other side: but he has seen fences like it with a great ditch on the other side, and suspects one here likewise. He has seen horses fall at such, and men hurt thereby. He pictures to himself his horse falling at that fence, himself rolling in the ditch, with possibly a broken limb; and he recoils from the picture he himself has made; and perhaps with very good reason. His picture may have its counterpart in fact; and he may break his leg. But his picture, like the previous pictures from which it was compounded, is simply a physical impression on the brain, just as much as those in dreams. Now, does the fact of the ditch, the fall, and the broken leg, being unseen and unknown, make them a spiritual ditch, a spiritual fall, a spiritual broken leg? And does the fact of the demon and his doings, being as yet unseen and unknown, make them spiritual, or the harm that he may do, a spiritual harm? What does the savage fear? Lest the demon should appear; that is, become obvious to his physical senses, and produce an unpleasant physical effect on them. He fears lest the fiend should entice him into the bog, break the hand-bridge over the brook, turn into a horse and ride away with him, or jump out from behind a tree and wring his neck--tolerably hard physical facts, all of them; the children of physical fancy, regarded with physical dread. Even if the superstition proved true; even if the demon did appear; even if he wrung the traveller's neck in sound earnest, there would be no more spiritual agency or phenomenon in the whole tragedy than there is in the parlour table, when spiritual somethings make spiritual raps upon spiritual wood; and human beings, who are really spirits--and would to heaven they would remember that fact, and what it means--believe that anything has happened beyond a clumsy juggler's trick. You demur? Do you not see that the demon, by the mere fact of having produced physical consequences, would have become himself a physical agent, a member of physical Nature, and therefore to be explained, he and his doings, by physical laws? If you do not see that conclusion at first sight, think over it till you do. It may seem to some that I have founded my theory on a very narrow basis; that I am building up an inverted pyramid; or that, considering the numberless, complex, fantastic shapes which superstition has assumed, bodily fear is too simple to explain them all. But if those persons will think a second time, they must agree that my base is as broad as the phenomena which it explains; for every man is capable of fear. And they will see, too, that the cause of superstition must be something like fear, which is common to all men: for all, at least as children, are capable of superstition; and that it must be something which, like fear, is of a most simple, rudimentary, barbaric kind; for the lowest savage, of whatever he is not capable, is still superstitious, often to a very ugly degree. Superstition seems, indeed, to be, next to the making of stone-weapons, the earliest method of asserting his superiority to the brutes which has occurred to that utterly abnormal and fantastic lusus naturae called man. Now let us put ourselves awhile, as far as we can, in the place of that same savage; and try whether my theory will not justify itself; whether or not superstition, with all its vagaries, may have been, indeed must have been, the result of that ignorance and fear which he carried about with him, every time he prowled for food through the primeval forest. A savage's first division of nature would be, I should say, into things which he can eat, and things which can eat him; including, of course, his most formidable enemy, and most savoury food--his fellow-man. In finding out what he can eat, we must remember, he will have gone through much experience which will have inspired him with a serious respect for the hidden wrath of nature; like those Himalayan folk, of whom Hooker says, that as they know every poisonous plant, they must have tried them all--not always with impunity. So he gets at a third class of objects--things which he cannot eat, and which will not eat him; but will only do him harm, as it seems to him, out of pure malice, like poisonous plants and serpents. There are natural accidents, too, which fall into the same category, stones, floods, fires, avalanches. They hurt him or kill him, surely for ends of their own. If a rock falls from the cliff above him, what more natural than to suppose that there is some giant up there who threw it at him? If he had been up there, and strong enough, and had seen a man walking underneath, he would certainly have thrown the stone at him and killed him. For first, he might have eaten the man after; and even if he were not hungry, the man might have done him a mischief; and it was prudent to prevent that, by doing him a mischief first. Besides, the man might have a wife; and if he killed the man, then the wife would, by a very ancient law common to man and animals, become the prize of the victor. Such is the natural man, the carnal man, the soulish man, the [Greek text] of St. Paul, with five tolerably acute senses, which are ruled by five very acute animal passions--hunger, sex, rage, vanity, fear. It is with the working of the last passion, fear, that this lecture has to do. So the savage concludes that there must be a giant living in the cliff, who threw stones at him, with evil intent; and he concludes in like wise concerning most other natural phenomena. There is something in them which will hurt him, and therefore likes to hurt him: and if he cannot destroy them, and so deliver himself, his fear of them grows quite boundless. There are hundreds of natural objects on which he learns to look with the same eyes as the little boys of Teneriffe look on the useless and poisonous _Euphorbia canariensis_. It is to them--according to Mr. Piazzi Smyth--a demon who would kill them, if it could only run after them; but as it cannot, they shout Spanish curses at it, and pelt it with volleys of stones, "screeching with elfin joy, and using worse names than ever, when the poisonous milk spurts out from its bruised stalks." And if such be the attitude of the uneducated man towards the permanent terrors of nature, what will it be towards those which are sudden and seemingly capricious?--towards storms, earthquakes, floods, blights, pestilences? We know too well what it has been--one of blind, and therefore often cruel, fear. How could it be otherwise? Was Theophrastus's superstitious man so very foolish for pouring oil on every round stone? I think there was a great deal to be said for him. This worship of Baetyli was rational enough. They were aerolites, fallen from heaven. Was it not as well to be civil to such messengers from above?--to testify by homage to them due awe of the being who had thrown them at men, and who though he had missed his shot that time, might not miss it the next? I think if we, knowing nothing of either gunpowder, astronomy, or Christianity, saw an Armstrong bolt fall within five miles of London, we should be inclined to be very respectful to it indeed. So the aerolites, or glacial boulders, or polished stone weapons of an extinct race, which looked like aerolites, were the children of Ouranos the heaven, and had souls in them. One, by one of those strange transformations in which the logic of unreason indulges, the image of Diana of the Ephesians, which fell down from Jupiter; another was the Ancile, the holy shield which fell from the same place in the days of Numa Pompilius, and was the guardian genius of Rome; and several more became notable for ages. Why not? The uneducated man of genius, unacquainted alike with metaphysics and with biology, sees, like a child, a personality in every strange and sharply-defined object. A cloud like an angel may be an angel; a bit of crooked root like a man may be a man turned into wood--perhaps to be turned back again at its own will. An erratic block has arrived where it is by strange unknown means. Is not that an evidence of its personality? Either it has flown hither itself, or some one has thrown it. In the former case, it has life, and is proportionally formidable; in the latter, he who had thrown it is formidable. I know two erratic blocks of porphyry--I believe there are three--in Cornwall, lying one on serpentine, one, I think, on slate, which--so I was always informed as a boy--were the stones which St. Kevern threw after St. Just when the latter stole his host's chalice and paten, and ran away with them to the Land's End. Why not? Before we knew anything about the action of icebergs and glaciers, that is, until the last eighty years, that was as good a story as any other; while how lifelike these boulders are, let a great poet testify; for the fact has not escaped the delicate eye of Wordsworth: "As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie Couched on the bald top of an eminence; Wonder to all who do the same espy, By what means it could thither come, and whence, So that it seems a thing endued with sense; Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself." To the civilised poet, the fancy becomes a beautiful simile; to a savage poet, it would have become a material and a very formidable fact. He stands in the valley, and looks up at the boulder on the far-off fells. He is puzzled by it. He fears it. At last he makes up his mind. It is alive. As the shadows move over it, he sees it move. May it not sleep there all day, and prowl for prey all night? He had been always afraid of going up those fells; now he will never go. There is a monster there. Childish enough, no doubt. But remember that the savage is always a child. So, indeed, are millions, as well clothed, housed, and policed as ourselves--children from the cradle to the grave. But of them I do not talk; because, happily for the world, their childishness is so overlaid by the result of other men's manhood; by an atmosphere of civilisation and Christianity which they have accepted at second-hand as the conclusions of minds wiser than their own, that they do all manner of reasonable things for bad reasons, or for no reason at all, save the passion of imitation. Not in them, but in the savage, can we see man as he is by nature, the puppet of his senses and his passions, the natural slave of his own fears. But has the savage no other faculties, save his five senses and five passions? I do not say that. I should be most unphilosophical if I said it; for the history of mankind proves that he has infinitely more in him than that. Yes: but in him that infinite more, which is not only the noblest part of humanity; but, it may be, humanity itself, is not to be counted as one of the roots of superstition. For in the savage man, in whom superstition certainly originates, that infinite more is still merely in him; inside him; a faculty: but not yet a fact. It has not come out of him into consciousness, purpose, and act; and is to be treated as non-existent: while what has come out, his passions and senses, is enough to explain all the vagaries of superstition; a vera causa for all its phenomena. And if we seem to have found a sufficient explanation already, it is unphilosophical to look further, at least till we have tried whether our explanation fits the facts. Nevertheless, there is another faculty in the savage, to which I have already alluded, common to him and to at least the higher vertebrates--fancy; the power of reproducing internal images of external objects, whether in its waking form of physical memory--if, indeed, all memory be not physical--or in its sleeping form of dreaming. Upon this last, which has played so very important a part in superstition in all ages, I beg you to think a moment. Recollect your own dreams during childhood; and recollect again that the savage is always a child. Recollect how difficult it was for you in childhood, how difficult it must be always for the savage, to decide whether dreams are phantasms or realities. To the savage, I doubt not, the food he eats, the foes he grapples with, in dreams, are as real as any waking impressions. But, moreover, these dreams will be very often, as children's dreams are wont to be, of a painful and terrible kind. Perhaps they will be always painful; perhaps his dull brain will never dream, save under the influence of indigestion, or hunger, or an uncomfortable attitude. And so, in addition to his waking experience of the terrors of nature, he will have a whole dream-experience besides, of a still more terrific kind. He walks by day past a black cavern mouth, and thinks, with a shudder--Something ugly may live in that ugly hole: what if it jumped out upon me? He broods over the thought with the intensity of a narrow and unoccupied mind; and a few nights after, he has eaten--but let us draw a veil before the larder of a savage--his chin is pinned down on his chest, a slight congestion of the brain comes on; and behold he finds himself again at that cavern's mouth, and something ugly does jump out upon him: and the cavern is a haunted spot henceforth to him and to all his tribe. It is in vain that his family tell him that he has been lying asleep at home all the while. He has the evidence of his senses to prove the contrary. He must have got out of himself, and gone into the woods. When we remember that certain wise Greek philosophers could find no better explanation of dreaming than that the soul left the body, and wandered free, we cannot condemn the savage for his theory. Now, I submit that in these simple facts we have a group of "true causes" which are the roots of all the superstitions of the world. And if any one shall complain that I am talking materialism: I shall answer, that I am doing exactly the opposite. I am trying to eliminate and get rid of that which is material, animal, and base; in order that that which is truly spiritual may stand out, distinct and clear, in its divine and eternal beauty. To explain, and at the same time, as I think, to verify my hypothesis, let me give you an example--fictitious, it is true, but probable fact nevertheless; because it is patched up of many fragments of actual fact: and let us see how, in following it out, we shall pass through almost every possible form of superstition. Suppose a great hollow tree, in which the formidable wasps of the tropics have built for ages. The average savage hurries past the spot in mere bodily fear; for if they come out against him, they will sting him to death; till at last there comes by a savage wiser than the rest, with more observation, reflection, imagination, independence of will--the genius of his tribe. The awful shade of the great tree, added to his terror of the wasps, weighs on him, and excites his brain. Perhaps, too, he has had a wife or a child stung to death by these same wasps. These wasps, so small, yet so wise, far wiser than he: they fly, and they sting. Ah, if he could fly and sting; how he would kill and eat, and live right merrily. They build great towns; they rob far and wide; they never quarrel with each other: they must have some one to teach them, to lead them--they must have a king. And so he gets the fancy of a Wasp-King; as the western Irish still believe in the Master Otter; as the Red Men believe in the King of the Buffalos, and find the bones of his ancestors in the Mammoth remains of Big-bone Lick; as the Philistines of Ekron--to quote a notorious instance--actually worshipped Baal-zebub, lord of the flies. If they have a king, he must be inside that tree, of course. If he, the savage, were a king, he would not work for his bread, but sit at home and make others feed him; and so, no doubt, does the wasp-king. And when he goes home he will brood over this wonderful discovery of the wasp-king; till, like a child, he can think of nothing else. He will go to the tree, and watch for him to come out. The wasps will get accustomed to his motionless figure, and leave him unhurt; till the new fancy will rise in his mind that he is a favourite of this wasp-king: and at last he will find himself grovelling before the tree, saying--"Oh great wasp-king, pity me, and tell your children not to sting me, and I will bring you honey, and fruit, and flowers to eat, and I will flatter you, and worship you, and you shall be my king." And then he would gradually boast of his discovery; of the new mysterious bond between him and the wasp-king; and his tribe would believe him, and fear him; and fear him still more when he began to say, as he surely would, not merely--"I can ask the wasp-king, and he will tell his children not to sting you:" but--"I can ask the wasp-king, and he will send his children, and sting you all to death." Vanity and ambition will have prompted the threat: but it will not be altogether a lie. The man will more than half believe his own words; he will quite believe them when he has repeated them a dozen times. And so he will become a great man, and a king, under the protection of the king of the wasps; and he will become, and it may be his children after him, priest of the wasp-king, who will be their fetish, and the fetish of their tribe. And they will prosper, under the protection of the wasp-king. The wasp will become their moral ideal, whose virtues they must copy. The new chief will preach to them wild eloquent words. They must sting like wasps, revenge like wasps, hold all together like wasps, build like wasps, work hard like wasps, rob like wasps; then, like the wasps, they will be the terror of all around, and kill and eat all their enemies. Soon they will call themselves The Wasps. They will boast that their king's father or grandfather, and soon that the ancestor of the whole tribe, was an actual wasp; and the wasp will become at once their eponym hero, their deity, their ideal, their civiliser; who has taught them to build a kraal of huts, as he taught his children to build a hive. Now, if there should come to any thinking man of this tribe, at this epoch, the new thought--Who made the world? he will be sorely puzzled. The conception of a world has never crossed his mind before. He never pictured to himself anything beyond the nearest ridge of mountains; and as for a Maker, that will be a greater puzzle still. What makers or builders more cunning than those wasps of whom his foolish head is full? Of course, he sees it now. A Wasp made the world; which to him entirely new guess might become an integral part of his tribe's creed. That would be their cosmogony. And if, a generation or two after, another savage genius should guess that the world was a globe hanging in the heavens, he would, if he had imagination enough to take the thought in at all, put it to himself in a form suited to his previous knowledge and conceptions. It would seem to him that The Wasp flew about the skies with the world in his mouth, as he carries a bluebottle fly; and that would be the astronomy of his tribe henceforth. Absurd enough; but--as every man who is acquainted with old mythical cosmogonies must know--no more absurd than twenty similar guesses on record. Try to imagine the gradual genesis of such myths as the Egyptian scarabaeus and egg, or the Hindoo theory that the world stood on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, the tortoise on that infinite note of interrogation which, as some one expresses it, underlies all physical speculations, and judge: must they not have arisen in some such fashion as that which I have pointed out? This, I say, would be the culminating point of the wasp-worship, which had sprung up out of bodily fear of being stung. But times might come for it in which it would go through various changes, through which every superstition in the world, I suppose, has passed or is doomed to pass. The wasp-men might be conquered, and possibly eaten, by a stronger tribe than themselves. What would be the result? They would fight valiantly at first, like wasps. But what if they began to fail? Was not the wasp- king angry with them? Had not he deserted them? He must be appeased; he must have his revenge. They would take a captive, and offer him to the wasps. So did a North American tribe, in their need, some forty years ago; when, because their maize-crops failed, they roasted alive a captive girl, cut her to pieces, and sowed her with their corn. I would not tell the story, for the horror of it, did it not bear with such fearful force on my argument. What were those Red Men thinking of? What chain of misreasoning had they in their heads when they hit on that as a device for making the crops grow? Who can tell? Who can make the crooked straight, or number that which is wanting? As said Solomon of old, so must we--"The foolishness of fools is folly." One thing only we can say of them, that they were horribly afraid of famine, and took that means of ridding themselves of their fear. But what if the wasp-tribe had no captives? They would offer slaves. What if the agony and death of slaves did not appease the wasps? They would offer their fairest, their dearest, their sons and their daughters, to the wasps; as the Carthaginians, in like strait, offered in one day 200 noble boys to Moloch, the volcano-god, whose worship they had brought out of Syria; whose original meaning they had probably forgotten; of whom they only knew that he was a dark and devouring being, who must be appeased with the burning bodies of their sons and daughters. And so the veil of fancy would be lifted again, and the whole superstition stand forth revealed as the mere offspring of bodily fear. But more; the survivors of the conquest might, perhaps, escape, and carry their wasp-fetish into a new land. But if they became poor and weakly, their brains and imagination, degenerating with their bodies, would degrade their wasp-worship till they knew not what it meant. Away from the sacred tree, in a country the wasps of which were not so large or formidable, they would require a remembrancer of the wasp-king; and they would make one--a wasp of wood, or what not. After a while, according to that strange law of fancy, the root of all idolatry, which you may see at work in every child who plays with a doll, the symbol would become identified with the thing symbolised; they would invest the wooden wasp with all the terrible attributes which had belonged to the live wasps of the tree; and after a few centuries, when all remembrance of the tree, the wasp-prophet and chieftain, and his descent from the divine wasp--aye, even of their defeat and flight--had vanished from their songs and legends, they would be found bowing down in fear and trembling to a little ancient wooden wasp, which came from they knew not whence, and meant they knew not what, save that it was a very "old fetish," a "great medicine," or some such other formula for expressing their own ignorance and dread. Just so do the half-savage natives of Thibet, and the Irishwomen of Kerry, by a strange coincidence--unless the ancient Irish were Buddhists, like the Himalayans--tie just the same scraps of rag on arise, and show men that they are not the puppets of Nature, but her lords; and that they are to fear God, and fear naught else. And so ends my true myth of the wasp-tree. No, it need not end there; it may develop into a yet darker and more hideous form of superstition, which Europe has often seen; which is common now among the Negros; {256} which, we may hope, will soon be exterminated. This might happen. For it, or something like it, has happened too many times already. That to the ancient women who still kept up the irrational remnant of the wasp-worship, beneath the sacred tree, other women might resort; not merely from curiosity, or an excited imagination, but from jealousy and revenge. Oppressed, as woman has always been under the reign of brute force; beaten, outraged, deserted, at best married against her will, she has too often gone for comfort and help--and those of the very darkest kind--to the works of darkness; and there never were wanting--there are not wanting, even now, in remote parts of these isles--wicked old women who would, by help of the old superstitions, do for her what she wished. Soon would follow mysterious deaths of rivals, of husbands, of babes; then rumours of dark rites connected with the sacred tree, with poison, with the wasp and his sting, with human sacrifices; lies mingled with truth, more and more confused and frantic, the more they were misinvestigated by men mad with fear: till there would arise one of those witch-manias, which are too common still among the African Negros, which were too common of old among the men of our race. I say, among the men. To comprehend a witch-mania, you must look at it as--what the witch-literature confesses it unblushingly to be--man's dread of Nature excited to its highest form, as dread of woman. She is to the barbarous man--she should be more and more to the civilised man--not only the most beautiful and precious, but the most wonderful and mysterious of all natural objects, if it be only as the author of his physical being. She is to the savage a miracle to be alternately adored and dreaded. He dreads her more delicate nervous organisation, which often takes shapes to him demoniacal and miraculous; her quicker instincts, her readier wit, which seem to him to have in them somewhat prophetic and superhuman, which entangle him as in an invisible net, and rule him against his will. He dreads her very tongue, more crushing than his heaviest club, more keen than his poisoned arrows. He dreads those habits of secresy and falsehood, the weapons of the weak, to which savage and degraded woman always has recourse. He dreads the very medicinal skill which she has learnt to exercise, as nurse, comforter, and slave. He dreads those secret ceremonies, those mysterious initiations which no man may witness, which he has permitted to her in all ages, in so many--if not all--barbarous and semi-barbarous races, whether Negro, American, Syrian, Greek, or Roman, as a homage to the mysterious importance of her who brings him into the world. If she turn against him--she, with all her unknown powers, she who is the sharer of his deepest secrets, who prepares his very food day by day--what harm can she not, may she not do? And that she has good reason to turn against him, he knows too well. What deliverance is there from this mysterious house-fiend, save brute force? Terror, torture, murder, must be the order of the day. Woman must be crushed, at all price, by the blind fear of the man. I shall say no more. I shall draw a veil, for very pity and shame, over the most important and most significant facts of this, the most hideous of all human follies. I have, I think, given you hints enough to show that it, like all other superstitions, is the child--the last born and the ugliest child--of blind dread of the unknown. SCIENCE: A lecture delivered at the Royal Institution. I said, that Superstition was the child of Fear, and Fear the child of Ignorance; and you might expect me to say antithetically, that Science was the child of Courage, and Courage the child of Knowledge. But these genealogies--like most metaphors--do not fit exactly, as you may see for yourselves. If fear be the child of ignorance, ignorance is also the child of fear; the two react on, and produce each other. The more men dread Nature, the less they wish to know about her. Why pry into her awful secrets? It is dangerous; perhaps impious. She says to them, as in the Egyptian temple of old--"I am Isis, and my veil no mortal yet hath lifted." And why should they try or wish to lift it? If she will leave them in peace, they will leave her in peace. It is enough that she does not destroy them. So as ignorance bred fear, fear breeds fresh and willing ignorance. And courage? We may say, and truly, that courage is the child of knowledge. But we may say as truly, that knowledge is the child of courage. Those Egyptian priests in the temple of Isis would have told you that knowledge was the child of mystery, of special illumination, of reverence, and what not; hiding under grand words their purpose of keeping the masses ignorant, that they might be their slaves. Reverence? I will yield to none in reverence for reverence. I will all but agree with the wise man who said that reverence is the root of all virtues. But which child reverences his father most? He who comes joyfully and trustfully to meet him, that he may learn his father's mind, and do his will: or he who at his father's coming runs away and hides, lest he should be beaten for he knows not what? There is a scientific reverence, a reverence of courage, which is surely one of the highest forms of reverence. That, namely, which so reveres every fact, that it dare not overlook or falsify it, seem it never so minute; which feels that because it is a fact, it cannot be minute, cannot be unimportant; that it must be a fact of God; a message from God; a voice of God, as Bacon has it, revealed in things; and which therefore, just because it stands in solemn awe of such paltry facts as the Scolopax feather in a snipe's pinion, or the jagged leaves which appear capriciously in certain honeysuckles, believes that there is likely to be some deep and wide secret underlying them, which is worth years of thought to solve. That is reverence; a reverence which is growing, thank God, more and more common; which will produce, as it grows more common still, fruit which generations yet unborn shall bless. But as for that other reverence, which shuts its eyes and ears in pious awe--what is it but cowardice decked out in state robes, putting on the sacred Urim and Thummim, not that men may ask counsel of the Deity, but that they may not? What is it but cowardice, very pitiable when unmasked; and what is its child but ignorance as pitiable, which would be ludicrous were it not so injurious? If a man comes up to Nature as to a parrot or a monkey, with this prevailing thought in his head--Will it bite me?--will he not be pretty certain to make up his mind that it may bite him, and had therefore best be left alone? It is only the man of courage--few and far between--who will stand the chance of a first bite, in the hope of teaching the parrot to talk, or the monkey to fire off a gun. And it is only the man of courage--few and far between--who will stand the chance of a first bite from Nature, which may kill him for aught he knows--for her teeth, though clumsy, are very strong--in order that he may tame her and break her in to his use by the very same method by which that admirable inductive philosopher, Mr. Rarey, used to break in his horses; first, by not being afraid of them; and next, by trying to find out what they were thinking of. But after all, as with animals, so with Nature; cowardice is dangerous. The surest method of getting bitten by an animal is to be afraid of it; and the surest method of being injured by Nature is to be afraid of it. Only as far as we understand Nature are we safe from it; and those who in any age counsel mankind not to pry into the secrets of the universe, counsel them not to provide for their own life and well-being, or for their children after them. But how few there have been in any age who have not been afraid of Nature. How few have set themselves, like Rarey, to tame her by finding out what she is thinking of. The mass are glad to have the results of science, as they are to buy Mr. Rarey's horses after they are tamed: but for want of courage or of wit, they had rather leave the taming process to some one else. And therefore we may say that what knowledge of Nature we have--and we have very little--we owe to the courage of those men--and they have been very few--who have been inspired to face Nature boldly; and say--or, what is better, act as if they were saying--"I find something in me which I do not find in you; which gives me the hope that I can grow to understand you, though you may not understand me; that I may become your master, and not as now, you mine. And if not, I will know: or die in the search." It is to those men, the few and far between, in a very few ages and very few countries, who have thus risen in rebellion against Nature, and looked it in the face with an unquailing glance, that we owe what we call Physical Science. There have been four races--or rather a very few men of each four races--who have faced Nature after this gallant wise. First, the old Jews. I speak of them, be it remembered, exclusively from an historical, and not a religious point of view. These people, at a very remote epoch, emerged from a country highly civilised, but sunk in the superstitions of nature-worship. They invaded and mingled with tribes whose superstitions were even more debased, silly, and foul than those of the Egyptians from whom they escaped. Their own masses were for centuries given up to nature-worship. Now among those Jews arose men--a very few--sages--prophets--call them what you will, the men were inspired heroes and philosophers--who assumed towards nature an attitude utterly different from the rest of their countrymen and the rest of the then world; who denounced superstition and the dread of nature as the parent of all manner of vice and misery; who for themselves said boldly that they discerned in the universe an order, a unity, a permanence of law, which gave them courage instead of fear. They found delight and not dread in the thought that the universe obeyed a law which could not be broken; that all things continued to that day according to a certain ordinance. They took a view of Nature totally new in that age; healthy, human, cheerful, loving, trustful, and yet reverent--identical with that which happily is beginning to prevail in our own day. They defied those very volcanic and meteoric phenomena of their land, to which their countrymen were slaying their own children in the clefts of the rocks, and, like Theophrastus' superstitious man, pouring their drink-offerings on the smooth stones of the valley; and declared that, for their part, they would not fear, though the earth was moved, and though the hills were carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters raged and swelled, and the mountains shook at the tempest. The fact is indisputable. And you must pardon me if I express my belief that these men, if they had felt it their business to found a school of inductive physical science, would, owing to that temper of mind, have achieved a very signal success. I ground that opinion on the remarkable, but equally indisputable fact, that no nation has ever succeeded in perpetuating a school of inductive physical science, save those whose minds have been saturated with this same view of Nature, which they have--as an historic fact--slowly but thoroughly learnt from the writings of these Jewish sages. Such is the fact. The founders of inductive physical science were not the Jews: but first the Chaldaeans, next the Greeks, next their pupils the Romans--or rather a few sages among each race. But what success had they? The Chaldaean astronomers made a few discoveries concerning the motions of the heavenly bodies, which, rudimentary as they were, still prove them to have been men of rare intellect. For a great and a patient genius must he have been, who first distinguished the planets from the fixed stars, or worked out the earliest astronomical calculation. But they seem to have been crushed, as it were, by their own discoveries. They stopped short. They gave way again to the primeval fear of Nature. They sank into planet-worship. They invented, it would seem, that fantastic pseudo-science of astrology, which lay for ages after as an incubus on the human intellect and conscience. They became the magicians and quacks of the old world; and mankind owed them thenceforth nothing but evil. Among the Greeks and Romans, again, those sages who dared face Nature like reasonable men, were accused by the superstitious mob as irreverent, impious, atheists. The wisest of them all, Socrates, was actually put to death on that charge; and finally, they failed. School after school, in Greece and Rome, struggled to discover, and to get a hearing for, some theory of the universe which was founded on something like experience, reason, common sense. They were not allowed to prosecute their attempt. The mud-ocean of ignorance and fear in which they struggled so manfully was too strong for them; the mud-waves closed over their heads finally, as the age of the Antonines expired; and the last effort of Graeco-Roman thought to explain the universe was Neoplatonism--the muddiest of the muddy--an attempt to apologise for, and organise into a system, all the nature-dreading superstitions of the Roman world. Porphyry, Plotinus, Proclus, poor Hypatia herself, and all her school--they may have had themselves no bodily fear of Nature; for they were noble souls. Yet they spent their time in justifying those who had; in apologising for the superstitions of the very mob which they despised: just as--it sometimes seems to me--some folk in these days are like to end in doing; begging that the masses might be allowed to believe in anything, however false, lest they should believe in nothing at all: as if believing in lies could do anything but harm to any human being. And so died the science of the old world, in a true second childhood, just where it began. The Jewish sages, I hold, taught that science was probable; the Greeks and Romans proved that it was possible. It remained for our race, under the teaching of both, to bring science into act and fact. Many causes contributed to give them this power. They were a personally courageous race. This earth has yet seen no braver men than the forefathers of Christian Europe, whether Scandinavian or Teuton, Angle or Frank. They were a practical hard-headed race, with a strong appreciation of facts, and a strong determination to act on them. Their laws, their society, their commerce, their colonisation, their migrations by land and sea, proved that they were such. They were favoured, moreover, by circumstances, or--as I should rather put it--by that divine Providence which determined their times, and the bounds of their habitation. They came in as the heritors of the decaying civilisation of Greece and Rome; they colonised territories which gave to man special fair play, but no more, in the struggle for existence, the battle with the powers of Nature; tolerably fertile, tolerably temperate; with boundless means of water communication; freer than most parts of the world from those terrible natural phenomena, like the earthquake and the hurricane, before which man lies helpless and astounded, a child beneath the foot of a giant. Nature was to them not so inhospitable as to starve their brains and limbs, as it has done for the Esquimaux or Fuegian; and not so bountiful as to crush them by its very luxuriance, as it has crushed the savages of the tropics. They saw enough of its strength to respect it; not enough to cower before it: and they and it have fought it out; and it seems to me, standing either on London Bridge or on a Holland fen-dyke, that they are winning at last. But they had a sore battle: a battle against their own fear of the unseen. They brought with them, out of the heart of Asia, dark and sad nature-superstitions, some of which linger among our peasantry till this day, of elves, trolls, nixes, and what not. Their Thor and Odin were at first, probably, only the thunder and the wind: but they had to be appeased in the dark marches of the forest, where hung rotting on the sacred oaks, amid carcases of goat and horse, the carcases of human victims. No one acquainted with the early legends and ballads of our race, but must perceive throughout them all the prevailing tone of fear and sadness. And to their own superstitions, they added those of the Rome which they conquered. They dreaded the Roman she-poisoners and witches, who, like Horace's Canidia, still performed horrid rites in grave-yards and dark places of the earth. They dreaded as magical the delicate images engraved on old Greek gems. They dreaded the very Roman cities they had destroyed. They were the work of enchanters. Like the ruins of St. Albans here in England, they were all full of devils, guarding the treasures which the Romans had hidden. The Caesars became to them magical man-gods. The poet Virgil became the prince of necromancers. If the secrets of Nature were to be known, they were to be known by unlawful means, by prying into the mysteries of the old heathen magicians, or of the Mohammedan doctors of Cordova and Seville; and those who dared to do so were respected and feared, and often came to evil ends. It needed moral courage, then, to face and interpret fact. Such brave men as Pope Gerbert, Roger Bacon, Galileo, even Kepler, did not lead happy lives; some of them found themselves in prison. All the medieval sages--even Albertus Magnus--were stigmatised as magicians. One wonders that more of them did not imitate poor Paracelsus, who, unable to get a hearing for his coarse common sense, took--vain and sensual--to drinking the laudanum which he himself had discovered, and vaunted as a priceless boon to men; and died as the fool dieth, in spite of all his wisdom. For the "Romani nominis umbra," the shadow of the mighty race whom they had conquered, lay heavy on our forefathers for centuries. And their dread of the great heathens was really a dread of Nature, and of the powers thereof. For when the authority of great names has reigned unquestioned for many centuries, those names become, to the human mind, integral and necessary parts of Nature itself. They are, as it were, absorbed into it; they become its laws, its canons, its demiurges, and guardian spirits; their words become regarded as actual facts; in one word, they become a superstition, and are feared as parts of the vast unknown; and to deny what they have said is, in the minds of the many, not merely to fly in the face of reverent wisdom, but to fly in the face of facts. During a great part of the middle ages, for instance, it was impossible for an educated man to think of Nature itself, without thinking first of what Aristotle had said of her. Aristotle's dicta were Nature; and when Benedetti, at Venice, opposed in 1585 Aristotle's opinions on violent and natural motion, there were hundreds, perhaps, in the universities of Europe--as there certainly were in the days of the immortal 'Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum'--who were ready, in spite of all Benedetti's professed reverence for Aristotle, to accuse him of outraging not only the father of philosophy, but Nature itself and its palpable and notorious facts. For the restoration of letters in the fifteenth century had not at first mended matters, so strong was the dread of Nature in the minds of the masses. The minds of men had sported forth, not toward any sound investigation of facts, but toward an eclectic resuscitation of Neoplatonism; which endured, not without a certain beauty and use--as let Spenser's 'Faery Queen' bear witness--till the latter half of the seventeenth century. After that time a rapid change began. It is marked by--it has been notably assisted by--the foundation of our own Royal Society. Its causes I will not enter into; they are so inextricably mixed, I hold, with theological questions, that they cannot be discussed here. I will only point out to you these facts: that, from the latter part of the seventeenth century, the noblest heads and the noblest hearts of Europe concentrated themselves more and more on the brave and patient investigation of physical facts, as the source of priceless future blessings to mankind; that the eighteenth century, which it has been the fashion of late to depreciate, did more for the welfare of mankind, in every conceivable direction, than the whole fifteen centuries before it; that it did this good work by boldly observing and analysing facts; that this boldness toward facts increased in proportion as Europe became indoctrinated with the Jewish literature; and that, notably, such men as Kepler, Newton, Berkeley, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Descartes, in whatsoever else they differed, agreed in this, that their attitude towards Nature was derived from the teaching of the Jewish sages. I believe that we are not yet fully aware how much we owe to the Jewish mind, in the gradual emancipation of the human intellect. The connection may not, of course, be one of cause and effect; it may be a mere coincidence. I believe it to be a cause; one of course of very many causes: but still an integral cause. At least the coincidence is too remarkable a fact not to be worthy of investigation. I said, just now--The emancipation of the human intellect. I did not say--Of science, or of the scientific intellect; and for this reason: That the emancipation of science is the emancipation of the common mind of all men. All men can partake of the gains of free scientific thought, not merely by enjoying its physical results, but by becoming more scientific men themselves. Therefore it was, that though I began my first lecture by defining superstition, I did not begin my second by defining its antagonist, science. For the word science defines itself. It means simply knowledge; that is, of course, right knowledge, or such an approximation as can be obtained; knowledge of any natural object, its classification, its causes, its effects; or in plain English, what it is, how it came where it is, and what can be done with it. And scientific method, likewise, needs no definition; for it is simply the exercise of common sense. It is not a peculiar, unique, professional, or mysterious process of the understanding: but the same which all men employ, from the cradle to the grave, in forming correct conclusions. Every one who knows the philosophic writings of Mr. John Stuart Mill, will be familiar with this opinion. But to those who have no leisure to study him, I should recommend the reading of Professor Huxley's third lecture on the origin of species. In that he shows, with great logical skill, as well as with some humour, how the man who, on rising in the morning, finds the parlour window open, the spoons and teapot gone, the mark of a dirty hand on the window-sill, and that of a hob-nailed boot outside, and comes to the conclusion that some one has broken open the window and stolen the plate, arrives at that hypothesis--for it is nothing more--by a long and complex train of inductions and deductions, of just the same kind as those which, according to the Baconian philosophy, are to be used for investigating the deepest secrets of Nature. This is true, even of those sciences which involve long mathematical calculations. In fact, the stating of the problem to be solved is the most important element in the calculation; and that is so thoroughly a labour of common sense that an utterly uneducated man may, and often does, state an abstruse problem clearly and correctly; seeing what ought to be proved, and perhaps how to prove it, though he may be unable to work the problem out, for want of mathematical knowledge. But that mathematical knowledge is not--as all Cambridge men are surely aware--the result of any special gift. It is merely the development of those conceptions of form and number which every human being possesses; and any person of average intellect can make himself a fair mathematician if he will only pay continuous attention; in plain English, think enough about the subject. There are sciences, again, which do not involve mathematical calculation; for instance, botany, zoology, geology, which are just now passing from their old stage of classificatory sciences into the rank of organic ones. These are, without doubt, altogether within the scope of the merest common sense. Any man or woman of average intellect, if they will but observe and think for themselves, freely, boldly, patiently, accurately, may judge for themselves of the conclusions of these sciences, may add to these conclusions fresh and important discoveries; and if I am asked for a proof of what I assert, I point to 'Rain and Rivers,' written by no professed scientific man, but by a colonel in the Guards, known to fame only as one of the most perfect horsemen in the world. Let me illustrate my meaning by an example. A man--I do not say a geologist, but simply a man, squire or ploughman--sees a small valley, say one of the side-glens which open into the larger valleys in the Windsor forest district. He wishes to ascertain its age. He has, at first sight, a very simple measure--that of denudation. He sees that the glen is now being eaten out by a little stream, the product of innumerable springs which arise along its sides, and which are fed entirely by the rain on the moors above. He finds, on observation, that this stream brings down some ten cubic yards of sand and gravel, on an average, every year. The actual quantity of earth which has been removed to make the glen may be several million cubic yards. Here is an easy sum in arithmetic. At the rate of ten cubic yards a year, the stream has taken several hundred thousand years to make the glen. You will observe that this result is obtained by mere common sense. He has a right to assume that the stream originally began the glen, because he finds it in the act of enlarging it; just as much right as he has to assume, if he finds a hole in his pocket, and his last coin in the act of falling through it, that the rest of his money has fallen through the same hole. It is a sufficient cause, and the simplest. A number of observations as to the present rate of denudation, and a sum which any railroad contractor can do in his head, to determine the solid contents of the valley, are all that are needed. The method is that of science: but it is also that of simple common sense. You will remember, therefore, that this is no mere theory or hypothesis, but a pretty fair and simple conclusion from palpable facts; that the probability lies with the belief that the glen is some hundreds of thousands of years old; that it is not the observer's business to prove it further, but other persons' to disprove it, if they can. But does the matter end here? No. And, for certain reasons, it is good that it should not end here. The observer, if he be a cautious man, begins to see if he can disprove his own conclusion; moreover, being human, he is probably somewhat awed, if not appalled, by his own conclusion. Hundreds of thousands of years spent in making that little glen! Common sense would say that the longer it took to make, the less wonder there was in its being made at last: but the instinctive human feeling is the opposite. There is in men, and there remains in them, even after they are civilised, and all other forms of the dread of Nature have died out in them, a dread of size, of vast space, of vast time; that latter, mind, being always imagined as space, as we confess when we speak instinctively of a space of time. They will not understand that size is merely a relative, not an absolute term; that if we were a thousand times larger than we are, the universe would be a thousand times smaller than it is; that if we could think a thousand times faster than we do, time would be a thousand times longer than it is; that there is One in whom we live, and move, and have our being, to whom one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. I believe this dread of size to be merely, like all other superstitions, a result of bodily fear; a development of the instinct which makes a little dog run away from a big dog. Be that as it may, every observer has it; and so the man's conclusion seems to him strange, doubtful: he will reconsider it. Moreover, if he be an experienced man, he is well aware that first guesses, first hypotheses, are not always the right ones; and if he be a modest man, he will consider the fact that many thousands of thoughtful men in all ages, and many thousands still, would say, that the glen can only be a few thousand, or possibly a few hundred, years old. And he will feel bound to consider their opinion; as far as it is, like his own, drawn from facts, but no further. So he casts about for all other methods by which the glen may have been produced, to see if any one of them will account for it in a shorter time. 1. Was it made by an earthquake? No; for the strata on both sides are identical, at the same level, and in the same plane. 2. Or by a mighty current? If so, the flood must have run in at the upper end, before it ran out at the lower. But nothing has run in at the upper end. All round above are the undisturbed gravel beds of the horizontal moor, without channel or depression. 3. Or by water draining off a vast flat as it was upheaved out of the sea? That is a likely guess. The valley at its upper end spreads out like the fingers of a hand, as the gullies in tide-muds do. But that hypothesis will not stand. There is no vast unbroken flat behind the glen. Right and left of it are other similar glens, parted from it by long narrow ridges: these also must be explained on the same hypothesis; but they cannot. For there could not have been surface-drainage to make them all, or a tenth of them. There are no other possible hypotheses; and so he must fall back on the original theory--the rain, the springs, the brook; they have done it all, even as they are doing it this day. But is not that still a hasty assumption? May not their denuding power have been far greater in old times than now? Why should it? Because there was more rain then than now? That he must put out of court; there is no evidence of it whatsoever. Because the land was more friable originally? Well, there is a great deal to be said for that. The experience of every countryman tells him that bare or fallow land is more easily washed away than land under vegetation. And no doubt, when these gravels and sands rose from the sea, they were barren for hundreds of years. He has some measure of the time required, because he can tell roughly how long it takes for sands and shingles left by the sea to become covered with vegetation. But he must allow that the friability of the land must have been originally much greater than now, for hundreds of years. But again, does that fact really cut off any great space of time from his hundreds of thousands of years? For when the land first rose from the sea, that glen was not there. Some slight bay or bend in the shore determined its site. That stream was not there. It was split up into a million little springs, oozing side by side from the shore, and having each a very minute denuding power, which kept continually increasing by combination as the glen ate its way inwards, and the rainfall drained by all these little springs was collected into the one central stream. So that when the ground being bare was most liable to be denuded, the water was least able to do it; and as the denuding power of the water increased, the land, being covered with vegetation, became more and more able to resist it. All this he has seen, going on at the present day, in the similar gullies worn in the soft strata of the South Hampshire coast; especially round Bournemouth. So the two disturbing elements in the calculation may be fairly set off against each other, as making a difference of only a few thousands or tens of thousands of years either way; and the age of the glen may fairly be, if not a million years, yet such a length of years as mankind still speak of with bated breath, as if forsooth it would do them some harm. I trust that every scientific man in this room will agree with me, that the imaginary squire or ploughman would have been conducting his investigation strictly according to the laws of the Baconian philosophy. You will remark, meanwhile, that he has not used a single scientific term, or referred to a single scientific investigation; and has observed nothing and thought nothing which might not have been observed and thought by any one who chose to use his common sense, and not to be afraid. But because he has come round, after all this further investigation, to something very like his first conclusion, was all that further investigation useless? No--a thousand times, no. It is this very verification of hypotheses which makes the sound ones safe, and destroys the unsound. It is this struggle with all sorts of superstitions which makes science strong and sure, and her march irresistible, winning ground slowly, but never receding from it. It is this buffeting of adversity which compels her not to rest dangerously upon the shallow sand of first guesses, and single observations; but to strike her roots down, deep, wide, and interlaced into the solid ground of actual facts. It is very necessary to insist on this point. For there have been men in all past ages--I do not say whether there are any such now, but I am inclined to think that there will be hereafter--men who have tried to represent scientific method as something difficult, mysterious, peculiar, unique, not to be attained by the unscientific mass; and this not for the purpose of exalting science, but rather of discrediting her. For as long as the masses, educated or uneducated, are ignorant of what scientific method is, they will look on scientific men, as the middle age looked on necromancers, as a privileged, but awful and uncanny caste, possessed of mighty secrets; who may do them great good, but may also do them great harm. Which belief on the part of the masses will enable these persons to instal themselves as the critics of science, though not scientific men themselves: and--as Shakespeare has it--to talk of Robin Hood, though they never shot in his bow. Thus they become mediators to the masses between the scientific and the unscientific worlds. They tell them--You are not to trust the conclusions of men of science at first hand. You are not fit judges of their facts or of their methods. It is we who will, by a cautious eclecticism, choose out for you such of their conclusions as are safe for you; and them we will advise you to believe. To the scientific man, on the other hand, as often as anything is discovered unpleasing to them, they will say, imperiously and e cathedra--Your new theory contradicts the established facts of science. For they will know well that whatever the men of science think of their assertion, the masses will believe it; totally unaware that the speakers are by their very terms showing their ignorance of science; and that what they call established facts scientific men call merely provisional conclusions, which they would throw away to-morrow without a pang were the known facts explained better by a fresh theory, or did fresh facts require one. This has happened too often. It is in the interest of superstition that it should happen again; and the best way to prevent it surely is to tell the masses--Scientific method is no peculiar mystery, requiring a peculiar initiation. It is simply common sense, combined with uncommon courage, which includes uncommon honesty and uncommon patience; and if you will be brave, honest, patient, and rational, you will need no mystagogues to tell you what in science to believe and what not to believe; for you will be just as good judges of scientific facts and theories as those who assume the right of guiding your convictions. You are men and women: and more than that you need not be. And let me say that the man of our days whose writings exemplify most thoroughly what I am going to say is the justly revered Mr. Thomas Carlyle. As far as I know he has never written on any scientific subject. For aught I am aware of, he may know nothing of mathematics or chemistry, of comparative anatomy or geology. For aught I am aware of, he may know a great deal about them all, and, like a wise man, hold his tongue, and give the world merely the results in the form of general thought. But this I know; that his writings are instinct with the very spirit of science; that he has taught men, more than any living man, the meaning and end of science; that he has taught men moral and intellectual courage; to face facts boldly, while they confess the divineness of facts; not to be afraid of Nature, and not to worship nature; to believe that man can know truth; and that only in as far as he knows truth can he live worthily on this earth. And thus he has vindicated, as no other man in our days has done, at once the dignity of Nature and the dignity of spirit. That he would have made a distinguished scientific man, we may be as certain from his writings as we may be certain, when we see a fine old horse of a certain stamp, that he would have made a first-class hunter, though he has been unfortunately all his life in harness. Therefore, did I try to train a young man of science to be true, devout, and earnest, accurate and daring, I should say--Read what you will: but at least read Carlyle. It is a small matter to me--and I doubt not to him--whether you will agree with his special conclusions: but his premises and his method are irrefragable; for they stand on the "voluntatem Dei in rebus revelatam"--on fact and common sense. And Mr. Carlyle's writings, if I am correct in my estimate of them, will afford a very sufficient answer to those who think that the scientific habit of mind tends to irreverence. Doubtless this accusation will always be brought against science by those who confound reverence with fear. For from blind fear of the unknown, science does certainly deliver man. She does by man as he does by an unbroken colt. The colt sees by the road side some quite new object--a cast-away boot, an old kettle, or what not. What a fearful monster! What unknown terrific powers may it not possess! And the colt shies across the road, runs up the bank, rears on end; putting itself thereby, as many a man does, in real danger. What cure is there? But one; experience. So science takes us, as we should take the colt, gently by the halter; and makes us simply smell at the new monster; till after a few trembling sniffs, we discover, like the colt, that it is not a monster, but a kettle. Yet I think, if we sum up the loss and gain, we shall find the colt's character has gained, rather than lost, by being thus disabused. He learns to substitute a very rational reverence for the man who is breaking him in, for a totally irrational reverence for the kettle; and becomes thereby a much wiser and more useful member of society, as does the man when disabused of his superstitions. From which follows one result. That if science proposes--as she does--to make men brave, wise, and independent, she must needs excite unpleasant feelings in all who desire to keep men cowardly, ignorant, and slavish. And that too many such persons have existed in all ages is but too notorious. There have been from all time, goetai, quacks, powwow men, rain-makers, and necromancers of various sorts, who having for their own purposes set forth partial, ill-grounded, fantastic, and frightful interpretations of nature, have no love for those who search after a true, exact, brave, and hopeful one. And therefore it is to be feared, or hoped, science and superstition will to the world's end remain irreconcilable and internecine foes. Conceive the feelings of an old Lapland witch, who has had for the last fifty years all the winds in a sealskin bag, and has been selling fair breezes to northern skippers at so much a puff, asserting her powers so often, poor old soul, that she has got to half believe them herself,--conceive, I say, her feelings at seeing her customers watch the Admiralty storm-signals, and con the weather reports in the 'Times.' Conceive the feelings of Sir Samuel Baker's African friend, Katchiba, the rain-making chief, who possessed a whole housefull of thunder and lightning--though he did not, he confessed, keep it in a bottle as they do in England--if Sir Samuel had had the means, and the will, of giving to Katchiba's Negros a course of lectures on electricity, with appropriate experiments, and a real bottle full of real lightning among the foremost. It is clear that only two methods of self-defence would have been open to the rain-maker: namely, either to kill Sir Samuel, or to buy his real secret of bottling the lightning, that he might use it for his own ends. The former method--that of killing the man of science--was found more easy in ancient times; the latter in these modern ones. And there have been always those who, too good-natured to kill the scientific man, have patronised knowledge, not for its own sake, but for the use which may be made of it; who would like to keep a tame man of science, as they would a tame poet, or a tame parrot; who say--Let us have science by all means, but not too much of it. It is a dangerous thing; to be doled out to the world, like medicine, in small and cautious doses. You, the scientific man, will of course freely discover what you choose. Only do not talk too loudly about it: leave that to us. We understand the world, and are meant to guide and govern it. So discover freely: and meanwhile hand over your discoveries to us, that we may instruct and edify the populace with so much of them as we think safe, while we keep our position thereby, and in many cases make much money by your science. Do that, and we will patronise you, applaud you, ask you to our houses; and you shall be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously with us every day. I know not whether these latter are not the worst enemies which science has. They are often such excellent, respectable, orderly, well- meaning persons. They desire so sincerely that everyone should be wise: only not too wise. They are so utterly unaware of the mischief they are doing. They would recoil with horror if they were told they were so many Iscariots, betraying Truth with a kiss. But science, as yet, has withstood both terrors and blandishments. In old times, she endured being imprisoned and slain. She came to life again. Perhaps it was the will of Him in whom all things live, that she should live. Perhaps it was His spirit which gave her life. She can endure, too, being starved. Her votaries have not as yet cared much for purple and fine linen, and sumptuous fare. There are a very few among them who, joining brilliant talents to solid learning, have risen to deserved popularity, to titles, and to wealth. But even their labours, it seems to me, are never rewarded in any proportion to the time and the intellect spent on them, nor to the benefits which they bring to mankind; while the great majority, unpaid and unknown, toil on, and have to find in science her own reward. Better, perhaps, that it should be so. Better for science that she should be free, in holy poverty, to go where she will and say what she knows, than that she should be hired out at so much a year to say things pleasing to the many, and to those who guide the many. And so, I verily believe, the majority of scientific men think. There are those among them who have obeyed very faithfully St. Paul's precept, "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life." For they have discovered that they are engaged in a war--a veritable war--against the rulers of darkness, against ignorance and its twin children, fear and cruelty. Of that war they see neither the end nor even the plan. But they are ready to go on; ready, with Socrates, "to follow reason withersoever it leads;" and content, meanwhile, like good soldiers in a campaign, if they can keep tolerably in line, and use their weapons, and see a few yards ahead of them through the smoke and the woods. They will come out somewhere at last; they know not where nor when: but they will come out at last, into the daylight and the open field; and be told then--perhaps to their own astonishment--as many a gallant soldier has been told, that by simply walking straight on, and doing the duty which lay nearest them, they have helped to win a great battle, and slay great giants, earning the thanks of their country and of mankind. And, meanwhile, if they get their shilling a day of fighting-pay, they are content. I had almost said, they ought to be content. For science is, I verily believe, like virtue, its own exceeding great reward. I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom, panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life under the tropic forest, Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil, and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of; some law, or even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact; but explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them all with each other and with the mighty whole, till order and meaning shoots through some old Chaos of scattered observations. Is not that a joy, a prize, which wealth cannot give, nor poverty take away? What it may lead to, he knows not. Of what use it may become, he knows not. But this he knows, that somewhere it must lead; of some use it will be. For it is a truth; and having found a truth, he has exorcised one more of the ghosts which haunt humanity. He has left one object less for man to fear; one object more for man to use. Yes, the scientific man may have this comfort, that whatever he has done, he has done good; that he is following a mistress who has never yet conferred aught but benefits on the human race. What physical science may do hereafter I know not; but as yet she has done this: She has enormously increased the wealth of the human race; and has therefore given employment, food, existence, to millions who, without science, would either have starved or have never been born. She has shown that the dictum of the early political economists, that population has a tendency to increase faster than the means of subsistence, is no law of humanity, but merely a tendency of the barbaric and ignorant man, which can be counteracted by increasing manifold by scientific means his powers of producing food. She has taught men, during the last few years, to foresee and elude the most destructive storms; and there is no reason for doubting, and many reasons for hoping, that she will gradually teach men to elude other terrific forces of nature, too powerful and too seemingly capricious for them to conquer. She has discovered innumerable remedies and alleviations for pains and disease. She has thrown such light on the causes of epidemics, that we are able to say now that the presence of cholera--and probably of all zymotic diseases--in any place, is usually a sin and a shame, for which the owners and authorities of that place ought to be punishable by law, as destroyers of their fellow- men; while for the weak, for those who, in the barbarous and semi-barbarous state--and out of that last we are only just emerging--how much has she done; an earnest of much more which she will do? She has delivered the insane--I may say by the scientific insight of one man, more worthy of titles and pensions than nine-tenths of those who earn them--I mean the great and good Pinel--from hopeless misery and torture into comparative peace and comfort, and at least the possibility of cure. For children, she has done much, or rather might do, would parents read and perpend such books as Andrew Combe's and those of other writers on physical education. We should not then see the children, even of the rich, done to death piecemeal by improper food, improper clothes, neglect of ventilation and the commonest measures for preserving health. We should not see their intellects stunted by Procrustean attempts to teach them all the same accomplishments, to the neglect, most often, of any sound practical training of their faculties. We should not see slight indigestion, or temporary rushes of blood to the head, condemned and punished as sins against Him who took up little children in His arms and blessed them. But we may have hope. When we compare education now with what it was even forty years ago, much more with the stupid brutality of the monastic system, we may hail for children, as well as for grown people, the advent of the reign of common sense. And for woman--What might I not say on that point? But most of it would be fitly discussed only among physicians and biologists: here I will say only this--Science has exterminated, at least among civilised nations, witch-manias. Women--at least white women--are no longer tortured or burnt alive from man's blind fear of the unknown. If science had done no more than that, she would deserve the perpetual thanks and the perpetual trust, not only of the women whom she has preserved from agony, but the men whom she has preserved from crime. These benefits have already accrued to civilised men, because they have lately allowed a very few of their number peaceably to imitate Mr. Rarey, and find out what nature--or rather, to speak at once reverently and accurately, He who made nature--is thinking of; and obey the "voluntatem Dei in rebus revelatam." This science has done, while yet in her infancy. What she will do in her maturity, who dare predict? At least, in the face of such facts as these, those who bid us fear, or restrain, or mutilate science, bid us commit an act of folly, as well as of ingratitude, which can only harm ourselves. For science has as yet done nothing but good. Will any one tell me what harm it has ever done? When any one will show me a single result of science, of the knowledge of and use of physical facts, which has not tended directly to the benefit of mankind, moral and spiritual, as well as physical and economic--then I shall be tempted to believe that Solomon was wrong when he said that the one thing to be sought after on earth, more precious than all treasure, she who has length of days in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour, whose ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace, who is a tree of life to all who lay hold on her, and makes happy every one who retains her, is--as you will see if you will yourselves consult the passage--that very Wisdom--by which God has founded the earth; and that very Understanding--by which He has established the heavens. GROTS AND GROVES I wish this lecture to be suggestive, rather that didactic; to set you thinking and inquiring for yourselves, rather than learning at second- hand from me. Some among my audience, I doubt not, will neither need to be taught by me, nor to be stirred up to inquiry for themselves. They are already, probably, antiquarians; already better acquainted with the subject than I am. They come hither, therefore, as critics; I trust not as unkindly critics. They will, I hope, remember that I am trying to excite a general interest in that very architecture in which they delight, and so to make the public do justice to their labours. They will therefore, I trust, "Be to my faults a little blind, Be to my virtues very kind;" and if my architectural theories do not seem to them correct in all details--well-founded I believe them myself to be--remember that it is a slight matter to me, or to the audience, whether any special and pet fancy of mine should be exactly true or not: but it is not a light matter that my hearers should be awakened--and too many just now need an actual awakening--to a right, pure, and wholesome judgment on questions of art, especially when the soundness of that judgment depends, as in this case, on sound judgments about human history, as well as about natural objects. Now, it befel me that, fresh from the Tropic forests, and with their forms hanging always, as it were, in the background of my eye, I was impressed more and more vividly the longer I looked, with the likeness of those forest forms to the forms of our own Cathedral of Chester. The grand and graceful Chapter-house transformed itself into one of those green bowers, which, once seen, and never to be seen again, make one at once richer and poorer for the rest of life. The fans of groining sprang from the short columns, just as do the feathered boughs of the far more beautiful Maximiliana palm, and just of the same size and shape: and met overhead, as I have seen them meet, in aisles longer by far than our cathedral nave. The free upright shafts, which give such strength, and yet such lightness, to the mullions of each window, pierced upward through those curving lines, as do the stems of young trees through the fronds of palm; and, like them, carried the eye and the fancy up into the infinite, and took off a sense of oppression and captivity which the weight of the roof might have produced. In the nave, in the choir the same vision of the Tropic forest haunted me. The fluted columns not only resembled, but seemed copied from the fluted stems beneath which I had ridden in the primeval woods; their bases, their capitals, seemed copied from the bulgings at the collar of the root, and at the spring of the boughs, produced by a check of the redundant sap; and were garlanded often enough like the capitals of the columns, with delicate tracery of parasite leaves and flowers; the mouldings of the arches seemed copied from the parallel bundles of the curving bamboo shoots; and even the flatter roof of the nave and transepts had its antitype in that highest level of the forest aisles, where the trees, having climbed at last to the light-food which they seek, care no longer to grow upward, but spread out in huge limbs, almost horizontal, reminding the eye of the four-centred arch which marks the period of Perpendicular Gothic. Nay, to this day there is one point in our cathedral which, to me, keeps up the illusion still. As I enter the choir, and look upward toward the left, I cannot help seeing, in the tabernacle work of the stalls, the slender and aspiring forms of the "rastrajo;" the delicate second growth which, as it were, rushes upward from the earth wherever the forest is cleared; and above it, in the tall lines of the north-west pier of the tower--even though defaced, along the inner face of the western arch, by ugly and needless perpendicular panelling--I seem to see the stems of huge Cedars, or Balatas, or Ceibas, curving over, as they would do, into the great beams of the transept roof, some seventy feet above the ground. Nay, so far will the fancy lead, that I have seemed to see, in the stained glass between the tracery of the windows, such gorgeous sheets of colour as sometimes flash on the eye, when, far aloft, between high stems and boughs, you catch sight of some great tree ablaze with flowers, either its own or those of a parasite; yellow or crimson, white or purple; and over them again the cloudless blue. Now, I know well that all these dreams are dreams; that the men who built our northern cathedrals never saw these forest forms; and that the likeness of their work to those of Tropic nature is at most only a corroboration of Mr. Ruskin's dictum, that "the Gothic did not arise out of, but developed itself into, a resemblance to vegetation. . . . It was no chance suggestion of the form of an arch from the bending of a bough, but the gradual and continual discovery of a beauty in natural forms which could be more and more transferred into those of stone, which influenced at once the hearts of the people and the form of the edifice." So true is this, that by a pure and noble copying of the vegetable beauty which they had seen in their own clime, the medieval craftsmen went so far--as I have shown you--as to anticipate forms of vegetable beauty peculiar to Tropic climes, which they had not seen: a fresh proof, if proof were needed, that beauty is something absolute and independent of man; and not, as some think, only relative, and what happens to be pleasant to the eye of this man or that. But thinking over this matter, and reading over, too, that which Mr. Ruskin has written thereon in his 'Stones of Venice,' vol. ii. cap. vi., on the nature of Gothic, I came to certain further conclusions--or at least surmises--which I put before you to-night, in hopes that if they have no other effect on you, they will at least stir some of you up to read Mr. Ruskin's works. Now Mr. Ruskin says, "That the original conception of Gothic architecture has been derived from vegetation, from the symmetry of avenues and the interlacing of branches, is a strange and vain supposition. It is a theory which never could have existed for a moment in the mind of any person acquainted with early Gothic: but, however idle as a theory, it is most valuable as a testimony to the character of the perfected style." Doubtless so. But you must remember always that the subject of my lecture is Grots and Groves; that I am speaking not of Gothic architecture in general, but of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture; and more, almost exclusively of the ecclesiastical architecture of the Teutonic or northern nations; because in them, as I think, the resemblance between the temple and the forest reached the fullest exactness. Now the original idea of a Christian church was that of a grot; a cave. That is a historic fact. The Christianity which was passed on to us began to worship, hidden and persecuted, in the catacombs of Rome, it may be often around the martyrs' tombs, by the dim light of candle or of torch. The candles on the Roman altars, whatever they have been made to symbolise since then, are the hereditary memorials of that fact. Throughout the North, in these isles as much as in any land, the idea of the grot was, in like wise, the idea of a church. The saint or hermit built himself a cell; dark, massive, intended to exclude light as well as weather; or took refuge in a cave. There he prayed and worshipped, and gathered others to pray and worship round him, during his life. There he, often enough, became an object of worship, in his turn, after his death. In after ages his cave was ornamented, like that of the hermit of Montmajour by Arles; or his cell-chapel enlarged, as those of the Scotch and Irish saints have been, again and again; till at last a stately minster rose above it. Still, the idea that the church was to be a grot haunted the minds of builders. But side by side with the Christian grot there was throughout the North another form of temple, dedicated to very different gods; namely, the trees from whose mighty stems hung the heads of the victims of Odin or of Thor, the horse, the goat, and in time of calamity or pestilence, of men. Trees and not grots were the temples of our forefathers. Scholars know well--but they must excuse my quoting it for the sake of those who are not scholars--the famous passage of Tacitus which tells how our forefathers "held it beneath the dignity of the gods to coop them within walls, or liken them to any human countenance: but consecrated groves and woods, and called by the name of gods that mystery which they held by faith alone;" and the equally famous passage of Claudian, about "the vast silence of the Black Forest, and groves awful with ancient superstition; and oaks, barbarian deities;" and Lucan's "groves inviolate from all antiquity, and altars stained with human blood." To worship in such spots was an abomination to the early Christian. It was as much a test of heathendom as the eating of horse-flesh, sacred to Odin, and therefore unclean to Christian men. The Lombard laws and others forbid expressly the lingering remnants of grove worship. St. Boniface and other early missionaries hewed down in defiance the sacred oaks, and paid sometimes for their valour with their lives. It is no wonder, then, if long centuries elapsed ere the likeness of vegetable forms began to reappear in the Christian churches of the North. And yet both grot and grove were equally the natural temples which the religious instinct of all deep-hearted peoples, conscious of sin, and conscious, too, of yearnings after a perfection not to be found on earth, chooses from the earliest stage of awakening civilisation. In them, alone, before he had strength and skill to build nobly for himself, could man find darkness, the mother of mystery and awe, in which he is reminded perforce of his own ignorance and weakness; in which he learns first to remember unseen powers, sometimes to his comfort and elevation, sometimes only to his terror and debasement; darkness; and with it silence and solitude, in which he can collect himself, and shut out the noise and glare, the meanness and the coarseness, of the world; and be alone a while with his own thoughts, his own fancy, his own conscience, his own soul. But for a while, as I have said, that darkness, solitude, and silence were to be sought in the grot, not in the grove. Then Christianity conquered the Empire. It adapted, not merely its architecture, but its very buildings, to its worship. The Roman Basilica became the Christian church; a noble form of building enough, though one in which was neither darkness, solitude, nor silence, but crowded congregations, clapping--or otherwise--the popular preacher; or fighting about the election of a bishop or a pope, till the holy place ran with Christian blood. The deep-hearted Northern turned away, in weariness and disgust, from those vast halls, fitted only for the feverish superstition of a profligate and worn-out civilisation; and took himself, amid his own rocks and forests, moors and shores, to a simpler and sterner architecture, which should express a creed, sterner; and at heart far simpler; though dogmatically the same. And this is, to my mind, the difference, and the noble difference, between the so-called Norman architecture, which came hither about the time of the Conquest; and that of Romanized Italy. But the Normans were a conquering race; and one which conquered, be it always remembered, in England at least, in the name and by the authority of Rome. Their ecclesiastics, like the ecclesiastics on the Continent, were the representatives of Roman civilisation, of Rome's right, intellectual and spiritual, to rule the world. Therefore their architecture, like their creed, was Roman. They took the massive towering Roman forms, which expressed domination; and piled them one on the other, to express the domination of Christian Rome over the souls, as they had represented the domination of heathen Rome over the bodies, of men. And so side by side with the towers of the Norman keep rose the towers of the Norman cathedral--the two signs of a double servitude. But, with the thirteenth century, there dawned an age in Northern Europe, which I may boldly call an heroic age; heroic in its virtues and in its crimes; an age of rich passionate youth, or rather of early manhood; full of aspirations, of chivalry, of self-sacrifice as strange and terrible as it was beautiful and noble, even when most misguided. The Teutonic nations of Europe--our own forefathers most of all--having absorbed all that heathen Rome could teach them, at least for the time being, began to think for themselves; to have poets, philosophers, historians, architects, of their own. The thirteenth century was especially an age of aspiration; and its architects expressed, in buildings quite unlike those of the preceding centuries, the aspirations of the time. The Pointed Arch had been introduced half a century before. It may be that the Crusaders saw it in the East and brought it home. It may be that it originated from the quadripartite vaulting of the Normans, the segmental groins of which, crossing diagonally, produced to appearance the pointed arch. It may be that it was derived from that mystical figure of a pointed oval form, the vesica piscis. It may be, lastly, that it was suggested simply by the intersection of semicircular arches, so frequently found in ornamental arcades. The last cause may perhaps be the true one: but it matters little whence the pointed arch came. It matters much what it meant to those who introduced it. And at the beginning of the Transition or semi-Norman period, it seems to have meant nothing. It was not till the thirteenth century that it had gradually received, as it were, a soul, and had become the exponent of a great idea. As the Norman architecture and its forms had signified domination, so the Early English, as we call it, signified aspiration; an idea which was perfected, as far as it could be, in what we call the Decorated style. There is an evident gap, I had almost said a gulf, between the architectural mind of the eleventh and that of the thirteenth century. A vertical tendency, a longing after lightness and freedom, appears; and with them a longing to reproduce the graces of nature and art. And here I ask you to look for yourselves at the buildings of this new era--there is a beautiful specimen in yonder arcade {304}--and judge for yourselves whether they, and even more than they the Decorated style into which they developed, do not remind you of the forest shapes? And if they remind you: must they not have reminded those who shaped them? Can it have been otherwise? We know that the men who built were earnest. The carefulness, the reverence, of their work have given a subject for some of Mr. Ruskin's noblest chapters, a text for some of his noblest sermons. We know that they were students of vegetable form. That is proved by the flowers, the leaves, even the birds, with which they enwreathed their capitals and enriched their mouldings. Look up there, and see. You cannot look at any good church-work from the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, without seeing that leaves and flowers were perpetually in the workman's mind. Do you fancy that stems and boughs were never in his mind? He kept, doubtless, in remembrance the fundamental idea, that the Christian church should symbolise a grot or cave. He could do no less; while he again and again saw hermits around him dwelling and worshipping in caves, as they had done ages before in Egypt and Syria; while he fixed, again and again, the site of his convent and his minster in some secluded valley guarded by cliffs and rocks, like Vale Crucis in North Wales. But his minster stood often not among rocks only, but amid trees; in some clearing in the primeval forest, as Vale Crucis was then. At least he could not pass from minster to minster, from town to town, without journeying through long miles of forest. Do you think that the awful shapes and shadows of that forest never haunted his imagination as he built? He would have cut down ruthlessly, as his predecessors the early missionaries did, the sacred trees amid which Thor and Odin had been worshipped by the heathen Saxons; amid which still darker deities were still worshipped by the heathen tribes of Eastern Europe. But he was the descendant of men who had worshipped in those groves; and the glamour of them was upon him still. He peopled the wild forest with demons and fairies: but that did not surely prevent his feeling its ennobling grandeur, its chastening loneliness. His ancestors had held the oaks for trees of God, even as the Jews held the Cedar, and the Hindoos likewise; for the Deodara pine is not only, botanists tell us, the same as the Cedar of Lebanon: but its very name--the Deodara--signifies nought else but "The tree of God." His ancestors, I say, had held the oaks for trees of God. It may be that as the monk sat beneath their shade with his Bible on his knee, like good St. Boniface in the Fulda forest, he found that his ancestors were right. To understand what sort of trees they were from which he got his inspiration: you must look, not at an average English wood, perpetually thinned out as the trees arrive at middle age. Still less must you look at the pines, oaks, beeches, of an English park, where each tree has had space to develop itself freely into a more or less rounded form. You must not even look at the tropic forests. For there, from the immense diversity of forms, twenty varieties of tree will grow beneath each other, forming a close-packed heap of boughs and leaves, from the ground to a hundred feet and more aloft. You should look at the North American forests of social trees--especially of pines and firs, where trees of one species, crowded together, and competing with equal advantages for the air and light, form themselves into one wilderness of straight smooth shafts, surmounted by a flat sheet of foliage, held up by boughs like the ribs of a groined roof; while underneath the ground is bare as a cathedral floor. You all know, surely, the Hemlock spruce of America; which, while growing by itself in open ground, is the most wilful and fantastic, as well as the most graceful, of all the firs; imitating the shape, not of its kindred, but of an enormous tuft of fern. Yet if you look at the same tree, when it has struggled long for life from its youth amid other trees of its own kind and its own age; you find that the lower boughs have died off from want of light, leaving not a scar behind. The upper boughs have reached at once the light, and their natural term of years. They are content to live, and little more. The central trunk no longer sends up each year a fresh perpendicular shoot to aspire above the rest: but as weary of struggling ambition as they are, is content to become more and more their equal as the years pass by. And this is a law of social forest trees, which you must bear in mind, whenever I speak of the influence of tree-forms on Gothic architecture. Such forms as these are rare enough in Europe now. I never understood how possible, how common, they must have been in medieval Europe, till I saw in the forest of Fontainebleau a few oaks like the oak of Charlemagne, and the Bouquet du Roi, at whose age I dare not guess, but whose size and shape showed them to have once formed part of a continuous wood, the like whereof remains not in these isles--perhaps not east of the Carpathian Mountains. In them a clear shaft of at least sixty, it may be eighty feet, carries a flat head of boughs, each in itself a tree. In such a grove, I thought, the heathen Gaul, even the heathen Frank, worshipped, beneath "trees of God." Such trees, I thought, centuries after, inspired the genius of every builder of Gothic aisles and roofs. Thus, at least, we can explain that rigidity, which Mr. Ruskin tells us, "is a special element of Gothic architecture. Greek and Egyptian buildings," he says--and I should have added, Roman buildings also, in proportion to their age, _i.e_., to the amount of the Roman elements in them--"stand for the most part, by their own weight and mass, one stone passively incumbent on another: but in the Gothic vaults and traceries there is a stiffness analogous to that of the bones of a limb, or fibres of a tree; an elastic tension and communication of force from part to part; and also a studious expression of this throughout every part of the building." In a word, Gothic vaulting and tracery have been studiously made like to boughs of trees. Were those boughs present to the mind of the architect? Or is the coincidence merely fortuitous? You know already how I should answer. The cusped arch, too, was it actually not intended to imitate vegetation? Mr. Ruskin seems to think so. He says that it is merely the special application to the arch of the great ornamental system of foliation, which, "whether simple as in the cusped arch, or complicated as in tracery, arose out of the love of leafage. Not that the form of the arch is intended to imitate a leaf, but to be invested with the same characters of beauty which the designer had discovered in the leaf." Now I differ from Mr. Ruskin with extreme hesitation. I agree that the cusped arch is not meant to imitate a leaf. I think with Mr. Ruskin, that it was probably first adopted on account of its superior strength; and that it afterwards took the form of a bough. But I cannot as yet believe that it was not at last intended to imitate a bough; a bough of a very common form, and one in which "active rigidity" is peculiarly shown. I mean a bough which has forked. If the lower fork has died off, for want of light, we obtain something like the simply cusped arch. If it be still living--but short and stunted in comparison with the higher fork--we obtain, it seems to me, something like the foliated cusp; both likenesses being near enough to those of common objects to make it possible that those objects may have suggested them. And thus, more and more boldly, the mediaeval architect learnt to copy boughs, stems, and, at last, the whole effect, as far always as stone would allow, of a combination of rock and tree, of grot and grove. So he formed his minsters, as I believe, upon the model of those leafy minsters in which he walked to meditate, amid the aisles which God, not man, has built. He sent their columns aloft like the boles of ancient trees. He wreathed their capitals, sometimes their very shafts, with flowers and creeping shoots. He threw their arches out, and interwove the groinings of their vaults, like the bough-roofage overhead. He decked with foliage and fruit the bosses above and the corbels below. He sent up out of those corbels upright shafts along the walls, in the likeness of the trees which sprang out of the rocks above his head. He raised those walls into great cliffs. He pierced them with the arches of the triforium, as with hermits' cells. He represented in the horizontal sills of his windows, and in his horizontal string-courses, the horizontal strata of the rocks. He opened the windows into high and lofty glades, broken, as in the forest, by the tracery of stems and boughs, through which was seen, not merely the outer, but the upper world. For he craved, as all true artists crave, for light and colour; and had the sky above been one perpetual blue, he might have been content with it, and left his glass transparent. But in that dark dank northern clime, rain and snowstorm, black cloud and grey mist, were all that he was like to see outside for nine months in the year. So he took such light and colour as nature gave in her few gayer moods; and set aloft his stained glass windows the hues of the noonday and the rainbow, and the sunrise and the sunset, and the purple of the heather, and the gold of the gorse, and the azure of the bugloss, and the crimson of the poppy; and among them, in gorgeous robes, the angels and the saints of heaven, and the memories of heroic virtues and heroic sufferings, that he might lift up his own eyes and heart for ever out of the dark, dank, sad world of the cold north, with all its coarsenesses and its crimes, toward a realm of perpetual holiness, amid a perpetual summer of beauty and of light; as one who--for he was true to nature, even in that--from between the black jaws of a narrow glen, or from beneath the black shade of gnarled trees, catches a glimpse of far lands gay with gardens and cottages, and purple mountain ranges, and the far off sea, and the hazy horizon melting into the hazy sky; and finds his heart carried out into an infinite at once of freedom and of repose. And so out of the cliffs and the forests he shaped the inside of his church. And how did he shape the outside? Look for yourselves, and judge. But look: not at Chester, but at Salisbury. Look at those churches which carry not mere towers, but spires, or at least pinnacled towers approaching the pyrmidal form. The outside form of every Gothic cathedral must be considered imperfect if it does not culminate in something pyramidal. The especial want of all Greek and Roman buildings with which we are acquainted is the absence--save in a few and unimportant cases--of the pyramidal form. The Egyptians knew at least the worth of the obelisk: but the Greeks and Romans hardly knew even that: their buildings are flat- topped. Their builders were contented with the earth as it was. There was a great truth involved in that; which I am the last to deny. But religions which, like the Buddhist or the Christian, nurse a noble self- discontent, are sure to adopt sooner or later an upward and aspiring form of building. It is not merely that, fancying heaven to be above earth, they point towards heaven. There is a deeper natural language in the pyramidal form of a growing tree. It symbolises growth, or the desire of growth. The Norman tower does nothing of the kind. It does not aspire to grow. Look--I mention an instance with which I am most familiar--at the Norman tower of Bury St. Edmund's. It is graceful--awful, if you will--but there is no aspiration in it. It is stately: but self-content. Its horizontal courses; circular arches; above all, its flat sky-line, seem to have risen enough: and wish to rise no higher. For it has no touch of that unrest of soul, which is expressed by the spire, and still more by the compound spire, with its pinnacles, crockets, finials, which are finials only in name; for they do not finish, and are really terminal buds, as it were, longing to open and grow upward, even as the crockets are bracts and leaves thrown off as the shoot has grown. You feel, surely, the truth of these last words. You cannot look at the canopy work or the pinnacle work of this cathedral without seeing that they do not merely suggest buds and leaves, but that the buds and leaves are there carven before your eyes. I myself cannot look at the tabernacle work of our stalls without being reminded of the young pine forests which clothe the Hampshire moors. But if the details are copied from vegetable forms, why not the whole? Is not a spire like a growing tree, a tabernacle like a fir-tree, a compound spire like a group of firs? And if we can see that: do you fancy that the man who planned the spire did not see it as clearly as we do; and perhaps more clearly still? I am aware, of course, that Norman architecture had sometimes its pinnacle, a mere conical or polygonal capping. I am aware that this form, only more and more slender, lasted on in England during the thirteenth and the early part of the fourteenth century; and on the Continent, under many modifications, one English kind whereof is usually called a "broach," of which you have a beautiful specimen in the new church at Hoole. Now, no one will deny that that broach is beautiful. But it would be difficult to prove that its form was taken from a North European tree. The cypress was unknown, probably, to our northern architects. The Lombardy poplar--which has wandered hither, I know not when, all the way from Cashmere--had not wandered then, I believe, further than North Italy. The form is rather that of mere stone; of the obelisk, or of the mountain peak; and they, in fact, may have at first suggested the spire. The grandeur of an isolated mountain, even of a dolmen or single upright stone, is evident to all. But it is the grandeur, not of aspiration, but of defiance; not of the Christian; not even of the Stoic: but rather of the Epicurean. It says--I cannot rise. I do not care to rise. I will be contentedly and valiantly that which I am; and face circumstances, though I cannot conquer them. But it is defiance under defeat. The mountain-peak does not grow, but only decays. Fretted by rains, peeled by frost, splintered by lightning, it must down at last; and crumble into earth, were it as old, as hard, as lofty as the Matterhorn itself. And while it stands, it wants not only aspiration, it wants tenderness; it wants humility; it wants the unrest which tenderness and humility must breed, and which Mr. Ruskin so clearly recognises in the best Gothic art. And, meanwhile, it wants naturalness. The mere smooth spire or broach--I had almost said, even the spire of Salisbury--is like no tall or commanding object in Nature. It is merely the caricature of one; it may be of the mountain-peak. The outline must be broken, must be softened, before it can express the soul of a creed which, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries far more than now, was one of penitence as well as of aspiration, of passionate emotion as well as of lofty faith. But a shape which will express that soul must be sought, not among mineral, but among vegetable, forms. And remember always, if we feel thus even now, how much more must those medieval men of genius have felt thus, whose work we now dare only copy line by line? So--as it seems to me--they sought among vegetable forms for what they needed: and they found it at once in the pine, or rather the fir,--the spruce and silver firs of their own forests. They are not, of course, indigenous to England. But they are so common through all the rest of Europe, that not only would the form suggest itself to a Continental architect, but to any English clerk who travelled, as all did who could, across the Alps to Rome. The fir-tree, not growing on level ground, like the oaks of Fontainebleau, into one flat roof of foliage, but clinging to the hill-side and the crag, old above young, spire above spire, whorl above whorl--for the young shoots of each whorl of boughs point upward in the spring; and now and then a whole bough, breaking away, as it were, into free space, turns upward altogether, and forms a secondary spire on the same tree--this surely was the form which the mediaeval architect seized, to clothe with it the sides and roof of the stone mountain which he had built; piling up pinnacles and spires, each crocketed at the angles; that, like a group of firs upon an isolated rock, every point of the building might seem in act to grow toward heaven, till his idea culminated in that glorious Minster of Cologne, which, if it ever be completed, will be the likeness of one forest-clothed group of cliffs, surmounted by three enormous pines. One feature of the Norman temple he could keep; for it was copied from the same nature which he was trying to copy--namely, the high-pitched roof and gables. Mr. Ruskin lays it down as a law, that the acute angle in roofs, gables, spires, is the distinguishing mark of northern Gothic. It was adopted, most probably, at first from domestic buildings. A northern house or barn must have a high-pitched roof: or the snow will not slip off it. But that fact was not discovered by man; it was copied by him from the rocks around. He saw the mountain peak jut black and bare above the snows of winter; he saw those snows slip down in sheets, rush down in torrents under the sun, from the steep slabs of rock which coped the hill-side; and he copied, in his roofs, the rocks above his town. But as the love for decoration arose, he would deck his roofs as nature had decked hers, till the grey sheets of the cathedral slates should stand out amid pinnacles and turrets rich with foliage, as the grey mountain sides stood out amid knolls of feathery birch and towering pine. He failed, though he failed nobly. He never succeeded in attaining a perfectly natural style. The medieval architects were crippled to the last by the tradition of artificial Roman forms. They began improving them into naturalness, without any clear notion of what they wanted; and when that notion became clear, it was too late. Take, as an instance, the tracery of their windows. It is true, as Mr. Ruskin says, that they began by piercing holes in a wall of the form of a leaf, which developed, in the rose window, into the form of a star inside, and of a flower outside. Look at such aloft there. Then, by introducing mullions and traceries into the lower part of the window, they added stem and bough forms to those flower forms. But the two did not fit. Look at the west window of our choir, and you will see what I mean. The upright mullions break off into bough curves graceful enough: but these are cut short--as I hold, spoiled--by circular and triangular forms of rose and trefoil resting on them as such forms never rest in Nature; and the whole, though beautiful, is only half beautiful. It is fragmentary, unmeaning, barbaric, because unnatural. They failed, too, it may be, from the very paucity of the vegetable forms they could find to copy among the flora of this colder clime; and so, stopped short in drawing from nature, ran off into mere purposeless luxuriance. Had they been able to add to their stock of memories a hundred forms which they would have seen in the Tropics, they might have gone on for centuries copying Nature without exhausting her. And yet, did they exhaust even the few forms of beauty which they saw around them? It must be confessed that they did not. I believe that they could not, because they dared not. The unnaturalness of the creed which they expressed always hampered them. It forbade them to look Nature freely and lovingly in the face. It forbade them--as one glaring example--to know anything truly of the most beautiful of all natural objects--the human form. They were tempted perpetually to take Nature as ornament, not as basis; and they yielded at last to the temptation; till, in the age of Perpendicular architecture, their very ornament became unnatural again; because conventional, untrue, meaningless. But the creed for which they worked was dying by that time, and therefore the art which expressed it must needs die too. And even that death, or rather the approach of it, was symbolised truly in the flatter roof, the four-centred arch, the flat-topped tower of the fifteenth-century church. The creed had ceased to aspire: so did the architecture. It had ceased to grow: so did the temple. And the arch sank lower; and the rafters grew more horizontal; and the likeness to the old tree, content to grow no more, took the place of the likeness to the young tree struggling toward the sky. And now--unless you are tired of listening to me--a few practical words. We are restoring our old cathedral stone by stone after its ancient model. We are also trying to build a new church. We are building it--as most new churches in England are now built--in a pure Gothic style. Are we doing right? I do not mean morally right. It is always morally right to build a new church, if needed, whatever be its architecture. It is always morally right to restore an old church, if it be beautiful and noble, as an heirloom handed down to us by our ancestors, which we have no right--I say, no right--for the sake of our children, and of our children's children, to leave to ruin. But are we artistically, aesthetically right? Is the best Gothic fit for our worship? Does it express our belief? Or shall we choose some other style? I say that it is; and that it is so because it is a style which, if not founded on Nature, has taken into itself more of Nature, of Nature beautiful and healthy, than any other style. With greater knowledge of Nature, both geographical and scientific, fresh styles of architecture may and will arise, as much more beautiful, and as much more natural, than the Gothic, as Gothic is more beautiful and natural than the Norman. Till then we must take the best models which we have; use them; and, as it were, use them up and exhaust them. By that time we may have learnt to improve on them; and to build churches more Gothic than Gothic itself, more like grot and grove than even a northern cathedral. That is the direction in which we must work. And if any shall say to us, as it has been said ere now--"After all, your new Gothic churches are but imitations, shams, borrowed symbols, which to you symbolise nothing. They are Romish churches, meant to express Romish doctrine, built for a Protestant creed which they do not express, and for a Protestant worship which they will not fit." Then we shall answer--Not so. The objection might be true if we built Norman or Romanesque churches; for we should then be returning to that very foreign and unnatural style which Rome taught our forefathers, and from which they escaped gradually into the comparative freedom, the comparative naturalness of that true Gothic of which Mr. Ruskin says so well:-- "It is gladdening to remember that, in its utmost nobleness, the very temper which has been thought most averse to it, the Protestant temper of self-dependence and inquiry, were expressed in every case. Faith and aspiration there were in every Christian ecclesiastical building from the first century to the fifteenth: but the moral habits to which England in this age owes the kind of greatness which she has--the habits of philosophical investigation, of accurate thought, of domestic seclusion and independence, of stern self-reliance, and sincere upright searching into religious truth,--were only traceable in the features which were the distinctive creations of the Gothic schools, in the varied foliage and thorny fretwork, and shadowy niche, and buttressed pier, and fearless height of subtle pinnacle and crested tower, sent 'like an unperplexed question up to heaven.'" So says Mr. Ruskin. I, for one, endorse his gallant words. And I think that a strong proof of their truth is to be found in two facts, which seem at first paradoxical. First, that the new Roman Catholic churches on the Continent--I speak especially of France, which is the most highly cultivated Romanist country--are, like those which the Jesuits built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, less and less Gothic. The former were sham-classic; the latter are rather of a new fantastic Romanesque, or rather Byzantinesque style, which is a real retrogression from Gothic towards earlier and less natural schools. Next, that the Puritan communions, the Kirk of Scotland and the English Nonconformists, as they are becoming more cultivated--and there are now many highly cultivated men among them--are introducing Gothic architecture more and more into their churches. There are elements in it, it seems, which do not contradict their Puritanism; elements which they can adapt to their own worship; namely, the very elements which Mr. Ruskin has discerned. But if they can do so, how much more can we of the Church of England? As long as we go on where our medieval forefathers left off; as long as we keep to the most perfect types of their work, in waiting for the day when we shall be able to surpass them, by making our work even more naturalistic than theirs, more truly expressive of the highest aspirations of humanity: so long we are reverencing them, and that latent Protestantism in them, which produced at last the Reformation. And if any should say--"Nevertheless, your Protestant Gothic church, though you made it ten times more beautiful, and more symbolic, than Cologne Minster itself, would still be a sham. For where would be your images? And still more, where would be your Host? Do you not know that in the medieval church the vistas of its arcades, the alternations of its lights and shadows, the gradations of its colouring, and all its carefully subordinated wealth of art, pointed to, were concentrated round, one sacred spot, as a curve, however vast its sweep though space, tends at every moment toward a single focus? And that spot, that focus, was, and is still, in every Romish church, the body of God, present upon the altar in the form of bread? Without Him, what is all your building? Your church is empty: your altar bare; a throne without a king; an eye- socket without an eye." My friends, if we be true children of those old worthies, whom Tacitus saw worshipping beneath the German oaks; we shall have but one answer to that scoff:-- We know it; and we glory in the fact. We glory in it, as the old Jews gloried in it, when the Roman soldiers, bursting through the Temple, and into the Holy of Holies itself, paused in wonder and in awe when they beheld neither God, nor image of God, but blank yet all-suggestive--the empty mercy-seat. Like theirs, our altar is an empty throne. For it symbolises our worship of Him who dwelleth not in temples made with hands; whom the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain. Our eye-socket holds no eye. For it symbolises our worship of that Eye which is over all the earth; which is about our path, and about our bed, and spies out all our ways. We need no artificial and material presence of Deity. For we believe in That One Eternal and Universal Real Presence--of which it is written "He is not far from any one of us; for in God we live, and move, and have our being;" and again, "Lo, I am with you, even to the End of the World;" and again--"Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them." He is the God of nature, as well as the God of grace. For ever He looks down on all things which He has made: and behold, they are very good. And, therefore, we dare offer to Him, in our churches, the most perfect works of naturalistic art, and shape them into copies of whatever beauty He has shown us, in man or woman, in cave or mountain peak, in tree or flower, even in bird or butterfly. But Himself?--Who can see Him? Except the humble and the contrite heart, to whom He reveals Himself as a Spirit to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and not in bread, nor wood, nor stone, nor gold, nor quintessential diamond. So we shall obey the sound instinct of our Christian forefathers, when they shaped their churches into forest aisles, and decked them with the boughs of the woodland, and the flowers of the field: but we shall obey too, that sounder instinct of theirs, which made them at last cast out of their own temples, as misplaced and unnatural things, the idols which they had inherited from Rome. So we shall obey the sound instinct of our heathen forefathers, when they worshipped the unknown God beneath the oaks of the primeval forest: but we shall obey, too, that sounder instinct of theirs, which taught them this, at least, concerning God--That it was beneath His dignity to coop Him within walls; and that the grandest forms of nature, as well as the deepest consciousnesses of their own souls, revealed to them a mysterious Being, who was to be beheld by faith alone. GEORGE BUCHANAN, SCHOLAR The scholar, in the sixteenth century, was a far more important personage than now. The supply of learned men was very small, the demand for them very great. During the whole of the fifteenth, and a great part of the sixteenth century, the human mind turned more and more from the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages to that of the Romans and the Greeks; and found more and more in old Pagan Art an element which Monastic Art had not, and which was yet necessary for the full satisfaction of their craving after the Beautiful. At such a crisis of thought and taste, it was natural that the classical scholar, the man who knew old Rome, and still more old Greece, should usurp the place of the monk, as teacher of mankind; and that scholars should form, for a while, a new and powerful aristocracy, limited and privileged, and all the more redoubtable, because its power lay in intellect, and had been won by intellect alone. Those who, whether poor or rich, did not fear the monk and priest, at least feared the "scholar," who held, so the vulgar believed, the keys of that magic lore by which the old necromancers had built cities like Rome, and worked marvels of mechanical and chemical skill, which the degenerate modern could never equal. If the "scholar" stopped in a town, his hostess probably begged of him a charm against toothache or rheumatism. The penniless knight discoursed with him on alchemy, and the chances of retrieving his fortune by the art of transmuting metals into gold. The queen or bishop worried him in private about casting their nativities, and finding their fates among the stars. But the statesman, who dealt with more practical matters, hired him as an advocate and rhetorician, who could fight his master's enemies with the weapons of Demosthenes and Cicero. Wherever the scholar's steps were turned, he might be master of others, as long as he was master of himself. The complaints which he so often uttered concerning the cruelty of fortune, the fickleness of princes, and so forth, were probably no more just then than such complaints are now. Then, as now, he got his deserts; and the world bought him at his own price. If he chose to sell himself to this patron and to that, he was used and thrown away: if he chose to remain in honourable independence, he was courted and feared. Among the successful scholars of the sixteenth century, none surely is more notable than George Buchanan. The poor Scotch widow's son, by force of native wit, and, as I think, by force of native worth, fights his way upward, through poverty and severest persecution, to become the correspondent and friend of the greatest literary celebrities of the Continent, comparable, in their opinion, to the best Latin poets of antiquity; the preceptor of princes; the counsellor and spokesman of Scotch statesmen in the most dangerous of times; and leaves behind him political treatises, which have influenced not only the history of his own country, but that of the civilised world. Such a success could not be attained without making enemies, perhaps without making mistakes. But the more we study George Buchanan's history, the less we shall be inclined to hunt out his failings, the more inclined to admire his worth. A shrewd, sound-hearted, affectionate man, with a strong love of right and scorn of wrong, and a humour withal which saved him--except on really great occasions--from bitterness, and helped him to laugh where narrower natures would have only snarled,--he is, in many respects, a type of those Lowland Scots, who long preserved his jokes, genuine or reputed, as a common household book. {328} A schoolmaster by profession, and struggling for long years amid the temptations which, in those days, degraded his class into cruel and sordid pedants, he rose from the mere pedagogue to be, in the best sense of the word, a courtier; "One," says Daniel Heinsius, "who seemed not only born for a court, but born to amend it. He brought to his queen that at which she could not wonder enough. For, by affecting a certain liberty in censuring morals, he avoided all offence, under the cloak of simplicity." Of him and his compeers, Turnebus, and Muretus, and their friend Andrea Govea, Ronsard, the French court poet, said that they had nothing of the pedagogue about them but the gown and cap. "Austere in face, and rustic in his looks," says David Buchanan, "but most polished in style and speech; and continually, even in serious conversation, jesting most wittily." "Roughhewn, slovenly, and rude," says Peacham, in his 'Compleat Gentleman,' speaking of him, probably, as he appeared in old age, "in his person, behaviour, and fashion; seldom caring for a better outside than a rugge-gown girt close about him: yet his inside and conceipt in poesie was most rich, and his sweetness and facilitie in verse most excellent." A typical Lowland Scot, as I said just now, he seems to have absorbed all the best culture which France could afford him, without losing the strength, honesty, and humour which he inherited from his Stirlingshire kindred. The story of his life is easily traced. When an old man, he himself wrote down the main events of it, at the request of his friends; and his sketch has been filled out by commentators, if not always favourable, at least erudite. Born in 1506, at the Moss, in Killearn--where an obelisk to his memory, so one reads, has been erected in this century--of a family "rather ancient than rich," his father dead in the prime of manhood, his grandfather a spendthrift, he and his seven brothers and sisters were brought up by a widowed mother, Agnes Heriot--of whom one wishes to know more; for the rule that great sons have great mothers probably holds good in her case. George gave signs, while at the village school, of future scholarship; and when he was only fourteen, his uncle James sent him to the University of Paris. Those were hard times; and the youths, or rather boys, who meant to become scholars, had a cruel life of it, cast desperately out on the wide world to beg and starve, either into self-restraint and success, or into ruin of body and soul. And a cruel life George had. Within two years he was down in a severe illness, his uncle dead, his supplies stopped; and the boy of sixteen got home, he does not tell how. Then he tried soldiering; and was with Albany's French Auxiliaries at the ineffectual attack on Wark Castle. Marching back through deep snow, he got a fresh illness, which kept him in bed all winter. Then he and his brother were sent to St. Andrew's, where he got his B.A. at nineteen. The next summer he went to France once more; and "fell," he says, "into the flames of the Lutheran sect, which was then spreading far and wide." Two years of penury followed; and then three years of schoolmastering in the College of St. Barbe, which he has immortalised--at least for the few who care to read modern Latin poetry--in his elegy on 'The Miseries of a Parisian Teacher of the Humanities.' The wretched regent master, pale and suffering, sits up all night preparing his lecture, biting his nails, and thumping his desk; and falls asleep for a few minutes, to start up at the sound of the four o'clock bell, and be in school by five, his Virgil in one hand, and his rod in the other, trying to do work on his own account at old manuscripts, and bawling all the while at his wretched boys, who cheat him, and pay each other to answer to truants' names. The class is all wrong. "One is barefoot, another's shoe is burst, another cries, another writes home. Then comes the rod, the sound of blows and howls; and the day passes in tears." "Then mass, then another lesson, then more blows; there is hardly time to eat."--I have no space to finish the picture of the stupid misery which, Buchanan says, was ruining his intellect, while it starved his body. However, happier days came. Gilbert Kennedy, Earl of Cassilis, who seems to have been a noble young gentleman, took him as his tutor for the next five years; and with him he went back to Scotland. But there his plain speaking got him, as it did more than once afterward, into trouble. He took it into his head to write, in imitation of Dunbar, a Latin poem, in which St. Francis asks him in a dream to become a Grey Friar, and Buchanan answered in language which had the unpleasant fault of being too clever, and--to judge from contemporary evidence--only too true. The friars said nothing at first: but when King James made Buchanan tutor to one of his natural sons, they, "men professing meekness, took the matter somewhat more angrily than befitted men so pious in the opinion of the people." So Buchanan himself puts it: but, to do the poor friars justice, they must have been angels, not men, if they did not writhe somewhat under the scourge which he had laid on them. To be told that there was hardly a place in heaven for monks, was hard to hear and bear. They accused him to the king of heresy: but not being then in favour with James, they got no answer, and Buchanan was commanded to repeat the castigation. Having found out that the friars were not to be touched with impunity, he wrote, he says, a short and ambiguous poem. But the king, who loved a joke, demanded something sharp and stinging, and Buchanan obeyed by writing, but not publishing, the 'Franciscans,' a long satire, compared to which the 'Somnium' was bland and merciful. The storm rose. Cardinal Beaton, Buchanan says, wanted to buy him of the king, and then, of course, burn him, as he had just burnt five poor souls: so, knowing James's avarice, he fled to England, through freebooters and pestilence. There he found, he says, "men of both factions being burned on the same day and in the same fire"--a pardonable exaggeration--"by Henry VIII., in his old age more intent on his own safety than on the purity of religion." So to his beloved France he went again, to find his enemy Beaton ambassador at Paris. The capital was too hot to hold him; and he fled south to Bourdeaux, to Andrea Govea, the Portuguese principal of the College of Gruienne. As Professor of Latin at Bourdeaux, we find him presenting a Latin poem to Charles V.; and indulging that fancy of his for Latin poetry which seems to us now-a-days a childish pedantry; which was then--when Latin was the vernacular tongue of all scholars--a serious, if not altogether a useful, pursuit. Of his tragedies, so famous in their day--the 'Baptist,' the 'Medea,' the 'Jephtha,' and the 'Alcestis'--there is neither space nor need to speak here, save to notice the bold declamations in the 'Baptist' against tyranny and priestcraft; and to notice also that these tragedies gained for the poor Scotsman, in the eyes of the best scholars of Europe, a credit amounting almost to veneration. When he returned to Paris, he found occupation at once; and--as his Scots biographers love to record--"three of the most learned men in the world taught humanity in the same college," viz., Turnebus, Muretus, and Buchanan. Then followed a strange episode in his life. A university had been founded at Coimbra, in Portugal, and Andrea Govea had been invited to bring thither what French savans he could collect. Buchanan went to Portugal with his brother Patrick; two more Scotsmen, Dempster and Ramsay: and a goodly company of French scholars, whose names and histories may be read in the erudite pages of Dr. Irving, went likewise. All prospered in the new Temple of the Muses for a year or so. Then its high-priest, Govea, died; and, by a peripeteia too common in those days and countries, Buchanan and two of his friends migrated, unwillingly, from the Temple of the Muses for that of Moloch, and found themselves in the Inquisition. Buchanan, it seems, had said that St. Augustine was more of a Lutheran than a Catholic on the question of the mass. He and his friends had eaten flesh in Lent; which, he says, almost everyone in Spain did. But he was suspected, and with reason, as a heretic; the Grey Friars formed but one brotherhood throughout Europe; and news among them travelled surely if not fast: so that the story of the satire written in Scotland had reached Portugal. The culprits were imprisoned, examined, bullied--but not tortured--for a year and a half. At the end of that time, the proofs of heresy, it seems, were insufficient; but lest--says Buchanan with honest pride--"they should get the reputation of having vainly tormented a man not altogether unknown," they sent him for some months to a monastery, to be instructed by the monks. "The men," he says, "were neither inhuman nor bad, but utterly ignorant of religion;" and Buchanan solaced himself during the intervals of their instructions, by beginning his Latin translation of the Psalms. At last he got free, and begged leave to return to France; but in vain. Wearied out at last, he got on board a Candian ship at Lisbon, and escaped to England. But England, he says, during the anarchy of Edward VI.'s reign, was not a land which suited him; and he returned to his beloved France, to fulfil the hopes which he had expressed in his charming 'Desiderium Lutitiae,' and the still more charming, because more simple, 'Adventus in Galliam,' in which he bids farewell, in most melodious verse, to "the hungry moors of wretched Portugal, and her clods fertile in naught but penury." Some seven years succeeded of schoolmastering and verse-writing:--The Latin paraphrase of the Psalms; another of the 'Alcestis' of Euripides; an Epithalamium on the marriage of poor Mary Stuart, noble and sincere, however fantastic and pedantic, after the manner of the times; "Pomps," too, for her wedding, and for other public ceremonies, in which all the heathen gods and goddesses figure; epigrams, panegyrics, satires, much of which latter productions he would have consigned to the dust-heap in his old age, had not his too fond friends persuaded him to republish the follies and coarsenesses of his youth. He was now one of the most famous scholars in Europe, and the intimate friend of all the great literary men. Was he to go on to the end, die, and no more? Was he to sink into the mere pedant; or, if he could not do that, into the mere court versifier? The wars of religion saved him, as they saved many another noble soul, from that degradation. The events of 1560-1-2 forced Buchanan, as they forced many a learned man besides, to choose whether he would be a child of light or a child of darkness; whether he would be a dilettante classicist, or a preacher--it might be a martyr--of the Gospel. Buchanan may have left France in "the troubles" merely to enjoy in his own country elegant and learned repose. He may have fancied that he had found it, when he saw himself, in spite of his public profession of adherence to the Reformed Kirk, reading Livy every afternoon with his exquisite young sovereign; master, by her favour, of the temporalities of Crossraguel Abbey, and by the favour of Murray, Principal of St. Leonard's College in St. Andrew's. Perhaps he fancied at times that "to-morrow was to be as to-day, and much more abundant;" that thenceforth he might read his folio, and write his epigram, and joke his joke, as a lazy comfortable pluralist, taking his morning stroll out to the corner where poor Wishart had been burned, above the blue sea and the yellow sands, and looking up to the castle tower from whence his enemy Beaton's corpse had been hung out; with the comfortable reflection that quietier times had come, and that whatever evil deeds Archbishop Hamilton might dare, he would not dare to put the Principal of St. Leonard's into the "bottle dungeon." If such hopes ever crossed Geordie's keen fancy, they were disappointed suddenly and fearfully. The fire which had been kindled in France was to reach to Scotland likewise. "Revolutions are not made with rose-water;" and the time was at hand when all good spirits in Scotland, and George Buchanan among them, had to choose, once and for all, amid danger, confusion, terror, whether they would serve God or Mammon; for to serve both would be soon impossible. Which side, in that war of light and darkness, George Buchanan took, is notorious. He saw then, as others have seen since, that the two men in Scotland who were capable of being her captains in the strife were Knox and Murray; and to them he gave in his allegiance heart and soul. This is the critical epoch in Buchanan's life. By his conduct to Queen Mary he must stand or fall. It is my belief that he will stand. It is not my intention to enter into the details of a matter so painful, so shocking, so prodigious; and now that that question is finally set at rest, by the writings both of Mr. Froude and Mr. Burton, there is no need to allude to it further, save where Buchanan's name is concerned. One may now have every sympathy with Mary Stuart; one may regard with awe a figure so stately, so tragic, in one sense so heroic,--for she reminds one rather of the heroine of an old Greek tragedy, swept to her doom by some irresistible fate, than of a being of our own flesh and blood, and of our modern and Christian times. One may sympathise with the great womanhood which charmed so many while she was alive; which has charmed, in later years, so many noble spirits who have believed in her innocence, and have doubtless been elevated and purified by their devotion to one who seemed to them an ideal being. So far from regarding her as a hateful personage, one may feel oneself forbidden to hate a woman whom God may have loved, and may have pardoned, to judge from the punishment so swift, and yet so enduring, which He inflicted. At least, he must so believe who holds that punishment is a sign of mercy; that the most dreadful of all dooms is impunity. Nay, more, those "casket" letters and sonnets may be a relief to the mind of one who believes in her guilt on other grounds; a relief when one finds in them a tenderness, a sweetness, a delicacy, a magnificent self-sacrifice, however hideously misplaced, which shows what a womanly heart was there; a heart which, joined to that queenly brain, might have made her a blessing and a glory to Scotland, had not the whole character been warped and ruinate from childhood, by an education so abominable, that any one who knows what words she must have heard, what scenes she must have beheld in France, from her youth up, will wonder that she sinned so little: not that she sinned so much. One may feel, in a word, that there is every excuse for those who have asserted Mary's innocence, because their own high-mindedness shrank from believing her guilty: but yet Buchanan, in his own place and time, may have felt as deeply that he could do no otherwise than he did. The charges against him, as all readers of Scotch literature know well, may be reduced to two heads. 1st. The letters and sonnets were forgeries. Maitland of Lethington may have forged the letters; Buchanan, according to some, the sonnets. Whoever forged them, Buchanan made use of them in his Detection, knowing them to be forged. 2nd. Whether Mary was innocent or not, Buchanan acted a base and ungrateful part in putting himself in the forefront amongst her accusers. He had been her tutor, her pensioner. She had heaped him with favours; and, after all, she was his queen, and a defenceless woman: and yet he returned her kindness, in the hour of her fall, by invectives fit only for a rancorous and reckless advocate, determined to force a verdict by the basest arts of oratory. Now as to the "casket" letters. I should have thought they bore in themselves the best evidence of being genuine. I can add nothing to the arguments of Mr. Froude and Mr. Burton, save this: that no one clever enough to be a forger, would have put together documents so incoherent, and so incomplete. For the evidence of guilt which they contain is, after all, slight and indirect, and, moreover, superfluous altogether; seeing that Mary's guilt was open and palpable, before the supposed discovery of the letters, to every person at home and abroad who had any knowledge of the facts. As for the alleged inconsistency of the letters with proven facts: the answer is, that whosoever wrote the letters would be more likely to know facts which were taking place around them than any critic could be one hundred or three hundred years afterwards. But if these mistakes as to facts actually exist in them, they are only a fresh argument for their authenticity. Mary, writing in agony and confusion, might easily make a mistake: forgers would only take too good care to make none. But the strongest evidence in favour of the letters and sonnets, in spite of the arguments of good Dr. Whittaker and other apologists for Mary, is to be found in their tone. A forger in those coarse days would have made Mary write in some Semiramis or Roxana vein, utterly alien to the tenderness, the delicacy, the pitiful confusion of mind, the conscious weakness, the imploring and most feminine trust which makes the letters, to those who--as I do--believe in them, more pathetic than any fictitious sorrows which poets could invent. More than one touch, indeed, of utter self-abasement, in the second letter, is so unexpected, so subtle, and yet so true to the heart of woman, that--as has been well said--if it was invented there must have existed in Scotland an earlier Shakespeare; who yet has died without leaving any other sign, for good or evil, of his dramatic genius. As for the theory (totally unsupported) that Buchanan forged the poem usually called the Sonnets; it is paying old Geordie's genius, however versatile it may have been, too high a compliment to believe that he could have written both them and the Detection; while it is paying his shrewdness too low a compliment to believe that he could have put into them, out of mere carelessness or stupidity, the well-known line, which seems incompatible with the theory both of the letters and of his own Detection; and which has ere now been brought forward as a fresh proof of Mary's innocence. And, as with the letters, so with the sonnets: their delicacy, their grace, their reticence, are so many arguments against their having been forged by any Scot of the sixteenth century, and least of all by one in whose character--whatever his other virtues may have been--delicacy was by no means the strongest point. As for the complaint that Buchanan was ungrateful to Mary, it must be said: That even if she, and not Murray, had bestowed on him the temporalities of Crossraguel Abbey four years before, it was merely fair pay for services fairly rendered; and I am not aware that payment, or even favours, however gracious, bind any man's soul and conscience in questions of highest morality and highest public importance. And the importance of that question cannot be exaggerated. At a moment when Scotland seemed struggling in death-throes of anarchy, civil and religious, and was in danger of becoming a prey either to England or to France, if there could not be formed out of the heart of her a people, steadfast, trusty, united, strong politically because strong in the fear of God and the desire of righteousness--at such a moment as this, a crime had been committed, the like of which had not been heard in Europe since the tragedy of Joan of Naples. All Europe stood aghast. The honour of the Scottish nation was at stake. More than Mary or Bothwell were known to be implicated in the deed; and--as Buchanan puts it in the opening of his 'De Jure Regni'--"The fault of some few was charged upon all; and the common hatred of a particular person did redound to the whole nation; so that even such as were remote from any suspicion were inflamed by the infamy of men's crimes." {343} To vindicate the national honour, and to punish the guilty, as well as to save themselves from utter anarchy, the great majority of the Scotch nation had taken measures against Mary which required explicit justification in the sight of Europe, as Buchanan frankly confesses in the opening of his "De Jure Regni." The chief authors of those measures had been summoned, perhaps unwisely and unjustly, to answer for their conduct to the Queen of England. Queen Elizabeth--a fact which was notorious enough then, though it has been forgotten till the last few years--was doing her utmost to shield Mary. Buchanan was deputed, it seems, to speak out for the people of Scotland; and certainly never people had an abler apologist. If he spoke fiercely, savagely, it must be remembered that he spoke of a fierce and savage matter; if he used--and it may be abused--all the arts of oratory, it must be remembered that he was fighting for the honour, and it may be for the national life, of his country, and striking--as men in such cases have a right to strike--as hard as he could. If he makes no secret of his indignation, and even contempt, it must be remembered that indignation and contempt may well have been real with him, while they were real with the soundest part of his countrymen; with that reforming middle class, comparatively untainted by French profligacy, comparatively undebauched by feudal subservience, which has been the leaven which has leavened the whole Scottish people in the last three centuries with the elements of their greatness. If, finally, he heaps up against the unhappy Queen charges which Mr. Burton thinks incredible, it must be remembered that, as he well says, these charges give the popular feeling about Queen Mary; and it must be remembered also, that that popular feeling need not have been altogether unfounded. Stories which are incredible, thank God, in these milder days, were credible enough then, because, alas! they were so often true. Things more ugly than any related of poor Mary, were possible enough--as no one knew better than Buchanan--in that very French court in which Mary had been brought up; things as ugly were possible in Scotland then, and for at least a century later; and while we may hope that Buchanan has overstated his case, we must not blame him too severely for yielding to a temptation common to all men of genius when their creative power is roused to its highest energy by a great cause and a great indignation. And that the genius was there, no man can doubt; one cannot read that "hideously eloquent" description of Kirk o' Field, which Mr. Burton has well chosen as a specimen of Buchanan's style, without seeing that we are face to face with a genius of a very lofty order: not, indeed, of the loftiest--for there is always in Buchanan's work, it seems to me, a want of unconsciousness, and a want of tenderness--but still a genius worthy to be placed beside those ancient writers from whom he took his manner. Whether or not we agree with his contemporaries, who say that he equalled Virgil in Latin poetry, we may place him fairly as a prose writer by the side of Demosthenes, Cicero, or Tacitus. And so I pass from this painful subject; only quoting--if I may be permitted to quote--Mr. Burton's wise and gentle verdict on the whole. "Buchanan," he says, "though a zealous Protestant, had a good deal of the Catholic and sceptical spirit of Erasmus, and an admiring eye for everything that was great and beautiful. Like the rest of his countrymen, he bowed himself in presence of the lustre that surrounded the early career of his mistress. More than once he expressed his pride and reverence in the inspiration of a genius deemed by his contemporaries to be worthy of the theme. There is not, perhaps, to be found elsewhere in literature so solemn a memorial of shipwrecked hopes, of a sunny opening and a stormy end, as one finds in turning the leaves of the volume which contains the beautiful epigram 'Nympha Caledoniae' in one part, the 'Detectio Mariae Reginae' in another; and this contrast is, no doubt, a faithful parallel of the reaction in the popular mind. This reaction seems to have been general, and not limited to the Protestant party; for the conditions under which it became almost a part of the creed of the Church of Rome to believe in her innocence had not arisen." If Buchanan, as some of his detractors have thought, raised himself by subserviency to the intrigues of the Regent Murray, the best heads in Scotland seem to have been of a different opinion. The murder of Murray did not involve Buchanan's fall. He had avenged it, as far as pen could do it, by that 'Admonition Direct to the Trew Lordis,' in which he showed himself as great a master of Scottish, as he was of Latin, prose. His satire of the 'Chameleon,' though its publication was stopped by Maitland, must have been read in manuscript by many of those same "True Lords;" and though there were nobler instincts in Maitland than any Buchanan gave him credit for, the satire breathed an honest indignation against that wily turncoat's misdoings, which could not but recommend the author to all honest men. Therefore it was, I presume, and not because he was a rogue, and a hired literary spadassin, that to the best heads in Scotland he seemed so useful, it may be so worthy, a man, that he be provided with continually increasing employment. As tutor to James I.; as director, for a short time, of the chancery; as keeper of the privy seal, and privy councillor; as one of the commissioners for codifying the laws, and again--for in the semi-anarchic state of Scotland, government had to do everything in the way of organisation--in the committee for promulgating a standard Latin grammar; in the committee for reforming the University of St. Andrew's: in all these Buchanan's talents were again and again called for; and always ready. The value of his work, especially that for the reform of St. Andrew's, must be judged by Scotchmen, rather than by an Englishman: but all that one knows of it justifies Melville's sentence in the well-known passage in his memoirs, wherein he describes the tutors and household of the young King. "Mr. George was a Stoic philosopher, who looked not far before him;" in plain words, a high-minded and right-minded man, bent on doing the duty which lay nearest him. The worst that can be said against him during these times is, that his name appears with the sum of 100 pounds against it, as one of those "who were to be entertained in Scotland by pensions out of England"; and Ruddiman, of course, comments on the fact by saying that Buchanan "was at length to act under the threefold character of malcontent, reformer, and pensioner:" but it gives no proof whatsoever that Buchanan ever received any such bribe; and in the very month, seemingly, in which that list was written--10th March, 1579--Buchanan had given a proof to the world that he was not likely to be bribed or bought, by publishing a book, as offensive probably to Queen Elizabeth as it was to his own royal pupil; namely, his famous 'De Jure Regni apud Scotos,' the very primer, according to many great thinkers, of constitutional liberty. He dedicates that book to King James, "not only as his monitor, but also an importunate and bold exactor, which in these his tender and flexible years may conduct him in safety past the rocks of flattery." He has complimented James already on his abhorrence of flattery, "his inclination far above his years for undertaking all heroical and noble attempts, his promptitude in obeying his instructors and governors, and all who give him sound admonition, and his judgment and diligence in examining affairs, so that no man's authority can have much weight with him unless it be confirmed by probable reasons." Buchanan may have thought that nine years of his stern rule had eradicated some of James's ill conditions; the petulance which made him kill the Master of Mar's sparrow, in trying to wrest it out of his hand; the carelessness with which--if the story told by Chytraeus, on the authority of Buchanan's nephew, be true--James signed away his crown to Buchanan for fifteen days, and only discovered his mistake by seeing Buchanan act in open court the character of King of Scots. Buchanan had at last made him a scholar; he may have fancied that he had made him likewise a manful man: yet he may have dreaded that, as James grew up, the old inclinations would return in stronger and uglier shapes, and that flattery might be, as it was after all, the cause of James's moral ruin. He at least will be no flatterer. He opens the dialogue which he sends to the king, with a calm but distinct assertion of his mother's guilt, and a justification of the conduct of men who were now most of them past helping Buchanan, for they were laid in their graves; and then goes on to argue fairly, but to lay down firmly, in a sort of Socratic dialogue, those very principles by loyalty to which the House of Hanover has reigned, and will reign, over these realms. So with his History of Scotland; later antiquarian researches have destroyed the value of the earlier portions of it: but they have surely increased the value of those later portions, in which Buchanan inserted so much which he had already spoken out in his Detection of Mary. In that book also, "liberavit animam suam;" he spoke his mind, fearless of consequences, in the face of a king who he must have known--for Buchanan was no dullard--regarded him with deep dislike, who might in a few years be able to work his ruin. But those few years were not given to Buchanan. He had all but done his work, and he hastened to get it over before the night should come wherein no man can work. One must be excused for telling--one would not tell it in a book intended to be read only by Scotchmen, who know or ought to know the tale already--how the two Melvilles and Buchanan's nephew Thomas went to see him in Edinburgh, in September, 1581, hearing that he was ill, and his History still in the press; and how they found the old sage, true to his schoolmaster's instincts, teaching the Hornbook to his servant-lad; and how he told them that doing that was "better than stealing sheep, or sitting idle, which was as bad," and showed them that dedication to James I., in which he holds up to his imitation as a hero whose equal was hardly to be found in history, that very King David whose liberality to the Romish Church provoked James's witticism that "David was a sair saint for the crown." Andrew Melville, so James Melville says, found fault with the style. Buchanan replied that he could do no more for thinking of another thing, which was to die. They then went to Arbuthnot's printing-house, and inspected the history, as far as that terrible passage concerning Rizzio's burial, where Mary is represented as "laying the miscreant almost in the arms of Maud de Valois, the late queen." Alarmed, and not without reason, at such plain speaking, they stopped the press, and went back to Buchanan's house. Buchanan was in bed. "He was going," he said, "the way of welfare." They asked him to soften the passage; the king might prohibit the whole work. "Tell me, man," said Buchanan, "if I have told the truth." They could not, or would not, deny it. "Then I will abide his feud, and all his kin's; pray, pray to God for me, and let Him direct all." "So," says Melville, "by the printing of his chronicle was ended, this most learned, wise, and godly man ended his mortal life." Camden has a hearsay story--written, it must be remembered, in James I.'s time--that Buchanan, on his death-bed repented of his harsh words against Queen Mary; and an old Lady Rosyth is said to have said that when she was young a certain David Buchanan recollected hearing some such words from George Buchanan's own mouth. Those who will, may read what Ruddiman and Love have said, and oversaid, on both sides of the question: whatever conclusion they come to, it will probably not be that to which George Chalmers comes in his life of Ruddiman: that "Buchanan, like other liars, who by the repetition of falsehoods are induced to consider the fiction as truth, had so often dwelt with complacency on the forgeries of his Detections, and the figments of his History, that he at length regarded his fictions and his forgeries as most authentic facts." At all events his fictions and his forgeries had not paid him in that coin which base men generally consider the only coin worth having, namely, the good things of this life. He left nothing behind him--if at least Dr. Irving has rightly construed the "Testament Dative" which he gives in his appendix--save arrears to the sum of 100_l_. of his Crossraguel pension. We may believe as we choose the story in Mackenzie's 'Scotch Writers,' that when he felt himself dying, he asked his servant Young about the state of his funds, and finding he had not enough to bury himself withal, ordered what he had to be given to the poor, and said that if they did not choose to bury him they might let him lie where he was, or cast him in a ditch, the matter was very little to him. He was buried, it seems, at the expense of the city of Edinburgh, in the Greyfriars' Churchyard--one says in a plain turf grave--among the marble monuments which covered the bones of worse or meaner men; and whether or not the "Throughstone" which, "sunk under the ground in the Greyfriars," was raised and cleaned by the Council of Edinburgh in 1701, was really George Buchanan's, the reigning powers troubled themselves little for several generations where he lay. For Buchanan's politics were too advanced for his age. Not only Catholic Scotsmen, like Blackwood, Winzet, and Ninian, but Protestants, like Sir Thomas Craig and Sir John Wemyss, could not stomach the 'De Jure Regni.' They may have had some reason on their side. In the then anarchic state of Scotland, organisation and unity under a common head may have been more important than the assertion of popular rights. Be that as it may, in 1584, only two years after his death, the Scots Parliament condemned his Dialogue and History as untrue, and commanded all possessors of copies to deliver them up, that they might be purged of "the offensive and extraordinary matters" which they contained. The 'De Jure Regni' was again prohibited in Scotland, in 1664, even in manuscript; and in 1683, the whole of Buchanan's political works had the honour of being burned by the University of Oxford, in company with those of Milton, Languet, and others, as "pernicious books, and damnable doctrines, destructive to the sacred persons of Princes, their state and government, and of all human society." And thus the seed which Buchanan had sown, and Milton had watered--for the allegation that Milton borrowed from Buchanan is probably true, and equally honourable to both--lay trampled into the earth, and seemingly lifeless, till it tillered out, and blossomed, and bore fruit to a good purpose, in the Revolution of 1688. To Buchanan's clear head and stout heart, Scotland owes, as England owes likewise, much of her modern liberty. But Scotland's debt to him, it seems to me, is even greater on the count of morality, public and private. What the morality of the Scotch upper classes was like, in Buchanan's early days, is too notorious; and there remains proof enough--in the writings, for instance, of Sir David Lindsay--that the morality of the populace which looked up to the nobles as its example and its guide, was not a whit better. As anarchy increased, immorality was likely to increase likewise; and Scotland was in serious danger of falling into such a state as that into which Poland fell, to its ruin, within a hundred and fifty years after; in which the savagery of feudalism, without its order or its chivalry, would be varnished over by a thin coating of French "civilisation," and, as in the case of Bothwell, the vices of the court of Paris should be added to those of the Northern freebooter. To deliver Scotland from that ruin, it was needed that she should be united into one people, strong, not in mere political, but in moral ideas; strong by the clear sense of right and wrong, by the belief in the government and the judgments of a living God. And the tone which Buchanan, like Knox, adopted concerning the great crimes of their day, helped notably that national salvation. It gathered together, organised, strengthened, the scattered and wavering elements of public morality. It assured the hearts of all men who loved the right and hated the wrong; and taught a whole nation to call acts by their just names, whoever might be the doers of them. It appealed to the common conscience of men. It proclaimed a universal and God-given morality, a bar at which all, from the lowest to the highest, must alike be judged. The tone was stern: but there was need of sternness. Moral life and death were in the balance. If the Scots people were to be told that the crimes which roused their indignation were excusable, or beyond punishment, or to be hushed up and slipped over in any way, there was an end of morality among them. Every man, from the greatest to the least, would go and do likewise, according to his powers of evil. That method was being tried in France, and in Spain likewise, during those very years. Notorious crimes were hushed up under pretence of loyalty; excused as political necessities; smiled away as natural and pardonable weaknesses. The result was the utter demoralisation, both of France and Spain. Knox and Buchanan, the one from the stand-point of an old Hebrew prophet, the other rather from that of a Juvenal or a Tacitus, tried the other method, and called acts by their just names, appealing alike to conscience and to God. The result was virtue and piety, and that manly independence of soul which is thought compatible with hearty loyalty, in a country labouring under heavy disadvantages, long divided almost into two hostile camps, two rival races. And the good influence was soon manifest, not only in those who sided with Buchanan and his friends, but in those who most opposed them. The Roman Catholic preachers, who at first asserted Mary's right to impunity, while they allowed her guilt, grew silent for shame, and set themselves to assert her entire innocence; while the Scots who have followed their example have, to their honour, taken up the same ground. They have fought Buchanan on the ground of fact, not on the ground of morality: they have alleged--as they had a fair right to do--the probability of intrigue and forgery in an age so profligate: the improbability that a Queen so gifted by nature and by fortune, and confessedly for a long while so strong and so spotless, should as it were by a sudden insanity have proved so untrue to herself. Their noblest and purest sympathies have been enlisted--and who can blame them?--in loyalty to a Queen, chivalry to a woman, pity for the unfortunate and--as they conceived--the innocent; but whether they have been right or wrong in their view of facts, the Scotch partisans of Mary have always--as far as I know--been right in their view of morals; they have never deigned to admit Mary's guilt, and then to palliate it by those sentimental, or rather sensual, theories of human nature, too common in a certain school of French literature,--too common, alas! in a certain school of modern English novels. They have not said, "She did it; but after all, was the deed so very inexcusable?" They have said, "The deed was inexcusable: but she did not do it." And so the Scotch admirers of Mary, who have numbered among them many a pure and noble, as well as many a gifted spirit, have kept at least themselves unstained; and have shown, whether consciously or not, that they too share in that sturdy Scotch moral sense which has been so much strengthened--as I believe--by the plain speech of good old George Buchanan. RONDELET, THE HUGUENOT NATURALIST {358} "Apollo, god of medicine, exiled from the rest of the earth, was straying once across the Narbonnaise in Gaul, seeking to fix his abode there. Driven from Asia, from Africa, and from the rest of Europe, he wandered through all the towns of the province in search of a place propitious for him and for his disciples. At last he perceived a new city, constructed from the ruins of Maguelonne, of Lattes, and of Substantion. He contemplated long its site, its aspect, its neighbourhood, and resolved to establish on this hill of Montpellier a temple for himself and his priests. All smiled on his desires. By the genius of the soil, by the character of the inhabitants, no town is more fit for the culture of letters, and above all of medicine. What site is more delicious and more lovely? A heaven pure and smiling; a city built with magnificence; men born for all the labours of the intellect. All around vast horizons and enchanting sites--meadows, vines, olives, green champaigns; mountains and hills, rivers, brooks, lagoons, and the sea. Everywhere a luxuriant vegetation--everywhere the richest production of the land and the water. Hail to thee, sweet and dear city! Hail, happy abode of Apollo, who spreadest afar the light of the glory of thy name!" "This fine tirade," says Dr. Maurice Raynaud--from whose charming book on the 'Doctors of the Time of Moliere' I quote--"is not, as one might think, the translation of a piece of poetry. It is simply part of a public oration by Francois Fanchon, one of the most illustrious chancellors of the faculty of medicine of Montpellier in the seventeenth century." "From time immemorial," he says, "'the faculty' of Montpellier had made itself remarkable by a singular mixture of the sacred and the profane. The theses which were sustained there began by an invocation to God, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Luke, and ended by these words:--'This thesis will be sustained in the sacred Temple of Apollo.'" But however extravagant Chancellor Fanchon's praises of his native city may seem, they are really not exaggerated. The Narbonnaise, or Languedoc, is perhaps the most charming district of charming France. In the far north-east gleam the white Alps; in the far south-west the white Pyrenees; and from the purple glens and yellow downs of the Cevennes on the northwest, the Herault slopes gently down towards the "Etangs," or great salt-water lagoons, and the vast alluvial flats of the Camargue, the field of Caius Marius, where still run herds of half-wild horses, descended from some ancient Roman stock; while beyond all glitters the blue Mediterranean. The great almond orchards, each one sheet of rose- colour in spring; the mulberry orchards, the oliveyards, the vineyards, cover every foot of available upland soil: save where the rugged and arid downs are sweet with a thousand odoriferous plants, from which the bees extract the famous white honey of Narbonne. The native flowers and shrubs, of a beauty and richness rather Eastern than European, have made the 'Flora Monspeliensis,' and with it the names of Rondelet and his disciples, famous among botanists; and the strange fish and shells upon its shores afforded Rondelet materials for his immortal work upon the 'Animals of the Sea.' The innumerable wild fowl of the "Bouches du Rhone;" the innumerable songsters and other birds of passage, many of them unknown in these islands, and even in the north of France itself, which haunt every copse of willow and aspen along the brook sides; the gaudy and curious insects which thrive beneath that clear, fierce, and yet bracing sunlight; all these have made the district of Montpellier a home prepared by Nature for those who study and revere her. Neither was Chancellor Fanchon misled by patriotism, when he said the pleasant people who inhabit that district are fit for all the labours of the intellect. They are a very mixed race, and like most mixed races, quick-witted, and handsome also. There is probably much Roman blood among them, especially in the towns; for Languedoc, or Gallia Narbonnensis, as it was called of old, was said to be more Roman than Rome itself. The Roman remains are more perfect and more interesting--so the late Dr. Whewell used to say--than any to be seen now in Italy; and the old capital, Narbonne itself, was a complete museum of Roman antiquities ere Francis I. destroyed it, in order to fortify the city upon a modern system against the invading armies of Charles V. There must be much Visigothic blood likewise in Languedoc; for the Visigothic Kings held their courts there from the fifth century, until the time that they were crushed by the invading Moors. Spanish blood, likewise, there may be; for much of Languedoc was held in the early Middle Age by those descendants of Eudes of Acquitaine who established themselves as kings of Majorca and Arragon; and Languedoc did not become entirely French till 1349, when Philip le Bel bought Montpellier of those potentates. The Moors, too, may have left some traces of their race behind. They held the country from about A.D. 713 to 758, when they were finally expelled by Charles Martel and Eudes. One sees to this day their towers of meagre stone-work, perched on the grand Roman masonry of those old amphitheatres, which they turned into fortresses. One may see, too--so tradition holds--upon those very amphitheatres the stains of the fires with which Charles Martel smoked them out; and one may see, too, or fancy that one sees, in the aquiline features, the bright black eyes, the lithe and graceful gestures, which are so common in Languedoc, some touch of the old Mahommedan race, which passed like a flood over that Christian land. Whether or not the Moors left behind any traces of their blood, they left behind, at least, traces of their learning; for the university of Montpellier claimed to have been founded by Moors at a date of altogether abysmal antiquity. They looked upon the Arabian physicians of the Middle Age, on Avicenna and Averrhoes, as modern innovators, and derived their parentage from certain mythic doctors of Cordova, who, when the Moors were expelled from Spain in the eighth century, fled to Montpellier, bringing with them traditions of that primeval science which had been revealed to Adam while still in Paradise; and founded Montpellier, the mother of all the universities in Europe. Nay, some went further still, and told of Bengessaus and Ferragius, the physicians of Charlemagne, and of Marilephus, chief physician of King Chilperic, and even--if a letter of St. Bernard's was to be believed--of a certain bishop who went as early as the second century to consult the doctors of Montpellier; and it would have been in vain to reply to them that in those days, and long after them, Montpellier was not yet built. The facts are said to be: that as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century Montpellier had its schools of law, medicine, and arts, which were erected into a university by Pope Nicholas IV. in 1289. The university of Montpellier, like--I believe--most foreign ones, resembled more a Scotch than an English university. The students lived, for the most part, not in colleges, but in private lodgings, and constituted a republic of their own, ruled by an abbe of the scholars, one of themselves, chosen by universal suffrage. A terror they were often to the respectable burghers, for they had all the right to carry arms; and a plague likewise, for, if they ran in debt, their creditors were forbidden to seize their books, which, with their swords, were generally all the property they possessed. If, moreover, any one set up a noisy or unpleasant trade near their lodgings, the scholars could compel the town authorities to turn him out. They were most of them, probably, mere boys of from twelve to twenty, living poorly, working hard, and--those at least of them who were in the colleges--cruelly beaten daily, after the fashion of those times; but they seem to have comforted themselves under their troubles by a good deal of wild life out of school, by rambling into the country on the festivals of the saints, and now and then by acting plays; notably, that famous one which Rabelais wrote for them in 1531: "The moral comedy of the man who had a dumb wife;" which "joyous patelinage" remains unto this day in the shape of a well-known comic song. That comedy young Rondelet must have seen acted. The son of a druggist, spicer, and grocer--the three trades were then combined--in Montpellier, and born in 1507, he had been destined for the cloister, being a sickly lad. His uncle, one of the canons of Maguelonne, near by, had even given him the revenues of a small chapel--a job of nepotism which was common enough in those days. But his heart was in science and medicine. He set off, still a mere boy, to Paris to study there; and returned to Montpellier, at the age of eighteen, to study again. The next year, 1530, while still a scholar himself, he was appointed procurator of the scholars--a post which brought him in a small fee on each matriculation--and that year he took a fee, among others, from one of the most remarkable men of that or of any age, Francois Rabelais himself. And what shall I say of him?--who stands alone, like Shakespeare, in his generation; possessed of colossal learning--of all science which could be gathered in his days--of practical and statesmanlike wisdom--of knowledge of languages, ancient and modern, beyond all his compeers--of eloquence, which when he speaks of pure and noble things becomes heroic, and, as it were, inspired--of scorn for meanness, hypocrisy, ignorance--of esteem, genuine and earnest, for the Holy Scriptures, and for the more moderate of the Reformers who were spreading the Scriptures in Europe,--and all this great light wilfully hidden, not under a bushel, but under a dunghill. He is somewhat like Socrates in face, and in character likewise; in him, as in Socrates, the demigod and the satyr, the man and the ape, are struggling for the mastery. In Socrates, the true man conquers, and comes forth high and pure; in Rabelais, alas! the victor is the ape, while the man himself sinks down in cynicism, sensuality, practical jokes, foul talk. He returns to Paris, to live an idle, luxurious life; to die--says the legend--saying, "I go to seek a great perhaps," and to leave behind him little save a school of Pantagruelists--careless young gentlemen, whose ideal was to laugh at everything, to believe in nothing, and to gratify their five senses like the brutes which perish. There are those who read his books to make them laugh; the wise man, when he reads them, will be far more inclined to weep. Let any young man who may see these words remember, that in him, as in Rabelais, the ape and the man are struggling for the mastery. Let him take warning by the fate of one who was to him as a giant to a pigmy; and think of Tennyson's words:-- "Arise, and fly The reeling faun, the sensual feast; Strive upwards, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die." But to return. Down among them there at Montpellier, like a brilliant meteor, flashed this wonderful Rabelais, in the year 1530. He had fled, some say, for his life. Like Erasmus, he had no mind to be a martyr, and he had been terrified at the execution of poor Louis de Berquin, his friend, and the friend of Erasmus likewise. This Louis de Berquin, a man well known in those days, was a gallant young gentleman and scholar, holding a place in the court of Francis I., who had translated into French the works of Erasmus, Luther, and Melancthon, and had asserted that it was heretical to invoke the Virgin Mary instead of the Holy Spirit, or to call her our Hope and our Life, which titles--Berquin averred--belonged alone to God. Twice had the doctors of the Sorbonne, with that terrible persecutor, Noel Beda, at their head, seized poor Berquin, and tried to burn his books and him; twice had that angel in human form, Marguerite d'Angouleme, sister of Francis I., saved him from their clutches; but when Francis--taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia--at last returned from his captivity in Spain, the suppression of heresy and the burning of heretics seemed to him and to his mother, Louise of Savoy, a thank-offering so acceptable to God, that Louis Berquin--who would not, in spite of the entreaties of Erasmus, purchase his life by silence--was burnt at last on the Place de Greve, being first strangled, because he was of gentle blood. Montpellier received its famous guest joyfully. Rabelais was now forty- two years old, and a distinguished savant; so they excused him his three years' undergraduate's career, and invested him at once with the red gown of the bachelors. That red gown--or, rather, the ragged phantom of it--is still shown at Montpellier, and must be worn by each bachelor when he takes his degree. Unfortunately, antiquarians assure us that the precious garment has been renewed again and again--the students having clipped bits of it away for relics, and clipped as earnestly from the new gowns as their predecessors had done from the authentic original. Doubtless the coming of such a man among them to lecture on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the Ars Parva of Galen, not from the Latin translations then in use, "but from original Greek texts, with comments and corrections of his own, must have had a great influence on the minds of the Montpellier students; and still more influence--and that not altogether a good one--must Rabelais' lighter talk have had, as he lounged--so the story goes--in his dressing-gown upon the public place, picking up quaint stories from the cattle-drivers off the Cevennes, and the villagers who came in to sell their olives and their grapes, their vinegar and their vine-twig faggots, as they do unto this day. To him may be owing much of the sound respect for natural science, and much, too, of the contempt for the superstition around them, which is notable in that group of great naturalists who were boys in Montpellier at that day. Rabelais seems to have liked Rondelet, and no wonder: he was a cheery, lovable, honest little fellow, very fond of jokes, a great musician and player on the violin, and who, when he grew rich, liked nothing so well as to bring into his house any buffoon or strolling player to make fun for him. Vivacious he was, hot-tempered, forgiving, and with a power of learning and a power of work which were prodigious, even in those hard-working days. Rabelais chaffs Rondelet, under the name of Rondibilis; for, indeed, Rondelet grew up into a very round, fat, little man; but Rabelais puts excellent sense into his mouth, cynical enough, and too cynical, but both learned and humorous; and, if he laughs at him for being shocked at the offer of a fee, and taking it, nevertheless, kindly enough, Rondelet is not the first doctor who has done that, neither will he be the last. Rondelet, in his turn, put on the red robe of the bachelor, and received, on taking his degree, his due share of fisticuffs from his dearest friends, according to the ancient custom of the University of Montpellier. He then went off to practise medicine in a village at the foot of the Alps, and, half-starved, to teach little children. Then he found he must learn Greek; went off to Paris a second time, and alleviated his poverty there somewhat by becoming tutor to a son of the Viscomte de Turenne. There he met Gonthier of Andernach, who had taught anatomy at Louvain to the great Vesalius, and learned from him to dissect. We next find him setting up as a medical man amid the wild volcanic hills of the Auvergne, struggling still with poverty, like Erasmus, like George Buchanan, like almost every great scholar in those days; for students then had to wander from place to place, generally on foot, in search of new teachers, in search of books, in search of the necessaries of life; undergoing such an amount of bodily and mental toil as makes it wonderful that all of them did not--as some of them doubtless did--die under the hard training, or, at best, desert the penurious Muses for the paternal shop or plough. Rondelet got his doctorate in 1537, and next year fell in love with and married a beautiful young girl called Jeanne Sandre, who seems to have been as poor as he. But he had gained, meanwhile, a powerful patron and the patronage of the great was then as necessary to men of letters as the patronage of the public is now. Guillaume Pellicier, Bishop of Maguelonne--or rather then of Montpellier itself, whither he had persuaded Paul II. to transfer the ancient see--was a model of the literary gentleman of the sixteenth century; a savant, a diplomat, a collector of books and manuscripts, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac, which formed the original nucleus of the present library of the Louvre; a botanist, too, who loved to wander with Rondelet collecting plants and flowers. He retired from public life to peace and science at Montpellier, when to the evil days of his master, Francis I., succeeded the still worse days of Henry II., and Diana of Poitiers. That Jezebel of France could conceive no more natural or easy way of atoning for her own sins than that of hunting down heretics, and feasting her wicked eyes--so it is said--upon their dying torments. Bishop Pellicier fell under suspicion of heresy: very probably with some justice. He fell, too, under suspicion of leading a life unworthy of a celibate churchman, a fault which--if it really existed--was, in those days, pardonable enough in an orthodox prelate, but not so in one whose orthodoxy was suspected. And for a while Pellicier was in prison. After his release he gave himself up to science, with Rondelet, and the school of disciples who were growing up around him. They rediscovered together the Garum, that classic sauce, whose praises had been sung of old by Horace, Martial, and Ausonius; and so childlike, superstitious if you will, was the reverence in the sixteenth century for classic antiquity, that when Pellicier and Rondelet discovered that the Garum was made from the fish called Picarel--called Garon by the fishers of Antibes, and Giroli at Venice, both these last names corruptions of the Latin Gerres--then did the two fashionable poets of France, Etienne Dolet and Clement Marot, think it not unworthy of their muse to sing the praises of the sauce which Horace had sung of old. A proud day, too, was it for Pellicier and Rondelet, when wandering somewhere in the marshes of the Camargue, a scent of garlic caught the nostrils of the gentle bishop, and in the lovely pink flowers of the water-germander he recognised the Scordium of the ancients. "The discovery," says Professor Planchon, "made almost as much noise as that of the famous Garum; for at that moment of naive fervour on behalf of antiquity, to rediscover a plant of Dioscorides or of Pliny was a good fortune and almost an event." I know not whether, after his death, the good bishop's bones reposed beneath some gorgeous tomb, bedizened with the incongruous half-Pagan statues of the Renaissance: but this, at least, is certain, that Rondelet's disciples imagined for him a monument more enduring than of marble or of brass, more graceful and more curiously wrought than all the sculptures of Torrigiano or Cellini, Baccio Bandinelli or Michael Angelo himself. For they named a lovely little lilac snapdragon, _Linaria Domini Pellicerii_,--"Lord Pellicier's toad-flax;" and that name it will keep, we may believe, as long as winter and summer shall endure. But to return. To this good patron--who was the Ambassador at Venice--the newly-married Rondelet determined to apply for employment; and to Venice he would have gone, leaving his bride behind, had he not been stayed by one of those angels who sometimes walk the earth in women's shape. Jeanne Sandre had an elder sister, Catherine, who had brought her up. She was married to a wealthy man, but she had no children of her own. For four years she and her good husband had let the Rondelets lodge with them, and now she was a widow, and to part with them was more than she could bear. She carried Rondelet off from the students who were seeing him safe out of the city, brought him back, settled on him the same day half her fortune, and soon after settled on him the whole, on the sole condition that she should live with him and her sister. For years afterwards she watched over the pretty young wife and her two girls and three boys--the three boys, alas! all died young--and over Rondelet himself, who, immersed in books and experiments, was utterly careless about money; and was to them all a mother, advising, guiding, managing, and regarded by Rondelet with genuine gratitude as his guardian angel. Honour and good fortune, in the worldly sense, now poured in upon the druggist's son. Pellicier, his own bishop, stood godfather to his first- born daughter. Montluc, Bishop of Valence, and that wise and learned statesman, the Cardinal of Tournon, stood godfathers a few years later to his twin boys; and what was of still more solid worth to him, Cardinal Tournon took him to Antwerp, Bordeaux, Bayonne, and more than once to Rome; and in these Italian journeys of his he collected many facts for the great work of his life, that 'History of Fishes' which he dedicated, naturally enough, to the cardinal. This book with its plates is, for the time, a masterpiece of accuracy. Those who are best acquainted with the subject say, that it is up to the present day a key to the whole ichthyology of the Mediterranean. Two other men, Belon and Salviani, were then at work on the same subject, and published their books almost at the same time; a circumstance which caused, as was natural, a three- cornered duel between the supporters of the three naturalists, each party accusing the other of plagiarism. The simple fact seems to be that the almost simultaneous appearance of the three books in 1554-5 is one of those coincidences inevitable at moments when many minds are stirred in the same direction by the same great thoughts--coincidences which have happened in our own day on questions of geology, biology, and astronomy; and which, when the facts have been carefully examined, and the first flush of natural jealousy has cooled down, have proved only that there were more wise men than one in the world at the same time. And this sixteenth century was an age in which the minds of men were suddenly and strangely turned to examine the wonders of nature with an earnestness, with a reverence, and therefore with an accuracy, with which they had never been investigated before. "Nature," says Professor Planchon, "long veiled in mysticism and scholasticism, was opening up infinite vistas. A new superstition, the exaggerated worship of the ancients, was nearly hindering this movement of thought towards facts. Nevertheless learning did her work. She rediscovered, reconstructed, purified, commented on the texts of ancient authors. Then came in observation, which showed that more was to be seen in one blade of grass than in any page of Pliny. Rondelet was in the middle of this crisis a man of transition, while he was one of progress. He reflected the past; he opened and prepared the future. If he commented on Dioscorides, if he remained faithful to the theories of Galen, he founded in his 'History of Fishes' a monument which our century respects. He is above all an inspirer, an initiator; and if he wants one mark of the leader of a school, the foundation of certain scientific doctrines, there is in his speech what is better than all systems, the communicative power which urges a generation of disciples along the path of independent research, with Reason for guide, and Faith for aim." Around Rondelet, in those years, sometimes indeed in his house--for professors in those days took private pupils as lodgers--worked the group of botanists whom Linnaeus calls "the Fathers," the authors of the descriptive botany of the sixteenth century. Their names, and those of their disciples and their disciples again, are household words in the mouth of every gardener, immortalised, like good Bishop Pellicier, in the plants which have been named after them. The Lobelia commemorates Lobel, one of Rondelet's most famous pupils, who wrote those 'Adversaria' which contain so many curious sketches of Rondelet's botanical expeditions, and who inherited his botanical (as Joubert his biographer inherited his anatomical) manuscripts. The Magnolia commemorates the Magnols; the Sarracenia, Sarrasin of Lyons; the Bauhinia, Jean Bauhin; the Fuchsia, Bauhin's earlier German master, Leonard Fuchs; and the Clusia--the received name of that terrible "Matapalo," or "Scotch attorney," of the West Indies, which kills the hugest tree, to become as huge a tree itself--immortalizes the great Clusius, Charles de l'Escluse, citizen of Arras, who after studying civil law at Louvain, philosophy at Marburg, and theology at Wittemberg under Melancthon, came to Montpellier in 1551, to live in Rondelet's own house, and become the greatest botanist of his age. These were Rondelet's palmy days. He had got a theatre of anatomy built at Montpellier, where he himself dissected publicly. He had, says tradition, a little botanic garden, such as were springing up then in several universities, specially in Italy. He had a villa outside the city, whose tower, near the modern railway station, still bears the name of the "Mas de Rondelet." There, too, may be seen the remnants of the great tanks, fed with water brought through earthen pipes from the Fountain of Albe, wherein he kept the fish whose habits he observed. Professor Planchon thinks that he had salt-water tanks likewise; and thus he may have been the father of all "Aquariums." He had a large and handsome house in the city itself, a large practice as physician in the country round; money flowed in fast to him, and flowed out fast likewise. He spent much upon building, pulling down, rebuilding, and sent the bills in seemingly to his wife and to his guardian angel Catherine. He himself had never a penny in his purse: but earned the money, and let his ladies spend it; an equitable and pleasant division of labour which most married men would do well to imitate. A generous, affectionate, careless little man, he gave away, says his pupil and biographer, Joubert, his valuable specimens to any savant who begged for them, or left them about to be stolen by visitors, who, like too many collectors in all ages, possessed light fingers and lighter consciences. So pacific was he meanwhile, and so brave withal, that even in the fearful years of the troubles, he would never carry sword, nor even tuck or dagger; but went about on the most lonesome journeys as one who wore a charmed life, secure in God and in his calling, which was to heal, and not to kill. These were the golden years of Rondelet's life; but trouble was coming on him, and a stormy sunset after a brilliant day. He lost his sister-in- law, to whom he owed all his fortunes, and who had watched ever since over him and his wife like a mother; then he lost his wife herself under most painful circumstances; then his best-beloved daughter. Then he married again, and lost the son who was born to him; and then came, as to many of the best in those days, even sorer trials, trials of the conscience, trials of faith. For in the mean time Rondelet had become a Protestant, like many of the wisest men round him; like, so it would seem from the event, the majority of the university and the burghers of Montpellier. It is not to be wondered at. Montpellier was a sort of half-way resting-place for Protestant preachers, whether fugitive or not, who were passing from Basle, Geneva, or Lyons, to Marguerite of Navarre's little Protestant court at Pau or at Nerac, where all wise and good men, and now and then some foolish and fanatical ones, found shelter and hospitality. Thither Calvin himself had been, passing probably through Montpellier, and leaving--as such a man was sure to leave--the mark of his foot behind him. At Lyons, no great distance up the Rhone, Marguerite had helped to establish an organised Protestant community; and when in 1536 she herself had passed through Montpellier, to visit her brother at Valence, and Montmorency's camp at Avignon, she took with her doubtless Protestant chaplains of her own, who spoke wise words--it may be that she spoke wise words herself--to the ardent and inquiring students of Montpellier. Moreover, Rondelet and his disciples had been for years past in constant communication with the Protestant savants of Switzerland and Germany, among whom the knowledge of nature was progressing as it never had progressed before. For--it is a fact always to be remembered--it was only in the free air of Protestant countries the natural sciences could grow and thrive. They sprung up, indeed, in Italy after the restoration of Greek literature in the fifteenth century; but they withered there again only too soon under the blighting upas shade of superstition. Transplanted to the free air of Switzerland, of Germany, of Britain, and of Montpellier, then half Protestant, they developed rapidly and surely, simply because the air was free; to be checked again in France by the return of superstition with despotism super-added, until the eve of the great French Revolution. So Rondelet had been for some years Protestant. He had hidden in his house for a long while a monk who had left his monastery. He had himself written theological treatises: but when his Bishop Pellicier was imprisoned on a charge of heresy, Rondelet burnt his manuscripts, and kept his opinions to himself. Still he was a suspected heretic, at last seemingly a notorious one; for only the year before his death, going to visit patients at Perpignan, he was waylaid by the Spaniards, and had to get home through bypasses of the Pyrenees, to avoid being thrown into the Inquisition. And those were times in which it was necessary for a man to be careful, unless he had made up his mind to be burned. For more than thirty years of Rondelet's life the burning had gone on in his neighbourhood; intermittently it is true: the spasms of superstitious fury being succeeded, one may charitably hope, by pity and remorse: but still the burnings had gone on. The Benedictine monk of St. Maur, who writes the history of Languedoc, says, quite _en passant_, how some one was burnt at Toulouse in 1553, luckily only in effigy, for he had escaped to Geneva: but he adds, "next year they burned several heretics," it being not worth while to mention their names. In 1556 they burned alive at Toulouse Jean Escalle, a poor Franciscan monk, who had found his order intolerable; while one Pierre de Lavaur, who dared preach Calvinism in the streets of Nismes, was hanged and burnt. So had the score of judicial murders been increasing year by year, till it had to be, as all evil scores have to be in this world, paid off with interest, and paid off especially against the ignorant and fanatic monks who for a whole generation, in every university and school in France, had been howling down sound science, as well as sound religion; and at Montpellier in 1560-1, their debt was paid them in a very ugly way. News came down to the hot southerners of Languedoc of the so-called conspiracy of Amboise.--How the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine had butchered the best blood in France under the pretence of a treasonable plot; how the King of Navarre and the Prince de Conde had been arrested; then how Conde and Coligny were ready to take up arms at the head of all the Huguenots of France, and try to stop this lifelong torturing, by sharp shot and cold steel; then how in six months' time the king would assemble a general council to settle the question between Catholics and Huguenots. The Huguenots, guessing how that would end, resolved to settle the question for themselves. They rose in one city after another, sacked the churches, destroyed the images, put down by main force superstitious processions and dances; and did many things only to be excused by the exasperation caused by thirty years of cruelty. At Montpellier there was hard fighting, murders--so say the Catholic historians--of priests and monks, sack of the new cathedral, destruction of the noble convents which lay in a ring round Montpellier. The city and the university were in the hands of the Huguenots, and Montpellier became Protestant on the spot. Next year came the counter blow. There were heavy battles with the Catholics all round the neighbourhood, destruction of the suburbs, threatened siege and sack, and years of misery and poverty for Montpellier and all who were therein. Horrible was the state of France in those times of the wars of religion which began in 1562; the times which are spoken of usually as "The Troubles," as if men did not wish to allude to them too openly. Then, and afterwards in the wars of the League, deeds were done for which language has no name. The population decreased. The land lay untilled. The fair face of France was blackened with burnt homesteads and ruined towns. Ghastly corpses dangled in rows upon the trees, or floated down the blood-stained streams. Law and order were at an end. Bands of robbers prowled in open day, and bands of wolves likewise. But all through the horrors of the troubles we catch sight of the little fat doctor riding all unarmed to see his patients throughout Languedoc; going vast distances, his biographers say, by means of regular relays of horses, till he too broke down. Well for him, perhaps, that he broke down when he did; for capture and recapture, massacre and pestilence, were the fate of Montpellier and the surrounding country, till the better times of Henry IV. and the Edict of Nantes in 1598, when liberty of worship was given to the Protestants for a while. In the burning summer of 1566 Rondeletius went a long journey to Toulouse, seemingly upon an errand of charity, to settle some law affairs for his relations. The sanitary state of the southern cities is bad enough still. It must have been horrible in those days of barbarism and misrule. Dysentery was epidemic at Toulouse then, and Rondelet took it. He knew from the first that he should die. He was worn out, it is said, by over-exertion; by sorrow for the miseries of the land; by fruitless struggles to keep the peace, and to strive for moderation in days when men were all immoderate. But he rode away a day's journey--he took two days over it, so weak he was--in the blazing July sun, to a friend's sick wife at Realmont, and there took to his bed, and died a good man's death. The details of his death and last illness were written and published by his cousin Claude Formy; and well worth reading they are to any man who wishes to know how to die. Rondelet would have no tidings of his illness sent to Montpellier. He was happy, he said, in dying away from the tears of his household, and "safe from insult." He dreaded, one may suppose, lest priests and friars should force their way to his bedside, and try to extort some recantation from the great savant, the honour and glory of their city. So they sent for no priest to Realmont: but round his bed a knot of Calvinist gentlemen and ministers read the Scriptures, and sang David's psalms, and prayed; and Rondelet prayed with them through long agonies, and so went home to God. The Benedictine monk-historian of Languedoc, in all his voluminous folios, never mentions, as far as I can find, Rondelet's existence. Why should he? The man was only a druggist's son and a heretic, who healed diseases, and collected plants, and wrote a book on fish. But the learned men of Montpellier, and of all Europe, had a very different opinion of him. His body was buried at Realmont: but before the schools of Toulouse they set up a white marble slab, and an inscription thereon setting forth his learning and his virtues; and epitaphs on him were composed by the learned throughout Europe, not only in French and Latin, but in Greek, Hebrew, and even Chaldee. So lived and so died a noble man; more noble--to my mind--than many a victorious warrior, or successful statesman, or canonised saint. To know facts, and to heal diseases, were the two objects of his life. For them he toiled, as few men have toiled; and he died in harness, at his work--the best death any man can die. VESALIUS THE ANATOMIST I cannot begin a sketch of the life of this great man better than by trying to describe a scene so picturesque, so tragic in the eyes of those who are wont to mourn over human follies, so comic in the eyes of those who prefer to laugh over them, that the reader will not be likely to forget either it or the actors in it. It is a darkened chamber in the College of Alcala, in the year 1562, where lies, probably in a huge four-post bed, shrouded in stifling hangings, the heir-apparent of the greatest empire in the then world, Don Carlos, only son of Philip II., and heir-apparent of Spain, the Netherlands, and all the Indies. A short sickly boy of sixteen, with a bull head, a crooked shoulder, a short leg, and a brutal temper, he will not be missed by the world if he should die. His profligate career seems to have brought its own punishment. To the scandal of his father, who tolerated no one's vices save his own, as well as to the scandal of the university authorities of Alcala, he has been scouring the streets at the head of the most profligate students, insulting women, even ladies of rank, and amenable only to his lovely young stepmother, Elizabeth of Valois, Isabel de la Paz, as the Spaniards call her, the daughter of Catherine de Medicis, and sister of the King of France. Don Carlos should have married her, had not his worthy father found it more advantageous for the crown of Spain, as well as more pleasant for him Philip, to marry her himself. Whence came heart-burnings, rage, jealousies, romances, calumnies, of which two last--in as far at least as they concern poor Elizabeth--no wise man now believes a word. Going on some errand on which he had no business--there are two stories, neither of them creditable nor necessary to repeat--Don Carlos has fallen down stairs and broken his head. He comes, by his Portuguese mother's side, of a house deeply tainted with insanity; and such an injury may have serious consequences. However, for nine days the wound goes on well, and Don Carlos, having had a wholesome fright, is, according to Doctor Olivarez, the _medico de camara_, a very good lad, and lives on chicken broth and dried plums. But on the tenth day comes on numbness of the left side, acute pains in the head, and then gradually shivering, high fever, erysipelas. His head and neck swell to an enormous size; then comes raging delirium, then stupefaction, and Don Carlos lies as one dead. A modern surgeon would, probably, thanks to that training of which Vesalius may be almost called the father, have had little difficulty in finding out what was the matter with the luckless lad, and little difficulty in removing the evil, if it had not gone too far. But the Spanish physicians were then, as many of them are said to be still, as far behind the world in surgery as in other things; and indeed surgery itself was then in its infancy, because men, ever since the early Greek schools of Alexandria had died out, had been for centuries feeding their minds with anything rather than with facts. Therefore the learned morosophs who were gathered round Don Carlos's sick bed had become, according to their own confession, utterly confused, terrified, and at their wits' end. It is the 7th of May, the eighteenth day after the accident, according to Olivarez' story: he and Dr. Vega have been bleeding the unhappy prince, enlarging the wound twice, and torturing him seemingly on mere guesses. "I believe," says Olivarez, "that all was done well: but as I have said, in wounds in the head there are strange labyrinths." So on the 7th they stand round the bed in despair. Don Garcia de Toledo, the prince's faithful governor, is sitting by him, worn out with sleepless nights, and trying to supply to the poor boy that mother's tenderness which he has never known. Alva too is there, stern, self-compressed, most terrible, and yet most beautiful. He has a God on earth, and that is Philip his master; and though he has borne much from Don Carlos already, and will have to bear more, yet the wretched lad is to him as a son of God, a second deity, who will by right divine succeed to the inheritance of the first; and he watches this lesser deity struggling between life and death with an intensity of which we, in these less loyal days, can form no notion. One would be glad to have a glimpse of what passed through that mind, so subtle and so ruthless, so disciplined and so loyal withal: but Alva was a man who was not given to speak his mind, but to act it. One would wish, too, for a glimpse of what was passing through the mind of another man, who has been daily in that sick chamber, according to Olivarez' statement, since the first of the month: but he is one who has had, for some years past, even more reason than Alva for not speaking his mind. What he looked like we know well, for Titian has painted him from the life--a tall, bold, well-dressed man, with a noble brain, square and yet lofty, short curling locks and beard, an eye which looks as though it feared neither man nor fiend--and it has had good reason to fear both--and features which would be exceeding handsome, but for the defiant snub-nose. That is Andreas Vesalius, of Brussels, dreaded and hated by the doctors of the old school--suspect, moreover, it would seem, to inquisitors and theologians, possibly to Alva himself; for he has dared to dissect human bodies; he has insulted the medievalists at Paris, Padua, Bologna, Pisa, Venice, in open theatre; he has turned the heads of all the young surgeons in Italy and France; he has written a great book, with prints in it, designed, some say, by Titian--they were actually done by another Netherlander, John of Calcar, near Cleves--in which he has dared to prove that Galen's anatomy was at fault throughout, and that he had been describing a monkey's inside when he had pretended to be describing a man's; and thus, by impudence and quackery, he has wormed himself--this Netherlander, a heretic at heart, as all Netherlanders are, to God as well as to Galen--into the confidence of the late Emperor Charles V., and gone campaigning with him as one of his physicians, anatomising human bodies even on the battle-field, and defacing the likeness of Deity; and worse than that, the most religious King Philip is deceived by him likewise, and keeps him in Madrid in wealth and honour; and now, in the prince's extreme danger, the king has actually sent for him, and bidden him try his skill--a man who knows nothing save about bones and muscles and the outside of the body, and is unworthy the name of a true physician. One can conceive the rage of the old Spanish pedants at the Netherlander's appearance, and still more at what followed, if we are to believe Hugo Bloet of Delft, his countryman and contemporary. {390} Vesalius, he says, saw that the surgeons had bound up the wound so tight that an abscess had formed outside the skull, which could not break: he asserted that the only hope lay in opening it; and did so, Philip having given leave, "by two cross-cuts. Then the lad returned to himself, as if awakened from a profound sleep, affirming that he owed his restoration to life to the German doctor." Dionysius Daza, who was there with the other physicians and surgeons, tells a different story: "The most learned, famous, and rare Baron Vesalius," he says, advised that the skull should be trepanned; but his advice was not followed. Olivarez' account agrees with that of Daza. They had opened the wounds, he says, down to the skull before Vesalius came. Vesalius insisted that the injury lay inside the skull, and wished to pierce it. Olivarez spends much labour in proving that Vesalius had "no great foundation for his opinion:" but confesses that he never changed that opinion to the last, though all the Spanish doctors were against him. Then on the 6th, he says, the Bachelor Torres came from Madrid, and advised that the skull should be laid bare once more; and on the 7th, there being still doubt whether the skull was not injured, the operation was performed--by whom it is not said--but without any good result, or, according to Olivarez, any discovery, save that Vesalius was wrong, and the skull uninjured. "Whether this second operation of the 7th of May was performed by Vesalius, and whether it was that of which Bloet speaks, is an open question. Olivarez' whole relation is apologetic, written to justify himself and his seven Spanish colleagues, and to prove Vesalius in the wrong. Public opinion, he confesses, had been very fierce against him. The credit of Spanish medicine was at stake: and we are not bound to believe implicitly a paper drawn up under such circumstances for Philip's eye. This, at least, we gather: that Don Carlos was never trepanned, as is commonly said; and this, also, that whichever of the two stories is true, equally puts Vesalius into direct, and most unpleasant, antagonism to the Spanish doctors. {392} But Don Carlos still lay senseless; and yielding to popular clamour, the doctors called in the aid of a certain Moorish doctor, from Valencia, named Priotarete, whose unguents, it was reported, had achieved many miraculous cures. The unguent, however, to the horror of the doctors, burned the skull till the bone was as black as the colour of ink; and Olivarez declares he believes it to have been a preparation of pure caustic. On the morning of the 9th of May, the Moor and his unguents were sent away, "and went to Madrid, to send to heaven Hernando de Vega, while the prince went back to our method of cure." Considering what happened on the morning of the 10th of May, we should now presume that the second opening of the abscess, whether by Vesalius or someone else, relieved the pressure on the brain; that a critical period of exhaustion followed, probably prolonged by the Moor's premature caustic, which stopped the suppuration: but that God's good handiwork, called nature, triumphed at last; and that therefore it came to pass that the prince was out of danger within three days of the operation. But he was taught, it seems, to attribute his recovery to a very different source from that of a German knife. For on the morning of the 9th, when the Moor was gone, and Don Carlos lay seemingly lifeless, there descended into his chamber a Deus e machina, or rather a whole pantheon of greater or lesser deities, who were to effect that which medical skill seemed not to have effected. Philip sent into the prince's chamber several of the precious relics which he usually carried about with him. The miraculous image of the Virgin of Atocha, in embroidering garments for whom, Spanish royalty, male and female, has spent so many an hour ere now, was brought in solemn procession and placed on an altar at the foot of the prince's bed; and in the afternoon there entered, with a procession likewise, a shrine containing the bones of a holy anchorite, one Fray Diego, "whose life and miracles," says Olivarez, "are so notorious;" and the bones of St. Justus and St. Pastor, the tutelar saints of the university of Alcala. Amid solemn litanies the relics of Fray Diego were laid upon the prince's pillow, and the sudarium, or mortuary cloth, which had covered his face, was placed upon the prince's forehead. Modern science might object that the presence of so many personages, however pious or well intentioned, in a sick chamber on a hot Spanish May day, especially as the bath had been, for some generations past, held in religious horror throughout Spain, as a sign of Moorish and Mussulman tendencies, might have somewhat interfered with the chances of the poor boy's recovery. Nevertheless the event seems to have satisfied Philip's highest hopes; for that same night (so Don Carlos afterwards related) the holy monk Diego appeared to him in a vision, wearing the habit of St. Francis, and bearing in his hand a cross of reeds tied with a green band. The prince stated that he first took the apparition to be that of the blessed St. Francis; but not seeing the stigmata, he exclaimed, "How? Dost thou not bear the marks of the wounds?" What he replied Don Carlos did not recollect; save that he consoled him, and told him that he should not die of that malady. Philip had returned to Madrid, and shut himself up in grief in the great Jeronymite monastery. Elizabeth was praying for her step-son before the miraculous images of the same city. During the night of the 9th of May prayers went up for Don Carlos in all the churches of Toledo, Alcala, and Madrid. Alva stood all that night at the bed's foot. Don Garcia de Toledo sat in the arm-chair, where he had now sat night and day for more than a fortnight. The good preceptor, Honorato Juan, afterwards Bishop of Osma, wrestled in prayer for the lad the whole night through. His prayer was answered: probably it had been answered already, without his being aware of it. Be that as it may, about dawn Don Carlos' heavy breathing ceased; he fell into a quiet sleep; and when he awoke all perceived at once that he was saved. He did not recover his sight, seemingly on account of the erysipelas, for a week more. He then opened his eyes upon the miraculous image of Atocha, and vowed that, if he recovered, he would give to the Virgin, at four different shrines in Spain, gold plate of four times his weight; and silver plate of seven times his weight, when he should rise from his couch. So on the 6th of June he rose, and was weighed in a fur coat and a robe of damask, and his weight was three arrobas and one pound--seventy- six pounds in all. On the 14th of June he went to visit his father at the episcopal palace; then to all the churches and shrines in Alcala, and of course to that of Fray Diego, whose body it is said he contemplated for some time with edifying devotion. The next year saw Fray Diego canonised as a saint, at the intercession of Philip and his son; and thus Don Carlos re-entered the world, to be a terror and a torment to all around him, and to die--not by Philip's cruelty, as his enemies reported too hastily indeed, yet excusably, for they knew him to be capable of any wickedness--but simply of constitutional insanity. And now let us go back to the history of "that most learned, famous, and rare Baron Vesalius," who had stood by and seen all these things done; and try if we cannot, after we have learned the history of his early life, guess at some of his probable meditations on this celebrated clinical case; and guess also how those meditations may have affected seriously the events of his after life. Vesalius (as I said) was a Netherlander, born at Brussels in 1513 or 1514. His father and grandfather had been medical men of the highest standing in a profession which then, as now, was commonly hereditary. His real name was Wittag, an ancient family of Wesel, on the Rhine, from which town either he or his father adopted the name of Vesalius, according to the classicising fashion of those days. Young Vesalius was sent to college at Louvain, where he learned rapidly. At sixteen or seventeen he knew not only Latin, but Greek enough to correct the proofs of Galen, and Arabic enough to become acquainted with the works of the Mussulman physicians. He was a physicist, too, and a mathematician, according to the knowledge of those times; but his passion--the study to which he was destined to devote his life--was anatomy. Little or nothing (it must be understood) had been done in anatomy since the days of Galen of Pergamos, in the second century after Christ, and very little even by him. Dissection was all but forbidden among the ancients. The Egyptians, Herodotus tells us, used to pursue with stones and curses the embalmers as soon as they had performed their unpleasant office; and though Herophilus and Erasistratus are said to have dissected many subjects under the protection of Ptolemy Soter in Alexandria itself: yet the public feeling of the Greeks as well as of the Romans continued the same as that of the ancient Egyptians; and Galen was fain--as Vesalius proved--to supplement his ignorance of the human frame by describing that of an ape. Dissection was equally forbidden among the Mussulmans; and the great Arabic physicians could do no more than comment on Galen. The same prejudice extended through the middle age. Medical men were all clerks, clerici, and as such forbidden to shed blood. The only dissection, as far as I am aware, made during the middle age was one by Mundinus in 1306; and his subsequent commentaries on Galen--for he dare allow his own eyes to see no more than Galen had seen before him--constituted the best anatomical manual in Europe till the middle of the fifteenth century. Then, in Italy at least, the classic Renaissance gave fresh life to anatomy as to all other sciences. Especially did the improvements in painting and sculpture stir men up to a closer study of the human frame. Leonardo da Vinci wrote a treatise on muscular anatomy: the artist and the sculptor often worked together, and realised that sketch of Michael Angelo's in which he himself is assisting Fallopius, Vesalius' famous pupil, to dissect. Vesalius soon found that his thirst for facts could not be slaked by the theories of the middle age; so in 1530 he went off to Montpellier, where Francis I. had just founded a medical school, and where the ancient laws of the city allowed the faculty each year the body of a criminal. From thence, after becoming the fellow-pupil and the friend of Rondelet, and probably also of Rabelais and those other luminaries of Montpellier, of whom I spoke in my essay on Rondelet, he returned to Paris to study under old Sylvius, whose real name was Jacques Dubois, _alias_ Jock o' the Wood; and to learn less--as he complains himself--in an anatomical theatre than a butcher might learn in his shop. Were it not that the whole question of dissection is one over which it is right to draw a reverent veil, as a thing painful, however necessary and however innocent, it would be easy to raise ghastly laughter in many a reader by the stories which Vesalius himself tells of his struggles to learn anatomy.--How old Sylvius tried to demonstrate the human frame from a bit of a dog, fumbling in vain for muscles which he could not find, or which ought to have been there, according to Galen, and were not; while young Vesalius, as soon as the old pedant's back was turned, took his place, and, to the delight of the students, found for him--provided it were there--what he could not find himself;--how he went body-snatching and gibbet-robbing, often at the danger of his life, as when he and his friend were nearly torn to pieces by the cannibal dogs who haunted the Butte de Montfaucon, or place of public execution;--how he acquired, by a long and dangerous process, the only perfect skeleton then in the world, and the hideous story of the robber to whom it had belonged--all these horrors those who list may read for themselves elsewhere. I hasten past them with this remark--that to have gone through the toils, dangers, and disgusts which Vesalius faced, argued in a superstitious and cruel age like his, no common physical and moral courage, and a deep conscience that he was doing right, and must do it at all risks in the face of a generation which, peculiarly reckless of human life and human agony, allowed that frame which it called the image of God to be tortured, maimed, desecrated in every way while alive; and yet--straining at the gnat after having swallowed the camel--forbade it to be examined when dead, though for the purpose of alleviating the miseries of mankind. The breaking out of war between Francis I. and Charles V. drove Vesalius back to his native country and Louvain; and in 1535 we hear of him as a surgeon in Charles V.'s army. He saw, most probably, the Emperor's invasion of Provence, and the disastrous retreat from before Montmorency's fortified camp at Avignon, through a country in which that crafty general had destroyed every article of human food, except the half- ripe grapes. He saw, perhaps, the Spanish soldiers, poisoned alike by the sour fruit and by the blazing sun, falling in hundreds along the white roads which led back into Savoy, murdered by the peasantry whose homesteads had been destroyed, stifled by the weight of their own armour, or desperately putting themselves, with their own hands, out of a world which had become intolerable. Half the army perished. Two thousand corpses lay festering between Aix and Frejus alone. If young Vesalius needed "subjects," the ambition and the crime of man found enough for him in those blazing September days. He went to Italy, probably with the remnants of the army. Where could he have rather wished to find himself? He was at last in the country where the human mind seemed to be growing young once more; the country of revived arts, revived sciences, learning, languages; and--though, alas, only for a while--of revived free thought, such as Europe had not seen since the palmy days of Greece. Here at least he would be appreciated; here at least he would be allowed to think and speak: and he was appreciated. The Italian cities, who were then, like the Athenians of old, "spending their time in nothing else save to hear or to tell something new," welcomed the brave young Fleming and his novelties. Within two years he was professor of anatomy at Padua, then the first school in the world; then at Bologna and at Pisa at the same time; last of all at Venice, where Titian painted that portrait of him which remains unto this day. These years were for him a continual triumph; everywhere, as he demonstrated on the human body, students crowded his theatre, or hung round him as he walked the streets; professors left their own chairs--their scholars having deserted them already--to go and listen humbly or enviously to the man who could give them what all brave souls throughout half Europe were craving for, and craving in vain: facts. And so, year after year, was realised that scene which stands engraved in the frontispiece of his great book--where, in the little quaint Cinquecento theatre, saucy scholars, reverend doctors, gay gentlemen, and even cowled monks, are crowding the floor, peeping over each other's shoulders, hanging on the balustrades; while in the centre, over his "subject"--which one of those same cowled monks knew but too well--stands young Vesalius, upright, proud, almost defiant, as one who knows himself safe in the impregnable citadel of fact; and in his hand the little blade of steel, destined--because wielded in obedience to the laws of nature, which are the laws of God--to work more benefit for the human race than all the swords which were drawn in those days, or perhaps in any other, at the bidding of most Catholic Emperors and most Christian Kings. Those were indeed days of triumph for Vesalius; of triumph deserved, because earned by patient and accurate toil in a good cause: but Vesalius, being but a mortal man, may have contracted in those same days a temper of imperiousness and self-conceit, such as he showed afterwards when his pupil Fallopius dared to add fresh discoveries to those of his master. And yet, in spite of all Vesalius knew, how little he knew! How humbling to his pride it would have been had he known then--perhaps he does know now--that he had actually again and again walked, as it were, round and round the true theory of the circulation of the blood, and yet never seen it; that that discovery which, once made, is intelligible, as far as any phenomenon is intelligible, to the merest peasant, was reserved for another century, and for one of those Englishmen on whom Vesalius would have looked as semi-barbarians. To make a long story short: three years after the publication of his famous book, 'De Corporis Humani Fabrica,' he left Venice to cure Charles V., at Regensburg, and became one of the great Emperor's physicians. This was the crisis of Vesalius' life. The medicine with which he had worked the cure was China--Sarsaparilla, as we call it now--brought home from the then newly-discovered banks of the Paraguay and Uruguay, where its beds of tangled vine, they say, tinge the clear waters a dark brown like that of peat, and convert whole streams into a healthful and pleasant tonic. On the virtues of this China (then supposed to be a root) Vesalius wrote a famous little book, into which he contrived to interweave his opinions on things in general, as good Bishop Berkeley did afterwards into his essay on the virtues of tar-water. Into this book, however, Vesalius introduced--as Bishop Berkeley did not--much, and perhaps too much, about himself; and much, though perhaps not too much, about poor old Galen, and his substitution of an ape's inside for that of a human being. The storm which had been long gathering burst upon him. The old school, trembling for their time-honoured reign, bespattered, with all that pedantry, ignorance, and envy could suggest, the man who dared not only to revolutionise surgery, but to interfere with the privileged mysteries of medicine; and, over and above, to become a favourite at the court of the greatest of monarchs. While such as Eustachius, himself an able discoverer, could join in the cry, it is no wonder if a lower soul, like that of Sylvius, led it open-mouthed. He was a mean, covetous, bad man, as George Buchanan well knew; and, according to his nature, he wrote a furious book, 'Ad Vesani calumnias depulsandas.' The punning change of Vesalius into Vesanus (madman) was but a fair and gentle stroke for a polemic, in days in which those who could not kill their enemies with steel or powder, held themselves justified in doing so, if possible, by vituperation, culumny, and every engine of moral torture. But a far more terrible weapon, and one which made Vesalius rage, and it may be for once in his life tremble, was the charge of impiety and heresy. The Inquisition was a very ugly place. It was very easy to get into it, especially for a Netherlander: but not so easy to get out. Indeed Vesalius must have trembled, when he saw his master, Charles V., himself take fright, and actually call on the theologians of Salamanca to decide whether it was lawful to dissect a human body. The monks, to their honour, used their common sense, and answered Yes. The deed was so plainly useful, that it must be lawful likewise. But Vesalius did not feel that he had triumphed. He dreaded, possibly, lest the storm should only have blown over for a time. He fell, possibly, into hasty disgust at the folly of mankind, and despair of arousing them to use their common sense, and acknowledge their true interest and their true benefactors. At all events, he threw into the fire--so it is said--all his unpublished manuscripts, the records of long years of observation, and renounced science thenceforth. We hear of him after this at Brussels, and at Basle likewise--in which latter city, in the company of physicians, naturalists, and Grecians, he must have breathed awhile a freer air. But he seems to have returned thence to his old master Charles V., and to have finally settled at Madrid as a court surgeon to Philip II., who sent him, but too late, to extract the lance splinters from the eye of the dying Henry II. He was now married to a lady of rank from Brussels, Anne van Hamme by name; and their daughter married in time Philip II.'s grand falconer, who was doubtless a personage of no small social rank. He was well off in worldly things; somewhat fond, it is said, of good living and of luxury; inclined, it may be, to say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," and to sink more and more into the mere worldling, unless some shock awoke him from his lethargy. And the awakening shock did come. After eight years of court life, he resolved early in the year 1564 to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The reasons for so strange a determination are wrapped in mystery and contradiction. The common story was that he had opened a corpse to ascertain the cause of death, and that, to the horror of the bystanders, the heart was still seen to beat; that his enemies accused him to the Inquisition, and that he was condemned to death, a sentence which was commuted to that of going on pilgrimage. But here, at the very outset, accounts differ. One says that the victim was a nobleman, name not given; another that it was a lady's maid, name not given. It is most improbable, if not impossible, that Vesalius, of all men, should have mistaken a living body for a dead one; while it is most probable, on the other hand, that his medical enemies would gladly raise such a calumny against him, when he was no longer in Spain to contradict it. Meanwhile Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, makes no mention of Vesalius having been brought before its tribunal, while he does mention Vesalius' residence at Madrid. Another story is, that he went abroad to escape the bad temper of his wife; another that he wanted to enrich himself. Another story--and that not an unlikely one--is, that he was jealous of the rising reputation of his pupil Fallopius, then professor of anatomy at Venice. This distinguished surgeon, as I said before, had written a book, in which he had added to Vesalius' discoveries, and corrected certain errors of his. Vesalius had answered him hastily and angrily, quoting his anatomy from memory; for, as he himself complained, he could not in Spain obtain a subject for dissection; not even, he said, a single skull. He had sent his book to Venice to be published, and had heard, seemingly, nothing of it. He may have felt that he was falling behind in the race of science, and that it was impossible for him to carry on his studies in Madrid; and so, angry with his own laziness and luxury, he may have felt the old sacred fire flash up in him, and have determined to go to Italy and become a student and a worker once more. The very day that he set out, Clusius of Arras, then probably the best botanist in the world, arrived at Madrid; and, asking the reason of Vesalius' departure, was told by their fellow-countryman, Charles de Tisnacq, procurator for the affairs of the Netherlands, that Vesalius had gone of his own free will, and with all facilities which Philip could grant him, in performance of a vow which he had made during a dangerous illness. Here, at least, we have a drop of information, which seems taken from the stream sufficiently near to the fountain-head: but it must be recollected that De Tisnacq lived in dangerous times, and may have found it necessary to walk warily in them; that through him had been sent, only the year before, that famous letter from William of Orange, Horn, and Egmont, the fate whereof may be read in Mr. Motley's fourth chapter; that the crisis of the Netherlands which sprung out of that letter was coming fast; and that, as De Tisnacq was on friendly terms with Egmont, he may have felt his head at times somewhat loose on his shoulders; especially if he had heard Alva say, as he wrote, "that every time he saw the despatches of those three senors, they moved his choler so, that if he did not take much care to temper it, he would seem a frenzied man." In such times, De Tisnacq may have thought good to return a diplomatic answer to a fellow-countryman concerning a third fellow-countryman, especially when that countryman, as a former pupil of Melancthon at Wittemberg, might himself be under suspicion of heresy, and therefore of possible treason. Be this as it may, one cannot but suspect some strain of truth in the story about the Inquisition; perhaps in that, also, of his wife's unkindness; for, whether or not Vesalius operated on Don Carlos, he had seen with his own eyes that miraculous Virgin of Atocha at the bed's foot of the prince. He had heard his recovery attributed, not to the operation, but to the intercession of Fray, now Saint, Diego; {408} and he must have had his thoughts thereon, and may, in an unguarded moment, have spoken them. For he was, be it always remembered, a Netherlander. The crisis of his country was just at hand. Rebellion was inevitable, and, with rebellion, horrors unutterable; and, meanwhile, Don Carlos had set his mad brain on having the command of the Netherlands. In his rage at not having it, as all the world knows, he nearly killed Alva with his own hands, some two years after. If it be true that Don Carlos felt a debt of gratitude to Vesalius, he may (after his wont) have poured out to him some wild confidence about the Netherlands, to have even heard which would be a crime in Philip's eyes. And if this be but a fancy, still Vesalius was, as I just said, a Netherlander, and one of a brain and a spirit to which Philip's doings, and the air of the Spanish court, must have been growing even more and more intolerable. Hundreds of his country folk, perhaps men and women whom he had known, were being racked, burnt alive, buried alive, at the bidding of a jocular ruffian, Peter Titelmann, the chief inquisitor. The "day of the _mau-brulez_," and the wholesale massacre which followed it, had happened but two years before; and, by all the signs of the times, these murders and miseries were certain to increase. And why were all these poor wretches suffering the extremity of horror, but because they would not believe in miraculous images, and bones of dead friars, and the rest of that science of unreason and unfact, against which Vesalius had been fighting all his life, consciously or not, by using reason and observing fact? What wonder if, in some burst of noble indignation and just contempt, he forgot a moment that he had sold his soul, and his love of science likewise, to be a luxurious, yet uneasy, hanger-on at the tyrant's court; and spoke unadvisedly some word worthy of a German man? As to the story of his unhappy quarrels with his wife, there may be a grain of truth in it likewise. Vesalius' religion must have sat very lightly on him. The man who had robbed churchyards and gibbets from his youth was not likely to be much afraid of apparitions and demons. He had handled too many human bones to care much for those of saints. He was probably, like his friends of Basle, Montpellier, and Paris, somewhat of a heretic at heart, probably somewhat of a pagan. His lady, Anne van Hamme, was probably a strict Catholic, as her father, being a councillor and master of the exchequer at Brussels, was bound to be; and freethinking in the husband, crossed by superstition in the wife, may have caused in them that wretched vie a part, that want of any true communion of soul, too common to this day in Catholic countries. Be these things as they may--and the exact truth of them will now be never known--Vesalius set out to Jerusalem in the spring of 1564. On his way he visited his old friends at Venice to see about his book against Fallopius. The Venetian republic received the great philosopher with open arms. Fallopius was just dead; and the senate offered their guest the vacant chair of anatomy. He accepted it: but went on to the East. He never occupied that chair; wrecked upon the Isle of Zante, as he was sailing back from Palestine, he died miserably of fever and want, as thousands of pilgrims returning from the Holy Land had died before him. A goldsmith recognised him; buried him in a chapel of the Virgin; and put up over him a simple stone, which remained till late years; and may remain, for aught I know, even now. So perished, in the prime of life, "a martyr to his love of science," to quote the words of M. Burggraeve of Ghent, his able biographer and commentator, "the prodigious man, who created a science at an epoch when everything was still an obstacle to his progress; a man whose whole life was a long struggle of knowledge against ignorance, of truth against lies." Plaudite: Exeat: with Rondelet and Buchanan. And whensoever this poor foolish world needs three such men, may God of his great mercy send them. Footnotes {15} 9, Adam Street, Adelphi, London. {72} I quote from the translation of the late lamented Philip Stanhope Worsley, of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. {76} Odyssey, book vi. 127-315; vol. i. pp. 143-150 of Mr. Worsley's translation. {88} Since this essay was written, I have been sincerely delighted to find that my wishes had been anticipated at Girton College, near Cambridge, and previously at Hitchin, whence the college was removed: and that the wise ladies who superintend that establishment propose also that most excellent institution--a swimming bath. A paper, moreover, read before the London Association of Schoolmistresses in 1866, on "Physical Exercises and Recreation for Girls," deserves all attention. May those who promote such things prosper as they deserve. {256} For an account of Sorcery and Fetishism among the African Negros, see Burton's 'Lake Regions of Central Africa,' vol. ii. pp. 341-360. {304} An arcade in the King's School, Chester. {328} So says Dr. Irving, writing in 1817. I have, however, tried in vain to get a sight of this book. I need not tell Scotch scholars how much I am indebted throughout this article to Dr. David living's erudite second edition of Buchanan's Life. {343} From the quaint old translation of 1721, by "A Person of Honour of the Kingdom of Scotland." {358} A Life of Rondelet, by his pupil Laurent Joubert, is to be found appended to his works; and with it an account of his illness and death, by his cousin, Claude Formy, which is well worth the perusal of any man, wise or foolish. Many interesting details beside, I owe to the courtesy of Professor Planchon, of Montpellier, author of a discourse on 'Rondelet et ses Disciples,' which appeared, with a learned and curious Appendice, in the 'Montpellier Medical' for 1866. {390} I owe this account of Bloet's--which appears to me the only one trustworthy--to the courtesy and erudition of Professor Henry Morley, who finds it quoted from Bloet's 'Acroama,' in the 'Observationum Medicarum Rariorum, lib. vii.,' of John Theodore Schenk. Those who wish to know several curious passages of Vesalius' life, which I have not inserted in this article, would do well to consult one by Professor Morley, 'Anatomy in Long Clothes,' in 'Fraser's Magazine' for November, 1853. May I express a hope, which I am sure will be shared by all who have read Professor Morley's biographies of Jerome Cardan and of Cornelius Agrippa, that he will find leisure to return to the study of Vesalius' life; and will do for him what he has done for the two just-mentioned writers? {392} Olivarez' 'Relacion' is to be found in the Granvelle State Papers. For the general account of Don Carlos' illness, and of the miraculous agencies by which his cure was said to have been effected, the general reader should consult Miss Frere's 'Biography of Elizabeth of Valois,' vol. i. pp. 307-19. {408} In justice to poor Doctor Olivarez, it must be said, that while he allows all force to the intercession of the Virgin and of Fray Diego, and of "many just persons," he cannot allow that there was any "miracle properly so called," because the prince was cured according to "natural order," and by "experimented remedies" of the physicians. 
20294	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 20294-h.htm or 20294-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/2/9/20294/20294-h/20294-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/2/9/20294/20294-h.zip) The Woods Hutchinson Health Series A HANDBOOK OF HEALTH by WOODS HUTCHINSON, A. M., M. D. Sometime Professor of Anatomy, University of Iowa; Professor of Comparative Pathology and Methods of Science Teaching, University of Buffalo; Lecturer, London Medical Graduates' College and University of London; and State Health Officer of Oregon. Author of "Preventable Diseases," "Conquest of Consumption," "Instinct and Health," etc. Houghton Mifflin Company Boston New York Chicago Copyright, 1911, by Woods Hutchinson All Rights Reserved Tenth Impression PREFACE Looking upon the human body from the physical point of view as the most perfect, most ingeniously economical, and most beautiful of living machines, the author has attempted to write a little handbook of practical instruction for the running of it. And seeing that, like other machines, it derives the whole of its energy from its fuel, the subject of foods--their properties, uses, and methods of preparation--has been gone into with unusual care. An adequate supply of clean-burning food-fuel for the human engine is so absolutely fundamental both for health and for efficiency--we are so literally what we have eaten--that to be well fed is in very fact two-thirds of the battle of life from a physiological point of view. The whole discussion is in accord with the aim, kept in view throughout the book, of making its suggestion and advice positive instead of negative, pointing out that, in the language of the old swordsman, "attack is the best defense." If we actively do those things that make for health and efficiency, and which, for the most part, are attractive and agreeable to our natural instincts and unspoiled tastes,--such as exercising in the open air, eating three square meals a day of real food, getting nine or ten hours of undisturbed sleep, taking plenty of fresh air and cold water both inside and out,--this will of itself carry us safely past all the forbidden side paths without the need of so much as a glance at the "Don't" and "Must not" with which it has been the custom to border and fence in the path of right living. On the other hand, while fully alive to the undesirability, and indeed wickedness, of putting ideas of dread and suffering into children's minds unnecessarily, yet so much of the misery in the world is due to ignorance, and could have been avoided if knowledge of the simplest character had been given at the proper time, that it has been thought best to set forth the facts as to the causation and nature of the commonest diseases, and the methods by which they may be avoided. This is peculiarly necessary from the fact that most of the gravest enemies of mankind have come into existence within a comparatively recent period of the history of life,--only since the beginning of civilization, in fact,--so that we have as yet developed no natural instincts for their avoidance. Nor do we admit that we are adding anything to the stock of fears in the minds of children--the nurse-maid and the bad boys in the next alley have been ahead of us in this respect. The child-mind is too often already filled with fears and superstitions of every sort, passed down from antiquity. Modern sanitarians have been accused of merely substituting one fear for another in the mind of the child--bacilli instead of bogies. But, even if this be true, there are profound and practical differences between the two terrors. One is real, and the other imaginary. A child cannot avoid meeting a bacillus; he will never actually make the acquaintance of a bogie. Children, like savages and ignorant adults, believe and invent and retail among themselves the most extraordinary and grotesque theories about the structure and functions of their bodies, the nature and causation of their illnesses and aches and pains. A plain and straightforward statement of the actual facts about these things not only will not shock or repel them, or make them old before their time, but, on the contrary, will interest them greatly, relieve their minds of many unfounded dreads, and save them from the commonest and most hurtful mistakes of humanity--those that are committed through ignorance. THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS PAGE I. RUNNING THE HUMAN AUTOMOBILE 1 II. WHY WE HAVE A STOMACH 4 What Keeps Us Alive 4 The Digestive System 7 The Journey down the Food Tube 9 III. THE FOOD-FUEL OF THE BODY-ENGINE 21 What Kind of Food should We Eat? 21 The Three Great Classes of Food-Fuel 25 IV. THE COAL FOODS 27 Proteins, or "Meats" 27 V. THE COAL FOODS (_Continued_) 40 Starches 40 Sugars 48 VI. THE COAL FOODS (_Continued_) 51 Animal Fats 51 Nuts 55 VII. KINDLING AND PAPER FOODS--FRUITS AND VEGETABLES 56 VIII. COOKING 62 IX. OUR DRINK 69 Filling the Boiler of the Body-Engine 69 Where our Drinking Water Comes from 72 Causes and Dangers of Polluted Water 75 Methods of Obtaining Pure Water 81 Home Methods of Purifying Water 87 X. BEVERAGES, ALCOHOL, AND TOBACCO 89 Alcohol 93 Tobacco 103 XI. THE HEART-PUMP AND ITS PIPE-LINE SYSTEM 108 The Blood Vessels 108 The Heart 115 XII. THE CARE OF THE HEART-PUMP AND ITS PIPE LINES 120 XIII. HOW AND WHY WE BREATHE 130 XIV. HOW TO KEEP THE LUNG-BELLOWS IN GOOD CONDITION 139 The Need of Pure Air 139 Colds, Consumption, and Pneumonia 152 How to Conquer Consumption 156 Pneumonia 165 XV. THE SKIN 167 Our Wonderful Coat 167 The Glands in the Skin 170 The Nails 172 The Blood-Mesh of the Skin 174 The Nerves in the Skin 177 XVI. HOW TO KEEP THE SKIN HEALTHY 179 Clothing 179 Baths and Bathing 184 Care of the Nails 188 Diseases and Disturbances of the Skin 189 XVII. THE PLUMBING AND SEWERING OF THE BODY 196 XVIII. THE MUSCLES 202 XIX. THE STIFFENING RODS OF THE BODY-MACHINE 210 XX. OUR TELEPHONE EXCHANGE AND ITS CABLES 216 XXI. THE HYGIENE OF BONES, NERVES, AND MUSCLES 228 How to Get and Keep a Good Figure 228 Our Feet 230 Sleep and Rest 232 Disorders of Muscles and Bones 233 Troubles of the Nervous System 235 XXII. EXERCISE AND GROWTH 241 XXIII. THE LOOKOUT DEPARTMENT 252 The Nose 253 The Tongue 257 The Eye 259 The Ear 266 Our Spirit-Levels 269 XXIV. THE SPEECH ORGANS 271 XXV. THE TEETH, THE IVORY KEEPERS OF THE GATE 277 XXVI. INFECTIONS, AND HOW TO AVOID THEM 286 XXVII. ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCIES 314 QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 331 GLOSSARY AND INDEX 343 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE TO ATTEMPT TO RUN AN AUTOMOBILE WITHOUT KNOWING HOW WOULD BE REGARDED AS FOOLHARDY 2 WHERE SUN-POWER IS MADE INTO FOOD FOR US 6 THE FOOD ROUTE IN THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM 8 THE SALIVARY GLANDS 10 A SECTION OF THE LINING SURFACE OF THE STOMACH 14 A LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF STOMACH, OR PEPTIC, GLANDS 15 A CHEAP HOME-MADE ICE BOX 23 A BABY-MILK STATION 30 CLEAN, DRY SUNNING YARDS AT A MODEL DAIRY 33 CLEANLINESS BEFORE MILKING 34 THE MILKING HOUR AT A MODEL DAIRY 35 MILKING BY VACUUM PROCESS 36 WASHING THE BOTTLES AT A MODEL DAIRY 37 BACTERIA IN CLEAN AND IN DIRTY MILK 38 DANGER FROM DIPPED MILK 38 MILK INSPECTION AT THE RETAIL STORE 39 A THOROUGH BAKING, AND A VALUABLE CRUST 44 AN IDEAL BAKERY WITH LIGHT, AIR, AND CLEANLINESS 45 A BASEMENT BAKERY--A MENACE TO THE PUBLIC HEALTH 46 CANDY, LIKE OTHER FOODS, SHOULD BE CLEAN 50 A SMALL STORE, CLEANLY AND HONEST 54 THE JOY OF HIS OWN GARDEN PATCH 61 THE KITCHEN SHOULD BE CARED FOR AS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ROOMS IN THE HOUSE 63 A KNOWLEDGE OF COOKING IS A VALUABLE PART OF A GOOD EDUCATION 66 BOYS, AS WELL AS GIRLS, SHOULD KNOW HOW TO COOK 67 THE CHAINED CUP 71 THE SPOUTING FOUNTAIN 72 NATURE'S FILTER-BED 74 AN EXAMPLE OF GOOD FARM DRAINAGE 76 THE DANGER SPOT ON THE FARM 78 TYPHOID EPIDEMIC IN THE MOHAWK-HUDSON VALLEY 80 ARTESIAN WELL BORINGS 82 A CITY WATER SUPPLY BROUGHT FROM THE FAR HILLS 84 A RESERVOIR AND COSTLY DAM 86 SCRAPING THE SEDIMENT FROM THE BOTTOM OF A RESERVOIR 87 THE DOMESTIC FILTER IN USE 88 A MILK STATION IN A CITY PARK 92 PROPORTION OF ALCOHOL IN LIGHT WINE, IN BEER, IN WHISKEY 95 A BOARD OF HEALTH EXAMINATION FOR WORKING PAPERS 105 A TEST OF CLEAR HEAD AND STEADY NERVES 106 BLOOD CORPUSCLES 109 SURFACE VEINS AND DEEP-LYING ARTERIES OF INNER SIDE OF RIGHT ARM AND HAND 112 DIAGRAM OF ARTERY, CAPILLARIES, AND VEIN 114 THE EXTERIOR OF THE HEART 116 DIAGRAM OF VALVES IN THE VEINS AND HEART 117 THE BLOOD-ROUTE TROUGHT THE HEART 118 THE SCHOOL PHYSICIAN EXAMINING HEART AND LUNGS 121 ROWING IS A SPLENDID EXERCISE FOR HEART AND LUNGS 127 THE GREAT ESSENTIAL TO LIFE--AIR 131 DIAGRAM OF THE AIR TUBES AND LUNGS 134 "IMPROVING THEIR WIND" 137 THE "DARK ROOM" DANGER OF THE TENEMENTS 145 VENTILATING THE PUPILS, AS WELL AS THE CLASSROOM 146 A WELL-AIRED CLASSROOM 147 A HEALTHFUL ARRANGEMENT OF WINDOWS AND SHADES 148 A HEALTHFUL BEDROOM 151 DISEASE GERMS 152 A VACUUM CLEANER 153 EXERCISE IN THE COLD IS A GOOD PREVENTIVE OF COLDS 155 A YEAR OF CONSUMPTION ON MANHATTAN ISLAND 156 CONSUMPTION IN CHICAGO 157 A REPORT-FORM FROM A HEALTH DEPARTMENT LABORATORY 159 A SIGN THAT OUGHT NOT TO BE NECESSARY 160 A COMPARATIVE DEATH-RATE FROM CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 161 A TUBERCULOSIS TENT COLONY IN WINTER 163 AN OUTDOOR CLASSROOM FOR TUBERCULOUS CHILDREN 165 THE LAYERS OF THE SKIN 169 THE GLANDS IN THE SKIN 171 RESULTS OF TIGHT CLOTHING 181 A COMFORTABLE DRESS FOR OUTDOOR STUDY IN COLD WEATHER 183 AS A TONIC, SWIMMING IS THE BEST FORM OF BATHING 185 THE URINARY SYSTEM 200 THE MUSCLE-SHEET 205 USE OF MUSCLES IN BOWLING 206 USE OF MUSCLES IN FOOTBALL 207 PATELLA AND MUSCLE 207 THE HUMAN SKELETON 211 THE SPINAL COLUMN 212 A BALL-AND-SOCKET JOINT 213 A HINGE JOINT 213 LENGTHWISE SECTION OF BONE 214 CROSS SECTION OF BONE 214 THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 218 THE POSITION OF THE BODY IS AN INDEX TO ITS HEALTH 229 IMPRINT OF (1) ARCHED FOOT AND (2) FLAT FOOT 230 THE RESULT OF WEARING A FASHIONABLE SHOE 231 CALLUS FORMED AROUND A FRACTURE 234 A TRAINED BODY 242 TUG OF WAR 245 THE GIANT STRIDE 246 SCHOOL GARDENING 248 A WASTED CHANCE FOR PUBLIC HEALTH 249 AN OBSTACLE RACE 250 THE HIGH JUMP 251 ADENOIDS 256 MOUTH-BREATHERS 257 THE APPARATUS OF VISION 260 A SCHOOL EYE-TEST 263 DISINFECTING A BABY'S EYES AT BIRTH 265 THE APPARATUS OF HEARING 267 THE VOCAL CORDS 272 TEETH--A QUESTION OF CARE 278 A TOOTH 279 THE REPLACING OF THE MILK TEETH 282 A TOOTH-BRUSH DRILL 284 THE WINNING FIGHT 290 DEATH-RATE FROM MEASLES 291 DEATH-RATE FROM DIPHTHERIA AND CROUP 294 BILL OF HEALTH 298 GERMS OF MALARIA 301 CULEX 302 ANOPHELES 302 OILING A BREEDING GROUND OF MOSQUITOES 304 AN EDUCATIONAL FLY POSTER 310 A BREEDING PLACE OF FLIES AND FILTH 311 A TOURNIQUET 321 POISON IVY 325 THE NEW METHOD OF ARTIFICIAL BREATHING 328 PLATES IN COLOR DIAGRAM OF THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM _facing_ 110 DIAGRAM SHOWING GENERAL PLAN AND POSITION OF BODY-MACHINERY _facing_ 198 A HANDBOOK OF HEALTH CHAPTER I RUNNING THE HUMAN AUTOMOBILE The Body-Automobile. If you were to start to-morrow morning on a long-distance ride in an automobile, the first thing that you would do would be to find out just how that automobile was built; how often it must have fresh gasoline; how its different speed gears were worked; what its tires were made of; how to mend them; and how to cure engine troubles. To attempt to run an automobile, for even a ten-mile ride, with less information than this, would be regarded as foolhardy. Yet most of us are willing to set out upon the journey of life in the most complicated, most ingenious, and most delicate machine ever made--our body--with no more knowledge of its structure than can be gained from gazing in the looking-glass; or of its needs, than a preference for filling up its fuel tank three times a day. More knowledge than this is often regarded as both unnecessary and unpleasant. Yet there are few things more important, more vital to our health, our happiness, and our success in life, than to know how to steer and how to road-repair our body-automobile. This we can learn only from physiology and hygiene. The General Plan of the Human Automobile is Simple. Complicated as our body-automobile looks to be, there are certain things about the plan and general build of it which are plain enough. It has a head end, where fuel supplies are taken in and where its lamps and other look-out apparatus are carried; a body in which the fuel is stored and turned into work or speed, and into which air is drawn to help combustion and to cool the engine pipes. It has a pair of fore-wheels (the arms) and a pair of hind-wheels (the legs), though these have been reduced to only one spoke each, and swing only about a quarter of the way around and back again when running, instead of round and round. It has a steering gear (the brain), just back of the headlights, and a system of nerve electric wires connecting all parts of it. It gets warm when it runs, and stops if it is not fed. [Illustration: TO ATTEMPT TO RUN AN AUTOMOBILE WITHOUT KNOWING HOW WOULD BE REGARDED AS FOOLHARDY] There is not an unnecessary part, or unreasonable "cog," anywhere in the whole of our bodies. It is true that there are a few little remnants which are not quite so useful as they once were, and which sometimes cause trouble. But for the most part, all we have to do is to look long and carefully enough at any organ or part of our bodies, to be able to puzzle out just what it is or was intended to do, and why it has the shape and size it has. Why the Study of Physiology is Easy. There is one thing that helps to make the study of physiology quite easy. It is that you already know a good deal about your body, because you have had to live with it for a number of years past, and you can hardly have helped becoming somewhat acquainted with it during this time. You have, also, another advantage, which will help you in this study. While your ideas of how to take care of your body are rather vague, and some of them wrong, most of them are in the main right, or at least lead you in the right direction. You all know enough to eat when you are hungry and to drink when you are thirsty, even though you don't always know when to stop, or just what to eat. You like sunny days better than cloudy ones, and would much rather breathe fresh air than foul. You like to go wading and swimming when you are hot and dusty, and you don't need to be told to go to sleep when you are tired. You would much rather have sugar than vinegar, sweet milk than sour milk; and you dislike to eat or drink anything that looks dirty or foul, or smells bad. These inborn likes and dislikes--which we call _instincts_--are the forces which have built up this wonderful body-machine of ours in the past and, if properly understood and trained, can be largely trusted to run it in the future. How to follow these instincts intelligently, where to check them, where to encourage them, how to keep the proper balance between them, how to live long and be useful and happy--this is what the interesting study of physiology and hygiene will teach you. CHAPTER II WHY WE HAVE A STOMACH WHAT KEEPS US ALIVE The Energy in Food and Fuel. The first question that arises in our mind on looking at an engine or machine of any sort is, What makes it go? If we can succeed in getting an answer to the question, What makes the human automobile go? we shall have the key to half its secrets at once. It is fuel, of course; but what kind of fuel? How does the body take it in, how does it burn it, and how does it use the energy or power stored up in it to run the body-engine? Man is a bread-and-butter-motor. The fuel of the automobile is gasoline, and the fuel of the man-motor we call food. The two kinds of fuel do not taste or smell much alike; but they are alike in that they both have what we call _energy_, or power, stored up in them, and will, when set fire to, burn, or explode, and give off this power in the shape of heat, or explosions, which will do work. Food and Fuel are the Result of Life. Fuels and foods are also alike in another respect; and that is, that, no matter how much they may differ in appearance and form, they are practically _all the result of life_. This is clear enough as regards our foods, which are usually the seeds, fruits, and leaves of plants, and the flesh of animals. It is also true of the cord-wood and logs that we burn in our stoves and fireplaces. But what of coal and gasoline? They are minerals, and they come, as we know, out of the depths of the earth. Yet they too are the product of life; for the layers of coal, which lie sixty, eighty, one hundred and fifty feet below the surface of the earth, are the fossilized remains of great forests and jungles, which were buried millions of years ago, and whose leaves and branches and trunks have been pressed and baked into coal. Gasoline comes from coal oil, or petroleum, and is simply the "juice" which was squeezed out of these layers of trees and ferns while they were being crushed and pressed into coal. How the Sun is Turned into Energy by Plants and Animals. Where did the flowers and fruits and leaves that we now see, and the trees and ferns that grew millions of years ago, get this power, part of which made them grow and part of which was stored away in their leaves and branches and seeds? From the one place that is the source of all the force and energy and power in this world, the sun. That is why plants will, as you know, flourish and grow strong and green only in the sunlight, and why they wilt and turn pale in the dark. When the plant grows, it is simply sucking up through the green stuff (_chlorophyll_) in its leaves the heat and light of the sun and turning it to its own uses. Then this sunlight, which has been absorbed by plants and built up into their leaves, branches, and fruits, and stored away in them as energy or power, is eaten by animals; and they in turn use it to grow and move about with. Plants can use this sun-power only to grow with and to carry out a few very limited movements, such as turning to face the sun, reaching over toward the light, and so on. But animals, taking this power at second-hand from plants by eating their leaves or fruits, can use it not merely to grow with, but also to run, to fight, to climb, to cry out, and to carry out all those movements and processes which we call life. Plants, on the other hand, are quite independent of animals; for they can take up, or drink, this sun-power directly, with the addition of water from the soil sucked up through their roots, and certain salts[1] melted in it. Plants can live, as we say, upon non-living foods. But animals must take their supply of sun-power at second-hand by eating the leaves and the fruits and the seeds of plants; or at third-hand by eating other animals. [Illustration: WHERE SUN-POWER IS MADE INTO FOOD FOR US] All living things, including ourselves, are simply bundles of sunlight, done up in the form of cabbages, cows, and kings; and so it is quite right to say that a healthy, happy child has a "sunny" disposition. Plants and Animals Differ in their Way of Taking Food. As plants take in their sun-food and their air directly through their leaves, and their drink of salty water through their roots, they need no special opening for the purpose of eating and drinking, like a mouth; or place for storing food, like a stomach. They have mouths and stomachs all over them, in the form of tiny pores on their leaves, and hair-like tubes sticking out from their roots. They can eat with every inch of their growing surface. But animals, that have to take their sun-food or nourishment at second-hand, in the form of solid pieces of seeds, fruits, or leaves of plants, and must take their drink in gulps, instead of soaking it up all over their surface, must have some sort of intake opening, or mouth, somewhere on the surface; and some sort of pouch, or stomach, inside the body, in which their food can be stored and digested, or melted down. By this means they also get rid of the necessity of staying rooted in one place, to suck up moisture and food from the soil. One of the chief and most striking differences between plants and animals is that animals have mouths and stomachs, while plants have not. THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM How the Food Reaches the Stomach. Our body, then, has an opening, which we call the _mouth_, through which our food-fuel can be taken in. A straight delivery tube, called the _gullet_, or _esophagus_, runs down from the mouth to a bag, or pouch, called the _stomach_, in which the food is stored until it can be used to give energy to the body, just as the gasoline is stored in the automobile tank until it can be burned. The mouth opening is furnished with _lips_ to open and close it and assist in picking up our food and in sucking up our drink; and, as much of our food is in solid form, and as the stomach can take care only of fluid and pulpy materials, nature has provided a mill in the mouth in the form of two arches, of semicircles, of _teeth_, which grind against each other and crush the food into a pulp. [Illustration: THE FOOD ROUTE IN THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM In this diagram the entire alimentary canal is shown enlarged, and the small intestine greatly shortened, in order to show distinctly the course of the food in the process of digestion.] In the bottom or floor of the mouth, there has grown up a movable bundle of muscles, called the _tongue_, which acts as a sort of waiter, handing the food about the mouth, pushing it between the teeth, licking it out of the pouches of the cheeks to bring it back into the teeth-mill again, and finally, after it has been reduced to a pulp, gathering it up into a little ball, or _bolus_, and shooting it back down the throat, through the gullet, into the stomach. The Intestines. When the food has been sufficiently melted and partially digested in the stomach, it is pushed on into a long tube called the _intestine_, or _bowel_. During its passage through this part of the food tube, it is taken up into the veins, and carried to the heart. From here it is pumped all over the body to feed and nourish the millions of little cells of which the body is built. This bowel tube, or intestine, which, on account of its length, is arranged in coils, finally delivers the undigested remains of the food into a somewhat larger tube called the _large intestine_, in the lower and back part of the body, where its remaining moisture is sucked out of it, and its solid waste material passed out of the body through the _rectum_ in the form of the _feces_. THE JOURNEY DOWN THE FOOD TUBE The Flow of Saliva and "Appetite Juice." We are now ready to start some food-fuel, say a piece of bread, on its journey down our food tube, or _alimentary canal_. One would naturally suppose that the process of digestion would not begin until the food got well between our teeth; but, as a matter of fact, it begins before it enters our lips, or even before it leaves the table. If bread be toasted or freshly baked, the mere smell of it will start our mouths to watering; nay, even the mere sight of food, as in a pastry cook's window, with the glass between us and it, will start up this preparation for the feast. This flow of saliva in the mouth is of great assistance in moistening the bread while we are chewing it; but it goes farther than this. Some of the saliva is swallowed before we begin to eat; and this goes down into the stomach and brings word to the juices there to be ready, for something is coming. As the food approaches the mouth, a message also is telegraphed down the nerves to the stomach, which at once actively sets to work pouring out a digestive juice in readiness, called the "appetite juice." This shows how important are, not merely a good appetite, but also attractive appearance and flavor in our food; for if this appetite juice is not secreted, the food may lie in the stomach for hours before the proper process of digestion, or melting, begins. The Salivary Glands. Now, where does this saliva in the mouth come from? It is poured out from the pouches of the cheeks, and from under the tongue, by some little living sponges, or juice factories, known as _salivary glands_.[2] [Illustration: THE SALIVARY GLANDS In this diagram are shown the three glands (_G_) of the left side. The duct (_D_) from the parotid gland empties through the lining of the cheek; those from the lower glands empty at the front of the mouth under the tongue (_T_). _N_, nerve; _A_, artery; _V_, vein.] All the juices poured out by these glands, indeed nearly all the fluids or juices in our bodies, are either _acid_ or _alkaline_. By acid we mean sour, or sharp, like vinegar, lemon juice, vitriol (_sulphuric acid_), and _carbonic acid_ (which forms the bubbles in and gives the sharp taste to plain soda-water). By alkaline we mean "soap-like" or flat, like soda, lye, lime, and soaps of all sorts. If you pour an acid and an alkali together--like vinegar and soda--they will "fizz" or effervesce, and at the same time _neutralize_ or "kill" each other. The Use of the Saliva. As the chief purpose of digestion is to prepare the food so that it will dissolve in water, and then be taken up by the cells lining the food-tube, the saliva, like the rest of the body juices, consists chiefly of water. Nothing is more disagreeable than to try to chew some dry food--like a large, crisp soda cracker, for instance--which takes more moisture than the salivary glands are able to pour out on such short notice. You soon begin to feel as if you would choke unless you could get a drink of water. But it is not altogether advisable to take this short cut to relief, because the salivary juice contains what the drink of water does not--a _ferment_, or digestive substance (_ptyalin_), which possesses the power of turning the _starch_ in our food into _sugar_. As starch is only very slowly soluble, or "meltable," in water, while sugar is very readily so, the saliva is of great assistance in the process of melting, known as _digestion_. The changing of the starch to sugar is the reason why bread or cracker, after it has been well chewed, begins to taste sweetish. This change in the mouth, however, is not of such great importance as we at one time thought, because even with careful mastication, a certain amount of starch will be swallowed unchanged. Nature has provided for this by causing another gland farther down the canal, just beyond the stomach, called the _pancreas_, to pour into the food tube a juice which is far stronger in sugar-making power than the saliva, and this will readily deal with any starch which may have escaped this change in the mouth. Moreover, this "sugaring" of starch goes on in the stomach for twenty to forty minutes after the food has been swallowed. Starchy foods, like bread, biscuit, crackers, cake, and pastry, are really the only ones which require such thorough and elaborate chewing as we sometimes hear urged. Other kinds of food, like meat and eggs--which contain no _starch_ and consequently are not acted upon by the saliva--need be chewed only sufficiently long and thoroughly to break them up and reduce them to a coarse pulp, so that they can be readily acted upon by the acid juice of the stomach. Down the Gullet. When the food has been thoroughly moistened and crushed in the mouth and rolled into a lump, or bolus, at the back of the tongue, it is started down the elevator shaft which we call the gullet, or esophagus. It does not fall of its own weight, like coal down a chute, but each separate swallow is carried down the whole nine inches of the gullet by a wave of muscular action. So powerful and closely applied is this muscular pressure that jugglers can train themselves, with practice, to swallow standing on their heads and even to drink a glass of water in that position; while a horse or a cow always drinks "up-hill." This driving power of the food tube extends throughout its entire length; it is carried out by a series of circular rings of muscles, which are bound together by other threads of muscle running lengthwise, together forming the so-called _muscular coat_ of the tube. By contracting, or squeezing down in rapid succession, one after another, they move the food along through the tube. The failure of these little muscles to act properly is one of the causes of constipation and biliousness. Sometimes the action of the muscles is reversed, and then we get a gush of acid, or bitter, half-digested food up into the mouth, which we call "heart-burn" or "water-brash." The Stomach--its Shape, Position, and Size. By means of muscular contraction, then, the gullet-elevator carries the food into the stomach. This is a comparatively simple affair, merely a ballooning out, or swelling, of the food tube, like the bulb of a syringe, making a pouch, where the food can be stored between meals, and where it can undergo a certain kind of melting or dissolving. This pouch is about the shape of a pear, with its larger end upward and pointing to the left, and its smaller end tapering down into the intestine, or bowel, on the right, just under the liver. The middle part of the stomach lies almost directly under what we call the "pit of the stomach," though far the larger part of it lies above and to the left of this point, going right up under the ribs until it almost touches the heart, the diaphragm only coming between.[3] This is one of the reasons why, when we have an attack of indigestion, and the stomach is distended with gas, we are quite likely to have palpitation and shortness of breath as well, because the gas-swollen left end of the stomach is pressing upward against the diaphragm and thus upon the heart and the lungs. Most cases of imagined heart trouble are really due to indigestion. The Lining Surface of the Stomach. Now let us look more carefully at the lining surface of the stomach, for it is very wonderful. Like all other living surfaces, it consists of tiny, living units, or "body bricks" called _cells_, packed closely side by side like bricks in a pavement. We speak of the _mucous membrane_, or lining, of our food tube, as if it were one continuous sheet, like a piece of calico or silk; but we must never forget that it is made up of living ranks of millions of tiny cells standing shoulder to shoulder. These cells are always actively at work picking out the substances they need, and manufacturing out of them the ferments and acids, or alkalies, needed for acting upon the food in their particular part of the tube, whether it be the mouth, the stomach, or the small intestine. [Illustration: A SECTION OF THE LINING SURFACE OF THE STOMACH (Greatly magnified) Showing the mouths of the stomach glands, and the furrows, or folds, of the lining.] The Peptic Juice. The cells of the stomach glands manufacture and pour out a slightly sour, or acid, juice containing a ferment called _pepsin_. The acid, which is known as _hydrochloric acid_, and the pepsin together are able to melt down pieces of meat, egg, or curds of milk, and dissolve them into a clear, jelly-like fluid, or thin soup, which can readily be absorbed by the cells lining the intestine.[4] You can see now why you shouldn't take large doses of soda or other alkalies, just because you feel a little uncomfortable after eating. They will make your stomach less acid and perhaps relieve the discomfort, but they stop or slow down digestion. Neither is it well to swallow large quantities of ice-water, or other very cold drinks, at meal times, or during the process of digestion. As digestion is largely getting the food dissolved in water, the drinking of moderate quantities of water, or other fluids, at meals is not only no hindrance, but rather a help in the process. The danger comes only when the drink is taken so cold as to check digestion, or when it is used to wash down the food in chunks, before it has been properly ground by the teeth. [Illustration: A LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF STOMACH, OR PEPTIC, GLANDS (Greatly magnified) The long duct of each gland is but a deep fold of the stomach lining (see note, p. 11). Into this duct the ranks of cells around it pour out the peptic juice.] Digestion in the Stomach. Although usually a single, pear-shaped pouch, the stomach, during digestion, is practically divided into two parts by the shortening, or closing down, of a ring of circular muscle fibres about four inches from the lower end, throwing it into a large, rounded pouch on the left, and a small, cone-shaped one on the right. The gullet, of course, opens into the large left-hand pouch; and here the food is stored as it is swallowed until it has become sufficiently melted and acidified (mixed with acid juice) to be ready to pass on into the smaller pouch. Here more acid juice is poured out into it, and it is churned by the muscles in the walls of the stomach until it is changed to a jelly-like substance. Digestion in the Small Intestine. The food-pulp now passes on into the _small intestine_, where it is acted upon by two other digestive juices--the _bile_, which comes from the _liver_, and the _pancreatic juice_, which is secreted by the pancreas. The liver and the pancreas are a pair of large glands which have budded out, one on each side of the food tube, about six inches below where the food enters the small intestine from the stomach. The liver[5] weighs nearly three pounds, and the pancreas about a quarter of a pound. Of these two glands, the pancreas, though the smaller, is far more important in digestion. In fact, it is the most powerful digestive gland in the body. Its juice, the pancreatic juice, can do everything that any other digestive juice can, and do it better. It contains a ferment for turning starch into sugar, which is far more powerful than that of the saliva; also another (_trypsin_), which will dissolve meat-stuffs nearly twice as fast as the pepsin of the stomach can; and still another, not possessed by either mouth or stomach glands, which will melt fat, so that it can be sucked up by the lining cells of the intestine. What does this great combination of powers in the pancreas mean? It means that we have now reached the real centre and chief seat of digestion, namely, the small intestine, or upper bowel. This is where the food is really absorbed, taken up into the blood, and distributed to the body. All changes before this have been merely preparatory; all after it are simply a picking up of the pieces that remain. In general appearance, this division of the food tube is very simple--merely a tube about twenty feet long and an inch in diameter, thrown into coils, so as to pack into small space, and slung up to the backbone by broad loops of a delicate tissue (_mesentery_). It looks not unlike twenty feet of pink garden hose. The intestine also is provided with glands that pour out a juice known as the _intestinal juice_, which, although not very active in digestion, helps to melt down still further some of the sugars, and helps to prevent putrefaction, or decay, of the food from the bacteria[6] which swarm in this part of the tube. By the time the food has gone a third of the way down the small intestine, a good share of the starches in it have been turned into sugar and absorbed by the blood vessels in its wall; and the meats, milk, eggs, and similar foods have been digested in the same way. There still remains the bulk of the fats to be disposed of. These fats are attacked by the pancreatic juice and the bile, and made ready for digestion. Like other foods, they are then eaten by the cells of the intestinal wall; but instead of going directly into the blood vessels, as the sugars and other food substances do, they are passed on into another set of little tubes or vessels, called the _lymphatics_. In these they are carried through the _lymph glands_ of the abdomen into the great _lymph duct_, which finally pours them into one of the great veins not far from the heart. Tiny, branching lymphatic tubes are found all over the body, picking up what the cells leave of the fluid which has seeped out of the arteries for their use and returning it to the veins through the great lymph duct. All these different food substances, in the process of digestion, do not simply soak through the lining cells of the food tube, as through a blotting paper or straining cloth, but are actually eaten by the cells and very much changed in the process, and are then passed through the other side of the cells, either into the blood vessels of the wall of the intestine or into the lymph vessels, practically ready for use by the living tissues of the body. It is in the cells then that our food is turned into blood, and it is there that what we have eaten becomes really a part of us. It may even be said that we are living upon the leavings of the little cell citizens that line our food tube; but they are wonderfully decent, devoted little comrades of the rest of our body cells, and generous in the amount of food they pass on to the blood vessels. As the food-pulp is squeezed on from one coil to another through the intestine, it naturally has more and more of its nourishing matter sucked out of it; until, by the time it reaches the last loop of the twenty feet of the small intestine, it has lost over two-thirds of its food value. The Final Stage--the Journey through the Large Intestine. From the small intestine what remains of the food-pulp is poured into the last section of the food tube, which enlarges to from two to three inches in diameter. It is known as the large intestine, or large bowel. This section is only about five feet long. The first three-fourths of it is called the _colon_; the last or lowest quarter, the rectum, the discharge-pipe of the food tube. The principal use of the colon is to suck out the remaining traces of nourishing matter from the food and the water in which it is dissolved, thus gradually drying the food-pulp down to a solid or pasty form, in which condition it collects in a large "S" shaped loop of the bowel just above the rectum, until discharged. The Waste Materials. By the time that the remains of the food-pulp have reached the middle of the large intestine, they have lost all their nutritive value and most of their water. All the way down from the upper part of the small intestine they have been receiving solid waste substances poured out by the glands of the intestines; indeed, the bulk of the feces is made up of these intestinal secretions, not, as is generally supposed, of the undigested remains of the food. Ninety-five per cent of our food is absorbed; the body-engine burns up its fuel very clean. The next largest part of the feces is bacteria, or germs; and the third and smallest, the indigestible fragments and remainders of food, such as vegetable fibres, bran, fruit skins, pits, seeds, etc. Hence the feces are not only worthless from a food point of view, but full of all sorts of possibilities for harm; and the principal interest of the body lies in getting rid of them as promptly and regularly as possible. It can easily be seen how important it is that a habit should be formed, which nothing should be allowed to break, of promptly and regularly getting rid of these waste materials. For most persons, once in twenty-four hours is normal; for some, twice or even three times in the day. Whatever interval is natural, it should be attended to, beginning at a fixed hour every morning. Constipation, and how to Prevent It. Constipation should not be treated by the all too common method of swallowing salts, which will cause a flood of watery matters to be poured through the food tube and sluice it clean of both poisons and melting food at the same time, leaving it in an exhausted and disturbed condition afterwards; nor by taking some irritating vegetable cathartic, generally in the form of pills, which sets up a violent action of the muscles of the food tube, driving its contents through at headlong speed; nor by washing out the lower two or three feet of the bowel with injections of water; although any or all of these may be resorted to occasionally for temporary relief. A very large portion of the food eaten is sucked out of the food tube into the blood vessels, passes through a large area of the body, and is poured out again as waste through the glands of the lining of the lower third of the bowel. Constipation, therefore, is caused by disturbances which interfere with these processes _all over the body_, not only in the stomach and bowels. Its only real and permanent cure is through exercise in the open air, sleep, and proper ventilation of bedrooms, with abundance of nourishing food, including plenty of green vegetables and fresh fruits. The Appendix and Appendicitis. The beginning of the large bowel, where the small bowel empties into it, is the largest part of it, and forms a curious pouch called the _cecum_, or "blind" pouch. From one side of this projects a little wormlike tube, twisted and coiled upon itself, from three to six inches long and of about the size of a slate pencil. This is the famous _appendix vermiformis_ (meaning, "wormlike tag"), which is such a frequent source of trouble. It is the shrunken and shriveled remains of a large pouch of the intestine which once opened into the cecum, and was used originally as a sort of second stomach for delaying and digesting the remains of the food. The reason why it gives rise to so much trouble is that it is so small--scarcely larger than will admit a knitting-needle--and so twisted upon itself that germs or other poisonous substances swallowed with the food may get into it, start a swelling or inflammation, get trapped in there by the closing of the narrow mouth of the tube, and form an abscess, which leaks through, or bursts into, the cavity of the body, called the _peritoneum_. This causes a very serious and often fatal blood poisoning. Fortunately, _appendicitis_, or inflammation of the appendix, is not a very common disease, causing only one in one hundred of all deaths that occur; and these are mostly cases that were not treated promptly. Yet, if you have a severe, constant pain, rather low down in the right-hand corner of your abdomen, and if, when you press your hand firmly down in that corner, it hurts, or you feel a lump, it is decidedly safest to call a doctor and let him see what the condition really is, and advise you what to do. FOOTNOTES: [1] The term _salts_ includes, as will be explained later, a large number of substances, like ordinary table salt, baking soda, and the laxative salts. [2] There are three pairs of these: one just below the ears and behind the angles of the jaw, known as the _parotid_; one under the middle of the lower jaw known as the _submaxillary_; and a small pair just under the tip of the tongue, called the _sublingual_. These glands have grown up from the very simplest of beginnings. At first there was just a little pocketing or pouching down of the mucous lining, like the finger of a glove; then a couple of smaller hollow fingers budded off from the bottom of the first finger; then four smaller fingers from the bottom of these; and so on, until a regular little hollow tree or shrub of these tiny tubes was built up, all discharging through the original hollow stem, which has now become what we call the _duct_ of the gland. Every secreting gland in the body--the stomach (or peptic) glands, the salivary glands, the liver, the pancreas--is built up upon this simple plan. The saliva and the juice of the pancreas and that of the liver (bile) are alkaline, as are also the blood and most juices of the body. The stomach juice is acid, as also are the urine and the perspiration. [3] It is wonderfully elastic and constantly changing in size, contracting till it will scarcely hold a quart when empty, and expanding, as food or drink is put into it, until it will easily hold two quarts, or even a gallon or more when greatly distended, as by gas. [4] If you take some pepsin which has been extracted from the stomach of a pig or a calf, melt it in water in a glass tube, then drop one or two little pieces of meat or hard-boiled white of egg into it, you can see them slowly melt away like sugar in a cup of coffee. If you add a few drops of hydrochloric acid, the melting will go on much faster; and if you warm up the tube to about the heat of the body, it will proceed faster still. So nature knew just what she was doing when she provided pepsin and acid and warmth in the stomach. [5] The liver and the bile are more fully described in chapter XVII. [6] Tiny plant cells, known also as _germs_, which cause fermentation, decay, and many diseases. CHAPTER III THE FOOD-FUEL OF THE BODY-ENGINE WHAT KIND OF FOOD SHOULD WE EAT? Generally speaking, our Appetites will Guide us. Our whole body is an ingenious machine for catching food, digesting it, and turning the energy, or fuel value, which it contains, into life, movement, and growth. Naturally, two things follow: first, that the kind and amount of food which we eat is of great importance; and second, that from the millions of years of experience that the human body has had in trying all sorts of foods, it has adapted itself to certain kinds of food and developed certain likes and dislikes which we call _appetites_. Those who happened to like unhealthy and unwholesome foods were poisoned, or grew thin and weak and died off, so that we are descended solely from people who had sound and reliable food appetites; and, in the main, what our instincts and appetites tell us about food is to be depended upon. The main questions which we have to consider are: How much of the different kinds of food it is best for us to eat, and in what proportions we should use them. Both men and animals, since the world began, have been trying to eat and digest almost everything that they could get into their mouths. And what we now like and prepare as foods are the things which have stood the test, and proved themselves able to yield strength and nourishment to the body. So practically every food that comes upon our tables has some kind of real food value, or it wouldn't appear there. The most careful study and analysis have shown that almost every known food has some peculiar advantage, such as digestibility, or cheapness, or pleasant taste as flavoring for other more nutritious, but less interesting, foods. But some foods have much higher degrees of nutritiousness or digestibility or wholesomeness than others; so that our problem is to pick out from a number of foods that "taste good" to us, those which are the most nutritious, the most digestible, and the most wholesome, and to see that we get plenty of them. It is not that certain foods, or classes of food, are "good," and should be eaten to the exclusion of all others; nor that certain foods, or classes of food, are "bad," and should be excluded from our tables entirely; but that certain foods are more nutritious, or more wholesome, than others; and that it is best to see that we get plenty of the former before indulging our appetites upon the latter. Beware of Tainted Food. The most dangerous fault that any food can have is that it shall be tainted, or spoiled, or smell bad. Spoiling, or tainting, means that the food has become infected by some germs of putrefaction, generally _bacteria_ or _moulds_ (see chapter XXVI). It is the poisons--called _ptomaines_, or _toxins_--produced by these germs which cause the serious disturbances in the stomach, and not either the amount or the kind of food itself. Even a regular "gorge" upon early apples or watermelon or cake or ice cream will not give you half so bad, nor so dangerous, colic as one little piece of tainted meat or fish or egg, or one cupful of dirty milk, or a single helping of cabbage or tomatoes that have begun to spoil, or of jam made out of spoiled berries or other fruit. This spoiling can be prevented by strict cleanliness in handling foods, especially milk, meat, and fruit; by keeping foods screened from dust and flies; and by keeping them cool with ice in summer time, thus checking the growth of these "spoiling" germs. The refrigerator in the kitchen prevents colic or diarrhea, ice in hot weather is one of the necessaries of life. Smell every piece of food to be eaten, in the kitchen before it is cooked, if possible; but if not, at the table avoid everything that has an unpleasant odor, or tastes queer, and you will avoid two-thirds of the colic, diarrhea, and bilious attacks which are so often supposed to be due to eating too much. [Illustration: A CHEAP HOME-MADE ICE BOX This should not cost over twenty-five cents. The sketch shows an ordinary soap box; inside is a tin pail surrounded by a sheet of tin, so that there is a circular air space between the pail and the sheet of tin. Sawdust is packed around the tin, and cracked ice (two cents a day) fills the tin pail around the milk bottle. The newspapers inside the cover help to keep out the warmth of the outside air. Recommended by the Boards of Health of New York City and Chicago.] Variety in Food is Necessary. Man has always lived on, and apparently required, a great variety of foods, animal and vegetable--fish and flesh, nuts, fruit, grains, fat, sugar, and vegetables. Indeed, it was probably because man could live on anything and everything that he was able to survive in famines and to get so far ahead of all other sorts of animals. We still need a great variety of different sorts of food in order to keep our health; so our tendency to become tired of a certain food, after we have had it over and over and over again, for breakfast, dinner, and supper, is a sound and healthy one. There is no "best food"; nor is there any one food on which we can live and work, as an engine will work all its "life" on one kind of coal, wood, or oil. No one kind of food contains all the stuffs that our body is made of and needs, in exactly the right proportions. It takes a dozen or more different kinds of food to supply these, and the body picks out what it wants, and throws away the remainder. Even the best and most nutritious and digestible single food, like meat, or bread and butter, or sugar, is not sufficient by itself; nor will it do for every meal in the day, or every day in the week. We must eat other things with it; and we must from time to time change it for something which may even be not quite so nutritious, in order to give our body the opportunity to select from a great variety of foods the particular things which its wonderful instincts and skill can use to build it up and keep it healthy. This is why every grocery store, every butcher shop, every fish market, and every confectioner's shows such a great variety of different kinds of foods put up and prepared in all sorts of ways. Although nearly two-thirds of the actual fuel which we put into our body-boilers is in the form of a dozen or fifteen great staple foods, like bread, meat, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, potatoes, and fish, yet all the lighter foods, also, are needed for perfect health. It is possible, by careful selection, and by taking a great deal of trouble, to supply all the elements of the body from animal foods alone, or from vegetable foods alone. But practically, it has everywhere, and in all ages, been found that the best and most healthful diet is a proper combination of animal and vegetable foods. Our starches, for instance, which furnish most of our fuel,--though they give us _comparatively little_ to _build up_, or _repair_, the body with,--are found, as we have seen, in the vegetable kingdom, in grains and fruits; while most of our proteins and fats, which chiefly give us the materials with which to build up, or repair, the body, are found in the animal kingdom. There is no advantage whatever in trying to exclude either animal food or vegetable food from our dietary. Both animal and vegetable foods are wholesome in their proper place, and their proper place is on the table together. Those nations which live solely, or even chiefly, upon one or two kinds of staple foods, such as rice, potatoes, corn-meal, or yams, do so solely because they are too poor to afford other kinds of food, or too lazy, or too uncivilized, to get them; and instead of being healthier and longer-lived than civilized races, they are much more subject to disease and live only about half as long. THE THREE GREAT CLASSES OF FOOD-FUEL Food is Fuel. Now what is the chief quality which makes one kind of food preferable to another? As our body machine runs entirely upon the energy or "strength" which it gets out of its food, _a good food must have plenty of fuel value_; that is to say, it must be capable of burning and giving off heat and steaming-power. Other things being equal, the more it has of this fuel value, the more desirable and valuable it will be as a food. From this point of view, foods may be roughly classified, after the fashion of the materials needed to build a fire in a grate or stove, as Coal foods, Kindling foods, and Paper foods. Although coal, kindling, and paper are of very different fuel values, they are all necessary to start the fire in the grate and to keep it burning properly. Moreover, any one of them would keep a fire going alone, after a fashion, provided that you had a grate or furnace large enough to burn it in, and could shovel it in fast enough; and the same is true, to a certain degree, of the foods in the body. How to Judge the Fuel Value of Foods. One of the best ways of roughly determining whether a given food belongs in the Coal, the Kindling, or the Paper class, is to take a handful or spoonful of it, dry it thoroughly by some means,--evaporating, or driving off the water,--and then throw what is left into a fire and see how it will burn. A piece of beef, for instance, would shrink a good deal in drying; but about one-third of it would be left, and this dried beef would burn quite briskly and would last for some time in the fire. A piece of bread of the same size would not shrink so much, but would lose about the same proportion of its weight; and it also would burn with a clear, hot flame, though not quite so long as the beef. A piece of fat of the same size would shrink very little in drying and would burn with a bright, hot flame, nearly twice as long as either the beef or the bread. These would all be classed as Coal foods. Then if we were to dry a slice of apple, it would shrink down into a little leathery shaving; and this, when thrown into the fire, would burn with a smudgy kind of flame, give off very little heat, and soon smoulder away. A piece of raw potato of the same size would shrink even more, but would give a hotter and cleaner flame. A leaf of cabbage, or a piece of beet-root, or four or five large strawberries would shrivel away in the drying almost to nothing and, if thoroughly dried, would disappear in a flash when thrown on the fire. These, then, except the potato, we should regard as Kindling foods. But it would take a large handful of lettuce leaves, or a big cup of beef-tea, or a good-sized bowl of soup, or a big cucumber, or a gallon of tea or coffee, to leave sufficient solid remains when completely dried, to make more than a flash when thrown into the fire. These, then, are Paper foods, with little fuel value. CHAPTER IV THE COAL FOODS Kinds of Coal Foods. There are many different kinds of Coal foods, such as pork, mutton, beef, bread, corn-cakes, bacon, potatoes, rice, sugar, cheese, butter, and so on. But when you come to look at them more closely, and to take them to pieces, or, as we say, analyze them, you will see that they all fall into three different kinds or classes: (1) _Proteins_, such as meat, milk, fish, eggs, cheese, etc. (2) _Starch-sugars_ (_carbohydrates_), found pure as laundry starch and as white sugar; also found, as starch, making up the bulk of wheat and other grains, and of potatoes, rice, peas; also found, as sugar, in honey, beet-roots, sugar cane, and the sap of maple trees. (3) _Fats_, found in fat meats, butter, oil, nuts, beeswax, etc. This whole class of Coal foods can be recognized by the fact that usually some one of them will form the staple, or main dish, of almost any regular meal, which is generally a combination of all three classes--a protein in the shape of meat; a starch-sugar in the form of bread, potatoes, or rice; and a fat in the form of butter in northern climates, or of olive oil in the tropics. PROTEINS, OR "MEATS" Proteins, the "First Foods." There are proteins, or "meats," both animal and vegetable; and no one can support life without protein in some form. This is because proteins alone contain sufficient amounts of the great element called _nitrogen_, which forms a large part of every portion of our bodies. This is why they are called proteins, meaning "first foods," or most necessary foods. Whatever we may live on in later life, we all began on a diet of liquid meat (milk), and could have survived and grown up on nothing else. Composition of Proteins. Nearly all our meats are the muscle of different sorts of animals, made of a soft, reddish, animal pulp called _myosin_; the other principal proteins being white of egg, curd of milk, and a gummy, whitish-gray substance called _gluten_, found in wheat flour. This gluten is the stuff that makes the paste and dough of wheat flour sticky, so that you can paste things together with it; while that made from corn meal or oatmeal will fall to pieces when you take it up. The jelly-like or pulp-like myosin in meat is held together by strings or threads of tough, fibrous stuff; and the more there is of this fibrous material in a particular piece or "cut," of meat, the tougher and less juicy it is. The thick, soft muscles, which lie close under the backbone in the small of the back, in all animals, have less of this tough and indigestible fibrous stuff in them, and cuts across them give us the well-known porter-house, sirloin, or tenderloin steaks, and the best and tenderest mutton and pork chops. Fuel Value of Meats. Weight for weight, most of the butcher's meats--beef, pork, mutton, and veal--have about the same food value, differing chiefly in the amount of fat that is mixed in with their fibres, and in certain flavoring substances, which give them, when roasted, or broiled, their special flavors. The different flavors are not of any practical importance, except in the case of mutton, which some people dislike and therefore can take only occasionally, and in small amounts. The amount of fat in meats, however, is more important; and depends largely upon how well the animal has been fed. There is usually the least amount of fat in mutton, more in beef, and by far the greatest amount in pork. This fat adds to the fuel value of meat, but makes it a little slower of digestion; and its presence in large amounts in pork, together with the fact that it lies, not only in layers and streaks, but also mixed in between the fibres of the lean as well has caused this meat to be regarded as richer and more difficult of digestion than either beef or mutton. This, however is not quite fair to the pork, because smaller amounts of it will satisfy the appetite and furnish the body with sufficient fuel and nutrition. If it be eaten in moderate amounts and thoroughly chewed, it is a wholesome and valuable food. Veal is slightly less digestible than beef or mutton, on account of the amount of slippery _gelatin_ in and among its fibres; but if well cooked and well chewed, it is wholesome. The other meats--chicken, duck, and other poultry, game, etc.--are of much less nutritive value than either beef, pork, or mutton, partly because of the large amount of waste in them, in the form of bones, skin, and tendons, and partly from the greater amount of water in them. But their flavors make them an agreeable change from the staple meats. Fish belongs in the same class as poultry and consists of the same muscle substance, but, as you can readily see by the way that it shrinks when dried, contains far more water and has less fuel value. Some of the richer and more solid fishes, like salmon, halibut, and mackerel, contain, in addition to their protein, considerable amounts of fat and, when dried or cured, give a rather high fuel value at moderate cost. But the peculiar flavor of fish, its large percentage of water, and the special make-up of its protein, give it a very low food value, and render it, on the whole, undesirable as a permanent staple food. Races and classes who live on it as their chief meat-food are not so vigorous or so healthy as those who eat also the flesh of animals. As a rule, it is not best to use fish as the main dish of a meal oftener than two or three times a week. [Illustration: A BABY-MILK STATION The milk sold here for a few cents is perfectly clean and pure, and is variously adapted to the needs of different babies. In many cities such milk stations have been established.] Milk. Milk is an interesting food of great value because it combines in itself all three of the great classes of food-stuffs,--protein, starch-sugar, and fat. Its protein is a substance called _casein_, which forms the bulk of curds, and which, when dried and salted, is called cheese. The fat is present in little tiny globules which give milk its whitish or milky color. When milk is allowed to stand, these globules of fat, being lighter, float up to the top and form a layer which is called cream. When this cream is skimmed off and put into a churn, and shaken or beaten violently so as to break the little film with which each of these droplets is coated, they run together and form a yellow mass which we call butter. In addition to the curd and fat, milk contains also sugar, called milk-sugar (_lactose_), which gives it its sweetish taste. And as a considerable part of the casein, or curd, is composed of another starch-like body, or animal starch, this makes milk quite rich in the starch-sugar group of food-stuffs. All these substances, of course, in milk are dissolved in a large amount of water, so that when milk is evaporated, or dried, it shrinks down to barely one-sixth of its former bulk. It is, in fact, a liquid meat, starch-sugar, and fat in one; and that is why babies are able to live and thrive on it alone for the first six months of their lives. It is also a very valuable food for older children, though, naturally, it is not "strong" enough and needs to be combined with bread, puddings, meat, and fat. Soups and Broths. Soups, broths, and beef teas are water in which meats, bones, and other scraps have been boiled. They are about ninety-eight per cent water, and contain nothing of the meat or bones except some of their flavor, and a little gelatin. They have little or no nutritive or fuel value, and are really Paper foods, useful solely as stimulants to appetite and digestion, enabling us to swallow with relish large pieces of bread or crackers, or the potatoes, rice, pea-meal, cheese, or other real foods with which they are thickened. Their food value has been greatly exaggerated, and many an unfortunate invalid has literally starved on them. Ninety-five per cent of the food value of the meat and bones, out of which soups are made, remains at the bottom of the pot, after the soup has been poured off. The commercial extracts of meat are little better than frauds, for they contain practically nothing but flavoring matters. Protein in Vegetables. Several vegetable substances contain considerable amounts of protein. One of these has already been mentioned,--the gluten or sticky part of bread,--and this is what has given wheat its well-deserved reputation as the best of all grains out of which to make flour for human food. There is also another vegetable protein, called _legumin_, found in quite large amounts in dried beans and peas; but this is of limited food value, first because it is difficult of digestion, and secondly because with it, in dried peas and beans, are found a pungent oil and a bitter substance, which give them their peculiar strong flavor, both of which are quite irritating to the average person's digestion. So distressing and disturbing are these flavoring substances to the civilized stomach, that, after thousands of attempts to use them more largely, it has been found that a full meal of beans once or twice a week is all that the comfort and health of the body will stand. This is really a great pity, for beans and peas are both nourishing and cheap. Nuts also contain much protein, but are both difficult of digestion and expensive. Virtues and Drawbacks of Meats. Taken all together, the proteins, or meats, are the most nutritious and wholesome single class of foods. Their chief drawback is their expense, which, in proportion to their fuel value, is greater than that of the starches. Then, on account of their attractiveness, they may be eaten at times in too large amounts. They are also somewhat more difficult to keep and preserve than are either the starches or the fats. The old idea that, when burned up in the body, they give rise to waste products, which are either more poisonous or more difficult to get rid of than those of vegetable foods, is now regarded as having no sufficient foundation. Neither is the common belief that meats cause _gout_ well founded. The greatest danger connected with meats is that they may become tainted, or begin to spoil, or decay, before they are used. Unfortunately, the ingenious cook has invented a great many ways of smothering, or disguising, the well-marked bad taste of decayed, or spoiled, meat by spices, onions, and savory herbs. So, as a general thing, the safest plan, especially when traveling or living away from home, is to avoid as far as possible hashes, stews, and other "made" dishes containing meat. This is one of the ways in which spices and onions have got such a bad reputation for "heating the blood," or upsetting the stomach, when it is really the decayed meat which they are used to disguise that causes the trouble. Highly spiced dishes rob you of the services of your best guide to the wholesomeness of food--your nose. Risks of Dirty Milk. The risks from tainting or spoiling are particularly great in the case of milk, partly on account of the dusty and otherwise uncleanly barns and sheds in which it is often handled and kept, and from which it is loaded with a heavy crop of bacteria at the very start; and partly because the same delicateness which makes it so easily digestible for babies, makes it equally easy for germs and bacteria to grow in it and spoil, or sour, it. You all know how disagreeable the taste of spoiled milk is; and it is as dangerous as it is disagreeable. A very large share of the illnesses of babies and young children, particularly the diseases of stomach and bowels which are so common in hot weather, are due to the use of spoiled, dirty milk. [Illustration: CLEAN, DRY SUNNING YARDS AT A MODEL DAIRY] There is one sure preventive for all these dangers, and that is _absolute cleanliness_ from cow to customer. All the changes that take place in milk are caused by germs of various sorts, usually floating in the air, that get into it. If the milk is so handled and protected, from cow to breakfast table, that these germs cannot get into it, it will remain sweet for several days. [Illustration: Currying the cow Washing the udders CLEANLINESS BEFORE MILKING] Boards of Health all over the world now are insisting upon absolutely clean barns and cleanly methods of handling, shipping, and selling milk. In most of our large cities, milk-men are not allowed to sell milk without a license; and this license is granted only after a thorough examination of their cattle, barns, and milk-houses. These clean methods of handling milk cost very little; they take only time and pains. Nowadays, in the best dairies, it is required that the barns or sheds in which cows are milked shall have tight walls and roofs and good flooring; that the walls and roofs shall be kept white-washed; and the floor be cleaned and washed before each milking, so that no germs from dust or manure can float into the milk. Then the cows are kept in a clean pasture, or dry, graveled yard, instead of a muddy barnyard; and are either brushed, or washed down with a hose before each milking, so that no dust or dirt will fall from them into the milk. The men who are to milk wash their hands thoroughly with soap and water, and put on clean white canvas or cotton overalls, jackets, and caps. As soon as the milk has been drawn into the pails, it is carried into the milk-room and cooled down to a temperature of about forty-two degrees--that is, about ten degrees above freezing point. This is to prevent the growth of such few germs as may have got into it, in spite of all the care that has been taken. Then the milk is drawn into bottles; and the bottles are tightly capped by a water-proof pasteboard disc, or cover, which is not removed until the milk is brought into the house and poured into the glass, or cup, for use. [Illustration: THE MILKING HOUR AT A MODEL DAIRY] Milk handled like this costs from two to four cents a quart more to produce than when drawn from a cow smeared with manure, in a dark, dirty, strong-smelling barn, by a milker with greasy clothing and dirty hands; and then ladled out into pitchers in the open street, giving all the dust and flies that happen to be in the neighborhood a chance to get into it! But it is doubly worth the extra price, because, besides escaping stomach and bowel troubles, you get more cream and higher food value. There is one-third more food value in clean milk than in dirty milk, because its casein and sugar have not been spoiled and eaten by swarms of bacteria. How great a difference careful cleanliness of this sort can make in milk is shown by the difference in the number of bacteria that the two kinds of milk contain. Ordinary milk bought from the wagons in the open street, or from the cans in the stores, will contain anywhere from _a million_ to a _million and a half_ bacteria to the cubic centimeter (about fifteen drops); and samples have actually been taken and counted, which showed _five_ and _six millions_. [Illustration: MILKING BY VACUUM PROCESS This method is used in many large dairies to avoid handling the udders or the milk. Its chief drawback is that the long tubes are very difficult to keep clean.] Such a splendid food for germs is milk, and so rapidly do they grow in it, that dirty milk will actually contain more of them to the cubic inch than sewage, as it flows in the sewers. Now see what a difference a little cleanliness will make! Good, clean, carefully handled milk, instead of having a million, or a million and a half, bacteria, will have less than ten thousand; and very clean milk may contain as low as three or four hundred, and these of harmless sorts. The whole gospel of the care of milk can be summed up in two sentences: (1) _Keep dirt and germs out of the milk._ (2) _Keep the milk cool._ [Illustration: WASHING THE BOTTLES AT A MODEL DAIRY The inside of the bottle is thoroughly cleansed by the revolving brush.] Besides the germs of the summer diseases of children, which kill more than fifty thousand babies every year in the United States, dirty milk may also contain typhoid germs and consumption germs. The typhoid germs do not come from the body of the cow, but get into the milk through its being handled by people who have, or have just recovered from, typhoid, or who are nursing patients sick with typhoid, and who have not properly washed their hands; or from washing the cans, or from watering the milk with water taken from a well or stream infected with typhoid. It is estimated that about one-eighth of all the half million cases of typhoid that occur in the United States every year are carried through dirty milk. [Illustration: BACTERIA IN CLEAN AND IN DIRTY MILK] [Illustration: DANGER FROM DIPPED MILK The milk that spills or spatters over the hand drips back into the can and may seriously infect the main supply.] The germs of consumption, or _tuberculosis_, that are present in milk may come from a cow that has the disease; or from consumptive human beings who handle the milk; or from the dust of streets or houses--which often contains disease germs. The latter sources are far the more dangerous; for, as is now pretty generally agreed, although the tuberculosis of cattle can be given to human beings, it is not very actively dangerous to them; and probably not more than three or four per cent of all cases of tuberculosis come from this source. The idea, however, of allowing the milk of cows diseased from any cause to be used for human food, is not to be tolerated for a moment. All good dairymen and energetic Boards of Health now insist upon dairy herds being tested for tuberculosis, and the killing, or weeding out, of all cows that show they have the disease. [Illustration: MILK INSPECTION AT THE RETAIL STORE It is well to have the quality and purity of the milk tested just before it goes to the consumer, but it is far more important that it should be examined by State Inspectors at the dairy farms.] Cheese. Cheese is the curd of milk squeezed dry of its liquid (_whey_), salted, pressed into a mould, and allowed to ferment slowly, or "ripen," in which process a considerable part of its casein is turned into fat. It is a cheap, concentrated, and very nutritious food, and in small amounts is quite appetizing. But unfortunately, the acids and extracts which have formed in the process of fermentation and ripening are so irritating to the stomach, that it can usually be eaten only in small amounts, without upsetting the digestion. Its chief value is as a relish with bread, crackers, potatoes, or macaroni. In moderate amounts, it is not only appetizing and digestible, but will assist in the digestion of other foods; hence the custom of eating a small piece of "ripe" cheese at the end of a heavy meal. CHAPTER V THE COAL FOODS (_Continued_) STARCHES Sources of Starch. The starches are valuable and wholesome foods. They form the largest part, both in bulk and in fuel value, of our diet, and have done so ever since man learned how to cultivate the soil and grow crops of grain. The reason is clear: One acre of good land will grow from ten to fifteen times the amount of food in the form of starch in grains or roots, as of meat in the shape of cattle or sheep. Consequently, starch is far cheaper, and this is its great advantage. Our chief supply of starch is obtained from the seed of certain most useful grasses, which we call wheat, oats, barley, rye, rice, and corn, and from the so-called "roots" of the potato. Potatoes are really underground buds packed with starch, and their proper name is tubers. Starch, when pure or extracted, is a soft, white powder, which you have often seen as cornstarch, or laundry starch. As found in grains, it is mixed with a certain amount of vegetable fibre, covered with husks, or skin, and has the little germ or budlet of the coming plant inside it. It has been manufactured and laid down by little cells inside their own bodies, which make up the grains; so that each particular grain of starch is surrounded by a delicate husk--the wall of the cell that made it. This means that grains and other starch foods have to be prepared for eating by grinding and cooking. The grinding crushes the grains into a powder so that the starch can be sifted out from the husks and coating of the grain, and the fibres which hold it together; and the cooking causes the tiny starch grain to swell and burst the cell wall, or bag, which surrounds it. Starches as Fuel. The starches contain no nitrogen except a mere trace in the framework of the grains or roots they grow in. They burn very clean; that is, almost the whole of them is turned into carbon dioxid gas and water.[7] This burning quality makes the starches a capital fuel both in the body and out of it. You may have heard of how settlers out on the prairies, who were a long way from a railroad and had no wood or coal, but plenty of corn, would fill their coal scuttles with corn and burn that in their stoves; and a very bright, hot fire it made. One of the chief weaknesses of the starches is that they burn up too fast, so that you get hungry again much more quickly after a meal made entirely upon starchy foods, like bread, crackers, potatoes, or rice, than you do after one which has contained some meat, particularly fat, which burns and digests more slowly. How Starch is Changed into Sugar. As we learned in chapter II, the starches can be digested only after they are turned into sugars in the body. If you put salt with sugar or starch, although it will mix perfectly and give its taste to the mixture, neither the salt nor the starch nor the sugar will have changed at all, but will remain exactly as it was in the first place, except for being mixed with the other substances. But if you were to pour water containing an acid over the starch, and then boil it for a little time, your starch would entirely disappear, and something quite different take its place. This, when you tasted it, you would find was sweet; and, when the water was boiled off, it would turn out to be a sugar called _glucose_. Again, if you should pour a strong acid over sawdust, it would "char" it, or change it into another substance, _carbon_. In both of these cases--that of the starch and of the sawdust--what we call a _chemical change_ would have taken place between the acid and the starch, and between the strong acid and the sawdust. If we looked into the matter more closely, we should find that what has happened is that the starch and the sawdust have changed into quite different substances. Starches are _insoluble_ in water; that is, although they can be softened and changed into a jelly-like substance, they cannot be completely melted, or dissolved, like salt or sugar. Sugar, on the other hand, is a perfectly _soluble_ or "meltable" substance, and can soak or penetrate through any membrane or substance in the body. Therefore all the starches which we eat--bread, biscuit, potato, etc.--have to be acted upon by the ferments of our saliva and our pancreatic juice, and turned into sugar, called glucose, which can be easily poured into the blood and carried wherever it is needed, all over the body. Thus we see what a close relation there is between starch and sugar, and why the group we are studying is sometimes called the starch-sugars. Wheat--our Most Valuable Starch Food. The principal forms in which starch comes upon our tables are meals and flours, and the various breads, cakes, mushes, and puddings made out of these. Far the most valuable and important of all is wheat flour, because this grain contains, as we have seen, not only starch, but a considerable amount of vegetable "meat," or gluten, which is easily digested in the stomach. This gluten, however, carries with it one disadvantage--its stickiness, or gumminess. The dough or paste made by mixing wheat flour with water is heavy and wet, or, as we say, "soggy," as compared with that made by mixing oatmeal or corn meal or rice flour with water. If it is baked in this form, it makes a well-flavored, but rather tough, leathery sort of crust; so those races that use no _leavening_, or rising-stuff, in their wheat bread, roll it out into very thin sheets and bake it on griddles or hot stones. Most races that have wheat, however, have hit upon a plan for overcoming this heaviness and sogginess, and that is the rather ingenious one of mixing some substance in the dough which will give off bubbles of a gas, _carbon dioxid_, and cause it to puff up and become spongy and light, or, as we say, "full of air." This is what gives bread its well-known spongy or porous texture; but the tiny cells and holes in it are filled, not with air, but with carbon dioxid gas. Making Bread with Yeast. There are several ways of lightening bread with carbon dioxid gas. The oldest and commonest is by mixing in with the flour and water a small amount of the frothy mass made by a germ, or microbe, known as _yeast_ or the _yeast plant_. Then the dough is set away in a warm place "to rise," which means that the busy little yeast cells, eagerly attacking the rich supply of starchy food spread before them, and encouraged by the heat and moisture, multiply by millions and billions, and in the process of growing and multiplying, give off, like all other living cells, the gas, carbon dioxid. This bubbles and spreads all through the mass, the dough begins to rise, and finally swells right above the pan or crock in which it was set. If it is allowed to stand and rise too long, it becomes sour, because the yeast plant is forming, at the same time, three other substances--alcohol, lactic acid (which gives an acid taste to the bread), and vinegar. Usually they form in such trifling amounts as to be quite unnoticeable. When the bread has become light enough, it is put into the oven to be baked. The baking serves the double purpose of cooking and thus making the starch appetizing, and of killing the yeast germs so that they will carry their fermentation no further. Bread that has not been thoroughly baked, if it is kept too long, will turn sour, because some of the yeast germs that have escaped will set to work again. [Illustration: A THOROUGH BAKING, AND A VALUABLE CRUST Note the cleanly way of handling the food.] That part of the dough that lies on the surface of the loaf, and is exposed to the direct heat of the oven has its starch changed into a substance somewhat like sugar, known as _dextrin_, which, with the slight burning of the carbon, gives the outside, or crust, of bread its brownish color, its crispness, and its delicious taste. The crust is really the most nourishing part of the loaf, as well as the part that gives best exercise to the teeth. Making Bread with Soda or Baking-Powders. Another method of giving lightness to bread is by mixing an acid like sour milk and an alkali like soda with the flour, and letting them effervesce[8] and give off carbon dioxid. This is the mixture used in making the famous "soda biscuit." Still another method is by the use of _baking-powders_, which are made of a mixture of some cheap and harmless acid powder with an alkaline powder--usually some form of soda. As long as these powders are kept dry, they will not act upon each other; but as soon as they are moistened in the dough, they begin to give off carbon dioxid gas. [Illustration: AN IDEAL BAKERY WITH LIGHT, AIR, AND CLEANLINESS] Neither sour milk and soda nor baking-powder will make as thoroughly light and spongy and digestible bread as will yeast. If, however, baking-powders are made of pure and harmless materials, used in proper proportions so as just to neutralize each other, and thus leave no excess of acid or alkali, and if the bread is baked very thoroughly, they make a wholesome and nutritious bread, which has the advantage of being very quickly and easily made. The chief objection to soda or baking-powder bread is that, being often made in a hurry, the acid and the alkali do not get thoroughly mixed all through the flour, and consequently do not raise or lighten the dough properly, and the loaf or biscuit is likely to be heavy and soggy in the centre. This heavy, soggy stuff can be neither properly chewed in the mouth, nor mixed with the digestive juices, and hence is difficult to digest. If, however, soda biscuits are made thin and baked thoroughly so as to make them at least half or two-thirds crust, they are perfectly digestible and wholesome, and furnish a valuable and appetizing variety for our breakfast and supper tables. [Illustration: A BASEMENT BAKERY--A MENACE TO THE PUBLIC HEALTH Disease germs multiply in the dark and damp of the basement. The clothing hanging up in this bakery is a very probable source of infection.] Bran or Brown Bread. Flour made by grinding the wheat-berry without sifting the husks, or bran, out of it is called "whole-wheat" meal; and bread made from it is the brown "bran bread" or "Graham bread." It was at one time supposed that because brown bread contained more nitrogen than white bread, it was more wholesome and nutritious, but this has been found to be a mistake, because the extra nitrogen in the brown bread is in the form of husks and fibres, which the stomach is quite unable to digest. Weight for weight, white bread is more nutritious than brown. The husks and fibres, however, which will not digest, pass on through the bowels unchanged and stir up the walls of the intestines to contract; hence they are useful in small quantities in helping to keep the bowels regular. But, like any other stimulus, too much of it will irritate and disturb the digestion, and cause diarrhea; so that it is not best to eat more than one-fifth of our total bread in the form of brown bread. Dyspeptics who live on brown bread, or on so-called "health foods," are simply feeding their dyspepsia. "Breakfast Foods." The same defect exists in most of the breakfast cereals which flood our tables and decorate our bill-boards. Some of these are made of the waste of flouring mills, known as "middlings," "shorts," or bran, which were formerly used for cow-feed. The claims of many of them are greatly exaggerated, for they contain no more nourishment, or in no more digestible form, than the same weight of bread; and they cost from two to five times as much. As they come on our tables, they are nearly seven-eighths water; and the cream and sugar taken with them are of higher food value than they are. They should never be relied upon as the main part of a meal. Corn Meal. Corn meal is one of the richest meals in nutritive value for its price, as it has an abundance of starch and a small amount of fat. It is, however, poor in nitrogen, and like the other grains, in countries where wheat will grow, it is chiefly valuable for furnishing cakes, fritters, and mushes to give variety to the diet, and help to regulate the bowels. Oatmeal. Oatmeal comes the nearest to wheat in the amount of nitrogen or protein, but the digestible part of this is much smaller than in wheat, and the indigestible portion is decidedly irritating to the bowels, so that if used in excess of about one-fifth of our total starch-food required, it is likely to upset the digestion. Rye. Rye also contains a considerable amount of gluten, but is much poorer in starch than wheat is; and the bread made out of its flour--the so-called "black bread" of France and Germany--is dark, sticky, and inclined to sour readily. Most of the "rye" bread sold in the shops, or served on our tables, is made of wheat flour with a moderate mixture of rye to give the sour taste. Rice. Rice consists chiefly of starch, and makes nutritious puddings or cakes, and may be used as a vegetable, in the place of potatoes, with meat and fish. It is, however, lacking in flavor, and when properly cooked, contains so much water that it has to be eaten in very large amounts to furnish much nutrition. Potatoes. The only important starchy food outside of the grains is potatoes. These contain considerable amounts of starch, but mixed with a good deal of cellulose, or vegetable fibre, and water, so that, like rice, large amounts of them must be eaten in order to furnish a good fuel supply. They, however, make a very necessary article of diet in connection with meats, fish, and other vegetables. As a rough illustration of the fuel value of the different starch foods, it may be said that in order to get the amount of nourishment contained in an ordinary pound loaf of wheat or white bread, it would be necessary to eat about seven pounds of cooked rice, as it comes on the table; about twelve pounds of boiled potatoes; or a bowl of oatmeal porridge about the size of a wash-basin. SUGARS Where Sugar is Obtained. The other great member of the starch, or carbohydrate, group of foods is sugar. This is a scarcer and more expensive food than starch because, instead of being found in solid masses in grains and roots like starch, it is scattered, very thinly, through the fruits, stems, and roots of a hundred different plants, seldom being present in greater amounts than two or three per cent. It is, however, so valuable a food, with so high a fuel value, and is so rapidly digested and absorbed, that man has always had a very keen desire for it, or, as we say, a "sweet tooth," and has literally searched the whole vegetable kingdom the world over to discover plants from which it could be secured in larger amounts. During the last two hundred years it has been obtained chiefly from two great sources: the juicy stem of a tall, coarse reed, or cane, the sugar-cane, growing in the tropics; and (within the last fifty years) the sweet juice of the large root of a turnip-like plant, the beet. Another source of sugar, in the earlier days of this country, was the juice or sap of the sugar maple, which is still greatly relished as a luxury, chiefly in the form of syrup. Honey is nearly pure sugar together with certain ferments and flavoring extracts, derived in part from the flowers from which it is gathered, and in part from the stomach, or crop, of the bee. The Food Value of Sugar. In the early days of its use, sugar, on account of its expensiveness, was looked upon solely as a luxury, and used sparingly--either as a flavoring for less attractive foods, or as a special treat; and like most new foods, it was declared to be unwholesome and dangerous. But sugar is now recognized as one of our most useful and valuable foods. In fuel value, it is the equal, indeed the superior, weight for weight, of starch; and as all starch has to be changed into it before it can be used by the body, it is evident that sugar is more easily digested and absorbed than starch, and furnishes practically a ready-made fuel for our muscles. How We should Use Sugar. The drawbacks of sugar are that, on account of its exceedingly attractive taste, we may eat too much of it; and that, because it is so satisfying, if we do eat too much of it either between meals or at the beginning of meals, our appetites will be "killed" before we have really eaten a sufficient supply of nourishing food. But all we have to do to avoid these dangers is to use common sense and a little self-control, without which any one of our appetites may lead us into trouble. On account of this satisfying property, sugar is best eaten at, or near, the close of a meal; and taken at that time, there is no objection to its use nearly pure, as in the form of sweet-meats, or good wholesome candy. Its alleged injurious effects upon the teeth are largely imaginary and no greater than those of the starchy foods. The teeth of various tropical races which live almost entirely on sugar-cane during certain seasons of the year are among the finest in the world; and any danger may be entirely avoided by proper brushing and cleaning of the teeth and gums after eating. [Illustration: CANDY, LIKE OTHER FOODS, SHOULD BE CLEAN. Candy sold on the street is always questionable. It should never be bought from a cart or stand that is not covered with glass.] If eaten in excess, sugar quickly gives rise to fermentation in the stomach and bowels; but so do the starches and the fats, if over-indulged in. Its real value as a food may be judged from the fact that the German army has made it a part of its field ration in the shape of cakes of chocolate, and that the United States Government buys pure candy by the ton, for the use of its soldiers. FOOTNOTES: [7] On this account, they are often spoken of as carbohydrates, or "carbon-water stuffs." [8] See page 11. CHAPTER VI THE COAL FOODS (_Continued_) ANIMAL FATS The Digestibility of Fats. We have now come to the last group of the real Coal foods, namely, the fats. Fats are the "hottest" and most concentrated fuel that we possess, and might be described as the "anthracites," or "hard coals" of our Coal foods. They are, also, as might be expected from their "strength" or concentration, among the slowest to digest of all our foods, so that, as a rule, we can eat them only in very moderate amounts, seldom exceeding one-tenth to one-sixth of our total food-fuel. It is not, however, quite correct to say that fats are hard to digest, because, although from their solid, oily character, they take a longer time to become digested and absorbed by the body than most other foods, yet they are as perfectly and as completely digested, with the healthy person, as any other kind of food. Indeed, it is this slowness of digestion which gives them their well-known staying-power as a food. Their Place in our Diet. The wholesomeness of fats is well shown by our appetite for them, which is very keen for small amounts of them--witness, for instance, how quickly we notice and how keenly we object to the absence of butter on our bread or potatoes. To have our "bread well-buttered" is a well known expression for comfort and good fortune; yet a very little excess will turn our enjoyment into disgust. Fat, and particularly the cold fat of meat, "gags" us if we try to eat too much of it. Fortunately, most of these fat-foods are quite expensive, pound for pound, and hence we are not often tempted to eat them in excess. Within proper limits, then, fats are an exceedingly important and useful food--a valuable member of the great family of Coal foods. The Advantages of Fat as a Ration. The high fuel value and the small bulk of fats give them a very great practical advantage whenever supplies of food have to be carried for long distances, or for considerable lengths of time, as in sea voyages and hunting and exploring trips. So that in provisioning ships for a long voyage, or fitting out an expedition for the Arctic regions, fats, in the shape of bacon or pork, pemmican,[9] or the richer dried fishes, like salmon, mackerel, and herring, will be found to play an important part. Fats also have the great advantage, like the starches, of keeping well for long periods, especially after they have been melted and sterilized by boiling, or "rendering," as in the case of lard, or have had moderate amounts of salt added to them, as in butter. If you were obliged to pick out a ration which would keep you alive, give you working power, and fit into the smallest possible bulk, you would take a protein, a sugar, and a fat in about equal amounts. Indeed, the German emergency field-ration, intended to keep soldiers in the field for three or four days without their baggage-wagons, or cook-trains, is made up of bacon, pea-meal, and chocolate. A small packet of these, which weighs only a little over two pounds, and which can be slipped into the knapsack, will, with plenty of water, keep a soldier in fighting trim for three days. Butter. The most useful and wholesome single fat is the one which is in greatest demand--butter. This, as we have seen, is the churned and concentrated fat of milk, to which a little salt has been added to keep the milk-acid (_lactic acid_) which cannot be entirely washed out of it, from "turning it sour" or rancid. The rancid, offensive taste of bad or "strong" butter is due to the formation of another acid call _butyric_ ("buttery") _acid_. Butter is the best and most wholesome of our common fats because it is most easily digested, most readily absorbed, and least likely to give rise to this butyric acid fermentation. We should be particularly careful, even more so almost than with other foods, to see that it is perfectly sweet and good, because when we swallow rancid butter, we are simply swallowing a ready-made attack of indigestion. Most people's stomachs are strong enough to deal with small amounts of rancid butter without discomfort; but it is a strain on them that ought to be avoided, especially when good butter is simply a matter of strict cleanliness and care in handling and churning the cream, and of keeping the butter cool after it has been made. Plenty of sweet butter is one of the most important and necessary elements in our diet, especially in childhood. And if children are allowed to eat pretty nearly as much as they want of it on their bread or potatoes, and plenty of its liquid form, cream, on their berries and puddings, it will save the necessity of many a dose of cod-liver oil, or bitter physic. Cream is far superior to either cod-liver or castor oil for keeping us in health. Oleomargarine. On account of the expensiveness of butter, there are a number of substitutes sold, which go under the name of _oleomargarine_. These are made of the fat, or suet, of beef or mutton, mixed with a certain amount of cream and real butter, to give them an agreeable flavor. They are wholesome and useful fats, and for cooking purposes may very largely be substituted for butter. Owing to the fact that their fat is freer from the milk acids, they keep better than butter; and sweet, sound oleomargarine is to be preferred to rank, rancid butter. But it is not so readily digestible as butter is; is more liable to give rise to the butyric acid fermentations in the stomach; is not nearly so appetizing; and its sale as, and under the name of, _butter_ is a fraud which the law rightly forbids and punishes. [Illustration: A SMALL STORE, CLEANLY AND HONEST The milk is well kept, the bread and candies are under glass, and "butterine" is not sold as butter.] Lard. The next most useful and generally used pure fat is lard--the rendered, or boiled-down, fat of pork. It is a useful substitute for butter in cooking, where butter is scarce. But, even in pastry or cakes, it has neither the flavor nor the digestibility of butter, and the latter should always be used when it can be had. Bacon and Ham. The most useful and digestible fat meats are bacon and ham, as the dried, salted, and usually smoked, meat of the pig is called. Like all other fats, they can be eaten only in moderate amounts; but thus eaten, they are both appetizing, digestible, and very nutritious. One good slice of breakfast bacon, for instance, contains as much fuel value as two large saucers of mush or breakfast food, or two eggs, or two large slices of bread, or three oranges, or two small glasses of milk, or a quart of berries. NUTS How Nuts should be Used. Another form of fat is the "meat" of different nuts--walnuts, pecans, almonds, etc. These are quite rich in fats, and also contain a fair amount of proteins, and are, in small quantities, like other fats, appetizing and useful articles of food. But they should not be depended upon to furnish more than a small amount of the whole food supply, or even of its necessary fat, because nearly all nuts contain pungent or bitter aromatic oils and ferments, which give them their flavors, but which are likely to upset the digestion. This is particularly true of the peanut, which is not a true nut at all, but is, as its name indicates, a kind of pea grown underground. Peanuts, on account of their large amount of these irritating substances, are among the most indigestible and undesirable articles of diet in common use. A certain amount of these irritating substances present in nuts may be destroyed by careful roasting and salting; but this must be most carefully done, and it shrinks them in bulk so that the finished product is far more expensive than butter or fat meat of the same nutritive value. Good salted almonds, for instance, cost fifty to eighty cents a pound. The proper place for nuts is where they usually come on our tables--at the end of a meal. Those who attempt to cure themselves of dyspepsia by a nut diet are simply making permanent their disease. FOOTNOTES: [9] Pemmican is a sort of "canned beef" made originally out of the best parts of venison and buffalo-meat. This is boiled, and packed into skin bags; then melted fat is poured in, so as to fill up all the chinks and form a thick layer over the surface. It is now made of beef packed in canvas bags, and is much used by polar expeditions and Alaskan miners. CHAPTER VII KINDLING AND PAPER FOODS--FRUITS AND VEGETABLES The Special Uses of Fruits and Vegetables. We come now to the very much larger but much less important class of foods--the Kindling foods, which help the Coal foods to burn, and supply certain stuffs and elements which the body needs and which the coal foods do not contain. These are the vegetables--other than potatoes and dried peas and beans--and fruits. Fruits and vegetables contain certain mineral elements, which are not present in sufficient proportions in the meats, starches, and fats. Furthermore, the products of their digestion and burning in the body help to neutralize, or render harmless, the waste products from meats, starches, and fats. Thirdly, they have a very beneficial effect upon the blood, the kidneys, and the skin. In fact, the reputation of fruits and fresh vegetables for "purifying the blood" and "clearing the complexion" is really well deserved. The keenness of our liking for fruit at all times, and our special longing for greens and sour things in the spring, after their scarcity in our diet all winter, is a true sign of their wholesomeness. Not the least of their advantages is that they contain a very large proportion of water; and this, though diminishing their fuel value, supplies the body with a naturally filtered and often distilled supply of this necessary element of life. One of the best ways of avoiding that burning summer thirst, which leads you to flood your unfortunate stomach with melted icebergs, in the form of ice water, ice cold lemonade, or soda water, is to take an abundance of fresh fruits and green vegetables. Many of the vegetables contain small amounts of starch, but few of them enough to count upon as fuel, except potatoes, which we have already classed with the Coal foods. Most fruits contain a certain amount of sugar--how much can usually be estimated from their taste, and how little can be gathered from the statement that even the sweetest of fruits, like ripe pears or ripe peaches, contain only about eight per cent of sugar. They are all chiefly useful as flavors for the less interesting staple foods, particularly the starches. In fact, our instinctive use of them to help down bread and butter, or rice, or puddings of various sorts, is a natural and proper one. Like the vegetables, they contain various salts which are useful in neutralizing certain acid substances formed in the body. Soldiers in war, or sailors upon long voyages, who are fed upon a diet consisting chiefly of salted or preserved meat, with bread or hard biscuit and sugar, but without either fruits or fresh vegetables, are likely to develop a disease called scurvy. Little more than a century ago, hundreds of deaths occurred every year in the British and French navies from this disease, and the crews of many a long exploring voyage--like Captain Cook's--or of searchers for the North Pole, have been completely disabled or even destroyed entirely by scurvy. It was discovered that by adding to the diet fruit, or fresh vegetables like cabbage or potatoes, scurvy could be entirely prevented, or cured.[10] Their Low Fuel Value. How little real fuel value fruits and vegetables have, may be easily seen from the following table. In order to get the nourishment contained in a pound loaf of bread, or a pound of roast beef, you would have to eat: 12 large apples or pears (5 lbs.); 4-1/2 qts. of strawberries; a dozen bananas (3-1/2 lbs.); 7 lbs. of onions; 2 doz. large cucumbers (18 lbs.); 10 lbs. of cabbage; 1/2 bushel of lettuce or celery. Apples, the most Wholesome Fruit. Head and shoulders above all the other fruits stands that delight of our childhood days, apples. Well ripened, or properly cooked, they are readily digested by the average stomach; though some delicate digestions have difficulty with them. They contain a fair amount of acids, and from five to seven per cent of sugar. Their general wholesomeness and permanent usefulness may be gathered from the fact that they are one of the few fruits which you can eat almost daily the year round, or at very frequent intervals, without getting tired of them. Food that you don't get tired of is usually food which is good for you. Dried apples are much inferior to the fresh fruit, because they become toughened in drying, and because growers sometimes smoke them with fumes of sulphur in the process, in order to bleach or whiten them; and this turns them into a sort of vegetable leather. Other Fruits--their Advantages and Drawbacks. Next in usefulness probably come pears, though these have the disadvantage of containing a woody fibre, which is rather hard to digest, and they are, of course, poorer "keepers" than apples. Then come peaches, which have one of the most delicious flavors of all fruits, but which tend to set up fermentation and irritation in delicate stomachs, though in the average stomach, when eaten in moderation, they are wholesome and good. Then come the berries--strawberries, raspberries, blackberries,--all excellent and wholesome, when fresh in their season, or canned or preserved. One warning, however, should be given about these most delicious, fragrant berries; and as it happens to apply also to several of our most attractive foods, it is well to mention it here. While perfectly wholesome and good for the majority of people, strawberries, for instance, are to a few--perhaps one in twenty--so irritating and indigestible as to be mildly poisonous. The other foods which may play this kind of trick with the stomachs of certain persons are oranges, bananas, melons, clams, lobsters, oysters, cheese, sage, and parsley, and occasionally, but very rarely, eggs and mutton. This is a matter which each of you can readily find out by experiment. If strawberries, melons, and other fruits agree with you, then eat freely of them, in due moderation. But if, after three or four trials, you find that they do not agree with you, but make your stomach burn, and perhaps give you an attack of nettle-rash or hives, or a headache, then let them alone. The banana is of some food value because it contains not only sugar, but considerable quantities of starch--about the same amount as potatoes. But, if bananas are not fully ripe, both their starch and sugar are highly indigestible; while, if over-ripe, they have developed in them irritating substances, which are likely to upset the digestion and cause hives or eczema, especially in children. Bananas should therefore be regarded rather as a luxury and an agreeable variety than as a substantial part of the diet. Food Values of the Different Vegetables. The vegetables depend for their value almost solely upon the alkaline salts and the water in them, and upon their flavor, which gives an agreeable variety to the diet. Parsnips, beets, and carrots are among the most nutritious, as they contain some starch and sugar; but they so quickly pall upon the taste that they can be used only in small amounts. Turnips and cabbages possess the merit of being cheap and very easily grown. They contain valuable earthy salts, plenty of pure water, and a trace of starch. But these advantages are offset by their large amount of tough, woody vegetable fibre; this is incapable of digestion, and though in moderate amounts it is valuable in helping to regulate the movements of the bowels, in excess it soon becomes irritating. Both of them, particularly cabbages, contain, also, certain flavoring extracts, very rich in sulphur and exceedingly irritating to the stomach, which cause them to disagree with some persons. If these are got rid of by brisk boiling in at least two waters, then cabbage is a fairly wholesome and digestible dish for the average stomach. And because of its cheapness and "keeping" power, it is often the only vegetable that can be secured at a reasonable cost at certain seasons of the year. Onions, especially the milder and larger ones, are an excellent and wholesome vegetable, containing small amounts of starch, although their pungent flavor, due to an aromatic oil, makes them so irritating to some stomachs as to be quite indigestible. Sweet corn, whether fresh or dried, is wholesome, and has a fair degree of nutritive value, as it contains fair amounts of both starch and sugar. It should, however, be very thoroughly chewed and eaten moderately, on account of the thick, firm indigestible husk which surrounds the kernel. Tomatoes are an exceedingly valuable, though rather recent addition to our dietary. Their fresh, pungent acid is, like the fruit acids, wholesome and beneficial; and they can be preserved or canned without losing any of their flavor. They were at one time denounced as being indigestible, and even as the cause of cancer; but these charges were due to ignorance and distrust of anything new. Lighter Vegetables, or Paper Foods. The lighter vegetables such as lettuce, celery, spinach, cucumbers, and parsley have, in a previous chapter, been classed with the paper foods. They are all agreeable additions to the diet on account of their fresh taste and pleasant flavor, though they contain little or no nutritive matter. The Advantages of a Vegetable Garden. Notwithstanding their slight fuel value, there are few more valuable and wholesome elements in the diet than an abundant supply of fresh green vegetables. Everyone who is so situated that he can possibly arrange for it, should have a garden, if only the tiniest patch, and grow them for his own use, both on account of their greater wholesomeness and freshness when so grown, and because of the valuable exercise in the open air, and the enjoyment and interest afforded by their care. [Illustration: THE JOY OF HIS OWN GARDEN PATCH] FOOTNOTES: [10] As vegetables and fruit are bulky and likely to spoil, on the long voyages of sailing vessels before steamships were invented bottles of the juice of limes (a small kind of lemon) were added, instead, to the hard-tack and "salt-horse" of the ship's stores. Because of this custom, the long-voyage merchantmen who carried cargoes round the Horn or the Cape were for years nicknamed "Lime-juicers." CHAPTER VIII COOKING Why We Cook our Food. While some of all classes of food may be eaten raw, yet we have gradually come to submit most of our foods to the heat of a fire, in various ways; this process is known as _cooking_. While cooking usually wastes a little, and sometimes a good deal, of the fuel value of the food and, if carelessly or stupidly done, may make it less digestible, in the main it makes it both more digestible and safer, though much more expensive. This it does in three ways: by making it taste better; by softening it so as to make it more easily masticated; and by sterilizing it, or destroying any germs or animal parasites which may be in it. Cooking Improves the Taste of Food. It may seem almost absurd to regard changing the taste of a food as of sufficient importance to justify the expense and trouble of a long process like cooking. Yet this was probably one of the main reasons why cooking came into use in the first place; and it is still one of the most important reasons for continuing it. No one would feel attracted by a plate of slabs of raw meat, with a handful of flour, a raw potato or two, and some green apples; but cook these and you immediately have an appetizing and attractive meal. Any food, to be a thoroughly good food, must "taste good"; otherwise, part of it will fail to be digested, and will sooner or later upset the stomach and clog the appetite. Cooking Makes Food Easier to Chew and Digest. The second important use of cooking is that it makes food both easier to masticate and easier to digest. As we have seen, it bursts the little coverings of the starchy grains, and makes the tough fibres of grains and roots crisp and brittle, as is well illustrated in the soft, mealy texture of a baked potato, and in the crispness of parched wheat or corn. It _coagulates_, or curdles, the jelly-like pulp of meat, and the gummy white of the egg, and the sticky gluten of wheat flour, so that they can be ground into tiny pieces between the teeth. [Illustration: THE KITCHEN SHOULD BE CARED FOR AS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ROOMS IN THE HOUSE] We could hardly eat the different kinds of grains and meals and flours in proper amounts at all, unless they were cooked; indeed they require much longer and more thorough baking, or boiling, than meats. The amount of cooking required should always be borne in mind when counting the cost of a diet, as the fuel, time, and labor consumed in cooking vegetable articles of diet often bring up their expense much more nearly to that of meats than the cost of the raw material in the shops would lead us to expect. Cooking Sterilizes Food. A third, and probably on the whole, the most valuable and important service rendered by cooking is, that it sterilizes our food and kills any germs, or animal parasites, which may have been in the body of the animal, or in the leaves of the plant, from which it came; or, as is far the commoner and greater danger, may have got on it from dirty or careless handling, or exposure to dust. While it was undoubtedly the great improvement that cooking makes in the taste of food that first led our ancestors--and probably chiefly induces us--to use the process, it is hardly probable that they would have continued to bear the expense, trouble, and numerous discomforts of cooking, had they not noticed this significant fact: that those families and tribes that had the habit of thoroughly cooking their food, suffered least from diseases of the stomach and intestines, and hence lived longer and survived in greater numbers than the "raw fooders." We are perfectly right in spending a good deal of time, care, and thought on cooking, preparing, and serving our food, for we thus lengthen our lives and diminish our sicknesses. Civilized man is far healthier than any known "noble savage," in spite of what poets and story-tellers say to the contrary. The Three Methods of Cooking. The three[11] chief methods of cooking--_baking_, or roasting; _boiling_, or stewing; and _frying_--have each their advantages as well as disadvantages. No one of them would be suitable for all kinds of food; and no one of them is to be condemned as unwholesome in itself, if intelligently done; although all of them, if carelessly, or stupidly, carried out, will waste food, and render it less digestible instead of more so. In the main, the methods that are in common use for each particular kind of food, or under each special condition, are reasonable and sensible--the result of hundreds of years of experimenting. The only exceptions are that, on account of its ease and quickness, frying is resorted to rather more frequently than is best; while boiling is more popular than it should be, on account of the small amount of thought and care involved in the process. Roasting, or Baking. Roasting, or baking, is probably the highest form of the art of cooking, developing the finest flavors, causing less waste of food value, and requiring the greatest skill and care. On general principles, we may say that almost anything which can be roasted or baked, should be roasted or baked. On the other hand, roasting or baking has the disadvantage of taking a great deal of fuel and of time, and of being exceedingly fatiguing and annoying for the cook, making the labor cost high; and it cannot be used where a meal is needed in a hurry. If the process is carelessly done and carried too far, it may also waste a great deal of the food material, either by burning or scorching, or by the commoner and almost equally wasteful process of turning the whole outside of the roast--particularly in the case of meat--into a hard, tough, leathery substance, which it is almost impossible either to chew or to digest. Boiling. The advantages of boiling are that it is the easiest of all forms of cookery, and within the grasp of the lowest intelligence; that, on account of keeping the food continually surrounded by water, it leads to less waste and is far less likely than either baking or frying to result in destroying part of the food if not carefully watched; and that it can be used in cooking many cheap, coarse foods, such as the mushes, graham meal, corn meal, hominy, potatoes, cabbages, turnips, etc., which furnish the bulk of our food. On the other hand, from the point of view of fuel used, it is the most expensive of all forms of cooking; and unless a fire is being kept up for other purposes, which allows boiling or stewing to go on on the back of the stove as an "extra," without additional expense, careful experiments have shown that the prolonged boiling needed by many of these cheaper and coarser foods, especially such as are recommended by most diet reformers, brings their total cost up to that of bread, milk, eggs, sugar, and the cheaper cuts of meat,--all of which are more wholesome and more appetizing foods. [Illustration: A KNOWLEDGE OF COOKING IS A VALUABLE PART OF A GOOD EDUCATION] The supposed saving in boiling meat, that you get two courses, soup and meat, out of one joint, is imaginary; for, as we have seen, the soup or water in which meat has been boiled contains little, or nothing, of the fuel value, or nourishing part of the meat; and all the flavor that is saved in this is lost by the boiled meat, rendering it not only much less appetizing, but also less digestible. You cannot have the flavor of your food in two places at once. If you save it in the soup, you lose it from the meat. Frying. The chief advantages of frying are its marked saving of time, of fuel, and of discomfort to the cook; it also develops the appetizing flavors of the food to a very high degree. A wholesome, appetizing meal can be prepared by frying, much more quickly than by either baking or boiling, and with less than half the fuel expense. [Illustration: BOYS, AS WELL AS GIRLS, SHOULD KNOW HOW TO COOK] The drawbacks of frying come chiefly from unintelligent and careless methods of applying it. It is somewhat wasteful of food material, particularly of meats; although, if the fat which is fried out in the process can be used in other cooking, or turned into a gravy, a good deal of this waste can be avoided. As, in frying, some form of fat has to be used to keep the food from burning, this fat is apt to form a coating over the surface and, if used in excessive amounts, at too low a temperature, may soak deeply into the food, thus coating over every particle of it with a thick, water-proof film, which prevents the juices of the stomach and the upper part of the bowel from attacking and digesting it. This undesirable result, however, can be entirely avoided by having both the pan and the melted fat which it contains, _very_ hot, before the steak, chop, potatoes, or buckwheat cakes are put into the pan. When this is done, the heat of the pan and of the boiling fat instantly sears over the whole surface of the piece of food, and forms a coating which prevents the further penetration of the fat. Quick frying is, as a rule, a safe and wholesome form of cooking. Slow frying, which means stewing in melted grease for twenty or thirty minutes, is one of the most effective ways ever invented of spoiling good food and ruining digestion. Why Every One should Learn how to Cook. Every boy and every girl ought to know how to cook. Cooking is a most interesting art, and a knowledge of it is a valuable part of a good education. Everybody would find such a knowledge exceedingly useful at some time in his life; and most of us, all our lives long. As a life-saving accomplishment, it is much more valuable than knowing how to swim. Every schoolhouse of more than five rooms should have a kitchen and a lunch room as part of its equipment, and classes should take turns in cooking and serving lunches for the rest of the children.[12] FOOTNOTES: [11] For meats a fourth method may be used--_broiling_, which for flavor and wholesomeness is superior to any other, but requires a special and rather expensive type of clear, hot fire and a high degree of skill. [12] Whenever lunches are brought by children, or the school-lunch is a problem, if possible equip a spare room with a gas or a coal stove, sink, tables, chairs, necessary dishes, etc., and let classes under direction of teacher take turns in purchasing food supplies for lunch; cooking and serving lunch; planning dietaries with reference to balanced nutrition, digestibility, and cheapness; washing pots, pans, and dishes; cleaning kitchen; protecting and storing foods; finding risks of spoiling, contamination, infection, fly-visiting; and practicing other forms of kitchen hygiene. CHAPTER IX OUR DRINK FILLING THE BOILER OF THE BODY-ENGINE The Need of Water in the Body-Engine. If you have ever taken a long railway journey, you will remember that, about every two or three hours, you would stop longer than usual at some station, or switch, for the engine to take in water. No matter how briskly the fire burns in the furnace, or how much good coal you may shovel into it, if there be no water in the boiler above it to expand and make steam, the engine will do no work. And an abundant supply of water is just as necessary in our own bodies, although not used in just the same way as in the engine. The singular thing about water, both in a locomotive and in our own bodies is that, absolutely necessary as it is, it is neither burned up nor broken down in any way, in making the machine go; so that it gives off no energy, as our food does, but simply changes its form slightly. Exactly the same amount of water, to the ounce, or even the teaspoonful, that is poured into the boiler of an engine, is given off through its funnel and escape-pipes in the form of steam; and precisely the same amount of water which we pour into our stomachs will reappear on the surface of the body again in the form of the vapor from the lungs, the perspiration from the skin, and the water from the kidneys. It goes completely through the engine, or the body, enables the one to work and the other to live, and yet comes out unchanged. Just how water works in the engine we know--the heat from the furnace changes it into steam, which means that heat expands it, or makes it fill more space. This swelling pushes forward the cylinder that starts the wheels of the engine. The next puff gives them another whirl, and in a few minutes the big locomotive is puffing steadily down the track. Water is Necessary to Life. Just how water works in the body we do not know, as most of it is not even turned into steam or vapor. But this much we do know, that life cannot exist in the absence of water. Odd as it may seem to us at first sight, ninety-five, yes, ninety-nine per cent of our body cells are water-animals, and can live and grow only when literally swimming in water. The scaly cells on the surface of our skin, our hair, and the tips of our nails are the only parts of us that live in air. In fact, over five-sixths of the weight and bulk of our bodies is made up of water. Some one has quaintly, but truthfully, described the human body as composed of a few pounds of charcoal, a bushel of air, half a peck of lime, and a couple of handfuls of salt dissolved in four buckets of water. The reason why nearly all our foods, as we have seen, contain such large amounts of water is that they, also, are the results of life--the tissues and products of plants or animals. Water Frees the Body from Waste Substances. Water in the body, then, is necessary to life itself. But another most important use is to wash out all the waste substances from the different organs and tissues and carry them to the liver, the kidneys, the lungs, and the skin, where they can be burned up and got rid of. We must keep our bodies well flushed with water, just as we should keep a free current of water flowing through our drain-pipes and sewers. It Keeps the Body from Getting Over-heated. In summer time, or in hot climates the year round, an abundant supply of water is of great importance in keeping the body from becoming overheated, by pouring itself out on the skin in the form of perspiration, and cooling us by evaporation, as we shall see in the chapter on the skin. The Meaning of Thirst. None of us who has ever been a mile or more away from a well, or brook, on a hot summer's day needs to be told how necessary water is, for comfort as well as for health. The appetite which we have developed for it--_thirst_, as we call it--is the most tremendous and powerful craving that we can feel, and the results of water starvation are as serious and as quick in coming as is the keenness of our thirst. Men in fairly good condition, if they are at rest, and not exposed to hardship, and have plenty of water to drink, can survive without food for from two to four weeks; but if deprived of water, they will perish in agony in from two to three days. [Illustration: THE CHAINED CUP An "Exchange" for disease germs.] We should Drink Three Pints of Water a Day. Although all our foods, either as we find them in the state of nature, or as they come on the table cooked and prepared for eating, contain large quantities of water, this is not enough for the needs of the body; to keep in good health we must also drink in some form about three pints, or six glassfuls, of water in the course of the day. Part of this goes, as you will remember (p. 16), to dissolve the food so that it can be readily absorbed by our body cells in the process of digestion. WHERE OUR DRINKING WATER COMES FROM Water Contained in our Food is Pure. Seeing that five-sixths of our food is water, it is clearly of the greatest importance that that water should be pure. That part of our water supply which we get in and with our foods is fortunately, for the most part, almost perfectly pure, having been specially filtered by the plants or animals which originally drank it, or having been boiled in the process of cooking. [Illustration: THE SPOUTING FOUNTAIN Where no lips need touch the cup.] Water is Always in Motion. The part of our water supply which we take directly, in the form of drinking water, is, however, unfortunately anything but free from danger of impurities. The greatest difficulty with water is that it will not "stay put"--it is continually on the move. The same perpetual circulation, with change of form, but without loss of substance, which is taking place in the engine and in our bodies, is taking place in the world around us. The water from the ocean, the lakes, and the rivers is continually evaporating under the heat of the sun and rising in the form of vapor, or invisible steam, into the air. There it becomes cooler, and forms the clouds; and when these are cooled a little more, the vapor changes into drops of water and pours down as rain, or, if the droplets freeze, as snow or hail. The rain falls upon the leaves of the trees and the spears of the grass, or the thirsty plowed ground, soaks down into the soil and "seeps" or drains gradually into the streams and rivers, and down these into the lakes and oceans, to be again pumped up by the sun. All we can do is to catch what we need of it, "on the run," somewhere in the earthy part of its circuit. Why our Drinking Water is Likely to be Impure. Every drop of water that we drink or use, fell somewhere on the surface of the earth, in the form of rain or snow; and if we wish to find out whether it is pure and safe, we must trace its course through the soil, or the streams, from the point where it fell. Our drinking water has literally washed "all outdoors" before it reaches us, and what it may have picked up in that washing makes the possibilities of its danger. As it falls from the skies, it is perfectly pure--except in large cities or manufacturing centres, where rain water contains small amounts of soot, smoke-acids, and dust, but even these are in such small amounts as to be practically harmless. But the moment it reaches the ground, it begins to soak up something out of everything that it touches; and here our dangers begin. Risks from Leaf Mould. Practically the whole surface of the earth is covered with some form of vegetation--grass, trees, or other green plants. These dying down and decaying year after year, form a layer of vegetable mould such as you can readily scratch up on the surface of the ground in a forest or old meadow; this is known as leaf mould, or _humus_. As the water soaks through this mould, it becomes loaded with decaying vegetable matter, which it carries with it down into the soil. Most of this, fortunately, is comparatively harmless to the human digestion. But some of this vegetable matter, such as we find in the water from bogs or swamps, or even heavy forests, will sometimes upset the digestion; hence, the natural dislike that we have for water with a marshy, or "weedy," taste. [Illustration: NATURE'S FILTER-BED The spring water is pure; the brook may gather infection as it goes.] Nature's Filter-Bed. When, however, this peaty water soaks on down through the grass, roots, and leaf mold, into the soil, it comes in contact with Nature's great filter-bed--the second place in the circuit where the water is again made perfectly pure. This filter-bed consists of a layer of more or less spongy, porous soil, or earth, swarming with millions of tiny vegetable germs known as bacteria. These eagerly pick out all the decaying vegetable substances of the water and feed upon them, changing them into harmless carbon dioxid water, and small amounts of _ammonia_. Not only will this filter-bed, or spongy mat of bacteria, burn up and remove all traces of vegetable decay, but if the rain happens to have soaked through the decaying body of a bird or animal or insect, the bacteria will just as eagerly feed upon these animal substances and change them into harmless gases and salts.[13] By the time the rain water has reached the deeper layers of the soil, it is again perfectly pure and has also, in seeping through the soil, picked up certain mineral salts (such as _calcium_, _sodium_, and _magnesium_) which are of use in the body; so that in an open or thinly settled country, the water in streams, rivers, and lakes is usually fairly pure and quite wholesome. That is why, in ancient times, the great majority of villages and towns and camps were situated on the bank of some stream, where a supply of water could easily be obtained. CAUSES AND DANGERS OF POLLUTED WATER Wells--the Oldest Method of Supplying Water. It was long ago discovered that, by digging pits or holes in the ground, the rain water, in its steady flow toward the streams and lakes, could be caught or trapped, and that if the pit were made deep enough, a sufficient amount would accumulate during the winter or spring to last well on into the summer, unless the season were unusually dry. These pits, or water traps, are our familiar _wells_, from which most of our water supply, except in the large cities, is still taken. These wells were naturally dug, or sunk, as near as might be to the house, so as to shorten the distance that the water had to be carried; and from this arose their chief and greatest source of danger. The Danger to Wells from Household Waste. Every house has, like our bodies, a certain amount of waste, which must be got rid of. Some of this material can, of course, be fed to pigs and chickens, and in that way disposed of. But the simplest and easiest thing to do with the watery parts of the household waste is to take them to the back door and throw them out on the ground, while table-scraps and other garbage are thrown into the long grass, or bushes--a method which is still, unfortunately, pursued in a great many houses in the country and the suburbs of towns. If the area over which they are thrown is large enough, and particularly if the soil is porous and well covered with vegetation, nature's filter-bed--the soil, the bacteria, and the roots of the grass and other plants combined--will purify a surprising amount of waste; but there is always the danger, particularly in the wet weather of spring and of late fall, that the soil will become charged with more of these waste matters than the bacteria can destroy, and that these waste poisons will be washed down in the rain water right into the pit, or trap, which has been dug for it--the well. [Illustration: AN EXAMPLE OF GOOD FARM DRAINAGE Here the farmhouse is set above the barn, pens, and cattle yard, and at some distance from them. The drainage from these is into the lower fields, so that a well driven into the high ground not far from the house is presumably safe.] The Danger from Outbuildings. This danger is further increased by the fact that for the same reason--the vital need of plenty of water for all living creatures--the hen coop, the pig pen, the cow stable, and the horse barn are all likely to be built clustering around this same well. If the fertilizer from these places is, as it should be in all intelligent farming, protected from the rain so as not to have all its strength washed out of it, and removed and spread on the soil at frequent intervals, the well may even yet escape contamination; but the chances are very strongly against it. If you will figure out that a well drains the surface soil in every direction for a distance from ten to thirty times its own depth, and that the average well is about twenty-five feet deep, you can readily see what a risk of contaminating the well is caused by every barn, outhouse, or pen within from sixty to a hundred and fifty yards from its mouth. Every well from which drinking water is taken should be at least fifty, and better, a hundred and fifty, yards away from any stable, outhouse, or barn; or set well up-hill from it, so that all drainage runs away from its basin. This, of course, is possible only in the country, or in villages or small towns, where houses have plenty of ground about them. Consequently, the health laws of most cities and states forbid the use of shallow wells for drinking purposes in cities of over 10,000 population. Causes which Produce Pure Well Water. Occasionally a well will be driven through a layer of rock or hard water-proof clay, before the water-bearing layer of soil, or sand, is struck, so that its water will be drawn, not from the rain that falls on the surface of the ground immediately about it, but from that which has fallen somewhere at a considerable distance and filtered down through the soil. This water, on account of the many, many layers of soil through which it has filtered, and the long distance it has come, is usually fairly pure, so far as animal or vegetable impurities are concerned, though it is apt to have become too strong in certain salty and mineral substances, which give it a taste of salt, or iron, or sulphur. If, however, it is free from these salty substances, it makes a very pure and wholesome drinking water; and if the upper part of the well shaft be lined with bricks and cement, so that the surface water cannot leak into it, it may be used with safety for drinking purposes even in the heart of a city. [Illustration: THE DANGER SPOT ON THE FARM The milk inspector on visiting this dairy farm found that the well was receiving the drainage of both house and privy. The well water was used for drinking and for washing the milk pails (seen behind the fence).] The Greatest Single Danger to Well Water. The greatest single danger to the purity of well water is the privy vault. This is doubly dangerous, first, because it is dug below the level at which the bacteria in the soil are most abundant and active, so that they cannot attack and break up its contents; and the impurities, therefore, are gradually washed down by the rain water into the soil, unchanged, and seep directly into the well. The other reason is that its contents may contain the germs of serious diseases, particularly typhoid fever and other bowel troubles. These germs and their poisons would usually be destroyed by the bacteria of the soil, if not poured out in too large quantities; but in the privy vault they escape their attack, and so are carried on with the slow leakage of water into the well; then those who use that water are very liable to have typhoid fever and other serious diseases. Early Methods of Prevention. On account of these filth-dangers, it began, a century or so ago, to be the custom in cleanly and thoughtful households to provide, first, ditches, and then, lines of pipes, made out of hollow wood or baked clay, and later of iron, called drains, through which all the watery parts of household wastes could be carried away and poured out at some distance from the house. Then toilets, or flush-closets, were built, and this kind of waste was carried completely away from the house, and beyond danger of contaminating the wells. How Streams were Contaminated. For a time this seemed to end the danger, as the waste was soaked up by the soil, and eaten by its hungry bacteria and drunk up again by the roots of plants. But when ten or a dozen houses began to combine and run their drain-pipes together into a large drain called a sewer, then this could not open upon the surface of the ground, but had to be run into some stream, or brook, in order to be carried away. As cities and towns, which had been obliged to give up their wells, were beginning to collect the water from these same brooks and streams in reservoirs and deliver it in pipes to all their houses, it can be easily seen that we had simply exchanged one danger for another. The Loss of Life from Typhoid Fever. For a time, indeed, it looked as if the new danger were the greater of the two, because, when the typhoid germs were washed into a well, they poisoned or infected only one, or at most two or three, families who used the water from that well. But when they were carried into a stream which was dammed to form a reservoir to supply a town with water, then the whole population of the town might become infected. A great many epidemics of typhoid fever occurred in just this way, before people realized how great this danger was. Simply from the pouring of the wastes from one or two typhoid fever cases into the streams leading into the water reservoir used by a town, five hundred, a thousand, or even three or four thousand cases of typhoid have developed within a few weeks, with from one hundred to five hundred deaths. [Illustration: TYPHOID EPIDEMIC IN THE MOHAWK-HUDSON VALLEY, 1891-92 In 1891-92 typhoid fever broke out in Schenectady on the Mohawk River. Following this, Cohoes and West Troy, which drew their water supply from the Mohawk below Schenectady, and Albany, which drew its supply from the Hudson below the mouth of the Mohawk, suffered from typhoid epidemics; while Waterford and Troy, which drew their supplies from the Hudson _above_ the mouth of the Mohawk, and the river towns that, like Lansingburgh, drew from other sources, entirely escaped the infection.] In fact, even to-day, when these dangers are better understood, and while most of our big cities are getting fairly clear of typhoid, so ignorant and careless are the smaller towns, villages, and private houses all over the United States, that over 35,000 deaths[14] from typhoid fever occur every year in a country which prides itself upon its cleanliness and its intelligence. This means, too, that there are at least half a million people sick of the disease, and in bed or utterly prevented from working, for from five to fifteen weeks each. All of which frightful loss of human life and human labor, to say nothing of the grief, bereavement, and anxiety of the two million or more families and relatives of these typhoid victims, is due to eating dirt and drinking filth. Dirt is surely the most expensive thing there is, instead of the cheapest. METHODS OF OBTAINING PURE WATER Wise Planning and Spending of Money is Necessary. If our city wells are defiled by manure heaps and vault-privies, and our streams by sewage, where are we to turn for pure water? All that is required is foresight and a little intelligent planning and wise spending of money. Of course the community must take hold of the problem, through a Board of Health, or Health Officer, appointed for the purpose; and this is why questions of health are coming to play such an important part in legislation, and even in politics. No matter how fast a city is growing or how much money its inhabitants are making, if it has an impure water supply or a bad sewage system, there will be disease and death, suffering and unhappiness among its people, which no amount of money can make up for. Cleanliness is not only next to godliness, but one of the most useful forms of it; and a city can afford to spend money liberally to secure it--in fact, it is the best investment a city can make. Artesian and Deep Wells. The earliest, and still the most eagerly sought-for, source of pure water supply is springs or deep wells, such as we have referred to. Both of these are fed by rain water which has fallen somewhere upon the surface of the earth. As the layers of earth or rock, of which the crust of the earth is made up, do not run level, or horizontal, but are tilted and tipped in all directions, this rain water soaks down until it reaches one of these sloping layers that is so hard, or tough, as to be waterproof, and then runs along over its surface in a sort of underground stream. If anywhere in the course of this stream a very deep well shaft is driven right down through the soil until it strikes the surface of this sloping layer of rock, then the water will rise in this shaft to the level of the highest point from which it is running. [Illustration: ARTESIAN WELL BORINGS The sketch shows a wide section from northern Illinois to central Wisconsin, in which the cities have rejected the water supplies afforded by the rivers, choosing instead to bore down almost to hard rock to insure the purity of the supply.] If this highest point of the waterproof layer be many miles away, up in the hills above the surface of the ground where the well is dug, then the water will rise to the surface and sometimes even spout twenty, thirty, or fifty feet above it. This forms what is known as a _gushing_, or _artesian_, well (from Artois, a province in France, in which such wells were first commonly used) and furnishes a very pure and valuable source of water supply. If it rises only twenty, thirty, or fifty feet in the well-shaft, but keeps flowing in at a sufficient rate, then we get what is known as a "living," or _permanent_ well, and this also is a very valuable and pure source of water supply. Springs. Springs are formed on the same plan as the deep well, but with the difference that the waterproof layer on top of which the water is running either crops out on the surface again, lower down the mountain, or folds upon itself and comes up again to the surface some distance away from the mountain chain, out on the level. This is why springs are usually found in or near mountainous or hilly regions. If the water of a spring has gone deep enough into, or far enough through, the layers of the earth, it may, like water of some of the artesian wells, contain certain salts and minerals, particularly soda, sulphur, and iron. Such springs are often highly valued as mineral water, healing springs, or baths, partly because of these salts, partly on account of their peculiar taste. Most of the virtues ascribed to mineral waters or springs are due, however, to their _pure water_, and its cleansing effects internally and externally when freely used. Springs are among the most highly prized sources of water supply, because they have gone underground sufficiently deep to become well filtered and cooled to a low temperature, and usually not far enough to become too heavily loaded with salts or minerals like the waters of the deep wells. It must, however, be remembered that they also come from rain-water, and that in hilly or broken regions the source of that rain water may be the surface of the ground only a few hundred yards up the hill or mountain, and impurities there may affect it. Much of the delightful sparkle of spring water is due, as in the case of the popular soda water, to the presence of carbon dioxid, only in spring water it is produced by the decomposition of vegetable matter in it. As springs usually break out in a hollow or at the foot of a hill, unless carefully closed in they are quite liable to contamination from rain water from the surrounding surface of the ground. Where springs of a sufficient size can be reached, or a sufficiently "live" series of deep wells can be bored, these furnish a safe source of water supply for cities. But of course not more than one city in five or ten is so favored. Mountain Reservoirs. Two other methods of securing a water supply are now generally adopted. One is to pick out some stream up in the hills or mountains, within fifteen miles or so of the city, and put in a dam, thus making a reservoir, or to enlarge some lake which already exists there. At the same time, the entire valley, or slope of the mountain, which this stream or lake drains of its surface water, is bought up by the Government, or turned into a forest reserve, so that no houses can be built or settlement of any kind permitted upon it. It can still be used for lumber supply, for pastures, and, within reasonable limits, for a great public hunting and fishing reserve and camping resort. [Illustration: A CITY WATER SUPPLY BROUGHT FROM THE FAR HILLS] Almost every intelligent and farsighted town, which has not springs or deep wells, is looking toward the acquirement of some such area as this for its source of pure water. Many great cities go from thirty to fifty miles, and some even a hundred and fifty miles, in order to reach such a source, carrying the water into the city in a huge water-pipe, or _aqueduct_. These cities find that the millions of dollars saved by the prevention of death and disease amount to many times the cost of such a system, while the water rents gladly paid by both private houses and manufacturing establishments give good interest on the investment. Any town can afford to go a mile for every thousand of its population for such a source of water supply as this; and secure, _gratis_, a valuable forest preserve, public park, and beauty spot.[15] Filtration. The other method, which has to be adopted by cities situated on level plains, or at the mouths of great rivers, is to take the water of some lake, or river, as far out in the former, or as high up the latter, as possible, and purify it by filtration. This can be done at a moderate expense by preparing great settling-basins and filter-beds. The first are great pools or small lakes, into which the water is run and held until most of the mud and coarser dirt has settled or sunk. Then this clear water above the sediment is run on to great beds, first of gravel, then of coarse sand, then of fine sand; and if these beds are large enough, and frequently changed and cleaned, so that they do not become clogged, and the process is carried out slowly, the water, when it comes through the last bed, is pure enough to drink safely.[16] [Illustration: A RESERVOIR AND COSTLY DAM] One of these sources of a safe and wholesome water-supply--the deep flowing well, or spring; the water shut up in the mountains in its lake or reservoir; or the slow filter-bed--should be used by every intelligent and progressive town of more than a thousand inhabitants. Sewage and its Disposal. At the same time, while seeking a source of water-supply far removed from any possibility of contagion, we must not neglect the other end of the problem, the protecting of our rivers and lakes from pollution so far as possible; for the water from these must necessarily be used by thousands of people along their banks, either directly, or in the form of shallow wells, sunk not far from the water's edge. Moreover, so foul are many of our rivers and streams becoming in thickly settled regions that fish can no longer live in them, and it is hardly safe to bathe in them.[17] Fortunately, however, a great deal of the worst contamination can be prevented by using modern methods of disposing of sewage, such as filter-beds and sewage farms. All of these methods use the bacteria of the soil, or crops growing in it, to eat up the waste and thus purify the sewage. [Illustration: SCRAPING THE SEDIMENT FROM THE BOTTOM OF A RESERVOIR] HOME METHODS OF PURIFYING WATER Boiling. Where the water that you are obliged to drink is not known to be pure, then it can be made quite safe for drinking purposes by the simple process of boiling it for about ten or fifteen minutes. But this, except in travelling or in emergencies, is a lazy, slipshod substitute for pure water, and extremely unsatisfactory as well; for the boiling drives off all its air and other gases, and throws down most of the salts, so that boiled water has a flat, insipid taste. These salts, although sometimes regarded as impurities, are not such in any true sense; for the lime and soda especially are of considerable value in the body, so that boiled or sterilized water is neither a pleasant nor a wholesome permanent drink. Instead of boiling the water, get to work to protect your own well from filth of all sorts, if you drink well water; or, if not, to help the Board of Health to agitate, and keep on agitating, until something is done to compel your selectmen or City Council to secure a pure supply. [Illustration: THE DOMESTIC FILTER IN USE Unless the sand and charcoal in the glass bulb is very frequently cleaned, it serves merely as a "catch-all" for impurities, through which the water must flow.] Domestic Filters. Much the same must be said of _private_ or _domestic filters_. These are, at best, temporary substitutes, and should not be depended upon for permanent use. Many of them are made to sell rather than to purify, and will remove only the larger or mechanical impurities from the water. Others, while they work well at first, are exceedingly likely to become clogged, when the tendency is to punch at them to make them work faster, thus either poking a hole through them or cracking the filter-shell, so that a stream of water flows steadily through, just as impure as when it entered. Private filters, like boiling water, are only temporary ways of meeting conditions _which ought not to be allowed to exist at all_ in civilized communities, or in your own homes. A score of court decisions in all parts of the world have now held that the water company is legally responsible for all avoidable pollution of public water-supplies, and nine tenths of pollutions _are_ avoidable. FOOTNOTES: [13] These gases and salts are eagerly sucked up by the roots of plants, so that the soil bacteria are our best friends, changing poisonous decaying things into harmless plant-foods. They are the chief secret of the fertility of a soil; and the more there are of them the richer a soil is. [14] This makes fourteen times as many deaths from typhoid in proportion to the population as occur in Germany. [15] New York City, for instance, goes forty miles up into the hills to the great Croton reservoir for its water supply; and as this is proving insufficient, is preparing to go ninety-five miles up into the Ramapo Hills to secure control of a whole country-side for a permanent source of supply. Portland, Oregon, nearly twenty years ago, with then a population of some 75,000, built an aqueduct sixty miles up into the mountains to a lake on the side of Mt. Hood, and has reaped the advantages of its foresight ever since, in a low death rate and a rapid growth (200,000 in 1910), as well as a financial profit on its investment. Los Angeles, California, is preparing to build an aqueduct a hundred and thirty miles, and tunnel two mountain ranges in order to reach an inexhaustible supply of water. [16] Of late, currents of electricity are passed through the water (setting free _oxygen_ or _ozone_) which make the purifying of it much more rapid and complete. It is, however, often considered safer to pass the water through still another filter bed, consisting of layers of charcoal, which has the power of gathering oxygen in its pores, to attack and _oxidize_, or burn up, the remaining impurities in the water. A sort of scum forms over the surface of the last and finest bed of sand or charcoal, and if this scum is not too frequently removed, though it makes the filtering slower, the water comes out purer. On examining this scum, we find it to consist of a thick mat of our old friends, the purifying bacteria of the soil. So that the last step of our artificial filtration is simply an imitation of nature's great filter-bed. [17] Several streams emptying into the Ohio River from a thickly settled region are said to be actually pumped out into waterworks systems, used for drinking, washing, and manufacturing, and run back into the river again through sewers by the different cities along its banks, at such frequent intervals that every drop of water in them passes through waterworks systems and sewers _three times_ before it reaches the mouth of the stream. CHAPTER X BEVERAGES, ALCOHOL, AND TOBACCO The Popularity of Beverages. For some curious reason, the habit has grown up of taking a large part of the six glasses of water that we require daily in the form of mixtures known as beverages. These beverages are always much more expensive than pure water; are often quite troublesome to secure and prepare; have little, or no, food value; are of doubtful value even in small amounts; and injurious in large ones. Why they should ever have come into such universal use, in all races and in all ages of the world, is one of the standing puzzles of human nature. They practically _all consist of from ninety to ninety-eight per cent_ of water, the food elements that may be added to them being in such trifling amounts as to be practically of no value. They serve no known useful purpose in the body, save as a means of introducing the water which they contain; and yet mankind has used them ever since the dawn of history. We Have no Natural Appetite for Beverages. It is a most striking fact that, although these beverages have been drunk by the race for centuries, we _have never developed an instinct or natural appetite for them_! No child ever yet was born with an appetite or natural liking for beer or whiskey; and very few children really like the taste of tea or coffee the first time, although they soon learn to drink them on account of the sugar and cream in them. Thus, nature has clearly marked them off from all the _real_ foods on our tables, showing that they are not essential to either life or health; and that they are absolutely unnecessary, and almost always harmful in childhood and during the period of growth. If no child ever drank alcohol until he really craved it, as he craves milk, sugar, and bread and butter, there would be no drunkards in the world. Our other food-instincts have shown themselves worthy to be trusted--why not trust this one, and let these beverages, especially alcohol, absolutely alone? Statistics from the alcoholic wards of our great hospitals show that of those who become drunkards, nearly ninety per cent _begin to drink before they are twenty years old_. Of that ninety per cent, over two-thirds took their first drink, not because they felt any craving for it, or even thought it would taste good, but because they saw others doing it; or thought it would be a "manly" thing to do; or were afraid that they would be laughed at if they didn't! Whatever vices and bad habits our natural appetites, and so-called "animal instincts," may lead us into, drunkenness is not one of them. This striking hint on the part of nature, that alcoholic beverages are unnecessary, is fully confirmed by the overwhelming majority of hundreds of tests which have been made in the laboratory, showing clearly that, while these beverages may give off trifling amounts of energy in the body, their real effects and the sole reason for their use are their stimulating, or their discomfort-deadening (_narcotic_) effect. And the more carefully we study them, the heavier we find the price that has to be paid for any temporary relief or enjoyment which they may seem to give. Tea, Coffee, and Cocoa. The "weakest" and most commonly used of these beverages or amusement foods, are tea, coffee, and cocoa. These have an agreeable taste, mildly stimulate the nervous system, and, when used in moderation by adults, seldom do much harm. To a small percentage of individuals, who are specially sensitive to their effects, they seem to act as mild poison-foods, much in the same way as strawberries, cheese, or lobsters do to others. Tea is made from the green leaves of a shrub growing in hilly districts in China, Japan, and Southern India. The finer and more delicately flavored brands are from the young leaves, shoots, and flowers of the plant; while the coarser and cheaper are from the old leaves, stalks, and even twigs--the latter containing the most _tannin_, which, as we shall see, is the most injurious element in tea. Coffee is made from the seeds of a cherry-like berry growing upon a shrub, or low tree, on tropical hillsides. The bulk of our supply comes from South America, and is known as "Rio" coffee, from Rio Janeiro, the port in Brazil from which most of it is shipped. That from the East Indies is known as Java, and that from Arabia as Mocha; though these last two are now but little more than trade-names for certain finer varieties of coffee, no matter where grown. Cocoa and chocolate are made from the bean-like seeds of a small tree growing in the tropics and, in cake, or solid, form, contain considerable amounts of fat, and usually sugar and vanilla, which have been added to them to improve their flavor. As, however, only a teaspoonful or so of the powdered cocoa, or chocolate, goes to make a cupful, the actual food value of cocoa or chocolate, unless made with milk, is not much greater than that of tea or coffee with cream and sugar. They contain less _caffein_ than either tea or coffee, but are liable to clog rather than to increase the appetite for other foods. Effects of Tea, Coffee, and Cocoa. Though the flavors of tea, coffee, and cocoa are so different, they all depend for their effect upon a spicy-tasting substance, called caffein from its having been first separated out of coffee. The caffein of tea is sometimes called _thein_, and that of cocoa _theobromin_; but they are all practically the same substance. Part of the taste of these beverages is due to the caffein, but the special flavor of each is given by spicy oils and other substances which it contains. Caffein acts as a mild stimulant both to the nervous system and brain, and to the heart; as is shown by the way in which tea or coffee will wake us up or refresh us when tired, or, if drunk too late at night, keep us from going to sleep. If used in large amounts, especially if taken as a substitute for food, tea and coffee upset the nervous system and disturb the heart, and produce an unwholesome craving for more. [Illustration: A MILK STATION IN A CITY PARK Many cities have established such stations, where people can buy, for a cent or two, a drink that is far better than soda water or any other beverage.] Their chief value lies in the hot water they contain, which has been sterilized by boiling, while its heat assists the process of digestion; and in the fact that their agreeable taste sometimes gives us an appetite and enables us to eat more of less highly flavored foods, like bread, crackers, potatoes, or rice, than we would without them. They are, also, usually taken with cream, or milk, or sugar, which are real foods and bring their fuel value up to about half that of skimmed milk. So far as they stimulate the appetite and increase the amount of food eaten, they are beneficial; but when taken as a substitute for real food, they are most injurious. A cup of coffee, for instance, makes a very poor breakfast to start the day on; for although it gives you a comforting sense of having eaten something warm and satisfying, it contains very little real food, and soon leaves you feeling empty and tired; just as an engine would give out if you put a handful of shavings into its fire-box, and expected it to do four hours' work on them. The most disturbing effects of tea and coffee upon the digestion are due to the tannin which they contain if boiled too long, especially in the case of tea. This tannin, fortunately, will not dissolve in water except by prolonged boiling or steeping; so that if tea is made by pouring boiling water over the tea leaves and pouring it off again as soon as it has reached the desired strength and flavor, and coffee by being just brought to a boil and then not allowed to stand more than ten or fifteen minutes before use, no injurious amounts of tannin will be found in them. Tea, made by prolonged stewing on the back of the stove, owes its bitter, puckery taste to tannin, and is better suited for tanning leather than for putting into the human stomach. Boys and girls up to fifteen or sixteen years of age are much better off without tea, coffee, or cocoa; for they need no artificial stimulants to their appetites, while at the same time their nervous systems are more liable to injury from the harmful effects of over-stimulation. If the beverages are taken at all, they should be taken very weak, and with plenty of milk and cream as well as sugar. ALCOHOL How Alcohol is Made. The most dangerous addition that man has ever made to the water which he drinks is alcohol. It is made by the action of the yeast plant on wet sugar or starch--a process called _fermentation_. Usually the sugar or starch is in the form of the juice of fruits; or is a pulp, or mash, made from crushed grains like barley, corn, or rye. As the spores of this yeast plant are floating about almost everywhere in the air, all that is usually necessary is to let some fruit juice or grain pulp stand at moderate warmth, exposed to the air, when it will begin to "sour," or ferment. Wine. When the yeast plant is set to work in a tub or vat of grape juice, it attacks the fruit sugar contained in the juice, and splits it up into alcohol and carbon dioxid, so that the juice becomes bubbly and frothy from the gas. When from seven to fifteen per cent of alcohol has been produced, the liquid is called wine. It contains, besides alcohol, some unchanged fruit sugar, fruit acids, and some other products of fermentation (known as _ethers_ and _aldehydes_), which give each kind of wine its special flavor. Beer, Ale, and Cider. If the yeast germ be set to work in a pulp or mash of crushed barley or wheat, the starch of which has been partly turned into sugar by malting, it breaks up the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxid. When it has brewed enough of the starch to produce somewhere from four to eight per cent of alcohol, then the liquid, which still contains about three or four per cent of a starch-sugar called _maltose_, is called beer, or ale. It is usually flavored with hops to give it a bitter taste and make it keep better. If the same process be carried out in apple juice, we get the well known hard cider with its biting taste. Whiskey, Brandy, and Rum. When left to itself, the process of fermentation in most of these sugary or starchy liquids will come to a standstill after a while, because the alcohol, when it reaches a certain strength in the liquid, is, like all other toxins, or poisons produced by germs, a poison also to the germ that produces it. The yeast-bacteria probably produce alcohol as a poison to kill off other germs which compete with them for their share of the sugar or starch. So even the origin of this curious drug-food shows its harmful character. We should hardly pick out the poison produced by one germ to kill another germ as likely to make a useful and wholesome food. [Illustration: PROPORTION OF ALCOHOL IN LIGHT WINE IN BEER IN WHISKEY The liquid shows what part of a tumblerful of each is alcohol.] If man had been content to leave this fermentation process to nature, it is probable that many of the worst effects of alcohol would never have been heard of. But these lighter forms of alcoholic drinks did not satisfy the unnatural cravings which they had themselves created. Some people never can leave even bad-enough alone. So man, with an ingenuity which might have been much better used, sought a way of getting a liquor which would contain more alcohol than nature, unaided, could be made to brew in it. A little experimenting showed that the alcohol in fermenting juices was lighter than water; so that by gently heating the fermenting mass, the alcohol would evaporate and pass off as vapor, with a little of the steam from the water. Then, by catching this vapor in a closed vessel and pouring cold water over the outside of the vessel, it could be condensed again in the form of a clear, brownish fluid of burning taste, containing nearly fifty per cent of alcohol, instead of the original five or six. This evaporated or distilled mixture of alcohol and water, if made from a mash of corn, wheat, rye, or potatoes, is called whiskey; if from fruit-juice, brandy. A similar liquor, made out of fermented rice, is known as _arrack_ in India, or _saké_ in Japan; and the liquor made from fermented molasses is called rum. Alcohol not a True Food, but a Drug. The much disputed question as to whether alcohol is a food or not, is really of little or no practical importance. It is quite true, as might be expected, from its close relation to sugar and the readiness, for instance, with which it will burn in an alcohol lamp or stove, that alcohol, in small amounts, is capable of being burned in the body, thus giving it energy. This may give it a certain limited value in some forms of sickness, as, for instance, in certain fevers and infections, when the stomach does not seem to be able to digest food. But here it acts as a medicine rather than as a true food and, like all other medicines, should be used only under skilled medical advice and control. For practical purposes, any trifling food value it may have is more than offset by its later poisonous and disturbing effects and, secondly, by its enormous expensiveness. The greatest amount of alcohol that could be consumed in the body at all safely would barely supply one-tenth of the total fuel value needed; and if any one were to attempt to supply the body with energy by the use of alcohol, he would be blind drunk before he had taken one-third of the amount required. From the point of view of expense alone, to take alcohol for food is like killing buffalos for their tongues and letting the rest of the carcass go to waste, as the Indians and pioneer hunters of the plains used to do. It never has more than a fraction of the food value of the grain or fruit out of which it was made; and the amount of nutriment that it contains costs ten times as much as it would in any of the staple foods. Moreover, when it is taken with an ordinary supply of food, it is found that, for every ounce of alcohol burned in the body, a similar amount of the other food is prevented from being consumed, and probably goes to waste, owing to the harmful effects of alcohol upon digestion. Therefore, to talk of alcohol as a food is really absurd. The Effect of Alcohol on Digestion. It has been urged by some that alcohol increases the appetite, and enables one to digest larger amounts of food. The early experiments seemed to support this claim by showing that alcohol, well diluted, and in moderate amounts, increased appetite and the flow of the gastric juice. When the experiments were carried a little further, however, it was clearly shown that its presence in the stomach and intestines, in such amounts as would result from a glass of beer, or one or two glasses of claret-wine with a meal, interfered with the later stages of digestion, so that the later harmful effects overbalanced any earlier good effects. Its Effect on the Temperature of the Body. Another claim urged in its favor was that it warmed the body and protected it against cold. It ought to have been easy for any one with a sense of humor to judge the value of this claim by the fact that it was equally highly commended by its users as a means of keeping them cool in hot weather. Its supposed effects in the case of both heat and cold were due to the same fact: it deadened the nerves for a time to whatever sense of discomfort one might then be suffering from, but made no change whatever in the condition of the body that caused the discomfort. Any drug which has this deadening effect on the nerves is called a narcotic; and it is in this class that alcohol belongs, together with the stronger narcotics, _opium_, _chloroform_, _ether_, and _chloral_. In fact, it was quickly found in the bitter school of experience that alcohol, though producing an apparent glow of warmth for the time, instead of increasing our power to resist cold, rapidly and markedly lessens it; so that those who drink heavily are much more likely to die from cold and exposure than those who let alcohol alone. Nowadays, Arctic explorers, explorers in the tropics, officers of armies upon forced marches, and those who have to train themselves for the most severe strains on their powers of endurance, all bear testimony to the fact that the use of alcohol is harmful instead of helpful under these conditions, and that it is not for a moment to be compared to real foods, like meat, sugar, or fat. Its Effects on Working Power. Then it was claimed that alcohol increased the working power of the body; that more work and better work would be done by men at hard labor, if a little beer, or wine, was taken with their meals. Indeed, most of those who take alcohol believe that they work faster and better, and with less effort with it than without it. But the moment that this _feeling_ of increased power and strength was submitted to careful tests in the laboratory and in the workshop, it was found that instead of _more_ being accomplished when alcohol was taken, even in very moderate amounts, _less_ was accomplished by from six to twelve per cent. The false sense of increased vigor and power was due to the narcotic power of alcohol to deaden the sensations of fatigue and discomfort. It was discovered long ago, almost as soon as men began to put themselves into training for athletic feats or contests, that alcohol was not only useless, but very injurious. Any champion who, on the eve of a contest, "breaks training" by "taking a drink," knows that he is endangering his record and giving his competitors an advantage over him. Its Deadening Effect. In short, we must conclude that the so-called stimulating effects of alcohol are really due to its power of deadening us to sensations of discomfort or fatigue. Its boasted power of making men more "sociable" by loosening their tongues is due to precisely the same effect: it takes off the balance-wheels of custom, reserve, and propriety--too often of decency, as well. This is where the greatest and most serious danger of alcohol comes in, that even in the smallest doses, it begins to deaden us both mentally and morally, and thus lessens our power of control. This loss of control steadily increases with each successive drink until finally the man, completely under the influence of liquor, reaches a stage when he can neither think rationally nor speak intelligently, nor even walk straight or stand upright--making the most humiliating and disgusting spectacle which humanity can present. Harmful Effects on the Body. All doctors and scientists and thoughtful men are now practically agreed: First, that alcohol in excess is exceedingly dangerous and injurious, and one of the most serious enemies that modern civilization has to face. Second, that even in the smallest doses, as a deadener of the sense of discomfort, it blinds the man who takes it to the harm it is doing and, as soon as its temporary comforting effects begin to pass off, naturally leads its victim to resort to it again in increasing doses. In fact, unlike a true food which quickly satisfies, the use of alcohol too often creates an appetite that grows by what it feeds on, and is never satisfied. For every natural appetite or instinct, nature provides a check; but she provides none for tastes that must be acquired. The last man to find out that he is taking too much is the drinker himself. Taken first to relieve discomfort, its own poisonous after-effects create a new and permanent demand for it. The third point on which agreement is almost unanimous among scientists and physicians is that, as will be seen in later chapters, there are a considerable number of diseases of the liver, of the heart and blood vessels, of the kidneys, and of the nervous system, which are produced by, or almost always associated with, alcohol. There are, for instance, three different kinds of alcoholic insanity. It is true that these disease-changes most commonly occur in the tissues of those who use alcohol to excess; and it is also probably true that what the alcoholic poison is doing in these cases, is picking out the weak spots in the body and the weaker individuals in the community. Even the strongest and best of us have our little weaknesses of digestion, of nerves, and of disposition that we know of, as well as others that we are not acquainted with. And what is the use of running the risk of having these picked out and made worse in this dangerous and unpleasant manner, just for the sake of a little temporary indulgence? Moreover, while it is admitted that most of these harmful effects of alcohol are produced by its use in excess, it is daily becoming a more and more difficult matter to decide just how much is "excess." It certainly differs widely in different individuals, and in different organs and parts in the same body. An amount of alcohol which one man might possibly take without harm may greatly injure another; and its frequent use, though it does not produce the slightest sign of intoxication, or even of discomfort, or headache, may be slowly and fatally damaging the cells of the liver or kidney. In fact, the conviction is growing among scientists that alcohol does the greatest harm in this slow, insidious way without its user's realizing it in any way until too late to break the fearful habit. It may even be perfectly true that alcohol seriously injures not more than ten or fifteen per cent of those who take it in small quantities; but how can you tell whether you, or your liver, or kidney, or nerve cells, belong in the ten per cent or the ninety per cent class? On general principles, it would hardly seem worth while making the test simply for the sake of finding out. You never can _quite_ tell what alcohol has done to you, until the _post mortem_ (after death) examination--and then the question will not interest you very much. Its Effect upon Character. Just as alcohol deadens the body and the senses, especially the higher ones--so it has a terrible effect upon the mental and moral sides of our natures. The results of the use of alcohol are so well known that it is unnecessary here to either describe or picture them. All that is needed is to keep our eyes open upon the street, and read the police reports. What good effects upon man's better nature has alcohol to show as an offset for this dreadful tendency to bring out the worst and lowest in man? Increasing Knowledge of the Bad Effects of Alcohol is Decreasing its Use. It is most impressive that almost everything we have found out about alcohol in the short time that we have been studying it carefully has been to its discredit. Fifty years ago beer and wine, all over the civilized world, were commonly regarded as foods. Now they are not considered true foods, but harmful beverages. Fifty years ago alcohol was believed to improve the digestion and increase the appetite. Now we know that it does neither. It was believed to increase working power, and has now been clearly shown to diminish it. It was supposed to increase the thinking power and stimulate the imagination, and now we know that it dulls and muddles both. Fifty years ago it was freely used as medicine for all sorts of illnesses, both by doctor and patient; it was supposed to stimulate the heart, to sustain the strength, to increase the power of the body to resist disease, and to sustain and support life in emergencies. Now we know that practically all these claims are unfounded, and that such value as it has in medicine is chiefly as a narcotic, as a deadener of the sense of discomfort. As a result, it is already used in medicine only about one-fourth as much as it was fifty years ago, and its use is still steadily decreasing. Fifty years ago, in this country, in England, and on the continent of Europe, farm laborers and servants living in the house, expected so many pints or quarts of ale or beer a day, as part of their regular food rations, just as they now would expect milk or tea or coffee. It was only a few years ago that the great steamship companies stopped issuing _grog_, or raw spirits, to the sailors in their employ, as part of their daily ration, because they at last came to realize how harmful were its effects. And a score of similar instances could be mentioned, showing that the unthinking and general use of alcohol as a beverage at our tables is steadily and constantly diminishing. Great temperance societies are springing up in this and other civilized countries and are having a powerful influence in showing the harm of the use of alcohol and in inducing people to abstain from using it. This movement is only fairly started, but is being hastened by such practical and important influences as the experience of many of the great business corporations, such as railroads, steamship companies, insurance companies, banks, and trust companies, which support the findings of science against alcohol in almost every respect. On account of the manner in which alcohol unconsciously dulls the senses and blurs the judgment, these companies began long ago weeding out from their employ all men who were known to drink to excess; then they began to reject those who were likely to occasionally over-indulge, or take it too freely; and now, finally, many of them, particularly the railway and steamship companies, will not employ--except in the lowest and poorest paid classes of their service--and will not promote to any position which puts men in charge of human life and limb, those who use alcohol in any form or amount. Nearly all the captains, for instance, of our great trans-atlantic liners, whose duties in storm or fog keep them on the bridge on continuous duty for forty-eight, sixty, and even seventy-two hours at a stretch, with thousands of lives depending upon their courage and their judgment, are total abstainers. And while twenty-five years ago they used to think that they could not go through these long sieges of storm duty without plenty of wine or whiskey, they now find that they are far better off without any alcoholic drink. Another powerful force in the same direction is our insurance companies, practically all of whom now will refuse to insure any man known habitually to use alcohol to excess, because where lists have been kept of their policy-holders showing which were users of alcohol and which total abstainers, their records show that the death rate among the users of alcohol is some twenty per cent greater than among the total abstainers. A similar result has also been reached in the companies that insure against sickness, whose drinking members average nearly twice as many weeks of sickness during the year as the abstaining ones. So both of these two great groups of business corporations are becoming powerful agencies for the promotion of temperance. Within fifty years from now the habitual use of alcohol will probably have become quite rare. It is already becoming "good form" among the best people not to drink; and the fashion will spread, as the bad effects of alcohol become more generally understood. TOBACCO Smoking, a Senseless Habit. Smoking is the curious act of drawing smoke into the mouth and puffing it out again. Why this custom should have become so widespread is even a greater puzzle than is the drinking of alcohol. In civilized countries at least, it is a custom of much more recent growth than "drinking," as it was introduced into Europe from America by the early explorers, notably those sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh. As tobacco-smoke is neither a solid nor a liquid, but only a gas, no one could even pretend that it is of any value, either as food or drink. All that can be said of smoking, even by the most inveterate smoker, is that it is a habit, of no possible use or value to body or mind, and of great possibilities of harm. Another singular thing about smoking is that its effects vary so greatly according to the individual who practices it, that scarcely any two smokers can agree as to the exact reason why they smoke, except that in some vague way smoking gives them pleasure. The only thing that they do agree upon is that they miss it greatly, and crave it keenly whenever they stop it. The only thing that stands out clearly about smoking is that while it does no good, and does not even give one definite and uniform kind of pleasure, it does form a powerful and over-mastering habit, which is exceedingly difficult to break, and develops a craving which can be satisfied only by continuing, or returning, to it. It is Very Difficult to Break the Habit of Smoking. As a matter of practical experience, not one smoker in fifty who tries to swear off ever succeeds in doing so permanently. Why then should any one form a habit, which is of no benefit whatever, which is expensive, unpleasant to others, and which may become exceedingly injurious, simply for the sake of saddling one's self with a craving which will probably never be got rid of all the rest of one's life? The strongest and most positive thing that a smoker can say about his pipe, or cigar, or cigarette, is that he could not get along without it; and he will usually add that he wishes he had never begun to use it. You are better off in every way by letting tobacco strictly alone, and never teaching yourself to like it. Tobacco is Not a Natural Taste. As might be expected, in the case of such an utterly useless drug, we have no natural liking or instinct for it; and the taste for it has to be acquired just as in the case of alcohol, only as a rule with greater difficulty and with more painful experiences of headache, nausea, and other discomforts. [Illustration: A BOARD OF HEALTH EXAMINATION FOR WORKING PAPERS The Board of Health of the City of New York requires that all children between the ages of fourteen and sixteen shall have certificates of good health before they can be employed in business. Any employer who hires a child without such a certificate is liable to a heavy fine. This law is to protect the health of both the worker and the public.] Nicotine, a Powerful Poison. Tobacco contains and depends largely for its effects upon considerable amounts of a substance called _nicotine_. This is a powerful poison, even in very small doses, with only feeble narcotic, or pain-deadening, powers; but fortunately, the larger part of it is destroyed in the process of burning. Enough, however, is carried over in the smoke, or absorbed through the butt of the cigar or cigarette, or the mouth-piece of the pipe, to injure the nervous system, especially in youth. As will be seen in the chapter upon the "Care of the Heart," it especially attacks the nerves supplying the heart, and is thus most harmful to growing boys. On account of its injurious effects upon the nerves of the heart, smoking has long been forbidden by trainers and coachers to all athletes who are training for a contest or race. In addition to its poisonous effects upon the nervous system, tobacco also does great harm to boys and young men by providing them with an attractive means of filling up their time and keeping themselves amused without either bodily or mental effort. The boy who smokes habitually will find it much easier to waste his time in day-dreams and gossip, and tends to become a loafer and an idler. The Advantage that Non-Smokers have over Smokers. When both of these influences are taken together, it is little wonder that the investigations of Dr. Seaver, the medical director of Yale, showed that out of the 187 men in the class of 1881, those not using tobacco during their college course had gained, over the users of tobacco, twenty-two per cent in weight, twenty-nine per cent in height, nineteen per cent in growth of chest, and sixty-six per cent in increase of lung capacity. [Illustration: A TEST OF CLEAR HEAD AND STEADY NERVES The boy who smokes cigarettes finds it increasingly difficult to obtain a position in a bank or other large commercial house.] In the Amherst graduating class for the same year, the non-users of tobacco had gained twenty-four per cent more in weight, thirty-seven per cent more in height, and forty-two per cent more in growth of chest than had the smokers. In lung capacity, the tobacco users had lost two cubic inches, while the abstainers had gained six cubic inches. As a wet-blanket upon ambition, a drag upon development, and a handicap upon success in life, the cigarette has few equals and no superiors. The stained fingers and sallow complexion of the youthful cigarette smoker will generally result in his being rejected when applying for a position. The employer knows that the non-smoking boy is much more likely to succeed in his work and win his way to a position of trust and influence than is the "cigarette fiend." Especially in these days of sharp competition, no boy can afford to contract a habit which will so handicap him in making his way as will the cigarette habit. CHAPTER XI THE HEART-PUMP AND ITS PIPE-LINE SYSTEM THE BLOOD VESSELS Where the Body Does its Real Eating. When once the food has been dissolved in the food-tube and absorbed by the cells of its walls, the next problem is how it shall be sent all over the body to supply the different parts that are hungry for it; for we must remember that the real eating of the food is done by the billions upon billions of tiny living cells of which the body is made up. The Pipe Lines of the Body. What do we do when we want to carry water, or oil, or sewage, quickly and surely from one place to another? We put down a pipe line. We are wonderfully proud of our systems of water and gas supply, and of the great pipe lines that carry oil from wells in Ohio and Indiana clear to the Atlantic coast. But the very first man that ever laid a pipe to carry water was simply imitating nature--only about ten or fifteen million years behind her. No sooner has our food passed through the cells in the wall of the food-tube, than it goes straight into a set of tiny tubes--the blood-pipes, or _blood vessels_--which carry it to the heart; and the heart pumps it all over the body. Veins and Arteries. These blood-tubes running from the walls of the food-tube to the heart are called _veins_; and the other tubes through which the heart pumps the blood all over the body are called _arteries_. If you will spell this last word "air-teries," it may help you to remember why the name was given to these tubes ages ago. When the body was examined after death, they were found to be empty and hence were not unnaturally supposed to carry air throughout the body, and "air-teries" they have remained ever since. While absurd in one way, the name is not so far amiss in another, for an important part of their work is to carry all over the body swarms of tiny baskets, or sponges, of oxygen taken from the air. Why the Blood is Red. The first and main purpose of the blood-pipes and the heart is to carry the dissolved food from the stomach and intestines to the cells all over the body. But the cells need air as well as food; and, to carry this, there are little basket-cells--the _red corpuscles_. Take a drop of blood and put it under a microscope, and you will see what they look like. The field will be simply crowded with tiny, rounded lozenges--the red cells of the blood, which give it its well-known color. [Illustration: BLOOD CORPUSCLES (Greatly magnified) _A_, red blood; _B_, white blood.] The White Corpuscles or Scavengers of the Blood. As the blood-tubes are not only supply-pipes but sewers and drainage canals as well, it is a good thing to have some kind of tiny animals living and moving about in them, which can act as scavengers and eat up some of the waste and scraps; and hence your microscope will show you another kind of little blood corpuscle, known, from the fact that it is not colored, as the _white corpuscle_. These corpuscles are little cells of the body, which in shape and behavior are almost exactly like an _ameba_--a tiny "bug," seen only under the microscope, that lives in ditch-water. Under the microscope the white corpuscles look like little round disks, about one-third larger than the red corpuscles, and with a large kernel, or _nucleus_, in their centre. They have the same power of changing their shape, of surrounding and swallowing scraps of food, as has the ameba, and are a combination of scavengers and sanitary police. When disease germs get into the blood, they attack and endeavor to eat and digest them; and whenever inflammation, or trouble of any sort, begins in any part of the body, they hurry to the scene in thousands, clog the blood-tubes and squeeze their way out through the walls of the smallest blood-tubes to attack the invaders or repair the damage. This causes the well-known swelling and reddening which accompanies inflammation. Blood, then, is a sticky red fluid, two-thirds of which is food-soup, and the other third, corpuscles. How tiny the blood-corpuscles are, may be guessed from the fact that there are about 5,000,000 red cells and 10,000 white cells in every _cubic centimetre_ (fifteen drops) of our blood. How the Blood Circulates through the Body. Now let us see how some portion of the body, say the right thumb, gets its share of food and of oxygen through the blood. We will start at the very beginning. The food, of course, is put into the mouth, chewed by the teeth, and softened and digested in the stomach and intestines. It is then taken up by the cells of the mucous coat of the intestines and passed into the network of tiny blood-pipes surrounding them, between the lining of the bowels and their muscular coat. These tiny blood-pipes, called _capillaries_, run together to form larger pipes--the small veins; and the small veins from the walls of the intestine and stomach finally run together into one large pipe, or trunk-line (called the _portal vein_), which carries them to the liver. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM All details are omitted. The connection between arteries and veins is shown only in the brain. Both heart and blood vessels are considerably enlarged to show clearly the course of the blood.] In passing through the liver, the blood is purified of some irritating substances picked up from the food-tube, and the melted food which it contains is further prepared for the use of the cells of the body. The portal vein of the liver breaks up into a network of veins, and these again break up into a number of tiny capillaries, in which the blood is acted upon by the cells of the liver. These capillaries gather together again to form veins, and finally unite into two large veins at the back of the liver, which run directly into the great trunk-pipe of all the veins of the body--the _vena cava_ (or "empty vein," so called because it is always found empty after death), about an inch from where this opens into the right side of the heart. In the vena cava the blood from the food-tube, rich in food, but poor in oxygen, mixes with the impure, or used-up, blood brought back by the veins from all over the body and, passing into the right side of the heart, is pumped by the heart through a large blood-pipe to the lungs. This large blood-pipe divides into two branches, one for each lung; and these again break up into smaller branches, and finally into tiny capillaries, which are looped about in fine meshes, or networks, around the air-cells of the lung. Here, through the thin and delicate walls of the capillaries the blood cells give off, or breathe out, their carbon dioxid and other waste gases (which are passed out with our outgoing breath), and at the same time they breathe in oxygen which our incoming breath has drawn into the lungs. This oxygen is picked up by, and combines with, the red coloring matter of the millions of little oxygen sponges, or baskets--the red corpuscles--and turns them a light red color, causing the blood to become bright red, such as runs in the arteries and is known as _arterial blood_. The loops of tiny capillaries around the air cells of the lungs run together again to form larger pipes; and these unite, at the point of each lung nearest the heart, to form two large blood pipes--one from each lung--which pour the rich, pure blood, loaded with both food and oxygen into the left side of the heart. The left side of the heart pumps this blood out into the great main delivery-pipe for pure blood, known as the _aorta_, and this begins to give off branches to the different parts of the body, within a few inches of where it leaves the heart. [Illustration: SURFACE VEINS AND DEEP-LYING ARTERIES OF INNER SIDE OF RIGHT ARM AND HAND The deep-lying veins that run parallel to the arteries have been omitted; so have the veins of three of the fingers.] One of the first of these branches to be given off by the aorta is a large blood pipe, or artery, to supply the shoulder and arm; this artery runs across the chest, thence across the armpit, and down the arm to the elbow. Here it divides into two branches, one to supply the right, and the other the left, side of the forearm and hand. These branches have by this time got down to about the size of a wheat straw; the one supplying the right side is the artery which we feel throbbing in the wrist, and which we use in counting the pulse. From it run off smaller branches to supply the thumb and fingers. These branches break up again into still smaller branches, and they into a multitude of tiny capillaries, which run in every direction among all the muscle cells, delivering the food and oxygen at their very doors, as it were. The muscle cells eagerly suck out the food-stuffs, and breathe in the oxygen of the blood; at the same time, they pour into it their waste stuffs of all sorts, including carbon dioxid. These rob the blood of its bright red oxygen color and turn it a dirty purplish, or bluish, tint. The loops of capillaries again run together, as they did in the liver and in the lung, to form tiny veins; and these run together at the base of the thumb and in the wrist, to form larger ones through which the now poor and dirty blood is carried back up the arm over much the same course as it took in coming down it. Indeed, the veins usually run parallel with, and often directly alongside of, the arteries. The blood passes through the armpit, across the chest, into the great main pipe for impure blood, the vena cava, and through this into the right side of the heart, where it again meets the rich, but waste-laden blood from the food tube and liver, and starts on its circuit through the lungs and around the body again. The blood reaches every portion of our body in precisely this same manner, only taking a different branch of the great pure-blood delivery pipe, the aorta, according to the part of the body which it is to reach, and coming back by a different vein-pipe. Why the Arteries are more deeply Placed than the Veins. In the limbs and over the surface of the body generally, the arteries are more deeply placed than the veins, so as to protect them from injury, because the blood in the arteries is driven at much higher pressure than in the veins and spurts out with dangerous rapidity, if they are cut. Some of the veins, indeed, run quite a little distance away from any artery and quite close to the surface of the body, so that you can see them as bluish streaks showing through the skin, particularly upon the front and inner side of the arms. The Capillaries. Of course, the blood pipes into which the food is sucked through the walls of the food tube, and those in the lung, through which the oxygen is breathed, as well as those in the thumb through which food is taken to the muscle-cells, have the tiniest and thinnest walls imaginable. For once, the name given them by the wise men--capillaries (from the Latin _capilla_, a little hair)--fits them beautifully, except that the hairs in this case are hollow, and about one-twentieth of the size of the finest hair you can see with the naked eye. So tiny are they that they compare with the big veins near the heart into which they finally empty much as the smallest and slenderest twigs of an elm do with its trunk. What they lack in size, however, they more than make up in numbers; and a network of them as fine and close as the most delicate gauze goes completely around the food tube between its mucous lining and muscular coat. Though thickest and most abundant on the inner and outer surfaces of the body, every particle of the body substance is shot through and through with a network of these tiny tubes. So close and fine is this network in the skin, for instance, that, as you can readily prove, it is impossible to thrust the point of the finest needle through the skin without piercing one of them and "drawing blood," as we say, or making it bleed. From this network of tiny, thin-walled tubes, the body-cells draw their food from the blood. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF ARTERY, CAPILLARIES, AND VEIN] The Meaning of Good Color. It is the red blood in this spongy network of tiny vessels that gives a pink coloring to our lips and the flush of health to our cheeks. Whenever for any reason the blood is less richly supplied with food or oxygen, or more loaded with "smoke" and other body dirt than it should be, we lose this good color and become pale or sallow. If we will remember that our hearts, our livers, our brains, and our stomachs, are at the same time often equally "pale" and sallow--that is, badly supplied with blood--as our complexions, we can readily understand why it is that we are likely to have poor appetites, poor memories, bad tastes in our mouths, and are easily tired whenever, as we say, our "blood is out of order." The blood is the life. Starve or poison that, and you starve or poison every bit of living stuff in the body. THE HEART Structure and Action of the Heart. Now what is it that keeps the blood whirling round and round the body in this wonderful way? It is done by a central pump (or more correctly, a little explosive engine), with thick muscular walls, called the _heart_, which every one knows how to find by putting the hand upon the left side of the chest and feeling it beat. The heart is really a bulb, or pouch, which has ballooned out from the central feed pipe of the blood supply system, somewhat in the same way that the stomach has ballooned out from the food tube. The walls of this pouch, or bulb, are formed of a thick layer of very elastic and powerful muscles almost as thick as the palm of your hand. When the great vein trunk has poured blood into this pouch until it is swollen full and tight, these muscles in its walls shut down sharply and squirt or squeeze the blood in the heart-pouch into the great artery-pipe, the aorta. In fact, you can get a very fair, but rough, idea of the way in which the heart acts by putting your half-closed hand down into a bowl of water and then suddenly squeezing it till it is shut tight, driving the water out of the hollow of your hand in a jet, or squirt. "But," some of you will ask at once, "what is to prevent the blood in the heart, when the muscle wall squeezes down upon it, from shooting backward into the vena cava, instead of forward into the aorta?" Nature thought of that long ago, and ingeniously but very simply guarded against it by causing two little folds of the lining of the blood pipes to stick up both where the vena cava enters the heart and where the aorta leaves it, so as to form little flaps which act as valves. These valves allow the blood to flow forward, but snap together and close the opening as soon as it tries to flow backward. While largest and best developed in the heart, these valves are found at intervals of an inch or two all through the veins in most parts of the body, allowing the blood to flow freely toward the heart, but preventing it from flowing back. As the heart has to pump all the blood in the body twice,--once around and through the lungs, and once around and through the whole of the body,--it has become divided into two halves, a right half, which pumps the blood through the lungs and is slightly the smaller and the thinner walled of the two; and a left half, which pumps the purified blood, after it has come back from the lungs, all over the rest of the body. [Illustration: THE EXTERIOR OF THE HEART Showing the strands of muscle that compose it, the arteries and veins that feed and drain the muscle coat, and fat protecting these.] Each half, or side, of the heart has again divided itself into a receiving cavity, or pouch, known as the _auricle_; and a pumping or delivering pouch, known as the _ventricle_. And another set of valves has grown up between the auricle and the ventricle on each side of the heart. These valves have become very strong and tough, and are tied back in a curious and ingenious manner by tough little guy ropes of tendon, or fibrous tissues, such as you can see quite plainly in the heart of an ox. It is important for you to remember this much about them, because, as we shall see in the next chapter, these valves are one of the parts of the heart most likely to wear out, or become diseased. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF VALVES IN THE VEINS AND HEART In _A_ the blood flows forward naturally. In _B_ and _C_ is shown what would happen were the blood to reverse its course, as it does when it meets an obstruction: the pockets would fill until they met and closed the passageway.] Heart Beat and Pulse. The heart fills and empties itself about eighty times a minute, varying from one hundred and twenty times for a baby, and ninety for a child of seven, to eighty for a woman, and seventy-two for a full-grown man. When the walls of the ventricles squeeze down to drive out their blood into the lungs and around the body, like all other muscles they harden as they contract and thump the pointed lower end, or _apex_, of the heart against the wall of the chest, thus making what is known as the _beat_ of the heart, which you can readily feel by laying your hand upon the left side of your chest, especially after you have been running or going quickly upstairs. As each time the heart beats, it throws out half a teacupful of blood into the aorta, this jet sends a wave of swelling down the arteries all over the body, which can be felt clearly as far away as the small arteries of the wrist and the ankle. This wave of swelling, which, of course, occurs as often as the heart beats, is called the _pulse_; and we "take" it, or count and feel its force and fullness, to estimate how fast the heart is beating and how well it is doing its work. We generally use an artery in the wrist (_radial_) for this purpose because it is one of the largest arteries in the body which run close to the surface and can be easily reached. Summary of the Circulation of the Blood. We will now sum up, and put together in their order, the different things we have learned about the circulation of the blood through the body. [Illustration: THE BLOOD-ROUTE THROUGH THE HEART _R.A._, right auricle; _L.A._, left auricle; _R.V._, right ventricle; _L.V._, left ventricle; _A_, aorta; _P.A._, pulmonary artery; _P.V._, pulmonary veins; _V.C.s._, Vena cava superior; _V.C.i._, Vena cava inferior. At the entrance to the pulmonary artery are shown two of the pockets of the valve, the third pocket having been cut away with the front side of the artery. The other blood-tubes have similar valves, not shown in the diagram.] Starting from the great vein trunk, the vena cava, it pours into the receiving chamber, or auricle, of the right side of the heart, passes between the valves of the opening into the lower chamber, the right ventricle. When this is full, the muscles in the wall of the ventricle contract, the valve flaps fly up, and the blood is squirted out through the pulmonary artery to the lungs. Here it passes through the capillaries round the air cells, loses its carbon dioxid, takes in oxygen, and is gathered up and returned through great return pipes to the receiving chamber, or auricle, of the left side of the heart. Here it collects while the ventricle below is emptying itself, then pours down between the valve flaps through the opening to the left ventricle. When this is full, it contracts; the valves fly up and close the orifice; and the blood is squirted out through another valve-guarded opening, into the great main artery, the aorta. This carries it, through its different branches, all over the body, where the tissues suck out their food and oxygen through the walls of the capillaries, and return it through the small veins into the large vein pipes, which again deliver it into the vena cava, and so to the right side of the heart from which we started to trace it. Although the two sides of the heart are doing different work, they contract and empty themselves, and relax and fill themselves, at the same time, so that we feel only one beat of the whole heart. One of the most wonderful things about the entire system of blood tubes is the way in which each particular part and organ of the body is supplied with exactly the amount of blood it needs. If the whole body is put to work, so that a quicker circulation of blood, with its millions of little baskets of oxygen, is needed to enable the tissues to breathe faster, the heart meets the situation by beating faster and harder. This, as you all know, you can readily cause by running, or jumping, or wrestling. CHAPTER XII THE CARE OF THE HEART-PUMP AND ITS PIPE-LINES The Effect of Work upon the Heart. Whatever else in this body of ours may be able to take a rest at times, the heart never can. When it stops, we stop! Naturally, with such a constant strain upon it, we should expect it to have a tendency to give way, or break down, at certain points. The real wonder is that it breaks down so seldom. It has great powers of endurance and a wonderful trick of patching up break-downs and adjusting itself to strains. Every kind of work, of course, done in the body throws more work upon the heart. When we run, or saw wood, our muscles contract, and need more food-fuel to burn, and pour more waste-stuff into the blood to be thrown off through the lungs; so the heart has to beat harder and faster to supply these calls. When our stomach digests food, it needs a larger supply of blood in its walls, and the heart has to pump harder to deliver this. Even when we think hard or worry over something, our brain cells need more blood, and the ever-willing heart again pumps it up to them. This is the chief reason why we cannot do more than one of these things at a time to advantage. If we try to think hard, run foot races, and digest our dinner all at one and the same time, neither head, stomach, nor muscles can get the proper amount of blood that it requires; we cannot do any one of the three properly, and are likely to develop a headache, or an attack of indigestion, or a "stitch in the side," and sometimes all three. So the circulation has a great deal to do with the intelligent planning and arranging of our work, our meals, and our play. If we are going to increase our endurance, we must increase the power of our heart and blood vessels, as well as that of our muscles. The real thing to be trained in the gymnasium and on the athletic field is the heart rather than the muscles. Fortunately, however, the heart is itself a muscle, alive and growing, and with the same power of increasing in strength and size that any other muscle has. So that up to a proper limit, all these things which throw strain upon the heart in moderate degree, such as running, working, and thinking, are not only not harmful, but beneficial to it, increasing both its strength and its size. The heart, for instance, of a thoroughbred race-horse is nearly twice the size, in proportion to his body weight, of the heart of a dray-horse or cart-horse; and a deer has more than twice as large a heart as a sheep of the same weight. [Illustration: THE SCHOOL PHYSICIAN EXAMINING HEART AND LUNGS] The important thing to bear in mind in both work and play, in athletic training, and in life, is that this work must be kept easily within the powers of the heart and of the other muscles, and must be increased gradually, and never allowed to go beyond a certain point, or it becomes injurious, instead of beneficial; hurtful, instead of helpful. Over-work in the shop or factory, overtraining in the gymnasium or on the athletic field, both fall first and heaviest upon the heart. Importance of Food, Air, and Exercise. At the same time, the system must be kept well supplied through the stomach with the raw material both for doing this work and for building up this new muscle. When anyone, in training for an event, gets "stale," or overtrained, and loses his appetite and his sleep, he had better stop at once, for that is a sign that he is using more energy than his food is able to give him through his stomach; and the stomach has consequently "gone on a strike." How to Avoid Heart Overstrain and Heart Disease. The way, then, to avoid overstrain and diseases of the heart and blood vessels is:-- First, to take plenty of exercise, but to keep that exercise within reasonable limits, which, in childhood, ought to be determined by a school physician, and in workshops and factories by a state factory physician. Second, to take that exercise chiefly in the open air, and as much of it as possible in the form of play, so that you can stop whenever you begin to feel tired or your heart throbs too hard--in other words, whenever nature warns you that you are approaching the danger line. Third, to keep yourself well supplied with plenty of nutritious, wholesome, digestible food, so as to give yourself, not merely power to do the work, but something besides to grow on. Fourth, to avoid poisonous and hurtful things like the toxins of infectious diseases; and alcohol, tobacco, and other narcotics, which have a harmful effect upon the muscles, valves, or nerves of your heart, or the walls of your blood vessels. Fortunately, the heart is so wonderfully tough and elastic, and can repair itself so rapidly, that it usually takes at least two, and sometimes three, causes acting together, to produce serious disease or damage. For instance, while muscular overwork and overstrain alone may cause serious and even permanent damage to the heart, they most frequently do so in those who are underfed, or badly housed, or recovering from the attack of some infectious disease. While the poisons of rheumatism and alcohol will alone cause serious damage to the valves of the heart and walls of the blood vessels, yet they again are much more liable to do so in those who are overworked, or underfed, or overcrowded. The Disease of the Stiffening of the Arteries. The points at which our pipe-line system is most likely to give way are the valves of the heart, and, more likely still, the muscles of the heart wall and of the walls of the blood vessels. These little muscles are slowly, but steadily, changing all through life, becoming stiffer and less elastic, less alive, in fact, until finally, in old age, they become stiff and rigid, turning into leathery, fibrous tissue, and may even become so soaked with lime salts as to become brittle, so that they may burst under some sudden strain. When this occurs in one of the arteries of the brain, it causes an attack of _apoplexy_, or a "stroke of paralysis." Overstrain, or toxins in the blood, may bring about this stiffening of the arteries too soon, and then, we say that the person is "old before his time." A man is literally "as old as his arteries." The causes which will hasten the stiffening of the arteries are, first of all, prolonged overwork and overstrain,--due especially to long hours of steady work in unwholesome shops or surroundings; second, the presence in the blood of the poisons of the more chronic infectious diseases, like tuberculosis; third, the waste products that are formed in our own body, and are not properly got rid of through lungs, skin, and kidneys; and fourth, the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other narcotics. The Bad Effects of Alcohol. Alcohol is particularly likely to damage the walls of the blood vessels and the heart, first, because it is a direct poison to their cells, when taken in excess, and often in what may appear to be moderate amounts, if long continued; secondly, because it is frequently taken, especially by the poorer, underfed class of workers, as a substitute for food, causing them literally to "spend their money for that which is not bread," and to leave their tissues half-starved; and thirdly, because, by its narcotic effects, it decreases respiration and clogs the kidneys and the skin, thus preventing the waste products from leaving the body. How the Heart Valves may be Injured. The valves of the heart are likely to give way, partly because they are under such constant strain, snapping backward and forward day and night; and partly, because, in order to be thin enough and strong enough for this kind of work, they have become turned, almost entirely, into stringy, half-dead, fibrous tissue, which has neither the vitality nor the resisting power of the live body-stuffs like muscles, gland-cells, and nerves. They are so tough, however, that they seldom give way under ordinary wear and tear, as the leather of a pump valve, or of your shoes, might; but the thing which damages them, nine times out of ten, is the germs or poisons of some infectious disease. These poisons circulating through the blood, sometimes set up a severe inflammation in the valves and the lining of the heart. Ulcers, or little wart-like growths, form on the valves; and these may either eat away and destroy entirely parts of the valves or, when they heal, leave scars which shorten and twist the valves out of shape, so that they can no longer close the openings. When this has happened, the heart is in the condition of a pump which will not hold water, because the leather valve in its bucket is broken or warped; and we say that the patient has _valvular_ or _organic_ heart disease. The disease which most frequently causes this serious defect is rheumatism, or rheumatic fever; but it may also occur after pneumonia, typhoid, blood poisoning, or even after a common cold, or an attack of the grip. This is one of several reasons why we should endeavor, in every way, to avoid and stop the spread of these infectious diseases; not only are they dangerous in themselves, but although only two of them, rheumatism and pneumonia, frequently attack the heart, all of them do so occasionally, and together they cause nearly nine-tenths of all cases of organic heart disease. Should you be unfortunate enough to catch one of these diseases, the best preventive against its attacking the heart, or causing serious damage, if it does, is a very simple one--rest in bed until the fever is all gone and your doctor says it is perfectly safe for you to get up; and avoid any severe muscular strain for several months afterward. This is a most important thing to remember _after all infections and fevers_, no matter how mild. Even where the heart valves have been seriously attacked, as in rheumatism, they will often recover almost completely if you keep at rest, and your heart is not overtaxed by the strain of heavy, muscular work, before it has entirely recovered. Ten days' "taking it easy" after a severe cold, or a bad sore throat, may save you a serious strain upon the heart, from which you might be months or even years in recovering. But even where serious damage has been done to the heart, so that one of its valves leaks badly, nature is not at the end of her resources. She simply sets to work to build up and strengthen and thicken the heart muscle until it is strong enough to overcome the defect and pump blood enough to keep the body properly supplied--just as, if you are working with a leaky pump, you will have to pump harder and faster in order to keep a good stream of water flowing. It is astonishing how completely she will make good the loss of even a considerable part of a valve. Doctors no longer forbid patients with heart disease to take exercise, but set them at carefully planned exercise in the open air, particularly walking and hill-climbing; at the same time feeding them well, so as to assist nature in building up and strengthening the heart muscle until it can overcome the defect. In this way, they may live, with reasonable care, ten, fifteen, or twenty years--often, in fact, until they die of something else. Don't worry about your heart if it should happen to palpitate, or take a "hop-skip-and-jump" occasionally. You will never get real heart disease until you have had some fever or serious illness, which leaves you short of breath for a long time afterward. Danger to the Heart through the Nervous System. The other chief way in which the heart may be affected is through the nervous system. Being the great supply pump for the entire body, it is, of course, connected most thoroughly and elaborately by nerve wires with the brain and, through it, with every other organ in the body. So delicately is it geared,--set on such a hair-trigger, as it were,--that it not only beats faster when work is done anywhere in the body, but begins to hurry in anticipation of work to be done anywhere. You all know how your heart throbs and beats like a hammer and goes pit-a-pat when you are just expecting to do something important,--for instance, to speak a piece or strike a fast ball,--or even when you are greatly excited watching somebody else do something, as in the finish of a close race. Two-thirds of the starts and jumps and throbbings that the heart makes, are due to excitement, or nervous overstrain, or the fact that your dinner is not digesting properly; and they don't indicate anything serious at all, but are simply useful danger signals to you that something is not just right. In work and in athletics for instance, this rapid and uncomfortably vigorous action of the heart is one of nature's best checks and guides. When your heart begins to throb and plunge uncomfortably, you should slow up until it begins to quiet down again, and you will seldom get into serious trouble. The next time you try the same feat, you will probably find that you can go a little farther, or faster, without making it throb. Indeed, getting into training is very largely getting the heart built up and educated, so that you can run or play, or wrestle hard without overtaxing it. Whatever you can do within the limits of your heart is safe, wholesome, and invigorating; whatever goes beyond this, is dangerous and likely to be injurious. [Illustration: ROWING IS A SPLENDID EXERCISE FOR HEART AND LUNGS] Occasionally, however, some of the nerves which control the heart become disturbed or diseased so that, instead of the heart's simply beating harder and faster whenever more blood is really needed, it either throbs and beats a great deal harder and faster than is necessary, or goes racing away on its own account, and beats "for dear life," when there is no occasion for it, thus tiring itself out without doing any good, and producing a very unpleasant feeling of nervousness and discomfort. This may be due to overwork, whether with muscles or brain; or to worry or loss of sleep, in which case it means that you must put on the brakes, take plenty of rest and exercise in the open air, and get plenty of sleep. Then these danger signals, having accomplished their warning purpose, will disappear. Other Causes of Heart Trouble. At other times, this palpitation is due to the presence of poisons in the blood, either those of infectious disease, or of certain waste products produced in the body in excess, as, for instance, when your digestion is out of order, or your skin, kidneys, and bowels are not working properly; or it is due to tea, coffee, or tobacco. Effects of Tea and Coffee. Tea and coffee, if taken in excess, will sometimes produce very uncomfortable palpitation, or rapid over-action of the heart, with restlessness and inability to sleep. They usually act in this way only when taken in large amounts, or upon a small percentage of persons who are peculiarly affected by them; and this palpitation is seldom serious, and disappears when their excessive use is stopped. Tobacco and its Dangers to the Heart. Tobacco has a very injurious effect upon the nerves of the heart in the young, making them so irritable that the heart will beat very rapidly on the least exertion; so that gradually one becomes less and less inclined to attempt exertion of any sort, whether bodily or mental, and falls into a stagnant, stupid sort of condition which seriously interferes with both growth and progress. In other cases, tobacco dulls and deadens the nerves controlling the heart, as it does the rest of the nervous system and the brain, so that the smoker feels as if nothing were worth while doing very hard, and it becomes difficult for him to fix his mind upon a subject. At the same time, it dulls the appetite so that one takes less wholesome food; and it checks, or clogs up, the sewer-pipes of the skin, the liver, and the kidneys. Of course, as you know, all trainers and coaches, even though they be habitual smokers themselves, absolutely forbid tobacco in any form to athletes who are training for a contest, on account of its effects upon the nervous system and the heart. A certain percentage of individuals are peculiarly susceptible to tobacco, so that it has a special poisonous effect upon the nerves of the heart, causing a rapid pulse and shortness of breath, known as _tobacco heart_. This is not of very common occurrence; but it is exceedingly troublesome when it does occur, and it takes a long time to get over it, even after the use of tobacco has been stopped entirely. Sometimes it leads to permanent damage of the nerves and of the heart. Give your heart plenty of vigorous exercise, but don't make it beat uncomfortably hard. Give it plenty of food, sleep, and fresh air; _avoid poisoning it_, either with the toxins of diseases, or with your own waste-poisons, or alcohol, or tobacco; and it will serve you faithfully till a good old age. CHAPTER XIII HOW AND WHY WE BREATHE Life is Shown by Breathing. If you wanted to find out whether a little black bunch up in the branches of a tree were a bird or a cluster of leaves, or a brown blur in the stubble were a rabbit or a clod, the first thing you would probably look for would be to see whether it moved, and secondly, if you could get close enough without its moving away, whether it were breathing. You would know perfectly well if you saw it breathing that it was alive, and that, if it were not breathing at all, it would probably be dead, or very nearly so. Why is breathing so necessary to life that it lasts practically as long as life does, and when it stops, life stops too? Animals can stop eating for days, or even weeks, and yet live, especially if they were fairly fat when they began to fast. Indeed, some animals, like woodchucks, bears, and marmots, will go to sleep in the fall, and sleep right on through to spring without eating a mouthful. But if any animal or bird is prevented from breathing for three minutes, it will die. Short Storage Supply of Air. There is a difference between the kind of things that you take in when you breathe and the kind of things you take in when you eat or drink. Food and drink are solids and liquids; and the body is a great sponge of one soaked full of the other, so that large amounts of food and water can be stored up in the body. But what you take in when you breathe is, of course, air--which is neither a solid nor a liquid, but a gas, very light and bulky. Of gases the body can soak up and hold only a very small amount; so its storage supply of them will be used up completely in about three minutes, and then it dies if it cannot get more air. Why our Bodies Need Air-Oxidation. The body is made up of millions of tiny living animals called cells, which eat the food that is brought to them from the blood and pour their waste and dirt back again into the same current. Now, what would happen if we were to throw all the garbage from the kitchen, and the wash water from the kitchen sink, and the dirty water from the bathroom right into the well out of which we pumped our drinking water? We should simply be poisoned within two or three days, if indeed we could manage to drink the disgusting mixture at all. That is exactly what would happen to our body cells if they were not provided with some way of getting rid of their waste and dirt. [Illustration: THE GREAT ESSENTIAL TO LIFE--AIR If the air, supplied to the diver through the tube, is cut off for three minutes, or even less, the diver cannot live.] Part of the waste that comes from our body cells is either watery, or easily dissolved in water; and this is carried in the blood to a special set of filter organs--the liver and the kidneys--and poured out of the body as the _urine_. Another part of it, when circulating through the skin, is passed off in the form of that watery vapor which we call perspiration, or sweat. But part of the waste can be got rid of only by burning, and what we call burning is another name for combining with oxygen, or to use one word--_oxidation_; and this is precisely the purpose of the carrying of oxygen by the little red blood cells from the lungs to the deeper parts of the body--to burn up, or oxidize, these waste materials which would otherwise poison our cells. When they are burnt, or oxidized, they become almost harmless. Why the Red Cells Carry only Oxygen to the Body. But why do not the red cells carry air instead of just oxygen? This is simply a clever little economy of space on nature's part. As a chemist will tell you the air which we breathe is a mixture of two gases--one called nitrogen and the other oxygen; just as syrup, for instance, is a mixture of sugar and water. Then too, as in syrup, there are different amounts of the two substances in the mixture: as syrup is made up of about one-quarter sugar and three-quarters water, so air is made up of one-fifth oxygen and four-fifths nitrogen. Now the interesting thing about this mixture, which we call air, is that the only really "live" and vital part of it for breathing purposes is the one-fifth of oxygen, the four-fifths of nitrogen being of no use to our lungs. In fact, if you split up the air with an electric current, or by some other means, and thus divide it into a small portion of pure oxygen (one-fifth), and a very much larger portion (four-fifths) of nitrogen, the latter would as promptly suffocate the animal that tried to breathe it as if he were plunged under water.[18] It may perhaps be difficult to think of anything burning inside of your bodies where everything is moist, especially as you do not see any flame; but you do find there one thing which always goes with burning, and that is warmth, or heat. This slow but steady and never-ceasing burning, or oxidation, of the waste and dirt inside your bodies is what keeps them warm. When you run fast, or wrestle, or work hard, your muscle-cells work faster, and make more waste, and you breathe faster to get in the oxygen to burn this up--in other words, you fan the body fires, and in consequence you get a great deal hotter, and perhaps perspire in order to get rid of your surplus heat. The Ocean of Air. Where does the blood in the body go in order to get this oxygen, which is so vital to it? Naturally, somewhere upon the surface of the body, because we are surrounded by air wherever we sit, or stand, or move, just as fishes are by water. All outdoors, as we say, is full of air. We are walking, just as fishes swim, at the bottom of an ocean of air some thirty miles deep; and the nearer we get up toward the surface of that ocean, as, for instance, when we climb a high mountain, the lighter and thinner the air becomes. Above ten thousand feet we often have great difficulty in breathing properly, because the air is so thin and weak in oxygen. How the Lungs Grew Up. In the simplest forms of life, any part of the soft and delicate surface will do for the blood to reach, in order to throw off its load of carbon "smoke" and take on its supply of oxygen. In fact, animals like jellyfish and worms are lungs all over. But as bodies begin to get bigger, and the skin begins to toughen and harden, this becomes more and more difficult, although even the highest and biggest animals like ourselves still throw off a certain amount of this carbon dioxid and other gases through the skin. Accordingly, certain parts of the surface of the body are set apart specially for this business of breathing; and as we already have an opening into the body provided by the mouth and food tube, the simplest thing to do is to use the mouth for taking in air, when it is not being used for taking in food, and to set aside some part of the food tube for breathing purposes. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF THE AIR TUBES AND LUNGS The arrows show the direction of the incoming air.] The lungs sprout out from the front of the gullet, just below the root of the tongue, in the days when we are getting ready to be born. The sprout divides into two, forming the beginning of the pair of lungs. Each lung sprout again divides into two, and each of the two smaller buds again into two, until finally we have the whole chest filled up with a "lung-tree" whose trunk stems and leaves are hollow. The stem of the tree or bush becomes the windpipe (_trachea_). The first two branches into which it divides form the right and left lung tubes, known as _bronchi_. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc., divisions, and so on, form what are known as the _bronchial tubes_. These keep on splitting into tinier and tinier twigs, until they end, like the bush, in little leaves, which in the lung, of course, are hollow and are called the air cells (_alveoli_). This budding off of the lungs from the gullet is the reason why the air we breathe and the food we swallow go down the same passage. Every mouthful of our food slides right across the opening of the windpipe, which has to be protected by a special flap, or trap-door of gristle, called the _epiglottis_. If you try to eat and talk at the same time, the epiglottis doesn't get warning of the coming of a swallow of food in time to cover the opening of the windpipe, and the food goes down the wrong way and you cough and choke. Now, if you will just place your fingers upon the front of your neck and slide them up and down, you will, at once, feel your windpipe--a hard, rounded tube with ridges running across it,--while, no matter how carefully you feel, or how deeply you press, you cannot feel your gullet or esophagus at all. Just take a mouthful of water, however, put your fingers deeply on each side of the windpipe, and swallow, and you will feel something shoot down the esophagus, between your fingers, toward the stomach. Both of these tubes were made of exactly the same materials to begin with. Why have they become so different? A moment's thought will tell you. One, the gullet, has only to swallow solid food or drink, so that its walls can remain soft, and indeed fall together, except when it is actually swallowing. The other tube, the air-pipe or windpipe, has to carry air, which neither will fall of its own weight, nor can readily be gulped down or belched up. It is absolutely necessary that its walls should become stiff enough to keep it open constantly and let the air flow backward and forward. So we find growing up in the walls of this air pipe, cells which turn themselves into rings of gristle, or cartilage. What the Breath Is. As you know, your "breath," as you call it,--that is to say, the used-up air which you blow out of your lungs,--is different in several ways from pure, or unused air. In the first place, it is likely to have a slight musky or mousy odor about it. You never like to breathe any one else's breath, or have any one breathe in your face. This dislike is due to certain gases, consisting of impurities from the blood, the cells of the lungs, the throat, the nose, and, if the mouth is open, the teeth. These are not only offensive and disagreeable to smell, but poisonous to breathe. Then your breath is much warmer than the rest of the air. In fact, on a very cold morning you may have tried to warm up your fingers by breathing on them; and you have also noticed that if a number of people are shut up in a room with doors and windows closed, it soon begins to feel hot as well as stuffy. This heat, of course, is given off from the blood in the lungs and in the walls of the throat and nose, as the air passes in and out again. When you stand at the window on a cold day, the glass just in front of your mouth clouds over, so that you can no longer see through it; and if you rub your finger across this cloud, it comes away wet. Evidently, the air is moister than it was when you breathed it in; this moisture also has been given off from the blood in the lungs. But what of the principal waste gas that the blood gives off in the lungs--the carbon "smoke," or carbon dioxid? Can you see any trace of this in the breath? No, you cannot, for the reason that this gas is like air, perfectly clear and transparent, and never turns to moisture at any ordinary temperature. But it has a power of combining with certain other things and forming substances which, because they are combinations of carbon, are called _carbonates_. The commonest substance with which it will do this is lime. If you take a glass or a bottle two-thirds full of lime water, and breathe into it through a glass tube or straw, you will see in a very few minutes that it is becoming milky or cloudy from the formation of visible carbonate of lime, which, when you get enough of it, makes ordinary limestone. So, although you cannot see, or smell, this carbon "smoke" in your breath, you can readily prove that it is present. [Illustration: "IMPROVING THEIR WIND"] How and Why our Breathing Varies. When you run or wrestle, you breathe faster in order to draw more air into the lungs. At the same time, your heart beats faster in order to drive a larger amount of blood through the lungs. If you run too far, or wrestle too hard, your heart and your lungs both go faster and faster, until finally they reach a point when they cannot go any quicker, and the poisonous waste substances are formed in your muscles faster than they can possibly be burned up, even by the quickest breathing and the hardest pumping of your heart. Then you begin to get "out of breath"; and if you were compelled--in order to save your life, for instance--to keep on running, or fighting, you would at last be suffocated by your own waste and dirt, and fall exhausted, or unconscious. On the other hand, by carefully training your muscles and your heart and your lungs by exercises of various sorts in the open air, beginning with easy ones and going on to harder and longer ones, you can "improve your wind," so that your heart will be able to pump more blood through the lungs per minute, and your lungs will be able to expand themselves more fully and more rapidly without fatigue. If you can recall having had a fever of any sort, even a slight one, such as comes with a sore throat or a bad cold, you may remember that you breathed faster and that your heart beat faster, and yet you were not doing any work with your muscles. The cause, however, is the same; namely, the amount of waste that is being produced in the body--in this case, by the poisons (toxins) of the germs that cause the fever. The more waste that is formed in the body, the more effort the heart and lungs will make to try to get rid of it. The Ribs. How does the air get in and out of the lung tubes? Evidently you do not and cannot swallow it as you would food or drink; and as it will not run down of its own accord when you simply open your mouth, nature has had to devise a special bit of machinery for the purpose of sucking it in and pressing it out again. This she has done in a rather ingenious manner by causing certain of the muscle-rings in the wall of the chest to turn first into gristle, or cartilage, and then later into bone, making what are known as the _ribs_; these run round the chest much as hoops do round a barrel, or as the whalebone rings did in the old-fashioned hoop skirt. When the muscles of the chest pull these ribs up, the chest is made larger,--like a bellows when you lift the handle,--air is sucked in, and we "breathe in" as we say; when the muscles let go, the ribs sink, the chest flattens and becomes smaller, the air is driven out, and we "breathe out." FOOTNOTES: [18] This nitrogen, though of no value for breathing, is of great value as a food, forming, as we have seen, an important part of all meats, or proteins, which build the tissues of our bodies. It can, however, be taken from the air only with great difficulty, by a very roundabout route; the bacteria of the soil eat it first, then they pass it on as food to the roots of plants; animals eat plants, and we eat the animals, and thus get most of our nitrogen. CHAPTER XIV HOW TO KEEP THE LUNG-BELLOWS IN GOOD CONDITION THE NEED OF PURE AIR Free Air is Pure. As air, in the form of wind, actually sweeps all outdoors, day and night, it clearly is likely to pick up a good many different kinds of dust and dirt, which may not be wholesome when breathed into our lungs. Fortunately, nature's great outdoor system of purifying the air is almost perfect, so that it is only when we build houses and shut in air from the great outdoor circulation, that "dirt" that is really dangerous begins to get into it. Caged air is the only air that is dangerous. Free-moving air is always perfectly safe to breathe any hour of the day or night, or any season of the year. Shut-in and Stagnant Air is Foul. This restless air-gas cannot be stored outside of the body, any better than it can be inside. For one thing, it is too bulky; and for another, it begins to become impure in various ways, as soon as it is shut up. It is the most unmanageable food that we "eat," for we can neither cook it nor wash it like solid food, nor filter it nor boil it like water, except on a very limited scale. We can do nothing to it except to foul it, which we do with every breath that we breathe, every fire that we make, every factory that we build. Our only chance of safety, our only hope of life, is to connect every room and every corner of those little brick and mortar boxes, those caged sections of out-of-doors, that we call houses, with nature's great system of air supply, "All Outdoors." Fortunately, the only thing needed to make the connection is to open a window--no need to send for a plumber or put in a meter, and there is no charge for the supply after connections have been made. The Enormous Amount of Air. Air outdoors is everywhere, for practical purposes, absolutely pure, just as water is when it comes down from the clouds. And like water, its only dangerous impurities are what we put there ourselves. The purity of outdoor air is due mainly to the fact that there is such an enormous amount of it, not only the miles and miles of it that stretch away on every side of us, but nearly thirty miles of it straight up above our heads; its purity is also due to the fact that, like water, it is always in motion. When heated by the sun, it expands; and, in doing so, it rises because it is less dense and therefore lighter. As soon as the pressure of the air above is lessened, air rushes in below from all the cooler regions around. This rushing of air we call a _wind_. If the low pressure lies to the north of us, the air rushes northward over us to fill it, and we say the wind is from the south; if the air is flowing to the south of us, we say the wind is from the north. How Air is Purified. In these winds certain small amounts of dust, or dirt, or leaf mould are whirled up into the air, but these are promptly washed down again whenever it rains; and the same is true of the smoke impurities in the air of our great cities. Air is also constantly being purified by the heat and light of the sunbeams, burned clean in streaks by the jagged bolt of the lightning in summer, and frozen sweet and pure by the frosts every winter. So that air in the open, or connected with the open, and free to move as it will, is always pure and wholesome. But to be sure of this, it must be "eaten alive"--that is, in motion. Stagnant air is always dead and, like all dead things, has begun to decay. The Carbon Dioxid in the Air. Air, as you will remember (p. 132), is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, and its value in the body is that it gives off part of its oxygen to combine with the body wastes and burn them to carbon dioxid. Oddly enough, even pure outdoor air contains tiny traces of carbon dioxid; but the amount is so very small as to be of no practical importance, in spite of the fact that every kind of animal that lives and moves upon the earth is pouring it out from his lungs every second. The rapidity with which it disappears is due in part to the rapidity with which it rises and spreads, or is blown, in every direction; and in part to the wonderful arrangement by which, while animals throw off this poisonous gas as waste, plants eagerly suck it in through the pores in their leaves and eat it, turning it into the carbohydrates, starch and sugar, which, in turn, become valuable foods for the animals. So perfect is this system of escape, or blowing away, of carbon dioxid, combined with its being eaten up by plants, that even the air over our great cities and manufacturing towns contains only the merest trifle more of carbon dioxid than that over the open country. Its other smoke-impurities, dirts and dusts, escape, or are blown away so rapidly that they are seldom thick enough to be injurious to health, except in the narrowest and darkest streets; so that it is always safe to open your windows wide for air, wherever you may live. The principal danger from smoke is that it cuts off the sunlight. The Necessity for Ventilation--Impurities of Indoor Air. The worst impurities in air are those that come from our own breaths and our own bodies; and, unexpectedly enough, carbon dioxid is not one of them. In spite of hundreds of experiments, we do not yet know exactly what these impurities are, though they are doubtless given off from our lungs, our skins, our mouths, and teeth, especially if the latter are not kept clean and sweet, but left dirty and decaying. We do know, however, to a certainty that air shut up in a room, or house, with people, rapidly becomes poisonous and unwholesome. As we breathe on an average about eighteen or twenty times to the minute when we are grown up, and twenty-five to thirty times a minute when we are children, you can readily see how quickly the air in an ordinary-sized room will be used up, and how foul and unfit for further breathing it will become from being loaded with these bad-smelling lighter gases, with the carbon "smoke," with heat, and with moisture. The only way in which a room can be kept fit for human beings to breathe in is to have a draught, or current of air, pouring into it through open windows, or open doors, or ventilating shafts, at least as rapidly as it is being breathed by the persons who occupy that room. By hundreds of tests this has now been found to be on an average about four bushels a minute for each person, and any system of proper ventilation must supply this amount of air in order to make a room fit to sit in. If a man, for instance, accidentally gets shut into a bank-vault, or other air-tight box or chamber, it will be only a few minutes before he begins to feel suffocated; and in a few hours he will be dead, unless some one opens the door. A century ago, when the voyage from Europe to America was made in sailing vessels, whenever a violent storm came up, in the smaller and poorer ships the hatches were closed and nailed down to keep the great waves which swept over the decks from pouring down the cabin-stairs and swamping the ship. If they were kept closed for more than two days, it was no uncommon thing to find two or three children or invalids among the unfortunate emigrants dead of slow suffocation; and many of those who were alive would later have pneumonia and other inflammations of the lungs. On one or two horrible occasions, when the crew had had a hard fight to save the ship and were afraid to open the hatches even for a moment, nearly one-third of the passengers were found dead when the storm subsided. So it is well to remember that we are fearfully poisonous to ourselves, unless we give nature full chance to ventilate us. There are also other ways in which the air in houses may be made impure besides by our own bodies, but none of them is half so serious or important. All the lights that we burn in a house, except electric ones, are eating up oxygen and giving off carbon dioxid. In fact, a burning gas jet will do almost as much toward fouling the air of a room as a grown man or woman, and should be counted as a person when arranging for ventilation. If gas pipes should leak, so that the gas escapes into a room, it is very injurious and unwholesome--indeed, in sufficient amounts, it will suffocate. Or, if the sewer pipes in the walls of the house, or in the ground under the cellar, are not properly trapped and guarded, _sewer gas_ may escape into the house from them, and this also is most unwholesome, and even dangerous. Cellar and Kitchen Air. Houses in which fruit and vegetables are stored in the cellar become filled with very unpleasant odors from the decay of these. Others again, where the kitchen is not properly ventilated, get the smoke of frying and the smell of cooking all through them. But such sources of impurity, while injurious and always to be strictly avoided, are neither half so dangerous when they occur, nor one-tenth so common as the great chief cause of impure air--our breaths and the other gases from our bodies, with the germs they contain. Drafts not Dangerous. Now comes the practical question, How are we to get rid of these breath-poisons? From the carelessness of builders, and the porous materials of which buildings are made, most houses are very far from air-tight, and a considerable amount of pure air will leak in around window-casings, door-frames, knot-holes, and other cracks, and a corresponding amount of foul air leak out. But this is not more than one-fifth enough to keep the air fresh when the rooms are even partially occupied, still less when they are crowded full of people. As each individual, breathing quietly, requires about four bushels of air (one and a half cubic yards) a minute, it is easy to see that, when there are ten or more people in a room, there ought to be a steady current of air pouring into that room; and when there are twenty or even forty people, as in an average schoolroom, the current of air (provided there _is_ one) must move so fast to keep up the supply that the people in the room begin to notice it and call it "a draft." It would be difficult to ventilate a room for even four or five persons without producing, in parts of it, a noticeable draft of air. In fact, it is pretty safe to say that, if somebody doesn't feel a draft the room is not being properly ventilated. At one time this was considered a very serious drawback--drafts were supposed to be so dangerous. But now we know that a draft is only air in motion, and that air in motion is the _only air that is sure to be pure_. There is nothing to be afraid of in a draft which is not too strong, if you are clean outside and in, and reasonably vigorous. If the draft is too strong, move away from the window or the door. Colds are very seldom caught from the cold, pure air of a draft, but nearly always from the germs, or dirt, in the still, foul air of a tightly closed room. This fact has swept away the chief objection to the _direct_, or natural, method of ventilating through open windows. Methods of Ventilation. Fortunately, as often happens, the simplest and most natural method of ventilation is the best one. Open the windows, and let the fresh air pour in. If there be any room which hasn't windows enough in it to ventilate it properly, it is unfit for human occupation, and is seldom properly lighted. Most elaborate and ingenious systems of ventilation have been devised and put into our larger houses, and public buildings like libraries, court-houses, capitols, and schools. Some of them drive the air into each room by means of a powerful steam, or electric, fan in the basement; others suck the used-up air out of the upper part of each room, thus creating an area of low pressure, to fill which the fresh air rushes in through air-tubes or around doors and windows. They have elaborate methods of warming, filtering, and washing the air they distribute. Some work fairly well, some don't; but they all have one common defect--that what they pump into the rooms is not _fresh_ air, though it may conform to all the chemical tests for that article. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating," and fresh air is air that will make those who breathe it _feel_ fresh, which the cooked and strained product of these artificial ventilating systems seldom does. [Illustration: THE "DARK ROOM" DANGER OF THE TENEMENTS The rooms "ventilate" from one to another; bedroom, dining-room, and kitchen being practically one room, with only one window opening to the _outer air_. Most of the old small tenements were built on this plan and are accountable for much of the lung disease in cities to-day.] If they could be combined with the natural, window system of ventilation, they would be less objectionable; but the first demand of nearly all of them is that the windows must be kept shut for fear of breaking the circuit of their circulation. Any system of ventilation, or anything else, that insists on all windows being kept shut is radically wrong. It is only fair to say, however, that most of these systems of ventilation attempt the impossible, as well as the undesirable thing of keeping people shut up too long. No room can be, or ought to be, ventilated so that its occupants can stay in it all day long without discomfort. In ventilating, we ought to _ventilate the people in the room_, as well as the room itself. This can only be done successfully by turning the people out of doors, at least every two or three hours if grown-ups, and every hour or so if children. That is what school recesses are for, and they might well be longer and more frequent. [Illustration: VENTILATING THE PUPILS, AS WELL AS THE CLASSROOM] The first and chief thing necessary for the good ventilation of houses and schools is plenty of windows, which are also needed to give proper light for working purposes, and to let in the only ever-victorious enemy of germs and disease--sunlight. Secondly, and not less important, the windows should fit properly, and be perfectly hung and balanced, so that the sash will come down at a finger's touch, stay exactly where it is put, and go up again like a feather, instead of having to be pried loose, wrested open, held in place with a stick, and shoved up, or down again, only with a struggle. [Illustration: A WELL-AIRED CLASSROOM The windows to the left of the pupils cannot, of course, be shown in the picture, but it can be seen that the lighting of the room is chiefly from that side. Notice that the windows are both down from the top and up from the bottom.] There should be, if possible, windows on two sides of every room, or, if not, a large transom opening into a hall which has plenty of windows in it. With this equipment and a good supply of heat, any room can be properly ventilated and kept so. But it _will not ventilate itself_. Ventilation, like the colors of the great painter Turner, must be "mixed with brains"; and those brains must be in the room itself, not down in the basement. In the schoolroom, each teacher and pupil should regard the ventilation of the room as the most important single factor in the success of their work. The teacher has a sensitive thermometer and guide in, first, her own feelings and, second, the looks and attention of her pupils. There should be vacant seats or chairs in every room so that those too near the window in winter can move out of the strong current of cold air. [Illustration: A HEALTHFUL ARRANGEMENT OF WINDOWS AND SHADES The windows face in more than one direction. The shades are hung in the middle, not only regulating the light in the room, but allowing free passage of air at the top.] Windows should reach well up toward the ceiling and be opened _at the top_, because the foul air given off from the lungs at the temperature of the body is warmer than the air of the room and consequently rises toward the ceiling. It is just as important in ventilation to _let the foul air out_ as to let the fresh air in. In fact, one is impossible without the other. Air, though you can neither see it, nor grasp it, nor weigh it, is just as solid as granite when it comes to filling or emptying a room. Not a foot, not an inch of it can be forced into a room anywhere, until a corresponding foot or inch is let out of it somewhere. Therefore, never open a window at the bottom until you have opened it at the top. If you do, the cold fresh air will pour in onto the floor, while the hot foul air will rise and bank up against the ceiling in a layer that gets thicker and thicker, and comes further and further down, until you may be actually sitting with your head and shoulders in a layer of warm foul air, and your body and feet in a pool of cool pure air. Then you will wonder why your head is so hot, and your feet so cold! Currents and Circulation of Air. In fact, this tendency of hot air to rise, and of cold air to sink, or rush in and take its place, which is the mainspring of nature's outdoor system of ventilation, is one of our greatest difficulties when we wall in a tiny section of the universe and call it a room. The difficulty is, of course, greatest in winter time, when the only pure air there is--that out of doors--is usually cold. This is one of the few points at which our instincts seem to fail us. For when it comes to a choice between being warm or well ventilated, we are sadly prone to choose the former every time. Still we would much rather be warm _and_ well ventilated than hot and stuffy, and this is what we should aim for. The main problem is the cost of the necessary fuel, as it naturally takes more to heat a current of air which is kept moving through the room, no matter how slowly, than it does a room full of air which is boxed in, as it were, and kept from moving on after it has been warmed. The extra fuel, however, means the difference between comfort and stuffiness, between health and disease. Fortunately, the very same cold which makes a room harder to heat makes it easier to ventilate. When air is warmed, it expands and makes a "low pressure," which sucks the surrounding cooler air into it, as in the making of winds; so that the warmer the air inside the room, or the colder the air outside of it, which is practically the same thing, the more eagerly and swiftly will the outdoor air rush into it. So keen is this draft, so high this pressure, that some loosely-built houses and rooms, with only a few people in them, will in very cold weather be almost sufficiently ventilated through the natural cracks and leaks without opening a window or a door at all. And what is of great practical importance, an opening of an inch or two at the top of a window will admit as much fresh air on a cold day as an opening of a foot and a half in spring or summer, so swiftly does cold air pour in. Bearing this in mind, and also that it is always best to ventilate through as many openings as possible, both to keep drafts of cold air from becoming too intense, and to give as many openings for the escape of the foul air as possible, there will be little difficulty in keeping any room which has proper window arrangements well ventilated in winter. An opening of an inch at the top of each of three windows is better than a three-inch opening at the top of one. But you must use your brains about it, watching the direction of the wind, and frequently changing the position of the window sashes to match the changes of heat in the room, or of cold outside. No arrangement of windows, however perfect, is likely to remain satisfactory for more than an hour at a time, except in warm weather. This watchfulness and attention takes time, but it is time well spent. "Eternal vigilance" is the price of good ventilation, as well as of liberty; and you will get far more work done in the course of a morning by interrupting it occasionally to go and raise or lower a window, than you will by sitting still and slaving in a stuffy, ill-smelling room. Plenty of Heat Needed. Any method of heating--open fireplace, stove, hot air, furnace, hot water, or steam--which will keep a room _with the windows open_ comfortably warm in cold weather is satisfactory and healthful. The worst fault, from a sanitary point of view, that a heating system can have is that it does not give enough warmth, so that you are compelled to keep the windows shut. Too little heat is often as dangerous as too much; for you will insist on keeping warm, no matter what it may cost you in the future, and a cold room usually means hermetically sealed windows. Remember that coal is cheaper than colds, to say nothing of consumption and pneumonia. [Illustration: A HEALTHFUL BEDROOM Windows on two sides; shades rolling from the middle; draperies few and washable; no carpet, but rugs by the bedside.] Ventilating the Bedroom. The same principles that apply to ventilating a living-room or day-room apply to ventilating a bedroom. Here you can almost disregard drafts, except in the very coldest weather, and, by putting on plenty of covering, sleep three hundred days out of the year with your windows wide open and your room within ten degrees of the temperature outdoors. You need not be afraid of catching cold. On the contrary, by sleeping in a room like this you will escape three out of four colds that you usually catch. Sleeping with the windows wide open is the method we now use to cure consumption, and it is equally good to prevent it. No bedroom window ought to be closed at the top, except when necessary to keep rain or snow from driving in. Close the windows for a short time before going to bed, and again before rising in the morning, to warm up the room to undress and dress in; or have a small inside dressing-room, with your bed out on a screened balcony or porch. But sleep at least three hundred nights of the year with the free air of heaven blowing across your face. You will soon feel that you cannot sleep without it. In winter, have a light-weight warm comforter and enough warm, but light, blankets on your bed, and leave the heat on in the room, if necessary--but _open the windows_. COLDS, CONSUMPTION, AND PNEUMONIA Disease Germs. In all foul air there are scores of different kinds of germs--many of them comparatively harmless, like the yeasts, the moulds, the germs that sour milk, and the bacteria that cause dead plants and animals to decay. But among them there are a dozen or more kinds which have gained the power of living in, and attacking, the human body. In so doing, they usually produce disease, and hence are known as _disease germs_. [Illustration: DISEASE GERMS (Greatly magnified) (1) Bacilli of tuberculosis; (2) Bacilli of typhoid fever.] These germs--most of which are known, according to their shape, as _bacilli_ ("rod-shaped" organisms), or as _cocci_ (round, or "berry-shaped" organisms)--are so tiny that a thousand of them would have to be rolled together in a ball to make a speck visible to the naked eye. But they have some little weight, after all, and seldom float around in the air, so to speak, of their own accord, but only where currents of air are kept stirred up and moving, without much opportunity to escape, and especially where there is a good deal of dust floating, to the tiny particles of which they seem to cling and be borne about like thistle-down. This is one reason why dusty air has always been regarded as so unwholesome, and why a very high death rate from consumption, and other diseases of the lungs, is found among those who work at trades and occupations in which a great deal of dust is constantly driven into the air, such as knife-grinders, stone-masons, and printers, and workers in cotton and woolen mills, shoddy mills, carpet factories, etc. [Illustration: A VACUUM CLEANER Most of the dust being emptied from the bag, would, in ordinary sweeping, have been merely blown around the room. By the vacuum process the dust is sucked up through the tube into the storing receptacle.] In cleaning a room and its furniture, it is always best to use a carpet sweeper, a vacuum cleaner, or a damp cloth, as much as possible, the broom as little as may be, and the feather duster never. The two latter stir up disease germs resting peacefully on the floor or furniture, and set them floating in the air, where you can suck them into your lungs. There are three great groups of disease germs which may be found floating in the air wherever people are crowded together without proper ventilation--for most of these disease germs cannot live long outside of the body, and hence come more or less directly from somebody else's lungs, throat, or nose. The most numerous, but fortunately the mildest group, of these are the germs of various sorts which give rise to _colds_, _coughs_, and _sore throats_. Then there are two other exceedingly deadly germs, which kill more people than any other disease known to humanity--the bacillus of consumption, and the coccus of pneumonia. Our best protection against all these is, first, to have our rooms well ventilated, well lighted, and well sunned; for most of these germs die quickly when exposed to direct sunlight, and even to bright, clear daylight. The next most important thing is to avoid, so far as we can, coming in contact with people who have any of these diseases, whether mild or severe; and the third is to build up our vigor and resisting power by good food, bathing, and exercise in the open air, so that these germs cannot get a foothold in our throats and lungs. Colds. Two-thirds of all colds are infectious, and due, not to cold pure air, but to foul, stuffy air, with the crop of germs that such air is almost certain to contain. They should be called "fouls," not "colds." They spread from one person to another; they run through families, schools, and shops. They are accompanied by fever, with headache, backache, and often chills; they "run their course" until the body has manufactured enough antitoxins to stop them, and then they get well of their own accord. This is why so many different remedies have a great reputation for curing colds. If you "catch cold," stay in your own room or in the open air for a few days, if possible, and keep away from everybody else. You only waste your time trying to work in that condition, and will get better much more quickly by keeping quiet, and will at the same time avoid infecting anybody else. Get your doctor to tell you what mild antiseptic to use in your nose and throat; and then keep it in stock against future attacks. Often it is advisable to rest quietly in bed a few days, so as not to overtax the body in its weakened condition. [Illustration: EXERCISE IN THE COLD IS A GOOD PREVENTIVE OF COLDS] Keep away from foul, stuffy air as much as possible, especially in crowded rooms; bathe or splash in cool water every morning; sleep with your windows open; and take plenty of exercise in the open air; and you will catch few colds and have little difficulty in throwing off those that you do catch. Colds are comparatively trifling things in themselves; but, like all infections however mild, they may set up serious inflammations in some one of the deeper organs--lungs, kidneys, heart, or nervous system, and frequently make an opening for the entrance of the germs of tuberculosis or pneumonia. Don't neglect them; and if you find that you take cold easily, find out what is wrong with yourself, and reform your unhealthful habits. [Illustration: A YEAR OF CONSUMPTION ON MANHATTAN ISLAND Every black dot represents one case reported. The groupings show how rapidly the disease spreads from one household to another in the same locality.] HOW TO CONQUER CONSUMPTION Different Forms of Tuberculosis. The terrible disease tuberculosis is the most serious and deadly enemy which the human body has to face. It kills every year, in the United States, over a hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children--_more lives than were lost in battle in the four years of our Civil War_. It is caused by a tiny germ--the _tubercle bacillus_--so called because it forms little mustard-seed-like lumps, or masses, in the lungs, called _tubercles_, or "little tubers." For some reason it attacks most frequently and does its greatest damage in the lungs, where it is called _consumption_; but it may penetrate and attack any tissue or part of the body. Tuberculosis of the glands, or "kernels," of the neck and skin, is called _scrofula_; tuberculosis of the hip is _hip-joint disease_; and tuberculosis of the knee, _white swelling_. "Spinal disease" and "hunch-back" are, nine times out of ten, tuberculosis of the backbone. Tuberculosis of the bowels often causes fatal wasting away, with diarrhea, in babies and young children; and tuberculosis of the brain (called _tubercular meningitis_) causes fatal convulsions in infancy. [Illustration: CONSUMPTION IN CHICAGO Four hundred and seventy-seven cases in one month--February, 1909.] Tuberculosis of the Lungs--How to Keep it from Spreading. Tuberculosis of the lungs is the most dangerous of all forms, both because the lungs appear to have less power of resistance against the tubercle bacillus, and also because from the lung, the bacilli can readily be coughed up and blown into the air again, or spit onto the floor, to be breathed into the lungs of other people, and thus give them the disease. Two-thirds of all who die of tuberculosis die of the pulmonary, or lung, form of the disease, popularly called consumption. The first thing then to be done to put a stop to this frightful waste of human life every year is to _stop the circulation of the bacillus from one person to another_. This can be done partially and gradually by seeing that every consumptive holds a handkerchief, or cloth, before his mouth whenever he coughs; that he uses a paper napkin, pasteboard box, flask, or other receptacle whenever he spits; and that these things in which the sputum is caught are promptly burned, boiled, or otherwise sterilized by heat. The only sure and certain way, however, of stopping its spread is by placing the consumptive where he is in no danger of infecting any one else. And as it fortunately so happens that such a place--that is to say, a properly regulated sanatorium, or camp--is the place which will give him his best chance of recovery, at least five times as good as if he were left in his own home, this is the plan which is almost certain to be adopted in the future. Its only real drawback is the expense. But when you remember that consumption destroys a hundred and fifty thousand lives every year in this country alone, and that it is estimated that every human life is worth at least three thousand dollars to the community, you will see at once that consumption costs us in deaths alone, four hundred and fifty million dollars a year! And when you further remember that each person who dies has usually been sick from two to three years, and that two-thirds of such persons are workers, or heads of families, and that tens of thousands of other persons who do not die of it, have been disabled for months and damaged or crippled for life by it, you can readily see what an enormous sum we could well afford to pay in order to stamp it out entirely. One of the most important safeguards against the disease is the law that prevents spitting in public places. Not only the germs of consumption, but those of pneumonia, colds, catarrhs, diphtheria, and other diseases, can be spread by spitting. The habit is not only dangerous, but disgusting, unnecessary, and vulgar, so that most cities and many states have now passed laws prohibiting spitting in public places, under penalty of fine and imprisonment. [Illustration: A REPORT-FORM FROM A HEALTH DEPARTMENT LABORATORY In a suspected case, the physician sends a specimen of the sputum to the Laboratory to be tested, and receives a reply according to the result of the test. The form is filled in with the name of the patient and signed by the Director of the Laboratory.] The next best safeguard is plenty of fresh air and sunlight in every room of the house. These things are doubly helpful, both because they increase the vigor and resisting power of those who occupy the rooms and might catch the disease, and because direct sunlight, and even bright daylight, will rapidly kill the bacilli when it can get directly at them. How great is the actual risk of infection in crowded, ill-ventilated houses is well shown by the reports of the tuberculosis dispensaries of New York and other large cities. Whenever a patient comes in with tuberculosis, they send a visiting nurse to his home, to show him how best to ventilate his rooms, and to bring in all the other members of the family to the dispensary for examination. No less than from _one-fourth to one-half_ of the children in these families are found to be already infected with tuberculosis. The places where we look for our new cases of tuberculosis now are in the same rooms or houses with old ones. A careful consumptive is no source of danger; but alas, not more than one in three are of that character. [Illustration: A SIGN THAT OUGHT NOT TO BE NECESSARY But, being necessary, it should be strictly respected and obeyed.] It has been estimated that any city or county could provide proper camps, or sanatoria, to accommodate all its consumptives and cure two-thirds of them in the process, support their families meanwhile, and stop the spread of the disease, at an expense not to exceed five dollars each per annum for five years, rapidly diminishing after that. If this were done, within thirty years consumption would probably become as rare as smallpox is now. Some day, when the community is ready to spend the money, this will be done, but in the mean time, we must attack the disease by slower and less certain methods. [Illustration: A COMPARATIVE DEATH-RATE OF CONTAGIOUS DISEASES Note the number of deaths from tuberculosis to one from smallpox; yet smallpox before the days of vaccination and quarantine, was the universal scourge. Similarly, by preventive measures, we are controlling the other diseases. Why not also tuberculosis? (Statistics for greater New York, 1908; total number of deaths from all causes, 73,072.)] Why the Fear and Danger of Consumption have been Lessened. Terrible and deadly as consumption is, we no longer go about in dread of it, as people did twenty-five years ago, before we knew what caused it; for we know now that it is preventable and that two-thirds of the cases can be cured after they develop. The word consumption is no longer equivalent to a sentence of death. The deaths from tuberculosis each year have diminished almost one-half in the last forty years, in nearly every civilized country in the world; and this decrease is still going on. The methods which have brought about this splendid progress, and which will continue it, if we have the intelligence and the determination to stick to them, are:--First, the great improvements in food supply, housing, ventilation, drainage, and conditions of life in general, due to the progress of modern civilization and science, combined with a marked increase in wages in the great working two-thirds of the community. Second, the discovery that consumption is caused by a bacillus, and by that alone, and is spread by the scattering of that bacillus into the air, or upon food, drink, or clothing, to be breathed in or eaten by other victims. Third, increase of medical skill and improved methods of recognizing the disease at a very early stage. A case of consumption discovered early means a case cured, eight times out of ten. Its Cure and Prevention. Fortunately, the same methods which will cure the disease will also prevent it. The best preventatives are food, fresh air, and sunshine. Eat plenty of nourishing food three times a day, especially of milk, eggs, and meat. Sit or work in a gentle current of air, keep away from those who have the disease, sleep with your windows open, take plenty of exercise in the open air, and you need have little fear of consumption. In the camps, or sanatoria, for the cure of consumption, these methods are simply carried a little further, to make up for previous neglect. The patients sit or lie out of doors all day long, usually in reclining chairs, in summer under the trees, and in winter on porches, with just enough roof to protect them from rain or snow. They sleep in tents, or in shacks, which are closed in only on three sides, leaving the front open to the south. They dress and undress in a warm room, or the curtains of the tent are dropped, or the shutters of the shack closed night and morning until the room is warmed up. In cold climates they dress day and night almost as if they were going on an arctic relief expedition, and spend twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four in the open air. [Illustration: A TUBERCULOSIS TENT COLONY IN WINTER] They eat three square meals a day, consisting of everything that is appetizing, nutritious, and wholesome, with plenty of butter, or other fats; and in addition, drink from one to three pints of new milk and swallow from six to twelve raw eggs a day. You would think they would burst on such a diet, but they don't; they simply gain from two to four pounds a week, lose their fever and their cough, get rid of their night sweats, and usually in from two to five weeks are able to be up and about the camp, taking light exercise. When they have reached their full, normal, or healthy weight for their height and age, their amount of food is reduced, but still kept at what would be considered full diet for a healthy man at hard work. If sick people can be made well by this open air treatment, those of us that are well ought not be afraid to have a window open all night. Two-thirds of the treatment that would cure you of consumption will prevent your ever having it. While tuberculosis chiefly attacks the lungs, it is really a disease of the entire body, or system, and cannot attack you if you will keep yourself strong, vigorous, and clean in every sense of the word. How to Recognize the Disease in its Early Stages. To recognize the disease early is, of course, work for the doctor; but he must be helped by the intelligence of the patient, or the patient's family, or he may not see the case until it is so far advanced as to have lost its best chance of cure. We can now recognize consumption before the lungs are seriously diseased. Among the most useful methods with children is the rubbing or scratching of a few drops of the toxin of the tubercle bacillus, tailed _tuberculin_, into the skin. If the children are healthy, this will leave no mark, or reddening, at all; but if they have tuberculosis, in two-thirds of the cases it will make a little reddening and swelling like a very mild vaccination. But in order to get any good from this, cases must be brought to a doctor, early, without waiting for a bad cough, or for night sweats. Signs of Consumption. The signs that ought to make us suspicious of a possible beginning of tuberculosis are first, loss of weight without apparent cause; fever, or flushing of the cheeks, with or without headache, every afternoon or evening; and a tendency to become easily tired and exhausted without unusual exertion. Whenever these three signs are present, without some clear cause, such as a cold, or unusual overwork or strain, especially if they be accompanied by a rapid pulse and a tendency to get out of breath readily in running upstairs, they should make us suspect tuberculosis; and if they keep up, it is advisable to go at once and have the lungs thoroughly examined. Nine cases out of ten, seen at this stage, are curable--many of them in a few months. Even if we should not have the disease, if we have these symptoms we need to have our health improved; and a course of life in the open air, good feeding, and rest, which would cure us if we had tuberculosis, will build us up and prevent us from developing it. [Illustration: AN OUTDOOR CLASSROOM FOR TUBERCULOUS CHILDREN The roof and the side awnings are the only obstructions to the outer air.] PNEUMONIA Its Cause and Prevention. The other great disease of the lungs is _pneumonia_, formerly known as inflammation of the lungs. This is rapid and sudden, instead of slow and chronic like tuberculosis, but kills almost as many people; and unfortunately, unlike tuberculosis, is not decreasing. In fact in some of our large cities, it is rapidly increasing. Although we know it is due to a germ, we don't yet know exactly how that germ is conveyed from one victim to another. One thing, however, of great practical importance we do know, and that is that pneumonia is a disease of overcrowding and foul air, like tuberculosis; that it occurs most frequently at that time of the year--late winter and early spring--when people have been longest crowded together in houses and tenements; and that it falls most severely upon those who are weakened by overcrowding, under-feeding, or the excessive use of alcohol. How strikingly this is true may be seen from the fact that, while the death-rate of the disease among the rich and those in comfortable circumstances, who are well-fed and live in good houses, is only about five per cent,--that is, one in twenty,--among the poor, especially in the crowded districts of our large cities, the death-rate rises to twenty per cent, or one in five; while among the tramp and roustabout classes, who have used alcohol freely, and among chronic alcoholics, it reaches forty per cent. The same steps should be taken to prevent its spread as in tuberculosis--destroying the sputum, keeping the patient by himself, and thoroughly ventilating and airing all rooms. As the disease runs a very rapid course, usually lasting only from one to three weeks, this is a comparatively easy thing to do. Though pneumonia is commonly believed to be due to exposure to cold or wet, like colds, it has very little to do with these. You will not catch pneumonia after breaking through the ice or getting lost in the snow, unless you already have the germs of the disease in your mouth and throat, and your constitution has already been run down by bad air, under-feeding, overwork, or dissipation. Arctic explorers, for instance, never catch pneumonia in the Frozen North. CHAPTER XV THE SKIN OUR WONDERFUL COAT What the Skin Is. The skin is the most wonderful and one of the most important structures in the body. We are prone to think lightly of it because it lies on the surface, and to speak of it as a mere coating, or covering--a sort of body husk; but it is very much more than this. Not only is it waterproof against wet, a fur overcoat against cold, and a water jacket against heat, all in one, but it is also a very important member of the "look-out department," being the principal organ of one of our senses, that of touch. The eyes in the beginning were simply little colored patches of the skin, sunk into the head for the purpose of specializing on the light-rays. The smelling areas of the nose also were pieces of the skin, as were also the ears. Not only so, but--although it is a little hard for you to understand how this could have happened--the whole brain and nervous system is made up of folds of the skin tucked in from the surface of the back; so that we can say that the skin, with the organs that belong to it and have grown from it--the eyes, nose, ears, brain, and nerves--forms the most wonderful part of the body. Everything that we know of the world outside of us is told us by the skin and the look-out organs that have grown out of it. The skin is not only the surface part and coating of the body, far superior to any six different kinds of clothing which have yet been invented, but it is related to, and assists in, the work of nearly half the organs in the body. Not only all that we learn by touch and pressure, but everything that we know of heat and cold, of moisture and dryness, and most of pain, comes to us through our skin, through the little bulbs on the ends of the nerve twigs in it. It also helps the lungs to breathe, the kidneys to purify the blood, and the heart to control the flow of blood through the body. A healthy skin is of very great importance; and part of this health we can secure directly, by washing and bathing, scrubbing and kneading and rubbing, because the skin lies right on the surface, where we can readily get at it. But, on the other hand, no amount of attention from the outside alone will keep it healthy. All the organs inside the body must be kept healthy if the skin is to be kept in good condition. Although the external washing and cleaning are very important, the greater part of the work of developing a healthy skin and a good complexion must be done from the inside. The Two Layers which Make Up the Skin. Like our "internal skin," the mucous membrane, which lines our stomach and bowels, the skin is made up of two layers--a deeper, or basement, sheet, woven out of tough strands of fibrous stuff (_derma_); and a surface layer (_epidermis_) composed of cells lying side by side like the bricks in a pavement, or the tiles on a floor, and hence called "pavement" (_epithelial_) cells. These pavement cells are fastened on the basement membrane much as the kernels of corn grow on a cob; only, instead of there being but one layer, as on a cob of corn, there are a dozen or fifteen of them, one above the other, each one dovetailing into the row below it, as the corn kernels do into the surface of the cob. As they grow up toward the surface from the bottom, they become flatter and flatter, and drier, until the outer surface layer becomes thin, fine, dry, slightly greasy scales, like fish-scales, of about the thickness of the very finest and driest bran. We are continually Shedding our Skin. One way in which the skin keeps itself so wonderfully clean and fresh is by continually shedding from its surface showers of these fine, dry, scaly cells, which drop, or are rubbed off, as they dry. This is the reason why no mark, not even a stain or dye, upon the skin, will stay there long; for no matter how deeply it may have soaked into the layers of the pavement-cells, every cell touched by it will ultimately grow up to the surface, dry up, and fall off, carrying the stain with it. If you want to make a mark on the skin that will be permanent, you have to prick the colors into it so deeply that they will go through the basement layer and reach cells which will not grow toward the surface. This "pricking-in" operation is known as _tattooing_; and it is as foolish as it is painful, for blood-poisoning and other diseases may be carried into the system in the process. [Illustration: THE LAYERS OF THE SKIN _E_, epidermis; _C_, capillaries; _D_, dermis; _F_, fat globules and connecting fibres.] Perhaps you will wonder why, if you are shedding these scales from all over your surface every day, you don't see them. This is simply because they are so exceedingly small, thin, and delicate, that you cannot see them unless you get a large number of them together; and when you are changing your clothing, bathing, etc., they are rubbed off and float away. If a part of the body has been shut in--as when a broken arm, for instance, is in a cast, which cannot be changed for several weeks--when finally you take off the bandage, you will find inside it spoonfuls--I had almost said handfuls--of fine scales, which have been shed from the skin and held in by the wrappings. THE GLANDS IN THE SKIN Sweat Glands. Like all the pavement (epithelial) surfaces of the body, inside and out, the skin has the power of making glands by dipping down little pouches or pockets into the layers below. In the skin, these little gland-pockets are of two kinds, the _sweat glands_ and the _hair glands_. The sweat glands are tiny tubes which go twisting down through the different pavement layers, through the basement layer, and right into the coat of fat, which lies just under the skin. The tube of the sweat gland soaks, or picks, out of the blood some of the waste-stuff--just as the kidney tube does in the kidney,--together with a good deal of water and a small amount of delicate oil, and pours them out on the surface of the body in the form of the "sweat," or _perspiration_. As you will remember, when the muscles work hard and pour more waste into the blood, then the heart pumps larger amounts of blood out into the skin; and this causes it to redden. The sweat glands work harder to purify this extra blood, and they pour out the waste and oil and water on the surface. As soon as this water gets upon our hot skin, it begins to evaporate and cool us off, as well as to carry off some of the waste in the form of gas. The trace of oil in the perspiration helps to lubricate the skin and keep it soft; but when too much of it is poured out we have that greasy feeling, which we have all felt after perspiring freely. From all this cooling and breathing and blood-purifying work going on upon the surface of our skin, you can easily see why it is so important that all our clothing should be loose and porous and that next the skin easily washed; else it will very soon become clogged up and greasy, and shut off the breathing and blood-purifying work of the skin and make it dirty and unhealthy. This continual mist of water, rising and bubbling up through our skin like springs out of a hillside, is another of nature's wonderful ways of cleansing the skin and of preventing any kind of dirt from permanently sticking to or lodging in it. Remember, you do not need to dig below the surface when you wash. Hair Glands. The other kind of skin glands, the hair glands, are also pouches growing out from the deepest part of the stem of the hair, known as the root, or _hair bulb_. [Illustration: THE GLANDS IN THE SKIN _S_, sweat gland; _H_, hair bulb; _O_, oil gland; _T_, touch bulb at tip of nerve.] From the root of the hairs, two or three little bundles of muscle run up toward the surface of the skin. When these contract, they pull the root of the hair up toward the surface, causing the hair to stand erect, or "bristle," as we say. This is what makes the hair on a dog's or a cat's back stand up when he is angry; but the commonest use of the movement is, when animals are cold, to make their coats stand out so as to hold more air and retain the body-heat better. We have lost most of our hairy coating, but whenever we get chilly, whether from cold or from fright, these little muscles of our hair bulbs contract and pull the hair glands of our skin up toward the surface, so that it looks all "pimply" or "goose-skinned." Each hair pouch has sprouted out from its sides a pair of tiny pouches, which form _oil glands_ to lubricate the hair and keep it sleek and flexible. It is hard to beat nature at her own game, and her method of oiling the hair is far superior to any hair oil that can be put on from the outside. Keep your hair well brushed and washed, and nature will oil it for you much better than any hair oil or scalp reviver ever invented.[19] THE NAILS How the Nails are Made. Another "trade," which our wonderful skin has literally "at its fingers' ends," is that of making nails. Indeed, every kind of scale, armor, fur, feather, and leather coating possessed by bird, beast, or fish was made by, and out of, the skin. Nail-making, however, is one of its simplest feats, as it is carried out merely by turning a little patch, or area, of itself into a horn-like substance. This, the skin of insects, of fishes, of crocodiles, etc., does all over the surface of their bodies; but in animals and birds only a number of little patches at the tips of the toes harden up in this way, to form the claws or nails; and in birds, the beak; and in some animals, the horns. So it is quite correct to call the substance of our nails "horn-like." In some animals and birds, these little horny patches at the ends of the toes grow out into long, curved hooks, or broad, digging chisels and scoops; but on our own fingers, they simply make a little mould over the finger-tip. If, however, they are protected from being broken off, they will grow four or five inches long; in fact, they are carefully trained to do this by some of the upper classes in China, merely for the purpose of showing that they have never been obliged to degrade themselves, as they foolishly regard it, by working with their hands. You can easily prove that the nails do grow constantly from the root or base, out toward the tip, by watching, some time when you have pounded one of your nails, how the black or discolored patch in it will grow steadily outward toward the tip, where it will be broken off and shed. You cannot see the softest and youngest row, or layer, of the nail cells at the base, because a fold of skin, the _nail fold_, has been doubled, or folded, over them to protect them while they are young and soft. It is not best to push this fold of skin back too much, as, by so doing, you may uncover the young nail cells while they are soft and tender, and expose them to injury. The reason why there is a little whitish crescent at the base of the nail is that the cells of the nail do not grow hard and horn-like and transparent until they have grown out a quarter of an inch or so from under the fold, but at first look whitish, or opaque, like the rest of the skin. Health Shown by the Color of the Nails. Your nails and your lips are not really any redder, or pinker, than the rest of your skin; but the cells forming them are clear and transparent and allow the red blood to show through. This is why we often look at the nails and lips to see what the color of the blood is like, and how well or badly it is circulating. If the blood is _anemic_, or thin, then both lips and nails are pale and dull. If the blood is healthy and the circulation good, then the nails are pink, and the lips clear red. If, on the other hand, the circulation is bad, as in some forms of lung disease and heart disease, so that the blood is loaded with carbonic acid until it is blue and dark, then the lips may become purplish or dark blue, and the finger nails nearly the same color. THE BLOOD-MESH OF THE SKIN The Blood Vessels under the Skin. Not merely the nails and the lips, but the whole surface of the skin is underlaid with a thick mat, or network, of blood vessels. These vessels are all quite small, so that a cut has to go down completely through the skin, and generally well down into the muscles, before it will reach any blood vessel which will bleed at a dangerous rate. But there are so many of them, and they cover such a wide surface throughout the body, that they are actually capable of holding, at one time, nearly one-tenth of all the blood in the body. This "water-jacket" coat of tiny blood vessels all over our body has some very important uses: It allows the heart to pump large amounts of blood out to the surface to be purified by the sweat glands, and to breathe out a little of its carbon dioxid and other gas-poisons. The Skin as a Heat Regulator. Heat, as well as waste, is given off by the blood when it is poured out to the surface; so another most important use of the skin is as a heat regulator. As we have already seen, every movement which we make with our muscles, whether of arms and limbs, heart, or food tube, causes heat to be given off. We very well know, when we work hard at anything, we are likely to "get warmed up." Although a certain amount of this heat is necessary to our bodily health, too much of it is very dangerous. Just as it is best for the temperature, or heat, of a room to be at about a certain level, somewhere from 60° to 70° F., so it is best for the interior of our bodies to be kept at about a certain heat. This, as we can show by putting a little glass thermometer under the tongue, or in the armpit, and holding it there for a few minutes, is a little over 98° F. (98.4° to be exact); and this we call "body heat," or "blood heat," or "normal temperature." Our body cells are, in one way, a very delicate and sensitive sort of hot-house plants, though tough enough in other respects. Whenever our body heat goes down more than five or six degrees, or up more than two or three degrees, then trouble at once begins. If our temperature goes down, as from cold or starvation, we begin to be drowsy and weak, and finally die. If, on the other hand, our temperature climbs up two, three, or four degrees, then we begin to be dizzy and suffer from headache and say we have "a fever." A fever, or rise of temperature, that can be noted with a thermometer, is usually due to disease germs of some sort in the body; and most of the discomfort that we suffer is really due more to the poisons (toxins) of the germs than to the mere increase of heat, though this alone will finally work serious damage. However, as we well know from repeated experience, we need only to run or work hard in the sun for a comparatively short time to make ourselves quite hot enough to be very uncomfortable; and if we had no way to relieve ourselves by getting rid of some of this heat, we should either have to stop work at once, or become seriously ill. This relief, however, is just what nature has provided for in this thick coat of blood vessels in our skin; it enables us to throw great quantities of blood out to the surface where it can get rid of, or, as the scientists say, "radiate," its heat. This cooling process is hastened by the evaporation of the perspiration poured out at the same time, as we have seen. One of the chief things in training for athletics is teaching our skin and heart together to get rid of the heat made by our muscles, as fast, or nearly as fast, as we make it, thus enabling us to keep on running, or working, without discomfort. As soon as we stop running, or working, the heart begins to slow down, the blood vessels in the skin contract and diminish in size, the flush fades, and we begin to cool off. We are not making either as much heat or as much waste as we were, and hence do not need to get rid of so much through our skins. When we feel cold, just the opposite kinds of change occur in the skin. The blood vessels in the skin contract so as to keep as much of our warm blood as possible in the deeper parts of our body, and prevent its losing heat. As blood showing through the pavement-layer of the skin is what gives us our color, or complexion, our skin becomes pale and pasty-looking; and if all the blood is driven in from the surface, our lips and finger nails will become blue with cold. Here again, by changes in the skin, nature is simply trying to protect herself from the loss of too much heat. If we exercise briskly, or eat a good warm meal, and thus make more heat inside of our body, then there is no longer any need to save its surface loss in this way; and the blood vessels in our skin fill up, the heart pumps harder, and the warm, rich color comes back to our faces and lips and finger nails. So perfectly and wonderfully does this skin mesh of ours work, by increasing or preventing the loss of heat, that it is almost impossible to put a healthy man under conditions that will raise or lower his temperature more than about a degree, that is to say, about one per cent above, or below, its healthful level. Men studying this power of the skin have shut themselves into chambers, or little rooms, built like ovens, with a fire in the wall or under the floor, and found that if they had plenty of water to drink and perspired freely, they could stand a temperature of over 150° F. without great discomfort and without raising the temperature of their own bodies more than about one degree. If, however, the air in the chamber was moistened with the vapor of water, or steam, so that the perspiration could no longer evaporate freely from the surface of their bodies, then they could not stand a temperature much above 108° or 110° without discomfort. Other men, who were trained athletes, have been put to work in a closed chamber, at very vigorous muscular exercise, so as to make them perspire freely. But while a thermometer placed in that chamber showed that the men were giving off enormous amounts of heat to the air around them, another thermometer placed under their tongues showed that they were raising the temperature of their own bodies only about half a degree. One man, however, happened to try this test one morning when he was not feeling very well, and didn't perspire properly, and the thermometer under his tongue went up nearly four degrees. THE NERVES IN THE SKIN How We Tell Things from Touch, and Feel Heat and Cold and Pain. Last of all, the skin is the principal organ of the sense of touch, and also of the "temperature sense"--the sense of heat and cold--and of the sense that feels pain. All these feelings are attended to by little bulbs lying in the deeper part of the skin and forming the tips of tiny nerve twigs,[20] which run inward to join larger nerve branches and finally reach the spinal cord. There are millions of these little bulbs scattered all over the surface of the skin, but they are very much thicker and more numerous in some parts than in others; and that is why, as you have often noticed, certain parts of the skin are more sensitive than others. They are thickest, for instance, on the tips of our fingers and on our lips, and fewest over the back of the neck and shoulders, and across the lower part of the hips.[21] For a long time, it was supposed that all these little nerve-bulbs in the skin did the same kind of work, because they looked, under the microscope, exactly alike; but it was found that they divide the work up among them, so that some of them give their entire attention to heat, and others to cold, others to touch, and others again to pain. So carefully has the work been mapped out among them that they report to different centres in the brain and spinal cord, so that we now understand why, in diseases which happen to attack one or other of these centres, we may lose our sense of heat and cold, as in that terrible disease, _leprosy_; or our sense of touch, as in _paralysis_; or we may even, in some very rare cases, lose our sense of pain, and yet have all our other senses perfect. FOOTNOTES: [19] Hairs are of value chiefly as protection against cold and wet, although we have got rid of them and substituted clothing for this purpose, except on the top of our heads; but their roots also are very richly supplied with nerves so that they form almost a sort of feelers, or organs of sense. Many animals that move about much in the dark, like cats and bats, for instance, have their lips or faces studded with long, delicate, stiff hairs called whiskers, which act in this way and prevent their bumping into objects in the dark. And it is probable that the bristling of the hair on a dog's back, when he is angry or frightened, is in part for this purpose--to enable him to slip aside and dodge a blow, even after it has touched the ends of the hairs. This great sensitiveness of the hair roots is what makes it hurt so when any one pulls your hair. [20] See the diagram of the skin on page 171. [21] You can easily test this by a very simple experiment. Take a pair of dividers; or, if you haven't these, a couple of long pins or needles will do. Set them with their points a quarter of an inch apart. Then touch these points, first closing your eyes, so that you will not be able to see them, to the tip of one of your fingers, and you will readily feel that _two_ points touch the skin. Turn your hand over and touch the back of it with the two points, and they will feel like one point. Carry the test further, over other parts of the body, and you will find that they are much less sensitive; thus you will find that at the back of the neck, or over the shoulder-blades, you will have to put the points nearly an inch apart before you can tell that there are two of them. This simply means that you have to touch two separate touch bulbs before you can get the idea of "two-ness." As these bulbs are an inch or more apart in the skin of the back, you have to spread the points of the dividers that distance. You can also prove that the touching of two nerve-buds gives the idea of "two-ness" by crossing two of your fingers and placing a pea, or small round piece of chalk, between their crossed tips. If you close your eyes and roll the pea on the table, or desk, you will think you have two peas between your fingers. CHAPTER XVI HOW TO KEEP THE SKIN HEALTHY CLOTHING Clothes should be Loose and Comfortable. Man is the only animal that has no natural suit of clothing. Birds have feathers, and animals have fur, or hair, which they shed in summer and thicken up in winter without even thinking about it, so that they do not have to bother with either overcoats or flannels. The wise men say that man originally had a full suit of hair like other animals, and that he gradually got rid of it, as he became human. Whether this be true or not, the fact remains that he has none now; and consequently he must invent and manufacture something to take its place. Originally, in the time of our savage ancestors, clothing was worn chiefly as protection from cold at night, so that all the earlier forms of clothing were of a more or less blanket-or cloak-like form, and wrapped, or swathed, the whole body without fitting closely to the limbs. It is interesting to remember this fact, because even our most highly civilized forms of clothing still show this same tendency. The skirt, for instance, is simply a survival of the lower end of the blanket, which has never been cut down to fit the limbs. The principles upon which garments should be built are two: First, they should fit closely enough to the body and limbs to protect them from either injury or cold, even while free activity of every sort is allowed--you could not wrestle in a blanket or run very far in a sack. Second, they should be thick enough to protect us from cold, and yet at the same time porous enough not to interfere with the natural breathing and ventilating of the skin. A garment should be as loose as possible without interfering with our movements, and as free and as light as can be worn with reasonable warmth and protection. The less clothing you can wear and be comfortable, the better. We should particularly avoid binding or cramping the chest and the hips and waist. If clothing is too tight about the chest, it interferes both with free movement of the arms and, what is even more important, with the breathing movements of the chest. If too tight about the waist and hips, it badly cripples the lower limbs and interferes with the proper movements of the diaphragm in breathing, and with the passage of the food and the blood through the bowels. Your instincts are perfectly right that make you dislike to be squeezed or pinched or cramped in any way, or at any point, by your clothing; and if you will only follow these instincts all through your lives, you will be far healthier and happier. The Texture of Clothing. Just as for ages we have experimented with different kinds of food, so we have with different kinds of material for clothing. We have used the skins of animals; mats woven out of leaves and grasses; the feathers of birds; the skins of fishes; cloths made of wool and of cotton; and even the cocoon spun by certain caterpillars, which we call _silk_. But of all these materials, practically only two have stood the test of the ages and proved themselves the most suitable and best all-round clothing materials--wool and cotton. Woolen cloth, woven from the fleece of sheep or goats or camels or llamas or alpacas, has three great advantages, which make it _the_ outside clothing of the human species. First, it is sufficiently tough and lasting to withstand rips and tugs and ordinary wear and tear; second, it is warm--that is, it retains well the body heat; and third, it is porous, so that it will allow gases and perspiration from the surface of the body to pass through it in one direction, and air for the skin to breathe, in the other. [Illustration: RESULTS OF TIGHT CLOTHING (1) The normal thorax. (2) The thorax and organs cramped and lifted by pressure of the clothing. (From an X-ray photograph.--After Dickinson.)] No clothing, of course,--not even fur,--has any warmth in itself; it simply has the power of retaining, or keeping in, the warmth of the body that it covers. The best and most effective way of retaining the body warmth is to surround the body with a layer of dead, or still, air, which is the best non-conductor of heat known. Hence, porous garments, like loosely-woven flannels, blankets, and other woolen cloths, are warm because they contain or hold large amounts of air in their spongy mesh. The reason why furs are so warm is that their soft, furry under-hairs, or "pelt" as the furriers call it, entangle and hold an enormous amount of air. The fur of ordinary sealskin, for instance, is about half an inch deep; and _ninety per cent_ of this half-inch is air. If you wet it, its fur "slicks down" to almost nothing, although the most drenching wetting will not wash all the air out of it, but still leaves a dry layer next to the skin. The fur of mink skin, coon skin, or wolf skin, is an inch thick; and nearly eighty per cent of this thickness is air. The great advantage for clothing purposes of wool over fur is that the wool is porous through and through, while the fur is borne upon, and backed by, a layer of leather--the skin of the animal upon which it grew--which layer, after tanning and curing, becomes almost absolutely air-tight. As a matter of fact, furs are worn mostly for display and are most unwholesome and undesirable garments. The only real excuse for their use, save for ornament in small pieces or narrow strips, is on long, cold rides in the winter, and among lumbermen, frontiersmen, and explorers. They hold in every particle of perspiration and poisonous gas thrown off by the skin, and if worn constantly, make it pale, weak, and flabby; and the moment we take them off, we take cold. For outer garments and general wear, nothing yet has been discovered equal to wool, particularly at the cooler times of the year. But for under wear, in the hotter seasons and climates, wool has certain disadvantages. It is likely to be rough and tickling to most skins, which makes it uncomfortable, especially in warm weather. It is also difficult and troublesome to wash woolens without shrinking them; and, as soon as they do shrink, not only do they become uncomfortably tight, but the natural pores in them which make them so valuable close up, and they become almost air-tight. Finally, when loaded with perspiration, woolens easily become offensive, so that they must be frequently changed and washed; and as they are also high in price, it is easily seen that there are practical drawbacks to their use. Cotton is much softer and pleasanter to the skin than wool, is cooler in hot weather, is much cheaper, and is very easily washed without losing either its shape or its porousness. It can be so woven as to be almost as porous as wool, and to retain that porousness even when saturated with perspiration. It does not soak up and retain the oils and odors of perspiration in the way that wool does; and on the whole, for under wear, and for general wear at the warm seasons of the year, it is not only more comfortable, but far more healthful, than wool. Persons of fair health and reasonably vigorous outdoor habits, whose skins are well bathed and ventilated, can wear properly woven cotton or linen undergarments the whole year round with perfect safety. [Illustration: A COMFORTABLE DRESS FOR OUTDOOR STUDY IN COLD WEATHER The thick bags pulled up to the shoulders keep the body surrounded by a layer of warm air.] Linen and silk both make admirable and healthful under wear, if woven with a properly porous mesh. Linen has the advantage of remaining more porous than cotton, when moist with perspiration. But for healthy people they have no advantages over cotton that are not offset by their higher prices. BATHS AND BATHING Bathing as a Means of Cleanliness. It has been said that one of the reasons why man lost his hairy coat was that he might be able to wash himself better and keep cleaner. However this may be, he has to wash a great deal oftener than other animals, most of whom get along very well with currying, licking, and other forms of dry washes, and an occasional swim in a river or lake. You can readily see how necessary for us washing is, when you remember the quarts of watery perspiration, which are poured out upon our skins every day, and the oily and other waste matters, some of them poisons, which the perspiration leaves upon our skins. Especially is some means of washing necessary when the free evaporation of perspiration and the free breathing of the skin has been interfered with by clothing which is water-tight or too thick. Bathing as a Tonic. But bathing is of much greater value than simply as a means of cleansing. Splashing the body with water is the most valuable means that we have of toning up and hardening the skin, and protecting us against the effects of cold. The huge and wonderfully elaborate network of blood vessels that lies in and just under our skins all over our bodies is, from the point of view of circulation, second only in importance to our hearts, and from the point of view of taking cold, and of resisting the attack of disease, one of the most important structures in our entire body. If, by means of daily baths, you keep this mesh of blood vessels in your skin toned up, vigorous, and elastic, and full of red blood, it will do more to keep you in perfect health and vigor than almost any other one thing, except an abundance of food, and plenty of fresh air and exercise. A healthy skin is the best undergarment ever invented. Right and Wrong Bathing. The best form of bath is either the tub or the shower bath; and the cooler the water, provided that you warm up to it quickly and pleasantly, the greater the tonic effect, the more exhilaration and pleasure you will get out of it, and the more it will harden your skin against cold. But it should never under any circumstances be any cooler than you can _readily_ and pleasantly react, or warm up to, during the bath and afterward. The habit of plunging into a great tub of ice-cold water all winter long, except for people of vigorous constitutions and active habits, may often do quite as much harm as good. Have your bath water just cool enough to give you a slight, pleasant shock, as you plunge into it, or turn it on, so that you will enjoy the glow and sense of exhilaration that follows; and you will get all the good there is out of the cold bath, and none of the harm. By beginning with moderately cool water you will find that you come to enjoy it cooler and cooler. If a bath-room is not at hand, a large wash-bowl of cool, or cold, water into which you can dip your hands and splash well over the upper half of your body every morning, and once or twice a week all over your body, will keep your skin clean and vigorous. If you cannot warm up properly after a cool bath, there is something wrong about your habits of life; and you had better change them, and keep changing them, until you find you can enjoy it. For some delicate children, a quick plunge into, or splash with, very hot water in the morning will give somewhat the same tonic effect as stronger ones can get from cold water. [Illustration: AS A TONIC, SWIMMING IS THE BEST FORM OF BATHING] Warm baths are best taken at night, just before going to bed, though the danger of catching cold after them on account of their "opening up the pores of the skin," has been very greatly exaggerated. They have, however, a relaxing effect upon the skin, and take out an undue amount of the natural oil which nature provides for its oiling and softening, so that, except for special reasons, it is best not to take them oftener than once, or twice, a week. Soaps and Scrubbing Brushes. As part of the perspiration deposited upon our skins is in the form of a delicate oil, and as this oil may become mixed with dirt, or dust, and form a mixture not readily soluble in water, it is at times advisable to add to the water something that will dissolve oil. The commonest thing used for this purpose is soap, which is a combination of an _alkali_--most commonly _soda_, though occasionally _potash_ (lye) is used in the soft soaps--with a fat or an oil. The combination of the two, which we call soap, has been invented for two reasons; one, that it makes a convenient, solid form in which the alkali, needed to dissolve the body oil, can be used in such strength as not to burn or injure the skin; the other, that the fat in the soap will, to some extent, take the place of the natural oil, or fat, which it washes off. Necessary as soap is, it should be used very moderately. You should never lather and scrub your skin as if it were a kitchen floor, for the reason that, with the dirt, the alkali also washes and dissolves out a considerable amount of the natural oil of the skin, and leaves it harsh and dry. On this account, it is best not to use soap upon the covered portions of the body, and in the full bath, oftener than once or twice a week; and upon the face, oftener than once or twice a day. But the hands may be washed with soap more frequently. It is also best to avoid the too frequent use of hot water, even upon the hands and face, for the same reason; it takes out too much of the natural oil of the skin, along with the dirt. Unless the dirt be of some infectious, or offensive, character, it is often best to content yourself with washing off just the "big dirt," and wait for the bubbling up of the perspiration through your skin to bring the deeper dirt up to the surface, and wash that off later, in the course of two or three hours. Soaps to be Avoided. Soaps that lather too quickly and easily should always be avoided, for this shows that they contain an excessive amount of soda or other alkali. It is also best to avoid, or at least be very wary of, any soaps which are dark-colored or heavily perfumed, as these disguises may indicate the presence of decaying, offensive fats, and even of grease extracted from garbage. This is what strong perfumes in soaps are chiefly used for. Beware of all such, and especially of tar soaps, for the black color and the strong odor of tar can cover up any amount of bad quality. Medicated soaps (soaps containing medicines) are also best let alone. They are only fit to be used on the advice of a doctor. Most of them are out and out humbugs, and make up for their richness in drugs by their poorness in good, pure fat and alkali. Moreover, what may suit one particular diseased condition of the skin is quite as likely to be injurious as helpful to another. Any drug which has the power of curing disease is almost certain to be irritating to a healthy skin; and nothing can be put into a soap beyond pure, sweet fat, or oil, and good soda, which will make it any better, or more wholesome, for a healthy skin. If your skin be red, or itchy, or scaly, or out of condition in any way, go to a doctor and get the appropriate treatment for that particular disease, instead of smearing on the surface of your body some drug of which you know nothing, in the hope of its being the proper thing for the little patch of diseased skin. Avoid Using Skin Brushes. Scrubbing brushes and skin brushes of all sorts should be used even more sparingly than soap or hot water, for the same reason. Nature did not coat us over with either boards or rubber, but with delicate, velvety, sensitive, living skin worth ten times as much as any sort of leather, bark, rubber, or cloth, for resisting cold, heat, and injuries. It is most important for the health of the skin that we keep that velvety coating unscratched and unbroken. The use of brushes and bristles of all sorts, therefore, should be chiefly restricted to the hair and the finger nails, as for every ounce of dirt that they take out of the skin, they do a pound of damage to it. They scrub off the delicate epidermis, as well as the natural oil in it, and leave it dry and irritated and ready to crack open. Then more dirt gets into the cracks just formed, and more scrubbing with bristles and hot water and soap is indulged in to get it out. This opens the cracks still further, and the next layer of dirt is worked in still deeper. Wash frequently with cold or cool water, occasionally with hot water, and sparingly with soap; and limit the use of brushes to the nails and the hair. CARE OF THE NAILS Importance of Clean Nails. On account of their constant use, your hands are brought in contact with dusty or dirty substances in your work and in your play; and it is very easy for some of this dirt, and such germs as it may contain, to lodge in the little chink under the free edge of the nail, between it and the rounded end of the finger. It is of great importance that this nail chink should be kept clean, not only because it looks both ugly and untidy to have the ends of your fingers "in mourning," with black bands across them, but also because the germs lodged under your nails may get onto your food the next time that you eat, and set up irritation and fermentation in your stomach. They may also cause other trouble; for instance, if your collar chafes the back of your neck, and to relieve the itching you rub it a little too hard with your finger, your nail may scratch the skin; and if it be blackened with infectious dirt, this may get into the little scratch and give rise to a boil, or a festering sore. How to Clean the Nails. This cleaning of the nails, however, must be done carefully and gently; for, if too harsh methods are used, the delicate skin on the under surface of the nail will be torn, the nail will be roughened or split, the dirt will work in just that much deeper next time, and the germs in it may set up inflammations under the nail. For this reason it is best not to use a sharp-pointed knife in cleaning the nails, but a blunt-pointed nail cleaner, such as can be bought for a few cents at any drug store, or such as many pocket-knives are now provided with. It is also best to trim the nails with a file or with scissors, instead of a knife, as the latter may split or tear the nail, or cut down to the quick. Before any of these are used, the nails should be thoroughly softened in warm water, and scrubbed with a moderately stiff nailbrush, such as should be kept on every washstand. It is also best not to push back the fold of skin at the base of the nails, with instruments of any sort; or indeed, with anything harder than the ball of the thumb or finger. This fold protects the delicate growing part, or root, of the nail; and if it is shoved back too vigorously, the root may become exposed, or even inflamed and infected, and cause one of those extremely irritating little sores known as a "hangnail." DISEASES AND DISTURBANCES OF THE SKIN Their Chief Causes. Skin troubles are of two main kinds according to their cause: _internal_, due to the irritation of waste-poisons, or toxins, in the blood; and _external_, from direct injury or irritation of the skin from without. The latter are often due to the wearing of too tight or too heavy clothing, or the failure properly to wash, cleanse, and ventilate the skin. Some of the lesser disturbances come from the chafing of collars, wristlets, and belts, and are, of course, relieved by loosening the clothing or substituting soft, comfortable cotton for rasping flannels. Others come from the use of too strong soaps, or the too frequent use of hot water, or too vigorous scrubbing of the skin, and these can be relieved by the avoidance of their cause. Sunburn and Freckles and how to Cure Them. Upon the hands and face, sunburn and freckles may occur from exposure to the weather. They are not caused necessarily by exposure to direct sunlight; as the bright light and the cold air out of doors, also, will produce this irritating effect upon the skin. The best way to cure sunburn is to bathe in cool water, take a night's rest, then go out the next day, and the day after, and take another dose of exposure, keeping this up until your face is hardened to stand a reasonable amount of sun. If you are in proper condition, neither your face nor your hands will sunburn uncomfortably. If they do, except under extreme exposure, it is a sign that you have not been living out of doors enough. The various face-washes and creams and dusting powders which are used for the relief of sunburn, while they may, if mild enough, make the face feel somewhat more comfortable for a little time, owe most of their virtues to the fact that they are generally used at bedtime and then get the credit for the cure which nature works while you are asleep. If you should buy them, and keep them on your dressing-table unopened, where you could see them before you went to bed, you would in nine cases out of ten be just as much better in the morning as if you had used them. The only harm done by freckles is to your vanity. They and sunburn both, in fact, are protective actions on nature's part, filling the skin with coloring matter, or _pigment_, so as to protect it, and the tissues below, from the irritating effects of the strong rays of light. A like deposit of pigment, in greater amounts, in the skins of races who live in or near the tropics, gives rise to the characteristic coloring of the black, brown, and yellow races. The pigment, or coloring matter, is of exactly the same kind in all, from the negro to the white. The brown race having a little less of it than the negro, the yellow race a little less yet, and the white least of all, though there is some of it in even the whitest of skins. Real Skin Diseases. Most of the serious and lasting diseases of the skin are caused by the attack of germs. Perfect cleanliness and ventilation are the best protection against them all; but if you should be unfortunate enough to catch one of these diseases, your doctor will be able to give you the mild germicide or antiseptic that will kill the particular germ that may have lodged upon your skin. The commonest form of inflammation of the skin is called _eczema_, and eight-tenths of all eczemas are due to some mild germ, and can be cured by the appropriate poison for it. Other diseases, particularly of the scalp, such as _ringworm_ and _dandruff_, are due to other forms of vegetable germs, and may be cured by their proper poisons; while others, such as the so-called "prairie itch" (_scabies_), and lice in the hair, are due to the presence of tiny animal _parasites_. The Hookworm. Another disease which enters through the skin is the now famous _hookworm_, or blood-sucking parasite, which has been found to be so common in tropical regions and in our Southern States. This parasite has the curious habit of attaching itself by hooks surrounding its mouth (which gave it its name), to the lining of the human intestine, particularly its upper third. There it swings, and lives by sucking the blood of its victim. When the worm has once attached itself in the intestine, it may live for from five to fifteen years. All this time it is constantly laying eggs; and these eggs, which are so tiny that they have to be put under a microscope to be seen, pass out in the feces; and if they are not deposited in a proper water closet, or deep vault, but scattered about upon the surface of the soil, the eggs quickly hatch into tiny, little wriggling worms called _larvæ_, which are still scarcely large enough to be seen with the naked eye. These larvæ live in the soil; and, when it is wet and muddy, they get up between the toes of boys and girls who are going barefoot, burrow their way in through the skin, and produce a severe itching inflammation of the skin of the feet, known as "ground-itch," "toe-itch" or "dew-itch." When they have worked their way through the skin, they bore on into a blood vessel, are carried to the heart, pumped by the heart into the lungs, and there again work their way out of the blood vessels into the bronchial, or air tubes, crawl up these through the windpipe and voice organ into the throat, are swallowed into the stomach, and from there pass on into the upper intestine to attach themselves for their blood-sucking life. If they are sufficiently numerous, their victim becomes thin, weak, and bloodless, with pale, puffy skin, and shortness of breath; he is easily tired on the least exertion, and ready to fall a victim to any disease, like tuberculosis, pneumonia, or typhoid, that may happen to attack him. Their spread can be absolutely prevented either by the strict use of toilets or deep vaults, thus preventing the deposit of feces anywhere upon the surface of the ground; or by the constant wearing of shoes or sandals, thus preventing the larvæ from attacking the feet and working their way through the skin and body into the intestine. Fortunately, the disease is as curable as it is common, and two doses of a proper germicide, with a day in bed, and a laxative, will promptly cure it except in the worst cases. The Rashes of Measles, Scarlet Fever, etc. Many of the infectious fevers, such as measles, scarlet fever, chicken-pox, and smallpox, are attended by rashes, or _eruptions_, upon the surface of the skin, due to a special gathering or accumulation of the particular germs causing each disease, just under the skin. When the skin sheds, or flakes off, after the illness, the germs are shed in the scales and float, or are carried about, and thus spread the disease to others. These rashes or eruptions are not dangerous in themselves, though often very uncomfortable, but help us to recognize the disease; they probably show us the sort of thing that is going on in the deeper parts of the body. If you imagine that your throat and bronchial tubes and lungs are peppered as full of the disease spots as your skin is, in measles and in scarlet fever, you will readily understand why your throat is so sore and why you have so much tickling and coughing. The Health of the Scalp and Hair. The scalp, being covered by hair, does not perspire so freely as the rest of the skin of the body; but a considerable amount of oily waste matter is poured out on it, and the surface of its skin scales off in exactly the same way as does the rest of the body. If this accumulation of tiny scales and grease is not properly brushed out, it forms an excellent seed-bed for some of the milder kinds of germs that attack the skin; and a scurfy, itchy condition of the scalp is set up, known as dandruff. The best way to keep the scalp clean of these accumulations of greasy scales is by vigorous and regular brushing with a moderately stiff, but flexible, bristle brush. Wire brushes should not be used, as the wires scratch and irritate the delicate scalp and do more harm than good. If you watch a groom brushing and currying the coat of a thoroughbred horse, you will get a fair idea of hew you ought to treat your own scalp at least twice a day, night and morning. If this currying of the hair be thoroughly done, and the head washed with soap and hot water about once a week for short hair and twice a month for long hair, most of the dangers of dandruff and of other infections of the scalp will be avoided. One thing to be remembered is, don't brush too hard or too deep. There is an old saying and a good one, "You can't brush the scalp too little, or the hair too much." Wetting the hair for the purpose of "slicking" it or combing it, is about as bad a thing as could be done; for the moisture sets up a sort of rancid fermentation in the natural oil of the scalp, giving the well-known sour smell to hair that is combed instead of brushed, and furnishing a splendid soil for germs and bugs of all sorts to breed in. There is no objection to boys' and men's wetting their hair in cold water as often as they wish, provided that they rub it thoroughly dry afterward and give it a brisk currying with the brush. Hair oils and greases of all sorts are sanitary nuisances, and mere half-civilized and lazy substitutes for proper brushing and washing. There is no drug known to medicine which will cause hair to grow, or make it thicker or curlier. All "hair tonics" claiming to do this are frauds. Corns, Calluses, and Warts. Our skin not only made our hair, teeth, and nails, but still retains in every part a trace of its nail-making powers, so that under pressure or irritation, it can thicken up into a heavy leather-like substance which we call _callus_. This is naturally and healthfully present in the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. Savage, or barbarous, races who wear no shoes get the skin of their soles thickened into a regular human leather, almost half an inch thick, and as tough as rawhide. A somewhat similar condition develops in the palms of the hands of those who work hard with spades, axes, or other tools. Any good process carried to excess becomes bad, and this is true of this power of callus formation in the skin; for parts of it which are under constant pressure, like the surface of the toes inside the shoe, and particularly of the outside toes, the little and the big toe, develop under that pressure patches of thickened, horny skin, which we call _corns_. These patches start to grow into cone-shaped projections or buttons; but being prevented from growing outward by the pressure of the shoe, they turn upon themselves and burrow into the skin itself, and we get the well-known ingrowing corn. If there is anything in the human body which we ought to be thoroughly ashamed of, it is corns; for they are caused by our own vanity, and nothing else, in cramping our feet into shoes one or two sizes too small for them. There are a number of things that can be done to relieve the discomfort of the corn, but the only sure way is to remove its cause, namely, the tight shoe. Under other kinds of irritation, the skin has the power of growing curious little button-like buds, or projections, which we call _warts_. These are commonest in childhood, and generally disappear at about twelve or fifteen years of age, when we no longer delight in dirt, and glory in mud pies. They can be produced upon the hands of grown men and women by irritating fluids and substances, such as wet sugar in the case of bakers and confectioners, and various color-stains in dye works. They seldom last for more than a few months, and usually narrow at their base and drop off, when the particular irritation that caused them ceases. On this account it is seldom worth while to try to remove them by burning with acids or cutting them off; and it is best not to pick at, or irritate, or scratch them too much. CHAPTER XVII THE PLUMBING AND SEWERING OF THE BODY The Wastes of the Body. Almost everything that the body does in the process of living means the breaking down, or burning, of food; and produces, like every other kind of burning, two kinds of waste--"smoke" and "ashes." The carbon dioxid "smoke," as we have already learned, is carried in the blood to the lungs, where it passes off in the breath. The solid part of our body waste, or the "ashes," is of two kinds--that which can be melted in water, or is, as we say, _soluble_; and that which cannot be melted in water, or is _insoluble_. The insoluble part of our solid body waste goes into the feces and is thus disposed of. The soluble part of the body waste goes by a somewhat more roundabout route. With the carbon dioxid it is poured by the body cells into the veins, carried to the heart, and pumped through the lungs, where the carbon dioxid is thrown off. Going back to the heart it is pumped all over the body, part of it going through a very large artery to the liver, part through two large arteries to the kidneys, part to the skin, and the rest all over the remainder of the body. The blood goes completely round the body-circuit from the heart to the fingers and toes, and back again to the heart, in less than forty-five seconds. Practically every drop of blood in the body will be pumped through the liver, the kidneys, and the skin, about once every half minute, so that they get plenty of chance to purify it thoroughly when they are working properly. This sounds rather complicated; but is interesting, because it shows how much of a "mind of their own" the different organs and stuffs in our bodies have, or what, in scientific language, we call "power of selection." The skin glands pick out of the blood those waste substances which they are able to get rid of. The kidneys pick out another class of waste substances, which they are best able to deal with; while the liver which is the most important of all, attacks almost every kind of waste brought to it by the blood, and prepares it for disposal by the intestines, skin, and kidneys. The Liver. The liver has a size to match its importance. It is the largest and heaviest gland, or organ, in the body, and weighs about three pounds, a little more than the brain. It buds off from the food tube just below the stomach, so that its waste tube, the _bile duct_--about the size of a goose quill--opens into the upper part of the intestine. The main work of the liver is to receive the blood from all over the body and to act upon its waste substances, burning them up so that they can be taken up, and got rid of, by the glands of the skin and the kidneys. In the process it very frequently changes these waste substances from poisonous into harmless forms; and even when disease germs get into the body and infect it, the poisons, or toxins, which they pour into the blood are carried to the liver and there usually burned up, or turned into harmless substances. The liver is, therefore, to be regarded as a great _poison filter_ for the entire body. So long as it can deal with the poisons as fast as they are formed, either by the body itself, or in the food, or by disease germs, the body is safe and will remain healthy. But if the poisons come faster than the liver can deal with them, as, for instance, when we have eaten tainted meat or spoiled fruit, or have drunk alcohol, they begin to poison our nerves and muscles, and we become, as we say, "bilious." Our head aches, our tongue becomes coated, we have a bad taste in the mouth, we lose our appetite and feel stupid, dull, and feverish. Such waste materials as the liver cannot burn down so that the kidneys and skin can handle them, it pours out through its duct into the intestine as the bile. The bile is a yellowish-brown fluid, which assists the pancreatic juice in the digestion of the food, and helps to dissolve the fats eaten, but is chiefly a waste product. It turns green when it has been acted upon by acids, or exposed to the air. So that the bile which you throw up when you are very sick at your stomach, is green because it has been acted upon by your gastric juice. As you will remember, the blood which comes from the stomach and bowels is carried by the portal vein to the liver first and, through that, to the heart, instead of going directly to the heart, as all the other impure blood in the body does. This is owing, in part, to the fact that this blood, being full of substances freshly taken or made from the food, is very likely to contain poisons; indeed, as a matter of fact, blood taken from these veins on its way to the liver, and injected directly into the blood vessels of an animal, acts like a mild poison. In part, however, this blood goes first to the liver, because the liver, besides being a great blood purifier, is a "blood-maker" in the sense that it changes raw food-stuffs in the blood from the intestines into forms which are more suitable for use by the brain, the muscles, and the other tissues of the body. Some of the sugars, for instance, the liver turns into a kind of animal starch (_glycogen_), which it stores away in its own cells. It also turns both sugars and proteins in the portal blood into fat, part of which it pours into the blood, and part of which it stores away also in its own cells. Thus the liver owes its great size partly to the large amount of blood-purifying, filtering, and poison-destroying work which it has to do, and partly to its acting as a storehouse of starch and fat, which the body can readily draw upon as it needs them. [Illustration: OUTLINE DIAGRAM SHOWING GENERAL PLAN AND POSITION OF BODY-MACHINERY] As all poisons formed in, or entering, the body are brought to the liver for destruction, it is in an extremely exposed position, and very liable to break down under the attack of these poisons, whether of infectious diseases, or chloroform, or alcohol, or those formed by putrefaction in the stomach and intestines. This is why those who have lived long in the tropics and suffered from malaria, dysentery, and other infectious diseases, and those who drink too much alcohol, or have chronic indigestion, or dyspepsia, are likely to have swollen and inflamed livers. The Gall Bladder. The liver has on its under side a little pear-shaped pouch called the _gall bladder_, in which the bile is stored before it is poured into the bowel. If this becomes inflamed by disease germs, or their poisons, in the blood, little hard masses will form inside it, usually about the size of a grain of corn, known as _gall stones_. So long as they stay in the gall bladder, they give little trouble, but if they start to pass out through the narrow bile duct into the intestine, they cause severe attacks of pain, known as "gall-stone colic," and, by blocking up the duct, may dam up the flow of the bile, force it back into the blood again, and stain all our tissues, including our skin and our eyes, yellow; and then we say we are _jaundiced_. Jaundice may also be caused by colds or other mild infections which attack the liver and bile ducts and clog the proper flow of the bile. The Kidneys. The kidneys are another form of blood-filter, which deal chiefly with waste stuffs in the blood left from the proteins, or Meats, of our food--meat, fish, milk, cheese, bread, peas, beans, etc. These waste-stuffs, called _urea_ and _urates_, are formed in the liver and brought in the blood to the kidneys. These lie on either side of the backbone, opposite the small of the back, their lower ends being level with the highest point of the hip-bones, nearly six inches higher than they are usually supposed to be. When you think you have a "pain across the kidneys," it is usually a pain in the muscles of the back much lower down, and has nothing to do with the kidneys at all. A very large artery carries the blood from the aorta to each side of the kidney, and a large vein carries the purified blood back to the vena cava and heart. Two smaller tubes about the size of a crow quill, the waste pipes of the kidneys (the _ureters_), carry the water containing urea and other waste substances strained out by the kidneys and called urine, down into a large pouch, the _bladder,_ to be stored there until it can be got rid of. [Illustration: THE URINARY SYSTEM _K_, kidneys; _U_, ureters; _B_, bladder; _A_, artery; _V_, vein.] The kidneys then are big filter-glands. They, like the lungs, are made up of a mesh, or network, of thousands of tiny tubes of two kinds, one set of tubes being blood vessels, and the other set the tiny branches of the kidney tubes which finally run together to form the ureters. The urine filters through from the spongy mesh of blood tubes (capillaries) into the kidney tubes and is poured out through the ureters. It is very important that the urine should be discharged as fast as it fills the bladder, that is, about once every three hours during the day. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with this; and whenever nature tells you that the bladder is full, it should be emptied promptly, or the poisons which nature is trying to get rid of in the urine may get back into the blood and cause serious trouble. Diseases of the Kidneys. Naturally, the kidneys, working all the time and pouring out, as they do every day, from three to four pints of the liquid waste called urine, are subject to numerous diseases and disturbances. One of the common causes of these is failure to keep the skin thoroughly clean and healthy, as perspiration is of somewhat the same character as the urine; and if it be checked, it throws an extra amount of work upon the kidneys. Another most important thing to keep the kidneys working well is to drink plenty of water, at least six or eight glasses a day, as well as to eat plenty of fresh green vegetables and fresh fruits, which, as we have seen, are eighty per cent water. Remember, we are a walking aquarium, and all our cells must be kept flooded with and soaked in water in order to be healthy. If the blood becomes overloaded with poisons, so much work may be thrown upon the kidneys that they will become inflamed and diseased and cannot form the urine properly; and then poisons accumulate in the system and finally produce serious illness and even death. It was at one time believed that eating too much of certain kinds of foods, particularly those that leave much nitrogenous waste in the body, such as meat and fish, could produce a diseased condition of the kidneys, known as Bright's Disease; but we have found that the larger part of such cases are due to the attack of the germs of infectious diseases, particularly scarlet and typhoid fevers, tuberculosis, and colds. The popular impression that colds from wet feet or long drives in winter may "settle in the kidneys" is wrong, except in so far as those colds are caused by infectious germs. Another cause of disturbance and permanent damage to the kidneys is the habitual use of alcohol. Even though this may be taken in only moderate amounts, the constant soaking of the tissues with even small amounts of alcohol may be most harmful to the kidneys, as well as to the liver. CHAPTER XVIII THE MUSCLES Importance of the Muscles. It wouldn't be of much use to smell food, if we couldn't pick it up and bite it after we had reached it; or to see danger, if we were not able to move away from it. Every animal that lives, moves; and every movement, whether of the entire body from one place to another, or of parts of the body changing their relations to one another, or altering their shape, is carried out by an elastic, self-moving body-stuff, which we call _muscle_. All the work that we do, whether in earning our living, or catching our food, or chewing it, or swallowing it and driving it through our food tube, or pumping the blood through our arteries, or drawing air into our lungs, is done by muscles. Hence, a very large part of the body has to be made of muscles. In fact, our muscles, put together, weigh almost as much as all the other stuffs in the body, making over forty per cent of our weight. How the Muscles Act. The commonest form of muscle that we see is the red, lean meat of beef, mutton, or pork; and this will give us a good idea of how our own muscles look. All muscles, whatever their size or shape, are made up of little spindle-shaped or strap-shaped cells, or wriggling "body-cells" arranged in bands or strings. The size of a given muscle depends upon the number of cells that it contains. The astonishing variety of movements which muscles can make is due to the fact that they have the power when stirred up, or stimulated, of changing their shape. As most of the muscle substance is arranged in bands, this change of shape on the part of the tiny cells that make up the band means that the band grows thicker and at the same time shorter,--just as a stretched rubber band does when it slackens,--so that it pulls nearer together the bones or other structures to which it is fastened at each end by fibrous cords called _tendons_, or sinews. This shortening of the muscle band is known as _contraction_. When you wish, for instance, to lift your hand toward your face, you unconsciously send a message from your brain down the nerve cables in your spinal cord, out through the nerve-wires of your neck and shoulder, to the big _biceps_ muscle on the front of your upper arm. This muscle then contracts, or shortens, and pulls up the forearm and hand, by bending the elbow joint. Just in proportion as the muscle becomes shorter, it becomes thicker in the middle; and this you can readily prove by grasping it lightly with your fingers when it contracts, and feeling it bulge.[22] The food tube is surrounded with muscles, as you will remember, for moving the food along it, or churning it. These internal muscles, requiring only the presence of food to cause them to act, and not needing attention on the part of the brain or the will, are known as the _involuntary_ ("without the will") muscles. The great group of the _voluntary_, or bone-moving muscles, which move "with the will" and are under our direct control, may be divided roughly into two divisions--those that move the trunk, or body proper, and run, for the most part, lengthwise of it; and those that move the limbs. On the body, they may be divided into two great sheets--one running up the front, and the other up the back. When those running up the front of the body contract, they naturally bend the back, and pull the head and shoulders forward and downward. Or, as when you spring up and catch the branch of a tree or a horizontal bar with your hands, these same muscles will pull the lower part of the body and legs upward, so that you can climb into the tree. The largest and thickest bands of these front body muscles are found over the abdomen, or stomach, where you can feel them thicken and harden when you bend your body forward and pull with your arms, as in hauling on a rope. By their pressure upon the intestines, they give the bowels valuable support, assist in their movements, and help the circulation of the blood through them; so that it is of considerable importance to keep this entire group of muscles well toned up by exercises, such as swinging your arms back over your head, and then down between your legs; bending the head and shoulders backward and forward; swinging the legs up over the body, either when hanging from a bar or lying on your back. Proper exercising and toning up of these muscles will often cure constipation and dyspepsia, by their influence upon the bowels and stomach, and also keep one from taking on fat around the waist too rapidly. On the back of the body, the muscle-sheet has grown into great, thick ropes of muscle on each side of the backbone, which you can feel hardening and softening in the small of the back, when you stoop down or lift weights. These are the muscles that hold the body erect, and keep the back straight when you stand, and are the largest and hardest working group of muscles in the body. Every minute that you sit, or stand, they are at work; and that is why they so often get tired out, and ache, and you say you have "a backache." They have to work harder to keep you erect or upright when you are standing perfectly still than when you walk or run, so that standing perfectly still is the hardest work you can do. Next to standing still, the hardest thing is to sit still, as you probably have found out. If it were not for these great muscles of the back and abdomen, we should double up like a jack-knife, either forward or backward, when we tried to stand up. It is not our skeleton that keeps us stiff or erect, but our muscles. [Illustration: THE MUSCLE-SHEET Showing how the muscles, overlapping and interlocking, give shape to the body.] If you want to keep straight and erect, and thus have a good carriage, you must keep these great body muscles well trained and exercised by swinging movements, such as bending the back forward, standing with your feet apart and then swinging your head and shoulders down and between your legs; or, with your heels together, swinging your hands down till the fingers touch the ground; or by the different exercises that either bend your back, or hold it stiff and erect. Swinging from a bar, rowing, digging with a spade, chopping or sawing wood, dancing, rope-skipping, ball-playing, hop-scotch, and wrestling, all develop these muscles finely and are good for both boys and girls. Other strands of these muscles branch out to fasten themselves to the shoulder blades and shoulders, where they help to draw the arm back as for a blow, pull the shoulders into position when you stand upright, or, when you have leaned forward and grasped something with the hand, help to pull up the arm and lift it from the ground. These muscles are quite important in holding the shoulders back and giving a good shape to the chest and good carriage of the upper part of the body and head. They are called into play in all exercises like striking, batting, tennis-playing, ball-throwing, swinging, shoveling, swimming, as well as in pulling, in lifting weights, in swinging an axe or handling a broom. [Illustration: USE OF MUSCLES IN BOWLING Showing _A_ thickening of flexors on front of arm, as forearm is swung forward, and _B_ thickening of extensors on back of arm, as forearm is swung backward.] The muscles of the limbs are almost as numerous as those of the trunk of the body, and even more complex. Most of them, on both arms and legs, are in two great groups--one known as the "benders," or _flexors,_ which, when they shorten, bend the limb; and the other, the "straighteners," or _extensors_, which straighten or extend it. On the front of the arm, for instance, we have the large biceps ("two-headed") muscle, which runs from the shoulder to the bone of the forearm just below the elbow and, when it shortens, bends the elbow and lifts the arm toward the body. On the back of the upper arm is the _triceps_ ("three-headed") muscle, which is fastened at its lower end to a big spur of bone, the "point" of the elbow; when it shortens, acting lever fashion, it straightens or _extends_ the arm. If this is done quickly, the fist is swung outward with force enough to strike quite a sharp blow, though, as you know, if you wish to hit really hard, you have to strike with the weight and muscles of the full arm and the body behind it, or, as we say, "from the shoulder." [Illustration: USE OF MUSCLES IN FOOTBALL Showing _A_ thickening of flexors on front of thigh and leg, as foot is swung forward; and _B_ thickening of extensors on back of thigh and leg, as leg is swung backward.] [Illustration: PATELLA AND MUSCLE _P_, patella (knee cap); _M_, muscle; _L_, ligament; _T_, tendon.] In the lower limbs, the muscles are larger because they have heavier work to do, supporting and moving the whole weight of the body; but they are simpler in their arrangement since they have not such a variety of movements to carry out. The principal muscle in the thigh is the great muscle running down the front of the thigh, and fastening to the upper border of the _patella_, or knee cap. This muscle, when it shortens, straightens or extends the limb, or lifts the foot from the ground and swings it forward as in walking, or raises the knee up toward the body when we are sitting or lying down. You can easily tell how much it is used in walking by remembering how stiff and sore it gets when you have taken an unusually long tramp, particularly if there has been much hill-climbing in it. On the back of the thigh, runs another great group of muscles, which bend or flex the limb when they shorten. When the knee is bent, you can feel their tendons, or sinews, stand out as hard cords beneath the knee; hence, this group is called the _ham-string_ muscles.[23] How the Muscles are Fed. Our muscles are not only the largest, but the "livest" part of our bodies. Their contractions and movements are caused by their tiny "explosions" (like the chugging of an automobile, except that we can't hear them); and in this way they burn up the largest part of the food-fuel which we eat--mostly in the form of sugar. When they have burned up their surplus food-fuel, they call for more; and when this demand has been telegraphed to the brain, we say we are hungry, and that exercise has given us an appetite. While the muscles are at work, they demand that large supplies of fresh fuel shall be brought to them through the blood vessels; and this makes the heart beat harder and faster, and improves the circulation. As they burn up this fuel, they form smoke and ashes, or waste materials, which must be got rid of--the fluid part by perspiration from the surface of the skin, and through the kidneys, and the gas, or "smoke," through the lungs. This is the reason why, during exercise, we breathe faster and deeper than at other times, and why our skin begins first to glow and then to perspire. If these waste-materials form in the muscles faster than the blood can wash them out, they poison the muscle-cells and we begin to feel tired, or fatigued. This is why our muscle-cells are often so stiff and sore next morning after a long tramp, or a hard day's work, or a football game. A hot bath or a good rub-down takes the soreness out of the muscles by helping them to get these poisonous wastes out of their cells. Thus when we play or run or work, we are not only exercising our muscles and making them gain strength and skill, but we are stirring up, or stimulating, almost every part of our body to more vigorous and healthful action. Indeed, as our muscles alone, of all our body stuffs, are under the control of the will, our only means of deliberately improving our appetites, or strengthening our hearts or circulation, or invigorating our lungs, or causing a large part of our brains and minds to grow and develop, is through muscular exercise. This is why nature has taken care to make us all so exceedingly fond of play, games, and sports of all sorts, in the open air, when we are young; and, as we grow older, to enjoy working hard and fighting and "hustling," as we say; and that is the reason, also, why we are now making muscular exercise such an important part of education. FOOTNOTES: [22] The muscle does not get any bigger when it contracts, as was at one time supposed; if you were to plunge it into a bath of water, and then cause it to contract, you would find that it did not raise the level of the water, showing that it was of exactly the same size as before, having lost as much in length as it gained in thickness. [23] In the leg below the knee, and in the forearm, we have two groups of "benders" or _flexors_, and "straighteners" or _extensors_, as in the upper arm and leg, only slenderer and more numerous. They taper down into cord-like tendons at the wrist and ankle to fasten and to pull the hands and feet "open" and "shut," just as do the strings in the legs and arms of a puppet or mechanical doll, or the sinews in the foot of a chicken. CHAPTER XIX THE STIFFENING RODS OF THE BODY-MACHINE What Bones Are. The bones are not the solid foundation and framework upon which the body is built, as they are usually described. They are simply a framework of rods and plates which "petrified," or turned into spongy limestone after the body was built, to make it firmer and stiffen it for movement. All the animals below the fishes, such as worms, sea-anemones, oysters, clams, and insects, get along very well without any bones at all; and when we are born, our bones, which haven't fully "set" yet, are still gristly and soft. The cores of the limbs, as they begin to stiffen, first turn into gristle, or cartilage, and later into bone; indeed, many of our bones remain gristle in parts until we are fifteen or sixteen years of age. This is why children's bones, being softer and more flexible than those of grown-up people, are not so liable to break or snap across when they fall or tumble about; and why, too, they are more easily warped or bent out of shape through lack of proper muscular exercise and proper food. Bones are strips of soft body-stuff soaked with lime and hardened, like bricklayer's mortar, or concrete.[24] When you know the shape of the body, you know the bones; for they simply form a shell over the head and run like cores, or piths, down the centre of the back, and down each joint of the limbs. In turning into spongy limestone, or animal concrete, they have become one of the deadest tissues in the body. They are tools of the muscles, the levers by which the muscles move the limbs and body about; they never do anything of their own accord. On account of their lifelessness and lack of vitality, they are rather easily attacked by disease, or broken by a blow or fall. There are such a large number of bones (two hundred and six, all told), and they resist decay and last so much longer after death than any other parts of the body, that they fill our museums and text-books of anatomy, form most of our fossils, and have thus given us rather an exaggerated idea of their importance during life. [Illustration: THE HUMAN SKELETON] The Frame-Work of the Body. Just look at any part of the body and imagine that it has a bony core of about the same general shape as itself, and you can reason out all the bones of the skeleton. To begin at the top, the _skull_ is a box of strong, plate-like bones, which have hardened to protect the brain as it grew; and the shape of its upper, or brain, part is exactly that of the head, as you can easily feel by laying your hands upon it. Then come bony shells, or sockets, for the eyes and nose; and, below these, two heavy half-circles of bone, like the jaws of a steel trap, to carry the teeth. The thickness of the lower jaw and the size and squareness of the angle where it bends upward to be hinged to the skull, below the ear, are what give the appearance of squareness and determination to the faces of strong, vigorous men or women. If we want to imply that a person has a feeble will, or weak character, we say he has a "weak jaw." The skull rests upon the top of the backbone, or _spinal column_, which, instead of being one long solid bone, is made up of a number of pieces, or sections, known as _vertebræ_. Each one of these vertebræ has a ring, or arch, upon its back. These, running one after the other, form a jointed, bony tube to protect the _spinal cord_, or main nerve-cable of the body, which runs through it. [Illustration: THE SPINAL COLUMN _V_, vertebra; _C_, cartilage protecting spinal cord; _A_, point of articulation on the right side.] Although the backbone can bend forward or backward, or twist from side to side a little, by the little pieces of bone of which it is built up gliding and turning upon one another, it is really very stiff and rigid, so as to protect the spinal cord and prevent its being stretched or pinched. Most of the movements which we call bending the spine are really movements of other joints which connect the body or head with it. When we bend our necks, for instance, we hardly bend the backbone at all, as most of the movement is made in the joint at the top of it, between it and the skull. Similarly, when we bend our backs, we really bend our backbones very little; for most of the movement comes at the hip joints, between the thighs and the hip bones. Each of the limbs has a single, long, rounded bone in the upper part, known in the arm as the _humerus_, and two bones in the lower part. These last are known as the _radius_ and _ulna_ (the "funny bone") in the forearm, and the _tibia_ and _fibula_ in the leg. The shoulder-joint is made by the rounded head of the humerus fitting into the shallow cup of the _scapula_, or shoulder-blade. It is shallower than the hip joint to allow it freer movement; but this makes it weaker and much more easily dislocated, or put out of joint,--the most so, in fact, of any joint in the body. [Illustration: A BALL-AND-SOCKET JOINT Hip joint.] [Illustration: A HINGE JOINT Knee joint, with the knee cap removed] The hip joints are deep, strong, cup-shaped sockets upon each side of the hip bones, or _pelvis_, into which fit the heads of the _femurs_ or thigh bones. When the hip joint does become dislocated, it is very hard to put back again, on account of its depth and the heavy muscles surrounding it. It is quite subject to the attack of tuberculosis, or "hip-joint disease." [Illustration: LENGTHWISE SECTION OF BONE] The _joints_, or points at which the bones join one another, look rather complicated, but they are really as simple as the bones themselves. Each joint has practically made itself by the two bones' rubbing against each other, until finally their ends became moulded to each other, and formed the ball-and-socket, or the hinge, according to whichever the movements of the "bend" required. The ends, or heads, of the bones which form a joint are covered with a smooth, shining coating of _cartilage_, or gristle, so that they glide easily over each other. [Illustration: CROSS SECTION OF BONE] Around each joint has grown up a strong sheath of tough, fibrous tissue to hold the bones together; and, inside this, between the heads of the bones, is a very delicate little bag, or pouch, containing a few drops of smooth, slippery fluid (_synovial fluid_) to lubricate the movements of the joint. This is sometimes called the "joint oil," though it is not really oil. Bones are covered with a tough skin, or membrane (_periosteum_). They are hardest and most solid on their surfaces, and hollow, or spongy, inside. The long bones of the limbs are hollow, and the cavity is filled with a delicate fat called _marrow_--just as an elderberry stem or willow-twig is filled with pith. This tubular shape makes them as strong as if they were solid, and much lighter.[25] The short, square, and flattened bones of the body, such as those of the wrist, the skull, and the hips, instead of being hollow inside are spongy; and the spaces in the bone-sponge are filled with a soft tissue called the _red marrow_ in which new red and white corpuscles for the blood are born, to take the place of those which die and go to pieces. FOOTNOTES: [24] You can easily prove that a bone is made up of living tissue soaked and stiffened with lime, by putting it into a jar filled with weak acid. This will gradually dissolve and melt out the lime salts, and then you will find that the bone has lost three-fourths of its weight and that what remains of it is so soft and flexible that it can be bent, or even tied into a knot. [25] The hollow spaces in the bones of birds, however, are filled with air, which makes them lighter for flying. CHAPTER XX OUR TELEPHONE EXCHANGE AND ITS CABLES The Brain. We are exceedingly proud of our brain and inclined to regard it as the most important part of our body. So it is, in a sense; for it is the part which, through its connecting wires, called the _nerves_, ties together all the widely separated organs and regions in our body, and helps them to work in harmony with one another. We speak of it as the master and controller of the body; but this is only partially true. The brain is not so much the President of our Cell Republic as a great central telephone exchange, where messages from all over the body are received, sifted, and transmitted in more or less modified form, to other parts of the body. Three-fourths of the work of the brain consists in acting as "middle-man," or transmitter, of messages from one part of the body to another. In fact, the brain is far more the servant of the body than its ruler; and depends for its food supply, its protection, its health, and its very life, upon the rest of the body. The best way to keep the brain clear and vigorous is to keep the muscles of the stomach, the liver, the heart, and the entire body in good health. What the Brain Does. The brain is the very wonderful organ with which we do what we are pleased to call our thinking, and also a number of other more important things of which we are not conscious at all. It is a large organ, weighing nearly three pounds when full grown. In shape it is like an oval loaf of bread split lengthwise by a great groove down the centre, and with a curiously wrinkled or folded surface. The two halves of the brain, called _hemispheres_ (though more nearly the shape of a coffee-bean), are alike; and each one, by some curious twist, or freak, of nature, receives messages from, and controls, the opposite half of the body--the right half controlling the left side of the body, while the left half controls the right side of the body. Thus an injury or a hemorrhage on the left side of the brain will produce paralysis of the right side, which is the side on which a stroke of paralysis most commonly occurs. All the nerve fibres in each half or hemisphere of the upper brain run downward and inward like the sticks of a fan, to meet in a strap-like band, or stalk, which connects it with the base of the brain and the spinal cord. A very small amount of damage at this central part, or base, of the brain will produce a very large amount of paralysis. We may have large pieces of the bones of the skull driven into the outer surface of the brain, or considerable masses of our upper brain removed, or destroyed by tumors or disease, without very serious injury. But any disease or injury which falls upon the base of the brain, where these stalks run and big nerve-knots (_ganglia_) lie, will cause very serious damage, and often death. The whole upper brain is a department of superintendence, which has grown up from the lower brain to receive messages, compare them with each other, and with the records of previous messages which it has stored up, thus giving us the powers which we call memory, judgment, and thought. Unfortunately, however, long and carefully as we have studied the brain, we really know little about the way in which it carries out these most important processes of memory, of judgment, and of thought, or even of the particular parts of it in which each of these is carried out. [Illustration: THE NERVOUS SYSTEM Diagram to show brain, spinal cord, and larger nerves.] No part of the brain, for instance, seems to be specially devoted to, or concerned in, memory or reason or imagination, still less to any of the emotions, such as anger, joy, jealousy or fear; so all those systems which pretend to tell anything about our mental powers and our dispositions by feeling the shapes of our heads, or the bumps on them, are pure nonsense. The most important and highest part of the brain is its surface, a thin layer of gray nerve-stuff, often spoken of as the _gray matter_ (the _cortex_, or "bark"), which is thrown into curious folds, or wrinkles, called _convolutions_. This gray matter is found in the parts of the nervous system where the most important and delicate work is done. The rest of the nervous system is made up of what is called white matter, from its lighter color; and this is chiefly mere bundles of telephone wires carrying messages from one piece of gray matter to another, or to the muscles. We also know that a certain rather small strip of the upper brain-surface, or cortex, about the size of two fingers, running upward and backward from just above the ear, controls the movements of the different parts of the body. One little patch of it for the hand, another for the wrist, another for the arm, another for the shoulder, another for the foot, and so on. We can even pick out the little patch which controls so small a part of the body as the thumb or the eyelids. So when we have a tumor of the brain or an injury to the skull in this region, we can tell, by noticing what groups of muscles are paralyzed, almost exactly where that injury or tumor is. Then we can drill a hole in the skull directly over it and remove the tumor, lift up the splinter of bone, or tie the ruptured blood vessel. Three other patches, or areas, running along the side of the brain, each of them about two inches across, are known to be the centres for smell, hearing, and sight, that for sight lying furthest back. Damage to one of these areas will make the individual more or less completely blind, or deaf, or deprived of the sense of smell, as the case may be. At the lower part of the area which controls the muscles of the different parts of the body, above and a little in front of the tip of the ear, lies a very important centre, which controls the movements of the tongue and lips, and is known as the _speech centre_. If this should be injured or destroyed, the power of speech is entirely lost. This, curiously enough, lies upon the left side of the brain, and is the only one-sided centre in the body. Why this is so is somewhat puzzling, except that as speech is made up both of sound and of gesture, and our gestures are usually made with the right hand, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the speech centre should have grown up on that side of the brain which controls the right hand, which is, as you remember, the left hemisphere. What makes this more probable is that in persons who are "left-handed," the speech centre lies upon the opposite or _right_ side of the brain. So it is waste of time and does more harm than good to try to "break" any child of left-handedness. The Spinal Cord. Running downward from the base of the brain, like the stalk of a flower, is a great bundle of nerve-fibres, the central cable of our body telephone system, the spinal cord. This, you will remember, runs through a bony tube formed by the arches of the successive vertebrae; and as it runs down the body, like every other cable it gives off and receives branches connecting it with the different parts of the body through which it passes. These branches are given off in pairs, and run out through openings between the little sections of bone, or vertebrae, of which the spinal column is made up. They are called the _spinal nerves_, and each pair supplies the part of the body which lies near the place where it comes out of the cord. The spinal nerves contain nerve wires of two sorts--the inward, or _sensory_, and the outward, or _motor_, nerves. The sensory, or ingoing, nerves come from the muscles and the skin and bring messages of heat and cold, of touch and pressure, of pain and comfort, to the spinal cord and brain. The outward, or motor, nerves running in the same bundle go to the muscles and end in curious little plates on the surface of the tiny muscle fibres, and carry messages from the spinal cord and brain, telling the muscles when and how to contract. As the spinal cord runs down the body, it becomes gradually smaller, as more and more branches are given off, until finally, just below the small of the back and opposite the hip bones, it breaks up by dividing into a number of large branches which go to supply the hips and lower limbs. While most of the spinal cord is made up of bundles of white fibres, carrying messages from the body to the brain, its central portion, or core, is made of gray matter. The reason for this is that many of the simpler messages from the surface of the body and the movements that they require are attended to by this gray matter, or ganglia, of the spinal cord without troubling the brain at all. For instance, if you were sound asleep, and somebody were to tickle the sole of your bare foot very gently, the nerves of the skin would carry the message to the gray matter of the spinal cord, and it would promptly order the muscles of the leg to contract, and your foot would be drawn away from the tickling finger, without your brain taking any part in the matter, though, if you had been awake, you would of course have known what was going on. This sort of reply to a stimulus, or "stirring up," without our knowing anything about it, is known as a _reflex_ movement. Not only are many of these reflexes carried out without any help from the will, or brain, but they are so prompt and powerful that the brain, or will, can hardly stop them if it tries, as, for instance, in the case of tickling the feet. You can, if you make up your mind to it, prevent yourself from either wriggling, pulling your foot away, or giggling, when the sole of your foot is tickled; but if you happen to be at all "ticklish," it will take all the determination you have to do it, and some children are utterly unable to resist this impulse to squirm when tickled. This extraordinary power of your reflexes has developed because only the promptest possible response, by jerking your hand away or jumping, will be quick enough to save your life in some accidents or emergencies, when it would take entirely too long to telephone up to the brain and get its decision before jumping. When you are badly frightened, you often jump first and discover that you are frightened afterwards; and this jump, under certain circumstances, may save your life. On the other hand, like all instinctive or impulsive movements, it may get you into more trouble than if you had kept still. As you will see by the picture, the spinal nerves, which are given off from the cord in the lower part of the neck and between the shoulder blades, are gathered together into a great loose bundle to form the long nerve-wires needed to supply the shoulders and arms. Those given off from the small of the back just above the hips also run together to form, first a network and then a big single nerve-cord, called the _sciatic_ nerve, which many of you have probably heard of from the frightfully painful disease due to an inflammation of it, called _sciatica_. It is the largest nerve-cord in the body, running down the middle of the back of the thigh to supply the muscles of two-thirds of the leg.[26] The substance of both the spinal cord and the brain is made up of millions of delicate, tiny cells, called _neurons_, most of which, with very long branches, are arranged in chains for carrying messages, forming the white matter; while the others lie in groups, or ganglia, for sorting and deciding upon messages, forming the gray matter. Just at the top of the spinal cord, where it passes into the skull and joins with the brain, it swells out into a sort of knob, about the size of a queen olive or the head of a gold-headed cane, which is known as the _medulla_, or "pith." This is the most vital single part of the entire brain and nervous system; and the smallest direct injury to it will produce instant death, partly because all the messages which pass between the brain and the body have to go through it, and partly because in it are situated the centres which control breathing and the beat of the heart, and another quite important but less vital centre,--that for swallowing. How Messages are Received and Sent. Now to learn how smoothly and beautifully this nerve telephone system of ours works, and how simple it really is, although it has such a large number of lines and so many telephones on each line, and such a large central exchange, let us see how it deals with a message from the outside world. Suppose you are running barefoot and step on a thorn. Instantly the tiny nerve bulbs in the skin of the sole of your foot are stimulated, or set in vibration, and they send these vibrations up the sciatic nerve, into and up the whole length of the spinal cord, through the medulla, which switches them over to the other side of the brain up through the _brain stalk_, and out to the part of the surface (cortex) of the brain which controls the movements of the foot. All this takes only a fraction of a second, but it is not until the message reaches the brain-surface that you feel pain. If you were to cut the sciatic nerve, or even tie a string tightly around it, you could prick or burn the sole of your foot as much as you pleased, and you would not feel any pain at all. As soon as the surface of the brain has recognized the pain and where it comes from, it promptly sends a return message back down the same cable, though by different nerve-wires, to the muscles of the foot and leg, saying, "Jerk that foot away!" As a matter of fact, this message will arrive too late, for the centres in the spinal cord will already have attended to this part of the matter, often almost before you know that you are hurt. However, there is plenty of other work for the brain to do; and its next step, quicker than you can think, is to wake up a dozen muscles all over the body with the order, "Sit down!" And you promptly sit down. At the same time, the brain "central" has ordered the muscles of your arms and hands to reach down and pick up the foot, partly to protect it from any further scratch, and partly to pull the thorn out of it. Next it rushes a hurry call to the muscles controlling your lungs and throat, and says, "Howl!" and you howl accordingly. Another jab at the switchboard, and the eyes are called up and ordered to weep, while at the same time the muscles of the trunk of your body are set in rhythmic movement by another message, and you rock yourself backward and forward. This weeping and rocking yourself backward and forward and nursing your foot seem rather foolish,--indeed you have perhaps often been told that they are both foolish and babyish,--but, as you say, you "can't help it," and there is a good reason for it. The howl is a call for help; and if the hurt were due to the bite of a wolf or a bear, or the cut had gone deep enough to open an artery, this dreadfully unmusical noise might be the means of saving your life; while the rocking backward and forward and jerking yourself about would also send a message that you needed help, supposing you were so badly hurt that you couldn't call out, to anyone who happened to be within sight of you. So that it isn't entirely babyish and foolish to howl and squirm about when you are hurt--though it is manly to keep both within reasonable limits. If the message about the thorn had been brought by your eyes,--in other words, if you had seen it before you stepped on it,--then a similar but much simpler and less painful reflex would have been carried out. The image of the thorn would fall on the _retina_ of the eye and through its _optic nerve_ the message would be flashed to the brain: "There is something slim and sharp in the path,--looks like a thorn." When this message reached the brain, and not till then, would you see the thorn, just as in the case of the pain message from the foot. Then the brain would take charge of the situation just as before, flashing a hasty message to the muscles of the legs, saying, "Jump!" while its message to the throat and lungs, instead of "Yell," would be merely, "Say, 'Goodness!' or 'Whew!'" and you would say it and run on. If the thing in the grass, instead of a thorn, happened to be a snake, and you heard it rustle, then the warning message would come through your ears to the brain, and you would jump just the same; though, as it is not so easy to tell by a hearing message exactly where the sound is coming from, you might possibly jump in the wrong direction and land on top of the danger. This is the way in which you see, hear, and form ideas of things. Your eye telegraphs to the brain the colors; your ear, the sounds; and your nose, the smells of the particular object; and then your brain puts these all together and compares them with its records of things that it has seen before, which looked, or sounded, or smelt like that, and decides what it is; and you say you _see_ an apple, or you _hear_ a rooster crow, or you _smell_ pies baking. Remember that, strange as it may seem, you don't see an orange, for instance, but only a circular patch of yellowness, which, when you had seen it before, and felt of it with your hand, you found to be associated with a feeling of roundness and solidness; and when you lifted it toward your nose, with the well-known smell of orange-peel; so you called it an orange. If the yellow patch were hard, instead of elastic, to the touch, and didn't have any aromatic smell when you brought it up to your nose, you would probably say it was a gourd, or an apple, or perhaps a yellow croquet ball. This is the way in which, we say, our senses may "deceive" us, and is one of the reasons why three different people who have seen something happen will often differ so much in their accounts of it. It is not so much that our senses deceive us, but that we draw the wrong conclusions from the sights, sounds, and smells that they report to our brains, usually from being in too great a hurry and not looking carefully enough, or not waiting to check up what we _see_ by touching, hearing, or tasting the thing that we look at. This message-and-answer system runs all through our body. For instance, if we run fast, then the muscle cells in our legs burn up a good deal of sugar-fuel, and throw the waste gas, or smoke, into the blood. This is pumped by the heart all over the body, in a few seconds. When this carbon dioxid reaches the breathing centre in the medulla, it stirs it up to send promptly a message to the lungs to breathe faster and deeper, while, at the same time, it calls upon the circulation centre close to it, to stir up the heart and make it beat harder and faster, so as to give the muscles more blood to work with. If some poisonous or very irritating food is swallowed, as soon as it begins to hurt the cells lining the stomach, these promptly telegraph to the vomiting centre in the brain, we begin to feel "sick at the stomach," the brain sends the necessary directions to the great muscles of the abdomen and the diaphragm, they squeeze down upon the stomach, and its contents are promptly pumped back up the gullet and out through the mouth, thus throwing up the poisons. And so on all over the body--every tiniest region or organ in the body, every square inch of the skin, has its special wire connecting it with the great telephone exchange, enabling it to report danger, and to call for help or assistance the moment it needs it. FOOTNOTES: [26] To give you an idea of what real things nerve-trunks are, this sciatic nerve is as large as a small clothes-line, or, more accurately, as a carpenter's lead pencil, and so strong that when the surgeon cuts down upon it and stretches it to cure a very bad case of sciatica, he can lift the lower half of the body clear of the table by it. This strength, of course, is not due to the nerve-fibres and cells themselves but to the tough, fibrous sheath, or covering, with which all the nerves that run outside of the brain and spinal cord are covered and coated. The spinal cord, though it is between one-half and three-fourths of an inch across, or about the size of an ordinary blackboard pointer, has little or none of this fibrous tissue in it, and is very soft and delicate, easily torn when its bony case is broken; hence its old name, the _spinal marrow_, from its apparent resemblance to the marrow, or soft fat, in the hollow of a bone. CHAPTER XXI THE HYGIENE OF BONES, NERVES, AND MUSCLES HOW TO GET AND KEEP A GOOD FIGURE Erect Position is the Result of Vigorous Health. Naturally and properly, an erect, graceful figure and a good carriage have always been keenly desired; and much attention has been paid to the best means of acquiring them; as we say, we try to "get the habit" of carrying ourselves straight and well. But it must be remembered that an erect figure and a good carriage are the results of health and vigor, rather than the cause of them. Stooping, round shoulders, sitting "all hunched up," or a shuffling gait, are owing partly to bad habits, or "slouchiness," but chiefly to weak muscles and a badly-fed nervous system, often due to a poor digestion and a weak circulation. If a child is not healthy and vigorous, then no amount of drilling or reminders to "sit straight" and "stand erect" will make him do so. It is of great importance that the child should take an erect and correct position for reading and writing, and while sitting at his desk; and that the desk and the seat should fit him. But it is more important that he should not sit at his desk in a stuffy room long enough to be harmed by a cramped position. There are few children who will "hump over" at their desks, if the muscles of their backs and necks are strong and vigorous, and their brains well ventilated. Nor will many of them bore their noses into their books, or sprawl all over their copy books when they write, unless the light is poor, or they have some defect of the eyes which has not been corrected by proper glasses. A bad position or a bad carriage in a child is a sign of ill health, and should be treated by the removal of its cause. Curvatures--Their Cause and Cure. There are various forms of curvatures, or bendings, of the spine which are supposed to be owing to faulty positions of sitting or of carrying the body. There is wide difference of opinions as to their cause; but this all are agreed on, that they practically never occur in sturdy, well-grown, active children; and the way that they are now corrected is by careful systems of balancing, muscular exercise, open-air life, and abundant feeding, instead of using steel braces, or jackets, or schoolroom drills. [Illustration: THE POSITION OF THE BODY IS AN INDEX TO ITS HEALTH Note the pupil in the second row who evidently needs eye glasses.] Much the same is true of other deformities and defects of the body, as, for instance, round shoulders, or "flat-foot," or even such serious ones as "club-foot" and "bow-legs." Nearly all these are caused by the weakness or wrong action of some muscle, or groups of muscles. If this be long continued or neglected, the bones--which, you will remember, were made by the muscles in the first place--will be warped out of shape. When this has occurred, it is often necessary to bring back the limb, or foot, into a nearly straight position by mechanical or surgical means; but we now largely depend upon muscular exercises combined with rubbing and massage with the hand, and on building up the general vigor of the entire body, so that the muscles will pull the limb or the backbone back into proper position. Take care of the muscles, and the bones will take care of themselves! Make the body strong, vigorous, and happy, and it will "hold" and "carry" itself. OUR FEET The Living Arches of the Foot. One of the most important things to look after, if we wish to have an erect carriage and a swift, graceful gait, is the shape and vigor of the feet. Each foot consists of two springy, living arches of bone and sinew, which are also used as levers, one running lengthwise from the heel to the ball of the toes, and the other crosswise at the instep. These arches are built largely of bones, but are given that springy, elastic curve on which their health and comfort depend, and are kept in proper shape and position, solely by the action of muscles--those of the lower part of the leg and calf. [Illustration: IMPRINT OF (1) ARCHED FOOT AND (2) FLAT FOOT The absence of impression on the inner border of the normal footprint at _A_ is due to the elevation of the foot by the longitudinal arch. The other arch lies across the foot in front of this.--After Schmidt.] The purpose of these arches is to "give," or spring, like carriage springs, and thus break the shock of each step and cause the body to "ride" easily and comfortably. In order that a spring may "give," it must expand, or spread. Far the commonest and most serious cause of a poor, easily tired gait and a bad carriage is tight shoes, which, by being too short, or too narrow, or both, prevent the arches of the foot from "giving" and expanding. Not only does this produce corns, bunions, and lame feet, but it makes both standing and walking painful and feeble, and destroys the balance of the entire body, causing the back to ache, the shoulders to droop forward, and the neck muscles to tire themselves out trying to pull the head back so as to keep the face and eyes erect. Thus one soon tires, and never really enjoys walking. If this disturbance of balance is increased by high heels, thrust forward under the middle of the foot, the result is very bad. [Illustration: THE RESULT OF WEARING A FASHIONABLE SHOE (1) A foot that has never worn a shoe (from a photograph); (2) A foot so cramped and bent as to prevent firmness of step and gait.] Our Shoes, an Important Factor in Health. Few more ingenious instruments of crippling and torture have ever been invented than fashionable tight shoes with high heels. Kipling never said a shrewder or truer thing than when he made Mulvaney, the old Irish drill-sergeant, tell the new recruit, "Remimber, me son, a soljer on the marrch is no betther than his feet!" and this applies largely to the march of life as well. Every shoe should be at least three-quarters of an inch longer, and from half to three-quarters of an inch wider, than the foot at rest, to allow proper expansion of these great "carriage-spring" arches. If children run free in the open air, either barefoot, or with light, loose, well-ventilated shoes, or sandals, they will have little trouble, not only with bunions, corns, "flat-foot," or lameness, but also with their backs, their gait, and their carriage. Easily half of our backaches, and inability to walk far or run fast in later life, to say nothing of over-fatness and dyspepsia, are caused by tight shoes. SLEEP AND REST Why We Need Rest. A most important element in a life of healthful exercise, study, and play is rest. Even when we are hard at work, we need frequent breathing spells and changes of occupation and amusement to keep one part of our muscles, or our brains, from poisoning itself. But after a time, in even the strongest and toughest of us, there comes a period when no change of occupation, no mere sitting still, will rest us; we begin to feel drowsy and want to go to sleep. This means partly that the fatigue poisons, in spite of fresh air and change, have piled up faster than we can burn them, so that we need sleep to restore the body. All day long we are making more carbon dioxid than the oxygen we breathe in can take care of; while we sleep, the situation is reversed--the oxygen is gaining on the carbon dioxid. This is why the air in our bedrooms ought to be kept especially pure and fresh. But the need goes deeper than this: sleeping and waking are simply parts of the great rhythm in which all life beats--a period of work followed by a period of rest. Continuous, never-ceasing activity for any living thing quickly means death. While externally the body appears to be at rest, the processes of growth and upbuilding probably go on more rapidly when we are asleep than when we are awake. The benefits of exercise are made permanent and built into the body during the sleep that follows it. The more rapidly young animals are growing, the more hours out of the twenty-four they spend in sleep. When you sleep, you are not stopping all the useful activities of your body and mind, you are simply giving some of the most useful and most important of them a chance to work. The only likeness between sleep and death is that in both the body is quiet and the eyes are closed. Really we are never more alive and growing than when asleep. It is of the utmost importance that young children especially have all the sleep they need, and that is precisely all that they can be induced to take. The best rule for you, then, to follow, is to go to bed when you feel sleepy, and to get up when you wake rested. Every child under twelve should have at least ten hours of sleep, and every grown person eight, or better still, nine hours. Time spent in sound, refreshing sleep, is time well spent. If you cannot sleep well, it is a signal that something is wrong with your health, or your habits--a danger signal of great importance, which should be attended to at once. The best and only safe sleep-producer is exercise in the open air. DISORDERS OF MUSCLES AND BONES The Muscles and Bones Have Few Diseases. Considering how complex it is, and the never-ceasing strain upon it, this moving apparatus of ours, the nerve-bone-muscle-machine, is surprisingly free from disease. The muscles, though they form nearly half our bulk, have scarcely a single disease peculiar to them, or chiefly beginning in them, unless fatigue and its consequences might be so regarded. They may become weakened and wasted by either lack or excess of exercise, by under-feeding, or by loss of sleep; but most of their disturbances are due to poisons which have got into the blood pumped through them, or to paralysis or other injuries to the nerves that supply them. The muscles of an arm, for instance, which has been lashed to a splint, or shut tightly in a cast for a long time, waste away and shrink until the arm becomes, as we say, "just skin and bone"; and the same thing will happen if the nerve supplying a muscle, or a limb, is cut or paralyzed. The bones have more diseases than the muscles, but really comparatively few, considering their great number and size, and the constant strain to which they are subjected in supporting the body, and driving it forward and doing its work under the handling and leverage of the muscles. Most of their diseases are, like those of the muscles, the after-effects of general diseases, particularly the infections and fevers, which begin elsewhere in the body; and the best treatment of such bone diseases is the cure and removal of the disease that caused them. [Illustration: CALLUS FORMED AROUND A FRACTURE An aluminum splint holds the parts of the bone together.] Repair of Broken Bones. If bones are broken by a fall, or blow, they display a remarkable power of repair. The "skin" covering them (periosteum) pours out a quantity of living lime-cement, or animal-mortar, around the two broken ends, which solders them together, much as a plumber will make a joint between the ends of two pipes. This repair substance is called _callus_. The most remarkable thing about the process is that, when it has held the two broken ends together long enough for them to "knit" firmly--that is, to connect their blood vessels and marrow cavities properly--this handful of lime-cement, which has piled up around the break, gradually melts away and disappears; so that, if the ends of the bone have been brought accurately together, you can hardly tell where the break was, except by a slight ridge or thickening. TROUBLES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM The Nervous System is not easily Damaged. The nervous system is subject to a good many more diseases than are either the muscles or the bones; but, considering how complex it is, it is not nearly so easily damaged or thrown out of balance as we usually imagine, and has astonishing powers of repair. Instead of being one of the first parts of the body to be attacked by a disease, such as an infection or a fever, it is one of the very last to feel the effects of disease, except in the sense that it often gives early that invaluable danger signal, pain. Headache. Next after fatigue the most valuable danger signal given us by our nerves is that commonest of all pains, _headache_. Indeed, it is not too much to say that headache is the most useful pain in the world. It has little to do with the condition of the brain, but occurs in the head chiefly because the nerves of the head and face are the most sensitive of all those in the body, and the first ones, therefore, to "cry out" when hurt. Headache has been described as the cry of a poisoned or starved or over-worked nerve, and is simply nature's signal that something is going wrong. Toxins, or poisons, formed anywhere in the body, from any cause, get into the blood, are carried to the sensitive nerves of the head and face, and irritate them so that they ache. It is foolish to try to do anything to the head itself for the relief of headache, although cold cloths, or a hot-water bottle, may be soothing in mild cases. The thing to do is to clear the poison out of the blood, and the only way is to find what has caused it. Nearly all the things that cause headache do so by poisoning the blood. A very common cause of headache, for instance, is getting over-tired, especially if at the same time you do not get enough sleep; and, as you already know, tiredness, or fatigue, is a form of self-poisoning. Another very common cause of headache is bad air--sitting or sleeping in hot, stuffy rooms with the windows shut tight. If you do this, not only are you not getting oxygen enough into your blood to burn up the waste poisons that your own cells are making all the time, but also you are breathing in the waste poisons from other people's lungs, and the germs that are always in bad air. Another very common cause of headache is _eye-strain_. Whenever you find that, when you try to read, the letters begin to dance before your eyes, and your head soon begins to ache, it is a sign that you need to have your eyes examined and perhaps a pair of glasses fitted to enable you to see properly. Constipation and disturbances of digestion also very often cause headache by poisoning the blood; and, as you know, the first sign of a bad cold, or the beginning of a fever, or other illness, will often be a bad headache. In short, a headache always means that something is going wrong; and the thing to do is to set to work at once to see if you can find out what has caused it, and then to remove the cause. If you cannot find out the cause, then go to a doctor and ask him to tell you what it is, and what to do to get rid of it. Above all things, don't swallow a dose of some kind of headache medicine, and go on with your work, or your bad habits of eating, or using your eyes; because, even though it may relieve the pain, it doesn't do anything whatever to remove the cause and leaves you just as badly off as you were before you took it. Besides, most of these headache medicines, which for a time will relieve the pain of a headache, are narcotics, or pain-deadeners; and in more than very moderate doses they are poisons, and often dangerous ones. Those in commonest use, known as the "coal tar" remedies, because the chemists make them out of coal tar,[27] are likely to have a weakening effect upon the heart; and, while not very dangerous in small doses, they are very bad things to get into the habit of using. The Exaggerated Claims of Patent Medicines. The same thing must be said of the habit of dosing yourself every time you feel a pain or an ache, with some sort of medicine, whether obtained at some previous time from a doctor, or bought at a drug store. A large majority of the medicines that are most widely advertised to cure all sorts of pains and aches contain some form of narcotic--most commonly either alcohol or opium. The reason for this is that no one medicine can possibly be a cure for all sorts of diseases; and the only kind of medicine that will make almost every one who takes it feel a little bit better for the time being is a narcotic, because it has the power of deadening the nerves to pain or discomfort. Careful analyses by boards of health and government chemists of a great number of advertised medicines have shown that three-fourths of the so-called tonics and "bitters" and "bracers" of all sorts contain alcohol--some of them in such large amounts as to be stronger and more intoxicating than whiskey. The same investigations have found that a large majority of the "colic cures," "pain relievers," nearly all the "soothing syrups" and "teething syrups," and most of the cough mixtures, cough cures, and consumption cures contain opium, often in quite dangerous amounts. The widely-advertised medicines and remedies guaranteed to cure all sorts of diseases in a very short time are almost certain to be one of two things: either out-and-out frauds, costing about four cents a bottle and selling for fifty cents or a dollar, or else dangerous poisons. All patent pain relievers are safe things to let entirely alone. Another risk in taking medicines wholesale, especially those that are known as patent medicines, is that you never can be quite sure what you are taking, as their composition is usually kept a strict secret. It may happen to be something very good for your disease, it may be entirely useless, and it may be something very harmful. There is no one drug, or medicine, known to the medical profession, that will cure more than one or two diseases, or relieve more than four or five disturbed and uncomfortable conditions. As you not only do not know what you are taking, but are not always quite sure what is the matter with you, the chances of your getting the right remedy for your disease are not much more than one in a hundred. If it isn't the right thing, you are certainly wasting your money, and may be doing yourself a serious injury. We should not pour drugs of which we know little into a body of which we know less. Doctors give scarcely a fourth as much medicine now as they did fifty years ago. The best cures are food, exercise, sleep, and fresh air. The Effects of Disease. In the case of nearly all infectious diseases, the effects on the nervous system are among the last to appear, and may not occur until weeks, months, or even years after the main fever or attack of sickness. This is one of the reasons why, when they do occur, they are often hard to cure; the whole system has become saturated with the poisons before they reach the nerves at all. So it happens that the idea has grown up that nervous diseases are very hard to cure. When, however, we know that two-thirds of them are a late result of some of the preventable infectious diseases and fevers, we can realize that it is perfectly possible to prevent them, and that prevention is the best cure. The poisons that attack the brain and nervous system may be formed in the body by disease germs or brought in from without, as are alcohol, tobacco, lead, or arsenic. Even such mild infections as measles, scarlet fever, and influenza may poison certain nerves supplying the muscles of an arm or a leg, causing temporary paralysis, or even permanent laming; or they may attack the nerve of sight or of hearing and produce blindness or deafness. A great many of the cases of paralysis and insanity are caused by alcohol. Alcohol in excess may attack the nerves supplying the arms and legs, producing severe pain and partial paralysis. It may also, after long-continued use, affect the cells of the brain itself, producing the horrible condition known as delirium tremens--a form of acute insanity with distressing delusions, in which the patient imagines that he sees rats, snakes, and other reptiles and vermin crawling over him, or in his room. Even in those who never use it to such excess as this, or indeed in those who may never become intoxicated, the long-continued use of alcohol may produce a slow poisoning and general breaking-down of the whole nervous system, causing in time the hand to tremble, the eye to become bleared and dim, the gait weak and unsteady, the memory uncertain, and the judgment poor. Are Nervous Diseases Increasing? The direct use of the brain and nervous system has much less to do with the production of its diseases or even its serious disturbances than is usually believed. Most of these, as we have seen, are due either to the poisons of disease or alcohol, or to the fatigue-poisons, or other poisons, produced in the stomach, the liver, the muscles, or other parts of the body. The worst results of brain-work are due to the extent to which it deprives us of proper exercise and fresh air. Good, vigorous mental activity,--hard brain work, in fact,--when you are in good condition, is, if not overdone, as healthful and almost as invigorating as physical exercise or hearty play. We often hear it said that the rush and hurry of our modern strenuous life is increasing the number of mental diseases and nervous breakdowns. But there is no evidence that the strain of civilization upon our brains and nervous systems is damaging them, or that either nervous diseases or insanity are more frequent now than they used to be one hundred or five hundred years ago. In fact, all the evidence that we have points in exactly the opposite direction; for, as we have seen, most of these brain and nerve diseases are due to infectious diseases, bad food, and bad living conditions generally, all of which the progress of modern civilization is rapidly lessening and preventing. We are collecting our insane in modern hospitals and comfortable homes, instead of letting them wander in rags about the country, and this makes them live longer and seem more numerous. But the poorest and least highly civilized classes and races have much more insanity among them than those who live under more favorable conditions. FOOTNOTES: [27] Some of these coal-tar remedies are _Acetanilid_, and _Antipyrin_, and _Phenacetin_. CHAPTER XXII EXERCISE AND GROWTH Fatigue as a Danger Signal. The chief use of exercise in childhood, whether of body or mind, is to make us grow; but it can do this only by being kept within limits. Within these limits it will increase the vigor of the heart, expand the lungs, clear the brain, deepen sleep, and improve the appetite. Beyond these limits it stunts the body, dulls the brain, overstrains the heart, and spoils the appetite. How are we going to tell when these limits are being reached? Nature has provided a danger signal--fatigue, or "tiredness." Fatigue is due, not to complete exhaustion, but to poisoning of the muscle, or nerve, by its own waste substances. If the fatigue is general, or "all over," it is from these waste substances piling up in the blood faster than the lungs, skin, and kidneys can get rid of them. In other words, fatigue is a form of self-poisoning. We can see how it is that exercise, which, up to the point of fatigue, is both healthful and improving, when carried on after we are tired, becomes just the opposite. Fatigue is nature's signal, "Enough for this time!" That is why all methods of training for building up strength and skill, both of mind and muscle, forbid exercising beyond well-marked fatigue. If you yourself stop at this point in exercising, you will find, the next time you try that particular exercise, that you can go a little further before fatigue is felt; the third time, a little further yet; and so, by degrees, you can build up both your body and brain to the fullest development of which they are capable. In muscular training, a series of light, quick movements, none of which are fatiguing, repeated fifteen, twenty, or a hundred times, will do much more to build up muscle and increase strength, than three or four violent, heaving strains that tax all your strength. Real athletes and skilled trainers, for instance, use half-or three-quarter-pound dumb-bells and one-or two-pound Indian clubs, instead of the five-pound dumb-bells and ten-pound clubs with which would-be athletes delight to decorate their rooms. A thoroughbred race-horse is trained on the same principle: he is never allowed to gallop until tired, or to put out his full speed before he is well grown. In fact, the best methods of all forms of exercising and training always stop just short of fatigue. Education and study ought to be planned on the same principle. Exercise of either our muscles or our minds after they have begun to poison themselves through fatigue never does them any good, even if it does not do them serious harm; and, where the exercise is for the sake of building us up and developing our powers, it is best to stop for a little while, or change the task, as soon as we begin to feel distinctly tired, and then to try it again when we are rested. [Illustration: A TRAINED BODY Ellery H. Clark, All-around Athletic Champion of America, 1897, 1903.] This is one of the secrets of the healthfulness and value of play and games for children, and for older persons as well. When you get tired, you can stop and rest; and then start in again when you feel rested--that is to say, when your heart has washed the poisons out of your muscles and nerves. In fact, if you will notice, you will find that nearly all play and games are arranged on this plan--a period of activity followed by a period of rest. Some games have regular "innings," with alternate activity and rest for the players; or each player takes his turn at doing the hard work; or the players are constantly changing from one thing to another--for instance, throwing or striking the ball one minute; running to first base the next; and standing on base the next. Every muscle, every sense, every part of you is exercised at once, or in rapid succession, and no part has time to become seriously fatigued; so that you can play hard all the afternoon and never once be uncomfortably tired, though your muscles have done a tremendous lot of work, measured in foot-pounds or "boy-power," in that time. The good school imitates nature in this respect. The recitation periods are short, and recesses frequent; a heavy subject is followed by a lighter one; songs, drawing, calisthenics, and marching are mixed in with the lessons, so as to give every part of the mind and body plenty to do, and yet not over-tire any part. All-Round Training from Work and Play. Every game that is worth playing, every kind of work that accomplishes anything worth while, trains and develops not merely the muscles and the heart, but the sight, hearing, touch, and sense of balance, and the powers of judgment, memory, and reason, as well. If you are healthy, you know that you don't need to be told to play, or even how, or what, to play; for you would rather play than eat. You have as strong and natural an appetite for play as you have for food when you are hungry, or for water when you are thirsty, or for sleep when you are tired. It is just as right to follow the one instinct as the others, though any one may be carried to extremes. Some of the most important part of your training and fitting for life is given by plays and games. Not only do they put you in better condition to study and enjoy your work in school, but they also teach you many valuable lessons as well. Our favorite national game, base-ball, for instance, not only develops the muscles of your arms and shoulders in throwing the ball and in striking and catching it, and your lungs and heart in rushing to catch a fly or in running the bases, but also develops quickness of sight and hearing,--requires, as we say, "a good eye" for distance,--makes you learn to calculate something of the speed at which a ball is coming toward you or flying up into the air, requires you to judge correctly how far it is to the next base and how few seconds it will take to get there and whether you or the baseman can get there first. More important yet, like all team games, it teaches you to work with others, to obey orders promptly, to give up your own way and do, not what you like best, but what will help the team most; to keep your temper, to bend every energy to win, but to play fair. It also teaches you that you must begin at the beginning, take the lowest place, and gradually work yourself up; and that only by hard work and patience and determination can you make yourself worth anything to the team, to say nothing of becoming a "star" player. If you will just go at your studies the way you do at base-ball, you will make a success of them. Make up your mind to gain a little at a time, to learn something new every day, and you will be astonished how your knowledge will mount up at the end of the year. When you first start in a new study, it looks, as you say, "like Greek" to you. You feel quite sure that you never will be able to understand those hard words or solve those problems "clear over in the back of the book." But remember how you started in on the diamond as a "green player," with fumbling fingers that missed half the balls thrown to you, with soft hands that stung every time you tried to stop a "hot" ball; how you ducked and flinched when a fast ball came at you, and how you fumbled half your flies and, even when you fielded them, were likely to send them in six feet over the baseman's head. But by quietly sticking to it--watching how the good players did it, and playing an hour or two every day during the season--you gradually _grew_ into the game, until, almost without knowing how it happened, you had trained your muscles, your nerve cells, and your brain and found yourself a good batsman and a sure catcher. [Illustration: TUG OF WAR Good for muscle and will.] So it will be in your school work. Just stick quietly to it, taking your work a lesson at a time; give yourself plenty of sleep and plenty of fresh air, and eat plenty of good food three times a day, and your mind will grow in strength and skill as gradually, as naturally, and as happily as your body does. Every season of the year has its special games suited to the weather and the condition of the ground. If you take pride in playing all of them in their turn, hard and thoroughly, and making as good a record in them as you can, you will find that it will not only keep you healthy and make you grow, but will help you in your school work as well, by keeping your wits bright and your head clear. There is a fine group of running games, for instance, such as Prisoner's Base, or Dare Base, Hide-and-Seek, or I Spy, and the different kinds of tag,--Fox-and-Geese, Duck-on-Rock,--which are not only capital exercise for leg muscles, lungs, and heart, but fine training in quickness of sight, quickness and accuracy of judgment, and quickness of ear in catching the slightest rustle on either side, or behind you, so that you can rush back to the base, or "home," first. Then with the winter comes skating, with hockey and Prisoner's Base on the ice, and coasting and sledding and snow-balling, to say nothing of forts and snowmen. You should try to be out of doors as many hours a day in the winter-time as in the summer, so far as possible. If you play and romp hard, you will find that you don't mind the cold at all, and that, instead of taking more colds and chills, you will have fewer of these than you had when you cooped yourself up indoors beside the warm stove. [Illustration: THE GIANT STRIDE A good exercise for all the muscles.] It is just as important for girls to play all these games as it is for boys; and girls enjoy them just as much and can play them almost, if not quite, as well, if they are only allowed to begin when they are small and do just as they please. There is no reason whatever why a girl should not be just as quick of eye and ear, and as fast on the run, and as well able to throw or catch or bat a ball, as a boy. Up to fifteen years of age boys and girls alike ought to be dressed in clothes that will allow them to play easily and vigorously at any good game that happens to be in season. Girls like base-ball as well as boys do, if they are only shown how to play it. In summer, of course, the whole wide world outdoors turns into one great playground; and it is largely because we turn out into this playground that we have so much less sickness, and so many fewer cases of the serious diseases like tuberculosis, pneumonia, and rheumatism in summer than in winter. Boys and girls ought to know how to swim and how to handle a boat before they are twelve years old; for these are not only excellent forms of exercise and most healthful and enjoyable amusements in themselves, but they may be the means of saving lives--one's own life or the lives of others. As a form of exercise and education combined, nothing is better than walks in the country or, where this is impossible, in parks and public gardens. An acquaintance with trees, flowers, plants, birds, and wild animals, is one of the greatest sources of enjoyment and good health that any one can have all his life through. Last, but not by any means least, comes that delightful combination of work and play known as gardening, and the lighter forms of farming. Every child naturally delights in having a little patch of ground of his own in which he can dig and rake and weed and plant seeds and watch the plants grow. In our large cities, where most of the houses have not sufficient space about them to allow children to have gardens of their own at home, land is being bought near school-houses and laid out as school gardens, and the work done in them is counted as part of the school work. Indeed, so important is this work considered as a part of school education, that some large cities are actually building their schools out in the open country, so that they can have plenty of space for playgrounds and gardens and shops, and carrying the children from the central parts of the city out to them by trolley or train in the morning and back at night. [Illustration: SCHOOL GARDENING] Wherever you happen to live, you should engage in healthy happy, vigorous play in the open air at least two to four hours a day all the year round. If you live in a town, while it will not be quite so easy to reach the woods and the fields and the swimming holes and the skating ponds, yet you will have a large number of playmates of your own age, and have good opportunity to play the games calling for half a dozen or more players; and there will be plenty of vacant lots and open spaces, or little-traveled streets, in which to play base-ball and foot-ball and Prisoner's Base and tag. And although you may not be within reach of the best zoological garden ever made,--a barnyard,--yet you can make occasional trips to the city "Zoo," or the botanical gardens, or to parks. Healthful Methods of Study. In the growth and training of the highest, most valuable, and most wonderful part of the body--the brain--the same methods followed in our outdoor games will give the best results. We do not create intelligence by study, nor manufacture a brain for ourselves, in school. We simply develop and strengthen and improve the brains and the mental power that we were born with. [Illustration: A WASTED CHANCE FOR PUBLIC HEALTH A large area in the residence section of a city, now used as a dump, from which dust and disease can spread. It could easily be cleared and used for children's gardens, or a playground or athletic field.] Our minds grow as our bodies do, by healthful exercise--little at a time, with plenty of rest and change of occupation between the periods of work. That is why our school studies are arranged as they are: instead of one subject being studied all the morning, or all day, four or five subjects are studied for twenty or thirty minutes each, and a change is made to another before our minds become over-tired and begin poisoning themselves with fatigue toxins. A subject that is rather hard for us is followed by one that is easier; and the hardest subjects in the course are usually taken up early in the morning session, or after recess, or early in the afternoon, when we are well-rested and feeling fresh and ready for work. We should try to keep our bodies and our brains and our sight and hearing in the very best possible condition for our work, so as to come up to each task that we have to master keen and fresh and clear-headed, rather than to take pride in spending so many hours a day studying in a half-tired, half-hearted, listless kind of way. You will find that you will be able to master a lesson and see through a problem in half the time if you get plenty of sleep in a room with the windows open, play a great deal out-of-doors, and do not hurry through your meals for either school or play. [Illustration: AN OBSTACLE RACE] Study just as you play ball when you are trying to make a place on the team. Bend every energy that you have to that one thing, and forget everything else, until you have finished it. You can do more work in fifteen minutes in this way than you can in forty minutes of sitting and looking out of the window and wondering how much longer the study period is to last, and what the next chapter is about in the story that you are reading at home, or what you are going to wear to the party next week. Keep yourself in good condition, and then buckle down to your work as if that were the only thing there was in the world for the time being, and you will be surprised to find, not only how much more easily and quickly you will do your work, but how much better you will remember it afterwards. Do not set out to accomplish too much at a time; but when you undertake a task, don't let go until you have finished it. If you will train yourself in this way, you will soon find that it will seldom take you longer to master a lesson than it will to recite it. It is becoming more and more the custom in the best schools to plan to do all the school work in school hours, alternating periods of recitation and play with periods of study, so that no school-books need be taken home at night. This cannot always be done; but it is well to come as near to it as possible, in order, first, to learn to do work quickly and thoroughly and to drop it when it is finished, and, secondly, to give time to playing and resting and forming the priceless habit of reading. You will leave school some day, but you may still be a student in the great University of Books; and the pleasure of widening your knowledge and kindling your imagination will never fail you or pall on you as long as you live. An evening spent with newspapers and magazines, with books of travel and adventure, with good stories and poetry, with enjoyable and sensible parlor games such as authors, checkers, chess, charades, and with music and singing, will help you more with your lessons next day than two hours of listless yawning over text-books. [Illustration: THE HIGH JUMP Like the obstacle race, the high jump cultivates determination as well as muscle.] If you take your school work in this spirit, you will find that you will enjoy it quite as well as any other form of exercise--even play itself. The harder and more intelligently you play, the better you will be able to work in the schoolroom; and the harder and more intelligently you study, the more you will enjoy your play. CHAPTER XXIII THE LOOKOUT DEPARTMENT Why the Eyes, Ears, and Nose are Near the Mouth. If you had no eyes, ears, or nose, you might just as well be dead; and you soon would be, if you had no one to feed you and guide you about and take care of you. Naturally, all three of these scouts and spies of the body, which warn us of danger and guide us to food and shelter, are near the mouth, at the head-end of the body. The nose by means of which we smell food, to see whether it is sweet and good or not, is directly above the mouth; the eyes are above and on each side, like the lamps of an automobile, but swinging in sockets like search-lights; while the ears are a couple of inches behind, on each side of us, for catching from the sea of air the waves that we call sound. You could almost guess what each of these is for, just by looking at it. The nose and the ears are open and hollow because air must pass into them in order to bring us odors or sounds; while the eyes are solid, somewhat like big glass marbles, to receive light--because light can go right through anything that is transparent. Eyes, ears, and nose all began on the surface, and sank gradually into the head, so as to be surrounded and protected, leaving just opening enough at the surface to allow smells, light-rays, and sound-waves to enter; and all of them have at their bottom, or deepest part, a sensitive patch of surface, which catches the light, or the smells, or the sounds, and sends them by a special nerve to the brain. These three sets of organs have gradually and slowly grown into the shape in which we now find them, in order to do the particular kind of smelling, seeing, and hearing that will be most useful to us. Every kind of animal has a slightly different shape and arrangement of eye, of ear, and of nose to fit his particular "business"; but in all animals they are built upon the same simple, general plan. THE NOSE How the Nose is Made. The nose began as a pair of little puckers, or dimples, just above the mouth, containing cells that were particularly good smellers, in order to test the food before it was eaten. All smells rise, so these cells were right on the spot for their particular "business." The original way of breathing, before the nose-dimples or pits opened through into the throat, was through the mouth; and that is one reason why it is so easy to fall into the bad habit of mouth-breathing whenever the nose gets blocked by _adenoids_ or _catarrh_. Some creatures--fishes, for instance,--breathe through their mouths entirely; if you watch one in an aquarium or a clear stream, you will easily see that it is going "gulp, gulp, gulp" constantly. The saying "to drink like a fish" is a slander upon an innocent creature; for what it is really doing is breathing, not drinking. Even a frog, which has nostrils opening into its throat, still has to swallow its air in gulps, as you can see by watching its throat when it is sitting quietly. And, strange as it may seem, if you prop its mouth open, it will suffocate, because it can no longer gulp down air.[28] Our noses are nine-tenths for breathing, and only about one-tenth for smelling; so that by far the greater part of the nose is built on breathing lines. But the smelling part of it, though small, is very important, because it now has to decide, not merely upon the goodness or badness of the food, but also upon the purity or foulness of the air we breathe. The _nostrils_ lie, as you can see, side by side, separated from each other by a thin, straight plate of gristle and bone known as the _septum_. This should be perfectly straight and flat; but very often when the nose does not grow properly in childhood, it becomes crumpled upon itself, or bulged over to one side or the other, and so blocks up one of the nostrils. This is a very common cause of catarrh, and requires, for its cure, a slight operation, a cutting away of the bulging or projecting part of the septum. The rims of the openings of the nose, known as the _wings_, have little muscles fastened to them which pull them upward and backward, thus widening the air openings or, as we say, dilating the nostrils. If you will watch any one who has been running fast, or a horse that has been galloping, you will see that his nostrils enlarge with every breath; and these same movements occur in sick people who are suffering from disease of the lungs or the heart, which makes it difficult for them to get breath enough. Each nostril opens into a short and rather narrow, but high, passage, known as the _nasal passage_, through which the air pours into the back of the throat, or _pharynx_, and so down into the windpipe and lungs. Instead of having smooth walls, however, the passage is divided into three almost separate tubes, by little shelves of bone that stick out from the outer wall. These are covered with thick coils of tiny blood vessels, through which hot blood is being constantly pumped, like steam through the coils of a radiator, so that the air, as it is being drawn into the lungs, is warmed and moistened. The passage is lined with a soft, moist "skin," called mucous membrane, very much like that which lines the stomach and bowels, except that it is covered with tiny little microscopic hairs, called _cilia_, and that its glands pour out a thin, sticky _mucus_, instead of a digestive juice. This thick network of blood vessels just under the thin mucous "skin" is easily scratched into or broken, and then we have "nose-bleed." The purpose of this mucus is to catch and hold, just as flypaper catches flies, all specks of dust, lint, or germs that may be floating in the air we breathe, and to keep them from going on into the lungs. As these are caught upon the lining of the nose, they are washed down by the flow of mucus or wafted by the movement of the tiny hairs back into the throat, and swallowed into the stomach, where they are digested. Or, if they are very irritating, they are blown out of the nostrils, or sneezed out, and in that way got rid of. If the dust is too irritating, or the air is foul and contains disease germs, these set up an inflammation in the nose, and we "catch cold," as we say. If we keep on breathing bad or dusty air, the walls of the nasal passages become permanently thickened and swollen; the mucus, instead of being thin and clear, becomes thick and sticky and yellowish, and we have a catarrh. Catarrh is the result of a succession of neglected "bad colds," caused, not by fresh, cold air, but by hot, stuffy, foul air containing dust and germs. The best and only sure way to avoid catarrh is by breathing nothing but fresh, pure air, day and night, keeping your skin clean and vigorous by cool bathing every day, and taking plenty of play in the open air. So perfect is this heating, warming, and dust-cleansing apparatus in the nose, that by the time quite cold air has passed through the nostrils, and got down into the back of the throat, it has been warmed almost to the temperature of the body, or blood-heat, and has been moistened and purified of three-fourths of its dust or disease germs. When you go out of doors on a cold, frosty morning, your nose is very likely to block up, because so much hot blood is pumped into these little steam-coils of blood vessels, in order to warm the air properly, that they swell until they almost block up the nostrils. The Sense of Smell. The lower three-fourths of the nasal passages have nothing whatever to do with the sense of smell; this is found only in the highest, or third, division of the passages, right up under the root of the nose, where odors can readily rise to it. Here can be found a little patch of mucous membrane of a deep yellowish color, which is very sensitive to smells, and from which a number of tiny little nerve twigs run up to form the nerve of smell (_olfactory nerve_), which goes directly to the brain. The position of the smell area at the highest and narrowest part of the nose passage explains why when you have a very bad cold, you almost lose your sense of smell; the lining of the lower part of the nose has become so inflamed and swollen as to block up the way to the highest part where the smelling is done. [Illustration: ADENOIDS A section through the nose and mouth: _A_, adenoid growth; _P_, soft palate; _T_, right tonsil.] Adenoids. If colds are neglected and allowed to run on, the inflammation spreads through the nose back into the upper part of the throat, or pharynx. Here it attacks a spongy group of glands, like a third tonsil, which swells up until it almost blocks up the nose and makes you breathe through your mouth. These swollen glands are called adenoids, and cause not only mouth-breathing, but deafness, loss of appetite, indigestion, headache, and a stupid, tired condition; so that children that are _mouth-breathers_ are often two or more grades behind in school, poor students, and even stunted and undersized. You can often tell them at sight by their open mouths and vacant, stupid look. A very simple and harmless scraping operation will remove these adenoids entirely, and what a wonderful improvement the mouth-breather will make! He will often catch up two grades, and gain two inches in height and ten pounds in weight within a year. [Illustration: MOUTH-BREATHERS Note how swollen the face is under the eyes and how tired and dull the whole expression.] Adenoids not only cause deafness by blocking up the tube (_Eustachian_) that runs from the throat to the ear,--the tube through which the air passes when your ear "goes pop,"--but are also the commonest cause of ear-ache and gatherings in the ear, which may burst the drum. THE TONGUE The Tongue is not Used chiefly for Tasting. If you will notice the next time that you have a bad cold, you will find that you have almost lost your sense of taste, as well as of smell, so that everything tastes "flat" to you. This illustrates what scientists have known for a long time, but which seems very hard to believe, that two-thirds of what we call taste is really smell. If you carefully block up your nostrils with cotton or wax, so that no air can possibly reach the smell region at the top of them, and blindfold your eyes, and have some one cut a raw potato, an apple, and a raw onion into little pieces of the same size and shape, and put them into your mouth one after the other, you will find that it is difficult to tell which is which. The only tastes that are really perceived in the mouth are bitter, sweet, sour, and salty; and even these are perceived quite as much by the roof and back of the mouth, especially the soft palate, as they are by the tongue. All the delicate flavors of our food, such as those of coffee or of roast meat or of freshly baked bread, are really smells. The tongue, which is usually described as the organ of taste, is really a sort of fingerless hand grown up from the floor of the mouth--to help suck in or lap up water or milk, push the food in between the teeth for chewing, and, when it has been chewed, roll it into a ball and push it backward down the throat. It is not even the chief organ of speech; for people who have had their tongues removed on account of cancer, or some other disease, can talk fairly well, although not so clearly as with the whole tongue. The tongue is simply a "tongue-shaped" bundle of muscles, covered with a thick, tough skin of mucous membrane, dotted all over with little knob-like processes called _papillæ_, which are of various shapes, but of no particular utility, except to roughen the surface of the tongue and give it a good grip on the food. If the mucous "skin" covering the tongue does not shed off properly, the dead cells on its surface become thickened and whitish, and the germs of the mouth begin to breed and grow in them, forming a sort of mat over the surface. Then we say that the tongue is badly coated. This coating is in part due to unhealthy conditions of the stomach and bowels, and in part to lack of proper cleaning of the mouth and teeth. The Sense of Taste can usually be Trusted. Since the nose and the tongue have had about five million years' experience in picking out what is good and refusing what is bad, their judgment is pretty reliable, and their opinion entitled to the greatest respect. As a general thing, those things that taste good are wholesome and nutritious; the finest and most enjoyable flavors known are those of our commonest and most wholesome foods, such as good bread, fresh butter, roast meats, apples, cheese, sugar, fruit, etc.; while, on the other hand, those things that taste bad or bitter or salty or sour, or that we have to learn to like, like beer or pickles or strong cheese or tea or coffee, are more often unwholesome or have little nutritive value. Very few real foods taste bad when we first try them. If we used our noses to test every piece of food that went into our mouths, and refused to eat it if it "smelt bad," we should avoid many an attack of indigestion and ptomaine poisoning. It is really a great pity that it is not considered polite to "sniff" at the table. THE EYE How the Eye is Made. Next in importance after the smell and the taste of our food comes the appearance of it; hence, our need of eyes to help us in choosing what to eat, as well as how to avoid the dangers about us. The eyes began as little sensitive spots on the surface of the head. Like the nose pits, as they became more sensitive, they too sank in beneath the surface; but with this difference, that, instead of remaining open, the rims or edges of the eye-pit grew together and became transparent, forming a cover, or eye-glass, which became the clear part of the eye, called the _cornea_. At the same time, the little sensitive spot at the bottom of the eye-pit spread out into the shape of the bottom of a cup, called the _retina_; and then the hollow of that cup between the retina and the cornea filled up with a clear, soft, animal jelly called the _vitreous humor_, and we have the eye as it is in our heads to-day. The sensitive retina, spreading out, as it does, to form the back of the eyeball, is the nerve-coat of the eye; and from its centre a thick round bundle of nerve fibres, known as the _optic nerve_, runs back to the brain. [Illustration: THE APPARATUS OF VISION A cross-section diagram, showing eye and optic nerve, the bones forming the orbit or socket, and the front lobes of the brain.] The bones of the head, grown out in a ring in order to protect the eyes, are called the _orbit_ or _socket_. To protect the delicate glass (cornea) of the eye, there are two folds of skin, one above and one below, known as the eyelids. The eyelids carry a row of extra long hairs at their edges, called the eyelashes, and a number of little glands, somewhat like those of the stomach, to pour out a fluid, which makes the lids glide smoothly over the eyeball and keeps them from sticking together. Underneath the upper lid a number of these glands become gathered together and "grow in," after the fashion of the salivary glands, to form a larger gland about the size of a small almond, which pours out large amounts of this fluid as tears. It is called the tear gland (_lachrymal_ gland). Whenever a cinder or a grain of sand or a tiny insect or any other irritating thing gets into the eye, this gland pours out a flood of tears, which washes the intruder down into the inner corner of the eye where it can be wiped out; or, if it be small enough, carries it down through a little tube in the edge of each eyelid, through a little passage known as the _nasal_, or _tear, duct_, into the nose. So, if you get anything into your eye, much the best and safest thing to do is to hold the lids half shut, but as loose, or relaxed, as possible, and allow the tears to wash the speck of dust down into the inner corner of the eye. If you squeeze down too hard with the lids, and particularly if you rub the eye, you will be very likely to scratch the cornea with the speck of dust or sand, or, if the speck be sharp-edged, to drive it right into the cornea and give yourself a great deal of unnecessary pain and trouble, or even seriously damage the eye. If the cinder or dust doesn't wash down quickly, pull the upper lid gently away from the eyeball by the lashes and hold it there a minute or so, when often the cinder will drop or wash out. As the light rays cannot be bent, or drawn into the eyes as smells can into the nostrils, it is necessary that the eyes should be able to roll about so as to turn in different directions; and so nature has made them round, or globular, attaching to their outer coat or shell (the _sclerotic_ coat) little bands of muscle, each of which pulls the eyeball in its particular direction. There are four straight bands--one for each point of the compass: one fastened to the upper surface of the eye to roll it upward; another to the lower to roll it downward; another to the outer to roll it outward; and another to the inner side to roll it inward for near vision.[29] There is another reason for the rounded shape of the eye--that it may act as a lens in condensing the rays of light. In order that we may see things clearly, the rays of light must be brought to a focus upon or close to the retina, at the back of the eye; and our eyes are so shaped that they form a lens of proper thickness, or strength, to do this. You can see how this is done with an ordinary magnifying glass, or burning-glass. The little sharply lighted and heated point to which the light-rays can be brought is the focus of the lens, and the distance it lies behind the lens is called the focal distance. The thicker the lens, or burning-glass, is in the middle, the shorter its focal distance, and the more strongly it will magnify. A healthy, or normal, eye is of just such shape and "bulge" that rays of light entering the eye are brought to a focus on, or close to, the retina at the back of the eyeball. Some people, however, are unfortunately born with eyes that are too small and flat, or do not "bulge" enough; and then the rays of light are focused behind the retina instead of upon it, and the image is blurred. This is known as "long sight" (_hyperopia_), and can be corrected by putting in front of the eyes lenses of glass, called spectacles, which bulge sufficiently to bring the rays to focus on the retina. An eye that is too large and round and bulging brings the rays to a focus in front of the retina, and this also blurs the image. This form of poor sight is called "short sight" (_myopia_), and can be relieved by putting in front of the eye a glass that is concave, or thinnest in the middle and thickest at the edges, in the right proportions to focus the image where it belongs, right on the retina. This kind of glass is sometimes called a "minifying" glass, from the fact that it makes objects seen through it look smaller. It is also called a "minus" glass, while the magnifying glass is called a "plus" glass. The shape of the glasses or spectacles prescribed for an eye is just the opposite of that of the eye. If the eye is too flat (_long-sighted_), you put on a bulging, or convex, glass; and if the eye is too bulging (_short-sighted_), a hollow, or concave, glass. Other eyes are irregularly shaped in front and bulge more in one direction than another, like an orange. This defect is called _astigmatism_ and is very troublesome, making it hard to fit the eye with glasses, as the glasses have to be ground irregular in shape. [Illustration: A SCHOOL EYE-TEST A normal eye should be able to read the smaller type easily at a distance of twenty feet.] We have just seen how the eye deals with rays of light coming from a distance, which are practically parallel. When, however, books or other objects are brought near the eye, the rays of light coming from them do not remain parallel, but begin to spread apart, or diverge; and a stronger lens is required to bring them to a focus upon the retina. To provide for this, there is in the middle of the eyeball a firm, elastic, little globular body about the size and shape of a lemon-drop, called the _crystalline lens_. Around this is a ring of muscle, which is so arranged that when it contracts it causes the lens to change its shape and become more bulging, or thicker in the middle. This makes the eyeball a "stronger" lens so that the rays of light can be brought to a focus upon the retina. This action is known as _accommodation_, or adjustment; and you can sometimes feel it going on in your own eye, as when you pick up a book or a piece of sewing and bring it up quickly, close to the eye, in order to see clearly. If this little muscle is worked too hard, as when we try to read in a bad light, it becomes tired and we get what is called "eye-strain"; and if the strain be kept up too long, it will give us headache and may even make us sick at the stomach. The commonest cases of eye-strain are in eyes that are too flat (_hyperopic_) where this little muscle has to "bulge" the lens enough to make good the defect and bring the rays to a focus. This, however, of course keeps it on a constant strain; and the eye is continually giving out, and its owner suffering from headache, neuralgia, dyspepsia, sleeplessness, and other forms of nervous trouble, until the proper lens or spectacle is fitted.[30] A surface as delicate and sensitive to light as the retina, would, of course, be damaged by too bright a glare; so in the front of the eye, just behind the cornea, a curtain has grown up, with an opening or "peep-hole" in its centre, which can be enlarged or made smaller by little muscles. This opening is the _pupil_; the curtain, which is colored so as to shut out the rays of light, is known as the _iris_, for the quaint, but rather picturesque, reason that _Iris_ in Greek means "rainbow," and this part of the eye may be any one of its colors. [Illustration: DISINFECTING A BABY'S EYES AT BIRTH] It is the iris which, according to the amount of coloring matter (pigment) in it, makes the eye, as we say, blue, gray, green, brown, or black. Blue eyes have the least; black, the most.[31] The Care of the Eyes. The most dangerous diseases of the eye are caused by infectious germs, which get into them either from the outside, as in dust, or by touching them with dirty fingers; or through the blood, as in measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, and rheumatism. The more completely we can prevent these diseases, the less blindness we shall have in the nation. About one-sixth of all cases of blindness in our asylums is caused by a germ that gets into babies' eyes at birth, but can be done away with by proper washing and cleansing of the eyes. THE EAR Structure of the Ear. Next after sight, hearing is our most important sense; without it, speaking, and consequently reading and writing, would be impossible. Man learned to speak by hearing the sounds made by other people and things, and then by listening to his own voice and practicing until he could imitate them. Children who are unfortunate enough to be born _deaf_ also become _dumb_, not because there is anything the matter with their voice organs, but simply because, as they cannot hear the sounds they make, they do not form them by practice into words and sentences. By proper training, deaf mutes can now be taught to speak, though their voices sound flat and "tinny," like a phonograph. As in the nose and the eye, the important part of the ear is the nerve spot that can "feel" the air waves that we call sound, just as the retina "feels" light. It is from this sensitive spot that the _auditory nerve_ carries the sound to the brain. This spot has grown into quite an elaborate structure, buried, for safety, deeply in the bones of the skull, close to the base of the brain. It is made up of a long row of tiny little nerve rods, laid side by side like the keys of a piano, only there are about three thousand of them. Each one of these is supposed to respond, or vibrate, to a particular tone, or sound. This keyboard, from the fact that, to save space, it is coiled upon itself like a sea-shell, instead of running straight, is called the _cochlea_ (Greek for "snail-shell"); it is also called, because it is the deepest, or innermost, part of the hearing apparatus, the _internal ear_. Just as the retina has a lens and a vitreous humor in front of it to act upon the light, so the internal ear has an apparatus in front of it to act upon the sound waves. This is called the _drum_ (_tympanum_). It consists of a fold of thin, delicate skin stretched tightly across the bottom of the outer ear canal, as parchment is stretched across the head of a drum. If you should take a hand-mirror--best a hollow, or concave, one--and throw a bright ray of light deep into some one's ear, you would be able, after a little trying, to see this drum-skin stretched across the bottom of it and about an inch and a quarter in from the surface of the head. [Illustration: THE APPARATUS OF HEARING A cross-section diagram from the outer ear to the lobes of the brain.] When the sound waves go into the ear canal and strike upon this tiny drum, which is about two-thirds the size of a silver dime and really more like a tambourine or the disk of a telephone or phonograph than a drum, they start it thrilling, or vibrating, just as a guitar string vibrates when you thrum it. These little vibrations are carried across the hollow behind the drum by a chain of tiny bones, known as the _ear-bones_ (called from their shapes, the _hammer_, the _anvil_, and the _stirrup_), and passed on to the keyboard of the cochlea. Here comes in one of the most curious things about this ingenious hearing-apparatus. This little hollow behind the drum-skin has to be kept full of air in order to let the drum vibrate properly, and this is arranged for by a little tube (the Eustachian tube) which runs down from the bottom of it and opens into the back of the throat just behind the nasal passages, and above the soft palate. When you blow your nose very hard, you will sometimes feel one of your ears go "pop"; and that means that you have blown a bubble of air out through this tube into your drum cavity. If your nose and throat become inflamed, then the mouth of this little tube may become blocked up; the drum can no longer thrill, or vibrate, properly; and, for the time being, you are deaf. This tube is of great importance, because nearly all the diseases that attack the ear start in at the throat and travel up the tube until they reach the drum cavity. This is why one so often has earache after an attack of the grip or after a bad cold. The drum cavity, with its chain of bones and its tube down to the throat, is called, from its position, the _middle ear_. The _outer_, or _external, ear_, though far the largest of the three parts, and quite imposing in appearance, is really of little use or importance. It is simply a sort of receiving trumpet for catching sounds, with a very wide and curiously curved and crumpled mouth, or bell. The large, expanded mouth of the trumpet, called the _concha_ ("conch shell"), was at one time capable of being "pricked up" and turned in the direction of sounds, just as horses' or dogs' ears are now; and in our own ears there are still for this purpose three pairs of tiny unused muscles running from them to the side of the head. But the concha is now motionless and almost useless, except for its beauty; and it is very troublesome to wash. The Care of the Ear. The tube of the trumpet leading down from the surface of the ear to the drum is lined with skin; and this skin is supplied with glands, which pour out a sticky, yellowish fluid called _ear wax_, which catches the bits of dust or insects that get into the ear and, flowing slowly outward, carries them with it. If it is let alone, it will keep the ear canal clean and healthy; but some people imagine that, because it looks yellowish, it must be dirt; and consequently, from mistaken ideas of cleanliness, they work at it with the end of the finger, the corner of a towel, or even with a hairpin, an ear-spoon, or an ear-pick, and in this way stop the proper flow of the wax and make it dry and block up the ear. Remember, you should not wash too deeply into your ears; (as the old German proverb puts it, "Never pick your ear with anything smaller than your elbow"). And if you don't, you will seldom have trouble with wax in the ear. Scarcely one case of deafness in a hundred is caused by wax. When your ear does become blocked up with wax, it is best to go to a doctor and let him syringe it out. Picking at it, or even syringing too hard, may do serious damage to the ear. If an earache is neglected, the inflammation may spread into some air-cells in the bony lump behind the ear (the _mastoid_) and thus cause _mastoid disease_, which may spread to, and attack, the brain if not cured by a surgical operation. OUR SPIRIT-LEVELS The Sixth Sense. Though we usually speak of having five senses,--sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste,--we really have also a sixth--the sense of direction, or of balance. The "machine" of this sense is comparatively simple, being made up of three tiny curved tubes, which, from their shape, are called the _semi-circular canals_. These are buried in the same bone of the skull as the internal ear, and so close to it that they were at one time described as part of it. These little canals are three in number, one for each of the dimensions--length, breadth, and thickness,--so that whichever way the head or body is moved,--backward and forward, up and down, or from side to side,--the fluid with which they are filled will change its level in one of them, just as the "bead" does in the carpenter's spirit-level that you can find in any tool shop. The delicate nerve twigs that run out into the fluid in these tiny canals are gathered together into a bundle, or nerve-cable, which runs back to the part of the brain known as the _cerebellum_ or hind-brain, which has most to do with controlling the balance and movements of our bodies. It is the disturbance set up in these spirit-level canals by the pitching and rolling of a ship, which makes us seasick. Neither the stomach, nor anything that we may have eaten, has anything to do with it. In the same way we sometimes become sick and dizzy from swinging too long or too high, or from riding on the cars. FOOTNOTES: [28] To show in how many different ways nature may carry out the same purpose, the smelling organs in insects, lobsters, and crabs are on the ends and sides of tiny feelers, which they wave about; and the eyes in lobsters, crawfish, and snails, are on the ends of stalks, which they thrust about in all directions as a burglar handles a bull's-eye lantern. Snakes "hear," or catch the sound-waves, with their flickering, forked tongues; and grasshoppers and locusts have "ear-drums" on the sides of their chests. [29] These are called the _recti_ or "straight" muscles, upper, lower, inner, and outer, according to their position. Then, to roll the eye round and round, there are two little muscles, one above and one below, which run "crosswise" of the orbit, called the upper and lower _oblique_ muscles. [30] The retina is chiefly made up of a great number of fine little nerve cells called, from their shape, the _rods_ and _cones_. These are kept soaked in a colored fluid called the _retinal purple_, which changes under the influence of light, somewhat in the same way that the film on a photographic plate does, thus forming pictures, which are translated by the rods and cones and telegraphed along the fibres of the optic nerve to the brain. Naturally, all parts of the retina are not equally sensitive to light; its centre, which is directly opposite the pupil of the eye, is far the most so, while those around the rim of the cup are dull. This is why, when you are looking, say at some one's face across the room, only the face and a few inches around it are seen perfectly clear and sharp, while the rest of the room is seen only vaguely. [31] As the inside of the eye is dark, or comparatively so, the pupil, or little opening in the centre of the iris, looks black, and was at one time supposed to be a solid body instead of a hole. You can easily watch the pupil changing in size, according to the brightness of the light, from a mere pin-point in very bright sunlight or gaslight, up to the size of the butt-end of a lead pencil in the dark or in a dim light. This change in size is very simply but ingeniously carried out by two sets of tiny muscles. One set of these muscles runs in a ring right around the pupil; and when they shorten, the opening is contracted or narrowed. The other set runs outward through the iris like the spokes of a wheel; and when they shorten, they pull the pupil open. If anyone has had "drops" (_atropin_) put into his eyes in order to have them fitted with glasses, he will know what a disagreeably dazzling thing it is to have the pupil permanently enlarged, so that it cannot _contract_ in a bright light. CHAPTER XXIV THE SPEECH ORGANS The Voice, a Waste Product. It is one of the most curious things in this body of ours that what we regard as its most wonderful power and gift, the voice, is, in one sense, a waste product. So ingenious is nature that she has actually made that marvelous musical instrument--the human voice--with its range, its flexibility, and its powers of expression, out of spent breath, or used-up air, which has done its work in the lungs and is being driven off to get rid of it. It is like using the waste from a kitchen sink to turn a mill. The organs that make the human voice were never built for that purpose in the first place. Unlike the eye and the ear, nature built no special organ for the voice alone, but simply utilized the windpipe and lung-bellows, the swallowing parts of the food passage (tongue, lips, and palate) and the nose, for that purpose, long after they had taken their own particular shapes for their own special ends. The important point about this is that a good voice requires not merely a large and well-developed "music box" in the windpipe, but good lungs, a well-shaped healthy throat, properly arched jaws,--which mean good, sound teeth,--clear and healthy nasal passages, and a flexible elastic tongue. Of course, the blood and the nerves supplying all these structures must be in good condition, as well. So practically, a good voice requires that the whole body should be healthy; and whatever we do to improve the condition of our nose, our teeth, our throat, our lungs, our digestion, and our circulation will help to improve the possibilities of our voice. There are, of course, many exceptions; but you will generally find that great singers have not only splendid lungs and large vocal cords, but good hearts, vigorous constitutions, and bodies above the average in both stature and strength. How the Voice is Produced. The chief parts of the breathing machine that nature has made over for talking purposes are the windpipe, or air tube, and the muscles in its walls. In the neck, about three inches above the collar bone, four or five of the rings of cartilage, or gristle,--which, you remember, give stiffening to the windpipe,--have grown together and enlarged to form a voice box, or _larynx_. [Illustration: THE VOCAL CORDS Looked at from above: position _A_, in quiet inspiration; _B_, in singing a low tone; _C_, in singing a high tone.] The upper edge of this voice box forms the projection in the front of the throat known by the rather absurd name of the "Adam's apple." This grows larger in proportion to the heaviness of the sounds to be made, and hence is larger in men than in women and boys. When the boy's voice box begins to grow to the man's in shape and size, his voice is likely to "break"; for it is changing from the high, clear boy's voice to the heavy, deep voice of the man. Inside of this voice box, one of the rings of muscle that run around the windpipe has stretched into a pair of straight, elastic bands, or strings, one on each side of the air pipe, known as the _vocal cords_, or voice bands. These are so arranged that they can be stretched and relaxed by little muscles; and, when thrown into vibration by the air rushing through the voice box, they produce the sounds that we call talking or singing. The more tightly they are stretched, the higher and shriller are the tones they produce; and the more they are slackened, or relaxed, the deeper and more rumbling are the tones. This is why, when you try to sing a high note, you can feel something tightening and straining in your throat, until finally you can stretch it no tighter, and your voice "breaks," as you say, into a scream or cry. All musical instruments that have strings, are played, or produce their sounds, upon this same principle. The thinner and shorter the string, or the more tightly it is stretched, the higher the note; the heavier and longer the string, the lower the note. But no musical instrument ever yet invented can equal the human voice in the music of its tones, in its range, in the different variety and quality of tones it can produce, and in its wonderful power of expression. The human voice is a combination of reed organ, pipe organ, trumpet, and violin; and can produce in its tiny music box--only about two inches long by one inch wide--all the tones and qualities of tones that can be produced on all these instruments, except that it cannot go quite so high or so low. All the musical instruments in the world, from the penny whistle to the grand piano, are but poor imitations of the human music box. The bellows, of course, of the human pipe organ are the lungs; while the tongue furnishes the stops; and the throat, mouth, and nose, the resonance, or sounding, chambers. Just as a violin, or guitar, has two main parts,--a string, which vibrates and makes the sound; and a box, or hollow body, which catches that sound and enlarges it and gives it sweetness and vibration and quality,--so the human voice has two similar parts--the vocal bands, which make the sound; and a sound box, or rather series of three resonance boxes,--the throat, the mouth, and the nasal passages,--which enlarge and soften it and improve its quality. You would naturally think that the strings, or cords, were the most important part both of the voice and of a musical instrument; and in one sense they are, as it could make no noise at all without them. But in another sense, far more important are the sounding boxes, or resonance chambers. The whole quality and value, for instance, of a Stradivarius[32] violin, which will make it readily bring ten thousand dollars in the open market, are due to the skill with which the body, or sound box, was made; the quality of the wood used; and, odd as it may seem, even the varnish used on it--the strings are the same as on any five-dollar fiddle. This is almost equally true of the human voice. While its size, or volume, is determined by the voice box and vocal bands, and its power largely by the lungs and chest, its musical quality, its color, and its expression are given almost entirely by the throat, mouth (including the lips), and nose. The proper management of these parts is two-thirds of voice training, and all these are largely under our control. How a Good Voice may be Developed. If the nasal passages, for instance, are blocked by a bad cold or a catarrh or adenoids, then nearly half the body of your violin is blocked up and deadened; half your resonance chamber is destroyed, and the voice sounds flat and dead and nasal. If, on the other hand, your throat be swollen, or blocked, as by enlarged tonsils or chronic sore throat, then this part of the resonance chamber is muffled and spoiled, and your voice will be either entirely gone or hoarse; though perhaps by driving it very hard you may be able to make a clear tone. If you have an attack of inflammation or cold further down, and the vocal bands swell, or the mucous membrane lining the voice box becomes inflamed and thickened, then the voice is lost entirely, just as the tone of a violin would be if a wet cloth were thrown across the strings. But disturbances in the voice box, or larynx, cause only a very small percentage of husky, poor, or unmusical voices. A far commoner cause, indeed probably the commonest single cause of a poor, squeaky, or drawling, unmusical voice is careless and improper management of the mouth and lips. In the first place, you can easily show that such marked differences in sound as those of the different vowels are all produced by the mouth and lips. If you will prepare to say the vowels--_a, e, i, o, u_--aloud, and begin with _a_, and then hold your mouth and lips firmly in the same position, you will find that all the other vowels also come out as _a_. If, on the other hand, you begin with your mouth and lips in the rounded and somewhat thrust-out position necessary to say _o_, and try to repeat the rest of the vowels, you will find that you cannot say them at all, but only different forms of _o_. When you have convinced yourself of this, repeat the vowels loudly and clearly without stopping to think about the position of the mouth, and notice how your lips, the tip and base of your tongue, and your soft palate and throat all change their positions for each successive vowel. If you will try to sing the scale, beginning with a comfortable note about the middle of your voice range, and letting your mouth take the shape for that note unconsciously, you will find that, as you sing up the scale, you change the shape of your mouth, lips, and tongue at every note, thrusting the lips and mouth further forward as if to whistle, narrowing the opening and closing up the back of your throat for the high notes. On the other hand, as you sing down, you tend to open the mouth and lips more widely, to drop the bottom of your mouth--that is, the base of your tongue--toward your throat, and your chin down toward your chest. Again you will find, just as in the case of the different vowels, that you can sing any tone clearly and musically after putting the mouth in precisely the shape that best fits that tone; and learning how to do this is a most important part of vocal training. What we call words are simply breath sounds and voice-box sounds chopped into convenient lengths by the movements of the tongue and lips and throat. So when we come to the question of clear and pleasant speaking, or, as we term it, _articulation_, the lips and tongue have almost everything to do with making the difference between a clear, musical, and refined enunciation, which is so easy to understand that it is a pleasure to listen to it, and a slurred, drawling, squeaky, nasal kind of speech, which is as hard to understand as it is unpleasant to listen to. Few of us can ever hope to develop a really great singing voice; but anyone who will take the pains can acquire a clear, distinct, and pleasing speaking voice; and perhaps half of us can learn to sing fairly well. But to do this, we must first have good, healthy, well-developed lungs and elastic chest walls, which can come only from plenty of vigorous exercise in the open air, combined with good food and well-ventilated rooms. We must have a healthy stomach, which will not fill up with gas and keep our diaphragms from going down and enlarging our chests properly; we must have clear nasal passages, good teeth, well-shaped mouths and flexible lips, which we are willing to use vigorously in articulating, or cutting up our voice sounds; and we must have good hearing and a well-trained ear. In short, the best way to get a clear, strong, pleasant voice is to have a vigorous, well-grown, healthy body. FOOTNOTES: [32] A famous violin-maker who lived about 200 years ago in Cremona, Italy. Fifty thousand dollars has been asked for an unusually choice "Strad." CHAPTER XXV THE TEETH, THE IVORY KEEPERS OF THE GATE Why the Teeth are Important. The teeth are a very important part of our body and deserve far more attention and better care than they usually get. They are the first and most active part of our digestive system, cutting up and grinding foods that the stomach would be unable to melt without their help. In all animals except those that have horns or fists, the teeth are their most important weapons of attack and defense. So important are they in all animals, including ourselves, and so closely do they fit their different methods of food-getting and of attack and defense, that when scientists wish to decide what class, or group, a particular animal belongs to, they look first and longest at its teeth. The shape and position of the teeth literally make the lower half of the face and give it half its expression. A properly grown and developed set of teeth not only is necessary to health and comfort, but helps greatly to make the face and expression attractive or unattractive. Few faces with bright eyes, clear skin, and white, regular, well-kept teeth are unpleasing to look at. Beauty and health are closely related, and we ought to try to have both. In fact, nine times out of ten, what we call beauty is the outward and visible sign of inward health. The healthier you are, the handsomer you'll be. It is particularly important to understand the natural growth and proper care of the teeth because there are few organs in the body for which we are able to do so much by direct personal attention. Our stomachs, our livers, and our kidneys, for instance, are entirely out of sight, and more or less out of reach; but our teeth are both easily got at and in full view; and, to a large degree, upon the care that we give them while they are young, will depend not only their regularity and whiteness, but also the length of their life and the vigor and comfort of our digestion all our lives. [Illustration: TEETH--A QUESTION OF CARE] The first thing to be remembered about the teeth is that, hard and shiny and different from almost everything else in the body as they look, they are simply a part of the skin lining the mouth, hardened and shaped for their special work of biting and chewing. Much of the care needed to prevent decay should be given, not to the teeth themselves directly, but to the gums and the mucous membrane of the whole mouth. The gums and the mouth literally _grew_ the teeth in the first place; and when they become diseased, they secrete acids which slowly eat away the crowns and roots of the teeth. Their diseases come chiefly from irritation by decaying scraps of food, or from the blocking of the nose so that air is breathed in through the mouth, drying and cracking the soft mucous membrane. After the acids from the diseased gums have attacked the teeth, the poisons of the germs that breed in the warmth and moisture of the mouth cause the teeth to decay. Eight times out of ten, if you take care of the gums the teeth will take care of themselves. Structure of the Teeth. The upper half of the tooth, which pushes through and stands up above the jaw and the gum, we call the _crown_; and this is the portion that is covered with _enamel_, or "living glass." The body of the tooth under the enamel is formed of a hard kind of bone called _dentine_. The lower half of the tooth, which still is buried in the jaw, we call the _root_. Wrenching the lower or root part of the tooth loose from its socket in the jaw is what hurts so when a tooth is pulled. The crown of the tooth is hollow, and this hollow is filled with a soft, sensitive pulp, in which we feel toothache. Tiny blood vessels and nerve-twigs run up from the jaw to supply this pulp through canals in the roots of the tooth. [Illustration: A TOOTH (Lengthwise section.) _E_, enamel; _D_, dentine; _P_, pulp cavity; _C_, cement; _B_, blood vessels; _N_, nerve.] Kinds of Teeth. If you look at your own teeth in a mirror, the first thing that strikes you is your broad, white, shiny front teeth, four above and four below, shaped like the blade of a rather blunt chisel. Their shape tells what they are used for. Like chisels, they cut, or bite, the food into appropriate sizes and lengths for chewing between the back teeth; and from this use they are called the _incisors_, or "cutters." From having been used for so many generations upon the kind of food we live on, they have grown broader than the _canines_, the teeth next to them, and almost as long. The canines are of a cone-like shape, although it is a pretty blunt cone, or peg. Those in the upper jaw lie almost directly under the centre of each eye, and are called the "eye-teeth"; though their proper name, from the fact that they are the most prominent teeth in the dog, is the canine teeth. These are our oldest and least changed teeth; and as you might guess from their shape, like a heavy, blunt spear-head, were originally the fighting and tearing teeth, and still have the longest and heaviest roots of any teeth in our jaws. If you slip your finger up under your upper lip, you can feel the great ridge of this root, standing out from the surface of the gum. Lastly, looking farther back into our mouths, we see behind our canines a long row of broad, flat-topped, square-looking teeth, which fill up the largest part of our jaws. Again their shape tells what they are used for. They are not sharp enough to cut with, or pointed enough to tear with, but are just suited for crushing and grinding into a pulp, between their broad, flat tops, any food that may be placed between them; and from this grinding they are called the _molars_, or "mill" teeth. If you will look closely at the back ones, you will see that each of them has four corners, or _cusps_, with a cross-shaped, sunken furrow in the centre, where they come together. After they have been used in grinding food for some years and rubbing against each other, these little corner projections become worn away, and their tops become almost flat. Those in the upper jaw have three roots, and those in the lower jaw have two, so that they are solidly anchored for their heavy, grinding work. The first two molars in each jaw, behind the canines, are smaller than the others and made up of only two pieces instead of four, and hence are called the _bicuspids_, or "two-cusped" teeth. As we are what the scientists call an omnivorous, or "all-devouring," animal, able to eat and live upon practically every kind of food that any animal on earth can deal with,--animal and vegetable, soft and hard, wet and dry; fruits, nuts, crabs, roots, seaweeds, insects, anything that we can get our teeth into,--we have kept in working condition some of every kind of teeth possessed by any living animal; and the most important rule for keeping our teeth in health is to give all these kinds something to do. Just as in other animals the teeth appear when needed, and grow into the shape required, so they grow in our own mouths when they are wanted, and of the size and shape required at the time. We are born without any teeth at all; and it is only when we begin to need a little solid food added to our milk diet,--when we are about seven months old,--that our first teeth appear; and these are incisors, first of all in the lower jaw. Then, at average intervals of about three months, the other incisors and the canines appear and, last of all, the molars, so that at about two years of age we have a complete set of twenty teeth. These are called the _milk teeth_. Most animals (_mammals_) have formed the habit of growing two sets of teeth--a smaller, slighter set for use during the first few months or years of life, and a larger, heavier set to come in and take their place after the jaws have grown to somewhat more nearly their permanent size. In our mouths, at about seven years of age, a larger, heavier tooth pushes up behind the last milk tooth,--called the "seventh year molar,"--the milk teeth begin to loosen and fall out, and their places are taken by other new teeth budding up out of the jaw just as the first set did. These take a still longer time to grow, so that the last four of the full set of thirty-two do not come through the gums until somewhere between our eighteenth and twentieth years. These last four teeth, for the rather absurd reason that they do not appear until we are old enough to be wise, are known as the "wisdom teeth." Instead of being, as one might expect, the hardest and longest-lived of all our teeth, they are the smallest and worst built of our molars and among the first of our permanent teeth to break down and disappear. Not only so, but our jaws are so much shorter than they were in the days when man fought with his teeth and knew nothing about cooking and had no tools or utensils with which to grind and prepare his food, that there is scarcely room in them for these last teeth to come through. They often cause a great deal of pain in the process, and may even break through at the side of the jaw and cause abscesses and other troubles. [Illustration: THE REPLACING OF THE MILK TEETH The "second teeth" are shown fully formed in the gums, ready to push out the milk teeth. The wisdom teeth, which appear later, cannot be shown at this stage.--After Gray.] Care of the Teeth. The most important thing for the health of any organ in the body is to give it plenty of exercise, and this is especially true of our teeth. This exercise can be secured by thoroughly chewing, or _masticating_, all our food, of whatever sort, especially breads, biscuits, and cereals. Thorough chewing not only gives valuable exercise to the teeth, but, by grinding up these foods thoroughly, makes them easier for the stomach to digest; and, by mixing them well with the saliva, enables it to change the starch into sugar. Meats, fish, eggs, cheese, etc., do not need to be mixed with the saliva, nor to be ground so fine for easy digestion in the stomach, and hence do not require such thorough chewing, though it is better to make a rule of chewing all food well. We can exercise our teeth also by eating plenty of foods that require a good deal of chewing, especially the crusts of bread, and vegetables such as corn, celery, lettuce, nuts, parched grains, and popcorn. It is most important to keep the nasal passages clear and free, and the teeth sound and regular by proper dental attention, so that the jaws will grow properly, and each tooth will strike squarely against its fellow in the opposite jaw, and both jaws fit snugly and closely to each other, making the bite firm and clean, and the grinding close and vigorous. If we are mouth-breathers, our jaws will grow out of shape, so that our teeth are crowded and irregular and do not meet each other properly in chewing. Pressure upon the roots of the teeth, from meeting their fellows of the opposite jaw in firm, vigorous mastication, is one of the most important means of keeping them sound and healthy. Whenever a tooth becomes idle and useless, from failing to meet its fellow tooth in the jaw above or below properly, or from having no fellow tooth to meet, it is very likely to begin to decay. The next important thing in keeping the teeth healthy is to keep them thoroughly clean. The greatest enemies of our teeth are the acids that form in the scraps of food that are left between them after eating. Meats are not so dangerous in this regard as starches and sugars, because the fluids resulting from their decay are alkaline instead of acid; but it is best to keep the teeth clear of scraps of all kinds. This can best be done by the moderate and gentle use of a quill, or _rolled_ wooden tooth-pick, followed by a thorough brushing after each meal with a rather stiff, firm brush. Then use floss-silk, or linen or rubber threads to "saw" out such pieces as have lodged between the teeth. This brushing should be given, not merely to the teeth, but to the entire surface of the gums as well; for, as we have seen, it is the gums that make or spoil the health of the teeth, and they, like all other parts of the body, require plenty of exercise and pressure in order to keep them healthy. In the early days of man, when he had no knives and gnawed his meat directly off the bones, and when he cracked nuts and ground all his grain with his teeth, the gums got an abundance of pressure and friction and were kept firm and healthy and red; but now that we take out the bones of the meat and stew or hash it, have all our grain ground, and strip off all the husks of our vegetables and skins of our fruits, though we have made our food much more digestible, we have robbed our gums of a great deal of valuable friction and exercise. The most practical way to make up for this is by vigorous massage and scrubbing with a tooth-brush for five minutes at least three times a day. It will hurt and even make the gums bleed at first; but you will be surprised how quickly they will get used to it, so that it will become positively enjoyable. [Illustration: A TOOTH-BRUSH DRILL A school in which the children are taught the importance of using the tooth brush, are supplied with brushes at cost, and required to report both on their care of their teeth and on the condition of the brushes.] It is good to use some cleansing alkaline powder upon the brush. The old-fashioned precipitated chalk, which makes the bulk of most tooth powders, is very good; but an equally good and much cheaper and simpler one is ordinary baking soda, or saleratus, though this will make the gums smart a little at first. Any powder that contains pumice-stone, cuttle-fish bone, charcoal, or gritty substances of any sort, as many unfortunately do, is injurious, because these scratch the enamel of the teeth and give the acids in the mouth a chink through which they may begin to attack the softer dentine underneath the "glaze" of enamel. Antiseptic powders and washes, while widely advertised, are not of much practical value, except for temporary use when you have an abscess in your gums, or your teeth are in very bad condition. It is almost impossible to get them strong enough to have any real effect in checking putrefaction of the food or diseases of the gums, without making them too irritating or poisonous. If you keep the gums and teeth well brushed and healthy, you will need no antiseptics. Not only should the teeth be kept thoroughly clean and sweet for their own sake, but also for the sake of the stomach and the health of the blood and the whole body. The mouth, being continually moist and warm and full of chinks and pockets, furnishes an ideal breeding ground for all kinds of germs; and the average, uncleansed human mouth will be found to contain regularly more than thirty different species of germs, each numbering its millions! Among them may sometimes be found the germs of serious diseases such as pneumonia, diphtheria, and blood-poisoning, just waiting, as it were, their opportunity to attack the body. In fact, a dirty, neglected mouth is one of the commonest causes of disease. CHAPTER XXVI INFECTIONS, AND HOW TO AVOID THEM What Causes Disease. The commonest and most dangerous accident that is likely to happen to you is to catch some disease. Fortunately, however, this is an accident that is as preventable as it is common. Indeed, if everybody would help the Board of Health in its fight against the spread of the common "catchable" diseases, these diseases could soon be wiped out of existence. Every one of them is due to dirt of some sort; and absolute cleanness would do away with them altogether. Diseases that are "catching," or will spread from one person to another, are called _infections_; and all of them, as might be supposed from their power of spreading, are due to tiny living particles, called _germs_--so tiny that they cannot be seen except under a powerful microscope. Nine-tenths of these disease germs are little plants of the same class as the moulds that grow upon cheese or stale bread, and are called bacteria, or bacilli. The different kinds of bacteria, or bacilli, are usually named after the diseases they produce, or else after the scientists who discovered them. For instance, the germ that causes typhoid fever is called the _bacillus typhosus_; that which causes tuberculosis is called the bacillus tuberculosis; while the germ of diphtheria known as the _Klebs-Loeffler bacillus_, after the two men who discovered it. A few kinds of disease germs belong to the animal kingdom, though all germs are so tiny that you would have to have a very powerful microscope to tell the difference between the animal germs and the bacilli, or little plants. Most of these animal germs are called _protozoa_ and cause diseases found in, or near, the tropics, like malaria and the terrible "sleeping sickness" of Africa. Smallpox, yellow fever, and hydrophobia--the disease that results from the bite of a mad dog--are also probably due to animal germs. So far as prevention is concerned, however, it makes practically little difference whether infectious diseases are due to an animal or a vegetable germ, or to one bacillus or another. They all have two things in common: they can be spread only by the touch of an infected person, and "touch" includes breath,--indeed "by touch" is the meaning of both infectious and contagious; and they can all be prevented by the strictest cleanness, or killed by various poisons known as germicides ("germ-killers"), or disinfectants. Most of these germicides are, unfortunately, poisonous to us as well; for, as you will remember, our bodies are made up of masses of tiny animal cells, not unlike the animal germs. Most of the germicides, therefore, have to be used against germs while they are outside of our bodies. Scripture says that "a man's foes shall be they of his own household," and this is true of disease germs. They grow and flourish--and, so far as history tells us, the diseases they cause seem to have started--only where people are crowded together in huts or houses, breathing one another's breaths and one another's perspiration, and drinking one another's waste substances in the well water. This fact has, however, its encouraging side; for, since this habit of crowding together, which we call civilization, or "citification," has caused and keeps causing these diseases, it can also cure them and prevent their spread if all the people will fight them in dead earnest. No amount of money, or of time, that a town or a county can spend in stamping out these infectious diseases would be wasted. Indeed, every penny of it would be a good investment; for, taken together, they cause at least half, and probably nearly two-thirds, of all deaths. Not only so, but most of the so-called chronic diseases of the heart, kidneys, lungs, bones, and brain are due to the after-effects of their toxins, or poisons. How Disease Germs Grow and Spread. But perhaps you will ask, "If these bacteria and protozoa are so tiny that we have to use a microscope, and one of the most powerful made, in order even to see them, how is it that they can overrun our whole body and produce such dangerous fevers and so many deaths?" The answer is simply, "Because there are so many millions of them; and because they breed, or multiply, at such a tremendously rapid rate." When one of these little bacilli breeds, it doesn't take time to form buds and flowers and seeds, like other plants, or even the trouble to lay eggs like an insect or a bird, but simply stretches itself out a little longer, pinches itself in two, and makes of each half a new bacillus. This is known as _fission_ or "splitting," and is of interest because this is the way in which the little cells that make up our own bodies increase in number; as, for instance, when a muscle is growing and enlarging under exercise, or when more of the white blood cells are needed to fight some disease. Remember that we and the disease germs are both cells; and that, if they are numbered by millions, we are by billions; and that we are made up of far the older and the tougher cells of the two. Except in a few of the most virulent and deadly of fevers, like the famous "Black Death," or _bubonic plague_, and lock-jaw, or _tetanus_, ninety-five times out of a hundred when disease germs get into our bodies, it is our bodies that eat up the germs instead of the germs our bodies. Keep away from disease germs all that you reasonably and possibly can; but don't forget that the best protection against infectious diseases, in the long run, is a strong, vigorous, healthy body that can literally "eat them alive." Grow that kind of body, keep it perfectly clean inside and out, and you have little need to fear fevers, or indeed any other kind of disease; for you will live until you are old enough to die--and then you'll want to, just as you want to go to sleep when you are tired. Remember that this fight against the fevers is a winning fight, this study of disease germs a cheering and encouraging one, because it will end in our conquering them, not merely nine times out of ten, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred. We are not making this fight just to escape death; what we are fighting for is to live out a full, useful, and happy life. And we already have five chances to one of gaining this, and the chances are improving every year; for science has already raised the average length of life from barely twenty years to over forty. Broadly speaking, if you will keep away from every one whom you know to have an infectious disease; wash your hands always before you eat, or put anything into your mouth; keep your fingers, pencils, pennies, and pins out of your mouth,--where they _don't_ belong; live and play in the open air as much as possible and keep your windows well open day and night, you will avoid nine-tenths of the risks from germs and the dangers that they bring in their wake. Children's Diseases. We have already studied two of the greatest and most dangerous diseases, and the way to conquer them--tuberculosis, or consumption, in the chapter on the lungs; and typhoid fever, in the chapter on our drink. One of the next most important groups of "catching" diseases--important because, though very mild, they are so exceedingly common,--is that known as the "diseases of childhood," or "diseases of infancy" because they are most likely to occur in childhood. So common are they that you know their names almost as well as you know your own--measles, mumps, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and chicken-pox. Though they are in no way related to one another, so far as we know (indeed, the precise germs that cause two of them--measles and scarlet fever--have not yet positively been determined), yet they can be practically taken together, because they are all spread in much the same way, they all begin with much the same sort of sneezing and inflammation of the nose and throat, they can all be prevented by the same means, and, if properly taken care of, they result in complete recovery ninety-five times out of a hundred. [Illustration: THE WINNING FIGHT Statistics for the population of the old City of New York. The chart shows a decrease from 95 out of every 1,000 in 1891-92 to 48 out of every 1,000 in 1909. This is due very largely to the careful methods of prevention enforced by the Board of Health, especially the inspection of milk.] Any child who has sneezing, running at the nose or eyes, sore throat, or cough, especially with headache or backache, a flushed face and feverishness, ought to be kept at home from school and placed in a well-ventilated, well-lighted room by himself for a day or two, until it can be seen whether he has one of these children's diseases, or only a common cold. If it turns out to be measles, scarlet fever, or whooping cough, he should then be kept entirely away from other children in a separate room, or, where that is impossible, in a special hospital or ward for the purpose; he should be kept in bed and given such remedies as the doctor may advise. Then no one else will catch the disease from him; and within from two to five weeks, he will be well again. The most important thing is not to let him get up and begin to run about, or expose himself, too soon; five times as many deaths are caused by taking cold, or becoming over-tired, or by injudicious eating, during recovery after measles, scarlet fever, and whooping cough, as by the disease itself. This one caution will serve two purposes; for, as a sick child's breath, and the scales from his skin, and what he coughs out from his mouth and nose are full of germs, and will give the disease to other children from two to four weeks after the fever has left him, he ought to be kept by himself--"in quarantine," as we say--for this length of time, which is just about the period needed to protect him from the dangers of relapse or taking cold. Boards of Health fix this period of quarantine by law and put a colored placard on the house to warn others of the danger of infection. [Illustration: DEATH-RATE FROM MEASLES Note that, after the quarantining of measles in 1896, the death-rate dropped at once. Statistics for the old City of New York.] Colds and Sore Throats. A milder and even more common kind of infection is that known as common colds. These, as shown by their name, were once supposed to be due to exposure to cold air, or drafts, or to becoming wet or chilled. But, while a few of them are so caused, at least eight, and probably nine, out of ten are due to germs caught from somebody else. They are never caught in the open air and very seldom in cold, pure fresh air of any sort, but almost always in the hot, foul, stuffy, twice-breathed air of bedrooms, schoolrooms, churches, theatres, halls, sleeping cars, etc. The colds, for instance, that you catch when traveling, are usually due not to drafts or damp sheets, but to the crop of cold germs left behind by the last victim. You have probably known of colds that have run through a family or a school or a shop. It is well worth trying to keep away from the infection of colds, because not only is their coughing and sore throat and hoarseness and running at the nose very disagreeable and uncomfortable, but they may cause almost as many different kinds of serious troubles in heart, kidneys, and nervous system as any of the other infections. In fact, they probably cause more than any other, because they are at least ten times as common and frequent. For instance, many cases of rheumatism, or rheumatic fever, come after attacks in the nose and throat, which cannot be distinguished from a common cold or ordinary tonsilitis. Indeed, it is more than probable that one of the ten or a dozen different germs that may get into your nose or throat and give you a cold, is the germ that causes rheumatism. At all events, it would be fairly safe to say, "No colds, no rheumatism." Whenever you have a cold, keep away from everybody that you possibly can and stay at home from school or business for a day or two. You will do no good to yourself or others, working in that condition; and you may infect a dozen others. If you find anyone in your class or room or shop, sneezing or coughing or running at the nose, report him to your teacher or foreman; and if he won't send him home, keep away from him as much as possible. Diphtheria. Another common and serious disease, until quite recently very fatal, is diphtheria. This is caused by getting into your mouth or nose the germs from another case of the disease. This disease also is most likely to occur in childhood, though it may attack a person of any age, and is always serious. It may be prevented from spreading by keeping children who have it shut up in rooms, or wards, by themselves and keeping all other children away from them, or from their nurses or those who have anything to do with them. Up to about thirty years ago, it was one of the deadliest and most terrible diseases that we had anything to do with. We knew absolutely nothing that would cure it, or even check its course; and nearly half of the children attacked by it died. About that time, however, two scientists, Klebs and Loeffler, discovered that, by taking some of the membrane, or tough growth that forms in the throat in this disease, and by rubbing it over a plate of gelatin jelly, they could grow on that gelatin a particular kind of germ. This germ, or bacillus, they then put into the throats of guinea pigs, and found that it would give them diphtheria. This is the way disease germs are discovered, or, as we say, identified; but of course this did not give at once any remedy for the disease. Scientists soon found, however, that, if a very small number of these bacilli were put into a guinea pig's throat, it would have diphtheria, but in a very mild form. If, when it had recovered, it was again infected, it would stand a much larger dose of the bacilli without harm. This made them suspect that some substance had been formed in the guinea-pig's blood that killed the bacillus or worked against its toxin, or poison; and soon, to their delight, they succeeded in finding this substance, which they called _antitoxin_ (meaning "against poison"). Then came the idea that if they could only get enough of this antitoxin, and inject it into the blood of a child who had diphtheria, it might cure the disease. A guinea pig is such a tiny animal that the amount of antitoxin which it could form would be far too small to cure a man, or even a child. So larger animals were taken; and it was finally found that the largest and strongest of our domestic animals, the horse, would, if the diphtheria germs were injected into its blood, make such large amounts of antitoxin that merely by drawing a quart or two of the blood--and closing up the vein again--enough antitoxin could be got to cure fifty or a hundred children of diphtheria. This treatment has not the slightest harmful effect upon the horse. The pain of injecting is only like sticking a pin through the skin, while the pain of bleeding is no greater than cutting your finger. There are now at our great manufacturing laboratories whole stables full of horses, for the production of this wonderful remedy. [Illustration: DEATH-RATE FROM DIPHTHERIA AND CROUP Statistics from the City of New York. Antitoxin was used largely from 1893-95, during which time there was a steady decrease (from 60% to 30%) in the death-rate. After the Board of Health took up the matter, furnishing antitoxin without cost, the death-rate continued to decrease to less than 10% of the total number of cases, in 1909.] With this remedy, our entire feeling toward diphtheria is changed. Instead of dreading it above all things, we know now, from hundreds of thousands of cures, that, if a case is seen on the first day of the disease, and this antitoxin injected with a hypodermic needle, it is almost certain that the patient will recover; not more than two or three cases out of a hundred will fail. If the case is seen and treated on the second day, all but four or five out of a hundred will recover; and if on the third day, all but ten. In fact, the average death rate of diphtheria has been cut down now from forty-five per cent to about six per cent. We now have antitoxins, or _vaccines_, for blood-poisoning; for typhoid fever; for one of the forms of rheumatism; for boils; for the terrible _cerebro-spinal meningitis_, or "spotted fever"; and for tetanus, or lock-jaw. And every year there are one or two other diseases added to the list of those that have been conquered in this way. None of these vaccines is so powerful, or so certain in its effects, as the diphtheria antitoxin. But they are very helpful already; and some of them, particularly the typhoid vaccine, are of great value in preventing the attack of the disease, as small doses of it given to persons who have been exposed to the infection, or are obliged to drink infected water, as in traveling or in war, very greatly lessen their chances of catching the disease. Vaccination, the Great Cure for Smallpox. Another valuable means of preventing disease by means of its germs is by putting very small doses of the germs into a patient's body, so that they will give him a very mild attack of the disease, and cause the production in his blood of such large amounts of antitoxin that he will no longer be liable to an attack of the violent, or dangerous, form of the disease. Vaccines, for this purpose, usually consist either of a very small number of the disease germs, or of a group of them, which have been made to grow upon a very poor soil or have been chilled or heated so as to destroy their vitality or kill them outright. When these dead, or half-dead, bacilli are injected into the system, they stir up the body to produce promptly large amounts of its antitoxin. In some cases the reaction is so prompt and so vigorous that the antitoxin is produced almost without any discomfort, or disturbance, and the patient scarcely knows anything about it. In others there will be a slight degree of feverishness, with perhaps a little headache, and a few days, or hours, of discomfort. When this has passed, then the individual is protected against that disease for a period varying from a few months to as long as seven or eight years, or even for life. The best-known and oldest illustration of the use of these vaccines is that of _smallpox_. A little more than a hundred years ago, an English country doctor by the name of Jenner discovered that the cows in his district suffered from a disease accompanied by irritation upon their skins and udders, which was known as "cowpox." The dairymaids who milked these cows caught this disease, which was exceedingly mild and was all over within four or five days; but after that the maids would not take smallpox, or, as we say, were immune against it. Smallpox at that time was as common as measles is now. Nearly one-fourth of the whole population of Europe was pock-marked, and over half the inmates in the blind asylums had been made blind by smallpox. So common was it that it was quite customary to take the infectious matter from the pocks upon the skin of a mild case and inoculate children with it, so as to give them the disease in mild form and thus protect them against a severe, or fatal, attack; just as in country districts, a few years ago, some parents would expose their children to measles when it happened to be a mild form, so as to "have it over with." It occurred to Dr. Jenner that if this inoculation with cowpox would protect these milkmaids, it would be an infinitely safer thing to use to protect children than even the mildest known form of inoculation. So he tried it upon two or three of his child patients, after explaining the situation to their parents, and was perfectly delighted when, a few months afterward, these children happened to be exposed to a severe case of smallpox and entirely escaped catching the disease. This was the beginning of what we now call _vaccination_. The germ of cowpox, which is believed to be either the cow or horse variety of human smallpox, is cultivated upon healthy calves. The matter formed upon their skin is collected with the greatest care; and this is rubbed, or scraped, into the arm of the child. It is a perfectly safe and harmless cure; and although it has been done millions of times, never has there been more than one death from it in 10,000 cases. In a little over a hundred years it has reduced smallpox from the commonest and most fatal of all diseases to one of the rarest. But in every country in the world into which vaccination has not been introduced, smallpox rages as commonly and as fatally as ever. For instance, between 1893 and 1898 in Russia, where a large share of the people are unvaccinated, 275,000 deaths occurred from smallpox; in Spain, where the same condition exists, 24,000. In Germany, on the other hand, where vaccination is practically universal, there were in the same period only 287 deaths--1/1000 as many as in Russia; and in England, only a slightly greater number. Another illustration, which comes closer home, is that of the Philippine Islands. Before they were annexed by the United States, vaccination was rare, and thousands of deaths from smallpox occurred every year. In 1897, after the people had been thoroughly vaccinated, there was not a single death from this cause in the whole of the Islands. [Illustration: BILL OF HEALTH No outgoing ship may "clear the port" without a Bill of Health, signed by the Collector of Customs and the naval officer of the Port.] This discovery of Jenner's was most fortunate; for vaccination remains until this day absolutely the only remedy of any value whatever that we possess against smallpox. Quarantine, inoculation, improvement of living and sanitary conditions, the use of drugs and medicines of all sorts other than vaccination, have no effect whatever upon either the spread or the fatality of the disease. The author, when State Health Officer of Oregon, saw the disease break out in a highly-civilized, well-fed, well-housed community, and kill eleven out of thirty-three people attacked, just as it would have done in the "Dark Ages." Not one of the cases that died had been vaccinated; and, with but one exception (and in this the proof of vaccination was imperfect), every vaccinated case recovered. Vaccination will usually protect for from five to ten years; then it is advisable to be re-vaccinated, and in six to eight years more, another vaccination should be attempted. This third vaccination will usually not "take," for the reason that two successful vaccinations will usually protect for life. Unexpected as it may seem, vaccination is not only a preventive of smallpox, but a cure for it. The reason being that _vaccinia_, the disease resulting from successful vaccination, being far milder than smallpox, runs its course more quickly,--taking only two days to develop,--while smallpox requires anywhere from seven to twenty days to develop after the patient has been infected, or exposed. So, if anyone who has been exposed to smallpox is vaccinated any time within a week after exposure, the vaccine will take hold first, and the patient will have either simple vaccinia, with its trifling headache and fever, or else a very mild form of smallpox. Some persons object to having children deliberately infected with even the mildest sort of disease; but this is infinitely better than to allow, as was the case before vaccination, from one-fourth to one-fifth of them to be killed, twenty-five per cent of them to be pock-marked, and ten per cent of them to be blinded by this terrible disease. So far as any after-effects of vaccination are concerned, careful investigation of hundreds of thousands of cases has clearly shown that it is not so dangerous as a common cold in the head. Infantile Paralysis. Another disease that has been unpleasantly famous of late is also caused and spread by a germ. This is a form of laming or crippling of certain muscles in childhood known as _infantile paralysis_. It is not a common disease, though during the last two years there has been an epidemic of it in the United States, especially in New York and Massachusetts. The only things of importance for you to know about it are that it begins, like the other infections, with headache, fever, and usually with "snuffles" or slight sore throat, or an attack of indigestion; and that its germ is probably spread by being sneezed or coughed into the air from the noses and throats of the children who have it, and breathed in by well children. The best known preventive of serious results from this disease is the same as in the rest of infectious diseases, namely, rest in bed, away from all other children, which at the same time stops the spread of it. It furnishes one more reason why all children having the "snuffles" and sore throat with fever and headache should be kept away from school and promptly put to bed and kept there until they are better. The reason why the disease produces paralysis is that its germs specially attack the spinal cord, so as to destroy the roots of the nerves going to the muscles. Unless the harm done to the spinal cord is very severe, other muscles of the arm or the leg can very often be trained to take the place and to do the work of the paralyzed muscles, so that while the limb will not be so strong as before, it will still be quite useful. Malaria. Practically the only disease due to animal germs, which is sufficiently common in temperate or even subtropical regions to be of interest to us, is _malaria_, better known perhaps as _ague_, or "chills-and-fever." This disease has always been associated with swamps and damp marshy places and the fogs and mists that rise from them; indeed its name, _mal-aria_, is simply the Italian words for "bad air." It is commonest in country districts as compared with towns, in the South as compared with the North, and on the frontier, and usually almost disappears when all the ponds and swamps in a district are drained and turned into cultivated land or meadows. About four hundred years ago, the Spanish conquerors of America were fortunate enough to discover that the natives of Peru had a bitter, reddish bark, which, when powdered or made into a strong tea, would cure ague. This, known first as "Peruvian bark," was introduced into Europe by the intelligent and far-sighted Spanish Countess of Chincon; and, as she richly deserved, her name became attached to it--first softened to "cinchona" and later hardened to the now famous "quinine." But for this drug, the settlement of much of America would have been impossible. The climate of the whole of the Mississippi Valley and of the South would have been fatal to white men without its aid. [Illustration: GERMS OF MALARIA (Greatly magnified) These germs are animal germs and are in the red blood corpuscles, feeding on them.] But although we knew that we could both break up and prevent malaria by doses of quinine large enough to make the head ring, we knew nothing about the cause--save that it was always associated with swamps and marshy places--until about forty years ago a French army surgeon, Laveran, discovered in the red corpuscles of the blood of malaria patients, a little animal germ, which has since borne his name. This, being an animal germ, naturally would not grow or live like a plant-germ and must have been carried into the human body by the bite of some other animal. The only animals that bite us often enough to transmit such a disease are insects of different sorts; and, as biting insects are commonly found flying around swamps, suspicion very quickly settled upon the mosquito. [Illustration: CULEX Position on the wall.--After Berkeley.] By a brilliant series of investigations by French, Italian, English, and American scientists, the malaria germ was discovered in the body of the mosquito, and was transmitted by its bite to birds and animals. Then a score or more of eager students and doctors in different parts of the world offered themselves for experiment--allowed themselves to be bitten by infected mosquitoes, and within ten days developed malaria. At first sight, this discovery was not very encouraging; for to exterminate mosquitoes appeared to be as hopeful a task as to sweep back the Atlantic tides with a broom. But luckily it was soon found that the common piping, or singing, mosquito (called from his voice _Culex pipiens_) could not carry the disease, but only one rather rare kind of mosquito (the _Anopheles_), which is found only one-fiftieth as commonly as the ordinary mosquito. It was further found that these malaria-bearing mosquitoes could breed only in small puddles, or pools, that were either permanent or present six months out of the year, and that did not communicate with, or drain into, any stream through which fish could enter them. Fish are a deadly enemy of the mosquito and devour him in the stage between the egg and the growth of his wings, when he lives in water as a little whitish worm, such as you may have seen wriggling in a rain-barrel. [Illustration: ANOPHELES Position on the wall.--After Berkeley.] It was found that by hunting out a dozen or twenty little pools of this sort in the neighborhood of a town full of malaria, and filling them up, or draining them, or pouring kerosene over the surface of the water, the spread of the malaria in the town could be stopped and wiped out absolutely. This has been accomplished even in such frightfully malarial districts as the Panama Canal Zone, and the west coast of Africa, whose famous "jungle fever" has prevented white men from getting a foothold upon it for fifteen hundred years. Since the young mosquitoes, in the form of wrigglers, or _larvæ_, cannot grow except in still water, draining the pools kills them; and, as they must come to the surface of the water to breathe, pouring crude petroleum over the water--the oil floating on the surface and making a film--chokes them. The common garden mosquito, while not dangerous, is decidedly a nuisance and can be exterminated in the same way--by draining the swamps and pools, or by flooding them with crude petroleum,--or by draining swamps or pools into fresh-water ponds and then putting minnows or other fish into these ponds. There is no reason why any community calling itself civilized should submit to be tormented by mosquitoes if it will spend the few hundred, or the thousand, dollars necessary to wipe them out. It is prophesied that the use of quinine will soon become as rare as it is now common, because malaria will be wiped out by the prevention of the mosquito. Disinfectants. So far we have been considering how to attack the germs after they have got into our bodies, or to prevent them from spreading from one patient to another; but there is still another way in which they may be attacked, and that is by killing, or poisoning them, outside the body. This process is generally known as _disinfection_, and is carried out either by baking, boiling, or steaming, or by the use of strongly poisonous fluids or gases, known as _disinfectants_. While fortunately none of these disease germs can breed, or reproduce their kind, outside the human body, and while comparatively few of them live very long outside the human body, they may, if mixed with food or caught upon clothing, hangings, walls, or floors, remain in a sort of torpid, but still infectious, condition for weeks or even months. Consequently, it has become the custom to take all the bedding, clothing, carpets, curtains, etc., that have touched a patient suffering from a contagious disease, or have been in the room with him, and also any books that he may have handled, any pens or pencils that he may have used, and either destroy them, or bake, boil, or fumigate them with some strong germicidal, or disinfectant, vapor. [Illustration: OILING A BREEDING GROUND OF MOSQUITOES The photograph shows work done in the Panama Canal Zone. The swamp has already been drained by ditches, and the work of destroying the larvæ is being completed by the use of oil.] This is usually done by closing up tightly the sick-room, putting into it all clothing, bedding, pictures, books, hangings, and other articles used during the illness (except wash-goods, which, of course, can be sterilized by thorough boiling; and dishes and table utensils, which also can be scalded and boiled); draping the carpet over chairs so as to expose it on all sides, opening closets and drawers, and then filling the room full of some strong germ-destroying fumes. One of the best disinfectants, and the one now most commonly used by boards of health for this purpose, is _formaldehyde_--a pungent, irritating gas, which is an exceedingly powerful germ-destroyer. This, for convenience in handling is usually dissolved, or forced into water, which takes up about half its bulk; and the solution is then known as _formalin_. When formalin is poured into an open dish, it rapidly evaporates, or gives up its gas; and, if it be gently heated, this will be thrown off in such quantities as to completely fill the room and penetrate every crevice of it, and every fold of the clothing or hangings. One pound, or pint, of formalin will furnish vapor enough to disinfect a room eight feet square and eight feet high, so the amount for a given room can thus be calculated. The formalin vapor will attack germs much more vigorously and certainly if it be mixed with water vapor, or steam; so it is usually best either to boil a large kettle of water in the room for half an hour or more, so as to fill the air with steam, before putting in the formalin, or to use a combination evaporator with a lamp underneath it, which will give off both formalin and steam. This, if lighted and placed on a dish in the centre of a wash-tub or a large dishpan, with two or three inches of water in the bottom of it, can be put into the room and left burning until it goes out of its own accord. Another very good method is to take a pan, or basin, with the required amount of formalin (not more than an inch or two inches deep) in the bottom of it, get everything ready with doors and windows fastened tight and strips of paper pasted across the cracks, pour quickly over the formalin some permanganate of potash (about a quarter of a pound to each pound of formalin), and then bolt for the door as quickly as possible to avoid suffocation. The resulting boiling up, or effervescence, will throw off quantities of formaldehyde gas so quickly as to drive it into every cranny and completely through clothing, bedding, etc. The room should be left closed up tightly for from twelve to thirty-six hours, when it can be opened--only be careful how you go into it, first sniffing two or three times to be sure that all the gas has leaked out, or holding your breath till you can get the windows open; and in a few hours the room will be ready for use again. Another older and much less expensive disinfectant for this purpose is common _sulphur_. From one to three pounds of this, according to the size of the room, is burned by a specially prepared lamp in a pan placed in the centre of a dishpan of water, and the vapor thus made is a very powerful disinfectant. This, however, is a very poisonous and suffocating gas (as you will remember if you have ever strangled on the fumes of an old-fashioned sulphur match) and, compared with formalin, is nearly five times as poisonous to human beings, or animals, and not half so much so to the germs. Where formalin cannot be secured, sulphur is very effective; but its only merit compared with formalin is that it is cheaper, and more destructive to animal parasites and vermin such as bugs, cockroaches, mice, rats, etc., when these happen to be present. Formalin has the additional advantage of not tarnishing metal surfaces, as sulphur does. It is a good thing for every household and every schoolroom to have a bottle of formalin on hand, so that you may sniff the vapor of it into your nostrils and throat if you think you have been exposed to a cold, or other infectious disease, or make a solution with which to wash your hands, handkerchiefs, pencils, etc., after touching any dirt likely to contain infection. Half a teaspoonful in a bowl of water is enough for this. A saucerful of it placed in an air-tight box, or cabinet, will make a disinfecting chamber in which pencils, books, etc., can be placed over night; and a teaspoonful of it in a quart of water will make an actively germ-destroying solution, which can be used to soak clothing, clean out bedroom utensils, or pour down sinks, toilets, or drains. It is a good thing also to pour a few teaspoonfuls occasionally on the floor of the closets in which your shoes, trousers, dresses, and other outdoor clothing are kept, as these are quite likely to be contaminated by germs from the dust and dirt of the streets. Formalin is one of the best and safest general disinfectants to use. Its advantages are, that it is nearly ten times as powerful a germicide as carbolic acid, or even corrosive sublimate, so that it may be used in a solution so weak as to be practically non-poisonous to human beings. It is so violently irritating to lips, tongue, and nostrils as to make it almost impossible for even a child to swallow it, while the amount that would be absorbed if taken into the mouth and spit out again would be practically harmless, so far as danger to life is concerned, though it would blister the lips and tongue. Bacteria, our Best Friends. While, naturally, the bacteria that do us harm by producing disease are the ones that have attracted our keenest attention and that we talk about most, it must never be forgotten that they form only a very, very small part of the total number of bacteria, or germs. These tiny little germs swarm everywhere; and the mere fact that we find bacteria in any place, or in any substance, is no proof whatever that we are in danger of catching some disease there. All our farm and garden soil, for instance, is full of bacteria that not only are harmless, but give that soil all its richness, or fertility. If you were to take a shovelful of rich garden earth and bake it in an oven, so as to destroy absolutely all bacteria in it, you would have spoiled it so that seeds would scarcely grow in it, and it would not produce a good crop of anything. These little bacteria, sometimes called the soil-bacteria, or bacteria of decay, swarm in all kinds of dead vegetable and animal matter, such as leaves, roots, fruits, bodies of animals, fishes, and insects, and cause them to decay or break down and melt away. In doing this they produce waste substances, particularly those that contain ammonia, or nitrates, or some other form of nitrogen, which are necessary for the growth of plants or crops. This is why soil can be made richer by scattering over it and plowing into it manure, waste from slaughter houses, or any other kind of decaying animal or vegetable matter. This is promptly attacked by the bacteria of the soil and turned into these easily soluble plant foods. The roots of the plants grown in the soil could no more take this food directly from dead leaves or manure than you could live on sawdust or cocoanut matting. So, if it were not for these bacteria, or lower plants, there could be no higher, or green, plants. As animals live either upon these green plants, such as grass and grains, or upon the flesh of other animals that live upon plants, we can see that without the bacteria there would be no animal life, not even man. No bacteria, no higher life. It would be safe to say that, out of every million bacteria in existence, at least 999,999 are not only not harmful but helpful to us. One large group of bacteria produces the well-known souring of milk; and while this in itself is not especially desirable, yet the milk is still wholesome and practically harmless, and its sourness prevents the growth of a large number of other bacteria whose growth would quickly make it dangerous and poisonous. Many races living in hot countries deliberately sour all the milk directly after milking, by putting sour milk into it, because, when soured, it will keep fairly wholesome for several days, while if not soured it would entirely spoil and become unusable within twenty-four hours. Another group of bacteria, which float about in the air almost everywhere, are the yeasts, which we harness to our use for the very wholesome and healthful process of bread-making. Millions upon millions of bacteria of different sorts live and grow naturally in our stomachs and intestines; and while they are probably of no special advantage to us, yet at the same time the majority of them are practically, within reasonable limits--not to exceed a few billions or so--harmless. Insect Pests. One kind of "dirt" that should be avoided with special care is insects of all sorts. No one needs to be told to try to keep a house, or a room, clear of fleas, bed-bugs, or lice; indeed to have these creatures about is considered a mortal disgrace. Not only is their bite very unpleasant, but they may convey a variety of diseases, including plague and blood poisonings of various sorts. But there is another insect pest far commoner and far more dangerous than either fleas or bed-bugs, whose presence we should feel equally ashamed of; and that is the common house fly. This filthy little insect breeds in, and feeds upon, filth, manure, garbage, and dirt of all sorts, and then comes and crawls over our food, falls into our milk, wipes his feet on our sugar and cake, crawls over the baby's face, and makes a general nuisance of himself. Take almost any fly that you can catch, let him crawl over a culture plate of gelatin, put that gelatin away in a warm place, and you will find a perfect flower-garden of germs growing up all over it, following the pattern made by the tracks of his dirty feet. In this garden will be found not "silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row," but a choice mixture of typhoid bacilli, pus germs, the germs of putrefaction, tubercle bacilli, and the little seeds which, if planted in our own bodies, would blossom as pneumonia or diphtheria. [Illustration: AN EDUCATIONAL FLY POSTER] The fly is an unmitigated nuisance and should be wiped out. No half-way measures should be considered. Fortunately, this is perfectly possible; for his presence is our own fault and nothing else, as he can lay his eggs and hatch only in piles of dirt and filth found about our own houses, barns, and outbuildings. He is not a wild insect but a domestic one and is practically never found more than a few hundred yards away from some house or barnyard. His favorite place for breeding is in piles of stable manure, especially horse manure; but neglected garbage cans, refuse heaps, piles of dirt and sweepings, decaying matter of all sorts, which are allowed to remain for more than ten days or two weeks at a time, will give him the breeding grounds that he needs. [Illustration: A BREEDING PLACE OF FLIES AND FILTH] It takes him about two weeks to hatch and get away from these breeding places; so that if everything of this sort is cleaned up carefully once a week, or if, where manure heaps and garbage dumps have to remain for longer periods, they are sprinkled with arsenic, kerosene, corrosive sublimate, chloride of lime, or carbolic acid, he will perish and disappear as surely as grass will if you wash away the soil in which it grows. The presence of a fly means a dirty house or a dirty yard somewhere, and to discover a fly in your house should be considered a disgrace. Until people are aroused to the need of such cleanliness as will make flies disappear entirely, in most places it will be necessary, as warm weather approaches, to screen all doors and windows, and particularly all boxes, pantries, or refrigerators in which food is kept. If you cannot afford screens, use fly paper. These are all, however, only half-way measures and will give only partial relief. The best prevention of flies is absolute cleanliness. No dirt, no flies. Dust, a Source of Danger. Dust is an easily recognized form of dirt. It is dangerous in itself and nearly always contains germs of one sort or another mixed in with it. Shops and factories whose processes make much dust are usually very unhealthy for the workers, who are likely to show a high death-rate from consumption. Dust should be fought and avoided in every possible way. City streets should have good modern pavements,--preferably asphalt or some crude petroleum, or sawmill-waste, "crust," or coating,--which will not make any dust, and which can be washed down every night with a hose. In smaller towns where there is no pavement, dust may be prevented by regular sprinklings during the summer, preferably with some form of crude oil. Two or three full sprinklings of this will keep down the dust for the greater part of the summer. If these measures are properly carried out, they will prevent most of the dust that accumulates in houses, as nearly all of this blows in through the windows or is carried in on shoes or skirts. When this has once floated in and settled down upon the walls, furniture, or carpets, be very careful how you disturb it; for, as long as it lies there, it will do you no harm, however untidy it may look. The broom and the feather duster and the dry cloth do almost as much harm as they do good; for while they may remove two-thirds of the dust from a room, they drive the other third right into your nose and throat, where the germs it contains can do the most possible harm. Dusting should always be done with a damp cloth; sweeping, with a damp cloth tied over a broom; and, wherever possible, a carpet sweeper, or, better still, a vacuum cleaner, should be used instead of a broom. Carpets, window curtains, and any hangings that catch dust should be abolished--rugs that can be rolled up and taken out of doors to be shaken and beaten should be used instead; and too many pieces of bric-à-brac and ornaments should be avoided. All surfaces of walls, ceilings, and floors should be made as smooth and hard and free from angles, ledges, and projecting lines as possible. The colds usually caught by members of the family during "spring cleaning" are usually due to the swarms of germs stirred up from their peaceful resting places. Let those sleeping germs lie, until you can devise some means of removing them without brushing, or whisking, them straight into your nostrils. CHAPTER XXVII ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCIES Ordinarily, Accidents are not Serious. Accidents will happen--even in the best regulated families! While taking all reasonable care to avoid them, it is not best to worry too anxiously about the possibility of accidents; for a nervous, fearful state of mind is almost as likely to give rise to them as is a reckless and indifferent one. Fortunately, most accidents, especially with growing boys and girls, are comparatively trifling in their results, and to a considerable extent must simply be reckoned as part of the price that has to be paid for experience, self-control, and skill. To have keen senses, vigorous and elastic muscles, and a clear head, is better protection against accidents than too much caution; it is also the best kind of insurance that can be taken out against their proving serious. The real problem is not so much to avoid accidents as to be ready to meet them promptly, skillfully, and with good judgment when they occur, as they inevitably will. As the old masters of swordsmanship used to teach, "Attack is the best defense." Luckily, healthy children are as quick as a cat and as tough as sole-leather--if they weren't, the race would have been wiped out centuries ago. Children in their play, on errands, going to and from school, and in excursions through the woods and the fields, run, of course, a great many risks. But in spite of all these dangers, the number of children killed, or even seriously injured, in these "natural" accidents, is not half of one per cent of those who die from disease or bad air or poor food or overwork. Another cheering thing about accidents is that ninety-nine out of every hundred of them are not serious; and if you are only wise enough to know what to do--and still more what not to do--in taking care of them, you can recover from them safely and quickly. The bodies of healthy children have an astonishing power of repairing themselves. Their bones are not so brittle as those of "grown-ups"; and even when one of them is broken, if properly splinted and dressed, it will heal up in a little more than half the time required by the adult. And wounds and scratches and bruises, _if kept perfectly clean_, will heal very rapidly. Probably the commonest of all accidents are cuts and scratches. So common is it for us to "bark" our knuckles, or our shins, or scratch ourselves on nails and splinters and drive pins into ourselves, or let our pocket knives slip and cut our fingers, that, if the human skin had not the most wonderful power of repairing itself,--not merely closing up the cut or the scratch, but making the place "as good as new,"--we should be seamed and lined all over our hands, arms, faces, and limbs like a city map, or scarred and pitted like a tattooed man, before we were fifteen years old. But of course, as you know, the vast majority of cuts and scratches and tears heal perfectly. They hurt when they happen; and they burn, or smart, for a few hours, or hurt, if bumped, for a few days afterward; but they heal soon and are forgotten. On the other hand, some cuts and scratches will fester and throb and turn to "matter" (_pus_) and even give you fever and headache and blood poisoning. What makes the difference? It is never the size, or depth, of the scratch or cut itself, but simply _the dirt that gets into it afterward_. If a cut, or scratch, no matter how deep or ragged, be made with a clean knife-blade or sliver and kept clean afterward, it will never "matter" (_suppurate_) or cause blood poisoning. So if you know how to keep dirt out of cuts and scratches, you know how to prevent ninety-nine per cent of all the dangers and damage that may come from this sort of accident. Not more than one cut or scratch in a thousand is deep enough to go down to an artery, so as to cause dangerous bleeding, or to injure an important nerve trunk. So, though no one would by any means advise you to be reckless about getting cut and scratched, yet it is better and safer to run some risk of cuts and scratches in healthy play when young, and learn how to keep them clean, than to grow up pale and flabby-muscled and cowardly. How to Prevent Infection in Wounds. It is not just dirt that is dangerous,--although dirt of any sort is a bad thing to get into wounds and should be kept out in every possible way,--but dirt that contains those little vegetable bacteria that we call germs. The dirt most likely to contain these germs--called pus germs, because they cause pus, or "matter" in a wound--is dirt containing decaying animal or vegetable substances (particularly horse manure, which may contain the tetanus, or lock-jaw germ) and the discharges from wounds, or anything that has come near decayed meat or unhealthy gums or noses or teeth. This is why a cut or scratch made by a knife that has been used for cutting meat, or by a dirty finger-nail, or by the claw of a cat, or by the tooth of a rat, is often likely to fester and "run." Animals like rats and dogs and cats often feed upon badly decayed meat; and hence their teeth, or claws, are quite likely to be smeared with the germs that cause decay, and these will make trouble if they get into a wound. Fortunately, the care of a cut or scratch is very simple and practically the same in all cases. Just make the wound thoroughly clean and keep it so until it is healed. For a slight clean cut or scratch, a good cleanser is pure water. Hold the hand or foot under the faucet or pump, and let the cool water wash it out thoroughly. If you are sure that the thing you cut it with was clean, let the blood dry on the cut and form a scab over it. If the wound is large, or there is any danger of the water of the well, or tap, having sewage in it (see chapter IX), it is better to boil the water before using it. Unless the blood is spurting in jerks from a cut artery, or bleeding very freely indeed, it is better to let the wound bleed, as this helps to wash out any dirt or germs that have got into it. When the bleeding has stopped, do not put on sticking plaster, because this keeps out the air and keeps in the sweat of the skin surrounding the wound, which is not healthful for the wound, and may also contain some weak pus germs. If the wound is small, the old-fashioned clean white rag that has been boiled and washed is as good as anything that can be used for a dressing. Tear off a narrow strip from one to two inches wide and as many feet long, according to the position of the wound, roll it round the finger or limb three or four times, and then take a turn round the wrist or nearest joint, to keep the bandage from slipping off. If the wound be likely to keep on oozing blood, put on first a thickness of surgeon's cotton, or prepared cotton-batting, an ounce of which can be purchased for ten cents at any drugstore. This is an excellent dressing, because it not only sucks up, or absorbs any oozing from the wound, but is a perfect filter-protection against germs of all sorts from the outside. Ninety-nine simple wounds out of a hundred dressed in this way will heal promptly and safely without danger of pus, or "matter." If the wound happens to have been made with a knife or tool that you are not absolutely sure was perfectly clean, or if the wound gets manure or road-dirt or other filth rubbed into it, then it is best to go at once to a doctor and let him give it a thorough _antiseptic_ dressing, which consists of cleaning it out thoroughly with strong remedies, called antiseptics,--which kill the germs, but do not injure living tissues,--and then putting on a germ-proof dressing as before. This is one of the "stitches in time" which will save not only nine, but ninety-nine. If you have a wound with dirt in it, and cannot reach a doctor, one of the best and safest antiseptics to use is _peroxide of hydrogen_. This is non-poisonous, and can be poured right into the wound. It will smart and foam, but will clean out and kill most of the germs that are there. Another safe antiseptic is pure alcohol. It is a good thing to have a bottle of one of these in the medicine-closet, or in your "war-bag" when camping out. A package of surgeon's cotton and two or three rolled bandages of old cotton, linen, or gauze also should be on hand. Dog-bites, rat-bites, or cat-bites should always be dressed by a doctor, or made thoroughly antiseptic, mainly on account of the germs that swarm round the roots of the teeth of these animals, and also because treatment of this sort will prevent _hydrophobia_--although this danger is a rare and remote one, not more than a few score of deaths from mad-dog bites occurring in the whole United States in a year. The wonderful progress made by surgery within the last twenty or thirty years has been almost entirely due to two things: first, the discovery of chloroform and ether, which will put patients to sleep, so that they do not feel the pain of even the severest and longest operation; and, second, but even more important, keeping germs of all kinds out of the wound before, during, and after the operation. That sounds simple, but it really takes an immense amount of trouble and pains in the way of baking the dressings; boiling the instruments, and scrubbing with soap, alcohol, hot water, and two or three kinds of antiseptics, or germ-killers, the hands of the surgeon and of the nurse and the body of the patient. How enormous a difference this keeping of the germs out of the wound has made may be gathered from the fact that, while in earlier days, before Lister showed us how to avoid this danger, surgeons used to lose seventy-five per cent of their amputations of the thigh, from pus infection, or blood poisoning, now they can perform a hundred operations of this sort and not lose a single case. We can open into the skull and remove tumors from the brain; open into the chest and remove bullets from the lungs, and even from the heart itself; operate in fact upon any part, or any organ, of the body with almost perfect safety and wonderful success. Whereas, before, two-thirds of the patients so operated upon would die, probably of blood poisoning. How to Treat Bruises. Bruises are best treated either by holding the injured part under the faucet, or pump, if convenient, or by plunging it into very hot water and holding it there for ten or twelve minutes. Then if the bruise still continues to throb or ache, wrap it up lightly with a bandage of soft, loose cotton or linen cloth, and pour over it a lotion of water containing about one-fourth alcohol until the bandage is soaked, moistening it again as fast as it dries. This is also a useful treatment for wounds that have been made by a fall, or by something blunt and heavy, so that there is bruising as well as cutting. Most of the household applications for wounds or bruises, such as arnica, camphor, witch-hazel, etc., owe their virtues to the five or ten per cent of alcohol they contain, which, by evaporating, cools the wound and relieves inflammation, kills germs and so acts as an antiseptic, and cleans the wound and the skin around it very thoroughly and effectively. Bruises of all sorts, however, unless very severe, are much safer than cuts or scratches, because they do not break the skin, and consequently no germs can get into the tissues of the blood. Our skin, as you remember, is one of the most wonderful water-proof, germ-proof, hot-and-cold-proof coatings in the world; and as long as it remains unbroken, none but a few of the most virulent disease-germs can get through it into the body. Boils and Carbuncles, their Cause and their Cure. Boils and carbuncles are almost the only instances in which pus germs can get into the body without some actual cut, tear, or breaking of the skin. They come always from other boils or ulcers or discharging wounds and are caused by the pus germs in these either being rubbed into the skin until it is almost chafed through, or else being driven down into the mouth of one of the hair follicles, or "pores." Here they proceed to grow and form a little gathering, which soon turns to pus; and this stretches the skin and presses upon the sensitive nerves in it so as to cause much pain. The best way to treat them in the beginning is to give a thorough scrubbing with hot water and soap, and then to drop right over the point, or "head," of the gathering two or three drops of a strong antiseptic, like formalin or peroxide or carbolic acid. If this does not check them, then they had better be opened up freely with a sharp knife that has been held in boiling water, or a needle that has been held in a flame until it is red hot and allowed to cool. Then pour peroxide into the opening, put on a light dressing, and keep soaked with alcohol and water, as for a bruise. This evaporating dressing is far superior to the dirty, sticky, germ-breeding poultice. If this does not clear it up within twenty-four hours, go to a doctor and have him treat it antiseptically. How to Stop Bleeding. If a cut should go deep enough to reach an artery the size of a knitting needle, or larger, then the blood will spurt out in jets. There is then some danger of so much blood being lost as to weaken one. Our blood, however, has a wonderful power of clotting, or clogging, round the mouth of the cut artery, so that the risk of bleeding to death, except from quite a large artery, like that of the thigh, or the armpit, is not very great. For a wound in the hand or foot, that spurts in this way, it will usually be sufficient to grasp the arm firmly above the wrist or the elbow, or the ankle, as the case may be, with the thumb over the artery, or even to press directly over the wound, until the bleeding stops and the blood is thus given a chance to clot. If the wound is small and deep, like that made by the stab of a knife, or the slip of a chisel, then firm pressure directly over the wound itself with a thumb, or both thumbs, will usually be sufficient to stop the bleeding. [Illustration: A TOURNIQUET A stone laid above the cut under the bandage will help to increase the pressure at this point.] Should, however, the spurting be from an artery like that of the pulse, or from that at the bend of the elbow or the knee, then the best thing to do is to tie quickly a handkerchief or strip of tough cloth loosely around the limb above the wound and, slipping a short stick or bar into the loop, twist upon it, as shown in the picture, until the blood ceases to flow from the wound. It is much better to use a handkerchief or piece of cloth than a cord, because the latter may cut into and damage the tissues, when drawn as tight as is needed to stop the circulation. It is not best to allow a bandage twisted tight enough to stop the circulation--called a _tourniquet_--to remain tight for more than half an hour at a time, as this may give rise to very dangerous congestion, or serious "blood starvation" of the tissues below it. It should be gently untwisted every half hour until the arm, or limb, below it reddens up again, and then, if the spurting begins, should be tightened as before. There is, however, a good chance that if the cut artery is not too large, the blood will have clotted firmly enough in this time to stop the bleeding; though the tourniquet had better be left on the arm, ready to be tightened at a moment's notice, until the doctor comes. The Treatment of Burns. Burns require more careful treatment on account of the wide surface of the skin usually destroyed. The layer of the skin that is most alive and most active in the process of repair is the outer layer (the epithelial, or epidermis). A burn, or scald, if at all severe, is likely to destroy almost the entire thickness of this, over its whole extent. This gives both a wide surface for the absorption of pus germs and a long delay in "skinning over," or healing. As the same heat that made the burn has usually destroyed any germs that may be present, it is not necessary to wash or clean a burn, like a wound, unless dirt has been rubbed or sprinkled into it after it has been made. The first thing to be done is to coat it over so as to shut out the air; and this, for a slight burn, can be very well done by dusting it over with baking soda or clean flour or with one of the many dusting, or talc, powders on the market, containing boracic acid, or by laying over the burn a clean cloth soaked in perfectly clean olive oil or vaseline. If the oil or vaseline is not perfectly clean, put it on the top of a stove and heat it thoroughly before using. Dress with soft, clean cotton rag or lint as before, keeping wet with the alcohol lotion (one part of alcohol to eight of water) if there be much pain, or throbbing. If the burn is deep or the pain at all severe, it is best to call in a doctor, as bad burns are not only agonizingly painful, but also very dangerous on account of the wide, raw surface that they leave open to entrance of pus germs for days and even weeks. Until a doctor can be secured, coat it over with some non-irritating powder or oil, as for lighter burns, or hold it in warm water to exclude the air. Do not try to clean a burn. You only increase the pain of it and probably add to the risk of infection. If your clothing ever catches fire, wrap yourself up at once in a blanket or rug to smother the flame. Remember that running will supply more air to the flame and cause it to do more damage. If you have nothing at hand in which to wrap yourself, lie down on the floor, or ground, and roll over and over until you have smothered the flame. What should be Done in the Case of Broken Bones, or Fractures. Broken bones, or fractures, as they are called, are more serious, but fortunately not very common. They should, of course, always be treated by a doctor, to prevent shortening of the limb, or to prevent the bones from growing together at an angle, or in a bad position, so as to interfere with the use of it. Where a doctor cannot readily be had, or the patient has to be taken to him,--as, for instance, where the accident occurs out in the woods,--take two light pieces of board, or two bundles of straight twigs, or two pieces of heavy paper folded fifteen or twenty times--two folded newspapers, for instance--and, wrapping them in cloth or paper, place one on each side of the broken limb, at the same time gently pulling it straight. Then take strips of cloth, or bandage, and bind these splints gently, but firmly and snugly, the length of the limb, so that it cannot be bent in such a way as to make the ends of the bone grate against each other. The patient can then be lifted, or carried, with comparative comfort. Most fractures, or broken bones, in children or young boys or girls, heal very rapidly; and if the limb be properly straightened and splinted by competent hands, it will be practically as good and as strong as before the accident. Sprains. Sprains are twists or wrenches, of a joint, not severe enough to "put it out," or dislocate it, or to break a bone. A mild sprain is a very trifling affair, but a severe one is exceedingly painful and very slow in healing. The best home treatment for sprains is to hold the injured joint under a stream of cold water for ten or fifteen minutes and then to bandage it firmly and thoroughly, but gently, with a long "figure-of-eight" bandage, wound many times, and to keep this moist with an alcohol lotion. Then keep the limb at rest. If the cold water does not relieve the pain, plunge the joint into water as hot as you can comfortably bear it and keep it there for ten or fifteen minutes, adding fresh hot water to keep up the temperature; then bandage as before. If the pain should not go down under either of these treatments within six or eight, certainly within ten or twelve, hours, it is far wisest to call a doctor, because severe sprains very often mean the tearing of some important tendon or ligament, and the partial fracture of one of the bones of the joint. Unless these conditions are promptly corrected, you may be laid up for weeks, and even months, and left with a permanently damaged--that is, stiffened--joint. You will often hear it said that a sprain is harder to heal than a fracture; but that kind of sprain usually includes a fracture of some small portion of a bone, which has escaped notice and proper treatment. If the sprain is mild, so that it does not pain you when at rest, then the bandage should be removed every day, and the joint gently rubbed and massaged, and the bandage replaced again. Should there be any one in reach who understands massage, a thorough massaging right after the accident is quite helpful; but no amateur had better attempt it, as unskilled rubbing and stretching are likely to do more harm than good. What to Do in Case of Poisoning. Poisoning is, fortunately, a rare accident; and the best thing to be done first is practically the same, no matter what poison--whether arsenic, corrosive sublimate, or carbolic acid--has been swallowed. This is to dilute the poison by filling the stomach with warm water and then to bring about vomiting as quickly as possible. This can usually be done by adding a tablespoonful of mustard to each glass of warm water drunk. If this cannot be had, or does not act within a few minutes, then thrusting the finger as far down the throat as it will go, and moving it about so as to tickle the throat, will usually start gagging; or a long feather may be dipped in oil and used in the same way. It is also a good thing to add milk or white of egg or soap to the water, or to mix a little oil or plaster scraped off the wall with it, as these tend to combine with the poison and prevent its being absorbed. If the poison happens to be an acid, like vitriol, then add a tablespoonful or more of baking soda to the hot water; if an alkali, like lye or ammonia, give half a glass of weak vinegar. The main thing, however, is to set up vomiting as quickly as possible. [Illustration: POISON IVY It may be distinguished from woodbine by its _leaves in groups of three_ (not five), _glossy_ and _smooth-edged_ (not dull and saw-toothed); its _berries greenish-white_ (not blue).] Another rather frequent and most disagreeable accident, which may happen to you when out in the woods, is poisoning by poison ivy. This is due to the leaves or twigs of a plant, which many of you probably know by sight, touching your hands or face. If you do not happen to know what poison ivy looks like, you had better get some one who knows to point out the shrub to you the next time you go into the woods, and then you should try to keep as far away from it as possible. It is sometimes called poison oak, but both these names are incorrect, as the shrub is really a kind of sumac. It takes its different names because it has the curious habit of either climbing like a vine, when it is called "ivy," or growing erect like a bush, or shrub, when it is called "oak." All sorts of absurd stories are told about the leaves of the shrub being so poisonous that it is not safe to go within ten feet of it, when the dew is on it, or to walk past it when the wind is blowing from it toward you. But these are pretty nearly pure superstitions, because it has been found that the substance in the leaves or bark of the shrub which poisons the skin is an oil, which is _non-volatile_, that is to say, will not give off any vapors to the air and, of course, cannot be dissolved in dew or other watery moisture. You must actually touch the leaves in order to be poisoned; but, unfortunately, this is only too easy to do without knowing it when you are scrambling through the woods or hunting for flowers or picking berries. The remedy for poison ivy is a very simple one, and within the reach of anybody, and is as effective as it is simple. This is a thorough scrubbing of the part poisoned, just as soon as it begins to itch, with a nail-brush and soap and hot water. This makes the skin glow for a little while, but it washes out all the burning and irritating oil and, if used promptly, will usually stop the trouble then and there. It is a good idea if you know that you have touched poison ivy, or even if you have been scrambling about actively in woods or patches of brush where you know that the ivy is common, to give your hands a good washing and scrubbing with sand or mud, if there is no soap at hand, in the first stream or pool that you come to. This will usually wash off the oil before it has had time to get through the natural protective coating of the skin. Snake-bite is one of the rarest of all accidents and not one-fiftieth as dangerous as usually believed. Not more than one person in twenty bitten by a large rattlesnake will die, and only about two in a hundred bitten by small rattlers or by copperheads. The average poisonous snake of North America cannot kill anything larger than a rabbit, and any medium-sized dog can kill a rattlesnake with perfect safety. Our horror-stricken dread of snakes is chiefly superstition. Of those who die after being bitten by North American snakes, at least half die of acute alcoholic poisoning from the whiskey poured down their throats in pints; and another fourth, from gangrene due to too tight bandaging of the limb to prevent the poison from getting into the circulation, or from pus infections of the wound from cutting it with a dirty knife. Alcohol is as great a delusion and fraud in snake-bite as in everything else; instead of being an antidote, it increases the poisoning by its depressing effect on the heart. If you should be bitten, throw a bandage round the limb, above the bite, and tighten as for a cut artery. Then make with a clean knife two free cuts, about half or three-quarters of an inch deep, through the puncture, one lengthwise and the other crosswise of the limb, and let it bleed freely. Then throw one or, if there be room, two or three other bandages round the limb, three or four inches apart, and tighten gently so as to close the surface veins by the pressure, without shutting off the flow in the arteries. After thirty or forty minutes loosen the first bandage to the same tightness and leave it so unless the heart weakens or faintness is felt, in which case tighten again. If this be done, there isn't one chance in a hundred of any serious result. How to Avoid Drowning. In case of falling into the water, the chief thing to do is to try to keep calm and to _keep your hands below your chin_. If you do this and keep paddling, you will swim naturally, just as a puppy or a kitten would, even if you have never learned to swim. It is, however, pretty hard to remember this when you go splash! into the water. Everyone should learn to swim before he is twelve years old; and then in at least nine times out of ten, he will be safe if he fall overboard. Remember that, if you keep your mouth shut and your hands going below your chin, you can keep floating after a fashion, for some time; and in that time the chances are that help will reach you. If you can reach a log or apiece of board or the side of a boat, just cling quietly to that with one hand, and keep paddling with the other. Even if you can get hold of only quite a small limb or pole or piece of a box, by holding one hand on that and paddling with the other and kicking your feet, you will be able to keep floating a long time unless the water be ice cold. If you can manage to keep both your feet splashing on top of the water and both hands going, you can swim several hundred yards. [Illustration: Pressing out the air in the lungs. Allowing the lungs to fill themselves. THE NEW METHOD OF ARTIFICIAL BREATHING Devised by a celebrated physiologist, Professor Schaefer of Edinburgh, and now being adopted by life-saving stations and crews everywhere.] You may sometime be called upon to save another person from drowning. In such a case, as in every emergency, a cool head is the chief thing. Make up your mind just what you are going to do before you do _anything_,--then do it _quickly_! If no one is near enough to hear your shouts for help, and no boat is at hand, if possible throw, or push, to the one in the water a plank or board or something that will float, and he will instinctively grasp it. If you are thrown into the water with a person that can't swim, grasp his collar or hair, and hold him at arm's length, to prevent his dragging you under, until help arrives, or until you can tow him to safety. Boys and girls, after they have learned to swim, may well practice rescuing each other, so as to be prepared for such accidents. Artificial Breathing. The best way to revive a person who has been under water and is apparently drowned, is to turn him right over upon his chest on the ground, or other level surface, turning the face to one side so that the nose and mouth will be clear of the ground. Then, kneeling astride of the legs, as shown in the picture, place both hands on the small of the back and throw your weight forward, so as to press out the air in the lungs. Count three, then swing backward, lifting the hands, and allow the lungs to fill themselves with air for three seconds, then again plunge forward and force the air out of the lungs and again lift your weight and allow the air to flow in for three seconds. Keep up this swinging backward and forward about ten or twelve times a minute. This is the newest and by far the most effective way--in fact the only real way--of keeping up artificial breathing. It is very, very seldom that any one can be revived after he has been under water for more than five minutes,--indeed, after three minutes,--but this method will save all who can possibly be saved. So perfect a substitute for breathing is it that if any one of you will lie down in this position upon his face, and allow some one else to press up and down on the small of his back after this fashion, ten or twelve times a minute, he will find that, without making any effort of his own to breathe, this pumping will draw enough air into his lungs to keep him quite comfortable for half an hour. Don't waste any time trying to pour the water out of the lungs. As a matter of fact there is very little there, in drowned people. Don't waste any time in undressing, or warming or rubbing the hands or feet to start the circulation. Get this pendulum pump going and the air blowing in and out of the lungs, and if there is any chance of saving life this will do it; then you can warm and dry and rub the patient at your leisure after he has begun to breathe. QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES CHAPTERS I AND II 1. Look up in a dictionary the words physiology and hygiene. What does each mean? If you can, find the derivation of each. 2. Why should everyone learn about the human body? 3. How is the "man-motor" like an "auto"? Compare the fuel of each. 4. From what source do all the fuels get their force or energy? 5. How do plants get their fuel, or food? 6. What is meant in saying that man takes his food at second, or third, hand? 7. Why do we need a mouth? 8. Does a plant have a mouth? Where? 9. Draw a diagram showing how the food is carried into and throughout the body. 10. Describe the parts of the food tube through which it goes. 11. Tell how the body-motor uses bread as a fuel. How is its form changed before it can be used? 12. What are the salivary glands for? What work is done by their juice? 13. What other juices help to melt the bread? 14. Which foods need the most chewing? 15. How is the food carried down the food tube? 16. What is the appendix? Explain how it sometimes causes trouble. 17. How can you tell the difference between colic and appendicitis? 18. On which side is the appendix located? 19. In what parts of the food tube are (_a_) starch, (_b_) meats, (_c_) fat digested? 20. What causes constipation? How may it be avoided? 21. Is drinking water at meals hurtful? If so, how? CHAPTER III 1. If we call the body an engine, what is the fuel? what is the smoke? what are the ashes? 2. Why and how far can we rely upon our natural desires and appetites for food? 3. How should we choose our foods? 4. Name two serious faults that foods may have. 5. Why do we need a variety of foods? 6. What is meant by the term "fuel value of food"? 7. How can we roughly tell to which class a food belongs or what its fuel value is? 8. Why should animal and vegetable foods be used together? CHAPTER IV 1. Name and describe our most common meats. 2. When is pork a valuable food? 3. Why do we digest it slowly? 4. Why should we eat fish only once or twice a week? 5. What food-stuffs are found in milk? 6. Name some vegetables which contain protein food. 7. In planning a week's diet, how often would you use these vegetables, and why? 8. What is our greatest danger in eating meat? 9. Why is it dangerous to eat highly seasoned stews or hashes? 10. Should cheese be eaten in large amounts at a time? Why? 11. Describe the care taken at a good dairy. 12. Why is this necessary? 13. Why is dirty milk less nourishing than clean milk? CHAPTER V 1. Explain the name "starch-sugars." To which class of fuel-food might we say that they belong? 2. Why are they cheaper than meat? 3. Why must these foods be ground and cooked? 4. Which is the better food, white or brown bread? Why? 5. Could we live on starch-foods alone? What is the reason of this? 6. In what foods do we find nitrogen? In what, carbon? 7. What is a "complete food"? Name some. 8. Why must the starchy foods be changed in the body into sugar, or glucose? 9. Name three ways by which bread is made "light." 10. What is yeast? 11. How is bread made? 12. Why should it be thoroughly baked? 13. What causes bread to become sour? 14. Name other important starchy foods. 15. Is sugar a valuable food? Why? 16. In what plants do we find it? CHAPTER VI 1. Why are fats slow of digestion? 2. If they are so valuable as "coal foods," why do we not eat more of them at a meal? 3. Give some reasons for carrying fats as food supply on long voyages and expeditions. 4. In what forms are they best carried? 5. What makes up the emergency field-ration of the German army, and why? 6. What is the most valuable single fat, and why? 7. Name other fats in common use and describe their effects on digestion. 8. State the food values of bacon. 9. Why should nuts be eaten in moderate quantity only? 10. How do nuts compare in cost (_a_) with other proteins? (_b_) with other fats? 11. What is the peanut? 12. Why is it hard to digest? 13. What digestive juices "melt" fats? 14. What is oleomargarine and how does it compare with butter? CHAPTER VII 1. What is the necessity of fruits and vegetables in our dietary? Why especially in summer? 2. Give some idea of the food value of fruits as compared with bread and meat. 3. Name the most wholesome and useful fruits. 4. What is the food value of bananas? Why is it very important that they be eaten in moderation only? 5. What does (_a_) boiling and (_b_) drying do to fruits? 6. Why seal the jars of preserved fruits? 7. Why can you not eat as much jam, at one time, as raw fruit? 8. What disease is caused by scarcity of fresh vegetables or fruits? 9. Name some of the common vegetables and give their fuel values. 10. Why do we need with our meals the lighter green vegetables, although they have little nutritive value? 11. What vegetables contain starch, what sugar, and what digestible protein? 12. In what form is most of the nitrogen of vegetables? CHAPTER VIII 1. What changes occur in food when it is cooked? Describe some of the changes. 2. What are the advantages of cooking meats and vegetables? 3. Why is it necessary that food should taste good? 4. What has cooking to do with the cost of food? 5. Why is time well spent in cooking food? 6. Describe the different methods of cooking food and tell advantages of each. 7. In what ways can you help make the table attractive and preserve health? 8. In what ways may food be made less digestible and wholesome by cooking? 9. In what way can fried food be made digestible? 10. What is the supposed economy of boiling? 11. Write out a good menu for each meal of the day. CHAPTER IX 1. Why is water necessary in the body? 2. How does the body take in water other than by drinking it? 3. Why is this water sure to be pure? 4. Why is drinking water likely to be impure? 5. Where and when is water perfectly pure? 6. What are our chief sources of water-supply? 7. What is a well? a spring? a reservoir? 8. Which source of water-supply is safest? 9. What are the dangers of well water? 10. How can they be avoided? 11. What are the dangers of river water? 12. What is a filter and how does it work? 13. What makes water rise in a spring or an artesian well? 14. How may water suspected of being unhealthful be made safe to drink? 15. How is sewage disposed of? 16. How can it be kept out of the drinking water? 17. Why does it pay cities to spend large sums to secure pure water? 18. How can a reservoir be protected? 19. What are the risks of house filters? 20. How do bacteria help us in keeping our water-supply pure? 21. Does your city or town have a central source of water-supply? Where is it? 22. Visit the waterworks of your city or town and describe to the class how the water is obtained, how prepared for use, and how distributed to buildings. CHAPTER X 1. How can you prove that beverages are not real foods? 2. What is tea? What is coffee? What are chocolate and cocoa? 3. Why are tea and coffee, if stewed, bad for the digestion? 4. Why is it better for you to let these drinks alone? 5. How is alcohol made? 6. How is wine made? beer? cider? whiskey? 7. When does fermentation stop, and for what reason? 8. What is the difference between whiskey and brandy? Why are these the most harmful of these drinks? 9. Explain the effect of alcohol on the digestion. 10. Does it increase the warmth of the body? 11. Does it increase our working power? 12. How is it that at first people thought that alcohol was helpful, when really it was not? 13. What is the effect of alcohol on the nervous system? 14. Can the man who drinks alcohol tell how, or to what extent, it is injuring him? 15. Is alcohol a food or a medicine? 16. How does alcohol usually affect the mind and character? 17. Why is smoking a foolish habit? 18. Why is it harmful for boys? 19. What is nicotine? 20. What proof have we that smoking stunts growth? 21. How is it likely to hinder a boy's career? CHAPTER XI 1. Where does the real "eating" take place in the body? 2. How is the food carried to these parts? 3. What does the name "artery" mean? 4. What are veins? 5. If you examine blood under a microscope, what will you find in it? 6. What are the uses of these two kinds of little bodies (corpuscles)? 7. Explain the process of inflammation. 8. Draw a diagram or rough picture showing the route of the blood through the heart and body. Mark the vena cava and the portal vein. 9. What are the capillaries, and what does the name mean? 10. Why do the veins have valves? 11. Explain how the different parts of the heart act, while they are pumping and receiving the blood. 12. How many strokes of the heart-pump are there per minute in a man? a woman? a child? 13. Which part of the heart has the thickest muscle and why? 14. Where are the strongest valves? 15. What blood vessels carry the blood to and from the lungs? 16. What blood vessel carries the blood from the heart over the body? 17. When you press your hand to the left side of your chest, what movement do you feel? 18. Where is the best place to feel the pulse? Why? 19. Which are generally nearer the surface, arteries or veins? Are they near each other? 20. Why does the heart beat faster when you run? CHAPTER XII 1. Why is it bad for you to study or exercise while you are eating, or right after eating? 2. How does overwork, or over-training, affect the heart? 3. What kind of play or exercise strengthens it? 4. How does good food help it? 5. What is the best way to avoid heart diseases, rheumatism, consumption, and pneumonia? 6. How does outdoor air help heart-action? 7. How do alcohol and tobacco injure the blood system and heart? 8. Why is alcohol particularly bad for underfed and overworked people? 9. At what two points is the blood system most likely to give way? 10. What may cause this breakage, or leakage? 11. What "catching" diseases often cause organic disease of the heart? 12. Why should heavy muscular work or strain be avoided after an attack of one of these diseases? 13. How may valvular heart trouble be remedied? 14. In what way are the nerve and blood systems connected? 15. What signal have we that we are beginning to over-exercise the heart? 16. What do we mean by "tobacco heart"? 17. Tell how to take care of the heart. CHAPTER XIII 1. How long can an animal live without eating? 2. How long can an animal live without breathing? 3. Why is your body like a sponge? 4. What are cells? 5. How do they get their food? 6. How many kinds of waste come from the body cells? 7. How is each kind carried away from the body? 8. What does the blood carry from the lungs to the body cells? 9. Why does it not carry air? 10. What process keeps your body warm? 11. What happens if the body cannot get oxygen? 12. How are the human lungs formed? 13. What is the windpipe? What are the bronchi? 14. Draw a picture of the lung-tree showing how the tubes branch. 15. What is at the end of each tiny branch? 16. How do the windpipe and the esophagus differ in form? 17. Why is the windpipe stiff? 18. In what four ways is the air you breathe out different from that which you took in? 19. Why does lime-water become milky when you breathe into it? 20. When you run, why do you breathe more quickly? Why does your heart beat faster? 21. How can you improve your "wind"? 22. In fever, why do you breathe more rapidly? 23. How do the ribs and muscles help in breathing? CHAPTER XIV 1. Why is "caged air" dangerous? 2. How is outdoor air kept clean and pure? 3. What is air made of? 4. In what ways do people poison the air? 5. How do plants help to clean the air? 6. What is the best way to ventilate a room? Why? 7. Why do you have recess? 8. How does impure air make children look and feel? 9. Why is an open fire not the best means of heating and ventilating? 10. See if the room you are now in is properly ventilated. Why, or why not? 11. What are disease germs? 12. Why is dusty air unwholesome? 13. What is the safest way to clean a room? 14. Name three groups of disease germs that float in the air. 15. Name three ways in which you can protect yourself against these germs. 16. What is a cold? 17. What is the best way to cure a cold? 18. How can you prevent colds? 19. What causes consumption (tuberculosis of the lungs)? 20. Does the tubercle bacillus attack other parts of the body? 21. Why should a consumptive hold a cloth before his face when coughing? 22. Why should his sputum be burned? 23. Why should he go to a camp or sanatorium? Give two reasons. 24. About how much money could this country afford to spend in fighting consumption? Why? 25. Why need we no longer dread it as people did twenty-five years ago? 26. What methods are used in curing the disease? 27. What methods are used for preventing it? 28. Give two reasons why spitting should be prohibited. 29. What will fresh-air and sunlight do to the disease germs in the dust? 30. What do we know about the germs of pneumonia? 31. Do those who use alcohol stand a good chance in fighting pneumonia? 32. How may pneumonia be prevented? CHAPTER XV 1. Why is the skin so important? 2. Name some of the things that it does. 3. How many layers has it? Describe each. 4. What glands are found in the skin? 5. What is sweat, or perspiration, and from what does it come? 6. Why should clothing be porous? 7. Why should clothing be frequently washed? 8. Describe a hair gland and its muscles. 9. Describe the process of "nail-making." 10. Is there any process like this among the lower animals? 11. Why do we need nails? 12. What causes the white crescent on the nail? 13. Explain how the skin is a heat regulator. 14. What is the "normal temperature" of the body? 15. How does perspiring affect the heat of the body? 16. What are the "nerve buds" or "bulbs"? 17. Name four things that they do. CHAPTER XVI 1. What are the uses of the skin to the rest of the body? 2. In what two ways does the skin clean itself? 3. What should we specially avoid in washing or scrubbing the skin? 4. What are the characteristics of a good soap? 5. What are the dangers of a poor soap? 6. What are the advantages of cold water in bathing? 7. How often should hot baths be taken and why? 8. On what parts of the body should soap be most freely used? 9. What is the best way of keeping the hair and scalp healthy? 10. Why is this important? 11. Why should hair tonics be let alone? 12. What causes dandruff? 13. How should the nails be trimmed and cleaned? 14. What should be done to the nail-fold? 15. Why is dirt under the nails sodangerous? 16. What qualities should a good garment possess as to shape, fit, and texture? 17. What are the advantages and disadvantages of wool? 18. What are the advantages and disadvantages of cotton? 19. Why are furs unwholesome? 20. What is the best possible material for an undergarment? 21. What are some of the causes of diseases of the skin? 22. What is the cause of sunburn and freckles? 23. What makes a good complexion? 24. What is a corn? What causes it? CHAPTER XVII 1. Name four processes that take place in the living body. 2. What two kinds of waste do these processes cause? 3. What is the name of the "body smoke"? 4. How is the body smoke carried away? 5. What do the terms "soluble" and "insoluble" waste mean? 6. How does the insoluble waste leave the body? 7. By what path does the soluble waste leave the body? 8. How many times in an hour is all the blood in the body pumped through the liver, kidneys, and skin? 9, Why is this done? 10. Why is the blood from the food tube sent to the liver directly, instead of by way of the heart? 11. Why is the liver such a large organ? 12. What does the liver do to the blood? 13. What is the bile duct? 14. What is the bile? 15. What is the gall bladder? 16. What do the terms "bilious" and "jaundiced" mean? 17. What effect does alcohol have upon the liver? CHAPTER XVIII 1. What is muscle? How much of your body weight is made up of the muscles? 2. What two kinds of muscles are there? 3. How do muscles change in shape? 4. What do we mean by voluntary and involuntary muscles, and how do they differ in form and location? 5. Describe the way in which the body muscles are arranged. What kind of actions do they perform? 6. What exercise is good for the muscles over the abdomen? for the muscles of the back? 7. What muscles are we using when we "bat" or "serve" in ball and tennis? 8. How do the muscles of the limbs act for you? 9. Where are the biceps and triceps muscles? Explain their use. 10. What are tendons? What is their use (function)? 11. How is your arm fastened to your body? 12. Describe the arrangement of the muscles in the lower limb. Why are they larger than the arm-muscles? 13. How does exercising the muscles give you an appetite? What else does it do? 14. Why do you naturally love to play? 15. Why is muscular exercise in the open air important in education? CHAPTER XIX 1. What are the bones? 2. Make a rough sketch of the human skeleton. 3. In what sense are the bones the tools of the muscles? 4. How are the bones of the skull arranged? 5. Give two functions (uses) of the spinal column (back bone). 6. What bones and tendons do you use when you stand on tip-toe? 7. How are the limbs fastened to the body and back bone? 8. Why is the collar-bone more likely to be broken than some of the other bones? 9. How are the joints formed? 10. What is cartilage? 11. How does it help in making the two kinds of joints we find in the body? 12. Is there any arrangement for oiling the joints? If so, what is it? 13. When you soak a bone in weak acid, what happens? What does this prove? 14. What causes disease or deformity of the bones? CHAPTER XX 1. Why do we need a system of nerves? 2. What do we mean by motor nerves? by sensory nerves? 3. How is the central system like a telephone office? 4. What does the word ganglion mean to you? 5. What are the ganglions (ganglia) for? 6. Is the brain a ganglion? 7. Give a rough idea of the structure of the brain, and name its parts or divisions. 8. What does each one of these divisions do? 9. What is the result of injury to any one of these parts? Give an instance. 10. Where do we find the gray matter in the nervous system? 11. What is the white matter and what does it do? 12. When the thumb is paralyzed, what do we know about the brain? 13. Where in the body do we really smell, hear, and see? 14. What do we know about the speech centre? 15. Draw a picture of the spinal cord and its branches. 16. Of what use are the ganglia (gray matter) in the spinal cord? Give an example. 17. Why is it that some children can't help wriggling when tickled? 18. Why is the medulla such an important part of the nervous system? 19. When you touch a hot lamp chimney, what happens in your nervous system? 20. Suppose you had seen some tempting fruit, what would have happened in your nervous system and in your digestive system? 21. What does the brain do with the messages from the eyes, ears, and nose? 22. How does the message-and-answer system protect the body? 23. How does it help us to gain knowledge? 24. Why is it that when two people look at the same thing at the same time they may have very different ideas of what it is? CHAPTER XXI 1. Describe the arches of the feet and tell what they are for. 2. Describe the kind of shoe you ought to wear. 3. Do you grow while asleep? 4. How much sleep do you need? 5. Are there many diseases of the muscles and bones? 6. How does nature repair a broken bone? 7. What causes most of the diseases of bones? 8. What is a slouching gait due to? 9. What is the cause of headache? 10. How should headache be regarded and treated? 11. What are the dangers of taking patent or unknown medicines? 12. What do most patent medicines contain? 13. Are the nerves resistant to disease, or specially subject to its attack? 14. What causes many of the diseases of the nerves? 15. Name some poisons that injure the nerves. 16. How may diphtheria affect the nerves? 17. What does alcohol do to the nervous system? 18. Does our modern method of life tend to cause or to cure nervous diseases and insanity? Why? CHAPTER XXII 1. How much of the body will muscular exercise develop? 2. Why should exercise and play be in the open air? 3. What is fatigue and what does it mean? 4. Name some games that are good exercise for the body and tell why they are so. 5. Why do marching and singing and drawing alternating with your other lessons, help you to grow? 6. Is playing a waste of time? Why? 7. How much exercise a day does a grown man or woman need? 8. How should this exercise be taken? 9. What senses and powers does base-ball develop? 10. In what respects is your progress in school work like your progress in learning to play games well? 11. What are good games for girls? 12. Why have we less sickness in summer than in winter? 13. Why is gardening a valuable occupation? 14. When should we do our hardest studying? 15. What is the best and most successful way to study? 16. How can you make school work as enjoyable as play? 17. What are your duties to-day? Plan the best way to do them so that you can also take exercise and rest and time for meals. Write this plan in the form of a day's programme. CHAPTER XXIII 1. What is the "Lookout Department" of the body, and how is the work of this department distributed among the members? 2. Describe the inside structure of the nose. 3. In what sense is the nose like a radiator? 4. What are the cilia for? 5. How does the nose dispose of dust and lint? 6. What causes catarrh and colds? 7. Where is the sense of smell located? 8. When you have a cold, why do you often lose your sense of smell? of taste? 9. How do you tell the difference in flavor between an apple and an onion? 10. What does the tongue do? 11. What are the only tastes perceived in the mouth? 12. What does a coated tongue mean? 13. Is the sense of taste a safe guide in choosing foods? Why? 14. What are adenoids? What trouble do they cause? How can they be cured? 15. How does the eye help to choose food? 16. Name and describe the parts of the face around the eye. 17. Of what use is each? 18. How does the tear gland act? 19. What is the retina? the pupil? the iris? What is each for? 20. What do we mean by bringing the rays of light to a focus? How can you illustrate this by a burning glass? 21. When do eyes need glasses? 22. How can the eye change the form of its lens for near and for far sight? What is this action called? 23. Why do children born deaf become dumb? 24. Where do we find the key-board of hearing? Why do we call it the cochlea? 25. Draw a picture showing the position of the drum, "hammer," "anvil," "stirrup," and cochlea. 26. What has happened in your inner ear when something in your ear goes "pop"? 27. Why does a cold sometimes make you deaf? 28. Why do we have wax in the outer ear? What is the German proverb about cleaning the ear? 29. What is our "sixth sense"? Where do we find its organ located? What is it like? CHAPTER XXIV 1. How is the voice a waste product? 2. What are the conditions required to make a good voice? 3. Are great singers usually strong? Why? 4. How was the windpipe made into the voice box? 5. Describe the vocal bands or cords. 6. How do they act in making voice sounds? when we breathe? 7. How do catarrh and adenoids affect the voice? 8. How is the voice box like a violin? 9. What part of the violin has most to do with the quality of the sound? How does this apply to the human voice? 10. What do the throat, the mouth, and the nose have to do with voice training? 11. What is one of the commonest causes of a poor voice? 12. How can you prove this? 13. What are spoken words? 14. How is a good, clear, distinct voice of value? 15. How can you build up a strong, clear, useful voice? CHAPTER XXV 1. Give four reasons why the teeth are important. 2. To take proper care of the teeth, what other parts of the mouth need attention? 3. Draw a picture of a tooth and label the crown, the enamel, the root, the pulp. 4. Name the different teeth, making diagrams of the upper and lower jaws and tell how each kind of tooth is used. 5. Compare your own teeth with those of a dog, a sheep, and a squirrel and explain the difference in use. 6. In what order did your teeth appear in your mouth? 7. What are the milk-teeth? 8. How many teeth have you? Have any been pulled? 9. Will you have any more later? 10. Name three things to be remembered in exercising the teeth. 11. What is the best method to keep the teeth and gums clean? 12. Why are "gritty" tooth-powders bad for the teeth? 13. Are antiseptics good for them? 14. Why are dirty teeth a very common cause of disease in the body? 15. (Exercise) Write a letter to your teacher telling how you have been taking care of your teeth in the past, and how you purpose to do it in the future. CHAPTER XXVI 1. How may "catching" diseases be prevented? 2. What are disease germs, and how are they named? 3. How do disease germs grow? 4. Why should patients with the "diseases of childhood" be placed in quarantine. 5. What causes a cold? How should you take care of one? Why keep away from other people? 6. When and how did we find that diphtheria was due to germs? 7. Explain how "antitoxin" prevents it. 8. How much has the death rate in diphtheria been lowered? 9. Name the diseases for which we now have vaccines and antitoxins. How do we grow them? 10. Tell the story about Dr. Jenner and the milkmaids. 11. What good has his discovery done? 12. Explain why vaccination will cure as well as prevent smallpox. 13. What is quinine, and where does it get its name? 14. Who discovered the germ of malaria? Is it a plant or an animal? 15. What do we know about the connection between mosquitoes and malaria? 16. What is a quick way of killing the mosquito? 17. How does draining fields prevent malaria? Why is malaria not so common now as in pioneer days? 18. Why do we need disinfectants? Name some, and describe how they are used. 19. What is the best one in most cases? Why? In what ways may it be used? 20. How do the bacteria of the soil "feed" the green plants? 21. Explain why a crop of clover will enrich the soil. What other plants also do the same thing? 22. Name some other harmless bacteria. 23. Why ought one to wash the hands before eating? 24. Is it possible to kill all house flies? Why ought we to try to? How can it be done? 25. What do we find in dust? 26. What good does it do to sprinkle streets? 27. What is the best way to clean house? CHAPTER XXVII 1. What is the best insurance against accidents? 2. Why do most cuts and scratches heal quickly, while some others do not? 3. What kind of dirt is dangerous to wounds? 4. If your knife should slip and cut you, how ought you to take care of the cut? 5. If you know the knife is dirty, what is the proper treatment? 6. Is "sticking-plaster" good for a wound? Why not? 7. Why does absorbent cotton make a good dressing? 8. Give two reasons why doctors can perform surgical operations now much more safely than some years ago. 9. Why must surgeons and nurses keep themselves and their patients perfectly clean? 10. What difference has this cleanliness made in the saving of life? 11. What is the treatment for bruises? Why are they not so dangerous as cuts? 12. What are boils and carbuncles? 13. How do we clean and heal them? 14. Where blood comes in spurts from a cut, what does this mean? 15. How does the blood itself protect us against infection in wounds? 16. If the wound is very deep, how can you check the bleeding? 17. Why should the tight bandage be slightly loosened in half an hour after it has been applied? 18. Why is it that we do not need to clean a burn? 19. Why is it wise to keep the air from a burn? How may it be done? 20. Why must the dressings be perfectly clean? 21. Why do we need a doctor in the case of a broken bone? 22. If you can't get a doctor, what is to be done? 23. What is a sprain? Tell how to bathe and bandage it. 24. In the case of swallowing poison, why should one drink warm water? 25. What else should be done? 26. What should be given when lye has been swallowed? 27. What is the important thing to remember in any such case? 28. If you fall into deep water, what four things should you remember? 29. Explain carefully just how to revive a person who has been under water. 30. What is the main purpose of this method? GLOSSARY OF IMPORTANT TERMS USED IN THE BOOK [Transcriber's note: In the following section vowels are transcribed as: [)vowel] with breve [=vowel] with macron [.vowel] with dot above] I. RELATING TO THE BODY AS A WHOLE Ab'do men (or [)a]b d[=o]'m[)e]n). The cavity of the trunk immediately below the diaphragm. Car'ti lage. Tough, elastic tissue, generally more or less fibrous; called also gristle (gr[)i]s'l). Cell. The simplest form of living matter, with power to grow, develop, reproduce itself, and, with others of its kind, build up a living fabric. Di'a phragm (d[=i]'[.a] fr[)a]m). The muscular membrane that separates the thorax from the abdomen. Duct. A tube through which fluid from a gland is conveyed. Fa tigue' (f[.a] t[=e]g'). A condition in which the body cells are worn out faster than they are built up, so that waste matter accumulates in the body and poisons it. Germ. The simplest form of life, from which a living organism develops. Gland. A part, or organ, that has the power of making a secretion, peculiar to itself. A gland may be a simple pocket, or follicle, as is an oil gland of the skin, or it may be an aggregate of such glands, as is the liver. Or'gan. Any part, or member, that has some specific function, or duty, by which some one of the body's activities is carried on; for example, the eye is the organ of vision, the liver is one of the organs of digestion. Tho'rax. The cavity of the trunk immediately above the diaphragm. Tis'sue (t[)i]sh'[=u]). A fabric, or texture, composed of cells and cell-products of one kind; as, for example, nervous tissue, muscular tissue, fatty tissue. Se cre'tion. A substance made from the blood, the special character of which depends upon the kind of gland that makes, or secretes, it. II. RELATING TO THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM Al i men'ta ry ca nal'. The food tube, or digestive tube, extending from lips and nose to the end of the rectum, with its various branches and attachments. Bile. A yellow, bitter, alkaline liquid secreted by the liver, and especially valuable in the digestion of fats; sometimes called gall. Co'lon. The large intestine. Di ges'tion. The process in the body by which food is changed to the form in which it can pass from the alimentary canal to the blood vessels and lymphatics. Di ges'tive sys'tem. The alimentary canal with all its branches and appendages; that is, all the organs that directly take part in the process of digestion. E soph'a gus. The tube through which food and drink pass from the pharynx to the stomach; called also the gul'let. Gall blad'der. The bile bladder; the sac, or reservoir, lying on the under side of the liver, in which the bile is received from the liver, and in which it is retained until discharged through the gall duct into the small intestine. Gas'tric juice. The digestive liquid secreted by the glands of the stomach (pep'tic glands); it contains pepsin, acid, and ferments; called also peptic juice. In tes'tine. The last part of the alimentary canal, extending from the pylorus. Its length is five or six times that of the body. The greater part of its length is called the small intestine in distinction from the remaining part, which, though much shorter, is larger in diameter, and is called the large intestine or co'lon. The intestine as a whole is sometimes called the bow'el. Liv'er. The large gland that secretes bile and is active in changing or killing harmful substances; located in the upper part of the abdominal cavity, on the right side, and folds over on the pyloric end of the stomach. Lym phat'ics. Small transparent tubes running through the various tissues, and containing a colorless fluid somewhat thinner than blood, called lymph. This fluid is composed of the leakage from the arteries and of wastes from the tissues, which are being carried to a larger lymph duct to be emptied into one of the larger veins. The lymphatics in the wall of the intestine take up some of the digested food from the cells and pass it on through the lymph glands of the abdomen to the lymph duct which empties into a vein near the heart. Mas ti ca'tion. The process of grinding, or chewing, food in the mouth. Mes'en ter y. The tissue (part of the peritoneum) which is attached to the intestine and, for a few inches, to the spinal column, to hold the coils of the intestine in place. Mu'cous mem'brane. The lining membrane, or tissue, of the entire alimentary canal. It is very complex in structure, has different characteristics in different areas, and contains nerves, blood vessels, lymphatics, and in various parts special structures such as glands. It secretes mucous. It is continuous with the outside skin of the body, as may be seen at the lips. Pan'cre as. The gland that secretes the pancreatic juice; located in the abdominal cavity near the stomach. Pan cre at'ic juice. An alkaline digestive juice poured by the pancreas into the small intestine; especially valuable in the digestion of starches, fats, and proteins. Per i to ne'um. The membrane lining the abdominal cavity and enfolding its organs. Phar'ynx. The passage between the nasal passages and the esophagus: the throat. Py lor'us. (1) The opening from the stomach into the small intestine. (2) The fold of mucous membrane, containing muscle fibres, that helps to regulate the passage of food through the pyloric opening. Sa li'va. The digestive secretion in the mouth, consisting of the secretion of the salivary glands and the secretion of the mucous membrane of the mouth. Stom'ach. The pouch-like enlargement of the alimentary canal, lying in the upper part of the abdominal cavity, and slightly to the left, between the esophagus and the small intestine. III. RELATING TO FOOD AND DRINK Ac'id ([)a]s'[)i]d). A substance (usually sour tasting) that has, among other properties, the power of combining with an alkali in such a way that both substances lose their peculiar characteristics and form a salt. Al'co hol. A colorless liquid formed by the fermentation of starch-sugars or certain other substances, which is highly inflammable and burns without smoke or waste; it is a stimulant and an antiseptic. Al'ka li. A substance that has, among other properties, the power of neutralizing acids and forming salts with them. (See Acid.) Car'bo hy'drates. Plant or animal substances composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. (Called also starch-sugars.) Chlo'ro phyll. The green coloring matter of plants, formed by the action of sunlight on the plant cells. It is a necessary part of the plant's digestive system, since without it the plant could not break up the carbon dioxid of the air into the carbon which it uses in preparing its starch food, and the oxygen which it gives off as waste. Fer men ta'tion. A chemical change in plant or animal substance, produced usually by the action of bacteria, in the process of which the substance is broken up (decomposed), and new substances are formed. Nar cot'ic. Any substance that blunts the senses, or the body's sensibility to pain or discomfort. Ni'tro gen. A tasteless, odorless, colorless gas, forming nearly four-fifths of the earth's atmosphere; and constituting a necessary part of every plant and animal tissue. Pro'te ins. Foods containing a large amount of nitrogen; such as meat, fish, milk, egg, peas, beans. IV. RELATING TO THE BLOOD AND THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM A or'ta. The main artery of the body; it leads out from the left ventricle of the heart, carrying arterialized blood (blood that has been acted upon by oxygen) to all parts of the body except the lungs. Ar'te ries. The blood vessels and their branches that carry blood from the heart to all parts of the body. The pul'mon a ry artery carries impure (ve'nous) blood to the lungs. Au'ri cles (ô'r[)i] klz). The two chambers of the heart that receive blood from the veins. Cap'il la ries. The minute blood vessels which form a network between the ends of the arteries and the beginnings of the veins. Cir cu la'tion. The passage of the blood from the heart into the arteries, and from them through the capillaries into the veins, and through the veins back into the heart. Cor'pus cles (cor'p[)u]s'lz). Minute jelly-like disks or cells. These are of two kinds, red and white, the red (the oxygen carriers) being about 350 times as many as the white, and giving the blood its color. Heart. A muscle-sac located in the thorax between the lungs, its lower point, or a'pex, being tilted somewhat to the left; the centre and force-pump of the circulatory system. Ox i da'tion. Combining with oxygen. Ox'y gen. A colorless, odorless, tasteless gas, which forms about one-fifth of the earth's atmosphere. It is found in all animal and vegetable tissues. When it combines with other substances, a certain amount of heat is produced; and if the process is sufficiently rapid, a flame is seen. Pulse. The regularly recurring enlargement of an artery, caused by the increased blood flow following each contraction of the ventricle of the heart. Veins. The blood vessels and their branches through which blood flows from all parts of the body back to the heart. All the veins except the pulmonary veins carry impure (venous) blood; the pulmonary veins carry arterialized (oxidated) blood from the lungs. Ve'na ca'va. Either of the two large veins discharging into the right auricle of the heart. Por'tal vein. The large, short vein that drains the liver and adjacent parts. Ven'tri cles. The two chambers of the heart that receive blood from the auricles and force it into the arteries. V. RELATING TO THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM AND ORGANS OF EXCRETION Al ve'o li ([)a]l v[=e]'o l[=i]). (Plural of _alveolus_). Air cells. The cells, or cavities, that line the air passages and air sacs at the ends of the bronchial tubes. Breath. Air taken in or sent out in respiration; that breathed out containing carbon dioxid, watery vapor, and various impurities. Bron'chi (br[)o]n'k[=i]). (Plural of _bronchus_). The two main branches of the trachea. These branch into numerous smaller branches, called the bron'chi al tubes. Car'bon di ox'id. A gas formed of carbon and oxygen; colorless and odorless; has a somewhat acid taste, and is used for aerating soda water and other beverages; is present naturally in mineral and spring waters. It is present largely in the fissures of the earth and makes the choke-damp of mines. Called also car bon'ic acid. Ep i glot'tis. The valve-like cover that prevents food and drink from entering the larynx. Ex cre'tion. A waste substance thrown out, or rejected, from the system; for example, carbon dioxid, sweat, ur'ine, the fe'ces. Lar'ynx. The enlargement of the windpipe, near its upper end, across which are stretched the vocal cords. Lungs. Two spongy organs in the thorax, entered by the bronchi with their bronchial tubes; they contain in the walls of their air cells the capillaries through which the blood passes from the branches of the pulmonary artery to the branches of the pulmonary veins. Rec'tum. The lowest and last section of the alimentary canal, being the discharge pipe of the large intestine, and excreting the solid wastes in the form of the feces. Res pi ra'tion. Breathing; the action of the body by which carbon dioxid is given off from the blood and a corresponding amount of oxygen is absorbed into the blood. Skin. The continuous outer covering of the body, in the deeper layer (der'ma) of which are located the sweat glands, which secrete sweat (a watery, oily substance containing impurities from the blood) and excrete it through the sweat ducts and their openings (pores) in the surface of the skin. Tra'che a (or tr[=a] ch[=e]' [.a]). The windpipe between the larynx and the bronchi. U'ri na ry system. The organs concerned in the secretion and discharge of urine: the kid'neys (two glands in the abdominal cavity, back of the peritoneum, which receive wastes from the blood, and excrete them as urine), the u re'ters (ducts through which the urine flows from the kidneys to the bladder), the blad'der (an elastic muscle-sac in which the urine is retained until discharged from the body). VI. RELATING TO THE NERVOUS AND MOTOR SYSTEMS Brain. The soft mass of nerve tissue filling the upper cavity of the skull. Its cellular tissue is gray, and its fibrous tissue white. With the spinal cord it controls all the sensory and motor activities of the body. Cer e bel'lum. The part of the brain lying below the hind part of the cerebrum. Cer'e brum. The upper or fore part of the brain; it is divided by a deep fissure into two hemispheres, its cor'tex (surface) lies in many con vo lu'tions (folds), and its fibres run down into the spinal cord. In this part of the brain are the centres, or controlling nerve cells, of the senses and most of our conscious activities. Gang'li a (g[)a]ng'l[)i] [.a]). (Plural of _ganglion_). Nerve knots, or groupings of nerve cells, forming an enlargement in the course of a nerve. Me dul'la. A portion of the brain forming an enlargement at the top of the spinal cord and being continuous with it; the channel between the brain and the other parts of the nervous system. Muscle (mus'l). A kind of animal tissue that consists of fibres that have the power of contracting when properly stimulated. A bundle of muscle fibres, called a muscle, is usually attached to the part to be moved by a ten'don, or sinew. Muscles causing bones to bend are termed flex'ors; those causing them to straighten, ex ten'sors. The movements of muscles may be voluntary (controlled by the will), or involuntary (made without conscious exercise of the will). Nerve. A fibre of nerve tissue, or a bundle of such fibres, connecting nerve ganglia with each other or with some terminal nerve organ. Nerves running inward toward the spinal cord and the brain are called sen'so ry nerves; those from the brain and spinal cord outward, mo'tor nerves. Nerv'ous system. The nerve centres with the sensory and motor nerves and the organs of sense. Neu'rons. The cells of the spinal cord and the brain. Re'flex. A simple action of the nervous system, in which a stimulus is carried along sensory nerves to a nerve centre, and from which an answering stimulus is sent along motor nerves to call into play the activity of some organ, without consciousness, or without direct effort of the will. Spi'nal cord. The soft nerve tissue that extends from the medulla almost to the end of the spinal column, being encased by it. It controls most of the reflex actions of the body. Stim'u lus. Anything that starts an activity in the tissues on which it acts; for example, light is a stimulus to the nerve tissues of the eye. INDEX Abdomen, 204. Accommodation, 264. Acetanilid, 237 _note_. Acid, as an antidote, 325; butyric, 53; carbonic, 11; explained, 11; in changing starch, 41; in leavening, 44, 45; in fruits, 57, 58, 59; in starch-sugars, 283; in digestive juices, 11 _note_; in mouth, 283, 285; lactic, 43. "Adam's apple," 272. Adenoids, 253, 256, 257, 274. Ague. _See_ Malaria. Air, circulation of free, 140, 149; composition of, 132; indoor currents of, 148-150; per person, 142; pure and impure, 139-146. Alcohol, a medicine, 96, 100; an antiseptic, 318, 319, 324; a narcotic, 90, 98, 99; a toxin, 94; decreasing use of, 101-103; effect of, on character, 101; in beverages, 94, 95; in patent medicines, 237; not a food, 90, 96; physical effects of, 97-100, 122-124, 166, 197, 199, 201, 239; source of, 93, 95. Aldehydes, 94. Ale, 94. Alimentary canal, 8, 9; digestion in, 9-19. _See also_ Gullet, Intestine. Alkali, as an antidote, 325; as medicine, 14, 15; explained, 11; digestive juices, 11 _note_; in leavening, 44, 45; in meat, 283; in soap, 186. Alveoli, 135. Ameba, white corpuscles compared to, 109, 110. Amherst, experiments with smokers at, 107. Ammonia from decay, 74, 308. Animals and plants contrasted, 5-7. Anopheles, 302. Antidotes. _See_ Poisoning. Antipyrin, 237 _note_. Antiseptics, use of, 317-320. Antitoxins, 293-296. Anvil, 267. Aorta, 112, 113, 115, 118, 119, 200. Apex of heart, 117. Apoplexy, 123. Appendicitis, 20. Appendix vermiformis, 20. Appetite, from exercise, 208; juice, 9. Appetites, explained, 21. Apples, fermented, 94; food value of, 58; fuel value of, 26. Aqueduct, 85. Arrack, 96. Arteries, bleeding from, 320-322; defined, 108, 109; function of, 17; position of, 113; red blood in, 111; stiffening of, 123; _also_, 112, 196, 200. Artery, pulmonary, 118; radial, 118. Articulation, of bones, 212; of sounds, 276. Artois, wells of, 82. Astigmatism, 263. Athletics, 175, 176, 242. Atropin, 265 _note_. Auricle, 116, 117, 118. Bacilli, cultivation of, 293; explained, 152-154, 286; method of naming, 286; multiplication of, 288. _See also_ Bacteria _and_ Germs. Backache, 204. Backbone. _See_ Spinal column. Bacon, fuel value of, 52, 54, 55. Bacteria, explained, 17; harmless, 152; in feces, 19; in food, 22; in milk, 33-38; in small intestine, 17; of disease, 152, 286; of soil, 74, 76, 78, 79, 83, 86, 308; of yeast, 43. _See also_ Bacilli _and_ Germs. Bakeries, 45, 46. Baking-powders, 44, 45. Banana, 58, 59. Barley, in making beer and ale, 94. Bathing, need of, 184; preventive of colds, 155; right and wrong, 184-186. Beans, 32. Beef-tea, 26, 31. Beer, 89. _See also_ Alcohol. Beets, 26, 59. Berries, 58, 59. Beverages, 89-93. _See also_ Alcohol. Biceps, 203, 206. Bile, 11 _note_, 16, 17, 198, 199; duct, 197, 199. Biliousness, 23, 197. "Black bread," 48. "Black Death," 288. Bladder, 200. _See also_ Gall bladder. Bleeding. _See_ Wounds. Blood, alkaline quality of, 11 _note_; anemic, 173, 192; arterial, 111; circulation of, 110-113, 118, 119; color of, 109, 111, 112, 173, 174; composition of, 109, 110; heat, 175; impure, 198; poisoning, 295, 315, 319; purifying of, 196; result of food, 18. Blood vessels, 108, 109. _See also_ Arteries, Capillaries, Veins. Board of Health, and infections, 286, 291; control of water supply, 77, 81, 88; examination, 105; milk inspection, 34, 38, 39, 78. Boils, 295, 320. Bolus, 9. Bones, composition and growth of; 210, 211; disorders of, 229, 230, 234, 235; fractures of, 323; kinds of, 212-214; number of, 211; structure of, 215; tuberculosis of, 157. Bowel. _See_ Intestine. Brain, 216-220; development of, 167. Brandy, 94, 95. Bread, baking, 43, 44; crust of, 44; fuel value of, 58; kinds and values of, 42, 46, 48; leavening, 42-46; souring of, 43, 44. Breakfast foods, 47. Breathing, control of, 226; need of continuous,130; operation of, 138; rate of, 142; variations in, 137, 138. Bright's Disease, 201. Bronchi, 135. Bronchial tubes, 135. Bruises, 319. Brushes, hair, 193-194; nail, 189; skin, 188. Bubonic plague, 288. Burns, 322, 323. Butter, 51, 52-54. Cabbage, 26, 58, 60. Caffein, 91. Callus, 194, 195, 234. Candy, 50, 52. Capillaries, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 118, 119, 200. Carbohydrates, 27, 41, 48, 141. _See also_ Starch-Sugars. Carbon, 42. Carbonates, 136. Carbon dioxid, in air, 140, 141; in blood, 174; in body cells, 112; in breath, 137; in lungs, 111, 196; in spring water, 74, 83; in yeast, 43. Carbuncles, 320. Carrots, 59. Cartilage, 136, 210, 214. Casein, 30, 36, 39. Catarrh, 253, 256, 274. Cathartic, 19. Cecum, 20. Celery, 58, 61. Cells, 9, 14, 15, 17, 18, 201, 287; eating done by, 108, 110, 112, 131; of liver, 111; of lungs, 135; of muscles, 202, 203, 209; of skin, 169, 170; waste from, 131, 132; water 111, 70. Cereals, 42. _See also_ Breakfast Foods _and_ Oatmeal. Cerebellum, 270. Cheese, 39. Chemical change, 42. Chickenpox, 290. Children's diseases, 289-291; from dirty milk, 37. China, wearing nails long in, 173. Chincon, Countess of, 301. Chloral, 97. Chloroform, 97, 199. Chlorophyll, 5. Choking, cause of, 135. Cider, 94. Cigarette habit, 104, 107. Cinchona. _See_ Quinine. Circulation, blood vessels of skin and, 184; color an index to, 174; control of, 226; rate of, 196. Clothing, 179-183. _Also_ 190, 247. Coal-tar remedies, 237 _note_. Cocci, 153; of pneumonia, 154, 166. Cochlea, 267. Cocoa, 90, 91-93. Coffee, 26, 89, 90, 91-93. Colds, 125, 154-156, 199, 201, 291-293. Colic, 23. Colon, 8, 18. Complexion, 114, 115, 176. Concha, 268. Cones, 264 _note_. Constipation, 19, 20, 204. Consumption, 152, 153, 157-166. _See also_ Tuberculosis. Contraction, 203. Convolutions, 219. Cooking, 62-68. Corn, 47, 60. Cornea, 259, 260, 261. Corns, 194, 195. Corpuscles, malaria germs in red, 301; red, 109, 111, 132; renewal of, 215; white, 109, 110. Cortex, 219, 223. Cowpox, 296, 297. Crystalline lens, 263. Cucumbers, 26, 58, 61. Culex pipiens, 302. Dandruff, 191. Dentine, 279. Derma, 168. Dextrin, 44. Diaphragm, 8, 13, 276. Diarrhea, 23, 47, 157. _See also_ Children's diseases. Digestion, by body cells, 17, 18; by liver, 198; food route in, 8; in intestines, 16-20; in mouth, 10-12; in stomach, 13-15; juices aiding, 9-12, 14-17; preparatory, 9. Digestive system, 7-9. Diphtheria, 293-295; germs of, 286, 310. Disease, causes of, 286-288; effects of, 238; germs of, 17 _note_, 152-154, 286, 301; growth and spread of, 288-290; hip-joint, 157. Diseases, children's, 289-291; nervous, 239, 240; occupation, 153, 195. Disinfectants, 193, 287, 303-307, 318. Disinfection, 303; methods of, 304-307; of wounds, 316-319. Dispensaries, tuberculosis, 160. Drafts, 143, 144. Drainage, extent of wells, 77; of sewage, 75-79; of swamps, 302, 303. Drink, 69-103. _See also_ Alcohol, Beverages, Water, etc. Drowning, treatment for partial, 327-330. Duct of a gland, development of, 10 _note_. Dust, 22, 153, 154, 312, 313. Dysentery, 199. _See also_ Diarrhea. Dyspepsia, 47, 199, 204, 264. Ear, care of, 268, 269; development of, 167, 252, 253; structure of, 266-270. Eczema, 59, 191. Effervescence, 11, 43, 44. Egg, digestion of, 14, 17. Enamel, 279. Energy in food and fuel, 4, 5. England, smallpox in, 296, 297. Epidermis, 168. Epiglottis, 135. Epithelial cells, 168, 169. Eruptions, 193. Esophagus, 7. _See also_ Gullet. Ether, 97. Ethers, 94. Eustachian tube, 257. Exercise, 241-251; appetite and, 208; heart and, 120-122, 126, 127, 128; muscles and, 204, 205, 208, 209. _Also_ 154, 162, 163, 176, 238. Extensors, 206. Eyes, care of, 266; development of, 167, 252, 253; structure of, 259-265. Eye-strain, 236. Fat, 51-55; fuel value of, 27, 51, 52; in digestion, 16, 17, 51; in liver, 198, 199; in milk, 30, 39. Fatigue, 241-243. Feces, 9, 18, 19, 192. Femur, 214. Fermentation, 94. Fever, 175-177; effect of, on heart, 125; in consumption, 124. Fibula, 213. Filters, domestic, 88; nature's, 74, 75, 83, 85, 86; of waterworks, 85, 86. Fish, fuel value of, 29; wastes from, 201. Fission of a bacillus, 288. Flexors, 206. Flies, 309-312. Food, absorption of, 17-19; appetizing, 9-10; as fuel, 4-7, 21, 25, 26; changed into blood, 18; cleanliness of, 22; "coal," 25, 26, 27-55; digestion of, 9-18; in blood, 110-113; irritating, 55, 59, 60; "kindling," 25, 26, 56-61; "paper," 25, 26, 31, 56-61; preservation of, 22, 23; sunlight in, 5-7; variety in, 23-25; water in, 73. Food tube. _See_ Alimentary canal. Foot, 230-232. Formaldehyde, 305-307. Formalin, 305-307. Fractures, 323, 324. Freckles, 190. Fruits, composition of, 24, 57, 58; fuel value of, 26, 58; in diet, 23-25; tainted, 22. Furs, as clothing, 182. Gall bladder, 199. Gall stones, 199. Games, 242-251. Ganglia, 217, 221, 223. Gardening, 61, 247, 248. Gas, illuminating, 143; sewer, 143. _See also_ Carbon dioxid, Carbonic acid. Gastric juice, 198. Gelatin, in veal, 29; for bacteria culture, 293, 309. German proverb, 269. Germany, smallpox in, 197; typhoid in, 80 _note_. Germicides. _See_ Disinfectants. Germs, 17 _note_, 301. _See also_ Bacilli, Bacteria, Cocci, Disinfection, Disease. Glands, development of, 10, 11 _note_; hair, 171, 172; lachrymal, 261; lymph, 17; of ear, 269; of intestine, 17-19; of stomach, 15,16; of throat, 256; oil, 171; parotid, 10; salivary, 10, 11; sublingual, 10 _note_; submaxillary, 10 _note_; sweat, 170, 171. Glucose, 41. Gluten, 28, 42, 48, 63. Glycogen, 198. "Goose-skin," 171. Gout, 32. Gray matter, 219, 221. Gristle. _See_ Cartilage. Gullet, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 134, 135. Habit, regularity of physical, 19. Hair, 70, 171, 172 _and note_; care of, 172, 193, 194; diseases of, and scalp, 191, 193. Ham, 54, 55. Hammer, 267. "Ham-string" muscle, 208. Hang nail, 189. Headache, 235-237, 264. Heart, alcohol and, 99, 123, 124; beat, 9, 13, 117, 118, 119, 126-129; blood vessels connecting with, 111, 112; care of, 122; disease of, 123-128; exercise and, 120-122, 241, 243; function of, 108; nerves and, 126-128; repairing power of, 122, 123; structure and action of, 115-117, 118, 119; tea and coffee and, 128. Heart-burn, 13. Heat of body, normal, 175; radiation of, 175-177. Heating, 149, 151. Hemispheres, 216. Hives, 59. Hookworm, 191-193. Humerus, 213. Humus, risks to water from, 73, 74. Hydrophobia, 287, 318. Hygiene, 1-3. Hyperopia, 262, 264. Influenza. 239. _See also_ Colds. Insanity, 239, 240. Insect pests, 309-312. Instincts, 3, 21. Intestine, absorption in, 14, 16-19; digestion in, 9, 15-18, 20; effect of fibrous foods on, 47, 60; hookworm in, 192; muscles supporting, 204. Iris, 265. Jaundice, 199. Jenner, Dr., 296-298. "Joint oil." _See_ Synovial fluid. Joints, 213, 214; injury to, 323, 324. Kidneys, 196, 197, 199-201. _See also_ Wastes. Kipling quoted, 231. Klebs-Loeffler bacillus, 286, 293. Knee cap. _See_ Patella. Lactose, 30. Lard, 52, 54. Larynx, 272-276. Laveran, 301. Leavening, 43-45. Legumin, 32. Leprosy, 178. Lettuce, 26, 61. Lime, carbon dioxid and, 137; in body, 70, 210, 211; in water, 88. "Lime-juicers," 57 _note_. Liver, 197-199; development of, 11 _note_; function of, 110, 111; juice of, 16, 17; position of, 13; vein entering, 110; weight of, 16. _See also_ Wastes. Lungs, 133-136; capillaries in, 111; function of, 111; diseases of, 153, 157-166. _See also_ Wastes. Lymphatics, 17. Malaria, 199, 300-303. Maltose, 94. Marrow, 215; "spinal," 223 _note_. Mastication, 11, 12. Mastoid, 269. Measles, 193, 239, 290, 291. Meat, digestion of, 14, 17; fuel value of, 27-29, 58; tainted, 22, 32, 335. wastes from, 201. Medulla, 223, 226. Meningitis, cerebro-spinal, 295; tubercular, 157. Mesentery, 16. Microbes. _See_ Bacteria. Milk, bacteria in, 22, 33-39, 308, 309; digestion of, 14, 17; fuel value of, 28-31; inspection of, 34, 38, 39, 78; stations, 30, 92. Mosquitoes, 302, 303. Mouth, 7, 8, 9; in speaking and singing, 274-276; infection from, 285; breathing, 253, 256, 257, 283. Mucous membrane, 14, 110, 118, 255, 256, 275. Mucus, 255. Mumps, 290. Muscles, 202-209; and nerves, 220-227; controlling hair, 171; disorders of, 229, 230, 233, 234; exercise of, 241-248; in breathing, 138. _See also_ 7, 12, 13, 15, 214, 261, 262. Myopia, 262. Myosin, 28. Nails, 172-174. _See also_ 70, 188, 189. Narcotics, 90, 97, 237, 238. Nerves, and heart, 126-128; and muscles, 203, 220-227; auditory, 266; optic, 260; sciatic, 222, 223, 224; sensory and motor, 220; spinal, 220, 221. Nervous system, 216-227; alcohol and, 97-103, 239; development of, 167; disorders of, 235-240; effects of disease on, 238; eyes and, 264; fatigue and, 241-243; tobacco and, 105, 106. Nettle-rash. _See_ Hives. Neurons, 223. Nicotine, 105. Nitrogen, as food, 27, 46, 47, 132, 201, 133 _note_; in air, 132; in soil, 308. Nose, 167, 252-255, 274-276. Nuts, 32, 55. Oatmeal, 42, 47, 48. Ohio River, pollution of, 87 _note_. Oil, in killing larvæ, 302, 303, 311. Oleomargarine, 53, 54. Onions, 58, 60. Opium, 97, 238. _See also_ Narcotics. Orbit, 260. Oxidation, 131-133. Oxygen, gas jets and, 143; in blood, 109, 110-113, 132; in water, 86. Ozone. _See_ Oxygen. Palate, 8. Panama, malaria in, 303. Pancreas, 11 _note_, 16. Pancreatic juice, 11 _note_, 12, 16, 17. Papillae, 258. Paralysis, 178, 239; infantile, 300. Parasites, animal, in the skin, 191-193. Parsnips, 59. Patella, 207. Patent medicines, 237, 238. Peaches, 58. Peanuts, 55. Pears, 58. Peas, 32. Pelvis, 214. Pemmican, 52. Pepsin, 14, 16. Peptic juice, 11 _note_, 14, 15. Periosteum, 215, 234. Peritoneum, 20. Peroxide of hydrogen, 318. Perspiration. _See_ Sweat. Pharynx, 8, 254, 256. Phenacetin, 237 _note_. Philippine Islands, smallpox in, 297. Physiology, 1-3. Pigment, 191. Pneumonia, 165, 166; coccus of, 154; effects of, on heart, 125. Poisoning, treatments for, 324-327. Poison ivy, 325, 326. Portal vein, 110, 198. Post mortem, 101. Potatoes, 26, 27, 40, 41, 42, 48, 56, 57. Privy vault, dangers from, 78, 79, 81, 192. Proteins, 27, 28; changed by liver, 198; in food, 28, 30, 31, 32, 47; wastes from, 199. Protozoa, 287, 288. Ptomaines, 22. Ptyalin, 11. Pulse, 112, 117, 118. Pupil, 265. Pylorus, 8. Quarantine, 291, 298. Quinine, 301. Radius, 213. Reading, position in, 228. Recti, 261. Rectum, 9, 18. Reflex, 221, 222. Reservoirs, 84-86; _also_, 79, 80, 85 _note_. Respiration, artificial, 329, 330. Retina, 260, 262, 263, 264. Rheumatism, 123, 125, 292, 295. Ribs, 138. Rice, fermented, 96; fuel value of, 48. Ringworm, 191. Rods, 264 _note_. Russia, smallpox in, 297. Rye, 48. Saké, 96. Saliva, 9-11, 12, 16. Salts, 6; from deep soil, 75; in vegetables, 57, 59, 60; in water, 77, 83, 88; laxative, 6 _note_, 19. Scabies, 191. Scapula, 213. Scarlet fever, 193, 201, 239, 290, 291. School, gardens, 247, 248; luncheons, 68; physician, 121, 122; recesses, 146. Sclerotic coat, 261. Scrofula, 157. Scurvy, 57. Seaver, Dr., experiments with smokers, 106. Selection, power of, 197. Semi-circular canals, 269, 270. Sense, of hearing, 266; of pain, 177, 224; of sight, 260; of smell, 256; of taste, 257-259; of temperature, 177; of touch, 177, 178 _and note_; sixth--of direction or balance, 269, 270. Senses and ideas, 225, 226. Septum, 254. Shoes, 195, 231, 232. Skeleton, 211, 212. Skin, 167-178; accidents to, 315-320, 322; brushes, 188; diseases of, 157, 178, 187, 189, 190, 191, 193. _See also_ Wastes. Skull, 212. Sleep, 232, 233. Smallpox, 287, 295-299. Smoking. _See_ Tobacco. Snake-bite, 327. Soaps, 11, 186, 187, 190. Socket. _See_ Orbit. Soda water, 11, 57. Soup, 26, 31. Spinal column, 212, 213; curvatures of, 229; tuberculosis of, 157. Spinal cord, 212, 220-223, 300. Spitting, 159, 160. Sprains, 323, 324. Sputum, infection from, 158, 159, 166. Starch, as fuel, 24, 27, 41; compared with sugar, 49; digestion of, 11, 12, 16, 17, 41, 42; in foods, 24, 31, 40, 41, 42-44, 48, 57, 59, 60; teeth and, 283. Starch-Sugars, 27, 31, 42. State control of health, 122. Sterilizing, 304. Stirrup, 267. Stomach, 7, 13-15; and nervous system, 227. _See also_ 4-6, 8, 10 _note_, 12, 204. Stradivarius, 274. Strawberries, 26, 58, 59. Study, how to, 248, 249. Sugar, digested starch, 11, 12, 16, 17, 41, 42; fuel value of, 27, 49, 50, 52, 208; in digestion, 198; in foods, 30, 36, 48, 49, 57-60; teeth and, 283. Sulphur, as a disinfectant, 306; in cabbage, 60; in water, 77. Sulphuric acid, 11. Sunburn, 190. Sweat, 11 _note_, 132, 133, 170, 181-184, 208. Synovial fluid, 214. Tannin, 91, 93. Tattooing, 169. Tea, 26, 89, 90-93. Teeth, 7, 277-282; care of, 282-285; infection from, 141, 285. Temperance, 101-103. _See also_ Alcohol. Tendons, 117, 203, 207, 208. Tetanus, 288, 295. Thein, 91. Theobromin, 91. Thigh, 207, 208. Thirst, 71. Tibia, 213. Tissues, 18. _See also_ Cells. Tobacco, 103-107; and heart, 128, 129; and nervous system, 239. Tomatoes, 60, 61. Tongue, 7, 9, 10, 257, 259. Tonsil, 256. Tourniquet, 321. Toxins, 22. Trachea, 134. _See also_ Windpipe. Triceps, 206. Trypsin, 16. Tubercle bacillus, 157, 158; toxin of, 164. Tuberculin test, 164. Tuberculosis, deaths from, 156; effects of, 123, 201; expense of, 158, 161; kinds of, 152-154, 157; prevention and cure of, 157-164, 309; symptoms of, 164, 165. Turner, 147. Turnips, 60. Tympanum, 257, 267, 268. Typhoid, bacillus of, 286, 295; effect of, on heart, 125; from milk, 37, 38; from water, 79-81; in Germany, 80. _See also_ 201, 309. Ulna, 213. Urates, 199. Urea, 199, 200. Ureters, 200. Urinary system, 200. Urine, 11 _note_, 132, 200, 201. Vaccination, 295-299. Vaccine. _See_ Antitoxin. Vaccinia, 299. Vacuum, process, of cleaning, 153, 154; of milking, 36. Valves, of heart and veins, 116-118; disease of heart, 123, 124-126. Vegetables, fuel value of, 26, 31, 32, 40, 56, 57, 58; in diet, 23-25, 59, 201; salts in, 57, 59; water in, 56, 72. Veins, denned, 108; function of, 110-113; position of, 113. _See also_ 9, 17. Vena cava, in, 113, 115, 116, 118, 119, 200. Ventilation, diseases from poor, 154; methods of, 144-149; need of, 141-143. Ventricle, 115, 116, 117, 118. Vertebrae, 212. Vitreous humor, 260. Vitriol. _See_ Sulphuric acid. Vocal cords, 272-275. Voice, 271-276. Warts, 195. Wastes, disposal of, 75-77, 78, 79; in the body, 70, 71, 196, 208. Water, body's need of, 69-71, 201; boiled, 87, 88; carbon dioxid in, 74, 83; filtration of, 74, 75, 83, 85, 86, 88; in food, 71, 72; marsh, 74; minerals in, 75, 77, 83; natural purifiers of, 72, 74-79, 86, 87; rain, 73; sources of impurities in, 72-80; supply 75, 79-86; when and how to drink, 15, 57. Water-brash, 13. Wells, artesian, 81-83, 86; dangers to, 75-77, 78, 79; permanent, 83. Wheat, 27, 31; fermented, 94; food value of, 42; whole, 46. Whiskey, 94, 95. _See also_ Alcohol, Beverages. White matter, 219, 221. White swelling, 157. Whooping cough, 290, 291. Windpipe, 134-136, 271, 272. Wine, 94. _See also_ Alcohol. Wings, 254. Wounds, treatment of, 315-319. Yale. _See_ Seaver. Yeast, as leavening, 43-45; in making alcohol, 93, 94, 309. Yellow fever, 287. 
21418	----	Transcriber's notes: Obvious typographical errors have been corrected and a few punctuation usages have been normalized. [Illustration: Courtesy of New York World More Babies Like These These nine little tots are all sound, healthy stock. The generations behind them had unconsciously been practicing Eugenics through the process of natural selection. By luck, as it were, no strain was bred into the several families that would have caused these children to be unsound mentally, morally, or physically. It is through Eugenics that we shall have more babies like these, and shall eliminate the possibility of children like those shown in the other illustrations to this volume.] The Eugenic Marriage A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies By W. GRANT HAGUE, M.D. College of Physicians and Surgeons (Columbia University), New York; Member of County Medical Society, and of the American Medical Association In Four Volumes VOLUME IV New York THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY 1914 Copyright, 1913, by W. GRANT HAGUE Copyright, 1914, by W. GRANT HAGUE * * * * * TABLE OF CONTENTS ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCIES CHAPTER XXXIV COMMON DISEASES OF THE NOSE, MOUTH AND CHEST PAGE "Catching cold"--Sitting on the floor--Kicking the bedclothes off--Inadequate head covering--Subjecting baby to different temperatures suddenly--Wearing rubbers--Direct infection--Acute nasal catarrh--Acute coryza--Acute rhinitis--"Cold in the head"--"Snuffles"--Treatment of acute nasal catarrh, or rhinitis, or coryza, or "cold in the head," or "snuffles"--Chronic nasal catarrh--Chronic rhinitis--Chronic discharge from the nose--Nervous or persistent cough--Adenoids as a cause of persistent cough--Croup--Acute catarrhal laryngitis--Spasmodic croup--False croup--Tonsilitis--Angina--Sore throat--Symptoms of tonsilitis--Treatment of tonsilitis--Bronchitis in infants--Bronchitis in older children--"Don'ts" in bronchitis--Diet in bronchitis--Inhalations in bronchitis-- External applications in bronchitis--Drugs in bronchitis-- Chronic or recurrent bronchitis--Pneumonia--Acute broncho-pneumonia--Symptoms of broncho-pneumonia--How to tell when a child has broncho-pneumonia--Treatment of broncho-pneumonia--The after treatment of broncho-pneumonia--Adenoids--How to tell when a child has adenoids--Treatment of adenoids--Nasal hemorrhage-- "Nose-bleeds"--Treatment of nose-bleeds--Quinsy--Hiccough-- Sore-mouth--Stomatitis--Treatment of ulcers of the mouth-- Sprue--Thrush 497 CHAPTER XXXV DISEASES OF THE STOMACH AND GASTRO-INTESTINAL CANAL Inflammation of the stomach--Acute gastritis--Persistent vomiting--Acute gastric indigestion--Iced champagne in persistent vomiting--Acute intestinal diseases of children-- Conditions under which they exist and suggestions as to remedial measures--Acute intestinal indigestion--Symptoms of acute intestinal indigestion--Treatment of acute intestinal indigestion--Children with whom milk does not agree--Chronic, or persistent intestinal indigestion-- Acute ileo-colitis--Dysentery--Enteritis--Enter-colitis-- Inflammatory diarrhea--Chronic ileo-colitis--Chronic colitis--Summer diarrhea--Cholera infantum--Gastro-enteritis-- Acute gastro-enteric infection--Gastro-enteric intoxication--Colic--Appendicitis--Jaundice in infants--Jaundice in older children--Catarrhal jaundice--Gastro-duodenitis--Intestinal worms--Worms, thread, pin and tape--Rupture 527 CHAPTER XXXVI DISEASES OF CHILDREN (continued) PAGE Mastitis, or inflammation of the breasts in infancy--Mastitis in young girls--Let your ears alone--Never box a child's ears--Do not pick the ears--Earache--Inflammation of the ear--Acute otitis--Swollen glands--Acute adenitis-- Swollen glands in the groin--Boils--Hives--Nettle rash-- Prickly Heat--Ringworm in the scalp--Eczema--Poor blood--Simple anemia--Chlorosis--Severe anemia--Pernicious anemia 553 CHAPTER XXXVII DISEASES OF CHILDREN (continued) Rheumatism--Malaria--Rashes of childhood--Pimples--Acne-- Blackheads--Convulsions--Fits--Spasms--Bed-wetting--Enuresis-- Incontinence--Sleeplessness--Disturbed sleep--Nightmare-- Night terrors--Headache--Thumb sucking--Biting the finger nails--Colon irrigation--How to wash out the bowels--A high enema--Enema--Methods of reducing fever--Ice cap--Cold sponging--Cold pack--The cold bath--Various baths--mustard baths--Hot pack--Hot bath--Hot air, or vapor bath--Bran bath--Tepid bath--Cold sponge--Shower bath--Poultices--Hot fomentations--How to make and how to apply a mustard paste--How to prepare and use the mustard pack--Turpentine stupes--Oiled silk, what it is and why it is used 569 DISEASES OF CHILDREN CHAPTER XXXVIII INFECTIOUS OR CONTAGIOUS DISEASES Rules to be observed in the treatment of contagious diseases-- What isolation means--The contagious sick room--Conduct and dress of the nurse--Feeding the patient and nurse--How to disinfect the clothing and linen--How to disinfect the urine and feces--How to disinfect the hands--Disinfection of the room necessary--How to disinfect the mouth and nose--How to disinfect the throat--Receptacle for the sputum--Care of the skin in contagious diseases--Convalescence after a contagious disease--Disinfecting the sick chamber--The after treatment of a disinfected room--How to disinfect the bed clothing and clothes--Mumps--Epidemic parotitis--Chicken pox-- Varicella--La Grippe--Influenza--Diphtheria--Whooping Cough--Pertussis--Measles--Koplik's spots--Department of health rules in measles--Scarlet fever--Scarlatina-- Typhoid fever--Various solutions--Boracic acid solution--Normal salt solution--Carron oil--Thiersch's solution--Solution of bichloride of mercury--How to make various solutions 599 ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCIES CHAPTER XXXIX ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCIES Accidents and emergencies--Contents of the family medicine chest--Foreign bodies in the eye--Foreign bodies in the ear--Foreign bodies in the nose--Foreign bodies in the throat--A bruise or contusion--Wounds--Arrest of hemorrhage--Removal of foreign bodies from a wound--Cleansing a wound--Closing and dressing wounds--The condition of shock--Dog bites--Sprains--Dislocations--Wounds of the scalp--Run-around--Felon--Whitlow--Burns and scalds 629 MISCELLANEOUS CHAPTER XL MISCELLANEOUS The dangerous housefly--Diseases transmitted by flies--Homes should be carefully screened and protected--The breeding places of flies--Special care should be given to stables, privy vaults, garbage, vacant lots, foodstuffs, water fronts, drains--Precautions to be observed--How to kill flies--Moths--What physicians are doing--Radium--X-Ray treatment and X-Ray diagnosis--Aseptic surgery--New anesthetics--Vaccine in typhoid fever--"606"--Transplanting the organs of dead men into the living--Bacteria that make soil barren or productive--Anti-meningitis serum--A serum for malaria in sight 645 * * * * * ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCIES CHAPTER XXXIV COMMON DISEASES OF THE NOSE, MOUTH, AND CHEST "Catching Cold"--Sitting on the Floor--Kicking the Bed Clothes Off--Inadequate Head Covering--Subjecting Baby to Different Temperatures Suddenly--Wearing Rubbers--Direct Infection--Acute Nasal Catarrh--Acute Coryza--Acute Rhinitis--"Cold in the Head"--"Snuffles"--Treatment of Acute Nasal Catarrh, or Rhinitis, or Coryza, or "Cold in the Head," or "Snuffles"--Chronic Nasal Catarrh--Chronic Rhinitis--Chronic Discharge from the Nose--Nervous or Persistent Cough--Adenoids as a Cause of Persistent Cough--Croup--Acute Catarrhal Laryngitis--Spasmodic Croup--False Croup--Tonsilitis--Angina--Sore Throat--Symptoms of Tonsilitis--Treatment of Tonsilitis--Bronchitis in Infants--Bronchitis in Older Children--"Don'ts" in Bronchitis--Diet in Bronchitis--Inhalations in Bronchitis--External Applications in Bronchitis--Drugs in Bronchitis--Chronic or Recurrent Bronchitis--Pneumonia--Acute Broncho-pneumonia--Symptoms of Broncho-pneumonia--How to Tell When a Child has Broncho-pneumonia--Treatment of Broncho-pneumonia--The After-treatment of Broncho-pneumonia--Adenoids--How to Tell When a Child has Adenoids--Treatment of Adenoids--Nasal Hemorrhage--"Nose-bleeds"--Treatment of Nose-bleeds--Quinsy--Hiccough--Sore Mouth--Stomatitis--Treatment of Ulcers of the Mouth--Sprue--Thrush. "CATCHING COLDS" Mothers frequently wonder where their children get colds. Briefly we will point out some of the sources from which these apparently inexplicable colds may come. A. Sitting on the Floor.--Children should not be allowed to sit or crawl upon the floor at any season of the year, but especially during the winter months. There is always a draught of cold air near the floor. It is a bad habit to begin allowing a child to play with its toys on the floor. Use the bed or a sofa or a platform raised a foot from the floor. B. Kicking the Bed Clothes Off During the Night.--The bed clothes should be securely pinned to the mattress by large safety pins. When it is established as a habit a child who kicks off the bed clothes should wear a combination night suit with "feet," made of flannel during the winter and of cotton during the summer. C. Inadequate Head Covering.--Professor Kerley states that this is one of the "most frequent causes of disease of the respiratory tract in the young." He calls attention to the fact that "mothers carefully clothe the baby with ample coats, blankets, leggings, etc., before they take him out for the daily walk. They dress him in a warm room taking plenty of time to put on the extra clothes, during which time the baby frets and perspires. When all is ready they place upon the hot, almost bald head of the baby a light artistically decorated airy creation which is sold in the shops as children's caps. The child is then taken out of doors and because of the inadequate covering of the hot perspiring head, catches cold and the mother never knows how it came." Every baby and child should wear under such caps a skull cap of thin flannel, especially in cold weather. In summer or windy day a light silk handkerchief folded under the cap is a very excellent protection. D. Subjecting a Baby to Different Temperatures Suddenly, is liable to be followed by a cold--for example, taking the child from a warm room to a cold room, or through a cold hall, holding the child at an open window for a few moments. E. The Practice of Wearing Rubbers Needs Some Consideration.--They should never be worn indoors for even five minutes. They should not therefore be kept on in school, nor should they be worn by women in stores when they go shopping. When it is actually raining, or snowing, or when there is slush or wet mud they are needful; but they should not be worn simply because the weather is threatening or damp. Children should not put them on to play--worn for any length of time when active they are harmful. If worn to and from school they should be taken off at once when in school or at home. Wearing rubbers prevents free evaporation of the natural secretion of the skin, keeps the feet moist and invites colds and catarrh. In damp weather, or when children play during winter months, they should be shod with stout shoes with cork insoles. The same argument applies to storm coats of rubber, water-proof material. They should not be worn as overcoats all day, but only when going to and from school or business when it is actually storming. Underclothing or hosiery should not be heavy enough to cause moisture of the skin. Health demands a dry skin at all times. The necessary degree of body heat should be attained by the quality of the outer clothing, not by the quantity of the underclothing. Many men and women wear heavy underclothing which causes moisture when indoors, with the result that they get surface chills when they go outside if the weather is cold and as a result catch cold. The underclothing should be just heavy enough to be comfortable indoors and the extra warmth necessary when outside should be supplied by a good overcoat or furs. F. Direct Infection.--A baby may catch cold if kissed or "hugged" by an adult who has a cold. Catching cold while bathing is possible, but scarcely probable, if ordinary precautions are taken. It is very bad practice to permit children to use one another's handkerchiefs or the handkerchief of an adult. Certain children are predisposed to attacks of "cold in the head" or acute coryza or nasal catarrh (these being the medical names for this condition). Sometimes this is an inherited characteristic. There is no doubt, however, that most of these children acquire the habit by bad sanitary and hygienic surroundings. These children do not as a rule get enough fresh air. They are kept indoors most of the time in stuffy, overheated, badly ventilated rooms, unless the weather is absolutely perfect. The windows in their bedrooms are always kept closed, because they are "liable to catch cold." They are overdressed and perspire easily and as a result "catch cold." These conditions all tend to create an unhealthy condition of the nasal mucous membrane and of the throat, and this is rendered worse if the child lives in a damp, changeable climate, such as that of New York City. In these susceptible children the exciting cause of an attack may be trivial; exposure, cold or wet feet, inadequate head covering (as already pointed out), a draught of cold air even may excite sneezing and a nasal discharge; hence we have: Acute Nasal Catarrh (Acute Coryza, Acute Rhinitis, "Cold in the Head", "Snuffles").--Acute nasal catarrh may accompany measles, diphtheria, influenza, and whooping cough. Symptoms.--The onset is sudden with sneezing, and difficulty in breathing through the nose. In a few hours, or it may be not for a day or two, a mucous, watery, nasal discharge appears. There are redness and slight swelling of the nose and upper lip, caused by the discharge. There is no fever as a general rule except in very young infants, in whom the fever may be very high. The discharge interferes with the nursing and the child suffers from lack of nourishment. The inflammation may extend to the eyes and ears, causing painful complications, or to the throat and bronchi, causing hoarseness and cough. Less frequently we have disturbances of the digestive tract with vomiting, or diarrhea. The mild form of the disease lasts for two or three days, the severe form from one to two weeks. Repeated attacks are said to contribute to the production of adenoid growths. An acute attack of this disease is seldom a serious affliction in older children; it may be, however, very serious and even dangerous in very young infants. The tendency of the disease to extend downward, causing bronchitis or pneumonia, explains in part the possible danger to a baby. Another reason is because it may seriously interfere with suckling and with breathing in these little patients. It may even cause sudden attacks of strangulation. An infant, therefore, suffering with an acute attack of rhinitis requires constant attention. It may be necessary to feed it with a spoon, and if necessary mother's milk should be so fed. Plenty of fresh air should be provided. It may be essential to keep the mouth open in order that it may get enough fresh air. Every effort should be made to keep the nostrils open. The secretions must be removed from time to time. Causing the child to sneeze by tickling the nose with a camel's hair brush will clear the nose for the time being. The physician may be compelled to use a solution of cocaine for this purpose. Treatment of Acute Rhinitis ("Taking Cold", Nasal Catarrh, Acute Coryza, "Snuffles").--A child suffering with an acute attack of "cold in the head" should be kept indoors in a room with a constant, uniform temperature; the particular reason for this is, that, if a child is exposed to cold at any time during an attack of "cold in the head," it may cause the disease to invade the chest,--a tendency which it has at all times. The bowels must be kept open; if they do not move every day of their own accord they must be made to move by means of an enema of sweet oil or of soap-suds. The amount of food should be reduced to suit the circumstances and the condition of the patient. We treat the local condition in the nose with a menthol mixture. The following is a very good one: Menthol, 30 grains; Camphor, 30 grains; White Vaseline, 1 ounce. Put some of this on the end of the finger and push it gently into each nostril. When the nostrils become blocked and the child cannot breathe through the nose, tickle the nose with a feather until it sneezes; this will clear the passage. Immediately after the sneeze place the menthol mixture in each nostril. When the child is about to sneeze place a handkerchief before the nose, as this discharge is full of germs and will infect others when dry. Internal remedies should not be used unless the child is distinctly sick and is running a fever, in which case a physician should look the child over and prescribe whatever is called for. The upper lip and the nostrils of the child should be protected, because the discharge very quickly irritates the parts and renders them raw and painful. Vaseline or cold cream is very suitable for this purpose. Mothers should not wash out the nose of a child with any solution advised for this purpose where force is used, as, for example, with a syringe. Any forceful irrigation of the nose is dangerous, because it would carry the infection into the deeper parts and set up a more serious condition. If the above treatment is carefully carried out and the child unexposed to a fresh cold, two or three days will be sufficient to cure the disease. It is not, however, the treatment of an acute attack of "cold in the head" that is important; it is intelligently to follow out a plan which will prevent these attacks from repeating themselves that is of consequence. The tendency to take cold is a real condition in childhood and a very common one. When mothers appreciate that it is possible to prevent this condition and to cure it when it is seemingly an established habit, more interest will undoubtedly be taken in the subject. Too frequently it is looked upon as an unfortunate affliction, but it is never regarded as a condition that is caused by neglect and ignorance. It is an exceedingly common occurence to find a mother worrying over her child's cold, dosing it with cod liver oil or some other unnecessary tonic, rubbing it with camphorated oil or plastering it over with certain useless patent plasters, dressing it with extra pieces of flannel on its chest and extra clothes pinned snugly around it, then shutting it up in a warm, stuffy, unsanitary, ill-smelling room, in order to keep it from "catching a fresh cold." Can you imagine anything else she could do to defeat her purpose? No quantity of cod liver oil, no medicine, no coddling, will remove the tendency to "catch cold." The child's life must be lived amidst sanitary surroundings and hygienic conditions first; then other expedients may be utilized if necessary. These children must be kept out of doors most of the time, unless during the severest wet weather. They should sleep in a room the windows of which are open at the top and bottom every night in the year. They should not, however, be in a draught. The rooms in which they live should be of a uniform temperature, never too hot and never too cold, between 68° and 70° F. These delicate catarrhal children should be accustomed to light clothing on their beds. Chest protectors, mufflers, cotton pads, and heavy wraps of any description should be absolutely prohibited. It is advisable to use flannel underwear winter and summer, light in summer and a medium weight in winter. During the summer months the mother should begin cold sponging of the face, throat, chest, and spine every morning and carry it into the winter. The entire process need take only a moment or two. Always dry thoroughly with a fairly rough towel. If the cold sponging is begun in the warm summer time the child will become so accustomed to it that no objection will be made when the cold weather comes. If the child continues to be "catarrhal," despite a course of this treatment, it would be well to investigate whether any adenoids or adenoid tissue exist in the naso-pharynx. If adenoids are found no treatment will be successful until they are removed. It is a wise plan to place a flannel cap on an infant who has an acute attack of "cold in the head" (snuffles). This will prevent catching a fresh cold and it will aid in the speedy cure of the attack from which it is suffering when it is put on. CHRONIC NASAL CATARRH--CHRONIC RHINITIS CHRONIC DISCHARGE FROM THE NOSE Some children have a nasal discharge during all of their childhood. It is usually worse during the winter months. It may be a thin, watery discharge or a thick, nasty, yellow discharge. It is a condition that is very frequently neglected even by the family physician. This is unfortunate because it may lead to serious disease, permanent damage sometimes being done to the hearing, the speech, the smell, and to the lungs of the child. It may be caused by adenoids; disease of the bones or tissues in the nose; foreign bodies in the nose; or it may occur in children whose nutrition is bad. It may result from frequent acute attacks of "cold in the head." It also occurs in other less important conditions. The foreign bodies which usually cause a chronic nasal discharge are,--buttons, peas, beans, beads, paper balls, flies and bugs, cherry-stones, small pieces of coal, or stone, cork or other material. A child gets hold of a shoe-button for example and pushes it into its nostrils. In the effort to get it out the child pushes it further in. It may or may not cause pain at the time, and it may be overlooked, but shortly the mother will notice a discharge from one nostril. This discharge becomes thick and foul and when an investigation is made the button is found embedded firmly in the nose. It is sometimes quite difficult to get the button out and this should always be done by a physician. Treatment.--Remove the cause first then treat the catarrh. If it is a product of a constitutional disease that causes general poor health, such as tuberculosis, syphilis, or scrofula, the child will need "building up" and a decided change of climate. Foreign bodies must be removed, adenoids taken out, large tonsils excised, and malformations of the nasal bones operated upon. The catarrh will in many cases be cured by removing its cause; if, however, it should persist it must be treated for some time with appropriate solutions. These solutions and the directions as to the method of giving them must be given by a physician, because there is great danger of carrying the disease to deeper structures if given wrongly. SUMMARY:-- 1st.--A chronic discharge from the nose is a sign that something is wrong and should be carefully and thoroughly investigated. 2nd.--The cause can usually be found out and the proper treatment will cure it. 3rd.--If the condition is neglected it may ruin the health of the child for the whole period of its life. NERVOUS OR PERSISTENT COUGH Cough in an infant or growing child is usually the result of a cold and the structure affected is some part of the nose, throat or bronchi. It is a comparatively simple matter to discover just where the trouble is and to prescribe the appropriate remedy and effect a cure. There is another type of cough, however, that is of quite a different character. This cough will begin as an ordinary cough and it will only be discovered that it is not an ordinary cough because nothing will apparently cure it. We mean that the child is given cough remedies that usually cure a cold, is kept in the house and carefully watched for a sufficiently long period to justify a cure, and yet, despite this care and attention, the cough remains the same. The child is not sick, the appetite is good, there is no fever, it plays and seems to enjoy good health, yet for weeks and frequently for months the annoying cough hangs on. It is as a rule worse at night. It begins soon after the child falls asleep and spoils the entire night's rest or a great part of it. It may be a dry, hard, hacking cough, or a croupy, harsh bark. It may come in spells with a considerable interval between them, during which time the child falls asleep, or it may be almost constant, not quite severe enough to rouse the child, but bad enough to spoil the child's rest and the rest of the mother. If this condition lasts for a long time, as it occasionally does, the health of the little patient is apt to suffer from loss of sleep. Treatment.--These children should be taken to a good physician and thoroughly examined. Special care should be devoted to investigating the condition of the nose, throat, ear, stomach, heart, and lungs. A very large majority of these coughs are caused by adenoid growths in the back part of the nose. The child may not look like an adenoid child, nor may it breathe through its mouth when asleep, and it may have had its adenoids removed, yet in spite of these contra-indications it may have enough loose adenoid tissue in its nose to cause this kind of persistent cough. This has been proved many times. It is not only useless but positively harmful to give these children cough remedies. The cause of the cough must be found and treated. The cough may be indirectly caused by anemia (poor blood) or heart or stomach trouble, or it may have a number of other causes. Whatever it is it must be found by a careful physical examination or a number of careful physical examinations, because these cases are as a rule obscure and difficult to diagnose, and even the most expert examiner cannot always tell where the trouble is without seeing the child a number of times. The parents must therefore have patience and confidence in the physician and must aid him all they can by watching and reporting all the symptoms, etc., to him. (See article on Adenoids). SUMMARY:-- Coughs that resist careful treatment are not "ordinary coughs." Coughs of this type require special medical care. The usual cough medicines are not only useless in these coughs, but dangerous. Don't give them. ACUTE CATARRHAL LARYNGITIS: SPASMODIC CROUP: FALSE CROUP Croup is one of the common diseases of childhood. It usually follows a catarrhal "cold in the head" with a cough. Croup is most frequently associated with large tonsils and adenoids. It may come on gradually or it may occur suddenly. There is always fever with croup. One of the first symptoms is a hard, dry, croupy, barking cough, which gets worse toward night. If it occurs suddenly, the child will wake about midnight with the characteristic croupy cough. The disease may go no further than this and under the proper treatment is well in a few days. In other cases, however, there develops marked interference with breathing. Every inspiration is accompanied by a loud hissing or "crowing" sound. This feature of the disease is one that frightens the parents, though it seldom means anything serious. The child sits up in bed, frightened, and struggles for breath. It may clutch its throat with its hands as if something was tied round its neck. The lips may become slightly blue and the perspiration appears upon the child's brow. After some time,--it may be two or three hours,--the attack wears away and the child goes to sleep. Next morning it wakes up apparently well except for the croupy cough. The attack may repeat itself the next night and mildly on the third night. Treatment.--The object of treatment during an acute attack, when the child is struggling for breath, is to relax quickly the spasm of the larynx which interferes with the breathing. The simplest way is to give the child a teaspoonful of the fresh syrup of ipecac. If the child does not vomit in fifteen minutes, give another teaspoonful and keep on giving it every fifteen minutes till the child vomits. One or two doses is usually enough, but it must be given till the child vomits. If the attack comes suddenly during the night and there is no syrup of ipecac in the house, the physician should be sent for at once and informed that the child probably has croup, so he may know what to take with him. While waiting for the physician the mother should apply over the front of the neck (in the region of Adam's apple), hot applications. These are best made of flannel wrung out of quite hot water every two or three minutes: also a hot mustard foot bath. When the physician takes charge of the case he will also direct the treatment for the following day in order that the attack of the next night may be a very mild one, if it should came at all. Children who have a tendency to frequent attacks of croup should receive the same attention as the children do who are subject to attacks of tonsilitis and acute catarrhal rhinitis. SUMMARY:-- 1st. Spasmodic Croup always requires prompt and efficient treatment. 2nd. It is called "false" croup, because "true" croup is always diphtheritic and is a very serious disease. 3rd. For that reason a physician should always be called because if it is "true" croup antitoxin must be given at once. 4th. Don't worry unnecessarily because, though "spasmodic croup" can make the child look exceedingly sick for a very short time, an uncomplicated case in a healthy child is seldom if ever dangerous. TONSILITIS: ANGINA: "SORE THROAT" This is one of the frequent diseases of childhood. We rarely see it in infants. It is caused by inhaling air which contains poisonous germs. These germs quickly develop when conditions are favorable. They lodge in the pores or follicles of the tonsils and set up an active inflammation. The tonsils swell up and the follicles exude a thick fluid which looks like curdled cream. This fluid sticks in the mouths of the follicles forming spots. If enough of this fluid is coming out, these spots join together forming patches, and the patches may join together forming membrane. This is why it is sometimes so difficult to tell whether the case is one of tonsilitis or diphtheria. Conditions are favorable to the development of tonsilitis if the child is not in good health when he happens to inhale the infection, when the feet are wet or cold, or when the child is allowed out during inclement weather and it becomes chilled or numbed from cold, when the child has a cold in the head and a running nose, or when its stomach is out of order. Any condition in which the child should be carefully watched and tended to, rather than allowed further liberties, or risks, conduces to sore throat of some kind. Some children have the disease a number of times; they seem to be predisposed toward a sore throat. These are children who have large tonsils or who are rheumatic. The tonsils should be removed in the one case, and the tendency to rheumatism should be the main treatment in the other case. These children should be encouraged to cleanse the throat and nose morning and night with a warm salt solution (half a teaspoonful of ordinary table salt to three-quarters of a cup of warm water). This will help greatly to prevent these chronic sore throats. Symptoms of Tonsilitis.--The disease begins suddenly. The child may have a chill or be seized with sudden vomiting or diarrhea. A very young infant may have a convulsion. The usual way is for the child to develop a fever quickly, to complain of being sick and tired. Muscular pains all over the body and a severe headache are constant symptoms. The fever is usually high from the beginning. The child will tell you its throat is sore, but there is as a rule very little pain in the throat. The little spots or patches can be seen on one or both tonsils. The general symptoms are more pronounced than the local throat symptoms. The amount of physical depression that is caused by a tonsilitis is out of all proportion to the seriousness of the disease. Tonsilitis lasts three days usually. The throat symptoms may take a day or two longer to clear up, and the patients feel more or less weak for some time after all the symptoms have disappeared. Tonsilitis is medically regarded as one of the mild diseases of childhood. It is, however, of very great importance because of its likeness to diphtheria, and inasmuch as a positive diagnosis must be promptly made, in the interest of the patient, it is given close attention and treated with considerable respect by the medical profession. The chief differences between the two diseases are as follows: Tonsilitis begins abruptly with pronounced prostration and a high fever the first day. The patient feels distinctly sick all over. The second day the patient feels somewhat better, the fever is lower and the prostration and pain are not so marked. The third day he feels better still, and but for a little weakness would feel well. Diphtheria begins slowly and insidiously, with very little prostration and a very low fever the first day. The patient scarcely feels sick. The second day more prostration is present, the fever climbs upward a little more, and the patient begins to feel sick. On the third day the prostration is much more profound, the fever is higher, and all the evidences of a serious sickness are present. Two very different pictures: The one begins bad and ends easy, the other begins easy and may end bad. The important fact, however, so far as the similarity of the two diseases is concerned, is, that we must make the diagnosis positive on the first or second day, because if we are dealing with a case of diphtheria we must give antitoxin at once. This is essential, because the efficacy of antitoxin is greatest when given early in the disease. By "early" we mean the first or second day of the disease. When antitoxin is given late (the third or fourth day of the disease) it is much less efficacious and must be given in relatively larger doses. The need, therefore, of a quick, positive diagnosis is a real one. Another important element involved in a speedy diagnosis is, that we must not take any chances of infecting other children. So important are these conditions that it is the proper treatment to give antitoxin at once in every case of tonsilitis that in the slightest way resembles diphtheria. An examination of the throat contents,--a culture of which is taken during the first visit of the physician,--will, of course, reveal the true condition and dictate the future use of the antitoxin. Antitoxin is absolutely harmless when given to a patient who has no diphtheria. Every case of tonsilitis should be quarantined when there are other children in the house. The local condition of the throat helps in the diagnosis: In tonsilitis (as the name implies) the disease is limited to the tonsils and on the tonsils (one or both) do we find the spots or patches. In diphtheria, on the other hand, the membrane is not limited to the tonsils, but may cover every part of the throat and extend into the nose and mouth. In tonsilitis it is spots or patches we see in the throat. In diphtheria it is membrane we see always. The difficulty here again is that if we wait till the diphtheritic membrane covers the whole throat, antitoxin will not be of much use. In diphtheria we have a characteristic odor, in tonsilitis we have no characteristic odor. The practical lesson to be learned from this uncertainty is, immediately to get a physician as soon as you find spots in the throat of your sick child, unless you are absolutely sure that the condition is not diphtheria and you are willing to take that chance. Treatment of an Acute Attack of Tonsilitis.--Put the child in bed at once and keep him on a light diet during the fever. Give him all the cool boiled water he wants to drink. If the fever is very high it can be controlled by sponging the body with cool water. If the patient is an infant the food should be reduced to one-half strength. Tonsilitis is a disease that runs a certain course and gets better, or the patient develops some other more serious conditions as a result of neglect or carelessness. We therefore try to make the patient comfortable and let the disease take care of itself. The throat can be gargled or sprayed with any mild antiseptic liquid, or it can be painted with tincture of iodine or 10 per cent. solution of silver nitrate. As a rule the gargles do not aid in the cure of the disease, though they contribute to the comfort of the patient. A cold compress made of half a dozen thicknesses of cloth, such as a table napkin, and put under the jaw (not round the neck), and covered with oiled silk and held in place with a bandage that meets and is tied on the top of the head, is of distinct usefulness. When it is known that the child is rheumatic, the heart must be carefully watched during the fever and anti-rheumatic remedies depended upon to effect a cure. SUMMARY:-- Tonsilitis, because of its likeness to diphtheria, must be promptly and carefully diagnosed. A physician only is capable of making a diagnosis. Any sore throat in a child with spots or membrane is deserving of serious and immediate attention. A mistake may mean death. Don't take a chance. BRONCHITIS Bronchitis is one of the commonest diseases of childhood. It is the cause of many deaths. Exposure during inclement weather is as a rule the cause of it. It occurs in all classes and conditions of children. Poorly nourished and badly clothed children are more liable to get it than are others. It is more dangerous in young children and infants than in older children. A young child or an infant will get bronchitis quicker than those older and stronger under the same conditions. Bronchitis is often present while children are suffering from other diseases, measles, influenza, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, pneumonia, diphtheria, whooping-cough, for example. It may accompany any disease of childhood, however. Symptoms.--In infants bronchitis usually follows a "cold in the head," with running nose and a cough. The child is indisposed and peevish because of the cold. In a few days the cough becomes worse, fever develops, the breathing is quicker, and the baby looks and acts sick. The cough may be constant and severe; sometimes the cough does not seem to bother the baby, although this is exceptional. The breathing is quite rapid and is accompanied with a moist, rattling sound in the chest. The baby is restless and if the cough is severe it becomes exhausted. Vomiting or diarrhea may be present. Bronchitis in Older Children.--Bronchitis in older children comes on abruptly, with fever and cough. The child may complain of headache and pains in the chest or other parts of the body. It may begin with a chill or chilly feelings. These children "raise" with the cough. The expectoration may be quite profuse; at first it is a white, frothy mucus, then yellow, and later a yellowish green; it may be slightly tinged with blood. There is a mild form of bronchitis in these older children where the serious symptoms are absent. The children are not sick enough to go to bed, but they appear to have a "heavy cold" with, at first, a tight, hard cough, which is usually worse at night. Later the cough turns loose and the same expectoration occurs as in the severe type. It is these cases of mild bronchitis which do not receive the proper care and treatment that develop into the so-called "winter cough," which lasts for months. Treatment.--(See page 497 under heading, "Catching Colds.") Children who acquire bronchitis easily and frequently, should be built up. Cod liver oil should be given all winter. The sleeping apartment of these children should not be too cold, but it should be well aired through the day and well ventilated throughout the night. Flannel night clothes should be worn and the feet should be kept warm always. Mild attacks of "cold in the head" should be treated vigorously and not neglected. The following "Don'ts" may be profitably studied when your child or baby has bronchitis:-- Don't keep the windows tightly closed; fresh air and good ventilation are absolutely necessary to the patient. Don't use a cotton jacket or oil silk. Don't wrap the child up in blankets and shawls. Don't carry the child around; keep it in bed. Don't dose the child with syrupy cough mixtures. Don't overheat the room. Don't let friends bother or annoy the baby. Don't reduce the diet unnecessarily. The child should be put to bed. The temperature of the room should be 70 degrees F. all the time. The windows should be opened top and bottom according to the weather, and the room should be well aired every day, the patient being taken to another room while it is being done. The child should have its usual night clothes on, nothing more. If the child is not very sick and insists on sitting up, a bath robe can be worn but it should be always removed when it sleeps. It is advisable to change the position of the baby from time to time. Have it rest on one side, then on the other, as well as on the back. Give a dose of castor oil at the beginning of the sickness and keep the bowels open during the disease. Diet.--The diet will depend upon the severity of the disease. If the fever is high and the cough persistent, the strength of the food of nursing infants should be reduced. We can reduce the strength of the food by giving the child a drink of cool boiled water before each feeding and shortening the length of each feeding. Older children may be given toast, milk with lime water, cocoa with milk, broths, gruels, custards, cereals and fruit juices. Inhalations.--The value of inhalations in bronchitis is very great. The ordinary croup kettle, which can be bought in any good drug store, is the best method of giving them. Full directions come with each kettle as to the best way to use it. The best drug to use in the kettle is creosote (beechwood). Ten drops are added to one quart of boiling water and the steaming continued for thirty minutes. The interval between steaming is two hours and a half in bad cases day and night. In mild cases the night treatments can be dispensed with. Sheets rigged up over the top and sides of the crib, in the form of a tent, is the most desirable way to give the inhalations. External Applications.--Counter-irritation by means of mustard pastes are the best applications. They should be put back and front--one on back and one on the chest, overlapping at the sides beneath the arms. They should cover the entire body from the waist line to the neck. These pastes are made as follows:--Mix the mustard (English) and the flour in the following proportions, using a quantity according to the size of child and area to be covered; one tablespoonful mustard to three tablespoonfuls of flour. Mix with lukewarm water until a paste is formed, not too thick and not too thin. Spread on a cloth (put plenty on) and cover with one layer of cheesecloth and place the cheesecloth side next the skin. In order to guard against burning the skin it is advisable to rub the skin with vaseline, before and after putting on the paste. The paste should be left on until the skin is uniformly red. It may be applied from two to four times in the twenty-four hours according to the severity of the case. Mustard pastes are most effective during the first two or three days of the disease. Drugs.--Drugs are of very little value in the treatment of bronchitis. In the first stage of the disease, when the cough is hard and dry, small doses of castor oil and syrup of ipecac may be given to good advantage. The following dosage should be followed closely: 1st year, 2 drops castor oil, 2 drops syrup of ipecac, every two hours; 3rd year, 3 drops castor oil, 3 drops syrup of ipecac, every two hours; over 3 years, 4 drops castor oil, 4 drops syrup of ipecac, every two hours. The benefits from this treatment will be obtained in the first two or three days, when it should be discontinued. The cough under this treatment and the use of the mustard paste and inhalations of creosote will be soft and loose in two or three days and the fever will be distinctly on the mend. The disease lasts from five to ten days. It may, however, last much longer according to the condition of the child, etc. There are other drugs that can be given, with good effect, but when other remedies are indicated a physician should be called to prescribe them according to indications. SUMMARY:-- Bronchitis is one of the commonest diseases of childhood. It is the cause of many deaths. A large number of children have a tendency to bronchitis. These children need careful attention and "building up." Do not neglect a "little" cold. It means trouble. Chronic or Recurrent Bronchitis.--Bronchitis becomes chronic when the treatment of an acute attack fails to cure the condition. The failure usually is dependent upon the condition of the child. It may be suffering with some disease resulting from poor nourishment or poor sanitary and hygienic surroundings or both. The bronchitis, in other words, is dependent upon some other condition, and will not get wholly better until the cause is cured. These children should lead an active outdoor life when the weather is favorable. Their sleeping-room should be well aired and ventilated. Red meats are allowed twice a week only. Sugar is cut down to the lowest limit. Skimmed milk only should be taken--the cream being too rich for them. They can eat freely of fruits in season, green vegetables and cereals. The bowels must move freely every day. Patients must be given a lukewarm bath, followed by a brief spray of cold water, daily. The cold spray should not be too cold; about 60 degrees F. is the suitable temperature of the water. An absolute change of climate, to a warmer inland atmosphere, is imperative before some of these patients will begin to improve. SUMMARY:-- A child with chronic bronchitis, or with frequent attacks of bronchitis (or chronic colds), is usually suffering from some other diseased condition. The bronchitis, or the cold, will not get better until you find out what that "other diseased condition" is. It takes a physician to find that out. Having found the cause, cure it, and the bronchitis will disappear and the general health of the child will immediately improve. PNEUMONIA Pneumonia is a very common disease in childhood. It is the most frequent complication of the various acute infectious diseases. Pneumonia is an exceedingly important factor in the mortality of infancy. There are two kinds of pneumonia:-- 1. Broncho-pneumonia. 2. Lobar-pneumonia. Acute Broncho-Pneumonia.--Up to the fourth year this is the form of pneumonia always present. It is the form that always complicates other diseases all through childhood. It is most apt to occur during the spring and winter months. It affects all classes, but especially those whose hygienic surroundings are poor. Catching cold is the exciting cause in a large percentage of primary pneumonias. Symptoms.--Broncho-pneumonia has no regular course. It may or it may not follow a cold or an attack of bronchitis. As a rule it begins suddenly with a high fever, frequently accompanied by vomiting, rapid respiration, cough, and prostration. The child does not maintain a high fever continuously; it varies considerably throughout each twenty-four hours. It lasts from one to three weeks, and subsides gradually. The respirations vary between 60 and 80 per minute, though they may be much more frequent than this. The child breathes with apparent difficulty, the soft parts of the cheeks and nose rising and falling as it breathes. The prostration becomes, as the disease progresses, more and more marked, until the child looks profoundly sick. Cough is a constant and incessant symptom. It disturbs rest and sleep and may cause frequent vomiting. There is no expectoration. A strong cough is a good symptom; if it stops it is a bad symptom. Pain is seldom present. Blueness of the skin is a bad sign and indicates failure of respiration and suggests constant and careful watching. Delirium may be present during the disease. It is not necessarily a bad sign. Accompanying stomach troubles are frequent if the patient is very young, and are very important. The bowels may be loose; they may be green in color and contain much mucus. Large quantities of gas may accumulate in the intestines and may cause much distress and convulsions. Death may occur at any time or the process may be arrested and recovery take place at any stage of the disease. Broncho-pneumonia is not necessarily a fatal disease in a fairly healthy child. It is, however, always a serious disease. Various complications may occur in the course of the disease. The most frequent are: pleurisy, emphysema, abscess of the lung, meningitis, heart disease, stomach troubles, thrush, intestinal disease. How to Tell When a Child Has Broncho-Pneumonia.--If a child develops a high fever, breathes rapidly, coughs, and is content to lie in bed because of the degree of prostration, broncho-pneumonia is almost certain to be the disease present. If in addition to these symptoms there is any blueness of the fingers or around the mouth it is more strongly suggestive of pneumonia. If the child has been suffering with bronchitis it is sometimes difficult to tell just when the pneumonia begins. The child will appear more profoundly sick, the fever will go higher, and the respiration will be more frequent when pneumonia sets in on top of bronchitis. Treatment.--The nursing of a little patient with pneumonia is the most important part. He must get plenty of fresh air; consequently he should be kept in a well-ventilated room. It is an excellent plan to change the patient twice daily from the sick room into another which has previously been thoroughly aired. While he is in this room the sick room should be as thoroughly aired as is possible. Keep this plan up all through the disease; change the position of the patient in bed every two hours. He should never be allowed to lie on his back for hours at a time. In this way the different parts of the lungs get a chance to air themselves,--the air cells expand and the oxygen in the air and the fresh blood tend to heal the parts more quickly. It would be distinctly wrong to go into the detailed symptomatic treatment of broncho-pneumonia in a book of this character. Inasmuch as this is one of the most serious diseases of infancy, no mother should attempt to treat it alone. A physician is absolutely necessary and the most the mother can hope to do is to follow out his directions to the letter. He may direct the use of mustard pastes but it is essential to know where to apply them. If he should request the use of the cotton jacket, the height and character of the fever must regulate its use. Stimulants are always necessary, whisky and strychnine being given in every case, but if given at the wrong time they may do more harm than good. Cough mixtures may be necessary, but frequently they are contra-indicated. Drugs and cold sponging may be used to reduce the fever, but they are dangerous if used when conditions do not justify their use. Complications must be diagnosed when they occur, and the correct methods of treatment promptly instituted. A competent physician alone can assume the responsibility of these various phases of the disease. Every mother should appreciate, however, that pneumonia is frequently the result of carelessness. It is a well-known fact that pneumonia is an infrequent disease among children of the well-to-do, because the hygienic surroundings of these children are better and because they receive competent attention if suffering with colds and bronchitis. Bronchitis is quite common in all classes of children, but in the lower walks of life it is the custom to allow children to run around while they give every sign of having a heavy cold, and a beginning bronchitis. These children should receive treatment and should be kept indoors and in bed if they have even a slight fever, as pneumonia is frequently the inevitable outcome. They should be carefully fed, and all signs of stomach or intestinal troubles attended to at once. [Illustration: By permission of Henry H. Goddard A Grim Result Isaac is 16, although mentally 10. He is a high-grade moron. This is one of those all too frequent instances[A] "of a feeble-minded woman with a husband who is alcoholic and the offspring either feeble-minded or miscarriages." "Isaac is exceedingly dangerous. He is a potential criminal or bad man, or under the best conditions would at least marry and probably become the father of defectives like himself." This and the succeeding pictures in this volume contrast vividly with the frontispiece. Terrible are the results when we disregard the inevitable laws of nature, and so mate ourselves that our children will be parasites on society.] [A] "Feeble-mindedness; Its Causes and Consequences", Goddard, The Macmillan Company. The After-Treatment of Pneumonia is important, and every detail has a distinct bearing on the ultimate recovery and establishment of good health. Careful feeding, a good tonic, and the proper attention to exercise, fresh air and bathing are requisite. A change of air after the fever is gone is more important than all other measures put together. A dry, warm climate where patients can be kept in the open air is preferable. The danger of allowing a slow, long drawn-out convalescence after pneumonia is the development of tuberculosis. ADENOIDS Adenoids are very common, almost popular, in childhood. The condition is one that causes more real trouble and discomfort than any other childhood affliction. Adenoids are associated with, and are responsible for, many of the ailments of childhood. They may be associated with enlarged tonsils or they may be independent of them. They may be present at birth or develop any time thereafter, though they are more frequent between the ages of two and six years. Children who have adenoids invariably suffer from chronic "head-colds" with a discharge from the nose. These chronic colds are caused by the adenoids. Nearly every disease, and every diseased, or abnormal, condition of the nose, throat, larynx, and lungs can be directly caused by the presence of adenoids. They are also responsible for numerous other conditions of very grave importance in the growing child. The accompanying "head-colds" may develop into a bronchitis which may keep the child indoors for a long period. Adenoids always interfere with respiration, thereby depriving the child of a normal quantity of oxygen, thus rendering the blood less pure, and, as a consequence, seriously interfering with the nourishment and general health. The impaired nourishment and poor health thus produced, as a direct result of adenoids, renders the child more liable to disease; he may thus acquire ailments that may affect his whole subsequent life. The mental side of a child's development is also affected by the presence of adenoids, so much so that actual statistics prove that these children cannot keep up with their classes in the public school. We must therefore regard the presence of adenoids as a serious menace to the health and comfort of the patient. It has already been pointed out in discussing other diseases that before a cure of these diseases could be permanently accomplished it would be absolutely necessary to remove the adenoids, which were, no doubt, the actual cause, or an important contributing cause, of the disease. Such conditions as catarrhal laryngitis, croup, chronic recurring winter coughs, acute catarrhal rhinitis, "snuffles", "cold in the head", chronic catarrh, bronchial asthma, incontinence of urine, "bed-wetting", "nose-bleeding", headaches in growing children, anemia, deafness, night terrors, defective speech, diphtheria, consumption, are frequently caused by the presence of adenoids. These patients contract certain diseases easier than other children, and when they do, they have them more severely; such diseases are diphtheria, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, measles, and whooping cough. Adenoid children are, as a rule, in better health during the warm, equable, summer weather than during the changeable, uncertain weather we have in the winter months. If the case is neglected, and if the adenoids have existed for a long time, the growth of the child is impaired. He remains small and stunted, and the expression of the face is dull and stupid. The temperament and disposition are affected also; such children are languid, listless and depressed. How to Tell When a Child Has Adenoids.--Children with well-developed adenoids are "mouth-breathers." Instead of breathing through the nose they breathe with the mouth open, especially when sound asleep. If a child has a discharge from its nose and a chronic cough, both of which resist treatment, and if in addition it is a mouth-breather, it is safe to investigate the naso-pharynx for adenoids. If a child with these symptoms is not in good health, is listless and depressed, looks stupid, snores at night, has difficulty in breathing and cannot blow its nose satisfactorily, is troubled occasionally with "nose bleeds" and headaches, we may be satisfied that the child has adenoids, as no other condition could produce such a picture. Adenoids, like enlarged tonsils, are dangerous, apart from the physical distress and disease which they cause, owing to the fact that they harbor deadly bacteria, and from these bacteria, which find a lodgment in the adenoids and tonsils, a fatal attack of diphtheria or consumption may have its beginning. Treatment of Adenoids.--Absolute removal is the only justifiable treatment. This is rendered imperative for so many reasons that it is unnecessary to go into details in justification of the procedure. The physical well-being, the mental development, the life of the child depend upon it. Any parent who would wittingly interpose an objection to the removal of his or her child's adenoids, after they have been demonstrated to exist, would be guilty of a grave crime. The operation itself is not at all dangerous. It is over in a few moments and the child is well in an hour or two, so far as any pain or suffering is concerned. Physicians are frequently asked if adenoids "grow" again after removal. The answer is, "Yes," they sometimes do. In a very small percentage of the cases they do return. The older the child is when they are removed the less chance there is of a recurrence. A child operated on before it is two years of age is more liable to a recurrence than a child operated on at six years of age. This must not, however, be construed as an excuse for putting an operation off, because if a child needs an operation at two years and it is postponed till later, its health will be permanently injured before it is four years of age. SUMMARY:-- 1. Adenoids cause more trouble and more actual disease than any other condition during childhood. 2. It is a crime for a parent to refuse operation if the presence of adenoids has been proved. 3. Removal is the only treatment and it should be done in every case as soon as possible. 4. The operation is a trivial one and is free from danger. NASAL HEMORRHAGE--"NOSE BLEEDS" A hemorrhage from the nose may occur at any time from birth on. It depends upon the rupture of one or more blood vessels. The great majority of "nose-bleeds" are caused by adenoids, or by a small ulcer in the nose, or by an injury, such as a blow or fall. A nasal hemorrhage, however, may be caused by other, more serious conditions, and for that reason may justify a careful inquiry into the cause, especially if bleeding should occur a number of times, or be of a serious character the first time. Of the more common causes as given above, the adenoids should be removed, and the chronic catarrh which is invariably the cause of the ulcer should be cured. Treatment of an Acute Attack.--Have the patient sit erect; loosen all tight clothing around neck; fold the hands over the head; apply cold to the back of the neck and the nose. Pieces of ice can be put into the nostril and the ice bag to the nape of the neck, or a piece of ice can be put into a folded napkin and held on the back of the neck. Taking a long breath and holding it as long as possible and repeating it while the ice is being applied is an aid. Placing the feet in hot mustard water is of decided use. Another excellent expedient is to wrap absorbent cotton round a smooth probe (piece of whalebone, for example), dip the cotton in an alum-water mixture (half teaspoonful powdered alum in a half cupful of water), and then push it into the bleeding nostril as far as you can with gentle force. A valuable remedy is Peroxide of Hydrogen used full strength and freely dropped into the nostril. If these measures fail, send for a physician at once. SUMMARY:-- 1st. Nose bleeds may be caused by some serious condition. 2nd. If they occur a number of times have the child examined. 3rd. If the treatment outlined above does not stop the bleeding in a few moments send immediately for a physician. QUINSY Quinsy is not common in childhood. It usually follows tonsilitis when it is seen. The child complains of pain in the neck, extreme pain and difficulty upon swallowing, and inability to open the mouth as much as usual. There is a tendency to hold the head to one side. The treatment is to open the abscess at the earliest moment after pus is present. HICCOUGH Hiccough is, in most cases, in infancy and childhood caused by some irritation of the stomach, may be over-filled with food or gas. In these cases it is an unimportant incident and may be quickly relieved by giving the child an enema of soap-water and a laxative of rhubarb and soda. Infrequently hiccough may be the result of cold feet, or a surface chill. Simple methods of relief are, to hold the breath, to expire, or blow the breath out as long as possible before taking the next breath; to sip water from a cup held by another person while the tips of the two fore-fingers are in the ears. Hiccough is quite frequent in hysteria in girls, but it is of no consequence. When hiccoughs set in during the course of any serious disease it is a very unfavorable sign. SORE MOUTH: STOMATITIS Stomatitis is an inflammation of the mucous membrane (inner lining) of the mouth. The gums and the inner surface of the lips and cheeks may be red and angry-looking. There may be small grayish spots on any part of the mouth. If the case is very bad or if it has lasted some time and has been neglected, these spots grow larger and join together forming irregular grayish plaques. A large percentage of the cases never go further than this because the proper care and attention is given them. It is possible, however, for any case to progress further and become ulcerative. This will be observed first as a faint yellow line at the margin of the teeth and gum. Ulceration never takes place unless the child has teeth. The quantity of saliva is very greatly increased, so much so that it flows out of the mouth soiling the clothes. The saliva is intensely acid and it consequently irritates the skin, causing more or less eczema. The mouth is painful and hot. There is slight fever, but seldom any marked prostration. If, however, the ulceration should be severe, the fever may be quite high. There is one feature of these cases that sometimes proves vexatious and annoying. Because of the soreness of the mouth, the child cannot draw strongly enough on the nipple to get a normal feeding, and as a result the nutrition of the child is poor. These children are hungry and when offered the nipple grasp it greedily, draw a few mouthfuls then stop because of the pain and begin to cry. If the ulceration is extensive, there is usually an odor and the gums bleed easily. Sometimes the teeth fall out or have to be drawn out. Strong, well-fed children are as likely to develop stomatitis as are those who are weakly and ill fed. The disease is caused by infection and is contagious. Just what the infection is we do not know; we do, however, know that children whose mouths are carefully cleaned after each feeding do not have sore mouths of this character. When cleaning the mouth care must be observed not to injure the tender mucous membrane. Treatment.--As soon as the condition is observed mouth-washing should be systematically and thoroughly carried out. After each feeding the mouth should be washed with a saturated solution of boric acid in boiled water. (See page 626.) It is not necessary to use any further treatment, as a rule. Patients recover in four to eight days. Strict attention to cleanliness, however, is imperative. The feeding bottle and nipple, or the mother's nipple, if breast fed, must be kept scrupulously clean. The feeding of these children is sometimes a problem for a day or two, because, as stated above, of the soreness of the mouth. This is best overcome by feeding the baby with a spoon. If breast fed, it is necessary to pump the milk and then feed with the spoon. Children will take the milk better if it is fed cold. Cold boiled water is largely taken and is good for them at this time. Treatment for Ulcers in Mouth.--The ulcers should be touched with a camel's-hair brush which has been dipped into finely powdered burnt alum. If a stronger caustic is necessary, the solid stick of nitrate of silver may be used. A mouth wash may also be used in the ulcerative cases, composed of the peroxide of hydrogen diluted with two parts of water. If this is used wash the mouth out afterward with plain, cool, boiled water. The peroxide mouth wash can be used four or five times daily. In addition to the mouth washing in the ulcerative cases it is advisable to use internally chlorate of potash. The druggist should be requested to make a two-ounce saturated solution, and of this you can give one-half teaspoonful, largely diluted with cool water, every hour during the day for the first twenty-four hours, then every two hours until marked improvement is shown, when it can be further reduced by lengthening the interval between doses. SPRUE--THRUSH Sprue is a form of sore mouth. It is seen only during the first six months of life, as a rule. It affects the mucous membrane of the mouth; it appears in the form of small white spots that look like drops of curdled milk. They are on the inner surface of the cheek and may be all over the mouth, and on the tongue. The spots are firmly attached, and if forcibly removed the mucous membrane will bleed. The disease is caused by infection through lack of cleanliness and it invariably affects poorly nourished children, especially those who are bottle-fed. There are no symptoms other than those of the mouth; the child frequently refuses to nurse because of evident pain and distress while nursing. The condition is not contagious. It may be cured in from six to eight days without difficulty. Treatment.--Mouth irrigations of boracic acid are all that are necessary. They are given in the following way: Place the child on its side, roll around the index finger a piece of absorbent cotton, dip this in a saturated solution of boracic acid, and put into the mouth of the child. Let the cotton take up as much of the solution as it will hold, so that when it is lightly pressed on the tongue and cheeks it will flow out of the mouth, thus "irrigating the mouth." Repeat this a number of times, pressing the cotton to a different part each time. This should be gone through from four to six times daily. If the child is a bottle-fed baby, care should be taken in cleaning the nipples and bottles as directed on page 264. If the patient is breast-fed, care must be taken to note that the mother's nipples are clean. They should be washed with the same solution of boracic acid and not handled. If the child cannot nurse it is necessary to feed it with a spoon. In obstinate cases the parts may be touched with a one per cent. solution of formalin. Mothers should particularly note not to use honey and borax, as is often recommended by women who know no better, in any disease of the mouth in children. * * * * * CHAPTER XXXV DISEASES OF THE STOMACH AND GASTRO-INTESTINAL CANAL Inflammation of the Stomach--Acute Gastritis--Persistent Vomiting--Acute Gastric Indigestion--Iced Champagne in Persistent Vomiting--Acute Intestinal Diseases of Children--Conditions Under Which They Exist and Suggestions as to Remedial Measures--Acute Intestinal Indigestion--Symptoms of Acute Intestinal Indigestion--Treatment of Acute Intestinal Indigestion--Children with Whom Milk Does Not Agree--Chronic or Persistent Intestinal Indigestion--Acute Ileo-colitis--Dysentery--Enteritis--Entero-colitis--Inflammatory Diarrhea--Chronic Ileo-colitis--Chronic Colitis--Summer Diarrhea--Cholera Infantum--Gastro-enteritis--Acute Gastro-enteric Infection--Gastro-enteric Intoxication--Colic Appendicitis--Jaundice in Infants--Jaundice in Older Children--Catarrhal Jaundice--Gastro-duodenitis--Intestinal Worms--Worms, Thread, Pin and Tape--Rupture ACUTE GASTRIC INDIGESTION Acute Inflammation of the Stomach--Acute Gastritis--Persistent Vomiting An infant seldom has real inflammation of the stomach. Gastric, or stomach, indigestion is the better name, because it actually signifies the true condition. It is indigestion that causes a child to vomit, though it is possible to have a true inflammation caused by the taking of irritant or corrosive drugs. Gastric indigestion causes sudden, repeated vomiting, with prostration and occasional fever. It is caused by unsuitable food, the wrong quantity of food, irregular feeding, and food the quality of which is not good. Treatment.--The stomach should be immediately washed out. Until the physician arrives the mother can encourage the child to drink a large quantity of cool boiled water. This will be vomited and it will wash out the stomach at the same time. No further treatment may be necessary, as the vomiting may stop. All food should be withheld for at least twenty-four hours. A high rectal irrigation should now be given. It is essential to know that the bowel is absolutely clean in all vomiting cases. The normal salt solution is the best agent to use for a high enema in infants. (See page 586.) After twelve or twenty-four hours' abstinence from food, the child can be given teaspoonful doses every twenty minutes of cooled boiled water, or barley or albumen water, weak tea, or chicken broth. Cold liquids are better retained and more readily taken than those that are heated. If the liquid feedings are vomited, another twelve hours must elapse before trying stomach feedings. In these cases we must try to satisfy the thirst by giving cold colon flushings. If the case becomes protracted and we find it impossible to nourish the child by the mouth, we must wash the stomach out once every day with a five per cent. solution of bicarbonate of soda, and feed the child by the rectum. Sometimes we can feed through the stomach tube. Liquids will frequently be retained when put into the stomach through a tube when they will be vomited if swallowed. The best food by the rectum is plain peptonized milk. Drugs are absolutely useless. If the vomiting persists, despite the above efforts to stop it, there is nothing to be gained by experimenting. You will not only render the condition worse but you will weaken the child. Morphine given hypodermatically is the only remedy. Given in appropriate doses, according to age, it is absolutely harmless. It will not only stop the vomiting, but it will give the child a much-needed rest, by allowing it to go to sleep. When it wakes up it will be stronger and its stomach will most likely retain small doses of nourishment. Great care must be exercised, in getting the child back on a normal diet, not to try to go too fast. In cases of persistent vomiting in children I have found it advisable to use teaspoonful doses of ice-cold champagne. These children will sometimes keep this down when all other liquids will be vomited. It is absolutely necessary to keep the child lying down. If he is restless or sits up, the vomiting may begin all over again. The champagne not only is excellent nourishment for the child, but it quiets the stomach, allays irritability, and frequently favors sleep, during which time a cure very often results. The champagne must be drawn through a champagne siphon (procured in the drug store), and the bottle must be kept on ice with the mouth downward; otherwise it will get stale very quickly and be of no use. If kept as advised it will remain good to the end. SUMMARY:-- 1st. Persistent vomiting in a child means acute gastritis. Stop all food for twenty-four hours. 2nd. Encourage the child to drink large quantities of slightly warm water; this will wash the stomach out and frequently stops the vomiting. 3rd. When the child is quiet wash out the bowels. 4th. If vomiting persists, use iced champagne as directed. ACUTE INTESTINAL DISEASES OF CHILDREN The large infant mortality that results from intestinal diseases during the summer months is deserving of the most careful consideration, both of the physician and the parent. Apart from the excessive heat of the summer, there is no doubt that an unfavorable environment, which means bad hygienic surroundings, bad sanitary conditions, bad food and home influences, contributes largely to the enormous number of these serious cases. Education, while it may be expected to influence favorably the sanitary and other conditions in the home, cannot change the home location. The child must continue to live in the same environment. It is in this class of cases that these summer diseases are so very fatal. Children in better circumstances can take advantage of conditions which are denied to the tenement child. The diseases must therefore be faced and treated under these existing conditions. In addition to the climate and the environment, there are certain factors that occur in all classes which result in intestinal derangement. If the stomach or bowels are not performing their function properly, or if the food or method of feeding is wrong, these, plus very hot, humid weather, invariably result in serious intestinal disease. The mother must be taught to interpret properly the meaning of a green, loose stool in the summertime; she must appreciate that it is the danger signal and must be regarded seriously. The very best preventive against summer diseases of the intestine is to guard particularly against any trouble with the child's stomach at all seasons of the year. A healthy stomach and bowel will resist disease, even in very hot weather. The most important food product which has a direct relationship to this class of diseases is milk. In a large city like New York it will remain impossible to solve the milk problem, despite the splendid efforts of the Health Department and the members of the medical profession, until the city itself shall establish milk depots and ice stations where safe milk, and ice to keep it safe, may be obtained at a nominal cost, or free, if the parents cannot afford to buy it. We, therefore, must recognize that the vast majority of children to-day are taking milk that is not suited to them, that is really not fit as a food for children. The mothers do not know this and no steps are taken to render the milk more safe for them to feed to their children. These mothers are willing to do what is essential in the interest of their children, but they do not know what should be done. These people cannot afford a physician or a nurse to teach them, nor do they even know that their methods are wrong or that they need any instruction. We must carry the information and the explanation to them. We must show them the need for a change of methods. This is the work for those charitably disposed women who desire some worthy purpose in life, who really wish to do some real good. All the equipment they need is good common sense. They will tell these mothers why it is necessary to pasteurize the milk before feeding it to the baby. They will show how to keep the nursing bottles clean, and the nipples sweet and fresh. They will instruct them how to dress the baby in the hot weather and impress them with the need of giving it all the cool, fresh air possible. In short, they will gain the confidence and the good will of these mothers in a tactful and diplomatic way, and they will tell them all they know in language which they will understand regarding the care of the baby. In every city in the country this work is needed and is waiting for the missionaries who will volunteer. To teach mothers the need for boiled water as a necessary drink for baby and older children is alone a worthy avocation. To impress upon one of these willing but ignorant mothers the absolute necessity for washing her hands before she prepares her baby's food, that she must keep a covered vessel in which the soiled napkins are placed until washed, that she should frequently sponge her baby in the hot weather, and explain thoroughly why these are important details, is a work of true religious charity. They should be specially taught to immediately discontinue milk at the first sign of intestinal trouble, to give a suitable dose of castor oil and to put the child on barley water as a food until the danger is passed. They should be taught to know the significance of a green, watery stool, they should know that is the one danger signal in the summer time that no mother can ignore without wilfully risking the life of her baby. They should be taught to prepare special articles of diet when they are needed. If every mother were educated to the extent as indicated in the above outline the appalling infant mortality would fall into insignificance. It is not a difficult task nor would it take a long time to carry it out; it is the work for willing women who have time and who perhaps spend that time in less desirable but more dramatic ways. It is the knowledge that aids in catching disease in its inception that counts. The worst infections begin as a mild condition and prompt treatment robs them of their sting. When treatment is delayed and the child is fed for twenty-four hours too long on milk, the condition which in the beginning could have been stopped promptly has developed and it becomes a fight for life. It will be seen from the above that all we need is education. Education of the mother primarily, but education of the missionary, the nurse, the physician, the municipality, and the State, each co-operating, each willing to work in the interest of a great cause, for the benefit of the human race and for the brotherhood of man. ACUTE INTESTINAL INDIGESTION Causes.--Overfeeding, unsuitable and improper food, irregular and indiscriminate feeding, sudden change from one food to another, as at weaning time, a change from a poor quality to a rich food, or vice versa. Conditions affecting the health of the child, especially the nervous system, such as hot weather, extreme cold, fatigue, or at the beginning of any of the acute diseases. Children sometimes are predisposed to attacks of intestinal indigestion; these children are delicate in health and have weak digestive ability. The slightest irregularity or error in diet will cause an attack in these children. Symptoms.--The attack may come on suddenly or it may develop slowly. The important constitutional symptoms are fever, prostration, and a general nervous irritability. The child is seized with pain in the abdomen. The pain is referred to the region around the navel. It is sharp, colicky, and severe, causing the child to cry out and draw up its legs in an effort to lessen its severity. The child is exceedingly restless and acts as if it were on the verge of a dangerous illness. Gas in the bowel is not present as a rule as frequently as it is in infants under the same circumstances. In a few hours diarrhea sets in, the stools may number from four to twelve or more in twenty-four hours. The stools are acid, sour, and the odor may be very foul. They are thinner than usual and frothy from the presence of gas. In very young infants suffering from a sudden attack of intestinal indigestion, the stomach, as well as the bowels, is invariably upset. If the indigestion is the result of a slower process, the stomach does not participate in the process. The color of the stools in infancy is yellow, then yellowish-green, and later grass-green. Undigested food is always present and in infants the curdled casein of the milk appears as white specks or lumps in the movements. The fever is high in the sudden cases and lower in the cases of gradual onset. The prostration is more severe when the onset is sudden and in infants may be very marked. The termination of the disease depends upon the cause, the treatment, and the previous health of the child. In healthy children promptly and properly treated it may be all over in a week. In delicate, poorly nourished children, and especially in the summer time, it may be the beginning of trouble that may eventuate in death. Treatment.--There is no condition in the whole realm of diseases of childhood where the knowledge of the mother may have such important results as this condition. The most effective time to treat these cases of intestinal indigestion is before the physician is called. There are few diseases in which time is so valuable, so far as final results are concerned, as it is here. Every mother should know the significance of a loose, green stool. She should be taught that it means danger and consequently demands prompt treatment. The first indication is to empty, thoroughly, the bowel. The best means for this purpose, if it is immediately procurable, is calomel. If calomel is not procurable at once give castor oil, two teaspoonfuls to an infant, one tablespoonful to an older child. Calomel should be given in one-eighth-grain doses, repeated every three-quarters of an hour for eight or twelve doses, until the bowel is thoroughly cleaned out. Don't be afraid of a few extra movements at the beginning. Better clean out thoroughly at the start than to be compelled to do it all over again after the child is weak and suffering from the poison of the disease. The next important thing to do is to stop milk at once. The thirst is usually intense and if vomiting is not present it can be moderately relieved by giving small quantities frequently of cool boiled water or mineral water or strained albumen or barley water. We quite often have to stop all food and liquids by the mouth for twenty-four hours. If the prostration is very great and the child looks as though it might collapse, it can be given brandy in cracked ice from time to time. After the bowels have been thoroughly cleaned out, never before, some medicinal agent may be given to stop the unnecessary diarrhea. In a very large number of promptly and properly treated cases this is not needed. If it is thought best to use it the physician will select the agent according to the conditions present and prescribe it. Breast-fed infants rarely have intestinal diseases of a severe type. If they should develop diarrhea they must be taken off the mother's milk for twenty-four hours. They should be given a dose of castor oil or calomel and fed on barley water in the interval. The feedings should be reduced in quantity and the interval doubled. The two-hour interval will become a four-hour feeding: the three or four ounces at each feeding can be reduced to two ounces. The intention is to simply give as little as possible while the diarrhea is under way. The mother's breasts must be pumped at the regular feeding time in order to preserve the flow, release the pressure, and keep the milk fresh. It is sometimes a problem to renew feedings of milk without exciting a relapse of the diarrhea. It should not be tried until the stools are normal in color and consistency. This may not be for three or four days. In resuming the milk it should be given in smaller amounts and diluted with lime water or barley water for the first day. Gruels may be given to which skimmed milk may be added: later add the ordinary milk. If it is well digested and does not cause any return of the diarrhea, the quantity of milk can be slowly increased until the former feedings are resumed. It is often of very great advantage to boil the milk for some time. Peptonized milk is safe and can be used in bottle-fed infants after diarrhea. In older children, meat, broths, eggs, boiled milk, and dry toast bread may be used sparingly for some time. Cereals, vegetables, fruits, should be withheld for a considerable time and watched carefully when resumed. Kumyss, buttermilk, matzoon, bacillac, and other fermented milks are better borne than plain milk. All of these children need rest, fresh air, change of air, frequent bathing, and tonics, as an attack of this kind leaves them depressed, weak, languid, and anemic. SUMMARY:-- 1st. When a child complains of sharp, colicky, severe pains in the abdomen, around navel, which are shortly followed by foul, sour, frothy diarrhea,--greenish in color, it has acute intestinal indigestion. 2nd. Every mother should know that a green stool means danger. She should know to give at once a cathartic,--castor oil is good, but give a good large dose--then stop all food for twenty-four hours. If she learns this lesson she will have time to wait for the doctor; meantime, she may have saved her child's life. CHILDREN WITH WHOM MILK DOES NOT AGREE Contrary to the general belief, there are quite a large number of children in whom milk seems to act as a poison. These children are not necessarily constipated. They suffer, however, from a slow, continuous intestinal toxemia or poison. The symptoms of this condition are headache, disorders of speech, habitual sleep-talking, sleep-walking, and general nervous irritability without cause: they are listless, languid, and constantly tired. They may be bright in the morning and sleepy in the afternoon. They are irritable and cross and touchy. Treatment.--Milk must be wholly discontinued. Eggs must be restricted to one every second day, and meat but once daily. The use of green vegetables is particularly suitable and should be given daily. Cereals and fruit also are good. Malted milk, kumyss, or matzoon may be given in place of milk. If constipation is present, rhubarb and soda mixture is an excellent laxative in these cases. A tonic should be prescribed for all these children. DYSENTERY--ENTERITIS--ENTERO-COLITIS--INFLAMMATORY DIARRHEA Cause.--Any cause which has been mentioned as a cause of ordinary diarrhea may result in this disease. It may occur at any time of the year and at any age. It may follow the infectious diseases. It may follow any other disease of the intestines. Symptoms.--It may begin like an ordinary attack of acute intestinal indigestion. There is usually vomiting, fever, pain, and frequent yellow or green stools. The passages may be blood-stained and there may be little or much mucus. The stools at the beginning have no odor as a rule. The bowels move very frequently, often with little or nothing to pass. There may be pain with each movement. The blood may disappear in a few days, but the mucus remains, often in large quantity in each stool. At the beginning the fever is high, but it soon falls and remains low during the attack. The child loses weight, is irritable, has no appetite, and looks and acts sick. When the attack is over these children do not gain their strength as readily as we would like; recovery is slow. The acute symptoms usually last about one week, after this time the child begins to recover, but the process is a tedious one and one in which much care has to be exercised. It is an encouraging sign to note the disappearance of the blood in the stools and the return of the movements to the normal brown color. When these favorable signs are wanting the bowel is probably ulcerated and it will take a much longer time to return to normal and to be free from blood and mucus. The above is the ordinary form of this disease and it ends in recovery as a rule. There is a more severe form, however, which differs from the above in the following way: The fever is high and remains high; the stools are more frequent and there is more blood and more mucus in them; the child is much more irritable and is more profoundly sick. Death may occur at any time from the second day. If the little patient survives, the return to health is a very slow process; it often takes months and frequently years before a reasonable degree of strength is regained. Relapses are common, and they are very difficult to treat and care for. In some cases the child never wholly regains its former strength. There are children who have been the victims of other intestinal diseases or conditions who develop colitis. The colitis in these cases may come on suddenly with vomiting and high fever, or it begins slowly, with no vomiting and with little fever. Their appetite is poor, their digestion is feeble, their prostration is pronounced. They lose flesh rapidly and may be emaciated to a remarkable degree. Very few of these cases recover completely. Serious and sometimes fatal relapses may take place. The feeding of these children is a difficult task and the greatest care must be constantly taken; a very little mistake may cost the life of the child. Treatment.--All diseases of the intestine in childhood should be promptly and efficiently treated. If any form of diarrhea is neglected, it may result in the development of ileo-colitis with all its risks and uncertainty. When a child is seized with sudden bowel trouble, no matter what variety it is, it should be treated with the greatest care because "sudden" bowel trouble usually means plenty of trouble if it is neglected. Fresh air is essential in all these cases. A change of air is of decided value as soon as the immediate symptoms have abated. The diet is the same as for children who have gastro-enteric intoxication. Later, much difficulty will be met because these patients have absolutely no appetite,--peptonized skimmed milk is always good, beef broths are often well borne, liquid beef peptonoids may be tried. The food should be given every three hours. Boiled water and stimulants may be given between the feedings. Later in older children, raw beef, eggs, boiled milk, kumyss, or matzoon and gruels may be given. Great care has to be taken for months after an attack; relapses may be caused by changes of temperature, by fatigue, and, of course, by improper feeding. These children should avoid potatoes, tomatoes, fruits, corn, oatmeal, and a great many other things which an intelligent mother would not give any sick child, as candy, cakes, pastries, etc. Cases which begin with free vomiting, thin stools; and fever should be treated at once. The bowels must be thoroughly cleaned out, the colon should be thoroughly irrigated, and all food should be stopped. When there are bloody stools with mucus and pain we must depend upon castor oil, irrigations of the colon, and opium and bismuth by the mouth. A good big dose of oil at the beginning is always necessary. If, however, the stomach is irritable and will not tolerate castor oil, we may substitute calomel in one-fourth-grain doses every hour for six doses, to be followed by citrate of magnesium. Irrigation of the colon in these cases is one of the essential means of successful treatment; it should be done twice a day during the first few days of the disease. Stimulants are needed in all the cases. They help the heart, act as a food, and tend to quiet the general nervousness by favoring sleep. Good brandy given in boiled cool water is the best stimulant. After the child is over the worst of the acute symptoms all medicine should be withdrawn and the proper kind of food given. Tonics will aid in restoring the strength. Cod Liver Oil during the following winter is a very good plan to aid in building up the vitality of the weakened bowel, but it must not be given too soon. CHRONIC ILEO-COLITIS--CHRONIC COLITIS Chronic Ileo-colitis fellows the acute variety. Cases which are unusually severe or which have been badly managed are likely to become chronic. A child suffering from this disease presents the following picture: The patient is emaciated, the abdomen is usually enlarged with gas, the feet are cold, the circulation of the blood is poor, the fever is low or absent altogether except when the child is having a relapse, when it jumps up suddenly. The bowels are loose and contain mucus, frequently in large quantities. The mucus may stop for a few days; then it appears again with a rise of temperature accompanied with loose stools with foul odor. These children are exceedingly nervous and irritable and are very poor sleepers. Parents should be told it will be impossible to effect a rapid cure of these cases. It often takes months to get them started on the safe road. The slightest mistake or change in the weather will upset the progress of the cure and it will be necessary to begin all over again. The entire hope of cure rests with the mother. She must be faithful, patient, and must carry out the physician's instructions implicitly. The management consists in diet, change of climate, and such other treatment as the physician finds necessary in each individual case. Treatment.--In children under one year of age the only hope is breast milk, which must be given in small quantities. They do not do well on any starch food for a considerable period. Where breast milk is not available the whites of two or three eggs may be given daily. They may be beaten up and given in skimmed milk, or in plain water with a little salt added. Zwieback or bread crumbs may be given in small quantities. They should be fed at four-hour intervals. Older children may take skimmed milk, raw scraped beef, junket, and coddled white of egg or raw egg, bread crumbs, toasted, or zwieback. A rectal enema must be given every twenty-four hours if the bowels have not moved. If constipation is the habit a laxative should be given; the aromatic fluid extract of cascara sagrada or magnesia are suitable. At least one free movement every day is essential to success. Colon irrigations are only to be used when there is a rise of temperature, irrespective of whether the bowels have moved or not. When convalescence is established these children should be given a maximum of fresh air and should be treated as recommended in cases of malnutrition. SUMMER DIARRHEA As the name implies, this is the form of diarrhea that is so common, especially in cities, in summer. It is always preceded by some milder condition which paves the way for the more serious diarrhea. Acute indigestion is, as a general rule, the forerunner of cholera infantum. The influence of hot weather must always be kept in mind as the underlying factor which no doubt conduces to gastro-intestinal disease of infancy and childhood. The depression incident to a spell of hot and possibly humid weather tends to interfere with the digestive process of babies and children. When this function is carried on imperfectly, the strength and vitality of the child fails, and if immediate steps are not taken to check the process, diarrhea makes its appearance. If these children are improperly fed, or if their surroundings are not sanitary; if they are not getting fresh air enough, or if they suffer because of lack of attention, and have at the same time a little indigestion, it is only a step further to develop a full-fledged cholera infantum. The outcome of any case of summer diarrhea is questionable. It is not safe to make any promise. An apparently mild attack may prove quickly fatal. Much depends upon the previous history of the child. If it has been a strong, healthy child it has a very good chance if treated energetically and correctly. If it has previously suffered from bad nutrition, is not robust, has had trouble with its stomach, etc., the chances are against it. The one lesson to be learned by all mothers is, as stated above, to act quickly; to be on the watch all through the summer months for any trouble with the baby's stomach or bowels. It is much easier to treat and cure a little trouble than to battle against an established gastro-enteric intoxication. Overfeeding and indiscriminate feeding must be religiously avoided,--they are the two most prolific causes of stomach and intestinal troubles in childhood. Symptoms.--The onset is sudden and pronounced. The child begins to vomit and continues vomiting and retching persistently. The bowels are loose, and large, watery, greenish stools are frequent. The prostration is very marked, the child looks seriously sick, respiration is quick and shallow, the eyes sunken, the skin becomes ashen gray in color, and the pulse is soft and very rapid. The fever may be very high or it may remain low. The low febrile cases are the worst. If taken in hand quickly and if the treatment is energetic and if the child reacts, the case may go rapidly on to recovery and the child be wholly well in a few days; or it may not react, but be overwhelmed by the poison and sink and die in twenty-four hours. Treatment.--In the treatment of cholera infantum it must not be forgotten that the dangerous element is the poisoning of the system that is constantly going on. It is difficult for the non-medical mind to estimate the importance of this element. It is, of course, caused by the bacteria present in the gastro-intestinal canal. There are numberless millions of bacteria in the normal healthy bowel. A very large percentage of those germs are good for us, are there for a beneficent purpose, and can and do protect us from other germs which occasionally find their way into the bowel and whose purpose is not a peaceful one. When the bowel condition changes, as during an attack of summer diarrhea, it is invaded by multitudes of evil-intentioned germs. These germs find conditions in the diseased bowel exceedingly favorable to them, so they begin work in an active, energetic way. The result of their activity is highly poisonous, and, as the good germs are virtually out of business and are consequently not working in our interest, we are absolutely in the hands of the enemy. There is soon manufactured, by these invading germs, enough poison to poison the entire system of the child. It is this feature that we must combat in summer diarrhea. It is absolutely essential to keep these cases as much in the open fresh air as possible. No matter how sick they may be, this rule must be observed. Light clothing is advisable. If it is a city child that is affected and it does not show decided improvement in three or four days, it should, if possible, be sent to the country. There is always distinct danger of a relapse in every case, so the little victim should be given a change of air as soon as convalescence permits. The seashore is preferable to the mountains in all intestinal cases. In the care of these patients cleanliness is an important factor and counts much in the ultimate cure. The child, as well as the clothing, should be kept scrupulously clean. Napkins as soon as soiled should be removed and put into a disinfecting solution. The buttocks should be well powdered after each movement to prevent sores developing. Feeding must be stopped at once. No food of any kind should be given for at least twenty-four hours, or until the tendency to vomit subsides. The thirst must be allayed, however, so we give frequently small quantities of thin barley water or albumen water or cold boiled water. If these are vomited we must stop giving them altogether for twenty-four hours. If the fever is high and the skin dry, the child should be given a cool pack, 85° to 90° F., which can be moistened every half hour with water at this temperature; this will often control the fever satisfactorily. Hot-water bottles should be placed at the feet if they are cold. If, on the other hand, the fever is very low (below normal), the child's circulation poor, the skin blue and cold, a hot-water bath at 108° F., for five minutes (rubbing the surface of the body while in the bath), will be of very great service. The bath may be repeated at half-hour intervals. If the patient is a breast-fed infant it can be allowed to nurse after the twenty-four-hour rest. The length of time it is permitted to stay at the breast should be about one-quarter of the time it was allowed before the attack began. If it does not vomit, the nursing can be repeated every four hours. As the case progresses toward recovery the interval between feedings can be shortened. Care, however, must be taken not to shorten the interval too rapidly. If the patient is artificially fed and is not over four months old, a substitute for the milk must be found. The best substitutes are rice or barley water, either plain or dextrinized, the malted foods, chicken or beef broths, liquid peptonoids or bovinine. Water (boiled and cooled) may be allowed at all times if not vomited. Older children are treated in the same way. All food is withheld while there is any vomiting. When vomiting stops begin with small quantities of beef broth, or chicken, or veal broth. Later kumyss or matzoon can be tried, and finally thin gruels made with milk. If vomiting persists the stomach must be washed out; this can be done by giving the infant or child a large drink of cool boiled water. This will be immediately vomited and it will clean the stomach at the same time. The stomach-pump may be used to better advantage. One washing is usually sufficient. The vomiting will stop after the stomach has been washed out and the patient may then be given, frequently, small quantities of cold albumen water or barley water. The bowel should be thoroughly cleaned out at the beginning of every summer diarrhea. Castor oil or calomel are the two best cathartics for this purpose. If the stomach is not upset use castor oil. If the stomach is upset use calomel; one-fourth of a grain every hour for eight doses will be sufficient. Give enough, however,--there is no danger at the beginning of the attack of too free movements of the bowel. Whatever cathartic is given, it should produce green, watery stools. Irrigation of the bowel is an exceedingly effective way of cleaning out the poison-laden large intestine. It should be done in every instance unless the movements are watery and of such frequency as to render irrigation unnecessary. Once or twice daily will be sufficient in even the worst cases. The irrigation should be given at the temperature of 100° F, and should be the normal saline solution; a long rectal tube is used to give the irrigation. SUMMARY:-- 1st. Cholera infantum is one of the most dangerous, one of the most treacherous, and one of the quickest acting diseases of childhood. 2nd. Don't temporize, don't delay, don't regard lightly any diarrhea during the summer time. 3rd. Give a large dose of castor oil and withhold all nourishment until the doctor sees the little patient in every case of diarrhea during the warm weather. 4th. Keep the child in a cool, quiet place and don't handle or annoy it. 5th. Follow, your doctor's directions implicitly. The fight may be short, sharp, and decisive. Don't pave the way for regrets afterward. Do everything while you have the chance. COLIC Colic is a common condition in infancy. Very few children escape more or less colic during the first few months of life. It does not seem to injure permanently some infants; they go on growing according to standard, eat and sleep, and seem contented and happy despite occasional severe attacks of colic. Other children suffer seriously; the degree of indigestion is considerable, and the nutrition of the child is interfered with. Colic is much more frequent in bottle-fed infants than in those fed on breast milk. Cow's milk, no matter how skillfully it is prepared for their use, is at best an unsuitable diet and taxes the digestive ability of robust children. It is quite natural for an infant whose digestive organs are not strong to develop colic and intestinal indigestion if put on artificial food. Any condition that causes indigestion may likewise cause colic. Those children who are always overfeeding,--taking too much milk, too strong milk, or who are fed irregularly,--are the colicky babies. Constipation is frequently associated with colic and may be the actual cause. A daily movement of the bowel does not necessarily mean that the bowels are emptying themselves satisfactorily. Despite the daily movement, there may be considerable fecal matter left in the bowel which undergoes decomposition. This results in the evolution of large quantities of gas and severe attacks of colic. Indigestion is very often caused by conditions which effect the stability of the child's nervous organism; such conditions are fright, anger, fatigue, exhaustion, excitement. The origin of the colic in breast-fed children is very often caused by some nervous condition of the mother that affects her milk. Constipation in the mother may cause colic in the child. Symptoms.--A baby having an attack of colic will cry loudly from time to time and whine during the interval; it will pull up its legs and bear down. Its abdomen is tense and hard and distended with gas. With the expulsion of the gas the pain ceases and the child falls asleep. If the attack is very severe the prostration and exhaustion is marked; the feet are cold and the body is bathed in perspiration. If the colic is constant the child may be fretful and restless most of the time, being seemingly comfortable for only an hour or two in the twenty-four. In older children who cry because of severe pain in the abdomen the possibility of appendicitis must not be forgotten. Treatment.--Find out the cause of the colic if possible. If the cause is located in the mother, the remedy naturally must affect her. Regulation of her bowel, restriction of her diet, and proper exercise, may be sufficient to effect a cure of the colic in the infant. The object of treatment is to help the child get rid of the gas. The best and quickest means to effect this is to apply massage or give a rectal injection. An injection of two ounces of cold water in which a half or one teaspoonful of glycerine has been put, will act quickly. Dry heat applied to the abdomen in the form of the hot-water bottle or woolen cloths will aid in the expulsion of the gas. The feet should be kept warm. In cases of habitual colic in breast-fed babies the cause may be in the quality of the mother's milk. It should be examined and if found too strong should be diluted. This can be done by giving the child an ounce of plain boiled water or barley water before each feeding. If the child gets an ounce of liquid before each feeding he will not want as much of the breast milk; so we shall have the same total quantity, but a reduced quality, which may cure the colic at once. It is necessary, in order to cure colic, that the bowels move every day in a satisfactory manner. If any aid is needed, milk of magnesia is the best laxative. It may be given in teaspoonful doses in water previous to a feeding. Aromatic cascara sagrada in from ten to thirty-drop doses is a very good laxative, if a stronger remedy is needed. To relieve the acute attack, three drops of Hoffman's anodyne may be given in two teaspoonfuls of warm water and repeated in ten-minute intervals until relieved, to a baby under one year of age. From five to ten drops of gin, given in three teaspoonfuls of warm water, and repeated in fifteen minutes, is also satisfactory and harmless. A very good remedy which may be used with the above for quick relief, and to stop the child from crying, is the following: Fold a piece of flannel cloth (two thicknesses) the size of the baby's abdomen; wring out of very hot water and drop ten drops of turpentine over the surface,--at different spots,--of the flannel and lay on abdomen,--turpentine side next skin. Cover this with another piece of flannel,--two or three thicknesses, that has been dry-heated and allow to remain in place for about ten minutes. Colic, as a rule, disappears completely about the third month. APPENDICITIS Appendicitis is mentioned here merely to acquaint mothers with its prominent symptoms. When a child has what seems to be an attack of indigestion, but complains of pain and tenderness in the abdomen, vomits, and develops a fever, and is constipated, appendicitis may be suspected. The pain and tenderness are not referred to the region of the appendix but are more centrally located. If, however, the finger point is pressed over the appendix, distinct tenderness will be elicited in inflammation of that region. Constipation is the rule in appendicitis, but diarrhea occasionally accompanies it. The abdominal muscles may be rigid, that is, the abdomen does not feel soft as is usual; there is a feeling if they are pressed, as if they were hard and unyielding. Treatment.--Put the child in bed and send for the family physician at once. The condition is too serious and too uncertain to delay, or for a parent to make any effort at treatment. Appendicitis is a much more serious condition in infancy and childhood than it is in an adult. JAUNDICE IN INFANTS There are two types of jaundice in infants that deserve brief consideration. 1st. There is a form of jaundice caused by a defect in the development of the bile or gall tubes. These infants develop jaundice a day or two after birth and become intensely jaundiced within a very brief time. They lose flesh and strength to a marked degree and die in a few weeks. It is not possible to affect this condition favorably by any method of treatment. This type of jaundice is not very common. 2nd. There is a type of jaundice that appears between the second and fifth day of life that is very common. It lasts from one to two weeks and then disappears. It is never fatal and is not serious. It requires no treatment. JAUNDICE IN OLDER CHILDREN--CATARRHAL JAUNDICE--GASTRO DUODENITIS Symptoms.--This form of jaundice begins like an attack of ordinary indigestion. There are, as a rule, pain, fever, vomiting, and prostration. The pain is located in the upper part of the abdomen and may be quite severe. The vomiting may continue for a number of days. The bowels are usually constipated. After a few days the jaundice sets in and may be quite intense. After the jaundice is established the stools are gray or white in color and there is much gas in the bowel. The urine is very dark and may be yellow or yellowish-green in color. The child complains of headache, is dull and listless, and appears sick and weak. The condition lasts about two weeks, but the jaundice may last much longer. It is not a serious disease. Treatment.--The diet should be cut down in quantity and should consist of rare meat, fruit, and a small quantity of milk. If vomiting continues the milk may diluted with lime water or vichy water. The child should drink water or vichy water freely. No starchy foods, or fats, or sugars should be allowed. The bowels should be kept open with calomel, one-tenth of a grain every hour until ten are taken, to be followed by citrate of magnesia every morning. If the pain is severe it may be relieved by a mustard paste or a turpentine poultice. The child should be given acid hydrochloric diluted, eight drops in one-half glass of water, ten minutes before each meal--and kept on it for at least one month. INTESTINAL WORMS There are three types of intestinal worms; they are known as the round-worm, the thread-worm, and the tape worm. Round-Worm.--The round-worm is usually found in children of the run-about age. It is never seen in infancy. It occupies the small or upper intestine, and is from four to ten inches long. If there are round-worms in the bowel, there are usually a number of them and there may be hundreds. Symptoms.--Round-worms give no definite symptoms. The only possible way to tell if they are present is actually to see them in the stools of the child. They are of a light gray color. It is reasonable to expect that a child suffering from worms will have symptoms of abdominal distress from time to time; indigestion with colic and much gas may be present; children lose their appetites and are nervous and restless; sleep is disturbed; they may grind their teeth and talk in their sleep, and they may pick their noses unnecessarily during the day. These symptoms may, however, accompany other conditions when no worms are present in the bowel. My observation has been that in children in whom worms were present the nervous symptoms were distinctly accentuated. They are unreliable children; they seem well to-day and peevish to-morrow; they complain of headaches, dizziness, and chilly feelings. They are hysterical, noisy, uncontrollable. A child with these symptoms should be suspected of having worms and if no cause can be found to explain his temperamental vagaries he should be treated for worms. I have cured a number of children of excessive nervousness by giving them medicine for worms when no worms were present. Such results can only be explained on the assumption that these children were suffering from intestinal auto-toxemia or self-poisoning, and the thorough disinfection of the bowel apparently stopped the process by ridding the child's system of a mass of bacteria, which were undoubtedly causing the auto-toxemia and consequent nervousness. Treatment.--The most efficient remedy for removing round-worms is Santonin. The quantity necessary for the various ages is as follows: Two to four years 2 grains. Four to six years 3 grains. Six to ten years 3-1/2 grains. The best way to give it is in divided doses, with an equal quantity of sugar of milk. For a child of six years the formula would therefore be, 3-1/2 grains of Santonin, mixed with the same quantity of sugar of milk divided into three powders. These powders are given four hours apart in the following way. The child is given a light supper the evening before and one-half glass citrate of magnesia the following morning and the first powder one-half hour later; no breakfast being given. A light lunch, of milk and crackers, may be taken about noon. The second powder is given four hours after the first, and the third four hours after the second. Half an hour after the last powder, a dose of castor oil (one tablespoonful) is given. In a few moments the bowels will move; usually there are no worms in this movement. A little later they will move freely again and if worms are present they will be discharged in this movement. Thread-Worm, or Pin-Worm.--A thread-worm looks just like a little piece of white thread. They are found in the lower part of the bowel and in the rectum. They are usually present, if present at all, in large numbers. Symptoms.--The chief symptom is itching. It may be limited to the anus or it may involve the neighboring parts. Thread-worms may find their way out of the anus and in female children may find their way into the vagina. In these instances the child is tormented with itching of the privates and may establish the habit of self-abuse as a result of the constant itching and scratching. The itching is more intense at night soon after the child goes to bed. As a result of the local irritation in the lower part of the bowel and rectum there is set up a catarrh of the bowel which produces large quantities of mucus. Treatment.--The only medication by the mouth that is of any use is turpentine in one drop doses after meals, given in a teaspoonful of sugar. The best treatment, and in most cases the only treatment that is effective, is the use of rectal injections. The procedure is as follows:--The child first gets a cleaning injection of two quarts of warm water into which a teaspoonful of borax has been put. This will wash away any mucus or fecal matter that may have collected. This injection is best given with a No. 18 rectal catheter which is pushed into the rectum for about 10 inches, the water being allowed to run away as it enters. From six to eight ounces of the infusion of quassia is then passed, as high up as the catheter will reach. It is intended that the quassia will remain in as long as possible, for at least half an hour. In order to assure this there are two features that should be kept in mind: first, the water should be allowed to flow in slowly, consequently hold the bag low, not higher than two feet above the level of the bed on which the patient lies; second, after the water is all in remove the catheter very slowly and keep the child absolutely quiet. This treatment is repeated every second night for a week, then twice a week for four weeks. A solution of garlic is a very effective remedy and may be tried if the quassia fails, which is not likely if the treatment is carried out effectively and if the parts are kept scrupulously clean. Tape Worms.--Tape worms are obtained from eating raw meat, pork or sausage, rarely from fish, and from playing with cats and dogs. Symptoms.--No definite symptoms accompany the presence of tape worm. The children may have pains in the abdomen, diarrhea, a capricious appetite, foul breath, and they may suffer from anemia, sometimes quite severely. The only positive symptoms is the presence of links of the worm in the stools. Treatment.--Give a dose of castor oil at bed time. Two hours after breakfast next morning give one-half dram of the oleoresin of male-fern in emulsion or capsule. Very light nourishment should be taken during the day, composed of gruels and soups. When the worm is passed it should be examined to find if the head is present; if not, the treatment should be repeated in twenty-four hours. RUPTURE Rupture of any description is not a condition that any mother should attempt to treat. A physician should be called in every case. Any misdirected effort at manipulation or pressure may result in irreparable injury to the parts. External applications are useless and may be injurious. All ordinary forms of rupture in infancy and early childhood are curable if properly treated. * * * * * CHAPTER XXXVI DISEASES OF CHILDREN, CONTINUED Mastitis or Inflammation of the Breasts in Infancy--Mastitis in Young Girls--Let Your Ears Alone--Never Box a Child's Ears--Do Not Pick the Ears--Earache--Inflammation of the Ear--Acute Otitis--Swollen Glands--Acute Adenitis--Swollen Glands in the Groin--Boils--Hives--Nettle Rash--Prickly Heat--Ringworm in the Scalp--Eczema--Poor Blood--Simple Anemia--Chlorosis--Severe Anemia--Pernicious Anemia MASTITIS, OR INFLAMMATION OF THE BREASTS IN INFANCY There are a few drops of a milky secretion in the breasts of infants when born. Occasionally the amount will be in excess of the normal quantity, and the breasts, around the nipple, may be swollen and slightly inflamed. Should this condition persist, it may be relieved by painting the parts with the tincture of belladonna. Under no circumstances should the breasts be manipulated or rubbed, as this is very apt to cause an inflammatory condition, and to result in mastitis. Mastitis begins, as a rule, during the second week of life. The breast becomes red, swollen, painful, and shows inflammatory changes. It may terminate without the formation of an abscess, or it may go on to suppuration. The child becomes extremely restless and irritable, it is disinclined to nurse, and suffers from loss of sleep and nourishment. It is possible for such a condition, in the female, to injure the breast to the extent of arresting its development and to render it useless in the future. If the suppuration is extensive the process may terminate fatally. Mastitis in infants is caused by unnecessary interference and manipulation and by want of cleanliness. When it occurs the parts should be kept absolutely clean and should not be handled in any way. Ichthyol 25 per cent., Zinc Oxide Ointment, enough to make one ounce, spread upon old, clean, soft linen, and laid over the parts and changed every six hours, is an excellent healing application. A piece of oiled silk may be put outside the linen to prevent the ointment staining the clothing, and over this a layer of absorbent cotton and a binder, applied without pressure. If an abscess develops in spite of treatment, it must be freely opened and freely drained, and the general health of the patient supported by regular nourishment and tonics. Mastitis in Young Girls.--Pain and swelling of the breasts are sometimes complained of by girls between the twelfth and fifteenth years, though it may occur at an earlier or later date. If left alone the condition will invariably subside without treatment. Should bacteria find an entrance through the nipple at this time, an abscess may result. The whole breast is involved and it will be exceedingly painful and much swollen. There may be moderate fever, headache, and a pronounced feeling of indisposition. These patients should be given a laxative,--citrate of magnesia, or Pluto Water, and kept on a very light diet. An ice-bag should be kept constantly at the breast during the day, and a moist dressing of 1:5000 bichloride of mercury during the night. It may take a week before recovery takes place. LET YOUR EARS ALONE Never Box a Child's Ears.--A single blow may make a child deaf; repeated blows on their ears will certainly injure children's hearing. Thomas A. Edison, our greatest inventor, was made deaf when a lad by a surly brakeman, who soundly boxed his ears for some trivial or fancied offense. Boxing a child's ears is but one of a great many things you should never do to the ears. In fact, there are far more things you should not do to safeguard the hearing, than there are things you can do to benefit your ears. Do Not Pick the Ears.--Do not put cotton in the ears unless ordered to do so by a reputable physician. Do not syringe the ears without the doctor's orders. Put no poultices in the ears. Do not put drops of any kind in the ears unless prescribed by a doctor. Above all, do not use the advertised ear cures, as most of them are harmful. Never blow into a child's ear, never douche the nose without the doctor's orders, as this may wash germs into the tubes leading to the ears and bring about a serious condition. Riding in tunnels, especially in tunnels under water where the air pressure varies, has, through some recent investigation, been found to be injurious to the ears of a great many people. Conductors and other trainmen who run through many tunnels are apt to have ear trouble, as are the men who work underground a great depth where they are in motion, such as miners running underground trains. If you have an earache that continues for any length of time, take no chances, but consult a physician. And remember to care for the throat and nose, as ill conditions in those places result in ear troubles. Do not blow your nose too hard; it merely injures the inner sides of the ear drums. Adenoids in children frequently bring about a bad ear trouble. Even seasickness is due in a great measure to ear disturbances. If you have a running ear, attend to it at once by visiting a doctor. So serious is this that life insurance companies will not insure people in that condition. Earache.--When a child complains of earache its ear should be examined. In nearly every case of earache it is necessary to treat the throat, as this is, as a rule, the seat of the trouble. An antiseptic gargle of equal parts of Borolyptol and warm water is an excellent mixture. It should be used freely every two hours. Children suffering from earache should be kept indoors. If the examination should show that it is not necessary to lance the ear drum, some local measure may be adopted to allay the pain. Putting the child in bed with the head resting on a hot-water bottle may be all that will be necessary. The following procedure may be carried out, but only after a physician has made an examination and according to his directions: A hot water douche, given by means of a douche bag, is quite effective. The water should be 110° F.; the bag should be held about two feet above the level of the child's head, and the irrigating point should not be pushed into the ear, but held so that the water will find its own way into the ear. When the earache does not respond to the above methods the ear should be closely watched and examined at intervals so that it may be opened at the right moment. This is very essential because, if it is neglected, the pus may find its way into the mastoid cells and set up the dangerous disease, mastoiditis. This disease may cause abscess of the brain and death. The moment a child develops fever in the course of an earache the ear should be examined and opened at once, if found necessary. Inflammation of the Ear. Acute Otitis.--Inflammation of the ear seldom occurs in childhood, unless as a complication, or as a result of some infectious disease. Any disease which affects the throat in any way may be the cause of the inflammation of the ear. Such diseases are, "cold in the head," tonsilitis, grippe, "sore throat," or pharyngitis, measles, scarlet fever. It is much more common in children than in adults. The younger the child, the more liable it is to develop ear trouble when suffering from any of the above diseases. The presence of adenoids favors the development of ear complications. Symptoms.--There is one symptom present in all cases of inflammation of the ear; that is, fever. Pain may or may not be present; it is present in a majority of the cases. Children with inflammation of the ear are exceedingly restless and do not sleep long at a time nor do they sleep soundly. Treatment.--The treatment is to open the drum membrane, at the right time, which of course will always be done by a physician who has had some experience in this work. After Treatment.--The after treatment consists of washing or syringing the ear every three hours with eight or twelve ounces of a 1:10,000 solution of corrosive sublimate. This will be kept up for four days; then the intervals between the washing will be extended to five hours, and kept up until the drum membrane closes. If the corrosive sublimate solution should cause any eruption around the ear, a normal salt solution (see page 627) may be used in the same way, and in the same quantity as above. A running ear will run for from three to six weeks. It may heal up at any time after ten days. If the discharge should suddenly stop and the fever rise, it indicates that the opening has become plugged or healed too quickly. In either case it will have to be opened again. As soon as the ear begins running again the symptoms will disappear. After syringing the ear it should be dried thoroughly with pieces of sterile absorbent cotton. The best syringe to use for washing out the ear is a one-ounce hard-rubber ear syringe with a soft rubber tip. An ordinary douche bag will do if a syringe of the above character cannot be obtained. The douche bag should not be held higher than two feet above the patient's head. The double-current ear irrigator is an excellent device for this purpose. The child should be on its back on a table. Its arms should be fastened down by its side. A basin can be placed under its ear and the irrigating done without causing any pain or discomfort. Any child addicted to disease of the ear should be closely watched and examined for tuberculosis. Scrofula may accompany this condition. These children need careful attention in every little detail, they need good nourishment, fresh air night and day, and they should not be pushed at school. During the winter they should be protected from "catching colds;" it is a good plan to put them on a cod-liver-oil mixture for the entire cold season. During the summer they should have a radical change of climate. SUMMARY: 1st. Inflammation of the ear is frequently a complication of or follows some other disease which affects the throat. 2nd. If a child with one of these diseases becomes restless, sleepless and feverish, be on the look-out for ear trouble. 3rd. The ear must be lanced immediately when necessary. 4th. The after treatment is very important, because the hearing of the child depends upon it. SWOLLEN GLANDS. ACUTE ADENITIS Swollen glands in infancy and childhood are usually seen below and behind the ear, less frequently in the groin. Their cause is, as a rule, local disturbance in the mouth or throat, as decayed teeth, enlarged tonsils, cold in the head, catarrh, adenoids, or some form of infection of the mouth, or throat, or scalp. They occasionally accompany scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, and influenza. They seldom suppurate. Symptoms.--A swelling is noticed just below the angle of the jaw; it does not grow rapidly. There is a slight temperature and the child is more or less irritable. If the patient is an infant, the fever may be quite high and there may be considerable prostration. The trouble lasts from four to eight weeks. Treatment.--An ice-bag constantly applied is the best treatment. This not only relieves pain, but it prevents the possibility of the gland breaking down and suppurating. It is sometimes difficult to keep an ice-bag on an infant, in which case cold compresses should be applied. These are made by taking several layers of old linen or cheese cloth and laying them on ice. They should be applied frequently to the swollen gland. The following ointment may be applied, though the ice-bag is the better and more certain treatment: Ichthyol 25 per cent., Adeps Lanae one ounce. This is applied on cloth and renewed every six hours. This ointment is black and stains the clothing. For that reason it is advised to use oiled silk over the cloth to avoid staining the pillow or clothing. Children suffering from adenitis should use a spray of Dobell's solution in the nose and throat three or four times daily. If the cause of the swollen glands is known, treatment for its cure should be promptly instituted. In the event of pus forming the gland must be opened and drained. Swollen glands in the groin of a child are caused most frequently by some inflammatory condition of the privates, which should be discovered and treated. BOILS In some delicate children and in some children who do not seem to be delicate, repeated crops of boils may appear from time to time. It is necessary to open them as soon as pus is present. They should be pressed out and a gauze dressing, wet with a saturated solution of boric acid, bound over them. The dressing should be kept moist. I have in a number of instances successfully rid a child of the tendency to boils by the use of the following formula, which I can recommend highly as one of the best tonics I have ever used in the treatment of delicate and poorly nourished children: Tinct. Nux Vomica 4 drops, Acid Phosphoric Dilute 8 drops, Syrup Hypophosphites, 1 teaspoonful. Make a two-ounce mixture and give to children over four years of age one teaspoonful after each meal; to younger children, one-half teaspoonful after each meal. It is necessary in these cases to keep the bowels open daily. HIVES. NETTLE-RASH Cause.--Contact with different plants, bites of insects, irritation from clothing, use of certain drugs. Certain articles of food, such as tomatoes, strawberries, oatmeal, buckwheat, have all been said to cause hives. Dentition during warm weather and the presence of worms and chronic malarial poisoning have been known to cause hives. It is most frequently caused, however, in childhood by some disturbance in the stomach or bowels. It causes severe itching and loss of sleep and as a result of these the general health suffers. Treatment.--If caused by any external irritant, remove it. If it is caused by any special article of diet, prohibit its use. If no cause is apparent, give the child one tablespoonful of castor oil, and put it on the mildest diet possible of soups, broths, and dried stale bread. Give no milk. Use the following treatment on the erupted parts: Menthol, ten grains in one ounce of cold cream. Keep the bowels open. It is sometimes necessary to advise a change of air before complete cure results. PRICKLY HEAT This is a very common complaint in children during the summer months. It is so common that it is well known and easily recognized. It consists of a bright red eruption, composed of little papules, close together. The rash comes out quickly, so much so that mothers may be surprised and frightened by observing an angry looking rash on their baby some morning when none was there the night before. It most frequently appears upon the neck, back, chest, and forehead. It is exceedingly itchy and a child may scratch itself and cause extensive harm. Eczema, of a very obstinate type, frequently results from scratching. The rash of prickly heat is easily diagnosed from other rashes because it is accompanied by no other symptom, such as fever, which would suggest a more serious disease. The rash of prickly heat resembles the rash of scarlet fever more than any other rash, but it is quickly noted that when a child has scarlet fever it has every symptom of being profoundly sick, while prickly heat has no symptom other than the itch and discomfort. It is caused by overfeeding, being overclothed, and sweating in hot weather. Treatment.--Steps should be taken to prevent prickly heat in an infant. Use light, seasonable clothing, bathe frequently, and use plenty of good toilet powder. When the child actually has an attack, open its bowels freely with citrate of magnesia, and give some sweet spirits of niter, according to age. Protect the skin from the irritating underwear by interposing a soft piece of linen. In order to reduce the inflammation and cure the condition apply equal parts of starch and boric acid powder freely. Keep the patient on a light fluid diet. The bran bath is advisable if the little patient is addicted to these skin eruptions. RINGWORM OF THE SCALP Children of all ages are liable to "catch" ringworm of the scalp. It particularly affects those who are untidy, dirty, and badly cared for, though any child is apt to get it while attending the public schools. If a mother discovers scaly patches in the scalp, with loss of hair, ringworm should be immediately suspected. It is not, however, always easy to diagnose the condition, especially if the case is a mild one. If it is a severe attack, there is, as a rule, quite a little inflammation, and this may render the condition obscure for some time. The disease may be mistaken for dandruff, but dandruff covers a large area of the scalp, while ringworm is limited and sharply defined. Dandruff may cause a loss of hair; if it does, the hairs come out clean, while in ringworm they break off near the scalp. Treatment.--Ringworm is always curable, provided the patient is watched and treatment carried out thoroughly. It is always absolutely necessary to treat the condition, because it will not get better of itself, and the longer it is permitted to last, the worse it gets, and the more difficult it is to cure. If treatment is begun at once, it may take two months to cure it. If the case has lasted for some time, or if it has been neglected and not treated thoroughly, it will take from six months to one year to cure it. These facts are stated so that parents may not become discouraged. The first thing to do is to cut the hair as close to the scalp as possible, wherever the ringworm is, and for about an inch outside, and all around it. The entire scalp should be thoroughly washed three times a week. The scales should be kept soft by the use of carbolic soap. The hair should not be brushed at all, because brushing the hair may spread the disease to other parts of the scalp. Every child with ringworm of the scalp should wear a cap of muslin or one lined with paper, so that others may not be infected. These caps can be burned when dirty and new ones made. One of the best remedies to apply to the affected area is the following: Bichloride of mercury, 2 grains; olive oil, 2 teaspoonfuls; kerosene, 2 teaspoonfuls. This is rubbed in every day until the parts are sore and tender. It is a good plan to apply this mixture to the entire scalp every fourth day, to guard against other parts becoming infected. It is not necessary to rub it in when using it where there is no ringworm. When the scalp becomes sore from the application it can be stopped for a day or two, or until better; then begin again and repeat the treatment right along. If the kerosene in the above mixture is objected to, a very good mixture is bichloride of mercury, 2 grains, and tincture of iodine, 1 ounce. This may be rubbed vigorously enough to produce a rash. If the disease shows a tendency to spread under this treatment it is best to apply the latter mixture to the entire scalp. Ringworm on any other part of the body is effectually treated by applying tincture of iodine. It should be painted on every day until the skin begins to peel, when the ringworm will disappear with the skin. ECZEMA Eczema is the most important skin disease of babyhood. It is probably the most frequent skin disease of infancy. Any baby may develop eczema. There are, however, some babies who seem to be very susceptible to it. The reason of this susceptibility seems to be due to the natural tenderness, or delicacy, of the skin. These children, because of the extreme sensitiveness of the skin, develop an eczema from a very slight degree of external irritation, or a trifling disturbance of digestion. Children of rheumatic or gouty parents are more liable to be victims of eczema than are others. Eczema of the face is quite common in children who are apparently healthy and fat. It does not seem to matter whether they are breast-fed or bottle-fed. The following conditions may be regarded as contributory to eczema: Exposure to winds; cold, dry air; heat; the use of hard water or strong soaps; lack of cleanliness, and the irritation of clothing. It frequently accompanies chronic constipation, indigestion, and other conditions of the intestinal canal; overfeeding; too early or too excessive use of starchy foods. Eczema of the Face:--Eczema Rubrum.--This is the most frequent form. It affects the cheeks, scalp, forehead, and sometimes the ears and the neck. It begins on the cheeks as small red papules. These join together and form a mass of moist, exuding crusts. They dry in time and may be so thick as to form a mask on the face. The skin may be much swollen. When the crusts are removed the face looks red and angry and bleeds easily. It is exceedingly itchy. It causes restlessness, loss of sleep, and it may affect the appetite, though, as a rule, the health remains good. Eczema of the face is exceedingly chronic; it improves from time to time, but it is cured with great difficulty only. Infants suffering with eczema of the face begin to improve about the middle of the second year and may be entirely cured about this time. The reason of this is the greater amount of exercise the child is getting at this period. If the disease continues longer it is because of the unnecessary amount of fat that the child has. Treatment.--Eczema is a notoriously tedious disease. There is very little tendency for it to improve, if left to itself. The age, the severity, and just how much you can rely upon the mother, or nurse, faithfully to carry out directions--upon these its cure depends. At best, the treatment may have to be carried out for months. If the eczema is accompanied with constipation and indigestion in infancy, very little can be done with the eczema until these conditions are removed. There exists in the minds of the laity, and in some physicians also, an idea that it is wrong, or dangerous, to cure, or "dry up," an eczema. It is never dangerous, but highly desirable, to cure an eczema, whenever possible. It is always wise, because it is always necessary, to get the child in perfect condition before you treat the eczema. Cure the constipation, or indigestion, or cold, or whatever is the matter with the child; then treat the eczema. This is the only plan that offers any success. It is not a simple matter to find out why a nursing child is having indigestion. The most minute care must be exercised to find out the element in the milk that is causing the eczema. It would, however, be foolish, and a waste of time, to apply pastes, etc., to an eczema of the face, while the real cause that produced it was still in existence. It will frequently be found necessary to change the food entirely. Strict attention to the bowels is essential, both in infants and in older children. Sometimes to cure the constipation means an immediate cure of the eczema. If the child is anemic, poorly nourished, and flabby, tonics are advisable. Cod liver oil is of use in quite a number of these cases. Eczematous children should not be taken out when the weather is very cold or when there are high winds. They should not be washed with plain water, or with castile soap and water. When washing is necessary, do it with milk and water, to which one teaspoonful of borax is added. The clothing must not be too heavy. In eczema of the face, the child must either wear a mask or heavy woolen gloves, so that he will not scratch the parts. Frequently these fail, and it will be necessary to restrain the child from scratching the face by the use of some mechanical device. A piece of strong pasteboard bandaged on the elbows, so as to prevent the child from bending them, is all that is necessary. If the child cannot bend the elbows he cannot scratch his face, yet he has the free use of his hands. The use of external remedies is imperative, as frequently the cause is mostly external, and in other cases it must be used in addition to the general treatment. Before external treatment is instituted, the crusts should be softened by applying olive oil to them for twenty-four hours, after which they can be removed with soap and water. If there is much inflammation, or if the face looks angry, a very good application is Lassar's paste. Later, when the inflammation has subsided and the itching is severe, a mixture of tar ointment, 3 teaspoonfuls; zinc oxide, 1-1/2 teaspoonfuls; rose water ointment, 6 teaspoonfuls has proved to be one of the very best. When the eczema on the face is of the weeping, or moist, variety, the application of bassorin paste gives splendid results. When an external remedy is applied to any eczematous surface it is necessary to apply it on a cloth. Simply to smear it on will do no good. In the treatment of eczema, when the children are breast-fed, it is well to remember that the real cause of the eczema may be in the mother. If the mother is constipated, or if her diet is too liberal, if she is drinking beer, or an excess of coffee, or is not taking exercise, the eczema may be caused by one or other or all of these. For eczema of the scalp the remedy to use is white-precipitate ointment, 1 part; vaseline, 4 parts. Mix together and apply. POOR BLOOD. SIMPLE ANEMIA Causes.--There is what may be termed an unnatural tendency toward poor blood during infancy and childhood. The explanation of this anomalous condition is, that the tax or strain put upon the blood to provide for the growth of the child is severe, and is in addition to the great demands made upon it in the exercise of its regular duties. We must, therefore, always take this special duty into consideration, when the question of recuperation, convalescence, feeding, and the administration of blood foods and tonics comes up. It is not necessary to specify the diseases from which a child may suffer and recover, in an anemic condition. Any disease may leave a child with temporarily poor blood. The conditions which most frequently produce anemia in childhood are improper feeding and unhealthy surroundings. It is not fully appreciated how seriously these conditions can affect the health of growing children. There is one condition that every mother should be warned against, namely, the possibility of unduly prolonging breast-feeding. Children should be weaned at the end of the tenth month. By prolonging the breast-feeding a mother can undermine the vitality and strength of her baby and so impoverish its blood as to invite disease. A bottle-fed baby should be put upon a mixed diet at the same time. To continue feeding a child exclusively on milk for a year or two after weaning, simply because "it will not take anything else," is criminal. Any woman guilty of such stupidity should never have become a mother. Once again it must be emphasized that every child must have an abundance of fresh air, must not be confined in close, hot, unsanitary rooms, and must have a daily, satisfactory movement of the bowels to be a healthy child with good blood in its body. Symptoms.--Children suffering from poor blood are flabby, constipated, hungry, weak specimens of childhood. They are under weight, complain of headache, pains, disturbed sleep, are nervous and irritable. They tire quickly, are short of breath, and may have a tendency to faint easily. The hands and feet are cold, the pulse is small and irregular. They may have attacks of nose-bleeding and of bed-wetting. Chlorosis.--Chlorosis is that form of anemia, of poor blood, which occurs in young girls about the time their sickness begins. It is most frequently seen between the fourteenth and seventeenth years, and more often in blondes than in brunettes. The cause is not known. It is thought to be due to constipation. Any occupation which is deleterious to health has a distinct influence on the condition. Employment in factories, confinement in badly ventilated rooms, bad or insufficient food, great grief, care, or a bad fright, mental strain, overstudy, may all produce, or contribute to the production of chlorosis. Symptoms.--The symptoms of chlorosis resemble those of simple anemia. Children suffering from anemia are pale; girls with chlorosis have a peculiar greenish yellow tint in the skin. They are short of breath, they have vertigo, palpitation, disturbances of digestion, constipation, cold hands and feet, and scanty or arrested monthly periods. They have various nervous disturbances, such as headache, pains in various parts of the body, neuralgia, especially over the eyes, hysterical attacks, and sometimes cholera. Ulcer of the stomach is sometimes seen in this condition. The disease lasts for a year or longer; it frequently lasts a number of years. Relapses are frequent. [Illustration: By permission of Henry H. Goddard "A Misfortune at Birth"] Warren is feeble-minded. His family said it was due to "a serious fall of the mother." [A]"The family history is, however, exceedingly interesting. "The paternal grandfather, whom we have called Nick, was of good family, although he himself was totally different from the rest. He was weak in every way, and to be considered feeble-minded. He married into a family that was much lower socially than his own, although we have no proof that it was a defective family. The children of this couple were all mentally defective and low-grade, morally as well as intellectually. "Warren's father, Jake, a thoroughly disgraceful character, married Sal, a woman somewhat older than he. "The immorality of this family beggars description. A girl named Moll was fifteen years old when Jake brought her into his home: his wife, Sal, was so feeble-minded that she allowed the illicit relations between these two. Moll's child was born in the hospital after the mother had been sent away from one Home because of her horrible syphilitic condition--from which she finally died. "Our boy Warren's sister Liz with whom the father lived in incestuous relations, was also allowed to live illicitly with a man who worked for her father. She was so simple that she talked openly about her relations with her father and with this man. When a child was to be born the man married her. "This is not all, but enough: and sufficient to show what feeble-mindedness leads to when it takes the direction of sexual abuses." [A] "Feeble-mindedness: Its Causes and Consequences, Goddard, The Macmillan Company. Severe Anemia: Pernicious Anemia.--This is the most severe form of anemia, or the condition in which we have the poorest blood. While this condition frequently results in death the others rarely ever do. This condition is not common in childhood. Symptoms.--There is intense weakness and prostration. The skin is very pale, the mucous membranes are bluish white. The breath is markedly short and there is often dropsy of the limbs and feet. Fever is often present and quite high. The disease lasts a number of months; the patient often feels better for a time, then relapses into a more serious condition than before. TREATMENT OF THE VARIOUS FORMS OF ANEMIA Simple Anemia.--Find the cause and stop it. In infancy special attention should be given to diet and hygiene, giving the child plenty of fresh air, and a change of air to the country or seashore if necessary. The general treatment is more important than any benefit that may be derived from drugs. The rules laid down in the articles on "Malnutrition" must be closely followed in these children. Chlorosis.--In this form of anemia, or poor blood, it is best to give iron. Change of air and change of scene are of special importance in these cases and will frequently cure. The general condition of course must not be overlooked. The diet, exercise, bowels, habits, should receive careful attention. Iron should be continued for a number of months after all traces of the anemia have disappeared. Pernicious Anemia.--For this condition arsenic is the one remedy needful. In all conditions of poor blood the most careful attention should be given to the general health. Colds must be guarded against. The patients should never get their feet or their clothes wet. Muscular exercise, because of the weak condition of the heart, should be moderate, and only given on the advice of a physician. It is frequently necessary to stop all forms of exercise and in many instances we get the best results by directing complete rest in bed for a considerable part of the day or for all day if the case demands it. * * * * * CHAPTER XXXVII DISEASES OF CHILDREN, CONTINUED Rheumatism--Malaria--Rashes of Childhood--Pimples--Acne-- Blackheads--Convulsions--Fits--Spasms--Bed-wetting--Enuresis-- Incontinence--Sleeplessness--Disturbed Sleep--Nightmare--Night Terrors-- Headache--Thumb-sucking--Biting the Finger Nails--Colon Irrigation-- How to Wash Out the Bowels--A High Enema--Enema--Methods of Reducing Fever--Ice Cap--Cold Sponging--Cold Pack--The Cold Bath--Various Baths-- Mustard Baths--Hot Pack--Hot Bath--Hot Air, or Vapor Bath--Bran Bath-- Tepid Bath--Cold Sponge--Shower Bath--Poultices--Hot Fomentations--How to Make and How to Apply a Mustard Paste--How to Prepare and Use the Mustard Pack--Turpentine Stupes--Oiled Silk, What it is and Why it is Used. RHEUMATISM This is a rather common disease of childhood. It occurs most frequently between the ages of nine and thirteen years. Children can have it, however, at any age. The symptoms of rheumatism in children are much the same, though somewhat milder, as when the disease is present in an adult. Children are not quite as sick, nor is the fever as high, nor is the pain as great as in a grown person. In children the disease does not last as long, as a rule. Sometimes it will jump from one joint to another, and may, as a consequence, become chronic. When a child has once had rheumatism, it has the same disposition to recur that it has in adults. The principal danger of rheumatism in children is its tendency to attack the heart. Even mild attacks of the disease can do serious damage to the heart. Children who have the rheumatic tendency invariably suffer from inflammatory conditions of the upper respiratory tract. They are prone to have recurring colds, tonsilitis, and sore throats. Treatment of conditions without regard to the underlying rheumatism is never satisfactory. These children complain of indefinite pains, now in one place, now in another. These pains are commonly known as "growing-pains" and, inasmuch as they are rheumatic and not "growing pains," they should be regarded seriously because of the heart damage they might do if ignored, and especially so since the mildest attacks of rheumatism, without any joint symptoms even, frequently leave the heart in very bad shape. As a general rule it will be found that when a child has had a number of attacks of bronchitis or asthma it is rheumatic and should receive treatment for the rheumatic tendency. Children with the tendency to rheumatism invariably eat too much red meats and sugar,--the latter in the form of candy or as an excess in the food. Treatment of an Acute Attack.--The child should be put in bed and kept warm. The bowels should be freely opened with citrate of magnesia. The diet should be very light: milk and lime water or milk and vichy water, with a piece of dry toast or zwieback, is all the child needs until the fever is relieved. When a single joint is affected local measures may be taken for its relief. Wraping the joints up with flannel cloths which have been wrung out of true oil of wintergreen, and outside of this oiled silk snugly bandaged on, is an excellent external application. The flannel cloths should be kept moist by adding a little of the wintergreen from time to time as it dries in. This can be done without removing the bandage. This application is kept in place for twenty-four hours and renewed if necessary. Such an external application will aid in the actual cure of the disease and will quickly relieve the patient of the pain. The oil of wintergreen used in this way should be the "true" oil, and should be so specified when bought in the drug store. Because of the great tendency to attack the heart a physician should take charge of every case of acute rheumatism in a child. To Treat the Tendency to Rheumatism.--Exclude red meats and sugar in all forms as much as is possible. Give green vegetables freely, potatoes boiled with the skins on, fish, eggs, and poultry. Cereals with milk, especially well cooked Scotch oatmeal, are exceedingly good for these children. By keeping up this diet after the acute attack has passed for a considerable time, it is possible to cure the various other complaints with which the child is afflicted,--tonsilitis, sore-throats, winter coughs, head-colds, bronchitis, asthma, etc. These children should wear woolen underwear all the year round. They should be encouraged to drink water or vichy freely between meals. In the treatment of an acute attack as given above it will be observed that no drugs are mentioned. This is intentional because it would be unjust to encourage the home treatment of a disease that is so treacherous, even in its mildest forms. Because of its tendency to recur and with each recurrence the danger of the heart being affected, it is advisable to put these children on cod liver oil or iron or some other good tonic. Every precaution should be taken to prevent these children from getting their feet wet or being out in the rain. SUMMARY:-- Rheumatism is a dangerous disease in children. In its mildest forms it can affect the heart badly. It has a distinct tendency to recur. Rheumatic children are afflicted with a number of diseased conditions which do not respond to treatment unless the rheumatism is treated. Acute rheumatism should never be treated except by a physician because of its treacherous character. MALARIA. INTERMITTENT FEVER Malaria occurs quite often in infants and children. As a rule the child gives evidence of gastro-intestinal disturbance for a short period before the malarial symptoms appear. The chilly stage is often absent. Sometimes the hands and feet are cold and may be slightly blue and the child may appear to be in collapse. This stage may last for an hour or longer. The chilly stage may, however, be replaced by nervous symptoms,--restlessness, dizziness, irritability, nausea, etc.,--or a convulsion may take place. In the second stage the temperature may rise quite high, the pulse may be quite rapid; the child is flushed, restless, and cries. This period may last from half an hour to two hours. The sweating stage is not as a rule well marked in a child. It may be very slight or not at all. Between the attacks some children may be entirely well; others remain restless, have little appetite and poor digestion. Malaria in children does not always follow a typical course. We often see children suffering from spasms, fainting spells, neuralgias, diarrhea, vomiting, and skin eruptions, all due to the malarial condition. This often leads to a mistake in diagnosis. Intermittent fever is often mistaken for pneumonia. Malaria is not a favorable disease for an infant to have. It rapidly weakens the child and great debility and anemia follows. Treatment.--The treatment for malaria in children is by the administration of quinine as in adults. It must, however, be given with care and intelligence; for this reason no mother should begin dosing her child with it without consulting a physician. REGARDING MOSQUITOES The following is an extract from a circular in relation to the causation and prevention of malaria and the life history and extermination of mosquitoes issued by the Department of Health, City of New York: Extermination and Prevention of Mosquitoes.--Mosquitoes require for their development standing water. They cannot arise in any other way. A single crop soon dies and disappears unless the females find water on which their eggs may be laid. In order to prevent mosquitoes, therefore, the requirement is simple. No Standing Water.--Pools of rain water, duck ponds, ice ponds, and temporary accumulations due to building; marshes, both of salt and fresh water, and road-side drains; pots, kettles, tubs, springs, barrels of water, and other back-yard collections, should be drained, filled with earth, or emptied. Running streams should have their margins carefully cleaned and covered with gravel to prevent weeds and grass at the water's edge. Lily ponds and fountain pools should, if possible, be abolished; if not, the margins should be cemented or carefully graveled, a good stock of minnows put in the water, and green slime (Algæ) regularly cleaned out, as it collects. Where tanks, cisterns, wells or springs are necessary to supply water, the openings to them should be closely covered with wire gauze (galvanized to prevent rusting), not the smallest aperture being left. When neither drainage nor covering is practicable, the surface of the standing water should be covered with a film of light fuel oil (or kerosene) which chokes and kills the larvæ. The oil may be poured on from a can or from a sprinkler. It will spread itself. One ounce of oil is sufficient to cover 15 square feet of water. The oil should be renewed once a week during warm weather. Particular attention should be paid to cess-pools. These pools when uncovered breed mosquitoes in vast numbers; if not tightly closed by a cemented top or by wire-gauze, they should be treated once a week with an excess of kerosene or light fuel oil. Certain simple precautions suffice to protect persons living in malarial districts from infection: First: Proper screening of the house to prevent the entrance of the mosquitoes (after careful search for and destruction of all those already present in the house), and screening of the bed at night. The chief danger of infection is at night (the Anopheles bite mostly at this time). Second: The screening of persons in malarial districts who are suffering from malarial fever, so that mosquitoes may not bite them and thus become infected. Third: The administration of quinine in full doses to malarial patients to destroy the malarial organisms in the blood. Fourth: The destruction of mosquitoes by one or more of the methods already described. These measures, if properly carried out, will greatly restrict the prevalence of the disease, and will prevent the occurrence of new malarial infections. It must be remembered that when a person is once infected, the organisms may remain in the body for many years, producing from time to time relapses of the fever. A case of malarial infection in a house (whether the person is actively ill or the infection is latent) in a locality where Anophele mosquitoes are present, is a constant source of danger, not only to the inmates of the house, but to the immediate neighborhood, if proper precautions are not taken. It should be noted in this connection that the mosquitoes may remain in a house through an entire winter and probably infect the inmates in the spring upon the return of the warm weather. Malarial fever is prevalent in certain boroughs of New York City, and in view of the presence of standing water resulting from the extensive excavations taking place in various parts of these boroughs, is likely to extend, if means are not taken for its prevention. REGULATIONS OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH, NEW YORK CITY, IN AID OF MOSQUITO EXTERMINATION AND THE PREVENTION OF MALARIAL FEVER (In Force from March 15 to October 15.) 1. No rain-water barrel, cistern, or other receptacle for rain-water, shall be maintained without being tightly screened by netting, or so absolutely covered that no mosquito can enter. 2. No cans, pails, or anything capable of holding water, shall be thrown out or allowed to remain unburied on or about any premises. 3. Every uncovered cesspool or tank shall be kept in such condition that oil may be freely distributed so as to flow over the surface of the water. Covered cess-pools must have perfectly tight covers, and all openings must be screened. 4. No waste or other water shall be thrown out or allowed to stand on or near premises. Information is requested as to the presence of standing water anywhere, so that the premises may be inspected and the legal remedies against the same be applied. The prompt coöperation of all persons in the enforcement of the above regulations is earnestly desired, and they are assured that in this way the breeding of mosquitoes on their premises may be prevented. Mosquitoes are, so far as known, the only means of conveying malaria. "RASHES" OF CHILDHOOD The following table gives all the characteristics of the rashes that accompany the eruptive fevers. The term "incubation" means the period of time which elapses between the time when the child was exposed to, or caught the disease, and the time when the child is taken sick. It is sometimes interesting to know where a child could have caught a disease; so if we know the incubation period we can tell exactly where the child was on the day, or days, when it was infected. -----------+------------+-----------+-----------------+----------+---------+ Name | Incubation |Day of Rash|Character of Rash|Rash fades|Duration -----------+------------+-----------+-----------------+----------+---------+ Measles | 10-14 days | 4th day |Small red like |On the |6-10 | | |spots resembling |7th day |days | | |flea bites, first|of fever | | | |appearing on face| | | | |and forehead, | | | | |forming blotches | | | | |with semi-lunar | | | | |borders. | | -----------+------------+-----------+-----------------+----------+---------+ Scarlet | 1-6 days | 2d day of |Bright scarlet, |On 5th |8-9 days Fever |occasionally| fever |rapidly diffused,|day of | | longer | |first on chest |fever | | | |and upper | | | | |extremities. | | -----------+------------+-----------+-----------------+----------+---------+ Chicken-pox| 4-12 days | 2d day |Small rose |Slight |6-7 days | | |vesicles, which |scab of | | | |do not become |short | | | |pustular |duration | -----------+------------+-----------+-----------------+----------+---------+ Typhoid | 10-14 days | 7-14 days |Rose colored | |From Fever | | |papules elevated,| |21-35 | | |few in number, | |days | | |limited to trunk,| | | | |disappear on | | | | |pressure. | | -----------+------------+-----------+-----------------+----------+---------+ Smallpox | 10-14 days | 3d day of |Small, round, |9th day |14-21 (Variola) | | fever |red, hard, |scabs |days | | |papules forming |form and | | | |vesicles then |about | | | |pustules, first |14th day | | | |appearing on face|fall off | | | |and wrists. | | -----------+------------+-----------+-----------------+----------+---------+ Other Rashes.--There are so-called "stomach" rashes which are a source of much worry to mothers. These rashes may appear at any time and they may be limited to certain parts or may cover most of the body. They may be bright red, or they may be simply a general discoloration. They may appear as blotches or they may spread all over, like the rash of scarlet fever when at its height. These rashes are of no importance, except that they indicate some derangement of the gastro-intestinal tract. As a rule they indicate indiscriminate feeding or overfeeding. Children who have had too much candy or pastries, or who have been fed things which are unsuited to their age, frequently develop rashes. Such children should have a thorough cleaning out; a dose of castor oil is probably the best cathartic to give them. The mother may readily learn to know the difference between a rash that is unimportant and one that indicates one of the eruptive diseases, if she gives the matter a little careful thought. In the first place a child who is about to become the victim of one of the eruptive diseases will be sick, and will have a fever for two or three days before any rash appears; while on the other hand a child may go to bed in good health and may next morning be covered with a general rash, or with large blotches, without any fever and without any evidence of ill-health, except the skin condition. In the second place, if the mother gives the child a cathartic and restricts the diet for a day the rash will disappear, and good spirits and good health will be maintained; on the other hand, the giving of a cathartic to a child who is the victim of an eruptive disease will not tend to diminish the rash, but may accentuate it. Pimples: Blackheads (Acne).--This eruption is situated chiefly on the face. It may appear, however, on the back, shoulders, and on the chest. It is mostly seen in young men and women about the age of puberty. It appears as conical elevations of the size of a pea; they are red and tender on pressure, and have a tendency to form matter, or pus, in their center. In from four to ten days the matter is discharged but the red spots continue for some time longer. "Blackheads" appear as slightly elevated spots of a black color out of which a small worm-like substance may be pressed. Pimples and blackheads are due to inflammation of the glands of the skin. The mouths of these glands become filled with dust which acts as a plug causing the retention of the oily matter of the gland which becomes inflamed and hence the pimples and blackheads. Certain constitutional conditions favor the development of these skin blemishes. Constipation, indigestion, bad blood from unsanitary and bad hygienic surroundings, self-abuse and bad sexual habits favor the appearance of these skin affections. Treatment.--The patient must avoid tea, coffee, tobacco, alcohol, veal, pork, fats, candy, pastries, cheese, and all edibles that are known to disagree with the digestion of the patient. Constipation must be avoided; if necessary, laxatives may be taken to keep the bowel open. The blackheads must be squeezed out with an instrument made for the purpose, not with the finger nails. Pimples must be opened with a sterile needle. The parts should be washed three times a day with hot water and green soap, and the following mixture applied at night:-- Zinc Oxide ounces 1/4 Powdered calamine ounces 1/4 Lime water ounces 6 Mix and shake before applying to the skin. CONVULSIONS. FITS. SPASMS Convulsions are quite common in children, especially those under three years of age. A convulsion in an infant immediately, or within three months, after its birth is the result of injury, either at birth or later (a fall for example) which seriously affects the brain itself. After the third month the cause of fits or convulsions is, in a very large percentage of the cases, to be found in errors of diet resulting in disturbances in the stomach or bowels--eating of articles of food difficult to digest, as green or overripe fruit, salads, fresh bread, pickles, cheese, etc. Children of a nervous temperament are more liable to convulsions than are others. Females are more frequently victims of fits than are male children. In infants convulsions often result from changes in the mother's milk. Mental excitement, deep emotion, anger, frights, severe affliction and distress will so affect a woman's milk that it will cause convulsions in her child if she nurses it while under the influence of any of these conditions. Convulsions may result from any condition that disturbs the nutrition of the child, as, for example,--exhaustion, anemia, intestinal indigestion, blood poison, and general weakness resulting from some severe sickness, especially those of the digestive organs. Various forms of brain disease cause spasms and fits; the most common are meningitis, tumors, hemorrhage, abscesses and injuries. Convulsions may accompany certain conditions, as, the presence of worms, teething, severe burns, foreign bodies in the ear, whooping cough, pneumonia scarlet fever, malaria, sometimes measles, typhoid fever, and diphtheria. Children who are badly nourished and who live constantly in unsanitary surroundings are more apt to have convulsions than those who are well nourished and who live hygienically. One attack renders the patient more liable to another, and when the "habit" is established any trivial cause may incite a convulsion; persistent and systematic efforts should therefore be taken to prevent the attacks. The best preventives are: 1st. To regulate the diet and the bowels. 2nd. Remove adenoids and worms, if they exist. 3rd. Avoid the use of alcohol, coffee, tea, fresh bread, pastries, candies and all improper foods. 4th. Guard the child against catching cold, infectious diseases and all fevers. In other words, save the child from the cause and the convulsion will not take place. By regulating the bowels we mean that everything the child eats must be seen by the mother, must be with the mother's permission, and must be suited to the child's age. If there is any question about the latter it will be advisable to have a physician write out a list of articles suitable to the child. It is generally necessary to eliminate meats, pastries, candies, sugar to a large extent, gravies, salads, sauces, and all the extras of the table, as pickles, mustard, relish, etc., as well as coffee, tea, cocoa, and alcohol. The child should live in the open air as much as possible; a daily warm bath, followed by a quick, cold sponge, is a necessity. Children subject to fits are possessed of a highly nervous temperament. They are difficult to manage unless managed with firmness and tact. It is not necessary to be harsh, but it is imperative to be firm and decided. They must be made to realize that they are not "the master," that their will is not supreme, and the mother must exact this condition; otherwise these children will become dictators and selfish despots--ruining the discipline of the home, spoiling their own chance of physical health, and rendering unhappy everyone around them. The parents, therefore, have a definite duty to perform and it is not an easy one. The food should be so regulated that each day a natural movement of the bowels will take place. (See article on constipation, page 303.) If a day should pass without a movement the child should be given a hot rectal enema as described on page 586. The adenoids can be easily demonstrated to either exist or be absent. (See page 519.) If worms are known to be present in the child they should be at once removed. If they are simply suspected, the child should receive treatment for them, just the same. (See page 549.) By going a long time without a convulsion the nervous system will recuperate itself, and become so strong and healthy that what once would cause a fit will make no impression in its new strengthened state; therefore, if you "save the child from the cause," the convulsions will cure themselves, as it were. There are some cases of convulsions for which no satisfactory explanation can be found. Treatment.--When a child has a convulsion, remove its clothing and put it into a mustard bath. The temperature of the bath should be 105° F. Every part of the child should be under the water except the head, which is supported in the palm of the hand. While it is in the bath its body, and especially its arms and legs, should be briskly rubbed by the hands of an assistant in order to keep the circulation active. A rectal injection of soap suds or plain salt and water (see page 579) should be given while the child is in the bath, because, as explained above, a large percentage of these cases are caused by gastro-intestinal derangements. The rectal injection will likely remove the cause. An ordinary convulsion lasts from five to ten minutes. When the child is removed from the bath it should be placed in a warm, comfortable bed and kept absolutely quiet. A hot-water bottle may be put near its feet and an ice-bag or cold cloths should be kept on its head. It should be given a full dose of castor oil and allowed to go to sleep. Its diet should consist of light broths for two or three days and during this time it should not be disturbed or annoyed by too much attention. This is as far as it is wise or safe for any mother to go in the treatment of convulsions. A physician should be called in every instance, because a convulsion should never be regarded lightly. Many children have become idiots, others have been afflicted with paralysis, because of inattention at the proper time. SUMMARY:-- 1st. Convulsions must always be regarded as serious. 2nd. Convulsions demand prompt treatment. 3rd. Every mother should know that an English mustard bath--hot--is the first resort in convulsions. 4th. While this is being done she can read the home treatment in this book and carry it out before the doctor comes. 5th. If the fit is not caused by some stomach or intestinal trouble, have the physician find out the cause and tell you what to do, and do it faithfully, because if you neglect the proper treatment the child may become idiotic or paralyzed. BED WETTING. ENURESIS--INCONTINENCE Enuresis, or incontinence of urine, is customary in infancy. Just when urination becomes a voluntary act depends upon the development and training of the individual child. As a rule children can be taught to control this function during the day, or while awake, about the tenth month. It is not under control during sleep until a much later period, usually by the end of the second year, but lack of control should not be regarded as abnormal until the child has entered the fourth year. If the child fails to control the act of urination during the day at the end of the second year, and is addicted to habitual bed-wetting, some measures should be adopted to cure the condition. Boys under twelve years of age seem to be affected more frequently than girls. It is wrong to assume that it is caused by negligence or laziness, as some parents do. It has generally a special cause, and the cause usually can be found if it is carefully sought for. It may be the result of bad habits: exposure to cold in the night; lying on the back; drinking too much liquid in the afternoon or at bedtime. It may be due to too much acid in the urine, and if so it will be found necessary to reduce meats and eggs the child is eating. Worms, stone in the bladder, some anatomical abnormality or deficiency, may be responsible for it. The diet may be at fault; adenoids are supposed by some physicians to be the cause. No matter what the actual cause may be, it must be found and remedied before we can hope for a permanent cure. A very large majority of these cases are due to nervousness. These children are of a nervous temperament. They are not necessarily sickly children; they are simply of a nervous type. They are well-nourished, active, and lively. Incontinence of urine during the day and long-continued bed-wetting does not at all affect the health of the child. If they are in poor health, it is essential to treat their general condition before trying to cure the incontinence. It is absolutely wrong to punish or to crush the spirit of these children. Constant nagging and taunting, even if done in the hope of shaming the child into a cure, will simply make a coward of him and will not aid in improving matters, but will be distinctly detrimental. Scrupulous cleanliness must be constantly practiced or these children, if neglected, may develop ulcers and sores of a very obstinate character. The odor is also bad for the health of the child. Treatment.--Find and remove the cause if possible. If due to general poor health, give tonics, obtain a change of air, and build the child up. Reduce the total quantity of liquids, if in excess, and be very careful not to give any liquids near bedtime. Don't cover these children too much; they should never be "too warm"; they should sleep in a well-aired room, and they should receive a quick, cool sponge bath every morning. They should be taught to sleep on their sides, never on their backs. Their diet should be light but nourishing. When bed-wetting is established it will continue, if untreated, until the child is eight or ten years of age, and it frequently lasts much longer. When treatment is undertaken it should be distinctly understood by the mother that it will take many months to cure; and during these months she must give her constant attention to the child. If she does not undertake to do this, or if she fails to do it, the treatment should not be begun at all, as it will not succeed. Various plans should be tried to keep the child from sleeping on its back. The reason of this is because it has been found that the child wets the bed only when sleeping on its back and never when sleeping on its side. The simplest method, of tying a towel or cloth around the child with a knot over the spinal column, so that it will hurt and waken it, if it turns on its back, is a very good one and should be carefully tried for some time. The nervous system of these children should never be overtaxed at home or at school. Early hours and plenty of sleep are desirable. Certain articles of diet of a stimulating character should be entirely avoided,--for example, coffee, tea, beer, candies, sugars, and pickles. The best diet for these children is one composed exclusively of milk, vegetables, fruits, meats, and cereals. Meats, however, should be given only once every two days. It is a good plan to teach the child to hold his water during the day, as long as he can, to accustom the bladder to being full. Adenoid growths, which contribute to the nervousness of a naturally nervous child, should be removed. It is a good plan to take the child up when the parents go in bed and let him urinate. This often cures the condition in itself. Sometimes moral measures, such as the promise of a reward, will strengthen the will so that the child may overcome the tendency. Find out what the child most desires in the way of a toy, and promise it if he goes so long without wetting the bed. Aid and encourage him to make efforts to win the reward. If drugs have to be resorted to, it is necessary to call the family physician, as the only drugs that are of any use are very powerful and have to be given with great care and caution. It is the experience of most physicians and specialists, however, that in a large majority of cases the treatment, along the lines as given above, will be effective, without drugs, if faithfully persisted in by the mother. These children should be examined by a physician. The cause of the bed-wetting is frequently discovered to be produced by anatomical abnormalities which render circumcision imperative. In these cases no method of treatment will succeed until circumcision is performed. SLEEPLESSNESS. DISTURBED SLEEP Causes.--In babies, disturbed sleep is most frequently due to hunger or to indigestion. The latter is the result of overfeeding or improper feeding. Rocking the child to sleep, or feeding it during the night will cause sleeplessness. Teething, colic, or any pain will result in disturbed sleep. Nervous children are frequently poor sleepers. In older children, some digestive disturbance is, as a rule, the cause. Chronic intestinal indigestion, worms, adenoid growths, enlarged tonsils, lack of fresh air in the bedroom, cold feet, may, however, be the cause. Overstudy in school, poor blood, poor nourishment are always accompanied by inability to sleep soundly. Too strenuous play, exciting stories read before bedtime, may cause sleeplessness. Treatment.--The removal of the cause is absolutely necessary. In order to discover the cause it is sometimes essential to study the child's whole routine in order to be able to tell exactly just what is causing the apparent insomnia. It may be necessary to change the method of feeding, to regulate the studies and the exercises, and to suggest changes regarding the sanitary and hygienic environment of the child's life. Mothers must be warned against using drugs in the form of soothing syrups or teething mixtures. They are dangerous and absolutely forbidden under the above conditions. The nervous disposition of the child must be taken into consideration and treated if necessary. If bad habits exist they must be stopped. Poor blood and poor nutrition must receive the treatment suggested under these headings. NIGHTMARE. NIGHT TERRORS In a nightmare a child wakes suddenly in a state of fright and will inform you that it has had a bad dream. His mind seems clear and he recognizes those about him. He is not easily calmed and may cry for some time; finally he goes to sleep again. The next day he will remember the dream and most of the incidents of the night before. Such cases are quite frequent. They are to be treated in the same way as cases of disturbed sleep, as they really have the same cause. They are mostly due to digestive disturbances and errors of diet. Night-Terrors.--Cases under this heading form a distinct group by themselves. They are not frequent, but the condition is much more serious. The cause seems to be wholly nervous and may indicate an important nervous derangement. It seems to have some indefinite relation to such conditions as migraine, hysteria, epilepsy, and even insanity. The child wakes suddenly during the night and sits up, evidently in terror; he does not apparently regain his full consciousness. He talks of being scared, calls for his mother, trembles and shakes, cannot answer questions intelligently, and after a time goes to sleep. Next day he remembers nothing of the attack and does not seem to suffer in any way as a result of it. I am disposed to believe that all of these attacks are not due to a nervous condition. A number of them of exactly this type have been cured by absolutely withdrawing milk from the diet. It is a good plan to restrict the possibility of excessive play in these children. They are of the type whose play is work, and too much of it is too exhausting. Some person should sleep in the same room with these patients or in an adjoining room with the door open. If the condition occurs frequently the child should be subjected to a thorough physical examination, because it may be one evidence of a serious ailment. Sometimes these little patients have to be taken out of school and sent to the country, where they should remain for many months. It is far better to regard the condition as indicating an abnormality,--even though it may not have any deeper significance than that the digestive apparatus of the child is not quite right,--and make every effort to cure it, than to permit the child to go on under what really are unjust and unfavorable conditions. HEADACHE Headaches are not common in little children. The most frequent ones are caused by: 1. Chronic indigestion and constipation. 2. Anemia and malnutrition. 3. Nervous disorders. 4. Diseases of the eye, nose, throat. 5. Rheumatism and gout. 6. Disturbances of the genital tract. Those arising from anemia and poor nutrition are most frequently present in girls from ten to fifteen years of age. They may result from overcrowding of school work, which results in loss of appetite and poor sleep. Nervous headaches may be hereditary or acquired through unhygienic surroundings. Hysteria, epilepsy, disease of the brain, neuralgia from carious teeth, may result in nervous headaches. Headaches from disturbances of the genital tract may afflict girls about the time of puberty. Treatment.--To remove the cause is the only plan that promises any result. Each one must be investigated by itself and dealt with accordingly. For the headache itself a hot foot bath, cold to the head, and small doses of phenacetine (one grain every hour for four doses) are perhaps the most certain of all methods of treatment. THUMB-SUCKING The habit of sucking the thumb may be corrected by wearing a pair of white mittens, or gloves tied at the wrist. Should children attempt to suck the thumb with gloves on, as some do, it will be necessary to saturate the thumb and fingers of the gloves with tincture of aloes, or a solution of the bisulphate of quinine, one dram to two ounces of water. BITING THE FINGER NAILS Biting the finger nails may be stopped by the use of the same bitter remedies as are used in thumb-sucking. HOW TO WASH OUT THE BOWELS COLON IRRIGATION. A HIGH ENEMA Procure a soft rubber catheter,--No. 18 American is about right. It is not advisable to get too soft rubber for the reason that it will buckle when the child strains and it will be impossible to wash out the bowel. Fill half full an ordinary two-quart douche bag with water that is warm, but not too hot. Dissolve a heaping teaspoonful of table salt in a glass of hot water and add this to the water in the bag. Hang the bag about two feet above the level of the child, so that the water will not flow in with too strong a stream; otherwise the child will immediately try to eject it. If the water flows in gently, the child may not object to it to the extent of making strenuous efforts to force the catheter out. Use the small sized nozzle that comes with the douche bag. Place the rubber catheter over this nozzle, lubricate the catheter, place the child on its back over a douche pan, insert the catheter about two inches, let the water run and as it runs in push the catheter up gently until it is all in the bowel except the end on the douche tip. The object of letting the water run while pushing in the catheter is because it floats up with the water as it distends the bowel; there is no risk then of pushing the end into the intestinal wall or hurting the child. While the water is flowing into the bowel it is a good plan to compress the buttocks together to aid in holding the water, as the child is very apt to let it run out as soon as it feels uncomfortable. The temperature of the water for the ordinary rectal injection should be 95° F. When the child is exhausted or very weak, or when the circulation is poor, the temperature of the water may be as high as 110° F. When, on the other hand, the fever is very high, the water may be much cooler; as low as 70° F. has been given with good results on the fever. If the irrigation is given with the intention of reducing the fever, it is best to begin with water around 90° F., and reduce it to 70° F., gradually. Indications for Irrigation of the Colon.--When it is desired to cleanse the bowel of any collection of matter a colon irrigation is indicated. This matter may be mucus, fecal substance, undigested food, or the decomposing waste products which may remain there as a result of disease or other conditions. When it is desired to medicate by putting fluids into the bowel we adopt the colon infusion. Every diseased condition of the bowel does not, however, indicate irrigation. If a child is having frequent loose movements every half-hour it is safe to assume that the bowel is being cleaned out sufficiently without any artificial aid. To irrigate in these cases would only irritate and would not accomplish anything. The cases which are benefited are those in which we have a fever with four or five green stools in the twenty-four hours, or where we have a high fever with no movement at all. To irrigate in these cases we not only get rid of the products of decomposition, but we prevent further decomposition and we reduce the fever, thereby contributing to the general welfare of the child. When the child is convalescing and when there is only mucus in the stools, with no fever--as in cases of chronic ileo-colitis--the colon irrigations should be stopped, as they tend to keep up the discharge of mucus in these cases. If, however, there is a relapse with fever, which would indicate a fresh infection with more discharging mucus and possibly green stools, the irrigation must be used until the fever subsides. Colon irrigations should always be given in every case of convulsions in infancy, first to clean out the bowel to prevent putrefaction, and second to empty the bowel on general principles because an overloaded bowel is very frequently the cause of convulsions in children. When irrigation of the bowel is given at all it must be given thoroughly. Enough water must pass into the bowel to wash it all out. For this reason it is essential that the catheter should be all in and in the bowel--not doubled on itself two or three inches in the bowel. If it is a serious case and the mother nervous, someone else should give the washing--preferably the physician himself. If the child objects strenuously, as often happens, it must be done with greater care to be successful. Remember that a colon irrigation is never given unless it is absolutely necessary and as a consequence it is given to accomplish a certain purpose; it must, therefore, be done thoroughly. If it is not, your child may miss the chance it has of getting over some immediate difficulty and if the moment of the "chance" is wasted or lost, that moment will not return. Be thorough, therefore. Enema.--Some physicians talk about a high enema and a low enema. A high enema is really an irrigation as described above. The following remarks apply to low enemas only. A so-called low enema is given to clean out the rectum of constipated matter, or for the introduction of food or medicine by rectum, when for various reasons it is necessary to spare the stomach. It may be given with the fountain syringe or with the ordinary bulb (baby) syringe. A catheter may be put on the tip of the syringe if it is thought best to inject higher up than in the rectum. When an enema is used in infants or older children for the relief of constipation, the best medium to use is glycerine. For an infant, one teaspoonful to an ounce of water is sufficient; for older children, one tablespoonful to two ounces of water, given with the bulb syringe, will give prompt results. If the constipation is pronounced, the fecal mass very hard, an enema of sweet oil, allowed to remain in for ten minutes, will soften it and permit a movement. Soap suds are often used. They are good but not as reliable as the glycerine or oil; if, however, neither of these two are at hand the soap suds may be given. Enemas should be carefully given and the liquid slowly injected. If the fountain syringe is used care must be exercised in not having the bag too high. If it is too high the liquid will flow in too strongly, either injuring the bowel wall or causing the child to strain immediately and pass out the injection before it has an opportunity of accomplishing its work. The temperature of the enema should be warm--not hot, and not cold, simply body heat. METHODS OF REDUCING FEVER During the course of acute illness it is frequently necessary to reduce the fever, if possible, without the use of drugs. The following means are often adopted. It is desirable that the mother should know just how to carry out these methods: Ice-Cap.--An ice-cap is used to protect the brain when a child or adult is running a very high fever. It is put on when the fever is above 103° F. It may be used in other conditions--brain disease, or disease of the meninges or cord--in which case the physician will be in attendance and will direct what should be done. Ice-bags are procured in the drug stores. The best one is the flat French ice-bag. Fill it three-quarters full of finely chopped ice, put the ice-bag in a towel, and place on the patient's head. There should be only one thickness of the towel between the ice-bag and the head. It will be necessary to keep a record of the fever so that the ice-bag may be withdrawn when it falls below 103° F. When the ice melts the bag must be at once refilled. This is often overlooked by careless mothers. Cold Sponging.--Cold sponging is used to reduce fever or to allay nervous irritability. Equal parts of alcohol and water or vinegar and water are used. The temperature of the water should be 80° to 85° F. Infants to be sponged should be completely undressed and laid upon a blanket. The sponging should be done for about fifteen or twenty minutes, after which the child is wrapped in a dry blanket without further clothing except the diaper. To be effective it must be done frequently. Cold Pack.--The cold pack is used to reduce fever. It is one of the simplest and one of the best means we have. The child is undressed completely, and laid upon a blanket. It is completely covered with a small blanket (except its head) wrung out of water at 100° F. Outside of this the child is rubbed with a piece of ice, front and back, for a sufficiently long time to render the surface cool, but not cold. Children take kindly to this means of reducing fever; there is no shock and they are quieted by it. Just how long one will rub with the ice depends upon circumstances. From five to thirty minutes may be employed. The head should be sponged with cold water while this is being done and it is a good plan to have a hot-water bottle at the child's feet. The Cold Bath.--To reduce fever the cold bath is used in the following way: Water at a temperature of 100° F. is put into the bath and the child is first put into this water, then the water is reduced by putting into it shaved ice until it reaches 80° F. The child's body is well rubbed while it is in the bath and cold water is applied to its head. The bath is continued for five minutes, or sometimes with a robust child to ten minutes. On removal the child should be put into a warm blanket after being thoroughly dried. Rectal Irrigations.--These are sometimes given to reduce fever. They are very useful and very successful if they are given properly and without exciting the child too much. It is best to give water of an ordinary temperature at first and gradually reduce it to 70° F. It should be continued for ten minutes or longer. It may be repeated every three hours. (See page 586.) VARIOUS BATHS Every mother should know how to give any bath that may be directed by the physician. The Mustard Bath.--Take from three to four tablespoonfuls of English mustard; mix thoroughly in about one gallon of warm water. Add to this about five gallons of plain water at a temperature of 100° F. If it is necessary to raise the temperature of the water higher it may be done by adding water until the temperature reaches 105° or 110° F. The mustard bath is exceedingly effective in cases of shock, great sudden depression, collapse, heart failure, or in sudden congestion of the lungs or brain. The special use of the mustard bath is in the treatment of convulsions; it is also useful for nervous children who sleep badly. Two or three minutes in the mustard bath, followed by a quick rubbing, will induce refreshing sleep in these children. It is not necessary to have more than one tablespoonful of mustard in these cases. The Hot Bath.--A bath is prepared of water at a temperature of 100° F. After the child is in the bath the temperature of the water is raised to 105°, or to 110° F. It is not safe to go above this point. The body of the child should be well rubbed while it is in the bath. In most cases it is advisable to apply cold water to the head while the child is in the bath. A bath thermometer should be kept in the water to see that it does not rise above the temperature desired. The hot bath, like the mustard bath, is used to promote reaction in cases of shock, collapse, etc., and in convulsions. The Hot Pack.--Remove all clothing from the baby and envelop the body in a sheet wrung out of water at a temperature of 100° F., to 105° F., after which the body should be rolled in a thick blanket. Those hot applications may be changed every twenty minutes until free perspiration is produced. This condition may be kept up as long as is necessary. The hot pack is used mainly in disease of the kidney. The Hot-Air or Vapor Bath.--The child is put in bed wholly undressed with the bed clothing raised about twelve inches, and held in that position by a wicker support. The child's head is of course outside the bed clothing. Beneath the bed clothing hot air or vapor from a croup kettle is introduced. This will cause free perspiration in twenty minutes. It may be continued from twenty to thirty minutes at a time. The vapor bath is used in diseases of the kidney, as a rule. The Bran Bath.--In five gallons of water place a bag in which is put one quart of ordinary wheat bran. The bag is made of cheese cloth. Squeeze and manipulate the bran bag until the water resembles a thin porridge. The temperature of the water is usually about 95° F., though it may be given with any temperature of water. The bran bath is of great value in eczema, or in rashes about the buttocks, or in delicate skin conditions when plain water would irritate. The Tepid Bath.--This bath may be given at a temperature of 95°, or 100° F. It is of distinct advantage in extremely nervous children. To induce sleep it is often better than drugs. The Cold Sponge or Shower Bath.--This bath should be given in the morning in a warm room. A tub should be provided with enough water in it to cover the child's feet. This water should be warm because when the feet are in warm water it prevents the shock which frequently comes when cold water is applied to any other part of the body. A large sponge is filled with water at a temperature of from 40° to 60° F. This is squeezed a number of times over the child's chest, shoulders, and back. While the cold water is being applied the body should be well rubbed with the free hand of the mother. The bath should not last longer than half a minute. When finished take the child out quickly and stand him on a bath towel and give him a brisk rubbing with a bath towel until the skin reacts. This is an exceedingly valuable tonic for a delicate child. It should not be used on younger children than eighteen months of age. In younger children a cold plunge is preferable. For the cold plunge water at a temperature of 55° F. is prepared. The child is lifted into this and given a single dip up to the neck. He is then briskly rubbed off as above. There are a very few children who do not take kindly to either the cold sponge or plunge. These children do not react; they remain pale or blue and pinched for some time after. It may be necessary to discontinue the procedure or to use water of a higher temperature. POULTICES Poultices are useful in inflammation and for the relief of pain. To be of any value they should be applied frequently--every ten or twenty minutes--and they should be applied hot. Ground flaxseed is the best material for poultices. It should be mixed with boiling water until the proper thickness is reached. It may be kept simmering on a fire. When one poultice is taken off it can be scraped into the pot and heated over if there is no discharge. Each poultice should be put into clean muslin, put on the part and covered with oiled silk. This will help to retain the heat and prevent the clothing or bed sheet from becoming wet. HOT FOMENTATIONS A hot fomentation is simply a clean poultice. Several thicknesses of flannel are taken, wrung out of very hot water, covered with cotton batting, and then with oiled silk. How to Make and How to Apply a Mustard Paste.--For infants: Take one part English mustard to six parts flour, mix with lukewarm water, and spread between two layers of cheesecloth. For older children and adults: Take one tablespoonful English mustard to three or four tablespoonfuls of flour, and mix as above. Mustard pastes should be made big enough. You can accomplish a great deal more by putting on a sufficiently large mustard paste than by simply putting on one the size of the palm of your hand. It should be left on until the skin is distinctly red. The length of time will depend, of course, upon the strength of the mustard. Mustard pastes may be put on every three hours, if necessary, and they may be used for a week at this interval if the conditions demand it. If they are used in pneumonia or other pulmonary diseases, they should be used large enough to go around the whole chest. If they are used in heart failure, they should be big enough to cover the whole trunk. When made with the white of an egg they will not blister. Or if the part is rubbed with white vaseline before applying, it will not blister and it will be just as effective. When a mustard paste is removed the red area should be rubbed with white vaseline and covered with a clean piece of flannel. How to Prepare and Use the Mustard Pack.--The child is stripped and laid upon a blanket, and the trunk is surrounded by a large towel or sheet saturated with mustard water. This is prepared as follows: Take one tablespoonful of English mustard and dissolve it in one quart of water, slightly warmed. Saturate a towel in this mixture and apply to the body of the child while it is dripping. The patient is then rolled in a blanket. Keep the child in this pack for ten or fifteen minutes. The mustard pack is not as good as the mustard bath, but it is all that is necessary in a number of various conditions. The physician will, of course, decide these matters. It is simply the duty of the mother to know how to carry out the physician's instructions. The Turpentine Stupe.--Take a piece of flannel, big enough to cover the area which it is desired to affect, wring it out of as hot water as it is possible. Upon this sprinkle twenty drops of spirits of turpentine. Place the stupe wherever it is desired and cover with a piece of oiled silk or dry flannel. The turpentine stupe is mostly used in pain of the abdominal cavity. In colic from acute indigestion it is a very convenient means of quieting the child by allaying the pain. Care should be taken not to allow this form of application to remain on too long. Take it off when the skin is red. For continuous use it is not as good as the mustard paste. OILED SILK. WHAT IT IS, AND WHY IT IS USED Oiled silk is sold in the drug stores by the yard. It is one yard wide. It is used to cover any local application to prevent evaporation into the air or to prevent the clothing from absorbing the medicament. If a liniment is applied on cloth to effect a certain result, it may take some time to do its work. If the wet cloth is covered with the clothing, the clothing will absorb the medicine quicker than the body will and thereby defeat the object in view, in addition to rendering the clothing wet and nasty. If the application is covered with oiled silk it cannot escape into the clothing, because the oiled silk is impervious. The body will be compelled to absorb the medicine and consequently results will be quicker and more certain. Many liniments are expensive; to permit them to be absorbed by the clothing is needless waste It is therefore economical to apply the oiled silk. DISEASES OF CHILDREN [Illustration: By permission of Henry H. Goddard.] The First Blight This is one of those truly unfortunate cases which, so far as present knowledge goes, cannot be guarded against. Eunice, age 31, mentally 2, is a low-grade imbecile. There is not in the whole family, for generations back, a single case of feeble-mindedness, nor of disease that would undermine the nervous organization. Close scrutiny does not reveal a single assignable cause. She came, as an accident, to blight an otherwise normal family. Such cases are few, but unfortunately they do occur. It is for Eugenics to materially reduce the possibility of such occurrences. * * * * * CHAPTER XXXVIII INFECTIOUS OR CONTAGIOUS DISEASES Rules to be Observed in the Treatment of Contagious Diseases--What Isolation Means--The Contagious Sick Room--Conduct and Dress of the Nurse--Feeding the Patient and Nurse--How to Disinfect the Clothing and Linen--How to Disinfect the Urine and Feces--How to Disinfect the Hands--Disinfection of the Room Necessary--How to Disinfect the Mouth and Nose--How to Disinfect the Throat--Receptacle for the Sputum--Care of the Skin in Contagious Diseases--Convalescence After a Contagious Disease--Disinfecting the Sick Chamber--The After Treatment of a Disinfected Room--How to Disinfect the Bed Clothing and Clothes--Mumps--Epidemic Parotitis--Chicken Pox--Varicella--La Grippe--Influenza--Diphtheria--Whooping Cough--Pertussis--Measles--Koplik's Spots--Department of Health Rules in Measles--Scarlet Fever--Scarlatina--Typhoid Fever--Various Solutions--Boracic Acid Solution--Normal Salt Solution--Carron Oil--Thiersch's Solution--Solution of Bichloride of Mercury--How to Make Various Solutions. RULES TO BE OBSERVED IN THE TREATMENT OF CONTAGIOUS DISEASES Every mother should know the elementary principles involved in the treatment of contagious diseases. They are contagious because they may be conveyed from one individual to another or because a person nursing a victim of a contagious disease may carry that disease to another person without having the disease herself. For this reason, certain rules have been established by the medical profession, which experience has taught are necessary in order to preserve the health of the community when such diseases are prevalent. The very first rule to which the physician will direct the mother's attention, when there is a contagious disease, will be that the child must be "isolated." What Isolation Means.--Isolation means the complete seclusion of the patient in a room by himself, so that no one will see him or come in contact with him except the physician and the nurse or mother who will tend him during the entire course of the disease. Isolation implies more than it would seem to mean. It implies that every article used during the sickness will be thoroughly disinfected before it leaves the room in which the patient himself is isolated. Mothers must always remember that every article used by the patient may carry the germs of the disease to some other member of the family or to some other individual. These articles are the clothing of the child, the bedclothes, napkins, handkerchiefs, towels, dishes, knives and spoons, rags, the various discharges--sputum, urine, and bowel passages--and, we may add to this list, flies, insects, and domestic animals. Every precaution must, therefore, be taken to safeguard any dissemination of the disease by means of these articles. Thorough isolation also implies that the nurse shall frequently bathe and disinfect her person and her clothing, and that the sick-room itself shall be carefully dusted with a moist cloth and disinfected from time to time. The Contagious Sick-Room.--The contagious sick-room will be prepared in exactly the same way as the ordinary sick-room which has been previously described. In addition, however, it will be safeguarded in the following manner. A wet sheet will be hung up outside the door. This sheet will be kept constantly moistened with a solution of chloride of lime. One-half pound to an ordinary house-pail of water is the strength of the solution to use. Every window must be effectively screened to prevent the ingress and egress of flies and other insects. Conduct and Dress of the Nurse.--She will remain in the sick-room all the time unless when she takes outdoor exercise. Her dress will consist of a long gown which will entirely cover her person from the neck to the shoes and will be of plain, white, easily washed material, without tucks or ruffles or adornment of any kind. She should wear an ordinary pair of house slippers made of light leather. Her cap will be large enough to cover and include her hair and head. When she leaves the room, she will remove her cap, gown, and slippers, disinfect her hands in a disinfecting solution and wash her face, neck, and hands in soap and water. She should go directly out and in, without coming in contact with any occupant of the home. Feeding the Patient and Nurse.--The meals for the patient and nurse should be left on a table outside the door of the sick-room, from which place the nurse will then take them into the room. The utensils used for these meals should not be used by other members of the family during the entire sickness. After the patient and nurse have eaten, the utensils should be placed in a chloride of lime solution for disinfection. If any of the food is left over it should be put into a jar in which it may be disinfected and rendered harmless before being disposed of. How to Disinfect the Clothing and Linen.--All bed and body linen, towels, handkerchiefs, napkins, etc., should be immediately put into a large receptacle--a wash boiler, or tub, will answer the purpose admirably--containing a five per cent. solution of carbolic acid in which an adequate quantity of soft soap has been dissolved. They should remain in this mixture for two hours, after which they may be wrung out and taken to the laundry. How to Disinfect the Urine and Feces.--The urine and the stools should be passed into vessels containing a solution of four ounces of carbolic acid to the gallon of water. This vessel should be covered and the mixture allowed to stand for one hour, after which time it may be thrown out. How to Disinfect the Hands.--Any of the following solutions may be used for disinfection of the nurse's hands: Creolin, one teaspoonful to the quart of water; chloride of lime, one-half pound to a pail of water; formalin, thirty-two drops to a quart of water. A basin containing one of the above solutions should be constantly kept standing for the frequent disinfection of the nurse's hands. After disinfection, the hands should be washed in plain water and soap. Disinfection of Room Necessary.--The room in which a contagious patient is confined requires systematic attention on the part of the nurse. Every other day all flat or projecting surfaces should be disinfected. Mantels, window-sills, door knobs, picture moldings, furniture, chairs, and bed-railings, should be wiped with cloths moistened in a disinfecting solution. A suitable solution for this purpose is one containing one ounce of carbolic acid to the quart of water. How to Disinfect the Mouth and Nose.--In the course of all contagious diseases the mouth and throat of the patient and nurse should be thoroughly disinfected as a matter of routine. It should be done at least twice daily unless more frequent disinfection is called for because of the nature of the disease. In measles and diphtheria, for example, the nasal and throat conditions will undoubtedly call for more frequent and more thorough disinfection than twice daily. This may also apply to scarlet fever if the throat is involved as is often the case. Pocket handkerchiefs should never be used by a patient suffering from a contagious disease. The nose and mouth should be wiped with pieces of gauze or cheesecloth, cut into small squares for this purpose. These should be immediately burned after being used. To disinfect the throat, a solution of formalin, six drops to six ounces of water, is effective. To disinfect the nose, a solution of Glyco-Thymoline is suitable. These applications should be made by means of an atomizer, a different atomizer being used for the patient and nurse. Receptacle for the Sputum.--A cuspidor, or basin, should be constantly kept at the side of the bed in which the patient may conveniently expectorate. This utensil should contain the chloride of lime solution previously mentioned. Care of the Skin in Contagious Diseases.--As in all other sick conditions, the skin of the patient should be bathed frequently with an alcoholic solution. In the later stages of measles and scarlet fever it is essential to anoint the skin while the patient is scaling. This may be done with carbolated vaseline. Mothers should understand why this is necessary. These diseases have a distinct rash or eruption. This eruption practically kills the skin cells and at a certain period these cells are cast off by the new growth of skin underneath. This process is called scaling. In measles the scales are small, and are cast off in the form of bran like dust. In scarlet fever, the cells adhere together and are cast off in large scales. These scales are contagious. They are very light and will float in the air if dry. The movement of the patient, changing the bed clothing, etc., will waft a multitude of these contagious scales into the air of the room and infect every article they may land on. This would make the disinfection of the room difficult and tedious. In order to obviate this tendency experience has taught us that much of the difficulty and nearly all of the risk of contagion may be overcome by rubbing some oily or sticky substance on the skin. By this method the dust and scales are rendered heavier than the air, stick together and will not float. During the scaling period there is a constant itch present which irritates the little patient. By using carbolated vaseline to anoint the skin we accomplish two purposes. The carbolic acid in the vaseline relieves the itch, and the vaseline itself greases the skin so that the scales remain in the bed. Each day the nurse changes the bed-sheet, gathers the scales in the sheet and puts all in the disinfecting solution. Convalescence After a Contagious Disease.--Complete isolation must be kept up until all danger from contagion is passed. In diphtheria this period is not reached until the examination of the throat contents under the microscope is returned negative. In diseases Which have a rash this period is not reached until all scaling is completed. Even then, and for a number of days or weeks, the patient may be taken out for exercise daily, but must not be allowed to play with other children until his strength justifies active exercise. It takes a much longer period to rid the system of the poison of a contagious disease than most mothers appreciate. Many children have died from heart failure after they were considered well simply because the active exercise overtaxed the heart before the system was wholly free from the poison of the disease. Before the child is removed from the sick-room for the first time he should have a disinfecting bath. This bath should be in a solution of bichloride of mercury, the strength of which should be one part to five thousand parts of water. The towels used to dry the patient after the bath should be fresh and should not have been in the sick-room. He should then be dressed in clothing which has never been in the sick-room. DISINFECTING THE SICK-CHAMBER How to Disinfect a Room.--The most efficient way to disinfect a room is by means of formaldehyde gas. This, however, requires a special apparatus which can only be used by one familiar with the process. In all large cities the Department of Health usually undertakes the disinfection of rooms after any contagious disease. The next best method is by sulphur. When sulphur is employed it should be used in the form of powder or in small pieces. This is placed in a shallow iron pan set on a couple of boards in a tub partly filled with water. The sulphur is moistened with alcohol before it is set on fire. It is always necessary, of course, before disinfecting by any process to make the room as nearly air tight as is possible. To accomplish this the windows must be tightly closed, the doors locked, and the cracks and keyhole sealed with pieces of paper or adhesive paper. The room should remain closed for six or eight hours, after which it should be thoroughly aired for several days. The After Treatment of a Disinfected Room.--The walls, ceiling, and all flat surfaces, such as mantels, window-sills, etc., should be washed with a fresh chloride of lime solution. The floor should be scrubbed with a four per cent. soda solution. All carpets and curtains, if any, should be removed, taken to a vacant lot and thoroughly beaten and then exposed to direct sunlight for a number of hours. The room should then be well aired again for a couple of days before it is again occupied. How to Disinfect the Bed Clothing and Clothes.--The surest way is to boil them for half an hour; otherwise they may be left in the room while it is being disinfected. Spraying the clothes with a spray of formaldehyde is an effective way of disinfecting them. MUMPS: EPIDEMIC PAROTITIS Mumps is a contagious disease. It is most common between the fourth and sixth years. Infants are rarely affected. The disease is not very contagious, direct contact being necessary to communicate it. Every case should be isolated for a period of three weeks from the beginning of the disease. The seat of the affection is the parotid gland which is located in front of and on a level with the ear. One or both glands may be affected at the same time or one may follow the other in succumbing. The duration of the disease from the time the swelling becomes noticeable is about ten days. It is contagious for a week after the swelling subsides. The period of incubation is from one to three weeks. Symptoms.--In the majority of cases the first symptom is the swelling and the discomfort which it causes. In more severe cases the child feels sick and is listless for from twenty-four to forty-eight hours. There may be a headache, vomiting, pains in the back and limbs, and fever. There is pain in the swelling which is increased by movement of the jaws and by pressure. The degree of the swelling varies with the severity of the attack. It may be very little or it may be so great as to completely distort, and render unrecognizable, the face. It must be remembered that, though mumps is not regarded as an important or dangerous disease, it may assume dangerous characteristics. We sometimes see distressing complications with mumps. In boys, orchitis, or inflammation of the testicles, occasionally occur. In girls, ovaritis, or inflammation of the ovaries may be present. These complications may be avoided by keeping the patients in bed. Treatment.--Keep the child in bed until the fever is gone. Keep him in the house for one week after the swelling has entirely subsided. He should be put on a liquid diet while the fever lasts. The bowels should move each day. The mouth should be kept clean by an antiseptic mouth wash. If there is much pain in the swollen gland, warm, wet dressings give the best results. Sometimes it is advisable to paint the gland with belladonna ointment. If it is not very painful, the most comfortable way to dress the gland is simply to place over it a large pad of absorbent cotton held in place by a broad strip of flannel cloth. CHICKEN POX. VARICELLA Chicken pox is an affection almost entirely special to children, in whom it may be observed from their first year, although it is especially frequent from the ages of two to six. It appears often in the epidemical form and spreads by contagion. Some doctors are inclined to regard varicella as a very attenuated form of smallpox, hence the name "chicken pox," by which it is popularly known. This opinion is based merely on the analogy between the two types of skin eruptions and the coincidence sometimes observed between two epidemics of smallpox and chicken pox. But the theory falls on considering that, on the one hand, chicken pox offers no safeguard against infection by smallpox and does not prevent the effects of vaccination, and, on the other hand the disease may occur in children who have been vaccinated or who have had smallpox. Chicken pox, too, differs essentially from smallpox in the course of its development. After a period of incubation, extending over a fortnight, chicken pox becomes apparent by such symptoms as slight shivering, extreme fatigue and a general but not very intense condition of fever. In less than twenty-four hours small pink spots will appear on the skin, and these after a few hours are topped by a vesicle, and the next day the whole rash shows a vesiculous appearance. The vesicles are sometimes small and pointed, sometimes more voluminous and globular in form. They are filled with a limpid or a slightly yellowish liquid. Their base is sometimes surrounded by an inflammatory ring. By the third day the contents of the vesicle has become thicker and tends to become purulent. On the fourth day desiccation commences, and the vesicles shrivel and shrink in and form small brownish scabs, which fall about the eighth day. Frequently the child will scratch them off with the finger nails before they are entirely desiccated. The vesicles leave small reddish spots, which generally disappear gradually, almost always without a scar. An eruption of chicken pox does not burst out all over the body at once, but appears in successive rashes. It is not confined to any special parts of the body. It may begin and spread at the same time from the face, the trunk of the body or the limbs. A dozen pimples may be seen the first day, while three or even ten times as many may be visible the next day, and so on for several days in succession. Sometimes the vesicles appear on mucous membrane at different parts--the mouth, tongue, soft palate and tonsils--and may also invade the conjunctiva and cornea, or the larynx, where they will set up laryngitis. Owing to the very contagious nature of chicken pox, the first thing to be done is to provide for the complete isolation during a period of twelve to fifteen days of all patients attacked by the disease. The treatment of the disease is solely a matter of hygiene. The more severe the fever the stricter the diet should be, and in the case of great fever, the diet should be restricted to broth and milk. If there is no fever the child need not be placed on any special diet. If the intestines are sluggish, they may be stimulated by administering a dose of castor oil. It is advisable to make the patient rinse his mouth two or three times a day with a mouth wash. It is also well to apply a lotion around the eyes and face, consisting of two per cent. boracic acid solution with the chill taken off. Finally, in order to prevent the child scratching the sores and the consequent danger of inoculation by the finger nails, it is a good practice to rub a small amount of carbolated vaseline over the itching parts. It is frequently found necessary to have the little patient wear white woolen gloves to prevent scratching and infecting the sores. If a child scratches the sores on the face it will leave an unsightly mark which will stay for the rest of its life. The child, of course, should not be allowed to rejoin his playmates without having had a good bath, and having had his clothes completely disinfected. INFLUENZA: LA GRIPPE The most important feature with reference to influenza in children is its very active tendency to develop complications. These complications generally affect the respiratory tract. So we find in children suffering from grippe an easy disposition to get bronchitis or broncho-pneumonia. The younger the child the greater the danger. The disease itself, so long as it remains an uncomplicated influenza, is not of much importance or severity. The lesson to be learned, therefore, is to treat the disease with respect and take every precaution to avoid the possibility of developing a complication. La Grippe is a highly contagious disease. It prevails epidemically, and after an active epidemic it may remain in the vicinity for a number of years. It is more frequently seen in the late winter months and early spring. The poison of the disease clings to clothing and apartments as well as to railroad and street cars. The germ is found in the sputum and in the nasal secretions. Sneezing is one of its symptoms and it is one of the ways by which the disease is spread around. Children should never be brought near an adult suffering from influenza. One attack does not render the patient immune to a subsequent attack as is the case with most of the contagious diseases. The reverse is the rule with La Grippe because one attack favors the development of another attack. It is a common experience for many people to have influenza every winter or spring. Symptoms.--If a child "catches" grippe, it becomes quite sick abruptly. There is usually chilliness, pains in the muscles all over the body, more or less fever, sometimes nausea and vomiting. If the attack is a more severe one, the prostration is more marked, the temperature higher and the signs of shock and poisoning of the system are more in evidence. A child a few months old can get influenza so severely as to cause collapse and death in thirty-six hours. As a rule the type of grippe most common in infancy is of a very mild character. It lasts about a week. Children may be a little slow in convalescing and it may be three or four weeks before they regain their health. Complications.--As has been intimated, the most frequent complication is bronchitis and the most fatal one is broncho-pneumonia. A congestion of the entire mucous membrane of the respiratory tract, producing a nasal discharge, a sore and inflamed throat, pains and a feeling of compression, with a cough in the chest, may accompany the disease. Gastric symptoms, with vomiting, intestinal disturbance, diarrhea, with or without mucus and blood, are quite common in some epidemics. Not infrequently we have numerous cases in which the ear seems to be the vulnerable part. As a consequence running ears have to receive most of our attention. When the ears are affected, the glands of the neck become inflamed. They swell up and add considerable to the discomfort of the little patient. Treatment.--Cases of influenza should be isolated. Children should be put in a room by themselves and the other children of the family should not be permitted to see them. The rooms should be disinfected after the case is over. As complications are the dangerous element in grippe, we should try to prevent them. This can be best done by promptly putting the child in bed, making him comfortable, opening his bowels by castor oil or calomel. He should be made to drink hot lemonade. He should be kept on a light diet from which meat and vegetables are excluded. The above treatment will usually suffice in the ordinary uncomplicated grippe. If complications arise they must be treated according to the conditions. It is well to remember that the degree of prostration following a rather severe attack of grippe is out of all proportion to the extent of the disease. These little patients sometimes suffer considerably and do not regain their strength promptly. Experience has taught us that the best thing to do is to send them away. A change of climate will do wonders for them, more quickly and more thoroughly than all the medicine we can give them at home. The seashore is particularly good for them. DIPHTHERIA Diphtheria is an acute, specific, infectious, communicable disease. It affects the tonsils, throat, nose, or larynx. It is most frequently seen in children between the ages of two and five years, though it may appear at any time during life. The two sexes are equally liable to it. The same person may have the disease twice or more times at different ages. Children suffering from disease of the nose or throat are more likely to get it than are others. Such diseases are cold in the head with running nose, catarrh of the nose and throat, inflammation of the mucous membranes of the nose or throat. Diphtheria may occur at any time of the year, though it is more frequent during the cold months. The incubation, or the length of time between exposure to the disease and the development of the symptoms, is between two and five days. In its mild form the disease may be present without giving any constitutional symptoms. In its severe form, however, it is one of the most dangerous diseases of childhood. In large cities it is present all the year round with more or less frequent outbreaks in the form of local epidemics. In the country it is only seen in its epidemic form. It does not arise without a cause, that is, there is always a preceding case from which an epidemic springs, though it is not always easy to trace the connection. The child inhales the bacilli which cause the disease with the air it breathes. The bacilli may lodge on toys or other articles from which the child gets them. Direct infection is usually the mode of communication through which a child obtains the disease. The saliva and mucus from the nose contain the bacilli in large quantities and if a patient coughs or sneezes they are expelled in this way and infect others. Frequently a child suffering from a mild form of diphtheria may attend school and infect others without it being known that the child has the disease. Symptoms.--The symptoms vary with the severity of the attack. There are mild cases, as has been stated, that give no constitutional symptoms. There may be a small amount of local disturbance in the throat or nose and there may be some membrane present, but, for some reason, there does not seem to be any absorption of the poison into the system and the child escapes the systemic disturbance. Even as a local condition these cases vary. There is always a fever at the beginning, but the child never seems sick enough to go to bed. If the throat is examined it will be found to be red and slightly inflamed, there may be spots on the tonsils, or there may be a gray film over them. There is no discharge from the nose and the child does not complain of an excess of mucus from the throat. The spots may last for a week and then disappear. These cases are difficult to diagnose without making a culture, and if the physician insists upon keeping the child confined to bed while apparently well the family as a rule object, though it is absolutely necessary. These are the cases that do great harm in school, and no mother should object if the physician insists in taking preventative measures to stop an epidemic if the bacilli have been found in the child's throat. She should rather feel thankful that the child escaped so easily. Since the introduction of antitoxin we do not see the severe cases now, so that a description of them would not be of any use in a book of this character. Mothers should, however, know that it is absolutely criminal to take any chances with a "sore throat." Antitoxin is a prompt and an absolute remedy if used soon after the onset of the disease. It is more sure if used the first or second day, still reliable the third day, but its efficacy diminishes the longer we postpone its use from the date of the onset of the disease. When, therefore, a child complains of being sick and states that its throat hurts, medical aid should be at once sought. The disease may develop in one of two ways. It may begin as a slight indisposition for a day or two, and perhaps some soreness of the throat. The fever may be slight. The child will continue to be sick despite any treatment given and will get slowly worse until the fourth or fifth day, when it will be impossible to mistake the condition. At other times the disease begins abruptly. The child complains of being sick. It may vomit, or suffer from headache, chilly feelings, and a fever. The glands in the neck may swell and cause considerable disturbance. There is, as a rule, an abundant discharge from the nose and there is an excess of mucus in the throat. Membrane is seen in the throat. It may cover the tonsils and spread over the entire throat cavity, or it may extend up into the nose and over the roof of the mouth. All the parts are much swollen and breathing is interfered with, sometimes seriously. If the attack is very severe there is an active absorption of poison going on from the throat which soon renders the little patient intensely sick. There is marked weakness and prostration, the circulation becomes poor, the pulse rapid and the child falls into a stupor. The physician will, of course, have taken complete charge of the case before the patient has gone thus far. The nursing of the case, which may fall to the mother if no trained nurse is present, is most important. She should preserve absolute cleanliness of herself and of the sick room. She should never eat or sleep in the same room with the patient, and should use a gargle, which the physician should prescribe, frequently during the day. She should dress simply, so that whatever is worn can be changed often and washed easily. Every article of furniture must be taken out of the sick room that is not absolutely essential in the care of the case. If toys are allowed they should be burned as soon as the child is tired of them, never left around the house after the case is over. The room should be a large one and it should be thoroughly aired each day. The floor should be washed each day with a solution of bichloride of mercury, and all dusting should be done with a wet cloth. The bed linen and any rags or handkerchiefs used should be treated as in scarlet fever. All vessels in which the patient expectorates should have an antiseptic in them. The room must be disinfected after the case is over. The patient must be kept in bed during the entire attack. He must not be allowed to even sit up in bed until the physician gives him permission. This is a very important essential in the treatment of this disease, and the nurse must be held responsible for the conduct of the patient in this respect. Because of the character of the poison, there is a tendency to paralysis of the heart, and frequently children have been allowed to sit up too soon only to fall back dead in bed. The same thing has occurred later in the disease when children have been allowed to play too heartily before the poison had an opportunity to completely eliminate itself. Nursing children should be fed on breast milk pumped from the mother, but they must not nurse it themselves. Older children can take milk and should depend upon it mostly. The physician will give any other special directions that he may think necessary, the duty of the mother being to see that they are faithfully carried out. WHOOPING-COUGH Whooping-cough is usually seen in young children. It may, however, affect a person at any age. It is contagious. During infancy it is one of the most fatal diseases. During adult life it is a dangerous condition, while in childhood it is simply regarded as a mildly contagious disease. It is most contagious during the catarrhal stage,--the first ten days. Children suffering from whooping-cough should not be allowed to mix or play with other children for two months. After an exposure to the disease it takes about fourteen days for a case to develop. The danger of whooping-cough is the tendency to develop pneumonia or bronchitis. Symptoms.--During the first ten days the child acts as if suffering from an ordinary catarrhal cold with cough. This is called the catarrhal stage. There is no way of telling that whooping-cough is present until the child whoops. Most children do not whoop until the expiration of the catarrhal stage, though a very few do from the beginning of the disease. If a child is treated for an ordinary cold with cough and does not respond to treatment, and whooping-cough is epidemic, it is fair to assume that whooping-cough has been contracted. When the cough shows a distinct tendency to be worse at night it is further proof of this assumption. When they begin to cough in paroxysms, and whoop, the second, or spasmodic stage begins. These fits of paroxysmal coughing are much more severe than spells of ordinary coughing. These may only be three or four attacks daily, or the child may have from forty to fifty such attacks. When children feel these attacks coming on they seek support, holding on to chairs or they stand by the mother's knee. The coughing is explosive, rapid, and forceful, the child fails to catch its breath and is compelled to take a deep inspiration, which is the whoop; it then goes on coughing more. The face may become purple, the eyes protrude, and the veins of the face swell up. Near the end of the attack the child raises, or vomits a mass of stringy, glutinous mucus. After it is over the child is exhausted, there is a more or less profuse perspiration, and he may be quite dazed. These attacks are, as a rule, more frequent and more severe during the night. This stage lasts about one month and is then followed by the stage of decline, during which the disease subsides into what appears as an ordinary bronchial cold. It is quite common for these children to get relapses, especially during inclement winter weather, and go on whooping for two or three months longer. Their vitality suffers because their sleep and nourishment is interfered with, and they become nervous and difficult to manage. Treatment.--Inasmuch as there is no remedy known that will cure whooping-cough, the best we can do is to render the patient physically efficient to stand the severe strain of coughing, which is the worst feature of the disease. Experience has taught us that those children do best who spend their entire time out of doors. We, therefore, advise parents to encourage their children to play in the open air. There is no exception to this rule, even in winter weather, unless it is particularly inclement. If the weather is wet or raw, or if the child has bronchitis, or is running a fever, it would be more safe to keep the child indoors, in a well-aired room, until the temporary conditions pass over, when they could again resume the open-air treatment. Naturally delicate children if under two years of age should not risk staying out of doors too much in very cold or raw weather, even if not suffering from any of the above complications. The bedrooms of children suffering from whooping-cough should be large and thoroughly aired day and night. The nourishment in these cases is of great importance. They should be carefully fed, and if they vomit with the paroxysms of coughing, they should be fed small quantities frequently. Any form of digestive disturbance is very apt to accentuate the frequency of coughing. A fluid diet of milk is the best. Milk punches aid in keeping up the strength; malted milk and eggs beaten in milk are nutritious and easily digested. So far as internal medication is concerned, I have found pertussin to be the most efficacious remedy. If it is begun early and in sufficient dosage, it not only favors an early termination of the disease, but it lessens the frequency and the severity of the paroxysms. If it is suspected that the child has been exposed to whooping-cough, pertussin may be given during the catarrhal stage with the advantage that it will render the whole course of the disease milder. If it is given during the course of an ordinary catarrhal cold, it will in most cases be as effectual as any ordinary cough remedy. The dosage should be large enough to produce results. I have found a teaspoonful every two hours to a child of three years to be the average dose. In older children I give two teaspoonfuls every three hours. It is necessary to continue its use throughout the disease. The taste of pertussin is pleasant and young children take it willingly. When the disease is inclined to a protracted course, or when the cough does not subside, especially during unfavorable weather, it is of great importance to send the child away. A change of climate, preferably to the seashore, even for a short time, will act like a charm, and will cure the cough of whooping-cough quicker than any other possible measure. MEASLES Measles is the most widely prevalent, eruptive, contagious disease. With few exceptions, every human being "gets" measles. As an uncomplicated disease it is never fatal, and is not even regarded as dangerous. Because of this characteristic, however, parents are neglectful and complications occur, and these frequently prove fatal. One attack renders the patient immune. It is very highly contagious and spreads with great rapidity among those who have never had it. It is not possible to carry the disease any great distance by a third person or by means of living objects. It does not, however, cling to clothing or other objects as long as scarlet fever. Its period of incubation is from eleven to fourteen days. Symptoms.--The symptoms develop gradually. A severe cold in the head is the first and most characteristic symptom of the disease. There is a discharge from the nose, swollen and watery eyes, sneezing and a hoarse, harsh cough. The patient may complain of the throat being painful and examination will reveal a general congestion of the parts. There are also headache, lassitude, pains in the back, and there may be vomiting and diarrhea. Children in the early stages of measles are tired and sleepy. Koplik's Spots.--Three or four days, in rare cases somewhat longer, before the appearance of the rash there appears on the mucous membrane of the cheeks small, bluish white, or yellowish white points, the size of a small pin head. These points are surrounded with reddened areas which give the appearance of a general rash with fine white points upon it. These points resemble milk particles. They adhere firmly to the mucous membrane and when an effort is made to remove them it is found that the underlying surface is ulcerated and excoriated. The Koplik spots are not of much value to the mother other than that they may be relied upon to indicate the coming disease with which they child is affected. Physicians look for them as an aid in diagnosis before the rash would of itself indicate the disease. The rash appears on the third, fourth, or fifth day of the disease. From the day of the infection to the outbreak of the rash about thirteen days intervene. It is seen first at the roots of the hair on the forehead, behind the ears or on the neck. It may be seen first on the cheeks. The beginning rash appears as small, dark red, dull spots. At first there are only a few, but they soon become more numerous, they join together, and soon the surface looks inflamed as if entirely covered with the rash. The rash covers the entire body, including the soles and palms. In twenty-four hours it is at its height on the face. It spreads downward like a wave, first the face, then the neck and chest, then the abdomen and later the legs. By the time it invades the legs it has begun to fade on the face. It fades slowly in the order of its appearance. Its duration is about four days. The skin is swollen; it burns and itches. The eyes are swollen and red and intensely sensitive to light. There is usually a muco-pus discharge from them. The cough is invariably an annoying feature. The fever is high and reaches its highest point when the rash is at its height. As the rash fades the fever subsides. When the rash fades, the patient begins to "scale." The scales of measles are fine, like bran, never in large patches like the scales of scarlet fever. The amount of the scaling varies. It may be quite considerable or it may be so small as to be overlooked. Complications.--The most important and by far the most frequent complication of measles is broncho-pneumonia. There may be various conditions affecting the stomach, bowels, throat, ears, bronchi, and the nervous system, which may accompany the disease but are seldom of a serious or important character. Treatment.--Measles runs a certain course and will run that course, no matter what we may or may not do. We cannot stop it, or shorten it, or lessen its severity. We can only hope to make the patient comfortable and to prevent the development of complications. The child should be put in bed and kept comfortably warm but not too warm. The room should be kept at the ordinary temperature of the sick room, 68° to 70° F. It should be darkened but not dark. The food should be fluid and given regularly. The child may be given all the cool,--not cold,--water it wants to drink. The bowels should be kept open daily. If constipation occurs an enema may be given. The eyes must be carefully watched and washed every hour or two during the day with a boracic acid solution. If the cough is distressing, it may be rendered less distressing, though we cannot hope to stop it until the disease has run its course. The restlessness, headache and general discomfort can be much modified by suitable remedies. If the itching is acute, the body can be rubbed with carbolated vaseline. When the rash subsides and the patient is free from fever a daily warm bath should be given in order to facilitate scaling. Should complications arise they should be promptly cared for by the attending physician. SUMMARY:-- 1. Measles is the most prevalent infectious disease of childhood. 2. The danger of measles has been and is underestimated. Because of its prevalency many mothers treat it with less respect than they should, with the result that fatal complications occur, or the future health of the child is permanently injured. 3. Children with measles should be put in bed and kept in bed and treated as directed above. The following rules have been formulated by the Department of Health of New York City, with reference to measles, and embody precautions that should find general observance: 1. All children in the family must be promptly excluded from school attendance. 2. Careful and continued isolation of the patient must be enforced until the case is terminated and fumigation has been ordered by the medical inspector of the Department. 3. All secondary cases must be reported even if the first case is still under surveillance of the Department of Health. 4. Suspected cases must be treated as contagious cases until a sufficiently long observation has shown that the patient has a non-contagious disease. All cases will be considered as measles, if so reported. Any change in the original diagnosis must be made in writing to the Department of Health and must be confirmed by a diagnostician. 5. Physicians must not order the removal of patients to the contagious disease hospital, or elsewhere, in cabs or other vehicles, but must notify the Department of Health and the removal will be effected by a coupé or ambulance of the Department. 6. Whenever there is a case of measles in rooms in the rear of, or communicating with, a store, the inspector is required to have the store closed at once, or to report the case for immediate removal to the hospital. 7. A case of measles must not be removed from one house to another, or even to a different apartment in the same house, without the permission of the Department. Such removal is in direct violation of the provisions of the Sanitary Code. 8. No case of measles shall be discharged from observation until the Department has been notified, the case examined by an inspector to see if desquamation is entirely completed, and the premises ordered fumigated. This examination by the inspector is necessary because the Department of Health must have official information as to the completion of desquamation before a child is dismissed from observation. Other people with children demand this protection. At no other time is the inspector allowed to examine the patient. In any case, however, where isolation has not been maintained and it becomes necessary to remove the patient to the hospital, a diagnostician will make an examination. It is recommended that physicians provide a special washable gown for each case of measles. This gown should be put on before entering the sick-room and taken off outside the sick-room as soon as the visit is completed. The gown should be kept in a closet or suitable place, separate from all other clothing, and the gown, and the closet should be fumigated after the termination of the case. 10. In private houses only fumigation may be performed under the supervision of the attending physician; provided he follow accurately the directions given in the following rules and regulations. Upon request a blank will be provided upon which he must state the manner and extent of the work performed under his orders and supervision. If satisfactory to the Department, this will be accepted in place of fumigation by the Department. It is essential, however, that he should know that the disinfection has been efficiently carried out. In every case of fumigation the following regulations must be complied with: All cracks or crevices in rooms to be fumigated must be sealed or calked, to prevent the escape of the disinfectant, and one of the following disinfectants used in the quantities named: a. Sulphur, 4 lbs., for every 1,000 cubic feet of air space, 8 hours' exposure. b. Formaline, 6 oz. for every 1,000 cubic feet of air space, 4 hours' exposure. c. Paraform, 1,000 grains for every 1,000 cubic feet of air space, 6 hours' exposure. The following disinfecting solutions may be used for goods, which are afterwards to be washed: a. Carbolic acid, 2 to 5 per cent. b. Bichloride of mercury, 1-1,000. SCARLET FEVER. SCARLATINA. Scarlet fever is an acute, contagious disease. It begins abruptly. The child may have a severe attack and be quite sick from the beginning, or he may have a mild attack and not be very sick. Usually the fever rises rapidly, the child vomits and complains of a sore throat. If the attack is very mild the throat symptoms may not cause any distress. Frequently, about the third day, there are patches on the tonsils. Prostration may be profound if the fever is very high. Convulsions and diarrhea are sometimes present in very young patients. It takes from two to six days to develop scarlet fever from the time the child is exposed to it. The disease may be caught at any time, but it is most contagious during the time the patient is scaling. It is not as contagious as measles. Some children seem to escape even though directly exposed to it. It is more frequent in the fall and during the winter, and it is more severe during the latter months. Eruption.--The eruption appears at any time after twelve hours. It may not, however, appear before the third or fourth day. It lasts from three to seven days, and only takes a few hours to cover the whole body after it is first seen. The rash is first seen on the neck or chest; it appears as a red, uniform blush, but, when examined closely, small reddish spots may be seen all over it. If the rash is very faint and of a doubtful character a hot bath may bring it out. A bright red, well-developed rash is a sign of good heart action. In the event of heart failure, the rash fades quickly. Itching is a constant symptom after the rash is fully out. About the eighth day the rash begins to scale or desquamate. It begins on the neck and chest. It takes from one to three weeks to scale completely, from the time it begins to peel. The hands and feet are the last spots to scale. It must always be kept in mind that mild cases are just as contagious as severe cases, and that a mild case may cause in another person a very severe attack. The throat may be mildly affected or it may be the most troublesome feature of the case. It is red and swollen and the child complains of pain during the act of swallowing. Patches may be seen on the tonsils on the third day. There is usually a discharge from the nose and this discharge may be contagious. While the fever is high, the child is restless, complains of thirst, and may be slightly delirious. One attack is usually all a child has during life, though there are exceptions to this rule. Complications are quite frequent with scarlet fever. Inflammation of the ears and kidneys is most often met. Measures to be Taken to Prevent Spread of Disease.--Every case, no matter how mild, should be isolated for four weeks. Many cases must be isolated longer,--until scaling is complete. Children should not play or sleep with other children for three or four weeks after all symptoms have been absent. Other children in the family, who have not been exposed, should be sent away. All clothing should be changed and washed in soap and water and then boiled in a carbolic solution. The nurse should not mix freely with other members of the family. The sick room should be kept clean, and well aired. It should be dusted with a wet cloth, and this should afterwards be burned. There should be no furniture, or hangings, or pictures in the room other than are absolutely necessary. The room should not be used after the case is over until it is thoroughly and completely disinfected. During the period of scaling the patient should be rubbed all over with carbolated vaseline. This allays itching and prevents the scales flying around. The bed sheet can be taken off daily with the scales in it, and immediately put in carbolic water and boiled. Treatment.--Inasmuch as scarlet fever is one of the most dangerous and one of the most treacherous diseases of childhood, we cannot afford to take any chances with it. Every child with scarlet fever should be put in bed, and kept there during the entire illness,--that is, from four to six weeks. Light, and the free circulation of fresh air are absolutely necessary for the proper care of a scarlet fever case. The child should be clothed only with the usual night gown and a light undershirt. No extra wraps or blankets are required. The diet should be reduced in quantity and strength. The bowels should move daily. If anything is necessary to accomplish this, citrate of magnesia is quite satisfactory. There is no special medicine for the treatment of this disease. Often it is not necessary to give any. Good nursing is more essential, and with proper attention to the bowels, diet, fresh air, clothing, sleep, and quiet, all will, as a rule, result favorably. Quiet is essential. Consequently, two persons at a time should never be allowed in the room with the little patient. The family physician will prescribe whatever medicine is necessary in his judgment, and will meet any complication as it arises. TYPHOID FEVER Typhoid fever is an acute infectious disease. It is rare in infancy. After the fifth year it is more common. It is caused by drinking infected water or milk. It is not a serious disease in childhood, rarely being fatal. Symptoms.--It may begin suddenly or it may come on slowly. If suddenly, the child develops what appears to be an attack of indigestion, has fever, vomiting, and is prostrated. In cases developing slowly the child complains of being tired, has a headache, nausea, and fever. Vomiting is the suggestive and important symptom. Diarrhea is usually present. Constipation, however, may accompany the entire illness. Children may not complain of an excess of gas as do adults. The abdomen is tender. The typhoid eruption is rarely seen in children. They lose flesh steadily and then strength diminishes rapidly. Headache and delirium at night are quite common, and the child is dull and indifferent, and often in a state of semi-stupor. In order to tell definitely whether the child has typhoid, it is necessary to make a blood examination. There are so many intestinal conditions in children that simulate typhoid, that a blood examination is imperative. Treatment.--The patient should remain in bed during the time fever is present and for a few days after. A fluid diet, preferably milk, is the most suitable means of nourishing the child. It may be diluted or given plain according to the age of the patient. Water is essential and should be given freely. The discharges of the patient should be thoroughly disinfected in a solution of carbolic acid, 1-20. All clothing and bed linen should be boiled for two hours. If the fever remains high cold sponging is advisable. The attending physician should instruct regarding this feature, as some children do not stand cold applications well. The average duration of the disease is about six weeks. How to Keep From Getting and Spreading Typhoid Fever.--Typhoid fever is a communicable disease, but, if certain precautions are taken, its contraction and spread can almost certainly be prevented. The disease is caused by a specific germ known as the typhoid bacillus. These germs are found in the excreta (stools and urine) of persons ill with typhoid fever. Failure to properly disinfect these excreta and carelessness in the care of persons ill with typhoid fever lead to the transmission of the disease from the sick to the well by the infection of water, milk or food with the typhoid bacillus or by direct contact. The disease is contracted by taking into the mouth in some form the discharges from some previous case. There is no other way. It is, therefore, a disease of filth and someone is at fault somewhere for every case of typhoid fever that occurs. Bad sanitary conditions, such as lack of drainage, open cess-pools, sewer gas, decaying vegetable matter, etc., may favor the contraction of the disease, but cannot cause it unless the specific germ, the typhoid bacillus, is present. The water supply of a community becomes infected by the entrance into it of the excreta (stools and urine) of persons suffering from typhoid fever. Milk (in which typhoid bacilli grow and multiply very rapidly) usually becomes infected by washing out milk cans with water in which these bacilli are present, or from the presence of the bacilli on the hands or persons of those handling milk. Oysters spread the disease when they have been "freshed" in water rich in sewage and containing the typhoid bacillus. Flies, whose bodies have become foul with typhoid excreta, may infect food, milk, etc. Those who take care of typhoid patients may contract the disease if they do not at once disinfect their hands after handling the patient, or clothing or bedding which has become soiled with the discharges. How to Keep From Getting Typhoid Fever.--If the chance of infection is to be reduced to a minimum, all drinking water, concerning the character of which there may be the slightest doubt, should be boiled, and all milk, the handling and care of which is not absolutely beyond suspicion, should be pasteurized or boiled. All food supplies (meat, milk, vegetables, etc.), should be carefully protected against flies, and flies should not be permitted access to the sick-room, the kitchen nor to the room in which the meals are eaten. Bathing at all beaches which have sewers emptying in their immediate vicinity should be strictly avoided. In the majority of cases it is probable that the system must be slightly below par in order that the disease may be contracted; therefore, all indigestible food, green fruit, etc., which may set up indigestion or diarrhea, and so render the system more susceptible to infection, should be avoided. In addition, the elementary rules of cleanliness and hygiene, both as to the house and person, should be most strictly observed. No member of a household in which a case of typhoid fever occurs should take food in any form without previously washing the hands. Typhoid bacilli enter the body only through the mouth. If sufficient care be taken to prevent their entrance, the contraction of the disease can be absolutely prevented. How to Keep From Spreading the Disease.--In order to protect themselves and others in the household, persons caring for or in any way coming into contact with a case of typhoid fever must constantly bear in mind that the secretions and excretions (urine, stools, etc.), of the patient contain typhoid bacilli and are capable of transmitting the disease to others. The person who nurses the patient should not do the cooking for the family. The bedding used by the patient should be washed separately from that used by others. Special dishes, plates, knives, forks, etc., should be kept for the use of the patient alone, and should be washed separately and thoroughly. Particular attention should be paid to immediate disinfection of the stools and urine of the patients until the restoration of health is complete. The urine is especially dangerous. It may look entirely normal and yet contain typhoid bacilli for some time after recovery is apparently complete. In a few instances the typhoid bacilli may persist in the stools for weeks or months after recovery. Such persons are called "typhoid carriers," and constitute a grave menace to the health of the community. The best disinfectants are carbolic acid and freshly slacked lime; both are effectual, cheap and easily obtained. Urine or stools to which has been added one-third of their volume of a solution of one part of carbolic acid to twenty parts of water are, as a rule, sufficiently disinfected in half an hour, provided the mass of the stool is broken up and thoroughly mixed with the solutions. The best method is to keep the urinal of bed-pan partly filled with the disinfecting solution at all times. In this way any germs present in the urine or stools are almost instantly destroyed. Stools and urine should never be thrown out on the ground. If no system of drainage is at hand, they should be very thoroughly disinfected and emptied into a hole in the ground and covered with earth. All persons nursing or handling the patient in any way should be careful to wash their hands very thoroughly with soap and water before leaving the sick-room. They should never, while in the sick-room, touch any article of food or put their hands to their mouths. Careful observation of the above suggestions and precautions will almost certainly prevent contraction of typhoid fever or the spread of the disease. VARIOUS SOLUTIONS Boracic Acid Solution.--In the previous pages mothers are frequently told to use "a saturated solution of boracic acid." A saturated solution means that the water in the solution has dissolved all of the product that is put into it that it is capable of dissolving. When boracic acid is put into water, the water will dissolve it up to a certain point; if you add more the boracic acid will not dissolve; it will float if it is in the form of powder, or it will remain at the bottom of the glass if it is crystal--in other words the water is saturated to its limit and the solution is known as a saturated solution. The strength of a saturated solution of boracic acid is as follows:-- Boracic Acid Ounces 1-1/2 Hot Sterile Water Pints 2 which means that 2 pints of hot water will completely dissolve 1-1/2 ounces of boracic acid. If any more boracic acid is added the water will not dissolve it because it is already "saturated." Inasmuch, however, as boracic acid is harmless, it is perfectly safe to use the liquid part of a solution which contains some undissolved acid. A saturated solution is used in the eyes after it is strained. Normal Salt Solution.--A normal salt solution is made in the following proportions:-- Sodium Chloride (ordinary table salt) Grains 128 Sterile Water Pints 2 Normal salt solution is much used in irrigating the bowel. A mother may safely use it in the proportion of one heaping teaspoonful to two quarts of water--two quarts being the size of the ordinary fountain syringe. Carron Oil.--Lime water and raw linseed oil, equal parts. This mixture is much used in burns. It should be made fresh. Thiersch's Solution:-- Salicylic Acid Drams 1/2 Boracic Acid Drams 3 Sterile Water Pints 2 Thiersch's solution is a good, mild antiseptic solution, or wash. Solution of Bichloride of Mercury (1 to 1000):-- Bichloride of Mercury Grains 15 Common Salt Grains 15 Sterile Water Pints 2 Bichloride of mercury is one of the most powerful and poisonous drugs. Solutions made from it should never be used without special directions from a physician. In much weaker solutions than the above it is one of the best antiseptic washes known. It is used to disinfect wounds, for douches, and for various other purposes, but always by special direction of a physician. Other solutions.--Frequently mothers are directed to use solutions in the proportion of 1 to 500, or 1 to 1000. This means that there will be one part of the drug, or of the liquid medicine, to 500, or 1000 parts of water. For example if you were asked to make up a solution of bichloride of mercury in the strength of 1 to 4000, you would use one ounce of bichloride of mercury to four thousand ounces of water, or one grain of the mercury to four thousand drops of water,--one grain being equivalent to one drop. Sometimes solutions are made up on the percentage basis. For example, a five per cent. solution of carbolic acid. In this case it would be necessary to take five ounces of carbolic to one hundred ounces of water, or five drops of carbolic to one hundred drops of water. * * * * * CHAPTER XXXIX ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCIES Accidents and Emergencies--Contents of the Family Medicine Chest--Foreign Bodies in the Eye--Foreign Bodies in the Ear--Foreign Bodies in the Nose--Foreign Bodies in the Throat--A Bruise or Contusion--Wounds--Arrest of Hemorrhage--Removal of Foreign Bodies from a Wound--Cleansing a Wound--Closing and Dressing Wounds--The Condition of Shock--Dog Bites--Sprains--Dislocations--Wounds of the Scalp--Run-around--Felon--Whitlow--Burns and Scalds Contents of the Family Medicine Chest.--The family medicine cabinet should contain the following articles: a graduate, medicine droppers, hot water bags, a flat ice bag, a fountain syringe, a Davidson's syringe, a baby syringe, sterile gauze, absorbent cotton, gauze bandages of various widths, a yard of oiled silk, one roll of one inch "Z O" adhesive plaster, a bottle of Pearson's creolin, hydrogen peroxide (fresh), one ounce tincture of iodine in an air-tight bottle, a can of Colman's mustard, two ounces of syrup of ipecac, a bottle of castor oil (fresh), one pound of boracic acid powder, one pound of boracic acid crystal, a bottle of glycerine, a bottle of white vaseline, a bath thermometer, some good whisky or brandy, aromatic spirits of ammonia, smelling salts, pure sodium bicarbonate, oil of cloves for an aching gum or toothache, a bottle of alkolol for mouth wash and gargle, and one ounce of the following ointment for use in the various emergencies which occur in all homes,-- Bismuth subnitrate dram one Zinc oxide dram one Phenol (95%) drops twelve Resinol ointment to make ounce one This ointment may be applied to all cuts, bruises, skin eruptions, chafings and sores of minor importance. It is one of the best applications for chafing of the skin in babies. The medicine chest should also contain a small jar of Unguentine for burns; one-tenth grain calomel tablets for a cathartic for baby to be used as explained in the text of the book, or as advised by the physician. It may also contain tablets for colds and for other purposes as suggested by the family physician. It should never contain medicines the use of which is not thoroughly understood by the mother. It is a wrong practice for mothers to keep medicines to use for the same ailment at a subsequent time. The ailment may not be the same and frequently the medicine itself deteriorates, or it may get stronger with age. Many medicines are made with alcohol in them. If kept for some time the alcohol evaporates and leaves a concentrated mixture which, if given in the dose meant for the fresh preparation, may poison a child. Such cases of poisoning are on record. The same argument applies to powders. Certain drugs lose their strength, some absorb moisture, others change their chemical strength if kept mixed with other chemicals. They should be thrown away after the case is over if they have not been used. It is a dangerous practice to keep medicines around if there are children in the family. Foreign Bodies in the Eye.--Particles which accidentally lodge in the eye are usually located on the under surface of the upper lid. They are sometimes, however, found on the ball of the eye or on the inner aspect of the lower lid. Foreign bodies which are propelled into the eye with great force, as iron specks which railroad men frequently get sometimes imbed themselves into the eye-ball and have to be cut out or dug out. The entrance of the foreign particle is always accompanied by a flow of tears which is nature's way of removing them. The offending object may escape through the tear duct into the nose, or it may be simply washed out with the flow of tears. Rubbing the well eye will cause a flow of tears in both eyes and may facilitate removal of the foreign matter. Blowing the nose may force the particle into the tear duct. The use of the eye cup may help in ridding the eye of the body. The same object may be accomplished if the eyes are immersed in a basin of water and opened wide. Then by moving the eyes around the particle may be washed out. If the particle is located on the under surface of the upper lid it may be promptly removed by pulling the upper lid forcibly down and over the lower lid. The eyelashes of the lower lid act as a brush and as a rule quickly remove the irritant if the procedure is carried out adroitly. Everting the upper lid is a means of locating the body and in making possible its removal by a small camel's hair brush or corner of a handkerchief. To evert the upper lid it is necessary to employ a guide. A match stem may be used in an emergency. This is laid across the middle of the upper lid, the eye lashes are grasped with the fingers of the other hand and the lid is bent over the match stem and turned up thus everting or turning inside out the entire upper lid. The procedure may be facilitated if the patient is instructed to look down while the operator is drawing the eye-lid upward. If the particle cannot be easily removed by any of the above methods it is not safe for an uninstructed individual to go any further. The eye is an exceedingly delicate organ and may be permanently injured by unnecessary irritation. It is always safer and it may be cheaper in the long run to consult a competent oculist in such cases. After the removal of any object from the eye, it is desirable to frequently wash it out with a saturated solution of boracic acid. This mixture will allay any inflammation and will tend to restore the normal condition more quickly and more satisfactorily than if the eye were left to heal itself. Foreign Bodies in the Ear.--When a foreign body gets into the ear mothers are unnecessarily alarmed because of a failure to appreciate that the ear is a closed passage. It is impossible for any object to get into the ear itself; the depth of the external passage is only about one inch in an adult. At this point the passage is completely closed by the drum membrane. Most of the harm is done by ignorant meddling, not by the object itself. Children frequently put foreign bodies in the ear, as, buttons, pebbles, beans, cherry stones, coffee, etc. The very first thing for the mother to do when she learns that her child has put "something" in its ear is to keep cool, and try to find out what the something is. It is essential to know what the article is because different articles are treated differently. For example if we try to remove a bean or pea with a syringe, the liquid will cause the pea or bean to swell and result in wedging it in so firmly that it will be impossible to dislodge it in this way. If the object is hard, as a marble, button, pebble, bead, the greatest care must be exercised. Try to make the object fall out. To effect this, turn the child's head downward with the injured ear toward the floor. Then pull the lobe of the ear outward and backward so as to straighten the canal. A teaspoonful of olive oil poured into the ear will aid in its expulsion. If after the oil is poured in, the head is suddenly turned as above described the object will fall out. A very effective way to remove a hard object is to take a small camel's hair brush and coat the end with glue, or any other adhesive substance, then place it in contact with the object and permit it to remain long enough to become firmly attached after which it may be gently pulled out with the object attached. Never employ an instrument in the ear to remove a foreign body. When a live insect or fly enters the ear a number of safe methods may be developed. If the ear is immediately turned to a bright light the insect may come out of its own accord. It may be floated out with salt water, or it may be smothered with sweet oil or castor oil after which it may be floated or syringed out. If it is necessary to employ a syringe this should be used gently. A foreign body may remain in the ear for days or weeks without doing any harm. This suggests that any unnecessary poking or prying should not be undertaken, because this may wedge it in tighter and to injure the drum membrane. Foreign Bodies in the Nose.--Children may put any of these articles into the nose. Very often they do, and do not know enough to tell. If such is the case the first symptom calling attention to the fact that something is wrong is the appearance of a thick foul discharge from one nostril or some obstruction to breathing on the same side. When the foreign body may be seen the child should be made to blow the nose, first closing the well side with the finger. If this does not expel the object the child should be made to sneeze by tickling the free nostril with a feather or by taking snuff. The mother should never permit the use of instruments by one unskilled in an effort to rid the nose of an obstruction. There is great danger of seriously injuring the delicate structure of the nose in this way or of pushing the object so far in that it may necessitate an operation to extract it. It is much safer to seek medical aid before any damage is effected. It seldom does harm to wait until the right assistance is at hand; it often does serious harm to be too smart in these little matters. Foreign Bodies in the Throat.--If the foreign body is in the upper part of the throat and can be seen it may be removed with any instrument that can grasp it. The child may be immediately held up by its feet when the article may be shaken out. If it is further back or in the air passages the child should be made to vomit by tickling the throat with a feather or with the finger held in the throat till it does vomit. When the object interferes with breathing a physician should be sent for in a hurry. In the meantime the family may try to dislodge it by having the child bend forward or by holding it with the head downward and, while in this position, sharply striking the back with each cough. Striking the chest when in this position may effect the same purpose. If no success follows this procedure try the reverse position. Have the child bend backward over the arm of a sofa, for example, or put him in bed with the body hanging out of the bed face upward. If none of these effect relief you must depend upon the skill of the physician. A Bruise or Contusion.--A bruise or contusion is an injury to the tissues underneath the skin, but this does not imply that the skin itself is opened or damaged. In every bruise the small blood vessels are ruptured, and the blood collects in the tissues causing distention, swelling and pain. The blood is held in the tissues, it is stagnant, becomes dark in color and so produces the bluish discoloration that we see in all bruises. The color varies according to the extent of the collected blood. At first it is red and inflamed looking, then purple, then black, then greenish and finally citron. The so-called "black-eye" is a typical example of this degree of bruise. After a bruise the parts swell from the collection of blood and from the accompanying inflammation. This causes pain which persists for a day although the spot may be sore and tender for a week or more. In all mild varieties home remedies may suffice, but in the more serious and extensive bruises it is advisable to seek medical assistance. It is essential to completely put the part to rest and to elevate it. This will relieve the pain and favor the absorption of the exuded blood. If the bruise is on the foot, the leg should be elevated until the foot is higher than the hip. If, on the hand, it should be so held that it will be higher than the elbow and it may frequently be held higher than the shoulder to relieve the throbbing and the pain. As a rule, cold should be applied as soon after the injury as possible, cloths wrung out of ice water, or a piece of ice may be bound on the part for a short time. The object of the cold is to stop the internal bleeding. If the injury is slight, as are most of the injuries of the household, the mother may apply repeated cloths wrung out of very hot water. This procedure tends to aid the immediate absorption of the blood and prevents a discoloration of the part. If there is great pain relief may be afforded by applying a firm bandage saturated in the lead-water and laudanum mixture which may be obtained in the drug store under the name of lead and opium wash. The bruised part should be massaged every day and a simple ointment may be applied to soften the inflamed area. If any complication arises in the treatment of a bruise, it will be necessary to consult a physician. Wounds.--A wound implies an injury to the skin in addition to injury to the underlying parts to a lesser or greater extent. The skin may be opened by cutting, or stabbing wounds; or it may be punctured, torn, contused, or bruised open. These injuries are effected in various ways. We speak of machinery or mechanical wounds, or gunshot wounds, bites, cuts, stabs and other varieties of wounds. It is very important to know exactly how a wound is produced and the nature of the instrument which opened the skin. We try to obtain this information in order to estimate the probable degree of poison that may or may not have entered into the wound. The first thing to do in treating wounds is to stop the bleeding. If the patient is suffering from shock he should be given active treatment for this condition as described elsewhere. If the wound contains any foreign bodies these should be removed. The wound should then be cleansed, closed and dressed and kept at rest. If the wound is poisoned, or if there is any fear that lockjaw may arise, or if the wound has been caused by a mad dog it will require special treatment. It is far better not to interfere if you do not know what to do than to do harm. One should offer no advice if they are not qualified to give advice. Much harm has resulted from doing the wrong thing in these cases. The instruction in the following pages is given so that the average mother may know what to do in emergency but not with the intention that she may regard her knowledge as sufficient to dispense with the aid of the physician. Arrest of Hemorrhage.--When there is a wound there is always bleeding; this means that some blood vessels have been cut or torn open allowing blood to escape. The character of the hemorrhage will determine the nature of the treatment to be employed. On general principles, the first thing to do in the presence of bleeding is to elevate the part, if that is possible. If there is simply a general oozing of blood, it may be controlled and arrested by pressure. This pressure should be steady and prolonged. It is best accomplished by wetting a clean handkerchief or a pad of gauze in ice cold water, placing this on the part and binding it on firmly with a bandage. If the discharge of blood flows in a steady stream and is rather dark the hemorrhage is coming from a vein. We know that veins carry blood toward the heart so that any pressure or constriction employed to stop a venous hemorrhage should be tied on the side of the wound further removed from the heart. Inasmuch as veins have soft walls the right kind of pressure will in most instances stop the bleeding. The part should be elevated after the pad is adjusted in place. Any tight band on the limb as a garter or sleeve band should be removed as they tend to interrupt the return circulation. If the hemorrhage is from an artery the blood is bright red. It spurts out forcibly, is difficult to control and demands immediate attention. Arteries carry the blood from the heart to the extremities. They beat with every pulsation of the heart so that blood coming from an artery spurts with every pulse beat. Even a small artery may be responsible for a very considerable hemorrhage in a very short time. Whatever is done must be done quickly. The parts should be freed from all clothing and if possible elevated. Pressure may be tried, if it succeeds it must be strong and steady pressure. The point to press must be on the heart side of the bleeding artery since the blood stream is coming that way--this the mother will note is the reverse from treating bleeding from a vein as previously explained. The artery at this point may be felt beating. It is frequently necessary to clamp the whole limb to stop an arterial hemorrhage. This may be done in the following manner. Take a strong piece of cloth or bandage and tie above the bleeding point. Insert a short piece of stick between the bandage and the limb and twist around until the bleeding stops. This should not be kept on longer than one hour. A tourniquet of this character shuts off all the blood in the limb and if kept on too long the parts may mortify. The best means to stop a hemorrhage of this character is by means of a rubber bandage sold for the purpose. It is applied by stretching at every turn. It exerts uniform pressure and in this way does no injury to the parts. All these measures are, of course, only temporary expedients as the artery will finally have to be caught and tied by a physician. Removal of Foreign Bodies From a Wound.--When the foreign bodies are large enough to be seen they may be picked out with the fingers after the hands have been rendered sterile. Smaller bodies may be picked up with forceps, or they may be washed out with water that has been boiled and cooled slightly, or a bichloride of mercury solution in the strength of 1 to 2000 may be used; or a normal salt solution may be used. As a general rule the physician should be allowed to undertake this procedure so that you may not be blamed for something that may come up later. Cleansing a Wound.--The simplest way, and the most effective, to cleanse a wound, no matter how caused, is to procure a brush and paint it thoroughly with tincture of iodine. The iodine should be painted right into the raw wound, it is then bound up and left if it is small and does not need any stitching. When the physician comes he can attend to any further procedure that may be necessary. Closing and Dressing Wounds.--If the wound is small, its edges may be drawn together with narrow strips of adhesive bandage after it has been painted with iodine. It is then bound up and kept at rest. It should be inspected the following day to see if it is healing properly. If the wound is large or torn, it should be seen by a physician and dressed and closed by him. All wounds do better if they are kept at rest. The Condition of Shock.--When a person suffers a serious injury, loses a large quantity of blood, or is subjected to a profound emotion, it affects the vital powers to such an extent that the individual is said to be suffering from shock. Shock expresses itself in varying degrees of apathy. The patient may or may not be conscious. If conscious he gives no evidence of feeling, he is silent and motionless although he will respond to directions and may answer questions. The eyes are dull and listless, the face pale and pinched, and the general expression is apathetic. The skin is cold and there may be perspiration; the pulse is feeble and irregular, and the breathing is shallow. The whole attitude of the victim is one of indifference and apparent inability to appreciate the seriousness of the situation and a seeming immunity to pain or discomfort. When this condition exists it must always be regarded as serious because the patient may die as a direct result of the condition of shock. The various symptoms depend upon a temporary paralysis of the blood vessels which deprives the brain of blood. There is always a certain degree of shock with all injuries. Mothers should know what to do in these cases before the physician comes. The general treatment in all cases is to keep the patient warm and quiet, and to use stimulants carefully. The patient should be put in bed or on a flat surface with the feet higher than the head. If raising the feet should cause the face to become blue it will be advisable to restore the patient to the horizontal posture. Artificial heat must be applied to the patient's body and extremities by means of hot water bags, bottles, bricks, plates, or any other handy device. Blankets should be put around the patient and every possible means resorted to, to maintain body heat. Mustard plasters may be put to the heart, spine and shins. Stimulants are necessary, such as hot black coffee if possible or hot water, in which a small portion of brandy may be put. If brandy is not obtainable the patient may take aromatic spirits of ammonia in hot water every twenty minutes for a number of doses. In every case of shock a physician should be sent for immediately. Dog Bites.--When a child is bit by a dog every effort should be made to get the dog. It should be kept in a safe place for a week so that it may be definitely known whether it is sick or not. If the dog dies within a few days after biting anyone it may be assumed that he had rabies. Its head should be sent to the local health authorities who can tell after examination if it was mad. If there is any reason to assume that the dog was infected, the child should receive the Pasteur treatment. This treatment will, if conducted under favorable circumstances, absolutely prevent hydrophobia. The mother should sterilize the wound as thoroughly as possible. This may be done by using pure hydrogen peroxide. A little piece of absorbent cotton is wound round the end of a tooth-pick or match, dipped in the peroxide and the incision thoroughly rubbed clean. This may be done a number of times to ensure thorough cleansing. No effort should be made to cauterize the wound. It is not considered proper to employ this method with dog bites. When the physician examines the wound he may or may not open it further for more extensive inspection and sterilization. Mothers should remember that there are thousands of bites by dogs that never cause any trouble, and if it is known that the dog is healthy no worry need trouble the family. It is also wrong to inform the child of the probability of hydrophobia. The child may worry himself sick with fear and if the mother is nervous and excitable he is apt to be made sick with the dread of what may follow. It is better, therefore, to remain quiet, to keep cool, and not to excite the little patient at all. Sprains.--Every joint is held together by ligaments which are attached to the bones forming the joint. If these ligaments are subjected to a sudden twist in a direction in which the joint is not constructed to move, the resulting injury is known as a sprain. The ligaments are stretched, though they may be torn apart and even small pieces of the bone may be split off if the wrench is great enough. The injury is an exceedingly painful one and frequently renders the limb useless for some time. It is always accompanied with some degree of swelling and more or less inflammation. A sprained joint should be immediately put at absolute rest. The best dressing is the lead and opium wash. Two pints of it may be obtained at the drug store. Pour into a large bowl, saturate a large piece of thick absorbent cotton, wrap around the joint and bind in place. This dressing may be repeated as often as the cotton becomes dry. When the swelling has disappeared and the pain is gone, it is desirable to have the joint supported with strips of adhesive bandage. These must be put on in a certain way in order to properly support the joint. Consequently a physician should put them on. If a sprain is not attended to effectively there is danger of the joint being more or less incapacitated for life. Dislocations.--A dislocated joint is one that has been put out of place. It is best to allow a physician to treat a dislocation. Unskilled handling of a dislocated joint may not only increase the damage but it may permanently put the joint out of business. Until the physician arrives the part should be kept absolutely at rest. Wounds of the Scalp.--Children frequently get injuries of the scalp. These wounds bleed freely and as a rule they occasion a great deal of unnecessary worry and apprehension. Usually they are not of much importance. We must keep in mind, however, the probability of fracture as a consequence of severe injury. The first thing to do when there is bleeding from the scalp is to cut or shave away the hair surrounding the wound. This should be done for an inch around the wound so that thorough disinfection may be possible. The wound should now be cleansed as previously instructed and an effort made to stop the bleeding. The best method is to first apply pads of gauze wrung out of very hot water. When success is evident a pad made of boiled cotton should be placed on the wound and held tightly in place for some time. If the wound is of such a character as to demand stitches a physician should of course put them in. Run-Around: Felon: Whitlow.--When pus germs enter around a finger nail and lodge in the soft tissue a "run-around" is the result. It is accompanied with pain, swelling, redness and inflammation. The loss of the nail may follow. A felon or Whitlow is a more extensive and a more serious condition. It is not always possible to trace the cause of a felon. The fact that germs gain an entrance, however, is soon established. Sometimes a bruise, or scratch, or a wound is the primary cause. The last joint of any of the fingers may be the seat of a felon. A end of the finger becomes hot, tense, swollen and very painful; the pain is intense if the hand is held down. The surface may or may not be red. There is as a rule some fever. If the felon is on the little finger or thumb the condition is worse than on the others as a rule,--the inflammation extending to the hand and often into the arm. The condition affects the palmar surface of the fingers. If the felon results in the "death" of the bone, the last joint will have to be taken off and the hand may be distorted, crippled, and rendered permanently disabled. Blood poison may set in and death is possible as a result of this complication. Treatment.--Every effort should be made to abort a felon. Continuous application of equal parts of alcohol and water night and day may abort it. Tincture of iodine applied to the entire end of the finger may be effective. The hand must be at rest, carried in a sling during the day and slung over the head to the bed-board at night. If these efforts are not successful after twenty-four hours hot poultices should be resorted to, but they must be changed every twenty minutes. If, at the end of another twenty-four hours, there is no improvement the finger must be freely cut open by a surgeon and the poultices continued. Treatment of "Run-Around."--Apply iodine freely, cold applications, and if the inflammation persists use poultices. It is frequently necessary to incise the run-around. Patients suffering from either of these conditions need general tonic treatment and should be under the care of a physician. Burns and Scalds.--Burns result from undue exposure to dry heat. Scalds are produced by the action of hot liquids and steam. There are always produced two results from a burn or a scald. First the local effect, and, second, the general effect. The general effect may produce shock, the symptoms of which have been described in the previous pages. The degree of shock depends upon the extent of the local injury and may be severe enough to result in death. If the local injury covers more than two-thirds of the body death as a rule takes place within two days. How to Extinguish Burning Clothing.--The thought to keep in mind is to smother the flames effectively. If we deprive the flame of all air or oxygen it will immediately subside. This may be done quickly by wrapping the burning part in a carpet, rug, blanket, overcoat or any large woolen material at hand. If none of these articles are at hand the victim may roll on the floor and try to smother the flame by pressure, aided by the hands. It is a good plan to throw water on the patient immediately after the fire has been put out, so as to extinguish the smoldering fire. When a person is scalded by steam or boiling water or other liquid, it is advisable to pour cold water freely over the wound. How to Remove the Clothing.--When it is necessary to remove the clothing it is essential to be gentle in order not to do greater injury. The clothing must not be pulled. The garment should be cut so that they fall off. If any part sticks to the skin, it must be left, not torn away. Later, it may be removed by moistening it with salt water. Treatment of Scalds and Burns.--All slight burns or scalds may be effectively treated with Unguentine. This substance may be obtained in any drug store. It is spread on a cloth and applied directly to the injured part, bound securely on and renewed every day until the wound is healed. If Unguentine is not readily obtainable the part may be covered with any of the following mixtures or oils: carbolated vaseline, equal parts of linseed oil and lime water, olive oil, castor oil or kerosene, cloths soaked in a solution of baking soda, or a solution of phenol sodique. In severe burns or scalds the mother should not attempt to treat the child. A physician should be summoned at once. The child may be given a little whisky or brandy in warm water, and if the pain is great a dose of laudanum may be given. The dose of laudanum is one drop for each year of life. If the child has a chill he may be put into a warm bath of 100°F. It is not wise to cut a burn blister. The water may be let out by puncturing with a sterile needle, but the skin must be left intact until the new skin is grown. The treatment of burns must be done with the greatest cleanliness because if infected with germs they may prove serious. * * * * * MISCELLANEOUS CHAPTER XL MISCELLANEOUS The Dangerous House Fly--Diseases Transmitted by Flies--Homes Should be Carefully Screened and Protected--The Breeding Places of Flies--Special Care Should be Given to Stables, Privy Vaults, Garbage, Vacant Lots, Foodstuffs, Water Fronts, Drains--Precautions to be Observed--How to Kill Flies--Moths--What Physicians are Doing--Radium--X-Ray Treatment and X-Ray Diagnosis--Aseptic Surgery--New Anesthetics--Vaccine in Typhoid Fever--"606"--Transplanting the Organs of Dead Men into the Living--Bacteria that Make Soil Barren or Productive--Anti-meningitis Serum--A Serum for Malaria in Sight. THE DANGEROUS HOUSE FLY Mothers should become thoroughly acquainted with the grave consequences which may result from fly-infected foods, and from the possible carriage of disease by means of flies, even where foods are carefully protected. The transmission of the following diseases by means of flies has been conclusively proven: typhoid fever, tuberculosis, cholera, Oriental plague, inflammation of the eyelids, serious infection of wounds. Summer diarrhea of children is also transmitted in this way. Typhoid fever and summer diarrhea of children in this country, and cholera and Oriental plague in the countries in which those diseases exist, may be transmitted through the various foods that are eaten in an uncooked state, if infected by flies, through cooked foods infected by flies after the process of cooking, through drinking water which has been infected by flies, and through milk similarly infected. Fruits are especially likely to be infected by the small fruit fly commonly found around markets and stands. Fish may be infected by flies, and in consequence will undergo rapid decomposition. Decomposition caused in this way has resulted in many cases of diarrhea and dysentery. What is commonly known as fly speck is the excreta of the fly, and frequently contains virulent disease germs. These specks are often found on foodstuffs that have not been properly protected. Transmission of disease may also occur by the infection of open wounds through contact with infected flies. This is true of all pus formation in wounds. The simple contact of a fly infected with the disease may cause Oriental plague, sore eyes, and possibly granular eyelids. A fly infected with dysentery or typhoid fever may cause either of these diseases by simply coming in contact with the lips of susceptible persons. The fly in the house should be relentlessly pursued and destroyed. The house which is carefully screened and protected from flies is infinitely safer than one not so protected. In the spring of the year the house fly begins to take on life. Eggs which were laid the preceding fall begin to hatch. At first the fly is only a little worm wriggling in some pile of filth. The eggs are usually laid and the grub developed in a manure pile or some mass of garbage or other filth. Before the grub develops into the fly it is easily destroyed. If everything in and about the house were kept scrupulously clean, and if every manure pile were kept carefully screened or covered so as to protect it from flies, there would be no difficulty in preventing the fly nuisance. The most effective way to accomplish this is to destroy the breeding places. The importance of this may be seen when it is considered that one fly produces one hundred and twenty-five millions or more of its kind in one season. Stables.--Manure is by far the commonest material in which the fly lays her eggs. All stables should be kept scrupulously clean. No manure should be allowed to accumulate where it will be exposed to flies for even a few minutes. Immediately after it is dropped by an animal, it should be removed and covered. Manure may be treated with considerable quantities of lime without interfering with its fertilizing value, and in this way the development of the eggs laid in it by the flies can be practically prevented. The floors of stables should be thoroughly flushed with water at least once in every twenty-four hours. Privy Vaults.--Human excrement also affords an excellent breeding place for flies. In army camps the latrines are the points from which much infection is transmitted to troops, and thousands of the men have lost their lives by contracting typhoid fever transmitted in this manner. During the summer time all open vaults and dry closets should be treated continuously with lime, crude creolin or crude carbolic acid, and they should be carefully cleaned out at frequent intervals. Garbage.--As a medium for the development of flies, garbage may be considered next in importance to excreta. The eggs of the fly hatch in about twenty-four hours, and garbage which is retained in the kitchen for that length of time may contain flies in the grub stage. To prevent this development, all garbage should be covered and pails should be emptied as often as possible. In country districts garbage should be burned in the kitchen or buried in the garden at frequent intervals, twenty-four hours being the maximum time it should be retained. Vacant Lots.--Vacant lots frequently contain appreciable quantities of organic matter in a state of decomposition, affording favorable breeding places for flies. These vacant areas should be maintained in a state of scrupulous cleanliness. Foodstuffs.--In order to prevent contamination of foodstuffs, all foods that are eaten in the raw state and all foods that are exposed for sale after having been cooked should be carefully protected from contact with flies, by screens or covers. A point where rapid development of flies takes place is along the city's water front. This is due to the fact that many of the sewers do not discharge below the level of the water. All open drains should be eliminated, whether they be sewers, private house drains or drains from cess-pools. Precautions to be Observed.--Keep the house free from flies. Every fly should be considered a possible disease carrier and should be destroyed. Keep the windows of the house, especially the kitchen windows, carefully screened during the spring, summer and autumn. Protect children from exposure to flies, particularly children who are ill, and do not allow nursing bottles to be exposed to flies. Protect milk and other foodstuffs from contact with flies. Keep the garbage outside of the house, carefully covered. Abolish open drains near dwelling places. Stable manure should be frequently sprinkled with lime and kept covered. Earth closets and privy vaults should be treated with lime, crude creolin or crude carbolic acid at frequent intervals. Earth closets and privy vaults should be cleaned frequently in order to prevent excrement accumulating to an undue extent. To Kill Flies.--Dissolve one dram of bichromate of potash in two ounces of water, add a little sugar to this solution and put some of it in shallow dishes and place about the house. Sticky fly paper and fly traps may also be used. To clean the room where there are many flies, burn pyrethrum powder (Persian insect powder). This stupefies the flies and in this condition they may be swept up and burned. Probably the best and simplest fly killer is a weak solution of formaldehyde in water (two teaspoonfuls to the pint). This solution should be placed in plates or saucers throughout the house. Ten cents' worth of formaldehyde, obtained in the drug store, will last an ordinary family all summer. Don't smell formaldehyde in the pure state; it is very pungent and strong. In the solution of the strength used for flies it has no offensive smell. It is fatal to disease organisms, and is practically non-poisonous except to insects. Flies will not stay in the house when this solution is around. Moths.--Late spring and early summer is the time to guard against moths and beetles. Many of these fabric-destroying insects are brought into the house on flowers. May and June are especially bad months, as both moths and beetles are only dangerous to fabrics in their young or grub stage. These insects will destroy almost anything from coarse rugs to the finest of ball gowns and dress suits. Carpets that are rarely swept and garments that are seldom disturbed are most liable to damage. The substitution of the frequently removed and easily cleaned rugs for carpets will greatly lessen the danger from the destructive moth and beetle grubs. Carpets laid on tight floors are much less liable to injury than where numerous cracks furnish safe retreats for the insects. Tarred paper under a carpet is an excellent preventive. All clothes presses should be thoroughly cleaned at frequent intervals. The garments should be removed, aired and vigorously brushed. Any larvæ which are not dislodged in this way should be destroyed. It is a bad plan to keep odds and ends of woolen or other materials in attics where these pests can breed and thus spread to more valuable articles. Spraying with benzine two or three times during hot weather is a good way of preventing injury to furniture or carriage upholstery and other articles which are in storage or not in use for a long time. If you are certain that woolens and furs are free from the pests they may be stored in safety by placing them in tight paste board boxes and sealing the covers firmly with gummed paper. Both moths and carpet beetles are harmless at a temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit--a fact very well known to advantage by the large fur storage companies. They cannot survive furthermore a temperature of 120 decrees if subjected to it for about twenty minutes. What Physicians are Doing.--It is desirable that the ordinary non-medical individual should know what the science of medicine is doing and what it is accomplishing. During the past fifteen years the art of curing and preventing disease has taken on giant strides. The man or woman most ready to question the accomplishments and the ability of the humble family physician or the motive of the science of medicine, is the one who appreciates least that it is due to the skill and intelligence of the medical men of to-day that he owes his comfort, his health, and his freedom from pestilence, plague and disease. Unthinking people laud and praise some upstart whose ability lies in his faculty to fool the gullible, or they will rush to seek the false aid of some nondescript science, because it is popular and well advertised, while they pass by or ignore the men whose labors have made the world what it is, and who alone possess the ability to intelligently wage the battle in the interest of humanity against disease. The medical profession has repeatedly pointed out that there are, on an average, six hundred thousand lives lost every year in the United States from preventable disease and accidents. Six hundred thousand lives which medical science has at hand the remedy to save, but which the medical profession sacrificed because of inadequate legislation. Few people can comprehend just what six hundred thousand lives mean. Let us put it in another way. There are destroyed by preventable disease and accidents every day American lives equal in number to the crews of two battle ships, equal in three months to more than the total combined numbers of the Army and Navy of the United States; equal in one year to more than the total number of lives lost in all our wars since the Declaration of Independence. The Titanic disaster shocked the public for a moment, and seemed to impress them as though it was a terrible and unheard of waste of good human lives. Yet in the loss of life due to preventable causes we have in this country every day in the year a destruction of our citizens exceeding in magnitude that which occurred when the Titanic sank. Think of it! A Titanic disaster a day, and yet the public does not rise up and demand in a spirit of anger and determination that steps be taken at once to put an end to this appalling and unnecessary waste of lives. Under modern hygienic conditions, the average length of existence for an individual in Great Britain has increased ten years in the last half century. Among all the enlightened and advanced nations, the expectation of the individual for long survival is greater. Since the appearance of uncheckable and epidemic disorders is less frequent and the percentage of cures is greater. Since quarantine has been regularly established and the sewage system made efficient in large cities, and since the sanitary plumbing laws have been made compulsory, the general death rate has decreased enormously. These regulations have been the product of regularly educated medical or sanitary experts. No 'ism or 'ology has ever established any scientific principle which has contributed to the general welfare of the people. We no longer fear the plague, or typhus or yellow fever, cholera, diphtheria, typhoid, consumption, and other diseases which once were a constant menace to the race. The plague, for example, is practically limited to the Far East, where modern methods cannot evidently be introduced efficiently. At one time it periodically devastated Europe, where it cannot now get a foothold because of the introduction of sanitary systems and hygienic principles. Tetanus or lockjaw and hydrophobia are now amenable to cure while formerly all cases were practically fatal. The mortality of diphtheria has been reduced more than fifty per cent. Antiseptic precautions in surgical cases, first introduced by the famous surgeon, Lord Lister, have made possible and successful operations that formerly could not be undertaken, thus broadening the whole field of surgical possibilities. The Boer war and the war with Spain proved this truth in a way that could not be denied. Smallpox is almost a medical curiosity in New York City, where it once was a scourge. The mortality of childbirth has been reduced to about one-fifth of what it was by the introduction of antiseptics and anesthetics. The new methods of making and preparing drugs, the sterilization and inspection of milk, the methods devised for the care of and preparation of infant foods have all enormously contributed to checking disease, to preventing disease, and to increasing the length of life and its happiness. These are all facts which may be proved by any one, no matter how incompetent they may be. If we were to give up all these hard earned victories, cease to investigate or experiment, deny the existence of disease, and depend upon the questionable methods of hysterical emotionalists we would soon find ourselves facing all the horrors of the past. Can we afford to lose the priceless benefits we have achieved and are attaining? Can we sit still and permit the profession of medicine, which has always contained the best of the race in its membership, the best intellects, the most sympathetic and unselfish characters, the noblest and most steadfast souls, to be maligned and assailed, to have its means of well-doing assaulted and threatened, when we know that it should be supported and protected for the sake of all it has done in the past in the interest of humanity? Every mother should be acquainted with these facts so that she may lend her influence in behalf of honest effort and honest inquiry. The following summary comprises a brief review of what medicine has been doing in the recent past: Radium.--This element was discovered about fifteen years ago by Professor and Mme. Curie. It possesses the wonderful property of giving out inexhaustible stores of energy. It virtually possesses the property of perpetual motion. Professor Becquerel was the first one to suggest that it might possess therapeutic or healing powers. The suggestion came to him in a curious way. He carried a tube of radium in his vest pocket and was severely burnt as a consequence. The incident suggested to him that, if radium could attack healthy tissue in such a short time, it should be able to similarly attack diseased tissue. Experiments were soon instituted, and are still being conducted to exactly define its curative value and scope. It was hailed as a cure for cancer and other serious conditions, but we have found that it is not a cure for these ailments. It is, however, exceedingly valuable in the treatment of certain skin diseases. In lupus, epithelial tumors, ulcers, papillomata, angiomata and pruritus, it is being widely and successfully used. It was later discovered that it can quickly kill disease-producing bacteria. It is also well known that it will efficiently purify water. X-Ray Treatment and X-Ray Diagnosis.--Professor Roentgen gave to the world an exceedingly valuable discovery in the X-Ray. He discovered that a certain form of electrical energy, when applied in a certain way, would produce shadows that differentiated between a certain degrees of opacity. For example, it would, if directed upon the human hand, produce shadows that clearly indicated whether the substance through which the rays passed was bone or muscle. The chief value of the X-Rays has been found to be this property rather than any healing value which has been attributed to them. The fact that these shadows can be photographed has rendered them of supreme value in surgery and medicine. Previously it was essential that the surgeon should depend upon his own diagnosis, upon what he could learn from his sense of touch and from surrounding conditions. With the X-Rays at his disposal he can quite eliminate the personal equation. His pictures are precise and mathematically accurate; he can prove the truth of his diagnosis before he cuts. We can take pictures of fractured bones and from what we learn we can immediately tell how they should be set to attain the very best results. We can actually tell if there is a stone in the kidney before we subject the patient to a serious operation. We can actually take pictures of the stomach at various stages of digestion and tell what disease affects the individual with a degree of precision that was not possible before the X-Rays were introduced. These examples only suggest its use. There are a multiplicity of uses for these as yet unknown rays which have greatly aided in diagnosis and consequently in successful treatment. Aseptic Surgery.--The utility of the aseptic principle in surgery was demonstrated by the Japanese army surgeons during the war with Russia in 1904-1905. Their success in preventing deaths from suppurating wounds amazed the world. Their method was to discard the use of antiseptics and to depend upon absolutely clean instruments, dressings and hands. The most terrible wounds healed under this method without festering. This is, of course, the method in vogue to-day all over the civilized world. The Japanese did not discover aseptic surgery, but they were the first to put it to actual test in a large way. The old method was to depend upon drugs to kill the germs which might find their way into wounds and operations. To-day we prevent the germs from getting into the wound and depend upon nature to do the rest. New Anesthetics.--Several important advances have been made in methods of giving anesthetics and in the nature of the products used. Temporary unconsciousness with electricity was induced in 1909 by Dr. Stephane Leduc. Stovaine was invented by Dr. Jonnesco, of Bucharest. He injected it into the spinal cord after the method made famous by Biers with cocaine in 1899. Dr. W. S. Schley invented novocaine for the same purpose. Temporary unconsciousness was accomplished by the use of epsom salts injected into the spinal cord by Dr. Samuel J. Meltzer. All of these efforts to discover a harmless anesthetic by spinal injection were made possible by investigations and experiments of Dr. J. Leonard Corning, of New York, who worked along this line as far back as 1885. The most revolutionary discovery, however, was that of Dr. S. J. Meltzer at the Rockefeller Institute, New York, when he inserted a tube into the windpipe, through which he pumped the anesthetic into the lungs. While doing this he at the same time pumped oxygen to aerate the blood, thus ensuring the patient against possible accident during the course of difficult and tedious operations on the lungs and heart. Vaccine in Typhoid Fever.--Inasmuch as typhoid fever has played an important part in the conduct of all wars, it has always been a source of much careful study by military and naval surgeons in every civilized country in the world. We had not, however, reached a stage when it was possible to hope for its extermination until medical science began to appreciate the possibilities of vaccine therapy. The Cuban, Boer and Russian wars, because of the terrible experiences of the soldiers with typhoid in each of them, stimulated inquiry along the line of discovering a serum of vaccine that would be effectual against it. American, British, French and Japanese military and naval surgeons instituted experiments simultaneously to discover an anti-typhoid vaccine. In the fall of 1909, American army surgeons were experimenting with a serum at Washington and on Governor's Island with success, but the first public announcement of an absolutely successful vaccine was made by Captain Vincent of the French navy on June 20th, 1910, before the Académie de Medicine in Paris. The final success of the anti-typhoid serum has been conclusively proved by elaborate tests upon soldiers and sailors in many nations. It is difficult for the ordinary individual to appreciate the significance and importance of a discovery of this character and magnitude. When one thinks calmly of the thousands and thousands of men who have lost their lives during wars because of typhoid epidemics, and of the thousands of others who have returned home practically invalided for life from the same cause, it is possible to, at least, conceive of the benefit to the race such a discovery promises. And when we learn that the discovery is a product of the same principle or method which gave to the world a cure for smallpox, diphtheria and syphilis, we must begin to believe that the medical profession is on the path which is unlimited in its field of promise so far as efficient treatment is concerned. Yet to-day we have people who do not believe in vaccination or in anti-diphtheritic serum. We may not live to see the time, but it is not far distant in the opinion of men qualified to speak with authority, when every disease will be amenable to the serum therapy, and when drugs will virtually be discarded by the human race. "606."--One of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine was recently given to the world by Dr. Paul Ehrlich. He called it "606," because it was the 606th experiment he had made with the same end in view. It was designed with the purpose of curing the most terrible disease known to man, syphilis. The name of the remedy is salvarsan. That it will do all that was first claimed for it is still doubtful, but salvarsan and its improvements, neosalvarsan, etc., are accepted by the profession as by far the best treatment yet devised for this dread disease. It points the way for improvement along the same line to an ultimate specific. Transplanting the Organs of Dead Men Into Living Men.--To take from a recently dead individual a kidney, or a bone, or an artery, and by immersing them in certain fluids thereby keeping them alive indefinitely, and later transplanting them in the body of a living individual so that they will continue to live and perform their function in the new environment, is a revolutionary and a seemingly incredible performance. Yet Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute, New York, has accomplished this wonderful task. The smallest imagination can picture the possibilities of this kind of surgery, but, inasmuch as the discovery is so recent and the opportunities for testing it upon human beings are so relatively few, that time alone can tell how far it may be possible to go. Anti-Meningitis Serum.--Another important discovery that has emanated from the Rockefeller Institute is the Anti-Meningitis serum. The death rate from spinal meningitis, before the introduction of the serum, was 70 per cent., the use of the serum has reduced this percentage to 30. We owe this important contribution to Dr. Simon Flexner. A Serum for Malaria Now Possible.--Dr. C. C. Bass, of Tulane University, has succeeded in extracting malaria-producing parasites from human blood and keeping them alive in test tubes. This feat had been long attempted but never before with success. The significance of this achievement is that it is the first step toward preparing a serum that will give immunity to malaria. 
31616	----	[Illustration: Book Cover] HEALTH LESSONS BOOK I BY ALVIN DAVISON, M.S., A.M., PH.D. PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN LAFAYETTE COLLEGE [Illustration: Publisher Symbol] NEW YORK · CINCINNATI · CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY ALVIN DAVISON. ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON. HEALTH LESSONS. BK. 1. W. P. 6 [Illustration: Exercise, clean air, and well-chewed food make a strong and healthy body.] PREFACE Scarcely one half of the children of our country continue in school much beyond the fifth grade. It is important, therefore, that so far as possible the knowledge which has most to do with human welfare should be presented in the early years of school life. Fisher, Metchnikoff, Sedgwick, and others have shown that the health of a people influences the prosperity and happiness of a nation more than any other one thing. The highest patriotism is therefore the conservation of health. The seven hundred thousand lives annually destroyed by infectious diseases and the million other serious cases of sickness from contagious maladies, with all their attendant suffering, are largely sacrifices on the altar of ignorance. The loving mother menaces the life of her babe by feeding it milk with a germ content nearly half as great as that of sewage, the anemic girl sleeps with fast-closed windows, wondering in the morning why she feels so lifeless, and the one-time vigorous boy goes to a consumptive's early grave, because they did not know (what every school ought to teach) the way to health. Doctor Price, the Secretary of the State Board of Health of Maryland, recently said before the American Public Health Association that the text-books of our schools show a marked disregard for the urgent problems which enter our daily life, such as the prevention of tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and acute infectious diseases. Since the observing public have seen educated communities decrease their death rate from typhoid fever, tuberculosis, and diphtheria from one third to three fourths by heeding the health call, lawmakers are becoming convinced that the needless waste of human life should be stopped. Michigan has already decreed that every school child shall be taught the cause and prevention of the communicable diseases, and several other states are contemplating like action. This book meets fully the demands of all such laws as are contemplated, and presents the important truths not by dogmatic assertion, but by citing specific facts appealing to the child mind in such a way as to make a lasting impression. After the eleventh year of age, the first cause of death among school children is tuberculosis. The chief aim of the author has been to show the child the sure way of preventing this disease and others of like nature, and to establish an undying faith in the motto of Pasteur, "It is within the power of man to rid himself of every parasitic disease." Nearly all of the illustrations used are from photographs and drawings specially prepared for this book. These, together with the large amount of material gleaned from original sources and from the author's experiments in the laboratory, will, it is hoped, make this little volume worthy of the same generous welcome accorded the two earlier books of this series. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. CARING FOR THE HEALTH 9 II. PARTS OF THE BODY 15 III. FEEDING THE BODY 21 IV. FOOD AND HEALTH 30 V. HOW PLANTS SOUR OR SPOIL FOOD 36 VI. MILK MAY BE A FOOD OR A POISON 41 VII. HOW THE BODY USES FOOD 47 VIII. THE CARE OF THE MOUTH 60 IX. ALCOHOLIC DRINKS 68 X. ALCOHOL AND HEALTH 74 XI. TOBACCO AND THE DRUGS WHICH INJURE THE HEALTH 78 XII. THE SKIN AND BATHING 85 XIII. CLOTHING AND HOW TO USE IT 94 XIV. BREATHING 100 XV. FRESH AIR AND HEALTH 111 XVI. THE BLOOD AND HOW IT FLOWS THROUGH THE BODY 117 XVII. INSECTS AND HEALTH 127 XVIII. HOW THE BODY MOVES 135 XIX. THE MUSCLES AND HEALTH 144 XX. HOW THE BODY IS GOVERNED 149 XXI. HOW NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS AFFECT THE BRAIN AND NERVES 158 XXII. THE SENSES, OR DOORS OF KNOWLEDGE 165 XXIII. KEEPING AWAY SICKNESS 174 XXIV. HELPING BEFORE THE DOCTOR COMES 183 INDEX 189 HEALTH LESSONS CHAPTER I CARING FOR THE HEALTH =Good Health better than Gold.=--Horses and houses, balls and dolls, and much else that people think they want to make them happy can be bought with money. The one thing which is worth more than all else cannot be bought with even a houseful of gold. This thing is good health. Over three million persons in our country are now sick, and many of them are suffering much pain. Some of them would give all the money they have to gain once more the good health which the poorest may usually enjoy by right living day by day. =How long shall you live?=--In this country most of the persons born live to be over forty years of age, and some live more than one hundred years. A hundred years ago most persons died before the age of thirty-five years. In London three hundred years ago only about one half of those born reached the age of twenty-five years. Scarcely one half of the people in India to-day live beyond the age of twenty-five years. In fact, people in India are dying nearly twice as fast as in our own country. This is because they have not learned how to take care of the body in India so well as we have. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--By right living this woman remained in good health for several years after she was a century old.] The study which tells how to keep well is _Hygiene_. Whether you keep well and live long, or suffer much from headaches, cold, and other sickness, depends largely on how you care for your body. =Working together for Health.=--One cannot always keep well and strong by his own efforts. The grocer and milkman may sell to you bad food, the town may furnish impure water, churches and schools may injure your health by failing to supply fresh air in their buildings. More than a hundred thousand people were made very sick last year through the use of water poisoned by waste matter which other persons carelessly let reach the streams and wells. Many of the sick died of the fever caused by this water. Although it cannot be said that we are engaged in real war, yet we are surely killing one another by our thoughtless habits in scattering disease. We must therefore not only know how to care for our own bodies, but teach all to help one another to keep well. =A Lesson from War.=--The mention of war makes those who know its terrors shudder. Disease has caused more than ten times as much suffering and death as war with its harvest of mangled bodies, shattered limbs, and blinded eyes. In our four months' war with Spain in 1898 only 268 soldiers were killed in battle, while nearly 4000 brave men died from disease. We lost more than ten men by disease to every one killed by bullets. In the late war between Japan and Russia the Japanese soldiers cared for their health so carefully that only one fourth as many died from disease as perished in battle. This shows that with care for the health the small men of Japan saved themselves from disease, and thus won a victory told around the world. [Illustration: FIG. 2.--The Surgeon General who, by keeping the soldiers well, helped Japan win in the war against Russia.] =The Battle with Disease.=--For long ages sickness has caused more sorrow, misery, and death than famine, war, and wild beasts. Many years ago a plague called the _black death_ swept over most of the earth, and killed nearly one third of the inhabitants. A little more than a hundred years ago yellow fever killed thousands of people in Philadelphia and New York in a few weeks. When Boston was a city with a population of 11,000, more than one half of the persons had smallpox in one year. Within a few years one half of the sturdy red men of our forests were slain by smallpox when it first visited our shores. Before the year 1798 few boys or girls reached the age of twenty years without a pit-marked face due to the dreadful disease of smallpox. This disease was formerly more common than measles and chicken pox now are because we had not yet learned how to prevent it as we do to-day. =Victory over Disease.=--Cholera, yellow fever, black death, and smallpox no longer cause people to flee into the wilderness to escape them when they occasionally break out in a town or city. We have learned how to prevent these ailments among people who will obey the laws of health. [Illustration: FIG. 3.--One of the thousands of sturdy red men which smallpox slew before we learned how to prevent the disease.] Until the year 1900, people fled from a city when yellow fever was announced, but now any one can sleep with a fever patient and not catch the disease, because we have learned how to prevent it. Nurses and doctors no longer hesitate to sit for hours in the rooms of those sick with smallpox because they know how to treat the body to keep away this disease. By studying this book, boys and girls may learn not only how to keep free from these diseases, but how to manage their bodies to make them strong enough to escape other diseases. =As the Twig is bent so the Tree is inclined.=--This old saying means that a strong, straight, healthy, full-grown tree cannot come from a weak and bent young tree. Health in manhood and womanhood depends on how the health is cared for in childhood. The foundation for disease is often laid during school years. The making of strong bodies that will live joyous lives for long years must begin in boyhood and girlhood. In youth is the time to begin right living. Bad habits formed in early life often cause much sorrow in later years. It is said that over one half the drunkards began drinking liquor before they were twenty years of age and most of the smokers began to use tobacco before they were twenty years old. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. What is worth most in this world? 2. How many people are sick in our country? 3. How long do most people live? 4. Why do people not live long in India? 5. What is hygiene? 6. How many more deaths are caused by disease than by war? 7. Give some facts about smallpox. 8. Why do we have no fear of yellow fever and smallpox now? 9. Why should you be careful of your health while young? 10. When do most smokers and drinkers begin their bad habits? CHAPTER II PARTS OF THE BODY =Regions of the Body.=--In order to talk about any part of the body it must have a name. The main portion of the body is called the _trunk_. At the top of the trunk is the _head_. The arms and legs are known as _limbs_ or _extremities_. The part of the arm between the elbow and wrist is the _forearm_. The _thigh_ is the part of the leg between the knee and hip. The upper part of the trunk is called the _chest_ and is encircled by the ribs. The lower part of the trunk is named the _abdomen_. A large cavity within the chest contains the lungs and heart. The cavity of the abdomen is filled with the liver, stomach, food tube, and other working parts. =The Plan of the Body.=--All parts of the body are not the same. One part has one kind of work to do while another performs quite a different duty. The covering of the body is the _skin_. Beneath is the red meat called _muscle_. It looks just like the beef bought at the butcher shop which is the muscle of a cow or ox. Nearly one half of the weight of the body is made of muscle. [Illustration: FIG. 4.--General plan of the organs of the body.] The muscle is fastened to the _bones_ which support the body and give it stiffness. The muscle by pulling on the bones helps the body to do all kinds of work. The muscles and bones cannot work day after day without being fed. For this reason a food tube leads from the mouth down into the trunk to prepare milk, meat, bread, or other food, for the use of the body. =Feeding the Body.=--The mouth receives the food and chews it so that it may be easily swallowed. It then goes into a sac called the _stomach_. Here the hard parts are broken up into tiny bits and float about in a watery fluid. This goes out of the stomach into a long crooked tube, the _intestine_. Here the particles are made still finer, and the whole mass is then ready to be carried to every part of the muscles, bones, and brain to build up what is being worn out in work and play. =Carrying Food through the Body.=--In all parts of the body are little branching tubes. These unite into larger tubes leading to the heart. Through these tubes flows _blood_. Hundreds of tiny tubes in the walls of the intestine drink in the watery food, and it flows with the blood to the heart. The heart then pushes this blood with its food out through another set of tubes which divide into fine branches as they lead to every part of the body (Fig. 5). =Getting rid of Ashes and Worn-out Parts.=--The body works like a machine. Food is used somewhat as a locomotive uses coal to give it power to work. Some ashes are left from the used food, and other waste matter is formed by the dead and worn-out parts of the body. This waste is gathered up by the richly branching blood tubes and carried to the lungs. Here some of it passes out at every breath. Part of the waste goes out through the skin with the sweat and part passes out through the kidneys. In this way the dead matter is kept from collecting in the body and clogging its parts. =How the Parts of the Body are made to work Together.=--The mass of red flesh covering the bones is made up of many pieces called muscles. Whenever we catch a ball or run or even speak, more than a dozen muscles must be made to act together just in the right way. When food goes into the stomach, something must tell the juice to flow out of the walls to act on the food. The boss or manager of all the work carried on by the thousands of parts of the body is known as the _brain_ and _spinal cord_ with their tiny threads, the _nerves_, spreading everywhere through bones and muscles. The brain and spinal cord give the orders and the nerves carry them (Fig. 5). =The Servants of the Body.=--The parts of the body are much like the servants in a large house or the clerks in a store. One servant or clerk does one kind of work while another does something entirely different. Each portion of the body does a different kind of work. Each one of these parts doing a particular work is called an _organ_. The stomach is an organ to prepare food and the heart is an organ for sending the blood through the body. [Illustration: FIG. 5.--On the left are shown the branching tubes which carry blood to all parts of the body; on the right are the brain, spinal cord, and nerves which direct the work of the organs.] The entire body is composed of several hundred organs. Each of them is formed of several kinds of materials named _tissue_. A skinlike tissue makes up the lining of the stomach, while its outside is made of muscular tissue. The smallest parts of a tissue are little bodies named _cells_, and very fine threads called _fibers_. =Growth of the Body.=--The body grows rapidly in childhood and more slowly after the sixteenth year, but it continues to get larger until about the twenty-fifth year of age. Some children always grow slowly, have weak bones, and frail bodies. This is generally so because they have poor food or do not chew it well, and get too little fresh air, sunshine, and sleep. The use of beer, wine, or tobacco may hinder the body from using food for growth, or they may poison the body so that it will never be large and strong. The body should grow about a hundred pounds in weight during the first thirteen years of life. Whether children grow little or much generally depends on the food they give their bodies. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Point out and name four parts of the body. 2. Name the two parts of the trunk. 3. What does the chest contain? 4. What is muscle? 5. How is the body fed? 6. Give three parts taking waste out of the body. 7. Of what use are the brain and nerves? 8. Name two organs. 9. How long does the body continue to grow? 10. Why are some children weak and of slow growth? CHAPTER III FEEDING THE BODY [Illustration: FIG. 6.--Photograph of the outer dead skin pushed off from a black snake crawling through the brush.] =Why the Body needs Food.=--Every living thing, whether a plant or an animal, needs food. While the whole body lives, a part of it is constantly dying. The entire outer layer of a snake's skin dies three or four times during a year and is cast off, sometimes in a single piece. We can scrape dead bits of skin from the surface of our body at any time. Tiny particles are dying in all regions of the body, and we should soon waste away if food were not taken to make up the loss for the worn-out parts. The body also needs food to help it do its work and keep warm. The body has the strange power of using food eaten to make the legs and arms move and the brain to think. In doing this the body is said to burn the food. =How the Body burns itself and also Food.=--If a boy is weighed just before playing a game of ball and again afterward, he will find that part of his body has been used up and given off in the breath and sweat. He has burned part of his body, and the breath and sweat are like the smoke given off when a match is burned. One fifth of the air is made of a gas called _oxygen_. When anything becomes very hot, this oxygen makes it burst into a flame and burn. We breathe in oxygen with the air and the living action of the body causes such a slow union of the oxygen and the tissues that there is no blaze although there is a little heat. =Kinds of Food.=--There are four general classes of foods. These are the _building foods_, the _sugars_ and _starches_, the _fats_, and the _mineral foods_. The building foods are those which help largely in forming new muscle and blood or other parts of the body. _Proteids_ is another name for building foods. _Sugars_ and _starches_ are placed in one group because starch changes to sugar within the body. If you chew a starchy food like bread for a few minutes, it will begin to taste sweet because the starch is becoming sugar. Fats are got not only from fat meat but also from eggs, butter, milk, and many other foods. There is some mineral matter, such as potash and soda, in many of the vegetables and meats eaten, and we use much table salt to season other foods. [Illustration: FIG. 7.--Good foods for building muscles, blood, and bone.] =Body-building Foods.=--A person with all the sugar, molasses, starch, butter, and lard he could eat would starve to death in a few weeks because none of these foods would help to build up the dying parts of the body. A large amount of body builder is found in lean meat, eggs, milk, peas, beans, corn meal, and bread. Bread and milk is a good food to make the body grow. If the body takes in more building food than it needs for repairs, it may store it up in the form of fat or burn it to help the body do its work. =The Fuel Foods.=--The fuel foods are the sugars, starches, and fats. These are the foods which the body can easily burn to keep it warm and give it power to act. Candy, molasses, or sugar in any form, taken in small quantities, is a good food. Starch, which the body quickly changes to sugar, is a much cheaper food. Meats contain very little starch, but nearly all vegetables contain much starch. Three fourths of corn meal, rice, wheat flour, and soda crackers consists of starch. More than one half of white bread, dried beans, and peas is made of pure starch, and there is much starch in potatoes. _Fat_ is more abundant in animal than in vegetable food. Castor oil and cotton-seed oil are fats from vegetables. The fat of the cow is called _suet_ or _tallow_, while the fat of the hog is known as _lard_. _Butter_ is the fat collected from milk. Cream and eggs contain much fat. When persons eat too much of the sugars, starches, or fats, the body may store them up as fat. For this reason thin persons wishing to gain in flesh eat eggs, nuts, and rich milk. =The Mineral Foods.=--The body must have not only lime to help form the bones, but iron, salt, soda, and potash for other parts of the body. All these minerals except salt are found in many of the common foods. [Illustration: FIG. 8.--Good foods for giving the body power and heat.] Water is one of the most important of the mineral foods because it helps the body use all the other foods. Most people drink too little water to enjoy the best health. The body needs more than two quarts of water every day. There is much water in our foods. More than one half of eggs, meat, and potatoes is made of water, and more than three fourths of tomatoes, green corn, onions, cabbage, and string beans is composed of water. We should drink one quart or more of water daily. It should not be used ice cold, and very little should be taken at meal time. [Illustration: FIG. 9.--Diagram showing how the drainage from a house with a sick person caused one hundred and twenty cases of typhoid fever at Mount Savage, Maryland.] =Water and Health.=--One of the common causes of sickness is bad water. Water from shallow wells within a hundred feet of barnyards, pigpens, or other outhouses is usually unsafe to drink. At Newport, Rhode Island, more than eighty persons were made sick with the fever by drinking the water from a well only ten feet deep. The impure water from one spring at Trenton, New Jersey, gave the fever to nearly a hundred persons in one season. At Mount Savage, Maryland, a hundred and twenty persons were made ill by using the water from a spring near a house drain. Water from rivers and streams running near where many people live is likely to be made impure and is sure to bring sickness and death to some of those who use it. Water from a small stream at Plymouth, Pennsylvania, running past a house occupied by a typhoid patient, gave the fever to over a thousand persons in one month. The water from a small stream at Ithaca, New York, gave the fever to over thirteen hundred people in one season, and an almost equal number caught the fever in a few weeks at Butler, Pennsylvania, by drinking water from a small creek along which some sick persons lived. =Preventing Sickness from Bad Water.=--It is better to go thirsty than to drink water which is likely to cause sickness. Any water can be made safe by boiling it one minute. Boiled water is the most healthful kind of water to use. The people of China and Japan seldom use water that has not been boiled. Many cities using water from rivers run it through a layer of sand and gravel to remove the tiny things that cause so much sickness and death. This makes the water very much purer, but it is not so certain to make the water safe as is boiling it. Bad water makes nearly a quarter of a million of our people sick every year and kills twenty thousand of them. =How much Food does the Body Need?=--Most people eat too much. Overeating overworks the stomach, poisons the body, makes one feel lazy, and causes headache. If you chew your food fine and stop eating as soon as hunger is satisfied without tempting the appetite with sweets, you are not likely to overeat. About one seventh of a pound of building food is needed daily to keep the body in repair, and a quarter of a pound of fat and a pound of starches and sugars are required to help the body do a hard day's work. A half pound of bread, beans, and meat each, a pound of potatoes, a pint of milk, and a quarter of a pound of butter and sugar each, will give a working man all the food he needs for a day. [Illustration: FIG. 10.--Bird's-eye view of Plymouth, Pennsylvania, showing where the waste from one sick room was thrown on the bank of a stream which several miles below supplied the town with water and caused over one thousand cases of fever and more than a hundred deaths within seven weeks.] =Beer and Wine as Foods.=--It was once thought that beer and wine were good foods, but hundreds of late experiments show that these drinks are very poor and expensive foods. A half glass of milk is of more use to the body as a food than a full quart of beer. The use of much wine or beer may seem to satisfy the appetite because they deaden the real feeling of hunger. Neither of these drinks can be used by the young without danger of doing much harm. [Illustration: FIG. 11.--The little glass of milk contains nearly twice as much food for building flesh and blood as the large glass of beer.] PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Why does the body need food? 2. Why do you weigh less after working? 3. What is oxygen? 4. From what do we get body-building foods? 5. In what is starch found? 6. How much water does the body need? 7. Where have people been made sick by using bad water? 8. How can we prevent sickness from bad water? 9. What harm does overeating do? 10. What can you say of beer as a food? CHAPTER IV FOOD AND HEALTH =Meats.=--Beef is the best of all meat for food. Nearly one fifth of it can be used to repair the worn-out parts of the body. Mutton, the meat of sheep, is almost as good for food as beef. Veal and pork also contain much body-building matter, but the stomach must work hard to prepare them for use. Fish is an excellent food, but it has only little more than one half as much flesh-building matter as good beef. Poultry is a healthful food, especially for the weak and sick, but it is more expensive than the other meats. Oysters are largely made of water and do not contain much to strengthen the body. In all meat there is some waste matter. This may harm the body if we eat too much meat. It is no longer thought healthful for most persons to eat meat more than once a day. Too much meat used daily for several years is likely to cause disease. [Illustration: FIG. 12.--Each of these articles costs the same, but the bread will furnish four times as much food for the body as the cabbage, more than twice as much as the fish, and nearly twice as much as the milk.] =The Cooking of Meat.=--The best meat if poorly cooked is unfit for eating. Broiled and roasted meats are more healthful than boiled or fried meat. Meat is broiled by holding it in a wire frame over a flame or hot coals. It is roasted by placing it in a covered pan in a hot oven for two or three hours. It is boiled by keeping it in hot water several hours. Meat is fried by cooking it in lard or other fat in a pan. Only those who have strong bodies should eat fried meat. The cheap cuts of meat from the neck, breast, and legs have about as much food matter in them as the more costly parts. Such meat may be made more tender by boiling than by roasting. =Soup.=--Soup, broth, and beef tea furnish but little food for the body. They are very useful in giving us a good appetite for the real food to be eaten later. They make the stomach go to work more quickly than other food. Soup or broth is made from meat by placing it on the stove in cold water, gradually heating it, and then keeping it hot several hours. [Illustration: FIG. 13.--Either group of foods will give the body the same strength and nourishment for work and growth.] =Vegetables.=--Some persons never eat meat of any kind because they enjoy better health when using only vegetables, milk, and eggs. Peas and beans contain much matter for making new flesh and blood and also much starch to give heat and power to the body. Potatoes form a valuable food. Roasted potatoes are more healthful than those boiled or fried. [Illustration: FIG. 14.--The amount of real food in these articles.] Radishes, onions, and cucumbers are made largely of water. Only a small amount of these should be eaten at one meal as the stomach must work hard to make use of them. Young beets, lettuce, and ripe tomatoes may be eaten by young and old. They contain useful minerals and help keep the body in a healthful condition. =The Cereals or Grain Foods.=--These foods are eaten in the form of bread, oatmeal, corn meal, rice, and breakfast foods. All of these furnish much matter to strengthen the body and make it grow. Bread and butter with rice are excellent foods for children. =Fruits.=--Very few people can remain well long without eating fruit of some kind. Ripe apples, pears, plums, peaches, berries, and cherries furnish useful salts to the body and also help the stomach and food tube do their work in a more healthful way. Fruits also increase the appetite. Green fruit and fruit which is overripe should never be eaten. =Eggs.=--Eggs form a good food for nearly everybody, but they are specially needed by the young and other persons with weak bodies. They can repair the worn-out parts of the body and also help it do its work. Eggs are most healthful when eaten raw or soft cooked. The best way to cook them through evenly is to put them in a pan off the stove and add about a quart of boiling water for every three eggs. Cover and let them cook fifteen minutes. Eggs should be kept in a cold room or cellar until used. They become stale in less than a week when left in a warm living room and may get a bad taste when only three or four days old. =Salt, Pepper, and Vinegar.=--Eating much salt is harmful. A small quantity of salt and pepper increases the appetite and makes the stomach do its work better. Children should use very little pepper and almost no vinegar and mustard. [Illustration: FIG. 15.--A bottle of beer. The dotted part at the top shows how much body-building food it contains.] =Tobacco.=--Some people think tobacco is a food because it is made from the leaves of a plant. Other people think tobacco is a food because they do not feel hungry after smoking or chewing it. The truth is that tobacco is of no use to the body as a food and may do it much harm because of the poison it contains. Tobacco satisfies hunger somewhat by deadening the parts of the body that are calling for food. =Beer.=--The people who make beer and sell it say that it is a food. Men who have no interest in selling beer, and have experimented with it to find out whether it strengthens the body, say that beer should never be used as a food. It often tends to weaken the body. Children should never use beer at any time, and older people can sometimes avoid disease by letting it alone. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Which are the best meats for food? 2. Why should we not eat meat at every meal? 3. How should meat be cooked to make it most tender? 4. How is soup or broth made? 5. Name the best vegetables for food. 6. Name some good grain foods. 7. Of what use are fruits? 8. What can you say of the use of eggs? 9. How should eggs be cared for? 10. What can you say of the use of salt and pepper? 11. Why does tobacco satisfy hunger? 12. Of what value is beer for food? CHAPTER V HOW PLANTS SOUR OR SPOIL FOOD =Germs, Microbes, or Bacteria.=--The dust and dirt of all sorts contain thousands of tiny plants too small to be seen by the eye without help. An instrument called a _microscope_ makes them appear so large that their form and growth are easily studied. These little plants are called _germs_ or _microbes_. They are also named _bacteria_. They are so small that a million laid side by side would not cover the head of a pin. [Illustration: FIG. 16.--Bacteria or microbes found in water, dust, and waste. They help change straw and other dead matter into food for plants. Much enlarged.] There are hundreds of different kinds of germs. Some are round like little balls and others are the shape of tiny rods. Many of them which look just alike act very different in growing. There are more than twenty different kinds that grow in our bodies and cause diphtheria, tuberculosis, and other diseases. We have measles and scarlet fever because we have gotten these disease germs from some one else in whom they were growing. [Illustration: FIG. 17.--Mold which grew on moist bread in two days. 5, seed bodies breaking out of the sack; 1, 2, and 4, one of the seed bodies after one, two, and four hours' growth. Much enlarged.] Most germs feed on dead matter instead of our living bodies and make it melt away or change into another form. An apple or a piece of meat thrown out on the ground will soon change and become like the earth on which it lies. The change, called decay, is caused by millions of germs. The farmer's best friends are certain germs which help make the ground rich, so that the crops will grow. =Mold.=--The dust raised in sweeping contains tiny living seedlike bodies. If these fall on bread, cheese, or fruit, and this food is afterward kept moist in a warm room for a day or two, they will grow into grayish fluffy spots. These spots are mold. The greenish white growth on the top of some canned fruit and on berries left in the warm kitchen over night is also mold. Mold is a plant which grows from tiny round bodies acting like seeds (Fig. 17). These seed bodies of mold are common in all dust and often fly through the air. On this account food should be kept covered when possible and especially when one is sweeping. Some mold gives bread, cheese, and other food a bad taste, but it will not make one sick. =How Germs Grow.=--Germs will not grow where it is very cold, but freezing the germs does not kill them. Boiling one minute kills most germs. Drying will stop the germs from growing, but will not kill all of them. Sunlight kills many of them. Moisture and warmth make germs grow rapidly. A germ in growing lengthens out a little and then divides in the middle. It does this so quickly that one germ may become two in fifteen minutes. Each of these will then divide. In this way one germ can make many million germs in a single day (Fig. 18). =The Spoiling of Meat.=--Fresh meat will not remain good even one day if left in a warm place. A large greenish blue fly seen buzzing about in warm weather will sometimes lay its eggs on meat. These will hatch the next day into little worms, called maggots. They grow rapidly and a few days later change into flies. [Illustration: FIG. 18.--Drawing of the germ at the top every ten minutes, showing how it grew into two germs in a half hour. Much enlarged.] Germs will also spoil meat not kept cold. They feed on the meat and give off a poison, making it unfit to eat. The bad odor tells when the germs are at work. Every home should have a cold cellar or an ice box to keep food from spoiling. =Saving Food from Souring.=--The souring of milk and of cooked food of any kind is due to the germs always present in the air and clinging by the thousands to unwashed dishes and hands. If meat or fruit is cooked and kept tightly covered, it will remain good for years. Many persons save fruit and vegetables for use in winter by putting them in jars, which are heated to kill the germs, and sealed tight to keep out other germs. =Yeast or the Alcohol Plant.=--Sweet cider and other fruit juices are sometimes spoiled by a plant named yeast. This plant has the form of a football and is so small that a million of its kind together would not make a mass as large as the head of a pin. It floats about in the air and is present on the skins of fruits. Yeast is also called the alcohol plant because whenever it grows in a sweet substance like fruit juice it changes part of it into a biting substance called alcohol. At the same time it gives off a gas. It is this gas which forms the bubbling or frothing in beer. [Illustration: FIG. 19.--Yeast plants used in making bread and beer. Those on the right are growing new plants. Much enlarged.] The millions of yeast plants in the yeast cake bought at the store, when put into the dough for bread, grow and form gas. This pushes the bits of dough apart and makes it light. The little alcohol formed is all driven off in the baking. The alcohol which yeast forms by growing in sweet cider is in a few weeks changed to vinegar by other germs called the vinegar plants. Sour cider may make those who use it sick and drunk because it contains alcohol. Yeast makes wine out of grape juice. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Where are germs found? 2. What is the form of microbes? 3. Name some diseases caused by germs. 4. What is mold? 5. Why should food be kept covered when not in use? 6. What causes meat to spoil? 7. How may fruit be kept from spoiling? 8. Where is yeast found? 9. What effect has yeast on fruit juice? 10. Why should you not drink sour cider? CHAPTER VI MILK MAY BE A FOOD OR A POISON =Of what Milk is Made.=--Milk is the most perfect food known. It contains everything needed to build and strengthen the body. In one gallon of milk there is about one teacupful of pure fat, nearly the same amount of sugar, one teacupful of body-building food needed to make muscle and blood. There is also some lime and other mineral matter to make the bones of the young grow strong. The remaining seven pints are water. =Kinds of Milk.=--When milk is left standing in a jar for several hours, much of the fat, which is present in the form of tiny balls, rises to the upper part. This upper layer of milk full of fat is called _cream_. If this is removed, the rest is called _skim milk_. Milk after standing in a warm place one or two days becomes sour. It is then sometimes put into a tight box or barrel and beat in such a way as to break up the little balls of fat. These are then pressed together into a mass called _butter_. It requires a whole gallon of milk to make one teacupful of butter. The milk remaining after the butter is taken out is called _buttermilk_. Cheese is made from milk. [Illustration: FIG. 20.--Two kinds of milk, showing the amount of fat in each.] =Milk as a Food.=--Milk is a healthful drink for nearly every one and especially useful for those with weak bodies. During sickness it is sometimes the only food the patient can take. It is well for children to use two or three glasses of milk daily with their meals. It should be sipped slowly so it will mix with the fluid in the mouth and not form lumps called curds in the stomach. A quart of milk contains more food for the body than a half pound of good beefsteak. A pint of milk will supply the body with about as much food as a pint of oysters. A bowl of milk and a half loaf of bread is a healthful supper for a boy or girl. Skim milk and buttermilk are healthful drinks which furnish much food for building bone, blood, and muscle. [Illustration: FIG. 21.--Germs which grow in milk and make it sour.] =When Milk is a Poison.=--In New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago it has been noticed for many years that large numbers of babies become sick in warm weather and many of them die. The doctors learned that most of the babies taken sick were being fed on cows' milk because their own mothers did not have enough for them. It was then found that the sick babies had been using milk from dairies where the stables were dirty, the cows soiled, and the hands of the milkers unclean. On this account much dirt got into the milk. Babies fed on clean milk from clean cows kept in clean stables remained strong and well. By much study the doctors learned that _dirty milk is poisonous milk_. The poison is made by the germs or bacteria living by the millions in unclean stables and in milk buckets not well washed in boiling water. Dirty milk becomes most poisonous in hot weather because warmth makes the germs grow very fast and become so numerous that millions are present in a teaspoonful of milk. =Keeping Milk Clean.=--During one week of hot weather in Cincinnati, over a hundred babies were poisoned with dirty milk. In the same week twice this number were made sick by unclean milk in Philadelphia. During the hot part of the year in our country bad milk kills more than a half dozen babies every hour of the day and night. The only way _to have milk clean is to have clean stables with clean cows, milked by clean hands, and the milk handled in clean pails, cans, and bottles which have been scalded after being washed_. The milk must then be kept cold until used, so that the germs will not grow in it. =Saving the Baby from Bad Milk.=--If possible, milk should be bought for the baby in bottles sealed with a pasteboard lid. If milk turns sour the same day it is delivered, it is not fit for the baby to take. Heating it makes most milk safer for use. The heating of milk to kill most of the germs is _pasteurizing_ it. It should be kept very hot for about fifteen minutes, but should not be allowed to boil. It should be cooled by placing the vessel on ice or in cold water. The baby's bottle and nipple should be washed in cold water and then well scalded immediately after being used. The bottle, the nipple, and the milk should be kept away from flies and dust. One fly has been known to carry on its body more germs than there are leaves on a large tree. [Illustration: FIG. 22.--Plan of the prison at Easton, Pa. The crosses show into which cells the flies brought typhoid germs from the sewer and made the prisoners sick with fever.] =Flies and Fever in a Prison.=--In August, 1908, thirteen prisoners in the jail at Easton, Pennsylvania, were taken ill with typhoid fever. They had not been near any sick persons and their food and water were found to be pure. All those sick were in cells in one end of the prison. About twenty feet from this end a sewer had been uncovered two weeks before and left open. This sewer carried the waste from the hospital where several patients were sick with the fever. Flies fed on the waste in the sewer and then with the germs sticking to their feet flew into the cells of the prisoners and walked over their cups, spoons, and food. A little girl who played near this open sewer and shared her lunch with the flies had a severe attack of fever two weeks later because the germs scraped from the flies' feet on her food got into her body and grew. =Milk and Disease.=--We must be very careful to get not only clean milk but milk from healthy cows milked by persons who have no typhoid fever, scarlet fever, or diphtheria in their homes. If only one or two disease germs get into the milk from the hands of those who have nursed the sick, these will grow into immense numbers in a single day. Many of those who use the milk will then become ill. Hundreds are made sick in this way every year. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Why is milk a good food? 2. What does a gallon of milk contain? 3. What is cream? 4. How is butter made? 5. For whom is milk specially good? 6. How does milk become poisonous? 7. Why is dirty milk more poisonous in hot weather? 8. Tell what harm unclean milk does. 9. How may milk be kept clean? 10. Explain how milk is heated to make it safe for use. 11. Show how flies may cause fever. 12. Tell how milk may carry diphtheria into our homes. CHAPTER VII HOW THE BODY USES FOOD =Organs for making ready the Food.=--Before the food can get into the blood and be carried over the body to feed the muscles and the brain, it must be made into a fluid. This changing of the solid food into a liquid by the stomach and other organs is called _digestion_. The organs which do this work are known as _digestive organs_. They consist of a _food tube_ and several bodies called _glands_. =The Food Tube.=--The food canal is about thirty feet long. Its first part, the _mouth_, opens back of the tongue into the throat, named the _pharynx_. This leads into a tube, the gullet, passing down through the back part of the chest into the _stomach_ below the diaphragm. The stomach is a bent sac opening into a tube over twenty-five feet long called the _bowels_ or _intestines_. This tube is folded into a bunch which fills a large part of the cavity of the abdomen. [Illustration: FIG. 23.--The plan of a gland. _a_ carries blood to the gland and _v_ takes it away after the gland has taken out what it needs. On the right side the top of the gland has been cut off.] =The Glands or Juice Makers.=--A gland is a little tube closed at one end, or a bunch of such tubes, which can take something out of the blood and make it into a juice. A gland under each ear and four others near the tongue make the juice called _saliva_ which flows into the mouth through tubes. A long, flat, pink gland back of the stomach is called the _sweetbread_ or _pancreas_. This and a large brown gland, the _liver_, empty their juices into the intestines. The whole inner surface of the stomach and intestines is lined with tiny tubes, the glands. The juice of these with that of the other glands softens the food and makes it into a liquid. =The Work of the Mouth.=--The mouth has three things to do: It should break the lumps of food into fine bits so it can be well wet with the slippery fluid called _saliva_ and also easily swallowed. It must roll the food about so that it gets soaked with saliva. It must hold the food long enough to get much taste from it because this starts the juices to flowing into the stomach. Food gives out its taste only after it is changed to a liquid. It should not be washed down with water, as this weakens the juices in the stomach. [Illustration: FIG. 24.--The three glands which make the saliva for acting on the food in the mouth.] No food should be swallowed until it is broken into bits nearly as small as the head of a pin. Some foods, such as cheese, bananas, and nuts, should be made even finer than this. There is nothing in the stomach to crush to pieces large lumps of food. The juices of the stomach can do their full work only when the food is well chewed in the mouth. [Illustration: FIG. 25.--Photograph of a chestnut chewed a half minute by a boy who had poor teeth because he had not taken care of them. The lumps are so large that the juices of the stomach could not dissolve them.] =The Chewing of Food keeps away Sickness.=--Bread, meat, and potatoes should be cut into pieces no larger than half the size of your thumb and each piece put separately into your mouth with a fork. It should then be chewed from twenty to thirty times before another piece is put into the mouth. Food treated in this way will not cause headache or a sickness in the stomach called _indigestion_ or _dyspepsia_. It is said that there are so many persons with this kind of sickness that more than $5,000,000 are spent every year for medicine to help them. Too little chewing of the food while you are young may not cause many aches or pains, but if you form the habit of rapid eating it is hard to learn to eat slowly. No one who chews his food poorly can avoid sickness long or grow well and strong. [Illustration: FIG. 26.--Photograph of a chestnut chewed a half minute by a boy with good teeth.] =The Work of the Stomach.=--When the food is swallowed, it passes through the gullet into the stomach. This is a sac holding more than a quart (Fig. 27). It is made of an outer wall of muscle and an inner skinlike coat full of tiny tubes called _gastric glands_. Millions of these give out drop by drop a watery fluid named _gastric juice_. This juice begins to flow as soon as we smell or taste food and continues to drop out as long as there is any food in the stomach. The use of the gastric juice is to help change part of the food into a more watery fluid. To do this it must be well mixed with the food. This mixing is done by the muscles in the outer wall of the stomach (Fig. 29). They squeeze together and then loosen up in such a way as to move the food about and turn it over until every particle is wet again and again with the gastric juice. =How long Food stays in the Stomach.=--A ring of muscle around the end of the stomach keeps the food from escaping until it has become a thin grayish liquid. The stomach can finish its work on some kinds of food in one or two hours. With other foods it must work four or five hours. The stomach can finish its work on soft boiled eggs, milk, roasted potatoes, and broiled lamb within two hours. With pork, veal, cabbage, and fried potatoes it must work four or five hours. When a person is sick the stomach is weak, and he should have only the food which causes the stomach the least work. =The Work of the Intestines.=--The last part of the work in getting the food ready for the blood is done in the long folded tube known as the intestine (Fig. 27). Here juices coming from the pancreas and liver mix with the food and change into a liquid those parts not acted on in the stomach. The intestine does quite as much work as the stomach. Sometimes when the stomach is sick, too much work is put off on the intestines and then they become sick and give much pain. The pint of watery fluid from the pancreas and the quart of greenish yellow fluid called _bile_ given out by the liver are carried through two tubes into the intestine (Fig. 27). To mix these juices with the food the intestine is being swung gently back and forth and the walls squeezed together by muscles forming its outer coat. As soon as the intestine has finished its work the food begins to enter the blood. [Illustration: FIG. 27.--The organs which get the food ready to enter the blood.] [Illustration: FIG. 28.--Showing how the food in the dog is carried from the intestine to the liver and heart. The white tubes carry the fats up to the vein in the neck, and the dark tubes which are veins carry the other part of the food to the liver.] =How Food gets into the Blood.=--An hour or two after food has entered the intestine it is almost as thin a fluid as milk. Millions of tiny fingerlike growths stick out from the inner side of the intestines and drink in the watery food. These little fingers for drinking up the food are scarcely one fourth as large as the point of a pencil. They are called _villi_. The villi are filled with blood tubes having thin walls. The food passes through these walls into the blood stream. Much of it then goes to the liver, but the fatty parts flow up a tube along the backbone and empty into a blood tube in the neck. From the neck and the liver the food goes with the blood to the heart which sends it to all parts of the body. =What the Liver does.=--The liver is a dark red body nearly as large as the upper half of your head. It lies just below the diaphragm. It works night and day helping to keep the inner parts of the body clean and at the same time deal out food. The liver takes some waste out of the blood and sends it out into the intestine with the bile. When there is no food in the intestine, the bile is stored up in the _gall bladder_ under the liver. The liver changes certain waste matter in the blood into such form that other organs can cast it out of the body. It also stores up certain parts of the food coming from the intestines and gives it out to the body little by little as it is needed. =When and How much to Eat.=--When the food organs do not do their work rightly, the whole body becomes sick. Eating too much overworks the stomach. It becomes so full that the food cannot be moved about and well mixed with the juices. Germs then work on the food and make it sour. In fact the germs may change part of the food into a poison. This poison will cause headache and a bad feeling. Do not form a habit of taking powders to cure headache. They are likely to hurt the heart. Take less food, eat it more slowly, and do not wash it down with drink. Stop eating before your stomach feels full. Each meal gives the stomach about four hours of work to do. It then needs one hour of rest. This shows that the time from one meal to the next should be about five hours. Very young children and sick persons need food oftener. Boys and girls should not eat candies, cake, or other food between meals. It spoils the appetite and is likely to get the stomach out of working order. =Danger Signals.=--A white or yellowish coat on the tongue, a bad breath, pain in the bowels, or a headache is a danger signal. It tells that the food organs are not doing their work as they should and unless help is given sickness is likely to occur. Medicine may help, but using foods easy to digest, eating less, chewing more, and getting plenty of exercise in the fresh air are likely to be the greatest aids to health. =The Chewing of Tobacco and Digestion.=--Some men chew tobacco as much as ten hours every day. The taste of the tobacco makes the saliva flow from the glands into the mouth. This dissolves the poison out of the tobacco and it is then spit out. If the tobacco-soaked saliva were all swallowed, the man would be poisoned. The chewing of tobacco causes the loss of much saliva which is needed to help digest the food. Anyone who tires his jaw by chewing tobacco is not likely to chew his food well. Some of the poison in the tobacco is taken into the body through the blood vessels in the lining of the mouth. This is shown by the fact that a boy not used to tobacco becomes very sick after he has chewed a mouthful for only ten minutes. =Smoking and Digestion.=--Some persons think that the smoking of a cigar after a meal helps digestion. It may do so in some cases. If a lawyer is much excited about a case he is trying, or a business man is in trouble about his losses, the thinking causes the blood to flow to the head when it is needed in the stomach to give out digestive juices. The taste of the tobacco smoke may cause some gastric juice to run out into the stomach, but at the same time it is likely to hurt the nerves of taste so that food cannot give so much enjoyment as when the nerves are unharmed. Although smoking may at the time help digestion a little, the poison in the tobacco may afterward injure the body. This poison is especially harmful to growing bodies, and boys who are wise will refuse to smoke on all occasions. =Beer and Digestion.=--Some people drink beer with their meals because they think it makes the food taste better. It really prevents them from getting the full taste of the food because they wash it down before it is well soaked with the saliva. [Illustration: FIG. 29.--The stomach, showing the arrangement of the muscular fibers which alcohol may hinder from doing good work. At the right a piece is cut out of the top layer of muscle.] The flavor of beer may sometimes cause an extra flow of gastric juice into the stomach, but the alcohol in the beer is likely to make the movements of the stomach slower. This prevents the food from being well and quickly mixed with the juices. Several glasses of beer used at one meal will make the stomach do its work very slowly, and it will not do it well. =Wine and Digestion.=--Wine is taken by some people to give more appetite for food. It is likely, however, to do more harm than good because the alcohol in it makes the muscles which mix the food in the stomach act more slowly. Some of the food may sour before it gets wet with the juice. Much wine used at a meal is always harmful. =Natural Appetite.=--If one is in health, he should feel a desire for his food at every meal. This desire for a reasonable amount of food is a natural appetite. Fresh air and exercise will do much to give one the right kind of an appetite. The eating of much sweets and the breathing of bad air are likely to spoil the appetite. The use of some things, such as opium, tobacco, beer, wine, and whisky, creates an unnatural appetite. That is, after one has used these articles a few months he cannot stop their use without great suffering. The younger the person, the sooner the appetite becomes fixed. For this reason _young persons should never use tobacco or alcoholic drinks of any kind_. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. What is digestion? 2. Name the parts of the food tube. 3. Where does saliva come from? 4. Explain how the food is acted on in the mouth. 5. Why should food be well chewed? 6. What forms the gastric juice? 7. Of what use is the gastric juice? 8. How long does food stay in the stomach? 9. Name some foods easily digested. 10. What does the intestine do? 11. What are villi? 12. Tell how the food gets into the blood. 13. Of what use is the liver? 14. Why should we not eat too much? 15. Should we eat between meals? 16. Give three reasons why you should not use tobacco. CHAPTER VIII THE CARE OF THE MOUTH =Sickness often begins in the Mouth.=--A clean mouth and sound teeth have much to do in keeping one well. The germs which cause nearly a half million deaths in the United States every year enter the body through the mouth. If the mouth is unclean, only one or two disease germs entering it may remain there and grow. [Illustration: FIG. 30.--The teeth of the upper jaw at eleven years of age.] It is just as important to wash the mouth two or three times each day as it is to wash the hands and face. A few germs of diphtheria, sore throat, or tuberculosis are likely to get into the mouth any day, but if the mouth and teeth are well washed with a brush morning and night, the germs will not have time to grow and cause sickness. =The Teeth.=--The first twenty teeth that appear are called the _milk set_. The eight front teeth grow out during the first year of life and back of these twelve others appear during the second year. Between the seventh and the tenth year all of the milk teeth are lost because others grow beneath them and push them out. [Illustration: FIG. 31.--The full set of teeth on the right side at twelve years of age. The numbers show at what year of age each one grows out of the gum.] The first four teeth of the second set appear in the sixth year, just behind the last milk teeth (Fig. 30). These teeth should be watched very closely and at the first sign of decay you should go to the dentist. As the milk teeth get loose and come out, the second set of teeth take their places. If you are ten or eleven years old, you should have twelve good teeth in the upper jaw and the same number below. The last ones to break through the gums are the four wisdom teeth at the back of the mouth. They appear after the seventeenth year. The front teeth are called _incisors_ because they are used to cut the food. The back teeth are named _molars_ because they are used in grinding the food. [Illustration: FIG. 32.--Photograph of teeth not kept clean, showing how germs and a sour substance called acid eat holes in them and thus cause decay and toothache.] =Toothache.=--Toothache is a common ailment, and yet it can be entirely prevented. A tooth does not ache until it has a hole in it. The tender nerve within gives us warning that it is being hurt. The dentist can stop the ache and mend the tooth so that it will not ache again. Look at your teeth every month and feel about them with a wooden tooth-pick to know when the decay begins. If the little holes are mended as soon as found, you will never have toothache, and you can keep your teeth as long as you live. [Illustration: FIG. 33.--Slice down through a tooth showing _f_, the enamel, and _d_, the soft pulp with nerves and blood tubes from the root at _h_.] =How to keep the Teeth Sound.=--Every tooth is covered with a layer of hard shining substance called _enamel_ (Fig. 33). So long as this is unbroken the softer bony part of the tooth cannot decay. At the base of the tooth where the gum joins it the enamel is very thin, so that the scratch of a pin or other instrument may break it. Never pick the teeth with a pin or needle. The biting off of thread, finger nails, and other hard material may crack the enamel. It may also be softened and eaten away by acid formed where food remains about a tooth. For this reason a quill or wooden pick or piece of tough thread, called _dental floss_, should be used to clear the teeth of food after each meal. Slimy matter collects over the whole surface of the teeth, and is likely to cause decay in spots unless it is cleaned off night and morning with brush and water. The chewing of dry crusts of bread or crackers strengthens the teeth and keeps off decay. =Why Candy and other Sweets cause the Teeth to Decay.=--A sour substance called acid usually starts the decay of a tooth by eating through the enamel. Germs change sugar and other sweets into an acid. The acid is not made at once. An hour or more is needed for the germs to grow to form the acid. If, after eating sweet foods, the mouth is well cleaned, no acid will be formed. Sugar and candy do not, therefore, spoil the teeth unless it is left sticking about them. =How to brush the Teeth.=--Every boy and girl should own a toothbrush. _The teeth should be brushed every night and morning and kept white._ Yellow or gray slimy teeth are very ugly. The teeth should be brushed on the inside as well as on the outside. It is best to brush the teeth crosswise for two minutes and then spend another two minutes brushing the upper teeth downwards and the lower teeth upwards. This prevents pushing the gum away from the teeth. Plenty of water should be used with the brush, and a little good powder is helpful once a day. =How the Dentist can Help.=--Sometimes the milk teeth do not get loose so that they can be pulled with the fingers at the right time. The second teeth then come in at one side and may never get straight in place. They then spoil the appearance of the face and do poor work in chewing. The dentist should be asked to help straighten the teeth as soon as they appear crooked. [Illustration: FIG. 34.--Exact drawing of the teeth of two persons. Those in the lower picture began to decay over twenty-five years ago and they were then filled so as to remain perfect. The teeth in the upper picture began to decay less than ten years ago but were not filled.] It is wise to have the dentist examine the teeth once or twice every year and remove a limy substance called tartar collecting at their base. The dentist can stop the decay in a tooth by cleaning out the little hole and filling it with gold or some other material. It may cause a little pain and expense to have the teeth filled, but it will save a hundred times as much pain and expense later. The six year molars need special care as they are likely to decay early. Even the milk teeth often need filling so that they will not be lost too soon. =Bad Teeth cause Sickness.=--When anything decays, it is full of germs, and they are always giving off some poison. The poison may hurt the body and is likely to make parts of the mouth sore and tender so that other germs of disease can break through into the flesh. Disease germs can easily lodge in the holes of decaying teeth, grow in numbers, and finally cause diphtheria, sore throat, or other ailments. Four out of every five children suffering from diphtheria or other throat or ear troubles are found to have from one to ten bad teeth. You must keep good teeth if you wish to be well and strong. =The Value of Sound Teeth.=--Sound teeth which will do good work in chewing food are worth more than a foot or an arm. If the foot or arm is lost, the body is likely to get well and be as healthy as ever. _The health of the whole body depends upon the work done by the teeth._ Unless they do their part the stomach cannot get the food ready for the blood. A part of badly chewed food is turned into a poison farther down in the food canal. This is what makes many people feel so tired and miserable much of the time. Hundreds of men have been refused admission to our army because they have poor teeth. Soldiers must be strong and well to take long marches and fight battles. Sound teeth give strength and health. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Why should the mouth be washed out every day? 2. When do the milk teeth appear? 3. When are the milk teeth lost? 4. How many teeth have you? 5. How many show signs of decay? 6. How may toothache be prevented? 7. How may the teeth be kept sound? 8. Why do sweets cause the teeth to decay? 9. How should you brush your teeth? 10. Why should the dentist examine your teeth every year? 11. Why are sound teeth of great worth? CHAPTER IX ALCOHOLIC DRINKS =Drink needed for Health.=--Water in the form of sweat and in other ways is constantly passing off from the body. This water carries with it the waste matter which, if it remained, would poison the body. There is some water in the food we eat, but not enough to supply the wants of the body. Some persons think that the body needs beer or wine to keep it in good order. These liquids, as well as whisky, brandy, and rum, are called _alcoholic drinks_. The latest experiments and studies show that the body never needs alcoholic drinks to keep it in the best of health. These drinks sometimes make the body sick, and if much alcohol is taken at one time, the person becomes dizzy, staggers, and may fall down and go to sleep. =The Desire for Drink.=--When parts of the body have too little water, there is a longing for drink. This is called _thirst_. As soon as a cup of water is drunk the desire is satisfied. There is no danger of drinking too much pure water. Persons who have been accustomed to use alcoholic drink have a thirst which water does not satisfy. It is an _unnatural thirst_. Even beer or wine will not satisfy such a thirst except for a few minutes. Very often a person's thirst is not satisfied until he has used so much wine or whisky that he becomes dull and unsteady in his walk. He is then said to be drunk. [Illustration: FIG. 35.--Yeast plants growing as in the making of beer and wine. Much enlarged.] =How the Yeast Plant makes Alcohol.=--In the cake of yeast bought at the grocery there are millions of tiny plants, each shaped somewhat like a potato. This strange little plant will grow very rapidly when put into any sweet watery substance. It sends out a bud which grows larger and larger until in a half hour the bud is as large as the old plant. It may then break loose and grow other buds, just like the mother plant. When yeast grows, it changes the sugar or sweet part of the water into alcohol and a gas called carbon dioxide. It is this gas which makes beer foam and bubble when opened. All alcohol used in beer, porter, ale, wine, brandy, rum, gin, and whisky is made by yeast plants. [Illustration: FIG. 36.--Photograph of sprouted barley grains called malt.] =How Beer is Made.=--There is more beer used than any other alcoholic drink. It is cheap and is much weaker in alcohol than wine or whisky. Only about one twentieth part of beer is alcohol. [Illustration: FIG. 37.--Photograph of a spray of hops, which are used to flavor beer.] In making beer, a sweet watery mixture is first prepared by mashing sprouted barley grains in water. Barley or any other grain forms sugar as soon as it begins to grow. Yeast plants are added to the sweet mixture. By growing they change some of the sugar into alcohol. Hops are also put in to give the beer a fine flavor. After a time the clear liquid is separated from the barley grains and hops and put into tight casks and bottles. =The Making of Wine.=--Wine contains from two to four times as much alcohol as beer. Most of the wine is made in California, France, and Germany because grapes grow better in these countries than elsewhere. Wine may be made from the juice of any fruit, but the grape is generally used. [Illustration: FIG. 38.--The quantity of grapes required to make this glass full of wine.] The grapes after being picked are thrown into large tubs and crushed so that the juice runs out. The wild yeast always present on the grape skins begins to grow in the juice and change some of the sugar into alcohol. This work of the yeast lasts from one to eight weeks. At the end of that time, the grape juice has become a kind of poor wine, consisting of alcohol, water, grape flavor, and some acid. To make the wine good it must be drawn off into casks, where the yeast causes further changes during several weeks. It is then put into bottles, where it should remain about five years to get the right flavor. =Sherry= is a strong wine used in flavoring food, such as puddings and sauces. A few teaspoonfuls of this wine will make a child drunk. The wines made at home from elderberries, blackberries, and cherries contain alcohol which will do just as much harm as that in the purchased wines. =How Brandy is Made.=--Brandy contains more alcohol than wine and almost as much as whisky. In fact brandy is only very strong wine. After the yeast plants have formed as much alcohol as they can in grape juice it becomes so strong that it kills them. This wine is then heated in such a way as to separate some of the water from it. The taking away of the water leaves the wine stronger in alcohol and it then forms brandy. [Illustration: FIG. 39.--The shaded part at the bottom of each bottle shows the amount of alcohol in the drink.] [Illustration: FIG. 40.--A still used in making whisky or brandy. The heat makes the alcohol fumes or vapor rise and pass over through the pipe coiled in a vessel of cold water. The cold changes the vapor to a liquid which is whisky.] =Whisky and Rum.=--These two drinks are strong in alcohol. Nearly one half of each is pure alcohol. Whisky is usually made from rye, corn, or wheat, or all three together. They furnish the food in which the yeast grows and makes alcohol. This watery mixture of grain and alcohol is then heated and the vapor or steam forms whisky after it goes off through a pipe into another vessel. This kind of heating is _distillation_. Rum is formed in somewhat the same way from molasses or cane juice. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Name some alcoholic drinks. 2. What is an unnatural thirst? 3. Explain how the yeast plant forms alcohol. 4. Tell how beer is made. 5. Tell how wine is made. 6. What is brandy? 7. Which drinks contain most alcohol? CHAPTER X ALCOHOL AND HEALTH =The Money spent for Alcoholic Drinks.=--If the money spent for alcoholic drinks were all collected together in silver dollars, it would more than fill ten schoolrooms of average size. Not only rich men spend large sums yearly for fine wines and brandies, but also the poor give their money for beer and other drinks which the body does not need. When parents waste their money on drink, they cannot buy the food and clothes needed to keep their families strong and well. In this way strong drink causes much sickness and suffering and sometimes even death. =Alcohol injures the Body.=--Some persons drink very little beer or wine, so they seem to have but little effect on the health. Others use strong drink every day and for a few years they may remain quite well. Later ill health often comes on, and they then find that some of the organs have been so much hurt that they will never be quite well again. A few years ago a group of fifty well-known men in the United States spent much time and thousands of dollars to learn how much alcohol was harming our country. After much study among many people they announced that there were about one million men and boys whose health had been injured by strong drink, such as beer, wine, and whisky. Because strong drink causes so much sorrow and sickness several states have passed laws forbidding its sale, and saloons have been closed by laws in parts of many other states. =How Alcohol affects Kittens.=--The body of a kitten is made very much like the body of a child. It has just the same organs that a child has, and they do the same kind of work. Doctor Hodge, a well-known scientist of Massachusetts, therefore concluded that alcohol would act on kittens in the same way as it would on a man or boy. The doctor got two healthy kittens and fed them a little alcohol every day for nearly two weeks. In a few days they stopped being playful, did not grow, and did not keep their fur clean and smooth as healthy kittens do. After using alcohol several days they became very ill. This experiment showed that alcohol stops kittens from growing and robs them of good health. =How Alcohol hurts Dogs.=--Doctor Hodge fed a little alcohol to two dogs nearly every day for three years. He also kept the brother and sister of these dogs, but gave them no alcohol. All the dogs had the same kind of food and were treated alike except that one pair got alcohol and the other pair did not. The two drinking dogs got sick more easily and staid sick much longer than the temperance dogs. The drinking dogs became lazy, and timid, while the others were strong, full of fun, and brave. Within four years the drinking dogs had born to them twenty-seven puppies, but only four of them lived to grow up. The others were too weak or sickly to live. During the same time the temperance dogs had forty-five puppies and forty-one of these lived. This shows that strong drink will not only injure the bodies of those who take it, but will make their children weak and sickly. =The Use of Strong Drink causes Disease.=--Many persons who take beer or wine every day become fat. They think this is a sign of health. It is really a sign of disease. They become short of breath. They can no longer run so fast or do so much work because the heart is covered with fat and even some of its wall is changed to fat. For this reason the heart cannot do its work easily or well. The kidneys which take the waste out of the blood often become injured by alcohol and a disease causing death follows. Sometimes the stomach becomes diseased so that it cannot do its work. This makes the whole body sick. The hardening of parts of the liver is nearly always caused by the use of beer. The liver is sure to suffer if one uses much alcoholic drink because the alcohol goes direct from the food tube to the liver. Long use of strong drink may bring on disease in the brain and nerves. =Alcoholic Drinks may cause Death.=--Every ten years the government appoints persons to visit each home in our land to take the census. A part of this census report consists of a table showing the disease of which people died. It is from the census report that we know that hundreds of people die every year from the use of alcohol. =Danger to Health in beginning the Use of Strong Drink.=--A large number of people take a drink of beer or wine occasionally because they do not see that it hurts the body. No one expects to become a steady drinker or a drunkard when he begins to drink. Reports show that every drunkard begins his downward course by taking a few drinks occasionally. Thousands of persons begin a drunkard's life every year because the appetite leads them on gently until they become slaves and cannot let drink alone. CHAPTER XI TOBACCO AND OTHER DRUGS WHICH INJURE THE HEALTH [Illustration: FIG. 41.--The tobacco plant.] =How Tobacco is Made.=--Tobacco is made from the leaves of the tobacco plant. The plant may grow as tall as a man and bear more than a dozen leaves. Each leaf is two or three times as large as your hand. The seeds are planted in the springtime, and the plants are ready to be cut in the autumn. Most of our tobacco is raised in the Southern states and Cuba. After cutting, the tobacco must be dried and cared for in a special way to give it the right flavor. It is then sent to factories and made into cigars, smoking tobacco, or chewing tobacco. =How Tobacco is Used.=--Many million dollars are spent every year by the people of our country for tobacco. Most of the tobacco is used in smoking. Some men smoke it in pipes, while others smoke it in the form of cigars or cigarettes. Many men chew tobacco. When used in this way, something like licorice is generally mixed with the tobacco to give it a more pleasant taste. Sometimes the dry tobacco is ground into a fine powder called snuff. This is used by both men and women. =Tobacco contains a Poison.=--When boys chew or smoke tobacco for the first time, it always makes them sick. Chewing or smoking for fifteen minutes will make them grow dizzy and weak and feel so sick that they must lie down for a long time. The sickness is caused by a poison called _nicotine_ which is present in all tobacco. Much of this poison may be soaked out by boiling the tobacco in water. A cup of water in which a pipeful of tobacco has been boiled will kill goldfish in an hour when poured into a gallon jar of water with the fish. There is enough poison in a handful of tobacco to kill a boy who is not in the habit of using it. =Why Men can use Tobacco without becoming Sick.=--Experiments upon animals have shown that the body can learn to use a poison and not become sick from it. The poison of a rattlesnake is deadly to most animals; but if a tiny bit of the poison is put under the skin of the rabbit one day and then on each succeeding day a little larger dose of the poison is given the rabbit for a long time, the animal will become so accustomed to the poison that the bite of a rattlesnake will not harm it. It is the same way with tobacco. Little by little the body learns to overcome the effects of the poison, but much use of tobacco is likely to hurt certain parts of the body. =Tobacco is Harmful to the Young.=--A dose of poison which will kill a child may do but little harm to a man. Tobacco is certain to hurt boys more than it does men. The poison makes the body grow slower. [Illustration: FIG. 42.--There is more poison in the one on the right than in the one on the left.] A large number of measurements made by Doctor Seaver showed that the boys who did not use tobacco gained in four years one twentieth more in weight and one fourth more in girth and height than the users of tobacco. These boys were between sixteen and twenty-two years of age. It is likely that tobacco will have a more harmful effect on younger boys. =Laws to keep the Young Healthy.=--Boys ought to be wise and brave enough to let alone what keeps their bodies from growing and hurts their health, but some will not do it. For this reason some countries are trying to save the health of their boys by making laws against the use of tobacco. The Germans a few years ago passed a law in their land forbidding all boys and girls under sixteen years of age to use tobacco in any form. Seeing the good results of this law in Germany and the harm that tobacco was doing the boys in the United States, the Emperor of Japan on the 6th of March, 1900, proclaimed this law: "The smoking of tobacco by minors under the age of twenty is prohibited." In our own country several states have passed laws against the use of cigarettes by boys. One country after another is learning that if they want strong men, to fight, to work, and to win, tobacco must not be allowed to weaken the bodies of the young. =How the White Man becomes a Slave.=--Before the Civil War the black men of the South were slaves. They could not do as they pleased because they belonged to their masters whom they must obey or else they would suffer punishment. No boy can begin the use of tobacco without the danger of becoming a slave to it. The use of tobacco either by chewing or smoking gradually causes in any one the growth of an appetite which makes him feel miserable and unhappy unless it is kept satisfied. It can be satisfied only by the use of more and more tobacco. Many men would like to quit the use of tobacco if they could do so without suffering. They are slaves, and tobacco is their master. =Cigarettes and Health.=--A cigarette is a tube of paper filled with tobacco. The tobacco is usually not so strong as that used in cigars and pipes. For this reason, boys like it better, and because it is so mild they draw the smoke down into the lungs. This gives the poison a better chance to be taken up by the blood. On this account, and because one is likely to smoke oftener when he smokes a small piece of tobacco, cigarettes are thought by some to be more harmful than the use of tobacco in pipes and cigars. =Tea and Coffee.=--Tea is made from the dried leaves of the tea plant. Tea plants are raised in North Carolina, China, and Japan. The drink called tea used at the table is made by pouring boiling water on the tea leaves. The leaves should not be boiled as this draws out a substance which keeps the stomach from doing its work in the right way. Coffee is the seed of a plant growing in South America and Asia. It is roasted, then ground, and boiled in water to make the drink called coffee. [Illustration: FIG. 43.--Branch of a tea plant.] [Illustration: FIG. 44.--Branch of a coffee plant with bunches of coffee berries near the bottom.] Children should not use either tea or coffee as they are likely to hurt the stomach and may injure the heart. One or two cups of tea or coffee daily seem to have little or no bad effect on the health of most grown persons. Coffee taken at supper may keep one awake by sending too much blood to the brain. =Opium and Morphine.=--Opium is a dangerous drug which is got from the heads of the white poppy plant grown mostly in the far East. From gashes cut in the poppy heads a juice runs out and hardens into a gum from which the pure drug is made. Some persons smoke opium for the drowsy and pleasant feeling it gives. Its use is very hurtful and ruins both body and mind. _Morphine_ is a pure form of opium. Persons take it to kill pain and make them sleep. You should never take it except when given by the doctor, as a habit is quickly formed which will make you miserable through life. =Patent Medicines.=--These are medicines advertised to cure ailments which generally cannot be cured by drugs. They are the medicines much advertised in the newspapers and magazines. Never use them unless your doctor tells you to do so. Many of them contain harmful drugs, such as morphine and alcohol. When you are sick, go to your doctor for advice. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Explain how tobacco is raised. 2. How is tobacco used? 3. How does tobacco affect a boy using it for the first time? 4. What is the name of the poison in tobacco? 5. Tell how tobacco keeps boys from growing. 6. What countries do not allow boys to use tobacco? 7. What is meant by being a slave to tobacco? 8. What is tea? 9. What is coffee? 10. Why should you not use opium or morphine? CHAPTER XII THE SKIN AND BATHING =Parts of the Skin.=--The skin is about as thick as the leather of your shoe. It is fastened to the muscles beneath with fine white threads like spider webs. This is called _connective tissue_ because it connects the skin to the lean meat. The skin is made of two layers (Fig. 45). The upper layer is formed of cells. This is named _epidermis_ or _scarfskin_. The deeper layer is made largely of fine threads woven together. It is the _true skin_ or _derma_. There is no blood in the scarfskin, but there is a network of blood tubes in the true skin. It is the crowding of these with blood that makes the skin look so red when we get hot or excited. =The Use of the Skin.=--The skin has three chief uses. It protects the softer parts of the body from being hurt by rough or hard things which might touch it. It contains the organs of feeling. It helps keep the right amount of heat in the body. [Illustration: FIG. 45.--A thin slice through the skin, showing sweat glands, a nerve, and blood-tubes. Much enlarged.] The top part of the skin is dry and dead. This gives better protection than if it were moist and tender. Particles of it are wearing out and dropping off while other bits are growing beneath to take the place of the worn-out parts. The more this top skin is pressed on and rubbed, the thicker it becomes. For this reason it is twice as thick in the palms of the hand and on the soles of the feet. Scattered through the true skin are millions of tiny organs fastened to the ends of the nerve threads leading to the spinal cord and brain. These organs tell us when the skin is touched or when it is hot or cold or is being hurt. =The Pores and the Sweat Glands.=--On a warm day the skin becomes wet with a salty fluid called _sweat_ or _perspiration_. This flows from the tiny holes or pores in the skin. A good magnifying glass will show these pores arranged in rows on the ridges in the palm of the hand. From each pore a tube leads down into the true skin to a coiled tube forming the _sweat gland_ (Fig. 45). Sweat glands are present by the thousands in the skin of all parts of the body. They give out from one pint to a gallon of sweat daily. The more we work and the warmer the weather, the more the sweat flows. There is a little waste matter carried out of the body by the sweat, but its chief use is to cool the body. It does this by passing off in the air and carrying the heat with it. In this way the body is kept from getting too hot in summer. =The Color of the Skin.=--In the African race the color of the skin is black, in the Chinese it is yellowish, while in our race it is nearly white. The different hues are due to a coloring matter called _pigment_. This lies in the deep part of the scarfskin. Going out in the wind and sun causes more pigment to collect, and we say we are tanned. If the pigment collects in spots, it makes freckles. There is no way of removing at once freckles or tan. They usually disappear in the winter. No powders nor any other kind of medicine should be taken to make the skin white and smooth. Such medicines may contain poison and are likely in time to hurt the body. The skin may usually be kept soft and smooth by washing well with soft water and good soap. If it becomes harsh or cracked, a little glycerine rubbed on after each washing may help it. =The Nails and their Care.=--The nails are hardened parts of the epidermis. They are intended to prevent the ends of the fingers from being hurt and to give a neat appearance to the hand. The ends of the nails should never be chewed or torn off, as this makes the fingers blunt and the flesh sore. They should be filed or cut neatly with the scissors so that they do not stick out beyond the ends of the fingers. [Illustration: FIG. 46.--Photograph of hands showing at the right how the nails should appear, and at the left how biting off the nails makes the fingers blunt and sore.] Many boys and some girls spoil the appearance of their nails by letting a line of black dirt remain beneath them. A piece of a stick or a nail cleaner should be passed beneath the nails every time the hands are washed. If the fingers are much soiled, a stiff brush is useful in removing the dirt under the nails. [Illustration: FIG. 47.--A slice through a hair in its sac. Much enlarged.] =The Hair.=--Some hair grows on nearly all parts of the body. It is much thicker on the head than elsewhere. Each hair grows from a little knob at the bottom of a tiny tube in the skin called the _hair sac_ (Fig. 47). If hair is pulled out, another one will grow in its place if the knob at the bottom of the sac is not hurt. One or two _oil glands_ open into each hair sac and give out an oil to keep the scalp and hair soft. No other hair dressing is needed. After thirty or forty years of age the hair begins to turn gray. No medicine will prevent the hair from turning gray, and it is generally unwise to color the hair with a dye. There is poison in some of the mixtures sold to color the hair. =The Care of the Hair.=--When the hair is uncombed, the whole person looks untidy. The hair should be combed carefully every morning and again made tidy before each meal. You should use as little water as possible to moisten the hair. The glands can be made to give out their hair oil by squeezing parts of the scalp between the fingers. The scalp should be well cleansed with soap and warm water every three or four weeks. The hair should be dried quickly with a soft towel and by sitting in the sun or near a stove. One is likely to catch cold by going out of doors when the hair is wet. Hair oils and dandruff cures should not be used unless advised by a physician. Pinching and wrinkling the scalp twice weekly with the fingers makes the blood tubes grow larger and bring more food to the hair. It will also in many persons stop the hair from falling out and prevent dandruff and itching. [Illustration: FIG. 48.--Photographs showing how keeping the hair tidy improves the appearance.] Do not use the hair brush of another person or exchange hats with your companions. Unclean persons and those living or playing much with them often have among their hairs little creatures called _head lice_. They suck blood and cause constant itching. The doctor will tell any one how to get rid of them easily. =Keeping the Skin Clean.=--The amount of dead matter carried out by the sweat on to the skin every day is equal to a mass as large as your thumb. Dust also works through the clothing and sticks fast to the moist skin. For this reason every one should wash the whole body once or twice each week. The feet should be washed oftener as they become more soiled. Many persons take a bath every day. A cold bath taken just after rising in the morning wakes up the nerves, makes the heart work better, and gives health and strength to the whole body. Afterward, the body should be well rubbed with a coarse towel. The bath may be taken by lying in a tub of water or by rubbing the body over quickly with a wet sponge. A hot bath is best for cleansing the skin. A warm bath makes one sleepy and should, therefore, be taken only at bedtime. _The hands should always be well washed before handling food._ Persons neglecting to do this have caused much sickness because of the disease germs on their hands. One hundred and fifty persons were given typhoid fever in one city in Massachusetts by a man who handled milk without washing his hands. Dirt and disease are companions. You must be clean if you would be healthy. =The Kidneys.=--The sweat glands do not take out of the blood one quarter as much waste matter as the kidneys. These are two bodies longer than the finger and more than twice as wide, and having the shape of a bean. One lies on either side of the backbone below the liver. The blood coming to the kidneys is full of waste and dead matter picked up from all parts of the body. This is passed out through the thin walls of the thousands of little blood tubes into the many tiny tubes of the kidneys. [Illustration: FIG. 49.--The blood tubes in a piece of skin as large as the head of a pin.] Water is required to keep the body clean within as well as without. For this reason you should drink more than a quart of water daily. A glass or two of water drunk a half hour before meals cleanses and rouses to action the digestive organs. =Alcohol and the Skin.=--The skin of those who use much beer or whisky often becomes rough, red, and pimply. Any alcoholic drink is likely to injure the skin because it may hinder good digestion. The drunkard has a red nose and a dark-colored skin. This is because alcohol weakens the walls of the blood tubes and lets them become gorged with blood. If a person takes a drink only once in a while, his face becomes red after each drink, and an hour or two later the effect of the alcohol passes off. The blood tubes have squeezed up to their natural size. =Alcohol and the Kidneys.=--Taking several glasses daily of even such weak alcoholic drink as beer often causes the kidneys to become sick. Some of their working parts become changed to fat and some parts become hard. The cells which let the waste matter pass out of the blood get hurt by the poison of the alcohol so that they let some of the food also pass out of the blood. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Name the two parts of the skin. 2. Give the three uses of the skin. 3. What is a sweat gland? 4. How much sweat is formed daily? 5. Of what use is the sweat? 6. How should the nails be cared for? 7. Tell what care should be given the hair. 8. Why should you not use another person's hair brush? 9. Why should the skin be washed often? 10. Of what use is a cold bath? 11. Why should the hands be well washed before handling food? 12. Why does the drunkard have a red nose? CHAPTER XIII CLOTHING AND HOW TO USE IT =Kinds of Clothing.=--People are beginning to learn that the wearing of the right kind of clothing has much to do with keeping them well. Many persons wear too heavy clothing in winter. Keeping the body too hot makes it weak. Some kinds of clothing are much warmer than others. Some are expensive and others are cheap. Cheap clothes will often serve the same purpose as the more costly ones. If you look at your handkerchief or stockings, you will see that they are made of threads running crosswise to each other. All clothing is made from threads. Some of these are wool, some are linen, a few are silk, and many are cotton. =Woolen Clothing.=--Woolen clothing, such as overcoats and fine cloth dresses and suits, is made from the wool cut from sheep. Enough wool can be sheared from two sheep in one year to make an entire suit of clothes. The raw wool is first twisted into threads and then woven by machines into cloth. [Illustration: FIG. 50.--At the left is a bunch of flax gathered from the field, and on the right is a spool of thread made from the flax and ready to be woven into linen.] =Linen.=--Linen is used in making collars, cuffs, and handkerchiefs. It is made from fine threads taken from the flax plant. On a piece of ground as large as a schoolroom enough flax can be raised to make a half dozen collars. Garments to be worn in warm weather are sometimes made of linen. =Silk.=--Silk is used in making neckties, gloves, ribbons, and dresses. Silk cloth is woven from the cocoons made by silkworms. A silkworm is about as big as your largest finger. It grows to this size from the egg in one month. In three or four days it spins a shell of silk thread completely surrounding itself. This shell is called a _cocoon_. Within this it changes to a moth. [Illustration: FIG. 51.--Photograph of silkworms changing mulberry leaves into silk.] [Illustration: FIG. 52.--These fibers from the lint about the seed of cotton are woven into cotton cloth.] When the cocoons are to be used for silk, the worm is killed by heat as soon as it has woven its home so that it may not change to a moth and eat off some of the silk in getting out. Many thousand worms are needed to get enough silk for a dress. The worms are raised largely in China, Japan, Italy, and France. =Cotton.=--All calico, muslin, and most cheap clothing are made from cotton thread. This is made from the cotton fibers surrounding the seeds of the cotton plant (Fig. 52). The cotton used in this country is raised in the Southern states. Cotton clothing is stronger and wears much longer than silk or wool, but it does not look so well and is not nearly so warm. =The Use of Wraps and Overcoats.=--_Outer wraps and overcoats should never be worn in a warm room or while working hard._ They cause much sweat to form on the body, and as soon as one goes out of doors the sweat begins to pass off. This makes the body feel cold and in some cases leads to a long sickness. When riding in cold weather, extra wraps should be worn. Scarfs and furs should not be worn about the throat except in extreme cold weather. Bundling up the neck and chin is likely to cause sore throat. =Danger from Wet Clothing.=--Many children have caught severe colds leading to serious sickness by wearing wet or damp clothing. Wet clothing causes the heat to pass off from the body quickly, so that it is chilled before we know it. This may be shown by wrapping two bottles of warm water in cloths. Wet one cloth and let the other remain dry. In twenty minutes the bottle with the wet cloth will be cool, but the other one will still be warm. _If your wet clothing cannot be changed at once, keep exercising or throw a heavy coat about you._ =Untidy and Soiled Clothing.=--All boys and girls should learn to keep their clothing as clean as possible. Do not wipe the hands on the clothing, or sit down in the dirt, or let food smear the front of the coat or dress. The sweat is constantly bringing waste matter out of the body. This soils the clothing next to it. On this account clothing to be washed every week or oftener should be worn next to the skin. Very thin cotton underclothing should be worn in summer. Woolen clothes give more warmth for winter. [Illustration: FIG. 53.--Showing how to prevent the shoe from pressing on corns caused by wearing tight shoes or socks roughly darned.] =Shoes.=--Badly fitting shoes cause sore feet and much pain. A shoe that is tight across the toes is sure to cause corns. A _corn_ is a thickened part of the top skin which presses on the more tender part beneath. Soaking the feet in hot water and filing off the top of the corn or using a corn plaster will help it. Shoes should always be a half inch longer than the foot. Waterproof shoes or rubbers should be worn in wet weather. Rubbers should not be worn in the house. =Alcohol and Clothing.=--Many persons think that a drink of whisky will make them warm when taken on a cold day. For this reason whisky is sometimes used when clothing is really needed. The use of whisky or any other alcoholic drink will not make the body warm. It may make one feel warm because it loosens the muscles in the blood tubes of the skin and so lets more blood come to the surface. In this way the body becomes colder because too much blood gets into the skin and is then chilled by the cold air. As alcohol deadens the feeling it may prevent one from feeling cold when the body is really very cold. Too little clothing and too much alcohol have been known to cause men to freeze to death. =Experience in using Alcohol to keep the Body Warm.=--Doctor Hayes, who went as physician with Doctor Kane to explore in the Arctic regions, said that he would never again take alcoholic drink with him on such a trip. He declared alcohol was of no use in helping men to keep warm. He found from actual experience that those who use alcohol cannot endure cold so well as other people. Doctor Carpenter, a well-known physician, tells of a crew of sixty-six men who tried to stay in Hudson Bay all winter. They used some alcoholic drink. Only two of the party lived through the winter. Later another party of twenty-two men passed the winter in the same place. They used no strong drink at any time and as a consequence all but two of them were reported well and strong in the following spring. CHAPTER XIV BREATHING =The Lungs.=--The lungs are two light spongy bodies filling up the greater part of the chest. The heart lies between the lungs. The lungs are formed largely of thousands of thin-walled sacs and two sets of tubes. One set of tubes carries air into and out of the lungs, and the other set is filled with blood. These sacs and tubes are held in place by a loose meshwork of tissue. [Illustration: FIG. 54.--The ribs and front wall of the chest cut away to show the lungs. A piece of one lung is cut off to show the heart. _A_ and _E_, parts of the breastbone; _F_, diaphragm.] =Why we Breathe.=--Breathing means taking air into the lungs and forcing it out. The air is made to go into the lungs in order that a part of it called oxygen may get into the blood. The blood then carries the oxygen to all parts of the body where it can help the organs do their work. [Illustration: FIG. 55.--Photograph of a salamander, showing the gills on either side of the head, which are used in breathing.] The air which comes out of the lungs is not the same as that which goes in. Some of the oxygen has been used up and in its place is a heavier gas named _carbon dioxide_, which has been given out by the body. This carbon dioxide is part of the waste formed in every part of the body from the used-up food and dying parts of the body. We breathe therefore to get oxygen into the body and to take out some of the waste matter. All animals must breathe. If our breath is shut off only four or five minutes, death results. In the earthworm the oxygen goes right through the skin into the blood. Bugs and flies have several little openings along the sides of the body which lead into tubes branching throughout the body to carry air. A fish gets air through its gills lying under a bony flap on each side of the head. [Illustration: FIG. 56.--The windpipe and lungs viewed from in front. On the right, the tissue is removed to show the air tubes.] =How the Air passes into the Lungs.=--The outer openings of the nose are called nostrils. From here two channels lead back through the nose to the throat. The cavity of the throat behind the nose and tongue is the _pharynx_. At the bottom of the pharynx is a tube made mostly of gristle. This tube is larger than your thumb and is named the _larynx_, or _voice box_. The bump on its front part forms the lump in the throat called the _Adam's Apple_. From the voice box extends the _windpipe_ called _trachea_, down to the lungs. The windpipe divides at its lower end between the lungs into two branches. One of these enters each lung. =The Air Tubes in the Lungs.=--As the branch of the windpipe enters each lung it divides into smaller branches just like the limbs of a tree. These divide into still smaller tubes, which branch again and again until they are as small as a hair. These hairlike tubes have swollen ends called _air sacs_. The walls of the air sacs are much thinner than tissue paper. [Illustration: FIG. 57.--A bunch of air cells at the end of an air tube in the lungs, showing the blood vessels which receive the oxygen and give out the carbon dioxide.] =How the Blood trades Waste for Oxygen in the Lungs.=--The blood, which is constantly running from all parts of the body to the lungs, collects waste formed from the burnt food and dying parts of the organs. When the blood comes to the lungs, it is full of this waste, called carbon dioxide. The blood tubes divide into fine branches with very thin walls and form a rich network over the air sacs. This allows the carbon dioxide and water to pass out of the blood tubes into the air sacs, while the oxygen at the same time goes through into the blood. More than a pint of water is given off in the breath daily. =How we Breathe.=--The bottom of the chest cavity is formed by an upward arching sheet of muscle called the _diaphragm_. This is fastened to the lower ribs. The ribs at rest slant downward and inward. When the ribs are pulled up or the arch of the diaphragm down, the cavity of the chest becomes larger. The air then runs into the lungs and swells them out. When the ribs are let drop or the arch of the diaphragm goes up, the air is pushed out of the lungs. Without thinking, we work the muscles to draw up the ribs about eighteen times every minute, because all parts of the body are calling for oxygen. The harder we work the oftener we breathe because the muscles need more oxygen to make them go. =Why we should breathe through the Nose.=--Most persons find it easy to breathe through the nose. In some, however, the passages in the nose are too small to carry the air without effort. On this account they let the mouth hang open and breathe through it. [Illustration: FIG. 58.--Face cut through the middle to show how the adenoids stop the air from passing through the nose. Arrows show the course which the air should take.] The air should pass only through the nose because it is lined with hairs and tiny waving threads which catch the dust. In this way germs and dirt are prevented from getting into the throat and lungs, and in winter the cold air is warmed. =Why Some Children cannot breathe through the Nose.=--When one has a cold, the lining of the nose becomes swollen and gives out a white substance called _mucus_. The swelling of the lining and the mucus fill up the passages. The nose should be kept clean by using a handkerchief and blowing out the mucus into it. _Never put the finger into the nose._ Disease germs often get on the fingers from things touched. Children who have the habit of breathing through the mouth should be examined by a physician. He will, in most cases, find soft spongy growths called _adenoids_ in the back part of the nose. They should always be removed as soon as possible. They may cause disease or deafness and may even injure the mind. [Illustration: FIG. 59.--A view of the voice box from the top.] =The Voice.=--In the upper part of the voice box at the top of the windpipe is a fold of tissue stretched on either side. These two folds of tissue form the _vocal cords_. The air rushing past them causes sound. The different sounds are made by stretching the cords tight or loosely. By means of the tongue, teeth, and lips the sound is formed into words. =How to use the Voice.=--A cold or much shouting makes the vocal cords swell and we become hoarse. Rest is the best cure. It is not polite to shout or whistle in the house and you should never use an angry tone of voice. When talking to a person, always speak distinctly but pleasantly and turn your face toward his and look directly into his eyes. Never use a harsh, loud tone of voice. =Why you should not spit on Floors or Sidewalks.=--We used to think that any one well had no germs of sickness in his mouth, but we now know that many well persons have germs in their mouths which can cause long sickness when they get into other persons. If you are sick with diphtheria, scarlet fever, or sore throat, the germs of the disease are likely to remain in your mouth two or three months. Persons with tuberculosis throw out millions of these germs in their spit every day. Spitting is not only an unclean habit but a deadly curse. Spit often contains the seeds of death. Women's skirts and the soles of our shoes carry it into the houses. It becomes dry, but the germs live and float about in the dust, then enter the mouth to make us sick. Carelessness with spit is said to cause more than a hundred deaths every day in our land. =Do not use an Open Spittoon.=--It is much safer to have a smallpox patient in the house than an open spittoon in the summer. You can prevent the smallpox by vaccination, but you cannot keep the flies from carrying ten thousand germs of death from the spittoon to the food on the table. A million germs have been found on a single fly. [Illustration: FIG. 60.--Photograph of a house fly on a piece of bread. This fly had been feeding on spit and a study of its legs and body showed more germs present than there are hairs on a person's head.] Spit should be dropped into a cup which should be kept covered when not being used. The spit should be destroyed by fire or some germ-killing fluid, such as lye or formalin. [Illustration: FIG. 61.--An exact drawing of the germs in a spot as large as a period, on the edge of a drinking cup.] =Keeping Sickness away from the Throat and Lungs.=--All sickness of the throat and lungs is caught from some one else. The germs are passed from one to another on the drinking cup, by sucking pencils, wetting the finger to turn the pages of a book, or putting the fingers in the nose or mouth. [Illustration: FIG. 62.--A dish of beef broth jelly left open two minutes in a room being swept. Each spot is a city of thousands of germs which grew from one germ dropping on the jelly. By counting the spots you can tell how many germs fell from the dust on this dish three inches in diameter.] _Dust is the partner of disease._ It contains germs. Avoid dust. Wipe up the rooms with a damp cloth; never use a feather duster. Avoid dry sweeping. Use a suction cleaner or have rugs which can be cleaned out of doors. Give the lungs fresh air and deep breathing and the body good food and plenty of sleep to make it so strong that germs cannot overcome it when they enter. [Illustration: FIG. 63.--Photograph of consumption germs, the tiny rods which often grow and cause tuberculosis in bodies weakened by beer or whisky. Much enlarged.] =Alcoholic Drink and the Lungs.=--The most common disease of the lungs is _tuberculosis_. Nearly all bartenders who sell strong drink take some themselves. Lately it has been learned in Germany that tuberculosis causes one half of all the deaths among bartenders. Alcohol was once thought to be a good medicine for lung troubles, but it has been clearly proven that beer and whisky weaken the lungs and make them ready for the germs of disease. The body already weakened by the poison of the alcohol is then easily overcome by the disease. =Tobacco and the Lungs.=--The occasional use of tobacco does not seem to hurt the lungs when fully grown. A study of many young persons has shown that the chest of smokers grows much more slowly than in those who do not use tobacco. As the lungs cannot grow any faster than the chest, they must grow slowly in boys using much tobacco. Tobacco is a common cause of sore throat. Many smokers have been compelled to quit the habit because of throat troubles. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Where are the lungs located? 2. What do the tubes in the lungs carry? 3. What part of the air do we use in the body? 4. Tell how the air gets into the lungs. 5. What passes from the blood into the air sacs? 6. Why should we breathe through the nose? 7. Why should you keep the fingers away from the nose? 8. What are the vocal cords? 9. Give two reasons why no one should spit on the floor. 10. Tell how alcohol harms the lungs. CHAPTER XV FRESH AIR AND HEALTH =How much Air we Breathe.=--At every breath we take in about one pint of air. We breathe eighteen times each minute. Nine quarts of air therefore pass in and out of the lungs every minute. Air once breathed is not fit to breathe again. It contains waste and carbon dioxide which weaken the body. If you breathe three full breaths into a wide-mouthed jar or bottle, it will contain so much of the carbon dioxide that a lighted candle or splinter will at once go out when thrust into the jar. A cat shut in a tight box two feet square and one foot high will die in less than a half hour. Many years ago when the British and Hindoo soldiers were fighting each other, the Hindoos made prisoners of 146 of the British and locked them in a room about one half as large as a common schoolroom. There were only two small windows. During the night 123 of these men died because of the bad air. [Illustration: FIG. 64.--The direction of the flame of the candle shows how the fresh air enters and the bad air leaves a room.] =How much Air should enter a Room.=--The air laden with waste coming out of the lungs quickly mixes with the other air of the room. In this way all of the air in the room soon becomes impure. Forty children will give out nearly two barrels of air in one minute. In another minute this air has made all of the other air in the room unclean. It can still be breathed, but it makes children feel drowsy and lazy and may cause headache. They then do poor work. To keep the air pure in a room, fresh air must be let in from the outside. If there are many in the room, the openings must be large or fans on a wheel must be used to force the air in. In the New York schools a little over a cubic yard of fresh air is forced into the room for each child every minute. =How to get Fresh Air into a Room.=--When air is warmed it becomes lighter and rises. In many public buildings, fresh air heated by a furnace is forced into the rooms through pipes entering several feet above the floor. By a fan or heated flue the impure air is sucked out of the room through openings near the floor. [Illustration: FIG. 65.--How the windows of your bedroom should be open to get the most fresh air.] Changing the air in a room is called _ventilation_. To get plenty of fresh air in a room there must be one or more places for it to enter and one or more places for it to pass out. Where there is no furnace or fan, windows on one side of the room may be opened at the bottom to let in the air and the same windows opened at the top to let the impure air escape. _Do not sit in a draft_, but use a board or curtain to throw the air upward as it enters the window. _A room should not be kept too warm._ Sitting in a very warm room weakens the body and prepares it to take cold. The temperature of a living room should be between 65 and 70 degrees. =Fresh Air while you Sleep.=--Thousands of people have weakened their bodies and brought on disease by sleeping in bad air. Many persons keep their windows so tightly closed during the night that the air smells bad in the morning. I knew a family who always slept with windows closed except in the very warmest weather. Three of the children died of tuberculosis, and a fourth one took the disease but was saved by keeping his windows wide open. Bad air in the sleeping room makes one feel drowsy in the morning instead of refreshed by sleep. _Your windows should always be open while you sleep._ In cold weather a window should be open a foot at both the bottom and the top, or if there are two windows in the room, both may be opened at the bottom. In moderate weather the openings should be twice as large. A cap may be worn to keep the head warm, and the bed should be out of the draft. =Fresh Air gives Health.=--Four hundred people die of tuberculosis in our country every day. A few years ago it was thought that no one could get well of this disease. Now three fourths of those in the first stages of the disease get well. The chief part of the cure is fresh air. Medicine is seldom used because no medicine will cure tuberculosis. Good food and rest are great helps. Many of those with tuberculosis stay out of doors all day and at night sleep in tents or with all of the windows wide open, even in the coldest weather. Snow may blow in and the water in the room may turn to solid ice, but fresh air, the good angel of health, will give the body new strength and make it well and strong again. [Illustration: FIG. 66.--This man is curing himself of tuberculosis by sleeping at night, and sitting by day, on this porch.] Many years ago when the Indians lived in tents and often slept outdoors none of them had this dirty air disease of tuberculosis. Since they have formed the habit of living in houses nearly one half of some tribes have become sick with this catching disease. =Making the Lungs Strong.=--It requires over three quarts of air to fill your lungs. When you breathe quietly, less than one pint of air passes in and out of your lungs. This shows that a large part of the lungs is not used. The air sacs at the top and in the bottom part of the lungs are seldom filled completely. It is in these places that disease begins. Several minutes should be spent two or three times each day in exercising the lungs. Fill them completely with air many times. _Learn to breathe deeply while you are walking in the fresh air._ Hold the head up and the shoulders back so that every part of the lungs can be filled. _Sit straight. Your life depends upon your lungs._ Give them a chance to do their work and teach them to do it well. [Illustration: FIG. 67.--Unhealthful position which squeezes the lungs so that they cannot work freely.] =Tobacco and Pure Air.=--There is poison in the smoke of tobacco. This is shown by its effect on insects. Owners of greenhouses often buy the stems and other waste parts of tobacco. They pile it in a pan and after closing the doors and windows of the greenhouse tightly, set fire to it. The smoke rises and fills the whole house. In less than an hour it has killed many of the bugs and beetles which were destroying the plants. A person not used to tobacco will sometimes be made sick by sitting only an hour in a room where persons are smoking. It is wrong for smokers to poison the air which others must breathe. For this reason a smoking room should be well ventilated. CHAPTER XVI THE BLOOD AND HOW IT FLOWS THROUGH THE BODY [Illustration: FIG. 68.--The cells in the blood. The two white ones were drawn while crawling. Much enlarged.] =The Blood keeps the Body Clean within and gives it Food.=--Every tiny particle of the body, whether in the legs, arms, or head, must have food to keep it alive and help it do its work. It must also have oxygen, and it must be washed clean of its waste matter. All this is done by the streams of blood, which bathe every cell to bring it food and oxygen and to wash away its waste. =Parts of the Blood.=--Blood consists of a clear, watery part called _plasma_ and many little bodies named _cells_. The liquid found in a blister is the clear part of the blood. The cells which float in the watery part are so little and so close together that more than a million are in each drop of blood. A few of the cells are white, but most of them are red, and it is their color that makes the blood look red. Your body contains about one gallon of blood. It is carried through the body in branching tubes called _blood vessels_ (Fig. 70). [Illustration: FIG. 69.--Photograph of the heart from in front with the lungs pinned aside. One fourth natural size.] =The Blood Vessels.=--There are four kinds of blood vessels. They are the _heart_, the _arteries_, the _capillaries_, and the _veins_. The heart lies in the chest between the lungs. It squeezes the blood into the arteries. These carry the blood to all parts of the body. It then runs into the capillaries, which are tiny tubes connecting the arteries with the veins. The veins return the blood to the heart. The blood flows so fast that it goes from the heart down to the toes and back again in a half minute. =The Heart or Pump of Life.=--When the heart stops we die, because the blood can no longer flow to carry food and oxygen to the hungry tissues. The heart is a sac with thick walls of muscle. It is shaped like a strawberry and is about as large as your fist. Its cavity is divided into four parts. The two upper ones are called _auricles_ and the lower ones are named _ventricles_. The blood enters the auricles and then pours through an opening into each ventricle, from which it passes out into the arteries. =The Arteries or Sending Tubes.=--The blood is sent out from the heart through the arteries leading to all parts of the body. The chief artery is the _aorta_. It is larger than your thumb and extends from the heart down through the body in front of the backbone. It has more than twenty branches. All of these branch again and again like the limbs of a tree until they are finer than hairs. A large tube, the _lung artery_, takes blood directly from the heart to the lungs. Here it branches into more than a thousand divisions, so that the blood can take in oxygen and give off to the lungs its waste. [Illustration: FIG. 70.--Arteries, the tubes carrying the blood from the heart through the body. Only the chief vessels are shown on one side.] =The Capillaries or Feeding Tubes.=--These are the tiny tubes, finer than hairs, which join the smallest end branches of the arteries with the beginnings of the little veins. They are so thickly scattered in the flesh that you cannot stick it with a pin without piercing one. They are called feeding tubes because they have such very thin walls that the food in the blood and the oxygen brought from the lungs can pass through to feed the muscles and other organs. The dead parts of the body and also the ashes of the food used up, pass from the organs into the capillaries. =The Veins or Returning Tubes.=--The veins, beginning in fine branches formed by the capillaries, return the blood to the heart. The branches unite into larger and larger vessels and finally flow into one main vein, the _vena cava_. This extends along in front of the backbone and opens into the heart. =Why the Blood flows in only one Direction.=--The heart causes the flow of the blood. It does this by squeezing together its walls so as to make the blood go out into the arteries. When once in the arteries, the blood must go forward because there are little doors at the mouths of the arteries in the heart. These doors, called _valves_, open in only one direction, so that the blood cannot flow backward (Fig. 71). There are other valves between the upper and lower cavities of the heart, preventing the blood from being pushed back into the veins. [Illustration: FIG. 71.--The heart with the front part cut away to show the four chambers and valves. The arrows show the direction in which the blood flows.] The movement of the walls of the heart in and out is called the _heart beat_. This can be plainly felt by placing the hand on the left side of the chest. The heart beats about seventy times each minute in grown persons, but much oftener in children. At each beat a wave of blood flows along the arteries. This is known as the _pulse_. It may be felt at the base of the thumb, where an artery runs just under the skin. =Why the Heart sometimes beats Faster.=--When we run or do hard work, the heart may beat twice as fast as when we are lying down. This is because the muscles need more oxygen to help them act. Work makes them get hungry, and they send word by the nerves to the heart to hurry along the blood to bring more oxygen from the lungs. When germs make the body sick, the heart often beats faster because it is affected by the poison made by the germs. The doctor then feels the pulse to tell how much the body is poisoned. =Use of Blood Cells.=--The red cells act like boats. They load up with oxygen in the lungs and carry it to all parts of the body. Here they trade it off for carbon dioxide, a waste substance. This they carry back to the lungs to be cast out of the body. There is one white blood cell to every four hundred red ones. The white cells are the body-guards. They change their shape and are able to crawl through the walls of the capillaries. Wherever the body is hurt, they collect in large numbers and eat the germs which are always trying to get into the body through sores. The white matter called _pus_ in a sore is largely made of white blood cells which came there to fight the germs and were killed in the battle. The germs of boils and fevers often get into the blood, but the white cells usually kill them before they have a chance to grow into large numbers and make the body sick. =How to stop Bleeding.=--Most of the larger arteries are deep in the flesh and seldom get cut. There are many veins just under the skin. If the blood comes out in spurts, it is from an artery; but if it flows steadily, it is from a vein. If the blood does not run out in a stream, it will stop without any special care. As soon as the blood gets to the air it forms a jellylike mass called a _clot_. This helps stop the flow. All hurt places in the skin should be tied up in a clean cloth. [Illustration: FIG. 72.--Stopping the flow of blood from an artery.] If a large artery is cut, a bandage twisted tight with a stick around the limb on the side of the wound next to the heart will stop the bleeding. If a vein is cut, the bandage should be placed on the side of the cut away from the heart. =Alcoholic Drinks weaken the Blood.=--It has been noticed for some years that when a user of beer or whisky is attacked with fever, the disease is more severe than in one not using alcohol. The reason for this has lately been explained by a well-known scientist working in Paris. He put certain disease germs in rabbits, but they did not become sick. When he gave them a little alcohol and put the same amount of disease germs in them as before, they became sick and died. By careful study he learned that the white blood cells had in the first case killed the germs. In the second experiment the blood cells were made so weak and lazy by the alcohol that they did not put up such a strong fight against the germs. =Tobacco and the Blood.=--Any one who chews or smokes tobacco regularly gets much of the poison into the blood. The vessels in the mouth and throat drink in some of the juice and also the poison from the smoke. How much this poison affects the blood cells is not known, but it is likely to do them some harm because it makes the growing cells of the body less active. =How Beer weakens the Heart.=--Whisky was at one time thought to strengthen the heart, but doctors generally agree now that it weakens the heart. It may make the heart beat a little stronger for a few minutes, but after that the beating is weaker than usual. Much use of beer is known to make fat collect around the heart and also cause some of the heart muscle itself to change into fat. In this way the heart becomes so weak that it can no longer do its work, and death results. The reports from Germany show that hundreds of persons die every year from weakened hearts made so by the use of much beer. =Alcohol hurts the Blood Vessels.=--Careful examination of the blood vessels of drunkards after death shows that in many cases the alcohol has caused the walls of the vessels to become thick and sometimes hard. The thickening of the wall makes the channel of the tube smaller. The heart must then work much harder to get the blood through to feed the tissues. =Tobacco and the Heart.=--Many boys who use tobacco regularly do not have a steady heart beat. This is specially true of those who smoke several cigarettes daily. A few years ago, when our country was at war with Spain, thousands of young men, wanted for soldiers, were examined to find out whether their bodies were strong enough to endure the hardships of war. Hundreds were refused admittance to the army because of weak bodies, and many of them were reported by the physicians as having hearts weakened by the use of tobacco. The boys preparing for the army at the Military Academy at West Point and for sea fighting at the Naval Academy at Annapolis are not allowed to smoke cigarettes. Our country must have strong men for hard work. Tobacco never gives strength, but often causes weakness. CHAPTER XVII INSECTS AND HEALTH =Malaria or Chills and Fever.=--Malaria is a disease in which the patient usually has a chill followed by a fever at the same time each day or every other day. Thousands of people suffer from this sickness in the warm parts of our country and hundreds of them die every year. In some regions people cannot live because this sickness attacks every one who comes there. Many years ago a doctor found in the blood of malaria patients tiny animals. He thought that they might be the cause of the illness, but he could not find out how they got into the blood. =Finding out how Malaria Germs get into the Blood.=--It had been noticed for many years that mosquitoes were always found wherever there was malaria. In the year 1900 two men decided to find out if they could live in a malaria region and not have the disease when the mosquitoes were kept from biting them. [Illustration: FIG. 73.--Position of the common humpback mosquito at rest with body full of blood sucked by thrusting the bill into the flesh.] They made their home a whole season in a cottage in the midst of many persons who were sick with malaria. They breathed the same air, ate the same kind of food, and drank the same kind of water as those who suffered from the disease, but they remained well. The only thing that they did different from those who got sick was to keep the mosquitoes out of their rooms at night by means of screens. This experiment and many other studies have shown that we catch malaria only by the bites of mosquitoes. [Illustration: FIG. 74.--Position of the malaria mosquito at rest.] =Only a Few Mosquitoes carry Malaria.=--Malaria is not common in all regions where mosquitoes live, and it has been found that only one group of mosquitoes carries the germs. The two common groups are the straight-backed and the humped. To prove that the straight-backed ones did the harm several of them were allowed to suck blood from a man sick with malaria in Italy. They were then sent to London and let bite a healthy man. In a few days he became sick with malaria. Many experiments with the humped-back mosquitoes, found nearly everywhere in our country, show that they do not carry malaria germs. =Yellow Fever.=--Until 1901 yellow fever was the scourge of many cities in the South. Thousands of persons lost their lives from it. Wherever the dread disease broke out in a city many persons would flee to the country because they thought that they could not breathe the air without getting the germs. Some persons thought that mosquitoes might cause the disease, and in 1900 experiments were carried out in Cuba to learn whether mosquitoes really did carry yellow fever germs. Seven men made their home in a room well screened to keep out the mosquitoes. They used clothing which had been worn by others sick with the fever and even slept on pillows and blankets on which yellow fever victims had died. Many persons thought that these bedclothes were full of fever germs and that all the men would surely get the disease. Not one of them, however, got sick although they lived in the midst of these soiled materials for three weeks. [Illustration: FIG. 75.--The yellow fever mosquito biting the finger. Note how the lower lip is bent.] Seven other men were chosen for another experiment. A large room was prepared and made thoroughly clean. Only clean bedding and clean clothes were used. The men were given pure food and pure water, but into the room were let loose mosquitoes which had been sucking blood from a person sick with the fever. In a few days six of the seven men became sick with the fever and one of them died. From these experiments and other studies we now know that _this dreadful fever is carried from the sick to the well only by the bites of mosquitoes_. [Illustration: FIG. 76.--A bunch of mosquito eggs floating on the surface of the water. Enlarged about fifteen times.] =How Mosquitoes Live.=--Before we can get rid of any pests we must know where the eggs are hatched and the young pass their early life. The eggs of mosquitoes are laid on standing water. The water may be in an old tomato can, a rain barrel, a cistern, or a large pond. A day or two after the mother lays one or two hundred eggs, they hatch into dark, wriggling objects called _wigglers_. In from ten to twenty days later they change into flying mosquitoes. These habits of life show that the easiest time to kill them is when they are young. [Illustration: FIG. 77.--Photograph of wigglers, the stage in which the mosquito lives a week or two in water.] =Getting rid of Mosquitoes.=--During warm weather mosquitoes cause the death of more than a thousand persons in the world every day besides making many others very sick. To get rid of mosquitoes is to prevent sickness and death. In one year yellow fever killed over five thousand people in New York and Philadelphia because the doctors did not know how to stop the disease from spreading. When this fever broke out in New Orleans in 1905, less than five hundred persons died of it because the doctors had then learned that the disease is spread only by the yellow fever mosquito. They therefore began killing the mosquitoes. Kerosene was poured over all the ponds and stagnant pools of water which could not be drained. This kills the young mosquitoes because the oil gets into their breathing tube which they stick up to the surface of the water to get air. All rain barrels and tin cans were emptied and cisterns were tightly covered. Men, women, and children worked week days and Sundays killing mosquitoes because they knew that they were saving human life. The destroying fever was stopped. [Illustration: FIG. 78.--Photograph of eggs laid on waste matter by two flies in one hour.] =Flies cause much Sickness.=--Very few people are afraid of house flies because they do not bite. Although they are so small and seemingly harmless yet we know that they cause many more deaths every year than mad dogs, poisonous snakes, and all wild beasts. Flies crawl around among slops, in spittoons, and in other unclean places. In this way they get thousands of germs of tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and cholera on their feet and then scatter them over our food as they crawl about on the table, in the grocery store, or among the milk cans. In our last war with Spain more than a thousand of our soldiers were made sick with fever carried to them by flies. In Denver, Colorado, in 1908 fifty persons were made sick with the fever by flies which fed on the slops from a sick room and then crawled around in the milk cans from which those who became sick used milk. [Illustration: FIG. 79.--Photograph of the worm stage or larva of the fly at the left and three of the sleeping stage or pupæ at the right. Twice the natural size.] =How to fight the Flies.=--House flies lay at one time about one hundred eggs in the dirt thrown out of horse stables, in garbage cans, or in any other unclean place. In a day or two the eggs hatch into little white worms which feed on the dirt. One or two weeks later the worms change to flies. Flies may be kept out of houses by putting screens in the windows and doors or by darkening the rooms when they are not in use. The few which gain entrance may be caught in fly traps. All food in the store or the home should be kept covered. It is not safe to eat candy on which flies have wiped their feet or to drink the milk in which they have washed them. [Illustration: FIG. 80.--Photograph of a half handful of manure which had been thrown out of a horse stable. Note more than one hundred houseflies in the sleeping stage.] The surest way to get rid of flies in any community is for all the people to work together and keep the entire neighborhood clean. No dead grass, weeds, or rags should be allowed to lie in the backyards or alleys. The cleanings from stables should be hauled away every week or stored in tightly covered boxes. Garbage cans must have close-fitting lids, so that there will be no place in which the young may hatch and grow. =Other Insects which carry Disease.=--In certain parts of Africa, the _sleeping sickness_ has made ruins of prosperous villages. Thousands of the natives are dying yearly from this disease. The germs are carried from one person to another by the bite of a fly. Some fleas carry the germs of _plague_, which a few centuries ago swept across Asia and Europe destroying hundreds of lives daily. The plague is now common in India and was present in California in 1908 and 1910. The bedbug spreads several kinds of fevers in warm countries and may also be a carrier of leprosy and typhoid fever. These facts show that insects are dangerous and should be kept out of the home. Any one troubled with these little pests in the house may learn how to get rid of them by writing to the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. CHAPTER XVIII HOW THE BODY MOVES =The Need of a Framework.=--The body needs a stiff framework made of bones for three purposes. One purpose is to give it shape, a second purpose is to help the body move, and a third one is to protect from injury some of the delicate organs, such as the heart and brain. The bones are nowhere separate but are joined together with tough bands named _ligaments_. All the bones together form the _skeleton_. All animals from fish to man have a skeleton. Many of the lower creatures, such as worms and flies, have no bony skeleton. Most of these move sluggishly or have a hardened outer covering, like beetles and wasps. The skeleton of animals such as the cat, rabbit, or cow, has about the same number of bones as man, and they are arranged in the same way. =Of what a Bone is Made.=--Although the bones are so hard, they are not dead. They contain blood, have feeling, and are just as much alive as the softer parts of the body. It is the lime that makes them stiff. This can be eaten out by putting the bone in strong vinegar or other acid for a few days. A long bone will then become so limber that it can be tied into a knot. The living part of a bone can be burned out by placing it on hot coals for a half hour. At the end of this time the bone will look just as before, but when it is touched, will crumble to pieces. =Forms of Bones.=--The bones of the legs and arms are hollow. This form gives the greatest strength with the least weight. You can prove this by using two sheets of paper. Roll one sheet and fold the other one. Hang weights on both ends of each and use the finger for a support in the middle. The cavity of these bones is filled with a soft white substance called _marrow_. This is largely fat. Each bone is surrounded by a tough membrane to which the muscles are attached. =Arrangement of the Bones.=--The bones of the head form the _skull_. The other bones of the body not belonging to the _limbs_ make up the _trunk_. There are over two hundred bones in the entire body. Eight of these form a case for the brain. Fourteen give shape to the face. A chain of twenty-six bones named _vertebræ_ forms the backbone. [Illustration: FIG. 81.--Photograph of the bones of the skeleton.] Twelve pairs of _ribs_ encircle the chest. They are fastened behind to the backbone. The front parts of the ribs are made of pieces of gristle. The seven upper pairs are joined to the breastbone. The five lower pairs are named _false ribs_. The _collar bone_ is in front of the shoulder and behind it is the flat _shoulder blade_. There is one bone in the upper part of each arm and leg and two bones in the lower part of each limb. Twenty-eight small bones are found in the hand, while twenty-seven are present in the foot. =How the Bones may be Injured.=--In the young some of the entire bones and parts of many others are soft like gristle. For this reason, the bones of the young seldom get broken, but they are easily bent and pressed out of their natural shape. On this account you should hold the body erect in sitting and walking. Bending over the table or desk day after day is not only likely to cause round shoulders, but is sure to squeeze up the lungs and other organs so they cannot do their best work. Sitting at a table or desk, so that one shoulder is higher than the other or carrying books at the side, so that they rest on the hip may cause a curve sidewise in the backbone. Tight clothing about the waist presses the ribs out of shape and hurts the other organs within the body. [Illustration: FIG. 82.--How the bones are held together. A piece has been cut out of the tough ligament to show the cup of the hip bone into which the head of the thigh bone fits.] =Caring for Broken Bones.=--When a bone of the arm or leg is broken, the muscles tend to make the ends shove over each other. The broken ends are sometimes sharp, and if the limb is bent, these may tear through the flesh. This may be prevented by binding a board firmly on opposite sides of the limb across the broken part. This will hold the bones in place until the surgeon comes and will also allow the patient to be moved. The surgeon will set the broken bones by bringing the ends together and holding them in place by sheets of wood or metal firmly held by a bandage. In a few days the membrane around the bone begins to grow new bone to join the broken parts. =How the Bones are joined together.=--The two general classes of joints are the _movable_ and _immovable_. Except the lower jaw, the bones of the skull are so tightly joined together that there is no motion between them. The bones of the wrist and back have but little movement. The freest motion is at the shoulder joint, where the round head of one bone fits into the shallow cup of another. This is called a _ball and socket joint_. Such a joint is found also at the hip. At the elbow and knee the bones move back and forth like a hinge and these are named _hinge joints_. =Working Parts of a Joint.=--The ends of the bones are covered with a thin layer of gristle. The bones are held in place by several strong bands called _ligaments_ (Fig. 82). These entirely surround the joint. On their inner sides is a delicate membrane which gives out a slippery fluid to make the joint work easily. The ligaments are sometimes strained, stretched, or torn by a fall. The joint then swells because the watery part of the blood collects there. A sprained limb should be elevated to prevent swelling. Bathing it in very hot water is helpful. =The Muscles.=--The muscles form the lean meat in any animal. They make up about one half the weight of the body. Each muscle is a bundle of thousands of little threads held together by other finer threads, while the whole is surrounded by a thin sheet. Little bundles formed of several of these threads called fibers may be seen in a piece of cooked beef picked to pieces. There are over five hundred muscles in the body. [Illustration: FIG. 83.--Fifty of the muscles just under the skin. Note the white cords, the tendons in the regions of the hands and feet.] [Illustration: FIG. 84.--The biceps muscle contracted above and relaxed or loosened below.] Some of the muscles are more than a foot long and have the shape of a ribbon. Some are circular like those around the mouth, eyes, and stomach, while others are large in the middle and taper toward the ends. =How the Muscles are fastened to the Bones.=--The two ends of a muscle are attached to different bones. In many cases the muscle is not joined directly to the bone, but is connected to a tough white cord called a _tendon_. The tendon is then fixed to the bone. Several of the muscles in the forearm run into tendons in the wrist because if the muscle part were to extend along the wrist, this part of the arm would be large and clumsy instead of graceful and slender. Some of these tendons may be seen to move by bending the wrist and then working the fingers. =How the Muscles do their Work.=--A tiny nerve thread runs from the spinal cord or brain to every muscle thread. Messages sent through the nerve threads to the muscles make them act. A muscle can act in only two ways (Fig. 84). It can become shorter or longer. When it gets shorter, we say it _contracts_. When it stretches out, it is said to _relax_. A muscle cannot contract more than one fourth of its length. To pull the forearm up, the brain sends a message to the muscle fixed by one end at the shoulder and by the other end to a bone at the elbow. The muscle at once becomes shorter and thicker, as may be felt by placing the fingers on it. Although it shortens only two inches it is fastened to the bone so near the elbow that it draws the hand up two feet. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Of what use are the bones? 2. What animals have bony skeletons? 3. What can you say of the form of bones? 4. How many bones in the body? 5. Name six bones. 6. What part of the arm has two bones side by side? 7. How many ribs have you? 8. Explain how a broken bone should be cared for. 9. Point out and name two kinds of joints. 10. What are ligaments? 11. Of what is a muscle made? 12. How many muscles in the body? 13. How many tendons can you feel in your wrist? CHAPTER XIX THE MUSCLES AND HEALTH =Making the Muscles Strong.=--No persons use all of the five hundred muscles in the body every day. In slow walking only about twenty muscles are used, while in running more than four times that number are called into action. Muscles which are not used get lazy and weak. Every time a muscle is made to act the blood vessels enlarge and bring to it more blood to supply food. The more food the muscle has the stronger it grows. The right arm is used more than the left in most persons. This makes it so much stronger that some boys can lift twenty-five pounds more with the right arm than they can with the left. =Using the Muscles keeps the Body Well.=--All muscles must have more blood when they are used so that the heart is made to beat faster and stronger by exercise. In this way its valves and walls become able to do more work. Such a heart not only does its work better in a well person, but is able to keep pumping when the body is weakened by disease. Many persons die because the heart gets too weak to push the blood through the body. In all the little spaces between the muscles and parts of other organs is some watery part of the blood containing much waste given off from the tissues. Moving the muscles presses on this watery waste in such a way as to move it along into the blood channels. It then can be cast out of the body by the lungs and other organs. One reason why we feel so good after exercise is because the poisonous waste has been taken away. No one can remain well very long without taking exercise. Children as well as older persons should enjoy one or two hours of outdoor play every day. [Illustration: FIG. 85.--Various ways of exercising the muscles to keep the body well.] =How to exercise the Muscles.=--Outdoor games give the best form of exercise. Tennis, baseball, cricket, rowing, and swimming are sports which bring nearly all the muscles into use. Every boy and girl should learn to swim. It is dangerous to go swimming alone or to swim in deep water. Cramp may seize the muscles at any time, so that the limbs cannot be moved. Hundreds of persons are drowned every year by venturing in deep water. Taking care of the yard and garden and helping with other work about the home is one of the best ways of getting exercise and at the same time doing some good. =Special Kinds of Exercise.=--A room with ropes, swings, and machines in it for exercise is called a _gymnasium_. Under the direction of a teacher the pupils can get quickly just the right kind of exercise to strengthen the weak parts of the body and keep every organ in health. The muscles oftenest neglected are those of the chest. Every one should keep his chest full and round by swinging the arms and _practicing deep breathing every day_. =Danger from too much Exercise.=--Lately it has been learned that very violent exercise for more than a few minutes often injures the heart. The running of many races until you are all out of breath or much jumping of the rope is likely to strain the heart. It is always harmful to urge the body on until it is completely tired out. =Alcohol makes the Muscles Weak.=--In the year 1903 two learned men in Switzerland spent much time to determine whether alcohol helped persons do more work. They tried more than two hundred experiments with men to whom they sometimes gave wine and sometimes food, and sometimes both were given together. The results of these tests showed that when wine was given alone, the man's ability to do work was increased for a short time, but later he could not do so much work as when he had taken no wine. When the man took both food and wine, he could do only about nine tenths as much work as when he took food alone. The most careful tests by other persons show that whisky will not help a man do more work, lift a heavier weight, or shoot straighter. In fact little or much whisky makes him less able to do any of these things. =Beer makes the Muscles Lazy.=--Doctor Parkes of Netley secured two gangs of soldiers to do the same kind of work. He allowed the first gang to drink some beer, but the second gang were not allowed to have any. During the first hour the beer gang did the most work, but after that the temperance gang did far more work during the entire day. The next week beer was refused the first gang and given to the second. The beer helped the second gang do more work than the first one for nearly two hours, but after that they did much less than the first gang. This shows that men who wish to do their best work during the entire day should not use beer. =Tobacco and the Muscles.=--Many experiments and studies have shown that the body cannot do its best work when even very small amounts of poison are taken day after day. The poison in tobacco is believed to weaken the muscles so much that no man on a football team in any of our large colleges or universities is allowed to smoke or chew during the season. Persons training for any contest where much strength is required do not use tobacco in any form. =Tobacco prevents Growth of the Muscles.=--The moderate use of tobacco by men has but little effect on the muscles. It may cause them to tire a little more easily when doing very hard work. Tobacco poison does, however, show a marked effect on the muscles of the young. Very careful measurements made at one of the large universities showed that the boys who did not smoke grew one tenth more in weight and one fourth more in height than those using tobacco regularly. This slow growth in tobacco users is partly due to the fact that tobacco makes the muscles in the walls of the blood vessels squeeze together so as to shut off some of the blood from the legs, arms, and other parts, so that they get too little food. Tobacco may also cause less food to be digested for the use of the body. CHAPTER XX HOW THE BODY IS GOVERNED =Making the Parts of the Body Work.=--Each of the hundreds of organs in the body has a certain work to do and this must be done at the right time. In order that all may work together and each one do its part when needed, there is a chief manager called the _brain_ and a helping manager named the _spinal cord_. Millions of tiny threads for sending messages connect the two managers with every part of the body. These threads form the _nerves_. =The Brain.=--The brain is a soft bunch of matter filling the inside of the skull. The bones of the skull are a quarter of an inch thick and prevent any common knocks from hurting the brain. It is surrounded by three coverings which also help shield it from injury. The surface of the brain is very uneven. There are a great many folds separated by grooves. Some of these are more than an inch deep. [Illustration: FIG. 86.--The under side of the brain and the spinal cord with the chief nerves of one side of the body viewed from in front.] =Parts of the Brain.=--The brain is divided into three chief parts. The upper and larger part is called the _big brain_ or _cerebrum_. The lower part behind is the _little brain_ or _cerebellum_. The part under the little brain and round like the thumb is the _stem_ of the brain. It connects the larger parts of the brain with the spinal cord. The big brain is partly separated into halves by a deep cut called a _fissure_. Each half is a _hemisphere_. The outer layer of the brain is gray. It is made of millions of tiny lumps of matter which are the bodies of nerve cells. These are connected by threads much finer than hairs with other parts of the brain and spinal cord. Over these threads called _nerve fibers_ one cell can talk to another somewhat as we talk over a telephone wire. [Illustration: FIG. 87.--Side of the skull cut away to show the brain. _B_, backbone.] =The Spinal Cord.=--This is a bundle of nerve matter about as thick as your finger. It extends from the stem of the brain down the canal in the backbone. The outer layer of the spinal cord is white because it is made of the tiny threads, _nerve fibers_. The inner part is made of the bodies of nerve cells and therefore looks gray. The fibers are branching threads from the cells in the cord and brain. =The Message Carriers or Nerve Fibers.=--In order that the managers may send messages, these fine threads, the nerve fibers, extend from them to all parts of the body. In many places from five to five hundred or more of these fibers are united in one white cord called a _nerve_. Twelve pairs of nerves are joined to the under side of the brain and thirty-one pairs are connected with the spinal cord (Fig. 86). The nerves of the brain branch to all parts of the head and neck, and one pair goes down to the lungs, heart, and stomach. The nerves connected with the spinal cord branch to every part of the muscles, bones, and skin of the arms, trunk, and legs. =How the Nerves do their Work.=--On a telephone wire we can send a message in either direction. A message can travel on a nerve in only one direction. For this reason there must be two kinds of nerves. One kind is called _sending nerves_ because the brain and cord send orders over them to make the organs act. The other kind carries messages to the brain from the eyes, ears, skin, or other organs of sense, telling it how they feel. On this account these are named _receiving nerves_. When we wish to catch a ball, the brain sends an order along the nerve threads down the spinal cord and out through the nerves of the arm to the fingers to get ready to seize a ball. The fingers are spread to grasp the ball, but they do not close until a message goes from the skin of the finger tips to the spinal cord, telling it that the ball is in the hand. =The Work of the Brain.=--The brain is not only the chief manager of the body, but the home of the mind. The mind acts through the brain. The mind receives through the brain what the eye sees, the ear hears, the nose smells, and the fingers feel. All this knowledge is stored up in the mind and called _memory_. These facts and others learned later are worked over by the mind. This is called _thought_. The mind rules and becomes good or bad according to whether it contains good thoughts or bad thoughts. _It is wrong to read books and papers about robberies and murders or to tell or to listen to bad stories_, because in this way evil thoughts get into the mind. The best way of keeping badness out of the mind is to fill it with goodness. It is said that Lincoln was so busy thinking how he could help others that there was no room in his mind for a bad thought. Doing some kindness every day helps much in the making of a good mind. =Habit.=--The doing of anything over and over again until the body goes through the same motions without any or very little thought is called _habit_. The brain and nerves are so formed that when they get used to obeying the same order of the mind again and again, they will carry out these orders when the mind no longer gives them. Sometimes they will continue to obey the old orders even when new ones are given. Many persons would like to break off the habit of drinking beer or whisky, of chewing tobacco, and using bad language, but they find it very hard to make the mind rule the body because they have let the nerves have their own way so long. Speaking cheerfully to those we meet, giving a kind word to our friends, and looking pleasant are good habits which every one ought to form in youth. They not only make the mind better, but they help the body to keep well and will prepare the way for success in life later. Nobody wants a grumbling clerk or a sour-faced housekeeper. [Illustration: FIG. 88.--The difference in appearance between a pouting and a pleasant expression.] =Parts of the Body work without Orders from the Brain.=--A snake with its brain crushed will still squirm and a chicken with its head cut off jumps about. These movements are caused by orders sent from the spinal cord. When the hand or foot is being hurt, the spinal cord orders the muscles to draw the limb away even before we feel the pain in the brain. Many of the movements of the body which are often repeated may be directed by the spinal cord, while the brain is left free to do other work. This is why the spinal cord is called the helping manager. The action of the muscles in the walls of the blood vessels, the working of the stomach, the liver, pancreas, and other glands are not directed by the brain, but by the _sympathetic nerves_. These extend from a little cord on either side of the backbone to all parts of the body and make the organs, such as the heart and sweat glands, which we cannot make obey our will, do their work. =Injury to the Nerves.=--The nerves are so important for the welfare of the body that all the chief ones are placed deep in the flesh, where they are not likely to be hurt. If the nerves leading to the arm were cut, it could not be moved, and we should have no feeling in it. The hurting of a part of the brain, the spinal cord, or the nerves may cause loss of feeling or motion in the leg, arm, or other part of the body. Such a part then seems asleep or dead and is said to have _paralysis_. Pressing on a nerve prevents it from acting. Sitting so as to press on the nerve of the leg often makes the foot go to sleep. The bursting of a blood vessel in the brain may let a blood clot form and press on the nerves which govern the arm or the leg. This pressure may cause paralysis. =Resting the Brain.=--When there is no food in the stomach, it has time to rest. When we sit down or lie down, the muscles get rest. The brain is always busy except when we are asleep. No one can live even a week without sleep. If a dog is kept awake five days, it will die. [Illustration: FIG. 89.--Sleeping in the position shown in the lower figure prevents free breathing and tends to cause round shoulders. The upper figure shows correct position.] Children need much more sleep than older persons. Men and women who work should have about eight hours of sleep daily to remain in good health. Children of twelve years should sleep nine hours each day; those of ten years, ten hours; those of seven years, eleven hours; and those of four years, twelve hours. =Getting the most out of Sleep.=--You should go to bed every night at about the same hour. This will help you to fall asleep as soon as you are in bed. Do not sleep in the clothes which you have worn during the day, but hang them up to air, and put on a night robe. Children should use a very low pillow, so that the body can lie straight in the bed. This gives the lungs and heart freedom to act. Do not lie on the back as this causes some of the organs to press on certain nerves and makes you dream. The windows should be opened wide because fresh air is the best aid to rest and health and keeps away tuberculosis. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. What makes the parts of the body work together? 2. Describe the surface of the brain. 3. Name the three parts of the brain. 4. Of what is the outer layer of the brain made? 5. Where is the spinal cord? 6. What are nerve fibers? 7. What work does the brain do? 8. What makes the mind good or bad? 9. What is habit? 10. How long should children sleep? 11. How can you get the most good out of sleep? CHAPTER XXI HOW NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS AFFECT THE BRAIN AND NERVES =What Narcotics and Stimulants Are.=--A _narcotic_ is something which when taken into the body makes the organs do their work more slowly and tends to cause sleepiness. Alcoholic drinks, tobacco, opium, soothing sirups, and pain killers are narcotics. A _stimulant_ is a substance which makes the organs of the body do more and quicker work and does not later make the organs work more slowly. Coffee and tea are stimulants. Beer, wine, and whisky were once thought to be stimulants, but experiments have shown them to be narcotics. They urge the brain to faster work for a few minutes, but a half hour later they make it act slower than usual. =Alcohol hurts the Brain.=--Within five minutes after a drink of beer or whisky has been swallowed, part of the alcohol has reached the blood. Within fifteen minutes much of the alcohol has gone from the stomach directly into the blood. In a minute after entering the blood vessels it reaches the brain. If much strong drink is taken, the cells of the brain become so numbed that they cannot give the right orders to the muscles to move the limbs. The person then staggers about and is said to be drunk. Much whisky taken will make the nerve cells so numb that a man cannot move, and he will then lie down as if in a deep sleep. A tablespoonful of whisky will make a child drunk and twice that amount may make him very sick. Much use of strong drink sometimes gives to the brain a terrible disease called _delirium tremens_. In this sickness the man thinks he sees horned animals, hissing snakes, and other creatures which annoy him. =Alcohol injures the Thinking Part of the Brain.=--It was once thought that wine or whisky would make a man think better. Now we know that either of these drinks makes his thoughts slower and also causes him to make mistakes. Two doctors in Europe made many tests with men to learn how alcohol affected their thinking. They found that when using wine the men could do about one tenth less work in adding numbers than when they took no strong drink. These doctors also tested the effect of alcohol on memory and discovered that the use of even small quantities of liquor caused their pupils to learn their lessons more slowly. When persons have taken only a very little drink, they often say and do very foolish things. They sometimes tell secrets, for which they are very sorry when they get sober. Often they become angry at the least cause and strike or even shoot any person who seems to speak or work against them in any way. =Alcohol makes People Steal and Kill.=--The alcohol in strong drink, when often used, appears to deaden that part of the brain which helps the mind know right from wrong. In one year the courts of Suffolk County in Massachusetts found 17,000 persons guilty of doing some wickedness and in over 12,000 of these cases alcohol was found to be the cause of doing the wrong for which they were arrested. Some time ago there were collected the records of 30,000 prisoners, and among these over 12,000 had done their wicked acts while alcohol was numbing the brain. Lately another careful record of over 13,000 prisoners in twelve different states has been studied. In over 4000 of these men the use of strong drink was the first cause of their crimes. =Alcohol makes the Mind Sick.=--Since the mind depends upon certain parts of the brain, whatever hurts the brain is quite sure to hurt the mind. When the mind cannot reason rightly, the person is said to be _insane_. A study of 2000 insane men in New York State showed that the use of alcoholic drink was the cause of the mind sickness in over 500 of them. Of 687 persons in Massachusetts who were so insane that they had to be cared for daily by others, more than 200 of them were brought to this sad condition by alcohol. =Brain of the Young easily overcome by Alcohol.=--No one expects to become a drunkard or a criminal when he first begins to drink. The continued use of alcohol, however, soon numbs the brain and weakens the mind, so that the person's will power is lost. He is then not able to quit drinking even though he wants to stop. He has become a slave to alcohol. _The brain of a young person is injured much more quickly by alcohol than that of an older person and he_ is much more likely to become a slave than one who begins the use of drink late in life. Doctor Lambert, of New York, studied the cases of 259 slaves to alcohol. He learned that four began to drink before six years of age; thirteen between six and twelve years of age; sixty, between twelve and sixteen years; 102 between sixteen and twenty-one years; seventy-one, between twenty-one and thirty years; and only eight after thirty years of age. These facts teach that it is dangerous for the young to take strong drink at any time. =Laws against Alcohol.=--The men who make laws for the good of the people are learning that alcohol is injuring the mind and body of many persons every year. For this reason laws have lately been passed forbidding the sale of strong drink in several entire states and in large parts of many other states. =Tobacco makes the Brain work Slower.=--An examination of the age and habits of hundreds of the students entering a large university in New England showed that those who smoked required more than a year longer than those who did not use tobacco, to learn enough to enter the first classes in this school. Moreover, out of every hundred of those who took the highest rank in their work in the university, ninety-five did not use tobacco. It is likely that tobacco makes the mind work slower by preventing the full amount of blood from going to the brain. It does this by making the blood vessels smaller. So far as known tobacco has but little effect upon the brains of older persons. Superintendent Ogg of Indiana reports that the occasional users of cigarettes are a year, and the regular users two years, behind those who do not smoke. The conduct and honesty of the smokers were also found to be lower than among those who did not smoke. =Opium, Morphine, and Cocaine.=--All of these harmful drugs are widely used in our country. They act on the brain in a strange way. All of them deaden pain. When a person first begins their use, only a small amount is required to produce the effect wanted on the body. Later the doses must be increased. After a few months' use the person becomes a slave to the habit of using them, and he cannot stop their use without the help of a doctor. It is therefore dangerous to use these drugs at any time. Powders used for colds in the nose, also paregoric and laudanum, contain these harmful drugs. =Pain Killers and Soothing Sirups.=--All pain killers contain opium or morphine or other harmful drugs. They are therefore dangerous to use. Pain is useful in telling us that some organ is out of order and needs care. Killing the pain does not help the sick organ, and it may let the organ get so sick as to cause death. One use of the nerves is to tell us when any part of the body is hurt or sick. Pain is nature's warning, and to numb the nerves which tell us about it is as foolish as to kill a person because he brings us bad news. _No medicine should ever be given children to make them sleep or stop their crying except by the advice of the physician._ =Powders and Pills.=--If you get sick, do not try to cure yourself with pills or powders bought at the store. Some of these medicines contain poisons which hurt the heart or other organs. A number of persons have been killed by taking such medicines. When you are sick, go to a good doctor who understands how the organs should work, and he will find which one is out of order and tell you exactly what medicine you need and what to eat in order to get well quickly. =Tea and Coffee.=--These drinks usually wake up the brain and make it work better for a time. If too much of them is used, they may excite the brain in such a way as to make persons nervous. If taken for supper, they may prevent sleep. Children should not use either tea or coffee. Tea sometimes disturbs digestion, and coffee may injure both the stomach and the heart. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. What is a narcotic? 2. Name some narcotics. 3. What is a stimulant? 4. Name some stimulants. 5. How long before alcohol taken reaches the brain? 6. What effect does strong drink have on the brain? 7. Does alcohol help us think better? 8. What facts show that alcohol sends men to prison? 9. What shows that alcohol makes the mind sick? 10. Why is it dangerous for the young to take strong drink? 11. What shows that tobacco makes the brain work slower? 12. Why should you not use opium or morphine? 13. What do pain killers contain? CHAPTER XXII THE SENSES, OR DOORS OF KNOWLEDGE =The Organs of Sense.=--In order that our body may keep out of the way of other persons and find food and drink and do its work, the brain must have some way of receiving news about what is near us, how it looks, and of what it is made. Special organs for receiving knowledge of people and things about us are scattered over the surface of the body. They are called _sense organs_. The chief ones are the two eyes, the two ears, the nose, and many organs of taste in the mouth, and the thousands of tiny organs of feeling in the skin. =The Eye.=--The eye consists of a globe called the _eyeball_ and parts which move this and protect it from injury. Each eyeball is attached at its back part to the large nerve of sight (Fig. 90). This carries messages to the brain, telling it what the eye sees. The eyeball is held in a socket in the front of the skull. A layer of fat lines the socket and keeps the eye from being injured by jars. The _eyebrows_ at the lower edge of the forehead prevent the sweat from running into the eyeball. [Illustration: FIG. 90.--Side of the face cut away to show the eyeball in its socket. _n_ is the nerve of sight; the other letters show the muscles which move the eyeball.] The _eyelids_ can close over the front of the eyeball to shut out dirt or anything else likely to hurt it. The lids have learned to do their work so well that we do not need to think to close them when anything flies toward the eye, for they are shut before we can think. A salty fluid called _tears_ flows from the tear gland at the upper and outer side of the eyeball. The tears keep the front of the eyeball clean. =Parts of the Eyeball.=--The outside of the eyeball is a tough white coat except in front, where it is as clear as glass. Within the outer coat is a very thin black lining to keep the light from scattering. In front the lining is not against the outer coat, but hangs loose and has in it a round hole called the _pupil_ to let the light pass through. The part around the hole is the _iris_. It may be blue, black, or brown, and can squeeze up so as to make the pupil very small when the light is strong. [Illustration: FIG. 91.--A slice from before backward through the eye.] The end of the nerve of sight forms a tender pink covering over most of the inner surface of the eyeball. The cavity within the eyeball is filled with three clear substances. The _lens_, shaped like a flat door knob, is fixed just behind the pupil. In front of the lens is a _watery fluid_ and behind it is a clear _jellylike mass_. The use of the lens and also the other substances is to bend the rays of light together so that they will meet at one place. =How the Eyeball is Moved.=--Six muscles fixed to the bones of the socket holding the eye have their other ends fastened to the tough coat of the eyeball. One muscle turns the ball upward, another turns it downward, one turns it inward and another turns it outward. If an inner or an outer muscle is too strong, a person may have cross eyes. =Keeping the Eye Strong.=--Nearly all young children have perfect eyes. After a year or two in school the eyes of some children become weak. Many children get weak eyes after they are ten or twelve years old. This is because they have not taken care of the eyes. The eyes are often hurt by reading a book with fine print, reading in a dim light, or by leaning over the book so that the eyes look downward instead of straight forward. As the eyes are very weak after measles and most other diseases, they should not be used much until a week or more after recovery. In reading the book should be held a little over a foot in front of the chest and you should sit nearly straight and let the light fall on the page from one side. Never read while lying down because it strains the eyes. Stop reading as soon as the eyes smart. =Helping the Eyes to See.=--Very few old people can see to read without the help of glasses, because the lens of the eye hardens in old age. To see things near by, the shape of the lens must be changed. In some children, the shape of the eyes has become so changed by straining them to read fine print or see things in a dim light that the eyes hurt after being used for any kind of work, and the head may often ache and make the whole body feel bad. Such eyes need help. You should have them examined by an eye doctor who can fit you with glasses which will help you see clearly without headache. =Keeping the Eyes Well.=--Bits of dirt often get beneath the eyelids and cause much pain. By taking hold of the eyelashes the lid may be pulled out from the eye and any dirt removed with the corner of a clean handkerchief passed gently along the lid. The eyes sometimes become sore because they are rubbed with soiled fingers on which are germs. These germs get inside the lids and grow, and in this way poison the eyes. Unless care is used sore eyes are likely to spread from one child to another in the school. The sick child rubs its eyes and then handles a book or pencil on which the germs are smeared by the fingers which touched the eyes. The next child picks up the same book later, gets the germs on the fingers, and then rubs the eyes. For this reason you should never rub the eyes. If you have sore eyes, _be careful that no one else catches the sickness from you_. =The Ear.=--The ear is made of three parts called the _outer ear_, the _middle ear_ or _eardrum_, and the _inner ear_. The outer ear is made of a plate of skin and gristle and a slightly bent tube about one inch long. At the inner end of this tube is a thin membrane or _drumhead_. Beyond the drumhead is the cavity of the middle ear about as large as a pea. A chain of three tiny bones stretches from the outer drumhead across this cavity to a tiny _inner drumhead_. Beyond the inner drumhead is the inner ear. [Illustration: FIG. 92.--View of the ear from in front. Three little bones stretch across the middle ear.] The middle ear is kept full of air by means of a tube leading from it to the throat. A cold or other sickness may cause this tube to fill up and make you deaf. The inner ear consists of a sac and four bent tubes filled with a watery fluid. They are also surrounded by watery fluid contained in channels in a bone of the skull. The end of the nerve of hearing is on one of the tubes. =How we Hear.=--Throwing a stone in the water makes waves which move farther and farther outward. In the same way a noise causes waves in the air. These waves pass into the ear tube, strike the outer drumhead, and make it move. This moves the chain of bones in the middle ear so that they cause motion in the inner drumhead. This in moving back and forth makes waves in the fluid of the inner ear which strike on the ends of the nerve of hearing and cause messages to be carried to the brain. =Care of the Ears.=--The ears should not be struck or pulled, as the eardrum is easily broken. Do not put pencils, pins, or anything else in your ears. Wax naturally forms in the ear tube to keep out bugs and flies. The outer part of the tube may be kept clean by wiping it with a moist cloth over the little finger. If you often have earache or a running ear, you should have it examined by a physician. _Neglecting a sick ear may cause deafness._ Some persons are deaf in one ear and do not know it. Test each ear by covering the other one with a heavy cloth and note how far off you can hear the ticks of a watch. =The Nose.=--The nose has a skin-like lining, but it is always kept moist by little glands which give out a watery fluid. The endings of the nerve of smell are in the lining in the upper part of the nose. Two nerves lead from the nose to the brain. When we catch cold, much blood rushes to the lining of the nose and it becomes swollen. It then gives out a thick white mucus. This covers the nerve endings, so that we cannot smell. Smell is of great use in telling us whether our food is good, by helping us to enjoy food with a pleasant odor, and by warning us against bad air. =The Sense of Taste.=--The nerves by which we taste end in the soft covering of the tongue and some other parts of the mouth. A food cannot be tasted while it is dry. For this reason much slippery fluid flows into the mouth from glands under the ears and tongue. This fluid, called _saliva_, softens the solid food when it is well chewed, so we can taste it. =The Senses of the Skin.=--There are endings of nerves in the skin all over the body. They are of three or four different kinds. Some of them tell us about heat, others tell us about cold. Some tell us about the shape, the smoothness, or hardness of objects, while others tell us when the skin gets hurt. Most of the nerve endings are in the deeper part of the skin, so that they are covered by the epidermis and cannot be hurt by the rough things handled. =Alcohol and the Senses.=--The senses are but little affected by a small amount of alcoholic drink. The sense of taste, after being accustomed to the sharpness of strong drink, may be less easily pleased with the taste of common food and drink. The use of large amounts of alcohol blunts all the senses. In a drunken man the senses of the skin are so numbed that he does not know when anything touches him, and he may be badly burned before he feels the pain. Heavy drinking makes the hearing less keen, enlarges the blood vessels of the eyes, and makes them appear red and bloodshot. =Tobacco and the Senses.=--The use of tobacco does not injure the senses of the skin and usually has no effect on hearing. Both chewing and smoking, if much practiced, make the sense of taste less delicate, so that one cannot enjoy his food to the fullest extent. Much smoking of tobacco may hurt the nerve of sight and in a few cases it has made men blind. Many boys have weakened their eyes by the use of cigarettes. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. Name the chief sense organs. 2. Of what use are the eyelids and tears? 3. Name four parts of the eyeball. 4. What is the iris? 5. Of what use is the lens? 6. What moves the eyeball? 7. When do children get weak eyes? 8. How are the eyes often hurt? 9. How may poor eyes be helped? 10. What makes the eyes sore? 11. How do germs get into the eyes? 12. Name the three parts of the ear. 13. What does the inner ear contain? 14. What may result from neglecting a sick ear? 15. Of what use is smell? 16. Why should food be well chewed? 17. In what part of the skin are most of the nerve endings? 18. What effect does tobacco have on the sense of taste? CHAPTER XXIII KEEPING AWAY SICKNESS =Too Much Sickness.=--Many diseases are caused by our own carelessness and our bad habits of living. We have about one doctor for every one hundred families. There are enough people sick every day to make a city as large as New York or to equal the number of people living in the thirteen states of Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Delaware, Montana, Vermont, New Hampshire, North Dakota and South Dakota, and Oklahoma. A careful study of disease and its cause shows that at least one half of all the sickness in our land can be avoided by right living. =The Cause of Sickness.=--Some people are so foolish as to make themselves sick. They weaken the body by using much beer or wine, by breathing bad air, by lack of exercise, or by fast eating. When the body becomes weak, it is likely to get sick at any time. [Illustration: FIG. 93.--The germs of diseases. Much enlarged.] It is not always our own fault when we are sick. It may be caused by the carelessness of others who have let germs escape from their bodies so that they are able to reach us. One half of the sickness in our land is catching sickness. That is, it is sickness which passes from one person to another and is caused by tiny germs or microbes. A catching sickness is called a _contagious disease_. Some of the common catching diseases are sore throat, colds, diphtheria, pneumonia, typhoid fever, measles, grippe, and whooping cough. =How we get a Catching Sickness.=--We get a catching sickness by taking into our bodies the germs from some other person. The germs of the sick do not pass off in the breath, but in the spit or anything else which comes from their bodies. This is why the spit and all slops from the sick room should be burned, buried, or destroyed in some way. [Illustration: FIG. 94.--How the germs of disease start on their mission of death. This sewer carries slops from the houses of the sick and well and empties into a stream used below for drinking water.] We should think it very wicked if a showman should turn his lions and tigers loose in a crowd of women and children. Somebody would surely be killed and others hurt. It is just as wrong to turn loose the germs of the sick by throwing the spit and the slops where they will get into a stream or where the flies may find them and by soiling their feet leave death in their trail wherever they crawl. =How the Germs of Sickness catch Us.=--The germs of sickness have no feet to walk and no wings to fly, yet they easily travel from the sick to the well. They are not killed by being frozen, or drowned by floating in water, or destroyed by drying. For this reason they can travel with the ice, water, milk, and dust. In Buffalo, New York, fifty-seven children caught the scarlet fever in one week by using milk cared for by a boy who was getting well from the scarlet fever. The germs of sickness are so small that a million can hang to the hands or clothing and not be seen. For this reason they are often left clinging to the fingers, desks, books, and pencils, and travel in large numbers on the feet of flies. The surest way the germs have of getting from one person to another is by the common drinking cup. [Illustration: FIG. 95.--Photograph of clear beef broth jelly in which a fly walked five minutes scattering germs. Two days later each germ brushed off the fly's feet grew into a city of germs appearing as a white spot.] =The Common Drinking Cup is an Exchange Station for Germs.=--The most careful examinations have shown that there are thousands of children as well as grown persons who have very light attacks of scarlet fever, tuberculosis, or other diseases and go to school or about their work scattering the germs of sickness in their spit. A child seldom drinks from a cup without leaving on it thousands of germs. Some of these may be germs which will cause sickness. On one drinking cup used in a school, the germs were found to be as thick as the leaves on a maple tree in June. In an Ohio school one warm day, a boy with beginning measles drank from the cup which was afterward used on the same day by the teacher and all the other pupils. In less than two weeks every pupil and the teacher were suffering from measles. _Put nothing into your mouth which has been in another's mouth._ [Illustration: FIG. 96.--A schoolhouse in Morgan county, Ohio, where sixteen pupils and the teacher caught the measles in one day by drinking from a cup which had been used by a boy sick with the measles.] =The Golden Rule.=--If you have a catching sickness, such as measles, chicken pox, or whooping cough, stay away from others. Since the germs of some diseases, like scarlet fever and diphtheria, remain in the spit sometimes several months after you feel well, don't scatter your spit. Hold a handkerchief before your face when you sneeze or cough. _Wash your hands before handling food._ =Some Animals carry Sickness.=--Mosquitoes carry malaria and yellow fever and some other diseases. Flies carry typhoid fever, grippe, diphtheria, and tuberculosis. Bedbugs and fleas carry the plague and leprosy. Rats carry the plague. Cats sometimes carry diphtheria. Many cows have tuberculosis and the germs of this disease are then sometimes found in their milk. Some children have caught tuberculosis from drinking such milk. [Illustration: FIG. 97.--A pane of glass held about two feet before the face of a boy who sneezed. The spots are the droplets of spit thrown out. Each spot showed under the microscope from 50 to 1000 germs.] =Keeping away Smallpox.=--Smallpox was once the most terrible of all diseases. It is so catching that two or three were often sick with it at one time in the same family. Sometimes nearly one half the people of a whole town would have the disease in one year. Over a hundred years ago nearly every grown up person had little pits scattered over his face as a result of having had smallpox. You can always keep away smallpox by being vaccinated. The doctor can vaccinate you by putting on the freshly scraped skin of your arm some weak smallpox germs from a clean healthy calf which has been vaccinated. Your arm will in a few days get sore and you will not feel well for about one week, but you will be made safe from smallpox for several years. Fifty nurses were vaccinated in Philadelphia and cared for many sick with the smallpox, staying with them day after day, but not one of the nurses took the disease. _Every one should be vaccinated when a year old and again at the age of ten or twelve years._ =Colds.=--Some colds are catching, but we generally take cold because we have weak bodies or have been careless. If you want to be free from colds, remember these six rules:-- Don't sit still in wet clothes or with wet feet. Don't sit in a cold draft or in a cold room. Don't sit on the damp ground or on the ice when you are resting from skating. Don't cool off quickly after exercising. Sleep in a room with the windows _wide_ open. Take a cold bath every morning and draw fresh air to the bottom of the lungs many times every day. =Tuberculosis or Consumption.=--This disease is so common and deadly that twenty persons die from it in our country every hour. It is caused by tiny germs (Fig. 63) which lodge in the lungs, glands, bones, or other parts of the body, where they give off poison and hurt the tissues. We take these germs into the body with dust or food, and also by putting to the lips a drinking cup or other things used by a consumptive. Generally the germs will not grow in a strong body, even when they have lodged there. =Preventing Consumption.=--Living in poorly lighted houses without much fresh air, working in dusty rooms, using much strong drink and tobacco, eating poor food, losing sleep, neglecting a cough, and taking little or no outdoor exercise weaken the body so that the consumption germs can grow in it. Deep breathing, sitting and walking erect, living in rooms with sunshine, sleeping with the windows open eight or nine hours every night, and eating good food will prevent one from taking consumption and will often cure the disease. Persons with this sickness give out the germs in their spit, which should be caught in a cup and burned. =The Hookworm Disease.=--This is a sickness affecting thousands of persons in the South. It is caused by tiny worms half as large as a pin hanging fast to the lining of the bowels. The worm is sometimes called the lazy germ because it destroys the red blood cells and makes the body feel weak and lazy. Children with these worms grow slowly, have a dry skin, and a swollen abdomen with a tender spot below the stomach. The disease is easily cured by a physician, but it is better to prevent it by killing the germs in the waste from the bowels. For directions, address the Department of Health at the capital of your state. If the germs reach the ground they crawl around and may get into the well, and enter the body again with the drinking water. Generally, however, the worms enter through the skin of those going barefooted, and are carried by the blood to the lungs. From here they go up the windpipe to the throat, and then down the gullet to the bowels. It is their entrance through the skin that causes ground itch or dew itch. Wearing shoes will help prevent the disease. =A Strong Body Wins.=--Nobody wants to be weak and sickly. Most all of us could keep well if we would try in the right way to keep the body strong. To keep the body in health it must have plenty of sleep, enough good food well chewed, plenty of clean water, exercise every day, and an abundance of fresh air. The body is the temple of the soul. Don't hurt it with bad habits. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS 1. How many people are sick to-day in our country? 2. How can much sickness be avoided? 3. What causes sickness? 4. What is a contagious disease? 5. Name some contagious diseases. 6. How do we get a catching sickness? 7. Why should we be careful with the slops from the sick room? 8. Tell how children in Buffalo caught scarlet fever. 9. What is the danger in using a cup from which others have drunk? 10. How can you prevent others from getting your sickness? 11. Name some animals which carry sickness. 12. How can we keep away smallpox? 13. Give six rules to keep away colds. 14. How may the body be kept strong? CHAPTER XXIV HELPING BEFORE THE DOCTOR COMES =The Need of Quick Help.=--In many places in the country, or when out camping, it is impossible to get a doctor in less than two or three hours. Unless some one at hand can give aid before the doctor comes, much suffering and even death may result when a simple accident occurs. For this reason every one should know how to help in case of such accidents as burns, bleeding, choking, and sunstroke. =Clothing on Fire.=--Children should never play about an open fire. A single spark lighting on a cotton dress may cause it to burst into a blaze so that within a few minutes the child is enveloped in flames. The quickest way to put out such a fire is to wrap the child in a blanket, a piece of carpet, a coat, or any part of your clothing quickly removed. If nothing is at hand to wrap the sufferer in, roll him over and over in the dirt or weeds until the flames are smothered. When your clothing is on fire, you must not run, because this fans the fire and makes it burn. =Burns and Scalds.=--If there is clothing on the part burned, it should be taken off slowly so as not to tear the skin. If the clothing sticks, soak it in oil a few minutes until it gets loose. Cover the burned part as quickly as possible with vaseline or a clean cloth soaked in a quart of boiled water containing a cup of washing soda. Let nothing dirty touch the burned surface and keep it well wrapped. =Bleeding.=--A person can lose a quart of blood without danger of death and may live after more than two quarts have been lost, but it is wise to try to stop any flow of blood as quickly as possible. Tying a clean cloth folded several times over the cut will in most cases stop the flow. This will help a clot to form and will also close the ends of the cut vessels if the bandage is twisted tight with a stick. If the cut is on a limb and the blood comes out in spurts, a bandage tied about the limb between the cut and the body may be twisted tight with a stick so as to press upon the artery and close it. A piece of wood or folded cloth placed over the artery under the bandage before it is tightened is helpful. =Nosebleed.=--Some persons are troubled frequently with bleeding from the nose. The least knock may cause it to bleed for more than an hour. It may generally be stopped without sending for a doctor. Sit up straight to keep the blood out of the head and press the middle part of the nose firmly between the fingers. Apply a cold wet cloth or a lump of ice wrapped in a cloth to the back of the neck. Put a bag of pounded ice on the root of the nose. If it does not stop in a half hour, wet a soft rag or a piece of cotton with cold tea or alum water and put it gently into the bleeding nostril so as to entirely close it. Do not blow the nose for several hours after the bleeding has stopped as this may start it again. =Fainting.=--Fainting may be caused by bad air, an overheated room, by fear, or by some other excitement. A fainting person falls down and appears to be asleep. The lips are pale and there may be cold sweat on the forehead. There is too little blood in the brain, and the heart is weak. A fainting person should be laid flat on the floor or on a couch, and all doors and windows opened wide. Loosen all tight clothing and apply to the forehead a cloth wet with cold water. A faint usually lasts only a few minutes. =Sunstroke.=--A person with sunstroke becomes giddy, sick at the stomach, and weak. He then gets drowsy and may seem as if asleep, but he cannot be aroused. The skin is hot and dry instead of being cold and pale, as in fainting. The doctor should be sent for at once. The first aid for sunstroke is to put the patient in a cool cellar or an icehouse, raise the head, and wet the head, neck, and back of the chest with cold water. As soon as he wakens put him in a cool room. =Frostbite.=--When out in very cold weather, the end of the nose, the tips of the ears, and the toes and fingers are sometimes frozen. If a person comes into a warm room, these frozen parts will give much pain. The parts should be rubbed with snow or ice water until a tingling sensation is felt. =Breaks in the Skin.=--A small cut or tear in the skin may become very sore and cause much trouble if not cared for so as to keep the germs out. If there is dirt in the wound, as when made with a rusty nail or by the bite of a dog, it should be squeezed and washed with boiled water to make it perfectly clean. It may then be bound up in a clean cloth. A little turpentine poured on the wound will help kill the germs which may make it sore. If the dog is thought to be mad or the wound is too deep to be easily washed out to the bottom, a doctor should be called. =Snakebite.=--The scratches made by the little teeth of most snakes, such as the milk snake, garter snake, and black snake, do no more harm than the scratch of a pin. The _copperhead_, the _southern moccasin_, and the _rattlesnake_ have a pair of long teeth called _fangs_ in the upper jaw. These teeth have little canals in them through which the snake presses poison into the bite. [Illustration: FIG. 98.--Photograph of a copperhead snake whose bite may cause death.] If a person is bitten by one of these snakes, the doctor must be sent for and help given at once. Put a bandage above the bite and twist it tight with a stick. Make two or three deep cuts into the bitten place to let out the poisoned blood. Suck the wound to draw out the poison and apply ammonia. =Choking.=--A hard piece of meat, a bone, or a peach seed may slip back into the throat and press so hard on the windpipe as to cut off the air from the lungs. If the object is not far back in the throat, it may be seized with the first finger. A few smart slaps on the upper part of the back while the body is bent forward may drive enough air out of the lungs to push the object outward. =Drowning.=--Every one should learn to swim while young, but no one should venture in deep water. Stiffening of the muscles called cramps often causes the best swimmer to drown. After a person has been under the water two or three minutes he appears lifeless. He may, however, be brought to life if laid face downward, his clothes loosened, and the lungs made to breathe. A heavy folded coat, a piece of sod, or a bunch of weeds should be put under the chest. Then standing astride of him place the hands on the lower ribs and bend forward gradually so as to press on the ribs and push the air out of the lungs. Then straighten your body and slowly lessen pressure on the patient's ribs so that the air will run into the lungs. In this way make the air go in and out of the lungs about fifteen times each minute. =Poisoning.=--Whenever a person has taken poison, a physician should be sent for at once. In most cases an effort should be made to get the poison out of the stomach by causing vomiting. A glass or two of weak, warm soapsuds, a pint of water with a tablespoonful of mustard, or a glass of water with two tablespoonfuls of salt may be taken to make the stomach throw out the poison. Tickling the throat back of the tongue will help cause vomiting. If a strong acid such as carbolic acid or a strong alkali such as ammonia has been taken, do not cause vomiting. For acids give chalk in warm water and a pint of milk. For an alkali give vinegar in water. INDEX Ab do´men, 15. Ad´e noids, 105, 106. Air and health, 111-116. Air sacs, 102, 103. Air tubes, 103. Alcohol, 20, 35. and blood, 124, 125. and blood vessels, 126. and brain, 158-162. and clothing, 98, 99. and crime, 160, 161. and digestion, 57, 58. and health, 74, 75. and kidneys, 93. and lungs, 109, 110. and muscles, 146-148. and senses, 172. and skin, 92, 93. Alcoholic drinks, 68-73. as food, 27, 29. A or´ta, 16. Appetite, 58, 59. Arteries, 19, 119. Backbone, 16. Bac te´ria, 36, 39. of disease, 175-177. of milk, 43. Bathing, 91. Beans, 24. Bedbugs and disease, 134, 178. Beef tea, 31. Beer and digestion, 57, 58. as a food, 27, 35. and heart, 125. making of, 70. Bile, 52, 55. Blackdeath, 11. Bleeding, to stop, 123, 124, 184, 185. Blood, 17, 117, 118. Blood vessels, 19, 118-122. Body, parts of, 15-19. Bones, 135-139. Bowels, 47, 52, 53. Brain, 149-153. Brain, use of, 18. Brandy, 72. Bread, 23. Breathing, 100-107. Building foods, 22, 23. Burns and scalds, 184. Butter, 41. Capillaries, 119, 120. Carbon dioxide, 102, 111. Cells, 20. Cereals, 33. Cer´e brum, 150, 151. Chest, 15. Chewing and health, 49-50. Choking, 187. Cholera, 175. Cider, 40. Cigarettes, 82, 162. Cleanliness, 44, 91. Clothing, 94-99. Co´ca ine, 162. Coffee, 82, 83, 164. Colds, 180. Consumption, 109, 180-181. Cooking of eggs, 34. of meat, 30, 31. Corns, 98. Cotton, 96. Cream, 41. Deafness, 171. Diaphragm (_di´a fram_), 16, 104 Digestion, organs of, 47-52. Diphtheria, 175, 178. Disease, cause of, 25-27. from alcohol, 76, 77. from bad air, 114. from drinking cup, 108, 177. from dust, 108, 109. of eyes, 169. from flies, 108. from insects, 127-134. from milk, 43-46, 178. prevention of, 174-182. Disease, from spit, 107, 108, 178, 179. victory over, 12. Dis til la´tion, 73. Drinking cup and disease, 108, 177. Drowning, 187. Drunkards, cause of, 14. Dust and disease, 37, 108, 109. Dys pep´si a, 50. Ear, 169-171. Eggs, 23, 33, 34. Epidermis, 85, 86. Exercise, 144-146. Eye, 165-168. Fainting, 185. Fat, 24. Fats, 22, 23. Feeding of body, 21. Feeling, 172. Feet, care of, 98. Fish as food, 30. Fleas and disease, 134. Flies and disease, 45-46, 108, 132-134, 176, 178. Food, amount needed, 27. and health, 30-35. digestion of, 47-55. entrance to blood, 52, 54. Foods, 22. Freckles, 87. Frostbite, 186. Fruits, 33, 34. Fuel foods, 23, 24. Gastric juice, 51. Germs, 36-40. of disease, 175, 176. of milk, 43. of spit, 107. Glands, 47-49. Growth of body, 20. Gullet, 16, 53. Habit, 133, 154. Habits, 14. Hair, 88-90. Headache, 55. Hearing, 170. Heart, 16, 100, 118, 122. Hookworm disease, 181, 182. Hookworms, 175. Hy´gi ene, 10. Insects and health, 129-134. Intestine, 16. Intestines, 47, 52, 53. Joints, 139, 140. Kidney, 16. Kidneys, 17, 92. Larynx (_lar´inks_), 102. Leprosy, 134. Life, length of, 9. Ligaments, 135, 139, 140. Linen, 95. Liver, 16, 53, 54, 55, 100. Lung, 16. Lungs, 100-101. Malaria, 175. Measles, 175. Meat, 23. cooking of, 30. spoiling of, 38, 39. Meats, 30. Mi´crobes, 36, 37. Milk, 23, 29, 41-46. and scarlet fever, 176. as a food, 31. souring of, 39. Mineral foods, 24. Mold, 37, 38. Morphine, 83, 84, 162, 163. Mosquitoes and disease, 127-132. Mouth, 60-67. Muscles, 140-143. Muscles and health, 144-148. Nails, 87, 88. Nar cot´ics, 158-164. Nerves, 19, 149, 151, 152. Nose, 104-106, 171. Nose bleed, 181. Opium, 83, 84, 162, 163. Organ, 18. Organs of body, 16. Oxygen, 22. Oysters as a food, 30. Painkillers, 163. Pan´cre as, 16, 48, 52, 53. Pa ral´y sis, 155. Patent medicines, 84. Pharynx (_far´inks_), 47. Plague, 134, 175. Poisoning, 188. Pro´te ids, 22. Pus, 123. Radius, 137. Ribs, 137. Rum, 73. Sa li´va, 48, 49. Salt, 34. Scarlet fever, 175, 176, 178. Sense organs, 165-173. Shoes, 98. Sick, number of, 9. Sickness, how caused, 11. prevention of, 174-182. Silk, 95. Skin, 85-93. senses of, 172. Skull, 136. Sleep, 156, 157. and disease, 113, 114. Sleeping sickness, 134. Slops, care of, 175. Smallpox, 12, 178-180. Smell, 171. Smoking, 57. Snakebites, 186, 187. Sore throat, 175. Soups, 31. Spinal cord, 16, 19, 151, 154, 155. Spit, care of, 175, 178. Spitting and health, 107, 108. Spleen, 54. Starch, 23, 24. Stimulants, 158, 164. Stomach, 16, 47, 50-53, 100. Sugars, 22, 23. Sunstroke, 185. Sweeping and health, 37. Sweetbread, 48. Swimming, 145, 146, 187. Sym pa thet´ic nerves, 155. Taste, 171, 172. Tea, 82, 83, 164. Teeth, 60-67. Thigh, 15. Tissue, 18. Tobacco, 20. and air, 116. and blood, 125. and brain, 162. and digestion, 56, 57. as food, 34, 35. and health, 78-82. and heart, 126. and lungs, 110. and muscles, 148. and senses, 172, 173. Tonsil, 105, 106. Toothache, 62, 63. Tuberculosis, 107, 108, 175. and bad air, 114, 115. cause of, 178, 180. prevention of, 107-109, 111-116, 180-181. Trunk, 15. Typhoid fever, 175. how caused, 25-27, 28, 134. Vaccination, 179, 180. Vegetables as food, 32, 33. Veins, 28, 121. Ventilation, 111-115. Villi, 54. Vocal cords, 105, 106. Voice, 106, 107. Voice box, 102. War, deaths from, 11. Waste, giving out of, 17. Water, use of, 24, 92. Water and health, 25-27, 28. Water in food, 25. Whisky, 72, 73. Whooping cough, 175. Wigglers, 130-131. Windpipe, 16, 102, 103. Wine, 27, 28. and digestion, 58. making of, 70-71. Wounds, 186. Yeast, 39, 40, 69. Yellow fever, 12, 13, 129, 130. BALDWIN AND BENDER'S READERS Reading with Expression By JAMES BALDWIN, Author of Baldwin's School Readers, Harper's Readers, etc. and IDA C. BENDER, Supervisor of Primary Grades, Buffalo, New York. AN EIGHT BOOK SERIES or A FIVE BOOK SERIES The authorship of this series is conclusive evidence of its rare worth, of its happy union of the ideal and the practical. The chief design of the books is to help pupils to acquire the art and habit of reading so well as to give pleasure both to themselves and to those who listen to them. They teach reading with expression, and the selections have, to a large extent, been chosen for this purpose. ¶ These readers are very teachable and readable, and are unusually interesting both in selections and in illustrations. The selections are of a very high literary quality. Besides the choicest schoolbook classics, there are a large number which have never before appeared in school readers. The contents are well balanced between prose and poetry, and the subject matter is unusually varied. Beginning with the Third Reader, selections relating to similar subjects or requiring similar methods of study or recitation, are grouped together. Many selections are in dialogue form and suitable for dramatization. ¶ The First Reader may be used with any method of teaching reading, for it combines the best ideas of each. A number of helpful new features are also included. Each reading lesson is on a right-hand page, and is approached by a series of preparatory exercises on the preceding left-hand page. ¶ The illustrations constitute the finest and most attractive collection ever brought together in a series of readers. There are over 600 in all, every one made especially for these books by an artist of national reputation. AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY HICKS'S CHAMPION SPELLING BOOK By WARREN E. HICKS, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Cleveland, Ohio Complete, $0.25--Part One, $0.18--Part Two, $0.18 This book embodies the method that enabled the pupils in the Cleveland schools after two years to win the National Education Association Spelling Contest of 1908. ¶ By this method a spelling lesson of ten words is given each day from the spoken vocabulary of the pupil. Of these ten words two are selected for intensive study, and in the spelling book are made prominent in both position and type at the head of each day's lessons, these two words being followed by the remaining eight words in smaller type. Systematic review is provided throughout the book. Each of the ten prominent words taught intensively in a week is listed as a subordinate word in the next two weeks; included in a written spelling contest at the end of eight weeks; again in the annual contest at the end of the year; and again as a subordinate word in the following year's work;--used five times in all within two years. ¶ The Champion Spelling Book consists of a series of lessons arranged as above for six school years, from the third to the eighth, inclusive. It presents about 1,200 words each year, and teaches 312 of them with especial clearness and intensity. It also includes occasional supplementary exercises which serve as aids in teaching sounds, vowels, homonyms, rules of spelling, abbreviated forms, suffixes, prefixes, the use of hyphens, plurals, dictation work, and word building. The words have been selected from lists, supplied by grade teachers of Cleveland schools, of words ordinarily misspelled by the pupils of their respective grades. AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY SPENCERS' PRACTICAL WRITING By PLATT R. SPENCER'S SONS Books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 Per dozen, $0.60 SPENCERS' PRACTICAL WRITING has been devised because of the distinct and wide-spread reaction from the use of vertical writing in schools. It is thoroughly up-to-date, embodying all the advantages of the old and of the new. Each word can be written by one continuous movement of the pen. ¶ The books teach a plain, practical hand, moderate in slant, and free from ornamental curves, shades, and meaningless lines. The stem letters are long enough to be clear and unmistakable. The capitals are about two spaces in height. ¶ The copies begin with words and gradually develop into sentences. The letters, both large and small, are taught systematically. In the first two books the writing is somewhat larger than is customary because it is more easily learned by young children. These books also contain many illustrations in outline. The ruling is very simple. ¶ Instruction is afforded showing how the pupil should sit at the desk, and hold the pen and paper. A series of drill movement exercises, thirty-three in number, with directions for their use, accompanies each book. SPENCERIAN PRACTICAL WRITING SPELLER Per dozen, $0.48 This simple, inexpensive device provides abundant drill in writing words. At the same time it trains pupils to form their copies in accordance with the most modern and popular system of penmanship, and saves much valuable time for both teacher and pupil. AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY MAXWELL'S NEW GRAMMARS By WILLIAM H. MAXWELL, Ph.D., LL.D. Superintendent of Schools, City of New York Elementary Grammar $0.40 School Grammar $0.60 The ELEMENTARY GRAMMAR presents in very small space all the grammar usually taught in elementary schools. ¶ It gives the pupil an insight into the general forms in which thought is expressed, and enables him to see the meaning of complicated sentences. The explanatory matter is made clear by the use of simple language, by the elimination of unnecessary technical terms, and by the frequent introduction of illustrative sentences. The definitions are simple and precise. The exercises are abundant and peculiarly ingenious. A novel device for parsing and analysis permits these two subjects to be combined in one exercise for purposes of drill. ¶ The SCHOOL GRAMMAR contains everything needed by students in upper grammar grades and secondary schools. It covers fully the requirements of the Syllabus in English issued by the New York State Education Department. ¶ The book treats of grammar only, and presents many exercises which call for considerable reflection on the meaning of the expressions to be analyzed. Throughout, stress is laid on the broader distinctions of thought and expression. The common errors of written and spoken language are so classified as to make it comparatively easy for pupils to detect and correct them through the application of the rules of grammar. The book ends with an historical sketch of the English language, an article on the formation of words, and a list of equivalent terms employed by other grammarians. The full index makes the volume useful for reference. AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY Transcriber's Note: * Inconsistent hyphenation in the word "skinlike" retained. * Pg 91 Added period after "Clean" located in "Keeping the Skin Clean". * Pg 182 Added period after "sickness" located in "animals which carry sickness". * Pg 188 Removed extraneous comma after "back" located in "throat back, of the tongue". * Pg 190 Index page reference "47" amended to "67" located in "Mouth, 60-47". 
32521	----	Music by Lesley Halamek. KEEP-WELL STORIES FOR LITTLE FOLKS BY MAY FARINHOLT-JONES, M.D. PROFESSOR OF HYGIENE AND SANITATION, AND RESIDENT PHYSICIAN MISSISSIPPI NORMAL COLLEGE _ILLUSTRATED BY_ PAULINE WRIGHT SOPHIE NEWCOMB COLLEGE [Illustration] PHILADELPHIA & LONDON J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1916. BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1916 REPRINTED NOVEMBER 23, 1916 PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. FOREWORD The Author, in her work with young teachers, has frequently noted the great difficulty they seem to have in presenting hygienic facts to little children in a manner so attractive as to catch and hold their attention. The child's mind dwells constantly in the realm of imagination; dry facts are too prosaic to enter this realm. The "Land of Story Books" is the most fascinating of all lands, and therefore the Author has endeavored to weave hygienic facts into stories that will appeal to the child's imagination. She believes the truths of hygienic living and habits in the stories will "creep up on the blind side," so to speak, and impress themselves upon the young mind. The child can appreciate only those hygienic facts which can be applied in every-day living: he has no interest in health as an end in itself. Furthermore, that instruction in hygiene which is given as an end in itself, and which does not reach beyond the school-room in its influence, is a failure. Therefore, that instruction in hygiene which is in line with the child's interest is also the instruction which is most effective. The effort throughout has been to make scientific truths simple and concrete, and so captivating that the young pupil will at once find interest in them. The early years of child-life are the most impressionable; it is, therefore, especially important that we stress during these years that which means more to the conservation of life than any other one thing, viz., hygiene. Lessons of personal cleanliness, the necessity for good food, fresh air and exercise are the truths which are the underlying principles of these stories. With these as suggestions, the teacher may easily develop further. The mother as well as the teacher will find them helpful as she gathers her little ones around her knee at the evening hour, in response to the request for "a story." The questions following each story, a kind of catechism, supply more information than it was thought best to give in the story itself. The illustrations have been prepared especially for this work and make the lessons of the story more impressive. The Author desires to acknowledge her obligations to Mr. Charles Jerome for permission to use "The Sand Bed"; to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union for "The White Ship," and "Clovis, The Boy King," by Miss Christine Tinling. To Misses Marion Chafee and Bessie McCann, students of the Hygiene Department of the Mississippi Normal College for the "Hygiene Song" and "Little Fairies": also to Miss M. Larsen for "One Little Girl" and the poem, "Jack Frost"; to Mr. O. S. Hoffman for the poem, "The Five Best Doctors," to Messrs. Flanagan and Company, for permission to use the anonymous poem, "Merry Sunshine," and to Miss Virginia R. Grundy for "A Child's Calendar." M. F. J. JULY, 1916. CONTENTS PAGE THE WONDERFUL ENGINE 1 TWO LITTLE PLANTS 6 THE STORY OF A FLY 11 SWAT THE FLY 18 THE STORY OF THE RAIN BARREL 19 MALARIA 24 JACK FROST 29 JACK FROST, A POEM 34 A STORY OF TUBERCULOSIS 35 IT IS TIME THAT YOU SHOULD STOP 41 A TRUE STORY 42 TWO LITTLE WINDOWS 46 MERRY SUNSHINE 50 A WONDERFUL STREAM 52 TWO MILLS 57 A CHILD'S CALENDAR 61 THE TOOTHBRUSH BRIGADE 62 MR. FLY AND MRS. MOSQUITO 64 A HYGIENE SONG 70 OUR LITTLE ENEMIES 71 ONE LITTLE GIRL 77 CLOVIS, THE BOY KING 78 WHAT TEMPERANCE BRINGS 85 THE WHITE SHIP 86 A QUEER CASE 94 BREATHE MORE 97 THE LITTLE GIRL AND THE BUTTERFLY 97 LITTLE BAREFOOT 103 THE LITTLE FAIRIES 107 THE RED CROSS SEAL 111 THE SAND BED 119 THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT 120 A NEW STORY OF THE LION AND THE MOUSE 124 FIRST AID TO THE INJURED AND THE BOY SCOUTS 127 AN INVITATION 131 A GREAT FIGHT 132 THE FIVE BEST DOCTORS 135 GLOSSARY 136 KEEP-WELL STORIES FOR LITTLE FOLKS [Illustration] A WONDERFUL ENGINE We all have seen a steam engine, have we not? There are engines that pull trains on the railroad, and there are engines that make factories, gins, and saw-mills work. Then there are engines that run great ships on the water. How many know what must be done to one of these engines before it can do all this work? "It must have coal, or wood, or gasoline put into it." That is right. Now this coal or wood or gasoline, when it is used in an engine to make it work, is called fuel. Would we put rotten or green wood into the engine? No. We must always put in the kind of thing that will burn best, and make the most heat and do the most work. Let us see how this wood or coal we call fuel makes the engine work. First, we must burn the fuel. Second, when the fuel burns, it heats the water in the boiler. Third, the water changes into steam, and this steam gives the engine the power to work. Now we see how an engine is made to move and do work, such as hauling great trains of cars, and pulling great ships across the wide ocean. But we must remember that the engine will not do this work unless there is a man near-by to put the fuel into the engine. I want to tell you of another engine that is very like the steam engine. It too must have fuel before it can run or work. It is unlike the steam engine in as much as it grows all the time, and it does not need to have an extra man to put the fuel into it. You must think of your body as an engine and remember that it needs fuel to run it. The fuel that makes the body-engine move and work is the food you eat. You have learned that you must put into the steam engine the fuel that will burn best and make the most heat and work. The same thing is true of your body-engine. You must put in the fuel that will best make heat and the power to work. Have you sometimes eaten something which made you sick? It must have been that that was the wrong kind of fuel for the little body-engine. This is the reason our mothers are so very careful in preparing our food. They want the little engines to have the right kind of fuel so that they will not run off the track. Now what fuel must you use in your body-engine? In the first place you must put in fuel that will make the engine grow so that it can do a great deal of work. This fuel you get when you eat lean meat, eggs, milk, and many other things. If you want your engine to keep warm, you must use fuel that will make heat. You get this fuel by eating plenty of fats, such as nice butter and some sweet things. Potatoes, rice and syrup help to run your engine. You need some fuel that will make you plump and round and healthy looking, so you must put into your engine fruits, nuts, a little candy, and a lot of vegetables. You need to eat things that have color, such as: tomatoes, lettuce, greens, and beets,--not because they look pretty, but because they have iron in them and help to make your engine strong. You must remember that you eat food for three reasons: to make you grow, keep warm, and able to work. You must be careful that you do not eat too much of any one kind of food, but remember to eat a little of many kinds. Your engine can use only a little of each at one time. Wood is chopped into short pieces, and coal is broken up before it will do good work in the engine, so the fuel must be prepared before it will suit your engine. It must be well cooked and then chewed thoroughly before it will do its best work in your body-engine. You should be careful not to swallow any food until it has been chewed as fine as it can be. If you put into your engine the right amount of food, and the right kind of well-prepared food, you will have an engine more wonderful than any steam engine that ever pulled a train, or carried a big ship across the wide ocean. The engineer sees that his engine is kept clean and bright, in order that it may run smoothly. Since you are the engineer of your body-engine, you must keep it neat and clean that it may work well. [Illustration] QUESTIONS 1. What is it that causes the big steam engine to do its work, draw long trains, or big ships, or turn great factory wheels? 2. What must happen to this fuel--wood, coal, or gasoline--before it can make the engine do its work? 3. Did you ever wonder why it is that your body is always warm? It is very much like the engine. 4. What do you call this fuel that your body-engine uses? Just as the fuel for the steam engine must be burned if it is to make heat, even so must the food be burned in your body if it is to keep it warm and able to work. Of course the food in your body does not burn exactly as the wood and coal burn in the steam engine. It burns much more slowly--so slowly that you would not know that it burns at all if it were not that it always keeps your body warm. Just as the steam engine needs the fuel if it is to do its work well, your body needs the best of food if it is to be healthy and do the best work. You have learned that all foods do not serve the same purpose equally well. For instance, some foods such as lean meat, eggs, and milk build up more muscle than other foods do; while others, such as fats, syrup, sugar and potatoes, give more heat than other foods. 5. What do all colored vegetables contain? 6. What kinds of foods do people living in the very cold climates need a great deal of? 7. What kinds of foods do people living in very warm climates need a great deal of? TWO LITTLE PLANTS Look at this lovely little plant with its pretty bright leaves and beautiful pink blossoms. Well may we ask what makes the little plant so healthy, strong, and pretty. It is a delight to the eye. Now here is another little plant. It belongs to the same family. The same kind of seed was planted, and when its tiny leaves began to peep above the ground, it seemed to have as good a chance as its little sister plant. But the leaves are pale and drooping; they look sick. It has no pretty blossoms. Its stems are withered and weak; it can hardly hold its little leaves up. "Poor little sickly looking plant," its strong and rosy little sister seems to say. [Illustration] Let us see if we can find a reason for the difference between the two plants. I do not believe that it will take us long to find the cause of the sickness, for it is sick just like a little child. Mother Nature prepares a special food for all her children, food for the little plant children as well as for the little babies in our homes, and food for the little piggies and the frisky little calves out in the barn. When mother feeds little baby brother she gives him nice warm, sweet milk, because that is the food that he needs to make him grow big and strong. Mother Nature knows that the little babies and the little calves and pigs need this fresh warm milk, so she prepares it all ready for them. When we plant seed in the ground, the soft, warm dark earth furnishes food for the little seed, until its leaves and stems are above the ground. Its little roots run down into the moist, mellow soil and drink up the food Mother Nature has there for it. The warm sun shines down on the little plant and makes it green, and the pure air helps to make its stems strong and sturdy that it may hold its leaves and blossoms up for the passersby to enjoy. What a beautiful sight it is as it seems to nod a morning greeting of cheer and good health. Now the little plant with the pretty bright leaves and wonderful pink blossoms has had all the water and mellow soil and warm sunshine it needed to make it grow, from a tiny plant into the large handsome one we see. The little sister plant with its sick, pale leaves and no blossoms has not been treated kindly. When it was just a baby plant it did not have enough water to drink. The soil in which it was planted was poor, and did not have enough food to feed the tiny baby plant. The poor little plant was shut away from the bright sunshine and the clean, fresh air. Now its leaves hang down as if it were saying, "I am so sick; give me some water to drink, give me some food to make my stems strong, give me some sunshine and fresh air to warm me and make the nice green color come into my leaves!" We may give the little plant all that it asks for, and help it a great deal. In a few days the color will begin to come into its leaves and its stems will look stronger, but we doubt if the little neglected plant will ever become as strong as the little sister plant which has had all the good soil, water, air and sunshine that it needed when it was a baby plant. Little boys and girls need things to make them strong just as the little plants do. They need simple, pure food to make strong bone and muscle, pure water to drink, and to bathe their bodies with; fresh air to breathe; and sunshine to give color to their cheeks and sparkle to their eyes. If the little folks do not have the things that Mother Nature intended for them, they will grow thin and twisted like the little sick plant. Their cheeks will grow pale and their eyes will look dull and heavy and lose their sparkle. They will not want to romp and play as all healthy children do. They will not want to go to school. Little children who are ruddy and strong like the first little plant have mothers who see that they get all the food they need and plenty of pure water to drink; that they keep their bodies clean and play in the sunshine and breathe fresh air. These little girls and boys are in all the games. They love to run and play. They will grow into strong men and women and be ready to do the work for which they were created. If the little green plant is shut away in the dark, out of the sunshine and fresh air, it will soon droop and die. Children are human plants and need the same care and treatment that should be given other plants. QUESTIONS 1. Why was it that one of the little plants in the story was so healthy and strong, while its sister plant was weak and sickly? 2. Did you ever see a boy or girl who did not have enough wholesome food to eat, enough fresh air to breathe, and enough sunshine to give a healthy color to his or her cheeks? 3. What kind of a big boy or girl will such a child grow to be? 4. If we are to grow into strong, healthy, hardy, robust boys and girls--men and women--what rules must we obey? THE STORY OF A FLY I was hatched one sunny day in May in the nicest, warmest, dirtiest spot you ever saw. It was in a barnyard heap, just outside a city, that I first saw the light. I was not very old before I had to take care of myself, so you may know I was glad that I had opened my eyes for the first time in such a dirty place, because it is much easier for a baby fly to take care of himself in a dirty place than in a clean one. My good mother knew this when she flew away that May morning and left the tiny egg, from which I came, to Dame Nature to care for. Mother Fly knew that warmth, dirt, and moisture were all that a baby fly needed in its infant days. She knew that the dump-heap at the barn made the nicest kind of cradle for her baby, and it was rent-free to all the mother flies in the neighborhood. Day by day, I grew and soon began to take notice of things around me. It was not long before I saw that some of the other baby flies which were in the dump-heap with me had grown some beautiful gauzy wings. On these wings they began making daily visits from our fly-nursery to a near-by farm-house. When they came back from these visits, they would talk long and loud about the good time they had, and the nice things they had to eat in the great world outside the dump-heap. I was mighty glad that my wings were growing stronger each day. One morning, bright and early, I sailed away on my beautiful wings to see if all the wonderful things my little fly friends had told me were true. I followed the lead of my friends, and we soon came to that same farm-house. First, we went to a door--a screen they called it--and tried hard to get through. To our great disappointment, we could not get through; the screen was closed tight. One little fly said, "I will find a way in, I don't believe the folks who live here have been so careful with the kitchen door." So we flew away, and sure enough the kitchen screen door was standing ajar, with just enough of a crack in it for a busy little fly to slip through into the kitchen. I was next to the last one to get through; and, alas! when I did get in, you never saw such a disappointed little fly in your life. Everything looked very clean, too clean for me to enjoy it. Presently, one of my friends called to me and O joy! he had found some soiled dishes and bits of food on a table, just the thing for a tired, hungry little fly. The sugar bowl was uncovered, and, oh, how I did eat, for I dote on nice, sweet sugar. The pantry door stood ajar, and I could see some nice things to eat in there also. After we had feasted on the good things in the kitchen, we flew into the dining-room. There on the table was a pitcher filled with milk. I jumped into the pitcher and took a nice bath and a good swim. I came out very much refreshed, for I had left there in the milk pitcher all the dirt I had gathered on my feet and body in my early life. I walked much better. I walked all over the food which was on the table and I also walked on the baby's bottle which was on a nearby shelf. [Illustration] While I was thinking what I would do next, a lady came into the room. She had a dear little baby in her arms. You know how I love little babies. I love to tickle their noses and to lick the sweets from their juicy little mouths. I sat and watched the little fellow, awaiting my chance to make his acquaintance. Presently the lady gave the baby some milk to drink from the pitcher in which I had had such a nice bath. After the little fellow was fed, the lady put him to sleep and laid him in his crib in the next room for his morning nap. My friends told me to come with them into this room, the nursery. The lady had forgotten to put a net over the little fellow; so I crawled around and ate some sugar from his lips. It tasted so good that I crawled almost into his mouth. Since that happy morning, I have spent almost every day between the farm-house and out-houses. I have my daily bath in the milk pitcher and my dinner from the nice juicy food on the table. Very often I get my lunch of sweets from the corners of the baby's mouth, and I like this best of all. For several days I have felt lonely. I noticed that the baby did not come to the dining-room to get his milk and sugar. I kept wondering why he did not come, and finally I wandered into the nursery to see for myself. What do you think? The baby was lying in his crib all red and hot. While his mother was busy, I crawled on his mouth to see if there was any sugar in the corners for a lunch. Then away I flew. This morning I flew over to the farm-house again, through the kitchen door, and into the nursery. I thought I would find a glass of milk and have a nice bath and my breakfast. But, alas! the baby was not in his crib. The room was so still and cold it frightened me and I flew out. I saw several strange men and women; the women were all crying and the men looked sad. A man was fastening something white on the front door. I tried to understand it all, but I could not catch any word except "TYPHOID." I wonder what that means, anyhow? As no one will tell me, I must be off to the next farm-house to hunt a good dinner. This was a sensible fly, do you not think so, children? Thousands of other flies might tell the same story if we would only watch their habits and listen to what they have to say. QUESTIONS 1. I wonder if any of you can guess what was the matter with the baby on the morning the fly found it red and hot? 2. What had happened when the fly went back to it? 3. What caused the baby to have typhoid fever? 4. What is a germ? 5. Where did the little fly say he was hatched? It is in such places as this--in stables and other filthy places--that all flies are hatched and raised. They all like good things to eat. Flies can smell a good thing to eat a long way off; so they soon find their way to the kitchen and dining-room. On their way to the kitchen, they often stop by the out-houses and gather on their feet and legs a lot of dirt and germs. I must tell you now that the fly can get the typhoid germ or plant only from human filth. NOTE.--The teacher should have an inexpensive microscope and show the children a fly,--its head and its feet especially. 6. Have you ever seen a fly under a magnifying glass? On the bottom of the fly's feet are little glue-like pads and a number of little hairs on his body and feet, to which germs and bits of dirt stick. The fly in this story had come to the farm-house for the first time, you know, when he found the pitcher of milk and had such a nice bath. He had been gathering germs and dirt on his feet, both from his early home in the barn-yard and from the out-house at which he stopped on his way. Some of these germs gathered at the out-house had come from some person who had typhoid fever. As he crawled over the baby's bottle and its little mouth, he left some of the germs there and he left some in the milk pitcher also. It was careless of the mother to give her baby milk that was not covered. The mother did not know she was giving the baby milk in which there were these little plants, or germs, which cause typhoid fever. You have learned that the house-fly carries the seed, or germs, of typhoid. These germs, or seed, will grow and multiply in the body. So you should never leave food uncovered where a fly can get to it. 7. Since you know where house-flies are hatched and bred, what may you do to keep them from multiplying? 8. What else can be done to make sure that no germ can get to our food or drink? SWAT THE FLY S is for Sunshine, keeps nature clean, And makes Mr. Fly feeble and lean. W is for Waste, where the fly breeds, The fouler, the better it suits his needs. A is for Anything dirty and vile, On which the children may spend a short while. T is for Typhoid, whose best friend is the fly, It makes thousands to sicken and hundreds to die. T is for Trouble he brings to us all, From Spring's early green until far into Fall. H is for Housewife, his unceasing foe, Who traps, swats and otherwise brings him to woe. E is for Energy she puts into work, So long as there is one left she will never shirk. F stands for Friends of which he has none, If you look for his foes you may count me as one. L stands for Labor, which is always well spent, If it keeps Mr. Fly from enjoying content. Y stands for You, who will help in the task, Kill each fly you can is all we ask. _Author Unknown._ THE STORY OF THE RAIN BARREL O John! did you know that I almost fell on my head into the rain barrel at the corner of the house this morning? I was looking at the picture of myself in the water, when, all of a sudden, I saw the funniest little things darting everywhere in the water. I forgot to look at myself or to make any more faces at the broad face of the little boy at the bottom of the rain barrel. There were lots of these queer little things in the rain water. They were turning somersaults and standing on their heads every few minutes. Here is a picture of one. I tried to catch some in my hands, but they were too quick for me; they would just wiggle out of reach. This was why I nearly fell on my head. I ran into the house to ask Mother about them. Mothers know a lot, don't they, John? At least, mine does. I just knew she could tell me all about these queer little things in the rain barrel. When I asked her to tell me, she put her sewing down and went to the rain barrel with me. As soon as she looked she said she was so glad that I had come for her, that she would tell me all about these little "wiggle-tails," and that I could help her destroy them, as they would do much harm if they grew up. She said that they were the little baby mosquitoes. Isn't that funny? I did not know that mosquitoes lived in the water, even when they were babies, did you? I will tell you just what Mother said. She said that if I were near a pond or rain barrel, or even an old tin can, in which water was standing, early in the morning before the sun was up, I could hear Mrs. Mosquito come singing merrily to the water, and that if I watched and did not disturb her, I could see her rest lightly on the water and lay her eggs there in a little brown boat or raft-shaped mass, little eggs like these. The mosquito mother now thinks her duty to her children is done, for, after she lays her eggs on the water, she goes off singing, never thinking of them again. [Illustration] If nothing disturbs it, the boat of eggs floats on the water a little longer than a day, when all of a sudden the shells of the eggs begin to break and the little "wiggle-tails" hatch, or come out of the shells. These funny little "wiggle-tails" go frisking about in the water. They dive here and there down into the water, hunting for something to eat. These are the baby mosquitoes. They are very queer looking, with their big heads and eyes and a funny little tube at the tail end of their bodies. They push this tube up out of the water to get air to breathe. I saw a number of them push these little tubes up to the top of the water, but, when I got close to them, down to the bottom of the barrel they would dive, head foremost, as if they were scared. They soon had to come up again for another breath of air. Mother said that if no one disturbed them they would eat germs and all sorts of little water plants for about two weeks, growing all the time. At the end of that time, each one would curl himself into a cocoon, like a ball, called a pupa. After about four days of rest and growing in this cocoon, the case would break and out would come a thing with wings, a full-grown mosquito. It would stand on its case or cocoon, dry its wings in the sun, and then fly away to begin life as a mosquito. Mother said she did not want to give the little "wiggle-tails" a chance to become mosquitoes, and that if I would bring her some oil from the kitchen pantry, she would show me how to kill the little "wiggle-tails." I ran for the oil, oil just like that your Mamma burns in her lamps. Mother poured a few spoonfuls in the rain barrel, and that was the end of Mr. Wiggle-tail. The oil kept the "wiggle-tails" from getting any air to breathe through their funny breathing tubes, and they smothered. [Illustration] Mother says we must have a Mosquito Brigade and go about the place killing all the mosquitoes; that we must not let water stand in any tin cans or barrels; and that we must pour oil in the ditches and ponds where water stands and where the mosquitoes can lay eggs. The mosquito will not lay eggs on the dry land, for the "wiggle-tails" cannot take care of themselves on dry land, and the mosquito mothers know this. It seems to me that Dame Nature, as Mother calls her, has taught many wonderful secrets to her children. Mother told me why she wanted to kill all the "wiggle-tails." I will tell you about it to-morrow, if you will come to the grape-vine swing with me. QUESTIONS 1. What did the little boy see in the rain barrel? Why couldn't he catch them? 2. How did the "wiggle-tails" get into the barrel? 3. Why do they have to come to the top of the water so often? 4. Why did the little boy's mother want to destroy or kill the little "wiggle-tails"? 5. What is a Mosquito Brigade? Can't we have one in our school? MALARIA You remember, John, I told you about the "wiggle-tails," or baby mosquitoes, in the rain barrel, and how eager my mother was to put oil on the water and kill them. Well, Mother told me a long story about the baby mosquitoes and what they do when they are grown up. She said that mosquitoes carry malaria, or chills, from one person to another. Don't you remember when we had chills last summer and Uncle John had to come to see us and give us some medicine? Mother says that was because some grown mosquito had bitten a person who had chills, and while sucking that person's blood the mosquito had sucked into her bill some malaria poison; then later when she bit us, she punched some of that poison into our blood, while she was getting a supper from our blood. The mosquito's bill is as sharp as one of Uncle John's knives. Mother told me that a long time ago, when the English came to Virginia, they settled at Jamestown, and they were afraid of the Indians, the bears, and the panthers that could hide in the forest near-by. The English did not know it, but they had a more deadly enemy then at Jamestown than the Indians and the panthers. This enemy was so small they could not see it, and then, too, they had not learned about it as we are learning now. This enemy was the little germ or parasite that causes malaria. Mother says that it is easy to fight an enemy when it is out in the open. The settlers knew only that many of their people got sick and died. This was because there were many mosquitoes there, and these mosquitoes bit them, and put these poisonous enemies into their blood. But they did not know that the mosquitoes were the cause of the great number of deaths in the colony. All this happened many years ago. I believe the English thought their old enemy, the Dragon, of which they had heard so much, but which they could not see, had come to this new land. We can know the mosquito that carries malaria because she looks as if she is trying to stand on her head when she lights on anything. It seems queer that the female mosquito is the only one which poisons us with malaria. Perhaps the male mosquito cannot bite, because he has so many feathery plumes on his bill. The mosquito and the germ of malaria, which is carried from one person to another, killed far more white people than the Indians or the wild animals did. Not many years ago, a very clever man found out that the mosquito carried malaria, for, without her, the germs could never get into our blood. Mother says that the way for us to stop malaria is for us to kill all the mosquitoes, and the best way to kill them off is to do so when they are little "wiggle-tails" or "wigglers." She says the best way of all, though, is never to have any standing water around where the mosquito can lay her eggs. [Illustration] I am going to kill every mosquito I see. Mother says I can tell the one that carries malaria, because she is always trying to stand on her head like this. I'll tell you, let's have a "Mosquito and Fly Brigade." You can be the Captain. All the little boys and girls in our classes can march under our colors, and we will make war on every fly and mosquito in the neighborhood, and stop the children and grown people from having malaria. Mother says sickness costs a lot of money--many millions of dollars every year. We will be little soldiers while all the country is at peace, but we will wage a battle royal against these very small but strong enemies, and we will win. Our motto will be, "To prevent is better than to cure." QUESTIONS 1. What causes malaria? 2. Can you tell the difference between the mosquito that carries malaria and the one that is called the house mosquito? 3. Where do the mosquitoes feed? 4. What caused so many of the early settlers in the Old Dominion (Virginia) to die? 5. Which was their greatest enemy, Indians, wild animals, or malaria? 6. How much does malaria cost? 7. Can we prevent malaria? How? 8. What medicine will cure malaria? 9. Is it better to cure a disease or to prevent it? 10. Where was quinine first gotten? 11. If a person has malaria, how may we prevent other persons from getting it? 12. Have you a "Fly and Mosquito Brigade" in your school, or will you have one? [Illustration] JACK FROST Children, do you know who Jack Frost is? Well, he is a frisky little fellow. He never seems to lose his youth and freshness, although he is as old as time itself. When the days grow shorter and the nights get longer, Jack Frost is a regular busybody--he is here, there, and everywhere. Jack does not make long visits in the Sunny Southland. The warm sunshine and balmy winds chase him back to the North, his native land. Jim lives in the North where Jack Frost makes long visits, sometimes remaining from early autumn until late in the spring. Jim says he likes Jack Frost and the gay times and sports he brings with him for the little boys and girls of the North. Jim loves to skate and sleigh ride. Jack Frost is a mischievous little elf; he skips gaily around while you are asleep. He peeps into your windows to see if you are tucked snugly in bed. He dances on the window panes, and covers them with beautiful crystals that he must have brought from fairyland. He goes whistling down the street on the wind in the early morning. He gleefully snips at the noses of the old gentlemen as they step briskly along to their business. Jack gives these old folks a bit of his youth as they feel his frolicsome touch. He makes them think of the days when they were boys, how they used to run out to meet him with a jump and a skip. He reminds them of the days long ago, when they made a snow man in the school-yard, and when they played snowball on the way to and from school. As they think of these frolics with Jack Frost, each one seems to quicken his step. Could you look into their eyes you would see how they sparkle with the memories of youth that Jack Frost has recalled. He frolics about among the trees. As he touches them with his wand, their bright green coat is changed to a soft brown one. He tells the little sleeping buds to lie still. They must not even peep out while he is in the air. Jack waves his wand and covers brown Mother Earth with sparkling frost or downy snow. The little seed babies snuggle close, and whisper to each other of how good Jack Frost is to cover them from the biting winter wind with this beautiful warm blanket of snow. This blanket is finer and warmer than any ever woven by man. Even after the snow has melted, Jack Frost tells the little seed babies not to lift their heads from under their blanket of leaves until the warm spring days wake them. He shows to the children of the Southland only a few of his pranks; now and then a beautiful frost that is soon chased back to the North by the warm sun; sometimes a wonderful snow-storm from the Northwest. How joyous these children of the Sunny South are when Jack does give them a touch of old King Winter! There are many children here as old as you, who have never seen one of Jacks beautiful white blankets. In the Northland Jack is a very terrible old fellow. There are ice and snow on the ground for many months. The people build very warm houses to keep Jack Frost out. Did you ever think of the little Eskimo boys and girls in their cold country? They wear clothes made of skins and furs. They live in snow houses, but they manage to keep warm. The little Eskimo children are used to the cold, for Jack Frost plays his pranks all the year round in the land of the long, long nights. They have great sport going here and there on their snow-shoes, and in their sleds drawn by their faithful dogs. In our own Northland, Jack is a very frisky fellow. He touches the lakes and rivers with his magic wand and covers them with ice. Ah! now comes the best of fun, for now old Jack Frost is ready for you to have the finest of sports. You must put on warm clothes and high, heavy shoes and run out to play with him. Children who have colds and sore throats can not play. So he says, "Wrap up warm, come out into the fresh air." Let the pure frosty air get into your lungs, and sweep out old disease germs that may have hidden there. Come with me to the pond. The ice is thick and smooth. Put on your skates and let us go skimming over the ice. You will feel the warm red blood, made clean and pure by the frosty air, tingling all over your body. I tell you, Jack Frost is a good friend. Jack Frost often hurts the poor, pinching too hard their fingers and toes. So, while you are warmly clad and prepared for a frolic with him, you must remember there are some children to whom Jack Frost is not such a welcome friend. He nips with his cold fingers the insects that do our plants harm. With his icy breath, he kills many of the germs that would hurt you. Jack Frost helps to give you health, and health means joy, strength, happiness and success. QUESTIONS 1. Who is Jack Frost, where does he come from? 2. What does he bring? 3. What does he say to the little seed babies and buds? 4. What does he say to the young folks? 5. Who are the Eskimos, where do they live? 6. Of what, and how, do they build their houses? 7. What does Jack Frost do to some of the disease germs? 8. Can you tell me something of the games the children play in the lands where Jack Frost visits? In the land where he never comes? JACK FROST A mischief-maker is old Jack Frost, His pranks are many indeed; He comes and goes with the speed of the wind, But who has ever seen his steed? He comes when the nights are clear and cold, And the wind has gone to rest, He comes with his magic wand, And few things stand the test. He rides o'er fields of waving corn, And leaves them sere and dry; He touches the flowers with his magic wand, And they wither away and die. He spreads on the walk a coat of ice, That unwary feet may slip; He freezes the leaves, the trees and grass, And holds them all in his icy grip. He pinches the apple's ruddy cheeks, And the children's cheeks as well-- Oh, of all the mischief that Jack Frost does, Who could ever tell? But still we love this mischief-maker, We could not do without him; We think his little plays and pranks The very best thing about him. A STORY OF TUBERCULOSIS PART I Mary, did you and Tom see the poor, sick woman on the cars when we were going to visit grandmother last week? Did you see how pale and thin and feeble she looked? Did you hear her coughing so often that it seemed to hurt her whole body? How sorry we felt when we knew she was so sick. Don't you remember that Uncle John, who is a doctor, told us that she had consumption. Uncle John talked of the poor lady and of the dreadful disease which she has. He called it by two other names, tuberculosis and the "Great White Plague." I'll tell you just what he told me, for Uncle John said that even little children should know about this disease and that they could help to prevent it. He said that a very small plant, so small that we cannot see it with our naked eyes, causes this terrible sickness from which so many, both old and young, die. These plants are so small that a thousand of them could be put on a pin head and still not crowd each other there. These little plants are like tiny rods and are always found in the saliva or spit of a person who has consumption. When Uncle John wants to see them he uses a very powerful magnifying glass called a microscope. You have seen this microscope in Uncle John's office. Long years ago, a great German doctor tried to find out why so many persons, young people and little children, died of this terrible disease. Finally, after long years of study, he found that these tiny plants are the cause of all this disease and sorrow. He also found that these plants are different from the plants in our gardens, for they grow best in dark, damp places where there are warmth and the kind of soil suited to them. These plants never blossom, but they grow and make more plants of the same kind. When father wants to grow more cotton he plants cotton seed, does he not? He always sees that the ground or soil is well prepared for the seed. Our bodies are the soil or ground, and these little rod-like plants are the seed of consumption. Persons who have delicate bodies and who live in damp, dark places, and who do not eat good food furnish the best kind of soil on which these plants will grow. They grow and make more tuberculosis seed just as the cotton grows and makes more cotton seed. Strong, healthy bodies are poor seed ground for consumption seed. They do not grow well but shrink up and die just as cotton seed would if they were planted on stony ground instead of nice mellow earth. You have seen some plants that you were told not to handle or taste because they were poisonous. Well, these little tuberculosis plants that I am telling you about are more poisonous than the plants that you can see. If they get on cups from which you drink, and into your milk or any other food, they may get into your bodies. If you think, I am sure that you will remember some of your friends who have consumption. You remember, Mary, you told me of your little friend, Lucy Stevens, who has been ill a long time, and who is quite lame. She has to use crutches to walk with because her hip is diseased. Uncle John says this is because she has tuberculosis of the hip joint. It is strange, but often after these little plants or seed get into the body, they may travel to any part of it, and set up house-keeping for themselves in a gland or a joint. They usually find their way to the weakest part of our bodies. PART II Uncle John says that the only cure for consumption is plenty of fresh air, good food, and the proper amount of rest. He says that patent medicines are fakes and do much harm. You can, each of you, do a great deal to prevent these plants or seeds from getting into your bodies and into the bodies of others by following these simple rules: 1. Remember that fresh air and sunshine are necessary to good health. 2. Remember that cold or damp air will not do harm if the body is kept warm. 3. Breathe through the nose only. Avoid dark, crowded, dusty, or damp rooms. Breathe deep. 4. Hold shoulders up. 5. Use your own individual drinking cup. 6. Remember that consumption is spread by careless spitting. Do not spit on the floor of rooms, halls, or cars. 7. Keep clean and bathe frequently, at least twice a week. 8. Always wash your hands before eating. 9. Brush your teeth after each meal. 10. Never put money, pencils, pens, or anything that another person has handled, in your mouth. 11. Do not bite off fruit that other people have bitten. 12. Do not kiss babies or sick persons. QUESTIONS 1. What do you call the little plants that cause tuberculosis or consumption? How big are these plants or germs? 2. What part of garden plants are these germs like? Why do you think so? 3. Big plants in the garden get their food from the water in the soil. I wonder if any of you can tell me where these little germ-plants get their food? When we see persons with consumption we know that these little germ-plants are growing on the cells of their lungs. This causes their lung cells and the tissue that binds them together to decay. Then these people have to cough and spit this decayed matter up. Every bit of it is often filled with these little germ-plants, or seed of consumption. 4. Then what should be done with this spit to keep any one else from taking the disease? 5. Germs are often carried in little particles of dust. How may we keep from getting germs in this way? 6. How else may these little plants get into our bodies? 7. Can you think of another way by which we might get these plants into our bodies? (From milk.) What insect may carry the germs from the sick-room to our dining-room table? 8. What did Uncle John say was the only cure for consumption or tuberculosis? 9. What can each of us do to prevent these plants from getting into our bodies, and to prevent them from growing if they should happen to get into our bodies? IT IS TIME THAT YOU SHOULD STOP "Whenever you spit, whenever you sneeze, Whenever your rugs you beat, When you scatter dust with a feather broom, And shake it on the street, Where rubbish you pile upon the road, When ash barrels have no top You're poisoning the air for somebody's lungs, And it is time that you should stop. --_Selected._ A TRUE STORY In a little city near the great Mississippi River, lived two boys who were the very best of friends. Every day they played together and had a fine time. Life was as pleasant as a summer day to the little fellows. One of the boys was named Oliver. He had a rich father who gave him everything he wanted. The other little boy was Arthur. His father was dead, but he had a gentle little mother who was as good as she could be. Arthur's mother had to work very hard to make enough money to buy food and clothes for her little boy and herself. Little Arthur knew this, and he often said when he got big he would make enough money for them both, so that the dear mother would not have to work so hard. When the two boys were six years old, they started to school. They were very happy and proud when the day to go came. Every morning Oliver's mother would put his fine clothes on him and give him some money to pay his way on the street car. After he got to the school he would not play games with the boys for he was afraid he would soil his clothes. He stood around and watched the other boys romp and play. Arthur's mother could not give him the ten cents for car-fare to and from school, so he walked to school every morning. He would eat his breakfast early and start out for school in the cool morning air. As he walked along whistling, his cheeks would get rosy and red and he would run and jump; he was a happy little boy. He felt as if he would never get tired. And all the time he would be thinking of the time when he would be a big boy and ready to help to care for the little mother. When he got to school he would join the other little boys in their play, for his clothes were good and strong and not too fine to romp and play in. For a long time things went on in this way and Arthur was growing stronger and taller all the time. He was learning very fast. Oliver was getting pale and thin and he was beginning to be absent from school very often. The teacher went to see his mother and found that the little boy was absent because he often had headaches and colds. The two boys were in the same class, but they were not as good friends as they had been. Oliver could not keep up with his class, and after awhile he had to drop into a lower class. Arthur did not have much time to play after he came home from school because he had to help his mother. Their teacher lived just across the street from the two little boys. She had noticed in school that Arthur could learn faster than Oliver. She saw that Arthur was stronger and happier, and she soon thought she knew why. So one day she told them both to stay after school, that she wanted to talk to them for a little while. After all the other children had gone she called them up to her desk and said, "Oliver, would you like to be like Arthur and have healthy, rosy cheeks, and be able to run and play as he does?" Of course, Oliver said yes, for he had long been wishing that he could feel as happy as Arthur looked. He wanted to be able to come regularly to school, and he did not want to have colds and headaches--he was tired of them. "Well," said the teacher, "I want to tell you how you may grow as strong as Arthur. You must stay out-of-doors, and play with the other boys more than you do. You look pale because your blood is not red enough. "Boys and girls have blood in their bodies. You have seen it when you cut your finger. The more you run and play, the more blood you will have and the redder it will be. This good red blood is what makes you strong; you must eat plenty of good food and play out in the open air with the other boys. Keep your body clean, and get your mother to let you walk to school each morning with Arthur. Now run along to play, and I am sure you will soon feel better, and after a few days you will be as strong as Arthur and the other boys." QUESTIONS 1. Compare the two boys--Arthur and Oliver--as to their pleasures and opportunities. 2. Why did Arthur study hard and love to work? 3. Why did Oliver ride on the street car to school, and why could he not run and play with the other boys after he got to school? 4. Oliver was sick a great deal and could not keep up with his class. Why did his teacher say that he could not do his work as well as Arthur? [Illustration] TWO LITTLE WINDOWS In every house there is a window. Some houses have many windows to let in the bright sunshine and the pure fresh air, and to let us see from within the glorious world on the outside. I am going to tell you of some houses that have only two windows; the houses cannot do without them. Many of the little windows are beautiful. On the outside are two beautiful awnings with a pretty black fringe on the edge; the awnings keep out the light when it is too bright, and keep insects and bugs from flying in at the windows. At night these awnings are drawn over the windows so that the little housekeeper within may have rest and quiet. The window casings are white and on the inside there are dainty curtains. Some of these curtains are blue, some are brown, some are gray, and some are black. In the centre of these curtains there is a round black hole. It is through this little hole that the housekeeper can look out and see the beautiful world around. When the windows are bright and sparkling we know that the house is strong and well kept, and the little housekeeper is happy when she plays and when she works. Only one person can live in each house. A queer thing about these little houses is that they can move from place to place. Sometimes these little windows are not cared for; the little housekeeper forgets how important the windows are. I know of some that are not cared for. These were very pretty and seemed larger than most windows of this kind. They had deep brown curtains and when you looked at the little hole in the curtain, it seemed that you were looking down into a deep well, and that you could see your own picture in it. The little housekeeper who owned these windows was a little girl almost ten years old. She would look through the windows and read fine print when it was too dark to see the letters well, and would do many things that would hurt these windows. Her mother had to take her to a person in a big city who knew what to do to help the windows. This man put a piece of glass in front of the windows, so that the little housekeeper could see through them. How sorry this housekeeper was that she had not always taken care of her windows. We sometimes see little housekeepers whose windows are always dark. It is a pitiful sight to see windows through which no light ever goes to the housekeeper within the house. "Shut-ins," they are in truth. It makes one's heart ache to know that if many of these windows had had proper care when they were first opened the housekeeper's hearts would now be glad, for they could look out on the glorious world, they could read and play and work just as little children like to do. Instead, they must go to special schools. They read from books that have raised letters, and use their fingers to find them. Many of these little housekeepers learn to read and do many wonderful things with their fingers. Helen Keller, whose windows were always dark, even graduated from Radcliffe College. QUESTION 1. Can you tell me what these little windows are? You have already guessed that the little house is the body, and the little housekeeper any little boy or girl. MERRY SUNSHINE "Good morning, Merry Sunshine, How did you wake so soon? You've scared the little stars away, And shined away the moon. I saw you go to sleep last night Before I ceased my playing; How did you get 'way over there? And where have you been staying?" "I never go to sleep, dear child, I just go round to see My little children of the east Who rise and watch for me. I waken all the birds and bees And flowers on my way, And now come back to see the child Who stayed out late to play." --_Anonymous._ [Illustration: CONSULTATION FREE AT THIS OFFICE DR. SUNSHINE DR. FRESH AIR DR. GOOD FOOD DR. EXERCISE DR. REST HOURS 6 AM-6 AM] [Illustration] A WONDERFUL STREAM I am going to tell you of a wonderful stream that flows through our bodies. We may call it the stream of life. It is made of tiny rills, and of great branches, all of which join to form this wonderful stream. This stream has a great, double force pump, which keeps pumping night and day. It always pumps the same way, its engine does not make much noise, but just a little sound that you may hear if you put your ear close to mother's breast. You can hear this busy little engine pumping away, forcing the stream on. Many queer looking little boats float on its bosom. These boats carry freight to the far-away countries in all parts in the body. They are so small we cannot see them with the naked eye. They are of various shapes; some are round. They have a very important freight to carry. There are more of these boats than there are of any other kind. They have a little cup-shaped centre, a kind of deck, and in this centre they carry the freight. They take on this freight at the Lung Station. They have something on deck which holds on to the goods they get at the station, to keep it from being lost on its long journey. It never overflows its banks. Its color is not bright and blue as the waters of the Hudson or Potomac Rivers. It is yellow and red, like the Mississippi, the great "Father of Waters." If you would taste it you would find it to be salty like the ocean. As soon as the little boats load up at the Lung Station, off they sail on this wonderful stream, carrying their freight to the Muscle Country, the Skin Country or the Gland Country. When the boats reach one of these countries, they unload and the little men of these countries (or cells) take the freight and put it just where it is needed. The freight is called oxygen. The Lung Station is filled with it every time a person takes a good breath of pure fresh air. The little boats come to Lung Station and load up with oxygen about three times every minute, so you see how fast they travel. This freight is the thing that paints our cheeks a rosy color and gives us good health. When each little boat has unloaded its cargo in the far countries, the little cell men load them with a return cargo, which is made up of waste matter (carbon dioxide). This cargo is carried back to the Lung Station, and unloaded there. It is breathed out into the air, through the air tubes. [Illustration] If we breathe impure air, the little boats go back to the far countries with only a small cargo of oxygen. Then the cell men feel as if they are cheated and refuse to do good work for us. In fact, they grow weak and cannot do as good work as they could if the boats brought a full cargo of fresh air. There is another boat in the stream; just look at its queer shape, and, queerer still, this little boat is changing its shape. Is not that funny? Now the small end is toward us, now the large end, and now it is round like the little freight boats, only it is larger. I wonder what kind of a vessel it is. It is larger than the freight boat. There are not so many of these boats either, not half so many as there are freight boats. They are flying white flags, and belong to the White Squadron. I wonder if that means peace. No, they are war-vessels. Let us see what these white ships are doing. We will call them Dreadnoughts. Watch them as they move slowly down the stream; how powerful they look. They have their searchlights on, looking for any enemy that may appear upon the surface. Further on some germs or bacteria are coming up the stream; they may be pneumonia germs, or typhoid germs. These are the Captains of the Death Armada. The Dreadnoughts pull up along side. War is declared, a battle royal is on. The victory will go to the strongest. When the smoke clears away we may see the Dreadnought sailing calmly down stream. Where now are these mighty Goliaths, the typhoid or pneumonia germs? As the Dreadnoughts were in good fighting trim, we may find them on the inside of the engine-room of the Dreadnought. They are being used as fuel in its furnace. Sometimes the battle is in favor of the germs, and the Dreadnought is destroyed by the germs. This happens when the little round freight boats have not found a full cargo of fresh air and oxygen waiting for them in the Lung Station. All this happens in this wonderful stream. If we look further we would find that the muscle men in the muscle countries are busy making heat to keep our bodies warm. The little workmen in the gland country are making fluids to mix with the food we eat. The fluids change the starch, the sugar, and the meat we eat, so that the muscle men can use it to build us large and strong. The little workmen in the skin are pouring water out of it in order that we may keep clean and cool. This wonderful stream carries all these things from one country to the other, exchanges the produce of one country for the produce of another--so to speak. The little freight boats on this stream cannot do the work they were intended to do, the Dreadnoughts cannot overcome and disable the germs that get on their decks, if they are not kept in the very best condition. The only way in which we can keep them "fit" is by living according to the rules of hygiene. Eat wholesome food. Take outdoor exercise. Sleep with the windows open. Drink pure water. Bathe the body frequently. QUESTIONS 1. What are the little round boats? 2. What do they carry? 3. What are the Dreadnoughts? 4. What are the muscle men? 5. What is the stream, and what is the force pump that forces the stream on? 6. What are the rules for keeping the little freight boats, and the great Dreadnoughts on this wonderful stream in the best working condition? TWO MILLS Come, children, listen to the story Uncle Ned told to me. It was the story of a long time ago when Uncle Ned was a little boy. One day his mother took him on her knee and said, "Ned, do you know that your mouth is like a little mill?" It is. The mill grinds corn. Your teeth grind your food. Look in the mirror. Are your teeth all alike? Some of the teeth in your mouth are to bite the food into bits, and others are to grind it fine so that it will not hurt your stomach. You have twenty now because you are a little boy and do not need any more. When you have grown to be a man you will have thirty-two teeth. You will have more grinders in your mouth when you are a man than you have now. The jaw teeth are called grinders, because they grind the food you put into your mouth, just as the big mill stones grind the corn into meal down at Grandpa's mill. You wear clothes to keep your bodies warm, so the teeth need some covering to keep out the cold. The enamel, a hard outer covering on the teeth, keeps them from feeling the cold. Down in the middle of the tooth is a place for the nerves of the tooth. When you break the covering on the tooth the cold and hot things that you sometimes put into your mouth will make the nerves ache. Sometimes things that are very sweet or very sour hurt the covering on the teeth. To use the teeth to crack nuts or ice will harm them, for it often breaks the outer covering, and it will not grow again. Your teeth should last you all your life if you will take care of them. Grandpa's mill would not grind the corn well, nor would the mill last long, if he did not take care of it and keep the big stone grinders clean and free from grit and dirt. Your teeth must have just as good care as the stones in the mill if you wish them to last you a long time, and if you want them to grind your food fine. This is why you must use your toothbrush, and wash your mouth out regularly every day. If you do not keep your mouth clean, germs will creep in and cause the little boy to have toothache. You are wondering what the germs have to do with toothache. These little germs always get into places that are not kept clean, and when they get into the mouth they go to work, like so many little carpenters, with pick and drill, and pick away the outer covering of the tooth and then the tooth decays, and this causes toothache. We all want to have pretty white teeth like Ned's, do we not? When we are little we must take care of the teeth, and if they begin to decay we must have them filled or treated by the dentist. Let us look at our teeth and see who has the prettiest and the best ones. Has every one a toothbrush? We must each have one. We must brush our teeth every day and rinse them with pure clean water. This will wash out all the germs that would soon injure our teeth if they were left in the mouth. If we will care for our teeth when we are young we will not need to have false teeth when we are old. QUESTIONS 1. What are our mouths like? Why like a mill? 2. What is there in the mouth that corresponds to the rocks in the mill? 3. Is there a little baby in your home? Has it any teeth? Can you tell me why? Yes, that is right. Teeth are given us to chew food with. The little baby does not eat any hard or solid food, and therefore he does not need any teeth yet. When he is a little older pretty white teeth will be given him. By the time he is four or five years old he will have twenty of these little baby teeth. But he cannot keep the first teeth long. They would be too little and weak to do him much good when he gets to be a big boy. 4. Did you ever notice the twig of a tree just after the leaves had fallen? What did you find on the stem where the old leaf had grown? That is right, a tiny new leaf was pushing its way out. And that is just what happens to the teeth. When a boy or girl gets to be about eight or ten years old, a set of new teeth begins to grow down in the gums under the baby teeth. As these new teeth grow longer they push up the baby teeth, and cause them to get loose and fall out. When the new teeth appear they are strong and hard, that they may last a long time, if taken care of as Uncle Ned did his. 5. How many things do we know that we may do to make our teeth last a long time? A CHILD'S CALENDAR "January first is cold, February winds are bold, March runs whistling round the hill, April laughs and cries at will. Lovely are the woods in May, Happy June is our time to play; In July we lazy grow, August hours are quite as slow. But September school days are fleet! In October nuts grow sweet; Sad November's friends are few, But, December, we love you, For you bring Saint Nick!" THE TOOTHBRUSH BRIGADE The toothbrush brigade is a happy club We boys and girls have made, We try to care for our teeth So they'll not be decayed. And so we have promised one and all, At morning and at night, To brush them clean and white. First across we'll brush them, Well then up and down we go, Then open wide the mouth you see, And do just as before. So carefully we'll rinse them, too, You'll see a healthy sight. Our teeth so clean and white. [Illustration: TOOTH BRUSH BRIGADE] And now my friends a word to you Before we leave the stage, If your teeth you would preserve, Down to a nice old age, Go get your toothbrush and water, too, And start this very night To brush them clean and white. CHORUS Happy, healthy, little children, Happy, healthy, little children, Happy, healthy, little children, In our toothbrush brigade. --_M. E. Stokes._ MR. FLY AND MRS. MOSQUITO One day in the summer, Mr. Fly and Mrs. Mosquito stopped to rest on the window pane of a house in the country. [Illustration] Mr. Fly, after sitting for some time rubbing his nose with his front feet, looked up and said, "Good morning." "Mr. Fly," replied Mrs. Mosquito, "I do not believe that we have met before." "No," said Mr. Fly, "but I am glad to meet you to-day. I have long wanted to do so. May I ask where you live?" "Ah me, Mr. Fly," replied Mrs. Mosquito, "I have been having a rather hard time lately. You have heard of my family, and know that with a number of brothers and sisters, I was hatched in a small pond near the meadow. Life went well with us for a while. But one afternoon I heard footsteps coming nearer and nearer. I could not understand what terrible beast was coming down to the pond to drink. I shivered with fear and darted as fast as I could to the bottom of the pond. However, I soon had to come to the top again to get a good breath, as I thought I was going to suffocate. Dearie me, why cannot we get air at the bottom of the pond as well as at the top. "My heart was beating with fear as I still heard the footsteps, and presently I could hear voices. A voice said, 'Where are all the members of this brigade?' What could it mean? What is a brigade? Someone cried out, 'Here we come to give him the oil.' Looking up I saw a number of girls and boys, 'The Mosquito Brigade,' they called themselves. They laughed and talked as if they were a gay crowd. One said, 'Here they are,' and then said, 'This will get them.' "I wondered what in the world they could mean. I soon learned what they were about. "I smelled a terrible odor, and peeping out from the mud (at the bottom of the pond in which I was hiding), I saw something thick and terrible coming down like rain in the pond. "I ran through the mud to the far end of the pond and hid. Oh, how that stuff did smell! I thought it would surely smother me. "I stayed in the mud until the next day. I did not dare peep out. When I did look out nothing could I see on the bottom of the pond but my dead brothers and sisters. They had not been as quick as I and had been smothered by that dreadful stuff. Ah me! I had scarcely strength enough to live. Life seemed very hard. "The next thing I remember I was sailing down the pond in a canoe Mother Nature built for me. It was just large enough to be perfectly comfortable. I slept the greater part of the time I was in the little canoe. I stayed in there several days and many times old Father Wind sent a breeze that nearly upset my little craft. I grew some wings finally and flew away from that awful pond. I hope that I can always escape that 'Mosquito Brigade' and that deadly oil. I shall be very busy for a while and may yet have my revenge, if I can poison some member of it with malaria germs. "I have finished my story. Pray, tell me of yourself, Mr. Fly, you look very happy." "Well," said the fly, "I was hatched in the corner of a stable where it was damp and warm. I stayed in an egg one day. Then I was a white crawling thing for nine days. I ate all this time. At the end of that time I slept a while and then I was grown. I can't tell you how big I felt the day I first stretched my wings for flight. "Just listen to what I have done since that happy day. I have crawled over a person who had small-pox and got some germs which I carried to a girl across the street. I went into a house and sat on a bed in which a little girl was lying. The doctor came in and after staying there a while he said, 'Typhoid fever.' I was sorry for the little child with her red swollen face. I left her and walked on the bed. I knew that my feet were loaded with germs when I flew out. Off I went to the country. "The first home I passed, a little tot of a boy, sitting on the step, was eating milk and mush out of a bowl. When he took the spoon from his mouth I got into it and sucked all the milk I could get. I left him the germs that I had been carrying. This was a pretty good day's work, don't you think? The next morning I flew away to the next house, but dear me, I found that a fly would have to carry his own rations there. "This was a new thing to me. I met one of my friends who told me that it would be just as well for me to travel on. The folks who lived in this house had been going to the lectures of the Health Doctor. The doctor had told them to clean up the stable, to screen the house, and to cover the well. I tell you, Mrs. Mosquito, that man is trying to put me out of business. I fear that I shall have a hard time in the future if he stays in this neighborhood. I am not as happy as I once was, so I will say good-bye." "Good-bye, friend Fly," said Mrs. Mosquito, "I am glad we met near our old home." QUESTIONS 1. Where did the mosquito meet the fly? 2. What did the mosquito carry? 3. What did the fly do to the man who had small-pox? 4. Why could not the fly get in the house in the country? 5. What was the Health Doctor teaching the people in the country? A HYGIENE SONG TUNE:--"YE-HO" A FOLK SONG [Illustration: Music] 1. We're for happiness and health, hurrah! But we have no claims on wealth, hurrah! And we stand for all that's clean, Flies must go, this sure doth mean, So we trap and swat and screen, hurrah! 2. We're for sunshine and fresh air, hurrah! Microbes cannot live in there, hurrah! Sanitation is our aim, No mosquitoes do we claim, For we oil and screen and drain, hurrah! Chorus: Then it's rah, rah, rah, for the Hygiene work, The best we've ever done. We'll have none who duty shirk, We'll have only those who work, Many to our cause are won, hurrah! [Illustration] OUR LITTLE ENEMIES "Hello, Central, give me 1882, Mrs. Consumption Germ. Oh, is that you, I am so glad to hear your voice. Do tell me what you have been doing this long time!" "Oh, my good friend Pneumonia, I have been hiding away all these years to keep the doctors from finding me. I did not want them to learn about me. I feared that they would destroy me entirely. "But with all my care, do you know that just a few years ago, an old German doctor pulled me out of my hiding place and showed me to the world. Since then I and my family have had little peace. "I have to be mighty careful, or I fear that these doctors who are turning all sorts of magnifying glasses on my people will finally drive us from the earth. They already have us on the run. In the meantime we are playing a game of 'catch me if you can.' Sometimes we get on pencils or sticks of candy. Then again we roll and turn somersaults on a nice red apple and are passed from one mouth to another by over-polite children. "Sometimes, some of my children swim in the milk or travel on a fly's foot. "I don't like sunshine at all. I dote on dark places where the wind does not blow. "I like poor people better than rich ones, because the poor have not money enough to buy good food, fresh air, and rest, the weapons the rich use to fight us with. "Last week I went to a Fourth of July celebration on a grain of dust--my airship, I called it. Whom do you think I saw there? Young Mr. Lockjaw Germ; do you know I think that he has gotten the big head. Probably the war in Europe has something to do with it. For I believe that he and his family are very prominent among the soldiers in Belgium. I hear also that in America the folks are trying to put him out of business, especially since fire-crackers are not used so much. Some man had to start a 'Sane Fourth of July.' That was a sane Fourth of July celebration that I attended, and I must say that Mr. Lockjaw Germ looked a bit lonely." "Do tell me, Mrs. Consumption Germ," said her friend Pneumonia Germ, "have you heard about the Diphtheria family? They are having a hard time." "These French doctors have found something that will even prevent children from having diphtheria. They call it anti-toxin. I never did like antis anyway, did you? "Mrs. Typhoid Germ tells me that her family is not as large as it used to be, all because of an anti-toxin." "My, my, what shall we do!" said Mrs. Consumption Germ, "even the school people are after us. I heard Miss Measles and little Master Scarlet Fever say that a doctor comes every day to some of the schools. They said that in some of the school-rooms the teacher had the nerve to hang a placard, on which was printed, 'Prevention Better Than Cure.' "I'll tell you I don't like these new times; this Hygiene the people talk of is a regular ogre to our children. "In some schools the teachers are even having lunches for the little children who are pale and thin. They are having their eyes examined. Some are having adenoids taken out, just to make those children so strong that we can't catch them. "I thought that I had a fair chance to get little Jimmy Brown, but his teacher talked to his mother one day at recess. The next day his mother whisked him off down town and had the doctor take the adenoids from behind his nose. Now he is as strong as any little boy, because he can breathe through his nose. So I lost my chance at him, you see." "Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Consumption Germ, "one can't even hide in an old stump of a tooth. Some man with sharp-looking things tells you that o-u-t spells 'out and begone,' as we used to say in playing the game." "Do you know I believe that man Pasteur was our greatest enemy?" "Tell me, who was he?" said Mrs. Consumption Germ. "Well, he was a man who lived in France. He discovered the germ that killed the silk-worm and also the cause of the loss of grapes in that country. "The wine and silk merchants of that country paid him immense sums of money for this work. "He studied all about our friends and relatives, and it was he who first started all this anti-toxin, which saves the people, but which kills us by the millions. "But with all this great work and the work of their great men, we sometimes catch folks napping. We catch our greatest enemy, the white blood-cells, when they are without their fighting clothes on, and then we get busy. In this way we can make up for a great deal of lost time. "Of course, you have heard of Dr. Jenner. He was another enemy of ours. He taught the people about vaccination, which keeps them from having small-pox. I am glad to say there will always be a few persons who do not follow these new ideas. If this were not true, one would starve to death." "I know, Mrs. Pneumonia Germ, that you love close, damp, places. I am sure that fresh air makes you nervous. What will you do now that the factories and mills are to be cleaner and better ventilated? We used to find plenty to do with the old order of things. "Dr. Sunshine, Dr. Fresh Air, and Dr. Good Food are certainly doing all they can to drive us out of the country. "We will go to the great cities, and I suspect that, for a long time yet, we can find a home for our little ones in the miserable homes of the poor; and, notwithstanding all this talk of hygiene, health, and sanitation, I believe that some of the homes and factories will always furnish us with hiding places in which to rear our families." "Well, I must say good-bye, Mrs. Germ, as I see Dr. Fresh Air coming, and I do not care to speak to him; he does not treat me cordially. Good-bye." QUESTIONS 1. Who was Pasteur? Where did he live? What did he do for the merchants of France? 2. Who was Jenner? What disease did he show the people how to prevent? 3. Why did Jimmy Brown grow well and strong? ONE LITTLE GIRL One little girl Said, "Oh, dear, dear, I want to go to school, I will be late, I fear. "I am sure I won't forget To brush my teeth to-night, Just to put off a while, I know will be all right." One little germ Said, "Here is work to do;" Other little germs Said, "We are coming, too." A million little germs Got to work right then, Made a little hole, And soon made ten. One little girl, In very great pain, Said, "I never will forget To brush my teeth again." CLOVIS, THE BOY KING Long, long ago, on the banks of the Rhine, there lived a brave and war like tribe called Franks. Their name means "Freemen." I always think Frank is a very nice name for a boy or girl to have. It is so grand to be really and truly free. These Franks had for their leader a king, and, at the time I am going to tell about, their king was a boy. His name was Clovis and he was only sixteen years old. You would hardly think that a boy could rule those fierce warriors, but he was such a brave and fearless boy, and had such a good sensible head that they were glad to follow him. He was never afraid of anything, even when he was a little fellow, and he could tame and ride the wildest horse as well as the best man among them. One day a great idea came into the heads of the Frankish warriors. They thought they would leave their old homes on the banks of the Rhine and go and settle in a new country called Gaul. It would have been easy enough, perhaps, if there had been nobody there but the natives and the wild beasts, but that was not the case. The Romans were there. I am sure you have heard of the Romans and how very strong and warlike they were. Their soldiers conquered the world and were very seldom beaten. They had an army in this country of Gaul. Clovis was not afraid of the Romans, however, and he marched against them. The two armies stood facing each other and the two leaders came out to speak together in an open space between the camps. The Roman general was very big and grand, and he had Roman soldiers on each side of him in splendid uniform. Clovis was accompanied by some of his brave followers. When the Roman leader saw Clovis, he burst out laughing and cried, "Why, he's a boy! A _boy_ has come to fight against the Romans!" He thought it was so funny that a boy of sixteen should dare to fight against him that he couldn't do anything but laugh. Clovis did not like this at all, and he shouted back, "Yes, but the boy will conquer you!" [Illustration: "YES, BUT THE BOY WILL CONQUER YOU!"] Then came the battle, and the Roman general found it wasn't so funny after all. For the boy did conquer him and he ran away. Afterwards the Franks gained the country for themselves and called it their own name, France. I believe in boys. I think they can do almost anything. I believe in girls, too, just as much. The girls did not fight in this battle I have been telling you about, but there is another and better kind of battle in which boys and girls fight side by side. The old kind of battle in which men were killed, and little children lost their fathers, was very bad and very sad, at the best. In the new kind of battle people don't kill each other, and yet they fight very hard against their enemies and have to be very brave. Let me tell you about a few of these battles. One that is going on now is the battle against Disease. Very likely you have heard the grown folks talk about consumption, and saying that it is one of the worst enemies of our American people, and kills thousands and thousands every year. Men and women and boys and girls are joining together to fight against consumption and make an end to it, and a big fight it is. Then, again, in the struggle with yellow fever some of our noble American heroes willingly laid down their lives. Another great battle is against Dirt. Dirt causes people to get sick and die, and since we have known this we have been fighting hard against it. The boys and girls have helped a great deal in this battle. One of the finest fights to be in is the battle against Tobacco. What do you think? Could the boys and girls defeat the use of tobacco and drive it out of the country if they tried hard enough? I really believe they could. But, perhaps, you have not all made up your minds that it would be a good thing to fight tobacco. Let us think of some of the reasons why we should fight it. REASON NUMBER ONE is because the tobacco habit is a dirty habit. Are the lips of the smoking boy nice and clean for mother to kiss? What about his hands? Isn't he ashamed of that yellow stain that won't come off? How much cleaner the streets, and cars, and railway stations would be if nobody used tobacco! REASON NUMBER TWO is because tobacco injures a boy's body. It hurts his heart, causing it to beat too fast for a while and afterwards making it weak and tired. It hurts his lungs, for when he draws the smoke in he carries the poisonous nicotine to the tender and delicate air-cells. We must talk more about that at another time. It hurts his stomach and gives him indigestion, and no one knows how bad that is until he has had it for himself. REASON NUMBER THREE is because tobacco harms a boy's mind. Boys who don't smoke make better grades than those who do. Some college boys found this out for themselves a while ago. Don't you forget it. REASON NUMBER FOUR is because it is a dangerous habit. The insurance men, whose business it is to find out what causes the fires, say that cigarette smokers are often to blame, because they throw the cigarettes down with fire on them. If you spend nickels on cigarettes, a dollar is soon gone. You don't exactly burn the dollar bill, but you spend the bill and buy cigarettes, and burn them. Isn't that just the same as burning the bill, after all? If a boy spends a nickel a day on cigarettes, how much will he lose in a week? Thirty cents in six week-days. In four weeks, what will he have spent? A dollar and twenty cents. A month is a little over four weeks, so we will add an extra nickel to find what he spends a month. A dollar and a quarter. How much will this come to in twelve months? Is that too hard for you, I wonder? Fifteen dollars. Dear me, how quickly money runs away! Surely no one ought to smoke cigarettes unless he has more money than he knows what to do with. REASON NUMBER FIVE is because smoking is an enslaving habit. By that I mean it makes boys into slaves. So here are five reasons why we should fight against it. Let us see how many of them you can remember. I hope that all you boys and girls will be as brave as Clovis, and now that you see how much harm tobacco and alcohol are doing to your people, you will get ready for the fight and will say, "Yes, you are strong and terrible foes, but boys and girls will conquer you." QUESTIONS 1. Who were the people that were called Franks? What does the name mean? 2. Who was Clovis? What kind of a boy king was he? 3. What country did the boy king with his Franks want to conquer? 4. Who won the battle? 5. What kind of a battle can both girls and boys fight? 6. Name some of these battles. (Disease, Dirt, Tobacco, and Alcohol.) 7. What are the five reasons why all boys and girls should fight the battle against Tobacco? WHAT TEMPERANCE BRINGS More of good than we can tell; More to buy with, more to sell; More of comfort, less of care; More to eat and more to wear; Happier homes and faces brighter; All our burdens rendered lighter; Conscience clean and minds much stronger; Debts much shorter, purses longer; Hopes that drive away all sorrow; And something laid up for to-morrow. [Illustration] THE WHITE SHIP We are going to have a story to-day about something that happened nearly eight hundred years ago. In that far-away time there lived a King of England whose name was Henry I. He was a great warrior, and his enemies generally had the worst of it in battle. But he was still greater as a ruler, and he made the people of England keep the laws. When they disobeyed, he punished them severely. A certain scholar wrote down the story of his reign and we have it still. He said Henry "was a good man and great was the awe of him." That is, the people rather feared him because he was so strict. He said, too, that while Henry was king no one dared "ill-do to man or beast." King Henry was sometimes called the Lion of Justice, because he was so great and powerful, and all wrong-doers were afraid of him. He had another nickname, too. They called him Fine Scholar because he could read and write. Very few persons in those old days could do these things. The clergy were almost the only ones who went to school and learned how. We who live now-a-days should be very glad and thankful that we have good schools and kind teachers, and lesson books that are full of interesting things. King Henry had one son whom he loved very much, indeed. His name was William. He was a fine boy, and the people of England were very fond of him. They expected that some day, when his father died, William would be King in his turn. Indeed, they had already promised Henry that whenever that happened, they would be faithful and true to his son. Not very far from England is the country called France. A narrow sea separates the two. The English call it the Channel and the French call it the Sleeve--perhaps because it is something like a sleeve in shape. Henry was very often over in France because he had some possessions there. His father had come from France and conquered England, so he had land on both sides of this narrow sea. Though it is narrow, it is very rough, and sailors have to be very careful in crossing it. One time Henry and his son had been over in France doing some fighting. They overcame their enemies and made ready to set sail for England. They were about to start when a captain came up to the King and begged him to sail in his ship. He was very anxious to have the honor of carrying him across the Channel. He had carried over the King's father, William the Conqueror, when he went to invade England. He said that he had a beautiful new boat called the White Ship. There were fifty strong men to do the rowing, and they had sails besides. Of course, there were no steam-boats in those old times. Now King Henry had already made his arrangements, and he did not like to change them. But, to please the captain, he said he would send his treasure in his new ship--the precious things he had taken in war and was carrying home to England. More than that, he said he would let the captain take charge of the greatest treasure he had in the world, his only son, who was then seventeen years old. So William sailed with Captain Fitz-Stephen. The King was in a hurry to get home, and he started as soon as the tide would let him. In the White Ship with Prince William a great many knights and nobles sailed. Some of his own relatives were there, and many boys and girls belonging to the chief families of England. They wanted to have a good time, so they had a grand feast on board ship before they started on the voyage. They shouted and danced on the deck, and, I am sorry to say, they drank a great deal of wine. They did one thing that was specially foolish. They made the sailors drink, too. They opened three barrels of the wine and divided it among them. They ought to have known that the sailors would need steady hands to take the ship across that dangerous sea. But they did not think. It grew later and later, and darker and darker, and there was no moon that night. Some people began to be afraid to trust themselves in that ship, and they got off and waited till morning for another one. Most of them, however, were feeling too merry and jolly to be afraid of anything, and away they sailed. The rowers pulled with all their might and the helmsman steered for England. A man who has been using strong drink, though, is not fit to steer a ship or anything else. It has been found out that after even a very little wine or beer one cannot guide so well, or do anything else properly that needs a clear brain and steady nerves. Alcohol makes people stupid. We all know that if they drink a good deal of it, it takes their senses altogether away, so that they don't know anything and can't do anything. So, if they drink a little of it, it takes their senses partly away and they are not so bright as they should be. They do not see danger when it comes and then accidents happen. The helmsman of the White Ship was made stupid by the wine and he was not able to do his work. They had not gone very far before he steered the ship on a rock. There was a terrible crash and a terrible cry, and the water began to rush in through the hole which had been made. Quickly a boat was lowered and Prince William was hurried into it, and the rowers rowed away with him. But he heard a voice calling for help and knew it was his sister's, so he made the sailors turn back to save her. When they did so, ever so many people jumped in and the little boat could not hold them. They all went to the bottom. No one escaped from that dreadful shipwreck except one man who held on to the top of the mast till help came next day. When, at last, he reached land he told how the young prince and his sister had been drowned, and also a hundred and forty noble youths and girls, and the Captain and the fifty rowers, and everyone else on board except himself--all because of wine. What a dangerous drink this alcohol is, and how many accidents it has caused! It sends the brain to sleep so that it cannot do its work, and when that is the case we never know what dreadful thing may happen next. When anything puts the brain to sleep, we call it narcotic. Alcohol is a narcotic poison. No one should ever use it who wants to pilot a ship, or steer an automobile, or drive a train, or shoot a gun, or run a machine in a factory. King Henry was a busy man, and he went home as quickly as he could and attended to his work. He was very much surprised that William and the others did not come, and he kept wondering where they could be. When the sad news reached the palace, no man dared go in and tell the King. At last, they sent a little boy into his room--a page who waited on the ladies and gentlemen--and he fell at the King's feet. "O, King ... Prince William ... the White Ship!" When poor King Henry understood what had happened, he fell down in a faint. They say that all the rest of his life he was very sad. No one ever saw him smile again. One thing we must never forget about strong drink is this: It does not only bring trouble to the people who use it, but to many others besides. King Henry had nothing to do with the drinking on board the White Ship. He was not even there, and did not know about it. But it caused him to lose his boy and girl, both in one night. In our days, too, it makes more trouble than any one can possibly imagine. Although the wreck of the White Ship happened nearly eight hundred years ago, it was not by any means the first accident brought on by alcohol. Drink has always done these things. It has always made men's heads dull and their hands unsteady. It has caused them to be hurt and to lose their lives. The strange thing is that, although every one knows it does this, so many people venture to use it. We should all do well to remember the proverb, "Where there's drink there's danger." "Write it o'er the railroad wreck, Write it on the sinking deck, Write upon our hearts the truth, Let us learn it in our youth-- Where there's drink there's danger." A QUEER CASE Agnes, you and John may look at this watch. Don't you think its covering is very pretty? The covering of the watch is called its case. Now we will open it, and you may look inside and see what this pretty case covers. Look at all these little wheels. How small they are! Do you think they would stay in place long, or run and keep time, if we bruised them or took off the case? Then you see the case is not only pretty, but useful. It keeps the little wheels from getting broken or dirty. It protects them from harm. Look at the covering or case of your body. It covers and protects you just as the case does the works in the watch. Well, let me tell you a story about it. The covering of your body covers a number of organs which are even more wonderful than the little wheels in the watch. This covering of your body is full of little holes. These holes are too small to be seen with our naked eyes. Through these holes air and sunshine get into your body, and through these tiny holes little drops of water come out. This is sweat, and it helps to keep our bodies cool. When you run and play, these little drops of water keep you from getting too warm. They also help to keep your body clean by bringing out the little bits of dirt. [Illustration: IS THIS YOU?] I wonder if we are like a little pig, who, when his mother asked him what kind of a house he wanted, said, "mud house?" If so, we will have the little holes all closed up. Then we won't have a nice, soft, pink skin that will let the little drops of water through, but we will have a dirty, muddy-looking skin. When we run and play we get so warm that it will make us sick. But if we take nice warm baths twice a week at night, and a cool sponge bath every morning, with good clear water and soap, we will be like the watch, and have a beautiful covering, and this will help to keep our wonderful organs and body well and strong. We must bathe our hands often, and keep the covering on them nice and clean. Sometimes germs get on our hands, and, if we do not wash them often, we may carry them to our mouths. Sometimes this is the way we "catch" a disease, because we do not keep the covering, or case, on our hands clean. [Illustration: WATCH THE BIRDS] Did you ever watch the little birds as they fly down to a gutter, or little stream of water, how they dip their bills into the water? Do they just fly down into the water only to get a drink? No, indeed. They fill their bills with water and pour it all over their feathers. They get into the water, and such a splashing they have! All birds and animals wash themselves clean and nice when they can get to water. Old Rover has a good time swimming and bathing in the creek. This is the way they keep their skins nice and clean, and their hair and feathers slick and shining. "Drink less, breathe more; Eat less, chew more; Ride less, walk more; Worry less, work more; Preach less, practice more." --_Selected._ THE LITTLE GIRL AND THE BUTTERFLY Virginia is a little girl who lives in Not Far-Away Land. Her mother is a wise woman, and she wants her little girl to grow up into a strong and beautiful young woman. [Illustration: THE LITTLE GIRL AND THE BUTTERFLY] Some days Virginia pouts and is cross. She does not go out to play. She cries for things her mother does not want her to have. She will not take a nap in her snug little bed. She cries for candy, and will not eat her bread and butter. One day Virginia was sitting on the door-step, pouting; she had forgotten to be good that day. Presently, a beautiful butterfly fluttered down near her. Virginia forgot all her naughty thoughts and said, "Tell me, pretty Butterfly, where did you come from and what made you so beautiful?" The Butterfly turned its pretty head and looked at Virginia a moment. Then it said, "Little girl, I'll tell you a secret if you will forget your pouts and listen." Virginia promised. "I was an egg once; for you know, little girl, every living thing comes from an egg. This egg hatched, and a little green worm crawled out. This little green worm was I, and I did not know then that some day I would be a beautiful butterfly. "I was a good little worm, and did all the things Mother Nature told me to do. I ate the things that were good for me. I liked nice, juicy leaves--and Mother Nature told me they would make me grow big and strong. Little babies and little calves have nice warm milk to make them grow, and little worms eat nice, tender, green leaves. I chewed them up fine, so that my very little stomach could digest them. Do you like your bread and butter? "I do not cry for things Mother Nature tells me are not good for me. Every day I take plenty of cool, fresh water to drink from the drops I find on the leaves. Little worms, as well as little girls, need cool, pure water. "You should see my bath-tub; it is a rose leaf filled with dewdrops. Oh, how clean and sweet I am after my daily bath! I am fresh and fit for my travels over the green bushes and pretty rose vines. "Once I climbed to the top of a high maple tree, and rested on a leaf, while I watched the folks below passing. "After I had eaten, and bathed, and played as long as Mother Nature wanted me to, I curled up in a tiny cradle and went fast asleep. "My nap lasted a long time--all winter. All babies need sleep, you know; it makes them grow healthy and strong. Mother Nature was wise; she hung my cradle to the branch of a tree, where it would be in the pure fresh air while I was sleeping. The winds sang sweet lullabys to me. Some fine days Jack Frost would go whistling by. Sometimes an icicle would swing on the same branch with me. When the warm sun came out from behind the clouds, down would go the little icicle to the ground, shattered and sparkling like a thousand diamonds. All this time I was tucked away in my warm, brown cradle, waiting for the gentle spring breezes to wake me. "One day I woke from my long nap to find that I was a beautiful creature. Mother Nature had dressed me in wonderful colors. My wings were gaudy. She had given me graceful legs on which to walk, and a pretty head and body. I could fly from flower to flower. I did not eat leaves any more, but I drank nectar from the flower cups. "I love the sunshine, the clear water, the green grass, the bright flowers, and I love to hear the birds sing in the trees. I love to see the bees, as they rove from flower to flower to gather honey. Life seems one long, sweet song as I flit here and there. "Little girl, if you will listen to your mother as I listened when Mother Nature told me how to grow strong and beautiful, you will grow to be a strong, healthy girl, with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes. To be strong and healthy is to be beautiful." QUESTIONS 1. Why was Virginia cross? How did she behave? 2. What fluttered down by her? What story did the butterfly tell Virginia? 3. What kind of food did Mother Nature prepare for the little baby that one day was to be a butterfly? Was this different from the food it needed when it grew into a butterfly? 4. What food is good for the little babies in the home and the little baby calves? 5. When did baby butterfly sleep? Is fresh air good for the baby in your home? Was it good for Virginia? 6. What was the baby butterfly's cradle made of? [Illustration] LITTLE BAREFOOT "Look out, little Barefoot, the hookworm will catch you if you don't watch." This is what Will seemed to hear a wee small voice say one day as he stepped briskly along the dewy path. Will was driving the cows to the cool, green pasture down in the meadow. Will always drove old Brindle and Bess to the pasture every morning before he went to school. Brindle and Bess loved the juicy grass in the meadow pasture. They loved to drink the cool brook water. They would stand knee-deep in it on hot days. Soft pictures of the cows, and the tall trees, and the clouds could be seen in its water. When the sun was high in the sky, at noon-time, old Brindle and Bess would lie down under the trees near the brook, and chew and think, and chew and think. One afternoon Will came home from school limping, and tired, and hot. His feet hurt him, so he begged his mother not to send him for the cows, but to let some one else bring Brindle and Bess home at milking time. Will's mother knew that something was surely wrong, for Will liked nothing better than to call faithful Rover and romp away to the pasture. His mother looked at his feet and found them blistered and very sore. "We will call the doctor," she said. Uncle John looked wise when he came to see the little fellow. "Ah, ha! you have been going barefooted, my little man, and some young hookworms that were in the ground or grass have gone through the skin on your feet and made your toes and feet sore." "What are hookworms, Uncle?" asked Will. Uncle John told him this: "The hookworm is a very small worm, about a quarter of an inch long, or a little more, when it is grown. It was first brought to America from Africa by the negroes--the slaves that the Dutch people traded to our forefathers in the colonial days. "The little worm is called the 'American Murderer,' because it kills so many people of the southland. It does not hurt the little negro children as badly as it does the white children. "The hookworm eggs are hatched in the sand. The young hookworm sheds its skin two or three times, growing a little larger each time it sheds. "Sometimes it will crawl upon a grass blade, or lie in the sand until a little barefooted boy or girl comes stepping along. (The worm is now so small that it cannot be seen.) The little folks step on the worm, and it pushes its way through the skin. This is when it makes the sores on the feet and between the toes. "As soon as the little hookworms get through the skin they go into the blood. They are carried to the heart and lungs by the veins. They go from the lungs into the wind-pipe, and then crawl from the wind-pipe into the gullet. It is then an easy matter for them to get into the food tube in the body. "The mouth of the hookworm has a sharp hook which it fastens into the wall of the food tube. It hangs there and sucks all the blood it wants. A hookworm will suck a drop of blood a day. In feeding themselves they are slowly bleeding the person, drop by drop. This is the reason the boys or girls who have hookworms look so pale, and feel so tired all the time. The hookworm robs them of the good rich blood, and makes children, and even grown persons, dull and lazy. The disease keeps children from growing. "It is easy to cure the disease, but it is better to prevent it. We can prevent hookworm disease by preventing the ground from being polluted. Polluted ground means that which is made unclean with waste matter from our bodies. The eggs are found in this matter which pollutes the ground. "Now, Will, always wear your shoes, and see that the soles are good and thick. Then, even though the ground is unclean, hookworms can't get to your feet. I am sure, now that you know about hookworms, you will not go barefooted through the lanes again." QUESTIONS 1. What was the matter with Will's feet when he did not want to go for the cows? 2. What caused the ground-itch blisters on his feet? 3. How did the hookworms get into Will's feet? 4. In what part of the body do the hookworms make their stopping-place? 5. How do they get from the feet into the intestines? 6. How may infected persons get rid of hookworms? 7. How may the hookworm disease be prevented? THE LITTLE FAIRIES Once there was a little girl who was very beautiful. This little girl was a princess, and her name was Hilda. Hilda had many servants in her home to do her bidding. She had two little servants to wait on her, and each of these little servants had five other little servants. These little servants were called hands and fingers. She had two little servants to carry her everywhere she wanted to go. These were called feet. She had two little servants to see for her, called eyes, two to hear for her, called ears; one to talk for her, called tongue; and servants to chew for her, called teeth. Hilda took great pride in keeping these little servants clean and sweet. But one day Hilda grew cross. She would not keep her little hand-servants clean, and they would not wash her little eyes, or ears, or feet, and these other little servants would not do their duty. Soon her little teeth were dirty, for her hands gathered all the germs they could find and carried them to her pretty little mouth. Her little hand-servants would not curl her hair, which got tangled and ugly. The little teeth would not chew her food well, so Hilda had a bad night with the colic. In fact, her little servants treated Hilda so badly that her mother was afraid some wicked person had sent an evil spirit over them. I am afraid that this was true, for Hilda was cross, and sent that spell into her little servants. Things went on this way for a whole day, when Hilda's mother decided to carry her to her Fairy Godmother, and see if she could do anything to take this evil spirit from Hilda. Hilda's Godmother was at home. The mother told her about how things had been going. The Godmother was very sad. After talking it all over, she gave Hilda a large bundle to carry home, and told her not to open it until she reached the nursery. As soon as Hilda got to her own clean little room, she started to untie the bundle. She heard a tiny little voice, saying, "Hurry up, little Hilda, we are waiting for you." As soon as she unwrapped the first piece in the bundle, a pail of nice warm water, with sponge, soap, and towel, jumped out, and began washing her face and hands. A toothbrush jumped out, and began washing her teeth; a golden comb combed her pretty curls; a little fairy jumped out and took off her dirty dress and put a clean one on her; and another small fairy laced up her shoes, and then ran about, killing all the germs she could find. When the fairies and all the other wonders had finished their work, Hilda was again a beautiful little girl, and more like a little princess than ever. The Fairy Godmother came into the room and stooped and kissed her. [Illustration: WHAT THE FAIRIES DID FOR LITTLE HILDA] Hilda, all of a sudden, opened her eyes and saw her beautiful mother standing over her, kissing her. Hilda rubbed her eyes and found that she had been asleep. "O, mother," she said, "I have been asleep, and I had such a funny dream, and the fairies were so nice to me." Hilda promised her mother that she would never neglect her little servants again. This made the mother very happy, and, for making that promise, she bought Hilda a nice new doll, dressed like a fairy. Hilda was so proud of her doll that she named her Fairy. Fairy has been very good to Hilda, for every time she plays with her doll, Hilda always makes sure that her face and hands are as clean as her little doll's. QUESTION 1. What lesson can we get from this story? THE RED CROSS SEAL I am only a tiny bit of paper, with a little green and red color in the form of a cross or a wreath. I am not much larger than a postage stamp. I am going to tell you of some of the work I have done for mankind in this big world, notwithstanding my small size. Please don't think I am boasting of myself in an unbecoming manner. I was made long, long years ago, when our grandfathers were just soldiers, and fighting each other in a long and bloody war. [Illustration] The mothers and wives of these soldiers were constantly thinking out some plan by which they could do something for the "boys" at the front. It is hard to sit with idle hands when those we love are in the thick of battle, and I sometimes think that the women and children suffer most in our great wars. So, in 1862, when the days were very dark, when the battle seemed so fierce, and when the hospitals, North and South, were crowded with the sick and wounded, some good ladies of Boston thought of me. They decided to make me into a stamp, and to sell me to get money to help the sick soldiers. I was made and sold at a kind of "post-office booth" at many fairs. I did not look then just as I do now--you see the style of my dress has changed with the change in fashion. I have taken as my color the Red Cross, the emblem of that great army of workers who, in 1864, first organized the Red Cross Society at Geneva, Switzerland. This society works for the sick and suffering; it does not matter under what flag they live. Did you ever think of what a great thing a flag is? Just a little bit of cotton with a few colors on it, the red, white and blue, the tri-color of France; the red, white and black, of Germany; the stars and stripes of our own free land; or the Red Cross of Greece on a white field, the flag of the Red Cross Society. Men have fought and died for the thing which these bits of rag and color mean to them. But I am getting away from my story. With all the newness of the idea, and my very small size, I helped to make nearly a million dollars during that terrible war between our own beloved States. This money was used for the benefit of the sick and wounded soldiers. My mission has always been one of mercy. I cannot but feel good when I think over the days of the past, and recall to memory the deeds I have done. For a long time after that war I had nothing to do but to think of these past deeds, and, as I thought of the poor fever-stricken soldiers to whom I had brought medicine to cool their fever, and how I had gotten bandages to bind the wounds made by shot and shell, I thought sadly that I was forgotten, and that my mission was ended. These thoughts were sad, for I knew there was a work to be done, and I wanted to be up and about it. I wondered if the time would ever come when I could go on another errand of mercy. I felt that I must be needed somewhere in the big world, but I hoped I would never see another war. The time of waiting was a weary one, but one day in 1892 I heard a call from little Portugal, far across the ocean. I was needed by the Red Cross there to aid in getting money for the sick and suffering. Since I answered that call I have been at work in every country in the world; in coldest Russia, in sunny Italy, and even in far-away Australia. Sometimes I work to provide money for soldiers, for men will not stop fighting each other, and the Red Cross owes allegiance to the sick and wounded of every nation. Sometimes I work for the benefit of the homeless ones; and, again, I work for hospitals for sick children. My work is broad, indeed. I have always been happy in this work, for it is a great one, but in the year 1907 I started the work I like best of all. It was that year that Miss Emily Bissell, a little woman of Delaware, did what Jacob Riis suggested. He suggested that Americans adopt the plan already begun in Norway and Sweden. This was to sell the Red Cross stamps to aid in raising money for the great fight against tuberculosis. So the first real seal for this purpose was issued in 1908, and since that time I have brought to this cause over a million dollars. One little seal, on which shines a red cross of Greece, for one little penny, has grown and grown, until with the seals and pennies I have made over a million dollars to help suffering human beings. Now, let me tell you how it has been done. I am printed about six weeks before Christmas. After I am printed, with my red crosses and holly wreaths, and "Merry Christmas," agents advertise me in every nook and corner of the country. I go to every little village--especially where there are women interested in doing good for others. I am sold to seal packages to go to far-away countries; I am used to paste on the back of letters; I go everywhere carrying the message of "Peace and good will to men." In every place that I go some one is talking and writing about how to prevent tuberculosis, the "great white plague," as Oliver Wendell Holmes called it--the terrible disease that has killed so many people--more than all the wars of the world. Seventy-five to ninety per cent. of all the money I bring is used in the community in which I am sold. The money I bring is used to hire nurses to go down into the crowded city districts to care for the poor consumptives crowded in the tenement houses. It may help to send a poor little cripple, with tuberculosis of the hip-joint, to the "Fresh Air Home" in the mountains, where she has a chance to get well. It often aids in sending a tired, sick mother to the seashore in summer, where she finds rest and health. It aids in sending some one to the schools to teach the gospel of fresh air, good food, and pure water for the children. So you see my mission has always been one of mercy, hope and health. Yet I am such a little thing--just a bit of paper, bearing a little red cross on a white shield, worth only a penny. "Great oaks from little acorns grow," you know. QUESTIONS 1. When were the first stamps used to make money for charitable purposes? 2. Who first suggested using such stamps to aid the fight on tuberculosis? 3. Who was Jacob Riis? Who was Oliver Wendell Holmes? 4. Why is the cross of Greece used on the stamps? What does it signify? 5. What is done with the money gotten from the sale of the Red Cross seal? 6. Do you think it a good cause? Why? Will you join the band of workers who are fighting "the great white plague?" [Illustration: OUT IN THE SAND BED WHERE I PLAY] THE SAND BED I have a sand bed, and there I play, There in the sand for half the day. And mother comes and sits by me; And little sister likes to see The many things I make of sand, But she's too young to understand. And then I make believe and say My sand bed is the sunny bay; These blocks are boats, and far away They sail all night and sail all day, And carry iron. When they return They bring us coal that we may burn. And now my sand bed is a farm. This is the barn. Here, safe from harm, My horses and my cows I keep. These sheds are for the woolly sheep. And there you see my piggie's pens. The yard holds in the lively hens. This is the garden, where I hoe My plants: and here the flowers grow. The sticks are pines, so straight, so tall And dark. But these aren't half of all The things I make each pleasant day Out in the sand bed where I play. THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT "Oh, Jack, Uncle John says, if we will build a play-house for Mary and her dolls, he will take us to Washington with him when he goes next month." "All right, Stuart, we can do it. Let us begin right away. Here is a nice place for the house, just on the little hill. The ground is nice and sandy, and the rain-water runs off. Here are some pretty trees for shade. The hill is not high enough for it to be very cold. "Now, for the house. We will place it so that it will face the south. Then the living rooms will have plenty of sunshine. We will put it about two feet off the ground, in order that it will not be damp; we can have a wide piazza nearly all around the house; and on the south piazza we can screen off a part for a sleeping porch. I am sure the dolls would like one. [Illustration: THE SLEEPING PORCH THAT JACK BUILT] "We will screen every door and window to keep the flies and mosquitoes out of the house. Mary says that each room must have at least two windows. She wants the walls of the rooms painted a soft cream color. We will oil and wax the floors. She can put a few rugs on them. She does not want large ones that she cannot take up when she sweeps. "The little white iron beds, with dainty pillows and white covers, will surely please the dolls. "Even in the parlor we will not have a single chair with plush or velvet on it, for, Uncle John says, such furniture collects and holds germs. The plan for the kitchen is a beauty. Everything is white except the stove. There is a nice little table, and a cupboard, where the pans and dishes are to be kept. The table is covered with zinc, and the floor is covered with oil-cloth, so that it will be easy to keep it clean. A shelf, on which are fastened hooks for spoons and forks, is near the sink. "The windows will have white muslin sash curtains. Mother says it is just the kitchen to delight the heart of a neat little cook, with 'a place for everything, and everything in its place.' "Look at the cloth-covered broom we are going to use for sweeping, no dust and no feather-dusters in this play-house. "We can put the well here, this is near the house and on a hill above the barn and chicken houses. We can put a little gasoline engine in, to pump water into the bathroom and kitchen. "We will plant some roses in the yard. "Well, Stuart, we have worked hard on Mary's doll-house, and, now that it is finished, I am sure Uncle John will take us on the promised trip." "I showed the house to Uncle John to-day, Jack, and he said he wished that some of the 'grown-ups' houses were as carefully planned for sunshine and health as Mary's doll house." QUESTIONS 1. Why did Jack and Stuart build a sleeping porch to the doll house? 2. Why did they put the house on a little hill? Why did they put the barns and out-houses at the foot of the hill? 3. Where did they place the well? 4. Why did they use a cloth-covered broom for sweeping? 5. Would this be a good way for grown-ups to build their houses? [Illustration] A NEW STORY OF THE LION AND THE MOUSE A long while ago, so the story goes, there was a time when the Lion, King of Beasts, had a little mouse at his mercy. The Lion was about to crush the mouse with his paw. The little mouse begged for his life, and the great King of Beasts spared him. Not a great while after that day the Lion was caught in a net. He could not get out, and howled with rage. The little mouse heard him, and ran to help his old-time friend. The great King of Beasts did not think the little mouse could help him. But the mouse gnawed the cords in the net with his teeth, and thus set the Lion free. This story that I am going to tell you is of a rat--a kind of cousin to the mouse. In many of our cities the City Fathers have not thought much of the many rats that live in the alleys and big warehouses, where cotton and grain are stored. The City Fathers, like the King of Beasts, have looked with contempt on the little rats. They did not believe they were large enough to do any great harm, but rats and mice are dirty little animals and can carry disease. The Health Doctors, who are always digging into things, have made a serious charge against Mr. Rat. They say that he is the "Carrier" of a terrible disease, and that he is to be more feared than the biggest lion. The rats have brought this disease from the far-away countries in Asia. You will ask--How could the rats bring this disease, which is called "the plague," since they cannot swim across the ocean? No, that is true. But you know that the rats are great wanderers, and they frequently get on the ships which are loaded in the harbors in China, or Japan, and travel with the ships to the next port. You must remember that rats have fleas on them. In the far-away country the fleas bite persons who have the plague. The fleas then get on the rats in the neighborhood, and even give the plague to the rats. When the ship unloads its cargo, in Mobile, San Francisco, or New York, these rats, with their fleas and plague germs, go ashore, and in this way they spread the disease. When the fleas from the rats bite persons, they poison them with the plague germs. Many persons in Asia die of this disease every year. In this country we prevent it by doing what the Lion of long ago did not do. We kill the rats, for they are dirty little animals. QUESTIONS 1. Tell the story of the Lion and the Mouse. Who wrote this fable? What is a fable? 2. Why are we not so merciful to the rat as the Lion was? 3. What disease germs does the rat carry? [Illustration] FIRST AID TO THE INJURED AND THE BOY SCOUTS "I say, Jack, what do you think; I am going to join the Boy Scouts." "What is that, Tom? I don't know anything about Boy Scouts. Is it something new? You are always starting some new stunt. Is it playing soldier?" "Oh, no, Jack; it is a company made up of boys, who are learning to be manly and brave. Being a Boy Scout takes you out-of-doors a great deal, and in that way it helps make you strong and healthy. I wish you would come with me and join." "Well, tell me all about it." "The Boy Scouts were organized in England, in 1907, and a brother organization was started in America in 1910. It was started by men who knew all about boys, and who wanted to help them to get the best out of life. "The Boy Scouts elect leaders; they form troops, that is, so many boys under one leader. They go camping. They go on long 'hikes.' A hike is a trip into the country, over hills and through meadows. "The Boy Scout must learn to swim, and to do many things to help himself, and to help others. A Boy Scout has to promise to do something for some one each day--lend a helping hand. "Mr. Brown, the lawyer, is our Scout Master. Come, Jack, join us. You are twelve years old. It will help to make a man of you. A number of us are going to be initiated this afternoon; then we will be Tenderfoot Scouts." "All right, Tom, I'll ask mother. I am pretty sure she will let me join. She wants me to be a manly, healthy boy." SOME THINGS JACK AND TOM LEARNED TO DO AS BOY SCOUTS (FIRST AID, IT IS CALLED) When a person faints, lay him flat, loosen his collar and belt, and bathe the face in cool water. When a person is cut, and the wound is bleeding, put a clean cloth on the wound, and press on it with the fingers until it stops bleeding, or until a doctor comes. Tie a bandage above the cut. If a bone is broken, carry the person so the broken bone will not tear or injure the flesh near it. Put a board or pillow under the broken bone to steady it. They also learn to bind wet soda to a burn. To put clove oil or turpentine on a bit of cotton in an aching tooth. To put three drops of carbolic acid in half a teaspoonful of warm glycerine into an aching ear. To put wet cloths on the throat for sick stomach. To bathe a sprain in hot water, and not to bandage until it stops swelling. To turn an eyelid and take out a cinder, or a bit of dirt, with a soft cloth. When a person has taken poison, to give him something to make him vomit--salt and warm water, or mustard dissolved in warm water; call for a doctor. For sunstroke, to put the person in a cool place, and bathe in cool water. To put ice-cap on head. For heat prostration, to give stimulants, 10 to 12 drops of aromatic spirits of ammonia in a little water, or hot drinks. Put hot-water bottle to the feet. When on fire, to lie down, not to run. Wrap in a rug or blanket, or anything that will shut off the air from the flame. To protect the face from the flames. In nose bleed, to raise the head and arms. To press on the nostril from which the blood is coming. That a small piece of cotton dipped in very weak vinegar or lemon juice and placed in the nostril will cause the bleeding to stop. Should a child swallow a penny, or ring, or other small things, to give bread and potatoes; not to give a laxative, or purgative. If a child has convulsions, to put it in a warm bath without waiting to undress it. For snake bite, or the bite of a dog, tie a string above the bite, wash the wound with clean water, and rub carbolic acid or luna caustic on it. The most important thing that the Boy Scout learns is that common sense and self-control are two of the best things to possess. The Boy Scout must be well trained to use the last two aids for the benefit of the injured. AN INVITATION "What do you say?" said the Work to be Done. "Shall we start bravely together, Up with the morning sun, Sing, whatever the weather?" Come, little busy folks, what do you say? Let's begin fairly together to-day. Shall we keep step with a laugh and a song All through the runaway morning? And when the noontide comes speeding along, Whistling his chorus of warning, "Then," said the Work to be Done, "let us see Who has kept in the hurry with me?" Hark, in the midst of the long afternoon, When you are a little bit weary, How all the meadows keep sweetly in time, Toiling, and prattling and cheery. "What do you say?" said the Work to be Done, "Shall we be comrades till the setting of sun?" --_Selected._ A GREAT FIGHT Tom, Uncle John told me last night that he was going to make a hard fight. I thought he was going to war. He could not tell me all about this fight then, because some one came for him, to go to see a sick child. When I went to bed, I dreamed Uncle John was a soldier, and that he had on a uniform, and was riding away on a big black horse. In my dream, I could hear the bugle blow. Then I dreamed he was fighting wild beasts. My! how hot I got while I was dreaming this. This morning, when I told Uncle John about my dream, he said he was going to fight something that did more harm than wild beasts. He told me that, as soon as I helped mother, to come over to his office, and he would tell me all about it. I could scarcely eat my breakfast, I was in such a hurry to learn what my Uncle John was going to fight. I could just see him with a sword buckled to his side, getting on a big war-horse, galloping off to the music of fife and drum. After breakfast, I ran to the office. "Well, my boy," said Uncle John, "you have come to learn about the big fight your peace-loving Uncle is going to make. I am fighting for others, not for myself, and I hope we will win this fight. "I will show you the enemy, he is in ambush." My eyes were wide open when Uncle said that. Uncle John walked quickly over to a shelf and took down a bottle of "Soothing Syrup." I wondered what he was going to do, when he returned and said, "This bottle holds one of the greatest enemies of little innocent children. It contains opium. Opium is a poison. Little babies don't need it. Sometimes a mother will give too large a dose, and kill her little one. The mother does not know that the 'soothing' part of the syrup is opium. "The English people have told the makers of such stuff that they must take the opium out of it, or label the bottle _poison_. Much of this kind of medicine is sold. The people do not know how harmful it is. I am going to fight this enemy of little babies to the last ditch. "Some of the well-known captains of regiments of these fake cures are known as 'Compounds,' 'Bitters,' 'Kidney Cures,' 'Cough Cures,' 'Asthma Cures' and 'Liver Regulators.' These are mighty captains, and flaunt their false colors in the daily newspapers which come to our firesides. Many of them contain alcohol. 'Corn Cures' and 'Skin Foods' are little corporals in the army of the enemy. "The great generals are the fake consumption cures which are advertised in so many daily papers and magazines. Their shot and shell are the most dangerous, because they attack those already weak. They rob persons of the judgment to choose such allies as Fresh Air, Food and Rest. They are not even brave soldiers--they strike the weak and ignorant. "_These_, my boy, are the enemies I am going to fight--in the trenches and out. I am buckling on my armor and sword. Will you join me, and help to put down quacks and patent medicines of all kinds?" QUESTIONS 1. Give the names of some patent medicines you know. 2. What do nearly all patent medicines contain? 3. Will you promise to help in stopping the use of patent medicines? THE FIVE BEST DOCTORS The five best doctors anywhere, And no one can deny it, Are Doctors Sunshine, Water, Air, Exercise and Diet. These five will gladly you attend, If only you are willing; Your mind they'll cheer, your ills they'll mend, And charge you not one shilling. GLOSSARY To facilitate the pronunciation of the words in this glossary the correct syllabication has been indicated. Of course, it is expected that the teacher will assist the pupil where any difficult combinations occur. AC´CI DENT--an event which is unexpected. AD´E NOID--growth between the back of the nose and the mouth, which prevents or disturbs breathing through the nose. A JAR´--open. AL LIES´--friends. AM´ BUSH--secret or concealed place where troops lie in wait to attack unawares. AN´TI TOX´IN--against poison. AWN´ING--a covering stretched upon a frame and used as a shelter from wind or sun. BAC TE´RI A--very small plants; some bacteria cause disease. BOAST´ING--bragging. CAP´TAIN--a leader. CAR´GO--load; freight carried by ships or other vessels. CAR´PEN TER--one who builds houses, ships, etc. CEL´E BRATE--to keep a festival holiday. CLEV´ER--having skill; good-natured. COL´O NY--of, or pertaining to, a colony or colonies; the thirteen British colonies which formed the United States of America. CON´QUER--overpower; win. CON SUMP´TION--progressive wasting of the lungs. CON TEMP´--scorn; to despise. COR´PO RALS--lower officers in an army. CRYS´TAL--pure, transparent; resembling crystal. DE STROY´--to kill; to break up the structure of a thing. DIS AP POINT´--defeated of expectation or hope. DRAG´ON--a large serpent; legendary animal. DREAD´NOUGHT--a fearless ship. DREAM--a series of thoughts, images or emotions occurring during sleep. DU´TY--that which is required by one's station or occupation; any assigned service or business. EN GI NEER´--one who manages an engine. ENG´LISH--the people of England. ER´RAND--a trip to carry a message or do some special business. FAKE--anything prepared for the purpose of deceiving; trick. FA´VOR--a kind act; kindness. FEAST--a meal of abundant and satisfying food; a rich treat. FEE´BLE--weak physically. FORE´FA THERS--one who comes before another in the line of direct descent; especially a male ancestor. FREIGHT--goods carried from one place to another. FRE´ QUENT LY--at short intervals. FU´EL--anything that feeds fire. FUR´NACE--a structure in which heat is produced. FUR´NISH--to provide; to give. GEN´ER AL--an officer who commands an army or any body of troops. GIN--a machine for separating cotton fibres from the seeds. GLAND--an organ of the body. HELMS´MAN--a man who steers a boat. HOS´PIT AL--a place where sick and afflicted are cared for. I´CI CLE--a rod of ice formed by the freezing of drops of dripping water. IN´DI AN--member of one of the aboriginal races of North, South and Central America. IN FECT´ED--to taint; to contaminate; to give disease. IN I´TI ATE--to introduce. IN´JURED--damaged; hurt. IN´NO CENT--free from; clean; pure. IN TES´TINE--that part of the digestive tube below the stomach; bowel. JOUR´NEY--passage from one place to another. KNIGHT--a man of gentle birth, bred to the profession of arms. LAX´A TIVE--a gentle purgative, having the power to loosen the bowels. MA LA´RI A--(old meaning, bad air), a disease, the cause of which is carried by the mosquitoes. MEAD´OW--low or level land covered with grass. MER´CY--the act of relieving suffering. MI´CRO SCOPE--a magnifying instrument for seeing very small objects, such as germs. NEC´TAR--the honey of plants. NO´BLE--a man of lofty lineage. O´PI UM--a poisonous powder gotten from the poppy plant. OR´GAN--any part performing a special work. OX´Y GEN--a chemical substance in the air necessary to life. PALE--lacking in color. PAS´TEUR--a French scientist who studied and told us much of germs. PI AZ´ZA--a porch. PLAGUE--a disease of Asia; a pestilence. POL LUTE´--to make unclean. POI´SON--a substance taken into the body which injures or kills. PNEU MO´NI A--an inflammation of the lung tissue, caused by a germ. PUR´GA TIVE--a medicine which purges or cleans out the alimentary canal. QUACK--a pretender to medical skill. RAID--to make war on. RA´TIONS--food; a ration; amount of food used. REG´I MENT--a body of soldiers. REIGN--to preside over; to rule. REL´A TIVES--near of kin. ROY´AL--kingly; pertaining to kings. RUB´BISH--trash; waste. SEARCH´LIGHT--a powerful light used on ships. SMOTH´ERED--prevented from breathing. SOL´DIER--a member of an army. SOOTH´ING--to make quiet. SQUAD´RON--several war vessels detailed for service. STIM´U LANT--something which excites or spurs on. TRENCH--a large ditch. TY´PHOID--a long slow fever, caused by a germ; it can be prevented by cleanliness. U´NI FORM--special dress, usually with braid and buttons. VAC CI NAT´TION--producing a mild form of a disease to prevent a severe form. VEINS--tubes that carry blood to the heart. VEN´TI LATE--to supply with fresh air. VES´SEL--a ship. VIC´TO RY--act of overcoming an enemy in battle, or an opponent in a contest. VIR GIN´I A--an eastern state in the United States. WARE´HOUSE--storehouse. WEAP´ON--any implement used for offense or defense. WHOLE´SOME--healthy. WIND´PIPE--a tube that carries the air from the throat to the lungs. WITH´ERED--dried up. ZINC--a metal. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious punctuation errors repaired. 
33155	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) _Medicina Flagellata_: OR, THE DOCTOR SCARIFY'D. ----_Ægrescitque medendo._ Virg. _Si tibi deficiant Medici, Medici, tibi fiant: Hæc tria, Mens læta, requies, moderata dieta._ _LONDON:_ Printed for J. BATEMAN, at the _Hat_ and _Star_; and J. NICKS, at the _Dolphin_ and _Crown_, both in St. _Paul's Church-yard_. 1721. _Medicina Flagellata_: OR, THE Doctor Scarify'd. Laying open the VICES of the Faculty, the Insignificancy of a great Part of their _Materia Medica_; with certain RULES to discern the true Physician from the Emperick, and the Useful Medicine from the Noxious and Trading Physick. WITH An ESSAY on HEALTH, Or the POWER of a REGIMEN. To which is added, A Discovery of some Remarkable Errors in the late Writings on the PLAGUE, by Dr. _Mead_, _Quincey_, _Bradley_, &c. With some useful and necessary RULES to be observed in the Time of that Contagious Distemper. _LONDON_: Printed for J. BATEMAN, and J. NICKS. M. DCC. XXI. PREFACE. _It being usual for Authors, in Prefaces, to render an Account of the Occasion which gave Birth to their Writings, and to acquaint the Reader with the Design and Scope of their Discourses; I thought it convenient to continue a Custom approved by many illustrious Examples._ _The Motive of publishing this Tract, is not the Intercession of Friends, for none had ever the View of any Part of it; and that it is not Design of Applause that has engaged me in this Undertaking, the Care I have had to conceal my Name will, I suppose, free me from such Suspicion: the chief Inducement proceeds from an Inclination to Mankind, to instruct them to preserve and prolong their Lives, thereby to prevent them from using fraudulent Quack Medicines (which are now become so universally vendible amongst them) or advising with such as are wholly ignorant; and I should think my self sufficiently rewarded for my Pains, if I could arrive to the Point of reforming the Abuses of the present, and restoring the Simplicity of the ancient Practice, by laying open to the World my Observations of the pretended and fallacious =Methodus Medendi=, and the Insignificancy of a great Part of their =Materia Medica=._ _And here I will particularly address my self to all those Persons concern'd with me, who are the People or Patients; and the Physicians with their Followers, the Chirurgeons and Apothecaries: This Discourse is chiefly intended for the first, it being they who are most highly injured by the unwarrantable Practices of those we have therein accused; for although many understanding Persons among the People are sufficiently satisfied of the Abuses we have mentioned; and that it is of absolute Necessity some Reformation should be made: Yet all are not thus perswaded; for we may daily observe, that many who are less discerning, being deceiv'd by an imaginary Good, covet their own Ruin; and unless they be given to understand which is the Evil, and which is the Good, by Persons they have Reason to confide in, they must necessarily run much Hazard._ _I have here endeavoured to undeceive them; which I should dispair of, did I only foresee Inconveniencies afar off (the Vulgar being led by Sense, and not by probable Conjectures); but since they do now actually labour under many, and those obvious, Inconveniencies, how short sover their sight be, the Senses of Feeling being no less acute in them than in others, I persuade my self, they will readily assent to those Truths I have largely discovered._ _And here must I venture through all the Barricadoes and the Fortifications of popular Resentment; but Satires, like Incision, become necessary when the Humour rankles, and the Wound threatens Mortification; when Advice ceases to work; when Loss, Experience, and Disaster will not convince, then Satire reforms, by making the Error we embrace ridiculous: Shame works to make us forsake a Thing, which Instruction augments, or Persuasion could have no Effect upon._ _Many and great Abuses, and of the last Importance to the People, have urged my Duty and demanded my Assistance; and if in my Essay on Health, I do persuade my Reader to the =Regimen= I have here laid down, he may assure himself of that =Golden Panacea=, that =Elixir Salutis=, at no other Charge but in =cura seipsum=._ _It would by many be expected, that I should make an Apology for the great Liberties I have taken in my general Treatment of the whole Faculty; in which I claim the allow'd Exception, that there are some few very Eminent, and worthy of the first Honours and Dignity of Physick, and who by their unwearied Labour of Body and Application of Mind, have run through the Courses of =Anatomy, Botany, Chymistry=, and =Galenick Pharmacy=, and no less acquainted with the Virtues, Faults, and Preparations, Compositions and Doses of Vegetables, Animals, Minerals, and all the Shop Medicines._ _And yet nevertheless, the Profession of Physick (though arrived to much greater Improvement than before) it's Dignity and Degrees are so despicably fallen, that the very lowest of People, as well Women as Men, usurp the Title; and how monstrous it is to see that Mob of Empericks, as Barbers, Farriers, and Mountebanks, over-reach and bubble the People both of their Lives and Money._ _As I would not arrogate to my self the Performance of another, I must not here forget to acknowledge that I have borrowed from the judicious Author of a late excellent Discourse concerning some few Passages of the State of Physick, and the Regulation of it's Practice. I suppose it will be easily imagined, that I could have spoken the same Things in other Words; but my Respect to the Memory of that worthy Person, disposes me to believe, they will sound better, and be more effectual in his own Language._ _The following Appendix receiv'd it's Birth in Answer to some the most formidable of the many Pamphlets that were crowded upon the People at the first Report we had of the miserable State of the =Marseillians= by the Plague; which had not been but for the same plausible End, of being serviceable to the Nation, by detecting their Errors, and setting aside the clashing Opinions of those =Literati=, which has rather given Alarm, than a Security to the People._ _To conclude: If in speaking the Truth there is no Blame, but rather Commendation, I then need not Apologise for the Freedom I've used, in exploding the great Varieties and Abuses in both the Theory and Practice of Physick. And although the Attempt should not answer equal to the good Intention I've had for the Publick; yet I shall demand that Justice of the World, and with =Horace=,_ Quod Verum atque decens, curo, & rogo, & omnis in hoc sum. _Medicina Flagellata_: OR, The Doctor Scarify'd. It is most certain that all Nations, even the most barbarous, have in all Ages made use of Medicines, to ease their Pains, to regain or preserve Health, the greatest among earthly Felicities; in the Absence whereof, we cannot relish any of those numerous Enjoyments, which the bountiful Creator hath plentifully bestow'd on us; so that the most sublime ancient Philosophers who excluded all other external Good from being necessary, to the well being of Man, placing Happiness only in the things whereof we cannot be depriv'd; yet out of them they excepted Health, knowing there was so near a Connexion between the Soul and Body, that the one could not be disorder'd in its Functions, but the other would be disturb'd in its Operations. Hence it is that no Part of human Knowledge can be of greater Moment than what directs to Remedies, and Means of Relief under those Infirmities to which the whole Race of Man is Heir to; so that even amongst the wisest, that Science or Art whereby those Defects we call Diseases were repair'd, was always accounted Divine; for that God is the first and chief Physician, hath been the constant Faith of all Ages, and that Physicians were accounted the Sons of Gods, was commendably asserted by _Galen_, and therefore it was truly spoken, that Medicines were the Hand of God, there meriting only such Names, as related to their divine Original; thus a certain Antidote was called [Greek: Isytheo], equal to God, another [Greek: Theodotos], given by God, another divine; several Compositions had the Inscription [Greek: Iera], or Sacred; and 'twas the common Belief among the Heathens, that so great a Knowledge in Physick came by Inspiration: And St. _Austin_ is of the same Opinion in his _Civi. Dei_, who saith, _Corporis Medicina (si altius rerum origines repetas) non invenitur unde ad homines manare potuerit, nisi à Deo_. It cannot be conceived whence Physick should come to Man but from God himself. It is well known how great a Name _Hippocrates_ obtain'd, not only in _Greece_ (which he deliver'd from the greatest Plague) but in remote Parts; so that the greatest Monarchs of the _East_, and their Vice-Roys, were Suitors to him, to free their Country from that devouring Disease, which threatned to exhaust those populous Regions of their Inhabitants, unless the same Person who freed _Greece_ interpos'd, whom they esteem'd divine, and sent from the Gods, because successful in so great Undertakings. Very certain it is, so Noble and Useful a Study were encouraged, yea and practised by Kings, Princes, and Philosophers, by the highest, wisest, and best of Men, whereof some were honour'd by Statues erected to perpetuate their Memoirs, and by many other Instances of the publick Gratitude. So that when I consider what Reverence has been paid to this Profession, and the Professors thereof in all times whereof we have any particular Account, I am amaz'd that in this latter Age wherein it hath received greater Improvements than in Two thousand Years before, and that nevertheless it should be by many neglected, by others slighted, and by some even contemned. After a diligent Enquiry into the Causes of so strange and sudden an Alteration, I could not, in my Opinion, so justly ascribe it to Defects in the Profession, as to those of its Professors; not that I deny that Physick may be capable of greater Improvements, notwithstanding it might to this Day have been maintain'd at least in the same Degree of Honour and Esteem which all Ages have justly had for it, if the Avarice and Imprudence of the Real, the Ignorance and Baseness of the pretended Artists had not interpos'd: Under the former I comprize the Vulgar Physicians; under the latter, their Dependants the Apothecaries, who, I am confident, have caused many of the great Inconveniences under which the Practice of Physick now labours. That the Sick are in all Cases oppressed with too many Medicines, and made to loath, and complain of the very Cordials; that the Expence is made greater, and more extravagant by the often Confederacy and Artifices visible in the new Modes of prescribing: And the Deaths of the Patient I would not say is frequently the Effect not of the Disease, but of the numerous Doses obtruded in the same Proportions in every Sickness and Age, pushing on declining, and even departing Life; which after its Exit makes Pots and Glasses observed, with the same Passions and Concern, as the bloody Sword is viewed as the Instrument of Death and Mischief. By whom, or by what Means the Purity of Physick has sunk into this Degeneracy, let us farther examine, and trace it from the first Steps of entring into this great Abuse; let us then usher in the young Physician now come from the University, and having spent a great Part of his Money (if not all) in his Education, very wisely for himself considers, which are the most obvious and practis'd Ways of making himself known, and by what Methods he may more easily insinuate himself, and that he may recover the Fortune he has lent the Publick in his Education, which he is resolved they shall now pay him with Interest. He is inform'd, or presently observes, that most, or all the Families are under the Directions of the Apothecary, who gives his Physick 'till he fears the Patient will die, and then appoints a Physician, who before is prepared to acquit him, by bearing the Reproach with the most perfect Resignation. And to support this good Temper, he is bid to cast his Eyes around the Kingdom, and consider how they flourish in the common Fame, who had the good Luck to follow those Instructions at their first Arrival. Or if he has found out any more effectual Medicines, or more compendious or grateful Methods of Cure, or would imitate the applauded Practice of some few of the most eminent of that Profession, whose Prescriptions were only to assist, not to overload, or suppress Nature; this is too bold a Stroke, a too dangerous Reform in Physick; he must previously consider, that the Number of Apothecaries are increas'd, and that their Dependance lieth more on the Quantities of Medicines in suitable Proportions, and notwithstanding a generous and liberal Education, by which he has learn'd to explode the malevolent and useless Practice, from a great many Prescriptions that are now in vogue; he must not dare to refute them, he must obey that great Principle of Nature, to preserve himself; he must conform to the Manners of the Age, and the general Practice; he must dispence with his not knowing whether the Medicines are made up according to his Prescription; he must wink at the Design, Ignorance, Carelessness, or Unfaithfulness of the Apothecary; whom he must not any ways disgust, tho' he in Revenge, as well in executing his own Interest, may make his Dose up with worm-eaten superannuated Drugs, wherewith most of 'em are well stor'd, which will not work according to the Physician's Promise, and the Patient's Expectation: The Apothecary who here outwits the Doctor, and assumes the Character, is here ready at hand to tell his Patient that this was no ways accommodated to his Temper; nay, perhaps, he presages to him that it will not work sufficiently, (as he may without Conjuring or Astrology) by which he obtains a Reputation of a Person more judicious than the Physician making way for his own Advantage, by telling the Patient that he will prepare a Purge that shall work more effectually than the former: This you need not doubt is the same the Physician before prescrib'd, but assuredly made up of better Drugs, and so the Apothecary executes his Design, which is to exclude the Physician, and prefer himself. The young Physician, tho' he has learn'd the Abuse, yet he has that Regard to himself, to make use of that old Maxim, _Of the two Evils, to choose the least_; and finding it best suiting his Interest, which otherwise might be endanger'd by the clandestine and underhand Dealings of the other, and now finds it necessary to close in with him, and such a one as will join in a mutual Application and Advancement of each other: Now are their Engines set at work, and the Doctor not to be behind-hand, gives a new Form to his Bills, which he prescribes in Terms so obscure, that he forces all chance Patients to repair to his own Apothecary, pretending a particular Secret, which only they have a Key to unlock; whereas in effect it is no other than the commonest of Medicines disguised under an unusual Name, on design to direct you to that Apothecary, between whom and the Physician there is a private Compact of going Snips out of the most unreasonable Rates of the said Medicines; wherein if you seek a Redress, by shewing the Bill to the Doctor, he shall most religiously aver it to be the cheapest he ever read. The Consequence whereof, as to your Particular, is a double Fraud; and as the Apothecaries in general, their Numbers bearing the Proportion at least ten to one of noted Physicians; to whom allowing his Covenant Apothecary, who constituting one Part of the ten, the remaining nine Parts are compell'd either to sit still, or to quack for a Livelihood, or at least eight of them, for we'll suppose one Part of the nine a Possibility of acquiring competent Estates, in a Way more honest than that of the Covenanters, by their wholsome Trade of fitting out Chirurgeons Chests for Sea, and supplying Country Apothecaries with Compositions: Lastly, all accomplish'd Physicians are likewise expos'd to manifest Injuries from the Covenant Apothecaries, who being sent for by Patients, after a short Essay of a Cordial, will overpower them by Perswasions to call in a Doctor, who shall be no other than his Covenant Physician; by which Means the former Physician, who by his extraordinary Care and Skill had oblig'd the Family before, shall be passed by, and lose the Practice of that Patient: And should it happen, the Sense of Gratitude of the forementioned Patient, should engage him to continue the Use of his former Physician, yet this Covenant Apothecary shall privately cavil at every Bill, and impute the Appearance of every small Pain, or Symptom (which necessarily in the Course of a Disease will happen) to his ill Address in the Art of Physick, and shall not give over before he has introduc'd his Covenanter, whose Authority in the Fraud of Physick he supposes to be most necessary. But least you should think me overbalanc'd with a Prejudice to those that so much abuse that noble Profession, I'll conduct you into their usual Road and Method of examining their Patients, and making Enquiry into their Diseases, wherewith being acquainted, you may, without any farther Conviction, pronounce a Verdict. This Knack doth chiefly consist in three Notions; _viz._ _First_, That a Patient's Grievance is either a discernible evident Disease, which his own Confession makes known to you, what it is; or, _Secondly_, an inward Pain; or, _Thirdly_, one of those two Endemic Diseases, a Scurvy, or Consumption; or, a _Fourth_, the Pox. This is their Theory, which is so deeply ingrafted on their _Dura Mater_, and may be acquired with less Industry than fourteen Years Study at one of our Universities; for so much Time is requir'd to make a Man grow up a Doctor, the Formality whereof in most Places consists in this Elogy; _Accipiamus pecuniam, & dimittamus asinùm_. If a sick Man makes his Address to a vulgar Physician, he demands his Complaint; t'other replies, he is troubled either with a Vomiting, Looseness, want of Stomach, Cough, bad Digesture, difficulty of Breathing, a Phtisick, Faintness, Jaundice, Green-Sickness, Dropsy, Gout, Convulsion-Fits, Palsy, Diziness, or Swimming in the Brain, Spitting of Blood, an Ague, a continual great Heat or Fever, _&c._ These are all evident Diseases the Party himself expresses he is troubled with; but his Sickness not being an evident Disease, which he himself can explain, the Vulgar Doctor concludes, it must be either an inward Pain, or an Endemick Disease: The Patient then making complaint of an inward Pain, to his old way of guessing t'other goes, enquiring first in what Part? If he answers, he feels a Pain in the right Side, or under the short Ribs, he tells him it is an Obstruction, or Stoppage in the Liver; if in the left Side, in the opposite Part, then 'tis a Stoppage of the Spleen; if in the Belly, he it may be calls it a Cholick, or Wind in the Guts; if in the Back, or Loins, he perswades him it's Gravel, Stone, or some other Obstruction in the Kidneys; if a Stitch in the Breast, he terms it Wind, or other times a Pleurisy: Lastly, if the Party be reduc'd to a very lean Carcass, by reason of a long tedious Cough, Spitting of Blood, or want of Stomach, or Feebleness, or almost any other Disease, or Pain, then besure he tells him he's in a Consumption, or at least falling into one: But being troubled with several Diseases and Pains at once, as running Pains, Faintness, want of Stomach, change of Complexion, so as to look a little yellowish, duskish, or greenish; then t'other whispers him, he is troubled with the Scurvy. If diseased with Ulcers or running Sores, red, yellow, blue, or dark Spots, Pimples, or Blotches in the Face, Arms, Legs, or any other Part of the Body, that's determin'd to be the Scurvy likewise, supposing the Party to be a sober discreet Person: But if appearing inclined to Wantonness by reason of his Youth, or sly Countenance, then the fore-mention'd Disease is to be call'd the Pox. In most Diseases of Women, they accuse the Mother. In Children, their Guess seems far more fallible; for a Child within the six Months being taken ill, restless, and froward, if there appear no evident Disease, he ever affirms it's troubled with Gripes; upon which he prognosticates, that if not speedily remedied, the Child will fall into Convulsion-Fits; but this not happening according to his Prediction, to prevent the Forfeiture of his Skill and Repute, endeavours to possess the Mother, and rest of the Gossips, it had inward Fits. The Child being past six Months, and falling indispos'd, then instead of Gripes, it is discompos'd by breeding of Teeth; but having bred all his Teeth, and being surpriz'd with any kind of Illness, the Doctor then avouches it is troubled with Worms: In short, take away these three Words, Obstruction, Consumption, and Scurvy, and there will remain three dumb Doctors, the Hackney Physician, the Prescribing Surgeon, and the Practicing Apothecary. Hitherto we have only discovered to you the Ordinary Physicians conjecturing Compass, whereby he steers his Course, to arrive to the Knowledge of his Patients Diseases: There yet remains we should unlock the other Ventricle of his Brain, to behold the Subtilty of his Fancy in groaping at the Causes of Diseases, which, tho' the Poet declares (_Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas_) to be cloathed with the darkest Clouds, yet by the Virtue of this following Principle, aims at this Mark immediately, _viz._ That most Diseases are caus'd by Choler, Phlegm, Melancholy, or abundance of Blood: Of these, two are suppos'd to be hot, namely, Choler, and abundance of Blood, and the other two cold, to wit, Phlegm, and Melancholy, and consequently Causes of hot and cold Diseases: These four Universals being reduced to two general Categories; under the Notion of hot and cold, any one having but the Sense of distinguishing Winter from Summer, may, in the Time of an _Hixius Doxius_, instantly appoint a Cause for almost every Disease: So that a Patient discovering his Trouble, it may be a want of Stomach, bad Digesture, Fainting, Cough, Difficulty of breathing, Giddiness, Palsy, _&c._ his Vulgar Physician has no more to do, but take him by the Fist, to feel whether he be hot or cold; if he finds him cold, then summons in his old Causes, Phlegm, and Melancholy; which ready, and quick pronouncing of the Cause upon a meer Touch, doth almost stupify your Patient, thro' Admiration of _Æsculapian_ Oracle, hitting him in the right Vein to a hair's breadth: For, quoth he, indeed, Mr. Doctor, I think you understand my Distemper exceedingly well, and have infallibly found out the Cause; for every Morning as soon as I awake, I spit such a deal of Phlegm, and moreover, I must confess my self extreamly given to Melancholy. This jumping in Opinions between them, makes Mr. Doctor swell with Expectation of a large Fee, which the Patient most freely forces on him, and so the Fool and his Monies are soon parted. Now it's two to one but both are disappointed, the one in his unexperienced Judgment, t'other in his fond Belief; for, state the Case, the Disease takes its Growth from Choler, or abundance of Blood, or any other internal Cause; there is scarce one in a hundred that are indispos'd, who is not subject to hauk and spit in the Morning, and being reduc'd to Weakness, by reason of his Trouble, must necessarily be heavy in the Passions of the Mind, and incident to melancholy Thoughts, through the Memory of his Mortality, occasion'd by this Infirmity: So that, seldom Mirth and Cheerfulness are housed in indispos'd Bodies, because they are deficient of that abundance of Light, and clear Spirits, required to produce them. No Wonder the Vulgar is so opinionated in the Affair of their Temperament, when belabour'd with a Disease; since in their healthful State, it's impossible for a Physician to engage their Opinion otherwise, than to believe themselves phlegmatick and melancholy. To return to the Point of declaring how the Vulgar strives even with Violence to be cheated, not in their Purses only, but in their Fancies and Opinion; and in this Particular, our Women are so violent eager, that if the Vulgar Physician can but make a true Sound upon the Treble of their Fancy, will produce such a Harmony as shall sound his Praise through City and Country; and without those Female-Instruments, or She-Trumpets, it's almost impossible for a Vulgarist to arrive to a famous Report, who having once by his Tongue-Harmony inchanted the Woman, doth by the same Cheat subject the Opinion of Man to his Advantage, Women generally usurping, and impropriating the Affair of their Husbands Health to their own Management; for if a Man chance to be surpriz'd with Sickness, he presently asks his Wife what Doctor he shall send to, who instantly gives her Direction to him that had her by the Nose last. In this Piece of Subtilty, the Doctor shews him self no less cunning than the Serpent in _Genesis_, who, to cheat _Adam_, thought it expedient first to deceive _Eve_. Now without any further Preamble, I must tell you the Humour many a sick Woman delights to be coaks'd in by the Ordinary Physician, _viz._ She loves to be told she is very melancholy, tho' of never so merry a Composure, and in that Part of the Litany, Mr. Doctor is a perfect Reader; for a Woman making Complaint she is troubled with Drowsiness, want of Stomach, Cough, or any other Distemper; he answers her, she is in an ill State, and troubled with great and dangerous Diseases, and all engender'd by Melancholy; and then tells her over again, she is very melancholy, and, saith he, probably occasion'd by coarse Treats at Home, or some Unkindness of Friends, which makes the poor Heart put Fingers in her Eye, and force a deep Sigh or two; and all this possibly for being deny'd the extravagant Charge of a Tea-Equipage, or a new Gown on a _May_-Day; which being refresh'd in her Memory, doth certainly assure her, the Impression of that Melancholy to be the Original of her Trouble, tho' some Months or Years past, especially since her Physician discovers to her so much: And for so doing, admires him no less, intending withal to give him an ample Testimony to the World of the Doctor's great Skill: But this is not all, he pursues his Business, looks into her Eyes, where 'spying a small Wrinkle or two in the inward or lesser Angle, he tells her, she has had a Child or two, namely, a Boy, or a Girl, according to the Place of the aforesaid Wrinkle in the right or left inward Angle; thence perswades her, that at her last lying in, her Midwife did not perform her Office skilfully, or did not lay her well, whereby she receiv'd a great deal of Prejudice, as Cold, Wrenching, displacing of the _Matrix_, &c. Which Instance squaring with the premeditated Sense and Opinion of his She-Patient, (most Women, though never so well accommodated in their Labour, being prone to call the Behaviour of their Midwife in Question) he hath now produced a far greater Confidence than before: And last of all, to compleat his Work now at the going off of his gull'd Patient, of rendring her Thoughts, Opinion, and Confidence, Vassals to his Service, Fame, and Advantage, makes one Overture more, of a great Cause of some of her Symptoms, declaring to her, she is much subject to Fits of the Mother, occasioning a Choaking in her Throat, and herein they also jump in their Sentiments; scarce one Woman in an hundred but one time or other is assaulted by those Uterin Steams, especially upon a Tempest of any of the Passions of Fright, Fret, Anger, Love, _&c._ If I have reproached the Vulgar Physician for executing his Employ with so little Ingenuity, far greater Reason may move me to condemn the Water-gazer, who by the Steams of the Urine, pretends to gratify his Patient's nice Curiosity, of being resolv'd what was, what is, and what Disease is to come; and what is more, some by their great Cunning aiming to discover as much by the Urinal, as the Astrologer by the Globe. The Fame unto which the _English_ Doctor, who some Years ago residing at _Leyden_, promoted himself by his wonderful Sagacity in Urins, is not unworthy of your Note, hundreds, or rather thousands repairing to this stupendious Oracle, to have the State of their Bodies describ'd by Urine. But when I relate to you the first Means that gave Birth to our Countryman's Repute, I shall soon remove your Passion of admiring him. Upon his Arrival at the Place aforemention'd, he had in his Company a bold Fellow, that haunted the most noted Taverns and Tap-houses, who by way of Discourse divulg'd the good Fortune that was happened to the Town, by the Arrival of an _English_ Doctor, whose great Learning, and particular Skill in Urins, would soon render him famous to all the Inhabitants. This being pronounced with a Confidence suitable to the Subject, occasion'd three sick Scholars (two Hecticks, one Hydropical) then present, to make Trial of the Truth of his Words; the next Morning, agreeing to mix all their Urins in one Urinal, and commit the Carriage of it to him that was dropsical. In the Interim, the Doctor advertis'd of it by his Companion, which made him so skilful, that when the Hydropical Scholar presented him with the Urinal, to know the State of his diseased Body, he soon gravely reply'd, that he observed three Urins in this one Urinal, whereof the two lowermost Parts of the Urin, appear'd to him to be consumptive, and the third that floated at top dropsical, and with all, that their Conditions were desperate, and at the Expiration of six Months they should be all lodg'd in their Graves. This admirable Dexterity of discerning Diseases by the Urinal, was soon proclaim'd by the Scholars themselves, who all having finish'd the Course of their Lives, within the Time prefix'd, proved an undoubted Argument of his unparallel'd Parts in the Art of Physick, which immediately procur'd him an incredible Concourse of People for many Years together. Another Instance of a Woman whose Husband had a Bruise by a Fall down Stairs, carry'd his Urin to the Urin casting Doctor in _Moor-fields_, who pretended likewise to be a Conjurer; he (after shaking) seeing little Specks of Blood float in it, had so much Understanding to tell her, that the Party had receiv'd some internal Hurt; the Woman agreed to this as Truth, but demanding by what Means he came by it: Upon this he erected a Scheme, and in the mean time asked her so many Questions, that by the Drift of her Discourse, he gather'd that he had tumbled down Stairs: The Woman not minding well what she had said, (in the Consternation she was in at the hard Words he had utter'd) suppossing he was conjuring up the Devil, to be resolv'd in the Matter, told her own Words in a different Title; the Woman acknowledged it true, with some Admiration, but desir'd to know how many Pair of Stairs he might fall down? She had told him before where she liv'd (and he considering the Place chiefly consisted of low Buildings) answer'd, two Pair. Nay, now said she, you are out in your Art, he fell three Story I'll promise. This put our Doctor to his Trumps, when having mused a while for an Excuse, he shook the Urinal again, and asked her if there was all the Water her Husband had made? No, reply'd she, I spilt a little in pouring it in. O ho, did you so? said he: Why that, Woman, was the Business that made me mistake, for there went away the other Pair of Stairs in the Urin you spilt. I shall but trouble you with another Instance, which explodes this Cheat, of what happened in the early Practice of the fam'd Dr. _Radcliff_ when at _Oxford_; of a Country Woman that brought to him her Husband's Urin in a Glass-Bottle, very carefully cork'd up; and after a low Courtesy, presented the Bottle, desiring the Doctor to send a Remedy for her Husband, who then lay very ill: The Doctor observing the Simplicity of this Woman, put no other Question, but of what Profession or Trade her Husband was of? Who reply'd, a Shoemaker: At which he pours forth the Urin in a Basin then by him, and after he had supply'd it with a like Quantity of his own, he gives it her, and says, Good Woman, carry this to your Husband, and bid him fit me with a Pair of Boots: but she replying, Her Husband must first take Measure; to which he return'd, The Shoemaker might as well judge by the Urinal the fitting of his Leg, as he in that of his Distemper. That the Effects of Confederacy in promoting a Physician to a popular Vogue, are as powerful as sinister and disingenuous, may not only be deduced from the aforesaid Naratives, but from the common Design of vulgar Empericks, who to raise their Fame as high as a Pyramid, send forth several prating Fellows into all publick Places, Taverns, Coffee-houses, and Ale-houses, to publish their vast Abilities, expecting with that Bait to hook in as many Patients as will swallow it. Others are no less skill'd in counterfeiting their great Practice, by causing their Apothecaries, or others, to call them out of the Church at an Afternoon Sermon, to hasten Post to a suborn'd Patient, to the Intent the World be advertis'd of the weighty Business this Doctor is concern'd in. Others by their Equipage, eminent Houses, and occasioning one and the same Patient, to repair needlesly to them twenty or thirty times, manifest a Decoy even taken Notice of by the Vulgar. These few disingenuous Ways, do here purposely bring on Board, omitting many others, to convince the Publick, that the only Means for a Physician to advance himself honourably to Practice, is by discovering his real Abilities in curing Diseases, by quick, certain, and pleasant Medicines; and therefore nothing should render his Parts more suspicious than by attempting their Discovery by such fallacious and ignoble Devices; for certainly the Conclusion is most sophistical, that because this Doctor is drawn in his Coach, t'other rides on Horseback, or another hath his Lacquey at his Heels, therefore he must be excellently qualify'd in his Profession, but _Vulgus vult decipi_. If I now describe, by way of Advice to those that are entering upon the Study of this divine Art, the Method of attaining to a Point of Excellency in it, and that may serve our Vulgar for a better Rule to distinguish their Qualifications by the Course they have passed through; for it is most necessarily requisite, our young Student should be perfectly instructed in the _Latin_ and _Greek_ Tongues, being the Universal Keys to unlock all those Arts and Sciences, and no less a Grace to the future Physicians. In this Particular, many of our Embryonated Physicians, that have of late Years transported themselves to _Leyden_, and _Utrecht_, to purchase a Degree, have been found very defective; insomuch, that I have heard the Professors condemn several of them for their shameful Imperfection in that which is so great an Ornament, and of so absolute an Use in the Study of Physick: Neither can less be suspected of some of the more aged Vulgar Physicians, making Choice to manage their Consultations in the Vulgar Tongue. _Secondly_, Being thus qualify'd for a Student, he ought to apply himself close to the Study of Phylosophy, for which, _Oxford_ and _Cambridge_ may justly challenge a Pre-eminence above other Universities: Here it is our Student learns to speak like a Scholar, and is inform'd in the Principles of Nature, and the Constitutions of Natural Bodies; and so receiving a rough Draught in his Mind, is to be accomplish'd by that excellent Science of Human Bodies. But because, according to the first Aphorism of the first Master _Hippocrates_, Art is long, and Life short, he ought to engage his Diligence to absolve his Philosophical Course in two Years at longest, and in the interim, for his Recreation and Divertisement, enter himself Scholar to the Gardiner of the Physick-Garden, to be acquainted with the Foetures of Plants, but particularly with those that are familiarly prescrib'd by Practitioners, to prevent being outwitted by Herb-women in the Markets, and to enable him to give a better Answer, than is said once of a Physician, who having prescrib'd _Maiden-hair_ in his Bill, the Apothecary asked which Sort he meant; t'other reply'd, some of the Locks of a Virgin. _Thirdly_, Supposing our Student having made sufficient Progress in Philosophy, may now pass to _Leyden_, and may enter himself into a _Collegium Anatomicum_, Anatomy being the Basis and Foundation whereon the weighty Structure of Physick is to be raised; and unless he acquires more than ordinary Knowledge and Dexterity in this, will certainly be deceiv'd in the Expectation of ever arriving to the Honour of an accomplish'd Physician: A Proficiency in that Part fits him for a _Collegium Medicum Institutionum_, and afterward for a _Collegium Practicum_, and then 'tis requisite he should embrace the Opportunity of visiting the Sick in the Hospital twice a Week with the Physick-Professor, where he shall examine those Patients with all the Exactness imaginable, and point at every Disease, its Symptoms, as it were, with his Fingers, and afterward propose several Cases upon those Distempers, demanding from every young Student his Opinion, and his Grounds, and his Reasons for it; withal requiring of him what Course of Physick is best to be prescrib'd: This is the only Way for a young Physician to attain a Habit of knowing Diseases when he seeth them; and a confident Method of curing those that may repair to him, without running the Hazard of being censured by Apothecaries, or derided by them for his Bills, as too many are, that at _Oxford_ or _Cambridge_ have only imbib'd a Part of _Senuert_'s Institutions, and overlook'd _Riverius_'s Practice, and thence attaining an imperfect and unhappy Skill, by enlarging the Church-yards in the City or Country; but what is more, he shall escape the Danger a young Student I formerly knew at _Oxford_ precipitated himself into, by imagining every Disease he read was his own. I must likewise advise our Student to take his Lodgings there at an able Apothecary's House, to contract the Knowledge of Drugs, and of preparing, dispensing, and mixing them in Compositions, and then by Means of his own Qualifications, may boldly pretend to inform, correct, and improve those Apothecaries which the Chance of his Practice shall conduct him to; for it would be judged ridiculous, should a Physician undertake to reprehend, and afterwards bend his Force to suppress and decry Apothecaries privately or publickly, without having first acquired a particular Experience in their Art. Hence it is again the Vulgar Physician is wrapped up in a Cloud, and the Apothecaries dance round about him; he prescribes Medicines he never saw; they prepare them according to their own Will and Pleasure. Neither is it over these alone the Physician claims a Superintendance, but over Chirurgeons likewise; and therefore in this his Course of Study, would contribute to his future Qualifications, in sojourning a Year with some experienc'd manual Operator, without a Hindrance to his other Affair, and there by an ocular Inspection, and handling of his Instruments, demanding their Names, Uses, and Manner of using, withal by Insinuations to visit the Chirurgical Patients, and see him dress them, would render his Study in Chirurgery, so plain and easy, which otherwise might be thought difficult, that it should enable him to give Laws to Chirurgeons also, especially to those that execute their Office with that Rashness, Indiscretion and Dishonesty as I have sometime discover'd amongst them. These two Years giving occasion to our Student to acquire a System, or a brief Comprehension of the Theory of Physick, and of the Practice likewise: Nothing now remains than to amplify his commenc'd Knowledge and Experience by his farther Travels; to which End, takes his Journey to _Paris_, to be acquainted with the most famous Physicians, and to be inform'd of their Way of Practice, by surveying their Prescripts at the most frequented Apothecaries, to visit for a Year every Day the Hospitals of _l'Hostel Dieù_, and _la Charitè_; in which latter, it is customary, for any three or four young Physicians to examine and overlook the new enter'd Patients, to name the Distempers among themselves, and propose their Cures, for to compare their Opinions afterwards with the Physicians that are appointed for the Hospital, and where he may see most difficult Operations perform'd in Chirurgery, as Trypaning, Amputating, Cutting for the Stone, Tapping of the Belly and Breast with the greatest Dexterity. Here he may also observe Wounds and Ulcers cured by Virtue of those famed Waters, _viz._ the White Water, and the Yellow Water; the former being _Aqua Calcis_, the latter the same, with an Addition of _Sublimate_. The Art of preparing Medicines chymically, having merited a great Esteem for its stupendious and admirable Effects in the most despair'd Diseases, shews a Necessity of being instructed in it, in which he can not fail of prying into, in the Course of his Travels. Having attained his Scope in this Place, his Curiosity ought to direct him to _Montpellier_, where he will meet with a Concourse of the greatest Proficients in Physick in _Europe_, converse with the Professors and Physicians of that Place, and out of 'em all, extract choice Observations, Secrets, and most subtle Opinions upon several Diseases, which Design can scarce be compassed in less than another Year. Now we must suppose our Student to merit the Title of an experienc'd Physician, and raised far above the Vulgar ones, that never felt the Cold beyond the Chimneys of their own Homes: He is now render'd capable of understanding the greatest Mysteries, and most acute Opinions in Physick, which he is chiefly to expect from those reputed Professors of the _Albò_ at _Padua_, where he is likewise to continue his Diligence in visiting the famed Hospital of _San Lorenzo_, and observe the _Italian_ Method of curing Diseases by alterative Broths, without purging or bleeding, that Climate seldom suffering Plethories in those dry Bodies: He cannot but be wonderfully pleased with the Variety and excellent Order of the Plants of their Physick Garden, by them call'd _Horto di Sempleci_. Neither will he receive less Satisfaction from the curious and most dextrous Dissections perform'd by the artificial Hand of the Anatomy Professor. Having here made his Abode for six Months, may justly aspire to a Degree of a Doctor in Physick, which the Fame of the Place should persuade him to take here, being the Imperial University for Physick of all others in the World, and where Physicians do pass a very exact Scrutiny, and severe Test. Hence may he transport himself to _Bologn_, and in three Months time add to his Improvements what is possible by the Advantage of the Hospital, and the Professors. Last of all, in the Imitation of the diligent Bee sucking Honey out of all sweet Flowers, our Doctor must not neglect to extract something that his Knowledge did not partake of before, out of the eminentest Practitioners at _Rome_, examine the chief Apothecaries Files, and still frequent those three renown'd Hospitals of _San Spirito_ in the _Vatican_, _San Giovanni Laterano_ on the Mount _Celio_, and that of _San Giacomo di Augusta_ in the Valley _Martia_, besides many others of less Note. Here may he see the Rarities and Antiquities of this once renowned Empress of the World, from whence he may visit the renowned City of _Naples_, and take a Survey of the Antiquities of the Nature of _Pazzoli_. Having thus in all Particulars satisfied his Curiosity, may consult about the most advantageous Ways homeward, which is to embark for _Leghorn_, or _Genoa_, where he cannot fail of _English_ Shipping. Or else may take a Tour by Land to _Milan_, where he will see the finest Hospital, and the strongest Citadel in _Europe_. Hence passes the _Alpes_, and that stupendous Mount St. _Godart_, through _Altorph_, and _Lucern_, and thence to _Bazil_, the chief of the Protestant _Cantons_, so by Boat down the River _Rhine_ to _Strasburgh_, and _Heydelbergh_, _Manheim_, and so down the _Rhine_ to _Coblentz_, _Audernach_ and _Collen_, then by Land to _Brussels_, _Ghant_, _Ostend_, _Newport_, and _Dunkirk_, _Gravelin_, and _Calais_: And thence to the Place of his Inclinations for his future Settlement, where, by his vast Experience and Knowledge, being render'd conspicuous in the secure and certain Method of his Cures, will soon give Occasion to the People to discern the Difference between him and the ordinary vulgar Physicians, who by their sordid Deports, and dangerous Practice, make it their Business to ease the blind People of the Weight in their Pockets, and plague them in worse Diseases. How very few go through this Course of Improvement, we too readily discover, and may be reproved by the first beginning of the Practice among the Ancients, where we find the Method then in use, to train up Youth to the Profession, was to place them Apprentices with able Physicians, who adjudged it necessary to take their Beginning from Surgery, the Subject whereof being external Diseases, as Wounds, Swellings, Members out of joint, and others that were visible, proved more facile and easy to their inmate Capacities, and wherein they might suddenly become serviceable to their Masters, in easing them of the Trouble of dressing and cleansing stinking Ulcers, and applying Ointments and Plaisters, a nauseous Employ, which they ever endeavour'd to abandon to their Scholars with what Expedition possible: This as it was the easiest, so it was the first, and ancientest Part of Physick, and from which those that exercised it were anciently not called Surgeons, but Physicians, tho' they attempted no other Diseases but what were external; according to which Sense _Æsculapius_ the first Physician, or Inventor of Physick, and his Sons _Podalyrius_ and _Machaon_, are by History asserted to have undertaken only those that wanted external Help; internal Diseases being in those Days unknown, and by Temperance in their Diet, wholly debarr'd; and if accidentally an internal Distemper did surprize them, they apply'd a general Remedy (having no other) of poisoning or killing themselves with a Dagger or Sword, thereby chusing rather to die once, and finish their Misery, than to survive the Objects of Peoples Pity, or to endure the Shocks of Death by every Pain or Languor, especially since the sage Judgment of that Age did esteem it a signal Virtue to despise and scorn the vain World, by hurrying out of it in a Fury, a Maxim most of the Philosophers were very eminent in observing; and was likewise extended to Children that brought any Diseases external or internal with them into the World, their Cure being perform'd immediately by strangling, or drowning them; neither was this Art of external Physick of short Continuance; _Pliny_ writing that Six hundred Years after the building of _Rome_, the _Romans_ entertain'd Chyrurgical Physicians from _Peloponesus_: Idleness and Gluttony at last exchang'd their Ease into a Disease, which soon put them into a Necessity of experimenting such Remedies as might re-establish them into that healthful Condition, which Exercise in War, and Temperance in Diet had for so many Ages preserved their Ancestors in. Upon a competent Improvement of their Scholars in this external Practice of Physick, and their deserving Deportment, they thought them worthy of giving them Entrance into their Closets, to be instructed in such Matters as the most retir'd Places of their Cabinets contained; which were their Remedies and Medicines, and the Manner of preparing them: And then bending his Endeavours to arrive to the Art of discerning the Disease by its Signs, and making Observations upon the Prognosticks, all critical and preternatural Changes: The Dose, Constitution, and all other Circumstances of giving the Medicines which he did gradually accomplish, by his sedulous Attendance on his Master, and his practical Discourses and Lectures from him on every Patient he visited: Lastly, upon his Attainment to a Degree of Perfection in the Art, discovered by his Master by his private Examination, all the Physicians and Commonalty of the Place were summoned to be present at the taking of his Oath in the publick Physick-School, which served in lieu of making Free to Practise, or taking his Degree; the Form of which, as remarkable as it is ancient, the Oath was as followeth. "I Swear by [1]_Apollo_ the Physician, and [2]_Æsculapius_, and by [3]_Hygea_, and [3]_Panacea_, and I do call to witness all the Gods, and likewise all the Goddesses, that according to my Power and Judgment I will entirely keep this Oath and this Covenant; That I will esteem this Master that taught me this Art, give him his Diet, and with a thankful Spirit, impart to him whatever he wants; and those that are born of him I will esteem them as my Male Brethren, and teach them this Art, if they will learn it, without Hire or Agreement; I will make Partakers of the Teaching, Hearing, and of all the whole Discipline, my own and my Master's Sons, and the rest of the Disciples, if they were bound before by Writing, and were obliged by the Physicians Oath, no other besides; I will, according to my Capacity and Judgment, prescribe a Manner of Diet suitable to the Sick, free from all Hurt or Injury; neither will I, through any bodies Intercession, offer Poison to any, neither will I give Counsel to any such Thing; neither will I give a Woman a Pessary to destroy her Conception: Moreover, I will exercise my Art, and lead the rest of my Life chastly and holily; neither will I cut those that are troubled with the Stone, but give them over to Artists that profess this Art; and whatever Houses I shall come into, I will enter for the Benefit of the Sick; and I will abstain from doing any voluntary Injury, from all Corruption, and chiefly from that which is venereal, whether I should happen to have in Cure the Bodies either of Women or of Men, or of free-born Men or Servants; and whatever I shall chance to see or hear in curing, or to know in the common Life of Men; if it be better not to utter it, I will conceal, and keep by me as Secrets: That as I entirely keep and do not confound this Oath, it may happen to me to enjoy my Life and my Art happily, and celebrate my Glory among all Men to all Perpetuity; but if transgressing and forswearing, that the contrary may happen." Between those Bounds of Secresy, Veneration, Honesty and Gratitude, the Art was for many hundred Years maintained; for in the Time of _Galen_, and many Ages after him, Medicines for their greater Secresie were used to be prepared and composed by Physicians, as you may read, _Libr. de Virt. Centaur._ where is observable, their Men were wont to carry their Physick ready prepar'd in Boxes after them, which they themselves, according to the Exigency, did dispense. This Custom was continued until Wars ceasing, People began to be as intent upon the Propagation of Mankind, as the Cruelty of the former martial Ages had been upon its Destruction; where the World growing numerous, and through Idelness and want of those Diversions of their military Employ, addicting themselves to Gluttony, Drunkenness, and Whoredom, did contract so great a Number of all inward Diseases, that their Multiplicity imposed a Necessity upon Physicians (being unable to attend them all as formerly) to dismember their Act into three Parts, whereof two were servile, Chirurgery and Pharmacy; and the other imperial and applicative or methodical. The servile Part being now committed to such as are now called Surgeons and Apothecaries, the former were employed in applying external Medicines to external Diseases; the latter in preparing all ordinary internal and external Medicines, according to the Prescription and Directions of the Physicians, whose Servants were ordered to fetch the prescrib'd Medicines at the Apothecaries, and thence to convey them to their Patients; by which Means the Apothecary was kept in Ignorance: As to the Application and Use of the said Medicines, not being suffered to be acquainted with the Patients or their Diseases, to prevent their Insinuation into their Acquaintance, which otherwise might endanger the diverting the said Patients to other Physicians, or at least their presuming themselves to venture at their Distempers. Neither were the Physicians Servants in the least Probability of undermining or imitating their Masters in the Practice, not knowing their Medicines or Prescriptions. Besides all this, those Remedies from which the chief Efficacy and Operation against the Disease was expected, still remain'd secret with the Physicians, who thought it no Trouble to prepare them with their own Hands. Thus you may remark the Physician's necessary Jealousy of their Underlings, and their small Pains prov'd the sole Means of impropriating their Art to themselves: And yet by the Advantage of their Chirurgeons and Apothecaries, were capacitated to visit and cure ten times greater Numbers of Sick than before; which in a short Time improved their Fame and Estate to a vast Treasure, whence it was well rhimed, ----_dat Galenus Opes, dat Justinianus Honores_. But at length, their Honour and vast Riches in the Eye of Apothecaries and Surgeons, proved Seeds sown in their Minds, that budded into Ambition of becoming Masters, and into Covetousness of Equality, and shareing with them in their Wealth; both which they thought themselves capable of aspiring to by an Emperical Skill the Neglect and Sloath of their Masters had given them occasion to attain, since they did not begin to scruple to make them Porters of their Medicines to their Patients, to intrust them with the Preparation of their greatest Secrets. This Trust they soon betray'd, for having insinuated into a familiar Acquaintance with their Masters Patients, it was a Task not difficult to perswade them, that those that had made and dispensed the Medicines, were as able to apply them to the like Distempers, as they that had prescrib'd them, who had either forgot, or were wholly ignorant how to prepare them; so that now they were as good as arrived to a Copartnership with their Masters in Reputation and Title, the best being call'd Doctors alike, and there being no other Difference between them, than that the Master Doctor comes at the Heells of his Man Doctor, to take in Hand the Work which he or his Brother Doctor (the Chirurgeon) had either spoiled, or could not farther go on with; a very fine Case the Art of Physick and its Professors are reduc'd to, and that not only of late Days, but of almost Seven hundred Years, for before that time Apothecaries had scarce a Being, only there were those they call'd _Seplasiarij_ from their selling of Ointments on the Market of _Capua_, call'd _Seplasia_, _Armatarij_, and _Speciarij_, or such as sold Drugs and Spices; tho' I confess Apothecaries may offer a just Objection in pretending to a far greater Antiquity, since the Original and Necessity of their Employ was deriv'd from the _Egyptian_ Bird _Isis_, spouting Water into its Breech for a Glyster: But 'tis no Matter, the Doctor must truckle to this powerful Engineer, he must conform to the Manner of the Age; and were I to enumerate the many Abuses that are practised by this lower Profession, I mean the Generality of them, you would be more careful in making Choice of your Apothecary, or making a better Choice in having least to do with them; and how dangerous is their Ignorance in the _Latin_ Tongue, which is of very ill Consequence, as their Prescriptions sent 'em by the Physicians are writ in _Latin_, and which not being rightly understood, hath often occasioned not only innocent but fatal Mistakes. _Homine semi docto quid iniquius?_ and that a great Part of the Apothecaries are very illiterate! is so evident, that they themselves dare not deny it; among many Instances of this Kind, that most unfortunate one recorded by an eminent Physician is notorious, who instead of a Dose of _Mercurius sublimatus dulcis_, exhibited so much common Sublimate, a mortal Poison, which was scarce ever given inwardly, instead of an innocent Medicine approved by all Physicians. Yet those worthy Sons of Bombast must disgust your Palate with the Relation of the nauseous and choaking Terms, their Ends of _Latin_ and stifling Phrases, driving to confound and amaze the simple Vulgar. An Instance of this Kind may afford you some little Diversion: A practical Apothecary coming to see his Customer, a Cobler, that lay indisposed of the Cholick, observed him to crack a Fart (for so it is express'd in the Original) upon which, said the Apothecary, Sir, that's nothing but the Tonitruation of Flatuosities in your Intestines; this was no sooner out of his Mouth, but the Cobler crack'd another, and reply'd to his Doctor, Sir, that is nothing but your Hobgoblin Notes thundring Wind out of my Guts; which literal Return of his Terms of Art in plain _English_, though by chance, obliged the Apothecary to this Expression; I beg your Pardon, Sir, I suppose you have study'd the Art of Physick as well as my self, and want not my Help: So away went Doctor Pestle, imagining the Cobler to be as great a Master in the Faculty as himself. Another Complaint against the Apothecaries is, That they are not well acquainted with the _Materia Medica_; the Knowledge of which is an essential Part of their Profession, but must take the Words of Druggists, who themselves are sometimes mistaken, and differ about the Names of several Drugs; and which is worse, their trusting to Herb-women, who obtrude almost any thing upon the greatest Part of them; and that those Women do often mistake one Thing for another, sometimes ignorantly, sometimes designedly, is well known to many Physicians, who have seen them sell the Apothecaries Herbs, Roots and Seeds, under other Names than those they do really bear, for many among them cannot distinguish between Ingredients noxious and salutary: So that we have not Patients daily poisoned is rather from the Care of Herb-women than Apothecaries. Another just Cause of Complaint against the Apothecaries are, their old Medicines; for suppose them as faithfully prepared as they can pretend or we desire, yet Length of Time will make some Changes in them, which are not often Improvements: The Syrups grow acid, and Waters full of Mother, Electuaries and Pills dry and deprived of their most active Parts, Powders themselves are not free from this Fate, whose Virtues in Time we find marvelously diminished. But were they to be told of this, you may with as good Success preach to a Wall, for not a Dram of any other Medicine will the Apothecaries part with but for Sale: So that many times they sell their Preparations five or six Years after they were made, and whether their Medicinal Properties are not much impaired, if they have any left, we leave to others to determine. And indeed the Apothecary has many Things in his Shop which are not called for in many Months, yet these must be vended with the rest; all which, when they have lost their Virtues, should they be rejected, it would be much to their Prejudice, and they have a fundamental Practice that no such Thing should be allow'd of: For 'tis much better the Patient should suffer somewhat in his Body than the Apothecary in his Estate; and if he has injured by his bad Physick, perhaps he will take Pity of him, and the next Prescription shall be better prepared; whereby he makes him abundance of Recompence for the Hurt he receiv'd by that which was bad: And he himself makes an Advantage of both, although perhaps if he had consulted the Patient, he would rather have chosen to keep his Head sound than have it broken, that a proper Plaister might be applied for the Cure. This is so notorious a Truth, that all the World, even their best Friends, exclaim against them for it, and 'till they amend this among many other Peccadillo's, it behoves the Patient to take care how seldom he employs them. Another, that the Apothecaries and their Servants are so careless, slovingly and slight in preparing of dispensatory, or prescribed Medicines, that neither the Physicians, or the Diseased, have Reason to repose that Trust in them which they challeng'd as their Due. As for Slovenliness, they may, I confess, plead the old Proverb, _That what the Eyes see not, the Heart rues not_. Indeed of all the rest it may be dispensed with; but should Patients but once behold how their Physick was prepared in some Shops, they would nauseate it: But least I should offend some nice Stomachs, I shall dismiss this Subject, and proceed to another, which is the Carelessness of Apothecaries and their Apprentices; on which I can never reflect without Fear and Indignation, to think what Numbers have been destroy'd and injur'd by such Proceedings: That this is not a groundless Apprehension many Families can witness, and you can converse with few Persons who are not able to give an Account of some such Miscarriages. Another thing of great Blame with the Apothecaries is, their enhancing the Prices of Medicines so much above what they might in Reason expect; about which the Physician must no ways concern himself, because it has a bad Influence on him, as on the Account of his Patient; though certainly, if the Apothecaries were more modest in the prising of their Physick, the Patient would be more liberal to the Physician: Whereas on the contrary, the Apothecary holds them at such unreasonable Rates, that in most Courses of Physick he gains more than the Doctor, how deservedly let others determine, though in my Opinion, were their Pay proportion'd to their Care and Honesty, I doubt they would gain little besides Shame and Reproaches: But their Bills must be paid without Abatement; and with how much Regret they are discharg'd, I shall refer it to those who have suffered by them. Now several Things contribute to, or are the occasional Causes of this Universal Grievance. The Physician's Silence, and the Number, Pride, or Covetousness of the Apothecaries, and that Prices are not set upon their Medicines: the Apothecaries being reduc'd into a Company, were at first few; and therefore having full Employment, could afford their Medicines at moderate Prices; but being since that time increased to a great Number, each Person bringing up two or three, or more, that Imployment which was before in a few Hands, became more dispers'd, so that very small Portion thereof falls to the Share of some, and indeed very few of them have more than they can manage. Now the Sick must maintain all these, for although there be no occasion for a sixth Part, yet they must all live handsomely; to supply which Expence, they have no other Way than to exalt the Prices of their Medicines, and still the less they are employ'd, the higher they must prize them, otherwise they could not possibly subsist, unless they became Physicians, and prescribe as well as prepare; to which Practices they are not only propense, but more arrogantly assume, which is no less fatal to their Patients, than by the impudent Prescription of your common Quacksalver, Emperic, or Mountebank. Now would it not be much better, if it were with us as in some Parts of _Europe_, where the Magistrates of many Cities agree upon a certain Number of Apothecaries, so many as they can apprehend are necessary, all the rest are excluded, and must either seek other Seats, or be content for a small Salary to work under those that are allow'd; their Apothecaries not being permitted to multiply by Apprentices, but one out of the Shop is by the publick Authority appointed to succeed in the Employment. _Hamburgh_ has but one, _Stockholm_ and _Copenhagen_ four or Five, _Paris_ (which rivals _London_ in its Inhabitants) has but one or two and fifty; they are from the due Regard to the Safety of the People exempted from Offices, either troublesome or profitable, that they may always be inspecting the Preparations, or compounding of the Doses, to prevent the deadly Consequences of sophisticated Medicines, or the fatal Errors of one Composition for another, not easily to be distinguished: They are not permitted to visit the Sick, that they may not be wanting from the Duties of the Shop, or be tempted to gratify themselves as they please for the Trouble, by introducing the Custom of taking too often of the Bolus and Cordials. The Physicians Fees are settled according to the various Conditions and Abilities of the Patient; 'tis not allow'd them to make any Advantage by the arbitrary Rates of Physick, when prepared by themselves, that the Patient and the Bill may not be too much inflam'd by a Profit on that side, not easily to be limited or confined. I would not be suspected to design any Prejudice to the careful and industrious Apothecary, (if such there be) his Business requires the greatest Diligence and Fidelity in selecting the Drugs, and preparing them faithfully according to the Appointment of the Faculty, and in making up the Doses with that just Regard to the Life of the Sick, that all Suspicion of the least Mistake may be prevented, in the Weight and Measure, or the Number of Drops, _&c._ But when the Apothecary deserts his Station, is always abroad, and leaves the compounding Part to his unexperienc'd Apprentice, who cannot avoid sometimes infusing one thing for another, by which Errors many are known to have lost their Lives; when 'tis known that the Prescripts are made up of Medicines bought by Wholesale of the Chymist, and not made up by the Apothecary himself, as is too much the present Practice, and consequently can't be known to be made of all, and best Ingredients, but are suspected, because bought at low Prices; you will doubt whether the Character of an Apothecary can be given to this new, and till lately unknown Employment: When he neglects the Business of his Trade, neither prepares himself the Compositions, nor forms the Doses for them, to be deliver'd at the most urgent Occasions, but daringly undertakes to advise in all Distempers, he becomes an Emperic, and invades a Profession which he cannot be supposed to understand. And here give me Leave to be serious, in examining their general Practice in all Diseases. Suppose your self to be troubled with any Distemper, it matters not which, for all is one to him you send to; upon his Arrival he feels your Pulse, and with a fix'd Eye upon your Countenance, tells you your Spirits are low, and therefore it's high time for a Cordial; the next Interogatory he puts gravely to you is, When was you at Stool, Sir? if not to Day, he promises to send you a laxative Clyster by and by; and if you complain you have a Looseness, then instead of one laxative, he will send you two healing Clysters: If besides you intimate a Pain in your Stomach, Back and Sides, then, responding to each Pain, you shall have a Stomach Plaister, another for the right Side, another for the left, and one for the Back, and so you are like to have a large Patch and well fortified round the Middle. Now before we go farther, let's compute the Charge of the first Day. There is the Cordial, composed by the Direction of some old dusty Bill on his File, out of two or three musty Waters (especially if it be towards the latter End of the Year, and that his Glasses have been stopt with Corks) _viz._ it may be a Citron, a Borrage and a Baum Water, all very full of Spirits, if River Water may be so accounted; to these is to be added one Ounce of that miraculous Treakle Water, then to be dissolved a Dram of _Confectio Alkermes_, and one Ounce of nauseous Syrup of July-Flowers; this being well shaked in the Vial, you shall spy a great Quantity of Gold swimming in Leaves up and down, for which your Conscience would be burthened should you give him less than Five Shillings; for from the meanest Tradesman he expects, without Abatement, Three and Six pence, the ordinary and general Price of all Cordials, tho' consisting only of Baum Water and half an Ounce of Syrup of July-Flowers. Your Clyster shall be prepared out of two or three Handsful of Mallow Leaves and one Ounce of common Fennil Seeds, boiled in Water to a Pint, which strained, shall be thickned with the common Electuary lenitive, Rape Oil and brown Sugar, and so seasoned with Salt; this shall be convey'd into your Guts by the young Doctor, his Man, through an Engine he commonly carries about with him, and makes him smell so wholsome; for which Piece of Service if you present your Engineer with less than Half a Crown, he will think himself worse dealt with than those who empty your necessary Closets in the Night; the Master places to Account for the Gut-Medicine (though it were no more than Water and Salt) and for the Use of his Man, which he calls Porteridge, Eight Groats. _Item_, For a Stomatick, Hepatick, Splenetick, and a Nephretick Plaister, for each Half a Crown: What the Total of this Day's Physick does amount to you may reckon. The next Afternoon or Evening the Apothecary returns himself to give you a Visit, (for should he appear in the Morning, it would argue he had little to do) and finding, upon Examination, you are rather worse than better, by Reason those Plaisters caused a melting of the gross Humours about the Bowels, and dissolved them into Winds and Vapours, which fuming to the Head, occasion a great Head-ach, Dulness and Drowsiness, and Part of 'em being dispersed through the Guts and Belly, discompose you with a Cholick, a Swelling of your Belly, and an universal Pain or Lassitude over all your Limbs. Thus you see one Day makes Work for another; however, he hath the Wit to assure you, they are Signs of the Operations of Yesterday's Means, beginning to move and dissolve the Humours; which successful Work is to be promoted by a Cordial Apozem, the Repetition of a carminative Clyster, another Cordial to take by Spoonfuls, and because your Sleep has been interrupted by the Unquietness of swelling Humours, he will endeavour to procure you for this next Night a Truce with your Disease, by an Hypnotick Potion that shall occasion Rest: Neither will he give you any other Cause than to imagine him a most careful Man, and so circumspect, that scarce a Symptom shall pass his particular Regard; and therefore to remove your Head-ach by retracting the Humours, or rather, as you are like to discern best, by attracting Humours and Vapours, he will order his young Mercury to apply a Vesicatory to the Nape of your Neck, and with a warm Hand to besmear your Belly and all your Joints with a good comfortable Ointment for to appease your Pains: The Cordial Apozem is a Decoction that shall derive its Virtue from two or three unsavoury Roots, and as many Herbs and Seeds, with a little Syrup of July-Flowers, for three or four Times taking; which because you shall not undervalue by having it brought to you all in one Glass, you shall have it sent you in so many Vials and Draughts, and for every one of them shall be placed Three Shillings to your own Account, which is five Parts more than the Whole stands him in; for the Cordial Potion as much; for the Hypnotick Potion the same Price; for your Carminative Clyster no less; and for the Epispastick Plaister a Shilling: Thus with the Increase of your Disease you may perceive the Increase of your Bill; and therefore it's no improper Observation, That the Apothecaries Practice follow the Course of the Moon. The third Day produces an Addition of new Symptoms, and an Augmentation of the old ones; the Patient stands in need of new Comfort from his Apothecary, who tells him, that Nature begins now to work more strong, and therefore all Things go well (and never ill;) but because Nature requires all possible Assistance from Cordials and small Evacuations, he must expect to have the same Cordials over again, but with the Addition of greater Ingredients, it may be Magistery of Pearl, or Oriental Bezoar in Powder, besides the Repetition of a Clyster, and the renewing of your Plaisters, for the Profit of your Physician, you must be persuaded to accept of a comfortable Electuary for the Stomach, to promote Digestion; of a Collution to wash your Gums to secure you from the Scurvy, serving at the same Time to wash the Slime and Filth from your Tongue; of a Melilot Plaister to apply to the Blister that was drawn the Night fore; of some Spirits of Salt to drop into your Beer at Meals; of three Pills of Ruffi to be swallowed down that Night, and three next Morning, which possibly may pleasure you with three Stools, but are to be computed at two Doses, each at a Shilling; the Spirit of Salt a Crown the Ounce; for the Stomach Electuary as much, for the Clysters as before; for your Cordial in relation to the Pearl and Bezoar, their Weight in Gold, which is Two-pence a Grain, the greatest Cheat of my whole Discourse; for dressing your Blister a Shilling; for the Plaister as formerly. Here I presume that Candour in you, as not to believe me so disingenuous, as to take the Advantage of Apothecaries in producing any other than the best Methods of their Practice, and that which favours the least of their Frauds, for in Comparison with others (though these are very palpable, in regard there is not a valuable Consideration regarded as a _quid pro quo_) they are such as may be judged passable; yet when you are to reflect upon the Total that shall arise on the Arithmetical Progression of Charge of a Fortnights Physick, modestly computed at about Fifteen Shillings a Day, without the Inclusion of what you please to present him for his Care, Trouble, and Attendance, I will not harbour so ill an Opinion of him, or give so rigid a Censure as your self shall upon the following Oration your Clysterpipe Doctor delivers to you with a melancholy Accent, in these Terms: Sir, I have made use of my best Skill and Endeavours, I have been an Apothecary these twenty Years, and upwards, and have seen the best Practice of our best _London_ Physicians; my Master was such a one, Mr. ------ one of the ablest Apothecaries of the City; I have given you the best Cordials that can be prescrib'd; 'tis at your Instance I did it, I can do no more, and indeed it is more properly the Work of a Physician; your Case is dangerous, and I think, if you sent for such a one, Dr. ---- he is a very pretty Man; if you please I will get him to come down. Now, Sir, how beats your Pulse? The Loss of your Monies your Bills import, give Addition to your Pain, through the Remembrance it is due to one that hath fool'd you out of it, and deserv'd it no other way, than by adding Wings to your gross Humours that before lay dormant, and now fly rampant up and down, raking, and raging; which had you not been Penny wise and Pound foolish, you would have prevented by sending for a Physician, who for the small Merit of a City-Fee (for which you might also have expected two Visits) would have struck at the Root of the Distemper, without tampering at its Symptoms, or Branches, and by Virtue of one Medicine, restor'd you to your former Condition of Health from which you are now so remote, being necessitated, considering your doubtful State, to be at the Charge of a Physician or two, to whom, upon Examination of what hath been done before, the Apothecary shall humbly declare, he hath given you nothing but Cordials; which Word Cordial, he supposes to be a sufficient Protection for his erroneous Practice; and I must tell you, that had his Cordial Method been continu'd in a Fever, or any other acute Distemper, for eight or ten Days, your Heirs would have been particularly obliged to him for giving you a Cordial Remove out of your Possession, and that through Omission of those two great Remedies, Purging and Bleeding, the exact Use whereof, in respect of Time and Quantity, and other Circumstances, can only be determined by accomplish'd Physicians. I cannot better describe their Unaptness for so great a Work, nor express the great Difficulties that must be conquer'd to deserve the first Character of a compleat Physician, than in the Words of that eminent and learned Physician Dr. _Fuller_; 'It requires (says he) to understand the learned Languages, Natural Philosophy, all the Parts of the Body, and the Animal Oeconomy, the Nature, Causes, Times, Tendencies, Symptoms, Diognosticks, and Prognosticks of Diseases, the Indications of Cure, and contra Indications, the Rules of Errors of living as to the Six Non-naturals; we must have the Skill to judge to whom, for what, when, how much, how often to prescribe Bleeding, Vomiting, Purging, Sweating, and other Evacuations; as also to Opiates, Calybiates, Cortex, and the numberless other Alteratives: We must be very well acquainted with the Virtues, Faults, Preparations, Compositions, and Doses of Vegetables, Animals, Minerals, and all Shop Medicines; and lastly, to compleat all, must be able, upon every emergent Occasion, to write a Bill for a Patient, readily, pertinently, and in Form according to Art. Now to accomplish all this, a Man had need be rightly born, and set out by Nature, with a peculiar Genius, and particular Fitness, and with a strong prevailing Inclination to this Study and Practice above all others. 'He must endeavour with Diligence, Sagacity and Gravity, Integrity, and such a convenient Briskness and Courage as will bear him up, and carry him through Difficulties, without presumptuous Rashness or barbarous Hard-heartedness; and then 'tis necessary he should be a Man of a competent Estate, to answer the great Expence of Education and Expectation; for he must be brought up directly in it from the Beginning of his Studies in the University; he must lay out all his Time and Talents upon Reading, Advising, Observing, Experimenting, Reasoning, Remembering, with an unwearied Labour of Body and Application of Mind; he must run through Courses of Anatomy, Botany, Chymistry and _Galenick_ Pharmacy: And when he hath done all this, cannot handsomely compleat himself, except he see good Variety of others practise, which (by the by) it's probable he will have more Time for than he could wish, before he can get any of his own.' Now each of those singly will require a great deal of Pains, Expence and Time to be attained; and yet all these and much more that can be in short summed up, ought to be done and in some measure accomplished, before a Man can be rightly and duly qualified even to begin Practice. And as to Matter of Fact, few (very few, God knows) there have been, or now are, who tho' they spared not for Education or Diligence, ever work themselves up to a tolerable Sufficiency: Nay, _Hippocrates_ himself, that great Genius, is not ashamed to confess, in an Epistle to _Democritus_, That though he was now got to Old Age and to the End of Life, yet he was not got to the End of Physick; no, nor was _Æsculapius_ neither, the Inventor of it. By all which, it's undeniably evident, that the Science and Practice of Physick is one of the largest Studies, and most difficult Undertakings in the World; and consequently, not any the best Collection of Prescripts that ever was, will, or can be writ or printed, can alone make a compleat Physician, any more than good Colours and Pencils alone can make a fine Painter. And yet every illiterate Fellow and paltry Gossip that can make shift to patch up a Parcel of pitiful Receipts, have the Impudence and Villainy to venture at it; and in hopes of a good Pig, Goose or Basket of Chickens, shall boldly stake their Skill (forsooth) against Mens Lives, and lose them; and at the same Time scandalize and keep out true Physicians, that might probably save them. And this leads me to the third Consideration, The great Danger and Damage occasioned by the rash tampering of such as are not educated rightly and qualified for it. You that enter not by the Door into the Profession, but climb up some other Way, ought to take it into your most serious Thoughts, that Mistakes and Mismanagement in so difficult a Business easily happen; often the Mischiefs occasioned thereby are impossible to be retrieved; and being upon the Body, perhaps Mind of Man, sometimes produce such undoing Misery, such deplorable Ruin, as would make even an Heart of Stone break and bleed, and Death to think of it. Suppose one should lose his Limbs or Health, and live unhappily in Pain, Sick or Bedrid all his Days through your improper Applications or ignorant Omissions; Would it not turn your very Bowels within you, and make you wish a thousand times you had never been that unadvis'd Busie-body to act thus foolishly and unfortunately? But put the Case again: You behold a dead Man (which to me is the most lamentable of all lamentable Spectacles Upon Earth) I say, put Case a poor dead Man were laid before your Eyes, that your Heart tells you might probably have lived many a fair Year, had it not been for your physicking of him: Such a Sight, such a Thought, (if you have the least Humanity left) cannot fail to pierce your very Soul; and ever after the Remembrance, yea, the evil Conscience of it must haunt you and give you Horror and Terror, and a sort of Hell to your dying Hour. Perhaps it may be an only and hopeful Son, in whose Life his aged Parents Lives were bound up; and they die too, or linger out a miserable Life in Sorrow and Anguish worse than Death. Perhaps the good Father of a many little Orphans, who being poor and now helpless, must pitiously perish, or being fallen into bad Hands, and cheated of what was left them, may suffer Poverty, Contempt, Injury and Misery all their Life long. Perhaps a Wife, who might have brought forth an useful eminent Man, a Hero of his Generation, and the Head of splendid Families; and so the Mischief you do may fall upon not only the present but future Ages. But Possibilities and putting of Cases are endless, the Upshot of all this, if you take upon you to cure the Sick, and be not licensed and otherwise qualified for it, if you presumptuously thrust in your self, and bar out another that is authorized and able, though no ill Event chance thereupon, yet well it might, and was likely to do so for all you; and therefore good Providence that protected your Patient, and fenced off the Evils, is alone to be thanked, and you nevertheless to be blamed. But if Death ensue your arrogant Intermeddling and pernicious Quackery, be assured of it, 'tis a sort of Murder in the Court of Conscience, and probably will be adjudged so in the last Great Court. This is not my private Opinion only, but the Judgment and Decision of the Legislature of our Land; for the _Present State of_ England tells us, That by the Law of _England_, if one who is no Physician or Surgeon, and not expresly allow'd to practise, shall take upon him a Cure, and his Patient die under his Hands, this is Felony in the Person presuming so to do. 'Tis not enough for you to say, If I can do no Good, I'll do no Hurt, (which you may as well invert, and say, If I do no Hurt I'll do no Good) no, you interlope, you injure the Faculty, you discourage Education, you keep out better Advice, you trifle with Mens Lives, you lose the golden Opportunity, you prolong the Case 'till it gets head, and grows incurable and mortal, or else extremely hazardous and almost helpless; and this is doing Hurt with a Vengeance. To bring this home to you, and make it more plain. If an House be on Fire, and you come and pretend to put it out your self, and absolutely keep off others, and then fling in Dust instead of Water, and so the Flame gets Mastery; in this Case, though you did not directly intend any positive Hurt, though you did not actually pour in Oil, nor stir and blow up the Coals; yet forasmuch as you would needs be an Undertaker, and could not extinguish it your self, and suffered not others, used to and skill'd in the Business, who coming with Water and proper Engines, might have done it, you are really and truly the Cause of it being burnt. Think not to excuse your self by pretending you did it out of Charity, and meant well, though it fell out ill; no, no, be it known to you, such a Charity as did not appertain to you, and proved murderous, was unpardonable Presumption, and therefore will not cover the multitude of Sins. If you are not sufficient for those Things, you'll do well and wisely to desist from this difficult and dangerous Practice, and fall into such a Trade of Life as you well understand and rightly can manage. And then like the Men who used curious Arts (_Acts_ xix. 19.) you may burn all your Receipt-Books; so shall you keep your Innocence, save your Conscience, secure your Quiet, and yet reserve Room enough to exercise your Charity. For if at any Time your Heart move you to pity and succour a poor sick Neighbour that can't pay for Advice, there will be no Necessity that you should try your Skill upon him, 'till you mischief or murder him by way of Charity. Do but you send him a Physician, Medicines and Necessaries without Hope of Requital; and trust me, that will be an handsome Assistance, most nobly becoming a generous Mind and a charitable Man. Now that not one of our Apothecaries, or indeed very few of our modern Traders in Physick, have these requisite Endowments, I shall leave it to any considerate Person to judge of; and how far they stretch beyond their Knowledge, we have a many miserable Objects in our daily View, woful Instances of their great Rashness, Folly and Ignorance. That the Profession has sunk into the Craft of deceiving, and amusing, and making Profit by new Medicines, or useless Preparations brought into fashion, and highly esteem'd, as long as the Mode of crying them up shall last, and the Fallacy which imposes them can support it, the unhappy People suffer themselves to be deluded, and cheated of their Lives, and their Money. The Rich please themselves that they can purchase the Alexipharmic, which has Power to controul the Disease, and have not any Doubt within themselves, that by the often Use, their Lives become almost immortal; they look down with some small Pity on the Vulgar, who they think must die before them, being not able to pay the Ransom. They please themselves, because Health and Life are of the highest Demands for these Rarities peculiar to them. The Gentlemen of both the higher and lower Faculty have not been wanting to make use of the Credulity and Weakness of the richer Patients; and I shall now lay open to your great Surprize, that the most despicable and useless Stuff have been brought into the highest Esteem to be rely'd on in the most difficult and dangerous Distempers. And _First_, of the _Bezoar_-Stone, an obvious Instance of our _English_ Practice, from whence you may concur with the Physicians abroad, with what Skill, and Art, and Integrity the Profession continues to be practised here. _Bezoar_ (which has neither Smell nor Taste, and upon taking into the Stomach gives no Sensation perceivable) has held its Name and Reputation almost sacred with us, though exploded long since in almost all Parts of _Europe_. The _French_ are well convinced that they have been impos'd upon by the trading Physicians returning from the _Indies_, to take off the pretty Trifle at a very great Price; they had made it to be admired, by asserting that it was able to encounter Poisons, that no malignant Distempers were able to resist its soveraign Virtues; but their overdoing, spoilt their Market, the more curious and wiser Part of the Nation discerning the Abuse, had the Opportunity of promoting the Experiment, which they procured by the King's Command, two Criminals who had Poison given them, with Promise of Life, if _Bezoar_ could procure their Pardon. They lost their Lives, and the Physicians and the Stone their Reputations. The greatest and most learned abroad have freely own'd that they have been deceiv'd by it, but their Patients much more, who had used it without Success, and any observable Effect. Doctor _Pauli_ tells you, he has left the Use of it many Years, and had given to better Purpose, the more powerful and certain Cordials taken from Plants; and supports his Opinion with the Suffrages of _Casper_, _Bauhinus_, _Casp. Hofmanus_, _Rectius_, _Fabriciùs_; The learned and judicious _Deemoebreck_ in his Treatise of the Pestilence, declares he had no Regard to it, that he gave it often _absque ullo fructu, movebat aliquo modo exiguum duntaxit sudorem_. It did, says he, no good to those who used it; scarcely mov'd so much as a little Sweat: It was of the best Parcel chosen of any coming from the _Indies_, or ever was sent to _Europe_, but gave them not the least Relief, though they had promised themselves the greatest from it: To confirm his Opinion that it is worth nothing, he produces the Opinion of _Hercules Saxonias_, and _Crato_ Physician to three Emperors, and refers you to many others. Doctor _Patin_, late Royal Professor of Physick in _Paris_, decides the Pretences to its being of any kind of Use: He says it neither stirs the Blood, nor puts the Spirits in any Motion; besides, some of the above-nam'd Physicians, he appeals to the Judgment of many others, and his own Experience of more than thirty Years. The lately corrected _Leewarden_'s Dispensatory leaves it out of their _Gascoins Powder_, condemning it as a useless and frivolous Ingredient. _Bontius_ tells you, that if we must give Stones, we ought to put a greater Value upon those cut out of the Bladders of Man, a more noble Creature, fed with Meat of the highest Nourishment, and his Spirits warm'd with Wine, than that of a Goat starving upon the Mountains. He assures you that he has given the _Bezoar_, from the Gall or the Bladder, with better Effect than he ever observ'd of those from the _Indies_. The Physicians who first began the Amusement and Cheat, made themselves ridiculous by dreading to give for a Dose more than five, or six, or seven Grains: You may take forty or fifty with no other Advantage or Alteration than your Imagination shall raise; and with the same Effect, ten times as much more. It may, with modern Observers, pass for a Sweater, and a Cordial, when they have given it with good Cordials, and Sweaters, but the most visible Operation it has, is seen when the Bill is paid. Our Physicians in their private Conversations, talk of it as a thing altogether worthless; but because the People are willing to be cheated with _Bezoar_ and _Pearl_, they dare not entertain a Thought of undeceiving them, fearing the Consequence to their own Disadvantage: And I pray with what Art can the high Rate of Medicines be maintain'd, if the World could not be amused with the Imagination of being kept alive in all the Distempers, by the Force of these two? _Pearl_ is a Disease in a Shell-Fish, as _Bezoar_ is in the _Quadruped_: They are very different in Shape and Bulk, the whitest and most glittering are most in Esteem; the sickly Fancy conceits it will revive the Blood as it pleases the Eye; and that it will brisk up the Spirits and Mind, when it reflects on its being dear and fashionable. But this has been despis'd by the honest Physicians, who prescribe for the Cure of their Patients. The famous _Plater_, after the Experience of a many Years Practice, rejects the pretended Virtues of Pearl, or Metals, which have no Taste or Smell, to give the least Pretence to rank them with the Vegetable Alexipharmicks. Most of our Writers are of his Sentiment, and give it only a common Place with the others usually prescrib'd in the Heart-burning, or windy sour Humour offending the upper Orifice of the Stomach: But the Shell of the Fish that breeds them, pretends to, and is allow'd by all our best Authors to have the same Virtues. Nature has been very liberal in this Sort of _Alkali_; all the Shell-fish, all the Claws of Crabs, or the Tips, if you please to value them most, the two Stones of the Craw-fish, and the Shells of Eggs are directed frequently with the Pearl: The two Corals, _&c._ and the numerous Earths of the absorbing Kind, the Chalk, the Marles, are judged by many preferable to it, or are used with the same Success: So that we have the greatest Reason to believe, that the debauched Practice of the _English_ Preservers of Health have made use of it, with Design to extract Sums out of the Purse, rather than of making the Crasis of the Blood better, or the Spirits more vivacious; and if you have Oyster-Shells or Crabs-Eyes in its Stead, which are generally made use of under that Name, they will have the same, if not a better Effect. Gold is by our Chymical Writers stil'd the Sun, and the King of Metals. The Kings and Princes of the last Age were amus'd and defrauded, their Lives made less durable than their Subjects, who were beneath the Use of Gold; the Chicken they eat had the Happiness to be fed with it, that they might extract the Sulphur and prepare it by their Circulation, and volatize it for their Use. But the Physicians were contented to collect all the Gold which past unaltered and undiminished thro' the Poultry, into their Pockets. This, with many other Artifices of this Stamp, are by many laid aside, because the Publick begin to be sensible that the Gold, as the _Bezoar_ and the Pearl, were of more Cordial Virtue to the Adviser and Confederates than to the Subject of their Care and Attendance. The _Aurum potabile_ is sometime the Entertainment of Conversation, when the poor Alcymists or their vain Pretensions are considered; there being no Humour in any Animal which can alter or dissolve it, no Effect or Operation can be expected from it, it deludes the Eye and Fancy in the Cordial Waters, and on the Bolus and Electuaries, but must pass away sooner or later as it adheres more or less to the Stomach or Bowels, without acting or being acted on in any Part of the Body; the Pills, either purgative or cordial, are as often dismist entire, having been covered with Leaf-Gold, which is able, though thin, to dismiss the most subtil and penetrating Parts of all Humours. The Value of the Leaf is not worth your Enquiry, the Book being sold at a low Price. The Fulminating Powder is a rough violent Medicine, and has been lately neglected, and given Place to others more useful and less dangerous. Silver and Lunar Pills are as vile and disregardless as Gold, when they are considered with relation to the Cure of Diseases. The precious Stones have constantly been put into the old Receipts by that Sort of Writers who prescribe every Medicine very faithfully, and design to please and amuse the Readers with the Bulk and Length of the Prescription; but they have been neglected by the practical Authors, who had the Trouble of considering, that no Manner of Vertue could be expected from so hard and therefore impenetrable Bodies; as the Diamond, Ruby, Hyacinth, the Sapphire, the Smargad and Topaz, _&c._ who are not capable of a Dissolution, and of altering or acting upon the Fluids, and as it is most certain that many very cheap Medicines have greater and more observable Effects, it's ridiculous to give a hard gritty Powder, which may for many Reasons corrode and offend the Stomach and Bowels in their Passage. Among the many Foreign Vegetables imported here, I must take Notice of Sarsaparilla, as it has had the Preference before many others, especially of our own Growth, in many difficult and chronical Cases, will have obtain'd its Credit and Reputation by being in good Company, and by being prescrib'd with the cheapest Drugs, but of the greatest Virtues, _viz._ Guiacum, Sasaphras, China, and the Seeds of many most useful Plants. If it has been by it self beneficial, in the Practice of the _West-Indies_, it has lost its Qualities in the Passage into the colder Climates, being a soft and thin Root, it may evaporate and exhale its most active Parts; many of the late Writers have given this Judgment of it, that it is _nullius Saporis vel Odoris_, of no Smell or Taste. The Physicians have not yet done, but contrive to thrust into the Stomachs of their Patients, not only the most loathsome, but the Parts of Animals, which after their Death, are void of all Spirits or Oils, and are a dry and unactive Earth. Of the first Sort, Mummy claims the Precedence; this has had the Honour to be worn in the Bosom next to the Heart, by the Kings and Princes, and all those who could then bear the Price the last Age in all the Courts of _Europe_; 'twas presented with the greatest Assurance, that it was able to preserve from the most deadly Infections, and that the Heart was secured by it from all the Kinds of Malignity: They expected long Life from the decay'd, or dead, Spices, and Balsams, and Gums, and the Piece of the dead Body of an _Egyptian_ Prince, or of a Slave preferred by him: If taken inwardly, it was avow'd to be able to dissolve the Blood coagulated, to give new Life and Motion to all the Spirits. The dry'd Hearts of many Animals, the Livers, the Spleens burnt to a Powder; the Skins of the Stomachs, or Guts of Cocks, and Worms, and the dry'd Lungs of Foxes, ought to be rejected as loathsome and offensive without any Qualities to amend, by the Expectation of any Advantage. The Powder of Vipers by it self, and in the Troches, will deserve a more strict Examination, because it is not only depended on in many Chronical Diseases, but the Life of the Patient in the Acute and Pestilential is betray'd and lost, if it has no alexiterial Powers to expel the Malignity, or support the natural Vigour. But as the Flesh of all Animals, and Fish, when dry'd, have exhal'd the Volatile Spirits with the Moisture, and nothing remains but the Skins and Fibres, and are capable of giving very little Nourishment to the Blood, and are very difficult to be dissolv'd, or digested in the Stomach: You may conclude, by trying when in Health, if Vipers will support your Strength, or if eating of the Flesh in all the Kinds of Cookery, will please the Palate more than the common Food, what you may hope from the dry Powder, or the Cake of it with Salt and Meal, (and the Troches of Vipers are no more) when your Fever calls for the best Alexipharmick. You may to this compare the Skulls of dead Men, now presum'd to command the Epilepsies, and other violent Diseases, if the Skull has been long in Powder, or has long surviv'd the Criminal, the Spirits distill'd from it, are not stronger than those from the Horn of a Stag, or the Spirits of Urin by it self, or from Sal Armoniack: the Shell of the Head preserves the Brains, and the Powder shall not fail to preserve the Spirits of all the Brains which can be perswaded to use it. What can you think will be the Success, from the Use of the Nest of the Swallow, or the Cast off Skin of a Serpent; your Thoughts will naturally reflect on the perfidious Fourbery of making great Gain from the Bubbles put on the Sick, or the vile Negligence of the rest who have suffer'd the fatal Amusements to be at last confirm'd by Custom. After these it may seem needless to speak of the gainful Industry, which has brought the Horns of the Elk, the Bufalo, Rhinoceros, and of the Unicorn's Horn, which is no other than the Bone of a Fish, and has been thought sufficient alone to expel all Poisons; or the Hoofs of the Elk and the Ounce, or the Bone of the Hart of a Stag, the Effect of his old Age; or the Jaw-bones of the Pyke, _&c._ or the Ancle-bones of the Hares and Boars, _&c._ with the Eagle-Stone, and those for the Cramp, and Convulsions, and Cholicks, the great Assistance from your Amulets, and abounding Nostrums, cannot sufficiently be derided. Of the simple distill'd Waters, one hundred and fifty are appointed to be made, the greatest Part of them are not now prepar'd; and indeed they are found of no Use, but to increase the Bulk of the Julep, with the hot and compound Waters; the Milk Water is now order'd for that Design, and because as much Money can be procur'd from it, as from all the vast Variety of the other, this in the usual Practice almost supplies the Place of all the rest. You may run over the vast Number of the _Galenical_ Preparations and Compositions, as they are improperly stiled; they are almost seven hundred, to be kept till they be corrupt, and be viewed as the old rusty and rotten Weapons of an ancient Armory; they are now reduc'd to, and the Shop is supposed to be made up with about One hundred and fifty: But if the insipid Simple Waters, and the fiery ungrateful Compound Waters shall be thrown aside, and the Simple Milk Water, with five or six Cordial Tinctures, shall be kept for Use, and the other Tincture appointed by the Physician, with respect to the Circumstances of the Patient: If only three or four Syrups and Conserves, and Powders, and Pills, and Oils, and Ointments, and Plaisters in that Number, in Imitation of the Prudence and Integrity of the Foreign Physicians who have contracted their Dispensatories, shall be order'd, in the most rational, and efficacious Forms, to receive the Addition of all the natural Powders, Balsams, Gums, or the Chymical Medicines, the Apothecary will have his Trouble very much lessened, and with less Expence; the Patient will have his Disease much sooner cured, and his Life much better preserved. By this time we presume the Reader is convinc'd, that private Interest too often influences many of our Modern Physicians, and makes them prescribe such Medicines as tend most to the Apothecaries Gain, because the People give the Apothecary Power of appointing the Physician; we have shewn that those costly pretended Medicines, which so much raise the Sum in the Bill, have no real Virtue; that the greatest Part of the most senative grow in our own Gardens; that if some few are fetch'd from foreign Parts, they are used in so small Quantities, that the Doses are of the lowest Price: And consequently you will very plainly see, that the long and high charg'd Bill after a Fit of Sickness, is more the Effect of the Collusion betwixt the Doctor and Apothecary, together with your own Folly of desiring of it, than either the Prices of the Medicine, or the Necessity of so many Doses. I dare say, my Reader now thinks it high time to take Care of himself, to believe that the seldomer the Physician or Apothecary are employ'd, the less Risque he runs in his Health or Fortune, that he is not upon every slight Indisposition, or ordinary Sickness to call upon their Help, whereby very often the Remedy proves worse than the Disease; that your Constitution will endeavour to preserve it self, and will effect it in most of the common Distempers, but with ill Medicines those will become dangerous, and will be made every Day more malignant. Take the Counsel of your most observing and experienced Friend, who has no Byass to divert him from the only Care of your Health; but avoid the Emperick, who will, instead of procuring the Ease of your Thoughts and Repose, and prescribing the Rules of your Diet, and permitting Nature to subdue the Disease, affright you with the greatest Danger, disturb you, and fill your Chamber, or both, with the inflaming and pernicious Cordials, the Bolus's and Draughts, till he has cured his own Distemper by the Number of Articles he shall enter into the Bill. That it is in the Power of every Man to become his own Physician, who needs no other Helps of supporting a good, and correcting a bad Constitution, than by observing a sober and regular Life; there is nothing more certain, than that Custom becomes a second Nature, and has a great Influence upon our Bodies, and has too often more Power over the Mind than Reason it self? The honestest Man alive, in keeping Company with Libertines, by degrees forgets the Maxims of Probity he before was used to, and naturally falls into those Vices with his Companions; and if he be so happy as to acquit himself, and to meet with better Company, then Virtue reassumes its first Lustre, and will triumph in its Turn, and he insensibly regains the Wisdom that he had abandoned. In a Word, all the Alterations that we perceive in the Temper, Carriage, and Manners of most Men, have scarce any other Foundation, but the Force and Prevalency of Custom. 'Tis an Unhappiness in which the Men of this Age are fall'n, that Variety of Dishes is now the Fashion, and become so far preferable to Frugality; and yet the one is the Product of Temperance, whilst Pride and unrestrain'd Appetite is the Parent of the other. Notwithstanding the Difference of their Origin, yet Prodigality is at present stiled Magnificence, Generosity and Grandeur, and is commonly esteem'd of in the World, whilst Frugality passes for Avarice and Sordidness in the Eyes and Acceptation of most Men: Here is a visible Error which Custom and Habit have established. The Error has so far seduc'd us, that it has prevail'd upon us, to renounce a frugal Way of living, though taught us by Nature, even from the first Age of the World, as being that which would prolong our Days, and has cast us into those Excesses, which serve only to abridge the Number of them. We become old before we have been able to taste the Pleasures of being young; and the time which ought to be the Summer of our Lives, is often the beginning of their Winter, we soon perceive our Strength to fail, and Weakness to come on apace, and decline even before we come to Perfection. On the contrary, Sobriety maintains us in the natural State wherein we ought to be. Our Youth is lasting, our Manhood attended with a Vigour that does not begin to decay 'till after a many Years. A whole Century must be run out before Wrinkles can be form'd on the Face, or Grey-hairs grow on the Head: This is so true, that when Men were not addicted to Voluptuousness, they had more Strength and Vivacity at Fourscore, than we have at present at Forty. It cannot indeed be expected, that every Man should tie himself strictly to the Observations of the same Rules in his Diet, since the Variety of Climates, Constitution, Age, and other Circumstances may admit of Variations. But this we may assert as a reasonable, general, and undeniable Maxim, founded upon Reason and the Nature of Things; that for the Preservation of Health and prolonging a Man's Life, it is necessary that he eat and drink no more than is sufficient to support his natural Constitution; and on the contrary, whatsoever he eats and drinks beyond, that is superfluous, and tends to the feeding of the corrupt and vicious Humours, which will at last, though they may be stifled for a Time, break out into a Flame and burn the Man quite down, or else leave him like a ruinated or shattered Building. This general Maxim which we have laid down, will hold good with respect to Men of all Ages and Constitutions, and under whatsoever Climate they live, if they have but the Courage to make a due Application of it, and to lay a Restraint upon their unreasonable Appetites. After all, we will not, we dare not warrant, that the most strict and sober Life will secure a Man from all Diseases, or prolong his Days to the greatest old Age. Natural Infirmities and Weaknesses, which a Man brings along with him into the World, which he deriv'd from his Parents and could not avoid, may make him sickly and unhealthful, notwithstanding all his Care and Precaution: And outward Accidents (from which no Man is free) may cut off the Thread of Life before it is half spun out. There is no fencing against the latter of those, but as to the former, a Man may in some Measure correct and amend them by a sober and regular Life. In fine, let a Man's Life be longer or shorter, yet Sobriety and Temperance renders it pleasant and delightful. One that is sober, though he lives but thirty or forty Years, yet lives long, and enjoys all his Days, having a free and clear Use of all his Faculties; whilst the Man that gives himself to Excess, and lays no Restraint to his Appetites, though he prolongs his Life to Threescore or Fourscore Years (which is next to a Miracle) yet is his Life but one continu'd doseing Slumber, his Head being always full of Fumes, the Pores of his Soul cloudy and dark, the Organs of his Body weak and worn out, and very unfit to discharge the proper Offices of a rational Creature. And indeed Reason, if we hearken to it, will tell us, that a good Regimen is necessary for the prolonging our Days, and that it consists in two Things, first in takeing Care of the Quality, and secondly of the Quantity, so as to eat and drink nothing that offends the Stomach, nor any more than we can easily digest. And in this, Experience ought to be our Guide in those two Principles, when we arrive to Forty, Fifty, or Sixty Years of Age. He who puts in Practice that Knowledge which he has of what is good for him, and goes on in a frugal Way of Living, keeps the Humours in a just Temperature, and prevents them from being altered, though he suffer Heat and Cold, though he be fatigued, though his Sleep be broke, provided there be no Excess in any of them. This being so, what an Obligation does Man lie under of living soberly, and ought he not to free himself from the Fears of sinking under the least Intemperature of the Air, and under the least Fatigue, which makes us sick upon every slight Occasion? 'Tis true, the most sober Man may sometimes be indisposed, when they are unavoidably obliged to transgress the Rule which they have been used to observe; but then they are certain, their Indisposition will not last above two or three Days at most, nor can they fall into a Fever: Weariness and Faintness are easily remedied by Rest and good Diet. There are some who feed high, and maintain, that whatsoever they eat is so little a Disturbance to them, that they cannot perceive in what Part of the Body the Stomach lies; but I averr, they do not speak as they think, nor is it natural? 'Tis impossible that any created Being should be of so perfect a Composition, as that neither Heat nor Cold, Dry nor Moist should have any Influence over it, and that the Variety of Food which they make use of, of different Qualities, should be equally agreeable to them. Those Men cannot but acknowledge, that they are sometimes out of Order; if it is not owing to a sensible Indigestion, yet they are troubled with Head-achs, Want of Sleep, and Fevers, of which they are cured by a Diet, and taking such Medicines as are proper for Evacuations. It is therefore certain, that their Distempers proceed from Repletion, or from their having eat or drank something which did not agree with their Stomachs. Most old People excuse their high Feeding by saying, that it is necessary to eat a great deal, to keep up their natural Heat, which diminishes proportionably as they grow into Years; and to create an Appetite, 'tis necessary to find out proper Sauces, and to eat whatsoever they have a Fancy for, and that without thus humouring their Palates, they would be soon in their Graves. To this I reply: That Nature, for the Preservation of a Man in Years, has so composed him, that he may live with a little Food; that his Stomach cannot digest a great Quantity, and that he has no need of being afraid of dying for want of eating; since when he is sick, he is forced to have recourse to a regular Sort of Diet, which is the first and main Thing prescrib'd him by his Physician, that if this Remedy is of such Efficacy to snatch us out of the Arms of Death, 'tis a Mistake to suppose that a Man may not by eating a little more than he does when he is sick, live a long Time without ever being sick. Others had rather be disturb'd twice or thrice a Year with the Gout, the Sciatica, and their Epidemical Distempers, than to be always put to the Torment and Mortification of laying a Restraint upon their Appetites, being sure, that when they are indisposed, a regular Diet will be an infallible Remedy and Cure. But let them be informed by me, that as they grow up in Years their natural Heat abates; that as regular Diet, despised as a Precaution, and only look'd upon as Physick, cannot always have the same Effect nor Force, to draw off the Crudities, nor repair the Disorders that are caused by Repletion; and lastly, that they run the Hazard of being cheated by their Hope and by their Intemperance. Others say, That it is more eligible to feed high and enjoy themselves, though a Man live the less while. It is no surprizing Matter that Fools and Mad-men should contemn and despise Life; the World will be no Loser whenever they go out of it; but 'tis a considerable Loss, when wise, virtuous, and holy Men drop into the Grave, who might have done more Honour to their Country and to themselves. In Youth this Excess is more frequent; necessary therefore it is to moderate his Apetite; for if the Stomach be stretch'd beyond its due Extent, it will require to be fill'd, but never well digest what it receives. Besides, it is much better to prevent Diseases, by Temperance, Sobriety, Chastity, and Exercise, than cure them by Physick. _Quid enim se Medicis dederit, seipsum sibi eripit. Summa Medicinarum ad sanitatem corporis & animæ, abstinentiæ est._ He that lives abstemiously, or but temperately, need not study the Wholesomeness of his Meat, nor the Pleasantness of that Sawce, the Moments and Punctillio's of Air, Heat, Cold, Exercise, Lodging, Diet; nor is critical in Cookery or in his Liquors, but takes thankfully what God gives him. Especially, let all young Men forbear Wines and Strong Drinks, as well as spiced and hot Meats; for they introduce a preternatural Heat in the Body, and at least hinder and obstruct, if not at length exhaust the natural. But if overtaken by Excess, (it's difficult to be always upon our Guard) the last Remedy is vomiting, or fasting it out, neither go to bed on a full Stomach; let Physick be always the last Remedy, that Nature may not trust to it; for though a sick Man leaves all for Nature to do, he hazards much; but when he leaves all for the Doctor to do, he hazards more: And since there is a Hazard both ways, I would sooner rely upon Nature; for this at least we may be sure of, that she is as honest as she can, and that she does not find the Account in prolonging the Disease. Others there are, who perceiving themselves to grow old, tho' their Stomach be less capable of digesting well every day less than another, yet will not upon that Account abate any thing of their Diet; they only abridge themselves in the Number of their Meals; and because they find two or three Meals a Day is troublesome, they think their Health is sufficiently provided for, by making only one Meal; that so the time between one Repast and another, may (as they say) facilitate the Digestion of those Aliments which they might have taken at twice: For this Reason they eat as much at one Meal, that their Stomach is over-charged and out of Order, and converts the Superfluities of its Nourishment into bad Humours, which engender Diseases and Death. I never knew a Man live long by this Conduct. These Men would doubtless have prolong'd their Days, had they abridg'd the Quantity of their ordinary Food proportionally as they grew in Years; and had they eat a great deal less a little oftner. Some again are of Opinion, that Sobriety may indeed preserve a Man in Health, but does not prolong his Life. To this we say, that there have been Persons in past Ages, who have prolong'd their Lives by this Means; and some there are at present who still do it; for as Infirmities contracted by Repletion shorten our Days, a Man of an ordinary Reach may perceive, that if he desires to live long, it is better to be well than sick, and that consequently Temperance contributes more to long Life, than excessive Feeding. Whatsoever Sensualists may say, Temperance is of infinite Benefit to Mankind: To it he owes his Preservation; it banishes from his Mind the dismal Apprehensions of dying; 'tis by its Means he becomes wise, and arrives to an Age wherein Reason and Experience furnish him with Assistance to free himself from the Tyranny of his Passions, which have lorded it over him for almost the whole Course of his Life. A very notable Instance of this we have in the Life of _Lewis Cornaro_, a noble _Venetian_, who though of a weakly Constitution, increas'd by a voluptuous Life, yet at the Age of thirty five or forty Years, he was resolv'd to practice in all the Rules of Sobriety and Temperance, and to withdraw from those Excesses that had brought upon him those usual Ills the Gout and the Cholick, fatal Attendants to an indolent and luxurious Life, and which reduc'd him to so low a State, that his Recovery was despair'd of by the wisest Physician: And here he tells you that he was born very cholerick and hasty, and flew out into a Passion for the least Trifle, that he huffed all Mankind, and was so intolerable, that a great many Persons of Repute avoided his Company: He apprehended the Injury which he did to himself, he knew that Anger is a real Frenzy, that it disturbs our Judgment, that it transports us beyond our selves, and that the Difference between a passionate and a mad Man is only this, that the latter has lost his Reason, and the former is only depriv'd of it by fits. A sober Life cured him of his Frenzy; by its Assistance he became so moderate, and so much a Master of his Passions, that no body could perceive it was born with him. How great and valuable must Temperance then be, which carries that soveraign Aid, and can relieve the Passions of the Mind, and not only to expel the bad Humours of the Body, but also to restore it to a due Tone, and a full State of Health. Now let any one upon a serious Reflection consider which is most eligible, a sober and regular, or an intemperate, and disorderly Course of Life: This is certain, that if all Men would live regularly and frugally, there would be so few sick Persons, that there would hardly be any Occasion for Remedies, _Si tibi deficiant Medici, Medici tibi fiant. Hæc tria, Mens læta, requies moderata dieta._ _The best and safest Physician is Doctor Diet, Doctor Merryman, and Doctor Quiet._ every one would become his own Physician, and would be convinced that he never met with a better. It would be to little Purpose to study the Constitution of other Men; every one, if he would but apply himself to it, would always be better acquainted with his own than that of another; every one would be capable of making those Experiments for himself which another could not do for him, and would be the best Judge of the Strength of his own Stomach, and of the Food which is agreeable thereto; for in one Word, 'tis next to impossible to know exactly the Constitution of another, their Constitutions being as different as their Complexions. Since no Man therefore can have a better Physician than himself, nor a more soveraign Antidote than a Regimen, that is to study his own Constitution, and to regulate his Life according to the Rules of right Reason. I own, indeed, the disinterested Physician may be some time necessary, since there are some Distempers, which all human Prudence cannot provide against, there happen some unavoidable Accidents which seize us after such a Manner, as to deprive our Judgment of the Liberty it ought to have to be a Comfort to us; it may then be a Mistake wholly to rely upon Nature, it must be assisted, and Recourse must be had to some one or another for it; and in this we have much the Advantage of the irregular Man, his Vices having heaped Fewel to the Distemper; but on the contrary, by a regular Course of Life, the very Cause is not to be found, and the Disease retreats from you. And here the fam'd _Cornaro_, who being at Seventy Years of Age, had another Experiment of the Usefulness of a Regimen, and 'twas this; A Business of extraordinary Consequence drawing him into the Country, and being in the Coach, the Horses ran away with him, and was overthrown, and dragg'd a long away before they could stay the Horses; they took him out of the Coach with his Head broke, a Leg and Arm out of joint, and in a Word, in a very lamentable Condition. As soon as they brought him Home again, they sent for the Physicians, who did not expect he should live three Days to an end: However, they resolv'd upon letting of him Blood, to prevent the coming of a Fever, which usually happens upon such Cases. He was so confident that the regular Life which he had led, had prevented the contracting of any ill Humours, of which he might be afraid, that he rejected their Prescription, and ordered them to dress his Head, to set his Leg and Arm, and to rub him with some Specifick Oils proper for Bruises, and without any other Remedies he was soon cured, to the Amazement of the Physicians and of all those that knew him. From hence he did infer, that a regular Life is an excellent Preservative against all natural Ills; and that Intemperance produces quite contrary Effects. What a Difference then between a sober and an intemperate Life? the one shortens and the other prolongs our Days, and makes us enjoy a perfect Health, and with _Juvenal_, _Mens sana in Corpore sano_. I cannot understand how it comes to pass, that so many People, otherwise prudent and rational, cannot resolve upon laying a Restraint upon their insatiable Appetites at fifty or sixty Years of Age, or at least when they begin to feel the Infirmities of old Age coming upon them they might rid themselves of them by a strict Diet and a due Regimen. I do not wonder so much that young People are so hardly brought to such a Resolution; they are not capable enough of reflecting; and their Judgment is not solid enough to resist the Charms of Sense: But at Fifty a Man ought to be govern'd by his Reason, which would convince us if we would hearken to it, that to gratify all our Appetites without any Rule or Measure, is the Way to become infirm and die young. Nor does the Pleasure of Taste last long, it hardly begins but 'tis gone and past; the more one eats, the more one may, and the Distempers which it brings along with it, last us to our Graves. Now should not a sober Man be very well satisfied when he is at Table, upon the Assurance, that as often as he rises from it, what he eats will do him no harm: Who then would not perfectly enjoy the Pleasures of this mortal Life so perfectly? Who will not court and win Sobriety, which is so grateful to God, as being the Guardian to Virtue, and irreconcileable Enemy to Vice. Surely the Example of this wise and good Man deserves our Imitation, that since old Age may be made so useful and pleasant to Men, I should have fail'd in Point of Charity to inform Mankind by what Methods they might prolong their Days. A great Assistant to that of Sobriety, and which is highly conducive to the Preservation of the whole Man, is to renew with us that habitual and beneficial Custom of the Antients in promoting _Exercise_, as one great Instrument to the Conservation of Health, and which no one can deny who has given himself the Experience of a Trial. That it promotes the Digestion, raises the Spirits, refreshes the Mind, and that it strengthens and relieves the whole Man, is scarce disputed by any; but that it should prove curative in some particular Distempers, and that too when scarce any thing else will prevail, seems to obtain little Credit with most People, who though they will give the Physician the hearing when he recommends the Use of Rideing, or any other Sort of Exercise, yet at the Bottom, look upon it as a forlorn Method, and rather the Effects of his Inability to relieve them, than a Belief that there is any great Matter in what he advises: Thus by a negligent Diffidence they deceive themselves and let slip the golden Opportunities of recovering by a diligent Struggle what could not be cur'd by the Use of Medicine alone. But to give you a just and rational Idea of its Power of moving and actuating upon the Body, let us consider the whole human System as a Compound of Tubes and Glands, or to use a more rustick Phrase, a Bundle of Pipes and Strainers, fitted to one another after so wonderful a Manner as to make a proper Engine for the Soul to work with. This Description does not only comprehend the Bowels, Bones, Tendons, Veins, Nerves, and Arteries, but every Muscle and every Ligature, which is a Composition of Fibres, that are so many imperceptable Tubes or Pipes interwoven on all Sides with invisible Glands and Strainers. This general Idea of a human Body, without considering it in the Niceties of Anatomy; let us see how absolutely necessary Labour is for the right Preservation of it. There must be frequent Motions and Agitations to mix, digest, and separate the Juices contained in it, as well as to clear and cleanse that Infinitude of Pipes and Strainers of which it is composed, and to give their solid Parts a more firm and lasting Tone; Exercise ferments the Humours, casts them into their proper Channels, throws off Redundancies, and helps Nature in those secret Distributions, without which the Body cannot subsist in Vigour, nor act with Chearfulness. I might here mention the Effects which this has upon the Soul, upon all the Faculties of the Mind, by keeping the Understanding clear, the Imagination untroubled, and refining those Spirits that are necessary for the proper Execution of our intellectual Faculties, during the present Laws of Union between Soul and Body. It is a Neglect in this Particular, that we must ascribe the Spleen, which is so frequent in Men of studious and sedentary Tempers; as well as the Vapours, to which those of the other Sex are so often subject. Had not Exercise been absolutely necessary for our Well-being, Nature would not have made the Body so proper for it, by giving such an Activity to the Limbs, and such a Pliancy to every Part, as necessarily produce those Compressions, Extensions, Contortions, Dilatations, and all other Kind of Motions that are necessary for the Preservation of such a System of Tubes and Glands as has been before mentioned. And that we might not want Inducements to engage us in such an Exercise of the Body as is proper for its Welfare, it is so ordered, that nothing valuable can be procur'd without it. Not to mention Riches and Honour, even Food and Raiment are not to be come at without the Toil of the Hands, and Sweat of the Brows. Providence furnishes us with Materials, but expects we should work them up ourselves. The Earth must be labour'd before it gives Encrease; and when it is forced into its several Products, how many Hands must they pass thro' before they are fit for Use? Manufactures, Trade, and Agriculture naturally employ more than nineteen Parts of the Species in twenty; and as for those who are not obliged to labour, by the Condition in which they are born, they are more miserable than the rest of Mankind, unless they indulge themselves in that voluntary Labour call'd Exercise, of which there is no Kind I would so recommend to both Sexes, as that of Rideing; as there is none that conduces so much to Health, and is every Way accommodated to the Body. Dr. _Sydenham_ is very lavish in its Praises, and if you would learn the mechanical Effects of it described at length, you may find it learnedly treated of by Dr. _Fuller_, in a late Treatise, intituled, _Medicina Gymnastica_, or, _The Power of Exercise_. And here Mr. _Dryden_: _The first Physicians by Debauch were made; Excess began, and Sloth sustain'd the Trade. By Chase our long-liv'd Fathers earn'd their Food, Toil strung the Nerves, and purified the Blood; But we their Sons, a pamper'd Race of Men, Are dwindled down to threescore Years and ten. Better to hunt in Fields for Health unbought, Than fee the Doctor for a nauseous Draught. The Wise for Cure on Exercise depend; God never made his Work for Man to mend._ General MAXIMS FOR HEALTH: OR, _RULES to preserve the Body to a good old Age_. I. It is not good to eat too much, or fast too long, or do any thing else that is preternatural. II. Whoever eats or drinks too much, will be sick. III. If thou art dull and heavy after Meat, it's a Sign thou hast exceeded the due Measure, for Meat and Drink ought to refresh the Body, and make it chearful, not to dull and oppress it. IV. If thou findest those ill Symptoms, consider whether too much Meat or Drink occasions it, or both, and abate by little and little, 'till thou findest the Inconveniency remov'd. V. Pass not immediately from a disorder'd Life, to a strict and precise Life, but by degrees abate the Excess, for ill Customs arrive by degrees, and so must be wore off. VI. As to the Quality of the Food, if the Body be of a healthful Constitution, and the Meat does thee no Harm, it matters little what it is; but all Sorts must be avoided that does Prejudice, though it please the Taste never so much. VII. After Diet is obtain'd, the Appetite will require no more than Nature hath need of, it will desire as Nature desires. VIII. Old Men can fast easily; Men of ripe Age can fast almost as much, but young People and Children can hardly fast at all. IX. Let ancient People eat Panada, made of Bread, and Flesh Broth, which is of light Digestion; an Egg now and then will do well. X. Growing Persons have a great deal of Natural Heat, which requires a great deal of Nourishment, else the Body will pine. XI. It must be examin'd what Sort of Persons ought to feed once or twice a Day, more or less; Allowance being always made to the Person, to the Season of the Year, to the Place where one lives, and to Custom. XII. The more you feed foul Bodies, the more you hurt your selves. XIII. He that studies much, ought not to eat so much as those that work hard, his Digestion being not so good. XIV. The near Quantity and Quality being found out, it is safest to be kept to. XV. Excess in all other things whatever, as well as in Meat and drink, are to be avoided; excessive Heats and Colds, violent Exercises, late Hours, and Women, unwholsome Air, violent Winds, the Passions, _&c._ XVI. Youth, Age, and Sick require a different Quantity. XVII. And so do those of different Complexions, for that which is too much for a Phlegmatick Man, is not sufficient for the Cholerick. XVIII. The Measure of the Food ought to be proportionable to the Quality and Condition of the Stomach, because the Stomach is to digest it. XIX. The Quantity that is sufficient, the Stomach can perfectly concoct, and answers to the due Nourishment of the Body. XX. Hence it appears we may eat a greater Quantity of some Viands than of others of a more hard Digestion. XXI. The Difficulty lies in finding out an exact Measure; but eat for Necessity not Pleasure; for Lust knows not where Necessity ends. XXII. Wouldst thou enjoy a long Life, a healthy Body, and a vigorous Mind, and be acquainted also with the wonderful Works of God, labour in the first Place to bring thy Appetite to Reason. XXIII. Beware of Variety of Meats, and such as are curiously and daintily drest, which destroy a multitude of People; they prolong Appetite four times beyond what Nature requires, and different Meats are of different Natures, some are sooner digested than others, whence Crudities proceed, and the whole Digestion depraved. XXIV. Keep out of the Sight of Feasts and Banquets as much as may be, for it is more difficult to retain good Cheer, when in Presence, than from the Desire of it when it is away; the like you may observe in all the other Senses. XXV. Fancy that Gluttony is not good and pleasant, but filthy, evil, and detestable; as it really is. XXVI. The richest Food, when concocted, yields the most noisom Smells; and he that works and fares hard, hath a sweeter and pleasanter Body than the other. XXVII. Winter requires somewhat a larger Quantity than Summer; hot and dry Meats agree best with Winter, cold and moist with Summer; in Summer abate a little of your Meat and add to your Drink, and in Winter substract from your Drink and add to your Meat. XXVIII. If a Man casually exceeds, let him fast the next Meal and all may be well again, provided it be not often done; or if he exceed at Dinner, let him rest from, or make a slight Supper. XXIX. Use now and then a little Exercise a Quarter of an Hour before Meals, or swing your Arms about with a small Weight in each Hand, to leap, and the like, for that stirs the Muscles of the Breast. XXX. Shooting in the long Bow, for the Breast and Arms. XXXI. Bowling, for the Reins, Stone and Gravel, _&c._ XXXII. Walking, for the Stomach: And the great _Drusus_ having weak and small Thighs and Legs, strengthened them by Riding, and especially after Dinner. XXXIII. Squinting and a dull Sight are amended by Shooting. XXXIV. Crookedness, by Swinging and hanging upon the Arms. XXXV. A temperate Diet frees from Diseases; such are seldom ill, but if they are surprized with Sickness, they bear it better, and recover it sooner, for all Distempers have their Original from Repletion. XXXVI. A temperate Diet arms the Body against all external Accidents, so that they are not so easily hurt by Heat, Cold, or Labour; if they at any Time should be prejudiced, they are more easily cured, either of Wounds, Dislocations, or Bruises; it also resists Epidemical Diseases. XXXVII. It makes Mens Bodies fitter for any Employments; it makes Men to live long; _Galen_, with many others, lived by it a Hundred Years. XXXVIII. _Galen_ saith, That those that are weak-complexioned from their Mothers Womb, may (by the Help of this Art, which prescribes the coarse Diet) attain to extreme old Age, and that without Diminution of Senses or Sickness of Body; and he saith, that though he never had a healthful Constitution of Body from his Birth, yet by using a good Diet after the Twenty-seventh Year of his Age, he never fell into Sickness, unless now and then into a One Days Fever, taken by One Days Weariness. XXXIX. A sober Diet makes a Man die without Pain; it maintains the Senses in Vigour; it mitigates the Violence of Passions and Affections. XL. It preserves the Memory; it helps the Understanding; it allays the Heat of Lust; it brings a Man to that weighty Consideration of his latter End. A DISCOVERY Of some Remarkable ERRORS In the late WRITINGS of Dr. _Mead_, _Quincey_, _Bradley_, &c. on the Plague. The great Apprehensions that all _Europe_ has received from the dreadful and raging Plague which has lately destroyed the greatest Part of the Inhabitants of _Marseilles_, has given that just Alarm to our Ministry, who under the Direction of His Majesty, by their wise and prudent Management, to the Duty of Publick Prayers, with that of a General and Solemn Fast throughout the Kingdom, have not been wanting, as much as possible, to prevent that direful Contagion which now threatens, and might be brought amongst us by the Sailors, or by Merchandize comeing from Places that are infected; and have ordered a strict Quarentine to be observed by all Ships in all the Maritime Ports liable to that Invasion. And to be Assistant to so great a Work, the Neglect of which the Lives of the Nation being at stake, we have some the most eminent of the Physicians now in Vogue, who from that Duty to their Profession, and their Zeal to the Publick Good, have publish'd some Essays, not only of the Nature, Cause, Symptoms, Prognosticks, and Affections of this fatal Distemper; but likewise of the proper Means to be used in preventing, and fortifying against, with the proper Applications of recovering those that are seiz'd by this fatal Enemy to Mankind. Books of this kind lately published are, a short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, by Dr. _Mead_. The Plague of _Marseilles_ consider'd by Dr. _Bradley_. Dr. _Hodges_'s Loimologia of the Plague in _London_, _Anno_ 1665; reprinted by Dr. _Quincy_: To which is added, an Essay of his own, with Remarks of the Infection now in _France_. To those worthy Gentlemen are we indebted for their ready Help, to their philosophical Enquiries, their learned and analytical Explanations in all the Stages of this raging Ill; and farther, by what physical Power it corrupts the Blood, destroys the Spirits, and is follow'd by Death at the last. The Apologies that are made in their Preface, _viz._ of a short Warning, of their little Leisure, the Uncorrectness of Style, and the Typographical Errors should be favourably construed from so great an Aim of doing the Publick so great a Good; and it would be esteemed a base Ingratitude, meerly for the sake of Contradiction, to quarrel with the Hand that directs, and may support us in the greatest Extremity. But where there may be a sufficient Reason to undeceive, or amend such Errors, as might otherwise be prejudicial to their intended Purpose of preserving the Common Weal, or advancing some other necessary Instructions which they have omitted; I can't but perswade myself that I shall have their Approbation, if not their Thanks in prosecuting the Advancement of that good End they so greatly have desired in their Publications. It is very certain, that Essay of Doctor _Hodges de Peste_, is the best of any hitherto publish'd of that Kind; and if the Gentleman who has annex'd his Treatise to that of his own, has taken Care to remove the most affected Peculiarities, and Luxuriances of his Enthusiastick Strain, he should have avoided that Contagion himself, which are discover'd in his crabbed and dogmatical Terms of _Formulæ_, _Miasms_, _Miasmata_, _Nexus_, _Moleculæ_, _Spicula_, _Pabulum_, &c. Such Terms being too abstruse and difficult to be understood by the People in general, for whose Instruction and Benefit we have the Charity to believe he undertook his Publication. Nay, it cannot be doubted, and will need no Confirmation by those that carefully peruse Dr. _Hodges_, but will find that there is scarcely any advanced Method in what they have writ, or but what may be found in his Treatise, unless in this one Hint of _Quincy_, from the Use of _Pulvis Fluminans_ in dispersing the stagnate Air instead of the fucing of great Guns, _&c._ And he is no ways out in his Policy by tacking his own Remarks with those of the good old Doctors, which are the best Recommendations of their passing to his own Advantage. _Hodges_ in his Introduction tells you, "That the first Discoveries of the late Plague began in _Westminster_, about the Close of the Year 1664, for at that Season two or three Persons died there, attended with like Symptoms as manifestly declar'd their Origin; that in the Months of _August_ and _September_, the Contagion chang'd its former slow and languid Pace, having, as it were, got Master of all, made a most terrible Slaughter, so that three, four or five thousand died in a Week, and once eight thousand: Who can express the Calamities of those Times! None surely in more pathetick and bewailing Accents than himself, who gives us so melancholly a Description of their dismal Misery, as affects the Mind with the same Passions and despairing Sorrow they were then overloaded with; and as _Virgil_ has it, _Horror ubique Animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent. Hærent in fixi pectore Vultus._ The _British_ Nation wept for the Miseries of her Metropolis. In some Houses Carcases lay waiting for Burial; and in others, Persons in their last Agonies; in one Room might be heard dying Groans, in another the Raveings of a Delirium, and not far off Relations and Friends bewailing both their Loss and the dismal Prospect of their own sudden Departure; Death was the sure Midwife to all Children, and Infants passed immediately from the Womb to the Grave; Who would not burst with Grief to see the Stock of a future Generation hang upon the Breasts of a dead Mother? or the Marriage-Bed changed the first Night into a Sepulchre, and the unhappy Pair meet with Death in the first Embraces? Some of the Infected run about staggering like drunken Men, and fall and expire in the Streets; while others lie half dead and comatous, but never to be waked but by the last Trumpet; some lie vomiting, as if they had drank Poison; and others fall dead in the Market while they are buying Necessaries for the Support of Life. Not much unlike was it in the following Conflagration; where the Altars themselves became so many Victims, and the finest Churches in the whole World carried up to Heaven Supplications in Flames, while their marble Pillars, wet with Tears, melted like Wax; nor were Monuments secure from the inexorable Flames, where many of their venerable Remains passed a second Martyrdom; the most august Palaces were soon laid waste, and the Flames seem'd to be in a fatal Engagement to destroy the great Ornament of Commerce; and the burning of all the Commodities of the World together, seem'd a proper Epitome of this Conflagration: Neither confederate Crowns, nor the drawn Swords of Kings could restrain its phanatick and rebellious Rage; large Halls, stately Houses, and the Sheds of the Poor, were together reduced to Ashes; the Sun blush'd to see himself set, and envied those Flames the Government of the Night which had rivall'd him so many Days: As the City, I say, was afterwards burnt without any Distinction, in like Manner did this Plague spare no Order, Age, or Sex; the Divine was taken in the very Exercise of his priestly Office, to be inroll'd amongst the Saints above; and some Physicians, as before intimated, could not find Assistance in their own Antidotes, but died in the Administration of them to others; and although the Soldiery retreated from the Field of Death, and encamped out of the City, the Contagion followed and vanquished them; many in their old Age, others in their Prime, sunk under its Cruelties; of the female Sex, most died; and hardly any Children escaped; and it was not uncommon to see an Inheritance pass successively to three or four Heirs in as many Days; the Number of Sextons were not sufficient to bury the Dead; the Bells seem'd hoarse with continual tolling, until at last they quite ceased; the Burying-places would not hold the Dead, but they were thrown into large Pits dug in waste Grounds in Heaps, thirty or forty together; and it often happened, that those who attended the Funerals of their Friends one Evening, were carried the next to their own long Home." ------_Quis talia fundo temperet à lacrymis?_---- About the Beginning of _September_ the Disease was at the Height, in the Course of which Month more than Twelve thousand died in a Week[4] but from this Time its Force began to relax; and about the Close of the Year, that is, at the Beginning of _November_, People grew more healthful, and such a different Face was put upon the Publick, that although the Funerals were yet frequent, yet many who had made most haste in retiring, made the most to return, and came into the City without Fear; insomuch that in _December_ they crowded back as thick as they fled; and although the Contagion had carried off, as some computed, about One hundred thousand People; after a few Months this Loss was hardly discernable. The Doctor himself comes to no determinate Number of those that died of this Distemper, but in the Table that he has writ of the Funerals in the several Parishes within the Bills of Mortality of the Cities of _London_ and _Westminster_ for the Year 1665, he tells you, 68596 died of the Plague. Dr. _Mead_ in the same Year 1665, that it continued in this City about ten Months, and swept away 97306 Persons. Dr. _Bradley_, in his Table from the 27th of _December_, 1664/5, takes no notice of any buried of that Distemper, but of one on the 14th of _February_ following, and two on _April_ the 25th, and in all, to the 7th of _June_, 89. The next following Months, to _October_ the 3d, there were buried 49932, in all 50021. Why he should here break up from giving any further Account may be from the Weakness of his Intelligence, which so widely differs from all other Accounts; and in this one, with Dr. _Hodges_, who tells you, that about the Beginning of _September_, at which Time the Disease was at the Height, in the Course of which Month, more than 12000 Persons died in a Week: Whereas in _Bradley_, the most that were buried in one Week, _i. e._ from the 12th of _September_ to the 19th, amounted to no more than 7165. But computing after the Manner of Dr. _Hodges_, we find (taking one Week with another, from _August_ the 29th to the 27th of _September_, the Time of its greatest Fury) the exact Number of 6555; which falls short very near to one half of the Number accounted to be buried of that Distemper by Dr. _Hodges_; and we have abundant Reason to believe, that the greatest Account hitherto mentioned, may be short of the Number dying of that Distemper. If we do but observe the strict Order then published to shut up all infected Houses, to keep a Guard upon them Day and Night, to withhold from them all Manner of Correspondence from without; and that after their Recovery, to perform a Quarentine of 40 Days, in which Space if anyone else of the Family should be taken with that Distemper, the Work to be renewed again; by which tedious Confinement of the Sick and Well together, it often proved the Cause of the Loss of the Whole. These, besides many other great Inconveniencies, were sufficient to affright the People from making the Discovery, and we may be certain, that many died of the Plague which were returned to the Magistracy under another Denomination, which might easily be obtained from the Nurses and Searchers, whether from their Ignorance, Respect, Love of Money, _&c._ And if they vary so much in their Computation of those that died; we shall find them as widely different in the Time when 'tis said the Plague first began. The great Dr. _Mead_ on this important Subject, may establish by his Name whatever he lays down, with the same Force and Authority as the Ancients held of that _ipse dixit_ of Aristotle; but as that great Master of Nature was not exempt from slipping into some Errors, _& humanum est errare_, it can be no Shock to the Reputation of this Gentleman, if we shall find him no less fallible than of some others of the Faculty who has treated on this Subject; and to this part of the time when 'tis said the Plague first began. Doctor _Mead_, by what Information he has not thought fit to tell us, does affirm, That its Beginning was in _Autumn_ before the Year 1664/5; whereas Dr. _Hodges_ says, in the very first Page of his _Liomologia_, that it was not till the Close of the Year 1664; at that Season two or three Persons died suddenly in one Family at _Westminster_, of which he gives a further Light from his visiting the first Patient in the _Christmas_ Holidays, and fully confirmed by the Weekly Bills of Mortality, whose first Account of those who died of the Plague were from _December_ the 27th, 1664/5. As those Gentlemen have forfeited their Infallibility by what I have proved hitherto against them, we have further Reason to suspect, whether or not the late Plague in 1665 was occasioned by that Bale of Cotton imported from _Turkey_ to _Holland_, and thence to _England_, as Dr. _Hodges_ makes irrefregable, and Dr. _Mead_'s Authority indisputable; which is no less a Subject of Wonder and Admiration how many Years we have escaped from the Plagues that have happened and are frequent in so many Parts of _Turkey_; as at _Grand Cairo_, which is seldome or never free from that Distemper, at _Alexandria_, _Rosetta_, _Constantinople_, _Smyrna_, _Scanderoon_, and _Aleppo_, from which Places we have the most considerable Import of any of our Neighbours, and of such Goods as are most receptive of those infectious Seeds, such as Cotton, Raw Silk, Mohair, _&c._ And though Coffee may seem less dangerous, from its Quality of being more able to resist its pestilential Effluvia, yet from the many Coverings the Bales are wrapped in, it is not hard to conceive the contagious Power might be latent in some Part of the Packidge; which Escape is the more surprising and to be wondred at from the great Encrease of our Trade and Shipping which yearly arrive from those Countries; and yet to be preserved from the like Misfortune near to this 60 Years. _Gockelius_ informs us, [5]"That the Contagion in the same Year 1665 was brought into _Germany_ by a Body of Soldiers returning from the Wars in _Hungary_ against the _Turks_, spread the Infection about _Ulm_ and _Ausburgh_, where he then lived, and besides the Plague, they brought along with them the _Hungarian_ and other malignant Fevers, which diffused themselves about the Neighbourhood, whereof many died.[6] And with Submission to the wise Judgment and Opinion of these learned _Triumviri_, who have cited no fuller Authority for this Assertion than a bare Relation of it from _Hodges de Peste_; it may be no unreasonable Conjecture to have its first Progress from _Hungary_, _Germany_, and to _Holland_, from which last Place they all have agreed we certainly received the Contagion; and that we have had the Plague convey'd to us by the like Means may be found in the _Bibliotheca Anotomica_, being brought to us by some Troops from _Hungary_ sent thither against the _Turks_ by _Henry_ VI. King of _England_. Dr. _Mead_, who thinks it necessary to premise somewhat in general concerning the Propagation of the Plague, might, to the three Causes he has laid down, of a bad Air, diseased Persons, and Goods transported from Abroad, have added the Aliment or Diet, because affording Matter to the Juices it does not less contribute to the Generation of Diseases: And it may be observed, that in the Year before the pestilential Sickness, there was a great Mortality amongst the Cattel from a very wet Autumn, and their Carcasses being sold amongst the ordinary People at a very mean Price, a great many putred Humours might proceed from thence; and this, in the Opinion of many, was the Source of our late Calamities, when it was observed this fatal Destroyer raged with greater Triumph over the common People: And the feeding on unripened and unsound Fruits are frequently charged with a Share in Mischiefs of this Kind. _Galen_[7] is very positive in this Matter, and in one Place accuses[8] his great Master to _Hippocrates_ with neglecting the Consequence of too mean a Diet: From this 'tis generally observed, that a Dearth or Famine is the Harbinger to a following Plague. And we have an Account from our Merchants trading to _Surat_, _Bencoli_, and some other Parts of the _East-Indies_, that the Natives are never free from that Distemper, which is imputed to their low and pitiful Fare. The _Europeans_, especially the _English_, escaping by their better Diet, by feeding on good Flesh, and drinking of strong generous Wine, which secures them from the Power of that Malignancy. Their Hypotheses as widely differ in the very Substance or Nature of the Pestilence; and Dr. [9]_Hodges_, [10]_Mead_, and [11]_Quincey_, have asserted, that it proceeds from a Corruption of the Volatile Salts, or the Nitrous Spirit in the Air. Dr. [12]_Bradley_, from the Number of poisonous Animals, Insects, or Maggots which at that Time are swimming or driving in the circumambient Air; and being sucked into our Bodies along with our Breath, are sufficiently capable of causing those direful Depredations on Mankind called the Plague. Both these Opinions are supported by the Authorities of Learned Men. And if _Hodges_, _&c._ have the Suffrages of the greatest of the ancient Physicians, with those of _Wolfius_, _Agricola_, _Forestus_, _Fernelius_, _Belini_, _Carolus de là Font_, _&c._ _Bradley_ may challenge to him the famed _Kirchir_, _Malhigius_, _Leeuwenhooch_, _Morgagni_, _Redi_, and _Mangetus_. It is almost endless as well as altogether needless, to cite all the Authorities for the different Opinions, that might be collected from the most remote Antiquity down to the present Age. And although it is yet to be contested, and might be held an occult Quality with those learned Gentlemen, we shall find, each Doctor passes his favourite Opinion upon the World with as much Infallibility as a Demonstration in _Euclid_. [13]And for that Opinion of the famous _Kirchir_, about animated Worms, (says _Hodges_) 'I must confess I could never come at any such Discovery with the Help of the best Glasses, nor ever found the same discovered by any other; but perhaps in our cloudy Island we are not so sharp-sighted as in the serene Air of _Italy_; and with Submission to so great a Name, it seems to me very disconsonant to Reason, that such a pestilential Seminium, which is both of a nitrous and poisonous Nature, should produce a living Creature.' And he is well assured, that he is in the right, when he says, '[14]Every one of those Particulars are as clear as the Light at Noon-Day; and those Explications are so obvious to be met with in the Writings of the Learned, that it would be lost Labour to insist upon any such Thing here.' [15]Dr. _Mead_ chimes in here very tuneably with _Hodges_, and is pleased to say, 'That some Authors have imagined Infection to be performed by the Means of Insects, the Eggs of which may be conveyed from Place to Place, and make the Disease when it comes to be hatch'd. As this is a Supposition grounded upon no Manner of Observation, so I think there is no need to have Recourse to it.' Dr. _Bradley_, who hatches this Distemper by the smaller Kind of Insects floating in the Air, is greatly jealous of his favourite Egg, from which that fatal Cockatrice breaks forth and disperses Death in every Quarter: He may be seen to promote this Hypothesis in that Discourse of his new Improvement of Planting, _&c._ and with no less Pursuit in his late Pamphlet on the Plague at _Marseilles_; where in his Preface, _p._ 13, he tells you, 'That to suppose this malignant Distemper is occasioned by Vapours only arising from the Earth, is to lay aside our Reason, _&c._' And it may be farther observed, That they are as remote from their Consent to one another, as in the distant Place from whence they would trace its Origin. [16]Dr. _Mead_, from a bare Transcription of _Matthæus Villanus_, does affirm, That the Plague in the Year 1346, had its first Rise in _China_, advancing through the _East-Indies_, _Syria_, _Turkey_, _&c._ and by Shipping from the _Levant_, brought into _Europe_, which in the Year 1349. seized _England_. This is directly against Dr. _Bradley_,[17] who suggests the Plague is no where to be found in _India_, _China_, the South Parts of _Africa_ and _America_, and has taken the Pains in filling up three Pages in the Defence of this Assertion. It would be well if their Opposition ended here; but when it affects us more near, when their Difference becomes more wide in the very Means of our Preservation, and what by one is laid down as a soveraign and real Good, to be returned by another as the most fatal and destructive, is a Weight of no small Consequence, nor a less melancholly Reflection, if it should please God to inflict us with the same Calamities. And as to those preservative Means which the Government have only a Power to direct, the making of large Fires in the Streets, as has been practised in the Times of Contagion, is a Point largely contested. Dr. _Hodges_[18] seems inveterate against this Custom, and tells us, 'That before three Days were expired after the Fires made in 1665, the most fatal Night ensued, wherein more than 4000 expired; the Heavens both mourn'd so many Funerals, and wept for the fatal Mistake, so as to extinguish even the Fires with their Showers. May Posterity, (says he) be warned by this Mistake, and not like Empericks, apply a Remedy where they are ignorant of the Cause.' And Dr. _Mead_[19] has an Eye to this Remark, when he tells us, 'The fatal Success of the Trials in the last Plague is more than sufficient to discourage any farther Attempts of this Nature.' Whereas on the contrary, the making of Fires in the Streets were practised from the greatest Antiquity, and supported by _Mayerne_, _Butler_, and _Harvey_ in the two great Plagues before the Year 1665, and recommended by Dr. _Quincey_[20] for the Dissipation of Pestilential Vapours, _&c._ And without all manner of Dispute, Dr. _Bradley_[21] must be wholly on his Side, when he tells us, 'That the Year 1665, was the last that we can say raged in _London_, which might happen from the Destruction of the City by Fire the following Year 1666, and besides the destroying of the Eggs or Seeds of those poisonous Animals that were then in the stagnating Air, might likewise purifie the Air in such a Manner as to make it unfit for the Nourishment of others of the same kind, which were swimming or driving in the circumambient Air.' What has been said of Fires is likewise to be understood of firing of Guns, which some have too rashly advised. Says Dr. _Mead_[22], 'The proper Correction of the Air would be to make it fresh and cool.' And here quotes from the Practice of the _Arabians_ out of _Rhazes de re Medica_, &c. Dr. _Quincey_[23] 'That as the Air being still and as it were stagnate at such Times, and as it favours the Collection of poisonous Effluvia, and aggravates Infection, thinks it more effectual to let off small Parcels of the common _Pulvis Fulminans_, which must afford a greater Shock to the Air by its Explosion than by the largest Pieces of Ordnance.' In favour of which last Assertion, the Experience both of Soldiers, will justifie the firing of great Guns and Ordnance, which is frequently used in Camps, for the Dissipation of the collected pestilential Atoms, which by Concussion as well as its constituent Parts of Nitre and Sulphur, tend greatly to the Purification of the grosser Atmosphere within the Compass of their Activity; and by the Seamen in their Voyages in the Southern Parts of the World, when sometimes the Air is so gross, and hangs so low upon them, as to be almost suffocated. And in the late Plague at _Marseilles_ the constant firing of great Guns at Morning and Evening, by the Appointment of _Monsieur le Marquis de Langeron_ their Governour, was esteemed of great Relief to the Inhabitants. Nay, their Contest will not end in a Pipe of Tobacco, against which Dr. _Hodges_[24] declares himself a profess'd Enemy: 'But whether (says he) we regard the narcotick Quality of this _American_ Henbane; or the poisonous Oil which exhales from it in Smoaking, or that prodigious Discharge of Spittle which it occasions, and which Nature wants for many other important Occasions, besides the Aptitude of the pestilential Poison to be taken down along with it; he chose rather to supply its Place with Sack.' Dr. _Bradley_[25] redeems it from this low Character, and represents it as a great Antidote in the last Plague _Anno_ 1665. 'The Distemper did not reach those who smoak'd Tobacco every Day, but particularly it was judged best to smoak in a Morning: He farther gives you an Account of a famous Physician, who in the pestilential Time took every Morning a Cordial to guard his Stomach, and after that a Pipe or two, before he went to visit his Patients; at the same time he had an Issue in his Arm, by which, when it begun to smart, he knew he had received some Infection (as he says) and then had recourse to his Cordial and his Pipe.' By this Means only he preserved himself, as several others did at that Time by the same Method. I could heartily wish those worthy Gentlemen had struck in with greater Harmony to the Satisfaction and Security of the People, whose Expectations were greatly raised by the Hopes of their Assistance, by gaining a greater Light into the Nature, Quality, Symptoms, and Affections of this definitive Ill, to have promoted their Safety, by giving the necessary Indications relating to the Cure, as well as the necessary Precautions in order to guard us from that secret Attack which may approach us by very minute and unheeded Causes; the which, from their different Notions and positive Contradictions, lay too deep from the narrow Re-searches of those Philosophizing and Learned Gentlemen, and for the Manner whereby it kills, its Approaches are generally so secret, that Persons seiz'd with it seem to be fallen into an Ambuscade or a Snare, of which there was no Manner of Suspicion. And there are very few Discourses relating to the Pestilence but what abound in many Instances of this kind: And the Learned _Boccace_, in his Admirable Description of the Plague at _Florence_ (quoted by Dr. _Mead_[26] _Anno_ 1348) relates what himself saw, 'That two Hogs finding in the Streets some Rags which had been thrown off from a poor Man dead of the Disease, after snuffling upon them, and tearing them with their Teeth, fell into Convulsions, and died in less than an Hour.' The Misfortune which happened in the Island of _Bermudas_ about 25 Years since, which Account is from Dr. _Halley_; A Sack of Cotton put ashore by Stealth, lay above a Month without any Prejudice to the People of the House where it was hid; but when it came to be distributed among the Inhabitants, it carried such a Contagion along with it, that the Living scarce sufficed to bury the Dead. And Dr. _Quincey_[27] has somewhere read a strange Story in _Baker_'s Chronicle, 'of a great Rot amongst Sheep, which was not quite rooted out until about Fourteen Years time, that was brought into _England_ by a Sheep bought for its uncommon Largeness, in a Country then infected with the same Distemper.' _Fracastorius_[28], an eminent _Italian_ Physician, tells us, 'That in the Year 1511, when the _Germans_ were in Possession of _Verona_, there arose a deadly Disease amongst the Soldiers, from the wearing only of a Coat purchased for a small Value; for it was observed, that every Owner of it soon sickned and died; until at last the Cause of it was so manifestly known from some Infection in the Coat, that it was ordered to be burned.' Ten thousand Persons, he says, were computed to fall by this Plague before it ceased. And _Kephale_, in his _Medela Pestilentiæ_, printed _Anno_ 1665, acquaints us, That the following Plagues were produced from the following Causes. That in the Year 1603, the contagious Seeds were brought to _England_ amongst Seamens Clothes in _White-Chappel_; and in that Year there died of the Plague 30561. That in the Year 1625, was bred and produced by rotten Mutton at _Stepney_; of which died 35403 Persons. That in the Year 1630, was brought to us by a Bale of Carpets from _Turkey_, of which died 1317 Persons. That in the Year 1636, was brought over to us by a Dog from _Amsterdam_; of which died 10400 Persons. That in the Year 1665, was brought from _Turkey_ in a Bale of Cotton to _Holland_, thence to _England_; in this great Plague died no less than 100,000 People. And at _Marseilles_, in this present Year 1720, the Plague has swept away more than 70000 Persons, which was brought in Goods from _Sidon_, a fam'd and ancient City and Sea-port in _Phoenicia_, and the same which sometimes is mentioned in Holy Writ. From the Neighbourhood of this last Contagion, the frightful Apprehensions of the People are rais'd to the greatest Height; and when every one is consulting his own Security, how to guard and preserve himself from that dreadful Enemy, nothing can come more seasonably to their Relief, than to lay before them a _Compendium_ of the best and approved Rules for their Conduct; to which End I have carefully collected, from the successful Practice of Dr. _Glisson_, Sir _Thomas Millington_, Dr. _Charlton_, and other Learned Physicians in the last Plague, with what only may be of Use from the abounding Prescripts of those who have lately published, and as this Evil is supported throughout the general Practice, it appears to be the Result of the Reasoning of some of the Learned Sons of _Æsculapius_, to marshal into the Field as many Compositions as if only by their Number they might be able to pull down the Tyranny of this fatal Destroyer. It would be a Work insuperable, and altogether foreign to the Method I have gone by, to extract all the Medicines which some Writers abound with for this End; it is our Business here chiefly to take Notice of that saving _Regimen_, that Rule of Self-governing, which proved more successful in the Preservation of the People in the late Plague, than all the abounding _Nostrums_ that have been crouded into the Practice, the which has become a due Reproach to the Faculty. _Turpe est Doctori, quem culpa redarguit ipsum._ And it is here worthy of our first Remark, That the last Plague, in the Year 1665, as well from the late Accounts we have of that at _Marseilles_, the poorer Sort of People were those that mostly suffered, which can only be attributed to their mean and low Fare, whereas the most nutritive and generous Diet should be promoted, and such as generate a warm and rich Blood, Plenty of Spirits, and what easily perspires, which otherwise would be apt to ferment and generate Corruption. Your greatest Care is, to have your Meat sweet and good, neither too moist nor flashy, having a certain Regard to such as may create an easy Digestion, and observing that roasted Meats on those Occasions should be preferred; as Beef, Mutton, Lamb, Venison, Turkey, Capon, Pullet, Chicken, Pheasant, and Partridge: But Pidgeon, and most Sort of Wild and Sea Fowl to be rejected: Salt Meats to be cautiously used; all hot, dry, and spicey Seasonings to be avoided; most Pickles and rich Sauces to be encouraged, with the often Use of Garlick, Onion, and Shallot; the cool, acid, and acrid Herbs and Roots, as Lettuce, Spinnage, Cresses, Sorrel, Endive, and Sellery; all windy Things, which are subject to Putrefaction, to be refrained, as all kind of Pulse, Cabbage, Colliflower, Sprouts, Melons, Cucumbers, _&c._ as also most Summer Fruits, excepting Mulberries, Quinces, Pomegranates, Raspers, Cherries, Currants, and Strawberries, which are of Service when moderately eat of. All light and viscid Substances to be avoided, as Pork, most Sorts of Fish, of the latter that may be eat, are Soles, Plaise, Flounder, Trout, Gudgeon, Lobster, Cray-fish, and Shrimps, no Sort of Pond-Fish being good; and for your Sauce, fresh melted Butter, or Oil mixed with Vinegar or Verjuice, the Juice of Sorrel, Pomegranates, Barberries, of Lemon or _Seville_ Orange, which two last are to be preferred, from their Power of resisting all Manner of Putrefaction, as well to cool the violent Heat of the Stomach, Liver, _&c._ For your Bread, to be light, and rather stale than new, not to drink much of Malt Liquors, avoiding that which is greatly Hopped, or too much on the ferment, Mead and Metheglin are of excellent Use, and good Wines taken moderately are a strong Preservative, Sack especially being accounted the most Soveraign and the greatest Alexipharmick: Excess is dangerous to the most healthy Constitution, which may beget Inflammations of fatal Consequence in pestilential Cases. Let none go Home fasting, every one, as they can procure, to take something as may resist Putrefaction; some may take Garlick with Bread and Butter, a Clove two or three, or with Rue, Sage, Sorrel, dipt in Vinegar, the Spirit of Oil of Turpentine frequently drank in small Doses is of great Use; as also to lay in steep over-Night, of Sage well bruis'd two Handfuls, of Wormwood one Handful, of Rue half a Handful, put to them in an Earthen Vessel four Quarts of Mild Beer; which in the Morning to be drank fasting. The Custom that prevails now of drinking Coffee, Bohea-Tea, or Chocolate, with Bread and Butter, is very good; at their going abroad 'tis proper to carry Rue, Angelica, Masterwort, Myrtle, _Scordianum_ or Water-Germander, Wormwood, Valerian or Setwal-Root, _Virginian_ Snake-Root, or Zedoary in their Hands to smell to, or of Rue one Handful stampt in a Mortar, put thereto Vinegar enough to moisten it, mix them well, then strain out the Juice, wet a Piece of Sponge or a Toast of brown Bread therein, tie it in a Bit of thin Cloth to smell to. But there is nothing more grateful and efficacious than the volatile _Sal Armoniac_, well impregnated with the essential Oils of aromatick Ingredients, which may be procured dry, and kept in small Bottles, from a careful Distillation of the common _Sal Volatile Oleosum_. Sometimes more foetid Substances agree better with some Persons than the more grateful Scents, of which the most useful Compositions may be made of Rue, Featherfew, _Galbanum_, _Assafoetida_, and the like, with the Oil of Wormwood, the Spirit or Oil drawn and dropt upon Cotton, so kept in a close Ivory Box, though with Caution to be used, the often smelling to, dilating the Pores of the Olfactory Organs, which may give greater Liberty for the pestilential Air to go along with it. A Piece of Orris Root kept in the Mouth in passing along the Streets, or of Garlick, Orange or Lemon Peel, or Clove, are of very great Service. As also Lozenges of the following Composition, which are always profitable to be used fasting; of Citron Peel two Drams, Zedoary, Angelica, of each, prepar'd in Rose Vinegar, half a Dram, Citron Seeds, Wood of Aloes, Orris, of each two Scruples, Saffron, Cloves, Nutmeg, one Scruple, Myrrh, Ambergrease, of each six Grains, Sugarcandy one Ounce; make into Lozenges with Gum Traganth and Rose-water. I know not indeed a greater Neglect than not keeping the Body clean, and the keeping at a distance any thing superfluous and offensive, to keep the House airy and fresh, and moderately cool, and to strew it with Herbs, Rushes, and Boughs, which yield refreshing Scents, and contribute much to the purifying of the Air, and resisting the Infection; of this kind all Sorts of Rushes and Water Flags, Mint, Balm, Camomil Grass, Hyssop, Thyme, Pennyroyal, Rue, Wormwood, Southernwood, Tansy, Costmary, Lime-tree, Oak, Beech, Walnut, Poplar, Ash, Willow, _&c._ A frequent Change of Clothes, and a careful drying or airing them abroad, with whisking and cleaning of them from all Manner of Filth and Dust, which may harbour Infection, as it is likewise to keep the Windows open at Sun-Rise till the Setting, especially to the North and East, for the cold Blasts from those Quarters temper the Malignity of pestilential Airs. Preservative Fumigations are largely talked of by all on those Occasions, and they with good Reason deserve to be practised. And of the great Number of Aromatick Roots and Woods, I should chiefly prefer Storax, Benjamin, Frankinsense, Myrrh, and Amber, the Wood of Juniper, Cypress and Cedar, the Leaves of Bays and Rosemary, and the Smell of Tarr and Pitch is no ways inferior to any of the rest, where its Scent is not particularly offensive, observing the burning of any or more of those Ingredients at such proper Distances of Time from each other, that the Air may always be sensibly impregnated therewith. Amongst the Simples of the Vegitable Kind, _Virginian_ Snake-Root cannot be too much admired, and is deservedly accounted the most Diaphoretick and Alexipharmick for expelling the pestilential Poison; its Dose, finely powder'd, is from four or six Grains to two Scruples, in a proper Vehicle; due Regard being had to the Strength and Age of the Patient. The next is generally given to the Contrayerva Root, (from which also a Compound Medicine is admirably contrived, and made famous by its Success in the last Plague;) the Dose of this in fine Powder is from one Scruple to a Dram, in Angelica or Scordium Water, or in Wine, _&c._ There are other Roots likewise of which many valuable Compounds are form'd in order to effect that with an united Force which they could not do singly; in this Class are the Roots of Angelica, Scorzonera, Butterbur, Masterwort, Tormentil, Zedoary, Garlick, Elicampane, Valerian, Birthwort, Gentian, Bitany, and many others, which may be found in other Writings. Ginger, whether in the Root, powder'd, and candy'd deserve our Regard; for it is very powerful both to raise a breathing Sweat and defend the Spirits against the pestilential Impression. From these Roots may be made Extracts, either with Spirit of Wine or Vinegar, for it is agreed by all, that the most subtil Particles collected together, and divested of their grosser and unprofitable Parts, become more efficacious in Medicinal Cases. The Leaves of Vegetables most us'd in Practice are Scordiam, Rue, Sage, Veronica, the lesser Cataury, Scabious, Pimpinel, Marygolds, and Baum, from which, on Occasion, several _Formulæ_ are contrived. Good Vehicles to wash down and to facilitate the taking of many other Medicines, should be made of the Waters distilled from those Herbs while they are fresh and fragrant (having not yet lost their volatile Salt) for those which are commonly kept in the Shop, are insipid and of little Use. _FINIS._ Footnotes: [1] _An_ Ægyptian, _and the first Inventor of Physick_; [2] _The Son of_ Apollo, _begotten upon_ Coronis, _the Daughter of_ Phlegia. [3] _The two eldest Daughters of_ Æsculapius. [4] _See_ _Hodges of the Plague_, _reprinted_ per Qincey, p. 19. [5] _Vid._ Gockelius de peste, p. 25. [6] _Vid._ Gockelius de peste, p. 25. [7] Lib. 1. de differ. Feb. Cap. 3. & de cibis mali & boni succi. [8] Lib. 6. Obser. 9. 26. [9] _Liomologia_, p. 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 42, 44, 52, 53, 54, 75. [10] _Short Discourse_, p. 11, 17. [11] _Different Causes_, p. 266. [12] _Plague_, Marseilles, p. 17, 30, 31, 36, 41. [13] Hodges'_s Limologia_, p. 64. [14] Hodges'_s Limilogia_, p. 32. [15] _Short Discourse_, p. 16. [16] _Short Discourse_, p. 10. [17] _Plague_, Marseilles, p. 31, 32, 33. [18] _Loimologia_, p. 20. [19] _Short Discourse_, p. 46. [20] _Liomologia Causes and Cures_, p. 281. [21] _Plague_, Marseilles, p. 9. [22] _Short Discourse_, p, 46. [23] _Loimologia_, p. 283. [24] _Loimologia_, p. 218. [25] _Plague_, Marseilles, p. 40. [26] _Short Discourse_, p. 24. [27] _Loimologia, Causes and Cures_, p. 255. [28] De Morbis Contag. Lib. II. Cap. 7. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. In the Preface, non-italicized words are indicated by =not italics=. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. The following misprints have been corrected: "Gratiude" corrected to "Gratitude" (page 5) "togegether" corrected to "together" (page 31) "Phsick" corrected to "Physick" (page 63) "Apothecacaries" corrected to "Apothecaries" (page 64) "Medicince" corrected to "Medicine" (page 65) "Strengh" corrected to "Strength" (page 120) "Humous" corrected to "Humours" (page 131) "snch" corrected to "such" (page 157) "nnless" corrected to "unless" (page 158) "Weeek" corrected to "Week" (page 187) "Aristole" corrected to "Aristotle" (page 189) Other than the corrections listed above, printing is retained from the original. 
37640	----	He is not far from every one of us. For in Him we live and move not less than in Him we have our being. "Out of darkness comes the hand Reaching through nature,--moulding man." _HEALTH:_ FIVE LAY SERMONS TO WORKING-PEOPLE. BY JOHN BROWN, M.D. BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, _Late Ticknor and Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co._ 1877. _Affectionately inscribed to the memory of the_ REV. JAMES TRENCH, _the heart and soul of the Canongate Mission, who, while he preached a pure and a fervent gospel to its heathens, taught them also and therefore to respect and save their health, and was the Originator and Keeper of their Library and Penny Bank, as well as their Minister._ PREFACE. Three of these sermons were written for, and (shall I say?) preached some years ago, in one of the earliest missionary stations in Edinburgh, established by Broughton Place Congregation, and presided over at that time by the Reverend James Trench; one of the best human beings it was ever my privilege to know. He is dead; dying in and of his work,--from typhus fever caught at the bedside of one of his poor members--but he lives in the hearts of many a widow and fatherless child; and lives also, I doubt not, in the immediate vision of Him to do whose will was his meat and his drink. Given ten thousand such men, how would the crooked places be made straight, and the rough places plain, the wildernesses of city wickedness, the solitary places of sin and despair, of pain and shame, be made glad! This is what is to regenerate mankind; this is the leaven that some day is to leaven the lump. The other two sermons were never preached, except in print; but they were composed in the same key. I say this not in defence, but in explanation. I have tried to speak to working men and women from my lay pulpit, in the same words, with the same voice, with the same thoughts I was in the habit of using when doctoring them. This is the reason of their plain speaking. There is no other way of reaching these sturdy and weather and work-beaten understandings; there is nothing fine about them outside, though they are often as white in the skin under their clothes as a duchess, and their hearts as soft and tender as Jonathan's, or as Rachel's, or our own Grizel Baillie's; but you must speak out to them, and must not be mealy-mouthed if you wish to reach their minds and affections and wills. I wish the gentlefolks could hear and could use a little more of this outspokenness; and, as old Porson said, condescend to call a spade a spade, and not a horticultural implement; five letters instead of twenty-two, and more to the purpose. You see, my dear working friends, I am great upon sparing your strength and taking things cannily. "All very well," say you; "it is easy speaking, and saying, Take it easy; but if the pat's on the fire it maun bile." It must, but you needn't poke up the fire forever, and you may now and then set the kettle on the hob, and let it sing, instead of leaving it to burn its bottom out. I had a friend who injured himself by overwork. One day I asked the servant if any person had called, and was told that some one had. "Who was it?" "O, it's the little gentleman that _aye rins when he walks_!" So I wish this age would walk more and "rin" less. A man can walk farther and longer than he can run, and it is poor saving to get out of breath. A man who lives to be seventy, and has ten children and (say) five-and-twenty grandchildren, is of more worth to the state than three men who die at thirty, it is to be hoped unmarried. However slow a coach seventy may have been, and however energetic and go-ahead the three thirties, I back the tortoise against the hares in the long run. I am constantly seeing men who suffer, and indeed die, from living too fast; from true though not consciously immoral dissipation or scattering of their lives. Many a man is bankrupt in constitution at forty-five, and either takes out a _cessio_ of himself to the grave, or goes on paying ten per cent for his stock-in-trade; he spends his capital instead of merely spending what he makes, or better still, laying up a purse for the days of darkness and old age. A queer man, forty years ago,--Mr. Slate, or, as he was called, _Sclate_, who was too clever and not clever enough, and had not wisdom to use his wit, always scheming, full of "go," but never getting on,--was stopped by his friend, Sir Walter Scott,--that wonderful friend of us all, to whom we owe Jeanie Deans and Rob Roy, Meg Merrilies and Dandie Dinmont, Jinglin' Geordie, Cuddie Headrigg, and the immortal Baillie,--one day in Princess Street. "How are ye getting on, Sclate?" "Oo, just the auld thing, Sir Walter; _ma pennies a' gang on tippenny eerands_." And so it is with our nervous power, with our vital capital, with the pence of life; many of them go on "tippenny eerands." We are forever getting our bills renewed, till down comes the poor and damaged concern with dropsy or consumption, blazing fever, madness, or palsy. There is a Western Banking system in living, in using our bodily organs, as well as in paper-money. But I am running off into another sermon. Health of mind and body, next to a good conscience, is the best blessing our Maker can give us, and to no one is it more immediately valuable than to the laboring man and his wife and children; and indeed a good conscience is just moral health, the wholeness of the sense and the organ of duty; for let us never forget that there is a religion of the body, as well as, and greatly helpful of, the religion of the soul. We are to glorify God in our souls and in our bodies, for the best of all reasons, _because they are his_, and to remember that at last we must give account, not only of our thoughts and spiritual desires and acts, but _all the deeds done in our body_. A husband who, in the morning before going to his work, would cut his right hand off sooner than injure the wife of his bosom, strangles her that same night when mad with drink; that is a deed done in his body, and truly by his body, for his judgment is gone; and for that he must give an account when his name is called; his judgment was gone; but then, as the child of a drunken murderer said to me, "A' but, sir, wha goned it?" I am not a teetotaler. I am against teetotalism as a doctrine of universal application; I think we are meant to use these things as not abusing them,--this is one of the disciplines of life; but I not the less am sure that drunkenness ruins men's bodies,--it is not for me to speak of souls,--is a greater cause of disease and misery, poverty, crime, and death among the laboring men and women of our towns, than consumption, fever, cholera, and all their tribe, with thieving and profligacy and improvidence thrown into the bargain: these slay their thousands; this its tens of thousands. Do you ever think of the full meaning of "he's the waur o' drink?" How much the waur?--and then "dead drunk,"--"mortal." Can there be anything more awfully significant than these expressions you hear from children in the streets? * * * * * You will see in the woodcut a good illustration of the circulation of the blood: both that through our lungs, by which we breathe and burn, and that through the whole body, by which we live and build. That hand grasps the heart, the central depot, with its valves opening out and in, and, by its contraction and relaxation, makes the living fluid circulate everywhere, carrying in strength, life, and supply to all, and carrying off waste and harm. None of you will be the worse of thinking of that hand as His who makes, supports, moves, and governs all things,--that hand which, while it wheels the rolling worlds, gathers the lambs with his arm, carries them in his bosom, and gently leads those that are with young, and which was once nailed for "our advantage on the bitter cross." J. B. 23 RUTLAND STREET, December 16, 1861. CONTENTS. Preface SERMON I. THE DOCTOR: OUR DUTIES TO HIM " II. THE DOCTOR: HIS DUTIES TO YOU " III. CHILDREN, AND HOW TO GUIDE THEM " IV. HEALTH " V. MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS HEALTH. SERMON I. THE DOCTOR: OUR DUTIES TO HIM. Everybody knows the Doctor; a very important person he is to us all. What could we do without him? He brings us into this world, and tries to keep us as long in it as he can, and as long as our bodies can hold together; and he is with us at that strange and last hour which will come to us all, when we must leave this world and go into the next. When we are well, we perhaps think little about the Doctor, or we have our small joke at him and his drugs; but let anything go wrong with our body, that wonderful tabernacle in which our soul dwells, let any of its wheels go wrong, then off we fly to him. If the mother thinks her husband or her child dying, how she runs to him, and urges him with her tears! how she watches his face, and follows his searching eye, as he examines the dear sufferer; how she wonders what he thinks,--what would she give to know what he knows! how she wearies for his visit! how a cheerful word from him makes her heart leap with joy, and gives her spirit and strength to watch over the bed of distress! Her whole soul goes out to him in unspeakable gratitude when he brings back to her from the power of the grave her husband or darling child. The Doctor knows many of our secrets, of our sorrows, which no one else knows,--some of our sins, perhaps, which the great God alone else knows; how many cares and secrets, how many lives, he carries in his heart and in his hands! So you see he is a very important person the Doctor, and we should do our best to make the most of him, and to do our duty to him and to ourselves. A thinking man feels often painfully what a serious thing it is to be a doctor, to have the charge of the lives of his fellow-mortals, to stand, as it were, between them and death and eternity and the judgment-seat, and to fight hand to hand with Death. One of the best men and greatest physicians that ever lived, Dr. Sydenham, says, in reference to this, and it would be well if all doctors, young and old, would consider his words:-- "It becomes every man who purposes to give himself to the care of others, seriously to consider the four following things: _First_, That he must one day give an account to the Supreme Judge of all the lives intrusted to his care. _Secondly_, That all his skill and knowledge and energy, as they have been given him by God, so they should be exercised for his glory and the good of mankind, and not for mere gain or ambition. _Thirdly_, and not more beautifully than truly, Let him reflect that he has undertaken the care of no mean creature, for, in order that we may estimate the value, the greatness of the human race, the only begotten Son of God became himself a man, and thus ennobled it with his divine dignity, and, far more than this, died to redeem it; and _Fourthly_, That the Doctor, being himself a mortal man, should be diligent and tender in relieving his suffering patients, inasmuch as he himself must one day be a like sufferer." I shall never forget a proof I myself got twenty years ago, how serious a thing it is to be a doctor, and how terribly in earnest people are when they want him. It was when cholera first came here in 1832. I was in England at Chatham, which you all know is a great place for ships and sailors. This fell disease comes on generally in the night; as the Bible says, "it walks in darkness," and many a morning was I roused at two o'clock to go and see its sudden victims, for then is its hour and power. One morning a sailor came to say I must go three miles down the river to a village where it had broken out with great fury. Off I set. We rowed in silence down the dark river, passing the huge hulks, and hearing the restless convicts turning in their beds in their chains. The men rowed with all their might: they had too many dying or dead at home to have the heart to speak to me. We got near the place; it was very dark, but I saw a crowd of men and women on the shore, at the landing-place. They were all shouting for the Doctor; the shrill cries of the women, and the deep voices of the men coming across the water to me. We were near the shore, when I saw a big old man, his hat off, his hair gray, his head bald; he said nothing, but turning them all off with his arm, he plunged into the sea, and before I knew where I was, he had me in his arms. I was helpless as an infant. He waded out with me, carrying me high up in his left arm, and with his right levelling every man or woman who stood in his way. It was Big Joe carrying me to see his grandson, little Joe; and he bore me off to the poor convulsed boy, and dared me to leave him till he was better. He did get better, but Big Joe was dead that night. He had the disease on him when he carried me away from the boat, but his heart was set upon his boy. I never can forget that night, and how important a thing it was to be able to relieve suffering, and how much Old Joe was in earnest about having the Doctor. Now, I want you to consider how important the Doctor is to you. Nobody needs him so much as the poor and laboring man. He is often ill. He is exposed to hunger and wet and cold, and to fever, and to all the diseases of hard labor and poverty. His work is heavy, and his heart is often heavy, too, with misery of all kinds,--his heart weary with its burden,--his hands and limbs often meeting with accidents,--and you know if the poor man, if one of you falls ill and takes fever, or breaks his leg, it is a far more serious thing than with a richer man. Your health and strength are all you have to depend on; they are your stock-in-trade, your capital. Therefore I shall ask you to remember _four things_ about your duty to the Doctor, so as to get the most good out of him, and do the most good to him too. _1st_, It is your duty to trust the Doctor; _2dly_, It is your duty to obey the Doctor; _3dly_, It is your duty to speak the truth to the Doctor, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and, _4thly_, It is your duty to reward the Doctor. And so now for the _first_. It is your duty to _trust_ the Doctor, that is, to believe in him. If you were in a ship, in a wild storm, and among dangerous rocks, and if you took a pilot on board, who knew all the coast and all the breakers, and had a clear eye, and a firm heart, and a practised hand, would you not let him have his own way? would you think of giving him your poor advice, or keep his hand from its work at the helm? You would not be such a fool, or so uncivil, or so mad. And yet many people do this very same sort of thing, just because they don't really trust their Doctor; and a doctor is a pilot for your bodies when they are in a storm and in distress. He takes the helm, and does his best to guide you through a fever; but he must have fair play; he must be trusted even in the dark. It is wonderful what cures the very sight of a doctor will work, if the patient believes in him; it is half the battle. His very face is as good as a medicine, and sometimes better,--and much pleasanter too. One day a laboring man came to me with indigestion. He had a sour and sore stomach, and heartburn, and the water-brash, and wind, and colic, and wonderful misery of body and mind. I found he was eating bad food, and too much of it; and then, when its digestion gave him pain, he took a glass of raw whiskey. I made him promise to give up his bad food and his worse whiskey, and live on pease-brose and sweet milk, and I wrote him a prescription, as we call it, for some medicine, and said, "Take _that_, and come back in a fortnight and you will be well." He did come back, hearty and hale;--no colic, no sinking at the heart, a clean tongue, and a cool hand, and a firm step, and a clear eye, and a happy face. I was very proud of the wonders my prescription had done; and having forgotten what it was, I said, "Let me see what I gave you." "O," says he, "I took it." "Yes," said I, "but the prescription." "_I took it_, as you bade me. I swallowed it." He had actually eaten the bit of paper, and been all that the better of it; but it would have done him little, at least less good had he not trusted me when I said he would be better, and attended to my rules. So, take my word for it, and trust your Doctor; it is his due, and it is for your own advantage. Now, our next duty is to _obey_ the Doctor. This you will think is simple enough. What use is there in calling him in, if we don't do what he bids us? and yet nothing is more common--partly from laziness and sheer stupidity, partly from conceit and suspiciousness, and partly, in the case of children, from false kindness and indulgence--than to disobey the Doctor's orders. Many a child have I seen die from nothing but the mother's not liking to make her swallow a powder, or put on a blister; and let me say, by the by, teach your children at once to obey you, and take the medicine. Many a life is lost from this, and remember you may make even Willie Winkie take his castor-oil in spite of his cries and teeth, _by holding his nose_, so that he must swallow. _Thirdly, You should tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth_, to your Doctor. He may be never so clever, and never so anxious, but he can no more know how to treat a case of illness without knowing all about it, than a miller can make meal without corn; and many a life have I seen lost from the patient or his friends concealing something that was true, or telling something that was false. The silliness of this is only equal to its sinfulness and its peril. I remember, in connection with that place where Big Joe lived and died, a singular proof of the perversity of people in not telling the Doctor the truth,--as you know people are apt to send for him in cholera when it is too late, when it is a death rather than a disease. But there is an early stage, called premonitory,--or warning,--when medicines can avail. I summoned all the people of that fishing-village who were well, and told them this, and asked them if they had any of the symptoms. They all denied having any (this is a peculiar feature in that terrible disease, they are afraid to _let on_ to themselves, or even the Doctor, that they are "in for it"), though from their looks and from their going away while I was speaking, I knew they were not telling the truth. Well, I said, "You must, at any rate, every one of you take some of this," producing a bottle of medicine. I will not tell you what it was, as you should never take drugs at your own hands, but it is simple and cheap. I made every one take it; only one woman going away without taking any; she was the only one of all those _who died_. _Lastly, It is your duty to reward_ your Doctor. There are four ways of rewarding your Doctor. The first is by giving him your money; the second is by giving him your gratitude; the third is by your doing his bidding; and the fourth is by speaking well of him, giving him a good name, recommending him to others. Now, I know few if any of you can pay your Doctor, and it is a great public blessing that in this country you will always get a good Doctor willing to attend you for nothing, and this _is_ a great blessing; but let me tell you,--I don't think I need tell you,--try and pay him, be it ever so little. It does you good as well as him; it keeps up your self-respect; it raises you in your own eye, in your neighbor's, and, what is best, in your God's eye, because it is doing what is right. The "man of independent mind," be he never so poor, is "king of men for a' that"; ay, and "for twice and mair than a' that"; and to pay his way is one of the proudest things a poor man can say, and he may say it oftener than he thinks he can. And then let me tell you, as a bit of cool, worldly wisdom, that your Doctor will do you all the more good, and make a better job of your cure, if he gets something, some money for his pains; it is human nature and common sense, this. It is wonderful how much real kindness and watching and attendance and cleanliness you may get _for so many shillings a week_. Nursing is a much better article at that,--much,--than at _nothing_ a week. But I pass on to the other ways of paying or rewarding your Doctor, and, above all, _to gratitude_. Honey is not sweeter in your mouths, and light is not more pleasant to your eyes, and music to your ears, and a warm, cosey bed is not more welcome to your wearied legs and head, than is the honest, deep gratitude of the poor to the young Doctor. It is his glory, his reward; he fills himself with it, and wraps himself all round with it as with a cloak, and goes on in his work, happy and hearty; and the gratitude of the poor is worth the having, and worth the keeping, and worth the remembering. Twenty years ago I attended old Sandie Campbell's wife in a fever, in Big Hamilton's Close in the Grassmarket,--two worthy, kindly souls they were and are. (Sandie is dead now.) By God's blessing, the means I used saved "oor Kirsty's" life, and I made friends of these two forever; Sandie would have fought for me if need be, and Kirsty would do as good. I can count on them as my friends, and when I pass the close-mouth in the West Port, where they now live, and are thriving, keeping their pigs, and their hoary old cuddie and cart, I get a courtesy from Kirsty, and see her look after me, and turn to the women beside her, and I know exactly what she is saying to them about "Dr. Broon." And when I meet old Sandie, with his ancient and long-lugged friend, driving the draff from the distillery for his swine, I see his gray eye brighten and glisten, and he looks up and gives his manly and cordial nod, and goes on his way, and I know that he is saying to himself, "God bless him! he saved my Kirsty's life," and he runs back in his mind all those twenty past years, and lays out his heart on all he remembers, and that does him good and me too, and nobody any ill. Therefore, give your gratitude to your Doctor, and remember him, like honest Sandie; it will not lose its reward and it costs you nothing; it is one of those things you can give and never be a bit the poorer, but all the richer. One person I would earnestly warn you against, and that is the _Quack Doctor_. If the real Doctor is a sort of God of healing, or rather our God's cobbler for the body, the Quack is the Devil for the body, or rather the Devil's servant against the body. And like his father, he is a great liar and cheat. He offers you what he cannot give. Whenever you see a medicine that cures everything, be sure it cures nothing; and remember, it may kill. The Devil promised our Saviour all the kingdoms of the world if he would fall down and worship him; now this was a lie, he could not give him any such thing. Neither can the Quack give you his kingdoms of health, even though you worship him as he best likes, by paying him for his trash; he is dangerous and dear, and often deadly,--have nothing to do with him. We have our duties to one another, yours to me, and mine to you: but we have all our duty to one else,--to Almighty God, who is beside us at this very moment--who followed us all this day, and knew all we did and didn't do, what we thought and didn't think,--who will watch over us all this night,--who is continually doing us good,--who is waiting to be gracious to us,--who is the great Physician, whose saving health will heal all our diseases, and redeem our life from destruction, and crown us with loving-kindness and tender mercies,--who can make death the opening into a better life, the very gate of heaven; that same death which is to all of us the most awful and most certain of all things, and at whose door sits its dreadful king, with that javelin, that sting of his, which is sin, our own sin. Death would be nothing without sin, no more than falling asleep in the dark to awake to the happy light of the morning. Now, I would have you think of your duty to this great God, our Father in heaven; and I would have you to remember that it is your duty to trust him, to believe in him. If you do not, your soul will be shipwrecked, you will go down in terror and in darkness. It is your duty to _obey_ him. Whom else in all this world should you obey, if not him? and who else so easily pleased, if we only do obey? It is your duty to speak the truth to him, not that he needs any man to tell him anything. He knows everything about everybody; nobody can keep a secret from him. But he hates lies; he abhors a falsehood. He is the God of truth, and must be dealt honestly with, in sincerity and godly fear; and, lastly, you must in a certain sense _reward_ him. You cannot give him money, for the silver and gold, the cattle upon a thousand hills, are all his already, but you can give him your grateful lives; you can give him your hearts; and as old Mr. Henry says, "Thanksgiving is good, but thanks-living is better." One word more; you should call your Doctor early. It saves time; it saves suffering; it saves trouble; it saves life. If you saw a fire beginning in your house, you would put it out as fast as you could. You might perhaps be able to blow out with your breath what in an hour the fire-engine could make nothing of. So it is with disease and the Doctor. A disease in the morning when beginning is like the fire beginning; a dose of medicine, some simple thing, may put it out, when if left alone, before night it may be raging hopelessly, like the fire if left alone, and leaving your body dead and in the ruins in a few hours. So, call in the Doctor soon; it saves him much trouble, and may save you your life. And let me end by asking you to call in the Great Physician; to call him instantly, to call him in time; there is not a moment to lose. He is waiting to be called; he is standing at the door. But he must be _called_,--he may be called too late. SERMON II. THE DOCTOR: HIS DUTIES TO YOU. You remember our last sermon was mostly about your duties to the Doctor. I am now going to speak about his duties to you; for you know it is a law of our life, that there are no one-sided duties,--they are all double. It is like shaking hands, there must be two at it; and both of you ought to give a hearty grip and a hearty shake. You owe much to many, and many owe much to you. The Apostle says, "Owe no man anything but to love one another"; but if you owe that, you must be forever paying it; it is always due, always running on; and the meanest and most helpless, the most forlorn, can always pay and be paid in that coin, and in paying can buy more than he thought of. Just as a farthing candle, twinkling out of a cotter's window, and, it may be, guiding the gudeman home to his wife and children, sends its rays out into the infinite expanse of heaven, and thus returns, as it were, the light of the stars, which are many of them suns. You cannot pass any one on the street to whom you are not bound by this law. If he falls down, you help to raise him. You do your best to relieve him, and get him home; and let me tell you, to your great gain and honor, the poor are far more ready and better at this sort of work than the gentlemen and ladies. You do far more for each other than they do. You will share your last loaf; you will sit up night after night with a neighbor you know nothing about, just because he is your neighbor, and you know what it is to be neighbor-like. You are more natural and less selfish than the fine folks. I don't say you are better, neither do I say you are worse; that would be a foolish and often mischievous way of speaking. We have all virtues and vices and advantages peculiar to our condition. You know the queer old couplet,-- "Them what is rich, them rides in chaises; Them what is poor, them walks like blazes." If you were well, and not in a hurry, and it were cold, would you not much rather "walk like blazes" than ride listless in your chaise? But this I know, for I have seen it, that according to their means, the poor bear one another's burdens far more than the rich. There are many reasons for this, outside of yourselves, and there is no need of your being proud of it or indeed of anything else; but it is something to be thankful for, in the midst of all your hardships, that you in this have more of the power and of the luxury of doing immediate, visible good. You pay this debt in ready-money, as you do your meal and your milk; at least you have very short credit, and the shorter the better. Now, the Doctor has his duties to you, and it is well that he should know them, and that you should know them too; for it will be long before you and he can do without each other. You keep each other alive. Disease, accidents, pain, and death reign everywhere, and we call one another _mortals_, as if our chief peculiarity was that we must die, and you all know how death came into this world. "By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned"; and disease, disorder, and distress are the fruits of sin, as truly as that apple grew on that forbidden tree. You have nowadays all sorts of schemes for making bad men good, and good men better. The world is full of such schemes, some of them wise and some foolish; but to be wise they must all go on the principle of lessening misery by lessening _sin_; so that the old weaver at Kilmarnock, who at a meeting for abolishing slavery, the corn laws, and a few more things, said, "Mr. Preses, I move that we abolish Original Sin," was at least beginning at the right end. Only fancy what a world it would be, what a family any of ours would be, when everybody did everything that was right, and nothing that was wrong, say for a week! The world would not know itself. It would be inclined to say with the "wee bit wifiekie," though reversing the cause, "This is no me." I am not going to say more on this point. It is not my parish. But you need none of you be long ignorant of who it is who has abolished death, and therefore vanquished sin. Well, then, it is the duty of the Doctor in the first place, to _cure us_; in the second, _to be kind to us_; in the third, to be _true to us_; in the fourth, to keep _our secrets_; in the fifth, to _warn us_, and, best of all, to _forewarn us_; in the sixth, to _be grateful to us_; and, in the last, to _keep his time and his temper_. And, _first_, it is the duty of the Doctor to _cure_ you,--if he can. That is what we call him in for; and a doctor, be he never so clever and delightful, who doesn't cure, is like a mole-catcher who can't catch moles, or a watchmaker who can do everything but make your watch go. Old Dr. Pringle of Perth, when preaching in the country, found his shoes needed mending, and he asked the brother whom he was assisting to tell him of good cobbler, or as he called him, a _snab_. His friend mentioned a "Tammas Rattray, a godly man, and an elder." "But," said Dr. Pringle, in his snell way, "can he mend my shoon? that's what I want; I want a shoemaker; I'm not wanting an elder." It turned out that Tammas was a better elder than a shoemaker. A doctor was once attending a poor woman in labor; it was a desperate case, requiring a cool head and a firm will; the good man--for he _was_ good--had neither of these, and, losing his presence of mind, gave up the poor woman as lost, and retired into the next room to pray for her. Another doctor, who, perhaps, wanted what the first one had, and certainly had what he wanted, brains and courage, meanwhile arrived, and called out, "Where is Doctor ----?" "O, he has gone into the next room to pray!" "Pray! tell him to come here this moment, and help me; he can work and pray too"; and with his assistance the snell doctor saved that woman's life. This, then, is the Doctor's first duty to you,--to cure you,--and for this he must, in the first place, be up to his business; he must know what to do, and, secondly, he must be able to do it; he must not merely do as a pointer dog does, stand and say, "There it is," and no more, he must point and shoot too. And let me tell you, moreover, that unless a man likes what he is at, and is in earnest, and sticks to it, he will no more make a good doctor than a good anything else. Doctoring is not only a way for a man to do good by curing disease, and to get money to himself for doing this, but it is also a study which interests for itself alone, like geology, or any other science; and moreover it is a way to fame and the glory of the world; all these four things act upon the mind of the Doctor, but unless the first one is uppermost, his patient will come off second-best with him; he is not the man for your lives or for your money. They tell a story, which may not be word for word true, but it has truth and a great principle in it, as all good stories have. It is told of one of our clever friends, the French, who are so knowing in everything. A great French doctor was taking an English one round the wards of his hospital; all sort of miseries going on before them, some dying, others longing for death, all ill; the Frenchman was wonderfully eloquent about all their diseases, you would have thought he saw through them, and knew all their secret wheels like looking into a watch or into a glass beehive. He told his English friend what would be seen in such a case, _when the body was opened_! He spent some time in this sort of work, and was coming out, full of glee, when the other doctor said: "But, Doctor ----, you haven't _prescribed_ for these cases." "O, neither I have!" said he, with a grumph and a shrug; "I quite forgot _that_"; that being the one thing why these poor people were there, and why he was there too. Another story of a Frenchman, though I dare say we could tell it of ourselves. He was a great professor, and gave a powerful poison as a medicine for an ugly disease of the skin. He carried it very far, so as to weaken the poor fellow, who died, just as the last vestige of the skin disease died too. On looking at the dead body, quite smooth and white, and also quite dead, he said, "Ah, never mind; he was _dead cured_." So let me advise you, as, indeed, your good sense will advise yourselves, to test a Doctor by this: Is he in earnest? Does he speak little and do much? Does he make your case his first care? He may, after that, speak of the weather, or the money-market; he may gossip, and even _haver_; or he may drop, quietly and shortly, some "good words,"--the fewer the better; something that causes you to think and feel; and may teach you to be more of the Publican than of the Pharisee, in that story you know of, when they two went up to the temple to pray; but, generally speaking, the Doctor should, like the rest of us, stick to his trade and mind his business. _Secondly_, It is the Doctor's duty to be _kind_ to you. I mean by this, not only to speak kindly, but to _be_ kind, which includes this and a great deal more, though a kind word, as well as a merry heart, does good like a medicine. Cheerfulness, or rather cheeriness, is a great thing in a Doctor; his very foot should have "music in't, when he comes up the stair." The Doctor should never lose his power of pitying pain, and letting his patient see this and feel it. Some men, and they are often the best at their proper work, can let their hearts come out only through their eyes; but it is not the less sincere, and to the point; you can make your mouth say what is not true; you can't do quite so much with your eyes. A Doctor's eye should command, as well as comfort and cheer his patient; he should never let him think disobedience or despair possible. Perhaps you think Doctors get hardened by seeing so much suffering; this is not true. Pity as a motive, as well as a feeling ending in itself, is stronger in an old Doctor than in a young, so he be made of the right stuff. He comes to know himself what pain and sorrow mean, what their weight is, and how grateful he was or is for relief and sympathy. _Thirdly_, It is his duty to be _true_ to you. True in word and in deed. He ought to speak nothing but the truth, as to the nature, and extent, and issues of the disease he is treating; but he is not bound, as I said you were, to tell _the whole truth_,--that is for his own wisdom and discretion to judge of; only, never let him tell an untruth, and let him be honest enough, when he can't say anything definite, to say nothing. It requires some courage to confess our ignorance, but it is worth it. As to the question, often spoken of,--telling a man he is dying,--the Doctor must, in the first place, be sure the patient is dying; and, secondly, that it is for his good, bodily and mental, to tell him so: he should almost always warn the friends, but, even here, cautiously. _Fourthly_, It is his duty to _keep your secrets_. There are things a Doctor comes to know and is told which no one but he and the Judge of all should know; and he is a base man, and unworthy to be in such a noble profession as that of healing, who can betray what he knows must injure, and in some cases may ruin. _Fifthly_, It is his duty to _warn_ you against what is injuring your health. If he finds his patient has brought disease upon himself by sin, by drink, by overwork, by over-eating, by over-anything, it is his duty to say so plainly and firmly, and the same with regard to the treatment of children by their parents; the family doctor should forewarn them; he should explain, as far as he is able and they can comprehend them, the Laws of Health, and so tell them how to _prevent disease_, as well as do his best to _cure_ it. What a great and rich field there is here for our profession, if they and the public could only work well together! In this, those queer, half-daft, half-wise beings, the Chinese, take a wiser way; they pay their Doctor for keeping them well, and they stop his pay as long as they are ill! _Sixthly_, It is his duty to be _grateful_ to you; 1st, for employing him, whether you pay him in money or not, for a Doctor, worth being one, makes capital, makes knowledge, and therefore power, out of every case he has; 2dly, for obeying him and getting better. I am always very much obliged to my patients for being so kind as to be better, and for saying so; for many are ready enough to say they are worse, not so many to say they are better, even when they are; and you know our Scotch way of saying, "I'm no that ill," when "I" is in high health, or, "I'm no ony waur," when "I" is much better. Don't be niggards in this; it cheers the Doctor's heart, and it will lighten yours. _Seventhly_, and lastly, It is the Doctor's duty _to keep his time and his temper_ with you. Any man or woman who knows how longed for a doctor's visit is, and counts on it to a minute, knows how wrong, how painful, how angering it is for the Doctor not to keep his time. Many things may occur, for his urgent cases are often sudden, to put him out of his reckoning; but it is wonderful what method, and real consideration, and a strong will can do in this way. I never found Dr. Abercrombie a minute after or _before_ his time (both are bad, though one is the worser), and yet if I wanted him in a hurry, and stopped his carriage in the street, he could always go with me at once; he had the knack and the principle of being true in his times, for it is often a matter of _truth_. And the Doctor must keep his _temper_: this is often worse to manage than even his time, there is so much unreason, and ingratitude, and peevishness, and impertinence, and impatience, that it is very hard to keep one's tongue and eye from being angry: and sometimes the Doctor does not only well, but the best, when he is downrightly angry, and astonishes some fool, or some insolent, or some untruth doing or saying patient; but the Doctor should be patient with his patients, he should bear with them, knowing how much they are at the moment suffering. Let us remember Him who is full of compassion, whose compassion never fails; whose tender mercies are new to us every morning, as his faithfulness is every night; who healed all manner of diseases, and was kind to the unthankful and the evil; what would become of us, if he were as impatient with us as we often are with each other? If you want to be impressed with the Almighty's infinite loving-kindness and tender mercy, his forbearance, his long-suffering patience, his slowness to anger, his Divine ingeniousness in trying to find it possible to spare and save, think of the Israelites in the desert, and read the chapter where Abraham intercedes with God for Sodom, and these wonderful "peradventures." But I am getting tedious, and keeping you and myself too long, so good night. Let the Doctor and you be honest and grateful, and kind and cordial, in one word, dutiful to each other, and you will each be the better of the other. I may by and by say a word or two to you on your _Health_, which is your wealth, that by which you are and do well, and on your _Children_, and how to guide it and them. SERMON III. CHILDREN, AND HOW TO GUIDE THEM. Our text at this time is Children and their treatment, or as it sounds better to our ears, Bairns, and how to guide them. You all know the wonder and astonishment there is in a house among its small people when a baby is born; how they stare at the new arrival with its red face. Where does it come from? Some tell them it comes from the garden, from a certain kind of cabbage; some from "Rob Rorison's bonnet," of which wha hasna heard? some from that famous wig of Charlie's, in which the cat kittled, when there was three o' them leevin', and three o' them dead; and you know the Doctor is often said to bring the new baby in his pocket; and many a time have my pockets been slyly examined by the curious youngsters,--especially the girls!--in hopes of finding another baby. But I'll tell you where all the babies come from; _they all come from_ _God_; his hand made and fashioned them; he breathed into their nostrils the breath of life,--of his life. He said, "Let this little child be," and it was. A child is a true creation; its soul, certainly, and in a true sense, its body too. And as our children came from him, so they are going back to him, and he lends them to us as keepsakes; we are to keep and care for them for his sake. What a strange and sacred thought this is! Children are God's gifts to us, and it depends on our guiding of them, not only whether they are happy here, but whether they are happy hereafter in that great unchangeable eternity, into which you and I and all of us are fast going. I once asked a little girl, "Who made you?" and she said, holding up her apron as a measure, "God make me that length, and I growed the rest myself." Now this, as you know, was not quite true, for she could not grow one half-inch by herself. God makes us grow as well as makes us at first. But what I want you to fix in your minds is, that children come from God, and are returning to him, and that you and I, who are parents, have to answer to him for the way we behave to our dear children,--the kind of care we take of them. Now, a child consists, like ourselves, of a body and a soul. I am not going to say much about the guiding of the souls of children,--that is a little out of my line,--but I may tell you that the soul, especially in children, depends much, for its good and for its evil, for its happiness or its misery, upon the kind of body it lives in: for the body is just the house that the soul dwells in; and you know that, if a house be uncomfortable, the tenant of it will be uncomfortable and out of sorts; if its windows let the rain and wind in, if the chimney smoke, if the house be damp, and if there be a want of good air, then the people who live in it will be miserable enough; and if they have no coals, and no water, and no meat, and no beds, then you may be sure it will soon be left by its inhabitants. And so, if you don't do all you can to make your children's bodies healthy and happy, their souls will get miserable and cankered and useless, their tempers peevish; and if you don't feed and clothe them right, then their poor little souls will leave their ill-used bodies,--will be starved out of them; and many a man and woman have had their tempers, and their minds and hearts, made miseries to themselves, and all about them, just from a want of care of their bodies when children. There is something very sad, and, in a true sense, very unnatural, in an unhappy child. You and I, grown-up people, who have cares, and have had sorrows and difficulties and sins, may well be dull and sad sometimes; it would be still sadder, if we were not often so; but children should be always either laughing and playing, or eating and sleeping. Play is their business. You cannot think how much useful knowledge, and how much valuable bodily exercise, a child teaches itself in its play; and look how merry the young of other animals are: the kitten making fun of everything, even of its sedate mother's tail and whiskers; the lambs, running races in their mirth; even the young asses,--the baby-cuddie,--how pawky and droll and happy he looks with his fuzzy head, and his laughing eyes, and his long legs, stot, stotting after that venerable and _sair nauden-doun lady_, with the long ears, his mother. One thing I like to see, is a child clean in the morning. I like to see its plump little body well washed, and sweet and _caller_ from top to bottom. But there is another thing I like to see, and that is a child dirty at night. I like a _steerin' bairn_,--goo-gooin', crowing and kicking, keeping everybody alive. Do you remember William Miller's song of "Wee Willie Winkie?" Here it is. I think you will allow, especially you who are mothers, that it is capital. "Wee Willie Winkie Rins through the toun, Up stairs an' doon stairs In his nicht-goun, Tirlin' at the window, Crying at the lock, 'Are the weans in their bed, For it's noo ten o'clock?' "'Hey Willie Winkie, Are ye comin' ben! The cat's singin' gray thrums To the sleepin' hen, The dog's speldert on the floor, And disna gi'e a cheep, But here's a waakrife laddie! That winna fa' asleep.' "'Onything but sleep, you rogue! Glow'rin' like the moon! Rattlin' in an airn jug Wi' an airn spoon, Rumblin', tumblin' roun' about, Crawin' like a cock, Skirlin' like a kenna-what, Wauk'nin' sleepin' folk. "'Hey, Willie Winkie, The wean's in a creel! Wamblin' aff a bodie's knee Like a verra eel, Ruggin' at the cat's lug, And ravelin' a' her thrums,-- Hey, Willie Winkie,-- See, there he comes!' "Wearied is the mither That has a stoorie wean, A wee stumpie stousie, Wha canna rin his lane, That has a battle aye wi' sleep Afore he'll close an e'e,-- But ae kiss frae aff his rosy lips Gi'es strength anew to me." Is not this good? first-rate! The cat singin' gray thrums, and the wee stumpie stousie, ruggin' at her lug, and ravlin' a' her thrums; and then what a din he is making!--rattlit' in an airn jug wi' an airn spoon, skirlin' like a kenna-what, and ha'in' a battle aye wi' sleep. What a picture of a healthy and happy child! Now, I know how hard it is for many of you to get meat for your children, and clothes for them, and bed and bedding for them at night, and I know how you have to struggle for yourselves and them, and how difficult it often is for you to take all the care you would like to do of them, and you will believe me when I say, that it is a far greater thing, because a far harder thing, for a poor, struggling, and it may be weakly woman in your station, to bring up her children comfortably, than for those who are richer; but still you may do a great deal of good at little cost either of money or time or trouble. And it is well-wared pains; it will bring you in two hundred percent in real comfort, and profit, and credit; and so you will, I am sure, listen good-naturedly to me, when I go over some plain and simple things about the health of your children. To begin with their _heads_. You know the head contains the brain, which is the king of the body, and commands all under him; and it depends on his being good or bad whether his subjects,--the legs, and arms, and body, and stomach, and our old friends the bowels, are in good order and happy, or not. Now, first of all, keep the head cool. Nature has given it a nightcap of her own in the hair, and it is the best. And keep the head clean. Give it a good scouring every Saturday night at the least; and if it get sore and scabbit, the best thing I know for it is to wash it with soft soap (black soap), and put a big cabbage-blade on it every night. Then for the _lungs_, or _lichts_,--the bellows that keep the fire of life burning,--they are very busy in children, because a child is not like grown-up folk, merely keeping itself up. It is doing this, and growing too; and so it eats more, and sleeps more, and breathes more in proportion than big folk. And to carry on all this business it must have fresh air, and lots of it. So, whenever it can be managed, a child should have a good while every day in the open air, and should have well-aired places to sleep in. Then for their _nicht-gowns_, the best are long flannel gowns; and children should be always more warmly clad than grown-up people,--cold kills them more easily. Then there is the _stomach_, and as this is the kitchen and great manufactory, it is almost always the first thing that goes wrong in children, and generally as much from too much being put in, as from its food being of an injurious kind. A baby, for nine months after it is born, should have almost nothing but its mother's milk. This is God's food, and it is the best and the cheapest, too. If the baby be healthy it should be weaned or spained at nine or ten months; and this should be done gradually, giving the baby a little gruel, or new milk, and water and sugar, or thin bread-berry once a day for some time, so as gradually to wean it. This makes it easier for mother as well as baby. No child should get meat or hard things till it gets teeth to chew them, and no baby should ever get a drop of whiskey, or any strong drink, unless by the Doctor's orders. Whiskey, to the soft, tender stomach of an infant, is like vitriol to ours; it is a burning poison to its dear little body, as it may be a burning poison and a curse to its never-dying soul. As you value your children's health of body, and the salvation of their souls, never give them a drop of whiskey; and let mothers, above all others, beware of drinking when nursing. The whiskey passes from their stomachs into their milk, and poisons their own child. This is a positive fact. And think of a drunk woman carrying and managing a child! I was once, many years ago, walking in Lothian Street, when I saw a woman staggering along very drunk. She was carrying a child; it was lying over her shoulder. I saw it slip, slippin' farther and farther back. I ran, and cried out; but before I could get up, the poor little thing, smiling over its miserable mother's shoulder, fell down, like a stone, on its head on the pavement; it gave a gasp, and turned up its blue eyes, and had a convulsion, and its soul was away to God, and its little soft, waefu' body lying dead, and its idiotic mother grinning and staggering over it, half seeing the dreadful truth, then forgetting it, and cursing and swearing. That was a sight! so much misery, and wickedness, and ruin. It was the young woman's only child. When she came to herself, she became mad, and is to this day a drivelling idiot, and goes about forever seeking for her child, and cursing the woman who killed it. This is a true tale, too true. There is another practice which I must notice, and that is giving children laudanum to make them sleep, and keep them quiet, and for coughs and windy pains. Now, this is a most dangerous thing. I have often been called in to see children who were dying, and who did die, from laudanum given in this way. I have known four drops to kill a child a month old; and ten drops one a year old. The best rule, and one you should stick to, as under God's eye as well as the law's, is, never to give laudanum without a Doctor's line or order. And when on this subject, I would also say a word about the use of opium and laudanum among yourselves. I know this is far commoner among the poor in Edinburgh than is thought. But I assure you, from much experience, that the drunkenness and stupefaction from the use of laudanum is even worse than that from whiskey. The one poisons and makes mad the body; the other, the laudanum, poisons the mind, and makes it like an idiot's. So, in both matters beware; death is in the cup, murder is in the cup, and poverty and the workhouse, and the gallows, and an awful future of pain and misery,--all are in the cup. These are the wages the Devil pays his servants with for doing his work. But to go back to the bairns. At first a word on our old friends, the bowels. Let them alone as much as you can. They will put themselves and keep themselves right, if you take care to prevent wrong things going into the stomach. No sour apples, or raw turnips or carrots; no sweeties or tarts, and all that kind of abomination; no tea, to draw the sides of their tender little stomachs together; no whiskey, to kill their digestion; no _Gundy_, or _Taffy_, or _Lick_, or _Black Man_, or _Jib_; the less sugar and sweet things the better; the more milk and butter and fat the better; but plenty of plain, halesome food, parritch and milk, bread and butter, potatoes and milk, good broth,--kail as we call it. You often hear of the wonders of cod-liver oil, and they are wonders; poor little wretches who have faces like old puggies, and are all belly and no legs, and are screaming all day and all night too,--these poor little wretches under the cod-liver oil, get sonsy, and rosy, and fat, and happy, and strong. Now, this is greatly because the cod-liver oil is capital _food_. If you can't afford to get cod-liver oil for delicate children, or if they reject it, give them plain olive oil, a tablespoonful twice a day, and take one to yourself, and you will be astonished how you will both of you thrive. Some folk will tell you that children's feet should be always kept warm. I say no. No healthy child's feet are warm; but the great thing is to keep the body warm. That is like keeping the fire good, and the room will be warm. The chest, the breast, is the place where the fire of the body,--the heating apparatus,--is, and if you keep it warm, and give _it_ plenty of fuel, which is fresh air and good food, you need not mind about the feetikins, they will mind themselves; indeed, for my own part, I am so ungenteel as to think bare feet and bare legs in summer the most comfortable wear, costing much less than leather and worsted, the only kind of soles that are always fresh. As to the moral training of children, I need scarcely speak to you. What people want about these things is, not knowledge, but the will to do what is right,--what they know to be right, and the moral power to do it. Whatever you wish your child to be, be it yourself. If you wish it to be happy, healthy, sober, truthful, affectionate, honest, and godly, be yourself all these. If you wish it to be lazy and sulky, and a liar, and a thief, and a drunkard, and a swearer, be yourself all these. As the old cock crows, the young cock learns. You will remember who said, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." And you may, as a general rule, as soon expect to gather grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles, as get good, healthy, happy children from diseased and lazy and wicked parents. Let me put you in mind, seriously, of one thing that you ought to get done to all your children, and that is, to have them vaccinated, or inoculated with the cow-pock. The best time for this is two months after birth, but better late than never, and in these times you need never have any excuse for its not being done. You have only to take your children to the Old or the New Town Dispensaries. It is a real crime, I think, in parents to neglect this. It is cruel to their child, and it is a crime to the public. If every child in the world were vaccinated, which might be managed in few years, that loathsome and deadly disease, the small-pox, would disappear from the face of the earth; but many people are so stupid, and so lazy, and so prejudiced, as to neglect this plain duty, till they find to their cost that it is too late. So promise me, all seriously in your hearts, to see to this if it is not done already, and see to it immediately. Be always frank and open with your children. Make them trust you and tell you all their secrets. Make them feel at ease with you, and make _free_ with them. There is no such good plaything for grown-up children like you and me as _weans_, wee ones. It is wonderful what you can get them to do with a little coaxing and fun. You all know this as well as I do, and you all practise it every day in your own families. Here is a pleasant little story out of an old book. "A gentleman having led a company of children beyond their usual journey, they began to get weary, and all cried to him to carry them on his back, but because of their multitude he could not do this. 'But,' says he, 'I'll get horses for us all'; then cutting little wands out of the hedge as ponies for them, and a great stake as a charger for himself, this put mettle in their little legs, and they rode cheerily home." So much for a bit of ingenious fun. One thing, however poor you are, you can give your children, and that is your prayers, and they are, if real and humble, worth more than silver or gold,--more than food and clothing, and have often brought from our Father who is in heaven, and hears our prayers, both money and meat and clothes, and all worldly good things. And there is one thing you can always teach your child; you may not yourself know how to read or write, and therefore you may not be able to teach your children how to do these things; you may not know the names of the stars or their geography, and may therefore not be able to tell them how far you are from the sun, or how big the moon is; nor be able to tell them the way to Jerusalem or Australia, but you may always be able to tell them who made the stars and numbered them, and you may tell them the road to heaven. You may always teach them to pray. Some weeks ago, I was taken out to see the mother of a little child. She was very dangerously ill, and the nurse had left the child to come and help me. I went up to the nursery to get some hot water, and in the child's bed I saw something raised up. This was the little fellow under the bedclothes kneeling. I said, "What are you doing?" "I am praying God to make mamma better," said he. God likes these little prayers and these little people,--for of such is the kingdom of heaven. These are his little ones, his lambs, and he hears their cry; and it is enough if they only lisp their prayers. "Abba, Father," is all he needs; and our prayers are never so truly prayers as when they are most like children's in simplicity, in directness, in perfect fulness of reliance. "They pray right up," as black Uncle Tom says in that wonderful book, which I hope you have all read and wept over. I forgot to speak about punishing children. I am old-fashioned enough to uphold the ancient practice of warming the young bottoms with some sharpness, if need be; it is a wholesome and capital application, and does good to the bodies, and the souls too, of the little rebels, and it is far less cruel than being sulky, as some parents are, and keeping up a grudge at their children. Warm the bott, say I, and you will warm the heart too; and all goes right. And now I must end. I have many things I could say to you, but you have had enough of me and my bairns, I am sure. Go home, and when you see the little curly pows on their pillows, sound asleep, pour out a blessing on them, and ask our Saviour to make them his; and never forget what we began with, that they came from God, and are going back to him, and let the light of eternity fall upon them as they lie asleep, and may you resolve to dedicate them and yourselves to him who died for them and for us all, and who was once himself a little child, and sucked the breasts of a woman, and who said that awful saying, "Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it had been better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the midst of the sea." SERMON IV. HEALTH. My dear friends,--I am going to give you a sort of sermon about your health,--and you know a sermon has always a text; so, though I am only a doctor, I mean to take a text for ours, and I will choose it, as our good friends the ministers do, from that best of all books, the Bible. Job ii. 4: "All that a man hath will he give for his life." This, you know, was said many thousands of years ago by the Devil, when, like a base and impudent fellow, as he always was and is, he came into the presence of the great God, along with the good angels. Here, for once in his life, the Devil spoke the truth and shamed himself. What he meant, and what I wish you now seriously to consider, is, that a man--you or I--will lose anything sooner than life; we would give everything for it, and part with all the money, everything we had, to keep away death and to lengthen our days. If you had £500 in a box at home, and knew that you would certainly be dead by to-morrow unless you gave the £500, would you ever make a doubt about what you would do? Not you! And if you were told that if you got drunk, or worked too hard, or took no sort of care of your bodily health, you would turn ill to-morrow and die next week, would you not keep sober, and work more moderately, and be more careful of yourself? Now, I want to make you believe that you are too apt to do this very same sort of thing in your daily life, only that instead of to-morrow or next week, your illness and your death comes next year, or at any rate, some years sooner than otherwise. _But your death is actually preparing already, and that by your own hands_, by your own ignorance, and often by your own foolish and sinful neglect and indulgence. A decay or rottenness spreads through the beams of a house, unseen and unfeared, and then, by and by down it comes, and is utterly destroyed. So it is with our bodies. You plant, by sin and neglect and folly, the seeds of disease by your own hands; and as surely as the harvest comes after the seed-time, so will you reap the harvest of pain, and misery, and death. And remember there is nobody to whom health is so valuable, is worth so much, as the poor laboring man; it is his stock-in-trade, his wealth, his capital; his bodily strength and skill are the main things he can make his living by, and therefore he should take better care of his body and its health than a rich man; for a rich man may be laid up in his bed for weeks and months, and yet his business may go on, for he has means to pay his men for working under him, or he may be what is called "living on his money." But if a poor man takes fever, or breaks his leg, or falls into a consumption, his wife and children soon want food and clothes: and many a time do I see on the streets poor, careworn men, dying by inches of consumption, going to and from their work, when, poor fellows, they should be in their beds; and all this just because they cannot afford to be ill and to lie out of work,--they cannot spare the time and the wages. Now, don't you think, my dear friends, that it is worth your while to attend to your health? If you were a carter or a coach-driver, and had a horse, would you not take care to give him plenty of corn, and to keep his stable clean and well aired, and to curry his skin well, and you would not kill him with overwork, for, besides the cruelty, this would be a dead loss to you,--it would be so much out of your pocket? And don't you see that God has given you your bodies to work with, and to please him with their diligence; and it is ungrateful to him, as well as unkind and wicked to your family and yourself, to waste your bodily strength, and bring disease and death upon yourselves? But you will say, "How can we make a better of it? We live from hand to mouth; we can't have fine houses and warm clothes, and rich food and plenty of it." No, I know that; but if you have not a fine house, you may always have a clean one, and fresh air costs nothing,--God gives it to all his children without stint,--and good plain clothes and meal may now be had cheaper than ever. Health is a word that you all have some notion of, but you will perhaps have a clearer idea of it when I tell you what the word comes from. Health was long ago _wholth_, and comes from the word _whole_ or _hale_. The Bible says, "They that are whole need not a physician"; that is, healthy people have no need of a doctor. Now, a man is whole when, like a bowl or any vessel, he is entire, and has nothing broken about him; he is like a watch that goes well, neither too fast nor too slow. But you will perhaps say, "You doctors should be able to put us all to rights, just as a watchmaker can clean and sort a watch; if you can't, what are you worth?" But the difference between a man and a watch is, that you must try to mend the man when he is going. You can't stop him and then set him agoing; and, you know, it would be no joke to a watchmaker, or to the watch, to try and clean it while it was going. But God, who does everything like himself, with his own perfectness, has put inside each of our bodies a Doctor of his own making,--one wiser than we with all our wisdom. Every one of us has in himself a power of keeping and setting his health right. If a man is overworked, God has ordained that he desires rest, and that rest cures him. If he lives in a damp, close place, free and dry air cures him. If he eats too much, fasting cures him. If his skin is dirty, a good scrubbing and a bit of yellow soap will put him all to rights. What we call disease or sickness is the opposite of health, and it comes on us,--1st. By descent from our parents. It is one of the surest of all legacies; if a man's father and mother are diseased, naturally or artificially, he will have much chance to be as bad, or worse. 2dly. Hard work brings on disease, and some kinds of work more than others. Masons who hew often fall into consumption; laborers get rheumatism, or what you call "the pains"; painters get what is called their colic, from the lead in the paint, and so on. In a world like ours, this set of causes of disease and ill health cannot be altogether got the better of; and it was God's command, after Adam's sin, that men should toil and sweat for their daily bread; but more than the half of the bad effects of hard work and dangerous employments might be prevented by a little plain knowledge, attention, and common sense. 3dly. Sin, wickedness, foolish and excessive pleasures, are a great cause of disease. Thousands die from drinking, and from following other evil courses. There is no life so hard, none in which the poor body comes so badly off, and is made so miserable, as the life of a drunkard or a dissolute man. I need hardly tell you, that this cause of death and disease you can all avoid. I don't say it is easy for any man in your circumstances to keep from sin; he is a foolish or ignorant man who says so, and that there are no temptations to drinking. You are much less to blame for doing this than people who are better off; but you CAN keep from drinking, and you know as well as I do, how much better and happier, and healthier and richer and more respectable you will be if you do so. 4thly and lastly. Disease and death are often brought on from ignorance, from not knowing what are called the _laws of health_,--those easy, plain, common things which, if you do, you will live long, and which, if you do not do, you will die soon. Now, I would like to make a few simple statements about this to you; and I will take the body bit by bit, and tell you some things that you should know and do in order to keep this wonderful house that your soul lives in, and by the deeds done in which you will one day be judged,--and which is God's gift and God's handiwork,--clean and comfortable, hale, strong, and hearty; for you know that, besides doing good to ourselves and our family and our neighbors with our bodily labor, we are told that we should glorify God in our bodies as well as in our souls, for they are his, more his than ours,--he has bought them by the blood of his Son Jesus Christ. We are not our own, we are bought with a price; therefore ought we to glorify God with our souls and with our bodies, which are his. Now, first, for _the skin_. You should take great care of it, for on its health a great deal depends; keep it clean, keep it warm, keep it dry, give it air; have a regular scrubbing of all your body every Saturday night; and, if you can manage it, you should every morning wash not only your face, but your throat and breast, with cold water, and rub yourself quite dry with a hard towel till you glow all over. You should keep your hair short if you are men; it saves you a great deal of trouble and dirt. Then, the inside of your _head_,--you know what is inside your head,--your brain; you know how useful it is to you. The cleverest pair of hands among you would be of little use without brains: they would be like a body without a soul, a watch with the mainspring broken. Now, you should consider what is best for keeping the brain in good trim. One thing of great consequence is _regular sleep, and plenty of it_. Every man should have at the least eight hours in his bed every four-and-twenty hours, and let him sleep all the time if he can; but even if he lies awake it is a rest to his wearied brain, as well as to his wearied legs and arms. _Sleep is the food of the brain._ Men may go mad and get silly, if they go long without sleep. Too much sleep is bad; but I need hardly warn you against that, or against too much meat. You are in no great danger from these. Then, again, whiskey and all kinds of intoxicating liquors in excess are just so much poison to the brain. I need not say much about this, you all know it; and we all know what dreadful things happen when a man poisons his brain and makes it mad, and like a wild beast with drink; he may murder his wife, or his child, and when he comes to himself he knows nothing of how he did it, only the terrible thing is certain, that he _did_ do it, and that he may be hanged for doing something when he was mad, and which he never dreamt of doing when in his senses: but then he knows that he made himself mad, and he must take all the wretched and tremendous consequences. From the brains we go to the _lungs_,--you know where they are,--they are what the butchers call the _lichts_; here they are, they are the bellows that keep the fire of life going; for you must know that a clever German philosopher has made out that we are all really burning,--that our bodies are warmed by a sort of burning or combustion, as it is called,--and fed by breath and food, as a fire is fed with coals and air. Now the great thing for the lungs is plenty of fresh air, and plenty of room to play in. About seventy thousand people die every year in Britain from that disease of the lungs called consumption,--that is, nearly half the number of people in the city of Edinburgh; and it is certain that more than the half of these deaths could be prevented if the lungs had fair play. So you should always try to get your houses well ventilated, that means to let the air be often changed, and free from impure mixtures; and you should avoid crowding many into one room, and be careful to keep everything clean, and put away all filth; for filth is not only disgusting to the eye and the nose, but is dangerous to the health. I have seen a great deal of cholera, and been surrounded by dying people, who were beyond any help from doctors, and I have always found that where the air was bad, the rooms ill ventilated, cleanliness neglected, and drunkenness prevailed, there this terrible scourge, which God sends upon us, was most terrible, most rapidly and widely destructive. Believe this, and go home and consider well what I now say, for you may be sure it is true. Now we come to the _heart_. You all know where it is. It is the most wonderful little pump in the world. There is no steam-engine half so clever at its work, or so strong. There it is in every one of us, beat, beating,--all day and all night, year after year, never stopping, like a watch ticking; only it never needs to be wound up,--God winds it up once for all. It depends for its health on the state of the rest of the body, especially the brains and lungs. But all violent passions, all irregularities of living, damage it. Exposure to cold when drunk, falling asleep, as many poor wretches do, in stairs all night,--this often brings on disease of the heart; and you know it is not only dangerous to have anything the matter with the heart, it is the commonest of all causes of sudden death. It gives no warning; you drop down dead in a moment. So we may say of the bodily as well as of the moral organ, "Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." We now come to the _stomach_. You all know, I dare say, where it lies! It speaks for itself. Our friends in England are very respectful to their stomachs. They make a great deal of them, and we make too little. If an Englishman is ill, all the trouble is in his stomach; if an Irishman is ill, it is in his heart, and he's "kilt entirely"; and if a Scotsman, it is in his "heed." Now, I wish I saw Scots men and women as nice and particular about their stomachs, or rather about what they put into them, as their friends in England. Indeed, so much does your genuine John Bull depend on his stomach, and its satisfaction, that we may put in his mouth the stout old lines of Prior:-- "The plainest man alive may tell ye The seat of empire is the Belly: From hence are sent out those supplies, Which make us either stout or wise; The strength of every other member Is founded on your Belly-timber; The qualms or raptures of your blood Rise in proportion to your food, Your stomach makes your fabric roll, Just as the bias rules the bowl: That great Achilles might employ The strength designed to ruin Troy, He dined on lions' marrow, spread On toasts of ammunition bread; But by his mother sent away, Amongst the Thracian girls to play, Effeminate he sat and quiet; Strange product of a cheese-cake diet. Observe the various operations, Of food and drink in several nations. Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel, Upon the strength of water-gruel? But who shall stand his rage and force, If first he rides, then eats his horse! Salads and eggs, and lighter fare, Turn the Italian spark's guitar; And if I take Dan Congreve right, Pudding and beef make Britons fight." Good cooking is the beauty of a dinner. It really does a man as much good again if he eats his food with a relish, and with a little attention, it is as easy to cook well as ill. And let me tell the wives, that your husbands would like you all the better, and be less likely to go off to the public-house, if their bit of meat or their drop of broth were well cooked. Laboring men should eat well. They should, if possible, have meat--_butcher-meat_--ever day. Good broth is a capital dish. But, above all, keep whiskey out of your stomachs; it really plays the very devil when it gets in. It makes the brain mad, it burns the coats of the stomach; it turns the liver into a lump of rottenness; it softens and kills the heart; it makes a man an idiot and a brute. If you really need anything stronger than good meat, take a pot of wholesome porter or ale; but I believe you are better without even that. You will be all the better able to afford good meat, and plenty of it. With regard to your _bowels_,--a very important part of your interior,--I am not going to say much, except that neglect of them brings on many diseases; and laboring men are very apt to neglect them. Many years ago, an odd old man, at Green-cock, left at his death a number of sealed packets to his friends, and on opening them they found a Bible, £50, and a box of pills, and the words, "Fear God, and keep your bowels open." It was good advice, though it might have been rather more decorously worded. If you were a doctor, you would be astonished how many violent diseases of the mind, as well as of the body, are produced by irregularity of the bowels. Many years ago, an old minister, near Linlithgow, was wakened out of his sleep to go to see a great lady in the neighborhood who was thought dying, and whose mind was in dreadful despair, and who wished to see him immediately. The old man, rubbing his eyes, and pushing up his Kilmarnock nightcap, said, "And when were her leddyship's booels opened?" And finding, after some inquiry, that they were greatly in arrears, "I thocht sae. Rax me ower that pill-box on the chimney-piece, and gie my compliments to Leddy Margret, and tell her to tak thae twa pills, and I'll be ower by and by mysel'." They did as he bade them. They did their duty, and the pills did theirs, and her leddyship was relieved, and she was able at breakfast-time to profit by the Christian advice of the good old man, which she could not have done when her nerves were all wrong. The old Greeks, who were always seeking after wisdom, and didn't always find it, showed their knowledge and sense in calling depression of mind Melancholy, which means black bile. Leddy Margret's liver, I have no doubt, had been distilling this perilous stuff. My dear friends, there is one thing I have forgot to mention, and that is about keeping common-stairs clean; you know they are often abominably filthy, and they aggravate fever, and many of your worst and most deadly diseases; for you may keep your own houses never so clean and tidy, but if the common-stair is not kept clean too, all its foul air comes into your rooms, and into your lungs, and poisons you. So let all in the stair resolve to keep it clean, and well aired. But I must stop now. I fear I have wearied you. You see I had nothing new to tell you. The great thing in regulating and benefiting human life, is not to find out new things, but to make the best of the old things,--to live according to Nature, and the will of Nature's God,--that great Being who bids us call him our Father, and who is at this very moment regarding each one of us with far more than any earthly father's compassion and kindness, and who would make us all happy if we would but do his bidding, and take his road. He has given us minds by which we may observe the laws he has ordained in our bodies, and which are as regular and as certain in their effects, and as discoverable by us as the motions of the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens; and we shall not only benefit ourselves and live longer and work better and be happier, by knowing and obeying these laws, from love to ourselves, but we shall please him, we shall glorify him, and make him our _Friend_,--only think of that! and get his blessing, by taking care of our health, from love to him, and a regard to his will, in giving us these bodies of ours to serve him with, and which he has, with his own almighty hands, so fearfully and wonderfully made. I hope you will pardon my plainness in speaking to you. I am quite in earnest, and I have a deep regard, I may say a real affection, for you; for I know you well. I spent many of my early years as a doctor in going about among you. I have attended you long ago when ill; I have delivered your wives, and been in your houses when death was busy with you and yours, and I have seen your fortitude, energy, and honest, hearty, generous kindness to each other; your readiness to help your neighbors with anything you have, and to share your last sixpence and your last loaf with them. I wish I saw half as much real neighborliness and sympathy among what are called your betters. If a poor man falls down in a fit on the street, who is it that takes him up and carries him home, and gives him what he needs? it is not the man with a fine coat and gloves on,--it is the poor, dirty-coated, hard-handed, warm-hearted laboring man. Keep a good hold of all these homely and sturdy virtues, and add to them temperance and diligence, cleanliness and thrift, good knowledge, and, above all, the love and the fear of God, and you will not only be happy yourselves, but you will make this great and wonderful country of ours which rests upon you still more wonderful and great. SERMON V. MEDICAL ODDS AND ENDS. My dear friends,--We are going to ring in now, and end our course. I will be sorry and glad, and you will be the same. We are this about everything. It is the proportion that settles it. I am, upon the whole, as we say, sorry, and I dare say on the whole you are not glad. I dislike parting with anything or anybody I like, for it is ten to one if we meet again. My text is, "_That His way may he known upon earth; His saving health to all nations._" You will find it in that perfect little Psalm, the 67th. But before taking it up, I will, as my dear father used to say,--you all remember him, his keen eye and voice; his white hair, and his grave, earnest, penetrating look; and you should remember and possess his Canongate Sermon to you,--"The Bible, what it is, what it does, and what it deserves,"--well, he used to say, let us _recapitulate_ a little. It is a long and rather kittle word, but it is the only one that we have. He made it longer, but not less alive, by turning it into "a few recapitulatory remarks." What ground then have we travelled over? _First_, our duties to and about the Doctor; to call him in time, to trust him, to obey him, to be grateful to, and to pay him with our money and our hearts and our good word, if we have all these; if we have not the first, with twice as much of the others. _Second_, the Doctor's duties to us. He should be able and willing to cure us. That is what he is there for. He should be sincere, attentive, and tender to us, keeping his time and our secrets. We must tell him all we know about our ailments and their causes, and he must tell us all that is good for us to know, and no more. _Third_, your duties to your children; to the wee Willie Winkies and the little wifies that come toddlin' hame. It is your duty to _mind_ them. It is a capital Scotch use of this word: they are to be in your mind; you are to exercise your understanding about them; to give them simple food; to keep goodies and trash, and raw pears and whiskey, away from their tender mouths and stomachs; to give them that never-ending meal of good air, night and day, which is truly food and fire to them and you; to _be_ good before as well as to them, to speak and require the truth in love,--that is a wonderful expression, isn't it?--the truth in love; that, if acted on by us all, would bring the millennium next week; to be plain and homely with them, never _spaining_ their minds from you. You are all sorry, you mothers, when you have to spain their mouths; it is a dreadful business that to both parties; but there is a spaining of the affections still more dreadful, and that need never be, no, never, neither in this world nor in that which is to come. Dr. Waugh, of London, used to say to bereaved mothers, Rachels weeping for their children, and refusing to be comforted, for that simplest of all reasons, because they were not, after giving them God's words of comfort, clapping them on the shoulders, and fixing his mild deep eyes on them (those who remember those eyes well know what they could mean), "My woman, your bairn is where it will have two fathers, but never but one mother." You should also, when the time comes, explain to your children what about their own health and the ways of the world they ought to know, and for the want of the timely knowledge of which many a life and character has been lost. Show them, moreover, the value you put upon health, by caring for your own. Do your best to get your sons well married, and soon. By "well married," I mean that they should pair off old-fashionedly, for love, and marry what deserves to be loved, as well as what is lovely. I confess I think falling in love is the best way to begin; but then the moment you fall, you should get up and look about you, and see how the land lies, and whether it is as goodly as it looks. I don't like walking into love, or being carried into love; or, above all, being sold or selling yourself into it, which, after all, is not it. And by "soon," I mean as soon as they are keeping themselves; for a wife, such a wife as alone I mean, is cheaper to a young man than no wife, and is his best companion. Then for your duties to yourselves. See that you make yourself do what is _immediately_ just to your body, feed it when it is really hungry; let it sleep when it, not its master, desires sleep; make it happy, poor hard-working fellow! and give it a gambol when it wants it and deserves it, and as long as it can execute it. Dancing is just the music of the feet, and the gladness of the young legs, and is well called the poetry of motion. It is like all other natural pleasures, given to be used, and to be not abused, either by yourself or by those who don't like it, and don't enjoy your doing it,--shabby dogs these, beware of them! And if this be done, it is a good and a grace, as well as pleasure, and satisfies some good end of our being, and in its own way glorifies our Maker. Did you ever see anything in this world more beautiful than the lambs running races and dancing round the big stone of the field; and does not your heart get young when you hear,-- "Here we go by Jingo ring, Jingo ring, Jingo ring; Here we go by Jingo ring, About the merry ma tanzie." This is just a dance in honor of poor old pagan Jingo; measured movements arising from and giving happiness. We have no right to keep ourselves or others from natural pleasures; and we are all too apt to interfere with and judge harshly the pleasures of others; hence we who are stiff and given to other pleasures, and who, now that we are old, know the many wickednesses of the world, are too apt to put the vices of the jaded, empty old heart, like a dark and ghastly fire burnt out, into the feet and the eyes, and the heart and the head of the young. I remember a story of a good old Antiburgher minister. It was in the days when dancing was held to be a great sin, and to be dealt with by the session. Jessie, a comely, and good, and blithe young woman, a great favorite of the minister's, had been guilty of dancing at a friend's wedding. She was summoned before the session to be "dealt with,"--the grim old fellows sternly concentrating their eyes upon her, as she stood trembling in her striped short-gown, and her pretty bare feet. The Doctor, who was one of divinity, and a deep thinker, greatly pitying her and himself, said, "Jessie, my woman, were ye dancin'?" "Yes," sobbed Jessie. "Ye maun e'en promise never to dance again, Jessie." "I wull, sir; I wull promise," with a courtesy. "Now, what were ye thinking o', Jessie, when ye were dancin'? tell us truly," said an old elder, who had been a poacher in youth. "Nae ill, sir," sobbed out the dear little woman. "Then, Jessie, my woman, aye dance," cried the delighted Doctor. And so say I, to the extent, that so long as our young girls think "nae ill," they may dance their own and their feet's fills; and so on with all the round of the sunshine and flowers God has thrown on and along the path of his children. _Lastly_, your duty to your own bodies: to preserve them; to make, or rather let--for they are made so to go--their wheels go sweetly; to keep the _girs_ firm round the old barrel; neither to over nor under work our bodies, and to listen to their teaching and their requests, their cries of pain and sorrow; and to keep them as well as your souls unspotted from the world. If you want to know a good book on Physiology, or the Laws of Health and of Life, get Dr. Combe's _Physiology_; and let all you mothers get his delightful _Management of Infancy_. You will love him for his motherly words. You will almost think he might have worn petticoats,--for tenderness he might; but in mind and will and eye he was every inch a man. It is now long since he wrote, but I have seen nothing so good since; he is so intelligent, so reverent, so full of the solemnity, the sacredness, the beauty, and joy of life, and its work; so full of sympathy for suffering, himself not ignorant of such evil,--for the latter half of his life was a daily, hourly struggle with death, fighting the destroyer from within with the weapons of life, his brain and his conscience. It is very little physiology that you require, so that it is physiology, and is suitable for your need. I can't say I like our common people, or indeed, what we call our ladies and gentlemen, poking curiously into all the ins and outs of our bodies as a general accomplishment, and something to talk of. No, I don't like it. I would rather they chose some other _ology_. But let them get enough to give them awe and love, light and help, guidance and foresight. These, with good sense and good senses, humility, and a thought of a hereafter in this world as well as in the next, will make us as able to doctor ourselves--especially to act in the _preventive service_, which is your main region of power for good--as in this mortal world we have any reason to expect. And let us keep our hearts young, and they will keep our legs and our arms the same. For we know now that hearts are kept going by having strong, pure, lively blood; if bad blood goes into the heart, it gets angry, and shows this by beating at our breasts, and frightening us; and sometimes it dies of sheer anger and disgust, if its blood is poor or poisoned, thin and white. "He may dee, but he'll never grow auld," said a canty old wife of her old minister, whose cheek was ruddy like an apple. _Run for the Doctor_; don't saunter to him, or go in, by the by, as an old elder of my father's did, when his house was on fire. He was a perfect Nathanael, and lived more in the next world than in this, as you will soon see. One winter night he slipped gently into his neighbor's cottage, and found James Somerville reading aloud by the blaze of the licht coal; he leant over the chair, and waited till James closed the book, when he said, "By the by, I am thinkin' ma hoose is on fire!" and out he and they all ran, in time to see the auld biggin' fall in with a glorious blaze. So it is too often when that earthly house of ours--our cottage, our tabernacle--is getting on fire. One moment your finger would put out what in an hour all the waters of Clyde would be too late for. If the Doctor is needed, the sooner the better. If he is not, he can tell you so, and you can rejoice that he had a needless journey, and pay him all the more thankfully. So run early and at once. How many deaths--how many lives of suffering and incapacity--may be spared by being in time! by being a day or two sooner. With children this is especially the case, and with workingmen in the full prime of life. A mustard plaster, a leech, a pill, fifteen drops of Ipecacuanha wine, a bran poultice, a hint, or a stitch in time, may do all and at once, when a red-hot iron, a basinful of blood, all the wisdom of our art, and all the energy of the Doctor, all your tenderness and care, are in vain. Many a child's life is saved by an emetic at night, who would be lost in twelve hours. So send in time; it is just to your child or the patient, and to yourself; it is just to your Doctor; for I assure you we Doctors are often sorry, and angry enough, when we find we are too late. It affronts us, and our powers, besides affronting life and all its meanings, and Him who gives it. And we really _enjoy_ curing; it is like running and winning a race,--like hunting and finding and killing our game. And then remember to go to the Doctor early in the day, as well as in the disease. I always like my patients to send and say that they would like the Doctor "to call before he goes out!" This is like an Irish message, you will say; but there is "sinse" in it. Fancy a Doctor being sent for, just as he is in bed, to see some one, and on going he finds they had been thinking of sending in the morning, and that he has to run neck and neck with death, with the odds all against him. I now wind up with some other odds and ends. I give you them as an old wife would empty her pockets,--such wallets they used to be!--in no regular order; here a bit of string, now a bit of gingerbread, now an "aiple," now a bunch of keys, now an old almanac, now three _bawbees_ and a bad shilling, a "wheen" buttons all marrowless, a thimble, a bit of black sugar, and maybe at the very bottom a "goold guinea." _Shoes._--It is amazing the misery the people of civilization endure in and from their shoes. Nobody is ever, as they should be, comfortable at once in them; they hope in the long-run and after much agony, and when they are nearly done, to make them fit, especially if they can get them once well wet, so that the mighty knob of the big toe may adjust himself and be at ease. For my part, if I were rich, I would advertise for a clean, wholesome man, whose foot was exactly my size, and I would make him wear my shoes till I could put them on, and not know I was in them.[1] Why is all this? Why do you see every man's and woman's feet so out of shape? Why are there corns, with their miseries and maledictions? Why the virulence and unreachableness of those that are "soft"? Why do our nails grow in, and sometimes have to be torn violently off? [1] Frederick the Great kept an aid-de-camp for this purpose, and, poor fellow! he sometimes wore them too long, and got a kicking for his pains. All because the makers and users of shoes have not common sense, and common reverence for God and his works enough to study the shape and motions of that wonderful pivot on which we turn and progress. Because FASHION,--that demon that I wish I saw dressed in her own crinoline, in bad shoes, a man's old hat, and trailing petticoats, and with her (for she must be a _her_) waist well nipped by a circlet of nails with the points inmost, and any other of the small torments, mischiefs, and absurdities she destroys and makes fools of us with,--whom, I say, I wish I saw drummed and hissed, blazing and shrieking, out of the world,--because this contemptible slave, which domineers over her makers, says the shoe must be elegant, must be so and so, and the beautiful living foot must be crushed into it, and human nature must limp along Princess Street and through life natty and wretched. It makes me angry when I think of all this. Now, do you want to know how to put your feet into new shoes, and yourself into a new world? Go and buy from Edmonston and Douglas sixpence worth of sense, in _Why the Shoe Pinches_; you will, if you get your shoemaker to do as it bids him, go on your ways rejoicing; no more knobby, half-dislocated big toes; no more secret parings, and slashings desperate, in order to get on that pair of exquisite boots or shoes. Then there is the _Infirmary_.--Nothing I like better than to see subscriptions to this admirable house of help and comfort to the poor, advertised as from the quarry men of Craigleith; from Mr. Milne the brassfounder's men; from Peeblesshire; from the utmost Orkneys; and from those big, human mastiffs, the navvies. And yet we doctors are often met by the most absurd and obstinate objections by domestic servants in town, and by country people, to going there. This prejudice is lessening, but it is still great. "O, I canna gang into the Infirmary; I would rather dee!" Would you, indeed? Not you, or, if so, the sooner the better. They have a notion that they are experimented on, and slain by the surgeons; neglected and poisoned by the nurses, etc., etc. Such utter nonsense! I know well about the inner life and work of at least our Infirmary, and of that noble old Minto House, now gone; and I would rather infinitely, were I a servant, 'prentice boy, or shopman, a porter, or student, and anywhere but in a house of my own, and even then, go straight to the Infirmary, than lie in a box-bed off the kitchen, or on the top of the coal-bunker, or in a dark hole in the lobby, or in a double-bedded room. The food, the bedding, the physicians, the surgeons, the clerks, the dressers, the medicines, the wine and porter,--and they don't scrimp these when necessary,--the books, the Bibles, the baths, are all good,--are all better far than one man in ten thousand can command in his own house. So off with a grateful heart and a fearless to the Infirmary, and your mistress can come in and sit beside you; and her doctor and yours will look in and single you out with his smile and word, and cheer you and the ward by a kindly joke, and you will come out well cured, and having seen much to do you good for life. I never knew any one who was once in, afraid of going back; they know better. There are few things in human nature finer than the devotion and courage of medical men to their hospital and charitable duties; it is to them a great moral discipline. Not that they don't get good--selfish good--to themselves. Why shouldn't they? Nobody does good without getting it; it is a law of the government of God. But, as a rule, our medical men are not kind and skilful and attentive to their hospital patients, because this is to make them famous, or even because through this they are to get knowledge and fame; they get all this, and it is their only and their great reward. But they are in the main disinterested men. Honesty is the best policy; but, as Dr. Whately, in his keen way, says, "that man is not honest who is so for this reason," and so with the doctors and their patients. And I am glad to say for my profession, few of them take this second-hand line of duty. _Beards._--I am for beards out and out, because I think the Maker of the beard was and is. This is reason enough; but there are many others. The misery of shaving, its expense, its consumption of time,--a very corporation existing for no other purpose but to shave mankind. Campbell the poet, who had always a bad razor, I suppose, and was late of rising, said he believed the man of civilization who lived to be sixty had suffered more pain in littles every day in shaving than a woman with a large family had from her lyings-in. This would be hard to prove; but it is a process that never gets pleasanter by practice; and then the waste of time and temper,--the ugliness of being ill or unshaven. Now, we can easily see advantages in it; the masculine gender is intended to be more out of doors, and more in all weathers than the smooth-chinned ones, and this protects him and his Adam's apple from harm. It acts as the best of all respirators to the mason and the east-wind. Besides, it is a glory; and it must be delightful to have and to stroke a natural beard, not one like bean-stalks or a bottle-brush, but such a beard as Abraham's or Abd-el-Kader's. It is the beginning ever to cut, that makes all the difference. I hazard a theory, that no hair of the head or beard should ever be cut, or needs it, any more than the eyebrows or eyelashes. The finest head of hair I know is one which was never cut. It is not too long; it is soft and thick. The secret where to stop growing is in the end of the native untouched hair. If you cut it off, the poor hair does not know when to stop; and if our eyebrows were so cut, they might be made to hang over our eyes, and be wrought into a veil. Besides, think of the waste of substance of the body in hewing away so much hair every morning, and encouraging an endless rotation of crops! Well, then, I go in for the beards of the next generation, the unshorn beings whose beards will be wagging when we are away; but of course they must be clean. But how are we to sup our porridge and kail? Try it when young, when there is just a shadowy down on the upper lip, and no fears but they will do all this "elegantly" even. Nature is slow and gentle in her teaching even the accomplishment of the spoon. And as for women's hair, don't plaster it with scented and sour grease, or with any grease; it has an oil of its own. And don't tie up your hair tight, and make it like a cap of iron over your skull. And why are your ears covered? You hear all the worse, and they are not the cleaner. Besides, the ear is beautiful in itself, and plays its own part in the concert of the features. Go back to the curls, some of you, and try in everything to dress as it becomes you, and as you become; not as that fine lady, or even your own Tibbie or Grizzy chooses to dress, it may be becomingly to her. Why shouldn't we even in dress be more ourselves than somebody or everybody else? I had a word about _Teeth_. Don't get young children's teeth drawn. At least, let this be the rule. Bad teeth come of bad health and bad and hot food, and much sugar. I can't say I am a great advocate for the common people going in for tooth-brushes. No, they are not necessary in full health. The healthy man's teeth clean themselves, and so does his skin. A good dose of Gregory often puts away the toothache. It is a great thing, however, to get them early stuffed, if they need it; that really keeps them and your temper whole. For appearance' sake merely, I hate false teeth, as I hate a wig. But this is not a matter to dogmatize about. I never was, I think, deceived by either false hair, or false teeth, or false eyes, or false cheeks, for there are in the high--I don't call it the great--world, plumpers for making the cheeks round, as well as a certain dust for making them bloom. But you and I don't enjoy such advantages. _Rheumatism_ is peculiarly a disease of the workingman. One old physician said its only cure was patience and flannel. Another said six weeks. But I think good flannel and no drunkenness (observe, I don't say no drinking, though very nearly so) are its best preventives. It is a curious thing, the way in which cold gives rheumatism. Suppose a man is heated and gets cooled, and being very well at any rate, and is sitting or sleeping in a draught; the exposed part is chilled; the pores of its skin, which are always exuding and exhaling waste from the body, contract and shut in this bad stuff; it--this is my theory--not getting out is taken up by a blunder of the deluded absorbents, who are always prowling about for something, and it is returned back to the centre, and finds its way into the blood, and poisons it, affecting the heart, and carrying bad money, bad change, bad fat, bad capital all over the body, making nerves, lungs, everything unhappy and angry. This vitiated blood arrives by and by at the origin of its mischief, the chilled shoulder, and here it wreaks its vengeance, and in doing so, does some general good at local expense. It gives pain; it produces a certain inflammation of its own, and if it is not got rid of by the skin and other ways, it may possibly kill by the rage the body gets in, and the heat; or it may inflame the ill-used heart itself, and then either kill, or give the patient a life of suffering and peril. The medicines we give act not only by detecting this poison of blood, which, like yeast, leavens all in its neighborhood, but by sending it out of the body like a culprit. _Vaccination._--One word for this. Never neglect it; get it done within two months after birth, and see that it is well done; and get all your neighbors to do it. _Infectious Diseases._--Keep out of their way; kill them by fresh air and cleanliness; defy them by cheerfulness, good food (_better_ food than usual, in such epidemics as cholera), good sleep, and a good conscience. When in the midst of and waiting on those who are under the scourge of an epidemic, be as little very close to the patient as you can, and don't inhale his or her breath or exhalations when you can help it; be rather in the current to, than from him. Be very cleanly in putting away all excretions at once, and quite away; go frequently into the fresh air; and don't sleep in your day clothes. Do what the Doctor bids you; don't crowd round your dying friend; you are stealing his life in taking his air, and you are quietly killing yourself. This is one of the worst and most unmanageable of our Scottish habits, and many a time have I cleared the room of all but one, and dared them to enter it. Then you should, in such things as small-pox, as indeed in everything, carry out the Divine injunction, "_Whatsoever_ ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them." Don't send for the minister to pray with and over the body of a patient in fever or delirium, or a child dying of small-pox or malignant scarlet fever; tell him, by all means, and let him pray with you, and for your child. Prayers, you know, are like gravitation, or the light of heaven; they will go from whatever place they are uttered; and if they are real prayers, they go straight and home to the centre, the focus of all things; and you know that poor fellow with the crust of typhus on his lips, and its nonsense on his tongue,--that child tossing in misery, not knowing even its own mother,--what can they know, what heed can they give to the prayer of the minister? He may do all the good he can,--the most good maybe when, like Moses on the hillside, in the battle with Amalek, he uplifts his hands apart. No! a word spoken by your minister to himself and his God, a single sigh for mercy to him who is mercy, a cry of hope, of despair of self, opening into trust in him, may save that child's life, when an angel might pour forth in vain his burning, imploring words into the dull or wild ears of the sufferer, in the vain hope of getting _him_ to pray. I never would allow my father to go to typhus cases; and I don't think they lost anything by it. I have seen him rising in the dark of his room from his knees, and I knew whose case he had been laying at the footstool. And now, my dear friends, I find I have exhausted our time, and never yet got to the sermon, and its text--"_That the way of God_"--what is it? It is his design in setting you here; it is the road he wishes you to walk in; it is his providence in your minutest as in the world's mightiest things; it is his will expressed in his works and word, and in your own soul it is his salvation. That it "_may be known_," that the understandings of his intelligent, responsible, mortal and immortal creatures should be directed to it, to study and (as far as we ever can or need) to understand that which, in its fulness, passes all understanding; that it may be known "_on the earth_," here, in this very room, this very minute; not, as too many preachers and performers do, to be known only in the next world,--men who, looking at the stars, stumble at their own door, and it may be _smoor_ their own child, besides despising, upsetting, and extinguishing their own lantern. No! the next world is only to be reached through this; and our road through this our wilderness is not safe unless on the far beyond there is shining the lighthouse on the other side of the dark river that has no bridge. Then "_His saving health_"; His health--whose?--God's--his soundness, the wholeness, the perfectness, that is alone in and from him,--health of body, of heart, and brain, health to the finger-ends, health for eternity as well as time. "_Saving_"; we need to be saved, and we are salvable, this is much; and God's health can save us, that is more. When a man or woman is fainting from loss of blood, we sometimes try to save them, when all but gone, by transfusing the warm rich blood of another into their veins. Now this is what God, through his Son, desires to do; to transfuse his blood, himself, through his Son, who is himself, into us, diseased and weak. "_And_" refers to his health being "_known_," recognized, accepted, used, "_among all nations_"; not among the U.P.s, or the Frees, or the Residuaries, or the Baptists, or the New Jerusalem people,--nor among us in the Canongate, or in Biggar, or even in old Scotland, but "among all nations"; then, and only then, will the people praise thee, O God; will all the people praise thee. Then, and then only, will the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, will bless us. God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear him. And now, my dear and patient friends, we must say good night. You have been very attentive, and it has been a great pleasure to me as we went on to preach to you. We came to understand one another. You saw through my jokes, and that they were not always nothing but jokes. You bore with my solemnities, because I am not altogether solemn; and so good night, and God bless you, and may you, as Don Quixote, on his death-bed, says to Sancho, May you have your eyes closed by the soft fingers of your great-grandchildren. But no, I must shake hands with you, and kiss the bairns,--why shouldn't I? if their mouths are clean and their breath sweet? As for you, _Ailie_, you are wearying for the child; and he is tumbling and fretting in his cradle, and wearying for you; good by, and away you go on your milky way. I wish I could (unseen) see you two enjoying each other. And good night, my bonnie _wee wifie_; you are sleepy, and you must be up to make your father's porridge; and _Master William Winkie_, will you be still for one moment while I address you? Well, Master William, _wamble_ not off your mother's lap, neither rattle in your excruciating way in an airn jug wi' an airn spoon; no more crowing like a cock, or skirlin' like a kenna-what. I had much more to say to you, sir, but you will not bide still; off with you, and a blessing with you. Good night, _Hugh Cleland_, the best smith of any smiddy; with your bowly back, your huge arms, your big heavy brows and eyebrows, your clear eye, and warm unforgetting heart. And you, _John Noble_, let me grip your horny hand, and count the queer knobs made by the perpetual mell. I used, when I was a Willie Winkie, and wee, to think that you were born with them. Never mind, you were born for them, and of old you handled the trowel well, and built to the plumb. _Thomas Bertram_, your loom is at a discount, but many's the happy day I have watched you and your shuttle, and the interweaving treadles, and all the mysteries of setting the "wab." You are looking well, and though not the least of an ass, you might play Bottom must substantially yet. _Andrew Wilson_, across the waste of forty years and more I snuff the fragrance of your shop; have you forgiven me yet for stealing your paint-pot (awful joy!) for ten minutes to adorn my rabbit-house, and for blunting your pet _furmer_? Wise you were always, and in the saw-pit you spoke little, and wore your crape. Yourself wears well, but take heed of swallowing your shavings unawares, as is the trick of you "wrights"; they confound the interior and perplex the Doctor. _Rob Rough_, you smell of rosin, and your look is stern, nevertheless, or all the rather, give me your hand. What a grip! You have been the most sceptical of all my hearers; you like to try everything, and you hold fast only what you consider good; and then on your _crepida_ or stool, you have your own think about everything human and divine, as you smite down errors on the lapstane, and "yerk" your arguments with a well-rosined lingle; throw your window open for yourself as well as for your blackbird; and make your shoes not to pinch. I present you, sir, with a copy of the book of the wise Switzer. And nimble _Pillans_, the clothier of the race, and quick as your needle, strong as your corduroys, I bid you good night. May you and the cooper be like him of Fogo, each a better man than his father; and you, _Mungo_ the mole-catcher, and _Tod Laurie_, and _Sir Robert_ the cadger, and all the other odd people, I shake your fists twice, for I like your line. I often wish I had been a mole-catcher, with a brown velveteen, or (fine touch of tailoric fancy!) a moleskin coat; not that I dislike moles,--I once ate the fore-quarter of one, having stewed it in a Florence flask, some forty years ago, and liked it,--but I like the killing of them, and the country by-ways, and the regularly irregular life, and the importance of my trade. And good night to you all, you women-folks. _Marion Graham_ the milkwoman; _Tibbie Meek_ the single servant; _Jenny Muir_ the sempstress; _Mother Johnston_ the howdie, thou consequential Mrs. Gamp, presiding at the gates of life; and you in the corner there, _Nancy Cairns_, gray-haired, meek and old, with your crimped mutch as white as snow; the shepherd's widow, the now childless mother, you are stepping home to your _bein_ and lonely room, where your cat is now ravelling a' her thrums, wondering where "she" is. Good night to you all, big and little, young and old; and go home to your bedside, there is Some One waiting there for you, and his Son is here ready to take you to him. Yes, he is waiting for every one of you, and you have only to say, "Father, I have sinned,--take me"--and he sees you a great way off. But to reverse the parable; it is the first-born, your elder brother, who is at your side, and leads you to your Father, and says, "I have paid his debt"; that Son who is ever with him, whose is all that he hath. I need not say more. You know what I mean. You know who is waiting, and you know who it is who stands beside you, having the likeness of the Son of Man. Good night! The night cometh in which neither you nor I can work,--may we work while it is day; whatsoever thy _hand_ findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work or device in the grave, whither we are all of us hastening; and when the night is spent, may we all enter on a healthful, a happy, an everlasting to-morrow! Cambridge: Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. VEST-POCKET SERIES OF Standard and Popular Authors. The great popularity of the "Little Classics" has proved anew the truth of Dr. Johnson's remark: "Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all." The attractive character of their contents has been very strongly commended to public favor by the convenient size of the volumes. These were not too large to be carried to the fire or held readily in the hand, and consequently they have been in great request wherever they have become known. _The Vest-Pocket Series_ consists of volumes yet smaller than the "Little Classics." Their Lilliputian size, legible type, and flexible cloth binding make them peculiarly convenient for carrying on short journeys; and the excellence of their contents makes them desirable always and everywhere. The series includes STORIES, ESSAYS, SKETCHES, AND POEMS SELECTED FROM THE WRITINGS OF _Emerson_, _Longfellow_, _Whittier_, _Hawthorne_, _Carlyle_, _Aldrich_, _Hood_, _Gray_, _Aytoun_, _Tennyson_, _Lowell_, _Holmes_, _Browning_, _Macaulay_, _Milton_, _Campbell_, _Owen Meredith_, _Pope_, _Thomson_, AND OTHERS OF EQUAL FAME. The volumes are beautifully printed, many of them illustrated, and bound in flexible cloth covers, at a uniform price of =FIFTY CENTS EACH.= JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., PUBLISHERS, BOSTON. WORKS OF DR. JOHN BROWN. "_Of all the John Browns, commend us to Dr. John Brown, the physician, the man of genius, the humorist, the student of men, women, and dogs. By means of two beautiful volumes he has given the public a share of his by-hours; and more pleasant hours it would be difficult to find in any life._"--London Times. SPARE HOURS. First Series, I vol. 16mo. Cloth, $2.00; Half calf, $3.75. _CONTENTS._--Rab and his Friends.--"With Brains, Sir."--The Mystery of Black and Tan.--Her Last Half-Crown.--Our Dogs.--Queen Mary's Child-Garden.--Presence of Mind and Happy Guessing.--My Father's Memoir.--Mystifications.--"Oh, I'm wat, wat!"--Arthur H. Hallam.--Education through the Senses.--Vaughan's Poems.--Dr. Chalmers.--Dr. George Wilson.--St. Paul's Thorn in the Flesh.--The Black Dwarf's Bones.--Notes on Art. "Dr. John Brown is a medical practitioner in Edinburgh, whose leisure mements have been devoted to the cultivation of letters, and who, without the slightest degree of formality or reserve, pours out his feelings on paper, showing himself equally at home in the sphere of genial criticism, pathetic sentiment, and gay and sportive humor. His confessions have the frankness of Montaigne, and almost the playful _naïveté_ of Charles Lamb, combined with a vein of tender earnestness that stamps the individuality of the writer. The tone of his remarks is uniformly healthful, showing a genuine love of nature, and a cordial sympathy with all conditions of humanity."--_New York Tribune._ =SPARE HOURS.= Second Series, I vol. 16mo. With Steel Portrait and Illustrations. Cloth, $2.00; Half calf, $3.75. _CONTENTS._--John Leech.--Marjorie Fleming.--Jeems the Door-keeper.--Minchmoor.--The Enterkin.--Health: Five Lay Sermons to Working-People.--The Duke of Athole.--Struan.--Thackeray's Death.--Thackeray's Literary Career.--More of "Our Dogs."--Plea for a Dog Home.--"Bibliomania."--"In Clear Dream and Solemn Vision."--A Jacobite Family. "An excellent portrait of the author, showing a broad brow, and a face replete with sense, shrewdness, humor, and resolute force, adds to the attractiveness of one of the most attractive volumes of essays published for a long period."--_Boston Transcript._ =RAB AND HIS FRIENDS.= Paper, 25 cents. "Dr. Brown's masterpiece is the story of a dog called 'Rab.' The tale moves from the most tragic pathos to the most reckless humor, and could not have been written but by a man of genius. Whether it moves to laughter or to tears, it is perfect in its way, and immortalizes its author."--_London Times._ "A veritable gem. It is true, simple, pathetic, and touched with an antique grace."--_Fraser's Magazine._ =MARJORIE FLEMING ("Pet Marjorie").= Paper, 25 cents. "A story of one of the most exquisite children, miraculously brilliant, thoughtful, and fascinating."--_Detroit Post._ "A quaint, winning, sympathetic, beautiful sketch of child-life."--_Springfield Republican._ JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., PUBLISHERS, BOSTON. 
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21353	----	* * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Some text in this document has been moved to avoid | | multi-page tables being inserted mid-paragraph. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this | | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this | | document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * [Illustration: LOUIS AGASSIZ "A natural law is as sacred as a moral principle"] CIVICS AND HEALTH BY WILLIAM H. ALLEN SECRETARY, BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL RESEARCH FORMER SECRETARY OF THE NEW YORK COMMITTEE ON PHYSICAL WELFARE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN, AUTHOR OF "EFFICIENT DEMOCRACY" AND "RURAL SANITARY ADMINISTRATION IN PENNSYLVANIA," JOINT AUTHOR OF "SCHOOL REPORTS AND SCHOOL EFFICIENCY" WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GINN AND COMPANY BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL COPYRIGHT, 1909 BY WILLIAM H. ALLEN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 910.4 The Athenæum Press GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U.S.A. INTRODUCTION It is a common weakness of mankind to be caught by an idea and captivated by a phrase. To rest therewith content and to neglect the carrying of the idea into practice is a weakness still more common. It is this frequent failure of reformers to reduce their theories to practice, their tendency to dwell in the cloudland of the ideal rather than to test it in action, that has often made them distrusted and unpopular. With our forefathers the phrase _mens sana in corpore sano_ was a high favorite. It was constantly quoted with approval by writers on hygiene and sanitation, and used as the text or the finale of hundreds of popular lectures. And yet we shall seek in vain for any evidence of its practical usefulness. Its words are good and true, but passive and actionless, not of that dynamic type where words are "words indeed, but words that draw armed men behind them." Our age is of another temper. It yearns for reality. It no longer rests satisfied with mere ideas, or words, or phrases. The modern Ulysses would drink life to the dregs. The present age is dissatisfied with the vague assurance that the Lord will provide, and, rightly or wrongly, is beginning to expect the state to provide. And while this desire for reality has its drawbacks, it has also its advantages. Our age doubts absolutely the virtues of blind submission and resignation, and cries out instead for prevention and amelioration. Disease is no longer regarded, as Cruden regarded it, as the penalty and the consequence of sin. Nature herself is now perceived to be capable of imperfect work. Time was when the human eye was referred to as a perfect apparatus, but the number of young children wearing spectacles renders that idea untenable to-day. Meanwhile the multiplication of state asylums and municipal hospitals, and special schools for deaf or blind children and for cripples, speaks eloquently and irresistibly of an intimate connection between civics and health. There is a physical basis of citizenship, as there is a physical basis of life and of health; and any one who will take the trouble to read even the Table of Contents of this book will see that for Dr. Allen prevention is a text and the making of sound citizens a sermon. Given the sound body, we have nowadays small fear for the sound mind. The rigid physiological dualism implied in the phrase _mens sana in corpore sano_ is no longer allowed. To-day the sound body generally includes the sound mind, and vice versa. If mental dullness be due to imperfect ears, the remedy lies in medical treatment of those organs,--not in education of the brain. If lack of initiative or energy proceeds from defective aëration of the blood due to adenoids blocking the air tides in the windpipe, then the remedy lies not in better teaching but in a simple surgical operation. Shakespeare, in his wildwood play, saw sermons in stones and books in the running brooks. We moderns find a drama in the fateful lives of ordinary mortals, sermons in their physical salvation from some of the ills that flesh is heir to, and books--like this of Dr. Allen's--in striving to teach mankind how to become happier, and healthier, and more useful members of society. Dr. Allen is undoubtedly a reformer, but of the modern, not the ancient, type. He is a prophet crying in our present wilderness; but he is more than a prophet, for he is always intensely practical, insisting, as he does, on getting things done, and done soon, and done right. No one can read this volume, or even its chapter-headings, without surprise and rejoicing: surprise, that the physical basis of effective citizenship has hitherto been so utterly neglected in America; rejoicing, that so much in the way of the prevention of incapacity and unhappiness can be so easily done, and is actually beginning to be done. The gratitude of every lover of his country and his kind is due to the author for his interesting and vivid presentation of the outlines of a subject fundamental to the health, the happiness, and the well-being of the people, and hence of the first importance to every American community, every American citizen. WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CONTENTS PART I. HEALTH RIGHTS CHAPTER PAGE I. HEALTH A CIVIC OBLIGATION 3 II. SEVEN HEALTH MOTIVES AND SEVEN CATCHWORDS 11 III. WHAT HEALTH RIGHTS ARE NOT ENFORCED IN YOUR COMMUNITY? 23 IV. THE BEST INDEX TO COMMUNITY HEALTH IS THE PHYSICAL WELFARE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN 33 PART II. READING THE INDEX TO HEALTH RIGHTS V. MOUTH BREATHING 45 VI. CATCHING DISEASES, COLDS, DISEASED GLANDS 57 VII. EYE STRAIN 72 VIII. EAR TROUBLE, MALNUTRITION, DEFORMITIES 83 IX. DENTAL SANITATION 89 X. ABNORMALLY BRIGHT CHILDREN 104 XI. NERVOUSNESS OF TEACHER AND PUPIL 107 XII. HEALTH VALUE OF "UNBOSSED" PLAY AND PHYSICAL TRAINING 115 XIII. VITALITY TESTS AND VITAL STATISTICS 124 XIV. IS YOUR SCHOOL MANUFACTURING PHYSICAL DEFECTS? 139 XV. THE TEACHER'S HEALTH 152 PART III. COÖPERATION IN MEETING HEALTH OBLIGATIONS XVI. EUROPEAN REMEDIES: DOING THINGS AT SCHOOL 159 XVII. AMERICAN REMEDIES: GETTING THINGS DONE 166 XVIII. COÖPERATION WITH DISPENSARIES AND CHILD-SAVING AGENCIES 174 XIX. SCHOOL SURGERY AND RELIEF OBJECTIONABLE, IF AVOIDABLE 184 XX. PHYSICAL EXAMINATION FOR WORKING PAPERS 190 XXI. PERIODICAL PHYSICAL EXAMINATION AFTER SCHOOL AGE 201 XXII. HABITS OF HEALTH PROMOTE INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY 208 XXIII. INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE 218 XXIV. THE LAST DAYS OF TUBERCULOSIS 229 XXV. THE FIGHT FOR CLEAN MILK 252 XXVI. PREVENTIVE "HUMANIZED" MEDICINE: PHYSICIAN AND TEACHER 268 PART IV. OFFICIAL MACHINERY FOR ENFORCING HEALTH RIGHTS XXVII. DEPARTMENTS OF SCHOOL HYGIENE 283 XXVIII. PRESENT ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOL HYGIENE IN NEW YORK CITY 296 XXIX. OFFICIAL MACHINERY FOR ENFORCING HEALTH RIGHTS 302 XXX. SCHOOL AND HEALTH REPORTS 310 XXXI. THE PRESS 322 PART V. ALLIANCE OF HYGIENE, PATRIOTISM, AND RELIGION XXXII. DO-NOTHING AILMENTS 329 XXXIII. HEREDITY BUGABOOS AND HEREDITY TRUTHS 335 XXXIV. INEFFECTIVE AND EFFECTIVE WAYS OF COMBATING ALCOHOLISM 343 XXXV. IS IT PRACTICABLE IN PRESENTING TO CHILDREN THE EVILS OF ALCOHOLISM TO TELL THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH? 357 XXXVI. FIGHTING TOBACCO EVILS 363 XXXVII. THE PATENT-MEDICINE EVIL 369 XXXVIII. HEALTH ADVERTISEMENTS THAT PROMOTE HEALTH 378 XXXIX. IS CLASS INSTRUCTION IN SEX HYGIENE PRACTICABLE? 384 XL. THE ELEMENT OF TRUTH IN QUACKERY; HYGIENE OF THE MIND 391 XLI. "A NATURAL LAW IS AS SACRED AS A MORAL PRINCIPLE" 398 INDEX 405 CIVICS AND HEALTH PART I. HEALTH RIGHTS CHAPTER I HEALTH A CIVIC OBLIGATION In forty-five states and territories the teaching of hygiene with special reference to alcohol and tobacco is made compulsory. To hygiene alone, of the score of subjects found in our modern grammar-school curriculum, is given statutory right of way for so many minutes per week, so many pages per text-book, or so many pages per chapter. For the neglect of no other study may teachers be removed from office and fined. Yet school garrets and closets are full of hygiene text-books unopened or little used, while of all subjects taught by five hundred thousand American teachers and studied by twenty million American pupils the least interesting to both teacher and pupil is that forced upon both by state legislation. To complete the paradox, this least interesting subject happens also to be the most vital to the child, to the home, to industry, to social welfare, and to education itself. Whether the subject of hygiene is necessarily dull, whether the statutes requiring regular instruction in the laws of health are violated with impunity, whether health principles are flaunted by health practice at school,--these are questions of immediate concern to parents as a class, to employers as a class, to every pastor, every civic leader, every health officer, every taxpayer. Interviews with teachers and principals regarding the present apathy to formal hygiene instruction have brought out the following points that merit the serious consideration of those who are struggling for higher health standards. 1. _There is many a slip 'twixt the making of a law and its enforcement._ If laws regarding hygiene instruction are not enforced, we should not be surprised. It has been nobody's business to see whether and how hygiene is being taught. The moral crusade spent itself in forcing compulsory laws upon the statute books of every state and territory. Making a fetish of _Legislation_, the advocates of anti-alcohol and anti-tobacco instruction failed to see the truth that experienced political reformers are but slowly coming to see--_Legislation which does not provide machinery for its own enforcement is apt to do little good and frequently will do much harm._ Machinery, however admirably adapted to the work to be done, will get out of order and become useless, or even harmful, unless constantly watched and efficiently directed. Of what possible use is it to say that state money may be withheld from any school board which fails to enforce the law regarding instruction in hygiene, if state officials never enforce the penalty? So long as the penalty is not enforced for flagrant violation, what difference does it make whether the reason is indifference, ignorance, or desire to thwart the law? Fortunately, it is easy for each one of us to learn how often and in what way the children in our community are being taught hygiene, and how the schools of our state teach and practice the laws of health. If either the spirit or the letter of the law regarding instruction in hygiene is being violated, we can measure the penalty paid in health and morals by our children and our community. We can learn whether law, text-book, curriculum, or teacher should be changed. We can insist upon discussion of the facts and upon remedies suggested by the facts. 2. _Teachers give as one reason for neglecting hygiene, that they are often compelled to struggle with a curriculum which requires more than they are able to teach and more than pupils are able to learn in the time allowed._ While an overcharged curriculum may explain, it surely does not justify, the violation of law and the dropping of hygiene from our school curriculum. If there is any class of citizen who should teach and practice respect for law as law, it is the teacher. Parents, school directors, county and state superintendents, university presidents, social workers, owe it not only to themselves, but to the American school-teacher, either to repeal the laws that enjoin instruction in hygiene or else so to adjust the curriculum that teachers can comply with those laws. The present situation that discredits both law and hygiene is most demoralizing to teacher, pupil, and community. Many of us might admire the man teacher who frankly says he never explains the evils of cigarettes because he himself is an inveterate smoker of cigarettes. But what must we think of the school system that shifts to such a man the right and the responsibility of deciding whether or not to explain to underfed and overstimulated children of the slums the truth regarding cigarettes? If practice and precept must be consistent, shall the man be removed, shall he change his habits, shall the law regarding instruction in hygiene be changed, or shall other provision be made for bringing child and essential facts together in a way that will not dull the child's receptivity? 3. _Teachers are made to feel that while arithmetic and reading are essential, hygiene is not essential._ Whatever may be the facts regarding the relative value of arithmetic and hygiene, whether or not our state legislators have made a mistake in declaring hygiene to be essential, are questions altogether too important for child and state to be left to the discretion of the individual teacher or superintendent. It is fair to the teachers who say they cannot afford to turn aside from the three R's to teach hygiene, to admit that they have not hitherto identified the teaching of hygiene with the promotion of the physical welfare of children. Teachers awake to the opportunity will sacrifice not only hygiene but any other subject for the sake of promoting children's health. They do not really believe that arithmetic is more important than health. What they mean to say is that hygiene, as taught by them, has not heretofore had an appreciable effect upon their pupils' health; that other agencies exist, outside of the school, to teach the child how to avoid certain diseases and how to observe the fundamental laws of health, whereas no other agencies exist to give the child the essentials of arithmetic, reading, and geography. "We teach (or try to teach) what our classes are examined in. If you want a subject taught, you must test a class in it and hold a teacher responsible for results, and examinations are mercilessly unhygienic, you know." 4. _Teachers believe that they get better results for their children from teaching hygiene informally and indirectly than from stated formal lessons._ Whether instruction should be informal or formal is merely a question of method to be determined by results. What the results are, can be determined by principals, superintendents, and students of education. It is easy to understand how at the time of a fever epidemic children could be taught as much in one week about infection, disease germs, antiseptics, value of cleanliness, etc., as in five or ten months when vivid illustration is lacking. Physicians themselves learn more from one epidemic of smallpox than from four years of book study. To make possible and to require a daily shower bath will undoubtedly do more to inculcate habits of health than repeated lessons about the skin, pores, evaporation, and discharge of impurities. If one illustration is better than ten lessons, if an open window is worth more than all that text-books have to say about ventilation, if a seat adjusted to the child is better than an anatomical chart, this does not mean that instruction in hygiene should cease. On the contrary, it means that provision should be made for every teacher to open windows, to adjust desks, to use the experience of individual children for the education of the class. If the rank and file of teachers have not hitherto been sufficiently observant of physiological and hygienic facts, if they are unprepared from their own lives to detect or to furnish illustrations for the child, this again does not mean that the child should be denied the illustrations, but that the teacher should either have instruction and experience to incite interest and to stimulate powers of observation, or else be asked to give place to another teacher who is able to furnish such qualifications. 5. _Children, like adults, can be interested in other people, in rules of conduct, in social conditions, in living and working relations more easily than in their own bodies._ The normal, healthy child thinks very little of himself apart from the other boys and girls, the games, the studies, the animals, the nature wonders, the hardships that come to him from the outside. So true is this that one of the best means of mitigating or curing many ailments is to divert the child's attention from himself to things outside of himself that he can look at, hear, enjoy. The power to concentrate attention upon oneself is a sign either of a diseased body, a diseased mind, or a highly trained mind. To study others and to recognize the similarity between others and oneself is as natural as the body itself. Teachers are consulting this line of easiest access to children's attention when they honor children according to cleanliness of hands, of teeth, of shoes. Human interest attaches to what parks or excursions are doing for sickly children, how welfare work is improving factory employees, how smallpox is conquered by vaccination, how insurance companies refuse to take risks upon the lives of men or women addicted to the excessive use of alcohol or tobacco. Other people's interests--tenement conditions, factory rules--can be described in figures and actions that appeal to the imagination and impress upon the mind pictures that are repeatedly reawakened by experience and observation on the playground, at home, on the way to school or to work. "Once upon a time--" will always arrest attention more quickly than "The human frame consists--." What others think of me helps me to obey law--statutory, moral, or hygienic--more than what I know of law itself. How social instincts dominate may be illustrated by an experience in advertising a public bath near a thoroughfare traveled daily by thousands of working girls. I prepared a card to be distributed among these girls that began: "A cool, refreshing bath, etc." This card was criticised by one who knows the ways of girls and women, as follows: "Of course you get no success when you have a man stand on the street corner and pass out cards telling girls to get clean. Every girl that is worth while is affronted by the insinuation." Acting upon this expert advice, we then got out a neatly printed card reading as follows: "For a clear complexion, sprightly step, and bounding vitality, visit the Center Market Baths, open from 6 A.M. to 9 P.M. daily." The board of managers shook their sage masculine heads and reluctantly gave permission to issue these appeals. Woman's judgment was vindicated, however, and the advantage was proved of urging health for "society's" sake rather than for health's sake, when the patronage of the bath jumped at once to considerable proportions. 6. _Other people's habits of health influence our well-being quite as much, if not more, than our own._ Because we are social beings, ability to get along with our families, our friends, our employers, is--at least so it seems to most of us--quite as important as individual health. For too many of us, living hygienically is absolutely impossible without inconveniencing and bothering the majority of persons with whom we live. I remember a girl in college,--a fresh-air fiend,--who every morning, no matter how cold, threw the windows wide open. Then, with forty others, I thought this girl a nuisance as well as a menace to health, but now, twenty years afterwards, I find myself wanting to do the same thing. Professor Patten, the economist, whom I shall quote many times because he is particularly interested in the purpose of this book, was recently dining at my house and illustrated from his own health the importance of teaching hygiene so as to affect social as well as personal standards. "To be true to my own health needs, I ought to have declined nearly everything that has been offered me for dinner, but in the long run, if I am going to visit, my eating what is placed before me is better for society than making those who entertain me feel uncomfortable." Most of us know what uphill work it is to live hygienically in an unhygienic environment. I remember how hard it was to eat happily when sitting beside a college professor who took brown pills before each meal, yellow pills between each course, and a dose of black medicine after the meal was over. Mariano, an Italian lad cured of bone tuberculosis by out-of-door salt air at Sea Breeze, returned to his tenement home an ardent apostle of fresh air day and night, winter and summer. His family allowed him to open the window before going to bed, but closed it as soon as he was asleep. Lawrence Veiller, our greatest expert on tenement conditions, says: "To bathe in a tenement where a family of six occupy three rooms often involves the sacrifice of privacy and decency, which are quite as important to social betterment as cleanliness." To live unhygienically where others live hygienically is quite as difficult. Witness the speedy improvement of dissipated men when boarding with country friends who eat rationally and retire early. It must have been knowledge of this fact that prompted the tramways of Belfast to post conspicuous notices: "Spitting is a vile and filthy habit, and those who practice it subject themselves to the disgust and loathing of their fellow-passengers." It is almost impossible to have indigestion, blues, and headache when one is camping, particularly where action and enjoyment fill the day. Our practical question is, therefore, not "What shall I eat, how many hours shall I sleep, what shall I wear," but "How can I manage to get into an environment among living and working conditions where the people I live with and want to please, those who influence me and are influenced by me, make healthy living easy and natural?" 7. _Because the problems of health have to do principally with environment,--home, street, school, business,--it is worth while trying to relate hygiene instruction to industry and government, to preach health from the standpoint of industrial and national efficiency rather than of individual well-being._ Since healthful living requires the coöperation of all persons in a household, in a group, or in a community, we must find some working programme that will make it easy for all the members of the group to observe health standards. A city government that spends taxes inefficiently can produce more sickness, wretchedness, incapacity in one year than pamphlets on health can offset in a generation. Failure to enforce health laws is a more serious menace to health and morals than drunkenness or tobacco cancer. Unclean streets, unclean dairies, unclean, overcrowded tenements can do more harm than alcohol and tobacco because they can breed an appetite that craves stimulants and drugs. Others have taught how the body acts, what we ought to eat, how we should live. We are concerned here not with repeating the laws of health, but with a consideration of the mechanism that will make it possible for us so to work together that we can observe those laws. CHAPTER II SEVEN HEALTH MOTIVES AND SEVEN CATCHWORDS In making a health programme as in making a boat, a garden, or a baseball team, the first step is to look about and see what material there is to work with. A baseball team will fail miserably unless the captain places each man where he can play best. Gardening is profitless when the gardener does not know the habits of plants and the possibilities of different kinds of soil. So in planning a health programme we must study our materials and use each where it will fit best. The materials of first importance to a health programme in civilized countries are men; for men working together can control water sources, drainage, and ventilation, or else move away to surroundings better suited to healthful living. Therefore the first concern of the leader in a health crusade is the human kind he has to work for and work with. Seven kinds of man are to be found in every community, seven different points of view with regard to health administration. Each individual, likewise, may have seven attitudes toward health laws, seven reasons for demanding health protection. These seven points of view, seven stages of development, are clearly marked in the evolution of sanitary administration throughout the civilized world. With few exceptions, it is possible, by examining ourselves, our friends, and our communities, to see where one motive begins and leaves off, giving way to or mixing with one or more other motives. A friend once asked me if I could keep this number seven from growing to eight or nine. Perhaps not. Perhaps there are more kinds of people, more health motives, more stages in health progress; but I am sure of these seven, and certain that they have been of great help to me in planning health crusades for the state of New Jersey and for New York City. The number seven was not reached hit-or-miss fashion, nor was it chosen for its biblical prestige. On the contrary, it came as the result of studying health administration in twoscore British and American cities, and of reading scores of books on sanitary evolution. Seven catchwords make it easy to remember the characteristics and the source of every motive, every kind of person, and every stage in the evolution of sanitary standards. These seven catchwords are: _Instinct_, _Display_, _Commerce_, _Anti-nuisance_, _Anti-slum_, _Pro-slum_, _Rights_. By the use of these catchwords any teacher, parent, public official, educator, or social worker should be able to size up the situation, the needs, and the opportunity of the individuals or the communities for whom a health crusade is planned. _Instinct_ was the first health officer and made the first health laws. Instinct warns us against unusual and offensive odors, sights, and noises, just as it causes us to seek that which is agreeable. Primitive man in common with other animals learned by sad experience to avoid certain herbs as poisons; to bury or to move away from the dead; to shun discolored drinking water. During the roaming period sun and air and water acted as scavengers. When tribes settled down in one spot for long periods, habits that had hitherto been inoffensive and safe became noticeably injurious and unpleasant. Heads of tribes gave orders prohibiting such habits and restricting disagreeable acts and objects to certain portions of the camp. Instinct places outhouses on our farms and then gradually removes them farther and farther from dwellings. In many school yards, more particularly in country districts and small towns, outhouses are a crying offense against animal instinct. In visiting slum districts in Irish and Scotch cities, and in London, Paris, Berlin, and New York, I never found conditions so offensive to crude animal instinct as those I knew when a boy in Minnesota school yards, or those I have since seen in a Boy Republic. But the evil is not corrected because it is not made anybody's business to execute instinct's mandates. In the Boy Republic the leaders were waiting for the children themselves to revolt, as does primitive man. TABLE I TYPHOID A RURAL DISEASE[1] ==========================================+============+============== | Average | Average | Per Cent | Typhoid Fever | of Rural | Death Rate | Population | per 100,000 ------------------------------------------+------------+-------------- Five states in which the urban | | population was more than 60% of the total | 30 | 25 | | Six states in which the urban population | | was between 40% and 60% | 49 | 42 | | Seven states in which the urban | | population was between 30% and 40% | 67 | 38 | | Eight states in which the urban | | population was between 20% and 30% | 75 | 46 | | Twelve states in which the urban | | population was between 10% and 20% | 87 | 62 | | Twelve states in which the urban | | population was between 0 and 10% | 95 | 67 ==========================================+============+============== Among large numbers of persons, in city as well as country, washing the body is still a matter of instinct, a bath not being taken until the body is offensive, the hands not being washed until their condition interferes with the enjoyment of food or with one's treatment by others. There is a point of neglect beyond which instinct will not permit even a tramp to go. If cleanliness is next to godliness, the average child is most ungodly by nature, for it loathes the means of cleanliness and otherwise observes instinct's health warnings only after experience has punished or after other motives from the outside have prompted action. The chief form of legislation of the instinct age is provision of penalties for those who poison food, water, or fellow-man. There are districts in America where hygiene is supposed to be taught to children that are conscious of no other sanitary legislation but that which punishes the poisoner. _Display_ has always been an active health crusader. Professor Patten says the best thing that could happen to the slums of every city would be for every girl and woman to be given white slippers, white stockings, a white dress, and white hat. Why? Because they would at once notice and resent the dirt on the street, in their hallways, and in their own homes. People that have nothing to "spoil" really do not see dirt, for it interferes in no way with their comfort so far as they can see. Their windows are crusted with dust, their babies' milk bottles are yellow with germs. Who cares? Similar conditions exist among well-to-do women who live on isolated farms with no one to notice their personal appearance except others of the family who prefer rest to cleanliness. But let the tenement mother or the isolated farmer's wife entertain the minister or the school-teacher, the candidate for sheriff or the ward boss, let her go to Coney Island or to the county fair, and at once an outside standard is set up that requires greater regard for personal appearance and leads to "cleaning up." Elbow sleeves and light summer waists have led many a girl to daily bathing of at least those parts of the body that other people see. Entertainments and sociables, Saturday choir practice and church have led many a young man to bathe for others' sake when quite satisfied to forego the ordeal so far as his own comfort and health were concerned. Streets on which the well-to-do live are kept clean. Why? Not because Madam Well-to-do cares so much for health, but because she associates cleanliness with social prestige. It is necessary for the display of her carriages and dresses, just as paved streets and a plentiful supply of water for public baths and private homes were essential to the display of Rome's luxury. Generally speaking, residence streets are cleaned in small towns just as waterworks are introduced, to gratify the display motive of those who have lawns to water and clothes to show. Instinct strengthens the display motive. As every one can be interested in instinct hygiene, so every one is capable of this display motive to the extent that his position is affected by other people's opinion. It was love of display quite as much as love of beauty that gave Greece the goddess Hygeia, the worship of whom expressed secondarily a desire for universal health, and primarily a love of the beautiful among those who had leisure to enjoy it. _Commerce_ brooks no preventable interference with profits, whether by disease, death, impassable streets, or disabled men. The age of chivalry was also the age of indescribable filth, plague, Black Death, and spotted fever that cost the lives of millions. It would be impossible in the civilized world to duplicate the combination of luxury and filthy, disease-breeding conditions in the midst of which Queen Bess and her courtiers held their revels. The first protest was made, not by the church, not by sanitarians, but by the great merchants who were unable to insure against loss and ruin from the plagues that thrived on filth and overcrowding. By an interesting coincidence the first systematic street cleaning and the first systematic ship cleaning--maritime quarantine--date from the same year, 1348 A.D.; the former in the foremost German trading town, Cologne, and the latter in Venice, the foremost trading town of Italy. The merchants of Philadelphia and New York started the first boards of health in the United States. For what purpose? To prevent business losses from yellow fever. Desire for passable streets, drains, waterworks, and strong boards of health has generally started with merchants. For commercial reasons many of our states vote more money for the protection of cattle than for the protection of human life, and the United States votes millions for the study of hog cholera, chicken pip, and animal tuberculosis, while neglecting communicable diseases of men. No class in a community will respond more quickly to an appeal for the rigid enforcement of health laws than the merchant class; none will oppose so bitterly as that which makes profits out of the violation of health laws. TABLE II COST IN LIFE CAPITAL OF PREVENTABLE DISEASES[2] =============+============+=========================================== | | Multiply by the number of deaths for each | Estimated | age group to learn the cost in life | Value of | capital to your community in loss of life Age | Human Life | from one or all preventable diseases. -------------+------------+------------------------------------------- 0-5 years | $1,500 | 5-10 " | 2,300 | 10-15 " | 2,500 | 15-20 " | 3,000 | 20-25 " | 5,000 | 25-30 " | 7,500 | 30-35 " | 7,000 | 35-40 " | 6,000 | 40-45 " | 5,500 | 45-50 " | 5,000 | 50-55 " | 4,500 | 55-60 " | 4,500 | 60-65 " | 2,000 | 65-70 " | 1,000 | 70- " | 1,000 | =============+============+=========================================== _Anti-nuisance_ motives do not affect health laws until people with different incomes and different tastes try to live together. In a small town where everybody keeps a cow and a pig, piggeries and stables offend no one; but when the doctor, the preacher, the dressmaker, the lawyer, and the leading merchant stop keeping pigs and cows, they begin to find other people's stables and piggeries offensive. The early laws against throwing garbage, fish heads, household refuse, offal, etc., on the main street were made by kings and princes offended by such practices. The word "nuisance" was coined in days when neighbors lived the same kind of life and were not sensitive to things like house slops, ash piles, etc. The first nuisances were things that neighbors stumbled over or ran into while using the public highway. Next, goats and other animals interfering with safety were described as nuisances, and legal protection against them was worked out. It has never been necessary to change the maxim which originally defined a nuisance: "So use your own property that you will not injure another in the use of his property." The thing that has changed and grown has been society's knowledge of acts and objects that prevent a man from enjoying his own property. To-day the number of things that the law calls nuisances is so great that it takes hundreds of pages to describe them. Stables and outhouses must be set back from the street. Every man must dispose of garbage and drainage on his own property. Stables and privies must be at least a hundred feet from water reservoirs. Factories may not pollute streams that furnish drinking water. Merchants may be punished if they put banana skins in milk cans, or if they fail to scald and cleanse all milk receptacles before returning them to wholesalers. Automobile drivers may be punished for disturbing sleep. Anything that injures my health will be declared a nuisance and abolished, if I can prove that my health is being injured and that I am doing all I can to avoid that injury. No educational work will accomplish more for any community than to make rich and poor alike conscious of nuisances that are being committed against themselves and their neighbors. The rich are able to run away from nuisances that they cannot have abated. If proper publicity is given to living conditions among those who do not resist nuisances, the presence of such conditions will itself become offensive to the well-to-do, who will take steps to remove the nuisance. Jacob Riis in this way made the slums a nuisance to rich residents in New York City and stimulated tenement reform, building of parks, etc. _Anti-slum_ motives originated in cities where there is a clear dividing line between the clean and the unclean, the infected and the uninfected, the orderly and the disorderly, high and low vitality. As soon as one district becomes definitely known as a source of nuisance, infection, and disease, better situated districts begin to make laws to protect themselves. A great part of our existing health codes and a very large part of the funds spent on health administration are designed to protect those of high income against disease incident to those of low income, high vitality against low vitality, houses with rooms to spare against houses that are overcrowded. To the small town and the country the slum means generally the near-by city whose papers talk of epidemic scarlet fever, diphtheria, or smallpox. Cities have only recently begun to experience anti-slum aversion to country dairies whose uncleanliness brings infected milk to city babies, or to filthy factories and farms that pollute water reservoirs and cause typhoid. The last serious smallpox epidemic in the East came from the South by way of rural districts that failed to notify the Pennsylvania state board of health of the outbreak until the disease was scattered broadcast. Every individual knows of some family or some district that is immediately pictured when terms like "disease," "epidemic," "slum," are pronounced. The steps worked out by the anti-slum motive to protect "those who have" from disease arising from "those who have not" are given on page 31. [Illustration: A COUNTRY MENACE TO CITY HEALTH] _Pro-slum_ motives are not exactly born of anti-slum motives, but, thanks to the instinctive kindness of the human heart, follow promptly after the dangers of the slum have been described. You and I work together to protect ourselves against neglect, nuisance, and disease. In a district by which we must pass and with which we must deal, one of us or a neighbor or friend will turn our attention from our danger to the suffering of those against whom we wish to protect ourselves. Charles Dickens so described Oliver Twist and David Copperfield that Great Britain organized societies and secured legislation to improve the almshouse, school, and working and living conditions. When health reports, newspapers, and charitable societies make us see that the slum menaces our health and our happiness, we become interested in the slum for its own sake. We then start children's aid societies, consumer's leagues, sanitary and prison associations, child-labor committees, and "efficient government" clubs. _Rights_ motives are the last to be evolved in individuals or communities. The well-to-do protect their instinct, their comfort, their commerce, but run away from the slums and build in the secluded spots or on the well-policed and well-cleaned avenues and boulevards. Uptown is often satisfied with putting health officials to work to protect it against downtown. Pro-slum motives are shared by too few and are expressed too irregularly to help all of those who suffer from crowded tenements, impure milk, unclean streets, inadequate schooling. So long as those who suffer have no other protection than the self-interest or the benevolence of those better situated, disease and hardship inevitably persist. Health administration is incomplete until its blessings are given to men, women, and children as rights that can be enforced through courts, as can the right to free speech, the freedom of the press, and trial by jury. There is all the difference in the world between having one's street clean because it is a danger to some distant neighbor, or because that neighbor takes some philanthropic interest in its residents, and because one has a right to clean streets, regardless of the distant neighbor's welfare or interest. When the right to health is granted health laws are made, and all men within the jurisdiction of the lawmaking power own health machinery that provides for the administration of those laws. A system of public baths takes the place of a bathhouse supported by charity; a law restricting the construction and management of all tenements takes the place of a block of model tenements, financed by some wealthy man; medical examination of all school children takes the place of a private dispensary; a probation law takes the place of the friendly visitor to the county jail. Most of the rights we call inalienable are political rights no longer questioned by anybody and no longer thought of in connection with our everyday acts, pleasures, and necessities. When our political rights were formulated in maxims, living was relatively simple. There was no factory problem, no transportation problem, no exploitation of women and children in industry. Our ancestors firmly believed that if the strong could be prevented from interfering with the political rights of the weak, all would have an equal chance. The reason that our political maxims mean less to-day than two hundred years ago is that nobody is challenging our right to move from place to place if we can afford it, to trial by jury if charged with crime, to speak or print the truth about men or governments. If, however, anybody should interfere with our freedom in this respect, it would be of tremendous help that everybody we know would resent such interference and would point to maxims handed down by our ancestors and incorporated in our national and state constitutions as formal expressions of unanimous public opinion. The time is past when any one seriously believes that political freedom or personal liberty will be universal, just because everybody has a right to talk, to move from place to place, to print stories in the newspapers. The relation of man to man to-day requires that we formulate rules of action that prevent one man's taking from another those rights, economic and industrial, that are as essential to twentieth-century happiness as were political rights to eighteenth-century happiness. Political maxims showed how, through common desire and common action, steps could be taken by the individual and by the whole of society for the protection of all. Health rights, likewise, are to be obtained through common action. A modern city must know who is accountable when an automobile runs over a pedestrian, when a train load of passengers lose their lives because of an engineer's carelessness, when an employee is incapacitated for work by an accident for which he is not responsible, or when fever epidemics threaten life and liberty without check. How can a child who is prevented by removable physical defects from breathing through his nose be enthusiastic over free speech? Of what use is freedom of the press to those who find reading harder than factory toil? How futile the right to trial by jury if removable physical defects make children unable to do what the law expects! Who would not exchange rights of petition for ability to earn a living? Children permanently incapacitated to share the law's benefits cannot appreciate the privilege of pursuing happiness. Succeeding chapters will enumerate a number of health rights and will show through what means we can work together to guarantee that we shall not injure the health of our neighbor and that our neighbor shall not injure our health. The truest index to economic status and to standards of living is health environment. The best criterion of opportunity for industrial and political efficiency is the conditions affecting health. The seven catchwords that describe seven motives to health legislation and health administration, seven ways of approaching health needs, and seven reasons for meeting them, should be found helpful in analyzing the problem confronting the individual leader. Generally speaking, we cannot watch political rights grow, but health rights are evolved before our eyes all the time. If we wish, we can see in our own city or township the steps taken, one by one, that have slowly led to granting a large number of health rights to every American. FOOTNOTES: [1] Prepared by Dr. John S. Fulton, secretary of the state board of health, Maryland, and quoted by Dr. George C. Whipple in _Typhoid Fever_. [2] Marshall O. Leighton, quoted in Whipple's _Typhoid Fever_. CHAPTER III WHAT HEALTH RIGHTS ARE NOT ENFORCED IN YOUR COMMUNITY? Laws define rights. Men enforce them. For definitions we go to books. For record of enforcement we go to acts and to conditions.[3] What health rights a community pretends to enforce will, as a rule, be found in its health code. What health rights are actually enforced can be learned only by studying both the people who are to be protected and the conditions in which these people live. A street, a cellar, a milk shop, a sick baby, or an adult consumptive tells more honestly the story of health rights enforced and health rights unenforced than either sanitary code or sanitary squad. Not until we turn our attention from definition and official to things done and dangers remaining can we learn the health progress and health needs of any city or state. The health code of one city looks very much like the health code of every other city. This is natural because those who write health codes generally copy other codes. Even small cities are given complicated sanitary legislative powers by state legislatures. Therefore those who judge a community's health rights by its health laws will get as erroneous an impression as those who judge hygiene instruction in our public schools from printed statements about the frequency and character of such instruction. Advocates of health codes have thought the battle won when boards of health were given almost unlimited power to abate nuisances and told how to exercise those powers. [Illustration: A DAIRY INSPECTOR'S OUTFIT] The slip 'twixt law making and law enforcement is everywhere found. In 1864 New York state prohibited the sale of adulterated milk. Law after law has been made since that time, giving health officials power to revoke licenses of milk dealers and to send men to jail who violated milk laws. We now know that no law will ever stop the present frightful waste of infant lives, counted in thousands annually, unless dairies are frequently inspected and forced to be clean; unless milk is kept at a temperature of about fifty degrees on the train, in the creamery, at the receiving station, and in the milk shop; unless dealers scald and thoroughly cleanse cans in which milk is shipped; unless licenses are taken from farmers, creameries, and retailers who violate the law; unless magistrates use their power to fine or imprison those who poison helpless babies by violating milk laws; and unless mothers are taught to scald and thoroughly cleanse bottles, nipples, cups, and dishes from which milk is fed to the baby. We know that these things are not being done except where men or women make it their business to see that they are done. Experience tells us that inspectors will not consistently do their duty unless those who direct them have regular records of their inspections, study those records, find out work not done properly or promptly, and insist upon thorough inspection. Whether work is done right, whether inspectors do their full duty, whether babies are protected, can be learned only from statements in black and white that show accurately the conditions of dairies and milk shops, the character of milk found and tested by inspectors, and the number of babies known to have been sick or known to have died from intestinal diseases chiefly due to unsafe milk. Any teacher or parent can learn for himself, or can teach children to learn, what steps are taken to guarantee the right to pure milk by using a table such as Table III. Whether conditions at the dairy make pure milk impossible can be told by any one who can read the score card used by New York City (Table IV). TABLE III MILK INSPECTION WITHIN NEW YORK CITY, 1906 ======================================+===============+=============== | New York | Each borough +-------+-------+-------+------- | Stores| Wagons| Stores| Wagons +-------+-------+-------+------- FIELD | | | | Permits issued during 1906 | | | | Permits revoked during 1906 | | | | For discontinuance of selling | | | | For violation of law | | | | Average permits in force in 1906 | | | | | | | | INSPECTION | | | | Regular inspections | | | | Inspections at receiving stations | | | | Total | | | | Average inspections per permit per | | | | year | | | | Specimens examined | | | | Samples taken | | | | | | | | CONDITIONS FOUND | | | | Inspections finding milk above 50° | | | | % of such discoveries to total | | | | inspections | | | | Inspections finding adulteration | | | | Warning given | | | | Prosecuted | | | | % of adulterations found to | | | | inspections | | | | | | | | Rooms connected contrary to | | | | sanitary code | | | | Ice box badly drained | | | | Ice box unclean | | | | Store unclean | | | | Utensils unclean | | | | Milk not properly cooled | | | | Infectious disease | | | | | | | | Persons found selling without permit | | | | | | | | ACTION TAKEN | | | | DESTRUCTION OF MILK | | | | Lots of milk destroyed for being | | | | over 50° | | | | Quarts so destroyed | | | | Lots of milk destroyed for being | | | | sour | | | | Quarts so destroyed | | | | Lots of milk destroyed for being | | | | otherwise adulterated | | | | Quarts so destroyed | | | | Total quarts destroyed | | | | | | | | NOTICES ISSUED | | | | To drain and clean ice box | | | | To clean store | | | | | | | | CRIMINAL ACTIONS BEGUN | | | | For selling adulterated milk | | | | For selling without permit | | | | For interference with inspector | | | | Total | | | | ======================================+===============+=============== TABLE IV Perfect Score 100% Score allowed ...% File No............ DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH (Thirteen items are here omitted) =Dairy Inspection= =Division of Inspections= 1 Inspection No. ...... Time ...... A. P. M. Date ...... 190 2 All persons in the households of those engaged in producing or handling milk are ...... free from all infectious disease ...... 3 Date and nature of last case on farm ...... 4 A sample of the water supply on this farm taken for analysis ...... 190... and found to be ...... ====================================================+=========+======= STABLE | Perfect | Allow ----------------------------------------------------+---------+------- 5 COW STABLE is ... located on elevated ground | | with no stagnant water, hog pen, or privy | | within 100 feet | 1 | ... 6 FLOORS are ... constructed of concrete or | | some nonabsorbent material | 1 | ... 7 Floors are ... properly graded and water-tight | 2 | ... 8 DROPS are ... constructed of concrete, stone, | | or some nonabsorbent material | 2 | ... 9 Drops are ... water-tight | 2 | ... 10 FEEDING TROUGHS, platforms, or cribs are ... | | well lighted and clean | 1 | ... 11 CEILING is constructed of ... and is ... tight | | and dust proof | 2 | ... 12 Ceiling is ... free from hanging straw, dirt, | | or cobwebs | 1 | ... 13 NUMBER OF WINDOWS ... total square feet ... | | which is ... sufficient | 2 | ... 14 Window panes are ... washed and kept clean | 1 | ... 15 VENTILATION consists of ... which is | | sufficient 3, fair 1, insufficient 0 | 3 | ... 16 AIR SPACE is ... cubic feet per cow which is | | ... sufficient (600 and over--3) (500 to | | 600--2) (400 to 500--1) (under 400--0) | 3 | ... 17 INTERIOR of stable painted or whitewashed on | | ... which is satisfactory 2, fair 1, never 0 | 2 | ... 18 WALLS AND LEDGES are ... free from dirt, dust, | | manure, or cobwebs | 2 | ... 19 FLOORS AND PREMISES are ... free from dirt, | | rubbish, or decayed animal or vegetable matter | 1 | ... 20 COW BEDS are ... clean | 1 | ... 21 LIVE STOCK, other than cows, are ... excluded | | from rooms in which milch cows are kept | 2 | ... 22 There is ... direct opening from barn into | | silo or grain pit | 1 | ... 23 BEDDING used is ... clean, dry, and absorbent | 1 | ... 24 SEPARATE BUILDING is ... provided for cows | | when sick | 1 | ... 25 Separate quarters are ... provided for cows | | when calving | 1 | ... 26 MANURE is ... removed daily to at least 200 | | feet from the barn ( ... ft.) | 2 | ... 27 Manure pile is ... so located that the cows | | cannot get at it | 1 | ... 28 LIQUID MATTER is ... absorbed and removed | | daily and ... allowed to overflow and saturate | | ground under or around cow barn | 2 | ... 29 RUNNING WATER supply for washing stables is | | ... located within building | 1 | ... 30 DAIRY RULES of the Department of Health are | | ... posted | 1 | ... | | COW YARD | | 31 COW YARD is ... properly graded and drained | 1 | ... 32 Cow yard is ... clean, dry, and free from | | manure | 2 | ... | | COWS | Perfect | Allow 33 COWS have ... been examined by veterinarian ... | | Date ... 190 Report was | 3 | ... 34 Cows have ... been tested by tuberculin, and | | all tuberculous cows removed | 5 | ... 35 Cows are ... all in good flesh and condition | | at time of inspection | 2 | ... 36 Cows are ... all free from clinging manure and | | dirt. (No. dirty ... ) | 4 | ... 37 LONG HAIRS are ... kept short on belly, flanks, | | udder, and tail | 1 | ... 38 UDDER AND TEATS of cows are ... thoroughly | | cleaned before milking | 2 | ... 39 ALL FEED is ... of good quality and all grain | | and coarse fodders are ... free from dirt and | | mold | 1 | ... 40 DISTILLERY waste or any substance in a state | | of fermentation or putrefaction is ... fed | 1 | ... 41 WATER SUPPLY for cows is ... unpolluted and | | plentiful | 2 | ... | | MILKERS AND MILKING | | 42 ATTENDANTS are ... in good physical condition | 1 | ... 43 Special Milking Suits are ... used | 1 | ... 44 Clothing of milkers is ... clean | 1 | ... 45 Hands of milkers are ... washed clean before | | milking | 1 | ... 46 MILKING is ... done with dry hands | 2 | ... 47 FORE MILK or first few streams from each teat | | is ... discarded | 2 | ... 48 Milk is strained at ... and ... in clean | | atmosphere | 1 | ... 49 Milk strainer is ... clean | 1 | ... 50 MILK is ... cooled to below 50° F. within two | | hours after milking and kept below 50° F. | | until delivered to the creamery ... ° | 2 | ... 51 Milk from cows within 15 days before or 5 days | | after parturition is ... discarded | 1 | ... | | UTENSILS | | 52 MILK PAILS have ... all seams soldered flush | 1 | ... 53 Milk pails are ... of the small-mouthed design, | | top opening not exceeding 8 inches in diameter. | | Diameter ... | 2 | ... 54 Milk pails are ... rinsed with cold water | | immediately after using and washed clean with | | hot water and washing solution | 2 | ... 55 Drying racks are ... provided to expose milk | | pails to the sun | 1 | ... | | MILK HOUSE | | 56 MILK HOUSE is ... located on elevated ground | | with no hog pen, manure pile, or privy within | | 100 feet | 1 | ... 57 Milk house has ... direct communication with | | ... building | 1 | ... 58 Milk house has ... sufficient light and | | ventilation | 1 | ... 59 Floor is ... properly graded and water-tight | 1 | ... 60 Milk house is ... free from dirt, rubbish, and | | all material not used in the handling and | | storage of milk | 1 | ... 61 Milk house has ... running or still supply of | | pure clean water | 1 | ... 62 Ice is ... used for cooling milk and is cut | | from ... | 1 | ... | | WATER | | 63 WATER SUPPLY for utensils is from a ... located | | ... feet deep and apparently is ... pure, | | wholesome, and uncontaminated | 5 | ... 64 Is ... protected against flood or surface | | drainage | 2 | ... 65 There is ... privy or cesspool within 250 feet | | ( ... feet) of source of water supply | 2 | ... 66 There is ... stable, barnyard, or pile of | | manure or other source of contamination within | | 200 feet ( ... feet) of source of water supply | 1 | ... |---------| | 100 | ----------------------------------------------------+---------+------- It is a great pity that we Americans have taken so long to learn that laws do not enforce themselves, that even good motives and good intentions in the best of officials do not insure good deeds. Thousands of lives are being lost every year, millions of days taken from industry and wasted by unnecessary sickness, millions of dollars spent on curing disease, the working life of the nation shortened, the hours of enjoyment curtailed, because we have not seen the great gap between health laws and health-law enforcement. In our municipal, state, and national politics we have made the same mistake of concentrating our attention upon the morals and pretensions of candidates and officials instead of judging government by what government does. Gains of men and progress of law are useful to mankind only when converted into deeds that make men freer in the enjoyment of health and earning power. In protecting health, as in reforming government, an ounce of efficient achievement is worth infinitely more than a moral explosion. One month of routine--unpicturesque, unexciting efficiency--will accomplish more than a scandal or catastrophe. Such routine is possible only when special machinery is constantly at work, comparing work done with work expected, health practice with health ideals. Where such machinery does not yet exist, volunteers, civic leagues, boys' brigades, etc., can easily prove the need for it by filling out an improvised score card for the school building, railroad station, business streets, "well-to-do" and poor resident streets, such as follows: TABLE V SCORE CARD FOR CITIZEN USE =======================================================+=======+====== |Perfect|Allow -------------------------------------------------------+-------+------ _Schoolhouse_ | | Well ventilated, 20; badly, 0-10 | 20 | ... Cleaned regularly, 20; irregularly, 0-10 | 20 | ... Feather duster prohibited, 10 | 10 | ... No dry sweeping, 10 | 10 | ... Has adequate play space, 10; inadequate, 0-5 | 10 | ... Has clean drinking water, 10 | 10 | ... Has clean outbuildings and toilet, 20: unclean, 0-10 | 20 | ... | ------| | 100 | | | _Church and Sunday School_ | | Well ventilated, 20; badly, 0-10 | 20 | ... Heat evenly distributed, 20; unevenly, 0-10 | 20 | ... Cleaned regularly, 20; irregularly, 0-10 | 20 | ... Without carpets, 20 | 20 | ... Without plush seats, 20 | 20 | ... | ------| | 100 | | | _Streets_ | | Sewerage underground, 20; surface, 0-10 | 20 | ... No pools neglected, 10 | 10 | ... No garbage piled up, 10 | 10 | ... Swept regularly, 20; irregularly, 0-10 | 20 | ... Sprinkled and flushed, 10 | 10 | ... Has baskets for refuse, 10 | 10 | ... All districts equally cleaned, 20; unequally, 0-10 | 20 | ... | ------| | 100 | -------------------------------------------------------+-------+------ Until recently the most reliable test of health rights not enforced was the number of cases of preventable, communicable, contagious, infectious, transmissible diseases, such as smallpox, typhoid fever, yellow fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough. By noticing streets and houses where these diseases occurred, students learned a century ago that the darker and more congested the street the greater the prevalence of fevers and the greater the chance that one attacked would die. The well-to-do remove from their houses and their streets the dirt, the decomposed garbage, and stagnant pools from which fevers seem to spring. It was because fevers and congestion go together that laws were made to protect the well-to-do, the comfortable, and the clean against the slum. It is true to-day that if you study your city and stick a pin in the map, street for street, where infection is known to exist, you will find the number steadily increase as you go from uncongested to congested streets and houses, from districts of high rent to districts of low rent. Because it is easier to learn the number of persons who have measles and diphtheria and smallpox than it is to learn the incomes and living conditions prejudicial to health, and because our laws grant protection against communicable diseases to a child in whatever district he may be born, the record of cases of communicable diseases has heretofore been the best test of health rights unenforced. Even in country schools it would make a good lesson in hygiene and civics to have the children keep a record of absences on account of transmissible disease, and then follow up the record with a search for conditions that gave the disease a good chance. But to wait for contagion before taking action has been found an expensive way of learning where health protection is needed. Even when infected persons and physicians are prompt in reporting the presence of disease it is often found that conditions that produced the disease have been overlooked and neglected. For example, smallpox comes very rarely to our cities to-day. Wherever boards of health are not worried by "children's diseases," as is often the case, and wait for some more fearful disease such as smallpox, there you will find that garbage in the streets, accumulated filth, surface sewers, congested houses, badly ventilated, unsanitary school buildings and churches are furnishing a soil to breed an epidemic in a surprisingly short time. Where, on the other hand, boards of health regard every communicable disease as a menace to health rights, you will find that health officials take certain steps in a certain order to remove the soil in which preventable diseases grow. These steps, worked out by the sanitarians of Europe and America after a century of experiment, are seen to be very simple and are applicable by the average layman and average physician to the simplest village or rural community. How many of these steps are taken by your city? by your county? by your state? 1. Notification of danger when it is first recognized. 2. Registration at a central office of facts as to each dangerous thing or person. 3. Examination of the seat of danger to discover its extent, its cost, and new seats of danger created by it. 4. Isolation of the dangerous thing or person. 5. Constant attention to prevent extension to other persons or things. 6. Destruction or removal of disease germs or other causes of danger. 7. Analysis and record, for future use, of lessons learned by experience. 8. Education of the public to understand its relation to danger checked or removed, its responsibility for preventing a recurrence of the same danger, and the importance of promptly recognizing and checking similar danger elsewhere. With a chart showing what districts have the greatest number of children and adults suffering from measles, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, consumption, one can go within his own city or to a strange city and in a surprisingly short time locate the nuisances, the dangerous buildings, the open sewers, the cesspools, the houses without bathing facilities, the dark rooms, the narrow streets, the houses without play space and breathing space, the districts without parks, the polluted water sources, the unsanitary groceries and milk shops. In country districts a comparison of town with town as to the prevalence of infection will enable one easily to learn where slop water is thrown from the back stoop, whether the well, the barn, and the privy are near together. [Illustration: THE BABY, NOT THE LAW, IS THE TEST OF INFANT PROTECTION IN COUNTRY AND IN CITY] Testing health rights requires not only that there be a board of health keeping track of and publishing every case of infection, but it requires further that one community be compared with other communities of similar size, and that each community be compared with itself year for year. These comparisons have not been made and records do not exist in many states. FOOTNOTES: [3] A striking demonstration of law enforcement that followed lawmaking is given in _The Real Triumph of Japan_, L.L. Seaman, M.D. CHAPTER IV THE BEST INDEX TO COMMUNITY HEALTH IS THE PHYSICAL WELFARE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN Compulsory education laws, the gregarious instinct of children, the ambition of parents, their self-interest, and the activities of child-labor committees combine to-day to insure that one or more representatives of practically every family in the United States will be in public, parochial, or private schools for some part of the year. The purpose of having these families represented in school is not only to give the children themselves the education which is regarded as a fundamental right of the American child, but to protect the community against the social and industrial evils and the dangers that result from ignorance. Great sacrifices are made by state, individual taxpayer, and individual parent in order that children and state may be benefited by education. Almost no resistance is found to any demand made upon parent or taxpayer, if it can be shown that compliance will remove obstructions to school progress. If, therefore, by any chance, we can find at school a test of home conditions affecting both the child's health and his progress at school, it will be easy, in the name of the school, to correct those conditions, just as it will be easy to read the index, because the child is under state control for six hours a day for the greater part of the years from six to fourteen.[4] [Illustration: (Facsimile) PHYSICAL RECORD.] What, then, is this test of home conditions prejudicial to health that will register the fact as a thermometer tells us the temperature, or as a barometer shows moisture and air pressure? The house address alone is not enough, for many children surrounded by wealth are denied health rights, such as the right to play, to breathe pure air, to eat wholesome food, to live sanely. Scholarship will not help, because the frailest child is often the most proficient. Manners mislead, for, like dress, they are but externals, the product of emulation, of other people's influence upon us rather than of our living conditions. Nationality is an index to nothing significant in America, where all race and nationality differences melt into Americanisms, all responding in about the same way to American opportunity. No, our test must be something that cannot be put on and off, cannot be left at home, cannot be concealed or pretended, something inseparable from the child and beyond his control. This test it has been conclusively proved in Chicago, Boston, Brookline, Philadelphia, and particularly in New York City, is the physical condition of the school child. To learn this condition the child must be examined and reëxamined for the physical signs called for by the card on page 34. Weight, height, and measurements are needed to tell the whole story. When this card is filled out for every child in a class or school or city, the story told points directly to physical, mental, or health rights neglected. If for every child there is begun a special card, that will tell his story over and over again during his school life, noting every time he is sick and every time he is examined, the progress of the community as well as of the child will be clearly shown. Such a history card (p. 314) is now in use in certain New York schools, as well as in several private schools and colleges. Have you ever watched such an examination? By copying this card your family physician can give you a demonstration in a very short time as to the method and advantage of examination at school. The school physician goes at nine o'clock to the doctor's room in the public school, or, if there is no doctor's room, to that portion of the hall or principal's office where the doctor does his work. The teacher or the nurse stands near to write the physician's decision. The doctor looks the child over, glances at his eyes, his color, the fullness of his cheeks, the soundness of his flesh, etc. If the physician says "B," the principal or nurse marks out the other letter opposite to number 1, so that the card shows that there is bad nutrition. In looking at the teeth and throat a little wooden stick is used to push down the tongue. There should be a stick for every child, so that infection cannot possibly be carried from one to the other. If this is impossible, the stick should be dipped in an antiseptic such as boric acid or listerine. If, because of swollen tonsils, there is but a little slit open in the throat, or if teeth are decayed, the mark is Y or B. The whole examination takes only a couple of minutes, but the physician often finds out in this short time facts that will save a boy and his parents a great deal of trouble. Very often this examination tells a story that overworked mothers have studiously concealed by bright ribbons and clean clothes. I remember one little girl of fourteen who looked very prosperous, but the physician found her so thin that he was sure that for some time she had eaten too little, and called her anæmic. He later found that the mother had seven children whom she was trying to clothe and shelter and feed with only ten dollars a week. A way was found to increase her earnings and to give all the children better living conditions,--all because of the short story told by the examination card. In another instance the card's story led to the discovery of recent immigrant parents earning enough, but, because unacquainted with American ways and with their new home, unable to give their children proper care. [Illustration: LOOKING FOR ENLARGED TONSILS AND BAD TEETH Note the mouth breather waiting] The most extensive inquiry yet made in the United States as to the physical condition of school children is that conducted by the board of health in New York City since 1905. From March, 1905, to January 1, 1908, 275,641 children have been examined, and 198,139 or 71.9 per cent have been found to have defects, as shown in Table VI. TABLE VI PHYSICAL EXAMINATION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN--PERFORMED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH IN THE BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN, 1905-1907 =============================================+==========+=========== | Total | Percentage ---------------------------------------------+----------+----------- Number of children examined | 275,641 | 100 Number of children needing treatment | 198,139 | 71.9 _Defects found:_ | | Malnutrition | 16,021 | 5.8 Diseased anterior or posterior cervical | | glands | 125,555 | 45.5 Chorea | 3,776 | 1.3 Cardiac disease | 3,385 | 1.2 Pulmonary disease | 2,841 | 1.0 Skin disease | 4,557 | 1.6 Deformity of spine, chest, or extremities | 4,892 | 1.7 Defective vision | 58,494 | 21.2 Defective hearing | 3,540 | 1.2 Obstructed nasal breathing | 43,613 | 15.8 Defective teeth | 136,146 | 49.0 Deformed palate | 3,625 | 1.3 Hypertrophied tonsils | 75,431 | 27.4 Posterior nasal growths | 46,631 | 16.9 Defective mentality | 7,090 | 2.5 =============================================+==========+========= It is generally believed that New York children must have more defects than children elsewhere. If this assumption is wrong, if children in other parts of the United States are as apt to have eye defects, enlarged tonsils, and bad teeth as the children of the great metropolis, then the army of children needing attention would be seven out of ten, or over 14,000,000. Whether these figures overstate or understate the truth, the school authorities of the country should find out. The chances are that the school in which you are particularly interested is no exception. To learn what the probable number needing attention is, divide your total by ten and multiply the result by seven. The seriousness of every trouble and its particular relation to school progress and to the general public health will be explained in succeeding chapters. The point to be made here is that the examination of the school child discloses in advance of epidemics and breakdowns the children whose physical condition makes them most likely to "come down" with "catching diseases," least able to withstand an attack, less fitted to profit fully from educational and industrial opportunity. The only index to community conditions prejudicial to health that will make known the child of the well-to-do who needs attention is the record of physical examination. No other means to-day exists by which the state can, in a recognized and acceptable way, discover the failure of these well-to-do parents to protect their children's health and take steps to teach and, if necessary, to compel the parents to substitute living conditions that benefit for conditions that injure the child. Among the important health rights that deserve more emphasis is the right to be healthy though not "poor." A child's lungs may be weak, breathing capacity one third below normal, weight and nutrition deficient, and yet that child cannot contract tuberculosis unless directly exposed to the germs of that disease. But such a child can contract chronic hunger, can in a hundred ways pay the penalty for being pampered or otherwise neglected. Physical examination is needed to find every child that has too little vitality, no zest for play, little resistance, even though sent to a private school and kept away from dirt and contagion. The New York Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children visited fourteen hundred homes of children found to have one or more of the physical defects shown on the above card. While they found that low incomes have more than their proper share of defects and of unsanitary living conditions, yet they saw emphatically also that low incomes do not monopolize physical defects and unsanitary living conditions. Many families having $20, $30, $40 a week gave their children neither medical nor dental care. The share each income had in unfavorable conditions is shown by the summary in the following table. TABLE VII SHOWING PER CENT SHARE OF PHYSICAL DEFECTS OF CHILDREN, UNFAVORABLE HOUSING CONDITIONS, AND CHILD MORTALITY FOUND AMONG EACH FAMILY-INCOME GROUP ========================+============================================= | WEEKLY FAMILY INCOME +-----+------+------+------+------+------+---- | | | | | | $30 | |$0-10|$10-15|$16-19|$20-25|$25-29| and |$100 | | | | | | over | +-----+------+------+------+------+------+---- | % | % | % | % | % | % | % ------------------------+-----+------+------+------+------+------+---- Proportion to total | | | | | | | families | 8.4 | 32.7 | 15.2 | 23.8 | 3.9 | 15.6 | 100 | | | | | | | _Physical defects_: | | | | | | | Malnutrition |13.8 | 43.4 | 12.4 | 17.9 | 3.4 | 9. | " Enlarged glands | 8.6 | 37.4 | 14.6 | 22.6 | 3.6 | 13.2 | " Defective breathing | 9.6 | 32.3 | 15.5 | 24.4 | 2.8 | 15.4 | " Bad teeth | 8.1 | 32.2 | 15.3 | 24.5 | 4.8 | 15.1 | " Defective vision | 8.2 | 34.6 | 16.5 | 22.1 | 1.4 | 17.3 | " | | | | | | | _Unfavorable housing | | | | | | | conditions_: | | | | | | | Dark rooms | 8.2 | 35.4 | 18.1 | 18.4 | 3.8 | 15.9 | " Closed air shaft | 6.9 | 30.2 | 18.9 | 26.4 | 3.2 | 19.6 | " No baths |10.1 | 38.5 | 16.5 | 19.7 | 4.4 | 10.8 | " Paying over 25% rent | 8.6 | 27.6 | 21.7 | 14.7 | ... | 27.6 | " | | | | | | | _Child Mortality_: | | | | | | | Families losing | | | | | | | children |10.3 | 35.5 | 14.7 | 20.5 | 5.4 | 13.6 | " Families losing no | | | | | | | children | 6.4 | 30.1 | 15.7 | 26.9 | 2.4 | 18.6 | " Children dead |11.7 | 36.2 | 13.1 | 20.8 | 6.1 | 12.1 | " Infants dying from | | | | | | | intestinal diseases | 8.9 | 37.6 | 18.3 | 18.8 | 4. | 12.4 | " Children working | 4.2 | 19.5 | 13.2 | 30.3 | 11.5 | 21.3 | " ========================+============================================= The index should be read in all grades from kindergarten to high school and college. Last winter the chairman of the Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children was invited to speak of physical examination before an association of high-school principals. He began by saying, "This question does not concern you as directly as it does the grammar-school principals, but you can help secure funds to help their pupils." One after another the high-school principals present told--one of his own daughter, another of his honor girls, a third of his honor boys--the same story of neglected headaches due to eye strain, breakdowns due to undiscovered underfeeding, underexercise, or overwork. Are we coming to the time when the state will step in to prevent any boy or girl in high school, college, or professional school from earning academic honors at the expense of health? Harmful conditions within schoolrooms and on school grounds will not be neglected where pupils, teachers, school and family physicians, and parents set about to find and to remove the causes of physical defects. Disease centers outside of school buildings quickly register themselves in the schoolroom and in the person of a child who is paying the penalty for living in contact with a disease center. If a child sleeps in a dark, ill-ventilated, crowded room, the result will show in his eyes and complexion; if he has too little to eat or the wrong thing to eat, he will be underweight and undersized; if his nutrition is inadequate and his food improper, he is apt to have eye trouble, adenoids, and enlarged tonsils. He may have defective lung capacity, due to improper breathing, too little exercise in the fresh air, too little food. Existence of physical defects throws little light on income at home, but conclusively shows lack of attention or of understanding. Several days' absence of a child from school leads, in every well-regulated school, to a visit to the child's home or to a letter or card asking that the absence be explained. Even newly arrived immigrants have learned the necessity and the advantage of writing the teacher an "excuse" when their children are absent. Furthermore, neighbors' children are apt to learn by friendly inquiry what the teacher may not have learned by official inquiry, why their playmate is no longer on the street or at the school desk. While physicians are sometimes willing to violate the law that compels notification of infection, rarely would a physician fail to caution an infected family against an indiscriminate mingling with neighbors. Whether the family physician is careless or not, the explanation of the absence which is demanded by the school would give also announcement of any danger that might exist in the home where the child is ill. If it be said that in hundreds of thousands of cases the child labor law is violated and that therefore school examination is not an index to the poverty or neglect occasioning such child labor, it should be remembered that the best physical test is the child's presence at school. The first step in thorough physical examination is a thorough school census,--the counting of every child of school age. Moreover, a relatively small number of children who violate the child labor law are the only members of the family who ought to be in school. Younger children furnish the index and occasion the visit that should discover the violation of law. Appreciation of health, as well as its neglect, is indexed by the physical condition of school children. Habits of health are the other side of the shield of health rights unprotected. Physical examination will discover what parents are trying to do as well as what they fail to do because of their ignorance, indifference, or poverty. In so far as parents are alive to the importance of health, the school examination furnishes the occasion of enlisting them in crusades to protect the public health and to enforce health rights. The Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children found many parents unwilling to answer questions as to their own living conditions until told that the answers would make it easier to get better health environment not only for their own children but for their neighbors' children. Generally speaking, fathers and mothers can easily be interested in any kind of campaign in the name of health and in behalf of children. The advantage of starting this health crusade from the most popular American institution, the public school,--the advantage of instituting corrective work through democratic machinery such as the public school,--is incalculable. To any teacher, pastor, civic leader, health official, or taxpayer wanting to take the necessary steps for the removal of conditions prejudicial to health and for the enforcement of health rights of child and adult, the best possible advice is to learn the facts disclosed by the physical examination of your school children. See that those facts are used first for the benefit of the children themselves, secondly for the benefit of the community as a whole. If your school has not yet introduced the thorough physical examination of school children, take steps at once to secure such examination. If necessary, volunteer to test the eyes and the breathing of one class, persuade one or two physicians to coöperate until you have proved to parent, taxpayer, health official, and teacher that such an examination is both a money-saving, energy-saving step and an act of justice. We shall have occasion to emphasize over and over again the fact that it is the use of information and not the gathering of information that improves the health. The United States Weather Bureau saves millions of dollars annually, not because flags are raised and bulletins issued foretelling the weather, but because shipowners, sailors, farmers, and fruit growers obey the warnings. Mere examination of school children does little good. The child does not breathe better or see better because the school physician fills out a card stating that there is something wrong with his eyes, nose, and tonsils. The examination tells where the need is, what children should have special attention, what parents need to be warned as to the condition of the child, what home conditions need to be corrected. If the facts are not used, that is an argument not against obtaining facts but against disregarding them. In understanding medical examination we should keep clearly in mind the distinction between medical school inspection, medical school examination, and medical treatment at school. Medical inspection is the search for communicable disease. The results of medical inspection, therefore, furnish an index to the presence of communicable diseases in the community. Medical examination is the search for physical defects, some of which furnish the soil for contagion. Its results are an index not only to contagion but to conditions that favor contagion by producing or aggravating physical defects and by reducing vitality. Medical treatment at school refers to steps taken under the school roof, or by school funds, to remove the defects or check the infection brought to light by medical inspection and medical examination. Treatment is not an index. In separate chapters are given the reasons for and against trying to treat at school symptoms of causes that exist outside of school. When, how often, and by whom inspection and examination should be made is also discussed later. The one point of this chapter is this: if we really want to know where in our community health rights are endangered, the shortest cut to the largest number of dangers is the physical examination of children at school,--private, parochial, reformatory, public, high, college. Apart from the advantage to the community of locating its health problems, physical examination is due every child. No matter where his schooling or at whose expense, every child has the right to advance as fast as his own powers will permit without hindrance from his own or his playmates' removable defects. He has the right to learn that simplified breathing is more necessary than simplified spelling, that nose plus adenoids makes backwardness, that a decayed tooth multiplied by ten gives malnutrition, and that hypertrophied tonsils are even more menacing than hypertrophied playfulness. He has the right to learn that his own mother in his own home, with the aid of his own family physician, can remove his physical defects so that it will be unnecessary for outsiders to give him a palliative free lunch at school, thus neglecting the cause of his defects and those of fellow-pupils. FOOTNOTES: [4] Sir John E. Gorst in _The Children of the Nation_ reads the index of the health of school children in the United Kingdom; John Spargo, in _The Bitter Cry of the Children_, and Simon N. Patten in _The New Basis of Civilization_, suggest the necessity for reading the index in the United States and for heeding it. PART II. READING THE INDEX TO HEALTH RIGHTS CHAPTER V MOUTH BREATHING If the physical condition of school children is our best index to community health, who is to read the index? Unless the story is told in a language that does not require a secret code or cipher, unless some one besides the physician can read it, we shall be a very long time learning the health needs of even our largest cities, and until doomsday learning the health needs of small towns and rural districts. Fortunately the more important signs can be easily read by the average parent or teacher. Fortunately, too, it is easy to persuade mothers and teachers that they can lighten their own labors, add to their efficiency, and help their children by being on the watch for mouth breathing, for strained, crossed, or inflamed eyes, for decaying teeth, for nervousness and sluggishness. Years ago, when I taught school in a Minnesota village, I had never heard of adenoids, hypertrophied tonsils, myopia, hypermetropia, or the relation of these defects and of neglected teeth to malnutrition, truancy, sickness, and dullness. I now see how I could have saved myself several failures, the taxpayers a great deal of money, the parents a great deal of disappointment, and many children a life of inefficiency, had I known what it is easy for all teachers and parents to learn to-day. [Illustration: MOUTH BREATHERS BEFORE "ADENOID PARTY"] The features in the following cut are familiar to teachers the world over. Parents may reconcile themselves to such lips, eyes, and mouths, but seldom do even neglectful parents fail to notice "mouth breathing." Children afflicted by such features suffer torment from playfellows whose scornful epithets are echoed by the looking-glass. No fashion plate ever portrays such faces. No athlete, thinker, or hero looks out from printed page with such clouded, listless eyes. The more wonder, therefore, that the meaning of these outward signs has not been appreciated and their causes removed; conclusive reason, also, for not being misled by recent talk of mouth breathing, adenoids, and enlarged tonsils, into the belief that the race is physically deteriorating. Three generations ago Charles Dickens in his _Uncommercial Traveller_ pointed out a relation between open mouths and backwardness and delinquency that would have saved millions of dollars and millions of life failures had the civilized world listened. He was speaking of delinquent girls from seventeen to twenty years old in Wapping Workhouse: "I have never yet ascertained why a refractory habit should affect the tonsils and the uvula; but I have always observed that refractories of both sexes and every grade, between a Ragged School and the Old Bailey, have one voice, in which the tonsils and uvula gain a diseased ascendency." To-day we are just beginning to see over again the connection between inability to breathe through the nose and inability to see clearly right from wrong and inability to want to do what teachers and parents wish. Physical examinations show now, and might just as well have shown fifty years ago, that the great majority of truants and juvenile offenders have adenoids and enlarged tonsils. A recent examination made by the New York board of health on 150 children in one school made up from the truant school, the juvenile court, and Randall's Island, showed that only three were without some physical defect and that 137 had adenoids and large tonsils. Dickens wrote his observations in 1860; in 1854 the New York Juvenile Asylum was started, and up to 1908 cared for 40,000 children; in 1860 William Meyer pointed out, so that no one need misunderstand, the harmful effects of adenoids. What would have been the story of juvenile waywardness, of sickness, of educational advancement, had examinations for defective breathing been started in 1853 or 1860 instead of 1905; if one per cent of the attention that has been given to teaching mouth breathers the ten commandments had been spent on removing the nasal obstructions to intelligence? [Illustration: A "DEGENERATE" MADE NORMAL BY REMOVAL OF ADENOIDS] William Hegel, who is pictured on page 48, before his tonsils and adenoids were removed was described by his father in this way: "When playing with other boys on the street he seems dazed, and sluggish to grasp the various situations occurring in the course of the game. When he decides to do something he runs in a heedless, senseless way, as if running away,--will bump against something, pedestrian or building, before he comes to himself; seems dazed all the time. When told something by his mother he giggles in the most exasperating way, for which he receives a whipping quite often." The father said the whipping was of no avail. The child was restless, talkative, and snored during sleep. He had an insatiable appetite. He was removed or transferred from five different schools in New York City. To get redress the father took him to the board of education, whence he was referred to the assistant chief medical inspector of the department of health, whose examination revealed immensely large fungous-looking tonsils and excessive pharyngeal granulations (adenoids). He was operated on at a clinic. The tonsils and adenoids removed are pictured on the opposite page, reduced one third. After the operation the child was visited by the assistant medical inspector. There was a marked improvement in his facial expression,--he looked intelligent, was alert and interested. When asked how he felt, he answered, "I feel fine now." It required about fifteen minutes to get his history, during all of which time he was responsive and interested, constantly correcting statements of his father and volunteering other information. Eleven days after the operation he was reported to have had no more epileptic seizures. "Doesn't talk in sleep. Doesn't snore. Doesn't toss about the bed. Has more self-control. Tries to read the paper. His immoderate appetite is not present." [Illustration: REASON ENOUGH FOR MOUTH BREATHING Adenoid and tonsils reduced one third] While the open mouth is a sure sign of defects of breathing, it is not true that the closed mouth, when awake and with other people, is proof that there are no such defects. Children breathe through the mouth not because they like to, not because they have drifted into bad habits, not because their parents did, not because the human race is deteriorating, but because their noses are stopped up,--because they must. A mouth breather is not only always taking unfiltered dirt germs into his system but is always in the condition of a person who has slept in a stuffy room. What extra effort adenoids mean can be ascertained by closing the nostrils for a forenoon. For many reasons it is perhaps unfortunate that we can breathe at all when the nose is stopped up. If we could see with our ears as well as with our eyes, we should probably not take as good care of our eyes. In this respect the whole race has experienced the misfortune of the man of whom the coroner reported, "Killed by falling too short a distance." Because we can breathe through the mouth we have neglected for centuries the nasal passages. When a cold stops the nose we necessarily breathe through the mouth. Unfortunately children make the necessary effort required to breathe through the nose long before other people notice the lines along the nose and the slow mind. Mouth breathing will show with the child asleep, before the child awake loses power to accommodate his effort to the task. Therefore the importance of a physical test at school to detect the beginnings of adenoids and large tonsils before these symptoms become obvious to others. No child should be exempted from this examination because of apocryphal theories that only the poor, the slum child, the refractory, or the unclean have defects in breathing. This very afternoon a friend has told me of her year abroad with a girl of nine, whose parents are very wealthy. The girl is anæmic. Her backwardness humiliates her parents, especially because she gave great promise until two years ago. High-priced physicians have prescribed for her. It happens that they are too eminent to give attention to such simple troubles as adenoids that can be felt and seen. They are looking for complications of the liver or inflammation of muscles at the base of the brain. One celebrated French savant found the adenoids, assured the mother that the child would outgrow them, and advised merely that she be compelled to breathe through the nose. The mother and nursemaids nag the child all day. The poor unwise mother sits up nights to hold the child's jaws tight in the hope that air coming through the nose will absorb the adenoids. The mother is made nervous. Of course this makes the child more nervous and adds to the evil effects of adenoids. If the mother had the good fortune to be very poor, she could not sit up nights, and would long ago have decided either to let the child alone or else to have the trouble removed. Adenoids are not a city specialty. Country earache is largely due to adenoids or to inflammation that quickly leads to adenoids. In 415 villages of New York state twelve per cent were found to be mouth breathers. For two summers I have known a lad named Fred. He lives at the seashore. Throughout his twelve years he has lived in a veritable El Dorado of health and nature beauty. Groves and dunes and flora vie with the blues of ocean and sky in resting the eye and in filling the soul with that harmony which is said to make for sound living. Yet to a child, Fred's schoolmates are experts on patent medicines and on the heredity that is alleged to be responsible for bad temper, running sores, tuberculosis, anæmia, and weak eyes. Freddie is particularly favored. His well-to-do parents have supplied him with ponies, games, and bicycles. Nothing prevents his breathing salt air fresh from the north pole but hermetically sealed windows. The father thinks it absurd to make a fuss over adenoids. Didn't he have them when a boy, and doesn't he weigh two hundred pounds and "make good money"? The mother never knew of operations for such trifles when she taught school; she supposes her boy needs an operation, but "just can't bear to see the dear child hurt." As for Fred, he breathes through his mouth, talks through his nose, grows indifferent to boy's fun, fails to earn promotion at school, and fears that "I won't be strong in spite of all the patent medicine I've taken." Father, mother, and Fred feel profound pity for the city child living so far from nature. Adenoids are not monopolized by children whose parents are ignorant of the importance of them and of physical examination. Last summer I was asked by a small boy to buy some chocolate. A glance at his cigar box with its two or three uninviting things for sale showed that the boy was really begging. He had thick lips, open mouth, "misty" eyes, and a nasal twang. I asked him if his teacher had not told him he had lumps back of his nose and could not breathe right. He said, "No." I explained then that he could make a great deal more money if he talked like other boys, stepped livelier, and breathed as other people breathe. He said he had "been by a doctor onct but didn't want to be op'rated." I turned to my companion and asked, "Have you never noted those same lines on your boy's face?" Although he had been lecturing on mouth breathers, he had never noticed his own boy's trouble. He hastened home and found the infallible signs. The mother declared it could not be true of her boy. About five months before, their family physician had said of the child's earache, "The same inflammation of the nasal passages that causes earache causes adenoids; you must be on the lookout." Although in the country, the boy's appetite was not good and his zest for play had flagged. They had looked for the trouble to back generations and in psychology books,--everywhere but at the boy's face, in his mouth, and in his nose. After the operation, which took less than two minutes, the appetite was ravenous, the eyes cleared, and the spirit rebounded to its old buoyancy that craved worlds to conquer. The new personal experience made a deep impression upon my friend's mind. He wanted everybody to know how easy it was to overlook a child's distress. One person after another had a story to tell him; even the janitor said: "You'd ought to have seen our John at sixteen. He spent a week by the hospital." The only people who do not seem to know more than the new convert are the mouth breathers whom he religiously stops on the street. The indexes to adenoids and large tonsils for the teacher to read at school are: 1. Inability to breathe through the nose. 2. A chronically running nose, accompanied by frequent nose-bleeds and a cough to clear the throat. 3. Stuffy speech and delayed learning to talk. "Common" is pronounced "cobbéd"; "nose," "dose"; and "song," "sogg." 4. A narrow upper jaw and irregular crowding of the teeth. 5. Deafness. 6. Chorea or nervousness. 7. Inflamed eyes and conjunctivitis. The adenoids and large tonsils discovered at school are an index: 1. To children needlessly handicapped in school work. 2. To teachers needlessly burdened. 3. To whole classes held back by afflicted children. 4. To breeding grounds for disease. 5. To homes where children's diseases and tuberculosis are most likely to break out and flourish. 6. To parents who need instruction in their duty to their children, to themselves, and to their neighbors, and who are ignorant of the way in which "catching" diseases originate and spread. The riot that occurred when the adenoids of children in a school on the "East Side" in New York City were removed without the preliminary of convincing the parents as to the advantages of the operation was merely a demand for the "right to knowledge," which is never overlooked with impunity. Reluctance to permit operation on a young child, and the natural shrinking of a parent at seeing a child under the surgeon's knife, require the teacher or school physician or nurse to answer fully the usual questions of the hesitant mother and father. 1. Is the operation necessary? Will the child not outgrow its adenoids? Usually the adenoid growths atrophy or dry up after the age of puberty. Adenoids are not uncommon in adults, however. The surgeon general of the army reports that during the year 1905, out of 3004 operations on officers and enlisted men in service, there were 225 operations on the nose, mouth, and pharynx, 103 of which were operations for adenoids and enlarged or hypertrophied tonsils. Allowing the child to "outgrow" adenoids may mean not only that he is being subjected to infection chronically but that his body is allowed to be permanently deformed and his health endangered. Beginning at the age of the second dentition, the bones of jaw, nose, throat, and chest are undergoing important changes--nasal occlusion. Adenoids left to atrophy--if large enough to cause mouth breathing--may mean atrophy of this developing process, permanent disfiguration of face, and permanent deformity of chest and lungs. 2. Will the growth recur? In a few cases it does recur; frequently either because it was not desirable to make a complete removal of the adenoid tissue or because the surgeon was careless. If the growths do recur, then they must be removed again. 3. Is the operation a dangerous one? 4. Is an anæsthetic necessary? 5. Will the operation cure the child of all its troubles? These questions are best answered by the process and results of an "adenoid party," which was given especially for the benefit of this book, every step and symptom of which were carefully studied. The seven children pictured here were discovered by their school physician to have moderately large adenoid growths,--one boy having enlarged tonsils also. [Illustration: MOUTH BREATHERS IMMEDIATELY AFTER "ADENOID PARTY"] The picture on page 46 was taken by flash light at 2.30 P.M., January 15, 1908. At 3 P.M. the principal escorted these children into the operating room at Vanderbilt Clinic. The doctor examined the throat and nose of each child, entered the name and age of each, together with his diagnosis, on a clinic card, sending each child into the next room after examination. He then called the first boy and explained that it would hurt, but that it would be over in a minute. The principal stood by and told him to be brave and remember the five cents he could have for ice cream afterwards. The clinic nurse tied a large towel about him and put him in her lap; with one hand she held his clasped hands, while the other held his head back. The doctor then took the little instrument--the curette--and pushed it up back of the soft palate, and with one twist brought out the offending spongy lump. The boy's head was immediately held over a basin of running water. He was so occupied with spitting out the blood that rushed down to choke him that he hadn't time to cry before the acute pain had ceased. The rush of cool air through his nostrils was such a pleasurable sensation that he smiled as the school nurse escorted him out into the hall to wait for his companions. At 3.30 P.M. all seven children were out in the hall, all seven mouths were closed, and all seven faces were clothed with the sleepy, peaceful expression that comes with rest from the prolonged labor of trying to get enough air. At 3.45 P.M. they had been all reëxamined by the doctor, and a few tag ends were picked out of the nasopharynx of one child. At 4 P.M. the "party" had returned to the Children's Aid Society's school and to the ice cream that follows each adenoid party. It is worth while to tell mothers stories of the "marvelous improvement in school progress of those children whose brains have been poisoned and starved by the accursed adenoid growths, and how their bodies fairly bloom when the mysterious and awful incubus is removed," to use the words of one school principal. It is worth while to show them "before" and "after" pictures, and "before" and "after" children, and "before" and "after" school marks. CHAPTER VI CATCHING DISEASES, COLDS, DISEASED GLANDS Deadly fevers, the plague, black death, cholera, malaria, smallpox, taught mankind invaluable lessons. Millions of human beings died before the mind of man devoted itself to preventing the diseases for which no sure cure had been found. Efforts to conquer these diseases were tardy because men were taught that some unseen power was punishing men and governments for their sins. The difference between the old and the new way is shown powerfully by a painting in the Liverpool Gallery entitled "The Plague." A mediæval village is strewn with the dead and dying. Bloated, spotted faces look into the eyes of ghouls as laces and jewelry are torn from bodies not yet cold. In the foreground a muscular giant, paragon of conscious virtue, clad like John the Baptist and Bible in hand, finds his way among his plague-stricken fellow-townsmen, urging them to turn from their sins. Modern efficiency learns of the first outbreak of the plague, isolates the patient, kills rats and their fleas which spread the disease, thoroughly cleanses or destroys, if necessary, all infected clothing, bedding, floors, and walls, and makes it possible for us to go on living for each other with a better chance of "bringing forth fruits worthy for repentance." Where boards of health make it compulsory to report cases of sickness due to contagion, health records are a reliable index to "catching" diseases. But now that the chief infection is the kind that afflicts children, we can read the index before the outbreak that calls in a physician to diagnose the case. School examination shows which children have defects that welcome and encourage disease germs. It points to homes that cultivate germs, and consequently menace other homes. To locate children who have enlarged tonsils may prevent a diphtheria epidemic. To detect in September those who are undernourished, who have bad teeth, and who breathe through the mouth will help forecast winter's outbreaks of scarlet fever and measles. One dollar spent at this season in examination for soil hospitable to disease germs may save fifty dollars otherwise necessary for inspection and cure of contagious diseases. It is harder at first to interest a community in medical examination than in medical inspection, because we are all afraid of "catching" diseases, while few of us know how they originate and how they can be prevented by correcting the unfavorable conditions which physical examination of school children will bring to light. Courses in germ sociology are therefore of prime necessity. How do germs act? On what do they live? Why do they move from place to place? What causes them to become extinct? With few exceptions, germs migrate for the same reason as man,--search for food, love of conquest, and love of adventure. When there is plenty of food they multiply rapidly. Full of life, overflowing with vitality, they move out for new worlds to conquer. Like human beings, they will do their best to get away from a country that provides a scanty food supply. Like men and women, they starve if they cannot eat. Like boys and girls, they avoid enemies; the weak give way to the strong, the slow to the swift, the devitalized to the vitalized. Human sociology imprisons, puts to death, deprives of opportunity to do evil, or reforms those who murder, steal, or slander. Germ sociology teaches us to do the same with injurious germs. We imprison them, we take away their food supply, we kill them outright, or we starve them slowly. They have a peculiar diet, being especially partial to decomposing vegetable and animal matter and to what human beings call dirt. By putting this diet out of their reach we make it impossible for them to propagate their kind. By placing poison within their reach or by forcing it upon them we can successfully eliminate them as enemies. As the president of Mexico restored order "by setting a thief to catch a thief," so modern science is setting germs to kill germs that harm crops and human stock. Of utmost consequence is it that the body's germ consumer--its pretorian guard--be always armed with vitality ready to vanquish every intruding hostile germ. If we are false to our guard, it will turn traitor and join invaders in attacking us. But here, as in dealing with evils that originate with human beings, an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure. The most effectual way to eliminate germ diseases is to remove the cause--the food supply of disease germs. The fact that many germs are plants, not animals, does not weaken the analogy, for weeds do not get a chance in well-tilled soil. Perhaps the most notable recent example of government germ extermination is the triumph over the yellow-fever and malaria mosquito in Panama. When the French started to build a canal in Panama, the first thing they did was to build a hospital. The hospital was always full and the canal was given up. At the time the United States proposed to re-attempt the work, it was thought that it could not be done without great loss of life and without great labor difficulties. Instead of taking the sickness for granted and enlarging the French hospital, the chief medical inspector, Gorgas, took for granted that there need be no unusual sickness if proper preventive measures were taken. He knew what the French had not known, that the yellow-fever scourge depends for its terrors upon mosquitoes. Accordingly, with the aid of six thousand men and five million dollars he set about to starve out the few infected and infectious kinds of mosquito,--the yellow-fever or house mosquito and the malaria or meadow mosquito. He introduced waterworks and hydrants, paved the streets, drained the swamps and pools in which they breed, and instituted a weekly house-to-house inspection to prevent even so much as a pail of stagnant water offering harbor to these enemies. The grass of the meadows where the malaria mosquito breeds was cut short and kept short within three hundred feet of dwellers,--as far as the mosquito can fly. All ditches were disinfected with paraffin, and the natives were forced to observe sanitary laws. President Roosevelt, in his special message to Congress on the Panama Canal in 1906, stated that in the weekly house-to-house visit of the inspectors at the time he was in Panama but two mosquitoes were found. These were not of the dangerous type. As a consequence of this sanitary engineering there is very little sickness in Panama, the hospital is seldom one third full, and the canal is progressing very much faster than was expected. Panama, like Havana, is now safer than many American cities, because cleaner and less hospitable to disease germs. Any place where numbers of people are accustomed to assemble favors the propagation of germs,--whether it be the meetinghouse, the townhall, the theater, or the school. Every teacher can be the sanitary engineer of her own schoolroom, school, or community by coöperating with the school doctor, the town board of health, family physicians, and mothers. Every teacher can exterminate disease by applying the very same principles to her schoolroom as Chief Medical Inspector Gorgas applied to Panama. Knowledge, disinfection, absolute cleanliness, education, and inspection are the essential steps. First she must know that "children's diseases" are not necessary. She should discountenance the old superstition that every child must run the gamut of children's diseases, that every child must sooner or later have whooping cough, measles, chicken pox, mumps, scarlet fever, just as they used to think yellow fever and cholera inevitable. The price of this terrible ignorance has been not only expense, loss of time, acquisition of permanent physical defects, and loss of vitality, but, for the majority of children, death before reaching five years of age. All these "catching" diseases are germ diseases, which disinfection can eliminate. The free use of strong yellow soap and disinfectants on the school floor, windows, benches, desks, blackboards, pencils, in the coat closets and toilets, plus the natural disinfectants, hot sun and oxygen, will prevent the schoolroom from being a source of danger. One or more of these germ-killing remedies must be constantly applied; cleansing deserves a larger part in every school budget. Often country towns are as ignorant of the existence of germs and of the means of preventing the spread of disease as the woman in a small country town who used daily to astound the neighbors by the "shower of snow" she produced by shaking the bedding of her sick child out of the window. Their astonishment was soon changed to panic when that shower of snow resulted in a deadly epidemic of scarlet fever. Medical inspection of New York City's schools was begun after an epidemic of scarlet fever was traced to a popular boy who passed around among his schoolmates long rolls of skin from his fingers. Much of the care exercised at school to prevent children's diseases is counteracted because children are exposed at home and in public places to contagion, where ignorance more often than carelessness is the cause of uncleanliness. By hygiene lessons, illustrating practically the proper methods of cleaning a room, much may be done to enlist school children in the battle against germs. Through the enthusiasm of the children as well as through visits to the homes parents may be instructed as to the danger of letting well children sleep with sick children; the wisdom of vaccination to prevent smallpox, of antitoxin to prevent serious diphtheria, of tuberculin tests to settle the question whether tuberculosis is present; why anything that gathers dust is dangerous unless cleansed and aired properly; and why bedding, furniture, floor coverings, and curtains that can be cleansed and aired are more beautiful and more safe than carpets, feather beds, upholstery, and curtains that are spoiled by water and sunshine; how to care for the tuberculous member of the family, etc. Anti-social acts may be prevented, such as carrying an infected child to the doctor in a public conveyance, thereby infecting numberless other people; sending infected linen to a common laundry; mailing a letter written by an infected person without first disinfecting it; sending a child with diphtheria to the store; returning to the dairy unscalded milk bottles from a sick room. The daily inspection of school children for contagious diseases by the school physician has, where tried, been found to reduce considerably the amount of sickness in a town. Such inspection should be universally adopted. Moreover, the teacher should be conversant with the early symptoms of these diseases so that on the slightest suspicion the child may be sent home without waiting for the physician's call. Like the little girl who never stuttered except when she talked, school children and school-teachers are rarely frightened until too late to prevent trouble. The "easy" diseases such as measles, whooping cough, etc., cost our communities more than the more terrible diseases like typhoid and smallpox. During one typical week ending May 18, 630 new cases of measles were reported to one department of health. Obviously the nineteen deaths reported give no conception of the suffering, the cost, the anxiety caused by this preventable disease. The same may be said of diphtheria and croup, of which only thirty-two deaths are reported, but 306 cases of sickness. Yet no one to-day will send a child to sleep with a playmate so as to catch diphtheria and "be done with it." The most strategic point of attack is almost universally unrecognized. That is the child's mouth. Here the germs find lodgment, here they find a culture medium--at the gateway of the human system. The mouth is never out of service and is almost never in a state of true cleanliness. Solid particles from the breath, saliva, food between the teeth, and other débris form a deposit on the teeth and decompose in a constant temperature of ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit. In the normal mouth from eight to twenty years of age the teeth present from twenty to thirty square inches of dentate surface, constantly exposed to ever-changing, often inimical, conditions. This bacterially infected surface makes a fairly large garden plot. Every cavity adds to the germ-nourishing soil. Dental caries--tooth decay--is a disease hitherto almost universal from birth to death. Thus the air taken in through the mouth becomes a purveyor of its poisonous emanations and affects the lung tissues and the blood. Food and water carry hostile germs down into the stomach. Thence they may be carried into any organ or tissue, just as nourishment or poison is carried. Moreover, the child with an unclean mouth not only infects and reinfects himself but scatters germs in the air whenever he sneezes or coughs. In a cold apartment where there is no appreciable current of air a person can scatter germs for a distance of more than twenty-two feet. Germs are also scattered through the air by means of salivary or mucous droplets. It is this fact that makes colds so dangerous. TABLE VIII =City of Manchester Education Committee= =INFECTIOUS OR CONTAGIOUS DISEASES IN SCHOOLS INFORMATION FOR TEACHERS= Four columns are omitted: (1) Interval between Exposure to Infection and the First Signs of the Disease; (2) Day from Onset of Illness on which Rash appears; (3) Period of Exclusion from School after Exposure to Infection; (4) Period of Exclusion from School of Person suffering from the Disease -----------+------------------------------+------------+------------------ DISEASE | PRINCIPAL SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS | Method of | REMARKS | | Infection | -----------+------------------------------+------------+------------------ Measles |_Begins like cold in the | |After effects |head_, with _feverishness, | |often severe. |running nose, inflamed and | |Period of greatest |watery eyes, and sneezing_; | |risk of infection |small crescentic groups of | Breath and |first three or |_mulberry-tinted spots_ appear| discharges |four days, before |about the third day; _rash | from nose |the rash appears. |first seen on forehead and | and mouth. |May have repeated |face_. The rash varies with | |attacks. Great |heat; may almost disappear if | |variation in type |the air is cold, and come out | |of disease. |again with warmth. | | -----------+------------------------------+------------+------------------ German |Illness usually slight. Onset | | Measles |sudden. _Rash often first | | |thing noticed;_ no cold in | Breath and | |head. Usually have | discharges |After effects |_feverishness_ and _sore | from nose |slight. |throat_, and the _eyes may | and mouth | |be inflamed. Rash_ something | | |between Measles and Scarlet | | |Fever, variable. | | -----------+------------------------------+------------+------------------ Chicken |Sometimes begins with | |When children Pox |feverishness, but is _usually | |return, examine |very mild_ and without sign | |head for |of fever. _Rash_ appears on | |overlooked spots. |second day as _small pimples_,| |All spots should |which in about a day become | |have disappeared |filled with _clear fluid_. | Breath and |before child |This fluid then becomes | crust of |returns. A mild |_matter_, and then the _spot | spots. |disease and |dries up_and _the crust falls | |seldom any after |off_. | |effects. | | | |May have _successive crops of | | |of rash_ until tenth day. | | -----------+------------------------------+------------+------------------ Whooping |_Begins like cold in the | |After effects Cough |head_, with _bronchitis_ and | |often very severe |_sore throat_, and a _cough_ | |and the disease |which is _worse at night_. | Breath and |causes great |Symptoms may at first be very | discharges |debility. Relapses |mild. Characteristic | from nose |are apt to occur. |_"whooping" cough_ develops | and mouth. |Second attack |in about a fortnight, and the | |rare. Specially |spasm of coughing often ends | |infectious for |with _vomiting_. | |first week or two. | | |If a child is sick | | |after a bout of | | |coughing, it is | | |most probably | | |suffering from | | |whooping cough. | | | | | |Great variation in | | |type of disease. -----------+------------------------------+------------+------------------ Mumps |Onset may be sudden, beginning| | |with sickness and fever, and | | |_pain about the angle of the | Breath and |Seldom leaves |jaw_. The _glands become | discharges |after effects. |swollen and tender_, and the | from nose |Very infectious. |_jaws stiff_, and the _saliva | and mouth. | |sticky_. | | -----------+------------------------------+------------+------------------ Scarlet |The _onset is usually sudden_,| Breath, |Dangerous both Fever or |with _headache, languor, | discharges |during attack and Scarlatina |feverishness, sore throat_, | from nose |from after effects. |and often the child is _sick_.| and mouth, |Great variation |Usually within twenty-four | particles |in type of disease. |hours the _rash_ appears, and | of skin, |Slight attacks |is _finely spotted, evenly | and |as infectious as |diffused_, and _bright red_. | discharges |severe ones. Many |The _rash_ is seen first on | from |mild cases not |the _neck and upper part of | suppuratory|diagnosed and many |chest_, and lasts three to | glands or |concealed. The |ten days, when it fades and | ears. Milk |peeling may last |the _skin peels in scales, | specially |six to eight weeks. |flakes_, or even _large | apt to |A second attack is |pieces_. The _tongue_ becomes | convey |rare. When scarlet |whitish, with bright red | infection. |fever is occurring |spots. The eyes are not watery| |in a school, all |or congested. | |cases of sore | | |throat should be | | |sent home. -----------+------------------------------+------------+------------------- Diphtheria |Onset insidious, may be rapid | Breath and |Very dangerous |or gradual. Typically _sore | discharges |both during attack |throat_, great weakness, and | from nose, |and from after |swelling of glands in the | mouth, and |effects. When |neck, about the angle of the | ears. |diphtheria is |jaw. The back of the throat, | |occurring in a |tonsils, or palate may show | |school all children |_patches_ like pieces of | |suffering from sore |yellowish-white kid. The most | |throat should be |pronounced symptom is great | |excluded. There is |debility and lassitude, and | |great variation of |there may be little else | |type, and mild |noticeable. There may be | |cases are often not |hardly any symptoms at all. | |recognized but are | | |as infectious as | | |severe cases. There | | |is no immunity from | | |further attacks. | | |Fact of existence | | |of disease | | |sometimes | | |concealed. -----------+------------------------------+------------+------------------- Influenza |_Begins with feverishness, | Breath and |Excessively |pain in head, back_, and | discharges |infectious. After |_limbs_, and usually _cold in | from nose |effects often very |the head_. | and mouth. |serious and | | |accompanied with | | |great prostration | | |and nervous | | |debility. -----------+------------------------------+------------+-------------- Smallpox |The illness is usually well | Breath, |Peculiarly |marked and the onset rather | all |infectious. When |sudden, with _feverishness, | discharges,|smallpox occurs in |severe backache, and | and |connection with a |sickness_. About third day | particles |school or with any |a _red rash_ of _shotlike | of skin |of the children's |pimples_, felt below the skin,| or scabs. |homes, an endeavor |and seen first about the | |should be made to |_face_ and _wrists. Spots | |have all persons |develop_ in _two days_, then | |over seven years |form _little blisters_, and | |of age |in other two days become | |revaccinated. |_yellowish_ and filled with | | |matter. _Scabs_ then form, | |Cases of modified |and these fall off about | |smallpox--in |the fourteenth day. | |vaccinated | | |persons--may be, | | |and often are, so | | |slight as to | | |escape detection. | | |Fact of existence | | |of disease may be | | |concealed. Mild | | |or modified | | |smallpox as | | |infectious as | | |severe type. -----------+------------------------------+------------+----------------- =In the following diseases only the affected child is excluded= =Erysipelas.= Child should not | =Ringworm on Scalp.= Child should return till all swelling and | be excluded till cured. Very peeling of skin has disappeared. | difficult to cure and often takes | a very long time. =Ophthalmia.= Child should not | return till all traces have | =Phthisis= (=Consumption=). If in disappeared. | advanced stage and coughing much | _or spitting_, child should be =Scabies or Itch.= Child should be | excluded. (Infection from breath excluded until cured. | and dried spit floating in the air | as dust.) =Ringworm on Skin.= Child should be | excluded till cured. This takes | =Impetigo= (=Contagious Sore=). only a few days if properly | Child should be excluded until treated. | cured. A week or ten days should | suffice. =A. BROWN RITCHIE=, _Medical Officer to Education Committee_. Most people still think that colds are due to cold air or draughts rather than to a cold germ, which finds a body unequipped with resisting power, with its germ police off guard, exhausted from overwork, or disaffected and ready to turn traitor if the enemy seems stronger than our vitality. Sometimes it seems as if we contracted it from a sneezing fellow-passenger, sometimes from a draught from an open car window. An uninformed opponent of the theory that colds are a germ disease wrote the following letter last winter to a New York newspaper: In addition to the Society for the Suppression of Noises there should be in this town a Society for the Suppression of "Fresh-Air" Fiends. The newspapers report an epidemic of pneumonia, grippe, and colds. It is almost entirely due to the fact that the average New Yorker is compelled to live, move, and have his being from daylight to midnight in a succession of draughts of cold air caused by the insanity of overfed male and female hogs, who, with blood almost bursting through their skins, demand "fresh air" in order to keep from suffocating. Everywhere a man goes, day or night, he is in a draught caused by the crazy ideas about fresh air. Our wise ancestors, who as a rule lived much longer than we do, and had much better health, said: "If the wind should blow through a hole, God have mercy on your soul." After the correspondent has learned that our ancestors had more colds than we, had poorer health, and died twenty years younger, perhaps he will listen to proof that his unclean warm air weakens the body and makes it an easy prey to cold germs. Many physicians preach and practice this fallacy as to fresh air and colds, but few physicians now deny that influenza is a germ disease or that a nose so irritated and so neglected as to secrete large quantities of mucus is a better place for breeding disease germs than a nose whose membranes are clean and not thus irritated. Until medical specialists are agreed, and until they have definitely located the cold germ, we laymen must choose for ourselves a working theory. The weight of opinion at the present time declares that colds are due to germs. Strong membranes with good circulation and drainage provide poor food for germs. Congested membranes furnish proper conditions for propagation. The germ theory explains the spread of germs from the nose to the passages of the head, and from head to arteries and lungs. A cold can always be charged to some one else. How many can be laid to our account? There is one right that is universally not recognized, and that is the right of protection from the germs showered in the air we breathe, over the food we eat, by the sneezes of our unfortunate neighbor at school, in the street car, at the restaurant. The chief danger of a cold is to our neighbor, not to ourselves. A cold which a strong person may throw off in a day or two may mean death to his tuberculous neighbor. Though for our own health "lying up for a mere cold" is an unnecessary bore, the failure to do so may deprive our neighbor of a right greater than the right to protection against scarlet fever or smallpox. Though formerly this statement would not have been true, rights change with conditions, and the fact that to-day the three most deadly diseases are pneumonia, tuberculosis, and diphtheria,--all diseases of the respiratory organs,--justifies the assertion that we have a right to protection against colds. The prevalence of colds, sore throats, irritated vocal cords, bad voices, catarrh, bronchitis, laryngitis, and asthma in America to-day demands summary measures. One can learn to sneeze into a handkerchief, not into a companion's face or into a room. School children can be taught to avoid handkerchiefs on which mucus has dried. In the far distant future we may be willing to use cheesecloth, and boil it or throw it away, or, like the Japanese, use soft paper handkerchiefs and burn them after using. TABLE IX DEATH RATE PER 10,000 POPULATION, PNEUMONIA AND BRONCHITIS FIVE-YEAR PERIOD, 1896-1900 England and Wales 22.70 Scotland 27.40 Stockholm 26.70 London 31.20 Berlin 16.10 Vienna 39.70 Christiania 21.30 Boston 30.60 Chicago 24.20 Philadelphia 25.10 New York City 36.60 One child with a cold can infect a whole class or family, thus depriving the class and family of the top of their vitality and efficiency without their consent. Because a person is thought a weakling who lies up for a "mere cold," one is inclined to wish that colds were as prostrating as typhoid, in which case there would be some hope of their extermination. The exclusion of children with colds from school deserves trial as a check to children's diseases. Many of these "catching" diseases start with a cold in the head, as, for instance, measles, influenza, and whooping cough. The first symptom of mumps, diphtheria, and scarlet fever is a sore throat or swollen glands, which, because they commonly accompany a cold, are not at first distinguished from it. The first step for the teacher or mother in reading the index for colds is to look into the coat closet for evidence of warm clothing and overshoes, then to note whether the children put them on when they go out for lunch or recess. Whether "cold" settles in the nasal passages, ear, or stomach depends upon which is the weak spot. Draughts, thin soles, wet soles, exposure when perspiring, may be the immediate cause of the nutritional or respiratory disturbances that give cold germs a foothold. Adenoids, diseased teeth, inflamed ears, may furnish the food supply. "There is no use treating children and sending them on fresh-air trips as long as they have nutritional and digestive disturbances due to bad teeth, or colds due to adenoids," said a physician when examining a party of children for a summer outing. The great preventive measure to be taken for catching diseases, colds, diseased glands,--in fact all germ diseases,--is the repeated cleansing of those portions of the human body in which germs may find lodgment,--the mouth, the nose, the eyes, and the ears. In caring for young infants great pains is taken to cleanse all the orifices daily, but as soon as the child washes himself this practice is usually abandoned. Washing these gateways is far more important than washing the surface of the body through which germs could not possibly gain entrance into the system except through wounds. Oftentimes the douching of the nostrils with salt water will stop a cold at once. The mouth is the most important place of all, and the teacher should take care of her pupils' mouths first and foremost. As bad teeth, enlarged tonsils, and adenoids harbor germs and putrescent matter that vitiate every incoming and outgoing breath, these defects should be immediately corrected. Are we coming to a time when a thorough house-cleaning in the mouth of every child will take place before he enters the schoolroom, preferably in the presence of the teacher? Two other "catching" diseases cause city schools a great deal of trouble,--trachoma and pediculosis (head lice). There are probably no two diseases more quickly transmitted from one person to another. Almost before their presence is known, all children of a school or all persons of a group have contracted them. When at college twenty men of my fraternity discovered almost at the same time that they had an infectious eye trouble; yet we thought we were using different towels and otherwise taking sanitary precautions. Last summer a Vassar graduate took a party of tenement children for a country picnic. She returned with head lice that required constant attention for weeks. What then may we expect of children who live in homes where there is neither water, time, nor privacy for bathing, where one towel must serve a family of six, where mothers work for wages away from home and see their children only before seven and after six? Unfortunately for thousands of children, many parents still believe these troubles will be outgrown. Last summer a fresh-air agency in New York City arranged for several hundred school girls to go to a certain camp for ten days each. The only condition was that the heads should be free from lice and nits (eggs). From the list furnished by school-teachers--girls supposed to have been cured by school nurses--not one in five was accepted. A baby two weeks old, brought to Caroline Rest, had already begun to suffer from this easily preventable scourge. Of 1219 children examined in Edinburgh, Scotland, 909, or 69 per cent, had some skin disease, and 60 per cent had sores due to head lice. Even when neglect has caused the loss of hair and ugly sores on the head, mothers deceive themselves into believing that some other cause is responsible. Trachoma, if neglected, not only impairs the health of the eye, but may cause blindness. Tears carry the germs from the eye to the face, where they are taken up on handkerchiefs, towels, and fingers and infect other eyes. Of late, thanks to school nurses and physicians and hygiene instruction, American cities have found relatively little trachoma except among recent immigrants. So dangerous is the germ and so insidious its methods of propagation, that a physician should be summoned at once at the first sign of inflammation. Conjunctivitis is due to a germ, and will spread unless checked. Since the board of health of New York City has instituted the systematic examination of the eyes of the children in the public schools, it has found fully one third affected with some form of conjunctivitis. Many of these cases are out-and-out trachoma, others acute conjunctivitis, and a larger proportion are "mild trachoma." This last form of the disease is found to a great extent among children who have adenoids. The adenoids should be regarded as a predisposing factor rather than a direct cause. Therefore sore eyes are given as one of the indexes of adenoids. When we consider that adenoids are made up of lymphoid material, and that trachoma follicles are made up of the same sort of tissue, it is not surprising that the two conditions are found in the same child. The catarrhal inflammation produced by adenoids in the nasal mucous membrane travels up the lachrymal duct and thus infects the conjunctiva by contiguity. In preventing pediculosis and infection of the eye vigilance and cleanliness are indispensable. After the diseases are advanced, after the germ colonies have taken title, some antiseptic or germ killer more violent than water is needed,--kerosene for the hair or strong green oil soap; for the eye, only what a physician prescribes. CHAPTER VII EYE STRAIN Wherever school children's eyes have been examined, from six to nine out of thirty are found to be nearsighted, farsighted, or otherwise in need of attention. A child is dismissed from school for obstinately declaring that the letter between _c_ and _t_ in "cat" is an _o_; "a pupil in her fourth school year was recently brought to me by her teacher with the statement that she did unreasonably poor work in reading for an intelligent and willing child;" a boy is punished for being backward. These three cases are typical. Examinations showed that the first child was astigmatic and not obstinate; the boy had run a pin into one eye ten years before and destroyed its sight; while the second girl was found to be afflicted with diplopia, and in a friendly chat told the following story: "I very often see two words where there is only one. When I was a very little girl I used to write every word twice. Then I was scolded for being careless. _So I learned that I must not say two words even when I saw them._" As Miss Alida S. Williams, principal of Public School 33 in New York City, has in many articles and addresses freely illustrated from school experience, the art of seeing is acquired, not congenital, and every human being who possesses it has learned it. The large proportion of children suffering more or less seriously from eye trouble has led many persons to suggest physical deterioration as the cause. Eye specialists, however, assure us that eye troubles are probably as old as man. Our tardiness in learning the facts regarding these troubles is due in part to the lack, until recently, of instruments for examining the eye and for manufacturing glasses to correct eye defects; in part, also, to the tendency of the medical profession, which I shall repeatedly mention, to explain disorders by causes remote and hard to find rather than by those near at hand. About 1870 Dr. S. Weir Mitchell's attention was called "to the marked relief of headache, insomnia, and other reflex symptoms following the correction of optical defects by glasses." In 1874 and 1876 he wrote two articles that "impressed upon the general profession the grave significance of eye strain." Since that time, "in Philadelphia at least, no study of the rebellious cause of headache or of the obscure nervous diseases has ever been considered complete until a careful examination of the eyes has included them as a possible cause of the disturbance." The new fact, therefore, is not weak eyes or strained eyes, but rather (1) an increase in the regular misuse of eyes by school children, seamstresses, stenographers, lawyers, etc.; and (2) the incipient propaganda growing out of school tests that show the relation of eye strain to headache, nervous diseases, stomach disorder, truancy, backwardness. Every school, private and parochial as well as public, should supply itself with the Snellen card for testing eyes. Employers would do well to have these cards in evidence also, for they may greatly increase profits by decreasing inefficiency and risks. If there is no expert optician near, apply for cards to your health board or school board; failing there, write to your state health and school boards. In many states rural teachers are already supplied with these cards by state boards. In October, 1907, the New York state board of health sent out cards, with instructions for their use, to 446 incorporated towns. The state commissioner of education also sent a letter giving school reasons for using the cards. Results from 415 schools having shown that nearly half the children had optical defects, it is proposed to secure state legislation that will make eye tests obligatory in all schools. Such a test in Massachusetts recently discovered twenty-two per cent of the school children with defective vision, and from forty to fifty thousand in need of immediate care by specialists. [Illustration: POSITIONS OFTEN SUGGEST EYE STRAIN] Of course eye specialists,--oculists,--if skillful, know more about eyes and eye troubles than general medical practitioners or teachers. Preliminary eye tests, however, may be made by any accurate person who can read. The Massachusetts state board of health reports that tests made by teachers were "not less efficient" than tests made by specialists. In June, 1907, a group of eminent oculists recommended to the school board of New York City that teachers make this first test after being instructed by oculists. Persons interested in the schools nearest them can quickly interest teachers and pupils by starting tests with this card. In cities oculists can be found who will be glad to explain to teachers, individually or in groups, how the cards should be used and what dangers to avoid. Nature intended the human eye to read the last line of this card at a distance of ten feet. This conclusion is not a guess, but is based upon the examination of thousands of eyes. In making the test, the number of feet the eye ought to see is written as the denominator of the fraction; the distance the eye can see clearly is the numerator. If the child's card reads, "Right eye 10/10, left eye 10/20," it means that the right eye sees without conscious strain the distance it is intended to see, while the left eye must be within ten feet to see what it ought to see twenty feet away. The practical steps for a teacher to take in making eye tests are: 1. Scrutinize the faces for a strained or worried expression while reading or writing, for squint eyes, for unnatural positions, and for improper distances (more or less than nine inches) from eye to book. 2. Select for first tests the children who obviously need attention and will be obviously benefited. Use the eye test to help trace the cause of headaches, nervousness, inattention. 3. Let the children mark off the distances with a foot rule and chalk, going as high as twenty. Be sure to get the best light in the room. 4. Start all children on the ten-foot line. If a child cannot read at ten feet the letter which should be seen at that distance, move the child forward, have it step forward and backward, and note the result carefully. It is better to have ten separate letters of exactly the right size and the same size than a row of letters on one card, as in the Snellen test, otherwise memory will aid the eye, or, as happened recently, a whole class may agree to feign remarkable nearsightedness or farsightedness by confusing letters learned in advance from the card. If the Snellen card is used, and if it is more convenient to have both child and card stationary, satisfactory results will be obtained by having the child read from large letters down as far as he can see. 5. Have the child read from right to left, from left to right, or skip about so that memory cannot aid the eye. 6. Test each eye separately. I was twenty-five years old before I learned that my left eye did practically all of the close sight work. A grown woman discovered just a few days ago that she was almost blind in the left eye; when she rubbed the right one while reading she was shocked to find that she could see nothing with the left eye. 7. If the card is stationary and the child moved, and if only one size of the letter is used, put in the denominator the number of feet at which the normal eye should see clearly, and in the numerator the distance at which each eye and both together can easily see. If the regular Snellen card is used containing letters of different size, place in the denominator the number of the lowest line each eye and both eyes together can read easily, and in the numerator the number of feet from card to eye. 8. Explain the result to the child, to his fellows, to his parents. If the left eye reads 10/20 and the right eye 10/30, it means that neither eye is normal, and that reading small type is a constant strain, even though unnoticed. The right eye must be within ten feet to read what it should read at twenty feet. The left eye must be within ten feet to read what it should read at thirty feet. If the two eyes read at ten, it means that in working together they successfully strain for a result that is not worth what it is costing. When eyes thus unconsciously see what they are not intended to see, it is only a matter of time when stomach and nervous system will announce that the strain can no longer be borne. Indigestion, dislike of study, restlessness follow. If, however, the eyes are so near the normal that their story reads 12/10 or 8/10, the strain will be negligible _for the present_. If, on the other hand, the only difficulty is a confusion of _x_ and _z_ with _c_ and _g_, it means that there is a strain due to astigmatism, and that the child should be sent to an oculist. 9. Teach children and parents (and practice what you preach) the urgent importance of periodic reëxamination, just as you would teach them to visit a dentist twice a year. This is needed by those who wear eyeglasses, and more particularly by those who have recently put them on. Moreover, as shown below, it is needed by children able to pass satisfactorily the Snellen test. 10. Acquire the habit of reading the eye for evidence of temperate or intemperate living, sleeping, eating, dancing, drinking, and smoking. Inflamed eyes are _results_,--signals of danger. "The organ may be faultless in construction and in its work poor, because of nerve exhaustion, or, in a less and more easily recoverable degree, nerve fatigue." If unusual eye conditions are not readily explained by mode of living or by eye tests, an oculist should be consulted. The limits of the card test must be constantly kept in mind: (1) it does not register eye sickness due to dust, smoke, or disease germs; (2) it does not show unconscious eye strain due to successful accommodation. But it will discover a great part of the children who most need care. Sooner or later, too, inflammation of the eyelids, due to external causes, will affect the nerves of the eye and their power to conceal by accommodation the eye's defects. Just as we unconsciously open the mouth when a cold stops up the nose, the eye adapts itself to our needs without our realizing it. We expect it to see. It sees. If our eyes are not made alike, they do their best to work together. Like a good team of horses, the slow one hurries, the fast one holds back a little. But if one eye is 10/15 and the other 10/10, they will both be unnatural and strained if both read the same type. The effects of this strain frequently upset the stomach before the eyes rebel. I learned that I needed eyeglasses after a case of protracted indigestion, first diagnosed as "nervous" and later traced to eyes. Thousands of upper-grade children and college students are dieting for stomach trouble that will last until the eyes are relieved of the undue and unrecognized strain. To prove the influence of eye strain on indigestion, persuade some obstinate parent to wear improperly focused glasses for a day; she will then be willing to have her child's eyes attended to. It is unfortunate that the eyes will overwork without protesting. For years many persons suffer without learning that their eyes are unlike, or, as often happens, that one eye does all the close range work. Even when being tested, eyes will seem to see easily what requires a great effort of "accommodation." To prevent this self-deception skilled oculists do not trust the eye card, but put a drug in the eye that benumbs the muscles of accommodation. They cannot contract or expand if they want to. The oculist then studies the length of the eye and the muscle of accommodation. With this absolute knowledge of how each eye is made he knows what is wrong, exactly at what angle light enters the eye, whether objects are focused too soon or too late, exactly what kind of eyeglasses or what operation upon the eye is needed to enable it to do its work without undue straining or accommodation. So unconsciously do the eyes accommodate themselves to the work expected of them that not infrequently a child with seemingly perfect sight may be more in need of glasses than the child with imperfect sight. Practically, however, it is out of the question at the present time to have the majority of children given a more thorough test than that provided by the Snellen card. Where eye strains escape this test teachers will find evidence in complaints of headache, nervousness, sick stomach, chorea, or even epilepsy. The constant strain may also cause red or inflamed lids. Parents and teachers must be on the constant lookout for these symptoms of good sight persisting in spite of imperfect eyes. An epidemic of eyeglasses is usually the consequence of eye tests. So naturally do we associate eyeglasses with eye defects that some people assert that the eye tests at school originate with opticians more intent upon selling spectacles than upon helping children. In fact, even among educators who proclaim the need for eye tests there has been far more talk of eyeglasses than of removable conditions that cause eye strain. The women principals of New York City have sounded an alarm, and urge more attention to light and to reading position, more rest, more play, more hand work, less home study and less eye work at school, rather than more eyeglasses to conceal temporarily the effect of abusing children's eyes. Putting glasses on children without changing causal conditions is like giving alcohol to consumptives. The feeling of relief is deceptive. The trouble grows worse. For some time to come eye tests will find eye troubles by the wholesale in every industrial and social class, in country as well as city schools. In 415 New York villages 48.7 per cent of school children had defects of vision,--this without testing children under seven,--while 11.3 per cent had sore eyes. There are three possible ways of remedying defects: (1) changing the eye by operation; (2) changing the light as it enters the eye by eyeglasses; (3) decreasing the demands made upon the eye. To change eyes or light requires a technical skill which few physicians as yet possess. It will be remembered that it is but thirty years since the medical profession in America first began to understand the relation of eye defects to other defects. Until a generation of physicians has been trained by medical colleges to learn the facts about the eye and to apply scientific remedies, it is especially necessary that teachers and parents reduce the demands made upon children's eyes; oral can be substituted for written work, manual for optical work, relaxed and natural movement for discipline, outdoor exercise for less home study. Other requirements are suitable light and proper position, and abolition of shiny paper, shiny blackboard, and fine print. Even after it is easy to obtain the correction of eye defects it will still be necessary to adapt the demands upon children's eyes to the strength and shape of those eyes. Because we are born farsighted, nearsighted, and astigmatic, we must be watchful to eradicate conditions that aggravate these troubles. Finally, there is no excuse whatever for permitting the parent of any school child in the United States to remain ignorant of the fact that it is just as absurd to go to the druggist or jeweler for eyeglasses as to the hardware store for false teeth. The education of physician, oculist, and optician can be expedited by eye tests in school and by the follow-up work of schools in removing the prejudice of parents against glasses when needed. Because knowledge of chemistry preceded knowledge of the human body, the teaching of medicine still shows the effect of predilection for the remote, the problematical, the impossible. This predilection has influenced many specialists as well as many general practitioners, both overlooking too frequently obvious causes that even intelligent laymen can be taught to detect. Very naturally the man who makes money out of attention to simple troubles has stepped into the field not as yet occupied by the general practitioner and the specialist. Thus we have the optician, the painless tooth extractor, and quack cures for consumption. Opticians are placing before hundreds of thousands simple truths about the eye not otherwise taught as yet. Because they make their money by selling eyeglasses and because their special knowledge pertains to glasses rather than to eyes they frequently fail to recognize their limitations. Physicians feel very strongly that it is as unethical for an optician to fit eyeglasses without a physician's prescription as for a pharmacist to give drugs without a physician's prescription. The justification for this feeling should be based not upon the commercial motive of the optician but upon his ignorance. A physician uninformed as to eye troubles is just as unsafe as an optician determined to sell glasses. It must be made unethical and unprofessional for physician and optician alike to prescribe in the dark. Laymen and physicians must be taught that it is just as unethical and unprofessional for oculists and physicians to fail to bring their knowledge within the practical reach of the masses as for the optician to advertise his wares. School tests will not have been used to their utmost possibilities until optician and physician alike take the ethical position that the first consideration is the patient's welfare, not their own profits. It must soon be recognized as unethical and unprofessional for an optician who is also a skilled physician to refer patients to a medical practitioner ignorant as to optical science. Whether opticians and physicians are unprofessional or unethical may be told by reëxamination if the _examiner_ is himself competent and ethical. There is no better judge of their efficiency than the patient himself, who can tell whether the results promised have been effected. Whether the work of a country oculist is efficient and ethical can be learned: (1) by teaching country school children to recognize eye strain; (2) by comparing his results with those of other physicians. As soon as one or two states have tested eyes, we shall have an average by which to compare each class, school, and city with others of their size under similar conditions. If a particular physician finds half as many more or only half the average number, the presumption will be that his results are inaccurate and warrant an investigation. The interested teacher or parent can render an inestimable service to her local school and to the children of her state by taking steps to secure state laws compelling eye tests in all schools. Finally, it must be remembered by teachers, employers, parents, and all eye users that eyes are constantly changing; that eyes may need glasses six months after they are examined and found sound; that glasses change or develop the eye, so that they may be unnecessary and harmful six months after they are prescribed, or the eye may require a stronger glass; that eyeglasses become bent and scratched, so that they worry and strain the eye; that a periodic examination is essential to the health of the eye. In caring for the health of the eye, we should also remember that our eyes are our chief interpreters of the world that gives us problems, profits, and pleasures. Out of gratitude, if not out of enlightened self-interest, we owe our eyes protection, attention, and training, so that without straining we shall always be able to see truth and beauty. CHAPTER VIII EAR TROUBLE, MALNUTRITION, DEFORMITIES The presence of adenoids is a frequent cause of both slight and aggravated deafness. Of 156 deaf mutes examined 59 per cent had adenoids, while only 6 per cent of the general run of the children in the neighborhood had this trouble. In mouth breathing, the current of air entering the mouth draws out some of the air from the Eustachian tube which ventilates the middle ear and unequalizes the atmospheric pressure on the eardrum, causing it to sink in and to blunt the hearing. An examination of the eardrums of school children in New York who are mouth breathers showed a high percentage of deafness, incipient or pronounced, accompanying adenoids. For example, of 9 mouth breathers selected from one class (average age 7-8 years), 6 were well-marked cases of deafness. Of 8 mouth breathers (average age 8-9 years), and of 5 mouth breathers (average age 5-6 years), all had noticeable defects of hearing. Many adults that suffer from deafness maintain that they never had any trouble in childhood. Yet the evidences of nose and throat trouble in childhood persist and disprove such statements. _The foundations of deafness in later life are, in most instances, laid in childhood._ Since the majority of cases of ear trouble occurring in school children accompany diseased conditions of the nose and throat, the proper care of nose and throat will, in large measure, balance the shortcomings of the aural examinations. Since the examination of the drum itself is not practicable, especial care should be given to the examination of the nose and throat. The figures published by New York City's department of health show that of 274,641 children examined from March, 1905, to January, 1908, 3540, or 1.2 per cent, gave evidence of defective hearing. Ear specialists suggest that this small percentage results from employing the whisper test at twenty feet. The whisper test at sixty feet has been set by experts as a test of normal hearing. But preciseness with this test is well-nigh impossible when we consider that the acoustics, the quality of the examiner's voice, the weather, the vowel or consonant sounds, all are variable quantities. The watch test is frequently used, but since a young teacher in her enthusiasm used an alarm clock to make the test, specialists have decided that the volume of sound differs in watches to such a degree as to make the watch test unreliable. The examination of the eye has been reduced to mathematical precision, due altogether to the anatomy of that organ. As yet there is no instrument for the ear comparable to the ophthalmoscope. The acoumeter is largely used by aurists and can be obtained from the optician. This instrument has an advantage over the whisper or watch tests in that its tick is uniform. Each ear should be tested separately. Let the child place his finger against the flap of one ear while the other is being tested. Then compare the farthest distance from the ear at which the tick can be heard with the normal, standard distance. During the test all sound should be eliminated as far as possible and the eyes should be closed. At a demonstration of ear testing at Teachers College, one student stated that she could not hear the tick of the watch at a distance greater than twenty inches. Then the tester walked noisily toward her, leaving the watch on the desk, five feet away from the patient. She heard it now. When the class burst out laughing she opened her eyes, and, seeing the watch so far away, exclaimed, "Why, I thought I imagined it." Be careful in testing a child to distinguish between what he "thinks he imagines" and what he really hears. Because of the difficulties of this test a doubt should be sufficient to warn the teacher to send the child to be tested by an expert. Detection of slight deafness may lead to the discovery of serious defects of nose or throat. Inflammation from cold or catarrh may cause deafness, which if neglected may permanently injure the ear. Often deafness is due to an accumulation of wax. A running ear should receive immediate attention, as it is an indication of inflammation which may imperil the integrity of the eardrum, and, if neglected, may eat its way through the thin partition between the ear and the brain and cause death. It should never be assumed that deafness is incurable. Stupidity, inattention, and slowness to grasp a situation accompany difficulty of hearing and should cause the teacher to examine the ears. No ear trouble is negligible. Children and parents should be taught that the normal ear is intended to hear for us, not to divert our attention to itself. When the ear aches or "runs" or rumbles there is something wrong, and it should be examined together with the throat and nose. NERVOUSNESS In New York City one child in ninety-one already examined has had the form of nervous disease known as St. Vitus's Dance, or chorea. So prone are we to overlook moderate evils and moderate needs that the child with aggravated St. Vitus's Dance is apt to be cured sooner than the child who is just "nervous." Teachers cannot know whether twitching eyes, emotional storms, constant motion of the fingers or feet are due to chorea, to malnutrition, to eye strain, or to habits acquired in babyhood or early childhood and continued for the advantage that accrues when discipline impends. Many a child treasures as his chief asset in time of trouble the ability to lose his temper, to have a "fit," to exhibit nervousness that frightens parent, teacher, or playmate, incites their pity, and wards off punishment. The school examination will settle once for all whether the trouble can be cured. The family physician will explain what steps to take. TESTS OF MALNUTRITION We Americans were first interested in the physical examination of school children by exaggerated estimates of the number of children who are underfed. As fast as figures were obtained for eye defects, breathing defects, bad teeth, some one was ready to declare that these were results of underfeeding. Hence the conclusion: give children at least one meal a day at school. Scientific men began to set us straight and to give undernourishment a technical meaning,--soft bones, flabby tissue, under size, anæmia. While too little food might cause this condition, it was also explained that too much food of the wrong sort, or even food of the right sort eaten irregularly or hurriedly or poisoned by bad teeth, might also cause undernourishment, including the extreme type known as malnutrition. In extreme instances the symptoms enable an observant teacher who has learned to distinguish between the pretty hair ribbon and clean collar and the sunken, pale, or hectic cheek and lusterless eyes to detect the cause. But as with eyes and nose, an unhealthy condition of nourishment may exist long before outward symptoms are noticeable. Therefore the value of the periodic searching examination by the school physician. [Illustration: SAME AGE, SAME SCHOOL, DIFFERENT NUTRITION] BONE TUBERCULOSIS; ORTHOPEDIC TESTS Only recently have we laymen learned that knee trouble, clubfoot, ankle sores, spine and hip troubles, scrofula, running sores at joints, etc., are not hereditary and inevitable, but are rather the direct result of carelessness on the part of adult consumptives. These conditions in school are indices of homes and houses where tuberculosis is or has been active, and of health boards that are or have been inactive in checking the white plague. Early examination may disclose the small lump on the child's spine,--which one mother diagnosed as inherited "round shoulders,"--and save a child from being a humpback for life. Moreover, the examination of the crippled child's brothers and sisters will often show the beginnings of pulmonary tuberculosis. [Illustration: A GRIEVOUS PENALTY FOR NEGLECT BY ADULT CONSUMPTIVES] ENLARGED GLANDS--TUBERCULOSIS In almost every class are one or more children who are proud of small or big lumps under one or more jaws. Only physicians can find very small lumps. Many family doctors will say, "Oh, he will outgrow those," or "Those lumps will be absorbed." Like most other evils that we "outgrow" or that pass away, these lumps shriek not to be neglected. They mean interference with nourishment and prevent proper action of the lymphatic system, as adenoids prevent free breathing. Even when not actually infected with tubercle bacilli, they are fertile soil for the production of these germs. If detected early, they point to home conditions and personal habits that can be easily corrected. In New York one child in four has these enlarged glands. If the same proportion prevails in other parts of the United States, there are 5,400,000 children whose strength is being needlessly drained, many of whom, if neglected, will need repeated operations. [Illustration: MODEL OF AMERICA'S FIRST HOSPITAL FOR SEASHORE FRESH-AIR TREATMENT OF NONPULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS IN CHILDREN To be erected at Rockaway Beach, New York City] CHAPTER IX DENTAL SANITATION "Have their teeth attended to first, and many of the eye defects will disappear." This was an unexpected contribution to the debate upon free eyeglasses for the school children of New York City. So little do most of us realize the importance of sound, clean teeth, and the interrelation of stomach and sense nerves, that even the school principals thought the eye specialist was exaggerating when he declared that bad teeth cause indigestion and indigestion causes eye strain. "Bad" teeth mean to most people dirty teeth and offensive odors, loose, crooked, or isolated teeth, or black stumps. Even among dentists a great many, probably the majority, do not appreciate that "bad" teeth mean indigestion, lowered vitality, plague spots for contaminating sound teeth and for breeding disease germs. Until recently the only rule about the teeth of new recruits in the United States army was: "There must be two opposing molars on each side of the mouth. It doesn't matter how rotten these molars may be." The surgeon general was persuaded to change to "four opposing molars on each side"; still nothing as to the condition of the two additional molars! In the German army there is a regular morning inspection of teeth and toothbrushes. Several German insurance companies give free dental treatment to policy holders, not to bestow charity but to increase profits. Neglecting "baby teeth" and adenoids may mean crooked second teeth that will cause: (1) hundreds of dollars for straightening; (2) permanent business handicap because crooked teeth are disagreeable to others, because mastication is less perfect, and because a disfigured mouth means dis-arranged nerves; or perhaps (3) large dental bills because it is difficult to clean between cramped, crooked teeth. Unfortunately the great majority of parents rarely think of their children's teeth until too late to preserve them intact. Even among families where the rule of brushing the teeth twice daily prevails, regular dental examination is often not required. Doctors and dentists themselves have not been trained to realize that the teeth are a most dangerous source of infection when unclean. Does your dentist insist upon removing tartar and food particles beyond your reach, upon polishing and cleansing, or does he regard these as vanity touches, to be omitted if you are in a hurry? [Illustration: INDUSTRIAL HANDICAPS DISCOVERED AT SCHOOL] Physicians send tuberculosis patients to hospitals or camps without correcting the mouth conditions that make it impossible for the patient to eat or swallow without infecting himself. Tonics are given to women whose teeth are breeding and harboring disease germs that tear down vitality. Nurses watch their suffering patients and do the heavier tasks heroically, but are not trained to teach the simple truths about dental hygiene. The far-reaching results of neglect of teeth will not be understood until greater emphasis is placed on the bacteriology, the economics, the sociology, and the æsthetics of clean, sound teeth. Whether or not there is at present a tendency to exaggerate the importance of sound teeth, there is no difference of opinion as to the fact that the teeth harbor virulent germs, that the high temperature of the mouth favors germ propagation, that the twenty to thirty square inches of surface constantly open to bacterial infection offer an extensive breeding ground, and that the formation of the teeth invites the lodgment of germs and of particles of food injurious both to teeth and to other organs. By scraping the teeth with the finger nail and noticing the odor you can convince yourself of the presence of decomposing organic matter not healthful to be carried into the stomach. By applying a little iodine and then washing it off with water, your teeth may show stains. These stains are called gelatinous plaques, which are transparent and invisible to the naked eye except when colored by iodine. These plaques protect the germs, which ferment and create the acid which destroys tooth structure. Their formation can be prevented by vigorous brushing and by eating hard food. The individual with decayed teeth, even with unclean teeth, is open to infection of the lungs, tonsils, stomach, glands, ears, nose, and adenoid tissues. Every time food is taken, and at every act of swallowing, germs flow over the tonsils into the stomach. Mouth breathers with teeth in this condition cannot get one breath of uncontaminated air, for every breath becomes infected with poisonous emanations from the teeth. Bad teeth are frequently the sole cause of bad breath and dyspepsia, and can convey to the system tuberculosis of the lungs, glands, stomach, or nose, and many other transmissible diseases. They may also cause enlarged tonsils and ear trouble. Apart from decomposing food and stagnant septic matter from saliva injured by indigestion, and by sputum which collects in the healthy mouth, there are in many infected mouths pus, exudations from the irritated and inflamed gum margins, gaseous emanations from decaying teeth, putrescent pulp tissue, tartar, and chemical poisons. Every spray from such a mouth in coughing, sneezing, or even talking or reading, is laden with microbes which vitiate the air to be breathed by others. Indigestion from imperfect mastication and imperfect salivation (themselves often due solely to bad teeth) is far less serious than indigestion from germ infection. Germs taken into the stomach can so change the composition of saliva (a natural disinfectant when healthy) as to render it no longer able to kill germs. Indigestion may result in excess of uric acid and toxic material, so that the individual becomes subject to gout and rheumatism, which in turn frequently destroy the bony support of the teeth and bring about Riggs's Disease. The last named is a prevalent and disfiguring disease, whose symptom is receding gums. The irritating toxins deposited on the teeth cause inflammation of the tissues at the gum margins. The gums withdraw more and more from sections of the teeth; the poisons get underneath and work back toward the roots; the infection increases and hastens the loosening of the teeth. I know of a man who had all of his teeth extracted at twenty-one years of age, because he was told that this was the only treatment for this disease, which was formerly thought to be incurable. Yet thorough cleansing and removal of this matter from under the edges of the gums, disinfection, a few visits to the dentist, will stop the recession but cannot regain lost ground. Among those who regularly use the toothbrush, instinct, comfort, or display is the ruling motive, while a small percentage have evolved to the anti-nuisance stage, where the æsthetic standard of their group forbids any member to neglect his teeth. The anti-slum and pro-slum motives for mouth cleanliness and dental sanitation have been awakened in but one or two places. A significant pro-slum activity is the dental clinic organized by forty volunteer dentists, acting for an industrial school maintained by the New York Children's Aid Society. [Illustration: NEW YORK CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY'S DENTAL CLINIC FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN] Here 550 children have been examined, 447 teeth extracted, 284 teeth filled, 200 teeth treated for diseased pulp (and only 24 sets cleaned), 40 dentists taking turns in giving time to this work. The equipment cost but $239; cards and stationery, $72; incidentals, $33. The principal attends the clinic, because in her presence no child is willing to confess fear or unwillingness. To supplement this work, the dentists have prepared for free distribution a leaflet which tells in short, clear sentences how to care for the teeth. [Illustration: (leaflet)] +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | A DENTAL CATECHISM =When should they be cleansed?= | | | | =What are the teeth for?= Immediately after the morning and | | noonday meals and before going to | | To masticate food; that is, bed. | | grind it into fine particles, | | mix it with saliva, and so =By what means should they be | | begin its digestion; also to cleansed?= | | aid in speaking and singing. | | By a moderately stiff brush, | | =How long should they last?= water, and floss silk. | | | | To the very end of life. =How should these be used?= | | | | =How do we lose them?= The brush should be first used in | | a general way, high up on the | | By decay, by loosening, and by gums length-wise of the jaws, to | | accident. remove large particles and | | stimulate the gums, then the | | =What causes teeth to decay?= brush and the teeth should be | | carefully rinsed with water. The | | Particles of food decaying in brush should next be used with a | | contact with them. rolling or circular motion, so | | that the bristles will follow the | | =Where does food lodge?= lines of all the grooves and | | spaces in which the particles of | | All along the edges of the gums, food have lodged, and so brush | | in the spaces between the teeth, them out. Then again the mouth | | and in the crevices of their should be rinsed with water. | | grinding surfaces. | | =Should the gums be brushed?= | | =Can we prevent this loss?= | | Yes, moderate friction helps to | | Yes, to a large extent. keep them healthy. | | | | =How can we do it?= =How can the spaces between the | | teeth be reached?= | | By using the teeth properly and | | by keeping them clean and the By dental floss silk passed | | gums healthy. between the teeth, drawn | | carefully back and forth till it | | =What does using them properly reaches the gum, pressed firmly | | mean?= against the side of each tooth in | | turn and drawn out towards the | | 1. Using sufficient hard or grinding end of the tooth, and | | fibrous food to give the teeth this repeated several times in | | and gums full exercise. each space. | | | | 2. Taking time enough to =Should tooth powder or paste be | | masticate food thoroughly before used?= | | swallowing. | | Usually once a day. | | =How often should teeth be | | cleansed?= | | | | As often as they are used. | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Such a leaflet should be given out at dispensaries, hospitals, dental offices, schools, and from many Sunday schools and missions.[5] The time for the schools to begin is when the child is first registered. Examination and reëxamination must be accompanied by explanation of the serious disadvantages of neglected teeth, and the physical, social, and economic advantages of clean, sound teeth. Instruction at school must be followed by education of parents. The school or health authorities should examine the teeth of all children before issuing work certificates. Finally, the dental, medical, and nursing professions and the press must be enlisted in the school's campaign for dental hygiene. The Dental Hygiene Council of Massachusetts should be copied in all states. A preliminary examination of teeth can be made by parent or teacher. Crooked, loose, dirty, or black teeth or receding gums can be detected by a layman's naked eye. In fact, children can be interested in finding the most obvious defects in their own or their brothers' teeth. There could be no better first lesson than to ask each pupil to look in a hand mirror and to count each tooth obviously needing a cleaning or a filling. The most urgent need can thus be ascertained without expert aid. But because parent, teacher, or child cannot discover defects does not prove that dental care is not imperative; hence the importance of examination by a dentist or by a physician competent to discover dental needs. If a private, public, or parochial school has no paid visiting dentist, a zealous school officer can, at least in large towns, persuade one or more dentists or physicians to make a few first tests to confirm the teacher's findings, and to persuade the community that regular examination and reëxamination are necessary and a saving of pain, beauty, and money. Reëxamination is necessary because decay _may_ start the day after a dentist has pronounced a tooth sound. For most of us twice a year is often enough. A reëxamination should be made upon the slightest suspicion of decay, breaking, or loosening. Educational use should be made by the teacher of the results of school examination. Children cannot be made self-conscious and cleanly by telling them that their teeth will ache three or five years from now. They can be made to brush or wash their teeth every morning and every night if they once realize that cavities can be caused only by _mouth garbage_. All decay of human teeth starts from the outside through the enamel that covers the soft bone of the tooth. This enamel can be destroyed by accidentally cracking or breaking it, or by acids eating into it. These acids come from (1) particles of food allowed to remain in the teeth; (2) tartar, etc., that adheres to the teeth and can be removed only by a dentist; (3) saliva brought up from an ill-conditioned stomach. Even where the enamel is destroyed, absolute cleanliness will prevent serious decay of the tooth. A perfectly clean tooth will not decay. Generally speaking, unless particles of food or removable acids remain on or between the teeth long enough to decompose, teeth cannot decay. Decay always means, therefore, uncleanliness. To unclean teeth is due in large part the offensive odor of many schoolrooms. Uncleanliness becomes noticeable to our neighbors sooner or later. There is no offense we are so reluctant to commit as that of having uncleanliness of our bodies disagreeable to those about us. Very young children will make every effort in their power to live up to the school's standard of cleanliness. The other side to this reason for having clean teeth is vanity. Because all cleanliness is beautiful to us, clean teeth are one attribute of beauty that all of us can possess. Habits of cleanliness are easily fixed. In the most crowded, most overworked section of large cities visitors from "uptown" are surprised by the children's bright hair ribbons, clean aprons, clean faces, and smoothly combed hair. It will be easy to add clean teeth to the list of things necessary to personal and family standing. Armenian children are taught to clean their teeth after eating, even if only an apple between meals. They covet "beautiful teeth." American standards will soon prevent these Armenians from cleaning their teeth in public, but desire for beautiful teeth will stay, and will remind them to care for their teeth in private. As coarse food gives way to sugars and soft foods, stiff toothbrushes must supplement tongue and toothpicks. [Illustration: AN ARMENIAN SCHOOL GIRL] Strong as are the instinct and display motives in cleaning teeth, both parents and children need to be reached through the commerce motive. Instinct makes children afraid of the dentist, or content when the tooth stops aching. Display may be satisfied with cleaning the front teeth, as many boys comb only the front hair or as girls hide dirty scalps under pompadours and pretty ribbons. Desire to save money may give stronger reasons for not going to the dentist than instinct and comfort can urge for going. But parents can be made to see, as can children after they begin to picture themselves as wage earners, that a dentist in time saves nine, and that no regular family investment will earn more money than the price of prompt and regular dental care. A problem in arithmetic would be convincing, if, by questions such as those on page 98, we could compare the family cost of neglecting teeth with the cost of toothbrushes, bicarbonate of soda, pulverized chalk or tooth powder, early and repeated examination by a dentist, and treatment when needed. How many members in your family? What does a toothbrush cost? How many teeth have they? How many do you need in one year? How many teeth have they lost? How much does tooth powder How many false teeth have they? cost? How many teeth have been filled? How much is needed for one year? What is the total cost to date? How much would two examinations How many days have been lost a year by a dentist cost? from work because of toothache? How many teeth are now decayed? What will it cost to have them attended to? The result will show that the money spent for one good "house cleaning" of one child at fourteen or eighteen exceeds the cost of keeping clean and in repair the teeth of the entire family. How effective and economical is thorough cleaning is confessed by an eminent dentist, who taught an assistant to clean his patients' teeth. "Do you know," he said, "I had to stop it, so perceptibly did my work decrease." The total time required to examine school children for teeth needing attention is much less than the time now lost by absence from school or wasted at school on account of toothache. To remind school children regularly of dental hygiene is not more important than for the school to remind parents repeatedly of the many reasons for attending to their children's teeth. It is not enough, however, to send one message to parents. Illustrated lectures, mothers' meetings, demonstrations at hospitals and fresh-air homes are all very serviceable, but listening is a poor substitute for understanding. Schools should see that parents understand the æsthetics, the economics, the humanity of dental hygiene. The best test of whether the parent has understood is the child's tooth. Dental examination of children applying for work certificates gives the health and school authorities a means of enforcing their precepts. When no child is allowed to go to work whose teeth cause malnutrition or disgust, the news will spread, and both child and parent will see clearly the grave need for dental care. [Illustration: WON BY THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT] Finally, local papers can be interested. They will print almost anything the teacher sends about the need for dental care. They like particularly facts about the number of cavities found, the number of children needing care, efforts made to procure care, and new facts about diseases that can be caused by bad teeth or about diseases that can injure teeth. Teachers can persuade dentists and physicians to write stories. No newspaper will refuse to print such statements as this: "A tuberculous patient in six weeks lost ground steadily. I persuaded him to go to a dentist to clean the vestibule to his digestive system, and to have a set of false teeth. He enjoys his meals, and has gained twelve pounds in six weeks." Popular magazines and newspapers mention teeth seldom, because those who best know the interesting vital things are making money, not writing articles or otherwise concerning themselves with dental education. It is said that of forty thousand American dentists not over eleven thousand are readers of dental journals, and probably not three hundred contribute to professional literature. One dentist who is working for the children's clinic described above, when asked by the board of education to lecture to the people on the care of the teeth and to recommend simple, readable books, told me that he knew no good books to suggest. Five obstacles exist to practicing what is here preached: 1. The expensiveness of proper dentistry. 2. The untrustworthiness of cheap dental service and "painless" dental parlors; the domination of the supply houses wishing to sell instruments and other supplies. 3. The ethical objection to any kind of advertising or to work by wholesale. 4. The lack of dispensaries. 5. The profit-making basis of dental education. Additional reasons these for cleanliness that will make the dentist serviceable for his knowledge rather than for his time and gold. Good dentists really "come too high" for both the poor and the comfortably situated. Families in New York City that have four or five thousand dollars a year hesitate to go to a dentist whom they thoroughly trust, because his time is worth more than they feel they can afford to pay. The "free-extraction" dental parlors undoubtedly are doing a vast amount of harm. In every city are dental quacks that injure wage-earning adults as much as soothing-sirup quacks injure babies. Instead of teaching people to preserve their teeth, they extract, and then, by dint of overpersuading by a pretty cashier hired for the purpose, make a contract for a gold crown or a false set at an exorbitant price. A reputable dentist has said that a dental parlor can do more damage to the welfare of the race in a few months than a well-intentioned man in the profession can repair in a lifetime. Its question is not, What can I do for this patient? but What is there in this mouth for me? Many "parlors" never expect to see the same person twice, because they do not make him comfortable or gain his confidence; they put a filling in on top of decayed matter or even diseased pulp; put in plates and bridges that do not fit; charge more than the examination at first leads one to expect; refuse to correct mistakes; deny having ever seen the patient before. Yet true and severe as this arraignment is, many of these parlors, with their liveried "runners in," are doing an educational service not otherwise provided; it is conceivable that in many cities they are doing less harm by their malpractice than well-intentioned men in the profession by neglect of public needs or by failure to organize facilities for meeting those needs. I realize that advertising is "unethical" among dentists as among physicians. Humbug and imposition are supposed to go inevitably with self-advertising by the methods used in selling shoes or automobiles. Therefore such advertising is prohibited. But what seems to be forgotten in this definition of ethics is that the need and the opportunity for dental care must be advertised in some way, if we are ever to control diseases and evils due to bad teeth. The rich that one dentist can help are able to pay for his good taste, his neat attendants, his automobile, his club dues, his vacations at fashionable resorts, his hours without work, his standard of living. All of these things advertise him, just as hospital appointments and social position may and do advertise successful physicians. The patients of moderate means that one dentist can treat cannot afford to pay for rent, time disengaged, and indirect advertising. Either they must have free treatment, must go without treatment, or must go to a dental parlor where dental needs are organized so that a very large number will contribute to rent and display. It is out of the question to have both dentists and patients so distributed and prices so adjusted that dentists can make a good living by charging what the patient can afford, and at the same time admit of every patient being properly treated when necessary. Judging from every other branch of work, the solution of the problem lies partly in free care for those who can pay nothing or very little, and partly in coöperative treatment through the heretofore objectionable dental parlors. If instead of inveighing against advertisers, honorable and capable dentists worked through dental and medical societies to secure adequate public supervision of dental practice, more progress would be made against dental malpractice. Dental clinics will quickly follow the publication of facts that schools should gather. In some places these should be separate; but at first the best thing is to make every hospital, every children's home, every settlement a clinic, and every school an examining center. A skilled dentist informs me: "The demand that will follow examination of school children's teeth will make it profitable for young dentists to adopt a coöperative scheme, where several young men hire a parlor in a cheap district, and, under the supervision of some experienced dentist, give good advice at reasonable rates. This is the best antidote to the dental parlor which exploits the public so shamelessly." Bellevue Hospital in New York is the first general hospital to establish regular dental examination; others will undoubtedly soon follow. Dental education for profit rather than for instruction and for health has been the rule. Even where universities have put in dental courses, they have demanded a net profit from tuition. Instead of protecting society against men incapable of caring for teeth, the schools have marketed certificates to as large numbers as slowly enlightened self-interest would permit. Much progress has been made toward uniform standards of admission and graduation, but dental colleges sadly need the light and the inspiration of school facts about teeth. Of fourteen dental journals in America, only one has the advancement of dental science as its first reason for existence. Thirteen are trade journals. Not one of these would print articles proving that the supplies advertised by their backers were inimical to dental hygiene. Many dental colleges still retain on their faculties agents or editors in the pay of supply houses, Harvard's new dental school being a notable exception. This trade motive tolerates and encourages the disreputable practices of existing dental parlors. Largely because of this prostitution of the dental profession, patients generally neglect the repairing and cleansing of the teeth and the sterilizing of the mouth from which germs are carried to all parts of the body. Dental journalism for the sale of supplies cannot outlive the dentist's reading of the school's index. Many dentists will say that they must learn dentistry before they learn the economics and sociology of clean teeth. Being a young profession, it is natural that dentistry should first devote itself to learning its own mechanics,--the tricks of the trade--how to fill teeth. But the fact that it took the medical profession centuries to begin to feel responsibility for community health is no reason why the social sense of the dentist should be dormant for centuries or decades. We need training and exercise to determine what kind of filling will be most comfortable and most serviceable; whether the pulp of the teeth needs treating or removing before the filling is inserted; whether it is worth while to fill a deciduous or baby tooth. Sociology will never take the place of dental technic. The few dentists who have studied the social significance and social responsibility of their profession declare, however, that careless workmanship and indifferent education of patients continue chiefly because dentists themselves do not see the community's interest in dental hygiene. The school can socialize or humanize the dental profession if teachers themselves possess the social sense and make known the facts about the need for dental care among school children. FOOTNOTES: [5] _The Teeth and Their Care_, by Thaddeus P. Hyatt, D.D.S., is a short, concise treatment of the principles of dental sanitation. CHAPTER X ABNORMALLY BRIGHT CHILDREN What is commonly considered abnormal brightness in a school child is often a tendency to live an abnormal physical life. Being a child bookworm means that time is spent indoors that should be spent playing games with one's fellows. Excellence in the activities of children, not ability to imitate the activities of adults, should be the test of child brightness. To be able to hit a bull's-eye, to throw a ball accurately, to calculate the swing of a curve or the bound of a "grounder," these are tests of brightness quite as indicative of mental power as the ability to win highest marks in school, while less injurious to physical power. The child who is abnormally bright requires special treatment just as much as the child who is abnormally dull. The former as well as the latter must have his abnormal condition corrected if he is to grow into a normally bright man. The college man who sacrifices health to "marks" is thus described by the director of physical training at Harvard University: A drooping head, a pale face, dull, sunken eyes, flat chest and rounded shoulders, with emaciated limbs, soft flabby muscles, and general lack of good physical, mental, and moral tone. For the protection of these physical defective grinds it is suggested to put a physical qualification upon the candidates of Phi Beta Kappa and their awards of scholarship. If scholarship men cannot be induced to take time to improve their physique for fear of lowering their college standing, then give them credit for standing in physical work. The abnormally bright, at whatever age, is as much a subject for examination and treatment as the child with adenoids and pulmonary tuberculosis. Such attention will increase the percentage of abnormally bright schoolmates who figure in active business in later life. Moreover, it will decrease the number of high school superintendents who declare that their honor pupils are physical wrecks. There are children who develop very rapidly, both physically and mentally, and whose mental superiority is not at the expense of their bodies. Protection of such children requires that their minds be permitted to progress as rapidly as bodily health justifies. It is as cruel to keep back a physically and mentally superior child, as to push the physically or mentally defective beyond his powers. Worry and fatigue can be produced by lack of interest as well as by overwork. "Normal" should not be confused with "average." To keep a bright child back with the average child--marking time till the dull ones catch up--is to make him abnormal. The tests that we have employed for grading pupils are either the tests of age in years or of mental capacity. The first takes no account of slowness or rapidity of physiological development,--of physiological age. The second encourages mental activity at the expense of physique. The entrance of a child into school, the promotion from one class to another, the entrance into college, are thus determined either by the purely artificial test of age or by the individual teacher's discretion. There is nothing to prevent the ambitious teacher or the ambitious parent from pushing a child into kindergarten at four, high school at twelve, college at fifteen. If this cannot be done at the public school, a private school is resorted to. A community of college professors once started a school for faculty children. A tremendous pressure was put upon these scions of intellectual aristocracy to enter the high school at twelve. No thought was given to the ventilation of the school. The windows were so arranged that they could not be opened without the air blowing on some child's back. "You could cut the air with a knife" was a description given by one sensible professor who had taken his sturdy girl of seven away from the school, because he feared that in this environment she would become like the other little puny, pale, undersized children of that school. The University of Pennsylvania has instituted a psychological clinic. Parents and teachers are invited to bring any deviation from the usual or the expected to the attention of this clinic. Every month a bulletin is published called the _Psychological Clinic_, which will be found of great service in dealing with the abnormally bright as well as with the abnormally dull. Naturally the well-to-do and the rich are the first to take advantage of these special facilities for ascertaining just what work should be done by a precocious child or by the mentally and morally retarded. Abnormal brightness means power to be happy and to be serviceable that is above the average. Every school can be a miniature psychological clinic. While every teacher cannot be an expert, national and state superintendents can constantly remind teachers that the abnormally bright are also abnormally apt to neglect physical welfare and to endanger future mental power. CHAPTER XI NERVOUSNESS OF TEACHER AND PUPIL Nervousness of teacher and pupil deserves special mention. So universal is this physical defect that we take it for granted, especially for teachers. Teachers themselves feel that they need not even apologize for nervousness, in fact they too frequently use it as an excuse for impatience, ugly temper, discourtesy, and unfairness. Children, slates, papers, parents, blackboards "get on their nerves." Nervousness of teacher causes nervousness of pupils and adds to the evil results of mouth breathing, bad teeth, eye strain, and malnutrition. These conditions, added to bad ventilation, bad light, and an overcrowded schoolroom, render the atmosphere thoroughly charged with electricity--nerves--toward the end of the day. Lack of oxygen to breathe as well as inability to breathe it; lack of well-printed books and good light, as well as lack of the power to use them; toothache, earache, headache, deplete the vitality of both teacher and pupil. Most of the disturbances at school are but outward signs of unwholesome physical conditions. If the teacher attempts to treat these causes by crushing the child, she makes confession of her own nervousness and inadequacy and visits her own suffering upon her pupils. A transfixing glance prolonged into an overbearing stare, a loud, sharp voice, a rough manner, are successful only so far as they work on the nervousness of her pupil. She finds that it is temporarily effective, and so by her example and practice sets the child an example in losing control of himself. The position often assumed by school children when before authority, of hands held stiffly at the side, head drooped, and roving eye, does not mean control: it means a crushed spirit, hypocrisy, or brooding anarchy. The mother or teacher who obtains obedience by clapping her hands, pointing her finger, distorting her face, is copying in her own home the attitudes of caste in India, of serfdom in Russia, the discipline of the prison the world over, a modern reminder of the power of life and death or of physical torture. A young college girl unfamiliar with the ways of the public school was substituting in the highest grammar grade. The time for civics arrived. Here, she thought, is a subject in which I can interest them. The boys showed a vast amount of press information, as well as decided opinions on the politics of the day. The candidates which they elected for the position of ideal American patriot were Rockefeller, Lincoln, and Sharkey the prize fighter. During the ensuing debate, which gave back to Lincoln his proper rank, the boys in the back of the room had moved forward and were sharing seats with the boys in the front. Every boy was engrossed in the discussion. The room was in perfect order,--not, however, according to the ideas of the principal, who entered at that moment to see how the new substitute was managing the class, famed for its bad boys. With the stern look of a Simon Legree she demanded, "How dare you leave your seats!" When one child started to explain she shouted: "How dare you speak without permission! Don't you know your teacher never permits it? Every boy take his own seat at his own desk." This principal was far more to be pitied than the boys, for they had before them the prospect of "work papers" and a grind less monotonous and more productive than the principal's discipline. She was a victim of a nerve-racking system, more sinned against than sinning. There is nothing in school life _per se_ to cause nervousness. Given a well-aired, sunny room, where every child has enough fresh air to breathe, where he can see without strain, where he has a desk fitted to his body and work fitted to his maximum abilities, a teacher who is physically strong and mentally inspiring, and plenty of play space and play time, there will be no nervousness. One who visits vacation schools is struck with the difference in the atmosphere from that of the winter day schools. Here are the same rooms, the same children, and in many cases the same teachers, but different work. Each child is busy with a bright, interested, happy expression and easy attitude. Some are at nature study, some are weaving baskets, making dresses, trimming hats, knitting bright worsted sacks and mittens for the winter. Boys are at carpentering, raffia, or wrought-iron work. In none of the rooms is the absolute unity or the methodical order of the winter schoolroom, but rather the hum of the workroom and the order that comes from a roomful of children interested in the progress of their work. This condition only illustrates what a winter schoolroom might be were physical defects corrected or segregated, windows open, light good, and work adapted to the child. [Illustration: VACATION SCHOOL INTEREST: AN ANTIDOTE TO NERVOUSNESS] Nervousness is not a monopoly of city teachers and city pupils. In country schools that I have happened to know, nervous children were the chief problem. Nervousness led in scholarship, in disorder, in absences, in truancy, and in backwardness. After reading MacDonald's _Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood_, I became interested in one or two particularly nervous children, just to see if I could overcome my strong dislike for them. To one boy I gave permission to leave the room or to go to the library whenever he began to lose his self-control. My predecessors had not been able to control him by the rod. A few weeks after Willie's emancipation from rules, the county superintendent was astonished to see that the county terror led my school in history, reading, and geography. Had I known what every teacher should be taught in preparation,--the relation of eye strain, bad teeth, adenoids, "overattention," and malnutrition to nervousness and bad behavior,--I could have restored many "incorrigibles" to nerve control. Had I been led at college to study child psychology and child physiology, I should not have expected a control that was possible only in a normal adult.[6] In its primary aspect the question of nervousness in the schoolroom is purely physiological, and the majority of principals and teachers are not trained by professional schools how to deal with it. Normal schools should teach the physical laws which govern the child's development; should show that the pupil's mental, moral, and physical nature are one and inseparable; that children cannot at one time be docile, sickly, and intelligent,--perfect mentally and imperfect physically. Until teachers are so taught, the condition cannot be changed that makes of our schools manufactories of nervous teachers and pupils. Country nervousness, like city nervousness, is of three kinds: (1) that caused by defective nervous systems; (2) that resulting from physical defects other than defects of the nervous system, but reacting upon it; (3) that due to habit or to lack of self-control. Children who suffer from a defective nervous system should, in city schools, be segregated where they can have special care under constant medical supervision. Such children in schools too small for special classes should be given special treatment. Their parents should know that they have chorea, which is the same trouble as St. Vitus's Dance, although often existing in a degree too mild to attract attention. Special treatment does not mean that such children should be permitted to interfere with the school progress of other children. In many rural schools, where special privileges cannot be given children suffering with chorea without injury to other children, it would be a kindness to the unfortunates, to their parents, and to all other children, were the parents requested to keep such children at home. Nervousness that results from removable physical defects--eye strain, adenoids, indigestion, earache--will be easily detected by physical examination, and easily corrected by removing the physical defect. Preventable nervousness due to "habit" can be quite as serious in its effects upon the mind and health as the other two forms of nervousness. Twitching the face, biting the nails, wetting the lips, blinking the eyelids, continually toying with something, being in perpetual motion and never relaxing, always changing from one thing to the next, being forever on the rush, never accomplishing anything, are common faults of both teacher and pupil. We call them mannerisms or tricks of personality. They are readily imitated by children. I once knew a young lawyer who had started life as an oyster dealer, whose power of imitation helped to make him responsive to both helpful and harmful influences. After being at the same table for two weeks with a talented man whom he admired, he acquired the latter's habit of constantly twitching his shoulder and making certain gestures. These habits in turn quickly produced a nervousness that interfered with his power to reason straight. Nervousness is often confused with aggressiveness, initiative, confidence. "Think twice before you jump, and perhaps you won't want to jump" is a very difficult rule to follow for any one whose bodily movements are not under perfect control. It is said that the confusion of city life causes habits of nervousness. Unfortunately no one knows whether the city children or the country children have the highest percentage of nervousness. There is a general feeling that city life causes an unwholesome degree of activity, yet one finds that those people in the city who least notice the elevated railway are those whose windows it passes. City noises irritate those who come from the country, or the city man on returning to the city from the country, but a similar irritation is felt by the city-bred man on coming to the country. Mr. Dooley's description of a night in the country with the crickets and the mosquitoes and the early birds shows that it is the unusual noise rather than the volume or variety of noises that wreck nerves. At the time of the opening of the New York schools in 1907 a newspaper published an editorial on "Where can the city child study?" showing that in New York the curriculum, the schoolhouse, and the tenements are so crowded and so noisy that study is practically impossible. Lack of sleep, lack of a quiet place in which to study at school and at home, are causes for nervousness, whether these conditions are in the city or in the country. What evidence is there that the country curriculum is less crowded or country work better adjusted to the psychological and physiological age of the country pupil? The index is there; it should be read. In breaking habits of nervousness the first step is to explain how easily habits are formed, why their effects may be serious, and how a little attention will correct them. When a habit loses its mystery it becomes unattractive. Children will take an interest in coöperating with each other and with the teacher in curing habits acquired either at home or at school. My pupils greatly enjoyed overcoming the habit of jumping or screaming after some sudden noise. I told them how, when a boy, my imagination had been very much impressed by one of Thackeray's characters, the last remnant of aristocratic traditions, almost a pauper, but possessing one attribute of nobility,--absolute self-control. When his house burned he stood with his ankles crossed, leaning on his cane, the only onlooker who was not excited. For months I imitated that pose, using sticks and rakes and fork handles. The result was that when I taught school, a scream, a broken desk, or unusual noise outside reminded me of my old aristocrat in time to prevent my muscles from jumping. In a very short time several fidgety and nervous girls and boys had learned to think twice and to relax before jumping. One test of thorough relaxation in a dentist's chair proves the folly of tightening one's muscles. When in school or out the remedy for nervousness is relaxation. The discipline that prohibits a pupil from stretching or changing his posture or seat is as much to be condemned as that which flourishes the rod. It has been said of our schools that children are not worked to death but bored to death. Wherever a room must be stripped of all beauty and interest to induce concentration, wherever the greater part of the teacher's time must be spent in keeping order, there is confession either of inappropriateness of the present curriculum or of the failure of teacher and text-book to present subjects attractive to the pupils. Nervous habits will be inevitable until the pupil's attention is obtained through interest. Sustained interest will be impossible until teacher and pupil alike practice relaxation, not once a morning or twice a day, not during recess or lunch hour, but whenever relaxation is needed. In overcoming nervousness of teacher and pupil, both must be interested in home causes as well as school causes of that nervousness. Time must be found to ask questions about those causes and to discuss means for removing them. Naturally it will be embarrassing for a very nervous teacher to discuss nervousness with children,--until after she has overcome her own lack of nerve stability. To help her or to compel her to learn the art of relaxation of bodily and of mental control is the duty and the privilege of the school physician, of her doctor, and of superintendent and trustees. The outside point of view is necessary, because of the peculiar fact that almost every nervous person believes that he has unusually good control over his nerves, just as a man in the midst of his anger will declare that he is cool and self-controlled. Had Robert Burns been thinking of the habit of nervousness he could not have thought of a better cure than when he wrote: Oh wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as ithers see us; It wad frae mony a blunder free us, And foolish notion. FOOTNOTES: [6] _The Unconscious Mind_ by Schofield, _The Study of Children and their School Training_ by Dr. Frances Warner, and _The Development of the Child_ by Nathan Oppenheimer show clearly the physical and mental limitations and possibilities of children. CHAPTER XII HEALTH VALUE OF "UNBOSSED" PLAY AND PHYSICAL TRAINING _A boy without play means a father without a job. A boy without physical training means a father who drinks. When people have wholesome, well-disciplined bodies there will be less demand for narcotics as well as for medicines._ On these three propositions enthusiasm has built arguments for city parks and playgrounds, for school gymnastics, and for temperance instruction. We have tried the remedies and now realize that too much was expected of them. Neither movement appreciated the mental and physical education of spontaneous games and play. Like hygiene instruction, physical training was made compulsory by law in many states, and, like hygiene instruction, physical training had to yield to the pressure of subjects in which children are examined. At the outset both were based upon distorted psychology and physiology. Of late physical training has been revived "to correct defects of the school desk and to relieve the strain of too prolonged study periods." In New York grammar schools ten minutes a day for the lower grades, and thirty minutes a week for the higher grades, are set aside for physical training. With the exception of eighteen schools where apparatus is used, the exercise has been in the class rooms. It consists of what are known as "setting-up exercises,"--deep breathing and arm movements for two minutes between each study period, often forgotten until it is time to go home, when the children are tired and need it least. Many teachers so conduct these exercises that children keenly enjoy them. [Illustration: SERVICEABLE RELIEF FROM SCHOOL STRAIN, BUT A POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR OUTDOOR PLAY] Like hygiene instruction, physical training preceded physical examination. Generally speaking, it has not yet, either in schools or in colleges, been related to physical needs of the individual pupil. In fact, there is no guarantee that it is not in many schools working a positive injury on defective children or imposing a defective environment on healthy children. Formal exercises in cramped space, in ill-ventilated rooms, with tight belts and heavy shoes, are conceded to be pernicious. Formal exercises should never be given to any child without examination and prescription by a physician. Children with heart weakness, enlarged tonsils, adenoid growths, spinal curvature, uneven shoulders, are frequently seen doing exercises for which they are physically unfit, and which but serve to deplete further their already low vitality. Attention might be called to many a class engaged in breathing exercises when by actual count over half the boys were holding their mouths open. Special exercises are needed by children who show some marked defect like flat foot, flat chest, weak abdominal muscles, habitual constipation, uneven shoulders, spinal trouble, etc. That no physical training should be provided for normal children is the belief of many leading trainers. This special training is useful to develop athletes or to correct defects. Like massage, osteopathy, or medicine, it should follow careful diagnosis. The time is coming when formal indoor gymnasium exercises for normal pupils or normal students will be considered an anomaly. There is all the difference in the world between physical development and what is called physical training. The test of physical development is not the hours spent upon a prescribed course of training, but the physical condition determined by examination. To be refused permission to substitute an hour's walk for an hour's indoor apparatus work is often an outrage upon health laws. Given a normal healthy body, plenty of space, and plenty of playtime, the spontaneous exercise which a child naturally chooses is what is really health sustaining and health giving. Mere muscular development artificially obtained through the devices of a gymnasium is inferior to the mental and moral development produced by games and play in the open air. Eustace Miles, M.D., amateur tennis player of England, says: I do not consider a mere athlete to be a really healthy man. He has no more right to be called a really healthy man than the foundations or scaffolding of a house have a right to be called a house. They become a good house, and, indeed, they are indispensable to a good house, but at present the good house exists only in potentiality. The "healthy-mindedness" and "physical morality" which play and games foster rarely result from physical training as a business, at stated times, indoors, under class direction. It is too much like taking medicine. A certain breakfast food is said to have lost much of its popularity since advertised as a health food. When the National Playground Association was organized President Roosevelt cautioned its officers against too frequent use of the word "supervision" on the ground that supervision and direction were apt to defeat the very purpose of games and to stultify the play spirit. Is the little girl on the street who springs into a hornpipe or a jig to the tune of a hurdy-gurdy, or even the boy who runs before automobiles or trolley cars or under horses' noses, getting less physical education than those who play a round game in silence under the supervision of a teacher in the school basement, or who stretch their arms up and down to the tune of one, two, three, four, five, six? Who can doubt that the much-pitied child of the tenement playing with the contents of the ash can in the clothes yard or with baby brother on the fire escape is developing more originality, more lung power, and better arteries than the child of fortune who is led by the hand of a governess up and down Fifth Avenue. Children have not forgotten how to play, but adults have forgotten to leave space in cities, and time out of school, home work, and factory work in which children may play. Again, the child--whether a city child or a country child--rarely needs to be taught how to play. Teaching him games will not produce vitality. Games are the spontaneous product of a healthy body, active mind, and a joy in living. Give the children parks and piers, roof gardens and playgrounds in which they may play, and leave the rest to them. Give them time away from school and housework, and leave the rest to them. Instead of lamenting the necessity for playing in the streets, let us reserve more streets for children's play. There are too many students of child welfare whose reasoning about play and games is like that of a lady of Cincinnati, who, upon reading the notice of a child-labor meeting, said: "Well, I am glad to see there is going to be a meeting here for child labor. It is high time some measure was taken to keep the children off the streets." Physical examinations would prove that streets are safer and better than indoor gymnasiums for growing children. Intelligent physical training will train children to go out of doors during recess; will train pupils and teachers not to use recess for study, discipline, or eating lunch. [Illustration: SPONTANEOUS PLAY ON ONE OF NEW YORK CITY'S SCHOOL ROOF PLAYGROUNDS] "After-school" conditions are quite as important as physical training and gymnastics at school. Not long ago a nurse was visiting a sick tenement mother with a young baby. She found a little girl of twelve standing on a stool over a washtub. This child did all the housework, took care of the mother and two younger children, got all the meals except supper, which her father got on his return from work. As the nurse removed the infant's clothes to give it a bath, the little girl seized them and dashed them into the tub. "Yes, I am pretty tired when night comes," she confessed. This child has prototypes in the country as well as the city, and she did not need physical training. She did not lack initiative or originality. She did need playmates, open air, a run in the park, and "fun." The educational value of games and outdoor play should be weighed against the advantages of lowering the compulsory school age, and of bridging over the period from four to seven with indoor kindergarten training. Neither physical training nor education is synonymous with confinement in school. The whole tendency of Nature's processes in children is nutritional; it is not until adolescence that she makes much effort to develop the brain. Overuse of the young mind results, therefore, in diverting natural energy from nutritive processes to hurried growth of the overstimulated brain. The result is a type of child with a puny body and an excitable brain,--the neurotic. The young eye, for example, is too flat (hypermetropic)--made to focus only on objects at a distance. Close application to print, or even to weaving mats or folding bits of paper accurately, causes an overstrain on the eye, which not only results in the chronic condition known as myopia,--short-sightedness,--so common to school children, but which acts unfavorably on the constitution and on the whole development of the child. At the recent International Congress of School Hygiene in London, Dr. Arthur Newsholme, medical officer of health of Brighton, made a plea for the exclusion of children under five years of age from schools. "During the time the child is in the infant department it has chiefly to grow. Nutrition and sleep are its chief functions. Paints, pencils, paper, pins, and needles should not be handled in school by children below six." Luther Burbank, in an article on "The Training of the Human Plant," says: The curse of modern child life in America is overeducation, overconfinement, overrestraint. The injury wrought to the race by keeping too young children in school is beyond the power of any one to estimate. The work of breaking down the nervous systems of the children of the United States is now well under way. Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, and tad-poles, wild strawberries, acorns, and pine cones, trees to climb and brooks to wade in, sand, snakes, huckleberries, and hornets, and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education. Not every child can have these blessings of the country, but every child can be protected from the stifling of the nature instinct of play by formal indoor "bossed" exercises, whether called games, physical training, gymnastics, or Delsarte. [Illustration: NEW YORK CITY'S SCHOOL FARM DOES NOT STIFLE NATURE INSTINCT] The answer to the protest against too early and too constant confinement in school has always been: "Where will the child be if out of school? Will its environment at home not work a worse injury to its health? Will not the street injure its morals?" Because we have not yet worked out a method of supervising the health of those children who are not in school, it does not follow that such supervision is impossible. Perhaps the time will come when there will be state supervision over the health of children from birth, parents being expected to present them once a year at school for examination by the school physician. In this way defects can be corrected and health measures devised to build up a physique that should not break down under the strain of school life. For children whose mothers work during the day, and for those whose home environment is worse than school, it might be cheaper in the long run to assign teachers to protect them from injury while they play in a park, roof garden, or out-of-door gymnasium. If parks and playgrounds come too slowly, why not adopt the plan advocated by Alida S. Williams, a New York principal, of reserving certain streets for children between the hours of three and five, and of diverting traffic to other streets less suitable for children's play? So great is the value--mentally, morally, and physically--of out-of-door play that it has even been suggested that the substitution of such play for school for all children up to the age of ten would insure better minds and sounder physiques at fifteen. It is generally admitted that the child who enters school at eight rather than at six will be the gainer at twelve. What a travesty upon education to insist upon schooling for children because they are apt to be run over on the street, or to be neglected at home, to shoot craps, or belong to a gang and develop bad morals. Educators will some day be ashamed to have made the schools the catch-all or the court-plaster for the evils of modern industry. Instead of pupils and mothers going to the school, enough hygiene teachers, and play teachers, and district physicians could be employed with the money now spent on indoor instruction to do the house-to-house visiting urged in many chapters of this book. Such a course of action would have an incalculable effect on the reduction of tuberculosis, not only in making healthier physiques but by inculcating habits of outdoor life and love of fresh air. The danger of those contagious diseases which ravish childhood would be greatly reduced. An ambition for physical integrity would make unnatural living unpopular. Competition in games with children _of the same physical class_ develops accuracy, concentration, dispatch, resourcefulness, as much as does instruction in arithmetic. Smoking can easily be discredited among boys trying to hit the bull's-eye. A boy would sooner give up a glass of beer than the championship in rifle shooting or a "home run." The influence of the "spirit of the game" on practical life has been described thus by New York's director of physical training, Dr. Luther H. Gulick: Play is the spontaneous enlistment of the entire personality in the pursuit of some coveted end. We do not have to pursue the goal; we wish to--it is our main desire. This is the way in which greatest discoveries, fortunes, and poems are made. It is the way in which we take the responsibilities and problems of life that makes it either a deadly bore--a mere dull round of routine and drudgery--or the most interesting and absorbing game, capable of enlisting all the energy and enthusiasm we have to put into it. The people who accomplish things are the people who play the game. They let themselves go; they are not afraid. Under the stimulus and enthusiasm of play muscles contract more powerfully and longer than under other conditions. Blood pressure is higher in play. It is far more interesting to play the game than to work at it. When you work you are being driven, when you play you are doing the driving yourself. We play not by jumping the traces of life's responsibilities, but by going so far beyond life's compulsions as to lose sight of the compulsion element. Play up, play up, and play the game. CHAPTER XIII VITALITY TESTS AND VITAL STATISTICS Two things will disclose the strength or weakness of a bank and the soundness or unsoundness of a nation's banking policy, namely, a financial crisis or an expert audit. A searching audit that analyzes each debit and each credit frequently shows that a bank is solvent only because it is not asked to pay its debts. It continues to do business so long as no obvious weaknesses appear, analogous to measles, adenoids, or paralysis. A frequent disorder of banking results from doing too big a business on too little capital, in making too many loans for the amount of cash held ready to pay depositors upon demand. This disorder always comes to light in a crisis--too late. It can be discovered if looked for in advance of a crisis. Many individuals and communities are likewise physically solvent only because their physical resources are not put to the test. Weaknesses that lie near the surface can be discovered before a crisis by physical examination for individuals and sanitary supervision for communities. Whether individuals or communities are trying to do too much business for their health capital, whether the health reserves will pay debts that arise in a crisis, whether we are ill or well prepared to stand a run on our vitality, can be learned only by carefully analyzing our health reserves. Health debits are compared with health credits for individuals by vitality tests, for communities by vital statistics. Of the many vitality tests none is practicable for use in the ordinary class room. Scientific training is just as necessary for such tests as for discovering the quality of the blood, the presence or absence of tubercle bacilli in the sputum, diphtheria germs in throat mucus, or typhoid germs in milk. But scientific truth, the results of scientific tests, can be made of everyday use in all class rooms. State and national headquarters for educators, and all large cities, can afford to engage scientists to apply vitality tests to school children for the sake of discovering, in advance of physical breakdown and before outward symptoms are obvious, what curriculum, what exercise, what study, recreation, and play periods are best suited to child development. It will cost infinitely less to proceed this way than to neglect children or to fit school methods to the loudest, most persistent theory. The ergograph is an interesting strength tester. It takes a picture (1) of the energy exerted, and (2) of the regularity or fitfulness of the manner in which energy is exerted. Perhaps the time will come when science and commerce will supply every tintype photographer with an ergograph and the knowledge to use it. Then we shall hear at summer resorts and fairs, "Your ergograph on a postal card, three for a quarter." We can step inside, harness our middle finger to the ergograph, lift it up and down forty-five times in ninety seconds, and lo! a photograph of our vitality! If we have strong muscles or good control, the picture will be like this: [Illustration: FIG. 1. Ergogram of T.R., a strong, healthy girl, before taking 40 minutes' work in the gymnasium. Weight used, 3.5 kg. Distance lifted, 151 cm. Work done, 528.5 kg.-cm.] If weak and nervous, we shall look like this before taking exercise: [Illustration: FIG. 2. Ergogram of C.E., a weak and somewhat nervous girl, before taking 40 minutes' work in the gymnasium. Weight used, 3.5 kg. Distance lifted, 89 cm. Work done, 311.5 kg.-cm.] And like this after gymnasium exercise: [Illustration: FIG. 3. Ergogram of C.E. after taking 40 minutes' work in the gymnasium, showing that the exercise proved very exhausting. Weight used, 3.5 kg. Distance lifted, 55 cm.] In Chicago, two of whose girls are above photographed, the physician was surprised to have four pupils show more strength late in the day than in the morning. "Upon investigation it was found that the teacher of the four pupils had been called from school, and that they had no regular work, but had been sent to another room and employed themselves, as they said, in having a good time." The chart on page 127 shows the effect of the noon recess and of the good time after three o'clock. Chicago's child-study experts concluded after examining a large number of children: 1. In general there is a distinct relationship in children between physical condition and intellectual capacity, the latter varying directly as the former. 2. The endurance (ergographic work) of boys is greater than that of girls at all ages, and the difference seems to increase after the age of nine. 3. There are certain anthropometric (body measurements) indications which warrant a careful and thorough investigation into the subject of coeducation in the upper grammar grades. 4. Physical condition should be made a factor in the grading of children for school work, and especially for entrance into the first grade. 5. The great extremes in the physical condition of pupils in the upper grammar grades make it desirable to introduce great elasticity into the work of these grades. 6. The classes in physical culture should be graded on a physical instead of an intellectual basis. [Illustration: FIG. 4] To these conclusions certain others should be added, not as settled beyond any possibility of modification, but as being fairly indicated by these tests. 1. The pubescent period is characterized by great and rapid changes in height, weight, strength of grip, vital capacity, and endurance. There seems to accompany this physical activity a corresponding intellectual and emotional activity. It therefore is a period when broad educational influences are most needed. From the pedagogic standpoint it is preëminently a time for character building. 2. The pubescent period is characterized by extensive range of all physical features of the individuals in it. Hence, although a period fit for great activity of the mass of children, it is also one of numerous individual exceptions to this general law. During this period a greater per cent of individuals than usual pass beyond the range of normal limits set by the mass. It is a time, therefore, when the weak fail and the able forge to the front, and hence calls for a higher degree than usual of individualization of educational work and influence. 3. Unidexterity is a normal condition. Rapid and marked accentuation of unidexterity is a pubescent change. On the whole, there is a direct relationship between the degree of unidexterity and the intellectual progress of the pupil. At any given age of school life bright or advanced pupils tend toward accentuated unidexterity, and dull or backward pupils tend toward ambidexterity.... Training in ambidexterity is training contrary to a law of child life. 4. Boys of school age at the Bridewell (reform school) are inferior in all physical measurements to boys in the ordinary schools, and this inferiority seems to increase with age. 5. Defects of sight and hearing are more numerous among the dull and backward pupils. These defects should be taken into consideration in the seating of pupils. Only by removing the defects can the best advancement be secured. 6. The number of eye and ear defects increases during the first years of school life. The causes of this increase should be investigated, and, as far as possible, removed. 7. There are certain parts of the school day when pupils, on the average, have a higher storage of energy than at other periods. These periods should be utilized for the highest forms of educational work. 8. The stature of boys is greater than that of girls up to the age of eleven, when the girls surpass the boys and remain greater in stature up to the age of fourteen. After fourteen, girls increase in stature very slowly and very slightly, while boys continue to increase rapidly until eighteen. 9. The weight of the girl surpasses that of the boy about a year later than her stature surpasses his, and she maintains her superiority in weight to a later period of time than she maintains her superiority in height. 10. In height, sitting, girls surpass boys at the same age as in stature, namely, eleven years, but they maintain their superiority in this measurement for one year longer than they do in stature, which indicates that the more rapid growth of the boy at this age is in the lower extremities rather than in the trunk. 11. Commencing at the age of thirteen, strength of grip in boys shows a marked accentuation in its rate of increase, and this increase continues as far as our observations extend, namely, to the age of twenty. In girls no such great acceleration in muscular strength at puberty occurs, and after sixteen there is little increase in strength of grip. The well-known muscular differentiation of the sexes practically begins at thirteen. 12. As with strength of grip, so with endurance as measured by the ergograph; boys surpass girls at all ages, and this differentiation becomes very marked after the age of fourteen, after which age girls increase in strength and endurance but very slightly, while after fourteen boys acquire almost exactly half of the total power in these two features which they acquire in the first twenty years of life. 13. The development of vital capacity bears a striking resemblance to that of endurance, the curves representing the two being almost identical. Physiological age, according to studies made in New York City, should be considered in grading, not only for physical culture classes but for all high school or continuation classes. Dr. C. Ward Crampton, assistant physical director, while examining boys in the first grade of the High School of Commerce, noticed a greater variation in physical advancement than in years. He kept careful watch of the educational progress and discovered three clear divisions: (1) boys arrived at puberty,--postpubescent; (2) boys approaching maturity,--pubescent; (3) boys not yet approaching maturity,--prepubescent. The work in lower grades they had all passed satisfactorily, but in high school only the most advanced class did well. Practically none of the not-yet-maturing boys survived and few of the almost mature. In other words, the high school course was fitted to only one of the three classes of boys turned out of the grammar schools. The others succumbed like hothouse azaleas at Christmas time, forced beyond their season. Physiological age, not calendar years or grammar school months, should determine the studies and the companions of children after the tenth year. Physiological strength and vitality, not ability to spell or to remember dates, should be the basis of grading for play and study and companionship among younger children. Vitality, power to endure physically, should be the test of work and recreation for adults. Physicians may be so trained to follow directions issued by experts that physical examinations will disclose the chief enemies of vitality and the approximate limits of endurance. Teachers may train themselves to recognize signs of fatigue in school children and to adapt each day's, each hour's work to the endurance of each pupil. One woman principal has written: School programmes, after they have been based upon the laws of a child's development, should provide for frequent change of subject, alternating studies requiring mental concentration with studies permitting motor activity, and arranging for very short periods of the former. Anæmic children should be relieved of all anxiety as to the results of their efforts, and only short hours of daylight work required of them. The disastrous consequences of eye strain should be understood by all in charge of children who are naturally hypermetropic. The ventilation of a class room is far more important than its decoration or even than a high average percentage in mathematics, and the lack of pure air is one of the auxiliary causes of nervous exhaustion in both pupils and teachers. Deficient motor control is a most trustworthy indication of fatigue in children, and teachers may safely use it as a rough index of the amount of effort to be reasonably expected of their pupils. Facial pallor or feverish flushes are both evidences of overtasking, and either hints that fatigue has already begun. As to unfavorable atmospheric conditions, the teacher herself will undoubtedly realize them as soon as the children, but she should remember that effort carried to the point of exhaustion, injurious as it is in an adult, is yet less harmful than it is to the developing nerve centers of the child. Because adults at work and at play reluctantly submit themselves to vitality tests, because few scientists are beseeching individuals to be tested, because almost no one yearns to be tested, the promotion of adult vitality and of community vitality can best be hastened by demanding complete vital statistics. Industrial insurance companies and mutual benefit societies are doing much to educate laborers regarding the effect upon vitality of certain dangerous and unsanitary trades, and of certain unhygienic habits, such as alcoholism and nicotinism. Progress is slower than it need be because state boards of health are not gathering sufficiently complete information about causes of sickness and death. American health and factory inspection is not even profiting, as it should, from British, German, and French statistics. Statistics are in ill repute because the truth is not generally known that our boasted sanitary improvements are due chiefly to the efficient use of vital statistics by statesmen sanitarians.[7] The vital statistics of greatest consequence are not the number of deaths or the number of births, not even the number of deaths from preventable diseases, but rather the number of cases of sickness from transmissible diseases. The cost and danger to society from preventable diseases, such as typhoid, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, are imperfectly represented by the number of deaths. Medical skill could gradually reduce death rates in the face of increasing prevalence of infectious disease. With few exceptions, only those patients who refuse to follow instructions will die of measles, diphtheria, or smallpox. The scarlet-fever patient who recovers and goes to church or school while "peeling" can cause vastly more sickness from scarlet fever than a patient who dies. Dr. W. Leslie Mackenzie, who has recently written _The Health of the School Child_, said ten years ago, while health officer of Leith: Death is the ultimate and most severe injury that any disease can inflict, but short of death there may be disablement, permanent or temporary, loss of wages, loss of employment, loss of education, increase of home labor, increase of sickness outlays, increase of worry, anxiety and annoyance, disorganization of the household, general impairment of social efficiency. The best guarantee against such loss, the best protection of health, and the most essential element of vital statistics is prompt, complete record of cases of sickness. Statistics of sickness are confined to sickness from transmissible diseases, because we have not yet arrived at the point where we recognize the state's right to require information, except when the sick person is a menace to the health of other persons. The annual report of a board of health should give as clear a picture of a community's health during the past week or past quarter as the ergograph gives of the pupils mentioned on page 126. As ragged, rapidly shortening lines show nervousness and depleted vitality, so charts and diagrams can be made to show the needless waste of infant life during the summer months, the price paid for bad ventilation in winter time, when closed windows cause the sickness-and-death line from diphtheria and scarlet fever to shoot up from the summer level. In cities it is now customary for health boards to report weekly the number of deaths from transmissible diseases. Health officers will gladly furnish facts as to cases of sickness, if citizens request them. Newspapers will gladly publish such information if any one will take the pains to supply it. Wherever newspapers have published this information, it quickly takes its place with the weather reports among the news necessities. Marked changes are commented on editorially. Children can easily be interested, as can adults, in filling out week by week a table that will show increases and decreases in preventable sickness due to transmissible diseases. TABLE X CASES OF INFECTIOUS AND CONTAGIOUS DISEASES REPORTED =================+================================================ | WEEK ENDING +------+------+------+------+------+------+------ | Oct. | Nov. | Nov. | Nov. | Nov. | Nov. | Dec. | 26 | 2 | 9 | 16 | 23 | 30 | 7 -----------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------ Tuberculosis | | | | | | | pulmonalis | 350 | 350 | 317 | 364 | 345 | 337 | 422 Diphtheria and | | | | | | | croup | 313 | 264 | 283 | 331 | 282 | 343 | 326 Measles | 142 | 212 | 203 | 261 | 293 | 323 | 472 Scarlet fever | 208 | 228 | 231 | 252 | 278 | 323 | 372 Smallpox | -- | 1 | -- | 1 | -- | -- | 2 Varicella | 40 | 83 | 91 | 162 | 136 | 115 | 167 Typhoid fever | 106 | 105 | 107 | 123 | 86 | 77 | 71 Whooping cough | 6 | 13 | 15 | 14 | 27 | 9 | 8 Cerebro-spinal | | | | | | | meningitis | 6 | 11 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 15 -----------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+------ Total | 1171 | 1267 | 1250 | 1512 | 1451 | 1535 | 1855 =================+======+======+======+======+======+======+====== =================+========================================= | WEEK ENDING +------+------+------+------+------+------ | Dec. | Dec. | Dec. | Jan. | Jan. | Jan. | 14 | 21 | 28 | 4 | 11 | 18 -----------------+------+------+------+------+------+------ Tuberculosis | | | | | | pulmonalis | 360 | 354 | 308 | 344 | 432 | 402 Diphtheria and | | | | | | croup | 369 | 338 | 347 | 308 | 370 | 406 Measles | 471 | 517 | 346 | 581 | 691 | 803 Scarlet fever | 397 | 417 | 426 | 478 | 562 | 585 Smallpox | 4 | 3 | 2 | -- | 2 | -- Varicella | 160 | 198 | 123 | 98 | 199 | 169 Typhoid fever | 62 | 35 | 42 | 37 | 55 | 36 Whooping cough | 12 | 19 | 3 | 25 | 24 | 14 Cerebro-spinal | | | | | | meningitis | 13 | 7 | 6 | 11 | 16 | 13 -----------------+------+------+------+------+------+------ Total | 1844 | 1888 | 1603 | 1882 | 2351 | 2428 =================+======+======+======+======+======+====== In cities where physicians are not compelled to notify the health board of danger centers,--that is, of patients sick from measles, smallpox, or diphtheria,--and in smaller communities where notices are sent only to state boards of health, parents will find it difficult to take a keen interest in vital statistics. But if teachers would start at the beginning of the year to record in such a table the days of absence from school because of transmissible disease, both they and their pupils would discover a new interest in efficient health administration. After a national board of health is organized we may reasonably expect that either state boards of education or state boards of health will regularly supply teachers with reports that will lead them to compare the vitality photographs of their own schools and communities with the vitality photographs of other schools and other communities working under similar conditions. Then children old enough to study physiology and hygiene will be made to see the happiness-giving possibilities of vitality tests and vital statistics. [Illustration: VITAL STATISTICS CAN MAKE DISEASE CENTERS AS OBVIOUS AND AS OFFENSIVE AS THE SMOKE NUISANCE] Instead of discussing the theory of vital statistics, or the extent to which statistics are now satisfactory, it would be better for us at this point to make clear the significance of the movement for a national fact center for matters pertaining to personal, industrial, and community vitality. Five economic reasons are assigned for establishing a national department of health: 1. To enable society to increase the percentage of exceptional men of each degree, many of whom are now lost through preventable accidents, and also to increase the total population. 2. To lessen the burden of unproductive years by increasing the average age at death. 3. To decrease the burden of death on the productive years by increasing the age at death. 4. To lessen the cost of sickness. It is estimated that if illness in the United States could be reduced one third, nearly $500,000,000 would be saved annually. 5. To decrease the amounts spent on criminality that can be traced to overcrowded, unwholesome, and unhygienic environment. In addition to the economic gain, the establishment of a national department of health would gradually but surely diminish much of the misery and suffering that cannot be measured by statistics. Sickness is a radiating center of anxiety; and often death in the prime of life closes the gates of happiness on more than one life. Let us not forget that the "bitter cry of the children" still goes up to heaven, and that civilization must hear, until at last it heeds, the imprecations of forever wasted years of millions of lives. If progress is to be real and lasting, it must provide whatever bulwarks it can against death, sickness, misery, and ignorance; and in an organization such as a national department of health, adequately equipped,--a vast preventive machine working ceaselessly,--an attempt at least would be made to stanch those prodigal wastes of an old yet wastrel world. Among the branches of the work proposed for the national bureau are the following: infant hygiene; health education in schools; sanitation; pure food; registration of physicians and surgeons; registration of drugs, druggists, and drug manufacturers; registration of institutions of public and private relief, correction, detention and residence; organic diseases; quarantine; immigration; labor conditions; disseminating health information; research libraries and equipment; statistical clearing house for information. Given such a national center for health facts or vital statistics, there will be a continuing pressure upon state, county, and city health officers, upon physicians, hospitals, schools, and industries to report promptly facts of birth, sickness, and death to national and state centers able and eager to interpret the meaning of these facts in such simple language, and with such convincing illustrations, that the reading public will demand the prompt correction of preventable evils. Our tardiness in establishing a national board of health that shall do this great educational work is due in part to the fact that American sanitarians have frequently chosen to _do things_ when they should have chosen to _get things done_. Almost every state has its board of health, with authority to require registration of births, deaths, and sickness due to transmissible disease; with few exceptions the heads of these state boards have spent their energies in abating nuisances. In a short time they have degenerated into local scavengers, because they have shown the public neither the meaning of the vital statistics gathered nor its duty to support efficient health administration. The state reports of vital statistics have not been accurate; therefore in many states we have the anomalous situation of an aggressive veterinary board arousing the farmer and the consumer of milk to the necessity of protecting the health of cattle, and an inactive, uninformed state board of health failing to protect the health of the farmer and the consumer. Vital statistics presume efficient health administration. An inefficient health officer will not take the initiative in gathering health statistics. If some one else compels him to collect vital statistics, or furnishes him with statistics, they are as a lantern to a blind man. Unless some one also compels him to make use of them, unless we remove the causes of transmissible or infectious diseases and check an epidemic when we first hear of it, the collection of information is of little social value. "Statistics" is of the same derivation as "states" and "statesmen." Statistics have always been distinguished from mere facts, in that statistics are instruments in the hands of the statesman. Wherever the term "statistics" is applied to social facts it suggests action, social control of future contingencies, mastery of the facts whose action they chronicle. The object of gathering social facts for analysis is not to furnish material for future historians. They are to be used in shaping future history. They are facts collected with a view to improving social vitality, to raising the standard of life, and to eliminating permanently those forces known to be destructive to health. Unless they are to be used this way, they are of interest only to the historical grub. No city or state can afford to erect a statistical office to serve as a curiosity shop. Unless something is to be done to prevent the recurrence of preventable diseases annually experienced by your community or your school, it is not reasonable to ask the public printer to make tables which indicate the great cost of this preventable sickness. A tax collector cannot discharge his duties unless he knows the address of every debtor. The police bureau cannot protect society unless it knows the character and haunts of offenders. A health officer cannot execute the law for the protection of society's health unless he knows the haunts and habits of diseases. For this he must look to vital statistics. But the greatest service of vital statistics is the educational influence. Health administration cannot rise far above the hygienic standards of those who provide the means for administering sanitary law. The taxpaying public must believe in the economy, utility, and necessity of efficient health administration. Power and funds come from town councils and state legislatures. To convince and move these keepers of the purse, trustworthy vital statistics are indispensable. Information will be used for the benefit of all as soon as it is possessed by all. Fortunately the gathering of vital statistics is not beyond the power of the kind of health officer that is found in small cities and in rural communities. If years of study of mathematics and of the statistical method were required, we should despair of obtaining light within a century. But the facts we want are, for the most part, common, everyday facts, easily recognizable even by laymen; for example, births, deaths, age at death, causes of death, cases of transmissible diseases, conditions found upon examination of children applying for work certificates, etc. Where expert skill is required, as at state and national headquarters, it can be found. Every layman can train himself to use skillfully the seven ingredients of the statistical method which it is his duty to employ, and to know when to pay for expert analysis and advice. We can all learn to base judgment of health needs upon the seven pillars,--desire to know, unit of inquiry, count, comparison, percentages, classification, and summary. FOOTNOTES: [7] Dr. Arthur Newsholme's _Vital Statistics_ should be in public libraries and on the shelves of health officers, public-spirited physicians, and school superintendents. CHAPTER XIV IS YOUR SCHOOL MANUFACTURING PHYSICAL DEFECTS? Last year a conference on the physical welfare of school children was told by a woman principal: "Of course we need physicians to examine our children and to teach the parents, but many of us principals believe that our school curriculum and our school environment manufacture more physical defects in a month than all your physicians and nurses will correct in a year." At the same meeting the physical director of schools of New York City appealed eloquently for "biological engineers" at school, who would test the child's strength as building engineers are employed to test the strength of beams and foundations.[8] As explanation for the need of the then recently organized National School Hygiene Association, he elaborated the proposition that school requirements and school environment damage child health. "Ocular defects are in direct ratio to the length of time the pupil has attended school.... A desk that is too high may easily be the indirect agent for causing scoliosis, producing myopia or astigmatism.... Physically examine school children by all means, but do not fail to examine school desks." Fifty schools in different parts of New York City were examined last year with especial reference to the factors likely to cause or to aggravate physical defects.[9] The results, tabulated and analyzed, prove that the woman principal was right; many schools are so built or so conducted, many school courses are so devised or so executed, that children are inevitably injured by the environment in which the compulsory education law forces them to spend their formative years. [Illustration: ONE OF NEW YORK CITY'S ROOF PLAYGROUNDS] Recently I noticed that our little office girl, so anæmic and nervous when she left school that we hesitated to employ her, was becoming rosy and spirited. The child herself explained the change: "I like it better. I have more money to spend. I get more outdoor exercise, and then, oh, the room is so much sunnier and there is more air and the people are all so nice!" And these were just the necessities which were lacking in the school from which she came. Moreover, it is a fair commentary on the school work and the school hygiene in too many of our towns and cities to-day. "I like it better" means that school work is not adapted to the dominant interests of the child, that the curriculum includes subjects remote from the needs and ambitions of the modern school child, and fails to include certain other subjects which it recognizes as useful and necessary, and therefore finds interesting. "I have more money to spend" means that this little girl was able to have certain things, like a warm, pretty dress, rubbers, or an occasional trolley ride, which she longed for and needed. "I get more outdoor exercise" means that there was no open-air playground for her school, that "setting up" exercises were forgotten, that recess was taken up in rushing home, eating lunch, and rushing back again, and that "after school" was filled up with "helping mother with the housework." "The office is so much sunnier and I get more air" accounts for the increase in vitality; and "the people are all so nice," for the happy expression and initiative which the undiscriminating discipline at school had crushed out. [Illustration: BONE TUBERCULOSIS IS ONE OF THE PENALTIES FOR DRY SWEEPING AND FEATHER DUSTERS] For such unsanitary conditions crowded sections of great cities have no apologies to make to rural districts. A wealthy suburb recently learned that there was overcrowding in every class room, and that one school building was so unsanitary as to be a menace to the community. Unadjustable desks, dry sweeping, feather dusters, shiny blackboards, harassing discipline that wrecks nerves, excessive home study and subjects that bore, are not peculiar to great cities. In a little western town a competition between two self-governing brigades for merit points was determined by the amount of home study; looking back fifteen years, I can see that I was encouraging anæmic and overambitious children to rob themselves of play, sleep, and vitality. Many a rural school violates with impunity more laws of health than city factories are now permitted to transgress. After child labor is stopped, national and state child labor committees will learn that their real interest all the time has been child welfare, not child age, and will be able to use much of the old literature, simply substituting for "factory" the word "school" when condemning "hazardous occupations likely to sap [children's] nervous energy, stunt their physical growth, blight their minds, destroy their moral fiber, and fit them for the moral scrap heap." Many of the evils of school environment the teacher can avert, others the school trustee should be expected to correct. So far as unsanitary conditions are permitted, the school accentuates home evils, whereas it should counteract them by instilling proper health habits that will be taken home and practiced. Questions such as were asked in Miss North's study will prove serviceable to any one desiring to know the probable effect of a particular school environment upon children subject to it. Especially should principals, superintendents, directors, and volunteer committeemen apply such tests to the public, parochial, or private school, orphanage or reformatory for which they may be responsible. I. NEIGHBORHOOD HEALTH RESOURCES 1. Is the district congested? 2. Is congestion growing? 3. How far away is the nearest public park? a. Is it large enough? b. Has it a playground or beauty spot? c. Has it swings and games? d. Is play supervised? e. Have children of different ages equal opportunities, or do the large children monopolize the ground? f. Are children encouraged by teachers and parents to use this park? 4. Are the streets suitable for play? a. Does the sun reach them? b. Are they broad? c. Are they crowded with traffic? 5. How far away is the nearest public bath? a. Has it a swimming pool? b. Has it showers? c. Is it used as an annex to the school? [Illustration: VACATION-SCHOOL PLAY CLINIC ON A "VACANT" CITY LOT OWNED BY THE ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH] II. EFFECT OF SCHOOL EQUIPMENT UPON HEALTH 1. Is there an indoor yard? a. Is the area adequate or inadequate? b. Is the floor wood, cement, or dirt? c. Is the heat adequate or deficient? d. Is the ventilation adequate or deficient? e. Is the daylight adequate, deficient, or almost lacking? f. Is there equipment for light gymnastics and games? g. Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally? 2. Is there an outdoor yard? a. Is the area ample or inadequate? b. Is the area mainly occupied by toilets? c. Is the daylight sufficient or deficient? d. For how many hours does the sun reach it? e. Is it equipped for games? f. How much larger ought it to be? g. Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally? 3. Is there a gymnasium? a. Is it large enough? b. Is it used for a gymnasium? c. Is it cut up into class rooms? d. Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally? 4. Is there a roof playground? a. Is there open ventilation? b. Is it used in the daytime? c. Is it used at night? d. Is it used during the summer? e. Is it monopolized by the larger children? f. Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally? 5. Are washing facilities adequate? a. How many pupils per washbasin? b. Are there individual towels? c. Have eye troubles been spread by roller towels? d. Are only clean towels permitted? e. Are there bathing facilities; are these adequate? f. Are swimming pools used for games, contests, etc.? g. Are bathing facilities used out of school hours? h. Who is responsible for cleanliness of towels, washbasins, and swimming pools? i. How often is water changed in swimming pool, or is it constantly changing? 6. Is adequate provision made for clean drinking water? a. Are sanitary fountains used that prevent contamination of faucet or water? b. How often are cups or faucets cleaned? 7. Is provision made for airing outer clothing? a. Are children permitted to pile their clothing in the class room? b. Are there hooks for each child? c. Are lockers provided with wire netting to permit ventilation? d. Are lockers or hooks in the halls or in the basement? e. Have you ever thought of the disciplinary and social value of cheap coat hangers to prevent wrinkling and tearing? [Illustration: AN ATTEMPT TO OVERCOME THE DISADVANTAGES OF CONGESTION--A BOYS' HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY] III. THE CLASS ROOM AS A PLACE OF CONFINEMENT 1. How many sittings are provided? a. How many pupils are there? 2. What is the total floor area? a. What proportion is not occupied by desks? 3. Are the seats adjustable? a. Are the seats adjusted to pupils? b. Where desks are adjustable, are short children seated in low desks, or are children seated according to class or according to discipline exigencies without regard to size of desk? c. Are seats placed properly with reference to light? 4. Is the light ample and proper? a. For how many hours must artificial light be used in the daytime? b. Is artificial light adequate for night work? c. Does the reflection of light from blackboard and walls injure the eye? d. Are the blackboards black enough? e. Are the walls too dark? f. Is the woodwork too dark? g. Are window panes kept clean? 5. Is the air always fresh? a. Is ventilation by open windows? b. Is ventilation artificial? c. Does the ventilating apparatus work satisfactorily? d. Are the windows thrown open during recess, and after and before school? e. Do unclean clothes vitiate the atmosphere? f. Do unclean persons vitiate the atmosphere? g. Does bad breath vitiate the atmosphere? h. Are pupils and parents taught that unclean clothes, unclean persons, and bad breath may decrease the benefits of otherwise adequate ventilation and seriously aggravate the evils of inadequate ventilation? 6. Is the temperature properly regulated? a. Has every class room a thermometer? b. Are teachers required to record the thermometer's story three or more times daily? c. Is excess or deficiency at once reported to the janitor? 7. Are the floors, walls, desks, and windows always clean? a. How often are they washed? b. Is twice a year often enough? c. Do the floors and walls contain the dust of years? d. Is dry sweeping prohibited? e. Has wet sawdust or even wet sand been tried? f. Has oil ever been used to keep down surface dust on floors? g. Are feather dusters prohibited? h. Are dust rags moist or dry? i. Is an odorless disinfectant used? 8. Does overheating prevail? a. Do you know teachers and principals who protest against insufficient ventilation, particularly against mechanical ventilation, while they themselves are "in heavy winter clothing in a small room closely sealed, the thermometer at 80 degrees"? IV. EXERCISE AND RECREATION 1. How much time and at what periods is exercise provided for in the school schedule? a. Indoors? b. Outdoors? 2. How much exercise indoors and outdoors is actually given? 3. Are the windows open during exercise? 4. Is exercise suited to each child by the school physician after physical examination, or are all children compelled to take the same exercise? 5. Whose business is it to see that rules regarding exercise are strictly enforced? 6. Do clouds of dust rise from the floor during exercise and play? 7. Are children deprived of exercise as a penalty? 8. Should hygiene talks be considered as exercise? [Illustration: HOME WORKSHOPS NEED FRESH AIR] V. THE SCHOOL JANITOR AND CLEANERS 1. Do they understand the relation of cleanliness to vitality? 2. Is their aim to do the least possible amount of work, or to attain the highest possible standard of cleanliness? 3. Will the teacher's complaint of uncleanliness be heeded by trustees? If so, is the teacher not responsible for uncleanliness? 4. Have you ever tried to stimulate the pride of janitors and cleaners for social service? a. Have you ever tried to show them how much work they save themselves by thorough cleansing? b. Have you ever shown them the danger, to their own health, of dust and dirt that may harbor infection and reduce their own vitality? 5. What effort is made to instruct janitors and cleaners by your school trustees or by your community? 6. Have you explained to pupils the important responsibility of janitors for the health of those in the tenements, office buildings, or schools? a. Do you see in this an opportunity to emphasize indirectly the mother's responsibility for cleanliness of home? [Illustration: SCHOOL WORKSHOPS ALSO NEED FRESH AIR] VI. REQUIREMENTS OF CURRICULUM 1. How much home study is there? a. How much is required? b. What steps are taken to prevent excessive home study? c. Are light and ventilation conditions at home considered when deciding upon amount of home study? 2. Is the child fitted to the curriculum, or is the curriculum fitted to the child? a. Does failure or backwardness in studies lead to additional study hours or to regrading? b. Are there too many subjects? c. Are the recitation periods too long? d. Are the exercise periods too short and too few? e. Is there too much close-range work? f. Is it possible to give individual attention to individual needs so as to awaken individual interest? 3. Is follow-up work organized to enlist interest of parents, or, if necessary, of outside agencies in fitting a child to do that for which, if normal, he would be physically adapted? By reducing the harm done by old buildings and by the traditions of curriculum and discipline, teachers can do a great deal. Perhaps they cannot move the windows or the desks, but they can move the children. If they cannot insure sanitary conditions for home study, they can cut down the home study. If the directors do not provide proper blackboards, they can do less blackboard work. They can make children as conscious, as afraid, and as resentful of dirty air as of dirty teeth. They can make janitors believe that "dry sweeping" or "feather dusting" may give them consumption, and leave most of the dirt in the room to make work for the next day; that adjustable desks are made to fit the child's legs and back, not the monkey wrench; that the thermometer in the schoolroom is a safer guide to heat needed than a boiler gauge in the basement; that fresh air heated by coal is cheaper for the school fund than stale air heated by bodies and by bad breath. Finally, they can make known to pupils, to parents, to principals and superintendents, to health officials and to the public, the extent to which school environment violates the precepts of school hygiene. If the state requires the attendance of all children between the ages of five and fourteen at school for five hours a day, for five days in the week, for ten months in the year, then it should undertake to see that the machinery it provides for the education of those children for the greater part of the time for nine years of their lives--the formative years of their lives--is neither injuring their health nor retarding their full development. If the amount of "close-range" work is rapidly manufacturing myopic eyes; if bad ventilation, whether due to faulty construction or to faulty management, is preparing soil for the tubercle bacillus; if children with contagious diseases are not found and segregated; if desks are so ill adapted to children's sizes and physical needs that they are forming crooked spines; if too many children are crowded into one room; if lack of air and light is producing strained eyes and malnutrition; if neither open air, space, nor time is provided for exercise, games, and physical training; if school discipline is adapted neither to the psychology nor the physiology of child or teacher, then the state is depriving the child of a greater right than the compulsory education law forces it to endure. Not only is the right to health sacrificed to the right to education, but education and health are both sacrificed. In undertaking to enforce the compulsory education law, to put all truants and child laborers in school, the state should be very sure for its own sake that it is not depriving the child of the health on which depends his future usefulness to the state as well as to himself. TABLE XI EFFECTS OF A CHILD LABOR LAW Increase in Chicago Attendance Grades 4-9 ######## 1901-1902 ############# 1902-1903 ###################################################### 1903-1904 Grades 9-15 ####################### 1901-1902 #################### 1902-1903 ###################################################### 1903-1904 FOOTNOTES: [8] _The Sanitation of Public Buildings_, by William Paul Gerhard, contains a valuable discussion of how the school may avoid manufacturing physical defects. [9] By Professor Lila V. North, Baltimore College for Women, for the New York Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children, 105 East 22d Street, New York City. CHAPTER XV THE TEACHER'S HEALTH "Teachers, gentlemen, no less than pupils, have a heaven-ordained right to work so adjusted that the highest possible physical condition shall be maintained automatically." This declaration thundered out by an indignant physician startled a well-meaning board of school directors. The teacher's right to health was, of course, obvious when once mentioned, and the directors concluded: 1. School conditions that injure child health also injure teacher health. 2. Poor health of teacher causes poor health of pupil. 3. Poor health of pupil often causes poor health of teacher. 4. Adequate protection of children requires adequate protection of their teachers. 5. Teachers have a right to health protection for their own sake as well as for their children's sake. Too little concern has hitherto been shown for the vitality of teachers in private or public schools and colleges. Without protest, and without notice until too late, teachers often neglect their own health at home and at school,--recklessly overwork, undersleep, and undernourish; ruin their eyes, their digestion, and their nerves. School-teachers are frequently "sweated" as mercilessly as factory operatives. The time has come to admit that a school environment which destroys the health of the teacher is as unnecessary and reprehensible as an army camp that spreads typhoid among a nation's defenders. A school curriculum or a college tradition that breaks down teachers is as inexcusable as a gun that kills the gunner when discharged. Experience everywhere else proves that periodic physical examinations and health precautions, not essays about "happy teachers--happy pupils," are indispensable if teachers' health rights are to be protected. Physical tests are imposed upon applicants for teachers' licenses by many boards of education. In New York City about three per cent of those examined are excluded for defects of vision, of hearing, of probable endurance. Once a teacher, however, there is no further physical examination,--no way of discovering physical incapacity, nothing to prevent a teacher from exposing class after class to pulmonary tuberculosis contracted because of overwork and underventilation. The certainty of salary increase year by year and of a pension after the twentieth year will bribe many a teacher to overtax her own strength and to jeopardize her pupils' health. Seldom do training schools apply physical tests to students who intend to become teachers. One young girl says that before starting her normal course she is going to the physician of the board of education for examination, so as to avoid the experience of one of her friends, who, after preparing to be a teacher, was rejected because of pulmonary tuberculosis. During her normal course no examination will be necessary. Overwork during the first year may cause pulmonary tuberculosis, and in spite of her foresight she, too, may be rejected four years hence. The advantages of physical examination upon beginning and during the courses that prepare one for a teacher are so obvious that but little opposition will be given by prospective teachers. The disadvantages to teacher and pupil alike of suffering from physical defects are so obvious that every school which prepares men and women for teachers should make registration and certification dependent upon passing a satisfactory physical test. No school should engage a teacher who has not good proof that she can do the required work without injury to her own or her pupils' health. Long before physicians can discover pulmonary tuberculosis they can find depleted vitality which invites this disease. Headaches due to eye trouble, undernourishment due to mouth breathing, preventable indigestion, are insidious enemies that cannot escape the physical test. Three objections to physical tests for teachers will be urged, but each loses its force when considered in the light of general experience. 1. _A sickly teacher is often the most efficient teacher in a school or a county._ It is true that some sickly teachers exert a powerful influence over their pupils, but in most instances their influence and their efficiency are due to powers that exist in spite of devitalizing elements. Rarely does sickness itself bring power. It must be admitted that many a man is teaching who would be practicing law had his health permitted it. Many a woman's soul is shorn of its self-consciousness by suffering. But even in these exceptional instances it is probable that children are paying too dearly for benefits directly or indirectly traceable to defects that physical tests would exclude. 2. _There are not enough healthy candidates to supply our schools._ This is begging the question. In fact, no one knows it is true. On the contrary, it is probable that the teacher's opportunity will make even a stronger appeal to competent men and women after physical soundness and vitality are made conditions of teaching,--after we all believe what leading educators now believe, that the highest fulfillment of human possibilities requires a normal, sound body, abounding in vitality. 3. _Examination by a physician, especially if a social acquaintance, is an unnecessary embarrassment._ The false modesty that makes physical examination unwelcome to many adults, men as well as women, is easily overcome when the advantages of such examination are understood. It is likewise easy to prove to a teacher that the loss of time required in having the examination is infinitesimal compared with the loss of time due to ignoring physical needs. The programme for school hygiene outlined in Chapter XXVII, Part IV, assumes that state and county superintendents will provide for the examination of teachers as well as of pupils. [Illustration: TEACHERS WILL PREFER PHYSICAL EXAMINATIONS TO FORCED VACATIONS Boston Society for Relief and Study of Tuberculosis] Because the health of others furnishes a stronger motive for preventive hygiene than our own health, it is probable that the general examination of teachers will come first as the result of a general conviction that unhealthy teachers positively injure the health of pupils and retard their mental development. Children at school age are so susceptible and imitative that their future habits of body and mind, their dispositions, their very voices and expressions, are influenced by those of their teachers. Experts in child study say that a child's vocal chords respond to the voices and noise about him before he is able to speak, so that the tones of his voice are determined before he is able to express them. This influence is also marked when the child begins to talk. Babies and young children instinctively do what adults learn not to do only by study,--follow the pitch of others' voices. Can we then overestimate the effect upon pupils' character of teachers who radiate vitality? The character and fitness, aside from scholarship, of applicants for teachers' licenses are now subjected by the board of examiners of New York City to the following tests: 1. Moral character as indicated in the record of the applicant as a student or teacher or in other occupation, or as a participant in an examination. 2. Physical fitness for the position sought, reference being had here to all questions of physical fitness other than those covered in a physician's report as to "sound health." 3. Satisfactory quality and use of voice. 4. Personal bearing, cleanliness, appearance, manners. 5. Self-command and power to win and hold the respect of teachers, school authorities, and the community. 6. Capacity for school discipline, power to maintain order and to secure the willing obedience and the friendship of pupils. 7. Business or executive ability,--power to comprehend and carry out and to accomplish prescribed work, school management as relating to adjustment of desks, lighting, heating, ventilation, cleanliness, and attractiveness of schoolroom. 8. Capacity for supervision, for organization and administration of a school, and for the instructing, assisting, and inspiring of teachers. These tests probably exclude few applicants who should be admitted. Experience proves that they include many who, for their own sake and for children's sake, should be rejected. The moral character, physical fitness, quality of voice, personal bearing, self-command, executive ability, capacity for supervision, are qualities that are modified by conditions. The voice that is satisfactory in conference with an examiner may be strident and irritating when the teacher is impatient or is trying to overcome street noises. On parade applicants are equally cleanly; this cannot be said of teachers in the service, coming from different home environments. Self-command is much easier in one school than in another. Physical fitness in a girl of twenty may, during one short year of teaching, give way to physical unfitness. Therefore the need for _periodic tests_ by principal, superintendent, and school board, _to determine the continuing fitness_ of a teacher to do the special task assigned to her, based upon physical evidence of her own vitality and of her favorable influence upon her pupils' health and enjoyment of school life. Shattered nerves due to overwork may explain a teacher's shouting: "You are a dirty boy. Your mother is a dirty woman and keeps a dirty store where no decent people will go to buy." A physical examination of that unfortunate teacher would probably show that she ought to be on leave of absence, rather than, by her overwork and loss of control, to cause the boys of her class to feel what one of them expressed: "Grandmother, if she spoke so of my mother I would strike her." Just as there should be a central bureau to count and correct the open mouths and closed minds that clog the little old red schoolhouse of the country, so a central bureau should discover in the city teacher as well as in the country teacher the ailments more serious than tuberculosis that pass from teacher to pupil; slovenliness, ugly temper, frowning, crossness, lack of ambition, cynicism,--these should be blackballed as well as consumption, contagious morphine habit, and contagious skin disease. Crooked thinking by teacher leads to crooked thinking by pupil. Disregard of health laws by teacher encourages unhygienic living by pupils. A man whose fingers are yellow, nerves shaky, eyes unsteady, and mind alternately sleepy and hilarious from cigarettes, cannot convey pictures of normal, healthy physical living, nor can he successfully teach the moral and social evils of nicotinism. Both teacher and pupil have a right to the periodic physical examination of teachers that will give timely warning of attention needed. Until there is some system for giving this right to all teachers in private, parochial, charitable, and public schools, we shall produce many nervous, acrid, and physically threadbare teachers, where we should have only teachers who inspire their pupils with a passion for health by the example of a good complexion, sprightly step, bounding vitality, and forceful personality born of hygienic living. PART III. COÖPERATION IN MEETING HEALTH OBLIGATIONS CHAPTER XVI EUROPEAN REMEDIES: DOING THINGS AT SCHOOL Recently I traveled five hundred miles to address an audience on methods of fitting health remedies to local health needs. I told of certain dangers to be avoided, of results that had always followed certain remedies, of motives to be sought and used, of community ends to seek. Not knowing the local situation, I could not tell them exactly what to do next, or how or with whom to do it; not seeing the patient or his symptoms, I did not diagnose the disease or prescribe medicine. Several members of the audience who were particularly anxious to start a new organization on a metropolitan model were disappointed because they were told, not just how to organize, but rather how to find out what sort of organization their town needed. They were right in believing that it was easier to copy on paper a plan tried somewhere else, than to think out a plan for themselves. They had forgotten for the time being their many previous disappointments due to copying without question some plan of social work, just as they copy Paris or New York fashions. They had not expected to leave this meeting with the conviction that while the _ends_ of sanitary administration may be the same in ten communities, health _machinery_ should fit a particular community like a tailor-made suit. American-like, they had a mania for organization. I once heard an aged kindergartner--the savant of an isolated German village--describe my fellow-Americans as follows: "Every American belongs to some organization. The total abstainers are organized, the brewers are organized, the teachers are organized, the parents are organized, the young people and even the juniors are organized. Finally, those who belong to no organization go off by themselves and organize a society of the unorganized." Love of organization and love of copying have given us Americans a feverish desire for what we see or read about in Europe. When we talk about our European remedies we try to make ourselves believe that we are broad-minded and want to learn from others' experience. In a large number of cases our impatient demand for European remedies is similar to the schoolboy's desire to show off the manners, the slang, or the clothes picked up on his first visit away from home. With many travelers and readers European remedies or European ways are souvenirs of a pleasant visit, to be described like a collection of postal cards, a curious umbrella, a cane associated with Alpine climbing, or a stolen hymnal from an historic cathedral. Experience proves, however, that just as Roman walls and Norman castles look out of place in New York and Kansas, so European laws and European remedies are too frequently misfits when tried by American schools, hospitals, or city governments. Yesterday a Canadian clergyman, after preaching an eloquent sermon, met a professional beggar on the street in New York City and emptied his purse--of Canadian money! Quite like this is the enthusiastic demand of the tourist who has seen or read about "the way it's done in Germany." The trouble is that European remedies are valued like ruins, by their power to interest, by their antiquity or picturesqueness, or, like the beggar, by their power to stimulate temporary emotion. But we do not sleep in ruins, go to church regularly in thirteenth-century abbeys, or live under the remedies that fire our imagination. We do not therefore see their everyday, practical-result side. The souvenir value of European remedies is due to the assumption that no better way was open to the European, and that the remedy actually does what it is intended to do. Because free meals are given at school to cure and prevent undernourishment, it is taken for granted that undernourishment stops when free meals are introduced; therefore America must have free meals. Because it is made compulsory in a charming Italian village for every child to eat the free school meal, it is taken for granted that the children of that village have no physical defects; therefore let Kansas City, Seattle, and Boston introduce compulsory free meals. But when one goes to Europe to see exactly how those much-advertised, eulogized remedies operate from day to day, it is often necessary to write, as did a great American sanitarian recently, of health administration in foreign cities continually held up as models to American cities: "In spite of the rules and theories over here, the patient has better care in New York City." We have been asked of late to copy several very attractive European remedies for the physiological ills of school children, and for the physical deficiencies of the next generation of adults: breakfasts or lunches, or both, at school for all children, rich as well as poor, whether they want school nourishment or not; school meals for the poor only; school meals to be given the poor, but to be bought by those who can afford the small sum required; free eyeglasses for the poor, for poor and well-to-do, for those who wish them, for those who need them whether they want to wear eyeglasses or not; free dental care; free surgical treatment; free rides and outings during summer and winter; country children to visit the metropolis, city children to visit country and village; free treatment in the country of all children whose parents are consumptives; free rides on street cars to and from school; city-owned street railways that will prevent congestion by making the country accessible; city-built tenements to prevent overcrowding, dark rooms, insufficient air and light; free coal, free clothes, free rent for those whose parents are unable to protect them properly against hunger and cold. Every one of these remedies is attractive. Every one is being tried somewhere, and can be justified on emotional, economic, and educational grounds, if we think only of its purpose. Let us view them with the eyes of their advocates. Would it not be nice for country children to know that toward the end of the school year they would be given an excursion to the largest city of their state, to its slums, its factories, parks, and art galleries? They would grow up more intelligent about geography. They would read history, politics, sociology, and civil government with greater interest. They would have less contracted sympathies. They might even decide that they would rather live their life in the spacious country than in the crowded, rushing city. City children, on the other hand, would reap worlds of physical benefit and untold inspiration from periods of recreation and study in the country, with its quiet, its greens and bronzes and yellows, its birds and animals, its sky that sits like a dome on the earth, its hopefulness. Winter sleigh rides and coasting would give new vigor and ambition. Why spend so much on teaching physiology, geography, and nature study, if in the end we fail to send the child where alone nature and hygiene tell their story? Why tax ourselves to teach history and sociology and commercial geography out of books when excursions to the city and country will paint pictures on the mind that can never be erased? What more attractive or more reasonable than appetizing, warm meals, or cool salads and drinks for the boys and girls who carry their little dinner pails and baskets down the long road where everything runs together in summer and everything freezes in winter? One needs little imagination to see the "smile that won't come off," health, punctuality, and school interest resulting from the school meal. Again, if children must have teeth filled and pulled, eyes tested and fitted for glasses, adenoids and enlarged tonsils removed, surely the school environment offers the least affrighting spot for the tragedy. Thence goblins long ago fled. There courage, real or feigned, is brought to the surface by the anxious, critical, competitive interest of one's peers. [Illustration: A SOUTH IRELAND ARGUMENT FOR "DOING THINGS"] The economic defense of these remedies is many-sided. An English drummer once instructed me during a railroad journey from southern to northern Ireland. As we entered the fertile fields of Lord Dunraven's estate near Athlone, I expressed sympathy for other countries impoverished of soil, of wealth, and of thrift. My instructor replied: "It would pay the government to bring them all to this land free once a year, just to show them what they are missing." That his idea of an investment is sound has been proved by railroads and land companies and even by states, who give away excursions to entice settlers and buyers. Ambition at almost any cost is cheaper than indifference to opportunity. It would be cheaper for our American taxpayer to send school children to city and country than to pay the penalty for having a large number of citizens with narrow interests, unconscious of the struggles and joys of their co-citizens. Free meals, free books, free rides, free eyeglasses, are cheaper than free instruction for the second, third, and sixth terms in studies not passed because of physical defects,--infinitely cheaper than jails and almshouses, truant officers and courthouses. The demoralizing results of giving "something for nothing" did not follow free schooling or free text-books. Perhaps they would not follow the free remedies that we are asked to copy from Europe. In fact, the word "free" is the wrong word. These remedies rather require coöperation of parent with parent. It has demoralized nobody because the streets are cleaned by all of us, country roads made by the township, police paid for by taxes and not by volunteer subscription. The man whose children do not need glasses or nourishment or operation for adenoids would find it cheaper to pay for European remedies than for the useless schooling of boys unable to get along in school because of removable defects. An unruly, uninterested boy sitting beside your boy in public school, a pampered, overfed, undisciplined child sitting beside yours at private school, is taxing you without your consent and doing your child injury that may prove irreparable. It costs $2.50 to furnish a child with eyeglasses. It costs $25 to $50 to give that child a year's schooling. If the child cannot see right and fails in his studies, we have lost a good investment and, after one year so lost, we are out $22.50. In two years we have lost $47.50. But, what is more serious, we have discouraged that boy. Used to failure in school, his mind turns to other things. He is made to think that it is useless for him to try for first place. Perhaps he can play ball, and excels. He chooses a career of ball playing. Valuable years are lost. Initiative and competition are not interrupted any more by free eyeglasses and free operation for adenoids than by free schooling. There is only one place in the world where there is less competition or less struggle than among the ignorant, and that is among the ignorant and unwell. The boy who can't see the blackboard, who can't learn to spell, who can't breathe through his nose, and can't be interested, doesn't compete at all with the bright, healthy boy. Remove the adenoids, give glasses, make interest possible, and fitness to survive takes a higher level because larger numbers become fit to survive. Professor Patten says that it is easier to support in the almshouse than in competitive industry a man who cannot earn more than $1.50 a day. The question, therefore, regarding European remedies is not, To what general theory do they belong? but, What will they accomplish? How do they compare with other remedies of which we know? CHAPTER XVII AMERICAN REMEDIES: GETTING THINGS DONE In New York City there is a committee called the Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children. The word "welfare" was used rather than "condition" because the committee proposed to use whatever facts it could gather for the improvement of home and school conditions prejudicial to child welfare. The following programme was adopted: 1. _Study of the physical welfare of school children._ a. Examination of board of health records of children needing medical, dental, or ocular care, and better nourishment. b. Home visitation of such children, in order to ascertain whether their need arises from deficient income or from other causes. c. Effort to secure proper treatment, either from parents or from free clinics or other established agencies. d. Effort to secure proper physical surroundings of children while at school--playgrounds, baths, etc. 2. _Effort to secure establishment of such a system of school records and reports_ as will disclose automatically significant school facts,--e.g. regarding backward pupils, truancy, regularity of attendance, registered children not attending, sickness, physical defects, etc. 3. _Effort to utilize available information regarding school needs_ so as to stimulate public interest and thus aid in securing adequate appropriations to meet school needs. The committee grew out of the discussion, in the year 1905, of the following proposition: _To insure a race physically able to receive our vaunted free education, we must provide at school free meals, free eyeglasses, free medical and dental care._ Thanks to the superintendent of schools of New York City, to Robert Hunter's _Poverty_, to John Spargo's _Bitter Cry of the Children_, hundreds of thousands of American citizens were made to realize for the first time that a large proportion of our school children are in serious need of medical, dental, or ocular attention, or of better nourishment. Because physicians, dentists, oculists, hospitals, dispensaries, relief agencies, had seemingly been unconscious of this serious state of affairs, they had no definite, constructive remedy to propose. Their unpreparedness served to strengthen the arguments for the European method of _doing things_. France, Germany, Italy, England, had found it necessary to do things at school. Arguing from their experience, it was only a matter of time when American cities must follow their example. Why not, therefore, begin at once to deal radically with the situation and give school meals, school eyeglasses, etc.? Those who organized the Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children realized the danger of trying to settle so great a question with the little definite information then available. If _doing things at school_ were to be adopted as a principle and logically carried out, vast sums must be added to the present cost of the public school system. Complications would arise with private and parochial schools, whose children might have quite as serious physical defects, even though not educated by public funds. It would be difficult to obtain proper rooms for medical and dental treatment and meals, and perhaps still more difficult to insure proper food, skilled oculists, dentists, surgeons, and physicians. No one was clear as to how the problem was to be solved by small cities and rural districts, whose needy children are no less entitled to public aid simply because their numbers are smaller. Great as were the difficulties, however, the committee saw that difficulties are in themselves no reason for not doing the right thing. On the other hand, if doing things at school is wrong, if school meals fail to correct and remove physical defects, great social and educational wrong would result from New York's setting an example that would not only misdirect funds and attention in that city, but would undoubtedly lead other cities to move in the wrong direction. Right could be hastened, wrong could be prevented more effectually by facts than by any amount of theory. School meals had been made a political issue in England. The arguments supporting them were stronger than any possible arguments against them, except proof that they would be less effective in helping children than other means that might be proposed. If the American people must choose between sickly, unteachable, dull children without school meals, on the one hand, and bright, teachable, healthy children plus school meals, on the other hand, they will not hesitate because of expense or eighteenth-century objections to "socialism." During one year of investigation and of _getting things done_ the committee has prepared three studies for publication: (1) a report on the home conditions of fourteen hundred school children of different nationalities, found by school physicians to have defects of vision, breathing, hearing, teeth, and nourishment; (2) an examination of fifty schools--curriculum, buildings, home-study requirements, play space and playtime, physical culture--in an attempt to answer the question, How far does school environment directly cause or aggravate physical defects of school children; (3) a comparative study of methods now employed in a hundred cities to record, classify, and make public significant school facts. The results of the first year's work prove conclusively that physical defects are not caused solely by the inability of parents to pay for proper food. Among the twenty significant facts reported by the committee are the following: 1. Physical defects found in public schools are, for the most part, such as frequently occur in wealthy families and do not of themselves presume as the cause insufficient income. Of 145 reported for malnutrition, 44 were from families having over $20 weekly. 2. Few of the defects can be corrected by nourishment alone; plenty of fresh air, outside nourishment at school, or extra nourishment at home will not entirely counteract the influences of bad ventilation and bad light in school buildings. Country children have adenoids, bad teeth, and malnutrition. Plenty of food will not prevent bad teeth and bad ventilation from causing adenoids, enlarged tonsils, and malnutrition. 3. Children whose parents have long lived in the United States need attention quite as much as the recent immigrant. 4. A large part of the defects reported could be produced by conditions due directly to neglect of teeth. From twenty such statements of fact and from its experience in _getting things done_ for one year, the committee drew fifteen practical conclusions, among which the following deserve emphasis here: 1. The only new thing about the physical defects of school children is not their existence, but our recent awakening to their existence, their prevalence, their seriousness if neglected, and their cost to individual children, to school progress, to industry, and to social welfare. 2. _Physical deterioration_, applied to America's school children, is a misnomer. No evidence whatever has been given that the percentage of children suffering from physical defects in 1907 is greater than the percentage of children suffering from such defects in 1857. On the contrary, the small proportion of defects that are not easily removable, as well as a vast amount of evidence from medical experience and vital statistics, indicates that, if a comparison were possible, the children of 1907 would be found to have sounder bodies and fewer defects than their predecessors of fifty years ago. If there is an exception to this statement, it is probably defects of vision, with regard to which school authorities and oculists seem to agree that confinement in school for longer hours and more constant application under unfavorable lighting conditions have caused a marked increase. Positive evidence as to tendencies will be easily obtained after thorough physical examination has been carried on for a generation. 3. The effect of massing facts as to physical defects of school children should not be to cause alarm, but to stimulate remedial and preventive measures, to invoke congratulations and aggressive optimism, not doleful pessimism and palliative measures born of despair. 4. The causes of physical defects are not confined to "marginal" incomes, but, while more apt to be present in families having small incomes, are found among all incomes wherever there exist bad ventilation, insufficient outdoor exercise, improper light, irregular eating, overeating, improper as well as insufficient food, lack of medical, dental, and ocular attention. 5. Whatever may be said of free meals at school as a means of insuring punctual attendance or better attention, they are inadequate to correct physical conditions that home and street environment produce. 6. _To remove physical defects, causal conditions among all income classes should be treated, and not merely symptoms revealed at school by children of the so-called poor._ 7. Parents can and will correct the greater part of the defects discovered by the physical examination of school children, if shown what steps to take. Where parents refuse to do what can be proved to be within their power, and where existing laws are nonenforced or inadequate, the segregation of children having physical defects in special classes might prove an effective stimulus to obstinate parents. 8. Where parents are unable to pay for medical, dental, and ocular care and proper nourishment, private philanthropy must either provide adequately or expect the state to step in and assume the duty. 9. Private dispensaries and hospitals must either arrange themselves to treat cases and to educate communities as to the importance of detecting and correcting physical defects, or must expect the state to provide hospital and dispensary care. Until private hospitals and dispensaries take steps to prevent people with adequate incomes from imposing upon them for free treatment, it is difficult to make out a case against free eyeglasses and free meals for school children. 10. Either private philanthropy or the state must take steps to procure more dental clinics and an educational policy on the part of the dental profession that will prevent the exploitation of the poor when dental care is needed. 11. The United States Bureau of Education is the only agency with authority and equipment adequate to secure from all sections of the country proper attention to the subject. Nothing in the world can prevent free meals, free eyeglasses, free medical care, free material relief at school, unless educational use is made by each community of the facts learned through physical examination to correct home, school, and street conditions that produce and aggravate physical defects. The national bureau can mass information in such a way as to convince budget makers in city, county, and state to vote gladly the funds necessary to promote the physical welfare of school children. [Illustration: THE DARK-HALL EVIL IS HERE INDEXED BY ADENOIDS.] How the committee got things done is often referred to. There is something about a request for coöperation, whether by schools or by any other agency, that enlists the interest of those whose help is asked. The reason is not that people are flattered by requests to serve on committees, or that human nature finds it difficult to be unfriendly or unkind. On the contrary, men and women are by nature social; there is more joy in giving than in withholding, in working with others than in working alone. Men and women, official and volunteer agencies, will coöperate with school-teachers when invited, for the same reason and with the same readiness that ninety-nine farmers out of a hundred, on the prairie or in the mountain, will welcome a request for food and lodging. [Illustration: WHERE "GETTING THINGS DONE" IS POSSIBLE BUT "DOING THINGS" INEFFECTIVE] Mothers will naturally take a greater interest in the welfare of their children if held responsible for proper food and proper home surroundings than if not reminded of their responsibility. In New York City a woman district superintendent of schools, Miss Julia Richman, has organized a unique "social settlement." She and several school-teachers occupy a house, known as "The Teachers' House." This is their residence. Here they are subject to neither intrusion nor importunity; no clubs or classes are held here; visitors are treated as guests, not as beneficiaries. The purpose these teachers have in living together is to work out the methods of interesting private and official leaders in community needs disclosed at school. Where clubs and social gatherings are held in school buildings, it is not unusual for a thousand mothers, recent immigrants, to meet together in one hall to hear talks on the care of children. Thus, instead of principals, teachers, and physicians taking the place of mothers (which they nowhere have succeeded in doing), they do succeed in harnessing mothers to the school programme. It may take two, three, or ten visits to get a particular mother to do the necessary thing for her child, but when once convinced and once inspired to do that thing, she will go on day in and day out doing the right thing for that child and for all others in her home. It may take a year to convert a police magistrate whose sympathy for delinquent parents and truant children is an active promoter of disorder; but a magistrate convinced, efficient, and interested is worth a hundred volunteer visitors. To get things done in this way for a hundred thousand children costs less in time and money than to do the necessary things for one thousand children. CHAPTER XVIII COÖPERATION WITH DISPENSARIES AND CHILD-SAVING AGENCIES Scientists agree that the human brain is superior to the animal brain, not because it is heavier, but because it is finer and better supplied with nerves. As one writer has said, the human brain is better "wired," has better organized "centrals." A poor system of centrals will spoil a telephone service, no matter how many wires it provides. An independent wire is of little use, because it will not reach the person desired at the other end. The ideal system is that which almost instantly connects two persons, no matter how far away or how many other people are talking at the same time on other wires. The school that tries to do everything for its pupils without using other existing agencies for helping children[10] will be like the man who refuses to connect his telephone with a central switch board, or like a bank that will not use the central clearing house. As one telephone center can enable scores of people to talk at once, and as one clearing house can make one check pay fifty debts, so hospital and relief agencies enable a teacher who employs "central" to help several times as many children as she alone can help. [Illustration: ADEQUATE RELIEF RECOGNIZES THE FAMILY AS THE UNIT] It seems easier for a teacher to give twenty-five cents to a child in distress than to see that the cause of the misery is removed. In New York City there are over five hundred school principals, under them are over fifteen thousand teachers, and the average attendance of children is about six hundred thousand, representing one hundred and fifty thousand homes. If teachers give only to those children who ask for help, many will be neglected. In certain sections of the city principals have combined to establish a relief fund to be given out to children who need food, clothes, shoes, etc. One principal had to stop replacing stolen overcoats because, when it was known that he had a fund, an astonishingly large number of overcoats disappeared. At Poughkeepsie school children get up parties, amateur vaudeville, minstrel shows, basket picnics, to obtain food and clothing for children in distress. They are, of course, unable to help parents or children not in school. Of this method a district superintendent in New York said to his teachers and principals: "For thirty-two years I have been working in the schools of this district. I have given food and shoes to thousands of children. I know that however great our interest in a particular child when it comes to us with trouble at home, our duty as teachers prevents us from following our gift into the home and learning the cause of the child's trouble. This last winter we have made an experiment in using a central society, which makes it a business to find out what the family needs, to supply necessaries, country board, medicine, etc. We now know that we can put a slip of paper with the name and address of the child into a general hopper and it will come out eyeglasses, food, rent, vacation parties, as the need may be." Relief at home through existing agencies was brought about by the distribution of cards like those on opposite page, which offer winter and summer coöperation. [Illustration: FRESH-AIR AGENCIES LIKE SEA BREEZE PREFER TO AID CHILDREN IN ORDER OF NEED] [Illustration: (Facsimile of flyer for the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor.)] +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | =For School Children= | | | | Compulsory education implies the ability of all families, even the | | poorest, to take advantage of school benefits. This means that | | children should be fed properly, clad comfortably, and healthfully | | housed. | | | | The New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor | | aims to coöperate with school-teachers in every part of Manhattan | | and The Bronx to insure comfort and prevent suffering among school | | children, their parents, and younger brothers and sisters. On one | | day last winter we received appeals from school principals and | | teachers in behalf of twenty-nine families. Within six hours every | | family was visited, emergent aid in food and coal provided for | | many, and orders given for shoes and dresses and coats required by | | the children of school age. During the winter we gave not only | | clothing, groceries, food, and rent, but found work for older boys | | and parents, taught mothers to prepare food properly, and sent a | | visiting cleaner to make sick mothers comfortable and to get the | | children ready for school. | | | | In a word, we followed that need, the surface evidence of which | | comes to the attention of the teacher, back into the home and its | | conditions, aiding throughout the period when the family was | | unable to do justice by the school child. | | | | In many instances the home income was sufficient, but the home | | management inefficient. Probably such homes could be more | | effectively benefited through educational work emanating directly | | from the school. | | | | We can be reached by telephone (348, 349, and 1873 Gramercy) from | | 9 A.M. to 12 M. Letters or postal cards should be addressed to | | Mrs. H. Ingram, Superintendent, 105 East 22d Street. Reference | | slips will be gladly furnished upon application. | | | | The New York Association for Improving | | 1843 * the Condition of the Poor * 1905 | | | | =Teachers of Manhattan and The Bronx= | | | | _Do you know of such children as these:_ | | | | 1. Convalescent children now out of school, who would be | | benefited by a stay at the seashore in May or June? | | | | 2. Children in school whose anæmic condition would be | | greatly improved by a week at Sea Breeze during July or | | August? | | | | 3. Small brothers and sisters (and tired mothers) who may | | need outings or special help? | | | | The New York Association for Improving the Condition of the | | Poor will act promptly. Write or telephone (348 Gramercy). | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ When these cards were first distributed several teachers went from room to room, asking children who needed help to raise the hand. In many cases parents were very angry that their children should have asked for help. But help given in instances like the following soon proved to teachers that they could afford the time necessary to notice children who appeared neglected, when so much good would ensue: The father is sick and unable to work. They cannot get clothes for the children, who are not attending school on that account. Children were provided with shoes and clothes. November 30, 1907, a school principal reported that six children in one family needed underwear. A visitor discovered that one of the boys who had the reputation of being unruly and light-fingered also had adenoids. He was taken to a hospital for operation, and was later interested in his school work. A little girl was unruly and truant. No attempt was made to keep her at school, but she was reported to the Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children. The parents could not control her. The girl was taken for examination by a specialist and found to be feeble-minded. Later she was sent to a custodial institute. Another little girl was nine years old, but could not talk. A University Extension Society worker found that she was not kept at school because it was too much trouble. The child was taken to a physician who operated and corrected the tongue-tie. A girl of twelve said she must stay home to "help mother." The mother was found to be a janitress, temporarily incapacitated by rheumatism. A substitute was provided until the mother was well, and all the children were properly clad for school. After the adenoid operations in a New York school that occasioned the East Side riots of 1906, the physicians and principals who had persuaded parents to permit the operations were fearful lest the summer in unsanitary surroundings might make the demonstration less complete. Over forty children in three parties were sent away for the summer, where they had wholesome food and all the milk they could drink and fresh air day and night. When they returned in the fall the principal wrote: "The improvement in each individual is simply marvelous. We shall try to continue this condition and shall constantly urge the parents to keep up the good work by means of proper food and fresh air." In none of these instances could the teachers have accomplished equal results for the individual children or for the families without neglecting school duties. By informing other agencies as to children's needs, teachers started movements that have since helped practically every school child in New York City. Dispensaries are setting aside separate hours for school children; fresh-air agencies are giving preference to children found by teachers or school physicians to be in physical need; relief agencies are making "rush orders" of every note from teachers; the health board is more active because volunteer agencies have added their voice to that of teacher and health officer in demanding adequate funds for physical examination of school children. [Illustration: "CENTRAL" FOUND THE MOTHER SICK IN A HOSPITAL, THE FATHER KILLED--THE CHILDREN WERE BOARDED IN THE COUNTRY UNTIL THE MOTHER RECOVERED] Coöperation is at present easier in New York than in any other city. Charitable societies, hospitals, dispensaries, are probably more keenly alive to their responsibilities and are at least more apt to have acquired the habit of coöperation when asked. Yet even here I have been told repeatedly by teachers: "If we have to wait for that hospital or that charitable society, our children will go barefoot." In small communities where hospital and relief agencies are for emergencies only and generally inactive, it seems that the first thing to do is to ask some friends to establish a small relief fund, just as it is easier to give a child a five-cent meal than to teach its mother how to prepare its food. But the school-teacher will find that it takes very much less energy to arouse the relief society than to maintain her own relief work. In fact, in many cities nothing could do more to strengthen hospitals and charitable societies than to put them in touch with the needs of school children. For a principal to make known the fact that school children are neglected will help the charitable society and hospital to get the funds necessary to do their part better than they are now doing it and better than the school could ever do it. Finally, one reason for a breakdown of charitable societies is not their own inadequacy, but rather the failure of the school and church to make use of an agency better equipped than themselves to give material relief. The teacher sees the child every day, while the relief society will never see it and has no reason to see it until some one calls attention to it. The very first step, and an indispensable one in relief policy, is for teachers to be on the lookout for children not adequately provided for, and then have the physical evidence discovered at school followed to the home for the cause of the child's distress. [Illustration: HOME-TO-HOME INSTRUCTION IN COOKING Anæmic condition of child due to bad cooking, not to lack of income] _Coöperation_ removes the cause of distress; _doing_ may aggravate it. Teachers would do well to draw up for themselves a chart which will show exactly what part of the community's work can be best done by their school. On the following page is charted the social work now being conducted at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. So far as agencies exist to deal with any individual or family problem coming into the social-work square, the hospital aims to utilize that agency. Its own direct dealing with neurasthenics, with hygiene education, with sexual deviates, is primarily for the purpose of giving adequate treatment to the needy, and secondarily to demonstrate how adequate treatment should be organized for the community. Please to note that governmental agencies are not mentioned in Dr. Cabot's chart. This does not mean that he would not emphasize the importance of those agencies, but that up to the present time, for the particular cases dealt with in his clinics, governmental agencies can be reached most effectively through the private charitable agencies in the reference square. So the teacher will frequently find that the relief bureau, children's society, public education association, or church can get better results for her pupils from public health and correctional agencies than can she by writing directly. [Illustration: CHART OF SOCIAL WORK, MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL] +-----------------------------------+ | _Work for the Tuberculous_ | | | | 1. Tuberculosis classes | | 2. Reference to other agencies | | 3. Examination of children | | 4. Stimulation of suburbs | +-----------------------------------+ | | | +--------------------------------+ | +--------------------------------+ | _Psychiatric Work_ | | | _Work for Hygienic Conditions_ | | | | | | | 1. For neurasthenics and | | | 1. Individual instruction | | hysterics | | | 2. Convalescent homes | | 2. For defectives | | | 3. Industrial hygiene | | 3. For stammerers | | | 4. Home hygiene | | 4. For epileptics | | | | +--------------------------------+ | +--------------------------------+ \ | / \ | / \ | / \ | / \ | / \ | / \ | / +-----|-----+ | | /SOCIAL WORK\ /| M.G.H. |\ / +---/|\-----+ \ / / | \ \ / / | \ \ / / | \ \ / / | \ \ +-------/-----|-----\-------\---+ | _References to Other Agencies_| | | /|1. Hospitals and sanatoriums | / |2. Associated charities |\ / |3. Societies for children | \ / |4. District and visiting nurses| \ / |5. Settlements | \ / |6. Homes--temporary or not | \ / /|7. Employment agencies | \ / / +-------------|-----------------+ \ +------------/-----/----+ | +--\-------\----------+ | _Ward Work_ | | | | | | | | _Work for | | 1. With cases soon to | | | Cases of | | be discharged | | | Varicose Ulcer_ | | 2. Cases needing | | | | | friendly offices | | | | +-------------/---------+ | +---------\-----------+ / | \ +-----------/-----------+ | +--------------\----------+ | _Work for | | | _Assistance to M.G.H._ | | Sexual Deviates_ | +---------|---------+ | Financial investigation | | | | _Assistance to | | | | 1. Unmarried but | | Other Agencies_ | |(a) of Cases asking free | | pregnant | | | | treatment | | 2. Diseased | | 1. Steering cases | |(b) of Cases presumably | | 3. Exposed | | 2. Coöperation | | able to pay a physician | +-----------------------+ +-------------------+ +-------------------------+ In country districts no plan has yet been worked out for adequate relief. Fortunately, however, the distress is generally of such a kind, and the teacher so well acquainted with all the parents of her district, that it will not be difficult to procure such attention as is necessary. Country schools should be furnished by county and state superintendents with clear directions for getting the treatment afforded in the immediate vicinity. Where teachers are alone in seeing the need for coöperation they can quickly interest young and old, physicians, dentists, pastors, health officers, in home visiting, street cleaning, nursing, helping truants, needed changes of curriculum, etc. _Getting things done_ is easy because it is human to love the _doing_; getting things done is _doing_ of the highest order. FOOTNOTES: [10] The importance of recognizing the family as the unit of social treatment is presented in Edward T. Devine's _Principles of Relief_, and in Homer Folks's _Care of Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent Children_. CHAPTER XIX SCHOOL SURGERY AND RELIEF OBJECTIONABLE, IF AVOIDABLE The popular arguments for free meals, free relief, free medical treatment at school, are based upon the assumption that there are but two ways to travel, one leading to a physically sound, moral, teachable child, the other to an undernourished, subnormal, backward child. They tell us we must choose either school meals or malnutrition, school eyeglasses or defective vision, free coal or freezing poor, free rent or people sleeping on the streets, free dental clinics at school or indigestion and undernourishment, free operation at school for adenoids or backward, discouraged pupils. If there is no other alternative than neglect of the child, if we must either waste fifty dollars in giving a child education that he is physically unable to take, or pay two, three, four, or even fifty dollars to fit him for that education, the American people will not hesitate. Whether there are other roads to healthy children, whether it is cheaper and better for the school to see that outside agencies prepare the child for education rather than itself to take the place of those outside agencies, is a question of fact, not of theory. Facts prove, as we have seen, that there is more than one way to prevent malnutrition. Parents can be taught to attend to their children; hospitals and dispensaries will furnish eyeglasses where parents are unable to pay for them; charitable societies will go back of the need for eyeglasses to the conditions that produce that need and will do vastly more for the child than can eyeglasses alone. If parents, hospitals, dispensaries, and charitable societies will attend to children's needs, then relief at school is unnecessary, even though it may seem desirable. The objection to school surgery should be clearly before us, so that we can judge of the two methods that are open to us,--_treatment at school_ vs. _treatment away from school_. Society is so organized that the treatment of serious physical defects and social needs at school would upset the machinery a very great deal. For the school to do for its children whatever they may need during their school years will require the setting up of a miniature society in every school building or under every school board. Unless schools are to equip themselves to take the place of all existing facilities for relief and surgery, children would not be so well taken care of as at present. It should not be forgotten that the physical welfare of the school child is the most accurate index to the physical needs of the community. After all, the child lives for six important years before coming to the school and leaves at the early age of fourteen or fifteen; even while attending school it sleeps at home and is influenced more by home and street standards of ventilation, cleanliness, and morality than by conditions at school. It would seem, therefore, the wider use of the school's influence to use the child's appeal to strengthen every agency having to do with community health, rather than to concentrate upon the child himself. If babies were properly cared for up to the sixth year, the protection of the school child's health would be infinitely easier. To take our eyes from the child not yet in school and from the child just out of school is to make the mistake that so many advocates of the child labor movement have made of going whither and only so far as our interest leads us and of not continuing until our work is accomplished. [Illustration: "DOING THINGS" THROUGH MODEL TENEMENTS] Do we want to make of our schools miniature hospitals, dispensaries, relief bureaus, parks? Or shall we use the momentum of society's interest in the school child to put within the reach of every school building adequate hospitals, dispensaries, relief centers, and parks for school child and adult? Shall every little school have its library, or shall the child be taught at school how to use the same library that is available to his parents and older brothers and sisters? If the library is to be under the school roof, if dispensary and relief hospital are to be conducted on the same site as the school, shall they be known as dispensary, library, relief bureau, each under separate management, or shall they be known as school under the management of school principal and superintendent? So complicated and many-sided is the problem of working together with one's neighbor for mutual benefit that it is a safe rule for the schools to adopt: _We shall do nothing that is unnecessary or extravagant. We shall have done our part if we do well what no one else can do. Whatever any agency can do better than we, we shall leave to that agency. Work that another agency ought to have done and has left undone, we shall try to have done by that agency._ [Illustration: IMMEDIATELY OPPOSITE THE MODEL TENEMENTS, BUT UNINFLUENCED "Getting things done" by the Tenement House Department their special need] I know a hospital where a welfare nurse was recently employed. Within a few blocks were three different relief agencies and two visiting-nurse's associations, having among them over one hundred visitors and nurses going to all sections of Manhattan. This nurse had the choice of telephoning to one of these agencies and asking it to call at the needy home of one of her hospital patients, or of going to the home herself. Had she chosen to use another agency, she could have been the means of furnishing the kind of help needed in every needy home discovered in her hospital rounds, but she chose to do the running about herself and thus of helping ten families where she ought to have helped five hundred. Much the same condition confronts the school that tries to do all extra work for its child instead of seeing that the work is done. Illustration is afforded by the New York tenement department. Whereas European cities have built a few model tenements, New York City secured a law declaring that everybody who built a tenement and everybody who owned a tenement should provide sanitary surroundings. At the present time a philanthropist, by spending two million dollars, could give sanitary surroundings to thirty-five families; by spending each year the interest on one tenth that sum he could insure the enforcement of the tenement laws affecting every tenement resident in New York City. If schools are to perform surgical operations, they are in danger of being sued for malpractice; discipline will be interfered with. Finally, let us not forget that we are dealing with buildings, teachers, and school institutions as they exist. Where education is made compulsory, the unpleasant and the controversial should be kept out of school. Because a democratic institution, the American school should represent at all times a maximum of general agreement. To take _palliative measures to public schools_ not only _leaves undone remedial_ work necessary for the health of public school children but _neglects entirely the still large numbers who go to parochial, private pay, and private free schools_; no one has had the temerity to suggest that the public shall force upon nonpublic schools a system of free operations, free eyeglasses, free meals. Civilization has painstakingly developed a large number of agencies for the education and protection of mankind. Of these agencies the school is but one. Its first and peculiar function is _to teach and to train_. This it can do better than any other agency or combination of agencies. In attempting to "bring all life under the school roof," we use but a small part of our resources. Instead of persuading each of the agencies for the promotion of health to do its part for school children, we set up the school in competition with them. Thus in trying to _do things_ for school children we are in danger of crippling agencies equipped to do things for both school children and their parents, for babies before they come to school, and for wage earners after they leave school. _Getting things done_ will lead schools to study underlying causes; _doing things_ has heretofore caused schools to confine themselves to symptoms. _Getting things done_ will leave the school free to concentrate its attention upon school problems; _doing things_ will lead it afield into the problem of medicine, surgery, restaurant keeping, and practical charity. CHAPTER XX PHYSICAL EXAMINATION FOR WORKING PAPERS There is no sacred right to work when our work involves injury to ourselves and to our neighbor. Work at the expense of health is an unjustifiable tax upon the state. It is the duty of society to protect itself against such depletion of national efficiency. Three classes of workmen need special attention: (1) those who are physically unfit to work; (2) those who are physically unfitted for the work they are doing; (3) those who are subjected to unhealthful surroundings while at work. Viewing these three classes from the standpoint of their neighbors, we have three social rights that should be enforced by law: (1) the right to freedom from unhealthy work; (2) the right to work fitted to the body; (3) the right to healthy surroundings at work. It is undoubtedly true that just as the sick child may be found at the head of his class, so unhealthy men and women are often good business managers, good salesmen, good typewriters, successful capitalists. They excel, however, not because of their ill health, but in spite of it, excepting of course those instances where men and women, because of ill health, have devoted to business an attention that would have been given to recreation if bad health had not deprived recreation of its pleasure. As statistics in school have proved that the majority of mentally superior children are also physically superior, so statistics will probably prove that the number of the "sick superior" among the working classes is very small, while the danger of inefficiency that comes from physical defect is very great. There is one time in the individual's working life when the state may properly step in and demand an inventory of physical resources, and that is when the child asks the state for permission to go to work. Strategically, this is probably the most important of all contact as yet provided between society and the future wage earner. Here at the threshold of his industrial career the boy may be told for what work he is physically fitted, what physical defects need to be remedied, what physical precautions he needs to take, in order to do justice to himself and his opportunity. Every year from two to three million children leave the public schools of this country to join the army of workers. The percentage of those recruits who have physical defects needing attention is undoubtedly great; how great we shall never know until the benefits of physical examination are given to all of them. What steps is your state taking to ascertain the physical fitness of the children who present themselves each year for working papers? How does it insure itself against the risk of their defective eyesight, chorea, deafness, or general debility? Does it inform children of their defects, or tell them how they may increase their earning power by correcting these defects? What effort does it make to induce children to avoid dangerous trades, or trades that are particularly dangerous for their physiques? At the close of school last spring I had my secretary look in upon the New York board of health and see what demands that city makes upon its boys and girls before allowing them to drive its machinery, to run its elevators, to match its colors, to sew on its buttons, to set its type, to carry its checks to the bank. The officer at the door of the room where the children were being examined, greeted her as follows: "You must bring your child with you; bring his birth certificate or swear that he is fourteen years old, and bring a signed statement from his teacher that he has been in school for one hundred and thirty consecutive days within twelve months." "Is there no physical examination or test?" she asked. "No, no," he answered impatiently. Yet the board of health certifies that "said child has in our opinion reached the normal development of a child of its age, and is in sound health and is physically able to perform the work which it intends to do." In addition the blank calls for place and date of birth, color of hair and of eyes, height, weight, and facial marks. Volunteer societies in practically every state in the Union have been working for years to have it made a criminal offense to employ a child who has not been in school a minimum of days after a stated age (12, 13, 14, 15). Even in New York, however, the center of this agitation, no strong demand was made upon the board of health to apply a physical-fitness test as well as an age test until 1908 when examination for working papers was added to the programme for child hygiene. Yet who does not know girls and boys of sixteen less fit for factory or shop work than other boys and girls of twelve? It is the fetich of age which has made possible the "democracy" that permits a child of fourteen to work all day on condition that he go to school at night! [Illustration: CHILDREN ENLISTING IN THE INDUSTRIAL ARMY] [Illustration: WAITING TO BE EXAMINED FOR WORKING PAPERS An excellent opportunity for physical-fitness tests] So great is the risk of defective, sickly, or intemperate employees, that in some trades employers take every precaution to exclude them. One man with defective eyesight or unsteady nerves may cost a railroad thousands of dollars. As insurance companies rank trades as first-, second-, or third-class risks, so many factories, from long experience, debar men with certain characteristics which have been found detrimental to business. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company of New York City examines all applicants for employment, as to age, weight, height, keenness of vision, hearing, color perception, lungs, hearts, arteries, alcoholism, and nicotinism. Those who fall below the standard are rejected, but in each case the physical condition is explained to the applicant. Where defects are removable or correctable, the applicant is told what to do and invited to take another test after treatment. Moreover, accepted employees are periodically reëxamined. While designed to increase company profits and to reduce company losses, this examination obviously decreases the employees' losses also, and increases the certainty of work and prospect of promotion. Our states, and many of our industries, still have the attitude of a certain manufacturer who employs several hundred boys and girls. I asked him what tests he employed. "I look over a long line of the applicants and say," pointing his finger, "I want you, and you, and you; the rest may go." I asked him if he made a point of picking out those who looked strong. "No. The work is easy, sitting down all day long and picking over things. I select those whose faces I like. Yes, there is one question we now ask of all the girls. One day a girl in the workroom had an epileptic fit and it frightened everybody and upset the work so that the foreman always asks, 'Do you have fits? Because if you do, you can't work here.'" He makes no attempt to determine the physical fitness and endurance of the children employed, because when the strength of one is spent there is always another to step into her place. Because the apprentice's future is of no value to the manufacturer, the state must restrict the manufacturer's freedom to spend like water society's capital,--the health of the coming generation. Could there be a grosser mis-management of society's business than to permit trade to waste children on whose education society spends so many millions yearly? The most effective and most timely remedy is physical examination as a condition of the work certificate. A simple, easily applied, inexpensive measure that imposes only a legitimate restriction upon individual freedom, it is absolutely necessary in order to get to the bottom of the child labor problem. If thoroughly applied, children of the nation will no longer be exploited by unscrupulous or indifferent employers, nor will their health be hazarded by lack of discriminating examination that rejects the obviously sick and favors the apparently robust. Furthermore, knowledge that this test will be applied when work certificates are required, will be an incentive to the school boy and girl to keep well. Tell a boy that adenoids or weak lungs will keep him from getting a job, and you will make him a strong advocate of operation and of fresh air. Show him that his employers will not wish his services when his week is out if he is physically below par, and he will gladly submit to a board of health examination and ask to be told what his defects are and how to correct them. [Illustration: CHILDREN AT WORK BELOW BOTH AGE LIMIT AND VITALITY LIMIT National Child Labor Committee] Some there are who will object to this appeal to the child's economic instinct. This objection does not remove the instinct. The normal child is greedy for a job. His greed, as well as that of the manufacturer and parent, is responsible for much of the child labor; his greed for activity, for association, for money, and so for work. A little boy came into my office and wanted to hire as an office boy. I looked at him and said: "My little fellow, you ought to be in school. What do you want to hire out here for?" He said, "I am tired of school; nothing doing." He doesn't care about work for its own sake; he doesn't care about wealth for its own sake; he wants to get into life; to be where there is "something doing." In this lies one potent argument for vocational training. To tell a boy of his physical needs just before he has taken his first business step is to put him everlastingly in our debt. Then he is responsive, and, fortunately for the extreme cases, necessarily dependent, for he knows that his refusal would stand between himself and his ambition. When boys and girls go for work certificates to Dr. Goler, medical officer of health at Rochester, he requires not merely evidence of age and of schooling, but examines their eyes for defective vision and for disease, their teeth for cavities and unhealthy gums, and their noses and throats for adenoids and enlarged tonsils. If a boy has sixteen decayed teeth, Dr. Goler explains to him that teeth are meant to be not only ornaments and conveniences, but money getters as well. The boy learns that decayed teeth breed disease, contaminate food, interfere with digestion, make him a disagreeable companion and a less efficient worker. If he will go and have them put into proper condition he will enjoy life better and earn good wages sooner. After the teeth are attended to the boy secures his work certificate. If the boy's mother protests in tears or in anger that her boy does not work with his teeth, she learns what she never learned at school, that sound teeth help pay the rent. If a girl applicant for working papers has adenoids, she is asked to look in the mirror and to notice how her lips fail to meet, how the lower jaw drops, how much better she looks with her jaws and lips together. She is told that other people breathe through the nose, and that perhaps the reason she dislikes school and does not feel as she used to about play is that she cannot breathe through her nose as she used to. She is shown that her nose is stopped up by a spongy substance, as big as the end of her little finger, which obstruction can be easily removed. She is shown adenoids and enlarged tonsils that have been removed from some other girl, and is so impressed with the before-operation and after-operation contrast and by the story of the other girl's rapid increase in wages, that she and her mother both decide not to wait for the adenoids to disappear by absorption. After the operation they come back with proof that the trouble is gone, and get the "papers." Similar instruction is given when defects of vision seriously interfere with a child's prospects of getting ahead in his work, or when evidence of incipient tuberculosis makes it criminal to put a child in a store or factory. [Illustration: THE GRENFELL ASSOCIATION FINDS MOUTH BREATHERS AT WORK IN LABRADOR] No law as yet authorizes the health officer of Rochester to refuse work certificates to children physically unfit to become wage earners. A higher law than that which any legislature can pass or revoke, has given Dr. Goler power over children and parents, namely, interest in children and knowledge of the industrial handicap that results from physical defects. This higher law authorizes every health officer in the United States to examine the school child before issuing a work certificate, to tell the child and his parents what defects need to be removed, for what trades he is physically unfitted, what trades will not increase his physical weakness, and to what trade he is physically adapted. We should not forget that a large proportion of our children never apply for work certificates; some because they never intend to work; some because they expect to remain in school until sixteen or later; some because they live on farms, in small towns, or in cities and states where prohibition of child labor is not enforced. Because there is no reason for this large proportion of children to visit a board of health, some substitute must be found. This substitute has been already suggested by principals and district superintendents in New York City, who claim that the natural place for the examination of children is the school and not health headquarters. Developing the idea that the school should pronounce the child's fitness to leave school and to engage in work, we are led to the suggestion that the state, which compels evidence that every child, rich or poor, is being taught during the compulsory school age, shall also at the age of fourteen or sixteen require evidence that the child is physically fit to use his education, and that it shall not, because of preventable ill health, prove a losing investment. Parochial and private schools, the ultra-religious and ultra-rich, may resent for a time public supervision of the physical condition of children who do not ask for work certificates. This position will be short-lived, because however much we may disagree about society's right to control a child's act after his physical defects are discovered, few of us will question the state's duty to tell that child and his parents the truth about his physical needs before it accepts his labor or permits him to go to college, to "come out," to "enter society," or to live on an income provided by others. Thus an invaluable commencement present can be given by the state to children in country schools and to those compelled to drop out of fourth or fifth grades of city schools. [Illustration: THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT'S CLINICAL CARE AND HOME INSTRUCTION COME AFTER WAGE LOSSES, WHILE WORK CERTIFICATES PRECEDE BREAKDOWNS FROM TUBERCULOSIS] A brief test of this method of helping children, such as is now being made by several boards of health at the instance of the National Bureau of Labor, will prove conclusively that parents are grateful for the timely discovery of these defects which handicap because of their existence, not because of their discovery. Of the cadets preparing for war at West Point, it has recently been decided that those "who in the physical examinations are found to have deteriorated below the prescribed physical standard will be dropped from the rolls of the academy." Shall not cadets preparing for an industrial life and citizenship be given at least a knowledge of an adequate physical standard? To allow the school child to deteriorate whether before or after going to work is only to waste potential citizenship. Citizens who use themselves up in the mere getting of a living have no surplus strength or interest for overcoming incompetence in civic business, or for achieving the highest aim of citizenship,--the art of self-government for the benefit of all the governed. CHAPTER XXI PERIODICAL PHYSICAL EXAMINATION AFTER SCHOOL AGE Governor Hughes, in his address to the students in Gettysburg College, pleaded for such lives that strength would be left for the years of achievement. How many men and women can you count who are squandering their health bank account? How many do you know who are now physically bankrupt? The man who is prodigal of his health may work along all right for years, never realizing until the test comes that he is running behind in his vitality. The test may be hard times, promotion, exposure to cold, heat, fever, or a sudden call for all his control in avoiding accident. If his vitality fails to stand the test, his career may be ruined, "all for the want of a horseshoe nail": because of no health bank account to draw upon in time of need,--failure; because of vitality depleted by alcohol, tobacco, overeating, underexercise, or too little sleep,--no power to resist contagious diseases; because of ignorance of existing lung trouble,--a year or more of idleness, perhaps poverty for his family; or there is neglected ear or eye trouble,--and thousands of lives may be lost because the engineer failed to read the signals. Adults are now examined when applying for insurance or accident policies, for work on railroads, for service in the army and on the police and fire forces of cities that provide pensions. It is somewhat surprising that the hundreds of thousands who carry life insurance policies have not realized that a test which is rigorously imposed for business reasons by insurance companies can be applied by individuals for business reasons. Generations hence the state will probably require of every person periodic physical examination after school age. Decades hence business enterprises will undoubtedly require evidence of health and vitality from employees before and during employment, just as schools will require such evidence from teachers. It is, after all, but a step from the police passport to the health passport. Why should we not protect ourselves against enemies to health and efficiency as well as against enemies to order? But for the present we must rely upon the intelligence of individuals to recognize the advantage to themselves, their families, and their employers, of knowing that their bodies do not harbor hidden enemies of vitality and efficiency. From a semi-annual examination of teeth to a semi-annual physical examination is but a short step when once its effectiveness is seen by a few in each community. [Illustration: THE OLD SOUTHFIELD, NOW ANCHORED AT BELLEVUE HOSPITAL'S DOCK, NEW YORK CITY, GIVES DAILY LESSONS IN THE PREVENTABLE TAX LEVIED BY TUBERCULOSIS] Ignorance of one's physical condition is a luxury no one can afford. No society is rich enough to afford members ignorant of physical weaknesses prejudicial to others' health and efficiency. Every one of us, even though to all appearances physically normal, needs the biological engineer. New conditions come upon us with terrific rapidity. The rush of work, noise, dust, heat, and overcrowding of modern industry make it important to have positive evidence that we have successfully adapted ourselves to these new conditions. Only by measuring the effects of these environmental forces upon our bodies can we prevent some trifling physical flaw from developing into a chronic or acute condition. As labor becomes more and more highly specialized, the body of the laborer is forced to readapt itself. The kind of work a man does determines which organs shall claim more than their share of blood and energy. The man who sets type develops keenness of vision and manual dexterity. The stoker develops the muscles of his arms and back, the engineer alertness of eye and ear. All sorts of devices have been invented to aid this specialization of particular organs, as well as to correct their imperfections: the magnifying glass, the telescope, the microscope, extend the powers of the eye; the spectacle or an operation on the eye muscles enables the defective eye to do normal work. A man with astigmatism might be a policeman all his life, win promotion, and die ignorant of his defect; whereas if the same man had become a chauffeur, he might have killed himself and his employer the first year, or, if an accountant, he might have been a chronic dyspeptic from long-continued eye strain. It is a soul tragedy for a man to attempt a career for which he is physically unadapted.[11] It is a social tragedy when men and women squander their health. A great deal of the success attributed to luck and opportunity, or unusual mental endowment, is in reality due to a chance compatibility of work with physique. To secure such compatibility is the purpose of physical examination after school age. If the periodic visit to the doctor is the first law of adult health, still more imperative is the law that competent physicians should be seen at the first indication of ill health. Even when competent physicians are at hand, parents and teachers should be taught what warning signs may mean and what steps should be taken. In Germany insurance companies find that it saves money to provide free medical and dental care for the insured. Department stores, many factories and railroads, have learned from experience that they save money by inducing their employees to consult skilled physicians at the first sign of physical disorder. Many colleges, schools, and "homes" have a resident physician. Wherever any large number of people are assembled together,--in a hotel, factory, store, ship, college, or school,--there should be an efficient consulting physician at hand. If people are needlessly alarmed, it is of the utmost importance to show them that there is nothing seriously wrong. Therefore visits to the consulting physician should be encouraged. The reader's observation will suggest numerous illustrations of pain, prolonged sickness, loss of life, that could have been prevented had the physician been semi-annually visited. A strong man, well educated, with large income, personally acquainted with several of the foremost physicians of New York City, after suffering two weeks from pains "that would pass away," was hurriedly taken to a hospital at three o'clock in the morning, operated upon immediately, and died at nine. A business man of means put off going to a physician for fifteen years, for fear he would be told that his throat trouble was tobacco cancer, or incipient tuberculosis, or asthma; a physical examination showed that a difficulty of breathing and chronic throat trouble were due to a growth in the nose, corrected in a few minutes by operation. A celebrated economist was forced to give up academic work, and consecrated his life to painful and chronic dyspepsia because of eye trouble detected upon the first physical examination. A woman secretary suffered from alleged heart trouble; paralysis threatened, continuous headache and blurred vision forced her to give up work and income; a physical examination found the cause in nasal growths, whose removal restored normal conditions. A woman lecturer on children's health heard described last summer a friend's experience with receding gums: "'Why, I never heard of that disease.' she said. 'Don't you know you have it yourself'? I asked. She had never noticed that her gums were growing away in little points on her front teeth. I touched the uncovered portion and she winced. That ignorance has meant intense pain and ugly fillings. If it had gone longer, it might have meant the loss of her front teeth." A teacher lost a month from nervous prostration; physical examination would have discovered the eye trouble that deranged the stomach and produced the nerve-racking shingles which forced him to take a month's vacation. A journalist lost weeks each year because of strained ankles; since being told that he had flat foot, and that the arch of his foot could be strengthened by braces and specially made shoes, he has not lost a minute. A relief visitor, ardent advocate of the fresh-air, pure-milk treatment for tuberculosis, had a "little cough" and an occasional "cold sweat"; medical friends knew this, but humored her aversion to examination; when too late, she submitted to an examination and to the treatment which, if taken earlier, would most certainly have cured her. A mother's sickness cost a wage-earning daughter nearly $3000; softening of the brain was feared; after six years of suffering and unnecessary expense, physical examination disclosed an easily removable cause, and for two years she has contributed to the family income instead of exhausting it. Untold suffering is saved many a mother by knowledge of her special physical need in advance of her baby's birth. Untold suffering might be saved many a woman in business if she could be told in what respects she was transgressing Nature's law. [Illustration: NEW YORK CITY'S TUBERCULOSIS SANATORIUM AT OTISVILLE IS SENDING HOME APOSTLES OF SEMI-ANNUAL EXAMINATIONS] [Illustration: BOSTON'S PICTURESQUE DAY CAMP FOR TUBERCULOSIS PATIENTS IS TEACHING THE NEED FOR A PERIODIC INVENTORY OF PHYSICAL RESOURCES] To encourage periodic physical examination is not to encourage morbid thinking of disease. One reason for our tardiness in recognizing the need for thorough physical examination is the doctor's tradition of treating symptoms. After men and women are intelligent enough to demand an inventory of their physical resources,--a balance sheet of their physical assets and liabilities,--physicians will study the whole man and not the fraction of a man in which they happen to be specializing or about which the patient worries. By removing the mystery of bodily ailments and by familiarizing ourselves with the essentials to healthy living, we find protection against charlatans, quacks, faddists, and experimenters. By taking a periodic inventory of our physical resources we discharge a sacred obligation of citizenship. FOOTNOTES: [11] See _Dangerous Trades_, compiled by Thomas Oliver; also list of reports by the United States Bureau of Labor. CHAPTER XXII HABITS OF HEALTH PROMOTE INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY Education's highest aim is to train us to do the right thing at the right moment without having to think. The technic of musician, stenographer, artist, electrician, surgeon, orator, is gained only from patient training of the body's reflex muscles to do brain work.[12] The lower nerve centers are storehouses for the brain energy, just as central power houses are used for storing electric energy to be spent upon demand. From habit, not from mental effort, we turn to the right, say "I beg pardon" when we step on another's foot, give our seats to ladies or to elderly persons, use acceptable table manners. No person seems "to the manner born" who has to think out each act necessary to "company manners." How numerous are the mental and physical processes essential to good manners no one ever recognizes but the very bashful or the uncouth person trying to cultivate habits of unconsciousness in polite society. The habit of living ethically enables us to go through life without being tempted to steal or lie or do physical violence. No person's morals can be relied upon who is tempted constantly to do immoral acts; ethical training seeks to incapacitate us for committing unethical deeds and to habituate us to ethical acts alone. Eight different elements of industrial efficiency are concerned with the individual's health habits,--the industrial worker, his industrial product, his employer, his employer's profit, his trade or profession, its product, his nation, national product. Obviously few men have so little to do that they have time to think out in detail how this act or that indulgence will affect each of these eight factors of industrial efficiency. Once convinced, however, that all of these elements are either helped or injured by the individual's method of living, each one of us has a strong reason for imposing habits of health upon all industries, upon employees and operatives, upon all who are a part of industrial efficiency. When these eight relations are seen, parents and teachers have particularly strong reasons for inculcating habits of health in their children. That industrial inefficiency results from chronic habits of unhealthy living is generally recognized. The alcoholic furnishes the most vivid illustration. The penalties suffered by him and his family are grave enough, but because he has not full possession of his faculties he is unpunctual, wastes material, disobeys instructions, endangers others' lives, decreases the product of his trade and of his employer, lessens the profits of both, depresses wages, increases insurance and business risks. Because no one can foresee when the "drop too much" will be taken, industry finds it important to know that the habit of drinking alcoholics moderately has not been acquired by train dispatcher, engineer, switchman, chauffeur. Because the habit of drinking moderately is apt, among lower incomes, to go hand in hand with other habits injurious to business and fatal to integrity, positions of trust in industry seek men and women who have the habit of declining drink. In the aggregate, milder forms of unhealthy living interfere with industrial efficiency even more than alcoholism. Many capable men and women, even those who have had thorough technical training, fail to win promotion because their persons are not clean, their breath offensive, their clothes suggestive of disorderly, uncleanly habits. Persons of extraordinary capacity not infrequently achieve only mediocre results because they fail to cultivate habits of cleanliness and health. An employer can easily protect his business from loss due to alcoholism among his own employees; but loss through employees' constipation, headache, bad ventilation at home, irregular meals, improper diet, too many night parties, nicotinism, personal uncleanliness, is loss much harder to anticipate and avoid. Because evil results are less vivid, it is also hard to convince a clerk that intemperance in eating, sleeping, and playing will interfere with his earning capacity and his enjoyment capacity quite as surely as intemperance in the use of alcohol and nicotine. Where employees are paid by the piece, instead of by the hour, day, or week, the employer partially protects himself against uneven, sluggish, slipshod workmen; but, other things being equal, he awards promotion to those who are most regular and who are most often at their best, for he finds that the man who does not "slump" earns best profits and deserves highest pay. [Illustration: THESE PATIENTS ON THE OLD SOUTHFIELD ARE TAXING THEIR UNIONS AND THEIR TRADES AS WELL AS THEIR FAMILIES AND THE TUBERCULOSIS COMMITTEE] There are exceptions, it is true, where both industrial promotion and industrial efficiency are won by people who violate laws of health,--but at what cost to their efficiency? Your efficiency should be measured not by some other person's advancement, but by what you yourself ought to accomplish; while the effect of abusing your physical strength is shown not only in the shortening of your industrial life and in the diminishing returns from your labor, but by the decrease of national and trade efficiency. "Sweating" injures those who buy and those in the same trade who are not "sweated" just as truly as it injures the "sweated." [Illustration: HABITS OF HEALTH AMONG DAIRYMEN MEAN SAFE MILK FOR BABIES] What are the health habits that should become instinctive and effortless for every worker? What acts can we make our lower nerve centers--our subconscious selves--do for us or remind us to do? The following constitutes a daily routine that should be as involuntary as the process of digestion: 1. Throw the bedding over the foot of the bed. 2. Close the window that has been open during the night. 3. Drink a glass of water. 4. Bathe the face, neck, crotch, chest, armpits (finishing if not beginning with cold water), and particularly the eyes, ears, and nose. If time and conveniences permit, bathe all over. 5. Cleanse the finger nails. 6. Cleanse the teeth, especially the places that are out of sight and hard to reach. 7. Breakfast punctually at a regular hour. Eat lightly and only what agrees with you. If you read a morning paper, be interested in news items that have to do with personal and community vitality. 8. Visit the toilet; if impracticable at home, have a regular time at business. 9. Have several minutes in the open air, preferably walking. 10. Be punctual at work. 11. As your right by contract, insist upon a supply of fresh air for your workroom with the same emphasis you use in demanding sufficient heat in zero weather. 12. Eat punctually at noon intermission; enjoy your meal and its after effects. 13. Breathe air out of doors a few minutes, preferably walking. 14. Resume business punctually. 15. Stop work regularly. 16. Take out-of-door exercise--indoor only when fresh air is possible--that you enjoy and that agrees with you. 17. Be regular, temperate, and leisurely in eating the evening meal; eat nothing that disagrees with you. 18. Spend the evening profitably and pleasantly and in ways compatible with the foregoing habits. 19. Retire regularly at a fixed hour, making up for irregularity by an earlier hour next night. 20, 21, 22. Repeat 4, 6, 8. 23. Turn underclothes wrong side out for ventilation. 24. Open windows. 25. Relax mind and body and go to sleep. No man chronically neglects any one of the above rules without reducing his industrial efficiency. No man chronically neglects all of them without becoming, sooner or later, a health bankrupt. In addition to this daily routine, there are certain other acts that should become habitual: 1. Bathing less frequently than once a week is almost as dangerous to health as it is to attractiveness. 2. Distaste for unclean linen or undergarments and for acts or foods that interfere with vitality should become instinctive. 3. Excesses in eating or playing should be automatically corrected the next day and the next. Parties we shall continue to have. It will be some time before reasonable hours and reasonable refreshments will prevail. Meanwhile it is probably better for an individual to sacrifice somewhat his own vitality for the sake of the union, the class, or the church. While trying to improve group habits, one can acquire the habit of not eating three meals in one, of eating less next day, of sleeping longer next night, of being particularly careful to have plenty of outdoor air. 4. Visits to the dentist twice a year at least, and whenever a cavity appears, even if only a week after the dentist has failed to find one; whenever the gums begin to recede; and whenever anything seems to be wrong with the teeth. 5. Periodic physical examination by a physician. 6. Examination by a competent physician whenever any disorder cannot be satisfactorily explained by violation of the daily routine or by interruption of business or domestic routine. Health habits do not become instinctive until a continued, conscious effort is made to accustom the body to them. When this is once done, however, the body not only attends to its primary health needs automatically, but it rebels at their omission, as surely as does the stomach at the omission of dinner. Witness the discomfort of the consumptive, trained to fresh air at a sanatorium, when he returns to his overheated and underventilated home, or the actual pain experienced in readjusting our own healthy bodies to the stuffy workroom or schoolroom after a summer vacation out of doors. I heard a consumptive say that he left a sanatorium for a day class after trying for three nights to sleep in an unventilated ward. For many people the regular morning bath is at first a trial, then a pleasure, and finally a need; if omitted, the body feels thirsty and dissatisfied, the eyes sleepy, and the spirit flags early in the day. [Illustration: IMPROVISED SEASIDE HOSPITAL FOR NONPULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS AT SEA BREEZE TEACHES PASSERS-BY THE FRESH-AIR GOSPEL] Cold baths are not essential or even good for everybody. The same diet or the same amount of food or time for eating is not of equal value for all. The temperature of bath water, the kind and quality of food, are influenced by one's work and one's cook. Set rules about these things do more harm than good. Such questions must be decided for each individual,--by his experience or by the advice of a physician,--but they must be decided and the decisions converted into health habits if he would attain the highest efficiency of which he is capable. Here again our old contrast between "doing things" and "getting things done" applies. Get your body to attend to the essential needs for you, and get it to remind you when you let the exigencies of life interfere. Don't burden your mind every day with work that your body will do for you if properly trained. [Illustration: CRIPPLED CHILDREN LEAVING SEA BREEZE HOSPITAL FOR BONE TUBERCULOSIS FIND STALE AIR OFFENSIVE BY NIGHT OR BY DAY] Obstacles to habits of health are numerous; therefore the importance of correcting those habits of factory, family, trade, city, or nation that make health habits impracticable. We must change others' prejudices before we can breathe clean air on street cars without riding outside. When one's co-workers are afraid of fresh air, ventilation of shop, store, and office is impossible. So long as parents fear night air, children cannot follow advice to sleep with windows open. Unless the family coöperates in making definite plans for the use of toilet and bath for each member, constipation and bad circulation are sure to result. Indigestion is inevitable if employees are not given lunch periods and closing hours that permit of regular, unhurried meals. Cleanliness of person costs more than it seems to be worth where cities fail either to compel bath tubs in rented apartments or to erect public baths. A temperate subsistence on adulterated, poisonous, or drugged foods might be better for one's health than gormandizing on pure foods. No recipe has ever been found for bringing up a healthy baby on unclean, infected milk; for avoiding tuberculosis among people who are compelled to work with careless consumptives in unclean air; or for making a five-story leap as safe as a fire escape. Perfect habits of health on the part of an individual will not protect him against enervation or infection resulting from inefficient enforcement of sanitary codes by city, county, state, and national authorities. [Illustration: AT JUNIOR SEA BREEZE, TEACHING MOTHERS THE HEALTH ROUTINE FOR BABIES] The "municipalization" or "public subsidy" of health habits is indispensable to protecting industrial efficiency. Public lavatories, above or below ground, have done much to reduce inefficiency due to alcoholism, constipation of the bowels, and congestion of the kidneys. Theaters, churches, and assembly rooms could be built so as to drill audiences in habits of health instead of fixing habits of uncleanly breathing. Street flushing, drinking fountains, parks and breathing spaces, playgrounds and outdoor gymnasiums, milk, food, and drug inspection, tenement, factory, and shop supervision, enforcement of anti-spitting penalties, restriction of hours of labor, prohibition of child labor,--these inculcate community habits of health that promote community efficiency. It is the duty of health boards to compel all citizens under their jurisdiction to cultivate habits of health and to punish all who persistently refuse to acquire these habits, so far as the evils of neglect become apparent to health authorities. The unlimited educational opportunity of health boards consists in their privilege to point out repeatedly and cumulatively the industrial and community benefits that result from habits of health, and the industrial and community losses that result from habits of unhealthy living. FOOTNOTES: [12] Serviceable guides to personal habits of health are _Aristocracy of Health_ by Mary Foote Henderson, and _Efficient Life_ by Dr. Luther H. Gulick. CHAPTER XXIII INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE To call the movement for better factory conditions the "humanizing of industry" implies that modern industry not influenced by that movement is brutalized. The brutalizing of industry was due chiefly to a general ignorance of health laws,--an ignorance that registers itself clearly and promptly in factory and mine. It is not that a man is expected to do too much, but that too little is expected of the human body. The present recognition of the body's right to vitality is not because the employer's heart is growing warmer, or because competition is less vicious, but because the precepts of hygiene are found to be practical. Where better ventilation used to mean more windows and repair bills, it now means greater output. Where formerly a comfortable place in which to eat lunch meant giving up a workroom and its profits, it now means 25 per cent more work done in all workrooms during the afternoon. The general enlightenment as to industrial hygiene has been accelerated by the awakening that always follows industrial catastrophes, by the splendid crusade against tuberculosis, and by compulsory notification and treatment of communicable diseases. Catastrophes, however, have dominated the vocabulary that describes factory "welfare work." Because accidents such as gas in mines, fire in factories, fever in towns, and epidemics of diseases incident to certain trades were beyond the power of the workers themselves to control or prevent, wage earners have come to be looked upon as helpless victims of the cupidity and inhumanity of their employers. This attitude has weakened the usefulness of many bodies organized to promote industrial hygiene. Although the term "industrial hygiene" is broad enough to include all sanitary and hygienic conditions that surround the worker while at work, it is restricted by some to the efforts made by altruistic or farsighted employers in the interest of employees; others think of prohibitions and mandates, in the name of the state, that either prevent certain evils or compel certain benefits; for too few it refers to what the wage earner does for himself. Pity for the employee has caused the motive power of the employee to be wastefully allowed to atrophy. Yet when a man becomes an employee, he does not forfeit any right of citizenship, nor does being an employee relieve him from the duties of citizenship. In too many cases it has been overlooked that a worker's carelessness about habits of health, as well as about his machinery, causes accidents and increases industrial diseases. Too often the worker himself is responsible for uncleanliness and lack of ventilation and his own consequent lack of vitality. A study into the conditions of ventilation and cleanliness of workers' homes will prove this. Knowing that a light, well-aired, clean, safe factory would not of itself insure healthy men, many employers have built and supplied houses for their workmen at low rents. Just as these employers failed to see that they could reach more people and secure more permanent results if they demanded that tenement laws and the sanitary code be enforced as well as the laws for the instruction of children in hygiene, so the employee has failed to see that he is a part of the public that passes laws and determines the efficiency of factory inspection. The enforcement of state legislation for working hours, proper water and milk supply, proper teaching of children, proper tenement conditions, efficient health administration, is dependent upon the interest and activity of the public, of which the working class is no small or uninfluential part. [Illustration: COUNTRY CLUB HOUSE FOR NEW YORK SOCIAL WORKERS Given by the founder of Caroline Rest Educational Fund] The first and most important step in securing hygienic rights for workingmen is to make sure that they know the rights that the law already gives them. Men still throw out their chests when talking of their rights. The posting of the game laws in a club last summer, and the instruction of all the natives of the countryside in regard to their rights as against those of outsiders, meant that for the first time in their history the game laws were enforced. All the natives, instead of poaching as has been their wont, joined together in protecting club property from intruding outside sportsmen. Poachers were caught and served with the full penalties of the law. Over winter fires these people's heroism will grow, but their respect for law will grow also, and it is doubtful if the game laws can be violated in that section so long as the tradition of this summer's work lives. And so it would be in a factory, if employees once realized that by uniting they could, as citizens, enforce health rights in the factory. The hygiene of the workshop is not the same problem as the hygiene of the home and schoolhouse, because there are by-products of factory work that contaminate the air, overheat the room, and complicate the ordinary problems of ventilation. Certain trades are recognized as "dangerous trades." The problem of adequate government control of factories is one for a sanitary engineer. It has to do with disease-bearing raw material that comes to a factory, disease-producing processes of manufacture. There is need for revision of the dangerous-trade list. Many of the industries not so classed should be; many of the so-called dangerous trades can be made comparatively harmless by devices for exhausting harmful by-products. Industrial diseases should be made "notifiable," so that they can be controlled by the factory or health department. It is those trades that are dangerous because of remediable unsanitary and unhygienic conditions which demand the employer's attention. Complaints should be made by individuals when carelessness or danger becomes commonplace. The manner in which many organizations have tried to better working conditions is similar to the manner in which Europeans are trying to help defective school children. Here, as there, is the difference between _doing things_ and _getting things done_. Here more than there is the tendency to exaggerate legislation and to neglect enforcement of law. Instead of harnessing the whole army of workingmen to the crusade and strengthening civic agencies such as factory, health, and tenement departments, houses are built and given to men, clubs are formed to amuse factory girls, amateur theatricals are organized. All this is called "welfare work." "What is welfare work?" reads the pamphlet of a large national association. "It is especial consideration on the part of the employer for the welfare of his employees." In the words of this pamphlet, the aim of this association "is to organize the best brains of the nation in an educational movement toward the solution of some of the great problems related to social and industrial progress." The membership is drawn from "practical men of affairs, whose acknowledged leadership in thought and business makes them typical representatives of business elements that voluntarily work together for the general good." As defined by this organization, welfare work is something given to the employee by the employer for the welfare of both. It is not something the employee himself does to improve his own working conditions. We are told that employees should assume the management of welfare work. Should they install sanitary conveniences? Of course not. Would they know the need of a wash room in a factory if they never had had one? No. Should they manage lunch rooms? A few employers have attempted unsuccessfully to turn over the management of the lunch rooms to the employees, the result being that one self-sacrificing subofficial in each concern would find the burden entirely on his shoulders before working hours, during working hours, and after working hours. Employees cannot attend committee meetings during working hours, and they are unwilling to do so afterwards, for they generally have outside engagements. Furthermore, the employees know nothing about the restaurant business. If they did, they would probably be engaged in it instead of in their different trades. All experiments along this line of which we have heard have failed. The so-called "democratic idea," purely a fad, never has been successfully operated. Many employers would introduce welfare work into their establishments were it not for the time and trouble needed for its organization. The employment of a welfare director removes this obstacle. Successful prosecution of welfare work requires concentration of responsibility. All of its branches must be under the supervision of one person, or efforts in different directions may conflict, or special and perhaps pressing needs may escape attention. Pressure of daily business routine usually relegates welfare work to the last consideration, but the average employer is interested in his men and is willing to improve their condition if only their needs are brought to his attention. [Illustration: FIRST LESSONS IN INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE] +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | =Consumption= | | | | Is chiefly caused by the Filthy Habit of | | | | =SPITTING= | | | | TAKE THIS CARD HOME | | | | And show it to your family, friends, and neighbors | | | | Consumption is a disease of the lungs, which is taken from others, | | and is not simply caused by colds, although a cold may make it | | easier to take the disease. | | | | The matter coughed up and sneezed out by consumptives is full of | | living germs or "tubercle bacilli" too small to be seen. These | | germs are the cause of consumption, and when they are breathed | | into the lungs they set up the disease. | | | | DON'T GET CONSUMPTION YOURSELF | | | | Keep as well as possible, for the healthier your body, the harder | | for the germs of consumption to gain a foothold. Every person | | should observe the following rules: | | | | | | =DON'T= live, study, or sleep in rooms where there is no | | fresh air. Fresh air and sunlight kill the consumption | | germs and other germs causing other diseases; therefore | | have as much of both in your room as possible. | | | | =DON'T= live in dusty air; keep rooms clean; get rid of dust | | by cleaning with damp cloths and mops. =DON'T= sweep with | | a dry broom. | | | | =KEEP= one window partly open in your bedroom at night, and | | air the room two or three times a day. | | | | =DON'T= eat with soiled hands. Wash them first. | | | | =DON'T= put hands or pencils in the mouth, or any candy or | | chewing gum other persons have used. | | | | =DON'T= keep soiled handkerchiefs in your pockets. | | | | =TAKE= a warm bath at least once a week. | | | | =DON'T= neglect a cold or a cough, but go to a doctor or | | dispensary. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ [Illustration: WELFARE WORK THAT COUNTS] +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | =HOW TO GET WELL IF YOU HAVE CONSUMPTION= | | | | If you or any one in your family have consumption, you must obey | | the following rules if you wish to get well: | | | | =DON'T= waste your money on patent medicines or advertised | | cures for consumption, but go to a doctor or dispensary | | (see last page). If you go in time, you can be cured; if | | you wait, it may be too late. | | | | =DON'T= drink whisky or other forms of liquor. | | | | =DON'T= sleep in the same bed with any one else, and, if | | possible, not in the same room. | | | | =Good food, fresh air, and rest are the best cures. Keep out | | in the fresh air and in the sunlight as much as possible.= | | | | =KEEP= your windows open winter and summer, day and night. | | | | =IF= properly wrapped up you will not catch cold. | | | | =GO= to a sanatorium while you can and before it is too | | late. | | | | =The careful and clean consumptive is not dangerous to those | | with whom he lives and works.= | | | | =Don't give consumption to others.= | | | | Many grown people and children have consumption without knowing | | it, and can give it to others. Therefore every person, even if | | healthy, should observe the following rules: | | | | =DON'T SPIT= on the sidewalks, playgrounds, or on the | | floors or hallways of your home or school. It spreads | | disease, and is dangerous, indecent, and unlawful. | | | | =WHEN YOU MUST SPIT=, spit in the gutters or into a spittoon | | half filled with water. | | | | =DON'T COUGH OR SNEEZE= without holding a handkerchief or | | your hand over your mouth or nose. | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ $/ This method of promoting the welfare of the worker may have been a necessary step in the development of industrial hygiene. Undoubtedly it has succeeded, in many cases, in bringing to an employer's consciousness the needs of his workmen, in accustoming employees to higher sanitary standards, and in teaching them to demand health rights from their employers. In many cases, however, "welfare work" has miseducated both employer and employee. The fact that "the so-called democratic idea, purely a fad, has never been successfully operated," is due to the interpretation given to "democratic idea." The two alternatives in the paragraph above quoted are lunch rooms, wash rooms, as gifts from employers to employees, or lunch rooms and wash rooms to be furnished by employees at their own expense. The true democratic idea, however, is that factory conditions detrimental to health shall be prohibited by factory legislation, and this legislation enforced by efficient factory inspectors, regardless of what may be given to employees above the requirement of hygiene. Until employees are more active as citizens and more sensitive to hygienic rights, it is desirable that welfare directors be employed in factories to arbitrate between employer and employee, to raise the moral standard of a factory settlement, to organize amusements. Welfare work at its best is a method of dividing business profits among all who participate in making these profits. Too often welfare secretaries teach employees how to be happy in the director's way, rather than in their own way. This adventitious position increases suspicion on both sides, disturbs the discipline of the foreman, weakens rather than strengthens the worker's efficiency, because it depends upon other things than work well done and the relation of health to efficiency. In a small factory town the owner of a large cotton mill has recognized the financial benefit of physically strong workers, and is trying the experiment of a welfare director. The man himself works "with his sleeves up." The social worker has an office in the factory. A clubhouse is fitted up for the mill hands to make merry in. A room in the factory is reserved for a lunch room, with plants, tables, and chairs for the comfort of the women. Parties are given by the employer to the employees, which he himself attends. He has thrown himself into whatever schemes his director has suggested. The director complained that the reason the new lunch room was not more popular was because a piano was needed. A second-hand one would not do, for that would cultivate bad taste in music. This showed the employer that soon everything would be expected from the "big house on the hill." An event which happened at the time when the pressure was greatest on him for the piano, convinced him that his employees could supply their real needs without any trouble or delay. The assistant manager was about to leave, and in less than a week five hundred dollars was raised among the workers for his farewell gift. Walking home that night late from his office the owner was attracted by the sound of jollity, and saw a little room jammed full of mill people enjoying the improvised music of a mouth organ played to the accompaniment of heels. He resolved henceforth to train his employees to do his work well and to earn more pay,--and to let them amuse themselves. From that time on he refused to be looked upon as the _deus ex machina_ of the town. He decided that the best way to give English lessons to foreigners was to improve the school. His beneficence in supplying them with pure water at the mill did not prevent a ravaging typhoid epidemic because the town water was not watched. He saw that the best way to improve health was to strengthen the health board and to make his co-workers realize that they were citizens responsible for their own privileges and rights. Emergency hospitals and Y.M.C.A. buildings are sad substitutes for safety devices and automatic couplers. Christmas shopping in November is less kind than prevention of overwork in December. Night school and gymnastic classes are a poor penance for child labor and for work unsuited to the body. The left hand cannot dole favors enough to offset the evils of underpay, of unsanitary conditions, of inefficient enforcement of health laws tolerated by the right hand. Just because a man is taking wages for work done, is no reason why he should forfeit his rights as a citizen, or allow his children, sisters, neighbors, to work in conditions which decrease their efficiency and earning power. What the employee can do for himself as a citizen, having equal health rights with employers, he has never been taught to see. Factory legislation is state direction of industries so far as relates to the safety, health, and moral condition of the people,--and which embraces to-day, more than in any other epoch, the opinion of the workers themselves. No government, however strong, can hope successfully to introduce social legislation largely affecting personal interests until public opinion has been educated to the belief that the remedies proposed are really necessary. Until schools insist upon a better ventilation than the worst factories, how can we expect to find children of working age sensitive to impure air? Where work benches are more comfortable than school desks, where drinking water is cleaner and towels more sanitary, however unsanitary they may be, than those found in the schoolhouse, the worker does not realize that they menace his right to earn a living wage as much as does a temporary shut-down. Employers are by no means solely to blame for unhealthy working conditions. A shortsighted employee is as anxious to work overtime for double pay as a shortsighted employer is to have him. Among those who are agitating for an eight-hour day are many who, from self-interest or interest in the cause, work regularly from ten to sixteen hours. Would it help to punish employees for working in unhealthy places? The highest service that can be rendered industrial hygiene is to educate the industrial classes to recognize hygienic evils and to coöperate with other citizens in securing the enforcement of health rights. CHAPTER XXIV THE LAST DAYS OF TUBERCULOSIS If the historian Lecky was right in saying that the greatest triumphs of the nineteenth century were its sanitary achievements, the Lecky of the twenty-first century will probably honor our generation not for its electricity, its trusts, and its scientific research, but for its crusade against the white plague and for its recognition of health rights. Thanks to committees for the prevention of tuberculosis,--local, state, national, international,--we are fast approaching the time when every parent, teacher, employer, landlord, worker, will see in tuberculosis a personal enemy,--a menace to his fireside, his income, and his freedom. Just as this nation could not exist half slave, half free, we of one mind now affirm that equal opportunity cannot exist where one death in ten is from a single preventable disease.[13] Of no obstacle to efficient living is it more true than of tuberculosis, that the remedy depends upon enforcing rather than upon making law, upon practice rather than upon precept, upon health habits rather than upon medical remedies, upon coöperation of lay citizens rather than upon medical science or isolated individual effort. Without learning another fact about tuberculosis, we can stamp it out if we will but apply, and see that officers of health apply, lessons of cleanliness and natural living already known to us. [Illustration: DR. TRUDEAU'S "LITTLE RED COTTAGE" AT SARANAC--BIRTHPLACE OF OUT-OF-DOOR TREATMENT IN AMERICA] Perhaps the most striking results yet obtained in combating tuberculosis are those of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. To visit its tuberculosis classes reminds one more of the sociable than the clinic. In fact, one wonders whether the milk diet and the rest cure or the effervescing optimism and good cheer of the physicians and nurses should be credited with the marvelous cures. The first part of the hour is given to writing on the blackboard the number of hours that the class members spent out of doors the preceding week. So great was the rivalry for first place that the nurse protested that a certain boy in the front row gave himself indigestion by trying to eat his meals in ten or fifteen minutes. It was then suggested that twenty hours a day would be enough for any one to stay out of doors, and that plenty of time should be taken for meals with the family and for cold baths, keeping clean, etc. Interesting facts gathered by personal interviews of two physicians with individual patients are explained to the whole class. Next to the number of hours out of doors, the most interesting fact is the number of hours of exercise permitted. A man of forty, the head of a family, beamed like a school child when told that, after nearly a year of absolute rest, he might during the next week exercise ten minutes a day. A graduate drops in, the very picture of health, weighing two hundred pounds. An apparently hopeless case would brighten up and have confidence when told that this strong, handsome man has gained fifty pounds by rest, good cheer, fresh air, all on his own porch. One young man, just back from a California sanatorium where he progressively lost strength in spite of change of climate, is now returning to work and is back at normal weight. [Illustration: OUTDOOR LIFE CHART.] [Illustration: FIGHTING TUBERCULOSIS IN THE MOUNTAINS--SARANAC] Every patient keeps a daily record, called for by the following instructions: Make notes of temperature and pulse at 8, 12, 4, and 8 o'clock, daily; movements of bowels; hours in open air; all food taken; total amount of milk; total amount of oil and butter; appetite; digestion; spirits; cough (amount, chief time); expectoration (amount in 24 hours, color, nature); exercise (if allowed), with temperature and pulse 15 minutes after exercise; sweats; visitors. The following simple instructions can be followed in any home, even where open windows must take the place of porches: Rest out of doors is the medicine that cures consumption. Absolute rest for mind and body brings speedy improvement. It stops the cough and promotes the appetite. The lungs heal more quickly when the body is at rest. Lie with the chest low, so the blood flow in the lungs will aid to the uttermost the work of healing. The rest habit is soon acquired. Each day of rest makes the next day of rest easier, and shortens the time necessary to regain health. The more time spent in bed out of doors the better. Do not dress if the temperature is above 99 degrees, or if there is blood in the sputum. It is life in the open air, not exercise, that brings health and strength. Just a few minutes daily exercise during the active stage of the disease may delay recovery weeks or months. Rest favors digestion, exercise frequently disturbs digestion. When possible have meals served in bed. Never think the rest treatment can be taken in a rocking-chair. If tired of the cot, shift to the reclining chair, but sit with head low and feet elevated. Do not write letters. Dictate to a friend. Do not read much and do not hold heavy books. While reading remain in the recumbent posture. [Illustration: FIGHTING TUBERCULOSIS IN DAY CAMPS--BOSTON] Once having learned the simple facts that must be noted and the simple laws that must be followed, once having placed oneself in a position to secure the rest, the fresh air, and the health diet, no better next steps can be taken than to observe the closing injunction in the rules for rest: There are few medicines better than clouds, and you have not to swallow them or wear them as plasters,--only to watch them. Keeping your eyes aloft, your thoughts will shortly clamber after them, or, if they don't do that, the sun gets into them, and the bad ones go a-dozing like bats and owls. [Illustration: THE BACK OF A STREET-CAR TRANSFER, SUNDAYS, NEW YORK CITY] +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | CONSUMPTION IN EARLY STAGES CAN BE CURED | | | | Take your case in time to a good physician or to a dispensary and | | you may be cured--DO NOT WAIT. | | | | Consumption is "caught" mainly through the spit of consumptives. | | | | Friends of Consumption--Dampness, Dirt, Darkness, Drink. | | | | Enemies of Consumption--Sun, Air, Good Food, Cleanliness. | | | | If you have tuberculosis do not give it to others by spitting; | | even if you have not, set a good example by refraining from a | | habit always dirty and often dangerous. | | | | _The Committee on the Prevention of Tuberculosis_ | | _Of the Charity Organization Society_ | | | | (By Courtesy of Siegel Cooper Co.) | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ Important as are sanatoriums in mountain and desert, day or night camps within and near cities, milk and egg clinics, home visiting, change of air and rest for those who are known to be tuberculous, their importance is infinitesimal compared with the protection that comes from clean, healthy environment and natural living for those not known to be tuberculous. This great fact has been recognized by the various bodies now engaged in popularizing the truth about tuberculosis by means of stationary and traveling exhibits, illustrated lectures, street-car transfers, advertisements, farmers' institutes, anti-spitting signs in public vehicles and public buildings, board of health instructions in many languages, magazine stories, and press reports of conferences. This brilliant campaign of education shows what can be done by national, state, and county superintendents of schools, if they will make the most of school hygiene and civics. [Illustration: AN EXAMPLE IN COÖPERATION THAT ANTI-TUBERCULOSIS CRUSADERS SHOULD FOLLOW] +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | CIRCULAR ISSUED BY | | | | The Committee of Sanitation of the Central Federated Union of | | New York | | | | The Committee on the Prevention of Tuberculosis of the Charity | | Organization Society | | | | 105 East 22d Street, New York City | | | | * * * * * | | | | Don't Give Consumption to Others | | | | Don't Let Others Give It to You | | | | * * * * * | | | | =How to Prevent Consumption= | | | | =The spit and the small particles coughed up and sneezed out by | | consumptives, and by many who do not know that they have | | consumption, are full of living germs too small to be seen. THESE | | GERMS ARE THE CAUSE OF CONSUMPTION.= | | | | | | =DON'T SPIT on the sidewalks--it spreads disease, and it is | | against the law.= | | | | =DON'T SPIT on the floors of your rooms or hallways.= | | | | =DON'T SPIT on the floors of your shop.= | | | | =WHEN YOU SPIT, spit in the gutters or into a spittoon.= | | | | =Have your own spittoons half full of water, and clean them | | out at least once a day with hot water.= | | | | =DON'T cough without holding a handkerchief or your hand | | over your mouth.= | | | | =DON'T live in rooms where there is no fresh air.= | | | | =DON'T work in rooms where there is no fresh air.= | | | | =DON'T sleep in rooms where there is no fresh air.= | | | | =Keep at least one window open in your bedroom day and | | night.= | | | | =Fresh air helps to kill the consumption germ.= | | | | =Fresh air helps to keep you strong and healthy.= | | | | =DON'T eat with soiled hands--wash them first.= | | | | =DON'T NEGLECT A COLD or a cough.= | | | | | | =How to Cure Consumption= | | | | =DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY on patent medicines or advertised | | cures for consumption, but go to a doctor or a | | dispensary. If you go in time YOU CAN BE CURED; if you | | wait until you are so sick that you cannot work any | | longer, or until you are very weak, it may be too late; | | at any rate it will in the end mean more time out of work | | and more wages lost than if you had taken care of | | yourself at the start.= | | | | =DON'T DRINK WHISKY, beer, or other intoxicating drinks; | | they will do you no good, but will make it harder for you | | to get well.= | | | | =DON'T SLEEP IN THE SAME BED with any one else, and, if | | possible, not in the same room.= | | | | =GOOD FOOD, FRESH AIR, AND REST are the best cures. Keep in | | the sunshine as much as possible, and KEEP YOUR WINDOWS | | OPEN, winter and summer, night and day. Fresh air, night | | and day, is good for you.= | | | | =GO TO A HOSPITAL WHILE YOU CAN AND BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. | | There you can get the best treatment, all the rest, all | | the fresh air, and all the food which you need.= | | | | =THE CAREFUL AND CLEAN CONSUMPTIVE IS NOT DANGEROUS TO THOSE | | WITH WHOM HE LIVES AND WORKS= | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ Is it not significant that America's national movement is due primarily to the organizing capacity of laymen in the New York Charity Organization Society rather than to schools or hospitals? Most of the local secretaries are men whose inspiration came from contact with the non-medical relief of the poor in city tenements. The secretary of the national association is a university professor of anthropology, who has also a medical degree. The child victim's plea--Little Jo's Smile--was nationalized by an association of laymen, aided by the advertising managers of forty magazines. The smaller cities of New York state are being aroused by a state voluntary association that for years has visited almshouses, insane asylums, and hospitals. These facts I emphasize, for they illustrate the opportunity and the duty of the lay educator, whether parent, teacher, labor leader, or trustee of hospital, orphanage, or relief society. Three fundamental rules of action should be established as firmly as religious principles: 1. The public health authorities should be told of every known and every suspected case of tuberculosis. 2. For each case proved by examination of sputum to be tuberculous, the public-health officers should know that the germs are destroyed before being allowed to contaminate air or food. 3. Sick and not yet sick should practice habits of health that build up vitality to resist the tubercle bacilli and that abhor uncleanliness as nature abhors a vacuum. [Illustration: FIGHTING TUBERCULOSIS WITH A NATIONAL ORGANIZATION] All laws, customs, and environmental conditions opposed to the enforcement of these three principles must be modified or abolished. If the teachers of America will list for educational use in their own communities the local obstacles to these rules of action, they will see exactly where their local problem lies. The illustrations that are given in this book show in how many ways these rules of action are now being universalized. Three or four important steps deserve especial comment: 1. Compulsory notification of all tuberculous cases. 2. Compulsory removal to hospital of those not able at home to destroy the bacilli, or compulsory supervision of home care. 3. Examination of all members of a family where one member is discovered to be tuberculous. 4. Special provision for tuberculous teachers. 5. Protection of children about to enter industry but predisposed to tuberculosis. 6. Prohibition of dry cleaning of schools, offices, and streets. 7. Tax provision for educational and preventive work. Compulsory notification was introduced first in New York City by Hermann M. Biggs, M.D., chief medical officer: 1893, partially voluntary, partially compulsory; 1897, compulsory for all. Physicians who now hail Dr. Biggs as a statesman called him persecutor, autocrat, and violator of personal freedom fifteen years ago. Foreign sanitarians vied with American colleagues in upbraiding him for his exaggeration of the transmissibility of consumption and for his injustice to its victims. As late as 1899 one British expert particularly resented the rejection of tuberculous immigrants at Ellis Island, and said to me, "Perhaps if you should open a man's mouth and pour in tubercle bacilli he might get phthisis, but compulsory notification is preposterous." In 1906 the International Congress on Tuberculosis met in Paris and congratulated New York upon its leadership in securing at health headquarters a list of the known disease centers within its borders; in 1906 more than twenty thousand individual cases were reported, ten thousand of these being reported more than once. To know the nature and location of twenty thousand germ factories is a long step toward judging their strength and their probable product. To compulsory notification in New York City is largely due the educational movements of the last decade against the white plague, more particularly the growing ability among physicians to recognize and to treat conditions predisposing to the disease. As in New York City, the public should provide free of cost bacteriological analysis of sputum to learn positively whether tuberculosis is present. Simpler still is the tuberculin test of the eyes, with which experiments are now being made on a large scale in New York City, and which bids fair to become cheap enough to be generally used wherever physical examinations are made. This test is known as Calmette's Eye Test. Inside the eyelid is placed a drop of a solution--95 per cent alcohol and tuberculin. If conjunctivitis develops in twenty-four hours, the patient is proved to have tuberculosis. Some physicians still fear to use this test. Others question its proof. The "skin test" is also being thoroughly tried in several American cities and, if finally found trustworthy, will greatly simplify examination for tuberculosis. Dr. John W. Brannan, president of Bellevue and Allied Hospitals, New York City, is to report on skin and eye tuberculin tests for children at the International Congress on Tuberculosis, mentioned later. [Illustration: FIGHTING TUBERCULOSIS BY ORGANIZED COÖPERATIVE DISPENSARY WORK] [Illustration: FIGHTING BONE TUBERCULOSIS AT SEA BREEZE, WHERE EYE AND SKIN TUBERCULIN TESTS ARE BEING MADE] Compulsory removal of careless consumptives is yet rare. One obstacle is the lack of hospitals. In New York ten thousand die annually from tuberculosis and fifty thousand are known to have it, yet there are only about two thousand beds available. So long as the patients anxious for hospital care exceed the number of beds, it does not seem fair to give a bed to some one who does not want it. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that patients are taken forcibly to smallpox and scarlet-fever hospitals, not for their own good, but for the protection of others. The last person who should be permitted to stay at home is the tuberculous person who is unable, unwilling, or too ignorant to take the necessary precautions for others' protection. A rigid educational test should be applied as a condition of remaining at home without supervision. The objections to compulsory removal are two: (1) it is desired to make sanatorium care so attractive that patients will go at the earliest stage of the disease; (2) an unwilling patient can defeat the sanitarian's effort to help him and others. The alternative for compulsory removal is gratuitous, and, if need be, compulsory, supervision of home care, such as is now given in New York City. In Brighton, England, Dr. Newsholme treats his municipal sanatorium as a vacation school, giving each patient one month only. Thus one bed helps twelve patients each year. Almost any worker can spare one month and in that time can be made into a missionary of healthy living. Family examining parties were begun in New York by Dr. Linsly R. Williams, for the relief agency that started the seaside treatment of bone tuberculosis. Many of the crippled children at Sea Breeze were found to have consumptive fathers or mothers. In one instance the father had died before Charlie had "hip trouble." Long after we had known Charlie his mother began to fail. She too had consumption. Family parties were planned for 290 families. Weights were taken and careful examination made, the physician explaining that predisposition means defective lung capacity or deficient vitality. Of 379 members, supposedly free from tuberculosis, sixteen were found to have well-marked cases. (Of twenty Boston children whose parents were in a tuberculosis class, four had tuberculosis.) In one instance the father was astonished to learn not only that he was tuberculous, but that he had probably given the disease to the mother, for whom he was tenderly concerned. Of special benefit were the talks about teeth and nourishment, and about fresh air and water as germ killers. One examination of this kind will organize a family crusade against carelessness. [Illustration: FIGHTING TUBERCULOSIS IN SMALL CITIES New York State Charities Aid Association] Tuberculous teachers ought to be excluded from schoolrooms not merely because they may spread tuberculosis, but because they cannot do justice to school work without sacrifices that society ought not to accept. A tuberculous teacher ought to be generous enough to permit public hospitals to restore her strength or enterprising enough to join tuberculosis classes. It is selfish to demand independence at the price which is paid by schools that employ tuberculous teachers. [Illustration: FIGHTING BONE TUBERCULOSIS WITH SALT WATER AND SALT AIR] Predisposition to tuberculosis should be understood by every child before he is accepted as an industrial soldier. Many trades now dangerous would be made safe if workers knew the risk they run, and if society forbade such trades needlessly to exhaust their employees. A perfectly sound man is predisposed to tuberculosis if he elects to work in stale, dust-laden air. Ill-ventilated rooms, cramped positions, lack of exercise in the open air, prepare lungs to give a cordial reception to tubercle bacilli. Rooms as well as persons become infected. Fortunately, opportunities to work are so varied in most localities that workers predisposed to tuberculosis may be sure of a livelihood in an occupation suited to their vitality. Destruction of germs in the air, in carpets, on walls, on streets, is quite as important as destruction of germs in lungs. Why should not tenants and workers require health certificates stating that neither house nor working place is infected with tubercle bacilli? Some cities now compel the disinfection of premises occupied by tuberculous persons _after_ their removal. Landlords, employers, tenants, and employees can easily be taught to see the advantage of disinfecting premises occupied by tuberculous cases _before_ detection. [Illustration: FIGHTING FEATHER DUSTERS IS ONE OBJECT OF SEA-AIR HOSPITALS FOR BONE TUBERCULOSIS] Dry cleaning, feather dusters, dust-laden air, will disappear from schoolrooms within twenty-four hours after school-teachers declare that they shall disappear. We have no right to expect street cleaners, tenement and shop janitors, or overworked mothers to be more careful than school-teachers. Last year I said to a janitress, "Don't you realize that you may get consumption if you use that feather duster?" Her reply caused us to realize our carelessness: "I don't want any more than I've got now." Shall we some day have compulsory examination and instruction of all cleaners, starting with school cleaners? [Illustration: FIGHTING TUBERCULOSIS IN OPEN TENTS] Taxing is swift to follow teaching in matters of health. Teachers can easily compute what their community loses from tuberculosis. The totals will for some time prove a convincing argument for cleanliness of air, of body, and of building wherever the community is responsible for air, building, and body. The annual cost of tuberculosis to New York City is estimated at $23,000,000 and to the United States at $330,000,000. The cost of exterminating it will be but a drop in the bucket if school-teachers do their part this next generation with the twenty million children whose day environment they control for three fourths of the year, and whose habits they can determine. The first meeting in America of the International Congress on Tuberculosis was held at Washington, D.C., September 21 to October 12, 1908. For many years the proceedings of this congress will undoubtedly be the chief reference book on the conquest of tuberculosis.[14] How many aspects there are to this problem, and how many kinds of people may be enlisted, may be seen from the seven section names: I. Pathology and Bacteriology; II. Sanatoriums, Hospitals, and Dispensaries; III. Surgery and Orthopedics; IV. Tuberculosis in Children--Etiology, Prevention, and Treatment; V. Hygienic, Social, Industrial, and Economic Aspects; VI. State and Municipal Control of Tuberculosis; VII. Tuberculosis in Animals and Its Relation to Man. [Illustration: FIGHTING TUBERCULOSIS IN CHEAP SHACKS, $125 PER BED, OTISVILLE, NEW YORK] How many-sided is the responsibility of each of us for stamping out tuberculosis is shown by the preliminary programme of the eight sessions of Section V. These topics suggest an interesting and instructive year's study for clubs of women, mothers, or teachers, or for advanced pupils. I. ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF TUBERCULOSIS 1. The burdens entailed by tuberculosis: a. On individuals and families. b. On the medical profession. c. On industry. d. On relief agencies. e. On the community. f. On social progress. 2. The cost of securing effective control of tuberculosis: a. In large cities. b. In smaller towns. c. In rural communities. II. ADVERSE INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS 1. Incidence of tuberculosis according to occupation. 2. Overwork and nervous strain as factors in tuberculosis. 3. Effect of improvements in factory conditions on the health of employees. 4. Legitimate exercise of police power in protecting the life and health of employees. III. THE SOCIAL CONTROL OF TUBERCULOSIS 1. Outline of a comprehensive programme for: a. National, state, and municipal governments. b. Departments of health and departments of public relief. c. Private endowments. d. Voluntary associations for educational propaganda. e. Institutions, such as schools and relief agencies, which exist primarily for other purposes. 2. A symposium on the relative value of each of the features in an aggressive campaign against tuberculosis: a. Compulsory registration. b. Free sputum examination. c. Compulsory removal of unteachable and dangerous cases. d. Laboratory research. e. Hospital. f. Sanatorium. g. Dispensary. h. The tuberculosis class. i. Day camp. j. Private physician. k. Visiting nurse. l. After-care of arrested cases. m. Relief fund. n. Climate. o. Hygienic instruction,--personal and in class. p. Inspection of schools and factories. q. Educational propaganda. IV. EARLY RECOGNITION AND PREVENTION 1. Importance of discovering the persons who have tuberculosis before the disease has passed the incipient stage. 2. Examination of persons known to have been exposed or presumably predisposed. 3. Systematic examination of school children during their course and on leaving school to go to work. 4. Professional advice as to choice of occupation in cases where there is apparent predisposition to disease. V. AFTER-CARE OF ARRESTED CASES 1. Instruction in healthful trades in the sanatorium. 2. Training for professional nursing in institutions for the care of tuberculous patients. 3. Farm colonies. 4. Convalescent homes or cottages. 5. Aid in securing suitable employment on leaving the sanatorium. 6. How to deal with the danger of a return to unfavorable home conditions. VI. EDUCATIONAL METHODS AND AGENCIES 1. Special literature for general distribution. 2. Exhibits and lectures. 3. The press. 4. Educational work of the nurse. 5. Labor organizations. 6. Instruction in schools of all grades. 7. Presentation and discussion of leaflets awarded prizes by the congress. VII. PROMOTION OF IMMUNITY 1. Development of the conception of physical well-being. 2. Measures for increasing resistance to disease: a. Parks and playgrounds. b. Outdoor sports. c. Physical education. d. Raising the standards of living: housing, diet, cleanliness. 3. Individual immunity and social conditions favorable to general immunity. VIII. RESPONSIBILITY OF SOCIETY FOR TUBERCULOSIS 1. A symposium of representative a. Citizens. b. Social workers. c. Employers. d. Employees. e. Physicians. f. Nurses. g. Educators. h. Others. Cash prizes of one thousand dollars each are offered: (1) for the best evidence of effective work in the prevention or relief of tuberculosis by any voluntary association since 1905; (2) for the best exhibit of a sanatorium for working classes; (3) for the best exhibit of a furnished home for the poor, designed primarily to prevent, but also to permit the cure of tuberculosis. [Illustration: BOSTON FIGHTS TUBERCULOSIS WITH A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN _A-D, F, H-J_, private hospitals and agencies reporting cases to the official center; _E_, home care; _K, L, M_, day camp and hospitals for incipient and advanced cases] A white-plague scrapbook containing news items, articles, and photographs will prove an interesting aid to self-education or to instruction of children, working girls' clubs, or mothers' meetings. Everybody ought to enlist in this war, for the fight against tuberculosis is a fight for cleanliness and for vitality, for a fair chance against environmental conditions prejudicial to efficient citizenship. So sure is the result and so immediate the duty of every citizen that Dr. Biggs wrote in 1907: _In no other direction can such large results be achieved so certainly and at such relatively small cost. The time is not far distant when those states and municipalities which have not adopted a comprehensive plan for dealing with tuberculosis will be regarded as almost criminally negligent in their administration of sanitary affairs and inexcusably blind to their own best economic interests._ FOOTNOTES: [13] The best literature on tuberculosis is in current magazines and reports of anti-tuberculosis crusaders. For a scientific, comprehensive treatment, libraries and students should have _The Prevention of Tuberculosis_ (1908) by Arthur Newsholme, M.D. A popular book is _The Crusade against Tuberculosis_, by Lawrence F. Flick, of the Henry Phipps Institute for the Study, Treatment, and Prevention of Tuberculosis. [14] Those desiring copies this year or hereafter will do well to write to The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, 105 East 22d St., New York City. The congress is under the control of the National Association and is managed by a special committee appointed by it. Even after a national board of health is established, the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis will continue to be a center for private interest in public protection against tuberculosis. One of its chief functions is the preparation and distribution of literature to those who desire it. CHAPTER XXV THE FIGHT FOR CLEAN MILK "With the approval of the President and with the coöperation of the Department of Agriculture,[15] the [national quarantine] service has undertaken to prepare a complete report upon the milk industry from farm to the consumer in its relation to the public health." This promise of the United States Treasury insures national attention to the evils of unclean milk and to the sanitary standards of farmer and consumer. Nothing less than a national campaign can make the vivid impression necessary to wean dairymen of uncleanly habits and mothers of the ignorant superstition that babies die in summer just because they are babies. When two national bureaus study, learn, and report, newspapers will print their stories on the first page, magazines will herald the conclusions, physicians will open their minds to new truths, state health secretaries will carry on the propaganda, demagogues and quacks will become less certain of their short-cut remedies, and _everybody will be made to think_. The evolution of this newly awakened national interest in clean milk follows the seven stages and illustrates the seven health motives presented in Chapter II. I give the story of Robert M. Hartley because he began and prosecuted his pure-milk crusade in a way that can be duplicated in any country town or small city. Robert M. Hartley was a strong-bodied, strong-minded, country-bred man, who started church work in New York City almost as soon as he arrived. He distributed religious tracts among the alleys and hovels that characterized lower New York in 1825. Meeting drunken men and women one after another, he first wondered whether they were helped by tracts, and then decided that the mind befogged with alcohol was unfit to receive the gospel message. Then for fifteen years he threw himself into a total-abstinence crusade, distributing thousands of pamphlets, calling in one year at over four thousand homes to teach the industrial and moral reasons for total abstinence. Finally, he began to wonder whether back of alcoholism there was not still a dark closet that must be explored before men could receive the message of religion and self-control. So in 1843 he organized the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, which ever since has remembered how Hartley found alcoholism back of irreligion, and how back of alcoholism and poverty and ignorant indifference he found indecent housing, unsanitary streets, unwholesome working conditions, and impure food. [Illustration: FIGHTING INFANT MORTALITY BY A SCHOOL FOR MOTHERS IN THE HEART OF NEW YORK CITY,--JUNIOR SEA BREEZE] [Illustration: PROVIDING AGAINST GERM GROWTH AND ADAPTING MILK TO THE INDIVIDUAL BABY'S NEED,--ROCHESTER'S MODEL DAIRY] Hartley's instinct started the first great pure-milk agitation in this country. While visiting a distillery for the purpose of trying to persuade the owner to invest his money in another business, he noticed that "slops smoking hot from the stills" were being carried to cow stables. He followed and was nauseated by the sights and odors. Several hundred uncleaned cows in low, suffocating, filthy stables were being fed on "this disgusting, unnatural food." Similar disgust has in many other American cities caused the first effort to better dairy conditions. Hartley could never again enjoy milk from distillery cows. Furthermore, his story of 1841 made it impossible for any readers of newspapers in New York to enjoy milk until assured that it was not produced by distillery slops. The instinctive loathing and the discomfort of buyers awakened the commerce motives of milk dealers, who covered their wagons with signs declaring that they "no longer" or "never" fed cows on distillery refuse. But Hartley could not stop when the anti-nuisance stage was reached. He did not let up on his fight against impure or adulterated milk until the state legislature declared in 1864 that _every baby, city born or country born, no matter how humble its home, has the right to pure milk_. +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | =Clean Milk for New York City= | | | | =CONFERENCE= | | | | =ROOM 44, N.Y. ACADEMY OF MEDICINE= | | =No. 17 WEST 43D STREET= | | | | =November 20th, 1906, Tuesday 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.= | | | | | | =ESSENTIAL FACTS AS TO NEW YORK CITY= | | | | =Manhattan's Infant Mortality= | | (=UNDER 5 YRS.=) | | | | June to September, 1904, 4428 | | June to September, 1905, 4687 | | June to September, 1906, 4428 | | | | =Daily Consumption of Milk= | | | | 1,600,000 qts. | | ¼ in quart bottles | | ¾ in 40-quart cans | | "Certified," 10,000 quarts | | "Inspected," 3,000 quarts | | 24 to 48 hours old on arrival | | | | =Comes from= | | | | 30,000 dairies, 40 to 400 miles distant | | 600 creameries--105 proprietors | | 10 city railroad depots | | | | =Sold in= | | | | 12,000 places, mostly from cans | | Sale of skim milk prohibited | | | | =Milk Law Violations, 1905= | | | | Destroyed, 39,618 quarts | | Arrests, 806 | | Fines, $16,435 | | | | =New York City Inspectors= | | | | 14 in country since July; might make rounds not oftener than | | once a year | | (For 3 yrs. before, only 2; previously none) | | 16 in city, might make rounds in 30 to 40 days | | (Before July, 14) | | | | | | =POINTS OF AGREEMENT= | | | | =Cleanliness is the supreme requisite, from cow to consumer= | | | | Cows must be healthy, persons free from contagious diseases, | | premises clean, water pure, utensils clean, cans and bottles | | sterile, shops sanitary | | | | =Temperature is second essential= | | | | 50° F. or lower at dairy | | 45° F. at creamery | | 45° F. or less during transportation | | Not above 50° when sold to the consumer | | | | =As to Pasteurization= | | | | Not necessary for absolutely clean milk | | Destroys benign as well as harmful germs | | Disease germs develop more rapidly than in pure raw milk | | True, 155° for 30 minutes to 167° for 20 minutes | | Cost per quart, estimated, ¼ to ½ ct. | | Commercial, 165° for 15 seconds | | Cost per quart, negligible | | | | =As to Inspection= | | | | _Some_ inspection needed within the city | | _Some_ inspection needed of dairy and creamery | | | | | | =WHAT NEXT STEPS SHOULD NEW YORK TAKE?= | | | | =Skim Milk= | | | | Should its sale be permitted? | | Under what conditions? | | How would this affect price of whole milk? | | | | =Pasteurization= | | | | Should pasteurization be made compulsory? | | For what portion of the supply? | | At whose expense? | | Would it increase price of milk? | | Does it render inspection unnecessary? | | Does it reduce need for inspection? | | Should sale of repasteurized milk or cream be permitted? | | Should bottles show whether true or commercial pasteurization | | is used? | | | | =Infants' Milk Depots= | | | | Should they use pasteurized or clean milk? | | Are municipal depots desirable? | | Should private philanthropy support depots? | | How many depots would be required in New York City? | | Is Rochester experience applicable to New York City? | | What educational work is possible in connection with milk | | depots? | | | | | | =Model Milk Shops= | | | | What may safely be sold in connection with milk? | | Should law discourage other than model shops? | | Are present sanitary laws rigid enough? | | Should private capital be encouraged to establish shops? | | Is it practicable to prohibit use of cans? | | What provision can be demanded for proper refrigeration? | | What for receiving milk before business hours when delivered | | from stations? | | What for sterilization of utensils and bottles? | | What for attendants' dress and care of person? | | Would such restrictions increase price? | | | | =Inspection= | | | | Is it practicable by inspection alone to secure a clean milk | | supply? | | Will it protect against more dangerous forms of infection? | | How many inspectors does New York City need? | | Within the city? | | Among country dairies and creameries? | | How many inspectors should the state employ? | | | | =Legislation= | | | | What needed as to diseased cattle? | | What as to diseases of persons producing or handling milk? | | Is present sanitary code sufficient? | | Shall law require sterilization of all milk cans and bottles | | by milk company or creamery before returned to farms or | | refilled? | | Shall sealing cans at creameries be required? | | Shall transferring from one can to another or from can to | | bottle in open street be made a misdemeanor? | | Shall pollution of milk cans and bottles be made a | | misdemeanor? | | Shall bacterial standard be established? | | Is state supervision now adequate? | | What further legislation is needed? | | Does present law prescribe adequate penalties? | | | | =Education= | | | | Should state system of lectures before agricultural institutes | | be extended? | | Should Maryland plan of traveling school be adopted as means | | of reaching producer? | | What can be done to assist Teachers College in its plan for | | milk exhibit? | | What can be done to teach mothers to detect unclean milk and | | to care properly for milk purchased? | | How can tenement mothers keep milk at proper temperature? | | Can nothing be done to increase the supply and cheapen the | | price of ice? | | Is it desirable that a local committee be formed to coöperate | | with the Department of Health and County Medical Society? | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ Unfortunately Hartley and his contemporaries had never heard of disease germs that are carried by unclean milk into the human stomach. Science had not yet proved that many forms of barnyard filth could do quite as much harm as distillery refuse. Commerce had not invented milk bottles of glass or paper. The law of 1864 failed in two particulars: (1) it did not demand cleanliness from cow to consumer; (2) it did not provide means for its own enforcement, for learning whether everything and everybody that had to do with milk was clean. Not knowing of germs and their love for a warm climate and warm food, they naturally did not prohibit a temperature above fifty degrees from the time of milking to the time of sale. How much has been left for our generation to do to secure pure milk is illustrated by the opening sentence of this chapter, and more specifically by the programme of a milk conference held in New York in November, 1906, the board of health joining in the call. The four-page folder is reproduced in facsimile (excepting the names on the fourth page), because it states the universal problem, and also because it suggests an effective way to stimulate relevant discussion and to discourage the long speeches that spoil many conferences. This conference led to the formation of a milk committee under the auspices of the association founded by Hartley. Business men, children's specialists, journalists, clergymen, consented to serve because they realized the need for a continuing public interest and a persisting watchfulness. Such committees are needed in other cities and in states, either as independent committees or as subcommittees of general organizations, such as women's clubs, sanitary leagues, county and state medical societies. Teachers' associations might well be added, especially for rural and suburban districts where they are more apt than any other organized body to see the evils that result from unclean milk. The New York Milk Committee set a good example in paying a secretary to give his entire time to its educational programme,--a paid secretary can keep more volunteers and consultants busy than could a dozen volunteers giving "what time they can spare." Thanks chiefly to the conference and the Milk Committee's work, several important results have been effected. The general public has realized as never before that two indispensable adjectives belong to safe milk,--_clean_ and _cool_. Additional inspectors have been sent to country dairies; refrigeration, cans, and milk have been inspected upon arrival at night; score cards have been introduced, thanks to the convincing explanations of their effectiveness by the representatives of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the national Department of Agriculture; 8640 milch cows were inspected by veterinary practitioners (1905-1907), to learn the prevalence of bovine tuberculosis (of these thirty-six per cent reacted to the tuberculin test); state societies and state departments have been aroused to demand an efficient live-stock sanitary board; magistrates have fined and imprisoned offenders against the milk laws, where formerly they "warned"; popular illustrated milk lectures were added to the public school courses; illustrated cards were distributed by the thousand, telling how to keep the baby well; finally, private educational and relief societies, dispensaries, settlements, have been increasingly active in teaching mothers at home how to prepare baby's milk. In 1908 a Conference on Summer Care of Babies was organized representing the departments of health and education, and fifty private agencies for the care of sick babies and the instruction of mothers. The superintendent of schools instructed teachers to begin the campaign by talks to children and by giving out illustrated cards. Similar instructions were sent to parochial schools by the archbishop. [Illustration: NIGHT INSPECTION OF COUNTRY MILK UPON ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK CITY] As elsewhere, there are two schools of pure-milk crusaders: (1) those who want cities to _do things_, to pasteurize all milk, start milk farms, milk shops, or pure-milk dispensaries; and (2) those who want cities and states to _get things done_. So far the New York Milk Committee has led the second school and has opposed efforts to municipalize the milk business. The leader of the other school is the noted philanthropist, Nathan Strauss, who has established pasteurization plants in several American and European cities. The discussion of the two schools, similar in aim but different in method, is made more difficult, because to question philanthropy's method always seems to philanthropy itself and to most bystanders an ungracious, ungrateful act. As the issue, however, is clean milk, not personal motive, it is important that educators and parents in all communities benefit from the effective propaganda of both schools, using what is agreed upon as the basis for local pure-milk crusades, reserving that which is controversial for final settlement by research over large fields that involve hundreds of thousands of tests. [Illustration: A NEW YORK MILK COMMITTEE'S INFANT DEPOT AND SCHOOL FOR MOTHERS] Pasteurization, municipal dairies, municipal milk shops, municipal infant-milk depots, are the four chief remedies of the _doing things_ school. European experience is cited in support of each. We are told that cow's milk, intended by nature for an infant cow with four stomachs, is not suited, even when absolutely pure, to the human infant's single stomach. Cow's milk should be modified, weakened, diluted, to fit the digestive powers of the individual infant; hence the municipal depot or milk dispensary that provides exactly the right milk for each baby, prescribed by municipal physicians and nurses who know. That the well-to-do and the just-past-infancy may have milk as safe as babies receive at the depot, municipalization of farm and milk shop is advocated. Some want the city to run only enough farms and milk shops to set a standard for private farmers, as has been done in Rochester. This is city ownership and operation for educational purposes only. Finally, because raw milk even from clean dairies may contain germs of typhoid, scarlet fever, or tuberculosis, pasteurization is demanded to kill every germ. There are advocates of pasteurization that deprecate the practice and deny that raw milk is necessarily dangerous; they favor it for the time being until farms and shops have acquired habits of cleanliness. Likewise many would prefer private pasteurization or laws compelling pasteurization of all milk offered for sale; but they despair of obtaining safe milk unless city officials are held responsible for safety. Why wait to discuss political theories about the proper sphere for government, when, by acting, hundreds of thousands of lives can be saved annually? These methods of _doing things_ will not add to the price of milk; it is, in fact, probable that the reduction in the cost of caring for the sick and for inspecting farms and shops will offset the net cost of depots, farms, and dairies. [Illustration: ONE OF ROCHESTER'S SCHOOLS IN CLEANLINESS] [Illustration: ROCHESTER'S MODEL DAIRY FARM] As to pasteurization, its cost is negligible, while the cost of cleanliness is two, four, or ten cents a quart. Whether ideally clean milk is safe or not, raw milk that is not clean is unfit for human consumption. All cities should compel evidence of pasteurization as a condition of sale. Large cities should have their own pasteurizing plants, just as many cities now have their own vaccine farms and antitoxin laboratories. Parents in small towns and in the country should be taught to pasteurize all milk. The _getting things done_ school admits the need for modified milk of strength suited to the infant's stomach; affirms the danger of milk that contains harmful germs; demands educational work by city, state, and nation; confesses that talk about cleanliness will not make milk safe. On the other hand, it denies that raw milk is necessarily dangerous; that properly modified, clean, raw milk is any safer when pasteurized; that talking about germ-proof milk insures germ extinction. It maintains that pasteurization kills benign germs essential to the life of milk, and that after benign germs are killed, pasteurized milk, if exposed to infection, is more dangerous than raw milk, for the rapid growth of harmful germs is no longer contested by benign germs fighting for supremacy. While it is admitted that raw milk produced under ideal conditions may become infected by some person ignorant of his condition, and before detection may cause typhoid, scarlet fever, or consumption, it has not been proved that such instances are frequent or that the aggregate of harm done equals that which pasteurized milk may do. Pasteurization does not remove chemical impurities; boiling dirt does not render it harmless. The remedy for germ-infected milk is to keep germs out of milk. The remedy for unclean milk is cleanliness of cow, cow barn, cowyard, milker, milk can, creamery, milk shop, bottle, nipple. If the sale of unclean milk is prevented, farmers will, as a matter of course, supply clean milk. By teaching farmers and milk retailers the economic advantages of cleanliness they will cultivate habits that guarantee a clean milk supply. By punishing railroads and milk companies that transport milk at a temperature which encourages germ growth, and by dumping in the gutter milk that is offered for sale above 50 degrees, the refrigerating of milk will be made the rule. Purging magistrates' courts of their leniency toward dealers in impure, dangerous milk is better than purging milk of germs. Boiling milk receptacles will save more babies than boiling milk. Teaching mothers about the care of babies will bring better results than giving them a false sense of safety, because only one of many dangers has been removed by pasteurization. Educating consumers to demand clean milk and to support aggressive work by health departments leaves fewer evils unchecked than covering up uncleanliness by pasteurization. [Illustration: NEW YORK MILK COMMITTEE'S GRAPHIC METHOD OF SHOWING BABIES' PROGRESS] [Illustration: PRODUCING WINTER CONDITIONS IN MIDSUMMER BY PROPER REFRIGERATION FOR MILK IN FREIGHT CARS] When doctors disagree what are we laymen to do? We can take an intelligent interest in the inquiries that are now being made by city, state, and national governments. Because everybody believes that clean milk is safer than unclean milk, that milk at 50 degrees will not breed harmful germs, we can demand milk inspection that will tell our health officers and ourselves which dealers sell only clean milk at 50 degrees and never more than 60 degrees, that never shows over 100,000 colonies to the cubic centimeter. We can get our health departments to publish the results of their scoring of dairies and milk shops in the papers, as has been done in Montclair. We can tell our health officers that the best results in fighting infant mortality are at Rochester, which city, winter and summer, by inspection, correspondence, and punishment, educates farmers and dealers in cleanliness, not only censuring when dirty or careless, but explaining how to make more money by being clean. Finally, mothers can be taught at home how to cleanse the bottles, the nipples, all milk receptacles, and all things in rooms where milk is kept. Absolutely clean milk of proper temperature _at the shop_ may not safely be given to a baby in a dirty bottle. Infant milk depots, pasteurization, the best medical and hospital care, breast feeding itself, cannot prevent high baby mortality if mothers are not clean. The most effective volunteer effort for pure milk is that which first makes the health machinery do its part and then teaches, teaches, teaches mothers and all who have to do with babies. [Illustration: NEITHER PASTEURIZATION NOR INSPECTION CAN MAKE IT SAFE TO SELL "DIP MILK" UNDER SUCH UNCLEAN CONDITIONS] "Clean air, clean babies, clean milk," has been the slogan of Junior Sea Breeze,--a school for mothers right in the heart of New York's upper East Side. In the summer of 1907 twenty nurses went from house to house telling 102,000 mothers how to keep the baby well. This was the only district that had fewer baby deaths than for 1906. Had other parts of the city shown the same gain, there would have been a saving of 1100 babies. The following winter a similar work was conducted by nurses from the recently founded Caroline Rest, which has an educational fund for instruction of mothers in the care of babies, especially babies not yet born and just born. Heretofore the baby has been expected to cry and to have summer complaint before anybody worried about the treatment it received. If the baby lived through its second summer, it was considered great good fortune. Junior Sea Breeze and Caroline Rest start their educational work before the baby is sick, in fact, before it is born. Their results have been so notable that several well-to-do mothers declare that they wish they too might have a school. Dispensaries and diet kitchens and more particularly maternity wards of hospitals, family physicians, nurses, and midwives, should be required to know how to teach mothers to feed babies regularly, the right quantities, under conditions that insure cleanliness whether the breast or the bottle is used. Perhaps some day no girl will be given a graduating certificate, or a license for work, teaching, or marriage, until she has demonstrated her ability to give some mother's baby "clean air, clean body, clean milk." FOOTNOTES: [15] Libraries should obtain all reports on milk, Bureau of Animal Industry, Washington, D.C. CHAPTER XXVI PREVENTIVE "HUMANIZED" MEDICINE: PHYSICIAN AND TEACHER No profession, excepting possibly the ministry, is regarded with greater deference than the medical profession. Our ancestors listened with awe and obedience to the warnings and behests of the medicine man, bloodletter, bonesetter, family doctor. In modern times doctors have disagreed with each other often enough to warrant laymen in questioning the infallibility of any individual healer or any sect, whether homeopath, allopath, eclectic, osteopath, or scientist. Yet to this day most of us surround the medical profession or the healing art with an atmosphere of necromancy. Even after we have given up faith in drugs or after belief is denied in the reality of disease and pain, we revere the calling that concerns itself, whether gratuitously or for pay, with conquering bodily ills. Self-laudation continues this hold of the medical profession upon the lay imagination. One physician may challenge another's faults, ridicule his remedies, call his antitoxin dangerous poison, but their common profession he proudly styles "the most exalted form of altruism." Young men and women beginning the study or the practice of medicine are exhorted to continue its traditions of self-denial, and in their very souls to place human welfare before personal or pecuniary advancement. Newspapers repeat exhortation and laudation. We laymen pass on the story that we know is not universally true,--physicians know, physicians apply what they know without consciousness of error, physicians must be implicitly trusted. For a physician to give poison when he means to give food is worse, not better, than for a layman to make the same mistake. Neither the moral code nor the law of self-preservation enjoins a tuberculous mother to take alcohol or to sleep in an unventilated room, even if an uninformed physician prescribes it. Instruction in physiology and hygiene would be futile if those who are educated as to the elementary facts of hygiene and physiology must blindly follow blind physicians. A family doctor who gives cod-liver oil for anæmia due to adenoids may do a child as much harm as a nurse who drugs the baby to make it sleep. The physician who refuses to tell the board of health when smallpox or typhoid fever first breaks out takes human life just as truly as if he tore up the tracks in front of an express train. This is another way of saying that parents and teachers must fit themselves to know whether the family physician and their community's physicians are efficient practitioners and teachers. Every one can learn enough about the preventable causes of sickness and depleted vitality to insist upon the ounce of education and prevention that is better than a pound of cure. For its sins of omission, as for its sins of commission, the medical profession shares responsibility with laymen. For years leading educators, business men, hospital directors, public officials, have known that communicable diseases could be stamped out. The methods have been demonstrated. There is absolutely no excuse to-day for epidemics of typhoid in Trenton, Pittsburg, or Scranton, for epidemics of scarlet fever in the small towns of Minnesota, for uninterrupted epidemics of tuberculosis everywhere. Had either laymen, physicians, or school-teachers made proper use of the knowledge that has been in text-books for a generation, this country would be saving thousands of lives and millions of dollars every year. Our _doing_ and _getting done_ have lagged behind our _knowing_. The failure of physicians to "socialize" or "humanize" their knowledge is due to two causes: (1) no one has been applying _result tests_ to the profession as a whole and to the state in its capacity as doctor, testing carefully the sickness rate, the death rate, and the expense rate of preventable diseases; (2) physicians themselves have not needed to know, either at college or in practice, the tax levied upon their communities by preventable sickness. Public schools can do much to secure result tests for individual physicians, for the profession as a whole, and for boards of health. Schooling in preventive medicine, or, better named, schooling in preventive hygiene, will fit physicians to do their part in eradicating preventable disease. Preventive hygiene is not an essential part of the training of American physicians or nurses to-day. Not only are there no colleges of preventive hygiene, but medical schools have not provided individual courses. It is possible for a man to graduate with honors from our leading medical colleges without knowing what "vital statistics" means. Even boards of health, their duties and their educational opportunities, are not understood by graduates; it is an accident if the "social and economic aspects of medical practice," "statistical fallacies," "hospital administration," "infant mortality," are familiar terms. It is for this reason, rather than because physicians are selfish, that indispensable and beneficent legislation is so generally opposed by them when the prerogatives of their profession seem in danger. Practically every important sanitary advance of the past century has been fought at the outset by those whose life work should have made them see the need. Physicians bitterly attacked compulsory vaccination, medical inspection of schools, compulsory notification of communicable diseases. What is perhaps more significant of the physician's indifference to preventive hygiene is the fact that most of the sanitary movements that have revolutionized hygienic conditions in America owe their inception and their success to laymen, for example, tenement-house reform, anti-child labor and anti-tuberculosis crusades, welfare work in factories, campaigns for safety appliances, movement for a national board of health, prison, almshouse, and insane-asylum reform, schools for mothers, and milk committees. The first hospital for infectious diseases, the first board of health, the first out-of-door sea-air treatment of bone tuberculosis in the United States, were the result of lay initiative. Dr. Hermann M. Biggs says that in America the greatest need of the medical profession and of health administration is training that will enable physicians and lay inspectors to use their knowledge of preventive hygiene for the removal of living and working conditions that cause preventable sickness. A physician without knowledge of preventive hygiene is simply doing a "general repair" business. For a few months in 1907 New York City had a highly efficient commissioner of street cleaning, who, in spite of the unanimous protests and appeals of the press, refused to give up the practice of medicine. Hitherto the board of health of that city has been unable to obtain the full time of its physicians because professional standards give greater credit to the retail application of remedies than to the wholesale application of preventives. Statesmanship as well as professional ability is expected of physicians in the leading European cities, more particularly of those connected with health departments. There it is not felt that a medical degree is of itself a qualification for sanitary or health work. After the professional course, physicians must take courses in preventive hygiene and in health administration. Medical courses include such subjects as vital statistics, duties of medical officers of health, sanitary legislation, state medicine. The needless cost for one year of "catching" diseases in New York City would endow in perpetuity all the schools and lectureships and journals necessary to teach preventive hygiene in every section of this great country. That city alone sacrifices twenty-eight thousand lives annually to diseases that are officially called preventable. The yearly burial cost of these victims of professional and community neglect is more than a million dollars. When to the doctor bills, wages lost, burial cost of those who die are added the total doctor bills, wages lost, and other expenses of the sick who do not die, we find that one city loses in dollars and cents more every year from communicable diseases than is spent by the whole United States for hospitals and boards of health. Many diseases and much sickness are preventable that are not communicable. Indigestion due to bad teeth is not itself communicable, but it can be prevented. One's vitality may be sapped by irregular eating or too little sleep; others will not catch the trouble, although too often they imitate the harmful habits. Adenoids and defective vision are preventable, but not contagious. Spinal curvature and flat foot are unnecessary, but others cannot catch them. Preventive hygiene, however, should teach the physician's duty to educate his patient and his community regarding all controllable conditions that injure or promote the health. In the absence of special attention to preventive medicine new truth is forced to fight its way, sometimes for generations, before it is accepted by the medical profession. So strong are the traditions of that profession and so difficult is it for the unconventional or heterodox individual to retain the confidence of conservative patients, that the forces of honorable medical practice tend to discourage research and invention. The man who discovers a surgical appliance is forced by the ethics of his profession either to commercialize it and lose his professional standing, or to abide the convenience of his colleagues and their learned organizations in testing it. Rather than be branded a quack, charlatan, or crank, the physician keeps silent as to convictions which do not conform to the text-books. Many a life-saving, health-promoting discovery which ought to be taken up and incorporated into general practice from one end of the country to the other, and which should be made a part of the minimum standard of medical practice and medical agreement, must wait twenty-five or fifty years for recognition. [Illustration: THE DISCIPLE OF FRESH AIR AND HOME INSTRUCTION IS STILL AN OUTCAST IN SCORES OF HOSPITALS] For want of a school of preventive medicine to emphasize universally every new truth, the medical colleges are permitted to remain twenty-five or fifty years behind absolutely demonstrated facts as to medical truth and medical practice. In 1761 a German physician, Avenbruger, after discovering that different sounds revealed diseased tissue, used "chest tapping" in the diagnosis of lung trouble. In 1815 Lëannec discovered that sound from the chest was more distinct through a paper horn. On that principle the modern stethoscope is built. He made an accurate diagnosis of tuberculosis, and while suffering from that disease treated himself as a living clinical study. In 1857 Pasteur proved the presence of germs "without which no putrefaction, no fermentation, no decay of tissue takes place." In 1884 Trudeau started the first out-of-door care of pulmonary tuberculosis in America. In 1892 Biggs secured the compulsory notification of pulmonary tuberculosis. In 1904 began our first out-of-door sea-air treatment for bone tuberculosis. Yet there are thousands of physicians to-day who sincerely believe that they are earning their fees, who, from houses shut up like ovens, give advice to patients for treatment of tuberculosis, who prescribe alcohol and drugs, who diagnose the disease as malaria for fear patients will be scared, who oppose compulsory registration, and who never look for the tuberculous origin of crippled children. Just think of its being possible, in 1908, for a tuberculous young man of thirty to pay five dollars a day to a sanatorium whose chief reliance is six doses of drugs a day! In 1766 America's first dentist came to the United States. By 1785 itinerant dentists had built up a lucrative practice. In 1825 a course of lectures on dentistry was delivered before the medical class at the University of Maryland. As early as 1742 treatises were written "Upon Dentition and the Breeding of Teeth in Children." In 1803 the possibility of correcting irregularities was pointed out, as was the pernicious effect of tartar on the teeth in 1827. In 1838 attempts were made to abolish, "in all common cases, the pernicious habit of tooth drawing." In 1841 treatises were written on the importance of regulating the teeth of children before the fourteenth year and on the importance of preserving the first teeth. Yet in 1908 it is necessary to write the chapter on Dental Sanitation. Few physicians, whether in private practice or hospitals or just out of medical college, consider it necessary to know the conditions of the mouth before prescribing drugs for physical illness. Osteopathy furnishes an up-to-date illustration. Discredited by the medical profession, by medical journals and medical schools, it has in fifteen years built up a practice of eight thousand men, having from one to three years' training, including over one hundred physicians with full medical training plus a course in osteopathy. There were means of learning fifteen years ago what was truth and what was quackery about the practice of osteopathy. By refusing to look for its truth and by concentrating attention upon its quackery the medical profession has lost fifteen years. Whereas the truth of osteopathy should have been adopted by the medical colleges and a knowledge of its possibilities and limitations required of every practicing physician, a position has been reached where alleged quackery seems in several important points to be discrediting the sincerity, the intelligence, and the efficiency of orthodox medicine. No appeal to the natural can be stronger, no justification of schools of preventive medicine more complete, than the following paragraph from an osteopathic physician who is among the small number who, having both the medical and osteopathic degrees, see both the possibilities and limitations of manual surgery and demand the inclusion of this new science in the medical curriculum. The physical method of treating disease presents a tremendous and significant departure from the empiricism of medicine and the experimentation of dietetics, the restricted fields of electricity, suggestion, water cures, and massage. The patient as an individual is not treated; the disease as a disease is not treated; the symptoms are not treated; but the entire physical organism, with its many parts and diverse functions, is exhaustively examined until each and every abnormal condition, whether of structure or of function, causing disease and maintaining symptoms, is found and administered to with the skill of a definite art, based upon the data of an exact science. Likewise the truths underlying Christian Science have been disdained by medical schools and medical experts, just as its spiritual truth has been disdained by religious leaders, until it has grown to such strength that laymen are almost forced to question the sincerity and the efficacy of the conventional in religion as well as medicine. In May, 1907, the Emmanuel Church in Boston organized a clinic for the purpose of utilizing for neurasthenics particularly both the spiritual and the physical truths underlying religion and the various branches of medical science. Daily papers and magazines are giving a great deal of space to this experiment in "psychotherapy," which is discussed in the chapter on Mental Hygiene. Schools and chairs in preventive hygiene would soon give to the medical profession a point of view that would welcome every new truth, such as the alliance of religion and medicine, and estimate its full worth promptly. Truth seeking would be not only encouraged but made a condition of professional standing. Just what attitude any particular physician takes can be learned by the teacher or parents whose children he treats. If he pooh-poohs or resents board of health regulations as to isolation of scarlet-fever patients, he is a dangerous man, no matter how noble his personal character. If he says cross-eyes will straighten, weak eyes will strengthen, or nose-stopping adenoids "absorb," he is bound to do harm. If he says tuberculosis is incurable, noncommunicable, hereditary, or curable by drugs, or if he tries to cure cancer by osteopathy, he can do more injury than an insane criminal. If he fails to teach a mother how to bathe, feed, and clothe the baby, how to ventilate a room for the sick or the well, he is an expensive luxury for family or for school, and belongs to an age that knew neither school nor preventive hygiene. If he takes no interest in health administration; if he overlooks unclean milk or unclean streets, open sewers, and unsanitary school buildings, street cars, churches, and theaters; if he does not help the health board, the public hospitals, the schools, the factory, and tenement departments enforce sanitary laws, he is derelict as a citizen and as a member of an "exalted profession." If he sees only the patients he himself treats or one particular malady, he is derelict as a teacher, no matter how charming his personality or how skilled in his specialty. If a school physician is slovenly in his work, if he spends fifteen minutes when he is paid for an hour, should the efficient school-teacher conceal the fact from her superiors because he is a physician? If private hospitals misrepresent facts or compromise with political evils for the sake of a gift of public money, their offense is more heinous because of their exalted purpose. The test of a physician's worth to his patients and to his community is not what he is or what he has learned, and not what his profession might be, but what happens to patient and to community. Human welfare demands that the medical profession be judged by what it does, not by what it might do if it made the best possible use of its knowledge or its opportunity. [Illustration: TOO MANY PHYSICIANS AND EVEN MATERNITY HOSPITALS FAIL TO TEACH MOTHERS, EITHER BEFORE OR AFTER BABIES ARE BORN Caroline Rest Educational Fund was given to show the value of such teaching] A dispensary that treats more patients than it can care for properly is no better than a street-car company that chronically provides too few seats and too many straps. Unless physicians test themselves and their profession by results, we shall be compelled to "municipalize the medical man." Preventable sickness costs too much, causes too much wretchedness, and hampers too many modern educational and industrial activities to be neglected. If the medical profession does not fit itself to serve general interests, then cities, counties, and states will take to themselves the cure as well as the prevention of communicable and other preventable sickness. Human life and public health are more precious than the medical profession, more important even than theories and traditions against public interference in private matters. The unreasoning opposition of medical men to government protection of health, their concentration on cure, and their tardy emphasis on prevention have forced many communities to stumble into the evil practices mentioned in Chapter XVI. Incidentally, the best physicians have learned that the prosperity of their profession increases with every increase in the general standard of living. It is the man in the ten-room house not the man in one room who supports physicians in luxury. It is the healthy man and the healthy community that value efficient medical service. Many American cities maintain dispensaries and hospitals for the poor. Whether they will go to the logical conclusion of engaging physicians to give free treatment to all regardless of income depends largely upon what the next generation of private physicians do. The state already says when a physician's training fits him to practice. It will soon expect him to pass rigid examinations in the social and economic aspects of his profession,--its educational opportunity, vital statistics, sick and death rates. Will it need to municipalize him in order to protect itself? Obviously the teacher or parent should not begin cooperation with physicians by lecturing them or by assuming that they are selfish and unwilling to teach. The best first step is to ask questions that they should be able to answer: What causes cholera morbus or summer complaint? When does milk harm the baby? How can unclean milk be made safe? Whose fault is it that the milk is sold unclean and too warm? What agencies help sick babies? What is the health board doing to teach mothers? Or, if a school physician, the teacher can ask: Why not remove these adenoids? What causes them? When will they disappear by absorption? What harm can they do in the meantime? How long would an operation take? Would it hurt very much? What would be the immediate effects? Why not act at once? What provisions are there in town for such operations? Why have the physicians paid so little attention to breathing troubles? What could your state do to interest physicians in school hygiene? Will the school physician talk to a mothers' meeting? What agencies will give outings to sick children? What dispensaries are accessible? Who is the proper person to organize a public health league? Physicians love to teach. If teachers and parents will love to learn and will ask the right questions, all physicians can be converted into hygiene missionaries, heralds of a statesmanship that guarantees health rights to all. LICENSING THE PRACTITIONER Three parties are interested in setting a high standard for physicians, dentists, druggists, nurses, and veterinary surgeons--the profession itself, the schools that educate, and the general public on whom the arts are practiced. The schools and the practitioners are, for the most part, primarily interested in protecting a monopoly of skill. Their interest in restrictive legislation is analogous to that of the labor union which limits the number of apprentices. This trade unionism among professional colleges and professional graduates of these colleges has gradually developed a higher and higher standard that results in greater protection to the public. The first step is generally to demand that all persons entering a profession after a given date shall prove to the state their ability to "practice" without injury to clients. It is almost impossible to get such laws through unless the original law exempts all persons by whatever name, who are practicing the art in question at the time the law is passed. Whether we are speaking of medicine, law, dentistry, accountancy, osteopathy, or barbering, this has been the history of compulsory restriction and of state examinations. As with regard to most other legislation, the enforcement of the law lags behind its definition. Moreover nothing is done after a man has passed a certain examination to see that he remains fit and safe to treat the public. Because no supervision is provided except on the day of examination, it is possible for men and women to fill their brains for a week or two weeks with the information necessary to pass what coaches and tutors have learned will, in all probability, be asked. Forever after, the public is left to protect itself. Out of this condition have arisen the evil, unethical, and unprofessional practices represented particularly by painless dentists, by ignorant or dishonest physicians, and by osteopaths and careless nurses. The machinery for preventing these evils is discussed in Chapter XXIX. Suffice it here to present to parents and teachers the need for examination in advance of certification that will show whether or not those who make a livelihood by caring for others' health are equipped to mitigate rather than aggravate evils, and for further tests by which the public can learn from time to time which, among those professional men who are protected by the public against competition, continue to be safe. Finally, if, as will be clearly seen, it is desirable that what we call professional ethics persist and that self-advertisement be discouraged, society must, for its own protection, adopt some other means than epithets to correct the evils of self-advertisement and quackery. Even though we admit the responsibility of each citizen when he goes to the house of a private practitioner who has made no other effort to lure him thither than to place a card in the window, it must be seen that we cannot hold responsible for their choice men and women who receive through newspapers, magazines, or circulars convincing notices that Dr. So-and-So or the Integrity Company or the Peerless Dental Parlor will place at their disposal, at prices within their reach, skill and devotion absolutely beyond their reach at the office of an efficient private practitioner. Some way must be found by which departments of health will currently impose tests of methods and results upon physicians, opticians, pharmacists, manufacturers of medicine, and dentists. As laymen become more intelligent regarding their own bodies and healthy living, it grows harder and harder for quacks and incompetents to mislead and exploit them. Better than any possible outside safeguard is hygienic living. Fortunately, we can all learn the simple tests of environment and of living necessary to the selection of physicians, dentists, and opticians, or other "architects of health" whose efficiency and integrity are beyond question. PART IV. OFFICIAL MACHINERY FOR ENFORCING HEALTH RIGHTS CHAPTER XXVII DEPARTMENTS OF SCHOOL HYGIENE The term "school hygiene" generally suggests no other school than the public school. State laws say nothing about compulsory hygiene in military academies, ladies' seminaries, or other preparatory and finishing schools. Yet when one thinks of it, one must conclude that the right to health and to healthful school environment cannot equitably be confined to the children whose tuition is given at public expense. There is a better way to check "swollen" fortunes than by ruining the health of "fortune's children." The waste and danger of slow-minded, noticeably inefficient children are no less when parents are rich than when parents are poor. There is no justification for neglecting the health of children in parochial schools, in private schools for the well-to-do or rich, or in commercial schools for the ambitious youth of lower income strata. Nor has the commercial, parochial, private school, or college, any clearer right than the public school to injure or to fail to promote pupils' health. So far as school hygiene is advisable, so far as it is right to make hygiene compulsory, its personal and social benefits should be shared by children of school age without regard to income, and its laws should be enforced by all teachers, principals, and officers that have to do with school. In presenting a programme for school hygiene this chapter refers to the hygiene taught, the hygiene practiced, the hygiene not taught, and the hygiene not practiced in buildings and on grounds where children and youth are at school, whether these children are in kindergarten or high school, in reformatory or military academy, in charitable school, or in finishing and preparing center for society's juniors. The question of the local, state, and national machinery by which proper standards of school hygiene shall be made effective will be taken up after we have considered individual steps in a comprehensive programme for school hygiene. 1. _Thorough physical examination of all candidates for teachers' positions and periodic reëxamination of accepted teachers._ Teachers would be grateful to be told in time their own physical needs and the relations of their vitality to the vitality of their pupils. Are your teachers examined? Do they know the laws of health and the signs of child health? Are they permitted to continue in schoolrooms after tuberculosis is discovered? Are normal graduates given physical tests before being permitted to teach and before being permitted to give four years to preparation for teaching? 2. _Thorough physical examination of every single child in every single school upon entering and periodically during school life._ We believe a vast number of things that "ain't so" about the health of country children as compared with city children, of private-school children as compared with public-school children. Where do we find more degenerate men, physically and morally, than in so-called "American settlements," where, for generations, children have had all outdoors to play in, except when in homes and schoolhouses that are seldom cleansed and seldom ventilated? Open mouths and closed minds clog the "little red schoolhouse"; there headaches do not suggest eye strain; there deafness and running ears are frankly attributed to scarlet fever which everybody must have with all the other "catching" diseases, the earlier the better; there colds begin in December and run until March, to the serious injury of attendance and promotion records; there bone tuberculosis is called "knee trouble" or "spine trouble in the family"; there boys like my little friend Fred count the bottles of cod-liver oil they take to cure adenoids that could be removed in two minutes. The index to community life and community living conditions should be read in the country, not only for the country's sake, but also for the sake of the city whose milk and water, poisoned in the country, cause thousands of deaths annually, besides annual sick bills exceeding many times over the Russell Sage and Carnegie Foundations, which we rightly call munificent. Reading the index of private schools and colleges is important for their children and youth, but still more important for the community upon which unbridled passion, inability to work or to spend properly, inconsequential thinking, mediæval ideals of caste, etc., can inflict greater injuries than can typhoid fever or cholera. The physical record of each child should be kept from date of entrance to date of leaving school, showing condition at successive examinations, absence because of illness, etc. 3. _Thorough physical examination of children when leaving school, or when passing compulsory school age, as a condition to "working papers" and to "coming out."_ To give working papers to children seriously handicapped by physical defects is to buy future industrial trouble, hospital and poorhouse bills. A boy with adenoids, a girl with eye trouble, should not be permitted to begin the fight for self-support without at least being clearly shown that the correction of these defects will increase their earning power. At present a schoolgirl with incipient tuberculosis, or predisposed to that disease, can get working papers, go to a hammock or tobacco factory, work long hours, breathe bushels of dust, deplete her vitality, spread tuberculosis among her co-workers and home associates, infect a tenement,--and all this without any help or advice or any protection from society until she is too sick to work and her physician notifies the health department that she is a danger center. We may disagree about society's right to control a child's act after the defects are discovered, but who will question society's duty to tell that child and her parents the truth about her physical needs before it accepts her labor or permits her to "enter society"? 4. _Supervision by physicians of hygiene practiced in schoolrooms and on playgrounds._ Superintendent Maxwell, of New York City, and other educational leaders urge teachers to do their utmost to learn the physical conditions and home environment of the individual child, and to fit school treatment to the individual possibilities and handicaps. But experience proves conclusively that try as they will, teachers and principals have neither the special knowledge nor the time to acquire the special knowledge requisite to use the facts disclosed by the physical examination of school children. Physicians and nurses are needed, not so much for treating children, as for teaching children, parents, teachers, family and dispensary physicians. Private schools have visiting physicians who may be consulted; they need physicians to supervise, with power to examine or to require certificates of examination. The Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children found that when a visitor was detailed for that purpose it was easy to secure the coöperation of parents, teachers, family physicians, dispensaries, school boards, and charitable societies. The Hawthorne Club's school secretary has been similarly successful in Boston, as have those of Hartley House, Greenwich House, and the Public Education Association in New York. 5. _Restriction of study hours at school and at home to limits compatible with health._ Whether the hours of study at school and at home are excessive cannot be learned from treatises on pedagogics or physiology. Because children differ in vitality as in ability to learn, the maximum limit for study hours should be determined by the individual child's physical condition. When the Japanese went to war with Russia the highest authority in the field was the army surgeon. To this fact was largely due the astonishingly small amount of sickness and the high fighting capacity and endurance of the Japanese, working under unfavorable conditions. No board of school superintendents or board of directors, no state superintendent of schools or college professor, has the right to compel or to allow study hours beyond the maximum compatible with the individual student's physical condition and endurance. The physician responsible for school hygiene should have an absolute veto upon any educational policy, method, or environment demonstrably detrimental to children's vitality. 6. _Establishment of a "follow-up" plan to insure action by parents to correct physical defects and to attend to physical needs._ The advantages of _getting things done_ over _doing things_ have been repeatedly emphasized. In smaller cities and in rural districts it is particularly important for schools to get things done better by existing local agencies, such as churches, health and street-cleaning departments, hospitals, clinics, medical and sanitary societies, trade unions, young people's societies, and women's clubs. Where parents who have been followed up and taught, obstinately or ignorantly refuse to attend to their children's needs, the segregation of the physically defective or needy will encourage the coöperation of children themselves in persuading parents to act intelligently for the child's sake. No child wants to remain "queer" or "dopey" or behind his peers. The city superintendent of schools for New York City has asked for laws compelling parents to permit operations and punishing them for neglecting to take steps, within their power, to remove physical defects discovered at school. [Illustration: TEACHING A MOTHER TO CARE FOR ONE CHILD INSURES BETTER CARE FOR ALL HER CHILDREN] 7. _Physiological age should influence school classification and school curriculum._ On this subject the studies of Dr. C. Ward Crampton, referred to in the chapter on Vitality Tests, are invaluable and as convincing as they are revolutionary. Scientists accept his proof that our present high school curriculum is ill adapted to a large proportion of children; the "physiologically too young" drop out; only the physiologically mature succeed. The two physiological ages should be given different work. Children whose bodies yearn for pictures, muscular and sense expression, should be given a chance in school for normal development. Analysis should wait for action. Organized play and physical training antedated physical examination in our schools. Like the curriculum they often disregard physiological age, doing harm instead of good. Facts as to physical condition and physiological development would enable us to utilize the momentum of these two to broaden school hygiene and to insure proper physical supervision. Only good would result from adopting Leipsic's plan of having school children examined without clothing, in the presence of parents if parents desire. Expensive? Not so expensive as high school "mortality" due to maladjusted curriculums that force the great majority of boys and girls to drop out before graduation and ruin the health of a large fraction of those who remain. 8. _Construction of school building and of curriculum so that, when properly conducted, they shall neither produce nor aggravate physical defects._ When the state for its own protection compels a child to go to school, it pledges itself not to injure itself by injuring the child. Thousands of children are now being subjected to conditions in school far more injurious than the factory and shop conditions against which the national and state child labor committees have aroused universal indignation. Two illuminating studies of school buildings in New York City were made last year by the Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children, and later by the Board of Education. Similar studies should be made of every schoolroom. Whereas our discussions of buildings and curriculum have hitherto proceeded largely from abstract principles of light, ventilation, heating, and pedagogics, these two reports deal with rooms, equipment, courses of study, and school habits as they are, with obvious detrimental effects on child victims. Numerous questions that it is practicable to answer are given in Chapter XIV. What and when to build can be better determined after we have learned the what and the where of present equipment. In passing it is worth while to note that in large cities teachers are frequently forced to choose between bad ventilation and street noises. From Boston comes the suggestion that we avoid noises and evils of congestion by building schoolhouses for city children on the outskirts in the midst of fields, transporting, and, if necessary, feeding children at public expense. While it is true that the public funds now spent in attempting to cure physical and moral ills would purchase ample country reservations, the practical next step seems to be to provide ample play space and breathing space within the city for every school building already erected, and without fail for all buildings to be erected hereafter. 9. _Hygiene should be so taught that children will cultivate habits of health and see clearly the relation of health and vitality to present happiness and future efficiency._ Social rather than personal, public rather than private, health needs emphasis. Children can be shown how their health affects their neighbor; why money spent for health boards is a better investment than money given to corrupt politicians; that the cost of accepting Thanksgiving turkey or a park picnic from a political leader who encourages inefficient government is sickness, misery, deficient schooling, lifelong handicap; that children and adults have health rights in school and factory, on street and playground, which the law will protect if only they know when these rights are infringed. 10. _Central supervision of school hygiene._ In private and public, boarding and day, country and city, reformatory and military, commercial and high schools, the index--physical welfare of school children--should be read and interpreted. Headquarters should learn whether or not physical examinations are made and whether harmful conditions are corrected. So far as public schools are concerned, "headquarters" means for cities the fact center that informs city superintendent or school board; for rural schools, it means the county superintendent's office. Whether city or county headquarters have the facts and act accordingly should be known by state superintendents. Whether state superintendents are demanding the facts and educating the county and city headquarters of their states should be known to the national commissioner of education and by him published for all the world. Some people think the state health board should be responsible, others the state educational authority. The important thing is to make some one officer responsible. Methods can be easily worked out if the need is conceded. Legislatures will gladly confer the powers necessary to reading the index of all public schools. As for parochial and private schools, they may resent for a time public supervision of their hygiene teaching and practice. However, the case could be so presented that they would ask for it, because it would help not only their pupils and society but the schools themselves. No religious belief or private investment can afford to admit that it disregards child health; state supervision would require nothing more than evidence of adequate school hygiene. 11. _Information gained at school regarding conditions prejudicial to community health should be published and made the basis of an aggressive campaign for the enforcement of sanitary laws._ Ten thousand uses can be made of the information gained at school, ten thousand forces can be made to do educational work, but only a few kinds of work can be done effectively at school. Franklin Ford has said: "You can relate school to all life, but you cannot bring all life under the school roof." As Chapters XVI-XVIII make clear, to socialize the point of view of dispensaries and hospitals is more effective than to put clinics in school buildings. To _do for_ or _give to_ people who can help themselves is to _give up_ and _do up_ power of self-help. Machinery that must some day exist for the execution of this programme will be approximately the following: I. NATIONAL MACHINERY 1. Clearing house for facts regarding school hygiene as taught and practiced in all schools under the Stars and Stripes; this to be a part of the National Bureau of Education. 2. Scientific research to be conducted by the National Bureau of Education or by the future National Board of Health. II. STATE MACHINERY 1. Clearing house for facts regarding school hygiene taught and practiced in all schools within state limits; this to be maintained by the state educational authorities. 2. Agents to make special inquiries as to practice and teaching of school hygiene. 3. Agents to inspect and to instruct county superintendents, county physicians, teachers, normal schools, etc. 4. A bureau of experts--architect, sanitarian, teacher--whose approval must be obtained before any school building can be erected. (A plan which brought excellent results when applied by state boards to charitable institutions, hospitals for the insane, etc.) 5. Standard making by normal schools, state universities, hospitals, or other educational and correctional institutes under direct state management. III. COUNTY MACHINERY 1. Clearing house for facts regarding school hygiene taught and practiced in all schools within county limits; this to be maintained by the county superintendent of schools. 2. Physician and nurse to organize inspection and instruction for rural schools, to give lessons and make demonstrations at county institutes, to show teachers how to interest physicians, dentists, health officers, and parents in the physical welfare of school children. IV. TOWN AND TOWNSHIP MACHINERY 1. Teachers intelligent as to physical needs, as to sanitation of buildings, etc. 2. An examining physician, to be salaried where the population justifies; elsewhere to work as a volunteer in coöperation with teacher and with county physician. 3. Physical history of each child from date of entrance to date of leaving school, to be kept up to date by teacher. V. CITY MACHINERY 1. A division to be known as the Department of School Hygiene, headed by an officer who gives his entire time to that department. 2. A subcommittee of the Board of Education. 3. Clearing house for facts regarding school hygiene taught and practiced in all schools within city limits. 4. Specialists to examine applicants for teaching positions, and to reëxamine teachers to determine fitness for continuance, for promotion, and for special assignments. 5. A bureau for inspection and control of all hygiene of school buildings, old and new, with power to compel repairs or to reject plans that do not make adequate sanitary provision. 6. Similar supervision of curriculum and of study hours prescribed. 7. A bureau for the inspection and control of curriculum, required home study, exercise, physical training, etc., so far as relates to the health of pupils, and to the physical ability of children to be in certain grades or to be promoted. This will decide the duration of lessons, frequency of intermissions, sequence of subjects, time and method of recess throughout the various grades. 8. Supervision of indoor and outdoor playgrounds, roof gardens, indoor and outdoor gymnasiums, swimming pools, etc. 9. Supervision of instruction in school hygiene. 10. A staff of inspectors for communicable diseases of pupils and teachers, to be subject to the board of education or the board of health. 11. A staff of examiners adequate to examine all children and teachers at least once a year for defects of eye, ear, teeth, nose, throat, lungs, spine, bones, glands, etc., and for weight and height to be under the control of the board of education or the board of health. The expense would not be as great as the penalty paid for omitting such examination. 12. A staff of nurses to assist medical examiners to give children practical demonstrations in cleanliness, to teach mothers the care of children both at their homes and in mothers' meetings, to enlist the coöperation of family physician and neighborhood facilities, such as hospitals, dispensaries and relief agencies, magistrates' courts and probation officers,--all to be under the control of the board of education or the board of health. Whether inspectors, examiners, and nurses shall be directed by the board of education or the board of health is a question that it is impossible to decide without knowledge of local conditions. So far as state and county organizations are concerned, it is clear that whatever the boards of health may do, it will be necessary for state and county superintendents of education to equip themselves with the machinery above recommended. In cities it is quite clear that a board of education should be responsible for all of the machinery suggested, excepting the three divisions that have to do with work hitherto considered as protection against transmissible diseases, namely, inspection, examination, district visiting. In Cleveland these are school duties. In New York they are duties of the health department. Boston has school nurses and health department physicians. The state law of Massachusetts provides that where health boards do not examine school children, school boards may spend money for the purpose. As to inspection for transmissible diseases, it seems quite clear that health boards should not delegate their authority or responsibility to any other body, for they alone are accountable to their communities for protection against contagion. It is clear, too, that in the interest of community health, departments of health are justified in pointing out in advance of contagion those children most likely to become a menace. Similar grounds of public interest justify the health boards in sending nurses and physicians to the home as a means of getting things done. Dr. Biggs feels that responsibility for the physical welfare of school children will strengthen health work in all cities, and, given proper interest on the part of school officials, should make possible universal coöperation in a constructive programme. On the other hand, he believes that division of responsibility between school and health boards will weaken both in their appeals for funds and for support of a constructive programme. I have heard principals and superintendents maintain also that the moral effect of a visit to the school by a representative of the health board vested with powers of that board was much greater than a visit by a representative of the school board. They further allege that a physician coming from the outside is more apt to see things that need correction and less apt to accept excuses than an inspector who feels that he belongs to the same working group as the school-teacher. Because the follow-up work in the homes incident to successful use of knowledge gained at school involves so many sanitary remedies, it is theoretically better organization to hold the health authority responsible. CHAPTER XXVIII PRESENT ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOL HYGIENE IN NEW YORK CITY Many of the elements of the machinery outlined in the preceding chapter already exist in New York City. All of them brought together, either by amalgamation or by proper coördination, would present a very strong front. Unfortunately, however, there is not only unsatisfactory team work, but the efficiency of individual parts is seriously questioned by the heads of the health and school departments. The inspection for contagious diseases, the examination for physical defects, the follow-up work by nurses and physicians, are in charge of the department of health. Physical training and athletics for elementary and high schools, winter recreation centers, and vacation playgrounds are under directors and assistants employed by the board of education. Heretofore inadequate powers and inadequate assistance for training or for research have been given to the physical director. The city superintendent of schools, in his report for the year 1907, presented to the board of education in January, 1908, declares that the "present arrangements have been inadequate.... In only 248 schools--less than half the total number--were any examinations for possible diseases made. In these 248 schools not more than one third of the pupils were examined. It is only a few months since any examinations for physical defects were made outside of the boroughs of Manhattan and The Bronx, and then only on account of the New York Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children." As is so often the case, it is difficult to decide the merits of a method that has not been efficiently executed. The department of health has not hitherto done its best in its school relations. The commissioner of health, in a public interview, expresses resentment at the strictures by the school authorities. Yet in 1907 he permitted to accumulate an unexpended balance of $33,000 specifically voted for school inspectors, and repeatedly tried to have this amount transferred to other purposes. The interest of the Bureau of Municipal Research in municipal budgets that tell for what purposes money is voted and then prevent transfers without full publicity, preserved this particular fund. Moreover, the discussion that prevented its diversion from physical examinations strengthened the health department's interest in this important responsibility. Neither physicians nor nurses have been adequately supervised. Instead of seeing that defects were removed, the department of health sent out postal cards like the following: [Illustration: (Notice Example)] +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | "This Notice Does NOT Exclude This Child From School" | | | | DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH | | THE CITY OF NEW YORK | | | | _Oct. 2, 190_6_ | | | | The parent or guardian of ___________________________________________ | | of____________________________________attending P.S.__51___________ | | is hereby informed that a physical examination of this child seems to | | show an abnormal condition of the ___________________________________ | | ___Eyes, Nose, Throat and Teeth______________________________________ | | _____________________________________________________________________ | | Remarks__Is Anaemic__________________________________________________ | | _____________________________________________________________________ | | | | Take this child to your family physician for treatment and advice. | | Take this card with you to the family physician. | | | | THOMAS DARLINGTON, M.D., | | Commissioner of Health. | | | | HERMANN M. BIGGS, M.D., | | General Medical Officer | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ From 118,000 such notices sent out only 9600 replies were received, of which only one in twenty stated that attention had actually been given the needy child. The department had been satisfied with evidence that family physicians had advised parents properly, as in the case of the child above reported: [Illustration: (Card example)] +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | TAKE THIS CARD TO YOUR PHYSICIAN | | | | The Physician in charge is requested to fill out and | | forward this postal after he has examined this child. | | | | I have this day examined ___________________________________________ | | of P.S. __51______________ and find the following condition: | | | | __As reported, Also enlarged (unclear) glands_______________________ | | and advised as follows:__operation for adenoids and tonsils_________ | | _____Dental treatment at Cornell. Fresh air ________________________ | | _____outing at Sea Breeze Eyes wait.________________________________ | | | | Respectfully yours, | | _______P.L. OB___________ | | Date __Oct. 9, 1906______ _________________________ | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ For a candid, complete criticism of the medical examination work up to June, 1908, consult the report of the Bureau of Municipal Research, presented to the Washington Congress of Public Education Associations in October, 1908, by Commissioner of Health, Dr. Darlington. The bureau's study is entitled _A Bureau of Child Hygiene_, and, in addition to the story of medical examination in New York City schools, gives the blank forms adopted for use in September, 1908. Important as are the facts given in this study, its greatest value, its authors declare, is in its account of "the method of intelligent self-criticism and experiment which alone enables a public department to keep its service abreast of public needs." The Bureau of Municipal Research made its study for the purpose of learning whether the disappointing results emphasized by the school authorities were due to "dual responsibility in the school--that of the board of education and that of the department of health"--and to "lack of power or inclination to compel parents to remedy defects," or to _deficient administration_ of power and inclination by health officials. Coöperating with school physicians and nurses in three schools, 1442 children were examined, of whom 1345, or 93.2 per cent, had 3458 defects that needed treatment. The postal-card notice was followed by an interview with the parent either at school or at home. Only 4.2 per cent of the total number of parents refused to act, 81 per cent secured or permitted treatment for one or more defects, while 15 per cent promised to take the proper steps at the earliest possible date. Three fourths of the parents acted after one personal interview. "The net average result of a day's work by a nurse was the actual treatment of over five children, three of them completely, and two of them for one or more defects,"--sixty cents per child! [Illustration: A PHOTOGRAPH OF MOUTH BREATHING MAY MAKE COMPULSION UNNECESSARY] Having established the willingness--even eagerness--of parents to do all in their power to remove defects that handicapped their children, it was obviously the duty of the health department so to organize its work that it could insure the education of parents. The new Bureau of Child Hygiene gives foremost place to instruction of parents in care of babies, in needs of school children, and in the importance of physical examination when enlisting in the industrial army. Whether this work is well done is learned by result tests applied at headquarters, where work done and results are reported daily and summarized weekly. No longer will it be possible, without detection, for one physician to find only eye trouble and to neglect all other defects; for two inspectors examining different children in the same school to report results differing by 100 per cent; for physicians in different schools to find one 18 per cent, another 100 per cent with defects; for two inspectors examining identical children to agree on 51 out of 101 cases of vision, on 49 out of 96 cases of adenoids, or 3 out of 10 cases of skin disease. So conclusive were the results of follow-up work efficiently supervised by the department of health, that school officials are, for the present, inclined to waive the demand for the transfer of physicians and nurses to the board of education, and to substitute education for compulsion with parents who obstinately refuse to take proper remedial measures for their children when reported defective. This present plan requires the entire working time of inspectors and nurses for school work. Thus New York has for the present definitely abandoned the plan of having the district inspection for contagious diseases done by school physicians. The purpose of the change is not to reduce danger of infection, which was negligible, but to increase the probability of scientific attention to school children. Before a final settlement is made for New York City there should be tests showing what the school authorities would do if physicians and nurses were subordinate to them. It is conceivable that one physician working from nine to five would accomplish more than six physicians working the alleged three hours a day. So imperative are the demands of school hygiene that it seems probable that in New York and in other large cities school physicians, whether paid by the board of health or the board of education, must be expected to be at the service of school children, subject to the call of school officers, during as many hours of the day as teachers themselves must give. It is even conceivable that effective use of the knowledge gained by physical examinations of school children, and by those responsible for school hygiene, will require evening office hours or evening visits to homes, and regular Saturday office hours and Saturday visits by school physicians and nurses. Finally, it must be expected that the programme for school hygiene will need the special attention of physicians and nurses during the summer months, and other vacation periods when children and parents alike have time to receive and to carry out their instructions. One danger in New York City is that the board of education, like the board of health, when compelled to choose between so-called standard, necessary, traditional duty and school hygiene, will sacrifice the latter. The school authorities, without any more funds and without physicians and nurses, could already have made, had they desired, eye tests and breathing tests sufficiently accurate to detect the majority of children needing attention. The outcome of the discussion as to the jurisdiction of the two boards will undoubtedly be to interest both in their joint responsibility for children's welfare, and to increase the attention given by both to the physical condition of the child when he presents himself for registration as a wage earner. CHAPTER XXIX OFFICIAL MACHINERY FOR ENFORCING HEALTH RIGHTS The argument for _getting things done_ presumes adequate active machinery, official and private, for _doing things_ that schools are being urged to do. The chapter on Departments of School Hygiene suggests local, county, state, and national machinery necessary (1) to protect the child from injuries due to school environment, school methods, and school curriculum; (2) to getting those things done for the child at home and on the street, need for which is disclosed by physical and vitality tests at school. It is unreasonable to confine the school to the activities above outlined unless health machinery, adequate to the demands placed upon it by school and other community needs, is devised and kept in order. Generally speaking, adequate health machinery is already provided for by city charters and by the state laws under which villages, townships, and counties are organized. Quite as generally, however, machinery and methods of adequate administration are undeveloped. How much machinery has already been set to work by New York City is shown by the accompanying chart. A useful exercise for individuals or school classes wishing to study health administration would be to chart in this way the machinery actually at work in their locality, county, and state. Even for New York it should be remembered that this chart does not include national quarantine, the state protection of the port, the state dairy and health commissions, or the state and national food inspection. To get an idea of the vast amount of attention given to health in New York City there should be added to this chart the work of many departments other than the department of health. The building bureau, tenement-house department, board of water supply, sewage commission, street cleaning, public baths and comfort stations, the department of water, gas, and electricity, and finally the department of hygiene and physical training in the public schools. [Illustration: CHART SHOWING HOW NEW YORK CITY'S DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH EXERCISES IT'S AUTHORITY Courtesy of Bureau of Municipal Research] Five elements of adequate machinery are generally lost sight of: 1. The voter. 2. The nonvoter, subject to health laws and often apt to violate them. 3. The mayor, governor, or president who appoints health officers. 4. The council, board of aldermen, legislature, or congress that enacts health laws. 5. The police courts and the judiciary--police, circuit and supreme--that decide whether society has suffered from violation of law and what penalties should be inflicted for such violation. Legislative bodies have hitherto slighted their responsibilities toward public health. The chairman of a committee on public health of a state legislature was heard to remark, "I asked for that committee because there isn't a blooming thing to do." If voters, nonvoters, and health officials will follow the suggestion of this book to secure school and health reports that will disclose community and health needs, it will be increasingly difficult for legislators to refuse funds necessary to efficient health administration. To the courts tradition has required such deference that one hesitates to find out in how far they have been responsible in the past for the nonenforcement of health laws. Yet nothing is more obstructive of sanitary progress than the failure of magistrates to enforce adequate penalties for truancy, adulteration of milk, maintaining a public nuisance, defiling the air with black smoke, offering putrid meats for sale, running an unclean lodging house, defying tenement-house or factory regulations, working children under age and overtime, spitting in public places, or failing to register transmissible diseases.[16] The appointing officer cannot, of course, be held responsible unless voters and nonvoters know in how far his appointees are inefficient, and in how far he himself has failed to do his utmost to secure funds necessary to efficiency. Too frequently appointments to health positions have been made on political grounds, and catastrophes have been met by blundering incapacity. The political appointee has been made the scapegoat, and the appointing officer, whether mayor, governor, or president, has regained public confidence by replacing an old with a new incompetent. In order to have health machinery work properly, the appointing officer should not be allowed to shift responsibility for failure to his subordinates. For example, it was recently found in New York City that while the tenement-house commissioner was being condemned for failing to enforce the law, he had turned over to the corporation counsel, also appointed by the mayor, for prosecution ten thousand "violations" to which no attention whatever had been paid! The voter, nonvoter, appointing officer, legislative officer, and judicial officer determine the character and purpose of machinery and are analogous to the surveyors, stock-holders, directors, and constructors who provide railroads with tracks and with running stock. The actual running force of health department or railroad is what is meant by its official machinery. What this machinery should be depends, of course, upon the amount of business to be done, and differs with the size of the district and the character of population to be served. [Illustration: FOR PUSH-CART FOOD, INSPECTION IS PARTICULARLY NEEDFUL] Local health machinery should guarantee protection against the evils mentioned in preceding chapters. In general, one man is better than three to execute, although three may be better than one to legislate. Where small communities do not wish to have the entire state sanitary code rigidly administered, they can adopt New York's method of a legislative board of three members, headed by an executive, whose business it is to act, not talk; to watch subordinates, and to enforce rigidly and continuously ordinances passed by the board. The National Bureau of Census places under the general heading Health and Sanitation the following activities: health administration, street cleaning and refuse disposal, sewers and sewage disposal. Sanitarians generally emphasize also the health significance of efficient water service. A community's health programme should be clearly outlined in the annual budget. Where health work is given funds without specification of the kinds of work to be done, serious evils may be overlooked and lesser evils permitted to monopolize the energies of health officers. Again, after money has been voted to prevent an evil, records should be made of work done when done, and of money spent when spent, so that any diversion will be promptly made known. The best present guides to budget making, to educational health reports, and to records that show efficiency or inefficiency of health administrators are the budget and report of the department of health for New York City, and the story of their evolution told in _Making a Municipal Budget_, by the Bureau of Municipal Research. To find out whether local machinery is adequate, the reader must enumerate the things that need to be done in his community, remembering that in all parts of the United States to-day there are sanitary laws offering protection against dangers to health, excepting some dangers not understood until recently, such as child labor, dangerous trades, lack of safety devices. Adequate local protection, however, will not become permanent until adequate state machinery is secured. State health machinery should be of two kinds,--fact-gathering and executive supervision through inspection. The greatest service of state boards of health is to educate localities as to their own needs, using the experience of all communities to teach each community in how far its health administration menaces itself and its neighbors. In addition to registration of contagious diseases, facts as to deaths and births should be registered. State health boards should "score" communities as dairies and milk shops are now being scored by the National Bureau of Animal Industries and several boards of health. When communities persist in maintaining a public nuisance and in failing to enforce health laws, state health machinery should be made to accomplish by force what it has failed to accomplish by education. [Illustration: NATIONAL MACHINERY HAS STIMULATED LOCAL MILK INSPECTION AND STATE DAIRY INSPECTION] States alone can cope adequately with dangers to milk and water sources and to food. The economic motive of farmers has developed strong veterinary boards for the protection of cattle. Similar executive precaution must soon be taken by cities for the protection of babies and adults of the human species. It is far more economical to insure clean dairies, clean water sources, and wholesome manufactured foods by state inspectors than by local inspectors. At present the task of obtaining clean milk and clean water falls upon the few cities enlightened enough and rich enough to finance the inspection of community foods. Once tested, it would be very easy to prove that properly supported state health authorities will save many times the cost of their health work in addition to thousands of lives. County or district machinery is little known in America. For that reason rural sanitary administration is neglected and rural hospitals are lacking. In the British Isles rural districts are given almost as careful inspection as are cities. Houses may not be built below a certain standard of lighting, ventilation, and conveniences. Outbuildings must be a safe distance from wells. Dairies must be kept clean. Patients suffering from transmissible diseases may be removed by force to hospitals. What is more to the point, rural hospitals have proved that patients cared for by them are far more apt to recover than patients cared for much more expensively and less satisfactorily at home, while less likely to pollute water and milk sources or otherwise to endanger health. With national machinery the chapter on Vital Statistics has already dealt. We shall undoubtedly soon have a national board of health. Like the state boards, its first function should be educative. In addition, however, there are certain administrative functions where inefficiency may result in serious losses to nation, state, and locality. National quarantine, national inspection of meats, foods, and drugs are administrative functions of vital consequence to every citizen. Authorities are acquainted at the present time with the fact that the sanitary administration of the army and navy is unnecessarily and without excuse wasteful of human energy and human life. In the Spanish American War 14 soldiers died of disease for 1 killed in battle; in the Civil War 2 died of disease to 1 killed in battle; during the wars of the last 200 years 4 have died of disease for 1 killed in battle. Yet Japan in her war with Russia, by using means known to the United States Army in 1860, gave health precedence over everything else and lost but 1 man to disease for 4 killed in battle. Diseases are still permitted to make havoc with American commerce because the national government does not apply to its own limits the standards which it has successfully applied to Cuba and Panama. "The Japanese invented nothing and had no peculiar knowledge or skill; they merely took occidental science and used it. The remarkable thing is not what they did, but that they were allowed to do it. It is a terrible thing that Congress should choose to make one of its rare displays of economy in a matter where a few thousand dollars saved means, in case our army should have anything to do, not only the utterly needless and useless loss of thousands of lives, but an enormous decrease of military efficiency, and might, conceivably, make all the difference between victory and defeat." FOOTNOTES: [16] The technic and principles of municipal engineering have been treated in detail in _Principles of Sanitary Science and the Public Health_, by William T. Sedgwick, and in _Municipal Sanitation in the United States_, by Charles N. Chapin, M.D. CHAPTER XXX SCHOOL AND HEALTH REPORTS For every school-teacher or school physician responsible for the welfare of children at school, there are fifty or more parents responsible for the physical welfare of children at home. Therefore it is all important for parents to know how to read the index for their own children, for their children's associates, and for their community. School reports and health reports should tell clearly and completely the story of the school child's physical needs. [Illustration: NECESSARY TO EFFICIENT DEMOCRACY] It is impracticable at the present time to expect a large number of men and women to be interested in the reports published by school and health boards, for, with few exceptions, little effort is made to write these reports so that they will interest the parent. Fortunately, a small number of persons wishing to be intelligent can compel public officials to ascertain the necessary facts and to give them to the public. So backward is the reporting of public business that at the present time there is probably no service that a citizen can render his community which would prove of greater importance than to secure proper publicity from health and school boards. Generally speaking, these published reports fail to interest the citizen, not because officials wish to conceal, but because officials do not believe that the public is interested. A mayor of Philadelphia once furnished a notable exception. He called at the department of health and complained against publishing the number of cases of typhoid and smallpox lest stories in the newspapers "frighten the city and injure business." A sanitary inspector who was in the room asked if Philadelphia's business was more important than the health of Philadelphia's citizens. As a result of her "impertinence" the inspector was removed. That same year an epidemic of smallpox spread through all the rural districts and cities of Pennsylvania, because physicians thought it would be kinder to the patients not to make known to their neighbors the presence of so disagreeable a disease. Almost all health and school authorities, however, can be made to see the advantage of taking the public into their confidence, because public confidence means both public recognition and greater success in obtaining funds. With more funds comes the power to do more work. Other details with regard to health reports will be found in the chapter on Vital Statistics. As to school reports, little thought has been given in the past to their educational possibilities. A book was recently published--_School Reports and School Efficiency_--by the Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children, which tells the origins of school reports; contains samples of reports from one hundred cities; gives lists of questions frequently answered, occasionally answered, and never answered; and shows how to study a particular report so as to learn whether or not important questions are answered. The United States commissioner of education has organized among state and city superintendents special committees on uniform and adequate reporting. His aggressive leadership is welcomed by school men generally, and promises vast benefits. Just because the physical welfare of the school child is an index to health needs, the school report can put into one statement for a city or a state the story told by the index. The accompanying card tells facts that the individual teacher and individual parent want to know about a child, what a superintendent wants to know about all children, and what a community wants to know about all children. A modification of this card will soon be adopted in New York City. It is both a card index and a card biography of the individual boy or girl. It is expected to follow the child from class to class, each teacher telling the story of his physical welfare and his progress. When the boy goes to a new school or new grade, his new teacher can see at a glance not only what subjects have given him trouble, but what diseases or physical defects have kept him out of school or otherwise retarded his progress. With this card it is easy to take a hundred children of the same age and the same grade, to put down in one column those who have eye defects, and in another those who have no eye defects, for every school, every district, and for the schools as a whole. Schools that use these record cards are enabled, by thus classifying the total, to learn where the defects of children are, how serious the problem is, how many days children lose from school because of preventable defects, and in what section of the city the defects are most prevalent. The mere reporting of facts will stimulate teachers, principals, and parents to give attention. For example, assume a table: FIELD OF INSPECTION Total number of public schools 7 Public schools under inspection 3 Public schools not under inspection 4 The reader wonders why four schools are neglected and which particular schools they are. Let the next table read: EXAMINATION Total registration in all schools 1500 Number of children examined 500 Number of children not examined 1000 Parents begin to wonder whether or not their children were examined, and why the taxes spent for school examination of all children go to one third of the children. The next table arrests attention: TREATMENT Number needing treatment 200 Number known to have been treated 50 Number not known to have been treated 150 We ask, at once, if examination is worth while, and if treatment really corrects the defects, saves the pupil's time and teacher's time, discovers many defects; and we want to find out whether the one hundred and fifty reported not treated have since been attended to. [Illustration: PUPIL'S RECORD] [Illustration: DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH CITY OF NEW YORK REPORT] Again, if three out of five of those examined need treatment, people will wonder whether among the thousand not examined there is the same proportion--three out of five, or six hundred--who have some trouble that needs attention. Having begun to wonder, they will ask questions, and will expect the board of health or the school physicians to see that the questions are answered. As has been proved in New York, taxpayers and the press will go farther and will demand that the annual budget provide for making general next year the benefits found to result last year from a test of health policies. The story of the prevalence of contagious diseases in school children could be told by a table such as is now in use by New York's department of health: TABLE XII PREVALENCE OF CONTAGIOUS DISEASES IN SCHOOL CHILDREN (Case rate schools) KEY: A: In School B: Among Absentee =========+========================================+====================== | | COMMUNICABLE | GENERAL COMMUNICABLE DISEASES[1] | DISEASES OF EYE SCHOOL | | AND SKIN[2] +----------------------------------------+----------+----------- | NUMBER | | | +----------+-----------+-----+ Number per| |Number |Found by | Reported | | 1000 |Number |per 1000 |Inspectors| by | | Registered|found by |Registered +-----+----+ Attending + + in Schools+Inspectors|in Schools | A | B | Physician |Total| Inspected |and Nurses|Inspected ---------+-----+----+-----------+-----+-----------+----------+----------- A | | | | | | | B | | | | | | | C | | | | | | | =========+=====+====+===========+=====+===========+==========+=========== [1] Smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, chicken pox, mumps, and whooping cough; excluded when found. [2] Trachoma and other contagious eye diseases, ringworm, impetigo, scabies, favus, and pediculosis; excluded only for persistent nontreatment. Another table shows the following facts for each disease: TABLE XIII CONTAGIOUS DISEASES FOUND IN SCHOOLS BY INSPECTORS AND NURSES (Number and disposition of cases) KEY: A: Diphtheria J: Other B: Scarlet fever K: Ringworm C: Measles L: Impetigo D: Smallpox M: Scabies E: Chicken pox N: Favus F: Whooping cough O: Pediculosis G: Mumps P: Miscellaneous H: Total Q: Total I: Trachoma ===================+=======================+=========================== | GENERAL | COMMUNICABLE DISEASES | COMMUNICABLE | OF EYE AND SKIN | DISEASES |-----+--------------------- | | EYE | SKIN +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--- | A| B| C| D| E| F| G| H| I| J| K| L| M| N| O| P| Q -------------------+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--- Cases found in | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | school | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Cases excluded | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | from school | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Cases treated in | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | school | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Cases instructed | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | in school or | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | evidence of | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | treatment | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | furnished | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Number of | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | treatments | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Number of | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | instructions | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ===================+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+=== The story of noncontagious physical defects found and treated is set forth in the following table: TABLE XIV MEDICAL EXAMINATION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN: NONCONTAGIOUS PHYSICAL DEFECTS FOUND AND TREATED, 1906 ==============+=============================+=============================+ | SCHOOL A | SCHOOL B | |--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------| | Found | Reported | Found | Reported | | | Treated | | Treated | |-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------| DEFECTS | No. | % of | No. | % of | No. | % of | No. | % of | | | Total | |Defects | | Total | |Defects | | |Defects | | Found | |Defects | | Found | | | Found | | | | Found | | | --------------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+ Adenoids | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nasal | | | | | | | | | breathing | | | | | | | | | Hyper-trophied| | | | | | | | | tonsils | | | | | | | | | Defective | | | | | | | | | palate | | | | | | | | | Defective | | | | | | | | | hearing | | | | | | | | | Defective | | | | | | | | | vision | | | | | | | | | Defective | | | | | | | | | teeth | | | | | | | | | Bad nutrition | | | | | | | | | Diseased | | | | | | | | | anterior | | | | | | | | | cervical | | | | | | | | | glands | | | | | | | | | Diseased | | | | | | | | | posterior | | | | | | | | | cervical | | | | | | | | | glands | | | | | | | | | Heart disease | | | | | | | | | Chorea | | | | | | | | | Pulmonary | | | | | | | | | disease | | | | | | | | | Skin disease | | | | | | | | | Deformity | | | | | | | | | of spine | | | | | | | | | Deformity | | | | | | | | | of chest | | | | | | | | | Deformity of | | | | | | | | | extremities | | | | | | | | | Defective | | | | | | | | | mentality | | | | | | | | | Total | | | | | | | | | ==============+=====+========+=====+========+=====+========+=====+========+ ==============+=============================+ | SCHOOL C | |--------------+--------------| | Found | Reported | | | Treated | |-----+--------+-----+--------| DEFECTS | No. | % of | No. | % of | | | Total | |Defects | | |Defects | | Found | | | Found | | | --------------+-----+--------+-----+--------+ Adenoids | | | | | | | | | | Nasal | | | | | breathing | | | | | Hyper-trophied| | | | | tonsils | | | | | Defective | | | | | palate | | | | | Defective | | | | | hearing | | | | | Defective | | | | | vision | | | | | Defective | | | | | teeth | | | | | Bad nutrition | | | | | Diseased | | | | | anterior | | | | | cervical | | | | | glands | | | | | Diseased | | | | | posterior | | | | | cervical | | | | | glands | | | | | Heart disease | | | | | Chorea | | | | | Pulmonary | | | | | disease | | | | | Skin disease | | | | | Deformity | | | | | of spine | | | | | Deformity | | | | | of chest | | | | | Deformity of | | | | | extremities | | | | | Defective | | | | | mentality | | | | | Total | | | | | ==============+=====+========+=====+========+ The effect of a report telling what schools have enough seats, proper ventilation, adequate medical inspection, safe drinking water, ample play space, and what schools are without these necessities is to cause the reader to rank the particular school that he happens to know; i.e. he says, "School A is better equipped than School B; or, School C is neglected." County and state superintendents in many states have acquired the habit of ranking schools according to the number of children who pass in arithmetic, algebra, etc. It would greatly further the cause of public health and, at the same time, advance the interest of education if state superintendents would rank individual schools, and if county superintendents would rank individual schools, _according to the number of children found to have physical defects, the number afflicted with contagious diseases, and the number properly treated_. It is difficult to compare one school with another, because it is necessary to make subtractions and divisions and to reduce to percentages. It would not be so serious for a school of a thousand pupils as for a school of two hundred, to report 100 for adenoids. To make it possible to compare school with school without judging either unfairly, the state superintendent of schools for Connecticut has made tables in which cities are ranked according to the number of pupils, average attendance, per capita cost, etc. As to each of these headings, cities are grouped in a manner corresponding to the line up of a battalion, "according to height." A general table is then shown, which gives the ranking of each city with respect to each important item. Applied to schools, this would work out as follows: TABLE XV TABLE OF RANKING-SCHOOLS ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY ============================================================= | SCHOOL | RANK IN -------+----------+----------+----------+----------+--------- | Register | Defects | Children | Children | Children | | Found | Needing | Treated | not | | | Treatment| | Treated -------+----------+----------+----------+----------+--------- A | 10 | 11 | 11 | 12 | 6 B | 20 | 22 | 22 | 24 | 12 C | 30 | 33 | 30 | 36 | 18 =======+==========+==========+==========+==========+========= Such a table fails to convey its significance unless the reader is reminded that rank 18 in children not treated is as good a record for a school that ranks 30 in register as is rank 6 for a school that ranks 10 in register. The Connecticut report makes a serious mistake in failing to arrange schools according to population. If this were done, schools of a size would be side by side and comparison would be fair. When, as in the above table, schools are arranged alphabetically, a school with four thousand pupils may follow or precede a school with four hundred pupils, and comparison will be unfair and futile. Where, on the other hand, schools are arranged in order of register, a table will show whether schools confronted with practically the same problems, the same number of defects, the same number of children needing treatment, are equally successful, or perhaps equally inactive, in correcting these defects. The following table brings out clearly marked unequal achievement in the face of relatively equal need. TABLE XVI TABLE OF RANKING-SCHOOLS ARRANGED ACCORDING TO REGISTER, NOT ALPHABETICALLY ============================================================= | | RANK IN SCHOOL +----------+----------+----------+----------+--------- | Register | Defects | Children | Children | Children | | Found | Needing | Treated | not | | | Treatment| | Treated -------+----------+----------+----------+----------+--------- A | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 X | 10 | 10 | 10 | 14 | 6 H | 11 | 11 | 11 | 17 | 3 =======+==========+==========+==========+==========+========= If the number of schools in a state is so large that it is unlikely that people will read the table of ranking because of the difficulty of finding their own school, an alphabetical table might be given that would show where to look in the general ranking table for the school or schools in which the reader is interested. Experience will demonstrate to public school superintendents the strategic advantage of putting together all the things they need and of telling the community over and over again just what needs there are, what penalties are paid for want of them, and what benefits would result from obtaining them. If health needs of school children were placed side by side with mental results, the relation would come out so clearly that parents, school boards, and taxpayers would realize how inextricably they are bound together and would see that health needs are satisfied. To this end superintendents should require teachers to keep daily reports of school conditions. TABLE XVII WEEKLY CLASS-ROOM SCHEDULE ===========+================+========================+============== | Temperature | Cleaning | Exercise +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------------+------+------- | | | | | | | In |Out of |10.30|12.00| 2.00| Dry | Wet |Disinfecting| Room | Room ----------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------------+------+------- Monday | | | | | | | | Tuesday | | | | | | | | Wednesday | | | | | | | | Thursday | | | | | | | | Friday | | | | | | | | ==========+=====+=====+=====+=====+=====+============+======+======= The teacher's daily report of the temperature of a schoolroom, taken three times a day, tells the parent exactly what is the efficiency of the ventilating and heating apparatus in the particular school in which he is interested; whereas the report of the department of buildings gives only the number of schools which have an approved system of ventilation and steam heat. School authorities may or may not know that this system of ventilation is out of order, that the thermometer in the indoor playground of School A stood at forty degrees for many days in winter. But they must know it when the principal of School A sends in a daily record; the school board, the parents, or the press will then see that the condition is remedied. If the condition is due to lack of funds, funds will never be forthcoming so long as the condition is concealed. Similar results will follow publicity of overcrowding, too little play space, dry cleaning of school buildings, etc. The intent of such reporting is not to "keep tabs" on the school-teacher, the school child, the janitor, the principal, superintendent, or board, but to insure favorable conditions and to correct bad conditions. This is done best by giving everybody the facts. The objective test of the efficiency of a method throws emphasis on the method, not on the motive of those operating it. The blackboard method of publishing facts concentrates attention upon the importance of those facts and enlists aid in the attainment of the end sought. CHAPTER XXXI THE PRESS The president of Princeton University declares that for several decades we have given education that does not instruct and instruction that does not educate. Others tell us that because we read daily papers and magazines our minds become superficial, that our power to concentrate or memorize is weakened,--that we read so much of everything that we learn little of anything. As the habit of reading magazines and newspapers is constantly increasing, I think we must assume that it has come to stay. If we cannot check it, we can at least turn it to good advantage, systematize it, and discipline ourselves. Among the subjects continually described in newspapers and magazines, and even on billboards and in street-car advertising, is the subject of hygiene. No greater service can be rendered the community than for those who are conducting discussions of health to teach people how to read correctly this mass of information regarding health, to separate misinformation from information, and to apply the lessons learned to personal and public hygiene. There is no better way of doing this than to teach a class or a child to clip out of magazines and newspapers all important references to health, and then to classify these under the subject-matter treated. A teacher, parent, or club leader might practice by using the classification of subjects outlined in the Contents of this book. It is surprising how rapidly one builds up a valuable collection serviceable for talks or papers, but more particularly for giving one a vital and intelligent interest in practical health topics. Interested in comparing the emphasis placed on health topics in a three-cent paper having a small circulation with a penny paper having twenty times the circulation, I made during one week thirty-eight clippings from the three-cent paper and ninety-five from the penny paper. The high-priced paper had no editorial comment within the field of health, whereas the penny paper had three columns, in which were discussed among other things: _The Economics of Bad Teeth_; _Need for Individual Efficiency_; _"Good Fellows" Lower Standard of Living by Neglecting their Families_. The penny paper advertised fifty-two foods, garments, whiskies, patent medicines, or beautifiers urged upon health grounds. In the three-cent paper twenty-six out of thirty-eight items advertised food, clothing, patent medicine, or whisky. One issue of a monthly magazine devoted to woman's interests contained twenty-eight articles and editorials and fifty-five advertisements that concern health,--thirty-seven per cent of total reading matter and thirty-seven per cent of total advertisement. Excellent discipline is afforded by this clipping work. It is astonishing how few men and women, even from our better colleges, know how to organize notes, clippings, or other data, so that they can be used a few weeks later. There is a satisfaction in seeing one's material grow, as is remembered by all of us, in making picture scrapbooks or collections of picture postal cards and stamps. "Collections" have generally failed for want of classification,--putting things of a kind together. Chronological arrangement is uninteresting because unprofitable. One never knows where to find a picture, or a stamp, or a health clipping. Clippings, like libraries, will be little used if not properly catalogued so that use is easy. If a health-clipping collection is attempted, there are four essentials: (1) arrangement by topic; (2) inclusion of advertisements; (3) inclusion of items from magazines; (4) cross references. For classification, envelopes can be used or manila cards 10×12 inches. The teacher, parent, or advanced student will probably think the envelope most useful because most easily carried and filed,--most likely to be used. But clippings should be bound together in orderly appearance, or else it will be disagreeable working with them. Children, however, will like the pasting on sheets, which show clearly the growth of each topic. Envelopes or cards should not have clippings that deal with only one health topic. Unless a test is made to see how many health references there are in a given period, it should be made a rule not to clip any item that does not contain something new,--some addition to the knowledge already collected. Advertisements will prove interesting and educative. When newspapers and magazines announce some new truth, the commercial motive of manufacturer or dealer sees profit in telling over and over again how certain goods will meet the new need. Children will soon notice that the worst advertisements appear in the papers that talk most of "popular rights," "justice," and "morality." They will be shocked to see that the popular papers accept money to tell falsehoods about fake cures. They will be pleased that the best monthly magazines contain no such advertisements. They will challenge paper or magazine, and thus will be enlisted while young in the fight against health advertisements that injure health. To clip articles from magazines will seem almost irreverent at first. But the reverence for magazines and books is less valuable to education than the knowledge concealed in them. Except where families preserve all magazines, clippings will add greatly to their serviceability. The art of cross-referencing is invaluable to the organized mind. The purpose of classifying one's information is not to show how much there is, but to answer questions quickly and to guide constructive thinking. A clipping that deals with _alcoholism_, _patent medicine_, and _tuberculosis_ must be posted in three places, or cross-referenced; otherwise it will be used to answer but one question when it might answer three. If magazines may not be cut, it will be easy to record the fact of a useful article by writing the title, page, and date on the appropriate index card, or inclosing a slip so marked in the proper envelope. While it is true that the most important bibliography one can have in his private library is a classification of the material of which he himself has become a part while reading it, there are a number of health journals that one can profitably subscribe for. In fact, it is often true that the significant discoveries in scientific fields, or the latest public improvements, such as parks, bridges, model tenements, will not be appreciated until one has read in health journals how these improvements affect the sickness rate and the enjoyment rate of those least able to control their living conditions. The physician and nurse in their educational work for hospitals are distributors of health propaganda. Wherever there is a local journal devoted to health, parents, teachers, educators, and club leaders would do well to subscribe and to hold this journal up to a high standard by quoting, thanking, criticising it. In New Jersey, for example, is a monthly called the _New Jersey Review of Charities and Corrections_ that deals with every manner of subject having to do with public health as well as with private and public morality and education. A similar journal, intended for national instruction, is _The Survey_, whose topical index for last year enumerates two hundred and thirty-two articles dealing with subjects directly connected with public hygiene, e.g.: Schools, 6; school inspection, 3; eyes,--school children, 1; sex instruction in the schools, 2; psychiatric clinic, special children, 2; industrial education, 5; child labor, 18; playgrounds, 26; alley, crap, playing in streets, 3; labor conditions, 18; industrial accidents, 10; wage-earner's insurance, 4; factory inspection, 1; consumer's league, 3; women's work, 6; tuberculosis, 23; hospitals, dispensaries (social), 5; tenement reform, 10; living conditions, 2; baths, 1; public comfort stations, 2; lodging houses, 1; clean streets, 6; clean milk, 6; smoke, 1; noises, 1; parks, 1; patent medicines, 2; sanitary code, 1; mortality statistics, 2; social settlements and public health, 1; midwives, 1; children's bureau, 1; juvenile and adult delinquent, 25; dependent, defective, and insane, 7; blind, 5; cripples, 1; homes for aged, 1; inebriates, 3; Traveler's Aid Committee, 1; infant mortality, 2; social diseases, 2. * * * * * _The National Hospital Record_, the _Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette_, the _Journal of Nursing_, are three other magazines primarily intended for nurses and physicians, but full of suggestive material for unprofessional readers. National magazines concerned with health, but seeking popular circulation, are _Good Health_ and _Physical Culture_. In England there is a special magazine called _Children's Diseases_, which could be of great help to a school library for special reference. The same can be said of the _Psychological Clinic_, _Pediatrics_, and other technical journals published in this country. For many persons, to make the best use of any one copy of these magazines, clipping is of course impossible, but noting on a card or envelope is practicable. Of late many of the national popular magazines have several columns devoted to health. We have not appreciated the educational possibilities of these columns. In most large cities there are monthly book reviews which may be profitably consulted in learning the new thought in the health field. If teachers would either write their experience or ask questions, if children knew that in a certain magazine or newspaper questions as to ventilation, bathing, exercise, would be answered, they would take a keen interest in the progress of discussions. The large daily papers make a great feature of their health hints. It is not their fault if questioners care more about cosmetics and hair bleaches than about the fresh-air cure of headaches. They will coöperate with teachers and parents in securing more general discussion of other problems than beauty doctoring. Finally, persons wanting not only to have intelligence as to matters promoting health, but actually to exert a helpful influence in their community, ought to want the published reports of the mayor, health department, the public schools, and other institutions, noting carefully all that is said about conditions relating to health and about efforts made to correct all unfavorable conditions. The best literature of our day, with regard to social needs, appears in the reports of our public and private institutions and societies. Of increasing value are the publications of the national government printing office. Because it is no one's business to find out what valuable material is contained in such reports, and because no educational museum is comparing report with report, those who live nearest to our health problems and who see most clearly the health remedies, are not stimulated to give to the public their special knowledge in an interesting, convincing way. Teaching children how to find health lessons in public documents will advance the cause of public ethics as well as of public health. At the New York State Conference of Charities, of 1907, one official complained that the physicians made no educational use of their valuable experience for public education. He stated that a study of medical journals and health articles in popular magazines revealed the fact that the number of papers prepared by physicians in state hospitals averaged one to a doctor for every five or six years of service. This state of affairs is even more exaggerated in strictly educational institutions. Columbia University has recently instituted a series of lectures to be given by its professors to its professors, so that they may have a general knowledge of the work being done in other fields besides their own at their own university. This is equally important for teachers and heads of departments in elementary schools. It is now admitted by most educators that elementary schools and young children present more pedagogical difficulties and pressing biological problems than higher schools. If teachers and parents would realize that their method of solving the health problems that arise daily in the schoolroom and in the home would interest other mothers and teachers, their spirit of coöperation would soon be reflected in school journals, popular magazines, and daily newspapers. PART V. ALLIANCE OF HYGIENE, PATRIOTISM, AND RELIGION CHAPTER XXXII DO-NOTHING AILMENTS "Men have died, from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love"--_nor for work_. Work of itself never killed anybody nor made anybody sick. Work has caused worry, mental strain, and physical breakdown, only when men while working have been deprived of air, sun, light, exercise, sleep, proper food at the proper time, opportunity to live and work hygienically. Fortunately for human progress, doing nothing brings ailments of its own and has none of the compensations of work. As the stomach deprived of substantial food craves unnatural food,--sweets, stimulants,--so the mind deprived of substantial, regular diet of wholesome work turns to unwholesome, petty, fantastic, suspicious, unhappy thoughts. This state of mind, combined with the lack of bodily exercise that generally accompanies it, reacts unfavorably on physical health. An editor has aptly termed the do-nothing condition as a self-inflicted confinement: A great deal of the misery and wretchedness among young men that inherit great fortunes is caused by the fact that they are practically in jail. They have nothing to do but eat, drink, and enjoy themselves, and they cannot understand why their lives are dull. We have had the owner of a great railroad system pathetically telling the public that he is unhappy. That is undoubtedly true, because with all his race horses, and his yachts, and all the things that he imagines to be pleasures, he is not really doing anything. If he were running one little railroad station up the road, handling the freight, fussing about dispatches, living above the railroad station in two rooms, and buying shoes in a neighboring village for fifteen children he would be busy and happy. But he cannot be happy because he is in prison,--in a prison of money, a prison that is honorable because it gives him everything that he wants, and he wants nothing. A New York newspaper that circulates among the working classes where young men and women are inclined to associate health and happiness with doing nothing recently gave two columns to "Dandy Jim," the richest dog in the world. Dandy Jim's mistress left him a ten-thousand-dollar legacy. During his lifetime he wore diamonds. Every day he ate candy that cost eighty cents a pound. The coachman took him driving in the park sunny afternoons. He had no cares and nothing to work for. His food came without effort. He had fatty degeneration of the vital organs. He was pampered, coddled, and killed thereby. Thousands of men and women drag out lives of unhappiness for themselves and others because, like Dandy Jim, they have nothing to work for, are pampered, coddled victims of fatty degeneration. When President Butler of Columbia University finds it necessary to censure "the folly and indifference of the fathers, vanity and thoughtless pride of the mothers" who encourage do-nothing ailments; and when the editor of the _Psychological Clinic_ protests that the fashionable private schools and the private tutor share with rich fathers and mothers responsibility for life failures,--it is time that educators teach children themselves the physical and moral ailments and disillusions that come from doing nothing. Ten years ago a stenographer inherited two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Her dream of nothing to do was realized. She gave up her strenuous business life. Possessions formerly coveted soon clogged her powers of enjoyment. She imagined herself suffering from various diseases, shut herself up in her house, and refused to see any one. She grew morbid and was sure that every person who approached her had some sneaking, personal, hostile motive. Though always busy, she accomplished little. Desultory work, procrastination, and self-indulgence destroyed her power of concentration. She could not think long enough on one subject to think it out straight, therefore she was constantly deceived in her friends and interests. She first trusted everybody, then mistrusted everybody. Infatuation with every new acquaintance was quickly followed by suspicion. For years she was a very sick woman, a victim of do-nothing ailments. Doing nothing has of late been seriously recommended to American business men. They are advised to retire from active work as soon as their savings produce reasonable income. It is true, this suggestion has been made as an antidote to greed rather than for the happiness of the business man. What retiring from business is apt to mean, is indicated by a gentleman who at the age of sixty decided to sell his seat on the New York Stock Exchange and to enjoy life. He became restless and very miserable. He threw himself violently into one thing after another; in less than a year he became an ill, broken old man, after trying vainly to buy back his business. Both mind and body were made to work. The function of the brain is to think to a purpose, just as the function of the heart is to pump blood. The habit of doing nothing is very easily formed. The "out-of-work" soon become "the work-shy." Having too little to do is worse for the body and mind than having too little to eat. Social reformers emphasize the bad effect on society of vagrancy. Evils of indiscriminate relief to the poor are vividly described year after year. The philanthropist is condemned, who, by his gifts, encourages an employee's family to spend what they do not earn, and to shun work. Yet the idleness of the tramp, street loafer, and professional mendicant is a negligible evil compared with the hindrance to human progress caused by the idleness of the well-to-do, the rich, the educated, the refined, the "best" people. It is as much a wrong to bring up children in an atmosphere of do-nothingism, as to refuse to have their teeth attended to or to have glasses fitted to weak eyes. From the point of view of community welfare it is far more serious for the rich child to be brought up in idleness or without a purpose than for the poor child to become a public charge. Not only has society a right to expect more from rich children in return for the greater benefits they enjoy, but so long as rich children control the expenditure of money, they control also the health and happiness of other human beings. Unless taught the value and joy of wholesome work they cannot themselves think straight, nor are they likely to want to understand how they can use their wealth for the benefit of mankind. To quote President Butler again: The rich boy who receives a good education and is trained to be a self-respecting member of the body politic might in time share on equal terms the chance of the poor boy to become a man of genuine influence and importance on his own account, just as now by the neglect, or worse, of his parents the very rich boy is apt to be relegated to the limbo of curiosities, and too often of decadence. Nervous invalids make life miserable for themselves and for others, when often their sole malady is lack of the right kind of work to do. Suiting work to interest and interest to work is an economy that should not be overlooked. The energy spent in forcing oneself to do a distasteful task can be turned to productive channels when work is made pleasurable. The fact is frequently deplored that whereas formerly a man became a full-fledged craftsman, able to perform any branch of his trade, he is now confined to doing special acts because neither his interest nor his mind is called into play. Work seems to react unfavorably on his health. He has not the pride of the artisan in the finished product, for he seldom sees it. He does a task. His employer is a taskmaster. He decides that work is not good for him as easily as when a school-boy he grasped the meaning of escape from his lessons. By failing to fit studies to a student's interest, or by failing to insure a student's interest in his studies, schools and colleges miseducate young men and young women to look upon all work as tasks, as discipline, necessary but irksome, and to be avoided if possible. Just as there is a way of turning all the energy of the play instinct into school work, so there is a way of interesting the factory and office worker in his job. However mechanical work may be, there is always the interest in becoming the most efficient worker in a room or a trade. Routine--accurate and detailed work--does not mean the stultification of the imagination. It takes more imagination to see the interesting things in statistical or record work than to write a novel. Therefore employers should make it a point to help their employees to realize the significance of the perfection of each detail and the importance of each man's part. The other day a father said to me, "I want my boys to be as ashamed to do work in which they are not interested as to accept graft." When interest in work and efficiency in work are regarded as of more importance than the immediate returns for work, when it is as natural for boys and girls to demand enjoyment and complete living in work as it is to thrill at the sight of the Stars and Stripes, do-nothing ailments will be less frequent and less costly. Work--that one enjoys--is an invaluable unpatented medicine. It can make the sick well and keep the well from getting sick. It is the chief reliance of mental hygiene. "I should have the grippe if I had time," said a business woman to me the other day; but she did not have time, hence she did not have the grippe. If you're sick with something chronic, And you think you need a tonic, Do something. There is life and health in doing, There is pleasure in pursuing; Doing, then, is health accruing-- Do something. And if you're seeking pleasure, Or enjoyment in full measure, Do something. Idleness, there's nothing in it; 'Twill not pay you for a minute-- Do something. CHAPTER XXXIII HEREDITY BUGABOOS AND HEREDITY TRUTHS One of the red-letter days of my life was that on which I learned that I could not have inherited tuberculosis from two uncles who died of consumption. For years I had known that I was a marked victim. Silently I carried my tragedy, suspecting each cold and headache to be the telltale messenger that should let others into my secret. He was a veritable emancipator who informed me that heredity did not work from uncle to nephew; that not more than a predisposition to consumption could pass even from parent to child; that a predisposition to consumption would come to nothing without the germ of the disease and the environmental conditions which favor its development; and that if those so predisposed avoid gross infection, lead a healthy life, and breathe fresh air they are as safe as though no tuberculous lungs had ever existed in the world. Some years later I learned to understand the other side of the case; I realized how I had been in real danger of contracting consumption in the darkened, ill-ventilated sick room of the uncle who taught me my letters and gave me my ideal of God's purpose in sending uncles to small boys. There are two distinct things which make each individual life: the living stuff, the physical basis of life, handed down from parent to child; and the environmental conditions which surround it and play upon it and rouse its reactions and its latent possibilities. It is like the seed and the cultivation. You cannot grow corn from wheat, but you can grow the best wheat, or you may let your crop fail through careless handling. It is well that we should think seriously about the part played by heredity, for the living stuff of the future depends upon our sense of responsibility in this regard. The intelligent citizen would do well to read such a book as J. Arthur Thompson's _Heredity_ (1908), in which the latest conclusions of science are clearly and soundly set forth. The main problem of to-day, however, is to use well the talents that we have. Here two things should always be kept in mind: First, the inherited elements which make up our minds and bodies are complex and diverse. Health and strength are inherited as well as disease and weakness; they have indeed a better chance of survival. In the most unpromising ancestry there are latent potentialities which may be made fruitful by effort. No limit whatever can be set to the possibilities of improvement in any individual. In the second place, if science has shown anything more clearly than the importance of heredity, it is the importance of environment. This influence upon human lives is within our control, and it is a grave error to neglect what lies clearly within our power and to bemoan what does not. Science has wrought no benefits greater than those which result from drawing a clear line between heredity bugaboos and heredity truths. An overemphasis on the hereditary factor in development at the expense of the environmental factor, I call a heredity bugaboo; and it is a tendency which cannot be too strongly condemned. To fight against the sins and penalties of one's grandfather is a forlorn task that quickly discourages. To overcome diseases of environment, of shop and street, of house and school, seems, on the contrary, an easy task. Heredity bugaboos dishearten, enervate, encourage excesses and neglect. Heredity truths stimulate remedial and preventive measures. We may well watch with interest the progress of eugenics, that new science which biologists and sociologists hope will some day remake the very living stuff of the human race. But meanwhile let us take up with hope and courage and enthusiasm the great hemisphere of human fate which lies within our grasp. Good food and fresh air, well-built cities, enlightened schools and well-ordered industries, stable and free and expert government,--given these things, we can transform the world with the means now at our disposal. We can reap, if we will, splendid possibilities now going to waste, and by intelligent biological and sociological engineering we can hand on to the next generation an environmental inheritance which will make their task far easier than ours. "Physical deterioration" is a bugaboo that is discovered by some in heredity and by others in modern industrial evils. The British director general called attention a few years ago to the fact that from forty to sixty per cent of the men who were being examined for military service were physically unfit. A Commission on Physical Deterioration was appointed to investigate the cause, and to learn whether the low physical standard of the would-be Tommy Atkins was due to inherited defects. The results of this study were published in a large volume called _Report on Physical Deterioration, 1904_, in which is set forth a positive programme for obtaining periodically facts as to the physique of the nation. In the course of the commission's exhaustive investigation there was found no evidence that any progressive deterioration was going on in any function of the body except the teeth. "There are happily no grounds for associating dental degeneracy with progressive physical deterioration." The increase in optical defects is attributed not to the deterioration of the eye, but to greater knowledge, more treatment, and better understanding of the connection between optical defects and headache. [Illustration: Testing Environment--House Score] +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | DEFINITIONS OF TERMS USED IN HOUSE SCORE CARD | | | | LIGHT--Light enough to read easily in every part. | | | | GLOOMY--Not light enough to read easily in every part, but enough | | readily to see one's way about when doors are closed. | | | | DARK--Too dark to see one's way about easily when doors are | | closed. | | | | WELL VENTILATED--With window on street or fair-sized yard (not | | less than 12 ft. deep for a five-story tenement house not on a | | corner), or on a "large," "well-ventilated" court open to the sky | | at the top: "large" being for a court entirely open on one side to | | the street or yard in a five-story tenement, not less than 6 ft. | | wide from the wall of the building to the lot line; for a court | | inclosed on three sides and the other on the lot line in a | | five-story tenement, not less than 12×24 ft., "well ventilated" | | meaning either entirely open on one side to the street or yard, or | | else having a tunnel at the bottom connecting with the street or | | yard. | | | | FAIRLY VENTILATED--With window opening on a shallow yard or on a | | narrow court, open to the sky at the top, or else with 5×3 inside | | window (15 ft. square) opening on a well-ventilated room in same | | apartment. | | | | BADLY VENTILATED--With no window on the street, or on a yard, or | | on a court open to the sky, and with no window, or a very small | | window, opening on an adjoining room. | | | | IN GOOD REPAIR--No torn wall paper, broken plaster, broken | | woodwork or flooring, nor badly shrunk or warped floor boards or | | wainscoting, leaving large cracks. | | | | IN FAIR REPAIR--Slightly torn or loose wall paper, slightly broken | | plaster, warped floor boards and wainscoting. | | | | IN BAD REPAIR--Very badly torn wall paper or broken plaster over a | | considerable area, or badly broken woodwork or flooring. | | | | (Rooms not exactly coinciding with any of the three classes are to | | be included in the one the description of which comes nearest to | | the condition.) | | | | SINKS: GOOD--Iron, on iron supports with iron back above to | | prevent splashing of water on wall surface, in light location, | | used for one family. Water direct from city water mains or from a | | CLEAN roof tank. | | | | BAD--Surrounded by wood rims with or without metal flushings, | | space beneath inclosed with wood risers; dark location, used by | | more than one family; water from dirty roof tank. | | | | FAIR--Midway between above two extremes. (Sinks not exactly | | coinciding with any of the three classes are to be included in the | | one the description of which comes nearest to the condition.) | | | | WATER-CLOSET: GOOD--Indoor closet. In well lighted and ventilated | | location, closet fixture entirely open underneath, abundant water | | flush. | | | | FAIR--Indoor closet, poor condition--badly lighted and ventilated | | location, fixture inclosed with wood risers, or poor flush. | | | | POOR--Yard closet--separate water-closet in individual compartment | | in the yard. | | | | BAD--School sink--sewer-connected privy, having one continuous | | vault beneath the row of individual toilet compartments. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ The commission hoped "that the facts and opinions they have collected will have some effect in allaying the apprehensions of those who, as it appears, on insufficient grounds, have made up their minds that progressive deterioration is to be found among people generally." In regard to the facts which started the fear, the report says: (1) the evidence adduced in the director general's memorandum was inadequate to prove that physical deterioration had affected the classes referred to; (2) no sufficient material (statistical or other) is at present available to warrant any definite conclusions on the question of the physique of the people by comparison with data obtained in past times. [Illustration: THE BEST INHERITANCE IS A MOTHER WHO KNOWS HOW TO KEEP HER BABY WELL] The topics dealt with in the report refer to only a partial list of conditions that need to be carefully studied before we can know what environment heredity we are preparing for those who follow us: I. AS TO BABIES Training of mothers, provident societies and maternity funds, feeding of infants, milk supply, milk depots, sterilization and refrigeration of milk, effect of mother's employment upon infant mortality, still births, cookery, hygiene and domestic economy, public nurseries, crèches. II. AS TO CHILDREN Anthropometric measurements, sickness and open spaces, medical examination of school children, teeth, eyes, and ears, games and exercises for school children, open spaces and gymnastic apparatus, physical exercise for growing girls and growing boys, clubs and cadet corps, feeding of elementary school children, partial exemption from school, special schools for "retarded" children, special magistrate for juvenile cases, juvenile smoking, organization of existing agencies for the welfare of lads and girls, education, school attendance in rural districts, defective children. III. AS TO LIVING AND WORKING CONDITIONS Register of sickness, medical certificates as to causes of death, overcrowding, building and open spaces, register of owners of buildings, unsanitary and overcrowded house property, rural housing, workshops, coal mines, etc., medical inspection of factories, employment of women in factories, labor colonies, overfatigue, food and cooking, cooking grates, adulteration, smoke pollution, alcohol, syphilis, insanity. IV. AS TO HEALTH MACHINERY Medical officers of health, local, district, and national boards, health associations. Scientists of the next generation will continue to differ as to heredity truths and heredity bugaboos unless records are kept now, showing the physical condition of school children and of applicants for work certificates and for civil service and army positions. The British investigators declared that "anthropometric records are the only accredited tests available, and, if collected on a sufficient scale, they would constitute the supreme criterion of physical deterioration, or the reverse.... The school population and the classes coming under the administration of the Factory Acts offer ready material for the immediate application of such tests." In addition to the physical tests proposed in other chapters, there is great educational opportunity in the records of private and public hospitals. Every nation, every state, and every city should enlist all its educational and scientific forces to ascertain in what respects social efficiency is endangered by physical deficiencies that can be avoided only by restricting parenthood, and the environmental deficiencies that can be avoided by efficient health machinery. The greatest of all heredity truths are these: (1) the deficiencies of infants are infinitesimal compared with the deficiencies of the world with which we surround them; (2) each of us can have a part in begetting for posterity an environment of health and of opportunity. CHAPTER XXXIV INEFFECTIVE AND EFFECTIVE WAYS OF COMBATING ALCOHOLISM Wherever the Stars and Stripes fly over school buildings it is made compulsory to teach the evils of alcoholism. For nearly a generation the great majority of school children of the United States have been taught that alcohol, in however small quantities, is a poison and a menace to personal and national health and prosperity. Yet during this very period the per capita consumption of every kind of alcoholic beverage has increased. Whereas 16.49 gallons of spirituous liquors were consumed per capita of population in 1896, 22.27 gallons were used in 1906. Obviously the results of methods hitherto in vogue for combating alcoholism are disappointing. Why this paradoxical relation of precept to practice? Why is this, the most hygiene-instructed country in the world, the Elysium of the patent-medicine and cocaine traffic? If we have only the expected divergence of achievement from ideal, then there is nothing for us to do but to congratulate ourselves and posterity upon the part played by compulsory legislation in committing all states and territories to hygiene instruction in all public schools. If, on the other hand, our disappointment is due to ineffective method, then the next step is to change our method. The chief purpose of school hygiene has hitherto been not to promote personal and community health, but to lessen the use of alcohol and tobacco. Arguments were required against whisky, beer, cigars, and cigarettes. As the strongest arguments would probably make the most lasting impression upon the school child and the best profits for author and bookseller, writers vied with one another in the rhetoric and hyperbole of platform agitation. What effect would it have upon you if you were exhorted frequently during the next eight years to avoid tobacco because a mother once killed a child by washing its head in tobacco water? What is the effect on the mind of a boy or a girl who sees that the family doctor, the minister, the teacher, the judge, the governor, the President, and the philanthropist use tobacco and alcoholic beverages, when taught that "boys who use tobacco and alcoholic beverages will find closed in their faces the doors to strength, good health, skill in athletics, good scholarship, long life, best companions, many business positions, highest success"? It is probably true that "a boy once drank some whisky from a flask and died within a few hours." But that story is about as typical of boys and of whisky as that a boy once drank whisky from a flask and did not die for ninety years afterwards, or that George Washington drank whisky and became the Father of his Country. How special pleading has dominated the teaching of school hygiene is illustrated by a recent book which, for the most part, successfully breaks away from the narrow point of view and the crude methods hitherto prevailing. It presents the following facts concerning New York City: Saloons 10,821 Arrests 133,749 Expense of police department $10,199,206 Police courts, jails, workhouses, reformatories 1,310,411 Hospitals, asylums, and other charities 4,754,380 It is fair to the author to state that she does not declare in so many words that the shutting up of the saloons would obviate all the arrests and all the hospital, jail, and charity bills. Instead of _wipe out_ she says _shrivel_. No truth would have been lost by avoiding all misrepresentation. The author probably felt as I did when I took my total abstainer's protest to a celebrated scientist who had exposed certain misstatements regarding the effect of small quantities of alcohol: "Is not the untruth of these exaggerated statements less dangerous than the untruth of dispassionate, scientific statement? So long as the child mind takes in only an impression, is it not better to write this impression indelibly?" He sadly but indulgently replied, "And in what other studies would you substitute exaggeration for truth?" The reaction has already begun against exaggeration in hygiene text-books, against drawing lessons from accidental or exceptional cases of excessive use of alcohol, against classing moderate drinking and smoking with drunkenness as sins of equal magnitude, and against overlooking grave social and industrial evils that threaten children far earlier and more frequently than do tobacco and alcohol. Instead of adding an ell to the truth, text-book writers are now adding only an inch or two at a time. No longer do we favor highly colored charts that picture in purple, green, and black the effect of stimulants and narcotics upon the heart and brain, the stomach, the liver, the knee, and the eardrum, _assuming that all resultant evils are concentrated in one organ_. Menacing habits, such as overeating and indulgence in self-pity, are beginning to receive attention. It is also true that physiology and anatomy are progressively made more interesting. Publishers are looking for the utmost originality compatible with the purpose of the present laws and with the only effective public sentiment that has hitherto been interested in the interpretation of those laws. A score of improvements in the method of carrying out a small ideal will not take the place of enlarging that ideal. If existing laws stand in the way of broadening the purpose of school hygiene, let the laws be changed. If text-book publishers stand in the way, let us induce or compel them to get out of the way. If we fear rumsellers, their money, and the insidious political methods that they might employ to bring in undertruth if overtruth is once sacrificed, let us go to our communities and locate the rumseller's guns, draw their fire, tell the truth about their opposition, and educate the public to overcome it. If, on the other hand, misguided teetotalism stands in the way, then, as one teetotaler, I suggest that we prove, as we can, in our respective communities that there is a better way of inculcating habits of temperance and self-restraint than by telling untruths, overtruths, or half truths about alcohol and tobacco. Let us prove, as we can, that a subject vital to every individual, to every industry, and to every government is now prevented from fulfilling its mission not by its enemies but by its friends. We can learn the character of hygiene instruction in our schools and the interest taken in it by teachers, principals, and superintendents. We can learn how teachers practice hygiene at school, and how the children of our communities are affected by the hygiene instruction now given. Finally, we can compel a public discussion of the facts, and action in accordance with facts. Without questioning anybody's avowed motive, we can learn how big that motive is and how adequate or inadequate is the method of executing it. Alcohol and tobacco really occupy but a very small share of the interest and attention of even those men and women by whom they are habitually used. Hygiene, on the other hand, is of constant, uninterrupted concern. Why, therefore, should it be planned to have alcohol and tobacco displace the broader subject of personal and public hygiene in the attention and interest of children throughout the school life? Beyond the text-book and schoolroom a thousand influences are at work to teach the social evils, the waste of energy, and the unhappiness that always accompany the excessive use--and frequently result from a moderate use--of stimulants and narcotics. Of the many reasons for not drinking and smoking, physiology gives those that least interest and impress the child. The secondary effects, rather than the immediate effects, are those that determine a child's action. Most of the direct physiological effects are, in the majority of instances, less serious in themselves than the effects of overeating, of combining milk with acids, of eating irregularly, of neglecting constipation. Were it not for the social and industrial consequences of drunkenness and nicotinism, it is doubtful if the most lurid picture of fatty degeneration, alcoholic consumption, hardened liver, inactive stomach lining, would outweigh the pleasing--and deceiving--sensations of alcoholic beverages and cigarettes. The strong appeal to the child or man is the effect these habits have upon his mother, his employer, his wife, his children. The vast majority of us will avoid or stop using anything that makes us offensive to those with whom we are most intimately associated, and to those upon whom our professional and industrial promotion depends. Children will profit from drill in and out of school in the science of avoiding offense and of giving happiness, but unless the categories--_acts that give offense_ and _acts that give happiness_--are wide enough to include the main acts committed in the normal relations of son, companion, employer, husband, father, and citizen, those who set out to avoid alcohol and tobacco find themselves ill equipped to carry the obligations of a temperate, law-abiding citizen. Things do not happen as described in the early text-book. Other things not mentioned hinder progress and happiness. The child at work resents the mis-education received at school and suspects that he has been following false gods. The enemies that cause him trouble come from unexpected sources. He finds it infinitely easier to eschew alcohol and tobacco than to avoid living conditions that insidiously undermine his aversion to stimulants and narcotics. The reasons for avoiding stimulants in the interest of others are more numerous and more cogent than the reasons for avoiding stimulants and narcotics for one's own sake. The altruistic reasons for shunning stimulants and narcotics cannot be implanted in the child unless he sees the evil of excess _per se_ in anything and everything, and unless he becomes thoroughly grounded in the life relations and health relations to which he must adapt himself. Unclean streets, unclean milk, congested tenements, can do more harm than alcohol and tobacco, because they breed a physique that craves stimulants and drugs. Adenoids and defective vision will injure a larger proportion of the afflicted than will alcohol and tobacco, because they earlier and more certainly substitute discouragement for hope, handicap for equal chance. Failure to enforce health laws is a more serious menace to health and morals than drunkenness or tobacco cancer. If it is true that we must attack the problem of alcohol from the standpoint of its social and industrial effects, we are forced at once to consider the machinery by which cities and governments control the manufacture and sale of alcohol. It is not an exaggeration to say that courses in regulating the traffic in alcohol are more necessary than courses in the effects of alcohol upon digestion and respiration. If Sunday closing of saloons, local option, high license, and prohibition have failed, there is no evidence that the failure is due to the principles underlying any one of these methods. Until more earnest effort is made to study the effects of these methods, the results of their enforcement and the causes of their nonenforcement, no one is justified in declaring that either policy is successful or unsuccessful. It is very easy to select from the meager facts now available convincing proofs both that prohibition does not prohibit and that high license leads to increased drunkenness. The consequence is that the movements to control, restrict, or prohibit the use of alcohol are emotional, not rational. It is impossible to keep emotion, sensation, sentiment, at white heat. Most extremists worship legislation and do not try to keep interest alive by telling every week or every month new facts about the week or the month before. No new fuel is added to the anti-saloon fire, which gradually cools and dies down. Not so, however, with those who make money by the sale of intoxicants. The greater the opposition, the more brains, the more effort, the more money they put into overcoming or circumventing that opposition. Fuel is piled on and the bonfire is fed freely. Every day the anti-restriction bonfire becomes larger and larger, and the anti-saloon bonfire becomes smaller and smaller. By carefully selecting their facts, by counting the number of arrests for drunkenness and the number of saloons open on Sunday, by reiteration of their story the pro-saloonists gradually win recruits from the opposition, and, when the next election comes, their friends outnumber their enemies and the "dry" policy of a city, county, or state is reversed. The failures attributed to prohibitive or restrictive measures are probably no more numerous than the failures of government in other respects. The present ambassador from England, James Bryce, writing his _American Commonwealth_, declared that municipal government was America's "most conspicuous failure." The mayor of Toledo, writing in 1907, says, "There has been a pessimism, almost enthusiastic, about the city." These failures are due not to any lack of desire for good government, not to any fundamental evils of cities, but to the fact that municipal reform, like the crusade against alcohol, has been based upon emotionalism, not upon definite proof. Reformers have been unable to lead in the right direction, because they have looked at their lantern instead of their road. Not having cumulative information as to government acts, they have been unable to keep their fires burning. To illustrate: in November, 1907, the governor of New York state, the mayor of New York City, and reformers of national reputation eulogized the tenement-house department; yet this department, whose founding was regarded as a national benefaction, was the only department of the city government that did not receive an increase for 1908. It is in the position of temperance legislation, the facts of whose enforcement or nonenforcement are not promptly and continuously made public. Fear of the negro victim of alcoholism, social evils of intemperance, whether among white or black, industrial uncertainty and waste due to alcoholism, are the three chief motives that have swept alcohol traffic out of the greater part of the South. Knowledge of physiological evils has had little influence, except as it may have rendered more acceptable the claim that alcoholism is a disease against which there is no insurance except abolition of alcohol as a beverage. Religious revivals, street parades by day and by night, illustrated banners, personal intercession, lines of women and children at the polls, made it necessary for voters to make known their intention, and made it extremely difficult for respectable men, engaged in respectable business, to vote for saloons. Some states have gone so far as to prohibit the manufacture of alcoholic stimulants, even though not offered for sale within state limits. In Georgia wine cannot be used at the communion service, nor can druggists sell any form of liquor except pure alcohol. In Louisiana it is illegal for representatives of "wet districts" to solicit orders for liquor in any of the "dry districts." In Texas the sale of liquor in dining cars is forbidden, and the traveler may not even drink from his own flask. Congress is being urged by senators and congressmen, as well as by anti-saloon advocates, to pass laws prohibiting common carriers from delivering alcoholics to any "dry" community. The more optimistic anti-saloon workers believe it is but a matter of a short time when Congress will pass laws prohibiting the manufacture or sale of alcoholic beverages within any limits protected by the United States Constitution. Southern states have been warned that they could not afford the depreciation of real estate values, of rents, and of business that would surely follow the "confiscation of capital" and "interference with personal liberty." This warning has been met by plausible arguments that the buyers of legitimate and nonpoisonous commodities could pay better rents, better profits on business and on real estate, if freed from the uneven fight against temptation to drink. The argument that schools and streets and health must suffer if the license money was withdrawn, has been met by the plausible argument that the ultimate taxpayer--the family that wants clothing, food, and shelter--will save enough money to be able to spend still larger sums than heretofore upon education, health, and public safety. For the first time dealers in alcohol recognize the possibility of a great national movement and of national prohibition. Both the defects in methods hitherto used to oppose saloon legislation and the reasons for meeting the present situation by new methods are presented in the May issue (1907) of the _Transactions of the American Brewing Institute_. Under the title, "Social Order and the Saloon--the Measure of the Brewer's Responsibility," Mr. Hugh F. Fox, known throughout the Union as a defender of child rights, advocate of probation and children's courts, promoter of health and education, outlined a plan for research that is indispensable to the proper settling of this great question. Whether brewer or anti-saloon leaguist, total abstainer or moderate drinker, employer or trade unionist, it is necessary to the intelligent control of alcohol that each of us approach this momentous question of control or abolition of the saloon in the spirit expressed in this paper, whose thoroughness and whose social point of view would do credit to a church conference. The address is quoted and its questions copied because both show how much depends upon knowing whether laws are enforced and how much greater is the difficulty of coping with a conciliatory antagonist who professes willingness to submit to tests of evidence. The regulation of the liquor business involves fundamental questions of the function and scope of government, and there is hardly any department of organized human activity that has been the subject of so much experiment and futile tinkering.... The only people who are perfectly consistent are the prohibitionists, whose policy is abolition. Let us, however, try to detach ourselves from any personal interest that we may have in the subject, and consider it impartially as a matter of public concern. What the brewer as an individual cannot do, the brewers as an organization have done successfully in many places in spite sometimes of official negligence, corruption, or incapacity. The Texas Brewers' Association is reported as having successfully prosecuted two thousand cases against keepers of disreputable resorts during the past three years. The object of their campaign was to purify the retail liquor trade from unclean and law-defying elements. The greatest gain that has come to society, as distinguished from the individual, through the temperance movement is its effect in unconsciously informing the public that the regulation and administration of licensing is in itself a great and vital problem; and as a secondary result of such agitation, I should cite the growing sensitiveness of all persons in the business to the power of public opinion. The recognition by brewers of the force of public opinion is a recent affair. In former years they were totally indifferent to it, if indeed they did not openly flout it. Even now their appeal to public sentiment is mainly a special plea for defensive purposes, and has little or no educational value. Brewers have opposed practically every effort to effect a change in excise laws, often without any convincing reason, but simply because the proposed change involved temporary inconvenience and uncertainty, and perhaps a temporary loss. The brewing trade has utterly failed to develop a constructive programme in connection with the public regulation of its affairs. It does not seem to have any fixed principles or positive convictions as to excise methods and liquor laws. Its policy has been that of an opportunist, at the best,--or an obstructionist, at the worst. As in all other industries which affect the welfare of the people, reforms have been forced from the outside, with no help from within. Of course this is equally true of insurance and railroad corporations, of food purveyors, mine owners, cotton merchants, and a score of other interests. It is due not merely to human selfishness but to shortsightedness; in other words, to a lack of statesmanship. To call your opponents hypocrites, cranks, fakirs, and fanatics may relieve your feelings, but it doesn't convince anybody, and only hurts a just cause. It is foolish to question the motives of men who, without thought of personal gain, are trying to remedy the evils of inebriety. The church is perfectly right in urging total abstinence upon the individual. The only path of safety lies in abstinence for some individuals.... The recognition of the right of a community to establish its own licensing conditions carries with it the right of the community to determine whether there shall be any licenses at all! To make the discussion of this subject as fruitful as possible, I venture to submit the following questions for your consideration. None of them involve any direct moral issue, but there is an honest difference of opinion about each one of them, and they are certainly of vital importance in determining the course of wise and just administration. What has been the effect of high license? How much public revenue should the traffic yield? Does high license stimulate unlawful trade? How much license tax should be imposed upon local bottlers and grocers? Should they be allowed to peddle beer or to sell it in single bottles? Should the place or the individual be licensed? Should the licensing authorities be appointive or elective? By whom should they be appointed, and for what term of office? Have the courts made good or bad licensing authorities? Where the courts issue licenses, what has been the effect on the court? Should the licensing authority alone have the power to revoke a license, and discretion to withhold a license? How can the licensing authority enforce the law? Should it not be independent of the police? What should be the penalty for breach of the law? Do not severe penalties miscarry? On what plea, and under what conditions, should licenses be transferred? What has been the effect of limiting the number of saloons? Should limitation be according to area or to population? Is there any relation between the number of saloons and the volume of consumption? What should be the limit to the hours of selling? Should saloons be allowed to become places of entertainment? How can the sale of liquor by druggists be controlled? How can spurious drinking clubs be prevented or controlled? How can the operation of disreputable hotels be prevented? What should be the definition of a hotel? Who should define it? By whom should it be licensed? What special privileges should be given to it? How can the "back-room" evil be stopped? Is it legal (i.e. constitutional) to prohibit the sale or serving of liquor to women? Has the removal of screens reduced the volume of consumption? Has it improved the character of saloons? Has it solved the problem of Sunday prohibition for any length of time? What has been the general effect of it in the tenement districts? Should the state undertake to regulate the liquor business or to enforce liquor laws? Is it possible to devise any working plan which will apply with equal effectiveness and equity in communities of compact and of scattered population? Should, or should not, the principle of self-government be carefully preserved in the whole scheme of legislation to regulate the liquor business? Whether the present prohibition wave shall wash away the legalized saloon, as ocean waves have from time to time engulfed peninsulas, islands, and whole continents, depends upon the power of American educators and American officials to answer right such questions as the foregoing. The great danger is that we shall, as usual, over-emphasize lawmaking, underemphasize lawbreaking, and go to sleep during the next two or three years when we should be wide-awake and constantly active in seeing that the law is enforced. Unless exactly the same principles of law enforcement are applied in "dry districts" as we have urged for eradication of smallpox, typhoid, scarlet fever, and adenoids, local and city prohibition are doomed to failure. There must be: 1. Inspection to discover disease centers--"blind pigs," "blind tigers," etc. 2. Compulsory notification by parents and landlords, and by police and other officials. 3. Prompt investigation upon complaint from private citizens. 4. Prompt removal of the disease and disinfection of the center. 5. Segregation of individual units that disseminate disease, whether bartender, saloon keeper, owner of premises, or respectable wholesaler, none of whom should be permitted to shift to another the responsibility for violating liquor laws. 6. Persistent publicity as to the facts regarding enforcement and violation, so that no one, whether saloon leaguist or anti-saloon leaguist, shall be uninformed as to the current results of "dry" laws. It is perfectly safe to assume that none of these things will be done consistently unless funds are provided to pay one or more persons in each populous locality to give their entire time to the enforcement of laws, just as the improvement of other ills of municipal government require the constant attention of trained investigators. Cogent arguments for such funds have recently appeared in the _New York Evening Post's_ symposium on "How to Give Wisely," by Mrs. Emma Garrett Boyd, of Atlanta, and Miss Salmon, of Vassar College. If the saloon is here to stay, we must all agree that it is a frightful waste of human energy and of educational momentum to be appealing for its abolition when we might be hastening its proper control. On the other hand, if the saloon is destined to be abolished as a public nuisance and a private wrong, as a menace to industry and social order, is it not a frightful, unforgivable waste of energy to permit prohibition laws to fail, and thus to discredit the principle of prohibition? Philanthropists have provided millions for scientific research, for medical research, for the study of tuberculosis, and for the study of living conditions. It is to be hoped that a large benefaction, or that an aggregation of small benefactions, will apply to governmental attempts to regulate the sale of alcohol those methods of scientific research which have released men from the thraldom of ignorance and diseases less easily preventable than alcoholism. CHAPTER XXXV IS IT PRACTICABLE IN PRESENTING TO CHILDREN THE EVILS OF ALCOHOLISM TO TELL THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH? If children are taught that the most effective way of combating alcoholism is to insure the enforcement of existing laws and to profit from lessons taught by such enforcement; if children are taught that the strongest reasons for total abstinence are social, economic, and industrial rather than individual and physiological,--there is much to be gained and little to lose from telling them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about alcohol. To stimulate a child's imagination by untruths about alcohol is as vicious as to stimulate his body with alcohol. Whisky drinking does not always lead to drunkenness, to physical incapacity, to short life, or to obvious loss of vitality. Beer drinking is not always objected to by employers. Neither crime, poverty, immorality, lack of ambition, nor ignorance can always be traced to alcohol. On the contrary, it is unquestionably true that the majority of the nation's heroes have used alcoholics moderately or excessively for the greater part of their lives. It is probably true that among the hundred most eminent officials, pastors, merchants, professors, and scientists of to-day, the great majority of each class are moderate users of one or more forms of alcoholics. Overeating of potatoes or cake or meat, sleeping or working in ill-ventilated rooms, neglect of constipation, may occasion physiological and industrial injuries that are not only as grave in themselves as the evils of moderate drinking, but, in addition, actually tempt to moderate drinking. All of this can be safely admitted, because whether parents and teachers admit it or deny it, children by observation and by reading will become convinced that up to the year 1908 the noblest and the most successful men of America, as well as the most depraved and least successful, have used alcoholics. To be candid enough to admit this enables us to gain a hold upon the confidence and the intelligence of children and youth that will strengthen our arguments, based upon social and industrial as well as physiological grounds, against running the risks that are inevitably incurred by even the moderate use of alcohol. Other things being equal, the same man will do better work without alcohol than with alcohol; the same athlete will be stronger and more alert without alcohol than with alcohol; the clerk or lawyer or teacher will win promotion earlier without alcohol than with alcohol; man or woman will grow old quicker with than without alcohol. Other things being equal, a man of fifty will have greater confidence in a total abstainer than in a man of identical capacity who uses alcohol moderately; a mother will give better vitality and better care to her children without than with alcohol; a policeman or fireman or stenographer is more apt to win promotion without than with alcohol. Whatever the physical ailment, there is in every instance a better remedy for an acute trouble, and infinitely better remedies for deep-seated troubles, than alcoholics. The percentage of failure to use alcoholics moderately is so high, the uncertainty as to a particular individual's ability to drink moderately is so great, as to lead certain insurance companies, first, to give preference to men who never use alcoholics, and later, to refuse to insure moderate drinkers. Life insurance companies have the general rule that habitual drinkers are bad risks, as the alcohol habit is prejudicial to health and longevity; but they have no means of studying the risk of moderate drinkers, because, except where alcohol has already left a permanent impression upon the system, the indications are by no means such as to enable the medical examiner to trace its existence with certainty. For this reason the life insurance companies have little effect in _preventing_ alcoholism. Though they are agreed that habitual drinkers ought to be declined altogether, only a few companies have taken the decided stand of declining them. "Habitual drinkers, if not too excessive, are admitted into the general class where the expected mortality, according to the experience of the Pennsylvania Mutual Life Insurance Company, is 80 per cent, as against 56 per cent for the temperate class. Though it is only necessary to look over the death losses presented each day to see that intemperance in the use of liquors, as shown by cirrhosis of the liver, Bright's disease, diseases of the heart, brain, and nervous system, is the cause of a large proportion of the deaths, these companies prefer to grade the premiums accordingly rather than to decline habitual drinkers altogether. While this is partly due to the difficulty and expense of diagnosis, it is more probably due to an objection to take a definite stand on the temperance question." Thus the insurance companies' rules touch only the confirmed drinker, whose physique is often irreparably injured. One company writes: "Men who have been intemperate and taken the Keeley or other cures are never accepted until five years have elapsed from the date of taking the cure, and only when it can be conclusively shown that during the whole period they have refrained entirely from the use of alcoholic liquor, and that their former excesses have not in any way impaired the physical risk." Thus far American insurance companies are doing little preventive and educational work on the alcohol question, though they have the very best means at their command for so doing. According to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company nine tenths of the school children in New York City are insured by them, and an even greater proportion of workingmen. Even though this is done "at twice the normal cost," the most cursory medical examination is given and no attempt is made to instruct them in the relation of their physical condition to their working power, or in the evils of the alcohol and the smoking habits. Naturally the moderate drinker is first rejected for positions where an occasional overindulgence would be most noticeable and most serious. The manager of a large factory tells his men: "You cannot work here unless you are sober. If you must drink at parties, stay at home if necessary until 12 o'clock the next day and sleep it off, but don't come here till you are straight. We cannot afford it." Occasionally his men stay at home and not a word is said, but the minute they are found at work in an unsteady condition they are summarily discharged. From this position it is but a step to that of an upholsterer in New York City, who prints on his order blanks, "No drinking man employed." His company recently discharged a man after twenty years of service because a customer for whom this man was working detected a whisky breath. Men reported to trade unions for frequent intoxication are blacklisted. A certain financial corporation permits no liquor on its grounds or in its lunch rooms. The head of one of its large branches was heard to say recently that he would discharge on the spot a man who showed evidences of drinking, even though he had previously worked faithfully for years. Rejection of moderate drinkers by business houses is not done on moral grounds alone, but because experience has proved the danger of employing men who have not their faculties fully under control _all_ the time they are at work. The rules are especially strict for men working for a railroad or street railway company. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company replied to my inquiry as to their custom of discriminating against drinking men in these words: "We have no printed rules in regard to this except in a general way,--that no employee is allowed to go into a saloon during his hours of work or wearing the company's uniform. Of course the men are promptly discharged or disciplined if they show the effects of liquor while on duty, and the whole tendency of the administration of the rules is to get rid of any men who are habitual drinkers, but the administration of the rules and discipline is left to the superintendent of each division." The Interborough Rapid Transit Company of New York has these printed rules for the physical standard required for applicants for employment: 1. _Examination of heart and arteries._ Rejection of candidates showing excessive or long-continued use of tobacco and alcohol, with explanation of condition, causes, and dangers of continued use. Warning to chiefs of departments regarding those accepted who show tendency to drink at times, but whose physical examination does not disclose sufficient evidence to warrant their disqualifications. Foremen and chiefs of departments to be notified and to carry out the policy of employing only men who are at all times sober and not under the influence of alcohol at all. 2. _On reëxamination of employees._ Warning to or rejection of those showing, on physical examination, indulgence to excess of alcohol, tobacco, or drugs. Warning to chief of department of evidence of such habits on part of any employee examined for any reason, but retained in service of the company with injunction to chief of department to speak with such employee and have him under proper supervision. The blacklisting of habitual drinkers by their union, and the growing tendency on the part of large corporations, factories, and business houses to take a decided stand against drinking, are having a marked effect in reducing drunkenness where it does most harm. This practice has been declared by John Bach McMasters, the noted American historian, to have exerted a stronger influence in promoting temperance and total abstinence than all the temperance crusades from Hartley's time to the prohibition wave of 1907. The school, by instructing children how the alcohol habit will affect their chances of business success, future usefulness as citizens, and enjoyment of life, will inevitably reduce the evils of alcohol. By teaching based on facts that intimately concern the life of the child, as well as by caring for his health and his environment, the schools can help supplant the desire for alcohol with other more healthy desires. No truth about alcohol is more important than that the craving for alcohol or something just as bad will exist side by side with imperfect sanitation, too long hours of work, food that fails to nourish, lack of exercise, rest, and fresh air. Conditions that produce bounding vitality and offer freedom for its expression at work and at play will supplant the craving for stimulants. Finally, the great truth contained in the last chapter must be taught, that success in coping with alcoholism is a community task requiring efficient government above all else. CHAPTER XXXVI FIGHTING TOBACCO EVILS "It is not necessarily vicious or harmful to soothe excited nerves." This editorial comment explains, even if it condemns while trying to justify, the tobacco habit. To soothe excited nerves by lying to them about their condition and by weakening where we promise to nourish, is vicious and harmful just as other lying and robbery are vicious and harmful. Yet two essential facts in dealing with tobacco evils must be considered: tobacco does soothe excited nerves, and the harm done to the majority of smokers seems to them to be negligible. For these two reasons the tobacco user, unless frightened by effects already visible, refuses to listen to physiological arguments against his amiable self-indulgence. Cheerfully he admits the theoretical possibility that by its method of soothing nerves tobacco kills nerve energy. But in all sincerity he points to men who have found the right stopping point up to which tobacco hurts less perhaps than coffee or tea, candy or lobster, overeating or undersleeping. Therefore the physician, the bishop, the school superintendent, candidly run the necessary risk for the sake of nerve soothing and sociability. Less harm would be done by tobacco if it were more harmful. Like so many other food poisons, its use in small quantities does not produce the prompt, vivid, unequivocal results that remove all doubt as to the user's injuries and intemperance. As inability to see the physiological effect upon himself encourages the tobacco user to continue smoking or chewing, so failure to identify evil physiological effects upon the smoker encourages the nonuser to begin smoking or chewing. A very few smokers give up the habit because they fear its results, but too often the man who can see the evil results would rather give up almost anything else. The one motive that most frequently stops inveterate smoking--fear--is the least effective motive in dissuading those who have not yet acquired the habit; every young man, unless already suffering from known heart trouble, thinks he will smoke moderately and without harm. Unfortunately, every boy who begins to smoke succeeds in picturing to himself the adult who shows no surface sign of injury from tobacco, rather than some other boy who has been stunted physically, mentally, and morally by cigarettes. For adult and child, therefore, it behooves us to find some other weapons against tobacco evils in addition to fear of physiological injuries. Among these weapons are: 1. Enforcement of existing laws that make it an offense against society for dealer, parent, or other person to furnish children under sixteen with tobacco in any form; and raising the age limit to twenty-one, or at least to eighteen. 2. Enforcement of restrictions as to place and time when smoking is permitted. 3. Agitation against tobacco as a private and public nuisance. 4. Explanation of commercial advantages of abstinence. Because the childish body quickly shows the injurious effects of what in adults would be called moderate smoking, the proper physical examination of school children will reveal injuries which in turn will show where and to what extent the cigarette evil exists among the children of a community. Even the scientists who claim that "in some cases tobacco aids digestion," or that "tobacco may be used without bad effects when used moderately by people who are in condition to use it," declare emphatically that tobacco "must not be used in any form by growing children or youths." Prohibitive laws can be rigidly enforced if a small amount of attention is given to organizing the strong public sentiment that exists against demoralizing children by tobacco. Thus children and youths will not need to make a decision regarding their own use of tobacco until after other arguments than physiological fear have been used for many years by parent, teacher, and society. One effective weapon is the sign on a ferryboat or street car: "No smoking allowed on this side," or "Smoking allowed on three rear seats only." Public halls and vehicles in increasing numbers either prohibit smoking altogether or put smokers to some considerable inconvenience. The trouble involved in going to places where smoking is permitted tends gradually to irritate the nerves beyond the power of tobacco to soothe. Again, many men would rather not soothe their excited nerves after five, than have their nerves excited all day waiting for freedom to smoke. Restrictions as to time or place make possible and expedite still further restrictions. Thus gradually the army of occasional smokers or nonsmokers is being recruited from the army of regular smokers. The anti-nuisance motive follows closely upon the drawing of sharp lines of time and place for the use of tobacco. Like treason, smoking in the presence of nonsmokers can be considered respectable only when the numbers who profess and practice it are numerous. If the two first-mentioned weapons are effectively used, there will be an increasing proportion of nonsmokers and not-yet-smokers who will give attentive ear to proof that nicotinism is a nuisance. The physical evidences of the cigarette habit can easily be made distasteful to all nonsmokers if frankly pointed out,--the yellow fingers, the yellow teeth, the nasty breath, the offensive excretions from the pores that saturate the garments of all who cannot afford a daily change of underwear. The anti-nuisance argument is always insidious and abiding. In the presence of nonsmokers accustomed to regard tobacco using as a nuisance, smokers become self-conscious and sensitive. Men and women alike would prefer a reputation for cleanliness to the pleasures of tobacco. The educational possibility of fighting tobacco with the name "nuisance" was recognized the other day by an editorial that protested against a law to prevent women from using cigarettes in restaurants. "The way for any man who has the desire to reform some woman addicted to the cigarette habit is insidiously and gently to point out the injurious effects on her appearance. Cigarette smoking stains a woman's fingers and discolors her teeth. It also tends to make her complexion sallow and to detract from the rubiness of her lips. It bedims the sparkle of her eyes. It makes her less attractive mornings." Chewing has practically disappeared, not because it ceased to soothe excited nerves but because it was seen to be a nasty nuisance. Finally, the selfishness of the smoker is a nuisance that continues only because it has not been called by its right name. "Do you mind if I smoke?" was a polite question two hundred years ago when tobacco was rare enough to make smoking a distinction, or fifty years ago when everybody smoked at home and in public. But it is effrontery to-day when people do mind, when smoking pollutes the air of drawing room and office, and while soothing the excited nerves of the smoker lowers the vitality of nonsmokers compelled to breathe smoke-laden air. It is selfish to intrude upon others a personal weakness or a personal appetite. It is selfish to divert from family purposes to "soothing excited nerves" even the small amounts necessary to maintain the cigar or cigarette habit. It is selfish to run the risk of shortening one's life, of reducing one's earning capacity. Because the tobacco habit is selfish it is anti-social and a nuisance, and should be fought by social as well as personal weapons, as are other recognized nuisances, such as spitting in public or offensive manners. The economic motive for avoiding and for eliminating tobacco is gaining in strength. The soothing qualities of all drugs are found to be expensive to physical and business energy if enjoyed during business hours. Strangely enough, employers who smoke are quite as apt as are nonsmokers, to forbid the use of tobacco by employees at work. Some of this seeming inconsistency is due to a dislike for cheaper tobacco or for mixed brands in one atmosphere; some of it is due to the smoker's knowledge that "soothing nerves" and sustained attention do not go hand in hand, while "pipe dreams" and unproductive meditation are fast companions; finally no little of the opposition to tobacco in business is due to fear of fire. These various motives, combining with the anti-nuisance motive among nonsmokers, have led many business enterprises to prohibit the use of tobacco in any form on their premises or during business hours, even when on the premises of others. Notable examples are railroads that permit no passenger trainman to use tobacco while on duty. (Freight trainmen are restricted more tardily because the risk of damages is less and the anti-nuisance objection is wanting.) From penalizing excessive use and prohibiting moderate use in business hours, it is a short cut to choosing men who never use tobacco and thus never suffer any of its effects and never exhibit any of its offensive evidences. No young man expects to obtain a favorable hearing if he offers himself for employment while smoking or chewing tobacco. Business men dislike to receive tobacco-scented messengers. Cars and elevators contain signs prohibiting lighted cigars or cigarettes. Insurance companies reject men who show signs of excessive use of tobacco. Why? Because they are apt to die before their time. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company of New York City rejects applicants for motormen and conductors "for excessive or long-continued use of tobacco." Why? Because, other things being equal, such men are more apt to lose their nerve in an emergency and to fail to read signals or instructions correctly. Armed with these weapons against tobacco, parents and teachers can effectively introduce physiological arguments against excessive use, against use by those who suffer from nervous or heart trouble, and against any use whatever by those who have not reached physical maturity. By avoiding physiological arguments that children will not--cannot--believe contrary to their own eyes, parents and teachers are able to speak dogmatically of that which children will believe,--injuries to children, evils of excess, restrictions as to time and place, and offensiveness to nonsmokers. But even here it is wrong, as it is inexpedient, to leave the physical strength of the next generation to the persuasive power of parents and teachers or to the faith and knowledge of minors. Society should protect all minors against their own ignorance, their own desires, the ignorance of parents and associates, and against the economic motive of tobacco sellers by machinery that enforces the law. CHAPTER XXXVII THE PATENT-MEDICINE EVIL "Dhrugs," says Dock O'Leary, "are a little iv a pizen that a little more iv wud kill ye. Ye can't stop people fr'm takin' dhrugs, an' ye might as well give thim somethin' that will look important enough to be inthrojuced to their important and fatal cold in th' head. If ye don't, they'll leap f'r th' patent medicines. Mind ye, I haven't got annything to say agin' patent medicines. If a man wud rather take them thin dhrink at a bar or go down to Hop Lung's f'r a long dhraw, he's within his rights. Manny a man have I known who was a victim iv th' tortures iv a cigareet cough who is now livin' comfortable an' happy as an opeem fiend be takin' Dr. Wheezo's Consumption Cure." The Dock says th' more he practices medicine th' more he becomes a janitor with a knowledge iv cookin'. He says if people wud on'y call him in befure they got sick he'd abolish ivry disease in th' ward except old age and pollyticks. Thus Mr. Dooley with his usual wit and insight tells the American people why they spend over two hundred million dollars annually on patent medicines. Americans consume more drugs and use more patent medicines than the people of any other country on the civilized globe. Self-medication has grown to tremendous proportions. Everywhere--in cars, on transfers, on billboards, in magazines, in newspapers, in the mails--are advertised medicines to cure disease and devices to promote health. When we consider that electric cars contain from thirty-two to fifty-two advertisements each, three fourths of which are directly or indirectly concerned with health; when we multiply these by the number of cars actually in use in American cities; when we consider the number of advertisements in magazines and daily papers, and the enormous circulation of these papers and magazines; when we consider that an increasingly large proportion of advertising space is devoted to health,--we begin to realize the cumulative power for good or for evil that health advertisements must have. To illustrate advertisements devoted to health to-day, I have kept clippings for one week of news items, editorials, and advertisements in a penny and a three-cent paper, and had them classified according to the subjects treated: ===================+=========================+======================== | PENNY PAPER | THREE-CENT PAPER +------+---------+--------+-----+---------+-------- | News |Editorial| Adver- | News|Editorial| Adver- | Item | |tisement| Item| |tisement -------------------+------+---------+--------+-----+---------+-------- Milk | 3 | -- | 2 | 3 | -- | 2 Teeth | -- | 1 | 2 | -- | -- | 1 Shoes | -- | -- | 4 | -- | -- | 1 Food | 1 | -- | -- | 1 | -- | 4 Alcohol | 1 | -- | 5 | 3 | -- | 7 Tuberculosis | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | -- | -- Patent medicine | -- | -- | 17 | -- | -- | -- Constipation cures | -- | -- | 4 | -- | -- | 5 Eyes | 3 | -- | 5 | 1 | -- | -- Beauty | 2 | 5 | 8 | -- | -- | 6 General | 8 | 3 | 3 | 5 | -- | -- -------------------+------+---------+--------+-----+---------+-------- Total | 18 | 9 | 51 | 14 | -- | 26 ===================+======+=========+========+=====+=========+======== The following list of health topics was treated in the advertisements, editorials, and articles of a popular monthly periodical devoted to women: =========================+=========+===========+=============== | ARTICLE | EDITORIAL | ADVERTISEMENT -------------------------+---------+-----------+--------------- Babies | 1 | -- | 11 Soaps and powders | -- | -- | 5 Beauty | 3 | -- | 6 Quack cures | -- | 2 | -- Tooth powders | -- | -- | 4 Household | 1 | -- | 5 Food and cooking | 1 | -- | 14 Clothes | 13 | -- | 5 Teaching sex laws | 1 | 2 | -- Medicine | 4 | 1 | -- -------------------------+---------+-----------+--------------- Total | 24 | 5 | 50 =========================+=========+===========+=============== Besides the classic patent medicines, such as Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, Castoria, Cod Liver Oil, etc., there are "Colds Cured in One Day," "Appendixine," health foods, massage vibrators, violet rays, Porosknit underwear, sanitary tooth washes, soaps, vitopathic, naturopathic, and faith cures. New ones appear every day,--enough to make a really sick person dizzy, let alone a person suffering from imaginary ailments. All seem to outline my particular symptoms. After they have flamed at me in red letters in the surface cars, pursued me in the elevated and underground, accompanied me out into the country and back again to the city, greeted me each morning in the daily paper and in my daily mail, each week or each month in the periodical, the coincidence of a familiar package on a drug-store counter seems to be providential and therefore irresistible. I know that I ought to be examined by a physician, but I am busy and not unwilling to gamble for my health; it cannot kill me and there is a chance that it will cure me. If there is nothing the matter with us, we may be cured by our faith. If we are taking a cure for consumption, the morphine in it may lull us into thinking we feel better. If we are taking a tonic for spring fever, the cheap alcohol may excite us into thinking our vitality has been heightened. Soothing sirup soothes the baby, often doping its spirit for life, or soothing it into a sleep from which it never wakes. In spite of the fact that the "Great American Fraud" has been exposed repeatedly in newspapers and magazines of wide circulation, the appeal of the quack still catches men and women of intelligence. The other night a friend went out to a dinner and conference with a lawyer in the employ of the national government. Annoyed by a nagging headache, he made for the nearest drug store and ordered a "headache powder." He admitted that it was an awful dose, but he had been told that it always "did the business." He knew the principle was bad, confessed to a scorn for friends of his whom he knew to be bromo-seltzer fiends, but he had the headache and the work to do--a sure cure and a quick one seemed imperative. The headache was due to overwork, indigestion, constipation. Plain food and quiet sleep was what he needed most. But the dinner conference plus the headache was the unanswerable argument for a dose with an immediate result. Last winter an Irish maid slowly lost her rosy cheeks and grew hollow-eyed and thin. She was taken to a specialist who discovered a rapidly advancing case of consumption. He said that owing to the girl's ignorance, stupidity, and homesickness, her only chance of recovery was to return to the "auld countrie" at once. The girl agreed to go, but insisted on a few days "to talk it over with her cousins in New York." After two weeks had elapsed she was found in a stuffy, overcrowded New York tenement. She had found a doctor who had given her a little bottle of medicine for two dollars, which would cure her in the city. It was futile to protest. Days in the unventilated tenement and nights in a "dark room" meant that she would never live to finish the bottle. For a year Miss H. took a patent preparation for chronic catarrh. It seemed to "set her up"; but it so undermined her strength, through its artificial nerve spur, that chronic catarrh was followed by consumption. It later transpired that the cure's chief ingredient was whisky, and cheap whisky. A good grandmother, herself a vigorous temperance agitator and teetotaler, offered to pay for it as long as my friend would take it faithfully. The irony of it makes one wonder how many earnest advocates of total abstinence are in reality addicted to the liquor habit. Last summer a district nurse of the summer corps who visited city babies under two years of age encountered in the hallway of a tenement a bevy of frenzied women. A baby lay on the bed gasping and "rolling its eyes up into the top of its head." The nurse asked the frightened mother what she had been giving it. "Nothing at all," said the woman. But a telltale bottle of soothing sirup showed that the child was dying from morphine poisoning. Happily the nurse came in time to save it. Is it not pitiful, this grasping for a poison in an extremity; this seizing of a defective rope to escape the fire? [Illustration: LEARNING HOW TO KEEP BABY WELL WITHOUT PATENT MEDICINES Recreation Pier, New York City, Summer, 1908] The patent-medicine evil cannot be cured by occasional exposure or by overexposure. Nor can it be cured by legislation, legislation, legislation, unless laws are rigidly enforced. Occasional exposure is no better than occasional advertising of good things. The patent-medicine business thrives on constant, not occasional, advertising. Leading advertisers expect so little from the first notice that they would not take the trouble to write out a single advertisement. That is the reason merchants charge advertising in the programmes of church, festival, and glee-club concert to charity, not to business. Warning people once does no more lasting good than sending a child to school once a month. The exposure of patent-medicine evils must be as constant as efforts to sell the medicines. Overexposure is ineffective. It is the evils of patent medicines that do harm, not their name and not their patents. The medical profession has in vain protested against proprietary medicines. Ethical barriers cannot be erected by resolution. Calling things unethical does not make them unethical. The mere patenting of medicines for profit does not make the medicine injurious any more than the mere mixing of unpatented drugs makes a physician safe. Physicians who would not themselves patent a drug will use certain patented drugs whose ingredients are known to be safe and uniform. True exposure of patent-medicine evils will enable the average physician and the average layman to distinguish the dangerous from the safe, the fraud from the genuine, lies from truths. Legislation is needed to crystallize modern knowledge and to establish in courts the right to protection against the evils of patent medicines. The national Pure Food Law, passed January 1, 1907, and now in force throughout the country, requires on the "labels of all proprietary medicines entering into interstate commerce, a statement of the quantity or proportion of any alcohol, morphine, opium, heroin, chloroform, cannabis indica, chloral hydrate, or acetanilid, or any derivative or preparation of any such substance contained therein; this information must be in type not smaller than eight-point capital letters; also _the label shall embody no statement which shall be false or misleading in any particular_." This law does not forbid patent medicines nor the use of alcohol and narcotics in patent medicines; it merely says, "Let the label tell, that all who _buy_ may read." It does not require that all who _run_ may read, for _it does not say that advertisements of a patent medicine shall tell the truth about its ingredients or its action on the human body_; only that the label on the bottle shall tell. The object of this law is to explain to the consumer the exact nature of the medicine. But to the majority of people the word "acetphenitidin" on the label of a headache medicine does not explain. The new order that requires manufacturers to substitute acetanilid for acetphenitidin does no more than replace fog with mist. Protection requires legislation that cannot be evaded by technical terms. The present law requires that packages must be properly labeled _on entering the state_. To carry out the national law, state laws should make it an offense for dealers to have in their possession proprietary medicines without explanatory labels that explain. Where state laws to this effect do not exist, the packages once in the state may be deprived of their labels and sold as secret remedies, thus nullifying the whole effect of the national law. Enforcement must be insured. Impure drugs may do as much harm as patent medicines containing harmful drugs. In New York a vigorous campaign was recently inaugurated by the department of health to drive out impure drugs. Drugs are dangerous enough at their best. When they are not what they pretend to be, whether patented or not, they may take life. One extreme case where a patient's heart was weakened when it ought to have been strengthened, led to the discovery that practically all of one particular drug offered for sale in New York City was unfit to use and calculated to kill in the emergency where alone it would be used. Yesterday four lives and several million dollars were lost in a New York fire because the hose was rotten or weak. As inspection and testing were needed to insure hose equal to emergency pressure, so inspection and testing of patent medicines and drugs are needed to make legislation effectual. Legislation and enforcement should reach the newspaper, magazine, billboard, street car, that advertises a falsehood or less than the essential truth regarding drugs, foods, and patent medicines. Public sentiment condemns the advertising of many opportunities to commit crime or to be disorderly or indecent or to injure one's neighbor. The facts about hundreds of nostrums can be absolutely determined. The advertising agency, whether secular or religious, that carries misrepresentation of drugs and foods should be forbidden circulation through the mails. The existence of such advertisements should be made evidence of complicity in a public offense and punished accordingly. Treat them as we treated the Louisiana lottery. Boards of health, instead of furnishing names to druggists and manufacturers who want to sell patent foods and medicines, should print circulars exposing frauds, and punish so far as the law permits. While trying to secure adequate legislation and efficient administration of the above-mentioned standards, there is much that can be done by individuals and clubs. We can give preference to those journals that refuse drug and food advertisements unless evidence is produced that the truth is told and that the goods are not harmful. We can refuse to have in the house a paper or journal which prints notices that lie or that conceal the truth. If this drastic measure would cut us off entirely from daily papers, we could choose the least offensive and petition it to exclude specific lying methods. When it preaches health, honesty, and philanthropy, we can cut out of one issue the noble editorial and the exploiting advertisements and send them to the editor with our protest. Knowledge of the ingredients and dangers of patent medicines should be a prerequisite for the practice of medicine or pharmacy. We can help bring about such conditions, and we can patronize physicians who send patients to drug stores that cater to intelligence rather than to ignorance. Fighting patent-medicine evils is a civic duty to be accomplished by civic coöperation, not private effort. It is impossible to organize unofficial educational agencies that can offset the cumulative, lying advertisement. Personal opposition is but the beginning. Official machinery must be set running and kept running so as to protect the public health against the commercial motive that preys upon ignorance and easily inspired faith. CHAPTER XXXVIII HEALTH ADVERTISEMENTS THAT PROMOTE HEALTH It is usually considered futile to attempt to defeat the devil with his own methods, because he knows so much better how to use them. But abuse does not do away with use, and the success of quacks in reaching the people demands our respect. There is no reason why their methods, based on a knowledge of human nature and human psychology, should not be employed to appeal to needs rather than to weaknesses. A good thing may lie unused because of lack of advertisement. Vitality is coming to be the passion of the American people. It is on this sincere passion that fakirs have so long traded. There can be no doubt that advertisements of health-promoting goods are quite as profitable as health advertisements that injure health, when equally effective methods are used to make them reach the public. The tradition has been repeatedly mentioned in this book that the better the doctor, the less he advertises himself, except in medical and scientific journals that notoriously fail to reach the people. The same is too often true of reputable remedies and goods. The theory that these things stand or fall on their merits is not borne out by practical experience,--conspicuously in the case of "fake" remedies. Purely philanthropic undertakings for the advancement of health fail, if not placed before the people whom they aim to help in an attractive, convincing form. Failure to advertise a worthy cause limits its usefulness, and is therefore unjustifiable, whether we speak of medicine, legal aid, or dental clinics. An intensive study of the methods used to advertise patent medicines will suggest means of extending the usefulness of health-promoting goods. Aside from clever methods of suggestion that lead many people to take medicine for imaginary ailments, especially seasonal ailments, patent-remedy advertisers have employed (as an argument for the efficiency of their cures) scientific theory, bacterial origin of diseases, recent medical or physiological discoveries, and state and national movements for promoting health. In fact, they have turned to their own uses the very law that seeks to control them and the exposures that seek to exterminate them. Whatever may be the merits of Castoria, the "Don't Poison Baby" advertisement on the following page, printed just after the accompanying "Babies Killed by Patent Medicines," which appeared in a home journal, was surely a clever bit of advertising. Upon an editorial in a daily paper on the relation of eyeglasses to headache and indigestion, an optician based a promise of immediate relief for these ailments if he himself were patronized. The recent investigations of the Department of Agriculture, and of Professors Chittenden and Fisher, in regard to foodstuffs, are proving helpful to food quacks and advertisers of pills for constipation and indigestion. Since the passage of the Pure Food Law one health food is advertised in a column headed "Pure Food." When the season for pneumonia comes around numerous medicines are "sure cures" for grippe and pneumonia. "Rosy teachers look better in the schoolroom than the sallow sort," is surely a good introduction to a new food. Woman's vanity sells many a remedy advertised to counteract the "vandal hand of disease, which robs her of her beauty, yellows and muddies her complexion, lines her face, pales cheek and lip, dulls the brilliancy of her eye, which it disfigures with dark circles, aging her before her time." Who in your town is as good a friend to "owners of bad breath" as the advertiser who tells them that they "whiff out odor which makes those standing near them turn their heads away in disgust"? The climax of effective educational advertising as well as of consummate presumption and villainy is reached in the notice of an alcoholic concoction that uses the headline, "Medical Supervision Needed to Prevent the Spread of Consumption in the Schools." Thus grafting itself on the successful results of the medical examination in the Massachusetts schools, it enlists the aid of teachers, trades on the fear of tuberculosis, even indorses the fresh-air treatment. So convincing was this appeal that it was reprinted in the news columns of a daily paper in New York as official advice to school children. [Illustration: Don't Poison Baby.] So clever are these methods of advertising and so successful are they in reaching great numbers of people, that if reputable physicians would take lessons of them, they might conduct a health crusade that would exterminate tuberculosis, diminish the use of alcohol and tobacco, and save thousands of babies that die unnecessarily. The theory of patent-medicine advertising is sound. It emphasizes the joys of health, the beauty of health, the earning power of health. It adapts its message to season, event, and need. It offers testimonials of real persons cured. It is all-appealing, promising, convincing,--a fearful menace to health when the remedies offered are dishonest, a universal opportunity for promoting health if the cure is genuine. A classic example of health advertising that promotes health is Sapolio. The various hygiene lessons that have promoted Sapolio have done much to raise the standard of living in the United States. Few eminent physicians have done so much for public health as the "Poor M.D. of Spotless Town who scoured the country for miles around, but the only case he could find was a case of Sapolio." Recent press discussions about furnishing free eyeglasses to the children in the public schools have so enlightened people as to the need for expert examination of their eyes that opticians will be forced to employ competent oculists to make the preliminary examination and to see that the glasses are properly adjusted. In spite of the long mis-education by makers of corsets, the persistent advertising of "good health" and "common-sense" waists has gained an increasing number of recruits from the ranks of the self-persecuting. It is only a matter of time when the term "stylish" will be transferred to the advocates of health, because advertisers who tell the truth will, if persistent, gain a larger patronage than advertisers of falsehoods; there is profit in retaining old customers. The advertisement of a window device for "Fresh air while you sleep" will make prevention of tuberculosis more profitable than "sure cures" that lie and kill. A man deserves profit who sends this message to millions of readers: There are three kinds of cleanliness: First, the ordinary soap-and-water cleanliness. Second, the so-called "beauty" cleanliness. Third, prophylactic cleanliness, or the cleanliness that "guards against disease." But the man who sells soap ought to be the one to use this advertisement, not a man who sells toothwash that, when pure, is little better than water, that is seldom pure, and that always hurts the teeth. Many children and adults are being cured of flat foot by men who make money by selling shoes designed to strengthen the arch of the foot. Millions would never know how to discover the evil effects upon themselves of coffee and alcohol except for money-making advertisements. Little Jo's Smile taught a nation that the majority of crippled children are victims of neglect on the part of adult consumptives. Certain it is that advertising is an art promoted by the severest competition of the cleverest brains. It is a force which we cannot afford to ignore. If we can harness it to the promotion of aids to health, it will do more good than all the hygiene books ever written. To this end we must educate ourselves to distinguish between goods which do what they profess to do and those which do not. A good eye opener would be to keep for a week clippings from a high-priced daily paper, a penny daily paper, and one or two representative magazines, including a religious paper. Teachers and parents can very easily interest children in such clippings. Moreover, they can use the bulletin method, the stereopticon exhibit, the _cumulative illustration_ of a fact, which is the essence of successful advertising. Boards of health can use all the typographical aids to clear understanding,--cuts, diagrams, interesting anecdotes. In New York both the health board and the school board have issued circulars and given illustrated lectures, some of them being in school and some on public squares. Medical and sanitary societies and other educators can be induced to follow what a successful business man has called the three cardinal rules of advertising: First, put your advertisement where it will be seen. (Tell your story where it will be heard.) Second, write it so that people will read it. (Tell it so that people will understand it.) Third, tell the truth, so that people will believe it. CHAPTER XXXIX IS CLASS INSTRUCTION IN SEX HYGIENE PRACTICABLE? Among remedies for preventable disease and preventable poverty, the following was urged at a national conference for the betterment of social conditions: "We have been too prudish. Because we have been unwilling to teach school children the evils of violating sex hygiene, we have been unsuccessful in combating evils justly attributable to ignorance on the part of girls as to the duties and dangers of motherhood." This point of view is shared by so many men and women that a national body was organized in 1905 to promote the teaching of sex hygiene,--the Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. This society has its headquarters in New York, and distributes at cost lectures and essays. The second of its educational pamphlets is addressed to teachers, and is entitled "Instruction in the Physiology and Hygiene of Sex." The introduction asks eleven questions of the teachers as follows: 1. Do you wish a pamphlet on sex subjects to hand to your pupils? Why? 2. Do you wish separate pamphlets for boys and girls? 3. For what age limits and social conditions do you wish them? 4. What topics do you wish the pamphlets for boys to "handle"? 5. What topic do you wish the pamphlet for girls to "handle"? 6. If you think one pamphlet sufficient for both sexes, what should it consider? 7. How far do you go in teaching sexual hygiene or reproduction? By what method? 8. What special difficulties do you find in teaching it? 9. What special need of teaching it have you found? 10. What special benefits (or otherwise) have you noticed from teaching it? 11. What criticisms (favorable or otherwise) do you encounter? The difficulty of introducing formal instruction in sex hygiene, even in the upper grades of public and private schools, is hinted at in the pamphlet. The purpose of the publishing society as given in its constitution is "to eliminate the spread of diseases which have their origin in the social evil." Although sex hygiene does not begin with sex immorality, almost every text-book on sex hygiene, and almost every pamphlet urging class instruction in sex hygiene, begins with sex immorality. Yet only the exceptional school child is in danger of violating sex morals, while every school child needs instruction in sex hygiene. Instruction in sex hygiene, whether at school or at home, should deal with sex normality, sex health, sex temperance. Instruction in sex immorality is objectionable, not merely because it offends prudists, not because it is difficult, but because it can be shown by experience to be less efficacious than training in sex health. To expect fear to prompt sex hygiene is to make a mistake that has retarded the development of sound measures in the treatment of offenders against criminal law. For centuries man failed in attempts to fit the punishment to the crime. To deter men from committing crime by holding up a threat of prolonged and dreadful punishment has been found futile. Individuals take the risk because they think they will escape detection. It is an axiom of criminal procedure that a would-be offender is deterred by the certainty, not by the severity, of punishment. The modern theory of probation is, that children and adults may be best led away from evil practices by crowding out old influences with newer and stronger interests. Occupations that are wholesome are made to rival diversions or occupations that are harmful and criminal. [Illustration: OBJECT LESSONS FOR INSTRUCTION IN SEX HEALTH Note the uncomfortable, unhealthy overdressing] Abnormal conditions of mind and body in regard to sex can almost always be traced to general physical ill health or to an unhealthy moral environment. Cure and prevention require two kinds of treatment within reach of parents and teachers: (1) build up the child's physical condition; and (2) give him other interests. Proper physical care, and work adjusted to body and mind, may be relied upon to do infinitely more to promote sex hygiene than instruction, either at home or at school, in immoral sex diseases. That sex morality is weak and untrustworthy which is based upon fear of sex diseases. Like alcoholism and nicotinism, the saddest results of sex diseases are social and economic. The strongest reasons against such diseases are economic and social, not physiological. [Illustration: THE STUDY OF INFANT HEALTH IS CONDUCIVE TO PURE-MINDEDNESS Note the simple, comfortable, hygienic dress] Once having made up our minds to concentrate the teaching of sex hygiene upon sex health rather than upon sex immorality, upon sex functions rather than upon sex diseases, the chief objection to school instruction and to instruction in class will disappear. Our school text-books in history, literature, and biology abound in references to sex distinctions, sex functions, and sex health. In enumerating the daily routine of health habits I mentioned daily bathing of the armpits and crotch. There is nothing in this injunction to offend or injure a boy or girl. If studies and physical training are to be adapted to physiological age, and if children are to know why they are graded according to physiological age as well as mental brightness, we shall soon be talking of mature, maturing and not-yet-maturing girls and boys, so that everybody will be instructed in sex hygiene without offense. Any teacher who can explain the family troubles of King Henry VIII without becoming self-conscious can easily learn to look a class of girls and boys in the face and explain how a mother's health will injure her baby before its birth, why breast-fed babies are more apt to live than bottle-fed babies, why it is as important for the mother to keep a nursing breast absolutely clean as to clean the nipple of a nursing bottle. Words whispered by children, or marked in dictionaries, to be stealthily and repeatedly looked upon and talked over with other children, lose all their glamour when pronounced by a teacher. In these days of state subsidy of school libraries the child is hard to find who has not free access to books of fiction full of voluptuous allusions that make undesirable impressions which only blunt, candid discussion of sex facts can make harmless. Children now learn, whether in fashionable private schools or crowded slums, practically all that is lascivious and unwholesome about sex. For teachers to explain that which is wholesome and pure will disinfect the minds of most children and protect them against miseducation. Class instruction in hygiene is practicable for all matters pertaining to normal sex health. Girls of thirteen should be taught in classes the fact and meaning of menstruation, and its grave importance to the health, in order that they may care for themselves not only before, during, and immediately after the menstrual period, but throughout the month, in order that menstruation itself shall not be unnecessarily painful, enervating, and harmful to efficiency. It is not yet advisable to discuss dangers peculiar to girls or dangers peculiar to boys in mixed classes. Generally speaking, it is undesirable that men teachers discuss girls' troubles with girl pupils. But why should it not become possible for women teachers to explain health dangers peculiar to girls to classes of boys? Individual instruction in sex matters should be reserved for the diseased mind, for the boy or girl who has already been morbidly instructed. Discussion of immoral sex diseases should be confined to individual talk. This field teachers have already entered. Repeated physical examination of children will detect symptoms of sex abnormality. When detected, the fact and the meaning should be explained to the individual by school physician, school nurse, or school-teacher. While much can be done through mothers' meetings and through individual instruction of parents, the most effective means of improving the general attitude towards sex health is to give the simple truth to the millions of children who have not yet left school. Armed with the A B C's of sex hygiene at school, boys and girls will be prepared to select employment, associates, and newspapers that will permit normal, healthy sex development. Men and women who are leading normal lives, who have plenty of work, sleep, fresh air, nourishing food, amusement, and exercise are unlikely to be sexually abnormal. After all, the question of instruction in sex hygiene will quickly settle itself when it is made a condition of a teacher's certificate that the applicant shall himself or herself know the personal and social reasons for sex health. The woman who does not know how to take care of her own sex health, the man who is ignorant of a woman's special needs, cannot do justice to the requirements of arithmetic, language, and discipline. Whether men and women teachers are mentally, physically, and morally equipped to be sexually normal and to teach the law of sex health will be disclosed as soon as trustees and superintendent dare to ask the necessary questions. Whether an instructor's personality will enable him to fill the minds of children with interests more wholesome, more absorbing than obscene stories or morbid sex curiosity can also be learned. When school-teachers are prepared to teach the social and economic aspects of general health they will quickly solve the problem of instruction in sex health. Just one word about country morality. It is customary to deplore the influence of large cities on the young. Of late, however, there has been a tendency to question whether, after all, sex morality is apt to be higher in the country than in the city. Parents and teachers in small towns and in rural districts will do well to take an inventory of the influences surrounding their children. It will always be impossible to give country children city diversions. One great disadvantage of country children frequently counter-acts the beneficial influence of out-of-door living; namely, isolation. The city child is practically always in or about to be in the sight of, if not in the presence of, other people. Numbers and close contact with people, though they be strangers, mean restraint and pervading social conscience. City children find it difficult to have good times in pairs. No amount of instruction of rural pupils in sex hygiene will take the place of amusements and entertainments for groups of children, forming thus a special antidote for "two's company, three's a crowd." Liberating and standardizing normal intersex relations and discouraging cramped social intersex relations are more urgent needs than instruction in sex diseases. A working environment that permits pure-mindedness will do more to inculcate a reverence for sex cleanliness and for parenthood than lectures and essays on moral prophylaxis. CHAPTER XL THE ELEMENT OF TRUTH IN QUACKERY; HYGIENE OF THE MIND Patent medicines and other forms of quackery could not pay such enormous dividends unless there was some truth in their claims; unless their victim found some beneficial return for his money. They win confidence because they raise hopes and combat fear. They do cure thousands of people of fear and of "ingrowing thoughts." In so doing they remove the sole cause of much disability.[17] In so doing they are merely applying by wholesale principles of mental hygiene that are legitimately used by physicians, tradesmen, teachers, and parents who deal successfully with nervousness. Quackery makes cures and makes money because of the undoubted influence of mind in causing and in removing those ailments that originate in fear, imagination, or morbid introspection. A few years ago a little out-of-the-way town in southern Minnesota was visited by train loads of the sick and crippled from miles around. Miraculous cures were heralded broadcast. Life-long cripples left wagon loads of crutches and braces to decorate the little church with the enchanted transom. People who had not walked for years returned to their homes cured. The marvels of famous shrines were fast being duplicated when the church authorities at St. Paul issued an explanation of the alleged miraculous appearance of biblical figures in the transom of the new church. The outlines of a mother carrying a baby had been vaguely impressed in the transom glass when molten. When the mystery was explained the excursions and the cures stopped. Nearly every physician and practically every medical charlatan can count scores of cures of ailments that had previously defied the skill of eminent physicians. A child's bumps actually stop aching after the mother or nurse kisses the abused spot. Invalids forget their limitations under stress of some great excitement or some intense desire for pleasures incompatible with invalidism. Many a physician of reputation owes his success in great part to the discriminating use of the _placebo_,--a bread pill designed to supplant the patient's fear with confidence. Hypnotism and "suggestion" have been successfully used to cure alcoholism and to fill patients' minds with conviction stronger than the fear that produced the sickness. A well-known writer and preacher cures insomnia by auto-suggestion, telling himself he is sleepy, is very sleepy, is going to sleep, is almost asleep, is fast asleep. Treatment by osteopathy has been followed by disappearance of diseases that cannot possibly be cured by osteopathy. Christian Science has restored to health and happy usefulness hundreds of thousands of chronic invalids. Verily is hygiene of the mind an important factor in the civics of health. Fear can originate with mind. Fear produces fear. Fear disarranges circulation of the blood and the nourishment of muscle and nerve. Fear can produce many bodily disorders which in turn feed fear. Fear cannot last unless bodily symptoms exist or arise to justify and feed it. Fear can be cured and removed in two ways: (1) by driving away fear and releasing bodily disorders from its thraldom; (2) by removing the disorders and making fear impossible to the logical mind. An enforced sea voyage begins with the disorder; a clever, buoyant physician begins with the fear. Patent-medicine proprietors, quacks, and fakes of every kind begin by displacing the fear with hope or cheer; the physical disorders frequently vanish by the same window as fear. For _fear_ write _self-pity_, _morbid self-consciousness_, _hypertrophied submission_; to _hope_ and _cheer_ add _smile_, _relaxation_, and _zest_; and we have the chief elements of mental hygiene and the reason why intelligent as well as unintelligent men like to be swindled by medical or other quacks. The social aspects of mental hygiene are particularly important. Once admitting the power of the mind to decrease vitality, we recognize the duty of seeming happy, buoyant, cheerful, vital, at least when with others, for the sake of others' minds and bodies. Secondly, we find the duty to refrain from commenting on others' appearance in a way that will start "ingrowing thoughts." A "grouchy" foreman can give blues and indigestion to a roomful of factory girls. A self-pitying teacher can check the heart beats of her class, cause arteries and lungs to contract, and deprive the brain of fresh blood. An oversympathetic neighbor can put a strong man to bed by discovering signs of nervous disintegration. Shall we gradually work out a code of mental hygiene rights and nuisances that will require compulsory notification of the "blues" and compulsory segregation of every person unable to "smile dull care away"? Is the time coming when boards of health will accompany infection leaflets with messages such as this from James Whitcomb Riley: Talk health. The dreary, never-changing tale Of mortal maladies is worn and stale. You cannot charm or interest or please By harping on that minor chord, disease. "Whatever the weather may be," says he, "Whatever the weather may be, It's the songs ye sing, and the smiles ye wear, That's a-making the sun shine everywhere." Mental hygiene has hitherto enjoyed an evil reputation and has been condemned to generally evil associations, because the rank and file have been ignorant of hygiene of every kind. Medical science has so long enveloped itself in mystery that it is in danger now of becoming discredited and of falling heir to the mantle of quackery. Quacks often get social and economic results more agreeable to the patient and more helpful to society than orthodox medicine. "When traitors become numerous enough treason becomes respectable." So when mental hygiene succeeds, it becomes science for the case in question, and for that case orthodox medicine loses its respectability. For the layman there is no safety except in having intelligence enough to know whether his trouble has defied the sincere application of mental treatment, auto-suggestion, and loyalty to the health ideal. Mental hygiene admits the existence of dental cavities, scarlet fever germs, adenoids, cross-eyes, uncleanliness, broken legs, inflamed eyes, overeating. The organic, structural defects which are to be sought by physical examination are all admitted by mental hygienists. They work for an orderly, daily routine and affirm the penalties of its violation. They would even favor going periodically to a physician, provided that we never go to him except when organic or structural disorders may safely be assumed from the fact that cheer and relaxation treatment does not give relief. Unhygienic living and mind cure cannot go together. The mind that tries to deceive itself cannot cure either mind or body. The man who violates the habits of health cannot patch his injuries or conceal the ravages of dissipation by mental hygiene. Here is the great advantage of knowing how to live hygienically, of observing habits of health, and then concerning ourselves not with ourselves, but with conditions of living for all those whose health can be affected by our health, or can affect our health and efficiency. The most recent practical application of mental hygiene for moral and physical uplifting is the "moral clinic" or "psychotherapeutic" clinic established by Emmanuel Church in Boston. This clinic represents the union of three forces,--religion, medical diagnosis, mental hygiene. As a result of this alliance it is anticipated that both religion and medicine will be humanized, socialized, vitalized, made to express more accurately and more consistently that community consciousness and that yearning for equal opportunity and equal happiness which constitute the profoundest religious impulse. No person is treated at this moral clinic whose trouble is organic or structural. In determining whether the case belongs to this clinic, expert medical diagnosis is relied upon rather than the credulity of the patient or the zeal of the clergyman. Medical scientists of highest repute can consistently coöperate, because they recognize two scientific facts: first, that many troubles are due primarily to mental disorder; and, second, the greatest asset of the human mind is that something called religion, which is no less real and potent because peculiar to each individual. Whatever may be that deepest current of thought and feeling, whatever that synthetic philosophy, that explanation of being, which guides my life, it can be of inestimable aid if enlisted in an effort to secure normal vitality of mind and body. The controlling motive of the moral clinic has proved infectious. There is reason to believe that the alliance of medicine and religion has come to stay, and that the present excitement over psychotherapeutics will settle down into a scientific utilization of religious motive and medical knowledge to prevent mental and moral disease. Unwholesome, morbid, self-centered thought is driven out. A recognition of others' claims takes its place. Hypnotism, suggestion, and group enthusiasm are used to their utmost possibilities. The success of the Boston moral clinic is due to establishing in the mind of the neurasthenic, the alcoholic, the world-weary, and the purposeless a truer conception of the pleasures that result from vitality and from altruistic effort. It is too early to classify by kind of functional disorder the patients treated. Results from one patient have been described in newspapers as follows: A school-teacher, as a result of nervous collapse, had lost control, began to fear the children under her care, and thought of relinquishing her profession. She was instructed in the art of self-control and the control of others; the notion of fear was dislodged and a sentiment of love for her little charges took its place. In the course of a few weeks this conscientious and experienced teacher regained her poise and found herself performing her duties better than ever before. Many alcoholics have for months given evidences of complete cure. Stories almost incredible are quickening pastor and physician alike throughout the country. After individual treatments are given, after religious motive is appealed to, and the soul stirred to heed the lessons of religion, medicine, and sociology, patients are given the work cure. Thus a branch of social service is established, where after-treatment is given to the patient whose thoughts have been turned from himself to others. All of a sudden the church finds itself in need of definite knowledge as to opportunities for altruistic work, as to definite community needs not met, as to people in distress who can be relieved by volunteers, as to agencies which can be called upon to coöperate both in treating the individual and in utilizing his energies for others' benefits. Because a relatively small percentage of men and women are neurasthenic, melancholy, morbid, alcoholic, the lesson of the moral clinic is most serviceable when extended for the benefit of the "not yet alcoholic" and the "not quite neurasthenic." In other words, individuals in thinking of themselves must learn the health value and soul value of purpose that centers in others' happiness. That thing which we have called tact in personality, and which in the past was discovered by induction, namely, the law of mental hygiene and the control it gives over others' health, must be taught in schools to children by wholesale, must be taught in medical and theological schools, to all physicians and all pastors. This alliance of medicine and religion, which is at present confined to one or two moral clinics, should be incorporated into education, into social work, into church work, becoming thus a part of civilization's normal point of view. Mental hygiene cannot survive conscious violation of the fundamental laws of medicine and religion. The alliance of medicine and religion will prove utterly futile unless habits of living and of thinking are inculcated that conform to nature's law of self-preservation and to God's law of brotherly love. Self-centered religion, like self-centered medicine, destroys both body and soul. FOOTNOTES: [17] The alliance of mental hygiene, medicine, and religion is discussed in the Emmanuel Church book, _Religion and Medicine; the Moral Control of Nervous Disorders_; also in its bulletins, _Religion and Medicine_. CHAPTER XLI "A NATURAL LAW IS AS SACRED AS A MORAL PRINCIPLE" When a grammar-school boy I learned from the game "Quotations" that Louis Agassiz, scientist, had written the sentence with which I introduce a final appeal for living that will permit physical and civic efficiency. Agassiz has been called "America's greatest educator," and again "the finest specimen yet discovered of the genus _homo_, of the species _intelligens_." The story of his long life as teacher of teachers reads like a romance. But among his gifts to education and citizenship none can be made to mean more than the simple proposition that natural law is as sacred as a moral principle. All who remember this "beatitude" will be helped to solve many perplexing problems of dress, diet, play, education, philanthropy, morals, and civics. Reverence for the natural carries with it a distaste for the unnatural. Those who obey natural law soon come to regard its violation as a nuisance when not immoral. On the other hand, compromise with the unnatural, like compromise with vice, quickly leads first to toleration and thence to interest and practice. Therefore the importance of giving children Agassiz's conception of the sacredness of the laws that govern the human body. A passion for the natural is a strong foundation for habits of health and a priceless possession for one who wishes to know morality in its highest sense. "Natural" is less attractive to us than it would be had Agassiz first interpreted it for us rather than Rousseau or present-day exponents of "the simple life," "back to nature," and "back to the land." It is too often forgotten that no one sins against natural law more grievously than the primitive man or the isolated man in daily contact with non-human nature. Communing with nature seems not only to require communing with man but to give joys in proportion as the nature lover is concerned for the human society of which he is a part. Natural law does not become a moral principle until man is benefited or injured by man's use of nature's resources within and about him. Natural living according to natural law must be something sounder, more beautiful, and more progressive than can be read into or out of mountains, trees, brooks, and sky, or primitive society. Natural law points to a Nature Fore as well as a Nature Back, to a Nature Up and Beyond as well as a Nature Down and Behind. The Nature that was yesterday will not do for to-morrow, any more than a man is willing to give up his nature aspirations for the careless, animal ways of romping childhood. Civilization is constantly urged at each step to repeat the prayer of Holmes's old man who dreams for the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table: Oh for one hour of youthful joy! Give back my twentieth spring! I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy Than reign a gray-beard king! Off with the wrinkled spoils of age! Away with learning's crown! Tear out life's wisdom-written page, And dash its trophies down! One moment let my life blood stream From boyhood's fount of flame! Give me one giddy, reeling dream Of life all love and fame! But every experiment in turning back exalts the present and the future. Gifts as well as problems are seen to come with complexity, and civilization flatly refuses to relinquish these gifts. Sound maturity is better than youth or age: The smiling angel dropped his pen,-- "Why, this will never do; The man would be a boy again, And be a father too!" Problems of health and of civics can never be solved by appealing to Nature Back, when only the few could be healthy, when one baby in three died in infancy, when old age was toothless and childish, when infection ravished nations, when the average life was twenty years shorter than now, and when unspeakable filth was tolerated in air, street, and house. They can all be solved by appeals to Nature Fore, which holds up an ideal of mankind physically able to enjoy all the benefits and to conquer all the dangers of civilization. It is not looking back, but looking in and forward that reveals what natural law promises to those who obey it. By using numerous tests which have been suggested in preceding chapters we can learn how far we and our communities obey natural law when working and playing. Health for health's sake has nowhere been urged. On the contrary, healthful living has been frankly valued for its aid to efficient living by individual and by community; wherefore the emphasis upon others' health and upon the civic aspects of our own health. Tests furnish us with the technic necessary to efficient living; civics, with the larger reason; natural law, with the "pillar of fire by night" to help us choose our path among habits and pleasures whose immediate results upon efficient living cannot easily be determined. Fashions, tastes, mannerisms, personal indulgences, have been left for Agassiz to deal with. Generally speaking, we all know of numerous acts committed and numerous acts omitted in our daily routine that convict us of not living up to our knowledge of physiology and hygiene,--wearing tight shoes or tight corsets, drinking strong coffee, smoking, reading while reclining, failing to insure clean air and clean bodies. Then there are other acts whose omission or commission violate no physical law so far as we can see, but whose unnaturalness we concede,--putting chalk on the eyebrows, wearing false hair or curious puffs, putting perfumery in the bath or on handkerchiefs, assuming artificial poses of body or mouth. These violations of natural law are forced upon us by "style" or "custom" or family convenience. When we come to choose between following fashions and disobeying them, we generally decide that it is better to do a foolish or slightly harmful thing than to occasion criticism, mirth, or even special notice by our dress or our abstemiousness. Last night I went to a dinner party at eight. I ate and ate a great variety of palatable foods that Nature Back never knew. After two hours of eating I imbibed for two hours the tobacco smoke of the gentlemen who made up the party. I knew that eight o'clock was too late for me to begin eating, that two hours was too long to eat, that the tobacco of others was bad for my health and for to-day's efficiency. All this I knew when I accepted the invitation to dinner. I went with no intention of preventing others from smoking or of lecturing my host or his chef or his guests for the unhygienic practices of our day. Yet the physical ills were more than offset by certain definite gains to the school children of New York that will result from last night's meeting. Natural law was abated in part. But I declined certain dishes that would not agree with me, helped myself sparingly of many dishes, avoided tobacco and wines, and by a three-mile walk in the open air, a bath, and a good long night's sleep have almost recovered my right to talk of the sacredness of natural law. Nature Back says I should not have gone to this dinner. But I was compelled to go. I know I am going to others. I cannot do my work unless I overdraw my current health account. Nature Fore tells me that effective coöperation with others will frequently require me to eat at the dinner hour of others, to retire at others' sleeping time, to wear what others will approve, to violate natural law. But Nature Fore also tells me how to build up a health reserve so that I can meet these emergencies without endangering my health credit. Nature Back demands "dress reform." Nature Fore tells me that I can march in step with my contemporaries without either attracting attention or discrediting and affronting natural law. Passion for the natural has effected numerous reforms in dress, diet, and social habits, until commerce provides a natural adaptation of practically every fashion. With regard to few things is it necessary to-day for any one who reads magazines to do violence to bodily health for fashion's sake. We may wear what we will, eat what we prefer, decline what is unnatural for us, without inviting censure. The debauches of those unfortunate people who live an unnatural, purposeless existence, affect such a small number that their laws need not be considered here. Natural law makes obedience to itself attractive; hence commerce is rapidly learning to cater to distaste for the unnatural. With few exceptions, only temporary concessions to unnatural living are required in order to dress and act conventionally. Nature Back throws little light upon conditions necessary for modern labor. It can do nothing but demand the abolition of the factory, the big store, the tenement, the school. Nature Fore says we cannot abolish the means of working out the highest forms of coöperation. But we can make them compatible with natural living. We can modify conditions so that earning a livelihood will not compel workers to violate natural law at any or all times. The greatest need of factory and tenement reform is for parents and teachers to make a religion of Nature Fore and to instill its principles in the minds of children. Parents and teachers must live the natural before they can make children love the natural. Parents and teachers cannot possibly be natural in this day, cannot live or love natural law unless they know the machinery by which their communities are combating conditions prejudicial to health, morals, and civic efficiency. INDEX Adenoids. See _Mouth breathing_ Administration, health: steps in evolution, 11-22; knowledge of needs, 220; machinery, 302-309; in combating alcoholism, 362; departments of health: (1) New York City, 26, 27, 47, 48, 61, 71, 84, 296-298, 302; (2) general, 265, 281 Advertisements: motives for, 8; for dental parlors, 100; for consumptives, 234; by physicians, 281; educational, in newspapers and magazines, 323; "no smoking" signs, 365; of patent medicines, 369; that promote health, 378-383 Agassiz, Louis, 398, 400 Air, night, 216. See _Fresh air_ Alcoholism, 343-362; compulsory instruction in, 3; insurance companies against, 7; disqualifies for railroad service, 193; depletes vitality, 201; results, 209; Hartley's fight against, 253; injures the tuberculous, 274; ineffective ways of combating, 343; incited by bad living conditions, 348; injury to negroes, 350; so-called moderate use, 358; labor unions blacklist drunkards, 361; social dangers, 386; mental hygiene, 392, 396 Animal sanitation, 252, 260, 307 Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, New York, 177, 236, 253 Babies. See _Milk_ Bathing: motives for, 8, 13; a social requirement, 14; cold-water, 214 Beauty, reason for health, 15 Bibliography: A Bureau of Child Hygiene (Bureau of Municipal Research), 298; Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood (MacDonald), 110; Aristocracy of Health (Henderson), 208; Bitter Cry of the Children (Spargo), 33, 167; Bulletins of Emmanuel Church, 391; Bureau of Municipal Research, publications, 298; Care of Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent Children (Folks), 174; Charities and the Commons, 325; Child Growth (Newsholme), 120; Children of the Nation (Gorst), 33; Children's Diseases, 326; Clean Milk for New York City, 255; clippings, 370, 382; white-plague scrapbook, 250; Committee on Physical Welfare of School Children, programme, 166, three studies, 168; Crusade against Tuberculosis (Flick), 229; Dangerous Trades (Oliver), 203; Dental Catechism, 94; Dentistry, lectures and treatises, 274; Deterioration, Physical, report on, 339; Development of the Child (Oppenheimer), 110; Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette, 326; Efficient Life (Gulick), 208; Environment of Child at School (North), 142; Pure Food (U.S. Department of Agriculture), 379; Good Health, 326; Health of the School Child (Mackenzie), 132; Heredity (Thompson), 336; How to Give Wisely, 355; International Congress, Tuberculosis, programme, 246-249; Journal of Nursing, 326; Making a Municipal Budget (Bureau of Municipal Research), 306; Milk Industry, 252; Municipal Sanitation in the United States (Chapin), 304; National Hospital Record, 326; New Basis of Civilization (Patten), 33; New Jersey Review of Charities and Corrections, 325; Pediatrics, 326; Physical Culture, 326; Poverty (Hunter), 167; press and magazines, 322-328; Prevention of Tuberculosis (Newsholme), 229; Principles of Relief (Devine), 174; Principles of Sanitary Science and the Public Health (Sedgwick), 304; Psychological Clinic, 106, 326, 330; Real Triumph of Japan (Seaman), 23; Religion and Medicine (Emmanuel Church), 391; reports of schools, 166; reports of schools and health, 310-321; reports of institutions and societies, 327; reports of state and national conferences of charities and corrections, 327; reports of United States bureau of labor, 203; Sanitation of Public Buildings (Gerhard), 139; School Reports and School Efficiency (Snedden and Allen), 311; Social Order and the Saloon (Fox), 351; Study of Children and their School Training (Warner), 110; Study of School Buildings in New York City, 289; Teeth and their Care (Hyatt), 94; Training of the Human Plant (Burbank), 120; Typhoid Fever (Whipple), 13, 16; Uncommercial Traveller (Dickens), 46; Unconscious Mind (Schofield), 110; Vital Statistics (Newsholme), 131 Biggs, Hermann M., M.D., 237, 251, 271, 274, 295 Boston, 34, 155, 161, 241, 250, 290, 395 Boston Society for the Relief and Study of Tuberculosis, 155 Boyd, Emma Garrett, 355 Brannan, John Winters, M.D., 240 Breath, bad, 360, 379 Brightness, abnormal, 104-106 Bronchitis, 67 Brookline, 34 Budget: should provide for cleansing, 61; and tuberculosis, 237; annual health programme, 306; reforms in New York City, 350 Burbank, Luther, 120 Bureau of Municipal Research, 298, 306 Butler, Nicholas Murray, LL.D., 330, 332 Cabot, Richard C., M.D., 181 Calmette's Eye Test, 238 Carnegie Foundation, 285 Caroline Rest, 70, 267 Catching diseases: cost of, 16; unenforced laws, 30; steps in eradicating, 31; germ sociology, 57, 71; favorable soil at school, 58; instruction concerning, 62; mouth a breeding ground for, 63; information for bathers, 64; dangers of, 131; reasons for national board of health, 135; cost of, in New York City, 272; remedies urged, 384 Charity Organization Society, New York, 236, 239 Chicago, 34 Chicken-pox, 64 Child Hygiene, Bureau of: working-paper tests, 192; established, New York City, 298; programme, 299 Child labor: compulsory school attendance, 140; welfare or age test, 142; movement's limitations, 185; national and local committees, 33, 192; physical-fitness tests, 194 Children's Aid Society, New York, 56, 93 Child-saving agencies: coöperation with schools, 174-183; do-nothingism in, 332 Chorea. See _Nervousness_ Christian Science, 276, 392 Christmas shopping, 227 Cigarettes. See _Tobacco_ Cincinnati, 118 Cleanliness: acquired taste, 14; beauty of, 96; personal uncleanliness, 210; cost of, 216; dry cleaning dangerous, 244; in fighting tuberculosis, 250 Cleveland, Ohio, 294 Clippings: scrapbook, 250; envelope method, 324; advertisements, 382 Coffee, strong, 401 Colds, 63-69 College, physical tests, 39 Committee on Physical Welfare of School Children, New York, 39-41, 166, 168, 178, 286, 290, 311 Compulsory laws: school hygiene, 3; purpose of, 33; registration of catching diseases, 57; removal of tuberculosis cases, 237; notification of tuberculosis, 237, 274; hygiene, for private schools, 283; to remove physical defects, 288; restricting alcoholism, 343 Conference on Summer Care of Babies, New York, 260 Congestion: evils avoided, 290; and alcoholism, 348 Conjunctivitis, 71. See _Eyes_ Connecticut's school reports, 318 Constipation, 210, 216, 347, 357 Consumption. See _Tuberculosis_ Corsets, 381, 401 Cost: of preventable diseases, 16; of bad breath, 98; of diseases to nation, 135; of tuberculosis, 245 Crampton, C. Ward, M.D., 129, 289 Dangerous trades, 191 Darlington, Thomas, M.D., 297 Death rates: of bronchitis, 67; of pneumonia, 67; how to reduce, 131 Defects, physical: index of community needs, 33-44; removable, of children, 22; schools manufacture, 139; income distribution, 169 Delinquency, and mouth breathing, 47 Dental Hygiene Council, 95 Dental sanitation, 89-103; surface for breeding germs, 63; dentists, 93; state organizations, 95; clinics needed, 171; insurance companies treat teeth, 204; family instruction, 245; indigestion, 272; early treatises, 274; advertising parlors, 281 Devine, Professor Edward T., 174 Diet: cooking lessons at home, 180; overeating, 201, 347; improper, 210; proper and regular, 212; adapted to need, 214, 401; kitchens, 267; irregular eating, 272, 347 Diet kitchens, 267 Diphtheria, 18, 65 Dispensaries and hospitals: dental supervision, 102; coöperate with schools, 174-183, 185; welfare nurse, 188; emergency, 227; to prevent duplication, 239; lack of, 240; teach baby feeding, 261; inefficient, 278; social interest of, 292 Doing things at school, 159-165; free meals, 44, 161, 171; may hurt, 181; cripple social agencies, 185, 189; danger of malpractice, 184, 189; analogous to model tenements, 186 Do-nothing ailments, 329-334 Ear trouble, 83-85; periodic tests for, 201, 207 Edinburgh, 70 Ellis Island, 238 Environment: health problem, 9; tests, 120, 320; injurious school, 139-150; effect on physique, 203; and tuberculosis, 229-251; do-nothing ailments, 329; within our control, 336; in combating liquor, 362 Epidemics, 18, 38 Epilepsy, 47, 49 Ergograph, 125-127 Erysipelas, 65 Ethics, professional, 81, 101, 281 Eugenics, and heredity, 336 European remedies, 159-165 Eye trouble, 72-82; in high school, 40; catching diseases, 69-71; caused by bad teeth, 89; eyeglasses, free, 161, 164, 171, 184; in business, 193; examination for adults, 201; tuberculin test, 238; inefficient inspection of, 300; teachers' test, 301 Examination, physical: of school children, 33-138; best test of health needs, 33-44; individual record of, 35, 312; Snellen test, 73, 77; of teachers, 153; for work certificates, 190-200, 237, 301; by railroads, 193; at West Point, 199; periodic after school, 201-207, 218, 228; semi-annual, 202; tuberculin tests, 240; stripped, at Leipsic, 289; follow-up work, 295-300; of teachers and sex hygiene, 389 Family: unit of social treatment, 174; examining parties, 237, 241; tuberculosis histories, 241 Fear and bodily disorders, 392 Flick, Lawrence F., M.D., 229 Follow-up work, 295-301 Fox, Hugh F., 351 Fresh air: others' standards of, 9; fiends, 66; outings, 176, 178; economic value of, 195; ventilation at school, 142; ventilation at home, 210; ventilation at work, 212; ventilation at sanatoriums, 214; ventilation at churches and theaters, 217. See _Air_ Georgia, 350 Germany, 160, 204 Germs, disease: in milk bottles, 14; isolation, 31; germ sociology, 57-71; dental sanitation, 89-103; locating germ factories, 238; tuberculosis, 234 Getting things done, 166-173; doing of highest kind, 183; study underlying causes, 189; by local agencies, 287 Glands, 88 Goler, George W., M.D., 196 Gorgas, William C., M.D., 59 Government. See _Administration_ Greenwich House, 287 Grenfell Association, 197 Grippe, 379 Gulick, Luther H., M.D., 123, 208 Habits of health, 208-217; combat tobacco, 364; mental hygiene, 394; and Nature Fore, 400 Hartley House, 287 Hartley, Robert M., 252 Havana, 60 Hawthorne Club, 287 Headache, 210 Heredity, 335-342 High schools need physical tests, 39 Hip trouble. See _Tuberculosis_ Home conditions: indexed by epidemics, 32; indexed at school, 33; among different incomes, 39; cooking instructions, 180; weighing parties, 241; score card, 337; promote alcoholism, 348 Hughes, Governor Charles E., 201 Hunter, Robert, 167 Hyatt, Thaddeus P., D.D.S., 94 Impetigo, 65 Income, 34, 38, 39 India, 108 Indigestion: anti-social, 10; due to teeth, 272 Individual record card, 35, 312-314 Industrial hygiene: educates laborers, 131; factory conditions, 221, 227; factory reforms, 403; employers, 3, 210, 218, 360, 367; employees, 202, 211, 219, 228, 360 Influenza, 65-68 Ingram, Helene, 177 Insomnia, 392 Inspection: of milk, 26, 259; score cards, 27, 29, 337; of school children, 43, 61, 296; of factories, 131; of milch cows, 260; of transmissible diseases, 295; of foods, 307 Instinct, motive to health, 12, 14, 94 International Congress on tuberculosis, 238, 245 Itch, 65 Japan, 23, 287, 309 Junior Sea Breeze, 267 Kansas City, 161 Kidney trouble, 217 Labrador, 197 Lavatories, public, 217 Laws: nonenforcement demoralizing, 4; define rights, 23; when not enforced, 25; should not injure health, 151; enforcement better than character, 219; regarding milk, 258; licensing practitioners, 280; need machinery, 303, 348; to control liquor, 343, 355; test of prohibition, 353; on patent medicine, 373; on pure foods, 379 Leipsic, 289 Louisiana, 350, 376 Lung trouble. See _Tuberculosis_ Machinery, health: unsatisfactory coordination, 296; necessary, 302-309; five elements, 303 Mackenzie, W. Leslie, M.D., 132 Magistrates: promote disorder, 173; enforce health laws, 303 Malnutrition, 35; income distribution, 39; signs and tests, 86; prevention of, 184; education of family, 241 Massachusetts, 74 Maxwell, Superintendent William H., 286, 288 Measles, 64 Mental hygiene, 391-397; blues, anti-social, 10; hospital welfare work, 182; moral clinics, 276, 291, 295; and insomnia, 392 Meyer, William, M.D., 47 Milk: unclean dairies, 10; scalding receptacles of, 17; carries typhoid, 18; inspector's outfit, 24; tests of protection, 25; score cards, 26, 259, 337; public should know, 219; fight for pure, 252-267; New York conferences, 255, 260; breast feeding, 266 Milk committee, New York, 258, 260 Minnesota, 45, 269 Misgovernment causes sickness, 10 Mitchell, S. Weir, M.D., 73 Montclair, 265 Mosquitoes, 59, 307 Motives, seven health, 11-22, 377 Mouth breathing, 45-56; and delinquency, 47; adenoid parties, 55; causes deafness, 83; injures baby teeth, 89; industrial disadvantage of, 195; in Labrador, 197; preventable defect, 272; inefficient inspection of, 300 National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, 236, 246 National Board of Health, 133, 292, 308 National Bureau of Labor, 199 National Bureau of Census, 305 National Bureau of Animal Industry, 306 National Bureau of Education, 171, 292 National Playground Association, 118 National School Hygiene Association, 139 Nature Fore and Nature Back, 398-403 Negroes and alcoholism, 350 Nervousness, 85; and school life, 108; physical defects, 110; preventable, 111; causes of, 112; habit, 111, 113; from tobacco, 363 Neurasthenia. See _Mental Hygiene_ New Jersey, 12 Newsholme, Arthur, M.D., 120, 131, 229, 241 New York City, 16, 25, 34 New York Juvenile Asylum, 47 New York state, 12, 24 New York State Charities Aid Association, 236, 242 Nicotinism. See _Tobacco_ Normal schools, 110 North, Professor Lila V., 142 Notification of diseases, 31, 41 Nuisances, 17, 18, 23, 366 Nurses at school, 230, 286, 293, 300. See _Milk_ Oliver, Thomas, 203 Orthopedics. See _Tuberculosis_ Ophthalmia, 65 Oppenheimer, Nathan, M.D., 110 Osteopathy, 275 Panama, 59 Parents: and school hygiene, 3; interested by examinations, 41; should coöperate with physician, 279; interested in school examinations, 297; need health reports, 310; heredity, 335-342; nicotinism, 368 Parks and playgrounds, 7, 32, 118, 122, 142, 186, 290, 294 Parochial schools, 189, 198 Patent medicines: evils of, 369-377; advertisements, 380 Patten, Professor Simon N., 9, 14, 33, 165 Pediculosis, 69-71 Pennsylvania, 311 Philadelphia, 34 Phthisis. See _Tuberculosis_ Physical training, 115-117; in New York City, 296; and sex hygiene, 387 Physician: preventive medicine, 268-282; and eyes, 81; semi-annual visit to, 204; self-advertisement, 378; school, 173, 286, 293, 315 Physiological age, 105, 289, 387 Pittsburgh, 269 Plague, 15, 57 Pneumonia, 67, 379 Preventable diseases: those not communicable, 272. See _Catching Diseases_ Private schools, 189, 198, 283, 291, 330 Prohibition laws, 348, 350, 355 Pro-slum motive, 19-20 Public Education Association, New York, 287, 298 Publicity, 45, 81, 99, 292, 310-321, 382 Quarantine, first, 15; national, 308 Records: of disease centers, 31; defective, 32; individual, 35, 312-314 Reform's failure, 349 Registration: of diseases, 31 Relief, material: sound principles of, 174; at school, 175, 179, 184; indiscriminate, harmful, 332 Richman, Julia, 172 Riggs disease, 92 Rights: political, 21; not enforced, 23-32; of workmen at work, 190; machinery for enforcing, 283-322 Riis, Jacob, 18 Ringworm, 65 Rochester, N.Y., 262, 266 Rome, 15 Roosevelt, Theodore, 60, 118 Rural districts: encourage disease, 13; compared, 32; physical defects, 74; schools unsanitary, 141; hygiene in Great Britain, 308 Russia, 108 Sage Foundation, 285 St. Vitus's dance, 111 Salmon, Professor Lucy M., 355 Scabies, 65. See _Itch_ Scarlatina, 65 Scarlet fever: thrives in slums, 18; signs and method of infection, 65; "peeling," 132; compulsory removal of cases, 240; germ carried in milk, 264 School hygiene: and employers, 3; instruction compulsory, 3-10; practice of, 5, 18; biological engineering, 139, 203, 339; departments of, 283-293; in New York City, 294, 296-301 Score cards, 27, 29, 259, 337 Scranton, 269 Sea Breeze fresh-air home, 176 Sea Breeze seaside hospital, 9, 240 Seaman, L.L., M.D., 23 Seattle, 161 Sedgwick, Professor William T., 304 Sex hygiene, 384-389 Sexual deviates, 182 Shoes, tight, 401 Sickness, preventable, cost of, 278 Sleep and vitality, 201, 272 Slum, a menace, 13, 20 Smallpox: epidemics great teachers, 6; conquered by vaccination, 7; neglected in rural Pennsylvania, 18; comes rarely to cities, 31; compulsory removal of cases, 240 Snedden, Professor David S., 33, 165, 311 Snellen eye test, 73, 77 Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, 384 Southern states, 351 Spargo, John, 33, 167 Spitting, 223, 235 State activity, 4, 73, 121, 236, 292, 306 Statistics, object of, 131, 134, 333 Strauss, Nathan, 260 Streets, 15, 122, 217, 254, 348 Study hours, too long, 287 Sweating, 152, 211 Taxes, taxpayers. See _Budget_ Teacher's health: tests of, 152-158 Teachers: social work, 172; health passport, 202; for tuberculous pupils, 237; excluded when tuberculous, 242; and physicians, 279; physical examination of, 284; use of alcohol, 358; cigarettes, 368; use clippings, 382 Teeth. See _Dental Sanitation_ Temperance. See _Alcoholism_ Tenement reforms, 20, 186, 209, 304, 403 Thompson, J. Arthur, 336 Tobacco: instruction at school, 3; economic injuries of, 201; forbidden to employees, 210; evils of nicotinism, 363-368, 386 Tonsils, hypertrophied, 44 Trachoma, 69-71 Trudeau, E.L., M.D., 274 Tuberculosis: pupils excluded from school because of, 65; aggravated by colds, 68; bone tuberculosis, 87, 88, 236; and bad teeth, 90, 99; in teachers, 153; examination for working papers, 191; periodical examination for, 201; last days of, 229-251; eye and skin tests for, 240; tests of cows, 260; carried in milk, 264; out-of-door treatment, 274; only predisposition to, inherited, 335 Typhoid: a rural disease, 13; carried in milk, 264 University Extension Society, 178 Vacation schools, playgrounds, 109, 296 Veiller, Lawrence, 9 Vitality tests and statistics, 124-138 Water, drinking: reason for works, 15; factories pollute, 17; fountains, 217; public responsibility for, 226; protecting sources, 307 Welfare work, 7, 221-225 West Point, 199 Wheeler, Herbert L., D.D.S., 93 Whipple, George C., Ph. D., 13, 16 White plague. See _Tuberculosis_ Whooping cough, 64 Williams, Alida S., 72, 122 Williams, Linsly R., M.D., 241 Work: physical examination for working papers, 190-200, 285; healthful habits, 208-217; unpatented medicine, 334. See _Industrial Hygiene_ Young Men's Christian Association, 227 * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | Page 60: heath replaced with health | | | | Text moved to avoid splitting paragraphs with tables: | | | | First half of last paragraph on page 25, moved to page | | 29, following Table III and Table IV on pages 26 to 28. | | First half of last paragraph on page 63, moved to page | | 66, following Table VIII on pages 64 to 65. | | First half of last paragraph on page 181, moved to page | | 183, following Illustration on page 182. | | Continuation of paragraph begun on page 222, moved from | | page 225 to the end of the paragraph on page 222, to | | precede text ads/Illustrations on pages 223 and 224. | | Continuation of paragraph begun on page 254, moved from | | page 258 to the end of the paragraph on page 254, to | | precede Conference information on pages 255 to 257. | | First half of last paragraph on page 337, moved to page | | 340, following Score Cards on pages 338 and 339. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * 
21965	----	(This file was produced from images from the Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition and History, Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University) PREVENTABLE DISEASES BY WOODS HUTCHINSON, A.M., M.D. _Author of "Studies in Human and Comparative Pathology," "Instinct and Health," etc., etc. Clinical Professor of Medicine, New York Polyclinic, late Lecturer in Comparative Pathology, London Medical Graduates College and University of Buffalo_ BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1907, 1908 AND 1909, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY WOODS HUTCHINSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published November 1909_ FIFTH IMPRESSION * * * * * By Woods Hutchinson THE CONQUEST OF CONSUMPTION. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.00 _net_. Postage extra. PREVENTABLE DISEASES. 12mo, $1.50 _net_. Postage 13 cents. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK * * * * * CONTENTS I. The Body-Republic and its Defense 1 II. Our Legacy of Health: the Power of Heredity in the Prevention of Disease 31 III. The Physiognomy of Disease: what a Doctor can tell from Appearances 55 IV. Colds and how to catch Them 83 V. Adenoids, or Mouth-Breathing: their Cause and their Consequences 103 VI. Tuberculosis, a Scotched Snake. I 123 VII. Tuberculosis, a Scotched Snake. II 140 VIII. The Unchecked Great Scourge: Pneumonia 174 IX. The Natural History of Typhoid Fever 198 X. Diphtheria: the Modern Moloch 222 XI. The Herods of Our Day: Scarlet Fever, Measles, and Whooping-Cough 243 XII. Appendicitis, or Nature's Remnant Sale 267 XIII. Malaria: the Pestilence that walketh in Darkness; the greatest Foe of the Pioneer 289 XIV. Rheumatism: what it Is, and particularly what it Isn't 311 XV. Germ-Foes that follow the Knife, or Death under the Finger-Nail 331 XVI. Cancer, or Treason in the Body-State 350 XVII. Headache: the most useful Pain in the World 367 XVIII. Nerves and Nervousness 387 XIX. Mental Influence in Disease, or how the Mind affects the Body 411 Index 439 PREVENTABLE DISEASES CHAPTER I THE BODY-REPUBLIC AND ITS DEFENSE The human body as a mechanism is far from perfect. It can be beaten or surpassed at almost every point by some product of the machine-shop or some animal. It does almost nothing perfectly or with absolute precision. As Huxley most unexpectedly remarked a score of years ago, "If a manufacturer of optical instruments were to hand us for laboratory use an instrument so full of defects and imperfections as the human eye, we should promptly decline to accept it and return it to him. But," as he went on to say, "while the eye is inaccurate as a microscope, imperfect as a telescope, crude as a photographic camera, it is all of these in one." In other words, like the body, while it does nothing accurately and perfectly, it does a dozen different things well enough for practical purposes. It has the crowning merit, which overbalances all these minor defects, of being able to adapt itself to almost every conceivable change of circumstances. This is the keynote of the surviving power of the human species. It is not enough that the body should be prepared to do good work under ordinary conditions, but it must be capable, if needs be, of meeting extraordinary ones. It is not enough for the body to be able to take care of itself, and preserve a fair degree of efficiency in health, under what might be termed favorable or average circumstances, but it must also be prepared to protect itself and regain its balance in disease. The human automobile in its million-year endurance-run has had to learn to become self-repairing; and well has it learned its lesson. Not only, in the language of the old saw, is there "a remedy for every evil under the sun," but in at least eight cases out of ten that remedy will be found within the body itself. Generations ago this self-balancing, self-repairing power was recognized by the more thoughtful fathers in medicine and even dignified by a name in their pompous Latinity--the _vis medicatrix naturæ_, the healing power of nature. In the new conception of disease, our drugs, our tonics, our prescriptions and treatments, are simply means of rousing this force into activity, assisting its operations, or removing obstacles in its way. This remedial power does not imply any gift of prophecy on nature's part, nor is it proof of design, or beneficent intention. It is rather one of those blind reactions to certain stimuli, tending to restore the balance of the organism, much as that interesting, new scientific toy, the gyroscope car, will respond to pressure exerted or weight placed upon one side by rising on that side, instead of tipping over. Let the onslaught of disease be sufficiently violent and unexpected, and nature will fail to respond in any way. Moreover, we and our intelligences are a product of nature and a part of her remedial powers. So there is nothing in the slightest degree irrational or inconsistent in our attempting to assist in the process. However, a great, broad, consoling and fundamental fact remains: that in a vast majority of diseases which attack humanity, under ninety per cent of the unfavorable influences which affect us, nature will effect a cure if not too much interfered with. As the old proverb has it, "A man at forty is either a fool or a physician"; and nature is a good deal over forty and has never been accused of lacking intelligence. In the first place, nature must have acquired a fair knowledge of practical medicine, or at least a good working basis for it, from the fact that the body, in the natural processes of growth and activity, is perpetually manufacturing poisons for its own tissues. In this age of sanitary reform, we are painfully aware that the most frequent causes of human disease are the accumulations about us of the waste products of our own kitchens, barns, and factories. The "bad air" which we hear so frequently and justly denounced as a cause of disease, is air which we have ourselves polluted. This same process has been going on within the body for millions of years. No sooner did three or four cells begin to cling together, to form an organism, a body, than the waste products of the cells in the interior of the group began to form a source of danger for the others. If some means of getting rid of these could not be devised, the group would destroy itself, and the experiment of coöperation, of colony-formation, of organization in fact, would be a failure. Hence, at a very early period we find the development of the rudiments of systems of body-sewerage, providing for the escape of waste poisons through the food-tube, through the kidneys, through the gills and lungs, through the sweat glands of the skin. So that when the body is confronted by actual disease, it has all ready to its hand a remarkably effective and resourceful system of sanitary appliances--sewer-flushing, garbage-burning, filtration. In fact, this is precisely what it does when attacked by poisons from without: it neutralizes and eliminates them by the same methods which it has been practicing for millions of years against poisons from within. Take, for instance, such a painfully familiar and unheroic episode as an attack of colic. It makes little difference whether the attack is due to the swallowing of some mineral poison, like lead or arsenic, or the irritating juice of some poisonous plant or herb, or to the every-day accident of including in the menu some article of diet which was beginning to spoil or decay, and which contained the bacteria of putrefaction or their poisonous products. The reaction of defense is practically the same, varying only with the violence and the character of the poison. If the dose of poisonous substances be unusually large or virulent, nature may short-circuit the whole attack by causing the outraged stomach to reject its contents. The power of "playing Jonah" is a wonderful safety-valve. If the poison be not sufficiently irritating thus to short-circuit its own career, it may get on into the intestines before the body thoroughly wakes up to its presence. This part of the food-tube being naturally geared to discharge its contents downward, the simplest and easiest thing is to turn in a hurry call and cut down the normal schedule from hours to minutes, with the familiar result of an acute diarrh[oe]a. Both vomiting and purging are defensive actions on nature's part, remedies instead of diseases. Yet we are continually regarding and treating them as if they were diseases in themselves. Nothing could be more irrational than to stop a diarrh[oe]a before it has accomplished its purpose. Intelligent physicians now assist it instead of trying to check it in its early stages; and paradoxical as it may sound, laxatives are often the best means of stopping it. It is only the excess of this form of nature's house-cleaning which needs to be checked. Many of the popular Colic Cures, Pain-Relievers, and "Summer Cordials" contain opium which, while it relieves the pain and stops the discharge, simply locks up in the system the very poisons which it was trying to get rid of. Laxatives, intestinal antiseptics, and bowel irrigations have almost taken the place of opiates in the treatment of these conditions in modern medicine. We try to help nature instead of thwarting her. Supposing that the poison be of more insidious form, a germ or a ptomaine, for instance, which slips past these outer "firing-out" defenses of the food-tube and arouses no suspicion of its presence until it has been partially digested and absorbed into the blood. Again, resourceful nature is ready with another line of defense. It was for a long time a puzzle why every drop of the blood containing food and its products absorbed from the alimentary food-canal had to be carried, often by a most roundabout course, to and through the liver, before it could reach any part of the general system. Here was the largest and most striking organ in the body, and it was as puzzling as it was large. We knew in some crude way that it "made blood," that it prepared the food-products for use by the body-cells, and that it secreted the bile; but this latter secretion had little real digestive value, and the other changes seemed hardly important enough to demand that every drop of the blood coming from the food-tube should pass through this custom-house. Now, however, we know that in addition to its other actions, the liver is a great poison-sponge or toxin-filter, for straining out of the blood poisonous or injurious materials absorbed from the food, and converting them into harmless substances. It is astonishing what a quantity of these poisons, whether from the food or from germs swallowed with it, the liver is capable of dealing with--destroying them, converting them, and acting as an absolute barrier to their passage into the general system. But sometimes it is overwhelmed by appalling odds; some of the invaders slip through its lines into the general circulation, producing headache, backache, fever, and a "dark-brown taste in the mouth"; and, behold, we are bilious, and proceed to blame the poor liver. We used to pour in remedies to "stir it up," to "work on it"--which was about as rational as whipping a horse when he is down, instead of cutting his harness or taking his load off. Nowadays we stop the supply of further food-poisons by stopping eating, assist nature in sweeping out or neutralizing the enemies that are still in the alimentary canal, flush the body with pure water, put it at rest--and trust the liver. Biliousness is a sign of an overworked liver. If it wasn't working at all, we shouldn't be bilious: we should be dead, or in a state of collapse. Moral: Don't rush for some remedy with which to club into insensibility every symptom of disease as soon as it puts in an appearance. Give nature a little chance to show what she intends to do before attempting to stop her by dosing yourself with some pain-reliever or colic cure. Don't trust her too blindly, for the best of things may become bad in extremes, and the body may become so panic-stricken as to keep on throwing overboard, not merely the poisons, but its necessary daily food, if the process be allowed to continue too long. This is where the doctor comes in. This is the point at which it takes brains to succeed in the treatment of disease--to decide just how far nature knows what she is doing, even in her most violent expulsive methods, and is to be helped; and just when she has lost her head, or got into a bad habit, and must be thwarted. This much we feel sure of, and it is one of the keynotes of the attitude of modern medicine, that a large majority of the symptoms of disease are really nature's attempts to cure it. This is admirably shown in our modern treatment of fevers. These we now know to be due to the infection of the body by more or less definitely recognized disease-germs or organisms. Fever is a complicated process, and we are still in the dark upon many points in regard to it, but we are coming more and more firmly to the conclusion that most of its symptoms are a part of, or at least incidents in, the fight of the body against the invading army. The flushed and reddened skin is due to the pumping of large quantities of blood through its mesh, in order that the poisons may be got rid of through the perspiration. The rapid pulse shows the vigor with which the heart is driving the blood around the body, to have its poisons neutralized in the liver, burned up in the lungs, poured out by the kidneys and the skin. The quickened breathing is the putting on of more blast in the lung poison-crematory. It is possible that even the rise of temperature has an injurious effect upon the invading germs or assists the body in their destruction. In the past we have blindly fought all of these symptoms. We shut our patients up in stove-heated rooms with windows absolutely closed, for fear that they would "catch cold." We took off the sheets and piled blankets upon the bed, setting a special watch to see that the wretched sufferer did not kick them off. We discouraged the drinking of water and insisted on all drinks that were taken being hot or lukewarm. Nowadays all this is changed. We throw all the windows wide-open, and even put our patients out of doors to sleep in the open air, whether it be typhoid, tuberculosis, or pneumonia; knowing that not only they will not "catch cold," but that, as their hurried breathing indicates, they need all the oxygen they can possibly get, to burn up the poison poured out in the lungs and from the skin. We encourage the patient to drink all the cool, pure water he will take, sometimes gallons in a day, knowing that his thirst is an indication for flushing and flooding all the great systems of the body sewers. Instead of smothering him in blankets, we put him into cold packs, or put him to soak in cool water. In short, we trust nature instead of defying her, coöperate with her in place of fighting her,--and we have cut down the death-rate of most fevers fifty to seventy-five per cent already. Plenty of pure, cool water internally, externally, and eternally, rest, fresh air, and careful feeding, are the best febrifuges and antipyretics known to modern medicine. All others are frauds and simply smother a symptom without relieving its cause, with the exception of quinine in malaria, mercury, and the various antitoxins in their appropriate diseases, which act directly upon the invading organism. Underneath all this storm and stress of the fever paroxysm, nature is quietly at work elaborating her antidote. In some marvelous fashion, which we do not even yet fully understand, the cells of the body are producing in ever-increasing quantities an _anti-body_, or _antitoxin_, which will unite with the toxin or poison produced by the hostile germs and render it entirely harmless. By a curious paradox of the process, it does not kill the germs themselves. It may not even stop their further multiplication. Indeed, it utilizes part of their products in the formation of the antitoxin; but it domesticates them, as it were--turns them from dangerous enemies into harmless guests. The treaty between these germs and the body, however, is only of the "most-favored-nation" class; for let these tamed and harmless friends of the family escape and enter the body of another human being, and they will attack it as virulently as ever. Now, where and how did nature ever succeed in getting the rehearsal and the practice necessary to build up such an extraordinary and complicated system of defense as this? Take your microscope and look at a drop of fluid from the mouth, the gums, the throat, the stomach, the bowels, and you will find it simply swarming with bacteria, bacilli, and cocci, each species of which numbers its billions. There are thirty-three species which inhabit the mouth and gums alone! We are literally alive with them; but most of them are absolutely harmless, and some of them probably slightly helpful in the processes of digestion. In fevers and infections the body merely applies to disease-germs the tricks which it has learned in domesticating these millions of harmless vegetable inhabitants. Still more curious--there is a distinct parallel between the method in which food-materials are split up and prepared for assimilation by the body, and the method adopted in breaking up and neutralizing the toxins of disease-germs. It is now known that poisons are formed in the process of digesting and absorbing the simplest and most wholesome foods; and the liver uses the skill which it has gained in dealing with these "natural poisons" in disposing of the toxins of germs. When a fever has run its course, as we now know nearly all infections do, within periods ranging from three or four days to as many weeks, it simply means that it has taken the liver and the other police-cells this length of time to handle the rioters and turn them into peaceable and law-abiding, even though not well-disposed citizens. In this process the forces of law and order can be materially helped by skillful and intelligent coöperation. But it takes brains to do it and avoid doing more harm than good. It requires far more intelligence on the part of the doctor, the nurse, or the mother, skillfully to help nature than it did blindly to fight her. This is what doctors and nurses are trained for nowadays, and they are of use in the sick-room simply because they have devoted more time and money to the study of these complicated processes than you have. Don't imagine that calling in the doctor is going to interfere with the natural course of the disease, or rob the patient of some chance he might have had of recovering by himself. On the contrary, it will simply give nature and the constitution of the patient a better chance in the struggle, probably shorten it, and certainly make it less painful and distressing. If these symptoms of the summer fevers and fluxes are indicative of nature's attempts to cure, those of the winter's coughs and colds are no less clearly so. As we walk down the streets, we see staring at us in large letters from a billboard, "_Stop that Cough! It is Killing you!_" Yet few things could be more obvious to even the feeblest intelligence, than that this "killing" cough is simply an attempt on the part of the body to expel and get rid of irritating materials in the upper air-passages. As long as your larynx and windpipe are inflamed or tickled by disease-germs or other poisons, your body will do its best to get rid of them by coughing, or, if they swarm on the mucous membrane of the nose, by sneezing. To attempt to stop either coughing or sneezing without removing the cause is as irrational as putting out a switch-light without closing the switch. Though this, like other remedial processes, may go to extremes and interfere with sleep, or upset the stomach, within reasonable limits one of the best things to do when you have a cold is to cough. When patients with severe inflammations of the lungs become too weak or too deeply narcotized to cough, then attacks of suffocation from the accumulation of mucus in the air-tubes are likely to occur at any time. Young children who cannot cough properly, not having got the mechanism properly organized as yet, have much greater difficulty in keeping their bronchial tubes clear in bronchitis or pneumonia than have grown-ups. Most colds are infectious, like the fevers, and like them run their course, after which the cough will subside along with the rest of the symptoms. But simply stopping the cough won't hasten the recovery. Most popular "Cough-Cures" benumb the upper throat and stop the tickling; smother the symptoms without touching the cause. Many contain opium and thus load the system with two poisons instead of one. Lastly, in the realm of the nervous system, take that commonest of all ills that afflict humanity--headache. Surely, this is not a curative symptom or a blessing in disguise, or, if so, it is exceedingly well disguised. And yet it unquestionably has a preventive purpose and meaning. Pain, wherever found, is nature's abrupt command, "Halt!" her imperative order to stop. When you have obeyed that command, you have taken the most important single step towards the cure. _A headache always means something_--overwork, under-ventilation, eye-strain, underfeeding, infection. Some error is being committed, some bad physical habit is being dropped into. There are a dozen different remedies that will stop the pain, from opium and chloroform down to the coal-tar remedies (phenacetin, acetanilid, etc.) and the bromides. But not one of them "cures," in the sense of doing anything toward removing the cause. In fact, on the contrary they make the situation worse by enabling the sufferer to keep right on repeating the bad habit, deprived of nature's warning of the harm that he is doing to himself. As the penalties of this continued law-breaking pile up, he requires larger and larger doses of the deadening drug, until finally he collapses, poisoned either by his own fatigue-products or by the drugs which he has been taking to deaden him against their effect. In fine, follow nature's hints whenever she gives them: treat pain by rest, infections by fresh air and cleanliness, the digestive disturbances by avoiding their cause and helping the food-tube to flush itself clean; keep the skin clean, the muscles hard, and the stomach well filled--and you will avoid nine-tenths of the evils which threaten the race. The essence of disease consists, not in either the kind or the degree of the process concerned, but only in its relations to the general balance of activities of the organism, to its "resulting in discomfort, inefficiency, or danger," as one of our best-known definitions has it. Disease, then, is not absolute, but purely relative; there is no single tissue-change, no group even of changes or of symptoms, of which we can say, "This is essentially morbid, this is everywhere and at all times disease." Our attainment of any clear view of the essential nature of disease was for a long time hindered, and is even still to some degree clogged, by the standpoint from which we necessarily approached and still approach it, not for the study of the disease itself, but for the relief of its urgent symptoms. Disease presents itself as an enemy to attack, in the concrete form of a patient to be cured; and our best efforts were for centuries almost wasted in blind, and often irrational, attempts to remove symptoms in the shortest possible time, with the most powerful remedies at our disposal, often without any adequate knowledge whatever of the nature of the underlying condition whose symptoms we were combating, or any suspicion that these might be nature's means of relief, or that "haply we should be found to fight against God." There was sadly too much truth in Voltaire's bitter sneer, "Doctors pour drugs of which they know little, into bodies of which they know less"; and I fear the sting has not entirely gone out of it even in this day of grace. And yet, relative and non-essential as all our definitions now recognize disease to be, it is far enough (God knows) from being a mere negative abstraction, a colorless "error by defect." It has a ghastly individuality and deadly concreteness,--nay, even a vindictive aggressiveness, which have both fascinated and terrorized the imagination of the race in all ages. From the days of "the angel of the pestilence" to the coming of the famine and the fever as unbidden guests into the tent of Minnehaha; from "the pestilence that walketh in darkness" to the plague that still "stalks abroad" in even the prosaic columns of our daily press, there has been an irresistible impression, not merely of the positiveness, but even of the personality of disease. And no clear appreciation can possibly be had of our modern and rational conceptions of disease without at least a statement of the earlier conceptions growing out of this personifying tendency. Absurd as it may seem now, it was the legitimate ancestor of modern pathogeny, and still holds well-nigh undisputed sway over the popular mind, and much more than could be desired over that of the profession. The earliest conception of disease of which we have any record is, of course, the familiar Demon Theory. This is simply a mental magnification of the painfully personal, and even vindictive, impression produced upon the mind of the savage by the ravages of disease. And certainly we of the profession would be the last to blame him for jumping to such a conclusion. Who that has seen a fellow being quivering and chattering in the chill-stage of a pernicious malarial seizure, or tossing and raving in the delirium of fever, or threatening to rupture his muscles and burst his eyes from their sockets in the convulsions of tetanus or uræmia, can wonder for a moment that the impression instinctively arose in the untutored mind of the Ojibwa that the sufferer was actually in the grasp, and trying to escape from the clutch, of some malicious but invisible power? And from this conception the treatment logically followed. The spirits which possessed the patient, although invisible, were supposed to be of like passions with ourselves, and to be affected by very similar influences; hence dances, terrific noises, beatings and shakings of the unfortunate victim, and the administration of bitter and nauseous messes, with the hope of disgusting the demon with his quarters, were the chief remedies resorted to. And while to-day such conceptions and their resultant methods are simply grounds for laughter, and we should probably resent the very suggestion that there was any connection whatever between the Demon Theory and our present practice, yet, unfortunately for our pride, the latter is not only the direct lineal, historic descendant of the former, but bears still abundant traces of its lowly origin. It will, of course, be admitted at once that the ancestors of our profession, historically, the earliest physicians, were the priest, the Shaman, and the conjurer, who even to this day in certain tribes bear the suggestive name of "medicine men." Indeed, this grotesque individual was neither priest nor physician, but the common ancestor of both, and of the scientist as well. And, even if the history of this actual ancestry were unknown, there are scores of curious survivals in the medical practice of this century, even of to-day, which testify to the powerful influence of this conception. The extraordinary and disgraceful prevalence of bleeding scarcely fifty years ago, for instance; the murderous doses of calomel and other violent purges; the indiscriminate use of powerful emetics like tartar emetic and ipecac; the universal practice of starving or "reducing" fevers by a diet of slops, were all obvious survivals of the expulsion-of-the-demon theory of treatment. Their chief virtue lay in their violence and repulsiveness. Even to-day the tendency to regard mere bitterness or distastefulness as a medicinal property in itself has not entirely died out. This is the chief claim of quassia, gentian, calumbo, and the "simple bitters" generally, to a place in our official lists of remedies. Even the great mineral-water fad, which continues to flourish so vigorously, owed its origin to the superstition that springs which bubbled or seethed were inhabited by spirits (of which the "troubling of the waters" in the Pool of Bethesda is a familiar illustration). The bubble and (in both senses) "infernal" taste gave them their reputation, the abundant use of pure spring water both internally and externally works the cure, assisted by the mountain air of the "_Bad_," and we sapiently ascribe the credit to the salts. Nine-tenths of our cells are still submarine organisms, and water is our greatest panacea. Then came the great "humoral" or "vital fluid" theory of disease which ruled during the Middle Ages. According to this, all disease was due to the undue predominance in the body of one of the four great vital fluids,--the bile, the blood, the nervous "fluid," and the lymph,--and must be treated by administering the remedy which will get rid of or counteract the excess of the particular vital fluid in the system. The principal traces of this belief are the superstition of the four "temperaments," the _bilious_, the _sanguine_, the _nervous_, and the _lymphatic_, and our pet term "biliousness," so useful in explaining any obscure condition. Last of all, in the fullness of time,--and an incredibly late fullness it was,--under the great pioneer Virchow, who died less than a decade ago, was developed the great cellular theory, a theory which has done more to put disease upon a rational basis, to substitute logic for fancy, and accurate reasoning for wild speculation, than almost any discovery since the dawn of history. Its keynote simply is, that every disturbance to which the body is liable can be ultimately traced to some disturbance or disease of the vital activities of the individual cells of which it is made up. The body is conceived of as a cell-state or cell-republic, composed of innumerable plastid citizens, and its government, both in health and disease, is emphatically a government "of the cells, by the cells, for the cells." At first these cell-units were regarded simply as geographic sections, as it were, sub-divisions of the tissues, bearing much the same relation to the whole body as the bricks of the wall do to the building, or, from a little broader view, as the Hessians of a given regiment to the entire army. They were merely the creatures of the organism as a whole, its servants who lived but to obey its commands and carry out its purposes, directed in purely arbitrary and despotic fashion by the lordly brain and nerve-ganglia, which again are directed by the mind, and that again by a still higher power. In fact, they were regarded as, so to speak, individuals without personality, mere slaves and helots under the ganglion-oligarchy which was controlled by the tyrant mind, and he but the mouthpiece of one of the Olympians. But time has changed all that, and already the triumphs of democracy have been as signal in biology as they have been in politics, and far more rapid. The sturdy little citizen-cells have steadily but surely fought their way to recognition as the controlling power of the entire body-politic, have forced the ganglion-oligarchy to admit that they are but delegates, and even the tyrant mind to concede that he rules by their sufferance alone. His power is mainly a veto, and even that may be overruled by the usual two-thirds vote. In fact, if we dared to presume to criticise this magnificent theory of disease, we would simply say that it is not "cellular" enough, that it hardly as yet sufficiently recognizes the individuality, the independence, the power of initiative, of the single constituent cell. It is still a little too apt to assume, because a cell has donned a uniform and fallen into line with thousands of its fellows to form a tissue in most respects of somewhat lower rank than that originally possessed by it in its free condition, that it has therefore surrendered all of its rights and become a mere thing, a lever or a cog in the great machine. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I firmly believe that our clearest insight into and firmest grasp upon the problems of pathology will come from a recognition of the fact that, no matter how stereotyped, or toil-worn, or even degraded, the individual cells of any tissue may have become, they still retain most of the rights and privileges which they originally possessed in their free and untrammeled am[oe]boid stage, just as in the industrial community of the world about us. And, although their industry in behalf of and devotion to the welfare of the entire organism is ever to be relied upon, and almost pathetic in its intensity, yet it has its limits, and when these have been transgressed they are as ready to "fight for their own hand," regardless of previous conventional allegiance, as ever were any of their ancestors on seashore or rivulet-marge. And such rebellions are our most terrible disease-processes, cancer and sarcoma. More than this: while, perhaps, in the majority of cases the cell does yeoman service for the benefit of the body, in consideration of the rations and fuel issued to it by the latter, yet in many cases we have the curious, and at first sight almost humiliating, position of the cell absorbing and digesting whatever is brought to it, and only turning over the surplus or waste to the body. It would almost seem as if our lordly _Ego_ was living upon the waste-products, or leavings, of the cells lining its food-tube. Let us take a brief glance at the various specializations and trade developments, which have taken place in the different groups of cells, and see to what extent the profound modifications which many of them have undergone are consistent with their individuality and independence, and also whether such specialization can be paralleled by actually separate and independent organisms existing in animal communities outside of the body. First of all, because furthest from the type and degraded to the lowest level, we find the great masses of tissue welded together by lime-salts, which form the foundation masses, leverage-bars, and protection plates for the higher tissues of the body. Here the cells, in consideration of food, warmth, and protection guaranteed to themselves and their heirs for ever by the body-state, have, as it were, deliberately surrendered their rights of volition, of movement, and higher liberties generally, and transformed themselves into masses of inorganic material by soaking every thread of their tissues in lime-salts and burying themselves in a marble tomb. Like Esau, they have sold their birthright for a mess of "potash," or rather lime; and if such a class or caste could be invented in the external industrial community, the labor problem and the ever-occurring puzzle of the unemployed would be much simplified. And yet, petrified and mummified as they have become, they are still emphatically alive, and upon the preservation of a fair degree of vigor in them depends entirely the strength and resisting power of the mass in which they are embedded, and of which they form scarcely a third. Destroy the vitality of its cells, and the rock-like bone will waste away before the attack of the body-fluids like soft sandstone under the elements. Shatter it, or twist it out of place, and it will promptly repair itself, and to a remarkable degree resume its original directions and proportions. So little is this form of change inconsistent with the preservation of individualism, that we actually find outside of the body an exactly similar process, occurring in individual and independent animals, in the familiar drama of coral-building. The coral polyp saturates itself with the lime-salts of the sea-water, much as the bone-corpuscles with those of the blood and lymph, and thus protects itself in life and becomes the flying buttress of a continent in death. In the familiar connective-tissue, or "binding-stuff," we find a process similar in kind but differing in the degree, so to speak, of its degradation. The quivering responsiveness of the protoplasm of the am[oe]boid ancestral cell has transformed itself into tough, stringy bands and webs for the purpose of binding together the more delicate tissues of the body. It has retained more of its rights and privileges, and consequently possesses a greater amount of both biological and pathological initiative. In many respects purely mechanical in its function, fastening the muscles to the bones, the bones to each other, giving toughness to the great skin-sheet, and swinging in hammock-like mesh the precious brain-cell or potent liver-lobule, it still possesses and exercises for the benefit of the body considerable powers of discretion and aggressive vital action. Through its activity chiefly is carried out that miracle of human physiology, the process of repair. By the transformation of its protoplasm the surplus food-materials of the times of plenty are stored away within its cell-wall against the time of stress. Whatever emergency may arise, nature, whatever other forces she may be unable to send to the rescue, can always depend upon the connective-tissues to meet it; and, of course, as everywhere the medal of honor has its reverse side, their power for evil is as distinguished as their power for good. From their ranks are recruited a whole army of those secessions from and rebellions against the body at large--the tumors, from the treacherous and deadly sarcoma, or "soft cancer," to the harmless fatty tumor, as well as the tubercle, the gumma of syphilis, the interstitial fibrosis of Bright's disease. They are the sturdy farmers and ever ready "minute-men" of the cell-republic, and we find their prototype and parallel in the external world, both in material structure and degree of vitality, in the well-known sponge and its colonies. Next in order, and, in fact, really forming a branch of the last, we find the great group of storage-tissues, the granaries or bankers of the body-politic, distinguished primarily, like the capitalist class elsewhere, by an inordinate appetite, not to say greed. They sweep into their interior all the food-materials which are not absolutely necessary for the performance of the vital function of the other cells. These they form first into protoplasm, and then by a simple degenerative process it is transformed, "boiled down" as it were, into a yellow hydrocarbon which is capable of storage for practically an indefinite period. Not a very exalted function, and yet one of great importance to the welfare of the entire body, for, like the Jews of the Middle Ages, the fat-cells, possessing an extraordinary appetite for and faculty of acquiring surplus wealth in times of plenty, can easily be robbed of it and literally sucked dry in times of scarcity by any other body-cell which happens to need it, especially by the belligerent military class of muscle-cells. In fever or famine, fat is the first element of our body-mass to disappear; so that Proudhon would seem to have some biological basis for his demand for the _per capita_ division of the fortunes of millionaires. And yet, rid the fat-cell of the weight of his sordid gains, gaunt him down, as it were, like a hound for the wolf-trail, and he becomes at once an active and aggressive member of the binding-stuff group, ready for the repair of a wound or the barring out of a tubercle-bacillus. And this form of specialization has also its parallel outside of the body in one of the classes in a community of Mexican ants, whose most distinguishing feature is an enormously distended [oe]sophagus, capable of containing nearly double the weight of the entire remainder of the body. They are neither soldiers nor laborers, but accompany the latter in their honey-gathering excursions, and as the spoils are collected they are literally packed full of the sweets by the workers. When distended to their utmost capacity they fall apparently into a semi-comatose condition, are carried into the ant-hill, and hung up by the hind legs in a specially prepared chamber, in which (we trust) enjoyable position and state they are left until their contents are needed for the purposes of the community, when they are waked up, compelled to disgorge, and resume their ordinary life activities until the next season's honey-gathering begins. It scarcely need be pointed out what an unspeakable boon to the easily discouraged and unlucky the introduction of such a class as this into the human industrial community would be, especially if this method of storage could be employed for certain liquids. Another most important class in the cell-community is the great group of the blood-corpuscles, which in some respects appear to maintain their independence and freedom to a greater degree than almost any other class which can be found in the body. While nearly all other cells have become packed or felted together so as to form a fixed and solid tissue, these still remain entirely free and unattached. They float at large in the blood-current, much as their original ancestor, the am[oe]ba, did in the water of the stagnant ditch. And, curiously enough, the less numerous of the two great classes, the white, or leucocytes, are in appearance, structure, pseudopodic movements, and even method of engulfing food, almost exact replicas of their most primitive ancestor. There is absolutely no fixed means of communication between the blood-corpuscles and the rest of the body, not even by the tiniest branch of the great nerve-telegraph system, and yet they are the most loyal and devoted class among all the citizens of the cell-republic. They are called hither and thither partly by messenger-substances thrown into the blood, known as _hormones_, partly by the "smell of the battle afar off," the toxins of inflammation and infection as they pour through the blood. The red ones lose their nuclei, their individuality, in order to become sponges, capable of saturating themselves with oxygen and carrying it to the gasping tissues. The white are the great mounted police, the sanitary patrol of the body. The moment that the alarm of injury is sounded in a part, all the vessels leading to it dilate, and their channels are crowded by swarms of the red and white hurrying to the scene. The major part of the activity of the red cells can be accounted for by the mechanism of the heart and blood-vessels. They are simply thrown there by the handful and the shovelful, as it were, like so many pebbles or bits of chalk. But the behavior of the white cells goes far beyond this. We are almost tempted to endow them with volition, though they are of course drawn or driven by chemical and physical attractions, like iron-filings by a magnet, or an acid by a base. Not only do all those normally circulating in the blood flowing through the injured part promptly stop and begin to scatter themselves through the underbrush and attack the foe at close quarters, but, as has been shown by Cabot's studies in leucocytosis, the moment that the red flag of fever is hoisted, or the inflammation alarm is sounded, the leucocytes come rushing out from their feeding-grounds in the tissue-interspaces, in the lymph-channels, in the great serous cavities, and pour themselves into the blood-stream, like minute-men leaving the plough and thronging the highways leading towards the frontier fortress which has been attacked. Arrived at the spot, if there be little of the pomp and pageantry of war in their movements, their practical devotion and heroism are simply unsurpassed anywhere, even in song and story. They never think of waiting for reinforcements or for orders from headquarters. They know only one thing, and that is to fight; and when the body has brought them to the spot, it has done all that is needed, like the Turkish Government when once it has got its sturdy peasantry upon the battlefield: they have not even the sense to retreat. And whether they be present in tens, or in scores, or in millions, each one hurls himself upon the toxin or bacillus which stands directly in front of him. If he can destroy the bacillus and survive, so much the better; but if not, he will simply overwhelm him by the weight of his body-mass, and be swept on through the blood-stream into the great body-sewers, with the still living bacillus literally buried in his dead body. Like Arnold Winkelried, he will make his body a sheath for a score of the enemy's spears, so that his fellows can rush in through the gap that he has made. And it makes no difference whatever if the first ten or hundred or thousand are instantly mowed down by the bacillus or its deadly toxins, the rear ranks sweep forward without an instant's hesitation, and pour on in a living torrent, like the Zulu _impis_ at Rorke's Drift, until the bacilli are battered down by the sheer impact of the bodies of their assailants, or smothered under the pile of their corpses. When this has happened, in the language of the old surgeon-philosophers, "suppuration is established," and the patient is saved. Or if, as often happens, an antitoxin is formed, which protects the whole body, this is largely built out of substances set free from the bodies of slain leucocytes. And the only thing that dims our vision to the wonder and beauty of this drama, is that it happens every day, and we term it prosaically "the process of repair," and expect it as a matter of course. Every wound-healing is worthy of an epic, if we could only look at it from the point of view of these citizens of our great cell-republic. And if we were to ask the question, "Upon what does their peculiar value to the body-politic depend?" we should find that it was largely the extent to which they retained their ancestral characteristics. They are born in the lymph-nodes, which are simply little islands of tissue of embryonic type, preserved in the body largely for the purpose of breeding this primitive type of cells. They are literally the Indian police, the scavengers, the Hibernians, as it were, of the entire body. They have the roving habits and fighting instincts of the savage. They cruise about continually through the waterways and marshes of the body, looking for trouble, and, like their Hibernian descendants, wherever they see a head they hit it. They are the incarnation of the fighting spirit of our ancestors, and if it were not for their retention of this characteristic in so high a degree, many classes of our fixed cells would not have been able to subside into such burgher like habits. Although even here, as we shall see, it is only a question of quickness of response, for while the first bands of the enemy may be held at bay by the leucocyte cavalry, and a light attack repelled by their skirmish-line, yet when it comes to the heavy fighting of a fever-invasion, it is the slow but substantial burgher-like fixed cells of the body which form the real infantry masses of the campaign. And I believe that upon the proportional relation between these primitive and civilized cells of our body-politic will depend many of the singular differences, not only in degree but also in kind, in the immunity possessed by various individuals. While some surgeons and anatomists will show a temperature from the merest scratch, and yet either never develop any serious infection or display very high resisting power in the later stages, others, again, will stand forty slight inoculations with absolute impunity, and yet, when once the leucocyte-barrier is broken down, will make apparently little resistance to a fatal systemic infection. And this, of course, is only one of a score of ways in which the leucocytes literally _pro patria moriuntur_. Our whole alimentary canal is continually patrolled by their squadrons, poured into it by the tonsils above and Peyer's patches below; if it were not for them we should probably be poisoned by the products of our own digestive processes. If, then, the cells of the body-republic retain so much of their independence and individuality in health, does it not seem highly probable that they do also in disease? This is known to be the case already in many morbid processes, and their number is being added to every day. The normal activities of any cell carried to excess may constitute disease, by disturbing the balance of the organism. Nay, most disease-processes on careful examination are found to be at bottom vital, often normal to the cells concerned in them. The great normal divisions of labor are paralleled by the great processes of degeneration into fat, fibrous tissue, and bone or chalk. A vital chemical change which would be perfectly healthy in one tissue or organ, in another may be fatal. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred any group of cells acts loyally in the interests of the body; once in a hundred some group acts against them, and for its own, and disease is the result. There is a perpetual struggle for survival going on between the different tissues and organs of the body. Like all other free competition, as a rule, it inures enormously to the benefit of the body-whole. Exceptionally, however, it fails to do so, and behold disease. This struggle and turmoil is not only necessary to life--it is life. Out of the varying chances of its warfare is born that incessant ebb and flow of chemical change, that inability to reach an equilibrium, which we term "vitality." The course of life, like that of a flying express train, is not a perfectly straight line, but an oscillating series of concentric curves. Without these oscillations movement could not be. Exaggerate one of them unduly, or fail to rectify it by a rebound oscillation, and you have disease. Or it is like the children's game of shuttlecock. So long as the flying shuttle keeps moving in its restless course to and fro, life is. A single stop is death. The very same blow which, rightly placed, sends it like an arrow to the safe centre of the opposing racket, if it fall obliquely, or even with too great or too little force, drives it perilously wide of its mark. It can recover the safe track only by a sudden and often violent lunge of the opposing racket. The straight course is life, the tangent disease, the saving lunge recovery. One and the same force produces all. In the millions of tiny blows dealt every minute in our body-battle, what wonder if some go wide of the mark! CHAPTER II OUR LEGACY OF HEALTH: THE POWER OF HEREDITY IN THE PREVENTION OF DISEASE The evil in things always bulks large in our imaginations. It is no mere coincidence that the earliest gods of a race are invariably demons. Our first conception of the great forces of nature is that they are our enemies. This misconception is not only natural, but even necessary on the sternest of physical bases. The old darky, Jim, in Huckleberry Finn, hit upon a profound and far-reaching truth when he replied in answer to Huck's question whether among all the signs and portents with which his mind was crammed--like black cats and seeing the moon over your left shoulder and "harnts"--some were not indications of good luck instead of all being of evil omen:-- "Mighty few--an' _dey_ ain't no use to a body. What fur you want to know when good luck's a-comin'? Want to keep it off?" It isn't the good, either in the forces of nature or in our fellows, that keeps us watchful, but the evil. Hence our proneness to declare in all ages that evil is stronger than good and that "all men are liars." One injury done us by storm, by sunstroke, by lightning-flash, will make a more lasting impression upon our memories than a thousand benefits conferred by these same forces. Besides, evil has to be sharply looked out for and guarded against. Well enough can be safely let alone. The conviction is steadily growing, among both physicians and biologists, that this attitude has caused a serious, if not vital, misconception of the influence of that great conservative and preservative force of nature--heredity. We hear a great deal of hereditary disease, hereditary defect, hereditary insanity, but very little of hereditary powers of recovery, of inherited vigor, and the fact that ninety-nine and seven-tenths per cent of us are sane. One instance of hereditary defect, of inherited degeneracy, fills us with horror and stirs us to move Heaven and earth to prevent another such. The inheritance of vigor, of healthfulness, and of sanity we placidly accept as a matter of course and bank upon it in our plans for the future, without so much as a thank you to the force that underlies it. When once we clear away these inherited misconceptions and look the facts of the situation squarely in the face, we find that heredity is at least ten times as potent and as frequently concerned in the transmission and securing of health and vigor as of disease and weakness; that its influence on the perpetuation of bodily and mental defects has been enormously exaggerated and that there are exceedingly few hereditary diseases. It is not necessary for our present purpose to enter into a discussion of the innumerable theories of that inevitable tendency of like to beget like, of child to resemble parent, which we call heredity. One reference, however, may be permitted to the controversy that has divided the scientific world: whether _acquired_ characters, changes occurring during the lifetime of the individual, can be inherited. Disease is nine times out of ten an acquired character; hence, instead of the probabilities being that it would be inherited, the balance of evidence to date points in exactly the opposite direction. The burden of proof as to the inheritance of disease is absolutely upon those who believe in its possibility. Another fundamental fact which renders the inheritance of disease upon a _priori_ grounds improbable and upon practical grounds obviously difficult, is that characters or peculiarities, in order to be inherited certainly for more than a few generations, must be beneficial and helpful in the struggle. A moment's reflection will show this to be mathematically necessary, in that any family or race which tended to inherit defects and injurious characters would rapidly go down in the struggle for survival and become extinct. An inherited disease of any seriousness could not run for more than two or three generations in any family, simply for the reason that by the end of that time there would be no family left for it to run in. A slight defect or small peculiarity of undesirable character might run for a somewhat longer period, but even this would tend toward disappearance and elimination by the stern, selective influence of environment. Naturally, this great conservative tendency of nature has, like all other influences, "the defects of its virtues," as the French say. It has no gifts of prophecy, and in the process of handing down to successive generations those mechanisms and powers which have been found useful in the long, stern struggle of the past, it will also hand down some which, by reason of changes in the environment, are not only no longer useful, but even injurious. As the new light of biology has been turned on the human body and its diseases, it has revealed so many of these "left-overs," or remnants in the body-machine--some of most dramatic interest--that they at first sight have done much to justify the popular belief in the malignant tendencies of heredity. Yet, broadly considered, the overwhelming majority of them should really be regarded as honorable scars, memorials of ancient victories, monuments to difficulties overcome, significant and encouraging indications of what our body-machine is still capable of accomplishing in the way of further adjustment to conditions in the future. The really surprising thing is not their number, but the infrequency with which they give rise to serious trouble. The human automobile is not only astonishingly well built, with all the improvements that hundreds of thousands of generations of experience have been able to suggest, but it is self-repairing, self-cleaning, and self-improving. It never lets itself get out of date. If only given an adequate supply of fuel and water and not driven too hard, it will stand an astonishing amount of knocking about in all kinds of weather, repairing itself and recharging its batteries every night, supplying its own oil, its own paint and polish, and even regulating its own changes of gear, according to the nature of the work it has to do. Simply as an endurance racer it is the toughest and longest-winded thing on earth and can run down and tire out every paw, pad, or hoof that strikes the ground--wolf, deer, horse, antelope, wild goat. This is only a sample of its toughness and resisting power all along the line. These wide powers of self-support and adjustment overbalance a hundred times any little remnant defects in its machinery or gearing. Easily ninety-nine per cent of all our troubles through life are due to inevitable wear and tear, scarcity of food-fuel, of water, of rest, and external accidents--injuries and infectious diseases. Still, it occasionally happens that these little defects may furnish the point of least resistance at which external stresses and strains will cause the machine to break down. They are often the things which prevent us from living and "going to pieces all at once, all at once and nothing fust, just as bubbles do when they bust," like the immortal One-Hoss Shay. It is just as well that they should, for, of all deaths to die, the loneliest and the most to be dreaded is that by extreme old age. These _vestigia_ or remnants--instances of apparently hidebound conservatism on nature's part--are very much in the public eye at present, partly on account of their novelty and of their exceptional and extraordinary character. Easily first among these trouble-breeding remnants is that famous, or rather notorious, scrap of intestine, the _appendix vermiformis_, an obvious survival from that peaceful, ancestral period when we were more largely herbivorous in our diet and required a longer and more complicated food-tube, with larger side pouches in the course of it, to dissolve and absorb our food. Its present utility is just about that of a grain of sand in the eye. Yet, considering that it is present in every human being born into the world, the really astonishing thing is not the frequency with which it causes trouble, but the surprisingly small amount of actual damage that arises from it. Never yet in even the most appendicitis-ridden community has it been found responsible for more than one half of one per cent of the deaths. Then there is that curious and by no means uncommon tendency for a loop of the intestine to escape from the abdominal cavity, which we call hernia. This is one of a fair-sized group of dangers clearly due to the assumption of the erect position and our incomplete adjustment thereto. In the quadrupedal position this necessary weak spot--a partial opening through the abdominal wall--was developed in that region which was highest from the point of view of gravity and least exposed to strain. In the bipedal position it becomes lowest and most exposed; hence the much greater frequency of hernia in the human species as compared with any of the animals. Another fragment, of the impertinence of whose presence many of us have had painful proof, is the third or last molar, so absurdly misnamed the wisdom tooth. If there be any wisdom involved in its appearance it is of the sort characterized by William Allen White's delicious definition: "That type of ponderous folly of the middle-aged which we term 'mature judgment.'" The last is sometimes worst as well as best, and this belated remnant is not only the last to appear, but the first to disappear. In a considerable percentage of cases it is situated so far back in the jaw that there is no room for it to erupt properly, and it produces inflammatory disturbances and painful pressure upon the nerves of the face and the jaw. Even when it does appear it is often imperfectly developed, has fewer cusps and fewer roots than the other molars, is imperfectly covered with enamel and badly calcified. In no small percentage of cases it does not meet its fellow of the jaw below and hence is almost useless for purposes of mastication. But it comes in every child born into the world, simply because at an earlier day, when our jaws were longer--to give our canine teeth the swing they needed as our chief weapons of defense--there was plenty of room for it in the jaw and it was of some service to the organism. If the Indiana State Legislature would only pass a law prohibiting the eruption of wisdom teeth in future, and enforce it, it would save a large amount of suffering, inconvenience, and discomfort, with little appreciable lack of efficiency! In this list of admitted charges against heredity must also come the gall-bladder, that curious little pouch budded out from the bile ducts, which has so little known utility as compared with its possibility as a starting-point for inflammations, gall-stones, and cancer. Then there is that disfiguring facial defect, hare-lip, due to a failure of the three parts of which our upper jaw is built to unite properly,--this triple construction of the jaw being an echo of ancestral fishlike and reptilian times when our jaws were built in five pieces to permit of wide distention in the act of swallowing our prey alive. All over the surface of the body are to be found innumerable little sebaceous glands originally intended to lubricate hairs, which have now atrophied and disappeared. These useless scraps, under various forms of irritation, both external and internal, become inflamed and give rise to pimples, acne, or "a bad complexion." And so the list might be drawn out to most impressive length. But this length would be no indication of its real importance, inasmuch as the vast majority of entries upon it would come under the head of pathological curiosities, or conditions which were chiefly interesting on account of their rareness and unusual character. With the exception of the appendix, the gall-bladder, and hernia, these vestigial conditions may be practically disregarded as factors in the death-rate. In the main, when the fullest possible study and recognition have been made of all the traces of experimentation and even of ancient failure that are to be found in this Twentieth Century body-machine of ours, the resulting impression is one of enormously increased respect for and confidence in the machine and its capabilities. While they are of great interest as indicating what the past history and experiences of the engine have been, and of highest value as enabling us to interpret and even anticipate certain weak spots in its construction and joints in its armor, their most striking influence is in the direction of emphasizing the enormous elasticity and resourcefulness of the creature. Not only has it met and survived all these difficulties, but it is continuing the selfsame processes to-day. So far as we are able to judge, it is as young and as adaptable as it ever was, and just as ready to "with a frolic welcome greet the thunder and the sunshine" as it ever was in the dawn of history. These ancestral and experimental flaws, even when unrecognized and unguarded against, have probably not at any time been responsible for more than one or two per cent of the body's breakdowns; while, on the other hand, every process with which it fights disease, every trick of strategy which it uses against invading organisms, every step in the process of repair after wounds or injury, is a trick which it has learned in its million-year battle with its surroundings. Take such a simple thing as the mere apparently blind habit possessed by the blood of coagulating as soon as it comes in contact with the edges of a cut or torn blood-vessel, and think what an enormous safeguard this has been and is against the possibility of death by hemorrhage. So well is it developed and so rapidly does it act that it is practically impossible to bleed some animals to death by cutting across any vessel smaller than one of the great aortic trunks. The rapidity and toughness of the clotting, combined with the other ancestral tricks of lowering the blood pressure and weakening down the heart, are so immensely effective that a slash across the great artery of the thigh in the groin of a dog will be closed completely before he can bleed to death. So delicate and so purposeful is this adjustment that the blood will continue as fluid as milk for ten, twenty, forty, eighty years--as long as it remains in contact with healthy blood-vessels. But the instant it is brought in contact with a broken or wounded piece of a vessel-wall, that instant it will begin to clot. So inevitable is this result that it gives rise to some of the sudden forms of death by bloodclot in the brain or lung (apoplexy, "stroke"), the clot having formed upon the roughened inner surface of the heart or of one of the blood-vessels and then floated into the brain or lung. Then take that matchless and ingenious process of the healing of wounds, whose wondrousness increases with every step that we take into the deeper details of its study. First, the quick outpouring and clotting of the blood after enough has escaped to wash most poisonous or offending substances out of the wound. This living, surgical cement, elastic, self-moulding, soothing, not only plugs the cut or torn mouths of the blood-vessels, but fills the gap of the wound level with the surface. Here, by contact with the air and in combination with the hairs of the animal it forms a tough, firm, protective coating or scab, completely shutting out cold, heat, irritants, or infectious germs. Into the wedge-shaped, elastic clot which now fills the wound from bottom to top like jelly in a mould, the leucocytes or white blood-cells promptly migrate and convert it into a mesh of living cells. They are merely the cavalry and skirmishers of the repair brigade and are quickly followed by the heavy infantry of the line in the shape of cells born of the injured tissues on either side of the wound. These join hands across the gap, the engineer corps and the commissariat department move up promptly to their support in the form of little vein-construction switches, which bud out from the wounded blood-vessels. The clot is transformed into what we term granulation tissue and begins to organize. A few days later this granulation tissue begins to contract and pull the lips of the wound together. If the gap has not been too wide the wound will be completely closed, its lips and deeper parts drawn together in nearly perfect line, separated only by a thin scar on the surface with a vertical keel of scar tissue descending from it. If the lips cannot be drawn together and there be no surgical skill at hand to assist them with stitches or bandages, then the gap will be filled up by the fibrous transformation of this granulation tissue and a thick, heavy scar result. Meanwhile, the skin-cells of the surface have not been idle, but are budding out on either side of the healing wound, pushing a little line of colonists forward across the raw surface. In longer or shorter time, according to the width of the gap, these two lines meet, and the site of our wound or the scar that it has left is perfectly coated over with a layer of healthy skin. This drama has occurred so many score of times in every one of us that custom has blinded our eyes to its ingenious perfection, but it took a million years to bring it to its present finish. It may be a healthy corrective to our overweening conceit to remind ourselves that, remarkable and valuable as it is, it is a mere infant in arms compared to the superb powers of replacement and repair possessed by our more remote ancestors. Most invertebrates and many of the lowest two classes of backboned animals, the fishes and the amphibians, cannot merely stop up a rent, but renew an entire limb, fin,--yes, even eye or head. Cut an earthworm in two and the rear half will grow a new head and the front half a new tail. It may even be cut in four or five segments, each of which will proceed to form a head at one end and a tail at the other. The lobster can regrow a complete gill and any number of claws or an eye. A salamander will reproduce a foot and part of a limb. Take out the crystalline lens in the eye of a salamander and the edge of the iris, or colored part of the eye, will grow another lens. Take out both the lens and the iris and the choroid coat of the eye will reproduce both. We are in the A, B, C class in powers of repair by comparison with the angleworm, the lobster, or the salamander. Yet we are not without gruesome echoes of this lost power of regeneration in that our whole brood of tumors, including the deadly cancer and sarcoma, are due to a strange resumption, on the part of some little knot of our body-cells, of the power of reproducing themselves or the organ in which they are situated, without any regard to the welfare of the rest of the body. Cancer is, in one sense, a throwing off of the allegiance to the body-state and a resumption of amphibian powers of independent growth on the part of certain groups of our body-cells--literally, a "rebellion of the cells." These are but a handful of scores of instances that could be adduced, showing that the majority of the processes upon which we rely in combating disease and preserving life are the result of the hereditary experiences of our cells. Intelligent physicians are receding completely from that curiously warped and jaundiced view which led us to regard heredity chiefly as a factor in the _production_ of disease. It was, perhaps, natural enough, since it was inevitably only its injurious, or, so to speak, malicious, effects which were brought to our attention to be corrected. But, just as in the growth of our ethnic religions it is Evil that is worshiped first as strongest and most aggressive, and the recognition of the greater power of good comes only at a later stage, so it has been in pathology. Not only do we regard heredity as a comparatively small and steadily receding factor in the production of disease, but we fully and frankly recognize it as the strongest and most important single force in its prevention. All our processes of repair, all the reactions of the body against the attack of accident or of disease, are hereditary endowments, worked out with infinite pains and labor through tens of thousands of generations. The utmost that we can do with our drugs and remedies is to appeal to and rouse into action the great healing power of nature, the classic "_Vis medicatrix Naturæ_," an incarnation of our past experiences handed down by heredity. Enormously valuable and important as are the services to human welfare, health, and happiness which can be rendered by the destruction of the living external causes of disease and the prevention of contagion, our most permanent and substantial victories are won by appealing to and increasing this long-descended and hard-won power of individual resistance. "But," says some one at once, "I thought there were a large number of hereditary diseases." Fifty years ago there were a score of such, twenty years ago the score had sunk to five or six. Now there is scarcely one left. There is no known disease which is directly inherited as such. There is scarcely even a disease in which we now regard heredity as playing a dominant or controlling part. Among the few diseases in which there is serious dispute as to this are tuberculosis, insanity, epilepsy, and cancer. Then there are diseases which for a long time puzzled us as to the possibility of their inheritance, but which have now resolved themselves clearly into instances of the fact that a mother who happens to contract an acute infectious disease of any sort may communicate that disease to the unborn child. If this occurs at an early stage of development the child will naturally be promptly killed. In fact, this is the almost invariable result in smallpox and yellow fever. If, on the other hand, development be further advanced or the infection be of a milder character, like scarlet fever or syphilis, the child may be born suffering with the disease or with the virus in its blood, which will cause the disease to develop within a few days after birth. This, however, is clearly not inheritance at all, but direct infection. We no longer use the term _hereditary_ syphilis but have substituted for it the word _congenital_, which simply means that a child is born with the disease. There is no such thing as this disease extending "unto the third and fourth generation," like the wrath of Jehovah. One fact must, of course, be remembered, which has probably proved a source of confusion in the popular mind, and that is its extraordinary "long-windedness." It takes not merely two or three weeks or months to develop its complete drama, but anywhere from three to thirty years, so that it is possible for a child to be born with the taint in its blood and yet not exhibit to the non-expert eye any sign of the disease until its eighth, twelfth, or even fifteenth year. The case of tuberculosis is almost equally clear-cut. In all the thousands of post-mortem examinations which have been held upon newborn children and upon mothers dying in or shortly after childbirth, the number of instances of the actual transference of the bacilli of tuberculosis from mother to child could be counted upon the fingers of two hands. It is one of the rarest of pathologic curiosities and, for practical purposes, may be entirely disregarded. When tuberculosis appears in several members of a family, in eight cases out of ten it is due to direct infection from parents or older children. This is strikingly brought out in the admirable work done by the Associated Dispensaries for Tuberculosis of the Charity Organization Society of New York. One of the first steps in advance which they took was to establish in connection with every clinic for tuberculosis an attendant nurse, whose duty it was to visit the patients at their homes and advise and instruct them as to improvements in their methods of living, ventilation, food, and the prevention of infection. It was not long before these intelligent women began to bring back reports of other cases in the same family. Now the procedure is regularly adopted, whenever a case presents itself, of rounding up the remainder of the family group for examination, with the astounding result that where a mother or father is tuberculous, from twenty to sixty per cent of the children will be found to be suffering from some form of the infection. Instances of three infected children out of five living in the same room with a tuberculous mother are actually on record. No one can practice long in any of our great climatic health resorts for tuberculosis, like Colorado or the Pacific Slope, without coming across scores of painful and distressing instances of children of tuberculous parents dying suddenly in convulsions from tuberculous meningitis, or by a wasting diarrh[oe]a from tuberculosis of the bowels, or from a violent attack of distention of the bowels due to tuberculous peritonitis. The favorite breeding-place of the tubercle bacillus is unfortunately in the home. On the other hand, while the vast majority of cases of so-called hereditary tuberculosis are due to direct infection, and may be prevented by proper disposal of the sputum and other methods for avoiding contagion, there is probably a hereditary element in the spread of tuberculosis to this degree: that, inasmuch as all of us have been exposed to the attack and invasion of the tubercle bacillus, not merely scores, but hundreds of times, and have been able to resist or throw off that attack without apparent injury, the development of an invasion of the tubercle bacillus sufficiently extensive to endanger life is, in nine cases out of ten, in itself a proof of lowered resisting power on the part of the patient. This may be, and often is, only temporary, due to overwork, underfeeding, overconfinement, or that form of gradual suffocation which we politely term inadequate ventilation. In a certain percentage of cases, however, it is due to a chronic lack of vigor and vitality; a lowering of the whole systemic tone, which may have existed from birth. In that case it is hardly to be expected that such an individual, becoming a parent, will be able to transmit to his or her offspring more vigor than he originally possessed. It is therefore probable that the children of a considerable percentage of tuberculous parents would not possess the same degree of resisting power against tuberculosis, or any other infection, as the average individual. It is doubtful whether this factor of inherited lowered resistance plays any very important part in the propagation of tuberculosis, partly because it is comparatively seldom that consumptive marries consumptive, and such tendencies to lowered vigor and vitality as may be transmitted by one parent will be neutralized by the other; partly also because, by the superb and beneficent logic of nature, the pedigree of any disease is of the most mushroom and insignificant length, while the pedigree of health stretches back to the very dawn of time. In the struggle for dominance which takes place between the germ cells of the father and those of the mother, the chances are at least ten to one in favor of the old ancestral traits of vigor, of resisting power, and of survival. How deeply this idea is implanted in the convictions of the scientific world, the bitterly and widely debated biologic question whether acquired characters or peculiarities can under any circumstances be inherited clearly shows. Victory for the present rests with those who deny the possibility of such inheritance, and disease is emphatically an acquired character. Truth here, as everywhere, probably lies between the extremes, and both biologists and the students of disease have arrived at practically the same working compromise, namely, that while no gross defect, such as a mutilation, nor definite disease factor, such as a germ, nor even a cancer, can possibly be inherited, yet, inasmuch as the two cells, which by their development form the new individual, are nourished by the blood of the maternal body, influences which affect the nutritiousness or healthfulness of that blood may unfavorably influence the development of the offspring. Disease cannot be inherited any more than a mutilating defect, but the results of both, in so far as they affect the nutrition of the offspring in the process of formation, may be transmitted, though to a very much smaller extent than we formerly believed. In the case of tuberculosis, if the mother, during the months that she is building up the body and framework of a child, is in a state of reduced or lowered nutrition on account of consumption or any other disease, or has her tissues saturated with the toxins of this disease, it is hardly to be expected that the development of the child will proceed with the same perfection as it would under perfectly normal maternal surroundings. However, even this influence is comparatively small; for one of the most marvelous things in nature is the perfection of the barrier which she has erected between the child before birth and any injurious conditions which may occur in the body of the mother. Here preference, so to speak, is given to the coming life, and whenever there is a contest for an adequate supply of nutrition, as, for instance, in cases of underfeeding or of famine, it is the mother who will suffer in her nutrition rather than the child. The unborn child, biologically considered, feeds upon the best she has to offer, rejecting all that is inferior, doing nothing and giving nothing in return. How perfectly the coming generation is protected under the most unfavorable circumstances we have been given a striking object-lesson in one family of the lower animals. In the effective crusade against tuberculosis in dairy cattle waged by the sanitary authorities in Denmark, it was early discovered that the greatest practical obstacle to the extermination of tuberculosis in cattle was the enormous financial sacrifice involved in killing all animals infected. The disease was at that time particularly rife among the high-bred Jersey, Holstein, and other milking breeds. It was determined as a working compromise to test the truth of the modern belief that tuberculosis was transmitted only by direct infection, by permitting the more valuable cows to be saved alive for breeding purposes. They were isolated from the rest of the herd and given the best of care and feeding. The moment that their calves were born they were removed from them altogether and brought up on the milk of perfectly healthy cows. The milk of the infected cows was either destroyed or sterilized and used for feeding pigs. The results were brilliantly successful. Scarcely one of the calves thus isolated developed tuberculosis in spite of their highly infected ancestry. And not only were they not inferior in vigor and perfection of type to the remainder of their breed, but some of them have since become prize-winners. The additional care and more abundant feeding that they received more than compensated for any problematic defect in their heredity. As to the heredity of cancer, all that can be said is that the burden of proof rests upon those who assert it. It is really curious how widespread the belief is that cancer "runs in families," and how exceedingly slender is the basis of evidence for such a belief. There are so many things that we do not know about cancer that any positive statement of any kind would be unbecoming. It would be absurd to declare that a disease, of which the cause is still unknown, either is or is not inherited. And this is our position in regard to cancer. An overwhelming majority of the evidence so far indicates that it is not a parasite; if it were, of course, we could say positively that it is not inherited. Although we are getting a discouraging degree of familiarity with the process and clearly recognize that it consists chiefly in the sudden revolt or rebellion of some group of cells, a tendency which quite conceivably might be transmitted to future generations, yet it is highly improbable, on both biological and pathological grounds, that such is the case. If this rebellious tendency were transmitted we should at least have the right to expect that it would appear in the cells of the same organ or region of the body. It is a singular fact that in all the hundreds of cases in which cancer has appeared in the child of a cancerous parent it has almost invariably appeared in some different organ from that affected in the parent. For instance, cancer of the lip in the father may be followed by cancer of the liver in the son or daughter, while cancer of the breast in the mother will be followed by cancer of the lip in a son. Further than this, the percentage of instances in which cancer appears in more than one member of a family is decidedly small, considering the frequency of the disease. I took occasion to look into the matter carefully from a statistical point of view some ten or twelve years ago, and out of a collection of some fifty thousand cases of cancer less than six per cent were found to give any history of cancer in the family. And this, of course, simply means that some one of the relatives of the patient had at one time developed the disease. In fact, the consensus of intelligent expert opinion upon the subject of heredity of cancer is, that though it may occur, we have comparatively little proof of the fact; that the percentage of cases in which there is cancer in the family is but little larger than might be expected on the doctrine of probabilities from the average distribution. Though possibly the offspring of a cancerous individual may display a slightly greater tendency toward the development of that strange, curious process of "autonomy" than the offspring of the average individual, this tendency is so small and occurs so infrequently as to be a factor of small practical importance in the propagation and spread of the disease. In insanity and epilepsy we have probably the last refuge and almost only valid instance of the old belief in the remorseless heredity of disease. But even here the part played by heredity is probably only a fraction of that which it is popularly, and even professionally, believed to play. It is, of course, obvious that diseases which tend quickly to destroy the life of the patient, especially those which kill or seriously cripple him before he has reached the age of reproduction, or prevent his long surviving that epoch, will not, for mechanical reasons, become hereditary. The Black Death, or the cholera, for instance, could not "run in a family." Supposing that children were born with a special susceptibility to this disease, there would obviously soon be no family left. The same is true in a lesser degree of milder or more chronic diseases. The family which was hereditarily predisposed to scarlet fever, measles, smallpox, or tuberculosis would not last long, and in fact the whole progress of civilization has been a continuous process of the weeding out of those who were most susceptible and the survival of those who were least so. But when we come to deal with certain conditions, fortunately rare, such as functional disturbances of the nervous system, which neither seriously unfit their possessor for the struggle of life nor prevent him from reproducing his kind, then it becomes possible that a tendency to such disease may be transmitted through several successive generations. Such is the case with insanity, with epilepsy, with _hemophilia_, or "bleeders," and with certain rare and curious disturbances of the nervous system, such as the hereditary _ataxias_ and "tics" of various sorts. However, even here the only conditions on which these diseases can continue to run in a family for more than one or two generations is either that they shall be mild in form or that only a comparatively small percentage of the total family shall be affected by them. If, for instance, two-thirds, one-half, or even a third of the descendants of a mentally unsound individual were to become insane, it would only need a few generations for that family to be crushed to the wall. While the descendants of insane persons are distinctly more liable to become insane than the rest of the community, yet, on account of their fewness, this tendency probably does not account for more than a small fraction of the total insanity. We should, by all means, prevent the marriage of the insane and discourage that of their children, and the development of any well-defined form of insanity should act at once, _ipso facto_, as a ground and cause of divorce. But the consoling fact remains that even of such children, providing, of course, as usually happens, that the other parent--husband or wife--is sound and sane, not more than ten or fifteen per cent would probably become insane. In other words, insanity is acquired and the result of individual stress and strain at least five times as frequently as it is inherited. We have absolutely no rational or statistical basis for gloomy predictions that, at present rates, within a couple of centuries more, we shall all be shut up in asylums with nobody left to support us and pay the taxes. The apparent increase of insanity of recent decades is probably only "on paper," due to better registration. To put it very roughly, probably ninety-eight per cent of us are so born, thanks to heredity, that the possibility of our becoming insane, even under the severest stress, is almost infinitesimal. Of the two per cent born with this taint, this possible tendency to mental unbalance, only about one-tenth now become completely insane,[1] and this percentage might be greatly diminished by general sanitary improvements. Our alienists now claim that, by checking the reproduction of the obviously unstable, and careful hygienic treatment and training of the predisposed two per cent, insanity is almost as preventable as tuberculosis. [Footnote 1: The proportion of registered insane in civilized countries to-day ranges from two to three per 1000 of the population.] In fine, from all the broad field of pathology, the mists of tradition which have dimmed the fair name and reputation of heredity are slowly but surely lifting, until we now behold it, not as our worst enemy, but as our best friend in the prevention of disease and the upbuilding of the race. CHAPTER III THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF DISEASE: WHAT A DOCTOR CAN TELL FROM APPEARANCES It is our pride that medicine, from an art, and a pretty black one at that, originally, is becoming a science. And the most powerful factor in this development, its indispensable basis, in fact, has been the invention of instruments of precision--the microscope, the fever thermometer, the stethoscope, the ophthalmoscope, the test-tube, the culture medium, the triumphs of the bacteriologist and of the chemist. Any man who makes a final diagnosis in a serious case without resorting to some or all of these means is regarded--and justly--as careless and derelict in his duty to his patient. At the same time, priceless and indispensable as are these laboratory methods of investigation, they should not be allowed to make us too scornful and neglectful of the evidence gained by the direct use of our five senses. We should still avail ourselves of every particle of information that can be gained by the trained eye, the educated ear, the expert touch,--the _tactus eruditus_ of the medical classics,--and even the sense of smell. There is, in fact, a general complaint among the older members of the profession that the rising generation is being trained to neglect and even despise the direct evidence of the senses, and to accept no fact as a fact unless it has been seen through the microscope or demonstrated by a reaction in the test-tube. As one of our keenest observers and most philosophic thinkers expressed it a few months ago:-- "I fear that certain physicians on their rounds are most careful to take with them their stethoscope, their thermometer, their hemoglobin papers, their sphygmomanometer, but leave their eyes and their brains at home." And it is certain that the art of sight diagnosis, which seems like half magic, possessed in such a wonderful degree by the older physicians of the passing and past generations, has been almost lost by the new. A healthful reaction has, however, set in; and while we certainly do not love the Cæsar of laboratory methods and accuracy the less, we are beginning to have a juster affection for the Rome of the rich harvest that may be gained from the careful, painstaking, detective-like exercise of our eye, ear, and hand. As a matter of fact, the conflict between the two methods is only apparent. Not only is each in its proper sphere indispensable, but they are enormously helpful one to the other. Instead of our being able to tell less by the careful, direct eye-and-hand examination of our patients than the doctor of a century ago, we can tell three to five times as much. Signs that he could interpret only by the slow and painful method of two-thirds of a lifetime of plodding experience, or by occasional flashes of half-inspired insight, we are now able to interpret absolutely upon a physiological--yes, a chemical--basis from the revelations of the microscope, the test-tube, and the culture medium. His only way of determining the meaning of a particular tint of the complexion, or line about the mouth, or eruption on the skin, was by slowly and laboriously accumulating a long series of similar cases in which that particular symptom was found always to occur, and deducing its meaning. Now, we simply take a drop of our patient's blood, a scraping from his throat, a portion of some one of his secretions, a little slice of a tumor or growth, submit them to direct examination in the laboratory, and get a prompt and decisive answer. The observant physician begins to gather information about a patient from the moment he enters the sick-room or the patient steps into his consulting-room; and the value of the information obtained in the first thirty seconds, before a word has been spoken, is sometimes astonishingly great. While no intelligent man would dream of depending upon this first _coup d'[oe]il_, "stroke of the eye" as the French so graphically call it, for his final diagnosis, or accept its findings until he had submitted them to the most ruthless cross-examination with the stethoscope and in the laboratory, yet it will sometimes give him a clew of almost priceless value. It is positively uncanny to see the swift, intuitive manner in which an old, experienced, and thoughtful physician will grasp the probable nature of a case in one keen look at a patient. Often he can hardly explain to you himself how he does it, what are the data that determine it; yet not infrequently, three times out of five, your most elaborate and painstaking study of the case with all the modern methods will bring you to the same conclusion as that sensed within forty-five seconds by this keen-eyed old sleuth-hound of the fever trails. Time and again, in my interne days, have I gone the rounds of the wards or the out-patient departments with some kindly-faced, keen-eyed old Sherlock Holmes of the profession, and seen him point to a new case across the ward with the question: "When did that pneumonia come in?" or pick out a pain-drawn, ashy mask in the waiting line, with an abrupt, "Bring me that case of cancer of the stomach. He's in pain. I'll take him first." And, in later years, I have had colleagues with whom it was positively painful to walk down a crowded street, from the gruesome habit that they had of picking out, and condemning to lingering deaths, the cases of cancer, of Bright's disease, or of locomotor ataxia, that we happened to meet. Of course, they would be the first to admit that this was only what they would term a "long shot," a guess; but it was a guess based upon significant changes in the patient's countenance or gait, which their trained eye picked out at once, and it was surprising how often this snapshot diagnosis turned out to be correct. The first thing that a medical student has to learn is that appearances are _not_ deceptive--except to fools. Every line of the human figure, every proportion of a limb, every detail of size, shape, or relation in an organ, _means_ something. Not a line upon any bone in the skeleton which was not made by the hand-grip or thumbprint of some muscle, tendon, or ligament; no bump or knuckle which is not a lever or hand-hold for the grip of some muscle; not a line or a curve or an opening in that Chinese puzzle, the skull, which was not made to protect the brain, to accommodate an eye, to transmit a blood-vessel, or to allow the escape of a nerve. Every minutest detail of structure means something to the man who will take the pains to puzzle it out. And if this is true of the foundation structure of the body, is it to be expected that the law ceases to run upon the surface? Not a line, not a tint, not a hollow of that living picture, the face, but means something, if we will take the time and labor to interpret it. Even coming events cast their shadows before upon that most exquisitely responsive surface--half mirror, half sensitive plate--the human countenance. The place where the moving finger of disease writes its clearest and most unmistakable message is the one to which we must naturally turn, the face; not merely for the infantile tenth part of a reason which we often hear alleged, that it is the only part of the body, except the hand, which is habitually exposed, and hence open to observation, but because here are grouped the indicators and registers of almost every important organ and system in the body. What, of course, originally made the face the face, and, for the matter of that, the head the head, was the intake opening of the food-canal, the mouth. Around this necessarily grouped themselves the outlook departments, the special senses, the nose, the eyes, and ears; while later, by an exceedingly clumsy device of nature, part of the mouth was split off for the intake of a new ventilating system. So that when we glance at the face we are looking first at the automatically controlled intake openings of the two most important systems in the body, the alimentary and the respiratory, whose muscles contract and relax, ripple in comfort or knot in agony, in response to every important change that takes place throughout the entire extent of both. Second, at the apertures of the two most important members of the outlook corps, the senses of sight and of smell. These are not only sharply alert to every external indication of danger, but by a curious reversal, which we will consider more carefully later, reflect signals of distress or discomfort from within. Last, but not least, the translucent tissues, the semi-transparent skin, barely veiling the pulsating mesh of myriad blood-vessels, is a superb color index, painting in vivid tints--"yellow, and ashy pale, and hectic red"--the living, ever changing, moving picture of the vigor of the life-centre, the blood-pump, and the richness of its crimson stream. Small wonder that the shrewd advice of a veteran physician to the medical student should be: "The first step in the examination is to look at your patient; the second is to look again, and the third to take another look at him; and keep on looking all through the examination." It is no uncommon thing for an expert diagnostician deliberately to lead the patient into conversation upon some utterly irrelevant subjects, like the weather, the crops, or the incidents of his journey to the city, simply for the purpose of taking his mind off himself, putting him at his ease, and meanwhile quietly deciphering the unmistakable cuneiform inscription, often twice palimpsest, written by the finger of disease upon his face. It takes time and infinite pains. In no other realm does genius come nearer to Buffon's famous description, "the capacity for taking pains," but it is well worth the while. And with all our boasted and really marvelous progress in precise knowledge of disease, accomplished through the microscope in the laboratory, it remains a fact of experience that so careful and so trustworthy is this face-picture when analyzed, that our best and most depended upon impressions as to the actual condition of patients, are still obtained from this source. Many and many a time have I heard the expression from a grizzled consultant in a desperate case, "Well, the last blood-count was better," or, "The fever is lower," or, "There is less albumen,--but I don't like the look of him a bit"; and within twenty-four hours you might be called in haste to find your patient down with a hemorrhage, or in a fatal chill, or sinking into the last coma. It would really be difficult to say just what that careful and loving student of the _genus humanum_ known as a doctor looks at first in the face of a patient. Indeed, he could probably hardly tell you himself, and after he has spent fifteen or twenty years at it, it has become such a second nature, such a matter of instinct with him, that he will often put together all the signs at once, note their relations, and come to a conclusion almost in the "stroke of an eye," as if by instinct, just as a weather-wise old salt will tell you by a single glance at the sky when and from what quarter a storm is coming. I shall never forget the remark of my greatest and most revered teacher, when he called me into his consultation-room to show me a case of typical locomotor ataxia, gave me a brief but significant history, put the patient through his paces, and asked for a diagnosis. I hesitated, blundered through a number of further unnecessary questions, and finally stumbled upon it. After the patient had left the room, I, feeling rather proud of myself, expected his commendation, but I didn't get it. "My boy," he said, "you are not up to the mark yet. You should be able to recognize a disease like that just as you know the face of an acquaintance on the street." A positive and full-blown diagnosis of this sort can, of course, only be made in two or three cases out of ten. But the method is both logical and scientific, and will give information of priceless value in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. Probably the first, if not the most important, character that catches the physician's eye when it first falls upon a patient is his expression. This, of course, is a complex of a number of different markings, but chiefly determined by certain lines and alterations of position of the skin of the face, which give to it, as we frequently hear it expressed, an air of cheerfulness or depression, comfort or discomfort, hope or despair. These lines, whether temporary or permanent, are made by the contractions of certain muscles passing from one part of the skin to another or from the underlying bones to the skin. These are known in our anatomical textbooks by the natural but absurd name of "muscles of expression." Their play, it is true, does make up about two-thirds of the wonderful shifting of relations, which makes the human countenance the most expressive thing in the world; but their original business is something totally different. Primarily considered, they are solely for the purpose of opening or closing, contracting or expanding, the different orifices which, as we have seen, appear upon the surface of the face. This naturally throws them into three great groups: those about and controlling the orifice of the alimentary canal, the mouth; those surrounding the joint openings of the air-tube and organ of smell, and those surrounding the eyes. As there are some twenty-four pairs of these in an area only slightly greater than that of the outspread hand, and as they are capable of acting with every imaginable grade of vigor and in every possible combination, it can readily be seen what an infinite and complicated series of expressions--or, in other words, indications of the state of affairs within those different orifices--they are capable of. Only the barest and rudest outlines of their meaning and principles of interpretation can be attempted. To put it very roughly, the main underlying principle of interpretation is that we make our first instinctive judgment of the site of the disease from noting which of the three great orifices is distorted furthest from its normal condition. Then by constructing a parallel upon the similarity or the difference of the lines about the other two openings, we get what a surveyor would call our "lines of triangulation," and by following these to their converging point can often arrive at a fairly accurate localization. The greatest difficulty in the method, though at times our greatest help, is the extraordinary and intimate sympathy which exists between all three of these groups. If pain, no matter where located, once becomes intense enough, its manifestations will travel over the face-dial, overflowing the organ or system in which it occurs, and eyes, nostrils, and mouth will alike reveal its presence. Here, of course, is where our second great process, so well known in all clew-following, elimination, comes in. A patient comes in with pain-lines written all over his face. To put it very roughly--has he cancer of the stomach? Pneumonia? Brain tumor? If there be no play of the muscles distending and contracting the nostrils with each expiration, no increased rapidity of breathing, no gasp when a full breath is drawn, and no deep red fever blush on the cheeks, we mentally eliminate pneumonia. The absence of these nasal signs throws us back toward cancer or some other painful affection of the alimentary canal. If the pain-lines about the mouth are of recent formation, and have not graved themselves into the furrows of the forehead above and between the eyebrows; if the color, instead of ashy, be clear and red, we throw out cancer and think of colic, ulcer, hyperacidity, or some milder form of alimentary disease. If, on the other hand, the pain-lines are heaviest about the brows, the eyes, and the forehead, with only a sympathetic droop or twist of the corners of the mouth, if the nostrils are not at all distorted or too movable, if there is no fever flush and little wasting, and on turning to the eyes we find a difference between the pupils, or a wide distention or pin-point-like contraction of both or a slight squint, the picture of brain tumor would rise in the mind. Once started upon any one of these clews, then a hundred other data would be quickly looked for and asked after, and ultimately, assisted by a thorough and exhaustive examination with the instruments of precision and the tests in the laboratory, a conclusion is arrived at. This, of course, is but the roughest and crudest outline suggestive of the method of procedure. Probably not more than once in three times will the first clew that we start on prove to be the right one; but the moment that we find this barred, we take up the next most probable, and in this manner hit upon the true scent. As to the cause and rationale of these pain-lines, only the barest outlines can be given. Take the mouth for an example. When all is going well in the alimentary canal, without pain, without hunger, and both absorption of food and elimination of waste are proceeding normally, the tissues about the mouth, like those of the rest of the body, are apt to be plump and full; the muscles which open the aperture, having fulfilled their duty and received their regular wages, are quietly at rest; those that close the opening, having neither anticipation of an early call for the admission of necessary nutriment, nor an instinctive desire to shut out anything that may be indigestible or undesirable, are now in their normal condition of peaceful, moderate contraction; the face has a comfortable, well-fed, wholesome look. On the other hand, let the digestive juices fail to do their duty properly, or the swarms of bacteria pets which we keep in our food-canals get beyond control; or if for any other reason the tissues be kept from getting their proper supply of nourishment from the food-canal, the state of affairs is quickly revealed in the mouth mirror. Those muscles which open the mouth, instead of resting peacefully in the consciousness of duty well done, are in a state of perpetual fidget, twitching, pulling, wondering whether they ought not to open the portal for the entrance of new supplies of material, since the tissues are crying for food. As the strongest of these are those which pull the corners of the mouth outward and downward, the resultant expression is one of depression, with downward-curving angles to the mouth. The eyes, and even the nostrils, sympathetically follow suit, and we have that countenance which, by the cartoonist's well-known trick, can be produced by the alteration of one pair of lines, those at the angles of the mouth, turning a smiling countenance into a weeping one. On the other hand, if all these processes of nutrition and absorption are proceeding as they should, they are accompanied by mild sensations of comfort which, although they no longer reach our consciousness, reveal themselves in the mouth-opening muscles, and they gently contract upward and outward, in pleasurable anticipation of the next intake, and we get the grin or the smile. If, on the other hand, these digestive disturbances be accompanied by pain, then another shading appears on our magic mirror, and that is a curious contraction of the mouth, with distortion of the lines surrounding it, so violent in some cases as positively to whiten the lips or produce lines of paleness along the course of the muscles. This is the set or twisted mouth of agony, and is due to a curious transference and reflex on this order: that inasmuch as the last food which entered the alimentary canal seems to have caused this disturbance and pain, no more will be allowed to enter it at present under any conditions. And as our alimentary instincts are the most fundamental of all, by a due process of transference, mental agony calls into action this same set of muscles, to shut out any possible addition to the agony already present. The lines of determination, similarly, about the mouth, are those of the individual who has the courage to say "No" to the tempting morsel when he doesn't need it; and the lines of weakness and irresolution are those of the nature which cannot resist either gastronomic or other temptation. Similarly, the well-known lines of disgust or of discontent about the corners of the mouth are the unconscious contractions accompanying nausea, and preparations to expel the offending morsel whether from stomach or mouth. If, on the other hand, our first glance shows us that the deepest pain-lines are those about the nostrils and upper lip, especially if the wings of the nostrils can be seen to dilate with each breath, and breathing be faster than normal, our clew points in the direction of some disease of the great organs above the diaphragm--that is, the lungs or heart. Signs in this region might refer to either of these, for the reason that, although a sufficient intake of air is one of the necessary conditions of proper oxygenation, a free and abundant circulation of the blood through the air-cells is equally essential. In fact, that common phenomenon known as "shortness of breath" is more frequently due to disturbances of the heart and circulation than it is to the lungs, especially in patients who are able to be up and about. If, in addition to the danger signal of the rise and fall of the nostrils with each breath, we have a pale, translucent skin, with a light, hectic flush showing just below the knife-like lower edge of the cheekbone, a widely open, shining eye, and a clustering abundance of hair of a glossiness bordering on dampness, red lips slightly parted, showing the teeth between, a painfully strong suspicion of consumption would arise unbidden. This pathetic type of face has that fatal gift which the French clinicians, with their usual happiness of phrase, term _La beauté du diable_. The eager eyes, dilated nostrils, parted lips, give that weird air of exaltation which, when it occurs, as it occasionally does in the dying, is interpreted as the result of glimpses into a spirit world. When to this is added the mild delirium of fever, when memories of happier days and of those who have passed before rise unbidden and babble themselves from the tongue, one can hardly wonder at this interpretation. The last group of lines to be noted is that about the eyes and forehead. These are less reliable than either of the other two, for the reason that they are so sympathetic as almost invariably to be present in addition, whenever the lower dial-plates of the face are disturbed. It is only when they appear alone that they are significant; then they may be interpreted as one of three things: first, and commonest, eye strain; second, disease in some part of the nervous system or muscular system, not connected with the organs of the chest or abdomen; and third, mental disturbances. This last relation, of course, makes them in many respects the least reliable of all the face indices, because--as is household knowledge--they indicate mental conditions and operations, as well as bodily. "The wrinkled brow of thought," the "deep lines of perplexity," etc., are in the vocabulary of the grammar grades. They are, however, a valuable check upon the other two groups. They are not apt to be present in consumption and in other forms of serious disease, attended by fever, on account of the curious effect produced by the toxins of the disease, which is often not only stimulating, but even of an exhilarating nature, or will produce a slight stupor or lethargy, such as is typical of typhoid. One of the most singular transformations in the sick-room, especially in serious disease marked by lethargy or stupor, is that in which the patient's countenance will appear like a sponged-off slate, so completely have the lines of worry and of thought been obliterated. One distinct value of the pain-lines about the eyes and brow is that you can often test their genuineness. Just engage your hypochondriac or hysterical patient in lively conversation; or, on the reverse principle, wound his vanity, so as to produce an outburst of temper, and see how the lines of undying agony will fade away and be replaced by the curves of amusement or by the straight-drawn brows of indignation. As with the painter, next to line comes color. Every one, of course, knows that a fresh, rosy color is usually associated with health, while a pale, sallow complexion suggests disease. But our color signals, while more vivid, are much less reliable and more apt to deceive than our line-markings. Surprising as it may sound, careful analyses have shown, first, that the kind of pigment present in the human skin of every race is absolutely one and the same. The only difference between the negro and the white man is that the negro has two or three times as much of it. Secondly, that every skin except that of the albino has a certain, and usually a considerable, amount of this pigment present in it. "The red hue of health" is even more apt to mislead us, because, being due to the abundance of blood in the meshes of the skin, many fevers, by increasing the rapidity of the heart-beat and dilating the vessels in the skin, give a ruddiness of hue equal to or in excess of the normal. However, a little careful checking up will eliminate most of the possible mistakes and enable us to obtain information of the greatest value from color. For instance, if our patient be of Southern blood, or tanned from the seashore, the good red blood in his arteries is pretty safe to show through at the normal blush area on the cheeks; or, failing that, through the translucent epithelium of the lips and gums. If, on the other hand, this yellow tint be due to the escape of broken-down blood-pigments into the tissues, or a damming up of the bile, and a similar escape of its coloring matter, as in jaundice, then we turn to the whites of the eyes, and if a similar, but more delicate, yellowish tint confronts us there, we know we have to deal with a severe form of anæmia or jaundice, according to the tint. In extreme cases of the latter, the mucous membrane of the lips and of the gums will even show a distinctly yellowish hue. The frightful color of yellow fever, and the yellow "death mask," which appears just before the end of several fatal forms of blood poisoning, is due to the tremendous breaking down of the red cells of the blood under the attack of the fever toxins, and their leaking out into the tissues. A similar process of a milder and less serious extent occurs in those temporary anæmias of young girls, known for centuries past in the vernacular as "the green sickness." And a delicate lemon tint of this same origin, accompanied by a waxy pallor, is significant of the deadly, pernicious anæmia and the later stages of cancer. The most significant single thing about the red flush, supposed to be indicative of health, is its location. If this be the normal "blush area," about the middle of each cheek,--which is one of nature's sexual ornaments, placed, like a good advertisement, where it will attract most attention and add most beauty to the countenance,--and it fades off gradually at the edges into the clear whiteness or brownness of the healthy skin, it is probably both healthy and genuine. If the work of either fever or of art, it will generally reveal itself as a base imitation. In eight cases out of ten of fever, the flush, instead of being confined to this definite area, extends all over the face, even up to the roots of the hair. The eyes, instead of being clear and bright, are congested and heavy-lidded; and if with these you have an increased rapidity of respiration, and a general air of discomfort and unrest, you are fairly safe in making a diagnosis of fever. If the first touch of the tips of the fingers on the wrist shows a hot skin and a rapid pulse, the diagnosis is almost as certain as with the thermometer. Now for two of the instances in which it most commonly puzzles us. The first of these is consumption; for here the flush, both in position and in delicacy and gentle fading away at the proper margins, is an almost perfect imitation of health. It, however, usually appears, not as the normal flush of health does, upon a plump and rounded cheek, but upon a hollow and wasted one. It rises somewhat higher upon the cheekbones, throwing the latter out into ghastly prominence. The lips and the eyes will give us no clew, for the former are red from fever, and the latter are bright from the gentle, half-dreamy state produced by the toxins of the disease, the so-called "_spes phthisica_"--the everlasting and pathetic hopefulness of the consumptive. But here we call for help upon another of the features of disease--the hand. If, instead of being cool, and elastic, this is either dry and hot, or clammy and damp, and feels as if you were grasping a handful of bones and nerves, and the finger-tips are clubbed and the nails curved like claws, then you have a strong _prima facie_ case. The other color condition which is apt to puzzle us is that of the plump and comfortable middle-aged gentleman with a fine rosy color, but a watery eye and loose and puffy mouth, a wheezy respiration and apparent excess of adipose. Here the high color is often due to a paralytic distention of the blood-vessels of the face and neck, and an examination of his heart and blood-vessels shows that his prospects are anything but as rosy as his countenance. The varying expressions of the face of disease are by no means confined to the countenance. In fact, they extend to every portion of--in Trilby's immortal phrase--"the altogether." Disease can speak most eloquently through the hand, the carriage, the gait, and, in a way that the patient may be entirely unconscious of, the voice. These forms of expression are naturally not so frequent as those of the face, on account of the extraordinary importance of the great systems whose clock-dials and indices form what we term the human countenance. But when they do occur they are fully as graphic and more definitely and distinctively localizing. Next in importance to the face comes the hand, and volumes have been written upon this alone. Containing, as it does, that throbbing little blood-tube, the radial artery, which has furnished us for centuries with one of our oldest and most reliable guides to health conditions, the pulse, it has played a most important part in surface diagnoses. To this day, in fact, Arabic and Turkish physicians in visiting their patients on the feminine side of the family are allowed to see nothing of them except the hand, which is thrust through an opening in a curtain. How accurate their diagnoses are, based upon this slender clew, I should not like to aver, but a sharp observer might learn much even from this limited area. We have--though, of course, in lesser degree--all the color and line pictures with which we have been dealing upon the face. Though not an index of any special system, it has the great advantage of being our one approach to an indication of the general muscular tone of the body, as indicated both in its grasp and in the poses it assumes at rest. The patient with a limp and nerveless hand-clasp, whose hand is inclined to lie palm upward and open instead of palm downward and half-closed, is apt to be either seriously ill, or not in a position to make much of a fight against the attack of disease. The nails furnish one of our best indices of the color of the blood and condition of the circulation. Our best surface test of the vigor of the circulation is to press upon a nail, or the back of the finger just above it, until the blood is driven out of it, and when our thumb is removed from the whitened area to note the rapidity with which the red freshet of blood will rush back to reoccupy it. In the natural growth of the nail, traveling steadily outward from root to free edge, its tissues, at first opaque and whitish, and thus forming the little white crescent, or _lunula_, found at the base of most nails, gradually become more and more transparent, and hence pinker in color, from allowing the blood to show through. During a serious illness, the portion of the nail which is then forming suffers in its nutrition, and instead of going on normally to almost perfect transparency, it remains opaque. And the patient will, in consequence, carry a white bar across two or three of his nails for from three to nine months after the illness, according to the rate of growth of his nails. Not infrequently this white bar will enable you to ask a patient the question, "Did you not have a serious illness of some sort two, three, or six months ago?" according to the position of the bar. And his fearsome astonishment, if he answers your question in the affirmative, is amusing to see. You will be lucky if, in future, he doesn't incline to regard you as something uncanny and little less than a wizard. Another of the score of interesting changes in the hand, which, though not very common, is exceedingly significant when found, is a curious thickening or clubbing of the ends of the fingers, with extreme curvature of the nails, which is associated with certain forms of consumption. So long has it been recognized that it is known as the "Hippocratic finger," on account of the vivid description given of it by the Greek Father of Medicine, Hippocrates. It has lost, however, some of its exclusive significance, as it is found to be associated also with certain diseases of the heart. It seems to mean obstructed circulation through the lungs. Next after the face and the hand would come the carriage and gait. When a man is seriously sick he is sick all over. Every muscle in his body has lost its tone, and those concerned with the maintenance of the erect position, being last developed, suffer first and heaviest. The bowed back, the droop of the shoulders, the hanging jaw, and the shuffling gait, tell the story of chronic, wasting disease more graphically than words. We have a ludicrously inverted idea of cause and effect in our minds about "a good carriage." We imagine that a ramrod-like stiffening of the backbone, with the head erect, shoulders thrown back and chest protruded, is a cause of health, instead of simply being an effect, or one of the incidental symptoms thereof. And we often proceed to drill our unfortunate patients into this really cramped and irrational attitude, under the impression that by making them look better we shall cause them actually to become so. The head-erect, chest-out, fingers-down-the-seam-of-your trousers position of the drillmaster is little better than a pose intended chiefly for ornament, and has to be abandoned the moment that any attempt at movement or action is begun. So complete is this unconscious muscular relaxation, that it is noticeable not only in the standing and sitting position, but also when lying down. When a patient is exceedingly ill, and in the last state of enfeeblement, he cannot even lie straight in bed, but collapses into a curled-up heap in the middle of the bed, the head even dropping from the pillow and falling on the chest. Between this _débâcle_ and the slight droop of shoulders and jaw indicative of beginning trouble there are a thousand shades of expression significant instantly to the experienced eye. Though more limited in their application, yet most significant when found, are the alterations of the gait itself. Even a maker of proverbs can tell at a glance that "the legs of the lame are not equal." From the limp, coupled with the direction in which the toe or foot is turned, the tilt of the hips, the part of the foot that strikes first, the presence or absence of pain-lines on the face, a snap diagnosis can often be made as to whether the trouble is paralysis, hip-joint disease, knee or ankle mischief, or flatfoot, as your patient limps across the room. Even where both limbs are affected and there is no distinct limp, the form of shuffle is often significant. Several of the forms of paralysis have each its significant gait. For instance, if a patient comes in with a firm, rather precise, calculated sort of gait, "clumping" each foot upon the floor as if he had struck it an inch sooner than he had expected, and clamping it there firmly for a moment before he lifts it again, as though he were walking on ice, with more knee action than seems necessary, you would have a strong suspicion that you had to deal with a case of _locomotor ataxia_, in which loss of sensation in the soles of the feet is one of the earliest symptoms. If so, your patient, on inquiry, will tell you that he feels as if there were a blanket or even a board between his soles and the surface on which he steps. If a quick glance at the pupils shows both smaller or larger than normal, and on turning his face to the light they fail to contract, your suspicion is confirmed; while if, on asking him to be seated and cross his legs, a tap on the great extensor tendon of the knee-joint just below the patella fails to elicit any quick upward jerk of the foot, the so-called "knee-kick," then you may be almost sure of your diagnosis, and proceed to work it out at your leisure. On the other hand, if an elderly gentleman enters with a curiously blank and rather melancholy expression of countenance, holding his cane out stiffly in front of him, and comes toward you at a rapid, toddling gait, throwing his feet forward in quick, short steps, as if, if he failed to do so, he would fall on his face, while at the same time a vibrating tremor carries his head quickly from side to side, you are justified in suspecting that you have to do with a case of _paralysis agitans_, or shaking palsy. Last of all, your physiognomy of disease includes not merely its face, but its voice; not only the picture that it draws, but the sound that it makes. For, when all has been allowed and discounted that the most hardened cynic or pessimistic agnostic can say about speech being given to man to conceal his thoughts, and the hopeless unreliability of human testimony, two-thirds of what your patients tell you about their symptoms will be found to be literally the voice of the disease itself speaking through them. They may tell you much that is chiefly imaginary, but even imagination has got to have some physical basis as a starting-point. They may tell you much that is clearly and ludicrously irrelevant, or untrue, on account of inaccuracy of observation, confusion of cause and effect, or a mental color-blindness produced by the disease itself. But these things can all be brushed aside like the chaff from the wheat if checked up by the picture of the disease in plain sight before you. In the main, the great mass of what patients tell you is of great value and importance, and, with proper deductions, perfectly reliable. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a sharp observer would be able to make a fairly and approximately accurate diagnosis in seven cases out of ten, simply by what his eye and his touch tell him while listening to symptoms recounted by the patient. Time and again have I seen an examination made of a reasonably intelligent patient, and when the recital had been finished and the hawk-like gaze had traveled from head to foot and back again, from ear-tip to finger-nail, from eye to chest, a symptom which the patient had simply forgotten to mention would be promptly supplied; and the gasp with which the patient would acknowledge the truth of the suggestion was worth traveling miles to see. Of course, you pay no attention to any statement of the patient which flatly contradicts the evidence of your own senses. But even where patients, through some preconceived notion, or from false ideas of shame or discredit attaching to some particular disease, are trying to mislead you, the very vigor of their efforts will often reveal their secret, just as the piteous broken-winged utterings of the mother partridge reveal instantly to the eye of the bird-lover the presence of the young which she is trying to lure him away from. Only let a patient talk enough about his or her symptoms, and the truth will leak out. The attitude of impatient incredulity toward the stories of our patients, typified by the story of that great surgeon, but greater bear, Dr. John Abernethy, has passed, never to return. When a lady of rank came into his consulting-room, and, having drawn off her wraps and comfortably settled herself in her chair, launched out into a luxurious recital of symptoms, including most of her family history and adventures, he, after listening about ten minutes pulled out his watch and looked at it. The lady naturally stopped, open-mouthed. "Madam, how long do you think it will take you to complete the recital of your symptoms?" "Oh, well,"--the lady floundered, embarrassed,--"I hardly know." "Well, do you think you could finish in three-quarters of an hour?" Well, she supposed she could, probably. "Very well, madam. I have an operation at the hospital in the next street. Pray continue with the recital of your symptoms, and I will return in three-quarters of an hour and proceed with the consideration of your case!" When you can spare the time,--and no time is wasted which is spent in getting a thorough and exhaustive knowledge of a serious case,--it is as good as a play to let even your hypochondriac patients, and those who are suffering chiefly from "nervous prosperity" in its most acute form, set forth their agonies and their afflictions in their fullest and most luxurious length, breadth, and thickness, watching meanwhile the come and go of the lines about the face-dials, the changes of the color, the sparkling and dulling of the eye, the droop or pain-cramp, or luxurious loll of each group of muscles, and quietly draw your own conclusions from it all. Many and many a time, in the full luxury of self-explanation, they will reveal to you a clew which will prove to be the master-key to your control of the situation, and their restoration to comfort, if not health, which you couldn't have got in a week of forceps-and-scalpel cross-examination. In only one class of patients is this valuable aid to knowledge absent, and that is in very young children; and yet, by what may at first sight seem like a paradox, they are, of all others, the easiest in whom to make not merely a provisional, but a final, diagnosis. They cannot yet talk with their tongues and their lips, but they speak a living language in every line, every curve, every tint of their tiny, translucent bodies, from their little pink toes to the soft spot on the top of their downy heads. Not only have they all the muscle-signs about the face-dial, of pain or of comfort, but, also, these are absolutely uncomplicated by any cross-currents of what their elders are pleased to term "thought." When a baby knits his brows he is not puzzling over his political chances or worrying about his immortal soul. He has got a pain somewhere in his little body. When his vocal organs emit sounds, whether the gurgle or coo of comfort, or the yell of dissatisfaction, they are just squeezed out of him by the pressure of his own internal sensations, and he is never talking just to hear himself talk. Further than this, his color is so exquisitely responsive to every breath of change in his interior mechanism, that watching his face is almost like observing a reaction in a test-tube, with its precipitate, or change of color. In addition, not only will he turn pale or flush, and his little muscles contract or relax, but so elastic are the tissues of his surface, and so abundant the mesh of blood-vessels just underneath, that, under the stroke of serious illness, he will literally shrivel like a green leaf picked from its stem, or wilt like a faded flower. A single glance at the tiny face on the cot pillow is usually enough to tell you whether or not the little morsel is seriously ill. Nothing could be further from the truth than the prevailing impression that, because babies can't talk, it is impossible, especially for a young doctor, to find out what is the matter with them. If they can't talk, neither can they tell lies, and when they yell "Pin!" they mean pin and nothing else. In fact, the popular impression of the puzzled discomfiture of the doctor before a very small, ailing baby is about as rational as the attitude of a good Quaker lady in a little Western country town, who had induced her husband to subscribe liberally toward the expenses of a certain missionary on the West Coast of Africa. On his return, the missionary brought her as a mark of his gratitude a young half-grown parrot, of one of the good talking breeds. The good lady, though delighted, was considerably puzzled with the gift, and explained to a friend of mine that she really didn't know what to feed it, and it wasn't quite old enough to be able to talk and tell her what it wanted! CHAPTER IV COLDS AND HOW TO CATCH THEM Ancient vibrations are hard to stop, and still harder to control. Whether they date from our driving back by the polar ice-sheet, together with our titanic Big Game, the woolly rhinoceros, the mammoth, and the sabre-toothed tiger, from our hunting-grounds in Siberia and Norway, or from recollections of hunting parties pushing north from our tropical birth-lands, and getting trapped and stormbound by the advance of the strange giant, Winter, certain it is that our subconsciousness is full of ancestral memories which send a shiver through our very marrow at the mere mention of "cold" or "sleet" or "wintry blasts." From the earliest dawn of legend cold has always been ranked, with hunger and pestilence and storm, as one of the demons to be dreaded and fought. And, at a little later date, the ancient songs and sayings of every people have been full of quaint warnings against the danger of a chill, a draft, wet feet, or damp sheets. There is, of course, a bitterly substantial basis for this feeling, as the dozens of stiffened forms whose only winding-sheet was the curling snowdrift, or whose coffin the frozen sleet, bear ghastly witness. It was, however, long ago discovered that when we were properly fed and clothed, the Cold Demon could be absolutely defied, even in a tiny hut made out of pressed snow and warmed by a smoky seal-blubber lamp; that the Storm King could be baffled just by burrowing into his own snowdrifts and curling up under the crust, like an Eskimo dog. Hence, nearly all the legends depict the hero as finally conquering the Storm King, like Shingebis in the Song of Hiawatha. The ancient terror, however, still clings, with a hold the more tenacious as it becomes narrowed, to one large group of these calamities believed to be produced by cold,--namely, those diseases supposed to be caused by exposure to the weather. Even here, it still has a considerable basis in fact; but the general trend of opinion among thoughtful physicians is that this basis is much narrower than was at one time supposed, and is becoming still more restricted with the progress of scientific knowledge. For instance, fifty years ago, popular opinion, and even the majority of medical belief, was that consumption and all of its attendant miseries were chiefly due to exposure to cold. Now we know that, on the contrary, abundance of pure, fresh, cold air is the best cure for the disease, and foul air and overcrowding its chief cause. An almost equally complete about-face has been executed in regard to pneumonia. Prolonged and excessive exposure to cold may be the match that fires the mine, but we are absolutely certain that two other things are necessary, namely, the presence of the diplococcus, and a lowered and somewhat vitiated state of bodily resistance, due to age, overwork, underfeeding, or over-indulgence in alcohol. Not only do these two diseases not occur in the land of perpetual cold, the frozen North, except where they are introduced by civilized visitors,--and scarce a single death from pneumonia has ever yet occurred in the crew of an Arctic expedition,--but it has actually been proposed to fit up a ship for a summer trip through the Arctic regions, as a floating sanatorium for consumptives, on account of the purity of the air and the brilliancy of the sunlight. There is one realm, however, where the swing of this ancient superstition vibrates with fullest intensity, and that is in those diseases which, as their name implies, are still believed to be due to exposure to a lowered temperature--"common colds." Here again it has a certain amount of rational basis, but this is growing less and less every day. The present attitude of thoughtful physicians may be graphically indicated by the flippant inquiry of the riddle-maker, "When is a cold not a cold?" and the answer, "Two-thirds of the time." This much we are certain of already: that the majority of so-called "colds" have little or nothing to do with exposure to a low temperature, that they are entirely misnamed, and that a better term for them would be _fouls_. In fact, this proportion can be clearly and definitely proved and traced as infections spreading from one victim to another. The best place to catch them is not out-of-doors, or even in drafty hallways, but in close, stuffy, infected hotel bedrooms, sleeping-cars, churches, and theatres. Two arguments in rebuttal will at once be brought forward, both apparently conclusive. One is that colds are vastly more frequent in winter, and the other that when you sit in a draft until you feel chilly, you inevitably have a cold afterward. Both these arguments alike, however, are based upon a misunderstanding. The frequency of colds in winter is chiefly due to the fact that, at this time of the year, we crowd into houses and rooms, shutting the doors and windows in order to keep warm, and thus provide a ready-made hothouse for the cultivation and transmission from one to another of the influenza and other bacilli. As the brilliant young English pulmonary expert, Dr. Leonard Williams, puts it, "a constant succession of colds implies a mode of life in which all aërial microbes are afforded abundant opportunities." At the same time, we take less exercise and sit far less in the open air, thus lowering our general vigor and resisting power and making us more susceptible to attack. Those who live out-of-doors winter and summer, and who ventilate their houses properly, even in cold weather, suffer comparatively little more from colds in the winter-time than they do in summer; although, of course, the most vigorous individual, in the best ventilated surroundings, will occasionally succumb to some particularly virulent infection. The second fact of experience, catching cold after sitting in a draft or a chilly room until you begin to cough or sneeze, is one to which a majority of us would be willing to testify personally, and yet it is based upon something little better than an illusion. It is a well-known peculiarity of many fevers and infections to begin with a chill. The patient complains of shiverings up and down his spine, his fingernails and his lips become blue, in extreme cases his teeth chatter, and his limbs begin to twitch and shake, and he ends up in a typical ague fit. The best known, because most striking, illustration is malaria, or fever and ague, "chills and fever," as it is variously termed. But this form of attack, milder and much slighter in degree, may occur in almost every known infection, such as pneumonia, typhoid, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, measles, and influenza. It has nothing whatever to do with either external or internal temperature; for if you slip a fever-thermometer under your chilling patient's tongue, it will usually register anywhere from 102 to 105°. This method of attack is especially common, not only in influenza, but also in all the other so-called "common colds." In fact, when we begin to shiver and sneeze and hunt around for an imaginary draft or lowering of the temperature which has caused it, we are actually in the first stage of the development of an infection which was contracted hours, or even days, before. When you begin to shiver and sneeze and run at the eyes you are not "catching" cold; you have already caught it long before, and it is beginning to break out on you. Mere exposure to cold will never cause sneezing. It takes a definite irritation of the nasal mucous membrane, by gas or dust from without, or toxins from within, to produce a sneeze. As to mere exposure to cold weather and wet and storm being able to produce it, it is the almost unanimous testimony of Arctic explorers that, during their sojourn of from two to three years in the frozen North, they never had so much as a sneeze or a sore throat, even though frequently sheltered in extemporized huts, and running short of adequate food-supply before spring. Within a week of their return to civilization they would begin sneezing and coughing, and catch furious colds. Lumbermen, trappers, hunters, and prospectors in Alaska give similar testimony. I have talked with scores of these pioneers, visiting them, in fact, in their camps under conditions of wet, cold, and exposure that would have made one afraid of either pneumonia or rheumatism before morning, and found that, so long as they remained up in the mountains or out in the snow, and no case of influenza, sore throat, or cold happened to be brought into the camp, they would be entirely free from coughs and colds; but that, upon returning to civilization and sleeping in the stuffy room of a rude frontier hotel, they would frequently catch cold within three days. One unusually intelligent foreman of a lumber camp in Oregon told me that an experience of this kind had occurred to him three different times that he could distinctly recollect. It is difficult to catch a cold or pneumonia unless the bacilli are there to be caught. Boswell has embalmed for us, in the amber of his matchless biography, the fact that it had been noted, even in those days, that the inhabitants of one of the Faroe Islands never had colds in the head except on the rare occasions when a ship would touch there--usually not oftener than once a year. Then, within a week, half the population would be blowing and sneezing. The great Samuel commented upon the fact at length, and advanced the ingenious explanation that, as the harbor was so difficult of entry, the ships could beat in only when the wind was in a certain quarter, and that quarter was the nor'east. _Hinc illæ lacrimæ!_ (Hence these weeps!) The colds were caused by the northeast wind of unsavory reputation! How often the wind got into the northeast without bringing a ship or colds he apparently did not speculate. To come nearer yet, did you ever catch cold when camping out? I have waked in the morning with the snow drifting across the back of my neck, been wet to the skin all day, and gone to bed in my wet clothes, and slept myself dry; and have lain out all day in a November gale, in a hollow scooped in the half-frozen ground of the duck-marsh, and felt never a hair the worse. Scores of similar experiences will rise up in the minds of every camper, hunter, or fisherman. You _may_ catch cold during the first day or two out, before you have got the foul city air, with its dust and bacteria, out of your lungs and throat, but even this rarely happens. How seldom one catches cold from swimming, no matter how cold the water; or from boating, or fishing,--even without the standard prophylactic; or from picnicking, or anything that is done during a day in the open air. So much for the negative side of the evidence, that colds are not often caught where infectious materials are absent. Now for the positive side. First of all, that typical cold of colds, influenza, or the grip, is now unanimously admitted by authorities to be a pure infection, due to a definite germ (the _bacillus influenzæ_ of Pfeiffer) and one of the most contagious diseases known. Each of the great epidemics of it--1830-33, 1836-37, 1847-48, and, of most vivid and unblessed memory, 1889-90--can be traced in its stately march completely across the civilized world, beginning, as do nearly all our world-epidemics,--cholera, plague, influenza, etc.,--in China, and spreading, _via_ India or Turkestan, to Russia, Berlin, London, New York, Chicago. Moreover, its rate of progress is precisely that of the means of travel: camel-train, post-chaise, railway, as the case may be. The earlier epidemics took two years to spread from Eastern Russia to New York; the later ones, forty to sixty days. Soon it will beat Jules Verne or George Francis Train. So intensely "catching" is it, that letters written by sufferers have been known to infect the correspondents who received them in a distant town, and become the starting-point of a local epidemic. Of course, it may be urged that when we have proved the grip to be a definite infection, we have taken it out of the class of "colds" altogether, and that its bacterial origin proves nothing in regard to the rest. But a rather interesting state of affairs developed during the search for the true bacillus of influenza: this was that a dozen other bacilli and cocci were discovered, each of which seemed capable of causing all the symptoms of the _grip_, though in milder form. So that the view of the majority of pathologists now is that these "influenzoid," or "grip-like" attacks, under which come a majority of all _common colds_, are probably due to a number of different milder micro-organisms. The next fact in favor of the infectious character of a cold is that it begins with a chill, followed with a fever, runs a definite self-limited course, and, barring complications, gets well of itself in a certain time, just like the measles, scarlet fever, pneumonia, or any other frank infection. Colds are also followed by inflammations, or toxic attacks in other organs of the body, lungs, stomach, bowels, heart, kidneys, nerves, etc., just like diphtheria, scarlet fever, or typhoid, only, of course, of milder form and less frequently. Last, but not least practically convincing, colds may be traced from one victim to another, may "run through" households, schools, factories, may occur after attending church or theatre, may be checked by isolating the sufferers; and are now most effectually treated by the inhalation of non-poisonous germicidal or antiseptic vapors and sprays. One of my first experiences with this last method occurred in a most unexpected field. An old friend, a most interesting and intelligent German, was the proprietor of a wild-animal depot, importing foreign animals and birds and selling them to the zoölogical gardens and circuses. I used often to drop in there to see if he had anything new, and he would come up to see me, to tell me his troubles and keep my dissecting-table supplied with interestingly diseased dead beasts and birds. One day he came up in a state of great excitement, with a very dead and dilapidated parrot in his hand. "Choost look, Dogdor; here's one of dose measley new pollies I god in from Zingapore. De rest iss coffin' an' sneezin' to plow dere peaks off, an' all de utter caitches iss kitchen him." As parrots are worth from fifteen to thirty dollars apiece, "green" (not in color, but training), and he had fifty or sixty in the store, the situation was distinctly serious. Now, I was no specialist in the peculiar diseases of parrots, but something had to be done, and, with a boldness born of long practice, I drew my bow at a venture and let fly this suggestion:-- "Try formalin; it's pretty fierce on the eyes and nose, but it won't kill 'em; and, if you put a teaspoonful in the bottom of each cage, by the time it evaporates no germ that gets into that cage will live long enough to do any harm." Five days later back he came, red-eyed but triumphant. "Dogdor, dot vormaleen iss de pest shtuff I effer saw. It mos' shteenk me out of de shtore, an' de pollies nearly sneeze dere fedders off, but it shtopt de spret, an' _it's cureenall de seek ones_, an' I het a cold in de het, _an' it's curt me_." Before using it he had fourteen cases and three deaths; after, only three new cases and no more deaths. I would, however, hardly advise any human "coldie" to try such heroic treatment offhand, for the pungency and painfulness of formalin vapor is something ferocious, though the French physicians, with characteristic courage, are making extensive use of it for this purpose, with excellent results under careful supervision. Another curious straw pointing in the direction of the infectious nature of colds is the "annual cold," or "yearly sore throat," from which many of us suffer. When we have had it we usually feel fairly safe from colds for some months at least, often for a year. The only explanation that seems in the least to explain is that colds, like other infections, confer an immunity against another attack; only, unlike scarlet fever, measles, smallpox, etc., this immunity, instead of for life, is only for six months or a year. This immunity is due to the formation in the blood of protective substances known as _anti-bodies_, which destroy or render harmless the invading germs. Flabby, under-ventilated individuals, who are always "catching cold," have such weak resisting powers that they form hardly enough anti-bodies to terminate the first attack, without having enough left to protect them from another for more than a few weeks or months. Dr. Leonard Williams describes chronic cold-catchers as "people who wear flannel next their skins, ... who know they are in a draft because it makes them sneeze; who, in short, live thoroughly unwholesome, coddling lives." Strong and vigorous individuals may form enough to last them a year, or even two years. Now comes the question, "What are we going to do about it?" Obviously, we cannot "go gunning" for these countless billions of germs, of fifteen or twenty different species. Nor can we quarantine every one who has a cold. Fortunately, no such radical methods are necessary. All we have to do is to take nature's hint of the anti-bodies and improve upon it. Healthy cells can grow fat on a diet of such germs, and, if we keep ourselves vigorous, clean, and well ventilated, we can practically defy the "cold" devil and all his works. Here is the _leitmotif_ of the whole fascinating drama of infection and immunity. We can study only one phrasing here. We shall, of course, catch cold occasionally, but will throw it off quickly, and probably form anti-bodies enough to last us a year or more. How can this be done? First and foremost, by living and sleeping as much as possible in the open air. This helps in several different ways. First, by increasing the vigor and resisting power of our bodies; second, by helping to burn up, clean, and rid our tissues of waste products which are poisons if retained; third, by greatly reducing the risks of infection. You can't catch cold by sitting in a field exposed to the draft from an open gate; though I understand that casuists of the old school of the "chill-and-damp" theory of colds are still discussing the case of the patient who "caught his death o' cold" by having his gruel served in a damp basin. The first thing to do is to get the outdoor habit. This takes time to acquire, but, once formed, you wouldn't exchange it for anything else on earth. The next thing is to learn to sit or sleep in a gentle current of air all the time you are indoors. You ought to feel uncomfortable unless you can feel air blowing across your face night and day. Then you are reasonably sure it is fresh, and it is the only way to be sure of it. But drafts are so dangerous! As the old rhyme runs, But when a draft blows through a hole, Make your will and mend your soul. Pure superstition! It just shows what's in a name. Call it a gentle breeze, or a current of fresh air, and no one is afraid of it. Call it a "draft," and up go hands and eyebrows in horror at once. One of our highest authorities on diseases of the lungs, Dr. Norman Bridge, has well dubbed it "The Draft Fetich." It is a fetich, and as murderous as Moloch. The draft is a friend instead of an enemy. What converted most of us to a belief in the beneficence of drafts was the open-air treatment of consumption! Hardly could there have been a more spectacular proof, a more dramatic defiance of the bogey. To make a poor, wasted, shivering consumptive, in a hectic one hour and a drenching sweat the next, lie out exposed to the November weather all day and sleep in a ten-knot gale at night! It looked little short of murder! So much so to some of us, that we decided to test it on ourselves before risking our patients. I can still vividly recall the astonishment with which I woke one frosty December morning, after sleeping all night in a breeze across my head that literally made Each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine, not only without the sign of a sniffle, but feeling as if I'd been made new while I slept. Then we tried it in fear and trembling on our patients, and the delight of seeing the magic it worked! That is an old story now, but it has never lost its charm. To see the cough which has defied "dopes" and syrups and cough mixtures, domestic, patent, and professional, for months, subside and disappear in from three to ten days; the night sweats dry up within a week; the appetite come back; the fever fall; the strength and color return, as from the magic kiss of the free air of the woods, the prairies, the seacoast. There's nothing else quite like it on the green earth. Do you wonder that we become "fresh-air fiends"? The only thing we dread in these camps is the imported "cold." Dr. Lawrence Flick was the first to show us the way in this respect as in several others. He put up a big sign at the entrance of White Haven Sanatorium, "No persons suffering from colds allowed to enter," and traced the only epidemic of colds in the sanatorium to the visit of a butcher with the grip. I put up a similar sign at the gate of my Oregon camp, and never had a patient catch cold from tenting out in the snow and "Oregon mists" until the small son of the cook came back from the village school, shivering and sneezing, when seven of the thirteen patients "caught it" within a week. What will cure a consumptive will surely not kill a healthy man. I am delighted to say that it shows signs of becoming a fad now, and sleeping porches are being put on houses all over the country. No house in California is considered complete without them. The ideal bedroom is a small dressing-room, opening on a wide screened porch, or balcony, with a door wide enough to allow the bed to be rolled inside during storms or in severest weather. Sleep on a porch, or in a room with windows on two sides wide open, and the average living-room or office begins to feel stuffy and "smothery" at once. Apply the same treatment here. Learn to sit in a gentle draft, and you'll avoid two-thirds of your colds and three-fourths of your headaches. It may be necessary in winter to warm the draft, but don't let any patent method of ventilation delude you into keeping your windows shut any hour of the day or night. On the other hand, don't fall into the widespread delusion that because air is cold it is necessarily pure. Some of the vilest air imaginable is that shut up in those sepulchres known as "best bedrooms," which chill your very marrow. The rheumatism or snuffles you get from sleeping between their icy sheets comes from the crop of bacilli which has lurked there since they were last aired. The "no heat in a bedroom" dogma is little better than superstition, born of those fecund parents which mate so often, stinginess and puritanism. Practically, the room which will _never_ have a window opened in it in winter is the one without any heat. Similarly, the air in an underheated church, hall, or theatre is almost sure to be foul. The janitor will keep every opening closed in order to get the temperature up. Some churches are never once decently ventilated from December to May. The same old air, with an ever richer crop of germs, is reheated and served up again every Sunday. The "odor of sanctity" is the residue of the breaths and perspiration of successive generations. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but it is sometimes an astonishingly long step behind it. The next important step is to keep clean, both externally and internally: externally, by cold bathing, internally, by exercise. The only reason why a draft ever hurts us is because we are full of self-poisons, or germs. The self-poisons can be best got rid of by abundant exercise in the open air and plenty of pure, cold H2O, internally and externally. Food has very little to do with these autotoxins, and they are as likely to form on one diet as another. In fact, they form normally and in states of perfect health, and are poisonous only if retained too long. It is simply a question of burning them up, and getting rid of them quickly enough, by exercise, with its attendant deep breathing and perspiration. The lungs are great garbage-burners. Exercise every day till you puff and sweat. A blast of cold air suddenly stops the escape of these poisons through the skin and throws them on the lungs, liver, or kidneys. The resulting disturbance is the second commonest form of a "cold," and covers perhaps a third of all cases occurring. This is the cold that can be prevented by the cold bath. Keep the skin hardened and toned up to such a pitch that no reasonable chill will stop it from excreting, and you are safe. Never depend on clothing. The more you pile on, the more you choke and "flabbify" the skin and make it ready to "strike" on the first breath of cold air. Too heavy flannels are cold-breeders, and chest-protectors inventions of the evil one. Trust the skin; it is one of the most important and toughest organs in the body, if only given half a chance. But the most frequent way in which drafts precipitate a cold is by temporarily lowering the vital resistance. This gives the swarms of germs present almost constantly in our noses, throats, stomachs, bowels, etc., the chance they have been looking for--to break through the cell barrier and run riot in the body. So long as the pavement-cells of our mucous membranes are healthy, they can keep them out indefinitely. Lower their tone by cold, fatigue, underfeeding, and their line is pierced in a dozen places at once. One of the many horrifying things which bacteriology has revealed is that our bodies are simply alive with germs, even in perfect health. One enthusiastic dentist has discovered and described no less than _thirty-three_ distinct species, each one numbering its billions, which inhabit our gums and teeth. Our noses, our stomachs, our intestines,--each boasts a similar population. Most of them do no harm at all; indeed, some probably assist in the processes of digestion; others are camp-followers, living on our leavings; others, captive enemies which have been clubbed into peaceful behavior by our leucocyte and anti-body police. For instance, not a few healthy noses and throats contain the bacillus of diphtheria and the diplococcus of pneumonia. We are beginning to find that these last two groups will bear watching. Like camp-followers elsewhere, they carry knives, and are not above using them on the wounded after dark. In fact, they have a cheerful habit of taking a hand in any disturbance that starts in their bailiwick, and usually on the side against the body-cells. Finally, while clearly realizing that the best defense is attack, and that our chief reliance should be upon keeping ourselves in such fighting trim that we can "eat 'em alive" at any time, there is no sense in running easily avoidable risks, and we should keep away from infection as far as possible. If a child comes to school heavy-eyed, hoarse, and snuffling, the teacher should send him home at once. He will only waste his time attempting to study in that trim, and may infect a score of others. Moreover, it may be remarked, parenthetically, that these are also symptoms of the beginning of measles, scarlet fever, and diphtheria, and two-thirds of all cases of these would be sent home before they could infect any one else if this procedure were the rule. If your own child develops a cold, if mild, keep him playing out-of-doors by himself; or if severe, keep him in bed, in a well-ventilated room, for three or four days. He'll get better twice as quick as if at school, and the rest of the household will escape. When you wake with a stuffed head and aching bones, stay at home for a few days if possible, out of regard for your customers, your fellow-clerks, or your office force, as well as yourself. If one of your employees comes to work shivering, give him three days' vacation on full pay. If it runs through the force, you'll lose five times as much in enforced sick-leaves, slowness, and mistakes. Above all, don't go to any public gatherings,--to church, the theatre, or parties,--when you are snuffling and coughing. You are not exactly a joy to your beholders, even if you don't infect them. It is advisable, and well worth the trifling trouble and expense, to fumigate thoroughly with formalin all churches, theatres, and schoolrooms at least once a month. Reasonable and public-spirited precautions of this sort are advisable, not only to avoid colds themselves, which are disagreeable and dangerous enough, but because mild infections of this sort are far the commonest single means of making a breach in our body-ramparts through which more serious diseases like consumption, pneumonia, and rheumatism may force an entry. Colds do not "run into" consumption or pneumonia, but they bear much the same relation to them that good intentions are said to do to the infernal regions. They release the lid of a perfect Pandora's box of distempers--tuberculosis, pneumonia, rheumatism, bronchitis, Bright's disease, neuritis, endocarditis. A cold is no longer a joke. A generation ago a prominent physician was asked by an anxious mother, "Doctor, how would you treat a cold?" "With contempt, madam," replied the great man. That day is past, and has lasted too long. Intelligently regarded and handled, they are the least harmful of diseases; neglected, one of the most dangerous, because there are such legions of them. To sum up, if you wish to revel in colds, all that is necessary is to observe the following few and simple rules:-- Keep your windows shut. Avoid drafts as if they were a pestilence. Take no exercise between meals. Bathe seldom, and in warm water. Wear heavy flannels, chest-protectors, abdominal bandages, and electric insoles. Have no heat in your bedroom. Never let anything keep you away from church, the theatre, or parties, in winter. Never go out-of-doors when it's windy, or rainy, or wet underfoot, or cold, or hot, or looks as if it was going to be any of these. Be just as intimate and affectionate as possible with every one you know who has a cold. Don't neglect them on any account. CHAPTER V ADENOIDS, OR MOUTH-BREATHING: THEIR CAUSE AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES In all ages it has been accounted a virtue to keep your mouth shut--chiefly, of course, upon moral or prudential grounds, for fear of what might issue from it if opened. Then came physiology to back up the maxim, on the ground that the open mouth was also dangerous on account of what might be inhaled into it. Oddly enough, in this instance, both morality and science have been beside the mark to the degree that they have been mistaking a symptom for a cause. This has led us to absurd and injurious extremes in both cases. On the moral and prudential side it has led to such outrageous exaggerations as the well-known and oft-quoted proverb, "Speech is silver, but silence is golden." Articulate speech, the chiefest triumph and highest single accomplishment of the human species, the handmaid of thought and the instrument of progress, is actually rated below silence, the attribute of the clod and of the dumb brute, the easy refuge of cowardice and of stupidity. Easily eight-tenths of all speech is informing, educative, helpful in some modest degree; while fully that proportion of silence is due to lack of ideas, cowardice, or designs that can flourish only in darkness. It is not the abundance of words, but the scarcity of ideas, that makes us flee from "the plugless word-spout" and avoid the chatterbox. Similarly, upon the physical side, because children who breathe through the mouth are apt to have a vacant expression, to be stupid and inattentive, undersized, pigeon-breasted, with short upper lip and crowded teeth, we have leaped to the conclusion that it is a fearsome and dangerous thing to breathe through your mouth. All sorts of stories are told about the dangerousness of breathing frosty air directly into the lungs. Invalids shut themselves scrupulously indoors for weeks and even months at a stretch, for fear of the terrible results of a "blast of raw air" striking into their bronchial tubes. All sorts of absurd instruments of torture, in the form of "respirators" to tie over the mouth and nose and "keep out the fog," are invented, and those who have the slightest tendency to bronchial or lung disturbances are warned upon pain of their life to wrap up their mouths whenever they go out-of-doors. As a matter of fact, there is exceedingly little evidence to show that pure, fresh, open air at any reasonable temperature and humidity ever did harm when inhaled directly into the lungs. In fact, a considerable proportion of us, when swinging along at a lively gait on the country roads, or playing tennis or football, or engaged in any form of active sport, will be found to keep our lips parted and to inhale from a sixth to a third of our breath in this way, and with no injurious results whatever. Nine-tenths of all the maladies believed to be due to breathing even the coldest and rawest of air are now known to be due to invading germs. Nevertheless, mouth-breathing in all ages has been regarded as a bad habit, and with good reason. It was only about thirty years ago that we began to find out why. A Danish throat surgeon, William Meyer, whose death occurred only a few months ago, discovered, in studying a number of children who were affected with mouth-breathing, that in all of them were present in the roof of the throat curious spongy growths, which blocked up the posterior opening of the nostrils. As this mass was made up of a number of smaller lobules, and the tissue appeared to be like that of a lymphatic gland, or "kernel," the name "adenoids" (gland-like) was given to them. Later they were termed _post-nasal growths_, from the fact that they lay just behind the rear opening of the nostrils; and these two names are used interchangeably. Our knowledge has spread and broadened from this starting-point, until we now know that adenoids are the chief, yes, almost the sole primary cause, not merely of mouth-breathing, but of at least two-thirds of the injurious effects which have been attributed to this habit. Mouth-breathing is not simply a bad habit, a careless trick on the part of the child. We have come to realize that physical bad habits, as well as many mental and moral ones, have a definite physical cause, and that _no child ever becomes a mouth-breather as long as he can breathe comfortably through his nose_. This clears the ground at once of a considerable amount of useless lumber in the shape of advice to train the child to keep his mouth shut. I have even known mothers who were in the habit of going around after their helpless offspring were asleep and gently but firmly pushing up the little jaw and pressing the lips together until some sort of an attempt at respiration was made through the nostrils. Advertisements still appear of sling-like apparatuses for holding the jaws closed during sleep. To attempt to stop mouth-breathing before providing abundant air-space through the nostrils is not only irrational, but cruel. Of course, after the child has once become a mouth-breather, even after the nostrils have been made perfectly free, it will not at once abandon its habit of months or years, and disciplinary measures of some sort may then be needed for a time. But the hundred-times-repeated admonition, "For heaven's sake, child, shut your mouth! Don't go around with it hanging open like that!" unless preceded by proper treatment of the nostrils, will have just about as much effect upon the habit as the proverbial water on a duck's back. No use trying to close his mouth by any amount of opening of your own. Fortunately, as does not always happen, with our discovery of the cause has come the knowledge of the cure; and we are able to say with confidence that, widespread and serious as are disturbances of health and growth associated with mouth-breathing, they can be absolutely prevented and abolished. What, then, is the cause of this nasal obstruction, and when does it begin to operate? The primary cause is catarrhal inflammation, with swelling and thickening of the secretions, and it may begin to operate anywhere from the seventh month to the seventh year. A neglected attack, or series of attacks, of "snuffles," colds in the head, catarrhs, in infants and young children, will set up a slow inflammation of this glandular mass at the back of the nostrils--a tonsil, by the way--and start its enlargement. Whether we know anything about adenoids themselves or not, we are all familiar with their handiwork. The open mouth, giving a vacant expression to the countenance, the short upper lip, the pinched and contracted nostrils, the prominent and irregular teeth, the listless expression of the eyes, the slow response to request or demand, we have seen a score of times in every schoolroom. Coupled with these facial features are apt to be found on closer investigation a lack of interest in both work and play, an impaired appetite, restless sleep, and a curious general backwardness of development, both bodily and mental, so that the child may be from one to four inches below the normal height for his years, from five to fifteen pounds under weight, and from one to three grades behind his proper school position. Very often, also, his chest is inclined to be narrow, the tip of his breastbone to be sunken, and his abdomen larger in girth than his chest. Is it possible that the mere inhaling of air directly into the lungs, even though it be imperfectly warmed, moistened, and filtered, as compared with what it would be if drawn through the elaborate "steam-coils" in the nostrils for this purpose, can have produced this array of defects? It is incredible on the face of it and unfounded in fact. Fully two-thirds of these can be traced to the direct influence of the adenoids. These adenoids, it may briefly be stated, are the result of an enlargement of a _tonsil_, or group of small tonsils, identical in structure with the well-known bodies of the same name which can be seen on either side of the throat. They have the same unfortunate faculty as the other tonsils for getting into hot water, flaring up, inflaming, and swelling on the slightest irritation. And, unfortunately, they are so situated that their capacity for harm is far greater than that of the other tonsils. They seem painfully like the chip on the shoulder of a fighting man, ready to be knocked off at the lightest touch and plunge the whole body into a scrimmage. Their position is a little difficult to describe to one not familiar with the anatomy of the throat, especially as they cannot be seen except with a laryngeal mirror; but it may be roughly stated as in the middle of the roof of the throat, just at the back of the nostrils, and above the soft palate. From this coign of vantage they are in position to produce serious disturbances of two of our most important functions,--respiration and digestion,--and three out of the five senses,--smell, taste, and hearing. We will begin with their most frequent and most serious injurious effect, though not the earliest,--the impairment of the child's power of attention and intelligence. So well known is their effect in this respect that there is scarcely an intelligent and progressive teacher nowadays who is not thoroughly posted on adenoids. Some of them will make a snap diagnosis as promptly and almost as accurately as a physician; and when once they suspect their presence, they will leave no stone unturned to secure an examination of the child by a competent physician, and the removal of the growths, if present. They consider it a waste of time to endeavor to teach a child weighted with this handicap. How keenly awake they are to their importance is typified by the remark of a prominent educator five or six years ago:-- "When I hear a teacher say that a child is stupid, my first instinctive conclusion is either that the child has adenoids, or that the teacher is incompetent." The lion's share of their influence upon the child's intelligence is brought about in a somewhat unexpected and even surprising manner, and that is by the _effects of the growths upon his hearing_. You will recall that this third tonsil was situated at the highest point in the roof of the pharynx, or back of the throat. The first effect of its enlargement is naturally to block the posterior opening of the nostrils. But it has another most serious vantage-ground for harm in its peculiar position. Only about three-fourths of an inch below it upon either side open the mouths of the Eustachian tubes, the little funnels which carry air from the throat out into the drum-cavity of the ear. You have frequently had practical demonstrations of their existence, by the well-known sensation, when blowing your nose vigorously, of feeling something go "pop" in the ear. This sensation was simply due to a bubble of air being driven out through this tube from the back of the throat, under pressure brought to bear in blowing the nose. The luckless position of the third tonsil could hardly have been better planned if it had been devised for the special purpose of setting up trouble in the mouths of these Eustachian tubes. Just as soon as the enlargements become chronic, they pour out a thick mucous secretion, which quickly becomes purulent, or, in the vernacular, "matter." This trickles down on both sides of the throat, and drains right into the open mouth of the Eustachian tube. Not only so, but these Eustachian tubes are the remains of the first gill-slits of embryonic life, and, like all other gill-slits, have a little mass of this same lymphoid or tonsilar tissue surrounding them. This also becomes infected and inflamed, clogs the opening, and one fatal day the inflammation shoots out along the tube, and the child develops an attack of earache. At least two-thirds of all cases of earache, and, indeed, five-sixths of all cases of deafness in children, are due to adenoids. Earache is simply the pain due to acute inflammation in the small drum-cavity of the ear. This in the large majority of cases will subside and drain back again into the throat through the Eustachian tube. In a fair percentage of instances, however, it will break in the opposite direction, and we have the familiar ruptured drum and discharge from the ear. In either case the drum becomes thickened, so that it can no longer vibrate properly; the delicate little chain of bones behind it, like the levers of a piano, becomes clogged, and the child becomes deaf, whether a chronic discharge be present or not. This is the secret of his "inattention," his "indifference,"--even of his apparent disobedience and rebelliousness. What other children hear without an effort he has to strain every nerve to catch. He misunderstands the question that is asked of him, makes an absurd answer, and is either scolded or laughed at. It isn't long before he falls into the attitude: "Well, I can't get it right, anyhow, no matter how I try, so I don't care." Up to five or ten years ago the puzzled and distracted teacher would simply report the child for stupidity, indifference, and even insubordination. In nine cases out of ten, when children are naughty or stupid, they are really sick. Not content with dulling one of the child's senses, these thugs of the body-politic proceed to throttle two others--smell and taste. Obviously the only way of smelling anything is to sniff its odor into your nose. And if this be more or less, or completely, blocked up, and its delicate mucous membranes coated with a thick, ropy discharge, you will not be able to distinguish anything but the crudest and rankest of odors. But what has this to do with taste? Merely that two-thirds of what we term "taste" is really smell. Seal the nostrils and you can't "tell chalk from cheese," not even a cube of apple from a cube of onion, as scores of experiments have shown. We all know how flat tea, coffee, and even our own favorite dishes taste when we have a bad cold, and this, remember, is the permanent condition of the palate of the poor little mouth-breather. No wonder his appetite is apt to be poor, and that even what food he eats will not produce a flow of "appetite juice" in the stomach, which Pavloff has shown to be so necessary to digestion. No wonder his digestion is apt to go wrong, ably assisted by the continual drip of the chronic discharge down the back of his throat; his bowels to become clogged and his abdomen distended. But the resources for mischief of this pharyngeal "Old Man of the Sea" are not even yet exhausted. Next comes a very curious and unexpected one. We have all heard much of "the struggle for existence" among plants and animals, and have had painful demonstrations of its reality in our own personal experience. But we hardly suspected that it was going on in our own interior. Such, however, is the case; and when once one organ or structure falls behind the others in the race of growth, its neighbors promptly begin to encroach upon and take advantage of it. Emerson was right when he said, "I am the Cosmos," the universe. Now, the mouth and the nose were originally one cavity. As Huxley long ago remarked, "When Nature undertook to build the skull of a land animal she was too lazy to start on new lines, and simply took the old fish-skull and made it over, for air-breathing purposes." And a clumsy job she made of it! It may be remarked, in passing, that mouth-breathing, as a matter of history, is an exceedingly old and respectable habit, a reversion, in fact, to the method of breathing of the fish and the frog. "To drink like a fish" is a shameful and utterly unfounded aspersion upon a blameless creature of most correct habits and model deportment. What the poor goldfish in the bowl is really doing with his continual "gulp, gulp!" is breathing--not drinking. This remodeling starts at a very early period of our individual existence. A horizontal ridge begins to grow out on either side of our mouth-nose cavity, just above the roots of the teeth. This thickens and widens into a pair of shelves, which finally, about the third month of embryonic life, meet in the middle line to form the hard palate or roof of the mouth, which forms also the floor of the nose. Failure of the two shelves to meet properly causes the well-known "cleft-palate," and, if this failure extends forward to the jaw, "hare-lip." In the growth of a healthy child a balance is preserved between these lower and upper compartments of the original mouth-nose cavity, and the nose above growing as rapidly in depth and in breadth as the mouth below, the horizontal partition between--the floor of the nose and the roof of the mouth--is kept comparatively flat and level. In adenoids, however, the nostrils no longer being adequately used, and consequently failing to grow, and the mouth cavity below growing at the full normal rate, it is not long before the mouth begins to encroach upon the nostrils by pushing up the partition of the palate. As soon as this upward bulge of the roof of the mouth occurs, then there is a diminution of the resistance offered by the horizontal healthy palate to the continual pressure of the muscles of the cheeks and of mastication upon the sides of the upper jaw, the more readily as the tongue has dropped down from its proper resting position up in the roof of the mouth. These are pushed inward, the arch of the jaw and of the teeth is narrowed, the front teeth are made to project, and, instead of erupting, with plenty of room, in even, regular lines, are crowded against and overlap one another. When from any cause the lower jaw habitually hangs down, as in the open mouth, it tends to be thrown slightly forward in its socket. Then, when the jaws close again, the arches of the upper and lower teeth no longer meet evenly. Instead of "locking" at almost every point, as they should, they overlap, or fall behind, or inside, or outside, of each other. So that instead of every tooth meeting its fellow of the jaw above evenly and firmly, they strike at an angle, slip past or even miss one another, and thus increase the already existing irregularity and overlapping. Each individual tooth, missing its best stimulus to healthy growth and vigor, firm and regular pressure and exercise against its fellow in the jaw above or below, gets a twist in its socket, wears away irregularly, and becomes an easy prey to decay, while from failure of the entire upper and lower arches of the teeth to meet squarely and press evenly and firmly against one another, the jaws fail to expand properly and the tendency to narrowing of the tooth-arches and upward vaulting of the palate is increased. In short, we are coming to the conclusion that from half to two-thirds of all cases of "crowded mouth," irregular teeth, and high-arched palate in children are due to adenoids. Progressive dentists now are insisting upon their little patients, who come to them with these conditions, being examined for adenoids, and upon the removal of these, if found, as a preliminary measure to mechanical corrective treatment. Cases are now on record of children with two, three, or even four generations of crowded teeth and narrow mouths behind them, but who, simply by being sharply watched for nasal obstruction and the symptoms of adenoids, by the removal of these latter as soon as they have put in an appearance, have grown up with even, regular, well-developed teeth and wide, healthy mouths and jaws. Unfortunately, attention to the adenoids will not remove these defects of the jaws and teeth after they have been produced. But, if the child be under ten, or even twelve, years of age, their removal may yet do much permanently to improve the condition, and is certainly well worth while on general principles. Take care of the nose, and the jaws will take care of themselves. An ounce of adenoids-removal in the young child is worth a pound of _orthodontia_--teeth-straightening--in the boy or girl; though both are often necessary. The dull, dead tone of the voice in these children is, of course, an obvious effect of the blocked nostrils. Similarly, the broken sleep, with dreams of suffocation and of "Things Sitting on the Chest," are readily explained by the desperate efforts that the little one makes to breathe through clogging nostrils, in which the discharges, blown and sneezed out in the daytime, dry and accumulate during sleep, until, half-suffocated, it "lets go" and draws in huge gulps of air through the open mouth. No child ever became a mouth-breather from choice, or until after a prolonged struggle to continue breathing through its nose. This brings us to the question, What are these adenoids, and how do they come to produce such serious disturbances? This can be partially answered by saying that they are tonsils and with all a tonsil's susceptibility to irritation and inflammation. But that only raises the further question, What is a tonsil? And to that no answer can be given but Echo's. They are one of the conundrums of physiology. All we know of them is that they are not true _glands_, as they have neither duct nor secretion, but masses of simple embryonic tissue called _lymphoid_, which has a habit of grouping itself about the openings of disused canals. This is what accounts for their position in the throat, as they have no known useful function. The two largest, or throat-tonsils, surround the inner openings of the second gill-slits of the embryo; the lingual tonsil, at the base of the tongue below, encircles the mouth of the duct of the thyroid gland (the _goitre_ gland); and our own particular Pandora's Box above, in the roof of the pharynx, is grouped about the opening of another disused canal, which performs the singular and apparently most uncalled-for office of connecting the cavity of the brain with the throat. They can all of them be removed completely without any injury to the general health, and they all tend to shrink and become smaller--in the case of the topmost, or pharyngeal, almost disappear--after the twelfth or fourteenth year. Not only have they an abundant crop of troubles of their own, as most of us can testify from painful experience, but they serve as a port of entry for the germs of many serious diseases, such as tuberculosis, rheumatism, diphtheria, and possibly scarlet fever. They appear to be a strange sort of survival or remnant,--not even suitable for the bargain-counter,--a hereditary leisure class in the modern democracy of the body, a fertile soil for all sorts of trouble. Here, then, we have this little bunch of idle tissue, about the size of a small hazelnut, ready for any mischief which our Satan-bacilli may find for its hands to do. A child kept in a badly ventilated room inhales into his nostrils irritating dust or gases, or, more commonly yet, the floating germs of some one or more of those dozen mild infections which we term "a common cold." Instantly irritation and swelling are set up in the exquisitely elastic tissues of the nostrils, thick, sticky mucous, instead of the normal watery secretion, is poured out, the child begins to sneeze and snuffle and "run at the nose," and either the bacteria are carried directly to this danger sponge, right at the back of the nostrils, or the inflammation gradually spreads to it. The mucous membrane and tissues of the nose have an abundance of vitality,--like most hard workers,--and usually react, overwhelm, and destroy the invading germs, and recover from the attack; but the useless and half-dead tissue of the pharyngeal tonsil has much less power of recuperation, and it smoulders and inflames, though ultimately, perhaps, it may swing round to recovery. Often, however, a new cold will be caught before this has fully occurred, and then another one a month or so later, until finally we get a chronically thickened, inflamed, and enlarged condition of this interesting, but troublesome, body. What its capabilities are in this respect may be gathered from the fact that, while normally of the size of a small hazelnut, it is no uncommon thing to find a mass which absolutely blocks up the whole of the upper part of the pharynx, and may vary from the size of a robin's egg to that of a large English walnut, or even a small hen's egg, according to the age of the child and the size of the throat. Dirt has been defined as "matter out of place," and the pharyngeal tonsil is an excellent illustration. Nature is said never to make mistakes, but she is apt to be absent-minded at times, and we are tracing now not a few of the troubles that our flesh is heir to, to little oversights of hers--scraps of inflammable material left lying about among the cogs of the body-machine, such as the appendix, the gall-bladder, the wisdom teeth, and the tonsils. One day a spark drops on them, or they get too near a bearing or a "hot-box," and, in a flash, the whole machine is in a blaze. Never neglect snuffles or "cold in the head" in a young child, and particularly in a baby. Have it treated at once antiseptically, by competent hands, and learn exactly what to do for it on the appearance of the earliest symptoms in the future, and you will not only save the little ones a great deal of temporary discomfort and distress,--for it is perfect torment to a child to breathe through its mouth at first,--but you will ward off many of the most serious troubles of infancy and childhood. We can hardly expect to prevent all development of adenoids by these prompt and painless stitches in time, for some children seem to be born peculiarly subject to them, either from the inheritance of a particular shape of nose and throat,--"the family nose," as it has been called,--or from some peculiar sponginess and liability to inflammation and enlargement of all these tonsilar or lymphoid "glands" and "kernels" of the body generally--the old "lymphatic temperament." We are, however, now coming to the opinion that this so-called "hereditary" narrow nose, short upper lip, and high-arched palate are, in a large percentage of cases, the _result of adenoids in infancy_ in each successive generation of parents and grandparents. At all events, there are now on record cases of children whose parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents are known to have been mouth-breathers, and who have on that account been sharply watched for the possible development of adenoids in early life, and these removed as soon as they appeared, and they have grown up with well-developed, wide nostrils, broad, flat palates, and regular teeth, overcoming "hereditary defect" in a single generation. Curiously enough, their origin and ancestral relations may have an important practical bearing, even in the twentieth century. At the upper end of this curious _throat-brain_ canal lies another mass, the so-called _pituitary body_. This has been found to exert a profound influence over development and growth. Its enlargement is attended by giantism and another curious giant disease in which the hands, feet, and jaws enlarge enormously, known as _acromegaly_. It also pours into the blood a secretion which has a powerful effect upon both the circulation and the respiration. It is found shrunken and wasted in dwarfs. Some years ago it was suggested by my distinguished friend, the late Dr. Harrison Allen, and myself, that some of the extraordinary dwarfing and growth-retarding effects of adenoids might be due to a reflex influence exerted on their old colleague, the pituitary body. This view has found its way into several of the textbooks. Blood is thicker than water, and old ancestral vibrations will sometimes be set up in most unexpected places. Now comes the cheerful side of the picture. I should have hesitated to draw at such full length and in such lugubrious detail the direful possibilities and injurious effects of adenoids if its only result could have been to arouse apprehensions which could not be relieved. Fortunately, just the reverse is the case, and there are few conditions affecting the child, so common and such a fertile source of all kinds of mischief, and at the same time so completely curable, and whose cure will be attended by such gratifying improvement on the part of the little sufferer. In the first place, as has been said, their formation may usually be prevented altogether by intelligent and up-to-date hygienic care of the nose and the throat. In the second place, even after they have occurred and developed to a considerable degree, they can be removed by a trifling and almost painless operation, and, if taken early enough, all their injurious effects overcome. If, however, they have been neglected too long, so that the child has passed the eighth or ninth year before any interference has been attempted, and still more, of course, if it has passed the twelfth or thirteenth year, then only a part of the disturbances that have been caused can be remedied by their removal. So soft and pulpy are these growths, so poorly supplied with blood-vessels or nerves, and so slightly connected with the healthy tissues below them, that they may, in skilled hands, be completely removed by simply scraping with a dull surgical spoon (curette) or curved forceps, but never anything more knife-like than this. In fact, in the first seven years of life, when their removal is both easiest and will do most good, it is hardly proper to dignify the procedure by the name of an operation. It is attended by about the same degree of risk and of hemorrhage as the extraction of a tooth, and by less than half the amount of pain. But, trifling and free from danger as is the operation, there is nothing in the entire realm of surgery which is followed by more brilliant and gratifying results. It seems almost incredible until one has seen it in half a dozen successive cases. Not merely doctors, but teachers and nurses, develop a positive enthusiasm for it. This was the operation that led to the comical, but pathetic, "Mothers' Riots" in the New York schools. The word went forth, "The Krishts are cutting the throats of your children"; and, with the shameful echoes of Kishineff ringing in their ears, the Yiddish mothers swarmed forth to battle for the lives of their offspring. It is no uncommon thing to have a child of seven jump three to five inches in height, six to twelve pounds in weight, and one to three grades in his schooling, within the year following the operation. Ten years more of intelligence and hygienic teaching should see this scourge of childhood completely wiped out, or at least robbed of its possibilities for harm. When this is done, at least two-thirds of all cases of deafness, more than half of all cases of arrested development, and three-fourths of those of backwardness in children will disappear. CHAPTER VI TUBERCULOSIS, A SCOTCHED SNAKE I One of the darling habits of humanity is to discover that we are facing a crisis. One could safely offer a large prize for a group of ten commencement orations, or political platforms, at least a third of which did not announce this momentous fact. Either we are facing it or it confronts us, and unutterable things will happen unless we "gird up our loins," and vote the right ticket. An interesting feature about these loudly heralded crises is that they hardly ever "crise." The real crisis either strikes us so hard that we never know what hit us, or is over before we recognize that anything was going to happen. And most of our reflections about it are after ones--trying to explain what caused it. In fact, in public affairs, as in medicine, a crisis is a sign of recovery. Its occurrence is an indication that nature is preparing to throw off the disease. Nowhere is this truth more vividly illustrated than in the tuberculosis situation. When, about thirty years ago, the world began to awake from its stupor of centuries, and to realize that this one great disease alone was _killing one-seventh of all people born under civilization_, and crippling as many more; that its killed and wounded every year cast in the shade the bloodiest wars ever waged, and that it was apparently caused by the civilization which it ravaged,--no wonder that we were appalled at the outlook. Here was a disease of civilization, caused by the conditions of that civilization. Could it be cured without destroying its cause and reverting to barbarism? Yet this very apprehension was a sign of hope, a promise of improvement. That we were able to feel it was a sign that we were shaking off the old fatalistic attitude toward disease,--as inevitable or an act of Providence. It was brought about by the more accurate and systematic study of disease. We had long been sadly familiar with the fact that death by consumption, by "slow decline," by "wasting" or "slow fever," was frightfully common. "To fall into a decline" and die was one of the standard commonplaces of romantic literature. But that was quite different from knowing in cold, hard figures and inescapable percentages exactly how many of the race were killed by it. It is one of the striking illustrations of the advantages of good bookkeeping. Boards and departments of health had just fairly got on their feet and started an accurate system of state accounts in matters of deaths and births. We were beginning to recognize national health as an asset, and to scrutinize its fluctuations with keen interest accordingly. We may decry statistics as much as we like, but when we see the effects of a disease set down in cold columns of black and white we have no longer any idea of submitting to it as inevitable. We are going to get right up and do some fighting. "One-seventh of all the deaths" has literally become the war cry of our new Holy War against tuberculosis. Still another stirring phrase of inestimable value in rousing us from our torpor was that coined by the brilliant and lovable physician-philosopher, Oliver Wendell Holmes: "The Great White Plague of the North." This vivid epithet, abused as it may have been in later years, was of enormous service in fixing the public mind on consumption as a definite, individual disease, something to be fought and guarded against. Before that, we had been inclined to look upon it as just a natural failing of the vital forces, a thing that came from within, and was in no sense caused from without. The fair young girl, or the delicate boy whose vitality was hardly sufficient to carry him through the stern battle of life, under some slight shock, or even mental disappointment, would sink into a decline, gradually waste away, and die. What could be done in such a case, except to bow in submission to the inscrutable ways of Providence? It seems incredible now, but such was the light in which smallpox was regarded by physicians of the Arabian and mediæval schools: a natural oozing forth of "peccant humors" in the blood of the young, a disagreeable, but perfectly natural, and even necessary, process. For if the patient did not get rid of these humors either he would die or his growth would be seriously impaired. Now smallpox has become little more than a memory in civilization, and consumption is due to follow its example. Sanitary pioneers had already begun casting about eagerly for light upon the influence of housing, of drainage, of food, in the causation of tuberculosis, when a new and powerful weapon was suddenly placed in their hands by the infant science of bacteriology. This was the now world-famous discovery by Robert Koch that consumption and other forms of tuberculosis were due to the attack of a definite bacillus. No tubercle bacillus--no consumption. At first sight this discovery appeared to be anything but encouraging. In fact, it seemed to make the situation and the outlook even more hopeless. And when within a few years it was further demonstrated in rapid succession that most of the diseases of the spine in children, of the group of symptoms associated with enlarged glands or kernels in the neck and known as "scrofula" or struma, most cases of hip-joint disease, of white swelling of the knee, a large percentage of chronic ulcerations of the skin known as _lupus_, a common form of fatal bowel disease in children, and many instances of peritonitis in adults, together with fully half of the fatal cases of convulsions in children, were due to the activity of this same ubiquitous bacillus, it looked as if the enemy were hopelessly entrenched against attack. And when it was further found that a similar bacillus was almost as common a cause of death and disease in cattle, particularly dairy cattle, and another in domestic fowls, it looked as if the heavens above and the earth beneath were so thickly strewn and so hopelessly infested with the germs that to war against them, or hope to escape from them, was like fighting back the Atlantic tides with a broom. But this chill of discouragement quickly passed. Our foe had come down out of the clouds, and was spread out in battle array before us, in plain sight on the level earth. We were ready for the conflict, and proposed to "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." It was not long before we began to see joints in the enemy's armor and weaknesses in his positions. Then, when we lowered our field-glasses and turned to count our forces and prepare for the defense, we discovered with a shock of delighted relief that whole regiments of unexpected reinforcements had come up while we were studying the enemy's position. These new allies of ours were three of the great, silent forces of nature, which had fallen into line on either side and behind us, without hurry and without excitement, without even a bugle-blast to announce their coming. The first was the great resisting power and vigor of the human organism, which we had gravely underestimated. The second, that power of adaptation to new circumstances, including even the attack of infectious diseases, which we call "survival of the fittest." The third, that great, sustaining, conservative power of nature--heredity. More cheering yet, these forces came, not merely fully armed, but bearing new weapons fitted for our hands. The vigor and unconquerable toughness of the human animal presented us with three glittering weapons, sunshine, food, and fresh air. "If the deadly bacillus breaks through the lines, put me in the gap! With these weapons, with this triad, I will engage to hurl him back, shattered and broken." "Equip your vanguard with them, and the enemy will never break the line." The survival of the fittest held out to us two weapons of strange and curious make, one of them labeled "immunity," the other "quarantine." "Give me a little time," she said, "and with the first of these I will make seven-tenths of the soldiers in your army proof against the spears of the enemy, as Achilles was when dipped in the Styx. With the other, surround and isolate every roving band of the enemy that you can find; drive him out of the holes and caves in which he lives, into the sunlight. Hold him in the open for forty-eight hours, and he will die of light-stroke and starvation. Divide and conquer!" These reinforcements of ours have proved no mere figure of speech. They have won many a battle for us already upon the tented field. They have not merely made good their promises, but gone beyond them, and we are only just beginning to appreciate their true worth, and how absolutely we can rely upon them. The first outpost of the enemy was captured with the sunshine-food-air weapons, and a glorious victory it was,--great in itself, and even more important for its moral effect and its encouragement for the future. To pronounce an illness "consumption" had been from time immemorial equivalent to signing a death-warrant. Even the doctors could hardly believe it, when the first open-air enthusiasts began to claim that they had actually cured cases of genuine consumption. For long there was a tendency to mutter in the beard, "Well, it wasn't _genuine_ consumption, or it wouldn't have got better." But after a period of incredulity this gave way to delighted confidence. The open-air method would cure, and _did_ cure, and the patients remained cured for years afterward. Our first claims were barely for twenty-five or thirty per cent of the threatened victims. Then we were able to increase it to fifty per cent; sixty, seventy, and finally eighty were successively reached. But with the increase of our power over the cure of this disease came a realization of our knowledge of its limitations. It quickly proved itself to be no sovereign and universal panacea, which would cure all cases, however desperate, or however indiscriminately it was applied. And emphatically it had to be mixed with brains, on the part both of the physician and of the patient. In the first place, the likelihood of a cure depended, with almost mathematical certainty, upon the earliness of the stage at which it was begun. Eight or ten years ago the outlook crystallized itself into the form which it has practically retained since: of cases put under treatment in the very early stage, from seventy to ninety per cent were practical cures; of ordinary so-called "first-stage" cases, sixty to seventy per cent; second-stage cases, or those in whom the disease was well developed, thirty to sixty per cent; and well-advanced cases, fifteen to thirty per cent of apparent cures. _The crux of the whole proposition lies in the early recognition of the disease by the physician_, and the prompt acceptance of the diagnosis by the patient, and his willingness to drop everything and fight intelligently and vigorously for his life. Physicians are now thoroughly awake on this point, and are concentrating their most careful attention and study upon methods of recognition at the earliest possible stages. At the same time those magnificent associations for the study and prevention of tuberculosis, international, national, state, and local,--the greatest of which, the International Tuberculosis Congress, has just honored America, by meeting in Washington,--are straining every nerve to educate the public to understand the importance of recognizing the earliest possible symptoms of this disease, no matter how trivial they may appear, and making every other consideration bend to the fight. This new Word of Power, the open-air treatment, alone has transformed one of the most hopeless, most pathetic, and painful fields of disease into one of the most cheerful and hopeful. The vantage-ground won is something enormous. No longer need the family physician hang back, in dread and horror, from allowing himself even to recognize that the slow loss of weight, the increasing weakness, the flushed evening cheek, and the restless sleep, are signs of this dread malady. Instead of shrinking from pronouncing the patient's doom, he knows now that he has everything to gain and nothing to lose by promptly warning him of his danger, even while it is still problematical. On the other hand, the patient need no longer recoil in horror when told that he has consumption, and either go home to set his house in order and make his will, or hunt up another medical adviser who will take a more cheerful view of his case. All that he has to do is to turn and fight the disease vigorously, intelligently, persistently, with the certain knowledge that the chances are five to one in his favor; and that's a good fighting chance for any one. Even should there be reasonable ground for doubt as to the positive nature of the disease, he has nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking the steps required to cure it. There is nothing magical or irrational, least of all injurious, in any way about them. Simply rest, abundant feeding, and plenty of fresh air. Even if the bacillus has not yet lodged in his tissues, this treatment will relieve the conditions of depression from which he is suffering, and which would sooner or later render him a favorable lodging-place for this omnipresent, tiny enemy. If he has the disease the treatment will cure it. If he hasn't got it, it will prevent it; and the gain in vigor, weight, and general efficiency will more than pay him for the time lost from his business or his study. It always pays to take time to put yourself back into a condition of good health and highest efficiency. It was early recognized that the campaign could not be won with this weapon alone. Inexpressibly valuable and cheering as it was, it had obvious limitations. The first of these was the obvious reflection that it was idle to cure even eighty per cent of all who actually developed tuberculosis, unless something were done to stop the disease from developing at all. "Eighty per cent of cures," of course, sounds very encouraging, especially by contrast with the almost unbroken succession of deaths before. But even a twenty per cent mortality from such a common disease, if it were to proceed unchecked, would make enormous inroads every year upon our national vigor. Secondly, it was quickly seen that those who recovered from the disease still bore the scars; that while they might recover a fair degree of health and vigor, yet they were always handicapped by the time lost and the damage inflicted by this slow and obstinate malady; that many of them, while able to preserve good health under ideal conditions, were markedly and often distressingly limited in the range of their business activities for years after, and even for life. Finally, that as these cases were followed further and further, it was found that even after becoming cured they were sadly liable to relapse under some unexpected strain, or to slacken their vigilance and drop back into their former bad physical habits; while the conviction began to grow steadily upon men who had devoted one, two, or more decades to the study of this disease in the localities most resorted to for its cure, that the general vigor and vitality of these cured consumptives were apt to be not of the best; that their duration of life was not equal to the average; and that, even if they escaped a return of the disease, they were apt to go down before their normal time under the attack of some other malady. In short, _cure_ was a poor weapon against the disease as compared with _prevention_. But before this, a careful study of the enemy's position and investigation of our own resources had brought another most important and reassuring fact to light, and that is, that while a distressingly large number of persons died of tuberculosis, these represented only a comparatively small percentage of all who had actually been attacked by the disease. One of the reasons why consumption had come to be regarded as such a deadly disease was that the milder cases of it were never recognized. It was, and is yet, a common phrase in the mouths of both the laity and of the medical profession: "He was seriously threatened with consumption"; "She came very near falling into a decline,"--_but_ they recovered. If they didn't die of it, it wasn't "real" tuberculosis. Now we have changed all that, and have even begun to go to the opposite extreme, of declaring with the German experts, "_Jeder Mann ist am ende ein bischen tuberkulöse_." (Every one is some time or another a little bit tuberculous.) This sounds appalling at first hearing, but as a matter of fact it is immensely encouraging. Our first suspicion of it came from the records of that gruesome, but pricelessly valuable, treasure-house of solid facts in pathology--the post-mortem room, the dead-house. Systematic examinations of all the bodies brought to autopsy in our great hospitals and elsewhere revealed at first thirty, then, as the investigation became more minute and skillful, forty, sixty, seventy-five per cent of scars in the apices of the lungs, remains of healed cavities, infected glands, or other signs of an invasion by the tubercle bacillus. Of course, the skeptic challenged very properly at once:-- "But how do you know that these masses of chalky-material, these enlarged glands, are the result of tuberculosis? They may be due to some half-dozen other infections." Almost before the question was asked a test was made by the troublesome but convincing method of cutting open these scars, dividing these enlarged glands, scraping materials out of their centre, and injecting them into guinea pigs. Result: from thirty to seventy per cent of the guinea pigs died of tuberculosis. In other cases it was not necessary to inoculate, as scrapings or sections from these scar-masses showed tubercle bacilli, clearly recognizable by their staining reaction. Here, then, we have indisputable evidence of the fact that the tubercle bacillus may not only enter some of the openings of the body,--the nostrils, the mouth, the lungs,--but may actually form a lodgment and a growth-colony in the lungs themselves, and yet be completely defeated by the antitoxic powers of the blood and other tissues of the body, prevented from spreading throughout the rest of the lung, most of the invaders destroyed, and the crippled remnants imprisoned for life in the interior of a fibroid or chalky mass. It gave one a distinct shock at the meeting of the British Medical Association devoted to tuberculosis, some ten years ago, to hear Sir Clifford Allbutt, one of the most brilliant and eminent physicians of the English-speaking world, remark, on opening his address, "Probably most of us here have had tuberculosis and recovered from it." Here is evidently an asset of greatest and most practical value, which changes half the face of the field. Instead of saving, as best we may, from half to two-thirds of those who have allowed the disease to get the upper hand and begin to overrun their entire systems, it places before us the far more cheering task of building up and increasing this natural resisting power of the human body, until not merely seventy per cent of all who are attacked by it will throw it off, but eighty, eighty-five, ninety! We can plan to stop _consumption by preventing the consumptive_. A very small additional percentage of vigor or of resisting power--such as could be produced by but a slight improvement in the abundance of the food-supply, the lighting and ventilating of the houses, the length and "fatiguingness" of the daily toil--might be the straw which would be sufficient to turn the scale and prevent the tuberculous individual from becoming consumptive. Here comes in one of the most important and valuable features of our splendid sanatorium campaign for the cure of tuberculosis, and that is the nature of the methods employed. If we relied for the cure of the disease upon some drug, or antitoxin, even though we might save as many lives, the general reflex or secondary effect upon the community might not be in any way beneficial; at best it would probably be only negative. But when the only "drugs" that we use are fresh air, sunshine, and abundant food, and the only antitoxins those which are bred in the patient's own body; when, in fact, we are using for the cure of consumption _precisely those agencies and influences which will prevent the well from ever contracting it_, then the whole curative side of the movement becomes of enormous racial value. The very same measures that we rely upon for the cure of the sick are those which we would recommend to the well, in order to make them stronger, happier, and more vigorous. If the whole civilized community could be placed upon a moderate form of the open-air treatment, it would be so vastly improved in health, vigor, and efficiency, and saved the expenditure of such enormous sums upon hospitals, poor relief, and sick benefits, that it would be well worth all that it would cost, even if there were no such disease as tuberculosis on earth. This is coming to be the real goal, the ultimate hope of the far-sighted leaders in our tuberculosis campaign,--to use the cure of consumption as a lever to raise to a higher plane the health, vigor, and happiness of the entire community. Enormously valuable as is the open-air sanatorium as a means of saving thousands of valuable and beloved lives, its richest promise lies in its function as a school of education for the living demonstration of methods by which the health and happiness of the ninety-five per cent of the community who never will come within its walls may be built up. Every consumptive cured in it goes home to be a living example and an enthusiastic missionary in the fresh-air campaign. The ultimate aim of the sanatorium will be to turn every farmhouse, every village, every city, into an open-air resort. When it shall have done this it will have fulfilled its mission. Our plan of campaign is growing broader and more ambitious, but more hopeful, every day. All we have to do is to keep on fighting and use our brains, and victory is certain. Our Teutonic fellow soldiers have already nailed their flag to the mast with the inscription:-- "No more tuberculosis after 1930!" So much for the serried masses of the centre of our anti-tuberculosis army, upon which we depend for the heavy, mass fighting and the great frontal attacks. But what of the right and the left wings, and the cloud of skirmishers and cavalry which is continually feeling the enemy's position and cutting off his outposts? Upon the right stretch the intrenchments of the bacteriologic brigade, with the complicated but marvelously effective weapons of precision given us by the discovery of the definite and living cause of the disease, the _Bacillus tuberculosis_. Upon the left wing lie camp after camp of native regiments, whose loyalty until of very recent years was more than doubtful,--heredity, acquired immunity, and the so-called improvements of modern civilization, steam, electricity, and their kinsmen. To the artillerymen of the bacteriologic batteries appears to have been intrusted the most hopeless task, the forlorn hope,--the total extermination of a foe so tiny that he had to be magnified five hundred times before he was even visible, and of such countless myriads that he was at least a billion times as numerous as the human race. But here again, as in the centre of the battle-line, when we once made up our minds to fight, we were not long in discovering points of attack and weapons to assault him with. First, and most fundamental of all, came the consoling discovery that though there could be no consumption without the bacillus, not more than one individual in seven, of fair or average health, who was exposed to its attack in the form of a definite infection, succumbed to it; and that, as strongly suggested by the post-mortem findings already described, even those who developed a serious or fatal form of the disease had thrown off from five to fifteen previous milder or slighter infections. So that, to put it roughly, all that would be necessary practically to neutralize the injuriousness of the bacillus would be to prevent about one-twentieth of the exposures to its invasion which actually occurred. The other nineteen-twentieths would take care of themselves. The bacilli are not the only ones who can be numbered in their billions. If there are billions of them there are billions of us. We are not mere units--scarcely even individuals--except in a broad and figurative sense. We are confederacies of billions upon billions of little, living animalcules which we call cells. These cells of ours are no Sunday-school class. They are old and tough and cunning to a degree. They are war-worn veterans, carrying the scars of a score of victories written all over them. _They_ are animals; bacteria, bacilli, micrococci, and all _their_ tribe are _vegetables_. The daily business, the regular means of livelihood of the animal cell for fifteen millions of years past has been eating and digesting the vegetable. And all that our body-cells need is a little intelligent encouragement to continue this performance, even upon disease germs; so that we needn't be afraid of being stampeded by sudden attack. The next cheering find was that the worst enemies of the bacillus were our best friends. Sunlight will kill them just as certainly as it will give us new life. The germs of tuberculosis will live for weeks and even months in dark, damp, unventilated quarters, just precisely such surroundings as are provided for them in the inside bedrooms of our tenements, and the dark, cellar-like rooms of many a peasant's cottage or farmhouse. In bright sunlight they will perish in from three to six hours; in bright daylight in less than half a day. This is one of the factors that helps to explain the apparent paradox, that the dust collected from the floors and walls of tents and cottages in which consumptives were treated was almost entirely free from tuberculous bacilli, while dust taken from the walls of tenement houses, the floors of street-cars, the walls of churches and theatres in New York City, was found to be simply alive with them. One of the most important elements in the value of sunlight in the treatment of consumption is its powerful germicidal effect. CHAPTER VII TUBERCULOSIS, A SCOTCHED SNAKE II Closely allied to the discovery that sunlight and fresh air are fatal to the microörganisms of tuberculosis came the consoling fact that these bacilli, though most horribly ubiquitous and apparently infesting both the heavens above and the earth beneath, had neither wings nor legs, and were absolutely incapable of propelling themselves a fraction of an inch. They do not move--_they have to be carried_. More than this, like all other disease-germs, while incredibly tiny and infinitesimal, they have a definite weight of their own, and are subject to the law of gravity. They do not flit about hither and thither in the atmosphere, thistledown fashion, but rapidly fall to the floor of whatever room or receptacle they may be thrown in. And the problem of their transference is not that of direct carrying from one victim to the next, but the intermediate one of infected materials, such as are usually associated with visible dust or dirt. In short, keep dust or dirt from the floor, out of our food, away from our fingers or clothing or anything that can be brought to or near the mouth, and you will practically have abolished the possibility of the transference of tuberculosis. The consumptive himself is not a direct source of danger. It is only his filthy or unsanitary surroundings. Put a consumptive, who is careful of his sputum and cleanly in his habits, in a well-lighted, well-ventilated room, or, better still, out of doors, and there will be exceedingly little danger of any other member of his family or of those in the house with him contracting the disease. Wherever there is dirt or dust there is danger, and there almost only. Thorough and effective house-reform--not merely in tenements, alas! but in myriads of private houses as well--would abolish two-thirds of the spread of tuberculosis. It is not necessary to isolate every consumptive in order to stop the spread of the disease. All that is requisite is to prevent the bacilli in his sputum from reaching the floor or the walls, to have both the latter well lighted and aired, and, if possible, exposed to direct sunlight at some time during the day, and to see that dust from the floor is not raised in clouds by dry sweeping so as to be inhaled into the lungs or settle upon food, fingers, or clothing, and that children be not allowed to play upon such floors as may be even possibly contaminated. These precautions, combined with the five-to-one resisting power of the healthy human organism, will render the risk of transmission of the disease an exceedingly small one. To what infinitesimal proportions this risk can be reduced by intelligent and strict sanitation is illustrated by the fact, already alluded to, of the almost complete germ-freeness of the dust from walls and floors of sanitorium cottages, and by the even more convincing and conclusive practical result, that scarcely a single case is on record of the transmission of this disease to a nurse, a physician, or a servant, or other employee in an institution for its cure. There is absolutely no rational basis for this panic-stricken dread of an intelligent, cleanly consumptive, or for the cruel tendency to make him an outcast and raise the cry of the leper against him: "Unclean! Unclean!" It cannot be too strongly emphasized that consumption is transmitted _by way of the floor_; and if this relay-station be kept sterile there is little danger of its transmission by other means. Practically all that is needed to break this link is the absolute suppression of what is universally and overwhelmingly regarded as not merely an unsanitary and indecent, but a filthy, vulgar, and disgusting habit--promiscuous expectoration. There is nothing new or unnatural in this repression, this _tabu_ on expectoration. In fact, we are already provided with an instinct to back it. In every race, in every age, in every grade of civilization, the human saliva has been regarded as the most disgusting, the most dangerous and repulsive of substances, and the act of spitting as the last and deepest sign of contempt and hatred; and if directed toward an individual, the deadliest and most unbearable insult, which can be wiped out only by blood. Primitive literature and legend are full of stories of the poisonousness of human saliva and the deadliness of the human bite. It was the "bugs" in it that did it. It is most interesting to see how science has finally, thousands of years afterward, shown the substantial basis of, and gone far to justify, this instinctive horror and loathing. Not merely are the fluids of the human mouth liable to contain the tubercle bacillus, and that of diphtheria, of pneumonia, and half a dozen other definite disorders, but they are in perfectly healthy individuals, especially where the teeth are in poor condition, simply swarming with millions of bacteria of every sort, some of them harmless, others capable of setting up various forms of suppuration and septic inflammation if introduced into a wound, or even if taken into the stomach. Even if there were no such disease as tuberculosis a campaign to stamp out promiscuous expectoration would be well worth all it cost. Of course, as a counsel of perfection, the ideal procedure would be promptly to remove each consumptive, as soon as discovered, from his house and place him in a public sanatorium, provided by the state, for the sake of removing him from the conditions which have produced his disease, of placing him under those conditions which alone can offer a hopeful prospect of cure, and of preventing the further infection of his surroundings. The only valid objections to such a plan are those of the expense, which, of course, would be very great. It would be not merely best, but kindest, for the consumptive himself, for his immediate family, and for the community. And enormous as the expense would be, when we have become properly aroused and awake to the huge and almost incredible burden which this disease, with its one hundred and fifty thousand deaths a year, is now imposing upon the United States,--five times as great as that of war or standing army in the most military-mad state in Christendom,--the community will ultimately assume this expense. So long, however, as our motto inclines to remain, "Millions for cure, but not one cent for prevention," we shall dodge this issue. There can be no question but that each state and each municipality of more than ten thousand inhabitants ought to provide an open-air camp or colony of sufficient capacity to receive all those who are willing to take the cure but unable to meet the expense of a private institution; and, also, some institution of adequate size, to which could be sent, by process of law, all those consumptives who, either through perversity, or the weakness and wretchedness due to their disease, or the apathy of approaching dissolution, fail or are unable to take proper precautions. When we remember that the careful investigations of the various dispensaries for the treatment of tuberculosis in our larger cities, New York, Boston, Cleveland, report that on an average twenty to thirty per cent of all children living in the same room or apartment with a consumptive member of their family are found to show some form of tuberculosis, it will be seen how well worth while, from every point of view, this provision for the removal and sanatorium treatment of the poorer class of these unfortunates would be. These dispensaries now have, as a most important part of their campaign against the disease, one or more visiting nurses, who, whenever a patient with tuberculosis is brought into the dispensary, visit him in his home, show him how to ventilate and light his rooms as well as may be, give practical demonstrations of the methods of preventing the spread of the disease, advise him as to his food, and see that he is supplied with adequate amounts of milk and eggs, and, finally, round up all the children of the family and any adults who are in a suspicious condition of health, and bring them to the dispensary for examination. Distressing as are these findings, reaching in some cases as high as fifty and sixty per cent of the children, they have already saved hundreds of children, and prevented hundreds of others from growing up crippled or handicapped. It must be remembered that the tubercle bacillus causes not merely disease of the lungs in children but also a large majority of the crippling diseases of the bones, joints, and spine, together with the whole group of strumous or scrofulous disorders, and a large group of intestinal diseases and of brain lesions, resulting in convulsions, paralysis, hydrocephalus, and death. The battle-ground of the future against tuberculosis is the home. We speak of the churchyard as "haunted," and we recoil in horror from the leper-house or the cholera-camp. Yet the deadliest known hotbed of horrors, the spawning ground of more deaths than cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, and the bubonic plague combined, is the dirty floor of the dark, unventilated living-room, whether in city tenement or village cottage, where children crawl and their elders spit. It is scarcely to the credit of our species that for convincing, actual demonstrations of what can be done toward stamping out tuberculosis, by measures directed against the bacillus alone, we are obliged to turn to the lower animals. By a humiliating paradox we are never quite able to put ourselves under those conditions which we know to be ideal from a sanitary point of view. There are too many prejudices, too many vested interests, too many considerations of expense to be reckoned with. But with the lower animals that come under our care we have a clear field, free from obstruction by either our own prejudices or those of others. In this realm the stamping out of tuberculosis is not merely a rosy dream of the future but an accomplished fact, in some quarters even an old story. Two illustrations will suffice, one among domestic animals, the other among wild animals in captivity. The first is among pure-bred dairy cattle, the pedigreed Jerseys and Holsteins. No sooner did the discovery of the bacillus provide us with a means of identification, than the well-known "_perlsucht_" of the Germans, or "grapes" of the English veterinarians--both names being derived from the curious rounded masses or nodules of exudate found in the pleural cavity and the peritoneum (around the lungs and the bowels), and supposed to resemble pearls and grapes respectively--were identified as tuberculosis, and cows were found very widely infected with it. This unfortunately still remains the case with the large mass of dairy cattle. But certain of the more intelligent breeders owning valuable cattle proceeded to take steps to protect them. The first step was to test their cows with tuberculin, promptly weeding out and isolating all those that reacted to the disease. It was at first thought necessary to slaughter all these at once. But it was later found that, if they were completely isolated and prevented from communicating the disease to others, this extreme measure was necessary only with those extensively diseased. The others could be kept alive, and if their calves were promptly removed as soon as born, and fed only upon sterilized or perfectly healthy milk, they would be free from the disease. And thus the breeding-life of a particularly valuable and high-bred animal might be prolonged for a number of years. They must, however, be kept in separate buildings and fields, and preferably upon a separate farm from the rest of the herd. Those cows found healthy were given the best of care, including a marked diminution of the amount of housing or confinement in barns, and were again tested at intervals of six months, several times, to weed out any others which might still have the infection in their systems. In a short time all signs of the disease disappeared, and no other cases developed in these herds unless fresh infection was introduced from without. To guard against this, each farm established a quarantine station, where all new-bought animals, after having been tested with tuberculin and shown to be free from reaction, are kept for a period of at least a year, for careful observation and study, before being allowed to mix with the rest of the herd. It is now a common requirement among intelligent breeders of pedigreed cattle to demand, as a formal condition of sale, their submission to the tuberculin test, or the certificate of a competent veterinarian that the animal has been so tested without reacting. Protected herds have now been in existence under these conditions, notably in Denmark, where the method was first reduced to a system under the able leadership of Professor Bang, of Copenhagen, for ten years with scarcely a single case of tuberculosis developing. Only a fraction of one per cent of calves from the most diseased mothers are born diseased. Not only is the method spreading rapidly among the more intelligent class of breeders, but many progressive countries of Europe and states of our Union require the passing of the tuberculin test as a requisite to the admission within their borders of cattle intended for breeding purposes. So that, while the problem is still an enormous one, it is now confidently believed that complete eradication of bovine tuberculosis is only a question of time. The other instance furnishes a much more crucial test, as it is carried out upon wild animals under the unfavorable conditions of captivity in a strange climate, like our slum-dwellers from sunny Italy, and comes home to us more closely in many respects, inasmuch as it is concerned with our nearest animal relatives on the biological side--monkeys and apes, in zoölogical gardens. Tuberculosis is a perfectly frightful scourge to these unfortunate captives, causing not infrequently thirty, fifty, and even sixty per cent of the deaths. This, however, is only in keeping with their frightful general mortality. The collection of monkeys in the London Zoo, for instance, some fifteen years ago, was absolutely exterminated by disease and started over afresh _every three years_, a death-rate of thirty-five per cent per annum as compared with our human rate of about two per cent per annum. Here, it would seem, was an instance where there was little need to call in the bacillus. Brought from a tropical climate to one of raw, damp fog and smoke, from the freedom of the air-roads through the tree-tops to the confinement of dismal and often dirty cages in a stuffy, overheated house, condemned to a diet which at best could be but a feeble and far-distant imitation of their natural food, it seemed little wonder that they "jes' natcherly pined away an' died." But let the results speak. A thorough system of quarantine was enforced, beginning with one of the Vienna gardens, and finally reaching one of its most brilliant and successful exemplifications in our own New York Zoölogical Gardens in the Bronx. All animals purchased or donated were tested with tuberculin, and those that reacted were either painlessly destroyed or disposed of. Those which appeared to be immune were kept in a thoroughly healthy, sanitary quarantine station for six months or a year, and again tested by tuberculin before being introduced into the cages. The original stock of monkeys was treated in the same manner or else destroyed completely, and the houses and cages thoroughly cleaned and sterilized or new ones constructed. Keepers employed in the monkey-house were carefully tested for signs of tuberculosis, and rejected or excluded if any appeared. Signs were posted forbidding any expectoration or feeding of the animals (which latter is often done with nuts or fruit which had been cracked or bitten before being handed to the monkeys) by the general public, and these rules were strictly enforced. At the same time the houses were thoroughly ventilated and exposed to sunlight as much as possible, and the animals were turned out into open air cages whenever the weather would possibly permit. As a result the mortality from tuberculosis promptly sank from thirty per cent to five or six per cent. In our Bronx Zoo, for instance, it has become decidedly rare as a cause of death in monkeys, no case having occurred in the monkey-house for eighteen months past. What is even more gratifying, the general mortality declined also, though in less proportion, so that, instead of losing twenty-five to thirty per cent of the animals in the house every year, a mortality of ten to fifteen per cent is now considered large. And to think that we might achieve the same results in our own species if we would only treat ourselves as well as we do our monkey captives! To "make a monkey of one's self" might have its advantages from a sanitary point of view. "But this method," some one will remind us, "would silence only a part of the enemy's infection batteries." Even supposing that we could prevent the spread of the disease from human sources, what of the animal consumptives and their deadly bacilli? If the milk that we drink, and the beef, pork, and poultry that we eat, are liable to convey the infection, what hope have we of ever stopping the invasion? The question is a serious one. But here again a thorough and careful study of the enemy's position has shown the danger to be far less than it appeared at first sight. Even bacilli have what the French call "the defects of their virtues." Their astonishing and most disquieting powers of adjustment, of accommodation to the surroundings in which they find themselves, namely, the tissues and body-fluids of some particular host whom they attack, bring certain limitations with them. Just in so far as they have adjusted themselves to live in and overcome the opposition of the body-tissues of a certain species of animals, _just to that degree they have incapacitated themselves to live in the tissues of any other species_. Some of the most interesting and far-reachingly important work that has been done in the bacteriology of tuberculosis of late years has concerned itself with the changes that have taken place in different varieties and strains of tubercle bacilli as the result of adjusting themselves to particular environments. The subject is so enormous that only the crudest outlines can be given here, and so new that it is impossible to announce any positive conclusions. But these appear to be the dominant tendencies of thought in the field so far. Though nearly all domestic animals and birds, and a majority of wild animals under captivity, are subject to the attack of tuberculosis, practically all the infections hitherto studied are caused by one of three great varieties or species of the tubercle bacillus: the _human_, infesting our own species; the _bovine_, attacking cattle; and the _avian_, inhabiting the tissues of birds, especially the domestic fowl. These three varieties or species so closely resemble one another that they were at one time regarded as identical, and we can well remember the wave of dismay which swept over the medical world when Robert Koch announced that the "_perlsucht_" of cattle was a genuine and unquestioned tuberculosis due to an unmistakable tubercle bacillus. But as these varieties were thoroughly and carefully studied, it was soon found that they presented definite marks of differentiation, until now they are universally admitted to be distinct varieties, each with its own life peculiarities, and, according to some authorities, even distinct species. "But," we fancy we hear some one inquire impatiently, "what do those academic, technical distinctions matter to us? Whether the avian tuberculosis germ is a variety or a true species may be left to the taxonomists, but it is of no earthly importance to us." On the contrary, it is of the greatest importance. For the distinctive feature about a particular species of parasite is that it will live and flourish where another species will die, and, vice versa, _will die in surroundings where its sister species might live and thrive_. One of the first differences found to exist among these three types of bacteria was the extraordinary variation in their power of attacking different animals. For instance, while the guinea-pig and the rabbit could be readily inoculated with _human_ bacilli, they could only be infected with difficulty by cultures of the _bovine_ bacillus; while the only animal that could be inoculated at all with the _avian_ or bird bacillus was the rabbit, and he only occasionally. In fact, bacteriologists soon came to the consoling conclusion that the _avian_ bacillus might be practically disregarded as a source of danger to human beings, so widely different were the conditions in their moist and moderately warm tissues to those of the dry and superheated tissues of the bird to which it had adjusted itself for so many generations. And next came the bold pronunciamento of no less an authority than Koch himself, that the bovine bacillus also was so feebly infective to human beings that it might be practically disregarded as a source of danger. This promptly split the bacteriologists of the world into two opposing camps, and started a warfare which is still being waged with great vigor. As the question is still under hot dispute by even the highest authorities, it is, of course, impossible to pronounce any definite conclusions. But the net result to date appears to be that while Koch made a serious error of judgment in declaring that meat and milk as a source of danger to human beings of tuberculosis might be disregarded, yet, for practical purposes, his position is, in the main, correct: the actual danger from the bovine bacillus to human beings is relatively small. There was nothing whatever improbable, in the first place, in the correctness of Koch's position. It is one of the few consoling facts, well known to all students of comparative pathology or the diseases of the different species of animals, how peculiarly specialized they are in the choice of their diseases, or, perhaps, to put it more accurately, how particular and restricted disease-germs are in their choice of a host. For instance, out of twenty-eight actually infectious diseases which are most common among the domestic animals and man, other than tuberculosis, only one--_rabies_--is readily communicable to more than three species; only three--_anthrax_, _tetanus_, and _foot-and-mouth disease_--are communicable to two species; while the remainder are almost absolutely confined to one species, even though this be thrown into closest contact with half a dozen others. Again, we have half a dozen similar instances in the case of tuberculosis itself. The horse and the sheep, for instance, are both most intimately associated with cattle, pastured in the same fields, fed upon the same food, and yet tuberculosis is almost unknown in sheep and decidedly uncommon in horses, and when it does occur in them is from a human source. The goat is almost equally immune from both human and _bovine_ forms, while the cat and the dog, although developing the infection with a low degree of frequency, almost invariably trace that infection to a human source. There is, therefore, no _a priori_ reason whatever why we should be any more susceptible to bovine tuberculosis than the remainder of the domestic animals. It is only fair to say, however, that the animal whose diet--and appetite--most closely resembles ours, the hog, is quite fairly susceptible to bovine tuberculosis if fed upon the milk or meat of tuberculous cattle. Next came the particularly consoling fact that although nothing has been more striking than the great increase in the amounts of meat and milk consumed by the mass of the community during our last twenty years' progress in civilization, this has been accompanied not by any increase of tuberculosis, but by a _diminution of from thirty-five to forty-five per cent_. The allegation so frequently made that there has been an increase in the amount of infantile tuberculosis has been shown, upon careful investigation by Shennan of Edinburgh, Guthrie of London, Kossel in Germany, Comby in France, Bovaird in New York, and others, to be practically without foundation. Then, while repetitions of Koch's experiment, upon which his announcement was based, of inoculating calves and young cattle with _human_ bacilli have proved that a certain number of them can be, under appropriate circumstances, made to develop tuberculosis, that number has never been a large percentage of the animals tested, and in many cases the infection has been a local one, or of a mild type, which has resulted in recovery. Lastly, while a number of bacilli, with _bovine_ culture and other characteristics, have been recovered from the bodies of children dying of tuberculosis, and these bacilli have proved virulent to calves when injected into them, yet, as a matter of historical fact, the actual number of instances in which children or other human beings have been definitely proved to have contracted the disease from the milk of a tuberculous cow is still exceedingly and encouragingly small. A careful study of the entire literature of the past twenty years, some three years ago, revealed _only thirty-seven cases_; and of these thirty-seven Koch's careful investigations have since disproved the validity of nine. On the other hand, it is anything but safe to accept Koch's practical dictum and neglect the meat and milk of cattle as a source of danger in tuberculosis. First, because the degree of our immunity against the bovine bacilli is still far from settled; and, second, because, while bacteriologists are fairly agreed that the _avian_, the _bovine_, and the _human_ represent three distinct and different variations, if not species, of the bacillus, they are almost equally agreed that they are probably the descendants of one common species, which may possibly be a bacillus commonly found upon meadow grasses, particularly the well-known timothy, and hence very frequently in the excreta of cattle, and known as the _grass bacillus_ or _dung bacillus_ of M[oe]ller. This bacillus has all the staining, morphological, and even growth characteristics of the tubercle bacillus except that it produces only local irritation and little nodular masses, if injected into animals. Our knowledge of its existence is, however, of great practical importance, inasmuch as it warned us that in our earlier studies of the bacilli contained in milk and butter we have been mistaking this organism for a genuine tubercle bacillus. As a consequence, of late years our tests for the presence of tubercle bacilli in milk are made not only by searching for the organism with the microscope, but also by injecting the centrifugated sediment of the infected milk into guinea pigs, to see if it proves infectious. Many of our earlier statements as to the presence of tubercle bacilli in milk and butter are now invalidated on this account. Not only are the three varieties of tubercle bacilli probably of common origin, but they may, under certain peculiar conditions, be transformed into one another, or, at least, enabled to live under the conditions favorable to one another. This was shown nearly fifteen years ago by the ingenious experiments of Nocard, the great veterinary pathologist. He took a culture of bovine bacilli, which were entirely harmless to fowls, and, inclosing them in a collodion capsule, inserted them into the peritoneal cavity of a hen. The collodion capsule permitted the fluids of the body to enter and provide food for the bacilli, but prevented the admission of the leucocytes to attack and destroy them. After several weeks the capsule was removed, the bacilli found still alive, and transferred to another capsule in another fowl. When this process had been repeated some five or six times, the last generation of bacilli was injected into another fowl, which promptly developed tuberculosis, showing that by gradually exposing the bacilli for successive generations to the high temperature of the bird's body (from five to fifteen degrees above that of the mammal), they had become acclimated, as it were, and capable of developing. So that it is certainly quite conceivable that bovine bacilli introduced in milk or meat might manage to find a haven of refuge or lodgment in some out-of-the-way gland or tissue of the human body, and there avoid destruction for a sufficiently long time to become acclimated and later infect the entire system. This is the method which several leaders in bacteriology, including Behring (of antitoxin fame), believe to be the principal source and method of infection of the human species. The large majority, however, of bacteriologists and clinicians are of the opinion that ninety per cent of all cases of human tuberculosis are contracted from some human source. So that, while we should on no account slacken our fight against tuberculosis in either cattle or birds, and should encourage in every way veterinarians and breeders to aim for its total destruction,--a consummation which would be well worth all it would cost them, purely upon economic grounds, just as the extermination of human tuberculosis would be to the human race,--yet we need not bear the burden of feeling that the odds against us in the fight for the salvation of our own species are so enormous as they would be, had we no natural protection against infection from animals and birds. The more carefully we study all causes of tuberculosis in children, the larger and larger percentage of them do we find to be clearly traceable to infection from some member of the family or household. In Berlin, for instance, Kayserling reports that seventy per cent of all cases discovered can be traced to direct infection from some previous human case. Lastly, what of the left wing of our army of extermination, composed of those light-horse auxiliaries--the general progress and new developments of civilization, and the net results upon the individual of the experiences of his ancestors, which we designate by the term "heredity"? For many years we were in serious doubt how far we could depend upon the loyalty of this group of auxiliaries, and many of the faint-hearted among us were inclined to regard their sympathies as really against us rather than with us, and prepared to see them desert to the enemy at any time. It was pointed out, as of great apparent weight, that consumption was decidedly and emphatically a disease of civilization; that it was born of the tendency of men to gather themselves into clans and nations and crowd themselves into villages and those hives of industry called cities; that the percentage of deaths from tuberculosis in any community of a nation or any ward of a city was high in direct proportion to the density of its population; and that the whole tendency of civilization was to increase this concentration, this congestion of ground space, this piling of room upon room, of story upon story. How could we possibly, in reason, expect that the influences which had caused the disease could help us to cure it? But the improbable has already happened. Never has there been a more rapid and extraordinary growth of our great cities as contrasted with our rural districts, never has there been a greater concentration of population in restricted areas than during the past thirty-five years. And yet, the prevalence of tuberculosis in that time, in all civilized countries of the earth, has shown not only no increase, _but a decrease of from thirty-five to fifty per cent_. To-day the world power which has the largest percentage of its inhabitants gathered within the limits of its great cities, England, has the lowest death-rate in the civilized world from tuberculosis, although closely pressed within the last few years by the United States, whose percentage of urban population is almost equally large, while England's sister island, Ireland, with one of the highest percentages of rural and the lowest of urban population, has one of the highest death-rates from tuberculosis, and one which is, unfortunately, increasing. The real cure for the evils of civilization would appear to be _more civilization_, or, better, perhaps, _higher_ civilization. Nor are these exceptional instances. Take practically any city, state, or province in the civilized world, which has had an adequate system of recording all births and deaths for more than thirty years, and you will find a decrease in the percentage of deaths from tuberculosis in that time of from twenty to forty per cent. The city of New York's death-roll, for instance, from tuberculosis, per one thousand living, is some thirty-five per cent less than it was thirty years ago. So that our fight against the disease is beginning to bear fruit already. As Osler puts it, we run barely half the risk of dying of tuberculosis that our parents did and barely one-fourth of that of our grandparents. But this gratifying improvement goes deeper, and is even more significant than this. It is, of course, only natural to expect that our vigorous fight against the spread of the infection of the disease would give us definite results. But the interesting feature of the situation is that this diminution in England and in Germany, for instance, began not merely twenty, but thirty, forty, even fifty years ago--two decades before we even knew that tuberculosis was an infectious disease with a contagion that could be fought. In the case of England, for instance, we have the, at first sight, anomalous and even improbable fact that the rate of decline in the death-rate from tuberculosis for the twenty years preceding the discovery of Koch's bacillus was almost as great as it has been in the twenty years since. In other words, the general tendency, born of civilization, toward sanitary reform, better housing, better drainage, higher wages and consequently more abundant food, rigid inspection of food materials, factory laws, etc., is of itself fighting against and diminishing the prevalence of the "great white plague" by improving the resisting power and building up the health of the individual. Civilization is curing its own ills. It must be remembered that vital statistics, showing the decrease of a given disease within the past forty or fifty years, probably represent not merely a real decrease of the amount indicated by the figures but an even greater one in fact; because each succeeding decade, as our knowledge of disease and the perfection of our statistical machinery improves and increases, is sure to show a prompter recognition and a more thorough and complete reporting of all cases of the disease occurring. Statistics, for instance, showing a moderate apparent rate of _increase_ of a disease within the last thirty years are looked upon by statisticians as really indicating that it is at a standstill. It is almost certain that at least from ten to twenty per cent more of the cases actually occurring will be recognized during life and reported after death than was possible with our more limited knowledge and less effective methods of registration thirty years ago. So we need not hesitate to encourage ourselves to renewed effort by the reflection that we are enlisted in a winning campaign, one in which the battle-line is already making steady and even rapid progress, and which can have only one termination so long as we retain our courage and our common-sense. This decline of the tuberculosis death-rate is, of course, only a part of the general improvement of physique which is taking place under civilization. If we could only get out from under the influence of the "good old times" obsession and open our eyes to see what is going on about us! There is nothing mysterious about it. The soundest of physical grounds for improving health can be seen on every hand. We point with horror, and rightly, to the slum tenement house, but forget that it is a more sanitary human habitation than even the houses of the nobility in the Elizabethan age. We become almost hysterical over the prospect that the very fibre of the race is to be rotted by the adulteration of our food-supply, by oleomargarine in the butter, by boric acid in our canned meats, by glucose in our sugar, and aniline dyes in our candies, but forget that all these things represent extravagant luxuries unheard of upon the tables of any but the nobility until within the past two hundred, and in some cases, one hundred, years. Up to three hundred years ago even the most highly civilized countries of Europe were subject to periodic attacks of famine; our armies and navies were swept and decimated with scurvy, from bad and rotten food-supplies; almost every winter saw epidemics breaking out from the use of half-putrid salted and cured foods; only forty years ago, a careful investigation of one of our most conservative sociologists led him to the conclusion that in Great Britain _thirty per cent of the population never in all their lives had quite as much as they could eat_, and for five months out of the year were never comfortably warm. The invention of steam, with its swift and cheap transportation of food-supplies, putting every part of the earth under tribute for our tables, meat every day instead of once a week for the workingman, and the introduction of sugar in cheap and abundant form, with the development of the dietary in fruits and cereals which this has made possible, have done more to improve the resisting power and build up the physique of the mass of the population in our civilized communities, than ten centuries of congestion and nerve-worry could do to break it down. We shake our heads, and prate fatuously that "there were giants in those days," ignorant of the thoroughly attested fact, that the average stature of the European races has increased some four inches since the days of the Crusaders, as shown by the fact that the common British soldier of to-day--Mr. Kipling's renowned "Tommy Atkins," who is looked upon by the classes above him in the social scale as a short, undersized sort of person--can neither fit his chest and shoulders into their armor, get his hands comfortably on the hilts of their famous two-handed swords, nor even lie down in their coffins. We are at last coming to acknowledge with our lips, although we scarcely dare yet to believe it in our heart of hearts, that not merely the death-rate from tuberculosis, but the general death-rate from all causes in civilized communities, is steadily and constantly declining; that the average longevity has increased nearly ten years within the memory of most of us, chiefly by the enormous reduction in the mortality from infant diseases; and that, though the number of individuals in the community who attain a great or notable age is possibly not increasing, the percentage of those who live out their full, active life, play their man's or woman's part in the world, and leave a group of properly fed, vigorous, well-trained, and educated children behind them to carry on the work of the race, is far greater than ever before. Even in our much-denounced industrial conditions, made possible by the discovery of steam with its machinery and transportation, the gain has far exceeded the loss. While machinery has made the laborer's task more monotonous and more confining, the net result has been that it has shortened his hours and increased his efficiency. Even more important, it has increased his intelligence by demanding and furnishing a premium for higher degrees of it. Naturally, one of the first uses which he has made of his increased intelligence has been to demand better wages and to combine for the enforcement of his demands. The premium placed upon intelligence has led both the broader-minded, more progressive, and more humane among employers, and the more intelligent among employees, to recognize the commercial value of health, and of sanitary surroundings, comfort, and healthy recreations, as a means of promoting this. The combined results of these forces are seen in the incontestable, living fact that the death-rate from tuberculosis among intelligent artisans and in well-regulated factory suburbs is already below that of many classes of outdoor and even farm laborers, whose day is from twelve to fourteen hours, and whose children are worked, and often overworked, from the time that they can fairly walk alone, with as disastrous and stunting results as can be found in any mine or factory. Child-labor is one of the oldest of our racial evils, instead of, as we often imagine, the newest. All over the civilized world to-day the average general death-rate of each city, slums included, is now below that of many rural districts in the same country. If I were to be asked to name the one factor which had done more than any other to check the spread and diminish the death-rate from tuberculosis I should unhesitatingly say, the _marked increase of wages among the great producing masses of the country_, with the consequent increased abundance of food, better houses, better sanitary surroundings, and last, but not least, shorter hours of labor. _Underfeeding and overwork are responsible for more deaths from tuberculosis than any other ten factors._ Rest and abundant feeding are the only known means for its cure. This is one of the reasons why the medical profession has abandoned all thought of endeavoring to fight the disease single-handed, and is striving and straining every nerve to enlist the whole community in the fight. Its burden rests, not upon the unfortunate individual who has become tuberculous, but _upon the community_ which, by its ignorance, its selfishness, and its greed, has done much to make him so. What civilization has _caused_ it is under the most solemn obligation to _cure_. * * * * * One more brigade of irregular troops on the extreme left remains to be briefly reviewed, and that is those forces resulting from the successive exposure of generations to the physical influences of civilization, including the infectious diseases. For years we never dreamed of even attempting to raise any levies among these border tribes of more than doubtful loyalty. Indeed, they were supposed to be our open enemies. When we first attempted to take a world-view of tuberculosis, the first great fact that stood out plainly was that it was emphatically a disease of the walled town and the city; that the savage and the nomad barbarian were practically free from it; that range cattle and barnyard fowls seldom fell victims to it, while their housed and confined cousins in the dairy barn and the breeding-pens suffered frightfully. It was one of our commonplace sayings that we must "get back to nature," get away from the walled city into the open country, revert from the conditions of civilization in a considerable degree to those of barbarism, in order to escape. While, as for heredity, its influence was almost dead against us. How could a race be exposed to a disease like tuberculosis, generation after generation, without having its vital resistance impaired? But a marked and cheering change has come over our attitude to this wing of the battle of life. So far from regarding it as in any sense necessary to revert to barbarism, still less to savagery, for either the prevention or the cure of disease, we have discovered by the most convincing, practical experience, that we can, in the first place, with the assistance of the locomotive and trolley, combined with modern building skill and sanitary knowledge, put even our city-dwellers under conditions, in both home and workshop, which will render them far less likely to contract tuberculosis than if they were in a peasant's cottage or _the average farmhouse or merchant's house_ of a hundred years ago, to say nothing of the cave, the dugout, or the hut of the savage. In the second place, instead of simply "going back to nature" and living in brush-shelters on what we can catch or shoot, it takes _all the resources of civilization_ to place our open-air patients in the ideal conditions for their recovery. Let any consumptive be reckless enough to "go back to nature," unencircled by the strong arm of civilized intelligence and power, and unprotected by her sanitary shield, and nature will kill him three times out of five. There could not be a more dangerous delusion than the all-too-common one--that all that is necessary for the cure of consumption is to turn the victim loose among the elements, even in the mildest and most favorable of climates. He must be fed upon the most abundant and nutritious of foods, even the simplest being milk of a richness which is given by no kind of wild cattle, and which, indeed, only the most carefully bred and highly civilized strains of domestic cattle are capable of producing; eggs such as are laid by no wild bird or by any but the most highly specialized of domestic poultry at the season of the year when they are most required; steaks and chops, hams and sides of bacon, sugar and fruits and nuts, which simply _are not produced anywhere outside of civilization_, and often only in the most intelligent and progressive sections of civilized communities. Put him upon even the average diet of many people in this progressive and highly civilized United States the year round,--with its thin milk, its pulpy, half-sour butter, its tough meat, its half-rancid pickled pork, its short three months of really fresh vegetables and good fruit, and six months of eternal cabbage, potatoes, dried apples, and prunes,--and he will fail to build up the vigor necessary to fight the disease, even in the purest and best of air. The saddest and most pitiful tragedies which the consumptive health-resort physician can relate are those of wretched sufferers,--even in a comparatively early stage of the disease,--whose misguided but well-meaning friends have raised money enough to pay their fare out to Colorado, California, Arizona, or New Mexico, and expect them to get work on a ranch, so as to earn their living and take the open-air treatment at the same time. Three things are absolutely necessary for a reasonable prospect of cure of consumption. One is, abundance of fresh air, day and night. Another, abundance of the best quality of food. And the third, absolute--indeed, enforced--rest during the period of fever. Let any one of these be lacking, and your patient will die just as certainly as if all three were. _Not one in five_ of those who go out to climates with even a high reputation as health-resorts--expecting to earn their own living or to "rough it" in shacks or tents on three or four dollars a week, doing their own cooking and taking care of themselves--recovers. They have a four-to-one chance of recovery in _any_ climate in which they can obtain these three simple requisites, and a four-to-one chance of dying in any climate in which any one of these is lacking. Instead of nature being able to cure the consumptive unaided, as a matter of fact she has neither the ability nor the inclination to do anything of the sort. There is no class of patients whose recovery depends more absolutely upon a most careful and intelligent study and regulation of their diet, of every detail of their life throughout the entire twenty-four hours, and of the most careful adjustment of air, food, heat, cold, clothing, exercise, recreation, by the combined forces of sanitarian, nurse, and physician. So that, instead of feeling that only by reverting to savagery can consumption be prevented, we have no hesitation in saying that it is _only under civilization, and civilization of the highest type, that we have any reasonable prospect of cure_. Finally, we are getting over our misgivings as to the intentions of the hereditary brigade. It is certainly not our enemy, and may probably turn out to be one of our best friends. Our first sidelight on this question came in rather a surprising manner. It was taken for granted, almost as axiomatic, that if the conditions of savage life were such as to discourage, if not prevent, tuberculosis, certainly, then, the race which had been exposed to these conditions for countless generations would have a high degree of resisting power to the disease. But what an awakening was in store for us! No sooner did the army surgeon and medical missionary settle down in the wake of that extraordinary world-movement of Teutonic unrest, which has resulted in the colonization of half the globe within the past two or three hundred years, than it was discovered that, although the hunting or nomad savage had not developed tuberculosis, and the disease was emphatically born of civilization, yet the moment that these healthy and vigorous children of nature were exposed to its infection, instead of showing the high degree of resisting power that might be expected, they died before it like sheep. From all over the world--from the Indians of our Western plains, the negroes of our Southern States, the islanders of Polynesia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Samoa--came reports of tribes practically wiped out of existence by the "White Plague" of civilization. To-day the death-rate from tuberculosis among our Indian wards is from _three to six times_ that of the surrounding white populations. The negro population of the Southern States has nearly three times the death-rate of the white populations of the same states. Instead of centuries of civilization having made us more susceptible to the disease than those savages who probably most nearly parallel our ancestral conditions of a thousand to fifteen hundred years ago, we seem to have acquired from three to five times their resisting power against it. Not only this, but those races among us which have been continuous city-dwellers for a score of generations past have acquired a still higher degree of immunity. In every civilized land the percentage of deaths from tuberculosis among the Jews, who, from racial and religious prejudices, have been prisoners of the Ghetto for centuries, is about half to one-third that of their Gentile neighbors. In certain blocks of the congested districts of New York and Chicago, for instance, the Jewish population shows a death-rate of only one hundred and sixty-three per hundred thousand living, while the Gentile inhabitants of similar blocks show the appalling rate of five hundred and sixty-five. Similarly, by a strange apparent paradox, the highest mortality from tuberculosis in the United States is not in those states having the greatest urban population, but, on the contrary, in those having the largest rural population. The ten highest state tuberculosis death-rates contain the names of Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and South Carolina, while New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts are among the lowest. The subject is far too wide and complicated to admit of any detailed discussion here. But, explain it as we may, the consoling fact remains that civilized races, including slum-dwellers, have a distinctly lower death-rate from tuberculosis than have savage tribes which are exposed to it even under most favorable climatic and hygienic conditions; that those races which have survived longest in city and even slum surroundings have a lower death-rate than the rest of the community under those conditions; and that certain of our urban populations have lower death-rates than many of our rural ones. As for the immediate effect of heredity in the production of the disease, the general consensus of opinion among thoughtful physicians and sanitarians now is that direct infection is at least five times as frequent a factor as is heredity; that at least eight-tenths of the cases occurring in the children of tuberculous parents are probably due to the direct communication of the disease, and that if the spread of the infection could be prevented, the element of heredity could be practically disregarded. We are inclined to regard even the well-marked tendency of tuberculosis to attack a considerable number of the members of a given family to be due largely, in the first place, to direct infection; secondly, to the fact that that family were all submitted to the same unfavorable environment in the matter of food, of housing, of overwork, or of the New England conscience, with its deadly belief that "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." Upon direct pathological grounds nothing is more definitely proven than that the actual inheritance of tuberculosis, in the sense of its transmission from a consumptive mother to the unborn child, is one of the rarest of occurrences. On the other hand, the feeling is general that, inasmuch as probably four-fifths of us are repeatedly exposed to the infection of tuberculosis and throw it off without developing a systemic attack of the disease, the development of a generalized infection, such as we term consumption, is in itself a sign of a resisting power below the average. Should such an individual as this become a parent, the strong probability is that his children--unless, as fortunately often happens, their other parent should be as far above the average of vigor and resisting power--would not be likely to inherit more vigor than that possessed by their ancestry. So that upon _a priori_ grounds we should expect to find that the children born of tuberculous parents would be more susceptible to the infection to which they are so sure to be exposed than the average of the race. So that the marriage of consumptives should, unquestionably, upon racial grounds, be discouraged except after they have made a complete recovery and remained well at least five years. To sum up: while the earlier steps of civilization unquestionably provide that environment which is necessary for the development of tuberculosis, the later stages, with their greatly increased power over the forces of nature, their higher intelligence and their broader humanity, not merely have it in their power to destroy it, but are already well on the way to do so. CHAPTER VIII THE GREAT SCOURGE Not only have most diseases a living cause, and a consequent natural history and course, but they have a special method of attack, which looks almost like a preference. It seems little wonder that the terror-stricken imagination of our Stone Age ancestors should have personified them as demons, "attacking" or leaping upon their victims and "seizing" them with malevolent delight. The concrete comparison was ready to their hand in the attack of fierce beasts of prey; and as the tiger leaps for the head to break the neck with one stroke of his paw, the wildcat flies at the face, the wolf springs for the slack of the flank or the hamstring, so these different disease demons appear each to have its favorite point of attack: smallpox, the skin; cholera, the bowels; the Black Death, the armpits and the groin; and pneumonia, the lung. There are probably few diseases which are so clearly recognized by every one and about which popular impressions are in the main so clear-cut and so correct as pneumonia. The stabbing pain in the chest, the cough, the rusty or blood-stained expectoration, the rapid breathing, all stamp it unmistakably as a disease of the lung. Its furious onset with a teeth-chattering chill, followed by a high fever and flushed face, and its rapid course toward recovery or death, mark it off sharply from all other lung infections. Its popular names of "lung fever," "lung plague," "congestion of the lungs," are as graphic and distinctive as anything that medical science has invented. In fact, our most universally accepted term for it, pneumonia, is merely the Greek equivalent of the first of these. It is remarkable how many of our disease-enemies appear to have a preference for the lung as a point of attack. In the language of _Old Man Means_ in "The Hoosier Schoolmaster," the lung is "their fav'rit holt." Our deadliest diseases are lung diseases, headed by consumption, seconded by pneumonia, and followed by bronchitis, asthma, etc.; together, they manage to account for one-fourth to one-third of all the deaths that occur in a community, young or old. No other great organ or system of the body is responsible for more than half such a mortality. Now this bad eminence has long been a puzzle, since, foul as is the air or irritating as is the gas or dust that we may breathe into our lungs, they cannot compare for a moment with the awful concoctions in the shape of food which are loaded into our stomachs. Even from the point of view of infections, food is at least as likely to be contaminated with disease-germs as air is. Yet there is no disease or combination of diseases of the whole food canal which has half the mortality of consumption alone, in civilized communities, while in the Orient the pneumonic form of the plague is a greater scourge than cholera. It has even been suggested that there may possibly be a historic or ancestral reason for this weakness to attack, and one dating clear back to the days of the mud-fish. It is pointed out that the lung is the last of our great organs to develop, inasmuch as over half of our family tree is under water. When our mud-loving ancestor, the lung-fish (who was probably "one of three brothers" who came over in the Mayflower--the records have not been kept) began to crawl out on the tide-flats, he had every organ that he needed for land-life in excellent working condition and a fair degree of complexity: brain, stomach, heart, liver, kidneys; but he had to manufacture a lung, which he proceeded to do out of an old swim-bladder. This, of course, was several years ago. But the lung has not quite caught up yet. The two or three million year lead of the other organs was too much to be overcome all at once. So carelessly and hastily was this impromptu lung rigged up that it was allowed to open from the front of the gullet or [oe]sophagus, instead of the back, while the upper part of the mouth was cut off for its intake tube, as we have already seen in considering adenoids, thus making every mouthful swallowed cut right across the air-passages, which had to be provided with a special valve-trap (the epiglottis) to prevent food from falling into the lungs. So, whenever you choke at table, you have a right to call down a benediction upon the soul of your long departed ancestor, the lung-fish. However applicable or remote we may regard "the bearin's of this observation," the practical and most undesirable fact confronts us to-day that this crossing and mutual interference of the air and the food-passages is a fertile cause of pneumonia, inasmuch as the germs of this disease have their habitat in the mouth, and are from that lurking-place probably inhaled into the lung, as is also the case with the germs of several milder bronchitic and catarrhal affections. It may be also pointed out that, history apart, our lung-cells at the present day are at another disadvantage as compared with all the other cells of the body, except those of the skin; and that is, that they are in constant contact with air, instead of being submerged in water. Ninety-five per cent of our body-cells are still aquatic in their habits, and marine at that, and can live only saturated with, and bathed in, warm saline solution. Dry them, or even half-dry them, and they die. Even the pavement-cells coating our skin surfaces are practically dead before they reach the air, and are shed off daily in showers. We speak of ourselves as "land animals," but it is only our lungs that are really so. All the rest of the body is still made up of sea creatures. It is little wonder that our lungs should pay the heaviest penalty of our change from the warm and equable sea water to the gusty and changeable air. Even if we have set down the lung as a point of the least resistance in the body, we have by no means thereby explained its diseases. Our point of view has distinctly shifted in this respect within recent years. Twenty years ago pathologists were practically content with tracing a case of illness or death to an inflammation or disease of some particular organ, like the heart, the kidney, the lung, or the stomach. Now, however, we are coming to see that not only may the causation of this heart disease, kidney disease, lung disease, have lain somewhere entirely outside of the heart, kidney, or lung, but that, as a rule, the entire body is affected by the disease, which simply expresses itself more violently, focuses, as it were, in this particular organ. In other words, diseases of definite organs are most commonly the local expressions of general diseases or infections; and this local aggravation of the disease would never have occurred if the general resisting power and vigor of the entire body had not been depressed below par. So that even in guarding against or curing a disease of a particular organ it is necessary to consider and to treat the whole body. Nowhere is this new attitude better illustrated than in pneumonia. Frank and unquestioned infection as it is, wreaking two-thirds of its visible damage in the lung itself, the liability to its occurrence and the outlook for its cure depend almost wholly upon the general vigor and rallying power of the entire body. It is perfectly idle to endeavor to avoid it by measures directed toward the protection of the lung or of the air-passages, and equally futile to attempt to arrest its course by treatment directed to the lung, or even the chest. The best place to wear a chest-protector is on the soles of the feet, and poulticing the chest for pneumonia is about as effective as shampooing the scalp for brain-fag. This clears the ground of a good many ancient misconceptions; for instance, that the chief cause of pneumonia is direct exposure to cold or a wetting, or the inhalation of raw, cold air. Few beliefs were more firmly fixed in the popular mind--and, for the matter of that, in the medical--up to fifteen or twenty years ago. It has found its way into literature; and the hero of the shipwreck in an icy gale or of weeks of wandering in the Frozen North, who must be offered up for artistic reasons as a sacrifice to the plot, invariably dies a victim of pneumonia, from his "frightful exposure," just as the victim of disappointed love dies of "a broken heart," or the man who sees the ambitions of years come crashing about his ears, or the woman who has lost all that makes life worth living, invariably develops "brain fever." There is a physical basis for all of these standard catastrophes, but it is much slenderer than is usually supposed. For instance, almost every one can tell you how friends of theirs have "brought on congestion of the lungs," or pneumonia, by going without an overcoat on a winter day, or breaking through the ice when skating, or even by getting their feet wet and not changing their stockings; and this single dramatic instance has firmly convinced them that the chief cause of "lung fever" is a chill or a wetting. Yet when we come to tabulate long series of causes, rising into thousands, we find that the percentage in which even the patients themselves attribute the disease to exposure, or a chill, sinks to a surprisingly small amount. For instance, in the largest series collected with this point in mind, that of Musser and Norris, out of forty-two hundred cases only seventeen per cent gave a history of exposure and "catching cold"; and the smaller series range from ten to fifteen per cent. So that, even in the face of the returns, not more than one-fifth of all cases of pneumonia can reasonably be attributed to chill. And when we further remember that under this heading of exposure and "catching cold" are included many mere coincidences and the chilly sensations attending the beginning of those milder infections which we term "common colds," it is probable that even this small percentage could be reduced one-half. Indeed, most cautious investigators of the question have expressed themselves to this effect. This harmonizes with a number of obstinate facts which have long proved stumbling-blocks in the way of the theory of exposure as a cause of pneumonia. One of the classic ones was that, during Napoleon's frightful retreat from Moscow in the dead of winter, while his wretched soldiers died by thousands of frost-bite and starvation, exceedingly little pneumonia developed among them. Another was that, as we have already seen with colds, instead of being commoner and more frequent in the extreme Northern climate and on the borders of the Arctic Zone, pneumonia is almost unknown there. Of course, given the presence of the germ, prolonged exposure to cold may depress the vital powers sufficiently to permit an attack to develop. Again, the ages at which pneumonia is both most common and most deadly, namely, under five and over sixty-five, are precisely those at which this feature of exposure to the weather plays the most insignificant part. Last and most conclusive of all, since definite statistics have begun to be kept upon a large scale, pneumonia has been found to be emphatically a disease of cities, instead of country districts. Even under the favorable conditions existing in the United States, for instance, the death-rate per hundred thousand living, according to the last census, was in the cities two hundred and thirty-three, and for the country districts one hundred and thirty-five,--in other words, nearly seventy per cent greater in city populations. How, then, did the impression become so widely spread and so firmly rooted that pneumonia is chiefly due to exposure? Two things, I think, will explain most of this. One is, that the disease is most common in the winter-time, the other, that like all febrile diseases it most frequently begins with sensations of chilliness, varying all the way from a light shiver to a violent chill, or _rigor_. The savage, bone-freezing, teeth-rattling chill which ushers in an attack of pneumonia is one of the most striking characteristics of the disease, and occurs in twenty-five to fifty per cent of all cases. Its chief occurrence in the winter-time is an equally well-known and undisputed fact, and it has been for centuries set down in medical works as one of the diseases chiefly due to changes in temperature, humidity, and directions of the wind. Years of research have been expended in order to trace the relations between the different factors in the weather and the occurrence of pneumonia, and volumes, yes, whole libraries, published, pointing out how each one of these factors, the temperature, humidity, direction of wind, barometric pressure, and electric tension, is in succession the principal cause of the spread of this plague. Many interesting coincidences were shown. But one thing always puzzled us, and that was, that the heaviest mortality usually occurred, not just at the beginning of winter, when the shock of the cold would be severest, nor even in the months of lowest temperature, like December or January, but in the late winter and the early spring. Throughout the greater part of the temperate zone the death-rate for pneumonia begins to rise in December, increases in January, goes higher still in February, reaching its climax in that month or in March. April is almost as bad, and the decline often doesn't fairly set in until May. No better illustration could probably be given of the danger of drawing conclusions when you are not in possession of all the facts. One thing was entirely overlooked in all this speculation until about twenty years ago,--that pneumonia was due not simply to the depressing effects of cold, but to a specific germ, the pneumococcus of Fraenkel. This threw an entirely new light upon our elaborate weather-causation theories. And while these still hold the field by weight of authority and that mental inertia which we term conservatism, yet the more thoughtful physicians and pathologists are now coming to regard these factors as chiefly important according to the extent to which we are crowded together in often badly lighted and ill-ventilated houses and rooms, with the windows and doors shut to save fuel, thus affording a magnificent hothouse hatching-ground for such germs as may be present, and ideal facilities for their communication from one victim to another. At the same time, by this crowding and the cutting off of life and exercise in the open air which accompanies it, the resisting power of our bodies is lowered. And when these two processes have had an opportunity of progressing side by side for from two to three months; when, in other words, the soil has been carefully prepared, the seed sown, and the moist heat applied as in a forcing-house, then we suddenly reap the harvest. In other words, the heavy crop of pneumonia in January, February, and March is the logical result of the seed-sowing and forcing of the preceding two or three months. The warmth of summer is even more depressing in its immediate effects than the cold of winter, but the heat carries with it one blessing, in that it drives us, willy-nilly, into the open air, day and night. And on looking at statistics we find precisely what might have been expected on this theory, that the death-rate for pneumonia is lowest in July and August. It might be said in passing that, in spite of our vivid dread of sunstroke, of cholera, and of pestilence in hot weather, the hot months of the year in temperate climates are invariably the months of fewest diseases and fewest deaths. Our extraordinary dread of the summer heat has but slender rational physical basis. It may be but a subconscious after-vibration in our brain cells from the simoons, the choleras, and the pestilences of our tropical origin as a race. Open air, whether hot, cold, wet, dry, windy, or still, is our best friend, and house air our deadliest enemy. If this view be well founded, then the advance of modern civilization would tend to furnish a more and more favorable soil for the spread of this disease. This, unfortunately, is about the conclusion to which we are being most unwillingly driven. Almost every other known infectious disease is diminishing, both in frequency and in fatality, under civilization. Pneumonia alone defies our onslaughts. In fact, if statistics are to be taken at their surface-value, we are facing the appalling situation of an apparently marked increase both in its prevalence and in its mortality. For a number of years past, ever since, in fact, accurate statistics began to be kept, pneumonia has been listed as the second heaviest cause of death, its only superior being tuberculosis. About ten years ago it began to be noticed that the second competitor in the race of death was overtaking its leader, and this ghastly rivalry continued until about three years ago pneumonia forged ahead. In some great American cities it now occupies the bad eminence of the most fatal single disease on the death-lists. The situation is, however, far from being as serious and alarming as it might appear, simply from this bald statement of statistics. First of all, because the forging ahead of pneumonia has been due in greater degree to the falling behind of tuberculosis than to any actual advance on its part. The death-rate of tuberculosis within the last thirty years has diminished between thirty and forty per cent; and pneumonia at its worst has never yet equaled the old fatality of tuberculosis. Furthermore, all who have carefully studied the subject are convinced that much of this apparent increase is due to more accurate and careful diagnosis. Up to ten years or so ago it was generally believed that pneumonia was rare in young children. Now, however, that we make the diagnosis with a microscope, we discover that a large percentage of the cases of capillary bronchitis, broncho-pneumonia, and acute congestion of the lung in children are due to the presence of the pneumococcus. Similarly, at the other end of the line, deaths that were put down to bronchitis, asthma, heart failure, yes, even to old age, have now been shown on bacteriological examination to be due to this ubiquitous imp of malevolence; so that, on the whole, all that we are probably justified in saying is that pneumonia is not decreasing under civilization. This is not to be wondered at, inasmuch as the inevitable crowding and congestion which accompanies civilization, especially in its derivative sense of "citification," tends to foster it in every way, both by multiplying the opportunities for infection and lowering the resisting power of the crowded masses. Moreover, it was only in the last ten years, yes, within the last five years, that we fairly grasped the real method and nature of the spread of the disease, and recognized the means that must be adopted against it. And as all of these factors are matters which are not only absolutely within our own control, but are included in that programme of general betterment of human comfort and vigor to which the truest intelligence and philanthropy of the nation are now being directed, the outlook for the future, instead of being gloomy, is distinctly encouraging. Our chief difficulty in discovering the cause of pneumonia lay in the swarm of applicants for the honor. Almost every self-respecting bacteriologist seemed to think it his duty to discover at least one, and the abundance and variety of germs constantly or accidentally present in the human saliva made it so difficult positively to isolate the real criminal that, although it was identified and described as long ago as 1884 by Fraenkel, the validity of its claim was not generally recognized and established until nearly ten years later. It is a tiny, inoffensive-looking little organism, of an oval or lance-head shape, which, after masquerading under as many aliases as a confidence man, has finally come to be called the pneumococcus, for short, or "lung germ." Though by those who are more precise it is still known as the _Diplococcus pneumoniæ_ or _Diplococcus lanceolatus_, from its faculty of usually appearing in pairs, and from its lance-like shape. Its conduct abounds in "ways that are dark and tricks that are vain," whose elucidation throws a flood of light upon a number of interesting problems in the spread of disease. First of all, it literally fulfills the prognostic of Scripture, that "a man's foes shall be they of his own household," for its chosen abiding place and normal habitat is no less intimate a place than the human mouth. Outside of this warm and sheltering fold it perishes quickly, as cold, sunlight, and dryness are alike fatal to it. We could hardly believe the evidence of our senses when studies of the saliva of perfectly healthy individuals showed this deadly little bacillus to be present in considerable numbers in from fifteen to forty-five per cent of the cases examined. Why, then, does not every one develop pneumonia? The answer to this strikes the keynote of our modern knowledge of infectious disease, namely, that while an invading germ is necessary, a certain breaking down of the body defenses and a lowering of the vital resistance are equally necessary. These invaders lie in wait at the very gates of the citadel, below the muzzles of our guns, as it were, waiting for some slackening of discipline or of watchfulness to rush in and put the fortress to sack. Nowhere is this more strikingly true than in pneumonia. It is emphatically a disease where, in the language of the brilliant pathologist-philosopher Moxon, "While it is most important to know what kind of a disease the patient has got, it is even more important to know what kind of a patient the disease has got." The death-rate in pneumonia is an almost mathematically accurate deduction from the age, vigor, and nutrition of the patient attacked. No other disease has such a brutal and inveterate habit of killing the weaklings. The half-stifled baby in the tenement, the underfed, overworked laboring man, the old man with rigid arteries and stiffening muscles or waning life vigor, the chronic sufferer from malnutrition, alcoholism, Bright's disease, heart disease--_these_ are its chosen victims. Another interesting feature about the pneumococcus is its vitality outside of the body. If the saliva in which it is contained be kept moist, and not exposed to the direct sunlight and in a fairly warm place, it may survive as long as two weeks. If dried, but kept in the dark, it will survive four hours. If exposed to sunlight, or even diffuse daylight, it dies within an hour. In other words, under the conditions of dampness and darkness which often prevail in crowded tenements it may remain alive and malignant for weeks; in decently lighted and ventilated rooms, less than two hours. This explains why, in private practice and under civilized conditions, epidemics of this admittedly infectious disease are rare; while in jails, overcrowded barracks, prison ships, and winter camps of armies in the field they are by no means uncommon. This is vividly supported by the fact brought out in our later investigations of the sputum of slum-dwellers, carried out by city boards of health, that the percentage of individuals harboring the pneumococcus steadily increases all through the winter months, from ten per cent in December to forty-five, fifty, and even sixty per cent in February and March. The old proverb, "When want comes in at the door, Love flies out at the window," might be revised to read, "When sunlight comes in at the window the pneumococcus flies 'up the flue.'" Authorities are still divided as to the meaning and even the precise frequency of the occurrence of the pneumococcus in the healthy human mouth. Some hold that its presence is due to recent infection which has either been unable to gain entrance to the system or is preparing its attack; others, that it is a survival from some previous mild attack of the disease, and the body tissues having acquired immunity against it, it remains in them as a harmless parasite, as is now well known to be the case with the germs of several of our infectious diseases--for instance, typhoid--for months and even years afterward. Others hold the highly suggestive view that it is a normal inhabitant of the healthy mouth, which can become injurious to the body, or _pathogenic_, only under certain depressed or disturbed conditions of the latter. In defense of this last it may be pointed out that dental bacteriologists have now already isolated and described some thirty different forms of organisms which inhabit the mouth and teeth; and the pneumococcus may well be one of these. Further, that a number of our most dangerous disease germs, like the typhoid bacillus, the bacillus of tuberculosis, and the bacillus of diphtheria, have almost perfect "doubles," law-abiding relatives, so to speak, among the germs that normally inhabit our throats, our intestines, or our immediate surroundings. The ultimate foundation question of the science of bacteriology is, How did the disease germs become disease germs? But the question is still unanswered. However, fortunately, here, as in other human affairs, imperfect as our knowledge is, it is sufficient to serve as a guide for practical conduct. Widely present as the pneumococcus is, we know well that it is powerless for harm except in unhealthful surroundings. There is another interesting feature of its life history which is of practical importance, and that is, like many other bacilli it is increased in virulence and infectiousness by passing through the body of a patient. Flushed with victory over a weakened subject, it acquires courage to attack a stronger. This is the reason why, in those comparatively infrequent instances in which pneumonia runs through a family, it is the strongest and most vigorous members of the family who are the last to be attacked. It also explains one of the paradoxes of this disease, that, while emphatically a disease of overcrowding and foul air, and attacking chiefly weakened individuals, it is a veritable scourge of camps, whether mining or military. When once three or four cases of pneumonia have occurred in a mining camp, even though this consist almost exclusively of vigorous men, most of them in the prime of life, it acquires a virulence like that of a pestilence, so that, while ordinarily not more than fifteen to twenty per cent of those attacked die, death-rates of forty, fifty, and even seventy per cent are by no means uncommon in mining camps. The fury and swiftness of this "miners' pneumonia" is equally incredible. Strong, vigorous men are taken with a chill while working in their sluicing ditches, are delirious before night, and die within forty-eight hours. So widely known are these facts, and so dreaded is the disease throughout the Far West and in mountain regions generally, that there is a widespread belief that pneumonia at high altitudes is particularly deadly. I had occasion to interest myself in this question some years ago, and by writing to colleagues practicing at high elevations and collecting reports from the literature, especially of the surgeons of army posts in mountain regions, was somewhat surprised to find that the mortality of all cases occurring above five thousand feet elevation was almost identical with that of a similar class of the population at sea-level. It is only when a sufficient number of cases occur in succession to raise the virulence of the pneumococcus in this curious manner that an epidemic with high fatality develops. That this increase in virulence in the organism does occur was clearly demonstrated by a bacteriologist friend of mine, who succeeded in securing some of the sputum from a fatal case in the famous Tonopah epidemic of some years ago, an epidemic so fatal that it was locally known as the "Black Death." Upon injecting cultures from this sputum into guinea-pigs, the latter died in one-quarter of the time that it usually took them to succumb to a similar dose of an ordinary culture of the pneumococcus. It is therefore evident that just as "no chain is stronger than its weakest link," so in the broad sense no community is stronger than its weakest group of individuals, and pneumonia, like other epidemics, may be well described as the vengeance which the "submerged tenth" may wreak from time to time upon their more fortunate brethren. Now that we know that under decent and civilized conditions of light and ventilation the pneumococcus will live but an hour to an hour and a half, this reduces the risk of direct infection under these conditions to a minimum. It is obvious that the principal factors in the control of the disease are those which tend to build up the vigor and resisting power of all possible victims. The more broadly we study the disease the more clearly do the data point in this direction. First of all, is the vivid and striking contrast between hospital statistics and those gathered from private practice. While many individuals of a fair wage-earner's income and good bodily vigor are treated in our hospitals, yet the vast majority of hospital patients are technically known as the "hospital classes," apt to be both underfed, overworked, and overcrowded. On the other hand, while a great many both of the very poor and even of the destitute are treated in private practice, yet the majority of such cases who feel "able to afford a doctor," as they say, are among the comparatively vigorous, well-fed, and well-housed section of the community. And the difference between the death-rate of the two classes in pneumonia is most significant. In private practice, while epidemics differ in virulence, the rate ranges all the way from five per cent to fifteen per cent, the average being not much in excess of ten per cent, occasionally falling as low as three per cent. In the hospital reports on the contrary the death-rate begins at twenty per cent and climbs to thirty, forty, and forty-five per cent. It is only fair to say, of course, that hospital statistics probably include a larger percentage of more serious cases, the milder ones being taken care of at home, or not presenting themselves for treatment at all. But even when this allowance has been made, the contrast is convincing. A similar influence is exercised by age. Although pneumonia is common at all ages, its heaviest death-rate falls at the two extremes, under six years of age and over sixty, with a strong preponderance in the latter. Under five years of age, the mortality may reach twenty to thirty per cent; from five to twenty-five, not more than four to five per cent; from twenty-five to thirty-five, from fifteen to twenty per cent; and so on, increasing gradually with every decade until by sixty years of age the mortality has reached fifty per cent, and from sixty to seventy-five may be expressed in terms of the age of the patient. One consoling feature, however, about it is that its mortality is lowest in the ages at which it is most frequent, namely, from ten to thirty-five years of age. And its frequency diminishes even more rapidly than its fatality increases in later years. So that while it is much more serious in a middle-aged man, he is less liable to develop it than a younger one. Where the mortality from pneumonia is highest, is in the most densely populated wards, especially among negroes and foreigners of the hospital class, in individuals who are victims of chronic alcoholism, and also among those who are for long periods insufficiently nourished. Lastly, it is only within comparatively recent years that we have come clearly to recognize the large rôle which pneumonia plays in giving the finishing stroke to chronic diseases and degenerative processes. It is, for instance, one of the commonest actual causes of death in Bright's disease, in diabetes, in lingering forms of tuberculosis, and in heart disease; and last of all, in that progressive process of normal degeneration and decay which we term "Old Age." It is one of the most frequent and fatal of what Flexner described a decade ago as "terminal infections." Very few human beings die by a gradual process of decay, still less go to pieces all at once, like the immortal "One-Hoss Shay." Just as soon as the process has progressed far enough to lower the resisting power below a certain level, some acute infection steps in and mercifully ends the scene. This is peculiarly true of pneumonia in old age. To the medical profession to "die of old age" is practically equivalent to dying of pneumonia. The disease is so mild in its symptoms and so rapid in its course that it often utterly escapes recognition as such. The old man complains of a little pain in his chest, a failure of appetite, a sense of weakness and dizziness. He takes to his bed, within forty-eight hours he becomes unconscious, and within twenty-four more he is peacefully breathing his last. After death, two-thirds of the lung will be found consolidated. So mild and rapid and painless is the process that one physician-philosopher actually described pneumonia as "the friend of old age." When once the disease has obtained a foothold in the body its course, like one of Napoleon's campaigns, is short, sharp, and decisive. Beginning typically with a vigorous chill, sometimes so suddenly as to wake the patient out of a sound sleep, followed by a stabbing pain in the side, cough, high fever, rapid respiration, the sputum rusty or orange-colored from leakage of blood from the congested lung, within forty-eight hours the attacked area of the lung has become congested; in forty-eight more, almost solidified by the thick, sticky exudate poured out from the blood-vessels, which coagulates and clots in the air cells. So complete is this solidification that sections of the attacked lung, instead of floating in water as normal lung-tissue will, sink promptly. The severe pain usually subsides soon, but the fever, rapid respiration, flushed face, with or without delirium, will continue for from three to seven or eight days. Then, as suddenly as the initial attack, comes a plunge down of the temperature to normal. Pain and restlessness disappear, the respiration drops from thirty-five or forty to fifteen or twenty per minute, and the disease has practically ended by "_crisis_." Naturally, after such a furious onslaught, the patient is apt to be greatly weakened. He may have lost twenty or thirty pounds in the week of the fever, and from one to three weeks more in bed may be necessary for him to regain his strength. But the chief risk and danger are usually over within a week or ten days at the outside. Violent and serious as are the changes in the lung, it is very seldom that death comes by interference with the breathing space. In fact, while regarded as a lung disease, we are now coming to recognize that the actual cause of death in fatal cases is the overwhelming of the heart by the toxins or poisons poured into the circulation from the affected lung. The mode of treatment is, therefore, to support the strength of the patient in every way, and measures directed to the affected lung are assuming less and less importance in our arsenal of remedies. Our attitude is now very similar to that in typhoid, to support the strength of the patient by judicious and liberal feeding, to reduce the fever and tone up his blood-vessels by cool sponging, packing, and even bathing; to relieve his pain by the mildest possible doses of sedatives, knowing that the disease is self-limited, and that in patients in comfortable surroundings and fair nutrition from eighty to ninety per cent will throw off the attack within a week. So completely have we abandoned all idea of medicating or protecting the lung as such, that in place of overheated rooms, loaded with vapor by means of a steam kettle, for its supposed soothing effect upon the inflamed lung, we now throw the windows wide open. And some of our more enthusiastic clinicians of wide experience are actually introducing the open-air cure, which has worked such wonders in tuberculosis, in the treatment of pneumonia. In more than one of our New York hospitals now, particularly those devoted to the care of children, following the brilliant example of Dr. William Northrup, wards are established for pneumonia cases out on the roof of the hospital, even when the snow is banked up on either side, and the covering is a canvas tent. Nurses, physicians, and ward attendants are clothed in fur coats and gloves, the patients are kept muffled up to the ears, with only the face exposed; but instead of perishing from exposure, little, gasping, struggling tots, whose cases were regarded as practically hopeless in the wards below, often fall into the sleep that is the turning point toward recovery within a few hours after being placed in this winter roof-garden. In short, our motto may be said to be, "Take care of the patient, and the disease will take care of itself." Though pneumonia is one of our most serious and most fatal of diseases, yet it is one over whose cause, spread, and cure we are obtaining greater and greater control every day, and which certainly should, within the next decade, yield to our attack, as tuberculosis and typhoid are already beginning to do. CHAPTER IX THE NATURAL HISTORY OF TYPHOID FEVER Why should not a disease have a natural history, as well as an individual? At first sight, this might appear like a reversion to the old, crude theory of disease as a demonic obsession, or invasion by an evil spirit, of which traces still remain in such expressions as, "She was _seized_ with a convulsion," "He was strong enough to _throw off_ the illness," "He was _attacked_ by a fever," etc. But apart entirely from such conceptions, which were perfectly natural in the infancy of the race, while clearly recognizing that disease is simply a perverted state of nutrition or well-being in the body of the patient, a disturbance of balance, so to say, yet it is equally true that it has a birth, an ancestry, a life-course, and a natural termination, or death. This recognition of the natural causation and development of disease has been one of the greatest triumphs, not merely of pathology, but of intelligence and rationalism. It has done more to diminish that dread of the unknown which hangs like a black pall of terror over the mind of the savage and the semi-civilized mind than any other one advance. It contributes enormously to our courage, our hopefulness, and our power of protection in more ways than one: first of all, by revealing to us the external cause of disease, usually some careless, dirty, or bad habit on the part of an individual or of the community, and thus enabling us to limit its spread and even exterminate it; secondly, by assuring us that nearly all diseases, excepting a few of the most obstinate and serious, have not only a definite beginning, but a definite end, are, in fact, if left to themselves, self-limited, either by the exhaustion and loss of virulence of their cause, or by the resisting power of the body. All infectious diseases, and many others, tend to run a definite course of so many days, or so many weeks, within certain limits, and at least ninety per cent of them tend to terminate in recovery. It is a most serious and fatal disease which has a death-rate of more than twenty per cent. Typhoid, pneumonia, diphtheria, and yellow fever all fall below this, smallpox barely reaches it, and only the bubonic plague, cholera, and lockjaw rise habitually above it. The recognition of this fact has enormously increased the efficiency of the medical profession in dealing with disease, by putting us on the track of imitating the methods which the body itself uses for destroying, or checking the spread of, invading germs and leading us to trust nature and try to work with her instead of against her. Our antitoxins and anti-serums, which are our brightest hope in therapeutics at present, are simply antidotes which are formed in the blood of some healthy, vigorous animal against the bacillus whose virulence we wish to neutralize, such as that of diphtheria or septicemia. Diphtheria antitoxin, for instance, the first and best known triumph of the new medicine, is the antidotal substance formed in the blood of a horse in response to a succession of increasing doses of the bacilli of diphtheria. Similar antidotal substances are formed in the blood in all other non-fatal cases of infectious diseases, such as typhoid, pneumonia, blood-poisoning, etc.; and the point at which they have accumulated in sufficient amounts to neutralize the poison of the invading germs, forms the crisis, or "turn" of the disease. So that when we speak of a disease "running its course," we mean continuing for such length of time as the body needs to produce anti-bodies in sufficient amounts to check it. The principal obstacle to the securing of antitoxins like that of diphtheria for all our infectious diseases is, that their germs form their poison so slowly that it is difficult to collect it in sufficient amounts to produce a strong concentrated antitoxin in the animal into which it is injected. But the overcoming of this difficulty is probably only a question of time. Obviously, if infectious disease be, as we say, "self-limited," that is to say, if the body will defeat the invaders with its own weapons, on an average in nine cases out of ten, our wisest course, as physicians, is to back up the body in its fight. This we now do in every possible way, by careful feeding, by rest, by bathing, by an abundance of pure water and fresh air, with the gratifying result that we have already reduced the death-rate in most fevers, even such as we have no antitoxin against, or may not even have discovered the causal germ of, to one-half and even three-fourths of their former fatality. The recognition of the fact that disease has a natural history, a birth, a term of natural life and a death, has already turned a hopeless fight in the dark into a victorious campaign in broad daylight. Huxley's pessimistic saying that typhoid was like a fight in the dark between the disease and the patient, and the doctor like a man with a club striking into the mélée, sometimes hitting the disease and sometimes the patient, is no longer true since the birth of bacteriology. Nowhere can the natural history of disease be more clearly seen or more advantageously studied than in the case of typhoid fever. The cause of typhoid is simplicity itself, merely drinking the excreta of some one else, "eating dirt," in the popular phrase; simple, but of a deadly effectiveness, and disgracefully common. The demon may be exorcised by an incantation of one sentence: _Keep human excreta out of the drinking water._ This sounds simple, but it is n't. Eternal vigilance is the price of health as well as of liberty. We can, however, make our pedigree of typhoid a little more precise. It is not merely dirt of human origin which is injurious, but dirt of a particular type, namely, discharges from a previous case of the disease. Just as in the fight against malaria we have not the enormous problem of the extermination of all varieties of mosquito, but only of one particular genus, and only the infected specimens of that, so in typhoid, the contamination of water or food which we have to guard against is that from previous cases. From one point of view, this leaves the problem as wide as ever, for, obviously, the only way to insure against poisoning of water by typhoid discharges is to shut out absolutely all sewage contamination. On the other hand, it is of immense advantage in this regard,--it enables us to fight the enemy at both ends of the line, to turn his flank as well as crush his centre. While we are protecting our water-supplies against sewage, we can, in the meantime, render that sewage comparatively harmless by thoroughly disinfecting and sterilizing all discharges from every known case of the disease. A similar method is used in the fight against yellow fever and malaria. Not only are the breeding places of the two mosquito criminals broken up, but each known case of the disease is carefully screened, _so as to prevent the insects from becoming infected_, and thus able to transmit the disease to other human victims. It cannot be too emphatically insisted upon that every case of typhoid, like every case of yellow fever and of malaria, _comes from a previous case_. It is neither healthy nor exhilarating to drink a clear solution of sewage, no matter how dilute; but, as a matter of fact, it is astonishing how long communities may drink sewage-laden water with comparative impunity, so long as the sewage contains no typhoid discharges. One case of typhoid fever imported into a watershed will set a city in a blaze. The malevolent _Deus_ in the sewage _machina_ is, of course, a germ--the _Bacillus typhosus_ of Eberth. The astonishing recentness of much of our most important knowledge is nowhere better illustrated than in the case of typhoid. Although there had been vague descriptions of a fatal fever, slow and lingering in its character and accompanied by prolonged stupor and delirium, which was associated with camps and dirty cities and famines, from as far back as the age of Cæsar, the first description clear enough to be recognizable was that of Willis, of an epidemic during the English civil war in 1643, both Royalist and Roundhead armies being seriously crippled by it. Since that time a smouldering, slowly spreading fever has been pretty constantly associated with armies in camps, besieged cities, filthy jails, and famines, to which accordingly have been given the names, familiar in historical literature, of "famine fever," "jail fever," and "military fever." So slowly, however, did accurate knowledge come, that it was actually not until 1837 that it was clearly and definitely recognized that this famine fever was, like Mrs. Malaprop's Cerberus, "two gentlemen at once," one form of it being typhus or "spotted fever," which has now become almost extinct in civilized communities; the other, the milder, but more persistent form, which, like the poor, we have always with us, called, from its resemblance to the former, "typhoid" (typhus-like). Typhus was a far more virulent, rapid, and fatal fever than its twin survivor, though as to the relations between the two diseases, if any, we are quite in the dark, as the former practically disappeared before the days of bacteriology. The fact of its disappearance is both significant and interesting, in that it was unquestionably due to the ranker and viler forms of both municipal and individual filthiness and unsanitariness, which even our moderate progress in civilization has now abolished. There can be no question that, with a step higher in the scale of cleanliness, and further quickening of the biologic conscience, typhoid will also disappear. Typhus, the bubonic plague, the sweating sickness, were alike plagues and products of times when table-scraps were thrown on the dining-room floor and covered daily with fresh rushes for a week at a stretch, and fertilizer accumulated in a living-room as now in a modern stable. Clothing was put on for the season, shirts were unknown, and strong perfumes took the place of a bath. Michelet's famous characterization of the Middle Ages in one phrase as _Un mille ans sans bain_ (a thousand years without a bath) was painfully accurate. Doubtless certain habits of our own to-day will be regarded with equal disgust by our descendants. Typhus, by the way, may possibly be remembered by the dramatic "Black Assize" of Oxford, in 1577, in which not merely the wretched prisoners in the jail, but the jurors, the lawyers, the judges, and every official of the court were attacked, and many of them died. It was only in 1856 that the method of transmission of the disease was clearly recognized, and in 1880 that the bacillus was discovered and identified by the bacteriologist Eberth, whose name it bears, so that it is only within the last thirty years that real weapons have been put into our hands with which to begin a fight of extermination against the disease. What is the habitat of our organism, and is it increasing its spread? Its habitat is the entire civilized world, and it goes wherever civilization goes. In this sense its spread is increasing, but, in every other, we have good ground for believing that it is on the wane. Positive assurance, either one way or the other, is, of course, impossible, simply for the reason that the disease was not recognized until such a short time ago that no statistics of any real value for comparison are available; and, secondly, because even to-day, on account of its insidious character and the astonishing variety of its forms, and degrees of mildness and virulence, a considerable percentage of cases are yet unrecognized and unreported. It might be mentioned in passing that this statement applies to the alleged increase of nearly all diseases which are popularly believed to be modern inventions, like appendicitis, insanity, and cancer. We have no statistics more than thirty years old which are of real value for purposes of comparison. However, when it comes to the number of deaths from the disease, there is a striking and gratifying diminution for twenty years past, which is increasing in ratio instead of diminishing. That we are really getting control of typhoid is shown by the, at first sight, singular and decidedly unexpected fact that it is no longer a disease of cities, but of the country. The death-rate per thousand living in the cities of the United States is lower than in the rural districts. For instance, the mortality in the State of Maryland, outside of Baltimore, is two and one-half times as great as that in the city itself. Our period of greatest outbreak in the large cities is now the month of September, when city dwellers have just returned from their vacations in the pure and healthful country, bringing the bacilli in their systems. The moral is obvious. Great cities are developing some sort of a sanitary conscience. Farmers and country districts have as yet little or none. Bad as our city water often is, and defective as our systems of sewage, they cannot for a moment compare in deadliness with that most unheavenly pair of twins, the shallow well and the vault privy. A more ingenious combination for the dissemination of typhoid than this precious couple could hardly have been devised. The innocent householder sallies forth, and at an appropriate distance from his cot he digs two holes, one about thirty feet deep, the other about four. Into the shallower one he throws his excreta, while upon the surface of the ground he flings abroad his household waste from the back stoop. The gentle rain from heaven washes these various products down into the soil and percolates gradually into the deeper hole. When the interesting solution has accumulated to a sufficient depth, it is drawn up by the old oaken bucket or modern pump, and drunk. Is it any wonder that in this progressive and highly civilized country three hundred and fifty thousand cases of typhoid occur every year, with a death penalty of ten per cent? Counting half of these as workers, and the period of illness as two months, which would be very moderate estimates, gives a loss of productive working time equivalent to thirty thousand years. Talk of "cheap as dirt"! It is the most expensive thing there is. Typhoid still abundantly earns its old name of "military fever," and its sinister victories in war are even more renowned than its daily triumphs in peace. Strange as it may seem, the deadliest enemies of the soldier are not bullets but bacilli, and sewage is mightier than the sword. For instance, in the Franco-Prussian War, typhoid alone caused sixty per cent of all the deaths. In the Boer War it caused nearly six thousand deaths as compared with seven thousand five hundred from wounds in battle, while other diseases caused five thousand more. In the majority of modern campaigns, from two-thirds to five-sixths of all deaths are due to disease and not to battle. It may be that we sanitarians will achieve the ends of the peace congresses by an unexpected route, and make war a healthful and comparatively harmless form of national gymnastics. Its battle-mortality rate, for the number engaged, is not so very far above football now! Given the bacillus, how does it get into the human system? Here the evidence is so abundant and overwhelming that we may content ourselves with bald statements of fact. The three great routes of this pestilence are water, milk, and flies. Of the three, the first is far the most common and important. While only a rough statement is possible, probably eighty-five per cent of all cases from water, five per cent from milk, five per cent through flies, and five per cent through other channels, would fairly represent the percentage. That it is conveyed through water is as certain as that the sun rises and sets. The only embarrassment in proving it lies in selecting from the swarm of instances. There is the classic case of the Swiss villages on opposite sides of the same mountain chain, the second of which drew its water-supply from a spring that came through the mountain from a brooklet running by the first village. Typhoid fever broke out in the first village, and twenty days later it appeared in the second village, twenty miles away on the other side of the mountain. Colored particles thrown into the brook on one side promptly appeared in the spring upon the other. Then there was the gruesome modern instance of Plymouth, Pennsylvania, in 1885. A single case of imported typhoid occurring on the watershed of a reservoir was followed, thirty days later, by an epidemic of eleven hundred cases in a population of eight thousand. An equally vivid instance came under my own observation. A school and a penitentiary drew their water-supply from the same power-flume, carrying a superb volume of purest water from a mountain stream. Early in the autumn a single case of typhoid appeared in a small town near the head of the flume. The discharges were thrown into the swiftly running water. Two weeks later an epidemic of typhoid broke out in the school, and three weeks later in the penitentiary. An unexpected freak, however, was the appearance of fifteen or twenty cases in another state institution farther down on the same stream, which did not draw its water-supply from the flume, but from deep wells of tested purity. This was a puzzle, until it was found that, owing to a fall in the wells, the water from the flume had been used for sprinkling and washing purposes in the institution, being allowed to run through the water-pipes only at night, while the well-water was used in the daytime. This was enough to contaminate the pipes, and a small epidemic began, which promptly stopped as soon as the cause was suspected and the flume-water no longer used. This last instance is peculiarly interesting, as illustrating how typhoid infection gets into milk, the second--though at a long interval--most frequent means of its spread. It does not come from the cow, for, fortunately, none of the domestic animals, with the possible exception of the cat, is subject to typhoid. Nor is it possible that cattle, drinking foul and even infected water, can transmit the bacillus in their milk. That superstition was exploded long ago. Every epidemic of typhoid spread by milk--and there are scores of them now on record--can be traced to the handling of the milk by persons suffering from mild forms of typhoid, or engaged in waiting upon members of the family who are ill of the disease, or the dilution of milk with infected water, or even, almost incredible as it may seem, to such slight contamination as washing the cans with infected water. Health officers now watch like hawks for the appearance of any case of typhoid among or in the families of dairymen. The New York City Board of Health, for instance, requires the weekly filing of a certificate from the family physician of all dairymen that no such cases exist. And the more intelligent dairymen keep a vigilant eye upon any appearance of illness accompanied by fever among their employees, some that I have known even keeping a fever thermometer in the barn for the purpose of testing every suspicious case. How effective such precautions can be made may be illustrated by the fact that, in the past five years, there has not been a single epidemic of typhoid traceable to milk in Greater New York, even with its inadequate corps of ten inspectors, and the six states they have to cover. The moment a single case of typhoid appears, the dairy or milkman supplying that customer is given a most rigid special inspection, and, if any source of infection can be discovered, the milk is shut out of New York City until the department is satisfied that all danger has been removed. One or two lessons of this sort are enough for a whole county of dairymen. The danger of transmission of typhoid through milk has been enormously exaggerated, and, as in the case of all other milk-borne diseases, is entirely due to filthy handling, and may be prevented by intelligent sanitary policing. Even with our present exceedingly imperfect systems, probably not more than between five and ten per cent of typhoid is transmitted in this way; and, if the water-supply were kept clean, this would practically disappear. Typhoid may not only be transmitted from the earth beneath and the water under the earth, but also from the heavens above, through the medium of flies and dust. The first method is bulking larger every day, especially in country districts and in camps. The _modus operandi_ is simplicity itself. The fly lives and moves and has its being in dirt. It breeds in dirt and it feeds on food, and, as it never wipes its feet, the interesting results can be imagined. Just to dispel any possible doubt, plates of gelatine have been exposed where flies could walk on them, then placed in an incubator, and within forty-eight hours there was a clearly recorded track of the footprints of the flies written in clumps of bacilli sown by their filthy feet. More definitely, flies have been caught in the houses of typhoid patients, put under the microscope, and their feet, stomachs, and specks found swarming with typhoid bacilli. A single flyspeck may contain three thousand. Fortunately, we have a simple and effective remedy. We cannot disinfect the fly nor make him wipe his feet, but we _can_ exterminate him utterly! This sounds difficult, but it isn't. Like the mosquito, the fly can only breed in one particular kind of place, and that place is a heap of dirt, preferably horse manure, but, at a pinch, dust-bins, garbage-cans, sweepings under porches or behind furniture, vaults,--anywhere that dirt is allowed to remain undisturbed for more than a week at a stretch. Abolish, screen, or poison these dirt accumulations, and flies will disappear, and with them not merely risks from typhoid, but half a dozen other diseases, as well as all sorts of filth and much discomfort and inconvenience. It was largely through flies that the disgraceful epidemic of typhoid, which ravaged our camps on our own soil during the Spanish-American War and killed many times more than fell by Spanish bullets, was spread. It is also believed that typhoid bacilli may be carried in the infected dust of streets and camps. Here again we are dealing with a dangerous public enemy to both health and comfort, which can and ought to be abated by cleanliness, oilings, and sprinklings. Typhoid bacilli are also occasionally carried by shellfish, especially oysters, on account of the interesting modern custom of planting them in bays and harbors near the mouths of sewers to fatten them. The cheerful motto of the oysterman is, "The muddier the water the fatter the oyster." And nowhere do the bivalves plump up more quickly than near the mouth of a sewer. The last method of transmission is by direct contact with the sick. This is a relatively rare means of spread, so much so that it is generally stated that typhoid is not contagious; but it is a real source of danger and one against which precautions should by all means be taken. The only method is, of course, by the soiling of the hands of the nurse or other attendant, and then eating or touching food, or putting the fingers into the mouth before thoroughly cleansing. If the hands be washed with a strong antiseptic solution after waiting upon the patient, and the cheerful habit sometimes indulged in of putting fruit or other delicacies into the sick-room for a day or so, in the hope that they may tempt the appetite of the patient, and then taking them out and letting the children eat them as a treat, be abolished, and the nurse be not allowed to officiate in the kitchen, risk from this source will be done away with. When the bacillus has been introduced into the stomach through food or drink, it rapidly proceeds to diffuse itself throughout the tissues of the body. Because the most striking symptoms of the disease are diarrh[oe]a, abdominal distention, and pain, and the most striking lesions after death ulcers in the small intestine, it was supposed that the process was confined to the abdominal organs. This is now known to be an error, as cultures and examinations made from the blood and various parts of the body have shown the presence of the typhoid bacillus in almost every organ and tissue. This process of scattering, or invasion of the body, takes from three to ten days to accomplish; and the first sign of trouble is usually a feeling of depression, with headache, and perhaps slight nausea, before any characteristic bowel symptoms begin to show themselves. The general invasion of the system throws an interesting sidelight upon the subject of premonitions. There are several well authenticated cases on record where individuals just before coming down with typhoid have been strangely impressed with a sense of impending death, and have even gone so far as to make their wills and set their affairs in order. Because these strong impressions appeared before any clearly marked intestinal symptoms of the disease, they have been put down in popular literature as instances of the "second sight," or "sixth sense," which popular superstition believes many of us to possess under certain circumstances. Now, however, we know that the tissues of that individual were already swarming with bacilli, and his fear of impending death was simply the effect of his toxin-laden blood upon his brain centres. In other words, it was prophecy after the fact, like nearly all prophecies that happen to come true; and the "premonition" was an early symptom of the disease itself. As it is, of course, difficult to fix the precise drink of water or mouthful of food in which the infection was conveyed, we were for a long time in doubt as to the length of time which it took to spread through the system,--the "period of incubation," as it is termed,--although we knew in a general way that it averaged somewhere about ten days. But, about a year ago, fortune was kind to us. A nurse in one of the Parisian hospitals, in a fit of despondency, decided to commit suicide. Like a true Parisienne, she would be nothing if not up to date, and chose, as the most _recherché_ and original method of departing this life, to swallow a pure culture of typhoid germs, which she abstracted from the laboratory. Three days later she began to complain of headache, and within a week had developed a beautiful crop of symptoms, and a typical case of typhoid, from which, under modern treatment, she promptly recovered,--a wiser and, we trust, a happier woman. By just what avenue the infecting bacilli go from the stomach into the general system we do not know. Metschnikoff suggests that they can only penetrate the intestinal wall through wounds or abrasions of the mucous membrane, made by intestinal worms or other parasites. Certain it is that the average stomach has a considerable degree of resisting power against them, for in no known civil epidemic has the number of those who caught the disease exceeded ten per cent of the total number drinking the infected water or milk. In one or two camps in time of war the percentage has risen as high as eighteen or twenty per cent of those exposed, but this is exceptional. However, now that we know that intestinal symptoms do not constitute the entire disease, and may even be entirely absent, we strongly suspect that many cases of slight depression, with feverishness, loss of appetite, and disturbances of the digestion, which occur during an epidemic, may really have been very mild cases of the disease. One of the singular features of the disease is that, unlike many other infections, we are entirely unable to say what conditions or influences seem either to protect against it or to predispose toward it. In the days when we believed it to be an exclusively intestinal disease it was naturally supposed that chronic digestive disturbances, and especially acute attacks of bowel trouble or dysentery, would predispose to it, but this has been entirely disproved. Soldiers in barracks with chronic digestive disturbances, and even with dysentery, have shown no higher percentage of typhoid during an epidemic than others. Nor does it seem much more likely to occur in those who are constitutionally weak, or run down, or overworked, as some of the most violent and unmanageable cases occur in vigorous men and women, who were previously in perfect health. So that, although we have unquestionably a high degree of resistance against it, since not more than one in ten exposed contracts it, and only one in ten of those who contract it dies, we have not the least idea in what direction, so to speak, to build up our resisting powers in order to increase them. The best remedy is to destroy the disease altogether, and this could be done in five years by intelligent concerted effort. It was at one time supposed that typhoid fever was a disease exclusively confined to adult life; but it is now known to occur frequently in children, though often in such a mild and irregular form as to escape recognition. Something like seventy per cent of all cases occur between the fifteenth and the fortieth year, and it is, for some reason, though rarer, peculiarly serious and more often fatal after the fiftieth year. When once the outer wall has been pierced, the sack of the city rapidly proceeds. The bacilli multiply everywhere, but seem for some reason to focalize chiefly in the alimentary canal, and especially the middle part of it, the small intestines. After headache, backache, and loss of appetite comes usually a mild diarrh[oe]a. This diarrh[oe]a is due to an attack of the bacillus or its toxins upon certain clumps of lymphoid tissue in the wall of the small intestine, known as the "patches of Peyer." This produces inflammation, followed by ulceration, which in severe cases may eat through the wall of a blood-vessel, causing profuse hemorrhages, or even perforate the bowel wall and set up a fatal peritonitis. The temperature begins to swing from two to five degrees above the normal level, following the usual daily vibration, and ranging from 100 degrees to 101 degrees in the morning up to 102 degrees to 105 degrees in the afternoon. The face becomes flushed. There is usually comparatively little pain, and the patient lies in a sort of mild stupor, paying little attention to his surroundings. He is much enfeebled and seldom cares to lift his head from the pillow. A slight rash appears upon the surface of the body, but this is so faint that it would escape attention unless carefully looked for. Little groups of vesicles, containing clear fluid, appear upon the chest and abdomen. If one of these faint rose-colored spots be pricked with a needle and a drop of blood be drawn, typhoid bacilli will often be found in it, and they will also be present in the clear fluid of the tiny sweat blisters. This condition will last for from ten days to four weeks, the patient gradually becoming weaker and more apathetic, and the temperature maintaining an afternoon level of 102 to 104 degrees. Then, in the vast majority of cases, a little decline of the temperature will be noticed. The patient begins to take a slight interest in his surroundings. He will perhaps ask for something to drink, or something to eat, instead of apathetically swallowing what is offered to him. Next day the temperature is a little lower still, and within a week, perhaps, will have returned to the normal level. The patient has lost from twenty to forty pounds, is weak as a kitten, and it may be ten days after the fever has disappeared before he asks to sit up in bed. Then follows the period of return to health. The patient becomes a walking appetite, and, after weeks of liquid diet, will beg like a spoiled child for cookies or hard apples or pie, or something that he can set his teeth into. But his tissues are still swarming with the bacilli, and any indiscretion, either of diet, exposure, or exertion, at this time, may result in forming a secondary colony, or abscess, somewhere in the lungs, the liver, or the muscles. He must be kept quiet and warm, and abundantly, but judiciously, fed, for at least three weeks after the disappearance of the fever, if he wishes to avoid the thousand and one ambuscades set by the retreating enemy. Now, what has happened when recovery begins? One would suppose that either the bacilli had poisoned themselves, exhausted the supplies of nourishment in the body of the patient, so that the fever had "burnt itself out," as we used to say, or that the tissues had rallied from the attack and destroyed or thrown out the invaders. But, on the contrary, we find that our convalescent patient, even after he is up and walking about, is still full of the bacilli. To put it very crudely, what has really happened is that the body has succeeded in forming such antidotes against the poison of the bacilli that, although they may be present in enormous numbers, they can no longer produce any injurious effect. In other words, it has acquired immunity against this particular germ and its toxin. In fact, one of our newest and most reliable tests for the disease consists in a curious "clumping" or paralyzing power over cultures of the _Bacillus typhosus_, shown by a drop of the patient's blood, even as early as the seventh or eighth day of the illness. And, while it is an immensely difficult and complicated subject, we are justified in saying that this immunity is not merely a substance formed in the body, the stock of which will shortly become exhausted, but a faculty acquired by the body-cells, which they will retain, like other results of education, for years, and even for life. When once the body has learned the wrestling trick of throwing and vanquishing a particular germ or bacillus, it no longer has much to dread from that germ. This is why the same individual is seldom attacked the second time by scarlet fever, measles, typhoid, and smallpox. While, however, the individual may be entirely immune to the germs of a given disease, he may carry them in his body in enormous numbers, and infect others while escaping himself. This is peculiarly true of typhoid, and we are beginning to extend our sanitary care over recovered patients, not merely to the end of acute illness, but for the period of at least a month after they have apparently recovered. Several most disquieting cases are on record of so-called "typhoid carriers," or individuals who, having recovered from the disease itself, carried and spread the infection wherever they went for months and even years afterward. This, however, is probably a rare state of affairs, though a recent German health bulletin reports the discovery of some twenty cases during the past year. The lair of the bacilli is believed to be the gall-bladder. As to treatment, it may be broadly stated that all authorities and schools are for once practically agreed:-- First, that we have no known specific drug for the cure of the disease. Second, that we are content to take a leaf out of nature's book, and follow--so to speak--her instinctive methods: first of all, by putting the patient to bed the moment that a reasonable suspicion of the disease is formed; this conserves his strength, and greatly diminishes the danger of serious complications; cases of "walking typhoid" have among the highest death-rates; second, by meeting the great instinctive symptom of fever patients since the world began, thirst, encouraging the patient to drink large quantities of water, taking care, of course, that the water is pure and sterile. The days when we kept fever patients wrapped up to their necks in woolen blankets in hot, stuffy rooms, and rigorously limited the amount of water that they drank--in other words, fought against nature in the treatment of disease--have passed. A typhoid-fever patient now is not only given all he wants to drink, but encouraged to take more, and some authorities recommend an intake of at least three or four quarts, and, better, six and eight quarts a day. This internal bath helps not only to allay the temperature, but to make good the enormous loss by perspiration from the fevered skin, and to flush the toxins out of the body. Third, by liberal and regular feeding chiefly with some liquid or semi-liquid food, of which milk is the commonest form. The old attitude of mind represented by the proverb, "Feed a cold and starve a fever," has completely disappeared. One of the fathers of modern medicine asked on his death-bed, thirty years ago, that his epitaph should be, "He fed fevers." Fourth. We respond to the other great thirst of fever patients, for coolness, by sponge baths and tub baths, whenever the temperature rises above a certain degree. Simple as these methods sound, they are extremely troublesome to put into execution, and require the greatest skill and judgment in their carrying out. But intelligent persistence in the careful elaboration of these methods of nature has resulted in already cutting the death-rate in two,--from fifteen or twenty per cent to less than ten per cent,--and where the full rigor of the tub bath is carried out it has been brought down to as low as five per cent. Meanwhile the bacteriologists are steadily at work on a vaccine or antitoxin. Wright, of the English Army Medical Staff, has already secured a serum, which has given remarkable results in protecting regiments sent out to South Africa and other infected regions. Chantemesse has imported some six hundred successive cases treated with an antitoxin, whose mortality was only about a third of the ordinary hospital rate, and the future is full of promise. CHAPTER X DIPHTHERIA That was a dark and stern saying, "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission," and, like all the words of the oracles, of limited application. But it proves true in some unexpected places outside of the realm of theology. Was there something prophetic in the legend that it was only by the sprinkling of the blood of the Paschal Lamb above the doorway that the plague of the firstborn could be stayed? To-day the guinea-pig is our burnt offering against a plague as deadly as any sent into Egypt. Scarcely more than a decade ago, as the mother sat by the cradle of her firstborn, musing over his future, one moment fearfully reckoning the gauntlet of risks that his tiny life had to run, and the next building rosy air-castles of his happiness and success, there was one shadow that ever fell black and sinister across his tiny horoscope. Certain risks there were which were almost inevitable,--initiation ceremonies into life, mild expiations to be paid to the gods of the modern underworld, the diseases of infancy and of childhood. Most of these could be passed over with little more than a temporary wrinkle to break her smile. They were so trivial, so comparatively harmless: measles, a mere reddening of the eyelids and peppering of the throat, with a headache and purplish rash, dangerous only if neglected; chicken-pox, a child's-play at disease; scarlatina, a little more serious, but still with the chances of twenty to one in favor of recovery; diphtheria--ah! that drove the smile from her face and the blood from her lips. Not quite so common, not so inevitable as a prospect, but, as a possibility, full of terror, once its poison had passed the gates of the body fortress. The fight between the Angel of Life and the Angel of Death was waged on almost equal terms, with none daring to say which would be the victor, and none able to lift a hand with any certainty to aid. Nor was the doctor in much happier plight. Even when the life at stake was not one of his own loved ones,--though from the deadly contagiousness of the disease it sadly often was (I have known more doctors made childless by diphtheria than by any other disease except tuberculosis),--he faced his cases by the hundred instead of by twos and threes. The feeling of helplessness, the sense of foreboding, with which we faced every case was something appalling. Few of us who have been in practice twenty years or more, or even fifteen, will ever forget the shock of dismay which ran through us whenever a case to which we had been summoned revealed itself to be diphtheria. Of course, there was a fighting chance, and we made the most of it; for in the milder epidemics only ten to twenty per cent of the patients died, and even in the severest a third of them recovered. But what "turned our liver to water"--as the graphic Oriental phrase has it--was the knowledge which, like Banquo's ghost, would not down, that while many cases would recover of themselves, and in many border-line ones our skill would turn the balance in favor of recovery, yet if the disease happened to take a certain sadly familiar, virulent form we could do little more to stay its fatal course than we could to stop an avalanche, and we never knew when a particular epidemic or a particular case would take that turn. "Black" diphtheria was as deadly as the Black Death of the Middle Ages. The disease which caused all this terror and havoc is of singular character and history. It is not a modern invention or development, as is sometimes believed, for descriptions are on record of so-called "Egyptian ulcer of the throat" in the earliest centuries of our era; and it would appear to have been recognized by both Hippocrates and Galen. Epidemics of it also occurred in the Middle Ages; and, coming to more recent times, one of the many enemies which the Pilgrim Fathers had to fight was a series of epidemics of this "black sore throat," of particularly malignant character, in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, it does not seem to have become sufficiently common to be distinctly recognized until it was named as a definite disease, and given the title which it now bears, by the celebrated French physician, Bretonneau, about eighty years ago. Since then it has become either more widely recognized or steadily more prevalent, and it is the general opinion of pathologists that the disease, up to some thirty or forty years ago, was steadily increasing, both in frequency and in severity. So that we have not to deal with a disease which, like the other so-called diseases of childhood, has gradually become milder and milder by a sort of racial vaccination, with survival of the less susceptible, but one which is still full of virulence and of possibilities of future danger. Unlike the other diseases of childhood, also, one attack confers no positive immunity for the future, although it greatly diminishes the probabilities; and, further, while adults do not readily or frequently catch the disease, yet when they do the results are apt to be exceedingly serious. Indeed, we have practically come to the conclusion that one of the main reasons why adults do not develop diphtheria so frequently as children, is that they are not brought into such close and intimate contact with other children, nor are they in the habit of promptly and indiscriminately hugging and kissing every one who happens to attract their transient affection, and they have outgrown that cheerful spirit of comradeship which leads to the sharing of candy in alternate sucks, and the passing on of slate-pencils, chewing-gum, and other _objets d'art_ from hand to hand, and from mouth to mouth. Statistics show that of nurses employed in diphtheria wards, before the cause or the exact method of contagion was clearly understood, nearly thirty per cent developed the disease; and even with every modern precaution there are few diseases which doctors more frequently catch from their patients than diphtheria. It is a significant fact that the risk of developing diphtheria is greatest precisely at the ages when there is not the slightest scruple about putting everything that may be picked up into the mouth,--namely, from the second to the fifth year,--and diminishes steadily as habits of cleanliness and caution in this regard are developed, even though no immunity may have been gained by a mild or slight attack of the disease. The tendency to discourage and forbid the indiscriminate kissing of children, and the crusade against the uses of the mouth as a pencil-holder, pincushion, and general receptacle for odds and ends, would be thoroughly justified by the risks from diphtheria alone, to say nothing of tuberculosis and other infections. In addition to being almost the only common disease of childhood which is not mild and becoming milder, diphtheria is unique in another respect, and that is its point of attack. Just as tuberculosis seizes its victims by the lungs, and typhoid fever by the bowels, diphtheria--like the weasel--grips at the throat. Its bacilli, entering through the mouth and gaining a foothold first upon the tonsils, the palate, or back of the throat (pharynx), multiply and spread until they swarm down into the larynx and windpipe, where their millions, swarming in the mesh of fibrin poured out by the outraged blood-vessels, grow into the deadly false membrane which fills the air-tube and slowly strangles its victim to death. The horrors of a death like that can never fade from the memory of one who has once seen it, and will outweigh the lives of a thousand guinea-pigs. No wonder there was such a widespread and peculiar horror of the disease, as of some ghostly thug or strangler. But not all of the dread of diphtheria went under its own name. Most of us can still remember when the commonest occupant of the nursery shelf was the bottle of ipecac or soothing-syrup as a specific against croup. The thing that most often kept the mother or nurse of young children awake and listening through the night-watches was the sound of a cough, and the anxious waiting to hear whether the next explosion had a "croupy" or brassy sound. It was, of course, early recognized that there were two kinds of croup, the so-called "spasmodic" and the "membranous," the former comparatively common and correspondingly harmless, the latter one of the deadliest of known diseases. The fear that made the mother's heart leap into her mouth as she heard the ringing croup-cough was lest it might be membranous, or, if spasmodic, might turn into the deadly form later. To-day most young mothers hardly know the name of wine of ipecac or alum, and the coughs of young children awaken little more terror than a similar sound in an adult. Croup has almost ceased to be one of the bogies of the nursery. And why? Because membranous croup has been discovered to be diphtheria, and children will not develop diphtheria unless they have been exposed to the contagion, while, if they should be, we have a remedy against it. He was a bold man who first ventured to announce this, and for years the battle raged hotly. It was early admitted that certain cases of so-called membranous croup in children occurred after or while other members of the family or household had diphtheria; and for a time the opposing camps used such words as "sporadic" or scattered croup, which was supposed to come of itself, and "epidemic" or contagious croup, which was diphtheria. Now, however, these distinctions are swept away, and boards of health require isolation and quarantine against croup exactly as against any other form of diphtheria. Cases of fatal croup still occasionally occur which cannot be directly traced to other cases of diphtheria, but the vast majority of them are clearly traceable to infection, usually from some case in another child, which was so mild that it was not recognized as diphtheria until the baby became "croupy" and search was made through the family throats for the bacilli. For years we were in doubt as to the cause of diphtheria. Half a dozen different theories were advanced, bad sewerage, foul air, overcrowding; but it was not until shortly after the Columbus-like discovery, by Robert Koch, of the new continent of bacteriology, that the germ which caused it was arrested, tried, and found guilty, and our real knowledge of and control over the disease began. This was in 1883, when the bacteriologist Klebs discovered the organism, followed a few months later (in 1884) by Löffler, who made valuable additions to our knowledge of it; so that it has ever since been known as the Klebs-Löffler bacillus. This put us upon solid ground, and our progress was both sure and rapid: in ten years our knowledge of the causation, the method of spread, the mode of assault upon the body-fortress, and last, but not least, the cure, stood out clear cut as a die, a model and a prophecy of what may be hoped for in most other contagious diseases. Great as is the credit to which bacteriologists are entitled for this splendid piece of scientific progress, there was another co-laborer, a silent partner, with them in all this triumph, an unsung hero and martyr of science who deserves his meed of praise--the tiny guinea-pig. He well deserves his niche in the temple of fame; and as other races and ages have worshiped the elephant, the snake, and the sacred cow, so this age should erect its temples to the guinea-pig. From one of the most trifling and unimportant,--kept merely as a pet and curiosity by the small boys of all ages,--he has become, after the horse, the cow, the pig, and the sheep, easily our most useful and important domestic animal. It may be urged that he deserves no credit, since his sacrifice--though of inestimable value--was entirely involuntary on his own part; but this should only make us the more deeply bound to acknowledge our obligation to him. By a stern necessity of fate, which no one regrets more keenly than the laboratory workers themselves, the guinea-pig has had to be used as a stepping-stone for every inch of this progress. Upon it were conducted every one of the experiments whose results widened our knowledge, until we found that this bacillus and no other would cause diphtheria; that instead of getting, like many other disease-germs, into the blood, it chiefly limited itself to growing and multiplying upon a comparatively small patch of the body-surface, most commonly of the throat; that most of its serious and fatal results upon the body were produced, not by the entrance of the germs themselves into the blood, but by the absorption of the toxins or poisons produced by them on the moist surface of the throat, just as the yeast plant will produce alcohol in grape juice or sweet cider. Here was a most important clew. It was not necessary to fight the germs themselves in every part of the body, but merely to introduce some ferment or chemical substance which would have the power of neutralizing their poison. Instantly attention was turned in this direction, and it was quickly found that if a guinea-pig were injected with a very small dose of the diphtheria toxin and allowed to recover, he would then be able to throw off a still larger dose, until finally, after a number of weeks, he could be given a dose which would have promptly killed him in the beginning of the experiments, but which he now readily resisted and recovered from. Evidently some substance was produced in his blood which was a natural antidote for the toxin, and a little further search quickly resulted in discovering and filtering out of his body the now famous antitoxin. A dose of this injected into another guinea-pig suffering from diphtheria would promptly save its life. Could this antitoxin be obtained in sufficient amounts to protect the body of a human being? The guinea-pig was so tiny and the process of antitoxin-forming so slow, that we naturally turned to larger animals as a possible source, and here it was quickly found that not only would the goat and the horse develop this antidote substance very quickly and in large amounts, but that a certain amount of it, or a substance acting as an antitoxin, was present in their blood to begin with. Of the two, the horse was found to give both the stronger antitoxin and the larger amounts of it, so that he is now exclusively used for its production. After his resisting power had been raised to the highest possible pitch by successive injections of increasing doses of the toxin, and his serum (the watery part of the blood which contains the healing body) had been used hundreds and hundreds of times to save the lives of diphtheria-stricken guinea-pigs, and had been shown over and over again to be not merely magically curative but absolutely harmless, it was tried with fear and trembling upon a gasping, struggling, suffocating child, as a last possible resort to save a life otherwise hopelessly doomed. Who could tell whether the "heal-serum," as the Germans call it, would act in a human being as it had upon all the other animals? In agonies of suspense, vibrating between hope and dread, doctors and parents hung over the couch. What was their delight, within a few hours, to see the muscles of the little one begin to relax, the fatal blueness of its lips to diminish, and its breathing become easier. In a few hours more the color had returned to the ashen face and it was breathing quietly. Then it began to cough and to bring up pieces of the loosened membrane that had been strangling it. Another dose was eagerly injected, and within twenty-four hours the child was sleeping peacefully--out of danger. And the most priceless and marvelous life-saving weapon of the century had been placed in the hand of the physician. Of course there were many disappointments and failures in the earlier cases. Our first antitoxins were too weak and too variable. We were afraid to use them in sufficient doses. Often their injection would not be consented to until the case had become hopeless. But courage and industry have conquered these difficulties one after another, until now the fact that the prompt and intelligent use of antitoxin will effect a cure of from ninety to ninety-five per cent of all cases of diphtheria is as thoroughly established as any other fact in medicine. The mass of figures from all parts of the world in support of its value has become so overwhelming that it is neither possible nor necessary to specify them in detail. The series of Bayeaux, covering two hundred and thirty thousand cases of diphtheria, chiefly from hospitals and hence of the severest type, showing that the death-rate had been reduced from over _fifty-five_ per cent to below _sixteen_ per cent already, and that this decrease was still continuing, will serve as a fair sample. Three-quarters of even this sixteen per cent mortality is due to delay in the administration of the antitoxin, as is vividly shown in thousands of cases now on record, classified according to the day of the disease on which the antitoxin was given, of which MacCombie's "Report of the London Asylums Board" is a fair type. Of one hundred and eighty-seven cases treated the first day of the disease, none died; of eleven hundred and eighty-six injected on the second day of the disease, four and a half per cent died; of twelve hundred and thirty-three not treated until the third day of the disease, eleven per cent died; of nine hundred and sixty-three cases escaping treatment until the fourth day, seventeen per cent died; while of twelve hundred and sixty not seen until the fifth day, twenty per cent died. In other words, the chances for cure by the antitoxin are in precise proportion to the earliness with which it is administered, and are over four times as great during the first two days of the disease as they are after the fourth day. One "stick" in time saves five. This brings us sharply to the fact that the most important factor in the cure of diphtheria, just as in the case of tuberculosis, is early recognition. How can this be secured? Here again the bacteriologist comes to our relief, and we needed his aid badly. The symptoms of a mild case of diphtheria for the first two, or even three, days are very much like those of an ordinary sore throat. As a rule, even the well-known membrane does not appear in sufficient amounts to be recognizable by the naked eye until the middle of the second, or sometimes even of the third, day. By any ordinary means, then, of diagnosis, we would often be in doubt as to whether a case were diphtheria or not, until it was both well advanced and had had time to infect other members of the family. With the help of the laboratory, however, we have a prompt, positive, and simple method of deciding at the very earliest stage. We merely take a sterilized swab of cotton on the end of a wire, rub it gently over the surface of the throat and tonsils, restore it to its glass tube, smearing it over the surface of some solidified blood-serum placed at the bottom of the tube, close the tube and send it to the nearest laboratory. The culture is put into an incubator at body heat, the germs sown upon the surface of the blood-serum grow and multiply, and in twelve hours a positive diagnosis can be made by examining this growth with a microscope. Often, just smearing the mucus swabbed out of the throat over the surface of a glass slide, staining this smear, and putting it under a microscope, will enable us to decide within an hour. These tubes are now provided by all progressive city boards of health, and can be had free of charge at depots scattered all over the city, for use in any doubtful case, within half an hour. Twelve hours later a free report can be had from the public laboratory. If every case of suspicious sore throat in a child were promptly swabbed out, and a smear from the swab examined at a laboratory, it would not be long before diphtheria would be practically exterminated, as smallpox has been by vaccination, and this is what we are working toward and looking forward to. Our knowledge of the precise cause of diphtheria, the Klebs-Löffler bacillus, has furnished us not only with the cure, but also with the means of preventing its spread. While under certain circumstances, particularly the presence of moisture and the absence of light, this germ may live and remain virulent for weeks outside of the body, careful study of its behavior under all sorts of conditions has revealed the consoling fact that its vitality outside of the human or some other living animal body is low; so that it is relatively seldom carried from one case to another by articles of clothing, books, or toys, and comparatively seldom even through a third party, except where the latter has come into very close contact with the disease, like a doctor, a nurse, or a mother, or--without disrespect to the preceding--a pet cat or dog. More than this, the bacillus must chiefly be transmitted in the moist condition and does not float in the air at all, clinging only to such objects as may have become smeared with the mucus from the child's throat, as by being coughed or sneezed upon. As with most of our germ-enemies, sunlight is its deadliest foe, and it will not live more than two or three days exposed to sunshine. So the principal danger against which we must be on our guard is that of direct personal contact, as in kissing, in the use of spoons or cups in common, in the interchange of candy or pencils, or through having the hands or clothing sprayed by a cough or a sneeze. The bacillus comparatively seldom even gets on the floor or walls of a room where reasonable precautions against coughing and spitting have been taken; but it is, of course, advisable thoroughly to disinfect and sterilize the room of a patient and all its contents with corrosive sublimate and formalin, as a number of cases are on record in which the disease has been carried through books and articles of clothing which had been kept in damp, dark places for several months. The chief method of spread is through unrecognized mild cases of the disease, especially of the nasal form. For this reason boards of health now always insist upon smears being made from the throats and noses of every other child in the family or house where a case of diphtheria is recognized. No small percentages of these are found to be suffering from a mild form of the disease, so slight as to cause them little inconvenience and no interference with their attending school. Unfortunately, a case caught from one of these mild forms may develop into the severest laryngeal type. If a child is running freely at the nose, keep it at home or keep your own child away from it. A profuse nasal discharge is generally infectious, in the case of influenza or other "colds," if not of diphtheria. This also emphasizes the necessity for a thorough and expert medical inspection of school-children, to prevent these mild cases from spreading disease and death to their fellows. By an intelligent combination of the two methods, home examination of every infected family and strict school inspection, there is little difficulty in stamping out promptly a beginning infection before it has had time to reach the proportions of an epidemic. One other step makes assurance doubly sure, and that is the prompt injection of all other children and young adults living in the family, where there is a case of diphtheria, with small doses of the antitoxin for preventive purposes. Its value in this respect has been only secondary to its use as a cure. There are now thousands of cases on record of children who had been exposed to diphtheria or were in hospitals where they were in danger of becoming exposed to it, with the delightful result that only a very small per cent of those so protected developed the disease, and of these not a single one died! This protective vaccination, however, cannot be used on a large scale, as in the case of smallpox, for the reason that the period of protection is a comparatively short one, probably not exceeding two or three weeks. Suppose that, in spite of all our precautions, the disease has gained a foothold in the throat, what will be its course? This will depend, first of all, upon whether the invading germs have lodged in their commonest point of attack, the tonsils, palate, and upper throat, or have penetrated down the air-passages into the larynx or voice-organ. In the former, which is far the commoner case, their presence will cause an irritation of the surface cells which brings out the leucocyte cavalry of the body to the defense, together with squads of the serum or watery fluid of the blood containing fibrin. These, together with the surface-cells, are rapidly coagulated and killed by the deadly toxin; and their remains form a coating upon the surface, which at first is scarcely perceptible, a thin, grayish film, but which in the course of twenty-four to forty-eight hours rapidly thickens to the well-known and dreaded false membrane. Before, however, it has thickened in more than occasional spots or patches, the toxin has begun to penetrate into the blood, and the little patient will complain of headache, feverishness, and backache, often--indeed, usually--before any very marked soreness in the throat is complained of. Roughly speaking, attacks of sore throat, which begin first of all with well-marked soreness and pain in the throat, followed later by headache, backache, and fever, are not very likely to be diphtheria. The bacilli multiply and increase in their deadly mat on the surface of the throat, larger and larger amounts of the poison are poured into the blood, the temperature goes up, the headache increases, the child often begins to vomit, and becomes seriously ill. The glands of the neck, in their efforts to arrest and neutralize the poison, become swollen and sore to the touch, the breath becomes foul from the breaking down of the membrane in the throat, the pulse becomes rapid and weak from the effect of the poison upon the heart, and the dreaded picture of the disease rapidly develops. This process in from sixty to eighty per cent of cases will continue for from three to seven days, when a check will come and the condition will gradually improve. This is a sign that the defensive tissues of the body have succeeded in rallying their forces against the attack, and have poured out sufficient amounts of their natural antitoxin to neutralize the poisons poured in by the invaders. The membrane begins to break down and peel off the throat, the temperature goes down, the headache disappears, the swelling in the glands of the neck may either subside or go on to suppuration and rupture, but within another week the child is fairly on the way to recovery. Should the invaders, however, have secured a foothold in the larynx, then the picture is sadly different. The child may have even less headache, temperature, and general sense of illness; but he begins to cough, and the cough has a ringing, brassy sound. Within forty-eight, or even twenty-four, hours he begins to have difficulty in respiration. This rapidly increases as the delicate tissues of the larynx swell under the attack of the poison, and the very membrane which is created in an attempt at defense becomes the body's own undoing by increasing the blocking of the air-passages. The difficulty of breathing becomes greater and greater, until the little victim tosses continually from side to side in one constant, agonizing struggle for breath. After a time, however, the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the blood produces its merciful narcotic effect, and the struggles cease. The breathing becomes shallower and shallower, the lips become first blue, then ashy pale, and the little torch of life goes out with a flicker. This was what we had to expect, in spite of our utmost effort, in from seventy to ninety per cent of these laryngeal cases, before the days of the blessed antitoxin. Now we actually reverse these percentages, prevent the vast majority of cases from developing serious laryngeal symptoms at all, and save from seventy to eighty per cent of those who do. Our only resource in this form of the disease used to be by mechanical or surgical means, opening the windpipe below the level of the obstruction and inserting a curved silver tube--the so-called tracheotomy operation; or later, and less heroic, by pushing forcibly down into the larynx, and through and past the obstruction at the vocal cords, a small metal tube through which the child could manage to breathe. This was known as intubation. But these were both distressing and painful methods, and, what was far worse, pitifully broken reeds to depend upon. In spite of the utmost skill of our surgeons, from fifty to eighty per cent of cases that were tracheotomized, and from forty to sixty per cent of those that were intubated, died. In many cases they were enabled to breathe, their attacks of suffocation were relieved--but still they died. This leads us to the most important single fact about the course of the disease, and that is that the chief source of danger is not so much from direct suffocation as from general collapse, and particularly failure of the heart. This has given us two other data of great importance and value, namely, that while the immediate and greatest peril is over when the membrane has become loosened and the temperature has begun to subside, in both ordinary throat and in laryngeal forms of the disease, the patient is by no means out of danger. While the antitoxins poured out by his body have completely defeated the invading toxins in the open field of the blood, yet almost every tissue of the body is still saturated with these latter and has often been seriously damaged by them before their course was checked. For instance, nearly two-thirds of our diphtheria cases, which are properly examined, will show albumin in the urine, showing that the kidney-cells have been attacked and poisoned by the toxin. This may go on to a fatal attack of uremia; but fortunately, not commonly, far less so than in scarlet fever. The kidneys usually recover completely, but this may take weeks and months. Again, many cases of diphtheria will show a weak and rapid pulse, which will persist for weeks after the patient has apparently recovered; and if the little ones are allowed to sit up too soon, or to indulge in any sudden movements or muscular strains, this weak and rapid pulse will suddenly change into an attack of heart failure and, possibly, fatal collapse. This, again, illustrates the saturation of the poison, as these effects are now known to be due in part to a direct poisoning of the muscle of the heart itself, and later to serious damage done to the nerves controlling the heart, chiefly the pneumo-gastric. Moral: Keep the little patient in bed for at least two weeks or, better, three. He will have to spend a month or more in quarantine, anyway. Last of all, and by no means least interesting, are the effects which are produced upon the nervous system. One day, while the child is recovering, and is possibly beginning to sit up in bed, a glass of milk is handed to him. The little one drinks it eagerly and attempts to swallow, but suddenly it chokes, half strangles, and back comes the milk, pouring out through the nostrils. Paralysis of the soft palate has occurred from poisoning of the nerves controlling it, caused by direct penetration of the toxin. Sometimes the muscles of the eye become paralyzed and the little one squints, or can no longer see to read. Fortunately, most of these alarming results go only to a certain degree, and then gradually fade away and disappear; but this may take months or even longer. In a certain number, however, the nerves of respiration, or those controlling the heart-beat, become affected, and the patient dies suddenly from heart failure. This strange after-effect upon the nervous system, which was first clearly noticed in diphtheria and syphilis, has now been found to occur in lesser degree in a large number of our infectious diseases, so that many of our most serious paralyses and other diseases of the nervous system are now traceable to such causes. These effects of the diphtheria toxin are also of interest for a somewhat unexpected reason, since it has been claimed that they are effects of the antitoxin, by those who are opposed to its use. Every one of them was well recognized as a possible result of diphtheria long before the antitoxin was discovered, and every one of them can be readily produced by injections of diphtheria bacilli or their toxin into animals. It is quite possibly true that there are more cases of nerve-poisoning (neuritis) and of paralysis following diphtheria than there were before the use of antitoxin, but that is for the simple and sufficient reason that there are more children left alive to display them! And between a child with a temporary squint and a dead child few mothers would hesitate long in their choice. CHAPTER XI THE HERODS OF OUR DAY: SCARLET FEVER, MEASLES, AND WHOOPING-COUGH Why is a disease a disease of childhood? First and fundamentally, because that is the earliest period at which a human being can have it. But the problem goes deeper than this. There is no more interesting and important group of diseases in the whole realm of pathology than those which we calmly dub "the diseases of childhood," and thereby dismiss to the limbo of unavoidable accidents and discomforts, like flies, mosquitoes, and stubbed toes, which are best treated with a shrug of the shoulders and such stoic philosophy as we can muster. They are interesting, because the moment we begin to study them intelligently we stumble upon some of the profoundest and most far-reaching problems of resistance to disease; important, because, trifling as we regard them, and indeed largely just because we so regard them, they kill, or handicap for life, more children in civilized communities than the most deadly pestilence. Measles, for instance, according to the last United States census, causes yearly nearly thirteen thousand deaths, while smallpox causes so few that it is not listed among the important causes of death. Scarlet fever causes sixty-three hundred and thirty-three deaths, as compared with barely five thousand from appendicitis and the same number from rheumatism. Whooping-cough causes ninety-nine hundred and fifty-eight deaths, more than double the mortality from diabetes and nearly equal to that of malarial fever. In medicine, as in war, the gravest and deadliest mistake that you can make is to despise your enemy. These trivial disorders, these trifling ailments, which every one takes as a matter of course, and expects to go through with, like teething, tight shoes, and learning to smoke, sweep away every year in these United States the lives of from forty to fifty thousand children, reaching the bad eminence of fifth upon our mortality lists, only consumption, pneumonia, heart disease, and diarrh[oe]al diseases ranking above them. Of course, it is obvious that these diseases outrank many other more serious ones among the "captains of the men of death," largely upon the familiar principle of the old riddle, whereby the white sheep eat more grass than the black, "because there are more of them." While only a relatively small percentage of us ever have the bad luck to be attacked by typhoid fever, rheumatism, or appendicitis, to say nothing of cholera and smallpox, the vast majority of us have gone through two or more of these diseases of childhood; so that, though the death-rate of each and all of them is low, yet the number of cases is so enormous that the absolute total mounts high. But the pity and, at the same time, the practical importance of this heavy death-roll is that _at least two-thirds of it is absolutely preventable_, and by the exercise of only a very moderate amount of intelligence and vigilance. It is, of course, obvious that in a group of diseases which numbers its victims literally by the million every year there will inevitably occur a certain minute percentage of fatal results due to what might be termed unavoidable causes, like a badly nourished condition of the child attacked, unusual circumstances preventing proper shelter or nursing, or an exceptional virulence of the disease, such as will occur in two or three cases of every thousand in even the most trifling infectious malady. But even after making liberal allowance for what might be termed the unavoidable fatalities, at least two-thirds, and more probably nine-tenths, of the deaths from children's diseases might be prevented upon two grounds:-- First, that they are contagious and absolutely dependent upon a living germ, whose spread can be prevented; and secondly, and practically even more important, that more than half the deaths from them are due, not to the disease itself, but to complications occurring during the period of recovery, caused, for the most part, by gross carelessness on the part of the mother or nurse. A large majority, for instance, of the nearly thirteen thousand deaths attributed to measles are due to bronchitis, caught by letting the child go out-of-doors too soon after recovery, which means, of course, either a chill falling upon the irritated and weakened bronchial mucous membrane, or an infection by one of the score of disease-germs, such as those of influenza, pneumonia, bronchitis, and even tuberculosis, which are continually lying in wait for just such an emergency as this--just such a weakening of the vital resistance. It is a sadly familiar statement in the history of fatal cases of tuberculosis that the trouble "began with an attack of measles," or whooping-cough, or a bad cold, and was mistaken for a mere "hanging on" of one of these milder maladies until it had gained a foothold that there was no dislodging. As breakers of the wall of the hollow square of the body-cells, drawn up to resist the cavalry charges of tuberculosis, pneumonia, and rheumatism, few can be compared in deadliness with the diseases of childhood and "common colds." Further, while all of them except scarlet fever have a mortality so low that it might almost be described as what the French delicately term _une quantité négligeable_, yet a surprisingly large number of the survivors do not escape scot-free, but bear scars which they may carry to their graves, or which may even carry them to that bourne later. Again, the actual percentage of the survivors who are marked in this fashion is small, but such milliards of children are attacked every year that, on the old familiar principle, "if you throw plenty of mud some of it will stick," quite a serious number are more or less handicapped by these remainders. For instance, quite a noticeable percentage of cases of chronic eye troubles, particularly of the lids and conjunctiva, such as "granulated" lids, styes, ulcers of the cornea, date from an attack of measles or even whooping-cough. Many cases of nasal catarrh or chronic throat trouble or bronchitis in children date from the same source. A large group of chronic discharges from the ear and perforations of the ear-drum are a direct after-result of scarlet fever; and the frequency with which this disease causes serious disturbances of the kidneys is almost a household word. Less definitely traceable, but even more serious in their entirety, are the large group of chronic depression of vigor, loss of appetite, various forms of indigestion and of bowel trouble, which are left behind after the visitation of one of these minor pests, particularly among the children of the poorer classes, who are unable to obtain the highly nutritious, appetizing, and delicately cooked foods which are so essential to the full recovery of the little invalids. One of the English commissions which was investigating the alleged physical deterioration of city and town populations stumbled upon a singularly interesting and significant fact in this connection, while plotting the curves of the rate of growth of the children in a given district in Scotland during a series of years. They were struck with the fact that children born in certain years in the same families, neighborhoods, and presumably the same circumstances, grew more rapidly and had a lower death-rate than those born in other years; and that, on the other hand, children born in other years fell almost as far below the normal in their rate of growth. The only factor which they found to coincide with these differences was that in the years in which those children who made the slowest growth were born there had been unusually heavy epidemics of children's diseases and a high mortality; while, on the other hand, those years whose "crop" of children made the best growth had been unusually free from such epidemics and had a correspondingly low mortality, showing clearly that even the survivors of children's diseases were not only not benefited, but distinctly handicapped and set back in their growth by the energy, so to speak, wasted in resisting the onslaught. This brings us to an aspect of these diseases which from both a philosophic and a practical point of view is most interesting and profoundly significant; and that is the question with which we opened: Why is a disease a disease of childhood? The old, primitive view was as guileless and as simple as the age in which the diseases occurred. They were regarded not merely by the laity but by grave and reverend physicians of the Dark Ages as a sort of necessary vital crisis peculiar and appropriate to each particular age of life,--a sort of sweating out and erupting of "peccant humors" of the blood, which must be got rid of or else the individual would not thrive. Incredible as it may seem, so far was this idea extended, that the great Arabian physician-philosopher, Rhazes, actually included smallpox in this group, as the last of the "crises of growth" which had to appear and have its way in young manhood or womanhood. Quaint little echoes of this simple faith still ring in the popular mind, as, for instance, in the widespread notion about the dangerousness of doing anything to check the eruption in measles and cause it to "strike in." Any mother in Israel will tell you, the first time you propose a bath or a wet pack to reduce the temperature in measles, that if you so much as touch water to the skin of that child it will "drive the rash in" and cause it to die in convulsions. And, of course, one of the commonest of a physician's memories is the expression of relief from the mother or aunt in any of these mild eruptive fevers, where the skin was well reddened and spotted: "Well, anyway, doctor, it is a splendid thing to get the rash so well out!" Until within the last ten or fifteen years it was no uncommon thing to hear the expression: "Well, I suppose we might just as well let Willie and Susie go on to school and get the measles and have done with it. It seems to be a real mild sort this time." Of course this view was scientifically shattered two or more decades ago by our recognition of the infectious nature of these diseases, but practically its hold on the public mind constitutes one of the most serious and vital obstacles in the way of the health-officer when he endeavors to attack and break up an epidemic of measles, whooping-cough, or chicken-pox. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that, mild and in their immediate results trifling, as most of these "little diseases" are, they are genuine members of that class of pathologic poison-snakes, the germ-infections; that when they bite, they bite to kill; that two to five times in every hundred they do kill; that, like all other infections, they are capable of inflicting serious and permanent damage upon the great vital organs, the heart, the kidneys, the liver, and the brain; and that they are the very jackals of diseases, tracing down and pointing out the prey to the lions that work in partnership with them. With whatever we may treat measles and whooping-cough, _never_ treat them with contempt! The next conception of the "whyness" of children's diseases was that as one star differs from another in glory, so does one germ differ from another in virulence; that the germs of these particular diseases just happened to be from the beginning unusually mild and at the same time highly contagious, so that they remained permanently scattered about throughout the community, and attacked each successive brood of newborn children as quickly as they could conveniently get at them. Being so mild and so comparatively seldom fatal, little or no alarm was excited by them and few efforts made to check their spread, so that they continued to flourish, generation after generation. Upon this theory the germs of measles, chicken-pox, whooping-cough, mumps, would be in something like the same class as the numerous species of bacteria and other germs that normally inhabit the human mouth, stomach, and intestines; for the most part, comparatively harmless parasites, or what are technically now known as "_symbiotes_" (from two Greek words, _bios_, "life," and _syn_, "with"), a sort of little partners or non-paying boarders, for the most part harmless, but occasionally capable of making trouble. There are scores of species of such germs in our food-canals, some of which may be even slightly helpful in the process of digestion. Only a very small per cent of the bacilli of any sort in the world are harmful; the vast majority are exceedingly helpful. There is evidently some truth in this view of children's diseases, especially so far as the reason for their steady persistence and undiminished spread is concerned, namely, the comparative carelessness and indifference with which they are regarded and treated. But some rather striking developments of recent years have raised grave doubts in our minds as to whether they were always the mild and inoffensive "house cats" that they pass for at present. These are the astonishing and almost incredible developments that occur when for the first time these mild and harmless "diseaselets" are introduced to a savage or half-civilized tribe. Like an Arabian Nights' transformation, our sleepy, purring, but still able to scratch, "pussy cat" flashes out as a ravenous man-eating tiger, killing and maiming right and left. Measles--harmless, tickly, snuffly, "measly" little measles--kills from thirty to sixty per cent of whole villages and tribes of Indians and cripples half the remainder! My first direct experience with this feature of our "household pets" was on the Pacific Coast. All the old settlers told me of a dread pestilence which had preceded the coming of the main wave of invading civilization, sweeping down the Columbia River. Not merely were whole clans and villages swept out of existence, but the valley was practically depopulated; so that, as one of the old patriarchs grimly remarked, "It made it a heap easier to settle it up quietly." So swift and so fatal had been its onslaught that villages would be found deserted. The canoes were rotting on the river bank above high-water mark. The curtains of the lodges were flapped and blown into shreds. The weapons and garments of the dead lay about them, rusting and rotting. The salmon-nets were still standing in the river, worn to tatters and fringes by the current. Yet, from the best light that I was able to secure upon it, it appeared to have been nothing more than an epidemic of the measles, caught from the child of some pioneer or trapper and spreading like wildfire in the prairie grass. A little later I had an opportunity to see personally an epidemic of mumps in a group of Indians, and I have seldom seen fever patients, ill of any disease, who were more violently attacked and apparently more desperately ill than were sturdy young Indian boys attacked by this trifling malady. Their temperatures rose to one hundred and five or one hundred and six degrees, they became delirious, their faces were red and swollen, they ached in every limb, and the complications that occasionally follow mumps even in civilized patients were frequent and exceedingly severe. In like manner, influenza will slay its hundreds in a tribe of less than a thousand members. Chicken-pox will become so virulent as to be mistaken for smallpox. Several of the epidemics of alleged smallpox that have occurred among Indians and other savage tribes are now known to have been only measles. At first, pathologists were inclined to receive these reports with some degree of skepticism, and to regard them either as travelers' tales, or as instances of exceptional and accidental virulence in that particular tribe, the high death-rate due to bad nursing or horrible methods of voodoo treatment. But from all over the world came ringing in the same story, not merely from scores of travelers, but also from army surgeons, medical missionaries, and medical explorers, until it has now become a definitely established fact that the mild, trifling diseases of infancy, "colds" and influenzas of civilized races, leap to the proportions of a deadly pestilence when communicated to a savage tribe. Whether that tribe be the Eskimo of the Northern ice-sheet or the Terra del Fuegian of the Southern, the Hawaiian of the islands of the Pacific or the Aymarás of the Amazon, all fall like grain before the scythe under the attack of a malady which is little more than the proverbial "little 'oliday" of three days in bed to civilized man. Evidently civilized man has acquired a degree and kind of immunity that uncivilized man has not. Either the disease has grown milder or civilized man tougher with the ages. The probability is that both of these explanations are true. These diseases may originally have been comparatively severe and serious; but as generation after generation has been submitted to their attack, those who were most susceptible died or were so crippled as to be seriously handicapped in the race of life and have left fewer and less vigorous offspring. So that, by a gradual process of weeding out the more susceptible, the more resisting survived and became the resistant civilized races of to-day. On the other hand, any disease which kills its victim so quickly that it has not time to make sure of its transmission to another one before his death, will not have so many chances of survival as will a milder and more chronic disorder. Hence, the milder and less fatal strains of germs would stand the better chance of survival. This, of course, is a very crude outline, but it probably represents something of the process by which almost all known diseases, except a few untamable hyenas, like the Black Death, the cholera, and smallpox, have gradually grown milder with civilization. If we escape the attack of these attenuated diseases of infancy until fifteen or sixteen years of age, we can usually defy them afterward; though occasionally an unusually virulent strain will attack an adult, with troublesome consequences. At all events, whatever explanation we may give, the consoling fact stands out clearly that civilized man is decidedly more resistant to these pests of civilization than is any half-civilized race, and there is good reason to believe that this is a typical instance of his comparative vigor and endurance all along the line. If this view of the original character and taming of these diseases be correct, it also accounts for the extraordinary and otherwise inexplicable cases where they suddenly assume the virulence of cholera, or yellow fever, and kill within forty-eight or ninety-six hours, not merely in children but also in adults. To group these three diseases together simply because they all happen to occur in children would appear scarcely a rational principle of classification. Yet, practically, widely different as they are in their ultimate results and, probably, in their origin, they have so many points in common as to their method of spread, prevention, and general treatment, that what is said of one will with certain modifications apply to all. I said "probably" of widely different origin, because, by one of those strange paradoxes which so often confront us in real life, though the infectiousness and the method of spread of all these diseases is as familiar as the alphabet and as firmly settled, the most careful study and innumerable researches have failed to identify positively the germ in any one of them. There are a number of "suspects" against which a great deal of circumstantial evidence exists: a streptococcus in scarlet fever, a bacillus in whooping-cough, and a protozoan in measles; but none of these have been definitely convicted. The principal reason for our failure is a very common one in bacteriological research, whose importance is not generally known, and that is, that there is not a single species of the lower animals that is subject to the diseases or can be inoculated with them. This unfortunate condition is the greatest barrier which can now exist to our discovery of the causation of any disease. We were absolutely blocked, for instance, by it in smallpox and syphilis until we discovered that our nearest blood relatives, the ape and the monkey, are susceptible to them; and then the _Cytoryctes Variolæ_ and the _Treponema pallida_ were discovered within comparatively a few months. Some lucky day, perhaps, we may stumble on the animal or bird which will take measles, scarlet fever, or whooping-cough, and then we will soon find out all about them. But, fortunately, our knowledge of these little diseases, like Mercutio's wound, is "not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but 't is enough" for all practical purposes. The general plan of treatment in all of them might be roughly summed up as, rest in bed in a well-ventilated room; sponge-baths and packs for the fever; milk, eggs, bread, and fruit diet, with plenty of cool water to drink, either plain, or disguised as lemonade or "fizzy" mixtures; mild local antiseptic washes for nose and throat, and mild internal antiseptics, with laxatives, for the bowels and kidneys. There is no known drug which is specific in any one of them, though their course may be made milder and the patient more comfortable by the intelligent use of a variety of remedies, which assist nature in her fight against the toxin. Not knowing the precise cause, we have as yet no reliable antitoxin for any. Now very briefly as to the earmarks of each particular member of this children's group. It may be said in advance that the "openings" of all of them (as chess-players call the first moves) are very much alike. All of them are apt to begin with a little redness and itching of the mucous membranes of the nose, the throat, and the eyes, with consequent snuffling and blinking and complaints of sore throat. These are followed, or in severe, swift cases may be preceded, by flushed cheeks, complaints of headache or heaviness in the head, fever, sometimes rising very quickly to from one hundred and four to one hundred and five degrees, backache, pains in the limbs, and, in very severe cases, vomiting. In fact, the symptoms are almost identical with those of an attack of that commonest of all acute infections, a bad cold, and probably for the same reason, namely, that the germs, whatever they may be, attack and enter the system by way of the nose and throat. One of the most difficult practical points about the beginning of this group of diseases is to distinguish them from one another, or from a common cold. The important thing to remember is that, theoretically important as it may be to make this distinction, practically it isn't necessary at all, as they should all be treated exactly alike in the beginning. The only vital thing is to recognize that you are dealing with an infection of some sort, isolate promptly the little patient, put him to bed, and make your diagnosis later as the disease develops. Fortunately neither scarlet fever nor measles usually becomes acutely infectious until the rash appears, and as neither is particularly dangerous to adults, especially to such as have had them already, a one-room quarantine is sufficient for the first few days of any of these diseases. We will lose nothing and gain enormously by adopting this routine plan in all cases of snuffling noses, sore throats, headache, and fever in children, for these are the early symptoms of all their febrile diseases, from colds to diphtheria; all alike are infectious and all, even to the mildest, benefited by a few days of rest and seclusion. After this first general blare of defiance on the part of the system to the enemy, whoever he may be, the battle begins to take on its characteristic form according to the nature of the invader. We will take first the campaign of scarlet fever, since this is the swiftest and first to disclose itself. After the preliminary snuffles and headache have lasted for a few hours, the temperature usually begins to rise; and when it does, by leaps and bounds often reaching one hundred and four or one hundred and five degrees within twelve hours, the skin becomes dry and hot, the throat sore, the tongue parched, and the little patient drowsy and heavy-eyed. Within from twenty-four to forty-eight hours a bright red or pinkish rash appears, first on the neck and chest, and then rapidly spreading all over the surface of the body within another twenty-four hours. Meanwhile the throat becomes sore and swollen, ranging, according to the severity of the case, from a slight reddening and swelling to a furious ulcerative inflammation, with the formation of a thick membrane-like exudate, which sometimes is so severe as to raise a suspicion of possible diphtheria. The tongue becomes red and naked, with the papillæ showing light against a red ground, so as to give rise to what has been known as "the strawberry tongue." The temperature is usually high, and the little patient when he drowses off to sleep is quite apt to become more or less delirious. In the vast majority of cases, after two to four days of this, the temperature goes down almost as swiftly as it came up, the rash begins to fade, the throat gets less sore, and the rebound toward recovery sets in. About this time the daily examination of the urine will begin to show traces of albumin, but this, under strict rest in bed and careful diet, will usually diminish and ultimately disappear. In the event of a relapse, however, or setback from any cause, the kidneys may become violently attacked, and a considerable per cent of the fatal cases die from suppression of the urine. After this crisis has occurred, however, in ninety-nine per cent of all cases it is comparatively plain sailing; the throat is still sore and troublesome, the skin itches and tickles, and the eyes smart, but the little patient steadily improves day by day. Anywhere from three to five days after the break in the fever the skin begins to get rough and scaly, and gradually peels off, until in some cases the entire coating of the body is shed, having been killed, as it were, by the violence of the eruption. These _flakes and scales of the skin are exceedingly contagious_, and no case should be regarded as fit to be released from isolation until every particle has been shed and got rid of. This constitutes one of the most tiresome and annoying periods of the disease, as complete shedding is seldom finished before two weeks, and sometimes may last from three to five. However, this long period of contagiousness has been found to be really a blessing in disguise, inasmuch as we now know that even more strikingly than in the other children's diseases it is the period of _recovery_ that is the period of _greatest danger_ in scarlet fever. Like the Parthians of Greek history it is most dangerous when in retreat. Keeping the child at rest for the greater part of the time, in bed or on a lounge, in a well-ventilated room, or later on a porch or terrace, for five weeks from the beginning of the disease, is well worth all the trouble and inconvenience that it causes, for the sake of the almost absolute protection it gives against dangerous and even fatal complications, particularly of the kidneys, heart, or lungs. This is a fair description of what might be termed an average case of the disease. We also have the sadly familiar type described as the fulminant or, literally, "lightning-stroke" variety. The child goes down as if struck by an invisible hand; vomiting is one of the first symptoms; delirium follows within ten or twelve hours; the eruption becomes not merely scarlet but purplish from hemorrhage under the skin, giving the name of "black" scarlet fever to this type. The throat becomes furiously swollen, the urine is absolutely suppressed, the child goes into convulsions, and dies within forty-eight hours from the beginning of the attack. Fortunately, this type is rare, but the important thing to remember is that it may develop in a child who caught the disease from one of the mildest of all possible cases! Hence every case should be treated with the strictest isolation, as if it were itself of the most malignant type. Naturally, the mortality of scarlet fever varies according to the type. Not only may it assume a malignant form in individual cases, but whole epidemics may be of this character, with a mortality of from twenty to thirty per cent. Generally speaking, however, the death-rate is about one in twelve, ranging from as low as one in twenty-five to as high as one in five. As in the case of diphtheria, the greatest danger and most powerful means of spread of the disease is through the mild, unrecognized cases, which are supposed to have nothing but a cold and are allowed to continue in school or play with other children. We have no antitoxin and no bacteriologic means of positive diagnosis. But one method will stop the spread and within ten or fifteen years exterminate every one of these infections--_isolate at once every child_ that shows symptoms of a cold, sore throat, or feverishness, both for its own sake and for that of the community! In measles we have to deal with a much more harmless and more nearly domesticated "beast of prey," but one of a prevalence to correspond. Though probably (exact data being as yet lacking) not more than one-third of all individuals are attacked by scarlet fever, it would be safe to say that not more than one-third, and possibly not more than one-fifth, of us escape measles. Hence, though its mortality is scarcely one-fourth that of scarlet fever, it more than holds its own in the Herod class, as grimly shown by its total death-roll of over twelve thousand, compared with only a little over six thousand to the credit of scarlet fever. After the preliminary disturbances of snuffles, hot throat, headache, and feverishness, which it shares with all the other "little fevers," the first thing to mark off measles is usually that the itching and running at the nose and eyes become more prominent, the child begins to turn its face away from the light because it makes its eyes smart, and complains not so much of soreness as of a peppery, burning, itching sensation in its nose and throat. The tongue is coated, the stomach mildly upset; the little patient is more uncomfortable and fretful than seriously ill. This condition drags on, without apparently getting anywhere, for from two to four days, during which time it is often very difficult even for the most experienced physician to say positively what the sufferer has. But about the fourth day a rash begins to appear, typically first upon the cheeks or forehead in the shape of little widely separated dull-red blotches. These grow larger and deeper in color, rising in the middle and spreading at their edges, so that shortly the whole skin becomes puffed and swollen and of a mottled, pinkish-purple color. If the child's lower lip be pulled down, little red spots will be seen scattered over the lining membrane of the mouth, showing that the eruption is not confined to the skin. Indeed, these Koplik's spots (as they are called, after their discoverer) in the mouth will often appear a day or more before the eruption upon the skin and give the first clew to the nature of the disease. These are significant, because they probably illustrate the process of eruption, or, at least, irritation, which is taking place, not merely upon the skin, but also upon the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, and throat, the windpipe and the bronchial tubes, and which is the cause of the burning, running, and, later, occasional serious inflammatory symptoms in all these regions. When you look at the hot, angry-looking, swollen skin of the little victim of measles, the weeping eyes and running nose, and remember that this same sort of process is either going on or is likely to occur all over his entire lining, so to speak, from lungs to bowels, you can easily grasp how important it is to keep him absolutely at rest and protected from every possible risk in the way of chill, over-exertion, or injudicious feeding, until the whole process has completely subsided and been forgotten. Neglect of these precautions is the reason why so many cases of measles, on the least and most trifling exposure and overstrain during the two or three weeks following the disease, will blaze up into a fatal bronchitis or pneumonia. The rash takes about two or three days to get out, then it begins to fade and the skin to peel off in tiny, branny scales, so small and thin as to be almost invisible--unlike the huge flakes of scarlet fever. At the same time all the other symptoms recede. But, as in scarlet fever, all cases should be treated alike, by rest, sponging and packing for the fever, light diet with plenty of milk and fruit, and confinement to the room for at least ten days after the disappearance of the fever. The very mildest and most insignificant of attacks may be followed, through carelessness or exposure, by a fatal bronchitis. Indeed, in view of the distressing frequency with which our histories of tuberculosis in children contain the words, "Came on after measles," it is highly advisable to watch carefully every child as regards abundant feeding, avoidance of overwork or overstrain, and of all unnecessary exposure to infection, wind, or wet, for two months after an attack of measles instead of the customary two weeks. As the disease is acutely infectious, the little victim should be isolated for at least three weeks after the disappearance of the fever; but this again, as in the case of scarlet fever, is emphatically a blessing in disguise from his point of view, as well as a protection to the rest of the community. Should the "little fever" prove to be whooping-cough, it will be later still in positively declaring its definite intentions. The cold or catarrhal stage will be much milder, the fever lower, the cough a trifle more marked, but will drag on for from a week to ten days before anything definite happens. Usually the child is supposed to be suffering with a slight cold, hence the prevailing impression that colds run into whooping-cough, if neglected. Then one day the child is suddenly seized with a coughing fit, consisting of from ten to fifteen short coughs in rapid succession of increasing intensity, until all the air seems literally pumped out of the lungs of the poor little patient; then, with a tremendous whoop, the youngster gets his breath again and the diagnosis is made. This distressing performance may occur only four or five times a day, or it may be repeated every half-hour or so. So violent is the paroxysm that the eyes of the child protrude, it becomes literally black in the face, and runs to its mother or nurse, or clutches a chair, to keep from falling. As the same great nerves which supply the lungs supply the stomach, the irritation frequently "radiates," or spills over, from one division of it to the other, and the coughing fit is frequently followed by vomiting. Unexpectedly enough this may often become the most serious practical symptom of the disease, inasmuch as the stomach is emptied so frequently that the poor little victim is unable to retain any nourishment long enough to absorb it, and may waste away frightfully, and even literally starve to death, or have its resisting power so greatly lowered that an attack of bronchial trouble or bowel disturbance will prove rapidly fatal. So serious are the disturbances of the circulation all over the body by these spasmodic suffocation-fits, that rupture of small blood-vessels may occur in the eyes, the brain, in the lungs, and on the surface of the skin. The heart becomes distended, and if originally weakened may be seriously dilated or overstrained; the lungs become congested and inflamed, and any of the numerous accidental germs which may be present will set up a broncho-pneumonia, which is the commonest cause of death in this disease, as in measles. Strangely enough, while, as we do not positively know the germ, and hence cannot state definitely either the cause or the principal seat of the trouble, it is not generally believed that the condition of the lungs or the throat has much to do with the cough. At all events, it is perfectly idle to treat the disease with cough mixtures or expectorants. The view toward which the majority of intelligent observers are inclined is that whooping-cough is an infection, the germ or toxin of which attacks the nervous system, and particularly the great "lung-stomach" (pneumo-gastric) nerve. At all events, the only remedies which appear to have any effect upon the disease are, in the early stages, mild local antiseptics in the nose and throat, and later those which diminish the irritability of the nerves without upsetting the appetite or depressing the general vigor. The disease is, for all its mildness, one of the most obstinate known. A small percentage of cases run a violent course, in spite of the most intelligent and anxious care, both medical and household; but the vast majority of such complications as occur are either caused by carelessness or become serious only if neglected. Treating all children with whooping-cough as emphatically sick children, entitled to every care and excuse from exertion, every exemption and privilege that can be given them until the last whoop has been whooped, would prevent at least two-thirds of the almost ten thousand deaths from whooping-cough that yearly disgrace the United States. To sum up in fine: intelligent, effective isolation of all cases, the mild no less than the severe, would stamp out these Herods of the twentieth century within ten years. In the meantime, six weeks' sick-leave, with all the privileges and care appertaining thereto, will rob them of two-thirds of their terrors. CHAPTER XII APPENDICITIS, OR NATURE'S REMNANT SALE We were not made all at once, nor do we go to pieces all at once, like the "one-hoss shay." This is largely because we are not all of the same age, clear through. Some parts of us are older than other parts. We have always felt a difficulty, not to say a delicacy, in determining the age of a given member of the human species--especially of the gentler sex. Now we know the reason of it. From the biologic point of view, we are not an individual, but a colony; not a monarchy, but a confederacy of organ-states, each with its millions of cell-citizens. It is not merely editors and crowned heads who have a biologic right to say "We." Therefore, obviously, any statement that we make as to our age can be only in the nature of an average struck between the ages of our heart, lungs, liver, stomach; and as these vary in ancientness by thousands of years, the average must be both vague and misleading. The only reason why there is a mystery about a woman's age is that she is so intensely human and natural. The only statement as to our age that the facts would strictly justify us in making must partake of the vagueness of Mr. A. Ward's famous confession that he was "between twenty-three summers." As we individually climb our own family-tree, from the first, one-celled droplet of animal jelly up, none of our organs is older than we are, but a number of them are younger. The appendix is one of these. Now, by some curious coincidence, explain it as we may, some of our oldest organs are youngest, in the sense of most vigorous, elastic, and resisting, while some of our youngest are oldest, in the sense of decrepit, feeble, and unstable. It is perhaps only natural that an organ like the stomach, for instance, which has a record of honorable service and active duty millions of years long, should be better poised, more reliable, and more resourceful than one which, like the lung or the appendix, has, as it were, a "character" of only about one-tenth of that length. However this may be, the curious fact confronts us that scattered about through the body are structures and fragments, the remains of organs which at one time in our ancestral career were, under the then existing circumstances, of utility and value, but have now become mere survivals, remnants,--in the language of the day, "back numbers." Some of these have still a certain degree of utility, though diminished and still diminishing in size and functional importance, like our third molars or "wisdom" teeth, our fifth or "little" toes, our gall-bladder, our coccyx or tail-bone, the hair-glands scattered all over the now practically hairless surface of our bodies, and our once movable ears, which can no longer be "pricked," or laid back. These, though of far less utility and importance than they obviously were at one time, still earn their salt, and, though all capable of causing us considerable annoyance on slight provocation, seldom give rise to serious trouble or inconvenience. There are, however, a few of these "oversights" which are of little or no known utility, and yet which, either by their structure or situation, may become the starting-point of serious trouble. The best known members of this small group are the openings through the abdominal wall, which, originally placed at the strongest and safest position in the quadrupedal attitude, are now, in the erect attitude, at the weakest and most dangerous, and furnish opportunity for those serious and sometimes fatal escapes of portions of the intestines which we call hernia; the tonsils; and our friend the _appendix vermiformis_. For once its name expresses it exactly. It _is_ an "appendix," an afterthought; and it is "_vermiformis_," a worm-like creature,--and, like the worm, will sometimes turn when trodden on. Its worm-likeness is significant in another sense also, in that it is this very diminutiveness in size--the coils into which it is thrown, the spongy thickness of its walls, and the readiness with which its calibre or its circulation is blocked--that is the fundamental cause of its tendency to disease. The cause of appendicitis is the appendix. "Despise not the day of small things" is good pathology as well as Scripture. Here we have a little, worm-shaped tag, or side branch, of the food-tube, barely three or four inches long, of about the diameter of a small quill and of a calibre that will barely admit an ordinary knitting needle. And yet we speak of it with bated breath. When we remember that this little, twisted, blind tube opens directly out of one of the largest pouches of the intestines (the _cæcum_), and that it is easy for anything that may be present in the large pouch--food, irritating fragments of waste matter, or bacteria--to find its way into this fatal little trap, but very difficult to find the way out again, we can form some idea of what a literal death-trap it may become. How did such a useless and dangerous structure ever come to develop in a body in which for the most part there is mutual helpfulness, utility, and perfect smoothness of working through all the great machine? To attempt to answer this would carry us very far back into ancient history. But to make such backward search is absolutely the only means of reaching an answer. "But," some one will object, "how perfectly irrational, not to say absurd, to propose to go back hundreds of thousands of years into ancient history, to account for a disease which has been discovered--according to some, invented--within the past twenty-five years!" Appendicitis is a mark, not a result, of a high grade of civilization. To have had an operation for it is one of the insignia of modern rank and culture. Our new biologic aristocracy, the "Appendix-Free," look down with gentle disdain upon their appendiciferous fellows who still bear in their bodies this troublesome mark of their lowly origin. In short, the general impression prevails that appendicitis is a new disease, a disease which has become common, or perhaps occurred at all, only within the last quarter of a century, and which therefore--with the usual flying leap of popular logic--is a serious menace to our future, if it keeps on increasing in frequency and ferocity at anything like the same rate which it has apparently shown for the past fifteen years. As this feeling of apprehension is in many minds quite genuine, it may be well to say briefly, before proceeding further, first, that, if there be any disease which absolutely and almost exclusively depends upon definite peculiarities of structure, it is appendicitis, and that these structural peculiarities of this tiny, cramped tag of the food-canal have existed from the earliest infancy of the race. So it is almost unthinkable that man should not have been subject to fatal disturbances of this organ from the very earliest times. On the post-mortem table, the appendix of the lowest savage is the same useless, shriveled, and inflammable worm as that of the most highly civilized Aryan, though perhaps an inch or so longer. Secondly, there is absolutely no adequate proof that appendicitis is increasing in frequency among civilized races. It is only about twenty-five years ago that it was first definitely described, and barely fifteen that the profession began at all generally to recognize it. But all of us whose memory extends backward a quarter of a century can clearly recall that, while we did not see any cases of "appendicitis," we saw dozens of cases of "acute enteritis," "idiopathic (self-caused) peritonitis," "acute inflammation of the bowels," "acute obstruction of the bowels," of which patients died both painfully and promptly, and which we now know were really appendicitis. In short, from a careful study of all the data, including the claims so frequently made of freedom from appendicitis on the part of Oriental races, colored races, less civilized tribes, vegetarians, and others, we are tending toward the conclusion that the percentage of appendicitis in a given community is simply the percentage of its recognition,--in other words, of the intelligence and alertness, first of its physicians, and then of its laity. As an illustration, my friend Dr. Bloodgood kindly had the statistics of the surgical patients treated in the great Johns Hopkins Hospital at Baltimore investigated for me, and found almost precisely the same percentage of cases of appendicitis among colored patients as among white patients. The earlier impression, first among physicians and now in the laity, that appendicitis is an almost invariably fatal disease, is not well founded, and we now know that a large percentage of cases recover, at least from the first attack; so that it is quite possible for from half to two-thirds of the cases of appendicitis actually occurring in a given community to escape recognition, unless promptly reported, carefully examined, and accurately diagnosed. Thirdly, in spite of the remarkable notoriety which the disease has attained, the general dread of its occurrence,--which has been recently well expressed in a statement that everybody either has had it, or expects to have it, or knows somebody who has had it,--the actual percentage of occurrence of grave appendicitis is small. In the United States census of 1900, which was the first census in which it was recognized as a separate cause of death, it was responsible for only 5000 deaths in the entire United States for the ten years preceding, or about one death in two hundred. This rate is corroborated by the data, now reaching into thousands, from the post-mortem rooms of our great hospitals, which report an average of between a half and one per cent. A disease which, in spite of the widespread terror of it, kills only one in two hundred of those who actually die--or about one in every ten thousand of our population--is certainly nothing to become seriously excited over from a racial point of view. While appendicitis is one of the "realest" and most substantial of diseases, and, in its serious form, highly dangerous to life, there can be little doubt that there has come, first of all, a state of mind almost approaching panic in regard to it; and, second, a preference for it as a diagnosis, as so much more _distingué_ than such plebeian names as "colic," "indigestion," "enteritis," or the plain old Saxon "belly-ache," which has reached almost the proportions of a fad. It is certain that nowadays physicians have almost as frequently to refuse to operate on those who are clamoring for the distinction, as to urge a needed operation upon those unwilling to submit to it. The satirical proposal that a "closed season" should be established by law for appendicitis as for game birds, during which none might be taken, would apply almost as often to the laity as to the profession, even the surgical half. Since the chief cause of appendicitis is the appendix, the first question for disposal is, How did the appendix become an appendix? To this biology can render a fairly satisfactory answer. It is the remains of one of Mother Nature's experiments with her 'prentice hand upon the mammalian food-tube. As is now generally known, the food-canal in animals was originally a comparatively straight tube, running the length of the body from mouth to anus. It early distends into a moderate pouch, about a third of the way down from the mouth, forming a _stomach_, or storage and churning-place for the food. Below this, it lengthens into coils (the so-called _small intestine_), which, as the body becomes more complex, increase in number and length until they reach four to ten times the length of the body. Later, the lower third of the tube distends and sacculates out into a so-called _large intestine_, in which the last remnants of nutritive material and of moisture are extracted from the food-residues before they are discharged from the body. Just at the junction of this large intestine with the small intestine, nature took it into her head to develop a second pouch, a sort of copy of the stomach. This pouch, from the fact that it ends in a blind sac, is known as the _cæcum_ (or "blind" pouch), and is apparently simply a means of delaying the passage of the foodstuffs until all the nutriment and moisture have been absorbed out of them for the service of the body. Naturally, it has developed to the largest degree and size in those animals which have lived upon the bulkiest and grassiest of foods, the so-called _Herbivora_, or grass-eaters. In the _Carnivora_, or flesh-eaters, it is usually small, and in one family, the bears, entirely absent. This pouch is no mere figure of speech, as may be gathered from the fact that in certain of the rodent _Herbivora_, like the common guinea-pig, it may have a capacity equal to all of the rest of the alimentary canal, and in the horse it will hold something like four times as much as the stomach. Oddly enough, among the grass-eaters, for some reason which we do not understand, it appears to occur in a sort of inverse proportion to the stomach; those which have large, sacculate, pouched stomachs, like the cow, sheep, and the ruminants generally, having smaller _cæca_. In other _Herbivora_ with small stomachs, like the rabbit and the horse, it develops greater size. Our primitive ancestors were mixed feeders, and, though probably more largely herbivorous than we are to-day, had a medium-sized _cæcum_, and maintained it up to the point at which the anthropoid apes began to branch off from our family-tree. But at about this point, for some reason, possibly connected with the increasing variety and improved quality and concentration of the food, due to greater intelligence and ability to obtain it, this large _cæcum_ became unnecessary, and began to shrivel. Here, however, is where nature makes her first afterthought mistake. Instead of allowing this pouch to contract and shrivel uniformly throughout its entire length, she allowed the farther (or _distal_) two-thirds of it to shrivel down at a much faster rate than the central (or _proximal_) third; so that the once evenly distended sausage-shaped pouch, about six to eight inches long and two inches in diameter, has become distorted down into a narrow, contracted end portion, about a quarter of an inch in diameter, and a distended first portion, for all the world like a corncob pipe with a crooked stem and an unusually large bowl. And behold--the modern _appendix vermiformis_, with all its fatal possibilities! If we want something distinctly human to be proud of, we may take the appendix, for man is the only animal that has this in its perfection. A somewhat similarly shriveled last four inches of the _cæcum_ is found in the anthropoid apes and in the wombat, a burrowing marsupial of Australia. In some of the monkeys, and in certain rodents like the guinea-pig, a curious imitation appendix is found, which consists simply of a contracted last four or five inches of the _cæcum_, which, however, on distention with air, is found to relax and expand until of the same size as the rest of the gut. The most strikingly and distinctly human thing about us is not our brain, but our appendix. And, while recognizing its power for mischief, it is only fair to remember that it is an incident and a mark of progress, of difficulties overcome, of dangers survived. In all probability, it was our change to a more carnivorous diet, and consequently predatory habits, which enabled our ancestors to step out from the ruck of the "_Bandar-Log_," the Monkey Peoples. An increase in carnivorousness must have been a powerful help to our survival, both by widening our range of diet, so that we could live and thrive on anything and everything we could get our hands on, and by inspiring greater respect in the bosoms of our enemies. Let us therefore respect the appendix as a mark and sign of historic progress and triumph, even while recognizing to the full its unfortunate capabilities for mischief. But what has this ancient history to do with us in the twentieth century? Much in every way. First, because it furnishes the physical basis of our troubles; and second, and most important, because, like other history, it is not merely repeating itself, but continuing. This process of shriveling on the part of the appendix is not ancient history at all, but exceedingly modern; indeed, it is still going on in our bodies, unless we are over sixty-five years of age. In the first place, we have actually passed through two-thirds of this process in our own individual experience. At the first appearance of the _cæcum_, or blind pouch, in our prenatal life, it is of the same calibre as the rest of the intestine, and of uniform size from base to tip. About three weeks later the tip begins to shrivel, and from this on the process steadily continues, until at birth it has contracted to about one-fifteenth of the bulk of the _cæcum_. But the process doesn't stop here, though its progress is slower. By about the fifth year of life the stem of the cæco-appendix pipe has diminished to about one-thirtieth of the size of the bowl, which is the proportion that it maintains practically throughout the rest of adult life. For a long time we concluded that the process was here finished, and that the appendix underwent no further spontaneous changes during life; but, after appendicitis became clearly recognized, a more careful study was made of the condition of the appendix in bodies coming to the post-mortem table, dead of other diseases, at all ages of life. This quickly revealed an extraordinary and most significant fact, that, while the appendix was no longer decreasing in apparent size, its internal capacity or calibre was still diminishing, and at such a rate that by the thirty-fifth year it had contracted down so as to become cut off from the cavity of the _cæcum_ in about twenty-five to thirty per cent of all individuals. By the forty-fifth year, according to the anatomist Ribbert (who has made the most extensive study of the subject), nearly fifty per cent of all appendices are found to be cut off, and by the sixty-fifth year nearly seventy per cent. This explains at once why appendicitis is so emphatically a disease of young life, the largest number of cases occurring before the twenty-fifth year (fifty per cent of all cases occur between ten and thirty years of age), and becoming distinctly rarer after the thirty-fifth, only about twenty per cent occurring after this age. As soon as the cavity of the appendix is cut off from that of the intestine, it is of course obvious that infectious or other irritating materials can no longer enter its cavity to cause trouble, although, of course, it is still subject to accidents due to kinks, or twists, or interference with its blood-supply; but these are not so dangerous, providing there be no infectious germs present. Here, then, we have a clear and adequate physical basis for appendicitis. A small, twisted, shriveling spur or side twig of the intestine, opening from a point which has become a kind of settling basin in the food-tube, its mouth gaping, as it were, to admit any poisonous or irritating food, infectious materials, disease-germs, the ordinary bacteria which swarm in the alimentary canal, or irritating foreign bodies, like particles of dirt, sand, hairs, fragments of bone, pins, etc., which may have been accidentally swallowed. Once these irritating and infectious materials have entered it, spasm of its muscular coat is promptly set up, their escape is blocked, and a violent inflammation easily follows, which may end in rupture, perforation, or gangrene. Not only may any infection which is sweeping along the alimentary canal, thrown off and resisted by the vigorous, full-sized, well-fed intestine, find a point of lowered resistance and an easy victim for its attack in the appendix, but there is now much evidence to indicate that the ordinary bacteria which inhabit the alimentary canal, particularly that first cousin of the typhoid bacillus, the colon bacillus, when once trapped in this _cul-de-sac_, may quickly acquire dangerous powers and set up an acute inflammation. It is not necessary to suppose that any particular germ or infection causes appendicitis. Any one which passes through, or attacks, the alimentary canal is quite capable of it, and probably does cause its share of the attacks. Numerous attempts have been made to show that appendicitis is particularly likely to follow typhoid fever, rheumatism, influenza, tonsilitis, and half a dozen other infectious or inflammatory processes. But about all that has been demonstrated is that it may follow any of them, though in none with sufficient frequency or constancy to enable it to be regarded as one of the chief or even one of the important causes of the disease. One dread, however, we may relieve our anxious souls of, and that is the famous grape-seed or cherry-stone terror. To use a Hibernianism, one of our most positive conclusions in regard to the cause of appendicitis is a negative one: that it is not chiefly, or indeed frequently, due to the presence of foreign bodies. This was a most natural conclusion in the early days of the disease, since, given a tiny blind pouch with a constricted opening gaping upon the cavity of the food-canal, nothing could be more natural than to suppose that small irritating food remnants or foreign bodies, slipping into it and becoming lodged, would block it and give rise to serious inflammation. And, moreover, this _a priori_ expectation was apparently confirmed by the discovery, in many appendices removed by operation, of small oval or rounded masses, closely resembling the seed of some vegetable or fruit. Whereupon anxious mothers promptly proceeded to order their children to "spit out," with even more religious care than formerly, every grape-seed and cherry-stone. The increased use of fresh and preserved fruits was actually gravely cited, particularly by our Continental brethren, as one of the causes of this new American disease. Barely ten years ago I was spending the summer in the Adirondacks, and was bitterly reproached by the host of one of the Lake hotels, because the profession had so terrified the public about the dangers of appendicitis from fruit-seeds that he was utterly unable to serve upon his tables a large stock of delicious preserved and canned raspberries, blackberries, and grapes which he had put up the previous years. "Why," he said, "more than half the people that come up here will no more eat them than they would poison, for fear that some of the seeds will give 'em appendicitis." This dread, however, has been deprived of all rational basis, first, by finding that many inflamed appendices removed, after the operation became more common, contained no foreign body whatever; secondly, that many perfectly healthy appendices examined on the post-mortem table, death being due to other diseases, contain these apparently foreign bodies; and thirdly, that when these "foreign bodies" were cut into, they were found to be not seeds or pits of any description, but hardened and, in some cases, partially calcareous masses of the fæces. We are in a nearly similar position in regard to the third alleged cause of appendicitis, and that is food. Many are the accusations which have been made in this field. On the one hand, meat and animal foods generally have been denounced, on account of their supposed "heating" or "uric-acid-forming" properties; while on the other, vegetables and fruits have been equally hotly incriminated, on account of their seeds, fibres, husks, and irritating substances, and the danger of their being contaminated by bacteria and other parasites from the soil. These charges appear to have little adequate foundation, and, so far as we are in a position now to judge, the only way a food can give, or be accessory to, appendicitis is by its being taken in such excessive amounts as to set up fermentive or putrefactive changes in the alimentary canal, or by its being in an unsound, decaying, or actually diseased condition. Any amounts or quality of food which are capable of giving rise to an attack of acute indigestion may secondarily lead to an attack of appendicitis. The only single article of diet whose ingestion is declared by Osler to be rather frequently followed by an attack of appendicitis is the peanut. Therefore, the best thing to do in the way of taking precautions against the occurrence of appendicitis is, in the language of the day, to "forget it" as completely as possible, reassuring ourselves that, in spite of its extraordinary notoriety and popularity, it is a comparatively rare disease in its fatal form, responsible for not more than one-half of one per cent of the deaths, and that the older we grow, the better become our chances of escaping it. Whatever we may have decided in regard to our brains, by the time we reach fifty, we may feel reasonably sure we've no appendix. But the question will at once arise, if the appendix be so tiny in size, so insignificant in capacity, and so devoid of useful function, what is the use of disturbing ourselves over the question of what may become of it? If it is going to decay and drop off, why not permit it to do so, with the philosophic indifference with which we would sacrifice the tip of our little fingers in a planing-mill? Here, however, is just the rub, and the fact that gives to appendicitis all its terrors, and to the question of what to do in each particular case its difficulties and perplexities. The appendix does not, unfortunately, hang out from the surface of the body, where it could peacefully decay and drop off without prejudice to the rest of the body, or be quickly lopped off in the event of its giving trouble. On the contrary, it projects its stubby and insignificant length right into the midst of the most delicate and susceptible cavity of the body, the general cavity of the abdomen, or peritoneum. The thin, sensitive sheet of peritoneum which lines this cavity covers every fold and part of the food-tube, from the stomach down to the rectum. And when once infection or inflammation has occurred at any point in it, there is nothing to prevent its spreading like a prairie fire, all over the entire abdominal cavity from diaphragm to pelvis. If this wretched little remnant were a coil of explosive fuse within the brain-cavity itself, which any jar might set off, it could hardly be richer in possibilities of danger. A redeeming feature of appendicitis is that the appendix lies--so to speak--in a corner, or wide-mouthed pouch, of the great peritoneal cavity; and if the inflammation set up in it can be "walled off" from the rest of the peritoneal cavity, and limited strictly to this little corner or pouch, all will be well. This is what occurs in those cases of severe appendicitis which spontaneously recover. If, however, this disturbance bursts its barriers, and lights up an inflammation of the entire peritoneal cavity, then the result is likely to be a fatal one. Just how far nature can be trusted in each particular case to limit and stamp out the process in this manner is the core of the problem that confronts us, as attending physicians. In the majority of cases, fortunately, the peritoneal fire brigade acts promptly, pours out a wall of exudate, and locks up the appendix in a living prison, to fight out its own battles and sink or swim by itself. But unfortunately, in a minority of cases, by a wretched sort of "senatorial courtesy" which exists in the body, the appendix is given its ancestral or traditional rights and allowed to inflict its petty troubles upon the entire abdominal cavity, and include the body in its downfall. Lastly come the two most pertinent and appealing questions:-- What is the outlook for me if I should develop appendicitis? And what is to be done? In regard to the first of these, it is safe to say that our answer is much less alarming than it was in the earlier stage of our knowledge. Naturally enough, in the beginning, only the severest and most unmistakable forms of the disease and those which showed no tendency to localization, were recognized, or at least came under the eye of the surgeon; and as a large percentage of these resulted fatally, the conclusion was reached, both in the medical profession and by the laity, that appendicitis was an exceedingly dangerous disease, with a high fatality in all cases. As, however, physicians became more expert in the recognition of the disease, it was discovered to be vastly more common, while side by side came the consoling knowledge that a considerable percentage of cases got well of themselves, in the sense of the inflammation being limited to the lower right-hand corner of the abdominal cavity, though, of course, with the possibility of leaving a smouldering fuse which might light up another explosion under any stress in future. Further, as the attention of the post-mortem investigators at our large hospitals was directed to the subject, it was found that a very considerable percentage of all bodies, ranging from twenty to--according to some estimates--as high as sixty per cent, showed changes in the appendix and its neighborhood which were believed to be due to old inflammations; so that, while it is possible to speak only with great caution and reserve, the balance of opinion among clinicians and pathologists of wide experience and the more conservative surgeons appears to be that from one-half to two-thirds of all cases of appendicitis will recover of themselves, in the sense of subsiding more or less permanently, without causing death. On the other hand, it must be remembered that the appendix is an organ which, so far as any evidence has been adduced, is entirely without useful function; that it is in process of shriveling and disappearance, if left entirely alone, and that the best result which can be expected from a self-cured attack of appendicitis is the destruction of the appendix and its elimination as a further possible cause of mischief. By avoiding an operation in appendicitis, we may be practically certain that we save nothing that is worth saving--except the fee. Moreover, even though only from one-fourth to one-third of all cases develop serious complications, you never can be quite sure in which division your particular case will fall. The situation is in fact a little bit like one related in the experience of Edison, the inventor. The trustees of a church in a neighboring town had just completed a beautiful new church building with a high spire, projecting far above any other building in the town. When it was nearing completion, the question arose, should they put on a lightning-rod. The great church itself had strained their financial resources, and one party in the board were of the opinion that they should avoid this unnecessary expense, supporting their economic attitude by the argument that, to put on a lightning-rod, would argue a lack of trust in Providence. Finally, after much debate, it was decided, as the great electrician was readily accessible, to submit the question to him. Mr. Edison listened gravely to the arguments presented, pro and con. "What is the height of the building, gentlemen?" The number of feet was given. "How much is that above that of any surrounding structures?" The data were supplied. "It is a church, you say?" "Yes." "Well," said the great man, "on the whole, I should advise you to put on a lightning-rod. Providence is apt to be, at times, a trifle absent-minded." The chances are in favor of your recovery, but--put on a lightning-rod, in the shape of the best and most competent doctor you know, and be guided entirely by his opinion. An attack of appendicitis is like shooting the Grand Lachine Rapids. Probably you will come through all right; but there is always the possibility of landing at a moment's notice on the rocks or in the whirlpools. With a good pilot your risk doesn't exceed a fraction of one per cent. And fortunately this condition has been not merely theoretically but practically reached already; for the later series of case-groups of appendicitis treated in this intelligent way by coöperation between the physician and surgeon from the start, with prompt interference in those cases which to the practiced eye show signs of making trouble, has reduced the actual recorded mortality of the disease to between two and five per cent. Even of those cases which come to operation now, the death-rate has been reduced as low as five per cent, in series of from 400 to 600 successive operations. When we contrast this with the first results of operation, when the cases as a rule were seen too late for the best time of interference, and from twenty per cent to thirty per cent died; and with the intermediate stage, when surgeons as a rule were inclined to advise operation at the earliest possible moment that the disease could be recognized, and from ten per cent to fifteen per cent died, we can see how steady the improvement has been, and how encouraging the outlook is for the future. Cases which have weathered one attack of appendicitis are of course by no means free from the risk of another. Indeed, at one time it was believed that a recurrence was almost certain to occur. Later investigations, based upon larger numbers of cases, now running up into the thousands, give the reassuring result that though this danger is a real one, it is not so great as it was at one time supposed, as the average number in whom a second attack occurs appears to be about twenty per cent. This, however, is a large enough risk to be worthy of serious consideration; and in view of the fact that the mortality of operations done between attacks is less than one per cent, it is generally the feeling of the profession that, where there is any appreciable soreness, or tenderness, or liability to attacks of pain in the right iliac region, in an individual who has had one attack of appendicitis, the really conservative and prudent procedure is to have the source of the trouble removed once and for all. The four principal symptoms of appendicitis are: pain, which is usually felt most keenly somewhere between the umbilicus and the right groin, though this is by no means invariable; tenderness in that same region upon pressure; rigidity of the muscles of the abdominal wall on the right side; and temperature, or fever. No matter how much and how variegated pain you may have in the abdomen, or how high your temperature may run, if you are not distinctly sore on firm pressure down in this right lower or southwest quadrant of the abdomen,--but be careful not to press too hard, it isn't safe,--you may feel fairly sure that you haven't got appendicitis. If you are, you may still not have it, but you'd better send for the doctor, to be sure. CHAPTER XIII MALARIA: THE PESTILENCE THAT WALKETH IN DARKNESS; THE GREATEST FOE OF THE PIONEER Malaria has probably killed more human beings than all the wars that have ever devastated the globe. Some day the epic of medicine will be written, and will show what a large and unexpected part it has played in the progress of civilization. Valuable and essential to that progress as were the classic great discoveries of fire, ships, wheeled carriages, steam, gunpowder, and electricity, they are almost paralleled by the victories of sanitary science and medicine in the cure and prevention of that greatest disrupter of the social organism--disease. No sooner does the primitive human hive reach that degree of density which is the one indispensable condition of civilization, than it is apt to breed a pestilence which will decimate and even scatter it. Smallpox, cholera, and bubonic plague have blazed up at intervals in the centres of greatest congestion, to scourge and shatter the civilization that has bred them. No civilization could long make headway while it incurred the dangers from its own dirtiness; and to-day the most massive and imposing remains of past and gone empires are their aqueducts, their sewers, and their public baths. What chance has a community of building up a steady and efficient working force, or even an army large enough for adequate defense, when it has a constant death-rate of ten per cent per annum, and an ever recurrent one of twenty to thirty per cent, by the sweep of some pestilence? The bubonic plague alone is estimated to have slain thirty millions of people within two centuries in Mediæval Europe, and to have turned whole provinces into little better than deserts. In malaria, however, we have a disease enemy of somewhat different class and habits. While other great infections attack man usually where he is strongest and most numerous, malaria, on the contrary, lies in wait for him where he is weakest and most scattered, upon the frontiers of civilization and the borders of the wilderness. It is only of late years that we have begun to realize what a deadly and persistent enemy of the frontiersman and pioneer it is. We used to hear much of climate as an obstacle to civilization and barrier to settlement. Now, for climate we read "malaria." Whether on the prairies or even the tundras of the North, or by the jungles and swamps of the Equator, the _thing that killed_ was eight times out of ten the winged messenger of death with his burden of malaria-infection. The "chills and fever," "fevernager," "mylary," that chattered the teeth and racked the joints of the pioneer, from Michigan to Mississippi, was one and the same plague with the deadly "jungle fever," "African fever," "black fever" of the tropics, from Panama to Singapore. Hardly a generation ago, along the advancing front of civilization in the Middle West, the whole life of the community was colored with a malarial tinge and the taste of quinine was as familiar as that of sugar. To this day, over something like three-quarters of the area of these United States, the South, Middle West, and Far West, if you feel headachy and bilious and "run down," you sum it all up by saying that you are feeling "malarious." Dwellers upon the rich bottom-lands expected to shake every spring and fall with almost the same regularity as they put on and shed their winter clothing. Readers of Frank Stockton will remember the gales of merriment excited by his quaint touch of the incongruous in making the prospective bridegroom of the immortal Pomona change the date of their wedding day from Tuesday to Monday, because, on figuring the matter out, he had discovered that Tuesday was his "chill-day." Though the sufferer from ague seldom received very much sympathy at the time, but was considered a fair butt for genial ridicule and chaff, yet even there the trouble had its serious side. Through all those communities there stalked a well-known and dreaded spectre, the so-called "congestive chill," what is now known in technical language as the pernicious malarial paroxysm. These were like the three warnings of death in the old parable. You would probably survive the first and might never have another; but if you had your second, it was considered equivalent to a notice to quit the country promptly and without counting the cost. In my boyhood days in the Middle West, I can recall hearing old pioneers tell of little groups of one or more families moving out on to some particularly rich and virgin bottom-land and losing two or three or more members out of each family by congestive chills within the first year, and in some cases being driven in from the outpost and back to civilization by the fearful death-loss. A pall of dread hangs over the whole west coast of Africa. The factories and trading-posts are haunted by the ghosts of former agents and explorers who have died there. Some years ago one German company had the sinister record that of its hundreds of agents sent out to the Gold Coast under a three years' contract, not one had fulfilled the term! All had either died, or been invalided and returned home. It was malaria more than any other five influences combined that thwarted the French in their attempt to dig the Panama Canal and that made the Panama Railroad bear the ghastly stigma of having built its forty miles of track with a human body for every tie. Malaria ever has been, and is yet, the great barrier against the invasion of the tropics by the white races; nor has its injurious influence been confined to the deaths that it causes, for these gaps in the fighting line might be filled by fresh levies drawn from the wholesome North. Its fearfully depressing and degenerating effects upon even those who recover from its attacks have been still more injurious. It has been held by careful students of tropical disease and conditions that no small part of that singular apathy and indifference which steal over the mind and body of the white colonist in the tropics, numbing even his moral sense, and alternating with furious outbursts of what the French have termed "tropical wrath," characterized by unnatural cruelty and abnormal disregard for the rights of others, is the deadly work of malaria. It is the most powerful cause, not merely of the extinction of the white colonist in the tropics, but of the peculiar degeneracy--physical, mental, and moral--which is apt to steal over even the survivors who succeed in retaining a foothold. Two particularly ingenious investigators have even advanced the theory that the importation of malaria into the islands of Greece and the Italian peninsula by soldiers returning from African and Southern Asiatic conquests had much to do with accelerating, if not actually promoting, the classic decay of both of these superb civilizations. To come nearer home, there can be little question that the baneful, persistent influence of malaria, together with the hookworm disease, has had much to do both with the degeneracy of the Southern "cracker," or "mean white," and with those wild outbursts of primitive ferocity in all classes which take the form of White Cap raids and lynching mobs. However this may be, the disease and the colonization habit brought in a crude way their own remedy. The Spanish conquerors of Peru were told by the natives that a certain bark which grew upon the slopes of the Andes was a sovereign remedy for those terrible ague seizures. Indian remedies did not stand as high in popular esteem as they do now; but they were in desperate straits and jumped at the chance. To their delight, it proved a positive specific, and a Spanish lady of rank, the Countess Chincona, was so delighted with her own recovery that she carried back a package of the precious Peruvian bark on her return to Europe, and endeavored to introduce it. So furious was the opposition of the Church, however, to this "pagan" remedy that she was completely defeated in her praiseworthy attempt and was obliged to confine her ministrations to those who belonged to her, the peasantry on her own estate. About half a century later, the new remedy excited so much discussion by the numerous cures that it effected, that it was considered worthy of a special council of the Jesuits, who formally pronounced it suitable for the use of the faithful, thereby attaching to it for many years the name of "Jesuit's bark." Virtue, however, is sometimes rewarded in this world, and the devoted and enlightened countess has, all unknown to herself, attained immortality by attaching her name, Chincona, softened into _cinchona_, and hardened into _quinine_, to the greatest therapeutic gift of the gods to mankind. It is not too much to say that the modern colonization of the tropics and subtropics by Northern races, which is one of the greatest and most significant triumphs of our civilization, would have been almost impossible without it. Its advance depended upon two powders, one white and the other black,--quinine and gunpowder. For nearly three centuries we rested content with the knowledge that in quinine we had a remedy for malaria, which, if administered at the proper time and in adequate doses, would break up and cure ninety per cent of all cases. Just how it did it we were utterly in the dark, and many were the speculations that were indulged in. It was not until 1880, that Laveran, a French army surgeon stationed in Algeria, announced the discovery in the blood of malarial patients of an organism which at first bore his name, the _Hematozoon-Laveran_, now known as the _Plasmodium malariæ_. This organism, of all curious places, burrowed into and found a home in the little red corpuscles of the blood. At periods of forty-eight hours it ripened a crop of spores, and would burst out of the corpuscles, scattering throughout the blood and the tissues of the body, and producing the famous paroxysm. This accounted for the most curious and well-marked feature of the disease, namely, its intermittent character, chill and fever one day, and then a day of comparative health, followed by another chill day and so on, as long as the infection continued. One problem, however, was left open, and that was why certain forms of the disease had their chills every fourth day and so were called _quartan_ ague. This was quickly solved by the discovery of another form of the organism, which ripened its spores in three days instead of two. So the whole curious rhythm of the disease was established by the rate of breeding or ripening of the spores of the organism. Later still another form was discovered, which had no such regular period of incubation and gave rise to the so-called irregular, or _autumnal_, malarial fevers. That form of the fever which had a paroxysm every day, the classic _quotidian_ ague, remained a puzzle for a little longer, but was finally discovered to be due chiefly to the presence of two broods, or infections, of the organism, which ripened on alternate days and hence kept the entire time of the unfortunate patient occupied. The mystery of the remedial effect of quinine was also solved, as it was found that, if administered at the time which centuries of experience has shown us to be the most effective, between or shortly before the paroxysms, it either prevented sporulation or killed the spores. So that at one triumphant stroke the mystery of centuries was cleared up. But here will challenge some twentieth-century _Gradgrind_: "This is all very pretty from the point of view of abstract science, but what is the practical value of it? The discovery of the plasmodium and its peculiarities has merely shown us the how and the why of a fact that we had known well and utilized for centuries, namely, that quinine will cure malaria." Just listen to what follows. The story of the plasmodium is one of the most beautiful illustrations of the fact that there is no such thing as useless or unpractical knowledge. The only thing that makes any knowledge unpractical is our more or less temporary ignorance of how to apply it. The first question which instantly raised itself was, "How did the plasmodium get into human blood?" The very sickle-shape of the plasmodium turned itself into an interrogation mark. The first clew that was given was the new and interesting one that this organism was a new departure in the germ line in that it was an animal, instead of a plant, like all the other hitherto known bacilli, bacteria, and other disease-germs. It may be remarked in passing that its discovery had another incidental practical lesson of enormous value, and that was that it paved the way for the identification of a whole class of animal parasites causing infectious diseases, which already includes the organisms of Texas fever in cattle, dourine in horses, the _tsetse_ fly disease, the dreaded sleeping sickness, and finally such world-renowned plagues as syphilis and perhaps smallpox. Being an animal, the plasmodium naturally would not grow upon culture-media like the vegetable bacilli and bacteria, and this very fact had delayed its recognition, but raised at once the probability that it must be conveyed into the human body by some other animal. Obviously, the only animals that bite our human species with sufficient frequency and regularity to act as transmitters of such a common disease are those Ishmaelites of the animal world, the insects. As all the evidence pointed toward malaria being contracted in the open air, attested by its popular though unscientific name _mal-aria_, "bad air," and as of all forms of "bad air" the night air was incomparably the worst, it must be some insect which flew and bit by night; which by Sherlock Holmes's process promptly led the mosquito into the dock as the suspected criminal. It wasn't long before he was, in the immortal language of Mr. Devery, "caught with the goods on"; and in 1895 Dr. Ronald Ross, of the Indian Medical Service, discovered and positively identified the plasmodium undergoing a cycle of its development in the body of the mosquito. He attempted to communicate the disease to birds and animals by allowing infected mosquitoes to bite them, but was unsuccessful. Two Italian investigators, Bignami and Grassi, saw that the problem was one for human experiment and that nothing less would solve it. Volunteers were called for and promptly offered themselves. Their blood was carefully examined to make sure that they were not suffering from any latent form of malaria. They then allowed themselves to be bitten by infected mosquitoes, and within periods varying from six to ten days, eight-tenths of them developed the disease. It may be some consolation to our national pride to know that although the organism was first identified in the mosquito by an Englishman and its transmission to human beings in its bite by Italians, the first definite and carefully worked-out statement of the relation of the mosquito to malaria was made by an American, King of Washington, in 1882; though it is only fair to say that suggestions of the possible connection between mosquitoes and malaria had, so to speak, been in the air and been made from scores of different sources, from the age of Augustus onward. Another mystery was solved--and what a flood of light it did pour upon our speculations as to the how and wherefore of the catching of malaria! In some respects it curiously corroborated and increased our respect for popular beliefs and impressions. While "bad air" had nothing to do with causing the disease, except in so far as it was inhabited by songsters of the _Anopheles_ genus, yet it was precisely the air of marshy places which was most likely to be "bad" in this sense. So that, while in one sense those local wiseacres, who would point out to you the pearly mists of evening as they rose over low-lying meadows and bottom-lands, and inform you that there before your very eyes was the "mylary just a-risin' out of the ground," were ludicrously mistaken, in another their practical conclusion was absolutely sound; for it is in just such air, at such levels above the surface of the water, that the _Anopheles_ most delights to disport himself. Furthermore, while all raw or misty air is "bad," the night air is infinitely more so than that of the day, because this is the time at which mosquitoes are chiefly abroad. In fact, there can be little doubt that this is part of the foundation for that rabid and unreasonable dread of the night air which we fresh-air crusaders find the bitterest and most tenacious foe we have to fight. We have literally discovered the Powers of Darkness in both visible and audible form, and they have wings and bite, just like the vampire. It was also a widespread belief in malarial regions that the hours when you are most likely to "git mylary inter yer system" were those just before and just after sundown; and now entomologists inform us that these are precisely the hours at which the _Anopheles_ mosquito, the only genus that carries malaria, flies abroad. Of course, a number of popular causes, such as bad drainage, the drinking of water from shallow surface wells, damp subsoils under the houses, and especially that peculiarly widespread and firmly held article of belief that new settlements, where large areas of prairie sod were being freshly upturned by the plough, were peculiarly liable to the attack and spread of malaria, had to go by the board,--with this important reservation, however, that almost every one of these alleged causes either implied or was pretty safe to be associated with pools or swamps of stagnant water in the neighborhood, which would furnish breeding-spots for the mosquitoes. The discovery explains at once a score of hitherto puzzling facts as to the distribution of malaria. Why, for instance, in all tropical or other malarious countries, those who slept in second and third story bedrooms were less likely to contract the disease, supposedly because "bad air didn't rise to that height," is clearly seen to be due to the fact that the mosquito seldom flies more than ten or twelve feet above the level of the ground or marsh in which he breeds, except when swept by prevailing winds. It also explained why in our Western and Southwestern states the inhabitants of the houses situated on the south bank of a river, though but a short distance back from the stream, would suffer very slightly from malaria, while those living upon the north bank, half a mile back, or even upon bluffs fifteen or twenty feet above the water level, were simply plagued with it. The prevailing winds during the summer are from the south and mosquitoes cannot fly a foot against the wind, but will fly hundreds of yards, and even the best part of a mile, with it. The well-known seasonal preference of the disease for warm spring and summer months, and its prompt subsidence after a killing frost, were seen simply to be due to the influence of the weather upon the flight of mosquitoes. Shakespeare's favorite reference to "the sun of March that breedeth agues" has been placed upon a solid entomological basis by the discovery that, like his pious little brother insect, the bee, the one converted and church-going member of a large criminal family, the mosquito hies himself abroad on his affairs at the very first gleam of spring sunshine, and will even reappear upon a warm, sunny day in November or December. Perhaps even some of the popular prejudice against "unseasonable weather" in winter may be traceable to this fact. Granted that mosquitoes do cause and are the only cause of malaria, what are you going to do about it? At first sight any campaign against malaria which involves the extermination of the mosquito would appear about as hopeless as Mrs. Partington's attempt to sweep back the rising Atlantic tide with her broom. But a little further investigation showed that it is not only within the limits of possibility, but perfectly feasible, to exterminate malaria absolutely from the mosquito end. In the first place, it was quickly found that by a most merciful squeamishness on the part of the plasmodium, it could live only in the juices of one particular genus of mosquito, the _Anopheles_; and as nowhere, not even in the most benighted regions of Jersey, has this genus been found to form more than about four or five per cent of the total mosquito population, this cuts down our problem to one-twentieth of its apparent original dimensions at once. The ordinary mosquito of commerce (known as _Culex_) is any number of different kinds of a nuisance, but she does not carry malaria. Here the trails of the extermination party fork, one of them taking the perfectly obvious but rather troublesome direction of protecting houses and particularly bedrooms with suitable screens and keeping the inhabitants safely behind them from about an hour before sundown on. By this simple method alone, parties of explorers, of campers, of railroad-builders going through swamps, of the laborers on our Panama Canal, have been enabled to live for weeks and months in the most malarious regions with perfect impunity, so long as these precautions were strictly observed. The first experiment of this sort was carried out by Bignami upon a group of laborers in the famous, or rather infamous, Roman Campagna, whose deadly malarial fevers have a classic reputation, and has achieved its latest triumphs in the superb success of Colonel Gorgas at Panama. While this procedure should never be neglected, it is obvious that it involves a good deal of irksome confinement and interferes with freedom of movement, and it will probably be carried out completely only under military or official discipline, or in tropical regions where the risks are so great that its observance is literally a matter of life or death. The other division of malaria-hunters pursued the trail of the _Anopheles_ to her lair. There they discovered facts which give us practically the whip-hand over malarial and other tropical fevers whenever we choose to exercise it. It had long been known that the breeding-place of mosquitoes was in water; that their eggs when deposited in water floated upon the surface like tiny boats, usually glued together into a raft; that they then turned into larvæ, of which the well-known "wigglers" in the water-butt or the rain-barrel are familiar examples; and that they finally hatched into the complete insect and rose into the air. Obviously, there were two points at which the destroyers might strike, the egg and the larvæ. It was first found that, while the eggs required no air for their development, the larvæ wiggled up to the surface and inhaled it through curious little tubes developed for this purpose, oddly enough from their tail-ends. If some kind of film could be spread over the surface of the water, through which the larvæ could not obtain air, they would suffocate. The well-known property of oil in "scumming over" water was recalled, two or three stagnant pools were treated with it, and to the delight of the experimenters, not a single larva was able to develop under the circumstances. Here was insecticide number one. The cheapest of oils, crude petroleum, if applied to the pool or marsh in which mosquitoes breed, will almost completely exterminate them. Scores of regions and areas to-day, which were once almost uninhabitable on account of the plague of mosquitoes, are now nearly completely free from these pests by this simple means. An ounce to each fifteen square feet of water-surface is all that is required, though the oiling needs to be repeated carefully several times during the season. But what of the eggs? They require no air, and it was found impossible to poison them without simply saturating the water with powerful poisons; but an unexpected ally was at our hand. It was early noted that mosquitoes would not breed freely in open rivers or in large ponds or lakes, but why this should be the case was a puzzle. One day an enthusiastic mosquito-student brought home a number of eggs of different species, which he had collected from the neighboring marshes, and put them into his laboratory aquarium for the sake of watching them develop and identifying their species. The next morning, when he went to look at them, they had totally disappeared. Thinking that perhaps the laboratory cat had taken them, and overlooking a most contented twinkle in the corner of the eyes of the minnows that inhabited the aquarium, he went out and collected another series. This time the minnows were ready for him, and before his astonished eyes promptly pounced on the raft of eggs and swallowed them whole. Here was the answer at once: mosquitoes would not develop freely where fish had free access; and this fact is our second most important weapon in the crusade for their extermination. If the pond be large enough, all that is necessary is simply to stock it with any of the local fish, minnows, killies, perch, dace, bass,--and presto! the mosquitoes practically disappear. If it be near some larger lake or river containing fish, then a channel connecting the two, to allow of its stocking, is all that is required. On the Hackensack marshes to-day trenches are cut to let the water out of the tidal pools; while in low-lying areas, which cannot be thus drained, the central lowest spot is selected, a barrel is sunk at this spot, and four or five "killie" fish are placed in it. Trenches are cut converging into this barrel from the whole of the area to be drained, and behold, no more mosquitoes can breed in that area, and, in the language of the day, "get away with it." Finally, most consoling of all, it was discovered that, while the ordinary _Culex_ mosquito can breed, going through all the stages from the egg to the complete insect, in about fourteen days, so that any puddle which will remain wet for that length of time, or even such exceedingly temporary collections of water as the rain caught in a tomato-can, in an old rubber boot, in broken crockery, etc., will serve her for a breeding-place, the _Anopheles_ on the other hand takes nearly three months for the completion of her development. So that, while a region might be simply swarming with ordinary mosquitoes, it would frequently be found that the only places which fulfilled all the requirements for breeding-homes for the _Anopheles_, that is, isolation from running water or larger streams, absence of fish, and persistence for at least three months continuously, would not exceed five or six to the square mile. Drain, fill up, or kerosene these puddles,--for they are often little more than that,--and you put a stop to the malarial infection of that particular region. Incredible as it may seem, places in such a hotbed of fevers as the west coast of Africa, which have been thoroughly investigated, drained, and cleaned up by mosquito-brigades, have actually been freed from further attacks of fever by draining and filling not to exceed twenty or thirty of these breeding-pools. In short, science is prepared to say to the community: "I have done my part in the problem of malaria. It is for you to do the rest." There is literally no neighborhood in the temperate zone, and exceedingly few in the tropics, which cannot, by intelligent coöperation and a moderate expense, be absolutely rid first of malaria, and second of all mosquito-pests. It is only a question of intelligence, coöperation, and money. The range of flight of the ordinary mosquito is seldom over two or three hundred yards, save when blown by the wind, and more commonly not more than as many feet, and thorough investigation of the ground within the radius of a quarter of a mile of your house will practically disclose all the danger you have to apprehend from mosquitoes. It is a good thing to begin with your own back yard, including the water-butt, any puddles or open cesspools or cisterns, and any ornamental water gardens or lily-ponds. These latter should be stocked with fish or slightly oiled occasionally. If there be any accumulations of water, like rain-barrels or cisterns, which cannot be abolished, they should either be kept closely covered or well screened with mosquito netting. It might be remarked incidentally in passing, that the only really dangerous sex in mosquitodom, as elsewhere, is the female. The male mosquito, if he were taxed with transmitting malaria, would have a chance to reëcho Adam's cowardly evasion in the Garden of Eden, "It was the woman that thou gavest me." Both sexes of mosquitoes under ordinary conditions are vegetable feeders, living upon the juices of plants. But when the female has thrown upon her the tremendous task of ripening and preparing her eggs for deposition, she requires a meal of blood--which may be a comfort to our vegetarian friends, or it may not. Either she requires a meal of blood to nerve her up to her criminal deed, or, when she has some real work to do, she has to have some real food. The mosquito-brigade have still another method of checking the spread of malaria, at first sight almost a whimsical one,--no less than screening the patient. The mosquito, of course, criminal as she is, does not hatch the parasites _de novo_ in her own body, but simply sucks them up in a meal of blood from some previous victim. Hence by careful screening of every known case of malaria, mosquitoes are prevented from becoming infected and transmitting the disease. Instead of the screens protecting the victims from the mosquitoes, they protect the mosquitoes against the victim. This explains why hunters, trappers, and Indians may range a region for years, without once suffering from malaria, while as soon as settlers begin to come in in considerable numbers, it becomes highly malarious. It had to be infected by the coming of a case of the disease. The notorious prevalence of malaria on the frontier is due to the introduction of the plasmodium into a region swarming with mosquitoes, where there are few window-screens or two-story houses. No known race has any real immunity against malaria. The negro and other colored races, it is true, are far less susceptible; but this we now know applies only to adults, as the studies of Koch in Africa showed that a large percentage of negro children had the plasmodium in their blood. No small percentage of them die of malaria, but those who recover acquire a certain degree of immunity. Possibly they may be able to acquire this immunity more easily and with less fatality than the white race, but this is the extent of their superiority in this regard. The negro races probably represent the survivors of primitive men, who were too unenterprising to get away from the tropics, and have had to adjust themselves as best they might. The serious injury wrought in the body by malaria is a household word, and a matter of painfully familiar experience. Scarcely an organ in the body escapes damage, though this may not be discovered till long after the "fever-and-ague" has been recovered from. As the parasite breeds in the red cells of the blood, naturally its first effect is to destroy huge numbers of these, producing the typical malarial _anæmia_, or bloodlessness. Instead of 5,000,000 to the cubic centimetre of blood the red cells may be reduced to 2,000,000 or even 1,500,000. The breaking down of these red cells throws their pigment or coloring-matter afloat in the blood; and soaking through all the tissues of the body, this turns a greenish-yellow and gives the well-known sallow skin and yellowish whites of the eyes of swamp-dwellers and "river-rats." The broken-down scraps of the red blood-cells, together with the toxins of the parasite, are carried to the liver and spleen to be burned up or purified in such quantities that both become congested and diseased, causing the familiar "biliousness," so characteristic of malaria. The spleen often becomes so enormously enlarged that it can be readily felt with the hand in the left side below the ribs, so that it is not only relied upon as a sign of malaria in doubtful cases, but has even received the popular name of the "ague-cake" in malarious districts. So full is the blood of the parasites, that they may actually choke up the tiny blood-vessels and capillaries in various organs, so as to block the circulation and cause serious and even fatal congestions. Obstructions of this sort may occur in the brain, the liver, the coats of the stomach, or intestines, and the kidneys; and they are the chief cause of the deadly "congestive chills," or pernicious malarial paroxysms, which we have alluded to. The kidneys are particularly liable to be attacked in this way; indeed, one of their involvements is so serious and fatal in the tropics as to have been given a separate name, "Blackwater fever," from the quantities of broken-down blood which appear in and blacken the urine. The vast majority of attacks of malaria are completely recovered from, like any other infection, but it can easily be seen what an injurious effect upon the system may be produced by successive attacks, keeping the entire body saturated with the poison; while there is serious risk of the parasite sooner or later finding some weak spot in the body,--kidney, liver, nervous system,--where its incessant battering works permanent damage. How long the infection may lurk in the body is uncertain; certainly for months, and possibly for years. Many cases are on record which had typical chills and fever, with abundance of plasmodia in the blood, years after leaving the tropics or other malarious districts; but there is often the possibility of a recent re-infection. Altogether, malaria is a remarkably bad citizen in any community, and its stamping-out is well worth all it costs. CHAPTER XIV RHEUMATISM: WHAT IT IS, AND PARTICULARLY WHAT IT ISN'T What's in a name? All the aches and pains that came out of Pandora's box, if the name happens to be rheumatism. It is a term of wondrous elasticity. It will cover every imaginable twinge in any and every region of the body--and explain none of them. It is a name that means just nothing, and yet it is in every man's vocabulary, from proudest prince to dullest peasant. Its derivative meaning is little short of an absurdity in its inappropriateness, from the Greek _reuma_ (a flowing), hence, a cold or catarrh. It is still preserved for us in the familiar "salt rheum" (eczema) and "rheum of the eyes" of our rural districts. But this very indefiniteness, absurdity if you will, is a comfort both to the sufferer and to the physician. Moreover, incidentally, to paraphrase Portia's famous plea,-- It blesseth him that _has_ and him that _treats_; 'T is mightier than the mightiest. It doth _fit_ the thronéd monarch _closer_ than his crown. To the patient it is a satisfying diagnosis and satisfactory explanation in one; to the doctor, a great saving of brain-fag. When we call a disease rheumatism, we know what to give for it--even if we don't know what it is. As the old German distich runs,-- Was man kann nicht erkennen, Muss er Rheumatismus nennen.[2] [Footnote 2: What one cannot recognize he must call rheumatism.] However, in spite of the confusion produced by this wholesale and indiscriminate application of the term to a host of widely different, painful conditions, many of which have little else in common save that they hurt and can be covered by this charitable name-blanket, a few definite facts are crystallizing here and there out of the chaos. The first is, that out of this swarm of different conditions there can be isolated one large and important central group which has the characters of a well-defined and constant disease-entity. This is the disease known popularly as rheumatic fever, and technically as acute rheumatism or acute articular rheumatism. In fact, the commonest division is to separate the "rheumatisms" into two great groups: acute, covering the "fever" form, and chronic, containing all the others. From a purely scientific point of view, this classification has rather an undesirable degree of resemblance to General Grant's famous division of all music into two tunes: one of which was Old Hundred, and the other wasn't. But for practical purposes it has certain merits and may pass. Every one has seen, or known, or had, the acute articular form of rheumatism, and when once seen there is no difficulty in recognizing it again. It is one of the most striking and most abominable of disease-pictures, beginning with high fever and headache, then tenderness, quickly increasing to extreme sensitiveness in one or more of the larger joints, followed by drenching sweats of penetrating acid odor. The joint attacked becomes red, swollen, and glossy, so tender that merely pointing a finger at it will send a twinge of agony through the entire body, and the patient lies rigid and cramped for fear of the agony caused by the slightest movement. The tongue becomes coated and foul, the blood-cells are rapidly broken down, and the victim becomes ashy pale. He is worn out with pain and fever, yet afraid to fall asleep for fear of unconsciously moving the inflamed joint and waking in tortures; and altogether is about as acutely uncomfortable and completely miserable as any human being can well be made in so short a time. Fortunately, as with its twin brother, the grip, the bark of rheumatism is far worse than its bite; and a striking feature of the disease is its low fatality, especially when contrasted with the fury of its onslaught and the profoundness of the prostration which it produces. Though it will torture its victim almost to the limits of his endurance for days and even weeks at a stretch, it seldom kills directly. Its chief danger lies in the legacies which it bequeaths. Though, like nearly all fevers, it is self-limited, tends to run its course and subside when the body has manufactured an antitoxin in sufficient amounts, it is unique in another respect, and that is in the extraordinary variability of the length of its "course." This may range anywhere from ten days to as many weeks, the "average expectation of life" being about six weeks. The agonizing intensity of the pain and acute edge of the discomfort usually subside in from five to fifteen days, especially under competent care. When the temperature falls, the drenching sweats cease, the joints become less exquisitely painful, and the patient gradually begins to pull himself together and to feel as if life were once more worth living. He is not yet out of the woods, however, for while the pain is subsiding in the joints which have been first attacked, another joint may suddenly flare up within ten or twelve hours, and the whole distressing process be repeated, though usually on a somewhat milder and shorter scale. This uncertainty as to how many joints in the body may be attacked, is, in fact, one of the chief elements in making the duration of the disease so irregular and incalculable. Even when the frank and open progress of the disease through the joints of the body has come to an end, the enemy is still lying in wait and reserving his most deadly assault. Distressing and crippling as are the effects of rheumatism upon the joints and tendons, its most deadly and permanent damage is wrought upon the heart. Fortunately, this vital organ is not attacked in more than about half the cases of acute rheumatism, and in probably not more than one-third of these are the changes produced either serious or permanent, especially if the case be carefully watched and managed. But it is not too much to say that, of all cases of serious or "organic" heart disease, rheumatism is probably responsible for from fifty to seventy per cent. The same germ or toxin which produces the striking inflammatory changes in the joints may be carried in the blood to the heart, and there attack either the lining and valves of the heart (endocardium), which is commonest, or the covering of the heart (pericardium), or the heart-muscle. So intense is the inflammation, that parts of the valves may be literally eaten away by ulceration, and when these ulcers heal with formation of scar-tissue as everywhere else in the body, the flaps of the valves may be either tied together or pulled out of shape, so that they can no longer properly close the openings of the heart-pump. This condition, or some modification of it, is what we usually mean when we speak of "heart disease," or "organic heart disease." The effect upon the heart-pump is similar to that which would be produced by cutting or twisting the valve in the "bucket" of a pump or in a bulb syringe. In severe cases of rheumatism the heart may be attacked within the first few days of the disease, but usually it is not involved until after the trouble in the joints has begun to subside; and no patient should be considered safe from this danger until at least six weeks have elapsed from the beginning of the fever. The few cases (not to exceed one or two per cent) of rheumatic fever which go rapidly on to a fatal termination, usually die from this inflammation of the heart, technically known as endocarditis. The best way of preventing this serious complication and of keeping it within moderate limits, if it occurs, is absolute rest in bed, until the danger period is completely passed. Now comes another redeeming feature of this troublesome disease, and that is the comparatively small permanent effects which it produces upon the joints in the way of crippling, or even stiffening. To gaze upon a rheumatic knee-joint, for instance, in the height of the attack,--swollen to the size of a hornet's nest, hot, red, throbbing with agony, and looking as if it were on the point of bursting,--one would almost despair of saving the joint, and the best one would feel entitled to expect would be a roughening of its surfaces and a permanent stiffening of its movements. On the contrary, when once the fury of the attack has passed its climax, especially if another joint should become involved, the whole picture changes as if by magic. The pain fades away to one-fifth of its former intensity within twenty-four, or even within twelve hours; three-fourths of the swelling follows suit in forty-eight hours; and within three or four days' time the patient is moving the joint with comparative ease and comfort. After he gets up at the end of his six weeks, the knee, though still weak and stiff and sore, within a few weeks' time "limbers up" completely, and usually becomes practically as good as ever. In short, the violence and swiftness of the onset are only matched by the rapidity and completeness of the retreat. It would probably be safe to say that not more than one joint in fifty, attacked by rheumatism, is left in any way permanently the worse. But, alas! to counterbalance this mercifulness in the matter of permanent damage, unlike most other infections, one attack of rheumatic fever, so far from protecting against another, renders both the individual and the joint more liable to other attacks. The historic motto of the British in the War of 1812 might be paraphrased into, "Once rheumatic, always rheumatic." The disease appears to be lost to all sense of decency and reason; and to such unprincipled lengths may it go, that I have actually known one luckless individual who had the unenviable record of seventeen separate and successive attacks of rheumatic fever. As he expressed it, he had "had rheumatism every spring but two for nineteen years past." Yet only one ankle-joint was appreciably the worse for this terrific experience. Obviously, the picture of acute rheumatism carries upon its face a strong suggestion of its real nature and causation. The high temperature, the headache, the sweats, the fierce attack and rapid decline, the self-limited course, the tendency to spread from one joint to another, from the joints to the heart, from the heart to the lungs and the kidneys, all stamp it unmistakably as an infection, a fever. On the other hand, there are two rather important elements lacking in the infection-picture: one, that, although it does at times occur in epidemics, it is very seldom transmitted to others; the other, that one attack does not produce immunity or protect against another. The majority of experts are now practically agreed that _acute_ rheumatism, or _rheumatic fever_, is probably due to the invasion of the system by some microörganism or germ. When, however, we come to fixing upon the particular bacillus, or micrococcus, there is a wide divergence of opinion, some six or seven different eminent investigators having each his favorite candidate for the doubtful honor. In fact, it is our inability as yet positively to identify and agree upon the causal germ that makes our knowledge of the entire subject still so regrettably vague, and renders either a definite classification or successful treatment so difficult. The attitude of the most careful and experienced physicians and broad-minded bacteriologists may be roughly summed up in the statement that acute rheumatism is probably due to some germ or germs, but that the question is still open which particular germ is at fault, and even whether the group of symptoms which we call rheumatism may not possibly be produced by a number of different organisms, acting upon a particular type of constitution or susceptibility. There is no difficulty in finding germs of all sorts, principally micrococci, in the blood, in the tissues about the joints, and on the heart-valves of patients with rheumatism, and these germs, when injected into animals, will not infrequently produce fever and inflammatory changes in the joints, roughly resembling rheumatism. But the difficulty so far has been, first, that these organisms are of several different kinds and distinct species; and second, and even more important, that almost any of the organisms of the common infectious diseases are capable at times of producing inflammation of the joints and tendons. For instance, the third commonest point of attack of the tubercle bacillus, after the lungs and the glands, is the bones and joints, as illustrated in the sadly familiar "white-swelling of the knee" and hip-joint disease. All the so-called septic organisms, which produce suppuration and blood-poisoning in wounds and surgery, may, and very frequently do, attack the joints; while nearly all the common infections, such as typhoid, scarlet fever, pneumonia, and even measles, influenza, and tonsillitis, may be followed by severe joint symptoms. In fact, we are coming to recognize that diseases of the joints, like diseases of the nervous system, are among the frequent results of any and all of the acute infectious diseases or fevers; and we now trace from fifty to seventy-five per cent of both joint troubles and degenerations of the nervous system to this cause. Two-thirds, for instance, of our cases of hip-joint disease and of spinal disease (_caries_) are due to tuberculosis. The puzzling problem now before pathologists is the sorting out of these innumerable forms of joint inflammations and the splitting off of those which are clearly due to certain specific diseases, from the great, central group of true rheumatism. Most of these joint inflammations which are due to recognized germs, such as the pus-organisms of surgical fevers, tuberculosis, and typhoid, differ from true rheumatism in that they go on to suppuration (formation of "matter") and permanently cripple the joint to a greater or less degree. So that there is probably a germ or group of germs which produces the swift attack and rapid subsidence and other characteristic features of true rheumatism, even though we have not yet succeeded in sorting them out of the swarm. So confident do we feel of this, that although, as will be shown, there are probably other factors involved, such as exposure, housing, occupation, food, and heredity, yet the best thought of the profession is practically agreed that none of these would alone produce the disease, but that they are only accessory causes plus the micrococcus. In practically all our modern textbooks of medicine, rheumatism is included under the head of infections. This theory of causation, confessedly provisional and imperfect as it is, helps us to harmonize the other known facts about the disease; it has already greatly improved our treatment and given us a foothold for attacking the problem of prevention. For instance, it has long been known that rheumatism was very apt to follow tonsillitis or other forms of sore throat; indeed, many of the earlier authorities put down tonsillitis as one of the great group of "rheumatic" disturbances, and persons of rheumatic family tendency were supposed to have tonsillitis in childhood and rheumatism in later life. Not more than ten or fifteen per cent of all cases gave a history of tonsillitis; but since we have broadened our conception of infection and begun to inquire, not merely for symptoms of tonsillitis, but also for those of influenza, "common colds," measles, whooping-cough, and the like, we reach the most significant result of finding that forty to sixty per cent of our cases of rheumatism have been preceded, anywhere from one to three weeks before, by an attack of some sort of "cold," sore throat, catarrhal fever, cough, bronchitis, or other group of disturbances due to a mild infection. Further, it has long been notorious that when a rheumatic individual "catches cold" it is exceedingly apt to "settle in the joints," and, if these cases happen to come under the eye of a physician, they are recognized as secondary attacks of true rheumatism. In other words, the "cold" may simply be a second dose of the same germ which caused the primary attack of rheumatism. This brings us to the widespread article of popular belief that rheumatism is most commonly due to cold, exposure, chill, or damp. Much of this is found on investigation to be due to the well-known historic confusion between "cold," in the sense of exposure to cold air, and "cold," in the sense of a catarrh or influenza, with running at the nose, coughing, sore throat, and fever, a group of symptoms now clearly recognized to be due to an infection. In short, the vast majority of common colds are unmistakably infections, and spread from one victim to another, and this is the type of "cold" which causes the majority of rheumatic attacks. The chill, which any one who is "coming down" with a cold experiences, and usually refers to a draft or a cold room, is, in nine cases out of ten, the rigor which precedes the fever, and has nothing whatever to do with the external temperature. The large majority of our cases of rheumatism can give no clear or convincing history of exposure to wet, cold, or damp. But popular impression is seldom entirely mistaken, and there can be no question that, given the presence of the infectious germ, a prolonged exposure to cold, and particularly to wet, will often prove to be the last straw which will break down the patient's power of resistance, and determine an attack of rheumatism. This climatic influence, however, is probably not responsible for more than fifteen or twenty per cent of all cases, and, popular impression to the contrary notwithstanding, the liability of outdoor workers who are subject to severe exposure, such as lumbermen, fishermen, and sailors, is only slightly greater than that of indoor workers. The highest susceptibility, in fact, not merely to the disease, but also to the development of serious heart involvements, is found among domestic servants, particularly servant girls, agricultural laborers and their families (in districts where wages are low and cottages bad), and slum-dwellers; in fact, those classes which are underfed, overworked, badly housed, and crowded together. Diet has exceeding little to do with the disease, and, so far from meat or high living of any sort predisposing to it, it is most common and most serious in precisely those classes which get least meat or luxuries of any sort, and are from stern necessity compelled to live upon a diet of cereals, potatoes, cheap fats, and coarse vegetables. Even its relations to the weather and seasons support the infection theory. Its seasonal occurrence is very similar to that of pneumonia,--rarest in summer, commonest in winter, the highest percentage of cases occurring in the late fall and in the early spring; in other words, just at those times when people are first beginning to shut themselves up for the winter, light fires, and close windows, and at the end of their long period of winter imprisonment, when both their resisting power has been reduced to the lowest ebb in the year and infections of all sorts have had their most favorable conditions of growth for months. The epidemics of rheumatism, which occasionally occur, probably follow epidemics of influenza, tonsillitis, or other mild infections, and instances of two or more cases of rheumatism in one family or household are most rationally explained as due to the spread of the precedent infection from one member of the family to the other. Instances of the direct transmission of the disease from one patient to another are exceedingly rare. Our view of the infectious causation of rheumatism, vague as it is, has given us already our first intelligent prospect of prevention. Whatever may be the character of a germ or germs, the vast majority of them agree in making the nose and throat their first point of attack and of entry into the system. Hence, vigorous antiseptic and other rational treatment of all acute disturbances of the nose and throat, however slight, will prove a valuable preventive and diminisher of the percentage of rheumatism. This simply emphasizes again the truth and importance of the dictum of modern medicine, "Never neglect a cold," since we are already able to trace, not merely rheumatism, but from two-thirds to three-fourths of our cases of heart disease, of kidney trouble, and of inflammations of the nervous system, to those mild infections which we term "colds," or to other definite infectious diseases. Not only is this good _a priori_ reasoning, but it has been demonstrated in practice. One of our largest United States army posts had acquired an unenviable reputation from the amount of rheumatism occurring in the troops stationed there. A new surgeon coming to take charge of the post set about investigating the cause of this state of affairs, and came to the conclusion that the disease began as, or closely followed, tonsillitis and other forms of sore throat. He accordingly saw to it that every case of tonsillitis, of cold in the head, or sore throat was vigorously treated with local germicides and with intestinal antiseptics and laxatives, until it was completely cured; with the result that in less than a year he succeeded in lowering the percentage of cases of rheumatism per company nearly sixty per cent. At some of our large health-resorts, where great numbers of cases of rheumatism are treated, it has been discovered that if a case of common cold, or tonsillitis, happens to come into the establishment, and runs through the inmates, nearly half of the rheumatic patients attacked will have a relapse or new seizure of their rheumatism. Accordingly, a rigorous and hawk-like watch is kept for every possible case of cold, tonsillitis, or sore throat entering the house; the patient is promptly isolated and treated on rigidly antiseptic principles, with the result that epidemics of relapses of rheumatism in the inmates have greatly diminished in frequency. If every case of cold or sore throat were promptly and thoroughly treated with antiseptic sprays and washes such as any competent physician can direct his patients to keep in the house, in readiness for such an emergency, combined with laxatives and intestinal antiseptic treatment, and, above all, with rest in bed as long as any rise of temperature is present, there would be a marked diminution in both the frequency and the severity of rheumatism. If to this were added an abundant and nutritious dietary, good ventilation and pure air, an avoidance of overwork and overstrain, we should soon begin to get the better of this distressing disease. In fact, while positive data are lacking, on account of the small fatality of rheumatism and its consequent infrequent appearance among the causes of death in our vital statistics, yet it is the almost unanimous opinion of physicians of experience that the disease is distinctly diminishing, as a result of the marked improvement in food, housing, wages, and living conditions generally, which modern civilization has already brought about. So much for acute rheumatism. Vague and unsatisfactory as is our knowledge of it, it is, unfortunately, clearness and precision itself when contrasted with the welter of confusion and fog which covers our ideas about the _chronic_ variety. The catholicity of the term is something incredible. Every chronic pain and twinge, from corns to locomotor ataxia, and from stone-in-the-kidney to tic-douloureux, has been put down as "rheumatism." It is little better than a diagnostic garbage-dump or dust-heap, where can be shot down all kinds of vague and wandering pains in joints, bones, muscles, and nerves, which have no visible or readily ascertainable cause. Probably at least half of all the discomforts which are put down as "rheumatism" of the ankle, the elbow, the shoulder, are not rheumatism at all, in any true or reasonable sense of the term, but merely painful symptoms due to other perfectly definite disease conditions of every imaginable sort. The remaining half may be divided into two great groups of nearly equal size. One of these, like acute rheumatism, is closely related to, and probably caused by, the attack of acute infections of milder character, falling upon less favorable soil. The other is of a vaguer type and is due, probably, to the accumulation of poisonous waste-products in the tissues, setting up irritative and even inflammatory changes in nerve, muscle, and joint. Either of these may be made worse by exposure to cold or changes in the weather. In fact, this is the type of rheumatism which has such a wide reputation as a barometer and weather prophet, second only to that of the United States Signal Service. When you "feel it in your bones," you know it is going to snow, or to rain, or to clear up, or become cloudy, or whatever else may happen to follow the sensation, merely because all poisoned and irritated nerves are more sensitive to changes in temperature, wind-direction, moisture, and electric tension, than sound and normal ones. The change in the weather does not cause the rheumatism. It is the rheumatism that enables us to predict the change in the weather, though we have no clear idea what that change will be. Probably the only statement of wide application that can be made in regard to the nature of chronic rheumatism is that a very considerable percentage of it is due to the accumulation of poisons (toxins) in the nerves supplying joints and muscles, setting up an irritation (neurotoxis), or, in extreme cases, an inflammation of the nerve (neuritis), which may even go on to partial paralysis, with wasting of the muscles supplied. The same broad principles of causation and prevention, therefore, apply here as in acute rheumatism. The most important single fact for rheumatics of all sorts, whether acute or chronic, to remember is that they must _avoid exposure to colds_, in the sense of infections of all sorts, as they would a pestilence; that they must eat plenty of rich, sound, nourishing food; live in well-ventilated rooms; take plenty of exercise in the open air, to burn up any waste poisons that may be accumulating in the tissues; dress lightly but warmly (there is no special virtue in flannels), and treat every cold or mild infection which they may be unfortunate enough to catch, according to the strictest rigor of the antiseptic law. The influence of diet in chronic rheumatism is almost as slight as in the acute form. Persons past middle age who can afford to indulge their appetites and are inclined to eat and drink more than is good for them, and, what is far more important, to exercise much less, may so embarrass their liver and kidneys as to create accumulations of waste products in the blood sufficient to cause rheumatic twinges. The vast majority, however, of the sufferers from chronic rheumatism, like those from the acute form, are underfed rather than overfed, and a liberal and abundant dietary, including plenty of red meats, eggs, fresh butter, green vegetables, and fresh fruits, will improve their nutrition and diminish their tendency to the attacks. There appears to be absolutely no rational foundation for the popular belief that red meats cause rheumatism, either from the point of view of practical experience, or from that of chemical composition. We now know that white meats of all sorts are quite as rich in those elements known as the purin bodies, or uric-acid group, as red meats, and many of them much richer. It may be said in passing, that this last-mentioned bugbear of our diet-reformers is now believed to have nothing whatever to do with rheumatism, and probably very little with gout, and that the ravings of Haig and the Uric-Acid School generally are now thoroughly discredited. Certainly, whenever you see any remedy or any method of treatment vaunted as a cure for rheumatism, by neutralizing or washing out uric acid, you may safely set it down as a fraud. One rather curious and unexpected fact should, however, be mentioned in regard to the relation of diet to rheumatism, and that is that many rheumatic patients have a peculiar susceptibility to some one article of food. This may be a perfectly harmless and wholesome thing for the vast majority of the species, but to this individual it acts as a poison and will promptly produce pains in the joints, redness, and even swelling, sometimes accompanied by a rash and severe disturbances of the digestive tract. The commonest offenders form a curious group in their apparent harmlessness, headed as they are by strawberries, followed by raspberries, cherries, bananas, oranges; then clams, crabs, and oysters; then cheese, especially overripe kinds; and finally, but very rarely, certain meats, like mutton and beef. What is the cause of this curious susceptibility we do not know, but it not infrequently occurs with this group of foods in rheumatics and also in asthmatics. Both rheumatics and asthmatics are also subject to attacks of urticaria or "hives" (nettle-rash), from these and other special articles of diet. As to principles of treatment in a disease of so varied and indefinite a character, due to such a multitude of causes, obviously nothing can be said except in the broadest and sketchiest of outline. The prevailing tendency is, for the acute form, rest in bed, the first and most important, also the second, the third, and the last element in the treatment. This will do more to diminish the severity of the attack and prevent the occurrence of heart and other complications than any other single procedure. After this has been secured, the usual plan is to assist nature in the elimination of the toxins by alkalies, alkaline mineral waters, and other laxatives; to relieve the pain, promote the comfort, and improve the rest of the patient by a variety of harmless nerve-deadeners or pain-relievers, chief among which are the salicylates, aspirin, and the milder coal-tar products. By a judicious use of these in competent hands the pain and distress of the disease can be very greatly relieved, but it has not been found that its duration is much shortened thereby, or even that the danger of heart and other complication is greatly lessened. The agony of the inflamed joints may be much diminished by swathing in cotton-wool and flannel bandages, or in cloths wrung out of hot alkalies covered with oiled silk, or by light bandages kept saturated with some evaporating lotion containing alcohol. As soon as the fever has subsided, then hot baths and gentle massage of the affected joints give great relief and hasten the cure. But, when all is said and done, the most important curative element, as has already been intimated, is six weeks in bed. In the chronic form the same remedies to relieve the pain are sometimes useful, but very much less effective, and often of little or no value. Dry heat, moist heat, gentle massage, and prolonged baking in special metal ovens, will often give much relief. Liniments of all sorts, from spavin cures to skunk oil, are chiefly of value in proportion to the amount of friction and massage administered when they are rubbed in. In short, there is no disease under heaven in which so much depends upon a careful study of each individual case and adaptation of treatment to it personally, according to its cause and the patient in whom it occurs. Rheumatism, unfortunately, does tend to "run in families." Apparently some peculiar susceptibility of the nervous system to influences which would be comparatively harmless to normal nerves and cells is capable of being inherited. But this inheritance is almost invariably "recessive," in Mendelian terms, and a majority of the children of even the most rheumatic parent may entirely escape the disease, especially if they live rationally and vigorously, feed themselves abundantly, and avoid overwork and overcrowding. CHAPTER XV GERM-FOES THAT FOLLOW THE KNIFE, OR DEATH UNDER THE FINGER-NAIL Our principal dread of a wound is from fear that it may fester instead of healing quickly. We don't exactly enjoy being shot, or stabbed, or scratched, though, as a matter of fact, in what Mulvaney calls the "fog av fightin'" we hardly notice such trifles unless immediately disabling. But our greatest fear after the bleeding has stopped is lest blood-poisoning may set in. And we do well to dread it, for in the olden days,--that is, barely fifty years ago,--in wounds of any size or seriousness, two-thirds of the risk remained to be run after the bleeding had been stopped and the bandages put on. Nowadays the danger is only a fraction of one per cent, but till half a century ago every wound was expected to form "matter" or _pus_ in the process of healing, as a matter of course. Most of us can recall the favorite and brilliant repartee of our boyhood days in answer to the inquisitive query, "What's the matter?" "Nuthin': it hasn't come to matter yet. It's only a fresh cut!" Even surgeons thought it a necessary part of the process of healing, and the approving term "laudable pus" was applied to a soft, creamy discharge, without either offensive odor or tinge of blood, upon the surfaces of the healing wound; and the hospital records of that day noted with satisfaction that, after an operation, "suppuration was established." So strongly was this idea intrenched, that a free discharge or outpouring of some sort was necessary to the proper healing of the wound, that in the Middle Ages it was regarded as exceedingly dangerous to permit wounds to close too quickly. Wounds that had partially united were actually torn apart, and liquids like oil and wine and strong acids, which tended to keep them from closing and to set up suppuration, were actually poured into them; and in some instances their sides were actually burned with hot irons. There was a solid basis of reason underlying even these extraordinary methods, viz., the "rule of thumb" observation, handed down from one generation to another, that wounds that discharged freely and "sweetly," while they were slow in healing and left disfiguring scars, usually did not give rise to serious or fatal attacks of blood-poison or wound-fever. And of two evils they chose the less. Plenty of pus and a big ugly scar in preference to an attack of dangerous blood-poisoning. Even if it didn't kill you, it might easily cripple you for life by involving a joint. The trouble was with their logic, or rather with their premises. They were firmly convinced that the danger came from within, that there was a sort of morbid humor which must be allowed to escape, or it would be dammed up in the system with disastrous results. One day a brilliant skeptic by the name of Lister (who is still living) took it into his head that perhaps the fathers of surgery and their generations of imitators might have been wrong. He tried the experiment, shut germs out of his wounds, and behold, antiseptic surgery, with all its magnificent line of triumphs, was born! Now a single drop of pus in an operation wound is as deep a disgrace as a bedbug on the pillow of a model housekeeper, and calls for as vigorous an overhauling of equipment, from cellar to skylight; while a second drop means a commission of inquiry and a drumhead court-martial. This is the secret of the advances of modern surgery,--not that our surgeons are any more skillful with the knife, but that they can enter cavities like those of the skull, the spinal cord, the abdomen, and the chest, remove what is necessary, and get out again with almost perfect safety; whereas these cavities were absolutely forbidden ground to their forefathers, on account of the twenty, forty, yes, seventy per cent death risk from suppuration and blood-poison. The triumphs of antisepsis and asepsis, or keeping the "bugs" out of the cuts, have been illustrated scores of times already by abler pens, and are a household word, but certain of its practical appliances in the wounds and scratches and trifling injuries of every-day life are not yet so thoroughly familiar as they should be. When once we know who our wound-enemies are, whence they came, and how they are carried, the fate of the battle is practically in our own hands. Like most disease-germs our wound-infection foes are literally "they of our own household." They don't pounce down upon us from the trees, or lie in wait for us in the thickets, or creep in the grass, or grow in the soil, or swarm in our food. They live and can live only within the shelter of our own bodies, where it is warm and moist and comfortable. This is one great (in the expressive vernacular) "cinch" that we have on the vast majority of disease-germs, whether medical or surgical, that they do not flourish and breed outside of the body, or of houses closed and warm; and this grip can be improved, with skill and determination, into a veritable strangle-hold on most of them. In the language of biology, most of them have become "adapted to their environment" so closely that they can scarcely flourish and breed anywhere outside of the warm, moist, fertile soil of a living body, and many of them cannot even live long at temperatures more than ten degrees above or fifteen degrees below that of the body. At all events, so poorly are these pus-germs able to preserve their vigor and power of attack, not merely outside of the human body, but outside of some wound or sore spot, that it is practically certain that eight-tenths of all cases of wound-infection or blood-poisoning come directly from some previous festering wound, sore, ulcer, scab, boil, or pimple, in or on some other human being or animal. Practically whenever we get pus in a wound in a hospital, we insist upon finding the precise previous case of pus from which that originated, and seldom is our search unsuccessful. If we kept not only our wounds surgically clean, but our gums, noses, throats, skins, and fingernails, and burned and sterilized everything that came in contact with a sore, pustule, or scab, we should wipe out nine-tenths of our cases of wound-infection and suppuration; in fact, practically all of them, except such small percentage as may come from contact with infections in animals. This is the reason why, up to half a century ago, by a strange paradox hospitals were among the most dangerous places to perform operations in, on account of the abundance of wounds or sores always present for the pus-germs to breed in, and the fact that out of fifty or more wound-cases, there was practically certain to be one or two infected ones to poison the whole lot. Surgeons, ignorant of antisepsis, and careless nurses, spread the infection along, until in some instances it reached a virulence which burst into the dreaded "hospital gangrene." This dread disease was the scourge of all hospitals, especially military ones, all over the civilized world, as recently as our War of Secession. In some wards of our military hospitals, from thirty to fifty per cent of all the wounded received were attacked, and over five thousand cases were formally reported during the war, of which nearly fifty per cent died. This plague was born solely of those two great mothers of evils, ignorance and dirt, and is to-day, in civilized lands, as extinct as the dodo. Then the dread that the community had of hospitals, as places that "help the poor to die," in Browning's phrase, had a certain amount of foundation; and cases operated upon in a farmhouse kitchen, where no one in the family happened to have had a boil or a catarrh or a festering cut within a month or so, and where the knife happened to be clean or new, would recover with less suppuration than hospital cases. Nowadays, from incessant and eternal vigilance, a hospital is surgically the cleanest and safest place in the world for an operation, so that most surgeons decline to operate outside of one, except in emergencies; and some will not even operate except in one with which they are personally connected, so that they know every step in the process of protection. It was this terrible risk of the surgeon carrying infection from one case to another, that made the coroner of London declare, barely sixty years ago, that he would hold an inquest upon the next case of death after ovariotomy that was reported to him, on account of the fearful pus-mortality that followed this serious operation, which now has a possible death-rate from all causes connected with the operation of only a fraction of one per cent. The brusque reply is still remembered of Lawson Tait, the great English ovariotomist, to a distinguished German colleague, who had inquired the secret of his then marvelously low death-rate: after a glance at the bands of mourning on the ends of the other's fingers, he said, "I keep my fingernails clean, sir!" There was sadly too much truth in the saying of another eminent surgeon, that in the pre-Listerian days many a poor woman's death warrant was written under the fingernails of her surgeon. This reproach has been wiped out, thank Heaven! but the labor, pains, and persistence after heart-breaking failures which it took to do it! Never was there a more vivid illustration of the declaration that genius is the capacity for taking pains, than antiseptic surgery! Not a loophole must be left unstopped, not a possibility unconsidered, not a thing in, or about, or connected with, the operating-room left unsterilized, except the patient and the surgeon; and these are brought as near to it as is possible without danger to life. In the first place, the operating-room itself must be like a bath room, or, more accurately, the inside of a cistern. Walls, floor, and ceiling are all waterproof and capable of being washed down with a hose. There must be no casings or cornices of any sort to catch dust; and in the best appointed hospitals no one is permitted to enter, under any pretext, whose hands and garments have not been sterilized. In the second place, everything that is brought into the room for use in, or during, the operation, is first thoroughly sterilized. The knives, instruments, and other operative objects are sterilized by boiling, or by the use of superheated steam; and the towels, dressings, bandages, sheets, etc., by boiling, baking, or superheated steam. Then begins the preparation of the surgeon and the nurse. Dressing-rooms are provided, in which the outer garments are removed, and the hands given an ordinary wash. Then the scrubbing-room is entered, where, at a series of basins provided with running hot and cold water, whose faucets are turned by pressure with the foot so as to avoid any necessity for touching them with the hand, the hands are thoroughly scrubbed with hot water, boiled soap, and a boiled nail-brush. Then they are plunged into, and thoroughly soaked in, some strong antiseptic solution, then washed again; then plunged into another antiseptic solution, containing some fat solvent like ether or alcohol, to wash off any dirt that may have been protected by the natural oil of the skin. Then they are thoroughly scrubbed with soap and hot water again, to remove all traces of the antiseptics, most of which are irritating to wounded tissues; then washed in absolute alcohol, then in boiled or distilled water. Then the nurse, whose hands are already sterilized, takes out of the original package in which it came from the sterilizing oven, a linen surgical gown or suit which covers the operator from neck to toes. A sterilized linen or cotton cap is placed upon his head and pulled down so that the scales or germs of any sort may not fall into the wound. Some surgeons of stout and comfortable habit, who are apt to perspire in the high temperature of an operating-room, will tie a band of gauze around their foreheads, to prevent any unexpected drops of perspiration from falling into the wound; while some purists muffle up the mouth and lower part of the face lightly in a similar comforter. You would think that by this time the hands were clean enough to go anywhere with safety, but no risks are going to be taken. A pair of rubber or cotton gloves, the former taken right out of a strong antiseptic solution, the latter out of the sterilizing oven, are pulled carefully on by the nurse. Holding his sacred hands spread out rigidly before him, like the front paws of a kangaroo, the surgeon carefully edges his way into the operating-room, waiting for any doors that he may have to pass through to be opened by the nurse, or awkwardly pushing them with his elbow. In that attitude of benediction, the hands are maintained until the operation is ready to begin. Then comes the patient! If his condition will in any wise permit, he has been given a boiling hot bath and scrub the night before, and put to bed in a sterilized nightgown between sterilized sheets. The region which is to be operated upon has, at the same time, been scrubbed and rubbed and flushed with hot water, germicides, alcohol, soap,--in fact, has gone through the same sacred ceremonial of cleansing through which the surgeons' hands have passed; and a large, closely fitting antiseptic dressing, covering the whole field, has been applied and tightly bound. He is brought into a waiting-room and put under ether by an anæsthetist, through a sterilized mask; he is then wheeled into the operating-room, the dressing is removed, a thorough double scrub is again given, for "good measure," to the whole area in which the wound is to be made. A big sheet is thrown over the lower part of his body, another over the upper part, a third, with an oval opening in the centre of it, thrown over the region to be operated upon. The instrument nurse takes a boiled knife out of a sterilized dish of distilled water, hands it to the surgeon, who takes it in his gloved hand, and the operation begins. Now, if you can think of any possible chink through which a wandering streptococcus can, by any possibility, sneak into that wound, please suggest it, and it shall be closed immediately! The intruders against whom all these preparations are made are two in number: _Streptococcus pyogenes_ and _Staphylococcus pyogenes_--cousins, as you see, by their names. Their last (not family) name really means something, and is not half so alarming as it sounds, as it is Greek for "pus-making." Their real family name, _Coccus_, which means a berry, was suggested, by their rounded shape under the microscope, to some poetically minded microscopist. Undesirable citizens, both of them! But the older, or _Strepto_, cousin is by far the more dangerous character and desperate individual, giving rise to and being concerned in nearly all the civilized and dangerous wound-fevers--septicæmia, erysipelas, etc. _Staphylococcus_ is a milder and less harmful individual, seldom going farther than to produce the milder forms of festering, discharging, refusing to heal, pustules, etc. He is not to be given a yard of leeway, however, for if he can get a sufficient number of dirty wounds to run through, he can work himself up to a high degree of virulence and poisoning power. Indeed, this faculty of his may possibly furnish a clew as to how these pus-makers developed their power of living in wounds, and almost nowhere else. There is another cousin also, in the group, called _Staphylococcus pyogenes albus_, to distinguish him (_albus_, "white") from the other two, who have the tag name aureus (golden). He is an almost harmless denizen of the surfaces of our bodies, particularly the mouths of the sweat-ducts, and the openings of the hair follicles. Under peculiarly favorable circumstances, such as a very big wound, an aggravated chafe, or the application of that champion "bug-breeder," a poultice, he may summon up courage enough to attack some half-dead skin-cells and make a few drops of pus on his own account. He is the criminal concerned in the so-called stitch-abscesses, or tiny points of pus which form around the stitches of a big wound and in some of the smaller pimples which turn to "matter." It is conceivable that this feeble and harmless white coccus may at some time have been accelerated under favorable circumstances to where he was endowed with "yellow" powers, and even, upon another turn of the screw, with strepto-virulence. But this is a mere academic question. Practically the only thing needful is to keep all the rascals out of every wound. Now comes the question, how is this to be done? Fortunately it is not necessary to hunt out and destroy the pus-germs in their breeding-places outside of the human body. As we have seen, they do not long retain their vitality out of doors, or as a rule even in the dust of rooms and dirt of houses, unless the latter have been recently contaminated with the dressings of, or discharges from, wounds. There are two main things to be watched: first, the wound itself, and second, any unwashed or unsterilized part of your own or some other living body. Dirt of all sorts is a mighty good thing to keep absolutely out of the wound, but practically a whole handful of ordinary soil or dust rubbed into a wound might not, unless it happened to contain fertilizer of some sort, be half so dangerous as a single touch with a finger which had been dressing a wound, picking a scab out of the nose, rubbing an ulcerated gum, or scratching an itching scalp. If it be a cut on the finger, or scratch on the hand, for instance, don't suck it, or lick it, unless you can give an absolutely clean bill of health to your gums and teeth. If not thoroughly brushed three or four times a day, they are sure to be swarming with germs of twenty or thirty different species, which not infrequently include one or both of the pus-germs. Indeed, the real reason why the bite of certain animals, and above all of a man, particularly of a "blue-gum nigger," is regarded as so dangerous is on account of the swarms of germs that breed in any remnants of food left between the teeth or in the pockets of ulcerating gums. Many a human bite is almost as dangerous as a rattlesnake's. The devoted hero who sucks the poison of the dagger out of the wound may be conferring a doubtful benefit, if he happens to be suffering from Rigg's disease. Don't try to stop the bleeding unless it comes in spurts or the flow is serious. The loss of a few teaspoonfuls, tablespoonfuls, or, for the matter of that, cupfuls, of blood won't do you any harm, and its free flow will wash out the cut from the bottom, and carry out most of the germs that may happen to be present on the knife or nail. If water and dressings are not accessible, let the blood cake and dry over the wound without disturbing it, even though it does look rather gory. A slight cut with a clean knife, or other instrument, into which no dirt has been rubbed, will often require no other dressing than its own blood-scab. If, however, as oftener happens, you cannot be sure of the cleanness of the knife, tool, or nail, hold the wound under running water from a pump or tap (this is not germ-free, but practically never contains pus-germs), until the wound has been thoroughly washed out, wiping any gravel or dirt out of the cut with soft rags which have been recently washed, or baked in the oven; then dry with a small piece of linen, or white goods, put on a dressing of absorbent cotton such as can be purchased for a few cents an ounce at any drug store. Absorbent or surgical cotton makes a good dressing, because it both sucks up any fluids which might leak out of the wound, and forms a mesh-filter through which no germs can penetrate. It is not advisable to use sticking-plaster for any but the most trivial wounds, and seldom even for these, for several reasons. First, because its application usually involves licking it to make it stick; second, because it must cover a sufficient amount of skin on either side of the wound to give it firm grip, and this area of skin contains a considerable number of both sweat-ducts and hair-follicles, which will keep on discharging under the plaster, producing a moist and unhealthy condition of the lips of the wound. Moreover, these sweat-ducts and hair-follicles will, as we have seen, frequently contain white staphylococci, which are at times capable of setting up a low grade of inflammation in the wound. A wound always heals better if its surfaces and coverings can be kept dry. This is why cotton makes such an ideal dressing, since it permits the free evaporation of moisture, a moderate access of air, and yet keeps out all germs. If the cut or scratch is of any depth or seriousness whatever, or the knife, tool, or other instrument be dirty, or if any considerable amount of street-dust or garden-soil has got into the wound, then it is, by all means, advisable to go to a physician, have the wound thoroughly cleaned on antiseptic principles, and put up in antiseptic dressing. A single treatment of this sort, in a comparatively trifling wound which has become in any way contaminated, may save weeks of suffering and disability, and often danger of life, and will in eight cases out of ten shorten the time of healing from forty to sixty per cent. The rapidity with which a wound in a reasonably healthy individual, cleaned and dressed on modern surgical principles, will heal, is almost incredible, until it has actually been seen. The principal danger of garden-soil or street-dust in a wound is not so much from pus-germs, though these may be present, as from another "bug"--the tetanus or lockjaw bacillus. This deadly organism lives in the alimentary canal of the horse, and hence is to be found in any dirt or soil which contains horse manure. It is, fortunately, not very common, or widely spread, but enough so to make it the part of prudence to have thoroughly asepticized and dressed any wound into which considerable amounts of garden-soil, or street-dust, have been rubbed. The reason why wounds of the feet and hands have had such a bad reputation, both for festering and giving rise to lockjaw, is that it is precisely in these situations that they are most likely to get garden-soil, or stable manure, into them. The classic rusty nail does not deserve the bad reputation as a wound-maker which it enjoys, its bad odor being chiefly due to the fact already referred to, that injuries inflicted by it are most apt to be in the palm of the hand, or in the sole of the foot, and hence peculiarly liable to contamination by the tetanus and other soil bacilli. For some reason or other which we don't as yet thoroughly understand, burns from a toy pistol in particular, and Fourth of July fireworks in general, seem to be peculiarly liable to be followed by tetanus. The fulminate used in the cap of a toy pistol, and the paper and explosives of several of the brands of firecrackers, have been thoroughly examined bacteriologically, but without finding any tetanus germs in them. So many cases of lockjaw used to follow the Fourth of July celebrations a few years ago, that Boards of Health became alarmed, and not only forbade outright the sale of deadly toy pistols, but provided supplies of the tetanus antitoxin at various depots throughout the cities, so that all patriotic wounds of this description could have it dropped into them when they were dressed. Since then, the lockjaw penalty which we pay for our highly intelligent method of celebrating the Fourth, has diminished considerably. It is probable that the mortality was chiefly due to infection of the ugly, slow-healing, dirty little wounds with city-dust, a large percentage of which, of course, is dried horse manure. What with the tetanus bacillus and the swarms of flies which breed chiefly in stable manure, and carry summer diseases, typhoid, diphtheria, and tuberculosis in every direction, it will not be long before the keeping of horses within city limits will be as strictly forbidden as pigpens now are. So definite is the connection between the tetanus bacilli and the soil, that tetanus fields or lockjaw gardens are now recognized and listed by the health authorities, on account of their having given rise to several successive cases of the disease. Workers in such fields or gardens, who scratch or cut themselves, are warned to report themselves promptly for treatment with the tetanus antitoxin. Apart from the tetanus germ, however, the problem of the treatment of wounds--while there should be perfect cleanliness, the spotlessness of the model housekeeper multiplied fivefold--is yet not so much a matter of keeping dirt in general out of the wound, as of keeping out that _particular form of dirt which consists of or contains, discharges from some previous wound, sore, ulcer, or boil!_ While both these pus-organisms can breed and flourish freely only in wounds or sores, this is but their starting-point where they gather strength to invade the entire organism. We used to make a distinction between those cases in which their toxins or poison-products got into the blood, with the production of fever, headache, backache, delirium, sweats, etc., which we term _septicæmia_, and other cases in which the cocci themselves were carried into the blood and swept all over the body by forming fresh foci, or breeding-places, which resulted in abscesses all over the body, which we call _pyæmia_. But now we know that there is no hard and fast line to be drawn, and that the germs get into the blood much more easily than we supposed; and the degree and dangerousness of the fever which they set up depend, first, upon their virulence, or poisonousness, and, second, upon the resisting power of the patient at the time. Anything which lowers the general health and strength and weakens the resisting power of the body will make it much easier for pus-germs to get an entrance into it, and overwhelm it; so that, after prolonged famines for instance, or among the population of besieged cities, or in armies or exploring expeditions which have been deprived of food and exposed to great hardship, the merest scratch will fester and inflame, and give rise to a serious and even fatal attack of blood-poisoning, erysipelas, hospital gangrene, etc. Famines and sieges in fact are not infrequently followed by positive epidemics of blood-poisoning, often in exceedingly severe and fatal forms. It was long ago noted by the chroniclers that the death-rate from wound-fever among the soldiers of a defeated army was apt to be much greater than among those of the victorious one, and this was quoted as one of the stock evidences of the influence of mind over body. But we now know that armies are not beaten without some physical cause, that the defeated soldiers are apt to be in poorer physical condition to begin with; that they have often been cut off from their base of supplies, have made desperate forced marches without food or shelter in the course of their retreat; and, until within comparatively recent years, were never half so well treated or well fed as their captors. As the invading germs pass into the body, they travel most commonly through the lymph-channels and skin; are arrested and threatened with destruction by the so-called lymphatic glands, or lymph-nodes. This is why, if you have a festering wound or boil on your hand or wrist, the "kernels" or lymph-nodes up in your armpit will swell and become painful. If the lymph-nodes can conquer the germs and eat them up, the swelling goes down and the pain disappears. But if the germs, on the other hand, succeed in poisoning and killing the cells of the body, these latter melt down and turn to pus, and we get what we call a "secondary abscess." The next commonest point of attack of these pus-germs, if they once get into the body, and by far the most dangerous, is the heart, as in rheumatism and other fevers. Some will also attack the kidneys, giving rise to albumin in the urine, while others attack the membranes of the joints (_synovia_) and cause suppuration of one or more joints in the body, which is very apt to be followed by very serious stiffening or crippling. So that, common, and, in many instances, comparatively mild as they are, the pus-germs in the aggregate are responsible for a very large amount of damage to the human body. This is the way the _streptococcus_ and _staphylococcus_ behave in an open wound, or sore; but they have two other methods of operating which are somewhat special and peculiar. One of these is where the germ digs and burrows, as it were, underground, in a limited space, resulting in that charming product known as a boil, or a carbuncle. The other, where it spreads rapidly over the surface just under the skin, after the fashion of the prairie fire, producing _erysipelas_. In the first of these he behaves like the famous burrowing owl of our Western plains, who forms, with the prairie-dog, the so-called "happy family." He never makes his own burrow, he simply uses one which is already provided for him by nature, and that is the little close-fitting pouch surrounding the root of a hair. Whether the criminal is a harmless native white coccus which has suddenly developed anti-social tendencies, or a Mongolian immigrant who has been accidentally introduced, is still an open question. The probabilities are that it is more frequently the latter, as, while boils are absolutely no respecters, either of persons or places, and may rear their horrid heads in every possible region of the human form divine, yet they display a very decided tendency to appear most frequently in regions like the back of the neck, the wrist, the hips, and the nose. One thing that these areas have in common is that they are liable to a considerable amount of chafing and scratching as by collars and stocks on the neck, and cuffs on the wrists, or of friction from belts, or pressure or chafing from chairs or saddles. When the tissues have been bruised or chafed after such fashion, especially if the surface of the skin has been at the same time broken, and any pus-organism is either present in the hair-follicle, like the white coccus, or rubbed into it by a finger or finger-nail which has just been sucked in the mouth, used to pick the nose, or possibly engaged in dressing some wound, or cutting meat, or handling fertilizer, then all the materials for an explosion are at hand. CHAPTER XVI CANCER, OR TREASON IN THE BODY-STATE The imagination of the race has ever endowed Cancer with a peculiar individuality of its own. Although it has vaguely personified in darkest ages other diseases, like the Plague, the Pestilence, and _Maya_ (the Smallpox), these have rapidly faded away in even the earliest light of civilization, and have never approached in concreteness and definiteness the malevolent personality of Cancer. Its sudden appearance, the utter absence of any discoverable cause, the twinges of agonizing pain that shoot out from it in all directions, its stone-like hardness in the soft, elastic flesh of the body, the ruthless way in which it eats into and destroys every organ and tissue that come in its way, make this impression, not merely of personality, but of positive malevolence, almost unescapable. Its very name is instinct and bristling with this idea: _Krebs_, in German, _Cancer_, in Latin, French, and English, _Carcinoma_, in Greek, all alike mean "Crab," a ghastly, flesh-eating parasite, gnawing its way into the body. The simile is sufficiently obvious. The hard mass is the body of the beast; the pain of the growth is due to his bite; the hard ridges of scar tissue which radiate in all directions into the surrounding skin are his claws. The singular thing is that, while brushing aside, of course, all these grotesque similes, the most advanced researches of science are developing more and more clearly the conception of the independent individuality--as they term it, the _autonomy_--of cancer. More and more decidedly are they drifting toward the unwelcome conclusion that in cancer we have to deal with a process of revolt of a part of the body against the remainder, "a rebellion of the cells," as an eminent surgeon-philosopher terms it. Unwelcome, because a man's worst foes are "they of his own household." Successful and even invigorating warfare can be waged against enemies without, but a contest with traitors within dulls the spear and paralyzes the arm. Against the frankly foreign epidemic enemies of the race a sturdy and, of late years, a highly successful battle has been fought. We have banished the plague, drawn the teeth of smallpox, riddled the armor of diphtheria, and robbed consumption of half its terrors. In spite of the ravings and gallery-play of the Lombroso school anent "degeneracy," our bills of mortality show a marked diminution in the fatality of almost every important disease of external origin which afflicts humanity. The world-riddle of pathology the past twenty years has been: Is cancer due to the invasion of a parasite, a veritable microscopic crab, or is it due to alterations in the communal relations, or, to speak metaphorically, the allegiance of the cells? Disappointing as it may be, the balance of proof and the opinion of the ablest and broadest-minded experts are against the parasitic theory, so far, and becoming more decidedly so. In other words, cancer appears to be an evil which the body breeds within itself. There is absolutely no adequate ground for the tone of lamentation and the Cassandra-like prophecy which pervade all popular, and a considerable part of medical, discussion of the race aspects of the cancer problem. The reasoning of most of these Jeremiahs is something on this wise: That, inasmuch as the deaths from cancer have apparently nearly trebled in proportion to the population within the last thirty years, it only needs a piece of paper and a pencil to be able to figure out with absolute certainty that in a certain number of decades, at this geometric ratio, there will be more deaths from cancer than there are human beings living. There could be no more striking illustration, both of the dangerousness of "a little knowledge" and of the absurdity of applying rigid logic to premises which contain a large percentage of error. Too blind a confidence in the inerrancy of logic is almost as dangerous as superstition. Space will not permit us to enter into details, but suffice it to say:-- First, that expert statisticians are in grave doubt whether this increase is real or only apparent, due to more accurate diagnosis and more complete recording of all cases occurring. Certainly a large proportion of it is due to the gross imperfection of our records thirty years ago. Second, that the apparent increase is little greater than that of deaths due to other diseases of later life, such as nervous, kidney, and heart diseases. Our heaviest saving of life so far is in the first five-year period, and more children are surviving to reach the cancer and Bright's disease age. Third, that a disease, eighty per cent of whose death-rate occurs after forty-five years of age, is scarcely likely to threaten the continued existence of the race. The nature of the process is a revolt of a group of cells. The cause of it is legion, for it embraces any influence which may detach the cell from its normal surroundings,--"isolate it," as one pathologist expresses it. The cure is early and complete amputation of not only the rebellious cells, but of the entire organ or region in which they occur. A cancer is a biologic anomaly. Everywhere else in the cell-state we find each organ, each part, strictly subordinated, both in form and function, to the interests of the whole. Here this relation is utterly disregarded. In the body-republic, where we have come to regard harmony and loyalty as the invariable rule, we find ourselves suddenly confronted by anarchy and revolt. The process begins in one great class of cells, the epithelium of the secreting glands. This is a group of cell-citizens of the highest rank, descended originally from the great primitive skin-sheet, which have formed themselves into chemical laboratories, ferment-factories for the production of the various secretions required by the body, from the simplest watery mucus, as in the mouth, or the mere lubricant, as in the fat-glands of the hair-follicles, to the most complex gastric or pancreatic juice. They form one of the most active and important groups in the body, and their revolt is dangerous in proportion. The movement of the process is usually somewhat upon this order: After forty, fifty, or even sixty years of loyal service, the cells lining one of the tubules of a gland--for instance, of the lip, or tongue, or stomach--begin to grow and increase in number. Soon they block up the gland-tube, then begin to push out in the form of finger-or root-like columns of cells into the surrounding tissues. These columns appear to have the curious power of either turning their natural digestive ferments against the surrounding tissues, or secreting new ferments for the purpose, closely resembling pepsin, and thus literally eating their way into them. So rapidly do these cells continue to breed and grow and spread resistlessly in every direction, that soon the entire gland, and next the neighboring tissues, become packed and swollen, so that a hard lump is formed, the pressure upon the nerve-trunks gives rise to shooting pains, and the first act of the drama is complete. But these new columns and masses, like most other results of such rapid cell-breeding in the body, are literally a mushroom growth. Scarcely are they formed before they begin to break down, with various results. If they lie near a surface, either external or internal, they crumble under the slightest pressure or irritation, and an ulcer is formed, which may either spread slowly over the surface, from the size of a shilling to that of a dinner-plate, or deepen so rapidly as to destroy the entire organ, or perforate a blood-vessel and cause death by hemorrhage. The cancer is breaking down in its centre, while it continues to grow and spread at its edge. Truly a "magnificent scheme of decay." Then comes the last and strangest act of this weird tragedy. In the course of the resistless onward march of these rebel cell-columns some of their skirmishers push through the wall of a lymph-channel, or even, by some rare chance, a vein, and are swept away by the stream. Surely now the regular leucocyte cavalry have them at their mercy, and can cut them down at leisure. We little realize the fiendish resourcefulness of the cancer-cell. One such adrift in the body is like a ferret in a rabbit warren; no other cell can face it for an instant. It simply floats unmolested along the lymph-channels until its progress is arrested in some way, when it promptly settles down wherever it may happen to have landed, begins to multiply and push out columns in every direction, into and at the expense of the surrounding tissues, and behold, a new cancer, or "secondary nodule," is born (_metastasis_). In fact, it is a genuine "animal spore," or seed-cell, capable of taking root and reproducing its kind in any favorable soil; and, unfortunately, almost every inch of a cancer patient's body seems to be such. It is merely a question of where the spore-cells happen to drift and lodge. The lymph-nodes or "settling basins" of the drainage area of the primary cancer are the first to become infected, probably in an attempt to check the invaders; but the spores soon force their way past them toward the central citadels of the body, and, one after another, the great, vital organs--the liver, the lungs, the spleen, the brain--are riddled by the deadly columns and choked by decaying masses of new cells, until the functions of one of them are so seriously interfered with that death results. Obviously, this is a totally different process, not merely in degree, but in kind, from anything that takes place as a result of the invasion of the body by an infectious germ or parasite of any sort. There is a certain delusive similarity between the cancer process and an infection. But the more closely and carefully this similarity is examined the more superficial and unreal does it become. The invading germ may multiply chiefly at one point or focus, like cancer, and from this spread throughout the body and form new foci, and may even produce swarms of masses of cells resembling tumors, as, for instance, in tuberculosis and syphilis. But here the analogy ends. The great fundamental difference between cancer and any infection lies in the fact that, in an infection, the inflammations and poisonings and local swellings are due solely and invariably to the presence and multiplication of the invading germs, which may be recovered in millions from every organ and region affected, while swellings or new masses produced are merely the outpouring of the body-cells in an attempt to attack and overwhelm these invaders. In cancer, on the contrary, the destroying organism is a group of perverted body-cells. The invasion of other parts of the body is carried out by transference of their bastard and abortive offspring. Most significant of all, the new growths and swellings that are formed in other parts of the body are composed, not of the outpourings of the local tissues, but of _the descendants of these pirate cells_. This is one of the most singular and incredible things about the cancer process: that a cancer starting, say, in the pancreas, and spreading to the brain, will there pile up a mass--not of brain-cells, or even of connective tissue-cells--but of gland-cells, resembling crudely the organ in which it was born. So far will this resemblance go that a secondary cancer of the pancreas found in the lung will yield on analysis large amounts of trypsin, the digestive ferment of the pancreas. Similarly a cancer of the rectum, invading the liver, will there pile up in the midst of the liver-tissue abortive attempts at building up glands of intestinal mucous membrane. This fundamental and vital difference between the two processes is further illustrated by this fact: While an ordinary infection may be transferred from one individual to another, not merely of the same species, but of half a dozen different species, with perfect certainty, and for any number of successive generations, no case of cancer has ever yet been known to be transferred from one human being to another. In other words, the cancer-cell appears utterly unable to live in any other body except the one in which it originated. So confident have surgeons and pathologists become of this that a score of instances are on record where physicians and pathologists, among them the famous surgeon-pathologist, Senn, of Chicago, only a few years ago, have voluntarily ingrafted portions of cancerous tissue from patients into their own arms, with absolutely no resulting growth. In fact, the cancer-cell behaves like every other cell of the normal body, in that, though portions of it can be grafted into appropriate places in the bodies of other human beings and live for a period of days, or even months, they ultimately are completely absorbed and disappear. The only apparent exception is the epithelium of the skin, which can be used in grafting or skinning over a wide raw surface in another individual. However, even here the probability appears to be that the taking root of the foreign cells is only temporary, and makes a preliminary covering or protection for the surface until the patient's own skin-cells can multiply fast and far enough to take its place. A similarly reassuring result has been obtained in animals. Not a single authenticated case is on record of the transference of a human cancer to one of the lower animals; and of all the thousands and thousands of experiments that have been made in attempting to transfer cancers from one animal to another, only one variety of tumor with the microscopic appearance of cancer--the so-called Jensen's tumor of mice--has yet been found which can be transferred from one animal to another. So we may absolutely disabuse our minds of the fear which some of our enthusiastic believers in the parasitic theory of cancer have done much to foster, that there is any danger of cancer "spreading," like an infectious disease. Disastrous and gruesome as are the conditions produced by this disease, they are absolutely free from danger to those living with or caring for the unfortunate victim. In the hundreds of thousands of cases of cancers which have been treated, in private practice, in general hospitals, and in hospitals devoted exclusively to their care, not a single case is on record of the transference of the disease to a husband, wife, or child, nurse or medical attendant. So that the cancer problem, like the Kingdom of Heaven, is within us. This conclusion is further supported by the disappointing result of the magnificent crusade of research for the discovery of the cancer "parasite," whether vegetable or animal, which has been pursued with a splendid enthusiasm, industry, and ability by the best blood and brains of the pathological world for twenty years past. I say disappointing, because a positive result--the discovery and identification of a parasite which causes cancer--would be one of the greatest boons that could be granted to humanity; not so much on account of the actual loss of life produced by the disease as for the agonies of apprehension engendered by the fact of the absolute remorselessness and blindness with which it may strike, and our comparative powerlessness to cure. So far the results have been distressingly uniform and hopelessly negative. Scores, yes, hundreds, of different organisms have been discovered in and about cancerous growths, and announced by the proud discoverer as the cause of cancer. Not one of these, however, has stood the test of being able to produce a similiar growth by inoculation into another body; and all which have been deemed worthy of a test-research by other investigators besides the paternal one have been found to be mere accidental contaminations, and present in a score of other diseases, or even in normal conditions. Many of them have been shown to be abnormal products of the cells of the body in the course of the cancer process, and some even such ludicrous misfits as impurities in the chemical reagents used, scrapings from the corks of bottles, dust from the air, or even air-bubbles. These "discoveries" have ranged the whole realm of unicellular life,--bacilli, bacteria, spirilla, yeasts, moulds, protozoa,--yet the overwhelming judgment of broad-minded and reputable experts the world over is the Scotch verdict of "not proven"; and we are more and more coming to turn our attention to the other aspect of the problem, the factors which cause or condition this isolation and assumption of autonomy on the part of the cells. This is not by any means to say that there is no causative organism, and that this will not some day be discovered. Human knowledge is a blind and short-sighted thing at best, and it may be that some invading cell, which, from its very similarity to the body-cells, has escaped our search, will one day be discovered. Nor will the investigators diminish one whit of their vigor and enthusiasm on account of their failure thus far. The most strikingly suggestive proof of the native-born character of cancer comes from two of its biologic characters. The first is that its habit of beginning with a mass formation, rapidly deploying into columns and driving its way into the tissues in a ghastly flying wedge, is simply a perfect imitation and repetition of the method by which glands are formed during the development of the body. The flat, or epithelial, cells of the lining of the stomach, for instance, begin to pile up in a little swarm, or mass, elongate into a column, push their way down into the deeper tissue, and then hollow out in their interior to form a tubular gland. The only thing that cancer lacks is the last step of forming a tube, and thereby becoming a servant of the body instead of a parasite upon it. Nor is this process confined to our embryonic or prenatal existence. Take any gland which has cause to increase in size during adult life, as, for instance, the mammary gland, in preparation for lactation, and you will find massing columns and nests of cells pushing out into the surrounding tissue in all directions, in a way that is absolutely undistinguishable in its earlier stages from the formation of cancer. It is a fact of gruesome significance that the two organs--the mammary gland and the uterus--in which this process habitually takes place in adult life are the two most fatally liable to the attack of cancer. Another biologic character is even more striking and significant. A couple of years ago it was discovered by Murray and Bashford, of the English Imperial Cancer Research Commission, that the cells of cancer, in their swift and irregular reproduction, showed an unexpected peculiarity. In the simplest form of reproduction, one cell cutting itself in two to make two new ones, known as mitosis, the change begins in the nucleus, or kernel. This kernel splits itself up into a series of threads or loops, known as the chromosomes, half of which go into each of the daughter cells. When, however, sex is born and a male germ-cell unites with a female germ-cell to form a new organism, each cell proceeds, as the first step in the process, to get rid of half of these chromosomes, so that the new organism has precisely the normal number of chromosomes, half of which are derived from the father and the other half from the mother germ-cell. This, by the way, is the mechanical basis of heredity. It has been long known that the mitotic processes of cancer and the forming and dividing of the chromosomes were riotous and irregular, like the rest of its growth. But it was reserved for these investigators to discover the extraordinary fact that the majority of dividing and multiplying cancer-cells had, instead of the normal number of chromosomes, exactly half the quota. In other words, they had resumed the powers of the germ, or sexual, cells from which the entire body was originally built up, and were, like them, capable of an indefinite amount of multiplication and reproduction. How extraordinary and limitless this power is may be seen from the fact that a little group of cancer-cells grafted into a mouse to produce a Jensen tumor, from which a graft is again taken and transplanted into another mouse, and so on, is capable, in a comparatively few generations, of producing cancerous masses a thousand times the weight of the original mouse in which the tumor started! In short, cancer-cells are obviously a small, isolated group of the body-cells, which in a ghastly fashion have found the fountain of perpetual youth, and can ride through and over the law-abiding citizens of the body-state with the primitive vigor of the dawn of life. This brings us to the most practical and important questions of the problem: What are the influences which condition this isolation and outlawry of the cells? What can we do to prevent or suppress the rebellion? To the first of these science can only return a tentative and approximate answer. The subject is beset with difficulties, chief among which is the fact that we are unable to produce the disease with certainty in animals, with the single exception of the Jensen's tumors in mice referred to, nor is it transferred from one human being to another, so that we can make even an approximate guess at the precise time at, or conditions under, which the process began. Many theories have been advanced, but most investigators who have studied the problem in a broad-minded spirit are coming gradually to agree to this extent:-- First of all, that one of the most powerful influences conditioning this isolation and revolt of the cells is age, both of the individual and of the organ concerned. Not only does far the heaviest cancer mortality fall between the ages of forty-five and sixty, but the organs most frequently and severely attacked are those which between these years are beginning to lose their function and waste away. First and most striking, the mammary gland and the uterus in women, and the shriveling lips and tongue of elderly men. To put it metaphorically, the mammary gland and the uterus, after the change of life, the lip, after the decay of the teeth, have done their work, outlived their usefulness, and are being placed upon a starvation pension by a grateful country. Nineteen out of twenty accept the situation without protest and sink slowly to a mere vegetative state of existence, but, in the twentieth, some little knot of cells rebel, revert to an ancestral power of breeding rapidly to escape extinction, begin to make ravages, and cancer is born. The age-preferences are well marked. Cancer is emphatically a disease of senility, of age; but, as Roger Williams has pointed out in his admirable monograph, not of "completed" senility. To express it in percentages, barely twenty per cent of the cases occur before forty years of age, sixty per cent between forty and sixty, and twenty per cent between sixty and eighty. Thus the early period of decline, the transition stage between full functional vigor and declared atrophy (wasting) of the glands, is clearly the period of greatest danger; precisely the period in which the gland-cells, though losing their function,--and income,--have still the strength to inaugurate a rebellion, and a sufficient supply of the sinews of war, either in their own possession or within easy striking distance in the tissues about them, to make it successful. Not less than sixty-five to seventy-five per cent of all cancers in women occur in atrophying organs, the uterus and mammary glands. A rather alluring suggestion was made by Cohnheim, years ago, that cancers might be due to the sudden resumption of growth on the part of islands or _rests_ of embryonic tissue, left scattered about in various parts of the body. But these are now believed to play but a small part, if indeed any, in the production of true cancer. Finally, what can be done to prevent or cure this grotesque yet deadly process? So far as it is conditioned by age, it is, of course, obvious that little can be done, for not even the most radical vivisector would propose preventing in any way as large a proportion as possible of the human race from reaching fifty or sixty, or even seventy years, to avoid the barely six per cent liability to cancer after forty-five. As regards the influence of chronic inflammations and irritation, much can be done, and here is our most hopeful field for prevention. Warts and birthmarks that are in any way subject to pressure or friction from clothing or movements should be promptly removed, as both show a distinctly greater tendency than normal tissue to develop into cancer. Cracks, fissures, chafes, and ulcers of all sorts, especially about the lips, tongue, mammary gland, uterus, and rectum, should be early and aseptically dealt with. Jagged remnants of teeth should be removed, all suppurative processes of the gums antiseptically treated, and the whole mouth-parts kept in a thoroughly aseptic condition. Thorough and conscientious attention to this sort of surgical toilet work is valuable, not only for its preventive effect,--which is considerable,--but also because it will insure the bringing under competent observation at the earliest possible moment the beginnings of true cancer. For the disease itself, after it has once started, there is, like treason in the body-politic, but one remedy--capital punishment. Parleying with the rebels is worse than useless. Pastes, caustics, X-rays, trypsin, radium,--all are fatally defective, because they suppress a symptom only and leave the cause untouched. Only in one form of surface-cancer, the so-called flat-celled or rodent ulcer, which has little or no tendency to form spore-cells and attack the deeper organs, are they effective. Nothing is easier and nothing more idle than to destroy and break down cells which have actually become cancerous; but so long as there remains in the body a single nest, or even cell, of the organ in which the revolt started, so long the life of the patient is in danger. Absolutely the only remedy which is of the slightest value is complete removal with the knife. The one superiority of the knife, shudder as we may at the name of it, over every other means of removal lies solely in this fact, that with it can be removed not merely the actual cancer, but the entire gland or group of surrounding cells in which this malignant, parricidal change has begun to occur. The modern radical operations for cancer take not merely the tumor, but the entire diseased breast, for instance, and all the lymph-glands into which it drains, clear up into the armpit, with the muscles beneath it down to the ribs. Where this is done early enough, the disease does not recur. Such radical and complete amputation of an organ or region as this is possible in from two-thirds to three-fourths of all cases if seen reasonably early. With watchfulness and courage, our attitude toward the cancer problem is one of hopeful confidence. CHAPTER XVII HEADACHE: THE MOST USEFUL PAIN IN THE WORLD Greatness always has its penalties. Other ills besides death love a shining mark. Pain is one of them, and headache its best exemplar. If there be one thing about our bodies of which we are peculiarly and inordinately proud it is that expanded brain-bulb which we call the head. Yet it aches oftener than all the rest of us put together. Headache is the commonest of all pains, which fact gives the slight consolation that everybody can sympathize with you when you have it. One touch of headache makes the whole world kin, and the man or woman who has never had it would be looked upon as a creature abnormal and "a thing apart." It has even become incorporated into our social fabric as one of the sacred institutions of the game of polite society. How could we possibly protect ourselves against our instructors in youth and our would-be friends in later life if there were no such words as "a severe headache"? What is a headache, and why does it ache the head? This is a wide and hotly disputed problem. But one fact, which is obvious at the first intelligent glance, becomes clearer and more important with deeper study, and that is that it _is not the fault of the head_. When the head aches, it is, nine times out of ten, simply doing a combination of scapegoat and fire-alarm duty for the rest of the body. Just as the brain is the servant of the body, rather than its master, so the devoted head meekly offers itself as a sort of vicarious atonement for the sins of the entire body. It is the eloquent spokesman of such "mute, inglorious Miltons" as the stomach, the liver, the muscles, and the heart. The humblest and least distinguished of all the organs of the body can order the lordly head to ache for it, and the head has no alternative but to obey. To discuss the cause of headaches is like discussing the cause of the human species. It is one of the commonest facts of every-day observation, and can be demonstrated almost at will, that any one of a hundred different causes,--a stuffy room, a broken night's sleep, a troublesome letter, a few extra hours of work, eating something that disagrees, a cold, a glare of light in the eyes,--any and all of these may bring on a headache. The problem of avoiding headaches is the problem of the whole conduct of life. Two or three broad generalizations, however, can be made from the confused and enormous mass of data at our disposal, which are of both philosophic interest and practical value. One of these is that, while headache is felt in the head, and particularly in those regions that lie over the brain, the brain has comparatively little to do with the pain. Headache is neither a mark of intellectuality, nor, with rare exceptions, a sign of cerebral disturbance. Indeed, it is far more a matter of the digestion, the muscles, and the ductless glands, than it is of the brain, or even of the nervous system. It is, therefore, idle to endeavor either to treat or try to prevent it by measures directed to the head, the brain, or even the nervous system as such. Secondly, it is coming to be more and more clearly recognized that, while its causes are legion, a very large percentage of these practically and eventually operate by producing a toxic, or poisoned, condition of the blood, which, circulating through certain delicate and sensitive nerve-strands in the head and face, give rise to the sensation of pain. Thirdly, the tissues which give out this pain-cry under the torture of the toxins in the blood are, in a large majority of cases, neither the brain, nor the nerves of the eye, nor other special senses, but the nerves of common sensation which supply the face, the scalp, and the structures of the head generally, most of them derived from one great pair of nerve-trunks, the so-called _Trigeminus_, or fifth pair of cranial nerves. Strange as it may seem, the brain substance is comparatively insensitive to pain, and the acutest pain of an operation upon it, such as for the removal of a tumor, is over when the skin and scalp have been cut through. These poisons, of course, go all over the body, wherever the circulation goes, but they produce their promptest and loudest pain outcry, so to speak, in the region where the nerves are most exquisitely sensitive. When your head aches, nine times out of ten your whole body is suffering, but other regions of it are not able to express themselves so promptly and so clearly. These newer and clearer views of the nature of headache dispose at once of some of the most time-honored controversies in regard to its nature. In my student-days one of the most hotly debated problems in medicine was as to whether headaches were due to lack of blood (anæmia) or excess of blood (hyperæmia) in the brain. Few things could have been more natural for both the sufferer in, and the observer of, a case of throbbing, bursting headache, where every pulse-beat is registered as a thrill of agony, than to draw the conclusion that the pain was due to a huge engorgement and swelling of the brain with blood, resulting in agonizing pressure against its rigid, bony skull-walls. One of the most naïve and vivid illustrations of this conception of headache is the remedy adopted for generations past, in this all too familiar and distressing condition, by the Irish peasantry. It consists of a band or strip of tough cloth, or better, of twisted or plaited straw, which is tied around the head and then tightened vigorously by means of a stick inserted tourniquet fashion. This is believed to prevent the head, which is aching "fit to split," from actually bursting open, and is considered a cure of wondrous merit through many a countryside. Ludicrous as is the reason which is gravely assigned for its use, it does, in some cases, greatly relieve the pain, a fact which we were entirely at a loss to account for until our later knowledge showed us that the pain, instead of being inside the skull, was outside of it in the sensitive nerves supplying the scalp. By steady pressure of this sort upon the trunks of these nerves, pressing them against the bone, they can be gradually numbed into a condition of anæsthesia, when naturally the pain would diminish. In politer circles a similar misapprehension has also given rise to a favorite form of treatment. That is the application of cold in the form of the classic wet cloth sprinkled with _eau de Cologne_. The mere mention of headache calls up in the minds of most of us memories of a darkened room, a pale face on the pillow with a ghastly bandage over the eyes, and a pervading smell of _eau de Cologne_. It was a perfectly natural conclusion that, because the head throbbed and felt hot and bursting, there must be some inflammation, or at least congestion, present, and that the application of cold would relieve this. The results seemed to justify this belief, for in many cases the sense of coolness to the aching head gives great relief; but this is apt to be only temporary, and in really severe cases makes the situation worse by adding another depressing influence--cold--to the toxin-burdens that are weighing upon the tortured nerves. The chief virtue in these cold cloths and handkerchiefs soaked in cologne was that you were compelled to lie down and keep perfectly still in order to keep them on, while at the same time they mechanically blindfolded you. Few better devices for automatically insuring that absolute rest, which is the best and only rational cure for a headache, have ever been invented. We were not long in discovering that headaches, both of the mildest and the severest types, might be accompanied either by a rush of blood to the head, with flushing of the skin, reddening of the eyes, and a bursting sense of oppression in the head, or, on the other hand, by an absolute draining of the whole floating surplus of the blood into the so-called "abdominal pool," the huge network of vessels supplying the digestive organs, which, when distended, will contain nearly two-thirds of the entire blood of the body, leaving the face blanched, the eyes white and staring, and the brain so nearly emptied of blood as to cause loss of consciousness or swooning. Other headaches, again, will be accompanied by a fresh, natural color and a perfectly normal and healthy distribution of the blood-supply. In short, the amount of blood in the head, whether plus or minus, has practically nothing to do with the pain, but depends solely upon the effect of the poisons producing it upon the heart and great blood-vessels. A good illustration of the full-blooded type of headache is that which so very frequently, indeed almost invariably, occurs in the early stage of a fever or other acute infection, such as typhoid, pneumonia, or blood-poisoning, Here the face is red, the eyes are bloodshot and abnormally bright, the pulse is rapid and full, the headache so severe as to become the first disabling symptom in the disease,--all because this is the effect of the poison (toxin) of the disease upon the heart, the temperature, and the surface blood-vessels. Fortunately for the sufferer, this head-pain, like most others in the course of severe infections, is only preliminary, for as soon as the tissues of the body have become thoroughly saturated with the toxins, the nerves become dulled and semi-narcotized, so that they no longer respond with the pain-cry. As the patient settles down into the depression and dullness of the regular course of the fever, the headache usually subsides into little more than a sense of heaviness, or oppression and vague discomfort. Moral: It is a sign of health to be able to feel a headache, an indication that your body is still fighting vigorously against the enemy, whether traitor within or foe without. On the other hand, many of our most agonizing, and particularly our most persistent and obstinate headaches, occur in individuals who are markedly anæmic, with a low, weak pulse, poor circulation, blanched lips, and dull, lackluster eyes. The one and only thing in common between these two classes of "head-achers" is that their blood and tissues are loaded with poisons. Whether produced by invading germs or by starvation and malnutrition of the body-tissues makes no difference to the headache nerves. Their business, like good watchdogs, is to bark every time they smell danger of any sort, whether it be bears or book-agents. One of the most valuable services rendered us by our priceless heads is aching. This view of the nature of headache explains at once why it is so extraordinarily frequent and so extraordinarily varied in causation. It is not too much to say that _any_ influence that injuriously affects the body may cause a headache. It would, of course, be idle even to attempt to enumerate the different causes and kinds of this pain, as it would involve a review of the entire environment of the human species, internal and external. It makes not the slightest difference how the poison gets into the blood, or where it starts. A piece of tainted meat or a salad made from spoiled tomatoes will produce a headache just as promptly and effectively as an over-exposure to the July sun or an attack of influenza. It is even practically impossible to pick out from such a wealth of origins two or three, or even a score of, conditions which are the most frequent, most important, or the most interesting causes. The most exasperating thing about dealing with a headache is that we never know, until its history has been most carefully examined, whether we have to do with a mere temporary expression of discomfort and unbalance, due to overfatigue, errors in diet, a stuffy room, lack of exercise, or what-not, which can be promptly relieved by removing the cause; or whether we have to deal with the first symptoms of a dangerous fever, the beginning of a nervous breakdown, or an early warning of some grave trouble in kidneys, liver, or heart. The one thing, however, that stands out clearly is that _headache always means something_; that it should be promptly and thoroughly investigated with a view to finding and removing the cause,--never as something which is to be cured as quickly as possible, as the police cure social discontent, by clubbing it over the head, with some narcotic or other symptom-smotherer. Nor should it be regarded as a malady so trifling that it is best treated with contempt, and still less as a mere "thorn in the flesh," whose ignoring is to be counted a virtue, or whose patient endurance without sign a mark of saintship. Martyrdom is magnificent when it is necessary, but many forms of it are sheer stupidity. Don't either gulp down some capsule, or "grin and bear it." Look for the cause. The more trivial it is, the easier it will be to discover and remove before serious harm has been done. The less easy you find it to put your finger upon it, the more likely it is to be serious or chronic, and the more necessary it is to remove it. Once, however, we have clearly recognized that no headache should be treated too lightly or indifferently, it may be frankly admitted that practically the vast majority of headaches in which we are keenly interested--that is, the kind that we individually or the members of our family habitually indulge in--do form a moderately uniform class among the hundreds of varieties, and are in the main due to some six or seven great groups of causes. We have learned by repeated and unpleasant experience that they are very apt to "come on" in about a certain way, after a certain set of circumstances; that they last about so long, that they are made worse by such and such things, that they are helped by other things, and that they generally get better after a good night's sleep. One of the commonest causes of this group of recurrent and self-limited headaches is fatigue, whether bodily, mental, or emotional. This was long an apparent stumbling-block in the way of a poison theory of headache, but now it is one of its best illustrations. Physiologists years ago discovered that what produced not merely the sensation but also the fact of fatigue, or tiredness, was the accumulation in the muscles or nerves of the waste-products of their own activities. Simply washing these out with a salt solution would start the utterly fatigued muscle contracting again, without any fresh nourishment or even period for rest. It has become an axiom with physiologists that fatigue is simply a form of self-poisoning, or, as they sonorously phrase it, autointoxication. One of the reasons why we are so easily fatigued when we are already ill, or, as we say, "out of sorts," is that our tissues are already so saturated with waste-products or other poisons that the slightest addition of the fatigue poisons is enough to overwhelm them. This also explains why our pet variety of headache, which we may have clearly recognized to be due to overwork or overstrain of some sort, whether with eye, brain, or muscles, is so much more easily brought on by such comparatively small amounts of over-exertion whenever we are already below par and out of sorts. People who are "born tired," who are neurasthenic and easily fatigued and "ached," are probably in a chronic state of self-poisoning due to some defect in their body-chemistry. Further, the somewhat greater frequency and acuteness of headache in brain workers--although the difference between them and muscle workers in this regard has been exaggerated--is probably due in part to the greater sensitiveness of their nerves; but more so to the curious fact, discovered in careful experiments upon the nervous system, that the fatigue products of the nerve-cells are the deadliest and most powerful poisons produced in the body. Hence some brain workers can work only a few half-hours a day, or even minutes at a time; for instance, Darwin, Spencer, and Descartes. A very frequent cause of these habitual headaches, really a subdivision of the great fatigue group, is eye-strain. This is due to an abnormal or imperfect shape of the eye, which is usually present from birth. Hence, the only possible way of correcting it is by the addition to the imperfect eye of carefully fitted lenses or spectacles which will neutralize this mechanical defect. To put it very roughly, if the eye is too flat to bring the light-rays to a focus upon the retina, which is far the commonest condition (the well-known "long sight," or hyperopia), we put a plus or bulging glass before the eye and thus correct its shape. But if the eye is too round and bulging, producing the familiar "short sight," or myopia, we put a minus or concave lens before the eye, and thus bring it back to the normal. By a curious paradox, however, it often happens that the headache due to eye-strain is caused not by the grosser defects, such as interfere with vision so seriously as absolutely to demand the wearing of glasses to see decently, but from slighter and more irregular degrees and kinds of misshapenness in the eye, most of which fall under the well-known heading of astigmatism. These interfere only slightly with vision, but keep the eye perpetually on the strain, on a twist, as it were, rasping the entire nervous system into a state of chronic irritation. Our motto now, in all cases of chronic headache, is, first examine the patient's habits of life, next his eyes. Many forms of headache are really stomach-ache in disguise, due to digestive disturbances, the absorption of poisons from the food-tube, whether from tainted, spoiled, or decayed foods, as in the now familiar ptomaine poisoning, or from imperfect processes of digestion. The immediate effect, however, of diet in the causation of headache is not so great as we once believed. We have no adequate basis for believing that any particular kinds or amounts of food are especially likely to produce either headache or what we might call the headache habit, except in so far as they upset the digestion. In a certain number of susceptible individuals, however, it will be found that some particular kind of food, often perfectly wholesome and harmless in itself, will bring on an attack of headache whenever it is indulged in. Very frequently the disturbances of digestion which are put down as the _cause_ of a headache are only _symptoms_ of some general constitutional lack of balance, as eye-strain or neurasthenia, which is the cause of both these discomforts. Far fewer headaches can be cured by dieting than we at one time believed, and underfeeding is a more frequent cause than overeating. By an odd _bouleversement_ the one type of headache which we have almost unanimously in the past attributed to digestive disturbances, the famous, or, rather, infamous, "sick headache," is now known to have little or nothing to do with the stomach in its origin. In fact, incredible as it may seem at first sight, it is the headache that causes the sickness, not the sickness the headache. Stop the pain of a sick headache in the early stage, and the sickness will never develop at all. The vomiting of sick headache is an interesting illustration of vomiting due to disturbances of the brain and nervous system, technically known as central vomiting. Another illustration is the vomiting of seasickness, due solely to dizziness from the gross contradiction between the testimony of our eyes and of the balancing canals in the inner ear. The stomach or its contents has no more to do with seasickness than the water in a pump has with the plunger. Injuries to the head will bring on severe and uncontrollable vomiting, and the severer type of fevers is very frequently ushered in by this curious sign. As to what it means, we are as yet utterly in the dark, for in none of these conditions does the process do the slightest good, but simply adds to the discomfort of the situation. It would appear to be a curious echo of ancestral times, when the animal was pretty much all stomach, and hence emptying that organ would probably relieve two-thirds of his discomforts. Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that whenever our nervous system gets about so panic-stricken, it promptly begins throwing its cargo overboard, in the blind hope that this may somehow relieve the situation. The bile that we bring up at the end of these interesting acrobatic performances and which makes us feel so much better,--because we have now got the cause of the trouble out of our system,--is simply due to the prolonged vomiting, which has reversed the normal current and caused the perfectly healthy bile from our unoffending liver to pass upward into the stomach, instead of downward into the bowels. In another great group of headaches natural poisons or waste-products are not burned up or got rid of through the body-sewers and pores as rapidly as they should be; for instance, the familiar headache from sitting too long in a stuffy room. Your well-known and well-earned discomfort is, of course, due in part to the irritating and often poisonous gases, dust, and bacteria, which are present in the air of an unventilated room; but it is also due to the steady piling up of the waste products of your own tissues. These poisons are normally oxidized in the muscles, burned up and exhaled through the lungs, and sweated out through the skin,--all three of which relief agencies are, of course, practically paralyzed, or working at lowest possible level, while you are sitting at your desk. The well-known headache of sluggish bowels is an obvious case in point; and one of the early signs of beginning failure of the kidneys, as in Bright's disease, is a headache of a peculiar type due to accumulation in the system of the poisons which it is their duty to get rid of. There are few things the head resents more keenly than loss of sleep. The pillow is the best headache medicine. If this loss of sleep be due to the encroachments of work or of amusements, then the mechanism of its production is obvious. The fatigue poisons produced during the day and normally completely neutralized and burned up during sleep are not entirely disposed of and remain in the tissues to torture the nerves. The headache of insomnia, or habitual sleeplessness, on the other hand, is not, strictly speaking, caused by loss of sleep. Paradoxical as it may sound, the fatigue poisons, which in moderate amounts will produce drowsiness and promote sleep, in excessive amounts will cause wakefulness and inability to sleep. Insomnia and headache are usually symptoms of this overfatigued, or poisoned, condition, and should both be regarded and treated as symptoms by the removal of their causes, _not_ by the use of coal-tar products and hypnotics. Another common cause of headache is nasal obstruction, such as may be due to adenoids or deformities of the septum, or chronic catarrhal conditions. These probably act by their interference with breathing and consequent imperfect ventilation of the blood, as well as by obstruction and inflammation of the great air-spaces in the bones of the skull, closely underlying the brain, which open and drain into the nose. It may be remarked in passing that "sick headache," or _migraine_, though long and painfully familiar to us, is still a puzzle as to its cause. But the view which seems to come nearest to explaining its many eccentricities is that it is usually due to a congenital defect, not so much of the nervous system as of the entire body, by which the poisons normally produced in its processes fail to be neutralized and got rid of, and gradually accumulate until they saturate the system to such a degree as to produce a furious explosion of pain. This defect may quite possibly be in one of the ductless glands or in some of the internal secretions, rather than in the nervous system. Obviously, after what has been said of the world-wide causation of headache, to attempt to discuss its treatment would be as absurd as to undertake to advise what should be done for the relief of hunger, for "that tired feeling," or for a pain in the knee. The treatment for a headache due to an inflammation or tumor of the brain would, of course, be wide as the poles from that which would relieve an ordinary fatigue or indigestion pain. Besides, it is utterly irrational and often harmful to attempt _to treat any headache as such_. That is the open road to the morphine habit and drug addictions of all sorts. Remedies--and there are plenty of them--which simply relieve the pain without doing anything to remove its cause, merely make the latter state of that individual worse than the first. Headache is always and everywhere nature's vivid warning that something is going wrong, like the shrieking of a wagon-axle or the clatter of a broken cog in machinery. There is, however, fortunately one remedy which alone will cure ninety-nine per cent of all headaches, and that is rest. The first thing an intelligent machinist does when squeaking or rattling begins is to stop the machinery. This has the double advantage of preventing the damage from going any further and of enabling him to get at the cause. Headache, like pain anywhere, is nature's imperative order _to Halt_, at least long enough to find out what you are doing to yourself that you shouldn't. It makes little difference what you take for your headache, so long as you follow it up by lying down for an hour or two, or, better still, by going to bed for the remainder of the day and sleeping through until the next morning. If more headaches were treated in this way there would not only be fewer headaches, but two-thirds of the risks of nervous breakdown, collapse, insomnia, and chronic degenerative changes in the liver, kidneys, and blood-vessels would be avoided. This, of course, is a counsel of perfection, and incapable of general application for the sternest of reasons; but it does indicate the rational attitude toward headache and its treatment, and one which is coming to be more and more adopted. No motorist would dream of pushing ahead with a shrieking axle or a scorching hot box, unless his journey were one of most momentous importance or a matter of life and death. Pain is nature's automatic speed regulator. It is often necessary to disregard it, to get the work of the world done and to discharge our sacred obligations to others; but this disregarding should not be exalted to too high a pinnacle of virtue, and least of all worshiped as inherently and everywhere a mark of piety and one of the insignia of saintship. A business firm or a factory, for instance, which would send home for the day each of its employees who reported a genuine case of bad headache, would, in the long run, save money by avoiding accidents, mistakes, muddles, and confusions, often involving a whole department, due to the kind of work that is done by a man or woman who is physically unfit to attempt it. And the higher the type of work that has to be done, the more the elements of insight, grasp, and sound judgment enter into it, the graver and costlier are the mistakes that are likely to be made under such circumstances. Of course, it will probably be objected at this point: "What is the use of wasting a day, or even half a day, when by taking two or three capsules of So-and-So's Headache Cure I can get rid of the pain and go right on with my work?" It is perfectly true that there are a number of remedies which will relieve the average headache; but there are two important things to be borne in mind. The first is that all of these are simply weaker or stronger nerve-deadeners; most of them actual narcotics. All that they do is to stop the pain and thus cheat you into the impression that you are better. You are just as tired and as unfit for work as you were before. Your nervous system is just as saturated with poisons, and the chances are ten to one that the quality of the work that you do will be just as bad as if you had taken no medicine. Further, like alcohol, when used as a "pick-me-up" under somewhat similar conditions, the remedy which you have taken, while producing a false sense of comfort and even exhilaration by deadening your pain and discomfort, in that very process itself takes off the finer edge of your judgment, the best keenness of your insight, and the highest balance of your control. In short, your nervous system has to struggle with all the poisons that were present before, with another one added to them! After you have taken nature's wise advice, and obeyed her orders, and put yourself at rest, then there are a number of mild sedatives, with which every physician is familiar, one of which, according to the special circumstances of your case, it may be perfectly legitimate to take in moderate doses, with the approval of a physician, as a means of relieving the pain and helping to get that sleep which will complete the cure. One other measure of relief, which, like rest, is also indicated by instinct, is worth mentioning, and that is gentle friction of the head. One of the most instinctive tendencies of most of us when suffering from a severe headache is to put the hands to the head, either for the purpose of frantically clutching at it, rubbing as if our lives depended upon it, or pressing hard over the aching region. The mere picture of a man with his head in his hands instantly suggests the idea of headache. Part of this is, of course, little more than a blind impulse to do something to or with the offending member. We would sometimes like to throw it away if we could, or at others to bang it against the wall. But part of it is due to the discovery, ages ago, that pressure and friction would give a certain amount of relief. For some curious reason the nerves most frequently involved are those which are most readily accessible for this kind of treatment, namely, the long nerve-threads which run from the inner third of the eyebrow up the forehead and over the crown of the head (the so-called supraorbital or frontal branches). A corresponding pair run up the back of the neck, about half-way between the back of the ear and the spinal column, supplying the back of the head and the crown (these form the cervical plexus); and a smaller pair run up just in front of the ear into the temple, and from there on upward to join the other two pairs at the top of the head. Broadly speaking, the position of the pain depends upon which pair of these nerves is lifting up its voice most vigorously in protest. If it be the front pair (supraorbitals) then we get the well-known frontal or forehead headache; if the back pair (known as the occipitals) then we have the deadly, constricting, band-around-the-head pain which clutches us across the back of the neck and base of the brain. If the lateral pair are chiefly affected then we get the classic throbbing temples. Practically all of these aches, however, are of the "fire-alarm" character; and while certain of these nerve-gongs show some tendency to respond more readily to calls coming in from certain regions of the body, as, for instance, the forehead nerves to eye-strain, the back-of-the-head nerves (occipital) to grave toxic states of the system, the tips of any of the nerves in the crown of the head to pelvic disturbances and anæmic conditions, the lateral branches in the temples to diseases of the teeth and throat, yet there is little fixed uniformity in these relations. Eye-strain, for instance, may cause either frontal or occipital headache; and, as every one knows from experience, the pain may be felt in all parts of the head at once. Gentle and intelligent massage over the course of these nerves of the scalp, according to the location of the pain, will often do much to relieve the severity of the suffering. Treat headache as a danger signal, by rest and the removal of its cause, and it will prevent at least ten times as much suffering and disability as it causes. CHAPTER XVIII NERVES AND NERVOUSNESS Nerves are real things. In spite of their connection with imaginary diseases and mental disturbances, there is nothing imaginary or unsubstantial about them. There is no more genuine and obstinate malady on earth than a nervous disease. Because nerves lie in that twilight borderland between mind and matter, body and soul, the real and the ideal, the impression has got abroad that they are little better than figures of speech. Though their disturbances give rise to visions of all sorts there is nothing visionary about them; they are just as genuine and substantial a part of our bodily structure as our bones, muscles, and blood-vessels. In fact, it was this very substantiality that at the beginning prevented their proper recognition, and handicapped them with their present absurd and inappropriate name. "Nerve" is from the Greek _neuron_, meaning tendon, or sinew, and was originally applied indiscriminately to all the different shining cords which run down the limbs and among the muscles. In fact the first recognition of nerves was an utter failure to recognize. The tendon cords, which are the ropes with which the muscles work the joint pulleys, were actually included under one head with the less numerous but almost equally large and tough cords of grayer color, flatter outline, and less glistening hue, which were afterwards found to be nerve-trunks. Cutting either paralyzed the limb below the cut,--and what more proof could you ask of their having the same function? Such is the persistence of ancient memories, that any physician could tell you of scores of cases in which he has heard the naïve remark, in reference most frequently to a deep gash across the wrist, that the "nerves" were cut, and the hand was paralyzed, when what had happened was simply that the tendons had been cut across. When, after centuries of blundering in every possible direction until the right one was finally stumbled upon (which is the mechanism of progress), it was realized that some of these "nerves," the grayer and flatter ones, carried messages instead of pulling ropes, they were still far from being properly understood. It is an amusing illustration of the blissful ignorance and charming naïveté which marked their study and discussion at this time, that nerves were for centuries regarded as hollow tubes, carrying a supply of "animal spirits" from the central reservoir of the brain to the different limbs. So seriously was this believed, that, in amputations, the cut nerve-trunks were carefully sought out and tied, for fear the vital spirits would leak out and the patient thus literally bleed to death. One can imagine how this must have added to the comfort of the luckless patient. The term "nerves" still persists, in the old sense, in both botany and entomology, which speak of the "nerves" of a butterfly's wing, or the "nervation" of a leaf, meaning simply the branching, fibrous framework of each. It comes in the nature of a surprise to most of us to learn that "nerves" are real things. I shall never forget the shock of my own first convincing demonstration of this fact. It was in one of the first surgical clinics that I attended as a medical student. A woman patient was brought in, with a history of suffering the tortures of the damned for a year past, from an uncontrollable sciatica. It was a recognized procedure in those days (and is resorted to still), when all medical, electrical, and other remedial measures had failed to relieve a furious neuralgia, for the surgeon to cut down upon the nerve-trunk, free it from its surrounding attachments, and, slipping his tenaculum or finger under it, stretch the nerve with a considerable degree of force. Whether it acts by merely setting up some trophic change in the nerve-tissue, or by tearing loose inflammatory adhesions which are binding down the nerve-trunk, the procedure gives excellent results, nearly always temporary relief, and sometimes a permanent cure. The patient was placed upon the table and anæsthetized, and the surgeon made a free, sweeping incision down the back of the thigh, exposing the sciatic nerve. He thrust his finger into the wound, loosened up the adhesions about the nerve, hooked two fingers underneath it, and, to my wide-eyed astonishment, heaved upward upon it, until he brought into view through the gaping wound a flattened, bluish-gray cord about twice the size of a clothesline, with which he proceeded to lift the hips of the patient clear of the table. In my ignorant horror, I expected every moment to see the thing snap and the patient go down with a bump, paralyzed for life; but I never doubted after that that nerves were real things. Though it has nothing to do with this discussion, for the benefit of those of my readers who cannot bear to have a story left unfinished, I will add that the operation was as successful as it was dramatic, and the patient left the hospital completely relieved of her sciatica. When at last it was clearly recognized that the nerves were concerned in the sending of messages from the centre to the brain, known as _sensory_, or centripetal, and carrying back messages from the brain to the muscles and surface, known as _motor_, or centrifugal,--in other words that they were the organs of the mind,--still another source of confusion sprang up, and that was the determination on the part of some to regard them from a purely mental and, so to speak, spiritual point of view, and on the part of others to regard them from a physical and anatomical point of view. This confusion is of course in full riot at the present time. The term "nerves," and its adjective, "nervous," are used in two totally distinct senses: one, that which is vague and unsubstantial, purely mental or subjective, and, in the realm of disease at least, imaginary; the other, purely anatomical, referring to certain strands of tissue devoted to the purpose of transmitting impulses, and the condition affecting these strands. I am not so rash as to raise the question here,--still less to attempt to settle it,--which of these two views is the right and rational one. Whether the brain secretes thought as the liver does bile, or whether the mind created the brain and nervous system, or, as it has been epigrammatically put in a recent work on psychology, "whether the mind has a body, or the body has a mind," I merely call attention to the fact that this confusion of meanings exists, and that its injection into the field of medicine and pathology, at least, has done an enormous amount of harm in the way of confusing problems and preventing a proper recognition of the actual facts. The more carefully and exhaustively and dispassionately we study the disorders of the nervous system which come in the field of medicine, the more irresistibly we are drawn to the conclusion that from neurasthenia and hysteria to insanity and paralysis they are every one of them the result of some definite morbid change in some cell or strand of the nervous system. The man or woman who is nervous has poisoned nerve-cells, either from hereditary defect, or direct saturation of the tissues with toxic substances. The patient who has an imaginary disease is suffering from some kind of a hallucination produced by poison-soaked nerve-cells, such as in highest degree give rise to the delirium of fevers, and the horrid spectres of delirium tremens. Even the man who is suffering from a "mind diseased," and confined in one of our merciful asylums for the insane, is in that condition and position on account of physical disease, not merely of his brain, but of his entire body. The lunatic is insane, in the for once correct derivative sense of unhealthy, to the very tips of his fingers. Not merely his mind and his brain, but his liver, his stomach, his skin, his hair and fingernails, the very sweat-glands of his surface which control his bodily odor, are diseased and have been so usually for years before his mind breaks down. Tell a competent expert to pick out of a crowd of a thousand men and women the ten who are likely to become insane, and his selection will be found almost invariably to include the two or three who will actually become so. In fact, from even the crudest and scantiest knowledge of the actual growth of our own bodies from the ovum to the adult, it will be difficult to conceive how this relation could be otherwise, The nerve-cells and their long processes, which form the nerve-trunks, are simply one of a score of different specialized cells which exist side by side in the body. Primarily all our body-cells had the power of responding to stimuli, of digesting and elaborating food, of moving by contraction, of reproducing their kind. The nerve-cells are simply a group which have specialized exclusively upon the power of receiving and transmitting impulses. They still take food, but it has to be prepared for them by the other cells; and here, as we shall see later, is one of the dangers to which they are exposed. They still reproduce their kind, but in very much smaller and more limited degree. They still, incredible as it may seem, probably have slight powers of movement or contraction, and can draw in their processes. But they have surrendered many of their rights and neglected some of their primitive accomplishments, in order to devote themselves more exclusively and perfectly to the carrying out of one or two things. In spite of all this, however, they still remain blood-brothers and comrades to every other cell in the body. In the language of Shylock, "If you cut them, they will bleed; if you tickle them, they will laugh; if you starve them, they will die." In all this development, which continued up to a late hour last night, and is still going on, the nerve-tissue has lain side by side with every other tissue in the body, fed by the same blood, supplied with the same oxygen, saturated with the same body-lymph. It is of course perfectly clear that any influence, whether beneficial or injurious, affecting the body, will also be likely to affect the nervous system, as a part of it; and this is precisely the fact, as we find it. If the body be well fed, well warmed, sufficiently exercised, without being overworked, and allowed a liberal allowance of that recharging of the human battery which we call sleep, then the nervous system will work smoothly and easily, at peace with itself and with all mankind. Its sense-organs will receive external impressions promptly and accurately. Its conducting fibres will transmit them to the centre with neither delay nor friction. The brain clearing-house will receive and dispose of them with ease and good judgment. And then, just because his nervous system is working to perfection, we say that such an individual "has no nerves." If the triumph of art be to conceal art, then the nerves have achieved this. They have literally effaced themselves in the well-being of the body. If on the other hand, the food-supply is inadequate, if the sleep allowance has been cut short, whether by the demands of work or by those of fashion, if the body has been starved of oxygen and deprived of sunlight, if the whole system has been kept on the rack, whether in the sweatshop, or in the furnace of affliction, what is the effect on the nervous system? Just what might have been expected. The sense-organs shy, like a frightened horse, at every shadow or fluttering leaf. The conducting wires break, and cross, and tangle in every imaginable fashion. The central exchange, half wild with hunger, or crazed with fatigue-toxins, shrieks out as each distorted message comes in, or sulks because it can't understand them. And then, with charming logicality, we declare that such an one is "all nerves." The brain, by which we mean the biggest one near the mouth,--we have little brains, or _ganglia_ all over our bodies,--so far from being an absolute monarch, is not even a constitutional one, or a president of a republic, but a mere house of congress of the modern type, which can do little but register and obey the demands of its constituents. The brain originates nothing. Impulses are brought to it from the sense-organs by the nerves. They set up in it certain vibrations, or chemical disturbances. It responds to these much as blue litmus paper turns red when a weak acid is dropped on it, or as lemonade fizzes when you put soda in it. If more than one of these vibrations are set up simultaneously, it "chooses" between them, by responding to the strongest. If the response differs from the stimulus, it is because of its huge deference to precedent as established by the records of previous stimuli with which its tissues are stored. This brings us to the interesting and important question, What are the causes of these disturbances of the nerve-tissues? Probably the most important single result that has been reached in our study of nervous diseases in the last fifteen years, is that the cause of them in easily eighty per cent of all cases _lies entirely outside of the nervous system_. The stomach burns, the nerve-tissues send in the fire alarm and order out the engines. The liver goes on a strike, and the body-garbage, which it has failed to burn to clean ashes and clear smoke, poisons the nerve-cells, and they remonstrate accordingly, on behalf of the other tissues. The heart, or blood-vessels, fails to supply a certain muscle with its due rations of blood and the nerves of the region cry out in the agony of cramp. We have discovered, by half a century of careful study in the hospital and in the sick-room, not only that the nerve-tissues are usually poisoned by defect of other tissues of the body, but that they are among the very last of the body-stuffs to succumb to an intoxication. The complications of a given disease involving the nervous system are almost invariably the last of all to appear. This is one of the things that has given nervous diseases such a bad name for unmanageableness and incurableness, and that for years made us regard their study as so nearly hopeless, so far as any helpful results were concerned. When a disease has, so to speak, soaked into the inmost core of the nerve-fibre, it has got a hold which it will take months and even years to dislodge. And before your remedies can reach it, it will often have done irreparable damage. An illustration of the care taken to spare the nervous system is furnished by its behavior in starvation. If a man or an animal has almost died of starvation, the tissues of the body will be found to have been wasted in very varying degrees, the fat, of course, most of all; in fact this will have almost entirely disappeared, all but three per cent. Then come the liver and great glands, which will have shrunk about sixty per cent; then the muscles, thirty per cent; then the heart and blood-vessels. Last of all, the nervous system, which will scarcely have wasted to any appreciable degree. In fact, it is an obvious instance of jettison on the part of the body, throwing overboard those tissues which it could most easily spare, and hanging on like grim death to those which were absolutely essential to its continued existence, viz., the heart and the nervous system. To use a cannibalistic and more correct illustration, it is killing and eating the less useful and valuable members of its family, in order that their flesh may keep alive the two or three most indispensable. Another illustration is the actual behavior of the nerve-stuff in disease. This is most clearly shown in those clear-cut disturbances which are definitely known to be due to a specific infection; in other words, invasion of the body by a disease-organism, or germ. First of all, it may be stated that physicians are now substantially agreed that two-thirds of the general diseases of the nervous system are due to the extension of one of these acute infections to the nerve-tissue; and this extension almost invariably comes late in the disease. The only exceptions to this rule in the whole list of infectious diseases are two, epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis (spotted fever), and tetanus (lockjaw). Both of these have an extraordinary and deadly preference for the nervous system from the very start, and this is what gives them their frightful mortality and discouraging outlook. Even of this small number of exceptions, we are not altogether certain as to epidemic meningitis, inasmuch as we do not know how long the germ may have existed in the other tissues of the body before it succeeded in working its way to and attacking the brain and spinal cord. The case of tetanus, however, is perfectly clear in this regard, and exceedingly interesting, inasmuch as it explains why a disease specially involving the nervous system from the start is so excessively hard to check or cure. The germ of the disease, long ago identified as one having its habitat in farm or garden soils,--particularly those which have been heavily fertilized with horse manure,--gets into the system through a cut or scratch upon the surface, into which the soil is rubbed. These infected cuts, for obvious reasons, are most frequently upon the hands or feet. Small doses of the organism have been injected into animals; then, when they have recovered, larger ones, and so on, after the manner of the bacillus of diphtheria, until a powerful antitoxin can be obtained from their blood, very minute quantities of which will promptly kill the bacilli in a test-tube. For seven or eight years past we have been injecting this into every patient with tetanus that came under our observation, but so far with very limited benefit, even though the injections were made directly into the spinal cord, or brain substance. The problem puzzled us for years, until finally Cattani stumbled upon the explanation. While we had been supposing that the poison was carried, as almost every other known poison is, through the blood-vessels, or lymph-channels, to the heart and thence to the brain, he clearly proved that it ran up the central axis of the nerve-trunks, and consequently, when it had got once fairly started up this channel, was as safe from the attack of any antitoxin merely present in the general circulation and fluids of the body, as the copper of the Atlantic cable is from the eroding action of the sea-water. If, in his experimental animals, he carefully sought for the cut end of the nerve-trunk in the wound that had been infected, and injected the antitoxin directly into that, the disease was stopped. Or it might even be "headed off" by the crude method of cutting directly across the nerve-trunk at a point above that yet reached by the infection. The commonest and most fatal of all forms of general diseases of the nervous system are those which are due to the later extensions of general infections. First and foremost stands syphilis, due to the invasion of the blood by a clearly defined _spirillum_, the _Treponema pallida_ of Schaudinn. This first attacks the mucous membranes of the throat and mouth, then the skin, then the great internal organs like the liver and stomach, then the bones, and, last of all, the nervous system. The length of time which the poison takes to reach the nervous system is something which at first sight is almost incredible, viz., from one and a half to fifteen years. It is true that in rare instances brain symptoms will manifest themselves within six or eight months; but these are usually due to pressure by inflammatory growths on the bones of the skull and its lining membrane (_dura mater_). It is not too much to say that this disease plays the greatest single rôle in nervous pathology. Three of the commonest and most fatal diseases of the spinal cord and brain, _paresis_ (general paralysis of the insane), _locomotor ataxia_, and _lateral sclerosis_, are due to it. Naturally, when a poison has taken a decade or a decade and a half to penetrate to the nerve-tissues, it does irreparable damage long before it can be dislodged or neutralized. A similar aftermath may occur in almost all of the acute infectious diseases. Every year adds a new one to the list capable of causing cerebral complications. Tuberculosis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid, smallpox, influenza, have now well-recognized cerebral and nervous complications, some temporary, some permanent. A form of tuberculosis attacking the coverings (_meninges_) of the brain--hence known as meningitis--is far the commonest fatal brain-disease of infancy and childhood. Perhaps the most striking illustration of just how acute affections attack the nervous system, is that furnished by diphtheria. A child develops an attack of this disease, passes the crisis safely, and begins to recover. A few days later, it is allowed to sit up in bed. Suddenly, after some slight exertion, or often without any apparent cause, the face blanches, the eyes stare widely, the child gasps two or three times, and is dead: sudden heart failure, due to the poisoning either of the heart muscle itself, or of the nerves supplying the heart, by the toxin of the disease. Moral: Keep diphtheria patients strictly at rest in bed for at least a week after the crisis is past. Another case will pass this period safely, though perhaps with a rapid and weak heart, for days or weeks; then one morning the child will choke when swallowing milk. The next time it is attempted, the milk, instead of going down the throat, comes back through the nostrils. Paralysis of the soft palate has developed, apparently from a local saturation of the nerves with the poison. This may go no further, or it may extend, as it commonly does, to the nerves of the eye, and the child squints and can no longer read, if old enough, because the muscle of accommodation also is paralyzed. The arms and limbs may be affected, and in extreme cases the nerves of respiration supplying the diaphragm may be involved, and the child dies of suffocation. In the majority of cases, however, fortunately, after this paralysis has lasted from three to six weeks, it gradually subsides, and may clear up completely, though not at all infrequently one or more muscles may remain permanently damaged by the attack, giving, for instance, a palatal tone to the voice, or interfering with the production of singing tones. Occasionally a permanent squint may follow. It might be said in passing, that, with one of the charming logicalities of popular reasoning, these nerve complications have been said to be _caused by_ antitoxin, simply because the use of the antitoxin saves more children alive to develop them. The next group of nervous diseases may be roughly described as due to the failure of some part of the digestive system, like the stomach and intestines, properly to elaborate its food; or of one of the great glands, like the liver, thyroid, or suprarenal, properly to supply its secretion, which is needed to neutralize the poisons normally produced in the body. This class is very large and very important. It has long been known how surely a disordered liver "predicts damnation"; melancholia, or "black bilious condition," hypochondria, or "under the rib-cartilages" (where the liver lies), are every-day figures of speech. A thorough house-cleaning of the alimentary canal, together with proper stimulation of the skin and kidneys, and an intelligent regulation of diet, are our most important measures in the treatment of diseases of the nervous system, even in those extreme forms known as insanity. Closely allied to these are those disturbances of the nervous system lumped together under the soul-satisfying designation of "neurasthenia," which are chiefly due to the accumulation in the system of the fatigue poisons, or substances due to prolonged overstrain, under-rest, or underfeeding of the system. Neurasthenia is the "fatigue neurosis," as a leading expert terms it. It may be due to any morbid condition under heaven. It is "that blessed word Mesopotamia" of the slipshod diagnostician. Nearly one-fourth of the cases which come into our sanatoria for tuberculosis have been diagnosed and treated for months and even years as "neurasthenia." It satisfies the patient--and it means nothing; though some experts contend for a distinct disease entity of this name but admit its rarity. The intelligent neurologist, nowadays, has practically no known specific for any form of nervous disease, no remedy which acts directly and curatively upon the nervous system itself. He relies chiefly--and this applies to the asylum physician also--upon intestinal antisepsis, upon rest, upon baths, upon regulation diet, and habits of life. A number of the more sudden and fatal disturbances of the nervous system, as for instance, the familiar "stroke of paralysis," or apoplexy, of later middle life, are due to a defect, not in the nervous system at all, but in the blood-vessels supplying the brain; rupture of a vessel, and consequent escape of blood, destroys so much of the surrounding brain-tissue as to produce paralysis, and, in extreme cases, death. Just why the blood-vessels of the brain in general, and of one part of the basal ganglia in particular (the _Lenticulostriate_ artery in the internal capsule of the _corpus striatum_, the old jaw ganglion), are so liable to rupture we do not know; but it certainly is chiefly from a defect of the blood-vessels, and not of the brain. All of which brings us to the following important practical conclusions. First of all, that every attack or touch, however light, of "nervousness," "nerves," "imagination," "neurasthenia," yes, hysteria, _means_ something. It is the cry of protest of a smaller or larger part of the nervous system against underfed blood, under-ventilated muscles, lack of sunlight, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, excess of work, or bad habits. In other words, it is the danger signal, the red light showing the open switch, and we will disregard it at our peril. Unfortunately, by that power of _esprit de corps_ of the entire system, known as "pluck" or "grit," or the veto-power, physiologically termed inhibition, we may ignore and for a time suppress the symptom, but this in the long run is just as rational as cutting the wire that rings a fire alarm, or blowing out the red light without closing the switch. Nervousness is a _symptom_ which should always have _something done for it_, especially in children. In fact, it has passed into an axiom both with intelligent teachers and with physicians who have much to do with the little ones, that crossness, fretfulness, laziness, lack of initiative, and readiness to weep, in children, are almost invariably the signs of physical disease. And this doctrine will apply to a considerable percentage of children of larger growth. Unfortunately, one of the first and most decided tendencies on the part of the badly fed or poisoned nervous system, is to exaggerate the difficulties of the situation, and to minimize its good features. The individual "has lost his nerve," is afraid to undertake things, shrinks from responsibility, exaggerates the difficulties that may be in the way; hence the floods of tears, or outbursts of temper, with which nervous children will greet the suggestion of any task or duty, however trifling. If the nervous individual has reached that stage of maturity when she realizes that she is not merely "naughty," but sick, then this same process applies itself to her disease. She is sure that she is going to die, that another attack like that will end in paralysis; as a patient of mine once expressed it to me, "My heart jumps up in my mouth, I bite a couple of pieces off it, and it falls back again." In short, she so obviously and grossly exaggerates every symptom and phase of her disease, that the impression irresistibly arises that the disease itself is a fabrication. This view of her condition by her family or her physician is the tragedy of the neurasthenic. Broadly speaking, _no_ disease, even of the nervous system, is ever purely imaginary. Some part of the patient's nervous system is poisoned, or he would not imagine himself to be sick. We can all of us find trouble enough in some part of our complex bodily machinery, if we go around hunting for it; but this is precisely what the healthy man, or woman, _never_ does. They have other things to occupy them, and are far more liable to run into danger by pushing ahead at full steam, and neglecting small creakings and jarrings until something important in the gear jams, or goes snap, and brings them to a halt, than they are to be wasting time and energy worrying over things that may never happen. Worry, in fact, is a sign of disease instead of a cause. To put it very crudely, whenever the blood and fluids of a body become impoverished below a certain degree, or become loaded with fatigue poisons, or other waste products above a certain point, then the nervous system proceeds to make itself felt. Either the perceptive end-organs become color-blind and read yellow for blue, or are astigmatic and report oval for round; or the conducting nerve-strands tangle up the messages, or deliver them to the wrong centre; or the central clearing-house, puzzled by the crooked messages, loses its head, and begins to throw the inkstands about, or goes down in a sulk. In other words, the nervous system goes on a strike. But it is perfectly idle to endeavor to treat it with cheering words, or kindly meant falsehoods, to the effect that "nothing is really the matter." Like any other strike, it can be rationally dealt with only by improving the conditions under which the operatives have to work, and meeting their demands for higher wages, or shorter hours. We were accustomed at one time to divide diseases into two great classes, organic and functional. By the former, we meant those in which there was some positive defect of structure, which could be recognized by the eye or the microscope; by the latter, those diseases in which this could not be discovered, in which, so to speak, the machine was all right, but simply wouldn't work. It goes without saying that the latter class was simply a confession of our ignorance, and one which is steadily and rapidly diminishing as science progresses. If the machine won't work, there is a reason for it somewhere, and our business is to find it out, and not loftily to assure our patients that there is nothing much the matter, and all they need is rest, or a little cheerful occupation. Furthermore, the most inane thing that a sympathizing friend or kindly physician can do to a neurasthenic, is to advise him to take his mind off himself or his symptoms. The utter inability to do that very thing is one of the chief symptoms of the disease, which will not disappear until the underlying cause has been carefully studied out and removed. "Nerves," "neurasthenia," "psychasthenia," and "hysteria," are all the names of _symptoms_ of _definite bodily disease_. The modern physician regards it as his duty to study out and discover the nature of this disease, and, if possible, remove it, rather than to give high-sounding, soul-satisfying names to the symptoms, and advise the patient to "cheer up"; which advice costs nothing--and is worth just what it costs. "But," some one will say at once, "if nervous diseases are simply the reflection of general bodily states, as sanitary conditions improve under civilization, should they not become less frequent? And yet, any newspaper will tell you that nervous diseases are rapidly on the increase." This is a widespread belief, not only on the part of the public, but of many scientists and a considerable number of physicians; but it is, I believe, unfounded. In the first place, we have no reliable statistical basis for a positive statement, either one way or another. Our ignorance of the precise prevalence of disease in savagery, in barbarism, and even under civilization up to fifty years ago, is absolute and profound. It is only since 1840 that vital statistics of any value, except as to gross deaths and births, began to be kept. So far as we are able to judge from our study of savage tribes by the explorer, the army surgeon, and the medical missionary, the savage nervous system is far less well balanced and adjustable than that of civilized man. Hysteria, instead of occurring only in individual instances, attacks whole villages and tribes. In fact, the average savage lives in a state alternating between naïve and childish self-satisfaction and panic-stricken terror, with their resultant cowardice and cruelty on the one hand, and unbridled lust and delusions of grandeur on the other. The much-vaunted strain of civilization upon the nervous system is not one-fifth that of savagery. Think of living in a state when any night might see your village raided, your hut burned, yourself killed or tortured at the stake, and your wife and children carried into slavery. Read the old hymns and see how devoutly thankful our pious ancestors _were every day_ at finding themselves alive in the morning,--"Safely through another night,"--and fancy the nerve-strain of never knowing, when you lay down to sleep, whether some one of the djinns, or voodoos, or vampires would swoop down upon you before morning. Think of facing death by famine every winter, by drought or cyclone every summer, and by open war or secret scalp-raid every month in the year; and then say that the racking nerve-strain of the commuter's time-table, the deadly clash of the wheat-pit, or the rasping grind of office-hours, would be ruinous to the uncivilized nervous system. Certainly, in those belated savages, the dwellers in our slums, hysteria, diseases of the imagination, enjoyment of ill health, and the whole brood of functional nervous disturbances are just as common as they are on Fifth Avenue. It is not even certain that insanity is increasing. Insanity is quite common among savages; just how common is difficult to say, on account of their peculiar methods of treating it. The stupid and the dangerous forms are very apt to be simply knocked on the head, while the more harmless and fantastic varieties are turned into priests and prophets and become the founders of the earlier religions. A somewhat similar state of affairs of course prevailed among civilized races up to within the last three-quarters of a century. The idiot and the harmless lunatic were permitted to run at large, and the latter, as court and village fools, furnished no small part of popular entertainment, since organized into vaudeville. Only the dangerous or violent maniacs were actually shut up; consequently, the number of insane in a community a century ago refers solely to this class. Hence, in every country where statistics have been kept, as larger and larger percentages of these unfortunates have been gathered into hospitals, where they can be kindly cared for and intelligently treated, the number of the registered insane has steadily increased up to a certain point. This was reached some fifteen years ago in Great Britain, in Germany, in Sweden, and in other countries which have taken the lead in asylum reform, and has remained practically stationary since, at the comparatively low rate of from two to three per thousand living. This limit shows signs of having been reached in the United States already; and this gradual increase of recognition and registration is the only basis for the alleged increase of insanity under modern conditions. It is also a significant fact that the lower and less favorably situated stratum of our population furnishes not only the largest number of inmates, but the largest percentage of insanity in proportion to their numbers, while the most highly educated and highly civilized classes furnish the lowest. Immigrants furnish nearly three times as many inmates per thousand to our American asylums as the native born. It is, however, true that in each succeeding census a steadily increasing number and percentage of the deaths is attributed to diseases of the nervous system. This, however, does not yet exceed fifteen or twenty per cent of the whole, which would be, so to speak, the natural probable percentage of deaths due to failure of one of the five great systems of the body: the digestive, the respiratory, the circulatory, the glandular, the nervous. Two elements may certainly be counted upon as contributing in very large degree to this apparent increase. One is the enormous saving of life which has been accomplished by sanitation and medical progress during the first five years of life, infant mortality having been reduced in many instances fifty to sixty per cent, thus of course leaving a larger number of individuals to die later in life by the diseases especially of the blood-vessels, kidneys, and nervous system, which are most apt to occur after middle life. The other is the great increase in medical knowledge, resulting in the more accurate discovery of the causes of death, and a more correct reporting and classifying of the same. In short, a careful review of all the facts available to date leads us decidedly to the conclusion that the nervous system is the toughest and most resisting tissue of the body, and that its highest function, the mind, has the greatest stability of any of our bodily powers. Only one man in six dies of disease of the nervous system, as contrasted with nearly one in three from diseases of the lungs; and only one individual in four hundred becomes insane, as contrasted with from three to ten times that number whose digestive systems, whose locomotor apparatus, whose heart and blood-vessels become hopelessly deranged without actually killing them. CHAPTER XIX MENTAL INFLUENCE IN DISEASE, OR HOW THE MIND AFFECTS THE BODY One of the dearest delusions of man through all the ages has been that his body is under the control of his mind. Even if he didn't quite believe it in his heart of hearts, he has always wanted to. The reason is obvious. The one thing that he felt absolutely sure he could control was his own mind. If he couldn't control that, what could he control? Ergo, if man could control his mind and his mind could control his body, man is master of his fate. Unfortunately, almost in proportion as he becomes confident of one link in the chain he becomes doubtful of the other. Nowadays he has quite as many qualms of uncertainty as to whether he can control his mind as about the power of his mind over his body. By a strange paradox we are discovering that our most genuine and lasting control over our minds is to be obtained by modifying the conditions of our bodies, while the field in which we modify bodily conditions by mental influence is steadily shrinking. For centuries we punished the sick in mind, the insane, loading them with chains, shutting them up in prison-cells, starving, yes, even flogging them. We exorcised their demons, we prayed over them, we argued with them,--without the record of a single cure. Now we treat their sick and ailing bodies just as we would any other class of chronic patients, with rest, comfortable surroundings, good food, baths, and fresh air, correction of bad habits, gentleness, and kindness, leaving their minds and souls practically without treatment, excepting in so far as ordinary, decent humanity and consideration may be regarded as mental remedies,--and we cure from thirty to fifty per cent, and make all but five per cent comfortable, contented, comparatively happy. We are still treating the inebriate, the habitual drunkard, as a minor criminal, by mental and moral means--with what hopeful results let the disgraceful records of our police courts testify. We are now treating truancy by the removal of adenoids and the fitting of glasses; juvenile crime by the establishment of playgrounds; poverty and pauperism by good food, living wages, and decent surroundings; and all for the first time with success. In short, not only have all our substantial and permanent victories over bodily ills been won by physical means, but a large majority of our successes in mental and moral diseases as well. Yet the obsession persists, and we long to extend the realm of mental treatment in bodily disease. That the mind does exert an influence over the body, and a powerful one, in both health and disease, is obvious. But what we are apt to forget is that the whole history of the progress of medicine has been a record of diminishing resort to this power as a means of cure. The measure of our success and of our control over disease has been, and is yet, in exact proportion to the extent to which we can relegate this resource to the background and avoid resorting to it. Instead of mental influence being the newest method of treatment it is the oldest. Two-thirds of the methods of the shaman, the witch-doctor, the medicine-man, were psychic. Instead of being an untried remedy, it is the most thoroughly tested, most universal, most ubiquitous remedy listed anywhere upon the pages of history, and, it may be frankly stated, in civilized countries, as widely discredited as tested. The proportion to which it survives in the medicine of any race is the measure of that race's barbarism and backwardness. To-day two of the most significant criteria of the measure of enlightenment and of control over disease of either the medical profession of a nation or of an individual physician are the extent to which they resort to and rely upon mental influence and opium. Psychotherapy and narcotics are, and ever have been, the sheet-anchors of the charlatan and the miracle-worker. The attitude of the medical profession toward mental influence in the treatment of disease is neither friendly nor hostile. It simply regards it as it would any other remedial agency, a given drug, for instance, a bath, or a form of electricity or light. It is opposed to it, if at all, only in so far as it has tested it and found it inferior to other remedies. Its distrust of it, so far as this exists, is simply the feeling that it has toward half a hundred ancient drugs and remedial agencies which it has dropped from its list of working remedies as obsolete, many of which still survive in household and folk medicine. My purpose is neither to champion it nor to discredit it, and least of all to antagonize or throw doubt upon any of the systems of philosophy or of religion with which it has been frequently associated, but merely to attempt to present a brief outline of its advantages, its character, and its limitations, exactly as one might of, say, calomel, quinine, or belladonna. As in the study of a drug, the chief points to be considered are: What are its actual powers? What effects can be produced with it, both in health and sickness? What are the diseases in which such effects may be useful, and how frequent are they? In what way does it produce its effects, directly or indirectly? The first and most striking claim that is made for mental influence in disease is based upon the allegation that it has the power of producing disease and even death; the presumption, of course, being that, if able to produce these conditions, it would certainly have some influence in removing or preventing them. Upon this point the average man is surprisingly positive and confident in his convictions. Popular literature and legend are full of historic instances where individuals have not merely been made seriously ill but have even been killed by powerful impressions upon their imaginations. Most men are ready to relate to you instances that have been directly reported to them of persons who were literally frightened to death. But the moment that we come to investigate these widely quoted and universally accepted instances, we find ourselves in a curious position. On the one hand, merely a series of vague tales and stories, without date, locality, name, or any earmark by which they can be identified or tested. On the other, a collection of rare and extraordinary instances of sudden death which have happened to be preceded by a powerful mental impression, many of which bear clearly upon their face the imprint of death by rupture of a blood-vessel, heart failure, or paralysis, in the course of some well-marked and clearly defined chronic disease, like valvular heart-mischief, diabetes, or Bright's disease. Upon investigation most of these cases which have been seen by a physician previous to death have been recognized as subject to a disease likely to terminate in sudden death; and practically all in which a post-mortem examination has been made have shown a definite physical cause of death. The fright, anger, or other mental impression, was merely the last straw, which, throwing a sudden strain upon already weakened vessels, heart, or brain, precipitated the final catastrophe. In some cases, even the sense of fright and the premonition of approaching death were merely the first symptoms of impending dissolution. The stories of death from purely imaginative impressions, such as the victims being told that they were seriously ill, that they would die on or about such and such a date, fall into two great classes. The first of these--involving death at a definite date, after it had been prophesied either by the victim or some physician or priest--may be dismissed in a few words, as they lead at once into the realm of prophecy, witchcraft, and voodoo. Most of them are little better than after-echoes of the ethnic stories of the "evil eye," and of bewitched individuals fading away and dying after their wax image has been stuck full of pins or otherwise mutilated. There have occurred instances of individuals dying upon the date at which some one in whose powers of prophecy they had confidence declared they would, or even upon a date on which they had settled in their own minds, and announced accordingly; but these are so rare as readily to come within the percentage probabilities of pure coincidence. Most such prophecies fail utterly; but the failures are not recorded, only the chance successes. The second group of these alleged instances of death by mental impression is in most singular case. Practically every one with whom you converse, every popular volume of curiosities which you pick up, is ready to relate one or more instances of such an event. But the more you listen to these relations, the more familiar do they become, until finally they practically simmer down to two stock legends, which we have all heard related in some form. First, and most famous, is the story of a vigorous, healthy man accosted by a series of doctors at successive corners of the street down which he is walking, with the greeting:-- "Why, my dear Mr. So-and-So, what is the matter? How ill you look!" He becomes alarmed, takes to his bed, falls into a state of collapse, and dies within a few days. The other story is even more familiar and dramatic. Again it is a group of morbidly curious and spiteful doctors who desire to see whether a human being can be killed by the power of his imagination. A condemned criminal is accordingly turned over to them. He is first allowed to see a dog bled to death, one of the physicians holding a watch and timing the process with, "Now he is growing weaker! Now his heart is failing! Now he dies!" Then, after having been informed that he is to be bled to death instead of guillotined, his eyes are bandaged and a small, insignificant vein in his arm is opened. A basin is held beneath his arm, into which is allowed to drip and gurgle water from a tube so as to imitate the sounds made by the departing life-blood. Again the death-watch is set and the stages of his decline are called off: "Now he weakens! Now his heart is failing!" until finally, with the solemn pronouncement, "Now he dies!" he falls over, gasps a few times and is dead, though the total amount of blood lost by him does not exceed a few teaspoonfuls. A variant of the story is that the trick was played for pure mischief in the initiation ceremonies of some lodge or college fraternity, with the horrifying result that death promptly resulted. The stories seem to be little more than pure creatures of the same force whose power they are supposed to illustrate, amusing and dramatic fairy-tales, handed down from generation to generation from Heaven knows what antiquity. Death under such circumstances as these _may_ have occurred, but the proofs are totally lacking. One of our leading neurologists, who had extensively experimented in hypnotism and suggestion, declared a short time ago: "I don't believe that death was ever caused solely by the imagination." Now as to the scope of this remedy, the extent of the field in which it can reasonably be expected to prove useful. This discussion is, of course, from a purely physical point of view. But it is, I think, now generally admitted, even by most believers in mental healing, that it is only, at best, in rarest instances that mental influence can be relied upon to cure organic disease, namely, disease attended by actual destruction of tissue or loss of organs, limbs, or other portions of the body. This limits its field of probable usefulness to the so-called "functional diseases," in which--to put it crudely--the body-machine is in apparently perfect or nearly perfect condition, but will not work; and particularly that group of functional diseases which is believed to be due largely to the influence of the imagination. Nowhere can the curious exaggeration and over-estimation of the real state of affairs in this field be better illustrated than in the popular impression as to the frequency in actual practice of "imaginary" diseases. Take the incidental testimony of literature, for instance, which is supposed to hold the mirror up to nature, to be a transcript of life. The pages of the novel are full, the scenes of the drama are crowded with imaginary invalids. Not merely are they one of the most valuable stock properties for the humorist, but whole stories and comedies have been devoted to their exploitation, like Molière's classic "Le Malade Imaginaire," and "Le Médecin Malgré Lui." Generation after generation has shaken its sides until they ached over these pompous old hypochondriacs and fussy old dowagers, whose one amusement in life is to enjoy ill health and discuss their symptoms. They are as indispensable members of the _dramatis personæ_ of the stock company of fiction as the wealthy uncle, the crusty old bachelor, and the unprotected orphan. Even where they are only referred to incidentally in the course of the story, you are given to understand that they and their kind furnish the principal source of income for the doctor; that if he hasn't the tact to humor or the skilled duplicity to plunder and humbug these self-made sufferers, he might as well retire from practice. In short, the entire atmosphere of the drama gives the strong impression that if people--particularly the wealthy classes--would shake themselves and go about their business, two-thirds of the illness in the world would disappear at once. Much of this may, of course, be accounted for by the delicious and irresistible attractiveness, for literary purposes, of this type of invalid. Genuine, serious illness, inseparable from suffering and ending in death, is neither a cheerful, an interesting, nor a dramatic episode, except in very small doses, like a well-staged death-bed or a stroke of apoplexy, and does not furnish much valuable material for the novelist or the play-writer. Battle, murder, and sudden death, while horrible and repulsive, can be contemplated with vivid, gruesome interest, and hence are perfectly available as interest producers. But much as we delight to talk about our symptoms, we are never particularly interested in listening to those of others, still less in seeing them portrayed upon the stage. On account of their slow course, utter absence of picturesqueness, and depressing character, the vast majority of diseases are quite unsuitable for artistic material. In fact, the literary worker is almost limited to a mere handful, at one extreme, which will produce sudden and dramatic effects, like heart failure, apoplexy, or the ghastly introduction of a "slow decline" for a particularly pathetic effect; and at the other extreme, those imaginary diseases, migraines and vapors, which furnish amusement by their sheer absurdity. Be that as it may, such dramatic and literary tendencies have produced their effect, and the popular impression of the doctor is that of a man who spends his time between rushing at breakneck speed to save the lives of those who suddenly find themselves _in articulo mortis_ and will perish unless he gets there within fifteen minutes, and dancing attendance upon a swarm of old hypochondriacs, neurotics, and nervous dyspeptics, of both sexes. As a matter of fact, these two supposed principal occupations of the doctor are the smallest and rarest elements in his experience. A few years ago a writer of world-wide fame deliberately stated, in the course of a carefully considered and critical discussion of various forms of mental healing, that it was no wonder that these methods excited huge interest and wide attention in the community, because, if valid, they would have such an enormous field of usefulness, seeing that at least seven-tenths of all the suffering which presented itself for relief to the doctor was imaginary. This, perhaps, is an extreme case, but is not far from representing the general impression. If a poll were to be taken of five hundred intelligent men and women selected at random, as to how much of the sufferings of all invalids, or sick people who are not actually obviously "sick unto death" or ill of a fever, was real and how much imaginary, the estimate would come pretty close to an equal division. But when one comes to try to get at the actual facts, an astonishingly different state of affairs is revealed. I frankly confess that my own awakening was a matter of comparatively recent date. A friend of mine was offered a position as consulting physician to a large and fashionable sanatorium. He hesitated because he was afraid that much of his time would be wasted in listening to the imaginary pains, and soothing the baseless terrors, of wealthy and fashionable invalids, who had nothing the matter with them except--in the language of the resort--"nervous prosperity." His experience was a surprise. At the end of two years he told me that he had had under his care between six and seven hundred invalids, a large percentage of whom were drawn from the wealthier classes; and out of this number there were _only five_ whose sufferings were chiefly attributable to their imagination. Many of them, of course, had comparatively trivial ailments, and others exaggerated the degree or mistook the cause of their sufferings; but the vast majority of them were, as he naïvely expressed it, "really sick enough to be interesting." This set me to thinking, and I began by making a list of all the "imaginary invalids" I had personally known, and to my astonishment raked up, from over twenty years' medical experience, barely a baker's dozen. Inquiries among my colleagues resulted in a surprisingly similar state of affairs. While most of them were under the general impression that at least ten to twenty per cent of the illnesses presenting themselves were without substantial physical basis and largely imaginary in character, when they came actually to cudgel their memories for well-marked cases and to consult their records, they discovered that their memories had been playing the same sort of tricks with them that the dramatists and novelists had with popular impressions. Within the past few months one of the leading neurologists of New York, a man whose practice is confined exclusively to mental and nervous diseases, stated in a public address that purely or even chiefly imaginary diseases were among the rarer conditions that the physician was called upon to treat. Shortly after, two of the leading neurologists of Philadelphia, one of them a man of international reputation, practically repeated this statement; and they put themselves on record to the effect that the vast majority of those who imagined themselves to be ill were ill, though often not to the degree or in precisely the manner that they imagined themselves to be. Obviously, then, this possible realm of suffering in which the mind can operate is very much more limited than was at one time believed. In fact, imaginary diseases might be swept out of existence, and humanity would scarcely know the difference, so little would the total sum of its suffering be reduced. Another field in which there has been much general misunderstanding and looseness of both thought and statement, which has again led to exaggerated ideas of the direct influence of the mind over the body, is the well-known effect of emotional states, such as fright or anger, upon the ordinary processes of the body. Instances of this relation are, of course, household words,--the man whose "hair turned white in a single night" from grief or terror; the nursing mother who flew into a furious fit of passion and whose child was promptly seized with convulsions and died the next time it was put to the breast; the father who is prostrated by the death or disgrace of a favorite son, and dies within a few weeks of a broken heart. The first thing that is revealed by even a brief study of this subject is that these instances are exceedingly rare, and owe their familiarity in our minds to their striking and dramatic character and the excellent "material" which they make for the dramatist and the gossip. It is even difficult to secure clear and valid proof of the actual occurrence of that sudden blanching of the hair, which has in the minds of most of us been accepted from our earliest recollection. More fundamental, however, and vital, is the extent to which we have overlooked the precise method in which these violent emotional impressions alter bodily activities, like the secretions. Granting, for the sake of argument, that states of mind, especially of great tension, have some direct and mysterious influence as such, and through means which defy physical recognition and study, it must be remembered that they have a perfectly definite physiological sphere of influence upon vital activities. Indeed, we are already in a position to explain at least two-thirds of these so-called "mental influences" upon purely physical and physiological grounds. First of all, we must remember that these emotions which we are pleased to term "states of mind" are also states of body. If any man were to stand up before you, for instance, either upon the stage or in private, and inform you that he was "scared within an inch of his life," without tremor in his voice, or paling of his countenance, or widening eyes, or twitching muscles, or preparations either to escape or to fight, you would simply laugh at him. You would readily conclude, either that he was making fun of you and felt no such emotion, or that he was repressing it by an act of miraculous self-control. The man who is frightened and doesn't do anything or look as if he were going to do anything, the man who is angry and makes no movement or even twitching suggesting that fact, is neither angry nor frightened. An emotional state is, of course, a peculiarly complex affair. First, there is the reception of the sensation, sight, sound, touch, or smell, which terrifies. This terror is a secondary reaction, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is conditioned upon our memory of previous similar objects and their dangerousness, or our recollection of what we have been told about their deadliness. Then instantly, irrepressibly, comes the lightning-flash of horror to our heart, to our muscles, to our lungs, to get ready to meet this emergency. Then, and not till then, do we really feel the emotion. In fact, our most pragmatic philosopher, William James, has gone so far as to declare that emotions are the after-echoes of muscular contractions. By the time an emotion has fairly got us in its grip so that we are really conscious of it, the blood-supply of half the organs in our body has been powerfully altered, and often completely reversed. To what extent muscular contractions condition emotions, as Professor James has suggested, may be easily tested by a quaint and simple little experiment upon a group of the smallest voluntary muscles in the body, those that move the eyeball. Choose some time when you are sitting quietly in your room, free from all disturbing thoughts and influences. Then stand up and, assuming an easy position, cast the eyes upward and hold them in that position for thirty seconds. Instantly and involuntarily you will be conscious of a tendency toward reverential, devotional, contemplative ideas and thoughts. Then turn the eyes sideways, glancing directly to the right or to the left, through half-closed lids. Within thirty seconds images of suspicion, of uneasiness, or of dislike, will rise unbidden in the mind. Turn the eyes to one side and slightly downward, and suggestions of jealousy or coquetry will be apt to spring unbidden. Direct your gaze downward toward the floor, and you are likely to go off into a fit of reverie or of abstraction. In fact, as Darwin long ago remarked, quoting in part from Bain: "Most of our emotions [he should have said all] are so closely connected with their expression that they hardly exist if the body remains passive. As Louis XVI, facing a mob, exclaimed, 'Afraid? Feel my pulse!' so a man may intensely hate another, but until his bodily frame is affected he can hardly be said to be enraged." And, a little later, from Maudsley:-- "The specific muscular action is not merely an exponent of passion, but truly an essential part of it. If we try, while the features are fixed in the expression of one passion, to call up in the mind a different one, we shall find it impossible to do so." It will also be recollected what an important part in the production of hypnosis and the trance state, fixed and strained positions of these same ocular muscles have always been made to play. Many hypnotists can bring their subjects under their influence solely by having them gaze fixedly at some bright object like a mirror, or into a crystal sphere, for a few minutes or even seconds. A graphic illustration of the importance of muscular action in emotional states is the art of the actor. Not only would it be impossible for an actor to make an audience believe in the genuineness of his supposed emotion if he stood glassy-eyed and wooden-limbed declaiming his lines in a monotone, without gestures or play of expression of any sort, but it would also be impossible for him to feel even the counterfeit sensation which he is supposed to represent. So definite and so well recognized is this connection, that many actors take some little time, as they express it, to "warm up" to their part, and can be visibly seen working themselves up to the pitch of emotion desired for expression by twitching muscles, contractions of the countenance, and catchings of the breath. This last performance, by the way, is not by any means confined to the stage, but may be seen in operation in clashes and disagreements in real life. An individual who knows his case to be weak, or himself to be lacking in determination, can be seen working himself up to the necessary pitch of passion or of obstinacy. There is even a lovely old fairy-tale of our schoolboy days, which is still to be found in ancient works on natural history, to the effect that the King of Beasts himself was provided with a small, horny hook or spur at the end of his tail, with which he lashed himself into a fury before springing upon his enemy! What, then, will be the physical effect of a shock or fright or furious outburst of anger upon the vital secretions? Obviously, that any processes which require a full or unusually large share of blood-supply for their carrying out will be instantly stopped by the diversion of this from their secreting cells, in the wall of the stomach, in the liver, or in the capillaries of the brain, to the great muscular masses of the body, or by some strange, atavistic reflex into the so-called "abdominal pool," the portal circulation. The familiar results are just what might have been expected. The brain is so suddenly emptied of blood that connected thought becomes impossible, and in extreme cases we stand as one paralyzed, until the terror that we would flee from crashes down upon us, or we lose consciousness and swoon away. If the process of digestion happens to be going on, it is instantly stopped, leaving the food to ferment and putrefy and poison the body-tissues which it would otherwise have nourished. The cells of the liver may be so completely deprived of blood as to stop forming bile out of broken-down blood pigment, and the latter will gorge every vessel of the body and escape into the tissues, producing jaundice. Every one knows how the hearing of bad news or the cropping up of disagreeable subjects in conversation at dinner-time will tend to promote indigestion instead of digestion. The mechanism is precisely similar. The disagreeable news, if it concern a financial or executive difficulty, will cause a rush of blood to the brain for the purpose of deciding what is to be done. But this diminishes the proper supply of blood to the stomach and to the digestive glands, just as really as the paralysis of violent fright or an explosion of furious anger. If the unpleasant subject is yet a little more irritating and personal, it will lead to a corresponding set of muscular actions, as evidenced in heightened color, loud tones, more or less violent gesticulation, with marked interruption of both mastication and the secretion of saliva and all other digestive juices. In short, fully two-thirds of the influences of emotional mental states upon the body are produced by their calling away from the normal vital processes the blood which is needed for their muscular and circulatory accompaniments. No matter how bad the news or how serious the danger, if they fail to worry us or to frighten us,--in other words, to set up this complicated train of muscular and blood-supply changes,--then they have little or no effect upon our digestions or the metabolism of our liver and kidneys. The classic "preying upon the damask cheek" of grief, and the carking effect of the Black Care that rides behind the horseman, have a perfectly similar physical mechanism. While the primary disturbance of the banking balances of the body is less, this is continued over weeks and months, and in addition introduces another factor hardly less potent, by interfering with all the healthful, normal, regular habits of the body,--appetite, meal-times, sleep, recreation. These wastings and pinings and fadings away are produced by mental influence, in the sense that they cannot be cured by medicines or relieved at once by the best of hygienic advice; but it is idle to deny that they have also a broad and substantial physical basis, in the extent to which states of emotional agony, despair, or worry interfere with appetite, sleep, and proper exercise and recreation in the open air. Just as soon as they cease to interfere with this normal regularity of bodily functions, the sufferer begins to recover his health. We even meet with the curious paradox of individuals who, though suffering the keenest grief or anxiety over the loss or serious illness of those nearest or dearest to them, are positively mortified and ashamed because their countenances show so little of the pallid hues and the haggard lines supposed to be inseparably associated with grief. So long as the body-surplus is abundant enough to stand the heavy overdrafts made on it by grief and mental distress, without robbing the stomach of its power to digest and the brain of its ability to sleep, the physical effects of grief, and even of remorse, will be slight. It must be remembered that loss of appetite is not in itself a cause of trouble, but a symptom of the stomach's inability to digest food; in this instance, because it finds that it can no longer draw upon the natural resources of the body in sufficient abundance to carry out its operations. The state is exactly like a tightness of the money market, when, on account of unnatural retention or hoarding in some parts of the financial field, the accumulation of sufficient amounts of floating capital at the banks for moving the crop or paying import duties cannot be carried out as usual. The vital system is, in fact, in a state of panic, so that the stomach cannot get the temporary credit or capital which it requires. A similar condition of temporary panic, call it mental or bodily, as you will, occurs in disease and is not confined to the so-called imaginary diseases, or even to the diseases of the nervous system, but is apt to be present in a large number of acute affections, especially those attended by pain. Sudden invasion of the system by the germs of infectious diseases, with their explosions of toxin-shells all through the redoubts of the body, often induces a disturbance of the bodily balance akin to panic. This is usually accompanied and aggravated by an emotional dread and terror of corresponding intensity. The relief of the latter, by the confident assurance of an expert and trusted physician that the chances are ten to one that the disease will run its course in a few days and the patient completely recover,--especially if coupled with the administration of some drug which relieves pain or diminishes congestion in the affected organs,--will often do much toward restoring balance and putting the patient in a condition where the natural recuperative powers of the system can begin their work. The historic popularity of opium, and of late of the coal-tar products (phenacetine and acetanilide), in the beginning of an acute illness, is largely based on the power which they possess of dulling pain, relieving disturbances of the blood-balance, and soothing bodily and mental excitement. Fever-panic or pain-panic, like a banking panic, though it has a genuine and substantial basis, can be dealt with and relieved much more readily after checking excessive degrees of distrust and excitement. An opiate will relieve this physical pain-panic, just as a strong mental impression will relieve the fright-paralysis and emotional panic which often accompany it, and thus give a clearer field and a breathing space for the more slowly acting recuperative powers of nature to assert their influence and get control of the situation. _But neither of them will cure._ The utmost that they can do is to give a breathing spell, a lull in the storm, which the rallying powers of the body, if present, can take advantage of. If the latter, however, be not adequate to the situation, the disease will progress to serious or even fatal termination, just as certainly as if no such influence had been exerted, and often at an accelerated rate. In fact, our dependence upon opiates and mental influence have been both a characteristic and a cause of the Dark Ages of medicine. The more we depended upon these, the more content we were to remain in ignorance of the real causes of disease, whether bodily or mental. The second physical effect produced by mental influence is probably the most important of all, and that is _the extent to which it induces the patient to follow good advice_. We as physicians would be the last to underestimate the importance of the confidence of our patients. But we know perfectly well that our retention of that confidence will depend almost entirely upon the extent to which we can justify it; that its principal value to us lies in the extent to which it will insure prompt obedience to our orders, and intelligent and loyal coöperation with us in our fight against disease. The man who would depend upon the confidence of his patients as a means of healing, would soon find himself without practice. We know by the bitterest of experience that no matter how absolute and boundless the confidence of our patients may be in our ability to heal them, no matter how much they may express themselves as cheered and encouraged by our presence, ninety-nine per cent of the chance of their recovery depends upon the gravity of the disease, the vigor of their powers of resistance, and our skill and intelligence in combating the one and assisting the other. Valuable and helpful as courage and confidence in the sick-room are, they are but a broken reed which will pierce the hand of him who leans upon it too heavily, be he patient or physician. We can all recall, as among our saddest and most heart-breaking experiences, the cases of fatal disease, which were well-nigh hopeless from the start, and yet in which the sufferers expressed, and maintained to the last moments of conscious speech, a bright and pathetically absolute confidence in our powers of healing, based upon our success in some previous case, or upon their own irrepressible hopefulness. Even the deadliest and most serious of infectious diseases, consumption, has--as is well known--as one of its prominent symptoms an irrepressible hopefulness and confidence that they will get well, on the part of a considerable percentage of its victims. This has even been formally designated in the classical medical treatises as the "_Spes Phthisica_," or "Consumptive Hope." But these hopeful consumptives die just as surely as the depressed ones; in fact, if anything, in a little larger proportion. It well illustrates the other side of the shield of hope and confidence, the danger of unwavering expectancy, in that it is chiefly those who are early alarmed and turn vigorously to fight the disease under intelligent medical direction, who make the recoveries. Too serene a courage, too profound a confidence in occult forces, is only a form of fatalism and a very dangerous one. Broadly speaking, mental states in the sick-room are a pretty fair index--I don't mind saying, product--of bodily states. Hopefulness and confidence are usually favorable signs, for the reason that they are most likely to be displayed by individuals who, although they may be seriously ill, are of good physique, have high resisting power, and will make a successful fight against the disease. So, roughly speaking, courage and hopefulness are good omens, on purely physical grounds. But these are only rough indications of probabilities, not reliable signs; and as a rule we are but little affected by either the hopes or the fears of our patients in making up our estimate of their chances. The only mental symptom that weighs heavily with us is indifference. This puts us on the lookout at once. So long as our patients have a sufficiently vivid and lively fear of impending death, we feel pretty sure that they are not seriously ill; but when they assure us dreamily that they "feel first-rate," forget to ask us how they are getting along, or become drowsily indifferent to the outlook for the future, then we redouble our vigilance, for we fear that we recognize the gradual approach of the Great Restbringer, the merciful drowsiness which in nine cases out of ten precedes and heralds the coming of the Long Sleep. Lastly, the cases in which the sufferings of the patient are due chiefly to a morbid action of his or her imagination, are a small percentage of the total of the ills which come before us for relief. But, even of this small percentage, _only a very few are in perfect or even reasonably good physical health_. A large majority of even these neurasthenics, psychasthenics, imaginary invalids, and bodily or mental neurotics, have some physical disturbance, organic or functional, which is the chief cause of their troubles. And the important point is that our success in relieving these sufferers will depend upon our skill in ferreting out this physical basis, and the extent to which we can succeed in correcting or relieving it. We no longer ridicule or laugh at these unfortunates. On the contrary we pity them from the bottom of our hearts, because we know that their sufferings, however polarly remote they may be from endangering their lives in any way, and however imaginary in a purely material sense, are _to them_ real. Their happiness is destroyed and their efficiency is crippled just as genuinely and effectively as if they had a broken limb or a diseased heart. We are now more and more firmly convinced that these patients, however ludicrously absurd their forebodings, are _really sick_, either bodily or mentally, and probably both. A perfectly healthy individual seldom imagines himself or herself to be ill. And as the list of so-called functional diseases--that is to say, those diseases in which no definite, objective mark of degeneration or decay in any tissue or organ can be discovered--are steadily and swiftly diminishing under the scrutiny of the microscope and the methods of the laboratory, so these purely imaginary diseases, these "depressed mental states," these "essential morbid tendencies," are also rapidly diminishing in number, as cases are more conscientiously and personally studied and worked out. Even hysteria is no longer looked upon as sheer perversity on the part of the patient, but is patiently traced back, stage by stage, until if possible the primary "strangulated emotion" which caused it is discovered; and where this can be found the whole morbid tendency can often be relieved and reversed almost as if by magic. To sum up: My contention is, that the direct influence of emotional states upon bodily organs and functions has been greatly exaggerated; that it is exceedingly doubtful whether, for instance, any individual in a reasonable condition of health was ever killed by an imaginary or even an emotional shock; that there is surprisingly little valid evidence that the hair of any human being turned white in a single night, or was completely shed within a few hours, under the influence of fright, terror, or grief; that the effects upon bodily functions and secretions, digestion, etc., produced by emotion, are due to secondary effects of the latter, diverting the energy of the body into other channels and disturbing the general balance of its forces and blood-supply; that the actual percentage of cases in which the imagination plays the chief, or even a dominant part, is small, probably not to exceed five or ten per cent; that a very considerable share of the influence of mental impressions in the cure of disease is due to the relief of mental panic, permitting the rallying of the recuperative powers of the body, and to the extent to which they produce the reform of bad physical habits or surroundings or conditions. The most important element in the cure of disease by mental impression is _time_ plus the _vis medicatrix naturæ_. The mental impression--suggestion, scolding, securing of confidence--diverts the attention of the patient until his own recuperative power and the intelligent correction of bad physical habits remedy his defect. Pure mental impression, however vivid, which is not followed up by improvement of the environment, or correction of bad physical habits, will be almost absolutely sterile. Faith without works is as dead in medicine as in religion. Mental influence is little more than an introduction committee to real treatment. Even the means used for producing mental impressions are physical,--impressions made upon some one of the five senses of the individual. In short, as Barker aptly puts it, "Every psychotherapy is also a physical therapy." Furthermore, even mental worry, distress, or depression, in nine cases out of ten has a physical cause. To remedy conditions of mental stress by correcting the underpay, overwork, bad ventilation, or underfeeding on account of illness or death of the wage-earner of the family, is, of course, nothing but the most admirable common sense; but to call it the _mental_ treatment of disease is a mere juggling with words. "Take care of the body and the mind will take care of itself," is a maxim which will prove valid in actual practice nine times out of ten. INDEX Abernethy, Dr. John, 80. Acne, 38. Acromegaly, 119. Adenoids, 105-122. Air, foul, 97. Alimentary canal, 274-279. Allbutt, Sir Clifford, 134. Allen, Dr. Harrison, 120. Animals, immune to certain diseases, 255. Anti-bodies. _See_ Antitoxins. Antisepsis, 333, 336-339. Antitoxins, or anti-bodies, 9, 93, 94, 199, 200; discovery and use of the diphtheria antitoxin, 230-233, 236, 242, 401; tetanus antitoxin, 345, 346, 398. Apoplexy, 40, 402. Appendicitis, 269-288. Appendix, vermiform, 35, 36, 268-270, 273-279. Asepsis, 333. Asthmatics, 328. Attitude, the upright, 76. Autointoxication, 376. Bacilli. _See_ Bacteria. Bacteria, abundance of, in the body, 10, 99. Bang, Professor, 148. Bath, the cold, 98. Bile, in vomiting, 379. Bites, danger from, 342. Blood, coagulation of, 39, 40. Blood-corpuscles, 24-29. Blood-poisoning, 331-349. Bloodgood, Dr. J. C., 272. Bones, nature of, 20, 21. Boswell, James, 88. Bridge, Dr. Norman, 95. Cæcum, 274-278. Cancer, a rebellion of the cells, 42, 351; heredity and, 50, 51; individuality of, 350; probable nature of, 351; death-rate from, 352, 353; natural history of, 353-364; not communicable, 357, 358; vain search for a parasite, 359, 360; a disease of senility, 363, 364; problems of prevention and cure, 365, 366. Carriage, in illness, 76. Cattani, 398. Cellular theory of disease, 18, 19. Cerebro-spinal meningitis, 397. Chantemesse, 221. Children's diseases, importance of, 243-245; prevention of, 245; dangerous results of, 245, 246; effect on growth and development, 247; reasons for, 248-250; occasional severity of, 251-254; taming of, 253, 254; causes of, 254, 255; treatment of, 255, 256; symptoms of, 256, 257; the three chief, 257-266. Cities, disease and death-rate in, 159-165. Civilization, and nervousness, 406-408. Cleanliness, 98. Cohnheim, 364. Colds, treatment of, 11, 12, 93-101; cause of, 85-93; how to catch, 101, 102; their relation to rheumatism, 320, 321, 323, 324, 326, 327. Colic, 4. Color, in diagnosis, 70-74. Congenital disease, 44, 45. Coughing, use of, 11, 12. Darwin, Charles, quoted, 425, 426. Diagnosis, 55-82. Diarrh[oe]a, use of, 5; treatment of, 5. Diphtheria, 222-242; attacking the nervous system, 400, 401. Disease, causes of, 3; not absolute but relative, 14; former conceptions of, 15-18; organic and functional, 405, 406; mental influence in, 411-437. Drafts, 94, 95, 99. Earache, 110. Edison, Thomas A., 286. Epilepsy, heredity and, 52, 53. Erysipelas, 348. Eustachian tubes, 109, 110. Expectoration, 142, 143. Eye-strain, 377. Facial expression, in diagnosis, 62-70. Fever, meaning of, 7, 8; treatment of, 8-11. Flick, Dr. Laurence, 96. Fly, house, and typhoid, 210, 211. Food-tube, the, 274-279. Gait, in illness, 76-78. Gall-bladder, 37. Grip, the, 90. Guinea-pig, a burnt offering, 222; used in the discovery of the diphtheria antitoxin, 229-231. Hand, the, in diagnosis, 73-75. Harelip, 37. Headache, purpose and meaning of, 12, 13, 367-376; treatment of, 370, 371, 381-386; from eye-strain, 377, 386; from digestive disturbances, 377, 378; sick headache, 378, 379, 381; from stuffy rooms, 380; from sluggish bowels and kidney trouble, 380; from loss of sleep, 380, 381; from nasal obstruction, 381; rest the cure for, 382-384; massage for the relief of, 385, 386; the nerves affected in, 385, 386. Heart, effect of rheumatism on, 314, 315. Heredity, in health and disease, 32-54. Hernia, 36. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 125. Horses, and disease, 344, 345. Hospitals, blood-poisoning and antisepsis in, 335-339. Humoral theory of disease, 17, 18. Huxley, Thomas Henry, quoted, 1, 112, 201. Hysteria, 403, 406, 407, 435. Imaginary illness, 415-422, 436. Immunity, 93. Indians, epidemics among, 251, 252. Indifference of the dying, 434. Infants, diagnosis in the case of, 81, 82. Influenza, 90. Insanity, heredity and, 52-54; among savages and in civilization, 408, 409; treatment of, 411, 412. Intestines, 274. James, William, 425. Johnson, Samuel, 89. Joints, diseases of, 318, 319. King, Dr. Albert F. A., 298. Koch, Robert, 126, 152, 153, 155, 156, 228, 308. Laveran, 295. Lister, Lord, 332. Liver, functions of, 6, 7. Lockjaw, 344-346, 397, 398. Locomotor ataxia, 399; diagnosis of, 77, 78. Lungs, their liability to disease, 175-178. Lupus, 126. Malaria, 289-310. Measles, 243, 246, 248-252, 260-263. Medicines, repulsive, 17. Meningitis, 399, 400. _See also_ Cerebro-spinal meningitis. Mental influence in disease, 411-437. Metschnikoff, Elie, 214. Meyer, William, 105. Mind, its relation to the body, 390, 391, 411-437. Mosquitoes, and malaria, 297-307. Mouth-breathing, 103-119. Moxon, the pathologist, 187. Mumps, 252. Nails, the, in disease, 74, 75; pus-germs lurking under, 334, 336, 349. Nature, as a physician, 2, 3; not to be trusted too blindly, 7; coöperating with, 9. Nerves, affected in headache, 385, 386; old notions of, 387, 388; reality of, 389, 390; function of, 390; their diseases due to morbid changes in their tissues, 391, 392; affected by the bodily condition, 393-395; causes of disturbances in, 395-397; diseases that attack them directly, 397, 398; late effects of other diseases on, 398-401; nervousness and, 401-408; death-rate from diseases of, 409, 410. Nervousness, 403-408. Neurasthenia, 401, 402. Nocard, the veterinary pathologist, 157. Northrup, Dr. William, 196. Noses, narrow, 118, 119. Operations. _See_ Surgery. Opiates, 431, 432. Osler, Dr. William, 160, 282. Ovariotomy, 336. Pain, nature's command to halt, 13, 382; nature's automatic speed regulator, 383. Paresis, 399. Pimples, 38. Pituitary body, 119. Pneumonia, cause of, 84, 85, 88, 178-183, 185, 186; easily recognized, 174, 175; recent increase of, 184, 186; habits of the pneumococcus, 186-191; its relations to age and to other diseases, 192-194; symptoms of, 194, 195; treatment of, 195, 196; outlook as to, 196, 197. Poisons in the body, elimination of, 3-13; from fatigue, 373-376. Psychotherapy, 413. Pus, 331-336; germs of, 339-344, 346-349. Pyæmia, 346. Quinine, 293, 294. Repair of the body in the lower animals, 41, 42. Rheumatism, 311-330. Ross, Dr. Ronald, 247. Savages, nervousness among, 407, 408. Scarlet fever, 243, 247, 257-260. Sciatica, cure of a case of, 389, 390. Sclerosis, lateral, 399. Scrofula, 126. Seasickness, 379. Senn, Dr. Nicholas, 357. Septicæmia, 346. Sleeping porches, 96, 97. Smallpox, 125, 255. Smell, 111. Spitting, 142, 143. Staphylococcus, 339, 340, 343, 348. _See also_ Pus. Sticking-plaster, 343. Stomach, 274. Streptococcus, 339-341, 348. _See also_ Pus. Surgery, and blood-poisoning, 331-339. Syphilis congenital, 44; organism of, 255, 399; attacking the nervous system, 399. Tait, Lawson, 336. Taste, 111. Teeth, crowded, 114, 115. Tetanus, 344-346, 397, 398. Tonsillitis, 320, 323, 324. Tonsils, 107-109, 116-118. Tooth, wisdom, 36, 37. Tuberculosis, congenital, 45; seeming inheritance of, 46-50; diagnosis of, 68, 72; discovery of the bacterial nature of, 123-126; means of fighting, 127, 128; treatment of, 129-132; prevention of, 132, 135-139; universality of, 133, 134; prevention of transmission of, 140-145; in cattle and other animals, 146, 158; encouraging outlook as to, 159-166; civilization and, 166-173; cerebral complications from, 399; hopefulness in, 433. Tumor, Jensen's, 358, 362. Typhoid fever, 199-221. Typhus, 203, 204. Uric acid, 327, 328. Vestigia, 35-39, 268, 269. Virchow, Rudolf, 18. Vis medicatrix naturæ, 2. Voice, in diagnosis, 78. Voltaire, on doctors, 14. Vomiting, use of, 4, 5; from headache and seasickness, 378, 379; bile in, 379. Waters, mineral, 17. Whooping-cough, 244, 246, 249, 263-266. Williams, Dr. Leonard, 93. Williams, Dr. Roger, 364. Wound-fever, among soldiers, 347. Wounds, healing of, 40, 41; blood-poisoning in, 331-335, 341-344; treatment of, 342-344, 346. Wright, Dr., 221. The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 
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What is more is fume, Or emptiness, or fond impertinence, And renders us, in things that most concern, Unpractic'd, unprepar'd, and still to seek." --_Milton's Adam to Angel._= Experience is honored. This book is the result of experience. Man is interested in what pertains to health. We are positive that the ideas herein set forth are healthful. Our profession is not that of a doctor of chemical medicines. We have no hobby to ride or patent panacea to advertise, but desire to express, in plain, forcible, truthful language, the methods by which mankind can practically achieve health, happiness and longevity. These go together. Why should they not? Related, dependent upon each other, the great objects of human life, the culmination of all physical and worldly pleasure are contained in them. Whether you are the perfect embodiment of a business man or the ideal disciple of a certain profession, you cannot possibly reach the highest or even most lucrative grades of your calling without health, happiness, and their logical consequence, longevity. They will prove trusty lieutenants. Without them the battle of life will draw to a close in retreat and end in defeat. To assert that the average man can enjoy health without medicine, happiness without even money, and longevity too, is a broad and sweeping declaration. In fact, we expect to have opposition from those who have not tried the formula laid down in the following pages. To _keep_ yourself in health without medicine is what we intend to convey; and we assert that but little or no medicine is necessary to reach that condition. To have happiness without any money (in the present condition of society) is not what we claim, but that more happiness can be extracted from a competency than by more or less. To live to good old age means with us 80 to 120 years, to increase with future generations, when order, regularity, sobriety, cleanliness, and love for the whole human family, shall be paramount in the political, moral, and intellectual world. The author is living on thirty years of made land. In other words, according to medical diagnosis, he should have _died_ thirty years ago! Hence he desires to put before the unhealthy, unhappy, and short-lived human race the result of his experience of half a century. Having battled with a score of diseases, a number of which were claimed to be absolutely incurable--having freed himself entirely of them all--having been completely restored to health and happiness, he honestly believes that he has a convincing right to be heard. You can now prove for yourself. PART I. CHAPTER I. "Health is the vital principle of bliss, And exercise of health." _Health_, _Happiness_, and _Longevity_. What a talisman is here! In them is the magic that can rule all men. No seal, figure, character, engraven on a sympathetic stone, can equal their single or combined influence. Say to your fellow-man, "If you follow my direction I will confer upon you health, happiness, and longevity," and you will receive his lasting gratitude. He will always be your friend. Money is potent, but these qualities are, as it were, omnipotent. Money alone cannot bring them; they alone can make wealth. This work is _not_ a _philosophical_ treatise, difficult to read and more so to comprehend. Its ideas are simple, the result of long _experience_ and _observation_. Its propositions are easily demonstrated. Then, my reader, do not think you are perusing the hobbies of a crank, the fantasies of a dreamer, and the preachings of him who does not practice. The world has been so flooded with worthless productions of such characters that we fear we must combat severe _prejudice_. Will you lay that aside? If so we will not only interest but instruct you. Agreeing with our premises and conclusions, you will certainly reap some benefit; not agreeing, you will be tempted to further investigation, which will inevitably prove the strength of our position. This book was not written at one sitting or many, but it is the culmination of several _years' preparation_. While the first part is the result of thorough reasoning and experience, the second is a collection of the best modern data on prominent diseases and their remedies, with our own annotations. Both sections represent thoughtful and painstaking labor. Even if you are so bold as to maintain that you possess health, happiness, and are sure of longevity, we believe you cannot fail to find practical, valuable truths in these pages. Whether you are an editor, merchant, lawyer, doctor, minister, or day-laborer, we hope at least to entertain you. Are we right? Read and judge. From the mythological times of _Æsculapius_ down to the present day, votaries of medical science have been compounding, diagnosing, and prescribing for helpless, suffering humanity. For many ages this condition may have been a necessity, but in the light of our present civilization, sound common sense is the best physician. That _doctors_ cannot be trusted to be right in every instance or even in a majority of them is shown by practical experiments. They certainly are well proved to be an inharmonious crowd by the experience of a _Boston Globe_ reporter, who recently called upon ten regular physicians on the same day, and described his symptoms in exactly the same language to each. He received ten prescriptions, of which no two were alike, and a majority were utterly inconsistent each with the other. _Nellie Bly_, the famous lady writer of the New York _World_, had a cold and went to over fifty of the city's leading physicians, in October, 1889, asking them to prescribe for her. They did, and among the collection there were no two alike, and many diametrically opposite in nature and effect! In a lecture recently delivered before the Cooper Medical College, San Francisco, Cal., on the subject of "Quacks and Quackery," by Prof. L. C. Lane, the speaker said: "Every good thing in the world has been counterfeited, and in these advanced times the work is so well done that it takes an expert to detect the true from the false. Everything is now more or less adulterated, especially the food we consume. The three great professions also of theology, law, and medicine, have been and are grossly counterfeited, especially the latter, which opens up the widest field for imposture." As the above quotations, without an explanation, might convey the idea to the reader that the author considers that doctors, dentists, and specialists are no longer a necessity, I will say, Under the present state of society, they are not only indispensable, but absolutely a necessity. When you are ill, and do not know what is the matter with you, or if you know the nature of your ailments, and do not know a remedy, seek a first-class physician; take his advice in every particular until he either cures you or you are convinced he cannot. I am not a prophet, nor the son of one, but I will venture an opinion that before the close of the next century, the position of the minister, teacher, and physician will be filled by one and the same person. The teacher _then_ will fill the most exalted position on the earth. He will not only instruct how to navigate the air without collision, but how not to catch cold at 30,000 feet elevation in your shirt sleeves, and _who_ and _what_ is _God_. His school-house will sit upon the most elevated spot in his district, with light reflected from all four sides; it will be at least fifty feet from the floor of his school-room to the ceiling; and in place of a steeple, there will be a dome, containing a 100-inch refractor telescope, and with the extra timber not used for a _steeple_, the seats will be made more comfortable, and pure filtered water will be supplied for the pupils to drink. It is granted that the majority of mankind appreciate health, desire happiness, and expect longevity. With this as an incentive, why not strive to win the prize? Do not depend on the doctor, do not think some drug must be applied or imbibed for every ill; there are other methods. Perhaps we can aid you to the true enjoyment of life if you will _impartially_ weigh our _argument_. Here is an _editor_ suffering from nervousness. He consults a physician, who hands him an opiate so that he can sleep. Better if he had given up all thought of his paper and battles of words, on leaving his office, and allowed his throbbing, weary brain a deserving rest. Then the cells of this brainy tissue would cease to be gorged with blood, and sleep would positively follow. Again, there is a _clergyman_ every Sunday beseeching his flock to obey the commandments of the _Bible_; while every day, through carelessness, he is breaking the laws of health. If an _all-wise Being_ gave us our bodies as homes of our souls, did he not mean that we should promote the happiness of the soul by providing for it a healthy residence? What logic and strength exist in a religion that does not countenance such philosophy? The majority of mankind admire a well-developed _physique_. The minister wishes and prays to influence the masses of men. Can he reach them effectively, can he point to himself as an example, can he sway them by any reasoning or eloquence, when he himself has a husky voice, a pallid face, and a weakened figure? Indeed, the cowled, decrepit monk could lead the world in the darkness of the middle ages; but in the brightness of the nineteenth century his scepter is powerless. _Health_, _Happiness_ and _Longevity_ seem to be all that is required for mortal man. They are the foundation, the superstructure, and the apex respectively of the great _Pyramid_ of life. Who would desire more than the possession of perfect health, the realization of happiness, the achievement of ripe old age, retaining all the pleasurable attributes of Perfected Manhood, experiencing all these until called upon to surrender this present house of clay for a more advanced state, whatever that may be? Such degrees of soundness, felicity, and age, which we have mentioned, are within the reach of all who desire them, if they will observe the rules implied in the following terms, arranged in the order of their importance: Regularity, Cleanliness, Temperance (or moderation), Morality, and Self-control. It is safe to state the proposition that there is not one in a thousand of those induced to peruse this humble effort, who will not claim to possess one or more of the foregoing virtues, while a fair minority will urge that they are characterized by all of them. That your _egoism_ may not get the better of you in the start and bias you before reading my talk, I will frankly say that there is hardly a person living to-day who is either regular, cleanly, temperate, moral, or self-controlled. It is a fact that some have made fair efforts in those lines of action, but we shall attempt to prove that not any have perfected themselves in a single attribute above mentioned. With us, regularity, cleanliness, temperance, morality, and self-control are so interlaced as to become synonymous terms, the perfection of any one of which means the consummation of all, while their master could laugh at sorrow, pain, and even death, for through long years they would pass his door and forget to knock. Just in proportion as we approximate these virtues, correspondingly will our _lives_ be prolonged and our _happiness_ intensified. _Fear_ will not prostrate us because "Death rides on every passing breeze, He lurks in every flower." As modifying the foregoing partially, let us understand, however, that it is possible to have health and longevity to a wonderful degree without cleanliness, temperance, morality, and self-control, on one vital consideration. That is, the _continual_ exercise of _regularity_. Here we have the corner-stone of the whole structure of health, the cardinal first law. But can we be happy without the generous employment of _all_ these virtues? Obviously and fortunately, we cannot. _Health_ is also the chief _desideratum_ to happiness. As disease creeps through the physical frame, as aches and pains increase and torment our bodies, our _doubts_ supplant _faith_ in the _Source_ of all goodness. After a quarter of a century's constant devotion, in sackcloth and ashes, as it were, attempting to free the body from the shackles of pulmonary consumption, and growing gradually worse during the whole period, the majority of devotees, we think, would begin to inquire, "Are our prayers lacking sincerity? or is the Source of goodness at this time otherwise occupied? or may it not be that this for which I ask, I must seek by personal action?" We will try this self-helping method; if success comes, we will return to the same altar with a more exalted idea of a higher Source. Cleansed of our maladies, we will have a clearer perception of who and what is God. CHAPTER II. "There is naught like universal co-operation to promote universal achievement." _Individuals_ may seek and obtain health through the agencies already, and to be, suggested. To keep in health, their _neighbors_ must be induced or compelled to adopt the same course. This is not an absolute law, but manifestly is very essential. Supposing your own house, sidewalk, alley, or yard, are comparatively immaculate, it will be impossible to live without constant danger and exposure if your friend (or enemy in this sense) has an untidy house, a dirty sidewalk, and a filthy yard, in your proximity. Then how encouraging to note that health is as contagious as disease. It even spreads with greater rapidity. Health is gladly welcomed; disease is shunned like a deadly poison. All over the world past and contemporary history proves that, once started, health spreads at a rate that disease cannot follow. What will surely result? Healthful communities will make healthful municipalities; healthful municipalities will end in commonwealths and nations of like character. The whole earth will be leavened. From a record of 34 years as the average _duration_ of human life, the thermometer of universal progress will point to the threescore and ten, or 70 years. If you were induced to smile at the close of the last sentence, it shows that you are not lost to all sense of appreciation--but quietly put on your sober cap for a moment and read a few facts on _vital statistics_. The average length of life up to twenty years ago was 33 years, now it has reached about 34.8 years. This has not been caused by the _whole_ world becoming more healthful--indeed, some portions of the earth, including sections of the United States, have retrograded, and the former limit of _mortality_ has been lowered--but by the health of a number of _organizations_, _sects_, and individuals who have increased their standards of regularity, cleanliness, temperance, morality, and self-control. Thus the average rate of mortality has been raised nearly 2%. An interesting fact which is new to the majority of persons is this, that the whole sect of _Friends_, or _Quakers_, live an average of 58 years per individual. In the thirty-two years from 1850 to 1882 they raised the average six years, or about one year in five. With this ratio, which is itself increasing, the plurality of Quakers will be centenarians in less than two hundred years--in half that time if assisted by the world at large. By the foregoing it will be seen that the whole organization of Friends live 70% longer than the general age allotted to mankind, which includes them to make up the universal rate. Another noticeable feature in connection with the Quakers' life is this, the deaths among them average 18 in every thousand; in the general population, 22 per thousand; while the amount given to charities per inhabitant in that sect is $7.78, and in the total population the average is $1.46. Why this difference in longevity to so marked a degree? The _prohibitionist_ will give this reason, that the Friends dissipate less; the religionists will say they are more truthful, more godly. While each of the aforementioned reasons have a healthful tendency, there is a more scientific conclusion, for it is a well-known fact that there are thousands of cases of longevity of men and women who lack every moral principle, and dissipate all their lives. The _scientist_ comes to our rescue. He tells us that the Quaker's life is prolonged by his methodical way of living, evenness of temperament, wearing the same weight of clothing, allowing nothing to furrow the brow, regularity of sleeping, drinking, exercising, and eating. He takes no food or drink into his stomach above 100° or below 50° Fahr. _Boiling_ hot soup and frozen _ice-cream_ are unknown in a Quaker family. This might convey the idea that ice-cream is foresworn by them. Not entirely so. They use the same good judgment in that as in every other indulgence, allowing the cream to rise in temperature from 10° to 15° above the freezing point, to soft consistency, before it is taken into the stomach. Dr. Ufflemann, a German physician of authority, draws some important conclusions from his own experiments and those of others. The rules laid down are briefly:-- 1. That, in general, a temperature of food which approaches that of the blood is most healthful. 2. For quenching the thirst the best temperature is from 50° Fahr. to 68° Fahr. Americans prefer about 40°. 3. The gulping down of ice-water or hot coffee, etc., means eventually a stomach damnation. 4. The use of very hot and cold substances, following or alternating, is injurious to the teeth. 5. Ingestion of cold food and drinks lessens the bodily temperature, whether it be normal or febrile. 6. Cold food and drinks increase the tendency to cough, by causing, reflexly, a congestion of the bronchial vessels. Hence persons with bronchial disease ought not to indulge in cold drinks. The habits of indulgence in alcoholic drinks, tobacco, opium, and other narcotics or stimulants, have less to do than is generally supposed with longevity, but much to do with happiness, while their abuse or irregularity determines all for health, happiness, and longevity combined. Temperance men and moralists will take issue with me, and undertake to prove that any quantity, no matter how small, of either alcohol, tobacco, or opium will shorten life; but the facts will not sustain the assertion. It is the irregularity with which the body is treated, either by outward application or bathing, in eating, sleeping, or excess in all vices. For health, a regular gratification in the full list of vices is better than having no vices--such as are so termed by the world--and being irregular in everything else. While I do not believe in practising any form of vice, yet the man who takes six drinks of alcoholic spirits in reasonable quantities at fixed intervals each day, smokes six cigars--two after each meal--chews three ounces of tobacco with the same punctuality every day, eats his meals slowly and at stated periods, sleeps from 8-1/2 to 9 hours per night between the same hours, will outlive the man who neither smokes, chews, or drinks, but does eat and sleep irregularly, and lies awake all night hating his neighbor for his immoralities. He gets thin and haggard, followed by all the weaknesses to which his system is heir; while the other man, with his evenness of nature, habits, and dissipations, enjoys health, becomes fat, and lives to the proverbial good old age. Here, then, my reader, we have the explanation why a man may live through _dissipation_ all his life, and then die only by accident at 80 or 100 years of age. A beggar, miser, or hermit may by degrees contract the habit of filthiness, non-bathing, scantiness of food and improper clothing, with such regularity that he will outlive all his friends and relatives, and be chronicled at his death as one of the _centenarians_. As an interesting fact, we state that in 1888 a beggar, aged 84, in Perth, Hungary, tried to commit suicide by throwing himself into the Danube because he was no longer able to support his father and mother, who were 115 and 110 years old respectively! _Poisons_ may be taken in infinitesimal doses for a while, then increasing by degrees until _twenty_ grains of morphia or strychnia may be taken at a single dose without immediate injury. There is at least one case of positive record in Colusa County, of this State. In closing this chapter we wish to call attention to a reasonable result of true system, or regularity. Here is a _convict_ in the State prison. Before he was incarcerated his health was imperfect, and he wore a sallow, dejected look; but behold him after six months of strict penitentiary discipline; he is a well man, fat and sleek--no longer a semi-invalid. There are exceptions, but they are due to melancholy generally. A _soldier_ after he enlists, unless he is exposed to the constant privations of protracted war, throws off most defects in his physique. You must know the cause; it is the compulsory regulation of diet and clothing. Cleanliness and regularity are forced upon them, showing it to be just what they needed. CHAPTER III. "Let health my nerves and finer fibers brace." The possession of health, happiness, and longevity requires _not_ so much a general literary and _scientific education_, as a _practical knowledge_ of one's own self. The latter will far outweigh the other. In many ways, however, will these qualities be improved by the former. A person must know what is regularity, cleanliness, and temperance, or moderation. By the use of these effective auxiliaries, I have freed myself of so many maladies within the last thirty years that the average medical devotee will laugh in derision and question my trustworthiness. For the first _eleven_ years of my life I had _seven_ years of wasting sickness. Of these, _five_ were spent in bed. At the age of 22 I left a clerkship in New York City to come to California, _via_ Cape Horn. _Consumption_ was strongly seated on my lungs. In addition to this dangerous affliction I had bronchitis, catarrh, constipation, piles, periodical rheumatism, cataracts on my eyes, corns on my feet, and fever and ague from one to three months every year. Surely I was in a position to sympathize with _Job_, but impatient, rather than patient like the Biblical hero. I set myself towards absolute health. Before I had been in this State two years, I gained the mastery of the lung and throat troubles; but while assisting in putting in a flume in Feather River, below Oroville, in 1859, I ruptured myself so that for twenty-five years I wore a truss. Now I am entirely rid of the aforementioned list of ailments, including hernia. The detail of how I treated each of the maladies might not interest the reader, and is too long a story to relate in this work. The principal things done in each case, however, will be chronicled under their proper heads in the second part of this work. See index. I do not now smoke, chew, nor drink intoxicants; the latter I did to a limited degree, and the former to excess, for a number of years, up to the close of 1869. On the 31st day of December of that year--the day I smoked my _last cigar_--I bought _twenty-five_ cigars and smoked _twenty-three_ of them. My cigar bill that year averaged $2.50 per day, and ran as high as $4.00. Having dissipated, and had nearly every form of disease, I speak from my own thorough experience and not from that of anyone else. Why should not my story, then, have a beneficial influence? If any man knows how he can improve the welfare of his fellows, it is his duty to spread the information. True it is that many of the _quasi reformers_, or informers, are cranks or dreamers; but we wish the fact distinctly understood and appreciated that we come not under that category. We raise no false standard; we send forth no untried hypothesis. There is a man in a New England State who annually lectures on agriculture, writes special and general articles for the country papers on the most improved methods of farming, appears before legislative committees as a successful tiller of the soil. But, alas! what superficiality is contained in this man's brain. His house is a barn, his garden a chicken-yard, his orchard a forest, and his meadow a pasture. There are like phantasmagoric geniuses interested in the health question. We simply say, Trust them not. Shun them and their advice as you would the presence and enticings of a bunco steerer. But you will get impatient to learn in what consists cleanliness, regularity, and temperance if I do not proceed. Indeed, I think I can hear some of you say, "I neither chew, drink, smoke, eat irregularly, or miss my stipulated number of hours in bed; yet I have all manner of aches and pains, and many lingering maladies." If such be the case, you do not understand the true principle and its practical application of _cleanliness_. A word here in regard to bathing. There is no doubt we all should bathe at least once a day. It should be done either at retiring or rising. If a warm or hot bath, at night; if cold or sponge bath, in the morning. Of course, if a person is not accustomed to a cold sponge bath, or is quite nervous, he must not attempt it too strongly at first. Commence and advance by gradation. Almost anything can be done to which an individual is unaccustomed if regular steps are taken towards the end, and not one leap. Whether it be beneficial or destructive, invigorating or poisoning, gradation will accomplish the end. Madame Patti, who always has been obliged to take the greatest care of herself, gives this warning, which may not be out of place: "Take plenty of exercise, take it in the open air, take it alone, and breathe with the mouth closed. Live on simple food; all the fruit and rare beef you want, very little pastry, a glass of claret for dinner, coffee in moderation, but never a sip of beer, because it thickens the voice and stupefies the senses. Keep regular hours for work, meals, rest, and recreation, and never under any circumstances indulge in the fashionable habit of eating late suppers. If you want to preserve the beauty of face, and the priceless beauty of youth, keep well, keep clean, keep erect, and keep cool." Without being didactic, let me detail to you a few things you should and should not do; and all of which I carry out to the letter:-- Adopt some style of _clothing_ so that even if you change the color the _weight_ will be about the _same_. Wear no overcoat, overshoes, nor gloves; in their place wear a sufficiently heavy suit when it is warm, so as to have enough on when it is cold. By wearing a _chest protector_ fore and aft of the lungs, made of chamois and flannel, over the under-garment and under the shirt, you will never take cold through your lungs. Have good, thick-soled _boots_--and always of the same thickness--and you will not take cold through your feet. Have a _hat_ always of the same weight, and that should be light, with ventilators in the top or sides. If you do not wear your hat at the lunch table, or in your place of business, you will not catch cold in your head. A large list of accessories accompany the above:-- Never sit at your desk or home fireside with the same coat which you use on the street. In its place have one 50 per cent lighter for such occasions and positions. Never _sleep_ in your _under-garments_, nor in any other clothing that you carry during the day. The reason is strong and obvious. Your covering in the course of the day receives all the perspiration and surface deposit of the skin, which amounts to considerable in sixteen hours. This must have a chance to escape or be absorbed by the air. The amount is only increased by wearing the same garments at night. Have a good warm _night-shirt_, and a clean one at least every week. Do not sleep in a room without having the windows down from the top to some extent. If there be six, lower three of them. If you sleep with a companion and do not know anything about _animal magnetism_, find out through someone who does know. Ascertain which of you is more positive, and govern yourself accordingly. I find best results for me in sleeping with my head north, and on the west side of a negative companion. This principle of magnetism is too little observed. Yet it applies to all persons at all times. Naturally some individuals are more magnetic than others, that is, more positive. Usually, if not always, the more masculine, swarthy, is the more positive, while the light-haired and eyed are negative. Sleep invariably with your head towards the north if you are positive, towards the west if you are negative, but never in any case towards the east or south. These conclusions are based wholly on scientific reasons, and anyone who understands physics will see the cogency of our statements. As a preventative against anything that has once been in my stomach rising and remaining on the tongue, I use a piece of ordinary _whalebone_ to curry it every morning, from end to end. This will tend to purify the breath, sweeten the mouth, and aid mastication. My _tooth brush_, after using, is so thoroughly _cleansed_ and dried that anyone acquainted with the facts would hardly believe it had been used. There are millions of particles of dust, atoms, _microbes_, or any other name you may use, that collect upon your person and clothing hourly. If your garments be tattered and torn, or patched and glazed, this will not shorten your life or lessen your appetite; but I assure you, if you will use up a 15-cent whisk-broom twice a year, in brushing yourself from head to foot before each meal, there will be less to fall upon your food, and thus find its way to your stomach, and your days will be prolonged in exact ratio. CHAPTER IV. "On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale." There are more diseases contracted, more unhappiness created during life, and early decay occasioned, by _politeness_ and _pride_ than by whisky and tobacco combined. Total-abstinence advocates will assert that drink kills more than all other causes. What would they think if we should say, if he is a reformed drinker, that it was out of pure politeness that he quaffed his first glass. Politeness is the cause of disease in many ways, of which the following are a few:-- A friend--only in name--will stop you in the first corner of the street and insist on telling you a good(?) joke about Brown, Smith, or Jones. He takes you by the lapels of the coat, holds you to windward for twenty minutes in a breeze blowing twenty-five miles an hour, although this lays you up with a cold for a week, and thus plants the first seeds of consumption. You will be too polite to tell him that your health will not permit you to be so exposed. As a remedy for this class of attacks, if a man insists on saying anything more than "How do you do" or "Good-bye," I should invite him into the nearest hall-way or around the corner to leeward, entirely out of the draft. If this does not seem feasible, I would bid him "Good-day." Another case of excessive politeness is when a gentleman or lady continues chatting ten minutes in the _hall_ after he or she _must =go= immediately_. Then at the door after they have walked out, you, in dressing-gown and slippers, stand on the cold marble step in a driving fog for twenty minutes more, to hear the latest gossip--too polite to slam the door in their faces, or excuse it as an accident. But the politeness that kills faster than any other is that of the consumptive, bronchially-affected, or catarrhal patient. He will sit at the table, or in company, and, out of pure politeness, swallow the _mucus_ and other impurities that arise in his throat--too polite to use a cuspidor or excuse himself by withdrawing to another room or the open air, and clear his throat. A great many people are accustomed to _expectorate_ into their _handkerchiefs_. This is a baneful practice. Just as soon as that gets dry which they have thrown up from their lungs, innumerable microbes of deadly effect escape and do extensive harm. Avoid this habit and use the cuspidor or step out-of-doors. It is not unreasonable to believe that 50 per cent of all the consumptives would recover if they would, by care and cleanliness, see that no particle of mucus once away from the lungs should ever go back down the throat, and observe other points regarding apparel and cleanliness mentioned in the first part of this work. We have already devoted some space to what we should and should not do. All that, however, is but a small part of a life which will continually experience health, happiness, and longevity. We trust you do not simply read these statements not intending to test their value. It is not unlikely that many of you from your course or line of business will find it eminently difficult to absolutely follow our instructions. Be that as it may, come as approximately as you can, and there will positively result an improvement in your physical condition, a progression in your happiness, and a realization of longevity. The remainder of this chapter will be occupied by a program, or rather set of _formula_ of what is necessary to aid you in _keeping well_, living long and happily. Keep your _bowels_ open and regular in action. This you can do, if irregular or _constipated_, by taking a few drops of water in your right hand every morning and rubbing the bowels in a circular motion from right to left, until a friction is produced and the moisture gone. From six to ten separate passages of the hand over the bowels is usually sufficient, and the object will be accomplished. Each day this is repeated; in a very short time you will be all right in this particular, and will not require even this effective medicine. You must be aware that a score of maladies are kept at bay by the regularity of the bowels. This fact cannot be too strongly impressed on mankind in general. It is very seldom indeed that you come upon a man who is well with a bad digestive apparatus; but, again, he who possesses a strong stomach and is moderate and regular in eating is almost invariably characterized with a vigorous constitution. Disease finds no place to locate upon or in him. There is no doubt the American people eat too fast, and that is why so many die so soon. The system is worn out when it should be ready to do its best work. If all the men and women in this country would eat 50% slower they would live 25% longer. Of this we have no doubt--nor do you, reader. Sleep eight hours every night, between the same hours, as nearly as possible, in a room well ventilated from the top of the window. If your room is small you will require more _ventilation_ than if it is large; in this case use more clothing on the bed. If possible have a bowl or basin of water uncovered in the room, but the next morning do not either drink or wash your face in the water that has stood exposed all night. To drink it is slow suicide; to wash in it is unhealthy. In the morning scrape the tongue with a strip of whalebone, as before mentioned; brush the teeth with a good stiff clean tooth-brush, up and down, but not across; note this latter proposition, there is reason for it. By perpendicular brushing the bristles or hairs get in between the teeth, where much sediment is left, and the gums are not made sore. This is the best method also to prevent tartar forming. _Gargle_ the throat with clean water three or four times; then, if you have it at hand, drink about three swallows of cool filtered water; if not near go thirsty until it is. Never take a drink of water, whether you be sick or well, without first gargling the throat with at least one swallow and spitting it out. Do you think _filtering_ of reservoir or general city water is necessary? If not, then make a microscopic examination, and any skepticism will be entirely removed. It is a prominent fact in science to-day that almost all diseases and troubles are started or promulgated by microbes and bacilli. There are often enough of these in one swallow of water to poison a whole family. Then take a moist towel and apply it to every part of your body; follow this with a vigorous rubbing with a dry towel. A sponge bath is recommended by many physicians. This is all right for the first time, but from that on the sponge begins to get foul, not from necessity, but because not one person in fifty will wash and thoroughly _dry_ the _sponge_. In any other case it is a disease breeder. Perforated with so many cells and passages, intricate and numberless, it is not surprising that it should be the residence of much that is dangerous. During the time of your bath you should close the windows of your room to exclude the cold draughts--in any part of the country where the atmosphere moves over two miles per hour--but not the sun. After this lower or raise your window to the height or level of the eyes, and proceed to enjoy a breathing exercise. This is done by first exhausting all the air from the lungs through the mouth, then inhale, slowly, through the nasal organs to the full capacity of the lungs. Do this _three_ times or more each morning. If your lungs are not too weak, tap with your fingers on your chest while it is inflated. This will tend to develop your capacity of breathing wonderfully. The gentle percussion thus effected is quite exhilarating. Practice yourself also in _holding_ your _breath_ for a prolonged interval, but always draw in air through your nostrils; they strain out all impurities. You are now ready for your breakfast; but, perhaps you say, I am a workingman and have not the time. To such I would reply: I go through all these duties in _one_ hour's time, and if belated I accomplish it in _forty minutes_. If I have to take a train at 5 A. M., I see that I am called at 4 A. M., at least, and enjoy my regular time for _toilet_. I would advise those of you who think you have not time, to go to bed that much earlier. Even if you are to travel, by using my method of preparation you will not experience that tired, disagreeable, restless feeling that will otherwise come. You all know how intensely that feeling acts to destroy all your pleasure until the day is half over and it is worn away. Employ common-sense ways and you will be as fresh at 6 as at 12 o'clock. Your lips will not be blue, your skin cold, your teeth unclean, your mouth dry, your eyes red, and your whole self out of sorts as it were. CHAPTER V. "Of right choice food are his meals, I ween." Now as to what you should eat, what you should not eat, and how you should eat. This is perhaps the greatest problem for a man to solve. A man with a bad digestive apparatus is practically an invalid. We have no hesitation in saying that there is as much bodily injury done by over and careless eating among people commonly called temperate as among those who drink alcoholic liquors to a large extent. If you would preserve your vital strength and capabilities for a happy, long period, mind your diet. Don't rest too much on the insane idea that you have a _stomach_ of _iron_ and that you can digest shingle nails. You are not a species of the genus ostrich, or goat. Then if you really do possess organs that can take care of all kinds of food, their splendid power should not be destroyed or even weakened by improper indulgence. The mightiest engine is soon as valueless as old iron if it is continually exerted to its greatest velocity. If inanimate mechanism cannot stand a permanent strain surely bodily flesh would be quickly disabled. Some foods are particularly muscle formers, others produce fat, and still others brain and nerve, while most of the common articles of diet combine these uses in varying degrees. But the question to cover our entire physical needs requires to be broadened into this: What combination of food will best nourish the body? Even then the answer must be modified to suit individual cases, for the digestive power differs greatly in different persons. Moreover, there is an interdependence between the different bodily organs and tissues, so that the body must be built up as a whole. If one part lacks the whole suffers, and if one part is overfed the others will be underfed. Thus a person who becomes unduly fat loses in muscular fiber, either in quantity or quality. One who overfeeds the brain loses in muscular strength. So, too, muscular development may be carried to such excess as to impoverish the brain, and also to reduce the fat of the body below what is necessary both as surplus food laid up for emergencies, and as a protection against sudden changes of temperature. The best food for producing muscle, therefore, must, while being duly appetizing, contain a large per cent of nitrates for the muscles, of phosphates for the brain and nerves, and of carbonates for the fat. Of nitrates, beans stand at 24 per cent, then peas at 22, cabbage and salmon at 20, oats at 17, eggs and veal at 16, and beef at 15. Of phosphates, salmon stands first at 7, then codfish at 6, beef and eggs at 5, beans and veal at 4, and cabbage, peas, and oats at 3. Of carbonates, butter stands at the head at 100, rice at 80, corn and rye at 72, wheat at 69, oats at 66, peas at 60, beans at 57, and cabbage at 46. Fresh codfish fried in fat or served with butter gravy about equals beef in all respects, and so do eggs fried in fat. But we must add:-- The mere eating of food cannot make muscle. The muscles must be called into vigorous daily exercise, yet without overdoing. Excessive eating is weakening, and must be avoided. It is the amount digested and assimilated that tells, not the quantity taken into the stomach. All the laws of health must be steadily observed. We are in favor of a diet that excludes meat entirely; and once a day should be the excess of those who indulge in the flesh-eating luxury. A suspicion that there is a difference between merely getting food down into the stomach and its digestion, is abroad, and that a peach, an orange, an apple, a spoonful of flour, or something similar, which is digested, is really better for a man than a beefsteak, which simply passes through the alimentary canal. See "Food" for further consideration of vegetarianism. For _breakfast_ have any of the numerous preparations of _mush_, such as oatmeal, cracked wheat, and germea, every other day some kind of fish; of the miscellaneous, potatoes baked or boiled, eggs poached, boiled, or omelette, and natural fruit; of drinks, water, filtered or boiled, and not below 56° Fahr., milk, pure and sweet but not cream, cocoa, chocolate, tea, or coffee. These are good and beneficial in the order they are placed. The following from the N. Y. _Medical Record_ is invaluable information:-- "Stimulants (drink most healthful).--Milk heated to much above 100 degrees Fahrenheit loses for a time a degree of its sweetness and density. No one who, fatigued by over-exertion of body or mind, has ever experienced the reviving influence of a tumbler of this beverage, heated as warm as it can be sipped, will willingly forego a resort to it because of its being rendered somewhat less acceptable to the palate. The promptness with which its cordial influence is felt is indeed surprising. Some portion of it seems to be digested and appropriated almost immediately, and many who now fancy they need alcoholic stimulants when exhausted by fatigue will find in this simple draught an equivalent that will be abundantly satisfying and far more enduring in its effects. There is many an ignorant overworked woman who fancies she could not keep up without her beer; she mistakes its momentary exhilaration for strength, and applies the whip instead of nourishment to her poor, exhausted frame. Any honest, intelligent physician will tell her that there is more real strength and nourishment in a slice of bread than in a quart of beer; but if she loves stimulants it would be a very useless piece of information. It is claimed that some of the lady clerks in our own city, and those too who are employed in respectable business houses, are in the habit of ordering ale or beer at the restaurants. They probably claim that they are 'tired,' and no one who sees their faithful devotion to customers all day will doubt their assertions. But they should not mistake beer for a blessing or stimulus for strength. A careful examination of statistics will prove that men and women who do not drink can endure more hardships, and do more work, and live longer, than those less temperate." If you must eat meat for breakfast, have your _steak rare_, mutton chops well done; if fish, always well done; and if each are fried, use butter, not lard--the same applies to everything else that has to be fried. All meats are sweeter and more healthful broiled than fried. Of bread, for health, natural _graham_ comes first; and, in order of nutrition, corn, corn and wheat mixed, rye, and wheat. They should be taken cold and at least twenty-four hours after baking. If the midday meal is a lunch, all dishes should be cold. It can be made up largely from dishes left over from the morning meal, such as cold cracked wheat with milk, natural fruit; add nuts, sauces, jellies, and prepared fruit. If _dinner_ is taken at noon instead of lunch at that hour, any one of the score of vegetable soups are first in value; all other kinds are secondary; let there be from three to six kinds of vegetables cooked; any of the drinks mentioned for breakfast may be used, but none of them iced; cold bread, and no pastry unless an open pie with unshortened undercrust. An excellent morsel for _dyspeptics_ is _sea biscuit_ dipped in cold water and then placed in a hot oven from three to five minutes. If meat is to be a portion of this meal, you can have beef, mutton, or venison, roasted or broiled, the former rare, and the two latter well done. Provided dinner is enjoyed at the close of the day, it should occur before 5:30 P. M.; if at midday, then the lunch meal can be renamed supper, and can be partaken of as late as 6 or 7 P. M. Let there be no eating two meals for Sundays and holidays, and three for other days, or indulging in them at later hours in the morning and earlier in the evening; for this irregularity will detriment more than many kinds of improper food. Do not eat _fresh pork_, for this and every other kind of swine flesh is an abomination. Eat no _kidney_, _liver_, or _tripe_; deal sparingly with _fowl_ and all the bird family. Outside impure water and uncleanliness, there can be but one cause for _skin diseases_, eczema, boils, and the dread leprosy, which is the eating of pork, kidney, liver, duck, etc. If the lion indiscriminately kills and eats all kinds of flesh, and thereby is made ferocious, if the lamb is rendered passive and inoffensive by grasses and grains, then what the swine or different domestic fowls eat must have something to do with the make-up of the flesh of their bodies. The hog is the most filthy animal of that nature, while chicken and duck are the most so in the line of fowls used by man for food. It is offensive but true that they will not only _eat_ but relish both their own and man's _excrement_. We cannot use space foolishly, if we show plainly why pork should be abandoned. Did you ever stop to think on what most _swine_ live? _Swill_ is the most common term for it. Anything and everything that is the refuse of a boarding-house will they eagerly devour. Give them _rotten_ apples and potatoes, full of innumerable microbes, and they will relish the repast. Place them in a dung heap--they will root, and eat much of what they find. Now all meat, all flesh and tissue, is made from what an animal or person eats--if he doesn't eat he grows thin and starves. Then the hog's flesh is made from elements derived from swill, decayed substances, and everything either cooked, uncooked, or even digested, that man is through with or has cast off. You who eat pork relish that which once you have refused to eat--only in another form. Can you enjoy this meat when you consider all this? Surely its use means bad health and contamination. Skin diseases and _poor complexions_ are found almost entirely among those who live on these improper foods. Again, even if you feed swine on clean corn, milk, and water, we ascertain by careful experiment and examination that pork is most susceptible to bacteria of almost any meat. Better boycott it altogether. _Leprosy_ and skin troubles are found largely among pork-eating people--such as the inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands, where there are 749 lepers. On the other hand, Jews, who everywhere are marked with clear skins, avoid pork. In Constantinople there are 250 lepers, in Crete upwards of 3,000, and quantities in the islands of eastern Mediterranean Sea, and 1,000 in Norway. These places are all characterized by the great amount of pork, and duck too, that they consume. Other things not good for _invalids_, and will make strong persons invalids, are: Fried potatoes, hot cakes, warm bread, pound cake, green cucumbers, and rich pie-crust. Eat only those things that will excite the salivary glands to assist digestion. The walls, not the center of the alimentary canal, need attention. Have your _soup cool_ enough so that it will not cause tears in your eyes when you swallow--same with your coffee, tea, and other warm drinks; take no _ice drinks_; if you are used to having water only with your meals, drink it warm with sugar and milk, and _not hot_. If you are obliged to live in a second-class boarding-house or restaurant, and are obliged to take one of three meals each day at such a place, insist on having a _napkin_. Use it first to wipe your glass for water, then follow by polishing every utensil set before you for use at your meal. If note is taken of the napkin before and after each meal, you will be able by a mathematical calculation to tell just how much _real estate_ did not belong to you. How you should eat: Begin with one swallow of cool water. Eat slowly; take full 20 minutes for a hurried meal, and 45 minutes when you have the time. If you eat beefsteak, have it rare; if mutton chops, have them well done; if _fish_, well done and brown; if potatoes, first choice, baked; second, boiled; third, stewed or mashed. Never eat decayed vegetables or fruit; have them fresh or do without them. At table, see that the conversation is pleasant and mirthful. Should any of the younger members of the family insist, at each meal, in changing this order of things, cause them for a short season to sit at a separate table in the kitchen, until this sort of disease--for disease it is--may be cured. Nothing retards digestion, brings dyspepsia, or creates neuralgia, to such extent as a sullen disposition. We will end this chapter with a remarkably bright paraphrase on the ten commandments, which we recently ran across:-- THE TEN HEALTH COMMANDMENTS. "1. Thou shalt have no other food than at meal-time. "2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any pies, or put into pastry the likeness of anything that is in the heavens above or in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not fall to eating it or trying to digest it. For the dyspepsia will be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that eat pie; and long life and vigor upon those that live prudently and keep the laws of health. "3. Remember thy bread to bake it well; for he will not be kept sound that eateth his bread as dough. "4. Thou shalt not indulge sorrow or borrow anxiety in vain. "5. Six days shalt thou wash and keep thyself clean, and the seventh thou shalt take a great bath; thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, and the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days man sweats and gathers filth and bacteria enough for disease; wherefore the Lord has blessed the bath-tub and hallowed it. "6. Remember thy sitting-room and bed-chamber to keep them ventilated, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. "7. Thou shalt not eat hot biscuit. "8. Thou shalt not eat thy meat fried. "9. Thou shalt not swallow thy food unchewed, or highly spiced, or just before hard work, or just after it. "10. Thou shalt not keep late hours in thy neighbor's house, nor with thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his cards, nor his glass, nor with anything that is thy neighbor's."--_New England Farmer._ With the use of the foregoing as a guide, and ordinary judgment in the affairs with your fellow-men, life will run smoothly, happiness will follow, and a long life be the result. CHAPTER VI. "Let the jewel of happiness poise in the setting of health." If you are a reader of this work to find out a cure for consumption, catarrh, bronchitis, constipation, hemorrhoids or piles, hernia or rupture, rheumatism, fever and ague, cataracts on the eyes, warts on the hands, corns on the feet, and how to abstain from drink and tobacco in all injurious forms, we will try and not disappoint you. Under the head of each disease above named, see index and second part. We offer you a remedy. All of these troubles I have had (and a score not mentioned), of the entire list of which _=I=_ am now _free completely_. In short, the whole number of diseases that beset the human family can be cured by care, cleanliness, regularity, fresh air, cold water used internally, and by compress, proper clothing, right food, regular exercise, an even disposition, a clear conscience, intelligent and agreeable associates, and a reasonable amount of time. It took me 30 years, 25 of which I spent ascertaining the way. If someone could have informed me, as this book does you, I would have enjoyed full health _twenty-five_ years earlier than I did. Anyone observing the rules I have recounted can restore a broken-down _constitution_ in less than 5 years--yes, even if one foot is already in the grave! Soon you will begin to lift it out, and it will be a long period before you will take that step again. I do not exaggerate when I state that I had _both feet_ in the grave. Fortunately, however, my head was above-ground, and I began to reason how to get the rest of myself away. The secret was discovered, the causes set to work, and finally the end achieved. To use another figure, my coffin had many nails already driven in it when I secured a clincher, pulled them all out, and then split up the old wooden hulk to make fires with which to start the steam of my new energies. All of my _time_ is _employed_. I do some sort of laborious work every day to start my blood coursing vigorously, and open the pores of my skin. By a proper adjustment of my under-clothing, I prevent a cold, and am always ready with a good appetite when meal-time comes. I have never studied _Anatomy_, _Medicine_, or _Surgery_, know but little about the niceties of the English language, but I have studied the Materia Medica of myself, and am aware of just what is beneficial and what is injurious for me. There is a duty each individual owes to his fellow-man, each municipal corporation to its citizens, and each State and general government to those over whom they preside. Every individual should strive to see how much distress he can relieve during his short stay on this earth; how few thorns he has to place in the pathway of others, and how many drops of oil he can pour on the disturbed waters of the ocean of life. _Accidents_ that are _preventable_, caused by carelessness, laziness, and ignorance, cost more money, suffering, and life than viciousness and incendiarism, in the ratio of 3 to 1. Every man who builds a mill, manufactory, or a business block, makes his own rate of insurance. A slight variation in the construction of a building, the omission of certain details, the wrong location of hazardous machinery or materials, or the neglect of cleanliness and order, may very seriously affect the _fire hazard_, and consequently the _rate_ of insurance which must necessarily attach to the property. The _Fire Losses_ in the United States amount to $125,000,000 per annum, and the great mass of this enormous loss is chargeable to bad construction of buildings, the lack of necessary apparatus for extinguishing fires, and carelessness in the management of property. The _unavoidable_ losses are few in number; the _avoidable_, many. Insurance companies _restore no value_, _repair no loss_; they can only _distribute_ the loss throughout the community. Careless, ignorant, annihilative, is the term to be applied to 75% of the fire losses. The destruction of life by accidents, where immediate death follows, in the United States is large; but, in comparison with those that assist in shortening life, they are about in the ratio of 1 to 100. Only such persons as have undoubted _integrity_, coupled with order, cleanliness, and carefulness should be allowed to insure their property, and this should be restricted by law. A certain sect in our population that now have to be charged from 50 to 100% more for insurance than other people, should be stricken from the list of the insured, until they have by personal action abolished this difference in risk. When the time comes that only such persons as attend to all the details of cleanliness and prevention of the loss of property and health can be insured, the cost will be reduced 50%. Until we are willing, or educated up to that point, to protect our neighbors' lives and property as if they were ours, we must expect to pay this 50% more for everything we have, use, drink, eat, and wear. Longevity will be restricted in the same proportion. Hundreds of accidents would be prevented by proper care. Throwing foolishly the match, cigar, cigarette, etc., any and everywhere, causes great loss of property, and often life; the unthinking eat oranges and _bananas_ in the _street_ and cast underfoot the rinds and skins to cause the next moment the _dislocation_ of a limb, or broken skull. Over 500 accidents have occurred in this city alone during the last 5 years, occasioned by some sort of vegetable or fruit refuse lying upon the pavements; fatal results, though not all immediate, happened to 15 persons, and a number were maimed for life. Broken bottles and glass thrown into the street and on the sidewalks bring about at times frightful accidents to both man and beast; and if a correct report could be had from each livery-man and teamster in this regard, it would startle the most inhuman of our race. The _tax-payer_ has a tendency to be selfish when he is really doing himself severe injury. It is a case of reflex action. In passing along a thoroughfare he sees a banana skin lying on the sidewalk. He cannot possibly stop or trouble himself to push it into the gutter. Almost immediately another man comes along, steps on the skin, slips, breaks his leg, and is carried to the hospital. He remains there a month, supported by the city, that is, by money paid by the same tax-payer. In this manner, and other ways, can every man act, both selfishly or unselfishly. If selfish in passing this by, it is sure to come back on him a hundred-fold to the original trouble required. His unselfishness will consist in saving his fellow-men from danger by removing the cause. Indeed, he will be selfish if he casts it off for the sake of decreasing his taxation, but such selfish unselfishness will be gladly excused. _Garbage_ thrown out of back doors or under neighbors' steps creates contagion, and in time the thoughtless individuals fall a prey to their own carelessness. Three out of every five men and five out of every hundred women are ruptured as a result of their own or somebody else's recklessness. On the top of nearly every house in the section where _artesian_ water is used, there is a _tank_ to receive water for various purposes about each dwelling; much of this is employed for drinking and culinary uses. Without any attempt at a sensation, we pronounce this box or _tank_ a _death trap!_ There is not a clean one in this whole great city, that has an outside exposure, and 9 out of every 10 are reeking with filth. Having had occasion to investigate several I am convinced that they average alike. If so, there are at least 500 tons of concentrated filth playing the part of filters in the tanks of this city alone at this writing! And there is every reason to believe that this city is as clean as the average. Provided this is so, there is enough of such refuse in the United States to dam the Mississippi River many times and build a levee across Lake Erie. Health officers may keep their own tanks clean in the future, but if individuals desire health and abolition of the need of Health Boards, let them keep their own tanks, back yards, streets, and pavements neat. Municipal corporations should prevent by _law_ the throwing of any kind of rubbish into the streets, and make it a misdemeanor for the proprietors allowing any of their mercantile houses, work-shops, or residences to be found filthy, and there are thousands of them in this city. To avoid accidents, every man, woman, and child should be compelled to pass to their right on the street. Every person in every city not having a legitimate vocation in the eyes of the law, nor an income from property or money in the bank, should, if criminally inclined, be sent to the House of Correction. If poor and willing to work, they ought to be put to work in the public streets and in the parks, to beautify them, for the benefit of the frugal classes. No begging should be allowed, under penalty of imprisonment. That a city may escape being overrun by country tramps, their entrance should be quarantined. To stop contagion, public _crematories_ should be established and cremation of the human and animal bodies be compulsory. If the principal church and secret organizations will now change their rituals so as to permit of the incineration of the bodies of their deceased members, the world will have advanced 100 years before the close of this century and the average duration of life at that date will have increased from 34.8 to 40 years. It is needful that the false sentiment regarding the disposition of our dead should undergo a complete revolution. There could probably be no better aid to this end than a general investigation of the mortuary records of the towns and cities of the globe, by proper officials, the facts and discoveries of whom should be given all possible publicity. An hundred or so years ago this was not so much a matter of importance as now, with a greater and increasing density of population, by virtue of which a great portion of the habitable earth is fast becoming a mass of putrifying corruption, that will involve at no distant time the world in pestilence, woe, and desolation. The recent official return on the condition of the London cemeteries is, or should be, sufficient to cause all reasonable persons to cry out for the crematory. In Brompton Cemetery, with an area of twenty-eight and three-fourths of an acre, there have been buried in less than fifty years one hundred and fifty-five thousand bodies. In Tower Hamlets Cemetery, with twelve acres less, in about the same time, the number is two hundred and forty-seven thousand. When it is remembered how perfectly unfitted the soil of these districts is for burial purposes, together with the means so largely employed for preventing speedy decomposition, one may readily imagine the danger that menaces those above this still-increasing mass of sub-pollution. Multiply the condition of the London suburbs by several hundred thousand more, and then ponder the product! Talk about sanitary regulations, when our public health laws are violated thus, and the air and water poisoned as a result of the superstitious custom of body burial! When pestilence stalks abroad, it is said to be planetary influence or divine wrath! The following from the Springfield _Republican_ will indicate the current of public opinion:-- "That the custom of burying the dead is bound to be superseded by more scientific and economical methods, especially in the centers of population, may be seen in the reanimation of the old scheme of desiccation by New York capitalists. These men are not yet ready to accept cremation. Their project is to build mausoleums as substitutes for cemeteries, where the body will be subjected to the absorbent action of currents of pure, dry air, which will prevent decomposition, and, by thoroughly exhausting the body of moisture and gases, carry away all germs of disease. These air currents, thus laden, will then pass through furnaces, where all noxious elements will be destroyed. The lifeless form will be reduced in weight about two-thirds and nearly one-half in size. Resting in a sepulcher, it may then be preserved for an indefinite period. As explained in detail, with particulars of the beauty of the buildings thrown in, this scheme has advantages compared with the undesirable method in vogue, though it is less thorough and simple than cremation. A promoter of the enterprise in speaking of the desiccated body says that 'although shrunken, still, with the semblance of life, it is an object that the eye of affection can look upon without a shock, and the sanitarian can think of without a shudder.' In essence, however, the scheme is simply a concession to a public, not yet educated to the idea of cremation. While appropriating enough of the latter system to solve the question of public health, it caters to the human sentimentalities in preserving at half size the dead form. Upon these sentiments, summed up as the 'instinct of humanity,' the promoters of the new system base their hopes of profit. Besides advancing in its favor all the arguments used for cremation, its friends add that in the desiccating process no danger can exist of suspended animation escaping notice." Public _fountains_ should be established in every other block of cities or towns having over 1,000 inhabitants, with best-devised filters known, so that both man and beast could enjoy pure water to drink, free for the taking. During epidemics it should be not only compulsory in municipalities to have water filtered in each house before drinking, but it should be boiled. Every house ought to have a filter. If you cannot afford a $40 one, you can secure one for 40 cents. CHAPTER VII. "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace." "But evil is wrought by want of thought As well as by want of heart." The following extract from the report of the Grand Jury of this city, given publicity December 5, 1889, is self-explanatory:-- "Some of the dives and variety theaters are the nurseries of vice and crime, where drunkenness is encouraged, our youth demoralized, the unwary roped in and robbed, and crimes committed which the authorities are unable to prevent or discover. There is, of course, a broad distinction to be noted between those places of public resort where the demand for distilled, fermented, and malt liquors is supplied in a legitimate manner, and the entertainment provided, if any, is not of an objectionable character, and those places where salacious performances are presented as an attraction, and lewd women, under the guise of waitresses to serve liquors, pursue a shameful vocation. These evils may be partly remedied if respectable citizens will refuse to rent their property for such uses, and also refuse to assist in obtaining licenses whereby such headquarters for drunkenness, lewdness, and crime are in a measure entrenched behind existing general laws. "The so-called 'social evil' is aggressive on our thoroughfares, and should be restrained by the authorities within narrower limits." But we add our interpretation and our suggestions for these twin evils which stalk up and down the earth and apparently defy control. The _minister_ treats lightly upon the liquor traffic, in many instances because certain of his church members either sell it at wholesale, retail, or furnish the barley, corn, grapes, hops, or rent to the man who does. The _editors_ of all newspapers of general circulation must treat the subject likewise, for fear of his advertising patrons. His readers are never taken into account, for the simple reason that circulation alone does not pay newspapers issued daily, and very few that are issued weekly. It will be seen by the above report that the grand jurymen too have _vital_ interests at stake. In order to keep their respective businesses from being boycotted by their fellow-merchants, they handle the subject with soft gloves, as if it were eggs, and the "social evil" by this same jury is done up in _nineteen_ words. But they have indicated a great deal in those few words, namely, that such an evil _does exist_--something the different _church_ organizations have _refused_ to acknowledge. High license, with personal responsibility for results, under a sufficient bond, will in time remedy the liquor traffic. The _social evil_ should be licensed, and under the perfect control of the police--and not the police under its control, as seems to be the case in this city. Are they not under pay to look the other way? Its boundaries should be exact, isolated, and under the direct supervision of the health department. Is there any justice in demanding a license of a milliner, or on any other mercantile pursuit that a female may see fit to adopt, while 5,000 of these questionable women go untaxed, because you do not _dare_ to acknowledge that their calling _exists?_ To ask the question is to answer it--No!! Let no one think that in any way whatever we would seem to unduly countenance, or in the least encourage, this evil. But we do believe in recognizing absolute facts. They cannot be overlooked. It is surprising that, amidst all this widespread discussion of intemperance, no more has been said on this _social problem_. As long as men are mortal, this condition of relations will exist--it has existed through all time--but it is possible to limit it, to heavily license it, and keep it within proper bounds. Then by all means should churches and various kinds of societies exert their influence to the legal recognition of the true status, and benefit the general condition of mankind. Boards of supervisors, aldermen, etc., are clothed with power to accomplish the ends suggested, if they are only backed by public sentiment. If the _Catholic Church_ organization alone will inaugurate a general agitation over the country, as they have already indicated and begun in their convention at Baltimore, on the liquor traffic, they will either break it up or put it under control; for 60% of this business is carried on by their following. Public _urinals_ are greater necessities than public fountains in cities and large towns. The alarming increase of _diabetes_ and kidney troubles in cities during the last few years, while remaining normal, or actually decreasing in the rural districts, has led to the belief that the prolonged detention of the urine is the principal, and, in most cases, the only cause of this terrible malady. The foregoing facts recapitulated exhibit a few of the ills of mankind that are in the power of municipal officials to alleviate. The duties of the general government cover all of the above, and include the _prevention_ of all _criminals_ and _paupers_ of every nation from _landing_ on our shores; the compulsory education of all citizens old and young--as it is cheaper to educate than to punish criminals; to furnish employment upon all useful and needed public works for the worthy, willing poor, and cause to be distributed with equity to the deserving, all the earnings of the criminal institutions of the country, over and above their actual expenses. It will not be out of place to complete this chapter with a few words on the necessity of giving man and beast _one day_ in seven to _rest_. _Sunday_ seems to be the preferable one, but to compel the observance of one particular day in each week for all classes and sects would be tyrannical. The majority of religious societies employ Sunday for worship and rest, but, throwing aside the moral and religious bearing, every human being would be healthier, happier, and live longer, if he rested one day in the week. We all live too fast. Though we enjoy laziness at times, yet we are too anxious to get riches or fame earlier than we ought or can. A man may work so mightily that he will be very wealthy at 40 instead of 50, but he will die at 70 instead of 80. Better prolong life by reserving forces for the future. CHAPTER VIII. "For a man's house is his castle." After individual cleanliness and regularity, erect your next _house_ in which you intend to live, or that you expect to rent to another, or remodel your present residence, to correspond with the following:-- Sanitary House.--It should stand facing the sun, on dry soil, in a wide, clean, amply-sewered, substantially-paved street, over a deep, thoroughly ventilated and lighted cellar. The floor of the cellar should be cemented, the walls and ceilings plastered and thickly whitewashed with lime every year, that the house may not act as a chimney to draw up into its chambers micro-organisms from the earth. If your lot is situated so that you cannot face your house either east or south, construct the rooms in such a way that your parlors and sleeping apartments will receive the sun at least 3 hours during the day. All windows should extend from floor to ceiling, adjusted to let down from the top, and in position to secure as much as possible of the through currents of air. The outside walls, if of wood or brick, should be kept thickly painted, not to shut out penetrating air, but for the sake of dryness. All inside walls should be plastered smooth, painted, and, however unaesthetic, varnished. Mantels should be of marble, plate, iron, or, if wood, plain, and, whether natural, painted, or stained, varnished. Interior wood-work, including floors, should all show plain surfaces and be likewise treated. No paper on the walls, no carpets on the floors, but movable rugs, which can be shaken daily in the open air--not at doors or out of windows, where dust is blown back into rooms--should cover the floors. White linen shades, which will soon show the necessity of washing, should protect the windows. All furniture should be plain, with cane seats, without upholstery. Mattresses should be covered with oiled silk. Blankets, sheets, and spreads--no comforts or quilts--should constitute the bedding. Of plumbing there should be as little as is necessary, and all there is must be exposed. The inhabited rooms should be heated only with open fires, the cellar and halls by radiated heat, or, better, by a hot-air furnace, which shall take its fresh air from above the top of the house and not from the cellar itself or the surface of the earth, where micro-organisms most abound. Let there be no annual house cleaning, but keep it clean all the time, and have it gone through thoroughly at least four times per year. Of course a corner lot is always preferable, but how often it is supposed that the benefit consists alone in a commanding position, in a chance for architectural display, when the greatest boon is the increased opportunity for sunlight. The atmosphere of a room where the sun never shines is never agreeable or healthful. Science has taught us that the sun is the source of all life. It will effect more than tons of disinfectants and chemicals to purge and sweeten the air of a house. Let the building be exposed to the south, and keep shade trees from checking the sun too much. Verandas and broad piazzas often do as much harm as they give pleasure--especially if they are all covered with vines. Be more careful about plumbing than people are wont to be. Do not practice economy by trying to cut down _plumbing_ bills. When a contractor agrees to erect a house, either withhold this part from him or see that he employs the most skilled labor. Ventilation cannot be slighted, for upon it health greatly depends. If you can in any way afford it, use _incandescent electric light_ instead of gas or oil. The reason is a powerful one. An ordinary _gas_ jet destroys as much pure air and oxygen as five men--a good-sized _oil lamp_ equal to three men. Add to this the heat that comes from such methods, and we see the strong advantage of the incandescent electric light. This vitiates no air, gives off no perceptible heat. Though there are stories that electric lights injure the eyes, from careful observation we find that it hurts the eyes of the majority no more than any artificial light. The _Sanitary News_ urges people not to paper or paint the interior walls of houses. Arsenical poisons are used in coloring wall paper. Mold collects in flour paste used in fastening paper to walls, absorbing moisture and germs of disease. Glue also disintegrates, so that any friction removes small particles, to which germs attach and float in the air. Undecorated walls, ugly as they are, the _News_ insists are the only healthy ones to live within. Dr. Cushing, of this city, thus ends his lecture on "Healthful Houses":-- "The essentials then of good house building are, first, a dry soil, a good foundation, exposure to the sun, and, next, good plumbing by reputable men at whatever cost necessary for first-class work, warming and ventilating by open grates rather than by steam heaters and stoves, clean floors and clean walls; and now, if there be no decomposition of animal or vegetable matter allowed in the immediate vicinity of the house, we shall have done the best that the present state of science will permit toward making our houses healthful." The Hotel Del Monte is the only perfectly clean hotel in America. It is located at Monterey, Cal., not over a quarter of a mile from the ocean. The prevailing winds are from the sea and would naturally blow over the sands towards the house. Now the cause of dirt has virtually been killed by the planting of trees, brush, and by the laying of asphaltum walks and sod-ground drives on this windward side. The only dirt is that which is brought there by travelers--this is easily kept down. The moral is here: If possible prevent dust and dirt by stopping the cause. CHAPTER IX. "Let this great maxim be my virtue's guide." As we are hastily reading books and papers we continually come across maxims, epigrams, and short, pithy sayings that attract us. We wish we could not only remember them, but also often put them in practice, but they slip our mind and actions almost immediately. From time to time the author has collected fruit from the vast field of health of its kindred subjects, and placed the best of them in this book for the reader's careful consideration. Among the multitude of "Don'ts" for politeness are the following for health alone:-- "Don't endeavor to rest the mind by absolute inactivity; let it seek its rest in work in other channels, and thus rest the tired part of the brain. "Don't delude yourself into the belief that you are an exception as far as sleep is concerned; the normal average of sleep is eight hours. "Don't allow your servants to put meat and vegetables in the same compartments of the refrigerator. "Don't keep the parlor dark unless you value your carpet more than your and your children's health. "Don't forget that moral defects are as often the cause as they are the effects of physical faults. "Don't direct special mental or physical energies to more than eight hours' work in each day. "Don't neglect to have your dentist examine your teeth at least every three months. "Don't read, write, or do any delicate work unless receiving the light from the left side. "Don't pamper the appetite with such variety of food that may lead to excess. "Don't read in street-cars or other jolting vehicles. "Don't eat or drink hot and cold things immediately in succession. "Don't pick the teeth with pins or any other hard substance. "Don't sleep in a room provided with stationary washstands. "Don't neglect any opportunity to insure a variety of food." There are many things we should _never_ do. Among them are:-- "Never go to bed with cold or damp feet. "Never lean with the back upon anything that is cold. "Never begin a journey until the breakfast has been eaten. "Never take warm drinks and then immediately go out in the cold. "Never ride in an open carriage or near the window of a car for a moment after exercise; it is dangerous to health or even life. "Never omit regular bathing, for unless the skin is in regular condition the cold will close the pores and favor congestion or other diseases. "Never stand still in cold weather, especially after having taken a slight degree of exercise." Perhaps among the following you may find succinctly stated what will be of eminent value:-- "Focus your brain as you would a burning-glass. Butter enough for a slice won't do for a whole loaf. "Keep empty-headed between times. Mental furniture should be very select. Useless lumber in the upper story is worse than a pocketful of oyster shells. Leave your facts on your book shelves, where you can find them when wanted. A walking encyclopedia cannot work for want of room to turn round in his own head. "Don't tax your memory. Make a memorandum, and put it in your pocket. Every unnecessary thought is a waste of effective force. "Don't believe that muscular exercise contracts head work. Brain and muscle are bung-hole and spigot of the same barrel. It is poor economy to keep both running. "Pin your faith to the genius of hard work. It is the safest, most reliable, and most manageable sort of genius. "Amuse yourself. This is the first principle of good hard work. And the second is like unto it. "Don't work too much. It is quantity, not quality, that kills. Therefore, work only in the day-time. Night was made for sleep. And loaf on Sunday. Six days' work earns the right to go a-fishing, or to church, or to any harmless diversion, on the seventh. "Go to work promptly, but slowly. A late, hurried start keeps you out of breath all day trying to catch up. "When you stop work forget it. It spoils brains to simmer after a hard boil. "Feed regularly, largely, and slowly. Lose no meal; approach it respectfully and give it gratefully. No more can be got out of a man than is put into him. "Sleep one-third of your whole life. How I hate the moralist who croaks over time wasted in sleep. Besides, sleep is, on the whole, the most satisfactory mode of existence." Misconceivements.--"There are a number of mistakes made even by wise people while passing through life. Prominent among them is the idea that you must labor when you are not in a fit condition to do so; to think that the more a person eats the healthier and stronger he will become; to go to bed at midnight and rise at daybreak, and imagine that every hour taken from sleep is an hour gained; to imagine that, if a little work or exercise is good, violent and prolonged exercise is better; to conclude that the smallest room in the house is large enough to sleep in; to eat as if you had only a moment to finish a meal in, or to eat without any appetite, or to continue after it has been satisfied, merely to please the taste; to believe that children can do as much work as grown people, and that the more hours they study the more they learn; to imagine that whatever remedy causes one to feel immediately better (as alcoholic stimulants) is good for the system, without regard to the after-effects; to take off proper clothing out of season because you have become heated; to sleep exposed to a direct draught; to think any nostrum or patent medicine is a specific for all the diseases flesh is heir to." Weariness.--"A tramp knows what it is to be leg-weary, a farm laborer to be body-weary, a literary man to be brain-weary, and a sorrowing man to be soul-weary. The sick are often weary of life itself. Weariness is generally a physiological 'ebb-tide,' which time and patience will convert into a 'flow'. It is never well to whip or spur a worn-out horse, except in the direst straits. If he mends his pace in obedience to the stimulus, every step is a drop drawn from his life-blood. Idleness is not one of the faults of the present age; weariness is one of the commonest experiences. The checks that many a man draws on his physiological resources are innumerable; and, as these resources are strictly limited, like any other ordinary banking account, it is very easy to bring about a balance on the wrong side. Adequate rest is one kind of repayment to the bank, sound sleep is another, regular eating and good digestion another. One day's holiday in the week and one or two months in the year for those who work exceptionally hard usually bring the credit balance to a highly favorable condition; and thus with care and management physiological solvency is secured and maintained." "What Produces Death.--Someone says that few men die of age. Almost all persons die of disappointment, personal, mental, or bodily toil, or accident. The passions kill men sometimes even suddenly. The common expression, 'choked with passion,' has little exaggeration in it, for even though not suddenly fatal, strong passions shorten life. Strong-bodied men often die young; weak men live longer than the strong, for the strong use their strength and the weak have none to use. The latter take care of themselves, the former do not. As it is with the body, so it is with the mind and temper. The strong are apt to break, or, like the candle, run; the weak burn out. The inferior animals, which live temperate lives, have generally their prescribed term of years. The horse lives 25 years, the ox 15 or 20, the lion about 20, the hog 10 or 12, the rabbit 8, the guinea-pig 6 or 7. The numbers all bear proportion to the time the animal takes to grow to its full size. But man, of all animals, is one that seldom comes up to the average. He ought to live a hundred years, according to the physiological law, for five times 20 are 100; but instead of that he scarcely reaches an average of four times the growing period. The reason is obvious--man is not only the most irregular and most intemperate, but the most laborious and hard-working of all animals. He is always the most irritable of all animals, and there is reason to believe, though we cannot tell what an animal secretly feels, that more than any other animal man cherishes wrath to keep it warm, and consumes himself with the fire of his own reflections." Provided you have babies in your family go through the following and see if you can't train your child so it shall be among the last seventeen mentioned:-- "Take your pencil and follow me, while we figure on what will happen to the 1,000,000 of babies that will have been born in the last 1,000,000 seconds. "I believe that is about the average--'one every time the clock ticks.' "One year hence, if statistics don't belie us, we will have lost 150,000 of these little 'prides of the household.' "A year later 53,000 more will be keeping company with those that have gone before. "At the end of the third year we find that 22,000 more have dropped by the wayside. "The fourth year they have become rugged little darlings, not nearly so susceptible to infantile diseases, only 8,000 having succumbed to the rigors imposed by the master. "By the time they have arrived at the age of twelve years but a paltry few hundred leave the track each year. "After threescore years have come and gone we find less trouble in counting the army with which we started in the fall of 1889. "Of the 1,000,000 with which we began our count, but 370,000 remain; 630,000 have gone the way of all the world, and the remaining few have forgotten that they ever existed. At the end of eighty, or, taking our mode of reckoning, by the year 1969 A. D., there are still 97,000 gray-haired, shaky old grannies and grandfathers, toothless, hairless, and happy. "In the year 1984 our 1,000,000 babies with which we started in 1889 will have dwindled to an insignificant 223 helpless old wrecks, 'stranded on the shores of time.' "In 1992 all but seventeen have left this mundane sphere forever, while the last remaining wreck will probably, in seeming thoughtlessness, watch the sands filter through the hour-glass of time, and die in the year 1997 at the age of one hundred and eight. "What a bounteous supply of food for reflection!" "Laughter as a Health Promoter.--In his 'Problem of Health,' Dr. Greene says that there is not the remotest corner or little inlet of the minute blood-vessels of the human body that does not feel some wavelet from the convulsions occasioned by good hearty laughter. The life principle, or the central man, is shaken to its innermost depths, sending new tides of life and strength to the surface, thus materially tending to insure good health to the persons who indulge therein. The blood moves more rapidly and conveys a different impression to all the organs of the body, as it visits them on that particular mystic journey when the man is laughing, from what it does at other times. For this reason every good hearty laugh in which a person indulges tends to lengthen his life, conveying, as it does, new and distinct stimulus to the vital forces." CHAPTER X. "While bright-eyed science watches round." A scientific investigation into the nature and causes of consumption proves the immediate causes, apart from hereditary, to be dampness of houses and localities. Of races, the negroes seem most liable, and the Jews the most exempt. A french scientist has found that inhalation of air containing a small amount of _hydrofluoric acid_ gas has a remarkably good effect on _consumption_. In England good results were obtained by inspiration of air mixed with _ozone_. That the disease results chiefly from inactivity of the lungs is the statement of a physician who maintains that the cure of the disease is a mechanical question. The International Tuberculosis Congress lately held at Paris admits that tuberculosis is contagious, can be transmitted from man to animals, and _vice versa_, and is the same in men, women, and cattle. Diseased milk is the most frequent agent of transmission, and with this meat, particularly lightly cooked, as food. Predisposing causes are sedentary life, overwork, mental anxiety, insufficient nourishment, in general, anything calculated to lower the vitality. The congress has discovered no remedy, only palliatives for tuberculosis. Catarrhs, bronchitis, and other throat troubles have a tendency to develop into pleurisy or consumption when neglected. _Typhoid fever_ never affects the atmosphere, but it does affect water, milk, ice, and meat. The eggs of a parasite from dogs, and hence more or less infecting all waters to which dogs have access, appear to have an unequaled facility of passage to all parts of the human system. As for _surgical operations_, in a German paper are particulars of a case in which the eye of a man was thrust out of its socket by a parasite cyst in the rear, discovered by surgical exploration and extracted. From a 5-year old boy an injured kidney was removed successfully and the patient recovered. The bridge of the nose was completely restored by using the breast-bone of a chicken and stretching the flesh of the old nose over it. Even the part of a destroyed nerve of the arm was restored by the substitution of a part of a sound nerve from an amputated limb, so that the continuity was restored and sensation returned in 36 hours! Prematurely-born children are kept in an artificial mother, which consists of a glass case warmed by bowls of water. A new opiate has been discovered called the sulsonal. It produces sleep in nervous people and those affected with heart disease, but not in healthy subjects. The idea that sufferers from heart disease should avoid physical exertion has been dispelled by a noted physiologist who has successfully employed regulated exercise. Brown-Séquard has brought out his great Vital Fluid. He is reported as saying: "I never made use of the word 'elixir,' still less of the words 'elixir of life.' These are all expressions or inventions of sensational newspapers. If quacks or ignorant men in America have killed people, as stated by the New York papers, they would have avoided committing those murders had they paid the least attention to the most elementary rules as regards the subcutaneous injection of animal substances. Injections of animal matter have no danger, as a rule, unless the substances begin to be decomposed. When this condition of things exists, no good can be obtained, and there is grave danger of inflammation, abscesses, and even death." "Professor Brown-Séquard is reported to have lately informed the French Academy of Sciences that, by condensing the watery vapor coming from the human lungs, he obtained a poisonous liquid capable of producing almost immediate death. The poison is an alkaloid (organic), and not a microbe or series of microbes. He injected this liquid under the skin of a rabbit and the effect was speedily mortal without convulsions. Dr. Séquard said it was fully proved that respired air contains a volatile element far more dangerous than the carbonic acid which is one of its constituents, and that the human breath contains a highly poisonous agent. This startling fact should be borne in mind by the occupants of crowded horse-cars and ill-ventilated apartments." "A very curious geographical distribution of certain virtues and vices has been mooted by a scientist. Intemperance is mostly found above latitude 48°, amatory aberrations south of the forty-fifth, financial extravagance in large seaports, industrial thrift, in pastoral highland regions." "Advance in Hygienic Clothing.--The new cellular clothing now coming into use in England is said to be a success. It is woven out of the same materials as the common weaves of cloth, being simply, as its name indicates, closely woven into cells, the network of which is covered over with a thin fluff. Its porous quality allows the slow passing of the outside and inside air, giving time for the outside air to become of the same temperature as the body, obviating all danger of catching colds, and allowing vapors constantly exhaled by the body to pass off, thus contributing toward health and cleanliness. The common objection to cotton clothing--that it is productive of chills and colds--is removed if woven in this manner, and the invention can certainly be said to be strictly in accordance with hygienic and scientific principles." The annual death rate, in 1888, for the principal cities of the world, per 1,000 inhabitants, was: San Francisco, Cleveland, Stockholm, 17; Bristol, Dresden, 18; Chicago, Cincinnati, Edinburgh, London, Turin, 19; Berlin, Baltimore, Brussels, Buffalo, Liverpool, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, 20; Brooklyn, St. Louis, Tokyo, 21; Amsterdam, Christiana, Paris, Washington, 22; Glasgow, 23; Copenhagen, 24; Bombay, Boston, New Orleans, Pesth, Venice, Vienna, 25; Breslau, Calcutta, Manchester, New York, Prague, Rotterdam, 26; Dublin, 27; Rome, 28; Hamburg, Munich, 29; Trieste, 30; Buda Pesth, St. Petersburg, 32; Alexandria, 38; Madras, 40; and Cairo, 51. The death rate among the poor and rich respectively varies much. In Paris the death rate per 1,000 inhabitants between 40 and 50 years in easy circumstances was 8.3 against 18.7 among the poor. In London are some districts of the wealthy classes where the rate was 11.3 against 38 in the slums. The mean age at death among the gentry was 55 years, while among the workers it was 20-1/2 years. It was found that only 8% of the children of the upper classes died in their first year against 19% in the general population of Liverpool and 33% in the slums of that city. Deaths from consumption were nearly one-fourth of all deaths among the poor, and only one-eighteenth among the rich. The above facts and figures cannot fail to set every intelligent person who reads them to thinking of this great health problem. HAPPINESS. CHAPTER XI. HAPPINESS. "The learned is happy Nature to explore, The fool is happy that he knows no more." Happiness is defined by Webster as an agreeable feeling or condition of the soul arising from good of any kind; the possession of those circumstances or that state of being which is attended with enjoyment; the state of being happy; felicity; blessedness: bliss; joyful satisfaction. _Happiness_ is generic and applied to almost every kind of enjoyment except that of the animal appetites; _felicity_ is a more formal word, and is used more sparingly in the same general sense, but with elevated associations; _blessedness_ is applied to the most refined enjoyment arising from the purest social, benevolent, and religious affections; _bliss_ denotes still more exalted delight, and is applied more appropriately to the joy anticipated in heaven. Happiness is only comparative, and we drink it in, in the exact ratio of our understanding to interpret the justice of the divinity within us. The first pre-requisite is_ wisdom_, the second is like unto it, _more wisdom_, and the third sufficient understanding to know that it is wisdom. "It is easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows by like a song, But the man worth while is one who will smile When everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is trouble, And it always comes with the years, And the smile that is worth the praises of earth Is the smile that shines through tears. "It is easy enough to be prudent When nothing tempts you to stray, When without or within no voice of sin Is luring your soul away. But it's only a negative virtue Until it is tried by fire, And the life that is worth the honor of earth Is the one that resists desire. "By the cynic, the sad, the fallen, Who had no strength for the strife, The world's highway is cumbered to-day, They make up the item of life, But the virtue that conquers passion, And the sorrow that hides in a smile, It is these that are worth the homage of earth, For we find them but once in a while." --_Ella Wheeler Wilcox._ We possess none of the attributes save in a degree only, any one of which can be intensified, brightened, or benefited by our thoughts and actions. The shortest road to happiness, after having cleansed your body, actions, and thoughts, is to "do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all living creatures you can, just as long as you can." The more unselfish you become, the less you think of personal comfort, and the more pleasure you take in the comforts of others, the deeper and broader will the fountains of your own happiness become. There is no class of people who have equal happiness or bliss pictured upon their countenances to those who practice and teach the universal brotherhood of man without regard to race, creed, sex, caste, or color. Happiness is like manna. It is to be "gathered in grains and enjoyed every day; it will not keep; it cannot be accumulated; nor need we go out of ourselves nor into remote places to gather it, since it is rained down from heaven at our very doors, or, rather, within them." George Macdonald says: "A man must not choose his neighbor; he must take the neighbor that God sends him. In him, whoever he be, lies hidden or revealed a beautiful brother. Any rough-hewn semblance of humanity will at length be enough to move the man to reverence and affection." And there is a still more extensive love, urges Charles Mackay:-- "You love your fellow-creatures? So do I,-- But underneath the wide paternal sky Are there no fellow-creatures in your ken That you can love except your fellow-men? Are not the grass, the flowers, the trees, the birds, The faithful beasts, true-hearted, without words, Your fellows also, howsoever small? He's the best lover who can love them all." There are certain principles that lead to positive happiness. One of these is the avoiding of mistakes. "What have been termed 'the fourteen mistakes of life' are given as follows: It is a great mistake to set up our own standard of right and wrong and judge people accordingly; to measure the enjoyment of others by our own; to expect uniformity of opinion in this world; to look for judgment and experience in youth; to endeavor to mould all dispositions alike; not to yield to immaterial trifles; to look for perfection in our own actions; to worry ourselves and others with what cannot be remedied; not to alleviate all that needs alleviation as far as lies in our power; not to make allowances for the infirmities of others; to consider everything impossible that we cannot perform; to believe only what our finite minds can grasp; to expect to be able to understand everything. The greatest of mistakes is to live for time alone when any moment may launch us into eternity." Ignorance is a state of happiness that many fairly intellectual people cite as well worthy of emulation; but those who assert it have not understood, or attempted to fathom, how shallow is this lake of knownothingness called "ignorance." Only a slight ripple can be seen on the bosom of a shallow lake during the most fearful storm, yet but a slight zephyr is needed to show the white caps upon the grand old ocean, and at the least provocation of a storm "see how she causes the continents to tremble, showing her great depth and majesty." If in the presence of this happy, ignorant personage, we place the most beautiful piece of statuary or painting, or produce the most startling of Shakespeare's plays, with the best living talent, or have the most gifted vocalist sing the most difficult _aria_, or have a panorama of the pyramid Jeezeh, Eiffel Tower, Washington Monument, Philadelphia City Hall, Cologne Cathedral, all actual size, and such of nature's grandest views as the Yosemite Fall, and Father of the Forest, we would look upon this happy individual and listen in breathless silence for his opinion. Well, what of it? what is to prevent it? would be the reply. But note the difference even in a cultured child; see the gentle cheek turn from pale pink to livid carmine, the heart pant, the bosom heave, and the whole form, for the time being, feel itself suspended in the air. To the above picture, add cultured, ripe old age, and the enjoyment, ecstasy, and pure happiness that would follow could only be measured by the difference between where _we_ stand and the _end_ of space! Prerequisites in the begetting of wisdom are, first, you must be regular in everything you do, act, or think. This will give you health. Second, you must be regular, cleanly, temperate, and moral. This will start you on the road to happiness. Third, in addition to the first and second propositions, you must exercise self-control in all its aspects if you would have health, be happy, and live to excessive old age, before the culmination of which you will possess wisdom of no ordinary character. Let the legend that "man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn," cease, and in its place have, "The universal brotherhood of man removes the shackles of inhumanity, replacing them by bands of love." This will elevate the trend of human thought, and every zephyr of human intellect will gather and multiply until a cyclone of happiness envelopes the earth; like love it will seem but a soothing breeze to the human heart, so gentle will fall its benign influences. This brings us to the point where every person is led to look to each of the four points of the compass and there exclaim, "Who or what is God?" This is the first thing upon which intelligent beings should render a decision; mankind can only approximate happiness until they have settled in their own mind this point. It is not imperative that your decision should cover _all_ the truth or the _only_ truth in regard to Deity, but it should preclude all doubt on the part of the person so deciding. There is just as much inconsistency in the statement that we know who and what is God in his physical proportions, just where He or It resides, and just what relation It or He holds toward the human monad, man, as there is in the assertion, "There is no God." There is no harm, however, in asserting our belief in _one_ God, the Trinity, or a great First Cause. If we believe it and shape our lives accordingly, true light will be given sufficient to satisfy each searcher after the Truth; and he or they will advance to some other belief just when it is necessary. The exultant Methodist receives his light in one form, and the quiet Quaker in another. The devout Catholic represents still another type of ritualistic form, and the Wisdom Religionist (Theosophist) seems to get his from Nature, and finds some good in everything. With the 1,100 other different kinds of faith, there should be no complaint on our part of a variety from which to choose. We offer not as anything new, but as something possibly forgotten, the following formulæ for obtaining happiness, _viz._: (1) The carrying out in our lives and actions the Golden Rule; (2) total unselfishness as regards self; (3) trying to excel all others in doing what the world calls _good_; (4) condemning no one until we have heard both sides of the question in dispute; (5) having the same tender compassion for all the lower animals that you exercise towards the human family; (6) following out consistently some religious belief, and, until you are convinced of a better one, defending it; (7) above all other things, having charity for every person's short-comings and belief. Add to these a few intrinsic principles: (1) Happiness is no other than soundness and perfection of mind; (2) there are two ways of being happy--we may either diminish our wants or augment our means--either will do, the result is the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest; (3) happiness is a road-side flower growing on the highways of usefulness; (4) carry the radiance of your soul in your face; let the world have the benefit of it; (5) learn the lesson embodied in this little poem:-- THE TWO WORKERS. "Two workers in one field Toiled on from day to day, Both had the same hard labor, Both had the same small pay; With the same blue sky above, The same green grass below, One soul was full of love, The other full of woe. "One leaped up with the light, With the soaring of the lark; One felt it ever night, For his soul was ever dark. One heart was hard as stone, One heart was ever gay; One worked with many a groan, One whistled all the day. "One had a flower-clad cot Beside a merry mill; Wife and children near the spot Made it sweeter, fairer still. One a wretched hovel had, Full of discord, dirt, and din, No wonder he seemed mad, Wife and children starved within. "Still they worked in the same field, Toiled on from day to day, Both had the same hard labor, Both had the same small pay; But they worked not with one will: The reason let me tell-- Lo! the one drank at the still, And the other at the well." (6) Embody in your lives the better idea of this poem, "Where Do You Live," by Josephine Pollard:-- "I knew a man, and his name was Horner, Who used to live on Grumble Corner: Grumble Corner, in Cross-Patch Town, And he was never seen without a frown. He grumbled at this; he grumbled at that; He growled at the dog; he growled at the cat; He grumbled at morning; he grumbled at night; And to grumble and growl were his chief delight. "He grumbled so much at his wife that she Began to grumble as well as he; And all the children, wherever they went, Reflected their parents' discontent. If the sky was dark and betokened rain, Then Mr. Horner was sure to complain; And, if there was never a cloud about, He'd grumble because of a threatened drought. "His meals were never to suit his taste; He grumbled at having to eat in haste; The bread was poor, or the meat was tough, Or else he hadn't had half enough. No matter how hard his wife might try To please her husband, with scornful eye He'd look around, and then, with a scowl At something or other, begin to growl. "One day, as I loitered about the street, My old acquaintance I chanced to meet, Whose face was without the look of care And the ugly frown which it used to wear. 'I may be mistaken, perhaps,' I said, As, after saluting, I turned my head; 'But it is, and it isn't, the Mr. Horner Who lived for so long on Grumble Corner!' "I met him next day; and I met him again, In melting weather, and pouring rain, When stocks were up and when stocks were down; But a smile somehow had replaced the frown. It puzzled me much; and so one day I seized his hand in a friendly way, And said: 'Mr. Horner, I'd like to know What can have happened to change you so?' "He laughed a laugh that was good to hear, For it told of a conscience calm and clear, And he said, with none of the old-time drawl, 'Why, I've changed my residence, that is all!' 'Changed your residence?' 'Yes,' said Horner, 'It wasn't healthy on Grumble Corner, And so I moved; 'twas a change complete; And you'll find me now on Thanksgiving Street!' "Now, every day as I move along The streets so filled with the busy throng, I watch each face and can always tell Where men and women and children dwell; And many a discontented mourner Is spending his days on Grumble Corner, Sour and sad, whom I long to entreat To take a house on Thanksgiving Street." CHAPTER XII. "Gold can gild a rotten stick and dirt sully an ingot." Aids to Morality.--"Many imagine that the only ways in which public and private morality can be improved," says the Philadelphia _Ledger_, "are those definite and direct methods which appeal at once to the conscience and the heart. Preaching and teaching, persuading and warning, exhorting and encouraging, are instrumentalities worthy of all honor, and those whose abilities qualify them for such tasks should receive every possible stimulus to exert them in so noble a cause. But it is a great mistake to suppose that these are the only means to promote morality. Every truly civilizing influence is also a reforming one. By this we do not mean that miscalled civilization which multiplies wants, and increases luxury and develops refinement in a few, at the expense of the many, but that advancement of mind and of knowledge, which is forever disclosing better methods of living and diffusing them among the whole people. Dr. Howard Crosby, president of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, in New York, and who has had wide opportunities of observing the condition of morality in that city, has recently declared that the moral condition of New York has vastly improved during the past few years, and that fifty years ago, although there was far less of the foreign element than there is now, a low condition of morality existed that would not be tolerated at the present time. What is true of New York in this respect is equally true of our other cities, and if there be any pessimist who points to the well-known corruptions and vices which still exist as a refutation of this statement, we would remind him that the very fact that such things are now brought to the light, discussed, and condemned, is a proof that they are on the decline. When a community is deeply sunk in immorality, little or no comment is made on the fact. When we come to seek into the causes of this improvement, we shall find that among the most prominent are the practical results of scientific progress and the civilizing tendencies of the age. There is no question that dirt, disease, and darkness are prevalent sources of vice and crime, and whatever influences are brought to bear against them will also press heavily against immorality. The increasing value set upon health, as shown alike in sanitary laws and regulations and in the greater willingness manifested by the community to understand and adopt hygienic modes of life, is beyond dispute. The improvements in house building and drainage; the introduction of water, pure and plentiful; the freer admission of fresh air; the better systems of ventilation; the brilliant lighting up of our city streets--all contribute to the prevention of crime and to the spread of a higher type of morality, while increasing the health, peace, and comfort of the community. And when to all these we add the better and wider education given to the rising generation than was thought possible fifty years ago, we shall find abundant reason for the moral advancement which has been made. There are some persons who feel quite powerless to help on the cause of reform, or to improve the moral character of a single individual, because they have no gift for influencing men by direct appeal. They have, perhaps, tried and failed, and so, although they would like to do some good in the world, they are hopeless of any success. Let such take courage as they remember how many indirect, yet most effectual, methods there are of accomplishing this end. Let them look over the multitudes of civilizing agencies that are silently working in the interests of morality, and attach themselves to such as most heartily engage their interest. Every intelligent individual must be in sympathy with some of them; and it is just there that his services are needed and will be most valuable. Nor let him make the mistake of supposing that he is thus working upon a lower or inferior plane. It is in works of benevolence and reform, just as in all other kinds of work--that which a man can do best is the very best thing for him to do. So, if one man is interested in sanitary schemes and another in evening schools; if one is anxious for free libraries and another for free parks; if one can help to secure good roads and clean streets and another can aid in protecting children or dumb animals from ill-treatment, let each be assured that in such exertions he is doing his share in promoting morality and in elevating character as surely and as effectually as those whose peculiar province it is to teach or to preach, to admonish or to advise." If the butcher's trade begets in him, the butcher, a disposition to use the knife more indiscriminately, and causes him to look upon the taking of life indifferently and unconcernedly, so that in a majority of the States he is disqualified from sitting upon a murderer's jury, there then must be something not only in the associations we keep but in the business we follow. The average lawyer tries by every known means to clear his client. In 50% of the cases handled by 50% of the attorneys their clients are guilty and they know it. They do not break the law of their State or country simply because the laws in the main are made to screen the evil-doers and not the honest citizen. But how they can do this and affiliate with any one of the 1,100 different faiths, or attend their church organizations or services sincerely, is more than we can surmise. In contrast, however, we must mention an isolated case that has reached us well authenticated. A very prominent and able lawyer of New York City, who had the reputation of never losing a case, was accosted by a well-known offender of the law on trial for felony before the court of Oyer and Terminer. The attorney invited the would-be client into his private office and had him state his case. He finished, and the lawyer remarked, "You are guilty." "Well, I know that," replied the culprit, "that is why I want your services--you never lose a case." "Sir," said the lawyer, "you have come to the wrong office. I have never failed in any case before the courts; I account for it from the fact that I have never espoused a cause where I knew the client was guilty. Knowing I was right, I have thrown my whole soul into it, and won." Gossip.--There is a vast deal of unhappiness in this world caused by gossip. Dr. J. G. Holland presents helpful ideas in the following:-- "What is the cure for gossip?--Simply culture. There is a great deal of gossip that has no malignity in it. Good-natured people talk about their neighbors because they have nothing else to talk about. As we write, there comes to us the picture of a family of young ladies. We have seen them at home, we have met them in galleries of art, we have caught glimpses of them going from a book store or library with a fresh volume in their hands. When we meet them they are full of what they have seen and read. They are brimming with questions. One topic of conversation is dropped only to give place to another in which they are interested. We have left them after a delightful hour, stimulated and refreshed, and during the whole hour not a neighbor's garment was soiled by so much as a touch. They had something to talk about. They knew something, and wanted to know more. They could listen as well as they could talk. To speak freely of a neighbor's doings and belongings would have seemed an impertinence to them, and, of course, an impropriety. They had no temptation to gossip, because the doings of their neighbors formed a subject very much less interesting than those which grew out of their knowledge and their culture. "And this tells the whole story. The confirmed gossip is always either malicious or ignorant. The one variety needs a change of heart and the other a change of pasture. Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the young should not only shun it, but, by most thorough culture, relieve themselves from all temptation to indulge in it. It is a low, frivolous, and, too often, a dirty business. There are neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. Churches are split in pieces by it. Neighbors are made enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. Let the young cure it while they may." Married Life.--As the family is the center about which all life revolves, it is absolutely essential to have happy relations there. Husbands too often neglect their wives and homes. "Women are lonely," says Mrs. Annie Jenness. "They miss their husbands. What amount of companionship exists between the American woman and the man? He starts for his office as soon as his breakfast is hurriedly swallowed. He does not come home at the lunch hour. He is barely in season for a late dinner. Very possibly he belongs to a club and has an engagement as soon as dinner is done. "If not that, his head is in bank or counting-house, and he studies the stock quotations in the night's paper, and counts, as against a possible rise of wheat, the day's gossip, with which his wife is overflowing, very small potatoes. They have callers, or they go to opera or theater. It may easily happen that they do not spend ten minutes in conversation with each other during the day. American men are always in a hurry. They seem to live for the sole purpose of catching trains. They have no time to amuse or be amused. "The conditions of modern life separate them from women. The lives of men grow more and more simple--business comprehends the whole. The lives of women grow more and more complex--everything which is not business is given over to them. A man past the romantic epoch, who honestly enjoys talking with women, is not an average mortal. The every-day sort of man takes pains to be detained somewhere until all the guests have departed from his wife's 5 o'clock tea. The couple live in different worlds. The world is now discussing why marriage is a failure, if it is? Then consider this collection of reasons:-- "When either of the parties marry for money. "When the lord of creation pays more for cigars than his better half does for hosiery, boots, and bonnets. "When one of the parties engages in a business that is not approved by the other. "When both parties persist in arguing over a subject upon which they never have and never can think alike. "When neither husband nor wife takes a vacation. "When the vacations are taken by one side of the house only. "When a man attempts to tell his wife what style of bonnet she must wear. "When a man's Christmas presents to his wife consist of boot-jacks, shirts, and gloves for himself. "When the watchword is, 'Each for himself.' "When dinner is not ready at dinner-time. "When 'he' snores his loudest while 'she' kindles the fire. "When 'father' takes half of the pie and leaves the other half for the one that made it and her eight children. "When the children are given the neck and back of the chicken. "When children are obliged to clamor for their rights. "When the money that should go for a book goes for what only one side of the house knows anything about. "When there is too much latch-key. "When politeness, fine manners, and kindly attentions are reserved for company or visits abroad." CHAPTER XIII. "The greatest friend of truth is time." WHAT WE INHERIT FROM THE PAST. The world moves only through the constant accumulation and conservation of force--the force of mind. We are not capable of conceiving the immense wastage of this force from year to year and from century to century. If we produce a great inventor we are ignorantly proud of him. We wonder at him as if he were a miracle. A great thinker in mechanics, in art, in science, in letters, astonishes as if he were a prodigy, when he is really only an approach to what all men have the right to be, to what all men may become when the right mind has applied to it the right compelling power of suggestion from the force of other minds. As surely as the plant is involved in its seed, so surely is all the progress of the future involved in the thought of the past, recorded in books as far as it is possible to record it at all. The telephone, the telegraph, the phonograph, the steam-engine, the power loom--every result of the application of mind in the subjection of matter--existed in the minds of men and was recorded in books years before the thought gave suggestion to the mind which applied it practically. Back of the mind of the great thinker in poetry, in statesmanship, in science, in mechanics, is the conserved force of the minds preceding him. But what does it all avail if it is wasted? We may have now a thousand Edisons, Fultons, Morses and Maurys, inert and practically useless because of force unapplied that might set them in motion to make the lives of millions, born and unborn, easier and happier. We have poets, statesmen, scientists, and inventors as unknown and unproductive as the worms which change them into productive forms of matter in country church-yards, where some Gray finds them and touches us with a sense of their loss to us without suggesting the remedy. What remedy is there if it is not this of making the suggested possibility of the past the endeavor of the present and the achievement of the future? How is that possible, if we regard our capable men as miracles, when our own incapacity to understand is the only miracle when we leave the great possibilities of mind in unnumbered "thousands to die with the matter of their bodies? Charity builds a small-pox hospital and men bless it--rightly. It benefits its hundreds and its thousands. The same benevolence, operating under the force of the conserved energy of mind, discovers vaccination, and so benefits millions and tens of millions for ages after the small-pox hospital is back in the clay from which its bricks were burned. There is here no parallel possible between the results achieved--those of the one hand so immensely exceed those of the other. The whole problem of the present and future is to bring the accumulated force of suggestion from the past to bear on the given point--on the mind of the living man, capable in possibility, and failing to achieve only for lack of stimulus--of force, of power--as a steam-engine is incapable without force applied from without. And as it is the last shovel of coal that sets the engine to work, so the mind, prepared for the final suggestion that is to give it its highest usefulness, will remain inert if the suggestion fails it. These suggestions may come from nature or directly from other minds, but in the main they come from the force of mind preserved in books. Can there be any greater, any more capable benevolence, than that which gives this force its widest possible application? A million dollars may endow a hospital for a century. Half as much in an endowment making a library free may bring pressure to bear on some brain, that, as a result, will save more suffering for the human race than has been saved by vaccination." LONGEVITY. CHAPTER XIV. LONGEVITY. "Tell me not in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream, For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem." How long shall a man live? That depends entirely upon the _Liver!_--_Punch._ If you have read with care the preceding chapters of this work, and paused between the lines to reflect, you will not now have to be retold our panacea for a long life. By this we mean the usually allotted three-score and ten, or also the 120 years given as the limit in Genesis, 3rd and 6th chapters. These ages, however, are not common in any country or age. There are many instances of 70 years, but not enough to be called common, while it is the "survival of the fittest" that reach 120 years. In the United States only 5.6% of population are above 60 years and probably not more than 4-1/2% are over 70 years. Norway has the best record, with 9% of the population above the age of 60. Japan has 1,182,000 people over 70 years, but only 73 of these are over 100, and 1 alone has reached the age of 111 years. Probably the oldest human being living in the United States at this writing is the old Indian named Gabriel, residing at or near Castroville, Cal., 100 miles south of San Francisco. He has an authentic history of 146 years, and he is believed to be over 150 years old. But for real characteristic longevity, we must visit the mountain fastnesses of Thibet, in Asia, where live a number of specimens of the human family that have a recorded history back to the latter part of the 16th century. We have previously told you that by regularity alone man may reach the age of 100 years. Now we intend to treat more the possibilities of how long it is possible for mankind to retain all their mental faculties and enjoy sufficient vital force to battle with the world for a livelihood. We are led to believe, like Dr. Wm. A. Hammond, a prominent physician of New York City "that there is no physiological reason at the present day why man should die." (Further on we give more of the Doctor's theory.) Just so long, however, as there are no paid teachers to show how not to get sick, how to keep the physique and mind from tiring, the heart from growing weary and discontented, just so long will the average of life remain under 40 years and the grave-yards continue to be populated. There are hundreds of reasons why this or that clan or sect live longer than the other sect or clan, but what we wish to convey is that none of them live out all their days. For instance, in comparison with other nations not mentioned, the German can drink more beer, the Frenchman more wine, the Russian more pure spirits, the Englishman more brandy, and the American more whisky, before harm is perceptible, likewise the Chinese can smoke more opium and the Russian a stronger cigarette, and more of them, before harm is apparent to others. No matter what an individual's creed, color, or nationality, if he be intelligent and clearly endowed with the five known senses, he does know that any narcotic, no matter of what nature, even if it is as mild as steeped tea leaves and as odorless as pure water, is a detriment to some one of the senses. As each sense is dulled, the others must sympathize with it; so it will not require an instrument to measure to the .001 part of an inch, or to a single vibration of the violet ray, to test the degree of injury that the human structure received for each variation from the path of perfection. If perfection of climate is sought, perfect sanitation obtained, regularity, cleanliness, uprightness, temperance, and self-control practiced, if the bodily waste is supplied with nature's fruits, grains, vegetables, and herbs, if drinking is done at nature's fountain for thirst, life will be prolonged to see the light in more than one century. Finally, add to that, if self is forgotten, and only the comfort of others remembered and regarded, life may be indefinitely prolonged. M. Chevreul, the eminent French scientist, died April 9, 1889, aged 103 years. "On the 31st day of August, 1886, he attained the age of 100 years, and was still in vigorous health, and with all his faculties unimpaired. The occasion 'was celebrated by the students of Paris, among whom he is a great favorite, and by the French people generally, with enthusiasm.' The Paris _Journal Illustre_ seized upon the opportunity to interview him in a manner that is described as marking 'an era in this line of journalistic enterprise. Not only were his words taken down _verbatim_, but his various attitudes while speaking were photographed by the instantaneous process, and engraved,' twelve illustrations being given in the interview. M. Chevreul is an important figure in the scientific world, and the interview contains many useful lessons in hygiene and philosophy, not the least of which is described by his interviewer as an exposition of the 'chemical secret of longevity.' In a condensed form, it is as follows: He regards longevity as a great blessing, and declares that the method by which it may be secured is easy to learn; but I think that with many people it would be difficult to follow. He laid down the proposition that the larger proportion of the human race die of disease and not of old age. Now, he finds that while we should especially guard against drawing general conclusions from particular cases, yet it is nevertheless true that the study of particular cases may and should conduct us to general precepts. It is necessary for each one to study his personal aptitudes, and conform to them with a constant firmness. Every _régimé_ is personal, and 'I cannot too much insist upon this essential point, that what is suitable for one may not be for another. It is, then, important for each one to note well what is adapted to his own constitution. Thus, I have the same aversion to fish as to fermented liquors, especially to wine, also a distaste for a large number of vegetables, and I could never drink milk. Shall I conclude, then, that fish, that the vegetables which I do not relish, and milk, are not nutritive?--Certainly not; for I judge by a general rule and not by my own idiosyncrasies. Coffee and chocolate agree with me; the latter is especially nutritive, and gives me an appetite for food. It is for me an aperient. Shall I conclude from this that chocolate would give everybody an appetite?' "He maintains a barometric exactness and regularity in all the habits of his daily life,--eats at fixed hours, takes his time, and leaves the table with some appetite for more. He says he remembers the words of the wise man, 'The stomach has slain more men than war,' and that the Spartans proscribed those citizens who were too fat. "I use little salt or spices, and but little coffee, and I flee as from a pest from all those excitants of which I feel no need, and from all tobacco and alcoholics in whatever form they may present themselves.' "He divides his day, the morning to exact science, the middle of the day to philosophy, and the evening to music and poetry. 'But above all, no discussion at the table. One should only eat with a calm spirit. Let the dining-room remain the dining-room, and never be turned into a room for argument. Discussion while eating is a cushion of needles in the stomach.'" Dr. Felix L. Oswald has made the following brilliant conclusions in the "Curiosities of Longevity:"-- "Among the centenarians of all nations and all times, a significant plurality were either rustics, or city dwellers addicted to outdoor pursuits. Centenarians are remarkably frequent among the bailiff-ridden boors of Southern Russia, and the five oldest persons of modern times were care-worn if not abjectly poor villagers: Peter Czartan, who died in a hamlet near Belgrade, 1724, in his _hundred and eighty-fifth year_; the Russian beggar Kamartzik, a native of Polotzk, who reached an age of one hundred and sixty-three years, and died in consequence of an accident; the fisherman Jenkins, who, in spite of life-long penury, lived at least a century and a half (the estimate of his neighbors varying from one hundred and fifty-eight to one hundred and sixty-nine years); the negress Truxo, who died in slavery on the plantation of a Tucuman physician, in her hundred and seventy-fifth year; and the day-laborer, Thomas Parr, who attained the pretty-well-authenticated age of one hundred and fifty-two years, and who died a few weeks after his removal from country air and indigence to comfort and city quarters. If dietetic restrictions tend to prolong human life, the rule would seem to be chiefly confirmed by its exceptions. The children of Israel are apt to ascribe their certainly remarkable longevity to the Mosaic interdict of hogs' flesh.... "John H. Brown, M. D., the Berwick Æsculapius, enumerates a long list of patients who had postponed their funeral by following his plan of systematic hygiene--the plan, namely, of 'toning down' plethora by bleeding and cathartics, and of 'toning up' debility by means of beef and brandy. But sixteen hundred years ago the philosopher Lucian called attention to the exceptional longevity of the Pythagorean ascetics, whose religious by-laws enjoined total abstinence from wine and all sorts of animal food. The naturalist Brehm describes the robust physique of a Soudan chieftain who, at the reputed age of one hundred and six years, could hurl a stone with force sufficient to kill a jackal at a distance of fifty yards, and thought nothing of starving for a week or two if his foragers happened to return empty-handed. But the same traveler mentions that his swarthy Nestor now and then compensated such fasts by barbecues lasting from ten to twenty-four hours, and including a _mélange_ of marrow-fat and pepper-grass, besides dozens of hard-boiled crane's eggs, jerboa stew, and deep draughts of clarified butter. Long fasts certainly enhance the vigor of the digestive organs, but the net result of repeating such experiments seems rather difficult to reconcile with the experience of Luigi Cornaro, the Venetian reformer, who managed to outlive all his cousins and schoolmates, and ascribed his success to the mathematical regularity of his bill of fare, which, during the last sixty years of his self-denying existence, had been limited to twelve ounces of solid food and fourteen ounces of fluids--wine chiefly, a beverage which the Soudanese emir would have rejected with a snort of virtuous horror. Dr. Virchow, though by no means an advocate of total abstinence, admits that the longevity of the Semitic desert-dwellers can be explained only by their caution in the use of stimulants--a virtue which in their case would, indeed, appear to offset an unusual number of circumstantial disadvantages--thirst, fiery suns, and fiery passions being decidedly unpropitious to length of life. "And here, at last, we may strike a bit of _terra firma_ in the quicksands of speculative hygiene. 'Take a hundred different animals,' says the sanitarian Schrodt, and you will find them to prefer a hundred different sorts of solid food, but they all drink milk in infancy, and afterward water; and considering the infinite variety of comestibles a healthy human stomach contrives to digest, we might very well agree to deserve that privilege by limiting the variety of our beverages.' Instinct certainly abhors the first taste of alcoholic liquors, and statistics prove that in all climes and among all nations the disease-resisting power of the human organism is diminished by the habitual use of toxic stimulants. Mohammed, Buddha, and Zoroaster agree on that point, and the esoteric teachings of Pythagoras may have qualified his rather fanciful objections to grape-juice by the practical hope of longevity. A complete list of infallible prescriptions for the prolongation of human life would fill a voluminous book, and would include some decidedly curious specifics. 'To what do you ascribe your hale old age?' the Emperor Augustus asked a centenarian whom he found wrestling in the _palæstra_ and bandying jokes with the young athletes. '_Intus mulso, foris oleo_,' said the old fellow--'Oil for the skin and mead [water and honey] for the inner man.' Cardanus suggests that old age might be indefinitely postponed by a semi-fluid diet warmed (like mothers' milk) to the exact temperature of the human system and Voltaire accuses his rival Maupertuis of having hoped to attain a similar result by varnishing his hide with a sort of resinous paint (_un poix résineux_) that would prevent the vital strength from evaporating by exhalation. Robert Burton recommends 'oil of unaphar and dormouse fat;' Paracelsus, rectified spirits of alcohol; Horace, olives and marsh-mallows. Dr. Zimmerman, the medical adviser of Frederick the Great, sums up the 'Art of Longevity' in the following words: 'Temperate habits, outdoor exercise, and steady industry, sweetened by occasional festivals.'" "The increasing longevity of man is attracting considerable attention from collectors of statistics, and some curious facts are being elicited. According to the last census, 10 per cent of the people who died between 1870 and 1880 had outlived the traditional three-score years and ten, whereas of the deaths between 1840 and 1850, only 7.47 per cent were of persons of that age. In 1850, 16.90 per cent of the deaths were of children under one year of age; in 1880, the proportion was 23.24, showing a smaller percentage of deaths among adults. The average length of life in England 300 years ago was only twenty years. In France the average length of life, under Louis XVIII., was twenty-eight years. Actuaries are figuring that within the past half-century the average length of life has greatly increased." "A study of this subject is impeded by the tendency of almost everyone to generalize from individual examples within his own observation. This is almost sure to be misleading, because no one's acquaintance is so large that it embraces factors enough to base a theory on. People say that life is longer than it used to be, because Palmerston rode to hounds at 82, and Peter Cooper and the Emperor William were intellectually vigorous at over 91. They forget that Marino Faliero was over 80 when he concocted his plot, and that the blind Dodge Dandolo was 84 when he took Constantinople. Every age has produced a few long-lived men, and here and there a centenarian." "The question of importance is not whether this age is yielding more centenarians than former ages, but whether, on the average, the age of man is longer than it was, and if so, how much longer? The grounds for an increased longevity--better doctors and more of them, better drainage, more wholesome food, wiser habits, and better facilities for securing change of air--justify the belief that life is lengthening, to what degree it is hard to say. M. Flourens, who had made a life study of the subject, said that every man ought to live to be a hundred, if he took care of himself." "In a number of the _Popular Science Monthly_ is an article by Clement Milton Hammond on the prolongation of human life that is interesting both in the way of being readable and as based on returns as to an unusually large number of persons above eighty years of age. The facts were obtained by sending out 5,000 blanks to be filled. They were sent through New England only and were intended to cover personal history and hereditary influence. Over 3,500 of the blanks were filled out and returned. They show that less than 5 per cent remained unmarried through life, the unmarried women being three times as numerous as the unmarried men. The average number of children was five. Five out of six of the old people had light complexions, blue or gray eyes, and abundant brown hair. The men were generally tall and ranged in weight from 100 to 160 pounds, with a few of 200 pounds, and the women of medium size, weighing from 100 to 120 pounds, with some exceptional cases up to 180 pounds. The men were generally bony and muscular, and the women the opposite. At the time of record the hair was generally thick, the teeth poor or entirely gone, the skin only slightly wrinkled. Generally their habits of eating and sleeping have been conspicuously regular. They have as a rule adhered to one occupation through life, and of the 1,000 men 461 were farmers. Few have used alcoholic drink stronger than cider. A large majority of the men used tobacco. The average age of the parents and grandparents of the persons reported on was about sixty-five. The average time of sleep was about eight hours." Dr. Maurice advances some staunch ideas on old age:-- "Do poor people live longer than the affluent? There are so many more poor in the world than there are rich that we can be sure of finding more poor old people. Probably excessive wealth is a burden sure to exhaust its possessor in the care of it. Our millionaires, however, are men for the most part who began poor and were possessed of tenacious vitality, that is, with a grip on other things as strong as on the money bags. Professor Humphrey's 'Report on Age of Persons' gives us 824 persons, of both sexes, of whom about half were poor and the rest at least in good circumstances, 10 per cent only being possessed of wealth. The real truth seems to be that poverty, with an iron constitution and sound nerves, is most likely to produce an instance of extreme age; but the possession of the comforts and amenities of life produces by far the best average of ages. The average age of the middle classes has always surpassed that of others; but at present sanitation forces on the poor so many provisions against disease that they are saved from their former high death-rate, and brought quite near the privately better-bred and furnished class. "There has certainly been long sustained, in proverbs and otherwise, a conviction that early rising and early retiring have much to do with prolonged vitality. Franklin insisted on it vigorously. Lord Mansfield, also, held it to be an important item in his sustained vigor to near ninety. I am inclined to believe that the estimate is not erroneous. We are far more the creatures of habit than we generally allow. At certain moments we become regularly hungry, regularly sleepy, and so with all other functions. It is wise beyond doubt to recognize this fact and never break our habits, that is, our useful habits. But beyond this, there are certain habits dependent on cosmical causes, such as movements of the sun. Our natural rest would seem to be properly conformed, in the main, to the appearance and disappearance of daylight. "But after we have fairly and fully considered the subject, there remains the one fact that idleness will end life sooner than any other cause. The hour that any person retires from any and all occupation he is sure to drop into decadence. The mind is very sure to begin to lose its clearness when it is withdrawn from regular exercise. Both brain and muscular power lapse with lack of activity. The custom of working excessively till sixty-five or seventy, and then withdrawing from business, is wrong at both ends. We crowd life at the beginning, and let its functioning grow torpid at the close. Much is lost to age by our modern methods of locomotion. Great walkers are scarce; there is almost a total lack of horse-back exercise. Carriage-riding over smooth roads in no way compensates." Perhaps there is nothing that prolongs life more than genial, hearty _laughter_. William Matthews says "that there is not a remote corner or little inlet of the minute blood-vessels of the human body that does not feel some wavelet from the great convulsion caused by hearty laughter shaking the central man. Not only does the blood move more quickly than it is wont, but its chemical or electric condition is distinctly modified, and it conveys a different impression to the organs of the body, as it visits them on that particular mystic journey when the man laughs, from what it does at other times. A genial, hearty laugh, therefore, prolongs life, by conveying a distinct and additional stimulus to the vital forces. Best of all, it has no remorse in it. It leaves no sting, except in the sides, and that goes off. Cicero thought so highly of it that he complained bitterly at one time that his fellow-citizens had all forgotten to laugh: _Civem mehercule non puto esse qui his temporibus ridere possit_. Titus, the Roman emperor, thought he had lost a day if he had passed it without laughing. What a world would this be without laughter! To what a dreary, dismal complexion should we all come at last, were all fun and cachination expurged from our solemn and scientific planet! Care would soon overwhelm us; the heart would corrode; the river of life would be like the lake of the Dismal Swamp; we should begin our career with a sigh, and end it with a groan; while cadaverous faces, and words to the tune of 'The Dead March in Saul,' would make up the whole interlude of our existence." "Hume, the historian, in examining a French manuscript containing accounts of some private disbursements of King Edward II. of England, found, among others, one item of a crown paid to somebody for making the king laugh. Could one conceive of a wiser investment? Perhaps by paying one crown Edward saved another. 'The most utterly lost of all days,' says Chamfort, 'is that on which you have not once laughed.' Even that grimmest and most saturnine of men, who, though he made others roar with merriment, was never known to smile, and who died 'in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole'--Dean Swift--has called laughter 'the most innocent of all diuretics.' Yet the philosopher of Concord, R. W. Emerson, is reported as having said in a lecture: 'Laughter is to be avoided. Lord Chesterfield said that after he had come to the years of understanding he never laughed.' Lord Chesterfield would have had far more influence if, instead of repressing every inclination to laugh, he had now and then given his ribs a holiday--nay, if he had even roared outright; for it would have disabused the public of the notion that he never obeyed a natural impulse, but that everything he said and did was prestudied--done by square, rule, and compass. As it was, though he was confessedly the politest, best-bred, most insinuating man at court, yet he was regularly and invariably out-flanked and out-maneuvered by Sir Robert Walpole, who had the heartiest laugh in the kingdom, and by the Duke of Newcastle, who had the worst manners in the world. In commending laughter, we mean genuine laughter, not a make-believe, not the artificial or falsetto laugh of fashionable society, nor, again, the mere smile of acquiescent politeness, or the crackling of thorns under a pot, or the curl of the lips that indicates in the laughter a belief in his fancied superiority. Still less do we mean the hollow, mocking laugh of the cynic. The laughter which we would commend as healthful is not bitter, but kindly, genial, and sympathetic." No Physiological Reason for Death.--"Dr. William A. Hammond, a prominent physician of New York, who has written several medical treatises, and was some years ago Surgeon-General of the United States Army, has recently set forth his belief that there is no physiological reason at the present day why man should die. He maintains that people die through the ignorance of the laws which govern their existence, and from their inability, or indisposition, to attend to those laws with which they are acquainted. Now, as the business of medical men has ostensibly been for the last four thousand years to prolong human life, and as Dr. Hammond affirms that there is no good reason why people should die, the wonder is why men of his school have not drawn up some formula by which they could live on for three or four thousand years, at least. There has always been a vague impression that the knowledge of the preservation of human life had been lost, and that in some favored era of the world's history that knowledge would be recovered. "If there is such a thing as a hidden law of life, which, when discovered and asserted, will arrest physical decay and prevent death, except by accident, Doctor Hammond, and all who hold to his doctrine, ought to lose no time in making it known. This medical authority reasons that, as the human body is constantly dying and constantly renewing its particles, this law of displacement and renewal ought to be perpetual, and that when it is discovered just what substances are best fitted to maintain this equipoise, as it were, there should be no giving out of the physical powers. "'The food that man takes into his stomach,' says Doctor Hammond, 'ought to be of such quantity and quality as would exactly repair the losses which, through the action of the several organs, his body is to undergo. If it is excessive in either of these directions, or if it is deficient, disease of some kind will certainly be the result. If he knew enough to be able to adjust his daily food to the expected daily requirements of his system, disease could never ensue through the exhaustion of any one of his vital organs. A large majority of the morbid affections to which he is subject are due to a lack of this knowledge. "'Now, suppose that he is exactly right in his calculations, and that the food taken is neither too great nor too little, but exactly compensates the anticipated losses, the death of each cell in the brain, or the heart, or the muscles, etc., will be followed by the birth of a new cell, which will take its place and assume its functions. Gout, rheumatism, liver and kidney diseases, heart affections, softening and other destructive disorders of the brain, the various morbid conditions to which the digestive organs are subject, would be impossible except through the action of some external force, such as the swallowing of sulphuric acid, or a blow on the head, or a stab with a knife, which would come clearly within the class of accidents, and of course many of these would be avoidable.' "Dr. Hammond's theory supposes that the time will come when the individual will have learned the uttermost thing about the laws of life, and when he will conform so strictly to these laws that he will have nothing more to learn in regard to the best way of living. It may require ages for this progress, but when it is attained, and the race is set free from all morbific influences, physical death would be impossible. The summary of his points is that 'people die from ignorance of the laws of life; and from willfulness in not obeying the laws they know.' That may be a part of the truth which is very near the surface. But the other demonstration is not quite so clear as could be wished--that there can be any such thing as an eternity of physical life, even if all the laws touching that life were known and every one of them obeyed." PART II CHAPTER I. DISEASES AND REMEDIES; HOW TO PREVENT MOST MALADIES AND CURE ILLS POSSESSED. Note.--If the reader is in haste to know what will cure this or that trouble, before perusing the pages of this entire pamphlet, such as cramp, colic, indigestion, constipation, headache, etc., the index found in the back part of this work will give immediate reference, and the prescriptions instant relief. If you are cured thereby of any of the many maladies that beset the human family, remember that it is only temporary; for to be cured of any disease permanently requires the removal of the cause. One of the objects of this book is to convey that information. The great disparity between the actions and teachings of many of our principal writers must be apparent to every reader of books, pamphlets, and editorials, upon the subject of health and its allies, happiness and longevity. Many of the leading exponents of temperance have periodical spells of drunkenness, and some drink all the time. The prominent articles written upon the subject of sanitary matters and cleanliness, are generally by the editor whose office is the scene of disorder, the floor covered with tobacco quids, old rubbish and dust, and the corners filled with cobwebs. The writer upon the subject of poverty and the wrongs of the poor, has his headquarters fitted up in the most magnificent style;--he never knew what it was to want for a meal, nor did he ever darken the door of real poverty. The missionary advocate soliciting funds for the heathen and down-trodden poor of foreign lands, more than likely never crossed the borders of his own State, certainly has not taken a stroll through the dark lanes and alleys, or climbed the dingy stairways of the tenement houses of his own city. If he had done so, a more effective appeal would have gone up for the suffering poor and spiritually blind of the principal unsanitary municipalities of his own country. The physician with a bad cough and broken-down constitution is still prescribing for consumptives and patients with all manner of aches and pains, of which his own body is a perfect index. And the minister who has not yet lost all his hatred for "that other sect," and occasionally assists in persecuting it, is still teaching the doctrine of the meek and lowly Nazarene. Having experienced a large number of diseases and their successful remedies, we have for several years been collecting the most reliable data and testimony on many--in short most--of mankind's bodily ills. In this second part we present them for your benefit. There are about 11,000 remedies mentioned in the 15th edition of the "United States Dispensatory," by reference to which it will be seen that each affliction to which flesh is heir must be more than well drugged. It is the fault of the community at large that the necessity of such a work exists. There is no demand for any form of disease even with the improper state of society as it is to-day. Extreme old age and a limited number of accidents are all that can be necessary to record. The following is an admirable article from the St. Louis _Globe Democrat_, which is quite pertinent. "Sanitation and Sanity.--The general subject of sanitation now covers our architecture and our home life; our sewerage and disposition of waste; our personal cleanliness and contact in all social relations; our food and drink, both as to quality and kind; quarantine and other preventives against contagion and infection; the purification of streams, and the cleansing of the air of smoke and foul vapors; in fact, the whole subject of health or wholeness. * * * A national board of health was as unthought of as was an Atlantic cable in 1800. But the fact that great epidemics were liable to invade us, and did invade us, led to a system of quarantine and to enforced vaccination. But the regulation by law of our social manners, so far as they bore on public health, was not undertaken to any extent until within the past decade. * * * Indeed, public sentiment is as yet so uninformed that thorough laws in the case could not be enacted or enforced. There is not a stream in the United States that can be kept entirely free from pollution. The sanitary value of this is not understood by even the intelligent populace. The drainage of swamps is neglected in the neighborhood of our larger cities." "St. Louis has tolerated inside her limits pools that have made fevers of a malarious sort, with spinal meningitis, as common as croup. Chicago has acres of rotting vegetable matter inside the corporation every autumn. The inroads of yellow fever have always been invited by the unsanitary condition of Southern towns. The reports of Surgeon-General Hamilton, last summer, showed that the pest found its first welcome in a town where sewerage was wholly neglected, and tons of rotting sawdust and refuse filled the heated air with fever conditions. "The discovery of the germ origin of diphtheria and of the typhoid forms of fever, has led to great changes in thousands of households. Our houses are constructed with far more attention to ventilation and proper heating. We shall finally get rid of drunkenness and intemperance of other sorts, on sanitary grounds mainly. Alcohol has been considered as at least valuable in moderation. It has been looked upon as a medicine. That its value as a stimulant hangs on the previous abuse of health is now understood, and its value purely as a very temporary bridging of weakness alone is conceded. That the drink habit is in any sense, however moderate, of sanitary value, is disproved. Few doctors prescribe any form of alcohol for habitual use. The saloon is unsanitary in all its effects. The temperance issue rests at that point. Animals to which spirits have been given in their food digest nearly one-half less than other animals of the kind. The nutrition of the human body demands the abolition of stimulants and narcotics. The saloon will go ultimately as a nuisance to health. We have not yet reached a condition when public morals can rest on any other basis than health. It is doubtful if there can be a higher basis. What is unwholesome is wrong; what is promotive of health and completeness for the individual and for the community is right. "Sanity is dependent on sanitary living. They both are derived etymologically from _sanitus_, and that from _sanus_, the Latin for sound or whole. Insanity has come to have the limited meaning of unsoundness of brain. * * * Insanity is on the increase in the United States, but not more so than nervous disorders in general. This indicates a tendency to a break-down of the national type of organism, and cannot be considered with indifference. The fact exists as a consequence of the overwork and high pressure of modern life, but in this country is at its maximum, because, for several generations, we have been at white heat, subjecting a continent to our domestic purposes. "The vast unfolding of means of wealth has also acted as a stimulant, compared to which alcohol is insignificant. Our lunatic asylums multiply, but are all full. The percentage of failure is greatest in California, where speculation has been most intense. It is impossible to avoid the problem. How shall we reverse this tendency, and begin the construction of an American type of full, robust, conservative, and reserved energy? The underlying problem of all problems is to secure a constitution. A nation that lives and works in such a manner as to grow weaker in brain endurance and nerve power, and yet so lives that the demands on brain and nerves are increased, is doomed. The intensity of modern life is something we cannot reverse. We must adapt ourselves to it by securing larger and more systematic means of recuperation. Brain-workers must learn to use the first half of the day for work, and sacredly give the last half to rest and play. Night must be given back entirely to sleep. Withal it is clear that we must understand the close relation between sanity and sanitation. Our people can no longer eat and drink as grossly as our fathers did. The stomach gets not half the time it formerly did for digestion. It must, therefore, be delivered of half its toil. The introduction of stoves and modern conveniences must be accompanied by more rational ventilation. Active brains require a vast and regular supply of oxygen. It is not for the lungs alone that we need pure air, but for the brain. This is specifically an American problem, the readjustment of society, so that the mind shall be relieved of strain and consequent enfeeblement." Individual, municipal, and national cleanliness by enactment of law are among the first steps that should be taken. The churches and schools should teach it as a prerequisite before godliness, or education in general; then with perfect ventilation, sanitation, and regularity of all the virtues, there will be no vices, and godliness and education will be contagious, just as though they were real diseases. The first thing to undertake if you are desirous of freeing yourself of any disease, ache, or pain, is to stop the cause. Act on the same principle you would if you had a barrel that had leaked its contents and you desired to refill it,--first stop the leak. It is absolutely necessary that you study _cause_ as well as _effect_, if you would know yourself. The Secret of Sound Health.--"Half the secret of life," says _MacMillan's Magazine_, "we are persuaded, is to know when we are grown old; and it is the half most hardly learned. It is more hardly learned, moreover, in the matter of exercise than in the matter of diet. There is no advice so commonly given to the ailing man of middle age as the advice to take more exercise, and there is perhaps none which leads him into so many pitfalls. This is particularly the case with the brain workers. The man who labors his brain must spare his body. He cannot burn the candle at both ends, and the attempt to do so will almost inevitably result in his lighting it in the middle to boot. Most men who use their brains much soon learn for themselves that the sense of physical exaltation, the glow of exuberant health which comes from a body strung to its full powers by continuous and severe exercise, is not favorable to study. The exercise such men need is the exercise that rests, not that which tires. They need to wash their brains with the fresh air of heaven, to bring into gentle play the muscles that have been lying idle while the head worked. Nor is it only to this class of laboring humanity that the advice to take exercise needs reservations. The time of violent delights soon passes, and the effort to protract it beyond its natural span is as dangerous as it is ridiculous. Some men, through nature or the accident of fortune, will, of course, be able to keep touch of it longer than others; but when once the touch has been lost, the struggle to regain it can add but sorrow to the labor. Of this our doctor makes a cardinal point; but, pertinent as his warning may be to the old, for whom, indeed, he has primarily compounded his _elixir vitæ_, it is yet more pertinent to men of middle age, and probably it is more necessary. It is in the latter period that most of the mischief is done. The old are commonly resigned to their lot; but few men will consent without a struggle to own that they are no longer young. All things are not good to all men, and all things are not always good to the same man. The man who confines his studies within one unchanging groove will hardly find his intellectual condition so light and nimble, so free of play, so capable of giving and receiving, as he who varies them according to his mood, for the mind needs rest and recreation no less than the body; it is not well to keep either always at high pressure. One fixed, unswerving system of diet, without regard to needs and seasons, or even to fancy, is not wise. The great secret of existence after all is to be the master and not the slave of both mind and body, and that is best done by giving both free rein within certain limits, which, as the old sages were universally agreed, each man must discover for himself. Happy are the words of Addison, and happily quoted: "A continual anxiety for life vitiates all the relishes of it, and casts a gloom over the whole face of nature, as it is impossible that we should take delight in anything that we are every moment afraid of losing. "One of the best methods of avoiding that pitiful anxiety is to learn within what limits we may safely indulge our desire for change, and then freely indulge it within them." CHAPTER II. We shall now take up a practical list of subjects, arranged in alphabetical order. Without any attempt at egotism, we claim that there are few nontechnical books extant that contain a superior selection of preventatives and remedies. Read carefully and judge for yourself. There are very few common or occasional afflictions which are not considered to some extent. Why always seek a doctor when you seem to be somewhat off your physical equilibrium? You will generally at each visit spend more money than this book will cost. Learn to provide against constant medical attention. =Accidents.=--In sudden emergencies, either of accident or sickness, the first great requisite is presence of mind. Be calm. Endeavor, if possible, to grasp the situation, and do what is to be done promptly and quietly, until the arrival of the physician. All hurried and distracted motions, and all exciting noises, confuse the attendants and needlessly alarm the sufferer. In many cases, the course of immediate action is suggested by the circumstances; but where you do not know what aid to render, it is best to do nothing, except to make the patient as comfortable, for the time being, as possible. For all ordinary emergencies, ample directions are:-- "1. Always look in the direction in which you are moving. "2. Never leave a car, or other public vehicle, when it is in motion. "3. Never put your head or arms out of a vehicle when it is in motion. "4. If a horse runs away with you, remain in the vehicle rather than risk the danger of jumping from it. "5. In thunder-storms keep away from trees, metallic substances, doors, and windows. The lower part of a house is the safer. "6. Never play with fire-arms. Always keep them beyond the reach of children. "7. Avoid charcoal fumes; they are deadly when confined in a close room. "8. Illuminating gas; be sure to turn it off. _Never blow it out._ "9. When gas can be smelt in an apartment always air the room well before striking a match or bringing a light. "10. When very cold, move quickly. If any part of the body is frozen, rub it with snow, and keep from the fire. "11. Change wet clothing as soon as possible. "12. Carefully avoid exposure to night air, in malarial districts. "13. If necessary to go into an old vault or well, first introduce a burning candle. If the light burns low and finally goes out, carbonic acid gas is present and the place is unsafe to enter. Unslaked lime will absorb the gas and purify the air. "14. Avoid walking on railroad tracks and icy sidewalks. "15. When awake, very young children should never be left alone. "16. Do not go, with loose hair or flowing garments, near dangerous machinery. "17. Never touch gunpowder after dark. "18. Never fondle a strange dog. "19. Never light a fire with kerosene. "20. Fill and trim your lamps in the day-time. Never trim or fill a lighted lamp. "21. Keep matches in a closed metallic box. "22. Have your horses rough-shod as soon as the ground freezes. "23. When feeling dizzy or seasick, lie down. "24. Do not close the damper of your stove too early. Better waste coal than run the risk of suffocation by gas. "25. When climbing a ladder, look up and not down. "26. In railroad traveling take the center of the car, and the middle car of the train, for safety. "27. Eat only pure food, drink only pure liquids, think only pure thoughts, and keep your blood pure. "28. In going through dry woods or over prairies do not smoke or cast matches about carelessly. There should be laws against this often wanton destruction of property. "29. Look out for spontaneous ignition of oily rags, oil-painted canvas rolled up, wet iron filings. "30. In entering mines not used, always try for gas before venturing into them. "31. Do not be careless in any way whatever in connection with fire. The losses in the United States, in 1889, by fires as a result of carelessness amounted to nearly $100,000,000, while in San Francisco for the same year we find that fully 80% of the losses can be attributed to the same source." =Alcohol.=--Felix L. Oswald, M.D., gives some very good ideas in _Good Health_ on the alcoholic habit. "'Reform,' says an able political writer, 'is ever unpopular. All wrongs lie in the consent of the wronged, and what with the fierce support of those who thrive on the abuse, and the dull, heavy, ignorant conservatism of the masses, * * * it is a sad delusion to suppose that the cause is won when the argument is made.' An unquestionable preponderance of power, they argue, favors the side of the liquor venders, and in this world, at least, always finds a way to assert itself as right. The last link of that syllogism, however, is a rule with occasional exceptions. No unqualified evil has ever succeeded in maintaining its supremacy, and the evils of the alcohol vice are offset by no benefits. Alcohol has been called 'negative food,' because its physiological influence torpifies the functional energy of the digestive organs, and thus, for a time, renders the toper insensible to the cravings of hunger. The same effect, however, can be produced by a stunning blow, and we might as well claim that the interests of political economy could be promoted by a fierce war, because a knock-down stroke with the butt-end of a musket is apt to lessen the appetite of the afflicted soldier. No real benefit can result from the lethargizing effect of a poison dose, the retardation of the digestive functions being in every case a morbid and abnormal process, avenging its repetition by the fatty degeneration of the tissues and the impoverished condition of the blood. * * * During the horrible flood which a few months ago devastated the two richest provinces of the Chinese Empire, a number of vile marauders eked out an existence by fishing out wreckage and plundering floating corpses. The idea of mentioning the profits of these wretches as a compensating offset to the horrors of a public calamity would justly consign its propounder to the custody of a lunatic commission. Yet, by an exactly analogous line of argument, many of our political economists continue to defend the legal sanction of the liquor traffic. Nay, it might be seriously questioned if the total loss (by fire or water) of a billion bushels of grain would not be financially and morally preferable to their conversion into a life-blighting poison. According to the statistics of the Treasury Department, the alcohol drinkers of the United States (representing hardly one-fifth of the alcoholized nations of Christendom) spent during the last ten years a yearly average of $370,000,000 for whisky, $58,000,000 for other distilled liquors, $56,000,000 for wine, and $140,000,000 for ale and beer; together, $624,000,000 a year. That enormous sum has been far worse than wasted. It has been invested in the purchase of disease. It has been devoted to the development of idiocy, crime, and pauperism. It has turned blessings into a concentration of curses. The general recognition of these facts will seal the doom of the liquor traffic." Dr. C. E. Spitka expresses some results of science investigating strong drinks:-- "Alcoholism among the ancients was therefore mainly or exclusively known in its acute phases, the drunken frenzy in which Alexander the Great killed Clitus being a familiar example. With the introduction of tobacco and playing cards, the saloon, the cellar-dive, and the bar-room usurped the place formerly held by the inn. The enlargement of cities deprived their inhabitants of rustic sports, and led to their seeking in other and more dangerous channels an escape from mental and physical strain, and a variation of routine monotony. It is generally conceded by those medical writers who are unshackled by prejudice that a certain amount of alcohol can be ingested with perfect impunity. That amount has been accurately determined by Dujardin-Beaumetz in the course of experiments made in the abattoirs of Paris. Transferring the result of his experiments to the human species, he concluded that a man weighing 120 pounds could take the equivalent of two ounces of alcohol a day for years without injury to any organ of the body. But when the amount taken daily exceeds the toleration-point, prolonged abuse is followed by results which are as sinister as they are insidious. In the dead-house of the Philadelphia Hospital, Formad found that, of 250 chronic alcoholists, nearly 99 per cent had fatty degeneration of the liver, 60 per cent had congestion or a dropsical state of the brain, the same proportion an inflamed or degenerated stomach, while not quite 1 per cent had normal kidneys. Of 17 children of drunken fathers observed by Voisin, 3 were idiots, 2 confirmed epileptics, 1 suffered from a congenital spinal disease, and the remainder died in early life with convulsions. Of 11 children similarly descended, cited by Dagonet, 9 died in the same way. Of 117 such births recorded in Alsace-Lorraine, 13 were still-born and 39 died of convulsive disorders shortly after birth. One drunken father had 7 still-born children in succession; another lost 8 of 12 by convulsions. It is not alone as a direct result of inebriety that a defective nervous system is thus transmitted. Even in his sober intervals, he whose nervous system has been shattered by alcohol is liable to have a degenerate or diseased offspring. Of 18 children recorded as born under these circumstances, Voisin found 8 epileptic and 10 idiotic. As if to prove beyond the possibility of a doubt that such degeneracy is due to the alcoholism of the parent, and to that alone, two French investigators, Mairet and Combemale, performed a series of experiments on dogs, by which they showed that the same result which the chronic inebriate is accused of producing in his offspring, through selfish indulgence, can be produced at will in the offspring of lower animals by compulsory induction of the same vice in them." An English investigation, just completed, puts in tangible form the effect of the use of alcohol, from observations covering 4,234 cases in all walks of life. This report shows that, with men over twenty-five, the intemperate use of alcohol cuts off ten years from life, those who never drink to excess, or use no liquor, living, on the average, ten years longer than those who do. Indulgence, if carried to excess, doubles diseases of the liver, quadruples those of the kidneys, and greatly increases the number of deaths from pneumonia, pleurisy, and epilepsy. It is not often appreciated how many people die annually from the effects of strong drink. Dr. Norman Kerr, an eminent physician of England, believing the statement of temperance people to be extravagant, that 60,000 people die annually from the effects of strong drink, began as early as 1870 a personal inquiry, in connection with several medical men and experts, expecting to quickly disprove the same. According to their deductions, the latest estimates of deaths of adults annually caused through intemperance is, in Great Britain, 120,000; in France, 142,000; in the United States, 80,000--or nearly a half million each year in three countries aggregating a population of 112,000,000. _Excessive Beer Drinking._--In the earlier part of our work we endeavored to impress on our readers the necessity of regularity and the avoidance of excesses. The last week of 1889 in New York City saw two prominent brewers buried, and two others of the guild were near death. None of them were, or are, over forty-seven years old. Kidney and heart disease were the causes of death in the case of the first two. Similar ailments have marked the other two gentlemen for the grave. The question arises, Was it beer or champagne that caused these diseases? In this connection the statement a physician of Bellevue Hospital once made is not amiss. These are his words: "The worst cases of alcoholic ailments coming under our observation are those resulting from excessive beer drinking." In appearance the beer drinker may be the picture of health; but in reality he is most incapable of resisting disease. A slight injury, a severe cold, or a shock to the body or mind, will commonly provoke acute disease, ending fatally. Compared with other inebriates who use different kinds of alcohol, he is more incurable and more generally diseased. It is our observation that beer drinking in this country produces the very lowest kind of inebriety, closely allied to criminal insanity. The most dangerous class of ruffians in our large cities are beer drinkers. Intellectually, a stupor amounting almost to paralysis arrests the reason, changing all the higher faculties into a mere animalism, sensual, selfish, sluggish, varied only with paroxysms of anger, senseless and brutal. That men are the sex most addicted to stimulating but injurious habits is sadly growing less true, and women are finding recourse too often to poisonous invigorators. If one-half of what the doctors are saying all over the country is true, there may soon be a greater need of a temperance reform among the women than there ever has been among the men. Strong drink, however, is not the monster by which the women may be enslaved, but a strong and poisonous drug equally baneful in its effect. This drug is antipyrine. It is a white powder, slightly bitter, and soluble in water. Until about a year ago it was prescribed for fevers only, but a French medical college recommended it for headaches and other pains and disorders, and in this way it has gained its grasp on so many thoughtless and nervous women. In Chicago and many other places it is said that the habit is gaining with alarming rapidity, for the women take it for every ill, and cannot believe that its soothing effect can have any evil result until the habit is thoroughly fixed upon them. It produces different results under different circumstances, and, like many other preparations, varies according to the size of the dose. In large doses it has been known to produce complete relaxation, and at the same time a loss of reflex action, and death. In moderate or tonic doses it often produces convulsions. Its effect as a stimulant seems to be very much like that of quinine, and the physicians say that they do not understand why it should get the hold on women that it does. The latest female vice is intoxication by naphtha. It is not drank. The fumes of it are simply inhaled, inducing, so the inebriates say, a particularly agreeable exhilaration. _Remedies of Alcoholism._--Without much doubt, the best way to affect a cure is to regularly reduce one's amount of liquor each day until the system can do without it. A systematic decrease can always be carried through if the will power will back it. We add also some ideas that have been advanced by good judges: "To dispel as quickly as possible the effects of intoxicants, one of the most effectual remedies is a small dose of sal volatile, or volatile salts, in a wine-glass of water--repeating the dose in half an hour. A dish of cold broth may answer the same purpose. The most speedy way, however, of effecting a cure, is by taking an emetic, following it with the sal volatile and water half an hour after." The Russian physician and publicist Portugaloff declares that strychnine in subcutaneous injections is an immediate and infallible remedy for drunkenness. The craving of the inebriate for drink is changed into positive aversion in a day, and after a treatment of eight or ten days the patient may be discharged. Even should the appetite return months afterward, the first attempt to resume drinking will produce such painful and nauseating sensations that the person will turn away from the liquor in disgust. The strychnine is administered by dissolving one grain in two hundred drops of water, and injecting five drops of the solution every twenty-four hours. Dr. Portugaloff recommends the establishment of inebriate dispensaries in connection with police stations. =Appetite=.--Happy is the man who always possesses a good appetite; unhappy is he who does not have this precious boon. The lack of it results largely from failure of exercise and the excessive use of condiments. In the first place, try to take an invigorating bath with a wet towel and rub hard. If you cannot endure even that, use a dry towel on the body until the friction brings the blood to the surface of the skin. Then give the mouth a careful cleansing by rinsing and tooth-brush. When you sit at the table, do so with a cheerful mood, eat slowly, partake sparingly of condiments, using salt mostly, and vinegar for an acid. Preface your meals with a walk long enough to get up a circulation, if it is dinner or supper hour, but do not tire yourself, and be sure to rest the last fifteen minutes before eating. =Asphyxiation.=--A practical man, conversant with cases in which asphyxiation resulted from inhaling carbonic acid gas, gives some valuable hints for their recovery by simple remedies always at hand. Fresh air to restore consciousness is the first important step. Then he gave apples, apple juice, or vinegar, to neutralize the gas and remove it from the stomach by eructations. Eggs broken into vinegar mixed and swallowed made a very effective drink. After removing the gas from the stomach, the patient was further relieved by a cup of strong, hot coffee, which speedily restored him to normal vigor. On two similar occasions, where a physician was called, he administered injections of carbonate of ammonia, and the man was ill for eight or ten days from the effects of the medicine. A little common sense is often better than physic. =Bathing.=--We have already treated this subject to some extent, but we recommend the careful reading of Dr. C. H. Steele's ideas, part of which we embody here; also some other worthy opinions on this matter, of great importance to health. "The use of water in the treatment of diseases dates back to remote antiquity. Savages resort to the surf and sweat-bath, and Hindoos and Mohammedans bathe because their religion commands them to do so. References to the bath may be found scattered throughout the literature of Greece, and in Rome the magnificent buildings and lavish expenditure devoted to the public bath show it in the highest stage of perfection it has ever attained." "It is only within a few years past that the domestic bath has been accepted as a necessity. No home in England is complete without a bath-room, and no Englishman deems himself well unless he bathes daily. The speaker said that a thermometer, whose use should be understood, should be permanently attached to every bath-tub. "_Physiological Action of the Bath._--In considering the physiological action of the bath, it is first to be accepted that water of a temperature below that of the body abstracts heat from the skin, which abstraction continues indefinitely, only for a time checked by the renewed activity of the heat centers. In a bath the temperature of which is from 92° to 95°, the body may remain indefinitely without any loss or gain of temperature, but after the bath a cooling takes place, owing to increased perspirations. If the water is between 77° and 86°, there is, after the first shock, a positive rise in the temperature of the body. Sixty-five degrees, and lower, may be borne for a long time." "Nature adapts herself to the cold bath by a rapid stimulation of heat production. All the muscles, nerves, and organs of the body are brought into heightened activity, and thus it is that to the healthy individual the cold bath is invigorating. But nature has her limits, and the bath must be discontinued while this tonic effect is felt, for the heat centers become fatigued and give rise to a chill which may continue for days afterward. "The greatest agency in bathing is the stimulation of perspiration, and this depends upon the relative dryness of the surrounding air. Thus, in the dry vapor, or Turkish bath, a person will easily endure 264°, and lose four pounds per hour by perspiration. It is this rapid evaporation from the skin that keeps the body cool. A person may stand for some time in an oven, beside a roasting rib of beef. But in the steam or Russian bath the perspiration is retarded, and a temperature of 120° is hardly bearable. A temperature of 124° may induce a rise in the temperature of the mouth to 104° or even 107°, which is seldom reached in a raging fever. Hence, there is an element of danger in the Russian bath--a danger to sudden death similar to sunstroke. This danger is much more pronounced in the hot-water bath when perspiration ceases altogether, and the supply of heat from the interior to the skin is excessive. The temperature of bathing water should not exceed 104°, and this hot bath should not be endured more than fifteen minutes. Even then it is likely to be followed by depression and weakness." "The circulation being quickened, the cold bath acts as a good blood purifier, washing away the poisons of the body through the channels of the veins. In case of persons troubled with an excess of fat, the bath must be accompanied by massage, banting, and a liberal indulgence in outdoor exercise. In the hot bath there is this same waste of tissue, but no tonic effects, and it is invariably accompanied with loss of energy and vitality. But the action of the bath upon the skin is no less beneficial than upon the interior of the body. It favors the excretory action of the skin, thus purifying it. The millions of dead scales, kept to the skin by the clothing, and the cementing effect of the oil, are washed away, thus relieving the skin, which is the great sewerage system of the body. The work of the lungs and kidneys is thus lessened, and the danger of consumption and Bright's disease, which may be caused by uncleanness, reduced." "_Effects of Sea Bathing._--Sea bathing is much more tonic than all other kinds, and the reason is simple. The salt has a slightly irritating effect on the skin, which is very beneficial. Besides, sea bathing is always accompanied by the best of exercise, by relaxation and freedom from the ordinary cares of life, by a change of climate and scene. The beating of the waves against the body also has an exhilarating effect. The bath in the sea should be taken about three hours after breakfast. There are three stages experienced in the cold bath--first, that of depression; second, the tonic stage; and third, the giving out of the heat-producing powers. This is the same as the one stage of the hot bath, and is always to be avoided as highly injurious. "Nevertheless, the hot bath has its value. Its power to cool the body is admitted, and it is used with effect in cases inflammation induced by cold. The cold foot-bath is recommended as a positive cure for cold feet." "The practice among modern women of taking hot baths is endangering the health of the race. In a hot bath there is at first a feeling of oppression and violent throbbing of the head, followed by prostration, a highly feverish condition, and a relaxation of the entire system. In case of any organic disease of the heart or consumption, this bath must be carefully shunned. The hot bath belongs alone to the province of the physician. The cold bath, on the other hand, aside from its tonic effects, renders the body less sensitive to changes of temperature, and in this climate is, hence, especially valuable as a protection against catching cold. This bath is from 68° to 75°, and should be taken in the morning before breakfast." "=Bleeding.=--A sudden and profuse flow of blood is cause for alarm. First, decide whether the blood comes from an artery or a vein. If from a vein, the blood is dark, and oozes or flows evenly; if from an artery, it is bright red, and spurts in jets. In the former case, the bleeding may generally be stopped by binding on a hard pad. In case of a ruptured artery, the flow of blood may be checked by tying a twisted handkerchief, a cord, or strap, _between the wound and the heart_. If the hand is cut, raise the arm above the head and bind it tightly. In _wounds of the throat_, _arm-pit_, or _groin_, caused by cuts, and in case of any deep wound, thrust the thumb and finger into the bottom of the wound and pinch up the part from which the blood comes, directing the pressure against the flow. _In cuts of the lips_, compress the lips between the thumb and finger nearer the angle of the mouth than the cut itself. In _scalp wounds_, make direct pressure against the bones of the skull with the fingers, or, better, by means of a compress or bandage." "_Nosebleed._--Full-blooded persons who are afflicted with headache and dizziness are most subject to nosebleed. In such cases, the bleeding should be regarded as a relief to an overcharged system, and should not be too suddenly stopped. To stop the bleeding, keep the patient's arms elevated, apply cold water or ice to the base of the brain, or inject vinegar or alum water up the nostrils with a syringe. A thick piece of wrapping paper, placed between the upper lip and gum, and firmly pressed, will usually arrest the flow. It acts by compressing the arteries which supply the Sneiderian membrane. Try plugging with cotton, or a strip of soft muslin, gently pushed up the nostrils, thus causing the blood to clot about the plug. If these remedies fail, the case should have the attention of a physician." =Brain Worry.=--"After a good spell of hard work, the brain worker is often tormented by finding it difficult, all at once, to turn off the steam. His work-day thoughts will intrude themselves in spite of every effort to keep them out. Thackeray generally succeeded in exorcising the creatures he had been calling into existence, by the simple expedient of turning over the leaves of a dictionary. A great lawyer was in the habit, in similar circumstances, of plunging into a cold bath, and averred that a person never took out of cold water the same ideas that he took into it. Perhaps the best mental corrective of this condition is to employ the mind for a short time in a direction most contrasted to that in which it has been overworked. During excessive labor of the brain, there is an increased flow of blood to the working organ. If this condition of distention is long continued, the vessels are apt to lose the power of contracting when mental activity is diminished. Hence arises the impossibility of fulfilling the physical conditions of sleep, the most important of which is the diminution of the flow of blood to the brain. It is certain enough that the continued deprivation of any considerable part of the normal amount of sleep will be seriously detrimental to health. Dr. Hammond, in his work on sleep, mentions the case of a literary man in America who for nearly a year restricted his rest to four hours a day, and frequently less. At the end of that time, the overtasking of his mental powers was manifested in a curious way. He told the physician that, though still able to maintain a connected line of reasoning, he found that as soon as he attempted to record his ideas on paper, the composition turned out to be simply a tissue of arrant nonsense. When in the act of writing, his thoughts flowed so rapidly that he was not conscious of the disconnected nature of what he was writing, but as soon as he stopped to read it over, he was aware how completely he had misrepresented his conceptions." =Breathing.=--In each respiration an adult inhales one pint of air. A man respires 16 to 20 times a minute, or 20,000 times a day; a child, 25 to 35 times a minute. While standing, the adult respiration is 22; while lying, 13. The superficial surface of the lungs, _i. e._, of their alveolar spaces, is 200 square yards. The amount of air inspired in 24 hours is about 2,500 gallons. Two-thirds of the oxygen absorbed in 24 hours is absorbed during the night hours, from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. Three-fifths of the total carbonic acid is thrown off in the day-time. The pulmonary surface gives off about 5 fluidounces of water daily in the state of vapor. The heart sends through the lungs 192 gallons of blood hourly, or 4,608 gallons daily. The duration of inspiration is five-twelfths, of expiration seven-twelfths, of the whole respiratory act; but during sleep, inspiration occupies ten-twelfths of the respiratory period. There are two good rules to follow given by William Blaikie:-- "1. To hold the body erect, whether standing, sitting, or walking, and breathe deeply. This habit gives the lungs and digestive organs free play. More oxygen is taken into the blood, and the food is more readily digested and assimilated. 2. To fill the lungs full at frequent intervals, holding the air in the chest as long as is comfortable. This practice will soon improve a disturbed circulation." =Bright's Disease.=--Bright's disease is a disorder of the kidneys which causes those organs to secrete albumen in the urine, while they fail to extract from the blood the urea, or effete matter, which they should take up from that fluid. Urea in the blood operates as a poison, and when accumulated in large quantities, produces drowsiness, convulsions, and apoplexy. Intemperance is a fruitful source of Bright's disease, because excessive drinking tends peculiarly to the degeneration of the kidneys. The best remedy we know, or have ever seen tested, is Bethesda water, from Waukesha Springs, Wis. It should be natural, without gas; a quart per day will not be too much for an adult. =Bruises.=--If the skin is not broken, the best thing for a bruise, or black and blue spot, as they are often termed, is a piece of pure copper. It should be thin enough to shape with the fingers just the curvature or angle of the portion of the body bruised. In applying it, be very gentle at first, for if it be a finger nail you desire to preserve, on first application it will give you quite a severe shock, but by relieving it every second or two, inside of 5 minutes the pain will cease, and no black spot will follow. If the skin be broken, and the blood has ceased to flow, and you desire to use this remedy, first paste a piece of unprinted newspaper over the broken part, and then proceed as above; but in no case ever place a piece of copper on a broken part of the skin without the above precaution. =Burns=.--A correspondent of the Philadelphia _Record_ vouches for the wonderful efficacy of the common cat-tail as a remedy for burns. He says: "Take the down, and with just enough lard to hold it together, make a plaster and lay upon any burn, and it soothes and heals so soon that it seems a miracle. Put upon a fresh burn, and in less than half an hour the smart is gone; if it is an old burn, the healing will commence in twenty-four hours. 'Cat-tail' is also the Indian remedy for scrofulous sores or ulcers. Age does not destroy its healing virtues. It can be laid away and kept for years without losing any of its remedial properties." Burns should be bathed with alcohol or turpentine and afterwards with lime-water and sweet-oil, but never with cold water. Soft soap or apple butter are equally excellent for burns. =Cancer.=--It is well proved that cancer cannot be successfully removed by use of the knife. Surgeon John McFarlane, of Glasgow, mentions the cutting out of _eighty-six_ cancers without effecting a _single cure_. For those who are troubled we would say that there have been and there are remedies with permanent effects. The writer knows of a female physician in this city who has been very successful in achieving lasting cures in numerous authenticated instances. =Chewing Gum and Other Substances.=--Regular chewing outside of meal hours of any substance is injurious. It unnecessarily excites the salivary glands, the strength of which should be reserved for eating. Do not chew the ends of your finger nails. Little pieces of the nails may be swallowed, which at some time--possibly quite remote--may cause you great pain, and even death. This has occurred. It has also been found by opticians and doctors that hardly anything will affect the eyes harmfully quicker than gum-chewing. =Cholera.=--Dr. Gamaleia, of Odessa, claims to have discovered a prophylactic against cholera, and hopes to win the prize of $20,000 offered for such a cure. He calls his specific Chemical Vaccine, and has tried it efficaciously on apes, guinea-pigs, and pigeons. This is obtained by the successive passages of cholera virus through the blood of animals. After each of these passages, the virus becomes stronger, and is finally injected into the patient. A cure which was very effective when the cholera struck America is called the "Sun Cholera Medicine." It is also an excellent remedy for colic, and diarrhea, etc. Take equal parts of tincture of cayenne pepper, tincture of opium, tincture of rhubarb, essence of peppermint, and spirits of camphor. Mix well. Dose: 15 to 30 drops in a little cold water, according to age and violence of symptoms, repeated every fifteen minutes or twenty, until relief is obtained. Our own _infallible_ remedy for cholera, cholera morbus, cramps, colic, and diarrhea, is:-- Tincture of opium, 3 drachms. " " cayenne pepper, 5 drachms. " " ginger, 5 drachms. " " camphor, 3 drachms. Dose: 1 teaspoonful in a gill of cool water for an adult; repeat with half a teaspoonful in 15 minutes if not relieved. For a child 2 years old 1/4 the above dose, and in proportion up to an adult. =Cleanliness.=--The English upper classes are clean, but cleanliness of any high degree is a modern virtue among them. It is an invention of the nineteenth century. Men and women born at the close of the eighteenth century did as French people do to-day; they took a warm bath occasionally for cleanliness, and they took shower-baths when they were prescribed by the physician for health, and they bathed in summer seas for pleasure, but they did not wash themselves all over every morning. However, the new custom took deep root in England, because it became one of the signs of class. It was adopted as one of the habits of a gentleman. Don't take your pocket-handkerchief to dust off your shoes and the next moment wipe your face and eyes with it; don't carry your _own sheets_ with you on a trip and then sit in the smoking-car for 200 miles for enjoyment; anything added to white castile soap as scenting matter is no improvement and in most cases is detrimental. We have taken this subject up so carefully in "bathing" and in the first part that we will say no more here. =Cold Feet.=--The best prescription for cold or tired feet is to carefully envelop each toe and foot with blank newspaper before encasing the same with sock. First have the feet perfectly dry and warm, then they will remain so all day, if properly protected with easy-fitting, strong boots or shoes. Barbers do this to prevent their feet scalding and heating; stage drivers use this method, and hundreds attest its efficacy. Many people, especially women and children, suffer the whole winter through with cold feet. This is mainly due to the fact that they wear their shoes too tight. Unless the toes have perfect freedom, the blood cannot circulate properly. People who wear rubbers the whole winter through, generally suffer with their feet. Rubbers make them very tender by overheating and causing them to perspire. They should be removed as soon as one enters the house. They draw the feet, keep them hot and wet with perspiration--then as soon as one goes again into the air the feet are chilled. =Colds.=--Don't have any fear of night air. That is an unfounded superstition. Keep your windows open. You will sleep better and the next day you will not catch cold. Take a good hot lemonade just before retiring; in the morning, immediately on getting out of bed, take a cold bath and rub hard until you are in a perfect glow. Too much coddling is unquestionably one of the most common causes of catarrh. One who is inured to hardships is able to endure exposure without injury, while one unaccustomed to like experience quickly succumbs. Air-tight houses, close and unventilated, overheated rooms, even the quantity of clothing required, are active causes, preventing development of hardihood. As a result, colds and catarrh are universal maladies among civilized people. Says a writer in _Woman's Work_: "Without dwelling on the nature and causes of colds, or on what physicians call the pathology of these disorders, I will say that a low or even starvation diet for a few days, with the free drinking of warm, mildly stimulating teas, is better for a cold than any drug or combination of drugs. If with this a warm bath or a hot foot-bath is taken, little more will be needed. Nine cases in ten of colds can be broken up in this early stage by a hot foot or rather leg-bath, keeping the bath as hot as it can be borne, until perspiration arises. After the bath drink a half pint of hot lemonade and go to bed." _A Good Cough Remedy._--The following is from a doctor connected with an institution with many children: "There is nothing more irritable to a cough than a cough. For some time I had been so fully assured of this that I determined, for one minute at least, to lessen the number of coughs heard in a certain ward in a hospital of the institution. By the promise of rewards and punishments, I succeeded in inducing them to simply hold their breath when tempted to cough, and in a little while I was myself surprised to see how some of the children entirely recovered from their disease. Constant coughing is precisely like scratching a wound on the outside of the body. So long as it is done the wound will not heal. Let a person when tempted to cough draw a long breath and hold it until it warms and soothes every air-cell, and some benefit will soon be received from this process. The nitrogen which is thus refined acts as an anodyne to the mucous membrane, allaying the desire to cough and giving the throat and lungs a chance to heal. At the same time a suitable medicine will aid nature in her effort to recuperate." =Constipation.=--Regularity in the hour of going to stool and the avoidance of highly-seasoned food are preventatives. See "constipation," first part, per index, for a cure. =Consumption.=--"What Changes has the Acceptance of the Germ Theory made in Measures for the Prevention and Treatment of Consumption?" is the title of an essay by Dr. Charles V. Chapin, of Providence, to whom was awarded a premium of $200 by the trustees of the Fisk Fund. In this essay Dr. Chapin has given an admirable _résumé_ of all that has been written about consumption from the time of Hippocrates to the present day. After a careful examination of the literature of the subject, he thinks that we are justified in the conclusion that the acceptance of the germ theory has made no direct or important addition either to the hygiene or medicinal treatment of consumption. He thinks, however, that it should have great influence. It tells us plainly what we ought to do. We simply do not obey its behests. The germ theory--now no longer a theory in the case of tubercular consumption--tells us that we have to do with a contagious disease. Now there is no theoretical reason why a purely contagious disease like tuberculosis cannot be exterminated. If we can prevent the spread of contagion at all, we can prevent it entirely. The enormous value of preventive measures, isolation, disinfection, and quarantine, is well illustrated in history of cholera, typhus fever, and yellow fever in the United States. By keeping out the virus of these diseases, or destroying it when it had gained access to our shores, we have for a number of years been remarkably free from these diseases, and it is certain that if these precautions had not been taken we should have suffered severely. For obvious reasons, the suppression of tuberculosis is not so easy a matter as the suppression of cholera or yellow fever. Neither is the suppression of scarlet fever or small-pox as easy. Yet whenever the public has been educated to a correct appreciation of the contagious nature of scarlet fever, the number of cases has diminished very much. Even in small-pox, with its virulent contagion, it is possible, by means of isolation and disinfection, to check its spread even among an unvaccinated population, as has been illustrated many times of late in the anti-vaccination city of Leicester, England. We must now put tuberculosis among these diseases, and, though its theoretical suppression is simple its actual extermination is a very difficult problem. It lies largely with the medical profession how long tubercular disease shall decimate the human race. The physicians are the educators of the people in these matters. When the doctor shall teach that tuberculosis is contagious, the people will believe, and will govern themselves accordingly. In combating contagious diseases the preventive measures taken often give discouraging results. This will be particularly so in tubercular disease. Half-way measures secure less than half-way results, and these alienate the support of those who only indifferently believe in contagion and the importance of precautionary measures. Efficient means of suppression are radical, and bear hard on the individual; they are not complied with, and they produce violent opposition. Yet, difficult as it may be, the medical profession should take aggressive action against this disease. We have no right to wait for the discovery of a specific, or the gradual evolution of a phthisis-proof race. We must take the world as we find it, full of men and women predisposed to tubercular phthisis, and with no idea of its contagious nature. What can we do about it? 1. Teach the people the true nature of the tuberculosis, that no one ever has tubercular consumption unless the tubercle bacilli find their way into their lungs. 2. Teach them, also, that, even if it finds its way there, it will not grow unless the conditions are right. Teach fathers and mothers how to rear healthy boys and girls. Tell them what to eat and what to wear, to exercise, to breathe fresh air. This alone would exterminate phthisis. 3. The contagion must be destroyed. Fortunately, in this disease there is no need of isolation. Disinfection is enough. The consumptive patient gives off the poison only in the sputum, or perchance the other excreta, if the disease extend beyond the lungs. The virus is not given off from these while moist. We must therefore disinfect all sputum at once with mercuric bi-chloride. Cloths must be used instead of handkerchiefs, and then burned, or, if the latter are used, they should be often changed, and immediately put in a bi-chloride solution and boiled. Bed-linen should be treated in the same way. Frequent disinfection of the entire person, and fumigation of the apartment, would be safe additions to the preventive measures. 4. Persons who have a marked predisposition to the disease had best not come in close contact with the phthisical. Children should never have tuberculous nurses, wet or dry. In the case of consumptives very great attention should be paid to ventilation, and to the alimentation both of the patient and the attendants. Such measures, if rigidly carried out, would be of enormous service in preventing this disease. But with the increasing prevalence of tuberculosis among domestic animals, something more is imperatively demanded. Active measures should be taken to free the country from animal tuberculosis. There are some ideas which it is well to observe:-- 1. Flies may carry the virus if they are allowed to frequent cuspidors into which consumptives have expectorated. Clean these out often. Do not permit the patient to spit into a handkerchief and then let it lie around to dry. The dust arising may inoculate some person prone to consumption. 2. Be careful about the meat you eat. It can and does convey tuberculosis. Investigations have been made showing that as high as 50% of a herd to be slaughtered in New York City had tuberculosis. Milk may be also infected and often is. 3. Have an abundance of flowers around. They invariably are helpful. 4. Constant and regular singing with proper care and not tiring is excellent for consumptive lungs, which should be done in well-ventilated rooms. 5. Be out in the open air as much as possible, and breathe through the nose entirely. Continually exercise the lungs by drawing in long breaths. 6. If possible try fumes of hydrofluoric acid. In glass factories if workmen are rendered consumptive by stooping over the grinding machinery, they usually find great benefit by being allowed to work in the room with the glass etchers, where so much hydrofluoric acid is employed. 7. Buttermilk is well recommended. 8. Consumptive and bronchial troubles in women are often due to irregularity of dress about the throat and lungs. There is danger from wearing _décolléte_ costumes. So regular have we been in our habits that the throwing off of a 1-oz. neck-tie for half an hour in the open air will give us a cold with the thermometer at 70% Fahr. The ocean cure is well set forth in the following, which represents the advantages of a long sea voyage:-- 1. Perfect rest and quiet, and complete removal from and change of ordinary occupation and way of life; a very thorough change of scene, and perfect and enforced rest from both mental and physical labor. 2. The life in the open air and the great amount of sunshine to be enjoyed; it is quite possible, under favorable circumstances, to pass fifteen hours daily in the open air; and whenever it is possible the traveler by sea is certain to endeavor to escape from the close and sometimes unpleasant atmosphere of a small cabin, into the pure air to be found on deck. 3. The great purity of the air at sea, and its entire freedom from organic dust and other impurities. In this respect it has an advantage over the air of an open country, for the latter is apt to contain the pollen of grasses and other plants, which, in some persons, excites hay fever and asthma. The air of the cabins may, of course, be contaminated, but the air of the open sea is probably the purest to be found anywhere. 4. The presence in the sea air of a large amount of ozone, as well as particles of saline matter, more particularly in stormy weather, from the sea spray, and these may exercise a beneficial effect in certain throat and pulmonary affections on the respiratory mucous membrane. 5. The great equability of the temperature at sea. This refers chiefly to the daily variations, which rarely exceed four or five degrees Fahr. It must be noted that in a long sea voyage very considerable variations of temperature are encountered, and in a swift steamer the transitions are somewhat sudden. 6. The great humidity of the atmosphere and the high barometric pressure, which are considered to exercise a useful sedative influence on certain constitutions. It is said that the temperature of the body averages one degree Fahr. less on account of this sedative effect. The exhilarating and tonic effect of rapid motion through the air; for by the continuous progress of the ship the sea breezes are constantly blowing over it, and the passengers are borne through the rapidly-moving air without any exertion of their own. The influence of these currents of air on the surface of the body is, no doubt, important, acting as a stimulant and a tonic, increasing evaporation from the skin, and imparting tone to the superficial blood-vessels. We now give our own cure, which we claim is of great value, at least it is worth trying, for it cured the author of consumption of twenty years' standing in one year. This disease can be cured by "cold packing" the lungs and throat, and following the rules in general for health stated in the first part of this work. You must understand a cold compress or pack, otherwise you are likely to increase the malady and hasten your death. Some persons cannot warm one ounce of cold water in twenty-four hours. Such we advise to go very slowly. First adopt the formulæ for cleanliness and regularity already given. Then when a little more blood is infused through the system and hence more heat exists, commence the cold pack. Use simply a moistened cambric handkerchief, placed upon the lungs; envelop with at least two thicknesses of linen and one of flannel; wrap up warm and go to bed. Do not attempt to cold pack any part of your body and then expose it to a moving atmosphere. After one week you can increase the moisture of the pack at least 50%. Then add to the thickness and moisture 10% each week, as long as you can succeed in warming it and causing it to sweat that portion of the body packed. If you should wake up in the night and find the pack dry, remove the portion previously moistened and retain only the dry covering, viz., the linen and flannel. In the morning, before arising, thoroughly rub the lungs with a dry linen towel. This, then, is all that is necessary to get rid of this incurable (?) disease, if you will only follow the rules already given for health, happiness, and longevity. =Convulsions, Fits.=--When a child has a convulsion, or what is commonly called "a fit," attention should be given to the urinary secretion at once. If there is suppression of urine, the child should be put into a warm bath and made to sweat as speedily as possible. In many cases in which children die from a succession of convulsions, the real cause of death is suppression of urine (a fact which is probably not so generally known as it should be), so that the child really dies of poisoning through the retention of the urinary secretion. When a child is subject to attacks of this character, care should be taken to dress it warmly in flannels, so as to keep up a degree of perspiration most of the time, and hot baths should be administered frequently. Give a glass of Bethesda water from three to four times a day, and the disease will disappear. =Corns and Bunions= are caused by tight, ill-fitting boots and shoes. The way of preventing them is, therefore, manifest. Thrusting the toe into a lemon, to be kept on over night, will make the removal of a corn easy. Two or three applications will suffice for the worst cases. Soft corns may be relieved by dissolving a piece of ammonia, the size of three peas, in an ounce of water, and applying the solution as hot as can be borne. It is beneficial to place blank newspaper between the toes. That will keep them from scalding, and hence softening, so that corns will easily form. We have already referred to this paper method for cold feet. Paper is a non-conductor and thus has the proper effect. =Croup=.--The following prescription, to be used as a gargle, is not only excellent for croup, but will _absolutely_ keep anyone from choking to death from phlegm in the throat, no matter what the cause, so long as they have any portion of a lung left. It consists of the yolks of two eggs thoroughly beaten, in half a pint of good cider vinegar, adding two tablespoonfuls of honey. I have known two different patients, given up by their physicians, to rally in thirty minutes under the above treatment, and finally get well. =Diabetes.=--A prominent French physician advocates a coffee remedy. After having continued to use the remedy for upward of a third of a century in many hundreds of cases, he again appeals to the profession to give it a trial in those cases of liver and kidney troubles which have resisted all other treatment. His habit is to place twenty-five grammes, or about three drachms, of the green berries (he prefers a mixture of three parts of Mocha with one part each of Martinique and Isle de Bourbon coffee) in a tumbler of cold water, and let them infuse over night. The infusion, after straining or filtering, is to be taken on an empty stomach the first thing after getting up in the morning. He cites many cases of renal and hepatic colics, diabetes, migraine, etc., which, although rebellious to all other treatments for years, soon yielded to the green coffee infusion. It is worth a trial at any rate. Bethesda water from the Wakeshaw Springs, in Wisconsin, will cure three out of every five cases of diabetes and help the other two. Drink it as you would any good water. =Diphtheria.=--Diphtheria is a malignant and very infectious disease. It may often be communicated by a kiss, a touch of the hand, or by drinking out of the same cup with the sick person. The mildest case should be carefully isolated. In the family this may sometimes be done by removing the patient to an upper room, which can be well ventilated by means of windows and an open fire. The contagion of diphtheria is not carried far by the atmosphere; hence, by strict attention to cleanliness and ventilation, it may be quite possible to isolate a case even under the family roof. The disease is characterized by soreness of the throat, pain in swallowing, apoplectic, epileptic, hysterical, or the result of poisoning. Put a cork between the patient's teeth, that the tongue may not be bitten. Loosen the clothing, have plenty of fresh air, and do not restrain the movements of the patient, except to prevent injury or bruising. Rub the temples with cologne or spirits, and, as soon as the patient can swallow, give a little cold brandy and water. Dr. W. A. Scott, of Iowa, where, in the latter part of 1889, diphtheria raged, found a valuable and effective remedy for this dread disease. The recipe can be filled at any drug store, and used by any person without danger:-- Take ten grains of permanganate of potassium and mix with one ounce of cold water. As soon as dissolved, it must be applied with a rag or sponge mop or swab to the whitish places in the tonsils, and other parts that have the diphtheria membrane on them. Do this very gently, but thoroughly, every three hours until better; then every six hours until well. It does not give pain, but is rather nauseous to the taste. If the tongue is coated white, mix one drachm of hyposulphite of soda and five drops oil of sassafras in four ounces of syrup made of sugar and hot water, and give a teaspoonful every 1 to 3 hours, as needed, when awake. If the tongue is not coated white, I mix 20 drops of tincture of phytolacca in four ounces of cold water and give a teaspoonful every 1 to 3 hours, as needed, when awake. (The phytolacca is the common poke-root of the South, and as it loses its strength by drying and age, the tincture should be from the fresh root, or it is worthless.) It is well to apply a little sweet-oil or cosmoline to the outside of the throat to protect from the action of the air, as the patient must be protected from all danger of getting chilled. In the beginning of the disease, in mild cases, the above solution of permanganate of potassium is all I use, and all that is needed, as the disease is local at first, but rapidly affects the whole system when seated. In the stinking form of diphtheria this solution soon destroys all smell, and in every case destroys the diphtheria membrane without leaving any bad effect. M. Roulin, of France, has successfully treated 22 cases of diphtheria with carbolic acid as an antiseptic. Nasal douches, consisting of three teaspoonfuls of the crude acid in a quart of water, were employed every hour by means of the ordinary irrigator. Tonics were given internally. Dr. Deriker, of St. Petersburg, who is the head physician of the Children's Hospital, and has treated no less than 2,000 cases of diphtheria, and tried all remedies, both internal and external, has found the following a certain cure for the disease: As soon as the white spots appear on the tonsils he gives a laxative, usually senna tea. When the purgative effect has ceased, he gives cold drinks acidulated with lemons, limes, or hydrochloric acid, and every two hours a gargle composed of lime-water and milk. Hot milk was also given as a drink, and the throat well rubbed with spirits of turpentine. The Academy of Medicine in France offered a large sum of money for a successful cure for diphtheria, and this is said to have been it. Equal parts of liquid tar and turpentine are put in an iron pan and burned in the patient's room. The dense resinous smoke gives immediate relief. The fibrinous matter soon becomes detached and is coughed up. =Clothing.=--There are some very important principles in regard to dress:-- 1. If you desire health, do not wear a belt. 2. Avoid tight lacing. Some of the most beautiful women, including actresses, are giving up this injurious practice. 3. Do not wear, especially in summer, the constant black, even if in mourning. If you do someone may be mourning you too. 4. Use woolens almost entirely for clothing--always for under-clothing. 5. Have shoes that fit and give the feet an abundance of room, and not high heeled, but thick soled. 6. Wear sufficiently heavy woolen under-garments so that you will not be obliged to resort continually to overcoats. 7. In summer, use light outer garments--white flannels and cheviots are excellent. The Most Important Function of Under-garments.--It is a great mistake to suppose that the material of which a garment is made is the most important consideration in selecting warm under-clothing. The way in which the fabric is prepared and manufactured is of more vital importance as regards heat or coldness of the body than the actual material. A light garment with large meshes is more effective against cold than a close, heavy one. Whatever an under-vest may be made of, its real value as a protector from cold depends upon its ability to inclose within its meshes a certain quantity of air. This is indeed the most important function of under-garments, viz., to encircle the whole body with an envelope of warm air, and a vestment that does not keep a continual layer of warm air next to the skin is of very little use. We advise the discarding of cotton shirts altogether and wearing only those of flannel. The best material for an under-vest, where the shirt worn is flannel, is silk, but by reason of high cost it is within the reach of a comparatively few only. Hence woolen under-vests must be selected. They should be large and never tight-fitting, for there must be room for the air to circulate freely beneath them. Good taste suggests that the outside shirt be of white flannel, and that also must be large. Nearly all those which are on sale in stores have collars, but for a small sum added to the price the dealer will make the necessary changes so that a linen collar may be worn. With such under-clothing a man is very well protected against sudden changes of weather, and is much less liable to take cold than he would be with a cotton shirt on. Now, as to chest protectors. If a man is subject to colds during the winter he should wear a chest-protector. In order for him to get the full benefit of it it should fit him quite snugly at the neck and extend front and back to the belt. Dressed in flannels, as we have recommended, with his chest well covered by a protector, he will be as well fortified against cold as under-clothing of a healthful sort can make him. =Dropsy.=--It is not generally known that the silk on an ear of green corn is a powerful and efficient remedy for dropsy, for bladder troubles and diseases of the kidneys. In the Louisville _Medical News_ we find an account of the medical properties of corn-silk and the cures that have been effected by its use. The way to use it is to take two double-handfuls of fresh corn-silk and boil in two gallons of water until but a gallon remains. Add sugar to make a syrup. Drink a tumblerful of this thrice daily, and it will relieve dropsy by increasing the flow of urine. Other diseases of the bladder and kidneys are benefited by the remedy, which is prompt, efficient, and grateful to the stomach. The treatment can be continued for months without danger or inconvenience. Bethesda water is just as good, but both together are better. =Dyspepsia.=--This trouble is often the result of decomposition of the food before it is digested. Unless this is remedied death will ultimately follow. A good remedy is this: Thoroughly brown some whole grain wheat, grind it in an ordinary clean coffee-mill; eat of nothing else for the two last meals of the day; carefully masticate it and eat sparingly for a few days, after that _ad libitum_; in ten days you will be well, if all other suggestions regarding cleanliness are followed. =Ears=.--Sapolini of Milan has described a method of his which he states has been successfully employed in 62 cases of deafness of old age. It consists in mopping the membrana tympani with a weak oleaginous solution of phosphorus. He claims that the treatment diminishes the opacity of the membrane, increases the circulation, and improves the hearing. A writer in a medical journal says: "Beware of too much quinine. It will produce a congestion of the ear and irritation of the auditory nerve. The common habit of taking quinine for neuralgia and other ailments without consulting a doctor is altogether reprehensible, and may lead to very serious results. Many cases of deafness are produced by overdoses and long-continued use of this drug." Aprysexie is the name Dr. Guye, of Amsterdam, chooses for inattentiveness, and he quite singularly finds that the nose is a cause of it. A dull boy became quick to learn after certain tumors had been taken from the nose, and a man who had been troubled with vertigo and buzzing in the ears for twelve years found mental labor easy after a like operation. In a third case a medical student was similarly relieved. Dr. Guye supposes that these nasal troubles affect the brain by preventing the cerebral lymph from circulating freely. =Elixir Brown-Sequard.=--The way Brown-Sequard uses this medicine is entirely successful. Do not think because others have failed that the principle is wrong. Most experimenters, first, are not careful in getting perfectly healthy specimens of animals from whose vitals the elixir is made, while, secondly, they expose the liquid and allow it to become filled or impregnated with microbes and various foreign elements. The process of administration is thus described:-- The syringe punctures the cuticle, or scarf-skin, and the cutis, or true skin, and then enters the subcutaneous or cellular tissue which covers the muscles, or flesh. Through all the tissues of the body run the lymphatics, which convey the injected matter to the lymph channels, these in turn to the veins, and thence throughout the system. A half ounce of the fluid will be distributed in from one to three hours. Sometimes the subject might feel the stimulus very quickly, and in some cases hours might elapse before any effect was felt. The human system is able to absorb almost an unlimited amount of this liquid, if administered properly and if pure. =Epidemics.=--The history of severe plagues is remarkable. The first great pestilence in a comparatively civilized nation was the one at Athens about 400 B. C. On account of being shut up by the Spartans in their crowded city the Athenians had this terrible experience. It carried off thousands--nearly two-thirds of the population. In the reign of the Emperor Justinian no less than 100,000,000 inhabitants died in thirty years from a pestilence that swept from Persia to Gaul. Later, in the fourteenth century, the plague of beautiful Florence in Italy killed 80,000 people in six months. In 1665-66 London was a vast pest-house and during September of 1666 the weekly death rate reached the number of 8,000. In America the sunny South has witnessed the blasting effects of yellow fever during the last fifteen years. In 1878, Florida had 2,649 deaths, and New Orleans 3,977 from yellow fever. Fully 33% of those attacked succumbed. In the same year 4,200 people died of it at Memphis. The last important run of this epidemic was in 1888, at Jacksonville and Decatur. There the deaths averaged 10% of those attacked. The duration of the infection stages of various diseases is thus given by Dr. T. F. Pearse, an English physician: Measles, from the 2d day of the disease for 3 weeks; small-pox, from the 1st day for 4 weeks; scarlet fever, from the 4th day for 7 weeks; mumps, from the 2d day for 3 weeks; diphtheria, from the 1st day for 3 weeks. The incubation periods, or intervals occurring between exposure to infection and the first symptoms, are as follows: Whooping-cough, 14 days; mumps, 18 days; measles, 10 days; small-pox, 12 days; scarlet fever, 3 days; diphtheria, 14 days. Scarlet fever is at its minimum from January to May, and at its maximum in October and November. Diphtheria is more evenly distributed through the year, and is most dangerous a little later than scarlet fever. Measles and whooping-cough seem to be somewhat aggravated by cold weather, but are most fatal in May and June. Hot weather is adverse to small-pox, and favorable to disorders of the bowels, particularly in children. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEASLES AND SMALL-POX.--At the outset of a popular eruption it is often difficult to decide whether the case is one of measles or of small-pox. M. Grisol's method of diagnosis is as follows (_Medical Times_): "If, upon stretching a portion of the skin, the papule becomes impalpable to the touch, the eruption is caused by measles; if, on the contrary, the papule is still felt when the skin is drawn out, the eruption is the result of small-pox." =Erysipelas.=--It has long been known that an attack of erysipelas exerts a remarkable influence upon other diseases, and the attempt has been made to cure more serious maladies by deliberately inoculating the patient with the virus of erysipelas. In a recent case in Norway, the growth of a cancer was greatly retarded by this means, and life was probably prolonged a few weeks or even months, though no cure was effected. =Exercise.=--Ben. Hogan, the reformed pugilist, has advanced some practical ideas:-- "In every city there are thousands of rich men and women who are ready to commit suicide because of ill-health. 'What is wealth without health?' they say. 'Nothing,' I should say; but I do say that, while every man cannot amass wealth, every man can secure good health. I know a man who owns a fine horse. He employs two men to take care of that horse and keep him in condition. He is exercised, sponged, and blanketed daily. Does the owner himself have a man to take care of him?--No. He possibly bathes once a week. He arises at 8 o'clock in the morning, throws his breakfast down without masticating it, and madly rushes off to his business. At noon he rushes into a restaurant and eats his dinner in five minutes. On he goes, hiring men to look after the health of his horse, but never stops to think of his own body and its needs. "A man cannot digest his food unless he eats carefully. A meal should never be eaten in less than one hour. Gladstone says he bites each piece of meat he puts into his mouth twenty times before he swallows it, and that isn't too often. The men of to-day who throw their food into their stomach are physical wrecks in fifteen years. The American doctor studies medicine when he should study nature; instead of trying to prevent disease, they try to cure. There are many people who do not take a bath in two years and they prematurely die from poisoning. The poison that accumulates under the first layer of skin breeds disease and sooner or later must come death. "There are thousands of people dying of consumption who haven't sense enough to know that they can throw it off. No man who is lazy can become healthy, for the best way to bring health is by physical development. I have seen thousands of young men apparently on the verge of the grave grow strong by following this daily routine: When you get up in the morning rub yourself with a rough towel until the blood is in circulation, and then take a cold bath. Never take a cold bath without getting the blood in circulation, for it is dangerous. After the bath rub the flesh for three-quarters of an hour. Then take a cup of tea and eat some toast, and start out for a half hour's walk. Don't plod slowly along the streets, but walk as rapidly as your legs will carry you. When you return you are ready for breakfast. Eat rice, mutton chops, and toast, and drink tea. If you are a business man you are ready for business, but if you are training for an athlete you will again start upon the walk and keep it up all day. A man under training is required to walk at least forty miles every day. When he returns from his walk he is put under blankets until he has cooled, and then again put in the bath-tub. He is taken out and rubbed or manipulated. Then he is ready for dinner. The athlete or pugilist would be required to eat raw ham or raw steak without salt or pepper. Pugilists are not allowed to use pepper, because it heats the blood. For men who are not undergoing training for pugilists I would advise a dinner on rare beef, rice, and other vegetables cooked dry." =Eyes.=--A writer in _Cassell's Magazine_ gives the following rules for the use and care of the eyes:-- "1. Sit erect in your chair when reading, and as erect when writing as possible. If you bend downward you not only gorge the eyes with blood, but the brain as well, and both suffer. The same rule should apply to the use of the microscope. Get one that will enable you to look at things horizontally, not always vertically. "2. Have a reading-lamp for night use. N. B.--In reading the light should be on the book or paper and the eyes in the shade. If you have no reading-lamp, turn your back to the light and you may read without danger to your eyes. "3. Hold the book at your focus; if that begins to get far away use spectacles. "4. Avoid reading by the flickering light of the fire. "5. Avoid straining the eyes by reading in the gloaming. "6. Reading in bed is injurious as a rule. It must be admitted, however, that in cases of sleeplessness, when the mind is inclined to ramble over a thousand thoughts a minute, reading steadies the thoughts and conduces to sleep. "7. Do not read much in a railway carriage. I myself always do, however, only in a good light, and I invariably carry a good reading-lamp to hang on behind me. Thousands of people would travel by night rather than by day if the companies could only see their way to the exclusive use of the electric light. "8. Authors should have black-ruled paper instead of blue, and should never strain the eyes by reading too fine types. "9. The bedroom blinds should be red or gray, and the head of the bed should be toward the window. "10. Those ladies who not only write but sew should not attempt the black seam by night. "11. When you come to an age that suggests the wearing of spectacles, let no false modesty prevent you from getting a pair. If you have only one eye, an eye-glass will do; otherwise it is folly. "12. Go to the wisest and best optician you know of and state your wants and your case plainly, and be assured you will be properly fitted. "13. Remember that bad spectacles are most injurious to the eyes, and that good and well-chosen ones are a decided luxury. "14. Get a pair for reading with, and if necessary a long-distance pair for use outdoors." Further rules are:-- Avoid all sudden changes between light and darkness. Never begin to read, write, or sew for several minutes after coming from darkness to a bright light. Never read by twilight or moonlight, or on dark, cloudy days. When reading, it is best to let the light fall from above obliquely over the left shoulder. Do not use the eye-sight by light so scant that it requires an effort to discriminate. The moment you are instinctively prompted to rub your eyes that moment stop using them. If the eyelids are glued together on waking up do not forcibly open them, but apply saliva with the finger. It is the speediest diluent in the world; then wash your eyes and face in warm water. In the selection of books or pamphlets see that the paper is of a slight orange tint; this shade is the most pleasant for the eye to look upon. The following is recommended as an efficient means of removing particles from the eye: Make a loop by doubling a horse hair; raise the lid of the eye in which is the foreign particle; slip the loop over it, and placing the lid in contact with the eyeball, withdraw the loop, and the particle will be drawn out with it. An old locomotive engineer gives the following as an infallible method to eradicate any foreign substance from the eye, viz., close the eyes, and rub gently from right to left with a circular motion the well eye. =Food.=--Of all the fruits we are blest with, the peach is the most digestible. There is nothing more palatable, wholesome, and medicinal than good, ripe peaches. They should be ripe but not overripe and half rotten; and of this kind they may make a part of either meal, or be eaten between meals; but it is better to make them a part of the regular meals, says _Hall's Journal of Health_, a medical authority. It is a mistaken idea that no fruit should be eaten at breakfast. It would be far better if our people would eat less bacon and grease at breakfast and more fruit. In the morning there is an arid state of the secretions, and nothing is so well calculated to correct this as cooling, subacid fruits, such as peaches, apples, etc. The apple is one of the best of fruits. Baked or stewed apples will generally agree with the most delicate stomach, and are an excellent medicine in many cases of sickness. Green or half-ripe apples stewed and sweetened are pleasant to the taste, cooling, nourishing, and laxative, far superior, in many cases, to the abominable doses of salts and oil usually given in fever and other diseases. Raw apples and dried apples stewed are better for constipation than liver pills. Oranges are very acceptable to most stomachs, having all the advantages of the acid alluded to; but the orange juice alone should be taken, rejecting the pulp. The same may be said of lemonade, pomegranates, and all that class. Lemonade is the best drink in fevers, and when thickened with sugar is better than syrup of squills and other nauseants in many cases of cough. Tomatoes act on the liver and bowels, and are much more pleasant and safe than blue mass and "liver regulators." The juice should be used alone, rejecting the skins. The small-seeded fruits, such as blackberries, figs, raspberries, currants, and strawberries, may be classed among the best foods and medicines. The sugar in them is nutritious, the acid is cooling and purifying, and the seeds are laxative. We would be much the gainers if we would look more to our orchards and gardens for our medicines and less to our drug stores. To cure fever or act on the kidneys no febrifuge or diuretic is superior to water-melon, which may, with very few exceptions, be taken in sickness and health in almost unlimited quantities, not only without injury but with positive benefit. But in using them the water or juice should be taken, excluding the pulp, and the melon should be ripe and fresh, but not overripe and stale. While, undeniably, a mixed diet is the best for man, there is a mistaken notion, which prevails to a great extent, that meat should largely enter into the same. As a consequence, much more is eaten than is needed or can properly be disposed of in the system. Never eat meat oftener than once a day, and very sparingly in summer. Men of sedentary habits might with safety for several days at a time during that season live on vegetables, fruits, milk, breadstuffs, and foods of like character, which are easy of digestion. For those who have good reason to believe that their "kidneys are weak," a diet largely made up of meat is ill-advised. Those organs are intimately concerned in its disposal in the system, and hence are overtasked if it is taken in too great a quantity. _Reasons Why a Strictly Vegetable Diet Is to Be Preferred to Animal Food._--The food which is most enjoyed, says a writer in _Longman's Magazine_, is the food we call bread and fruit. In my long medical career, I have rarely known an instance in which a child has not preferred fruit to animal food. I have been many times called upon to treat children for stomachic disorders induced by pressing upon them animal to the exclusion of fruit diet, and have seen the best results occur from the practice of reverting to the use of fruit in the dietary. I say it without the least prejudice, as a lesson learned from simple experience, that the most natural diet for the young, after the natural milk diet, is fruit and whole-meal bread, with milk and water for drink. The desire for this same mode of sustenance is often continued into after years, as if the resort to flesh were a forced and artificial feeding, which required long and persistent habit to establish as a permanency as a part of the system of every-day life. How strongly this preference taste for fruit over animal food prevails is shown by the simple fact of the retention of those foods in the mouth. Fruit is retained, to be tasted and relished. Animal food, to use a common phrase, is "bolted." There is a natural desire to retain the delicious fruit for full mastication; there is no such desire, except in the trained gormand, for the retention of animal substance. One further fact which I have observed--and that too often to discard it--as a fact of great moment, is that when a person of mature years has for a time given up voluntarily the use of animal food in favor of vegetable, the sense of repugnance to animal food is soon so markedly developed that a return to it is overcome with the utmost difficulty. Neither is this a mere fancy or fad peculiar to sensitive men or oversentimental women. I have been surprised to see it manifested in men who are the very reverse of sentimental, and who were, in fact, quite ashamed to admit themselves guilty of any such weakness. I have heard those who have gone over from a mixed diet of animal and vegetable food to a poor vegetable diet speak of feeling low under the new system, and declare that they must needs give it up in consequence; but I have found even these (without exception) declare that they infinitely preferred the simpler, purer, and, as it seemed to them, more natural food plucked from the prime source of food, untainted by its passage through another animal body. There are thirty vegetarian restaurants in London, and a vegetarian hotel is the latest move in the right direction. The time required to digest different kinds of food:-- Hours. Roasted pork 5.15 Salt beef (boil'd) 4.15 Veal (boiled) 4.00 Boiled hens 4.00 Roasted mutton 3.15 Boiled beef 3.30 Roasted beef 3.00 Raw oysters 2.45 Roasted turkey 2.30 Boiled milk 2.00 Boiled codfish 2.00 Venison steak 1.35 Trout (broiled) 1.30 Tripe 1.00 Pig's feet 1.00 Eggs (hard boil'd) 3.30 to 5.30 Eggs (soft boil'd) 3.00 The above is taken from Beaumont's "Experiments on Digestion." Dalton comments on these observations as follows: "These results would not always be precisely the same for different persons, since there are variations in this respect according to age and temperament. Thus, in most instances, mutton would probably be equally digestible with beef, or perhaps more so; and milk, which in some persons is easily digested, in others is disposed of with considerable difficulty. But as a general rule, the comparative digestibility of different substances is no doubt correctly expressed by the above list." _To Ascertain Pure Milk._--Take an extra quart of milk any day from your milkman and put it in a glass jar, an ordinary fruit-jar will do; set it away and await results. The proportion of cream on top shows the richness of the milk. Let it alone until it turns to clabber, and if there is any water in it, it will appear between the cream and the clabber. After fermentation sets in, the water will sink to the bottom. If there has been no water put into the milk, none will show. By trying milk from different milkmen, you can readily see which is the best. We will add under food that eggs should be kept in oak or porcelain receptacles, not in pine boxes, as they partake of the odor of the pine. =Freckles.=--A young lady of St. Louis says: "I accidentally discovered a sovereign remedy a couple of years ago, which costs next to nothing. One day the plumber shut our water off, and I could get none in which to wash my face. I was fearfully soiled, and, looking out of the window just then, I saw a friend approaching to call on me. Glancing about me, I noticed half a water-melon from which the meat had been removed some time before. It was partly filled with juice, and I hastily washed my face in it. The result was so soothing that I repeatedly washed my face in that manner. Judge of my astonishment a few days later on seeing that there was not a freckle left on my face." =Gargle.=--An excellent gargle for general use is:-- Chloras Potass., 3 ounces. Tannin, 2 drachms. Dissolve one teaspoonful in half a pint of water, which will keep for several days. For bronchial trouble or bleeding at the lungs, gargle the throat often; but for general cleanliness, gargle a little every morning; for catarrh, not only gargle but snuff some up the nose. =Hair.=--To prevent hair from falling out, headache, neuralgia, brain fever, etc., the hair should be worn comparatively short by both sexes, washed and dried every day. To preserve the hair this is a good recipe: Take a teaspoonful of dried sage; boil it in a quart of water for twenty minutes. Strain it off and add a piece of borax the size of an English walnut; pulverize the borax. Put the sage tea, when cold, into a quart bottle; add the borax; shake well together and put in a cool place. Brush the hair thoroughly and rub and wash well on the head with the hand; then, after a good hard rubbing, brush the hair well before a fire, so that it will become perfectly dry. Never use a fine-tooth comb, as it irritates the skin, and consequently inflames the roots of the hair. =Headache.=--The causes are: "Overstudy, overwork in-doors, neglect of the bath, want of fresh air in bedrooms, nervousness, however induced; want of abundant skin-exciting exercise, the excitement inseparable from a fashionable life, neglect of the ordinary rules that conduce to health, overindulgence in food, especially of a stimulating character, weakness or debility of body, however produced (this can only be remedied by proper nutriment), work or study in-doors, carried on in an unnatural or cramped position of the body. Literary men and women ought to do most of their work at a standing desk, lying down now and then to ease the brain and heart, and permit ideas to flow. They should work out-of-doors in fine weather--with their feet resting on a board, not on the earth--and under canvas in wet weather. It is surprising the good this simple advice, if followed, can effect. =Health Beverages.=--Lemons make the best beverage. They are very healthy and good, not only for allaying the thirst, but will cure a multitude of disorders. The juice of the lemon contains citric acid. Acids, as a rule, decrease the acid secretion of the body and increase the alkaline. Citric acid, which is the acid of lemons and oranges, for instance, will diminish the secretions of gastric juice, but increases very materially the secretion of saliva. The very thought of a lemon is sufficient to make the mouth water. Thirst in fevers is not always due to lack of water in the blood. It may be due in part to a lack of the secretion of the saliva. When the mouth is parched and dry, the acid will increase the saliva. When acid is given for the relief of dyspepsia it should be taken before eating. Lemon juice drank before meals will be found very advantageous as a preventive of heart-burn. _Drinks for the Voice._--Tea, coffee, and cocoa are three admissible drinks, but none in excess. For the voice cocoa is the most beneficial. It should never be made too strong, and those cocoas are the best that have been deprived of their oil. A cup of thin cocoa, just warm, is more to be recommended between the exertions of singing than any alcoholic beverage. Tea must not be taken too strong, nor when it has drawn too long, for tea then becomes acid, and has a bad influence on the mucous membrane that lines the throat. There is always a dry sensation after having taken a cup of tea that has been allowed to draw too long. A vocalist had better do without sugar in tea and only take milk with it. =Hernia or Rupture.=--A swelling suddenly appearing in the abdomen, and especially in the groin, may be recognized as a rupture, particularly if it puffs out, or grows larger when the patient breathes or coughs violently. If, for any reason, the services of a physician cannot be immediately secured, the patient should lie down on his back, draw up his knees, and, while he breathes gently, rest his fingers upon the rupture, and press it in all directions. In most cases the hernia will slip back when thus treated. Then apply a bandage to hold the bowels in place long enough for the person to have a truss fitted to him. During this period the bowels should be kept regular. The author of this book was cured of rupture of the right groin completely. Though having worn trusses of different patterns for 25 years, the one that effected a permanent remedy was an electric elastic truss, invented by Dr. A. T. Sherwood, 408 Stockton Street, this city. This is no advertisement, but wishing to help others who are afflicted, we are of the opinion that it will cure four out of every five cases that exist, provided the patient will pursue a careful course otherwise. My treatment required less than 4 months. =Hiccoughing.=--Sweet-flag (calamus) is claimed to be an agent that will relieve and stop persistent hiccough in almost any case. Chew a small piece of the root. =Hydrophobia.=--Rabies, the madness produced by the bite of mad animals, is often apprehended when there is no danger. In case the supposed mad creature has been killed, an important means of information is lost. If possible, the animal should be secured and closely watched. If he does not show signs of rabies, the bitten person need have no fear; but, in any case, when one has been bitten, the wound should be washed with hot water, sucked, by some person whose mouth is free from sores, and then thoroughly cauterized with pure nitric acid or concentrated liquor of ammonia. The patient's strength should be sustained by stimulants, and medical attendance should be secured as soon as possible. Drs. Valentine Mott and A. F. Baldwin, of the Carnegie Laboratory; are prepared to inoculate hydrophobia patients according to the Pasteur system. The first patient was the seven-year-old son of Dr. Newell, of Jersey City. Dr. Mott inoculated himself to prove the harmlessness of the method for a healthy man. It has been discovered recently that the juice of the maguey plant is a certain remedy for hydrophobia. =Influenza (La Grippe).=--The first symptoms of the disease are sudden faintness, a chill, and marked prostration, succeeded by headache and a general feeling of malaria, followed by acute coryza, pharyngitis, and slight laryngitis, winding up with bronchitis. Examination shows that the patients are about as sick as persons with a bad cold. The duration of the attack is from 2 to 10 days and upward. An application of 2 parts turpentine to 1 of sweet-oil placed on the chest over the lungs, and then inhale the steam from steeped eucalyptus leaves, is the best remedy we know. =Insomnia.=--The next time a sufferer finds himself awake, say 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, instead of merely trying to banish the painful thought and repeating numbers, according to habit, let him revert at once to the dream which was the cause of his awakening, and try to go on with it. Sleep will come soon. It is stated on good authority that this experiment, oft repeated, has never been known to fail. A correspondent of the _Lancet_ gives the following method of self-asphyxiation as an effectual remedy for insomnia in his own case: After taking a deep inspiration, he holds his breath till discomfort is felt, then repeats the process a second and third time. As a rule this is enough to procure sleep. A slight degree of asphyxia is thus relied on as a soporific agent. =Leprosy.=--An interesting report by the Hawaiian Board of Health is in our hands; incomplete statistics give the number of lepers in the several islands of the Hawaiian group on January 1, 1888, as 400. A statement of the leper population at Leper Settlement at Molokai for the biennial period ending March 31, 1888, is 749. The report says: "Accurate statistics as to the number of lepers still at large in the various communities of this country cannot be obtained." It is estimated from the best data obtainable, that there were 644 lepers at large on the islands on March 31, 1888. The report says: "The rations furnished each leper at the Leper Settlement on Molokai are abundant for the support of any adult Hawaiian." One of the embarrassing questions the board is called upon to decide is, how many of the non-leper friends and relatives of the afflicted ones shall be allowed to go and live with them at the leper settlement as helpers, or _kokuas_, the number of applicants being in excess of the demand. The great obstacle to be overcome in carrying out the law of segregation consists in the fact that the Hawaiians do not appreciate and refuse to be convinced that leprosy is a communicable disease. It is with them as if devotion to a fatal sentimentality had bid defiance to every instinct of self-preservation. Marriages between leprous and non-leprous individuals are freely contracted, and the intimacies are not prevented by the fact of potent evidences of the disease. "If this race is ever to be rescued from the slough into which it is sinking, the fatal lethargy that stupefies them must be dispelled, the instinct of self-preservation must be awakened, and it must be written upon their hearts, as with the point of a diamond, that to voluntarily contaminate one's self with leprosy is a crime. In spite of a number of claims to the contrary, we believe it safe to say that no one has been able to prove, to the satisfaction of the medical profession, who very rightly demand full proof in such cases, that a single unmistakable case of this disease has been definitely cured." Says the report: "It is necessary always to bear in mind that the symptoms of leprosy, like those of some other diseases, have a way of receding or entirely disappearing for a time, only to show themselves again when least expected." Government physicians generally attribute the causes which are checking the increase of the Hawaiian population to be leprosy; also the indolent and easy nature of the natives, which causes them to rest content, provided they can obtain the bare necessities of life. They are content to sit idle while their places are being filled with Chinese, and their lands are gradually passing from their possession. This apathy causes them to degenerate, both mentally and physically, and thus leads to the smallness of families and the general extinction of the race. The following description of how this terrible disease develops and affects the patient is taken from the Hankow (China) Medical Mission report: "Leprosy is common. It chiefly affects men who work in the field; we have met with it in brothers; it is occasionally met with in women. The age varies from ten to fifty years. Often the first symptom complained of is some localized anæsthesia--which is sometimes quite accidentally discovered--in the feet, hands, or face, which are the parts that are most commonly affected. The sensory nerves are first affected, and sensation as a rule absent partially or completely. The anæsthesia is followed by want of free use of affected parts; the circulation is also impaired in those parts; the hair on the eyebrows falls out. A peculiar punched-out-looking ulcer, with a very fetid discharge, is often met in the feet; sometimes, but not so often, in the hands. As the disease advances, which it does very slowly--it often apparently remains stationary for years--the face broadens, becomes square, glazed, irregular and nodular; nodules are also found in the mucous membrane of the lips and in the nerves; perspiration is absent; the natural expression of the face is completely changed; the patient looks old and sad. As the disease further advances, the toes and fingers drop off, and by and by part of the limb. The general health is never affected. Treatment is not very satisfactory; symptoms seem to be controlled for a time, but never cured." =Lockjaw.=--Professor Renzi, of Naples, records several cases of tetanus successfully treated by absolute rest. The method advocated is as follows: The patient's ears are closed with wax, after which he is placed in a perfectly dark room, far from any noise. He is made to understand that safety lies in perfect rest. The room is carpeted heavily in order to relieve the noise of stepping about. The nurse enters every quarter of an hour with a well-shaded lantern, using more the sense of touch than sight to find the bed. Liquid food (milk, eggs in beef tea, and water) is carefully given, so that mastication is not necessary. Constipation is not interfered with. Mild doses of belladonna or secale are given to relieve pain. This treatment does not shorten the disease, but under it the paroxysms grow milder, and finally cease. Numerous physicians attest to the value of this treatment. =Marriage.=--The _Medical Record_ says the unpopularity of marriage in England continues unabated, and last year was the first in recent times in which, while the price of wheat fell, the marriage rate remained stationary. It is now 14.2 per 1,000. The decline in the popularity of matrimony is greatest with those who have already had some experience of wedded life. Between 1876 and 1888 the marriage rate fell 12 per cent for bachelors and spinsters, 27 per cent for widowers, 31 per cent for widows. Another interesting fact is that the births have now reached the lowest rate recorded since civil registration began. In 1876 the rate was 36.3 per 1,000; it is now 30.6. This is very satisfactory, and it is also notable that the illegitimate birth-rate has declined, the proportion, 4.6 per cent, being the lowest yet registered. The worst feature in the Registrar-General's returns, however, is the fact that the male births had fallen in proportion to the female; in the last ten years 1,038 boys were born for every 1,000 girls, and last year the male preponderance had dropped by 5, and is now standing at 1,033 to 1,000. M. Huth has recently published a valuable book on consanguinity. There is no lack of instances of enforced consanguinity, in the matter of marriage, in isolated communities, according to M. Huth, to disprove the assumption that physical degeneration is likely to result from the practice. An investigation into a number of unions between uncles and nieces, nephews and aunts, and cousins in the first and second degree, gives an average of children rather above than below the general average, though this is attributed to some extent to the comparatively early age at which such unions are generally contracted. Breeders inform us that the results are markedly in favor of consanguineous unions between healthy, well-bred animals. Unions between men or animals of widely different varieties, on the other hand, have a decidedly injurious effect on the offspring, and beyond a certain limit are almost absolutely sterile. Mulattoes and the half-breeds of India and America are striking examples of the deterioration to which such racial disparity gives rise. The great point to bear in mind is that the union of individuals with the same morbid tendencies intensifies the taint, and that, too, quite irrespective of any consanguinity. The moral, according to the author, is that the reasons which have led to the prohibition of marriages within certain degrees of relationship are social, and not physiological. =Malaria (Chills and Fever).=--Mr. W. S. Green, editor of the _Weekly Colusa Sun_, of this State, has made careful investigations on the malaria question. We quote from his issue of May 12, 1888:-- "_Irrigation and Malaria._--At the irrigation convention held at Riverside in March, '84, a paper by W. S. Green was read on the subject of 'Irrigation on Health.' The writer took a new departure, and combated notions held for ages; that is, he held that however much the received notions of malaria might hold good as to other climates, they were not correct when applied to California, where the air was in motion pretty much all the while. Mr. Green received the highest indorsement of his ideas, and they have come to be accepted as correct. His statement of facts has been verified by almost all observing men. "_To the Pres. of the Irrigation Convention, Riverside, Cal._-- "Having taken great interest in the problem of irrigation for twenty years and over, I had intended to be present at your meeting, but at this date I find it will be impossible. If a man possesses a mite of knowledge or an idea on this great subject, it is his duty to give his co-workers the benefit of it. "During a residence of thirty-four years in the Sacramento Valley, I have had time and opportunity to observe and to study its sanitary conditions, and these observations bear directly, I think, on the subject of the effect of irrigation on the health of a country. I am led by these observations to reject almost _in toto_ the long-accepted theory of infection by malaria from the atmosphere, that is, so far as it pertains to California. I will not consume your time with a technical dissertation, but will state some facts as briefly as possible, and in plain, homely phrase. "When I saw people living all along the margins of the tules, where in summer the water became hot and stale and full of decaying vegetation, and hundreds of forms of animal life, and yet remain entirely free from malarial influence, I began to think there was some mistake in the accepted theory. I do not pretend to say that all the people living along the tule margins were or are healthy. All who occupy some places seem to be attacked by chills, while the occupants of places close by are never so attacked. Health is the rule. I saw that all these people, those on the healthy and those on the sickly places, must breathe the same air, coming to them from the same hot, stagnant water and decaying vegetation, and I concluded that malaria was not in the air. But I investigated further. "There are clay, or, as some call them, hardpan banks to the upper Sacramento River, which are from a quarter of a mile to a mile apart. The river, for some very indefinite number of centuries, has vibrated between these banks--washing in on one side and filling in on the other. There is, then, an old or clay formation and a newer or alluvial formation; of course, there is alluvium on top of the clay, but this is not to our purpose. When I first saw the valley in 1850, this new land, some of it as high as the old, was covered with pea vines, blackberry vines, and a dense undergrowth generally, while the other grew wild oats and was usually as open as our wheat-fields. I began to notice that those people who built their houses and _dug their wells_ on a newer formation generally had chills, while the others, as a rule, had not. Sometimes these sickly and healthy places would be but a few feet apart. They breathed the same air, but they _did not drink the same water_. I began to conclude that these people, both along the river and around the margins of the tules, drank the germ of disease and did not breathe it, and I continued my observations. "The town of Colusa is built upon the old, or clay formation, and the people are entirely free from the so-called malarial influence. They are almost entirely free from chills, typhoid fevers, diphtheria, etc., but just at the lower end of the town there is evidence that the river at one time ran almost at right angles with its present course, and while the land is just as high, and very large oaks grew upon it, showing the formation to be very old--the span of human life taken as a measure--yet in digging and boring wells, as well as by the indigenous growth, the very great difference in the age of the formation was apparent. Upon this new formation an extension to the town was located, and among other buildings the county hospital was placed there. The patients and employes of the hospital all had chills for several years, until the physician-in-charge, Dr. W. H. Belton, noticed that the people generally who used water from wells on this newly-made land had chills, while the others had not, and caused pipes from the town waterworks, into which river water was pumped, to be laid to the hospital. There was an _immediate_ change. At the commencement of the use of river water, there were some forty persons in the hospital, all with chills, but since the building has been almost entirely free from it. There could be no more conclusive evidence that these people _drank_ the germ of the disease and _did not breathe it_. "It is claimed that after a wet season there is more malaria in the air, and that hence people are more subject to disease. I have investigated this, and my observations, extended over a number of years, have convinced me that the water in the wells is simply raised to a newer stratum, one not thoroughly washed, as it were, and that people drink the germ of disease, and do not breathe it. "My conclusions are, therefore, that irrigation will tend to bring on malarial disorders, as it raises the water in wells to a newer stratum of earth, but no further. When we irrigate so as to produce this effect we must _go down_ after pure drinking water, or bring it to our houses in pipes. The effect of disorders thus brought about is easily remedied. "I do not wish to be understood as maintaining that there may be no such thing as poison in the atmosphere. In some localities, where the air is not in motion every day, as it is here, the air, like standing water, may become stagnant. I know of some hotels in this valley totally void of drainage, and where the accumulated filth of a quarter of a century stands in the yards in cess-pools. In some countries this would kill ninety out of a hundred people who would stop in them a week, but here we feel no inconvenience from it, except in so far that the water may become impregnated. Air in motion, like water in motion, purifies itself, and hence I have come to the rejection of the theory of malaria in the air." Of our own remedies we feel very proud because they are sure to kill chills and fever. There are two:-- _First:_ Take the proportions of one (1) of sulphur to two (2) of gin, or 4 fluidounces of gin to 2 of sulphur. Let it stand overnight. For an adult take one teaspoonful of this mixture in a little water from 15 to 30 minutes before the attack. Remain in bed in a room warmed to 90° Fahr., for from 6 to 10 hours. This has not been known to fail. _Second:_ This requires much care and judgment. Take a whole nutmeg finely grated, and its equal quantity of pulverized alum, thoroughly mix them, and take at one dose; the _time_ to take it has everything to do with its effect. It must be taken between 10 and 17 minutes before the shake is due to come on. Go to bed immediately, using double the usual amount of bedclothes, remain there from 1-1/2 to 3 hours, and both chills and fever will permanently depart. If the medicine is taken too soon (say 30 minutes before the shake), the attack will be more severe; if taken immediately after the shake it will increase the fever; in either case the dose will have to be repeated to effect a cure. This latter treatment completely cured the author. =Nervousness and Worry.=--One meets few unworried people. Most faces bear lines of care. Men go anxious to their day's duties, rush through the hours with feverish speed, and bring hot brain and tumultuous pulse home at night for restless, unrefreshing sleep. This is not only a most unsatisfactory, but is also a most costly, mode of living. The other night the train lost two hours in running less than a hundred miles. "We have a hot box," was the polite conductor's reply to some impatient passengers who begged to know the cause of the long delays at stations. This hot-box trouble is not altogether unknown in human life. There are many people who move swiftly enough and with sufficient energy, but who grow feverish and are thus impeded in their progress. A great many failures in life must be charged to worrying. When a man worries he is impeded in several ways. For one thing he loses his head. He cannot think clearly. His brain is feverish, and will not act at its best. His mind becomes confused, and his decisions are not to be depended upon. The result is that a worried man never does his work as well as he should do it, or as he could do it if he were free from worry. He is apt to make mistakes. Marks of feverishness are sure to be seen somewhere in whatever he does. Remedy: Keep cool, think three times before you act once. =Obesity and Thinness.=--To increase the weight; Eat, to the extent of satisfying a natural appetite, of fat meats, butter, cream, milk, cocoa, chocolate, bread, potatoes, peas, parsnips, carrots, beets, farinaceous food, or Indian corn, rice, tapioca, sago, corn-starch, pastry, custards, oatmeal, sugar, sweet wines, and ale. Avoid acids. Exercise as little as possible, sleep all you can, and don't worry or fret. To reduce the weight: Eat, to the extent of satisfying a natural appetite, of lean meat, poultry, game, eggs, milk moderately, green vegetables, turnips, succulent fruits, tea or coffee. Drink lime juice, lemonade, and acid drinks. Avoid fat, butter, cream, sugar, pastry, rice, sago, tapioca, corn-starch, potatoes, carrots, beets, parsnips, and sweet wines. Exercise freely. =Piles.=--When piles become painful, whether they protrude or not, the patient should take a warm hip-bath and remain in until the pain ceases, extra precaution being taken for cleanliness, using pure white castile soap with the hip-bath. A careful diet of farinaceous and other easily-digested food, and regularity in going to stool, will suffice to cure the majority of cases. If the piles are bleeding, apply a salve of opium and nut-gall; if itching, a drop of oil of cade will give relief. Linseed oil, applied to the piles, is said to be an effective remedy. In severe cases of piles great relief is afforded by the use of suppositories made after the following formula: 2 grains sulphate morphina, 2 grains extract belladonna, 1 scruple tannin. The above mixed with a sufficient quantity of cocoa butter to make twelve suppositories of one-half ounce each; one to be used every night on retiring. =Poisons.=--Poisons may be classified under two distinct heads--_mineral_ and _vegetable_. _Mineral poisons_ are irritating and corrosive in their action. They produce a metallic taste in the mouth, burning pains in the throat, stomach, and bowels, and, often, violent retching and bloody vomiting, purging, cramps, cold sweats, and great depression. _Vegetable poisons_ are chiefly narcotics, and many of them are as virulent as any in the mineral kingdom. They cause giddiness, drowsiness, stupor, insensibility or delirium, and oppressed breathing. _General Directions._--First and instantly dilute the poison with large draughts of warm water, either clear, or, if the particular poison is known, containing the proper antidote. This will usually cause vomiting, which is to be desired. If vomiting does not soon occur, excite it. Protect as much as possible the lining membrane of the stomach and bowels from contact with the poison by large and frequent doses of sweet-oil, mucilage of gum arabic, flaxseed tea, milk, etc. Melted cosmoline, vaseline, butter, or lard will serve for this purpose. Keep up the temperature by means of warm blankets, hot bottles, etc.; and if there are marked evidences of sinking, such as a failure of the pulse, or very feeble, gasping respiration, give a little stimulus, preferably by injection into the bowels. In the case of an adult, a tablespoonful of brandy, whisky or gin, with an equal quantity of water, may be administered in this manner every five or ten minutes, until reaction sets in--that is, until the face regains its color, the pulse becomes stronger, and the breathing natural. A general antidote for all cases of poisoning, where the nature of the poison is unknown, is a mixture of carbonate of magnesia, powdered charcoal, and hydrated sesquioxide of iron, equal parts, in water. POISONS--MINERAL. _Acids.--Muriatic_ (spirit of salt), _nitric_ (aqua fortis), _sulphuric_ (oil of vitriol), _oxalic_, _nitro-muriatic_, etc. Nitric and sulphuric acids are sometimes used for the removal of warts; oxalic acid is often employed for taking out iron or ink stains; muriatic and nitro-muriatic acids are frequently prescribed medicinally. As soon as a poisonous dose has been swallowed, seek for something which will neutralize the acid. Powdered chalk, whiting, magnesia, or lime scraped from a wall and stirred in water, may be given in any of these cases. For sulphuric or muriatic acid also administer soap-suds, sweet milk, common soap cut into small pieces, baking or washing soda, or saleratus, giving these latter in very small quantities at a time, so as not to produce dangerous distension of the stomach, from the evolution of gas. In the case of sulphuric acid, water must not be used freely at first, at least not unless it contains some antidote, as the heat produced, when this acid and water are mixed, is sufficient of itself to cause serious damage. _Ammonia, and other alkalies (Caustic Potash, Soda or Lime)._--Antidotes: Vinegar, lemon juice, or a weak solution of tartaric acid, to be followed immediately with sweet-oil or mucilage of gum arabic, and an emetic. Also give an injection of boiled starch. Pain may be relieved with laudanum, in doses of ten to fifteen drops, as the paroxysms occur. _Antimony (Butter of Antimony, Tartar Emetic)._--Encourage vomiting. The antidotes are milk, tea, tannic acid. _Arsenic, Ratsbane, Paris Green, Cobalt, and all arsenical preparations used as rat poisons._--Give the whites of five or six eggs, beaten in half a pint of water; or, flour and water, barley water, flaxseed tea, or magnesia. Also administer an emetic of five grains of sulphate of copper (blue vitriol), or fifteen grains of sulphate of zinc (white vitriol), ipecac, or mustard and water. After the vomiting, give hydrated sesquioxide of iron in tablespoon doses, every fifteen minutes, until danger is past. This is the best-known antidote for arsenic, and should be procured fresh from the drug store if possible. _Chloral, Chloroform, Ether._--Cold water should be sprinkled over the face and applied to the head. If breathing is suspended, treat the patient for artificial respiration. The use of electricity is recommended. _Corrosive Sublimate_ (Bedbug Poison), _Calomel_ (Mercury).--The whites of three or four eggs, beaten in water, should be given without delay. If eggs are not at hand, flour or thin starch gruel, mucilage of gum arabic, or milk, will answer. An emetic should be taken immediately after the antidote has been administered. _Iodine_ (used for external application).--If it has been swallowed, give a paste of starch, or flour and water. _Lead, Salts of (Sugar of Lead, Lead Paint)._--After an emetic, administer as much Epsom salt, or Glauber's salt, as the patient can drink. Then give large quantities of milk and whites of eggs. _Lunar Caustic, Nitrate of Silver._--Give a large teaspoonful of common salt, in a glass of water. Repeat the dose every ten minutes for an hour. Then give a dose of castor-oil, and let the patient drink freely of flaxseed tea, barley water, or sweet milk. _Muriates of Tin and Zinc._--These poisons are sometimes found in canned goods--fruits, vegetables, fish, and meats. They cause nausea, vomiting, sudden failure of the vital forces, and sometimes cramps and convulsions. Milk, the whites of eggs, strong tea, or tincture of Peruvian bark, should be given. After the violent symptoms have subsided, the patient should drink freely of flaxseed tea or barley water. _Phosphorus, Matches._--Give large quantities of warm water containing calcined magnesia, chalk, or whiting. _Prussic Acid._--Liquor of ammonia, in doses of ten drops to a tablespoonful of water, should be given every fifteen minutes, until the patient is out of danger. Also apply smelling salts to the nose, dash cold water in the face, and give stimulants. _Verdigris._--Give sugar, milk, and whites of eggs in large quantities, then strong tea, but no acids of any kind. Poisons--Vegetable. _Aconite._--Induce free vomiting, then give brandy or whisky every half hour until the dangerous symptoms are allayed. _Alcohol, Spirits._--Give half a teaspoonful of aromatic spirits of ammonia in sweetened water every half hour. Bromide of potassa, in doses of fifteen to thirty grains, every two or three hours, will also be found useful. _Cocaine_ is the alkaloid of the coca plant of South American origin. It is generally employed in the form of muriate of cocaine and principally used as a local anæsthetic. It should only be used under the direction of a physician. It may occasion dangerous effects even in doses usually deemed safe. When it has been taken internally, the proper antidote is a powerful emetic followed by stimulants--such as liquor and spirits of ammonia--administered internally. When it has been used to a dangerous extent externally, give whisky or brandy and ammonia. _Laudanum, Opium, Paregoric, Morphia, Belladonna, Hyoscyamus, Stramonium, and Conium._--An emetic of mustard and water, twenty grains of sulphate of zinc (white vitriol), or thirty grains of powdered ipecac, should be given. Strong coffee, brandy, or whisky should then be administered in large quantities, and the patient walked around the room. Slapping, pinching, dashing cold water in the face, and even whipping, may be necessary to keep the patient awake. _Strychnine (Nux Vomica)._--Give an emetic of a solution of sulphate of zinc (white vitriol), or a strong infusion of tobacco; or inject into the bowels bromide of potassium, thirty grains, and the extract of coca, one-half ounce. During the spasms, the patient should breathe chloroform or ether from a saturated cloth held to the nose and mouth. _Toadstools (False Mushrooms) and other poisonous plants and seeds, such as are liable to be picked up and eaten by children._--Empty the stomach at once by an emetic you have at hand. Coffee poisoning occurs mostly with well-to-do people--those who are overfed. Tea poisoning comes to hard-working, half-starved women. The symptoms of coffee poisoning are want of appetite, sleeplessness, and nervous tremblings, with various indications of indigestion and torpor of liver. Tea poisoning requires rest and nourishment; but the victim of coffee excess usually needs to unload his system by exercise on a low diet. _Antipyrine._--Dr. T. E. Smith, of Cincinnati, had his whole right side paralyzed by a ten-grain dose of antipyrine. The dose is an ordinary one. This powerful drug is much resorted to by grippe victims. =Removal of Foreign Substances.=--Considering the frequency with which foreign bodies are swallowed, especially by children, the best treatment to employ in such cases should be generally known. A variety of such methods have been advocated, but just now the so-called "potato cure" appears to be the most popular. One physician not long ago reported that he had successfully applied it with the best results in three cases. One was that of a 6-year-old boy, who swallowed a small weight; another that of a girl, 9 years old, who had swallowed a nail; and the remaining one that of a woman who had swallowed a set of teeth. He fed the patients for three days on nothing but potatoes. This treatment is a method in vogue among the pickpockets of London, who, swallowing their booty, live on potatoes until the stolen articles have passed down and out of the body. =Rheumatism.=--Those who have a tendency to that disease should "take a stitch" now and free their systems from all injurious retained matter. They should live abstemiously, exercise freely, keep the skin active by frequent bathing, the bowels open with fruits, and drink water in large quantities. Water dissolves and washes waste matter out of the system; it is therefore an absolute essential where there is any impairment in the action of the kidneys, bowels, or skin. He who applies this simple treatment, and takes proper care of himself otherwise, may feel quite secure from attacks of rheumatism. "Practical Medicine" suggests: "Make a concentrated emulsion of black soap, 200 grammes; add thereto 100 or 150 grammes of turpentine, and shake the whole vigorously until a beautiful creamy emulsion is obtained. For a bath take half of this mixture, which possesses an agreeable pine odor. After remaining in the bath a quarter of an hour, the patient should get into bed, when a prickling sensation, not disagreeable, however, is felt over the entire body; then, after a nap, he awakens with marked diminution of rheumatic pains." Flour of sulphur dusted into the soles of the shoes and stockings is said to be a perfect preventive. The exciting causes of rheumatism are cold or wet applied to the body when in a state of heat, exposure to cold winds, remaining long in wet clothes, sleeping in a damp bed, or blood-poisoning. Acute attacks of rheumatism should be treated by painting the affected part with tincture of iodine. =Seasickness.=--Experts claim that seasickness can be regulated by a system of breathing. One must sit still and time the breathing to the upward and downward motion of the boat. As the boat falls there should be a full expiration, and as the boat rises start on an inspiration ending just as the boat begins to drop. =Sleep.=--The "Home Maker" says: "Up to the fifteenth year most young people require ten hours, and till the twentieth year, nine hours. After that age everyone finds out how much he or she requires, though, as a general rule, at least six to eight hours are necessary. Eight hours' sleep will prevent more nervous derangements in women than any medicine can cure. During growth there must be ample sleep if the brain is to develop to its full extent, and the more nervous, excitable, or precocious a child is, the longer sleep should it get if its intellectual progress is not to come to a premature standstill, or its life be cut short at an early age." A doctor of prominence says: "There is no doubt in my mind but the belief that human beings should sleep with their bodies lying north and south has its foundation in true scientific facts. Each human system has two magnetic poles--one positive and one negative. Now, it is true that some persons have the positive pole in the head and the negative pole in the feet, and _vice versa_. In order that the person sleeping should be in perfect harmony with the magnetic phenomena of the earth, the head, if it possesses the positive pole, should lie to the south, or if the feet possess the positive pole the head should lie to the north. The positive pole should always lie opposite to the magnetic center of the continent and thus maintain a magnetic equilibrium. The positive pole of the person draws one way, but the magnetic pole of the earth draws the other way and forces the blood toward the feet, affects the iron in the system, tones up the nerves, and makes sleep refreshing and invigorating. But if the person sleeps the wrong way and fails to become magnetically _en rapport_ with the earth, he will then probably be too magnetic, and he will have a fever resulting from the magnetic forces working too fast, or he will not be magnetic enough, and the great strain will cause a feeling of lassitude, sleep will not be refreshing, and in the morning he will have no more energy than there is in a cake of soap. Some persons may scoff at these ideas, but the greatest scientific men of the world have studied the subject. Only recently the French Academy of Science made experiments upon the body of a guillotined man, which go to prove that each human system is in itself an electric battery, one electrode being represented by the head, the other by the feet. The body was taken immediately after death and placed on a pivot, to move as it might. After some vacillation the head portion turned toward the north, the body then remaining stationary. One of the professors turned it half way around, but it soon regained its original position, and the same result was repeatedly obtained, until organic movement finally ceased." =Small-pox and Vaccination.=--Notwithstanding existing prejudices, statistics prove the great usefulness of vaccination. In small-pox epidemics, of those persons attacked who have not been vaccinated, one case in four is fatal; while of those who have been vaccinated, the death rate is not one in four hundred and fifty. In cities, it is important that every infant should be vaccinated before it is six months old. In the country, the operation may be deferred until the infant is a year old. Care should be taken to have the virus fresh and from the cow. The taking of virus from a child, or an adult, should never be allowed, as constitutional diseases are often transmitted in that way. Vaccination is performed by making a small incision in the skin and introducing the virus on the point of a lancet or needle. On the third day, if the desired result has been attained, a small red spot may be seen. This increases in size, becomes elevated, and, by the sixth day, is filled with a clear, yellow liquid. About the eighth day, the pustule is fully formed, when symptoms of small-pox are usually felt,--headache, shivering, loss of appetite, etc. These symptoms subside in a day or two; the fluid in the pustule dries up, and a scab forms, which remains about two weeks and then disappears, leaving a scar. The affected part should be protected by a loose bandage, and all scratching or rubbing prevented. The theory in regard to vaccination is that the disease in a mild form takes hold of the system, and either completely or partially destroys the liability to contract the same disease in the future. If the destruction is only partial, it can be made total by future vaccinations. All authorities agree that it is necessary to revaccinate frequently--just as often, in fact, as the system shows itself in readiness to take the vaccinations. Then as often as once in five or seven years vaccination should be repeated in order to obtain complete immunity from small-pox. =Superstitions.=--Numerous are the dangerous superstitions about marriage. For instance, the bride must not try on her wedding gown, or ill-luck will follow. She must not look in the glass after she is fully dressed and ready for the ceremony. She must not enter her new home by stepping over the threshold, but must be carried over it by one of her relatives. A piece of the bride's cake must be broken over her head as soon as she is safely on the other side. It is very unlucky for her to be in a happy state on her wedding-day. She must be as dolorous as possible, violent fits of weeping being especially beneficial. It is a good idea for the brides-maids to throw away as many pins as possible on the wedding-day, as this will hasten marriage. The bride should throw away her slipper in leaving the wedding feast, and she who catches it will be the first married. The month of May is generally conceded to be the most unfortunate for marriages. The lucky months are January, April, August, October, and November. January is especially lucky. Lovers should carefully avoid passing a sharp or pointed instrument from one to the other. Such things tend to cause quarrels. The wedding should be put off by all means if a cat sneezes on the eve of the wedding-day. It should never take place if the cat is black. To sweep dust over a girl's feet or legs will be certain to make an old maid of her. Should the younger sister of a family marry first, the older sisters will be condemned to lasting celibacy unless they dance at her wedding in their stocking-feet. The wedding-ring of the mother is an infallible cure for eruptions on the skin of the child. The ring must be rubbed three times around each sore. Cure is certain. The virtue of the dew that glitters and sparkles in every leaf and flower of a May morning has been recognized from the earliest times. If a young girl wishes to obtain and preserve a glorious complexion she should venture out of a May morning and wash her face in this dew. To spit in the hand before undertaking anything, whether in love, war, or business, will not fail to bring luck. If you are out fishing, do not step over your rod, or you will catch no more fish than did Simple Simon in his mother's pail. Of births, it may be said in general that a crying child will grow up to be a great and useful man. This omen is not very clearly settled, however, and is often given the other way. Some seer far back in the ages discovered the following: Born on Monday, fair in the face; born on Tuesday, full of God's grace; born on Wednesday, sour and sad; born on Thursday, merry and glad; born on Friday, worthily given; born on Saturday, work for your living; born on Sunday, you will never know want. To recall a person after they have left the house is bad luck. To go back for something forgotten is also bad luck, unless you sit down before going out again. If, when you sit before the fire, a live coal jumps out, it is a sign that you are to have good luck, especially in money matters. To wash in water another has washed in is not only bad sanitarily, but also superstitiously. He who makes many crumbs at the table will never have any money to spare. It is flying in the face of fortune to sweep dust out of the front door or to allow it to be swept out. In so doing you are sweeping out your good luck. To count one's gains brings luck, but to find money is the worst possible luck. The 4-leaved clover once found, should be treasured, as every school-child knows and believes. It brings luck of every description. Eve attempted to carry a 4-leaved shamrock of precious stone from Paradise with her, but it fell and shattered at her feet. Think of the disaster thus entailed upon the human race! To see the moon over the left shoulder is as unlucky as to hold the four of clubs at cards. But the new moon seen over the right shoulder, or straight in front, portends fortune as smiling as her own bright rays. One should be careful in writing a letter not to cross out a word in it. To do so means that any request you may have made in the letter will not be granted. It is very unlucky to dry a letter before the fire, instead of allowing it to dry slowly and naturally. But unluckiest of all is to drop the letter on the floor after finishing it. Birth, marriage, and death are the three most important events in every life. Death, being the most dreadful, comes in for the largest share. One of the best ways given us of avoiding it when mortal sickness is upon us is to allow the report to be circulated that you are already dead. The chances are strongly in favor of getting well. Especially is this so if friends begin to arrange for the funeral. A sure sign of early death is for a person to scatter the leaves of a red rose upon the ground. It is extremely hazardous to an infant's life to pare its nails before it is a year old. They should be bitten off. Some superstitions of my early life which I still remember are:-- 1. Turning a loaf of bread upside down creates family quarrels. 2. Allowing anyone to pass between you and your companion evil and death to follow. 3. Breaking a mirror, death in the family. 4. Having your hair cut on Sunday, forgetfulness. 5. Beginning an undertaking on Friday, ill luck. 6. Sitting at table or in company when just 13 are present, a death of one of their number before the year is done. 7. Presenting a sharp instrument or edge-tool to anyone, ill luck to ensue. 8. Putting on any garment inside out, unless you retain it until the sun goes down, bad luck to come. 9. Spilling salt, unless some is thrown into the fire or over the left shoulder, misfortune. During my life I have done everything in the above list that is claimed should not be done, that fell in my way to do, and still live and prosper, although born on Friday, and being one of a family of 13 children. =Snake Bites.=--Tie a string or ligature hard around the injured limb and above the bitten place; suck the wound, so as to extract the poison, but be careful to see that the person who performs the sucking has no open sore in his mouth; wash with warm water and apply caustics, such as carbolic acid or concentrated liquor of ammonia; give five to ten grains of carbonate of ammonia, in water, every hour, and stimulate the patient with whisky or brandy; rub the limbs with pieces of flannel dipped in hot whisky or diluted alcohol. Medical attendance should be secured as soon as possible. =Tape-worm.=--Recently attention has been called to cocoanuts as a vermifuge. Professor Paresi, of Athens, when he was in Abyssinia, happened to discover that ordinary cocoanut possesses vermifuge qualities in a high degree. He took, one day, a quantity of the juice and pulp, and shortly afterward felt some gastric disturbance, which, however, passed off in a few hours. Subsequently he had diarrhea, and was surprised to find that there had been expelled a complete tape-worm, head and all, quite dead. After returning to Athens he made a number of observations which were most satisfactory, the tape-worm being always passed and quite dead. He orders the milk and pulp of one cocoanut to be taken early in the morning, fasting, no purgative or confinement to the house being required. =Teeth.=--For toothache rub a little essential oil on the face, at the hinge of the jaw, on the side that aches. =Tobacco.=--Probably no subject in our book can interest the majority of persons more than this great question of the use of tobacco. We have a collection of opinions from the best authorities:-- The _Medical News_ published a paper by Dr. Wm. L. Dudley, Professor of Chemistry in the Vanderbilt University, giving the results of recent careful analytical experiments made by him in his laboratory with the smoke of an ordinary cigarette. Mice were used upon which to employ his tests. It is not needful that we should give the professor's description of his _modus operandi_ by means of air-tubes, an aspirator, a glass jar, etc., the results of his experimentation being the chief object of interest in which the reader is concerned. Suffice it to say, then, that in each of his several chemical tests by the gradual combustion of a single cigarette, the mouse that was the recipient of the resultant smoke died in the course of the operation, being literally poisoned to death by inhaling the carbonic oxide evolved from the "noxious weed." The blood of the dead creature being subjected to spectroscopic examination, it was found that the veinous fluid had been so completely altered and vitiated that death was the inevitable effect. The tests were thoroughly scientific and conclusive. The fact was demonstrated, beyond the chance of doubt or question, that carbonic oxide is the chief constituent of cigarette smoke, if not all tobacco smoke, and that its inhalation into the air-passage and lungs must of necessity be exceedingly deleterious, as much so to men and boys as to mice. Cases of poisoning due to meat which seemed thoroughly wholesome have sometimes occurred and have remained unexplained. In the _Revue d' Hygiene_, M. Bourrier, inspector of meat for the city of Paris, makes a suggestion. He described his experiments with meat impregnated with tobacco smoke. Some thin slices of beef were exposed for a considerable time to the fumes of tobacco, and afterward offered to a dog which had been deprived of food for twelve hours. The dog, after smelling the meat, refused to eat it. Some of the meat was then cut into small pieces and concealed within bread. This the dog ate with avidity, but in twenty minutes commenced to display the most distressing symptoms, and soon died in great agony. All sorts of meat, both raw and cooked, some grilled, roasted, and boiled, were exposed in tobacco smoke and then given to animals, and in all cases produced symptoms of acute poisoning. Even the process of boiling could not extract from the meat the nicotine poison. Grease and similar substances have facilities of absorption in proportion with their fineness and fluidity. Fresh-killed meat is more readily impregnated, and stands in order of susceptibility as follows--pork, veal, rabbit, poultry, beef, mutton, horse. A simple experiment which will show how injurious is cigarette smoke inhaled may be easily performed by means of a handkerchief: After taking a mouthful of smoke, put the handkerchief tightly over the lips and blow the smoke through it. You will find a dark brown stain on it. If the smoke is inhaled, and then blown through the handkerchief, there is very little stain, if any; consequently all that nicotine must remain in the lungs. _An Ex-Smoker's Advice._--A young man who, not long ago, was an inveterate smoker, but who was recently induced to "swear off," came to me and talked in this strain: "I have been doing some figuring lately, and the result astonishes me. When I was smoking my hardest my average was eight cigars a day. Sometimes it would run over eight and sometimes under; but eight was about the all-round figure. I rarely bought my cigars by the box, and as I indulged in straight 10-cent goods, 80 cents a day was what my smoking cost me. This, with 40 cents added for cigars that I gave away and lost shaking dice, make a total of about $6.00 a week that I now save. It is just nine weeks and three days since I swore off, and by Saturday I shall have $60 in the bank, without an effort on my part save that required to control an unnecessary appetite. I must also regard as an asset the superabundance of animal spirits I enjoy as a direct result of my abstinence from a habit that everybody knows is weakening, when indulged in to excess. Smoke yourself, do you? Well, try my scheme. Swear off and put your cigar money in the bank. You might need it some day, even if you are a newspaper man." The New York _Medical Journal_ contains a convincing article on tobacco: "Tobacco contains an acrid, dark brown oil, an alkaloid, nicotine, and another substance called nicotianine, in which exists its odorous and volatile principles. When tobacco is burned a new set of substances is produced, some of which are less harmful than the nicotine, and are more agreeable in effect, and much of the acrid oil--a substance quite as irritating and poisonous as nicotine--is carried off. These fire-produced substances are called, from their origin, the 'pyridine series.' By great heat the more aromatic and less-harmful members of the series are produced, but the more poisonous compounds are generated by the slow combustion of damp tobacco. This oil which is liberated by combustion is bad both in flavor and in effect, and it is better, even for the immediate pleasure of the smoker, that it should be excluded altogether from his mouth and air passages. "Smoking in a stub of a pipe is particularly injurious, for the reason that in it the oil is stored in a condensed form, and the smoke is therefore highly charged with the oil. Sucking or chewing the stub of a cigar that one is smoking is a serious mistake, because the nicotine in the unburned tobacco dissolves freely in the saliva, and is absorbed. 'Chewing' is, on this account, the most injurious form of the tobacco habit, and the use of a cigar holder is an improvement on the custom of holding the cigar between the teeth. Cigarettes are responsible for a great amount of mischief, not because the smoke from the paper has any particularly evil effect, but because smokers--and they are often boys or very young men--are apt to use them continuously, or at frequent intervals, believing that their power for evil is insignificant. Thus the nerves are under the constant influence of the drug, and much injury to the system results. Moreover, the cigarette smoker uses a very considerable amount of tobacco during the course of a day. 'Dipping' and 'snuffing' are semi-barbarities which need not be discussed. Not much effect is obtained from the use of the drug in these varieties of the habit. "Nicotine is one of the most powerful of the 'nerve poisons' known. Its virulence is compared to that of prussic acid. If birds be made to inhale its vapor in amounts too small to be measured, they are almost instantly killed. It seems to destroy life, not by attacking a few, but of all the functions essential to it, beginning at the center, the heart. A significant indication of this is that there is no substance known which can counteract its effects; the system either succumbs or survives. Its depressing action on the heart is by far the most noticeable and noteworthy symptom of nicotine poisoning. The frequent existence of what is known 'tobacco heart' in men whose health is in no other respect disturbed is due to this fact." "A youth of eighteen at Bayshire, L. I., has become insane from the excessive use of cigarettes." Those who can use tobacco without immediate injury will have all the pleasant effects reversed and will suffer from the symptoms of poisoning if they exceed the limits of tolerance. These symptoms are: 1. The heart's action becomes more rapid when tobacco is used. 2. Palpitation, pain, or unusual sensations in the heart. 3. There is no appetite in the morning, the tongue is coated, delicate flavors are not appreciated, and acid dyspepsia occurs after eating. 4. Soreness of the mouth and throat, or nasal catarrh appears, and becomes very troublesome. 5. The eyesight becomes poor, but improves when the habit is abandoned. 6. A desire, often a craving, for liquor or some other stimulant is experienced. "In an experimental observation of thirty-eight boys of all classes of society, and of average health, who had been using tobacco for periods ranging from two months to two years, twenty-seven showed severe injury to the constitution and insufficient growth; thirty-two showed the existence of irregularity of the heart's action, disordered stomachs, cough, and a craving for alcohol; thirteen had intermittency of the pulse, and one had consumption. After they had abandoned the use of tobacco, within six months one-half were free from all their former symptoms, and the remainder had recovered by the end of the year." _Pasteur Recommends Camphor Smoking._--In an interview with M. Pasteur, he was asked whether he considered la grippe occasioned by bacteria? The professor smiled sardonically and shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing. On being asked what he considered the best remedy for the malady, he remarked: "Let men and women both quit smoking tobacco and smoke camphor instead, and they will probably escape the pest."--_Paris Special._ The _Bulletin_ of this city has a good article on insanity and the cigarette. Ten or twelve boys have within a short time been committed to the insane asylum at Napa whose insanity has been traced directly to the smoking of cigarettes. The number who by reason of the same indulgence have brought on a degree of imbecility that may ultimately land them in the asylum or in the penitentiary cannot be reduced to an exact estimate. But having occasion recently to make some inquiry about a number of boys who had figured in the records of the criminal courts, it was found that a majority of them were habitual smokers of cigarettes. The connection between cigarette smoking, mental imbecility, idiocy, and crime has recently attracted more than usual attention. No boy or young man can smoke a cigarette without being harmed thereby. One of the reasons ascribed for the lunacy of several boys was that the cigarettes were made up of the vilest stuff. They contained a narcotic beyond that usually found in pure tobacco. This is supposed to be some of the cheaper forms of opium. But, whatever it may be, it is making imbeciles and idiots of many boys, and criminals of some of them. In a number of instances where boys have been sent to the asylum, it was found that after a short period, the cigarette and all other forms of dissipation having been cut off, the patients rapidly improved, and after a few months' detention they were sent home. The evil does not end here. If a boy becomes an inveterate cigarette smoker, the chances are greatly against any reformation. Some friend may take him in hand and show him the danger in season. The larger number will keep right on. Of this number it is doubtful if ten per cent will ever come to anything. And even these will accomplish far less than if they had never weakened their mental powers by this vile indulgence. The crazy boys who bring up in the asylum are only the few wretched examples of the cigarette mania. Other examples are constantly found in the criminal courts. The moral sense has been utterly lost, or so weakened that there is no clear distinction between right and wrong. Every boy who smokes a cigarette has started to go to the bad. Just where he will bring up--whether in the insane asylum, in the criminal courts, or in a condition of such hopeless moral and mental imbecility that friends must support him, or the almshouse must finally give him shelter, is one of the questions that time will settle for him. But if any better record is to be made for him, the boy and the cigarette must have a prompt and final separation. The Boston _Herald_ states: "It is said that Turkish tobacco contains prussic acid, and that Havana tobacco has another alkalide called collidine, of which one-twentieth of a drop will kill a frog, with symptoms of paralysis. The half-liquid matter that accumulates in the bowl of a pipe will kill a small animal in three-drop doses. A few drops of nicotine inserted under the conjunctiva of an animal will kill at once. Eight drops will kill a horse, with frightful general convulsions. It has been observed that the living systems quickly become tolerant of tobacco poison--"an animal that is thrown into convulsions by half a drop one day will require twice as much the next day, and so in four or five days four or five times as much." The following is suggestive: No student who smokes can obtain a scholarship at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H. It is a new rule of the faculty. As the purchase of the breweries of the United States has been commenced by the capitalists of the eastern continent, I trust they will extend their purchases to the distilleries and tobacco warehouses and plantations on this continent, especially of the United States; its financiers being shrewd will the sooner observe the advancement of intelligent progress in the line of thought, and change their investments from breweries, distilleries, and cigarette and tobacco manufactories, to the sinking of artesian wells and the invention of some improved water-filter. =Tonsillitis, Quinsy,= _Black Tongue, or Ulcerated Sore Throat._-- PRESCRIPTION. Solution chlorate of potash (1 in 16) 3 ounces Tincture muriate of iron 2 drachms Tannic acid 10 grains Tincture of capsicum 1 drachm Add glycerine to make 4 ounces Shake well before using. Dilute in equal parts of water, and gargle every half hour in a severe case for the first three hours. After that every two or three hours. The above is invaluable and unfailing in case of quinsy. =Vital Statistics.=--Statisticians are bringing out some curious facts with regard to the birth and death-rates of the leading nations of the world. Unfortunately, our tables are not as accurate as those collected in the European States. Abroad there is a careful record of marriages, births, and deaths. These are collected by us without any thoroughness, save only when a census is being taken. In England and Wales it has been found that the birth-rate is 35.4 and the death-rate is 20.5 per 1,000 persons. In Sweden the birth-rate is 30.2, against a death-rate of 18.1. In the German Empire, birth-rate 39.3 and death-rate 26.1. Austria, 39.1 birth-rate, 29.6 death-rate. The official returns state that our annual birth-rate is 36 and death-rate 18, but clearly our birth-rate is much larger, as we are growing in numbers faster than any people on earth. Our increase is fully 10,000,000 since the last census was taken in 1880. Our colored population have a higher birth-rate than have the Southern whites. Among the latter it is 28.71, while for the colored it is 35.08. Although the death-rate of the blacks is quite large, still they are increasing relatively faster than the white. It is also a curious fact that more colored females are born than whites, but taking blacks and whites together the births of the males exceed those of the females. The report of the California State Board of Health for the month of April, 1889, contains the following: Reports from 75 different localities, with an estimated population of 701,950, give a mortality of 835, which is a percentage of 1.18 per 1,000 in the month, or an annual mortality of 14.16, which is the lowest annual percentage at which we have yet arrived, indicating a remarkably good condition of the public health throughout the State. =Voice.=--A question in connection with the training of the voice is to be discussed, viz., when it should be commenced. With regard to the question, says a distinguished scientist, "I am strongly of opinion that training can hardly be begun too early. Of course, the kind and amount of practice that are necessary in the adult would be monstrous in a young child, but there is no reason why, even at the age of six or seven, the right method of voice production should not be taught. Singing, like every other art, is chiefly learned by imitation, and it seems a pity to lose the advantage of those precious early years when that faculty is most highly developed. There is no fear of injuring the larynx or straining the voice by elementary instruction of this kind; on the contrary, it is habitual faulty vocalization which is pernicious." There are three essential elements in voice production: First, the air blast, or motive power; second, the vibrating reed, or tone-producing apparatus; third, the sounding-board, or re-inforcing cavities. These, to parody a well-worn physiological metaphor, are the three legs of the tripod of voice. Defect in or mismanagement of any one of them is fatal to the musical efficiency of the vocal instrument. The air supplied by the lungs is moulded into sound by the innumerable little fingers of the muscles which move the vocal cords, and their training largely moulds the tone and volume of voice. Much of the lung and throat troubles existing can be traced to the ignorance of vocal teachers and parental indulgence in allowing the voice to be strained beyond its register. To know a teacher that understands the proper treatment of the vocal organs, from one that does not--judge them by their pupils; if a pupil has an impaired throat, and there is no improvement after six lessons, change teachers. Every vocal teacher can instruct in the rudiments of music, but only _one_ in _fifty_ knows anything about the voice. =Warts.=--A drop of cinnamon oil on each wart daily, continued for a fortnight, will usually remove them. The most successful remedy we have ever tried is to have the wart saturated three times a week for three weeks with the saliva of a person of _positive_ magnetism, not a member of the family. There is a scientific reason for it not here explained, _but try it_. =Water.=--If a small quantity of oxalic acid added to water produces a white precipitate, lime is contained in the water. Tincture of galls added to the water which contains iron will yield a black precipitate. Water which causes a bright piece of steel to turn yellow, when dipped into it, contains copper. Sulphuric acid, dropped into water and turning it black, shows that the water contains vegetable and animal matter. For detecting sewage contamination, fill a clean pint bottle three-fourths full of the water to be tested; add a teaspoonful of granulated sugar; cork the bottle, and set it in a warm place for two days; if the contents of the bottle become cloudy or muddy, the water is unfit for domestic use. Half an ounce of the neutral solution of bisulphate of alumina added to 200 gallons of water will precipitate the organic matter therein contained; the water may be then used freely for drinking purposes. To remove the odor from cistern water, suspend in the water a bag containing a peck of charcoal. According to Dr. Leuf, when water is taken into the full or partly full stomach, it does not mingle with the food, as we are taught, but passes along quickly between the food and lesser curvative toward the pylorus, through which it passes into the intestines. The secretion of mucus by the lining membrane is constant, and during the night a considerable amount accumulates in the stomach; some of its liquid portion is absorbed, and that which remains is thick and tenacious. If food is taken into the stomach when in this condition it becomes coated with this mucus, and the secretion of the gastric juice and its action are delayed. These facts show the value of a goblet of water before breakfast. This washes out the tenacious mucus and stimulates the gastric glands to secretion. In old and feeble persons water should not be taken cold, but it may be with great advantage taken warm or hot. This removal of the accumulated mucus from the stomach is probably one of the reasons why taking soup at the beginning of a meal has been found so beneficial. There is no remedy of such general application, and none so easily obtainable, as water, and yet nine persons in ten will pass it by in emergency to seek for something of less efficacy. There are but few cases of illness where water should not occupy the highest place as a remedial agent. A strip of flannel or a napkin wrung out of hot water and applied round the neck of a child that has croup will usually bring relief in ten minutes. A towel folded several times and quickly wrung out of hot water and applied over the seat of the pain in toothache or neuralgia will generally afford prompt relief. This treatment in colic works like magic. A physician writes: "We have known cases that have resisted other treatments for hours yield to this in ten minutes. There is nothing that will so promptly cut short congestion of the lungs, sore throat, or rheumatism as hot water when applied promptly and thoroughly. Pieces of cotton batting dipped in hot water and kept applied to sores and new cuts, bruises, and sprains, is the treatment adopted in many hospitals. Sprained ankle has been cured in an hour by showering it with water poured from a few feet. Tepid water acts promptly as an emetic, and hot water taken freely half an hour before bed-time is the best cathartic in the case of constipation, while it has a most soothing effect on the stomach and bowels. This treatment continued for a few months, with proper attention to diet, will alleviate any case of dyspepsia. =Water Pollution Remedy.=--According to Dr. S. S. Kilvington, the Mississippi River received during the past year 152,675 tons of garbage and offal, 108,550 tons of night-soil, and 3,765 dead animals from only eight cities; the Ohio 46,700 tons of garbage, 21,157 tons of night-soil, and 5,100 dead animals from five cities; and the Missouri 36,000 tons of garbage, 22,400 tons of night-soil, and 31,600 dead animals from four cities. Doctor Kilvington urges the cremation of most of the refuse, and 23 out of 35 health officials consulted by him favored the plan. =Whooping-Cough.=--Mr. W. A. Stedman, superintendent of the Rochester Gas Works, gives his opinion:-- "The fumes of the substance used to purify gas are generally recognized as a specific for this disease. "The composition used for purifying gas is composed of wood shavings, iron filings, lime, and sometimes copperas. This substance cleanses the gas of the ammonia and sulphur it contains. If a child with the whooping-cough is allowed to breathe the fumes of the purifier after it becomes foul, immediate relief will be experienced. The fumes of the lime after it has been taken out are particularly beneficial. The lime, after it is taken out, begins to heat and throws off fumes strongly impregnated with ammonia. After breathing these fumes for a short time the cough seems to loosen, and two of these visits will generally cure the most obstinate case. "In Newport one winter, when I was superintendent of the gas works there, there was an epidemic of whooping-cough, and I treated over 200 cases, with the happiest results. I had so many patients that I was forced to put benches in the purifying-room. Once in awhile there are people affected with whooping-cough to whom this gas treatment gives no relief, but they are the exception rather than the rule. In nearly every instance it gives immediate relief and effects a positive cure. I know of many physicians who send all their whooping-cough patients straightway to the gas works. I know that it is a sure cure from personal experience, and we would be happy to extend the courtesies of our purifying-room to any person who is suffering from the disease." =Yellow Fever.=--The yellow fever is one of the varied forms of the typhus, the name being derived front the hue of the victim, while the Spanish call it _vomito negro_--the black vomit--from one of its symptoms. Its home is tropical Africa and tropical America, but it is never found in India and China, hot as the climate may be. The cause of this difference, however, has never been explained. Its greatest prevalence is on the sea-coast or banks of navigable rivers. Its ordinary duration of attack is from 36 to 48 hours. The yellow tinge first appears in the eye and then spreads over the face, gradually reaching the extremities and often becoming dark brown. The rate of mortality varies in a striking degree, for in some places one-third of the cases prove fatal, while in others the mortality reaches two-thirds, and then at other times it has not exceeded three per cent. Treatment varies more in this disease than in any other, which is a proof that thus far it has baffled the best practitioners. Like all other forms of pestilence, it not only walketh in darkness but destroyeth at noonday. The disease itself is not as dangerous as typhoid fever when properly handled. It is a continuous fever, lasting 72 hours. The premonitory symptoms are a pain in the back of the head and in the loins, followed by a slight chill. The pulse and temperature then rise rapidly, the former attaining usually about 110 beats to the minute, and the latter 104 degrees in a few hours. On the second day the pulse begins to drop and continues to do so slowly until the normal is reached, while the temperature remains steady, and this peculiarity is the one pathognomonic symptom of the disease, as ascertained by experts who have studied many epidemics. Toward the third day the temperature is often up to 105. This is a grave symptom, and unless it can speedily be reduced, "black vomit" or gastric hemorrhage appears, or the kidneys refuse to act on account of acute inflammation and destruction of tissue. The famous black vomit is not fatal in more than 50 per cent of cases well treated, but when albumen appears in the urine death almost inevitably follows. Nursing is everything. The treatment of the disease is wholly expectant. A hot mustard foot-bath and a large dose of castor-oil are preliminaries. After this nothing is given but orange-leaf tea, to promote perspiration, and sometimes a little extract of jaborandi. Champagne in small quantities is found to be the best preventive of black vomit, and dry cupping and blisters are resorted to in case of a tendency to kidney trouble. The nurse does more than the doctor in yellow fever to effect a cure, and in New Orleans nearly all the black "mammies" are experts in handling the disease, which undoubtedly accounts for the very low mortality in that city's epidemics. To watch the patient, be quick to start a fire if a north wind comes to chill the air, to keep the clothing adjusted, see that no talking is allowed, and be familiar with the symptoms forerunning black vomit or kidney trouble, and know how to treat them promptly--these are necessaries in nursing yellow fever, and in these the darkey women of New Orleans are more familiar than are the doctors in other towns. On the third day after the attack, when the fever heat subsides, the patient is left in a weak and horribly nervous condition, and for many hours is subject to immediate relapse upon the slightest provocation. Then it is that the tolling of a bell, the sudden shock of a cannon fired by silly authorities, the slightest indigestion or exposure to cold or excitement, will do murder. The stomach is left raw, and for many days only milk, gruel, and crackers are given, doled out in miserly quantity. SUPPLEMENTAL. The following important items do not appear under their regular alphabetical heading, but are none the less efficacious. =Blindness.=--_A Simple Remedy That Often Will Prevent This Dreadful Misfortune._--It is distressing to learn that out of the 7,000 persons blind from their birth in this country, who owe their loss of sight to inflammation of the eyes, at least two-thirds might now have been in the enjoyment of their sight but for the ignorance or neglect of their earliest guardians. It seems that the remedies for the infantile inflammation which causes blindness are both many and simple. Thus, says the London _Figaro_, it cannot be too widely made known that the eyes of the newly-born child, if inflamed, should be washed with pure warm water, and that then a single drop of a 2 per cent solution of nitrate of silver should be instilled into each with a drop-tube. In Germany midwives are enjoined to adopt the above remedial treatment, under oath, and since this has been done the decrease in the number of blind children has been most appreciable. _Increase of Blindness._--Dr. Lucien Howe says blindness has increased in the State of New York during the past five years thirteen times as fast as the population; and the State Charities Commissioners state that the excess in the increase of the insane in the State over the increase in the population for the last nine years has been forty-four per cent. These figures are most startling, especially when it is considered that the modes of treating the eyes and brain are supposed to have been so much improved of late years.--_Ex._ =Hiccough.=--_A Mechanical Cure._--Procure a glass of water and pour a little of it down the patient's throat. While he is drinking the water he should press a finger on the orifice of each ear. By this method you open the glottis, and in five seconds the thing is done. Should you by any chance meet with an obstinate case, you may rest assured that the throat and ears were not closed at one and the same time; either the water was swallowed before the ears were thoroughly stopped, or the water was not sufficient to fill the throat. Another precaution is to keep the chin well up. This cure was obtained by the writer from an old Indian medical officer who had experimented for some years to discover a method of relieving the terrible stage of hiccoughing in yellow fever, and this cure was the outcome.--_Pharmaceutical Journal._ =Hydrophobia.=--Dr. Bokai, a professor at the Klausenburg University, Hungary, claims to have discovered an absolutely certain remedy for hydrophobia and for destroying the virus at the seat of the bite. The remedy consists of a solution of chlorine, bromine, sulphuric acid, and permanganate of potash, with oil of eucalyptus. The above was received in the United States as a press dispatch, from Vienna, February 3, 1890. =Intemperance.=--"We believe," says the Canada _Health Journal_, "that there is no better direct remedy for intemperance than strict vegetarianism. Sir Charles Napier tried a vegetable diet as a cure for intemperance in twenty-seven cases, and the cure was effected in every case, the time varying from thirty-six days to twelve months." =La Grippe.=--_How to Prevent It._--A Boston physician has a novel preventive of the influenza, which has been named la grippe. He orders a small quantity of the flour of sulphur to be put in an envelope and worn in the bottom of shoes. "Only this and nothing more." Patients who complied with the conditions laid down, escaped the influenza. This particular physician evidently has some knowledge of human nature. If he had told his patients, in a general way, to keep their feet warm, they would have paid no attention to his directions. But there was an odor of a drug store in the sulphur prescription, and they followed it. Perhaps that was the easiest way to keep the feet warm. =Teeth.=--_Extraction Painless._--By spraying the region of the external ear with ether, Drs. Henoque and Fridel, of Paris, render the dental nerves insensible, and extract teeth without pain or general anæsthesia. INDEX. Accidents, Percentage of, Preventable, 30-32 Prevention of, 85-87 Advice of an Ex-smoker, 148 Aids to Morality, Philadelphia _Ledger_, 58 Alcohol, Treatise by Dr. Felix Oswald on, 87, 88 Alcoholic Habit, 87-92 Alcoholism, Remedy for, 92 Reviewed by Dr. Spitka, 88, 89 Animal and Human Lives Compared, 45 Antipyrine, Female Intoxicant, 91 Paralysis Caused by, 139 Appetite, How to Improve an, 92 Artery, Ruptured, Treatment of a, 96 Asphyxiation, Remedy for, 93 Attorney, the Most Conscientious, 60, 61 Babies, Mortality out of 1,000, 45, 46 Bathing, Dr. Steele's Ideas of, 21, 93-96 Beer-drinking Excessive, 90 Beggar Centenarians, 13 Bethesda Water, Benefits of, 98, 108, 109, 113 Bites of Snakes, Remedy for, 145 Black Tongue, Prescription for, 152 Bleeding, Treatment and Cure for, 96 Blindness, a Simple Remedy for, 159 Increase of, in State of N. Y., 159 Boston _Globe_ Reporter, Experience of a, 6 Brain-Workers, Time to Rest for, 82 Brain Worry, Panacea for, 97 Breakfast, _Menu_ for, 24 Breathing, Healthful Mode of, 97, 98 Breweries, English Purchasers of, 152 Bright's Disease, Remedy for, 98 Brown Sequard's Vital Elixir, 48, 114 Bruises, Specific for, 99 Bunions and Corns, Preventive for, 108 Burns, Remedies for, 99 Butchers' Trade, Effect of, 60 Cancer Not Cured by Surgery, 99 Catholics and Liquor Evil, 37 Cemeteries of London, Pollution of the, 33, 34 Chevreul, M., Health at 100 Years, 68 Chewing-gum, Injurious Effect of, 99, 100 Chills and Fever, W. S. Green on, 130-133 Cholera, Remedies for, 100 Church and Society Duties, 37 Cigar Dissipation, 15 Cigarette-smoking, Insanity Results from, 150 Cleanliness, Hints on, 100, 101 of Teeth, Tongue, and Throat, 20 Clothing, Importunities about, 111-113 Hygienic Advance in, 49 Cold and Tired Feet, How to Prevent, 101 Colds, Cure for, 101-103 Commandments, the Ten Health, 28 Constipation, Remedies for, 19, 20, 103 Consumption, Causes and Palliatives, 47 Dr. Chapin's Treatise on, 103 Treatment of, 103-108 Consumptives' Pride Unhealthful, 19 Convulsions (Fits), Treatment of, 108 Corns and Bunions, Preventive and Cure of, 108 Cough Remedy, 102 Whooping, Cure for, 158 Crematories Will Stop Contagion, 33-35 Crime, Prevention of, Dr. Crosby, 58-60 Croup, Instantaneous Relief of, 109 Dartmouth College, No Student Smoker at, 152 Deafness, Prevention and Cure of, 113, 114 Death, How Produced, 44, 45 no Physiological Reason for, 76-78 Death-rate, of Poor and Rich, 49, 50 of Principal Cities, 49 Deity, Belief in, a Necessity, 54, 55 Del Monte Hotel, Model for Cleanliness, 41 Diabetes, Treatment and Remedies for, 109 Digestion, Time Required for, 122 Dinner _Menu_, 25, 26 Diphtheria, Dr. Deriker's Prescription, 111 Dr. Roulin's ", 111 Dr. Scott's ", 110 Notes on, and Treatment of, 109-111 Diseases and Their Remedies, 79-160 Individual Experience with, 14, 29 Disparity between Actions and Teachings, 79 Dissipators Long-lived, Why?, 12 Dives and Variety Theaters, Grand Jury's Report, 35 Doctors and Dentists a Necessity, 6, 7 Drinks for the Voice, 124 Dropsy, Treatment for, 113 Dyspepsia, Treatment and Remedy for, 113 Ears, Care of the, 113 Eat, How You Should, 22, 27 Eat, What You Should, 22 " " " " Not, 22 Editor's Opinion of Evil, 36 Eggs, How Best to Preserve, 123 Electric Light, Incandescent, Best, 40 Elixir, Brown Sequard's, 48, 114 Employment Necessary for Health, 30 Epidemics, History of, 114-116 Erysipelas, Facts Regarding, 116 Esculapius, 6, 70 Evil, Editor's Opinions of, 36 Ministers' ", 36 Exercise, Ben Hogan's Opinion of, 116, 117 Ex-smoker's Advice, 148 Eye-glasses, When to Use, 118 Eye, Surgical Operation on the, 47 Eyes, Care of the, 117-119 Faith in the Source of Goodness, 9 Feet, Cold and Tired, How Remedied, 101 Fever, Yellow, Treatment of, 157, 158 Filtered Water a Necessity, 21,, 35 Filters Indispensable, 35 Fire Losses in U. S., How to Avoid, 30 Fits (Convulsions), Treatment of, 108 Food, Carbonates of, 23 for Each Meal, 24-28 Most Wholesome, 119-123 Nitrates of, 23 Phosphates of, 23 Sinew Producing, 23 Temperature Most Healthful for, 12 Foreign Substances, Removal of, 139 Forgotten Lore Remembered, 41-43 Fountains, Public, a Necessity for, 35 Freckles, How to Remove, 123 Friends or Quakers, Average Life of, 11 Garbage Creates Contagion, 32 Gargle for Throat Troubles, 123 General Government, Duties of the, 37 Germ Theory, Discovery of the, 81 God, Clearer Perception of, 9 Who and What Is, 54, 55 Gossip, by Dr. J. G. Holland, 61 Remedy for, 61, 62 Grand Jury's Report, of S. F., Cal, 35, 36 Hair, Treatment to Preserve the, 123 _Hall's Journal of Health_ on Food, 119 Hammond, Dr., Death Not Imperative, 76-78 Happiness, 51-65 Formula for, 55 Happiness, Not Found in Ignorance, 53 Headache, Causes and Remedies for, 124 Health, 5-50 Beverages, 124 Chief Desideratum, 5-50 Commandments, Ten, 28 Contagious as Disease, 10 Happiness and Longevity, 5-78 How to Keep in, 10, 14-18 Laughter a Promoter of, 46 Maxims, 41-43 Officers' Attention, 32, 33 Requirements of, 41-43 Healthful Houses, by Dr. Cushing, 40 Hemorrhoids, Remedy for, 135 Hermit Centenarians, 13 Hernia or Rupture, Cure for, 125 Hiccough, Remedies for, 125, 159 High License, Liquor Remedy, 36 Hotel Del Monte, Model for Cleanliness, 41 House Decorations, _Sanitary News_, 40 Sanitary, Model for, 38-41 Human and Animal Lives Compared, 45 Life Prolonged, Professor Hammond, 73 Hydrophobia, Drs. Mott and Baldwin on, 126 Remedies for, 125, 126, 160 Hygiene, Systematic, Dr. J. H. Brown, 70-72 Hygienic Clothing, 49 Ignorance Is Not Happiness, 53, 54 Incandescent Light the Best, 40 Individual Duties, 30 Influenza (La Grippe), Remedy for, 126 Insanity and the Cigarette, _Bulletin_, 150 Insomnia, Relief for, 126 Insurance, Persons Not Eligible, 31 Intemperance, Cures for, 92, 160 Deaths Caused by, 90 Intemperate Men, Age of, 13 Invalids Should Not Eat, What?, 27 Irrigation and Malaria, by W. S. Green, 130-133 Kidney Surgical Operation, Successful, 47 La Grippe (Influenza), Remedy for, 126 Pasteur's Cure for, 150 Prevention of, 160 Lane, Prof. L. C., on Quackery, 6 Laughter, a Health Promoter, 46 Lawyer, the Most Conscientious, 60, 61 Lawyer's Profession, Influence Exerted by, 60 Lepers of Hawaii, Number of, 127 Pork Eaters Are, 27 Leprosy, Statistics Regarding, 126-128 Life Being Prolonged, Reason for, 9 Life-table of 1,000 Souls, 45, 46 Vitiated by Anxiety for, 84 Light, Electric, Incandescent, Best, 40 Liquor Remedy, High License, 36 Liquors Consumed in U. S., Value of, 88 Lockjaw, Successful Treatment of, 129 London Cemeteries, Condition of, 33-35 Longevity, 66-78 by Dr. Maurice, 73-76 Curiosities of, Dr. Oswald, 69, 73 Possible Without Virtues, 9, 12 Statistics Regarding, 66 _Longman's Magazine_ on Vegetable Diet, 121 Love, Those Deserving, 53 Luncheon, _Menu_, 25, 26 Macdonald, Geo., Neighbor of, 52 Mackay, Chas., on Love's Subjects, 53 Malaria and Irrigation, by W. S. Green, 130-133 Chills and Fever, Cures for, 133 New Theory by W. S. Green on, 130-133 Maladies and Ills Cured, 79-160 Man, Oldest, 69 Marriage, Facts Regarding, 62, 129, 130 Physical Degeneration, M. Huth on, 130 Married Life, Is It a Failure?, 62, 63 Maxims for Health, 41-43 Measles Contrasted with Small-pox, 115 Meats, How Best Prepared, 25 Kind and Quality of, 25 Men, Oldest, 69 Microbes and Bacilli in Water, 21 Milk, Purity, How Ascertained, 122 Minister, Teacher, and Physician, 7 Minister's Opinion of Evil, 36 Misconceivements, 43, 44 Miser Centenarians, 13 Mistakes of Life, 53 Morality, Aids to, 58 Municipalities, Duties of, 32 Naphtha, a Female Intoxicant, 91, 92 Nelly Bly's Experience with Doctors, 6 Nervousness and Worry, 134 Nicotine in Tobacco, Deadly Poison, 148, 149 Nose-bleed, Remedy for, 96 Obesity and Thinness, Treatment for, 134 Oldest Man Living in U. S. in 1890, 66 Patti's Formula for Health, 16 Physician, Minister, and Teacher, 7 Piles, Remedy for, 135 Poem, "Deserving Love," by Chas. Mackay, 53 Heart's Test, by Ella W. Wilcox, 51 Milton's "Adam to Angel", 3 "The Two Workers", 56 "Where Do You Live?" by Josephine Pollard, 56-58 Poisons and Antidotes, 135-139 Mineral, 136-139 Taken with Impunity, 13 Vegetable, 135 Politeness, Health Interfering, 18 Pork, Disease Producing, 26 Unfit for Food, 26 Practical Knowledge, Health Begetting, 14 Prevention of Accidents, 85-87 Prohibitionist's Reason for Longevity, 11 Public Fountains a Necessity, 35 Urinals " ", 37 Quaker's Life Prolonged, Why? 11 or Friends, Average Life of, 11 Quinsy, etc., Prescription for, 152 Regularity, First Consideration Is, 8 Religionist's Reason for Long Life, 11 Religious Perceptions, 55 Remedies for Alcoholism, 92 Diseases, 79-160 Supplemental List, 159, 160 Rest, One Day in Seven Necessary, 38 Rheumatism, Prevention and Cure of, 139, 140 Rupture or Hernia, Cure for, 125 Sanitation and Sanity, 80 Sanitary House Building, 38-41 Scientific Education, Practical Knowledge, 14 Scientist's Reasons for Longevity, 11 Sea-bathing, Effects of, 95 Seasickness, How to Prevent, 140 Selfishness Excusable in Tax-payer, 31, 32 Sleep, Hours Required, 20, 140-142 Position of Body During, 141 Small-pox and Vaccination, 142 Contrasted with Measles, 115 Smoking, Evil Effects of, 148-152 Pasteur's Substitute, Camphor, 150 Snake-bites, Remedy for, 145 Social Evil, Grand Jury's Report of, 36, 37 Society and Church Duties, 37 Sound Health, Secret of, 83 Spectacles, When to Use, 118 Stimulants, Most Healthful, 24 Strychnine Taken with Impunity, 13 Substances, Foreign, Removal of, 139 Sulsonal, a New Opiate, 48 Sunday, or One Day, for Rest, 38 Superstitions of the World, 143-145 Supplemental List of Remedies, 159, 160 Tanks for Water, Death-traps, 32 Tape-worms, Cure for, 146 Tax-payer, Selfishness Excusable in the, 31, 32 Teacher, Minister, and Physician, 7 Teeth, Painless Extraction of, 160 Treatment of the, 17, 20 Ten Health Commandments, 28 Temperament, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 51, 52 Temperance Not Necessary to Longevity, 12 Temperature for Food and Drinks, 12 Thinness and Obesity, Treatment for, 134 Tobacco Habit, Dr. Dudley on, 146 Experiments Regarding, 150 Authorities on, 146-152 Tonsillitis, etc., Prescription for, 152 Toothache, Remedy for, 146 Typhoid Fever, Substances Affected by, 47 Ulcerated Sore Throat, Remedy for, 152 Under-garments, Important Function of, 111-113 Urinals, Public, a Necessity, 37 Vaccination and Small-pox, 142 Vegetable Diet, Why Preferred, 121, 122 Vegetarian Restaurants in London, 122 Virtues, Rank of the, 8 Vital Statistics, 10, 152, 153 Principal Cities, 49 Voice, Drinks for the, 124 Essential Elements in the, 154 Treatment of the, 153, 154 Warts, Remedies for, 154 Water, Detection of Impurities in, 154-156 Filtration of, 154-156 Pollution Remedy, 156 When to Drink, 155 Water-tanks, Uncleanly, 32 Weariness, Different Phases of, 44 Treatment for, 44 What We Inherit, 63-65 "Where Do You Live?" by Josephine Pollard, 56 Whooping-cough, Positive Cure for, 156,157 Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, on Temperament, 51, 52 Wisdom, Prerequisites for, 54 "Workers, the Two", 56 Worry and Nervousness, 134 Yellow Fever, Statistics and Treatment of, 157, 158 ADJUSTING SPECTACLES _To suit the various conditions of sight a specialty. No other optician has or can get such facilities as are found at this establishment, because the instruments used for measuring the strength of the eye are my own invention and patent, and the only ones ever invented that will give the exact amount of imperfection in one's sight._ [Illustration: L.A. BERTELING SCIENTIFIC THE ONLY RELIABLE OPTICIAN 427 KEARNY ST. ] My Own Invented Instruments are the very Best ever Made for Measuring Defective Sight. I value my Reputation. My Own Discovered Method is the only Accurate one by which to Determine Imperfections of the Eye I guarantee Satisfaction. _BERTELING'S INVENTIONS:_ _Demonstrative Ophthalmoscope_, _Compound Optometer_, _Eyeglasses_, _Refraction Ophthalmoscope_, _Simple Optometer_, _Charts_, _Centralizing Prisometer_, _Myopic Scale_, _Objective._ MY SUCCESS HAS BEEN DUE TO THE MERITS OF MY WORK. THE ANNUAL STATISTICIAN AND ECONOMIST, [Illustration: BY L. P. 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BRASS, BRONZE, STEEL, AND IRON Fire Place Trimmings. _Warm Air, Hot Water, and Steam_ Heating Apparatus For Warming Churches, Halls, School-Houses, Dwellings and Public Buildings. Wrought Steel Ranges. 309--317 MARKET STREET, SAN FRANCISCO. * * * * * SHERMAN, CLAY & CO. IMPORTERS, MANUF'S AND JOBBERS. PIANOS. Weber, Estey, Emerson, SOLD ON INSTALLMENTS At Cash Prices. GUITARS. C. F. Martin, H. L. Mason. Fairbanks & Cole Banjos. Bohman Mandolines. Organs. Estey, Story & Clark, MANUFACTURERS OF CHURCH PIPE ORGANS. Band Instruments. Strings, Accordions, and MUSICAL MERCHANDISE. Sheet MUSIC, Music Books, Etc., Etc. CORNER Kearny and Sutter Sts. SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. [Illustration: Bird's-Eye View of the Celebrated Hotel Del Monte, Monterey, California.] Transcriber's Notes: Page 22 Add missing period. ... its greatest velocity. If inanimate ... Page 22 Add missing period. ... and beef at 15. Page 39 Correct spelling: celler to cellar. ... not from the cellar itself or ... Page 39 Correct spelling: unesthetic to unaesthetic. ... and, however unaesthetic, varnished. Page 42 Correct spelling: succintly to succinctly. ... may find succinctly stated ... Page 54 Correct spelling: Shakspere's to Shakespeare's. ... startling of Shakespeare's plays, ... Page 81 Change comma to period. ... of sanitary value, is disproved. Few doctors ... Page 135 Correct spelling: quaniny to quantity. ...with a sufficient quantity of cocoa ... Page 149 Correct typo: in-instantly to instantly. Page 152 Correct spelling: conjuctiva to conjunctiva. ... under the conjunctiva of an ... Page 152 Correct spelling: Tonsilitis to Tonsillitis. =Tonsillitis, Quinsy,= Page 166 Correct spelling: Tonsilitis to Tonsillitis. Tonsillis, etc., ... 
52657	----	file was produced from images generously made available by the Library of Congress) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A TREATISE Of CLEANNESS in Meats and Drinks, OF THE PREPARATION of FOOD, THE Excellency of Good Airs, AND THE BENEFITS of Clean Sweet BEDS. Also of the Generation of Bugs, AND THEIR CURE. To which is added, A SHORT DISCOURSE OF THE _PAIN_ in the _TEETH_, Shewing from what Cause it does chiefly proceed, and also how to prevent it. By _T H O. T R Y O N_. _L O N D O N_, Printed for the Author, and sold by _L. Curtis_ near _Fleet-Bridge_. 1682. _Of Cleanness in Meats and Drinks. Of the Excellency of Good Airs, and of the contrary. Of the Benefits of Clean Sweet Beds, and of the Inconveniences of Feather-Beds. What Matter it is that does occasion the Generation of that pernicious Vermin called Bugs, that so many Hundreds in this City, and other great Towns, are infested with; more especially in_ Holland, Italy, New-England, Barbadoes, Jamaica, _and in many other Places. That they are never bred but where Beds are: And that their being generated from Wooden Bedsteads, or from Hogs Hair in the Plaisterings of the Walls, is a meer Story, promoted inconsiderately by Persons mistaken in the Productions of Nature: Also, How all such Persons as are troubled with them may be cured without using Medicines, and Directions how to avoid ever having them again._ I. _Of Cleanness in Food._ What is more profitable for all Lovers of Health and Wisdom, than Food that is Radically Clean? And as Bread hath deservedly the first Place, together with Herbs, and various sorts of excellent Fruits; so the next is Milk, which of it self is a brave, mild, and most friendly Food to Nature, very fit and profitable for all Ages and Complexions; and if it do not agree with some People, it is because their Stomachs are made sharp and soured by superfluity of dainty Food, and the continual use of strong Drink. Also Milk being altered, it makes many sorts of wholesom healthy Food. Next to these, are various sorts of Flesh, which being killed in their proper Times and Seasons, and when they are free from their Uncleannesses, Surfeits, and other Inconveniences, which most Beasts are subject to; and if care be taken also that they be well and moderately seasoned with Salt, and boyled in plenty of River or Spring-water (which is the best of all Waters except Rain-water) they become wholesom Nourishment. For, River-water hath the advantage of running through various sorts of Earth, by which it sucks into it self a fat, oylie, and saline Quality, which the Surface of the Earth does plentifully afford; which also is the cause of all Vegitation, and the lovely Green Colour which all Vegitables are cloth'd with, does arise from this Saline Quality. For these Reasons, River-water will Brew, Boil, and Wash, and it is more profitable in all Uses in Houswifery, than Spring or Pump-water, and far wholesomer for Men and Beasts to drink. Also your Vessel in which your Food is boyled, ought to be uncovered all the time it boyls; for if the Air have not its free egress and regress, the pure Spirits in the Food become as it were suffocated, and then the Food so prepared becomes dull and heavy; for the Air is the Essential Life of the Spirit; and all Food that hath not plenty of Water, and the free Influences of the Air, in its Preparation, does certainly lose its natural Colour, with the pure Smell and Taste: for if those three Qualities be not preserved in all Preparations of Food, then the genuine Vertue and lively Tinctures are in part lost. The same is to be observed in all Physical Operations. And if the above-mentioned Order be not observed, then the Food is not so pleasant to the Pallate, nor so easie of Concoction; it lies heavy in the Stomach, dulling and stupifying the Senses; it generates a gross Nourishment, and bad Blood, whence does proceed many Diseases: Whereas if the above-mentioned Rules be observed, and your Fire quick, that your Food do not stand still, or cease from boyling, till it be sufficiently done, the Effects are contrary. It is also much better the Food should be a little under-prepared, than too much: For when the gross phlegmatick Body of any Food is by Preparation digested, then presently the lively spirituous Quality is set at liberty, whence does proceed a most pleasant Smell and Taste; which pleasant Quality, before the Preparation, lay hid or captivated in the Body of Phlegm; but so soon as this phlegmatick Body is in part destroyed, the Spirit becomes Volatile; and then, if the Preparation be continued, those pure Spirits do either become suffocated, or evaporate; and then the sweet Balsamick Body turns as it were sour. For these Reasons, all sorts of Food, either over prepared, or twice prepared, are of a strong fulsom taste and smell; as all Meats heat again, and also Pottages, and all such things, do obstruct Nature, and generate many Diseases. But if the forementioned Rules be observed, the Food so prepared is not only more pleasant to the Pallate, but far lighter of Digestion, and breeds better Blood. For that Universal Distemper (the _Scurvy_) which reigns so much in _England_, is chiefly caused by Food ill prepared, and the eating of too much Flesh, and Fat things, especially in the improper Seasons of the Year, _viz._ from _July_ to the last of _November_. In this Season the Sun, which is the true Life and Power of all things, declines; and all sorts of Herbage, which is the Food of all Beasts that are generally eaten, doth the same: The Grass all this Season is fraught with a gross phlegmatick Matter; besides, it is a fainty hot time; the Air, which is the Cherishing Life of all things, is more gross, and full of Humidity, than all other times of the Year; the Spirits of all sorts of Creatures are also weak, and on any Accidents are quickly wounded, or evaporated, more especially those Beasts that come from remote Parts to great Cities. Besides, it is then the principal time of their Generating, which renders them unclean. Are not the People ten-fold as sickly in this Season, and double the number die, than they do at other times? Also you may observe, That the Rots amongst Sheep, and Murrains that attend other Beasts, are all or most of them in this Season: Therefore all sorts of People ought to be more careful of their Health, both in Exercises, Meats, and Drink, that they do not exceed either in quantity, nor eat things that are improper in quality. This is the time that all Shepherds, and also those that are Drivers of Horses, and indeed all that have the Government of Cattel, ought to have and use double the prudence in the management of them, than at other Seasons of the Year, as I have more largely discoursed in a small Treatise, which I intend to put forth, if I am permitted, of the Preservation of Sheep from the Rot, and Horses from Surfeits. There are three Marks by which every one may know whether the Flesh be good. The first is by its pure White and brisk Red Colour, when Raw. The second is by its continuing its firmness, being plump or swelled when boyled, having a brisk and lively Taste, and that after eating it feels easie and pleasant in the Stomach. The third is, by its taking Salt well; for if your Flesh be free from Heat and Surfeits, and not over-fed, which charges the Body with gross Phlegm; as also if it be not kept longer after it is killed (as indeed it ought not) than it be thought to be cold, before it is salted; all such Flesh will take Salt greedily, and it will not only keep longer from Putrifaction, but it will eat much sweeter, and breed better Nourishment. For, if any sort of Cattel be over-fed, surfeited, or any other Inconveniency attends them, and they be killed before they have recovered themselves of those Injuries; or if it be in _August_, _September_, or _October_, this Flesh will not take Salt so well as the former, neither will the Salt preserve it half so long from Corruption. Also, as it is before-mentioned, if Flesh be kept too long after it be killed, such Flesh will not receive Salt into it, as other will, which is salted as soon as it is cold: For by keeping it does certainly lose its pure Spirituous Quality, so that the Body becomes heavy, gross, and dull. Does not the Life and Spirits of most sorts of Food waste and evaporate by keeping, if there be not a proper way of Preservation used? If Flesh, by any Inconveniencies, have lost its pure lively Spirits and Vertue, Salt then hath no power to preserve such Flesh from Putrifaction: For Salt cannot preserve the Body from Corruption, but by vertue of the pure subtile Spirits, which are a pleasant Habitation for the Salt to incorporate it self with: For Salt will not preserve Flesh from Putrifaction, any longer than the Vertue and Power of the Spirit does continue, as it does appear by all salted Flesh and Fish: For through length of time the Spirits become either suffocated, or evaporated, and then it presently falls into Putrifaction: And yet this same Flesh does still continue Salt; for Salt does not destroy and purge the Flesh from its Corruption, but incorporates it self with the Essential Spirits, and those two do as it were tie or hold the corrupt Part Captive, till the Spirit and Life of the Flesh be spent or wasted, and then the Flesh falls into Putrifaction, which cannot be recovered, eitheir by Salting, or any other Art, to its first state: But if the Salt had purged or destroyed the Humidity and gross part, then there would have been no Room nor Matter for Putrifaction, and then it would have continued firm and sound, as many other things do, which are freed from that gross humid Matter from which Putrifaction does proceed. Therefore Flesh is naturally the most unclean of all Food, it being of a gross phlegmatick Nature; and if Care be not taken, and Order and Temperance observed in the Eater, it generates abundance of crude and noxious Humours. 2. Cleanness in Houses, especially in Beds, is a great Preserver of Health. Now Beds for the most part stand in Corners of Chambers, and being ponderous close Substances, the refreshing Influences of the Air have no power to penetrate or destroy the gross Humidity that all such Places contract, where the Air hath not its free egress and regress. In these shady dull Places Beds are continued for many Years, and hardly see the Sun or Elements. Besides, Beds suck in and receive all sorts of pernicious Excrements that are breathed forth by the Sweating of various sorts of People, which have Leprous and Languishing Diseases, which lie and die on them: The Beds, I say, receive all these several Vapours and Spirits, and the same Beds are often continued for several Generations, without changing the Feathers, until the Ticks be rotten. Besides, we have many Feathers that are Imported from several Countries, which are the Drivings of old Beds, the Uncleanness whereof is not considered. As to the Nature of Feathers, they are of a strong, hot, fulsom Quality: for, Fowls, of all Creatures, are for the most part the hottest; and their Feathers contain the same Nature: Therefore the constant lying on soft Feather-beds, does not only over-heat the Back and Reins, weakning the Joynts and Nerves; but they have power also not only to receive but retain all evil Vapours and Excrements that proceed from, and are breathed forth by various Diseased People. Hence it comes to pass, that sundry Distempers are transferred from one to another, by lying upon or in such Beds, which Distempers do secretly steal on a Man by degrees, so that he cannot imagine whence the disorder proceeds, or what the Cause thereof should be. But I would not have the Reader mistake me; all People are not subject to get Diseases this way: There are some whose Constitutions are strong, and their Natural Heat and Spirits are vigorous and lively, by the Power and Vertue whereof they withstand and repel all such evil Vapours and Scents as do proceed from such Beds, when a Man is hot and sweats in them, that they have no power to seise the Spirit: But, on the contrary, when such People shall lie on such Beds, whose Natural Heat is weak, their Spirits few, and whose Central Heat is not able to withstand or repel those Vapours and Scents which such Beds send forth when a Man is hot in them, this last sort of People are subject to receive Injuries, and contract Diseases: For those evil Vapours do powerfully penetrate the whole Body; and if they are not withstood by the Central Heat and Power of the Spirits, then these evil Vapours do seise the Spirits, and incorporate themselves with their Likenesses: For every particular thing does sensibly and powerfully seek out its Likeness, and wheresoever it finds its Simile, it hath power to incorporate, and become essential. These are the chief Reasons why one Man gets Diseases by lying with Diseased Persons, and in unclean Beds, and others not. It is a general Custom, when Men go abroad or travel, to desire clean Sheets, imagining them to be a sufficient Bulwark to defend them from the pernicious Fumes and Vapours of old stale Beds; but it is too short. For, it is certain, that most or all Beds do perfectly stink, not only those in Inns and Houses of Entertainment, but others: Not but that every ones Bed does smell indifferent well to himself; but when he lies in a strange Bed, let a Man but put his Nose into the Bed when he is thorowly hot, and hardly any Common Vault is like it. Now this sort of Uncleanness, which does proceed from old Beds, is not only the greatest, but also the most injurious to the Health and Preservation of Mankind, and the least care is taken to prevent it: Every one that can, will have plentiful Changes both of Linen and Woollen Garments; for if they have not, Experience does shew, that the Excrements and Breathings of the Body will generate Vermin. Also do not most People take care that their Furnitures are daily brushed and rubbed, and their very Floors washed, as though they were to eat their Food on them? But all this while they lie on Beds that have not been changed, or hardly aired, in several Years. Let any indifferent Person judge, which is most pleasurable and healthful, to have a clean Floor to tread on, which costs many hard days Labour to keep so, and is dirtied in a Moments time; or to have a clean sweet Bed to lye on. There is no Comparison to be made, the difference is so great; the one being essential either to Health or Sickness, the other an indifferent thing. If there was but the tenth part of the Care taken to keep Beds clean and sweet, as there is of Clothing and Furniture, then there would be no Matter for the getting of Diseases, nor for the Generation of Bugs. I would have all Housewifes, and others, consider the Reasons of these things. Are not Lice, that troublesom Vermin, bred from the Breathings of the Body, for want of often Change both of Linnen and Woollen? And will not Fleas breed from the very Dust of Chambers where People lie? Also any Woollen that hath been used about Beds, although the cold Winter hath destroyed them, yet if these Clothes lie in any close place, where the Air hath not its free egress and regress, these very Garments will generate Fleas the Summer following: but if these Clothes had never been used about Men and Women, they would never have bred Fleas: for there is no Matter of Element in Wooll or Cloth for the Generation of such Creatures; but Wooll, Cloth, Furs, and Hair are chiefly the Element of Moths, and sometimes of small Worms; that is, if such things are kept in Places where the refreshing Influences of the Air have not their free egress: for all such Places do contract great store of Moisture, which, when hot Weather comes, causeth Putrifaction, whence all such Vermin do proceed. But if those things be in daily use, and exposed to the open Element, they never breed any Vermin: So that the Generation of those things are generally caused by Accidents; not but that there is Matter in the Radixes of such things for the Generation of such Vermin. 3. From the pernicious Smells and putrified Vapours that do proceed from old Beds, are generated the Vermin called Bugs, (of which, neither the Ancients, nor the Modern Writers of this Age, have taken any notice) according to the Degrees of Uncleanness, Nature of the Excrements, and the Closeness of the Places where Beds stand: for some Peoples Excrements are not so unclean as others: Also in all close Places, especially in Cities and Great Towns, the Spirits and thin Vapours of the Air are suffocated, which makes the same Air Sulphurous and Humid, whence does proceed Putrifaction. Therefore it is not to be thought a General Rule, _That all old Beds should breed Bugs_, as some (who are ignorant of the Operations of Nature) will be apt to say, _If one Bed do breed them, why not all?_ No, it is according to the nature of the Uncleanness, and other Accidents that do happen: For where (as is said before) the thin pure Air, with the refreshing Influences of the Sun and Elements, have their free egress and regress, all such Matter is destroyed whence such Vermin is produced. The Original of these Creatures called Bugs is from Putrifaction, occasioned by stinking Scents and Vapours which do proceed from the Bodies and Nature of Men and Women, and the mixing or incorporating of these Vapours with moist and sulphurous Airs: For where there is no Heat nor Humidity, there can begin no Putrifaction. Therefore all that have attributed the Generation of this Vermin to Wood, as Bedsteads, and the like, are grosly mistaken in the Productions of Nature; for there is no Matter in Wood that can generate such a Vermin, it being productive only or chiefly of two Creatures in _England_, _viz._ of Wood-Lice, and a small Worm. These Wood-Lice are never generated but in Places where the Sun and Air have not their free Influences, so that there is store of Humidity contracted; and when the Sun comes to such Degrees of the Zodiack, this Creature is generated, which is of as different a Nature from Bugs, as sweet Wood is from a stinking Bed. Also Wood does breed a certain small Worm, but never till the Salts Nature and Power is decayed through length of time; then the Air enters it, which does presently cause it to contract a humid Quality, from whence proceeds Putrifaction, whereof, when the Sun is powerful, this Worm is bred. But so long as Wood continues sound, and is kept dry, the Air having its free Influences on it, I affirm, That no sort of Wood ever breeds any kind of Vermin. 4. There are many also that attribute the Generation of this Creature to Hogs Hair, which being mixed with Lime, and Houses Plaistered with it, does occasion (say they) the Generation of Bugs. Now it is most certain, that there is no possibility in Nature for this Production: For no kind of Hair ever breeds any Living Creature, except it be put into Water or Mud when the Sun is powerful, and then this Creature, thus generated, retains its first _Species_, _viz._ a Hair, with a live Head, which was its Element whence it proceeded: but if you take it out of the Water, it presently dies: So also it doth when the Sun declines in Heat, as most sorts of Vermin that are bred through Heat and Moisture do. But Hair being mixed with Lime, all Matter of Generation is thereby totally destroyed: For Lime does chiefly contain a harsh, fiery, keen, sharp, corroding Quality; it is so sharp, that it does destroy all Life, and is as contrary to it, as Light is to Darkness; the predominant Quality in it is the Salts Nature, from which no Living Creature can be produced. Besides, if there were never so much Matter in Hair for the Generation of such Vermin, Lime would destroy it; for in Lime there is only a Sal-nitral fiery Vertue. 5. If the Reasons before-mentioned be not sufficient to convince the Ignorant of their erroneous Opinions in this particular, then I hope the following one will, which is more familiar to every one. It hath never been known, that this troublesom Vermin was ever seen in Warehouses, Kitchens, Parlours, Dining-rooms, or any Places where Beds have never been, except they have by accident been brought into such Rooms or Warehouses, by Furniture of Chambers that have been troubled with them, though all such Places have the same Furniture as Chambers, except Beds. 6. From the same Substance or Matter whence Bugs are bred, is also occasioned the Generation of many nasty Diseases in the Blood; so that the destruction of the Matter that breeds them, is of greater Consequence than most People are sensible of: And if these following Rules be observed, I dare affirm, That the Generation of Bugs will cease, and also many other Inconveniencies and Distempers, that are got by this sort of Uncleanness, will be avoided. First, You are to destroy all Press-Bedsteads which stand in Corners of Rooms, being made up with Boards so close, that the Air cannot penetrate or dry up and consume the moist sulphurous Vapours that are contracted. These sorts of Beds, that stand so, are apt to have them more than others. Also you are to set your other sorts of Beds as near as you can in the most Airie Places of your Rooms, exposing them to the Air the most part of the day, with your Chamber-Windows open, that the Air may freely pass, which is the most excellent Element, that does sweeten all things, and prevents Putrifaction. In the Night also you ought not to have your Window-Curtains drawn, nor your Curtains that are about your Beds; for it hinders the sweet refreshing Influences of the Air, so that the Air of all close Places becomes of a hot sulphurous Nature and Operation; the thin pure Vapours, which do wonderfully refresh Nature, are as it were suffocated: And this preventing the Influences of the Air, is in an especial manner observable, when People are sick, or out of order; as though the sweet pleasant Air had been the Cause of their Disease: such Rooms being so very close, with great Fires in them, that if a healthy Person do but continue three or four Hours in them, the fulsom Steams and thick Vapours will much disorder him, and take away the edge of his Appetite: And if so, what will the Operation be on those whose Spirits are weak and disordered with Distempers? What is more pleasant and healthful than good Air? It chears and comforts the Spirits, it opens the Passages of the Joynts and Nerves, it purifies the Blood, creates an Appetite, increasing Strength and Vigour: But, on the contrary, hot, thick, sulphurous Airs do not only obstruct the Passages of the Spirits, but suffocate them, loading the Joynts and Nerves with evil Juices, whereby the Limbs and Members become full of pain, causing a general Tenderness to possess the whole Body, and destroying the Appetite, and the Power of the Digestive Faculty in the Stomach. Also, do not all Houses and Places grow musty, and contract too great store of Moisture, if the Air be any way prevented, by Window-shutters, or the like, that it cannot have its free egress and regress? Therefore moderate Clothing, hard Beds, Houses that stand so as that the pleasant Briezes of Wind may air and refresh them, and also Houses that are full of Windows, are to be preferr'd: For where the Air hath not its free Influences, the Spirit becomes dull and heavy, this being the true Life of the Spirit in every thing. 7. Now the certain Means and Way not onely to prevent the Generation of this Vermin, but also to preserve Health and Strength, are Straw, or rather Chaff-Beds, with Ticks of Canvas, and Quilts made of Wooll or Flocks to lay on them; which certainly is the most easie and pleasant Lodging that can be invented: and a little Custom will make it appear friendly to Nature, and in every respect far beyond the softest Feather-beds, on which, when a Man lies down, he sinks into them, as into an Hole, with Banks rising on each side of him; especially if two lie together, when first they go to Bed they lie close, and after a little time, when they begin to be hot or sweat, they are generally willing to lie a little further off, that they may cool themselves, but cannot do it without great difficulty and trouble, by reason of the softness of the Bed, and those Banks that rise on each side. Besides, such soft Feather-Beds do over-heat the Reins and Back, making all the Parts tender, and causing Sweatings and many other Inconveniencies to attend the Body. Feather-beds also are nothing so easie as Quilts, after a little time being accustomed to them; they are also extream fulsom, and by their Heat they do powerfully dry up the Radical Moisture, causing a general Faintness to attend the whole Body. But, on the contrary, hard, even Beds, that lie smooth, are not only easie through custom, as is mentioned before; but a Man may turn freely, both sleeping and waking: They harden and strengthen the whole Body, especially the Back and Reins, make the Nerves and Sinews strong, preventing the immoderate Evacuations by Sweating, and keeping the Body in a temperate Heat. Besides, such Beds may be often changed, with but little Trouble, and less Cost; they send forth no stinking Fumes or Steams, as Feather-beds do; but are sweet and clean. Certainly nothing is more healthy, next to Temperance in Meat and Drink, than clean hard Beds. 8. All sorts of Beds, especially Feather-beds, ought to be changed, driven, or washed, at the least three or four times in a Year; or else it is impossible to keep them sweet and clean, and to prevent the Generation of Vermin, or the other Inconveniencies before-mentioned. Would not every one condemn a Man, if he should wear a Shirt a Year, and lie in Sheets seven Years? Which if any should do, it would not either endanger his Health, or bring half the Inconveniencies on his Body, as old stinking Feather-beds do; which possibly stunk before ever they were lain on, by reason of the fulsom Excrements that the Quills of the Feathers contain. Also Feathers do certainly contain an unclean putrified Matter, that hath a near affinity with the Nature of Bugs; and therefore Feather-beds are more apt to breed them, than Wooll, or Flocks; though both will do it, if the forementioned Rules be not observed. But if you are not willing, or so lowly-minded, to have Straw or Chaff-Beds under your Quilts, then you may have Flock-Beds, with Canvas Tickings, which may be both aired and washed as often as you please, with little Trouble and Charge. If any shall question the Truth of what I have alledged concerning Beds, I desire they would please but to try the Experiment, by filling a Bed with the freshest and cleanest Straw or Chaff, which will smell very pleasant; and having so done, let them lie on it half a Year, in a corner of a Room, as Beds generally stand, and then smell to it; and in stead of sending forth a pleasant Scent, as it did at first, it will send forth a strong, fulsom, musty Steam or Fume. And if this will do so, what will Feathers do, that in the Root of Nature are unclean fulsom Excrements, of a hot strong Quality? Therefore they have the greater power not only to attract and suck in to themselves the fulsom Excrements that are breathed forth of the Body by Sweatings, and the like; but they have also power to retain such evil Vapours: and when others come to lie on them, and are thoroughly hot, it awakens those pernicious Steams, which often bring many Inconveniencies on the Body. Besides, it is very unpleasant to lie in such Beds; a Man must always be forced to keep his Nose above-board. Indeed each Mans own Bed does not stink or smell strong to himself, because he is accustomed to it; neither does a Tallow-Chandler smell those horrible Scents and pernicious Fumes that old Tallow sends forth when it is melted: But let any other Person, that is not accustomed to it, be near such things, and it will be very offensive to him. Even so it is in all other stinking Trades, and things of this nature: so that the greatest Slut in the World does hardly smell her own House or Bed stink: For in Man is contained the true Nature and Property of all things, both of Good and Evil; therefore he is both liable and also apt to receive all Impressions, and to be wrought on by all things he shall either communicate with or joyn himself to, whether it be Cleanness, or the contrary. Also by Meats, Drinks, and Communication, all things have power, by a Sympathetical Operation, to work on Man, because he is like unto all, bearing a proportionable Nature unto all things. If People did understand this, they would prefer Sobriety and Temperance, with Cleanness, far beyond what they do; and then Men would not be subject to so many Diseases as now they are. 9. Heat and Moisture is the Root of all Putrifaction; and therefore Bugs are bred in Summer; but they live all the Winter, though they are not then so troublesom. They harbour in Bedsteads, Holes, and Hangings, Nitting and breeding as Lice do in Clothes: But all Men know, that Woollen and Linnen are not the Element of Lice, but they are bred from the fulsom Scents and Excrements that are breathed forth from the Body. The very same Radix have Bugs; and if there be any difference, they are from a higher Putrifaction, and therefore they are a more noisome stinking Creature. 10. The whole Preservation of Mens Health and Strength does chiefly reside in the Wisdom and Temperance of Women. Therefore the ancient Wise Men in former Ages, did direct and accustom their Women to a higher degree of Temperance than the Men. Which Customs of Sobriety the Women of several Countries do maintain to this day, as in _Spain_, great part of _France_, _Italy_, and many great Countries under the Dominion of the _Grand Seignior_. Their Women do always drink Water, their Food being for the most part of a mean and simple Quality; and for this Reason neither they nor their Children are subject to several Diseases which our Women and Children are. Wine and strong Drink should be sparingly drunk by Women, till they are past Child-bearing; because the frequent and common drinking of strong Drinks, does generate various Distempers in the Female Sex, such as are not fit to be discoursed of in this Place, which their Children often bring with them into the World. If the Seed be good, yet if the Ground be bad, it seldom brings forth good Fruit. Also Women are our Nurses for fifteen or sixteen Years; and they do not only suffer us to be Gluttons, by letting us eat and drink often, of their ill-prepared Food, beyond the power of the Digestive Faculty, and more than the Stomach can bear; but many of them will entice us to Gluttony, and some will force their Children to eat even against their Stomachs, till they cast it up again. Now if it be a difficult Point for a Man of Age and Experience to observe the necessary Rules of Temperance, how careful then ought Mothers and Nurses to be in ordering their Children? A great part of the Children that die, especially in Towns and Cities, is occasioned either by the Intemperance of their Mothers, during the time they go with Child, or afterwards by their unnatural and badly-prepared Food, and suffering them to eat to excess; also by their keeping of them too warm, and too close from the Air, and lapping of them up in several Double Clothes and Swathes, so tight, that a Man may write on them, and then putting them into warm Beds, and covering them up close. If a strong Man was so bound up, he could not endure it, without great injury unto his Health. Besides, the Window-Curtains are drawn, and also the Curtains about the Bed; by which means the Air becomes so hot and sulphurous, that it causes great Disorders to attend both the Mothers and the Children. This ill kind of Management does also cause such a Tenderness both in the Mother and the Child, that on every small occasion they are liable and apt to get Colds, and divers other Distempers. Also Women have the entire Management of all things that concern our Healths, during the whole time of our Lives; they prepare and dress our Food, and order all things in our Houses, both for Bed and Board. There is not one Man of a hundred that understands or takes any notice whether his Food be well prepared or not; and if his Bed stinks, he is used to it, and so counts it all well. Mens Time and Study is chiefly taken up about getting a Livelihood, and providing things necessary for themselves and Families; so that there is not one among a thousand that understands any thing what belongs to the Preservation of his Health: Whatever the Women do and say touching the Preparation of Food, and other ordering of Families for Health, most Men believe, not making the least scruple or question of the truth thereof. And well they may: For the chiefest Doctors of our Times do bow before them, and are altogether as subject to the Rules and Directions of Women, as other Men. Where are your Doctors that teach Men Sobriety in their Lives, or the proper and natural way of preparing Meats fit for the Stomach? Which of them adviseth against the evil Custom of keeping their Chambers so over-hot, when People are sick, and in the time of Womens lying in Child-bed? Why do they not advise them not to have their Curtains so close drawn, both before the Windows and Beds, insomuch that they are oftentimes in a manner suffocated for want of the fresh Air? For, I affirm, That all sorts of People that do keep their Beds, let the Occasion be what it will, have ten-fold more need of the refreshing Influences of the Air, than others that are up: For, the Bed being much hotter than a Mans Garments are when he is up, the thin, refreshing, moist Vapours, that do penetrate the whole Body more powerfully when a Man is up, are thereby hindred. This is one chief Reason why a Man cannot digest a Supper so well in Bed, as if he sits up. All Men know, that the Bed destroys Appetite. If a Man go to Bed at Eight a Clock, and lies till Eight in the Morning, he shall not be hungry; but if he goes to Bed at the same time, and rises at Four in the Morning, though he sits still without Action, yet by Eight he shall have a good stomach to eat and drink; so great is the power of the Air: For when a Man is up, his Body is cool, and the pure Spirits and thin moist Vapours of the Air have power to penetrate the Body; which Element the Body sucks in like a Spunge thorow the Pores; and this does not only cool and refresh the Spirits, and the whole Body, but also powerfully strengthens the Action of the Stomach. But I pity the young Children most, who are so tender, and of so delicate a Nature, both in their Body and Spirits, that every Disorder does wound them to the very Heart. Nothing is more grateful and refreshing to them, than the pleasant Air: It comforts their Spirits, and causeth a free Circulation of the Blood and Radical Moisture, begets Appetite, and makes them grow in Strength: But, on the contrary, hot sulphurous Airs, with great Fires, and warm Clothing, do not only hinder the Circulation of the Blood, but suffocate the Spirits, and destroy the Appetite, causing an unnatural Heat to possess the whole Body; whence does proceed various Disorders and Diseases, making them to cry, and be very forward. Also close Bindings, and over-warm Clothings, and thick hot Airs, do oft in weak-spirited Children cause Convulsions, Vapours, and Fumes to fly into the Head, sometimes occasioning Vomiting, which People call Windy Diseases. Again, The Food of most Children, of late Years, is so enriched with _West_ and _East-India_ Ingredients, that is, with Sugar and Spices, that thereby their Food becomes so hot in operation, that it does not only breed too much Nourishment, which generates Obstructions and Stoppages, but it heats the Body, drying up and consuming the Radical Moisture, and infecting the Blood with a sharp fretting Humour, which in some Complexions and Constitutions causeth Languishing Diseases, contracting the Breast and Vessels of the Stomach, and hindering the Passages of the Spirits, so that the Joynts and Nerves become weak and feeble: in others, with the help of bad Diet, and other Uncleanliness, does cause Botches, Boils, and various sorts of Leprous Diseases. Also many that have wherewithal, will frequently give their Children Sack, strong Drinks, and fat Meats, as long as they will eat, which is abominable, and absolutely contrary to the Nature of Children. There are a hundred other Disorders and Intemperances that many Mothers and ignorant Nurses affect their Children with, which I have no room in this Place to discourse of: Therefore I commend unto the Women Milk that is raw, only made so hot as the Mothers or Nurses Milk is when the Child sucks it; and sometimes Milk and Flower boyled together, giving it the Child about the warmness of Breast-milk; and indeed, neither Children nor others ought to eat any Food hotter. Also no Children ought to drink any kind of strong Drink: I could commend Water, as the most wholesom; but it being contrary to our Custom, ordinary Beer may do well, or rather small Ale. If Women did understand but the hundredth part of the Evils and Diseases those indulging and intemperate Ways do bring both to themselves and Children, they would quickly be of my mind; which I never expect; _They are too wise_. A SHORT DISCOURSE OF THE PAIN in the TEETH, Shewing from what Cause it does chiefly proceed, and also how to prevent it. The terrible Pains and Diseases of the Teeth do chiefly proceed from two Causes. The first is from certain filthy phlegmy Matter which the Stomach and Vessels do continually breathe and send forth, which does lodge or center in the Mouth, especially between the Teeth, and on the Gums; and some People having fouler Stomachs than others, such do breathe forth very sour, stinking, phlegmy Matter, which does not only increase the Pain, but causeth the Teeth to become loose and rotten: And for want of continual cleansing and washing, those Breathings and this Phlegmy Matter turns to Putrifaction, which does eat away the Gums, as though Worms had eaten them: And this Defect is generally attributed to the Disease called the _Scurvey_; but it is a mistake: the Cause is chiefly, as is mentioned before, from the Stomach, or for want of Cleansings. 2. This Distemper of the Teeth and Gums does also proceed from the various sorts of Meats and Drinks, and more especially from the continual eating of Flesh, and fat sweet things, compounded of various things of disagreeing Natures, which do not only obstruct the Stomach, but fur and foul the Mouth, part thereof remaining upon the Gums, and between the Teeth. For all such things do quickly turn to Putrifaction, which does by degrees corrupt both the Teeth and Gums. Besides, our Beds take up near half the time of our Lives, which time the Body is not only without motion, but the Bed and Coverings do keep it much hotter than the Day-garments, especially of those that draw the Curtains of their Windows and Beds so close, that the pure Spirits and thin refreshing Vapours of the Air are hindred of having their free egress and regress, which does dull and flatten the Action of the Stomach; and this is the chief Cause why Suppers lie hard in the Stomach, and require more than double the time for perfect Concoction, than the same Food does when a Man is up, and in the open Air: For this Element, if it hath its free Influences, is sucked in, as by Spunges, through all the Pores of the Body, and does wonderfully refresh, comfort, open, and cleanse all the Parts, having power to assist and help Concoction: but hot, dull, thick Airs do destroy the Action of the Stomach, and as it were suffocate the pure Spirits, drying up and consuming the Radical Moisture. Therefore the Night does foul the Mouth more than the Day, furring it with a gross slimy Matter, especially those that have foul Stomachs, and are in Years, which ought to be well cleansed every Morning. 3. Whatsoever are the Disorders in the Body, the Mouth does always partake of them; besides the Evils that the variety of Food, and the improper mixtures of Flesh and Fish, and many other things, which do foul and hurt both the Teeth and Gums. When any Person is disordered with inward Diseases, does not the Mouth quickly complain of the Evils thereof? This very few do consider in time. 4. It is to be noted, That most People do attribute the Diseases of the Teeth to Colds, and Rheums, and other outward Accidents. It is true, outward Accidents will further this Disease, but then there must be Matter before-hand, otherwise outward Colds can have no power to cause this Pain. The same is to be understood in all Stoppages of the Breast, and other Obstructions, as Coughs, and the like. For, if any Part be obstructed, or there be Matter for Distemper, then, on every small occasion of outward Colds, or the like Accidents, Nature complains. If your Teeth and Gums be sound, and free from this Matter, take what Colds you will, and your Teeth will never complain, as daily Experience doth shew. For all outward Colds, and other Accidents of the like nature, have no power to seise any part of the Body, except first there be some inward Defect or Infirmity: Suppose the Teeth be defective, then the Disease falls on that Part; or if it be the Head, Eyes, Breast, Back, or any other Part or Member of the Body, that is obstructed, the Evil is felt in that Part. Therefore if the Mouth be kept clean by continual Washings, it will prevent all Matter which may cause Putrifaction; and then Colds, and the like Accidents, will have no power to seise this Part, or cause this terrible Pain. Even so it is in all other Parts of the Body. If Temperance and Sobriety be observed in Meats, Drinks, and Exercises, with other Circumstances belonging to Health, then Stoppages, Coughs, Colds, and other Obstructions, would not be so frequent on every small occasion: For Temperance has an inward Power and Operation, and does as it were cut off Diseases in the very Bud, preventing the Generation of Matter whence Distempers do proceed, increasing the Radical Moisture, and making the Spirits lively, brisk, and powerful, able to withstand all outward Colds, and other Casualties of the like nature. 5. There are many various things, of divers Natures, prescribed by Physicians, and others, as Washes to preserve the Teeth and Gums; but most of them, if not all, to little or no purpose, as daily Experience teaches: For, all high, sharp Salts, and things of a sour or keen nature, do rather cause the Teeth to perish, than the contrary; as do all hot Spirits, be they what they will: Many have destroyed their Teeth by the frequent use of such things, and it hath hardly ever been known that any such things have ever cured or prevented the aking Pains of the Teeth, but Water only. Many Examples I could mention, if it were convenient. Physicians, and others, do daily prescribe such things for the Cure and Prevention of this Disease of the Teeth, which most of them do know by experience can do no good, but rather the contrary: But when People come to them, they must give them something for their Money; for Interest and Ignorance have more affinity with this sort of People, than Vertue, and the true Knowledge of the Nature of Things. Most certain it is, That the Shepherd and Husbandman do know far better how to prepare the Meat for their Cattel, and also how to preserve them from Disorders, than many Physicians do their Food or Physick: and a Man shall understand more by conversing with some of this sort of People, than with the Learned: For the Shepherd and Husbandman understand something of Nature; but most of the Learned are departed from the simple Ways of God in Nature, putting out their own Eyes, and then boasting what Wonders they can see with other Mens: They have invented many Words to hide the Truth from the Unlearned, that they may get the greater esteem. This hath chiefly been done to advance Pride and Interest; so that the Divine Eye is departed from many of them, who never make any Inspexion into the true Nature of Things, being contented to take other Mens Words, let it be right or wrong, as long as they have Authority and Law on their sides, wherefore should they trouble their weak Heads? 6. The best and most sure way to prevent the Diseases and Pains in the Teeth and Gums, is every Morning to wash your Mouth with at the least ten or twelve Mouthfuls of pure Water, cold from the Spring or River, and so again after Dinner and Supper, swallowing down a Mouthful of Water after each Washing: For there is no sort of Liquor in the World so pure and clean as Water; and nothing doth cleanse and free the Teeth and Gums from that foul Matter which does proceed from the Breathings and Purgings of the Stomach, and from the various sorts of Food, so well as Water: The use of other Washes is to little or no purpose; but whosoever do constantly wash their Mouths with Water, as is before mentioned, shall find an essential Remedy. All hard Rubbing and Picking of the Teeth ought by any means to be avoided for that is injurious to them. Also whensoever you find your Mouth foul, or subject to be slimie, as sometimes it will more than at others, according to the good or evil state of the Stomach, though it be not after eating; at all such times you ought to wash your Mouth. This Rule all Mothers and Nurses ought to observe, washing the Mouths of their Children two or three times a day; and also to cause their Children to swallow down a little Water, which will be very refreshing to their Stomachs: For Milk does naturally foul and fur the Mouth and Teeth, and if they be not kept clean by continual washing, it causes the Breeding of Childrens Teeth to be the more painful to them. 7. To keep your Teeth white, one of the best things is a piece of a _China_ Dish, or a piece of a fine _Dutch_ Earthen Dish, made into fine Powder, and the Teeth rubbed with it. 8. Few there be that understand or consider the excellent Vertues of Water, it being an Element of a mild and cleansing Nature and Operation, friendly unto all things, and of universal Use: But because it is so common, and so easily procured, I am afraid that many People will be like _Naaman_ the _Syrian_, when the Prophet _Elisha_ advised him to _wash seven times in the River of Jordan to cure his Leprosie_; it being the Ignorance and Folly of most People, to admire those things they do not know, and, on the other side, to despise and trample under foot those Things and Mysteries they do know; which the Learned in all Ages have taken notice of: For, should some People know what Apothecaries and others give them, they would despise the Physick, and have but little respect for their Doctor. All Housewifes do know, that no sort of Liquor, be it what it will, will cleanse and sweeten their Vessels, but only Water; all other Liquors leaving a sour stinking Quality behind them, which will quickly cause Putrifaction: But Water in its own nature is clean and pure, not only for all Uses in Housewifery, and the Preservation of Health; but the Saints and Holy Men of God have highly esteemed this Element, by using it in the exteriour Acts of Divine Worship, as having a Simile with the Eternal Water of Life, that does purifie and cleanse the Soul from Sin. _FINIS._ Transcriber's Notes. This Book is 300 years old and the advice given has been superceded by more modern methods and is only of historical value. The spelling is not consistent. Italicized words and phrases are presented by surrounding the text with underscores. 
30541	----	A TREATISE ON ANATOMY, PHYSIOLOGY, AND HYGIENE DESIGNED FOR COLLEGES, ACADEMIES, AND FAMILIES. BY CALVIN CUTTER, M.D. ----- WITH ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ENGRAVINGS. ----- REVISED STEREOTYPE EDITION. NEW YORK: CLARK, AUSTIN AND SMITH. CINCINNATI:--W. B. SMITH & CO. ST. LOUIS, MO.:--KEITH & WOODS. 1858. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by CALVIN CUTTER, M. D., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. C. A. ALVORD, Printer, No. 15 Vandewater Street, N. Y. PREFACE. Agesilaus, king of Sparta, when asked what things boys should learn, replied, "Those which they will _practise_ when they become men." As health requires the observance of the laws inherent to the different organs of the human system, so not only boys, but girls, should acquire a knowledge of the laws of their organization. If sound morality depends upon the inculcation of correct principles in youth, equally so does a sound physical system depend on a correct physical education during the same period of life. If the teacher and parents who are deficient in moral feelings and sentiments, are unfit to communicate to children and youth those high moral principles demanded by the nature of man, so are they equally incompetent directors of the physical training of the youthful system, if ignorant of the organic laws and the physiological conditions upon which health and disease depend. For these reasons, the study of the structure of the human system, and the laws of the different organs, are subjects of interest to all,--the young and the old, the learned and the unlearned, the rich and the poor. Every scholar, and particularly every young miss, after acquiring a knowledge of the primary branches,--as spelling, reading, writing, and arithmetic,--should learn the structure of the human system, and the conditions upon which health and disease depend, as this knowledge will be required in _practice_ in after life. "It is somewhat unaccountable," says Dr. Dick, "and not a little inconsistent, that while we direct the young to look abroad over the surface of the earth, and survey its mountains, rivers, seas, and continents, and guide their views to the regions of the firmament, where they may contemplate the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and thousands of luminaries placed at immeasurable distances, ... that we should never teach them _to look into themselves_; to consider their own corporeal structures, the numerous parts of which they are composed, the admirable functions they perform, the wisdom and goodness displayed in their mechanism, and the lessons of practical instruction which may be derived from such contemplations." Again he says, "One great practical end which should always be kept in view in the study of physiology, is the invigoration and improvement of the corporeal powers and functions, the preservation of health, and the prevention of disease." The design of the following pages is, to diffuse in the community, especially among the youth, a knowledge of Human Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene. To make the work clear and practical, the following method has been adopted:-- 1st. The structure of the different organs of the system has been described in a clear and concise manner. To render this description more intelligible, one hundred and fifty engravings have been introduced, to show the situation of the various organs. Hence the work may be regarded as an elementary treatise on anatomy. 2d. The functions, or uses of the several parts have been briefly and plainly detailed; making a primary treatise on human physiology. 3d. To make a knowledge of the structure and functions of the different organs _practical_, the laws of the several parts, and the conditions on which health depends, have been clearly and succinctly explained. Hence it may be called a treatise on the principles of hygiene, or health. To render this department more complete, there has been added the appropriate treatment for burns, wounds, hemorrhage from divided arteries, the management of persons asphyxiated from drowning, carbonic acid, or strangling, directions for nurses, watchers, and the removal of disease, together with an Appendix, containing antidotes for poisons, so that persons may know what _should be done_, and what _should not be done_, until a surgeon or physician can be called. In attempting to effect this in a brief elementary treatise designed for schools and families, it has not been deemed necessary to use vulgar phrases for the purpose of being understood. The appropriate scientific term should be applied to each organ. No more effort is required to learn the meaning of a _proper_, than an improper term. For example: a child will pronounce the word as readily, and obtain as correct an idea, if you say _lungs_, as if you used the word _lights_. A little effort on the part of teachers and parents, would diminish the number of vulgar terms and phrases, and, consequently, improve the language of our country. To obviate all objections to the use of proper scientific terms, a Glossary has been appended to the work. The author makes no pretensions to new discoveries in physiological science. In preparing the anatomical department, the able treatises of Wilson, Cruveilhier, and others have been freely consulted. In the physiological part, the splendid works of Carpenter, Dunglison, Liebig, and others have been perused. In the department of hygiene many valuable hints have been obtained from the meritorious works of Combe, Rivers, and others. We are under obligations to R. D. Mussey, M. D., formerly Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, Dartmouth College, N. H., now Professor of Surgery in the Ohio Medical College; to J. E. M'Girr, A. M., M. D., Professor of Anatomy, Physiology, and Chemistry, St. Mary's University, Ill.; to E. Hitchcock, Jr., A. M., M. D., Teacher of Chemistry and Natural History, Williston Seminary, Mass.; to Rev. E. Hitchcock, D. D., President of Amherst College, Mass., who examined the revised edition of this work, and whose valuable suggestions rendered important aid in preparing the manuscript for the present stereotype edition. We return our acknowledgments for the aid afforded by the Principals of the several Academies and Normal Schools who formed classes in their institutions, and examined the revised edition as their pupils progressed, thus giving the work the best possible test trial, namely, the recitation-room. To the examination of an intelligent public, the work is respectfully submitted by CALVIN CUTTER. WARREN, MASS., _Sept. 1, 1852_. TO TEACHERS AND PARENTS. As the work is divided into chapters, the subjects of which are complete in themselves, the pupil may commence the study of the structure, use, and laws of the several parts of which the human system is composed, by selecting such chapters as fancy or utility may dictate, without reference to their present arrangement,--as well commence with the chapter on the digestive organs as on the bones. The acquisition of a correct pronunciation of the technical words is of great importance, both in recitation and in conversation. In this work, the technical words interspersed with the text, have been divided into syllables, and the accented syllables designated. An ample Glossary of technical terms has also been appended to the work, to which reference should be made. It is recommended that the subject be examined in the form of _topics_. The questions in _Italics_ are designed for this method of recitation. The teacher may call on a pupil of the class to describe the anatomy of an organ from an anatomical outline plate; afterwards call upon another to give the physiology of the part, while a third may state the hygiene, after which, the questions at the bottom of the page may be asked promiscuously, and thus the detailed knowledge of the subject possessed by the pupils will be tested. At the close of the chapters upon the Hygiene of the several portions of the system, it is advised that the instructor give a lecture reviewing the anatomy, physiology, and hygiene, of the topic last considered. This may be followed by a general examination of the class upon the same subject. By this course a clear and definite knowledge of the mutual relation of the Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene, of different parts of the human body, will be presented. We also suggest the utility of the pupils' giving analogous illustrations, examples, and observations, where these are interspersed in the different chapters, not only to induce inventive thought, but to discipline the mind. To parents and others we beg leave to say, that about two thirds of the present work is devoted to a concise and practical description of the uses of the important organs of the human body, and to show how such information may be usefully applied, both in the preservation of health, and the improvement of physical education. To this have been added directions for the treatment of those accidents which are daily occurring in the community, making it a treatise proper and profitable for the FAMILY LIBRARY, as well as the school-room. CONTENTS. Chapter. Page. 1. General Remarks, 13 2. Structure of Man, 17 3. Chemistry of the Human Body, 25 4. Anatomy of the Bones, 29 5. Anatomy of the Bones, continued, 39 6. Physiology of the Bones, 48 7. Hygiene of the Bones, 53 8. Anatomy of the Muscles, 64 9. Physiology of the muscles, 76 10. Hygiene of the Muscles, 85 11. Hygiene of the Muscles, continued, 96 12. Anatomy of the Teeth, 105 12. Physiology of the Teeth, 109 12. Hygiene of the Teeth, 110 13. Anatomy of the Digestive Organs, 113 14. Physiology of the Digestive Organs, 124 15. Hygiene of the Digestive Organs, 129 16. Hygiene of the Digestive Organs, continued, 142 17. Anatomy of the Circulatory Organs, 154 18. Physiology of the Circulatory Organs, 164 19. Hygiene of the Circulatory Organs, 172 20. Anatomy of the Lymphatic Vessels, 181 20. Physiology of the Lymphatic Vessels, 183 20. Hygiene of the Lymphatic Vessels, 188 21. Anatomy of the Secretory Organs. 192 21. Physiology of the Secretory Organs, 193 21. Hygiene of the Secretory Organs, 197 22. Nutrition, 200 22. Hygiene of Nutrition, 205 23. Anatomy of the Respiratory Organs, 209 24. Physiology of the Respiratory Organs, 217 25. Hygiene of the Respiratory Organs, 228 26. Hygiene of the Respiratory Organs, continued, 239 27. Animal Heat, 252 28. Hygiene of Animal Heat, 261 29. Anatomy of the Vocal Organs, 268 29. Physiology of the Vocal Organs, 272 30. Hygiene of the Vocal Organs, 274 31. Anatomy of the Skin, 282 32. Physiology of the Skin, 293 33. Hygiene of the Skin, 301 34. Hygiene of the Skin, continued, 311 35. Appendages of the Skin, 322 36. Anatomy of the Nervous System, 327 37. Anatomy of the Nervous System, continued, 340 38. Physiology of the Nervous System, 346 39. Hygiene of the Nervous System, 358 40. Hygiene of the Nervous System, continued, 368 41. The Sense of Touch, 378 42. Anatomy of the Organs of Taste, 384 42. Physiology of the Organs of Taste, 386 43. Anatomy of the Organs of Smell, 389 43. Physiology of the Organs of Smell, 391 44. Anatomy of the Organs of Vision, 394 45. Physiology of the Organs of Vision, 404 45. Hygiene of the Organs of Vision, 410 46. Anatomy of the Organs of Hearing, 414 47. Physiology of the Organs of Hearing, 420 47. Hygiene of the Organs of Hearing, 422 48. Means of preserving the Health, 425 49. Directions for Nurses, 432 - - - - - APPENDIX, 439 GLOSSARY, 451 INDEX, 463 ANATOMY, &c. CHAPTER I. GENERAL REMARKS. 1. ANATOMY is the science which treats of the structure and relations of the different parts of animals and plants. 2. It is divided into _Vegetable_ and _Animal_ anatomy. The latter of these divisions is subdivided into _Human_ anatomy, which considers, exclusively, human beings; and _Comparative_ anatomy, which treats of the mechanism of the lower orders of animals. 3. PHYSIOLOGY treats of the functions, or uses of the organs of animals and plants. Another definition is, "the science of life." 4. This is also divided into _Vegetable_ and _Animal_ physiology, as it treats of the vegetable or animal kingdom; and into _Human_ and _Comparative_ physiology, as it describes the vital functions of man or the inferior animals. 5. HYGIENE is the art or science of maintaining health, or a knowledge of those laws by which health may be preserved. 6. The kingdom of nature is divided into _organic_ and _inorganic_ bodies. Organic bodies possess organs, on whose action depend their growth and perfection. This division includes animals and plants. Inorganic bodies are devoid of organs, or instruments of life. In this division are classed the earths, metals, and other minerals. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1. What is anatomy? 2. How is it divided? How is the latter division subdivided? 3. What is physiology? Give another definition. 4. How is physiology divided? Give a subdivision. 5. What is hygiene? 6. Define organic bodies. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 7. In general, organic matter differs so materially from inorganic, that the one can readily be distinguished from the other. In the organic world, every individual of necessity springs from some _parent, or immediate producing agent_; for while inorganic substances are formed by chemical laws alone, we see no case of an animal or plant coming into existence by accident or chance, or chemical operations. 8. Animals and plants _are supported by means of nourishment_, and die without it. They also increase in size _by the addition of new particles of matter to all parts of their substances_; while rocks and minerals grow only by additions to their surfaces. 9. "Organized bodies always present a combination of both solids and fluids;--of solids, differing in character and properties, arranged into organs, and these endowed with functional powers, and so associated as to form of the whole a single system;--and of fluids, contained in these organs, and holding such relation to the solids that the existence, nature, and properties of both mutually and necessarily depend on each other." 10. Another characteristic is, that organic substances have a _certain order of parts_. For example, plants possess organs to gain nourishment from the soil and atmosphere, and the power to give strength and increase to all their parts. And animals need not only a digesting and circulating apparatus, but organs for breathing, a nervous system, &c. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 6. Define inorganic bodies. 7. What is said of the difference, in general, between organic and inorganic bodies? 8. What of the growth of organic and inorganic bodies? 9. What do organized bodies always present? 10. Give another characteristic of organized substances. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 11. _Individuality_ is an important characteristic. For instance, a large rock may be broken into a number of smaller pieces, and yet every fragment will be rock; but if an organic substance be separated into two or more divisions, neither of them can be considered an individual. Closely associated with this is the power of _life_, or _vitality_, which is the most distinguishing characteristic of organic structure; since we find nothing similar to this in the inorganic creation. 12. _The distinction between plants and animals_ is also of much importance. _Animals grow proportionally in all directions_, while plants grow upwards and downwards from a collet only. The _food_ of animals is _organic_, while that of plants is _inorganic_; the latter feeding entirely upon the elements of the soil and atmosphere, while the former subsist upon the products of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The size of the vegetable is in most cases limited only by the duration of existence, as a tree continues to put forth new branches during each period of its life, while the animal, at a certain time of life, attains the average size of its species. 13. One of the most important distinctions between animals and plants, is _the different effects of respiration_. Animals consume the oxygen of the atmosphere, and give off carbonic acid; while plants take up the carbonic acid, and restore to animals the oxygen, thus affording an admirable example of the principle of compensation in nature. 14. But the decisive distinctions between animals and plants are _sensation_ and _voluntary motion_, the power of acquiring a knowledge of external objects through the senses, and the ability to move from place to place at will. These are the characteristics which, in their fullest development in man, show intellect and reasoning powers, and thereby in a greater degree exhibit to us the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 11. What is said of the individuality of organized and inorganized bodies? What is closely associated with this? 12. Give a distinction between animals and plants as regards growth. The food of animals and plants. What is said in respect to size? 13. What important distinction in the effects of respiration of animals and plants? 14. What are the decisive distinctions between animals and plants? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 15. DISEASE, which consists in an unnatural condition of the bodily organs, is in most cases under the control of fixed laws, which we are capable of understanding and obeying. Nor do diseases come by chance; they are penalties for violating physical laws. If we carelessly cut or bruise our flesh, pain and soreness follow, to induce us to be more careful in the future; or, if we take improper food into the stomach, we are warned, perhaps immediately by a friendly pain, that we have violated an organic law. 16. Sometimes, however, the penalty does not directly follow the sin, and it requires great physiological knowledge to be able to trace the effect to its true cause. If we possess good constitutions, we are responsible for most of our sickness; and bad constitutions, or hereditary diseases, are but the results of the same great law,--the iniquities of the parents being visited on the children. In this view of the subject, how important is the study of physiology and hygiene! For how can we expect to obey laws which we do not understand? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 15. What is said of disease? 16. Why is the study of physiology and hygiene important? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER II. STRUCTURE OF MAN, 17. In the structure of the human body, there is a union of fluids and solids. These are essentially the same, for the one is readily changed into the other. There is no fluid that does not contain solid matter in solution, and no solid matter that is destitute of fluid. 18. In different individuals, and at different periods of life the proportion of fluids and solids varies. In youth, the fluids are more abundant than in advanced life. For this reason, the limbs in childhood are soft and round, while in old age they assume a hard and wrinkled appearance. 19. The fluids not only contain the materials from which every part of the body is formed, but they are the medium for conveying the waste, decayed particles of matter from the system. They have various names, according to their nature and function; as, the blood, and the bile. 20. The solids are formed from the fluids, and consequently they are reduced, by chemical analysis, to the same ultimate elements. The particles of matter in solids are arranged variously; sometimes in _fi´bres_, (threads,) sometimes in _lam´i-næ_, (plates,) sometimes homogeneously, as in basement membranes. (Appendix A.) 21. The parts of the body are arranged into _Fi´bres_, _Fas-cic´u-li_, _Tis´sues_, _Or´gans_, _Ap-pa-ra´tus-es_, and _Sys´tems_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 17. What substances enter into the structure of the human body? Are they essentially the same? 18. What is said of these substances at different periods of life? 19. What offices do the fluids of the system perform? 20. What is said of the solids? How are the particles of matter arranged in solids? 21. Give an arrangement of the parts of the body. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 22. A FIBRE is a thread of exceeding fineness. It is either cylindriform or flattened. 23. A FASCICULUS is the term applied to several fibres united. Its general characteristics are the same as fibres. 24. A TISSUE is a term applied to several different solids of the body. 25. An ORGAN is composed of tissues so arranged as to form an instrument designed for action. The action of an organ is called its _function_, or use. _Example._ The liver is an organ, and the secretion of the bile from the blood is one of its functions.[1] [1] Where examples and observations are given or experiments suggested, let the pupil mention other analogous ones. 26. An APPARATUS is an assemblage of organs designed to produce certain results. _Example._ The digestive apparatus consists of the teeth, stomach, liver, &c., all of which aid in the digestion of food. [Illustration: Fig. 2. Represents a portion of broken muscular fibre of animal life, (magnified about seven hundred diameters.)] 27. The term SYSTEM is applied to an assemblage of organs arranged according to some plan, or method; as the nervous system, the respiratory system. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 22. Define a fibre. 23. Define a fasciculus. 24. Define a tissue. 25. Define an organ. What is the action of an organ called? Give examples. _Mention other examples._ 26. What is an apparatus? Give an example 27. How is the term system applied? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 28. A TISSUE is a simple form of organized animal substance. It is flexible, and formed of fibres interwoven in various ways; as, the cellular tissue. 29. However various all organs may appear in their structure and composition, it is now supposed that they can be reduced to a few tissues; as, the _Cel´lu-lar_, _Os´se-ous_, _Mus´cu-lar_, _Mu´cous_, _Ner´vous_, &c. (Appendix B.) 30. The CELLULAR TISSUE,[2] now called the _areolar tissue_, consists of small fibres, or bands, interlaced in every direction, so as to form a net-work, with numerous interstices that communicate freely with each other. These interstices are filled, during life, with a fluid resembling the serum of blood. The use of the areolar tissue is to connect together organs and parts of organs, and to envelop, fix, and protect the vessels and nerves of organs. [2] The _Cellular_, _Serous_, _Dermoid_, _Fibrous_, and _Mucous tissues_ are very generally called _membranes_. [Illustration: Fig. 3. Arrangement of fibres of the cellular tissue magnified one hundred and thirty diameters.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 28. What is a tissue? 29. What is said respecting the structure and composition of the various organs? Name the primary membranes. 30. Describe the cellular tissue. How are the cells imbedded in certain tissues? Give observation 1st, relative to the cellular tissue. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observations._ 1st. When this fluid becomes too great in quantity, in consequence of disease, the patient labors under general dropsy. The swelling of the feet when standing, and their return to a proper shape during the night, so often noticed in feeble persons, furnish a striking proof both of the existence and peculiarity of this tissue, which allows the fluid to flow from cell to cell, until it settles in the lower extremities. 2d. The free communication between the cells is still more remarkable in regard to air. Sometimes, when an accidental opening has been made from the air-cells of the lungs into the contiguous cellular tissue, the air in respiration has penetrated every part until the whole body is so inflated as to occasion suffocation. Butchers often avail themselves of the knowledge of this fact, and inflate their meat to give it a fat appearance. 31. "Although this tissue enters into the composition of all organs, it never loses its own structure, nor participates in the functions of the organ of which it forms a part. Though present in the nerves, it does not share in their sensibility; and though it accompanies every muscle and every muscular fibre, it does not partake of the irritability which belongs to these organs." 32. Several varieties of tissue are formed from the cellular; as, the _Se´rous_, _Der´moid_, _Fi´brous_, and several others. 33. The SEROUS TISSUE lines all the closed, or sac-like cavities of the body; as, the chest, joints, and abdomen. It not only lines these cavities, but is reflected, and invests the organs contained in them. The liver and the lungs are thus invested. This membrane is of a whitish color, and smooth on its free surfaces. These surfaces are kept moist, and prevented from adhering by a _se´rous_ fluid, which is separated from the blood. The use of this membrane is to separate organs and also to facilitate the movement of one part upon another, by means of its moist, polished surfaces. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give observation 2d. 31. What is said of the identity of this tissue? 32. Name the varieties of tissue formed from the cellular. 33. Where is the serous tissue found? What two offices does it perform? Give its structure. What is the use of this membrane? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 34. The DERMOID TISSUE covers the outside of the body. It is called the _cu´tis_, (skin.) This membrane is continuous with the mucous at the various orifices of the body, and in these situations, from the similarity of their structure, it is difficult to distinguish between them. _Observations._ 1st. In consequence of the continuity and similarity of structure, there is close sympathy between the mucous and dermoid membranes. If the functions of the skin are disturbed, as by a chill, it will frequently cause a catarrh, (cold,) or diarrhoea. Again, in consequence of this intimate sympathy, these complaints can be relieved by exciting a free action in the vessels of the skin. 2d. It is no uncommon occurrence that diseased or irritated conditions of the mucous membrane of the stomach or intestines produce diseases or irritations of the skin, as is seen in the rashes attendant on dyspepsia, and eating certain species of fish. These eruptions of the skin can be relieved by removing the diseased condition of the stomach. 35. The FIBROUS TISSUE consists of longitudinal, parallel fibres, which are closely united. These fibres, in some situations, form a thin, dense, strong membrane, like that which lines the internal surface of the skull, or invests the external surface of the bones. In other instances, they form strong, inelastic bands, called _lig´a-ments_, which bind one bone to another. This tissue also forms _ten´dons_, (white cords,) by which the muscles are attached to the bones. _Observation._ In the disease called rheumatism, the fibrous tissue is the part principally affected; hence the joints, where this tissue is most abundant, suffer most from this affection. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 34. Describe the dermoid tissue. What is said of the sympathy between the functions of the skin and mucous membrane? Give another instance of the sympathy between these membranes. 35. Of what does the fibrous tissue consist? How do these appear in some situations? How in others? What tissue is generally affected in rheumatism? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 36. The ADIPOSE TISSUE is so arranged as to form distinct bags, or cells. These contain a substance called _fat_. This tissue is principally found beneath the skin, abdominal muscles, and around the heart and kidneys; while none is found in the brain, eye, ear, nose, and several other organs. _Observation._ In those individuals who are corpulent, there is in many instances, a great deposit of this substance. This tissue accumulates more readily than others when a person becomes gross, and is earliest removed when the system emaciates, in acute or chronic diseases. Some of the masses become, in some instances, enlarged. These enlargements are called _adipose_, or _fatty tumors_. [Illustration: Fig. 4. 1, A portion of the adipose tissue. 2, 2, 2, Minute bags containing fat. 3, A cluster of these bags, separated and suspended.] 37. The CARTILAGINOUS TISSUE is firm, smooth, and highly elastic. Except bone, it is the hardest part of the animal frame. It tips the ends of the bones that concur in forming a joint. Its use is to facilitate the motion of the joints by its smooth surface, while its elastic character diminishes the shock that would otherwise be experienced if this tissue were inelastic. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 36. Describe the adipose tissue. Where does this tissue principally exist? Give observation in regard to the adipose tissue. 37. Describe the cartilaginous tissue. What is its use? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 38 The OSSEOUS TISSUE, in composition and arrangement of matter, varies at different periods of life, and in different bones. In some instances, the bony matter is disposed in plates, while in other instances, the arrangement is cylindrical. Sometimes, the bony matter is dense and compact; again, it is spongy, or porous. In the centre of the long bones, a space is left which is filled with a fatty substance, called _mar´row_. _Observation._ Various opinions exist among physiologists in regard to the use of marrow. Some suppose it serves as a reservoir of nourishment, while others, that it keeps the bones from becoming dry and brittle. The latter opinion, however, has been called in question, as the bones of the aged man contain more marrow than those of the child, and they are likewise more brittle. [Illustration: Fig. 5. A section of the femur, (thigh-bone.) 1, 1, The extremities, showing a thin plate of compact texture, which covers small cells, that diminish in size, but increase in number, as they approach the articulation. 2, 2, The walls of the shaft, which are very firm and solid. 3, The cavity that contains the marrow.] 39. The MUSCULAR TISSUE is composed of many fibres, that unite to form fasciculi, each of which is enclosed in a delicate layer of cellular tissue. Bundles of these fasciculi constitute a muscle. _Observation._ A piece of boiled beef will clearly illustrate the arrangement of muscular fibre. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 38. What is said of the osseous tissue? How is the bony matter arranged in different parts of the animal frame? What is said of the use of marrow? 39. Of what is the muscular tissue composed? How may the arrangement of muscular fibre be illustrated? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 40. The MUCOUS TISSUE differs from the serous by its lining all the cavities which communicate with the air. The nostrils, the mouth, and the stomach afford examples. The external surface of this membrane, or that which is exposed to the air, is soft, and bears some resemblance to the downy rind of a peach. It is covered by a viscid fluid called _mu´cus_. This is secreted by small _gland-cells_, called _ep-i-the´li-a_, or secretory cells of the mucous membrane. The use of this membrane and its secreted mucus is to protect the inner surface of the cavities which it lines. _Observation._ A remarkable sympathy exists between the remote parts of the mucous membrane. Thus the condition of the stomach may be ascertained by an examination of the tongue. 41. The NERVOUS TISSUE consists of soft, pulpy matter, enclosed in a sheath, called _neu-ri-lem´a_. This tissue consists of two substances. The one, of a pulpy character and gray color, is called _cin-e-ri´tious_, (ash-colored.) The other, of a fibrous character and white, is named _med´ul-la-ry_, (marrow-like.) In every part of the nervous system both substances are united, with the exception of the nervous fibres and filaments, which are solely composed of the medullary matter enclosed in a delicate sheath. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 40. How does the mucous differ from the serous tissue? What is the appearance of the external surface of this membrane? Where is the mucus secreted? What is the use of this membrane? 41. Of what does the nervous tissue consist? Describe the two substances that enter into the composition of the nervous tissue. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER III CHEMISTRY OF THE HUMAN BODY. 42. An ULTIMATE ELEMENT is the simplest form of matter with which we are acquainted; as gold, iron, &c. 43. These elements are divided into _metallic_ and _non-metallic_ substances. The metallic substances are _Po-tas´si-um_, _So´di-um_, _Cal´ci-um_, _Mag-ne´si-um_, _A-lu´min-um_, _I´ron_, _Man´ga-nese_, and _Cop´per_. The non-metallic substances are _Ox´y-gen_, _Hy´dro-gen_, _Car´bon_, _Ni´tro-gen_, _Si-li´-ci-um_, _Phos´phor-us_, _Sul´phur_, _Chlo´rine_, and a few others. 44. POTASH (potassium united with oxygen) is found in the blood, bile, perspiration, milk, &c. 45. SODA (sodium combined with oxygen) exists in the muscles, and in the same fluids in which potash is found. 46. LIME (calcium combined with oxygen) forms the principal ingredient of the bones. The lime in them is combined with phosphoric and carbonic acid. 47. MAGNESIA (magnesium combined with oxygen) exists in the bones, brain, and in some of the animal fluids; as milk. 48. SILEX (silicium combined with oxygen) is contained in the hair and in some of the secretions. 49. IRON forms the coloring principle of the red globules of the blood, and is found in every part of the system. _Observation._ As metallic or mineral substances enter into the ultimate elements of the body, the assertion that all minerals are poisonous, however small the quantity, is untrue. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 42. What is an ultimate element? Give examples. 43. How are they divided? Name the metallic substances. Name the non-metallic substances. 44. What is said of potash? 45. Of soda? 46. Of lime? 47. Of magnesia? 48. Of silex? 49. What forms the coloring principle of the blood? What is said of mineral substances? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 50. OXYGEN is contained in all the fluids and solids of the body. It is almost entirely derived from the inspired air and water. It is expelled in the form of carbonic acid and water from the lungs and skin. It is likewise removed in the other secretions. 51. HYDROGEN is found in all the fluids and in all the solids of the body. It is derived from the food, as well as from water and other drinks. It exists in the greatest abundance in the impure, dark-colored blood of the system. It is removed by the agency of the kidneys, skin, lungs, and other excretory organs. 52. CARBON is an element in the oil, fat, albumen, fibrin, gelatin, bile, and mucus. This element likewise exists in the impure blood in the form of carbonic acid gas. Carbon is obtained from the food, and discharged from the system by the secretions and respiration. 53. NITROGEN is contained in most animal matter, but is most abundant in fibrin. It is not contained in fat and a few other substances. _Observation._ The peculiar smell of animal matter when burning is owing to nitrogen. This element combined with hydrogen forms _am-mo´ni-a_, (hartshorn,) when animal matter is in a state of putrefaction. 54. PHOSPHORUS is contained in many parts of the system, but more particularly in the bones. It is generally found in combination with oxygen, forming _phosphoric acid_. The phosphoric acid is usually combined with alkaline bases; as lime in the bones, forming phosphate of lime. 55. SULPHUR exists in the bones, muscles, hair, and nails. It is expelled from the system by the skin and intestines. 56. CHLORINE is found in the blood, gastric juice, milk, perspiration, and saliva. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 50. What is said of oxygen? 51. Of hydrogen? 52. What is said of carbon? 53. Of nitrogen? How is ammonia formed? 54. What is said of phosphorus? 55. What is said of sulphur? 56. Of chlorine? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 57. PROXIMATE ELEMENTS are forms of matter that exist in organized bodies in abundance, and are composed chiefly of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen, arranged in different proportions. They exist already formed, and may be separated in many instances, by heat or mechanical means. The most important compounds are _Al-bu´men_, _Fi´brin_, _Gel´a-tin_, _Mu´cus_, _Fat_, _Ca´se-ine_, _Chon´drine_, _Lac´tic acid_, and _Os´ma-zome_. 58. ALBUMEN is found in the body, both in a fluid and solid form. It is an element of the skin, glands, hair, and nails, and forms the principal ingredient of the brain. Albumen is without color, taste, or smell, and it coagulates by heat, acids, and alcohol. _Observation._ The white of an egg is composed of albumen, which can be coagulated or hardened by alcohol. As albumen enters so largely into the composition of the brain, is not the impaired intellect and moral degradation of the inebriate attributable to the effect of alcohol in hardening the albumen of this organ? 59. FIBRIN exists abundantly in the blood, chyle, and lymph. It constitutes the basis of the muscles. Fibrin is of a whitish color, inodorous, and insoluble in cold water. It differs from albumen by possessing the property of coagulating at all temperatures. _Observation._ Fibrin may be obtained by washing the thick part of blood with cold water; by this process, the red globules, or coloring matter, are separated from this element. 60. GELATIN is found in nearly all the solids, but it is not known to exist in any of the fluids. It forms the basis of the cellular tissue, and exists largely in the skin, bones, ligaments, and cartilages. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 57. What are proximate elements? Do they exist already formed in organized bodies? Name the most important compounds. 58. What is said of albumen? Give observation relative to this element. 59. Of fibrin? How does albumen differ from fibrin? How can fibrin be obtained? 60. What is said of gelatin? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ Gelatin is known from other organic principles by its dissolving in warm water, and forming "jelly." When dry, it forms the hard, brittle substance, called _glue_. Isinglass, which is used in the various mechanical arts, is obtained from the sounds of the sturgeon. 61. MUCUS is a viscid fluid secreted by the gland-cells, or epithelia. Various substances are included under the name of mucus. It is generally alkaline, but its true chemical character is imperfectly understood. It serves to moisten and defend the mucous membrane. It is found in the cuticle, brain, and nails; and is scarcely soluble in water, especially when dry. (Appendix C.) 62. OSMAZOME is a substance of an aromatic flavor. It is of a yellowish-brown color, and is soluble both in water and alcohol, but does not form a jelly by concentration. It is found in all the fluids, and in some of the solids; as the brain. _Observation._ The characteristic odor and taste of soup are owing to osmazome. 63. There are several acids found in the human system; as the _A-ce´tic_, _Ben-zo´ic_, _Ox-al´ic_, _U´ric_, and some other substances, but not of sufficient importance to require a particular description. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is it known from other organic principles? 61. What is said of mucus? 62. Of osmazome? To what are the taste and odor of soup owing? 63. What acids are found in the system? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER IV. THE BONES. 64. The bones are firm and hard, and of a dull white color. In all the higher orders of animals, among which is man, they are in the interior of the body, while in lobsters, crabs, &c., they are on the outside, forming a case which protects the more delicate parts from injury. 65. In the mechanism of man, the variety of movements he is called to perform requires a correspondent variety of component parts, and the different bones of the system are so admirably adapted to each other, that they admit of numerous and varied motions. 66. When the bones composing the skeleton are united by natural ligaments, they form what is called a _natural skeleton_, when united by wires, what is termed an _artificial skeleton_. 67. The elevations, or protuberances, of the bones are called _proc´es-ses_, and are, generally, the points of attachment for the muscles and ligaments. ANATOMY OF THE BONES. 68. The BONES are composed of both animal and earthy matter. The earthy portion of the bones gives them solidity and strength, while the animal part endows them with vitality. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 64. What is said of the bones? 65. Is there an adaptation of the bones of the system to the offices they are required to perform? 66. What is a natural skeleton? What an artificial? 67. What part of the bones are called processes? 68-73. _Give the structure of the bones._ 68. Of what are the bones composed? What are the different uses of the component parts of the bones? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Experiments._ 1st. To show the earthy without the animal matter, burn a bone in a clear fire for about fifteen minutes, and it becomes white and brittle, because the gelatin, or animal matter of the bone, has been destroyed. 2d. To show the animal without the earthy matter of the bones, immerse a slender bone for a few days in a weak acid, (one part muriatic acid and six parts water,) and it can then be bent in any direction. In this experiment, the acid has removed the earthy matter, (carbonate and phosphate of lime,) yet the form of the bone is unchanged. 69. The bones are formed from the blood, and are subjected to several changes before they are perfected. At their early formative stage, they are cartilaginous. The vessels of the cartilage, at this period, convey only the _lymph_, or white portion of the blood; subsequently, they convey red blood. At this time, true ossification (the deposition of phosphate and carbonate of lime) commences at certain points, which are called _the points of ossification_. 70. Most of the bones are formed of several pieces, or centres of ossification. This is seen in the long bones which have their extremities separated from the body by a thin partition of cartilage. It is some time before these separate pieces are united to form one bone. 71. When the process of ossification is completed, there is still a constant change in the bones. They increase in bulk, and become less vascular, until middle age. In advanced life, the elevations upon their surface and near the extremities become more prominent, particularly in individuals accustomed to labor. As a person advances in years, the vitality diminishes, and in extreme old age, the earthy substance predominates; consequently, the bones are extremely brittle. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How can the earthy matter of the bones be shown? The animal? 69. What is the appearance of the bones in their early formative stage? When does true ossification commence? 70. How are most of the bones formed? 71. What is said of the various changes of the bones after ossification? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 72. The fibrous membrane that invests the bones is called _per-i-os´te-um_; that which covers the cartilages is called _per-i-chon´dri-um_. When this membrane invests the skull, it is called _per-i-cra´ni-um_. [Illustration: Fig. 6. A section of the knee-joint. The lower part of the femur, (thigh-bone,) and upper part of the tibia, (leg-bone,) are seen ossified at 1, 1. The cartilaginous extremities of the two bones are seen at _d_, _d_. The points of ossification of the extremities, are seen at 2, 2. The patella, or knee-pan, is seen at _c_. 3, A point, or centre of ossification.] 73. The PERIOSTEUM is a firm membrane immediately investing the bones, except where they are tipped with cartilage, and the crowns of the teeth, which are protected by enamel. This membrane has minute nerves, and when healthy, possesses but little sensibility. It is the nutrient membrane of the bone, endowing its exterior with vitality; it also gives insertion to the tendons and connecting ligaments of the joints. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 72. What is the membrane called that invests the bones? That covers the cartilage? That invests the skull? Explain fig. 6. 73. Describe the periosteum. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 74. There are two hundred and eight[3] bones in the human body, beside the teeth. These, for convenience, are divided into four parts: 1st. The bones of the _Head_. 2d. The bones of the _Trunk_. 3d. The bones of the _Upper Extremities_. 4th. The bones of the _Lower Extremities_. [3] Some anatomists reckon more than this number, others less, for the reason that, at different periods of life, the number of pieces of which one bone is formed, varies. _Example._ The breast-bone, in infancy, has _eight_ pieces; in youth, _three_; in old age, but _one_. 75. The bones of the HEAD are divided into those of the _Skull_, _Ear_, and _Face_. 76. The SKULL is composed of eight bones. They are formed of two plates, or tablets of bony matter, united by a porous portion of bone. The external tablet is fibrous and tough; the internal plate is dense and hard, and is called the _vit´re-ous_, or glassy table. These tough, hard plates are adapted to resist the penetration of sharp instruments, while the different degrees of density possessed by the two tablets, and the intervening spongy bone, serve to diminish the vibrations that would occur in falls or blows. 77. The skull is convex externally, and at the base much thicker than at the top or sides. The most important part of the brain is placed here, completely out of the way of injury, unless of a very serious nature. The base of the cranium, or skull, has many projections, depressions, and apertures; the latter affording passages for the nerves and blood-vessels. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 74. How many bones in the human body? How are they divided? 75-81. _Give the anatomy of the bones of the head._ 75. How are the bones of the head divided? 76. Describe the bones of the skull. 77. What is the form of the skull? What does the base of the skull present? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 78. The bones of the cranium are united by ragged edges, called _sut´ures_. The edges of each bone interlock with each other, producing a union, styled, in carpentry, _dovetailing_. They interrupt, in a measure, the vibrations produced by external blows, and also prevent fractures from extending as far as they otherwise would, in one continued bone. From infancy to the twelfth year, the sutures are imperfect; but, from that time to thirty-five or forty, they are distinctly marked; in old age, they are nearly obliterated. [Illustration: Fig. 7. 1, 1, The coronal suture at the front and upper part of the skull, or cranium. 2, The sagittal suture on the top of the skull. 3, 3, The lambdoidal suture at the back part of the cranium.] 79. We find as great a diversity in the form and texture of the skull-bone, as in the expression of the face. The head of the New Hollander is small; that of the African is compressed; while the Caucasian is distinguished for the beautiful oval form of the head. The Greek skulls, in texture, are close and fine, while the Swiss are softer and more open. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 78. How are the bones of the skull united? What are the uses of the sutures? Mention the appearance of the sutures at different ages. What does fig. 7 represent? 79. What is said respecting the form and texture of the skull in different nations? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 80. In each EAR are four very small bones. They aid in hearing. 81. In the FACE are fourteen bones, some of which serve for the attachment of powerful muscles, which are more or less called into action in masticating food; others retain in place the soft parts of the face. [Illustration: Fig. 8. 1, The frontal, or bone of the forehead. 2. The parietal bone. 3, The temporal bone. 4, The zygomatic process of the temporal bone. 5, The malar (cheek) bone. 6, The superior maxillary bone, (upper jaw.) 7, The vomer, that separates the cavities of the nose. 8, The inferior maxillary bone, (lower jaw.) 9. The cavity for the eye.] 82. The TRUNK has fifty-four bones--twenty-four _Ribs_; twenty-four bones in the _Spi´nal Col´umn_, (back-bone;) four in the _Pel´vis_; the _Ster´num_, (breast-bone;) and the _Os hy-oid´es_, (the bone at the base of the tongue.) They are so arranged as to form, with the soft parts attached to them, two cavities, called the _Tho´rax_ (chest) and _Ab-do´men_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 80. How many bones in the ear? 81. How many bones in the face? What is their use? Explain fig. 8. 82-94. _Give the anatomy of the bones of the trunk._ 82. How many bones in the trunk? Name them. What do they form by their arrangement? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 83. The THORAX is formed by the sternum in front; the ribs, at the sides; and the twelve dorsal bones of the spinal column, posteriorly. The natural form of the chest is a cone, with its apex above; but fashion, in many instances, has nearly inverted this order. This cavity contains the lungs, heart, and large blood-vessels. [Illustration: Fig. 9. 1, The first bone of the sternum, (breast-bone.) 2. The second bone of the sternum. 3, The cartilage of the sternum. 4, The first dorsal vertebra, (a bone of the spinal column.) 5, The last dorsal vertebra. 6, The first rib. 7, Its head. 8, Its neck. 9, Its tubercle. 10, The seventh, or last true rib. 11, The cartilage of the third rib. 12, The floating ribs.] 84. The STERNUM is composed of eight pieces in the child. These unite and form but three parts in the adult. In youth, the two upper portions are converted into bone, while the lower portion remains cartilaginous and flexible until extreme old age, when it is often converted into bone. 85. The RIBS are connected with the spinal column, and increase in length as far as the seventh. From this they successively become shorter. The direction of the ribs from above, downward, is oblique, and their curve diminishes from the first to the twelfth. The external surface of each rib is convex; the internal, concave. The inferior, or lower ribs, are, however, very flat. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 83. Describe the thorax. Explain fig. 9. 84. Describe the sternum. 85. Describe the ribs. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 86. The seven upper ribs are united to the sternum, through the medium of cartilages, and are called the _true ribs_. The cartilages of the next three are united with each other, and are not attached to the sternum; these are called _false ribs_. The lowest two are called _floating ribs_, as they are not connected either with the sternum or the other ribs. 87. The SPINAL COLUMN is composed of twenty-four pieces of bone. Each piece is called a _vert´e-bra_. On examining one of the bones, we find seven projections, called _processes_; four of these, that are employed in binding the bones together, are called _articulating_ processes; two of the remaining are called the _transverse_; and the other, the _spinous_. The last three give attachment to the muscles of the back. 88. The large part of the vertebra, called the body, is round and spongy in its texture, like the extremity of the round bones. The processes are of a more dense character. The projections are so arranged that a tube, or canal, is formed immediately behind the bodies of the vertebræ, in which is placed the _me-dul´la spi-na´lis_, (spinal cord,) sometimes called the pith of the back-bone. 89. Between these joints, or vertebræ, is a peculiar and highly elastic substance, which much facilitates the bending movements of the back. This compressible cushion of cartilage also serves the important purpose of diffusing and diminishing the shock in walking, running, or leaping, and tends to protect the delicate texture of the brain. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 86. How are the ribs united to the sternum? 87. Describe the spinal column. 88. Give the structure of the vertebra. Where is the spinal cord placed? 89. What is placed between each vertebra? What is its use? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 90. Another provision for the protection of the brain, which bears convincing proof of the wisdom and beneficence of the Creator, is the antero-posterior, or forward and backward curve of the spinal column. Were it a straight column, standing perpendicularly, the slightest jar, in walking, would cause it to recoil with a sudden jerk; because, the weight bearing equally, the spine would neither yield to the one side nor the other. But, shaped as it is, we find it yielding in the direction of the curves, and thus the force of the shock is diffused. [Illustration: Fig. 10. A vertebra of the neck. 1, The body of the vertebra. 2, The spinal canal. 4, The spinous process, cleft at its extremity. 5, The transverse process. 7, The inferior articulating process. 8, The superior articulating process.] [Illustration: Fig. 11. 1, The cartilaginous substance that connects the bodies of the vertebræ. 2, The body of the vertebra. 3, The spinous process. 4, 4, The transverse processes. 5, 5, The articulating processes. 6, 6, A portion of the bony bridge that assists in forming the spinal canal, (7.)] _Observation._ A good idea of the structure of the vertebræ may be obtained by examining the spinal column of a domestic animal, as the dog, cat, or pig. 91. The PELVIS is composed of four bones; the two _in-nom-i-na´ta_, (nameless bones,) the _sa´crum_, and the _coc´cyx_. 92. The INNOMINATUM, in the child, consists of three pieces. These, in the adult, become united, and constitute but one bone. In the sides of these bones is a deep socket, or depression, like a cup, called the _ac-e-tab´u-lum_, in which the round head of the thigh-bone is placed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 90. What is said of the curves of the spinal column? What is represented by fig. 10? By fig. 11? How can the structure of the vertebræ be seen? 91. Of how many bones is the pelvis composed? 92. What is said of the innominatum in the child? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 93. The SACRUM, so called because the ancients offered it in sacrifices, is a wedge-shaped bone, that is placed between the innominata, and to which it is bound by ligaments. Upon its upper surface it connects with the lower vertebra. At its inferior, or lower angle, it is united to the coccyx. It is concave upon its anterior, and convex upon its posterior surface. [Illustration: Fig. 12. 1, 1, The innominata, (nameless bones.) 2, The sacrum. 3, The coccyx. 4, 4, The acetabulum. a, a, The pubic portion of the innominata. d, The arch of the pubes; e, The junction of the sacrum and lower lumbar vertebra.] 94. The COCCYX, in infants, consists of several pieces, which, in youth, become united and form one bone. This is the terminal extremity of the spinal column. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= In the adult? Describe the acetabulum. 93. Describe the sacrum. Explain fig. 12. 94. Describe the coccyx. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER V. ANATOMY OF THE BONES, CONTINUED 95. The bones of the upper and lower limbs are enlarged at each extremity, and have projections, or processes. To these, the tendons of muscles and ligaments are attached, which connect one bone with another. The shaft of these bones is cylindrical and hollow, and in structure, their exterior surface is hard and compact, while the interior portion is of a reticulated character. The enlarged extremities of the round bones are more porous than the main shaft. 96. The UPPER EXTREMITIES contain sixty-four bones--the _Scap´u-la_, (shoulder-blade;) the _Clav´i-cle_, (collar-bone;) the _Hu´mer-us_, (first bone of the arm;) the _Ul´na_ and _Ra´di-us_, (bones of the fore-arm;) the _Car´pus_, (wrist;) the _Met-a-car´pus_, (palm of the hand;) and the _Pha-lan´ges_, (fingers and thumb.) 97. The CLAVICLE is attached, at one extremity, to the sternum; at the other, it is united to the scapula. It is shaped like the Italic _[s]_. Its use is to keep the arms from sliding toward the breast. 98. The SCAPULA is situated upon the upper and back part of the chest. It is flat, thin, and of a triangular form. This bone lies upon and is retained in its position by muscles. By their contractions it may be moved in different directions. 99. The HUMERUS is cylindrical, and is joined at the elbow with the ulna of the fore-arm; at the scapular extremity, it is lodged in the _glenoid_ cavity, where it is surrounded by a membranous bag, called the _capsular ligament_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 95-104. _Give the anatomy of the bones of the upper extremities._ 95. Give the structure of the bones of the extremities. 96. How many bones in the upper extremities? Name them. 97. Give the attachments of the clavicle. What is its use? 98. Describe the scapula. How is it retained in its position? 99. Describe the humerus. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 13. 1, The shaft of the humerus. 2, The large, round head that is placed in the glenoid cavity. 3, 4, Processes, to which muscles are attached. 5, A process, called the external elbow. 6, A process, called the internal elbow. 7, The articulating surface upon which the ulna rolls.] [Illustration: Fig. 14. 1, The body of the ulna. 2, The shaft of the radius. 3, The upper articulation of the radius and ulna. 4, Articulating cavity, in which the lower extremity of the humerus is placed. 5, Upper extremity of the ulna, called the olecranon process, which forms the point of the elbow. 6, Space between the radius and ulna, filled by the intervening ligament. 7, Styloid process of the ulna. 8, Surface of the radius and the ulna, where they articulate with the bones of the wrist. 9, Styloid process of the radius.] 100. The ULNA articulates with the humerus at the elbow, and forms a perfect hinge-joint. This bone is situated on the inner side of the fore-arm. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is represented by fig. 13? By fig. 14? 100. Describe the ulna. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 101. The RADIUS articulates with the bones of the carpus and forms the wrist-joint. This bone is situated on the outside of the fore-arm, (the side on which the thumb is placed.) The ulna and radius, at their extremities, articulate with each other, by which union the hand is made to rotate, permitting its complicated and varied movements. 102. The CARPUS is composed of eight bones, ranged in two rows, and so firmly bound together, as to permit only a small amount of movement. [Illustration: Fig. 15. U, The ulna. R, The radius. S, The scaphoid bone. L, The semilunar bone. C, The cuneiform bone. P, The pisiform bone. These four form the first row of carpal bones. T, T, The trapezium and trapezoid bones. M, The os magnum. U, The unciform bone. These four form the second row of carpal bones. 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, The metacarpal bones of the thumb and fingers.] [Illustration: Fig. 16. 10, 10, 10, The metacarpal bones of the hand. 11, 11, First range of finger-bones. 12, 12, Second range of finger-bones. 13, 13, Third range of finger-bones. 14, 15, Bones of the thumb.] 103. The METACARPUS is composed of five bones, upon four of which the first range of the finger-bones is placed; and upon the other, the first bone of the thumb. The five metacarpal bones articulate with the second range of carpal bones. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 101. The radius. 102. How many bones in the carpus? How are they ranged? 103. Describe the metacarpus. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 104. The PHALANGES of the fingers have three ranges of bones, while the thumb has but two. _Observation._ The wonderful adaptation of the hand to all the mechanical offices of life, is one cause of man's superiority over the rest of creation. This arises from the size and strength of the thumbs, and the different lengths of the fingers. 105. The LOWER EXTREMITIES contain sixty bones--the _Fe´mur_, (thigh-bone;) the _Pa-tel´la_, (knee-pan;) the _Tib´i-a_, (shin-bone;) the _Fib´u-la_, (small bone of the leg;) the _Tar´sus_, (instep;) the _Met-a-tar´sus_, (middle of the foot;) and the _Pha-lan´ges_, (toes.) 106. The FEMUR is the longest bone in the system. It supports the weight of the head, trunk, and upper extremities. The large, round head of this bone is placed in the acetabulum. This articulation is a perfect specimen of the ball and socket joint. 107. The PATELLA is a small bone connected with the tibia by a strong ligament. The tendon of the _ex-tens´or_ muscles of the leg is attached to its upper edge. This bone is placed on the anterior part of the lower extremity of the femur, and acts like a pulley, in the extension of the limb. 108. The TIBIA is the largest bone of the leg. It is of a triangular shape, and enlarged at each extremity. 109. The FIBULA is a smaller bone than the tibia, but of similar shape. It is firmly bound to the tibia, at each extremity. 110. The TARSUS is formed of seven irregular bones, which are so firmly bound together as to permit but little movement. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 104. How many ranges of bones have the phalanges? 105-112. _Give the anatomy of the bones of the lower extremities._ 105. How many bones in the lower extremities? Name them. 106. Describe the femur. 107. Describe the patella. What is its function? 108. What is the largest bone of the leg called? What is its form? 109. What is said of the fibula? 110. Describe the tarsus. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 17. 1, The shaft of the femur, (thigh-bone.) 2, A projection, called the trochantar minor, to which are attached some strong muscles. 4, The trochantar major, to which the large muscles of the hip are attached. 3, The head of the femur. 5, The external projection of the femur, called the external condyle. 6, The internal projection, called the internal condyle. 7, The surface of the lower extremity of the femur, that articulates with the tibia, and upon which the patella slides.] [Illustration: Fig. 18. 1, The tibia. 5, The fibula. 8, The space between the two, filled with the inter-osseous ligament. 6, The junction of the tibia and fibula at their upper extremity. 2, The external malleolar process, called the external ankle. 3, The internal malleolar process, called the internal ankle. 4, The surface of the lower extremity of the tibia, that unites with one of the tarsal bones to form the ankle-joint. 7, The upper extremity of the tibia, upon which the lower extremity of the femur rests.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Explain fig. 17. Explain fig. 18. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 111. The METATARSAL bones are five in number. They articulate at one extremity with one range of tarsal bones; at the other extremity, with the first range of the toe-bones. [Illustration: Fig. 19. A representation of the upper surface of the bones of the foot. 1, The surface of the astragulus, where it unites with the tibia. 2, The body of the astragulus. 3, The calcis, (heel-bone.) 4, The scaphoid bone. 5, 6, 7, The cuneiform bones. 8, The cuboid. 9, 9, 9, The metatarsal bones. 10, The first bone of the great toe. 11, The second bone. 12, 13, 14, Three ranges of bones, forming the small toes] [Illustration: Fig. 20. A side view of the bones of the foot, showing its arched form. The arch rests upon the _heel_ behind, and the _ball_ of the toes in front. 1, The lower part of the tibia. 2, 3, 4, 5, Bones of the tarsus. 6, The metatarsal bone. 7, 8, The bones of the great toe. These bones are so united as to secure a great degree of elasticity, or spring.] _Observation._ The tarsal and metatarsal bones are united so as to give the foot an arched form, convex above, and concave below. This structure conduces to the elasticity of the step, and the weight of the body is transmitted to the ground by the spring of the arch, in a manner which prevents injury to the numerous organs. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 111. Describe the metatarsal bones. Explain fig. 19. What is represented by fig. 20? What is said of the arrangement of the bones of the foot? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 112. The PHALANGES (fig. 19) are composed of fourteen bones; each of the small toes has three ranges of bones, while the great toe has but two. 113. The JOINTS form an interesting part of the body. In their construction, every thing shows the regard that has been paid to the security and the facility of motion of the parts thus connected together. They are composed of the extremities of two or more bones, _Car´ti-lages_, (gristles,) _Syn-o´vi-al_ membrane, and _Lig´a-ments_. [Illustration: Fig. 21 The relative position of the bones, cartilages, and synovial membrane. 1, 1, The extremities of two bones that concur to form a joint. 2, 2, The cartilages that cover the end of the bones. 3, 3, 3, 3, The synovial membrane which covers the cartilage of both bones, and is then doubled back from one to the other; it is represented by the dotted lines.] [Illustration: Fig. 22. A vertical section of the knee-joint. 1, The femur. 3, The patella. 5, The tibia. 2, 4, The ligaments of the patella. 6, The cartilage of the tibia 12, The cartilage of the femur. * * * *, The synovial membrane.] 114. CARTILAGE is a smooth, solid, elastic substance, of a pearly whiteness, softer than bone. It forms upon the articular surfaces of the bones a thin incrustation, not more than the sixteenth of an inch in thickness. Upon convex surfaces it is the thickest in the centre, and thin toward the circumference; while upon concave surfaces, an opposite arrangement is presented. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 112. Describe the phalanges. 113-118. _Give the anatomy of the joints._ 113. What is said of the joints? Of what are the joints composed? What is illustrated by fig. 21? By fig. 22? 114. Define cartilage. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 115. The SYNOVIAL MEMBRANE is a thin, membranous layer, which covers the cartilages, and is thence bent back, or reflected upon the inner surfaces of the ligaments which surround and enter into the composition of the joints. This membrane forms a closed sac, like the membrane that lines an egg-shell. [Illustration: Fig. 23. The anterior ligaments of the knee-joint. 1, The tendon of the muscle that extends the leg. 2, The patella. 3, The anterior ligament of the patella, near its insertion. 4, 4, The synovial membrane. 5, The internal lateral ligament. 6, The long external lateral ligament. 7, The anterior and superior ligament that unites the fibula to the tibia.] [Illustration: Fig. 24. 2, 3, The ligaments that extend from the clavicle (1) to the scapula (4.) The ligaments 5, 6, extend from the scapula to the first bone of the arm.] 116. Beside the synovial membrane, there are numerous smaller sacs, called _bur´sæ mu-co´sæ_. These are often associated with the articulation. In structure, they are analogous to synovial membranes, and secrete a similar fluid. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 115. Describe the synovial membrane. 116. Describe the bursæ mucosæ. What is represented by fig. 23? By fig. 24? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 117. The LIGAMENTS are composed of numerous straight fibres, collected together, and arranged into short bands of various breadths, or so interwoven as to form a broad layer, which completely surrounds the articular extremities of the bones, and constitutes a capsular ligament. These connecting bands are white, glistening, and inelastic. Most of the ligaments are found exterior to the synovial membrane. 118. The bones, cartilages, ligaments, and synovial membrane are insensible when in health; yet they are supplied with organic nerves, as well as with arteries, veins, and lymphatics. _Observation._ The joints of the domestic animals are similar in their construction to those of man. To illustrate this part of the body, a fresh joint of the calf or sheep may be used. After divesting the joints of the skin, the satin-like bands, or ligaments, will be seen passing from one bone to the other, under which may be observed the membranous bag, called the capsular ligament. This is very smooth, as it is lined with the soft synovial membrane, beneath which will be seen the cartilage, that may be cut with a knife, and under this the rough extremity of the ends of the bones. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 117. Of what are ligaments composed? What is the appearance of these bands? Where are they found? 118. With what vessels are the cartilages and ligaments supplied? How can the structure of the joints be explained? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER VI. PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BONES. 119. The bones are the framework of the system. By their solidity and form, they not only retain every part of the fabric in its proper shape, but afford a firm surface for the attachment of the muscles and ligaments. By means of the bones, the human frame presents to the eye a wonderful piece of mechanism, uniting the most finished symmetry of form with freedom of motion, and also giving security to many important organs. 120. To give a clear idea of the relative uses of the bones and muscles, we will quote the comparison of another, though, as in other comparisons, there are points of difference. The "bones are to the body what the masts and spars are to the ship,--they give support and the power of resistance. The muscles are to the bones what the ropes are to the masts and spars. The bones are the levers of the system; by the action of the muscles their relative positions are changed. As the masts and spars of a vessel must be sufficiently firm to sustain the action of the ropes, so the bones must possess the same quality to sustain the action of the muscles in the human body." 121. Some of the bones are designed exclusively for the protection of the organs which they enclose. Of this number are those that form the skull, the sockets of the eye, and the cavity of the nose. Others, in addition to the protection they give to important organs, are useful in movements of certain kinds. Of this class are the bones of the spinal column, and ribs. Others are subservient to motion. Of this class are the upper and lower extremities. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 119-128. _Give the physiology of the bones._ 119. How may the bones be considered? 120. To what may the bones be compared? 121. Give the different offices of the bones. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 122. The bones are subject to growth and decay; to removal of old, useless matter, and the deposit of new particles, as in other tissues. This has been tested by the following experiment. Some of the inferior animals were fed with food that contained madder. In a few days, some of the animals were killed, and their bones exhibited an unusually reddish appearance. The remainder of the animals were, for a few weeks, fed on food that contained no coloring principle. When they were killed, their bones exhibited the usual color of such animals. The coloring matter, which had been deposited, had been removed by the action of the lymphatics. 123. The extremities of the bones that concur in forming a joint, correspond by having their respective configurations reciprocal. They are, in general, the one convex, and the other concave. In texture they are porous, and consequently more elastic than if more compact. These are covered with a cushion of cartilage. The elastic character of these parts acts as so many springs, in diminishing the jar which important organs of the system would otherwise receive. 124. The synovial membrane secretes a viscous fluid, which is called _syn-o´vi-a_. This lubricating fluid of the joints enables the surfaces of the bones and tendons to move smoothly upon each other, thus diminishing the friction consequent on their action. _Observations._ 1st. In this secretion is manifested the skill and omnipotence of the Great Architect; for no machine of human invention supplies to itself, by its own operations, the necessary lubricating fluid. But, in the animal frame, it is supplied in proper quantities, and applied in the proper place, and at the proper time. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 122. What is said of the change in bones? How was it proved that there was a constant change in the osseous fabric? 123. What is said of the extremities of the bones that form a joint? 124. What is synovia? Its use? What is said of this lubricating fluid? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. In some cases of injury and disease, the synovial fluid is secreted in large quantities, and distends the sac of the joint. This affection is called dropsy of the joint, and occurs most frequently in that of the knee. 125. The function of the ligaments is to connect and bind together the bones of the system. By them the small bones of the wrist and foot, as well as the large bones, are as securely fastened as if retained by clasps of steel. Some of them are situated within the joints, like a central cord, or pivot, (3, fig. 26.) Some surround it like a hood, and contain the lubricating synovial fluid, (8, 9, fig. 25,) and some in the form of bands at the side, (5, 6, fig. 23.) [Illustration: Fig. 25. 8, 9, The ligaments that extend from the hip-bone (6) to the femur, (5.)] [Illustration: Fig. 26. 2, The socket of the hip-joint. 5, The head of the femur, which is lodged in the socket. 3, The ligament within the socket.] 126. By the ligaments the lower jaw is bound to the temporal bones, and the head to the neck. They extend the whole length of the spinal column, in powerful bands, on the outer surface, between the spinal bones, and from one spinous process to another. They bind the ribs to the vertebræ, to the transverse process behind, and to the sternum in front; and this to the clavicle; and this to the first rib and scapula; and this last to the humerus. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is the effect when the synovial fluid is secreted in large quantities? 125. What is the function of the ligaments? 126. Mention how the bones of the system are connected. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 127. They also bind the two bones of the fore-arm at the elbow-joint; and these to the wrist; and these to each other and to those of the hand; and these last to each other and to those of the fingers and thumb. In the same manner, they bind the bones of the pelvis together; and these to the femur; and this to the two bones of the leg and patella; and so on, to the ankle, foot, and toes, as in the upper extremities. [Illustration: Fig. 27. 1, A front view of the lateral ligaments of the finger-joints. 2, A view of the anterior ligaments (_a_, _b_,) of the finger-joints. 3, A side view of the lateral ligaments of the finger joints.] 128. The different joints vary in range of movement, and in complexity of structure. Some permit motions in all directions, as the shoulder; some move in two directions, permitting only flexion and extension of the part, as the elbow; while others have no movement, as the bones of the head in the adult. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Explain fig. 27. 128. Describe the variety of movements in the different joints. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 28. 1, 1, The spinal column. 2, The skull. 3, The lower jaw. 4, The sternum. 5, The ribs. 6, 6, The cartilages of the ribs. 7, The clavicle. 8, The humerus. 9, The shoulder-joint. 10, The radius. 11, The ulna. 12, The elbow joint. 13, The wrist. 14, The hand. 15, The haunch-bone. 16, The sacrum. 17, The hip-joint. 18, The thigh-bone. 19, The patella. 20, The knee-joint. 21, The fibula. 22, The tibia. 23, The ankle-joint. 24, The foot. 25, 26, The ligaments of the clavicle, sternum, and ribs. 27, 28, 29, The ligaments of the shoulder, elbow, and wrist. 30, The large artery of the arm. 31, The ligaments of the hip-joint. 32, The large blood-vessels of the thigh. 33, The artery of the leg. 34, 35, 36, The ligaments of the patella, knee, and ankle.] _Note._ Let the pupil, in form of topics, review the anatomy and physiology of the bones from fig. 28, or from anatomical outline plates No. 1 and 2. CHAPTER VII HYGIENE OF THE BONES. 129. _The bones increase in size and strength by use, while they are weakened by inaction._ Exercise favors the deposition of both animal and earthy matter, by increasing the circulation and nutrition in this texture. For this reason, the bones of the laborer are dense and strong, while those who neglect exercise, or are unaccustomed to manual employment, are deficient in size, and have not a due proportion of earthy matter to give them the solidity and strength of the laboring man. _Observation._ The tendons of the muscles are attached near the extremities of the bones. Exercise of the muscles increases the action of the vessels of that part to which the tendons are attached, and thus increases the nutrition and size of this portion of the bone. Hence the joints of an industrious mechanic or farmer are larger than those of an individual who has not pursued manual vocations. 130. _The gelatinous bones of the child are not so well adapted for labor and severe exercise as those of an adult._ 1st. They are liable to become distorted. 2d. They are consolidated by the deposition of earthy material before they are fully and properly developed. If a young animal, as the colt, be put to severe, continued labor, the deposition of earthy matter is hastened, and the bones are consolidated before they attain full growth. Such colts make small and inferior animals. Similar results follow, if a youth is compelled to toil unduly before maturity of growth is attained. On the other hand, moderate and regular labor favors a healthy development and consolidation of the bones. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 129-148. _Give the hygiene of the bones._ 129. What effect has exercise upon the bones? What effect has inaction? Why are the joints of the industrious farmer and mechanic larger than those of a person unaccustomed to manual employment? 130. Give the first reason why the bones of the child are not adapted to severe exercise. The second reason. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 131. _The kind and amount of labor should be adapted to the age, health, and development of the bones._ Neither the flexible bones of the child nor the brittle bones of the aged man are adapted, by their organization, to long-continued, and hard labor. Those of the one bend too easily, while those of the other fracture too readily. In middle age, the proportions of animal and earthy matter are, usually, such as to give the proper degree of flexibility, firmness, and strength for labor, with little liability to injury. 132. _The imperfectly developed bones of the young child will not bear long-continued exertions or positions without injury._ Hence the requisitions of the rigid disciplinarian of schools, are unwise when he compels his pupils to remain in one position for a long time. He may have a "quiet school;" but, not unfrequently, by such discipline, the constitution is impaired, and permanent injury is done to the pupils. 133. _The lower extremities, in early life, contain but a small proportion of earthy matter_; they bend when the weight of the body is thrown upon them for a long time. Hence, the assiduous attempts to induce children to stand or walk, either naturally or artificially, when very young, are ill advised, and often productive of serious and permanent evil. The "bandy" or bow legs are thus produced. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What effect has moderate, regular labor upon the growing youth? 131. What remark respecting the kind and amount of labor? At what age are the bones best fitted for labor? 132. What effect has long-continued exertions or positions on the bones of a child? What is said of the requisitions of some teachers, who have the famed "quiet schools"? 133. Why should not the child be induced to stand or walk, either naturally or artificially, at too early an age? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 134. _The benches or chairs for children in a school-room should be of such a height as to permit the feet to rest on the floor._ If the bench is so high as not to permit the feet to rest upon the floor, the weight of the limbs below the knee may cause the flexible bone of the thigh to become curved. The child thus seated, is inclined to lean forward, contracting an injurious and ungraceful habit. Again, when the feet are not supported, the child soon becomes exhausted, restless, and unfit for study. In the construction of a school-room, the benches should be of different heights, so as to be adapted to the different pupils, and they should also have appropriate backs. [Illustration: Fig. 29. The position assumed when the seat is of proper height, and the feet supported.] [Illustration: Fig. 30. The position a child naturally assumes when the seat is so high that the feet are not supported.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 134. What is said of the benches or chairs in a school-room? What is represented by fig. 29? By fig. 30? What is the effect when the lower limbs are not supported? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 135. _Compression of the chest should be avoided._ In children, and also in adults, the ribs are very flexible, and a small amount of pressure will increase their curvature, particularly at the lower part of the chest, and thus lessen the size of this cavity. The lower ribs are united to the breast-bone, by long, yielding cartilages, and compression may not only contract the chest, but an unseemly and painful ridge may be produced, by the bending of the cartilages, on one or both sides of the sternum. [Illustration: Fig. 31. A natural and well-proportioned chest.] [Illustration: Fig. 32. A chest fashionably deformed.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 135. Why should compression of the chest be avoided? What is represented by fig. 31? By fig. 32? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 136. Again, the cartilages on one side may be bent outward, while those on the opposite side are bent inward, thus forming a depression parallel with the sternum. In some instances, the anterior extremity of the lower ribs on each side are brought nearly or quite together. In these instances, the movable extremities of the ribs are drawn down toward the haunch-bones, while the space between the ribs is lessened. All this may be effected by tight or "snug" clothing. Therefore the apparel of a child should be loose, and supported over the shoulders, to avoid the before-mentioned evils. The same may be said of the clothing for adults. 137. _The erect position in sitting and standing should be assiduously observed._ The spinal column, in its natural position, curves from front to back, but not from side to side The admirable arrangement of the bones, alternating with cartilages, permits a great variety of motions and positions; and when the spine is inclined to either side, the elasticity of its cartilages tends to restore it to its natural position. For this reason we may incline the spinal column in any direction for a short time, without danger of permanent curvature, if, afterward, the erect position is assumed.[4] [4] Compare 1, 1, Fig. 28, with 2, 2, 2, Fig. 48. 138. But if a stooping position, or a lateral curved posture, is continued for a long time, the spinal column does not easily recover its proper position, for the compressed edges of the cartilages lose their power of reaction, and finally one side of the cartilage becomes thinned, while the other is thickened; and these wedge-shaped cartilages produce a permanent curvature of the spinal column. In a similar way, the student, seamstress, artisan, and mechanic acquire a stooping position, and become round shouldered, by inclining forward to bring their books or work nearer the eyes. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 136. May simply "snug" clothing compress the cartilages? How should the apparel of a child be worn? 137. In what direction does the spinal column, in its natural position, curve? What restores it to its natural position when curved laterally? 138. What is the effect if a lateral curved position of the spinal column is continued for a long time? 139. When one shoulder is elevated for a long time, what is the effect upon the spinal column? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 139. Pupils, while writing, drawing, and sometimes while studying, frequently incline the spinal column to one side, in order to accommodate themselves to the desks at which they are seated. Often, these are higher than the elbow as it hangs from the shoulder while at rest. This attitude elevates one shoulder while it depresses the other; consequently, the upper part of the spinal column is inclined toward the elevated shoulder, and the lower part is curved in the opposite direction, giving the form of the letter _S_ to the supporting column of the body. [Illustration: Fig. 33. The table is of proper height, the position is correct, and the spinal column, 1, 1, is straight, while the shoulders are of equal height.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What does fig. 33 represent? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Experiment._ Let a pupil be placed at a desk or table with one elbow raised, as is frequently seen while writing, or at study, and observe the condition of the shoulder and spinal column in this position. Place another pupil at a table no higher than the elbow when it hangs by the side while sitting, and observe the appearance of the shoulders and spinal column. By a comparison of the two attitudes, the preceding remarks will be comprehended and appreciated. [Illustration: Fig. 34. The table is too high, and the position is oblique and improper. The right shoulder is seen higher than the left, while the spinal column, 1, 1, exhibits three curves.] 140. One shoulder may be elevated, and no injurious results follow, provided care is taken not to keep it in the raised position too long, or if the opposite shoulder is elevated for the same period of time. The right shoulder projects more frequently than the left. This arises from the greater use of the right hand with the shoulder elevated, and not unfrequently the oblique positions assumed in performing the daily vocations of life. With proper care, and by calling into action the left shoulder, this deformity can be prevented. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What experiment is mentioned? What does fig. 34 represent? 140. How can one shoulder be elevated and no injurious results follow? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 35. A representation of a deformed trunk.] 141. The loss of symmetry and diminution of height from deformed spines are minor considerations, compared with the distortions that the chest experiences, thereby impairing respiration and inducing diseases of the heart and lungs. The invasion of the functions of these two important organs lessens the vitality of the whole system, and causes general ill health. Again, the curvature of the spinal column is frequently attended by irritation and disease of the spinal cord. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Why does the right shoulder project more frequently than the left? How can this deformity be prevented? 141. What is said of deformed spinal columns? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 142. Eminent physicians, both in this country and France state that not more than one female in ten, who has been fashionably educated, is free from deformities of the shoulder or spinal column. Teachers, as well as mothers, should notice the positions of the child in performing the tasks allotted to it, whether studying or pursuing any employment. The feebler the organization of the child, the more frequently should there be a change of position. 143. When a slight projection of the shoulder, with a curvature of the spine, exists, it can be improved by walking with a book, or something heavier, upon the head; to balance which, the spinal column must be nearly erect. Those people that carry burdens upon their heads seldom have crooked spines. _Observation._ Persons from the North, in travelling through the Southern States, are surprised to see the heavy burdens that the porters carry on their heads. It is not unusual to see them walking at a rapid pace, with one or two trunks, weighing fifty or eighty pounds each, upon their heads. Occasionally, we meet an itinerant toy-man, with his tray of fragile merchandise upon his head, walking with as much apparent security, as though his toys, or images, were in his hands. This is the easiest method of carrying burdens, because the position of the head and spinal column is erect. 144. _If the animal and earthy matter of the bones is not deposited in proper proportions, they are deficient in strength._ If the gelatin predominates, the bones are weak, and become distorted. When nutrition is defective in the cylindrical bones, the heads are generally enlarged, and the shafts crooked; if in the spinal column, it may be curved; or in the cranium, it may be enlarged. This disease is familiarly known by the name of rickets. It is most common among these who have poor and insufficient food, live in dark, damp rooms, and breathe a vitiated air. The prevention and remedies for this disease are cleanliness, regular exercise, pure air, and nutritious food. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 142. What statement by eminent physicians respecting deformities of the spine? What caution to teachers and mothers? 143. Why should we stand and sit erect? How may slight deformities of the spine be prevented? What is frequently noticed in travelling South? 144. What is the effect upon the bones when the gelatin preponderates? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 145. When a bone is broken, some days elapse before the substance that reunites it is thrown out from the blood. In young persons, it may be secreted during the second or third week, and in individuals advanced in life, usually during the third and fourth week. When the bone is uniting, during the second, third, or fourth week, the attention of a surgeon is more needed than during the first week. At this time, the ends of the bone should be placed together with accuracy, which requires the careful application of proper dressing. After the bones have united, it will take some weeks to consolidate the uniting material and render the "callus," or union, firm. During this time, the limb should be used with care. _Observation._ When a bone is fractured, a surgeon is immediately called, and the bone is "set." While the limb remains swelled and painful, the surgeon is required to attend and keep the dressings (bandages and splints) on. When the swelling has abated, and the pain subsided, frequently the patient intimates to the surgeon that his services can be dispensed with, as the "limb is doing well." This is the most important period, as the bone is uniting, and, unless the ends are nicely adjusted, the dressing properly applied, the person will find, on recovery, a shortened and crooked limb. The surgeon is then censured, when he is not blamable. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is one cause of rickets? What are the prevention and remedies for this disease? 145. Does the time vary when the reuniting substance of the bone is secreted from the blood? When is the surgeon's care most needed? Why? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 146. It is seldom that a bone is displaced without injury to the connecting ligaments and membranes. When these connecting bands are lacerated, pain, swelling, and other symptoms indicating inflammation succeed, which should be removed by proper treatment, directed by a surgical adviser. 147. In sprains, but few, if any, of the fibres of the connecting ligaments are lacerated; but they are unduly strained and twisted, which occasions acute pain at the time of the injury. This is followed by inflammation and weakness of the joints. The treatment of these injuries is similar to that of a dislocated bone after its reduction. The most important item in the treatment during the few first days, is rest. 148. In persons of scrofulous constitutions, and those in whom the system is enfeebled by disease, white swellings and other chronic diseases of the joints frequently succeed sprains. Such persons cannot be too assiduous in adopting a proper and early treatment of injured joints. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 146. What parts are injured in the displacement of a bone? 147. What causes the acute pain in sprains? What is a good remedy for this kind of injury? 148. What caution to persons of scrofulous constitutions? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER VIII THE MUSCLES. 149. All the great motions of the body are caused by the movement of some of the bones which form the framework of the system; but these, independently of themselves, have not the power of motion, and only change their position through the action of other organs attached to them, which, by contracting, draw the bones after them. In some of the slight movements, as the winking of the eye, no bones are displaced. These moving, contracting organs are the _Mus´cles_, (lean meat.) ANATOMY OF THE MUSCLES. 150. The MUSCLES, by their size and number, constitute the great bulk of the body, upon which they bestow form and symmetry. In the limbs, they are situated around the bones, which they invest and defend, while they form, to some of the joints, their principal protection. In the trunk, they are spread out to enclose cavities, and constitute a defensive wall, capable of yielding to internal pressure, and reassuming its original state. 151. In structure, a muscle is composed of _fas-cic´u-li_ (bundles of fibres) of variable size. These are enclosed in a cellular membranous investment, or sheath. Every bundle composed of a number of small fibres, and each fibre consists of a number of filaments, each of which is enclosed in a delicate sheath. Toward the extremity of the organ the muscular fibre ceases, and the cellular structure becomes aggregated, and so modified as to constitute _ten´dons_, (cords,) by which the muscle is tied to the surface of the bone. The union is so firm, that, under extreme violence, the bone will sooner break than permit the tendon to separate from its attachment. In some situations, there is an expansion of the tendon, in the manner of a membrane, called _Ap-o-neu-ro´sis_, or _Fas´ci-a_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 149. How are all the motions of the body produced? What are these motor organs called? 150-160. _Give the anatomy of the muscles._ 150. What is said of the muscles? 151. Give their structure. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ The pupil can examine a piece of boiled beef, or the leg of a fowl, and see the structure of the fibres and tendons of a muscle. [Illustration: Fig. 36. 1, A representation of the direction and arrangement of the fibres in a fusiform, or spindle-shaped muscle. 2, In a radiated muscle. 3, In a penniform muscle. 4, In a bipenniform muscle. _t_, _t_, The tendons of a muscle.] 152. Muscles present various modifications in the arrangement of their fibres, as relates to their tendinous structure. Sometimes they are completely longitudinal, and terminate, at each extremity, in a tendon, the entire muscle being spindle-shaped. In other situations, they are disposed like the rays of a fan, converging to a tendinous point, and constituting a _ra´di-ate_ muscle. Again they are _pen´ni-form_, converging, like the plumes of a pen, to one side of a tendon, which runs the whole length of the muscle; or they are _bi-pen´ni-form_, converging to both sides of the tendon. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How are tendons or cords formed? What is the expansion of a tendon called? How can the structure of muscles and their fibres be shown? What does fig. 36 represent? 152. Give the different arrangements of muscular fibres. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 153. In the description of a muscle, its attachments are expressed by the terms "origin" and "insertion." The term _origin_ is generally applied to the more fixed or central attachment, or to the point toward which motion is directed; while _insertion_ is assigned to the more movable point, or to that most distant from the centre. The middle, fleshy portion is called the "belly," or "swell." The color of a muscle is red in warm-blooded fish and animals; and each fibre is supplied with arteries, veins, lymphatics, and both sensitive and motor nervous filaments. 154. The FASCIA is of various extent and thickness, distributed through the different regions of the body, for the purpose of investing and protecting the softer and more delicate organs. An instance is seen in the membrane which envelopes a leg of beef, and which is observed on the edges of the slices when it is cut for broiling. When freshly exposed, it is brilliant in appearance, tough, and inelastic. In the limbs it forms distinct sheaths to all the muscles. 155. This tendinous membrane assists the muscles in their action, by keeping up a tonic pressure on their surface. It aids materially in the circulation of the fluids, in opposition to the laws of gravity. In the palm of the hand and sole of the foot, it is a powerful protection to the structures that enter into the formation of these parts. In all parts of the system, the separate muscles are not only invested by fascia, but they are arranged in layers, one over another. The sheath of each muscle is loosely connected with another, by the cellular membrane. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 153. What is meant by the origin of a muscle? The insertion? The swell? What is the color of muscles? With what is each muscular fibre supplied? 154. What is said of fascia? What is its appearance when freshly exposed? 155. What effect has it on the muscles? Give other uses of the fascia. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 156. The interstices between the different muscles are filled with adipose matter, or fat. This is sometimes called the packing of the system. To the presence of this tissue, youth are indebted for the roundness and beauty of their limbs. [Illustration: Fig. 37. A transverse section of the neck. The separate muscles, as they are arranged in layers, with their investing fasciæ, are beautifully represented. As the system is symmetrical, figures are placed only on one side. In the trunk the muscles are arranged in layers, surrounded by fasciæ, as in the neck. The same is true of the muscles of the upper and lower limbs. 12, The trachea, (windpipe.) 13, The oesophagus, (gullet.) 14, The carotid artery and jugular vein. 28, One of the bones of the spinal column. The figures that are placed in the white spaces represent some of the fasciæ; the other figures indicate muscles.] 157. The muscles may be arranged, in conformity with the general division of the body, into four parts: 1st. Those of the _Head_ and _Neck_. 2d. Those of the _Trunk_. 3d. Those of the _Upper Extremities_. 4th. Those of the _Lower Extremities_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 156. Give a reason why the limbs of youth are rounder than those of the aged. Describe fig. 37. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 38. The superficial layer of muscles on the face and neck. 1, 1, The occipito-frontalis muscle. 2, The orbicularis palpebrarum. 6, The levator labii superioris 7, The levator anguli oris. 8, The zygomaticus minor. 9, The zygomaticus major 10, The masseter. 11, The depressor labii superioris. 13, The orbicularis oris. 15, The depressor anguli oris. 16, The depressor labii inferioris. 18, The sterno-hyoideus. 19, The platysma-myodes. 20, The superior belly of the omo-hyoideus. 21, The sterno-cleido mastoideus. 20, The scalenus medius. 23, The inferior belly of the omo-hyoideus. 24, The trapezius.[5] _Practical Explanation._ The muscle 1, 1, elevates the eyebrows. The muscle 2 closes the eye. The muscle 6 elevates the upper lip. The muscles 7, 8, 9, elevate the angle of the mouth. The muscle 10 brings the teeth together when eating. The muscle 11 depresses the upper lip. The muscle 13 closes the mouth. The muscle 15 depresses the angle of the mouth. The muscle 16 draws down the lower lip. The muscles 18, 19, 20, 23, depress the lower jaw and larynx and elevate the sternum. The muscle 21, when both sides contract, draws the head forward, or elevates the sternum; when only one contracts, the face is turned one side toward the opposite shoulder. The muscles 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, aid in respiration.] [5] In the plates illustrating the muscular system, the names of such muscles are given as are referred to in the paragraph "Practical Explanation." These names need not be committed to memory. If a pupil wishes to acquire a knowledge of the general attachment of the muscles represented in the plates, he can do so by _comparing_ the muscular plate with that of the skeleton, (fig. 28.) _Observation._ When we are sick, and cannot take food, the body is sustained by absorption of the fat. The removal of it into the blood causes the sunken cheek, hollow eye, and prominent appearance of the bones after a severe illness. 158. The number of muscles in the human body is more than five hundred; in general, they form about the skeleton two layers, and are distinguished into superficial and deep-seated muscles. Some of the muscles are voluntary in their motions, or act under the government of the will, as those which move the fingers, limbs, and trunk; while others are involuntary, or act under the impression of their proper stimulants, without the control of the individual, as the heart. _Observations._ 1st. The abdominal muscles are expiratory, and the chief agents for expelling the residuum from the rectum, the bile from the gall bladder, the contents of the stomach and bowels when vomiting, and the mucus and irritating substances from the bronchial tubes, trachea, and nasal passages by coughing and sneezing. To produce these effects they all act together. Their violent and continued action sometimes produces hernia, and, when spasmodic, may occasion ruptures of the different organs. 2d. The contraction and relaxation of the abdominal muscles and diaphragm stimulate the stomach, liver, and intestines to a healthy action, and are subservient to the digestive powers. If the contractility of their muscular fibres is destroyed or impaired, the tone of the digestive apparatus will be diminished, as in indigestion and costiveness. This is frequently attended by a displacement of those organs, as they generally gravitate towards the lower portion of the abdominal cavity, when the sustaining muscles lose their tone and become relaxed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What causes the hollow eye and sunken cheek after a severe sickness? 158. How many muscles in the human system? Into how many layers are they arranged? What is a voluntary muscle? Give examples. What is an involuntary muscle? Mention examples. Give observation 1st, respecting the use of the abdominal muscles? Observation 2d. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 39. A front view of the muscles of the trunk. On the left side the superficial layer is seen; on the right, the deep layer. 1, The pectoralis major muscle. 2, The deltoid muscle. 6, The pectoralis minor muscle. 9, The coracoid process of the scapula. 11, The external intercostal muscle. 12, The external oblique muscle 13, Its aponeurosis. 16, The rectus muscle of the right side. 18, The internal oblique muscle. _Practical Explanation._ The muscle 1 draws the arm by the side, and across the chest, and likewise draws the scapula forward. The muscle 2 elevates the arm. The muscle 6 elevates the ribs when the scapula is fixed, or draws the scapula forward and downward when the ribs are fixed. The muscles 12, 16, 18, bend the body forward or elevate the hips when the muscles of both sides act. They likewise depress the rib in expiration. When the muscles on only one side act, the body is twisted to the same side.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Explain fig. 39. Give the function of some of the most prominent muscles, from this figure. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 40. A lateral view of the muscles of the trunk. 3, The upper part of the external oblique muscle. 4, Two of the external intercostal muscles. 5, Two of the internal intercostals. 6, The transversalis muscle. 7, Its posterior aponeurosis. 8, Its anterior aponeurosis. 11, The right rectus muscle. 13, The crest of the ilium, or haunch-bone. _Practical Explanation._ The rectus muscle, 11, bends the thorax upon the abdomen when the lower extremity of the muscle is the fixed point; but when the upper extremity is the fixed point, the effect is to bring forward and raise the pelvis and lower extremities. They likewise depress the ribs in respiration. The transverse muscle, 6, 7, 8, lessens the cavity of the abdomen, and presses the intestines; stomach, and liver upward, against the diaphragm, in expiration.] 3d. The region of the back, in consequence of its extent, is common to the neck, the upper extremities, and the abdomen. The muscles of which it is composed are numerous, and are arranged in six layers. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is represented by fig. 40? Give the function of some of the muscles represented by this figure. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 41 The first, second, and part of the third layer of muscles of the back. The first layer is shown on the right, and the second on the left side. 1, The trapezius muscle. 2, The spinous processes of the vertebræ. 3, The acromion process and spine of the scapula. 4, The latissimus dorsi muscle. 5, The deltoid muscle. 7, The external oblique muscle. 8, The gluteus medius muscle. 9, The gluteus maximus muscle, 11, 12, The rhomboideus major and minor muscles. 15, The vertebral aponeurosis. 16, The serratus posticus inferior muscle. 22, The serratus magnus muscle. 23, The internal oblique muscle. _Practical Explanation._ The muscles 1, 11, 12, draw the scapula back toward the spine. The muscles 11, 12, draw the scapula upward toward the head, and slightly backward. The muscle 4 draws the arm by the side, and backward, The muscle 5 elevates the arm. The muscles 8, 9, extend the thigh on the body. The muscle 1 draws the head back and elevates the chin. The muscle 16 depresses the ribs in expiration. The muscle 22 elevates the ribs in inspiration.] 159. The diaphragm, or midriff, is the muscular division between the thorax and the abdomen. It is penetrated by the oesophagus on its way to the stomach, by the aorta conveying blood toward the lower extremity, and by the ascending vena cava, or vein, on its way to the heart. [Illustration: Fig. 42. A representation of the under, or abdominal side of the diaphragm. 1, 2, 3, 4, The portion which is attached to the margin of the ribs. 8, 10, The two fleshy pillars of the diaphragm, which are attached to the third and fourth lumbar vertebræ. 9, The spinal column. 11, The opening for the passage of the aorta. 12, The opening for the oesophagus. 13, The opening for the ascending vena cava, or vein.] _Observation._ The diaphragm may be compared to an inverted basin, its bottom being turned upward into the thorax, while its edge corresponds with the outline of the edges of the lower ribs and sternum. Its concavity is directed toward the abdomen, and thus, this cavity is very much enlarged at the expense of that of the chest, which is diminished to an equal extent. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 159. Describe the diaphragm. What vessels penetrate this muscular septum? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 160. "The motions of the fingers do not merely result from the action of the large muscles which lie on the fore-arm, these being concerned more especially in the stronger actions of the hands. The finer and more delicate movements of the fingers are performed by small muscles situated in the palm and between the bones of the hand, and by which the fingers are expanded and moved in all directions with wonderful rapidity." [Illustration: Fig. 43. A front view of the superficial layer of muscles of the fore-arm. 5, The flexor carpi radialis muscle. 6, The palmaris longus muscle. 7, One of the fasciculi of the flexor sublimis digitorum muscle, (the rest of the muscle is seen beneath the tendons of the pintails longus.) 8, The flexor carpi ulnaris muscle. 9, The palmar fascia. 11, The abductor pollicis muscle. 12, One portion of the flexor orevis pollicis muscle. 13, The supinator longus muscle. 14, The extensor ossis metacarpi, and extensor primi internodii pollicis muscles, curving around the lower border of the fore-arm. 15, The anterior portion of the annular ligament, which binds the tendons in their places. _Practical Explanation._ The muscles 5, 6, 8, bend the wrist on the bones of the fore-arm. The muscle 7 bends the second range of finger-bones on the first. The muscle 11 draws the thumb from the fingers. The muscle 12 flexes the thumb. The muscle 13 turns the palm of the hand upward. The muscles 8, 13, 14, move the hand laterally.] [Illustration: Fig. 44. A back view of the superficial layer of muscles of the fore-arm. 5, The extensor carpi radialis longior muscle. 6, The extensor carpi radialis brevior muscle. 7, The tendons of insertion of these two muscles. 8, The extensor communis digitorum muscle. 9, The extensor minimi dlgiti muscle. 10, The extensor carpi ulnaris muscle. 13, The extensor ossis metacarpi and extensor primi internodii muscles, lying together. 14, The extensor secundi internodii muscle; its tendon is seen crossing the two tendons of the extensor carpi radialis longior and brevior muscles. 15, The posterior annular ligament. The tendons of the common extensor muscle of the fingers are seen on the back of the hand, and their mode of distribution on the back of the fingers. _Practical Explanation._ The muscles 5, 6, 10, extend the wrist on the fore-arm. The muscle 8 extends the fingers. The muscle 9 extends the little finger. The muscles 13 extend the metacarpal bone of the thumb, and its first phalanx. The muscle 14 extends the last bone of the thumb. The muscles 10, 13, 14, move the hand laterally.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 160. Where are the muscles situated that effect the larger movements of the hand? That perform the delicate movements of the fingers? Give the use of some of the muscles represented by fig. 43. Those represented by fig. 44. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER IX. PHYSIOLOGY OF THE MUSCLES. 161. The muscles exercise great influence upon the system. It is by their contraction that we are enabled to pursue different employments. By their action the farmer cultivates his fields, the mechanic wields his tools, the sportsman pursues his game, the orator gives utterance to his thoughts, the lady sweeps the keys of the piano, and the young are whirled in the mazy dance. As the muscles bear so intimate a relation to the pleasures and employments of man, a knowledge of the laws by which their action is governed, and the conditions upon which their health depends, should be possessed by all. 162. The peculiar characteristic of muscular fibres is _contractility_, or the power of shortening their substance on the application of stimuli, and again relaxing when the stimulus is withdrawn. This is illustrated in the most common movements of life. Call into action the muscles that elevate the arm, by the influence of the _will_, or mind, (the common stimulus of the muscles,) and the hand and arm are raised; withdraw this influence by a simple effort of the will, and the muscles, before rigid and tense, become relaxed and yielding. 163. The contractile effect of the muscles, in producing the varied movements of the system, may be seen in the bending of the elbow. The tendon of one extremity of the muscle is attached to the shoulder-bone, which acts as a fixed point; the tendon of the other extremity is attached to one of the bones of the fore-arm. When the swell of the muscle contracts, or shortens, its two extremities approach nearer each other, and by the approximation of the terminal extremities of the muscle, the joint at the elbow bends. On this principle, all the joints of the system are moved. This is illustrated by fig. 45. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 161-172. _Give the physiology of the muscles._ 161. What are some of the influences exerted by the muscles on the system? 162. What is peculiar to muscular fibres? How is this illustrated? 163. Explain how the movements of the system are effected by the contraction of the muscles. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 45. A representation of the manner in which all of the joints of the body are moved. 1, The bone of the arm above the elbow. 2, One of the bones below the elbow. 3, The muscle that bends the elbow. This muscle is united, by a tendon, to the bone below the elbow, (4,) at the other extremity, to the bone above the elbow, (5,) 6, The muscle that extends the elbow. 7, Its attachment to the point of the elbow. 8, A weight in the hand to be raised. The central part of the muscle 3 contracts, and its two ends are brought nearer together. The bones below the elbow are brought to the lines shown by 9, 10, 11. The weight is raised in the direction of the curved line. When the muscle 6 contracts, the muscle 3 relaxes and the fore-arm is extended.] _Experiments._ 1st. Clasp the arm midway between the shoulder and elbow, with the thumb and fingers of the opposite hand. When the arm is bent, the inside muscle will become hard and prominent, and its tendon at the elbow rigid, while the muscle on the opposite side will become flaccid. Extend the arm at the elbow, and the outside muscle will swell and become firm, while the inside muscle and its tendon at the elbow will be relaxed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Explain fig. 45. Give experiment 1st. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. Clasp the fore-arm about three inches below the elbow, then open and shut the fingers rapidly, and the swelling and relaxation of the muscles on the opposite sides of the arms, alternating with each other, will be felt, corresponding with the movement of the fingers. While the fingers are bending, the inside muscles swell, and the outside ones become flaccid; and, while the fingers are extending, the inside muscles relax, and the outside ones swell. The alternate swelling and relaxation of antagonist muscles may be felt in the different movements of the limbs. 164. Each fibre of the several muscles receives from the brain, through the nervous filament appropriated to it, a certain influence, called nervous fluid, or stimulus. It is this that induces contraction, while the suspension of this stimulus causes relaxation of the fibres. By this arrangement, the action of the muscular system, both as regards duration and power, is, to a limited extent, under the control of the mind. The more perfect the control, the better the education of the muscular system; as is seen in the graceful, effective, and well-educated movements of musicians, dancers, skaters, &c. 165. The length of time which a muscle may remain contracted, varies. The duration of the contraction of the voluntary muscles, in some measure, is in an inverse ratio to its force. If a muscle has contracted with violence, as when great effort is made to raise a heavy weight, relaxation will follow sooner than when the contraction has been less powerful, as in raising light bodies. 166. The velocity of the muscular contraction depends on the will. Many of the voluntary muscles in man contract with great rapidity, so that he is enabled to utter distinctly fifteen hundred letters in a minute; the pronunciation of each letter requiring both relaxation and contraction of the same muscle, thus making three thousand actions in one minute. But the contraction of the muscles of some of the inferior animals surpasses in rapidity those of man. The race-horse, it is said, has run a mile in a minute; and many birds of prey will probably pass not less than a thousand miles daily. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give experiment 2d. 164. With what is each muscular fibre supplied? What effect has this stimulus on the muscles? 165. how long does a voluntary muscle remain contracted? 166. On what is the velocity of muscular contraction dependent? How many letters may be pronounced in a minute? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 167. The functions of the involuntary muscles are necessary the digestion of food, the absorption and circulation of the nutritive fluids. They could not be trusted with safety to the control of the will, lest the passions or the indiscretions of the person should continually avert those operations so necessary to health, and even to life. The Divine Builder of this complicated machine has wisely ordered that the muscles upon which these motions depend, shall act under the impression of their proper stimulants, without the control of the individual. 168. Again, there are certain operations which could not be safely intrusted to the absolute government of the voluntary muscles, or entirely removed from their control. Thus life can be supported only a few minutes without breathing; but it would be impossible to perform the daily vocations of life if we were compelled to breathe at all times, or at perfectly regular intervals. 169. It has been observed that, among men of the same size, a wide difference exists in their strength and activity--qualities which depend upon the size and number of the nerves, the size and activity of the brain, and the education, or training of the muscles. Men having large nerves leading to the muscles, with the brain active, and muscles well trained will perform feats of strength and agility, that other men, of the same size, cannot effect. Rope-dancers, harlequins, and other performers of feats, are persons thus constituted. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How many contractions and relaxations of the same muscle? What is said of the rapidity of muscular contractions in other animals? 167. When are the involuntary muscles called into action? Why would it not have been safe to trust these important operations to the exclusive control of the will? 168. Give an instance where some of the muscles act under the government of the will, conjoined with those that are involuntary. 169. On what does the difference in muscular activity and strength depend? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 170. Persons with small muscles, and largely developed nervous systems, will sometimes exhibit very great muscular power for a time; but it will not be of long continuance, unless the brain is functionally diseased, as in hysteria, delirium of fever, insanity, &c. Men of large muscles and small nerves can never perform feats of great strength; but they have the power of endurance, and are better capacitated for continued labor. Thus we cannot judge of the ability of persons to make exertions and continue them, by their stature alone. Strength, and the power of endurance, are the result of a combination of well-developed muscles, large nerves, and a full-sized, healthy, and active brain. _Observation._ The muscles of fishes are large, and the nerves distributed to them, comparatively small. The muscles of birds are small, but their fibres are very compact. The nerves appropriated to the muscles that are called into action in flying, are large as well as numerous. 171. The contractile portion of a muscle is, in general, at a distance from the part to be moved. Thus the principal muscles that move the fingers are situated upon the forearm; and when the limb is nearly or quite extended, the angle formed by the part to be moved and the contractile muscles is small. Again, the attachment of the muscles to the part to be moved is near the joint that forms the fulcrum, (fig. 45.) By these arrangements there is a loss of power; but we are compensated for this disadvantage by increased celerity of movement, beauty of form, and adaptation of the limbs to the varied pursuits of man. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 170. What is said of those persons who have small muscles and largely developed nervous systems? Of those who have large muscles and small nerves? Upon what do strength and the power of endurance depend? 171. Why is there a loss of power in the action of the muscles? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Illustration._ The muscle that bends the elbow acts at disadvantage, and this is greatest when the arm is nearly or quite extended, as the angle of action is then least. This disadvantage is further increased by the attachment of the motive muscles near the joint. 172. The number of muscles which are called into action in the movements of the different joints, varies. The hinge-joints, as the elbow, have two sets of muscles--one to bend the joint, the other to extend it. The ball and socket joints, as the shoulder, are not limited to mere flexion and extension. No joint in the system has the range of movement that is possessed by that of the shoulder. By the action of the muscles attached to the arm, it is not only carried upward and forward, but forward and backward. Hence the arm may be moved at any angle, by a combined action of its muscles. _Observation._ "Could we behold properly the muscular fibres in operation, nothing, as a mere mechanical exhibition, can be conceived more superb than the intricate and combined actions that must take place during our most common movements. Look at a person running or leaping, or watch the motions of the eye. How rapid, how delicate, how complicated, and yet how accurate, are the motions required! Think of the endurance of such a muscle as the heart, that can contract, with a force equal to sixty pounds, seventy-five times every minute, for eighty years together, without being weary." _Note._ It would be a profitable exercise for pupils to press their fingers upon prominent muscles, and, at the same time, vigorously contract them, not only to learn their situations, but their use; as the one that bends the arm, 14, fig. 46. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is this illustrated? 172. Do all joints require the same number of muscles, when called into action? How many are called into action in the movement of the elbow? What is their office? What is said of the movement of the ball and socket joint? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 46. An anterior view of the muscles of the body. 1. The frontal swell of the occipito-frontalis. 2, The orbicularis palpebrarum. 3, The levator labli superioris. 4, The zygomaticus major. 5, The zygomaticus minor. 6, The masseter. 7, The orbicularis oris. 8, The depressor labli inferioris. 9. The platysma myodes. 10, The deltoid. 11, The pectoralis major. 12, The latissimus dorsi. 14, The biceps flexor cubiti. 15, The triceps extensor cubiti. 16, The supinator radii longus. 18, The flexor carpi radialis longior. 19, The flexor communis digitorum. 20, The annular ligament. 21, The palmar fascia. 22, The obliquus externus abdominis. 26, The psoas magnus. 27, The adductor longus. 28, The sartorius. 29, The rectus femoris. 30, The vastus externus. 31, The vastus internus. 32, The tendon patellæ. 33, The gastrocnemius. 34, The tibialis anticus. 36, The tendons of the extensor digitorum communis.] [Illustration: Fig. 47. A posterior view of the muscles of the body. 3, The complexus. 4, The splenius. 5, The masseter. 6, The sterno-cleido mastoideus. 7, The trapezius. 8, The deltoid. 10, The triceps extensor. 13, The tendinous portion of the triceps. 14, The anterior edge of the triceps. 15, The supinator radii longus. 17, The extensor communis digitorum. 18, The extensor ossis metacarpi pollicis. 19, The tendons of the extensor communis digitorum. 20, The olecranon process of the ulna and insertion of the triceps. 21, The extensor carpi ulnaris. 22, The extensor communis digitorum. 24, The latissimus dorsi. 25, Its tendinous origin. 26, The obliquus externus. 27, The gluteus medius. 28, The gluteus magnus. 29, The biceps flexor cruris. 30, The semi-tendinosus. 31, 32, The gastrocnemius. 33, The tendo Achillis. _Practical Explanation._ The muscle 1, fig. 46, by its contraction, raises the eyebrows. The muscle 2, fig. 46, closes the eyelids. The muscle 3, fig. 46, elevates the upper lip. The muscles 4, 5, fig. 46, elevate the angles of the mouth. The muscles 6, fig. 46, and 5, fig. 47, bring the teeth together. The muscle 7, fig. 46, closes the mouth. The muscle 8, fig. 46, depresses the lower lip. The muscles 9, fig. 46, and 6, fig. 47, bend the neck forward. The muscles 3, 4, fig. 47, elevate the head and chin. The muscle 22, fig. 46, bends the body forward, and draws the ribs downward. The muscle 11, fig. 46, brings the shoulder forward. The muscle 7, fig. 47, draws the shoulder back. The muscles 10, fig. 46, and 8, fig. 47, elevate the arm. The muscles 11, fig. 46, and 24, fig. 47, bring the arm to the side. The muscle 14, fig. 46, bends the arm at the elbow. The muscle 10, fig. 47, extends the arm at the elbow. The muscles 16, 18, fig. 46, bend the wrist and fingers. The muscle 19 bends the fingers. The muscles 18, 21, 23, fig. 47, extend the wrist. The muscle 23, fig. 47, extends the fingers. The muscles 26, 27, 28, fig. 46, bend the lower limbs on the body, at the hip. The muscle 28, fig. 46, draws one leg over the other, (the position of a tailor when sewing.) The muscles 27, 28, fig. 47, extend the lower limbs on the body, at the hip. The muscles 29, 30, 31, fig. 46, extend the leg at the knee. The muscles 29, 30, fig. 47, bend the leg at the knee. The muscles 34, 36, fig. 46, bend the foot at the ankle, and extend the toes. The muscles 31, 32, 33, fig. 47, extend the foot at the ankle.] _Note._ Let the anatomy and physiology of the muscular system be reviewed, in form of topics, from figs 46, 47, or from the anatomical outline plates No. 3 and 4. CHAPTER X. HYGIENE OF THE MUSCLES 173. _The muscles should be used, in order that the size and strength of these organs may be adequate to the demand made upon them._ It is a law of the system that the action and power of an organ are commensurate, to a certain extent, with the demand made upon it; and it is a law of the muscular system that, whenever a muscle is called into frequent use, its fibres increase in thickness within certain limits, and become capable of acting with greater force; while, on the contrary, the muscle that is little used decreases in size and power. _Illustrations._ 1st. The blacksmith uses and rests the muscles of his arm when striking upon the anvil. They not only increase in size, but become very firm and hard. 2d. The student uses the muscles of the arm but little, in holding his books and pen; they not only become small, but soft. 3d. Let the student leave his books, and wield an iron sledge, and the muscles of his arm will increase in size and firmness. On the other hand, let the blacksmith assume the student's vocation, and the muscles of his arm will become soft and less firm. 174. _When the muscles are called into action, the flow of blood in the arteries and veins is increased._ The increased flow of blood in the arteries and veins, causes a more rapid deposition of the particles of matter of which the muscles are composed. If the exercise is adequate to the power of the system, the deposit of new material will exceed in quantity the particles of matter removed, and both the size and energy of the muscles are increased. But there is a limit to the muscles becoming strong by labor. Sooner or later, man will attain his growth or power; yet by judicious exercise, care, and discreet management, the greatest power of the muscles may be preserved until advanced age. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 173-211. _Give the hygiene of the muscles._ 173. What is necessary that muscles may attain size and strength? Give a law of the muscular system. Show this by practical illustrations. 174. Why do muscles increase in size when exercised? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 175. _The muscles are lessened in size and diminished in power when the exercise is continued so as to produce a feeling of exhaustion._ The loss of material, in this instance, will exceed the deposition of the atoms of matter. This is seen in the attenuated frames of over-tasked domestic animals, as the horse. The same truth is illustrated by the laborious agriculturist, who, in consequence of too severe toil while gathering the products of the field, frequently diminishes his weight several pounds in a few weeks. Exercise, either for pleasure or profit, may fatigue, yet it should never be protracted to languor or exhaustion, if the individual desires "a green old age." 176. _The same amount of exercise will not conduce to the health of all individuals._ If riding or walking one mile causes slight fatigue, this may be beneficial; while, by travelling two miles, the exhaustion may be highly injurious. Exercise and labor should be adapted to the strength of particular individuals. How little soever the strength, that must be the measure of exertion. Any other rule would be fatal to the hopes of invigorating the system, either by exercise or labor. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Is there a limit to the muscles becoming powerful by action? How may the strength of muscles be kept until advanced age? 175. What is the effect when exercise is continued until there is a feeling of exhaustion? Give a practical illustration. What rule is mentioned in regard to exercise? 176. Can all persons take the same amount of exercise? What rule is given as to the amount of exercise? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 177. _Relaxation must follow contraction, or, in other words, rest must follow exercise._ The necessity of relaxation, when a muscle has been called into action, is seen in the example of a boy extending his arm with a book in his hand, as a penalty. The boy can keep the arm extended but a short time, make what effort he may. It is also seen in the restlessness and feverish excitement that are evinced by persons gazing on troops during days of review. The same is noted in shopping. Such employments call into action the muscles that support the spinal column in an erect position, and the languor or uneasiness is muscular pain. The long-continued tension of a muscle enfeebles its action, and eventually destroys its contractility. 178. _In school, the small children, after sitting a short time, become restless._ If their position be changed, their imperfectly developed muscles will acquire tone, and will again support the spinal column erect without pain. The necessity for frequent recesses in school, is founded on the organic law of muscular action alternating with rest. The younger and feebler pupils are, the greater the necessity for frequent recesses. We would not have the teacher think that one half of the time should be spent in recesses; or the mother, that her daughter is going to school to play. But we do maintain that recesses should be given, and that they should be short and frequent, especially for small and feeble scholars. 179. _Exhaustion is the inevitable result of continued muscular contraction._ For example, let a lady ply the needle quickly for some hours, and the muscles of the back and right arm will become exhausted, which will be indicated by a sense of weariness in these parts. A change of employment and position calls into action a different set of muscles, and the exhausted organs are relieved. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 177. What is said of the contraction and relaxation of the muscles? Give examples of the necessity of relaxing the muscles. 178. Why should not small children be confined in one position for a long time? What evils result from this practice? What class of pupils should have recesses most frequently? 179. What effect has continued muscular contraction? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 180. _Much more labor will be accomplished by taking time to relax the exhausted muscles_, or by so changing the employment as to bring into action a new set of muscles; the woodman thus relieves himself, by sawing and splitting alternately. This principle applies to the labor of the horse and ox; and it is also applicable to all kinds of employment. With the invalid convalescing from fever, relapses result from inattention to these laws. When a patient is recovering from sickness, his physician should take care that his exercise be proper, neither too much, too little, nor too long continued. 181. _The muscles of growing youths will not endure so much exercise or labor as those of mature men._ In youth a portion of the vital, or nervous energy of the system, is expended upon the growth of the organs of the body, while in the individual who has attained his growth, this expenditure is not demanded; consequently severe labor or exercise should not be imposed on growing children. _Observation._ In the campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte, his army was frequently recruited by mere boys. He complained to the French government, because he was not supplied with men of mature years, as the youths could not endure the exertion of his forced marches. 182. _The muscles should be gradually called into action._ These organs in action require more blood and nervous fluid than when at rest. As the circulation of these fluids can only be increased in a gradual manner, it follows, that, when the muscular system has been in a state of rest, it should not suddenly be called into vigorous action. On arising from a bed, lounge, or chair, the first movements of the limbs should be slow, and then gradually increased. _Observation._ if a man has a certain amount of work to perform in nine hours, and his muscles have been in a state of rest, he will do it with less fatigue by performing half the amount of the labor in five hours, and the remainder in four hours. The same principle should be regarded in driving horses and other beasts of burden. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 180. How can the greatest amount of labor be secured with the least exhaustion to the muscles? 181. Why should not severe labor be imposed on growing children? 182. How should the muscles be called into action? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 183. _The muscles should be rested gradually, when they have been vigorously used._ If a person has been making great muscular exertion in cutting wood, or any other employment, instead of sitting down to rest, he should continue muscular action, for a short time, by some moderate labor or amusement. 184. _If the system has been heated by muscular action, and the skin is covered with perspiration, avoid sitting down_ "to cool" in a current of air; rather, put on more clothing, and continue to exercise moderately. In instances when severe action of the muscles has been endured, bathing and rubbing the skin of the limbs and joints that have been used, are of much importance. The laboring agriculturist and industrious mechanic, by reducing to practice this suggestion, would thus prevent soreness of the muscles, and stiffness of the joints. 185. _The muscles should be abundantly supplied with pure blood._ This state of the circulating fluid requires a healthy condition of the digestive apparatus, and that the skin should be kept warm by proper clothing, clean by bathing, and be acted upon by pure air and good light; the movements of the ribs and diaphragm should be unrestricted, and the lungs should have ample volume and be supplied with pure air. In all instances, muscular power is greatest when the preceding conditions exist, as the muscles are then stimulated by pure blood; consequently, it is of practical importance to the mechanic, the farmer, the man of leisure, and not less so to the ladies, to observe these conditions, whatever vocation of life they pursue. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 183. How should the muscles be rested when they have been vigorously used? 184. What precaution is given when the skin is covered with perspiration? How may soreness of the muscles, consequent upon severe action, be prevented? 185. Should the muscles be supplied with pure blood? When is muscular power the greatest? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 186. _The muscles should be used in pure air._ The purer the air we breathe, the more stimulating the blood supplied to the muscles, and the longer they can be used in labor, walking, or sitting, without fatigue and injury; hence the benefit derived in thoroughly ventilating all inhabited rooms. For the same reason, if the air of the sick-room is pure, the patient will sit up longer than when the air is impure. _Observation._ It is a common remark that sick persons will sit up longer when riding in a carriage, than in an easy chair in the room where they have lain sick. In the one instance, they breathe pure air; in the other, usually, a confined, impure air. 187. _The muscles should be exercised in the light._ Light, particularly that of the sun, exercises more or less influence on man and the inferior animals as well as on plants. Both require the stimulus of this agent. Shops occupied by mechanics, kitchens, and sitting-rooms, should be well lighted, and situated on the sunny side of the house. Cellar kitchens and underground shops should be avoided. For similar reasons, students should take their exercise during the day, rather than in the evening, and, as much as possible, laborers should avoid night toil. _Illustrations._ Plants that grow in the shade, as under trees, or in a dark cellar, are of lighter color and feebler than those that are exposed to the light of the sun. Persons that dwell in dark rooms are paler and less vigorous than those who inhabit apartments well lighted, and exposed to the rays of the sun. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 186. Why should the muscles be used in pure air? Give a common observation. 187. What effect has light on the muscular system? What should the laborer avoid? Why should not students take their daily exercise in the evening? How is the influence of solar light illustrated? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 188. _Exercise should be regular and frequent._ The system needs this means of invigoration as regularly as it does new supplies of food. It is no more correct that we devote several days to a _proper_ action of the muscles, and then spend one day inactively, than it is to take a _proper_ amount of food for several days, and then withdraw this supply for a day. The industrious mechanic and the studious minister suffer as surely from undue confinement as the improvident and indolent. The evil consequences of neglect of exercise are gradual, and steal slowly upon an individual. But sooner or later they are manifested in muscular weakness, dyspepsia, and nervous irritability. _Observation._ The custom among farmers of enduring severe and undue toil for several successive days, and then spending one or two days in idleness to _rest_, is injudicious. It would be far better to do less in a day, and continue the labor through the period devoted to idleness, and then no rest will be demanded. 189. _Every part of the muscular system should have its appropriate share of exercise._ Some employments call into exercise the muscles of the upper limbs, as shoe-making; others, the muscles of the lower limbs; while some, the muscles of both upper and lower limbs, with those of the trunk, as farming. In some kinds of exercise, the lower limbs are mainly used, as in walking; in others, the upper limbs; and again, the muscles of the trunk, together with those of the upper and lower limbs, as in archery, quoits, playing ball. Those trades and kinds of exercise are most salutary, in which all the muscles have their due proportion of action, as this tends to develop and strengthen them equally. Thus labor upon the farm and domestic employment are superior as vocations, and archery, quoits, and dancing, if the air is pure, among the pastimes. For sedentary persons, that kind of exercise is best which calls into action the greatest number of muscles. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 188. How should exercise be taken? What is said respecting irregular exercise? Are the consequences of neglected exercise immediately apparent? What practical observation is given? 189. Should every muscle have its due amount of exercise? Mention some employments that only call into action the muscles of the upper limbs. Those of the lower limbs, those of the trunk and limbs. Mention, in the different pastimes, what muscles are called into action. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 190. _The proper time for labor or exercise should be observed._ This is modified by many circumstances. As a general rule, the morning, when the air is pure and the ground dry, is better than the evening; for then, the powers of the body are greatest. Severe exercise and labor should be avoided immediately before or after eating a full meal, for the energies of the system are then required to perform the digestive function. For similar reasons, it is not an appropriate time for energetic muscular action immediately before or after severe mental toil, as the powers of the system are then concentrated upon the brain.[6] [6] It appears to be a fact, that no two important organs can be called into intense action at the same time, without injury to both, as well as to the general system. This arises from the circumstance that an organ, when in functional action, attracts fluids (sanguineous and nervous) from other organs of the system. Except in a few instances of high health in youth, the power of the system is not adequate to supply more than one organ in action with the appropriate fluids at the same time. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What kinds of exercise are best? 190. What rule is given respecting the time for exercise? 191. Why do the muscles require sleep? What is the effect of an inversion of the law of rest? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 191. _The muscles require sleep to restore their expended energies._ Among the arrangements of creative wisdom, no one harmonizes with the wants of the system more than the alternation of day and night. The natural inclination of man to sleep, is in the stilly hour of night, when all nature reposes, and to be in action during the light of day. An inversion of this law of rest causes greater exhaustion of the system than the same amount of exertion during daylight. This is illustrated by the wearied and exhausted condition of watchers, night-police, and other individuals who spend a part of the night in some active business of life. 192. _The muscles should not be compressed._ Compression prevents the blood from passing to the muscles with freedom; consequently, they are not supplied with material to renovate and promote their growth. Again, pressure stimulates the lymphatics to action; and by the increased activity of these vessels the muscles are attenuated. In the case of a man with a fractured limb, the muscles are not only enfeebled by inaction, but diminished in size by compression from the dressing. Limbs enfeebled in this way will not recover their size, tone, and strength, until the bandages are removed, and a proper amount of exercise taken. 193. The pressure of tight dresses, under the name of a "snug fit," enfeebles the muscles of the back, and is a common cause of projecting shoulders and curvature of the spinal column. Thus every appendage to the dress of ladies which prevents free motion of the muscles of the chest and spinal column, weakens the muscles thus restrained, and not only prevents the proper expansion of the lungs, but, by weakening the muscles which sustain the spine, induces curvature and disease. Whalebone, wood, steel, and every other unyielding substance, should be banished from the toilet, as enemies of the human race. 194. _The mind exerts a great influence upon the tone and contractile energy of the muscular system._ A person acting under a healthy mental stimulus will make exertion with less fatigue than he would without this incentive. For this reason, a sportsman will pursue his game miles without fatigue, while his attendant, not having any mental stimulus, will become weary. Again, if the sportsman spends some hours in pursuit of his favorite game without success, a feeling of languor creeps over him; but while he is thus fatigued and dispirited, let him catch a glimpse of the game,--his wearied feelings are immediately dissipated, and he presses on with renewed energy and recruited strength. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 192. Why should not the muscles be compressed? 193. What is the effect of tight clothing upon the muscles? 194. What is said of the influence of the mind upon muscular activity? Give an illustration of mental stimulus coöperating with muscular activity in the case of a sportsman. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 195. This principle was well illustrated in the retreat from Russia of the defeated and dispirited French army. When no enemy was near, they had hardly strength sufficient to carry their arms; but no sooner did they hear the report of the Russian guns, than new life seemed to pervade them, and they wielded their weapons powerfully until the foe was repulsed, then there was a relapse to weakness, and prostration followed. It is thus with the invalid when riding for his health;--relate an anecdote, or excite this mental stimulus by agreeable conversation, and much benefit will accrue from the ride to the debilitated person. So it is in the daily vocations of life; if the mind have some incentive, the tiresomeness of labor will be greatly diminished. Let an air of cheerfulness ever pervade our every employment, and, like music, "it sweetens toil." 196. Facts illustrative of the inutility of calling the muscles into action, without the coöperation of the mind, are seen in the spiritless aspect of many of our boarding school processions, when a walk is taken merely for exercise, without having in view any attainable object. But present to the mind a botanical or geological excursion, and the saunter will be exchanged for the elastic step, the inanimate appearance for the bright eye and glowing cheek. The difference is, simply, that, in the former case, the muscles are obliged to work without that full nervous impulse so essential to their energetic action; and that, in the latter, the nervous influence is in full and harmonious operation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 195. Give an illustration of mental stimulus coöperating with muscular activity in the case of the dispirited French army in their retreat from Russia. How can a union of mental impulse and muscular action be beneficial to an invalid? Does this same principle apply to those who labor? 196. Give an instance of the different effects produced by the absence and presence of the mental stimulus. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 197. It must not, however, be supposed that a walk simply for the sake of exercise can never be beneficial. Every one, unless prevented by disease, should consider it a duty to take exercise every day in the open air; if possible, let it be had in combination with harmonious mental exhilaration; if not, let a walk, in an erect position, be made so brisk as to produce rapid respiration and circulation of the blood, and in a dress that shall not interfere with free motions of the arms and free expansion of the chest. _Observation._ The advantages of combining harmonious mental excitement, with muscular activity, is thus given by Dr. Armstrong:-- "_In whate'er you sweat, Indulge your taste._ Some love the manly toils The tennis some, and some the graceful dance; Others, more hardy, range the purple heath Or naked stubble, where, from field to field, The sounding covies urge their lab'ring flight, Eager amid the rising cloud to pour The gun's unerring thunder; and there are Whom still the mead of the green archer charm. _He chooses best whose labor entertains His vacant fancy most; the toil you hate Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your limbs._" -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 197. May not a walk, simply as an exercise, be beneficial? What is preferred? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XI. HYGIENE OF THE MUSCLES, CONTINUED. 198. _The erect attitude lessens the exhaustion of the muscles._ A person whose position is erect will stand longer, walk further, and perform more labor, than an individual whose position is stooping, but equal in all other respects. The manly port in an erect attitude, depends chiefly upon the action of the muscles of the back; and it follows that the fewer the muscles in a state of tension, the less the draught upon the nervous system, and the less its exhaustion. Another advantage which attends the erect position is, the trunk and head are balanced upon the bones and cartilages of the spinal column. If the body slightly incline forward, the muscles attached to the posterior side of the spine, by a gentle contraction, will bring it to the perpendicular, and even incline it backward. This is immediately removed by a slight contraction of the muscles upon the anterior side of the spinal column. 199. In the erect position, there is a constant slight oscillation of the body backward and forward, like the movement of a pendulum; while, in the stooping posture, the muscles on the posterior side of the spinal column are kept in a state of continued tension and contraction, to prevent the body from falling forward. This enfeebles the muscles of the back, and exhausts the nervous energy, while the erect position favors their development and power, because there is an alternate contraction and relaxation of the muscles. Again, in the stooping position, the lower limbs are curved at the knee. In this attitude, there is a constant tension of the muscles of the lower extremities, which produces muscular exhaustion. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 198. Why will a person who stands erect walk further, and perform more labor, than if he assumed the stooping posture? 199. Why are the muscles of the back so soon exhausted in the stooping position? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 48. 1, A perpendicular line from the centre of the feet to the upper extremity of the spinal column, where the head rests. 2, 2, 2, The spinal column, with its three natural curves. Here the head and body are balanced upon the spinal column and joints of the lower extremities, so that the muscles are not kept in a state of tension. This erect position of the body and head is always accompanied with straight lower limbs.] [Illustration: Fig. 49. 1, A perpendicular line from the centre of the feet. 2, Represents the unnatural curved spinal column, and its relative position to the perpendicular, 1. The lower limbs are curved at the knee, and the body is stooping forward. While standing in this position, the muscles of the lower limbs and back are in continued tension, which exhausts and weakens them.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is represented by figs. 48 and 49? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 200. When it is necessary to call into action a part of the muscles of the system in the performance of any duty, as those of the lower limbs in walking, if the muscles of other parts are in a state of inaction, the influence of the nervous system can be determined in an undivided manner upon those parts of the lower limbs in action; hence they will not so soon become wearied or exhausted, as when this influence is divided between a greater number of muscles. In performing any labor, as in speaking, reading, singing, mowing, sewing, &c., there will be less exhaustion, and the effort can be longer maintained in the erect position of the body and head, than in a stooping attitude. _Experiment._ Hold in each hand a pail of water or equal weights, in a stooping posture, as long as it can be done without much suffering and injury. Again, when the muscular pain has ceased, hold the same pails of water, for the same length of time, in an erect posture, and note the difference in the fatigue of the muscles. 201. If the stooping posture is acquired in youth, we are quite certain of seeing the deformed shoulders in old age. Hence the importance of duly exercising the muscles of the back, for when they are properly developed, the child can and will stand erect. In this attitude, the shoulders will be thrown back, and the chest will become broad and full. 202. Pupils, while standing during recitations, often inadvertently assume the attitude represented by fig. 49, and it is the duty of teachers to correct this position when assumed. When a child or adult has contracted a habit of stooping, and has become round-shouldered, it can be measurably, and generally, wholly, remedied by moderate and repeated efforts to bring the shoulders back, and the spinal column in an erect position. This deformity can and should be remedied in our schools. It may take months to accomplish the desired end, yet it can be done as well under the direction of the kind instructor, as under the stern, military drill sergeant, who never fails to correct this deformity among his raw recruits. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 200. What suggestion when it is necessary to call into action a part of the muscular system? Give the experiment that illustrates this principle. 201. Why should a child he taught to stand erect? 202. How can round shoulders acquired by habit be remedied? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 50. A proper position in sitting.] 203. _The child should be taught to sit erect when employed in study or work._ This attitude favors a healthy action of the various organs of the system, and conduces to beauty and symmetry of form. Scholars are more or less inclined to lean forward and place the elbow on the table or desk, for support and this is often done when their seats are provided with backs. Where there is a predisposition to curvature of the spine, no position is more unfavorable or more productive of deformities than this; for it is usually continued in one direction, and the apparent deformity it induces is a projection of the shoulders. If the girl is so feeble that she cannot sit erect, as represented by fig. 50, let her stand or recline on a couch; either is preferable to the position represented by fig. 51. In furnishing school-rooms, care should be taken that the desks are not so low as to compel the pupils to lean forward in examining their books. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 203. Why should the erect attitude be assumed in sitting? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 51. An improper position in sitting.] 204. _The muscles, when exhausted, cannot endure continued effort._ When the energies of the muscular system have been expended by severe and long-continued exercise, or the brain and nervous system prostrated by protracted mental effort, the muscles are unfitted to maintain the body erect in standing or sitting for a long time, as the nervous system, in its exhausted state, cannot supply a sufficient amount of its peculiar influence to maintain the supporting muscles of the body and head in a state of contraction. Hence, a child or adult, when much fatigued, should not be compelled to stand or sit erect in one posture, but should be permitted to vary the position frequently, as this rests and recruits both the muscular and the nervous system. 205. _A slight relaxation of the muscles tends to prevent their exhaustion._ In walking, dancing, and most of the mechanical employments, there will be less fatigue, and the movements will be more graceful, when the muscles are slightly relaxed. When riding in cars or coaches, the system does not suffer so severely from the jar if there is a slight relaxation of the muscles, as when they are in a state of rigid contraction. _Experiments._ Attempt to bow with the muscles of the limbs and trunk rigid, and there will be a stiff bending of the body only at the hip-joint. On the other hand, attempt to bow with the muscles moderately relaxed; the ankle, the knee, and the hip-joint will slightly bend, accompanied with an easy and graceful curve of the body. 206. The muscles when relaxed, together with the yielding character of the cartilage, and the porous structure of the ends of the bones that form a joint, diffuse or deaden the force of jars, or shocks, in stepping suddenly down stairs, or in falling from moderate heights. Hence, in jumping or falling from a carriage, or any height, the shock to the organs of the system may be obviated in the three following ways: 1st. Let the muscles be relaxed, not rigid. 2d. Let the limbs be bent at the ankle, knee, and hips; the head should be thrown slightly forward, with the trunk a little stooping. 3d. Fall upon the toes, not the heel. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 204. When are the muscles unfitted to maintain the system erect either in standing or sitting? What is necessary when this condition of the system exists? 205. Why should the muscular system be slightly relaxed in walking, &c.? Give illustrative experiments. 206. What is the reason that we do not feel the jar in falling from a moderate height? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Experiments._ Stand with the trunk and lower limbs firm, and the muscles rigid; then jump a few inches perpendicularly to the floor, and fall upon the heels. Again, slightly bend the limbs, jump a few inches, and fall upon the toes, and the difference in the force of the shock, to the brain and other organs, will be readily noticed. 207. _The muscles require to be educated, or trained._ The power of giving different intonations in reading, speaking, singing, the varied and rapid executions in penmanship, and all mechanical or agricultural employments, depend, in a measure, upon the education of the muscles. In the first effort of muscular education, the contractions of the muscular fibres are irregular and feeble, as may be seen when the child begins to walk, or in the first efforts of penmanship. 208. _Repetition of muscular action is necessary._ To render the action of the muscles complete and effective, they must be called into action repeatedly and at proper intervals. This education must be continued until not only each muscle, but every fibre of the muscle, is fully under the control of the will. In this way persons become skilful in every employment. In training the muscles for effective action, it is very important that correct movements be adopted at the commencement. If this is neglected, the motions will be constrained and improper, while power and skill will be lost. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is this shown by experiment? 207. Upon what do the different intonations of sound or mechanical employments depend? Why are the first efforts in educating the muscles indifferent or irregular? 208. Why is repetition of muscular action necessary? Why is it important that correct movements be adopted in the first efforts of muscular education? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Illustration._ If a boy, while learning to mow, is allowed to swing his scythe in a stooping position, twisting his body at every sweep of the scythe, he will never become an easy, efficient mower. Proper instruction is as necessary in many of the agricultural branches as in the varied mechanical employments. [Illustration: Fig. 52. An improper, but not an unusual position, when writing.] [Illustration: Fig. 53. A proper position, when writing.] 209. _Good penmanship requires properly trained muscles._ To a deficient analysis of the movements of the arm, hand, and fingers, on the part of teachers and pupils in penmanship, together with an improper position in sitting, is to be ascribed the great want of success in acquiring this art. The pen should be held loosely, and when the proper position is attained, the scholar should make an effort to imitate some definite copy as nearly as possible. The movements of the fingers, hand, and arm, necessary to accomplish this, should be made with ease and rapidity, striving, at each effort, to imitate the copy more nearly. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is this illustrated? 209. Why have so many pupils failed in acquiring good penmanship? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 210. When the arm, hand, and fingers are rigid, the large muscles, that bend and extend these parts, are called into too intense action. This requires of the small muscles, that produce the lateral movements, which are essential to rapidity in writing, an effort which they cannot make, or can with difficulty accomplish. _Experiment._ Vigorously extend the fingers by a violent and rigid contraction of the muscles upon the lower part of the arm, and the lateral movement which is seen in their separation cannot be made. But gently extend the fingers, and their oblique movements are made with freedom. 211. An individual who is acquainted with the laws of health, whose muscles are well trained, will perform a certain amount of labor with less fatigue and waste to the system, than one who is ignorant of the principles of hygiene, and whose muscles are imperfectly trained. Hence the laboring poor have a deep interest in acquiring a knowledge of practical physiology, as well as skill in their trade or vocation. It is emphatically true to those who earn their bread by the "sweat of their brow," that "knowledge is power." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 210. What is said of the lateral and oblique movements of the arm, hand, and fingers in writing? How is this shown by experiment? 211. Why is the study of physiology and hygiene of utility to the laborer? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XII. THE TEETH. 212. The teeth, in composition, nutrition, and growth, are different from other bones of the body. They vary in number at different periods of life, and, unlike other bones, they are exposed to the immediate action of atmospheric air and foreign substances. The bones of the system, generally, when fractured, unite; but there is never a permanent union of a tooth when broken. ANATOMY OF THE TEETH. 213. The TEETH are attached to the upper and lower jaw-bone, by means of bony sockets, called _al´ve-o-lar_ processes. These give great solidity to the attachment of the teeth, and frequently render their extraction difficult. The gums, by their fibrous, fleshy structure, serve to fix the teeth more firmly in the jaw. _Observation._ When a _permanent_ tooth is extracted, these bony processes are gradually absorbed, so that in advanced age there remains only the jaw-bone covered by the lining membrane of the gum. This accounts for the narrow jaw and falling in of the lips in old age. Frequently, a piece of the alveolar process comes out with the tooth when extracted, and the dentist has then the credit of "breaking the jaw." No great injury results from the removal of the process in this manner. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 212. What is said of the teeth? In what respect do they differ from other bones of the body? 213-218. _Give the anatomy of the teeth._ 213. What confines the teeth in the jaw-bone? What becomes of the socket when a tooth is removed? What effect has this absorption upon the jaw and lips? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 214. The teeth are formed in the interior of the jaws, and within _dent´al cap´sules_, (membranous pouches,) which are enclosed within the substance of the bone, and present in their interior a fleshy bud, or granule, from the surface of which exudes the ivory, or the bony part of the tooth. In proportion as the tooth is formed, it rises in the socket, which is developed simultaneously with the tooth, and passes through the gum, and shows itself without. [Illustration: Fig. 54. 1, The body of the lower jaw. 2, Ramus, or branch of the jaw, to which the muscles that move it are attached. 3, 3, The processes which unite the lower jaw with the head. _i_, The middle and lateral incisor tooth of one side. _b_, The bicuspid teeth. _c_, The cuspids, or eye teeth. m, The three molar teeth. A, shows the relation of the permanent to the temporary teeth.] 215. The first set, which appears in infancy, is called _tem´po-ra-ry_, or milk teeth. They are twenty in number; ten in each jaw. Between six and fourteen years of age, the temporary teeth are removed, and the second set appears, called _per´ma-nent_ teeth. They number thirty-two, sixteen in each jaw. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 214. Where and how are the teeth formed? Explain fig. 54. 215. What are the first set called? How many in each jaw? The second set? How many in number? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 216. The four front teeth in each jaw are called _in-ci´sors_, (cutting teeth;) the next tooth in each side, the _cus´pid_, (eye tooth;) the next two, _bi-cus´pids_, (small grinders;) the next two, _mo´lars_, (grinders.) The last one on each side of the jaw is called a _wisdom tooth_, because it does not appear until a person is about twenty years old. The incisors, cuspids, and bicuspids, have each but one root. The molars of the upper jaw have three roots, while those of the lower jaw have but two. [Illustration: Fig. 55. The permanent teeth of the upper and lower jaw. _a_, _b_, The incisors. _c_, The cuspids. _d_, _e_, The bicuspids. _f_, _g_, The molars, (double teeth.) _h_, The wisdom teeth.] _Observation._ The shape of the teeth in different species of animals is adapted to the kind of food on which they subsist. Those animals that feed exclusively on flesh, as the lion, have the cuspids, or canine teeth, largely developed, and the molars have sharp cutting points. Those animals that feed on grass and grain, as the horse and the sheep, have their molar teeth more rounded and flat on the crown. The human teeth are adapted to feed on fruits, grain, or flesh, as they are less pointed than those of the cat, and more pointed than those of the sheep. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 216. Give the names of the permanent teeth. What teeth have but one root, or "fang"? How many roots have the molars of the upper jaw? Of the lower jaw? What is said of the shape of the teeth in different species of animals? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 217. The teeth are composed principally of two substances--the _i´vo-ry_ and the _en-am´el_. The internal part of the tooth or the ivory, is harder and more enduring than bone, and forms the body of the tooth. The enamel is remarkable for its hardness, and varies somewhat in color with the age, temperament, habits, and manner of living of different individuals. When any part of the enamel is destroyed, it is never regenerated. [Illustration: Fig. 56. A side view of the body and enamel of a front tooth.] [Illustration: Fig. 57. A side view of a molar tooth. 1, The enamel. 2, The body of the tooth. 3, The cavity in the crown of the tooth that contains the pulp. 4, A nerve that spreads in the pulp of the tooth. 5, An artery that ramifies in the pulp of the tooth.] 218. Each tooth is divided into two parts, namely, _crown_ and _root_. The crown is that part which protrudes from the jaw-bone and gum, and is covered by the highly polished enamel. The root, or "fang," is placed in the sockets of the jaw, and consists of bony matter. Through this bony substance several small vessels pass, to aid in the growth and also in the removal of the tooth. There are, beside these vessels, small white cords passing to each tooth, called _nerves_. (See fig. 57.) When these nerves are diseased, we have the toothache. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 217. Give the structure of the teeth. What is said of the enamel? 218. Into how many parts are the teeth divided? Describe the crown. The root. What vessels pass through the bony matter? What is their use? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= PHYSIOLOGY OF THE TEETH. 219. The use of the teeth is twofold. 1st. By the action of the incisors the food is divided, while the molars grind or break down the more solid portions of it. By these processes, the food is prepared to pass more easily and rapidly into the stomach. 220. In the mastication of food there are two movements of the lower jaw--the action by which the teeth are brought together, and the lateral motion. In the former, the food is cut or divided, the jaws acting like shears. This movement is produced by the action of two large muscles situated on each side of the head and face. _Observation._ The muscles attached to the lower jaw are of great strength; by their action alone, some persons are enabled to bite the hardest substances. By putting the fingers upon the side of the head above and in front of the ears, and upon the face above the angle of the jaw, while masticating food, the alternate swelling and relaxation of these muscles will be clearly felt. 221. The lateral, or grinding movement of the teeth, is produced by the action of a strong muscle that is attached to the lower jaw on the inside. _Observation._ Those animals that live solely on flesh, have only the cutting, or shear-like movement of the jaws. Those that use vegetables for food, have the grinding motion; while man has both the cutting and grinding movement. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 219-222. _Give the physiology of the teeth._ 219. Give one of the functions of the teeth. 220. How many movements of the lower jaw in masticating food? What effect has the first movement upon the food? How produced? What is the character of the masticating muscles? 221. How is the grinding motion of the teeth produced? What is said of the movements of the teeth in different animals? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 222. 2d. The teeth aid us in articulating with distinctness certain letters and words. An individual who has lost his front teeth cannot enunciate distinctly certain letters called dental. Again, as the alveolar processes are removed by absorption soon after the removal of the teeth, the lips and cheeks do not retain their former full position, thus marring, in no slight degree, the symmetry of the lower part of the face. Consequently, those simple observances that tend to the preservation of the teeth are of great practical interest to all persons. HYGIENE OF THE TEETH. 223. _To preserve the teeth, they must be kept clean._ After eating food, they should be cleansed with a brush and water, or rubbed with a piece of soft flannel, to prevent the _tartar_ collecting, and to remove the pieces of food that may have lodged between them. Toothpicks may be useful in removing any particles inaccessible to the brush. They may be made of bone, ivory, or the common goose-quill. Metallic toothpicks should not be used, as they injure the enamel. 224. _The mouth should be cleansed with pure tepid water at night, as well as in the morning_; after which the teeth should be brushed upward and downward, both on the posterior and anterior surfaces. It may be beneficial to use refined soap, once or twice every week, to remove any corroding substance that may exist around the teeth; care being taken to thoroughly rinse the mouth after its use. 225. _Food or drink should not be taken into the mouth when very hot or very cold._ Sudden changes of temperature will crack the enamel, and finally produce decayed teeth. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 222. What is another use of the teeth? 223-232. _Give the hygiene of the teeth._ 223. How can the teeth be preserved? By what means? 224. How often should they be cleansed? 225. What is said of very hot or cold drinks? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ On this account, smoking is pernicious, because the teeth are subjected to an alternate inhalation of both cold and warm air. 226. _The temporary teeth should be removed as soon as they become loose._ If a permanent tooth makes it appearance before the first is removed, or has become loose, the milk tooth, although not loose, should be removed without delay. This is necessary that the second set of teeth may present a regular and beautiful appearance. 227. _In general, when the permanent teeth are irregular, one or more should be removed._ If the teeth are crowded and irregular, in consequence of the jaw being narrow and short, or when they press so hard upon each other as to injure the enamel, remove one or more to prevent their looking unsightly, and in a few months the remaining teeth, with a little care, will fill the spaces. _Observation._ When it is necessary to remove a tooth, apply to some skilful operator. It requires as much skill and knowledge to extract teeth _well_, as it does to amputate a limb; yet some persons, who possess strong arms, will obtain a pair of forceps, or a tooth-key, and hang out the sign of "surgeon-dentist," although ignorant of the principles that should guide them. 228. _It is not always necessary to have teeth extracted when they ache._ The nerve, or the investing membrane of the root, may be diseased, and the tooth still be sound. In such instances, the tooth should not be extracted, but the diseased condition may be remedied by proper medication. There are many sound teeth, that become painful, as already mentioned, which are unnecessarily removed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Why is smoking injurious to the teeth? 226. What remark respecting the temporary teeth? 227. What remarks respecting the permanent teeth? Do those persons that extract teeth require skill as well as knowledge? 228. Why should not teeth be extracted at all times when they are painful? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Illustration._ Dr. H. M., of Belfast, Me., related to me that an individual in that vicinity had his teeth, (all of them sound,) on one side of the lower jaw, extracted by an ignoramus of a "tooth-puller," and this without any relief from pain. The disease was tic douloureux, which was relieved by Dr. M. 229. _The preservation of the teeth requires that they be frequently examined._ When a part of the enamel is removed, and a small portion of the body of the tooth has become carious, in many instances such teeth may be preserved from further decay by having them filled or "plugged" with _gold foil_. All amalgams, pastes, and cheap patent articles for filling, should be avoided, if you would preserve both the teeth and the general health. 230. The practice of cracking nuts with the teeth, or of lifting heavy bodies, and the constant habit of biting thread, should be avoided, as they finally destroy the enamel. 231. _All acidulated drinks and mineral waters, that "set the teeth on edge," are injurious._ All tooth-powders and washes that contain any article that is acid, corrosive, or grinding, should be banished from the toilet. Tobacco is not a preservative of the teeth. It contains "grit," which wears away the enamel; beside, when chewed, it debilitates the vessels of the gums, turns the teeth yellow, and renders the breath and the appearance of the mouth disagreeable. 232. Healthy persons have generally sound teeth, while feeble persons have decayed teeth. For this reason, we should try to learn and practise the few simple rules that promote health. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give an illustration of the removal of sound teeth. 229. How may decaying teeth be preserved? What should be avoided in the filling of teeth? 230. What practices should also be avoided? 231. What is said of acidulated drinks? What effect has the chewing of tobacco upon the teeth? 232. What is one reason for preserving health? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XIII. THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 233. From the earliest existence of the human system to the last ray of life, change is impressed upon it by the Giver of this curious fabric. New atoms of matter are deposited, while the old and now useless particles are constantly removed. The material necessary to sustain the growth of the body in early life, and also to repair the waste that is unceasing to animal existence, is the food we eat. 234. Food, animal or vegetable, contains most of the elements of the different tissues of the system, yet it must undergo certain essential alterations before it can become a part of the body. The first change is effected by the action of the _Digestive Organs_. ANATOMY OF THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS 235. The DIGESTIVE ORGANS are the _Mouth_, _Teeth_,[7] _Sal´i-va-ry Glands_, _Phar´ynx_, _OE-soph´a-gus_, (gullet,) _Stom´ach_, _In-tes´tines_, (bowels,) _Lac´te-als_, (milk, or chyle vessels,) _Tho-rac´ic Duct_, _Liv´er_, and the _Pan´cre-as_, (sweetbread.) [7] See Chapter XII. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 233. What is impressed upon the human system from its earliest existence? What maintains this change? 234. Has animal or vegetable food any resemblance to the different tissues of which it finally forms a part? By what organs is the first change in the food effected? 235-258. _Give the anatomy of the digestive organs._ 235. Name them. 236. Describe the mouth. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= MOUTH is an irregular cavity, which contains the instruments of mastication and the organs of taste. It is bounded in front by the lips; on each side by the internal surface of the cheeks; above, by the _hard palate_ (roof of the mouth) and teeth of the upper jaw; below, by the tongue and teeth of the lower jaw; behind, it is continuous with the pharynx, but is separated from it by a kind of movable curtain, called the _soft palate_. This may be elevated or depressed, so as to close the passage or leave it free. 237. The SALIVARY GLANDS are six in number; three on each side of the jaw. They are called the _pa-rot´id_, the _sub-max´il-la-ry_ and the _sub-lin´gual_. [Illustration: Fig. 58. A view of the salivary glands in their proper situations. 1, The parotid gland. 2, Its duct. 3, The submaxillary gland. 4, Its duct. 5, The sublingual gland, brought to view by the removal of a section of the lower jaw.] 238. The PAROTID GLAND, the largest, is situated in front of the external ear, and behind the angle of the jaw. A duct (Steno's) from this gland opens into the mouth, opposite the second molar tooth of the upper jaw. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 237. How many glands about the mouth? Give their names. What does fig. 58 represent? 238. Describe the parotid gland. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 239. The SUBMAXILLARY GLAND is situated within the lower jaw, anterior to its angle. Its excretory duct (Wharton's) opens into the mouth by the side of the _fræ´num lin´guæ_, (bridle of the tongue.) 240. The _SUBLINGUAL GLAND_ is elongated and flattened, and situated beneath the mucous membrane of the floor of the mouth, on each side of the frænum linguæ. It has seven or eight small ducts, which open into the mouth by the side of the bridle of the tongue. _Observation._ In the "mumps," the parotid gland is diseased. The swelling under the tongue called the "frog" is a disease of the sublingual gland. [Illustration: Fig. 59. A side view of the face, oesophagus, and trachea. 1, The trachea (wind pipe.) 2, The larynx. 3, The oesophagus. 4, 4, 4, The muscles of the upper portion of the oesophagus forming the pharynx. 5, The muscle of the cheek. 6, The muscle that surrounds, the mouth. 7, The muscle that forms the floor of the mouth.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 239. The submaxillary. 240. The sublingual. What observation respecting these glands? What does fig. 59 represent? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 241. The PHARYNX is a membranous sac, situated upon the upper portion of the spinal column. It extends from the base of the skull to the top of the _tra´che-a_, (windpipe,) and is continuous with the oesophagus. From the pharynx are four passages; one opens upward and forward to the nose, the second leads forward to the mouth, the third downward to the trachea and lungs, the fourth downward and backward to the stomach. 242. The OESOPHAGUS is a large membranous tube that extends behind the trachea, the heart, and lungs, pierces the diaphragm, and terminates in the stomach. It is composed of two membranes--an internal, or mucous, and a muscular coat. The latter is composed of two sets of fibres; one extends lengthwise, the other is arranged in circular bands. 243. The STOMACH is situated in the left side of the abdomen, immediately below and in contact with the diaphragm. It has two openings; one connected with the oesophagus, called the _car´di-ac_ orifice; the other connected with the upper portion of the small intestine, called the _py-lor´ic_ orifice. It is composed of three coats, or membranes. The exterior or serous coat is very tough and strong, and invests every part of this important organ. The middle, or muscular coat is composed of two layers of muscular fibres, one set of which is arranged longitudinally, the other circularly. The interior coat is called the mucous, and is arranged in _ru´gæ_, (folds.) The stomach is provided with a multitude of small glands, in which is secreted the gastric fluid. _Illustration._ The three coats of the stomach anatomically resemble tripe, which is a preparation of the largest stomach of the cow or ox. The outer coat is smooth and highly polished. The middle coat is composed of minute threads, which are arranged in two layers. The fibres of these layers cross each other. The inner coat is soft, and presents many folds, usually named "the honey-comb." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 241. Describe the pharynx and the passages leading from it. 242. Give the structure of the oesophagus. 243. Where is the stomach situated? How many coats has it? Describe them. What article prepared for food does the stomach resemble? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 60. The inner surface of the stomach and duodenum. 1, The lower portion of the oesophagus. 2, The opening through which the food is passed into the stomach. 8, The stomach. 9, The opening through which the food passes out of the stomach into the duodenum, or upper portion of the small intestine. 10, 11, 14, The duodenum 12, 13, Ducts through which the bile and pancreatic fluid pass into it. _a_, _b_, _c_, The three coats of the stomach.] 244. The INTESTINES, or alimentary canal, are divided into two parts--the _small_ and _large_. The small intestine is about twenty-five feet in length, and is divided into three portions, namely, the _Du-o-de´num_, the _Je-ju´num_, and the _Il´e-um_. The large intestine is about five feet in length, and is divided into three parts, namely, the _Cæ´cum_, the _Co´lon_, and the _Rec´tum_. (Appendix D.) 245. The DUODENUM is somewhat larger than the rest of the small intestine, and has received its name from being in length about the breadth of twelve fingers. It commences at the pylorus, and ascends obliquely backward to the under surface of the liver. It then descends perpendicularly in front of the right kidney, and passes transversely across the lower portion of the spinal column, behind the colon, and terminates in the jejunum. The ducts from the liver and pancreas open into the perpendicular portion, about six inches from the stomach. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 244. Explain fig. 60. What is the length of the small intestine, and how is it divided? What is the length of the large intestine? Give its divisions. 245. Describe the duodenum. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 246. The JEJUNUM is continuous with the duodenum. It is thicker than the rest of the small intestine, and has a pinkish tinge. 247. The ILEUM is smaller, and thinner in texture, and somewhat paler, than the jejunum. There is no mark to distinguish the termination of the one or the commencement of the other. The ileum terminates near the right haunch-bone, by a valvular opening into the colon at an obtuse angle. This arrangement prevents the passing of substances from the colon into the ileum. The jejunum and ileum are surrounded above and at the sides by the colon. 248. The small intestine, like the stomach, has three coats. The inner, or mucous coat is thrown into folds, or valves. In consequence of this valvular arrangement, the mucous membrane is more extensive than the other tissues, and gives a greater extent of surface with which the aliment comes in contact. There are imbedded under this membrane an immense number of minute glands, and it has a great number of piles, like those upon velvet. For this reason, this membrane is sometimes called the _vil´lous_ coat. 249. The C�CUM is the blind pouch, or cul-de-sac, at the commencement of the large intestine. Attached to its extremity is the _ap-pend´ix verm-i-form´is_, (a long, worm-shaped tube.) It is from one to six inches in length, and of the size of a goose-quill. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What important ducts open into it? 246. Describe the jejunum. 247. The ileum. 248. What is said of the coats of the intestines? Why is the mucous membrane sometimes called the villous coat? 249. Describe the cæcum. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 250. The COLON is divided into three parts--the _ascending_, _transverse_, and _descending_. The ascending colon passes upward from the right haunch-bone to the under surface of the liver. It then bends inward, and crosses the upper part of the abdomen, below the liver and stomach, to the left side under the name of the transverse colon. At the left side, it turns, and descends to the left haunch-bone, and is called the descending colon. Here it makes a peculiar curve upon itself, which is called the _sig´moid flex´ure_. [Illustration: Fig. 61. 1, 1, The duodenum. 2, 2, The small intestine. 3, The junction of the small intestine with the colon. 4, The appendix vermiformis. 5, The cæcum. 6, The ascending colon. 7, The transverse colon. 8, The descending colon. 9, The sigmoid flexure of the colon. 10, The rectum.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 250. Describe the course of the divisions of the colon. Explain fig. 61. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 251. The RECTUM is the termination of the large intestine. The large intestine has three coats, like the stomach and small intestine. The longitudinal fibres of the muscular coat are collected into three bands. These bands are nearly one half shorter than the intestine, and give it a sacculated appearance, which is characteristic of the cæcum and colon. 252. The LACTEALS are minute vessels, which commence in the villi, upon the mucous surface of the small intestine. From the intestine they pass between the membranes of the _mes´en-ter-y_ to small glands, which they enter. The first range of glands collects many small vessels, and transmits a few larger branches to a second range of glands; and, finally, after passing through several successive ranges of these glandular bodies, the lacteals, diminished in number and increased in size, proceed to the enlarged portion of the thoracic duct, into which they open. They are most numerous in the upper portion of the small intestine. 253. The THORACIC DUCT commences in the abdomen, by a considerable dilatation, which is situated in front of the lower portion of the spinal column. From this point, it passes through the diaphragm, and ascends to the lower part of the neck. In its ascent, it lies anterior to the spine, and by the side of the aorta and oesophagus. At the lower part of the neck, it makes a sudden turn downward and forward, and terminates by opening into a large vein which passes to the heart. The thoracic duct is equal in diameter to a goose-quill, and, at its termination, is provided with a pair of semilunar valves, which prevent the admission of venous blood into its cylinder. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 251. What is said of the arrangement of the fibres of the muscular coat of the large intestine? 252. What are the lacteals? Give their course from the mucous coat of the intestine to the thoracic duct. 253. Describe the course of the thoracic duct. How is the venous blood prevented from passing into this duct? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 62. A portion of the small intestine, lacteal vessels, mesenteric glands, and thoracic duct. 1, The intestine. 2, 3, 4, Mesenteric glands, through which the lacteals pass to the thoracic duct. 5, 6, The thoracic duct. 7, The point in the neck where it turns down to enter the vein at 8. 9, 10, The aorta. 11, 12, Vessels of the neck. 13, 14, 15, The large veins that convey the blood and chyle to the heart. 16, 17, The spinal column. 18, The diaphragm, (midriff.)] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Explain fig. 62. What is said respecting the mesenteric glands? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ The mesenteric glands, which are situated between two layers of serous membrane (mesentery) that connects the small intestine with the spinal column, occasionally become diseased in childhood, and prevent the chyle from passing to the thoracic duct. Children thus affected have a voracious appetite, and at the same time are becoming more and more emaciated. The disease is called mesenteric consumption. 254. The LIVER, a gland appended to the alimentary canal, is the largest organ in the system, and weighs about four pounds. It is situated in the right side, below the diaphragm, and is composed of several lobes. Its upper surface is convex; its under, concave. This organ is retained in its place by several ligaments. It performs the double office of separating impurities from the venous blood, and of secreting a fluid (bile) necessary to chylification. On the under surface of the liver is a membranous sac, called the _gall-cyst_, which is generally considered as a reservoir for the bile. [Illustration: Fig. 63. The under surface of the liver. 1, The right lobe. 2, The left. 3, 4, Smaller lobes. 10, The gall-bladder, or cyst, lodged in its depression. 17, The notch on the posterior border, for the spinal column.] _Observation._ A good idea of the liver and intestines can be obtained by examining these parts of a pig. In this animal, the sacs, or pouches, of the large intestine are well defined. 255. The PANCREAS is a long, flattened gland, analogous to the salivary glands. It is about six inches in length, weighs three or four ounces, and is situated transversely across the posterior wall of the abdomen, behind the stomach. A duct from this organ opens into the duodenum. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 254. Describe the liver. 255. What is said of the pancreas? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 256. The SPLEEN, (milt,) so called because the ancients supposed it to be the seat of melancholy, is an oblong, flattened organ, situated in the left side, in contact with the diaphragm, stomach, and the pancreas. It is of a dark, bluish color, and is abundantly supplied with blood, but has no duct which serves as an outlet for any secretion. Its use is not well determined. [Illustration: Fig. 64. The pancreas with its duct, through which the pancreatic secretion passes into the duodenum.] 257. The OMENTUM (caul) consists of four layers of the serous membrane, which descends from the stomach and transverse colon. A quantity of adipose matter is deposited around its vessels, which ramify through its structure. Its function is twofold in the animal economy. 1st. It protects the intestines from cold. 2d. It facilitates the movements of the intestines upon each other during their vermicular, or worm-like action. 258. Every part of the digestive apparatus is supplied with arteries, veins, lymphatics, and nervous filaments, from the ganglionic system of nerves. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 256. Why is the spleen so called? What is peculiar to this organ? 257. Of what is the omentum composed? What is its use? 258. With what is every part of the digestive apparatus supplied? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XIV. PHYSIOLOGY OF THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 259. Substances received into the stomach as food, must necessarily undergo many changes before they are fitted to form part of the animal body. The solid portions are reduced to a fluid state, and those parts that will nourish the body are separated from the waste material. 260. The first preparation of food for admission into the system, consists in its proper mastication. The lips in front, the cheeks upon the side, the soft palate, by closing down upon the base of the tongue, retain the food in the mouth, while it is subjected to the; process of _mas-ti-ca´tion_, (chewing.) The tongue rolls the mass around, and keeps it between the teeth, while they divide the food to a fineness suitable for the stomach. 261. While the food is in process of mastication, there is incorporated with it a considerable amount of _sa-li´va_, (spittle.) This fluid is furnished by the salivary glands, situated in the vicinity of the mouth. The saliva moistens and softens the food, so that, when carried into the pharynx. it is passed, with ease, through the oesophagus into the stomach. 262. When the food has been properly masticated, (and in rapid eaters when it is not,) the soft palate is raised from the base of the tongue backward, so as to close the posterior opening through the nostrils. By a movement of the muscles of the tongue, cheeks, and floor of the mouth, simultaneous with that of the soft palate, the food is pressed into the upper part of the pharynx. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 259-272. _Give the physiology of the digestive organs._ 259. What is necessary before food can nourish the body? 260. Describe how mastication is performed. 261. Of what use is the saliva in the process of mastication? 262. How is the food pressed into the pharynx? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 263. When in the pharynx, the food and drink are prevented from passing into the trachea by a simple valve-like arrangement, called the _ep-i-glot´tis_. The ordinary position of this little organ is perpendicular, so as not to obstruct the passage of air into the lungs; but in the act of swallowing, it is brought directly over the opening of the trachea, called the _glot´tis_. The food, being forced backward, passes rapidly over the epiglottis into the oesophagus, where the circular band of muscular fibres above, contracts and forces the food to the next lower band. Each band relaxes and contracts successively, and thus presses the alimentary ball downward and onward to the stomach.[8] [8] The process of deglutition may be comprehended by analyzing the operation of swallowing food or saliva. _Observation._ If air is inhaled when the food or drink is passing over the glottis, some portions of it may be carried into the larynx or trachea. This produces violent spasmodic coughing, and most generally occurs when an attempt is made to speak while masticating food; therefore, never talk when the mouth contains food. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 263. When the food is in the pharynx, how is it prevented from passing into the trachea, or windpipe? Describe how it is passed into the stomach? Give the observation. 264. Describe how the food in the stomach is converted into chyme. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 264. When the food reaches the stomach, the gastric glands are excited to action, and they secrete a powerful solvent, called gastric juice. The presence of food in the stomach also increases a contractile action of the muscular coat, by which the position of the food is changed from one part of this cavity to another. Thus the aliment is brought in contact with the mucous membrane, and each portion of it becomes saturated with gastric juice, by which it is softened, or dissolved into a pulpy homogeneous mass, of a creamy consistence, called _Chyme_. The food is not all converted into chyme at the same time; but as fast as it is changed, it passes through the pyloric orifice into the duodenum. _Observation._ The gastric juice has the property of coagulating liquid albuminous matter when mixed with it. It is this property of rennet, which is an infusion of the fourth stomach of the calf, by which milk is coagulated, or formed into "curd." 265. The CHYME is conveyed through the pyloric orifice of the stomach into the duodenum. The chyme not only excites an action in the duodenum, but also in the liver and pancreas. _Mucus_ is then secreted by the duodenum, _bile_ by the liver, and _pancreatic fluid_ by the pancreas. The bile and pancreatic fluid are conveyed into the duodenum, and mixed with the chyme. By the action of these different fluids, the chyme is converted into a fluid of a whitish color, called _Chyle_, and into residuum. _Observation._ The bile has no agency in the change through which the food passes in the stomach. In a healthy condition of this organ, no bile is found in it. The common belief, that the stomach has a redundancy of this secretion, is erroneous. If bile is ejected in vomiting, it merely shows, not only that the action of the stomach is inverted, but also that of the duodenum. A powerful emetic will, in this way, generally bring this fluid from the most healthy stomach. A knowledge of this fact might save many a stomach from the evils of emetics, administered on false impressions of their necessity, and continued from the corroboration of these by the appearance of bile, till derangement, and perhaps permanent disease, are the consequences. 266. The CHYLE and residual matter are moved over the mucous surface of the small intestine, by the action of its muscular coat. As the chyle is carried along the tract of the intestine, it comes in contact with the villi, where the lacteal vessels commence. These imbibe, or take up, the chyle, and transfer it through the mesenteric glands into the thoracic duct, through which it is conveyed into a large vein at the lower part of the neck. In this vein the chyle is mixed with the venous fluid. The residual matter is conveyed into the large intestine, through which it is carried and excreted from the system. (Appendix E.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What peculiar property has gastric juice? 265. Where and how is chyme converted into chyle? What is said in regard to the bile? 266. What becomes of the chyle? Of the residuum? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 267. In the process of digestion, the food is subjected to five different changes. 1st. The chewing and admixture of the saliva with the food; this process is called _mastication_. 268. 2d. The change through which the food passes in the stomach by its muscular contraction, and the secretion from the gastric glands; this is called _chymification_. 269. 3d. The conversion of the homogeneous chyme, by the agency of the bile and pancreatic secretions, into a fluid of milk-like appearance; this is _chylification_. 270. 4th. The absorption of the chyle by the lacteals, and its transfer through them and the thoracic duct, into the subclavian vein at the lower part of the neck.[9] [9] The chyle is changed by the lacteals and mesenteric glands, but the nature of this change is not, as yet, well defined or understood. 271. 5th. The separation and excretion of the residuum. 272. Perfection of the second process of digestion requires thorough and slow mastication. The formation of proper chyle demands appropriate mastication and chymification; while a healthy action of the lacteals requires that all the anterior stages of the digestive process be as perfect as possible. (Appendix F.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 267. Recapitulate the five changes in the digestive process. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Note._ Let the pupil review the anatomy and physiology of the digestive organs from figs. 62 and 65, or from anatomical outline plate No. 5. [Illustration: Fig. 65. An ideal view of the organs of digestion, opened nearly the whole length. 1, The upper jaw. 2, The lower jaw. 3, The tongue. 4, The roof of the mouth. 5, The oesophagus. 6, The trachea. 7, The parotid gland. 8, The sublingual gland. 9, The stomach. 10, 10, The liver. 11, The gall-cyst. 12, The duct that conveys the bile to the duodenum, (13, 13.) 14, The pancreas. 15, 15, 15, 15, The small intestine. 16, The opening of the small intestine into the large intestine. 17, 18, 19, 20, The large intestine. 21, The spleen. 22, The upper part of the spinal column.] CHAPTER XV. HYGIENE OF THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS. 273. It is a law of the system, that each organ is excited to healthy and efficient action, when influenced by its appropriate stimulus. Accordingly, nutrient food, that is adapted to the wants of the system, imparts a healthy stimulation to the salivary glands during the process of mastication. The food that is well masticated, and has blended with it a proper amount of saliva, will induce a healthy action in the stomach. Well-prepared chyme is the natural stimulus of the duodenum, liver, and pancreas; pure chyle is the appropriate excitant of the lacteal vessels. 274. The perfection of the digestive process, as well as the health of the general system, requires the observance of certain conditions. These will be considered under four heads:--1st. The _Quantity_ of food that should be taken. 2d. Its _Quality_. 3d. The _Manner_ in which it should be taken. 4th. The _Condition_ of the system when food is taken. 275. The QUANTITY of food necessary for the system varies. Age, occupation, temperament, temperature, habits, amount of clothing, health and disease are among the circumstances which produce the variation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 273-330. _Give the hygiene of the digestive organs._ 273. Give a law of the system. What is the appropriate stimulus of the salivary glands during mastication? Of the stomach? Of the duodenum? Of the lacteal vessels? 274. What does the perfection of the digestive organs require? 275. What exert an influence on the quantity of food necessary for the system? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 276. _The child and youth require food to promote the growth of the different parts of the body._ The more rapid the growth of the child, the greater the demand for food. This accounts for the keen appetite and vigorous digestion in childhood. When the youth has attained his full growth, this necessity for nutriment ceases; after this period of life, if the same amount of food is taken, and there is no increase of labor or exertion, the digestive apparatus will become diseased, and the vigor of the whole system diminished. _Observation._ When the body has become emaciated from want of nutriment, either from famine or disease, there is an increased demand for food. This may be gratified with impunity until the individual has regained the usual size, but repletion should be avoided. 277. _Food is required to repair the waste, or loss of substance that attends action._ In every department of nature, waste, or loss of substance, attends and follows action. When an individual increases his exercise,--changes from light to severe labor,--or the inactive and sedentary undertake journeys for pleasure, the fluids of the system circulate with increased energy. The old and exhausted particles of matter are more rapidly removed through the action of the vessels of the skin, lungs, kidneys, and other organs, and their places are filled with new atoms, deposited by the small blood-vessels. 278. As the chyle supplies the blood with the newly vitalized particles of matter, there is, consequently, an increased demand for food. This want of the system induces, in general, a sensation of hunger or appetite, which may be regarded as an indication of the general state of the body. The sympathy that exists throughout the system accords to the stomach the power of making known this state to the nervous system, and, if the functions of this faithful monitor have not been impaired by disease, abuse, or habit, the call is imperious, and should be regarded. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 276. At what age is the appetite keen and the digestion vigorous? Why? What is said in regard to the quantity of food when the youth has attained his growth? What exception, as given in the observation? 277. Give another demand for food. What effect has increased exercise upon the system? 278. How are the new particles of matter supplied? What does this induce? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 279. _When exercise or labor is lessened, the quantity of food should be diminished._ When a person who has been accustomed to active exercise, or even hard manual labor, suddenly changes to an employment that demands less activity, the waste attendant on action will be diminished in a corresponding degree; hence the quantity of food should be lessened in nearly the same proportion as the amount of exercise is diminished. If this principle be disregarded, the tone of the digestive organs will be impaired, and the health of the system enfeebled. 280. This remark is applicable to those students who have left laborious employments to attend school. Although the health is firm, and the appetite keen from habit, yet every pupil should practise some self-denial, and not eat as much as the appetite craves, the first week of the session. After some days, the real wants of the system will generally be manifested by a corresponding sensation of hunger. _Observation._ It is a common observation that in academies and colleges, the older students from the country, who have been accustomed to hard manual labor, suffer more frequently from defective digestion and impaired health than the younger and feebler students from the larger towns and cities. 281. _Food is essential in maintaining a proper temperature of the system._ The heat of the system, at least in part, is produced in the minute vessels of the several organs, by the union of oxygen with carbon and hydrogen, which the food and drink contain. The amount of heat generated, is greatest when it is most rapidly removed from the system, which occurs in cold weather. This is the cause of the system requiring more food in winter than summer. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 279. Why should the quantity of food be diminished when the exercise is lessened? What effect if this principle be disregarded? 280. To what class is this remark applicable? What is often observed among students in academies and colleges? 281. State another demand for food. What is one source of heat in the body? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ Persons that do not have food sufficient for the natural wants of the system, require more clothing than those who are well fed. 282. The last-mentioned principle plainly indicates the propriety and necessity of lessening the quantity of food as the warm season approaches. Were this practised, the tone of the stomach and the vigor of the system would continue unimpaired, the "season complaints" would be avoided, and the "strengthening bitters" would not be sought to create an appetite. _Observation._ Stable-keepers and herdsmen are aware of the fact, that as the warm season commences, then animals require less food. Instinct teaches these animals more truly, in this particular, than man allows reason to guide him. 283. _The quantity of food should have reference to the present condition of the digestive organs._ If they are weakened or diseased, so that but a small quantity of food can be properly digested or changed, that amount only should be taken. Food does not invigorate the system, except it is changed, as has been described in previous paragraphs. _Observation._ When taking care of a sick child, the anxiety of the mother and the sufferings of the child may induce her to give food when it would be highly injurious. The attending physician is the only proper person to direct what quantity should be given. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Why do we eat more in the winter than in the summer? What practical observation is given? 282. Why should the quantity of food be lessened as warm weather commences? What would be avoided if this principle were obeyed? 283. Why should the present condition of the digestive organs be regarded in reference to the quantity of food? Mention an instance in which it would be injudicious to give food. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 284. _The quantity of food is modified, in some degree, by habit._ A healthy person, whose exercise is in pure air, may be accustomed to take more food than is necessary. The useless excess is removed from the system by the waste outlets, as the skin, lungs, liver, kidneys, &c. In such cases, if food is not taken in the usual quantity, there will be a feeling of emptiness, if not of hunger, from the want of the usual distention of the stomach. This condition of the digestive organs may be the result of disease, but it is more frequently produced by inordinate daily indulgence in eating, amounting almost to gluttony. 285. _Large quantities of food oppress the stomach, and cause general languor of the whole body._ This is produced by the extra demands made on the system for an increased supply of blood and nervous fluid to enable the stomach to free itself of its burden. Thus, when we intend to make any extraordinary effort, mental or physical, at least for one meal, we should eat less food than usual, rather than a greater quantity. 286. _No more food should be eaten than is barely sufficient to satisfy the appetite._ Nor should appetite be confounded with taste. The one is a natural desire for food to supply the wants of the system; the other is an artificial desire merely to gratify the palate. 287. Although many things may aid us in determining the quantity of food proper for an individual, yet there is no certain guide in all cases. It is maintained by some, that the sensation of hunger or appetite is always an indication of the want of food, while the absence of this peculiar sensation is regarded as conclusive evidence that aliment is not demanded. This assertion is not correct, as an appetite may be created for food by condiments and gormandizing, which is as artificial and as morbid as that which craves tobacco or ardent spirits. On the other hand, a structural or functional disease of the brain may prevent that organ from taking cognizance of the sensations of the stomach, when the system actually requires nourishment. Observation shows, that disease, habit, the state of the mind, and other circumstances, exert an influence on the appetite. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 284. Show the effect of habit upon the quantity of food that is eaten. What is said in regard to inordinate eating? 285. What is the effect of eating large quantities of food? What suggestion when an extraordinary effort, either mental or physical, is to be made? 286. How much food should generally be eaten? 287. What is the assertion of some persons relative to the quantity of food necessary for the system? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ Dr. Beaumont noticed, in the experiments upon Alexis St. Martin, that after a certain amount of food was converted into chyme, the gastric juice ceased to ooze from the coats of the stomach. Consequently, it has been inferred by some writers on physiology, that the glands which supply the gastric fluid, by a species of instinctive intelligence, would only secrete enough fluid to convert into chyme the aliment needed to supply the real wants of the system. What are the reasons for this inference? There is no evidence that the gastric glands possess instinctive intelligence, and can there be a reason adduced, why they may not be stimulated to extra functional action as well as other organs, and why they may not also be influenced by habit? 288. While all agree that the remote or predisposing cause of hunger is, usually, a demand of the system for nutrient material, the proximate or immediate cause of the sensation of hunger is not clearly understood. Some physiologists suppose that it is produced by an engorged condition of the glands of the stomach which supply the gastric juice; while others maintain that it depends on a peculiar condition of the nervous system. 289. The QUALITY of the food best adapted to the wants of the system is modified by many circumstances. There are many varieties of food, and these are much modified by the different methods of preparation. The same kind of food is not equally well adapted to different individuals, or to the same individual in all conditions; as vocation, health, exposure, habits of life, season, climate, &c., influence the condition of the system. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What does observation show? 288. What is said of the causes of hunger? 289. Why is not the same kind of food adapted to different individuals? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 290. All articles of food may be considered in two relations: 1st, As nutritive. 2d, As digestible. Substances are nutritious in proportion to their capacity to yield the elements of chyle, of which carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen are the most essential; they are digestible in proportion to the facility with which they are acted upon by the gastric juice. These properties should not be confounded in the various articles used for food. 291. As a "living body has no power of forming elements, or of converting one elementary substance into another, it therefore follows that the elements of which the body of an animal is composed must be in the food." (Chap. III.) Of the essential constituents of the human body, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are the most important, because they compose the principal part of the animal body; while the other elements are found in very small proportions, and many of them only in a few organs of the system. (Appendix G.) _Observation._ Nitrogen renders food more stimulating, particularly if combined with a large quantity of carbon, as beef. Those articles that contain the greatest amount of the constituent elements of the system are most nutritious. As milk and eggs contain all the essential elements of the human system, so they are adapted to almost universal use, and are highly nutritious. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 290. In what proportion are substances nutritious? Digestible? Why does beef stimulate the system? What is said of milk and eggs? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 292. The following table, by Pereira, in his treatise on Food and Diet may aid the student in approximating to correct conclusions of the quantity of nutriment in different kinds of food, and its adaptation to the wants of the system. TABLE, SHOWING THE AVERAGE QUANTITY OF DRY, OR SOLID MATTER, CARBON, NITROGEN, AND MOISTURE, IN DIFFERENT ARTICLES OF DIET. -------------------+---------+---------+-----------+------------ One hundred Parts. | Dry | Carbon. | Nitrogen. | Water | Matter. | | | -------------------+---------+---------+-----------+------------ Arrowroot, | 81.8 | 36.4 | | 18.2 Beans, | 85.89 | 38.24 | | 14.11 Beef, fresh, | 25 | 12.957 | 3.752 | 75 Bread, rye, | 67.79 | 30.674 | | 32.21 Butter, | 100 | 65.6 | | Cabbage, | 7.7 | | 0.28 | 92.3 Carrot, | 12.4 | | 0.30 | 87.6 Cherries, | 25.15 | | | 74.85 Chickens, | 22.7 | | | 77.3 Codfish, | 20 | | | 80 Cucumbers, | 2.86 | | | 97.14 Eggs, whites, | 20 | | | 80 ----, yolk, | 46.23 | | | 53.77 Lard, hog's, | 100 | 79.098 | | Milk, cow's, | 12.98 | | | 87.02 Oats, | 79.2 | 40.154 | 1.742 | 20.8 Oatmeal, | 93.4 | | | 6.6 Olive-oil, | 100 | 77.50 | | Oysters, | 12.6 | | | 87.4 Peaches, | 19.76 | | | 80.24 Pears, | 16.12 | | | 83.88 Peas, | 84 | 35.743 | | 16 Plums, greengage, | 28.90 | | | 71.10 Potatoes, | 24.1 | 10.604 | 0.3615 | 75.9 Rye, | 83.4 | 38.530 | 1.417 | 16.6 Suet, mutton, | 100 | 78.996 | | Starch, potato, | 82 | 36.44 | | 18 ----, wheat, | 85.2 | 37.5 | | 14.8 Sugar, maple, | | 42.1 | | ----, refined, | | 42.5 | | ----, brown, | | 40.88 | | Turnips, | 7.5 | 3.2175 | 0.1275 | 92.5 Veal, roasted, | | 52.52 | 14.70 | Wheat, | 85.5 | 39.415 | 1.966 | 14.5 -------------------+---------+---------+-----------+------------ _Note._ Let the pupil mention those articles of food that are most nutritious, from a review of this table, and the last four paragraphs. 293. Those articles that do not contain the essential elements of the system should not be used as exclusive articles of diet. This principle has been, and may be illustrated by experiment. Feed a dog with pure sugar, or olive-oil, (articles that contain no nitrogen,) for several weeks, and the evil effects of non-nitrogenous nutriment will be manifested. At first, the dog will take his food with avidity, and seem to thrive upon it; soon this desire for food will diminish, his body emaciate, his eye become ulcerated, and in a few weeks he will die; but mix bran or sawdust with the sugar or oil, and the health and vigor of the animal will be maintained for months. A similar phenomenon will be manifested, if grain only be given to a horse, without hay, straw, or material of like character. (Appendix H.) 294. Some articles of food contain the elements of chyle in great abundance, yet afford but little nutriment, because they are difficult of digestion; while other articles contain but a small quantity of these elements, and afford more nourishment, because they are more easily affected by the digestive process. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 293. How has the effect of non-nitrogenous nutriment been illustrated? 294. Why do some articles of food that contain the elements of chyle afford but little nutriment? Why do articles that contain a small quantity of these elements afford more nourishment? 295. How was the time required for digesting different articles of food ascertained? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 295. The following table exhibits the general results of experiments made on Alexis St. Martin, by Dr. Beaumont, when he endeavored to ascertain the time required for the digestion of different articles of food.[10] The stomach of St. Martin was ruptured by the bursting of a gun. When he recovered from the effects of the accident under the surgical care of Dr. Beaumont, the stomach became adherent to the side, with an external aperture. Nature had formed a kind of valve, which closed the aperture from the interior, and thus prevented the contents of the stomach from escaping; but on pushing it aside, the process of digestion could be seen. Through this opening, the appearance of the coats of the stomach and food, at different stages of digestion, were examined. [10] The time required for the digestion of the different articles of food might vary in other persons; and would probably vary in the same individual at different periods, as the employment, health, season, &c., exert a modifying influence. TABLE, SHOWING THE MEAN TIME OF DIGESTION OF THE DIFFERENT ARTICLES OF DIET. -----------------------------+--------------+-------- Articles. | Preparation. | Time | | h. m. -----------------------------+--------------+-------- Apples, sour, hard, | Raw, | 2 50 Apples, sour, mellow, | Raw, | 2 Apples, sweet, do., | Raw, | 1 30 Bass, striped, fresh, | Broiled, | 3 Beans, pod, | Boiled, | 2 30 Beef, fresh, lean, rare, | Roasted, | 3 Beef, fresh, lean, dry, | Roasted, | 3 30 Beef steak, | Broiled, | 3 Beef, with salt only, | Boiled, | 3 36 Beef, with mustard, | Boiled, | 3 10 Beef, fresh, lean, | Fried, | 4 Beef, old, hard, salted, | Boiled, | 4 15 Beets, | Boiled, | 3 45 Bread, wheat, fresh, | Baked, | 3 30 Bread, corn, | Baked, | 3 15 Butter, | Melted, | 3 30 Cabbage head, | Raw, | 2 30 Cabbage, with vinegar, | Raw, | 2 Cabbage, | Boiled, | 4 30 Cake, sponge, | Baked, | 2 30 Carrot, orange, | Boiled, | 3 15 Catfish, | Fried, | 3 30 Cheese, old, strong, | Raw, | 3 30 Chicken, full-grown, | Fricas'd, | 2 45 Codfish, cured, dry, | Boiled, | 2 Corn, green, & beans, | Boiled, | 3 45 Corn bread, | Baked, | 3 15 Corn cake, | Baked, | 3 Custard, | Baked, | 2 45 Dumpling, apple, | Boiled, | 3 Ducks, domesticated, | Roasted, | 4 Ducks, wild, | Roasted, | 4 30 Eggs, fresh, | Boiled hard, | 3 30 Eggs, fresh, | Boiled soft, | 3 Eggs, fresh, | Fried, | 3 30 Eggs, fresh, | Raw, | 2 Flounder, fresh, | Fried, | 3 30 Fowl, domestic, | Boiled, | 4 Fowl, domestic, | Roasted, | 4 Goose, | Roasted, | 2 30 Lamb, fresh, | Broiled, | 2 30 Liver, beef's, fresh, | Broiled, | 2 Meat hashed with vegetables, | Warm'd, | 2 30 Milk, | Boiled, | 2 Milk, | Raw, | 2 15 Mutton, fresh, | Roasted, | 3 15 Mutton, fresh, | Broiled, | 3 Mutton, fresh, | Boiled, | 3 Oysters, fresh, | Raw, | 2 55 Oysters, fresh, | Roasted, | 3 15 Oysters, fresh, | Stewed, | 3 30 Parsnips, | Boiled, | 2 30 Pig, sucking, | Roasted, | 2 30 Pigs' feet, soused, | Boiled, | 1 Pork, fat and lean, | Roasted, | 5 15 Pork, recently salted, | Boiled, | 4 30 Pork, recently salted, | Fried, | 4 15 Pork, recently salted, | Broiled, | 3 15 Pork, recently salted, | Raw, | 3 Pork, steak, | Broiled, | 3 15 Potatoes, Irish, | Boiled, | 3 30 Potatoes, Irish, | Baked, | 2 30 Rice, | Boiled, | 1 Sago, | Boiled, | 1 45 Salmon, salted, | Boiled, | 4 Sausage, fresh, | Broiled, | 3 20 Soup, beef, vegetables, and | Boiled, | 4 bread, | | Soup, chicken, | Boiled, | 3 Soup, mutton, | Boiled, | 3 30 Soup, oyster, | Boiled, | 3 30 Suet, beef, fresh, | Boiled, | 5 30 Suet, mutton, | Boiled, | 4 30 Tapioca, | Boiled, | 2 Tripe, soused, | Boiled, | 1 Trout, salmon, fresh, | Boiled, | 1 30 Trout, salmon, fresh, | Fried, | 1 30 Turkey, domesticated, | Roasted, | 2 30 Turkey, | Boiled, | 2 25 Turkey, wild, | Roasted, | 2 18 Turnips, flat, | Boiled, | 3 30 Veal, fresh, | Broiled, | 4 Veal, fresh, | Fried, | 4 30 Venison steak, | Broiled, | 1 35 -----------------------------+--------------+-------- 296. In view of this table, the question may be suggested, Is that article of food most appropriate to the system which is most easily and speedily digested? To this it may be replied, that the stomach is subject to the same law as the muscles and other organs; exercise, within certain limits, strengthens it. If, therefore, we always eat those articles most easily digested, the digestive powers will be weakened; if over-worked, they will be exhausted. Hence the kind and amount of food should be adapted to the maintenance of the digestive powers, and to their gradual invigoration when debilitated. _Observation._ Food that is most easily digested is not always most appropriate to a person convalescing from disease. If the substance passes rapidly through the digestive process, it may induce a recurrence of the disease. Thus the simple preparations which are not stimulating, as water-gruel, are better for a sick person than the more digestible beef and fish. 297. The question is not well settled, whether animal or vegetable food is best adapted to nourish man. There are nations, particularly in the torrid zone, that subsist, exclusively, on vegetables; while those of the frigid zone feed on fish or animal food. In the temperate zone, among civilized nations, a mixed diet is almost universal. When we consider the organization of the human system, the form and arrangement of the teeth, the structure of the stomach and intestines, we are led to conclude, that both animal and vegetable food is requisite, and that a mixed diet is most conducive to strength, health, and long life. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 296. How is the question answered, whether that article is most appropriate to the system which is most easily digested? Give observation. 297. What is said of the adaptation of animal and vegetable food to man? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 298. _The food should be adapted to the distensible character of the stomach and alimentary canal._ The former will be full, if it contain only a gill; it may be so distended as to contain a quart. The same is true of the intestines. If the food is concentrated, or contains the quantity of nutriment which the system requires, in small bulk, the stomach and intestines will need the stimulation of distention and friction, which is consequent upon the introduction and transit of the innutritious material into and through the alimentary canal. If the food is deficient in innutritious matter, the tendency is, to produce an inactive and diseased condition of the digestive organs. For this reason, nutrient food should have blended with it innutritious material. Unbolted wheat bread is more healthy than hot flour cakes; ripe fruits and vegetables than rich pies, or jellies. _Observation._ 1st. The observance of this rule is of more importance to students, sedentary mechanics, and those individuals whose digestive apparatus has been enfeebled, than to those of active habits and firm health. 2d. The circumstance that different articles of food contain different proportions of waste, or innutritious matter, may be made practically subservient in the following way: If, at any particular season of the year, there is a tendency to a diarrhoea, an article that contains a small proportion of waste should be selected for food; but, if there is a tendency to an inactive or costive condition of the intestinal canal, such kinds of food should be used as contain the greatest proportion of waste, as such articles are most stimulating to the digestive organs, and, consequently, most laxative. 299. _In the selection of food, the influence of season and climate should be considered._ Food of a highly stimulating character may be used almost with impunity during the cold weather of a cold climate; but in the warm season, and in a warm climate, it would be very deleterious. Animal food, being more stimulating than vegetable, can be eaten in the winter but vegetable food should be used more freely in the spring and summer. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 298. What is said of the distensible character of the stomach and alimentary canal? What is the effect of eating highly concentrated food? Why is the unbolted wheat bread more healthy than flour cakes? Give observation 1st. Observation 2d. 299. What kind of food is adapted to cold weather? To warm weather? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 300. _The influence of food on the system is modified by the age of the individual._ The organs of a child are more sensitive and excitable than those of a person advanced in years. Therefore a vegetable diet would be most appropriate for a child, while stimulating animal food might be conducive to the health of a person advanced in life. _Observation._ When the digestive organs are highly impressible or diseased, it is very important to adopt a nutritious, unstimulating, vegetable diet, as soon as the warm season commences. 301. _Habit is another strong modifying influence._ If a person has been accustomed to an animal or vegetable diet, and there is a sudden change from one to the other, a diseased condition of the system, particularly of the digestive apparatus, usually follows. When it is necessary to change our manner of living, it should be done gradually.[11] [11] The system is gradually developed, and all changes of food, apparel, labor, exercise, or position, should be gradual. Even a change from a bad to a good habit, on this principle, should be gradual. 302. _Some temperaments require more stimulating food than others._ As a general rule, those persons whose sensations are comparatively obtuse, and movements slow, will be benefited by animal food; while those individuals whose constitutions are highly impressible, and whose movements are quick and hurried, require a nutritious and unstimulating vegetable diet. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 300. What kinds of food are appropriate to old age? Why? What kinds to childhood? Why? 301. What is the effect when there is a sudden change from a vegetable to an animal diet? How should all changes of the system be made? 302. Do different temperaments require different kinds of food? What general rule is given? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XVI. HYGIENE OF THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS, CONTINUED. 303. The MANNER in which food should be taken is of much practical importance; upon it the health of the digestive organs measurably depends. But few circumstances modify the proper manner of taking food, or should exercise any controlling influence. 304. _Food should be taken at regular periods._ The interval between meals should be regulated by the character of the food, the age, health, exercise, and habits of the individual. The digestive process is more energetic and rapid in the young, active, and vigorous, than in the aged, indolent, and feeble; consequently, food should be taken more frequently by the former than by the latter class. 305. In some young and vigorous persons, food may be digested in one hour; in other persons, it may require four hours or more. The average time, however, to digest an ordinary meal, will be from two to four hours. In all instances, the stomach will require from one to three hours to recruit its exhausted powers after the labor of digesting a meal before it will again enter upon the vigorous performance of its duties. 306. _Food should not be taken too frequently._ If food is taken before the stomach has regained its tone and energy by repose, the secretion of the gastric juice, and the contraction of the muscular fibres, will be imperfect. Again, if food is taken before the digestion of the preceding meal has been completed, the effects will be still worse, because the food partially digested becomes mixed with that last taken. Therefore the interval between each meal should be long enough for the whole quantity to be digested, and the time of repose should be sufficient to recruit the exhausted organs. The feebler the person and the more debilitated the stomach, the more important to observe the above directions. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 303. Why is it important that we regard the manner of taking our food? 304. How should the intervals between meals be regulated? 305. What is the average time required to digest an ordinary meal? 306. Why should not food be taken too frequently? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ In the feeding of infants, as well as in supplying food to older children, the preceding suggestions should always be regarded. The person who has been confined by an exhausting sickness, should most scrupulously regard this rule, if he wishes to regain his strength and flesh with rapidity. As the rapidity of the digestive process is less in students and individuals who are engaged in sedentary employments, than in stirring agriculturists, the former class are more liable to take food too frequently than the latter, while its observance is of greater importance to the sedentary artisan than to the lively lad and active farmer. 307. _Food should be well masticated._ All solid aliments should be reduced to a state of comparative fineness, by the teeth, before it is swallowed; the gastric fluid of the stomach will then blend with it more readily, and act more vigorously in reducing it to chyme. The practice of swallowing solid food, slightly masticated, or "bolting" it down, tends to derange the digestive process and impair the nutrition of the system. 308. _Mastication should be moderate, not rapid._ In masticating food, the salivary glands are excited to action, and some time must elapse before they can, secrete saliva in sufficient quantities to moisten it. If the aliment is not supplied with saliva, digestion is retarded; besides, in rapid eating, more food is generally consumed than the system demands, or can be easily digested. Laborers, as well as men of leisure, should have ample time for taking their meals. Imperfect mastication is a prevailing cause of indigestion. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What persons would be benefited by observing the preceding remarks? 307. Why should food be well masticated? What is the effect of "bolting down" food? 308. How should mastication be performed? Why? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 309. _Food should be masticated and swallowed without drink._ As the salivary glands supply fluid to moisten the dry food, the use of tea, coffee, water, or any other fluid, is not demanded by nature's laws while taking a meal. One objection to "washing down" the food with drink is, the aliment is moistened, not with the saliva, but with the drink. This tends to induce disease, not only in the salivary organs, by leaving them in a state of comparative inactivity, but in the stomach, by the deficiency of the salivary stimulus. Another is, large quantities of fluids, used as drinks, give undue distention to the stomach, and lessen the energy of the gastric juice by its dilution, thus retarding digestion. Again, drinks taken into the stomach must be removed by absorption before the digestion of other articles is commenced. _Observation._ Were it customary not to place drinks on the table until the solid food is eaten, the evil arising from drinking too much at meals would be obviated. The horse is never known to leave his provender, nor the ox his blade of grass, to wash it down; but many persons, from habit rather than thirst, drink largely during meals. 310. The peculiar sensation in the mouth and fauces, called thirst, may not always arise from the demand for fluids to increase the _serum_ (water) of the blood, as in the desire for drink attendant on free perspiration, for then, pure water or some diluent drink is absolutely necessary; but it may be the result of fever, or local disease of the parts connected with the throat. In many instances, thirst may be allayed by chewing some hard substance, as a dry cracker. This excites a secretion from the salivary glands, which removes the disagreeable sensation. In thirst, attendant on a heated condition of the system, this practice affords relief, and is safe; while the practice of drinking large quantities of cold fluids, is unsafe, and should never be indulged. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Why should all persons have ample time for eating? 309. Why are drinks not necessary while masticating food? Give the objections to "washing down" food. What observation relative to drink? 310. Does the sensation of thirst always arise from a real want of the system? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 311. _Food or drink should not be taken when very hot._ When food or drink is taken hot, the vessels of the mucous membrane of the gums, mouth, and stomach are unduly stimulated for a short time; and this is followed by reaction, attended by a loss of tone, and debility of these parts. This practice is a fruitful cause of spongy gums, decayed teeth, sore mouth, and indigestion. 312. _Food or drink should not be taken very cold._ If a considerable quantity of very cold food or liquid be taken immediately into the stomach, the health will be endangered, and the tone of the system will be impaired, from the sudden abstraction of heat from the coats of the stomach, and from surrounding organs, to impart warmth to the cold food or drink. This arrests the digestive process, and the food is retained in the stomach too long, and causes oppression and irritation. Consequently, food and drink that are moderately heated are best adapted to the natural condition of the digestive apparatus. _Observation._ Food of an injurious quality, or taken in an improper manner, affects the inferior animals as well as man. The teeth of cows that are closely penned in cities, and are fed on distillery slops, or the unhealthy slops and remnants of kitchens, decay and fall out in about two years. Can the milk of such diseased animals be healthy--the proper nourishment for children? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give instances when it does and when it does not. 311. Why should not food or drink be taken hot? 312. Why should they not be taken cold? Show some of the effects of improper food upon the inferior animals. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 313. The CONDITION of the system should be regarded when food is taken. This is necessary, as the present and ulterior condition of the digestive apparatus is strongly influenced by the state of the other organs of the system. 314. _Food should not be taken immediately after severe exertion, either of the body or mind._ For all organs in action require and receive more blood and nervous fluid, than when at rest. This is true of the brain, muscles, and vocal organs, when they have been actively exercised. The increased amount of fluid, both sanguineous and nervous, supplied to any organ during extra functional action, is abstracted from other parts of the system. This enfeebles and prostrates the parts that supply the blood and nervous fluid to the active organ. Again, when any organ has been in vigorous action for a few hours, some time will elapse before the increased action of the arteries and nerves abates, and a due supply of fluids is transmitted to other organs, or an equilibrium of action in the system is reëstablished. 315. Thus food should not be taken immediately after severe mental labor, protracted speaking, continued singing, or laborious manual toil; as the digestive organs will be in a state of comparative debility, and consequently unfit to digest food. From thirty to sixty minutes should elapse, after the cessation of severe employment, before food is taken. This time may be spent in cheerful amusement or social conversation. _Observation._ The practice of students and accountants going immediately from severe mental labor to their meals, is a pernicious one, and a fruitful cause of indigestion and mental debility. The custom of farmers and mechanics hurrying from their toil to the dinner-table, does much to cause dyspepsia and debility among these classes in community. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 313. Should the condition of the system be regarded in taking food? 314. When should food not be taken? Why? What is the result when an organ has been in vigorous action? 315. After the cessation of severe toil, how much time should expire before eating? What is one cause of indigestion among students and accountants? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 316. _Severe mental or manual toil should not be entered upon immediately after eating._ As there is an increased amount of blood and nervous fluid supplied to the stomach and alimentary canal during the digestion of food, a deficiency exists in other organs. This is evinced by a slight paleness of the skin, and a disinclination to active thought and exercise. Under such circumstances, if either the mind, vocal organs, or muscles are called into energetic action, there will be an abstraction of the necessary amount of blood and nervous fluid from the stomach, and the process of digestion will be arrested. This will not only cause disease of the digestive organs, but chyle will not be formed, to nourish the system. _Illustration._ An English gentleman fed two dogs upon similar articles of food. He permitted one to remain quiet in a dark room; the other he sent in pursuit of game. At the expiration of one hour, he had both killed. The stomach of the dog that had remained quiet was nearly empty. The food had been properly changed and carried forward into the alimentary canal. In the stomach of the dog that had used his muscles in chasing game, the aliment remained nearly unaltered. 317. The same principle may be applied to the action of the organs of man. If his mind or muscles act intensely soon after eating, the stomach will not be sufficiently stimulated by blood and nervous fluid to change the food in a suitable period. The Spanish practice of having a "siesta," or sleep after dinner, is far better than the custom of the Anglo-Saxon race, who hurry from their meals to the field, shop, or study, in order to save time, which, in too many instances, is lost by a sense of oppression and suffering which soon follows. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 316. Why should not severe manual or mental exertion be made immediately after eating? State the illustration. 317. May this principle be applied to the action of the human stomach? What is said of the Spanish custom of resting after dinner? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 318. In some instances of good health, the infringement of this organic law may seem to pass with impunity, but Nature, though lenient, sooner or later asserts her claims. The practice of the Spaniard may be improved by indulging, for an hour before resuming toil, in moderate exercise of the muscular system, conjoined with agreeable conversation and a hearty laugh, as this facilitates digestion, and tends to "shake the cobwebs from the brain." _Observation._ No judicious teamster drives his animals as soon as they have swallowed their food, but gives them a period for repose, so that their food may be digested, and their systems invigorated. In this way, he secures the greatest amount of labor from his team. 319. _The mind exerts an influence upon the digestive process._ This is clearly exhibited, when an individual receives intelligence of the loss of a friend or of property. He may at the time be sitting before a plentiful board, with a keen appetite; but the unexpected news destroys it, because the excited brain withholds its stimulus. This shows the propriety of avoiding absorbing topics of thought at meals, as labored discussions and matters of business; but substitute cheerful and light conversation, enlivening wit, humor, the social intercourse of family and friends; these keep the brain in action, but not in toil. Under such circumstances, the blood and nervous fluid flow freely, the work of digestion is readily commenced, and easily carried on. 320. _Indigestion arising from a prostration of the nervous system, should be treated with great care._ The food should be simple, nutritious, moderate in quantity, and taken at regular periods. Large quantities of stimulating food, frequently taken, serve to increase the nervous prostration. Those afflicted should exercise in the open air, and engage in social conversation, that the brain may be excited to a natural or healthy action, in order that it may impart to the digestive organs the necessary stimulation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Of the Anglo-Saxon race? 318. How can the Spanish custom be improved? 319. How is the influence of the mind on the digestive process exhibited? What does it show the necessity of avoiding? 320. How should indigestion arising from nervous prostration be treated? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 321. _Persons should abstain from eating, at least three hours before retiring for sleep._ It is no unusual occurrence, for those persons who have eaten heartily immediately before retiring to sleep, to have unpleasant dreams, or to be aroused from their unquiet slumber by colic pains. In such instances, the brain becomes partially dormant, and does not impart to the digestive organs the requisite amount of nervous influence. The nervous stimulus being deficient, the unchanged food remains in the stomach, causing irritation of this organ. _Illustration._ A healthy farmer, who was in the habit of eating one fourth of a mince pie immediately before going to bed, became annoyed with unpleasant dreams, and, among the varied images of his fancy, he saw that of his deceased father. Becoming alarmed, he consulted a physician, who, after a patient hearing of the case, gravely advised him to eat _half_ of a mince pie, assuring him that he would then see his grandfather. 322. _When the general system and digestive organs are enfeebled, mild, unstimulating food, in small quantities, should be given._ In the instance of a shipwrecked and famished mariner, or a patient recovering from disease, but a small quantity of nourishment should be given at a time. The reason for this, is, that when the stomach is weakened from want of nourishment, it is as unfitted for a long period of action in digesting food, as the muscles are, under like circumstances, for walking. Consequently, knowledge and prudence should direct the administration of food under these circumstances. The popular adage, that "food never does harm when there is a desire for it," is untrue, and, if practically adopted, may be injurious and destructive to life. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 321. What is the effect of eating immediately before retiring for sleep? How is this illustrated in the case of a healthy farmer? 322. How should the food be given when both the digestive organs and general system are debilitated? Give the reason. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ Liquids are rapidly removed from the stomach by absorption. Hence, in cases of great prostration, when it is desirable to introduce nutriment into the system, without delay, the animal and vegetable broths are a desirable and convenient form of supplying aliment. 323. _The condition of the skin exercises an important influence on the digestive apparatus._ Let free perspiration be checked, either from uncleanliness or from chills, and it will diminish the functional action of the stomach and its associated organs. This is one of the fruitful causes of the "liver and stomach complaints" among the half-clothed and filthy population of the crowded cities and villages of our country. Attention to clothing and bathing would likewise prevent many of the diseases of the alimentary canal, called "season complaints," particularly among children. 324. _Restricting the movements of the ribs and diaphragm impairs digestion._ At each full inspiration, the ribs are elevated, and the central portion of the diaphragm is depressed, from one to two inches. This depression is accompanied by a relaxation of the anterior abdominal walls. At each act of expiration, the relaxed abdominal muscles contract, the ribs are depressed, the diaphragm relaxes, and its central parts ascend. These movements of the midriff cause the elevation and depression of the stomach, liver, and other abdominal organs, which is a natural stimulus of these parts. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= In cases of great prostration, what is recommended? 323. How is the influence that the skin exercises on the digestive organs illustrated? 324. What effect on the digestive process has the restriction of the ribs and diaphragm? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 325. It is noted of individuals who restrain the free movements of the abdominal muscles by tight dresses, that the tone and vigor of the digestive organs are diminished. The restricted waist will not admit of a full and deep inspiration and so essential is this to health, that abuse in this respect soon enfeebles and destroys the functions of the system. 326. _Pure air is necessary to give a keen appetite and vigorous digestion._ The digestive organs not only need the stimulus of blood, but they absolutely need the influence of pure blood, which cannot exist in the system, except when we breathe a pure air. From this we learn why those persons who sleep in small, ill ventilated rooms, have little or no appetite in the morning, and why the mouth and throat are so dry and disagreeable. The effect of impure blood, in diminishing the desire for food, and enfeebling the digestive organs, is well illustrated by the following incidents. _Illustrations._ 1st. Dr. Reid, in his work on "Ventilation of Rooms," relates that an innkeeper in London, when he provided a public dinner, always spread his tables in an under-ground room, with low walls, where the air was confined and impure. He assigned as a reason for so doing, that his guests consumed only one third as much food and wine, as if the tables were laid in the open air. 2d. A manufacturer stated before a committee of the British Parliament, that he had removed an arrangement for ventilating his mill, because he noticed that his men ate much more after his mill was ventilated, than previous to admitting fresh air into the rooms, and that he could not _afford_ to have them breathe pure air. _Observation._ Many of the cases of indigestion among clergymen, seamstresses, school teachers, sedentary mechanics, and factory operatives, are produced by breathing the impure air of the rooms they occupy. These cases can be prevented, as well as cured, by proper attention to ventilation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 325. What is observed of those individuals that restrict the movements of the abdominal muscles? 326. Why is pure air necessary to vigorous digestion? Give illustration 1st. Illustration 2d. What is one cause of indigestion among the sedentary class in community? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 327. _The position of a person, in standing or sitting, exerts an influence upon the digestive organs._ If a person lean, or stoop forward, the distance between the pelvic bones and the diaphragm is diminished. This prevents the depression of the diaphragm, while the stomach, liver, pancreas, and other abdominal organs, suffer compression, which induces many severe diseases of these organs. As healthy and well-developed muscles keep the spinal column in an erect position, which conduces to the health of the organs of digestion, the child should be taught to avoid all positions _but the erect_, while studying or walking. This position, combined with unrestricted waists, will do much to remove the now prevalent disease, dyspepsia. 328. _Whatever kind of aliment is taken, it is separated into nutriment and residuum_; the former of which is conveyed, through the medium of the circulation, to all organs of the system, and the latter, if not expelled, accumulates, causing headache and dizziness, with a general uneasiness; and, if allowed to continue, it lays the foundation of a long period of suffering and disease. For the preservation of health, it is necessary that there should be a daily evacuation of the residual matter. _Observation._ In chronic diseases of the digestive organs, very frequently, there is an inactive, or costive condition of the alimentary canal. This may be removed in many cases, and relieved in all instances, by friction over the abdominal organs, and by making an effort at some stated period each day, (evening is best,) to evacuate the residuum. In acute diseases, as fever, regard should be given to regularity in relieving the intestines of residuum. Attention to this suggestion will in many instances obviate the necessity of cathartic medicine. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 327. Why does the position of a person affect digestion? 328. Into what are different kinds of aliment separated? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 329. We would add, for the benefit of those afflicted with hemorrhoids, or piles, that the best time for evacuating the intestinal canal would be immediately before retiring for the night. During the night, while recumbent, the protruding parts return to their proper place, and the surrounding organs acquire increased tone to retain them. The same observance will do much to prevent such prostrating diseases.[12] [12] The urinary organs, as well as the intestinal canal, should be frequently and regularly evacuated. Some most distressing and frequently incurable complaints are caused by false customs and false delicacy in this particular. Teachers should be particularly careful, and regard this suggestion in reference to young pupils. 330. To recapitulate: digestion is most perfect when the action of the cutaneous vessels is energetic; the brain and vocal organs moderately stimulated by animated conversation; the blood well purified; the muscular system duly exercised; the food of an appropriate quality, taken in proper quantities, at regular periods, and also properly masticated. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 330. Give the summary when digestion is most perfect. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER VXII. THE CIRCULATORY ORGANS. 331. The ultimate object of the food and drink introduced into the body, is to furnish material to promote the growth and repair the waste of the organs of the system. The formation of chyle (the nutrient portion of the food) has been traced through the digestive process, and its transfer into the vein at the lower part of the neck, from which it is conveyed to the heart; and, finally, in the lungs it assimilates to the character of blood. 332. The BLOOD, after standing a short time, when drawn from its vessels, separates into _se´rum_, (a watery fluid,) and _co-ag´u-lum_, (clot.) This fluid is distributed to every part of the system. There is no part so minute that it does not receive blood. The organs by which this distribution is effected are so connected that there is properly neither beginning nor end; but as it respects their functions, they are connected in a complete circle. From this circumstance, they are called the _Circulatory Organs_. ANATOMY OF THE CIRCULATORY ORGANS. 333. The CIRCULATORY ORGANS are the _Heart_, _Ar´te-ries_, _Veins_, and _Cap´il-la-ries_. 334. The HEART is placed obliquely, in the left cavity of the chest, between the right and left lung. Its general form is that of an inverted cone, the base of which is directed upward and backward, toward the right shoulder, while its apex points forward to the left side, about three inches from the sternum to the space between the fifth and sixth ribs. Its under side rests upon the tendinous portion of the diaphragm. The heart is surrounded by a sac, called the _per-i-car´di-um_, (heart-case.) The interior surface of this membrane secretes a watery fluid, that lubricates the exterior of the heart, and obviates friction between it and the pericardium. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 331. what is the ultimate object of the food? 332. Of what is the blood composed? What is said of the distribution of the blood? 333. Name the circulatory organs. 334-351. _Give the anatomy of the circulatory organs._ 334. Describe the heart. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 66. A front view of the heart. 1, The right auricle of the heart. 2, The left auricle. 3, The right ventricle. 4, The left ventricle. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, The vessels[13] through which the blood passes to and from the heart.] [Illustration: Fig. 67. A back view of the heart. 1, The right auricle. 2, The left auricle. 3, The right ventricle. 4, The left ventricle. 5, 6, 7, The vessels that carry the blood to and from the heart. 9, 10, 11, The nutrient vessels of the heart.] [13] All vessels that carry blood to the heart, are called _veins_. All vessels that carry blood _from_ the heart, are called _arteries_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= With what is it surrounded? What is its use? How much fluid does this membrane contain when healthy? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ In health, there is usually about a tea-spoonful of fluid in the pericardium. When these parts are diseased, it may be thrown out more abundantly, and sometimes amounts to several ounces, producing a disease called dropsy of the heart. But all the unpleasant sensations in the region of the heart are not caused by an increased amount of fluid in the pericardium, as this disease is not of frequent occurrence. 335. The heart is composed of muscular fibres, that traverse it in different directions, some longitudinally, but most of them in a spiral direction. The human heart is a double organ, or it has two sides, called the right and the left. The compartments of the two sides are separated by a muscular _sep´tum_, or partition. Again, each side of the heart is divided into two parts, called the _Au´ri-cle_ (deaf ear) and the _Ven´tri-cle_. [Illustration: Fig. 68. A section of the heart, showing its cavities and valves. 3, The right auricle. 4, The opening between the right auricle and right ventricle. 5, The right ventricle. 6, The tricuspid valves. 7, The pulmonary artery. 9, The semilunar valves of the pulmonary artery. 10, The septum between the right and left ventricle. 12, The left auricle. 13, The opening between the left auricle and left ventricle. 14, The left ventricle. 15, The mitral valves. 16, The aorta. 17, The semilunar valves of the aorta.] 336. The AURICLES differ in muscularity from the ventricles. Their walls are thinner, and of a bluish color. These cavities are a kind of reservoir, designed to contain the blood arriving by the veins. 337. The VENTRICLES not only have their walls thicker than the auricles, but they differ in their internal structure. From the interior of these cavities arise fleshy columns, called _co-lum´næ car´ne-æ_. The walls of the left ventricle are thicker and stronger than those of the right. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 335. Of what is the heart composed? Give its divisions. 336. Describe the auricles. 337. Describe the ventricles. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 338. The cavities in the right side of the heart are triangular in shape; those of the left, oval. Each cavity will contain about two ounces of blood. Between the auricle and ventricle in the right side of the heart, there are three folds, or doublings, of thin, triangular membrane, called the _tri-cus´pid_ valves. Between the auricle and ventricle in the left side, there are two valves, called the _mi´tral_. There are seen passing from the floating edge of these valves to the columnæ carneæ, small white cords, called _chor´dæ ten´di-næ_, which prevent the floating edge of the valve from being carried into the auricle. 339. The right ventricle of the heart gives rise to the _Pul´mo-na-ry_ artery; the left ventricle, to a large artery called the _A-ort´a_. At the commencement of each of these arteries there are three folds of membrane, and from their shape, they are called _sem-i-lu´nar_ valves. 340. The heart is supplied with arteries and veins, which ramify between its muscular fibres, through which its _nutrient_ blood passes. It has, likewise, a few lymphatics, and many small nervous filaments from the sympathetic system of nerves. This organ, in its natural state, exhibits but slight indications of sensibility, and although nearly destitute of the sensation of touch, it is yet, however, instantly affected by every painful bodily excitement, or strong mental emotions. _Observation._ To obtain a clear idea of the heart and its valves, it is recommended to examine this part of an ox or calf. In order that each ventricle be opened without mutilating the fleshy columns, tendinous cords, and valves, cut on each side of the septum parallel to it. This may be easily found between the ventricles, as they differ in thickness. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 338. How do the cavities in the heart differ? What is found between the auricle and ventricle in the right side of the heart? How many valves in the left side, and their names? Where are the tendinous cords, and what is their use? 339. What vessels proceed from the ventricles? What is said of their valves? 340. With what is the heart supplied? What is said of its sensibility? How can an idea of the structure of the heart be obtained? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 341. The ARTERIES are the cylindrical tubes that convey the blood from the heart to every part of the system. They are dense in structure, and preserve, for the most part, the cylindrical form, when emptied of their blood, which is their condition after death. 342. The arteries are composed of three coats. The external, or cellular coat, is firm and strong; the middle, or fibrous coat, is composed of yellowish fibres. This coat is elastic, fragile, and thicker than the external coat. Its elasticity enables the vessel to accommodate itself to the quantity of blood it may contain. The internal coat is a thin, serous membrane, which lines the interior of the artery, and gives it the smooth polish which that surface presents. It is continuous with the lining membrane of the heart. 343. Communications between arteries are free and numerous. They increase in frequency with diminution in the size of the branches, so that through the medium of the minute ramifications, the entire body may be considered as one circle of inosculation. The arteries, in their distribution through the body, are enclosed in a loose, cellular investment, called a sheath, which separates them from the surrounding tissues. 344. The PULMONARY ARTERY commences in front of the origin of the aorta. It ascends obliquely to the under surface of the arch of the aorta, where it divides into two branches, one of which passes to the right, the other to the left lung. These divide and subdivide in the structure of the lungs, and terminate in the capillary vessels, which form a net-work around the air-cells, and become continuous with the minute branches of the pulmonary veins. This artery conveys the impure blood to the lungs, and, with its corresponding veins, establishes the _lesser_, or _pulmonic circulation_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 341. What are arteries? 342. Give their structure. 343. What is said of the communications between the arteries? In their distribution, how are they separated from the surrounding tissues? 344. Describe the pulmonary artery. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: The divisions of this artery continue to divide and subdivide, until they become no larger than hairs in size. These minute vessels pass over the air-cells, represented by small dark points around the margin of the lungs.] 345. The AORTA proceeds from the left ventricle of the heart, and contains the pure, or nutrient blood. This trunk gives off branches, which divide and subdivide to their ultimate ramifications, constituting the great arterial tree which pervades, by its minute subdivisions, every part of the animal frame. This great artery and its divisions, with their returning veins, constitute the _greater_, or _systemic circulation_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What does this artery and its corresponding veins establish? Explain fig. 69. 345. Describe the aorta. What do this artery and its corresponding veins constitute? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 70. The aorta and its branches. 1, The commencement of the aorta. 2, The arch of the aorta. 3, The carotid artery. 4, The temporal artery. 5, The subclavian artery. 6, The axillary artery. 7, The brachial artery. 8, The radial artery. 9, The ulnar artery. 10, The iliac artery. 11, The femoral artery. 12, The tibial artery, 13. The peroneal artery.] 346. The VEINS are the vessels which return the blood to the auricles of the heart, after it has been circulated by the arteries through the various tissues of the body. They are thinner and more delicate in structure than the arteries, so that when emptied of their blood, they become flattened and collapsed. The veins commence by minute radicles in the capillaries, which are every where distributed through the textures of the body, and coalesce to constitute larger and larger branches, till they terminate in the large trunks which convey the dark-colored blood directly to the heart. In diameter they are much larger than the arteries, and, like those vessels, their combined area would constitute an imaginary cone, the apex of which is placed at the heart, and the base at the surface of the body. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What does fig. 70 represent? 346. What are the veins? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 347. The communications between the veins are more frequent than between the arteries, and take place between the larger as well as among the smaller vessels. The office of these inosculations is very apparent, as tending to obviate the obstructions to which the veins are peculiarly liable, from the thinness of their coats, and from inability to overcome great impediments by the force of their current. These tubes, as well as the arteries, are supplied with nutrient vessels, and it is to be presumed that nervous filaments from the sympathetic nerves are distributed to their coats. 348. The external, or cellular coat of the veins, is dense and firm, resembling the cellular tunic of the arteries. The middle coat is fibrous, like that of the arteries, but extremely thin. The internal coat is serous, and also similar to that of the arteries. It is continuous with the lining membrane of the heart at one extremity, and with the lining membrane of the capillaries at the other. 349. At certain intervals, the internal coat forms folds, or duplicatures, which constitute valves. They are generally composed of two semilunar folds, one on each side of the vessel. The free extremity of the valvular folds is concave, and directed forward, so that while the current of blood sets toward the heart, they present no impediment to its free passage; but let the current become retrograde, and it is impeded by their distention. The valves are most numerous in the veins of the extremities, particularly the deeper veins situated between the muscles; but in some of the larger trunks, and also in some of the smaller veins, no valves exist. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Where do they commence? 347. What is said of their communications? What is the apparent design of the inosculations of the veins? What vessels are distributed to the coats of the veins? 348. Give the structure of the coats of the veins. 349. How are the valves in the veins formed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 71. A vein laid open to show the valves. 1, The trunk of the vein. 2, 2, Its valves. 3, An opening of a branch into the main trunk.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is their use? Where are they the most numerous? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 350. The CAPILLARIES constitute a microscopic net-work, and are so distributed through every part of the body as to render it impossible to introduce the smallest needle beneath the skin, without wounding several of these fine vessels. They are remarkable for the uniformity of diameter, and for the constant divisions and communications which take place between them. 351. The capillaries inosculate, on the one hand, with the terminal extremity of the arteries, and on the other, with the commencement of the veins. They establish the communication between the termination of the arteries and the beginning of the veins. The important operations of secretion and the conversion of the nutrient materials of the blood into bone, muscle, &c., are performed in these vessels. [Illustration: Fig. 72. An ideal view of a portion of the pulmonic circulation. 1, 1, A branch of the artery that carries the impure blood to the lungs. 3, 3, Capillary vessels. 2, 2, A vein through which red blood is returned to the left side of the heart.] [Illustration: Fig. 73. An ideal view of a portion of the systemic circulation. 1, 1, A branch of the aorta. This terminates in the capillaries, (3, 3.) 2, 2, A vein through which the impure blood is carried to the right side of the heart.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 350. What do the capillaries constitute? For what are they remarkable? 351. What relation do they bear to the arteries and veins? What important operations are performed in these vessels? What is represented by fig. 72? By fig. 73? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XVIII. PHYSIOLOGY OF THE CIRCULATORY ORGANS. 352. The walls of all the cavities of the heart are composed of muscular fibres, which are endowed with the property of contracting and relaxing, like the muscles of the extremities. The contraction and relaxation of the muscular tissue of the heart, produce a diminution and enlargement of both auricular and ventricular cavities. The auricles contract and dilate simultaneously, and so do the ventricles; yet the contraction and dilatation of the auricles do not alternate with the contraction and dilatation of the ventricles, as the dilatation of the one is not completed before the contraction of the other commences. The dilatation of the ventricles is termed the _di-as´to-le_ of the heart; their contraction, its _sys´to-le_. 353. The ventricles contract quicker and more forcibly than the auricles, and they are three times longer in dilating than contracting. The walls of the right ventricle, being thinner than the left, are more distensible, and thus this cavity will contain a greater amount of blood. This arrangement adapts it to the venous system, which is more capacious than the arterial. The thicker and more powerful walls of the left ventricle adapt it to expel the blood to a greater distance. 354. The valves in the heart permit the blood to flow from the auricles to the ventricles, but prevent its reflowing. The valves at the commencement of the aorta and pulmonary artery, permit the blood to flow from the ventricles into these vessels, but prevent its returning. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 352-366. _Give the physiology of the circulatory organs._ 352. What do the contraction and relaxation of the muscular walls of the heart produce? How do the auricles and ventricles contract and dilate? 353. What is said of the contraction and dilatation of the ventricles in the heart? How is the right ventricle adapted to its function? How the left? 354. What is the use of the valves in the heart? Those of the aorta and pulmonary artery? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 355. The function of the different parts of the heart will be given, by aid of fig. 74. The blood passes from the right auricle (3) into the right ventricle, (5,) and the tricuspid valves (6) prevent its reflux; from the right ventricle the blood is forced into the pulmonary artery, (7,) through which it passes to the lungs. The semilunar valves (9) prevent this circulating fluid returning to the ventricle. The blood, while passing over the air-cells in the lungs, in the minute divisions of the pulmonary artery, is changed from a bluish color to a bright red. It is then returned to the left auricle of the heart by the pulmonary veins, (11, 11.) [Illustration: Fig. 74. 1, The descending vena cava, (vein.) 2, The ascending vena cava, (vein.) 3, The right auricle. 4, The opening between the right auricle and the right ventricle. 5, The right ventricle. 6, The tricuspid valves. 7, The pulmonary artery. 8, 8, The branches of the pulmonary artery that pass to the right and left lung. 9, The semilunar valves of the pulmonary artery. 10, The septum between the two ventricles of the heart. 11, 11, The pulmonary veins. 12, The left auricle. 13, The opening between the left auricle and ventricle. 14, The left ventricle. 15, The mitral valves. 16, 16, The aorta. 17, The semilunar valves of the aorta.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 355. Describe the course of the blood from the right auricle in the heart to the lungs. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ If the blood is not changed in the lungs, it will not flow to the pulmonary veins. This phenomenon is seen in instances of death from drowning, strangling, carbonic acid, &c. The same is true, but in a less degree, of individuals whose apparel is tight, as well as of those who breathe impure air, or have diseased lungs. 356. The left auricle, (12,) by its contraction, forces the blood into the left ventricle, (14.) The mitral valves (15) prevent its reflowing. From the left ventricle the blood is forced into the aorta, (16,) through which, and its subdivisions, it is distributed to every part of the system. The semilunar valves (17) prevent its returning. _Observation._ The parts of the circulatory organs most liable to disease are the valves of the heart, particularly the mitral. When these membranous folds become ossified or ruptured, the blood regurgitates, and causes great distress in breathing. The operations of the system are thus disturbed as the movements of the steam engine would be if its valves were injured, or did not play freely. 357. The difference between the functions of the pulmonary artery and aorta is, the former communicates with the right ventricle of the heart, and distributes only impure blood to the lungs; the other connects with the left ventricle of the heart, and distributes pure blood to the whole body, the lungs not excepted. At the extremity of the divisions of the aorta, as well as the pulmonary artery, are found capillary vessels. This curious net-work of vessels connects with the minute veins of the body, which return the blood to the heart. _Observation._ The function of the veins of the systemic circulation is similar to the office of the arteries in the lungs, and that the veins of the pulmonic circulation transmit to the heart the pure, or nutrient blood, and thus supply the arteries of the general system with assimilating fluid. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is the effect when the blood is not changed in the lungs? 356. Describe the circulation of the blood from the left auricle to the general system. What part of the circulatory organs is most liable to disease? What is the effect when the valves are diseased? 357. Give the difference in the functions of the pulmonary artery and aorta. Show the relation between the functions of the arteries and veins both of the pulmonic and systemic circulation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 358. The veins that receive the blood from all parts of the body, follow nearly the same course as the arteries. The myriads of these small vessels beneath the skin, and others that accompany the arteries, at last unite and form two large trunks, called _ve´na ca´va as-cend´ens_, and _de-scend´ens_. _Observation._ A peculiarity is presented in the veins which come from the stomach, spleen, pancreas, and intestines. After forming a large trunk, they enter the liver, and ramify like the arteries, and in this organ they again unite into a trunk, and enter the ascending vein, or cava, near the heart. This is called the portal circulation. 359. The ventricles of the heart contract, or the "pulse" beats, about seventy-five times every minute; in adults; in infants, more than a hundred times every minute; in old persons, less than seventy-five times every minute. The energy of the contraction of this organ varies in different individuals of the same age. It is likewise modified by the health and tone of the system. It is difficult to estimate the muscular power of the heart; but, comparing it with other muscles, and judging from the force with which blood is ejected from a severed artery, it must be very great. _Observation._ The phenomenon known under the name of pulse, is the motion caused by the pressure of the blood against the coats of the arteries at each contraction of the ventricles. 360. The following experiment will demonstrate that the blood flows from the heart. Apply the fingers upon the artery at the wrist, at two different points, about two inches apart; if the pressure be moderately made, the "pulse" will be felt at both points. Let the point nearest the heart be pressed firmly, and there will be no pulsation at the lower point; but make strong pressure upon the lower point only, and the pulsation will continue at the upper point, proving that the blood flows from the heart, in the arteries, to different parts of the system. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 358. What is the course of the veins? What peculiarity is observable in the veins of the liver? 359. How often does the heart contract, or the pulse beat, in adults? In infants? In old persons? What is said of the energy of its contraction in different persons? How is the pulse produced? 360. Demonstrate by experiment that the blood flows from the heart. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 361. There are several influences, either separately or combined that propel the blood from the heart through the arteries, among which may be named,--1st. The contraction of the muscular walls of the heart. 2d. The contractile and elastic middle coat of the arteries aids the heart in impelling the blood to the minute vessels of the system. 3d. The peculiar action of the minute capillary vessels is considered, by some physiologists, as a motive power in the arterial circulation. 4th. The pressure of the muscles upon the arteries, when in a state of contraction, is a powerful agent, particularly when they are in active exercise. 362. The following experiments will demonstrate that the blood from every part of the system flows to the heart by the agency of the veins. 1st. Press firmly on one of the veins upon the back of the hand, carrying the pressure toward the fingers; for a moment, the vein will disappear. On removing the pressure of the finger, it will reappear, from the blood rushing in from below. 2d. If a tape be tied around the arm above the elbow, the veins below will become larger and more prominent, and also a greater number will be brought in view, while the veins above the tape are less distended. At this time, apply the finger at the wrist, and the pulsation of the arteries still continues, showing that the blood is constantly flowing from the heart through the arteries, into the veins; and the increased size of the veins shows that the pressure of the tape prevents its flowing back to the heart. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 361. State the influences that propel the blood from the heart. 362. Demonstrate by the first experiment that the blood flows to the heart. By the second experiment. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 363. The influences that return the blood to the heart through the veins, are not so easily understood as those that act on the blood in the arteries. Some physiologists have imputed an active propulsive power to the capillary vessels in carrying the blood through the veins. This is not easily explained, and perhaps it is as difficult to understand. An influence upon which others have dwelt, is the suction power of the heart in active dilatation, acting as a _vis a fronte_ (power in front) in drawing blood to it. 364. Another influence that aids the venous circulation is attributed to the propulsive power of the heart. It is not easy to comprehend how this power of the heart can be extended through the capillary vessels to the blood in the veins. Again, an important agency has been found, by some physiologists, in the inspiratory movements, which are supposed to draw the blood of the veins into the chest, in order to supply the vacuum which is created there by the elevation of the ribs and the descent of the diaphragm. 365. One of the most powerful causes which influence the venous circulation, is the frequently-recurring action of the muscles upon the venous trunks. When the muscles are contracted, they compress that portion of the veins which lie beneath the swell, and thus force the blood from one valve to the other, toward the heart. When they are relaxed, the veins refill, and are compressed by the recurring action of the muscles. _Observation._ The physician, in opening a vein, relies on the energetic contractions and sudden relaxations of the muscles, when he directs the patient to clasp the head of a cane, or the arm of a chair; these alternate motions of the muscles cause an increased flow of blood to the veins of the ligated arm. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 363. What is said of the influences that return the blood to the heart? What is said of the propulsive power of the capillaries? Of the suction power of the heart? 364. Give another influence. State another agency. 365. What is one of the most powerful causes which influence venous circulation? Give practical observation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 75. An ideal view of the circulation in the lungs and system. From the right ventricle of the heart, (2,) the dark, impure blood is forced into the pulmonary artery, (3,) and its branches (4, 5) carry the blood to the left and right lung. In the capillary vessels (6, 6) of the lungs, the blood becomes pure, or of a red color, and is returned to the left auricle of the heart, (9,) by the veins, (7, 8.) From the left auricle the pure blood passes into the left ventricle, (10.) By a forcible contraction of the left ventricle of the heart, the blood is thrown into the aorta, (11.) Its branches (12, 13, 13) carry the pure blood to every organ or part of the body. The divisions and subdivisions of the aorta terminate in capillary vessels, represented by 14, 14. In these hair-like vessels the blood becomes dark colored, and is returned to the right auricle of the heart (1) by the vena cava descendens, (15,) and vena cava ascendens, (16.) The tricuspid valves (17) prevent the reflow of the blood from the right ventricle to the right auricle. The semilunar valves (18) prevent the blood passing from the pulmonary artery to the right ventricle. The mitral valves (19) prevent the reflow of blood from the left ventricle to the left auricle. The semilunar valves (20) prevent the reflow of blood from the aorta to the left ventricle.] 366. The muscles exercise an agency in maintaining the venous circulation at a point above what the heart could perform. As the pulsations are diminished by rest, so they are accelerated by exercise, and very much quickened by violent effort. There can be little doubt that the increased rapidity of the return of blood through the veins, is, of itself, a sufficient cause for the accelerated movements of the heart during active exercise. _Observation._ The quantity of blood in different individuals varies. From twenty-five to thirty-five pounds may be considered an average estimate in a healthy adult of medium size. The time in which the blood courses through the body and returns to the heart, is different in different individuals. Many writers on physiology unconditionally limit the period to three minutes. It is undeniable that the size and health of a person, the condition of the heart, lungs, and brain, the quantity of the circulating fluid, the amount and character of the inspired air, and the amount of muscular action, exert a modifying influence. The time probably varies from three to eight minutes. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 366. What causes the accelerated movements of the heart during active exercise? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Note._ Let the pupil review the anatomy and physiology of the circulatory organs from fig. 75, or from anatomical outline plates, No. 6 and 7. CHAPTER XIX. HYGIENE OF THE CIRCULATORY ORGANS 367. If any part of the system is deprived of blood, its vitality will cease; but, if the blood is lessened in quantity to a limited extent, only the vigor and health of the part will be impaired. The following conditions, if observed, will favor the free and regular supply of blood to all portions of the system. 368. _The clothing should be loosely worn._ Compression of any kind impedes the passage of blood through the vessels of the compressed portion. Hence, no article of apparel should be worn so as to prevent a free flow of blood through every organ of the body. 369. The blood which passes to and from the brain, flows through the vessels of the neck. If the dressing of this part of the body is close, the circulation will be impeded, and the functions of the brain will be impaired. This remark is particularly important to scholars, public speakers, and individuals predisposed to apoplexy, and other diseases of the brain. 370. As many of the large veins lie immediately beneath the skin, through which the blood is returned from the lower extremities, if the ligatures used to retain the hose, or any other article of apparel, in proper position, be tight and inelastic, the passage of blood through these vessels will be obstructed, producing, by their distention, the varicose, or enlarged veins. Hence elastic bands should always be used for these purposes. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 367-386. _Give the hygiene of the circulatory organs._ 367. What effect will be produced on the body if it is deprived of blood? If the blood is only lessened in quantity? 368. Why should the clothing be worn loose? 369. What is said of dressing the neck? To what persons is this remark applicable? 370. How are enlarged veins frequently produced? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 371. _An equal temperature of all parts of the system promotes health._ A chill on one portion of the body diminishes the size of its circulating vessels, and the blood which should distend and stimulate the chilled part, will accumulate in other organs. The deficiency of blood in the chilled portion induces weakness, while the superabundance of sanguineous fluid may cause disease in another part of the system. 372. _The skin should be kept not only of an equal, but at its natural temperature._ If the skin is not kept warm by adequate clothing, so that chills shall not produce a contraction of the blood-vessels and a consequent paleness, the blood will recede from the surface of the body, and accumulate in the internal organs. Cleanliness of the skin is likewise necessary, for the reason, that this condition favors the free action of the cutaneous vessels. _Observation._ When intending to ride in a cold day, wash the face, hands, and feet, in cold water, and rub them smartly with a coarse towel. This is far better to keep the extremities warm, than to take spirits into the stomach. 373. _Exercise promotes the circulation of the blood._ As the action of the muscles is one of the important agents which propel the blood through the arteries and veins, daily and regular exercise of the muscular system is required to sustain a vigorous circulation in the extremities and skin, and also to maintain a healthy condition of the system. The best stimulants to improve the sluggish circulation of an indolent patient, whose skin is pale and whose extremities are cold, are the union of vigorous muscular exercise with agreeable mental action, and the systematic application to the skin of cold water, attended with friction. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 371. Why should the temperature of the body be equal? 372. Why should the skin be kept at its natural, as well as at an equal temperature? What practical observation when intending to ride in a cold day? 373. Why does exercise promote health? What are good stimulants for sluggish circulation in the indolent? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Illustration._ The coach-driver and teamster throw their arms around their bodies to warm them when cold. The muscles that are called into action in swinging the arms, force a greater quantity of blood into the chilled parts, and consequently, more heat is produced. 374. When a number of muscles are called into energetic action, a greater quantity of blood will be propelled to the lungs and heart in a given time, than when the muscles are in a state of comparative inaction. It is no uncommon occurrence, that before there is a proper expansion of the respiratory organs to correspond with the frequency and energy of the movements of the muscles, there is an accumulation of blood in the lungs, attended by a painful sensation of fulness and oppression in the chest, with violent and irregular action of the heart. This condition of the organs of the chest, called _congestion_, may be followed by cough, inflammation of the lungs, asthma, and a structural disease of the heart. 375. To avoid these sensations and results, when we feel necessitated to walk or run a considerable distance in a short time, commence the movements in a moderate manner increasing the speed as the respiratory movements become more frequent and their expansion more extensive, so that a sufficient amount of air may be received into the lungs to purify the increased quantity of blood forced into them. The same principles should be observed when commencing labor, and in driving horses and other animals. _Observation._ When a large number of muscles are called into action after repose, as when we rise from a recumbent or sitting posture, the blood is impelled to the heart with a very strong impetus. If that organ should be diseased, it may arrive there in larger quantities than can be disposed of, and death may be the result. Hence the necessity of avoiding all sudden and violent movements, on the part of those who have either a functional or structural disease of the heart. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Mention the illustration. 374. What is the effect when a number of muscles are called into energetic action? What effect has this accumulation of blood in the lungs? 375. How can such disagreeable sensations be avoided? Mention a practical observation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 376. _The mind exercises no inconsiderable influence upon the circulatory organs._ When an individual is stimulated by hope, or excited by anger, the heart beats more forcibly, and the arteries act more energetically, than when a person is influenced by fear, despair, or sorrow. Consequently, the system is more fully nourished, and capable of greater exertion, when the former condition obtains, than when the latter exists. 377. _The quality and quantity of the blood modify the action of the heart and blood-vessels._ If this fluid is abundant and pure, the circulatory vessels act with more energy than when it is deficient in quantity or defective in quality. _Illustrations._ 1st. In an athletic man, whose heart beats forcibly, and whose pulse is strong, if a considerable quantity of blood is drawn from a vein, as in bleeding, the heart will beat feebly, and the pulse will become weak. 2d. When the blood is made impure by inhaling vitiated air, the action of the heart and arteries is diminished, which produces an effect similar to that which takes place when blood is drawn from a vein. 378. _Hemorrhage from divided arteries should be immediately arrested._ When large blood-vessels are wounded or cut, the flow of blood must be immediately stopped, or the person soon faints, and the heart ceases its action. If it is a large artery that is wounded, the blood will be thrown out in jets, or jerks, every time the pulse beats. The flow of blood can be stopped until a surgeon arrives, either by compressing the vessel between the wound and the heart, or by compressing the end of the divided artery in the wound. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 376. State some of the effects that the mind has on circulation. 377. What effect have the quantity and quality of blood upon the circulatory organs? Give illustration 1st. Illustration 2d. 378. What is necessary when large blood-vessels are wounded or cut? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 76. The track of the large artery of the arm. 1, The collar-bone. 9, The axillary artery. 10, The brachial artery.] [Illustration: Fig. 77. B, The manner of compressing the artery near the collar-bone. A, The manner of compressing the large artery of the arm, with the fingers. C, The manner of compressing the divided extremity of an artery in the wound, with a finger.] 379. After making compression with the fingers, as described and illustrated, take a piece of cloth or handkerchief, twist it cornerwise, and tie a hard knot midway between the two ends. This knot should be placed over the artery, between the wound and the heart, and the ends carried around the limb and loosely tied. A stick, five or six inches long, should be placed under the handkerchief, which should be twisted until the knot has made sufficient compression on the artery to allow the removal of the fingers without a return of bleeding. Continue the compression until a surgeon can be called. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is shown by fig. 76? By fig. 77? 379. What is to be done after compressing the wound, as before described? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 78. A, B, The track of the large artery of the arm. The figure exhibits the method of applying the knotted handkerchief to make compression on this artery.] [Illustration: Fig. 79. A, C, The track of the large artery of the thigh. B, The method of applying the knotted handkerchief to compress this artery. In practice, the twisting stick B should be placed opposite the knot over the artery A, C.] 380. When an artery of the arm is cut, elevating the wounded limb above the head will tend to arrest the flow of blood. In a wound of a lower limb, raise the foot, so that it shall be higher than the hip, until the bleeding ceases. _Illustration._ On one occasion, the distinguished Dr. Nathan Smith was called to a person who had divided one of the large arteries below the knee. After trying in vain to find the bleeding vessel, so as to secure it, he caused the foot to be elevated higher than the hip. At the first instant the blood was forced from the wound about twelve inches; in a minute, it was diminished to three or four; and, in a short time, the bleeding ceased. This Dr. S. called his "_great_" operation; and it was truly great in _simplicity_ and _science_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is shown by fig. 78 and 79? 380. What suggestion relative to the position of a limb when bleeding? Relate a simple operation by Dr. Nathan Smith. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 381. The practical utility of every person knowing the proper means of arresting hemorrhage from severed arteries, is illustrated by the following incidents. In 1848, in the town of N., Mass., a mechanic divided the femoral artery; although several adult persons were present, he died in a few minutes from loss of blood, because those persons were ignorant of the method of compressing severed arteries until a surgeon could be obtained. 382. In 1846, a similar accident occurred in the suburbs of Philadelphia. While the blood was flowing copiously, a lad, who had received instruction on the treatment of such accidents at the Philadelphia High School, rushed through the crowd that surrounded the apparently dying man, placed his finger upon the divided vessel, and continued the compression until the bleeding artery was secured by a surgeon. 383. In "flesh wounds," when no large blood-vessel is divided, wash the part with cold water, and, when bleeding has ceased, draw the incision together, and retain it with narrow strips of adhesive plaster. These should be put on smoothly, and a sufficient number applied to cover the wound. In most instances of domestic practice, the strips of adhesive plaster are too wide. They should not exceed in width one fourth of an inch. Then apply a loose bandage, and avoid all "healing salves," ointments, and washes. In removing the dressing from a wound, both ends of the strips of plaster should be raised and drawn toward the incision. The liability of the wound re-opening is thus diminished. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 381. Relate the first incident showing the utility of every person knowing the proper method of arresting the flow of blood from divided arteries. 382. The second incident. 383. How should "flesh wounds" be dressed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ The union of the divided parts is effected by the action of the divided blood-vessels, and not by salves and ointments. The only object of the dressing is to keep the parts together, and protect the wound from air and impurities. _Nature_, in all cases of injuries, performs her own cure. Such simple wounds do not generally require a second dressing and should not be opened until the incisions are healed. [Illustration: Fig. 80. The manner in which strips of adhesive plaster are applied to wounds.] 384. In wounds made by pointed instruments, as a nail, or in lacerated wounds, as those made by forcing a blunt instrument, as a hook, into the soft parts, there will be no direct and immediate union. In these cases, apply a soothing poultice, as one made of linseed meal, and also keep the limb still. It is judicious to consult a physician immediately, in punctured or lacerated wounds, because they often induce the most dangerous diseases. 385. Wounds caused by the bite of rabid animals or venomous serpents, should be immediately cleansed with pure water. In many instances, the application of suction, either with "cupping glasses," or the mouth, will prevent the introduction of the poisonous matter into the system by absorption. When this is effected, cover the wound with a soothing poultice, as one made of slippery elm bark. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What should be avoided? How should the strips of plaster be removed from a wound? How is the union of the divided parts effected? 384. How should punctured and lacerated wounds be dressed? 385. What is the treatment of wounds caused by the bite of rabid animals? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ Although animal poisons, when introduced into the circulating fluid through the broken surface of the skin, frequently cause death, yet they can be taken into the mouth and stomach with impunity, if the mucous membrane which lines these parts is not broken. [Illustration: Fig. 81. _a_, _a_, Representation of wounds on the back part of the arm and fore-arm _b_, _b_, Wounds on the anterior part of the arm and fore-arm. By bending the elbow and wrist, the incisions at _a_, _a_, are opened, while those at _b_, _b_, are closed. Were the arm extended at the elbow and wrist, the wounds at _a_, _a_, would be closed, and those at _b_, _b_, would be opened.] 386. The proper position of the limbs favors the union of wounds. If the incision be upon the anterior part of the leg, between the knee and ankle, extending the knee and bending the ankle will aid its closing. If it be upon the back part of the leg, by extending the foot and bending the knee, the gaping of the incision will be diminished. When wounds occur upon the trunk or upper extremities, let the position of the person be regarded. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 386 Does the proper position of the limbs favor the union of wounds? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XX. ABSORPTION. 387. ABSORPTION is the process by which the materials of nutrition are removed from the alimentary canal, to be conveyed into the circulatory vessels. It is likewise the process by which the particles of matter that have become injurious, or useless, are removed from the mass of fluids and solids of which the body is composed. These renovating and removing processes are performed by two sets of vessels ANATOMY OF THE LYMPHATIC VESSELS. 388. The vessels that act exclusively for the growth and renovation of the system, are found only in the alimentary canal. They are called lacteals. The vessels whose sole function is to remove particles of matter already deposited, are called _Lym-phat´ics_. The radicles, or commencement of the veins, in many, and it may be in all parts of the body, perform the office of absorption. _Observation._ This fact accounts for the capacity of the venous system exceeding the arterial. Had the veins no other function to perform, beside returning the blood that had been distributed by the arteries, it would be reasonable to suppose that this system would be less than the arterial, but the reverse is known to be true. 389. The LYMPHATIC VESSELS, in structure, resemble the lacteals. They exist in great numbers in the skin and mucous membranes, particularly those of the lungs. Though no lymphatics have been traced to the brain, it is presumed that they exist there, as this part of the body is not exempt from the composition and decomposition, which are perpetual in the body. These vessels are extremely minute at their origin, so that in many parts of the system they cannot be detected without the aid of a microscope. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 387. Define absorption. 388-391. _Give the anatomy of the lymphatic vessels._ 388. What are those vessels called that act exclusively for the growth and renovation of the body? Those whose office is to remove the atoms already deposited? What other vessels perform the office of absorption? Give observation. 389. Describe the lymphatics. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 82. A single lymphatic vessel, much magnified.] [Illustration: Fig. 83. The valves of a lymphatic trunk.] [Illustration: Fig. 84. 1, A lymphatic gland with several vessels passing through it.] 390. The lymphatic vessels, like the veins, diminish in number as they increase in size, while pursuing their course toward the large veins near the heart, into which they pour their contents. The walls of these vessels have two coats of which the external one is cellular, and is capable of considerable distention. The internal coat is folded so as to form valves, like those in the veins. Their walls are so thin, that these folds give them the appearance of being knotted. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is represented by fig. 82? By fig. 83? By fig. 84? 390. In what respect do these vessels resemble the veins of the system? Give the structure of their coats. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 391. At certain points, the lymphatic vessels pass through distinct, soft bodies, peculiar to themselves, which are called _lymphatic glands_, which are to these vessels what the mesenteric glands are to the lacteals. The lymphatic glands vary in form and in size. They are extremely vascular, and appear to consist of a collection of minute vessels. These glands are found in different parts of the body, but are most numerous in the groins, axilla, or arm-pits, neck, and cavities of the chest and abdomen. _Observation._ From exposure to cold, these glands are frequently enlarged and inflamed. They are known under the name of "kernels." They are often diseased, particularly in scrofula, or "king's evil." PHYSIOLOGY OF THE LYMPHATIC VESSELS. 392. Though the lacteals and lymphatics resemble each other in their structure and termination, yet they differ as to the nature of the fluids which they convey, as well as the nature of their functions. The lacteals open into the small intestine, and possess the power of rejecting all substances in the passing aliment, but the chyle. The lymphatics, on the contrary, not only imbibe all the various constituents of the body, both fluid and solid, but they sometimes absorb foreign and extraneous substances, when presented to their mouths, as in vaccination. 393. The varieties of absorption are, the _In-ter-sti´tial_, _Rec-re-men-ti´tial_, _Ex-cre-men-ti´tial_, _Cu-ta´ne-ous_, _Res-pi´ra-to-ry_, _Ve´nous_, and the _Lac´te-al_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 391. Describe the lymphatic glands. What observation is given in regard to these glands? 392-403. _Give the physiology of the lymphatic vessels._ 392. Explain the difference between the lacteals and lymphatics 393. Name the varieties of absorption. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 394. INTERSTITIAL absorption is that change which is constantly going on in the animal economy among the particles of matter of which every texture is composed. The ordinary functions of the body, in health, require incessant action of the lymphatics; the circulatory system, with its myriads of small vessels, is constantly depositing new atoms of matter, which become vitalized, and perform a course of actions, then die, or become useless. These old atoms are removed by the absorbent system. Thus, wherever there is a minute artery to deposit a living particle of matter, there is a lymphatic vessel, or venous radicle, to remove it as soon as it shall have finished its particular office. 395. The action of the lymphatic vessels counterbalances those of nutrition, and thus the form and size of every part of the body is preserved. When their action exceeds that of the nutrient vessels, the body emaciates; when it is deficient, plethora is the result. In youth, they are less active than the nutrient vessels, and the limbs are plump; but in later periods of life, we find these actions reversed, and the body diminishes in size. It is not unfrequent that wens, and other tumors of considerable size, disappear, and even the entire bone of a limb has been removed from the same general cause. The effused fluids of bruises are also removed by absorption. _Observations._ 1st. When little or no food is taken into the stomach, life is supported by the lymphatic vessels and veins imbibing the fat and reconveying it into the blood vessels. It is the removal of this secretion which causes the emaciation of the face and extremities of a person recovering from a fever. In consumption, the extreme attenuation of the limbs is caused by the absorption, not only of the fat, but also of the muscles and more solid parts of the system. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 394. What is interstitial absorption? Flow are the new atoms of matter deposited? How removed? 395. What vessels do the lymphatics counterbalance in action? What is the result when their action exceeds that of the nutrient vessels? When it is less? Mention some instances of active absorption. What causes the emaciated limbs of a person recovering from fever? The extreme attenuation in consumption? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. Animals which live in a half torpid state during the winter, derive their nourishment from the same source. In other words, we may say the starving animal lives for a time upon itself, eating up, by internal absorption, such parts of the body as can be spared under urgent necessity, to feed those organs and continue those functions that are absolutely essential to life. 396. RECREMENTITIAL absorption is the removal of those fluids from the system, which are secreted upon surfaces that have no external outlet. These fluids are various, as the fat, the marrow, the synovia of joints, serous fluids, and the humors of the eye. Were it not for this variety of absorption, dropsy would generally exist in the cavities of the brain, chest, and abdomen, from the continued action of the secretory vessels. 397. EXCREMENTITIAL absorption relates to the fluids which have been excreted, such as the bile, pancreatic fluid, saliva, milk, and other secretions. 398. CUTANEOUS absorption relates to the skin. Here the lymphatic vessels extend only to the cuticle, which they do not permeate. There has been much diversity of opinion on the question of cutaneous absorption; some maintaining that this membrane absorbs, while others deny it. Many experiments have proved that the skin may absorb sufficient nutriment to support life for a time, by immersing the patient in a bath of milk or broth. It has been found that the hand, immersed to the wrist in warm water, will absorb from ninety to one hundred grains of fluid in the space of an hour. 399. Thirst may be quenched by applying moist clothes to the skin, or by bathing. It is no uncommon occurrence, during a passage from one continent to the other, for the saliva to become bitter by the absorption of sea water. Medicinal substances, such as mercury, morphine, and Spanish flies, are frequently introduced into the system through the skin. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 396. What is recrementitial absorption? 397. Define excrementitial absorption. 393. To what does cutaneous absorption relate? Is there a diversity of opinion respecting this variety of absorption? What do well attested experiments show? 399. What remark in reference to quenching thirst? What agency conveys medicinal substances and ointments into the system when tabbed on the skin? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 400. RESPIRATORY absorption has reference to the lungs. The mucous membrane of these organs is abundantly supplied with lymphatic vessels. By their action, substances finely pulverized, or in the form of gas, are readily imbibed when inhaled into the lungs, such as metallic vapors, odoriferous particles, _tobacco smoke_, and other effluvia. In this way, contagious diseases are frequently contracted. _Illustration._ In inhaling sulphuric ether, or letheon, it is introduced into the vessels of the lungs in the form of vapor, and through them it is rapidly conveyed to the brain, and thus influences the nervous system. 401. VENOUS absorption is the function which the veins perform in absorbing from the alimentary canal liquids of various kinds that have been taken into the stomach and are not converted into chyle. In other parts of the body, they also perform the common office of lymphatics. 402. LACTEAL, or digestive absorption has reference to the absorption of chyle only, which is destined for the nutrition of the body. 403. Absorption is not only very abundant, but generally very rapid, and all these varieties are maintained through life, except when suspended by disease. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 400. What is said of respiratory absorption? How is letheon introduced into the system? 401. Define venous absorption. 402. What is lacteal absorption? 403. What is said of absorption? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 85. A representation of the lymphatic vessels and glands. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, The lymphatic vessels and glands of the lower limbs. 7, Lymphatic glands. 8, The commencement of the thoracic duct. 9, The lymphatics of the kidney. 10, Of the stomach. 11, Of the liver. 12, 12, Of the lungs. 13, 14, 15, The lymphatics and glands of the arm. 16, 17, 18, Of the face and neck. 19, 20, Large veins. 21, The thoracic duct. 26, The lymphatics of the heart.] HYGIENE OF THE LYMPHATIC VESSELS. 404. By the action of the lymphatics, substances of an injurious, as well as of a beneficial, character may be conveyed into the system. These vessels, under certain conditions, are more active in their office than at other periods; and it is of practical utility to know what influences their action. 405. _The function of these vessels is increased by moisture, and lessened by an active state of the lacteals._ Observation shows that the ill-fed, and those persons that live in marshy districts, contract contagious diseases more readily than those individuals who are well fed, and breathe a dry and pure air. 406. _The air of the sick-room should be dry._ If due attention is not given to ventilation, the clothing of the nurse and patient, together with the air of the room, will be moistened by the exhalations from the skin and lungs. This exhalation may contain a poison of greater or less power, according to its quantity and degree of concentration, and may be absorbed and reconveyed into the system, causing inflammatory diseases, and not unfrequently death. _Observations._ 1st. When we are attending a sick person a current of air that has passed over the patient should be avoided. We may approach with safety very near a person who has an infectious disease, provided care is taken to keep on the side from which the currents of air are admitted into the room. 2d. When we have been visiting or attending on a sick person, it is judicious to change the apparel worn in the sick-room, and also give the skin a thorough bathing. The outside garments, also, should be aired, as poisonous matter may have penetrated the meshes of the clothing. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 404-413. _Give the hygiene of the lymphatic vessels._ 404. What is said respecting the action of the lymphatic vessels? 405. What influences the function of these vessels? What does observation show? 406. Why should the air of the sick-room be dry? What suggestion when we have been visiting or attending on the sick? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 407. _The stomach should be supplied with food of a nutrient and digestible character, in proper quantities, and at stated periods._ The chyle formed from the food stimulates the lacteals to activity, which activity is attended with an inactive state of the lymphatics of the skin and lungs. Thus due attention should be given to the food of the attendants on the sick, and the members of the family. Before visiting a sick person it is judicious to take a moderate amount of nutritious food. _Observation._ Many individuals, to prevent contracting disease that may be communicated from one person to another, use tobacco, either chewed or smoked; and sometimes alcohol, with decoctions of bitter herbs. These substances do not diminish, but tend to increase, the activity of the lymphatics. Thus they make use of the means by which the poisonous matter formed in the system of the diseased person, may be more readily conveyed into their own. 408. _The skin and clothing, as well as the bed-linen, should be frequently cleansed._ This will remove the poisonous matter that may be deposited upon the skin and garments, which, if suffered to remain, might be conveyed into the system by the action of the lymphatics. This points also to a frequent change of the wearing apparel, as well as the coverings of the bed. In visiting the unhealthy districts of the South and West, the liability of contracting disease is much lessened by taking a supply of food at proper periods, keeping the skin and clothing in a clean state, the room well ventilated, and avoiding the damp chills of evening. 409. _Absorption by the skin is most vigorous when the cuticle is removed by vesication, or blistering._ Then external applications are brought into immediate contact with the orifices of the lymphatics of the skin, and by them rapidly imbibed and circulated through the system. Thus arsenic applied to the cutaneous vessels, and strong solutions of opium to extensive burns, have been absorbed in quantities sufficient to poison the patient. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 407. Why should the stomach be supplied with food of a nutrient and digestible character? What is said of the use of alcohol, or tobacco, in preventing the introduction of the poisonous matter of contagious diseases? 408. Why should the clothing and bed-linen be frequently washed? What suggestion to persons in visiting the unhealthy districts of the South and West? 409. When is cutaneous absorption most vigorous? Why? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 410. _When the cuticle is only punctured or abraded, poisonous matter may be introduced into the system._ The highly respected Dr. W., of Boston, lost his life by poisonous matter from the body of a patient subjected to a post mortem examination. He had removed from his finger, previous to the examination, a "hang-nail," and the poison from the dead body was brought in contact with the denuded part, and through the agency of the lymphatics it was conveyed into the system. 411. Puncture any part of the cuticle with the finest instrument that has upon its point the smallest conceivable quantity of the _vaccine virus_, or small-pox matter, and it will be brought into contact with the lymphatic vessels, and through their agency conveyed into the system. The result is, that persons thus operated upon have the small-pox, or the vaccine disease. 412. When we expose ourselves to any poisonous vapors, or handle diseased animals or sick persons, safety and health require that the cuticle be not broken or otherwise injured. In many instances, the poisonous animal matter upon hides has been introduced into the systems of tanners, through small ulcers upon their fingers or hands. From these sores there would be seen small red lines extending up the arm. These swelled tracts indicate an inflammation of the large lymphatic trunks, that have been irritated and diseased by the passage of poisonous matter through them into the system. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 410. Do the same results follow, if the cuticle is only punctured? Relate an instance of death by the absorption of poisonous matter. 411. By what means is the vaccine matter introduced into the system? 412. What caution is necessary when we expose ourselves to poisonous vapors? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ A distressing illustration of the absorption of deleterious substances from the surface of a sore, is seen in the favorite experiments of that class of "quacks," who style themselves "cancer doctors." With them, every trifling and temporary enlargement, or tumor, is a cancer. Their general remedy is arsenic; and happy is the unfortunate sufferer who escapes destruction in their hands, for too frequently their speedy cure is death. 413. In case of an accidental wound, it is best immediately to bathe the part thoroughly in pure water, and to avoid all irritating applications. In some instances, it would be well to apply _lunar caustic_ immediately. When handling or shrouding dead bodies, or removing the skin from animals that have died of disease, it would be well to lubricate the hands with olive-oil or lard. This affords protection to the minute portions of the skin, from which the cuticle may be removed. In all cases where there is an ulcer or sore, the part should be covered with something impervious to fluids, as court-plaster, before exposing the system to any animal, vegetable, or mineral poison. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 413. What direction is given when the cuticle is broken? What suggestion is given when shrouding dead bodies? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXI. SECRETION. 414. In the human body are found many fluids and solids of dissimilar appearance and character. These are produced by the action of organs, some of which are of simple structure, while others are very complicated in their arrangement. These organs are called _Se-cre´to-ry_. ANATOMY OF THE SECRETORY ORGANS. 415. The SECRETORY ORGANS are the _Ex-ha´lants_, _Fol´li-cles_, and the _Glands_. 416. The EXHALANTS were supposed to be terminations of arteries or capillaries. The external exhalants terminate on the skin and mucous membranes; the internal in the cellular and medullary tissues. (Appendix I.) [Illustration: Fig. 86. A secretory follicle. An artery is seen, which supplies the material for its secretion. Follicles are also supplied with veins and organic nerves.] 417. The FOLLICLES are small bags, or sacs, situated in the true skin, and mucous membrane. The pores seen on the skin are the outlets of these bodies. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 414. How are the fluids and solids of the body produced? 415-419. _Give the anatomy of the secretory organs._ 415. Name the secretory organs. 416. Describe the exhalants. What is represented by fig. 86? 417. Define follicles. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 418. The GLANDS are soft, fleshy organs, and as various in their structure, as the secretions which it is their function to produce. Each gland is composed of many small lobules united in a compact mass, and each lobule communicates by a small duct with the principal outlet, or duct of the organ. Every gland is supplied with arteries, veins, lymphatics, and nerves. These, with the ducts, are arranged in a peculiar manner, and connected by cellular membrane. 419. There are two classes of glands, one for the modification of the fluids which pass through them, as the mesenteric and lymphatic glands; and the other for the secretion of fluids which are either useful in the animal economy, or require to be rejected from the body. [Illustration: Fig. 87. 1, 1, A secretory gland. 2, 2, Minute ducts that are spread through the glands. These coalesce to form the main duct, 3.] PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SECRETORY ORGANS. 420. SECRETION is one of the most obscure and mysterious functions of the animal economy. "It is that process by which various substances are separated from the blood, either with or without experiencing any change during their separation." Not only is the process by which substances are separated from the blood, called secretion, but the same term is also applied to substances thus separated. Thus physiologists say, that by the process of secretion, bile is formed by the liver; and also, that bile is the secretion of this organ. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 418. Give the structure of the glands. 419. How are the glands arranged? 420-431. _Give the physiology of the secretory organs._ 420. What is secretion? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 421. The secreted fluids do not exist in that form in the blood, but most of the elements of which they are made do exist in this fluid, and the "vessels by which it is accomplished may well be called the architects and chemists of the system; for out of the same material--the blood--they construct a variety of wonderful fabrics and chemical compounds. We see the same wonderful power possessed, also, by vegetables; for out of the same materials the olive prepares its oil, the cocoa-nut its milk, the cane its sugar, the poppy its narcotic, the oak its green pulpy leaves, and its dense woody fibre. All are composed of the same few, simple elements, arranged in different order and proportions." 422. "In like manner we find the vessels, in animated bodies, capable of forming all the various textures and substances which compose the frame; the cellular tissue, the membranes, the ligaments, the cartilages, the bones, the marrow, the muscles with their tendons, the lubricating fluid of the joints, the pulp of the brain, the transparent jelly of the eye; in short, all the textures of the various organs of which the body is composed, consist of similar ultimate elements, and are manufactured from the blood." 423. Of the agents that produce or direct the different secretions, we have no very accurate knowledge. Some have supposed this function to be mechanical, others a chemical process, but experiments prove that it is dependent on nervous influence. If the nerves are divided which are distributed to any organ, the process of secretion is suspended. It is no uncommon occurrence, that the nature of milk will be so changed from the influence of anger in the mother, as to cause vomiting, colic, and even convulsions, in the infant that swallows it. Unexpected intelligence either of a pleasant or unpleasant character, by its influence on the nervous system, will frequently destroy the appetite. Sometimes mental agitation, as fear, will cause a cold sweat to pervade the surface of the body. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 421. What is said respecting secreted substances? Do vegetables possess the property of secretion? 422. From what are the various textures formed? 423. Have we accurate knowledge of the agents that produce secretion? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 424. Secretions are constantly maintained, during life, from the serous membrane, by the action of the internal exhalants. The fluid which is exhaled bears some resemblance to the serum of the blood. Its use is to furnish the organs, which are surrounded by this membrane, with a proper degree of moisture, and thus enables them to move easily on each other, as those within the chest and abdomen. 425. The cellular tissue exhales a serous fluid, and when it becomes excessive in quantity, general dropsy is produced. Fat is another secretion, which is thrown out, in a fluid state, from the cellular membrane. It is deposited in little cells, and exists in the greatest abundance between the skin and the muscles. Its use seems to be, to form a cushion around the body for its protection; to furnish nutriment for the system when food cannot be taken; to supply the carbon and hydrogen necessary to sustain the generation of heat, when these articles of combustion are not otherwise furnished. The _med´ul-la-ry_ substance, (marrow,) in the cavities of the long bones, is very much like fat. _Observation._ During sickness, if there is not emaciation or absorption of this secretion, it is considered an unfavorable symptom, because it indicates a want of power in the absorbing system, which is among the last to be affected. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is it proved that secretion depends on nervous influence? 424. What is said of the secretions from the serous membrane? 425. From what tissue is a serous fluid exhaled? What is the effect when this fluid becomes excessive in quantity? What is fat? Its use? What is marrow? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 426. The mucous secretion is a transparent, viscid fluid which is secreted by those membranes that line the cavities of the body, which have an external communication, as the trachea and alimentary canal. This secretion serves to protect these parts from the influence of the air, and concurs, by means of its peculiar properties, in the performance of their functions. 427. There are two external secretions, namely, one from the skin, called perspiration, and the other from the lungs. The cutaneous exhalation, or transpiration[14] exists in two forms, called sensible perspiration (sweat) and insensible perspiration. The pulmonary exhalation is the most important and universal, and closely resembles that of the skin. [14] _Transpiration_ is a term often used generically, to signify the passage of fluids or gases through membranes, internally or externally; but _perspiration_ is a specific term, signifying transpiration on to the external surface. 428. The follicles are found only in the skin and mucous membrane. They secrete an oily, unctuous substance, which mixes with the transpiration, and lubricates the skin. At the root of each hair there is a minute follicle, which secretes the fluid that oils the hair. The wax in the passage of the ear is secreted from these bodies. 429. All the blood distributed to the different glands is similar in composition and character; but the fluids secreted by them, vary in appearance in a remarkable degree. The office of the glands appears to be principally to form different secretions. Thus the salivary glands secrete the insipid saliva; the lachrymal glands, the saline tears; the liver, the yellow, ropy bile; and the kidneys, the acrid urine. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 426. What is said relative to the mucous secretion? 427. Name the external secretions. 428. Give the office of the follicles. 429. What appears to be the principal office of the glands? 430. Mention a secretion produced in a particular emergency. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 430. Some secretions are evidently produced only in particular emergencies, as is seen in the increased secretion of bony matter when a limb is broken. 431. When any substance which is not demanded for nutrition, or does not give nourishment to the system, is imbibed by the lymphatic vessels, and conveyed into the blood, it is eliminated in the secretions. _Illustration._ A few years since, a poor inebriate was carried to a London hospital in a state of intoxication. He lived but a few hours. On examining his brain, nearly half a gill of fluid, strongly impregnated with gin, was found in the cavities of this organ. This was secreted from the vessels of the brain. HYGIENE OF THE SECRETORY ORGANS. 432. _Unless the secretions are regularly maintained, disease will be the ultimate result._ Let the secretions from the skin be suppressed, and fever or some internal inflammation will follow. If the bile is impeded, digestion will be impaired. If any other secretion is suppressed, it will cause a derangement of the various internal organs. _Observation._ Ardent spirits derange the secretions, and change the structure of the brain. This is one reason why inebriates do not generally live to advanced age. 433. _The quantity of blood influences the character of the secretions._ If it is lessened to any great extent, the secretions will be lessened as well as changed in character. _Illustration._ When a person has lost a considerable quantity of blood, there is a sensation of thirst in the fauces, attended with a cold, pale, dry skin. When reaction comes on, the perspiration is cold, attended with nausea, and sometimes vomiting. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 431. What becomes of those substances imbibed by the lymphatics that do not give nourishment to the body. 432-437. _Give the hygiene of the secretory organs._ 432. What effect on the system when the secretions are not regularly maintained? 433. Does the quantity of blood influence the secretions? Give an illustration. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 434. _The secretory organs require the stimulus of pure blood._ If this fluid is vitiated, the action of the secretory organs will be more or less modified. Either the quantity will be affected or the quality will be altered. _Observation._ The impurity of the blood arising from the inhalation of the vitiated air of sleeping rooms, diminishes and changes the character of the secretions of the mouth and stomach. This accounts for the thirst, coated tongue, and disagreeable taste of the mouth when impure air is breathed during sleep. The disease it induces, is indigestion or dyspepsia. 435. _The amount of action modifies the condition of the secretory organs._ When a secretory organ is excessively stimulated, its vigor and energy are reduced. The subsequent debility may be so great as to suppress or destroy its functional power. _Illustrations._ 1st. In those sections of the country where flax is spun on a "foot-wheel," it is not unfrequent that the spinners moisten the thread with the secretions of the mouth. This seems to operate economically for a time, but debility of the salivary organs soon follows, which incapacitates them from supplying saliva sufficient to moisten the food, producing in a short time disease of the digestive organs. 2d. The habit of continual spitting, which attends the chewing of tobacco and gums, and other substances, between meals, induces debility, not only of the salivary glands, but of the system generally. 436. _One secretory organ may do the office of another._ This increased action of a secretory organ may be sustained for a limited time without permanent injury, but, if long continued, a diseased action of the organ will follow. Of morbid secretions we have examples in the ossification of the valves of the heart, cancerous and other tumors. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 434. What is the effect of impure blood on the secretory organs? 435. What results from stimulating excessively a secretory organ? How is this illustrated? 436. What is the effect when one secretory organ performs the office of another? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ In the evenings of the warm season, a chill upon the impressible skin, that suppresses the perspiration, is frequently followed by a diarrhoea, dysentery, or cholera morbus. These can be prevented by avoiding the chill. An efficient means of relief, is immediately to restore the skin to its proper action. 437. _The secretions are much influenced by the mind._ How this is effected, it is difficult to explain; but many facts corroborate it. Every one has felt an increased action of the tear-glands from distressing feelings. Cheerfulness of disposition and serenity of the passions are peculiarly favorable to the proper performance of the secretory function. From this we may learn how important it is to avoid such things as distract, agitate, or harass us. _Observation._ In fevers and other diseases, when the skin, mouth, and throat are dry from a suppression of the secretions, let the mind of the patient be changed from despondency to hope, and the skin and the membrane that lines the mouth and throat will exhibit a more moist condition, together with a general improvement of the vital organs of the system. Consequently, all just encouragement of the restoration to health should be given to a sick person. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give examples of morbid secretions. What is one cause of dysentery and cholera morbus? How can these affections he relieved? 437. Show the influence of the mind on the secretions. Mention instances of its influence. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXII. NUTRITION. 438. NUTRITION is the vital act by which the different parts of the body renew the materials of which they are composed. Digestion, circulation, absorption, and respiration, are but separate links in the chain of nutrition, which would be destroyed by the absence of any one of them. 439. The nutritive process is also a kind of secretion, by which particles of matter are separated from the blood and conveyed with wonderful accuracy to the appropriate textures. The function of the nutrient vessels antagonizes those of absorption: while one system is constructing, with beautiful precision, the animal frame, the other is diligently employed in pulling down this complicated structure. 440. This ever-changing state of the body is shown by giving animals colored matter, mixed with their food, which in a short time tinges their bones with the same color as the matter introduced. Let it be withdrawn, and in a few days the bones will assume their former color--evidently from the effects of absorption. The changeful state of the body is further shown by the losses to which it is subjected; by the necessity of aliment; by the emaciation which follows abstinence from food. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 438-454. _What remarks respecting nutrition?_ 438. What is nutrition? 439. What is said of the nutritive process? The function of the nutrient vessels? 440. Give a proof of the ever-changing state of the body. Give other instances illustrative of the changeful state of the body. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 441. Every part of the body is subject to this continual change of material, yet it is effected with such regularity, that the size, shape, and appearance, of every organ is preserved; and after an interval of a few years, there may not remain a particle of matter which existed in the system at a former period. Notwithstanding this entire change, the personal identity is never lost. 442. Many calculations have been made to determine in what length of time the whole body is renewed. Some have supposed that it is accomplished in four years; others have fixed the period at seven years; but the time of the change is not definite, as was supposed by a genuine son of the Emerald Isle, who had been in America _seven years and three months_, and consequently maintained that he was a native American. _Observation._ India ink, when introduced into the skin, is not removed; hence some assert that this tissue is an exception to the alternate deposition and removal of its atoms. The ink remains because its particles are too large to be absorbed, and when in the skin it is insoluble. 443. "Those animals which are most complicated in their structure, and are distinguished by the greatest variety of vital manifestations, are subject to the most rapid changes of matter. Such animals require more frequent and more abundant supplies of food; and, in proportion as they are exposed to the greater number of external impressions, will be the rapidity of this change of matter." 444. "Animals may be situated so that they lose nothing by secretion; consequently, they will require no nutriment. Frogs have been taken from fissures in solid lime rock, which were imbedded many feet below the surface of the earth, and, on being exposed to the air, exhibited signs of life." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 441. Why is the personal identity never lost in the change of materials, which is unceasing in the system? 442. Give the opinion of physiologists respecting the time required for the renewal of the whole body. What exception to the changing state Of the different textures? 443. What animals are subject to the most rapid changes of material? 444. May animals be situated so that they require no nutriment? What is related of frogs? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 445. The renovation of the bone, muscle, ligament, tendon, cartilage, fat, nerve, hair, &c., is not perfected merely by the general circulation of the fluid which is expelled from the left side of the heart, but through the agency of a system of minute vessels, which, under ordinary circumstances, cannot be seen by the eye, even when aided by the microscope; still, minute as they are, the function of these agents is necessary to the continuance of life. They are the smallest capillary vessels. 446. "As the blood goes the round of the circulation, the nutrient capillary vessels select and secrete those parts which are similar to the nature of the structure, and the other portions pass on; so that every tissue imbibes and converts to its own use the very principles which it requires for its growth; or, in other words, as the vital current approaches each organ, the particles appropriate to it feel its attractive force,--obey it,--quit the stream,--mingle with the substance of its tissue,--and are changed into its own true and proper nature." 447. Thus, if a bone is broken, a muscle or a nerve wounded, and, if the system is in a proper state of health, the vital economy immediately sets about healing the rupture. The blood, which flows from the wounded vessels, coagulates in the incision, for the double purpose of stanching the wound, and of forming a matrix for the regeneration of the parts. Very soon, minute vessels shoot out from the living parts into the coagulum of the blood, and immediately commence their operations, and deposit bony matter, where it is required to unite fractured bones, and nervous substance to heal the wounded nerve, &c. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 445. Show how the renovation of the bones, muscles, &c., is perfected. 446. What is said of the office of the nutrient capillary vessels? 447. When a bone is fractured, by what process is it healed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 448. But the vital economy seems not to possess the power of reproducing the muscles and true skin, and therefore, when these parts are wounded, the rupture is repaired by a gelatinous substance, which gradually becomes hard, and sometimes assumes something of a fibrous appearance. It so perfectly unites the divided muscle, however, as to restore its functional power. When the cuticle is removed, it is reproduced and no scar remains; but, when the true skin is destroyed, a scar is formed. 449. It is not uncommon that the nutrient arteries have their action so much increased in some parts, as to produce preternatural growth. Sometimes the vessels whose function it is to deposit fat, are increased in action, and wens of no inferior size are formed. Again, there may be a deposition of substances unlike any known to exist in the body. Occasionally, these nutrient arteries of a part take on a new action, and not only deposit their ordinary substance, but others, which they have not heretofore secreted, but which are formed by vessels of other parts of the body. It is in this way that we account for the bony matter deposited in the valves of the heart and brain, also the chalky deposits around the finger-joints. 450. In infancy and childhood, the function of nutrition is very active; a large amount of food is taken, to supply the place of what is lost by the action of the absorbents, and also to contribute to the growth of the body. In middle age, nutrition and absorption are more equal; but in old age, the absorbents are more active than the nutrient vessels. The size, consequently, diminishes, the parts become weaker, the bones more brittle, the body bends forward, and every function exhibits marks of decay and dissolution. 451. A striking instance of active absorption in middle age was exhibited in the person of Calvin Edson, of Vermont, who was exhibited in the large towns of New England, as the "living skeleton." In early manhood he was athletic, and weighed one hundred and sixty pounds; but the excessive action of the absorbents over the nutrient vessels, reduced his weight, in the interval of eighteen years, to sixty pounds. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 448. What occurs when a muscle is divided? 449. State some of the results of an increased action of the nutrient arteries. 450. When is nutrition most active? How in middle age? How in old age? 451. Relate a striking instance of active absorption in middle age. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 452. Instances, on the other hand, have occurred, of the action of the nutrient vessels exceeding, in an extreme degree, those of absorption; as in the person of a colored girl, thirteen years of age, who was exhibited in New York in the summer of 1840. She was of the height of misses at that age, but weighed five hundred pounds. Several cases are on record of persons weighing eight hundred pounds. 453. As already mentioned, the blood is the nutritive fluid of animals. When this fluid is coagulated, a thick, jelly-like mass floats in the serum, called coagulum. This coagulated mass is composed of fibrin, and red globulated matter. The color of the red globules is owing to the presence of iron, though some physiologists think it depends on an animal substance of a gelatinous character. _Observation._ That portion of the serum which remains fluid after coagulation by heat has taken place, is called _se-ros´i-ty_. It is more abundant in the blood of old, than in that of young animals; and it forms the "red gravy" in roasted meats. 454. The blood is not necessarily red. It may be white, as in most fish. There is no animal in which the blood is equally red in all parts of the body. The ligaments, tendons, and other white tissues in man are supplied but sparingly with red blood. The fluid that supplies these tissues is whitish. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 452. Of excessive nutrition in early life. 453. Describe the parts that enter into the composition of the blood. What part of the blood forms the red gravy in roasted meats? 454. Is the blood necessarily red? Of what color is the blood of the fish? What part of the human system has white blood? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= HYGIENE OF NUTRITION. 455. _Healthy nutrition requires pure blood._ If the nutrient arteries of the bones are supplied with impure blood, they will become soft or brittle, their vitality will be impaired, and disease will be the ultimate result. The five hundred muscles receive another portion of the blood. These organs are attached to, and act upon the bones. Upon the health and contractile energy of the muscles depends the ability to labor. Give these organs of motion impure blood, which is an unhealthy stimulus, and they will become enfeebled, the step will lose its elasticity, the movement of the arm will be inefficient, and every muscle will be incapacitated to perform its usual amount of labor. 456. When the stomach, liver, and other organs subservient to the digestion of food, are supplied with impure blood, the digestive process is impaired, causing faintness and loss of appetite, also a deranged state of the intestines, and, in general, all the symptoms of dyspepsia. 457. The delicate structure of the lungs, in which the blood is or should be purified, needs the requisite amount of pure blood to give them vigor and health. When the blood is not of this character, the lungs themselves lose their tone, and, even if permitted to expand freely, have not power fully to change the impure quality of this circulating fluid. 458. The health and beauty of the skin require that the blood should be well purified; but, if the arteries of the skin receive vitiated blood, pimples and blotches appear, and the individual suffers from "humors." Drinks, made of various kinds of herbs, as well as pills and powders, are taken for this affection. These will never have the desired effect, while the causes of impure blood exist. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 455-462. _Give the hygiene of nutrition._ 455. What is the effect of impure blood upon the bones? On the muscles? 456. On the digestive organs? 457. On the lungs? 458. What is the effect if the vessels of the skin are supplied with vitiated blood? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 459. If the nutrient arteries convey impure material to the brain, the nervous and bilious headache, confusion of ideas, loss of memory, impaired intellect, dimness of vision, and dulness of hearing, will be experienced; and in process of time, the brain becomes disorganized, and the brittle thread of life is broken. _Observations._ 1st. An exertion of any organ beyond its powers, induces weakness that will disturb the nutrition of the part that is called into action; and it recovers its energy more slowly in proportion to the excess of the exertion. The function of the organ may be totally and permanently destroyed, if the exertion is extremely violent. We sometimes see palsy produced in a muscle simply by the effort to raise too great a weight. The sight is impaired, and total blindness may be produced, by exposure to light too strong or too constant. The mind may be deranged, or idiocy may follow the excess of study or the over-tasking of the brain. 2d. When the function of an organ is permanently impaired or destroyed by over-exertion, the nutrition of the part is rendered insufficient, or is entirely arrested; and then the absorbents remove it wholly or partially, as they do every thing that is no longer useful. Thus, in palsied patients, a few years after the attack, we often find scarce any trace of the palsied muscles remaining; they are reduced almost to simple cellular tissue. The condition of the calf of the leg, in a person having a club-foot, is a familiar proof of this. 460. _The blood may be made impure, by the chyle being deficient in quantity or defective in quality._ This state of the chyle may be produced by the food being improper in quantity or quality, or by its being taken in an improper manner, at an improper time, and when the system is not prepared for it. The remedy for impure blood produced in any of these ways is to correct the injudicious method of using food. (See Chapters XV. and XVI.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 459. How does impure blood affect the brain? What is the effect when any organ is exerted beyond its powers? What is the effect when an organ is permanently impaired? 460. How may the blood become impure? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 461. _The blood may also be rendered impure, by not supplying it with oxygen in the lungs, and by the carbon not being eliminated from the system through this channel._ The remedy for "impurities of the blood," produced in this manner, would be, to carefully reduce to practice the directions in the chapters on the hygiene of the respiratory organs, relative to the free movements of the ribs and diaphragm, and the proper ventilation of rooms. 462. _A retention of the waste products of the skin produces impure blood._ When the vessels of the skin, by which the waste, useless material is eliminated from the system, have become inactive by improper and inadequate clothing, or by a want of cleanliness, the dead, injurious atoms of matter are retained in the circulatory vessels. The only successful method of purifying the blood and restoring health when this condition exists, is to observe the directions given relative to clothing and bathing. (See Chapters XXXIII. and XXXIV.) _Observation._ If the blood has become "impure," or "loaded with humors," (an idea generally prevalent,) it is not and cannot be "purified" by taking patent pills, powders, drops, &c. But, on the contrary, by observing the suggestions in the preceding paragraphs, the blood can be freed of its impurities, and, what is of greater importance, such "injurious humors" will be prevented. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 461. Mention another means by which the blood may be made impure. How remedied? 462. What is the effect of want of cleanliness upon the blood? What is said respecting "humors" in the blood? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 88. A front view of the organs within the chest and abdomen. 1, 1, 1, 1, The muscles of the chest. 2, 2, 2, 2, The ribs. 3, 3, 3, The upper, middle, and lower lobes of the right lung. 4, 4, The lobes of the left lung. 5, The right ventricle of the heart. 6, The left ventricle. 7, The right auricle of the heart. 8, The left auricle. 9, The pulmonary artery. 10, The aorta. 11, The vena cava descendens. 12, The trachea. 13, The oesophagus. 14, 14, 14, 14, The pleura. 15, 15, 15, The diaphragm. 16, 16, The right and left lobe of the liver. 17, The gall-cyst. 18, The stomach. 26, The spleen. 19, 19, The duodenum. 20, The ascending colon. 21, The transverse colon. 25, The descending colon. 22, 22, 22, 22, The small intestine. 23, 23, The abdominal walls turned down. 24, The thoracic duct, opening into the left subclavian vein, (27.)] CHAPTER XXIII. THE RESPIRATORY ORGANS. 463. The nutrient portion of the food is poured into the left subclavian vein, (24, 27, fig. 88,) at the lower part of the neck, and is carried to the right cavities of the heart. The fluid in these cavities consists of the chyle incorporated with the impure blood. Neither of these two elements is fitted to promote the growth or repair the waste of the body. They must be subjected to a process, by which the first can be converted into blood, and the second freed of its carbonic acid gas and water. This is effected by the _Respiratory Organs_. ANATOMY OF THE RESPIRATORY ORGANS. 464. The RESPIRATORY ORGANS are the _Lungs_, (lights,) the _Tra´che-a_, (windpipe,) the _Bronch´i-a_, (subdivisions of the trachea,) and the _Air-Ves´i-cles_, (air-cells at the extremities of the bronchia.) The _Di´a-phragm_, (midriff,) _Ribs_, and several _Muscles_, also aid in the respiratory process. 465. The LUNGS are conical organs, one on each side of the chest, embracing the heart, (fig. 88,) and separated from each other by a membranous partition. The color of the lungs is a pinkish gray, mottled, and variously marked with black. Each lung is divided into lobes, by a long and deep fissure, which extends from the posterior surface of the upper part of the organ, downward and forward, nearly to the anterior angle of the base. In the right lung, the upper lobe is subdivided by a second fissure. This lung is larger and shorter than the left. It has three lobes, while the left has only two. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 463. What fluids are conveyed into the right cavities of the heart? What is necessary before they can be adapted to the wants of the body? By what organs are these changes effected? 464-474. _Give the anatomy of the respiratory organs._ 464. Name the respiratory organs. What organs also aid in the respiratory process? 465. Describe the lungs. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 89. A back view of the heart and lungs. The posterior walls of the chest are removed. 1, 2, 3, The upper, middle, and lower lobes of the right lung. 8, 9, 10, The two lobes of the left lung. 6, 13, The diaphragm. 7, 7, 14, 14, The pleura that lines the ribs. 4, 11, The pleura that lines the mediastine. 5, 12, 12, The portion of the pleura that covers the diaphragm. 15, The trachea, 16, The larynx. 19, 19, The right and left bronchia. 20, The heart. 29, The lower part of the spinal column.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Explain fig. 89. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 466. Each lung is enclosed, and its structure maintained by a serous membrane, called the _pleu´ra_, which invests it as far as the root, and is thence reflected upon the walls of the chest. The lungs, however, are on the outside of the pleura, in the same way as the head is on the outside of a cap doubled upon itself. The reflected pleuræ in the middle of the thorax form a partition, which divides the chest into two cavities. This partition is called the _me-di-as-ti´num_. [Illustration: Fig. 90. The heart and lungs removed from the chest, and the lungs freed from all other attachments. 1, The right auricle of the heart. 2, The superior vena cava. 3, The inferior vena cava. 4, The right ventricle. 5, The pulmonary artery issuing from it. _a_, _a_, The pulmonary artery, (right and left,) entering the lungs. _b_, _b_, Bronchia, or air-tubes, entering the lungs. _v_, _v_, Pulmonary veins, issuing from the lungs. 6, The left auricle. 7, The left ventricle. 8, The aorta. 9, The upper lobe of the left lung. 10, Its lower lobe. 11, The upper lobe of the right lung. 12, The middle lobe. 13, The lower lobe.] _Observation._ When this membrane that covers the lungs, and also lines the chest, is inflamed, the disease is called "pleurisy." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 466. By what are the lungs enclosed? What is the relative position of the lungs and pleura? What is said of the reflected pleuræ? Explain fig. 90. What part of the lungs is affected in pleurisy? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 467. The lungs are composed of the ramifications of the bronchial tubes, which terminate in the bronchial cells, (_air-cells_,) lymphatics, and the divisions of the pulmonary artery and veins. All of these are connected by cellular tissue, which constitutes the _pa-ren´chy-ma_. Each lung is retained in its place by its _root_, which is formed by the pulmonary arteries, pulmonary veins, and bronchial tubes, together with the bronchial vessels and pulmonary nerves. 468. The TRACHEA extends from the larynx, of which it is a continuation, to the third dorsal vertebra, where it divides into two parts, called bronchia. It lies anterior to the spinal column, from which it is separated by the oesophagus. 469. The BRONCHIA proceed from the bifurcation, or division of the trachea, to their corresponding lungs. Upon entering the lungs, they divide into two branches, and each branch divides and subdivides, and ultimately terminates in small sacs, or cells, of various sizes, from the twentieth to the hundredth of an inch in diameter. So numerous are these bronchial or air-cells, that the aggregate extent of their lining membrane in man has been computed to exceed a surface of 20,000 square inches, and Munro states that it is thirty times the surface of the human body. _Illustration._ The trachea may be compared to the trunk of a tree; the bronchia, to two large branches; the subdivisions of the bronchia, to the branchlets and twigs; the air-cells, to the buds seen on the twigs in the spring. 470. The AIR-VESICLES and small bronchial tubes compose the largest portions of the lungs. These, when once inflated, contain air, under all circumstances, which renders their specific gravity much less than water; hence the vulgar term, _lights_, for these organs. The trachea and bronchial tubes are lined by mucous membrane. The structure of this membrane is such, that it will bear the presence of pure air without detriment, but not of other substances. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 467. Of what are the lungs composed? How retained in place? 468. Where is the trachea situated? 469. Describe the bronchia. What is the aggregate extent of the lining membrane of the air-cells? To what may the trachea and its branches be compared? 470. What is said of the air-cells and bronchial tubes? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 91. A representation of the larynx, trachea, bronchia, and air-cells. 1, 1, 1, An outline of the right lung. 2, 2, 2, An outline of the left lung. 3, The larynx 4, The trachea. 5, The right bronchial tube. 6, The left bronchial tube. 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, The subdivisions of the right and left bronchial tubes. 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, Air-cells.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What membrane lines the trachea and its branches? What is peculiar in its structure? What does fig. 91 represent? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ The structure of the trachea and lungs may be illustrated, by taking these parts of a calf or sheep and inflating the air-vesicles by forcing air into the windpipe with a pipe or quill. The internal structure may then be seen by opening the different parts. 471. The lungs, like other portions of the system, are supplied with nutrient arteries and nerves. The nervous filaments that are distributed to these organs are in part from the tenth pair, (par vagum,) that originates in the brain, and in part from the sympathetic nerve. The muscles that elevate the ribs and the diaphragm receive nervous fibres from a separate system, which is called the respiratory. [Illustration: Fig. 92. 1, A bronchial tube. 2, 2, 2, Air-vesicles. Both the tube and vesicles are much magnified. 3, A bronchial tube and vesicles laid open.] _Observation._ When the mucous membrane of a few of the larger branches of the windpipe is slightly inflamed, it is called a "cold;" when the inflammation is greater, and extends to the lesser air-tubes, it is called _bronch-i´tis_. When the air-cells and parenchyma become inflamed, it is called inflammation of the lungs. Coughing is a violent expulsory effort by which air is suddenly forced through the bronchia and trachea to remove offending matter. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How may the structure of the trachea and its branches be illustrated? 471. Are the lungs supplied with nutrient arteries? Where are the respiratory nerves distributed? From what source do these organs derive their nervous filaments? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 472. The RIBS are joined to the spinal column at their posterior extremity; and in front, they terminate in cartilages, which unite them to the sternum. They incline downward, from the spinal column to the breast-bone, and form resisting walls that assist in producing the partial vacuum necessary for inspiration. [Illustration: Fig. 93. A section of the chest when the lungs are inflated. 1, The diaphragm. 2, The muscular walls of the abdomen.] [Illustration: Fig. 94. A section of the chest when the lungs are contracted. 1, The diaphragm in common expiration. 2, 2, The muscular walls of the abdomen. 3, The position of the diaphragm in forced expiration.] These engravings show the diaphragm to be more convex, and the walls of the abdomen more flattened, when the lungs are collapsed, than when they are inflated. 473. The DIAPHRAGM is a flexible circular partition, that separates the respiratory from the digestive organs, and the chest from the abdomen. Its margin is attached to the spinal column, the sternum, and cartilages of the lower ribs. The lungs rest upon its upper surface, while the liver and stomach are placed below it, (fig. 88.) In a state of repose, its upper surface forms an arch, the convexity of which is toward the chest. In forced expiration, its upper point reaches as high as the fourth rib. In an ordinary inspiration, it is depressed as low as the seventh rib, which increases the capacity of the chest. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 472. Describe the ribs. Explain figs. 93 and 94. 473. Describe the diaphragm. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 474. The RESPIRATORY muscles are, in general, attached at one extremity to the parts about the shoulders, head, and upper portion of the spinal column. From these, they run downward and forward, and are attached, at the opposite extremity, to the sternum, clavicle, and upper rib. Other muscles are attached at one extremity to a rib above, and by the opposite extremity to a rib below. These fill the spaces between the ribs, and, from their situation, are called _in-ter-cost´al_ muscles. _Observation._ 1st. There are several actions of common occurrence, that are intimately connected with respiration; such as hiccough, sneezing, &c. Hiccough is an involuntary contraction of the muscles of respiration, particularly the diaphragm. 2d. Sneezing is a violent, involuntary contraction of the respiratory muscles, as in hiccough. When an acrid stimulant, as snuff, is applied to the mucous membrane of the nose, an irritation is produced which is accompanied by a violent expulsion of air from the lungs. This is owing to the connection between the nasal and respiratory nerves. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is its form when not in action? 474. Where do the respiratory muscles make their attachment? What name is given to those muscles that fill the places between the ribs? What is hiccough? What is sneezing? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXIV. PHYSIOLOGY OF THE RESPIRATORY ORGANS. 475. RESPIRATION, or breathing, is that process by which air is taken into the lungs and expelled from them. The object of respiration is, 1st. To supply the system with oxygen, which is essential to the generation of animal heat; 2d. To convert the chyle into blood. This is done by the oxygen of the inspired air; 3d. To relieve the organs of the body of the principal elements (carbon and hydrogen) that compose the old and useless particles of matter. The organs of the system, as already mentioned, are principally composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. 476. By the action of the lymphatics and capillary veins, the old and worn-out particles are conveyed into the veins of the systemic circulation. The hydrogen, in form of watery vapor, is easily discharged in the perspiration and other secretions. The nitrogen and oxygen are, or may be, separated from the blood, through the agency of several different organs; but carbon does not escape so readily. It is probable that a part of the surplus carbon of the venous blood is secreted by the liver; but a far greater amount passes to the lungs, and these may be considered as special organs designed to separate this element from the venous blood. 477. An ordinary inspiration may be accomplished by the action of the diaphragm, and a slight elevation of the ribs. In full inspiration, the diaphragm is not only more depressed but the ribs are evidently elevated. To produce this effect on the ribs, two sets of muscles are called into action. Those which are attached to the upper rib, sternum, and clavicle, contract and elevate the lower and free extremities of the ribs. This enlarges the cavity of the chest between the spinal column and the sternum. But the lateral diameter, in consequence, is only slightly increased, because the central portion of the ribs sinks lower than their posterior extremities, or their cartilaginous attachment to the sternum. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 475-494. _Give the physiology of the respiratory organs._ 475. What is respiration? What is the principal object in breathing? 476. How are the useless atoms of matter conveyed into the veins of the systemic circulation? How may the principal elementary substances be separated from the blood? 477. How may an ordinary inspiration be accomplished? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 95. 6, Four of the vertebræ, to which are attached three ribs, (7, 7, 7,) with their intercostal muscles, (8, 8.) These ribs, in their natural position, have their anterior cartilaginous extremity at 4, while the posterior extremity is attached to the vertebræ, (6,) which are neither elevated nor depressed in respiration. 1, 1, and 2, 2, parallel lines, within which the ribs lie in their natural position. If the anterior extremity of the ribs is elevated from 4 to 5, they will not lie within the line 2, 2, but will reach the line 3, 3. If two hands extend from 1, 1, to 2, 2, they will effectually prevent the elevation of the ribs from 4 to 5, as the line 2, 2, cannot be moved to 3, 3.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What effect has a full inspiration on the ribs and diaphragm? How is the chest enlarged between the spinal column and sternum? What is said of the lateral diameter of the chest? Explain fig. 95. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 478. The central portion of the ribs is raised by the action of intercostal muscles. The first, or upper rib, has but little movement; the second has more motion than the first, while the third has still more than the second. The second rib is elevated by the contraction of the muscles between it and the first. The third rib is raised by the action of two sets of muscles; one lies between the first and second ribs, the other between the second and third. The motion of each succeeding rib is increased, because it is not only acted upon by the muscles that move the ribs above, but by an additional intercostal; so that the movement of the twelfth rib is very free, as it is elevated by the contraction of eleven muscles. 479. The tenth rib is raised eight times as much as the second rib, and the lateral diameter of the lower portion of the chest is increased in a corresponding degree. At the same time, the muscular margin of the diaphragm contracts, which depresses its central portion; and in this way, the chest is enlarged forward, laterally, and downward, simultaneously with the relaxation of the walls of the abdomen. 480. The lungs follow the variations of capacity in the chest, expanding their air-cells when the latter is enlarged, and contracting when the chest is diminished. Thus, when the chest is expanded, the lungs follow, and consequently a vacuum is produced in their air-cells. The air then rushes through the mouth and nose into the trachea and its branches, and fills the vacuum as fast as it is made. This mechanical process constitutes _inspiration_. 481. After the expansion of the chest, the muscles that elevated the ribs relax, together with the diaphragm. The elasticity of the cartilages of the ribs depresses them, and the cavity of the chest is diminished, attended by the expulsion of a portion of the air from the lungs. At the same time, the muscles that form the front walls of the abdominal cavity, contract, and press the alimentary canal, stomach, and liver, upward against the diaphragm; this, being relaxed, yields to the pressure, rises upward, and presses upon the lungs, which retreat before it, and another portion of air is expelled from these organs. This process is called _expiration_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 478. Describe the action of the intercostal muscles upon the ribs. 479. How does the elevation of the tenth rib compare with the second? What effect has this elevation upon the lateral diameter of the chest? 480. Describe the process of inspiration. 481. Describe the process by which the air is forced out of the lungs. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 96. A front view of the chest and abdomen in respiration. 1, 1, The position of the walls of the chest in inspiration. 2, 2, 2, The position of the diaphragm in inspiration. 3, 3, The position of the walls of the chest in expiration. 4, 4, 4, The position of the diaphragm in expiration. 5, 5, The position of the walls of the abdomen in inspiration. 6, 6, The position of the abdominal walls in expiration.] 482. Thus it is obvious that the enlargement of the chest, or inspiration, is produced in two ways: 1st. By the depression of the convex portion of the diaphragm; 2d. By the elevation of the ribs. On the contrary, the contraction of the chest, or expiration, is produced by the depression of the ribs, and elevation of the central part of the diaphragm. These movements are successive during life, and constitute _respiration_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Explain fig. 96. 482. In how many ways may the chest be enlarged, and how is it accomplished? How is the contraction of the chest effected? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 97. A side view of the chest and abdomen in respiration. 1, The cavity of the chest. 2, The cavity of the abdomen. 3, The line of direction for the diaphragm when relaxed in expiration. 4, The line of direction for the diaphragm when contracted in inspiration. 5, 6, The position of the front walls of the chest and abdomen in inspiration. 7, 8, The position of the front walls of the abdomen and chest in expiration.] _Experiment._ Place the ear upon the chest of a person, and a murmuring sound will be heard, somewhat like the soft sighings of the wind through forest trees. This sound is caused by the air rushing in and out of the lungs, and is peculiarly distinct in the child. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Explain fig. 97. How may the murmur of respiration be heard? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 483. It is not easy to decide how much air is taken into the lungs at each inspiration. The quantity, however, must vary in different individuals, from the difference in the condition and expansion of the lungs, together with the size of the chest. From numerous experiments, the quantity, at an ordinary inspiration, of a common-sized man, is fixed at forty cubic inches. It has been estimated that one hundred and seventy cubic inches can be thrown out of the lungs by a forcible expiration, and that there remain in the lungs two hundred and twenty cubic inches; so that these organs, in their quiescent state, may be considered as containing about three hundred and ninety cubic inches of air, or more than a gallon. 484. Respiration is more frequent in females and children than in adult men. In diseases, particularly those of the lungs, it is more increased in frequency than the action of the heart. In health, the smallest number of inspirations in a minute by an adult, is not less than fourteen, and they rarely exceed twenty-five. Eighteen may be considered an average number. The quantity of oxygen taken into the lungs at each inspiration is about eight cubic inches, one half of which disappears in every act of respiration. _Observation._ Under different circumstances, however, the consumption of oxygen varies. It is greater when the temperature is low, than when it is high; and during digestion the consumption has been found one half greater than when the stomach was empty. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 483. Can it be ascertained with accuracy how much air is taken into the lungs at each inspiration? Why not? What is the probable quantity that an ordinary sized man inspires? How much can be thrown out of the lungs at a forcible expiration, and how much remains in the lungs? From these calculations, how much may they contain in their quiescent state? 484. In whom is respiration most frequent? How in disease? How in health? How many may be considered an average number? When is the consumption of oxygen the greatest? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 485. Dr. Southwood Smith has lately performed a series of very interesting experiments, from which he deduces the following general results: "1st. The volume of air ordinarily present in the lungs is about twelve pints. 2d. The volume of air received by the lungs at an ordinary inspiration is one pint. 3d. The volume of air expelled from the lungs at an ordinary expiration, is a little less than one pint. 4th. Of the volume of air received by the lungs at one inspiration, only one fourth part is decomposed at one action of the heart. 5th. The quantity of blood that flows to the lungs, to be acted upon by the air at one action of the heart, is two ounces, and this is acted on in less than one second of time. 6th. The quantity of blood in the whole body of the human adult, is twenty-five pounds avoirdupois, or twenty pints. 7th. In the mutual action that takes place between the air and blood, every twenty-four hours, the air loses thirty-seven ounces of oxygen, and the blood fourteen ounces of carbon." 486. Apparently, atmospheric air is a simple element. But chemical analysis shows its composition to be oxygen and nitrogen, in the proportion of twenty-one parts of the former, and about seventy-nine of the latter. In addition, there is a small amount of vapor of water and carbonic acid. The pressure of this invisible, elastic fluid upon the body of an ordinary sized adult, is estimated to equal thirty-five thousand pounds. 487. The principal substance of a vitiated character in the dark-colored blood is carbonic acid. And since there is no chemical affinity between the oxygen and nitrogen of the air, the former readily unites with some of the elements of the blood. Hence, whenever blood is presented to the air in the lungs, the oxygen leaves the nitrogen, and becomes mixed with the circulating fluid. (Appendix J.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 485. State the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th deductions from the experiments of Dr. Southwood Smith. The 5th, 6th, and 7th. 486. Of what is atmospheric air composed? What is the weight of air upon a common sized man? 487. What is the principal substance of a vitiated character in the dark-colored blood? What is said of the chemical affinity between oxygen and nitrogen? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 488. Again, carbonic acid and water have a stronger affinity for atmospheric air than for the other elements of the blood. Consequently, when they are brought into contact with the air in the lungs, the carbonic acid and water leave the other constituents of the blood, and unite with the air. In this way the bluish, or impure blood is relieved of its impurities, and becomes the red, or pure blood, which contains the principles so essential to life. (Appendix K.) 489. The formation of carbonic acid and water, eliminated from the system through the lungs and skin, is explained by the following theory: In the lungs and upon the skin the oxygen separates from the nitrogen and unites with the blood in the capillary vessels of these organs. The oxygen is conveyed with the blood to the capillary arteries and veins of the different tissues of the system. In these membranes there is a chemical union of the oxygen with the carbon and hydrogen contained in the blood and waste atoms of the system. This combustion, or union of oxygen with carbon and hydrogen, is attended with the disengagement of heat, and the formation of carbonic acid and water. (Appendix L.) 490. The following experiment will illustrate the passage of fluids through membranes, and the different affinity of gases for each other. Put a mixture of water and alcohol into a phial and leave it uncorked. Both the water and alcohol have a greater affinity for air than for each other. Alcohol has a greater affinity for the air, and will be diffused through it more readily than the water, when there is no intervening obstacle. But tie a piece of bladder over the mouth of the phial, and let it stand a few days,--the water will leave the alcohol, and pass through the membrane. By the aid of this experiment, we shall endeavor to explain the interchange of fluids in the lungs. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 488. What is formed when oxygen unites with carbon or hydrogen? 489. Give the theory for the formation of carbonic acid and watery vapor thrown out of the system. 490. Illustrate the passage of fluids through membranes, and the different affinities of gases. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 491. The walls of the air-vesicles, and coats of the blood-vessels, are similar, in their mechanical arrangement, to the membranous bladder in the before described experiment. As the oxygen of the air has greater affinity for blood than for nitrogen, so it permeates the membranes that intervene between the air and blood more readily than the nitrogen. As the carbonic acid and water have a greater affinity for air than for the other elements of the blood, so they will also pass through the walls of the blood-vessels and air-cells more readily than the other elements of the dark-colored blood. [Illustration: Fig. 98. 1, A bronchial tube divided into three branches. 2, 2, 2, Air-cells. 3, Branches of the pulmonary artery, that spread over the air-cells. Through the pulmonary artery the dark, impure blood is carried to the air-cells of the lungs. 4, Branches of the pulmonary vein, that commence at the minute terminations of the pulmonary artery. Through the pulmonary vein the red blood is returned to the heart.] 492. As the impure blood is passing in the minute vessels over the air-cells, the oxygen passes through the thin coats of the air-cells and blood-vessels, and unites with the blood. At the same time, the carbonic acid and water leave the blood, and pass through the coats of the blood-vessels and air-cells, and mix with the air in the cells. These are thrown out of the system every time we breathe. This interchange of products produces the change in the color of the blood. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Explain fig. 98. 492. How and where is the blood changed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Experiment._ Fill a bladder with dark blood drawn from any animal. Tie the bladder closely, and suspend it in the air. In a few hours, the blood next to the membrane will have become of a bright red color. This is owing to the oxygen from the air passing through the bladder, and uniting with the blood, while the carbonic acid has escaped through the membrane. [Illustration: Fig. 99. An ideal view of the pulmonary circulation. 1, 1, The right lung. 2, 2, The left lung. 3, The trachea. 4, The right bronchial tube. 5, The left bronchial tube. 6, 6, 6, 6, Air-cells. 7, The right auricle. 8, The right ventricle. 9, The tricuspid valves. 10, The pulmonary artery. 11, The branch to the right lung. 12, The branch to the left lung. 13, The right pulmonary vein. 14, The left pulmonary vein. 15, The left auricle. 16, The left ventricle. 17, The mitral valves.] 493. The presence of carbonic acid and watery vapor in the expired air, can be proved by the following experiments: 1st. Breathe into lime-water, and in a few minutes it will become of a milk-white color. This is owing to the carbonic acid of the breath uniting with the lime, forming the _carbonate of lime_. 2d. Breathe upon a cold, dry mirror for a few minutes, and it will be covered with moisture. This is condensed vapor from the lungs. In warm weather, this watery vapor is invisible in the expired air, but in a cold, dry morning in winter, the successive jets of vapor issuing from the mouth and nose are sufficiently obvious. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give the experiment showing that oxygen changes the dark-colored blood to a bright red color. What is represented by fig. 99? 493. How can the presence of carbonic acid in the lungs be proved? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 494. From the lungs are eliminated other impurities beside carbonic acid, the perceptible quality of which is various in different persons. The offensive breath of many persons may be caused by decayed teeth, or the particles of food that may be retained between them, but it often proceeds from the secretion, in the lungs, of certain substances which previously existed in the system. _Illustration._ When spirituous liquors are taken into the stomach, they are absorbed by the veins and mixed with the dark-colored blood, in which they are carried to the lungs to be expelled from the body. This will explain the fact, which is familiar to most persons, that the odor of different substances is perceptible in the breath, or expired air, long after the mouth is free from these substances. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How the watery vapor? 494. Are there other excretions from the lungs? Give the illustration. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Note._ Let the anatomy and physiology of the respiratory organs be reviewed from figs. 96, 97, and 99, or from anatomical outline plates Nos. 5 and 7. CHAPTER XXV. HYGIENE OF THE RESPIRATORY ORGANS. 495. For man to enjoy the highest degree of health, it is necessary that the impure "venous" blood be properly changed. As this is effected in the lungs by the action of the air, it follows that this element, when breathed, should be pure, or contain twenty-one per cent. of oxygen to about seventy-nine per cent. of nitrogen. 496. The volume of air expelled from the lungs is somewhat less than that which is inspired. The amount of loss varies under different circumstances. An eightieth part of the volume taken into the lungs, or half a cubic inch, may be considered an average estimate. 497. _The quality and purity of the air is affected by every respiration._ 1st. The quantity of oxygen is diminished. 2d. The amount of carbonic acid is increased. 3d. A certain proportion of watery vapor is ejected from the lungs in the expired air. Of the twenty-one parts of oxygen in the inspired air, only eighteen parts are expired, while the carbonic acid and watery vapor are increased about four per cent. The quantity of nitrogen is nearly the same in the expired as in the inspired air. _Observation._ It is now fully ascertained that while the chemical composition of the blood is essentially changed, its weight remains the same, as the carbon and hydrogen discharged are equal to the united weight of the oxygen and nitrogen absorbed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 495-546. _Give the hygiene of the respiratory organs._ 495. What is necessary that man enjoy the highest degree of health? 496. How does the volume Of expired air compare with that which was inspired? Does this loss vary, and what is an average estimate? 497. How is the purity of the air affected by respiration? How is the inhaled oxygen affected? What effect on the carbonic acid and watery vapor? On the nitrogen? What is said respecting the weight of the blood? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 498. If one fourth part of the volume of air received by the lungs at one inspiration is decomposed at one "beat" of the heart, it might be supposed that if the expired air be again received into the lungs, one half of the oxygen would be consumed, and, in a similar ratio, if re-breathed four times, all the oxygen would be consumed. But it does not follow, if the air is thus re-breathed, that the same changes will be effected in the lungs. For air that has been inspired does not part with its remaining oxygen as freely as when it contains the proper amount of this life-giving element, and thus the changes in the impure blood are not so completely effected. _Illustration._ In the process of dyeing, each successive article immersed in the dye weakens it; but it does not follow that the dye each time is affected in the same degree, or that the coloring matter by repeated immersions can be wholly extracted. The same principle applies to the exchange of oxygen and carbonic acid gas in the lungs. 499. _If the inspired air is free from moisture and carbonic acid, these substances contained in the blood will be more readily imparted to it._ When the air is loaded with vapor, they are removed more slowly; but if it is saturated with moisture, no vapor will escape from the blood through the agency of the lungs. This may be illustrated by the following experiment: Take two and a half pounds of water, add to it half a pound of common salt, (chloride of sodium,) and it will readily mix with the water; and to this solution add the same quantity of salt, and it will be dissolved more slowly. Again, add more salt, and it will remain undissolved, as the water has become saturated by the pound before dissolved. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 498. Does air that is re-breathed freely impart its oxygen? Why? 499. What is the effect on the blood when the air is free from vapor and carbonic acid? When loaded with vapor? When saturated? How is this illustrated? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 500. The principle in this experiment is analogous to that of the union between carbonic gas and atmospheric air. Allen and Pepy showed by experiment, that air which had been once breathed, contained eight and a half per cent. of carbonic acid. They likewise showed, that no continuance of the respiration of the same air could make it take up more than ten per cent. This is the point of saturation. _Experiment._ Sink a glass jar that has a stop-cock, or one with a glass stopper, into a pail of water, until the air is expelled from the jar. Fill the lungs with air, and retain it in the chest a short time, and then breathe into the jar, and instantly close the stop-cock. Close the opening of the jar that is under the water with a piece of paper laid on a plate of sufficient size to cover the opening, invert the jar, and sink into it a lighted candle. The flame will be extinguished as quickly as if put in water.[15] Remove the carbonic acid by inverting the jar, and place a lighted candle in it, and the flame will be as clear as when out of the jar. [15] As a substitute for a jar with a stop-cock, take a piece of lead pipe bent in the form of a siphon, and insert it in the mouth of a reversed jar. This experiment is as conclusive whether the air is inhaled once only or breathed many times. _Observations._ 1st. It is familiarly known that a taper will not burn where carbonic acid exists in any considerable quantity, or when there is a marked deficiency of oxygen. From this originated the judicious practice of sinking a lighted candle into a well or pit before descending into it. If the flame is extinguished, respiration cannot there be maintained, and life would be sacrificed should a person venture in, until the noxious air is removed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 500. What did the experiments of Allen and Pepy show? How can the presence of carbonic gas in the expired air be demonstrated? State observation 1st. Observation 2d. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. It is the action of carbonic acid upon the respiratory organs, that gives rise to a phenomenon frequently seen in mines and caves. A man may enter these subterranean rooms, and feel no inconvenience in breathing; but the dog that follows him, falls apparently dead, and soon dies if not speedily removed to pure air. This arises from the fact that this gas is heavier than air, and sinks to the bottom of the room or cave. 3d. While it is true that carbonic acid possesses properties that render it unfit to be breathed, it is, notwithstanding, productive of very agreeable effects, when conveyed into the stomach. It forms the sparkling property of mineral waters, and fills the bubbles that rise when beer or cider is fermenting. 501. _Pure atmospheric air is best adapted to a healthy action of the system._ As the air cannot be maintained pure under all circumstances, the question may be asked, To what degree may the air be vitiated and still sustain life? and what is the smallest quantity of pure air a person needs each minute to maintain good health? Birnan says, that air which contains more than three and a half per cent. of carbonic acid is unfit for respiration, and, as air once respired contains eight and a half per cent. of carbonic acid, it clearly shows that it is not fitted to be breathed again. 502. No physiologist pretends that less than seven cubic feet of air are adequate for a man to breathe each minute, while Dr. Reid allows ten feet. The necessity of fifteen or twenty times the amount of air actually taken into the lungs, arises from the circumstance, that the expired air mixes with and vitiates the surrounding element that has not been inhaled. 503. _The quantity of air which different persons actually need, varies._ The demand is modified by the size, age, habits, and condition of the body. A person of great size who has a large quantity of blood, requires more air than a small man with a less amount of circulating fluid. Individuals whose labor is active, require more air than sedentary or idle persons, because the waste of the system is greater. On the same principle, the gormandizer needs more of this element than the person of abstemious habits. So does the growing lad require more air than an adult of the same weight, for the reason that he consumes more food than a person of mature years. Habit also exerts a controlling influence. A man who works in the open air suffers more when placed in a small, unventilated room, than one who is accustomed to breathe the confined air of workshops. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Observation 3d. 501. What questions may be asked respecting the inspired air? Give the remark of Birnan. 502. How many cubic feet of air are adequate for a man to breathe each minute? How much does Dr. Reid allow? 503. Mention some reasons why different persons do not require the same amount of air. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 504. _Air, in which lamps will not burn with brilliancy, is unfitted for respiration._ In crowded rooms, which are not ventilated, the air is vitiated, not only by the abstraction of oxygen and the deposition of carbonic acid, but by the excretions from the skin and lungs of the audience. The lamps, under such circumstances, emit but a feeble light. Let the oxygen gas be more and more expended, and the lamps will burn more and more feebly, until they are extinguished. _Illustrations._ 1st. The effects of breathing the same air again and again, are well illustrated by an incident that occurred in one of our halls of learning. A large audience had assembled in an ill-ventilated room, to listen to a lecture; soon the lamps burned so dimly that the speaker and audience were nearly enveloped in darkness. The oppression, dizziness, and faintness experienced by many of the audience induced them to leave, and in a few minutes after, the lamps were observed to rekindle, owing to the exchange of pure air on opening the door. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is it with the laborer? With the gormandizer? With the person that works in the open air? 504. What effect has impure air on a burning lamp? Give the illustration of the effects of impure air on lighted lamps. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. In the "Black Hole of Calcutta," one hundred and forty-six Englishmen were shut up in a room eighteen feet square, with only two small windows on the same side to admit air. On opening this dungeon, ten hours after their imprisonment, only twenty-three were alive. The others had died from breathing impure air. 505. _Air that has become impure from the abstraction of oxygen, an excess of carbonic acid, or the excretions from the lungs and skin, has a deleterious effect on the body._ When this element is vitiated from the preceding causes, it prevents the proper arterialization, or change in the blood. For this reason, pure air should be admitted freely and constantly into work-shops and dwelling-houses, and the vitiated air permitted to escape. This is of greater importance than the warming of these apartments. We can compensate for the deficiency of a stove, by an extra garment or an increased quantity of food; but neither garment, exercise, nor food will compensate for pure air. 506. _School-rooms should be ventilated._ If they are not, the pupils will be restless, and complain of languor and headache. Those unpleasant sensations are caused by a want of pure air, to give an adequate supply of oxygen to the lungs. When pupils breathe for a series of years such vitiated air, their life is undoubtedly shortened, by giving rise to consumption and other fatal diseases. _Illustration._ A school-room thirty feet square and eight feet high, contains 7200 cubic feet of air. This room will seat sixty pupils, and, allowing ten cubic feet of air to each pupil per minute, all the air in the room will be vitiated in twelve minutes. _Observation._ In all school-rooms where there is not adequate ventilation, it is advisable to have a recess of five or ten minutes each hour. During this time, let the pupils breathe fresh air, and open the doors and windows, so that the air of the room shall be completely changed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Of the effects of breathing impure air. 505. In preserving health, what is of greater importance than warming the room? 506. Why should a school-room be ventilated? Give the illustration. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 507. _Churches, concert halls, and all rooms designed for a collection of individuals, should be amply ventilated._ While the architect and workmen are assiduous in giving these public rooms architectural beauty and splendor, by adorning the ceiling with Gothic tracery, rearing richly carved columns, and providing carefully for the warming of the room, it too frequently happens that no direct provision is made for the change of that element which gives us beauty, strength, and life. _Illustration._ A hall sixty feet by forty, and fifteen feet high, contains 36,000 cubic feet of air. A hall of this size will seat four hundred persons; by allowing ten cubic feet of air to each person per minute, the air of the room will be rendered unfit for respiration in nine minutes. 508. _Railroad cars, cabins of steam and canal-boats, omnibuses, and stage-coaches, require ample ventilation._ In the construction of these public conveyances, too frequently, the only apparent design is, to seat the greatest number of persons, regardless of the quantity and character of the air to maintain health and even life. The character of the air is only realized when, from the fresh, pure air, we enter a crowded cabin of a boat or a closed coach; then the vitiated air from animal excretions and noxious gases is offensive, and frequently produces sickness. 509. The influence of habit is strikingly expressed by Birnan, in the "Art of Warming and Ventilating Rooms:" "Not the least remarkable example of the power of habit is its reconciling us to practices which, but for its influence, would be considered noxious and disgusting. We instinctively shun approach to the dirty, the squalid, and the diseased, and use no garment that may have been worn by another. We open sewers for matters that offend the sight or the smell, and contaminate the air. We carefully remove impurities from what we eat and drink, filter turbid water, and fastidiously avoid drinking from a cup that may have been pressed to the lips of a friend. On the other hand, we resort to places of assembly, and draw into our mouths air loaded with effluvia from the lungs, skin, and clothing of every individual in the promiscuous crowd--exhalations offensive, to a certain extent, from the most healthy individuals; but when arising from a living mass of skin and lungs, in all stages of evaporation, disease, and putridity,--prevented by the walls and ceiling from escaping--they are, when thus concentrated, in the highest degree deleterious and loathsome." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What suggestion when a school-room is not ventilated? 507. What is said in regard to ventilating churches, concert halls, &c.? State the illustration. 508. What remarks relative to public conveyances? 509. State the influence of habit by Birnan. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 510. _The sleeping-room should be so ventilated that the air in the morning will be as pure as when retiring to rest in the evening._ Ventilation of the room would prevent morning headaches, the want of appetite, and languor--so common among the feeble. The impure air of sleeping-rooms probably causes more deaths than intemperance. Look around the country, and those who are most exposed, who live in huts but little superior to the sheds that shelter the farmer's flocks, are found to be the most healthy and robust. Headaches, liver complaints, coughs, and a multitude of nervous affections, are almost unknown to them; not so with those who spend their days and nights in rooms in which the sashes of the windows are calked, or perchance doubled, to prevent the keen but healthy air of winter from entering their apartments. Disease and suffering are their constant companions. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 510. What is said of the ventilation of sleeping-rooms? What would adequate ventilation prevent? Give a common observation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Illustration._ By many, sleeping apartments twelve feet square and seven feet high, are considered spacious for two persons, and good accommodations for four to lodge in. An apartment of this size contains 1008 cubic feet of air. Allowing ten cubic feet to each person per minute, two occupants would vitiate the air of the room in fifty minutes, and four in twenty-five minutes. When lodging-rooms are not ventilated, we would strongly recommend early rising. 511. _The sick-room, particularly, should be so arranged that the impure air may escape, and pure air be constantly admitted into the room._ It is no unusual practice in some communities, when a child or an adult is sick of an acute disease, to prevent the ingress of pure air, simply from the apprehension of the attendants, that the patient will contract a cold. Again, the prevalent custom of several individuals sitting in the sick-room, particularly when they remain there for several hours, tends to vitiate the air, and, consequently, to increase the suffering and danger of the sick person. In fevers or inflammatory diseases of any kind, let the patient breathe pure air; for the purer the blood, the greater the power of the system to remove disease, and the less the liability to contract colds. _Observation._ Among children, convulsions, or "fits," usually occur when they are sleeping. In many instances, these are produced by the impure air which is breathed. To prevent these alarming and distressing convulsions, the sleeping-room should be ventilated, and there should be no curtains around the bed, or coverings over the face, as they produce an effect similar to that experienced when sleeping in a small, unventilated room. To relieve a child when convulsed, carry it into the open air. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is said of the size of sleeping-rooms? 511. What is said of the sick-room? Mention some prevailing customs in reference to these rooms. What is said of convulsions among children? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 512. _While occupying a room, we are insensible of the gradual vitiation of the air._ This is the result of the diminished sensibility of the nervous system, and gradual adaptation of the organs to blood of a less stimulating character. This condition is well illustrated in the hibernating animals. We are insensible of the impure air of unventilated sleeping-rooms, until we leave them for a walk or ride. If they have been closed, we are made sensible of the character of the air as soon as we reënter them, for the system has regained its usual sensibility while inhaling a purer atmosphere. 513. _In the construction of every inhabited room, there should be adequate means of ventilation, as well as warming._ No room is well ventilated, unless as much pure air is brought into it as the occupants vitiate at every respiration. This can be effected by making an aperture in the ceiling of the room, or by constructing a ventilating flue in the chimney. This should be in contact with the flues for the escape of smoke, but separated from them by a thin brick partition. The hot air in the smoke flues will warm the separating brick partition, and consequently rarefy the air in the ventilating flue. Communication from every room in a house should be had to such flues. The draught of air can be regulated by well-adjusted registers, which in large rooms should be placed near the floor as well as near the ceiling. 514. While provision is made for the escape of rarefied impure air, we should also provide means by which pure air may be constantly admitted into the room, as the crevices of the doors and windows are not always sufficient; and, if they should be adequate, air can be introduced in a more convenient, economical, and appropriate manner. There should be an aperture opposite the ventilating flue, at or near the floor, to connect with the outer walls of the building or external air. But if pure heated air is introduced into the room, it obviates the necessity of the introduction of the external air.[16] [16] Mr. Frederick Emerson, of Boston, has devised a simple and effective apparatus for removing vitiated air from a room. It is successfully used upon all the public school-houses of Boston. It is now being generally applied to the school-houses and other public buildings, as well as private dwellings, of New England. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 512. Why are we insensible to the gradual vitiation of the air of an unventilated room? 513. What is very important in the building of every inhabited room? How can a room be well ventilated? 514. What is said relative to a communication with the external air? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 515. In warming rooms, the hot air furnaces, or box and air-tight stoves converted into hot air furnaces, should be used in preference to the ordinary stoves. The air thus introduced into the room is pure as well as warm. In the adaptation of furnaces to dwelling-houses, &c., it is necessary that the air should pass over an ample surface of iron moderately heated; as a red heat abstracts the oxygen from the contiguous air, and thus renders it unfit to be respired.[17] [17] Dr. Wyman's valuable work on "Ventilation," and the work of Henry Barnard, Esq., on "School-house architecture," can be advantageously consulted, as they give the practical methods of ventilating and warming shops, school-rooms, dwelling-houses, public halls, &c. _Observation_. Domestic animals need a supply of pure air as well as man. The cows of cities, that breathe a vitiated air, have, very generally, tubercles. Sheep that are shut in a confined air, die of a disease called the "rot," which is of a tuberculous character. Interest and humanity require that the buildings for animals be properly ventilated. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 515. How should rooms be warmed? What is necessary in the adaptation of furnaces to dwelling-houses? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXVI. HYGIENE OF THE RESPIRATORY ORGANS, CONTINUED. 516. The change that is effected in the blood while passing through the lungs, not only depends upon the purity of the air, but the amount inspired. The quantity varies according to the size of the chest, and the movement of the ribs and diaphragm. 517. _The size of the chest and lungs can be reduced by moderate and continued pressure._ This is most easily done in infancy, when the cartilages and ribs are very pliant; yet it can be effected at more advanced periods of life, even after the chest is fully developed. For want of knowledge of the pliant character of the cartilages and ribs in infants, too many mothers, unintentionally, contract their chests, and thus sow the seeds of disease by the close dressing of their offspring. 518. If slight but steady pressure be continued from day to day and from week to week, the ribs will continue to yield more and more, and after the expiration of a few months, the chest will become diminished in size. This will be effected without any suffering of a marked character; but the general health and strength will be impaired. It is not the violent and ephemeral pressure, but the moderate and protracted, that produces the miscalled, "genteel," contracted chests. 519. The style of dress which at the present day is almost universal, is a prolific cause of this deformity. These baneful fashions are copied from the periodicals, so widely circulated, containing a "fashion plate of the latest fashions, from Paris." In every instance; the contracted, deformed, and, as it is called, lady-like waist, is portrayed in all its fascinating loveliness. These periodicals are found on almost every centre-table, and exercise an influence almost omnipotent. If the plates which corrupt the morals are excluded by civil legislation, with the same propriety ought not those to be suppressed that have a tendency so adverse to health? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 516. What varies the amount of air received into the lungs? 517. How can the size of the chest be diminished? When is this most easily effected? 518. How are the miscalled, "genteel," contracted chests usually produced? 519. What is said of the style of the dress at the present day? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 100. A correct outline of the Venus de Medici, the beau ideal of female symmetry.] [Illustration: Fig. 101. An outline of a well-corseted modern beauty. One has an artificial, insect waist; the other, a natural waist. One has sloping shoulders, while the shoulders of the other are comparatively elevated, square, and angular. The proportion of the corseted female below the waist, is also a departure from the symmetry of nature.] _Observations._ 1st. The Chinese, by compressing the feet of female children, prevent their growth; so that the foot of a _Chinese belle_ is not larger than the foot of an American girl of five years. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What does fig. 100 represent? Fig. 101? Give observation 1st. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. The American women _compress their chests_, to prevent their growth; so that the chest of an _American belle_ is not larger than the chest of a Chinese girl of five years. Which country, in this respect, exhibits the greater intelligence? 3d. The chest can be deformed by making the linings of the waists of the dresses tight, as well as by corsets. Tight vests, upon the same principle, are also injurious. 520. In children, who have never worn close garments, the circumference of the chest is generally about equal to that of the body at the hips; and similar proportions would exist through life, if there were no improper pressure of the clothing. This is true of the laboring women of the Emerald Isle, and other countries of Europe, and in the Indian female, whose blanket allows the free expansion of the chest. The symmetrical statues of ancient sculptors bear little resemblance to the "beau ideal" of American notions of elegant form. This perverted taste is in opposition to the laws of nature. The design of the human chest is not simply to connect the upper and lower portions of the body, like some insects, but to form a case for the protection of the vital organs. 521. _Individuals may have small chests from birth._ This, to the particular individual, is natural; yet it is adverse to the great and general law of Nature relative to the size of the human chest. Like produces like, is a general law of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. No fact is better established, than that which proves the hereditary transmission from parents to children of a constitutional liability to disease and the same may be said in regard to their conformations. If the mother has a small, taper waist, either hereditary or acquired, this form may be impressed on her offspring;--thus illustrating the truthfulness of scripture, "that the sins of the parents shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Observation 2d. Observation 3d. 520. What is the size of the chest of a child that has always worn loose clothing? What is said of the size of the laboring women of Ireland, and the Indian female? How is it in ancient statues? What is the design of the chest? 521. What is a general law of both the animal and vegetable kingdoms? What fact in this connection is well established? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 522. _The quantity of air inhaled is modified by the capacity of the respiratory organs._ The necessity of voluminous lungs may he elucidated by the following experiment: Suppose a gill of alcohol, mixed with a gill of water, be put into a vessel having a square foot of surface, and over the vessel a membrane be tied, and that the water will evaporate in twenty-four hours. If the surface had been only six inches square, only one fourth of the water would have evaporated through the membrane in the given time. If the surface had been extended to two square feet, the water would have evaporated in twelve hours. 523. Apply this principle to the lungs: suppose there are two hundred feet of carbonic acid to be carried out of the system every twenty-four hours. This gas, in that time, will pass through a vesicular membrane of two thousand square feet. If the lungs were diminished in size, so that there would be only one thousand square feet of vesicular membrane, the amount of carbonic acid would not, and could not, be eliminated from the system. Under such circumstances, the blood would not be purified. 524. Again; suppose the two thousand square feet of membrane would transmit two hundred cubic feet of oxygen into the system every twenty-four hours. If it should be diminished one half, this amount of oxygen would not pass into the blood. From the above illustrations we may learn the importance of well-developed chests and voluminous lungs; for, by increasing the size of the lungs, the oxygen is more abundantly supplied to the blood, and this fluid is more perfectly deprived of its carbon and hydrogen. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What does this hereditary transmission prove? 522. How is the necessity of voluminous lungs illustrated? 525. How is this principle applied to the interchange of products in the lungs? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 525. The chest is not only most expanded at its lower part, but the portion of the lungs that occupies this space of the thoracic cavity contains the greater part of the air-cells; and, from the lower two thirds of the lungs the greatest amount of carbonic acid is abstracted from the blood, and the greatest amount of oxygen gas is conveyed into the circulating fluid. Hence, contracting the lower ribs is far more injurious to the health than diminishing the size of the upper part of the chest. 526. The question is often asked, Can the size of the chest and the volume of the lungs be increased, when they have been injudiciously compressed, or have inherited this unnatural form? The answer is in the affirmative. The means for attaining this end are, a judicious exercise of the lungs, by walking in the open air, reading aloud, singing, sitting erect, and fully inflating the lungs at each act of inspiration. If the exercise be properly managed and persevered in, it will expand the chest, and give tone and health to the important organs contained in it. But, if the exercise be ill-timed or carried to excess, the beneficial results sought will probably not be attained. _Observation._ Scholars, and persons who sit much of the time, should frequently, during the day, breathe full and deep, so that the smallest air-cells may be fully filled with air. While exercising the lungs, the shoulders should be thrown back and the head held erect. 527. _The movement of the ribs and diaphragm is modified by the dress._ When the lungs are properly filled with air, the chest is enlarged in every direction. If any article of apparel is worn so tight as to prevent the full expansion of the chest and abdomen, the lungs, in consequence, do not receive air sufficient to purify the blood. The effect of firm, unyielding clothing, when worn tight, in preventing a due supply of air to the lungs, may be shown by the following illustration. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 525. Why is it more injurious to contract the lower part of the chest than the upper? 526. How can the size of the chest be increased when it is contracted? Give the observation. 527. How is the movement of the ribs and diaphragm modified? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Illustration._ If the diameter of a circle is three feet, the circumference will be nine feet. If the diameter is extended to four feet, the circumference will be increased to twelve feet. Should a tight band be thrown around a circle of nine feet, its diameter cannot be increased, for the circumference cannot be enlarged. 528. Any inelastic band, drawn closely around the lower part of the chest, or the abdomen, below the ribs, operates like the band in the preceding illustration, in restricting the movement of the ribs. When any article of dress encircles either the chest or abdomen, so as to prevent an increase of its circumference, it has an injudicious tendency, as it prevents the introduction of air in sufficient quantities to purify the blood. The question is not, How much restriction of the respiratory movements can be endured, and life continue? but, Does any part of the apparel restrict the movements? If it does, it is a violation of the organic laws; and though Nature is profuse in her expenditures, yet sooner or later, she sums up her account. 529. In determining whether the apparel is worn too tight, inflate the lungs, and, if no pressure is felt, no injurious effects need be apprehended from this cause. In testing the tightness of the dress, some persons will contract to the utmost the abdominal muscles, and thus diminish the size of the chest, by depressing the ribs; when this is done, the individual exclaims, "How loose my dress is!" This practice is both deceptive and ludicrous. A good test is, to put the hand on the chest below the arm; if there is no movement of the ribs during respiration, the apparel is too tight. The only reliable test, however, is a full inflation of the lungs. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is the effect of unyielding clothing, when worn tight, illustrated? 528. What effect has an inelastic band upon the lower part of the chest? What question is asked? 529. How can we determine whether the apparel is worn too tight? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ Many individuals do not realize the small amount of force that will prevent the enlargement of the chest. This can be demonstrated by drawing a piece of tape tightly around the lower part of the chest of a vigorous adult, and confining it with the thumb and finger. Then endeavor fully to inflate the lungs, and the movement of the ribs will be much restricted. 530. _The position in standing and sitting influences the movement of the ribs and diaphragm._ When the shoulders are thrown back, and when a person stands or sits erect, the diaphragm and ribs have more freedom of motion, and the abdominal muscles act more efficiently; thus the lungs have broader range of movement than when the shoulders incline forward, and the body is stooping. 531. _Habit exercises an influence upon the range of the respiratory movements._ A person who has been habituated to dress loosely, and whose inspirations are full and free, suffers more from the tightness of a vest or waistband, than one, the range of movements of whose chest has long been subjected to tight lacing. 532. _The condition of the brain exercises a great influence upon respiration._ If the brain is diseased, or the mind depressed by grief, tormented by anxiety, or absorbed by abstract thought, the contractile energy of the diaphragm and muscles that elevate the ribs, is much diminished, and the lungs are not so fully inflated, as when the mind is influenced by joy or other exhilarating emotions. The depressing passions likewise lessen the frequency of respiration. By the influence of these causes, the blood is but partially purified, and the whole system becomes enfeebled. Here we may see the admirable harmony between the different parts of the body, and the adaptation of all the functions to each other. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give another test. How can the amount of pressure necessary to prevent the enlargement of the chest be demonstrated? 530. Show the effect of position on the movements of the ribs and diaphragm. 531. Show the effect of habit on the respiratory movements. 532. State the influence of the mind upon respiration. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 533. As the quantity of air inhaled at each unimpeded inspiration in lungs of ample size, is about forty cubic inches, it follows, if the movement of the ribs and diaphragm is restricted by an enfeebled action of the respiratory muscles, or by any other means, the blood will not be perfectly purified. In the experiment, (§ 522, 523,) suppose forty cubic inches of air must pass over the membrane twenty times every minute, and that this is the amount required to remove the vapor which arises from the membrane; if only half of this amount of air be supplied each minute, only one half as much water will be removed from the alcohol through the membrane in twenty-four hours; consequently, the alcohol would be impure from the water not being entirely removed. 534. Restrain the elevation of the ribs and depression of the diaphragm, so that the quantity of air conveyed into the lungs will be reduced to twenty cubic inches, when forty are needed, and the results will be as follows: Only one half of the carbonic acid will be eliminated from the system, and the blood will receive but one half as much oxygen as it requires. This fluid will then be imperfectly oxydated, and partially freed of its impurities. The impure blood will be returned to the left side of the heart, and the whole system will suffer from an infringement of organic laws. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 533. Illustrate the effect upon the blood when the respiratory muscles are enfeebled in their action. 534. Show how the blood is imperfectly purified by restricting the movements of the ribs and diaphragm. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 535. _Scrofula, or consumption, frequently succeeds a depressed state of the nervous system._ These diseases arise from the deposition of tuberculous matter in different parts of the body. Those individuals who have met with reverses of fortune, in which character and property were lost, afford painful examples. Hundreds yearly die from the effect of depressed spirits, caused by disappointed hopes, or disappointed ambition. _Illustration._ A striking instance of the effects of mental depression is related by Lænnec. In a female religious establishment in France, great austerities were practised; the mind was absorbed in contemplating the terrible truths of religion, and in mortifying the flesh. The whole establishment, in the space of ten years, was several times depopulated--with the exception of the persons employed at the gate, in the kitchen, and garden--with that fatal disease, consumption. This institution did not long continue, but was suppressed by order of the French government. 536. _The purity of the blood is influenced by the condition of the lungs._ When the bronchial tubes and air-cells have become partially impervious to air, from pressure upon the lungs, from fluids in the chest, from tumors, or from the consolidation of the cells and tubes from disease,--as inflammation, or the deposition of yellow, cheesy matter, called tubercles,--the blood will not be purified, even if the air is pure, the lungs voluminous, and the respiratory movements unrestricted, as the air cannot permeate the air-cells. _Observations._ 1st. The twenty-three who escaped immediate death in the Black Hole of Calcutta were soon attacked with inflammation of the lungs, by which these organs were consolidated, and thus prevented the permeation of air into their cells. This disease of the lungs was caused by breathing vitiated air. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 535. Mention some of the effects of mental depression upon the body. What is related by Lænnec? 536. Does the condition of the lungs influence the purity of the blood? Mention some of the conditions that will impede the oxydation of blood in the lungs. What occurred to those persons who escaped death in the Black Hole of Calcutta? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. One of the precursory symptoms of consumption is the feeble murmur of respiration in the upper part of the lungs. This condition of these organs is produced by, or frequently follows, mental depression, the breathing of impure air, the stooping position in standing or sitting, and the restriction of the movements of the ribs and diaphragm. 3d. Persons asphyxiated by carbonic acid, water, strangling, or any noxious air, after resuscitation, are usually affected with coughs and other diseases of the lungs. 537. COLDS and COUGHS are generally induced by a chill, that produces a contraction of the blood-vessels of the skin; and the waste material, which should be carried from the body by the agency of the vessels of this membrane, is retained in the system, and a great portion of it is returned to the mucous membrane of the lungs. For such is the harmony established by the Creator, that if the function of any portion of the body is deranged, those organs whose offices are similar take on an increased action. 538. The waste material, that should have passed through the many outlets of the skin, creates an unusual fulness of the minute vessels that nourish the mucous membrane of the bronchia; this induces an irritation of these vessels, which increases the flow of blood to the nutrient arteries of the lungs. There is, also, a thickening of the lining membrane of the lungs, caused by the repletion of the bronchial vessels of the mucous membrane; this impedes the passage of air through the small bronchial tubes, and consequently the air-vesicles cannot impart a sufficient quantity of oxygen to purify the blood, and this fluid, imperfectly purified, does not pass with facility through the lungs. An additional obstacle to the free passage of air into the lungs, is the accumulation of blood in the pulmonary vessels. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is one of the precursory symptoms of consumption? How is this condition frequently produced? What diseases usually follow asphyxia by carbonic acid, water, strangling, &c.? 537. How are colds generally induced? 538. What effect has a common cold upon the mucous membrane of the lungs? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 539. As colds and coughs are very generally treated by the "matrons" of the community, or by the patient, the following suggestions may aid in directing a proper treatment: To effect a speedy cure, it is necessary to diminish the amount of fluid in the vessels of the lungs. This can be effected in two ways: 1st. By diminishing the quantity of blood in the system; 2d. By diverting it from the lungs to the skin. The first condition can be easily and safely affected, by abstaining from food, and drinking no more than a gill of fluid in twenty-four hours. As there is a continuous waste from the skin and other organs of the system, the quantity of blood by this procedure will be diminished, and the lungs relieved of the accumulated fluid. 540. The second condition can be accomplished by resorting to the warm or vapor bath. These and the common sweats will invite the blood from the lungs to the skin. By keeping up the action of the skin for a few hours, the lungs will be relieved. In some instances, emetics and cathartics are necessary; mucilages, as gum arabic or slippery-elm bark, would be good. After the system is relieved, the skin is more impressible to cold, and consequently requires careful protection by clothing. In good constitutions, the first method is preferable, and generally sufficient without any medicine or "sweating." 541. _The method of resuscitating persons apparently drowned._ In the first instance, it is necessary to press the chest, suddenly and forcibly, downward and backward, and instantly discontinue the pressure. Repeat this without intermission, until a pair of bellows can be procured. When the bellows are obtained, introduce the nozzle well upon the base of the tongue, and surround the mouth and nose with a towel or handkerchief, to close them. Let another person press upon the projecting part of the neck, called "Adam's apple," while air is introduced into the lungs through the bellows. Then press upon the chest, to force the air from the lungs, to imitate natural breathing. (Appendix M.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 539. Give the first method for the treatment of cold. 540. The second method. 541, 542. How should persons apparently drowned be treated? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 542. Continue the use of the bellows, and forcing the air out of the chest, for an hour at least, unless signs of natural breathing come on. Wrap the body in warm, dry blankets, and place it near the fire, to preserve the natural warmth, as well as to impart artificial heat. Every thing, however, is secondary to filling the lungs with air. Avoid all friction until breathing is restored. Send immediately for medical aid. 543. _The means of resuscitating persons asphyxiated from electricity, &c._ In apparent death from electricity, (lightning,) the person is frequently asphyxiated from _pa-ral´y-sis_ (palsy) of the respiratory muscles. To recover such persons, resort to artificial respiration. In cases of apparent death from hanging or strangling, the knot should be untied or cut immediately; then use artificial respiration, or breathing, as directed in apparent death from drowning. _Observation._ It is an impression, in many sections of the country, that the law will not allow the removal of the cord from the neck of a body found suspended, unless the coroner be present. It is therefore proper to say, that no such delay is necessary, and that no time should be lost in attempting to resuscitate the strangled person. 544. _The method of resuscitating persons apparently dead from inhaling carbonic acid gas._ When life is apparently extinct from breathing carbonic acid gas, the person should be carried into the open air. The head and shoulders should be slightly elevated; the face and chest should be sponged or sprinkled with cold water, or cold vinegar and water, while the limbs are wrapped in dry, warm blankets. In this, as in asphyxia from other causes, immediately resort to artificial respiration. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 543. What treatment should be adopted in asphyxia from electricity? From hanging? 544. What should be the treatment in asphyxia from inhaling carbonic acid gas? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observations._ 1st. Many persons have died from breathing carbonic acid that was formed by burning charcoal in an open pan or portable furnace, for the purpose of warming their, sleeping-rooms. This is not only produced by burning charcoal, but is evolved from the live coals of a wood fire; and being heavier than air, it settles on the floor of the room; and, if there is no open door or chimney-draught, it will accumulate, and, rising above the head of an individual, will cause asphyxia or death. 2d. In resuscitating persons apparently dead from causes already mentioned, if a pair of bellows cannot be procured immediately, let their lungs be inflated by air expelled from the lungs of some person present. To have the expired air as pure as possible, the person should quickly inflate his lungs, and instantly expel the air into those of the asphyxiated person. _Place the patient in pure air, admit attendants only into the apartment, and send for a physician without delay._ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What sad results frequently follow the burning of charcoal in a closed room? What suggestion in resuscitating asphyxiated persons? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXVII. ANIMAL HEAT. 545. The true sources of animal heat, or calorification, are still imperfectly known. No hypothesis has, as yet, received the concurrent assent of physiologists. We see certain phenomena, but the ultimate causes are hidden from our view. Its regular production, to a certain degree, is essential both to animal and vegetable life. 546. There is a tendency between bodies of different temperature to an equilibrium of heat. Thus, if we touch or approach a hot body, the heat, or caloric passes from that body to our organs of feeling, and gives the sensation of heat. On the contrary, when we touch a cold body, the heat passes from the hand to that body, and causes a sensation of cold. 547. The greater number of animals appear cold when we touch them; and, indeed, the temperature of their bodies is not much above that of the atmosphere, and changes with it. In man, and other animals that approach him in their organization, it is otherwise. They have the faculty of producing a sufficient quantity of caloric to maintain their temperatures nearly at the same degree, under all atmospheric changes, and keep themselves warm. 548. Those animals whose proper heat is not very perceivable, are called _cold_-blooded; as most species of fishes, toads, snakes, turtles, and reptiles generally. Those animals which produce sufficient heat independently of the atmosphere surrounding them, are called _warm_-blooded; as man, birds, quadrupeds, &c. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 545-570. _What is said respecting animal heat?_ 545. Are the true sources of animal heat known? What do we see? 546. What is the tendency between bodies of different temperatures? Give an explanation. 547. What is said of the temperature of animals? 548. What is meant by cold-blooded animals? By warm-blooded animals? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 549. The temperature of man is about 98°, (Fahrenheit's thermometer,) and that of some other animals is higher; the temperature of birds, for example, is about 110°. It is obvious, that in most parts of the globe, the heat of the atmosphere is, even in summer, less than that of the human body. In our latitude, the mercury rarely attains 98°, and sometimes it descends to several degrees below zero. 550. Captain Parry, with his ship's company, in his voyage of discovery to the arctic regions, wintered in a climate where the mercury was at 40°, and sometimes at 55° below zero. Captain Back found it 70° below zero. These were 72° and 102° below the freezing point, or about 200° below that of their own bodies, and still they were able to resist this low temperature, and escape being "frost-bitten." 551. Captain Lyon, who accompanied Captain Parry in his second voyage to the northern regions, found the temperature of an arctic fox to be 106°, while that of the atmosphere was 32° below zero; making a difference between the temperature of the fox and that of the atmosphere, of 138°. Captain Scoresby found the temperature of a whale, in the Arctic Ocean, to be 104°, or nearly as high as that of other animals of the same kind in the region of the equator, while the temperature of the ice was as low as 32°, and the water was nearly as cold. These facts show what a strong counteracting energy there is in animals against the effects of cold. 552. On the other hand, it has been ascertained by numerous and well-conducted experiments, that the human body can be exposed, even for a length of time, to a very high temperature, without essentially elevating that of the body. Chantrey, the sculptor, often entered the furnace, heated for drying his moulds, when the temperature indicated by the thermometer was 330°. Chaubert, the Fire-King, is said to have entered ovens when heated to 600°. In 1774, Sir Charles Blagden entered a room in which the mercury rose to 260°. He remained eight minutes without suffering. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 549. What is the temperature of the human body? Of birds? How does the heat of the atmosphere in summer, in our latitude, compare with that of the human system? 550. What is related of Captain Parry? Of Captain Back? 551. Of Captain Lyon? Of Captain Scoresby? What do these facts show? 552. What has been ascertained on the other hand? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 553. In order to render it certain that there was no fallacy, says Sir Charles Blagden, "in the degree of heat shown by the thermometer, but that the air breathed was capable of producing all the well-known effects of such a heat on inanimate matter, I put some eggs and beefsteak upon a tin frame placed near the thermometer, and farther distant from the cockle than from the wall of the room. In about twenty minutes the eggs were taken out, roasted quite hard; and in forty-seven minutes, the steak was not only dressed, but almost dry." 554. If a thermometer be placed under the tongue of a healthy person, in all climates and seasons the temperature will be found nearly the same. Sir Charles Blagden, "while in the heated room, breathed on a thermometer, and the mercury sank several degrees; and when he expired forcibly, the air felt cool as it passed through the nostrils, though it was scorching hot when it entered them in inspiration." _Observation._ Did not the human body possess within itself the power of generating and removing heat, so as to maintain nearly an equality of temperature, the most fatal consequences would ensue. In northern latitudes, especially, in severe weather of winter, the blood would be converted into a solid mass, and on the other hand, the fatty secretion, when subjected to equatorial heat, would become fluid, and life would be extinguished. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is related of Chantrey? Of Chaubert? Of Sir Charles Blagden? 553. Give Sir Charles's own statement. 554. What is said of the temperature of the human tongue? Mention the experiment by Sir Charles Blagden. What would be the effect if the human system did not maintain an equality of temperature? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 555. To enable man, and other warm-blooded animals, to maintain this equilibrium of temperature under such extremes of heat and cold, naturally suggests two inquiries: 1st. By what organs is animal heat generated? 2d. By what means is its uniformity maintained? 556. The ancients had no well-arranged theory on the subject of animal heat. They believed that the chief object of respiration was to cool the blood, and that the heart was the great furnace where all the heat was generated. At a later period, Mayow, from his discoveries respecting respiration, asserted that the object of respiration was to produce heat, and denied that the blood was cooled in the lungs. 557. When it was discovered that, both in combustion and respiration, carbonic acid was produced and oxygen absorbed, it led Dr. Black to conclude that breathing was a kind of combustion by which all the heat of the body was produced. This theory was objected to, because, if all the heat was generated in the lungs, like those parts of a stove in contact with the fuel, they would be at a higher temperature than those parts at a distance, which was known not to exist. 558. The next theory, and one which received the sanction of the scientific men of Europe, was proposed by Dr. Crawford. He agreed with Dr. Black that heat not only was generated in the lungs, but that the arterial blood had a greater capacity for heat than the venous, and that this increase of capacity takes place in the lungs. At the moment heat is generated, a portion of it, under the name of latent heat, is absorbed and conveyed to the different parts of the body Wherever arterial blood is converted into venous, this latent heat is given out. But, unfortunately for this theory, Dr. Davy proved the capacity of both, for heat, to be nearly the same. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 555. What inquiries are naturally suggested? 556. What was the theory of the ancients? What did Mayow assert at a later period? 557. What was the theory of Dr. Black? The objection? 558. What was the theory of Dr Crawford? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 559. No one can doubt that respiration and animal heat are closely connected. Those animals whose respiratory apparatus is the most extended, have the highest temperature. An example is seen in birds, whose organs of respiration extend over a large part of the body, and their temperature is 12° above man; while the respiratory apparatus of cold-blooded animals, as some kinds of fish, is imperfect, and only a small quantity of blood is subjected, at any time, to the effects of respiration. 560. To understand the process by which heat is generated in the human system and in animals, it will be necessary to state: 1st. That the apparent heat of a body, as perceived by the touch, or as indicated by a thermometer, is not the measurement of heat contained in the body, or its capacity for heat. _Illustration._ If we mix one pound of water, at the temperature of 60°, with another pound at 91°, the resulting temperature will be exactly the medium, or 75½°. But, if we mix a pound of water at 60° with a pound of quicksilver at 91°, the resulting temperature will be only 61°, because the capacity of water for heat is so much greater than that of quicksilver, that the heat which raised the quicksilver 31° will raise the water only 1°. 561. 2d. When the density and the arrangement of the atoms of a body are changed, its capacity to hold heat in a latent state is altered. If it will retain more, heat will be absorbed from contiguous and surrounding substances; but, if its capacity for caloric is lessened, heat will be set free and given out to surrounding bodies. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The objection? 559. In what do all the physiologists of the present day concur? How is it proved that respiration and animal heat are closely connected? 560. What is said of the apparent heat of bodies? How is this illustrated? 561. What is the effect when the density and the arrangement of the atoms of a body are changed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Illustrations._ 1st. Ice and salt, (Chl. of Sodium,) when mixed, are converted into a fluid. In this state they will hold more heat than when solid. The heat necessary to produce this change is drawn from the surrounding medium, which is made proportionally colder by the loss of caloric imparted to the ice and salt. It is by this chemical process that "ice-cream" is made. 2d. On the other hand, mix water and sulphuric acid, (oil of vitriol,) of the temperature of 60°, and the mixture will become quite warm, and will freely impart its heat to surrounding and contiguous objects. 562. The same principle is exhibited, when oxygen unites with an inflammable body, as in the burning of wood, coal, oil, &c. In combustion, the oxygen of the atmosphere unites with carbon and hydrogen, and carbonic acid and water are produced. This process, according to all the known laws of caloric, is attended with heat. The quantity of heat disengaged in combustion is always in proportion to the amount of carbon and hydrogen consumed; thus a piece of wood weighing one pound, in burning slowly, would give out the same quantity of heat as a pound of shavings of the same wood, in burning rapidly. Upon these principles, the production of animal heat may be understood. 563. The food contains carbon and hydrogen. These exist in the chyle. The old and waste atoms of the body likewise contain the same elements. In the lungs the oxygen and nitrogen of the inspired air are separated. It is now supposed that the oxygen enters the capillary vessels of the lungs, and mingles with the blood, with which it is carried to the heart and thence to the nutrient capillary vessels of every part of the system. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give the 1st illustration. The 2d. 562. What changes take place when oxygen unites with an inflammable body? To what is the quantity of heat proportionate in combustion? Give an example. 563. How are carbon and hydrogen supplied to the system? How the oxygen? Where does the oxygen mingle with the blood? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 564. In the capillary vessels, the oxygen of the arterial blood unites with the carbon and hydrogen which the refuse materials contain, and carbonic acid and water are formed. The combustion of carbon and hydrogen in the capillaries of every part of the system, (the lungs not excepted,) is attended with a disengagement of heat, and the carbonic acid and water are returned to the lungs in the dark-colored blood, and evolved from the system. 565. Sir Benjamin Brodie and some others have maintained, that the heat of the system is generated exclusively by the influence of the brain and nerves. This theory is discarded by most physiologists; yet it is true that the nervous system exercises a great influence over the action of the capillary vessels in the process of nutrition, secretion, and absorption. When these operations are most active, the change among the particles of matter of which the body is composed, is then greatest, and the generation of heat is increased in a corresponding degree. 566. The necessity of pure, red blood in the production of animal heat, is shown when the vessels that carry blood to a limb are ligated, or tied; the part immediately becomes colder. The necessity of nervous influence is seen in the diminished temperature of a paralytic limb. 567. Our next inquiry is, By what means is the uniformity of temperature in the body maintained? As there is a constant generation of heat in the system, there would be an undue accumulation,--so much so as to cause disagreeable sensations,--if there were no means by which it could be evolved from the body, or its production lessened. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 564. Where does it unite with the carbon and hydrogen contained in the body, and how is heat generated? 565. What was the theory of Sir Benjamin Brodie? Is this theory in general discarded? What is true of this theory? 566. How is the necessity of pure, red blood and nervous action shown in the production of animal heat? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 568. It has been ascertained that the principal means by which the system is kept at a uniform temperature, is the immense evaporation from the skin and lungs. These membranes, in an ordinary state, are constantly giving out water, which is converted into vapor, and carried off by the surrounding air. The quantity of heat abstracted from the system to effect this, depends on the rapidity of the change of air, its temperature, and the amount of water it contains in a state of vapor. The quantity removed is greatest when the air is warm and dry, and the change, or current, rapid. _Observations._ 1st. The first discovery of the use of free evaporation of the perspiration from the skin in reducing the heat of the body, and the analogy subsisting between this process and that of the evaporation of water from a rough porous surface, so constantly resorted to in warm countries, as an efficacious means of reducing the temperature of the air in rooms, and of wine and other drinks, much below that of the surrounding atmosphere, was made by Franklin. 2d. In all ages and climes, it has been observed that the increased temperature of the skin and system in fevers, is abated as soon as free perspiration is restored. In damp, close weather, as during the sultry days of August, although the temperature is lower, we feel a disagreeable sensation of heat, because the saturation of the air with moisture lessens evaporation, and thus prevents the escape of heat through the lungs and skin. 3d. It is on the principle of the evaporation of fluids that warm vinegar and water, applied to the burning, aching head, cools it, and imparts to it a comfortable feeling. The same results follow if warm liquids are applied to the skin in the hot stage of fever; and this evaporation can be increased by constant fanning. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 568. What are the principal means by which a uniform temperature of the body is maintained? On what does the quantity of heat abstracted from the system depend? What discovery relative to animal heat is due to Franklin? What is said of free perspiration in fevers? What occasions the disagreeable sensation of heat in damp, close weather? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 4th. It is frequently noticed, in very warm weather, that dogs and other domestic animals are seen with their tongues out of their mouths, and covered with frothy secretions. This is merely another mode of reducing animal heat, as the skin of such animals does not perspire as much as that of man. 569. Under some circumstances, a portion of the heat of the system is removed by radiation. When cold air comes in contact with the skin and mucous membrane of the lungs, heat is removed from the body, as from a stove, to restore an equilibrium of temperature. The removal of heat from the body is greatest when we are in a current of cold air, or when a brisk, cold wind is blowing upon us. 570. As the primary object of the different processes of nutrition is to supply animal heat, so the action of the different nutritive organs is modified by the demands of the system for heat. When heat is rapidly removed from the body, the functional activity of the organs of nutrition is increased. When the system is warmed by foreign influence, the activity of the nutritive organs is diminished. This leads to the natural, and, we may add, instinctive change in the quality and quantity of food at different seasons of the year. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 569. When is heat radiated from the body? When is it greatest? 570. What is the primary object of the different processes of nutrition? When is the activity of the nutritive organs increased? When diminished? To what does this lead? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXVIII. HYGIENE OF ANIMAL HEAT. 571. The amount of heat generated in man and inferior animals depends upon the quantity and quality of the food, age, exercise, the amount and character of the respired air, condition of the brain, skin, and general system. 572. _Animal heat is modified by the proportion of digestible carbon which the food contains, and by the quantity consumed._ As the kind of fuel that contains the greatest amount of combustible material evolves the most caloric when burned, so those articles of food that contain the greatest quantity of carbon produce the most heat when converted into blood. The inhabitants of the frigid zones, and individuals in temperate climates during the cold season, consume with impunity stimulating animal food, that contains a large proportion of carbon, while the inhabitants of the tropical regions, and persons in temperate climates during the warm season, are more healthy with a less stimulating or vegetable diet. _Observation._ When we ride or labor in cold weather, an adequate amount of nutritious food will sustain the warmth of the system better than intoxicating drinks. 573. _Age is another influence that modifies the generation of animal heat._ The vital forces of the child being feeble, less heat is generated in its system than in that of an adult. The experiments of Dr. Milne Edwards show that the power of producing heat in warm-blooded animals, is at its minimum at birth, and increases successively to adult age; and that young children part with their heat more readily than adults, and, instead of being warmer, are generally a degree or two colder. After adult age, as the vital powers decline, the generation of heat is diminished, as the energies of the system are lessened. Hence the young child, and the debilitated aged person, need more clothing than the vigorous individual of middle age. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 571-585. _Give the hygiene of animal heat._ 571. State some of the influences that modify the generation of animal heat. 572. What element of the food influences the generation of heat? When and where can animal food be eaten with impunity? Give the practical observation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 574. _Exercise is an influence that modifies the generation of animal heat._ As carbon and hydrogen enter into the composition of the organs of the body, whatever increases the flow of blood in the system, increases also the deposition of new material, and the removal of the waste particles. This change among the particles of matter is attended with an elevation of temperature, from the union of oxygen with the carbon and hydrogen of the waste atoms. For this reason, a person in action is warmer than in a quiescent state. Consequently, the amount of clothing should be increased, when exercise or labor is diminished or suspended. 575. On the other hand, whatever impedes the circulation and the interchange of the atoms of matter, diminishes animal heat. Common observation shows, that the extremities are not as warm when tight gloves or boots are worn as when they are loose. One reason is, the circulation of blood is impeded, which is attended with less frequent change of the particles of matter. 576. _The quantity of air which is inhaled modifies the heat of the system._ In the generation of heat in a stove, air, or oxygen, is as essential as the wood or coal. It is equally so in the production of animal heat. The oxygen of the inspired air should be in proportion to the carbon and hydrogen to be consumed. This requires voluminous lungs, together with free movements of the ribs and diaphragm. A person whose chest is small, and whose apparel is worn tight over the ribs, suffers more from the cold, and complains more frequently of chilliness and cold extremities, than the broad-chested and loosely dressed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What do the experiments of Dr. Milne Edwards show? 574. Why does exercise influence animal heat? 575. What is the effect when the circulation of blood is impeded? Give examples. 576. Why do those persons that have broad chests and voluminous lungs suffer less from cold than the narrow-chested with small lungs? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ Fishes that breathe by means of gills, as the cod, pike, &c., depend solely on the small quantity of oxygen that is contained in the air mixed with the water. Their temperature is not much greater than the medium in which they live. Whales, dolphins, &c., breathe by means of lungs, and the inhalation of atmospheric air makes their temperature about 100°, independent of the heat of the element in which they live. 577. _The quality of respired air influences the generation of animal heat._ In vestries, and other public rooms, when crowded with an audience, where the ventilation is inadequate, the lamps will emit but a faint light, because the oxygen is soon expended, and there is not enough of the vivifying principle to unite with the oil and disengage light. In the human body, when the respired air has lost some of its life-giving properties, the combustion that takes place in different parts of the system is not so complete as when it contains a proper proportion of oxygen; and hence less heat is disengaged. For this reason, those persons that breathe impure air, either in the daytime or night, require more clothing, than those that work and sleep in well-ventilated rooms. 578. _The condition of the brain and nervous system affects the generation of animal heat._ If the brain is diseased, or the mind is absorbed in thought, depressed by sorrow, or aroused from fear, the breathing becomes slow and scarcely perceptible, and a chilliness pervades the body, particularly the extremities; while, on the contrary, if the mind and nervous system are excited by joyous and agreeable emotions, the circulation of blood is quicker, and the system more powerfully resists external cold. During sleep, when the brain is partially inactive, less heat is generated than when awake. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is said of those fishes that breathe by means of gills? Of those that breathe by means of lungs? 577. Why do lamps give but a faint light in crowded, unventilated rooms? What effect on animal heat has impure air? 578. Mention the effects of some of the mental emotions on animal heat. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ The preceding remark explains why an individual who sleeps in the same clothing that was adequate to prevent chills while awake, contracts a cold, unless he throws over him an additional covering. 579. _The state of the skin exercises much influence in the generation of heat._ If the functions of this membrane are not interrupted, more heat will be generated than when it is pallid and inactive. The action of the capillaries is most energetic when the skin is clean; on this account, before taking a walk or a ride, in cold weather, remove all impurities from the skin, by thorough ablution and vigorous friction. 580. _The amount and kind of clothing modify the temperature of the system._ Those persons that are well clothed have greater power to resist cold than the thinly apparelled, because both the evaporation and the radiation from the skin are impeded, and less heat, in consequence, is abstracted from the body. If the articles of apparel possess the property of retaining air in their meshes, as flannel, the removal of heat is not as rapid as when linen is worn. _Observation._ In winter, although more heat is generated in the system than in summer, yet we require more clothing, and also those articles that are poor conductors of heat, because caloric is more rapidly extracted in clear, cold weather, than in a warm day. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What does the preceding remark explain? 579. What suggestion respecting the condition of the skin before taking a walk or ride in a cold day? Why? 580. Do the amount and kind of clothing affect animal heat? What is said of well-clothed persons? When does the system generate the most heat? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 581. _The health and constitution influence the generation of heat._ When the health is firm, and the constitution vigorous, less clothing is needed, for the change among the particles of matter is more rapid, and more heat is generated, than when the opposite condition obtains. Persons of a feeble constitution, particularly, if any of the vital organs[18] are diseased, need more clothing and require rooms of a warmer temperature, than individuals who are free from disease and have a vigorous constitution. [18] The brain, lungs, heart, and digestive organs, are called _vital_ organs. _Observation._ Persons who are infirm, and whose vital powers are feeble, in general, accustom themselves to an undue amount of clothing and warm rooms. A more judicious practice would be, to exercise more and use a moderate amount of clothing, together with a more nutritious diet. 582. _The surplus heat should be removed equally from all parts of the system._ The rapid evaporation of fluids, as in free perspiration, or from radiation, as in a cold atmosphere, is attended with a removal of heat from the system. This modifies the action of the circulatory vessels. Consequently, if heat is suddenly and rapidly abstracted from one part of the system, the equilibrium of the circulation is destroyed, which will produce disease. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Why do we, then, require more clothing in winter than in summer? 581. Why do persons of firm health and vigorous constitutions need less clothing than those who are feeble? What is a general practice among infirm persons? What would be more judicious? 582. Why should the surplus heat be removed equally from all parts of the system? What is said respecting currents of air from small apertures? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ Currents of air that impinge upon small portions of the body, as from small apertures, or from a window slightly raised, should be avoided. They are more dangerous than to expose the whole person to a brisk wind, because the current of air removes the heat from the part exposed, which disturbs the circulation of blood and causes disease, usually in the form of "colds." For the same reason, it is not judicious to stand in an open door, or the opening of a street. 583. _The system suffers less when the change of temperature is gradual._ The change in the production of heat, as well as in the evaporation of fluids from the system, is gradual when not influenced by foreign causes. This gradual change is known under the name _acclimation_. By this means the body is enabled to endure tropical heat and polar cold. Owing to this gradual adaptation of the system to different temperatures, we can bear a greater degree of heat in the summer between the tropics, than in the winter under the polar circles. On the other hand, we can endure a greater degree of cold in winter and in the arctic region, than in the summer and in equatorial countries. 584. The sensation of heat which would be oppressive in a mild, warm day of January, would only be grateful in July, and a degree of cold which could scarcely be endured in August, would not be uncomfortable in December. The changes of season in our latitude prevent the disagreeable and perhaps fatal consequence that would follow, if no spring or autumn intervened between the severity of winter's cold and the intensity of summer's heat. During the transition periods, the constitution is gradually changed, and adapted to bear the extremes of temperature without suffering. The amount of heat generated in the nutrient capillary vessels, is likewise diminished or increased as the temperature of the season becomes greater or less. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 583. In what manner should change of temperature take place, to be adapted to the body? How is the body enabled to endure tropical heat and polar cold? State some of the effects of the gradual adaptation of the system to different temperatures. 584. What is said relative to a warm day in winter? To a cold day in summer? What is said of the changes of seasons in our latitude? What effect on the constitution during spring and autumn? What change in the amount of heat generated? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 585. But, on the contrary, we cannot suddenly pass from one extreme of temperature to the other with impunity. Let an inhabitant of Quebec suddenly arrive in Cuba in February, and he would suffer from languor and exhaustion; after becoming acclimated to this tropical climate, let him suddenly return to Quebec in January, and the severity of the weather would be almost insupportable. _Observations._ 1st. Experience shows that heated rooms, as well as tropical climates, lessen the generation of heat in the body, and likewise the power of resisting cold. It would be idle for the merchant from his warehouse, or the mechanic from his heated shop, to attempt to sit on the box with a coachman, with the same amount of clothing as his companion, who is daily exposed to the inclemency of the weather. 2d. "It is the power of endurance of cold at one period, and the absence of its necessity at another, that enables animals, in their wild and unprotected state, to bear the vicissitudes of the seasons with so little preparation in clothing, and so little real inconvenience." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 585. What effect on the system has a sudden transition from a cold to a warm climate? What does experience show? Why do wild animals bear the vicissitudes of the seasons with so little preparation in clothing? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXIX. THE VOICE. 586. The beautiful mechanism of the vocal instrument, which produces every variety of sound, from a harsh, unmelodious tone, to a soft, sweet, flute-like sound, has, as yet, been imperfectly imitated by art. It has been compared, by many physiologists, to a wind, reed, and stringed instrument. This inimitable, yet simple instrument, is the _Lar´ynx_. 587. Incidentally, the different parts of the respiratory organs, as well as the larynx, are subservient to speaking and singing. The tongue, nasal passages, muscles of the fauces and face, are agents which aid in the intonation of the voice. ANATOMY OF THE VOCAL ORGANS. 588. The LARYNX is a kind of cartilaginous tube, which, taken as a whole, has the general form of a hollow, reversed cone, with its base upward toward the tongue, in the shape of an expanded triangle. It opens into the pharynx, at its superior extremity, and communicates, by its inferior opening with the trachea. It is formed by the union of five cartilages, namely, the _Thy´roid_, the _Cri´coid_, the two _A-ryt-e´noid_, and the _Ep-i-glot´tis_. These are bound together by ligaments, and moved by muscles. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 586. What is said of the structure of the vocal instrument? With what instrument have physiologists compared it? What is the vocal instrument called? 587. What organs are called into action in speaking beside the larynx? 588-596. _Give the anatomy of the vocal organs._ 588. Describe the larynx. Name the cartilages that form the larynx. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 589. The THYROID CARTILAGE is the largest of the five, and forms the prominence in the front of the neck, called _Po´mum A-da´mi_, (Adam's apple.) It is composed of two parts, and is connected with the bone of the tongue above, and with the cricoid cartilage below. 590. The CRICOID CARTILAGE takes its name from its resemblance to a ring. It is situated below the thyroid cartilage, it is narrow in front, broader at the sides, and still broader behind, where it is connected with the thyroid cartilage. Below, it connects with the first ring of the trachea. [Illustration: Fig. 102. A side view of the cartilages of the larynx. * The front side of the thyroid cartilage. 1, The os hyoides, (bone at the base of the tongue.) 2, The ligament that connects the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage. 3, 4, 5, The thyroid cartilage. 6, The cricoid cartilage. 7, The trachea.] [Illustration: Fig. 103. A posterior view of the cartilages and ligaments of the larynx. 1, The posterior face of the epiglottis. 3, 3, The os hyoides. 4, 4, The lateral ligaments which connect the os hyoides and thyroid cartilage. 5, 5, The posterior face of the thyroid cartilage. 6, 6, The arytenoid cartilages. 7, The cricoid cartilage. 8, 8, The junction of the cricoid and the arytenoid cartilages. 12, The first ring of the trachea.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 589. Describe the thyroid cartilage. 590. From what does the cricoid cartilage derive its name? Where is it situated? Explain fig. 102. Fig. 103. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 591. The ARYTENOID CARTILAGES are small triangular bodies placed upon the back part of the cricoid cartilage. They are connected with the thyroid cartilages, by four ligaments, called _Vo´cal Cords_. 592. The EPIGLOTTIS is fibro-cartilaginous, and is placed behind the base of the tongue. In shape it resembles a leaf of parsley. 593. The VOCAL CORDS, or ligaments, are formed of elastic and parallel fibres, enclosed in a fold of mucous membrane. They are about two lines in width, and pass from the anterior angle of the thyroid cartilage, to the two arytenoid cartilages. The one is called the superior, and the other the inferior vocal ligament. The cavity, or depression between the superior and inferior ligament, is called the _ventricle_ of the larynx. The aperture, or opening between these ligaments, is called the _glot´tis_, or _chink of the glottis_. It is about three fourths of an inch in length, and one fourth of an inch in width, the opening being widest at the posterior part. This opening is enlarged and contracted by the agency of the muscles appropriated to the larynx. [Illustration: Fig. 104. An ideal, lateral section of the larynx. 1, 1, The upper vocal cords. 2, 2, The lower vocal cords. 3, 3, The glottis. 4, 4, The ventricles of the larynx.] [Illustration: Fig. 105. A vertical section of the larynx. 2, The os hyoides. 4, The apex of the epiglottis. 7, The superior vocal ligament. 9, The ventricle of the larynx. 10. The lower vocal ligament. 11, The arytenoid cartilage. 12, 13, The cricoid cartilage. 14, The trachea. 18, The oesophagus.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 591. Describe the arytenoid cartilages. 592. What is said of the epiglottis? 593. Give the structure of the vocal cords. Where is the ventricle of the larynx? Where is the glottis situated? What is represented by fig. 104? Explain fig. 105. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 106. A view of the larynx from above, showing the vocal ligaments. 1, The anterior edge of the larynx. 4, The posterior face of the thyroid cartilage. 5, 5, The arytenoid cartilages. 6, 6, The vocal ligaments. 7, Their origin, within the angle of the thyroid cartilage. 9, Their termination, at the base of the arytenoid cartilages. 8, 10, The glottis.] 594. The larynx is connected by muscles with the sternum, oesophagus, base of the skull, hyoid bone, lower jaw, and tongue. This organ is supplied with a large number of blood-vessels, and it likewise receives nerves from the sympathetic system, and two large nerves from the tenth pair. The number and size of the nervous filaments distributed to the mucous membrane of the larynx, render it more sensitive than any other portion of the respiratory organs. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is the glottis enlarged or contracted? Explain fig. 106. 594. By what means and to what organs is the larynx connected? Why is the larynx more sensitive than other parts of the respiratory organs? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 595. The larynx is much more developed and prominent in man than in woman. In the former, the anterior angle of the thyroid cartilage is acute, while in the latter it is rounded, and the central slope of the superior border of the same cartilage is less deep, and the epiglottis smaller and less prominent, than in man. 596. The difference in the formation of the larynx in infancy is less striking; but at a later period, it is more developed in the male than in the female. It is very remarkable that this increase is not progressive, like that of other organs, but, on the contrary, develops itself at once at the period of puberty. PHYSIOLOGY OF THE VOCAL ORGANS. 597. In the formation of the voice, each part already described performs an important office. The cricoid and thyroid cartilages give form and stability to the larynx; the arytenoid cartilages, by their movement, vary the width of the glottis. The epiglottis is flexible and elastic. When it is erect, the chink of the glottis is open, as in inspiration; when depressed, as in swallowing food and drink, it covers and closes this aperture. It prevents the introduction of articles of food into the trachea, and probably modifies sound as it issues from the glottis. 598. The muscles of the neck elevate and depress the larynx; the muscles of the larynx increase or diminish the width of the glottis; at the same time, the vocal cords are relaxed or tightened, while the muscles of the face open and close the mouth. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 595. What difference between the formation of the larynx of the female and that of the male? 596. Does this difference exist in childhood? Is its development progressive? 597-600. _Give the physiology of the vocal organs._ 597. Which cartilages give stability and form to the larynx? Which vary the width of the glottis? What is the function of the epiglottis? 598. What effect have the muscles of the neck upon the larynx? The use of the muscles of the larynx? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 599. The elasticity of the ribs and the contraction of the abdominal muscles diminish the cavity of the chest, and the air, in consequence, is pressed from the air-cells into the bronchial tubes and trachea. It then rushes by the vocal cords, and causes a peculiar vibration, which produces _sound_. _Observations._ 1st. Experiments have satisfactorily shown that the vocal cords are the principal agents in the formation of the voice. The tongue, which many have supposed to be the most important organ in speaking, is not essential to sound. In several instances it has been removed, and the persons thus mutilated could speak with fluency. 2d. When the vocal cords are ulcerated, or inflamed, however slightly, as in sore throat produced by a cold, the voice will be changed. The loss of speech among public speakers is generally produced by a relaxation of the vocal ligaments. Hence, bronchitis is a misnomer for this affection. 600. Sound is varied by the velocity of the expelled current of air, and the tension of the vocal ligaments. The size of the larynx, the volume and health of the lungs, the condition of the fauces and nasal passages, the elevation and depression of the chin, the development and freedom of action of the muscles which are attached to the larynx, the opening of the mouth, the state of the mind, and general health of the system, influence the modulations of sound. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What effect has the combined action of these muscles? 599. How is sound produced? What have experiments shown? What effect has disease of the vocal ligaments upon the voice? 600. How is sound varied? Mention other conditions that contribute to the modulation of sound. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXX. HYGIENE OF THE VOCAL ORGANS. 601. _The voice can be changed and modified by habit._ Sailors, smiths, and others, who are engaged in noisy occupations, exert their vocal organs more strongly than those of more quiet pursuits. This not only affects the structure of the vocal organs, but varies the intonation of the voice. 602. _The voice is strong in proportion to the development of the larynx, and the capacity of the chest._ Singing and reading aloud improve and strengthen the vocal organs, and give a healthy expansion to the chest. The enunciation of the elementary sounds of the English language, aids in developing the vocal organs, as well as preventing disease of the throat and lungs. This exercise also conduces to the acquisition of musical sounds. 603. _The attitude affects the modulation of the voice._ When an individual stands erect, the movements of the whole respiratory apparatus are most free and effective. The larynx is brought forward by the erect position of the head and the elevation of the chin. The muscles of the arytenoid cartilages are then brought to a proper relation for action, by which a tension of the vocal cords is produced, that favors clear and harmonious enunciation. _Experiment._ Read with the head bowed forward and the chin depressed; then read with the head erect and the chin elevated, and the difference in the movement of the vocal organs, together with the difference in the voice, will be manifest. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 601-616. _Give the hygiene of the vocal organs._ 602. How may the voice be strengthened? 603. What effect has the erect attitude upon the modulations of the voice? Give the experiment. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 107. An improper position; but one not unfrequently seen in some of our common schools, and in some of our public speakers.] [Illustration: Fig. 108. The proper position for reading, speaking, and singing.] 604. If an individual or class read or sing when sitting, let the position represented by fig. 109 be adopted, and not the one represented by fig. 110; for the erect position in sitting conduces to the free and effective action of the respiratory and vocal organs, and is as important as the erect attitude in standing. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 604. What position should be adopted when a person reads or sings when sitting? Why? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 605. _The muscles of the neck should not be compressed._ If the muscles of the neck and larynx are compressed by a high cravat, or other close dressing, not only will the free and energetic movements of these parts be impeded, but the tones will be feeble and ineffective. Therefore the dress of the neck, particularly of public speakers and singers, should be loose and thin. For a warm dress upon the neck, when the vocal organs are in action, will induce too great a flow of blood to these parts, which will be attended by subsequent debility. [Illustration: Fig. 109.] _Observations._ 1st. The loss of voice, (_lar-yn-gi´tis_,) which is prevalent among public speakers, may be ascribed in part to the injudicious dressing of the neck, and improper position in standing. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 605. How should public speakers dress their necks? Why? What is a common cause of the loss of voice? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. When individuals have been addressing an audience in a warm room, or engaged in singing, they should avoid all impressions of a cold atmosphere, unless adequately protected by an extra garment. [Illustration: Fig. 110.] 606. _The condition of the air modifies speaking and singing._ As pure air is more elastic and resonant than impure, and as easy, melodious speaking or singing requires atmospheric elasticity, so school-rooms and singing-halls should be well ventilated, if we would be entertained with soft intonations in reading, or sonorous singing. _Observation._ The imperfect ventilation of churches and vestries is another cause of laryngitis among clergymen. This affection is almost unknown among those who speak in very open rooms, where stoves are not used. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give 2d. observation. 606. Why does easy and melodious speaking require pure air? What is another cause laryngitis among clergymen? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 607. _The condition of the nasal passages and throat modifies the voice._ The enunciation of words is rendered more or less distinct, in proportion as the jaws are separated in speaking, and the fauces and nasal passages are free from obstruction. For these reasons, the scholar should be taught to open the mouth adequately when reading, speaking, or singing, that the sounds formed in the larynx and modified in the fauces may have an unobstructed egress. _Observations._ 1st. If the fauces are obstructed by enlarged tonsils, (a condition by no means uncommon in children,) they should be removed by a surgical operation, which is not only effective, but safe, and attended with little suffering. The tonsils are situated on each side of the base of the tongue, and, when enlarged, they obstruct the passage through which the air passes to and from the lungs, and the respiration is not only laborious, but distressing. 2d. When the nasal passages are obstructed, there is a peculiar sound of the voice, which is called "talking through the nose." This phenomenon arises, not from the expired air passing through the nose, but from its not being able to pass through the nasal passages. 608. _The state of the mind and health exerts an influence upon the vocal organs._ "The organs of the voice, in common with all other parts of the bodily frame, require the vigor and pliancy of muscle, and the elasticity and animation of mind, which result from good health, in order to perform their appropriate functions with energy and effect. But these indispensable conditions to the exercise of vocal organs, are, in the case of most learners, very imperfectly supplied." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 607. Does the condition of the throat and nasal passages modify the voice? Name the influences that produce clear enunciation of words. What is the effect when the nasal passages are obstructed? 608. How are the vocal organs influenced? What do they require? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 609. "A sedentary mode of life, the want of invigorating exercise, close and long-continued application of mind, and, perhaps, an impaired state of health, or a feeble constitution, prevent, in many instances, the free and forcible use of those muscles on which voice is dependent. Hence arises the necessity of students of elocution practising physical exercises adapted to promote general muscular vigor, as a means of attaining energy in speaking; the power of any class of muscles being dependent on the vigor of the whole system." 610. "Gymnastic and calisthenic exercises are invaluable aids to the culture and development of the voice, and should be sedulously practised when opportunity renders them accessible. But even a slight degree of physical exercise, in any form adapted to the expansion of the chest and to the freedom and force of the circulation, will serve to impart energy and glow to the muscular apparatus of voice, and clearness to its sound." 611. "There is, therefore, a great advantage in always practising some preliminary muscular actions, as an immediate preparation for vocal exercises. The art of cultivating the voice, however, has, in addition to the various forms of corporeal exercise, practised for the general purpose of promoting health, its own specific prescription for securing the vigor of the vocal organs, and modes of exercise adapted to the training of each class of organs separately." 612. The results of such practice are of indefinite extent. They are limited only by the energy and perseverance of the student, excepting perhaps in some instances of imperfect organization. A few weeks of diligent cultivation are usually sufficient to produce such an effect on the vocal organs, that persons who commence practice with a feeble and ineffective utterance, attain, in that short period, the full command of clear, forcible, and varied tone. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 609. Why are students of elocution in general necessitated to practise physical exercise? 610. What are invaluable aids in the culture of the voice? 611. What is said of the art of cultivating the voice? 612. Are the results of such practices limited? What exception? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 613. _Repetition is essential to distinct articulation of words._ In teaching a child to articulate a letter or word, in the first instance, make an effort to induce a proper state of the vocal organs by which the particular sound is produced. Repeat the letter or word again and again, until all the parts of the vocal apparatus harmonize in their movements to produce the given sound. This repetition is as necessary in learning to read as in singing. _Observations._ 1st. There is nothing gained by trying to teach a child to pronounce the letters of the alphabet, before the vocal organs are so developed that distinct utterance can be given to the proper sounds. 2d. The drawling method of talking to young children, as well as using words that are not found in any written language, (called child's talk,) is decidedly wrong. A child will pronounce and understand the application of a correct word as quickly as an incorrect one. 614. _No part of the vocal organs is wanting, with those individuals that stammer, or who have an impediment in their speech._ Some parts may be more developed than others, but they generally are but imperfectly under the control of the will, and assume an irregular and rapid movement, while other parts, the motions of which are essential, remain comparatively inactive. This can be seen by comparing the movements of the lips, tongue, and larynx, while attempting to speak, in a person who stammers, with the movements of the corresponding parts, while speaking, in an individual who has no such impediment. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 613. Is repetition essential to distinct articulation? What method is suggested in teaching a child to articulate letters or words? Give observation 1st. Observation 2d. 614. Are the vocal organs wanting in stammerers? Why the defect in their articulation of words? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 615. Surgical operations and medical treatment are not highly advantageous in a majority of these cases. In the young and middle aged, this defect can be remedied by _patient_ and judicious training. At first, only those letters and words should be spoken that can be articulated with distinctness. Let there be repetition, until the words can be spoken at any time with readiness. Then take for a lesson other words, more difficult to articulate; and pursue a similar process of training and repetition, until every part of the vocal organs can be called into a ready and harmonious action in giving utterance to any word in common use. 616. _The method of removing foreign bodies from the throat._ It is not necessary to ascertain which passage the foreign body is in, for the immediate treatment ought in either case to be the same. Some person should place one hand on the front of the chest of the sufferer, and, with the other, give two or three smart blows upon the back, allowing a few seconds to intervene between them. This treatment will generally be successful, and cause the substance to be violently thrown from the throat. _Observation._ If the foreign body passes into the larynx violent spasmodic coughing immediately succeeds, which continues until it is removed or life is extinct. Such cases demand the prompt opening of the trachea below the larynx by a skilful surgeon. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 615. How can stammering be remedied? 616. What is the method of removing foreign bodies from the throat? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXXI. THE SKIN. 617. The skin is a membrane which envelops the muscles and other parts of the system. In youth, and in females particularly, it is smooth, soft, and elastic. In middle age, and in males, it is firm and rough to the touch. In old age, in persons who are emaciated, and about the flexions of the joints, it is thrown into folds. The interior of the body, like the exterior, is covered by a skin, which, from the constantly moistened state of its surface, is called the mucous membrane. At the various orifices of the body, the exterior skin is continuous with the internal. ANATOMY OF THE SKIN. 618. The SKIN, to the naked eye, appears composed of one membrane. But examination has shown that it consists of two layers of membrane, namely, the _Cu´ti-cle_, (scarf-skin,) and the _Cu´tis Ve´ra_, (true skin.) These layers are widely different from each other in structure, and perform very different offices in the animal economy. 619. The CUTICLE (sometimes called the _ep-i-derm´is_) is the external layer of the skin. This membrane is thin and semi-transparent, and resembles a thin shaving of soft, clear horn, and bears the same relation to other parts of the skin that the rough bark of a tree does to the liber, or living bark. The cuticle has no perceptible nerves or blood-vessels; consequently, if it is cut or abraded, no pain will be felt, and no fluid will ooze from it. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 617. What is the skin? Mention its different appearances in its different conditions in the human frame. Is the interior of the body, as well as the exterior, covered by a skin? What is the interior membrane called? Why has it received this name? 618-636. _Give the anatomy of the skin._ 618. What is said of the skin? What is said relative to these layers of membrane? 619. Describe the cuticle. What name is sometimes applied to the cuticle? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Experiment._ Pass a pin through the portion of the cuticle that skirts the nails, or remove a thin shaving from the palm of the hand, and no painful sensation will be experienced unless the pin or knife penetrates deeper than the cuticle. 620. This membrane varies in thickness on different parts of the body,--from the thin, delicate skin upon the internal flexions of the joints, to the thickened covering of the soles of the feet. The greater thickness of the cuticle of the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, is manifestly the intentional work of the Creator; for it is perceptible in infants, even at birth, before exercise can have had any influence. 621. The CUTIS VERA (sometimes called the _co´ri-on_) is composed of minute fibres, which are collected into small bundles or strands. These are interwoven with each other so as to constitute a firm, strong, and flexible web. In the superficial part of the true skin, the web is so close as to have the appearance of felt-cloth; but more deeply, the pores become progressively larger, and, upon the lower surface, have a diameter of about a line, or one twelfth of an inch. This gives the under surface the appearance of a coarse web. The strands of the under surface of the true skin are connected with the fibrous web, in which the sub-cutaneous fat of the body is deposited; while the upper surface gives support to the sensitive, or papillary layer, which is bedded upon it. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give the experiment. 620. What is said of the thickness of the cuticle in different parts of the body? 621. Describe the cutis vera. By what name is it sometimes called? What is the appearance of the upper surface of the cutis vera? Of the under surface? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ When the skins of animals are immersed in a strong solution of oak or hemlock bark, a chemical union takes place between the gelatin, of which the true skin is mostly composed, and the tannin of the bark. By this process leather is formed, and its peculiar markings are owing to the papillary layer. [Illustration: Fig. 111. An ideal representation of the papillæ. 1, 1, The cutis vera. 2, 2, The papillary layer. 3, 3, The arteries of the papillæ. 4, 4, The veins of the papillæ. 5, 5, The nerves of the papillæ.] 622. The sensitive layer of the skin is thin, soft, uneven, pinkish in hue, and composed of blood-vessels, which confer its various tints of red; and of nerves, which give it the faculty of sensation. The unevenness of this layer is produced by small, elongated, conical prominences, called _Pa-pil´læ_. 623. Each PAPILLA is composed of a minute artery, vein, and nerve. Some of the prominences are arranged in concentric ovals, as may be seen on the ends of the fingers; others are more or less parallel, and pursue a serpentine course; some suddenly diverge, and again reunite, as may be seen in the palm of the hand. Papillæ are found in every part of the skin. Consequently, their number is very great. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is leather formed? 622. What is the appearance of the sensitive layer? What causes the unevenness of this layer? Explain fig. 111. 623. Describe the papillæ. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 624. The cutis vera contains not only _Arteries_, _Veins_, and _Nerves_ but _Lymphatics_, _Oil-Glands_ and _Tubes_, and _Perspiratory Glands_ and _Tubes_. [Illustration: Fig. 112. The arteries and veins of a section of the skin. A, A, Arterial branches. B, B, Capillary, or hair-like vessels, in which the large branches terminate. C, The venous trunk, collecting the blood from the capillaries.] 625. The ARTERIES AND VEINS of the skin are very numerous. The larger branches of the arteries pass through the open meshes of the true skin, and are subdivided into a myriad of minute capillary vessels, which form a beautiful net-work on the upper surface of the true skin. This vascular net sends a branch to each of the papillæ, which opens into and terminates in a minute vein. The capillary veins are as numerous as the arteries which they accompany. They unite and form larger trunks, as small springs from the hill side coalesce to form rivulets. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 624. What vessels are found in the cutis vera? Explain fig. 112. 625. What is said of the cutaneous arteries? Of the cutaneous veins? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 626. The NERVES that are spread over every part of the sensitive layer of the true skin, proceed from the spinal cord. As a proof of the great number of nervous filaments in the skin, no part of this tissue can be punctured with a fine needle without transfixing a nerve, and inducing pain. In some parts of the system, however, the nerves are more abundant than in others; where the sense of feeling is most acute, we find the greatest number of nerves, and those of the largest size. Those parts that are most exposed to injury are most sensitive. _Examples._ 1st. The conjunctiva, or skin of the eye, is pained by the presence of a particle of dust, because it would render vision imperfect. 2d. The lungs, also, would be injured by the smallest particle of matter; they are therefore protected by the exquisite sensitiveness of the lining membrane of the trachea, so that a particle of food or dust is ejected by a convulsive cough before it reaches the lungs. 627. The nerves are more numerous in the upper than lower extremities; in greater numbers upon the palm than the back of the hand. They are, likewise, more abundant and larger at the extremities of the fingers, and in the lips, than in any other part of the skin. _Observation._ The proboscis of the elephant, the extremities of the tails of certain species of monkeys, and the tentacula of some kinds of fish, receive a more abundant supply of sensitive nerves than other parts of their systems. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 626. Where do the nerves of the skin proceed from? Are they numerous in this membrane? How is it proved? What is said of those parts most exposed to injury? Give example 1st. Example 2d. 627. Mention the difference in the distribution of the nerves in various parts of the body. Is this difference found in the lower order of animals? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 628. In the small papillæ, the nerve forms a single loop, while in papillæ of larger size, and endowed with a power of more exalted sensation, the nerve is bent several times upon itself previous to completing the loop. These little loops spring from a net-work of nerves, imbedded in the upper porous layer of the true skin, at the base of the papillæ. This net-work of nerves receives its influence through nerves which take their winding course through the fat distended openings of the deeper layers of the true skin. [Illustration: Fig. 113. 1, 1, The cuticle. 2, 2, The colored layer of the cuticle. 3, 3, The papillary layer, exhibiting the nerves as they form loops. 4, 4, The net-work of nerves. 5, 5, The true skin. 6, 6, 6, Three nerves that divide to form the net-work (4, 4.) 7, 7, 7, The furrows between the papillæ. 8, 8, 8, Three papillæ magnified fifty diameters.] 629. The LYMPHATICS are found in great numbers in the true skin, and they are so minute that they cannot be seen with the naked eye; but when these hair-like vessels are injected with quicksilver, (a work of great difficulty,) the surface injected resembles a sheet of silver. In this way their existence can be imperfectly demonstrated. They are a part of the vascular net-work situated upon the upper surface of the true skin. Each papilla is supplied with a lymphatic filament, the mouth of which opens beneath, and lies in contact with the under surface of the cuticle. This net-work of vessels communicates through the open meshes of the true skin with larger lymphatic trunks, that open into the venous system. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 628. How are the nerves of the small papillæ arranged? How in the large papillæ? What does fig. 113 represent? 629. What is said of the cutaneous lymphatics? How is their existence proved? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 114. A plexus of lymphatic vessels in the skin, considerably magnified from an injected preparation.] 630. The OIL-GLANDS are small bodies imbedded in the true skin. They connect with the surface of the skin by small tubes, which traverse the cuticle. In some parts, these glands are wanting; in others, where their office is most needful, they are abundant, as on the face and nose, the head, the ears, &c. In some parts, these tubes are spiral; in others, straight. These glands offer every shade of complexity, from the simple, straight tube, to a tube divided into numberless ramifications, and constituting a little rounded tree-like mass, about the size of a millet seed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Of what are they a part? 630. Describe the oil-glands. With what do they connect? Do they exist in every part of the body? Of what form are their tubes? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 631. In a few situations, these small glands are worthy of particular notice, as in the eyelids, where they possess great elegance of distribution and form, and open by minute pores along the lids; in the ear-passages, where they produce that amber-colored substance, known as the _ce-ru´men_, (wax of the ears,) and in the scalp, where they resemble small clusters of grapes, and open in pairs into the sheath of the hair, supplying it with a pomatum of Nature's own preparing. The oil-tubes are sometimes called the _se-ba´ceous fol´li-cles_. [Illustration: 4. A small hair from the scalp, with its oil-glands. The glands (A) form a cluster around the shaft of the hair-tube, (C.) These ducts open into the sheath of the hair, (B.) All the figures, from 1 to 4, are magnified thirty-eight diameters.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 631. What is said of these tubes in the eyelids? In the ear? In the scalp? What are these glands sometimes called? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ Among the inhabitants of cities, and especially in persons who have a torpid state of the skin, the contents of the oil-tubes become too dense and dry to escape in the usual manner. Thus it collects, distends the tube, and remains until removed by art. When this impacted matter reaches the surface, dust and smoke mix with it, then it is recognized by small, round, dark spots. These are seen on the forehead, nose, and other parts of the face. When this matter is pressed out, the tube gives it a cylindrical form. The parts around the distended tubes sometimes inflame. This constitutes the disease called, _"ac´ne punc-ta´ta."_ 632. The PERSPIRATORY APPARATUS consists of minute cylindrical tubes, which pass inward through the cuticle, and terminate in the deeper meshes of the cutis vera. In their course, each little tube forms a beautiful spiral coil; and, on arriving at its destination, coils upon itself in such a way as to constitute an oval-shaped, or globular ball, called the _perspiratory gland_. 633. The opening of the perspiratory tube on the surface of the cuticle, namely, "the pores," is also deserving of attention. In consequence of its extremity being a section of a spirally-twisted tube, the aperture is oblique in direction, and possesses all the advantages of a valvular opening, preventing the ingress of foreign injurious substances to the interior of the tube and gland. 634. "To arrive at something like an estimate of the value of the perspiratory system, in relation to the rest of the organism, I counted the perspiratory pores on the palm of the hand, and found 3528 in a square inch. Now each of these pores being the aperture of a little tube about a quarter of an inch long, it follows, that in a square inch of skin on the palm of the hand there exists a length of tube equal to 882 inches, or 73½ feet. Surely such an amount of drainage as seventy-three feet in every square inch of skin--assuming this to be the average for the whole body--is something wonderful and the thought naturally intrudes itself, What if this _drainage_ be obstructed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is said of the retention of the unctuous matter in the oil-tubes? 632. Of what does the perspiratory apparatus consist? 633. What is peculiar in the opening of the perspiratory tubes on the surface of the cuticle? 634. How many perspiratory pores did Dr. Wilson count upon a square inch of skin on the palm of the hand? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 116. A perspiratory gland from the palm of the hand, magnified forty diameters. 1, 1, A twisted tube composing the gland. 2, 2, The two excretory ducts from the gland. These unite to form one spiral tube, that perforates the cuticle, (3,) and opens obliquely on its surface at 4. The gland is imbedded in cells filled with fat, which are seen at 5, 5.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What does fig. 116 represent? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 635. "Could we need a stronger argument for enforcing the necessity of attention to the skin? On the pulps of the fingers, where the ridges of the sensitive layer of the true skin are somewhat finer than in the palm of the hand, the number of pores on a square inch a little exceeded that of the palm; and on the heels, where the ridges are coarser, the number of pores on the square inch was 2268, and the length of the tube 567 inches, 47¼ feet. 636. "To obtain an estimate of the length of tube of the perspiratory system of the whole surface of the body, I think that 2800 might be taken as a fair average of the number of pores in the square inch; and consequently, 700, the number of inches in length. _Now, the number of square inches of surface in a man of ordinary height and bulk is 2500; the number of pores, therefore, 7,000,000; and the number of inches of perspiratory tube is 1,750,000; that is, 145,833 feet, or 48,611 yards, or nearly TWENTY-EIGHT miles!_"--_Wilson._ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give other computations in this paragraph. 635. What is said of the number of these pores on the pulp of the fingers? On the heels? 536. What is an average number of pores and length of tube of the whole surface of the body? Give the summary of the number of pores, and number or inches of perspiratory tube. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXXII. PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SKIN. 637. The skin invests the whole of the external surface of the body, following all its prominences and curves, and gives protection to all the organs it encloses, while each of its several parts has a distinct use. 638. The cuticle is insensible, and serves as a sheath of protection to the highly sensitive skin (_cutis vera_) situated beneath it. The latter feels; but the former blunts the impression which occasions feeling. In some situations, the cuticle is so dense and thick, as wholly to exclude ordinary impressions. Of this we see an example in the ends of the fingers, where the hard and dense nail is the cuticle modified for the purpose referred to. Were the nervous tissue of the true skin not thus protected, every sensation would be so acute as to be unpleasant, and contact with external bodies would cause pain. 639. The cuticle, also, prevents disease, by impeding the evaporation of the fluids of the true skin, and the absorption of the poisonous vapors, which necessarily attend various employments. It, however, affords protection to the system only when unbroken, and then, to the greatest degree, when covered with a proper amount of oily secretion from the oil-glands. 640. The cuticle is, originally, a transparent fluid, exuded by the blood-vessels, and distributed as a thin layer on the surface of the true skin. While successive layers are formed on the exterior of the true skin, the external cuticular layers are converted into dry, flattened scales, by the evaporation of their fluid contents. The thickness of the cuticle is formed mainly from these scales. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 637-656. _Give the physiology of the skin._ 637. What is said of the skin? 638. Give a function of the cuticle. Does it vary in thickness on different parts of the body? Give examples. 630. Mention another use of the cuticle. 640. What is the cuticle originally? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 641. The cuticle is, therefore, undergoing a constant process of formation and growth at its under part, to compensate for the wear that is taking place continually on its surface. A proper thickness of the cuticle is in this manner preserved; the faculty of sensation and that of touch are properly regulated; the places of the little scales, which are continually falling off under the united influence of friction and ablution, are supplied; and an action necessary, not merely to the health of the skin, but to that of the entire body, is established. 642. Whenever the cuticle is exposed to moderate and repeated friction, it becomes thicker and tougher, as may be seen in the cuticle of the lady's finger that plies the needle and in the hard or callous appearance of the hands of farmers masons, and other mechanics. This enables them to handle the utensils and materials used in their vocations without pain or inconvenience. _Observations._ 1st. When the joints of the feet are subjected to moderate and continued pressure or friction, frequently one or more of the papillæ enlarge. This is accompanied with a thickening of the layers of the cuticle, which is termed a "callosity," or "corn." These thickened layers of the cuticle are broad at the top and narrow at the bottom, and the enlarged mass is conical, with the point innermost. When pressed upon by a tight shoe, these sensitive papillæ cause pain. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is the thickness of the cuticle mainly formed? 641. Describe the changes of this membrane. Show the necessity of this constant growth. 642. How does moderate and repeated friction affect the cuticle? Give examples. What is the benefit derived from having the cuticle thus changed? What is the result if the joints of the feet are subjected to moderate and continued pressure? What is the form of a "corn"? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. To remove these painful excrescences, take a thick piece of soft leather, somewhat larger than the corn; in the centre punch a hole of the size of the summit of the corn, spread the leather with adhesive plaster, and apply it around the corn. The hole in the leather may be filled with a paste made of soda and soap, on going to bed. In the morning, remove it, and wash with warm water. Repeat this for several successive nights, and the corn will be removed. The only precaution is, not to repeat the application so as to cause pain. 643. Let a person unaccustomed to manual labor, trundle the hand-cart, or row a boat, for several successive hours, and the cuticle upon the palms of the hands, instead of becoming thicker by use, is frequently separated from the subjacent tissues, by an effusion of serum, (water,) thrown out by the vessels of the true skin. Had the friction been moderate, and applied at regular intervals, instead of blisters being formed upon the inside of the hands, material would have been thrown out to form new layers upon the lower surface of the cuticle. 644. The cuticle is interesting to us in another point of view, as being the seat of the color of the skin. The difference of color between the blonde and the brunette, the European and the African, lies in the cuticle;--in the deeper, and softer, and newly-formed layers of that structure. In the whitest skin, the cells of the cuticle always contain more or less of a peculiar pigment, incorporated with the elementary granules which enter into their composition. In the white races, the pigmentary tint is extremely slight, and less in winter than in the summer season. In the darker races, on the contrary, it is deep and strongly marked. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How can they be removed? What precaution is given? 643. Explain why those persons unaccustomed to labor, blister their hands in rowing a boat or performing ordinary manual employment for several successive hours. 644. In what other point of view is the cuticle interesting? In what part of it do we find the coloring matter? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 645. The various tints of color exhibited by mankind, are, therefore, referable to the amount of coloring principle contained within the elementary granules of the cuticle, and their consequent depth of hue. In the negro, the granules are more or less black; in the European of the south, they are amber-colored; and in the inhabitants of the north, they are pale and almost colorless. 646. Color of the skin has relation to energy in its action; thus, in the equatorial region, where light and heat are most powerful, the skin is stimulated by these agents to vigorous action, and color is very deep; while in the temperate regions, where light and heat are not so intense, the lungs, liver, and kidneys relieve the skin of part of its duties. The colored layer of the cuticle has been called the _re´te mu-co´sum_, (mucous coat of the skin,) and described as a distinct layer by many physiologists. _Observation._ "The various coloring of the inner layer of the cuticle gives to some animals their varied hues; the serpent, the frog, the lizard, and some fishes have a splendor of hue almost equal to polished metal. The gold-fish and the dolphin owe their difference of color and the brilliancy of their hues to the color of this layer of the skin." 647. The nerves of the skin are the organs of the sense of touch and feeling. Through them we receive many impressions that enhance our pleasures, as the grateful sensations imparted by the cooling breeze in a warm day. In consequence of their sensitiveness, we are individually protected, by being admonished of the proximity of destructive agents. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= In what season of the year is the coloring matter less in the white race? 645. To what is the color of the skin referable? 646. Why have the races of the torrid zone darker complexions than those of the temperate or frigid zones? What is this colored layer called by many physiologists? To what is the different hues in animals owing? 647. Of what use are the nerves of the skin? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Illustration._ A man who had been afflicted some years with a severe disease of a portion of the brain and spinal cord, was deprived of feeling in the lower extremities. He was directed by his attending physician to use a warm footbath. Intending to follow the directions given him, he immersed his feet in boiling water, which he supposed of a proper temperature. While his feet were immersed in the water, he experienced no sensation of an unpleasant nature. On withdrawing them, he was astonished to find the cuticle separated from the other tissues, by the effusion of serum, and thus producing a blister over the whole surface. 648. Portions of the skin would suffer every day, were it not for the sentinel-like care exercised by the nerves, by which all impressions are transmitted to the brain. As the skin is continually exposed to the influence of destructive agents, it is important that the nerves, provided for its protection, should be kept in a healthy state. 649. A large proportion of the waste of the body passes through the outlets of the skin; some portions in the form of oil, others in the form of water and carbonic acid. 650. The oil-glands secrete an oil, partly free and diffused, and partly mixed with albumen. When the cells are fully formed, that is, fully distended, they yield their contents, and the fluid matter they contain is set free, and passes along the tubes to the surface; this fluid matter constitutes the oily element of the economy of the skin. 651. The uses of the unctuous product of the oil-glands are twofold: 1st. The protection; 2d. The removal of waste matter from the system. In the exercise of these offices the oily substance is diffused over those parts of the skin which are naturally exposed to vicissitudes of temperature and moisture,--as the nose, face, and head;--to the injurious attrition of contiguous surfaces,--as the flexures of joints;--or the contact of acrid fluids,--as in the excoriations to which infants are liable. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give the illustration. 648. Why is it necessary that the cutaneous nerves be kept in a healthy state? 649. Through what membrane does a large proportion of the waste material of the system pass? 650. What is the function of the oil-glands? 651. What are the uses of the oily product of these glands? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 652. The oil of the unctuous substance is the principal agent in effecting these purposes: 1st. It prevents the evaporation or congelation of the water of the cuticle, which would cause it to become parched and peel off, thus leaving the sensitive skin exposed. 2d. It affords a soft medium to the contact of moving substances. 3d. It repels moisture and fluids. 4th. The action of these glands removes the waste atoms and purifies the blood. 653. In considering the purpose of the oily matter of the skin, there are two situations in which it deserves especial remark. 1st. Along the edges of the eyelids, where it is poured out in considerable quantity. Here, it is the means of confining the tears and moisture of the eyes within the lids, defending the skin from the irritation of that fluid, and preventing the adhesion of the lids, which is liable to occur upon slight inflammation. 2d. In the ears, where the unctuous wax not only preserves the membrane of the drum and the passage of the ear moist, but also, by its bitterness, prevents the intrusion of small insects. 654. The use of the perspiratory glands is to separate from the blood that portion of the waste matter which is carried off through the skin in the form of vapor. Sanctorius, a celebrated medical writer, daily, for thirty years, weighed himself, his food, and excretions. He estimated that _five_ of every _eight_ pounds of food and drink passed from the system through the many outlets upon the skin. Many place the estimate much lower. All physiologists agree that from twenty to forty ounces of matter pass off from the skin of an adult every twenty-four hours. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 652. What prevents the evaporation of the water of the cuticle? Give its 2d use. Its 3d. Its 4th. 653. What is said in reference to the distribution of the oily matter along the edges of the eyelids? In the ears? 654. Of what use are the perspiratory glands? How long did Sanctorius daily weigh his food, to ascertain the amount of secretion that passed through the skin? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 655. The average amount of perspiration is about thirty ounces; and it passes off in such minute portions, and mixes so rapidly with the surrounding air, that it is not perceived. For this reason, it is called _insensible_ perspiration. When this excretion is increased, it forms into drops, and is called _sensible_ perspiration. The following experiments prove the existence of this excretion from the skin. _Experiments._ 1st. Take a cold bell-glass, or any glass vessel large enough to admit the hand, and introduce it perfectly dry; at the same time close the mouth by winding a napkin about the wrist; in a short time, the insensible perspiration from the hand, will be seen deposited on the inside of the glass. At first, the deposit is in the form of mist; but, if the experiment be continued a sufficient time, it will collect in drops. 2d. Hold the apparently dry hand near a looking-glass, and the invisible vapor will soon be condensed, and cover the glass with a slight dew. 656. It is important that this excretion be maintained with steadiness and regularity. When the action of the perspiratory glands is suppressed, all the vessels of the different organs will suffer materially, and become diseased, by the redundant waste matter that should be carried from the system. If a person is vigorous, the action of the organs, whose functions are similar to those of the skin, as channels for the exit of waste matter, will be increased, and thus relieve the diseased state of the body. But the over-taxing of these organs, to relieve the system, often produces a diseased action in themselves. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What were his conclusions? 655. What is the average amount of perspiration every twenty-four hours? What is insensible perspiration? What is sensible perspiration? How can the existence of the excretion of the skin be shown? Give the 2d experiment. 656. Why is it important that these excretions be maintained regularly? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 117. 1, 1, The lines, or ridges of the cuticle, cut perpendicularly. 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, The furrows, or wrinkles of the same. 3, The cuticle. 4, 4, 4, The colored layer of the cuticle. 5, 5, The cutis vera. 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, The papillæ. 7, 7, Small furrows between the papillæ. 8, 8, 8, 8, The deeper furrows between each couple of the papillæ. 9, 9, Cells filled with fat. 10, 10, 10, The adipose layer, with numerous fat vesicles. 11, 11, 11, Cellular fibres of the adipose tissue. 12, Two hairs. 13, A perspiratory gland, with its spiral duct. 14, Another perspiratory gland, with a duct less spiral. 15, 15, Oil-glands with ducts opening into the sheath of the hair, (12.)] _Note._--Let the pupil review the anatomy and physiology of the skin from Fig. 117 or from anatomical outline plate No. 9. CHAPTER XXXIII. HYGIENE OF THE SKIN. 657. The sensibility of the skin, and the activity of the oil and perspiratory glands, are modified by the condition of the cuticle, the temperature of the skin and body, the purity and warmth of the air, and the character of the light to which the body is exposed. Thus, to maintain a healthy action of every part of this membrane, attention should be given to _Clothing_, _Bathing_, _Light_, and _Air_. 658. CLOTHING, in itself, does not bestow heat, but is chiefly useful in preventing the escape of heat from the body, and in defending it from the temperature of the atmosphere. In selecting and applying clothing to our persons, the following suggestions should be observed. 659. _The material for clothing should be a bad conductor of heat_; that is, it should have little tendency to conduct or remove heat from the body. This depends mainly on the property possessed by the material in retaining atmospheric air in its meshes. 660. _The material for clothing should not possess the property of absorbing and retaining moisture._ Dampness, or moisture, renders apparel a good conductor of heat; beside, if the perspired fluid, and the saline material it holds in solution, are readily absorbed by the clothing, they become sources of irritation to the skin with which the apparel comes in contact. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 657-716. Give the hygiene of the skin. 657. What influences modify the action of the oil and perspiratory glands? To what must attention be given to maintain a healthy action of the skin? 658. What is said in regard to the clothing? 659. Mention a property that the material for clothing should possess. 660. What property in the selection of clothing should we avoid? Why? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 661. _Furs_ contain a greater amount of air in their meshes, than any other article, and they absorb no moisture; consequently, as an article of dress, they are best adapted to those who are exposed to great vicissitudes of heat and cold. 662. _Woollen cloth_ retains more air in its meshes than any other article except furs and eider down, and it absorbs but very little moisture. These properties, together with its comparative cheapness, render it a good article of apparel for all classes of persons. The only objection to its general use is, the disturbance of the electricity of the system, and the irritation to delicate skins from the roughness of its fibres. _Observation._ Flannels are not only beneficial, during the cold season, in preventing colds and rheumatism, but they are of great utility in the warm season, in shielding the system from the chills at evening, that induce disease of the alimentary canal. Their general use among children and delicate females, would be a preventive of the "season complaints" prevalent in the months of August and September. 663. _Cotton_ contains less air in its meshes than woollen, but much more than linen. In texture, it is smoother than wool, and less liable to irritate the skin. This fabric absorbs moisture in a small degree. In all respects, it is well adapted for garments worn next the skin. When woollen flannels irritate the skin, they may be lined with cotton. 664. _Silk_ is not as good a conductor of heat as cotton, nor does it absorb moisture to any considerable degree; its texture is smooth, and does not irritate the skin; consequently, when the garment of this fabric has sufficient body or thickness, it is a good article for clothing. The greatest objection to its use is the disturbance of the electricity of the system, and its high price. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 661. Give the properties of fur. As an article of dress, to whom are they best adapted? 662. Give the properties of woollen cloth. Is this a good article for clothing? What objection? What are the advantages of wearing flannels? 663. What are the qualities of cotton as an article of dress? 664. Of silk? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 665. _Linen_ is not only a good conductor of heat, and consequently a poor article of apparel, but it likewise absorbs the fluids carried from the system by the agency of the oil and perspiratory glands. When garments are made of this material, the body is not surrounded by a layer of air, but by one of moisture. This still further increases its power to conduct heat from the system, rendering it a very objectionable article of apparel, even in warm weather and in hot climates, where the dress is usually thin. 666. _Clothing differs in its power of radiating heat._ This is influenced by the color; those articles that radiate heat freely also absorb it readily. A black surface is a good radiator, while a white surface is not, because it reflects the calorific rays. It is obvious that those colors which render the transmission of external heat difficult, must impede the transmission of caloric from the body. Thus it is manifest, that light-colored apparel is best adapted for every season and every climate. _Observation._ Coach-drivers are practically aware, that in cold weather, light-colored over-coats are warmest, except when they are exposed to the direct rays of the sun, or when seated before a warm fire. On the other hand, when the temperature is elevated, light-colored apparel is coolest, because the sun's rays are then reflected. 667. _The clothing should be of a porous character._ The skin is not only an important agent in separating from the blood those impurities that otherwise would oppress the system and occasion death, but it exercises great influence upon the system, by receiving oxygen through its tissues, and giving back carbonic acid in return. Consequently, the apparel should be made of a material that will permit free transpiration from the skin, and likewise convey the excreted fluids from the surface. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 665. What is said of linen as an article of apparel? 666. Why is light-colored apparel best adapted for every season? What is said of the apparel of coach-drivers? 667. Why should we wear porous clothing? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 668. The necessity for this is illustrated in wearing India rubber over-shoes. If they are worn over boots ten or twelve hours, not only the hose, but the boots will be moist from retained perspiration, and the residual matter left in contact with the skin may be reconveyed into the system by absorption, causing headache and other diseases. Cotton and woollen fabrics are not only bad conductors of heat, but are also porous; for these reasons, they are well adapted to transmit the excretions of the skin. 669. _The clothing should be not only porous, but fitted loosely._ The garments should retain a layer of air between them and the body. Every one is practically aware that a loose dress is much warmer than one which fits closely; that a loose glove is warmer than a tight one; and that a loose boot or shoe affords greater warmth than one of smaller dimensions. The explanation is obvious; the loose dress encloses a thin layer of air, which the tight dress is incapable of doing; and what is required, is, that the dress should be closed at the upper part, to prevent the dispersion of the warm air, by the ventilating current which would be established from below. _Observation._ As the purpose of additional garments is to maintain a series of strata of warm air within our clothing, we should, in going from a warm room into the cold air, put on our defensive coverings some little time previous, in order that the layers of air which we carry with us may be sufficiently warmed by the heat of the room, and not borrowed from the body on exposure to the cold. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 668. How is the necessity of porous clothing illustrated? 669. Why should we wear loose garments? What is the use of additional garments when going from a warm to a cold air? When should they be put on? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 670. _The clothing should be suited to the temperature of the atmosphere and the condition of the individual._ The invariable rule should be, to wear enough to maintain an equal and healthy action of the skin. Care should be taken, however, that the action of the cutaneous vessels is not inordinately increased, as this would debilitate, not only the skin, but the internal organs of the system, as the stomach and lungs. 671. No rule as to the quantity of clothing can be given, as the demand will vary with different individuals. The following are among the most prominent causes of this variation: Those persons who have large, active brains, full chests, well developed lungs, breathe an adequate amount of pure air, and take sufficient food to supply the wants of the system, require less clothing than those of an opposite character, because more heat is generated in the system. 672. _The child and the aged person require more clothing than the vigorous adult._ "Should we judge from observation, the inference would be, that children require less clothing than adults. This is an error, for the temperature in infancy is not only lower than in manhood, but the power of creating heat is feebler. The same remarks are applicable to those persons who have outlived the energies of adult life." _Observation._ The system of "hardening" children, by an inadequate supply of clothing, and keeping them uncomfortably cold throughout the whole day, is inhuman, as well as unprofitable. It operates upon the child somewhat like the long-continued chill upon a certain portion of the farmer's herd, that are kept shivering under the thatched shed, retarding the growth of their systems, which require more food to satisfy the keen cravings of hunger than when they are comfortably sheltered. To make the boy robust and active, he must have nutritious food at stated hours, and free exercise in the open air, and his system must be guarded from chills by a due amount of apparel. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 670. What should be the invariable rule in reference to the amount of clothing that should be worn? What precaution should be observed? 671. What are some of the causes of the variation of the demand for clothing? 672. Why do the child and aged person require more clothing than the vigorous adult? What is said of the system of hardening children? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 673. _More clothing is needed when a vital organ is diseased._ It may be observed that in consumption, dyspepsia, and even in headache, the skin is pale and the extremities cold, because less heat is generated. Thus persons affected with these complaints, when exposed to cold air, need more clothing than those individuals whose organs are not diseased, and the functions of which are properly performed. 674. _More clothing is required in the evening, than during the day._ In the evening we have less vital energy, and therefore less heat is generated in the system, than in the early part of the day; beside, the atmosphere is damp, the skin has become moist from free perspiration, and heat, in consequence, is rapidly removed from the system. For this reason, when returning from crowded assemblies, we should be provided with an extra garment. _Observations._ 1st. If there is a chill upon the system after having arrived home, warmth should be restored as speedily as possible. This can be done by friction with warm flannels, and by using the warm or vapor bath. By this procedure, the pernicious effects of the chill will be prevented before any disease is fixed upon the system. Is it not the duty of the parent and the guardian to learn these facts, and to see that they are not only learned, but reduced to practice? 2d. The farmer and industrious mechanic would be freed from many a rheumatic pain, if, while resting from their labors at evening, or taking the ordinary meal after hard toil, they would put on an extra garment. The coat might not feel so agreeable for the first few minutes, but it would ultimately conduce to health and longevity. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 673. Why do dyspeptic and consumptive persons require more clothing than those who have healthy vital organs? 674. Why do we need more clothing in the evening than during the day? How can the pernicious effects of a chill be prevented? Give the 2d observation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 675. _The person of active habits requires less clothing than one of sedentary employments._ Exercise increases the circulation of the blood, which is always attended by the disengagement of a greater quantity of heat; consequently, an increase of warmth is felt throughout the system. We likewise need more clothing while riding, than when we are walking; because the exercise of the former is less than that of the latter. The same is true when resting in the field or shop, after laborious exercise. _Observation._ We need a greater amount of clothing while asleep, than during the day; as not only the action of the body, but that of the brain, during sleep, is suspended. 676. _Less clothing is required when the cutaneous surface is clean._ A film of impurities obstructs the perspiratory ducts, and diminishes the action of their glands; consequently, less heat is generated. For this reason, the hands or feet when clean are less liable to become chilled or frozen. 677. _The sensitiveness of the skin to the influence of cold, is much modified by habit._ A person who has been habituated to the temperature of a warm room, or warm climate, suffers more when exposed to cold, than an individual who has been accustomed to colder air. Thus a person who labors or studies in a warm room, should wear more clothing when exposed to the air, while walking or riding, than an individual who labors in a cooler atmosphere. Not only is the sensibility of the skin increased by a warm atmosphere, but the activity of the digestive, respiratory, and nervous systems, in generating heat, is much diminished. This is an additional reason why an increased amount of clothing is demanded during exposure to cold air. In all cases where practicable the heat of the system should be maintained by exercise, in preference to the use of fur or flannel. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 675. Why does the person of active habits require less clothing than one of sedentary employments? 676. Why do we need less clothing when the skin is clean? 677. Show the effect of habit on the sensitiveness of the skin. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 678. _Those parts of the skin usually covered, uniformly need that protection._ The power of generating heat is diminished, and the impressibility to cold is increased, on those portions of the skin usually clothed. If a person wears the dress high and close about the neck, he suffers from exposure to a cold atmosphere if a dress is worn that is not as high or more open. As a general rule, it is preferable that those parts of the system, as the larynx, be exposed that are not uniformly protected by clothing. 679. _The clothing should be kept clean._ No article of apparel is entirely free from absorption; even wool and cotton possess it in a small degree. They take up a portion of the transpired fluids which contain saline and animal matter, and thus the fibres of the garments become covered with the cutaneous excretions. We are practically aware of the retention of these secretions from the soiled appearance of those garments worn next the skin, which are so covered as to preclude the particles of dust from lodging upon them. 680. The porosity of the clothing is lessened when soiled, and its power of conducting heat from the system in consequence, is increased. The residual matter with which the clothing is coated is brought in contact with the skin, which causes irritation, and not unfrequently re-absorption of the elements, thrown off from the system through this avenue. Hence warmth, cleanliness, and health require that the clothing, particularly the garments worn next to the skin, should be frequently and thoroughly washed. This should not be forgotten in regard to children, for their blood circulates with greater rapidity than that of adults, and a proportionably greater amount of waste matter is thrown off from their systems. 681. _The under-garments worn during the day should not be worn at night, or the reverse._ When under-garments are worn several successive days or nights, they should not be put in drawers, or hung up in a close closet, as soon as taken from the body, but should be exposed to a current of air. 682. _Occupied beds should be thoroughly aired in the morning._ The excretions from the skin are most abundant during the hours of sleep; and if the sheets and blankets, together with the bed, are not aired every morning, by being so arranged that both surfaces may be exposed to the air, the materials eliminated from the skin will be retained in the meshes of the bed-clothing, and may be conveyed into the system of the next occupant, by absorption. Oftentimes diseases of a disagreeable nature are contracted in this way. This fact should be instilled into every mother's and daughter's mind. _Observation._ Bed-linen should not be put on a bed when it is not sufficiently dried, or contains moisture from the excretions of the skin, nor should beds or bedding be slept in, that have remained in a damp room that has not been occupied for many weeks, unless the dampness is removed from the bed-linen by a warming-pan, or in some other way. 683. _Changes of dress, from thick to thin, should always be made in the morning._ At this time the vital powers are usually in full play. Many a young lady has laid the foundation of a fatal disease, by disregarding this rule, in exchanging the thick dress, with woollen stockings, for the flimsy dress and hose of silk or cotton, which are considered suitable for the ball-room or party. Sudden changes in wearing-apparel, as well as in food and general habits, are attended with hazard; and this is proportionate to the weakness or exhaustion of the system when the change is made. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 681. Should the garments worn during the day be worn at night? 682. What is said respecting the cleanliness of beds and bedding? Why should not bed-linen that is damp be slept in? 683. When should change of dress from thick to thin be made? Why? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 684. _When the clothing has become wet, it is best to change it immediately._ The skin should then be rubbed with a dry crash towel, until reaction, indicated by redness, is produced. If the garments are not changed, the person should exercise moderately, so that sufficient heat may continue to be generated in the system to dry the clothing and skin without a chill. Sitting in a cool shade, or current of air, should, by all means, be avoided; as colds are not contracted by free and excessive exercise, but by injudicious management after such exercise. _Observation._ When an individual has been thrown into a profuse perspiration by violent exercise, though the skin and clothing may become wet, he feels no inconvenience from the dampness, as long as he continues that amount of exercise for the reason that the circulation of the blood being increased heat is generated in sufficient quantity to replace the amount abstracted from the system in evaporating the free perspiration; but as soon as the exercise is discontinued, the increased circulation subsides, and with it the extra amount of generated heat. This accounts for the chill we experience, when the damp clothing is permitted to dry on the body, after the cessation of exercise. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 684. What suggestion when the clothing has become wet? What should be done if the garments are not changed? What causes the chill that is experienced when damp clothing is permitted to dry on the body? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXXIV. HYGIENE OF THE SKIN, CONTINUED. 685. Bathing, its necessity and expediency, is obvious from the structure and the functions of the skin. The cuticle is cast off in minute, powdery scales, many of which are retained upon the surface by the pressure of clothing. These mingle with the oily and saline products of the skin, and form a thin crust. This crust, on account of its adhesiveness, collects particles of dust and soot from the atmosphere, and particles of foreign matter from our dress; so that in the course of the day the whole body becomes coated with impurities. If this coating remains, becomes thick and established upon the skin, it will produce the following effects:-- 686. 1st. _The pores will be obstructed, consequently transpiration impeded, and the influence of the skin as an excretory entirely prevented._ When the pores are obstructed, and transpiration is checked, the elements of the transpired fluids will necessarily be retained in the system; and, as they are injurious and poisonous if retained, they must be removed by those organs whose functions in the animal economy are similar, as the lungs, kidneys, liver, intestines, &c. 687. When these organs are called upon to perform their offices, and in addition that of another, the healthy equilibrium is destroyed, and the oppressed organ will suffer from exhaustion, and become the prey of disease. Thus, obviously, habits of uncleanliness are a cause of consumption and other serious diseases of the vital organs. Again, obstruction of the pores will prevent respiration through the skin, thus depriving the blood of one source of its oxygen, and one outlet of its carbonic acid, which will diminish the temperature of the system, and the same results follow as when the clothing is inadequate. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 685. Show the necessity for bathing. 686. What effect upon the body if the pores of the skin are obstructed? 687. What is the effect when an organ not only performs its own specific function, but that of another? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 688. 2d. _The retained perspirable matter will irritate the skin, both mechanically and chemically_; and this membrane will be kept damp and cold, from attraction and detention of moisture; and foreign material, as before adverted to, once removed from the system, may be reconveyed into it by absorption. As a consequence, cutaneous eruptions and diseases will be produced, and the re-absorption of matter once separated from the system, will be the exciting cause of other injurious disorders. 689. 3d. _A film of foreign substance on the skin will inevitably become the seat of detention of miasmata and infectious vapors._ These will remain until absorbed, and engender the diseases of which they are the peculiar cause. This is one reason why filthy persons contract infectious diseases more frequently than individuals of cleanly habits. 690. _Bathing is useful to promote cleanliness._ In this capacity, it enables us to remove the coating of impurities from the exterior of our persons. It effects this purpose by dissolving saline matters, and holding in temporary suspension those substances which are insoluble. 691. The cuticle is composed of a substance resembling the dried white of egg, or, in a word, _albumen_. This is soluble in alkalies, and these are the agents which are commonly employed for purifying the skin. Soap is a compound of the alkali soda with oil, the former being in excess. When used for washing, the excess of alkali combining with the oily fluid, with which the skin is naturally bedewed, removes it, in the form of an emulsion, and with it a portion of any adhering matter. Another portion of the alkali softens and dissolves the superficial layer of the cuticle; and when this is removed the cuticle is free from impurities. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 688. How are cutaneous eruptions frequently produced? 689. How are infectious vapors transmitted to the system? 690. How does bathing promote cleanliness? 691. Why is it necessary to use soap in bathing? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 692. Every washing of the skin with soap removes the old face of the cuticle, and leaves a new one; and were the process repeated to excess, the latter would become so thin as to render the body sensible to impressions too slight to be felt through its ordinary thickness. On the other hand, when the cuticle and its accumulated impurities are rarely disturbed, the sensitiveness of the skin is impaired. The proper inference to be drawn from the preceding remarks, is in favor of the _moderate_ use of soap to cleanse the skin. _Observation._ If any unpleasant sensations are felt after the use of soap, they may be immediately removed by washing the surface with water slightly acidulated with lemon juice or vinegar, which neutralizes the alkali that may remain on the skin. This is effective treatment for "chapped hands." 693. _Bathing may be partial or general, and the water used may be cold, temperate, tepid, warm, or hot._ A person may apply it to his system with a sponge, it may be poured upon him, or he may immerse himself in it. The simplest mode of bathing is to apply water to a small extent of surface, by means of a wet sponge, and after being wiped dry, again cover with the dress. In this way the whole body may be speedily subjected to the influence of water, and to no less useful friction. The water used may be warm or cold. This species of bathing may be practised by any invalid, and always with benefit, if the bathing is succeeded by a glow of warmth over the surface; and this is the test by which the benefit of all forms of bathing is to be estimated. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 692. Why should only a moderate amount of soap be used in bathing? If unpleasant sensations are felt from too free use of soap, how can they be counteracted? 693. Give the different forms of bathing. What is the simplest mode of bathing? Can this mode be adopted by invalids with safety? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 694. When the heat of the system is adequate, the bather may stand or sit in a shallow tub, while he receives the water from a sponge squeezed over the shoulders or against the body. In this form of bathing, the person is more exposed to the cold air, and on this account it is less suitable for very feeble individuals than the first-mentioned method. In the early use of this form of the sponge-bath, the bather should content himself with a single affusion from the sponge; the body should be quickly wiped with a soft towel, and friction applied with a crash towel or a brush. 695. The third kind of bathing is that of the shower-bath, which provides a greater amount of affusion than the former, combined with a greater shock to the nervous system. The concussion of the skin by the fall of water, particularly distinguishes this from the previous modes of bathing. The degree of concussion is modified by the size of the openings through which the water issues, and the height of the reservoir. The shower-bath admits of modification, adapting it to the most delicate as well as the robust. The extent of fall, the size of the apertures, the quantity and temperature of the water, may be regulated at pleasure. _Observation._ In using the shower-bath, it would be judicious to commence with warm or tepid water, for which, by a gradual process, cold water may be substituted. In this way the system may be inured to cold water. After bathing, the skin should be wiped dry and rubbed briskly. 696. The fourth form of bathing is that in which the body, or a portion of it, is immersed in water. The temperature of water in this form of bathing may be modified according to the sensations and purposes of the bather. This form of bathing is designated according to the heat of the water. When the temperature is below 75°, it is termed a cold bath; when from 75° to 85°, a temperate bath; from 85° to 95°, a tepid bath; from 95° to 98°, a warm bath; from 98° to 105°, a hot bath. In using this form of bathing, the skin should be wiped perfectly dry, and briskly rubbed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is the test by which to estimate, the benefit of all modes of bathing? 694. Give another method of sponge-bathing. 695. What is said of the shower-bath? What caution is given? 696. Give the fourth form of bathing. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ The length of time a person may remain in a cold bath with benefit varies from two to ten minutes; while a person may remain in a temperate, tepid, or warm bath, from ten to thirty minutes, or until special indications are exhibited. 697. In the vapor-bath, the vapor is not only applied to the exterior of the system, but it is inhaled and brought in contact with every part of the interior of the lungs. The bather is seated upon a chair, and the vapor gradually turned on around him, until the proper temperature (90° to 110°) is attained. The bath may be continued from ten to thirty minutes. After leaving the bath, attention should be given to the skin, as in other forms of bathing. 698. In order to increase and promote reaction of the skin, various measures and processes are used, some of which are practised in, and others after, quitting the bath. Of the former, the rubbing and brushing the skin are the most common and important. The brisk and efficient friction of the skin with a coarse towel and flesh-brush, after quitting the bath, should never be omitted. This short catalogue embraces all the appliances requisite for the purpose. 699. _Bathing promotes health by its immediate and remote physiological effects on the system._ When the body is moistened with a sponge wet with cold water, or when an affusion by the sponge or shower-bath is used, the skin instantly shrinks, and the whole of its tissue contracts. This contraction diminishes the capacity of the cutaneous system of blood-vessels, and a portion of the blood circulating through them is suddenly thrown upon the more internal parts of the body. The nervous system, among others, participates in it, and is stimulated by the afflux, and communicates its stimulus to the whole system. This causes a more energetic action of the heart and blood-vessels, and a consequent rush of blood back to the skin. This is the state termed _reaction_, the first object and purpose of every form of bathing. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What degree of temperature of water is termed a cold bath? A temperate? A tepid? A warm? A hot bath? State the length of time that a person should remain in the different baths. 697. What is said of the vapor bath? 698. Mention the different methods for promoting reaction of the skin. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 700. This condition of the skin is known by the redness of the surface, the glow, comfort, and warmth which follow the bath. The bather should direct all his care to insure this effect. By it the internal organs are relieved, respiration is lightened, the heart is made to beat calm and free, the mind is clear and strong, the tone of the muscular system is increased, the appetite is sharpened, and the whole system feels invigorated. This is the end and aim of the bather, and to this all his training tends. The error is, to expect the result without the preparation. 701. In order to promote reaction, and to be efficient in preserving health, bathing should be regular, should be commenced by degrees, and increased by a process of training, and should not be permitted to intrude upon hours devoted to some important function, as digestion. It must not precede or follow too closely a meal, or severe mental or muscular exercise, as reaction is less certain and vigorous when important internal organs are employed, than when they are at rest. When the vital powers are greatest, and the system most free from exhaustion, bathing is most beneficial; hence the morning is preferable to the evening, and the middle of the forenoon to the middle of the afternoon, for this healthful and agreeable duty; as the vital action of the system is most energetic in the early part of the day. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 699. What is the effect upon the skin when cold water is applied? What is the first object and purpose of every form of bathing? 700. How is this condition of the skin known? Mention the salutary effects that this condition has on the body. 701. How should bathing be performed, in order to be efficient in preserving health? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 702. In regard to the frequency of bathing, the face and neck, from their necessary exposure to the atmosphere, and the impurities which the latter contains, should receive at least two washings in twenty-four hours, one of which should be with soap; the feet, from the confined nature of the coverings which are worn over them, require at least one; the armpits, from the detention, as well as from the peculiar properties of the secretions, at least one; and the hands and arms, as many as seem proper. The whole person should be bathed at least every second day, but the most perfect health of every part of the body would be maintained, if the excretions from the skin were removed daily. 703. In diseases of the skin and internal organs, bathing is a remedial measure of great power. It should never be neglected or omitted. It is not only pleasant and safe, but is really more effective than any medicine administered internally. This, like other curative means, should be applied by the direction and under the eye of the medical adviser, that it may be adapted to the condition of the patient. 704. "From the first hour of man's existence to his latest breath, in health and in sickness, rich or poor, water is always requisite. Baths were dedicated by the ancients to the divinities of medicine, strength, and wisdom, namely, �sculapius, Hercules, and Minerva, to whom might properly be added the goddess of health, Hygeia. The use of water has been enforced as a religious observance, and water has been adopted as one of the symbols of Christianity." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= When should bathing be performed? 702. How often should we bathe? 703. What is said of bathing in disease? Who should direct the kind of bath proper in different diseases? 704. Were baths dedicated by the ancients? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 705. The AIR is an agent of importance in the functions of the skin. It imparts to this membrane oxygen, and receives from it carbonic acid. It likewise removes from it a large portion of the perspiration and the more fluid portions of the oily secretion. In order that the air may accomplish these ends, it is necessary that it come in contact with the body. This is one of the many reasons why we should wear loose and porous clothing. 706. Again, the air should be pure, and free from redundant moisture. In the warm mornings of July and August, the air is loaded with moisture and impurities, and the perspirable matter is not removed from the system as it is when the air is pure and dry. This is the cause of the general lassitude that is experienced during such mornings. As soon as the fog is dispelled, these unpleasant sensations are removed. To sustain the functions of the skin in a healthy state, the parlor, kitchen, sleeping-room, school-house, and work-shop, should be well ventilated. The blood of the system will be purer, and its color of a brighter scarlet, if the skin is surrounded by fresh and pure air, than when it is foul or moist. 707. The LIGHT permeating the skin, not only exercises a salutary influence upon this membrane, but upon the blood, and, through this fluid, upon the whole system. For this reason, the kitchen and the sitting-room, which are the apartments most used by ladies, should be selected from the most pleasant and well-lighted rooms in the house. On the other hand, dark rooms and damp cellar-kitchens should be avoided, as exercising an injurious influence upon both body and mind. 708. The dark, damp rooms, so much used in cities and large villages, by indigent families and domestics, are fruitful causes of disease, as well as of vice, poverty, and suffering. Common observation shows that solar light also exercises much influence upon the vigor and color of vegetables. Plants that are kept in well-lighted rooms, have darker and more brilliant colors than those that grow in darkened apartments. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 705. Give the reasons why pure air should be supplied to the skin. 706. What is the cause of the general lassitude in a damp, warm morning? 707. Show the salutary effects of light on the skin. 708. What is one cause of disease and suffering in large villages? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 709. BURNS and SCALDS are terms applied to those conditions of the skin which are produced by the application of an undue amount of heat, which changes the action of its vessels. 710. A small degree of heat will irritate the nerves, and cause an increased action of the blood-vessels. This is attended with severe smarting pain, and will be followed by the deposition of serum under the cuticle, unless applications are made immediately, to prevent vesication, or blistering. To prevent or suppress this state of arterial action, wet some folds of cotton or woollen cloth with cold water, and apply them to the parts scalded; continue to apply cold water, so as to steadily maintain the low temperature of the applications, as long as the _smarting pain_ is experienced. The steady application of cold dressing also tends to prevent an increased action of the blood-vessels, and will suppress it, if it already exist. 711. When blisters are formed, the cuticle is separated from the other tissues of the skin by the effusion of serum. In all cases, if this layer of the skin is not removed, a small opening should be made in the raised cuticle, by which the serum deposited may be removed. Under such circumstances, never remove the cuticle, as it makes the best possible covering for the blood-vessels and nerves of the true skin. The cold water dressing, recommended in the preceding paragraph, may then be applied as long as the smarting sensation continues. After the pain has subsided, the blistered part may be covered by a patch of cotton or linen cloth, upon which an ointment, made of lard and bees-wax, has been spread. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 709. To what condition of the skin are the terms burns and scalds applied? 710. What is the effect when only a small degree of heat is applied to the skin? How can vesication be prevented? 711. What should be the treatment when blisters are formed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 712. If the cuticle has been removed, there will be much suffering, because the nerves are unduly stimulated by the air. The cuticle is the sheath or covering of the vessels and nerves of the skin, and when it is removed, a substitute should be applied. This substitute should be soothing, and cover the denuded surface. Linseed-meal or ground slippery-elm bark poultice, fresh cream, or lard and bees-wax, spread upon linen or cotton cloth, would make a good dressing. When dressings are applied, they should not be removed until they become dry and irritating. 713. If there is much suffering, administer to an adult from twenty-five to sixty drops of laudanum, according to the severity of the pain. If the patient is a child, from fifteen drops to a tea-spoonful of paregoric may be administered. When there is much prostration, some hot peppermint tea or other stimulant may be found necessary to bring on reaction. 714. The hands, feet, ears, &c., are subject, in cold latitudes, to be _frozen_, or _frost-bitten_. This may occur when the patient, at the moment, is not aware of it. The part affected at first assumes a dull red color, which gradually gives place to a pale, waxy appearance, and becomes quite insensible. The first thing to be done in such cases, is to reëstablish circulation. This should be effected very gradually. If a large quantity of blood is thrown suddenly into the chilled and debilitated vessels of the frozen part, inflammation may be produced that will destroy the vitality of the limb. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 712. That should be the treatment if the cuticle has been removed? How often should the dressing of burns be removed? 713. What may be necessary when there is much suffering? 714. What is the appearance of limbs while freezing? How should the circulation be at first reëstablished? What should be avoided? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 715. The circulation and sensibility may be restored by rubbing the frozen limb, with snow, or, when this is not to be obtained, cold water; but snow is always to be preferred. The fire should be avoided; and it would be better for the patient to be kept in a cold room, for a time, where there is no fire, or where the temperature is moderate. 716. When a person is found benumbed with cold, and almost or quite insensible, he should be taken into a cold room, the clothing removed, and friction commenced and continued for some time, with _snow_. When warmth begins to be restored, the individual should be rubbed with dry flannel, and the friction continued until reaction takes place. _Observation._ When the toes and heels have been repeatedly chilled, there may be produced a disease called _chilblains_. This affection is attended with tenderness of the parts, accompanied with a peculiar and troublesome itching. The prevention of this disease is in wearing warm hose and thick shoes of ample size. Bathing the feet morning and evening is also a prevention of this disagreeable affection. When chilblains exist, apply cold water, warm camphorated spirits, or turpentine linament. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 715. How may the circulation and sensibility be restored? 716. What treatment should be adopted when a person is benumbed with cold? What treatment should be adopted when warmth begins to be restored? What is said of chilblains? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXXV. APPENDAGES OF THE SKIN. 717. The HAIRS are appendages of the skin, and, like the cuticle, they are a product of secretion. They have no blood-vessels or nerves, and, consequently, no vitality. The hairs take their origin from the cellular membrane, in the form of bulbs. Each hair is enclosed beneath the surface by a vascular secretory follicle, which regulates its form during growth. In texture, it is dense, and homogeneous toward the circumference, and porous and cellular in the centre, like the pith of a plant. Every hair has on its surface pointed barbs, arranged in a spiral manner, and directed toward the root of the hair; so that, if a hair be rolled between the fingers, it moves only in one direction. [Illustration: Fig. 118. The hair follicle (1) is represented as imbedded in the cellular membrane, (2,) which is situated beneath the skin. 3, 3, The membranous sac, which has a narrow neck, opening externally by a contracted orifice, through which the hair (4) passes. Its internal surface is smooth, and not adherent to the hair, but separated from it by a reddish fluid. From the bottom of the sac (5) the pulp of the hair arises, and passes through the skin at 6.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 717-723. _Describe the appendages of the skin._ 717. Why have not hairs vitality? Where do they take their origin? Give their structure. What is represented by fig. 118? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 718. The color of the hair varies in different individuals, and is generally supposed to depend on the fluids contained in the pith. There are two causes which act in changing the hair gray. The first is, defective secretion of the coloring fluid. The second is, the canals, which convey the fluid into the hair, become obliterated. In the first instance, the hair will remain; in the second, it dies, and drops out; the cuticle of the scalp grows over the canal, which is soon obliterated, and the head becomes bald. _Observation._ It is related that the hair of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, and others, from excessive mental agitation, changed from black to gray in a single night. This is not strictly true; the secretion may be arrested, but that already deposited in the pith will require days or weeks to be removed. 719. Upon the upper part of the head, the oil-tubes open into the hair-sacs; consequently, the secretion of the oil-glands is spread over the surface of the hair, and not upon the cuticle. This is the cause of the dry, white, branny scales, called "scurf," or "dandruff," upon the head. This is natural, and cannot be prevented. When scurf exists, the only necessary application to remove it, is the frequent use of the hair-brush, and washing with pure water. _Observation._ The secretion of the oil-glands may become impacted around the hairs as they issue from the skin, and thus prevent their outward movement in growing. The pressure of the matter deposited at their bulbs will then cause itching. The comb and the brush may be used to remove the impacted matter, and relieve the disagreeable sensation. 720. The oil is most abundant near the roots of the hair A free use of the brush spreads it along the hairs, and gives them a smooth, glossy appearance. Soap should rarely be used in washing the head, as it will remove the oil which is essential to the health and appearance of the hair. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 718. Upon what does the color of the hair depend? What are the causes of the hair becoming gray? What is the cause of the hair dropping out? What is related of Marie Antoinette? 719. How is "dandruff" on the scalp produced? What is the only necessary application to remove it? Give observation. 720. Where is the oil of the hair most abundant? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 721. The uses of the hair vary in different regions of the body. Upon the head, it aids in shielding the brain from injury by blows, and it likewise serves to protect this part of the system from heat and cold, thus maintaining equal temperature of the cerebral organ. About the flections of the joints, as in the axilla, (armpit,) they prevent irritation of the skin from friction; in the passages to the ears and nostrils, they present an obstacle to the ingress of insects and foreign bodies; while in the eyebrows and eyelids, they serve to protect the organ of vision. [Illustration: Fig. 119. A section of the end of the finger and nail. 4, Section of the last bone of the finger. 5, Fat, forming the cushion at the end of the finger. 2, The nail. 1, 1, The cuticle continued under and around the root of the nail, at 3, 3, 3.] 722. The NAILS are hard, elastic, flexible, semi-transparent scales, and present the appearance of a layer of horn. The nail is divided into the _root_, the _body_, and the _free portion_. The root is that part which is covered on both surfaces; the body is that portion which has one surface free; the free portion projects beyond the end of the finger. 723. The nail is formed of several laminæ, or plates, that are fitted the one to the other; the deepest is that which is last formed. The nails, as well as the hoofs of animals and the cuticle, are products of secretion. They receive no blood-vessels or nerves. If the cuticle be removed in severe scalds they will separate with it, as the hoofs of animals are removed by the agency of hot water. The nails increase in length and thickness, by the deposition of albumen upon their under surface, and at their roots, in a manner similar to the growth of the cuticle, of which they constitute a part. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How can it be spread along the hairs? Why should soap not be used in washing the hair? 721. Of what use is the hair upon the head? About the flexions of the joints? In the nasal and ear passages? Upon the eyebrows and eyelids? 722. Describe the nails. 723. How are they formed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observations._ 1st. The nail upon its under surface is fashioned into thin vertical plates, which are received between the folds of the sensitive skin. In this manner, the two kinds of laminæ reciprocally embrace each other, and the firmness of connection of the nail is maintained. If we look on the surface of the nail, we see an indication of this structure in the alternate red and white lines which are there observed. The former of these correspond with the sensitive laminæ; the latter with the horny plates. The ribbed appearance of the nail is due to the same circumstance. These sensitive laminæ are provided with an unusual number of capillary vessels for the formation of the nail, and hence they give a red tint to the portion under which they lie. 2d. Near the root of the nail there is a part that is not laminated, and it is less abundantly supplied with blood-vessels. This portion consequently looks pale compared with the laminated portion, and from its half-moon shape is technically termed _lunula_. Beyond the lunula, the root of the nail is imbedded in the fold of the sensitive skin, and has the same relation to that structure that any single one of the thin horny plates of its under surface has to its corresponding pair of sensitive laminæ. 724. The nails, from their position, are continually receiving knocks, which produce a momentary disturbance of their cell formation, followed by a white spot. The care of the nails should be strictly limited to the knife or scissors, to their free border, and an ivory presser, to prevent adhesion of the free margin of the scarf-skin to the surface of the nail. This edge of the cuticle should never be pared, the surface of the nail never scraped, nor the nails cleaned with any instrument whatever, except the nail-brush, aided by water and soap. An observance of these suggestions, will prevent irregularities and disorders of the nails. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give observation 1st. Observation 2d. 724. How should the nails be treated to prevent irregularities and disease? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observations._ 1st. When we wear a shoe that is too short for the foot, the edge of the nail is brought against the leather. This interrupts the forward growth of the nail, and it spreads out on the sides, and becomes unusually thick. It then presses upon the soft parts, and is said to "grow into the flesh." The prevention is, to wear shoes of ample size. 2d. Instances are by no means unfrequent in which the power of production of the nail at the root becomes entirely destroyed, and it then grows in thickness only. When this affection occurs, it is often remarkable what a mass the nail presents. Instances are on record, where the nail is regularly shed; and, whenever the old nail falls off, a new one is found beneath it, perfectly formed. Sometimes the growth in length is not entirely checked, although growth in thickness is induced; the nail then presents a peculiar appearance. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What causes the edge of the nail "to grow into the flesh" of the toe? How prevented? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXXVI. THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 725. In the preceding chapters, we have seen how various and complex are many of the motions necessary to maintain the life of an animal whose organization is superior to all others. We have noted the wonderful mechanism of the muscular system, in producing the varied movements of the body, the different processes by which the food is converted into chyle and mixed with the blood, and the circulation of this fluid to every organ and tissue of the system, that each may select from it the very principles which it requires for its growth. 726. Lymphatic absorption commences as soon as nutrition is completed, and conveys the useless, worn-out particles of different tissues back into the circulating fluid; while the respiratory organs and secretory glands perform the work of preparing the waste products to be eliminated from the body. Each of these processes effects a single object, and is performed in a regular manner. 727. "They must succeed each other in proper order in propelling every particle to its proper destination, or life would be sacrificed almost at the moment of its commencement. There is, therefore, a mutual dependence of all portions of the machinery of organic life upon each other, and a necessity for some medium of communication from one organ to another, by which they may convey mutual information of their several conditions, if we may be permitted to employ a figurative expression. Were there no such medium, how would the stomach notify the heart that additional exertion on its part is required, because the stomach is busy in digesting food? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 725. What has been noted in the preceding chapters? 726. Show the manner in which the several processes are performed. 727. How must they succeed each other? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 728. "When we are exerting the muscular system for a long time in some laborious employment, how else are our members to inform the stomach that they are too much occupied with their duties to spare the blood necessary in digestion; that it is requisite that the appetite should decline; and that digestion should cease for the time, even if the stomach should be oppressed with its contents? When we are thinking, how else are the blood-vessels to be told that an unusual supply of their contents is wanting in the head? or when the whole frame is weary with exertion, how, without some regular line of intelligence between all the organs, is the brain to be instructed that circumstances require that it should go to sleep? To supply the necessary medium of communication, Providence has furnished all the animals that possess distinct organs, with a peculiar apparatus called the _Nervous System_." ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 729. The NERVOUS SYSTEM consists of the _Cer´e-bro-spi´nal Cen´tre_, and of numerous rounded and flattened white cords, called _nerves_, which are connected at one extremity with the cerebro-spinal centre, and at the other, distributed to all the textures of the body. The sympathetic nerve is an exception to this description; for, instead of one, it has many small centres, which are called _gan´gli-a_, and which communicate very freely with the cerebro-spinal centre, and with its nerves. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 728. What is the medium of communication from one organ to another? 729-754. _Give the anatomy of the brain and cranial nerves._ 729. Of what does the nervous system consist? What constitutes an exception to this? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 730. The CEREBRO-SPINAL CENTRE consists of two portions: The _brain_, and the _spinal cord_. For convenience of description, the nervous system may be divided into the _Brain_, _Cranial Nerves_, _Spinal Cord_, _Spinal Nerves_, and the _Sympathetic Nerve_. 731. The term BRAIN designates those parts of the nervous system, exclusive of the nerves themselves, which are contained within the cranium, or skull-bones; they are the _Cer´e-brum_, _Cer-e-bel´lum_, and _Me-dul´la Ob-lon-ga´ta_. These are invested and protected by the membranes of the brain, which are called the _Du´ra Ma´ter_, _A-rach´noid_, and _Pi´a Ma´ter_. [Illustration: Fig. 120. 1, 1, The scalp turned down. 2, 2, 2, The cut edge of the bones of the skull. 3, The external strong membrane of the brain (dura mater,) suspended by a hook. 4, The left hemisphere of the brain, showing its convolutions.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 730. Of what does the cerebro-spinal centre consist? How is the nervous system divided? 731. What does the term brain designate? Name them. How are they protected? Describe fig. 120. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 732. The CEREBRUM IS divided into two hemispheres, by a cleft, or fissure. Into this cleft dips a portion of the dura mater, called the _falx cer´e-bri_, from its resembling a sickle. The apparent design of this membrane is to relieve the one side from the pressure of the other, when the head is reclining to either side. Upon the superior surface of the cerebrum are seen undulating windings, called _con-vo-lu´tions_. Upon its inferior, or lower surface, each hemisphere admits of a division into three lobes--the anterior, middle, and posterior. (Fig. 122, 123) [Illustration: Fig. 121 A section of the skull-bones and cerebrum. 1, 1, The skull. 2, 2, the dura mater 3, 3, The cineritious portion of the cerebrum. 4, 4, The medullary portion. The dark points indicate the position of divided blood-vessels. 5, 5, The lateral ventricles.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 732. How is the cerebrum divided? What is the use of the falx cerebri? What is seen upon the superior surface of the brain? Its inferior? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 733. When the upper part of the hemispheres is removed horizontally with a sharp knife, a centre of white substance is brought to view. This is surrounded by a border of gray, which follows the depressions of the convolutions, and presents a zigzag outline. The divided surface will be seen studded with numerous small red points, which are produced by the escape of blood from the division of the minute arteries and veins. The gray border is called the cortical, or _cineritious_ portion, while the white central portion is called the _medullary_. The two hemispheres are connected by a dense layer of transverse fibres, called _cor´pus cal-lo´sum_. 734. In the interior of the brain there are several cavities, two of which are of considerable size, and are called the lateral ventricles. They extend from the anterior to the posterior part of the brain, and wind their way into other parts of the cerebral organ. _Observation._ In the disease called "dropsy of the brain," (hydrocephalus internus,) the serum, or water, is usually deposited in these ventricles. This is effused from the many small blood-vessels of the membrane in these cavities. 735. The brain is of a pulpy character, quite soft in infancy and childhood; but it gradually becomes more and more consistent, and in middle age it assumes the form of determinate structure and arrangement. It is more abundantly supplied with blood than any organ of the system. No lymphatics have been detected, but it is to be presumed that they exist in this organ. 736. The CEREBELLUM is about seven times smaller than the cerebrum. Like that organ, it is composed of white and gray matter, but the gray constitutes the larger portion. Its surface is formed of parallel plates separated by fissures. The white matter is so arranged, that when cut vertically, the appearance of the trunk and branches of a tree (_ar´bor vi´tæ_) is presented. It is situated under the posterior lobe of the cerebrum, from which it is separated by a process of the dura mater, called the _ten-to´ri-um_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 733. Describe the appearance of the brain when a horizontal section has been made. What is the gray border often called? What connects the hemispheres? 734. Describe the ventricles of the brain. In the disease called "dropsy of the brain," where is the water deposited? 735. What is the character of the brain in childhood? In adults? 736. How does the cerebellum compare in size with the cerebrum? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 122. The under surface, or base, of the brain and origin of the cranial nerves. 1, 1, The anterior lobes of the cerebrum. 2, 2, The middle lobes. 3, 3, The posterior lobes, almost concealed by the cerebellum. 4, 4, The cerebellum. 7, 7, The longitudinal fissure that divides the brain into two hemispheres. 8, The first pair of nerves. 9, 9, The second pair of nerves. 10, The decussation, or crossing, of its fibres. 13, 13, The third pair of nerves. 14, The pons varolii. 15, 15, The fourth pair of nerves. 16, 16, The fifth pair of nerves. 17, The sixth pair of nerves. 18, 18, The seventh and eighth pair of nerves. 19, The medulla oblongata, with the crossing of some of its fibres exhibited. 20, The ninth pair of nerves. 21, The tenth pair of nerves, 22, The eleventh pair of nerves. 23, The twelfth pair of nerves.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Describe this portion of the brain. Explain fig. 122. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 737. The MEDULLA OBLONGATA, or that portion of the spinal cord which is within the skull, consists of three pairs of bodies, (_cor´pus py-ram-i-da´le_, _res-ti-for´me_, and _ol-i-va´re_,) united in a single bulb. [Illustration: Fig. 123. The base of the skull and the openings through which the cranial nerves pass. 1, 1, The first pair of nerves. 2, 2, The cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone through which this nerve passes. 3, 3, The second pair of nerves. 4, 4, The optic foramen in the sphenoid bone; through which passes the second pair of nerves. 5, 5, The sphenoidal fissure. 6, 6, The third pair of nerves. 7, 7, The fifth pair of nerves. 8, 8, The ophthalmic branch of the fifth nerve. The third, the ophthalmic branch of the fifth and the sixth nerve pass from the brain through the sphenoidal fissure to the eye. 9, 9, The superior maxillary branch of the fifth nerve. 10, 10, The foramen rotundum, (round opening,) through which the nerve 9, 9, passes to the upper jaw. 11, 11, The inferior maxillary branch of the fifth pair. 12, 12, The foramen ovale, (oval opening,) through which the nerve 11, 11, passes to the lower jaw. 13, 13, The sixth pair of nerves. 14, 14, The seventh and eighth pair of nerves. 15, 15, The opening in the temporal bone, through which the seventh and eighth nerves pass to the face and ear. 16, 16, The ninth pair of nerves. 17, The tenth pair of nerves. 18, 18, The eleventh pair of nerves. 19, 19, The foramen lacerum (rough opening.) The ninth, tenth, and eleventh nerves pass from the brain through this opening. 20, The spinal cord. 21, The foramen spinalis, through which the spinal cord passes. 22, 22, The position of the anterior lobe of the brain. 23, 23, The middle lobe. 24, 24, The posterior lobe. 25, 25, A section of the skull-bones.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 737. Describe the medulla oblongata. Explain fig. 123. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 738. The DURA MATER is a firm, fibrous membrane, which is exposed on the removal of a section of the skull-bones. This lines the interior of the skull and spinal column, and likewise sends processes inward, for the support and protection of the different parts of the brain. It also sends processes externally, which form the sheaths for the nerves, as they quit the skull and spinal column. The dura mater is supplied with arteries and nerves. [Illustration: Fig. 124. A vertical section of the cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla oblongata, showing the relation of the cranial nerves at their origin. 1, The cerebrum. 2, The cerebellum, with its arbor vitæ represented. 3, The medulla oblongata. 4, The spinal cord. 5, The corpus callosum. 6, The first pair of nerves. 7, The second pair. 8, The eye. 9, The third pair of nerves. 10, The fourth pair. 11, The fifth pair. 12, The sixth pair. 13, The seventh pair. 14, The eighth pair. 15, The ninth pair. 16, The tenth pair. 10, The eleventh pair. 18, The twelfth pair. 20, Spinal nerves. 21, The tentorium.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 738. Describe the dura mater. What is its use? Explain fig. 124. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 739. The ARACHNOID, so called from its extreme tenuity, is the serous membrane of the brain and spinal cord, and is, like other serous membranes, a closed sac. It envelops these organs, and is reflected upon the inner surface of the dura mater, giving to that membrane its serous investment. 740. The PIA MATER is a vascular membrane, composed of innumerable vessels, held together by cellular membrane. It invests the whole surface of the brain, and dips into its convolutions. The pia mater is the nutrient membrane of the brain, and receives its blood from the carotid and vertebral arteries. Its nerves are minute branches of the sympathetic, which accompany the branches of the arteries. 741. The CRANIAL NERVES, that connect with the brain, are arranged in twelve pairs. They are called: 1st. The _Ol-fact´o-ry_. 2d. The _Op´tic_. 3d. The _Mo-to´res Oc-u-lo´rum_. 4th. The _Pa-thet´i-cus_. 5th. The _Tri-fa´cial_. 6th. The _Ab-du-cen´tes_. 7th. The _Por´ti-o Du´ra_. 8th. The _Por´ti-o Mol´lis_. 9th. The _Glos´so-pha-ryn´gi-al_. 10th. The _Pneu-mo-gas´tric_. 11th. The _Spi´nal Ac´ces-so-ry_. 12th. The _Hy´po-glos´sal_. 742. The OLFACTORY NERVE (first pair) passes from the cavity of the skull through many small openings in a plate of the _eth´moid_ bone. (This plate is called _crib´ri-form_, from its resemblance to a sieve.) This nerve ramifies upon the membrane that lines the nasal passages. It is the softest nerve of the body. (Fig. 136.) 743. The OPTIC NERVE (second pair) passes from the interior of the cranium, through an opening in the base of the skull, (_fo-ra´men op´ti-cum_,) to the cavity for the eye. It pierces the coats of the eye, and expands in the retina. 744. The MOTORES OCULORUM (third pair) pass from the brain, through an opening of the _sphe´noid_ bone, (_sphe-noid´al fis´sure_,) to the muscles of the eye. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 739. Describe the arachnoid membrane. 740. What is said respecting the pia mater? 741. How many pairs of cranial nerves? Name them. 742. Describe the olfactory nerve. 743. The optic nerve. 744. Describe the motores oculorum. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 745. The PATHETICUS (fourth pair) passes from the brain, through the sphenoidal fissure, to the superior oblique muscle of the eye. [Illustration: Fig. 125. The distribution of the third, fourth, and sixth pairs of nerves, to the muscles of the eye. 1, The ball of the eye and rectus externus muscle. 2, The upper jaw. 3, The third pair, distributed to all the muscles of the eye, except the superior oblique, and external rectus. 4, The fourth pair passes to the superior oblique muscle. 6, The sixth pair, is distributed to the external rectus muscle.] 746. The TRIFACIAL NERVE (fifth pair) is analogous to the spinal nerves in its origin by two roots, from the anterior and posterior columns of the spinal cord. It has a ganglion, like the spinal nerves upon its posterior root. For these reasons, it ranges with the spinal nerves, and is considered the cranial spinal nerve. This nerve divides into three branches:--The _oph-thal´mic_, superior _max´il-la-ry_, and inferior _max´il-la-ry_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 745. The patheticus. What does fig. 125 represent? 746. What is the trifacial nerve sometimes called? Why is it classed with the cranial spinal nerves? Give the names of its branches. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 747. The ophthalmic nerve passes from the cranial cavity through the sphenoidal fissure. It sends branches to the forehead, eye, and nose. The superior maxillary nerve passes through an opening in the base of the skull, (_foramen ro-tund´dum_,) and sends branches to the eye, the teeth of the upper jaw, and the muscles of the face. The inferior maxillary nerve escapes from the cranial cavity through an opening called _foramen o-va´le_. It sends branches to the muscles of the lower jaw, the ear, the tongue, and the teeth of the lower jaw. [Illustration: Fig. 126. The distribution of the fifth pair of nerves. 1, The orbit for the eye. 2, The upper jaw. 3, The tongue. 4, The lower jaw. 5, The fifth pair of nerves. 6, The first branch of this nerve, that passes to the eye. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Divisions of this branch. 7, The second branch of the fifth pair of nerves is distributed to the teeth of the upper jaw. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, Divisions of this branch. 8, The third branch of the fifth pair, that passes to the tongue and teeth of the lower jaw. 23. The division of this branch that passes to the tongue, called the _gust´a-to-ry_. 24. The division that is distributed to the teeth of the lower jaw.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 747. Where do the filaments of the ophthalmic branch ramify? The superior maxillary? The inferior maxillary? Explain fig. 126. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 748. The ABDUCENTES (sixth pair) passes through the opening by which the carotid artery enters the cranial cavity. It is the smallest of the cerebral nerves, and is appropriated to the external straight muscle of the eye. 749. The PORTIO MOLLIS (seventh pair) enters the hard portion of the _tem´po-ral_ bone at the internal auditory opening, and is distributed upon the internal ear. (Fig. 147, 148.) [Illustration: Fig. 127. A representation of the distribution of the eighth pair of nerves with some branches of the fifth. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, Are branches of the eighth pair. They are distributed over the face in a radiated manner, which constitutes the pes anserinus, (foot of a goose.) The nerves 4, 6, 8, are branches of the fifth pair. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, Are branches of nerves from the upper part of the spinal cord, (cervical.)] 750. The FACIAL NERVE (eighth pair) passes from the skull through an opening situated below the ear, (_mas´toid foramen_.) It is distributed over the face, supplying the muscles with nervous filaments. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 748. What is said of the abducentes, or sixth pair of nerves? 749. Of the portio mollis? Explain fig. 127. 750. Of the facial nerve? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 751. The GLOSSO-PHARYNGEAL NERVE (ninth pair) passes from the brain, through an opening with the jugular vein, (_foramen lac´e-rum_.) It is distributed to the mucous membrane of the tongue and throat, and also to the mucous glands of the mouth. 752. the PNEUMOGASTRIC NERVE (tenth pair) escapes from the brain through the foramen lacerum. It sends branches to the larynx, pharynx, oesophagus, lungs, spleen, pancreas, liver, stomach, and intestines. (Fig. 132.) 753. The SPINAL ACCESSORY NERVE (eleventh pair) has its origin in the respiratory tract of the spinal cord. It connects with the ninth and tenth pairs of nerves, and is distributed to the muscles about the neck. 754. The HYPO-GLOSSAL NERVE (twelfth pair) passes from the brain, through a small opening, (_con´dy-loid foramen_.) It ramifies upon the muscles of the tongue, and is its motor nerve. _Observation._ The cranial nerves, with the exception of the olfactory, optic, and auditory, connect with each other by means of filaments. They also send connecting nervous filaments to the upper spinal nerves, (cervical,) and the sympathetic nerve. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 751. Describe the glosso-pharyngeal nerve. 752. The pneumogastric nerve. 753. The spinal accessory nerve. 754. The hypo-glossal nerve. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXXVII. ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM, CONTINUED. 755. The spinal column contains the spinal cord, the roots of the spinal nerves, and the membranes of the cord. 756. The SPINAL CORD extends from the medulla oblongata to the second lumbar vertebra, where it terminates in a rounded point. It presents a difference of diameter in different parts of its extent, and exhibits three enlargements. The uppermost of these is the medulla oblongata. There is no distinct demarkation between this enlargement and the spinal cord. The next corresponds with the origin of the nerves distributed to the upper extremities; the third enlargement is situated near the termination of the cord, and corresponds with the attachment of the nerves which are intended for the supply of the lower extremities. 757. An anterior and posterior fissure divides the spinal cord into two lateral cords. These are united by a thin layer of white substance. The lateral cords are each divided by furrows into three distinct sets of fibres, or columns; namely the _anterior_, _lateral_, and _posterior_ columns. The anterior are the motor columns; the posterior are the columns of sensation; the lateral columns are divided in their function between motion and sensation. They contain the fasciculus described, by Sir Charles Bell, as the respiratory tract. [Illustration: Fig. 128. A section of the brain and spinal column. 1, The cerebrum. 2, The cerebellum. 3, The medulla oblongata. 4, 4, The spinal cord in its canal.] [Illustration: Fig. 129. Anterior view of the brain and spinal cord. 1, 1, The two hemispheres of the cerebrum. 3, 3, The cerebellum. 4, The olfactory nerve. 5, The optic nerve. 7, The third pair of nerves. 8, The pons varolii. 9, The fourth pair of nerves. 10, The lower portion of the medulla oblongata. 11, 11, The spinal cord. 12, 12, Spinal nerves. 13, 13, The brachial plexus. 14, 14, The lumbar and sacral plexus.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 755-767. _Give the anatomy of the spinal cord, spinal nerves, and the sympathetic nerve._ 755. What does the spinal column contain? 756. Give the extent of the spinal cord. How many enlargements has this cord? What is said of each enlargement? 757. Into how many parts is the spinal cord divided? Give the function of these columns. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 758. The SPINAL NERVES, that connect with the spinal cord, are arranged in thirty-one pairs, each arising by two roots; an anterior, or _motor_ root, and a posterior, or _sensitive_ root. Each nerve, when minutely examined, is found to consist of an aggregate of very delicate filaments, enclosed in a common cellular envelope. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 758. How many pairs of nerves issue from the spinal cord? Explain fig. 128. Fig. 129. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 759. The anterior roots arise from a narrow white line upon the anterior columns of the spinal cord. The posterior roots arise from a narrow gray band formed by the internal gray substance of the cord. They are larger, and the filaments of origin more numerous than those of the anterior roots. A ganglion is found upon each of the posterior roots in the openings between the bones of the spinal column through which the nerve passes. [Illustration: Fig. 130. A section of the spinal cord, surrounded by its sheath. B, A spinal nerve, formed by the union of the motor root (C) and the sensitive root (D.) At D, the ganglion upon this root is seen.] 760. After the formation of the ganglion, the two roots unite, and constitute a spinal nerve, which passes through the opening between the vertebræ on the sides of the spinal column. The nerves divide and subdivide, until their minute filaments ramify on the tissues of the different organs. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 759. Give the origin of the anterior roots. Of the posterior roots. In what respect do the posterior roots differ from the anterior? 760. When do the two roots unite, and where do they pass? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 761. The _spinal nerves_ are divided into-- Cervical, 8 pairs, Dorsal, 12 " Lumbar, 5 " Sacral, 6 " 762. The four lower cervical and upper dorsal pass into each other and then separate to reunite. This is called the _brach´i-al plex´us_. From this plexus six nerves proceed, which ramify upon the muscles and skin of the upper extremities. 763. The last dorsal and the five lumbar nerves form a plexus called the lumbar, similar to that of the cervical. Six nerves pass from this plexus, which ramify upon the muscles and skin of the lower extremities. 764. The last lumbar and the four upper sacral unite to form the sacral plexus. From this plexus five nerves proceed, that are distributed to the muscles and skin of the hip and lower extremities. 765. The SYMPATHETIC NERVE[19] consists of a series of _Gan´gli-a_, or knots, extending each side of the spinal column, forming a chain its whole length. It communicates with both the cranial and spinal nerves. With the exception of the neck, there is a ganglion for each intervertebral space. These ganglia are composed of a mixture of cineritious and medullary matter, and are supposed to be productive of peculiar nervous power. [19] The structure of this nerve is very complicated, and different physiologists ascribe to it various functions. The character of its diseases are not well understood. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 761. Give the division of the spinal nerves. 762. What nerves constitute the brachial plexus? How many nerves pass from this plexus? 763. How many nerves from the lumbar plexus, and where do they ramify? 764. How is the sacral plexus formed? 765. Of what does the sympathetic nerve consist? How is the sympathetic nerve distributed? What exception? Of what are the ganglia composed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 131. A beautiful representation of the sympathetic ganglia and their connection with other nerves. It is from the grand engraving of Manec, reduced in size. A, A, A, The semilunar ganglion and solar plexus, situated below the diaphragm and behind the stomach. This ganglion is situated in the region (pit of the stomach) where a blow gives severe suffering. D, D, D, The thoracic ganglia, ten or eleven in number. E, E, The external and internal branches of the thoracic ganglia. G, H, The right and left coronary plexus, situated upon the heart. I, N, Q, The inferior, middle, and superior cervical ganglia. 1, The renal plexus of nerves that surrounds the kidneys. 2, The lumbar ganglion. 3, Their internal branches. 4, Their external branches. 5, The aortic plexus of nerves that lies upon the aorta. The other letters and figures represent nerves that connect important organs and nerves with the sympathetic ganglia.] 766. The GANGLIA may be considered as distinct centres, giving off branches in four directions; namely, the superior, or ascending, to communicate with the ganglion above; the inferior, or descending, to communicate with the ganglion below; the external, to communicate with the spinal nerves; and the internal, to communicate with the sympathetic filaments. It is generally admitted that the nerves that pass from the ganglia are larger than those that entered them; as if they imparted to the nerve some additional power. 767. The branches of distribution accompany the arteries which supply the different organs, and form communications around them, which are called plexuses, and take the name of the artery with which they are associated. Thus we have the mesenteric plexus, hepatic plexus, splenic plexus, &c. All the internal organs of the head, neck, and trunk, are supplied with branches from the sympathetic, and some of them exclusively; for this reason, it is considered a nerve of organic life. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is the design of fig, 131? 766. How may the ganglia be considered? 767. What is said of the branches of the sympathetic nerve? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XXXVIII. PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 768. The brain is regarded by physiologists and philosophers as the organ of the mind. Most writers consider it as an aggregate of parts, each charged with specific functions, and that these functions are the highest and most important in the animal economy. To the large brain, or cerebral lobes, they ascribe the seat of the faculties of _thinking_, _memory_, and _the will_. In man, this lobe extends so far backward as to cover the whole of the cerebellum. To the cerebellum, or little brain, is ascribed the seat of the _animal_, or _lower propensities_. 769. "The constant relation between mental power and development of brain, explains why capacities and dispositions are so different. In infancy, for example, the intellectual powers are feeble and inactive. This arises partly from the inaptitude of a still imperfect brain; but in proportion as the latter advances toward its mature state, the mental faculties also become vigorous and active." 770. We are able, in most instances, at least, to trace a correspondence between the development of the cerebral lobes and the amount of intelligence possessed by the person. The weight of the brain in man to that of the whole body varies in different individuals. The heaviest brain on record was that of Cuvier, which weighed 4 pounds and 13½ ounces. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 768-772. _Give the physiology of the nervous system._ 768. How is the brain regarded by physiologists and philosophers? What do they ascribe to the cerebrum? To the cerebellum? 769. What does the relation between mental powers and development of brain explain? 770. What is said respecting the correspondence between the development of the brain and the amount of intelligence possessed by the person? What is said of the weight of the brain? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 771. The brain likewise holds an important relation to all the other organs of the system. To the muscular system it imparts an influence which induces contraction of the fibres. By this relation they are brought under the control of the will. To the skin, eye, and ear, it imparts an influence that gives sensibility, or the power of feeling, seeing, hearing, &c. 772. Again, the involuntary functions of the different portions of the system are more or less influenced by the brain. If the action of this central organ of the nervous system is destroyed, the functions of the digestive, respiratory, and circulatory apparatuses will be much disturbed or entirely suppressed. 773. The brain is the seat of _sensation_. It receives the impressions made on all parts of the body, through the medium of the sensitive nerves. That the impressions of external objects, made on these nerves, be communicated to the brain, where sensation is perceived, it is necessary that they be not diseased or injured. _Observation._ There is a plain distinction between sensations and impressions; the latter are the changes produced in the extremities of the nerve; the former, the changes produced in the brain and communicated to the mind. 774. What part of the brain receives the impressions or has the most intimate relation with the intellectual faculties is unknown. Some portions, however, are of less importance than others. Large portions of the cortical, or outer part, are frequently removed without affecting the functions of this organ. Pieces of the medullary, or central parts, have been removed by injuries without impairing the intellect or destroying life. This organ, although it takes cognizance of every sensation, is, of itself, but slightly sensible. It may be cut, or parts may be removed without pain, and the individual, at the same times retain his consciousness. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 771. What is said of the relation of the brain to all of the organs of the body? 772. Are the involuntary functions of different parts of the system influenced by the brain? 773. Where is sensation perceived? By what agency are the impressions of external objects conveyed to the brain? What is the difference between sensations and impressions? 774. Is it known what part of the brain has the most intimate relation with the intellectual faculties? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 775. The brain is the seat of the _will_. It superintends the physical as well as the mental movements, and the medium of communication from this organ to the muscles, or the parts to be moved, is the motor nerves. If the brain is in a quiescent state, the muscles are at rest; if, by an act of the will, the brain sends a portion of nervous influence to a voluntary muscle, it immediately contracts, and those parts to which the muscle is attached move. There is no perceptible interval between the act of the will and the motion of the part. 776. Some physiologists assert, that the medulla oblongata is the point at which excitement to motion commences, and sensation terminates; and also, that it possesses the power of originating motion in itself. _Observation._ The medulla oblongata, unlike the brain, is highly sensitive; if slightly punctured, convulsions follow; if much injured, respiration, or breathing, immediately ceases. 777. It is remarkable that the nerves which arise from the right side of the spinal cord communicate with the left hemisphere of the cerebrum, and _vice versa_; this results from the crossing of the fibres in the medulla oblongata. It follows from this, that if the right side of the brain receives an injury, the parts of the opposite side of the body lose their sensibility and motion. _Observations._ 1st. If the cranial nerves which are connected by a single root are divided, only the sensation of the part to which they are distributed is lost. Thus, if the optic nerve is divided, the sense of vision disappears, but the motions of the eye are performed as readily as before. But, if the spinal nerves are divided, both sensation and motion of the part to which they lead are destroyed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What portions have been removed without impairing the intellect? What is remarkable of the brain? 775. What is the influence of the brain upon the muscles? 776. What do some physiologists assert of the medulla oblongata? 777. What is remarkable of the nerves? Give the 1st observation relative to the cranial nerves. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. When the spinal cord is divided or compressed, as in fractures of the spinal column, all parts below the fracture are paralyzed, though the nerves leading to these parts may be uninjured. 3d. Again, one side of the body or one limb may become insensible, and the power to move it, be perfectly retained; or the reverse of this may happen--the power of motion will be lost while sensation remains. In the former instance, the function of the posterior, or sensitive column of the spinal cord on one side is destroyed; in the latter, the anterior, or motor column is affected. 4th. In some cases, both sensation and motion of one side of the body or one limb are destroyed. In such instances, both the anterior and the posterior columns of one side of the spinal cord are diseased. 778. Vigorous and controllable muscular contraction requires a sound and well-developed brain. If this organ is defective in these particulars, the movements will be inefficient, and may be irregular. The central organ of the nervous system must, likewise, be in an active condition, to induce regular, steady, and controllable muscular movements. _Observations._ 1st. Persons who have suffered from apoplexy and other severe diseases of the brain, have an involuntary trembling of the limbs, which results from a weakened state of the nervous system. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= To the spinal nerves. What is said of the compression of the spinal cord? Give the 3d observation relative to the spinal nerves. The 4th observation. 778. Upon what does vigorous controllable muscular contraction depend? What causes the involuntary trembling of the limbs in persons who have suffered from apoplexy? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. The tremor of the hand, that lessens the usefulness or incapacitates the fine artist or skilful mechanic, in the prime of life, from pursuing their vocations, may be, and is often, induced by the influence of intoxicating drink, which debilitates and disorganizes the brain. 3d. The tottering step, trembling hand, and shaking head of the aged invalid, are the results of diminished nervous energy, so that steady muscular contraction, so essential to regular movements, cannot be maintained. 779. No difference can be discovered in the structure of the several kinds of nerves in any part of their course, and the functions they are designed to perform can only be known by ascertaining the place of their origin. The nerves may be functionally divided into five groups. 780. 1st. _Nerves of special sensation._ These are the first, second, eighth, and it may be one of the branches of the fifth pair of cranial nerves. The function of these nerves is particularly described in the chapters upon the senses of smell, vision, hearing, and taste. 781. 2d. _Nerves of general sensation._ These embrace the fifth pair of cranial nerves, and the thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves. In those parts that require sensation for their safety and the performance of their functions, there is an abundant supply of sensitive nervous filaments. The nerves of sensation are mostly distributed upon the skin. Few filaments ramify upon the mucous membranes and muscles. _Observations._ 1st. The painful sensations experienced in the face, and in the teeth or jaws, (tic douloureux and toothache,) are induced by irritation and disease of a portion of the filaments of the fifth pair of cranial nerves. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The tremor of the hand among some mechanics in the prime of life? The tottering step of the aged invalid? 779. What is said relative to the structure of the nerves? How may they be divided? 780. Give the nerves of special sense. 781. Those of general sensation. Where are the nerves of sensation distributed? What causes tic douloureux? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. The unpleasant sensation sometimes experienced when we hear the grating of a file or saw, is produced by the connection of the nerve that passes across the drum of the ear with the fifth cranial nerve. 3d. When pressure is made on the trunk of a nerve, the sensibility of the part where the nerve ramifies is modified. This is illustrated, when pressure is made upon the large nerve of the lower extremity (sciatic) in sitting upon a hard bench. The foot is then said to be "asleep." 4th. When the trunk of a nerve is diseased or injured, the pain is experienced in the outer extremity of the nerve. A blow upon the elbow, which causes a peculiar sensation in the little finger and one side of the ring finger, affords a familiar illustration. This sensation is produced by injuring the ulnar nerve, which is distributed to the little finger. 782. 3d. _Nerves of motion._ These are the third, sixth, and twelfth pairs of cranial nerves, and the thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves. These nerves are distributed to the fibres of the five hundred muscles of the body. The functions of the muscular are different from those of the sensitive nerves. The former are provided for the purpose of motion, and not of feeling. Hence, muscles may be cut, and the pain will be slight, compared with the cutting of the skin. This may be called muscular pain. Weariness is a sensation recognized by one set of muscular nerves. 783. So uniformly is a separate instrument provided for every additional function, that there is strong reason to regard the muscular nerves, although running in one sheath, as in reality double, and performing distinct functions. Sir Charles Bell, in his work on the Nervous System, endeavors to show, that one set of nervous fibres conveys the mandate from the brain to the muscle, and excites the contraction; and that another set conveys, from the muscle to the brain, a peculiar sense of the state or degree of contraction of the muscle, by which we are enabled to judge of the amount of stimulus necessary to accomplish the end desired. This is obviously an indispensable piece of information to the mind in regulating the movements of the body. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is the peculiar sensation accounted for when we hear the grating of a file or saw? What produces the sensation when the foot is said to be "asleep?" What is the effect when the ulnar nerve is injured by a blow? 782. Give the nerves of motion. What is said of the functions of the muscular nerves? 783. What does Sir Charles Bell endeavor to show? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 784. 4th. _Nerves of respiration._ These are the fourth, seventh, ninth, tenth, and eleventh pair of cranial nerves, also the phrenic and the external respiratory nerve. All of these nerves have their origin in a distinct tract or column, called the lateral, in the upper part of the spinal cord. Hence it is sometimes named the respiratory column. These nerves are distributed to one of the muscles of the eye; to the muscles of the face; to the tongue, pharynx, oesophagus, stomach, heart, lungs, diaphragm, and some of the muscles of the neck and chest. 785. It is through the instrumentality of the accessory, phrenic, and external respiratory nerves, (10, 11, 12, 13, fig. 132,) that the muscles employed in respiration are brought into action without the necessity of the interference of the mind. Though to a certain extent they may be under the influence of the will, yet it is only in a secondary degree. No one can long suspend the movements of respiration;[20] for in a short time, instinctive feeling issues its irresistible mandate, which neither requires the aid of erring wisdom, nor brooks the capricious interference of the will. [20] Dr. Elliotson, and some other writers On physiology, have detailed cases of death from voluntary suspension of respiration. But these cases are not conclusive, as examinations were not made, so as to determine positively, that death did not result from disease of the heart, brain, or some other vital organ. [Illustration: Fig. 132. The distribution of the respiratory nerves. _a_, Section of the brain and medulla oblongata. _b_, The lateral columns of the spinal cord. _c_, _c_, The respiratory tract of the spinal cord. _d_, The tongue. _e_, The larynx. _f_, The bronchia. _g_, The oesophagus. _h_, The stomach. _i_, The diaphragm. 1, The pneumogastric nerve. 2, The superior laryngeal nerve. 3, The recurrent laryngeal nerve. (These two ramify on the larynx.) 4, The pulmonary plexus of the tenth nerve. 5, The cardiac plexus of the tenth nerve. These two plexuses supply the heart and lungs with nervous filaments. 7, The origin of the fourth pair of nerves, that passes to the superior oblique muscle of the eye. 8, The origin of the facial nerve, that is spread out on the side of the face and nose. 9, The origin of the glosso-pharyngeal nerve, that passes to the tongue and pharynx. 10, The origin of the spinal accessory nerve. 11, This nerve penetrating the sterno-mastoideus muscle. 12, The origin of the internal respiratory or phrenic nerve, that is seen to ramify on the diaphragm. 13, The origin of the external respiratory nerve, that ramifies on the pectoral and scaleni muscles.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 784. Give the respiratory nerves. What is said in reference to the respiratory nerves? 785. Through the agency of what nerves are the respiratory muscles brought into action? Explain fig. 132. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 786. The fourth, seventh, and tenth pairs of nerves, (7, 8, 9, fig. 132,) with the spinal accessory, phrenic, and external respiratory, are not only connected with the function of respiration, but contribute to the expression of the passions and emotions of the mind. 787. The influence of this order of nerves in the expression of the passions, is strikingly depicted in Sir Charles Bell's Treatise on the Nervous System. "In terror," he remarks, "we can readily conceive why a man stands with his eyes intently fixed on the object of his fears--the eyebrows elevated, and the eyeballs largely uncovered; or why, with hesitating and bewildered steps, his eyes are rapidly and wildly in search of something. In this way, we only perceive the intense application of his mind to the objects of his apprehension, and its direct influence on the outward organs." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Can respiration be suspended for any considerable length of time? 786. What nerves contribute to the expression of the passions and emotions of the mind? 787, 788. What does Sir Charles Bell say of the influence of this order of nerves in the expression of the passions? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 788. "But when we observe him further, there is a spasm in his breast; he cannot breathe freely; the chest remains elevated, and his respiration is short and rapid. There is a gasping and convulsive motion of his lips, a tremor on his hollow cheeks, a gasping and catching of his throat; his heart knocks at his ribs, while yet there is no force in the circulation--the lips and cheeks being ashy pale." 789. "These nerves are the instruments of expression, from the smile upon the infant's cheek, to the last agony of life. It is when the strong man is subdued by this mysterious influence of soul on body, and when the passions may be truly said to tear the heart, that we have the most afflicting picture of human frailty, and the most unequivocal proof that it is the order of functions we have been considering, that is thus affected. In the first struggle of the infant to draw breath, in the man recovering from a state of suffocation, and in the agony of passion, when the breast labors from the influence at the heart, the same system of parts is affected, the same nerves, the same muscles, and the symptoms or character have a strict resemblance." 790. The seventh pair of nerves not only communicates the purposes of the will to the muscles of the face, but at the same time it calls them into action, under the influence of instinct and sympathy. On this subject a late writer remarks, "How expressive is the face of man! How clearly it announces the thoughts and sentiments of the mind! How well depicted are the passions on his countenance! tumultuous rage, abject fear, devoted love, envy, hatred, grief, and every other emotion, in all their shades and diversities, are imprinted there, in characters so clear that he that runs may read! How difficult, nay, how impossible, is it to hide or falsify the expressions which indicate the internal feelings! Thus conscious guilt shrinks from detection, innocence declares its confidence, and hope anticipates with bright expectation." _Observation._ The fifth pair of nerves (fig. 126) is distributed to the parts of the face on which the seventh pair ramifies. The former serves for sensation, the latter for motion. Thus, when the seventh pair of nerves is divided, or its functions destroyed by disease, the side affected loses all power of expression, though sensation remains unaffected. On the contrary, if we divide the fifth pair, sensation is entirely destroyed, while expression remains. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 789. Are they also the instruments of expression, either of joy or grief? 790. What is said in reference to the seventh pair of nerves? Where is the fifth pair of nerves distributed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 791. 5th. _The sympathetic nerve._ This nerve confers vitality on all the important portions of the system. It exerts a controlling influence over the involuntary functions of digestion, absorption, secretion, circulation, and nutrition. Every portion of the body is, to a certain extent, under its influence, as filaments from this system of nerves accompany the blood-vessels throughout their course. 792. An important use of the sympathetic nerve is to form a communication of one part of the system with another, so that one organ can take cognizance of the condition of every other, and act accordingly. If, for example, disease seizes the brain, the stomach, by its sympathetic connection, knows it; and as nourishment would add to the disease, it refuses to receive food, and perhaps throws off what has already been taken. Loss of appetite in sickness is thus a kind provision of nature, to prevent our taking food when it would be injurious; and following this intimation, we, as a general rule, should abstain from food until the appetite returns. [Illustration: Fig. 133. A back view of the brain and spinal cord. 1, The cerebrum. 2, The cerebellum. 3, The spinal cord. 4, Nerves of the face. 5, The brachial plexus of nerves. 6, 7, 8, 9, Nerves of the arm. 10, Nerves that pass under the ribs, 11, The lumbar plexus of nerves. 12, The sacral plexus of nerves 13, 14, 15, 16, Nerves of the lower limbs.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is the function of this nerve? What is the effect if the seventh pair is divided, or its function destroyed by disease? 791. What is said of the sympathetic nerve? 792. What is the use of the sympathetic system? Explain fig. 133. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Note._ Let the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system be reviewed from figs. 131, 132, 133, or from anatomical outline plate. No. 8. CHAPTER XXXIX. HYGIENE OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 793. As the different organs of the system are dependent on the brain and spinal cord for efficient functional action, and as the mind and brain are closely associated during life, the former acting in strict obedience to the laws which regulate the latter, it becomes an object of primary importance in education, to discover what these laws are, that we may escape the numerous evils consequent on their violation. 794. _For healthy and efficient action, the brain should be primarily sound_; as this organ is subject to the same general laws as other parts of the body. If the brain of the child is free from defects at birth, and acquires no improper impressions in infancy, it will not easily become diseased in after life. But, if the brain has inherited defects, or has acquired a proneness to disease by mismanagement in early life, it will more easily yield to influences that cause diseased action. The hereditary tendency to disease is one of the most powerful causes that produce nervous and mental affections. Consequently, children have a strong tendency to the diseases from which the parents suffered. 795. When both parents have similar defects, or have descended from tainted families, the children are usually more deeply impressed with their imperfections than when only one possesses the defect. This is the reason of the frequency of nervous disease and imbecility among the opulent, as intermarriages among near relations are more frequent with this class than among the poor. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 793-850. _Give the hygiene of the nervous system._ 793. Why is it important to know the laws which regulate the action of the brain? 794. What is necessary that the action of the brain be healthy and efficient? What follows if the brain of the child has inherited defects? 795. What is the effect when both parents possess similar defects? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ Among some of the reigning families of Europe, particularly the Spanish, the folly of intermarriage among themselves is strongly illustrated. The high and noble talents that characterized their progenitors are not seen, but there is now exhibited, among their descendants, imbecility and the most revolting forms of nervous disease. 796. "Unhappily, it is not merely as a cause of disease, that hereditary predisposition is to be dreaded. The obstacles which it throws in the way of permanent recovery are even more formidable, and can never be entirely removed. Safety is to be found only in avoiding the perpetuation of the mischief." 797. "Therefore, if two persons, each naturally of excitable and delicate nervous temperament, choose to unite for life, they have themselves to blame for the concentrated influence of similar tendencies in destroying the health of their offspring, and subjecting them to all the miseries of nervous disease, madness, or melancholy." The command of God not to marry within certain degrees of consanguinity, is in accordance with the organic laws of the brain, and the wisdom of the prohibition is confirmed by observation. _Observation._ The inhabitants, females particularly, of the sea-girt islands of America, are more affected with nervous diseases, than those who reside upon the mainland. The prevalence of these affections is ascribed to the frequent intermarriage of persons closely related by blood. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is one cause of nervous disease among the higher classes? What is true of some of the reigning families of Europe? 796. Why is hereditary predisposition to be dreaded? 797. Is the prohibition of God respecting intermarriage in accordance with the organic laws of the brain? What is said of the inhabitants of the sea-girt islands of America? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 798. _The brain requires a due supply of pure blood._ This organ receives an unusually large supply of blood, in comparison with the rest of the body. It is estimated that one tenth of all the blood sent from the heart goes to this organ. If the arterial blood be altogether withdrawn, or a person breathes air that is filled with carbonic gas, the brain ceases its proper action, and sensibility with consciousness becomes extinct. _Illustrations._ 1st. If a person lose a considerable quantity of blood, dizziness and loss of consciousness follow. This results from the brain not receiving a sufficient amount of blood to sustain its functions. 2d. When an individual descends into a well or pit that contains carbonic acid, the blood is not changed or purified in the lungs, and loss of consciousness and death soon follow. 799. The slighter variations in the state of the blood have equally sure, though less palpable effects. If its vitality is impaired by breathing an atmosphere so much vitiated as to be insufficient to produce the proper degree of oxygenation, the blood then affords an imperfect stimulus to the brain. As a necessary consequence, languor and inactivity of the mental and nervous functions ensue, and a tendency to headache, fainting, or hysteria, makes its appearance. _Observations._ 1st. Let a person remain, for a time, in a crowded, ill-ventilated, hall or church, and headache or faintness is generally produced. This is caused by the action of impure blood upon the brain. 2d. If a school-teacher wishes to have his pupils, on the day of examination, appear creditably, he will be careful to have the room well ventilated. Ventilating churches might prevent the inattention and sleepiness that are observed during the afternoon service. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 798. Why does the brain require a due supply of pure blood? What is the effect when a person loses a considerable quantity of blood? What causes the loss of consciousness when carbonic acid is breathed? 799. What effects are produced by slight variations in the quality of the blood? From the following observations, give some of the effects of impure blood on the brain. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 3d. In many instances, the transmission of imperfectly oxygenated blood to the brain, is an influential cause in the production of nervous disease and delicacy of constitution. The only efficient remedy for these conditions is a supply of pure blood to the brain. 800. _The brain should be called into action._ This organ, like the muscles, should be used, and then allowed to rest, or cease from vigorous thought. When the brain is properly called into action by moderate study, it increases in size and strength; while, on the other hand, if it is not used, the action of this organ is enfeebled, thereby diminishing the function of all parts of the body. 801. The brain, being an organized part, is subject, so far as regards exercise, to the same laws as the other organs of the body. If it is doomed to inactivity, its size diminishes, its health decays, and the mental operations and feelings, as a necessary consequence, become dull, feeble, and slow. If it is duly exercised after regular intervals of repose, the mind acquires readiness and strength. Lastly, if it is overtasked, either in the force or duration of its activity, its functions become impaired, and irritability and disease take the place of health and vigor. 802. The consequences of inadequate exercise will first be explained. We have seen that by disuse the muscles become emaciated, the bones soften, and the blood-vessels are obliterated. The brain is no exception to this general rule. It is impaired by permanent inactivity, and becomes less fit to manifest the mental powers with readiness and energy. Nor will this surprise any reflecting person, who considers that the brain, as a part of the same animal system, is nourished by the same blood and regulated by the same vital laws as the muscles, bones, and arteries. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 800. Why should the brain be called into action? 801. What is the effect if the brain is doomed to inactivity? 802. Show the consequences of disuse of the organs mentioned in preceding chapters. Does the same principle apply to the brain? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 803. It is the weakening and depressing effect which is induced by the absence of the stimulus necessary for the healthy exercise of the brain, that renders solitary confinement so severe a punishment, even to the most daring minds. Keeping the above principle in view, we shall not be surprised to find that _non-exercise_ of the brain and nervous system, or, in other words, inactivity of intellect and feeling, is a very frequent predisposing cause of every form of nervous disease. 804. For demonstrative evidence of this position, we have only to look at the numerous victims to be found among females of the middle and higher ranks, who have no calls to exertion in gaining the means of subsistence, and no objects of interest on which to exercise their mental faculties, and who, consequently, sink into a state of mental sloth and nervousness, which not only deprives them of much enjoyment, but subjects them to suffering, both of body and mind from the slightest causes. 805. But let the situation of such persons be changed; bring them, for instance, from the listlessness of retirement to the business and bustle of the city; give them a variety of imperative employments, and so place them in society as to supply to their cerebral organs that extent of exercise which gives health and vivacity of action, and in a few months the change produced will be surprising. Health, animation, and energy, will take the place of former insipidity and dulness. 806. An additional illustration, involving an important principle in the production of many distressing forms of disease will be found in the case of a man of mature age, and of active habits, who has devoted his life to the toils of business, and whose hours of leisure have been few and short. Suppose such a person to retire to the country in search of repose, and to have no moral, religious, or philosophical pursuits to occupy his attention and keep up the active exercise of his brain; this organ will lose its health, and the inevitable result will be, weariness of life, despondency, or some other variety of nervous disease. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 803. What renders solitary confinement so severe a punishment to the most daring minds? What is a predisposing cause of nervous disease? 804. In what classes do mental and nervous debility prevail? 805. How can this be counteracted? 806. Give another illustration, showing how disease of the brain is induced. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 807. One great evil attending the absence of some imperative employment or object of interest, to exercise the mind and brain, is the tendency which it generates to waste the mental energies on every trifling occurrence which presents itself, and to seek relief in the momentary excitement of any sensation, however unworthy. The best remedy for these evils is to create occupation to interest the mind, and give that wholesome exercise to the brain, which its constitution requires. 808. _The evils arising from excessive or ill-timed exercise of the brain, or any of its parts, are numerous._ When we use the eye too long, or in too bright a light, it becomes bloodshot. The increased action of its vessels and nerves gives rise to a sensation of fatigue and pain, requiring us to desist. If we relieve the eye, the irritation gradually subsides and the healthy state returns. But, if we continue to look intently, or resume our employment before the eye has regained its natural state by repose, the irritation at last becomes permanent, and disease, followed by weakness of vision, or even blindness, may ensue. 809. Phenomena precisely analogous occur, when, from intense mental excitement, the brain is kept long in a state of excessive activity. The only difference is, that we can always see what happens in the eye, but rarely what takes place in the brain; occasionally, however, cases of fracture of the skull occur, in which, part of the bone being removed, we can see the quickened circulation in the vessels of the brain, as easily as those of the eye. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 807. What is one great evil attending the absence of some imperative employment to exercise the mind and brain? What is the true remedy for these evils? 808. From what other cause do evils arise to the brain? Explain the evil of it by the excessive use of the eye. 809. What is the only difference in the analogy of the phenomena of the eye and brain? Has the analogy been verified? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 810. Sir Astley Cooper had a young man brought to him, who had lost a portion of his skull, just above the eyebrow. "On examining the head," says Sir Astley, "I distinctly saw that the pulsation of the brain was regular and slow; but at this time he was agitated by some opposition to his wishes, and directly the blood was sent with increased force to the brain, and the pulsation became frequent and violent." 811. Indeed, in many instances, the increased circulation in the brain, attendant on mental excitement, reveals itself when least expected, and leaves traces after death, which are very perceptible. When tasked beyond its strength, the eye becomes insensible to light, and no longer conveys any impressions to the mind. In like manner, the brain, when much exhausted, becomes incapable of thought, and consciousness is almost lost in a feeling of utter confusion. 812. _At any time of life, excessive and continued mental exertion is hurtful_; but in infancy and early youth, when the structure of the brain is still immature and delicate, permanent mischief is more easily produced by injudicious treatment than at any subsequent period. In this respect, the analogy is as complete between the brain and the other parts of the body, as that exemplified in the injurious effects of premature exercise of the bones and muscles. 813. Scrofulous and rickety children are the most usual sufferers in this way. They are generally remarkable for large heads, great precocity of understanding, and small, delicate bodies. But in such instances, the great size of the brain, and the acuteness of the mind, are the results of morbid growth. Even with the best of management, the child passes the first years of its life constantly on the brink of active disease. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 810. Relate the case detailed by Sir Astley Cooper. 811. May the increased functional action of the brain change its structure? 812. At what age particularly is excessive and continued mental exertion hurtful? 813. What is said of scrofulous and rickety children? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 814. Instead, however, of trying to repress its mental activity, the fond parents, misled by the early promise of genius too often excite it still further, by unceasing cultivation, and the never-failing stimulus of praise. Finding its progress for a time equal to their warmest wishes, they look forward with ecstasy to the day when its talents will break forth and shed lustre on its name. 815. But in exact proportion as the picture becomes brighter to their fancy, the probability of its being realized becomes less; for the brain, worn out by premature exertion, either becomes diseased, or loses its tone, leaving the mental powers imbecile and depressed for the remainder of life. The expected prodigy is thus easily outstripped in the social race by many whose dull outset promised him an easy victory. 816. Taking for our guide the necessities of the constitution, it will be obvious that the modes of treatment commonly resorted to ought to be reversed. Instead of straining to the utmost the already irritable powers of the precocious child, and leaving his dull competitor to ripen at leisure, a systematic attempt ought to be made, from early infancy, to rouse to action the languid faculties of the latter, while no pains ought to be spared to moderate and give tone to the activity of the former. 817. Instead of this, however, the prematurely intelligent child is sent to school and tasked with lessons at an unusually early age, while the healthy but more backward boy, who requires to be stimulated, is kept at home in idleness, perhaps for two or three years longer, merely on account of his backwardness. A double error is here committed. The consequences to the intelligent boy are, frequently, the permanent loss both of health and of his envied superiority of intellect. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 814. How are such children usually managed? 815. What is the cause of their early promise and subsequent disappointment? 816. What mode of treatment should be adopted in educating precocious children? 817. How should the dull or less active child be treated? What is the usual course? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 818. In youth, too, much mischief is done by the long daily period of attendance at school, and the continued application of the mind which the ordinary system of education requires. The law of exercise--that long-sustained action exhausts the vital powers of the organ--applies as well to the brain as to the muscles. Hence the necessity of varying the occupations of the young, and allowing frequent intervals of exercise in the open air, instead of "enforcing the continued confinement now so common." _Observation._ It is no unusual occurrence, that on examination day, the best scholars appear indifferently. This may be the result of nervous exhaustion, produced by extra mental effort in preparing for the final examination. It is advisable for such pupils to divert their minds from close study for a few days previous to examination. During this time, the student may indulge in physical recreation, social intercourse, and a moderate amount of reading. 819. "In early and middle life, fever, an unusual degree of cerebral disorder, is a common consequence of the excessive and continued excitement of the brain. This unhappy result is brought on by severe study, unremitted mental exertion, anxiety, and watching. Nervous disease, from excessive mental labor and high mental excitement, sometimes shows itself in another form. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What are the consequences of the error? 818. What error prevails in the present system of education? Why should youths be allowed frequent intervals to exercise in the open air? Give observation. 819. What is a frequent consequence of continued and excessive excitement of the brain? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 820. "From the want of proper intervals of rest, the vascular excitement of the brain has not time to subside. A restless irritability of temper and disposition comes on, attended with sleeplessness and anxiety, for which no external cause can be assigned. The symptoms gradually become aggravated, the digestive functions give way, nutrition is impaired, and a sense of wretchedness is constantly present, which often leads to attempts at suicide." _Observations._ 1st. Moderation in mental exertion is more necessary in old age than in early or mature years. In youth and manhood, the exhaustion of the brain from over-excitement may be repaired, but no such result follows over-exertion in the decline of life. "What is lost then, is lost forever." At that period, the brain becomes excited, and is soon exhausted when forced to protracted and vigorous thought. Sir Walter Scott and President Harrison afford sad examples of premature death from overtasked brains at an advanced period of their lives. 2d. If the mind is incessantly engaged in the contemplation of the same object, there is danger from over-exertion of the brain at any period of life, but more particularly in old age. The more limited the sphere of mental action, the greater the danger of the brain being over-exercised. Hence the frequency of nervous diseases in poets, mathematicians, and musicians. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 820. What often manifests itself from the want of proper intervals of rest? Why is moderation in mental action necessary in old age? What is the effect if the mind is incessantly engaged in the contemplation of the same object? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XL. HYGIENE OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM, CONTINUED. 821. Having pointed out the evils arising both from inadequate and from excessive mental exertion, it remains to direct the attention to some of the rules which should guide us in the exercise of the brain. 822. _We should not enter upon continued mental exertion, or arouse deep feeling, immediately before or after a full meal._ Such is the connection between the mind and body, that even in a perfectly healthy person, unwelcome news, sudden anxiety, or mental excitement, occurring soon after eating, will impede digestion, and cause the stomach to loathe the masticated food. 823. The worst forms of indigestion and nervous depression are those which arise from excessive mental application, or depressed feeling, conjoined with unrestrained indulgence in the pleasures of the table. In such circumstances, the stomach and brain react upon and disturb each other, till all the horrors of nervous disease make their unwelcome appearance, and render life miserable. Too many literary men and students know this from sad experience. 824. _We should engage in intense study in the early part of the day._ Nature has allotted the darkness of the night for repose, and for restoration by sleep of the exhausted energies of mind and body. In the early part of the evening, if study or composition be ardently engaged in, the increased action of the brain, which always accompanies activity of mind, requires a long time to subside. If the individual possesses a nervous temperament, he will be sleepless for hours after he has retired, or perhaps be tormented by unpleasant dreams. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 822. Why should we not arouse deep feeling immediately before or after eating a full meal? 823. How are the worst forms of indigestion and nervous depression produced? What class of men know this from sad experience? 824. What evils arise from studious application at night? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 825. It is, therefore, of great advantage to enter upon intense mental application early in the day, and to devote several of the hours which precede bedtime to entertaining conversation, music, and lighter reading. The vascular excitement previously induced in the brain by study, has then time to subside, and sound, refreshing sleep is much more certainly obtained. This rule is of great consequence to those who are obliged to undergo much mental labor. _Observation._ The idea of gathering wisdom by burning the "midnight oil," is more poetical than profitable. The best time to use the brain is during the day. 826. _The close student and the growing child need more sleep than the idler or the adult._ As steep is the natural repose of all organs, it follows that the more the brain and other organs of the system are employed, the more repose they require. The organs of the child, beside sustaining their proper functions, are busy in promoting its growth. This nutritive process is attended with a certain degree of exhaustion. The impaired health of children often results from a disregard of this principle. But, on the other hand, an excess of sleep produces feebleness, by preventing the proper exercise of the mind as well as the body. 827. _The length of time the brain may be advantageously used, is modified by many circumstances._ The power of the brain in different persons to endure action, is various. This is modified by its primary character; by development and age; by habits of action; by the health of the cerebral organ and general system; by the moral feelings and other conditions. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 825. Why should we engage in intense study in the early part of the day? 826. What persons require the most sleep? Why? 827. What is said relative to the length of time that the brain can be advantageously used? Give a condition that modifies the amount of mental labor. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 828. The primary physical organization of some individuals is such, that they are enabled to endure with impunity an amount of mental labor that would disorder, if not destroy functionally, the cerebral organ of others differently constituted. Napoleon Bonaparte was of this number. There can be no fixed period for mental labor, that may be adopted as a rule for all persons whose systems are maturely developed. Much less is there a proper definite period for study, that is applicable to all children. _Observation._ The practice of retaining pupils of all ages, from five to twenty years, in the school-room the same period of time, for the purpose of study, is not predicated upon any law of physiology. An exercise of three hours, with one or two recesses of ten minutes each, may profit the eldest class; two hours with a recess of ten minutes, the middle class; while one hour, or one hour and a half, with one recess, would be as long a period as the youngest pupils should be retained in the study-room at one session. 829. A person who is accustomed to muscular exertion will endure a longer period of physical toil than one who is not inured to it. So it is with mental labor. If the brain has been habituated to mental action and profound study, it will not be so soon fatigued as when not accustomed to such exertions; consequently, an amount of mental labor may be performed with impunity at one time, that would exhaust and cause serious disease of the cerebral organ at another. _Observation._ Persons that commence a course of study at a late period in life, frequently evince their zeal at the commencement by poring over their books twelve or more hours each day. The progress of such students is soon arrested by physical and mental depression. In such instances, it would be more judicious to commence with only three or four hours' vigorous application each day, and gradually protract the period of study five or more minutes every successive day, until the brain may be called into vigorous action six or eight hours with impunity. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 828. Why can there be no fixed period for mental labor? What is said of the practice of retaining pupils of all ages the same period of time in the school-room? 829. Show that the action of the brain is influenced by habit, as well as the muscular system. What suggestion to those persons that commence a course of study at a late period in life? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 830. The amount of mental power is greatly influenced by the general health. Such is the intimate connection of the different parts of the system, particularly the digestive apparatus, with the cerebral organs, that except there be vigor of constitution, and freedom from disease, mental efforts will be feeble and of little avail. _Observation._ The prevalent opinion, that individuals who are feeble or diseased may acquire a collegiate education, and thus become useful to themselves and the community, is very generally erroneous. Such persons should enter upon a daily and systematic course of physical training, and their labor should be in the open air, in order that the system may be invigorated and freed from disease. 831. The moral feelings exert a controlling influence over the functions of the muscular, digestive, and respiratory organs. They also exert an influence, perhaps, more powerful upon the nervous system. While fear and anxiety depress, hope and the enlivening emotions, facilitate the functional activity of the brain, and increase its power for mental exertion. By a proper and systematic education of the moral feelings, they are not only a source of happiness, and productive of right conduct, but aid in the culture of the intellect. Consequently, we should cultivate a feeling of hopeful trust in the future, and a firm reliance upon the laws which the Creator has given us for our guidance. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 830. Show that the amount of mental power is modified by the general health. What is said of feeble persons acquiring a collegiate education? 831. Do the moral feelings exert a controlling influence over the principal functions of the system? What is the effect of a proper and systematic culture of the moral feelings? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 832. _Regularity is very important in exercising the moral and intellectual powers._ Periodicity, or a tendency to resume the same mode of action at stated times, is peculiarly the characteristic of the nervous system. If we repeat any kind of mental effort every day at the same hour, we at last find ourselves entering upon it without premeditation when the time approaches. In like manner, if we arrange our studies in accordance with this law, and take up each in the same order, a natural aptitude is soon produced, which renders application more easy than by resuming the subjects as accident may direct. _Observation._ When engaged in abstruse studies, it may be found advantageous to pursue others that are less difficult. The intense application of the brain, which is requisite in the one instance, is relieved by directing the attention to a study that requires less thought. By this change, there is mental relaxation attended with invigoration of the cerebral organ. Or, it may be explained by assuming, that the brain is composed of an aggregate of distinct organs, each of which is called into action in pursuing different studies. 833. Effective study is impossible if the powers of the brain are depressed. When the cerebral organ has been temporarily debilitated by protracted intellectual efforts, it is ineffectual to attempt any concentrated mental exercise. This condition of the nervous system is indicated by confusion of thought and inability to attain results that usually follow similar efforts. Mental rest in these cases is required. _Observation._ Students frequently fail in solving mathematical problems when the mind is prostrated by continued and excessive effort to obtain a solution. Not unfrequently after a night's rest the problem is quickly solved, and the pupil thinks he "dreamed it out." The true explanation is rest invigorated the exhausted brain, which fitted it for vigorous and successful thought. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 832. Why is regularity of great importance in exercising the moral and intellectual powers? What suggestion when pursuing abstruse studies? How explained? 833. When is effective study impossible? How is this condition of the nervous system indicated? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 834. _The intellect should not be cultivated to the neglect of the moral and physical powers._ All the faculties require for their development regular exercise, alternated with intervals of rest. This is as necessary to the due development of the moral feelings of a child as in physical training and mental culture. Consequently, those schools are to be preferred in the education of youth, where the physical, intellectual, and moral faculties receive each day a due share of attention and culture. 835. The continuance of healthy and vigorous action in the matured physical, mental, and moral powers, requires frequent and regular action, alternated with rest, as much as in their development. Consequently, those who cultivate one or two of these faculties, to the neglect of the others, exhibit a marked deficiency of acuteness and vigor in those not exercised. This defect reacts on the powers that are vigorous, diminishing the energy and deteriorating all the other faculties of man. _Observations._ 1st. If the principles before mentioned are true, the adult, as well as the child, should spend a part of each day in some proper physical employment; another portion should be appropriated to intellectual pursuits; while another should be sedulously devoted to the cultivation of the moral feelings. 2d. Disease of the corporeal system more frequently occurs when only one set of faculties is used than when all are equally employed. This is particularly true of nervous and mental disease, which follows and is caused by either high intellectual action, or intense moral emotions, without a due amount of physical exercise. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is the "dreaming out" of problems explained? 834. What is said of the culture of the intellect? What schools are preferable in the education of youth? Why? 835. What is the effect of cultivating only one faculty of the mind? Give observation 1st. Observation 2d. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 836. _The brain can exercise its full force upon only one object at a time._ If its energies are directed to two or more operations, neither will receive that full power of exertion that it would if only one object had engaged the mind. Although the brain will direct several operations at the same time when only slight mental effort is required, yet when one operation becomes difficult, or demands special attention of the mind, the other will be suspended. This is illustrated in social conversation while walking. Let it become necessary to concentrate the nervous power upon the motor organs, and the conversation declines or ceases. 837. In acquiring an education, or in pursuing any profession or trade, none of those influences that promote the proper functions of the body, and tend to increase physical ease, should be neglected. For, if the brain is occupied with disagreeable sensations, it cannot concentrate its power as effectively in the various employments of man. _Observations._ 1st. The situation, ventilation, light, and warmth of a school-room, together with the arrangement of the benches, do much to influence the concentration or distraction of the operations of the mind. Let there be attached to the school-house a spacious yard planted with trees; let its architecture be attractive; let the windows be arranged with regularity, and not with the elevation of a convict's cell, and the benches, in every respect, be adapted to the different scholars, so that the position of each may be comfortable, and we mistake if there is not a greater improvement, in a given time, in such a school, than where there is an apparent disregard to the pleasure or comfort of the scholars. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 836. What is the effect if the brain concentrates its energies on more than one object at a time? How illustrated? 837. What should be regarded in pursuing any employment? Why? What is said in reference to the arrangement of school-rooms? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. Mechanics' shops should receive as much attention, relative to their situation, light, warmth, &c., as school-rooms. If these are duly observed, the nervous influence transmitted from the brain to the muscles will be more stimulating, as well as more abundant; consequently, labor will be performed with less exhaustion. 838. _Repetition is necessary to make a durable impression on the mind._ "The necessity of judicious repetition in mental and moral education, is, in fact, too little adverted to, because the principle which renders it efficacious has not been understood. To induce facility of action in the organs of the mind, practice is as essential as it is in the organs of motion. 839. "In physical education we are aware of the advantages of repetition. We know that if practice in dancing, fencing, skating, and riding, is persevered in for a length of time sufficient to give the muscles the requisite promptitude and harmony of action, the power will be ever afterward retained, although little called into use; whereas, if the muscles have not been duly trained, we may reiterate practice at different intervals, without proportionate advancement. The same principle applies equally to the moral and intellectual powers, because these operate by means of material organs. 840. "According to this principle, it follows, that in learning a language or science, six successive months of application will be more effectual in fixing it in the mind and making it a part of its furniture, than double or treble the time, if the lessons are interrupted by long intervals. Hence it is a great error to begin and study, and then break off, to finish at a later period. The fatigue is thus doubled, and the success greatly diminished. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Of mechanics' shops? 838. Is repetition necessary to make a durable impression on the mind? Why? 839. How is it with physical education? 840. What follows, according to this principle? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 841. "The best way is to begin at the proper age, and to persevere till the end is attained. This accustoms the mind to sound exertion, and not to _fits_ of attention. Hence the evil arising from long vacations; and also the evil of beginning studies before the age at which they can be understood, as in teaching children the abstract rules of grammar, to succeed in which, implies in them a power of thinking, and an amount of general knowledge, which they do not possess." 842. _The skull is susceptible of fractures from slight blows._ This occurs most frequently when the blow is given on the side of the head above and anterior to the ear. Here the bone is very thin, and often quite brittle. For these reasons, no instructor, or any person, should punish a child by striking upon any portion of the head. _Observation._ A few years since, a teacher in one of the Middle States gave a pupil a slight blow upon the head. It fractured the skull and ruptured a blood-vessel of the brain, causing a loss of consciousness, and finally death. 843. _Concussion of the brain may be produced by blows, or by violently shaking a person._ As the brain is of pulpy consistence, the atoms of which it is composed, and the circulation of blood in its minute vessels, may be disturbed by the vibration from a blow on the exterior of the skull-bones. This disturbance of the cerebral organ is attended with unpleasant sensations, dizziness, loss of memory and consciousness. These may be followed by headache and inflammation of the brain. Concussion of the brain, and the results above mentioned, may be produced by the sudden motion attendant on the violent shaking of a scholar. Consequently, a child should never be seized by the arm and shaken violently as a method of chastisement. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 841. What is the best way of learning the sciences? 842. Why should not a child be struck upon any portion of the head? What observation in this connection? 843. How may concussion of the brain be produced? What is the effect of each upon the brain of the child? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ Most persons have experienced a disagreeable sensation and dizziness, caused by falling from a slight elevation, or by jumping from a carriage. This is the result of a moderate concussion of the brain. 844. In injuries of the brain, from blows and falls, the symptoms are usually alarming, and all should possess some information for such contingencies. In general, such accidents are attended by insensibility; the skin and extremities are pale and cold, the pulse is very weak and feeble, and the circulation is less vigorous; the respiration, also, is less frequent and full. 845. When these symptoms exist, the individual, in the first instance, should be placed in pure air, and friction and dry warmth should be applied to the pallid and cold skin. This should be assiduously persevered in until heat and color are restored to the skin and limbs, and due action of the heart and arteries has been established. Mild stimulants may also be used internally, with much advantage. The sympathizing friends should not be permitted to stand about the patient, as they vitiate the air. There should be no bleeding until the skin and extremities become warm. Send for a surgeon without delay. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give an instance where moderate concussion of the brain is produced. 844. What are the symptoms when the brain is injured from blows and falls? 845. What treatment should be adopted? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XLI. THE SENSE OF TOUCH. 846. SENSATION is the perception of external objects by means of the senses. There are five senses, namely, _Touch_, _Taste_, _Smell_, _Hearing_, and _Vision_. 847. TOUCH is the sense by which the mind becomes acquainted with some of the properties of bodies, and enables us determine whether their surfaces are smooth or rough, their relative temperature, and, to a certain degree, their form and weight. 848. Some physiologists make a distinction between the sense of touch and tact. Tact, or feeling, is more general, extending over the whole surface of the skin and mucous membranes, while touch exists chiefly in the fingers of man and in the noses of certain quadrupeds. 849. "In the exercise of these functions, tact is considered passive; as, when any part of the system comes into contact with another body, a sensation of its presence is given, without the exercise of volition. On the contrary, touch is active, and is exercised voluntarily, for the purpose of conveying to the mind a knowledge of the qualities or properties of the surfaces of bodies; as when we feel of a piece of cloth to ascertain its qualities, or a polished surface, to prove its smoothness." 850. In man, the hand is admirably adapted to the exercise of touch. "The fineness of the skin, its great sensibility, the species of cushion formed by the sub-cutaneous fat at the extremities of the fingers, the length and flexibility of these organs, and the capability of opposing the thumb to the fingers, like a pair of forceps, are so many conditions essentially favorable to the delicacy of this sense, and enable us to appreciate with exactitude the qualities of the bodies we may feel." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 846. Define sensation. How many senses have we? 847-851. _What is said of the sense of touch?_ 847. Define touch. 848. What is the difference between touch and tact? 849. In the exercise of these functions, which is active, and which passive? 850. Why is the hand so admirably adapted to the exercise of the sense of touch? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 851. The nerves that supply the sense of touch, proceed from the anterior half of the spinal cord. Where this sense is most acute and delicate, we find the greatest number of sensitive nervous filaments, and those of the largest size. _Observation._ In amputating limbs, and other surgical operations, the division of the skin causes more pain than all the subsequent steps of the operation, however protracted. The muscles, cellular membrane, and fat have but little sensibility; while the bones, tendons, and ligaments are insensible when not diseased, and may be cut without causing pain. HYGIENE OF THE SENSE OF TOUCH. 852. The sense of touch varies in different persons, and also in individuals of different ages. Thus the sensibilities of the child are more acute than those of the aged. Although there is an original difference of sensibility from organization, still, the function of the nerves of sensation is modified by certain influences. 853. _The healthy or unhealthy, active or inactive state of the brain, influences the action of the sensitive nerves._ In sound and perfect sleep, the brain is inactive. In this state, ordinary impressions made upon the skin are not observed by the sleeping person. Thus the arm may be blistered while sleeping, when exposed to the warm rays of the sun, and the individual will not be aware of it at the time. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 851. From what do the nerves proceed that supply this sense? 852-864. _Give the hygiene of the sense of touch._ 852. Does this sense vary in different persons? 853. Mention a condition of the brain that influences the nerves of sensation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 854. If there is compression of the brain, as when the skull-bones are depressed, or disease of this organ exists, as in severe typhus fever, impressions made upon the nerves of the skin will not be noticed. The same is true when the mind is engaged in intense thought or study; heat or cold may be so intense as to disorganize the skin, and not to be noticed. 855. The varying health or condition of the brain usually depresses or increases the sensitiveness of the skin. This is seen in grief and fear, which diminish, while hope and joy increase the impressibility of this tissue. It is not uncommon to see the unfortunate insane endure exposure to heat and cold with seeming impunity; whereas it would induce almost insupportable suffering to the sane man. Diseases of the heart, stomach, and lungs, alter the condition of the brain, and modify, to a greater or less degree, the sensitiveness of the skin. 856. _The state of the conducting nervous trunks influences the nerves of sensation._ If a nervous trunk is compressed or divided, the parts supplied by nervous filaments from this branch, will be insensible to the impressions made upon them, and consequently such impressions are not transmitted to the brain. _Observation._ When the inside of the arm or lower extremities rests upon a hard surface, the nerves may be compressed so as to deprive the parts of sensibility. This condition is called "numbness." 857. _The quantity of blood supplied to the skin modifies its sensitiveness._ If the quantity of blood is diminished, the sensibility of the skin will be impaired. This is demonstrated by noting the effects of cold upon the cutaneous tissue, the application of which contracts the blood-vessels, and drives the circulating fluid from this membrane, which is shown by the paleness, as well as by the shrivelled appearance of the skin. And, if this tissue is wounded while under the influence of cold, but little pain will be felt, and this chilling influence may be carried so far as not only to deprive the part of sensation, but of vitality. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 854. Mention other conditions that affect these nerves. 855. What is the effect of the varying health or condition of the brain upon the sensitiveness of the skin? Give instances of this effect. 856. What is the result if a nervous trunk is divided or compressed? How may "numbness" in the limbs be produced? 857. Does the quantity of blood supplied to the skin affect its sensibility? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 858. The influence of the blood upon the sensibility of the skin, is further demonstrated by the pain experienced when chilled extremities are suddenly exposed to heat. The nerves, by the sudden dilatation of the contracted blood-vessels, are put in vivid and rapid motion, which causes the painful and tingling sensation that we experience. In every part of the system, sudden changes produce unpleasant sensations, and frequently a diseased condition of the organs. _Observation._ When the hands, or other portions of the body, are frozen, or severely chilled, safety and comfort demand that circulation be restored to the parts by moderate exercise in a cool room. Not unfrequently, the vitality of the limb is destroyed by immersing it in hot water or holding it near the fire. 859. _The quality of the blood also influences sensation._ If the brain and other parts of the nervous system receive impure blood, their energy is depressed, and the sensibility of the skin rendered more or less obtuse. 860. _The condition of the cuticle modifies the impression made upon the cutaneous nerves._ 1st. When the cuticle has become thick and hard, like horn, as on the inside of the mason's hand, it enables him to ply his tools without much suffering, because the thickened cuticle diminishes the impressions made upon the nerves. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How is it demonstrated? 858. How is the influence of the blood upon the skin further demonstrated? How should circulation be restored to limbs frozen or severely chilled? What should be avoided? 859. Show how the quality of the blood influences sensation. 860. Give the 1st condition of the cuticle that influences the impressions made on the cutaneous nerves. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 861. 2d. When the cuticle is very thin and delicate, as on the hand of the lady who is unaccustomed to manual labor. Let her pursue some manual employment for several hours, and the extreme tenuity, or thinness of the cuticle, will not protect the nerves and parts below from becoming irritated and inflamed. 862. 3d. When the cuticle is removed by blistering or abrasion, the pain indicates that the naked nerves are too powerfully stimulated by the contact of external bodies. 4th. When the cuticle is coated with impurities, blended with the secretion from the oil-glands, the sensibility of the skin is lessened. 863. _The sensibility of the cutaneous nerves is modified by being habituated to impressions._ If, for example, an individual should immerse his feet in moderately warm water, at first it might induce a smarting sensation; in a short time, the nerves would not only become habituated to the warm water, but its warmth night be considerably increased. The same results follow, if an individual is exposed to a cold element. The impressions at first are highly disagreeable; but as soon as the nerves become accustomed to the surrounding atmosphere, it may impart the most agreeable sensations. _Illustration._ 1st. Let a person from the tropical regions go to a colder climate, and the cool mornings of the latter will at first affect him unpleasantly; but, after a few days' exposure to the cooler air, the sensation will be far from disagreeable. 2d. Let a person enter a room moderately heated; gradually increase the temperature, until it attains extreme summer heat; not only the cutaneous nerves, but the whole system, become habituated to the high temperature. From these facts we learn that the sensations, are not always a correct index of the real temperature. A well-adjusted thermometer will indicate it with unerring certainty. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 861. The 2d condition. 862. The 3d and 4th condition. 863. Show how habit influences the sensibility of the cutaneous nerves. Give illustration 1st. Illustration 2d. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 864. _Touch is modified, in a high degree, by education._ Thus the blind, whose "windows of the soul" are closed to the beauties of the external world, cultivate this sense to such a degree that they can distinguish objects with great accuracy. And the rapidity with which they read books prepared for their use, is a convincing proof of the niceness and extent to which the cultivation of this sense can be carried. _Illustrations._ 1st. The cloth-dresser, by the aid of this sense, distinguishes the quality, as well as the slightest difference of texture, in the different pieces of cloth. 2d. The miller, from a similar education, quickly detects the quality of flour or meal, by permitting it to pass between his fingers. The difference in the texture of cloths, or the quality of the flour, would not be distinguished by an individual whose tactile sense had not been trained to make nice comparisons. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 864. Is this sense susceptible of improvement? What persons cultivate it to a high degree? Give illustration 1st. Illustration 2d. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XLII. SENSE OF TASTE. 865. The chief organ of TASTE is the upper surface of the tongue; though the lips, the palate, the internal surface of the cheeks, and the upper part of the oesophagus, participate in this function. ANATOMY OF THE ORGANS OF TASTE. 866. The tongue is a double organ, composed chiefly of muscular fibres, which run in almost every direction. The two sides are so perfectly distinct, that sometimes, in paralysis, one side is affected, while the function of the other remains perfect. It possesses great versatility of motion, and can be moulded into a great variety of shapes. In articulation, mastication, and deglutition, the tongue is an auxiliary to other organs. 867. This organ is abundantly supplied with blood-vessels, having a large artery sent to each side of it. It is also very largely furnished with nerves; it receives nervous filaments from the fifth, ninth, and twelfth pairs of nerves. The branch of the fifth, called the gustatory, is the nerve of taste and sensibility;[21] the twelfth, called the hypo-glossal, of voluntary motion. By means of the ninth, called the glosso-pharyngeal the tongue is brought into association with the fauces, oesophagus, and larynx. It is of obvious importance that these parts should act in concert; and this is effected by the distribution of this nerve. [21] Some physiologists impute the sense of taste to the ninth pair of nerves; others, to the twelfth pair; while others, again, contend that taste is the result of a concurrent action of the fifth, ninth, and twelfth pairs of nerves. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 865. What is the chief organ of taste? What other parts participate in the function? 866-870. _Give the anatomy of the organs of taste._ 866. Give the structure of the tongue. 867. Is this organ abundantly supplied with blood? From what source does the tongue derive its nerves? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [Illustration: Fig. 134. A view of one side of the neck, showing the nerves of the tongue. 1, A fragment of the temporal bone. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, Muscles of the tongue, fauces, and neck. 5, The tongue. 13, The common carotid artery. 14, The jugular vein. 15, The external carotid. 16, The internal carotid. 17, The gustatory branch of the fifth pair of nerves. 20, The glosso-pharyngeal nerve. 21, The hypo-glossal, or the muscular nerve of the tongue. 24, The pneumogastric nerve. 25, The facial nerve.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 868. What is the appearance of the surface of the tongue? Explain fig. 134. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 868. The surface of the tongue is thickly studded with fine papillæ, or _vil´li_, which give the organ a velvety appearance. These papillæ are of three varieties. The first is situated near the base of the tongue. They belong to the class of mucous follicles. They are larger than the others, and are called _len-tic´u-lar_, from being shaped like a lens. These, together with the tonsils, (sometimes called the almonds of the ears,) secrete mucus, to lubricate the food in the act of deglutition. 869. The instruments of taste are the two other sets of papillæ. One set consists of small, oval-shaped bodies, which are scattered over the whole surface of the tongue. They give it a rough appearance, and are called the _fil´i-form_ papillæ. 870. The other set of papillæ is called the _fun´gi-form_. They are larger than the former, and consist of small, rounded heads, supported on short stalks, something in the shape of mushrooms, from which they derive their name. In the last two described sets of sensitive papillæ, the gustatory branch of the fifth pair of nerves ramifies. _Observation._ By applying strong acids, as vinegar, to the tongue, with a hair pencil, these points will become curiously lengthened. PHYSIOLOGY OF THE ORGANS OF TASTE. 871. TASTE is the sense which makes us acquainted with the savor of substances. When fluids are taken into the mouth, the papillæ dilate and erect themselves, and the particular impression excited is transmitted to the brain through filaments of the gustatory nerve. This sense is closely connected with that of smell. The pleasures derived from it are strictly sensual and corporeal, and contribute in no way to the expansion of the mind, like those of hearing and seeing. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How many varieties of papillæ? Describe the first variety. What is the function of the lenticular papillæ? 869. Describe the filiform papillæ. 870. The fungiform papillæ? What nerve ramifies in the fungiform papillæ? How can these papillæ, or points, be seen? 871-875. _Give the physiology of the organs of taste._ 871. Define taste. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 872. If dry, solid food is taken, the tongue carries it to the back side of the mouth, where it receives secretions from the salivary glands; the saliva, becoming impregnated with its flavor, flows over the sides of the tongue, and gives to the papillæ a perception of the savory juice; this impression is then communicated to the brain. _Observation._ It is supposed that the salts which enter into the composition of the saliva, are very efficient agents in reducing substances to a proper state for making impressions on the nerves of taste. The fact that metals impart a peculiar taste, is owing to a galvanic shock, and not properly to what we understand by taste. 873. The primary use of taste is to guide animals in the selection of food, and to warn them against the introduction of noxious articles into the stomach. In all the inferior animals, we see that the original design of taste is still answered. But in man, this sense has been so abused and perverted, by the introduction of stimulants and condiments, and the endless admixture of different articles of food, that the simple action of this part seems to have been superseded almost entirely by acquired taste. 874. In children, this sense is usually acute, and their preference is for food of the mildest character. And it is also true, that every person has some peculiarities of taste, or dislikes to particular articles of food. This may be either constitutional or from the influence of association. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= With what sense is this closely connected? What is said of this sense? 872. Give the process by which we taste substances. How can we account for the taste of metals when applied to the tongue? 873. What is the primary use of taste? Where do we see it perverted? 874. How is this sense in children? What is true of every person in reference to taste? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ This sense has been made to vary more than any other by the refinements of social life. Thus, the Indian's like or dislike to particular kinds of food, generally extends to every person of the same tribe; but among civilized men, no two individuals can be found alike in all their tastes. 875. This sense is modified by habit, and not unfrequently those articles, which at first were disgusting, become highly agreeable by persevering in the use of them. By cultivation, this sense may be made very acute. Those persons whose business leads them to judge of the quality of an article by their taste, can discriminate shades of flavor not perceivable by ordinary persons. Epicures, and tasters of wines and teas, afford examples. _Observation._ Many persons impair their taste by bad habits, as chewing and smoking tobacco, and using stimulating drinks, and pungent condiments with the food. These indulgences lessen the sensibility of the nerve, and destroy the natural relish for food. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is true of the Indian? 875. Is this sense modified by habit? Give instances. How is this sense sometimes impaired? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XLIII. SENSE OF SMELL. 876. This sense is located in the air-passages of the _Nose_. To understand the function of smell, the structure of the nose and nasal cavities, with the distribution of the olfactory nerves, must be first examined. ANATOMY OF THE ORGANS OF SMELL. 877. The NOSE is composed of the _Bones_, _Fi´bro-car´tilages_, and _Mu´cous Mem´brane_, together with its integuments. 878. The BONES of the nose are the nasal, and the nasal processes of the upper jaw. 879. The FIBRO-CARTILAGES give form and stability to the framework of the nose, providing at the same time, by their elasticity, against injuries. They are five in number. 880. The MUCOUS MEMBRANE, which lines the interior of the nose, is continuous with the skin externally, and with the lining membrane of the parts of the throat. The entrance of the nostrils is provided with numerous hairs, which serve as guardians to the delicate membrane of the nose. 881. The NASAL FOSS�, or nostrils, are two irregular, compressed cavities, extending from the nose to the pharynx. These cavities are bounded superiorly by the sphenoid and ethmoid bones; inferiorly, by the hard palate. In the middle line they are separated from each other by a bony and fibro-cartilaginous septum; upon the outer wall of each fossa, in the dried skull, are three projecting processes, termed spongy bones. In the fresh fossa, these are covered by a mucous membrane. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 876. Where is the sense of smell located? 877-884. _Give the anatomy of the organs of smell._ 877. Name the parts that enter into the structure of the nose? 878. What bones form the framework of the nose? 879. What is the use of the cartilages? 880. What relation has the mucous membrane with other membranes of the nose? 881. Describe the nasal cavities. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 882. The space that intervenes between the superior and middle spongy bone, is called the _superior me-a´tus_, or channel; the space between the middle and inferior bone, is the _middle meatus_; and that between the inferior bone and the floor of the fossa, is the _inferior meatus_. [Illustration: Fig. 135. A vertical section of the middle part of the nasal cavities. 7, The middle spongy bones. 8, The superior part of the nasal cavities. 10, The inferior spongy bones. 11, The vomer. 12, The upper jaw. 13. The middle channel of the nose. 14, The lower channel of the nose. 17, The palatine process of the upper jaw-bone. 18, The roof of the mouth covered by mucous membrane. 19, A section of this membrane.] 883. The MEATUSES are passages that extend backward, from the nostrils, into which are several openings. They are lined by a mucous membrane, called the _pi-tu´i-ta-ry_, or _schneiderian_, from Schneider, who first showed that the secretion of the nasal fossæ proceeded from the mucous membrane, and not from the brain. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 882. What terms are applied to the spaces between these processes? What does fig. 135 represent? 883. Define the meatuses. By what are they lined? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 884. Upon the mucous membrane of the nasal passages, the olfactory nerve ramifies, and also a branch of the fifth pair of nerves. This membrane is of considerable extent in man; and in those animals whose sense of smell is very acute, it is still more extensive. [Illustration: Fig. 136. A side view of the passage of the nostrils, and the distribution of the olfactory nerve. 4, The olfactory nerve. 5, The fine and curious divisions of this nerve on the membrane of the nose. 6, A branch of the fifth pair of nerves.] PHYSIOLOGY OF THE ORGANS OF SMELL. 885. The sense of smell enables us to discern the odor or scent of any thing. When substances are presented to the nose, the air that is passing through the nostrils brings the odoriferous particles of matter in contact with the filaments of the olfactory nerves, that are spread upon the membrane that lines the air-passages, and the impression is then transmitted to the brain. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 884. What nerves ramify upon this membrane? What is represented by fig. 136? 885-899. _Give the physiology of the organs of smell._ 885. How does the mind become sensible of odoriferous particles? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 886. This sense, with that of taste, aids man as well as the inferior animals, in selecting proper food, and it also gives us pleasure by the inhalation of agreeable odors. The sense of smell, like that of taste and touch, may be improved by cultivation. It likewise varies in different persons. _Observation._ Sometimes this sense seems to possess a morbid degree of acuteness in respect to odors, which is highly inconvenient and even dangerous. With some individuals, the smell of certain fruits, flowers, cheese, &c., produce nausea and even convulsions. 887. In the inferior animals generally, the sense of smell is more acute than in man. Thus the bloodhound will track the hare over the ground for miles, guided only by the odor that it leaves in its flight. He also traces the progress of his master through thickly-crowded streets, distinguishing his footsteps from those of a thousand others, and amidst the odorous particles emanating from a thousand sources. _Observation._ In some of the higher orders of the inferior animals, there is an astonishing acuteness of smell in regard to effluvia that come from living animals. To these animals, it possesses an importance in them far beyond what it has in man, by making them acquainted with the presence of their enemies or their prey, when the eye and ear are incapable of acting. It is related by travellers in Africa, that they were always apprised of lions in their vicinity during the night, by the moans and tremblings of their horses. 888. Smell is somewhat under the control of the will. That is, we have the power of receiving or rejecting odors that are presented; thus, if odors are agreeable, we inspire forcibly, to enjoy them; but, if they are offensive, our inspirations are more cautious, or we close our nostrils. This sense is likewise modified by habit; odors which, in the first instance, were very offensive, may not only become endurable, but even agreeable. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 886. What is the use of the sense of smell? Can this sense be improved by cultivation? What is said respecting this sense in some individuals? 887. What is said of this sense in the bloodhound? Mention an instance of astonishing acuteness of smell in some of the higher orders of animals. 888. Show that smell is somewhat under the control of the will. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 889. Acuteness of smell requires that the brain and nerve of smell be healthy, and that the membrane that lines the nose be thin and moist. Any influence that diminishes the sensibility of the nerves, thickens the membrane, or renders it dry, impairs this sense. _Observations._ 1st. _Snuff_, when introduced into the nose, not only diminishes the sensibility of the nervous filaments, but thickens the lining membrane. This thickening of the membrane obstructs the passage of air through the nostrils, and thus obliges "snuff-takers" to open their mouths when they breathe. 2d. The mucous membrane of the nasal passages is the seat of chronic catarrh. This affection is difficult of removal, as remedial agents cannot easily be introduced into the windings of these passages. Snuff and many other articles used for catarrh, produce more disease than they remove. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 889. On what does acuteness of smell depend? What effect has snuff when introduced into the nose? What is said of chronic catarrh? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XLIV. SENSE OF VISION. 890. This sense contributes more to the enjoyment and happiness of man than any other of the senses. By it we perceive the form, color, volume, and position of objects that surround us. The eye is the organ of sight, or vision, and its mechanism is so wonderful, that it not only proves the existence of a great First Cause, but perhaps, more than other organs, the design of the Creator to mingle pleasure with our existence. ANATOMY OF THE ORGANS OF VISION. 891. The apparatus of vision consists of the _Op´tic Nerve_, the _Globe_ and _Muscles_ of the eye, and its _Protecting Organs_. 892. The OPTIC NERVE arises by two roots from the central portion of the base of the brain. The two nerves approach each other, as they proceed forward, and some of the fibres of each cross to the nerve of the opposite side. They then diverge, and enter the globe of the eyes at their back part, where they expand, and form a soft, whitish membrane. 893. The GLOBE, or ball of the eye, is an optical instrument of the most perfect construction. The sides of the globes are composed of _Coats_, or membranes. The interior of the globe is filled with refracting _Humors_, or _me´di-ums_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 890. Which sense contributes most to the enjoyment of man? What do we perceive by this sense? What is said of the mechanism of the eye? 891-916. _Give the anatomy of the organs of vision._ 891. Of what does the apparatus of vision consist? 892. Describe the optic nerve. 893. Describe the globe of the eye. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 894. The COATS are three in number: 1st. The _Scle-rot´ic_ and _Corn´e-a_. 2d. The _Cho´roid_, _Iris_, and _Cil´ia-ry processes_. 3d. The _Ret´i-na_. 895 The HUMORS are also three in number: 1st. The _A´que-ous_, or watery. 2d. The _Crys´tal-line_, (lens.) 3d. The _Vit´re-ous_, or glassy. [Illustration: Fig. 137. The second pair of nerves. 1, 1, Globe of the eye: the one on the left is perfect, but that on the right has the sclerotic and choroid coats removed, to show the retina. 2, The crossing of the optic nerve. 5, The pons varolii. 6, The medulla oblongata. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, The origin of several pairs of cranial nerves.] 896. The SCLEROTIC COAT is a dense, fibrous membrane and invests about four fifths of the globe of the eye. It gives form to this organ, and serves for the attachment of the muscles that move the eye in various directions. This coat, from the brilliancy of its whiteness, is known by the name of "the white of the eye." Anteriorly, the sclerotic coat presents a bevelled edge, which receives the cornea in the same way that a watch-glass is received by the groove in its case. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 894. Name the coats of the eye. 895. Name the humors of the eye. Explain fig. 137. 896. Describe the sclerotic coat. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 897. The CORNEA is the transparent projecting layer, that forms the anterior fifth of the globe of the eye. In form, it is circular, convexo-concave, and resembles a watch-glass. It is received by its edge, which is sharp and thin, within the bevelled border of the sclerotic, to which it is firmly attached. The cornea is composed of several different layers; its blood-vessels are so small that they exclude the red particles altogether, and admit nothing but serum. 898. The CHOROID COAT is a vascular membrane, of a rich chocolate-brown color upon its external surface, and of a deep black color within. It is connected, externally, with the sclerotic, by an extremely fine cellular tissue, and by the passage of nerves and vessels; internally, it is in contact with the retina. The choroid membrane is composed of three layers. It secretes upon its internal surface a dark substance, called _pig-ment´um ni´grum_, which is of great importance in the function of vision. 899. The IRIS is so called from its variety of color in different persons. It forms a partition between the anterior and posterior chambers of the eye, and is pierced by a circular opening, which is called the _pu´pil_. It is composed of two layers. The radiating fibres of the anterior layer converge from the circumference to the centre. Through the action of these radiating fibres the pupil is dilated. The circular fibres surround the pupil, and by their action produce contraction of its area. The posterior layer is of a deep purple tint, and is called _u-ve´a_, from its resemblance in color to a ripe grape. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= How are this coat and the cornea united? 897. Describe the cornea. 898. What is the color of the external surface of the choroid coat? Of the internal? How is it connected externally? How internally? What does this membrane secrete upon its internal surface? 899. Describe the iris. Of how many layers of fibres is the iris composed? What is the function of the radiating fibres? Of the circular? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 900. The CILIARY PROCESSES consist of a number of triangular folds, formed, apparently, by the plaiting of the internal layer of the choroid coat. They are about sixty in number. Their external border is continuous with the internal layer of the choroid coat. The central border is free, and rests against the circumference of the crystalline lens. These processes are covered by a layer of the pigmentum nigrum. [Illustration: Fig. 138. A view of the anterior segment of a transverse section of the globe of the eye, seen from within. 1, The divided edge of the three coats--sclerotic, choroid, and retina. 2, The pupil. 3, The iris: the surface presented to view in this section being the uvea. 4, The ciliary processes. 5, The scalloped anterior border of the retina.] 901. The RETINA is composed of three layers: The external; middle, or nervous; and internal, or vascular. The external membrane is extremely thin, and is seen as a flocculent film, when the eye is suspended in water. The nervous membrane is the expansion of the optic nerve, and forms a thin, semi-transparent, bluish-white layer. The vascular membrane consists of the ramifications of a minute artery and its accompanying vein. This vascular layer forms distinct sheaths for the nervous papillæ, which constitute the inner surface of the retina. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 900. How are the ciliary processes formed? What does fig. 138 exhibit? 901. Of how many layers is the retina composed? Describe the external layer. The nervous layer. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 902. The AQUEOUS HUMOR is situated in the anterior and posterior chambers of the eye. It is an albuminous fluid, having an alkaline reaction. Its specific gravity is a very little greater than distilled water. The anterior chamber is the space intervening between the cornea, in front, and the iris and pupil, behind. The posterior chamber is the narrow space, less than half a line in depth, bounded by the posterior surface of the iris and pupil, in front, and by the ciliary processes and crystalline lens, behind. The two chambers are lined by a thin layer, the secreting membrane of the aqueous humor. 903. The CRYSTALLINE HUMOR, or lens, is situated immediately behind the pupil, and is surrounded by the ciliary processes. This humor is more convex on the posterior than on the anterior surface, and, in different portions of the surface of each, the convexity varies from their oval character. It is imbedded in the anterior part of the vitreous humor, from which it is separated by a thin membrane, and is invested by a transparent elastic membrane, called the capsule of the lens. The lens consists of concentric layers, disposed like the coats of an onion. The external layer is soft, and each successive one increases in firmness until the central layer forms a hardened nucleus. These layers are best demonstrated by boiling, or by immersion in alcohol, when they separate easily from each other. _Observations._ 1st. The lens in the eye of a fish is round, like a globe, and has the same appearance, when boiled, as the lens of the human eye. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The vascular layer. 902. Where is the aqueous humor situated? What part of the eye is called the anterior chamber? The posterior chamber? With what are the chambers lined? 903. Where is the crystalline humor situated? With what is it surrounded? Of what does the lens consist? How are these layers best demonstrated? What is produced when the lens, or its investing membrane, is changed in structure? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. When the crystalline lens, or its investing membrane, is changed in structure, so as to prevent the rays of light passing to the retina, the affection is called a _cataract_. [Illustration: Fig. 139. A section of the globe of the eye. 1, The sclerotic coat. 2, The cornea (This connects with the sclerotic coat by a bevelled edge.) 3, The choroid coat. 6, 6, The iris. 7, The pupil. 8, The retina. 10, 11, 11, Chambers of the eye that contain the aqueous humor. 12, The crystalline lens. 13, The vitreous humor. 15, The optic nerve. 16, The central artery of the eye.] 904. The VITREOUS HUMOR forms the principal bulk of the globe of the eye. It is an albuminous fluid, resembling the aqueous humor, but is more dense, and differs from the aqueous in this important particular, that it has not the power of re-producing itself. If by accident it is discharged, the eye is irrecoverably lost; while the aqueous humor may be let out, and will be again restored. It is enclosed in a delicate membrane, called the _hy´a-loid_, which sends processes into the interior of the globe of the eye, forming the cells in which the humor is retained. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 904. Describe the vitreous humor. How does this humor differ from the aqueous? What membrane encloses the vitreous humor? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ The structure of this organ can be seen by first freezing the eye of a sheep or an ox; it then can be cut in various directions, and each part separately examined. 905. The MUSCLES of the eye are six in number. They are attached, at one extremity, to the bones of the orbit behind the eye; at the other extremity, they are inserted by broad, thin tendons, near the junction of the cornea with the sclerotic coat. The white, pearly appearance of the eye is caused by these tendons. [Illustration: Fig. 140. A view of the eye and its muscles. _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, Five of these muscles. _f_, The optic nerve. G, The trochlea, or pulley over which one of the muscles passes. The bone is seen above and below the eye.] _Observation._ If the external muscle is too short, the eye is turned out, producing the "wall eye." If the internal muscle is contracted, the eye is turned inward toward the nose. It is then called a "cross eye." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 905. How many muscles has the eye? Give their attachments. What causes the pearly appearance of the eye? What does fig. 140 represent? What is the effect if the external muscle is contracted? The internal muscle? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 906. The PROTECTING ORGANS are the _Or´bits_, _Eyebrows_, _Eyelids_, and _Lach´ry-mal Apparatus_. 907. The ORBITS are deep, bony sockets, in which the globes of the eyes are situated. They have the form of a cone, the base of which is open and directed forward. The bottom of the orbits is pierced by a large hole which gives passage to the optic nerve. These cavities are lined with a thick cushion of fat, in order that the eyes may move in all directions, with perfect freedom and without friction. 908. The EYEBROWS are two projecting arches of integument, covered with short, thick hairs, which form the upper boundary of the orbits. The eyebrows are so arranged that they prevent the moisture that accumulates on the forehead, in free perspiration, from flowing into the eye, and also shade these organs from too vivid light. 909. The EYELIDS are two movable curtains placed in front of the eye. They have a delicate skin on the outside, muscular fibres beneath, and a narrow cartilage on their edges, which tends to preserve the shape of the lid. Internally, they are lined by a smooth membrane, which is reflected over the front of the eye upon the sclerotica. This membrane is called the _con-junc-ti´va_. It secretes the fluid that moistens and lubricates the eye, and which causes the eyelids to open and shut without friction. _Observation._ When the portion of this membrane that is reflected over the globe of the eye, is inflamed, there is frequently a deposition of whitish material, called lymph. This accounts for the films, opacities, and white spots seen upon the eye after the inflammation has subsided. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 906. Name the protecting organs of the eye. 907. Describe the orbits. How are the movements of the eye facilitated? 908. Describe the eyebrows. What does this arrangement prevent? 909. Describe the eyelids. What is the use of the conjunctiva? How are the white spots frequently seen upon the eye accounted for? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 910. There are found several small glands on the internal surface of the cartilage, which have the appearance of parallel strings of pearls. They open by minute apertures upon the edges of the lids. The secretion from these glands prevents the edges of the eyelids from being united during sleep. 911. The edges of the eyelids are furnished with a triple row of long, thick hairs, called _eyelashes_, which curve upward from the upper lid, and downward from the lower, so that they may not interlace with each other in the closure of the eyelids. These appendages of the eye, by closing, not only protect it from moisture, but from dust, particularly during sleep. They likewise, by their movements in opening and shutting, spread the lubricating fluid equally over the eye. 912. The LACHRYMAL APPARATUS, which secretes the tears, consists of the _Lachrymal Gland_ with its ducts, _Lachrymal Canals_, and the _Nasal Duct_. 913. The LACHRYMAL GLAND is situated at the upper and outer angle of the orbit. It is about three quarters of an inch in length, flattened and oval in shape, and occupies a depression in the orbital plate of the frontal bone. Ten or twelve small ducts pass from this gland, and open upon the upper eyelid, where they pour upon the conjunctiva the lachrymal fluid, or tears. This secretion is maintained while we are asleep, as well as when we are awake. The eye from this cause is kept constantly moist. 914. The LACHRYMAL CANALS commence at minute openings upon the free borders of each eyelid, near the internal angle of the eye, by two small orifices, called _punc´ta lach-ry-ma´li-a_, (tear points.) Each of these points communicate with the sac at the upper part of the nasal duct. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 910. What are found on the internal surface of the cartilage of the eyelids? Where do they open, and what is their use? 911. With what are the edges of the eyelids furnished? What are their uses? 912. Of what does the lachrymal apparatus consist? 913. Describe the lachrymal gland. How many ducts pass from this gland, and what do they convey to the eye? Why is the eye constantly moist? 914. Where do the lachrymal canals commence? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 915. The NASAL DUCT is a short canal, about three quarters of an inch in length, directed downward and backward to the inferior channel of the nose, where it terminates by an expanded orifice. [Illustration: Fig. 141. 1, The lachrymal gland. 2, Ducts leading from the lachrymal gland to the upper eyelid. 3, 3, The puncta lachrymalia. 4, The nasal sac. 5, The termination of the nasal duct.] 916. The fluid (tears) secreted by the lachrymal gland, is conveyed to the eye by the small ducts before described. It is then imbibed by the puncta lachrymalia, and carried by the lachrymal canals into the lachrymal sac, from which it is passed to the nasal cavities by the nasal ducts. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What are they called? With what do they communicate? 915. Describe the nasal duct. 916. How are the tears conveyed from the lachrymal gland to the nose? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XLV. PHYSIOLOGY OF THE ORGANS OF VISION. 917. To comprehend the theory of vision, it is not sufficient to know the structure of the eye. We must be familiar with some of the properties of a subtile fluid, which is constantly emanating from all luminous bodies, called _light_. 918. It is the province of natural philosophy, rather than physiology, to enter minutely upon the properties of light. It may be observed, however, that, when light passes through any medium of the same density, the rays are in straight lines; but, when it passes from one medium into another of different density, it is refracted, or turned from a straight course, unless it strikes the medium in a perpendicular direction--then light passes through without a change of direction. 919. When a ray of light meets with a body, it either passes through it, or is reflected by it, or it may be absorbed. Again, in proportion as the rays of light become distant from the body from which they emanate, they diverge one from the other. In accordance with the laws of optics, the rays of light, in passing through an optical instrument like the eye, must cross each other, and thus produce an inverted image of the object from which the rays proceed. With the general view of the structure of the eye, we will now examine the use of each part in the function of vision. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 917-933. _Give the physiology of the organs of vision._ 917. What is necessary in order to understand the theory of vision? 918. When light passes through a medium of the same density, in what direction will be its rays? Of a different density? What exception? 919. When light meets with a body, what takes place? What is said in reference to rays of light in passing through the eye? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 920. The sclerotic coat not only gives form to the body of the eye, but protection to the interior and more delicate parts. The choroid coat seems to be chiefly composed of a tissue of nerves and minute blood-vessels; the latter give nourishment to the different parts of the eye. One of the uses of this coat is, to absorb the rays of light immediately after they have passed through the retina. This is effected by the black pigment that lines its inner surface. Were it not for this provision, light would be too intense, and vision indistinct. _Observation._ In albinos, where there is an absence of the black pigment, the rays of light traverse the iris, and even the choroid coat, and so overwhelm the eye with light, that their vision is quite imperfect, except in the dimness of evening, or at night. In the manufacture of optical instruments, care is taken to color their interior black, for the same object, namely, the absorption of scattered rays. 921. The iris, by means of its powers of expansion and contraction, regulates the quantity of light admitted through the pupil. If the iris is thin, and the rays of light pass through its substance, they are immediately absorbed by the uvea, and, if that layer be insufficient, they are taken up by the black pigment of the choroid coat. _Observation._ When we look toward the bottom of the eye, the pupil appears like a black spot, instead of an opening. This is caused by seeing the black pigment through the retina and humors of the eye. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 920. What is the use of the sclerotic coat? Of what is the choroid coat chiefly composed? What is the use of this coat? How is it effected? What is said of albinos? What care is taken in the manufacture of optical instruments? 921. What is the use of the iris? When we look toward the bottom of the eye, why does the pupil look like a black spot, instead of an opening? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 922. The cornea, and the aqueous, crystalline, and vitreous humors, are transparent; so that rays of light traverse these parts of the eye, and fall upon the retina. The office of these humors and the cornea is to refract the rays of light in such proportion as to direct the image in the most favorable manner upon the retina. 923. The office of the retina is to receive the impression of the rays of light which leave an object at which we look, and it is upon it that a small but very clear image of that object is formed. The impression thus produced by the reflected light is transmitted by the optic nerve to the brain, which receives the sensation. This constitutes vision. 924. The optic nerve has but one function, that of sight. Sensibility is conferred on this organ by a large branch from the fifth pair of nerves, which ramifies upon the different parts of the eye and its appendages. These parts, however, receive some nervous filaments from the seventh pair. _Observations._ 1st. The large number of sensitive nervous filaments renders the visual organ very impressible to bodies that cause irritation, as dust, or intense light. This compels us to use due care to shield the eye from the influence of agents that would impair or destroy vision. 2d. Although particles of dust, when in contact with the delicate parts of the eye, induce severe pain, yet these parts may be cut in surgical operations, and the patient's sufferings are not as great as when an incision is made in the skin to remove a small tumor. 925. Different degrees of density, as already mentioned, modify the refractory power of any transparent medium. It is found, on examination, that the cornea, the vitreous, the crystalline, and the aqueous humors, have each, severally, various degrees of density: and that the crystalline lens, at its circumference, is less dense than at its centre. These circumstances modify the direction of the refraction of the rays of light, in their passage from the cornea to the retina. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 922. What is the use of the cornea, aqueous, crystalline, and vitreous humors? 923. What is the office of the retina? 924. What is the function of the optic nerve? How is sensibility conferred on this organ? Give the 1st observation in this connection. The 2d observation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 926. The refracting powers of the plane, convex, concave, plano-convex, plano-concave, and concavo-convex lenses,[22] are different. The cornea and aqueous humors are convexo-concave, the vitreous humor is concavo-convex, while the crystalline humor is a convexo-convex medium. (Fig. 139.) [22] The refracting character of differently-formed lenses is illustrated in the works on Natural Philosophy, to which the pupil is referred. [Illustration: Fig. 142. The forms of the different lenses. 1, A plane lens. 2, A globe lens. 3, A convexo-convex lens. 4, A plano-convex lens. 5, A concavo-concave lens. 6, A plano-concave lens. 7, Meniscus. 8, A concavo-convex lens.] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 925. Have the cornea and the humors of the eye different degrees of density? What is said of the crystalline lens? What effect has the different density of the parts of the eye upon the light admitted to this organ? 926. What kind of lenses do the humors exhibit? 927. What modifies the refracting powers of transparent mediums? How does this principle apply to the humors of the eye? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 927. The different degrees of convexity or concavity also modify the refracting character of transparent mediums. The crystalline lens is of different degrees of convexity on its two sides. The convex surfaces of the aqueous and vitreous humors are segments of circles, of different diameters from their concave surfaces. (Fig. 139.) All these circumstances still further influence the refracting character of the visual organ. The achromatic arrangement of the transparent refracting mediums of the eye, remedies the aberration of refraction in the different portions of the eye. 928. Again, the refracting power of lenses is modified by their convexity or concavity. The more convex a lens is, the shorter the distance from the refracting medium, where the different refracted rays converge to a focus. To adapt the eye to view objects at different distances, requires a change in the refracting power of some of the transparent mediums of the eye. 929. Both surfaces of the crystalline lens are oval, not spherical, and the refraction of the rays of light is mainly effected in this portion of the eye. Change the inclination of this lens, so that different portions of its anterior surface shall be directly behind the pupil, and its refracting power is increased or diminished, as the surface presented is more or less convex. 930. To view objects at a distance, a less convex lens is needed than in examining articles very near the eye; and this organ, from its structure, has the power of adaptation to different distances. It is supposed that the muscular substance of the ciliary body and processes changes, by its contraction, the inclination of the crystalline lens. Without this, or some other adapting power, a picture of objects at different distances would not be formed upon the retina, and the vision of every person would be defective, except in reference to objects at certain definite distances from the eye. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 928. What modifies the refracting power of lenses? What is necessary to adapt the eye to view objects at different distances? 929. Where is the refraction of the rays of light mainly effected? 930. When we view objects at a distance, what kind of lens is required? Has the eye the power of adapting itself to different distances? How is it effected? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ It is well known that a separate image is formed on each eye, and, if they are not in the same direction, the objects will appear double. This is proved by pressing one eye, so that the rays of light cannot enter it in the same direction as they do in the other; consequently, the vision is double. 931. By the action of the muscles of the eye, it is turned in different directions, so that objects can be examined upon each side, as well as in front, without turning the body. By the slight or intense action of the straight muscles, the eye is more or less compressed, and the form of the globe is changed, together with the relative positions of the different humors. This modification also adapts the eye to view objects at different distances. [Illustration: Fig. 143. 1, A pen, an inverted image of which is painted on the retina of the eye, at 2. The image of all objects upon the expansion of the optic nerve, is inverted by the crossing of the rays of light from objects as they traverse the pupil.] _Observation._ If the eye is fixed for a time on some object which is distinguished with difficulty, there is a painful sensation, similar to that experienced by other muscles of the body when used too long. This is called "straining the eye." 932. When the refraction of the rays of light is too great, as in over-convexity of the cornea, or the crystalline lens, or the vitreous humor, or all of them, the image is formed a little in front of the retina. Persons thus affected cannot see distinctly, except at a very short distance. This infirmity is called _near_, or _short-sightedness_. This defect is in a great measure obviated by the use of concave glasses, which scatter the luminous rays, and thus counterbalance the too strong refracting force of the eye. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What does fig. 143 represent? 931. Why can we see objects at the side as well as in front of the eye, without turning the body? What is the effect when the eye is fixed on an object that is indistinctly seen? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 933. When the different parts of the eye are not sufficiently convex, the image is formed beyond the retina, and thus only distant objects are distinctly seen. This defect is called _long-sightedness_. The feebleness in the refracting power of the eye may be caused by disease; but usually it is a consequence of old age, and is remedied by wearing spectacles with convex glasses. HYGIENE OF THE ORGANS OF VISION. 934. _The eye, like other organs of the body, should be used, and then rested._ If we look intently at an object for a long time, the eye becomes wearied, and the power of vision diminished. The observance of this rule is particularly needful to those whose eyes are weak, and predisposed to inflammation. On the contrary, if the eye is not called into action, its functions are enfeebled. 935. _Sudden transitions of light should be avoided._ The iris enlarges or contracts, as the light that falls upon the eye is faint or strong; but the change is not instantaneous. Hence the imperfect vision in passing from a strong to a dim light, and the overwhelming sensation experienced on emerging from a dimly-lighted apartment to one brilliantly illuminated. A common cause of _am-aur-o´sis_, or paralysis of the retina, is, using the eye for a long time in a very intense light. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 932. What is short-sightedness? How is the defect remedied? 933. What is long-sightedness? How is the defect remedied? 934-942. _Give the hygiene of the organs of vision._ 934. Do the same principles apply to the use of the eye as to other organs? What is the effect if the eye is fixed intently on an object for a long time? What results if the eye is not called into action? 935. Why should sudden transitions of light be avoided? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Note._ Let the anatomy and physiology of the eye be reviewed from figs. 139 and 143, or from anatomical outline plate No. 10. 936. _Long-continued oblique positions of the eye should be avoided, when viewing objects._ If the eye is turned obliquely for a long time in viewing objects, it may produce an unnatural contraction of the muscle called into action. This contraction of the muscle is termed _stra-bis´mus_, or cross-eye. The practice of imitating the appearance of a person thus affected, is injudicious, as the imitation, designed to be temporary, may become permanent. _Observation._ The vision of a "cross-eye" is always defective. In general, only one eye is called into action, in viewing the object to which the mind is directed. This defect can be remedied by a surgical operation, which also corrects the position of the eye. 937. _Children should be trained to use the eye upon objects at different distances._ This is necessary, in order that the vision may be correct when objects at various distances are viewed. Any action unnatural to the muscles, if frequently repeated, may and will modify the character and action of the parts so operated upon. If a limb, as the arm, be kept flexed for a long time, one set of muscles will be relaxed and elongated, and another will be shortened, and its contractile power will be increased. The same principle is true of the eye. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What causes palsy of the retina? 936. Why should we avoid oblique positions of the eye in viewing objects? What is said of the practice of imitating persons thus affected? What is said in reference to the vision of a "cross-eye"? 937. Why should children be trained to use the eye upon objects at different distances? What is the effect if an unnatural action of the muscles is frequently repeated? Does the same principle apply to the eye? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 938. In viewing objects very near the eye, the ciliary processes are called into action to produce a proper inclination of the crystalline lens, so that the rays of light may be properly refracted to form a perfect image on the retina. In looking at objects at a great distance, the ciliary processes are called into a different action, to produce a different inclination of the lens. Let either of these actions be repeated, again and again, for weeks and months, and they will become natural, and the acquired inclination will be permanent. 939. From the preceding principle, a person becomes short or long sighted, as the objects to which the eye is usually directed are near or remote. This is one reason why scholars, watchmakers, and artisans, who bring minute objects near the eye to examine them, are short-sighted, and why hunters and sailors, who are habituated to view objects at a distance, are long-sighted. _Observation._ In the management of children, whether in the nursery or school-room, it is very important that their books, or articles upon which they may labor, should be held at an appropriate distance from the eye. Were this attended to by the parent or instructor, we should not see so many persons with defective vision. 940. Cleanliness, as well as the health of the eye, require that it be bathed every morning with pure water, either cold or tepid, accompanied with as little rubbing or friction as possible. In all instances, the secretion from the lachrymal glands, that sometimes collects at the angle of the eye, should be removed, as it contains saline matter. 941. When small particles, or dust, get upon the eye, they produce much inconvenience, which is often increased by harsh attempts to remove them. The individual should be placed before a strong light, the lids held open with one hand, or by another person, and the particles removed with the corner of a fine linen or silk handkerchief. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 938. What is the effect of repeatedly using the eye in one direction? 939. Why are artisans and scholars generally short-sighted? Why are sailors and hunters long-sighted? How can defective vision in a great degree be prevented? 940. What reasons are there for bathing the eye? 941. How can dust and other small particles be removed from the eye? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 942. Sometimes the substance is concealed under the upper eyelid, and it may then be exposed by turning back the lid in the following manner: Take a knitting-needle, or small, slender piece of stick, which is perfectly smooth, and place it over the upper lid, in contact with, and just under the edge of the orbit; then, holding it firmly, seize the eyelashes with the fingers of the disengaged hand, and gently turn the lid back over the stick or needle. The inner side of the lid can then be examined, and any substance removed that may have been there concealed. Too many trials ought not to be made, if unsuccessful, as much inflammation may be induced; but a surgeon should be consulted as soon as possible. _Observation._ Eyestones ought never to be placed in the eye, as they often cause more pain and irritation than the evil which they are intended to remedy. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 942. How removed from the upper eyelid? Why should not eyestones be used? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XLVI. THE SENSE OF HEARING. 943. The sense of hearing is next in importance to that of vision. Through this sense we are enabled to perceive sounds, that not only subserve to our comfort and pleasure, but are instrumental in promoting our intellectual enjoyments. The organ of hearing, or the ear, is one of the most complicated in the human body. ANATOMY OF THE ORGANS OF HEARING. 944. The EAR is composed of three parts: 1st. The _External Ear._ 2d. The _Tym´pan-um_, or middle ear. 3d. The _La´by-rinth_, or internal ear. 945. The EXTERNAL EAR is composed of two parts: The _Pin´na_, (pavilion of the ear,) and the _Me-a´tus Aud-it-o´ri-us Ex-ter´nus_, (auditory canal.) 946. The PINNA is a cartilaginous plate which surrounds the entrance of the auditory canal. It presents many ridges and furrows, arising from the folds of the cartilage that form it. _Observation._ The pinna, in many animals, is movable; in those that pursue their prey, it is generally directed forward; in timid animals, as the hare and rabbit, it is directed backward. In man, this part is but slightly under the control of the will. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 943. What is said of the importance of hearing? Is the ear complicated in its structure? 944-962. _Give the anatomy of the organs of hearing._ 944. Of how many parts is the ear composed? Name them. 945. Give the parts of the external ear. 946. Describe the pinna. What is said in reference to the pinna of many animals? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 947. The MEATUS AUDITORIUS is a canal partly cartilaginous, and partly bony, about an inch in length, which extends inward from the pinna to the _Mem´bra-na Tym´pan-i_, (drum of the ear.) It is narrower in the middle than at the extremities. It is lined by an extremely thin pouch of cuticle, which, when withdrawn, after maceration, preserves the form of the canal. Some stiff, short hairs are also found in the interior of the channel, which stretch across the tube, and prevent the ingress of insects. Beneath the cuticle are a number of small follicles, which secrete the wax of the ear. [Illustration: Fig. 144. A representation of the four bones of the ear. The smallest is highly magnified. This bone is early matured, and in the adult it becomes united with the incus. These bones are retained in their places and moved by three ligaments and four muscles.] 948. The MEMBRANA TYMPANI is a thin, semi-transparent membrane, of an oval shape. It is about three eighths of an inch in diameter, and is inserted into a groove around the circumference of the meatus, near its termination. This membrane is placed obliquely across the area of that tube. It is concave toward the meatus, and convex toward the tympanum. 949. The TYMPANUM consists of an irregular bony cavity, situated within the temporal bone. It is bounded externally by the membrana tympani; internally by its inner wall; and in its circumference by the petrous portion of the temporal bone and mastoid cells. The tympanum contains four small bones, called the _os-sic´u-la au-di´tus_. These are named separately, the _mal´le-us_, _in´cus_, _sta´pes_, and _or-bic´u-lar_. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 947. What is the meatus auditorius? What is found in this canal? What is their use? Where is the wax of the ear secreted? 948. Describe the membrana tympani. 949. Where is the tympanum situated? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 950. There are ten openings in the middle ear; five large and five small. The larger openings are, the _Me-a´tus Aud-it-o´ri-us Ex-ter´nus_, _Fe-nes´tra O-va´lis_, (oval window,) _Fe-nes´tra Ro-tun´da_, (round window,) _Mas´toid Cells_, and _Eu-sta´chi-an Tube_. [Illustration: Fig. 145. A representation of the pinna, meatus, membrana tympani, bones of the ear, and semicircular canals. _a_, The pinna. _c_, The meatus auditorius externus. _g_, The membrana tympani. _k_, The tympanum. _e_, The bones of the ear. _b_, The semicircular canals. _f_, The cochlea. _h_, The vestibule. _i_, The Eustachian tube. _d_, The auditory nerve.] 951. The FENESTRA OVALIS is the opening of communication between the tympanum and the vestibule. It is closed by the foot of the stapes, or bone of the ear, and by the lining membrane of both cavities. 952. The FENESTRA ROTUNDA serves to establish a communication between the tympanum and the cochlea. it is closed by a proper membrane, as well as by the lining of both cavities. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What does this cavity contain? 950. How many openings in the tympanum? Explain fig. 145. 951. Describe the fenestra ovalis. 952. The fenestra rotunda. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 953. The MASTOID CELLS are very numerous, and occupy the whole of the interior of the mastoid process of the temporal bone, and part of the petrous bone. They communicate, by a large, irregular opening, with the upper and posterior circumference of the tympanum. [Illustration: Fig. 146. A view of the labyrinth laid open. This figure is highly magnified. 1, 1, The cochlea. 2, 3, Two channels, that wind two and a half turns around a central point, (5.) 7, The central portion of the labyrinth, (vestibule.) 8, The foramen rotundum. 9, The fenestra ovalis. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, The semicircular canals. The cochlea and semicircular canals open into the vestibule.] 954. The EUSTACHIAN TUBE is a canal of communication, extending obliquely between the pharynx and the anterior circumference of the tympanum. In structure it is partly fibro-cartilaginous and partly bony. It is broad and expanded at its pharyngeal extremity, and narrow and compressed at the tympanum. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 953. Where are the mastoid cells? Explain fig. 146. 954. Describe the Eustachian tube. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 955. The small openings of the middle ear are for the entrance and exit of the chorda tympani, (a small nerve that crosses the tympanum,) and for the exit of the muscles that act upon the membrana tympani and bones of the ear. 956. The LABYRINTH consists of a membranous and a bony portion. The bony labyrinth presents a series of cavities which are channelled through the substance of the petrous bone. It is situated between the cavity of the tympanum and the _Aud´it-o-ry Nerve_. The labyrinth is divided into the _Ves´ti-bule_, _Sem-i-cir´cu-lar Canals_, and _Coch´le-a_. 957. The VESTIBULE is a small, three-cornered cavity, situated immediately within the inner wall of the tympanum. 958. The SEMICIRCULAR CANALS are three bony passages which communicate with the vestibule, into which two of them open at both extremities, and the third at one extremity. 959. The COCHLEA forms the anterior portion of the labyrinth. It consists of a bony and gradually tapering canal, about one and a half inches in length, which makes two turns and a half, spirally, around a central axis, called the _mo-di´o-lus_. The modiolus is large near its base, where it corresponds with the first turn of the cochlea, and diminishes in diameter toward its extremity. 960. The interior of the canal of the cochlea is partially divided into two passages, by means of a bony and membranous plate. At the extremity of the modiolus, the two passages communicate with each other. At the other extremity, one opens into the vestibule; the other into the tympanum, by the foramen rotundum. The internal surface of the bony labyrinth is lined by a fibro-serous membrane. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 955. What passes through the small openings of the middle ear? 956. Of what does the labyrinth consist? Give the parts of the internal ear. 957. Describe the vestibule. 958. What is said of the semicircular canals? 959. Why is the cochlea so called? Of what does it consist? 960. How is the interior of the canal of the cochlea divided? Where do they communicate with each other? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 961. The membranous labyrinth is smaller in size, but a perfect counterpart, with respect to form, of the bony vestibule, cochlea, and semicircular canals. Within this labyrinth are two small, elongated sacs, which are filled with a fluid. [Illustration: Fig. 147. A view of the auditory nerve. 1, The spinal cord. 2, The medulla oblongata. 3, The lower part of the brain. 4, The auditory nerve. 5, A branch to the semicircular canals. 6, A branch to the cochlea.] 962. The AUDITORY NERVE enters the temporal bone upon its internal surface, and divides into two branches, at the bottom of the cavity of the internal ear. These branches enter the structure of the elongated sacs and membranous labyrinth, radiating in all directions, and finally, they terminate upon the inner surface of the membrane, in minute papillæ, resembling those of the retina. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= By what is the internal labyrinth lined? 961. Describe the membranous labyrinth. What does fig. 147 represent? 962. Where does the auditory nerve enter and divide? Where do the branches of the auditory nerve enter and terminate? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XLVII. PHYSIOLOGY OF THE ORGANS OF HEARING. 963. HEARING is that function by which we obtain a knowledge of the vibratory motions of bodies, which constitute sounds. The precise function of all the different parts of the ear is not known. 964. The function of that part of the external ear which projects from the head is to collect sounds and reflect them into the meatus. 965. The membrana tympani serves to facilitate the transmission of sounds, and also to moderate their intensity. It is so arranged that it can be relaxed or tightened. _Observation._ This membrane, when healthy, has no opening; and it must be apparent that the apprehension which is often expressed, that insects will penetrate further, is groundless. The pain is owing to the extreme sensibility of the membrana tympani. 966. The supposed office of the tympanum is to transmit the vibrations made on the membrana tympani to the internal ear. This is effected by the air which it contains, and by the chain of small bones that are enclosed in this cavity. 967. The use of the Eustachian tube is to admit air into the tympanum, which renders the pressure on both sides equal, and thus its membrane is kept in a proper state of tension. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 963-971. _Give the physiology of the organs of hearing._ 963. What is hearing? Are the precise functions of the different parts of the ear known? 964. What is the function of the external ear? 965. Of the membrana tympani? What observation in reference to this membrane? 966. What is the supposed office of the middle ear? 967. What is the use of the Eustachian tube? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Observation._ When near a cannon, or a field-piece, about being discharged, by opening the mouth the impression upon the auditory nerve will be diminished, and the unpleasant sensation lessened. This is the result of the air in the middle ear escaping through the Eustachian tube, when the vibrations of the membrana tympani are violent. [Illustration: Fig. 148. A view of all the parts of the ear. 1, The tube that leads to the internal ear. 2, The membrana tympani. 3, 4, 5, The bones of the ear. 7, The central part of the labyrinth, (vestibule.) 8, 9, 10, The semicircular canals. 11, 12, The channels of the cochlea. 13, The auditory nerve. 14, The channel from the middle ear to the throat, (Eustachian tube.)] 968. But little is known of the functions of the internal ear; its parts are filled with a watery fluid, in which the filaments of the auditory nerve terminate. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What observation in this connection? 968. What is the function of the internal ear? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 969. Many of the parts just enumerated aid in hearing, but are not absolutely essential to this sense. But if the vestibule and auditory nerve are diseased or destroyed, no sound is then perceived. If this sense is destroyed in early life, the person also loses the power of articulating words. Hence a man born deaf is always dumb. 970. The transmission of sound through the different parts of the ear will now be explained by aid of fig. 148. The vibrations of air are collected by the external ear, and conducted through the tube (1) to the membrana tympani, (2.) From the membrane vibrations pass along the chain of bones, (3, 4, 5.) The bone 5 communicates with the internal ear, (7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 11, 11, 12, 12, 12.) From the internal ear the impression is transmitted to the brain by the nerve, (13.) 971. The auditory nerve, like the optic, has but one function, that of special sensibility. The nerves which furnish the ear with ordinary sensibility, proceed from the fifth pair. HYGIENE OF THE ORGANS OF HEARING. 972. Hearing, like the other senses, is capable of very great improvement. By cultivation, the blind are enabled to judge with great accuracy the distance of bodies in motion, and even the height of buildings. It is also capable of improvement when all the other senses are perfect. Thus the Indian will distinguish sounds that are inaudible to the white man. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 969. What parts of the ear are essential in order to hear sounds? What follows loss of hearing? 971. What is the office of the auditory nerve? What nerves convey ordinary sensibility to the ear? 972-978. _Give the hygiene of the organs of hearing._ 972. Is this sense capable of improvement? How does this sense aid the blind? Is it also capable of improvement when all the other senses are perfect? In whom is this illustrated? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Note._ Let the anatomy and physiology of the organs of hearing be reviewed, from fig. 148, or from anatomical outline plate No. 10. 973. Acute hearing requires perfection in the structure and functions of the different parts of the ear, and that portion of the brain from which the auditory nerve proceeds. Deafness is by no means unfrequent. We will now advert to some of the common causes of imperfect hearing. 974. The structure or functional action of the brain may be deranged by inflammation, by compression, or by debility, and produce deafness. The first is seen during inflammatory affections of the brain, and in fevers; the second is seen in accidental injuries of the head; the third is seen in old age, and after severe diseases of the head, and fevers. In these cases, applications to, and operations upon, the ear do no good. The only remedy is to remove, if possible, the diseased condition of the brain. 975. Imperfect hearing may be produced by the destruction of the membrana tympani, or removal of the bones of the ear, or the parts within the labyrinth. In these instances, medical treatment is of no avail, as the destroyed parts cannot be restored. 976. Hearing may be rendered defective by a diminution of the vibratory character of the membrana tympani. This may result from a thickening of this membrane, or from an accumulation of wax upon its outer surface. The increased thickness is usually the result of inflammation, either acute or chronic. The proper treatment is such as is efficient to remove inflammatory action. _Observations._ 1st. The introduction of heads of pins into the ear is a frequent cause of chronic inflammation of the membrana tympani. Hence this practice should never be adopted, and if acquired, should be abandoned. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 973. On what does acute hearing depend? 974. State effects on the hearing in some conditions of the brain. How relieved? 975. Of the effect on hearing when the bones of the ear or the labyrinth are destroyed? Is medical treatment of any avail? 976. What conditions of the drum of the ear may impair hearing? How relieved? What is said of the introduction of pins to cleanse the ear? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 2d. The accumulations of viscid wax may be softened by dropping some animal oil into the ear, and then removing it by ejecting warm soap suds a few hours subsequent to the use of the oil. This may be repeated for several successive days. 977. Hearing may be impaired by obstruction of the Eustachian tube. The closure of this canal diminishes the vibratory character of the air within the tympanum, in the same manner as closing the opening in the side of a drum. For the same reason, enlarged tonsils, inflammation and ulceration of the fauces and nasal passages during and subsequent to an attack of scarlet fever, and the inflammation attending the "sore throat" in colds, are common causes of this obstruction. 978. The treatment of such cases of defective hearing, is to have the tonsils, if enlarged, removed by a surgeon; for the inflammation and thickening of the parts remedial means should be applied, directed by a skilful physician. The nostrums for the cure of deafness are generally of an oleaginous character, and may be beneficial in cases of defective hearing caused by an accumulation of wax upon the drum of the ear, but in this respect they are no better than the ordinary animal oils. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What is the remedy where there is an accumulation of wax? 977. What is the effect on hearing if the Eustachian tube is obstructed? 978. What is the treatment when deafness is caused by inflammation or ulceration the fauces? What is said of the nostrums used for deafness? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XLVIII MEANS OF PRESERVING THE HEALTH.[23] [23] It is advised, that a thorough review of the hygiene of the preceding chapters be given from the suggestions contained in this. 979. Our bodies are constituted in harmony with certain laws, and every person should learn these, in order to regulate his actions and the performance of his duties, so that health may be unimpaired, and the power of enjoyment, activity, and usefulness continue while life lasts. 980. It is a law of the bones and the muscles, that they should either be used in some vocation, or called into action by some social play and active sport. 981. All admit that food is necessary to sustain life; and unless it be of a proper quality, taken in proper quantities, and at proper times, the functions of the digestive organs will be deranged, and disease produced. 982. Pure air is essential to the full enjoyment of health. The impure air of unventilated rooms may be breathed, and the effect be so gradual as not to arrest attention; yet it is a violation of the physical laws, and, sooner or later, we pay the penalty in disease and suffering. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 979. Why is it incumbent on every person to learn the laws of health? 980. Give a law of the muscles. 981. In preserving the health, is it necessary to give attention to the food which is eaten? Why? 982. What beside food is essential to the full enjoyment of health? What is said of the impure air of unventilated rooms? 983. What should be observed in regard to sleep? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 983. The body also requires sleep; and if it is not taken at the right time, or with regularity, we do not feel full refreshment from "tired nature's sweet restorer." Let youth be taught that "early to bed and early to rise" gives him health and its attendant blessings. The brain, like other organs of the body, should be called into action at proper times. 984. From the extent of the surface of the skin, and the close sympathy that exists between it and those organs whose office is, to remove the waste particles of matter from the body, it therefore becomes very important in the preservation of the health, that the functions of this membrane be properly maintained. 985. The function of the circulatory and secretory organs, together with the operations of absorption and nutrition, should be steadily maintained, as vitality and the generation of animal heat are intimately connected with these processes. In the proper performance of these functions, very much depends on the observance of the laws of the muscular, digestive respiratory, dermoid, and nervous apparatuses. REMOVAL OF DISEASE. 986. It is seldom that a physician is called in the first stages of disease. At this important period, the treatment adopted should be proper and judicious, or the sufferings of the patient are increased, and life, to a greater or less degree, is jeopardized. Hence the utility of knowing what _should be done_, and what _should not be done_, in order that the health may be rapidly regained. 987. In all instances of acute disease, it is proper to rest, not only the body, but the mind. To effect this, the patient should cease from physical exertion, and also withdraw his thoughts from study and business operations. This should be done, even if the person is but slightly indisposed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 984. Why should the functions of the skin be properly maintained? 985. Show the necessity of maintaining properly other functions of the system. 986. What is important in the first stages of disease? 987. What is proper in all instances of acute disease? How can it be effected? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 988. Select a room for a sick person that is exposed to as little external noise as possible, as impressions made on the organ of hearing greatly influence the nervous system. Likewise select a spacious, well-ventilated apartment, that has no superfluous furniture. The practice of placing a sick person in a small, ill-arranged sleeping-room, when a more spacious room can be used, is poor economy, not to say unkind. 989. Care is necessary in regulating the light of a sick-room. While a strong light would produce an increased action of the vessels of the brain, a moderate light would be an appropriate stimulus to this organ. It is seldom or never necessary to exclude all light from the sick-chamber. 990. A sick person, whether a child or an adult, should not be disturbed by visitors, even if their calls are short. The excitement of meeting them is followed by a depression of the nervous system. The more dangerous and apparently nearer death the sick person is, the more rigorous should be the observance of this suggestion. Nor should the sick-room be opened to privileged classes; for the excitement caused by a visit from relations and the virtuous, will do as much injury to the sick, as that produced by strangers and the vicious. 991. The custom of visiting and conversing with sick friends during the intervals of daily labor, and particularly on _Sunday_, is a great evil. No person will thus intrude herself in the sick-chamber who cares more for the welfare of the suffering friend than for the gratification of a _sympathetic curiosity_. Inquiries can be made of the family respecting the sick, and complimentary or necessary messages can be communicated through the nurse. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 988. What rooms should be selected for the sick? Why? 989. What is said in reference to the quantity of light admitted into a sick-room? 990. What effect have calls on the sick? 991. What is said of the custom of calling and conversing with the sick during the intervals of daily labor? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Illustration._ While attending a Miss B., of N. H., sick of fever, I pronounced her better, withdrew medicine, directed a simple, low diet, and the exclusion of all visitors. In the evening I was sent for to attend her. There was a violent relapse into the disease, which continued to increase in severity until the fourth day, when death terminated her sufferings. I learned that, soon after I gave directions that no visitors be admitted into her room, several _particular_ friends were permitted to enter the chamber and talk with the sick girl. Their conversation produced a severe headache; and, to use the language of the patient, "it seemed as if their talk would kill me;" and _it did kill her_. 992. No _solid food_ should be taken in the first stages of disease, even if the affection is slight. The thirst can be allayed by drinking cold water, barley-water, and other preparations of an unstimulating character. It is wrong to tempt the appetite of a person who is indisposed. The cessation of a desire for food, is the warning of nature, that the system is in such a state that it cannot be digested. 993. When a patient is recovering from illness, the food should be simple, and in quantities not so great as to oppress the stomach. It should also be given with regularity. "Eat little and often," with no regard to regularity, is a pernicious practice. 994. When a physician attends a sick person, he should have the _special_ management of the food, particularly after the medicine has been withdrawn and the patient is convalescent. The prevailing idea that _every_ person may safely advise relative to food, or that the appetite of the convalescing person is a competent guide, is dangerous; and cannot be too much censured. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give an illustration. 992. What suggestion relative to food in the first stages of disease? How can the thirst be allayed? 993. When the patient is convalescent, how should the food be given? What is said of the practice of eating "little and often"? 994. Who should have the special management of food when medicine is withdrawn? What idea prevails in the community? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Illustration._ In 1832, I attended a Miss M., sick of fever. After an illness of a few days, the fever abated, and I directed a simple, unstimulating diet. Business called me from the town two days. During my absence, a sympathizing, officious matron called; found her weak, but improving; and told her she needed food to strengthen her; and that "it would now do her good." Accordingly, eggs and a piece of beefsteak were prepared, and given to the convalescent girl. She ate heartily, and the result was a relapse into a fever more violent than the first attack. 995. It is very important in disease that _the skin be kept clean_. A free action of the vessels of this part of the body exerts a great influence in removing disease from the internal organs, as well as keeping them in health. If the twenty or thirty ounces of waste, hurtful matter, that passes through the "pores" of the skin in twenty-four hours, are not removed by frequent bathing and dry rubbing, it deranges the action of the vessels that separate this waste matter from the blood, and thus increases the disease of the internal organs. _Illustration._ Mrs. M. R., of N., Mass., was afflicted with disease of the lungs and cough. This was accompanied with a dry, inactive condition of the skin. As medicine had no salutary effect in relieving her cough, she was induced by the advice of the clergyman of the parish to enter upon a systematic course of bathing twice every day. Soon the skin became soft, its proper functions were restored, the disease of the lungs yielded, and the cough disappeared. 996. Every sick person should breathe _pure air_. The purer the blood that courses through the body, the greater the energy of the system to remove disease. The confined vitiated air of the sick-chamber, not unfrequently prolongs disease; and in many instances, the affection is not only aggravated, but, even rendered fatal, by its injurious influences. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Give an illustration of the evil effects attending such an idea. 995. Does the skin exert a great influence in removing disease from the internal organs, as well as in keeping them in health? Give an illustration 996. Why should every sick person, particularly, breathe pure air? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= _Illustrations._ 1st. In 1833, I was called, in consultation with another physician, to Mr. H., who was much debilitated, and delirious. For several successive days he had not slept. His room was kept very warm and close, for fear he would "take cold." The only change that I made in the treatment, was to open the door and window, at a distance from the bed. In a short time, the delirium ceased, and he fell into a quiet slumber. From this time he rapidly recovered, and the delirium was probably the result of breathing impure air. 2d. Formerly, every precaution was used to prevent persons sick of the small-pox from breathing fresh air. When Mrs. Ramsay had this disease in Charleston, S.C., her friends, supposing that life was extinct, caused her body to be removed from the house to an open shed. The pure air revived the vital spark. The result probably would have been different, had she been kept a few hours longer in the vitiated air. 997. The influence of habit should not be disregarded in the removal of disease. If food or drink is to be administered, however small in quantity or simple its quality, it should be given at or about the time when the ordinary meals were taken in health. 998. Again, the usual time when the patient was in the habit of retiring for sleep should be observed, and all preparation necessary for the sick-room during the night should be made previous to this hour. Efforts should also be made to evacuate the waste matter of the digestive and urinary organs at the period which habit has formed in health. This is not only a remedial agent in disease, but often precludes the necessity of laxative or drastic cathartics. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Are not diseases prolonged, and even rendered fatal, from breathing the impure, vitiated air of the sick-chamber? Give illustration 1st. Give illustration 2d. 997. What is said respecting the influence of habit in removing disease? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 999. MEDICINE is sometimes necessary to _assist_ the natural powers of the system to remove disease; but it is only an _assistant_. While emetics are occasionally useful in removing food and other articles from the stomach that would cause disease if suffered to remain, and cathartics are valuable, in some instances, to relieve the alimentary canal of irritating residuum, yet the frequent administration of either will cause serious disease. 1000. Although medicine is useful in some instances, yet, in a great proportion of the cases of disease, including fevers and inflammations of all kinds, attention to the laws of health will tend to relieve the system from disease; more certainly and speedily, and with less danger, than when medicines are administered. 1001. Thomas Jefferson, in writing to Dr. Wistar, of Philadelphia, said, "I would have the physician learn the limit of his art." I would say, Have the matrons, and those who are continually advising "herb teas," and other "cure-alls," for any complaint, labelled with some popular name, learn the limits of their duty, namely, attention to the laws of health. The rule of every family, and each individual, should be, to touch not, taste not of medicine of _any kind_, except when directed by a well-educated and honest physician, (sudden disease from accidents excepted.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 999. What is said of the use of medicine? 1000. Of its use in fevers and many other cases of disease? 1001. What remark by Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Wistar? What should matrons learn? What should be the rule of every person in regard to taking medicine? What exception? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= CHAPTER XLIX. DIRECTIONS FOR NURSES. 1002. The nurse requires knowledge and practice to enable her to discharge aright her duty to the patient, as much as the physician and surgeon do to perform what is incumbent on them. Woman, from her constitution and habits, is the natural nurse of the sick; and, in general, no small portion of her time is spent in ministering at the couch of disease and suffering. 1003. As the young and vigorous, as well as the aged and the infirm, are liable to be laid upon the bed of sickness, by an epidemic, or imprudent exposure, or by some accident, it is therefore necessary that the girl, as well as the matron, may know how she can render services in an efficient and proper manner. No _girl_ should consider her education complete who is not acquainted with the principles of the duties of a general nurse and a temporary watcher. 1004. It is to be regretted, that while we have medical schools and colleges to educate physicians, there is no institution to educate _nurses_ in their equally responsible station. In the absence of such institutions, the defect can be remedied, to some extent, by teaching every girl _hygiene_, or _the laws of health_. To make such knowledge more available and complete, attention is invited to the following suggestions relative to the practical duties of a nurse. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1002. Does the nurse require knowledge and practice in her employment, as well as the physician? Who is the natural nurse of the sick? 1003. What, then, is incumbent on every girl? 1004. Should there be schools to educate nurses, as well as physicians and surgeons? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1005. BATHING. The nurse, before commencing to bathe the patient, should provide herself with water, two towels, a sponge, a piece of soft flannel, and a sheet. The temperature of the room should also be observed. 1006. When the patient is feeble, use _tepid_ or warm water. Cold water should only be used when the system has vigor enough to produce reaction upon the skin. This is shown by the increased redness of the skin, and a feeling of warmth and comfort, after a proper amount of friction. Before using the sponge to bathe, a sheet, or fold of cloth, should be spread smoothly over the bed, and under the patient, to prevent the bed-linen on which the patient lies from becoming damp or wet. 1007. Apply the wet sponge to one part of the body at a time; as the arm, for instance. By doing so, the liability of contracting chills is diminished. Take a dry, soft towel, wipe the bathed part, and follow this by vigorous rubbing with a crash towel, or, what is better, a mitten made of this material; then use briskly a piece of soft flannel, to remove all moisture that may exist on the skin, and particularly between the fingers and the flections of the joints. In this manner bathe the entire body. 1008. The sick should be thoroughly bathed, at least twice in twenty-four hours. Particular attention should be given to the parts between the fingers and toes, and about the flections of the joints, as the accumulation of the excretions is most abundant on these parts. In bathing, these portions of the system are very generally neglected. The best time for bathing, is when the patient feels most vigorous, and freest from exhaustion. The practice of daubing the face and hands with a towel dipped in hot rum, camphor, and vinegar, does not remove the impurities, but causes the skin soon to feel dry, hard, and uncomfortable. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1005. What should a nurse provide herself with, before bathing a patient? 1006. When should cold water be used? 1007. How should the bathing then be performed, so that the patient may not contract a cold? 1008. How often should a sick person be bathed? What is said of daubing the face and hands merely with a wet cloth? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1009. FOOD. It is the duty of every woman to know how to make the simple preparations adapted to a low diet, in the most wholesome and the most palatable way. Water-gruel,[24] which is the simplest of all preparations, is frequently so ill-made as to cause the patient to loathe it. Always prepare the food for the sick, in the neatest and most careful manner. [24] Directions for making the simple preparations for the sick are found in almost every cook-book. 1010. When the physician enjoins abstinence from food, the nurse should strictly obey the injunction. She should be as particular to know the physician's directions about diet, as in knowing how and when to give the prescribed medicines, and obey them as implicitly. 1011. When a patient is convalescent, the desire for food is generally strong, and it often requires firmness and patience, together with great care, on the part of the nurse, that the food is prepared suitably, and given at proper times The physician should direct how frequently it should be taken. 1012. PURE AIR. It is the duty of the nurse to see that not only the room is well ventilated in the morning, but that fresh air is constantly admitted during the day. Great care must be taken, however, that the patient does not feel the current. 1013. Bed-linen, as well as that of the body, should be aired every day, and oftener changed in sickness than in health. All clothing, when changed, should be well dried, and warmed by a fire previous to its being put on the patient or the bed. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1009. Should every woman know how to make the simple preparations adapted to a low diet? 1010. Should the nurse strictly obey the injunctions of the physician relative to food? 1011. What period of a person's illness requires the most care in regard to the food? 1012. Give another duty of the nurse. 1013. What directions respecting the bed-linen of the patient? What is necessary when there is a change of clothing? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1014. TEMPERATURE. The warmth of the chamber should be carefully watched by the nurse. The feelings of the patient or nurse are not to be relied on as an index of the temperature of the room. There should be a well-adjusted thermometer in every sick-room. This should be frequently consulted by the nurse. 1015. The temperature of the sick-chamber should be _moderate_. If it is so cold as to cause a chill, the disease will be aggravated. If, on the other hand, it is too warm, the patient is enfeebled and rendered more susceptible to cold on leaving the sick-chamber. The Latin maxim, "_In medio tutissimus ibis_," (in medium there is most safety,) should be regarded in the rooms of the sick. 1016. QUIET. The room of the patient should be kept free from noise. The community should be guided by this rule, that no more persons remain in the room of the sick, than the welfare of the patient demands. It is the duty of the physician to direct when visitors can be admitted or excluded from the sick-room, and the nurse should see that these directions are enforced. 1017. The movements of the attendants should be gentle and noiseless. Shutting doors violently, creaking hinges, and all unnecessary noise, should be avoided. Most persons refrain from loud talking in the sick chamber, but are not equally careful to abstain from _whispering_, which is often more trying than a common tone. 1018. It is the duty of the nurse to ascertain the habits of the patient as respects the period for eating and sleep, when in health, that she may prepare the food and arrange the sick-room in accordance with the practice of the patient. If the person who is sick is ignorant of the necessity of the removal of the waste products from the system the nurse should invite attention to these functions at such periods as are in accordance with the previous habits of the patient. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1014. Why should there be a well-adjusted thermometer in every sick-chamber? 1015. What is said of the temperature of the sick-chamber? 1016. Why should the sick-room be kept quiet? 1017. What is said of noise in the sick-chamber? Of whispering? 1018. Should the habits of the patient be regarded in reference to the period for eating and sleep? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1019. The deportment and remarks of the nurse to the patient should be tranquil and encouraging. The illness of a friend, or persons who have recently died, should not be alluded to in the sick-room. No doubts or fears of the patient's recovery, either by a look or by a word, should be communicated by the nurse in the chamber of the sick. When such information is necessary to be communicated, it is the duty of the physician to impart it to the sick person. 1020. The nurse should not confine herself to the sick-room more than six hours at a time. She should eat her food regularly, sleep at regular periods, and take exercise daily in the open air. To do this, let her quietly leave the room when the patient is sleeping. A watcher, or temporary nurse, may supply her place. There is but little danger of contracting disease, if the nurse attends to the simple laws of health, and remains not more than six hours at a time in the sick-room. DIRECTIONS FOR WATCHERS. 1021. These necessary assistants, like the nurse, should have knowledge and practice. They should ever be cheerful, kind, firm, and attentive in the presence of the patient. 1022. A simple, nutritious supper should be eaten before entering the sick-room; and it is well, during the night, to take some plain food. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1019. What should be the deportment of the nurse toward the patient? Should doubts and fears of the patient's recovery be communicated in the sick-room? When necessary to impart such intelligence, on whom does it depend? 1020. How long should a nurse remain in the sick-chamber at a time? 1021. What qualifications are necessary in a watcher? 1022. What directions in regard to the food of the watcher? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1023. When watching in cold weather, a person should be warmly dressed, and furnished with an extra garment, as a cloak or shawl, because the system becomes exhausted toward morning, and less heat is generated in the body. 1024. Light-colored clothing should be worn by those who have care of the sick, in preference to dark-colored apparel; particularly if the disease is of a contagious character. Experiments have shown, that black and other dark colors will absorb more readily the subtile effluvia that emanate from sick persons, than white or light colors. 1025. Whatever may be wanted during the night, should be brought into the sick-chamber, or the adjoining room, before the family retires for sleep, in order that the slumbers of the patient be not disturbed by haste, or searching for needed articles. 1026. The same general directions should be observed by watchers, as are given to the nurse; nor should the watcher deem it necessary to make herself acceptable to the patient by exhausting conversation. 1027. It can hardly be expected that the farmer, who has been laboring hard in the field, or the mechanic, who has toiled during the day, is qualified to render all those little attentions that a sick person requires. Hence, would it not be more benevolent and economical to employ and _pay_ watchers, who are qualified by knowledge and _training_, to perform this duty in a faithful manner, while the kindness and sympathy of friends may be _practically_ manifested by assisting to defray the expenses of these qualified and useful assistants? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1023. When watching in cold weather, what precaution is necessary? 1024. What is said relative to the color of the clothing worn in the sick-room? 1025. What suggestions to watchers relative to the arrangement of the sick-chamber? 1026. What should watchers observe? 1027. What is said of employing those persons to watch who labor hard during the day? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= APPENDIX. POISONS AND THEIR ANTIDOTES 1028. POISONING, either from accident or design, is of such frequency and danger, that it is of the greatest importance that every person should know the proper mode of procedure in such cases, in order to render immediate assistance when within his power. 1029. Poisons are divided into two classes--_mineral_ (which include the acids) and _vegetable_. 1030. The first thing, usually, to be done, when it is ascertained that a poison has been swallowed, is to evacuate the stomach, unless vomiting takes place spontaneously. Emetics of the sulphate of zinc, (white vitriol,) or ipecacuanha, (ipecac,) or ground mustard seed, should be given. 1031. When vomiting has commenced, it should be aided by large and frequent draughts of the following drinks: flaxseed tea, gum-water, slippery-elm tea, barley water, sugar and water, or any thing of a mucilaginous or diluent character. MINERAL POISONS. 1032. AMMONIA.--The _water of ammonia_, if taken in an over-dose, and in an undiluted state, acts as a violent corrosive poison. 1033. The best and most effectual antidote is _vinegar_. It should be administered in water, without delay. It neutralizes the ammonia, and renders it inactive. Emetics should not be given. 1034. ANTIMONY.--The _wine of antimony_ and _tartar emetic_, if taken in over-doses, cause distressing vomiting. In addition to the diluent, mucilaginous drinks, give a tea-spoonful of the sirup of poppies, paregoric, or twenty drops of laudanum, every twenty minutes, until five or six doses have been taken, or the vomiting ceases. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1025. Is it useful to know the antidotes or remedies for poison? 1029. Into how many classes are poisons divided? 1030. What is the first thing to be done when it is ascertained that poison has been swallowed? 1031. What should be taken after the vomiting has commenced? 1032. What effect has an over-dose of ammonia? 1033. The antidote? Should an emetic be given for this poison? 1034. What effect has an over-dose of the wine of antimony or tartar emetic? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1035. The antidotes are _nutgalls_ and _oak bark_, which may be administered in infusion, or by steeping in water. 1036. ARSENIC.--When this has been taken, administer an emetic of ipecac, speedily, in mucilaginous teas, and use the stomach-pump as soon as possible. 1037. The antidote is the _hydrated peroxide of iron_. It should be kept constantly on hand at the apothecaries' shops. It may be given in any quantity, without injurious results. 1038. COPPER.--The most common cause of poisoning from this metal, is through the careless use of cooking utensils made of it, on which the _acetate of copper_ (verdigris) has been allowed to form. When this has been taken, immediately induce vomiting, give mucilaginous drinks, or the _white of eggs_, diffused in water. 1039. The antidote is the _carbonate of soda_, which should be administered without delay. 1040. LEAD.--The _acetate_ (sugar) _of lead_ is the preparation of this metal, which is liable to be taken accidentally, in poisonous doses. Induce immediate vomiting, by emetics of ground mustard seed, sulphate of zinc, and diluent drinks. 1041. The antidote is diluted _sulphuric acid_. When this acid is not to be obtained, either the sulphate of magnesia, (epsom salts,) or the sulphate of soda, (glauber's salts,) will answer every purpose. 1042. MERCURY.--The preparation of this mineral by which poisoning is commonly produced, is _corrosive sublimate_. The mode of treatment to be pursued when this poison has been swallowed, is as follows: The _whites of a dozen eggs_ should be beaten in two quarts of cold water, and a tumbler-full given every two minutes, to induce vomiting. When the whites of eggs are not to be obtained, soap and water should be mixed with wheat flour, and given in copious draughts, and the stomach-pump introduced as soon as possible. Emetics or irritating substances should not be given. 1043. NITRE--_Saltpetre._--This, in over-doses, produces violent poisonous symptoms. Vomiting should be immediately induced by large doses of mucilaginous, diluent drinks; but emetics which irritate the stomach should not be given. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1035. What is the antidote? 1036. What should immediately be done when arsenic is swallowed? 1037. What is the antidote? Can any quantity of this preparation of iron be given without injurious results? 1038. What should be given when verdigris has been taken into the stomach? 1039. What is the antidote? 1040. What should immediately be given when sugar of lead is taken? 1041. What is the antidote? 1042. Give the treatment when corrosive sublimate has been swallowed. 1043. What effect has an over-dose of saltpetre? What treatment should be adopted? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1044. ZINC.--Poisoning is sometimes caused by the _sulphate of zinc_, (white vitriol.) When this takes place, vomiting should be induced, and aided by large draughts of mucilaginous and diluent drinks. Use the stomach-pump as soon as possible. 1045. The antidote is the _carbonate_, or _super-carbonate of soda_. 1046. NITRIC, (aqua fortis,) MURIATIC, (MARINE ACID,) OR SULPHURIC (OIL OF VITRIOL,) ACIDS, may be taken by accident, and produce poisonous effects. 1047. The antidote is _calcined magnesia_, which should be freely administered, to neutralize the acid and induce vomiting. When magnesia cannot be obtained, the _carbonate of potash_ (salæratus) may be given. _Chalk_, powdered and given in solution, or strong _soap suds_, will answer a good purpose, when the other articles are not at hand. It is of very great importance that something be given speedily, to neutralize the acid. One of the substances before mentioned should be taken freely, in diluent and mucilaginous drinks, as gum-water, milk, flaxseed, or slippery-elm tea. Emetics ought to be avoided. 1048. OXALIC ACID.--This acid resembles the sulphate of magnesia, (epsom salts,) which renders it liable to be taken, by mistake, in poisonous doses. Many accidents have occurred from this circumstance. They can easily be distinguished by tasting a small quantity. _Epsom salts_, when applied to the tongue, have a very bitter taste, while _oxalic acid_ is intensely sour. 1049. The antidote is _magnesia_, between which and the acid a chemical action takes place, producing the oxalate of magnesia, which is inert. When magnesia is not at hand, _chalk_, _lime_, or _carbonate of potash_, (salæratus,) will answer as a substitute. Give the antidote in some of the mucilaginous drinks before mentioned. No time should be lost in introducing the stomach-pump as soon as a surgeon can be obtained. 1050. LEY.--The ley obtained by the leaching of ashes may be taken by a child accidentally. The antidote is vinegar, or oil of any kind. The vinegar neutralizes the alkali by uniting with it, forming the acetate of potash. The oil unites with the alkali, and forms soap, which is less caustic than the ley. Give, at the same time, large draughts of mucilaginous drinks, as flaxseed tea, &c. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1044. What is the antidote for white vitriol? 1047. What is the antidote for aqua fortis and oil of vitriol? Should emetics be avoided? 1048. How can oxalic acid be distinguished from epsom salts? 1049. What is the antidote for an over-dose of oxalic acid? When magnesia cannot be obtained, what will answer as a substitute? 1050. What is the antidote when ley is swallowed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= VEGETABLE POISONS. 1051. The vegetable poisons are quite as numerous, and many of them equally as virulent, as any in the mineral kingdom. We shall describe the most common, and which, therefore, are most liable to be taken. 1052. OPIUM.--This is the article most frequently resorted to by those wishing to commit suicide, and, being used as a common medicine, is easily obtained. From this cause, also, mistakes are very liable to be made, and accidents result from it. Two of its preparations, _laudanum_ and _paregoric_, are frequently mistaken for each other; the former being given when the latter is intended. 1053. _Morphia_, in solution, or _morphine_, as it is more commonly called by the public, is a preparation of the drug under consideration, with which many cases of poisoning are produced. It is the active narcotic principle of the opium; and one grain is equal to six of this drug in its usual form. 1054. When an over-dose of opium, or any of its preparations, has been swallowed, the stomach should be evacuated as speedily as possible. To effect this, a teaspoonful of ground mustard seed, or as much tartar emetic as can be held on a five cent piece, or as much _ipecacuanha_ as can be held on a twenty-five cent piece, should be mixed in a tumbler of warm water, and one half given at once, and the remainder in twenty minutes, if the first has not, in the mean time, operated. In the interval, copious draughts of warm water, or warm sugar and water, should be drank. 1055. The use of the stomach-pump, in these cases, is of the greatest importance, and should be resorted to without delay. After most of the poison has been evacuated from the stomach, a strong infusion of _coffee_ ought to be given; or some one of the vegetable acids, such as _vinegar_, or _lemon-juice_, should be administered. 1056. The patient should be kept in motion, and salutary effects will often be produced by dashing a bucket of cold water on the head. _Artificial respiration_ ought to be established, and kept up for some time. If the extremities are cold, apply warmth and friction to them. After the poison has been evacuated from the stomach, stimulants, as warm wine and water, or warm brandy and water, should be given, to keep up and sustain vital action. 1057. STRAMONIUM--_Thorn-Apple._--This is one of the most active narcotic poisons, and, when taken in over-doses, has, in numerous instances, caused death. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1051. Are vegetable poisons as numerous and as virulent in their effects as mineral? 1052. What is said of opium and its preparations? 1054, 1055, 1056. What treatment should be adopted when an over-dose of opium or any of its preparations is taken? 1057. What is said of stramonium? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1058. HYOSCIAMUS--_Henbane._--This article, which is used as a medicine, if taken in improper doses, acts as a virulent irritating and narcotic poison. 1059. The treatment for the two above-mentioned articles is similar to that of poisoning from over-doses of opium. 1060. CONIUM--_Hemlock._--Hemlock, improperly called, by many, _cicuta_, when taken in an over-dose, acts as a narcotic poison. It was by this narcotic that the Athenians used to destroy the lives of individuals condemned to death by their laws. Socrates is said to have been put to death by this poison. When swallowed in over-doses, the treatment is similar to that of opium, stramonium, and henbane, when over-doses are taken. 1061. BELLADONNA--_Deadly Nightshade._--CAMPHOR. ACONITE--_Monkshood_, _Wolfsbane._ BRYONIA--_Bryony._ DIGITALIS--_Foxglove._ DULCAMARA--_Bittersweet._ GAMBOGE. LOBELIA--_Indian Tobacco._ SANGUINARIA--_Bloodroot._ OIL OF SAVIN. SPIGELIA--_Pinkroot._ STRYCHNINE--_Nux vomica._ TOBACCO.--All of these, when taken in over-doses, are poisons of greater or less activity. The treatment of poisoning, by the use of any of these articles, is similar to that pursued in over-doses of opium. (See OPIUM, page 442.) 1062. In _all_ cases of poisoning, call a physician as soon as possible. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 1058. Of henbane? 1059. What should be the treatment when an over-dose of stramonium or henbane is taken? 1060. What name is sometimes improperly given to _conium_, or hemlock? How was this narcotic poison used by the Athenians? How are the effects of an over-dose counteracted? 1061. What is the treatment when an over-dose of deadly nightshade, monkshood, foxglove, bittersweet, gamboge, lobelia, bloodroot, tobacco, &c., is taken? 1062. Should a physician be called in all cases when poison is swallowed? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= A. The essential parts of every secretory apparatus are a simple membrane, apparently textureless, named the _primary_, or _basement membrane_, certain cells and blood-vessels. The serous and mucous membrane are examples. B. The division and description of the different membranes and tissues are not well defined and settled by anatomical writers. This is not a material defect, as a clear description of the different parts of the system can be given by adopting the arrangement of almost any writer. C. FAT is one of the non-nitrogenous substances. It forms the essential part of the adipose tissue. Chemical analysis shows that all fatty substances are compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. They are lighter than water, generally fluid at the natural temperature of the body, and burn with a bright flame, forming water and carbonic acid. CASEINE is abundantly found in milk. When dried, it constitutes cheese. Alcohol, acids, and the stomach of any of the mammalia coagulate it; and it is also soluble in water. It is found in the blood, bile, saliva, and the lens of the eye. CHONDRINE is a variety of gelatin. It is obtained from cartilage. It is soluble in warm water, but solidifies on cooling. LACTIC ACID is common to all the solids and fluids of the system. It is found united with potash, soda, lime, or magnesia. D. The word _duodenum_ is derived from the Latin, signifying "twelve," since the intestine, of which this is the name, is usually about twelve fingers' breadth in length. The _jejunum_ is also from the Latin _jejunum_, empty, since it is usually found in that condition after death, as the food seems to pass rapidly through this part of the intestine. The term _ileum_ is from the Greek, signifying "to twist," since it always appears in a contorted condition. The name _cæcum_ is derived from the fact of its being a blind or short sack, perforated by the extremity of the ileum. The name of the next division of the intestine--_colon_--is from the Greek, "to prohibit," as the contents of the alimentary canal pass slowly through this portion. The _rectum_ is named from the straight direction that it assumes in the latter part of its course. E. The food is forced through the alimentary canal by contractions of its muscular coat, produced by the nervous filaments of the sympathetic system, not being at all dependent on the cerebro-spinal centre. This is called the peristaltic, or vermicular motion. The great length of intestine in all animals, and especially in the herbivorous ones, is owing to the necessity of exposing the food to a large number of the lacteals, that the nourishment may all be taken from it. F. The different processes through which the food passes before assimilation are of considerable interest. The mastication and mixture of the saliva with the food are purely of a mechanical nature. When any solid or fluid substance is placed upon the tongue, or in contact with the inner surface of the cheeks, by an involuntary act, the salivary glands are stimulated to activity, and commence pouring the saliva into the mouth through the salivary ducts. As soon as mastication commences, the contraction of the masseter and other muscles employed in mastication stimulates the salivary glands to increased action, and a still greater quantity of saliva is secreted and forced upon the food, which is constantly being ground to a finer condition, until it is sufficiently reduced for deglutition. Whether the salivary fluid acts any other part than simply that of a demulcent to assist the gastric juice in still further dissolving the food, is yet a matter of some doubt, although it is found that no other liquid will equally well subserve the process of digestion and promote health. After the food is in the condition ready to be swallowed, by an apparently involuntary motion, it is placed upon the back of the tongue, which carries it backwards to the top of the pharynx, where the constrictions of the pharynx, aided by the muscles of the tongue and floor of the mouth, with a sudden and violent movement thrust it beyond the epiglottis, in order to allow the least necessary time to the closure of the glottis, after which, by the compression of the oesophagus, it is forced into the stomach. Here it is that the true business of digestion commences. For as soon as any substance except water enters the stomach, this organ, with involuntary movements, that seem almost like instinct, commences the secretion of the gastric juice, and by long-continued contractions of its muscular coat, succeeds in effecting a most perfect mixture of the food with this juice, by which the contents of the stomach are reduced to the softest pulp. The gastric juice, in its pure state, is a colorless, transparent fluid; "inodorous, a little saltish, and perceptibly acid. It possesses the property of coagulating albumen, and separating the whey of milk from its curd, and afterwards completely dissolving the curd. Its taste, when applied to the tongue, is similar to that of mucilaginous water, slightly acidulated with muriatic acid." The organs of its secretion are an immense number of tubes or glands, of a diameter varying from one five hundredth to one three hundredth of an inch, situated in the mucous coat of the stomach, and receiving their blood from the gastric arteries. A chemical analysis shows it to consist of water, mucilage, and the several free acids--muriatic, acetic, lactic, and butyric, together with a peculiar organic matter called _pepsin_, which acts after the manner of ferments between the temperature of 50° and 104° F. The true process of digestion is probably owing to the action of pepsin and the acids, especially if the presence of the chloro-hydric or muriatic be admitted; since we know, by experiments out of the body, that chlorine, one of its elements, is a powerful solvent of all organic substances. The antiseptic properties of the gastric juice, as discovered by experiments made on Alexis St. Martin, doubtless have much influence on digestion, although their true uses are probably not yet known. As soon as the food is reduced to a state of fluidity, the pyloric orifice of the stomach is unclosed, and it is thrust onwards through the alimentary canal, receiving in the duodenum the secretions of the liver and pancreas, after which it yields to the lacteals its nutrient portion, and the residuum is expelled from the body. There have been many hypotheses in regard to the nature of the digestive process. Some have supposed that digestion is a mere mechanical process, produced by the motion of the walls of the stomach; while others, in later times, have considered it as under the influence of a spirit separate from the individual, who took up his residence in the stomach and regulated the whole affair; while others still would make it out to be a chemical operation, and thus constitute the stomach a sort of laboratory. But to all these ridiculous hypotheses Sir John Hunter has applied the following playful language: "Some will have it that the stomach is a mill; others that it is a fermenting vat; and others that it is a stewpan; but in my view of the matter, it is neither a mill, a fermenting vat, nor a stewpan, but a stomach, _a stomach_!" At the present day this process is regarded as a complex, and not a simple operation. It seems to be a process in which the mechanical, chemical, and vital agencies must all act in harmony and order; for if one of these be withdrawn, the function cannot be sustained for any considerable length of time; and of the chemical and mechanical parts of the process, since the former is much more important, and, as a matter of course, the vital powers are indispensable, therefore digestion may be considered as a chemical operation, directly dependent on the laws of vitality, or of life; since the proper consistency of the food depends, in a great measure, upon the character of the solvents, while the secretion of these fluids, their proper amount, together with the peculiar instinct--as it almost seems to be--necessary to direct the stomach in its many functions, are exclusively and entirely dependent on the laws and conditions of life. G. As food is necessary to supply the waste and promote the growth of the body, it follows that that will be the best adapted to the system which contains the same chemical elements of which the body is composed; viz., oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. These elements are found in greater or less quantity in all animal food, and in many vegetable products. Hence, that article of food which contains all these elements in a proper proportion will tend much more to the growth and strength of the body than those kinds which are deficient in one or more of them. Much experience on this point, and scientific research, seem to show that a reasonable amount of animal food in health tends to give greater strength of muscle, and a more general sense of fulness, than in ordinary cases a vegetable diet is able to do, owing to the presence of nitrogen in animal tissues. Yet there are examples of the healthiest and strongest men, who live years without a morsel of animal food; and the fact can only be accounted for, by supposing that the system has the power to make the most economical use of the little nitrogen offered to it in the food; or else that it has by some means the power to abstract it from the atmosphere, and transform it to the living animal substance. H. The proximate principles, which are the most important in nourishing the body, are albumen and fibrin. These constitute the greater part of all the softer animal tissues, and are also found in certain classes of vegetables, such as peas, beans, lentils, and many seeds. Hence, in many cases, a vegetable diet, especially if embracing any of those articles, would be sufficient to sustain life, even if no animal food should be eaten. But no animal can exist for a long time if permitted only to eat substances destitute of nitrogen, as in the case of a dog fed entirely on sugar, which lived but thirty days. And owing to this fact, Baron Liebig proposes to call substances used for food, containing nitrogen, "elements of nutrition," and those containing an excess of carbon, "elements of respiration;" since, according to his view, the food is necessary to support the growth of the body by replacing the effete and worn-out particles with new matter, and also to keep up the supply of fuel, in order to promote a sufficient degree of heat in the system. Accordingly, under the first division would be included all lean meats and vegetables, such as peas, &c.; while the fat of animals, vegetable oils, sugars, tubers, (as the potato,) and all other substances containing starch, would be included under the latter division. I. This definition of exhalants is from the theory of Haller and others. It is now believed that the fluids exude through the thin coats of the blood vessels. This process is called _exosmose_, and is the _exhalation_ of old physiologists. J. It is a well-established fact, in animal and vegetable physiology, that membranes possess the property of allowing fluids and gases to pass through them in either direction, and also to permit two fluids to pass in opposite directions at the same time. This property is designated _endosmose_ when a fluid passes from without a body inward; and _exosmose_ when the reverse takes place. The first is called _imbibition_. One of the most striking instances of this, in the human system, is shown in the lungs, where carbonic acid and water pass out through the mucous membrane of the bronchial tubes and air-cells; and the oxygen of the air enters the blood through the same membrane. By this process of imbibition, the oxygenation of the blood is much more readily and faithfully accomplished; inasmuch, as by the immense number of bronchial tubes and air-cells a larger quantity of blood is exposed to a greater portion of air, than if the blood were directly laid open to the atmosphere in a mass, or the air were immediately transmitted through it. Since the function of respiration is to free the system of superfluous carbon and hydrogen, by union with the oxygen of the air, it follows that the greater the amount of the products to be expelled, the larger the quantity of oxygen will be required to effect this purpose, as we find to be the case with those who consume large quantities of food. The quantity of oxygen daily consumed through the lungs by an adult is about 32.5 oz., and the carbon in the food 13.9 oz. But in order to convert this whole amount of carbon into carbonic acid, which passes off through the lungs and skin, 37 oz. of oxygen are required; the remaining 4.5 oz. being absorbed by the skin. If the supply of food remain the same, while the amount of oxygen in the inspired air is diminished, the superfluous carbon will induce disease in the system, as is the case of those persons who are limited in their supply of air of a proper quality or quantity, and, consequently, have less appetite for food than those who are abundantly supplied with air of the proper standard of health; and in children, who proportionally consume more food than adults, and who are more active, thereby causing a more rapid circulation of blood, and, consequently, the removal of more superfluous particles of matter. In children we notice the need of air, by their disposition to be much in the open air, and often inspiring more deeply than is common in older persons. Also, if the carbon of the food does not have a requisite supply of oxygen from the air, or other sources, the body becomes emaciated, although nourishing food may be used. And on the other hand, if there be a diminished supply of food, but an abundance of atmospheric air, leanness and emaciation are sure to follow; owing to the fact that if the oxygen has no waste carbon from the body to unite with, it combines with the fat, and some other soft portions of the body, which the Author of nature seems to have provided for this very purpose; as is seen in the case of hibernating animals, who enter their places of winter abode sleek and fat, but crawl out in the spring not merely deprived of their fatty matter, but also with great diminution of all the softer parts, which have given up their share of carbon to supply animal heat. One important cause of emaciation in febrile diseases is the greater rapidity of the pulse and respiration, which consume more carbon than is afforded by the scanty supply of food that is taken, although profuse perspiration, which almost always occurs in some stages of fevers, greatly diminishes the full state of the body. K. The theory of Baron Liebig concerning the change which the blood experiences in color, in its passage through the lungs, meets with the approbation of many physiologists, although there are some important difficulties in the way of fully receiving it. A chemical analysis of the blood shows it to be composed of albumen and fibrin, together with some other substances, in small proportions, and always perceptible traces of iron. He attributes the change in color to the iron, as this substance enters into combination with carbon and oxygen. For, as the blood passes through the trunks of the larger vessels and capillaries, it receives the carbon from the tissues which are continually transformed, and taking up the oxygen from the arterialized blood, forms carbonic acid, which unites with the iron, forming proto-carbonate of iron. This being of a gray color, he supposes it to be that which, with the other impurities of the blood, gives the venous blood the dark blue color. Then, as the blood comes in contact with the oxygen, as it is returned and exposed to this element in the lungs, the carbonic acid leaves the iron, which has a stronger affinity for oxygen than for carbonic acid, and forms the scarlet red peroxide of iron, that gives the characteristic color to the arterial blood. After this, as the blood is sent out through the smaller arteries and capillaries, it again gathers carbon and other impurities from the system, and becomes the dark, venous blood, thus completing the whole change of color in the circulation. L. As already mentioned, different articles of food have been divided into the azotized and non-azotized, or those which contain nitrogen as one of their constituents, and those which are nearly destitute of it. Of these, according to Liebig, the azotized portions are simply to supply the waste that is continually going on in the body, and promote its growth in the early stages of existence, or, in other words, the nutrient portion; while the sugar, starch, &c., are mainly of use in the respiratory organs. The correctness of this view may be understood from the fact, that the inhabitants in the colder regions of the earth consume a much larger quantity of oil and fat than the residents of hotter climates; and also those dwelling in the temperate zones can eat with greater impunity a larger quantity of fat meats in the winter than in the summer, there being then so much more demand for animal heat than in the summer. M. The suggestion of using the bellows in asphyxia, is from the directions of that distinguished and veteran surgeon, Valentine Mott, of New York city. The directions in the first part of the paragraph are the most practical, and best adapted to the wants of the community. GLOSSARY AB-DUC´TOR. [L. _abduco_ to lead away.] A muscle which moves certain parts, by separating them from the axis of the body. AB-DO´MEN. [L. _abdo_, to hide.] That part of the body which lies between the thorax and the bottom of the pelvis. AB-DOM´IN-IS. Pertaining to the abdomen. A-CE-TAB´U-LUM. [L. _acetum_, vinegar.] The socket for the head of the thigh-bone; an ancient vessel for holding vinegar. A-CE´TIC. [L. _acetum_, vinegar.] Relating to acetic acid. This is always composed of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, in the same proportion. A-CHIL´LIS. A term applied to the tendon of two large muscles of the leg. A-CRO´MI-ON. [Gr. +akros+, _akros_, highest, and +ômos+, _omos_, shoulder.] A process of the scapula that joins to the clavicle. AD-DUC´TOR. [L. _adduco_, to lead to.] A muscle which draws one part of the body toward another. AL-BU-GIN´E-A. [L. _albus_, white.] A term applied to white textures. AL-BU´MEN. [L. _albus_, white.] An animal substance of the same nature as the white of an egg. A-LU´MIN-UM. [L.] The name given to the metallic base of alumina. AL´VE-O-LAR. [L. _alveolus_, a socket] Pertaining to the sockets of the teeth. AM-MO´NI-A. An alkali. It is composed of three equivalents of hydrogen and one of nitrogen. A-NAS´TO-MOSE. [Gr. +ana+, _ana_, through, and +stoma+, _stoma_, mouth.] The communication of arteries and veins with each other. AN-A-TOM´I-CAL. Relating to the parts of the body, when dissected or separated. A-NAT´O-MY. [Greek +ana+, _ana_, through, and +tomê+, _tomê_ a cutting.] The description of the structure of animals. The word _anatomy_ properly signifies dissection. AN´GU-LI. [L. _angulus_, a corner.] A term applied to certain muscles on account of their form. AN-I-MAL´CU-L�. [L. _animalcula_, a little animal.] Animals that are only perceptible by means of a microscope. AN´NU-LAR. [L. _annulus_, a ring.] Having the form of a ring. AN-TI´CUS. [L.] A term applied to certain muscles. A-ORT´A. [Gr. +aortê+, _aortê_; from +aêr+, _aêr_, air, and +têreô+, _têreo_, to keep.] The great artery that arises from the left ventricle of the heart. AP-O-NEU-RO´SIS. [Gr. +apo+, _apo_, from, and +neuron+, _neuron_, a nerve.] The membranous expansions of muscles and tendons. The ancients called every white tendon _neuron_, a nerve. AP-PA-RA´TUS. [L. _apparo_, to prepare.] An assemblage of organs designed to produce certain results. AP-PEND´IX. [L., an addition.] Something appended or added. A´QUE-OUS. [L. _aqua_, water.] Partaking of the nature of water. A-RACH´NOID. [Gr. +arachnê+, _arachnê_, a spider, and +eidos+, _eîdos_, form.] Resembling a spider's web. A thin membrane that covers the brain. AR´BOR. [L.] A tree. _Arbor vitæ._ The tree of life. A term applied to a part of the cerebellum. AR´TE-RY. [Gr. +aêr+, _aêr_, air, and +têreô+, _têreo_, to keep; because the ancients thought that the arteries contained only air.] A tube through which blood flows from the heart. A-RYT-E´NOID. [Gr. +arytaina+, _arutaina_, a ewer, and +eidos+, _eîdos_, form.] The name of a cartilage of the larynx. AS-CEND´ENS. [L.] Ascending; rising. AS-PHYX´I-A. [Gr. +a+, _a_, not, and +sphyxis+, _sphyxis_, pulse.] Originally, want of pulse; now used for suspended respiration, or apparent death. AS-TRAG´A-LUS. [Gr.] The name of a bone of the foot. One of the tarsal bones. AUD-I´TION. [L. _audio_, to hear.] Hearing. AUD-IT-O´RI-US. [L.] Pertaining to the organ of hearing. AU´RI-CLE. [L. _auricula_, the external ear; from _auris_, the ear.] A cavity of the heart. AU-RIC´U-LAR. [L. _auricula_.] Pertaining to the auricle. AX-IL´LA. [L.] The armpit. AX´IL-LA-RY. Belonging or relating to the armpit. A-ZOTE´. [Gr. +a+, _a_, not, and +zôê+, _zoê_, life.] Nitrogen. One of the constituent elements of the atmosphere. So named because it will not sustain life. BEN-ZO´IC. _Benzoic acid._ A peculiar vegetable acid, obtained from benzoin and some other balsams. BI´CEPS. [L. _bis_, twice, and _caput_, a head.] A name applied to muscles with two heads at one extremity. BI-CUS´PIDS. [L. _bis_ and _cuspis_, a point.] Teeth that have two points upon their crown. BILE. [L. _bilis_.] A yellow, viscid fluid secreted by the liver. BI-PEN´NI-FORM. [L. _bis_ and _penna_, a feather.] _Bipenniform muscle._ Having fibres on each side of a common tendon. BRACH´I-AL. [L. _brachium_.] Belonging to the arm. BRE´VIS. [L.] _Brevis_, short; _brevior_, shorter. BRONCH´I-A, -�. [L.] A division of the trachea that passes to the lungs. BRONCH´I-AL. Relating to the bronchia. BRONCH-I´TIS. [L.] An inflammation of the bronchia. BUC-CI-NA´TOR. [L. _buccinum_, a trumpet.] The name of a muscle of the cheek, so named because used in blowing wind instruments. BUR´S� MU-CO´SA. [L. _bursa_, a purse, and _mucosa_, viscous.] Small sacs, containing a viscid fluid, situated about the joints, under tendons. C�´CUM. [L.] Blind; the name given to the commencement of the colon. CALX, CAL´CIS. [L.] The heel-bone. CAL´CI-UM. [L.] The metallic basis of lime. CAP´IL-LA-RY. [L. _capillus_, a hair.] Resembling a hair; small. CAP´SU-LAR. Pertaining to a capsule. CAP´SULE. [L. _capsula_, a little chest.] A membranous bag, enclosing a part. CA´PUT. [L.] The head. _Caput coli._ The head of the colon. CAR´BON. [L. _carbo_, a coal.] Pure charcoal. An elementary combustible substance. CAR-BON´IC. Pertaining to carbon. CAR´DI-AC. [Gr. +kardia+, _kardia_, heart.] Relating to the heart, or upper orifice of the stomach. CAR´NE-A, -�. [L. _caro_, _carnis_, flesh.] Fleshy. CA-ROT´ID. [Gr. +karos+, _karos_, lethargy.] The great arteries of the neck that convey blood to the heart. The ancients supposed drowsiness to be seated in these arteries. CAR´PAL. [L. _carpus_, the wrist.] Relating to the wrist. CAR´PUS, -I. [L.] The wrist. CAR´TI-LAGE. [L. _cartilago_.] Gristle. A smooth, elastic substance, softer than bone. CAR-TI-LAG´IN-OUS. Pertaining to cartilage. CAU-CA´SIAN. One of the races of men. CA´VA. [L.] Hollow. _Vena cava._ A name given to the two great veins of the body. CEL´LU-LAR. [L. _cellula_, a little cell.] Composed of cells. CER-E-BEL´LUM. [L.] The hinder and lower part of the brain, or the little brain. CER´E-BRAL. Pertaining to the brain. CER´E-BRUM. [L.] The front and large part of the brain. The term is sometimes applied to the whole contents of the cranium. CER´E-BRO-SPI´NAL. Relating to the brain and spine. CER´VIX. [L.] The neck. CER´VI-CAL. Relating to the neck. CHEST. [Sax.] The thorax; the trunk of the body from the neck to the abdomen. CHLO´RINE. [Gr. +chloros+, _chloros_, green.] _Chlorine gas_, so named from its color. CHOR´DA, -�. [L.] A cord. An assemblage of fibres. CHO´ROID. [Gr. +chorion+, _chorion_.] A term applied to several parts of the body that resemble the skin. CHYLE. [Gr. +chulos+, _chulos_, juice.] A nutritive fluid, of a whitish appearance, which is extracted from food by the action of the digestive organs. CHYL-I-FI-CA´TION. [_chyle_ and L. _facio_, to make.] The process by which chyle is formed. CHYME. [Gr. +chumos+, _chumos_, juice.] A kind of grayish pulp formed from the food in the stomach. CHYM-I-FI-CA´TION. [_chyme_ and L. _facio_, to make.] The process by which chyme is formed. CIL´IA-RY. [L. _cilia_, eyelashes.] Belonging to the eyelids. CIN-E-RI´TIOUS. [L. _cinis_, ashes.] Having the color of ashes. CLAV´I-CLE. [L. _clavicula_, from _clavis_, a key.] The collar-bone; so called from its resemblance in shape to an ancient key. CLEI´DO. A term applied to some muscles that are attached to the clavicle. CO-AG´U-LUM. [L.] A coagulated mass, a clot of blood. COC´CYX. [Gr.] An assemblage of bones joined to the sacrum. COCH´LE-A. [Gr. +kochlô+, _kochlo_, to twist; or L. _cochlea_, a screw.] A cavity of the ear resembling in form a snail shell. CO´LON. [Gr.] A portion of the large intestine. CO-LUM´NA, -�.[L.] A column or pillar. COM-MU´NIS. [L.] A name applied to certain muscles. COM-PLEX´US. [L. _complector_, to embrace.] The name of a muscle that embraces many attachments. COM-PRESS´OR. [L. _con_, together, and _premo_, _pressus_, to press.] A term applied to some muscles, that compress the parts to which they are attached. CON´DYLE. [Gr. +kondulos+, _kondulos_, a knuckle, a protuberance.] A prominence on the end of a bone. CON-JUNC-TI´VA. [L. _con_, together, and _jungo_, to join.] The membrane that covers the anterior part of the globe of the eye. COP´PER. A metal of a pale, red color, tinged with yellow. COR-A´COID. [Gr. +korax+, _korax_, a crow, and +eidos+, _eîdos_, form.] A process of the scapula shaped like the beak of a crow. CO´RI-ON. [Gr. +chorion+, _chorion_, skin.] The true skin. CORN´E-A. [L. _cornu_, a horn.] The transparent membrane in the fore part of the eye. COS´TA. [L. _costa_, a coast, side, or rib.] A rib. CRIB´RI-FORM. [L. _cribrum_, a sieve, and _forma_, form.] A plate of the ethmoid bone, through which the olfactory nerve passes to the nose. CRI´COID. [Gr. +krikos+, _krikos_, a ring, and +eidos+, _eîdos_, form.] A name given to a cartilage of the larynx, from its form. CRYS´TAL-LINE. [L. _crystallinus_, consisting of crystal.] _Crystalline lens._ One of the humors of the eye. It is convex, white, firm, and transparent. CU´BI-TUS, -I. [L. _cubitus_, the elbow.] One of the bones of the forearm, also called the _ulna_. CU´BOID. [Gr. +kubos+, _kubos_, a cube, and +eidos+, _eîdos_, form.] Having nearly the form of a cube. CU-NE´I-FORM. [L. _cuneus_, a wedge.] The name of bones in the wrist and foot. CUS´PID. [L. _cuspis_, a point.] Having one point. CU-TA´NE-OUS. [L. _cutis_, skin.] Belonging to the skin. CU´TI-CLE. [L. _cutis_.] The external layer of the skin. CU´TIS VE´RA. [L. _cutis_, and _vera_, true.] The internal layer of the skin; the true skin. DEL´TOID. [Gr. +delta+, _delta_, the Greek letter +Delta+, and +eidos+, _eîdos_, form.] The name of a muscle, that resembles in form the Greek letter +Delta+. DENS. [L.] A tooth. DENT´AL. [L. _dens_, tooth.] Pertaining to the teeth. DE-PRESS´OR. [L.] The name of a muscle that draws down the part to which it is attached. DERM´OID. [Gr. +derma+, _derma_, the skin, and +eidos+, _eîdos_, form.] Resembling skin. DE-SCEND´ENS. [L. _de_ and _scando_, to climb.] Descending, falling. DI´A-PHRAGM. [Gr. +diaphragma+, _diaphragma_, a partition.] The midriff; a muscle separating the chest from the abdomen. DI-AR-RHOE´A. [Gr. +diarreô+, _diarrheo_, to flow through.] A morbidly frequent evacuation of the intestines. DI-AS´TO-LE. [Gr. +diastellô+, _diastello_, to put asunder.] The dilatation of the heart and arteries when the blood enters them. DI-GES´TION. [L. _digestio_.] The process of dissolving food in the stomach, and preparing it for circulation and nourishment. DIG-I-TO´RUM. [L. _digitus_, a finger.] A term applied to certain muscles of the extremities. DOR´SAL. [L. _dorsum_, the back.] Pertaining to the back. DU-O-DE´NUM. [L. _duodenus_, of twelve fingers' breadth.] The first portion of the small intestine. DU´RA MA´TER. [L. _durus_, hard, and _mater_, mother.] The outermost membrane of the brain. DYS´EN-TER-Y. [Gr. +dys+, _dûs_, bad, and +enteria+, _enteria_, intestines.] A discharge of blood and mucus from the intestines attended with tenesmus. DYS-PEP´SI-A. [Gr. +dys+, _dûs_, bad, and +peptô+, _pepto_, to digest.] Indigestion, or difficulty of digestion. EN-AM´EL. [Fr.] The smooth, hard substance which covers the crown or visible part of a tooth. EP-I-DERM´IS. [Gr. +epi+, _epi_, upon, and +derma+, _derma_, the skin.] The scarf-skin; the cuticle. EP-I-GLOT´TIS. [Gr. +epi+, _epi_, upon, and +glôtta+, _glôtta_, the tongue.] One of the cartilages of the glottis. EU-STA´CHI-AN TUBE. A channel from the fauces to the middle ear, named from Eustachius, who first described it. EX´CRE-MENT. [L. _excerno_, to separate.] Matter excreted and ejected; alvine discharges. EX-CRE-MEN-TI´TIAL. Pertaining to excrement. EX´CRE-TO-RY. A little duct or vessel, destined to receive secreted fluids, and to excrete or discharge them; also, a secretory vessel. EX-HA´LANT. [L. _exhalo_, to send forth vapor.] Having the quality of exhaling or evaporating. EX-TENS´OR. [L.] A name applied to a muscle that serves to extend any part of the body; opposed to _Flexor_. FA´CIAL. [L. _facies_, face.] Pertaining to the face. FALX. [L. _falx_, a scythe.] A process of the dura mater shaped like a scythe. FAS´CI-A. [L. _fascia_, a band.] A tendinous expansion or aponeurosis. FAS-CIC´U-LUS, -LI. [L. _fascis_, a bundle.] A little bundle. FAUX, -CES. [L.] The top of the throat. FEM´O-RAL. Pertaining to the femur. FEM´O-RIS. A term applied to muscles that are attached to the femur. FE´MUR. [L.] The thigh-bone. FE-NES´TRA, -UM. [L. _fenestra_, a window.] A term applied to some openings into the internal ear. FI´BRE. [L. _fibra_.] An organic filament, or thread, which enters into the composition of every animal and vegetable texture. FI´BRIN. A peculiar organic substance found in animals and vegetables; it is a solid substance, tough, elastic, and composed of thready fibres. FI´BROUS. Composed or consisting of fibres. FI´BRO-CAR´TI-LAGE. An organic tissue, partaking of the nature of fibrous tissue and that of cartilage. FIB´U-LA. [L., a clasp.] The outer and lesser bone of the leg. FIB´U-LAR. Belonging to the fibula. FIL´A-MENT. [L. _filamenta_, threads.] A fine thread, of which flesh, nerves, skin, &c., are composed. FLEC´TION. [L. _flectio_.] The act of bending. FOL´LI-CLE. [L. _folliculus_, a small bag.] A gland; a little bag in animal bodies. FORE´ARM. The part of the upper extremity between the elbow and hand. FOS´SA. [L., a ditch.] A cavity in a bone, with a large aperture. FR�´NUM. [L., a bridle.] _Frænum linguæ._ The bridle of the tongue. FUNC´TION. [L. _fungor_, to perform.] The action of an organ or system of organs. FUN´GI-FORM. [L. _fungus_ and _forma_.] Having terminations like the head of a fungus, or a mushroom. GAN´GLI-ON, -A. [Gr.] An enlargement in the course of a nerve. GAS´TRIC. [Gr. +gastêr+, _gastêr_, the stomach.] Belonging to the stomach. GAS-TROC-NE´MI-US. [Gr. +gastêr+, _gastêr_, the stomach, and +knêmê+, _knêmê_, the leg.] The name of large muscles of the leg. GEL´A-TIN. [L. _gelo_, to congeal.] A concrete animal substance, transparent and soluble in water. GLE´NOID. [Gr. +glênê+, _glênê_, a cavity.] A term applied to some articulate cavities of bones. GLOS´SA. [Gr.] The tongue. Names compounded with this word are applied to muscles of the tongue. GLOS´SO-PHA-RYN´GI-AL. Relating to the tongue and pharynx. GLOT´TIS. [Gr.] The narrow opening at the upper part of the larynx. GLU´TE-US. [Gr.] A name given to muscles of the hip. HEM´OR-RHAGE. [Gr. +haima+, _haima_, blood and +rêgnuô+, _rêgnuo_, to burst.] A discharge of blood from an artery or vein. HU´MER-US. [L.] The bone of the arm. HY´A-LOID. [Gr.] A transparent membrane of the eye. HY´DRO-GEN. [Gr. +hydôr+, water, and +gennaô+, to generate.] A gas which constitutes one of the elements of water. HY´GI-ENE. [Gr. +hugieinon+, _hugieînon_, health.] The part of medicine which treats of the preservation of health. HY´OID. [Gr. +u+ and +eidos+, _eîdos_, shape.] A bone of the tongue resembling the Greek letter upsilon in shape. HY-OID´E-US. Pertaining to the hyoid bone. HY´PO-GLOS´SAL. Under the tongue. The name of a nerve of the tongue. IL´E-UM. [Gr. +eilô+, _eilô_, to wind.] A portion of the small intestines. IL´I-AC. [From the above.] The flank; pertaining to the small intestine. IL´I-UM. The haunch-bone. IN-CI´SOR. [L. _incido_, to cut.] A front tooth that cuts or divides. IN´DEX. [L. _indico_, to show.] The fore-finger; the pointing finger. IN-NOM-I-NA´TA. [L. _in_, not, and _nomen_, name.] Parts which have no proper name. IN-OS´CU-LATE. [L. _in_ and _osculatus_, from _osculor_, to kiss.] To unite, as two vessels at their extremities. IN´TER. [L.] Between. IN-TER-COST´AL. [L. _inter_, between, and _costa_, a rib.] Between the ribs. IN-TER-NO´DI-I. [L. _inter_, between, and _nodus_, knot.] A term applied to some muscles of the forearm. IN-TER-STI´TIAL. [L. _inter_, between, and _sto_, to stand.] Pertaining to or containing interstices. IN-TES´TINES. [L. _intus_, within.] The canal that extends from the stomach to the anus. I´RIS. [L., the rainbow.] The colored circle that surrounds the pupil of the eye. I´VO-RY. A hard, solid, fine-grained substance of a fine white color; the tusk of an elephant. JE-JU´NUM. [L., empty.] A portion of the small intestine. JU´GU-LAR. [L. _jugulum_, the neck.] Relating to the throat. The great veins of the neck. LA´BI-UM, LA´BI-I. [L.] The lips. LAB´Y-RINTH. [Gr.] The internal ear, so named from its many windings. LACH´RY-MAL. [L. _lachryma_, a tear.] Pertaining to tears. LAC´TE-AL. [L., _lac_, milk.] A small vessel or tube of animal bodies for conveying chyle from the intestine to the thoracic duct. LAM´I-NA, -�. [L.] A plate, or thin coat lying over another. LAR´YNX. [Gr. +larunx+, _larunx_.] The upper part of the windpipe. LAR-YN-GI´TIS. Inflammation of the larynx. LA-TIS´SI-MUS, -MI. [L., superlative of _latus_, broad.] A term applied to some muscles. LE-VA´TOR. [L. _levo_, to raise.] A name applied to a muscle that raises some part. LIG´A-MENT. [L. _ligo_, to bind.] A strong, compact substance serving to bind one bone to another. LIN´E-A, -�. [L.] A line. LIN´GUA, -�. [L.] A tongue. LIV´ER. The name of one of the abdominal organs, the largest gland in the system. It is situated below the diaphragm, and secretes the bile. LOBE. A round projecting part of an organ. LON´GUS, LON´GI-OR. [L., long, longer.] A term applied to several muscles. LUM´BAR. [L. _lumbus_, the loins.] Pertaining to the loins. LYMPH. [L. _lympha_, water.] A colorless fluid in animal bodies, and contained in vessels called lymphatics. LYM-PHAT´IC. A vessel of animal bodies that contains or conveys lymph. MAG-NE´SI-UM. The metallic base of magnesia. MAG´NUS, -NA, -NUM. [L., great.] A term applied to certain muscles. MA´JOR. [L., greater.] Greater in extent or quantity. MAN´GA-NESE. A metal of a whitish gray color. MAR´ROW. [Sax.] A soft, oleaginous substance, contained in the cavities of bones. MAS-SE´TER. [Gr. +massaomai+, _massaomai_, to chew.] The name of a muscle of the face. MAS´TI-CATE, MAS-TI-CA´TION. [L. _mastico_.] To chew; the act of chewing. MAS´TOID. [Gr. +mastos+, _mastos_, breast, and +eidos+, _eîdos_, form.] the name of a process of the temporal bone behind the ear. MAS-TOID´E-US. A name applied to muscles that are attached to the mastoid process. MAX-IL´LA. [L.] The jaw-bone. MAX´IL-LA-RY. Pertaining to the jaw. MAX´I-MUS, -UM. [L., superlative of _magnus_, great.] A term applied to several muscles. ME-A´TUS. [L. _meo_, to go.] A passage or channel. ME-DI-AS-TI´NUM. A membrane that separates the chest into two parts. ME´DI-UM, -A. [L.] The space or substance through which a body passes to any point. MED´UL-LA-RY. [L., _medulla_, marrow.] Pertaining to marrow. ME-DUL´LA OB-LON-GA´TA. Commencement of the spinal cord. ME-DUL´LA SPI-NA´LIS. The spinal cord. MEM´BRA-NA. A membrane; a thin, white, flexible skin formed by fibres interwoven like net-work. MEM´BRA-NOUS. Relating to membrane. MES´EN-TER-Y. [Gr. +mesos+, _mesos_, the middle, and +enteron+, _enteron_, the intestine.] The membrane in the middle of the intestines, by which they are attached to the spine. MES-EN-TER´IC. Pertaining to the mesentery. MET-A-CAR´PAL. Relating to the metacarpus. MET-A-CAR´PUS. [Gr. +meta+, _meta_, after, and +karpos+, _karpos_, wrist.] The part of the hand between the wrist and fingers. MET-A-TAR´SAL. Relating to the metatarsus. MET-A-TAR´SUS. [Gr. +meta+, _meta_, after, and +tarsos+, _tarsos_, the tarsus.] The instep. A term applied to seven bones of the foot. MID´RIFF. [Sax. _mid_, and _hrife_, the belly.] See DIAPHRAGM. MIN´I-MUS, -I. [L.] The smallest. A term applied to several muscles. MI´NOR. [L.] Less, smaller. A term applied to several muscles. MI´TRAL. [L. _mitra_, a mitre.] The name of the valves in the left side of the heart. MO-DI´O-LUS. [L. _modus_, a measure.] A cone in the cochlea around which the membranes wind. MO´LAR. [L. _mola_, a mill.] The name of some of the large teeth. MOL´LIS. [L.] Soft. MO´TOR, -ES. [L. _moveo_, to move.] A mover. A term applied to certain nerves. MU´COUS. Pertaining to mucus. MU´CUS. A viscid fluid secreted by the mucous membrane, which it serves to moisten and defend. MUS´CLE. A bundle of fibres enclosed in a sheath. MUS´CU-LAR. Relating to a muscle. MY-O´DES. A term applied to certain muscles of the neck. NA´SAL. Relating to the nose. NA´SUS. [L., the nose.] The nostrils. NERVE. An organ of sensation and motion in animals. NERV´OUS. Relating to the nerves. NEU-RI-LEM´A. [Gr. +neuron+, _neuron_, a nerve, and +lemma+, _lema_, a sheath.] The sheath or covering of a nerve. NI´GRUM. [L.] Black. NI´TRO-GEN. That element of the air which is called azote. NU-TRI´TION. The art or process of promoting the growth, or repairing the waste of the system. OC-CIP-I-TA´LIS. Pertaining to the back part of the head. OC´CI-PUT. [L. _ob_ and _caput_, the head.] The hinder part of the head. OC-U-LO´RUM. Of the eyes. OC´ULUS, -I. [L.] The eye. OE-SOPH´A-GUS. [Gr. +oiô+, _oiô_, to carry, and +phagô+, _phago_, to eat.] The name of the passage through which the food passes from the mouth to the stomach. O-LEC´RA-NON. [Gr. +ôlene+, _ôlene_, the cubit, and +kranon+, _kranon_, the head.] The elbow; the head of the ulna. OL-FACT´O-RY. [L. _oleo_, to smell, and _facio_, to make.] Pertaining to smelling. O-MEN´TUM. [L.] The caul. O´MO. [Gr. +ômos+, _ômos_, the shoulder.] Names compounded of this word are applied to muscles attached to the shoulder. OPH-THAL´MIC. [Gr. +ophthalmos+, _ophthalmos_, the eye.] Belonging to the eye. OP-PO´NENS. That which acts in opposition to something. The name of two muscles of the hand. OP´TI-CUS, OP´TIC. [Gr. +optomai+, _optomai_, to see.] Relating to the eye. OR-BIC´U-LAR. [L. _orbis_, a circle.] Circular. OR-BIC-U-LA´RIS. A name applied to several muscles. OR´GAN. A part of the system destined to exercise some particular function. OR´I-GIN. Commencement; source. OS. [L.] A bone; the mouth of any thing. O´RIS. [L. _os_, _oris_.] Of the mouth. OS HY-OID´ES. [Gr. See HYOID.] The name of the bone at the base of the tongue. OS´MA-ZOME. [Gr. +osmê+, _osmê_, smell, and +zômos+, _zômos_, broth.] A principle obtained from animal fibre which gives the peculiar taste to broth. OS´SA. [L., plural of _os_, bone.] Bones. OS´SE-OUS. Pertaining to bones. OS-SI-FI-CA´TION. The formation of bones in animals. OS´SI-FY. [L. _ossa_, bones, and _facio_, to make.] To convert into bone. OS´SIS. Of a bone. O-VA´LE. [L.] The shape of an egg. OX-AL´IC. Pertaining to sorrel. _Oxalic acid_ is the acid of sorrel. It is composed of two equivalents of carbon and three of oxygen. OX´Y-GEN. A permanently elastic fluid invisible and inodorous. One of the components of atmospheric air. PA-LA´TUM. [L.] The palate; the roof of the mouth. PAL-PE-BRA´RUM. [L. _palpebra_, the eyelid.] Of the eyelids. PAL´MAR. [L. _palma_, the palm.] Belonging to the hand. PAL-MA´RIS. A term applied to some muscles attached to the palm of the hand. PAN´CRE-AS. [Gr. +pan+, _pan_, all, and +kreas+, _kreas_, flesh.] The name of one of the digestive organs. PAN-CRE-AT´IC. Belonging to the pancreas. PA-PIL´LA, -�. [L.] Small conical prominences. PA-RAL´Y-SIS. Abolition of function whether of intellect, sensation, or motion. PA-REN´CHY-MA. [Gr. +parencheô+, _parengcheô_, to pour through.] The substance contained between the blood vessels of an organ. PA-ROT´ID. [Gr. +para+, _para_, near, and +ôtos+, _ôtos_, the gen. of +ous+, _ous_, the ear.] The name of the largest salivary gland. PA-TEL´LA, -�. [L.] The knee-pan. PA-THET´I-CUS, -CI. [Gr. +pathos+, _pathos_, passion.] The name of the fourth pair of nerves. PEC´TUS. [L.] The chest. PEC´TO-RAL. Pertaining to the chest. PEC-TO-RA´LIS. Belonging to the chest. PE´DIS. [L., gen. of _pes_, the foot.] Of the foot. PEL´I-TONGS. A term applied to masses of fat. PEL´LI-CLE. [L., dim. of _pellis_, the skin.] A thin skin or film. PEL´VIC. Relating to the pelvis. PEL´VIS. [L.] The basin formed by the large bones at the lower part of the abdomen. PEN´NI-FORM. [L. _penna_, a feather.] Having the form of a feather, or quill. PER-I-CAR´DI-UM. [Gr. +peri+, _peri_, around, and +kardia+, _kardia_, the heart.] A membrane that encloses the heart. PER-I-CHON´DRI-UM. [Gr. +peri+, _peri_, around, and +chondros+, _chondros_, cartilage.] A membrane that invests cartilage. PER-I-CRA´NI-UM. [Gr. +peri+, and +kranion+, _kranion_, the cranium.] A membrane that invests the skull. PER´MA-NENT. Durable; lasting. PER-I-STAL´TIC. [Gr. +peristellô+, _peristello_, to involve.] A movement like the crawling of a worm. PER-SPI-RA´TION. [L. _per_, through, and _spiro_, to breathe.] The excretion from the skin. PHAL´ANX, -GES. [Gr. +phalanx+, _phalanx_, an army.] Three rows of small bones forming the fingers or toes. PHA-LAN´GI-AL. Belonging to the fingers or toes. PHA-RYN´GE-AL. Relating to the pharynx. PHAR´YNX. [Gr. +pharunx+, _pharunx_.] The upper part of the oesophagus. PHOS´PHOR-US. [Gr. +phôs+, _phôs_, the light, and +pherô+, _pherô_, to bear.] A combustible substance, of a yellowish color, semi-transparent, resembling wax. PHREN´IC. [Gr. +phrên+, _phrên_, the mind.] Belonging to the diaphragm. PHYS-I-OL´O-GY. [Gr. +phusis+, _phusis_, nature, and +logos+, _logos_, a discourse.] The science of the functions of the organs of animals and plants. PI´A MA´TER. [L., good mother.] The name of one of the membranes of the brain. PIG-MEN´TUM. [L.] Paint; a preparation of colors. PIN´NA. [L., a wing.] A part of the external ear. PLA-TYS´MA. [Gr. +platus+, _platûs_, broad.] A muscle of the neck. PLEU´RA, -�. [Gr. +pleura+, _pleura_, the side.] A thin membrane that covers the inside of the thorax, and also forms the exterior coat of the lungs. PLEU´RAL. Relating to the pleura. PLEX´US. [L. _plecto_, to weave together.] Any union of nerves, vessels, or fibres, in the form of net-work. PNEU-MO-GAS´TRIC. [Gr. +pneumôn+, _pneumôn_, the lungs, and +gastêr+, _gastêr_, the stomach.] Belonging to both the stomach and lungs. POL´LI-CIS. [L.] A term applied to muscles attached to the fingers and toes. PONS. [L.] A bridge. _Pons varolii._ A part of the brain formed by the union of the crura cerebri and cerebelli. POP-LIT-E´AL. [L. _poples_, the ham.] Pertaining to the ham or knee-joint. A name given to various parts. POS´TI-CUS. [L.] Behind; posterior. A term applied to certain muscles. POR´TI-O DU´RA. [L., hard portion.] The facial nerve; 8th pair. POR´TI-O MOL´LIS. [L., soft portion.] The auditory nerve; 7th pair. PO-TAS´SI-UM. [L.] The metallic basis of pure potash. PRO-BOS´CIS. [Gr. +pro+, _pro_, before, and +boskô+, _boskô_, to feed.] The snout or trunk of an elephant or other animal. PROC´ESS. A prominence or projection. PRO-NA´TOR. [L. _pronus_, turned downward.] The muscle of the forearm that moves the palm of the hand downward. PSO´AS. [Gr. +psoai+, _psoai_, the loins.] The name of two muscles of the leg. PUL-MON´IC. } } PUL´MO-NA-RY. } [L. _pulmo_, the lungs.] Belonging or } relating to the lungs. PUL-MO-NA´LIS. } PU´PIL. A little aperture in the centre of the iris, through which the rays of light pass to the retina. PY-LOR´IC. Pertaining to the pylorus. PY-LOR´US. [Gr. +pulôros+, _pulôros_, a gate keeper.] The lower orifice of the stomach, with which the duodenum connects. RA´DI-US. [L., a ray, a spoke of a wheel.] The name of one of the bones of the forearm. RA-DI-A´LIS. Radial; belonging to the radius. RA´DI-ATE. Having lines or fibres that diverge from a point. RA´MUS. [L.] A branch. A term applied to the projections of bones. REC-RE-MEN-TI´TIAL. [L. _re_, again, and _cerno_, to secrete.] Consisting of superfluous matter separated from that which is valuable. REC´TUM. The third and last portion of the intestines. REC´TUS, -I. [L.] Straight; erect. A term applied to several muscles. RE-SID´U-AL. Pertaining to waste matter. RE-SID´U-UM. [L.] Waste matter. The fæces. RES-PI-RA´TION. [L. _re_, again, and _spiro_, to breathe.] The act of breathing. Inspiring air into the lungs and expelling it again. RE-SPI´RA-TO-RY. Pertaining to respiration; serving for respiration. RET´I-NA. [L., _rete_, a net.] The essential organ of sight. One of the coats of the eye, formed by the expansion of the optic nerve. RO-TUN´DUM, -A. [L.] Round; circular. RU´GA, -�. [L.] A wrinkle; a fold. SAC´CU-LUS. [L., dim. of _saccus_, a bag.] A little sac. SA´CRAL. Pertaining to the sacrum. SA´CRUM. [L., sacred.] The bone which forms the posterior part of the pelvis, and is a continuation of the spinal column. SA-LI´VA. [L.] The fluid which is secreted by the salivary glands, which moistens the food and mouth. SAL´I-VA-RY. That which belongs to the saliva. SAN´GUIN-E-OUS. [L. _sanguis_, the blood.] Bloody; abounding with blood; plethoric. SAR-TO´RI-US. [L. _sartor_, a tailor.] A term applied to a muscle of the thigh. SCA´LA, -�. [L., a ladder.] Cavities of the cochlea. SCA-LE´NUS. [Gr. +skalênos+, _skalênos_, unequal.] A term applied to some muscles of the neck. SCAPH´OID. [Gr. +skaphê+, _skaphê_, a little boat.] The name applied to one of the wrist-bones. SCAP´U-LA. [L.] The shoulder-blade. SCAP´U-LAR. Relating to the scapula. SCARF-SKIN. The outer, thin integument of the body; the cuticle. SCI-AT´IC. [Gr., pertaining to the loins.] The name of the large nerve of the loins and leg. SCLE-ROT´IC. [Gr. +sklêros+, _sklêros_, hard.] A membrane of the eye. SE-BA´CEOUS. [L., _sebum_, tallow.] Pertaining to fat; unctuous matter. SE-CRE´TION. The act of secerning; the act of producing from the blood substances different front the blood itself, as bile, saliva. The matter secreted, as mucus, bile, &c. SE-CRE´TO-RY. Performing the office of secretion. SE-CUN´DUS. Second. A term applied to certain muscles. SEM-I-CIR´CU-LAR. Having the form of a half circle. The name of a part of the ear. SEM-I-TEN-DI-NO´SUS. [L. _semi_, half and _tendo_, a tendon.] The name of a muscle. SEP´TUM. [L.] A membrane that divides two cavities from each other. SE´ROUS. Thin; watery. Pertaining to serum. SE´RUM. [L.] The thin, transparent part of blood. SER-RA´TUS. [L. _serro_, to saw.] A term applied to some muscles of the trunk. SIG´MOID. [Gr.] Resembling the Greek +s+, sigma. SI-LI´CI-UM. A term applied to one of the earths. SI´NUS. [L., a bay.] A cavity, the interior of which is more expanded than the entrance. SKEL´E-TON. [Gr. +skellô+, _skellô_, to dry.] The aggregate of the hard parts of the body; the bones. SO´DI-UM. The metallic base of soda SPHINC´TER. [Gr. +sphingô+, _sphingo_, to restrict.] A muscle that contracts or shuts an orifice. SPI´NAL CORD. A prolongation of the brain. SPI-NA´LIS. Relating to the spine. SPINE. A thorn. The vertebral column; back-bone. SPI´NOUS. Belonging to the spinal column. SPLEEN. The milt. It is situated in the abdomen, and attached to the stomach. SPLEN´IC. Relating to the spleen. SPLE´NI-US. The name of a muscle of the neck. STA´PES. The name of one of the small bones of the ear. STER´NUM. The breast-bone. The bone that forms the front of the chest from the neck to the stomach. STOM´ACH. The principal organ of the digestive apparatus. STRA´TUM. [L. _sterno_, to stew.] A bed; a layer. STY´LOID. [L. _stylus_, a pencil.] An epithet applied to processes that resemble a style, a pen. SUB-CLA´VI-AN. [L. _sub_, under, and _clavis_, a key.] Situated under the clavicle. SUB-LI´MIS. High in place. SUB-LIN´GUAL. [L. _sub_, under, and _lingua_, the tongue.] Situated under the tongue. SUB-MAX´IL-LA-RY. [L. _sub_, under, and _maxilla_, the jaw-bone.] Located under the jaw. SUL´PHUR. A simple, mineral substance, of a yellow color, brittle, insoluble in water, but fusible by heat. SU-PE-RI-O´RIS. A term applied to certain muscles. SU-PI-NA´TOR. [L.] A muscle that turns the palm of the hand upward. SUT´URE. [L. _suo_, to sew.] The seam or joint that unites the bones of the skull. SYN-O´VI-A. [Gr. +syn+, _sûn_, with, and +ôon+, _ôon_, an egg.] The fluid secreted into the cavities of joints for the purpose of lubricating them. SYN-O´VI-AL. Pertaining to synovia. SYS´TEM. An assemblage of organs composed of the same tissues, and intended for the same functions. SYS-TEM´IC. Belonging to the general system. SYS´TO-LE. [Gr. +systellô+, _sûstellô_, to contract.] The contraction of the heart and arteries for expelling the blood and carrying on the circulation. TAR´SAL. Relating to the tarsus. TAR´SUS. [L.] The posterior part of the foot. TEN´DON. [Gr. +teinô+, _teino_, to stretch.] A hard, insensible cord, or bundle of fibres, by which a muscle is attached to a bone. TEN´DI-NA, -�. Pertaining to a tendon. TENS´OR. A muscle that extends a part. TEN-TAC´U-LA, -�. [L. _tento_, to seize.] A filiform process or organ on the bodies of various animals. TEN-TO´RI-UM. [L. _tendo_, to stretch.] A process of the dura mater which lies between the cerebrum and cerebellum. TE´RES. [L. _teres_, round.] An epithet given to many organs, the fibres of which are collected in small bundles. THO´RAX. [Gr.] That part of the skeleton that composes the bones of the chest. The cavity of the chest. THO-RAC´IC. Relating to the chest. THY´ROID. [Gr. +thureos+, _thureos_, a shield.] Resembling a shield. A cartilage of the larynx. TIB´I-A. [L., a flute.] The large bone of the leg. TIB-I-A´LIS, TIB´I-AL. Relating to the tibia. TIS´SUE. The texture or organization of parts. TON´SIL. [L.] A glandular body in the throat or fauces. TRA´CHE-A. [Gr. +trachus+, _trachus_, rough.] The windpipe. TRA´CHE-AL. Belonging to the trachea. TRANS-VERSE´, TRANS-VER-SA´LIS. Lying in a cross direction. TRA-PE´ZI-US. The name of a muscle, so called from its form. TRI´CEPS. [L. _tres_, three, and _caput_, head.] Three. A name given to muscles that have three attachments at one extremity. TRI-CUS´PID. [L. _tres_, three, and _cuspis_, point.] The triangular valves in the right side of the heart. TROCH´LE-A. [Gr. +trochalia+, _trochalia_, a pulley.] A pulley-like cartilage, over which the tendon of a muscle of the eye passes. TROCH-LE-A´RIS. The name of a muscle of the eye. TRUNK. The principal part of the body, to which the limbs are articulated. TU´BER-CLE. [L. _tuber_, a bunch.] A small push, swelling, or tumor, on animal bodies. TU-BER-OS´I-TY. The state of being knobbed or protuberant. TYM´PAN-UM. [L.] The middle ear. UL´NA. [L.] A bone of the forearm. UL´NAR, UL-NA´RIS. Relating to the ulna. U´RIC. [Gr. +ouron+, _ouron_, urine.] An acid contained in urine, and in gouty concretions. U-VE´A. [L. _uva_, a grape.] Resembling grapes. A thin membrane of the eye. U´VU-LA. A soft body, suspended from the palate, near the aperture of the nostrils, over the glottis. VAC´CINE VI´RUS. [L. _vacca_, a cow, _virus_, poison.] Pertaining to cows; derived from cows. VALVE. Any membrane, or doubling of any membrane, which prevents fluids from flowing back in the vessels and canals of the animal body. VAL´VU-LA, -�. A valve. VAS´CU-LAR. [L. _vasculum_, a vessel.] Pertaining to vessels; abounding in vessels. VAS´TUS. [L.] Great, vast. Applied to some large muscles. VEINS. Vessels that convey blood to the heart. VE´NOUS. Pertaining to veins. VEN´TRI-CLE. [L. _venter_, the stomach.] A small cavity of the animal body. VEN-TRIC´U-LAR. Relating to ventricles. VER-MIC´U-LAR. [L. _vermiculus_, a little worm.] Resembling the motions of a worm. VERM-I-FORM´IS. [L. _vermis_, a worm, and _forma_, form.] Having the form and shape of a worm. VERT´E-BRA, -�. [L. _verto_, to turn.] A joint of the spinal column. VERT´E-BRAL. Pertaining to the joints of the spinal column. VES´I-CLE. [L. _vesica_, a bladder.] A little bladder, or a portion of the cuticle separated from the cutis vera and filled with serum. VES´TI-BULE. [L.] A porch of a house. A cavity belonging to the ear. VIL´LI. [L.] Fine, small fibres. VI´RUS. [L. poison.] Foul matter of an ulcer; poison. VI´TAL. [L. _vita_, life.] Pertaining to life. VIT´RE-OUS. [L. _vitrum_, glass.] Belonging to glass. A humor of the eye. VO´LAR. [L. _vola_, the hollow of the hand or foot.] Belonging to the palm of the hand. VO´MER. [L. a ploughshare.] One of the bones of the nose. ZYG-O-MAT´I-CUS. [Gr. +zugos+, _zugos_, a yoke.] A term applied to some muscles of the face, from their attachment. INDEX. A. PAGE. ABDOMEN, 34 ABSORPTION, 181 ----, Varieties of, 183 ----, Cutaneous, 185 ACETABULUM, 38 ACIDS, Acetic, 28 ----, Benzoic, 28 ----, Muriatic, 440 ----, Nitric, 440 ----, Oxalic, 28, 440 ----, Sulphuric, 440 AIR, Composition of the, 223 ----, Influence of, on the Muscles, 90 ----, Quality of the, 223, 318 ----, Quantity inhaled, 222 ----, Quantity exhaled, 228 ----, Impure Air, the Effects of, 232 AIR VESICLES, 212 ALBUMEN, 27 ANIMAL HEAT, 252 AORTA, 159 ----, Valves of the, 157 APPARATUS, 18 ARTERIES, Structure of the, 158 ----, Cutaneous, 285 ----, Pulmonary, 158 ATTITUDE, Effects of, on Digestion, 152 ----, Effects of, on the Voice, 274 ----, Effects of, in Respiration, 245 AURICLES of the Heart, 156 ASPHYXIA, from Drowning, 249 ----, from Electricity, 250 ----, from Hanging, 250 ----, from Carbonic Gas, 251 AZOTE, 26 B. BATHING, Necessity of, 311 ----, Methods of, 313 ----, Proper Time for, 316 ----, Influence of, on the System, 316 ----, Frequency of, 317 BEDS, 309 BILE, 122 BLOOD, Composition of, 154 ----, Color of, 204 ----, Quantity of, 171 ----, Change of, 225 ----, Impure, Effects of, 205 BONES, Anatomy of the, 29 ----, Physiology of the, 48 ----, Hygiene of the, 53 ----, of the Head, 32 ----, of the Trunk, 34 ----, of the Upper Extremities, 39 ----, of the Lower Extremities, 42 ----, Composition of, 29 ----, Ossification of, 30 ----, Union of fractured, 62 ----, Influence of Position on the, 55 BRAIN, 329 ----, Functions of the, 346 ----, Effects of Impure Blood on the, 360 ----, Effects of inadequate Mental Exertion, 361 ----, Effects of excessive Mental Exertion, 363 ----, Directions for exercising the, 368 ----, Membranes of the, 334 ----, Injuries of the, 377 BRONCHIA, 212 BRONCHITIS, 214 BURNS AND SCALDS, 319 BURS� MUCOS�, 46 C. C�CUM, 118 CAPILLARIES, 163 CARBON, 26 CARBONIC GAS, where formed, 224 ----, Effects of, when inhaled, 230 ----, Effects of, on Combustion, 230 ----, Effects of, on Respiration, 231 CARPUS, 41 CARTILAGE, 45 ---- of the Larynx, 269 CAUL, 123 CELLULAR TISSUE, 19 CEREBELLUM, 331 CEREBRUM, 330 CHEST, 35 ----, Compression of the, 56 ----, Influence of the Size of the, 239 CHILBLAINS, 321 CHLORINE, 27 CHYLE, 126 CHYME, 126 CIRCULATORY ORGANS, Anatomy, 154 ----, Physiology of the, 164 ----, Hygiene of the, 172 CLAVICLE, 39 CLOTHING, Kind of, 301 ----, Amount of, 305 ----, Cleanliness of, 308 COCCYX, 38 COLDS, Treatment of, 248 COLON, 119 CONSUMPTION, how frequently produced, 247 CORNS, Treatment of, 295 CUTICLE, Structure of the, 282 ----, Use of the, 293 CUTIS VERA, Structure of the, 283 D. DEFINITIONS, General, 13 DIAPHRAGM, 73, 215 DIGESTIVE ORGANS, Anatomy of the, 113 ----, Physiology of the, 124 ----, Hygiene of the, 129 ----, Influence of the Mind on the, 148 ----, Influence of Pure Air on the, 151 ----, Influence of Position on the, 152 DRINKS, how taken, 145 DROWNED PERSONS, Treatment of, 249 DUODENUM, 117 E. EAR, Bones of, 34, 415 EPIGLOTTIS, 125, 270 EXHALANTS, 192 EXERCISE, how it should be taken, 91 ----, Influence of, on the Bones, 53 ----, Influence of, on Muscles, 85 ----, Influence of, on the Circulation, 173 EYE, 394 EXPIRATION, how effected, 220 F. FACE, Bones of the, 34 FASCIA, 66 FAT, 67, 195 FEMUR, 42 FIBRE, 18 FIBRIN, 27 FIBULA, 42 FILAMENT, 18 FLANNEL, Use of, 302 FLUIDS, Use of, 17 FOLLICLE, 192 FOOD, Quantity of the, 129 ----, Quality of the, 134 ----, Manner in which it is taken, 142 ----, Condition of the system, when taken, 146 FOOT, Bones of the, 44 FROZEN LIMBS, Treatment of, 320 G. GASTRIC JUICE, 125 GELATIN, 27 GLANDS, 193 ----, Gastric, 116 ----, Lachrymal, 402 ----, Lymphatic, 183 ----, Mesenteric, 121 ----, Oil, 288 ----, Perspiratory, 290 ----, Salivary, 114 GLOTTIS, 271 H. HAIR, 322 HEART, 154 ----, Auricles of the, 156 ----, Ventricles of the, 156 HEAT, Animal, 252 ----, Hygiene of, 261 HEARING, Anatomy of the Organs of, 414 ----, Physiology of the Organs of, 420 ----, Hygiene of the Organs of, 422 HUMERUS, 39 HEMORRHAGE, Means of arresting, 175 HYDROGEN, 26 I. ILEUM, 118 INTESTINES, 117 INNOMINATUM, 37 INSPIRATION, how effected, 219 IRON, 25 J. JEJUNUM, 118 JOINTS, Structure of the, 45 L. LACTEALS, 120, 181 LAMIN�, 17 LARYNX, 268 LARYNGITIS, 276 LIGAMENTS, 23, 47 ----, Use of, 50 ----, Capsular, 40 LIGHT, Influence on the Skin, 318 LIME, 25 LIVER, 122 LUNGS, 209 LYMPH, 30 LYMPHATICS, Anatomy of the, 181 ----, Physiology of the, 183 ----, Hygiene of the, 188 ----, Cutaneous, 287 M. MAGNESIA, 25 MARROW, Uses of, 24 MEDIASTINUM, 211 MEDULLA OBLONGATA, 333 MEMBRANE, 19 ----, Adipose, 20 ----, Cellular, 19 ----, Dermoid, 22, 282 ----, Mucous, 21 ----, Muscular, 24 ----, Serous, 21 MESENTERY, 120 METACARPUS, 41 MOUTH, Structure of, 113 MUCUS, 28 MUSCLES, Anatomy of, 64 ----, Physiology of, 76 ----, Hygiene of, 85 ----, Compression of, 93, 276 ----, Exhaustion of, 87, 101 ----, Effects of Pure Blood on, 89 ----, Effects of Pure Air on the, 90 ----, Effects of Light on the, 90 ----, Influence of the Mind on, 93 ----, Influence of Position on, 90 ----, Intercostal, 216 ----, Respiratory, 216 N. NAILS, 324 NERVES, Cranial, 335, 350 ----, Cutaneous, 286 ----, Respiratory, 340, 352 ----, Spinal, 341, 351 ----, Sympathetic, 343, 356 NERVOUS SYSTEM, Anatomy of, 327 ----, Physiology of, 346 ----, Hygiene of, 358 NITROGEN, 26 NOSE, Structure, 389 NURSES, Directions for, 433 NUTRITION, 200 ----, Hygiene of, 205 O. OESOPHAGUS, 116 OIL-GLANDS, Structure of the, 288 ----, Use of the, 297 OMENTUM, 123 ORGAN, 18 ORGANIC AND INORGANIC BODIES, Difference between, 14 ORIFICE, Cardiac, 116 ----, Pyloric, 116 OSMAZOME, 28 OXYGEN, 26 ----, Quantity at each Inspiration, 222 P. PAPILLA, 284 PANCREAS, 122 PAROTID GLAND, 114 PATELLA, 42 PERICARDIUM, 155 PERICHONDRIUM, 31 PERICRANIUM, 31 PERIOSTEUM, 31 PELVIS, Bones of the, 37 PERSPIRATORY APPARATUS, 290 ---- Use of, 298 PHALANGES, 42, 45 PHARYNX, 115 PHOSPHORUS, 26 PLEURA, 211 POISONS, and their Antidotes, 439 POTASH, 25 PRESERVATION OF HEALTH, 425 R. RADIUS, 41 READING, Proper Position in, 275 RECTUM, 120 REMOVAL OF DISEASE, 426 RESPIRATORY ORGANS, Anatomy of, 209 ----, Physiology of, 217 ----, Hygiene of, 228 RETINA, 397 RIBS, 35 ROOMS, Ventilation of, 233 ----, Warming of, 238 S. SACRUM, 38 SALIVA, Its Use, 124 SCAPULA, 39 SECRETORY ORGANS, Anatomy of, 192 ----, Physiology of, 193 ----, Hygiene of, 197 SENSES, 378 SICK-ROOM, Ventilation of, 236 SITTING, Proper Position in, 99 SKELETON, 29 SKIN, Anatomy of the, 282 ----, Physiology of the, 293 ----, Hygiene of the, 301 SKULL, Structure of, 32 SLEEP, Necessity of, 92 SLEEPING-ROOMS, Ventilation of, 235 SMELL, Anatomy of the Organs of, 389 ----, Physiology of the Organs of, 391 SODA, 25 SOLIDS, Arrangement of, 17 SOUND, 273 SPINAL COLUMN, Structure of, 36 ----, Curvature of, 57, 60 SPINAL CORD, 36, 340 SPLEEN, 123 SPRAINS, 63 STAMMERING, how improved, 281 STERNUM, 35 STOMACH, 116 SUBLINGUAL GLAND, 115 SUBMAXILLARY GLAND, 115 SULPHUR, 26 SUTURES, 33 SYNOVIAL MEMBRANE, 46 SYNOVIA, 49 SYSTEM, 18 T. TARSUS, 42 TASTE, Anatomy of the Organs of, 384 ----, Physiology of the Organs of, 386 TEETH, Anatomy of the, 105 ----, Physiology of the, 109 ----, Hygiene of the, 110 TENDONS, 23, 65 THORACIC DUCT, 120 THORAX, 35 THROAT, Extraneous Bodies in, 281 TIBIA, 42 TISSUE, 18 ----, Adipose, 20 ----, Cartilaginous, 23 ----, Fibrous, 22 ----, Osseous, 23 ----, Nervous, 24 TOUCH, Sense of, 378 ----, Hygiene of the, 379 TRACHEA, 212 U. ULNA, 40 UVEA, 396 V. VALVES of the Heart, 157 ----, Use of the, 164 ----, of the Veins, 162 VEINS, 160 ----, Cutaneous, 285 VENTILATION, 233 VENTRICLES of the Heart, 156 VERTEBRA, 36 VISION, Anatomy of the Organs of, 394 ----, Physiology of the Organs of, 404 ----, Hygiene of the Organs of, 410 VOCAL ORGANS, Anatomy of the, 268 ----, Physiology of the, 272 ----, Hygiene of the, 274 VOCAL CORDS, 270 W. WATCHERS, Directions for, 136 WOUNDS, Treatment of, 178 WRITING, Proper Position when, 103 KEY TO ANATOMICAL OUTLINE PLATES. SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. In using these plates, we would suggest, that the pupil carefully examine the illustrating cuts interspersed with the text, in connection with the lesson to be recited. The similarity between these and the plates will enable the pupil to recite, and the teacher to conduct his recitation, from the latter. Let a pupil show the situation of an organ, or part, on an anatomical outline plate, and also give its structure; while other members of the class note all omissions and misstatements. Another pupil may give the use of that organ, and if necessary, others may give an extended explanation. The third may explain the laws on which the health of the part depends, while other members of the class supply what has been omitted. After thus presenting the subject in the form Of topics, questions may be proposed promiscuously, from each paragraph, and where examples occur in the text, let other analogous ones be given. If the physiology and hygiene of a given subject have not been studied, confine the recitation to those parts only on which the pupil is prepared. When practicable, the three departments should be united; but this can only be done when the chapter on the hygiene has been learned, while the physiology can be united with the anatomy, in all chapters upon physiology. PLATE I. A FRONT VIEW OF THE SKELETON. _Bones of the Head._ 7, The sphenoid bone. 8, The frontal bone. 10, The parietal bone. 11, The os unguis. 12, The superior maxillary bone, (upper jaw.) 13, The nasal bone. 14, The ethmoid bone. 15, The malar bone, (cheek-bone.) 16, The vomer. 17, The inferior maxillary bone, (the lower jaw.) _a_, Its body. _b_, Its ramus, or branch. 18, The teeth. _Bones of the Trunk._ 1, 1, The spinal column. 2, The sternum. 3, 3, The ribs. 4, The sacrum. 5, The innominatum. _Bones of the Upper Extremities._ 19, The clavicle, (collar-bone.) 20, The scapula, (shoulder blade.) 21, The humerus. 22, The ulna. 23, The radius. 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, The bones of the carpus (wrist.) 32, 32, 32, The five bones of the metacarpus, (the palm of the hand.) 33, 33, 33, The first range of finger-bones. 34, 34, The second range of finger-bones. 35, 35, 35, The third range of finger-bones. _Bones of the Lower Extremities._ 36, The femur, (thigh-bone.) 37, The patella, (knee-pan.) 38, The tibia, (shin-bone.) 39, The fibula. 40, 40, 40, The bones of the tarsus, (instep.) 41, 41, The bones of the metatarsus, (middle of the foot.) 42, 42, The bones of the toes. ARTICULATIONS. (Left side of the plate.) _Ligaments of the Trunk._ 1, 1, The common spinal ligament. 2, 2, The intervertebral ligament, (cartilage between the vertebrae.) 9, 10, 11, 12, Articulations of the ribs with the spinal column. 13, 13, 14, 15, 16, Ligaments that connect the cartilages of the ribs with the sternum. _Ligaments of the Upper Extremities._ 25, The ligament that connects the clavicle and sternum. 27, The ligament that connects the upper rib and clavicle. 28, 29, 30, Ligaments that connect the clavicle and scapula. 31, 32, 33, 34, Ligaments of the shoulder-joint. 35, 35, 36, Ligaments of the elbow-joint. 37, 38, 39, 40, Ligaments of the wrist. 41, 42, 43, 44, Ligaments of the fingers. _Ligaments of the Lower Extremities._ 49, 49, Ligaments of the hip-joint. 50, 50, Ligaments of the patella. 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, Ligaments of the knee-joint. 56, A large bursa mucosa. 57, The ligament of the tibia and fibula. 58, 58, The interosseous ligament. 59, 59, Ligaments of the ankle-joint 60, 61, 62, Ligaments of the metatarsus. 63, 64, Ligaments of the toes. A, The brachial artery. B, The brachial vein. C, The radial artery D, The femoral artery. E, The femoral vein. F, G, The anterior tibia artery. PLATE II. A BACK VIEW OF THE SKELETON. _Bones of the Head._ 5, The occipital bone. 6, The parietal bone. 7, The temporal bone. 8, The frontal bone. 9, The sphenoid bone. 15, The malar bone. 16, The nasal bone. 17, The superior maxillary bone, (upper jaw.) 18, The inferior maxillary bone, (lower jaw.) 19, The teeth. _Bones of the Trunk._ 1, 1, The spinal column. 2, The sacrum. 3, The coccyx. 20, The innominatum. 4, 4, The ribs. _Bones of the Upper Extremities._ 21, The clavicle, (collar-bone.) 22, The scapula, (shoulder-blade.) 23, The humerus. 24. The ulna, 25, The radius. 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, The bones of the carpus, (wrist.) 33, 33, 33, The bones of the metacarpus, (palm of the hand.) 34, 34, 34, The first range of finger-bones. 35, 35, The second range of finger-bones. 36, 36, 36, The third range of finger-bones. _Bones of the Lower Extremities._ 37, The femur, (thigh-bone.) 38, The patella, (knee-pan.) 39, The tibia, (shin-bone.) 40, The fibula. 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, The bones of the tarsus, (instep.) 46, 46, The bones of the metatarsus, (middle of the foot.) 47, 47, Bones of the toes. ARTICULATIONS. (Left side of the plate.) _Ligaments of the Trunk._ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Ligaments of the spinal column. 14, 14, 15, 15, Ligaments that connect the ribs and spinal column. 11, 11, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, Ligaments that connect the sacrum and innominatum. _Ligaments of the Upper Extremities._ 27, 28, Ligaments that connect the clavicle and scapula. 29, The capsular ligament of the shoulder-joint. 30, 30, Ligaments of the elbow. 31, 32, 33, 34, Ligaments of the carpus, (wrist.) _Ligaments of the Lower Extremities._ 9, Tendon of the gluteus muscle. 35, The capsular ligament of the hip-joint. 36, 36, Ligaments of the knee-joint. 37, The ligament that connects the tibia and fibula. 38, The interosseous ligament. 39, 40, Ligaments of the ankle-joint. PLATE III. A FRONT VIEW OF THE MUSCLES. _Muscles of the Head and Neck._ 7, The sterno-mastoideus muscle. 8, The sterno-hyoideus muscle. 9, The omo-hyoideus muscle. 10, The trapezius muscle. 11, The orbicularis oculi muscle. 12, The frontal muscle. 14, The orbicularis oris muscle. 15, The elevator muscle of the nostrils. 16, The zygomatic muscle. 17, The depressor of the lower lip. 18, The depressor anguli oris muscle. 19, The triangular muscle of the nose. 20, 21, The aural muscles. 22, The masseter muscle. _Muscles of the Trunk._ 2, 3, The external oblique muscles. _Muscles of the Upper Extremities._ 1, The grand pectoral muscle. 3, 4, The serratus muscle. 23, The deltoid muscle. 24, The biceps brachialis muscle. 25, The coraco-brachialis muscle. 26, The anterior brachial muscle. 27, The triceps brachialis muscle. 28, The long supinator muscle. 29, The external radial muscle. 30, The pronator teres muscle. 31, The anterior radial muscle. 32, The palmaris brevis muscle. 33, The anterior ulnar muscle. 35, The palmar muscle. 36, The abductor muscle of the thumb. 37, The adductor muscle of the thumb. 38, 39, Small flexor muscles of the thumb. 40, The abductor muscle of the little finger. 41, 41, The lumbricales muscles. 61, 61, The bifurcation of the tendons of the superficial flexor muscle, in the fingers. _Muscles of the Lower Extremities._ 42, The fascia lata muscle. 43, The sartorius muscle. 44, The rectus femoris muscle. 45, The vastus externus muscle. 46, The vastus internus muscle. 47, The internal straight muscle. 48. The pectineus muscle. 49, The adductor muscle. 50, The psoas muscle. 51, The tibialis anticus muscle. 52, The long extensor muscle of the great toe. 53, The long extensor muscle of the toes. 54, The anterior peroneal muscle. 55, The long lateral peroneal muscle. 56, 57, The gastrocnemii muscles. 58, The long flexor muscle of the great toe. 69, The short extensor muscles of the toes. 60, The abductor muscle of the great toe. The figures and letters on the left side of the plate, indicate the position of important fasciæ, that cover the muscles and enclose the tendons. PLATE IV. BACK VIEW OF THE MUSCLES. _Muscles of the Head and Neck._ 4, The sterno-mastoideus muscle. 5, The complexus muscle. 6, The mylo-hyoideus muscle. 7, 8, The occipito-frontalis muscle. 9, The masseter muscle. 10, 11, 12, The anterior, middle, and posterior aural muscles. 13, The temporal muscle. _Muscles of the Trunk._ 1, 1, The trapezius muscle. 2, The latissimus dorsi muscle. 3, The rhomboideus muscle. 4, The external oblique muscle. _Muscles of the Upper Extremities._ 5, The deltoid muscle. 6, 7, The infra-spinatus muscle. 9, The triceps extensor muscle. 10, The internal brachial muscle. 11, The long supinator muscle. 12, The external radial muscle. 13, The second external radial muscle. 14, The anconeus muscle. 15, 16, The extensor digitorum communis muscle. 17, The extensor carpi ulnaris muscle. 18, The flexor carpi ulnaris. 19, 20, The extensor ossis metacarpi pollicis muscles. 21, An extensor muscle of the thumb. 22, 28, Interossii muscles. _Muscles of the Lower Extremities._ 29, The gluteus maximus muscle. 30, The gluteus medius muscle. 31, The biceps flexor cruris muscle. 32, The semi-tendinosus muscle. 33, The semi-membranosis muscle. 34, The gracilis muscle. 35, The adductor muscle. 36, The vastus externus muscle. 37, The sartorius muscle. 38, 39, The gastrocnemii muscles. 40, The long peroneal muscle. 41, The external peroneal muscle. 42, The long flexor muscle of the great toe. 43, The long extensor muscle of the toes. 44, The short extensor muscle of the toes. 47, The short flexor muscle of the toes. The figures and letters on the left side of the plate, indicate the position of membranous fasciæ which envelop the muscles and tendons. PLATE V. ORGANS OF THE THORAX AND ABDOMEN. Fig. 1. _The Mouth and Neck._ (A Side view.) 1, The upper lip. 2, The lower lip. 3, The upper jaw. 4, The lower jaw. 5, The tongue. 6, The hard palate, (roof of the mouth.) 7, The parotid gland. 8, The sublingual gland. T, The larynx. 10, The pharynx. 11, The oesophagus. 12, The upper portion of the spinal column. C, The spinal cord. _The Chest and its Organs._ 9, 9, The trachea. R, The right auricle of the heart. L, The left auricle. 13, The left ventricle of the heart. 14, The right ventricle. 15, The aorta. 16, The pulmonary artery. 17, The vena cava descendens. 18, The right subclavian vein. 19, The left subclavian vein. 20, The right jugular vein. 21, The left jugular vein. 22, The right carotid artery. 23, The left carotid artery. 24, 25, 26, The upper, middle, and lower lobes of the right lung. 27, 28, The upper and lower lobes of the left lung. 29, 29, 29, The diaphragm. P, P, P, P, The pleura, that lines the cavity of the chest. S, S, The clavicles. O, O, O, O, The ribs. M, M, M, M, Muscles of the chest. 40, The thoracic duct, opening into the left subclavian vein. _The Abdomen and its Organs._ 30, The stomach. 31, 32, The right and left lobe of the liver. F, The fissure that separates the two lobes. 33, The gall bladder. 34, 34, The duodenum. 35, The ascending colon. 36, The transverse colon. 37, The descending colon. 38, 38, 38, 38, The small intestine. 39, 39, The walls of the abdominal cavity turned down. 41, The spleen. Fig. 2. _The Relation of the Lacteals and Thoracic Duct._ 1, 1, A section of the small intestine. 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, Mesenteric glands, through which the lacteals from the intestine pass. 3, Several lacteal vessels entering the enlarged portion and commencement of the thoracic duct. 5, 5, 5, The thoracic duct. 6, The thoracic duct opening into the left subclavian vein. 7, (See 40, Fig. 1.) 8, The right subclavian vein. 9, The vena cava descendens. 10, 11, 11, The aorta. 12, The carotid arteries. 13, 13, The jugular veins. 14, The vena azagos. 15, 15, The spinal column. 16, The diaphragm. Fig. 3. _The Relation of the Larynx, Trachea, Bronchia, and Air-cells._ 1, 1, 1, An outline of the right lung. 2, 2, 2, An outline of the left lung. 3, The larynx. 4, The trachea. 5, The right bronchia. 6, The left bronchia. 7, 7, 7, 7, Divisions of the right bronchia. 8, 8, 8, 8, Divisions of the left bronchia. 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, Air-cells. Fig. 4. _An ideal View of a lateral and vertical Section of the Larynx._ 1, 1, The superior vocal cords, (ligaments.) 2, 2, The inferior vocal cords. 3, 3, The glottis. 4, 4, The ventricles of the larynx. PLATE VI. HEART, ARTERIES, AND VEINS Fig. 1. _The Heart and large Arteries._ 1, The right auricle of the heart. 2, The right ventricle of the heart. 3, The left auricle. 4, The left ventricle. 5, The pulmonary artery. 6, The aorta. 7, 7, The descending aorta. 8, The arteria innominata. 9, The left carotid artery. 10, The left subclavian artery. 56, The right subclavian artery. _Arteries of the Neck and Head._ 15, The right carotid artery. 16, The left carotid artery. 17, The right temporal artery. 50, The right facial artery. 54, The left temporal artery. _Arteries of the Upper Extremities._ 11, 11, The left brachial artery. 12, The left radial artery. 13, 13, The right brachial artery. 14, The right radial artery. 51, The right ulnar artery. _Arteries of the Lower Extremities._ 18, The left iliac artery. 19, The right iliac artery. 20, The left femoral artery. 21, The right femoral artery. 22, The peroneal artery. 23, The left anterior tibial artery. 24, The muscular artery. 25, 25, The right and left arteria profunda. 26, The right anterior tibial artery. 27, The right peroneal artery. _The Veins of the Neck and Head._ 28, The vena cava descendens. 29, The left subclavian vein. 30, The right subclavian vein. 31, The right jugular vein. 32, The left jugular vein. 53, The right temporal vein. 55, The left temporal vein. 49, The right facial vein. _Veins of the Upper Extremities._ 33, The left brachial vein. 34, The left radial vein. 35, The right brachial vein. 36, The right radial vein. 51, The right ulnar vein. _Veins of the Lower Extremities._ 37, The vena cava ascendens. 38, The left iliac vein. 39. The right iliac vein. 40, The left femoral vein. 41, The right femoral vein. 42, The left anterior tibial vein. 43, The left peroneal vein. 44, The right anterior tibial vein. 45, The right peroneal vein. 46, 46, The profunda veins. 47, The muscular veins. 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, Intercostal arteries and veins. Fig. 2. _The Relation of the Cavities of the Heart to the large Blood-vessels._ 1, The vena cava descendens. 2, The vena cava ascendens. 3, The right auricle of the heart. 4, The opening between the right auricle and right ventricle. 5, The right ventricle. 6, The tricuspid valves. 7, The pulmonary artery. 8, 8, The branches of the pulmonary artery that pass to the right and left lung. 9, The semilunar valves of the pulmonary artery. 10, The left pulmonary veins. 11, The right pulmonary veins. 12, The left auricle. 13, The opening between the left auricle and left ventricle. 14, The left ventricle. 15, The mitral valves. 16, 16, The aorta. 17, The semilunar valves of the aorta. 18, The septum between the right and left ventricle. Fig. 3. _An ideal View of the Heart, Arteries, and Veins._ A, The right auricle. B, The right ventricle. C, The tricuspid valves. D, The opening between the right auricle and right ventricle. E, The left auricle. F, the left ventricle. G, The mitral valves. H, The opening between the left auricle and left ventricle. I, The septum between the right and left ventricle. K, The pulmonary artery. L, The semilunar valves of the pulmonary artery. M, M, The right pulmonary artery. N, N, The left pulmonary artery. O, O, O, O, O, O, The capillary vessels of the lungs. P, P, P, The right pulmonary vein. Q, Q, The left pulmonary vein. R, R, The aorta. S, The semilunar valves of the aorta. T, T, A branch of the aorta to the upper extremities. U, U, U, U, A branch to the lower extremities. V, V, V, V, V, V, The capillary vessels at the extremity of the branches of the aorta. W, W, The descending vena cava. X, X, X, The ascending vena cava. In Figs. 1, 2, 3, the course of the blood through the circulatory vessels is indicated by arrows. PLATE VII. THE PULMONARY CIRCULATION. Fig. 1. 1, The right auricle of the heart. 2, The left auricle. 3, The right ventricle of the heart. 4, The left ventricle. 5, The pulmonary artery. 6, The branch of the pulmonary artery to the left lung. 7, The branch of the pulmonary artery to the right lung. 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, Branches of the pulmonary artery in the right and left lung. 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, Air-cells. 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, Small pulmonary veins in the right and left lung. 11, The left pulmonary vein. 12, 12, The right pulmonary vein. Fig. 2. _An ideal View of the Pulmonary Circulation._ 1, 1, The right lung. 2, 2, The left lung. 3, The trachea. 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, The right bronchia. 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, The left bronchia. 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, Air-cells, with arteries and veins passing around them. 7, The right auricle of the heart. 8, The right ventricle of the heart. 9, The tricuspid valves. 10, The pulmonary artery. 11, 11, 11, 11, The right pulmonary artery. 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, The left pulmonary artery. 13, 13, 13, 13, The right pulmonary vein. 14, 14, 14, 14, The left pulmonary vein. 15, The left auricle. 16, The left ventricle. 17, The mitral valves. 18, The septum between the right and left ventricles. Fig. 3. _An ideal View of the Capillaries._ 1, 1, A branch of the pulmonary artery. 2, 2, A branch of the pulmonary vein. 3, 3, Capillary vessels between the artery and vein. Fig. 4. _An ideal View of the Relations of the Bronchia, Air-cells, Pulmonary Arteries, and Veins._ 1, A bronchial tube. 2, 2, 2, Air-cells. 3, A branch of the pulmonary artery. 4, A branch of the pulmonary vein. PLATE VIII. THE CEREBRUM, CEREBELLUM, SPINAL CORD, AND NERVES 1, The cerebrum. 2, The cerebellum. 3, 3, The spinal cord. 4, The brachial plexus of nerves. 5, The lumbar plexus of nerves. 6, The sacral plexus of nerves. 7, The facial nerve. 8, 17, The radial nerve. 9, 9, 16, The ulnar nerve. 10, The median nerve. G, The circumvex nerve of the shoulder. 11, 11, The great sciatic nerve. 12, The external popliteal, or peroneal nerve. 13, 13, The posterior tibial nerve. 14, The external tibial nerve. 15, The muscular branch of the external peroneal nerve. 18, The muscular branch of the sciatic nerve. P, Q, The posterior tibial nerve. The letters and other figures indicate minor nervous filaments distributed to the various muscles and the skin. PLATE IX. THE SKIN. Fig. 1. _A perspiratory Tube and Gland._ 1, 1, The contorted portion of the tube that forms the gland. 2, 2, Two branches which unite to form the main duct of the gland. 3, 3, The perspiratory tube. 4, The cuticle. 5. Its colored portion. 6, The cutis vera, (true skin.) 7, 7, Fat vesicles, in which the gland is imbedded. Fig. 2. _A Papilla of the Skin._ 1, 1, Two papillæ, formed of an artery vein, and nerve. 2, 2, 2, 2, Nerves forming a loop in the papillæ. 3, 3, Arteries of the papillæ. 4, 4, Veins of the papillæ. 5, 5, A net-work of arteries, veins, and nerves. 6, 6, Nerves of the skin. 8, 8, Arteries of the skin. 7, 7, Veins of the skin. Fig. 3. _A Hair, and its Oil-Glands._ 1, 1, The hair. 2, 2, The sheath of the hair. 3, Oil-glands that surround the bulb of the hair, the ducts of which open into the sheath of the hair, (2, 2.) Fig. 4. _A Section of the Skin._ 1, 1, The cuticle. 2, 2, Its colored portion. 3, 3, The papillary layer. 4, 4, A net-work of arteries, veins, and nerves, upon the upper surface of the cutis vera. 5, 5, 5, 5, The cutis vera, (true skin.) 6, 6, 6, Hairs that originate in the cutis vera. 7, 7, 7, Oil-glands, the ducts of which connect with the sheath of the hair. 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, Perspiratory glands and their ducts. 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, Nerves of the skin 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, Arteries of the skin. 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, Veins of the skin. 12, 12, 12, 12, Papillæ, or ridges of the skin. PLATE X. AN ANTERO-POSTERIOR SECTION OF THE EYE. Fig. 1. 1, 1, The sclerotic coat. 2, 2, The cornea. 3, 3, The choroid coat. 4, 4, The retina. 5, 5, The iris. 6, 6, The posterior chamber of the eye that contains the aqueous humor. 7, 7, The anterior chamber. 8, 8, The pupil. 9, The crystalline humor. 10, 10, The vitreous humor 11, The optic nerve. 12, A representation of a pen. 13, An inverted image of the pen (12) on the retina. 14, 14, A canal surrounding the crystalline humor. 15, 15, The bevelled junction of the cornea and sclerotic coats. A, a perpendicular ray of light from the pen. B, B, oblique rays, that are refracted in passing through the humors of the eye. Fig. 2. _A View of the External, Middle, and Internal Ear._ 1, 1, The external ear. 2, The meatus auditorius externus, (the tube that connects with the middle ear.) 3. The membrana tympani, (drum of the ear.) 8, 8, The tympanum, (middle ear.) 4, The malleus. 5, The incus. 6, The orbicularis. 7, The stapes, (stirrup-bone,) that connects with the vestibule of the internal ear. 9, 9, (4, 5, 6, 7, The small bones of the middle ear,) 10, 11, 12, The semicircular canals. 13, 13, The cochlea. 14, The auditory nerve. 15, The division of the auditory nerve to the semicircular canals. 16, The division to the cochlea. 17, 17, The Eustachian tube. 18, The chorda tympani nerve. 19, The seventh pair (facial) nerve. 20, The styloid process of the temporal bone. 21, 21, 21, 21, 21, The petrous or hard portion of the temporal bone, in which the parts of the middle and internal ear are situated. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Below is given the Title of a Book on a new plan, just published, intended for beginners in the study of Physiology. * * * * * HUMAN AND COMPARATIVE ANATOMY, PHYSIOLOGY, AND HYGIENE BY MRS. EUNICE P. CUTTER. WITH ONE HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS. NEW YORK: CLARK, AUSTIN, AND SMITH 3 PARK ROW TEXT BOOKS UPON =Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene.= Recommended by the Hon. N. W. EDWARDS, School Sup't, Ill. HUMAN AND COMPARATIVE ANATOMY, PHYSIOLOGY, AND HYGIENE. For District Schools. With 100 Engravings. 132 pages. By MRS. EUNICE P. CUTTER. Price 33 cts. This work contains full directions for the _study_ and _teaching_ of Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene. This is a new feature. _Every teacher would profit by it._ The plan of the work can be gathered from the following _fac-simile_ of the table of contents:-- [Illustration: Fac-simile of the table of contents] * * * * * Transcriber's note: Typographical problems have been changed and are listed below. Author's archaic and variable spelling is mostly preserved. Author's punctuation style is mostly preserved. Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_. Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=. In paragraph 97, '[s]' is used to represent the integral symbol. Greek words and letters have been transliterated and placed between +marks+. This transcription is faithful to the original transliterations of Greek (which occur in italics), even when they seem incorrect. Author's Greek transliterations included vowels with macrons. These macrons have been changed to circumflexes in order to display correctly in this text transcription. The original revision questions at the bottom of each page have been set between lines that look like '-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-='. Footnotes have been placed directly below their relevant paragraphs. Transcriber's changes: Title page: Was 'DESIGNER' (=DESIGNED= FOR) Title page: Was 'Massachuetts' (In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of =Massachusetts=.) Title page: Added '.' (No. 15 Vandewater Street, N. =Y.=) Page 18: Added ',' (_Example._ The digestive apparatus consists of the =teeth,= stomach, liver, &c., all of which aid in the digestion of food.) Page 23, Fig. 5: Added '.' (=Fig.= 5. A section of the femur, (thigh-bone.) 1, 1, The extremities, showing a thin plate of compact texture) Page 24: Was 'serious' (40. How does the mucous differ from the =serous= tissue? What is the appearance of the external surface of this membrane?) Page 27: Added comma (The most important compounds are _Al-bu´men_, =_Fi´brin_,= _Gel´a-tin_) Page 27: Was 'organ ized (57. What are proximate elements? Do they exist already formed in =organized= bodies? Name the most important compounds.) Page 29: Added '.' (The earthy portion of the bones gives them solidity and strength, while the animal part endows them with =vitality.=) Page 33, Fig. 7: Added '.' (=7.= 1, 1, The coronal suture at the front and upper part of the skull, or) Page 33, Fig. 7: Was 'cra nium' over line break. (suture at the front and upper part of the skull, or =cranium=. 2, The sagittal suture on the top of the skull.) Page 35, Fig. 9: Added '.' (=Fig.= 9. 1, The first bone of the sternum, (breast-bone.) 2. The second bone of the sternum.) Page 36: Added '.' (83. Describe the thorax. Explain fig. 9. 84. Describe the =sternum.= 85. Describe the ribs.) Page 36: Added '?' (88. Give the structure of the vertebra. Where is the spinal cord placed? 89. What is placed between each =vertebra?= What is its use?) Page 37, Fig 10: Added '.' (5, The transverse =process.= 7, The inferior articulating process.) Page 38, Fig 12: Added '.' (2, The sacrum. 3, The =coccyx.= 4, 4, The acetabulum. a, a, The pubic portion) Page 38: Added '.' (In the adult? Describe the acetabulum. 93. Describe the =sacrum.= Explain fig. 12. 94. Describe the coccyx.) Page 41: Was 'out side' over page break (101. The RADIUS articulates with the bones of the carpus and forms the wrist-joint. This bone is situated on the =outside= of the fore-arm) Page 41, Fig. 16: Added '.' (11, 11, First range of finger-bones. 12, 12, Second range of finger-bones. 13, 13, Third range of =finger-bones.= 14, 15, Bones of the thumb.) Page 42: Was 'meta carpal' over line break. (and upon the other, the first bone of the thumb. The five =metacarpal= bones articulate with the second range of carpal bones.) Page 42: Added '.' (101. The radius. 102. How many bones in the carpus? How are they ranged? =103.= Describe the) Page 42: Added '.' (103. Describe the =metacarpus.=) Page 42: Was 'sim ilar' over line break. (109. The FIBULA is a smaller bone than the tibia, but of =similar= shape. It is firmly bound to the tibia, at each extremity.) Page 43, Fig. 17: Added '.' (=Fig.= 17. 1, The shaft of the femur, (thigh-bone.)) Page 44: Was 'a' (They articulate at one extremity with one range of tarsal bones; =at= the other extremity, with the first range of the toe-bones.) Page 45, Fig. 21: Added '.' (Fig. 21 The relative position of the bones, cartilages, and synovial =membrane.= 1, 1, The extremities of two bones that concur to form a joint.) Page 46: Added '.' (112. Describe the phalanges. 113-118. _Give the anatomy of the =joints.=_ 113. What is said of the joints? Of what are the joints composed?) Page 46: Added '?' (112. Describe the phalanges. 113-118. _Give the anatomy of the joints._ 113. What is said of the joints? Of what are the joints =composed?=) Page 52, Fig. 28: Added '.' (14, The hand. 15, The haunch-bone. 16, The =sacrum.= 17, The hip-joint.) Page 52, Fig. 28: Added '.' (19, The patella. 20, The =knee-joint.= 21, The fibula. 22, The tibia.) Page 65: Added '.' (150-160. _Give the anatomy of the =muscles.=_ 150. What is said of the muscles? 151. Give their structure.) Page 70, Fig. 39: Added '.' (Fig. =39.= A front view of the muscles of the trunk.) Page 70, Fig. 39: Was 'superficia' (On the left side the =superficial= layer is seen; on the right, the deep layer. 1, The pectoralis major muscle.) Page 72, Fig. 41: Added '.' (Fig. 41 The first, second, and part of the third layer of muscles of the =back.= The first layer is shown on the right, and the second on the left side.) Page 72, Fig. 41: Added '.' (_Practical Explanation._ The muscles 1, 11, 12, draw the scapula back toward the =spine.= The muscles 11, 12, draw the scapula upward toward the head) Page 73, Fig. 42: Added '.' (Fig. 42. A representation of the under, or abdominal side of the =diaphragm.= 1, 2, 3, 4, The portion which is attached to the margin of the ribs.) Page 74, Fig. 43: Added '.' (=Fig.= 43. A front view of the superficial layer of muscles of the fore-arm. 5, The flexor carpi radialis muscle.) Page 74: Added '.' (That perform the delicate movements of the fingers? Give the use of some of the muscles represented by =fig.= 43. Those represented by fig. 44.) Page 81: Added '.' (The ball and socket joints, as the shoulder, are not limited to mere flexion and =extension.= No joint in the system has the range of movement that is) Page 84, Fig. 47: Added '.' (The muscles 9, fig. 46, and 6, =fig.= 47, bend the neck forward. The muscles 3, 4, fig. 47, elevate the head and chin.) Page 84, Fig. 47: Added '.' (The muscles 26, 27, 28, fig. 46, bend the lower limbs on the body, at the =hip.= The muscle 28, fig. 46, draws one leg over the other) Page 84, Fig. 47: Added '.' (The muscles 27, 28, =fig.= 47, extend the lower limbs on the body, at the hip. The muscles 29, 30, 31, fig. 46, extend the leg at the knee.) Page 84, Fig. 47: Added ',' (The muscles 27, 28, fig. =47,= extend the lower limbs on the body, at the hip. The muscles 29, 30, 31, fig. 46, extend the leg at the knee.) Page 84, Fig. 47: Added '.' (The muscles 27, 28, fig. 47, extend the lower limbs on the body, at the =hip.= The muscles 29, 30, 31, fig. 46, extend the leg at the knee.) Page 84, Fig. 47: Added '.' (The muscles 29, 30, fig. =47,= bend the leg at the knee. The muscles 34, 36, fig. 46, bend the foot at the ankle, and extend the toes.) Page 88: Added '?' (What class of pupils should have recesses most =frequently?= 179. What effect has continued muscular contraction?) Page 95: Added '.' (196. Give an instance of the different effects produced by the absence and presence of the mental =stimulus.=) Page 97, Fig. 49: Was '(1.' (the unnatural curved spinal column, and its relative position to the perpendicular, =1.= The lower limbs are curved at the knee) Page 98: Added comma. (In performing any labor, as in speaking, reading, singing, mowing, sewing, =&c.,= there will be less exhaustion) Page 100, Fig. 51: Added '.' (Fig. 51. An improper position in =sitting.=) Page 104: Added ',' (210. What is said of the lateral and oblique movements of the =arm,= hand, and fingers in writing? How is this shown by experiment?) Page 107, Fig. 55: Added '.' (_d_, _e_, The bicuspids. _f_, _g_, The molars, (double teeth.) _h_, The wisdom =teeth.=) Page 108, Fig. 56: Added '.' (=Fig.= 56. A side view of the body and enamel of a front tooth.) Page 108, Fig. 57: Added '.' (=Fig.= 57. A side view of a molar tooth. 1, The enamel. 2, The body of the tooth.) Page 108, Fig. 57: Added '.' (1, The enamel. 2, The body of the =tooth.= 3, The cavity in the crown of the tooth that contains the pulp.) Page 115, Fig. 59: Added '.' (=Fig.= 59. A side view of the face, oesophagus, and trachea.) Page 118: Was 'COECUM' (249. The =C�CUM= is the blind pouch, or cul-de-sac, at the commencement of the large intestine. Attached to its extremity) Page 119: Was 'coecum' (is the mucous membrane sometimes called the villous coat? 249. Describe the =cæcum=.) Page 119, Fig. 61: Was 'coecum' (4, The appendix vermiformis. 5, The =cæcum=. 6, The ascending colon. 7, The transverse colon.) Page 120: Was 'coecum' (half shorter than the intestine, and give it a sacculated appearance, which is characteristic of the =cæcum= and colon.) Page 127: Moved up from the following box. (What is said in regard to the bile? 266. What becomes of the chyle? =Of the residuum?=) Page 128, Fig. 65: Added '.' (Fig. 65. An ideal view of the organs of digestion, opened nearly the whole =length.=) Page 128, Fig. 65: Added '.' (1, The upper jaw. 2, The lower jaw. 3, The tongue. 4, The roof of the =mouth.= 5, The oesophagus. 6, The trachea. 7, The parotid gland.) Page 128, Fig. 65: Added '.' (8, The sublingual =gland.= 9, The stomach. 10, 10, The liver. 11, The gall-cyst.) Page 128, Fig. 65: Added ',' (16, The opening of the small intestine into the large intestine. 17, 18, 19, =20,= The large intestine. 21, The spleen.) Page 128, Fig. 65: Added '.' (16, The opening of the small intestine into the large intestine. 17, 18, 19, 20, The large =intestine.= 21, The spleen.) Page 128, Fig. 65: Added '.' (21, The spleen. 22, The upper part of the spinal =column.=) Page 129: Was 'prope' (The food that is well masticated, and has blended with it a =proper= amount of saliva, will induce a healthy action in the stomach.) Page 129: Added '.' (will induce a healthy action in the =stomach.= Well-prepared chyme is the natural stimulus of the duodenum,) Page 129: Added ',' (Well-prepared chyme is the natural stimulus of the =duodenum,= liver, and pancreas; pure chyle is the appropriate excitant of) Page 131: Added '.' (another demand for food. What effect has increased exercise upon the system? =278.= How are the new particles of matter supplied? What does this induce?) Page 143: Was 'There fore' over line break. (digested becomes mixed with that last taken. =Therefore= the interval between each meal should be) Page 145: Added '.' (312. Why should they not be taken cold? Show some of the effects of improper food upon the inferior =animals.=) Page 153: Added '.' (=327.= Why does the position of a person affect digestion? 328. Into what are different kinds of aliment separated?) Page 154: Added ',' (333. The CIRCULATORY ORGANS are the _Heart_, =_Ar´te-ries_,= _Veins_, and _Cap´il-la-ries_.) Page 170, Fig. 75: Added '.' (=Fig.= 75. An ideal view of the circulation in the lungs and system. From the right ventricle of the heart) Page 179: Added '.' (the proper method of arresting the flow of blood from divided arteries. 382. The second incident. =383.= How should "flesh wounds" be dressed?) Page 182: Added '.' (What other vessels perform the office of absorption? Give observation. 389. Describe the =lymphatics.=) Page 186, Fig. 85: Added '.' (16, 17, 18, Of the face and neck. 19, 20, Large =veins.= 21, The thoracic duct. 26, The lymphatics of the heart.) Page 189: Added '.' (matter formed in the system of the diseased person, may be more readily conveyed into their =own.=) Page 191: Was 'gen eral' over line. (every trifling and temporary enlargement, or tumor, is a cancer. Their =general= remedy is arsenic; and happy is the unfortunate sufferer) Page 191: Was 'suf ferer' over line. (arsenic; and happy is the unfortunate =sufferer= who escapes destruction in their hands, for too frequently) Page 191: Was 'frequent ly' over line. (happy is the unfortunate sufferer who escapes destruction in their hands, for too =frequently= their speedy cure is death.) Page 191: Was 'imme diately' over line. (413. In case of an accidental wound, it is best =immediately= to bathe the part thoroughly in pure water, and to) Page 192: Was 'Fol li-cles' (415. The SECRETORY ORGANS are the _Ex-ha´lants_, =_Fol´li-cles_=, and the _Glands_.) Page 192, Fig. 86: Added '.' (Fig. 86. A secretory follicle. An artery is seen, which supplies the material for its =secretion.= Follicles are also supplied) Page 193: Was 'mys terious' over line. (420. SECRETION is one of the most obscure and =mysterious= functions of the animal economy. "It is that process) Page 194: Was 'secre tion' over line. (420-431. _Give the physiology of the secretory organs._ 420. What is =secretion=?) Page 202: Was 'he' (Very soon, minute vessels shoot out from the living parts into =the= coagulum of the blood, and immediately commence their operations) Page 207: Added '?' (461. Mention another means by which the blood may be made impure. How =remedied?= 462. What is the effect of want of cleanliness upon the blood?) Page 208, Fig. 88: Added '.' (7, The right auricle of the heart. 8, The left auricle. 9, The pulmonary artery. 10, The aorta. 11, The vena cava =descendens.= 12, The trachea.) Page 208, Fig. 88: Added '.' (16, 16, The right and left lobe of the liver. 17, The gall-cyst. 18, The =stomach.= 26, The spleen. 19, 19, The duodenum.) Page 208, Fig. 88: Added '.' (19, 19, The duodenum. 20, The ascending =colon.= 21, The transverse colon. 25, The descending colon.) Page 211, Fig. 90: Added '.' (10, Its lower lobe. 11, The upper lobe of the right =lung.= 12, The middle lobe. 13, The lower lobe.) Page 218: Was 'cavicle' (Those which are attached to the upper rib, sternum, and =clavicle=, contract and elevate the lower and free extremities of the ribs.) Page 220, Fig. 96: Added '.' (5, 5, The position of the walls of the abdomen in inspiration. 6, 6, The position of the abdominal walls in =expiration.=) Page 223: Was 'cabonic' (In addition, there is a small amount of vapor of water and =carbonic= acid. The pressure of this invisible) Page 225, Fig. 98: Added '.' (Fig. 98. 1, A bronchial tube divided into three branches. 2, 2, 2, =Air-cells.= 3, Branches of the pulmonary artery, that spread over the air-cells.) Page 226: Added 'to' (In a few hours, the blood next =to= the membrane will have become of a bright red color.) Page 227: Added '.' (reviewed from figs. 96, 97, and 99, or from anatomical outline plates Nos. 5 and =7.=) Page 232: Added '.' (503. Mention some reasons why different persons do not require the same amount of =air.=) Page 232: Added '.' (Give the illustration of the effects of impure air on lighted =lamps.=) Page 237: Added '.' (to connect with the outer walls of the building or external =air.= But if pure heated air is introduced into the room, it obviates) Page 241: Added '.' (What does fig. 100 represent? Fig. 101? Give observation =1st.=) Page 248: Added '.' (535. Mention some of the effects of mental depression upon the =body.= What is related by Lænnec?) Page 250: Was single-quote (Let another person press upon the projecting part of the neck, called "Adam's =apple,"= while air is introduced into the lungs through the bellows.) Page 263: Changed '.' to '?' (persons that have broad chests and voluminous lungs suffer less from cold than the narrow-chested with small =lungs?=) Page 269: Added '.' (still broader behind, where it is connected with the thyroid =cartilage.= Below, it connects with the first ring of the trachea.) Page 271: Was 'glot tis' (The aperture, or opening between these ligaments, is called the =_glot´tis_=, or _chink of the glottis_.) Page 276: Added '.' (vocal organs are in action, will induce too great a flow of blood to these parts, which will be attended by subsequent =debility.=) Page 289, Fig. 115: Added '.' (These ducts open into the sheath of the hair, (B.) All the figures, from 1 to 4, are magnified thirty-eight =diameters.=) Page 294: Added ';' (A proper thickness of the cuticle is in this manner =preserved;= the faculty of sensation and that of touch are properly regulated;) Page 326: Added '?' (What causes the edge of the nail "to grow into the flesh" of the =toe?= How prevented?) Page 329: Added '.' (731. What does the term brain designate? Name =them.= How are they protected? Describe fig. 120.) Page 330, Fig. 121: Added '.' (Fig. =121.= A section of the skull-bones and cerebrum. 1, 1, The skull.) Page 330, Fig. 121: Added '.' (1, 1, The skull. 2, 2, the dura =mater.= 3, 3, The cineritious portion of the cerebrum.) Page 330, Fig. 121: Added '.' (3, 3, The cineritious portion of the cerebrum. 4, 4, The medullary =portion.= The dark points indicate the position of divided blood-vessels.) Page 332: Added '.' (=733.= Describe the appearance of the brain when a horizontal section has been made. What is the gray border often called? What connects the) Page 333, Fig. 123: Added '.' (4, 4, The optic foramen in the sphenoid bone; through which passes the second pair of =nerves.= 5, 5, The sphenoidal fissure.) Page 334, Fig. 124: Added '.' (5, The corpus callosum. 6, The first pair of nerves. 7, The second =pair.= 8, The eye. 9, The third pair of nerves.) Page 334: Added '.' (738. Describe the dura mater. What is its use? Explain =fig.= 124.) Page 342: Added '.' (758. How many pairs of nerves issue from the spinal cord? Explain =fig.= 128. Fig. 129.) Page 347: Was '13 1-2' (The heaviest brain on record was that of Cuvier, which weighed 4 pounds and =13½= ounces.) Page 365: Added '.' (what age particularly is excessive and continued mental exertion hurtful? =813.= What is said of scrofulous and rickety children?) Page 369: Added '.' (the more repose they =require.= The organs of the child, beside sustaining their proper functions,) Page 385: Added '.' (868. What is the appearance of the surface of the tongue? Explain =fig.= 134.) Page 387: Added '.' (papillæ. 870. The fungiform papillæ? What nerve ramifies in the fungiform papillæ? How can these papillæ, or points, be seen? =871-875.= _Give the physiology of the organs of taste._ 871. Define taste.) Page 394: Added '.' (=892.= Describe the optic nerve. 893. Describe the globe of the eye.) Page 394: Added '.' (892. Describe the optic =nerve.= 893. Describe the globe of the eye.) Page 395, Fig. 137: Added '.' (7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, The origin of several pairs of cranial =nerves.=) Page 396: Added '.' (In form, it is circular, convexo-concave, and resembles a =watch-glass.= It is received by its edge, which is sharp and thin, within the) Page 397, Fig. 138: Added '.' (a transverse section of the globe of the eye, seen from =within.= 1, The divided edge of the three coats--sclerotic) Page 399, Fig. 139: Added '.' (The cornea (This connects with the sclerotic coat by a bevelled edge.) 3, The choroid =coat.= 6, 6, The iris. 7, The pupil.) Page 401: Added ',' (906. The PROTECTING ORGANS are the _Or´bits_, =_Eyebrows_,= _Eyelids_, and _Lach´ry-mal Apparatus_.) Page 401: Added '.' (covered with short, thick hairs, which form the upper boundary of the =orbits.= The eyebrows are so arranged) Page 401: Added '.' (909. Describe the =eyelids.= What is the use of the conjunctiva? How are the white spots frequently) Page 403: Added '.' (913. Describe the lachrymal =gland.= How many ducts pass from this gland, and what do they convey to the) Footnote 22: Added '.' (The refracting character of differently-formed lenses is illustrated in the works on Natural Philosophy, to which the pupil is =referred.=) Page 407, Fig. 142: Added '.' (Fig. 142. The forms of the different lenses. 1, A plane lens. 2, A globe =lens.= 3, A convexo-convex lens. 4, A plano-convex lens.) Page 407, Fig. 142: Added '.' (4, A plano-convex lens. 5, A concavo-concave =lens.= 6, A plano-concave lens. 7, Meniscus. 8, A concavo-convex lens.) Page 416: Changed '.' to '?' (Where is the wax of the ear =secreted?= 948. Describe the membrana tympani.) Page 417: Was ', 1,' (This figure is highly magnified. =1, 1,= The cochlea. 2, 3, Two channels, that wind two and a half turns around a central point) Page 421: Was 'Eustuchian' (This is the result of the air in the middle ear escaping through the =Eustachian= tube, when the vibrations of the membrana tympani are violent.) Page 422: Added '.' (969. Many of the parts just enumerated aid in hearing, but are not absolutely essential to this =sense.= But if the vestibule) Page 422: Added '.' (_Note._ Let the anatomy and physiology of the organs of hearing be reviewed, from fig. 148, or from anatomical outline plate No. =10.=) Page 439: Added '.' (know the proper mode of procedure in such cases, in order to render immediate assistance when within his =power.=) Page 441: Added '.' (=1035.= What is the antidote? 1036. What should immediately be done when arsenic is swallowed?) Page 441: Changed '.' to '?' (When magnesia cannot be obtained, what will answer as a =substitute?= 1050. What is the antidote when ley is swallowed?) Page 442: Changed '.' to '?' (What treatment should be adopted when an over-dose of opium or any of its preparations is =taken?= 1057. What is said of stramonium?) Page 443: Added '.' (lobelia, bloodroot, tobacco, &c., is taken? =1062.= Should a physician be called in all cases when poison is swallowed?) Page 444: Added '.' (CASEINE is abundantly found in milk. When dried, it constitutes =cheese.= Alcohol, acids, and the stomach of any of the mammalia coagulate it; and) Page 444: Added '.' (canal pass slowly through this portion. The _rectum_ is named from the straight direction that it assumes in the latter part of its =course.=) Page 445: Was 'a' (This is called the peristaltic, or vermicular motion. The great length of intestine in =all= animals, and especially in the herbivorous ones, is owing to the necessity of) Page 448: Added '.' (and often inspiring more deeply than is common in older =persons.= Also, if the carbon of the food does not have a requisite supply of oxygen) Page 451: Added '.' (=AB-DUC´TOR.= [L. _abduco_ to lead away.] A muscle which moves certain parts,) Page 452: Original looks like 'Arbør'. (AR´BOR. [L.] A tree. _=Arbor= vitæ._ The tree of life. A term applied to a part) Page 452: Added ',' (BRE´VIS. [L.] _Brevis_, short; =_brevior_,= shorter.) Page 452: Added ']' (CAP´IL-LA-RY. [L. _capillus_, a =hair.]= Resembling a hair; small.) Page 454: Added '.' (Having the quality of exhaling or =evaporating.=) Page 457: Added '.' (MI´TRAL. [=L.= _mitra_, a mitre.] The name of the valves in the left side of) Page 458: Added '.' (=O-MEN´TUM.= [L.] The caul.) Page 458: Added '.' (=OP-PO´NENS.= That which acts in opposition to something. The name of two) Page 458: Added '.' (OX-AL´IC. Pertaining to sorrel. _Oxalic acid_ is the acid of =sorrel.= It is composed of two equivalents of carbon) Page 458: Added '.' (invisible and inodorous. One of the components of atmospheric =air.=) Page 458: Added '.' (PEC´TUS. [L.] The =chest.=) Page 458: Added '.' (PEC´TO-RAL. Pertaining to the =chest.=) Page 459: Added '.' (PLEX´US, [L. _plecto_, to weave =together.=] Any union of nerves, vessels, or fibres,) Page 459: Added '.' (POS´TI-CUS. [L.] Behind; =posterior.= A term applied to certain muscles.) Page 459: Added '.' (The muscle of the forearm that moves the palm of the hand =downward.=) Page 460: Added '.' (=RA-DI-A´LIS.= Radial; belonging to the radius.) Page 460: Added '.' (RA´MUS. [L.] A branch. A term applied to the projections of =bones.=) Page 460: Added '.' (=SEP´TUM.= [L.] A membrane that divides two cavities from each other.) Page 462: Was 'Be longing' over line. (VIT´RE-OUS. [L. _vitrum_, glass.] =Belonging= to glass. A humor of the eye.) Page 462: Removed comma: was 'L.,' (VO´MER. [=L.= a ploughshare.] One of the bones of the nose.) Page 464: Added ',' (=----,= Physiology of the, 164) Page 464: Added ',' (=----,= Hygiene of the, 172) Page 464: Added ',' (----, Influence =of,= on the Circulation, 173) Page 465: Added ',' (=MEDIASTINUM,= 211) Page 465: Added ',' (MEDULLA =OBLONGATA,= 333) Page 466: Added ',' (PRESERVATION OF =HEALTH,= 425) Page 466: Substituted 'Spinal' for the repeat line. (=SPINAL= CORD, 36, 340) Page 467: Added comma (_Bones of the Head._ 7, The sphenoid bone. =8,= The frontal bone. 10, The parietal bone. 11, The os unguis. 12, The superior maxillary bone,) Page 468: Added ',' (41, 41, The bones of the =metatarsus,= (middle of the foot.) 42, 42, The bones of the toes.) Page 469: Added '.' (27, 28, Ligaments that connect the clavicle and =scapula.= 29, The capsular ligament of the shoulder-joint.) Page 469: Added '.' (9, Tendon of the gluteus =muscle.= 35, The capsular ligament of the hip-joint.) Page 469: Added '.' (37, The ligament that connects the tibia and =fibula.= 38, The interosseous ligament.) Page 469: Added '.' (38, The interosseous ligament. 39, 40, Ligaments of the =ankle-joint.=) Page 469: Added '.' (PLATE =III.=) Page 469: Added '.' (_Muscles of the Head and Neck._ 7, The sterno-mastoideus =muscle.= 8, The sterno-hyoideus muscle. 9, The omo-hyoideus muscle. 10, The) Page 469: Added '.' (16, The zygomatic muscle. 17, The depressor of the lower =lip.= 18, The depressor anguli oris muscle. 19, The triangular muscle of the) Page 469: Added '.' (43, The sartorius muscle. 44, The rectus femoris muscle. 45, The vastus externus =muscle.= 46, The vastus internus muscle.) Page 469: Added '.' (46, The vastus internus muscle. 47, The internal straight =muscle.= 48. The pectineus muscle. 49, The adductor muscle. 50, The psoas muscle.) Page 470: Added '.' (56, 57, The gastrocnemii muscles. 58, The long flexor muscle of the great =toe.= 69, The short extensor muscles of the toes.) Page 470: Added '.' (_Muscles of the Lower Extremities._ 29, The gluteus maximus =muscle.= 30, The gluteus medius muscle. 31, The biceps flexor cruris muscle.) Page 471: Added '.' (10, The pharynx. 11, The =oesophagus.= 12, The upper portion of the spinal column. C, The spinal cord.) Page 471: Added '.' (1, 1, 1, An outline of the right lung. 2, 2, 2, An outline of the left =lung.= 3, The larynx. 4, The trachea.) Page 472: Added '.' (_Arteries of the Neck and =Head.=_ 15, The right carotid artery. 16, The left carotid artery.) Page 472: Added '.' (The capillary vessels of the =lungs.= P, P, P, The right pulmonary vein. Q, Q, The left pulmonary vein.) Page 473: Unclear in original (10, The median nerve. G, The =circumvex= nerve of the shoulder.) Page 474: Added ',' (8, 8, =8,= 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, Perspiratory glands and their ducts. 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, Nerves of the) Page 475: Added '.' (8, 8, The tympanum, (middle ear.) 4, The =malleus.= 5, The incus. 6, The orbicularis.) 
5994	----	OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness BY ROBERT S. CARROLL, M.D. Medical Director Highland Hospital, Asheville, North Carolina Author of "The Mastery of Nervousness," "The Soul in Suffering" NEW YORK 1919 HEARTILY--TO THE HOST OF US CHAPTER I OUR FRIENDLY NERVES Illustrating the Capacity for Nervous Adjustment CHAPTER II THE NEUROTIC Illustrating Damaging Nervous Overactivity CHAPTER III THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS Illustrating Misdirected Nervous Energy CHAPTER IV WRECKING A GENERATION Illustrating "The Enemy at the Gate" CHAPTER V THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER Illustrating the Child Wrongly Started CHAPTER VI THE MESS OF POTTAGE Illustrating Nervous Inferiority Due to Eating-Errors CHAPTER VII THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY Illustrating the Wreckage of the Pampered Body CHAPTER VIII LEARNING TO EAT Illustrating the Potency of Diet CHAPTER IX THE MAN WITH THE HOE Illustrating the Therapy of Work CHAPTER X THE FINE ART OF PLAY Illustrating Re-creation Through Play CHAPTER XI THE TANGLED SKEIN Illustrating a Tragedy of Thought Selection CHAPTER XII THE TROUBLED SEA Illustrating Emotional Tyranny CHAPTER XIII WILLING ILLNESS Illustrating Willessness and Wilfulness CHAPTER XIV UNTANGLING THE SNARL Illustrating the Replacing of Fatalism by Truth CHAPTER XV FROM FEAR TO FAITH Illustrating the Curative Power of Helpful Emotions CHAPTER XVI JUDICIOUS HARDENING Illustrating the Compelling of Health CHAPTER XVII THE SICK SOUL Illustrating the Sliding Moral Scale CHAPTER XVIII THE BATTLE WITH SELFIllustrating the Recklessness that Disintegrates CHAPTER XIX THE SUFFERING OF SELF-PITY Illustrating a Moral Surrender CHAPTER XX THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE Illustrating Discord with Self CHAPTER XXI CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER Illustrating Disciplined Freedom CHAPTER XXII FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF Illustrating a Medical Conversion CHAPTER XXIII THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONY Illustrating the Power of the Spirit A REMARK Vividly as abstractions may be presented, they rarely succeed in revealing truths with the appealing intensity of living pictures. In Our Nervous Friends will be found portrayed, often with photographic clearness, a series of lives, with confidences protected, illustrating chapter for chapter the more vital principles of the author's The Mastery of Nervousness. CHAPTER I OUR FRIENDLY NERVES "Hop up, Dick, love! See how glorious the sun is on the new snow. Now isn't that more beautiful than your dreams? And see the birdies! They can't find any breakfast. Let's hurry and have our morning wrestle and dress and give them some breakie before Anne calls." The mother is Ethel Baxter Lord. She is thirty-eight, and Dick-boy is just five. The mother's face is striking, striking as an example of fine chiseling of features, each line standing for sensitiveness, and each change revealing refinement of thought. The eyes and hair are richly brown. Slender, graceful, perennially neat, she represents the mother beautiful, the wife inspiring, the friend beloved. Happily as we have seen her start a new day for Dick, did she always add some cheer, some fineness of touch, some joy of word, some stimulating helpfulness to every greeting, to every occasion. The home was not pretentious. Thoroughly cozy, with many artistic touches within, it snuggled on the heights near Arlington, the close neighbor to many of the Nation's best memories, looking out on a noble sweep of the fine, old Potomac, with glimpses through the trees of the Nation's Capitol, glimpses revealing the best of its beauties. It was a home from which emanated an atmosphere of peace and repose which one seemed to feel even as one approached. It was a home pervaded with the breath of happiness, a home which none entered without benefit. The husband, Martin Lord, was an expert chemist who had long been in the service of the Government. Capable, worthy, manly, he was blest in what he was, and in what he had. They had been married eight years, and the slipping away of the first child, Margaret, was the only sadness which had paused at their door. Mrs. Lord had been Ethel Baxter for thirty years. Her father was an intense, high-strung business man, an importer, who spent much time in Europe where he died of an American-contracted typhoid-fever, when Ethel was ten. Her mother was one of a large well-known Maryland family, fair, brown-eyed too, and frail; also, by all the rights of inheritance, training and development, sensitive and nervous. In her family the precedents of blue blood were religiously maintained with so much emphasis on the "blue" that no beginning was ever made in training her into a protective robustness. So, in spite of elaborate preparation and noted New York skill and the highest grade of conscientious nursing, she recovered poorly after Ethel's birth. Strength, even such as she formerly had, did not return. She didn't want to be an invalid. She was devoted to her husband and eager to companion and mother her child. The surgeons thought her recovery lay in their skill, and in ten years one operated twice, and two others operated once each, but for some reason the scalpel's edge did not reach the weakness. Then Mr. Baxter died, and all of her physical discomforts seemed intensified until, in desperation, the fifth operation was undertaken, which was long and severe, and from which she failed to react. So Ethel was an orphan at eleven, though not alone, for the good uncle, her mother's brother, took her to his home and never failed to respond to any impulse through which he felt he could fulfil the fatherhood and motherhood which he had assumed. Absolutely devoted, affectionate, emotional, he planned impulsively, he gave freely, but he knew not law nor order in his own high-keyed life; so neither law nor order entered into the training of his ward. Ethel Baxter's childhood had been remarkably well influenced, considering the nervous intensity of both parents. For the mother's sake, their winters had been spent in Florida, their summers on Long Island. Her mother, in face of the fact that she rarely knew a day of physical comfort and for years had not felt the thrill of physical strength, most conscientiously gave time, thought and prayer to her child's rearing. Hours were devoted to daily lessons, and many habits of consideration and refinement, many ideals of beauty, many niceties of domestic duty and practically all her studies, were mother-taught. Ethel was active, physically restless, impulsive, cheerful, fairly intense in her eagerness for an expression of the thrilling activities within. She was truly a high-type product of generations of fine living, and her blue blood did show from the first in the rapid development of keenness of mind and acuteness of feeling. Typically of the nervous temperament, she early showed a superb capacity for complex adjustments. Yet, with one damaging, and later threatening idea, the mother infected the child's mind; the conception of invalidism entered into the constructive fabric of the child-thought all the more deeply, because there was little of offensively selfish invalidism ever displayed by the mother. But many of the concessions and considerations instinctively demanded by the nervous sufferer were for years matters-of-course in the Baxter home; and these demands, almost unconsciously made by the mother, could but modify much of the natural expression of her child's young years. Another damaging attitude-reaction, intense in its expression, followed the unexpected death of Ethel's father. The mother, true to the ancient and honorable precedents of her family, went into a month of helplessness following the sad news. She could not attend the funeral, and for weeks the activities of the household were muffled by mourning; when she left her room, it was to wear the deepest crepe, while a half-inch of deadest black bordered the hundreds of responses which she personally sent to notes of condolence. She never spoke again of her husband without reference to her bereavement. Then, a year later, when the mother herself suddenly went, it seemed to devolve on the child to fulfil the mother's teachings. Her uncle's attitude, moreover, toward his sister's death was in many ways unhappy, for he did not repress expressions of bitterness toward the surgeons and condemned the fate which had so early robbed Ethel of both parents. Thus, early and intensely, a morbid attitude toward death, a conviction that self-pity was reasonable, normal, wholesome, a belief that it was her duty to publicly display intensive evidences of her affliction, determined a lasting and potent influence in this girl's life which was to alloy her young womanhood--disturbing factors, all, which before twelve caused much emotional disequilibrium. She now lived with her uncle in New York City and her summers were spent in Canada. The sense of fitness was so strong that during the next two vitally important, developing years she avoided any physical expression of her natural exuberance of spirits; and habits now formed which were, for years, to deny her any right use of her muscular self. She read much; she read well; she read intensely. She attended a private school and long before her time was an accredited young lady. Mentally, she matured very early, and with the exception of the damaging influences which have been mentioned, she represented a superior capacity for feeling and conceiving and accomplishing, even as she possessed an equally keen capacity for suffering. She was most winsome at sixteen, a bit frail and fragile, often spoken of as a rare piece of Sevres, beloved with a tenderness which would have warped the disposition of one less unselfish; emotionally intense, brilliancy and vivacity periodically burst through the habit of her reserve. A perfect pupil, and in all fine things literary, keenly alive, she had written several short sketches which showed imaginative originality and a sympathetic sensitiveness, especially toward human suffering. And her uncle was sure that a greater than George Eliot had come. There was to be a year abroad, and as the doctor and her teacher in English agreed on Italy, there she went. At seventeen, during the year in Florence, the inevitable lover came. Family traditions, parents, her orphanage, the protective surroundings of her uncle's home, her instincts--all had kept her apart. Her knowledge of young lovers was but literary, and this particular young lover presented a side which soon laid deep hold on her confidence. They studied Italian together. He was musical, she was poetic, and he gracefully fitted her sonnets to melodies. Finally, it seemed that the great Song of Life had brought them together to complete one of its harmonies. Her confidence grew to love, the love which seemed to stand to her for life. Then the awful suddenness, which had in the past marked her sorrows, burst in again. In one heart-breaking, repelling half-hour his other self was revealed, and a damaged love was left to minister to wretchedness. Here was a hurt denied even the expression of mourning stationery or black apparel--a hurt which must be hidden and ever crowded back into the bursting within. Immediate catastrophe would probably have followed had not, first, the fine pride of her fine self, then the demands of her art for expression, stepped in to save. She would write. She now knew human nature. She had tasted bitterness; and with renewed seriousness she became a severely hard- working student. But the wealth of her joy-life slipped away; the morbid made itself apparent in every chapter she wrote, while intensity became more and more the key-note of thought and effort. Back at her uncle's home, the uncle who was now even more convinced that Ethel had never outlived the shock of the loss of her parents, she found that honest study and devotion to her self-imposed tasks, and a life of much physical comfort and rarely artistic surroundings, were all failing to make living worth while. In fact, things were getting into a tangle. She was becoming noticeably restless. Repose was so lost that it was only with increasing effort that she could avoid attracting the attention of those near. Even in church it would seem that some demon of unrest would never be appeased and only could be satisfied by constant changing of position. Thoughts of father and mother, and the affair in Florence, intensified this spirit of unrest, and few conscious minutes passed that unseen stray locks were not being replaced. It seemed to be a relief to take off and put on, time and again, the ring which had been her mother's. Even her feet seemed to rebel at the confinement of shoes, and she became obsessed with the impulse to remove them, even in the theater or at the concert. A sighing habit developed. It had been growing for years into an air- hunger, and finally all physical, and much of mental, effort developed a sense of suffocation which demanded short periods of absolute rest. Associations were then formed between certain foods and disturbing digestive sensations. Tea alone seemed to help, and she became dependent upon increasingly numerous cups of this beverage. Knowing her history as we do, we can easily see how she had become abnormally acute in her responses to the discomforts which are always associated with painful emotions, and that emotional distress was interpreted, or misinterpreted, as physical disorder. Each year she became more truly a sensitive-plant, suffering and keenly alive to every discomfort, more and more easily fatigued by the conflicts between emotions, which craved expression, and the will, which demanded repression. Since the days in Florence there had been a growing antagonism to men, certainly to all who indicated any suitor-like attitude. In her heart she was forsworn. She had loved deeply once. Her idealism said it could never come again. But her antagonism, and her idealism, and her strength of will all failed to satisfy an inarticulate something which locked her in her room for hours of repressed, unexplained sobbing. Her writing became exhausting. Talks before her literary class were a nightmare of anticipation--for through all, there had never been any weakening of the beauty and intensity of her unselfish desire to give to the world her best. The dear old uncle watched her with growing apprehension. He persuaded her to seek health. It was first a water- cure; then a minor, but ineffective operation; then much scientific massage; and finally a rest-cure, and at the end no relief that lasted, but a recurrence of symptoms which, to the uncle, spoke ominously of a threatened mental balance. What truly was wrong? Do we not see that this woman's nerves were crying out for help; that, as her wisest friends, they were appealing for right ways of living; that they were pleading for development of the body that had been only half-trained; that they were beseeching a replacing of morbidness of feeling by those lost joyous happiness-days? Were they not fairly cursing the wrong which had robbed her of the hope and rights of her womanhood? A new life came when she was twenty-eight, with the saving helper who heard the cry of the suffering nerves, and interpreted their message. She had told him all. His wise kindness made it easy to tell all. He showed her the wrong invalidism thoughts, the unhappy, depressing, devitalizing attitude toward death. He revealed truths unthought by her of manhood and womanhood. He pointed out the poisonous trail of her enmity, and she put it from her. He inspired her to make friends with her nerves, who were so devotedly striving to save her. Simple, definite counsel he gave, for her body's sake. Her physical development could never be what early constructive care would have made it, but from out of her frailty grew, in less than a year of active building-training, a reserve of strength unknown for generations in the women of her line. Wholesome advice made her see the undermining influence of her morbid, mental habits, and resolutely she displaced them with the productive kind that builds character. Finally, new wisdom and a truly womanly conception of her duty and privilege replaced her antagonism to men, as understanding had obliterated enmity. It would seem as though Providence had been only waiting these changes, for they had hardly become certainties in her life when the real lover came--a man in every way worthy her fineness of instinct; one who could understand her literary ambitions and even helpfully criticize her work; one who brought wholesome habits of life and thought, and who could return cheer for cheer, and whose love responded in kind to that which now so wonderfully welled up within her. Her new adjustments were to be deeply tried and their solidity and worthiness tested to their center. Little Margaret came to make their rare home perfect, and like a choice flower, she thrived in the glow of its sunshine. At eighteen months, she was an ideal of babyhood. Then the infection from an unknown source, the treacherous scarlatina, the days of fierce, losing conflict, and sudden Death again smote Ethel Lord. But she now knew and understood. There was deep sadness of loss; there was greater joy in having had. There was an emptiness where the little life had called forth loving attention; there was a fulness of perfect mother-love which could never be taken. There were no funeral days, no mourning black, no gruesome burial. There were flowers, more tender love, and a beautified sorrow. Death was never again to stand to Ethel Lord as irreparable loss, for a great faith had made such loss impossible. And such is the life of this woman, filled with the spirit of beauty of soul--a woman who thrills husband and son with the uplift of her unremitting joy in living, who inspires uncle and friends as one who has mastered the art of a happy life, who holds the devotion of neighbors and servants through her unselfish radiation of cheer. Ethel Lord has learned truly the infinitely rich possibilities of our nerves when we make them our friends. CHAPTER II THE NEUROTIC For four heart-breaking years, the strife of a nation at war with itself had spread desolation and sorrow broadcast. The fighting ceased in April. One mid-June day following, the town folk and those from countrysides far and near met on the ample grounds of a bride-to-be. Had it not been for the sprinkling of blue uniforms, no thought of war could have seemed possible that fair day. The bride's home had been a-bustle with weeks of preparation for this hour, and nature was rejoicing and the heavens smiling upon the occasion. Sam Clayton, the bridegroom, was certainly a "lucky dog." A quiet, unobtrusive son of a neighboring farmer, he and Elizabeth had been school-children together. Probably the war had lessened her opportunity for choice but the night before he left for the front, they were engaged--and her family was the best and wealthiest of the county. "Lucky dog" and "war romance," the men said. Nevertheless, six weeks ago he had returned with his chevrons well-earned, and fifty years of square living later proved his unquestioned worth. Elizabeth at twenty, on her bridal day, was slender, lithe, fair-skinned; of Scotch-Irish descent, her gray eyes bespoke her efficiency--to-day, they spoke her pride, though neither to-day nor in years to come were they often softened by love. But it was a great wedding, and the eating and dancing and merry- making continued late into the night with ample hospitality through the morrow for the many who had come far. "Perfectly suited," the women said of the young couple. Sam Clayton had nothing which could be discounted at the bank, but the bride was given fifty fertile acres, and they both had industry and thrift, ambition and pluck. The fifty acres blossomed--Sam was a good farmer, but he proved himself a better trader, and before many years was running a small store in town. They soon added other fifty acres-- one-hundred-and-fifty in fifteen years, and out of debt--then a partner with money, and a thriving business. At forty-five it was: Mr. Samuel Clayton, President of the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank, rated at $150,000. Mrs. Clayton's ability had early been manifest. Before her marriage she had taken prizes at the County Fair in crocheting and plum-jell. In after years no one pretended to compete with her annual exhibit of canned fruits, and the coveted prize to the County's best butter-maker was awarded her many successive autumns. Our real interest in the Claytons must begin twenty-five years after the happy wedding. Their town, the county seat, had pushed its limits to the skirts of the broad Clayton acres; theirs was now the leading family in that section. Mr. Clayton, quiet, active, practical, was capable of adjusting himself without disturbance to whatever conditions he met. Three children had been born during the early years--a girl and two younger boys. The daughter was of the father's type--reserved, studious and truly worthy, for during the years that were to come, with the man she loved waiting, she remained at home a pillar of strength to which her mother clung. She turned from wifehood in response to the selfish needs of this mother. She and the older brother finished classical courses in the near-by "University," for their mother, particularly, believed in education. The brother and sister had much in common, were indeed much alike; he, however, soon married and moved into the new West and deservingly prospered. Fred, the youngest, was different. During his second summer he was very ill with cholera infantum--the days came and went--doctors came and went-- and the wonder was how life clung to the emaciated form. The mother's love flamed forth with intensity and the nights without sleep multiplied until she, too, looked wan and ill. She did not know how to pray. Her parents had been Universalists--she termed herself a Moralist; for her, heaven held no God that can hear, no Great Heart that cares, no Understanding that notes a mother's agony. The doctors offered no hope. The child was starving; no food nor medicine had agreed, and the end was near. A neighboring grandmother told how her child had been sick the same way, and how she had given him baked sweet potato which was the first thing he had digested for days. As fate would have it, it was even so with Fred, and he recovered leaving his mother devoid of faith in any one calling himself doctor, and fanatically devoted to the child she had so nearly lost. From that sickness she hovered over him, protecting him from the training she gave her other children--the kind she herself had received. His wish became her law; he was humored into weakness. He never became robust physically, and early showed defects quite unknown in either branch of the family. He failed in college, for which failure his mother found adequate excuse. He entered the bank, but within a few months his peculations would have been discovered had he not confessed to his mother, who made the discrepancy good from her private funds. During the next few years she found it necessary on repeated occasions to draw cheeks on her personal account to save him from trouble--but never a word of censure for him, always excuses. He was drinking, those days, and gambling. In the near-by state capitol the cards went his way one night. Hilarious with success and drink, he started for his room. There was a mix-up with his companions. He was left in the snow, unconscious--his winnings gone. The wealth of his father and the devotion of his mother could not save him, and he went with pneumonia a few days later. It was said that this caused her breakdown--let us see. As a girl, Elizabeth had lived in a home of plenty, in a home of local aristocracy. She was perfectly trained in all household activities and, for that period, had an excellent education, having spent one year in a far-away "Female Seminary." Her mind was good, her pride in appearance almost excessive. She said she "loved Sam Clayton," and probably did, though with none of the devotion she gave her son, nor with sufficient trust to share her patrimony which amounted to a small fortune with him when it came. In fact, she ran her own business, nor relied upon the safety of the "Farmers' and Merchants' Bank" in making her deposits. She was a housewife of repute, devoted to every detail of housewifery and economics. There was always plenty to eat and of the best; perfect order and cleanliness of the immaculate type were her pride. Excellent advice she frequently gave her husband about finances and management, but otherwise she added no interest to his life, and there was peace between husband and wife--because Sam was a peaceable man. As a mother, she taught the two older children domestic usefulness, with every care; they were always clad in good, clean clothes, clad better than the neighbors' children, and education was made to take first rank in their minds. Her sense of duty to them was strong; she frequently said: "I live and save and slave for my children." Fred, as we have seen, was her weakness. For him she broke every rule and law of her life. At forty-five she was thin, her face already deeply seamed with worry lines, a veritable slave to her home, but an autocrat to servants, agents and merchants. They said her will was strong; at least, excepting Fred, she had never been known to give in to any one. We have not spoken of Mary. Poor woman! She, too, was a slave--she was the hired girl. Meek almost to automatism, a machine which never varied from one year's end to another, faithful as the proverbial dog, she noiselessly slipped through her unceasing round of duties for twenty-three years--then catastrophe. "That fool hired man has hoodwinked Mary." No wedding gift, no note of well-wishing, but a rabid bundling out of her effects. Howbeit, Central Ohio could not produce another Mary, and from then on a new interest was added to the Claytons' table-talk as one servant followed another into the Mother's bad graces. She was already worn to a feather-edge before Mary's ingratitude. But the shock of Fred's death completed the demoralization of wrongly lived years. For weeks she railed at a society which did not protect its citizens, at a church which failed to make men good, while she now recognized a God against whom she could express resentment. This woman endowed with an excellent physical and mental organization had allowed her ability and capacity to become perverted. Orderliness, at first a well planned daily routine, gradually degenerated into an obsession for cleanliness. Each piece of furniture went through its weekly polishing, rugs were swept and dusted, sponged and sunned--even Mary could not do the table-linen to her taste--and Tuesday afternoon through the years went to immaculate ironing. The obsession for cleanliness bred a fear of uncleanliness, and for years each dish was examined by reflected light, to be condemned by one least streak. The milk and butter especially must receive care equaled only by surgical asepsis. Then there were the doors. The front door was for company, and then only for the elect--and Fred; the side door was for the family, and woe to the neighbor's child or the green delivery boy who tracked mud through this portal. No amount of foot-wiping could render the hired man fit for the kitchen steps after milking time--he used a step-ladder to bring up the milk to the back porch. Such intensity of attention to detail could not long fail to make this degenerating neurotic take note of her own body, which gradually became more and more sensitive, till she was fairly distraught between her fear of draughts and her mania for ventilation. It was windows up and windows down, opening the dampers and closing the dampers, something for her shoulders and more fresh air. Church, lecture-halls and theaters gradually became impossible. Finally she was practically a prisoner in the semiobscurity of her home--a prisoner to bodily sensation. Then came the autos to curse. The Clayton home was within a hundred yards of the county road, and when the wind was from the west really visible dust from passing motors presumed to invade the sanctity of parlor and spare rooms, and with kindling resentment windows were closed and windows were opened, rooms were dusted and redusted until she hated the sound of an auto-horn, until the smell of burning gasoline caused her nausea--but each year the autos multiplied. At last the family realized that her loss of control was becoming serious, that she was really a sufferer; but her antagonism to physicians was deep-set, so the osteopath was called. Had he been given a fair chance, he might have helped, but her obsessions were such that she resented the touch of his manipulations, fearing that some unknown infection might exude from his palms to her undoing. Reason finally became helpless in the grip of her phobias. Her stomach lining was "destroyed," and into this "raw stomach" only the rarest of foods and those of her own preparation could be taken. She had fainted at Fred's funeral, and repeatedly became dazed, practically unconscious, at the mention of his name. Self-interests had held her attention from girlhood to her wreckage, and from this grew self- study, which later degenerated into self-pity. Her converse was of food and feelings and self. She bored all she met, for self alone was expressed in actions and words. Father and daughter finally, under the pretext of a trip for her health, placed her in a Southern sanitarium. Much was done here for her, in the face of her protest. Illustrative of the unreasoning intensity with which fear had laid hold upon her was her mortal dread of grape-seeds. As she was again being taught to eat rationally, grapes were ordered for her morning meal. The nurse noticed that with painful care she separated each seed from the pulp, and explained to her the value of grape-seeds in her case. She wisely did not argue with the nurse, but two mornings later she was discovered ejecting and secreting the seeds. The physician then kindly and earnestly appealed for her intelligent cooperation. She thereupon admitted that many years ago a neighbor's boy had died of appendicitis, which the doctor said was caused by a grape-seed. The fallacy of these early-day opinions was shown her. Then was illustrated the weakness of her faith and the strength of her fear. She produced a draft for one thousand dollars, which she said she always carried for unforeseen emergencies, and offered it to the doctor to use for charity or as he wished, if he would change the order about the grapes. Suffice it to say she learned to eat Concords, Catawbas, Tokays and Malagas. She returned home better, but was never wholesomely well, and to-day dreads the death for which her family wait with unconscious patience. What is the secret of this miserable old woman's failure to adjust herself to the richness which life offered her? A selfish self peers out from every act. Even her generosity to Fred was the pleasing of self. Given all that she had, what could she not have been! Physically, with the advantages of plenty and her country life and the promise of her fair girlhood, what attraction could not have been hers had kindness and generosity softened her eyes, tinted her cheeks, and love-wrinkles come instead of worry-wrinkles. Her mind was naturally an unusual one. She lived within driving distance of one of Ohio's largest colleges--only an hour by train to the state capital. Fortune had truly smiled and selected her for happiness, but from the first it was self or her family and no further thought or plan or consideration. Elizabeth Clayton was given a nervous system of superb quality, which used for the good of those she touched would have hallowed her life; misused, she drifts into unlovable old age, a selfish neurotic. She could have been a leader in her community, a blessing in her generation, a builder of faiths which do not die, but she failed to choose the good part which neither loss of servant, death of child nor advancing age can take away. CHAPTER III THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS The price we pay for defective nerves is one of mankind's big burdens. Humanity reaches its vaunted supremacy, it realizes the heights of manhood and womanhood through its power to meet what the day brings, to collect the best therefrom and to fit itself profitably to use that best for the good of its kind. And these possibilities are all dependent on the superb, complicated nervous system. The miracles of right and wise living are rooted deep in the nerve-centers. Man's nervous system is his adjusting mechanism--his indicator revealing the proper methods of reaction. Nothing man will ever make can rival its sensitiveness and capacity. But when it is out of order, trouble is certain. Excessive, imperfect, inadequate reactions will occur and disintegrating forms of response to ourselves and our surroundings will certainly become habitual, unless wise and resolute readjustments are made. The common failure of the many to find the best, even the good in life, is apparent to all--so common indeed, that the search for the perfectly adjusted man, physically, mentally, morally adjusted, is about as fruitful as Diogenes' daylight excursions with his lantern. The physical, mental and moral are intricately related even as the primary colors in the rainbow. Our nerves enter intimately into every feeling, thought, act of life, into every function of our bodies, into every aspiration of our souls. They determine our digestion and our destinies; they may even influence the destinies of others. Let us turn a few pages of a life and see the cost of defective nervous-living. The Pullman was crowded; every berth had been sold; the train was loaded with holiday travelers, and the ever interesting bridal couple had the drawing-room. The aisle was cluttered with valises and suitcases; the porter was feverishly making down a berth; while bolstered on a pile of pillows, surrounded by a number of anxious faces, lay the sick woman, the source of the commotion and the anxiety. Sobs followed groans, and exclamations followed sobs-- apparently only an intense effort of self-control kept her from screaming. She held her head. Periodically, it seemed to relieve her to tear at her hair. She held her breath, she clutched her throat, she covered her eyes as though she would shut out every glimpse of life. She convulsively pressed her heart to keep it from bursting through; she clasped and wrung her hands, and now and then would crowd her forearm between her teeth to shut in her pent-up anguish. She would have thrown herself from the seat but for the unobtrusive little man who knelt in front to keep her from falling, and gently held her on as she spasmodically writhed. His plain, unromantic face showed deep anxiety, not unmixed with fear. He was eagerly assisted by the dear old lady who sat in front. Hers was mother-heart clear through; her satchel had been disturbed to the depths in her search for remedies long faithful in alleviating ministration; her camphor bottle lay on the floor, impulsively struck from her kind hand by the convulsed woman. The sweet-faced college girl who sat opposite had just finished a year in physiology and this was her first opportunity to use her new knowledge. "Loosen her collar and lower her head and let her have more air," she advised. "Yes," said the little man, "I'm her husband you see, and am a doctor. I've seen her this way before and those things don't help." The drummer, who had the upper berth, had retreated at the first sign of trouble to the safety of the smoking-room, and was apparently trying more completely to hide himself in clouds of obscuring cigar smoke. The passengers were all cowed into attentive quietude; the sympathetic had offered their help, while the others found satisfaction for their aloofness in agreement with the sophisticated porter, who, after he had assisted in safely depositing the writhing woman behind the green curtains and had been rather roughly treated by her protesting heels, shrewdly opined to the smoking-room refugees that "That woman sho has one case o' high-strikes." The berth, however, proved no panacea--she was "suffocating," she must get out of the smoke and dust, she must get away from "those people" or she would stifle, and to the other symptoms were added paroxysms of coughing and gasping which sent shivers through the whole car of her sympathizers. Her husband explained that she was just out of a hospital, which they had left unexpectedly for home, that she never could sleep in a berth, and if they could only get the drawing-room so he could be alone with her he thought he could get her to sleep, but he did not know what the consequences would be if she did not get quiet. The Pullman conductor was strong for quiet, and he and the sweet-faced college girl and the dear old lady formed a committee who waited on the young bride and groom. It was hard, mighty hard, even in the bliss of their happiness, to give up the drawing-room for a lower. Had not that drawing-room stood out as one of their precious dreams during the last year, as, step by step, they had planned in anticipation of that short bridal week! But the sacrifice was made, the transfers effected, and out of the quiet which followed, emerged order and the cheer normal to holiday travelers. A number were gratified by the sense of their well- doing, they had gone their limit to help; others were equally comfortable in their satisfied sense of shrewdness, they agreed with the porter--they had sized her up and not been "taken in." Mrs. Platt had been Lena Dalton. She was born in Galveston forty-five years before. Her father was a cattle-buyer, rough, dissipated, always indulgent to himself and, when mellow with drink, lavishly indulgent to the family. He never crossed Lena; even when sober and irritable to the rest, she had her way with him. The high point in his moral life was reached when she was seven. For three weeks she was desperately ill. A noted revivalist was filling a large tent twice a day; the father attended. He promised himself to join the church if Lena did not die--she got well, so there was no need. She remained his favorite. "Drunk man's luck" forgot him several years later when his pony fell and rolled on him, breaking more ribs than could be mended. He left some insurance, two daughters, and a very efficient widow. Mrs. Dalton had held her own with her husband, even when he was at his worst. She was strong of body and mind, practical, probably somewhat hard, certainly with no sympathy for folderols. Her common-school education, in the country, had not opened many vistas in theories and ideals, but she lived her narrow life well, doing as she would be done by--which was not asking much, nor giving much--caring for herself without fear or favor till she died, as she wished, at night alone, when she was eighty. She possessed qualities which with the help of a normal husband would have been a wholesome heritage to the children; but it was a home of double standards, certainly so in the training of Lena, who had never failed, when her father was home, to get the things her mother had denied her in his absence. She was thirteen when he died; at fifteen then followed her two most normal years. The accident occurred which, was to prove fateful for her life, and through hers, for others. Lena was a good roller-skater, but was upset one night, at the rink, by an awkward novice and fell sharply on the back of her head. She was taken home unconscious and was afterward delirious, not being herself until noon the next day, when she found beside her an anxious mother who for several days continued ministering to her daughter's every wish. Three months later she set her heart on a certain dress in a near-by shop window; her mother said it was too old for her, and cost too much. Day after day passed and the dress remained there, more to be desired each time she saw it. The Sunday-school picnic was only a week off. She made another appeal at the supper table; her sister unwisely interjected a sympathetic "too bad." The emphasis of the mother's "No" sounded like a "settler," but just then things went dark for Lena. She grasped her head and apparently was about to fall--her face twitched and her body jerked convulsively. The mother lost her nerve, and feeling that her harshness had brought back the "brain symptoms" which followed the skating accident, spent the night in ministrations--and hanging at the foot of Lena's bed, when she was herself next morning, was the coveted dress. To those who know, the mental processes were simple; strong desire, an implacable mother, save when touched by maternal fear, the association in the girl's mind of a relationship between her accident and her mother's compliance, a remoter association of her illness at seven with her father's years of free giving. What was to restrain her jerkings and twitchings and meanings? Many of these reactions were taking place in the semi- mysterious laboratory of her subconscious self; but it was the beginning of a life of periodic outbreaks through which she had practically never failed to secure what she desired. To the end of her good mother's life, Lena remained the only one who could change her "no" to "yes." The elder sister was a more normal girl. She studied stenography and soon married a promising young man. They had two children. He made a trip down the coast and died of yellow fever. The wife was much depressed and spent a bad year and most of the insurance money, getting adjusted. Then the Galveston storm with its harvest of death and miraculous escapes--the mother was taken, the two children left. Meanwhile Lena had finished high school, had taken a year in the Normal and secured a community school to teach, near Houston. She was now eighteen, her face was interesting, some of the features were fine. Her bluish-gray eyes could be particularly appealing; there was much mobility of expression; a wealth of slightly curling, light- chestnut hair was always stylishly arranged; in fact, her whole make- up caused the young fellows to speak of her as the "cityfied school- marm." Then came the merchant's son and all was going well, so well that they both pledged their love and plighted their troth. The temporary distraction of her lover's attention, deflected by the visiting brunette in silks, an inadvertently broken appointment (the train was late and he could not help it), and the first attack of the "jerks" among strangers is recorded. They hastily summoned old Jake Platt's son, just fresh from medical college, who, helpless with this suffering bit of femininity, supplied in attention and practical nursing what he lacked in medical discernment and skill, to the end that one engagement was broken and another formed in a fortnight. Old Jake had some money; the young doctor was starting in well, and needed a wife; she was still jealous, and young Dr. Platt got a wife, who molded his future as the modeler does his clay. Within the first month the bride had another attack. They had planned a trip to Houston to do some shopping and to attend the theater. The doctor-husband was delayed on a case and found his young bride in the throes of another nervous storm when he reached home, nor did the symptoms entirely abate until he had promised her that he would always come at once, no matter what other duties he might have, when she needed him. By this promise he handicapped his future success as a physician and did all that devoted ignorance could do to make certain a periodic repetition of the convulsive seizures. This was but the first of a series of concessions which involved his professional, social and financial future, which her "infirmity" exacted of him as the years passed. Later old Jake died and the doctor's share of his big farms was an opportune help. But Mrs. Platt had a certain far- reaching ambition; therefore, they soon moved to Houston. He would have done well where he started; his education, his medical equipment, his personality were certain to limit his progress in a city. The doctor's wife was superficially bright, capable of adapting herself with distinct charm to those she admired. She formed intense likes and dislikes--while often impulsively kind-hearted, she could cling to vindictive abuse for months. Here was a woman who proved very useful on church committees, in societies, in Sunday-school, who worked effectively in the Civic Club. She sang fairly well naturally, of course "adored music" and was an efficient enthusiastic worker when interested. But Lena Platt was never able to work when not interested. Periodically her "fearful nervous spells" would interfere with all duties. The doctor was absolutely subsidized. Had any other attractions appealed to him, his wife's early evidences of implacable jealousy would have proven a sure antidote. He was an unconscious slave. Her nervousness expressed itself toward him in other terms than convulsively. She had a tongue which from time to time blistered the poor man. He would never talk back, fearful as he ever was of bringing on one of those storms which, in his inadequate medical knowledge, were as mysterious and ominous as epileptic attacks. For years the absence of children in the home was a sorrow from which much affecting sentimentality evolved, being as well the pathetic cause for days of sickness, when outside interests were less attractive to this artful sufferer than the attentions elicited by her illness. Then out of the great gulf surged the heroic Galveston tragedy, and the two orphan children came to fill the idealized want. At first they received an abundance of impulsive loving, but unhappily one day, a few months after they came, the foster-mother overheard the elder girl make an unfavorable comparison between her and the real mother; and for years distinctions were made--the younger being always favored, the unfortunate, older child living half-terrorized, never knowing when angry, unfair words would assail her. Lena Platt had confided to several of her bosom friends the tragedy of her unequal marriage and that she knew she would yet find a "soul mate." There was a Choral Society in Houston one winter, and following a few gratuitous compliments from the dapper young director, she decided she had found it. He left in the spring and this dream faded. A few months later the new minister's incautious exaggeration that "he didn't know how he could run the church without her" came near resulting in trouble, for some of the good sisters unkindly questioned the quality of her sudden excessive devotion and religious zeal. Mrs. Platt was not vicious, but she craved excitement; hers was a life of constantly forming new plans. Attention from any source was sweet and from those of prominence it was nectar. Things were pretty bad in the doctor's home after the preacher episode, and she was finally persuaded to let her husband call in another physician. He was very nice to her, and while he never pretended to understand her case, his medicine and advice benefited her tremendously and she went nearly a year without a bad attack. Her visits to his office and her conscienceless use of his time were finally brought to a sudden close when one day he deliberately called other patients in, leaving her unnoticed in the waiting-room. Bad times again, then other new doctors, other periods of immunity from attacks, with exaggerated devotion to each new helper until she had made the rounds of the desirable, professional talent of Houston. Meanwhile, impulsive extravagance had sadly reduced the Platt inheritance, so when an acquaintance returned from St. Louis nervously recreated by a specialist there, the poor doctor had to borrow on his insurance to make it possible for her to have the benefit of this noted physician's skill. The trip North meant sacrifice for the entire family. Apparently she wished to be cured, and the treatment began most auspiciously. After careful, expert investigation, assurance had been given that if she would do her part, she could be made well in six months. Her husband told the physician that he hoped he would "look in on her often, for she will do anything on earth for one she likes." The treatment was thorough-going; it began at the beginning, and during the early weeks she was enthusiastically satisfied with the skill of her treatment and the care of her special nurse, in whom she found another "bosom friend," to whom she confided all. Her devotion for the new doctor grew by leaps. Mistaking his kindness and thinking perchance she might extract more beneficent sympathy by physical methods, she impulsively threw herself into where-his-arms-would-have- been had he not side-stepped. Her position physically and sentimentally was awkward; the doctor called the nurse and left her. Later he returned and did his best to appeal to her womanhood; he analyzed her illness and showed her some of the damage it had wrought both in her character and to others. He showed her the demoralization which had grown out of her wretched surrender to impulsive desire. He revealed to her the necessity for the effacement of much of her false self and the true spiritualizing of her mind as the only road to wholesome living. That same day Dr. Platt received a telegram peremptorily demanding that he come for her. Upon his arrival he had a short talk with the specialist who succinctly told him the problem as he saw it. For a few minutes, and for a few minutes only, was his faith in the helpless reality of his wife's sickness shaken; but faith and pity and indignation were united as she told of her mistreatment and how she had been outraged and her whole character questioned by that "brutal doctor," who talked to her as no one had ever dared before. She was going home on the first train and going home we found her, having another attack in the Pullman. A collapse, her husband told himself, from over-exertion and the result of her wounded womanhood. "A plain case o' high-strikes" was the porter's diagnosis; a sickness sufficiently adequate to have the sweet incense of much public attention poured upon her wounded spirit--and to secure the coveted drawing-room! On her way home! She had spurned her one chance to be scientifically taught the woefully needed lessons of right living-on her way to the home which had become more and more chaotic with the passing of the years and the dwindling of their means. Who can count the price this woman has paid for her nervousness? At fifty, with a scrawny, under-nourished body, the wrinkled remnants of beauty, she suffers actual weakness and distress. Quick prostration follows all effort, excepting when she is fired by excitement. All ability to reason in the face of desire is gone; she is dominated by emotions which become each year more unattractive; even the air- castles are tumbled into ruins. Her husband is a slave--used as a convenience. Her waning best is for those who attract her, her growing worst for those who offend. One child's life is maimed by indulgence, the other's by injustice. She has reached that moral depravity which fails to recognize and accept any truth which is opposed to her wishes. As she looks back over the vista of years, filled with many activities, no monument of wholesome constructiveness remains; she has blighted what she touched. Lena Platt, a wilful, spoiled, selfish hysteric! CHAPTER IV WRECKING A GENERATION The afternoon's heat was intense; it was reflecting in shimmering waves from everything motionless, this breathless September day in Donaldsville, Texas. Main Street is a half-mile long, unpainted "box- houses" fringe either end and cluster unkemptly to the west, forming the "city's" thickly populated "darky town." Near the station stands the new three-story brick hotel, the pride of the metropolis. Not even the Court House at the county seat is as imposing. Main Street is flanked by parallel rows of one and two story, brick store-buildings, from the fronts of which, and covering the wide, board-sidewalks, extend permanent, wooden awnings; these are bordered by long racks used for the ponies and mules of the Saturday crowds of "bottom niggers" and "post oak farmers." The higher ground east of Main Street is preempted by the comfortable residences of Donaldsville proper and culminates in Quality Hill, where the two bankers and a select group of wealthy bottom-planters lived in aristocratic supremacy. On this particular afternoon, the town's only business street was about deserted. On its shady side were hitched a few Texas ponies whose drooping heads and wilted ears bespoke the heat--so hot it was that the flies, even, did not molest them. Scattered groups of lounging, idle men indicated the enervating influence of the sizzling 108 degrees in the shade. But Donaldsville was not dead--perspiring certainly, but still possessing one lively evidence of animation. From time to time peals of boisterous laughter, boisterous but refreshing as the breath of a breeze, a congenial, almost contagious laughter would roll up and down Main Street even to its box-house fringes. Each peal would call forth from some dusky denizen of the suburbs the proud recognition: "Dar's Doctor Jim laughin' some mo'." Doctor Jim's laughter was one of Donaldsville's attractive features. His friends living a mile away claimed they often heard it--and everybody was Doctor Jim's friend. No more genial, generous gentleman of the early post-bellum Texas South could be found. His was an unfathomed well of good nature, good humor and good stories. He knew all comers whether he had met them before or not. For him, it was never "Stranger," it was always "Friend." Let us take his proffered hand and feel the heartiness of its greeting, feel its friendly shake, even to our shoe-soles. His good humor beams from his deep-blue eyes; his shock of gray hair, which knows no comb but his fingers, is pushed back from a brow which might have been a scholar's, were it not so florid. A soft, white linen shirt rolls deeply open, exposing a grizzled expanse of powerful chest. Roomy, baggy, spotless, linen trousers do homage to the heat, as does his broad, palm-fiber hat, used chiefly as a fan. Doctor Jim McDonald, six feet in his socks, weighing 180 pounds, erect and manly in bearing in spite of his negligee, is a remarkable specimen of physical manhood at sixty-five. Even with the Saturday afternoon crowds of the cotton-picking season, Main Street seems deserted if his resounding laughter is not heard; but it takes something as serious as a funeral to keep him away from his accustomed bench in front of Doctor Will's drug-store, centrally located on the shady side of the street. Doctor Will is Doctor Jim's brother, and is, according to the negroes, a "sho-nuff" doctor. Doctor Jim's life is comfortably monotonous. He had put up the first windmill in the region roundabout and his was the first real bath-tub in the county, and long before Donaldsville thought of water-works, Doctor Jim's windmill was keeping the big cistern on stilts filled from his deep artesian well. He started each day with a stimulating plunge in his big tub, and never tired proclaiming that with this and enough good whiskey he would live to be a hundred--and then Main Street would stop and listen to the generous reverberations of his deep-chested laugh. Three good meals, the best old Aunt Sue could cook and Aunt Sue came from Mississippi with them after the war--were eaten with an unflagging relish by this man whose digestion had never discovered itself. Two mornings a week Doctor Jim drove leisurely out to his big Trinity River plantation, a two-thousand-acre plantation, where he was the beloved overlord of sixty negro families. This rich, river-bottom farm, when cotton was at a good price, brought in so much that Doctor Jim, with another of his big laughs, would say he was "mighty lucky in having those rascally twins to throw some of it away." One night a week he could always be found at the Lodge, and once a day he covered each way the half-mile separating his generous, rambling home on Quality Hill and Doctor Will's office. His only real recreation was funerals. He would desert his shady seat and drive miles to help lay away friend or foe--if foes he had. On such occasions only, would he pass the threshold of a church. He contributed generously to each of the town's five denominations and showed considerable restraint in the presence of the cloth in his choice of reminiscences, but it was always the occasion of a good- natured uproar for him to proclaim, "The Missus has enough religion for us both." Still the silence of his charity could have said truly that his donation had constructed one-fifth of each church-building in the town; in fact, it was his pride to double the Biblical one-tenth in his giving. Of his open-heartedness Doctor Jim rarely spoke but another pride was his, to which he allowed no day to pass without some hilariously expressed reference. He was proud of his whiskey-drinking. One quart of Kentucky's best Bourbon from sun to sun, decade after decade! "I have drunk enough whiskey to float a ship--and some ship too. Look at me! Where will you find a healthier man at sixty-five? I haven't known a sick minute since the war. If you drink whiskey right, with plenty of water and plenty of eatin', it won't hurt anybody." This was the law and the gospel to Doctor Jim; he never failed to proclaim it to pale-faced youths or ailing mankind; and the Book of Judgment, alone, will reveal the harvest of destruction which Time reaped through Doctor Jim's influence in L---County. Yet, oddly, it was Doctor Jim's principle and practice never to treat. He claimed he had never offered a living soul a social drink. "Drink whiskey right and it won't hurt anybody!" Did it hurt? Doctor Jim and his two brothers spent their early life on a plantation in Mississippi. The father wanted the boys to be educated. Two of them took medical courses in New Orleans. Doctor Jim wished to see more of the world, and literally did see much of it on a two-year cruise around the Horn to the East Indies and China. He was thirty-five years old in '60 when he married. Then he served as surgeon--"mighty poor surgeon" he used to say, for a Mississippi regiment throughout the four years of the Civil War. He and his two brothers passed through this conflict and returned home to find their father dead, the negroes scattered and the old plantation devastated. The three with their families journeyed to Texas--the then Land of Promise! At twenty-five cents an acre they bought river-bottom lands which are to-day priceless, and the losses of the past were soon forgotten in the rapid prosperity of the following years. Mrs. McDonald represented all that high type of character which the dark years of the war brought out in so many instances of Southern womanhood. Patient, hopeful, uncomplaining she lived through the four years of war-time separation, left her own people and journeyed to the Southwest to begin life anew. She was particularly robust of physique, domestic in a high sense, gentle and deeply kind. She passed through hardship, privation and prosperity practically not knowing sickness. Her children could not have had better mother-stock, and the scant days were in the past, so they never knew the lack of plenty. There were eight, from Edith, born in 1870, to Frank, in 1885, including the twins. Did whiskey-drinking hurt? Edith grew into a slender, retiring girl, her paleness accentuated by her black hair. She was quiet, read much, and took little interest in out-of-door activities, entering into the play-life of the other children but rarely. Her father insisted, later, on her riding, and she became a fair horsewoman. She was refined in all her relations. Edith went to New Orleans at seventeen. The spring after, she developed a hacking cough and had one or two slight hemorrhages, but at twenty was better and married an excellent young merchant. The child was born when she was twenty-two; three weeks later the mother died, leaving a pitiable, scrofulous baby, which medical and nursing skill kept lingering eighteen months. The first boy was named James, Jr., as we should expect, and, as we should not expect, was never called "Jim." But James was not right. He developed slowly, did not walk till over three, was talking poorly at five; he was subject to convulsions and destructive outbreaks; he was uncertain and clumsy in his movements, so provision was made that he might always have some one with him. But even in the face of this care, he stumbled and fell into the laundry-pot with its boiling family-wash, was badly scalded and seriously blinded. James mercifully died two years later in one of his convulsions. Mabel was the flower of the family. Through her girlhood she was lovable in every way, and beloved. She was blond like her father, though not as robust as either father or mother, and in ideals and character was truly the latter's daughter. She finished in a finishing school, had musical ability and charm, and soon married and made a happy home--an unusual home, until the birth of the first child. Since then it has been a fight for health, with the pall of her family's history smothering each rekindling hope. Operations and sanatoria, health-resorts and specialists have not restored, and she lives, a neurasthenic mother of two neurotic children. Happiness has long fled the home where it so loved to bide those early days, before the strain and stress of maternity had drained the mother's poor reserve of vitality. The history of Will and John, named for the two uncles, would prove racy reading through many chapters. "The Twins" were the father's text for spicy stories galore many years before their death. From the first, they were "two young sinners." They both had active minds-- overactive in devising deviltry. Mischievous as little fellows, never punished, practically never corrected by their father, humored by sisters, house-servants, and the plantation-hands, feared and admired by other boys, they seemed proof against any helpful influence from the earnest, pained, prayerful mother. As boys of ten, they had become "town talk" and were held responsible for all pranks and practical jokes perpetrated in Donaldsville or thereabout, unless other guilty ones were captured red-handed. Multiply your conception of a "bad boy" by two and you will have Will at twelve; repeat the process and you will have John. They possessed one quality--dare we call it virtue?-- which kept them dear to Doctor Jim's heart through their very worst. They never lied to him, no matter what their misdeeds. They could lie as veritable troopers, but from him the truth in its rankest boldness was never withheld. As the years passed, they made many and deep excursions into the old doctor's pocket. But he paid the bills cheerfully and sent his reverberating laugh chasing the speedy dollars, as soon as he got with some of his Main Street cronies. The boys planned and worked together, protecting each other most cleverly. Still they were expelled from every school they attended after they were thirteen. A military academy noted for its ability to handle hard cases found them quite too mature in their wild ways, and sent them home. They may, for reasons best known to themselves, have been "square with the old man," but they were a pair of thoroughgoing toughs by twenty, not only fast but cruel, even brutal, in their evil- doing. Will was the first to show the strain of the pace. When twenty-two, the warning cough sobered him a bit, and in John's faithful and congenial company, he went first to Denver, then to New Mexico. Doctors' orders were irksome, whiskey and cards the only available recreation for the boys, and so they tried to follow their father's example in developing a powerful physique on Kentucky Bourbon ("best"). John suddenly quit drinking. "Acute nephritis" was on the shipping paster. Delirium tremens was the truth. Will was too frail to accompany his brother's remains home. He was pretty lonely and anxious, and miserable without John, but for several weeks behaved quite to the doctor's satisfaction. It didn't last long, and within the year tuberculosis and Bourbon laid him beside his brother. May was a promising girl, "almost a hoiden," the neighbors said. She rode the ponies bareback; she played boys' games, and at twelve looked as though the problem of health could never complicate her glad, young life. But cough and hemorrhage, twin specters, stalked in at sixteen and the poor child fairly melted away and was gone in a year. Annabel, the youngest girl, was a quiet child and thoughtful. Some called her dull, but rather, it seems, she early sensed her fate. When but a child she was sent to "San Antone" and operated on by a throat specialist. After May's death she went to the mountains each summer and spent two winters in South Texas. But she grew more and more thin, and in the end it was tuberculosis. Frank, the last child, was different from all the others. He seemed bright of mind and active of body. He attended school as had none of the other boys; he even went to Sunday-school. Physically and mentally, he gave promise of prolonging the family line--but he proved his father's only admitted regret. He lied and he stole. The money which his father would have given him freely he preferred to get by cunning. Doctor Jim could not tolerate what he called dishonesty, and from time to time they would have words and Frank would be gone for months. His cleverness made him a fairly successful gambler; that he played the game "crooked" is probably evidenced by his being shot in a gambling-joint before he was thirty. We have thus scanned the-wreckage of a generation bred in alcohol. Children they were of unusual physical and mental parentage, parents who never knowingly offended their consciences, children reared in most healthful surroundings with every comfort and opportunity for normal development. Four of them showed their physical inferiority through the early infection and unusually poor resistance to tuberculosis; one was born an imbecile; one died directly from the effects of drink; the only girl who survived early maturity, the best of them all, spent twenty years a nervous sufferer, mothering two nervously defective children; the physically best was the morally worst and died a criminal. Doctor Jim lived on with his habits unchanged, his laugh, only, losing something in volume and more in infectiousness. Still proud of his health he preached the gospel of good whiskey well drunk, never sensing his part in the tragedy of his own fireside. He was nearly eighty when the stroke came which bereft him of any possibility of understanding, or of knowing remorse. He had laid his wife away some years previously and for months he lingered on paralyzed, demented, in the big, empty house, cared for by an old negro couple, hardly recognizing Mabel when she came twice a year, but never forgetting that, "Whiskey won't hurt anybody." CHAPTER V THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER His name is not Lawrence Adams Abbott. The surname really is that of one of America's first families. He, himself, is among the few living of a third generation of large wealth. It was an early-summer afternoon and Dr. Abbott--for he was a graduate of Cornell Medical--was standing at one of the train gates of the Grand Central Station in New York. As he waits apart from the small crowd assembled to welcome, he attracts observing attention. His face appears thirty; he is thirty-six. The features are finely cut, the chin is especially good. The eyes are blue-gray, and a slight pallor probably adds to his apparent distinction. His attitude is languid, the handling of his cane gracefully indolent, the almost habitual twisting of his chestnut-brown mustache attractively self-satisfied. His clothing is handsome, of distinctive materials, and tailored to the day. So much for an observing estimate. The critical observer would note more. He would detect a sluggishness in the responses of the pupils, as the eyes listlessly travel from face to face, producing an effect of haunting dulness. Mumbling movements of the lips, a slightly incoordinate swaying of the body, might speak for short periods of more than absent-mindedness. But the gates open and after the eager, intense meetings, and the more matter-of-fact assumption of babies and bundles, the red-capped porters, with their lucky burdens of fashionable traveling-cases, pilot or follow the sirs and mesdames of fortune. Among these is one whose handsome face is mellowed by softening, early-gray hair, and whose perfect attire and tenderness in greeting our doctor at once associate mother and son. She has just come down the Hudson on one of the few seriously difficult errands of her fifty-six years. Two weeks have passed. The room is stark bare, save for two mattresses, a heap of disheveled bed clothes, and two men. The hours are small and the dim, guarded light, intended to soften, probably intensifies the weirdness of the picture. The suspiciously plain woodwork is enameled in a dull monochrome. The windows are guarded with protecting screens. One man, an attendant, lies orderly on his pallet; the other, a slender figure in pajamas, crouches in a corner. His hair is bestraggled; his face is livid; his pupils, widely dilated; his dry lips part now and then as he mutters and mumbles inarticulately or chuckles inanely. Now starting, again abstracted, he is capable of responding for a moment only, as the attendant offers him his nourishment. A few seconds later he is groaning and twisting, obviously in pain, pain which is forgotten as quickly, as he reaches here and there for imaginary, flying, floating things. Real sleep has not closed his eyes for now nearly three nights. He is delirious in an artificial, merciful semi-stupor, which is saving him the untold sufferings of morphine denial. Before this unhappy Dr. Abbott stretch long, wearisome weeks of readjustment, weeks of physical pain and mental discomfort, weeks, let us hope, of soul-prodding remorse. His only chance for a future worth spending lies in months of physical reeducation, of teaching his femininely soft body the hardness which stands for manliness; for him must be multiplied days of mental reorganization to change the will of a weakling into saving masterfulness; nor will these suffice unless, in the white heat of a moral revelation, the false tinsel woven into the fabric of his character be consumed. For months he must deny himself the luxuries, even many of the comforts, his mother's wealth is eager to give. Yet these weeks and months of development may never be, for in a short time he will again be legally accountable, and probably will resent and refuse constructive discipline, and return to a satin-upholstered life--his cigarettes, his wine-dinners, his liquors, and his "rotten feeling" mornings after--then to his morphin and to his certain degradation. And why should this be? Time must turn back the hands on her dial thirty-three years that we may know. The fine Abbott home was surrounded by a small suburban estate near Philadelphia, a generation ago; we have met the then young mistress of the mansion, at the Grand Central Station. It was a home of richness, a home of discriminating wealth, a home of artistic beauty; it was a home of nervous tension. This neurotic intensity was not of the cheap helter-skelter, melodramatic sort; there was a splendid veneer of control. But all the mother's plans and activities depended on the moods, whims and impulses of little Lawrence, the only child, then glorying in the hey-day of his three-year-old babyhood. It was a household kept in dignified turmoil by this child of wealth, who needed a poor boy's chance to be a lovable, hearty, normal chap. It was overattention to his health, with its hundreds of impending possibilities; to his food, with the unsolvable perplexity of what the doctor advised and of what the young sire wanted. More of satisfaction, perhaps, was found in clothing the youth, as he cared less about these details; still, an unending variety of weights and materials was provided that all hygienic and social requirements might be adequately met. Anxious thought was daily spent that his play and playmates might be equally pleasing and free from danger. Almost prayerful investigation was made of the servants who ministered, and tense, sleepless hours were spent by this nervous mother striving to wisely decide between the dangers to her child of travel and those other dangers of heated summers and bleak winters at home. Frequent trips into the city and frequent visitations from the city were made, that expert advice be obtained. Consultations were followed by counter consultations and conferences which but added the mocking counsel of indecision. And the marble of her beauty began to show faint marrings chiseled by tension and anxiety--for was not Lawrence her only son! It was a home of double standards. The father was a wholesome, serious-minded, essentially reasonable, Cornell man. His ideas were manly and from time to time he laid down certain principles, and when at home, with apparently little effort, exacted and secured a ready and certainly not unhappy, obedience from his son. But business interests and responsibilities were large and the bracing tonic of his association with the boy was all too passing to put much blood- richness into the pallor of the child's developing character. Moreover, this intermittent helpfulness was more than counteracted by the mother's disloyal, though unconscious dishonesty. Hers was an open, if need be a furtive, overattention and overstimulation, an inveterate surrender to the sweet tyranny of her son's childish whims. There was probably nothing malicious in her many little plans which kept the father out of the nursery and ignorant of much of their boy's tutelage. The mother was only repeating fully in principle, and largely in detail, her own rearing; and had she not "turned out to be one of the favored few?" The suburban special went into a crash, and all that a fine father might have done through future years to neutralize the unwholesome training of a nervous mother was lost. In fact, her power for harm was now multiplied. The large properties and business were hers through life, and with husband gone, and so tragically, there was increased opportunity, and unquestionably more reason, for the intensification of her motherly care. So the fate of a fine man's son is left in the hands of a servile mother. It now became a home of restrained extravagance. The table was fairly smothered with rare and rich foods. Fine wines and imported liquors entered into sauces and seasonings. The boy's playroom was a veritable toy-shop, with its hundreds of useless and unused playthings. Long before any capacity for understanding enjoyment had come, this unfortunate child had lost all love for the simple. With Mrs. Abbott, it was always "the best that money can buy"--unwittingly, the worst for her child's character. It was a home of formal morality. Sunday morning services were religiously attended; charities of free giving, the giving which did not cost personal effort, were never failing. It was a home of selfish unselfishness. All weaknesses in the son throughout the passing years were winked at. Never from his mother did Lawrence know that sympathy, sometimes hard, often abrupt, never pampering, which breeds self-help. Lawrence went to the most painstakingly selected, private preparatory- schools, and later, as good Abbotts had done for generations, entered Cornell. He had no taste for business. For years he had been associated with gifted and agreeable doctors; he liked the dignity of the title; so, after two years of academic work, he entered the medical department and graduated with his class. These were good years. His was not a nature of active evil. Many of his impulses were quite wholesome, and college fraternity camaraderie brought out much that was worthy. In the face of maternal anxiety and protest, he went out for track, made good, stuck to his training and in his senior year represented the scarlet and white, getting a second in the intercollegiate low hurdles. Another trolley crash now, and he might have been saved! All through his college days a morbid fear had shortened his mother's sleep hours with its wretchedness. Her boy was everything that would attract attractive women. Away from her influence he might marry beneath him, so all the refinements of intrigue and diplomacy were utilized that a certain daughter of blood and wealth might become her daughter-in-law. The two women were clever, and woe it was that his commencement-day was soon followed by his wedding-day. No more sumptuous wedding-trip could have been arranged-to California, to the Islands of the Pacific, to India, to Egypt, then a comfortable meandering through Europe. A year of joy-living they planned that they might learn to know each other, with all the ministers of happiness in attendance. But the disagreements of two petted children made murky many a day of their prolonged festal journey, and beclouded for them both many days of the elaborate home-making after the home-coming. And the murkiness and cloudiness were not dissipated when parenthood was theirs. Neither had learned the first page in Life's text-book of happiness, and as both, could not have their way at the same time, rifts grew into chasms which widened and deepened. Then the wife sought attentions she did not get at home in social circles and the husband sought comforts his wife and his home did not give, in drink and fast living, later with cocain and morphin. The ugliness of it all could not be lessened by the divorce, which became inevitable. By mutual agreement, the rearing of the child was intrusted to the father's mother, who to-day shapes its destiny with the same unwholesome solicitude which denied to her own son the heritage of wholesome living. We met father and grandmother as she arrived in New York to arrange for the treatment, which even his beclouded brain recognized as urgent; and we leave him with a darkening future, unless Fate snatches away a great family's millions, or works the miracle of self- revelation, or the greater miracle of late-life reformation in the son of this nervously damaged mother. CHAPTER VI THE MESS OF POTTAGE "I know Clara puts too much butter in her fudge. It always gives me a splitting headache, but gee, isn't it good! I couldn't help eating it if I knew it was going to kill me the next day." The Pale Girl looks the truth of her exclamations, as she strolls down the campus-walk arm-in-arm with the Brown Girl, between lectures the morning after. Clara Denny had given the "Solemn Circle" another of her swell fudge- feasts in her room the night before, and, as usual, had wrecked sleep, breakfast, and morning recitations for the elect half-dozen, with the very richness of her hand-brewed lusciousness. They called Clara the Buxom Lass, and they called her well. She was, physically, a mature young woman at sixteen, healthy, vigorous, rose-cheeked, plump, and not uncomely, frolicsome and care-free, with ten dollars a week, "just for fun." She was a worthy leader of the Solemn Circle of sophomores which she had organized, each member of which was sacredly sworn to meet every Friday night for one superb hour of savory sumptuousness-- in the vernacular, "swell feeds." Clara was a Floridian. Her father had shrewdly monopolized the transfer business in the state's metropolis, and from an humble one- horse start now operated two-score moving-vans and motor-trucks, and added substantially, each year, to his real-estate holdings. Mr. Denny let fall an Irish syllable from time to time, regularly took his little "nip o' spirits," and ate proverbially long and often. Year after year passed, with the hardy man a literal cheer-leader in the Denny household, till his gradually hardening arteries began to leak. Then came the change which brought Clara home from college--home, first to companion, then to nurse, and finally through ugly years, to slave for this disintegrating remnant of humanity. Slowly, reluctantly, this genial, old soul descended the scale of human life. He was dear and pathetic in the early, unaccustomed awkwardness of his painless weakness. "Only a few days, darlin', and we'll have a spin in the car and your father'll show thim upstarts how to rustle up the business." The rustling days did not come, but short periods of irritability did. He wanted his "Clara-girl" near and became impatient in her absence. He objected to her mother's nursing, and later became suspicious that she was conspiring to keep Clara from him, and often greeted both mother and daughter with unreasonable words. His interests narrowed pitiably, until they did not extend beyond the range of his senses, and the senses themselves dulled, even as did his feelings of fineness. He grew careless in his habits, and required increasing attention to his beard and clothing. Coarseness first peeped in, then became a permanent guest--a coarseness which the wife's presence seemed to inflame, and which could be stilled finally only by the actual caress of his daughter's lips. And with the slow melting of brain-tissue went every vestige of decency; vile thoughts which had never crossed the threshold of John Denny's normal mind seemed bred without restraint in the caldron of his diseased brain. His was a vital sturdiness which, for ten years, refused death, but during the last of these he was physically and morally repellent. Sentiment, that too-often fear of unkind gossip, or ignorant falsifying of consequences, stood between this family and the proper institutional and professional care, which could have given him more than any family's love, and protected those who had their lives to live from memories which are mercilessly cruel. Clara's older brother had much of his father's good cheer and less of his father's good sense. He, too, had money to use "just for fun," and Jacksonville was very wide open. So, after his father's misfortune had eliminated paternal restraint, the boy's "nips o' spirits" multiplied into full half-pints. For twelve years he drank badly, was cursed by his father, prayed for by his mother, and wept over by Clara. The wonderful power of a Christian revival saved him. He "got religion" and got it right, and lives a sane, sober life. The older sister had married while Clara was at school, and lived with her little family in Charleston. Her "duty" was in her home, but this duty became strikingly emphasized when things "went wrong" in Jacksonville, and she frankly admitted that she was entirely "too nervous to be of any use around sickness"; nor did she ever come to help, even when Clara's cup of trouble seemed running over. And this cup was filled with bitterness when, suddenly, the mother had a "stroke," and the care of two invalids and the presence of her periodically drunk brother made ruthless demands on her twenty years. The mother had been a sensible woman, for her advantages, and most efficient, and under her teaching Clara had become exceptionally capable. The two invalids now lay in adjoining rooms. "Either one may go at any time," the doctor said, and when alone in the house with them the daughter was haunted with a morbid dread which frequently caused her to hesitate before opening the door, with the fear that she might find a parent gone. As it happened, she was away, taking treatment, unable to return home, when grippe and pneumonia took the mother, and the candle of the father's life finally flickered out. Clara had handled the home situation with intermittent efficiency. When she entered her father's sick-room, called suddenly from the thoughtless hilarities of the Solemn Circle and fudge-feasts, and saw him so altered, and, for him, so dangerously frail, in his invalid chair, something went wrong with her breathing; the air could not get into her lungs; there was a smothering in her throat and she toppled over on the bed. It seemed to take smelling-salts and brandy to bring her back. She said afterwards that she was not unconscious, that she knew all that was happening, but felt a stifling sense of suffocation. Later after one of her father's first unnatural outbreaks, she suffered a series of chills and her mother thought, of course, it was malaria; but many big doses of quinin did not break it up, and no matter when the doctor came, his little thermometer revealed no fever. She spent three months at Old Point Comfort and the chills were never so bad again. Other distressing internal symptoms appeared closely following the shock of her mother's sudden paralysis. An operation and a month in a northern hospital were followed by comparative relief. But her nervous symptoms finally became acute and she was spending the spring and early summer on rest-cure in a sanitarium when her parents died. The Jacksonville home was then closed. Soon after, Clara was profoundly impressed at the same revival in which her brother was converted. While she could not leave her church to join this less formal denomination, she entered into Home Missionary activities with much zest. At this time a friendship was formed with a woman-physician who, as months of association passed, attained a reasonably clear insight into her life and encouraged her to enter a well-equipped, church training-school for deaconesses. The spell of the religious influences of the past year's revival was still strong; this, and the stimulation of new resolves, carried her along well for six months. In her studies and practical work she showed ability, efficiency and flashes of common sense. Then she became enamored of a younger woman, a class-mate--her heart was empty and hungry for the love which means so much to woman's life. Unhappily, she overheard her unfaithful loved one comment to a confidante: "It makes me sick to be kissed by Clara Denny." Another damaging shock, followed by another series of bad attacks--the old spells, chills and internal revolutions had returned. She rapidly became useless and a burden. The school-doctor sent her a thousand miles to another specialist. We first met Clara Denny effervescent, winning, almost charming--a sixteen-year-old minx. Let us scrutinize her at thirty-six. What a deformation! She weighs one hundred and seventy-three--she is only five-feet-four; her face is heavy, soggy, vapid; her eyes, abnormally small; her complexion is sallow, almost muddy; her chin, trembling and double; strongly penciled, black eye-brows are the only remnant apparent of the "Buxom Lass" of twenty years ago. Her hands are pudgy; her figure soft, mushy, sloppy; her presence is unwholesome. The specialist found her internally as she appeared externally. While not organically diseased, the vital organs were functionally inert. Every physical and chemical evidence pointed to the accumulation in a naturally robust body of the twin toxins--food poison and under oxidation. She was haunted by a fear of paralysis. She confused feelings with ideas and was certain her mind was going. The spells which had first started beside her invalid father were now of daily occurrence. She, nor any one else knew when she would topple over. She found another reason for her belief that her brain was affected in her increasingly frequent headaches. For years she had been unable to read or study without her glasses, because of the pain at the base of her brain. When these wonderful glasses were tested, they were found to represent one of the mildest corrections made by opticians; in fact, her eyes were above the average. Her precious glasses were practically window-glass. Much of each day had been spent in bed, and hot coffee and hot-water bottles were required to keep off the nerve-racking chills which otherwise followed each fainting spell. Her appetite never flagged. She had been a heavy meat eater from childhood. There never was a Denny meal without at least two kinds of meat, and one cup of coffee always, more frequently two--no namby-pamby Postum effects, but the genuine "black-drip." In the face of much dental work, her sweet tooth had never been filled. She loved food, and her appetite demanded quantity as well as quality. Of peculiar significance was the fact that throughout the years she had never had a spell when physically and mentally comfortable, but, as the years passed, the amount of discomfort which could provoke a nervous disturbance became less and less. She was a well-informed woman, quite interesting on many subjects, outside of herself, and had done much excellent reading. Unafflicted, she would mentally have been more than usually interesting. When her specialist began the investigation of her moral self, he found her impressed with the belief that she was a "saved woman," ready and only waiting health that she might take up the Lord's work. But as he sought her soul's deeper recesses, he uncovered a quagmire. Resentment rankled against the sister who had left her alone to meet the exhausting burdens of their parents' illness and brother's drinking--a sister who had taken care of herself and her own family, regardless. Worse than resentment smoldered against the father, a dull, deadening enmity, born in the hateful hours of his odious, but helpless, dementia. Burning deep was an unappeased protest that, instead of the normal life and pleasures and opportunities of other girls, she had been chained to his objectionable presence. Treatment was undertaken, based upon a clear conception of her moral, mental and physical needs. Seven months of intensive right-living were enjoined. The greatest difficulty was found in compelling restraint from food excesses. The love for good things to eat was theoretically shelved, but, practically, the forces of desire and habit seemed insurmountable. Her craving for "good eats" now and then discouraged her resolutions and she periodically broke over the rigid hospital regimen. But she was helped in every phase of her living. The skin cleared; a hint of the roses returned; twenty-five pounds of more than useless weight melted away and weeks passed with no threat of spell or chill. She was renewing her youth. A righteous understanding of the lessons which her years of sacrifice held, appealed to her judgment, if not to her feelings, and, as a new being, she returned to the church training-school. Most fully had Miss Denny been instructed in principle and in practice concerning the, for her, vital lessons of nutritional right-living. Each step of the way had been made clear, and it had proven the right way by the test of practical demonstration. The outlined schedule of habits, including some denials and some gratuitous activity, kept her in prime condition--in fact, in improving condition, for six highly satisfactory months. Never had she accomplished so much; never did life promise more, as the result of her own efforts. She had earned comforts which had apparently deposed forever her old nervous enemies. Victorious living seemed at her finger-tips. Then she sold her birth- right. She was feeling so well; why could she not be like other people? Certainly once in a while she could have the things she "loved." It was only a small mess of pottage--some chops, a cup of real coffee, some after-dinner mints. The doctor had proscribed them all, but "Once won't hurt." Her conscience did prick, but days passed; there was no spell, no chill, no headache. "It didn't hurt me" was her triumphant conclusion; and again she ventured and nothing happened--and again, and again. Then the coffee every day and soon sweets and meats, regardless; then coffee to keep her going. The message of the returning fainting spells was unheeded, unless answered by recklessness, for fear thoughts had come and old enmities and new ones haunted in. Routine and regimen had gone weeks before, and now a vacation had to be. She did not return to her work, but deluded herself with a series of pretenses. Before the year was gone, the imps of morbid toxins came into their own and she resorted to wines, later to alcohol in stronger forms--and alcohol usually makes short work of the fineness God gives woman. We leave Clara Denny at forty, leave her on the road of license which leads to ever-lowering levels. CHAPTER VII THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY A half-century ago the Stoneleighs moved West and located in Hot Springs. The wife had recently fallen heir to a few thousand dollars, which, with unusual foresight, were invested in suburban property. Mr. Stoneleigh was a large man, one generation removed from England, active, and noticeably of a nervous type. He was industrious, practically economical, single-minded; these qualities stood him in the stead of shrewdness. From their small start he became rapidly wealthy as a dealer in real estate. Mr. Stoneleigh was a generous eater; his foods were truly simple in variety but luxurious in their quality and richness. Prime roast-beef, fried potatoes, waffles and griddle-cakes supplied him with heat, energy and avoirdupois. He suddenly quit eating at fifty-eight--there was a cerebral hemorrhage one night. His remains weighed one hundred and ninety-five. The wife was a comfortable mixture of Irish and English. Her people were so thrifty that she had but a common-school education. She was the only child, her industrious mother let her go the way of least resistance, and were we tracing responsibility of the criminality behind our tragedy, Mrs. Stoneleigh's mother would probably be cited as the guilty one. The way of least resistance is usually pretty easy- going, and keeps within the valley of indulgence. Therefore, Mrs. Stoneleigh worked none, was a true helpmate to her husband, at the table, and like him, grew fat, and from mid-life waddled on, with her hundred and eighty pounds. She was superstitiously very religious, with the kind of religion that shudders at the thought of missing Sunday morning service or failing to be a passive attendant at the regular meetings of the Church Aid Society. Practically, the heathen were taught American civilization, and she herself was assured sumptuous reservations in Glory by generous donations to the various missionary societies. The only real ordeal which this woman ever faced was the birth of Henry, her first child; she was very ill and suffered severely. The mother instinct centered upon this boy the fulness of her devotion--a devotion which never swerved nor faltered, a devotion which never questioned, a devotion which became a self-forgetting servility. John arrived almost unnoticed three years later, foreordained to be this older brother's henchman as long as he remained at home. John developed. Education was not featured in the Stoneleighs' program, so John stopped after his first year at high school, but he was energetic, and through serving Henry had learned to work. At twenty he married, left the family roof, and starting life for himself in a nearby metropolis became a successful coal-merchant. Little Henry Stoneleigh would have thrilled any mother's heart with pride. He had every quality a perfect baby should have, and grew into a large handsome boy, healthy and strong; his disposition was the envy of neighboring mothers; nor was it the sweet goodness of inertia, for he was mentally and emotionally quick and responsive above the average. Indulged by his mother from the beginning and always preferred to his brother, he never recognized duty as duty. This young life was innocent of anything which suggested routine; order for him was a happen-so or an of-course result of his mother's or John's efforts; the details necessary for neatness were never allowed to ruffle his ease nor to interfere with his impulses. The Stoneleighs' home was a generous pile, locally magnificent, but our young scion's fine, front room was perennially a clutter. From his birth up, Henry was never taught the rudiments of responsibility. His boyhood, however, was not unattractive. He had inherited a large measure of vitality and was protected from disappointments or irritations by the many comforts which a mother's devotion and wealth can arrange and provide. His memory was superior. The boy inherited not only an exceptional physique, but mental ability which made his early studies too easy to suggest any objection on his part. In fact, he was actively interested in much of his school work and did well without the conscious expenditure of energy. Little discrimination was shown in the arrangements for his higher education; still he arrived at a popular Western Boy's Academy, rather dubious in his own mind as to just how large a place he would hold in the sun, with mother and John back home. Rather rudely assailed were some of his easy-going habits, and considerable ridicule from certain sources rapidly decided his choice of companions. It was young Stoneleigh's misfortune that at this epoch in his development he was situated where money could buy immunities and attract apparent friendships. He was of fine appearance, and should by all rights have made center on the Academy football team, being the largest, heaviest, strongest boy in school. But one day in football togs is the sum of his football history. Academy days went in good feeds, the popularity purchased by his freedom of purse and easy-going good fellowship, and much reading, which he always enjoyed and which, with his good memory, made him unusually well-informed. Finals even at this Academy demanded special effort, which, with Henry, was not forthcoming, so he returned home without his diploma. This incident decided him not to attempt college, so for a year he again basked in the indulgences of home-life. His father's business interests had no appeal for him, but the personal influence of a young doctor, with his vivid tales of medical-college experiences, and the struggling within of a never recognized ambition, with some haphazard suggestions from his mother, determined him to study medicine. At this time a medical degree could still be obtained in a few schools at the end of two years' attendance. Henry chose a Tennessee college which has, for reasons, long since ceased to exist, an institution which practically guaranteed diplomas. Here after three very comfortable years, he was transformed into "Doc" Stoneleigh. At twenty-five, "Doc" weighed two hundred and forty, and returned home for another period of rest. He did not open an office, nor did he ever begin the practice of his profession. During the next five years he lived at home, sleeping and reading until two in the afternoon, his mother carrying breakfast and lunch to his room. The late afternoons and evenings he spent in hotel-lobbies and pool-rooms, where he was always welcomed by a bunch of sports. Popular through his small prodigalities, he, at thirty, possessed a more than local reputation for the completeness of his assortment of salacious stories--his memory and native social instinct were herein successfully utilized. "Doc" now weighed two hundred and eighty-five, ate much, exercised none, and was the silent proprietor of a pool-room, obnoxious even in this wide-open town. At twelve he had begun smoking cigarettes; at twenty he smoked them day and night. The entire family drank beer, but, oddly, the desire for alcohol never developed with him. Yet at thirty he began acting queerly, and it was generally thought that he was drinking. Often now he did not go home at night and was frequently found dead asleep on one of his pool-tables. He had fixed up a den of a room where they would move him to "sleep it off." A fad for small rifles developed till he finally had over twenty of different makes in his den and spent many nights wandering around the alleys, shooting rats and stray cats. Eats became an obsession. They invaded his room and he would frequently awaken suddenly and empty the first gun he reached at their imaginary forms, much to the disquiet of the neighbors. One night he burst out of his place, began shooting wildly up and down the street and rushing about in a frenzy. No single guardian of the peace presumed to interfere with his hilarity, and two of the six who came in the patrol-wagon had dismissed action for deep contemplation before he was safely locked up as "drunk." The matter was kept quiet, as befitted the prominence of the Stoneleighs. To his mother's devotion now was added fear, and she freely responded to his demands for funds. There were no more outbreaks, but he was obviously becoming irresponsible, and influences finally secured his mother's consent to take him to a special institution in another state. This was quietly effected through the cooperation of the family physician, who successfully drugged poor "Doc" into pacific inertness. He was legally committed to an institution empowered to use constructive restraint, and for four months benefited by the only wholesome training his wretched life had ever known. Here it was discovered that he had been using quantities of codein and cocain, against the sale of which there were then no restrictions. Unusual had been his physical equipment, his indulgences unchecked by any sentiment or restraint, the penalty of inactivity was meting a horrible exaction--an exaction which could be dulled only by dope. In the early prime of what should have been manhood, this unfortunate's mind, as revealed to the institution's authorities during his days of enforced drugless discomfort, was a filthy cess-pool; cursings and imprecations, vile and vicious, were vomited forth in answer to every pain. His brother, his doctors, his mother were execrated for days, almost without ceasing. Here was a man without principle. As he became more comfortable, physically, he became more decent, and later his natural, social tendencies began to reappear attractively. At the end of four months the patient was perforce much better. He then succeeded in inducing his mother to have him released "on probation." Many fair promises were made. For months he was to have an attendant as a companion. His mother, believing him well, consented, after securing his promise in writing to return for treatment should there be a relapse into his old habits. As evidencing the decay of his character, these fair promises were made without the slightest intention that they would be kept. The first important city reached after crossing the state-line saw his demeanor change. Beyond the legal authority of the state in which he had been committed, he was free, and he knew it. With a few words he consigned his now helpless attendant to regions sulphurous, and alone took train in the opposite direction from home. For several months he went the paces. With his medical knowledge and warned by his recent experiences he was able to so adjust his doses as to avoid falling into the hands of the authorities. The weak mother never refused to honor his drafts. Six months later a serious attack of pneumonia caused her to be sent for, and when he was able to travel she took him back to the home he had forsworn. For over ten years "Doc" Stoneleigh has lived with his mother, a recluse, a morphin-soaked wreck. Sometimes he may be seen in a park near their home, sitting for hours inert, or automatically tracing figures in the gravel with his cane, noticing no one, unkempt, almost repellent. He is still sufficiently shrewd to secure morphin in violation of the law. Sooner or later the revenue department will cut off his supply. He drifts, a rotting hulk of manhood, unconsciously nearing the horrors of a drugless reality. The depth of this man's degradation may tempt us to feel that he was defective, but an accurate analysis of his life fails to reveal any deficiency save that reprehensible training which made possible his years of physical and mental indolence. CHAPTER VIII LEARNING TO EAT It was three in the early July afternoon. The large parlor, which had been turned into a bedroom, was darkened by closely-drawn shades; a dim, softened light coming from a half-hidden lamp deepened the dark rings around the worn nurse's eyes--eyes which bespoke sleepless nights and a heavy heart. A wan mother stood near the nurse, every line of her face showing the pain of lengthened anxiety. Tensely one hand held the other, the restraint of culture, only, keeping her from wringing them in her anguish. Dr. Harkins, the village physician, stood at the foot of the bed, his honest face set in strong lines in anticipation of the worst. Many scenes of suffering had rendered him only more sympathetic with human sorrow, sympathetic with the real, increasingly intolerant of the false. At the bed-side stood the expert, who had come so far, at so great an expense-long, rough miles by auto that a few hours might be saved-who had come, they all believed, to decide the fate of the beloved girl who lay so death-like before them. Ruth Rivers was the only one in the room who was not keenly alert or distressingly tense. Even in her waxy whiteness and unnatural emaciation, her face was good. The forehead was high and, with the symmetrical black eyebrows and long, dark lashes, suggested at a glance the good quality of her breeding. The aquiline nose was pinched by suffering, the finely curving lips were now bloodless and drawn tight from time to time, as though to repress the cry of pain; these marks of suffering could not rob her countenance of its refinement. Her breathing was shallow; at times it seemed irregular; and wan, almost inert, the fragile figure seemed nearing the eternal parting with its soul. The silence of the sick-room was fearsomely ominous. Three weeks before, Ruth, her mother, and ever-apprehensive Aunt Melissa had come from the heat of coastal Georgia to the invigorating coolness of the Southern Appalachians. They had come to Point View several weeks later than usual this year, as spring was tardy and the hot days at home had been few. Ruth had been most miserable for weeks before they left home, but had stood the trip well, and Judge Rivers had received an encouraging, indeed a hopeful report from the invalid. But a few days later a letter telling of another of Ruth's attacks was followed immediately by an urgent, distressed telegram which caused him to adjourn court and hasten to his family. For many years Dr. Harkins had driven through the mountains eight starving months, serving and saving the poorly housed and often destitute mountaineers. The tourist flood from the burning, summer lowlands to the mountains' refreshment gave him his living. Dr. Harkins was as truly a missionary as though he were on the pay-roll of a denominational society. He had always helped, or the mountains had helped, or something had helped Ruth before, but this time nothing helped. The doctor had already called a neighboring physician; they were both perplexed, and each feared to say the word which, in their minds, spelled her doom. For nearly three days Ruth had been delirious, this gentle, sensible, reserved girl, tossing and calling out. A few times she had even screamed, and her mother always said that she had been "too fine a baby to even cry out loud." For five nights there had been no sleep save an unnatural stupor produced by medicine. Mother and nurse had taxed their strength keeping her in bed during the paroxysms of her suffering, which, hour by hour, seemed to grow in intensity and to defy the ever-increasing doses of quieting drugs. She had recognized no one for days. Even her mother's voice brought back no moment of natural response. "It must be meningitis," Dr. Harkins finally said, and the other doctor nodded in agreement. And Aunt Melissa informed the neighbors that it was "meningitis" and that her darling Ruth could last but a few days. The mother's anxiety reiterated "meningitis," and good, levelheaded Martha King, the nurse, knew that the three cases of meningitis which she had nursed had suffered the same way before they died. When Judge Rivers came, he spent but one minute in the sick-room. It was days before he dared reenter. Ruth did not know him. For the first time in her twenty-seven years, she had failed to respond happily to his hearty, rich-voiced love-greeting. The Judge's small fortune had grown slowly. Only that year had the mortgage been finally lifted on their comfortable Georgia home. But in that minute at the sufferer's bedside all he had was thrown into the scales. Ruth must be saved. She was the only daughter; she was a worthily beloved daughter. "No, she cannot be moved to Johns Hopkins; the trip is too rough and long; she is too weak," decided Dr. Harkins, and the consultant agreed. "Our only hope for her is to get the 'brain expert' from the next state." Five days had passed since the patient had retained food. For twenty-four hours the tide of her strength seemed only to ebb. They all counted the minutes. The summer- boarders in the little town, so many of whom knew the sick girl, counted the hours, for Ruth was much quieter--too quiet, they felt. An hour before, Aunt Melissa had tiptoed in to see her darling; the finger-tips seemed cold in her excited palm, the nails looked bluish to her dreading eyes, and she retreated to the back porch-steps, threw her apron over her head and sat weaving to and fro, inconsolate; nor would she look up even when the big motor panted into sight out of a cloud of dust, and stopped. "It is too late, too late," moaned Aunt Melissa. Dr. Harkins and Judge Rivers met the neurologist. The former reviewed the case in a few sentences. The Judge simply said: "Doctor, my whole savings are nothing. I would give my life for hers." In the sick-room tensity had given place to intensity, as with deft, skillful directness the doctor made his examination. He had finished; the light had again been dimmed, and in the added shadow the haggard face seemed ashen. Motionless, thoughtful, interminably silent, the expert stood, holding the sick girl's hand. The nurse first saw him smile. It was a serious smile; it was a strangely hopeful smile--a smile which was instantly reflected in her own face and which the mother caught and Dr. Harkins saw. Each one of them was thrilled with such thrills as become rare when the forties have passed, thrilled even before they heard his words: "It is not meningitis. Your daughter can get well." In the conference which followed, Dr. Harkins felt that his confidence had been well placed. It is surprising how much the expert had discovered in forty minutes,--and how carefully considered and relentlessly logical were his reasons for deciding that it was an "auto-toxic meningismus, secondary to renal and pancreatic insufficiency," which, translated, signifies a self-produced poison due to defective action of the liver and pancreas, resulting in circulatory disturbance in the covering of the brain. Most clearly, too, he revealed that several of the most alarming symptoms were the result of the added poison of the drugs which had been given for the relief of the intolerable pain. Each step of the long road to recovery was outlined with equal clearness, and the light of hope burst in strong on Dr. Harkins first, then on Martha King. The crushing load was lifted from off the Judge's heart. The promise seemed too good to be true, to the mother, who had seen her daughter go down through the years, step by step. It never penetrated the shadow of Aunt Melissa's pessimism. What forces had been at work to bring ten years of relentlessly increasing suffering, even impending death, to Ruth Rivers at twenty- seven, when she should have been in the glory of her young womanhood? "Her headaches have always been a mystery," her mother had said again and again, and this saying had been accepted by family and friends. Let us join hands with Understanding, step behind this mystery, and find its solution. Judge Rivers' father had been Judge Rivers, too. The war between the States had absorbed the family wealth; still, our Judge Rivers showed every evidence of good living: he was always well-dressed, as befitted his office, portly and contented, as was also befitting, fine of color and always well. His daughter's illness had been practically the only problem in the affairs of his life which he had not solved to his quite reasonable satisfaction. His love for Ruth held half of his life's sweetness. Mrs. Rivers was tall, active, almost muscular in type. Her brow, like her daughter's, was high. The quality of her Virginia blood had marked her face. She had always been unduly pale, but never ill. Controlled and reasonable, she had ministered to her home with efficiency and pride. Aunt Melissa, her sister, five years the senior, was tall and strong, but her paleness had long been unhealthily tinted with sallowness. For years she had been subject to attacks of depression when for days she would insist upon being let alone, even as she let others alone. Ruth was the only bright spot she recognized in her life, and her morbidness was constantly picturing disaster for this object of her love. Ruth's babyhood was a joy. Plump, cooing and happy, she evinced, even in her earliest days, evidences of her rare disposition. At eighteen months, however, she began having spells of indigestion. She always sat in her high-chair beside Aunt Melissa, at the table, and rarely failed to get at least a taste of anything served which her fancy indicated. Her wise little stomach from time to time expressed its disapproval of such unlawful liberties, but parents and aunts and grandmothers, and probably most of us, are very dull in interpreting the protests of stomachs. So Ruth got what she liked, and what was an equal misfortune, she liked what she got; and no one ever associated the liking and the getting with the poor sick stomach's periodic protests. As a girl Ruth was not very active. There was a certain reserve, even in her playing, quite in keeping with family traditions. Mother, Aunt Melissa and the servants did the work--still Ruth developed, happy, unselfish, kindly and sensitive. There was rigid discipline accompanying certain rules of conduct, and her deportment was carefully molded by the silent forces of family culture. They lived at the county-seat. The public schools which Ruth attended were fairly good. As she grew older, while she remained thin and never approached ruggedness, her digestive "spells" were much less frequent, and during the two years she spent away from home in the Convent, she was quite well, and one year played center on the second basket ball team. Two years away at school were all that the Judge could then afford. And so at eighteen she was home for good. That fall she began having headaches. She was reading much, so she went to Mobile and was carefully fitted with glasses. The correction was not a strong one, but the oculist felt it would relieve the "abnormal sensitiveness of her eyes, which is probably causing her trouble." Throughout her years of suffering, Ruth had always maintained the rare restraint which marks fineness of soul. No one ever heard her complain. Even her mother could not be sure that another attack was on, until she found Ruth alone in her darkened room. Acquaintances, even friends, never heard her mention her illness. The midsummer months in Southern Alabama drive such as are able to the relief of the mountains of Tennessee and the Carolinas. The Judge had always felt that he should send his family away during July and August; they often went in June when the summers were early. And these weeks of change proved, year after year, the most helpful influences that came to Ruth. She always improved and would usually remain stronger until after Thanksgiving. But with irregular periodicity the blinding, prostrating headaches would return--a week of pain, nausea and prostration. Yet Ruth never asked for, nor took medicine, unless it was ordered by the doctor, and then more in consideration of the desires of her family, for the unnatural sensations, produced by most of the remedies she was given, seemed but the substitution of one discomfort for another. The only exercise that counted, which this girl ever had, was during her weeks at Point View. The stimulation of the invigorating mountain air seemed to get into her blood, and after a few weeks with her friendly mountains she could climb the highest with little apparent fatigue. At home, the country was flat, the roads sandy, and even horseback riding uninteresting. She had never been taught any strengthening form of daily home-exercise, and so she suffered on. While the glasses brought comfort, they lessened, for but a short time, the number and the intensity of her attacks. Several physicians were consulted and several varying courses of treatment undertaken, but no betterment came which lasted, and the headaches remained a mystery, not only to her mother, but to others who seriously tried to help. As we are behind the scenes, we need no longer delay the mystery's solution. It was not eyes, they were accurately corrected; it was not stomach, as much stomach treatment proved; it was not anaemia, or the many excellent tonics that had been prescribed would have cured; it was not displaced vertebrae nor improperly acting nerves, or the manipulations and vibrations and deep kneadings of the specialists in mechanical treatment would have rescued her years before. It was, and here is the secret--her mother's wonderful table! The war had brought ruinous, financial losses to most Virginia families. As a result, Ruth's mother had been taught, in minute detail, the high art of the best cookery of the first families of Virginia. And how she could cook, or make the colored cook cook! The Rivers' table had, for years, been the standard of the county-seat. Mrs. Rivers' spiced hams, fig preserves, brandied plum-pudding, stuffed roast-duck, fruit salads, all made by recipes handed down through several generations, could not be excelled in richness and toothsomeness. No simple dishes were known at the Rivers' table; these, for those poor mortals who knew not the inner art. Double cream, stimulating seasonings, sauces rarely spiced, the sort that recreate worn-out appetites, were never lacking at a Rivers' meal. Ruth had been overfed, had been wrongly fed since babyhood. The expert said hope lay in taking her back to babyhood and feeding her for days as though she were a four months' child. He said she must be taught to eat; that her salvation lay in a few foods of plebeian simplicity, foods which almost any one could get anywhere, foods which did not involve long hours of preparation according to priceless recipes. He said also that certain other foods were vicious, such matter-of-course foods on the Rivers' table, foods which Mrs. Rivers would have felt humiliated to omit from a meal of her ordering, and he insisted that these must be lastingly denied this young woman with prematurely exhausted, digestive glands. The process of her reeducation, succinctly expressed as it was in a few sentences, called for tedious months of care, of denial and of effort. It demanded that which was more than taxing in many details. So for Ruth Rivers long weeks were spent in a hospital-bed. She was fed on the simplest of foods, each feeding measured with the same care as were her few medicines, for now truly her food was medicine, and her chief medicine was food. Massage seemed at last to bring help, for even in bed she gained in strength. It was several weeks before her mind was entirely clear, but she was soon being taught the science of food; this included an understanding outline of food chemistry, of the processes of digestion, of food values, of the relation of food to work, of the vital importance of muscular activity and the relation of muscle-use to nervous health. Her beloved sweets and her strong coffee, the only friends of her suffering days, were gradually buried even from thought in this accumulation of new and understood truths--most reasonable and sane truths. Forty pounds she gained in twelve weeks. She had never weighed over one hundred and twenty-five. She has never weighed less than one hundred and forty-five since, and, as she is five feet eight, her one hundred and forty-five pounds brought her a new symmetry which, with her high-bred face, transformed the waxen invalid into an attractive beauty. She learned to do manual work. She learned to use every muscle the Lord had given her, every day she lived. An appetite unwhipped by condiments or unstimulated by artifice, an appetite for wholesome food, has made eating a satisfaction she never knew in the old days. This was ten years ago. Many changes have come in the Rivers' household, the most far-reaching of which is probably the revolution which shook its culinary department from center to circumference. What saved daughter must be good for them all. Father is less portly, more active, less ruddy. Some of the color he lost was found by the mother. Aunt Melissa disappears into her gloom-days but rarely, and has smiling hours unthought in the past. And Ruth has proven that the mystery was adequately solved. She married the kind of man so excellent a woman should have, and went through the trying weeks of her motherhood and has cared for her boy through the demanding months of early childhood without a complication. And all this in the face of Aunt Melissa's reiterated forebodings! CHAPTER IX THE MAN WITH THE HOE In the early years of the eighteenth century, a hardy family lived frugally and simply on a few, fertile Norman acres. Their home was but a hut of stone and clay and thatch. It was surrounded by a carefully attended vineyard and fruit trees which, in the springtime, made the spot most beautiful. On this May day the passerby would have stopped that he might carry away this scene of perfect pastoral charm. The blossoming vines almost hid the house, the blooming trees perfumed the morning breeze, and it all spoke for simple peace and contentment. But at this hour neither peace nor contentment could have been found within. Pierre, the eldest son, was almost fiercely resenting the quiet counsel of his father and the tearful pleadings of his mother. Pierre loved Adrienne, their neighbor's daughter. The two had grown up side by side, each had brought to the other all that their dreams had wished through the years of waiting. Pierre had long worked extra hours and they both had saved and now, nearing thirty, there was enough, and they could marry. But the edict had gone forth that Huguenot marriages would no longer be recognized by the state; that the children of such a union would be without civil standing. So Pierre and Adrienne had decided to leave France, nor did the protests of their elders delay their going. It was a solemn little ceremony, their marriage, a ceremony practically illegal in their land. Rarely are weddings more solemn or bridal trips more sad, for to England they were starting that same day, never to see their dear France again, never to prune or to gather in the little vineyard, never again to look into the faces of their own kin. It was not a worldly-wise change. Wages in England were very low and there were no vineyards in that chilly land, and Pierre worked and died a plain English farm-hand, blessed only with health, remarkable strength, and a wretched, but happy home. Much of their parents' sturdiness and independence was passed on into the blood of their four children, two boys and two girls, for in 1748, after long saving, they all left England for America, "the promised land," and sailed for New Amsterdam. Husbandmen they were, and for two generations painfully, gravely, they tilled the semi-productive soil of their little farm, west of the Hudson. Land was cheap in the New World. Their vegetables and fruit grew, the market in the city grew, and the van der Veere farms grew, and peace and contentment abode there. After the War of 1812 two healthy, robust van der Veere brothers tramped into New York City each carrying in his bundle nearly $1000.00, his share of their father's recently divided farm. They started a green-grocery shop. One attended the customers, the other, through the summer months, worked their little truck garden away out on the country road, a road which is to-day New York's Great White Way. They prospered. One married, and his two boys founded the van der Veere firm of importers. From the East this company's ship, later its ships, brought rare curios, oriental tapestries and fine rugs to make elegant the brown-stone front drawing-rooms of aristocratic, residential New York of that generation. The sons of one of these brothers to-day constitute the honorable van der Veere firm. The other brother left one son, Clifford, and two daughters, Dora and Henrietta. It is into the life-history of Clifford van der Veere that we now intrude. He was a sturdy youth, with no illnesses, save occasional sore throats which left him when he shed his tonsils. His father was a reserved, kindly man, a quietly efficient man. His competitors never understood the sure growth of his success--he was so unpretentious in all that he did. Clifford's mother was a sensible woman, untouched by the pride of wealth and the snobbery of station. Their home, facing Central Park, stood for elegance and restraint. There were no other children for ten years after the son's birth, then came the two sisters, which domestic arrangement probably proved an important factor in deciding the rest of our story. From early boyhood Clifford was orderly, obedient, studious and quietly industrious. He made no trouble for parents or teachers--other mothers always spoke of him as "good." He was thirteen when his only sinful escapade happened. Some of the Third Avenue boys shared the playgrounds in the park with Clifford's crowd. They all smoked, some chewed and the more self- important of them swore, and thereby, one day, our Fifth Avenue young hopeful was contaminated. It was a savory-smelling wad of fine-cut. It burned, a little went the wrong way and it strangled, but the joy of ejecting a series of amber projectiles was Clifford's. Another mouthful was ready for exhibition purposes when some appreciative admirer enthusiastically clapped our boy between the shoulder-blades and most of his mouth's contents, fluid and solid, was swallowed. Somehow Clifford got home, but landed in a wilted heap on the big couch, chalk-white, and sick beyond expression. The doctor was called and, discovering the cause, made him helpfully sicker. The next morning Clifford's father gravely offered to give him $500.00, when he was twenty-one, if he would not taste tobacco again until that time. Either the memory of first-chew sensations or the doctor's ipecac, or the force of habit, or something, kept him from ever tasting it again. Later, Clifford went to Columbia and was quietly popular with the quieter fellows. It would seem that had any little devils not been strained out of his blood by his long line of Huguenot ancestry, they had followed the fate of the fine-cut, for no one who knew Clifford van der Veere was ever anxious about the probity of his conduct. He did not take to the importing business, while his cousins early showed a natural capacity for the work of the big firm in all its branches. Clifford's parents, too, seemed to feel that it was time that there be a professional member of their honorable family. Moreover the property was large, and the younger sisters would require a guardian, and the estate an administrator. So Clifford finished the law-course. Nor was it many years until the family fortune of approximately one million dollars in real estate, securities and mortgages was left him to administer for himself and the two sisters. Thus before thirty the responsibility of these many thousands swept down upon him. Limited in practical contact with the world, geographically, politically, socially, having learned little of the play-side of life, he was by inheritance, training and inclination a conservative. He had never practiced law. He never tried a case, but he now opened a downtown office where he punctually arrived at ten o'clock and methodically spent the morning, carefully, personally managing all the details of the entailed estate. He was essentially conscientious and, as the years passed, there was no lessening of interest in his devotion to each transaction, large or small. There were no losses, though his conservatism turned him away from many golden opportunities which knocked at the door of his wealth, the acceptance of which would have doubled the estate in any ten-year period of these days of New York's magnificent expansion. He was nearly forty when he married a quiet, good woman who added little that was new, who most conscientiously subtracted nothing of the old, from his now systematic life. They both realized that their Fifth Avenue home was rapidly growing out of date, so for nearly five years they spent their spare hours daily, in the, to Clifford, vital and seemingly unending details of modernizing the old house. It was during those days when the plans so carefully considered were being realized in granite and marble and polished woods, that Mrs. van der Veere felt the first distressing touch of anxiety. Her husband seemed unduly particular. At times he would be painfully uncertain about minute and minor details of construction and on a few occasions unprecedentedly failed to get to the office at all, delayed by protracted discussions of the advisability of certain changes, long since decided upon, discussions which shook the confidence of architect and contractor in both his sagacity and judgment. Fortunately Mrs. van der Veere proved a wholesome counselor and her opinions often settled details her husband, alone, apparently could not have decided. At last the great new house was finished; it was such a home as the van der Veeres should have. Indecision largely disappeared for three quite normal years, office details only now and then ruffling the smooth normality of Mr. van der Veere's life. Then with the early spring nights came an unexplained insomnia. He would waken at five, four, even three o 'clock, and, unable to get back to sleep, would read until morning. The doctor found little to excite his apprehension, but prescribed golf, so three afternoons a week all summer and fall two hours were reserved for the links. He was better, still the doctor insisted on three months, that winter, in Southern California where he could keep up his play. Here he did eighteen holes a day for weeks at a time, yet some of the nights were haunted by scruples about neglecting his administrative duties. They returned home in the spring, and a moderately comfortable year and a half followed. Then things went wrong rapidly and badly. Peremptorily he was ordered away from all "work" to Southern France, later to Italy for the winter and to Switzerland for the next summer. And as the Alps have given of their strength to other needing thousands, so they ministered to him. He began climbing. His wife thought it was a new interest. Certainly that was a factor, but he became ambitious and went wherever he could find guides to take him. He returned home very rugged the fall he was fifty. Still with reason, Mrs. van der Veere was anxious, an anxiety shared by the family doctor. Between them they planned for him a sort of model life, truly a circumscribed life, and for five years wife and associates protected him from any possible strain, and for five years it worked successfully. Then in less than a month, almost like a bolt from the blue, all former symptoms returned, aggravated in form, bringing most unwelcome new ones in their trail. The family doctor called in a neurologist who, after examining the nervous man, spoke seriously of serious possibilities, and advised serious measures. Mr. van der Veere was now fifty-five years old, short, almost stocky in build, dark-skinned, with steel-gray hair and mustache. He was depressed in mien though always well-bred in bearing. He was not excitable and outwardly showed little of his suffering. Clifford van der Veere had always taken life and his duties seriously. For years his fear of making mistakes had been a chronic source of energy leakage-now it was a nightmare. All he did cost an exhausting price in the effort of decision. Duty and fear had long made a battle-ground of his soul, and when he realized that he had broken down again from "overwork," as they all expressed it, the depression of melancholy was added to the weight he so quietly bore. Yet this man of many responsibilities and interests had never truly worked. Since he left college he had played at work. Effort had been expended never more conscientiously. He was ever ready to give added hours of attention to problems referred to him. His intentions were true, but he did not know how to work. He did not know how to separate the serious from the unimportant, and he had never added the leaven of humor to the day's duties. An unusually well-equipped man, physically and mentally, he should have found the responsibilities of his administratorship but play. Had he been living right, he could have multiplied his efficiency three-fold and been the better for the larger doing. His wife felt he must "rest," and so did the family doctor; he himself was practically past arguing or disagreeing. But the rest-cure which the neurologist prescribed was certainly unique. It may have been wrongly named. Mr. van der Veere was a man of unusually strong physique. Nature had equipped him with a muscular system better than nine-tenths of his fellowmen possess, but he had never utilized it. For many generations his forbears had wrung food and life and, unconsciously, health from the soil. He was three generations from touch with mother earth, and back to the soil he was sent. He was taught to work increasing hours of common, manual labor. For weeks he did his part of the necessary drudgery of the world. He shoveled coal, he spaded in the garden, he worked on the public roads, he transplanted trees, he hoed common weeds with a common hoe, he tramped, he toiled and he sweat. The need for physical labor was in his blood. He needed his share of it, as do we all. And his blood answered exultantly, as good blood always does, to the call of honest toil. Within a month he realized a keenness for the work of the day. His fine muscles took on hardness, they seemed to double in size, and strength came, and with it not only a willingness but an eagerness which transformed that strength into productive effort. With the willingness to do what his hands found to do came sleep, for his nerves--bred as they had been in good stock--rejoiced when they found him living as they had for years begged him to live. A fifteen-year- old appetite came to the fifty-five-year-old man, and transformation wrought happy changes in his face and bearing. Indecision faded, introspection disappeared, and a decision came which was to forever put indecision out of his way. A decision which brought the peace and contentment to the van der Veere Fifth Avenue home, which religious intolerance had robbed from the van der Veeres in their stone-thatched hut in far-away Normandy, a simple decision, not requiring brilliance nor a college education, nor a professional training, nor even a loving helpmate to accomplish: "Six days shall I labor not only with my brain but with my hands, and the seventh day shall I rest." CHAPTER X THE FINE ART OF PLAY It was her earliest recollection, and parts of it were not clear. There were those big men carrying in her father, and her mother's face looking so strange, and her father looking so strange with the white cloths about his head, and the strange faces of doctors and neighbors she had not seen before. Then the strange stillness and the strange new fear when her father did not move and they all were so quiet. These memories were rather blurred; she was not always sure which were memories of the events or which had grown from what she had afterwards heard. But of the funeral she was very sure, for she could never forget those beautiful silvered handles on the shining wooden coffin, or her resentment toward the women dressed in black who would not let her touch these--the prettiest things she had ever seen. The colts had run away, frightened, when an empty sap-barrel fell off the sled, and her father had been thrown against a tree and brought home with a fractured skull, to live unconscious two days, and to be buried in the shiny coffin with the silver handles. There had been an older child who died as a baby of eight months, and so Widow Gilmore was left at thirty-five with her only child, Hattie, and a hundred-and-forty-acre farm, with the house in town. Mrs. Gilmore had good business sense. She lived alone with Hattie, ran the farm, and soon her interests degenerated into a slavery to household and farm details. The widow had taught school until she was nearly thirty. She was not handsome, and the meager sentiment of her soul easily disintegrated into morbidness. She wore black the rest of her days, and for the rest of her days church services were hours of public mourning. The Gilmore "parlor" was closed after the funeral, and Hattie never got a glimpse within its almost gruesomely sacred walls, save as she timidly peeped in during cleaning days or, rarely, when her mother tearfully led her in and they stood before the life-size crayon portrait of the departed. Even in her quiet play, Hattie must keep on the other side of the house. Hattie Gilmore was a sober child and lived a sober childhood. She was not strong; nothing had ever been done to make her so. Play and playmates were always limited. She and her mother belonged to Coopersville's "better class," most of the town children living below the bridge where the homes of the factory people crowded. Boys were "too rough," and the other girls were "not nice enough"; so she played much alone--such play as it was, with her two china dolls and the tin stove and tin dishes, which made up her toys. There was little to stimulate her imagination and nothing to develop comradeships and friendships. For hours of her play-time she sat inertly on the front stoop and watched the passersby, for there had never been any thought of training her in the art of play. Instead, she was warned to keep her dress clean and rather sharply reprimanded if, perchance, dress or apron was torn. So she stood and watched the school-play of the other children, never knowing the thrills of a game of "tag," nor the reckless adventures of "black man"; even "Pussy wants a corner" disarranged her painfully curled curls and was rarely risked. "Hop- scotch," when the figure was small and lady-like, was practically the limit of Hattie's "violent exercise." So she did not develop-how could she! She remained undersized. Moreover, her play-days were sadly shortened, for they early merged into work-days. Housekeeping cares were many, as her mother planned her household. According to York State traditions Hattie was early taught domestic details, and for over a generation seriously, slavishly followed the routine established by her mother who doggedly, to the last, knew no shadow of turning, and went to her honestly earned long rest within a week after she took to her bed. Hattie finished the town high school, and had taken her school-work so seriously that she was valedictorian--being too good to soil your dress ought to bring some reward. Her teacher proudly referred to her as an example of the fine work a student could do who was not disturbed by outside influences. Commencement night, the same summer she was seventeen, she was almost pretty. The natural flush of success and of public recognition was heightened by the reflected flush from the red roses she wore; and Ben Stimson, the old doctor's son, carried the image of this, her most beautiful self, in his big heart for many years. He was then twenty, a sophomore at college, and a wholesome fellow to look upon. He took Hattie home that night. It was early June, and they dallied on the way. She was so nearly happy that her conscience became suspicious. She felt something awful was going to happen!--and she almost did not care. They had reached the front steps of her home. Ominously, silence fell. Suddenly impulsive Ben crushed her to him and--must it be told?--kissed her, kissed Hattie Gilmore's unsullied lips. For a moment her heart leaped almost into wanton expression. A moment more--another kiss, and she might have been compromised, she might have responded to the thrilling love which was calling to her heart, but the goddess of her destiny willed otherwise. The front door opened; an angular form appeared; an acrid voice fairly curdled love-thoughts as it assailed the impetuous lover. Within a minute he was slinking away and the rescued maiden was safe in the indignant, resenting arms of her mother--safe, but for years to be tempted and troubled by remorse and wishes, to be haunted by unaccepted hopes. "Ben Stimson is a free lance. He can't help being, for his father's a free thinker and the boy never went to Sunday-school a dozen times in his life. Let him join the church and show folks he wants to live right; then, if he courts you regular, I won't mind, but he is too free and easy. I call that kind dangerous," her mother said. Ben Stimson wrote Hattie a note the next day, which she did not answer, but kept for years. Two summers later he drove up to the house, looking mighty fine in the doctor's new runabout, driving the high-stepping bay, natty in a "brand-new" tan harness--the first Hattie had ever seen. He asked her to come with him for a drive, and again her mother's nipping negative influenced her decision against the pleadings of a yearning, lonely heart. Mrs. Gilmore finally died an exclusive, matter-of-fact, joyless death, even as she had lived. Ben came to the funeral. He called on Hattie the next day. Inconstancy was not one of his weaknesses, and the veil of her Commencement beauty had clung to her through these many years, in her old lover's eyes. He was again impetuous and offended every conservative propriety of Hattie's dutiful melancholy by asking her to marry him--and this actually in the room where her mother's funeral was held the day before! What could Hattie do but burst into tears and leave the room--and Ben, and the secretly cherished hopes of many years, and a real home with a cheerily happy husband and those children which might have been hers--to leave all these and more in homage to the sacredness of her mother's memory. Ten gray years dragged by. Hattie kept a few boarders so as not to be alone in the house. She would take no children. They were too noisy and kept the place in disorder. Ben's patience had finally exhausted, though he finished his medical course and had been practicing nearly ten years before he married. No other one for whom she could care even called. The farm did well. The lone woman had over $20,000 in the bank and the property was worth as much more. But the brightest days were gray. At forty-five she weighed ninety-four. She ate barely enough to keep going. Her digestion was wretched. Her pride and her will alone made her able to sit through meals or through the occasional neighbors' calls. She spent hours alone in her room, dumb, dark-minded, with an unrelenting heartache and pains which racked every organ. Her sleep was fitful and she dreamed of Ben downstairs in a casket, again and again, until she fairly feared the night. When she took her nerve medicine, she seemed tied, bound hand and foot in that parlor of death, held by a sleep of terror. Then Ben would move about in the casket and make tortured faces at her, and some horrible times he accused, even berated her. Finally an awful dream, two caskets, her mother in one, Ben in the other, each railing and both showering abuse upon her. She was in bed for weeks. Another doctor came and then- praise be! her deliverer. Jane Andrews was the old Presbyterian minister's daughter. She had lived in Coopersville until she was twenty-four, giving her father an efficient, devoted daughter's care through his long, last illness. The family means had always been limited, and when the earner was laid away, she at once responded to the practical call. There were no hospitals near; so she left home and went into training in a small institution on the Hudson. This is a hospital where sickness is recognized as more than infections and broken, mangled members. Here she learned well the saving balm of joy in making whole wretched bodies with their more wretched souls. For five years she had lived in the midst of benefits brought by the inspiration of right-feeling attitudes. She knew full well the healing potency of the play-spirit. Her insight into life was already deep, her outlook upon life high and heartful. Then her mother failed; she came home and for three months had been beautifying the final weeks, This more than wise woman now came to nurse poor Hattie, came to companion her back to health, came as a revelation to this mistaken and wearied one, of a better way. After forty-five years of the playless life of a serf to blighting seriousness, the wonder is that sourness had not entered to hopelessly curdle all chances for joyous living. Hattie Gilmore had to be taught to play. During the weeks of her rest- treatment the stronger woman took the weaker back to girlhood. She brought some dolls. They made clothes for them. They dressed and undressed them and put them to bed. They taught them to say their prayers and prepared their little meals, teaching them "table manners," and they made them play as children should play. A sunshine scrapbook was made. It was a gorgeous conglomeration of colors, of fairies and children, of birds and flowers, and of awkward, but telling, hand-illustrations of the joys of being nursed and, prophetically, of the greater joys of being well. They played "Authors," "Flinch," and even "Old Maid." Splendid half-hours were spent in reading gloriously happy lives. Stories were told--happiness stories, and jokes and conundrums invented. One day Hattie laughed aloud, for which heartlessness her morbid conscience at once wrung forth a stream of tears; but that wondrously artful nurse held a mirror before a woefully twisting face, and her tactful comments brought back the smiles. That laugh was the first warming beam of a summer of happiness which was to golden the autumn of a bleak life made blest. Then Hattie Gilmore learned to play a score of out-of-door games and to understand sports. She learned to see the beauties in the roadside flowers-"weeds" her mother had called most of them. She learned to read glorious stories in the ever-transforming clouds. The neighbors' children were invited, timidly they came at first, later they were eager to come and play at "Aunt Hattie's." Three fine, determining events happened that fall to complete the salvation of this woman who was so fast learning happiness-living. They, Jane and Hattie, friends now rather than nurse and patient, made the daintiest possible cap and cloak for Dr. Ben's last baby, and sent it with a hearty, merry greeting. This was a peace-offering to the past, more efficient probably than much blood which has been shed on sacrificial altars. Then they made a trip which came near being a solemn occasion, it was so portentously important. They went to the church-orphanage, remained several days and brought home a lusty three-year-old bunch of mischief, who was forever to wreck all the gloom-sanctity of that old home. Hereafter even the parlor of mourning was to be assailed with shouts of glee; some things planted in Hattie's flower beds were foredoomed not to come up; no longer could the front lawn look like a freshly swept carpet. Roy was legally adopted by Hattie and became her proudest possession. Finally, her eyes were opened to that rarely sighted, fair vista of the sacred play-life, the play-life so long denied this good woman. Never again were housekeeping worries to be mentioned. They were not recognized. When things went wrong, they went merrily wrong. What could not be cured was joked about. The whole business of home-making became a gladsome game. Life for Hattie Gilmore, for Roy, for the neighbors' children, and for some of the mothers of dull old Coopersville came to be lived as the Father intended His children to live, when one almost old woman found the Fountain of Youth revealed by the fine art of play. A blessed revelation it is to every life when the joy of play robs the working hours of their tedium and weariness. He lives as master who makes play of his work. CHAPTER XI THE TANGLED SKEIN Warm balls of comfort, a thousand sheep feed on the hillside, turning herb and green growing things into food and wool. After the shearing and the washing, ten thousand soft strands are spun into a single thread, and each length of thread is a promise of warmth and protection for years to come. Then the wool-white yarn is dyed in colors symbolizing the strength of the navy, the loyalty of the army or the honor of the alma mater. Reeled into a skein, the wool is now all but ready for the fingers of the knitter; it has but to be wound in a ball. Yet here danger lurks. An inadvertent twist or a simple tangle quickly knots the thread, unless thoughtful patience rescues. Recklessness means hopeless disarray, and the soft fluff of warming color becomes unkempt disorder, a confused mass from which the thread broken again and again is extracted. The work of careful hands has been reduced to lasting defect. Francis Weston was reared in one of the prosperous, middle-Western cities, on the northern bank of the Ohio. The family had succeeded well and represented large manufacturing interests. All burdens which money could lift were removed, from his shoulders. He finished college in the East and entered business, never having felt a hand's weight of responsibility. As vice-president and director in one of the banks organized largely by the family's capital, he was free to follow his impulses. No details demanded his attention; other minds in the bank cared for these. Across the river a southern town nestled in cozy comfort, having for generations maintained a conscious superiority to its smoking, northern neighbor. Several handsome daughters of Kentucky aristocracy gave tangible evidence of the tone of the community, and Francis Weston's impulses made his trips across the river increasingly frequent. And, as it should have been, North and South were joined closer by one more golden link, when an only daughter of Kentucky wealth became Mrs. Weston. The marriage contract held but one stipulation: their home was to be in the bride's village. It looked as though one of Love's best plans had succeeded. The husband proved deeply devoted to his wife and the new home. The bank continued to take most excellent care of itself, and his trips north, across the river, were but occasional. The Weston mansion and estate in every way befitted the combined wealth of the two families, and the wife gave much time to making it increasingly attractive, and to the training of her good servants. The husband read much, exercised little, and the only reason for gentle protest from the wife was his excessive smoking. A little daughter came, but as though Fate would say, "I am Master," she lived but a few days. The shock was cruel, and the father seemed to suffer the more intensely. Mrs. Weston took her sorrow in a fine way; she seemed to realize that she, of the two, must turn away the threat of morbidness. But the touch of Fate was not to be denied. Still, three years later, it would seem that nothing but thankfulness and abounding joy should have filled the Weston home--a son came. They named him Harold. The father's solicitude for the little fellow's life was as pathetic as it was abnormal. The bank was now unvisited for months by its first vice-president. As the boy grew the father gave him more and more of himself. He was his companion in play, and personally taught him, seriously taking up study after study, until at sixteen Harold was well prepared for college--scholastically prepared, we should amend--for unconsciously the father had kept him from the normal comradeship with boys of his age. Much of excellent theory the youth had, some wisdom beyond his years, but no knowledge of denials, no spirit of give and take, no thought of the other fellow--his rights and wrongs. In spite of their long walks and rides on gaited Kentucky thoroughbreds, Harold was not physically robust, so it was decided to send him to a southern college, and he went to Vanderbilt. During his second year the father had a long siege of typhoid, and recovery was pitiably imperfect. His mentality did not return with his body strength--he remained a harmless, weak-minded man. Much care was exercised to keep the details from Harold, though both families were unwilling to have the broken man sent to an institution, and for four years professional nurses attended him at home. In spite of the mother's best efforts to distract and neutralize, the son could but feel the unnaturalness of the home atmosphere and profoundly miss the devotion of his father. Still from what little he did see of the invalid, it was a relief when, four years later, an accident took him away. Harold Weston's college life held true to his training. Quietly friendly, he mixed poorly; mentally well-equipped, he was an excellent student--brilliant in some classes, good in all. Athletics and fraternities, feeds and "femmies" dissipated none of his energies, nor added aught to the fulness of his living. He continued his college work until he had received both Bachelor's and Master's degrees. The spring he was twenty-three, he returned home for the summer, an attractive young man. A classmate had interested him in tennis, for which he showed some natural aptitude. The year's work had taxed him lightly. The skein of yarn gave promise of a perfect fabric. Mother and son had a happy summer. She saw to it that the home was alive with young folks, and one week-end party followed another. Harold had decided to study law, and nothing indicated that he would meet any obstacles during his course at Law School. All believed he was sufficiently strong to take this at Yale. There were brilliant minds in his classes--he was accustomed to lead. He dropped his tennis, he studied hard. In his second year he began losing weight after the holidays, and found difficulty in getting to sleep; his appetite became irregular, and his smoking, which had been moderate for some years, became a dependence. His nervous system was pretty well "shot up"--it had never been case-hardened. A weight of apprehension had become constantly present, and he let its burden depress him miserably. One of his professors, noting his appearance, talked with him earnestly, and with lay acumen decided his digestion was "out of fix" and told him of a "fine New York doctor." The stomach specialist worthily stood high in his profession. The examination was painstaking and exhaustive; the diagnosis seemed ominous to the morbid patient; the whole process was a revelation to him of organs and functions and laws of eating and drinking unheard in his years of study. "Chronic intestinal indigestion with food decomposition and auto-intoxication, augmented by nicotine," the doctor said. There had been a distinct lessening of efficiency in his law-school work. Study for the first time in his life required wearying effort. He did not feel himself, he was facing his first test, he was meeting his first strain. For the first time the skein was being mussed. Harold Weston began reading, indiscriminately, literature on food and digestion and diets. The doctor had given him a strict regimen. He began to note minutely the foods he ordered and to question the wholesomeness of their quality and preparation. Caution and over emphasis on details of food and habits of eating rapidly developed. Later not only the food in the dish, but most unhappily the foods he had swallowed were scrutinized by every alertness of sensation and imagination, and most damagingly did he become a victim of the unwholesome symptom-studying habit. Within two months his discerning physician recognized that the self-interest which had started in the physical damage of rapid eating of rich foods was developing into an obsession more detrimental than the original physical disorder, and thought it wise for him to discontinue study and return home to rest for the summer. The thread was tangled. The home-coming was not happy. From the first meal, the specialist's warnings were in conflict with the home diet, and resentments were not withheld from the good old dishes which had for a generation bedecked the home table. The delicacy instinctive to the family and to his earlier life was cast aside, and the subjects of food and its digestion, of food-poisoning and its consequences, made unpleasant every meal. Innocently and seriously the mother pointed to her good health and to rugged ancestors who had lived long and hale, unconsciously superior to food and drink. He brooked none of her suggestions, and finally when she honestly could not see it all his way, in the heat of his intensity he accused her of being to blame for all his trouble: she had fed him wrong from the first; she had fed his father wrong; the New York doctor had told him that certain mental diseases could be caused by food-poisoning, and his father would not have been a mental wreck, nor his own career cut short, had she only known what wives and mothers of this generation should know, and set a table which was not a laboratory of poison. These ideas, once accepted, never left him. They formed a theme which, after finding expression, recurred with ominously increasing frequency. A year before, Harold Weston was a kindly fellow, almost retiring, but with a peculiar lighting of his face in response which endeared him to feminine hearts. On a variety of subjects he was well-informed, his professors bespoke for him a high and honorable standing in the judiciary, but, from the mass of this fine mind's possibilities, a second wretched choice was now made. "Father's typhoid affected his mind, his brain must have been defective; my heredity is imperfect; my first illness damages my class work. I can never go on in my profession, there is no future for me but suffering." From this wrecking thought it was an easy step to condemnation of his father for his fatherhood, which, with his near-enmity toward his mother for her "criminal ignorance" in rearing him, introduced a sordidly demoralizing element into his mind which forever viciously tinctured memories and relations which should have been his sacred helpers. The normal mind can select well its world--miserably his mind lived with these dregs of his own choice. The power of normal selection will, in the best mind, be gradually lost through habitual surrender to the morbid. For the next year he lived unhappily in a home which he made unhappy. Naturally thoughtful, he daily took long walks, brooding over his wrongs--walks which brought him little benefit physically, as he considered himself unable to put into them sufficient effort to wring perspiration from his brow or toxins from his muscles. False interpretation of his own symptoms increased with the abnormal closeness of his scrutiny of them. His superficial knowledge he accepted as final. Ignorant of the limitations of heredity, will and judgment became subservient to pessimism, and the days marked a gradual, deepening depression. The skein was asnarl. A relative physician responded to the mother's call of distress and spent a week in the home, then took Harold under his personal care to a series of specialists--but not stomach specialists. Serious treatment was carried out at home with a young physician as companion. Two institutions offered the best help of their elaborate equipments and perfected methods. Three years of badly discounted usefulness passed. Long since had any call of responsibility ceased to elicit response. Toward the end of this time he seemed better, and was spending the summer at a health-resort, living a relatively normal life. Fate then seemed to smile--dainty fingers appeared from the nowhere, which promised gently, patiently, surely to loosen each tangled snarl. Eva Worth was another only child of affluence. She, too, was recuperating, spending the summer at the same resort as Harold. "Overwork at college," it was said. Petite of person, pleasing in manner, sweetly spoiled, with sympathies quickly born but usually displaced by fresher interests, she was bright and responsive in mind, and her attraction to Harold Weston gave promise of being the touch needed to complete his restoration. Providence only knows the possibilities latent in a union of these poor children of wealth. For him there was an unquestioned awakening. The somber clouds of his moods seemed destined to be transformed into delicate pastels by the promises of love. It was more than an infatuation for them both, and an understanding which was virtually an engagement left them happy even in their parting. But happiness was not a word for Harold Weston's conjuring. Throughout the weeks of his association with this fair girl, the first woman for whom he had ever cared, the thought had repeatedly come that he owed her a full and explicit explanation of his illness and of his "defective heredity." At home where the brooding habit had grown strong and fixed, this idea became so insistent, within two weeks, that he relieved the tension of its demands by a long letter of details, which even to the sympathetic ear of love were more than disquieting. The letter ended with a question of her willingness to indicate a final decision in her response. The appeal of his fine eyes was not there to help--other eyes were nearer. Eva Worth was but twenty-two. Home training, the reading of much fine literature, a college education, her own poor little heart, all failed to bespeak for her wisdom in this crisis. An impulsive, almost resentful refusal was sent. Second thoughts held more wisdom, for woman's pity was now wisdom, so another day saw another letter, one with a few saving words of hope. The first reply was handed to Harold after luncheon. Quietly he left the house, apparently for one of his afternoon walks. By morning he had not returned and a general alarm went out. Some days later two boys, fishing in the river from an old log, saw a cap in an eddy. No more has been seen or heard of Harold Weston. A hasty hand, a hasty touch had broken the thread. Two women were left to suffer. The elder, haunted by the re-echoings of an only son's condemnation, lives out her years in a loneliness which will not break, harrowed by questions of the wisdom of her mother-love, the best she had to give. Some mother's son she may yet help save, for she knows the vital error which shielded and guarded her boy till he reached his majority, never having met trial, hopelessly untrained in coping with adversity. The younger, sobered by the voice of self-accusation, ever feels the weight of the consciousness of a grave duty slighted; she was made more wise in a day of deep reality than by twenty years of conventional training. Tested again she would give as she has never known giving, give that she might protect. CHAPTER XII THE TROUBLED SEA A young woman, of rather striking appearance attired in her street clothing, is standing beside her dresser. She has just returned from town. She is of medium height, trim of figure, weighing about one hundred and forty, with skin of a soft ivory tint and cheeks showing a faint flush of health--or of excitement. Her dark hair waves gracefully and the scattering strands of gray quite belie her youth. The eyes are well placed, nearly black, and can sparkle on occasion. Her rather poorly formed hands of many restless habits, are the only apparent defect in this, externally attractive, young woman. She has just broken the seal of a heavy vellum envelope addressed in a strange feminine hand. It is an engraved announcement which reads: "Mrs. Pinkney Rogers announces the marriage of her daughter, Pearl May, to Mr. Lee Burnham"-- She never read the rest. She never saw the--"on Tuesday, May thirtieth nineteen hundred and one. At Home, Rome, Georgia, after July fifth." Her sister, Addie, coming up the stairs, thought she heard a moan and hurried in to find Stella lying in a crumpled heap. Addie's quick eye noticed the announcement. She read it all, and destroyed it, and through the years it was never mentioned by either of them. She, alone, knew its relation to her sister's collapse, but with proverbial southern pride never voiced her opinion of the tragic cause of her older sister's years of nervous ill-health. Mr. Beckman, Stella's father, was at this time about fifty-five. He was the brunette parent from whom many of her more attractive physical qualities had been inherited. He was proprietor of the best men's furnishing store of the county's metropolis. His business was moderately successful, built up, he felt, entirely through years of his personal thought and attention, and it was practically his only interest. Even his interesting family was a matter of course--though the amount of the day's sales never became so. Mr. Beckman had a single diversion. The store closed at ten o'clock Saturday nights; between twelve and one its proprietor would reach home in an exalted state, and for two hours poor Mrs. Beckman would hear his plans for developing the biggest gent's clothing-business in the state, for becoming a merchant-prince, emphasized with many a hearty slap on her back. This weekly relaxation was always followed by a miserable Sunday morning, invariably referred to by every member of the family as "another of Papa's sick headaches." Mrs. Beckman never lisped the details of those unhappy Saturday nights, and the loyal deception was so well carried out, with such devoted attention and nursing, that by early afternoon, Sunday, the invalid was quite restored and any possible self-reproach had been melted away. Headaches of the real kind did come later, and, as his habits changed not, the Brights which first appeared at fifty-eight progressed without interruption to his death at sixty. Mrs. Beckman was a blonde, but for many years had been a badly faded one. She was as singleminded in regard to her household as her husband to his store. Neither had developed more than family and local interests. She was the same age as her husband and had, without question, worked faithfully, long hours, through the long years, in homage to her sense of housekeeping duties. The coming of the children, only, from time to time, kept her away from kitchen and parlor for a few weeks. She had been to Atlanta but once during the last ten years, not that Mr. Beckman willed it so--she could have had vacations and attractive dresses, though for some reason, possibly the "fading" which has been mentioned, he never urged her to go with him-- and she needed urging, for she honestly believed there was "too much to do" at home. The habit of industry can become as inveterate as habits of pleasure. The two Beckman boys had the virtues of both father and mother. They finished at the city high school, and at once went to work in the store with such earnestness of purpose that they were quite prepared to conduct the business, even better than the father had done, when he became incapacitated. We met the sister, Addie, in Stella's room and realized from her discretion, manifested under stress, that she possessed elements of character. She was a clear-skinned, high-strung blonde--thin-skinned too, probably, for from childhood her hands rebelled at household duties. The family thrift was hers, however, and from the limited opportunities of the home town, she prepared herself for, and filled well, for years, a position with a successful law firm. She later married the senior member--a widower. His children and her high-strung thin-skinnedness and lack of domestic propensities have not made her as successful a home-builder as she was a stenographer. Stella Beckman's early life was deeply influenced by many of the surroundings which we have glimpsed. Hers was not a home of fine ideals. Much that was common was always present. The table-talk was almost competitive in nature, as, with the possible exception of the mother, each one used "I" almost insistently, as a text for converse, the three times a day they sat together. Even mutual interests were largely obscured, much of the time, by personal ones, barring only the subject of sickness. All forms of illness were themes commanding instant and absorbing attention. Inordinate anxiety was felt by all for the ills of the one; and for days the "I" would be forgotten if any member of the home-circle was "sick." And the concerns of the patient, whether suffering from a cold, sore eyes, a sprained ankle, or "had her tonsils out," were discussed with minuteness of detail worthy an International Conference. How the patient slept, what the doctor said, the effect of the new medicine, how the heart was standing the strain, what the visiting neighbors thought of the case, in fact the whole subject of sickness held a morbid interest for each member of the family. Sickness, no matter how slight, was with the Beckmans ever an excuse for changing any or all plans. We might speak of the discussion of illness as the Beckman family avocation. Stella was a bright child, who, wisely directed and influenced, would have taken a good education. She could have developed into a particularly pleasing, capable, useful, possibly forceful woman. But the emotional Stella was over-developed, until it obstructed the growth of the reasoning Stella. Still we should call her a normal small-town child, certainly until her last year in grammar-school. She had some difficulty with her studies that spring because of her eyes. Her lenses, fitted in Atlanta, seemed to make them worse. It was only after she went to a noted specialist in Charleston that she was relieved. It is significant that later these expensively obtained glasses were discarded as "too much trouble." The summer Stella was thirteen, Grandmother Beckman came to spend her last days in her son's home. The granddaughter had been named for her, and Grandmother was frail and old and needed attention. Grandmother also had some means. For over a year the young girl gave much of her time to the old lady, and for over a year she was able to lead the Beckman table-talk with her wealth of details about Grandma's sickness. Stella's care of her charge was excellent, entirely lacking in any selfish element. Death hesitated, when he finally called, and for nearly a week the dying woman lay unconscious. These "days of strain" and the death and funeral were, always after, mentioned by Stella and her people as her "first shock." For a time she was so nervous and restless and her sleep so disturbed that the doctor gave her hypnotics and advised her being sent away. She went to Atlanta for two months, boarding in the home of a Methodist minister, who some years before had been stationed in Rome. It was Stella's first experience in a religious home. She had never been accustomed to hearing the "blessing" said, and food referred to as "God-given" seemed, at first, quite too sacred to swallow. And the effect of morning worship--the seriously read Bible chapter, the earnest prayer, with the entire family kneeling--affected her profoundly, and gave to this godly home a sanctity which, at susceptible not-yet-fifteen, awakened emotions so powerful that for days she walked as one in a dream, one attracted by some wonderful vision which was drawing her, unresisting, into its very self. Each day was a step closer, and at prayer-meeting the Wednesday night before she returned home, she announced her conversion, with an intensity of earnestness which could but impress every hearer. Stella Beckman went back to Rome filled with a zeal for the new religious life which commanded the respect of even her religiously careless father. Nor was it a flash in the pan. She joined the church. She made her sister join the church, and to the church she gave four years of remarkable devotion. Church interests were first, and one Sunday the pastor publicly announced that for the twelve months past Stella Beckman had not missed a single service in any branch of the church's activities. She taught a Sunday-school class. She sang in the choir. She was president of the Epworth League, and not only attended, but always "testified" at mid-week prayer-meeting. Her church interests took all her time. The foreign-missionary cause later laid a gripping hold upon her, and arrangements were made, four years after she went into the church, for her to go to a Missionary Training- School. Somehow things went wrong here. She had expected an almost sanctified atmosphere. She was accustomed to being regarded as essentially devout, but there was a sense of order in the school which she felt was mechanical, class-room work seemed to be counted as important as religious services, and her fervidly expressed religious experiences appeared to reflect chill rather than the accustomed warmth of the home prayer-meetings. Moreover, real lessons were assigned which no amount of religious feeling or no intensity of personal praying made easy. She hadn't studied for years; in fact, she had never learned to do intellectual work studiously. And even these good religious teachers did not hesitate to demand accurate recitations. She had been accustomed for years to have preference shown, and here she was treated only as one of many, and, humiliatingly, as one who was failing to maintain the standards of the many. She fell behind in the two most important studies, nor was her classwork in general good. Whether she would have later proven capable of getting down to rock bottom and meeting the demands of reason on a rational basis, we cannot say, for the family hobby abruptly terminated her missionary career. "Mother dangerously sick with inflammatory rheumatism. Come at once," the telegram said--and she hastily returned home to be met with, what her history records as, "my second shock." Her mother WAS sick, and truly and genuinely suffering. The house was in disorder. Weeks followed in which Stella's best strength was needed. Her mother slowly mended, but never regained her old activity. The doctor said a heart-valve was damaged, and the family thereafter were never quite certain when the sudden end would come--an uncertainty which was proven legitimate ten years later, when she died, almost suddenly. Stella had met shock number two very well. The home-love and welcome and the warmth of feeling she experienced in the home-church were a never-admitted relief from the rigid exactions of the training- school life, and did much to neutralize, for the time, her anxiety about her mother and the "strain of her care." It was a family which ever advertised home-devotion, and so this call of home illness completely obscured all other plans for three years. But home responsibilities quite wrecked her church-going record. In fact, it was unkindly whispered that Stella was "backsliding." And these same whispers found audible expression the summer she was twenty-two, when attractive Lee Burnham, the judge's son, spent his summer vacation at home, and "took her buggy-riding every Sunday evening for over two months." Lee was only twenty-one, but his was a very romantic twenty-one, and he filled Stella's ears with so many sweet nothings that she no longer heeded the call of duty. And why shouldn't she be in love and have a lover? Had she not already given the best years of her youth to others? Had she not waited without a thought of rebellion for the coming of the right one? And Love, and Love's mysterious touch, wrought fantastic changes in Stella Beckman's affairs. She and Lee read poetry. She had never known how beautiful poetry was nor how much of it there was to read. He knew the good novels and sent her all that he himself read, and these were plenty! Then, when he was away, he wrote and she wrote, and now and then he wrote some verses to her. There was no real engagement. They never spoke much of the future; the present was too full. Home duties and church interests flagged badly during these two years, and the summer she was twenty-four, it became town talk that this young couple would marry. The Beckmans were very willing. But one day the judge called Lee into his office and wanted to know what these "doings" all meant, asking him if he was "going to marry his mother," and making some rather uncomplimentary Beckman- Burnham comparisons. Lee rather sheepishly told his father there was nothing to worry about. He had much respect, possibly awe, for the old gentleman. The next week Lee left for his final year in law-school. His letters to Stella continued, though he plead his studies as an excuse for their diminished frequency. He did not come home that spring, at Easter. "Work," he wrote Stella. Nor was he ever square to this poor girl, for he never mentioned his relations with Miss Pearl May Rogers. And "shock number three" came, as unhappy Stella read the announcement of his marriage, addressed in the hand of his June city- bride. A lastingly damaging shock it proved to be. Stella was put to bed; for days she lay in deep apathy. Feeding became a problem of nurses and doctors. She cared for nothing--nothing "agreed" with her, and she lost weight rapidly. Chills and flushes, sweatings and shakings came in regular disorder, and for hours she would be apparently speechless. Somebody--not the doctors--reported that Stella Beckman had typho-malaria. Abnormal sensitiveness to surroundings, to sounds, sights and smells, especially a dread of unpleasant news, were to complicate her living for years to come. For the remainder of her life she was to confound sensations normal to emotional reactions with sensations accompanying physical diseases; and sensations came and went in her now tense emotional nature like trooping clouds on a stormy day. Stella's illness was so prostrating that her weakened mother and busy sister could not care for her adequately, and an aunt came to help. Recovery was slow and imperfect; she remained a semi-invalid for two and a half years. Physical discomforts were so constant that a surgeon was finally consulted who did an exploratory operation and removed some unnecessary anatomy. This man's personality was strong, his desire to help, genuine, and he had considerable insight into the emotional illness of his patient. The influence of the operation, with the surgeon's encouragement and the atmosphere of confidence pervading the excellent, small surgical hospital, combined to make Stella very much better for the time. But within less than three years, her father died. She calls this "the fourth shock," and it resulted in another period of nervous illness. She cried much at the time. Work was impossible--as was all exercise --because of her rapid fatigue. One day she slipped on the front steps and, apparently, but bruised her knee. Her doctor nor the X-ray could discover more serious damage. Still, walking was practically discontinued, as she could not step without pain. At last, almost in desperation, her brother took her to a hospital noted for its success in reconstructing nervous invalids. At this time she weighed but one hundred and four, and the list of her symptoms seemed unending. A desire to be helped, however, was discerned and with rest-treatment she gained rapidly in weight, appetite returned, digestive disturbances disappeared, and massage, or a new idea, fully restored her walking powers. She became eager for the more important half of her treatment--the out-of-door work-cure. During these weeks she had certainly been given much physical and mental help. Expert and specialized counsel and nursing had been hers. At the end of five months Stella returned to Georgia--restored--a health enthusiast. It now became her joy, in and out of season, whenever she could secure hearers, to relate the details of her illness and the miracle of her restoration. The methods of the special hospital that wrought such wonders for her were reiterated in detail, and for years she made herself thoroughly wearisome by her talk of diet and exercise, special bathing, out-of-door work and prescribed habits. She kept herself constantly conspicuous in her efforts to reform others to her new ways of living. For over four years, she sedulously adhered to the routine outlined by the hospital, with such devotion to, and augmentation of, details that she had little time for church and practically no time for household affairs. As had been her habit in past experiences her enthusiasm was causing her to overdo, and the business of keeping well seemed now her only object in life. This could not go on interminably. Something had to happen, and her mother's rather sudden death proved the shock which was to relieve her from the overenthusiastic slavery to an impracticable routine. Stella Beckman at forty-five is sadly less fine and worthy than the Stella Beckman of eighteen. Religion, Love and Science have each entered her life deeply to enrich it, but all of these built upon the sands, the shifting sands of an emotional nature which had never laid the granite foundation of reason. Since the mother's death, the logic of her feelings has become more and more crippled by false valuations. She lives at home keeping house for the boys, recounting each mealtime the endless list of her feelings; bringing herself, her sickness, her hospital experiences wearisomely into the conversation with each caller. The emotional stability and the will to persevere even at considerable cost, which marked youth, are gone. At forty-five her life is objectlessly spasmodic, the old family-habit of talking of self and the family-fetish of discussing sickness have honeycombed her character and made her hopelessly tiresome. And her feeling-life is as restless as a troubled sea. CHAPTER XIII WILLING ILLNESS Mr. Harrison Orr lived till he was twenty-five in Indianapolis, the town of his birth, excepting the years spent in Chicago pursuing his literary and law courses. He inherited a small fortune and, after two years spent in "seeing the world," located in Memphis, Tennessee. Here, as an attorney and later as an investor, he was professionally, financially and socially successful. His father had been liberal in the use of wines and cordials, and young Orr himself always remained a "good fellow," just the kind of a man to attract a vivacious, socially proud daughter of the South. He was thirty-five when he married-- accounted an age of discretion. His experience with womankind was so ample that he should have made no mistake in his final, irrevocable choice, and, be it said to his honor, no one, not even the wife herself, ever knew by word or act of his, to the contrary. He and his Mississippi bride spent thirty years in apparent domestic tranquillity, until he died at sixty-five from a heart which refused longer to have its claims for purposeful living eternally answered by gin rickeys and nips of "straight Scotch." Mrs. Harrison Orr is unconsciously the unhappy "villain" of our tale. Her girlhood home was on a large sugar-plantation where she, as an only child, was reared to dominate her surroundings, while her parents made particular effort that she might shine socially. Parts of many years she lived in Washington in the home of a political relative, and attended a select girls' school. After her debut she spent the social winters at the Capitol where social niceties were developed with much attention to detail, and at home and while in Washington she was gratifyingly popular. "A brilliant conversationalist," she had heard herself called when fifteen, and the art of conversation, hitherto far from neglected, became by choice and practice her forte. Brilliancy in speech ever remained her only seriously attempted accomplishment. Clever of speech, from childhood, she had early learned to utilize this ability to attain any desired end. And talk she could, and talk she did, and as she grew older, by sheer talking she domineered every situation. It was her opinion when she married that at any time, with any listener, she could talk cleverly on any subject. As the years passed, during which she added little to her asset of knowledge, this art of fine speech gradually, but relentlessly, degenerated, and step by step she slipped down the paths of delicacy and fineness, through the selfishness of her insistent talkativeness. Harrison Orr never intimated that his evenings at home were hours of boredom, but in later years spent much time in the comparative quiet of his club. Few intellects can be so amply stored as to continue brilliant through decades of much speaking, and the sparkle of Mrs. Orr's conversation was gradually shrouded in the weariness of what a blunt neighbor termed her "inveterate gabble." As it must be, this woman of exceptional opportunities early lost true sensitiveness, and, both as guest and hostess, ignored the offense of inconsiderate and self- seeking interruptions. She broke into the speech of others with crude abandon. The itch to lead and preempt the conversation became uncontrollable. Finer natures thrown with her could but tolerate her "naive" discourtesy, while dependents had to dumbly endure. Mrs. Orr but stands as a type illustrating far too many mortally wearisome, social pretenders, prominent only through the tireless tiresomeness of their much speaking. The wreckage which may follow a single unthought crudity, in a home otherwise exceptional, is signally illustrated in the life of Mrs. Orr's only child, Hortense, born two years after their marriage. From the first she was sensitive and high-strung, nervously damaged probably in her early years by her mother's restless, unwise overcare. When Hortense was five she was sharply ill for several weeks with scarlatina. During these days she was isolated with Mrs. Place, her nurse, in a wing of the home. As fortune would have it, Mrs. Place was the daughter of a rural English clergyman. After the death of her husband, who left her limited in means, she came to America, where she trained. Her wholesome influence over Hortense, her general demeanor in the home, and her many excellent qualifications as nurse and woman attracted Mr. Orr's discerning attention, and he induced her to remain as governess to his daughter. Mrs. Place proved a most excellent addition to the Orr household. Always deferential, she was never servile; always reserved, she ever faced duties large and small, promptly, quietly and efficiently. Never, through her nearly ten years as daily companion of Hortense, did her speech or conduct betoken aught but refinement. More and more Hortense retreated to her wholesome companionship in face of the assaults of her mother's trying volubility. In many ways this most unusual nurse protected her charge from the greater damage of poor mothering than actually occurred. The differences between these two women were reflected in the sensitive child's life. Unconsciously at first, later in certain details, ultimately without reserve, she approved the standards of the one and repudiated those of the other. In contrast to her mother she grew into an abnormal reserve. Hortense never attended the public schools but was regularly taught by Mrs. Place until she was fifteen, when she went East and entered her mother's old school, in Washington. The years of her careful tutoring had failed to accustom her to competition of any kind, and this first year of school work was taxing and but indifferently successful. During the spring term she had measles which left her with a hacking cough, and she did not regain her lost weight. The school-doctor sent her home, "for the southern climate," where she remained for a year, rather frail and the object of much detailed, maternal solicitude. It was probably this same solicitude which finally became so wearying that she returned to school for relief. Hortense was now a year behind, but resented the rather superior airs of some of her old classmates so effectively that she got down to business, made up her back work, and graduated reasonably well up in her entrance class. Of light build, and always frail in appearance, she did commendable work in school athletics. She took private instruction in hockey, for she was determined "to make the team," and her success in accomplishing this is significant of her ability to do, when she willed. At one of the later inter-scholastic games she met a handsome, manly, George Washington University student. She was nineteen, he twenty-three, and on his commencement day he honored her by offering his hand. Her southern love was aglow. Her lover was practically making his own way, but his prospects were excellent, his character superior, and they both cared very much. Unhappily, Mrs. Place had returned to England, or Hortense would have confided in her and some futures might have been different. But the warmth of the new love seemed at the time to dissipate the chilliness toward her mother, which, unexpressed to herself, had through the years been increasing in the daughter's heart. So she wrote a long letter full of the beautiful story of the growing happiness, with pages of fervid descriptions of a certain fine young fellow, and importuned her mother to come East at once and to bring her blessing. No such filial warmth had Mrs. Orr ever before known. No such opportunity for a beneficent expression of the high privilege of motherhood had ever been entrusted to her. She responded without hesitation. She did not even wait to read their daughter's letter to her husband. When she reached Washington she summoned the young suitor to her hotel, and succeeded in one masterful quarter of an hour in arousing his violent dislike and lasting contempt. Through diplomacy she got Hortense on the Memphis-bound train. She was determined that her "darling child" should never marry beneath her station, and she talked and talked, drowning her daughter's protests, appeals and objections, in her merciless flow of words. Night after night she would stay with her till after twelve, leaving the poor girl tense, distracted and sleepless. And the habit of sleeplessness developed and with it a painfully abnormal sensitiveness to noises. The cruelly disappointed girl rapidly went to pieces. She craved a woman's sympathy, she longed for a mother's comprehending love, but she soon came to dread even her mother's presence, and formed the habit of burying her ears in the pillows to shut out the sound of that voice which could have meant the sweetest music of all, yet which to her distraught nerves had become an irritating, repelling, hated noise. Then special nurses came; the hot months were spent in the Rockies; several sea-trips were made; twice patient and nurse went East to forget it all in weeks of concerts and theaters in New York. But her inability to sleep was but temporarily relieved, while her antagonism to noises increased. She was then in Philadelphia for six months under the care of a noted neurologist, where she slowly gained considerably, physically, and was sufficiently well to spend a short, social "coming out season" with her parents. Yet the "at homes" and tea-parties and functions in which her mother reveled, never more than superficially interested her. Rather strangely, father and daughter had not been as close as their similar natures and needs would suggest. While Mrs. Orr may not have been jealous, she preempted her husband's home hours mercilessly; but in her father's death Hortense came to know that one of the few props of her stability had been removed. Moreover, her mother's incessant reiteration of her loneliness and sorrow, and the endless discussion of the details of her depressing widow's weeds, and of her taxing, exhausting widow's responsibilities, brought on a return of the old symptoms, with the antipathy to noises even intensified. We may think of Hortense Orr as inherently weak. This is not so. Save as influenced in her girlhood by Mrs. Place, and while stimulated during her last three years at school by personal ambition, she had known no duties nor responsibilities. There had never been any necessity for specific effort or sacrifice. After her great disappointment she had surrendered to depression of spirit, and she reacted in the same way after her father's death. And this surrender was early followed by weakness of her disused body. She also surrendered to the weakness of self-pity, that craven mocker of self-respect. She was not a will-less girl, but life had brought her small chance to develop that will which masters, while wilfulness, that will which demands selfishly for self, grew out of the soil so largely of her mother's preparing. This wilfulness, first asserted in small things, grew and grew. The family doctor saw more than tongue and liver and thin blood and bodily weakness. He realized the helplessness of Hortense in finding her stronger self in the home atmosphere, and advised a year in Europe--to get away from her sorrow, he said, to get away from her mother's wearying discussion of details, he knew. For nearly a year she was treated in Germany at different cures without benefit. It was always the "noise" that kept her from sleeping. It was the "noise" which she had learned to hate and to revile. To get away from noise became her fixed determination. And to this end a small mountain- cottage was secured, secluded from the haunts and industries of man, in the remoteness of the Tyrolean Alps. Here with her nurse and a servant she remained three years. For the first months she seemed happier, and took some interest in the inspiring views and rich flora of her surroundings. But the night did not bring the silence she willed. She sensed the heavy breathing of her nurse, the movements of the servant as she turned in her bed, and sometimes even snored, she knew it! She would spend hours of strained, sleepless attention, alert to detect another instance of the heartless repetition of this incriminating sound. She must be alone. She feared nothing so much as the hated sounds of human activity. So a one-room shack was built a hundred yards away from her companions, in the deeper solitude of the forest. Here she slept alone, month after month. But the winters, even in the Tyrolean foot-hills, are severe at times, and the deadly monotony of this useless life, and the improvement which she "knew" would come with the perfection of her sleeping arrangements, combined to decide her to return home, though still an enemy to the unbearable sounds of the night. Twenty-eight years she had lived with no true interest in life; neither home, attractions in New York or in Europe, nor treatment offered by competent and kind specialists had influenced her one thought away from her willingness to be ill. The nurse, who had buried herself so long with this poor girl in Europe, was quite appalled at Mrs. Orr's inconsideration of her daughter's "sensitive, nervous state." Nurse and mother soon had words; nurse and daughter left promptly for the East, where two hours from New York they spent another year in semi-isolation together. A New York broker owned the place adjoining the invalid's cottage. Walter Douglas, then but twenty-six, was his private secretary. Walter and Hortense met in the quiet, woodland paths. It is difficult to know just what the mutual attractions were. She had received many advantages which had not been his, still life was certainly a lonely thing for her. He was her first real interest since she had left Washington, and love reawakened and blew into life the embers she thought were gray-cold. It was never to be the flaming love-fire of ten years before, but it was bright enough to decide her to marry, which she did without writing any letter of confidence to her unsuspecting mother. Mr. Orr had left the property in his wife's control, and she had been unquestionably most generous in supplying her daughter with funds. When she received the brief note telling of the little wedding and inviting her to meet them in Washington, on their simple wedding-trip, she found herself for the first time in her life--speechless! There were no words to express this "outrage." The disability was short- lived, but her letter to the bridal couple was shorter. They had taken things into their own hands; they had ignored her who had every right to be at least advised, and they could take care of themselves. Hardly had this letter been mailed when she consulted her attorney as to ways and means to annul this "crazy marriage." The young couple had more pride than dollars, and bravely started house-keeping in a small flat. Few had been more inadequately trained for household duties than this self-pampered woman who pluckily at first, then grimly, went to the limit of her poorly developed strength in an effort to make homelike their few, plain rooms, and to prepare their unattractive meals. Still it all might have worked out had the noises of the street not attained an ascendancy. In less than four months the youthful husband, through a sense of duty, wrote the mother details of his bride's "precarious condition." Mrs. Orr promptly sent money, and the mother in her soon brought her to them in person. Within a few days she recognized the helpless husband's honesty and patience, and took them both to Memphis, providing a furnished flat and a good servant. The incompetent wife's short experience in household responsibilities, for which she was so utterly unprepared, made sickness a most welcome haven of refuge, and for months she did nothing but war with the noises of the quiet suburb. Then their baby came, but with it slight evidence of young mother love. She seemed almost indifferent to her little one. At rare times, only, would she respond to her first-born and to her husband. The doctor said there was no reason why she did not regain strength, that she could if she would, that it was not a question of physical frailty but it was decidedly a case of willing to have the easiest way. "Something has to be done," he said at last, and he strongly advised that she be sent to a hospital where she would be the object of benevolent despotism. She constantly complained of her oversensitive hearing, and had certainly developed all the arts of the invalid. She made no objection to the proposed plan. She did not know what was in store for her, outside of the mentioned "rest-cure." Full authority was given the institution officials to use any possible helpful means to stimulate her recovery. In all this the family physician counseled wisely and with discernment. At the hospital Hortense Douglas was told that she was to remain until she was well, that it was not a question of duration of treatment, but of her condition, which would determine the date of her return to her home, husband, and little one. The relationship between her years of illness and her unhappy disappointment, between her antagonism to night sounds and her intolerant impatience with her mother, was carefully explained. The ideal of making friends with these same noises which were but the voices of human progress, happiness, industry and personal rights, was held before her. Following the first clash of her will with the hospital authorities, she claimed that she was losing her mind, and was told that she would be carefully watched and would be treated at once as irresponsible when she proved to be so. Step by step she was forced to health, she was compelled to live rationally. Scientific feeding produced rapid improvement in her nutrition, she gained strength by the use of foods which she had never liked, had never taken and could "not take." In every way she improved in spite of herself. She often said she could not stand the treatment. But cooperation relentlessly proved more pleasant than rebellion. At the end of five months she was sleeping night after night the deep sleep honestly earned by thorough physical weariness, a sleep which nervous tire and worrying apprehension can never know. She could get no satisfaction as to when she would be allowed to return home. She had no money in her possession, but she slipped away one morning, pawned her watch for railway-fare, and arrived home announcing that she was well. Wealth, medical experts, years in Europe, society, the pleasures of seasons in New York, a husband's love, motherhood had failed to find health for this wilful woman. Not until her illness was made more uncomfortable than the legitimate duties of health, not until she recognized it was normal living at home or life in that "awful hospital," did she will to be well--and well she was. CHAPTER XIV UNTANGLING THE SNARL You have probably passed the mansion. It stands, prominent, on the avenue leading from Buffalo to Niagara Falls. Three generations have added to its beauty and appointments. A generation ago it stood, imposing, and if fault could be found, it was its self-consciousness of architectural excellence. Every continent had contributed to its furnishings, and some of its servants, too, were trained importations. In the middle eighties, this noble pile was the home of an invalid, a twelve-year-old boy, a housekeeping aunt, and nurses, valets, maids, butlers, cooks, and coachmen. The invalid master of the house was forty-eight. As he leaned on the mantel looking out across the lawn, you felt the presence of a massive, powerful physique, but as he slowly turned to greet you, you fairly caught your breath from the intensity of the shock. The cheeks were hollow; the lips were ever parted to make more easy the simple act of breathing, the pallor of the face was more than that of mere weakness--there was a yellowish hue of both skin and eye-whites. The shrunken claw-like hands that offered greeting, the shrunken thighs, the increased girth of body which had so deceived your first glance, all bespoke mortal illness to even the untrained eye--advanced cirrhosis of the liver, to the professional scrutiny. And he was to be the fourth, in a line of financially successful Kents, to die untimely from mere eating and drinking. You would not have stayed long with this sick man. Only a large love or a large salary could have made the atmosphere of his presence endurable, for he was the essence of impatience, the quintessence of wilfulness. The sumptuousness of his surroundings, the punctilious devotion of his servants, the deferential respect shown him in high financial circles, books, people, memories, all failed ever to soften that drawn, hard face, for he was a miserably wretched, unhappy sufferer. Now and then his eyes would light up when Francis, his son and heir, was brought in. But Francis had a governess and an aunt who were respectively paid and commanded to keep him entertained and contented, and to see that he did not long disturb the invalid. That last year was one of most disorderly invalidism--not disorder of a boisterous, riotous kind, but an unmitigated rebellion to doctors' orders and advice, to the suggestions of friends, to the urgings and pleadings of nurses and "Aunt Emma." There were no voluble explosions; the impatience was not of the noisy kind--he had too much character for that, but the stream of thought was turgid and sulphurous. Jan, the valet, never argued, urged, suggested--by no little foreign shrug of his shoulders did he even hint that the master's way was not entirely right--and politic, faithful Jan stood next to Francis in his good graces; in fact, he was more acceptable as a companion. The only reason the sick man gave for his indifference to professional advice was that he was the third generation to go this way--and this way he went. A giant he was in the forest of men, felled in his prime. Francis did not know his mother. She had been beautiful, a gentle, lovable daughter of generations of social refinement. Her father and grandfather had lived "pretty high." In truth, had the doctors dared, "alcoholic," as an adjective, would have appeared in both their death certificates; and the worm must have been in the bud, for she died suddenly at twenty-five, following a short, apparently inadequate illness. Thus, three-year-old Francis was left to a busy father's care, a maiden aunt's theoretical incompetence, and to the ministrations of a series of governesses who remained so long as they pleased their youthful lord. The undisciplined father's idea of good times, for both himself and his son, was based upon having what you want right now, and why not?--with unlimited gold, with its seemingly unlimited buying power. Dear Auntie, poor thing! knew no force higher than "Now, Francis, I wouldn't," or "Please don't," or on very extreme occasions, "I shall certainly tell your father"--as utterly ineffective in introducing one slightest gleam of the desirability and potency of unselfishness into this boy's mind, as was the gracious servility of the servants. Francis was large for his age, unusually active and remarkably direct mentally, therefore little adjustment was needed as he entered that usually leveling community--boy-school-life. He was generous and good- hearted to a lovable degree and with such qualities and advantages he early became, and remained, leader in his crowd. After his father died, the boy, not unnaturally, placed him--the only one whose will he had ever had to respect--high in his reverence. The father had been a powerful young man, a boxer to be feared, oar one in the Varsity Crew; a man who, through the force and brilliancy of his business life, had won more than state-wide prominence, and had left many influential friends who spoke of him in highest respect. It was to be expected that the father's strong character would have deeply influenced his only son, and like father like son, only more so, he grew. But the "more so" is our tale. "Rare, juicy tenderloin steaks go to muscle. You don't need much else, and we didn't get much else at the training-table," the father used to say, and they unquestionably formed the bulk of the boy's naturally fine physique, for he developed in spite of much physical misuse into a two-hundred-pound six-footer. Francis began smoking at twelve. On his tenth birthday a small wine glass had been filled for him and thereafter he always had wine at dinner, and he liked it--not only the effects but the taste. The desire was in his blood--Before he was eighteen he was brought home intoxicated and unconscious. No law had ever entered into his training which suggested any form of self-control. The principles of self-mastery were unthought; they had been untaught. "Eat, drink and be merry" might express the sum of his ideals. And so, physically or mentally, no thought of restraint entered his youthful philosophy. There was nothing vicious, no strain of meanness, much generosity; naturally kindly and practically devoid of any spirit of contention, and peculiarly free from any touch of the disagreeable, he was blessed with a spirit of good fellowship. He never questioned the rights of his friends to do as they pleased, and they quite wisely avoided questioning his right to do likewise; so, desire was untrammeled and grew apace. It was in Francis Kent's failure to bridle this power that the threads were first snarled. The boy's fine body was trained in a haphazard way. Had his father lived, it might have been different. Mentally, he was naturally industrious and next to the joys of the flesh came his studies. It was as toastmaster at his "prep-school" commencement-banquet that he first drank to intoxication. The next fall he entered Yale, and there is no question but those days this revered university had a "fast set" that was emphatically rapid. But Francis Kent could go the paces; in fact, none of the football huskies could put in a night out and bring as snappy an exterior and as clear a wit to first class next morning as young Kent. His heredity, his beefsteaks, the gods, or something, certainly made it possible for him to be a "bang-up rounder" and at the same time an acceptable student through four college years. He was almost gifted in a capacity for the romance literatures, and, anomalous though it may seem, he majored and excelled in philosophy. He was truly a popular fellow when he took his degree at twenty-two. High living had given him high color; his eye was active and his face, though somewhat heavy, was mobile with the sympathy of intelligence; his physique was good; he dressed with a negligee art which was picturesque. Big of heart, he had a wealth of scholarly ideas, and not a few ideals; many thought he faced life a certain winner. Practically every door was open to him, and he chose--Europe. Those were two hectic years. Every gait was traveled; for weeks he would go at top-speed, go until nerve and blood could brook no more. No conception of the duty of self-restraint ever reached him till, at last, the nervous system, often slow to anger, began to express its objection to the abuse it was suffering. He was not rebounding as in the past from his excesses. For a day or so following a prolonged drinking bout he would be apprehensive and depressed, unable to find an interest to take him away from the indefinite dread which haunted him. Not till he could again stand a few, stiff glasses of brandy could he find his nerve. A friend found him thus "shot up" one day and suggested that he was "going the pace that kills," and hinted that another path might be trod with wisdom. "What's the use?" Kent flung back, "I'm fated to go with an alcoholic liver; it's in the family strong--both sides. I saw my father go out with it. I know Mendel's theory by heart, two black pigeons never parent a white one." And on he went. His creed now might well have been: "For to-morrow I die." It may have been the impulsion of an unrecognized fear--he said it was philosophic interest--which had attracted him to study the various theories of heredity. He had been particularly impressed by Mendel's "Principles of Inheritance," and its graphic elucidation of the mathematical recurrence of the dominant characteristics had grasped him as a fetish. With such forebears as his, there was no hope. The die had been cast before he was born. Why struggle against the laws of determinism? He was what he was because forces beyond his control had made him so. Scientific certainty now seemed to add its weight of evidence to his accepted fatalism, when, at twenty-eight, instead of the accustomed days of depression, a period of particularly heavy drinking was followed by a serious attack of delirium tremens. For several days he was cared for as one dangerously insane. After reason had been restored, the doctor, in his earnest desire to help, warned him that he must live differently and, knowing the father's ending, thought to frighten him into a change of habits by stating that his drinking would kill him in a few years if he kept it up. "You are already in the first stages of cirrhosis," he told him. As it turned out, no warning could have been less wise; it simply assured Kent the certainty of the fate which pursued, and soon he was at it again. Before thirty he had suffered two attacks of alcoholic delirium, had been a periodic drinker for fifteen years, a regular drinker for five years, often averaging for weeks two quarts of whiskey a day, and always smoking from forty to fifty cigarettes. Life had become more and more unlivable when he was not narcotized by alcohol or nicotine, and he was fast becoming a pitiful slave to his intoxicated and damaged nervous system. He was living at home now, nominally secretary of a strong corporation--practically eating, smoking, drinking, theater-going, lounging at the Varsity Club, and playing with his speedy motorboat. He enjoyed music and, when in condition, occasionally attended concerts. Barely he went to the Episcopal service, then only when special music was given. The faithful will discern the hand of Providence in his first seeing Martha Fullington in one of these rare hours at church. She was truly a fine, wholesome woman. The daughter of a small town Congregational minister of the best New England stock, she had always been healthy in body and mind. She possessed an unusual contralto voice, and came to Buffalo at twenty-two for special training. Helpful letters of introduction, with her pleasing self and good voice, rapidly secured her friends and a position in a fashionable church-choir. Here Kent heard her in a short but effectively rendered solo. Unsusceptible as he had been in the past, the sacredness of her religiously inspired face appealed to him strangely. Within a fortnight a new and profound element was to complicate his life, for he met Miss Fullington and took her out to dinner at the home of a classmate, whose mother was befriending the young singer. The spell of her charm wakened the power of his desire. Whether it was from the stimulation of her inherent difference to other women he had known, or whether deep within, and as yet untouched, there was a fineness which instinctively recognized and responded to fineness, we may not say with certainty. He was remote from her every standard, she thought, and her seeming indifference was a conscious self-defense. But she inspired him with a sincerity of purpose he had not known before. He was frank; he was potently insistent and "hopeless," he told her, "unless you save me." Thus unwittingly he appealed to the mother sympathy, the strongest a good woman can feel. They were engaged and the wedding was all that any bride could have desired. Then ten weeks abroad, beautiful, revealing weeks, for Francis Kent, sober and in love, was much of a man. Still it was only ten weeks before the formal social function, with its inevitable array of wines, turned this kindly, genial lover, in an hour, into a coarse, inconsiderate drunkard. Confined for a week in their state-room on the steamer home with her husband, now a beast in drink, this poor, pure, uninitiated wife realized purgatory. Dark days were those next three years for them both. When sober, he was self-abased by the knowledge of the suffering of this woman he so truly loved, or was restlessly striving against desires which only alcohol could sate; while she was alternately fearing the debauch or fighting to keep her respect and love intact through the debauchery. For him, the battle waged on between love and desire, his love for her--his one inspiration, while desire was constantly reenforced by the taunts of his godless fatalism and the dead weight of his hopelessness. Then came the day which is hallowed in the lives of even the ignorant and coarse, the day in which the young wife gladly suffers through the lengthening hours and goes down to the verge of the Dark River, that in her nearness to death she may find that other life, the everlasting seal of her marriage. In all the beauty of eagerly desired motherhood, Martha Kent bore her baby-boy. The father was not there. She did not then know all. They shielded her. He had been taken the night before to a private asylum, entering his third attack of delirium tremens, and while his wife in pain and prayer made life more sacred, he, struggling and uncontrolled, beast-like, was making life more repulsive. The pain of her motherhood never approached the agony of her wifehood, when she knew, while the pride of fatherhood was utterly submerged in the poignancy of his self-abasement, when he realized. Another physician had treated him during this attack. He, too, wished to help. He talked with the humiliated man most earnestly, insisting that he had never truly tried, that in the past he had depended on his weak will and the inspiration of his devotion. He had not had scientific help. He assured him that he did not have incurable hardening of the liver and expressed, as his earnest belief, that there were places where the help he needed could be given--that there was hope. Plans were made and Francis Kent gave his pledge, expressed in a voluntary commitment, to carry out a six months' system of treatment. "Not," as he assured the physician-in-charge, "that I can be saved from the effects of what has gone before. I know my heredity is too strong for that. But by every obligation of manhood I owe my wife and boy five years of decent living. If you can make that possible, I shall be satisfied." The professional help Kent received, physically, was deep-reaching. It accurately adjusted food to energy expended. Forty self-indulgent cigarettes were transformed into three manly cigars, and he was put to work with his hands--those patrician hands which had not made a brow to sweat, for serious purpose, in three generations. His physical response in six weeks completely altered his appearance. The snap of healthy living reappeared; the pessimism of his fatalism was displaced by much of quiet cheer. Life was again becoming a good thing. But the professional help he received mentally was what untangled the snarl. His advisor was fortunately able to go the whole way with him as he discussed his hereditary "inevitables"--the whole way and then, savingly, some steps beyond-- and for the first time Kent's understanding, now reaching for higher truths than would satisfy the fatalist, was wisely, personally conducted through a wholesome interpretation of the distinction between the heritage of germinal and of somatic attributes, that vital distinction: that it takes but two ancestors to determine the species of the offspring, but that the individual's personal heritage is the result of, and may be influenced by, a thousand forerunners; that dominant characteristics, compelling though they seem, may be neutralized by obscure, recessive characteristics. More than this, his new counselor was able to convince him that the real damage he had to overcome was not a foreordained physical fate, for that was in a peculiar way largely in his own hands, now that he was properly started, but was the mental tangle of his unholy fatalism which absolutely did not represent truth; that he and all rational, normal men have been given wills and are as free as gods to choose, within certain large limitations. Francis Kent's mind had been well trained. Selfish desire had made of him a fatalist. A more beautiful desire led him into a constructive optimism. He thought deeply for a week, perchance he prayed, for he knew that she was praying from the depths of her soul. He outlined for himself a new, thoroughly wholesome mode of life, and in half an hour's heart-to-heart conference convinced his doctor-friend that more had been accomplished in two months than could have been promised at the end of the six months planned. So the new Francis Kent was told to go back and make a new home for his wife and the new baby. Years have passed--blessed years in the old mansion. There is no hint of cirrhosis of the liver. There has never been a drop of anything alcoholic served in that house since his return. There are two healthy chaps of boys; there is a wonderfully happy woman; there is a fine, manly man, the respected and efficient president of an influential bank. Patient, wise hands carefully untangled the knotted snarl. The thread was unbroken. CHAPTER XV FROM FEAR TO FAITH Thirty some years ago a baby girl came into a Virginia home. Her birth was a matter of family indifference; not specially needed, she was not particularly wanted. Her father, reared in a small town, having attained only moderate success as combination bookkeeper, cashier and clerk in a general store, could not enthuse over an arrival which would increase the burden of family expense. He was a man of good Virginia stock, not fired by large ambitions. An ubiquitous cud of fine-cut, flattening his cheek and saturating his veins, possibly explains his life of semicontent--for tobacco is a sedative. The mother was a washed-out, frail-looking reminder of youthful attractions, essentially of the nervous type. She was not without pride in her Cavalier stock and the dash of Cavalier blood it brought. The elder sister had none of her mother. Aspiring socially, she was reserved, pedantic, platitudinizing, thoroughly self-sufficient. She finished well up in her class in a small, woman's so-called "college" and lived with such prudence and exercised such foresight that, in spite of her Methodist rearing, she wedded the young, local, Episcopal rector, and, childless but still self-sufficient, "lived happy ever after." Our little Virginia's home surroundings gave her all material necessities, many comforts and occasional luxuries, but it was a home of narrow interests. Its own immediate affairs, including big sister's successes; critically, the doings of the neighborhood, and unquestioningly, the happenings of the church circle, comprised the themes of home discourse. Markedly lacking in beauty was that home--no music, a few perfunctory pictures, a parlor furnished to suit the local dealer's taste and stock, a few sets of books--the successful contribution of unctuous book agents. All converse was lacking in ideals save the haphazard ones brought home by the children from school. There was no pretense of unselfishness, the conception was foreign to that home's atmosphere. The religious teaching was of formalism and fear. The services of the church were regularly attended, and from time to time the children's discipline was augmented by references to the certain wrath of God. Into this home came Virginia to be reared under most irregular training, dependent on a combination of her mother's feelings and her sister's conventions-- the father's influence was negative, his was a well-bred nicotine indifference. In the little girl's life, every home appeal was emotional. During the mother's more rare, comfortable days, she exacted few restrictions, but much more often fear methods marked her use of authority: fear of punishment, fear of the Invisible, and, from her sister, fear of "what folks will say" were the chief home influences molding this young life. Such appeals found in her sensitive nature a rich soil. No single consistent effort was ever made to substitute reason for emotional supremacy, as she developed. At times her feelings would run rampant--what was to keep them in order but disorganizing fear?--while too often her mother weakly rewarded Virginia's most stormy outbreaks by acceding to her erratic desires. In one element did this home take pride. As true Virginians, the good things of the table were procured at any cost. Good eating was a pride--and rapid eating became the child's habit. Yet with all the sacrifices of time and effort, the richness of their table cost, and in spite of the fact that eating was ever in the forefront of family plans and efforts, no conception of the true art of dining was ever theirs. At sixteen Virginia was attractive, with remarkably clear, olive skin, with hair, eyes and eyebrows a peculiarly soft chestnut. Fun-loving, thoughtless, vivacious, spasmodically aggressive, naturally athletic, capable of many fine intuitions, she finished the local high school with a good record, for she was mentally alert. Still most of her thinking was of the emotional type, and smiles were quick and tears were quick, and upon a feeling-basis rested her decisions. The tender- heartedness of a child never left her, and when trusted and encouraged she had always shown an excellent capacity for good work. She was essentially capable of intense friendships, under the sway of which no sacrifice was questioned, but her stormy nature made friendships precarious. Pervading her life was a large conscientiousness. Her fear-conscience was acute--never an unwholesome impulse but fear- conscience rebuked and tortured. Few bedtimes were peaceful to her, because at that quiet hour remorse, entirely disproportionate to the wrong, lashed her miserably. Her love-conscience, too, was richly developed, and for love's sake she would have become a martyr. Her duty-conscience was yet in its infancy and held weak council in her plans and rarely swayed her from desire. After a year of normal-school training, she secured a primary grade in a near town school, and at nineteen, when she became an earner, there were two Virginias; the beautiful Virginia was a woman of appealing tenderness--body, heart and soul yearned for some adequate return of the richness of devotion which she felt herself capable of giving. Sentiment and capacity for love were unconsciously reaching out for satisfying expression, and the beauty of this tenderness shone forth to make appealing even her weaknesses. The other Virginia was a conglomerate of unhappy and harmful emotions--impatient in the face of small irregularities, frequently irritable to unpleasantness, and dominated by the false sensitiveness of unmerited pride. Under provocation, anger, quick-flaming, unreasonable and unreasoning, burned itself out in poorly restrained explosions--a quarter-hour of wrath, a half-hour of tears and a half-day of almost incapacitating headache. She was ambitious and had rebelled at her limitations, especially as she grew to realize the smallness and emptiness of the home-life. She resented her sister's superior attitude, her officious poise, her college-education authority. But the damning defect was the remorseless grip of fear on mind, body and spirit. Through ignorant training, she was afraid in the dark, even afraid of the dark; a morbid, cringing terror possessed her when she was alone in the night. Even the protecting safety of her own bed could not save her from the jangle of false alarms with which her imagination peopled the shadows. A second gripping dread--one all too common with harmfully taught, southern girls--was fear of negroes; a horrible, indefinite, haunting apprehension chilled her veins, not only when associated with them, but even more viciously when she was alone with her thoughts. And when added to these was her superstitious fear of the Lord, magnifying the evil of her ways, threatening, pervading, bringing no hint of Divine love, the preparation was ample for the forthcoming emotional chaos. At twenty-eight she was a sick woman. Through devotion to the kindly principal of her school, a devotion not unmixed with sentiment, she had worked intensely; quick, interested, almost capable, she had worked and worried. School-discipline early loomed large as a rock threatening disaster, dragging into her consciousness a sinister fear of failure. Thirty little ones, from almost as many different homes, representing a motley variety of home-training, looked to her to mold them into an orderly, happy unit. Some of her little tots were as thorns in her flesh--she couldn't keep her arms from around others; while some afternoons the natural restlessness of them all set her head to throbbing wretchedly. Her own emotional life not having found order or calm, she from the first failed to develop either in her charges. Visitors became a dread. Her only solace was the short conferences she had with the principal after school. But to hear his step approaching during class-time frightened her cruelly. Her order was poor. He knew it. The visitors saw it. And the more she struggled to master the problem of school-discipline, the greater grew the menace of her own unorderly training. Within a few months she was translating her emotional exhaustion into terms of overwork. The penalty of unmerited food had produced an autotoxic anaemia, and she was pale and weepy, easily fatigued, sleeping poorly, with the boggy thyroid and overactive tendon reflexes so common in subacidosis. She had to give up her school. After six months' ineffectual resting at home, she entered a special hospital where, after some weeks of intensive treatment, her physical restoration was remarkable. The marriage of her sister and death of her mother closed the home, and she went to live with a widowed aunt, the aunt who had managed her household and her ministerial spouse to perfection. It was probably Paul's injunction alone which kept her from taking her complacent husband's place in the pulpit and delivering the sermons she had so literally inspired. Here was an atmosphere of sanctity, but still no hint of true, personal giving, no expression of willing sacrifice, and Virginia felt keenly this lack, for in the hospital she had had a vision. There she had seen suffering softened by gentleness, there empty lives were filled from generous hearts, and men and women inspired to make new and better starts. She had visioned the nobleness of giving--and the unanswered call of her mother-nature had responded. She was not fully well, she was not deeply living, she had never fulfilled the best of self, and she hungered for the hospital. Her aunt's conventional pride was echoed by the laws and the in-laws, and positive, later peremptory objections were urged against her entering nursing. Again the headaches returned, the physical expression of her emotional unhappiness, and finally, almost in recklessness, certainly in desperation, she cast her lot in the self-effacing demands of a student-nurse's life in a city hospital, far from family and friends. How shall we tell of the next three years? Training, reeducation, evolution?--some of all perhaps. They were years of much travail. Physical wholeness was won promptly through the wholesome habits of active, daily effort, routine, regularity and rational diet. There was suffering--months of suffering, under correction, for rebellion had long been a habit, and hospital discipline is military in character. But she had given her pledge, and fear-conscience and love-conscience were later augmented by duty-conscience, and she never seriously thought of deserting. Cheer expression is demanded in the nurse's relations with her patients, and irritability and impatience slowly faded through hourly touch with greater suffering; and the cheer habit grew into cheer feeling. The old storms of anger seemed incongruous in the imperturbable atmosphere of the hospital, moreover her dignity as a nurse could not be risked. Thus was she helped till the solidity of self-control made her safe. Her truly formidable battle was with fear --no one can know what she faced alone on night duty. Her dread of the dark was overcome painfully when through helpful counsel she gained an intelligent insight into her defect, and was inspired to apply for night duty in excess of her regular schedule. Later, at her own request, she performed alone the last duties for the dead, that she might put fear under her feet. Her dread of negroes gradually gave place to a better understanding of the race through the daily association of ministration on the ward, reenforced by personal confidence in her own strength and skill, growing out of a wholesome training in self-defense--a training her love for athletics and her growing understanding of her fear-weakness moved her to take on her off-duty time. She became competent; anxious to help, her fineness of intuition and her capacity for devotion with her vision of service made her in every way worthy. And finally her fear of the Lord was lost in a wholesome faith in His "Well-done!" To-day, hers is a life of peace. Emotional instability and wretchedness have been displaced by habitual right feeling. Stabilizing her emotions has not impoverished, but enriched her nature. She has mastered the art of enjoying, for self-interests have expanded into love for service. To-day she is a capable, efficient, cheerful, wholesome, self-forgetting woman, filled with a faith in an able, worthy self--a God-given faith. CHAPTER XVI JUDICIOUS HARDENING In the softened light of a richly furnished office two physicians were seated. It was the elder who spoke. Drawn and sad was his cleanly featured, tense face; his clear skin and slightly whitened, dark hair belied his nearly seventy years. He was the anxious, unhappy father of a sick, unhappy daughter, whom the nurse was preparing in an adjoining room for examination by Dr. Franklin, the younger physician. "I mean no discourtesy, Doctor, when I say that I don't believe any one understands my girl's case. Her brother and sister are healthy youngsters and have always been so. I may have taken a few drinks too many now and then, but few men of my age can stand more night-work or do more practice than I can, and I've about rounded my three-score and ten. Wanda was a perfect child. She is my oldest. Her mother did pet and spoil her, always humored her from the first, but she was a cheerful, bright little thing. She finished high school at fifteen and did a good year's study at Monticello. All her trouble seemed to start that spring when she was vaccinated. She had never had worse than the measles before. She didn't seem to know how to take sickness, though the Lord knows she's had plenty of chances to learn since her sore arm; and the school-doctor had to lance a small place, and this kept her away from Commencement where they had some part for her to do. She didn't get well in time to spend the month in Michigan with her room- mate, and she always said that if she could have had this trip she would never have been so bad. It was a mighty hard summer with me, too, that year, and probably I didn't notice her enough--anyway she's been a half-invalid these eighteen years. It's pain and tenderness in this nerve and then in that one, and she hasn't walked a whole mile in fifteen years because of her sciatica. I have sent her to Hot Springs, one summer she spent at Saratoga, and she has taken two courses of mud-baths. When she was twenty-six, she lived for four months in Dr. Moore's home. He and I were college-mates and he had been mighty good in treating rheumatic troubles. After awhile he decided it was her diet and she lived a whole year in B--- Sanitarium and she gained weight too, there, and hasn't eaten any meat to speak of nor drunk any coffee since. She often complains of her eyes but the specialists say they are all right, that that isn't the trouble. Two of the best surgeons in our part of the country have refused to operate on her even when I begged one of them to open her and see if he couldn't find out what was the matter. Three of her doctors have said it was her nerves, but I don't think any of them know. You know I don't mean to say anything that will reflect on your specialty, but you never did see a case of only nerves put a healthy young girl in bed and keep her there suffering so that I've had to give her aspirin a hundred times and even morphin by hypodermic to get her quiet, and off and on for five years she's had ten, and sometimes fifteen grains of veronal at midnight, nights when she couldn't get to sleep. If it's only nerves, then I've got a mighty heap to learn about nerves. I think in forty- five years practicing medicine a man ought to know enough about them to recognize them in his own family. But something's got to be done. Wanda's making a hospital of our home. We daren't slam a door, or her sister mustn't play the piano but her headaches start; and if Rosie boils turnips or even brings an onion into the house, it goes to Wanda's stomach and it takes a hypodermic to quiet her vomiting and a week to get over the trouble. "That child of mine is just like a different creature from the fine little girl she was at twelve when my buggy turned over one night and broke my leg. Why, she nursed me better than her mother. She just couldn't do enough for me. That little thing would come down just as quiet as she could--sometimes every night--to see that that leg was all right and hadn't got twisted; while now she expects attention from everybody in the house and from some of the neighbors. She will even send for Rosie just when she is trying to get dinner started and keep her a half-hour telling just what she wants and how it's got to be fixed, then more often she'll just nibble at it just enough to spoil it for everybody else, after Rosie's spent an hour getting it ready for her. Tonics don't help her a bit. I've given her iron, arsenic and strychnin enough to cure a dozen weak women. She's always too weak to exercise, lies in bed two days out of three, reads and sometimes writes a letter or two. But before Christmas comes (you know she is mighty cunning with her fingers; she can sew and embroider and make all sorts of pretty, womanish things) she works so hard making presents that she's just clear done out for the next two months and won't leave her room for weeks. That's about all she does from one year's end to another, but complain of her sickness, and of late years criticize the rest of us and dictate to the whole household what they must do for themselves, and just out-and-out demand what she wants them to do for her. She really treats her stepmother like a dog, and often she is so disrespectful to me that I certainly would thrash her if she wasn't so sick. She was a fine child but her suffering has wrecked her disposition. She and the rest of us would be better off if she'd die. You see, Doctor, I haven't much faith left, but she's been bent so long a time on coming to you, and is willing to spend the little money her mother left her, to have her own way. Now, I am doctor enough to stand by you in what you decide if you say you can cure her, and if she gets well, I'll pay every cent of the bill, but if she don't, the Lord will just have to help us all, though I suppose I'll have to take care of her as long as she lives for she won't have a cent after she gets through with this." Wanda Fairchild lay expectant on the examination table, pale, almost wan; her blue eyes, fair skin and even her attractive, curling, blonde hair seemed lusterless, save when her face lighted with momentary anticipation at some sound suggesting Dr. Franklin's coming. Much indeed of her feeling life had grown false through the blighting touch of her useless years of useless sickness. But genuine was her greeting. "Oh, Doctor, I am so glad to be here! You remember Mrs. Melton. You cured her and she has been well ever since, and for over two years I've been begging papa to bring me here, but he hasn't any hope. He's tried so hard and spent so much. Now you've got to get me well. They all say this is my last chance. I certainly can't endure these awful pains much longer. I know they're going to drive me crazy some day if something isn't done to stop them. Just look at my arms. That's where I bit them last night to keep from screaming out in the sleeper, for I wouldn't take any medicine. I wanted you to see me without any of that awful stuff to make me different than I truly am. You will surely cure me, won't you, Doctor, so I can go back home soon, as strong as Mrs. Melton is, and live like other girls, and have company and go to parties and dance and take auto-rides and have a good time before I get too old--or die? Oh, Doctor, you don't know what a horrible life I live! Every day is just torture. I suppose they do as well as they know at home, but not one of them, not even papa, has any conception of how I suffer or they would show more consideration. It is terrible enough to be sick when you are understood and when everybody is doing the right thing to help you. I know my trip has made me worse, for my spine is throbbing now like a raw nerve. It would be a relief if some one would put burning coals on my back. You know there's nothing worse than nerve-pains." Dr. Franklin smiled quietly. How often he had heard poor sufferers hyperbolize their suffering! How keenly he could see the distinction between the real and the false in illness! How certainly he knew that such exaggerated rantings and wailings stood for illness of mind or soul, but not of body! The physical examination, nevertheless, was extremely thorough. Nothing can be guessed at in the intricate war with disease. "Yes, I was happy as a child. Mother understood me; no one else ever has. She knew when I needed petting. I did well at school and really loved Myrtle Covington, my room-mate at the Sem. Just think, she married--married a poor preacher, but I know she is happy, for she is well and has a home of her own and three children. I don't see how they make ends meet on eighteen-hundred and no parsonage. You know we had a smallpox scare at the Sem. that spring and all had to be vaccinated. I scratched mine, or something, and for weeks nearly died of blood-poisoning. That is where my neuritis started. They had to lance my arm to save my life, and when you examined me I had to grit my teeth to keep from screaming out when you took hold of that cut place. You believe I am brave, don't you, Doctor? It hurts there yet, but I didn't want to disturb you in the examination. Do you think there is any chance for me, Doctor?" At this point the physician nodded to the nurse, who left the room. "And what else happened that summer?" he asked her kindly. "Well, I was in bed over three months with my vaccination and my lanced arm, and I had a special nurse, and couldn't eat any solid food for days. They never would tell me how high my fever was; they were afraid of frightening me, but I wouldn't have cared. I used to wish I could die." "Why, child, what could have happened to make a young, happy girl of sixteen wish to die? Was there something really serious that you haven't told?" "Oh, Doctor, didn't papa tell you? No, I know he wouldn't. He probably don't know--he can't know what it cost me. Oh! must I tell you? Don't make me, Doctor! Oh, my poor head! Doctor, it will burst, please do something for it. Oh, my poor mamma! She loved me so much and she understood me, too." And tears came and sobs, and for a time neither spoke. "Tell me of your mother," the doctor said. Then the story, the unhappy story, whined out in that self-pitying voice which ever bespeaks the loss of pride--that characteristic of wholesome normal womanhood. Her parents had probably never been happy together. The spring she was in the Seminary, ill, her mother left home. There was a separation. That fall her father re-married, as did the mother later, who lived in her new home but a few months, dying that same winter. From the first, Wanda had hated her stepmother. "I despise her. I can never trust Father again. I can never trust any one and I loathe home, and I want to die. Please, Doctor, don't make me live. I have nothing to live for!" Here was the woman's sickness--the handiwork of an indulgent mother who had never taught her daughter the sterling ideals of unselfish living. This mother had gone. A better trained woman had entered the home, but her every effort to develop character in the stepdaughter was resented. Illness, that favorite retreat of thousands, became this undeveloped woman's refuge. Year after year, sickness proved her defense for all assaults of importuning duty. Sickness, weakly accepted at first, later grew, and as an octopus, entwined its incapacitating tentacles about and slowly strangled a life into worthlessness. "Your daughter will have to leave Alton for nine months. Six of these she will spend on a Western ranch; for three months she will work in the city slums. Miss Leighton will be her nurse and companion. Life was deliberately planned to develop wills. Miss Fairchild has lost the ability to will until, at thirty-four, she is absolutely lacking in the power to willingly will the effort which is essential to rational, healthy living. She is but a whimpering weakling, a coward who for years has run from misfortune. Your daughter must be turned from discomfort to duty, from pain to productive effort; her margin of resistance must be pushed beyond the suggestive power of the average headache, periodic discomfort, or desire for ease; she must learn to transform a thousand draining dislikes into a thousand constructive likes. Finally, we hope to teach her the hidden challenge which is brought us all by the inevitable. To-day she is more sensitive than a normal three-months-old baby. She must be judiciously hardened into womanhood." We cannot say that the troubled father gathered hope from this, to him, unique exposition of the invalid's case, but sufficient confidence came to induce him to promise his loyal support to the "experiment" for the planned period of nine months. The patient rebelled. She had come "to be Dr. Franklin's patient." She couldn't "stand the trip." She wouldn't "go a step." Yes, it seemed cruel. Three days and nights they were on the sleeper; forty miles they drove over increasingly poor roads to the big ranch in the Montana foot-hills where everybody else seemed so well, so coarsely well, she thought. After the first week the aspirin and the veronal gave out and there was no "earthly chance" of getting more. Then when she refused to exercise, she got nothing to eat but a glass of warm milk with a slice of miserably coarse bread crumbed in, and the mountain air did make her hungry; and when she was ugly, she was left alone, absolutely alone in that dreary room, and even Lee, the Chinese cook, wouldn't look in the window when she begged him for something else to eat. How she did love Rosie those "weary days of abuse"! Miss Leighton was always polite, though she would not stay with her a minute when she got "fussy," but would be gone for an hour, visiting and laughing and carrying on with the men-folks in the big- room. She had seemed so kind before they left the East and she was kind now, at times when she had her own way, but she was being paid to nurse a sick girl, and she had no right to leave her alone for hours simply because she whined or refused to do her bidding on the instant. There was a young doctor there who could have helped her if he would, but he had no more heart than the rest, and when the nurse called him in to make an examination, he was as noncommittal as a sphinx and gave her no speck of satisfaction, only telling her to do what the nurse said. Bitter letters she sent home, but somehow they all were answered by Dr. Franklin, who wrote her little notes in reply which made her angry--then ashamed. Verbal outbreaks there were, and physical ones, too, a few times, which the nurse calmly and humiliatingly credited to her exercise-account and brought her more to eat, saying that scrapping was as healthful as work in making strength. But somehow, she couldn't hate Miss Leighton long, as behind all her "cruelty" Wanda realized that a thoughtful friendship was ever waiting. One day they took a drive; when four miles from the ranch-house something happened, and they were asked to get out. They stood looking off over the ever-climbing hills to those remote, granite castles of the far Rockies. The team started, and as they turned, the driver waved his apparent regrets. They walked back--four miles. Wanda had not performed such a feat in nearly twenty years. She walked off her resentment, in truth she was a bit proud, and the nurse certainly did bring her a fine supper, the first square meal she had been given in Montana. This was the turning point. Walking, riding, working, camping in the open, sleeping in smoke and drafts after long hikes, carrying her own blanket and pack--all became matters-of-course. From 96 to l30--nearly thirty-five fine pounds--she put on. She even learned bare-back riding, and wove a rug from wool she had sheared, cleaned, dyed and spun. Long since, she had realized that Miss Leighton had only been carrying out Dr. Franklin's orders. That fall they came East to Baltimore. She worked with Miss Leighton in the tenement districts. She saw Dr. Franklin weekly. He now explained the principles underlying her ruthless, physical restoration. She learned to recognize her years of deficient will- living. The doctor revealed to her, as well, her great debt to her home, explained to her now cleared mind the poverty of the love she had borne, and wakened her to the stepmother's true excellence of character. Her opened eyes saw the great tragedy of defective living as reflected in the lives of want and evil in those to whom she was daily ministering. Her life had been blest in comparison. A message came that her stepmother was ill--could she come home and help? That day this girl put off childhood and took on womanhood. She returned to her family a new woman, a thoughtful, considerate woman, an almost silent woman--save when speech is golden; a woman who makes friends and who remembers them in a hundred beautiful ways, a working woman, a home-maker for a happier father, for an almost dependent stepmother; a woman who was scientifically compelled to exchange self- condoling weakness for strength, who, when strengthened against her will, chose and lives the worthy life of self-giving. We wish her well, this new woman, who is repaying to her home a debt of years. CHAPTER XVII THE SICK SOUL "Oh, 'War,' you just must win! I know you will!" "Keep a stiff upper lip, Old Fellow, and give them the best you've got." "Watch your knees, Buddie dear, and don't let them shake. Just think of us before you start, and remember we're pulling for you."--"Yes! and praying for you," whispered Eva Martin, who was shaking his hand just as the conductor called, "All aboard." And as Warren Waring gracefully swung aboard the last Pullman, the entire senior class of Beloit High gave the school-yell, with three cheers and a tiger for "War Waring." What occasion could be more thrilling to a susceptible, imaginative sixteen-year-old boy than this demonstration of the aristocratic peerage of youth? For a half-hour he had been the center of-- admiration and encouraging attention, the recipient of a rapid fire of well-wishing, of advice serious and humorous, and unquestionably the subject of not a few unspoken messages directed heavenward. The kindly eyes of the old Beloit station have looked out upon many a scene of enthusiastic greeting and hearty well-wishing, but rarely has it seen these good offices extended to one of more apparent merit than handsome Warren E. Waring. One of the National Temperance societies had been utilizing the promising declamatory powers of the high school students of the country, through a series of county, district and state competitions, to influence the public. The contest in Wisconsin had finally eliminated all but the select few who were to contest for the temperance-oratorical supremacy of the state, and for a gold medal, as large as a double eagle, which was to be awarded by judges from the University faculty. The good wishes and cheers, stimulating advice, and silent prayers at the Beloit station had all been inspired by enthusiasm and confidence and love for the unusually gifted comrade now leaving for the competition. For nearly a generation Squire Waring had struggled manfully, kindly, quietly, on his little farm up Bock River, adding a little now and then to the farm-income by the all-too-infrequent fees derived from his office as justice-of-the-peace. If the Squire had been a better farmer and less interested in books, especially in his yellow-backed law-books, the eking might not have been so continuous; and if his good wife had not been snatched away, at untimely thirty-five, by one of those accidents which we call providential, leaving a forty-year- old father alone with a five-year-old boy, her good sense would undoubtedly have made times easier with the Squire. As it was, his sister came to be mother in this little home. Good, steadfast Aunt Fannie she was, a woman without a vision, who accepted what the day brought with religiously unquestioning thanks. But as the only son grew and his charms multiplied, as the evidence of his gifts became manifest, the impracticable father let slip all personal ambition. The dreams he had dreamed for himself were to be fulfilled in his son, who would increase, even as he decreased. So it was that on his boy's tenth birthday the father turned from his ambition of years, to represent his county in the state legislature, and after forty-five doubled the time and strength devoted to his less than a hundred acres. "There must be money for the boy's education," he told his sister Fannie, "even if you and I have to skimp for the rest of our days. He's got the making of a state senator." The father was mistaken only in that he so limited his boy's possibilities. The Squire helped the little fellow in his studies, and he entered the second grade of the near-by Beloit High School the fall before he was fourteen. The train-schedule was so arranged that he could return home every night; though, whenever the Squire felt that the farm-work justified it, and there was no occasion for his honorable court, they would drive to town together. This was the Squire's one joy. And proud he was to share in acknowledging the greetings which came from all sides, even when they drove through the best part of town in the old buggy--to feel the universal popularity in which his boy was held. Then there was the added satisfaction of a minute's chat with some one of the teachers, for they all had praise, and never a word of censure. Enjoyment enough this dear man got from these irregular trips to town to lighten for weeks the, to him, unnatural farm-labor; while petty offenders appearing before his tribunal were dealt with almost gently after one of these adventures in happiness. Many a wealth-sated father would have exchanged his flesh and blood and thrown in his bank-balance to boot, could he have looked forward to so worthy an heir as promised to bless Squire Waring. The boy seemed to have been born to meet life successfully, whatever its challenge. Strong almost to sturdiness, yet agile and accurate in movement, he had "covered all sorts of territory around 'short,' and could hit the ball on the nose when it counted," and to him went the unprecedented glory of a forty-yard run for a touch-down and goal in a High School vs. Varsity Freshmen game. His were muscles which seemed to have been molded by a sculptor's hand. His face was manly. His waving dark-brown hair, deep-blue eyes, strong nose and rarely turned chin, his unfailing good-nature, his unquestioned nerve, his mental keenness and clearness, his remarkable power of expression, whether in recitation, school-theatricals or at young people's meetings; his instinctive courtesy of greeting, his apparent openness and honesty of dealing, his fairness to antagonist on field and platform, above all, his devotion to his unquestionably rural father, had made Warren Waring a school hero, even a model, in a church college-town. What other boy in Wisconsin was so well equipped to win the gold medal? Sixteen years and some months! A rather youthful lad to stand before a thousand strange faces, to be the object of professorial scrutiny, to listen to the exultant plaudits of local partisanship; not to be, not to seem brazen, yet to face it all without a quake of knee or, and what is more rare, a tremor of voice; not to forget a syllable; and, in ten minutes, to so cast the spell of a winning personality over his hearers as to evoke a spontaneous outburst of applause, generous from his antagonists, enthusiastic from the nonpartisan. And the medal! The Professor of English honored our boy by having him at his home to breakfast the following morning, for the double purpose of expressing a genuine appreciation of merit, and of making an impressive bid for his State University attendance next fall. Aunt Fannie's asthma, with feminine perversity, was at its worst these March nights, and the Squire--fine man that he was--never let his nonimaginative sister know what it cost not to go to Madison with his son--not to "hear him win the medal." "The trip would cost $10.00; that would get him a fine gold chain to wear his medal on," he ingeniously told her, and thus helped her enjoy her asthma a bit that night, for it was getting a chain for Warren's medal. The chain and the medal! Was it they that were fated to charm away manhood and nobility and the rich earnest of success? Was it they that were to entice, into this fine promise of fine living, crookedness of thought, unwholesomeness of feeling--dishonorable years? It was an exuberantly happy victor who returned from the Capitol City with the elaborate gold medal, his name in full conspicuously engraved upon its face--and the youthful society of his school-town was at his feet. Every door was open. So almost without fault was he that few mothers objected to his companionship with their daughters. Yes, here was to be the flaw!--he was soon to find that it was easy for him to have his way with a maid, a dangerous knowledge for a seventeen-year- old boy who had already reached higher social levels than his own home had known, who was much quicker of wit than his almost worshipful father. It was Eva Martin who had whispered the little prayer-message into his ear that expectant afternoon at the station, and Eva Martin's ear was destined to hear, in turn, whispered pledges of unending devotion, to hear the relentless verdict of unquestioned dishonor. High school was finished. A successful Freshman year--a Sophomore year that was disappointing to his professors was passed. The fire of his heart was heating many social irons. His earnings, so far, consisted of one gold medal. The savings from the denials at home were about exhausted. The boy had spent as much in the last two years as had been hoped would carry him through college. Fifteen hundred dollars could be raised by remortgaging the farm--it would take this to get him through Law-school, and he was eager to go to Chicago. So a second mortgage was placed. A good deal happened in Chicago which was not written to the Squire nor to Eva. Waring craved being a popular "Hail fellow," and with men, and especially with women, he knew no "No" which would be displeasing. He corresponded with Eva regularly; they would be married some day. He could not have chosen a more superior woman. She lived simply, with her widowed mother, and continued for years to conduct a private kindergarten. She was to save a thousand dollars and he four thousand, then the wedding! The gray-eyed girl from St. Louis came near saving Eva. Her steel- gray-eyed father's knowledge of human nature alone intervened. It was a chance introduction. She was pretty; she was wealthy. She ran up to Chicago often. Finally the business-like father ran up to Chicago. He invited young Waring to his club for dinner. There were tickets to the "Follies." The younger man let no feature on the stage pass unnoted; the elder remarked every change in the young man's face. There were polite farewells, and a very positive twenty minutes which left the daughter without a question in her mind that further relations with young Waring held most threatening possibilities. Her eyes were not gray without reason, as she proved discreet. There was a bundle of uncomfortably fervid letters which he refused to return. Warren was shifty with Eva about this affair, and others. He was crooked, too, as the years passed, about his savings. It was impossible to account for certain expenditures, to her. At twenty- eight, she had her thousand dollars in the bank; his supposed four thousand was a bare five hundred, most of which was spent on the gorgeous wedding-trip which he said they both deserved. And shortly after their return to the home, which, instead of being paid for in full, was heavily mortgaged, explanations began which could not explain. Clever as Waring was, his affairs were so involved that Eva could not avoid the suspicion and, soon after, the revelation that her wonderful husband's soul was without honor. It cannot be told, those details of her devoted efforts to "put him right." To forgive anything, everything, she was eager, but he never could come across square, and as the years passed the horror of the uncertain "What next?" enshrouded even her happiest days. Still the husband had ability, and the wife's efforts helped immensely, and there were profitable years. It was odd that, with his declamatory skill, he rarely had a case in court, but proved unusually efficient in developing a collection agency, and gradually represented the Bad Accounts Department of more and more important concerns. At thirty- five he was out of debt. They were living well--too well it proved, for his nervous health. There must have been a neurotic taint, as expressed in Aunt Fannie's asthma. Early that fall he had his first attack of hay-fever. For years he had been self-indulgent; he always drank when drinks were offered; he used much tobacco and rich food. Athletic he had been; and, advocate of exercise as he was when he gave talks to the boys, he took none himself. So toxins accumulated. He stood this illness poorly. It was the first physical discomfort he had ever known. The family doctor did not help much; patent medicines brought relief. He was pretty hard to live with, these weeks. For a number of years he used the threat of this disorder for a six weeks' trip to Mackinac Island. "Finances" made it possible for the wife and the little boy to spend only two of these weeks with him. During the last four he always managed to keep pace with the fast set. The summer he was forty, the combination of vacation, Mackinac, and fast set did not ward off, in fact did not mitigate, his attacks. Waring returned home "desperate," as he expressed it, and the family doctor succeeded in getting him to a competent Chicago specialist who did some needed nose and throat operations thoroughly and, in spite of careless living, three years of immunity passed. He had become unquestionably a clever handler of bad accounts, and could have made good, had he only been good. A dry, dusty summer, his old enemy, hay-fever-and this time a Chicago "specialist," the kind that advertises in the daily papers, proved his undoing. He gave Waring a spray, potent to relieve and potent to exalt him for hours beyond all touch of lurking apprehension. Bottle after bottle he used; he would not be without it. In a few weeks he realized that he could not be without it. And after the hay-fever days were over he kept using it, furtively now, not only for the exaltation it brought, but as protection from the hellish depression it wrought. For years Waring's office assistant had been an efficient, devoted, weak woman who had managed well much of the office detail. She now realized that things were not "going straight," that collections made were not being turned over to her, that she was being asked to falsify records. She never could resist his personality, and soon became more adroit than he in juggling figures. Everything went wrong fast. No one suspected cocain--they thought it was whiskey till Eva was forced to tell much to the good old doctor-details revealing her husband's uncouth carelessness of habits, his outbreaks of cruelty to her and the boy, his obvious and shameless lying, his unnatural coarseness of speech. This friend in need spent a bad hour, a hard hour with Waring. Calmness was ineffective, clear reasoning impossible. The accusation of drug-using was vehemently denied, and it was only the doctor's courageous threat to have him arrested and tried on a lunacy charge that broke down the false man's defiance. Two months of rigid treatment in a sanitarium did much to restore this broken man, and during these weeks the clever office assistant kept his over four-thousand dollar embezzlements from becoming known. Physically and mentally, Waring was restored. The moral sickness was only palliated. When he returned he did not clean house; he swept the dirt into the corners. Frank-facedly he lied to his wife. He met the most pressing of his creditors with a certificate of his illness, and they accepted his notes and promises. He almost crawled out. In so many ways, he was the winning, old "War" Waring again. Gradually, his regime of diet and routine of exercise were replaced by periodic "big eats," little drinks, and many smokes. Then came the warning sneezes and the charlatan's bottle. Irregular living grew apace; the accounts were again manipulated. A Chicago house, which had shown him clemency, became suspicious, and sent a representative who found many collections not reported. A warrant was sworn out, followed by a dozen others after his arrest. The dear old Squire, now eighty-six, sat beside the brave little wife at the trial. Neither of them thought of forsaking him. As the testimony was given, the old father bowed, mute--as one stricken. The verdict, "Guilty," was returned, and Judge Jefferson had evidently considered carefully his duty. In passing sentence he addressed the criminal: "Warren Waring, the law leaves it with the trial Judge to determine the sentence which shall be passed on you; it may be from five to fifteen years of hard labor in the State Penitentiary. You deserve the full extent of the law's punishment. I have known you from boyhood. Father, wife, God himself, have given you the best they have: an honorable name, a lifetime of devotion, the full ten talents. For these, you have returned dishonor, unchastity and self-indulgent hypocrisy. You have begged extenuation on the basis of nervous ill- health and temporary irresponsibility, both of which you have brought upon yourself by violating the laws of right-living. It is your soul that is sick. You are not fit to live free and equal with righteous men and women. You have had love and mercy-they have failed. Justice will now be given a chance to save you. For the sake of your wife whose noble heart, crushed, pleads for you, I reduce your deserved sentence five years. In respect for your disgraced but honorable father, five additional years are deducted. I pray he may live to see you a free man, chastened. Warren Waring, I sentence you to five years hard labor within the walls of the State Penitentiary." CHAPTER XVIII THE BATTLE WITH SELF The room was bare of furnishings save a cot; no dresser, table, stand, even chair, was there. The windows were of wire glass and guarded by metal screens, the lights were in shielded recesses, the floor was polished but without covering. No pictures, flowers, nor the dainty things which normal women crave were to be seen. On the cot sat a woman, Marie Wentworth, sullen and defiant, a worse than failure, locked in this protected room of a special hospital. Isolated with her caretaker, she was watched day and night-watched to save her from successfully carrying out her determination of self-destruction, a determination which had found expression in more than words, for only the day before-the day of her admission--she had swallowed some cleverly hidden, antiseptic tablets. The trained habits of observation of the skilful nurse had saved her from death. Crafty, vindictive, malicious, reckless, heartless! Her care demanded tireless watching-- hence this room, void of anything by which she could possibly injure herself or others. Nor was she more attractive than her surroundings. Her skin was sallow and unwholesome; yellow-gray rings added dulness to her black eyes. Scrawny of figure, hard and repelling of features, an atmosphere of malevolence seemed to emanate from her presence. She took little note of what was happening, though occasional, furtive glances gave intimation of her knowledge of the nurse's presence. When stimulated to expression there were explosions of violent abuse, directed chiefly against her older sister, explosions punctuated by vicious flashes of profanity which left doubt in no mind of the hatred which rankled-hatred of family, hatred of order and authority, hatred of goodness however expressed, hatred of life and damnations of the hereafter. An unholy picture she was of a demoralized soul in which smoldered and from which flared forth a peace-destroying fire--the rebellion of a depraved body and mind against the moral self. She had been placed in this institution under legal restraint to be treated for morphinism, and, according to her brother, "pure cussedness." How did it happen? The Wentworths lived well, very well indeed, in a bluegrass county-seat of fair Kentucky. The father was an attorney by profession, a horse-fancier by choice, and for years before Marie's birth relieved the monotony of office duties and race-track pleasures by vivid, gentlemanly "sprees." Marie was only six when his last artery essential to the business of living became properly hardened, and Marie's mother was a widow. Mrs. Wentworth was to the manor born. She took pride in her home and thoroughly admired the brilliant qualities of her husband. Adorned with old jewels and old lace, she regularly graced her table at the periodic big dinners it was her pride to give. In fact, her pride extended to the planning of three fine meals a day. An unsentimental science suggests that her husband's arteries, as well as her fatal cancer, might have been avoided had chronic proteid intoxication not been the result of her menus. She also took pride in her family and trained the two older children as well as she knew, instilling in them both a loyalty to certain ideals which evolved into morality. But her failing health left Marie much to the care of her sister, and more to the tutelage of her own desires. Unhappily, there was little of beauty in the mother's last months which made any appeal to her child's love, or left much to inspire a twelve-year-old girl's devotion when but memory was left. When the insurance was collected and all settlements made, the comfortable old home and the jewels sold, each of the three children had five thousand dollars. The brother's success was limited. He invested his all, together with many notes of promise payable to his senior partner, in a dry-goods business, and while he carried most of the details of the establishment, the everlasting interest on his notes, and his wife's love of and demand for fine feathers, kept ends from ever successfully meeting. The sister, the eldest, was fine. The illness and death of her parents laid grave responsibilities on her young life, and she met them seriously, wholesomely, constructively. She early proved herself capable of large sacrifices. She had finished her college course before her mother's death, and after the home was sold she secured a position in the local woman's college, where she continued to teach and to merit a growing respect for many years. She was not perfect; the Wentworth temper flashed out most inopportunely, and work and pray and sacrifice and resolve as she would, her rule of Marie was unfortunate-flint and steel strike fire. Probably she "school-manned" rather than mothered the child. But with all environment favorable, Marie would have proven a "proposition." The sporting blood and Bourbon high-balls of the father and the mother's love of the good things of life more than neutralized the latter's Methodism. Marie was a healthy, well-built, lithe lassie, with raven-black hair and eyes which snapped equally with pleasure or with wrath. Impulsive, intense, wilful, tempestuous, bright and possessing capacity, pleasure-loving and ever impatient of restraint, we see in her the highly developed nervous temperament. She feared nothing save the "horrible nightmares" which frequently followed the big dinners-a child who could have been led to Parnassus, but who was driven nearly to Hell! She went through the public schools without conscious effort, but her buxom figure, the rich flush of health, her vivacity, her bearing, were irresistible to the youth of the community, and a series of escapades culminated in her dismissal from college; her indiscretions cost her the respect of the one man she loved. At twenty she had spent two thousand of the five thousand left her, while she and the sister failed to find harmony together. She had little sympathy with her sister's plodding life, but realized the need of preparing herself to earn, so entered a Cincinnati hospital. She had many qualities which made her a valuable student-nurse, with propensities which kept her in hot water. She had completed her second year of training when she was dismissed. The interns could not resist her, nor she them, and only so many midnight lunches on duty can be winked at, even in a hospital needing nurses. For nearly a year she was spasmodically occupied as an experienced nurse. The end of this year found her one thousand dollars poorer, while her heritage was becoming more manifest. In the place of her father's periodic alcoholism, it was periodic headaches. She was thoroughly impatient of personal suffering, or of any hygienic restraint, and so took heavy doses of headache-powders and, if these did not relieve, opiates. By falsifying her record, she succeeded in entering another training- school, a smaller one, in her own state. For a year she was careful- she was anxious to graduate-and developed real cunning in the use of drugs; but dependence upon these steadily undermined her reserve until she was almost daily using something for the "tired feeling" which was now so chronic. Nearly two years had passed before her drug-taking habit was discovered. Prompt dismissal necessarily followed. Her sister was informed, and insisted upon her going to an institution to be cured. Five hundred dollars were spent, and three months of treatment, directed to the withdrawal of her drug, gave no insight into her need for seriously altering her habits of life and feeling, brought no least conception of her defects of character without change of which there could be, for her, no safe living. During the next ten years her physical and mental deterioration increased apace. Other courses of treatment were taken with no lasting benefit. Her misfortunes seemed to culminate when she voluntarily entered a "drug-cure" institute which was practically a resort for drug-users. There are in every country unworthy places of this kind, where no real effort to cure patients is made. Sufferers with means are kept comfortable by being given drugs whenever they demand them, thus satisfying their consciences that they are being "treated," while vainly waiting till they are sufficiently strong to get entirely off "dope." In such a house of quackery Marie stayed two years. Her remaining fifteen hundred dollars and a thousand of her sister's went for fake treatment. She learned to smoke cigarettes with the young doctor; she played cards, gossiped, ate, slept and was never refused a comforting dose whenever she couldn't "stand it a minute longer." Worse than wasted years these, for even the remnants of her pride faded, and she lived a sordid life of the flesh. The sister, when she finally realized the gravity of the situation, lost all hope whatever for any restoration and, acting under the advice of the old family physician, had her committed to the State Hospital for the Insane as an incurable narco-maniac. Here she was rudely but promptly deprived of all narcotics, nor by any hook nor crook, cunning though she was, could she secure a quieting, solacing grain. The wise superintendent, believing that there was little chance for her true regeneration in the surroundings of even his best wards, advised that she be sent to a hospital where she would receive special care. The sister's funds alone could make this possible, and her genuine worth is shown in her willingness to spend a quarter of her entire savings that Marie might have this chance. Here, thirty-three years old, we found her the day after she had been transferred, the day after she had vainly tried to carry out her vow to end things if she were ever "forced into another treatment." Throughout the years the primitive self had been pitted against her own soul. She had always rebelled at her misfortunes, though they were largely of her own making. She blamed others for her hardships, and through the intensity of her resentment but made things harder. Not the least expression of her depravity was her hatred for all who had interfered with her wilful desires, particularly the sister, whose sacrifice she ignored, but whom she took a malicious delight in proclaiming to be the one who had forever ruined her chances in life by committing her to an insane asylum. But her delight was malicious, and all that she got out of her hate and maligning was deeper misery. The bitter dregs of twenty years of soulless living were all the cup of life now held for her--all the more bitter because of the finer qualities of her nature. There were possibilities in this highly organized girl which could have led her into an unusual wholeness of living. Six months passed, months of sullen, dogged resistance-resistance to the returning health which was again rounding her form and glowing her cheeks, resistance to proffered kindnesses of fellow-patients and nurses, resistance to any appeal to pride, honor, ambition, right. Sick of soul, she abjured the interest of the hospital workers, the love of her sister whose weekly letters she left unopened, the wholesome atmosphere of her surroundings, the personal appeal of those whose hearts were heavy with desire to help. Then the miracle!-for one came who cast out devils. She was not only a nurse, she was one of those divinely human beings who, with a nurse's knowledge and training, attain practical sainthood. She, too, had frequently been repelled in her hours of contact with this unhappy creature, but she believed that under all this unholiness there was a soul. She was a busy, hard-worked nurse, but in time Marie became aware that she was spending part of her limited off-duty hours to minister to her, that she had requested a special assignment of duty which would throw them together. Marie's four years of training made her recognize the rareness of this giving. Curiosity at least was aroused, and she began asking personal questions. An unconscious self- pity impelled her to discuss the grievances of the life of nursing, the unfairness common in training-schools, the injustices of long hours and inadequate appreciation, with scores of other quarrels which she had with life. Each of these was met squarely by her nurse-friend, who, free from platitudes and cant, ever saw the ideal above it all, who, loving her profession and loving humanity and promised to a life of service, gently, beautifully, firmly stood by her principles. For three months they were in daily contact--three thankless months for the nurse, three months of cunning, evil-minded, suspicious testing by the patient. Finally the very goodness of her friend seemed intolerable, and a paroxysm of rage and resentment broke loose, in which she cursed and abused her helper beyond sufferance. The nurse suddenly grasped the unhappy woman's arms to shake some sense of decency into her warped nature, one would have thought, but in truth that eye might meet eye, and in this look the rare love, which can persist through such provocation, awakened a soul. That look was at once the revelation of the worth of the one and the worthlessness of the other. A flood of tears drowned, it would seem forever, the evil which was cursing. In a day, in an hour, the change was wrought, that miraculous change which enters every life when the soul comes into its own. There were months in which the battle of self ebbed and flowed, but never did defeat seem again imminent, and the final victory was found in a high resolve which took her back home a quiet, subdued woman, forgetful of self in her sense of debt to the sister whose goodness she had never before admitted. For years they lived together, she keeping the simple home and keeping it well, saving, industrious, devoted, even loving. She has largely avoided publicity, though always ready to nurse in emergencies. Nobly she is expiating the past, and has long since worthily won the "well-done" of her moral self. CHAPTER XIX THE SUFFERING OF SELF-PITY Alac MacReady was not much of an oarsman. Big and strong, and heretofore so successful that his large self-confidence had never been badly jolted, he was quite at a disadvantage, this June afternoon, as he attempted to row pretty Annette Neil across the head of the lake to where she said the fishing was good. Twice already he had splashed her dainty, starched frock, ironed, he knew, in the highest perfection of the art, by her own active, shapely, brown hands. And each awkward splashing had been followed by flashing glances which shriveled self- esteem even as they fascinated. They had planned to spend the sunset hour fishing, then land in time to meet the crowd and be driven on to Border City to a neighboring dance, and all come back to Geneva together. Alac's rural North-England training had developed in him many qualifications of worth but, among these, boating was not one. Had he told the truth when this little trip was planned, he would have admitted that he had never rowed a boat a half-mile in his life. Annette could do it tip-top; why not he? But things were unquestionably perverse. The boat wouldn't go in a straight line-in fact, it didn't go very fast anyway. The black eyes before him framed by that impudently beautiful face, so pert, so naive, so understandingly aware--so "damned handsome" he said to himself, prodded him to redoubled effort. He was swinging his two hundred pounds lustily, unevenly--an unusually vicious jerk, and snap went the old oar! Off the seat he tumbled, and, with land-lubber's luck, unshipped the other oar and away it floated, and a mile from land, they drifted. Alac MacReady was Scotch-English. The family had executed a number of important contracts for the British government; one of these had brought two of the boys to Canada. With their family backing, they had undertaken some constructive work in northern New York, and, at this time, were building a railroad which passed through Geneva. Alac had been in the neighborhood for two months supervising operations. He was striking in appearance--a florid-faced' blonde, brusque in business, quite jovial socially, and cracking--full of the conceit of youth, wealth and station. So far, life had, in practically nothing, refused his bidding. Annette Neil's father kept a small store, Annette did much of the clerking. She was unquestionably the prettiest girl in Geneva; indeed she was as pretty as girls are made. With all her small-town limitations she was bright as a pin, and as sharp; fine of instinct and, withal, coy as a coquette. The first time Alac addressed her it was as a shop-keeper. Something she said kept turning over in his brain and he realized next morning, as he was shaving, that her reply had been impertinent. Piqued, he returned the day after to make another purchase, and made the greater mistake of being patronizing. Mr. Alac MacReady discovered, without any prolonged period of rumination, that he had a bee in his bonnet, and left the little shop semispeechless and irate. He was not satisfied to leave the honors with this "snip of an American girl," and evolved a plan of verbal assault which was to bring the provincial upstart to her senses, only to discover that she had a dozen defenses for each attack, and to find himself, for two consecutive, disconcerting minutes, wondering if perchance he might be a "boob." With each visit--and they were almost daily and many of them made in the face of strong, contrary resolution--he felt the distinction in their stations disappearing. He later found himself calling on Annette's mother, and, stiffly at first, later humbly asking for the company of the bewitching girl, who, coy witch that she was, steadfastly refused to be "company" even when her mother said she might. This trip across the lake was the first real concession the little minx had made-and how "bloomingly" he "messed it up"! He was not used to the water, and, oarless, became "panicky." A pair of ridiculing eyes caused him to break off his second bellow for help, in its midst. The little boat drifted slowly. The June breeze was not strong. The sun slipped behind radiant clouds, clouds which shifted and softened, and tinted and toned through the pastels into the neutrals. Gently they were nearing the shore when the great, golden moon rose in the east, and soon brightening, shimmered the lake with countless, dancing splotches of silver. The water lapped with ceaseless, dainty caresses the sides of the boat. Some mother-bird nestling near the water's edge crooned her good-night message to her mate. A halo surrounded and softened the white face so near and, as part of the evening symphony, two dark eyes rested upon his face, deeply luminous. There are different stories of what he said. He admitted he was never so awkward. But they missed their companions, and the dance, and walked all the way 'round the head of the lake, home, this proud son of near- nobility doing obeisance to his untutored queen. So Alac and Annette married. They traveled far, first to Canada, then to England. Annette's sheer beauty and remarkable taste in the use of Alac's prodigal gifts of clothing and jewels carried the badly disturbed and certainly unfavorably prejudiced MacReady family by assault. Ten years they lived in the big Northumberland home. A boy and a girl came, both blondes like their father. The MacReady boys were not meeting the same success in their contracting ventures for which two former generations had been noted. And, after their father's death, one particularly disastrous contract quite reduced the family's financial standing and consequent importance. The three brothers could not agree as to which was to blame, so Alac and his family returned to America and located in Rochester. Their few thousands Alac invested in a small manufacturing concern which never prospered sufficiently to maintain him in his life-long habits of good living. Unhappily, too, strong as Alac was in many ways, his one weakness grew. Three or four times a year he would make trips to Toronto or New York, drink gloriously, spend hundreds of dollars, and return home meek and dutiful, almost praying Annette not to say what he knew was in her mind. Of the two children, little Alac multiplied his father's weaknesses by an unhappily large factor. He never amounted to much, developing little but small bombast. Charlotte was the child, dutiful, studious, rather serious perhaps, but very conscientious. Her features were those of neither father nor mother, but peculiarly delicate, strikingly refined. When she was fifteen her father was found dead, one morning, in an obscure hotel in the Middle West. He had neglected his insurance premiums. The resourceful little widow went to work at once. The products of her needle were exquisite. She sold some of the handsome old furniture and, during the next five years, most of her jewels went to keep the children in school. She had given absolutely to her husband and to her home, and through the years to come her cheer was never bedimmed save when the husband was mentioned. Charlotte became more attractive. She was slender, fair--the English type was apparent; she was a distinct contrast to her highly colored, brunette mother, who, however, might have been but an older sister, she had so preserved her youth. Charlotte was periodically morbid, a transmuted heritage. The financial need directed her training into practical lines; she studied stenography and was fortunate in securing a position in the office of John Evanson, the energetic senior member of a growing leather-manufacturing firm. There was something poetically appealing to this busy man in the quiet, sometimes sad-faced, fine- faced, competent woman, which gradually created in him a hungering sense of need-and he called one night. He afterwards said if he hadn't married Charlotte, he would have married her mother, who, to tell the truth, put what sparkle there was into the courtship. Charlotte's cup of happiness should have been overflowing when she moved into the handsome, big house. Her mother was to live with them, and such a mother-in-law would be a welcome asset to any home. Mr. Evanson gave Alac Junior the only good position he ever had--a position which he never filled to any one's satisfaction but his own. For two years Charlotte's virtues were expressed in quiet, almost thoughtful home-devotion, entertainment of poor relatives, and church- work. John Evanson was simple and rational in his tastes. In business he was enterprising and a keen fighter of competition. He cleverly managed his interests, which had grown through years of steadfast attention. He was nearly forty when he married, and his new home was to him a haven. The mother adapted herself superbly and was a real joy in the household through her wit and daintiness and ingenious thoughtfulness. Charlotte was not well for several months before the birth of the much-wished-for baby, which unhappily never breathed. A sharp illness which lingered was followed by eight miserable months, then an operation, and the surgeon pronounced her well-but she could not believe she was. Two years of rather unassuming semi-invalidism passed. She made few complaints; she was evidently repressing expression of the recurring symptoms of her discomfort. But since her baby's death she had recovered little ability for effort. She tired quickly. She was living a life of quiet, sheltered, almost luxurious inadequacy. Dr. Corning was puzzled. Mrs. Evanson had appealed to his professional pride and sympathetic nature strongly. Was there something obscure, a lurking condition which he had overlooked? He would have his work reviewed by the celebrated New York internist. Nothing was found which resulted helpfully. Mrs. MacReady was patient. Her innate good judgment withheld discussion of details with her unhappy daughter. She believed Charlotte to be secretly mourning for the little one who had not lived. She spent hours with her son-in-law in anxious conference. What could get her poor child out of this almost apathy? She looked so well; she had never weighed so much; but twice she had been found looking over the baby's things. Was her sorrow eating away at her heart? Hadn't he noticed that for months she left the room when her father or the baby was mentioned! And hadn't he noticed the marks of tears when she came back? The husband had never loved his wife more; he pitied her; he yearned to share the burden which she did not mention. He watched the change in her moods and brought something new each day to please, divert, to interest-books and flowers, periodicals, clothing, jewelry. Pets proved tiresome. She wearied soon on every attempted trip. Concerts and the theater, and music in the home, all made her "nervous." Mrs. MacReady firmly believed the trouble was a haunting spirit of unsatisfied mother-love, and suggested bringing a child into the home. This plan did arouse new interest. Months were spent in making the selection. Scores of points must be satisfactorily fulfilled, or the plan would prove but a bitter disappointment. At last, a nine-months- old girl-baby was discovered who promised to resemble her foster- mother, and who had a "respectable heritage 'way back on both sides." It seemed most fortunate for both the little orphan and the hungering woman-this adoption. Charlotte spent much time in getting the little one outfitted and settled. The child brought new problems, such as worthy nursemaids, sleep-hours and safe feeding-and Charlotte was better. Mrs. MacReady had not been looking well. For months she had been slowly losing weight, although there had been not a syllable of complaint. Mr. Evanson finally insisted-the examination revealed an incurable condition--presto! Charlotte was prostrated. The trained nurse, secured for the mother, spent most of her time attending the multiplying needs of the daughter, whose apprehension grew until she began sending for her husband during his office-hours, fearing that her mother was worse; or because she looked as if she might have one of the hemorrhages the doctor feared, or to discuss what they would do when her mother died. The months dragged on. The splendid mother radiated cheer to the last. Then began the reign of terror. Stimulants and sedatives seemed necessary to protect Charlotte from "collapse." For a month, Mr. Evanson did not go near the office; for years, he was subject to calls by day, was disturbed mercilessly at night. No nurse could fill his place. It seemed chiefly the sick woman's "heart." Dr. Corning was too frank-Charlotte insisted he did not "understand." Dr. Winton was "sympathetic." He was physician for many society women. He was an adept in providing understanding and comfort. He never advised "dangerous operations or nasty mixtures," and was no fanatic on diet and exercise. When Charlotte married, she was "lily-fair," and weighed one hundred and sixteen. Five years after her mother's death she was florid, vapid, and weighed one hundred and sixty-eight miserable pounds. She ran the gamut of nervous ailments: disturbances of circulation, digestion, breathing, eating, sleeping, antagonism to draughts and noises, and a special antipathy to the odor from the exhaust of motor- cars. This last made her faint, and of her fainting attacks pages might be written. The home of John Evanson was now a dreary place. It was a household subsidized to the whims of a self-pitying woman. Her loss of father, baby and mother had "wrecked her life." Husband, child, nurse, servants, were all under the blight of her enslaving self-commiseration. For years all church and social activities were unattempted. Relatives and friends could not be entertained, for every one's attention was demanded to meet the varying possible emergencies of symptoms and to keep her mind from dwelling on her losses and the wretchedness of her fate. Mr. Evanson's business interests were neglected. His devotion to his morbid, now thoroughly selfish wife lost him big opportunities. His nerves, too, suffered from the unceasing strain. Serious-minded, nonimaginative, honest, it never occurred to him that the illness of his "poor afflicted wife" was an illness of the soul only. The adopted daughter was surrounded by an atmosphere of unnatural repression, an atmosphere charged with false sympathy and unwholesome concessions to the selfish weaknesses of her foster-mother. Dr. Winton advised many comfortable and diverting variations in treatment, but life in the Evanson home became increasingly distorted. At last John realized he was losing out badly-he must have a change. Through some subconscious inspiration he took Dr. Winton with him. They spent two weeks hunting and fishing in the Maine woods. John sought to get in touch with the man behind the doctor. The doctor soon realized the manliness of his companion. They were resting after a taxing portage, both feeling the fine exhilaration of perfect physical relaxation after productive physical weariness. The two men were pretty close. Shop had not been mentioned during the two weeks. "Doctor, tell me about my wife, just as though she were a sister." The doctor mused several minutes. "It is not pleasant... it is not easy to tell... you won't want to hear it. You probably will not accept what I have to say... you may resent it." "Tell me straight; you know how vitally I and my household need to understand the truth." Gravely the physician spoke--as friend to friend: "Your wife has leprosy!--not the physical form, but the kind that anesthetizes, ulcerates, deforms the soul--the leprosy of self-pity. It began with her father's death. It has eaten deeper and deeper, fed by the unselfishness of her mother and of yourself, unchecked by the soothing salves applied by doctors like me. I early recognized that she would not pay the price of radical cure--the price of effortful living. Her understanding soul has degenerated--something vital to Christ-like living is, I believe, lost. She believes her undiseased body to be ill. Her reason is distorted by her disease-obsessions; her will has been pampered into a selfish caricature. She has accepted the false counsel of her selfishness so long that she is attracted by error, and repelled by truth. I see relief for her only through the culminating self-deception that disease does not exist. If this error is accepted by her, she will become as fanatically superior to her wretched sensations as she is now subservient to them. In other words, she is a worse than useless woman whom Christian Science may transform. She is emotionally sick. Christian Science appeals to the emotional life; it is not concerned with reason-no more is she. It negates physical illness and thus might replace her morbid, hopeless, selfish sufferings with years of applied, wholesome cheer and faith." Some details were discussed. A fine personality, a woman who devoutly accepted the teachings of Mrs. Eddy, who would have been an example of selfless living, regardless of details of religious faith, was interested in poor Charlotte. Progress was slow at first. Then the leaven began to work. One day the expressman moved a big box from the Evanson home to a local hospital. It contained the paraphernalia of a one-time invalid. One plastic nurse lost a chronic case. To-day in the Evanson household, all discussions of illness are under the ban. The home is no longer a private infirmary, but breathes a bit of the after-glow of cheer which should linger long after the passing of one so worthy and radiant as Annette--the mother beautiful in body and spirit. CHAPTER XX THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE In the following life-story, our sympathies are strongly drawn to the conscientious woman who gave so many years of uncomplaining service--a giving which should have brought its daily reward of satisfaction; yet she sorrowed through her youth because she lacked the charity that "suffereth long and is kind," finding which, her problem was met. The never too attractive Yarnell home was in a mess. Irene, the eight- year-old child, seemed seriously ill. The doctor had said, the night before, that they might have to operate if the pain in her side didn't get better; and the little girl prayed that they would, and prayed specially that she would die while they were doing it. She didn't want to live. She wanted to go rather than to stay forever with the new mother her father had brought home last month. Big Sister wouldn't stay; she ran away the second week and married Tim Shelby, and had a good home now with Tim's people--even though her father hadn't spoken to the Shelbys for years. Aunt Erne had gone too, dear Aunt Erne, her mother's sister, who had been mother to her ever since her real mother died--just after she was born--that precious mother, who, Aunt Effie used to tell her, had died happy that her little girl might live. Aunt Effie had always taught her a beautiful love, and every night she said a beautiful prayer for the mother she had never seen. Aunt Effie tried to stay, too, but couldn't. She left the same day the new mother asked father, before them all, how he was ever going to keep up with all the expenses of so many and give a tenth of his salary to the church. The very night her aunt went away, the step-mother had told Irene that it was wicked to "do up" her hair in curl-papers, and when she begged her, "Just this once," because she had a "piece to speak" in school next day, and cried in her disappointment, her stepmother had shaken her so hard that something seemed to tear loose in her side. Irene had never hated any one before--and it was wicked to hate; and so she was praying her real mother to come and take her before she became a sinner. But in spite of her prayers, she shrank when her stepmother came near and chilled whenever touched by her. She couldn't eat the food she brought, and every time she thought of her, the pain was worse. Both her father and his new wife seemed so strange. She felt like some stray, hurt animal, not loved by any one. The new Mrs. Yarnell had been a maiden-lady many years. During her spinstership she had given herself without stint to the activities of her small church, a church belonging to an obscure denomination which teaches that holiness is nigh upon us; that if we but supplement conversion by a second act of grace, sanctification here and forevermore is ours. Hers was not an easy disposition to live with. She had ably held her own through years of bickerings and wordy contentions with an overworked, irritable mother. She gave little love. She received little. But her underdeveloped, souring heart instinctively craved some drops of sweetness. So, when she listened to the fervid exhorter, revealing the new highway to heaven, that glorious way where the good Lord carries all our burdens, if we will just cast them upon Him, a great light illumined her soul. Why a weary life of strife and misunderstanding? She would give herself without reserve, and even in the giving she could feel her burden roll away. In a flash it seemed, life had changed. She was now the Lord's--mind, soul and body. He directed; she followed. He could not lead her wrong, and, as all her impulses and desires were now divine, she could do no wrong. She could think no wrong. Having given all, she was now saved to the uttermost. Misunderstood she must be, of course, by those who knew not the holy leadings of her sanctified soul. Serenely, supremely, she lived. Her old biting temper was now righteous indignation. Her dislike for household work was only an evidence that, like beautiful Mary, she had chosen the better part. What her mother had always called obstinacy and perversity were now stead-fastness in the Lord. Oddly, her tart, sarcastic, even flaying tongue was not softened by any gentleness of divine inspiration. Incidentally, the Lord had given her a plump figure, and a knack of apparel which had long appealed to Widower Yarnell's eye. And the Lord approved; in truth He said "Yes!" so audibly that Miss Spinster hesitated hut one maidenly minute. Mrs. Yarnell's sanctification washed dishes, kept house, and nursed lonely, sick, little children most inefficiently. So, after Aunt Effie and Big Sister, both willing workers, left, the new bride found unforeseen difficulties in following the Lord's leadings, which seemed to call to real back-and-muscle taxing effort for other people--such was for the world of Marthas. So things in the Yarnell household got in a mess. It seemed hard for Irene to recover. But her returning strength found early tonic in the house-work which was left for her to do. The new mother's church activities occupied so much of her time that little was left for any but unavoidable essentials. Irene became a fine little worker, and should have had all the honors and happiness due the model child. Neat, rapid, effective, an excellent student, she developed physically strong, the possessor of that rare and attractive glow of health, into a thoroughly wholesome looking young woman. Deep within, however, she had not known peace since the day Aunt Effie left. For years she had fought smoldering resentment and an embittering sense of injustice, until at fourteen the deeper depths were stirred by a slow but irresistible religious awakening. Her stepmother's church was on the opposite side of town, too far for them both to attend. Her own mother's church was in the neighborhood, and throughout the years she had usually been able to attend Sunday-school there and be home again in time to get dinner. Her young understanding had long been in a turmoil as to what religion and right are. Aunt Effie had taught gentleness of conduct and charity of speech, and forgetfulness of self in service. Mrs. Yarnell constantly proclaimed that, until the Lord entered her heart to absolutely sanctify it, she was certain to be miserable, unless she became a hopelessly hardened sinner. Unhappy the child surely was. Her conscience was a sensitive one; it seemed ever to chide, and often to condemn. No matter how faithfully she followed duty, her failure to receive that wonder-working "second blessing" left her feeling as an unworthy one outside of the fold. Then, when she neglected, even for an hour, her household duties or school-work for church-socials or class-picnics, her conscience, and usually her step-mother, pounced upon her mercilessly. At early fourteen, she was feeling the chilling shadows of a morbid conscience. Her stepmother was away for two weeks attending a denominational conference, and it seemed to Irene that she had more time than usual; so she talked her perplexities over with the pastor of her mother's church. A good man he was, but far from being an expert physician of the soul. He did not seem to sense her deeper problem-the one daily hurting her sensitive spirit, but asked a number of questions, her answers to which convinced him that she was entirely ready to join the church, which he definitely advised her to do, believing thereby she would find the peace she sought. So without delay, even before her stepmother's return, and without consulting her, she followed the minister's advice. Unhappily, her business-burdened father had no special interest in the welfare of any one's soul. Mrs. Yarnell henceforth treated Irene as a religious inferior. High school brought more work and little play. The unsuccessful father died with bad arteries when Irene was eighteen. He left little beside the mortgaged place; so Irene took up bookkeeping, and before she was twenty had a bank-position which, through her ability and merit and trustworthy conscientiousness, she has held through the years and the vicissitudes, supporting herself and her stepmother. Irene's play days had been rare. Her conscience was a grim-visaged angel whose flaming sword she ever saw barring each path to pleasure. The president of her bank was also an elder in her church. His mind was pretty well filled with business, still he took occasional thought for his employees, and the summer Irene was twenty-three, he asked her how she would spend her two vacation weeks. "No," she was not going to leave Wheeling. "Yes," it was hot, but she had much sewing to do, and if she could save for two years more, the mortgage would be paid. The banker noticed, even as they talked, the slight tremor of fingers and lips which bespeaks tension; and that not a little of her appearance of reserve and strength had slipped away through the grind of the years. Three delegates were to be sent to the Chautauqua Assembly for a two weeks' special conference, and somehow it turned out that, with those of Mrs. Crumb, the pastor's wife, and Matthew Reynolds, a theologic student the church was helping educate, Irene Tarnell's name was read. Two weeks at Chautauqua, her railway-fare paid both ways!-a score of the best people of the church assuring her that it was her duty-and an envelope with the banker's personal check for twenty dollars, endorsed "for incidentals as delegate"! Thus Irene set forth on her first foreign mission, her first trip out into this big, busy world, about which she had, wrongfully, of course, wasted a few minutes now and then in dreaming. Who could have been more companionable than Matthew, or who more thoughtful and self-eliminating than Mrs. Crumb whose thrifty, matronly heart early sensed the promise and wisdom-and excitement, too, of a romance en route. And dear Mrs. Crumb was deft, and Matthew supremely susceptible, and Irene-she was in the clouds! How like a story-book, the kind that ends happily, it would have worked out, if alas! Matthew had not been quite so susceptible. There was a Pittsburgh girl who had the advantage of prior association and, unfortunately, the young student's pledge of eternal devotion. Still, Irene was a mighty good-looking girl; in fact, Matthew admitted, the third day of their trip, when her fine color began to flash back, that she was better looking than his promised, and so refreshingly free from worldly-mindedness. Mrs. Crumb did not know of Matthew's entanglements, while the devotion of his attentions, a certain lighting of his eyes, and gentleness of speech and demeanor convinced her that all she wished was going very well. So convinced was she that she made bold, early the second week, to express her belief in Irene's almost unequaled qualifications for a minister's wife, to which dutiful Matthew gave unreserved assent. Nothing of importance was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, and Mrs. Crumb showed that she was not lacking in an understanding of young folks' human nature when she planned the little excursion which was to offer ample opportunity for the consummation she believed so impending. They had all taken some tramps together. She was not quite equal, she said, to the walk around to Mayfield, but it would make a fine afternoon trip for the young folks. She would go down on the steamer, and they could all come back and enjoy the refreshing, evening water-trip together. Matthew had certainly been attentive, giving an attention which Irene had never before received. For days she had been happy, the first joy- days she had known since she was eight. The very near future loomed large with intoxicating promise. Mrs. Crumb had talked to her, also, of Matthew, and of his fine record at college, and of his gentle nature. The early afternoon was hot; they walked slowly; they loitered when they came to shade. Then out of the west came booming black clouds, and they were caught in a mid-summer thunderstorm. He helped her as they ran for shelter, but, almost blinded by the pelting rain, she tripped and fell awkwardly, twisting her ankle cruelly. She probably fainted. Matthew was frightened, and in his helplessness lost his head. She was roused by him chafing her hands, and his importunate "Dear Irene," bundled stunned senses, soaked, chilling apparel and stabbing ankle into one unutterable confusion of unspeakable joy. And "devil-inspired fool" that she was, she reached up, drew his tense face, so near, against hers, and "hateful bliss," it stayed there a full minute. Then life went black, for he tore himself away, almost savagely putting her arm aside. "It is wrong; you have made me sin!" "It is wrong; you have made me sin!" were burned in loathsome black across the face of her conscience, accusing cruelly, unendingly accusing. Tears passed-those years that drag, and she never knew of the girl in Pittsburgh. She did not know other than that she had transgressed and tempted a fine, good man; that she had tempted him from the sanctity of great religious purpose-and her branded, sick conscience proved itself a poison to mind and body. Dazed, the hurt woman returned to the loveless home. Mechanically, for months, her hands made that home comfortable and toiled on at the bank. We wonder how the break could have been held back so long, in one so sensitive. The staunch body and well-trained mind must have carried her on through mere momentum. But it had to come. Self- condemnation and self-depreciation gave birth to false self- accusation. She began to question the worth of all she did. Repeatedly she must add and re-add a column of figures; even the evidence of the adding-machine had to be proven. She wakened at night questioning the correctness of her entries, and her work became slow and inaccurate. All she did, physically and mentally, became a dread. The very act of walking to and from the bank seemed to drain her waning strength. She refused a vacation suggested by her employer, who gradually became genuinely concerned about her health. He knew but little of the affair at Chautauqua. Mrs. Crumb was too good a woman to let drop any hint of what she may have surmised; she actually knew only of the storm and sprained ankle. One morning Mrs. Yarnell called a neighboring doctor. She couldn't waken Irene. It was found that her sleep had become so poor that she had bought some powders from the druggist. Never having taken medicine, she was easily influenced, and the ordinary dose left her confused for twenty-four hours. Two weeks' rest at home, if one could rest in Mrs. Yarnell's company, found the girl no stronger. The banker and the doctor had a conference. She must be gotten away from home. The banker had a doctor-friend, a man whose means made it unnecessary for him to give his years of strength to the unceasing demands of a general practice. He had long been keenly interested in the complicated and growing problem of nervousness. He owned a beautiful place down the Ohio River where, for years, he had been taking into his home a few deserving, nervous invalids. He had learned to enter into their lives with a specialist's skill-with a father's understanding. Thus he gave largely--to some it would seem, of his substance, but the true giving was his discerning, constructive comprehension of human problems. Into this atmosphere, God and the banker sent Irene. For nearly twenty years this oversensitive girl had known few hours of understanding and sympathy. For a week or two she merely rested; then one evening, it seemed precipitate, but some way it was as easy as anything she had ever done, she told the story we have heard. There, revealed, was the defect of a life, a problem to be worked out by the analytic student of mankind. Was it to introduce a little saving recklessness, the redeeming truth of honesty and justice to self, or the neutralizing of self-negation by the acceptance of merited worth! Even through our weaknesses are we sometimes healed. If any reason existed which could merit one self-accusing thought, the doctor found it when he uncovered the resentment which had never healed toward the usurping stepmother--"a woman who had proved her limitations and should be mercifully judged thereby," he told Irene. "Yes," the doctor said, "you have missed the 'second blessing'; you have missed a thousand blessings because the generosity of your years of fine doing were lacking in the gentleness of feeling which Aunt Effie taught you, and which made your mother so beloved. Lacking this, even in the fulness of your much giving, you have failed. You have been seeking the true religion. Your mother had it-the kind that lightens the dead heaviness and puts heaven's color into the dull, dark hours at home. Herein, only, have you fallen short." The doctor knew men, and he was able to show her how utterly innocent she was of the slightest hint of wrong in her relations with Matthew, how impossible that her spontaneous act could have wrought a second's harm to any good man. There was much more said helpfully, but the most good, unquestionably, came from the unspoken influence of the thoughtful personal consideration and discerning kindness of this scientific lover of his kind. Three months Irene spent with them, the doctor and his equally good wife; she returned home radiant. The years pass. During the Great War, when trained men were scarce, our restituted woman acted as cashier and drew almost a cashier's salary. The mortgage is paid. Two women live in the little house. The older is very religious. She still attends many church services; she dutifully gives her tenth to the cause, and, in and out of season, proclaims her way as the perfect road to the heights beyond. Old and practically unchangeable, she is not lovable and she never has been, but near-by tenderness has softened some of her self-satisfied asperities. Still radiant is the younger woman-the righteous woman whose righteousness has put unfailing cheer in service most of us would call "fierce," a righteousness which has learned to be charitably blind where most of us would see and resent, a righteousness which has brought abiding happiness to a life that had long suffered, a slave to its conscience. Cleverness and wealth-having not charity-have sought such happiness in vain through the ages. CHAPTER XXI CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER Grandfather Scott was a blacksmith. He was much more-a natural amateur mechanic-the only man in those early days in the little town of Warren, who could successfully tinker sewing-machines, repair clocks, or make a new casting for a broken Franklin heater. He was a hale, ruddy man who lived, worked and died with much peace. There were girls, but David was the only boy, and a lusty youth he was. The absence of brothers, or possibly an excess of sisters, gave him, both as youth and young man, much more liberty of action and right of way than was good for his soul. At any rate, he early developed a steadfastness which, throughout his life, stood for both strength of purpose and hard-headed, sometimes hard-hearted wilfulness. His father had dreamed a dream: his smithy was to grow into a shop, and later the shop was to become a factory where a hundred men would do his bidding and supply the country with products of his inventive genius. But so far as his own life was to realize, it remained a dream. The shop was never built; the genius failed to invent. But his son, David! Yes, he would have the schooling and advantages that the father had not known. And so it was: at thirty, David Scott had been well educated in mechanics; at forty, he had made improvements on the sewing-machine, which gave him valuable patents; at fifty, his factory employed ten times the number his father had visioned. Thus was fulfilled the dream of the ancestor. Business success was large for Mr. David Scott. But what of his success as a father? He married at twenty-eight, a handsome woman whose pride in appearance stood out through the years and influenced the training given her three children. Little David, or "Dave," as he was early called in distinction to his father, was petted by his mother and, in spite of evidences to the contrary, was his father's pride. The family moved to Cleveland when Dave was a little fellow. His father would not be cramped, so, with what proved to be rare foresight, bought part of an old farm on Mayfield Heights. Both here and at Granddad's, where Dave was sent each summer, there was ample out-of-doors, and the lad grew sturdy of limb. With a flaming shock of curling, copper hair, his eyes deepest blue, and skin as fair as a girl's, he was a boy for mother, teachers and later for maidens to spoil. But an attractive personality, an inherent fineness never left him while he was conscious, and seldom when he was irresponsible. Dave's mother was proud, proud of her successful husband, of the mansion and estate of which she was the envied mistress, proud of her handsome self and handsome daughters, and specially proud of Dave, the brightest and handsomest of them all. It is a pity that she who so fully enjoyed the pleasures of wealth, and of wealth-shielded motherhood, might not have lived to drink to her full of the joys she loved. Pride, insufficient clothing, wealth, inadequate exercise, exposure in a raw, March bluster, defective personal resistance, pneumonia!--and in a week, the life was gone. Dave was only fourteen, but, in face of his spoiling, was ready for St. Paul's, where he was sent the next fall. He was bright-even brilliant in his prep school work. Mathematics, the sciences and history seemed almost play for him, while in languages, and especially in English, he did an unusual amount of "not required" work. Dave made his father his hero, and for many years was instant in doing his will. Had the older man taken serious thought of his son's personality and entered into the boy's developmental needs with his wonted intelligence and thoroughness, the two could have grown into a closeness which would have made the Scott name one to be reckoned with in the manufacturing world. The father's business was growing even beyond his own dreams, and he found little time to give his boy, whom, in fact, he saw but rarely, save at Christmas holidays. So it happened that Dave was more deeply influenced by his mother's love for the beautiful than by machine-shop realities; and the aesthetic developed in him to the exclusion of the father's practical life. For many years wine had been served at the family dinners. Mr. Scott drank only at home, and then never more than two small glasses. He had no respect for the man who overindulged any weakness. He little thought his own blood could be different than he. This father was a man of exceptional energy who had wrought miracles financially, and was, without question, master in his thoroughly organized factory. He dominated his surroundings. Where he willed to lead--whether in business circles, in the vestry, in his own home--the strength of his intellect, the force of his purpose and his quiet but tangible assertiveness were felt. He had never been balked in any determined course of action. When Dave went East to school, he possessed physique and health which should have made athletics a desire and a joy. But on both the baseball and football squads were a few fellows not choice in their use of English. In fact, even at this excellent church-school, these exceptions did considerable "cussing." Dave's mother and sisters were fastidious, and Dave found himself, even at fourteen, resenting coarseness. He, therefore, chose the "nice fellows" as associates, and made friends to his liking in books. We must not think of him as "prissy" or snobbish, but he distinctly disliked crudity however expressed, and this dislike grew and was strengthened by his increasing devotion to the aesthetic. Otherwise, Dave's prep school years were those of an unusually fine fellow, whose mind promised both brilliance and strength. Sadly, during these vital years, Dave had no mature counselor; no strong character was sufficiently close to sense his needs and court his confidence. So some of the proclivities of his early home influence persisted and developed, which normally should have been displaced by others standing for oncoming manhood. College life, unfortunately, but increased his opportunities to indulge his weaknesses, and his three years at Yale found him a dependable member of a refined fast-set. With his unusual mind--giving no time to athletics--there were many idle hours at his disposal. He now discovered that he liked cigarettes which his father held in supreme contempt, while, from time to time, a quiet wine-supper with a select few, where spirits blended so finely when mellowed by champagne, stood for the acme of social pleasure. Dave could not carry much liquor and mellowed early, and rather soon slipped quietly under the table, to be told the next day most of the snappy toasts and stories the other fellows had contributed to the occasion. These entertainments soon forced Dave to overdraw his allowance. A business- like letter asking explanations came from his father, and this was followed by a peremptory command that he live within his already "ample remittance." Father and son had never been companions, and here the boy's devotion deserted, and a growing estrangement began. Dave, knowing his father's wealth, resented his lack of liberality, and he knew him too well to protest. For three months he heeded parental injunction; then a trip to New York to grand opera. Entertainment accepted must be returned. Another wine-supper, paid for by a draft on his father-and family warfare was on! The draft was paid-the family credit must not be questioned, but a house was divided against itself, and the letter David sent Dave left a trail of blue smoke. It left also a reckless, rebellious son. Adelaide Foster's grandfather was wealthy. Her mother had suited her own taste-not her parents'-when she married attractive Fred Foster. The grandfather dallied too often with the "bucket-shop" before he forgave his foolish child, and when he came to his better paternal self, he hadn't much to leave his little granddaughter. But Adelaide made much of her little, and spent two very developing years at Barnard. Dave and Adelaide met on terms artistic which were most satisfying to them both. Dave had made good junior marks in spite of his inoffensive sprees and conflicts with his father. He was in many ways Adelaide's superior, but she gave him a large companionship in things beautiful, and worshiped at his feet in questions profound. His father had ignored, or failed to notice, Dave's references to the young lady-so there was a little wedding-ceremony with four witnesses, an almost impulsive wedding. The elder Scott was not expecting this flank- movement, but family pride again helped Dave out, and a liberal check followed the stiff telegram of "best wishes." Six months the young folks spent abroad. The beautiful in nature and art which Europe offered blended into their honeymoon. The last wedding-gift dollar had been spent when they returned to East Best, the paternal mansion in Cleveland. Two evenings later Mr. Scott called his son into the library. It was time to reassert his sovereignty. This, too, was business; so it was curt and direct. "Well, sir, I trust you have sown your wild oats. You have married. It is high time you settled down. I shall give you and Adelaide a home with us, or, if you prefer to live elsewhere, one hundred dollars a month for living expenses. This, mark you, is my gift to her. You don't earn a cent of it. You will have to start in the business at the bottom. You may choose the shops or the office. You will be paid what you earn. I hope you will make good. You are capable. Good-night." Dave chose the office. The shops were "ugly." Unhappily, much of the good, the useful and the necessary was being classed as "ugly" in this young aesthete's mind, and worse, he was finding himself uncomfortable in the presence of an increasing number of normal, even practically essential conditions. This gifted and promising young man was at odds with reality. He refused to accept reality as real. For him in beauty of line and color and sound, in beauty of thought and expression, only, was the truth. He suffered in other surroundings. He had become aesthetically hypersensitive. And of all reality's ruthlessness, what was less tolerable than monotony? What less capable of leading a man to the heights than the eternal grind of the office? Even Adelaide and the baby bored him at times. Young Scott could do anything well to which he gave effort. And his father was considering giving him a raise, when at the end of six months he disappeared. The second day after, the distraught wife received a message from New York. He was all right, and would be home next week. The father, however, had to honor another draft before his son could square accounts and purchase a return ticket. This was the first of his retreats from the grim battle-front of reality. Six months seemed the limit of his capacity to face a work-a-day life. He read much, and of the best. He took up Italian alone and soon read it easily. When at home his chief excesses were books-but the Scott table was amply supplied, and in view of his inactive physical habits we realize that Dave was a high liver. Adelaide had proven a most dutiful daughter-in-law, and with the baby long kept the headsman's ax from descending. But even their restraining power had its limitations. The irk of that "godless" office was being more and more poorly met by Dave. Five times during the fourth year he took ungranted periods of relaxation. The last time the usual draft was not paid. He unwisely signed a check, badly overdrawing his private account. His father seemed waiting for such an opportunity, and took drastic action. Under an old law, he had his son apprehended as a spend thrift, and so adjudged, deprived of his rights and made ward of a guardian. A young physician was made deputy in charge of his person--a man chosen, apparently, with much care. It was to be his business to teach this wealthy man's son to work with his hands and to live on a stipulated sum. There is no question that immediate good followed these aggressive tactics, and in the personality of his companion-guardian he found much that was wholesome. A sturdy character was the doctor, who had fought his way through poverty to a liberal education, and was entering a special study of nervous disorders. His good theoretical training was planted in a rich soil of common-sense. For three months they worked on a farm, shoulder to shoulder. The two men became friends, a most helpful friendship for Dave, whose admiration for the young doctor had proven a path which led him, for the first time, to a realization of the hidden beauties in a life of overcoming, and this lies close to the nobility of the love of work. Dave was accepting his need for the bitter medicine which was being administered. He had forgiven Adelaide who sided with his father and, for the first time, had written, acknowledging some of his past failures. He wanted some books. He needed clothes. The orders given the doctor had been rigid as to spending-money and diversions. The determined father disapproved the expense account. Another man was sent to relieve the doctor-companion-a man who could be depended upon to carry out the letter of the father's law. Rebellion, fierce--and it seemed, righteous--flamed forth in Dave Scott's soul. He was doing his best. He was working as he never had worked before. He had seen his need--he had the vision of self-mastery. All this, and more he had seriously confided to the man his father, through the court, had placed over him. Without a word of explanation he was again to be turned over to the custody of a stranger. Was he a child or a chattel? Was he mentally irresponsible that he should be thus transferred from one hand to another without a hearing? He wired his protests, and received in return an assurance that he would accept his new custodian or be cut off without a cent. In that hour the real character of David Scott was born. He consulted an attorney and learned the limited power of his guardians. Outside of Ohio he was legally free. He pawned some of his few belongings. Adelaide and the child were financially cared for. Over night he left the State. He would be a man, penniless, rather than the chattel-son of a millionaire! The United States had just entered the Great War. The Marines were being recruited everywhere for "early over-seas service," and Dave Scott, the aesthetic, volunteered as a "buck-private." Few got over as fast as they wished. It was six months for Dave at Paris Island. There were few in the ranks of his mental ability, and physically he became as hard as the toughest. He was soon a corporal and later a sergeant. And he worked. He met the roughest of camp duties, at first with set jaw and revolting senses, later with a grim smile; finally, and then the emancipation, with a sense of the closeness of man to man in mankind's work. And the men began turning to him, and as he sweated with them he learned to discern the manliness in the crudest of them. He went across at the end of six months, to France. He was a replacement in the Sixth. The French line had been beaten thin as gold-foil. If it broke, Paris was at the mercy of the Hun. Then eight thousand of Uncle Sam's Marines were thrown in where the line was thinnest and the pressure heaviest. Sharp-shooters, expert marksmen, were most of them. The enemy was now in the open. They had not before met riflemen who boldly stood up and coolly killed at one thousand yards. Crested German helmets made superb targets, and the officers bit the dust disastrously. At the end of three days, six thousand of these eight thousand Marines were dead or casuals. But the tide of the Great War was turned-and Dave Scott was one of the immortals who forced the flood back upon the Rhine. What miracle was it that shielded that ever-smiling white face, crowned with its flaming shock, from the storm of lead and death? With the fate of nations trembling in the balance, who can know the part his blue eyes, now true as steel, played in the great decision as, hour after hour with deadly precision, he turned his hand to slaughter? Five times the gun he was using became too hot and was replaced by that of a dead comrade. After those three days at Chateau-Thierry, no mortal could question that Dave Scott had forsworn aesthetics; that he was a demon of reality. Later he saw service on the Champagne front, and then was invalided home. It was a chastened father, a magnificently proud father, who was the first to greet him. For the time he was unable to put into words the honor he had for the son whom, so few months before, he considered worthless. "It's all past now, Dave. That past we won't speak of again. I've arranged for your discharge. You'll be home to stay, inside of a month." Dave's answer, probably more than any act in battle, proved that his character had been remade: "No, Father, I have enlisted for four years. I belong to the Marines till my time is up. I owe it to you, to Adelaide, to the boy, to myself, to prove that I can be the man in peace that I have tried to be in training-camp and in France. I know I can face reality when spurred by excitement. I have yet to prove that I can face the monotony of two years and a half of routine service." CHAPTER XXII FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF The victorious soul counts life as a gift which, far from growing darker and more dreary as the sun falls into the west, may daily become more rich and beautiful and worthy. To the soul victorious our span of years is not menaced by misfortune and misery, is not degraded by bitterness, discord and hatred, but hourly thrills with the realization that the worst which life may bring but challenges the divine within to masterful assertion. And the soul victorious has risen unscathed--glorified--above every attack of fate. Mrs. Herman Judson was a sight to make the gods weep. With features more than usually attractive, softened by a halo of waving, silvery hair, she was but a mushy bog of misery. It was three P. M.; she had just been carried downstairs, and in spite of the usual host of apprehension, with some added new ones for to-day, no slightest accident had marred the perilous trip from her front bedroom to the living-room below; still everything and everybody, save old Dr. Bond, was in a flutter. Tension and apprehension marked the faces and actions of all. Not till the last of six propping, easing, supporting pillows had been adjusted; till hot-water bottles were in near contact with two "freezing" ankles; till her shoulder-shawl had been taken off--a twist straightened out--and accurately replaced; till the room, already ventilated to a preordered nicety of temperature, had a door opened and both windows closed; not till the screen had been moved twice to modify the "glare" of the lights, and to protect from possible "draughts"; not until the "Sunset Scene from Venice" had been turned face to the wall so the reflection from its glass wouldn't make her "eyes run cold water"; and finally, not until ten drops from the bottle labeled "For spinal pain" had been taken, and five minutes spent by her niece, fanning so very gently, "so as not to smother my breath"--not till this formidable contribution to the pitiful slavery of petted sensations had been slavishly offered, could the invalid find strength to greet her childhood playmate, quiet, observing, charitable Dr. Willard Bond. Twice a day for many months the household held its breath while this moving-down, and later moving-back (and to-day's was an uncomplicated, unusually peaceable one), was being accomplished. "Held its breath," is really not quite accurate, for Ben, the colored butler, and 'Lissie, the colored cook, found much reason for strenuous respiration, as Mrs. Judson and her rocker, with pillows, blankets and the ever present afghan, weighed two hundred and eight pounds-one hundred and eighty pounds of woman, twenty-eight pounds of accessories! And Ben and 'Lissie were the ones who logically deserved fanning and attention to ventilation, especially after the seven P. M. trip back. And they were always so solemn, so tensifyingly solemn, these risky journeys up and down. The niece, Irma, carried the hot-water bottles, the extra blankets and the fan. The nurse had the medicine-box and a small tray with water-glasses--for when things went wrong, the cavalcade must stop and some of the "Heart-weakness drops" be given, or some whiffs taken from the pungent "For tightness of breath" bottle, before further progress was safe. Mrs. Judson knew her symptoms so well. There were eighteen of special importance; and Dr. Cummings, the successful young surgeon, a far-away relative-by-marriage, had, in all seriousness, prescribed eighteen lotions, elixirs, powders, pills and potions, to meet each of the eighteen varied symptoms. Nine months ago this progressively developing invalidism of twenty years had culminated in what Dr. Cummings suspected to be a severe gall-stone attack. A few days later, when his sensitive patient was measurably relieved, he had told her his fears and suggested a possible operation. Within two minutes Mrs. Judson was faint and chilling. Since then the doctor, the nurse, the niece, not to forget Ben and 'Lissie, had labored without ceasing to prevent a return of the "awful gall-stone attacks," and, with the Lord's help, to get Mrs. Judson "strong enough for an operation." But progress was dishearteningly slow. Every mention of "operation" seemed to make their patient worse. And now for over eight months she had not walked a step and had been an hourly care. For the first time since the beginning of the gall-stone trouble, Dr. Cummings was going to be away for two weeks, and he, with Dr. Bond, had witnessed the downstairs trip in anticipation of a conference. Dr. Bond lived but two doors away, and as he had retired from active practice, could always respond to a call if needed. Moreover, it had been discovered that he was a neighbor-playmate of Mrs. Judson during her girlhood. He had but recently come to Detroit from their old home in Charlestown, under the shadow of Bunker Hill monument, about which they had often played as children. Dr. Bond had lived there alone for many years following his wife's death, and had now come to make a home with his successful son. He was giving his time, and he felt the best year of his life, writing a series of chapters on "Our Nerves and Our Morals." He had never been a specialist, claiming only to be a family- doctor. But for over thirty years he had been ministering most wisely to the ills of the soul as well as of the body. A large, compelling sympathy he gave his patients. He saw their ills. He felt their fears. He sensed their sorrows. He understood their weaknesses. He looked beyond the manifest ailments of flesh and blood. His fine discernment revealed the obscure sicknesses which affect hearts and souls. And his rational sympathies penetrated with the deftness and beneficence of the surgeon's scalpel. He stood for that type of man whom God has raised up to help frail and needing human-kind in body, mind and spirit. "Sixty years is a long time to pass between meetings, isn't it?" said Dr. Bond after Mrs. Judson's needs had severally and successfully been humored, and she was able to note and recognize the old-new doctor's presence and offer a plump, tremulous hand in greeting. "You don't know how nearly you have missed seeing me," she replied. "I have been on the verge for months, but Dr. Cummings has been able to pull me through. You see, he knows all my dangers, and has given me the best medicines that medical science knows for each of them. Have him tell you about it, Dr. Bond. I do hope nothing will happen while he's gone." Dr. Bond replied that he was sure, with Dr. Cummings' advice and the nurse's and the niece's help and understanding, there would be no danger; that he was so near he would come in each afternoon and they could talk about the old days and the old childhood friends around Boston. "I hope so," Mrs. Judson replied, "but you know I can't talk long. But do come every day. I'll feel safer, I'm sure. And promise me that you won't delay a minute if I send for you for my gall-stones. If they get started, I die a thousand deaths." "I shall come at once, you may be sure, but tell the nurse to put those gall-stones to bed at ten p. m., because you and I are too old to be spreeing around during sleeping hours." But Mrs. Judson couldn't find a ghost of a smile for this pleasantry. In fact, her look of alarm caused Dr. Bond to add, "Don't fear, Mrs. Judson, I can still dress in five minutes and will promise faithfully to come at any hour." The two physicians left the room together. Thirty-five and sixty-five they were, both earnest, capable, honest men, one a master of modern medical science, the elder a thoroughly equipped physician, and a deep student of humanity. "I am very glad you are going to see my aunt. For months I have wished to call in a consultant, but she has always refused. I know much of her trouble is nervous, and you know how little time most of us have to study nervousness, and I am sure you will see clearly much which has been rather hazy to me. I think you were concealing a laugh when they gave her the 'Spinal-pain drops,' and frankly, there is very little that has much strength in all those pills and powders I've given her. I have learned that she gets along very well much of the time when she can anticipate her symptoms and prescribe for herself. In fact, it's about all that the poor old lady has to do these days. I am not absolutely sure, either, about those gall-stones. The symptoms are not classic, but she certainly does suffer, and I have had to give her pretty heavy doses of morphine several times, and then she's wretchedly sick for some days. Believe me, Doctor, I do not feel competent in her case. It's not my line. Find out all you can. Do whatever you feel is best, and you may depend upon my endorsement of any changes you may see fit to make. It will be a God's mercy if you can win her confidence and share the burden of her treatment with me. Of course, she's too old to get well, and I'm afraid if we ever have to operate, there will be a funeral." Dr. Bond thanked the younger man heartily. He felt his earnestness and honesty, and saw that he had done all he knew to help his patient. That evening the old doctor's mind spanned the gulf of nearly two generations. He was again a little fellow, and Rhoda Burrows lived across the street. Their mothers were friends; they were playmates. And through the years he had treasured her happy, sunny, beautiful face as an ideal of girlhood perfection. She was older than he, and how she had "big sistered" and "mothered" him! How his little hurts and sorrows had fled before her laughter and caresses! Hundreds and thousands had touched his inner life since Rhoda moved West with her parents, but that gleam of girlhood had remained etched with the clearness of a miniature upon his mind, undimmed by the crowding, jostling throng. Rhoda Burrows, the fairy-child of his boyish dreams, and Mrs. Herman Judson, the acme of self-pitying and self-petting selfishness, the same! It seemed impossible--yet--and here his big charity spoke--all of the choice spirit of the girl cannot have been swallowed up in the sordidness of a selfish, old age. And that same charity breathed upon the physician's soul till his helpful and hopeful interest for this pitiful wreck of wretchedness was aglow. He would give her his best, and he knew that best sometimes wrought wonders. Dr. Bond first had a conference with the niece, who was pure gold, and who accepted each of her aunt's complaints as a warning which could but disastrously be ignored. But, and this was good to know, he learned that when Aunt Rhoda was better, she was kind and good- hearted. From the nurse, the doctor learned other details, and what was of special significance, that the invalid's appetite rarely flagged-then he saw a reason for her one hundred and eighty pounds; and when he learned that rare broiled beef, or rare roast beef was served the physically inert patient and bountifully eaten twice each day, his understanding became active. Mrs. Judson's presiding fates were good to her the next week. She would have denied it with the sum total of her vehemence, which incidentally was some sum, but Dr. Bond says it is true. It was after eleven, one night. He was just finishing his day's writing. It was the nurse 'phoning. "I am truly sorry to call you, Doctor, but I've given three doses of the gall-stone medicine, and it always relieves unless a real attack is on. I am sure she is suffering." The old doctor was not surprised. The patient had been doing unusually well for two or three days and had spoken particularly of her better appetite. The doctor's first query, upon reaching the house, related to the details of the evening meal. "No, there was no steak to-night. We had chicken- salad. 'Lissie had tried herself; Mrs. Judson was hungry and asked for a second portion." Gently, carefully, thoroughly, the suffering woman was examined. There was no doubt that her pain was severe, but in conclusion, the old doctor did doubt decidedly the presence of gall-stones. He believed it to be duodenal colic. "I don't wish to give you a hypodermic," he told her. "I know it will relieve you quickly to-night, but it will set you back several days. I am going to ask you to be patient, and to take an unpleasant dose, and I think the nurse and I can relieve you completely within two hours, and you will be little the worse; in fact, you may be better, to-morrow." "She won't take it," the nurse said, as the doctor called her from the room. "Dr. Cummings suggested it once, and she held it against him for weeks. She said her mother whipped her when she was a child and then couldn't make her swallow it." "You will fix it as I tell you, then bring it in to me," the Doctor replied. Dubiously the nurse carried out the order. She thanked her stars that the Doctor, not she, was to give it. Yet it looked very nice when she brought it into the sick-room, redolent with lemon and peppermint. "Think of this, Mrs. Judson, as your best friend to-night in all the realm of medicine. Take it with my belief that it is to prove the cure of your gall-stones. It is not nice. It's not easy to swallow. Don't sip it. Take it all at a gulp." But she sipped it. And she screamed, not a scream of pain, but of rage, of violated dignity-insulted-outraged. "Castor oil! I'll die first. Why, that stuff isn't fit to give an animal. Are you trying to kill me I Oh, you old fogy! I knew something would happen when I let Dr. Cummings go. I wouldn't give such stuff to a sick cat." All symptoms of pain seemed gone for the time. Generous as he was, the old Doctor stiffened in the face of her tirade, yet with dignity, replied: "You are refusing a real help. I speak from long experience. I can give you nothing else till you have taken this." "Then go!" she snapped out. But the "o-o-o" was prolonged into a wail as a particularly pernicious jab in the midst of her duodenum-"a providential thrust," Dr. Bond said--doubled her up, if rotundity can be said to double. The Doctor was obdurate. Colic was trumps--and won! The first dose did not meet a hospitable reception, but another was promptly given. Then other nicer things were done and the Doctor was home and the patient comfortably asleep soon after one. The next day's conference between the two was strictly professional, nor was there much thawing till the third day after. Mrs. Judson's ire must have been of Celtic origin, for it was not long-lived. The following Sunday afternoon seemed propitious for the beneficent work of the soul-doctor. The whole family had told Mrs. Judson how much better she was looking-the Doctor had kept her on soft diet since her attack. "You have told me so little of yourself," said Dr. Bond. "I only know that sorrow came." He then told her of herself as she had lived in his memory. She had forgotten the beauty of her childhood. The Doctor brought back the picture in tones which could stand only for high reverence. She felt he wanted to know, and she knew she wanted to tell. So for two hours they sat, hand in hand, as in their childhood, and he heard of her father's moderate success as an editorial writer after he came West when she was nine, of their comfortable home in Detroit, how well she had done in school, of her early ability as a teacher, of her election as super-intendent of the St. Claire Academy for Girls when she was twenty-five, of her marriage to Herman Judson, a childless widower fifteen years her senior, before she was thirty, of their very happy home, of her own little girl and how she grew into womanhood, of her daughter's marriage, and then of tier little girl, and how wonderful it was to be a grandmother before she was fifty! Then it was "Nurse, the bottle for 'Tightness of breath'... I don't see how I can tell it. You can't know. Nobody can. It was never the same for any one else. The train went through a bridge, and they were all three killed, my husband, my only girl, the darling grandchild. God turned His face away that night they brought them home. I've never seen Him since. I've never looked for Him since. I don't see how I kept my mind. Something snapped inside. I couldn't go to the funeral, and while I brought my sister home to live with me, and after she died, have done the best I could to raise Irma, her child, and Irma's tried, I know, to be a daughter to me, yet I've always been so lonely, so wretched and miserable and sick. I haven't anything to live for-but I'm afraid to die." Then began the cheapening catalog of the nearly twenty years of illness, her weak and sensitive spine, her constant difficulty in breathing, and the eternal thumping of her heart. And on and on, the list so old to Dr. Bond's ears, so commonly heard in the experience of helpers of the nervous sick-as usual to the nerve-specialist as the inflamed appendix to the modern surgeon--yet in the mind of every nerve-sufferer so unique, so individual, so different. But of all the long, two-hour story, one short sentence stood out, eloquent in the doctor's mind, "I haven't anything to live for, yet I'm afraid to die." He gently thanked her. He had felt with her in the recital of her great sorrow, and she knew he had suffered in her suffering. "You can get well. You can find something worth living for, and you can lose your fear of death, if you will pay the price." For the moment she misunderstood. "Why, Doctor, I would gladly give thousands for health." Again, gently, "Your dollars are worthless. You are poor in the gold which will buy your restoration. I shall tell you about it Wednesday if you want to know." On both Monday and Tuesday visits her curiosity prompted her to refer to the great cure Dr. Bond mentioned. But it was Wednesday afternoon before he spoke seriously. "You were very ill last week--such illnesses have frequently proved fatal to life, when ignorantly managed. But as I see you to-day, knowing your radiant childhood, and the good fortune which was yours for years, and the heart-tearing shock which came so cruelly, I see a sickness more dire and fatal than any for which you have ever yet been treated. The beauty and youth and charity of your spirit are mortally ill. I see your soul an emaciated remnant, a skeleton of its possible self. It threatens to die before your body. Selfish sorrow has infected and permeated your once lovely, better self, and to-day you have no true goodness left. You are good to others that they may be better to you. You are generous with your means-a generosity which costs you no sacrifice, that you may buy back the generosity without which you could not live. Four useful lives are emptying the best of their strength, ability and love into years of service that you may know a poor, low-grade, selfish, physical comfort. You are taking from them and others consideration, self-sacrifice, loyalty, unstinted devotion, and giving in return only ungrateful dollars. You are rich in these, but poorer than Lazarus in the least of the qualities which make life worth living a day, which keep Death from being a haunting terror. You have not one physical symptom of your endless catalog which cannot be removed if you meet the blessings half-way which discomforts offer." It couldn't have been what Dr. Bond said--it must have been what he was himself that made those unwelcome, humiliating truths carry conviction, win confidence, and waken hope. Possibly his last sentence helped her decision--his serious confidence in his ability to remove those terrifying, ever impending threats of physical anguish. At any rate, she gave her promise-for six months she would implicitly follow his instruction, with the understanding that if she did not see herself better at the end of four months, she was to be released from further treatment. It would be a long story, a story of remarkable medical finesse; it would be describing the work of an artist--for such was Dr. Bond as he turned bodies from sickness to health and souls from perdition to salvation. But victory came! In six weeks, the invalid was walking. In six months she was walking three miles a day. She was eating, bathing, sleeping and working more like a woman under sixty than one nearing seventy. She spent the summer with the doctor's people in their bungalow on Lake Huron. She now gave of her means thoughtfully, with growing unselfishness, and soon after she began to look up and out there came the peace within, so long a stranger. And she told Dr. Bond, simply, one day, that God had come back to her, and he as simply replied: "You have come back to God." That winter, Dr. Bond spent in the East. One day the expressman brought a package--some books he had always loved, in remarkable bindings, and this note: "My best Friend: "To-day I am seventy. I haven't been so young since sorrow was sent to prove me, nor more happy since I nursed your hurt arm when we were children. I walked down town, two miles you know, and back, and a mile in the stores, I am sure, to find these books you love, in bindings worthy your better enjoyment of them. All that you have promised has come to me. God bless you!" CHAPTER XXIII THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONY When man "conceives his superpower, his miraculous power to meet disaster, and in it to find profit; to face defeat after defeat and therein acquire faith in his own permanence; to live for years within a frail, defective body, with a mind unable to respond to the promptings of ambition and inspiration, and thereby take on the greatness of gentleness-the conviction comes clear, a conviction which will not comfortably stay put aside, that life is intended to develop a noble self." What could be more beautiful to senses that thrill with love than this pink-cheeked, azure-eyed babe, whose golden ringlets promise the glorious crown, the unfading beauty of her womanhood? She was hardly a month old, yet she seemed to understand--Mammy Lou said she did-that she must look her "beau'fulest"; so when her father came and bent over her little crib, she smiled, then coyly ducked her wobbly head, to smile again at Mother, the dear mother who only to-day had been allowed by the doctor to sit up for an hour. Mammy Lou must have been right, for there Baby lay playing with her fingers and the disappointed pink ribbons of her booties, while, now and then, when the discussion was specially serious, she would look soberly at her earnest-faced parents till they both would notice, and laugh. Then her little understanding smile-and some more play. It was an important conference. Considerations affecting Baby's future were in the balance, and, as she gave such perfect attention and never interrupted, and insisted on every one keeping good-natured, Mammy Lou's assertion that "Dat lil' sweetness' stood every word her pa an' ma said. She knew dey's findin' her a name," cannot be successfully disputed. The Southards had been married twelve years. Georgia was eight, and Etta five. It must be a boy--one who would pass on the Southard name and traditions. The first Earl of Minto had contributed some nobleness of blood to the Southard stock, and the father had set his heart on a boy who should feel the double inspiration of "Minto Southard," to help make him fine and great. A "girl"! And business took the father away for a fortnight. It was rumored that he drowned his disappointment in Charleston-but not in the Bay. He did not fully realize that the brave wife was gravely ill, until his return. Then he was devoted and tender. They had made no plans for a little girl; so she was nearly a month old and was still being called "Sweetness" by Mammy Lou, and "The Baby" by others, and to-day, while Mother first sat up, her name was to be decided. "Why, Father, dear, no girl was ever called that. I think it would be all right for a boy, but she's such a dainty little thing, and I'm sure it will always seem odd to her." "What would you like better, Mater? I don't wish to contend or to be unduly insistent, but you know I have looked forward to having the Earl's name in the family, and, personally, I think it has the attraction of uniqueness, as well as the flavor of distinction. Then, you remember, you suggested the names for the other girls. I know you are thinking of her future and fear an odd name may make her unhappy, some time. But we can, we should, teach her to be proud of so distinguished an association. My personal desire is very strong, and I can't think of any other name which will satisfy me nearly as well." Just then Baby looked at her mother, smiled and gurgled something which was intelligible to mother-ears, and the wife's hand slipped into the husband's, and the baby was named Minta Southard. Where could a new baby have found a more perfect setting for her childhood and girlhood? The plantation lay on both sides of the Catawba River-fresh and crystal clear those days, as it sped down from mountains to sea-fertile, fruitful acres there were, which never failed to bring forth manyfold. Three times in as many generations, the Manor House, as the rambling southern home had always been called, had been enlarged, but nothing was ever done which lessened the dignity lent by its fine colonial portico, the artistic columns of which could be seen miles down the river-road. The Manor House was good to see in its rare setting of stately water-oaks, now in their full maturity. For four years little Minta thrived and gave promise of bringing many joys to this home which knew no shadow but the father's periodic "business trips" to Charleston. Mammy Lou was her slave, and even Georgia, who had her own way so much that she was far from unselfish, asked, at times, to "take care" of her dainty sister, and would let her play with some of her things without protest. Then the fever! "Typhoid," the doctor said, "affecting her brain." Father, Mother and Mammy Lou took turns being with her those long, hot weeks, when it forgot to rain and the refreshing sea-breeze was cruelly withheld. Doctors from Charlotte, doctors from Charleston and doctors from Atlanta came, to look grave, to shake their learned heads, and to sadly leave, offering no hopeful change in treatment. The fever was prolonged over five weeks, and the child seemed more lifeless each day as it left her drained and damaged-drained and damaged for life it proved. So slowly her shadowy form gained, that a single week was too short to evidence improvement. Six months, and she was not yet walking. One year, and she was still fragile. Then, in a month, normal childhood apparently slipped back, and she began to play and be merry. Of course "Sweetness" was spoiled--and an autocrat she was, her mother, only, denying herself the indulgence of being her subject. Mother, however, was lovingly tactful, and exercised the discipline she believed necessary for her child's good most wisely. And Mother's memory has ever remained a hallowed one. Mammy Lou did much to discredit all of the mother's conscientious care. For so long the poor child "couldn't eat no thin'," and when at last Minta's appetite returned, her loving black nurse would give her anything she wanted, and if the fever hadn't hopelessly damaged the little one's digestive glands, Mammy Lou's unfailing "l'il snacks for her honey-chile" would have completed the wreckage. At first the trouble was not noticed. Minta rarely spoke of suffering. She would be found lying with her face from the light, and would always reply that she was "tired playing," sometimes only, "my head hurts." The parents thought she did play too hard, for she was developing into an intense little miss, who entered into whatever she was doing with more than blue-eyed zest, those blue eyes which snapped blue-black when her will was crossed. The girls all had their early teaching at home, so when Minta was thirteen, Miss Allison came from Washington to spend a year, as tutor, to prepare her for school the next fall. That was the year Georgia ran away. She had been visiting in Savannah several weeks, when she disappeared, leaving a hurried note to her friends, stating that she would write her people from New York, and begging them not to worry about her. The note from New York was thoughtlessly written. She was probably frightened by what she had done. She was safe in New York with Randolph, where they would be for ten days. She was sorry. Would they forgive her? She knew she had done wrong. Write her at --- East Fourteenth Street, where they were boarding. The outraged father called the two girls and their mother into his office, and read them Georgia's letter, then tore it into bits. "Your sister's name is never to be mentioned again in this house. She has brought the first dishonor to the Southard name in America. She is disowned, and may she be swallowed up in her own disgrace." Nothing had ever so impressed Minta as her father's face that day. A primitive savagery spoke, intensified by the refinements of Cavalier blood. No one dared utter a word of protest. He was implacable as adamant, they all knew. Mr. Southard was never the same. Some of his genial tenderness was lost forever, and the family lived on with the unmentionable name ever before them, like a grave which was never to be filled. The father was away much more the following year. He never drank at home. And, after his death, it was found that he had gambled away many thousands-all of Georgia's part. Thus a father's pride of family met a daughter's impulse. The little mother, never strong, always patient and devoted and lovable, seemed unable to rise above the shame and the sorrow of it all, and could give less and less to Minta, who now found in Miss Allison and Mammy Lou her most potent influences. Miss Allison was worthy the responsibility and probably did much to decide the girl's future. She had studied art, and had hoped to spend years abroad. Financial disappointments had made this impossible. But her imaginative pupil loved the art of which she spoke so often, and begged to be taught to sketch. She early showed unusual skill and the promise of talent; still the father would not consider her going North with Miss Allison to school. Yet the seeds had been sown and an artist she was to be. But the cost! Two years she spent at Converse College. During the second summer- vacation her father died, and as her mother's heart was gradually weakening, Minta stayed at home the following year. A few weeks before the dear mother slipped away, she talked with Minta about the older sister, dutifully avoiding the mention of her name. "I have never felt right about the way we treated her," she said. "Some time when you are older, won't you try to find her and help her?" The Cavalier was in the younger daughter too. "I certainly think she has caused unhappiness enough. She made our home a different place, and she shortened Father's life. I can't forgive her." "But, Daughter, we don't know. There may have been some mistake." Minta was decided. "She no longer belongs to the Southard family. Father was right." The mother did not insist, and only said, "She, too, is my child. She is of your blood. We should forgive." Her mother was with her but a few weeks after this conversation. And, within two months after her funeral, an attack of pneumonia robbed Minta's already frail body of strength which might have come at that developing age. Much of the next eighteen months she spent in bed. It was then decided that she consult a friend of her father's, a city physician. Unfortunately, this ambitious surgeon had been but a convivial friend. His professional development had reached only the "operation" stage. Surgery to him was a panacea, and the operation, which he promised to be her saving, was to be her tragedy. She did not know till two years later that she had been robbed of her birthright. Her headaches, far from being helped, were even worse, now blinding and exhausting. She at last went East to a world-renowned specialist who undid, as far as his great skill could, the damage of the first operation, and who, great man that he was, had time not only to operate but to comprehend. His cultivated instincts led him directly to an intimacy with his patient's idealisms, and he was one to whom every right-souled sufferer could trust his deepest confidence without reserve. "I fear, little girl, your ambitions are only for those of unquestioned strength. You are but a pigmy. Certain organs, essential to the conversion of food into energy, were injured beyond all repair in your first illness. Other damage which neither time nor skill can make good was inflicted by your first operation. Your eyes are entirely inadequate for the merciless exactions of a life of art. You are at best but a delicate hot-house plant-beyond human power to develop into sufficient hardiness to be transplanted into the world of Bohemia, or into much of any world save a sheltered one. You can never be more than a semi-invalid." This sentence the great doctor pronounced only after his own opinion had been re-enforced by a conference of experts. And every word was true, as far as he and the experts had investigated. But there was the spirit of a Cavalier with which they had not reckoned. "I'll not have it so. Life, the life that you give me, isn't worth living. I shall have my two years in Europe with my art, if it takes all those other years you say I can have by saving myself." And she had them! One year first in New York in preparation, then two years in Rome. Three weeks she worked; one week she suffered. And how wonderfully she did suffer! She had been warned of the danger of drug- relief. And when doctors came and began filling their hypodermic syringes, her indignation blazed up. "If that's all you have for me, you needn't come. I could give that to myself." She learned that quiet and darkness, and, it seemed, fasting, dulled the edge of the pain and shortened its duration, and that nothing else did as much. There was another art student in Rome-a fine, poor American who, too, was studying art because he loved it. How they could have helped each other! They both knew it. It was as natural as life, after they had worked together a few months, for him to ask if she could wait while he earned, and made a name. She knew that waiting was not necessary; that she had plenty for them both and that she could help him, as few others, to more quickly win the fame which he was sure to attain. And she knew, too, that she could not so love another-there was never a doubt of that. But this time love was bitterly cruel. It came in all its affection and beauty only to sear and rend. She "must not marry," the great surgeon had told her. So gently and fatherly he had said it, that she did not realize its full import till now. Husbandless, childless, a chronic, incurable sufferer, she must tread the wine- press alone! The man had gone. She could give him no reason. She could not remember what she said to him. The world went black, and consciousness fled. For weeks she lay in an Italian hospital. Etta and her husband came, and the only rational words they could hear were her pleadings to be taken back to Dr. Kingsley. Somehow the trip was made. But it was a desperately sick girl, the mere shell of a life, that they returned to America. It was weeks before she realized where she was and other weeks before she was able to tell Dr. Kingsley so that he could understand it all--not only of sorrow's final revelation, but this time, what she had not mentioned before, of Georgia--the family disgrace. She did not know the wonderful power of Christian counsel and ideals to save from the so- often misinterpreted sufferings of wrong spiritual adjustments. She had not realized the healing power of the love of God expressed in the lives of good men and women, and how it can sweeten the bitterness and dissipate even the paralyzing loneliness of an impossible human love. Dr. Kingsley's eyes had welled with tears when she told the story of Georgia. How impellingly gentle was his voice when he said, "You'll forgive her now, I know." Forgive her! What else to do, when he made it so noble and beautiful and right. So when she was strong enough, she began looking for the sister who had so complicated the years, and, through an old school-friend, traced her to a little flat. And it was even as her mother had thought. Georgia had married, "beneath the family," she told Minta, the Georgia who was too proud to ever write again. She was living in Brooklyn, the wife of Randolph, an assistant engineer on an ocean steamship. And Etta came to visit Georgia, and a great load, a load of which she had, through the years, been unconscious, slipped away as Minta let go her enmity. "In all things," she said to Dr. Kingsley, "I am your obedient patient-all things but one. I will work, and I shall work." And she does work. No one understands how. Seventy-odd pounds of frailty, with eyes which are ever resentful of the use to which she puts them; with the recurrence of suffering which wrings every ounce of physical strength, which for days holds her mind writhing as on the rack, which tortures her to physical and mental surrender, but which, through the lengthening years, has been impotent to daunt her regal spirit. And she gives, gives on through the days of relative comfort, gives of her cheer which comes from, no one knows where; gives, spontaneously, kindness which has multiplied her lovers, both men and women; and gives of her ability which is unquestioned. There are a few publishers who know her skill. There is a touch of pathos in all she draws, pathos-never bitterness, never ugliness-always the breath of beauty. Minta Southard, hopelessly defective in what we call health, has triumphed through the harmony of a brave adjustment to her pitiless limitations-a harmony realized by few, even though rich, in resource of mind, powerful, in reserve of body. Can we ignore the omnipotence of the spiritual? 
39044	----	Advice to the people _ADVICE_ __to the__ _PEOPLE_ in __General__, __with__ Regard to their __Health__: But more particularly calculated for those, who, by their Distance from regular Physicians, or other very experienced Practitioners, are the most unlikely to be seasonably provided with the best Advice and Assistance, in acute Diseases, or upon any sudden inward or outward Accident. _WITH_ A Table of the most cheap, yet effectual Remedies, and the plainest Directions for preparing them readily. Translated from the _French_ Edition of Dr. __Tissot's__ _Avis au Peuple_, &c. Printed at _Lyons_; with all his own Notes; a few of his medical Editor's at _Lyons_; and several occasional Notes, adapted to this _English_ Translation, By J. _Kirkpatrick_, M. D. _In the Multitude of the People is the Honour of a King; and for the Want of People cometh the Destruction of the Prince._ Proverbs xiv, 28. ----------------------------------------------------------------- __LONDON:__ Printed for T. _Becket_ and P. A. _De Hondt_, at _Tully's_ Head, near _Surry-Street_, in the _Strand_. M DCC LXV. _the Translator's_ PREFACE. Though the great Utility of those medical Directions, with which the following Treatise is thoroughly replenished, will be sufficiently evident to every plain and sensible Peruser of it; and the extraordinary Reception of it on the Continent is recited in the very worthy Author's Preface; yet something, it should seem, may be pertinently added, with Regard to this Translation of it, by a Person who has been strictly attentive to the Original: a Work, whose Purpose was truly necessary and benevolent; as the Execution of it, altogether, is very happily accomplished. It will be self evident, I apprehend, to every excellent Physician, that a radical Knowledge of the Principles, and much Experience in the Exercise, of their Profession, were necessary to accommodate such a Work to the Comprehension of those, for whom it was more particularly calculated. Such Gentlemen must observe, that the certain Axiom of _Nature's curing Diseases_, which is equally true in our Day, as it was in that of _Hippocrates_, so habitually animates this Treatise, as not to require the least particular Reference. This _Hippocratic_ Truth as certain (though much less subject to general Observation) as that Disease, or Age, is finally prevalent over all sublunary Life, the most attentive Physicians discern the soonest, the most ingenuous readily confess: and hence springs that wholesome Zeal and Severity, with which Dr. _Tissot_ encounters such Prejudices of poor illiterate Persons, as either oppose, or very ignorantly precipitate, her Operations, in her Attainment of Health. These Prejudices indeed may seem, from this Work, to be still greater, and perhaps grosser too, in _Swisserland_ than among ourselves; though it is certain there is but too much Room for the Application of his salutary Cautions and Directions, even in this Capital; and doubtless abundantly more at great Distances from it. It may be very justly supposed, for _one_ Instance, that in most of those Cases in the Small Pocks, in which the Mother undertakes the Cure of her Child, or confides it to a Nurse, that Saffron, in a greater or less Quantity, and Sack or Mountain Whey, are generally still used in the Sickening before Eruption; to accelerate that very Eruption, whose gradual Appearance, about the fourth Day, from that of Seizure inclusive, is so favourable and promising to the Patient; and the Precipitation of which is often so highly pernicious to them. Most of, or rather all, his other Cautions and Corrections seem equally necessary here, as often as the Sick are similarly circumstanced, under the different acute Diseases in which he enjoins them. Without the least Detraction however from this excellent Physician, it may be admitted that a few others, in many other Countries, might have sufficient Abilities and Experience for the Production of a like Work, on the same good Plan. This, we find, Dr. _Hirzel_, principal Physician of _Zurich_, had in Meditation, when the present Treatise appeared, which he thought had so thoroughly fulfilled his own Intention, that it prevented his attempting to execute it. But the great Difficulty consisted in discovering a Physician, who, with equal Abilities, Reputation and Practice, should be qualified with that _much rarer_ Qualification of caring so much more for the Health of those, who could never pay him for it, than for his own Profit or Ease, as to determine him to project and to accomplish so necessary, and yet so self-denying, a Work. For as the Simplicity he proposed in the Style and Manner of it, by condescending, in the plainest Terms, to the humblest Capacities, obliged him to depress himself, by writing rather beneath the former Treatises, which had acquired him the Reputation of medical Erudition, Reasoning and Elegance; we find that the Love of Fame itself, so stimulating even to many ingenuous Minds, was as impotent as that of Wealth, to seduce him from so benign, so generous a Purpose. Though, upon Reflection, it is by no Means strange to see wise Men found their Happiness, which all [however variously and even oppositely] pursue, rather in Conscience, than on Applause; and this naturally reminds us of that celebrated Expression of _Cato_, or some other excellent Ancient, "that he had rather _be_ good, than _be reputed_ so." However singular such a Determination may now appear, the Number of reputable medical Translators into different Languages, which this original Work has employed on the Continent, makes it evident, that real Merit will, sooner or later, have a pretty general Influence; and induce many to imitate that Example, which they either could not, or did not, propose. As the truly modest Author has professedly disclaimed all Applause on the Performance, and contented himself with hoping an Exemption from Censure, through his Readers' Reflection on the peculiar Circumstances and Address of it; well may his best, his faithfullest Translators, whose Merit and Pains must be of a very secondary Degree to his own, be satisfied with a similar Exemption: especially when joined to the Pleasure, that must result from a Consciousness of having endeavoured to extend the Benefits of their Author's Treatise, to Multitudes of their own Country and Language. For my own Particular, when after reading the Introduction to the Work, and much of the Sequel, I had determined to translate it; to be as just as possible to the Author, and to his _English_ Readers, I determined not to interpolate any Sentiment of my own into the Text, nor to omit one Sentence of the Original, which, besides its being _Detraction_ in its literal Sense, I thought might imply it in its worst, its figurative one; for which there was no Room. To conform as fully as possible to the Plainness and Perspicuity he proposed, I have been pretty often obliged in the anatomical Names of some Parts, and sometimes of the Symptoms, as well as in some pretty familiar, though not entirely popular Words, to explain all such by the most common Words I have heard used for them; as after mentioning the _Diaphragm_, to add, or _Midriff_--the _Trachæa_--or _Windpipe_--_acrimonious_, or _very sharp_, and so of many others. This may a little, though but a little, have extended the Translation beyond the Original; as the great Affinity between the _French_ and _Latin_, and between the former and many _Latin_ Words borrowed from the _Greek_, generally makes the same anatomical or medical Term, that is technical with us, vernacular or common with them. But this unavoidable Tautology, which may be irksome to many Ears, those medical Readers, for whom it was not intended, will readily forgive, from a Consideration of the general Address of the Work: while they reflect that meer Style, if thoroughly intelligible, is least essential to those Books, which wholly consist of very useful, and generally interesting, Matter. As many of the Notes of the Editor of _Lyons_, as I have retained in this Version (having translated from the Edition of _Lyons_) are subscribed _E. L._ I have dispensed with several, some, as evidently less within Dr. _Tissot's_ Plan, from tending to theorize, however justly or practically, where he must have had his own Reasons for omitting to theorize: a few others, as manifestly needless, from what the Author had either premised, or speedily subjoined, on the very same Circumstance: besides a very few, from their local Confinement to the Practice at _Lyons_, which lies in a Climate somewhat more different from our own than that of _Lausanne_. It is probable nevertheless, I have retained a few more than were necessary in a professed Translation of the original Work: but wherever I have done this, I have generally subjoined my Motive for it; of whatever Consequence that may appear to the Reader. I have retained all the Author's own Notes, with his Name annexed to them; or if ever the Annotator was uncertain to me, I have declared whose Note I supposed it to be. Such as I have added from my own Experience or Observation are subscribed _K_, to distinguish them from the others; and that the Demerit of any of them may neither be imputed to the learned Author, nor to his Editor. Their principal Recommendation, or Apology is, that whatever Facts I have mentioned are certainly true. I have endeavoured to be temperate in their Number and Length, and to imitate that strict Pertinence, which prevails throughout the Author's Work. If any may have ever condescended to consider my Way of writing, they will conceive this Restraint has cost me at least as much Pains, as a further Indulgence of my own Conceptions could have done. The few Prescriptions I have included in some of them, have been so conducted, as not to give the Reader the least Confusion with Respect to those, which the Author has given in his Table of Remedies, and which are referred to by numerical Figures, throughout the Course of his Book. The moderate Number of Dr. _Tissot's_ Prescriptions, in his Table of Remedies, amounting but to seventy-one, and the apparent Simplicity of many of them, may possibly disgust some Admirers of pompous and compound Prescription. But his Reserve, in this important Respect, has been thoroughly consistent with his Notion of Nature's curing Diseases; which suggested to him the first, the essential Necessity of cautioning his Readers against doing, giving, or applying any thing, that might oppose her healing Operations (a most capital Purpose of his Work) which important Point being gained, the mildest, simplest and least hazardous Remedies would often prove sufficient Assistants to her. Nevertheless, under more severe and tedious Conflicts, he is not wanting to direct the most potent and efficacious ones. The Circumstances of the poor Subjects of his medical Consideration, became also a very natural Object to him, and was in no wise unworthy the Regard of the humane Translator of _Bilguer on Amputations_, or rather _against_ the crying Abuse of them; an excellent Work, that does real Honour to them both; and which can be disapproved by none, who do not prefer the frequently unnecessary Mutilation of the afflicted, to the Consumption of their own Time, or the Contraction of their Employment. Some Persons may imagine that a Treatise of this Kind, composed for the Benefit of labouring People in _Swisserland_, may be little applicable to those of the _British_ Islands: and this, in a very few Particulars, and in a small Degree, may reasonably be admitted. But as we find their common Prejudices are often the very same; as the _Swiss_ are the Inhabitants of a colder Climate than _France_, and generally, as Dr. _Tissot_ often observes, accustomed to drink (like ourselves) more strong Drink than the _French_ Peasantry; and to indulge more in eating Flesh too, which the Religion of _Berne_, like our own, does not restrain; the Application of his Advice to them will pretty generally hold good here. Where he forbids them Wine and Flesh, all Butchers Meat, and in most Cases all Flesh, and all strong Drink should be prohibited here: especially when we consider, that all his Directions are confined to the Treatment of acute Diseases, of which the very young, the youthful, and frequently even the robust are more generally the Subjects. Besides, in some few of the _English_ Translator's Notes, he has taken the Liberty of moderating the Coolers, or the Quantities of them (which may be well adapted to the great Heats and violent _Swiss_ Summers he talks of) according to the Temperature of our own Climate, and the general Habitudes of our own People. It may be observed too, that from the same Motive, I have sometimes assumed the Liberty of dissenting from the Text in a very few Notes, as for Instance, on the Article of Pastry, which perhaps is generally better here than in _Swisserland_ (where it may be no better than the coarse vile Trash that is hawked about and sold to meer Children) as I have frequently, in preparing for Inoculation, admitted the best Pastry (but not of Meat) into the limited Diet of the Subjects of Inoculation, and constantly without the least ill Consequence. Thus also in Note [70] Page 287, 288, I have presumed to affirm the Fact, that a strong spirituous Infusion of the Bark has succeeded more speedily in some Intermittents, in particular Habits, than the Bark in Substance. This I humbly conceive may be owing to such a _Menstruum's_ extracting the Resin of the Bark more effectually (and so conveying it into the Blood) than the Juices of the Stomach and of the alimentary Canal did, or could. For it is very conceivable that the _Crasis_, the Consistence, of the fibrous Blood may sometimes be affected with a morbid Laxity or Weakness, as well as the general System of the muscular Fibres. These and any other like Freedoms, I am certain the Author's Candour will abundantly pardon; since I have never dissented for Dissention's Sake, to the best of my Recollection; and have the Honour of harmonizing very generally in Judgment with him. If _one_ useful Hint or Observation occurs throughout my Notes, his Benevolence will exult in that essential Adherence to his Plan, which suggested it to me: While an invariable ecchoing Assentation throughout such Notes, when there really was any salutary Room for doubting, or for adding (with Respect to ourselves) would discover a Servility, that must have disgusted a liberal manly Writer. One common good Purpose certainly springs from the generous Source, and replenishes the many Canals into which it is derived; all the Variety and little Deviations of which may be considered as more expansive Distributions of its Benefits. Since the natural Feelings of Humanity generally dispose us, but especially the more tender and compassionate Sex, to advise Remedies to the poor Sick; such a Knowledge of their real Disease, as would prevent their Patrons, Neighbours and Assistants from advising a wrong Regimen, or an improper or ill-timed Medicine, is truly essential to relieving them: and such we seriously think the present Work is capable of imparting, to all commonly sensible and considerate Perusers of it. A Vein of unaffected Probity, of manly Sense, and of great Philanthropy, concur to sustain the Work: And whenever the Prejudices of the Ignorant require a forcible Eradication; or the crude Temerity and Impudence of Knaves and Impostors cry out for their own Extermination, a happy Mixture of strong Argument, just Ridicule, and honest Severity, give a poignant and pleasant Seasoning to the Work, which renders it occasionally entertaining, as it is continually instructive. A general Reader may be sometimes diverted with such Customs and Notions of the _Swiss_ Peasants, as are occasionally mentioned here: and possibly our meerest Rustics may laugh at the brave simple _Swiss_, on his introducing a Sheep into the Chamber of a very sick Person, to save the Life of the Patient, by catching its own Death. But the humblest Peasantry of both Nations are agreed in such a Number of their absurd unhealthy Prejudices, in the Treatment of Diseases, that it really seemed necessary to offer our own the Cautions and Counsels of this principal Physician, in a very respectable Protestant Republick, in Order to prevent their Continuance. Nor is it unreasonable to presume, that under such a Form of Government, if honestly administered upon its justest Principles, the People may be rather more tenderly regarded, than under the Pomp and Rage of Despotism, or the Oppression of some Aristocracies. Besides the different Conditions of [1] Persons, to whom our Author recommends the Patronage and Execution of his Scheme, in his Introduction, it is conceived this Book must be serviceable to many young Country Practitioners, and to great Numbers of Apothecaries, by furnishing them with such exact and striking Descriptions of each acute Disease and its Symptoms, as may prevent their mistaking it for any other; a Deception which has certainly often been injurious, and sometimes even fatal: for it is dreadful but to contemplate the Destruction or Misery, with which Temerity and Ignorance, so frequently combined, overwhelm the Sick. Thus more Success and Reputation, with the Enjoyment of a better Conscience, would crown their Endeavours, by a more general Recovery of, or Relief to, their Patients. To effect this, to improve every Opportunity of eschewing medical Evil, and of doing medical Good, was the Author's avowed Intention; which he informs us in his Preface, he has heard, from some intelligent and charitable Persons, his Treatise had effected, even in some violent Diseases. That the same good Consequences may every where attend the numerous Translations of it, must be the fervent Wish of all, except the Quacks and Impostors he so justly characterizes in his thirty-third Chapter! and particularly of all, who may be distinguishably qualified, like himself, to, --_Look through Nature up to Nature's GOD!_ [1] Of all these the Schoolmasters, _with us_, may seem the most reasonably exempted from this Duty. The AUTHOR's _DEDICATION._ _To the most Illustrious, the most Noble and Magnificent Lords, the Lords President and Counsellors of the Chamber of Health, of the City and Republick of_ Berne. _Most honourable Lords_, When I first published the following Work, my utmost Partiality to it was not sufficient to allow me the Confidence of addressing it to Your Lordships. But Your continual Attention to all the Objects, which have any Relation to that important Part of the Administration of the State, which has been so wisely committed to Your Care, has induced You to take Notice of it. You have been pleased to judge it might prove useful, and that an Attempt must be laudable, which tends to the Extermination of erroneous and inveterate Prejudices, those cruel Tyrants, that are continually opposing the Happiness of the People, even under that Form and Constitution of Government, which is the best adapted to establish and to increase it. Your Lordships Approbation, and the splendid Marks of [2] Benevolence, with which You have honoured me, have afforded me a juster Discernment of the Importance of this Treatise, and have inclined me to hope, _most Illustrious, most Noble, and Magnificent Lords_, that You will permit this new Edition of it to appear under the Sanction of your Auspices; that while the Publick is assured of Your general Goodness and Beneficence, it may also be informed of my profoundly grateful Sense of them, on the same Occasion. [2] See the Author's Preface, immediately following this Dedication. May the present Endeavour then, in fully corresponding to my Wishes, effectually realize Your Lordships utmost Expectations from it; while You condescend to accept this small Oblation, as a very unequal Expression of that profound Respect, with which I have the Honour to be, _Most Illustrious, Most Noble, and Magnificent Lords,_ _Your most humble_ _And most_ _Obedient Servant_, _TISSOT._ _Lausanne_, _Dec. 3, 1762._ THE AUTHOR's _PREFACE._ _If Vanity too often disposes many to speak of themselves, there are some Occasions, on which a total Silence might be supposed to result from a still higher Degree of it: And the very general Reception of the *Advice to the People* has been such, that there would be Room to suspect me of that most shocking Kind of Pride, which receives Applause with Indifference (as deeming its own Merit Superior to the greatest) if I did not appear to be strongly impressed with a just Sense of that great Favour of the Publick, which has been so very obliging, and is so highly agreable, to me._ _Unfeignedly affected with the unhappy Situation of the poor Sick in Country Places in *Swisserland*, where they are lost from a Scarcity of the best Assistance, and from a fatal Superfluity of the worst, my sole Purpose in writing this Treatise has been to serve, and to comfort them. I had intended it only for a small Extent of Country, with a moderate Number of Inhabitants; and was greatly surprized to find, that within five or six Months after its Publication, it was become one of the most extensively published Books in *Europe*; and one of those Treatises, on a scientific Subject, which has been perused by the greatest Number of Readers of all Ranks and Conditions. To consider such Success with Indifference, were to have been unworthy of it, which Demerit, at least on this Account, I cannot justly be charged with; since Indifference has not been my Case, who have felt, as I ought, this Gratification of Self-love; and which, under just and prudent Restrictions, may perhaps be even politically cherished; as the Delight naturally arising from having been approved, is a Source of that laudable Emulation, which has sometimes produced the most essential good Consequences to Society itself. For my own particular, I can truly aver, that my Satisfaction has been exquisitely heightened on this Occasion, as a Lover of my Species: since judging from the Success of this Work (a Success which has exceeded my utmost Expectations) of the Effects that may reasonably be expected from it, I am happily conscious of that Satisfaction, or even Joy, which every truly honest Man must receive, from rendering essential good Offices to others. Besides which, I have enjoyed, in its utmost Extent, that Satisfaction which every grateful Man must receive from the Approbation and Beneficence of his Sovereign, when I was distinguished with the precious Medal, which the illustrious Chamber of Health of the Republick of Berne honoured me with, a few Months after the Publication of this Treatise; together with a Letter still more estimable, as it assured me of the extraordinary Satisfaction the Republick had testified on the Impression of it; a Circumstance, which I could not avoid this publick Acknowledgement of, without the greatest Vanity and Ingratitude. This has also been a very influencing Motive with me, to exert my utmost Abilities in perfecting this new Edition, in which I have made many Alterations, that render it greatly preferable to the first; and of which Amendments I shall give a brief Account, after saying somewhat of the Editions, which have appeared elsewhere._ _The first is that, which Messrs. *Heidegger*, the Booksellers published in the *German* Language at *Zurich*, about a Year since. I should have been highly delighted with the meer Approbation of *__M. Hirzel__*, first Physician of the Canton of *Zurich, &c.* whose superior and universal Talents; whose profound Knowledge in the Theory of Physick; and the Extent and Success of whose Practice have justly elevated him among the small Number of extraordinary Men of our own Times; he having lately obtained the Esteem and the Thanks of all *Europe,* for the History of one of her [3] Sages. But I little expected the Honour this Gentleman has done me, in translating the *Advice to the People* into his own Language. Highly sensible nevertheless as I am of this Honour, I must always reflect with Regret, that he has consumed that important Time, in rendering my Directions intelligible to his Countrymen, which he might have employed much more usefully, in obliging the World with his own._ _He has enriched his Translation with an excellent Preface, which is chiefly employed in a just and beautiful Portrait and Contrast of the true, and of the false Physician; with which I should have done myself the Pleasure to have adorned the present [4] Edition; if the Size of this Volume, already too large, had not proved an Obstacle to so considerable an Addition; and if the Manner, in which *Mr.* *__Hirzel__* speaks of its Author, had permitted me with Decency to publish his Preface. I have been informed by some Letters, that there have been two other *German* Translation of it; but I am not informed by whom. However, *__M. Hirzel's__* Preface, his own Notes, and some Additions with which I have furnished him, renders his Edition preferable to the first in *French*, and to the other *German* Translations already made._ [3] _Le Socrate rustique_, a Work, which every Person should read. [4] This Preface is indeed premised to this _French_ Edition, but a Translation of it was omitted, to avoid extending the Bulk and Price of the Work. Dr. _Tissot_ must then have been ignorant of this Addition, when first published at _Lyons_. _The Second Edition is that, which the younger *__Didot__*, the Bookseller, published towards the End of the Winter at *Paris*. He had requested me to furnish him with some Additions to it, which I could not readily comply with._ _The Third Edition is a *Dutch* Translation of it, which will be very speedily published by *__M. Renier Aremberg__*, Bookseller at *Rotterdam*. He had begun the Translation from my first Edition; but having wrote to know whether I had not some Additions to make, I desired him to wait for the Publication of this. I have the good Fortune to be very happy in my Translators; it being *__M. Bikker__*, a celebrated Physician at *Rotterdam* (so very advantagiously known in other Countries, by his beautiful *Dissertation on Human Nature*, throughout which Genius and Knowledge proceed Hand in Hand) who will present his Countrymen with the *Advice to the People*, in their own Language: and who will improve it with such Notes, as are necessary for a safe and proper Application of its Contents, in a Climate, different from that in which it was wrote. I have also heard, there has been an *Italian* Translation of it._ _After this Account of the foreign Editions, I return to the present one, which is the second of the original *French* Treatise. I shall not affirm it is greatly corrected, with Respect to fundamental Points: for as I had advanced nothing in the first, that was not established on Truth and Demonstration, there was no Room for Correction, with Regard to any essential Matters. Nevertheless, in this I have made, 1, a great Number of small Alterations in the Diction, and added several Words, to render the Work still more simple and perspicuous. 2, The typographical Execution of this is considerably improved in the Type, the Paper and Ink, the Spelling, Pointing, and Arrangement of the Work. 3, I have made some considerable Additions, which are of three Kinds. Not a few of them are new Articles on some of the Subjects formerly treated of; such as the Articles concerning Tarts and other Pastry Ware; the Addition concerning the Regimen for Persons, in a State of Recovery from Diseases; the Preparation for the Small Pocks; a long Note on the Jesuits Bark; another on acid Spirits; one on the Extract of Hemlock: besides some new Matter which I have inserted; such as an Article with Regard to proper Drinks; one on the Convulsions of Infants; one on Chilblains; another on Punctures from Thorns; one upon the Reason of the Confidence reposed in Quacks, and the thirty-first Chapter entirely: in which I have extended the Consideration of some former Articles, that seemed to me a little too succinct and short. There are some Alterations of this last, this additional, Kind, interspersed almost throughout the whole Substance of this Edition; but especially in the two Chapters relating to Women and Children._ _The Objects of the XXXI Chapter are such as require immediate Assistance, viz. Swoonings, Hæmorrhages, that is, large spontaneous Bleedings; the Attacks of Convulsions, and of Suffocations; the Consequences of Fright and Terror; Disorders occasioned by unwholesome or deadly Vapours; the Effects of Poison, and the sudden Invasions of excessive Pain._ _The Omission of this Chapter was a very material Defect in the original Plan of this Work. The Editor of it at Paris was very sensible of this Chasm, or Blank, as it may be called, and has filled it up very properly: and if I have not made Use of his Supplement, instead of enlarging myself upon the Articles of which he has treated, it has only been from a Purpose of rendering the whole Work more uniform; and to avoid that odd Diversity, which seems scarcely to be avoided in a Treatise composed by two Persons. Besides which, that Gentleman has said nothing of the Articles, which employ the greatest Part of that Chapter, *viz.* the Swoonings, the Consequences of great Fear, and the noxious Vapours._ _Before I conclude, I ought to justify myself, as well as possible, to a great Number of very respectable Persons both here and abroad, (to whom I can refuse nothing without great Chagrine and Reluctance) for my not having made such Additions as they desired of me. This however was impossible, as the Objects, in which they concurred, were some chronical Distempers, that are entirely out of the Plan, to which I was strictly attached, for many Reasons. The first is, that it was my original Purpose to oppose the Errors incurred in Country Places, in the Treatment of acute Diseases; and to display the best Method of conducting such, as do not admit of waiting for the Arrival of distant Succour; or of removing the Patients to Cities, or large Towns. It is but too true indeed, that chronical Diseases are also liable to improper Treatment in small Country Places: but then there are both Time and Convenience to convey the Patients within the Reach of better Advice; or for procuring them the Attendance of the best Advisers, at their own Places of Residence. Besides which, such Distempers are considerably less common than those to which I had restrained my Views: and they will become still less frequent, whenever acute Diseases, of which they are frequently the Consequences, shall be more rationally and safely conducted._ _The second Reason, which, if alone, would have been a sufficient one, is, that it is impossible to subject the Treatment of chronical Distempers to the Capacity and Conduct of Persons, who are not Physicians. Each acute Distemper generally arises from one Cause; and the Treatment of it is simple and uniform; since those Symptoms, which manifest the Malady, point out its Cause and Treatment. But the Case is very differently circumstanced in tedious and languid Diseases; each of which may depend on so many and various Causes (and it is only the real, the true Cause, which ought to determine us in selecting its proper Remedies) that though the Distemper and its Appellation are evidently known, a meer By-stander may be very remote from penetrating into its true Cause; and consequently be incapable of chusing the best Medicines for it. It is this precise and distinguishing Discernment of the real particular Cause *[or of the contingent Concurrence of more than one]* that necessarily requires the Presence of Persons conversant in the Study and the Practice of all the Parts of Physick; and which Knowledge it is impossible for People, who are Strangers to such Studies, to arrive at. Moreover, their frequent Complexness; the Variety of their Symptoms; the different Stages of these tedious Diseases [not exactly attended to even by many competent Physicians] the Difficulty of ascertaining the different Doses of Medicines, whose Activity may make the smallest Error highly dangerous, &c. &c. are really such trying Circumstances, as render the fittest Treatment of these Diseases sufficiently difficult and embarrassing to the most experienced Physicians, and unattainable by those who are not Physicians._ _A third Reason is, that, even supposing all these Circumstances might be made so plain and easy, as to be comprehended by every Reader, they would require a Work of an excessive Length; and thence be disproportioned to the Faculties of those, for whom it was intended. One single chronical Disease might require as large a Volume as the present one._ _But finally, were I to acknowledge, that this Compliance was both necessary and practicable, I declare I find it exceeds my Abilities; and that I am also far from having sufficient Leisure for the Execution of it. It is my Wish that others would attempt it, and may succeed in accomplishing it; but I hope these truly worthy Persons, who have honoured me by proposing the Achievement of it to myself, will perceive the Reasons for my not complying with it, in all their Force; and not ascribe a Refusal, which arises from the very Nature of the thing, either to Obstinacy, or to any Want of an Inclination to oblige them._ _I have been informed my Citations, or rather References, have puzzled some Readers. It was difficult to foresee this, but is easy to prevent it for the future. The Work contains Citations only of two Sorts; one, that points to the Remedies prescribed; and the other, which refers to some Passage in the Book itself, that serves to illustrate those Passages in which I cite. Neither of these References could have been omitted. The first is marked thus, *Nº.* with the proper Figure to it, as 1, 2, &c. This signifies, that the Medicine I direct is described in the Table of Remedies, according to the Number annexed to that Character. Thus when we find directed, in any Page of the Book, the warm Infusion *Nº. 1*; in some other, the Ptisan *Nº. 2*; or in a third, the Almond Milk, or Emulsion *Nº. 4*, it signifies, that such Prescriptions will be found at the Numbers 1, 2, and 4; and this Table is printed at the End of the Book._ _If, instead of forming this Table, and thus referring to the Prescriptions by their Numbers, I had repeated each Prescription as often as I directed it, this Treatise must have been doubled in Bulk, and insufferably tiresome to peruse. I must repeat here, what I have already said in the former Edition, that the [5] Prices of the Medicines, or of a great Number of them, are those at which the Apothecaries may afford them, without any Loss, to a Peasant in humble Circumstances. But it should be remembered, they are not set down at the full Prices which they may handily demand; since that would be unjust for some to insist on them at. Besides, there is no Kind of Tax in *Swisserland*, and I have no Right to impose one._ [5] The Reasons for omitting the Prices _here_, may be seen Page 23 of this Translation. _The Citations of the second Kind are very plain and simple. The whole Work is divided into numbered Paragraphs distinguished by the Mark §. And not to swell it with needless Repetitions, when in one Place I might have even pertinently repeated something already observed, instead of such Repetition at Length, I have only referred to the Paragraph, where it had been observed. Thus, for Example when we read Page 81, § 50 --*When the Disease is so circumstanced as we have described*, § 46,-- this imports that, not to repeat the Description already given, I refer the Reader to that last § for it._ _The Use of these Citations is not the least Innovation, and extremely commodious and easy: but were there only a single Reader likely to be puzzled by them, I ought not to omit this Explanation of them, as I can expect to be generally useful, only in Proportion as I am clear: and it must be obvious, that a Desire of being extensively useful is the sole Motive of this Work. I have long since had the Happiness of knowing, that some charitable and intelligent Persons have applied the Directions it contains, with extraordinary Success, even in violent Diseases: And I shall arrive at the Height of my Wishes, if I continue to be informed, that it contributes to alleviate the Sufferings, and to prolong the Days, of my rational Fellow Creatures._ _N. B._ A Small Blank occurring conveniently here in the Impression, the Translator of this Work has employed it to insert the following proper Remark, _viz._ Whenever the Tea or Infusion of the Lime-tree is directed in the Body of the Book, which it often is, the _Flowers_ are always meant, and not the _Leaves_; though by an Error of the Press, or perhaps rather by an Oversight of the Transcribers of this Version, it is printed _Leaves_ instead of _Flowers_ P. 392, as noted and corrected in the _Errata_. These Flowers are easily procurable here, meerly for gathering, in most Country Places in _July_, as few Walks, Vistas, &c. are without these Trees, planted for the pleasant Shade they afford, and to keep off the Dust in Summer, though the Leaf drops rather too early for this Purpose. Their Flowers have an agreeable Flavour, which is communicated to Water by Infusion, and rises with it in Distillation. They were, to the best of my Recollection, an Ingredient in the antiepileptic Water of _Langius_, omitted in our late Dispensatories of the College. They are an Ingredient in the antiepileptic Powder, in the List of Medicines in the present Practice of the _Hotel Dieu_ at _Paris_: and we think were in a former Prescription of our _Pulvis de Gutteta_, or Powder against Convulsions. Indeed they are considered, by many medical Writers, as a Specific in all Kinds of Spasms and Pains; and __Hoffman__ affirms, he knew a very tedious Epilepsy cured by the Use of an Infusion of these Flowers. I also take this Opportunity of adding, that as this Translation is intended for the Attention and the Benefit of the Bulk of the Inhabitants of the _British_ Empire, I have been careful not to admit any Gallicisms into it; as such might render it either less intelligible, or less agreeable to its Readers. If but a single one occurs, I either have printed it, or did intend it should be printed, distinguishably in Italics. _K._ __Introduction.__ The Decrease of the Number of Inhabitants, in most of the States of Europe, is a Fact, which impresses every reflecting Person, and is become such a general Complaint, as is but too well established on plain Calculations. This Decrease is most remarkable in Country Places. It is owing to many Causes; and I shall think myself happy, if I can contribute to remove one of the greatest of them, which is the pernicious Manner of treating sick People in Country Places. This is my sole Object, tho' I may be excused perhaps for pointing out the other concurring Causes, which may be all included within these two general Affirmations; That greater Numbers than usual emigrate from the Country; and that the People increase less every where. There are many Sorts of Emigration. Some leave their Country to enlist in the Service of different States by Sea and Land; or to be differently employ'd abroad, some as Traders, others as Domestics, _&c._ Military Service, by Land or Sea, prevents Population in various Respects. In the first Place, the Numbers going abroad are always less, often _much_ less, than those who return. General Battles, with all the Hazards and Fatigues of War; detached Encounters, bad Provisions, Excess in drinking and eating, Diseases that are the Consequences of Debauches, the Disorders that are peculiar to the Country; epidemical, pestilential or contagious Distempers, caused by the unwholsome Air of Flanders, Holland, Italy and Hungary; long Cruises, Voyages to the East or West Indies, to Guinea, &c. destroy a great Number of Men. The Article of Desertion also, the Consequences of which they dread on returning home, disposes many to abandon their Country for ever. Others, on quitting the Service, take up with such Establishments, as it has occasionally thrown in their Way; and which necessarily prevent their Return. But in the second Place, supposing they were all to come back, their Country suffers equally from their Absence; as this very generally happens during that Period of Life, when they are best adapted for Propagation; since that Qualification on their Return is impaired by Age, by Infirmities and Debauches: and even when they do marry, the Children often perish as Victims to the Excesses and Irregularities of their Fathers: they are weak, languishing, distempered, and either die young, or live incapable of being useful to Society. Besides, that the prevailing Habit of Libertinage, which many have contracted, prevents several of them from marrying at all. But notwithstanding all these inconvenient Consequences are real and notorious; yet as the Number of those, who leave their Country on these Accounts, is limited, and indeed rather inconsiderable, if compared with the Number of Inhabitants which must remain at home: as it may be affirmed too, that this relinquishing of their Country, may have been even necessary at some Times, and may become so again, if the Causes of Depopulation should cease, this kind of Emigration is doubtless the least grievous of any, and the last which may require a strict Consideration. But that abandoning of their Country, or _Expatriation_, as it may be termed, the Object of which is a Change of the Emigrants Condition, is more to be considered, being more numerous. It is attended with many and peculiar Inconveniencies, and is unhappily become an epidemical Evil, the Ravages of which are still increasing; and that from one simple ridiculous Source, which is this; that the Success of one Individual determines a hundred to run the same Risque, ninety and nine of whom may probably be disappointed. They are struck with the apparent Success of one, and are ignorant of the Miscarriage of others. Suppose a hundred Persons might have set out ten Years ago, to _seek their Fortune_, as the saying is, at the End of six Months they are all forgotten, except by their Relations; but if one should return the same Year, with more Money than his own Fortune, more than he set out with; or if one of them has got a moderate Place with little Work, the whole Country rings with it, as a Subject of general Entertainment. A Croud of young People are seduced by this and sally forth, because not one reflects, that of the ninety nine, who set out with the hundredth Person, one half has perished, many are miserable, and the Remainder come back, without having gained any thing, but an Incapacity to employ themselves usefully at home, and in their former Occupations: and having deprived their Country of a great many Cultivaters, who, from the Produce of the Lands, would have attracted considerable Sums of Money, and many comfortable Advantages to it. In short, the very small Proportion who succeed, are continually talked of; the Croud that sink are perpetually forgot. This is a very great and real Evil, and how shall it be prevented? It would be sufficient perhaps to publish the extraordinary Risque, which may be easily demonstrated: It would require nothing more than to keep an exact yearly Register of all these Adventurers, and, at the Expiration of six, eight, or ten Years, to publish the List, with the Fate, of every Emigrant. I am greatly deceived, or at the End of a certain Number of Years, we should not see such Multitudes forsake their native Soil, in which they might live comfortably by working, to go in Search of Establishments in others; the Uncertainty of which, such Lists would demonstrate to them; and also prove, how preferable their Condition in their own Country would have been, to that they have been reduced to. People would no longer set out, but on almost certain Advantages: fewer would undoubtedly emigrate, more of whom, from that very Circumstance, must succeed. Meeting with fewer of their Country-men abroad, these fortunate few would oftner return. By this Means more Inhabitants would remain in the Country, more would return again, and bring with them more Money to it. The State would be more populous, more rich and happy; as the Happiness of a People, who live on a fruitful Soil, depends essentially on a great Number of Inhabitants, with a moderate Quantity of pecuniary Riches. But the Population of the Country is not only necessarily lessened, in Consequence of the Numbers that leave it; but even those who remain increase less, than an equal Number formerly did. Or, which amounts to the same Thing, among the same Number of Persons, there are fewer Marriages than formerly; and the same Number of Marriages produce fewer Christenings. I do not enter upon a Detail of the Proofs, since merely looking about us must furnish a sufficient Conviction of the Truth of them. What then are the Causes of this? There are two capital ones, Luxury and Debauchery, which are Enemies to Population on many Accounts. Luxury compells the wealthy Man, who would make a Figure; and the Man of a moderate Income, but who is his equal in every other Respect, and who _will_ imitate him, to be afraid of a numerous Family; the Education of which must greatly contract that Expence he had devoted to Parade and Ostentation: And besides, if he must divide his Estate among a great many Children, each of them would have but a little, and be unable to keep up the State and the Train of the Father's. Since Merit is unjustly estimated by exterior Shew and Expence, one must of Course endeavour to attain for himself, and to leave his Children in, a Situation capable of supporting that Expence. Hence the fewer Marriages of People who are not opulent, and the fewer Children among People who marry. Luxury is further prejudicial to the Increase of the People, in another Respect. The irregular Manner of Life which it introduces, depresses Health; it ruins the Constitutions, and thus sensibly affects Procreation. The preceding Generation counted some Families with more than twenty Children: the living one less than twenty Cousins. Very unfortunately this Way of thinking and acting, so preventive of Increase, has extended itself even into Villages: and they are no longer convinced there, that the Number of Children makes the Riches of the Countryman. Perhaps the next Generation will scarcely be acquainted with the Relation of Brotherhood. A third Inconvenience of Luxury is, that the Rich retreat from the Country to live in Cities; and by multiplying their Domestics there, they drain the former. This augmented Train is prejudicial to the Country, by depriving it of Cultivaters, and by diminishing Population. These Domestics, being seldom sufficiently employed, contract the Habit of Laziness; and they prove incapable of returning to that Country Labour, for which Nature intended them. Being deprived of this Resource they scarcely ever marry, either from apprehending the Charge of Children, or from their becoming Libertines; and sometimes, because many Masters will not employ married Servants. Or should any of them marry, it is often in the Decline of Life, whence the State must have the fewer Citizens. Idleness of itself weakens them, and disposes them to those Debauches, which enfeeble them still more. They never have more than a few Children, and these sickly; such as have not Strength to cultivate the Ground; or who, being brought up in Cities, have an Aversion to the Country. Even those among them who are more prudent, who preserve their Morals, and make some Savings, being accustomed to a City Life, and dreading the Labour of a Country one (of the Regulation of which they are also ignorant) chuse to become little Merchants, or Tradesmen; and this must be a Drawback from Population, as any Number of Labourers beget more Children than an equal Number of Citizens; and also by Reason, that out of any given Number, more Children die in Cities, than in the Country. The same Evils also prevail, with Regard to female Servants. After ten or twelve Years Servitude, the Maid-Servants in Cities cannot acquit themselves as good Country Servants: and such of them as chuse this Condition, quickly fail under that Kind or Quantity of Work, for which they are no longer constituted. Should we see a Woman married in the Country, a Year after leaving Town, it is easy to observe, how much that Way of living in the Country has broke her. Frequently their first Child-bed, in which Term they have not all the Attendance their Delicacy demands, proves the Loss of their Health; they remain in a State of Languor, of Feebleness, and of Decay: they have no more Children; and this renders their Husbands unuseful towards the Population of the State. Abortions, Infants carried out of their Country after a concealed Pregnancy, and the Impossibility of their getting Husbands afterwards, are frequently the Effects of their Libertinage. It is to be apprehended too these bad Effects are rather increasing with us; since, either for want of sufficient Numbers, or from oeconomical Views, it has become a Custom, instead of Women Servants, to employ Children, whose Manners and whole Constitutions are not yet formed; and who are ruined in the same Manner, by their Residence in Town, by their Laziness, by bad Examples, and bad Company. Doubtless much remains still unsaid on these important Heads; but besides my Intention not to swell this Treatise immoderately, and the many Avocations, which prevent me from launching too far into what may be less within the Bounds of Medicine, I should be fearful of digressing too far from my Subject. What I have hitherto said however, I think cannot be impertinent to it; since in giving Advice to the People, with Regard to their Health, it was necessary to display to them the Causes that impaired it: though what I might be able to add further on this Head, would probably be thought more remote from the Subject. I shall add then but a single Hint on the Occasion. Is it not practicable, in Order to remedy those Evils which we cannot prevent, to select some particular Part or Canton of the Country, wherein we should endeavour by Rewards, _1st._ Irremoveably to fix all the Inhabitants. _2dly._ To encourage them by other Rewards to a plentiful and legitimate Increase. They should not be permitted to go out of it, which must prevent them from being exposed to the Evils I have mentioned. They should by no means intermarry with any Strangers, who might introduce such Disorders among them. Thus very probably this Canton, after a certain Time, would become even over-peopled, and might send out Colonies to the others. One Cause, still more considerable than those we have already mention'd, has, to this very Moment, prevented the Increase of the People in France. This is the Decay of Agriculture. The Inhabitants of the Country, to avoid serving in the Militia; to elude the Days-Service impos'd by their Lords, and the Taxes; and being attracted to the City by the Hopes of Interest, by Laziness and Libertinage, have left the Country nearly deserted. Those who remain behind, either not being encouraged to work, or not being sufficient for what there is to do, content themselves with cultivating just as much as is absolutely necessary for their Subsistence. They have either lived single, or married but late; or perhaps, after the Example of the Inhabitants of the Cities, they have refused to fulfil their Duty to Nature, to the State, and to a Wife. The Country deprived of Tillers, by this Expatriation and Inactivity, has yielded nothing; and the Depopulation of the State has daily increased, from the reciprocal and necessary Proportion between Subsistence and Population, and because Agriculture alone can increase Subsistence. A single Comparison will sufficiently evince the Truth and the Importance of these Principles, to those who have not seen them already divulged and demonstrated in the Works of the [6] Friend of Man. [6] The Marquis of Mirabeau. "An old Roman, who was always ready to return to the Cultivation of his Field, subsisted himself and his Family from one Acre of Land. A Savage, who neither sows nor cultivates, consumes, in his single Person, as much Game as requires fifty Acres to feed them. Consequently _Tullus Hostilius_, on a thousand Acres, might have five thousand Subjects: while a Savage Chief, limited to the same Extent of Territory, could scarcely have twenty: such an immense Disproportion does Agriculture furnish, in Favour of Population. Observe these two great Extremes. A State becomes dispeopled or peopled in that Proportion, by which it recedes from one of these Methods, and approaches to the other." Indeed it is evident, that wherever there is an Augmentation of Subsistence, an Increase of Population will soon follow; which again will still further facilitate the Increase of Provisions. In a State thus circumstanced Men will abound, who, after they have furnished sufficient Numbers for the Service of War, of Commerce, of Religion, and for Arts and Professions of every kind, will further also furnish a Source for Colonies, who will extend the Name and the Prosperity of their Nation to distant Regions. There will ensue a Plenty of Commodities, the Superfluity of which will be exported to other Countries, to exchange for other Commodities, that are not produced at home; and the Balance, being received in Money, will make the Nation rich, respectable by its Neighbours, and happy. Agriculture, vigorously pursued, is equal to the Production of all these Benefits; and the present Age will enjoy the Glory of restoring it, by favouring and encouraging Cultivaters, and by forming Societies for the Promotion of Agriculture. I proceed at length to the fourth Cause of Depopulation, which is the Manner of treating sick People in the Country. This has often affected me with the deepest Concern. I have been a Witness, that Maladies, which, in themselves, would have been gentle, have proved mortal from a pernicious Treatment: I am convinced that this Cause alone makes as great a Havock as the former; and certainly it requires the utmost Attention of Physicians, whose Duty it is to labour for the Preservation of Mankind. While we are employing our assiduous Cares on the more polished and fashionable Part of them in Cities, the larger and more useful Moiety perish in the Country; either by particular, or by highly epidemical, Diseases, which, within a few Years past, have appeared in different Villages, and made no small Ravages. This afflicting Consideration has determined me to publish this little Work, which is solely intended for those Patients, who, by their Distance from Physicians, are deprived of their Assistance. I shall not give a Detail of my Plan, which is very simple, in this Part; but content myself with affirming, I have used my utmost Care to render it the most useful I possibly could: and I dare hope, that if I have not fully displayed its utmost Advantages, I have at least sufficiently shewn those pernicious Methods of treating Diseases, that should incontestably be avoided. I am thoroughly convinced, the Design might be accomplished more compleatly than I have done it; but those who are so capable of, do not attempt, it: I happen to be less timid; and I hope that thinking Persons will rather take it in good part of me, to have published a Book, the composing of which is rather disagreeable from its very Facility; from the minute Details, which however are indispensable; and from the Impossibility of discussing any Part of it (consistently with the Plan) to the Bottom of the Subject; or of displaying any new and useful Prospect. It may be compared, in some Respects, to the Works of a spiritual Guide, who was to write a Catechism for little Children. At the same time I am not ignorant there have already been a few Books calculated for Country Patients, who are remote from Succour: but some of these, tho' published with a very good Purpose, produce a bad Effect. Of this kind are all Collections of Receipts or Remedies, without the least Description of the Disease; and of Course without just Directions for the Exhibition, or Application, of them. Such, for Example, is the famous Collection of Madam _Fouquet_, and some more in the same manner. Some others approach towards my Plan; but many of them have taken in too many Distempers, whence they are become too voluminous. Besides, they have not dwelt sufficiently upon the Signs of the Diseases; upon their Causes; the general Regimen in them, and the Mismanagement of them. Their Receipts are not generally as simple, and as easy to prepare, as they ought to be. In short, the greater Part of their Writers seem, as they advanced, to have grown tired of their melancholy Task, and to have hurried them out too expeditiously. There are but two of them, which I must name with Respect, and which being proposed on a Plan very like my own, are executed in a superior Manner, that merits the highest Acknowlegements of the Publick. One of these Writers is M. _Rosen_, first Physician of the Kingdom of _Sweden_; who, some Years since, employed his just Reputation to render the best Services to his Country Men. He has made them retrench from the Almanacs those ridiculous Tales; those extraordinary Adventures; those pernicious astrological Injunctions, which there, as well as here, answer no End, but that of keeping up Ignorance, Credulity, Superstition, and the falsest Prejudices on the interesting Articles of Health, of Diseases, and of Remedies. He has also taken Care to publish simple plain Treatises on the most popular Distempers; which he has substituted in the Place of the former Heap of Absurdities. These concise Works however, which appear annually in their Almanacs, are not yet translated from the _Swedish_, so that I was unqualified to make any Extracts from them. The other is the Baron _Van Swieten_, first Physician to their Imperial Majesties, who, about two Years since, has effected for the Use of the Army, what I now attempt for sick People in the Country. Though my Work was greatly advanced, when I first saw his, I have taken some Passages from it: and had our Plans been exactly alike, I should imagine I had done the Publick more Service by endeavouring to extend the Reading of his Book, than by publishing a new one. Nevertheless, as he is silent on many Articles, of which I have treated diffusively; as he has treated of many Distempers, which did not come within my Plan; and has said nothing of some others which I could not omit; our two Works, without entering into the Particulars of the superior Merit of the Baron's, are very different, with Regard to the Subject of the Diseases; tho' in such as we have both considered, I account it an Honour to me to find, we have almost constantly proceeded upon the same Principles. The present Work is by no means addressed to such Physicians, as are thoroughly accomplished in their Profession; yet possibly, besides my particular medical Friends, some others may read it. I beg the Favour of all such fully to consider the Intention, the Spirit, of the Author, and not to censure him, as a Physician, from the Composition of this Book. I even advise them here rather to forbear perusing it; as a Production, that can teach them nothing. Such as read, in order to criticize, will find a much greater Scope for exercising that Talent on the other Pamphlets I have published. It were certainly unjust that a Performance, whose sole abstracted Object is the Health and Service of my Countrymen, should subject me to any disagreeable Consequences: and a Writer may fairly plead an Exemption from any Severity of Censure, who has had the Courage to execute a Work, which cannot pretend to a Panegyric. Having premised thus much in general, I must enter into some Detail of those Means, that seem the most likely to me, to facilitate the beneficial Consequences, which, I hope, may result to others, from my present Endeavours. I shall afterwards give an Explanation of some Terms which I could not avoid using, and which, perhaps, are not generally understood. The Title of _Advice to the People_, was not suggested to me by an Illusion, which might persuade me, this Book would become a Piece of Furniture, as it were, in the House of every Peasant. Nineteen out of twenty will probably never know of its Existence. Many may be unable to read, and still more unable to understand, it, plain and simple as it is. I have principally calculated it for the Perusal of intelligent and charitable Persons, who live in the Country; and who seem to have, as it were, a Call from Providence, to assist their less intelligent poor Neighbours with their Advice. It is obvious, that the first Gentlemen I have my Eye upon, are the Clergy. There is not a single Village, a Hamlet, nor even the House of an Alien in the Country, that has not a Right to the good Offices of some one of this Order; And I assure myself there are a great Number of them, who, heartily affected with the Distress of their ailing Flocks, have wished many hundred Times, that it were in their Power to give their Parishioners some bodily Help, at the very Time they were disposing them to prepare for Death; or so far to delay the Fatality of the Distemper, that the Sick might have an Opportunity of living more religiously afterwards. I shall think myself happy, if such truly respectable Ecclesiastics shall find any Resources in this Performance, that may conduce to the Accomplishment of their beneficent Intentions. Their Regard, their Love for their People; their frequent Invitations to visit their principal Neighbours; their Duty to root out all unreasonable Prejudices, and Superstition; their Charity, their Learning; the Facility, with which their general Knowlege in Physics, qualifies them to comprehend thoroughly all the medical Truths, and Contents of this Piece, are so many Arguments to convince me, that they will have the greatest Influence to procure that Reformation, in the Administration of Physick to poor Country People, which is so necessary, so desirable, an Object. In the next Place, I dare assure myself of the Concurrence of Gentlemen of Quality and Opulence, in their different Parishes and Estates, whose Advice is highly regarded by their Inferiors; who are so powerfully adapted to discourage a wrong, and to promote a right Practice, of which they will easily discern all the Advantages. The many Instances I have seen of their entering, with great Facility, into all the Plan and Conduct of a Cure; their Readiness and even Earnestness to comfort the Sick in their Villages; and the Generosity with which they prevent their Necessities, induce me to hope, from judging of these I have not the Pleasure to know, by those whom I have, that they will eagerly embrace an Opportunity of promoting a new Method of doing good in their Neighbourhood. Real Charity will apprehend the great Probability there is of doing Mischief, tho' with the best Intention, for want of a proper Knowledge of material Circumstances; and the very Fear of that Mischief may sometimes suspend the Exercise of such Charity; notwithstanding it must seize, with the most humane Avidity, every Light that can contribute to its own beneficent Exertion. Thirdly, Persons who are rich, or at least in easy Circumstances, whom their Disposition, their Employments, or the Nature of their Property, fixes in the Country, where they are happy in doing good, must be delighted to have some proper Directions for the Conduct and Effectuation of their charitable Intentions. In every Village, where there are any Persons, of these three Conditions, they are always readily apprized of the Distempers in it, by their poor Neighbours coming to intreat a little Soup, Venice Treacle, Wines, Biscuits, or any thing they imagine necessary for their sick Folks. In Consequence of some Questions to the Bystanders, or of a Visit to the sick Person, they will judge at least of _what kind_ the Disease is; and by their prudent Advice they may be able to prevent a Multitude of Evils. They will give them some Nitre instead of Venice Treacle; Barley, or sweet Whey, in lieu of Soup. They will advise them to have Recourse to Glysters, or Bathings of their Feet, rather than to Wine; and order them Gruel rather than Biscuits. A man would scarcely believe, 'till after the Expiration of a few Years, how much Good might be effected by such proper Regards, so easily comprehended, and often repeated. At first indeed there may be some Difficulty in eradicating old Prejudices, and inveterately bad Customs; but whenever these were removed, good Habits would strike forth full as strong Roots, and I hope that no Person would be inclined to destroy them. It may be unnecessary to declare, that I have more Expectation from the Care and Goodness of the Ladies, than from those of their Spouses, their Fathers, or Brothers. A more active Charity, a more durable Patience, a more domestic Life; a Sagacity, which I have greatly admired in many Ladies both in Town and Country, that disposes them to observe, with great Exactness; and to unravel, as it were, the secret Causes of the Symptoms, with a Facility that would do Honour to very good Practioners, and with a Talent adapted to engage the Confidence of the Patient:--All these, I say, are so many characteristical Marks of their Vocation in this important and amicable Duty; nor are there a few, who fulfil it with a Zeal, that merits the highest Commendation, and renders them excellent Models for the Imitation of others. Those who are intrusted with the Education of Youth, may also be supposed sufficiently intelligent to take some Part in this Work; and I am satisfied that much Good might result from their undertaking it. I heartily wish, they would not only study to _distinguish the Distemper_ (in which the principal, but by no means an insuperable Difficulty consists; and to which I hope I have considerably put them in the Way) but I would have them learn also the Manner of applying Remedies. Many of them have; I have known some who bleed, and who have given Glysters very expertly. This however all may easily learn; and perhaps it would not be imprudent, if the Art of bleeding well and safely were reckoned a necessary Qualification, when they are examined for their Employment. These Faculties, that of estimating the Degree of a Fever, and how to apply and to dress Blisters, may be of great Use within the Neighbourhood of their Residence. Their Schools, which are not frequently over-crouded, employ but a few of their daily Hours; the greater part of them have no Land to cultivate; and to what better Use can they apply their Leisure, than to the Assistance and Comfort of the Sick? The moderate Price of their Service may be so ascertained, as to incommode no Person; and this little Emolument might render their own Situation the more agreeable: besides which, these little Avocations might prevent their being drawn aside sometimes, by Reason of their Facility and frequent Leisure, so as to contract a Habit of drinking too often. Another Benefit would also accrue from accustoming them to this kind of Practice, which is, that being habituated to the Care of sick People, and having frequent Occasions to write, they would be the better qualify'd, in difficult Cases, to advise with those, who were thought further necessary to be consulted. Doubtless, even among Labourers, there may be many, for some such I have known, who being endued with good natural Sense and Judgment, and abounding with Benevolence, will read this Book with Attention, and eagerly extend the Maxims and the Methods it recommends. And finally I hope that many Surgeons, who are spread about the Country, and who practice Physic in their Neighbourhood, will peruse it; will carefully enter into the Principles established in it, and will conform to its Directions; tho' a little different perhaps from such as they may have hitherto practiced. They will perceive a Man may learn at any Age, and of any Person; and it may be hoped they will not think it too much Trouble to reform some of their Notions in a Science, which is not properly within their Profession (and to the Study of which they were never instituted) by those of a Person, who is solely employed in it, and who has had many Assistances of which they are deprived. Midwives may also find their Attendance more efficacious, as soon as they are thoroughly disposed to be better informed. It were heartily to be wished, that the greater Part of them had been better instructed in the Art they profess. The Instances of Mischief that might have been avoided, by their being better qualify'd, are frequent enough to make us wish there may be no Repetition of them, which it may be possible to prevent. Nothing seems impossible, when Persons in Authority are zealously inclined to prevent every such Evil; and it is time they should be properly informed of one so essentially hurtful to Society. The Prescriptions I have given consist of the most simple Remedies, and I have adjoined the Manner of preparing them so fully, that I hope no Person can be at any Loss in that Respect. At the same time, that no one may imagine they are the less useful and efficacious for their Simplicity, I declare, they are the same I order in the City for the most opulent Patients. This Simplicity is founded in Nature: the Mixture, or rather the Confusion, of a Multitude of Drugs is ridiculous. If they have the very same Virtues, for what Purpose are they blended? It were more judicious to confine ourselves to that, which is the most effectual. If their Virtues are different, the Effect of one destroys, or lessens, the Effect of the other; and the Medicine ceases to prove a Remedy. I have given no Direction, which is not very practicable and easy to execute; nevertheless it will be discernible, that some few are not calculated for the Multitude, which I readily grant. However I have given them, because I did not lose Sight of some Persons; who, tho' not strictly of the Multitude, or Peasantry, do live in the Country, and cannot always procure a Physician as soon, or for as long a Time, as they gladly would. A great Number of the Remedies are entirely of the Country Growth, and may be prepared there; but there are others, which must be had from the Apothecaries. I have set down the Price [7] at which I am persuaded all the Country Apothecaries will retail them to a Peasant, who is not esteemed a rich one. I have marked the Price, not from any Apprehension of their being imposed on in the Purchase, for this I do not apprehend; but, that seeing the Cheapness of the Prescription, they may not be afraid to buy it. The necessary Dose of the Medicine, for each Disease, may generally be purchased for less Money than would be expended on Meat, Wine, Biscuits, and other improper things. But should the Price of the Medicine, however moderate, exceed the Circumstances of the Sick, doubtless the Common Purse, or the Poors-Box will defray it: moreover there are in many Country Places Noblemens Houses, some of whom charitably contribute an annual Sum towards buying of Medicines for poor Patients. Without adding to which Sum, I would only intreat the Favour of each of them to alter the Objects of it, and to allow their sick Neighbours the Remedies and the Regimen directed here, instead of such as they formerly distributed among them. [7] This oeconomical Information was doubtless very proper, where our judicious and humane Author published it; but notwithstanding his excellent Motives for giving it, we think it less necessary here, where many Country Gentlemen furnish themselves with larger or smaller Medicine Chests, for the Benefit of their poor sick Neighbours; and in a Country, where the settled parochial Poor are provided with Medicines, as well as other Necessaries, at a parochial Expence. Besides, tho' we would not suppose our Country Apothecaries less considerate or kind than others, we acknowledge our Apprehension, that in such Valuation of their Drugs (some of which often vary in their Price) might dispose a few of them, rather to discountenance the Extension of a Work, so well intended and executed as Dr. _Tissot's_; a Work, which may not be wholly unuseful to some of the most judicious among them, and will be really necessary for the rest. _K._ It may still be objected, that many Country Places are very distant from large Towns; from which Circumstance a poor Peasant is incapable of procuring himself a seasonable and necessary Supply in his Illness. I readily admit, that, in Fact, there are many Villages very remote from such Places as Apothecaries reside in. Yet, if we except a few among the Mountains, there are but very few of them above three or four Leagues from some little Town, where there always lives some Surgeon, or some Vender of Drugs. Perhaps however, even at this Time, indeed, there may not be many thus provided; but they will take care to furnish themselves with such Materials, as soon as they have a good Prospect of selling them, which may constitute a small, but new, Branch of Commerce for them. I have carefully set down the Time, for which each Medicine will keep, without spoiling. There is a very frequent Occasion for some particular ones, and of such the School-masters may lay in a Stock. I also imagine, if they heartily enter into my Views, they will furnish themselves with such Implements, as may be necessary in the Course of their Attendance. If any of them were unable to provide themselves with a sufficient Number of good Lancets, an _Apparatus_ for Cupping, and a Glyster Syringe (for want of which last a Pipe and Bladder may be occasionally substituted) the Parish might purchase them, and the same Instruments might do for the succeeding School-master. It is hardly to be expected, that all Persons in that Employment would be able, or even inclined, to learn the Way of using them with Address; but one Person who did, might be sufficient for whatever Occasions should occur in this Way in some contiguous Villages; with very little Neglect of their Functions among their Scholars. Daily Instances of Persons, who come from different Parts to consult me, without being capable of answering the Questions I ask them, and the like Complaints of many other Physicians on the same Account, engaged me to write the last Chapter of this Work. I shall conclude this Introduction with some Remarks, necessary to facilitate the Knowledge of a few Terms, which were unavoidable in the Course of it. The Pulse commonly beats in a Person in good Health, from the Age of eighteen or twenty to about sixty six Years, between sixty and seventy Times in a Minute. It sometimes comes short of this in old Persons, and in very young Children it beats quicker: until the Age of three or four Years the Difference amounts at least to a third; after which it diminishes by Degrees. An intelligent Person, who shall often touch and attend to his own Pulse, and frequently to other Peoples, will be able to judge, with sufficient Exactness, of the Degree of a Fever in a sick Person. If the Strokes are but one third above their Number in a healthy State, the Fever is not very violent: which it is, as often as it amounts to half as many more as in Health. It is very highly dangerous, and may be generally pronounced mortal, when there are two Strokes in the Time of one. We must not however judge of the Pulse, solely by its Quickness, but by its Strength or Weakness; its Hardness or Softness; and the Regularity or Irregularity of it. There is no Occasion to define the strong and the feeble Pulse. The Strength of it generally affords a good Prognostic, and, supposing it too strong, it may easily be lowered. The weak Pulse is often very menacing. If the Pulse, in meeting the Touch, excites the Notion of a dry Stroke, as though the Artery consisted of Wood, or of some Metal, we term it _hard_; the opposite to which is called _soft_, and generally promises better. If it be strong and yet soft, even though it be quick, it may be considered as a very hopeful Circumstance. But if it is strong and hard, that commonly is a Token of an Inflammation, and indicates Bleeding and the cooling Regimen. Should it be, at the same time, small, quick and hard, the Danger is indeed very pressing. We call that Pulse regular, a continued Succession of whole Strokes are made in equal Intervals of Time; and in which Intervals, not a single Stroke is wanting (since if that is its State, it is called an intermitting Pulse.) The Beats or Pulsations are also supposed to resemble each other so exactly in Quality too, that one is not strong, and the next alternately feeble. As long as the State of the Pulse is promising; Respiration or Breathing is free; the Brain does not seem to be greatly affected; while the Patient takes his Medicines, and they are attended with the Consequence that was expected; and he both preserves his Strength pretty well, and continues sensible of his Situation, we may reasonably hope for his Cure. As often as all, or the greater Number of these characterizing Circumstances are wanting, he is in very considerable Danger. The Stoppage of Perspiration is often mentioned in the Course of this Work. We call the Discharge of that Fluid which continually passes off through the Pores of the Skin, _Transpiration_; and which, though invisible, is very considerable. For if a Person in Health eats and drinks to the Weight of eight Pounds daily, he does not discharge four of them by Stool and Urine together, the Remainder passing off by insensible Transpiration. It may easily be conceived, that if so considerable a Discharge is stopt, or considerably lessened; and if this Fluid, which ought to transpire through the Skin, should be transfered to any inward Part, it must occasion some dangerous Complaint. In fact this is one of the most frequent Causes of Diseases. To conclude very briefly--All the Directions in the following Treatise are solely designed for such Patients, as cannot have the Attendance of a Physician. I am far from supporting, they ought to do instead of one, even in those Diseases, of which I have treated in the fullest Manner; and the Moment a Physician arrives, they ought to be laid aside. The Confidence reposed in him should be entire, or there should be none. The Success of the Event is founded in that. It is his Province to judge of the Disease, to select Medicines against it; and it is easy to foresee the Inconveniences that may follow, from proposing to him to consult with any others, preferably to those he may chuse to consult with; only because they have succeeded in the Treatment of another Patient, whose Case they suppose to have been nearly the same with the present Case. This were much the same, as to order a Shoemaker to make a Shoe for one Foot by the Pattern of another Shoe, rather than by the Measure he has just taken. _N. B._ Though a great Part of this judicious Introduction is less applicable to the political Circumstances of the British Empire, than to those of the Government for which it was calculated; we think the good Sense and the unaffected Patriotism which animate it, will supersede any Apology for our translating it. The serious Truth is this, that a thorough Attention to Population seems never to have been more expedient for ourselves, than after so bloody and expensive, though such a glorious and successful War: while our enterprizing Neighbours, who will never be our Friends, are so earnest to recruit their Numbers; to increase their Agriculture; and to force a Vent for their Manufactures, which cannot be considerably effected, without a sensible Detriment to our own. Besides which, the unavoidable Drain from the People here, towards an effectual Cultivation, Improvement, and Security of our Conquests, demands a further Consideration. _K._ _ADVICE_ _TO THE_ _PEOPLE_, With Respect to their _HEALTH._ *__Chapter I.__* _Of the most usual Causes of popular Maladies._ __Sect.__ 1. The most frequent Causes of Diseases commonly incident to Country People are, 1. Excessive Labour, continued for a very considerable Time. Sometimes they sink down at once in a State of Exhaustion and Faintness, from which they seldom recover: but they are oftener attacked with some inflammatory Disease; as a Quinsey, a Pleurisy, or an Inflammation of the Breast. There are two Methods of preventing these Evils: one is, to avoid the Cause which produces them; but this is frequently impossible. Another is, when such excessive Labour has been unavoidable, to allay their Fatigue, by a free Use of some temperate refreshing Drink; especially by sweet Whey, by Butter-milk, or by [8] Water, to a Quart of which a Wine-glass of Vinegar may be added; or, instead of that, the expressed Juice of Grapes not fully ripe, or even of Goosberries or Cherries: which wholesome and agreeable Liquors are refreshing and cordial. I shall treat, a little lower, of inflammatory Disorders. The Inanition or Emptiness, though accompanied with Symptoms different from the former, have yet some Affinity to them with Respect to their Cause, which is a kind of general Exsiccation or Dryness. I have known some cured from this Cause by Whey, succeeded by tepid Baths, and afterwards by Cow's Milk: for in such Cases hot Medicines and high Nourishment are fatal. [8] This supposes they are not greatly heated, as well as fatigued, by their Labour or Exercise, in which Circumstance free and sudden Draughts of cooling Liquors might be very pernicious: and it evidently also supposes these Drinks to be thus given, rather in Summer, than in very cold Weather, as the Juice of the unripe Grapes, and the other fresh Fruits sufficiently ascertain the Season of the Year. We think the Addition of Vinegar to their Water will scarcely ever be necessary in this or the adjoining Island, on such Occasions. The Caution recommended in this Note is abundantly enforced by Dr. _Tissot_, § 4: but considering the Persons, to whom this Work is more particularly addressed, we were willing to prevent every Possibility of a Mistake, in so necessary, and sometimes so vital a Point. _K._ § 2. There is another Kind of Exhaustion or Emptiness, which may be termed real Emptiness, and is the Consequence of great Poverty, the Want of sufficient Nourishment, bad Food, unwholesome Drink, and excessive Labour. In Cases thus circumstanced, good Soups and a little Wine are very proper. Such happen however very seldom in this Country: I believe they are frequent in some others, especially in many Provinces of _France_. § 3. A second and very common Source of Disorders arises, from Peoples' lying down and reposing, when very hot, in a cold Place. This at once stops Perspiration, the Matter of which being thrown upon some internal Part, proves the Cause of many violent Diseases, particularly of Quinseys, Inflammations of the Breast, Pleurisies, and inflammatory Cholics. These Evils, from this Cause, may always be avoided by avoiding the Cause, which is one of those that destroy a great Number of People. However, when it has occurred, as soon as the first Symptoms of the Malady are perceiveable, which sometimes does not happen till several Days after, the Patient should immediately be bled; his Legs should be put into Water moderately hot, and he should drink plentifully of the tepid Infusion marked No. 1. Such Assistances frequently prevent the Increase of these Disorders; which, on the contrary, are greatly aggravated, if hot Medicines are given to sweat the Patient. § 4. A third Cause is drinking cold Water, when a Person is extremely hot. This acts in the same Manner with the second; but its Consequences are commonly more sudden and violent. I have seen most terrible Examples of it, in Quinseys, Inflammations of the Breast, Cholics, Inflammations of the Liver, and all the Parts of the Belly, with prodigious Swellings, Vomitings, Suppressions of Urine, and inexpressible Anguish. The most available Remedies in such Cases, from this Cause, are, a plentiful Bleeding at the Onset, a very copious Drinking of warm Water, to which one fifth Part of Whey should be added; or of the Ptisan No. 2, or of an Emulsion of Almonds, all taken warm. Fomentations of warm Water should also be applied to the Throat, the Breast and Belly, with Glysters of the same, and a little Milk. In this Case, as well as in the preceding one, (§ 3.) a _Semicupium_, or Half-bath of warm Water has sometimes been attended with immediate Relief. It seems really astonishing, that labouring People should so often habituate themselves to this pernicious Custom, which they know to be so very dangerous to their very Beasts. There are none of them, who will not prevent their Horses from drinking while they are hot, especially if they are just going to put them up. Each of them knows, that if he lets them drink in that State, they might possibly burst with it; nevertheless he is not afraid of incurring the like Danger himself. However, this is not the only Case, in which the Peasant seems to have more Attention to the Health of his Cattle, than to his own. § 5. The fourth Cause, which indeed affects every Body, but more particularly the Labourer, is, the Inconstancy of the Weather. We shift all at once, many times a Day, from Hot to Cold, and from Cold to Hot, in a more remarkable Manner, and more suddenly, than in most other Countries. This makes Distempers from Defluxion and Cold so common with us: and it should make us careful to go rather a little more warmly cloathed, than the Season may seem to require; to have Recourse to our Winter-cloathing early in Autumn, and not to part with it too early in the Spring. Prudent Labourers, who strip while they are at Work, take care to put on their Cloaths in the Evening when they return home. [9] Those, who from Negligence, are satisfied with hanging them upon their Country Tools, frequently experience, on their Return, the very unhappy Effects of it. There are some, tho' not many Places, where the Air itself is unwholsome, more from its particular Quality, than from its Changes of Temperature, as at _Villeneuve_, and still more at _Noville_, and in some other Villages situated among the Marshes which border on the _Rhone_. These Countries are particularly subject to intermitting Fevers; of which I shall treat briefly hereafter. [9] This good Advice is enforced in a Note, by the Editor of _Lyons_, who observes, it should be still more closely attended to, in Places, where Rivers, Woods or Mountains retain, as it were, a considerable Humidity; and where the Evenings are, in every Season, cold and moist.--It is a very proper Caution too in our own variable Climate, and in many of our Colonies in North _America_. _K._ § 6. Such sudden Changes are often attended with great Showers of Rain, and even cold Rain, in the Middle of a very hot Day; when the Labourer who was bathed, as it were, in a hot Sweat, is at once moistened in cold Water; which occasions the same Distempers, as the sudden Transition from Heat to Cold, and requires the same Remedies. If the Sun or a hot Air succeed immediately to such a Shower, the Evil is considerably lighter: but if the Cold continues, many are often greatly incommoded by it. A Traveller is sometimes thoroughly and unavoidably wet with Mud; the ill Consequence of which is often inconsiderable, provided he changes his Cloaths immediately, when he sets up. I have known fatal Pleurisies ensue from omitting this Caution. Whenever the Body or the Limbs are wet, nothing can be more useful than bathing them in warm Water. If the Legs only have been wet, it may be sufficient to bath them. I have radically, thoroughly, cured Persons subject to violent Cholics, as often as their Feet were wet, by persuading them to pursue this Advice. The Bath proves still more effectual, if a little Soap be dissolved in it. § 7. A fifth Cause, which is seldom attended to, probably indeed because it produces less violent Consequences, and yet is certainly hurtful, is the common Custom in all Villages, of having their Ditches or Dunghills directly under their Windows. Corrupted Vapours are continually exhaling from them, which in Time cannot fail of being prejudicial, and must contribute to produce putrid diseases. Those who are accustomed to the Smell, become insensible of it: but the Cause, nevertheless, does not cease to be unwholesomly active; and such as are unused to it perceive the Impression in all its Force. § 8. There are some Villages, in which, after the Curtain Lines are erased, watery marshy Places remain in the Room of them. The Effect of this is still more dangerous, because that putrify'd Water, which stagnates during the hot Season, suffers its Vapours to exhale more easily, and more abundantly, than that in the Curtain Lines did. Having set out for _Pully le Grand_, in 1759, on Account of an epidemical putrid Fever which raged there, I was sensible, on traversing the Village, of the Infection from those Marshes; nor could I doubt of their being the Cause of this Disease, as well as of another like it, which had prevailed there five Years before. In other Respects the Village is wholesomly situated. It were to be wished such Accidents were obviated by avoiding these stagnated Places; or, at least, by removing them and the Dunghils, as far as possible from the Spot, where we live and lodge. § 9. To this Cause may also be added the Neglect of the Peasants to air their Lodgings. It is well known that too close an Air occasions the most perplexing malignant Fevers; and the poor Country People respire no other in their own Houses. Their Lodgings, which are very small, and which notwithstanding inclose, (both Day and Night) the Father, Mother, and seven or eight Children, besides some Animals, are never kept open during six Months in the Year, and very seldom during the other six. I have found the Air so bad in many of these Houses, that I am persuaded, if their Inhabitants did not often go out into the free open Air, they must all perish in a little Time. It is easy, however, to prevent all the Evils arising from this Source, by opening the Windows daily: so very practicable a Precaution must be followed with the happiest Consequences. § 10. I consider Drunkenness as a sixth Cause, not indeed as producing epidemical Diseases, but which destroys, as it were, by Retail, at all times, and every where. The poor Wretches, who abandon themselves to it, are subject to frequent Inflammations of the Breast, and to Pleurisies, which often carry them off in the Flower of their Age. If they sometimes escape through these violent Maladies, they sink, a long Time before the ordinary Approach of old Age, into all its Infirmities, and especially into an Asthma, which terminates in a Dropsy of the Breast. Their Bodies, worn out by Excess, do not comply and concur, as they ought, with the Force or Operation of Remedies; and Diseases of Weakness, resulting from this Cause, are almost always incurable. It seems happy enough, that Society loses nothing in parting with these Subjects, who are a Dishonour to it; and whose brutal Souls are, in some Measure, dead, long before their Carcases. § 11. The Provisions of the common People are also frequently one Cause of popular Maladies. This happens 1st, whenever the Corn, not well ripened, or not well got in, in bad [10] _Harvests_, has contracted an unwholesome Quality. Fortunately however this is seldom the Case; and the Danger attending the Use of it, may be lessened by some Precautions, such as those of washing and drying the Grain completely; of mixing a little Wine with the Dough, in kneading it; by allowing it a little more Time to swell or rise, and by baking it a little more. 2dly, The fairer and better saved Part of the Wheat is sometimes damaged in the Farmers House; either because he does not take due Care of it, or because he has no convenient Place to preserve it, only from one Summer to the next. It has often happened to me, on entering one of these bad Houses, to be struck with the Smell of Wheat that has been spoiled. Nevertheless, there are known and easy Methods to provide against this by a little Care; though I shall not enter into a Detail of them. It is sufficient to make the People sensible, that since their chief Sustenance consists of Corn, their Health must necessarily be impaired by what is bad. 3dly, That Wheat, which is good, is often made into bad Bread, by not letting it rise sufficiently; by baking it too little, and by keeping it too long. All these Errors have their troublesome Consequences on those who eat it; but in a greater Degree on Children and Valetudinarians, or weakly People. [10] Thus I have ventured to translate _Etés_ (_Summers_) to apply it to this and the neighbouring Islands. Their Harvests in _Swisserland_ perhaps are earlier, and may occur in _August_, and that of some particular Grain, probably still earlier. _K._ Tarts or Cakes may be considered as an Abuse of Bread, and this in some Villages is increased to a very pernicious Height. The Dough is almost constantly bad, and often unleavened, ill baked, greasy, and stuffed with either fat or sour Ingredients, which compound one of the most indigestible Aliments imaginable. Women and Children consume the most of this Food, and are the very Subjects for whom it is the most improper: little Children especially, who live sometimes for many successive Days on these Tarts, are, for the greater Part, unable to digest them perfectly. Hence they receive a [11] Source of Obstructions in the Bowels of the Belly, and of a slimy Viscidity or Thickishness, throughout the Mass of Humours, which throws them into various Diseases from Weakness; slow Fevers, a Hectic, the Rickets, the King's Evil, and Feebleness; for the miserable Remainder of their Days. Probably indeed there is nothing more unwholesome than Dough not sufficiently leavened, ill-baked, greasy, and soured by the Addition of Fruits. Besides, if we consider these Tarts in an oeconomical View, they must be found inconvenient also for the Peasant on that Account. [11] The Abuse just mentioned can scarcely be intended to forbid the moderate Use of good Pastry, the Dough of which is well raised and well baked, the Flower and other Ingredients sound, and the Paste not overcharged with Butter, even though it were sweet and fresh. But the Abuse of Alum and other pernicious Materials introduced by our Bakers, may too justly be considered as one horrible Source of those Diseases of Children, &c. which our humane and judicious Author mentions here. What he adds, concerning the Pastries being rendered still more unwholesome by the sour Fruits sometimes baked in it, is true with Respect to those Children and others, who are liable to Complaints from Acidities abounding in the Bowels; and for all those who are ricketty or scrophulous, from a cold and viscid State of their Humours. But as to healthy sanguine Children, who are advanced and lively, and others of a sanguine or bilious Temperament, we are not to suppose a moderate Variety of this Food injurious to them; when we consider, that the Sharpness and Crudity of the Fruit is considerably corrected by the long Application of Fire; and that they are the Produce of Summer, when bilious Diseases are most frequent. This suggests however no bad Hint against making them immoderately sweet. _K._ Some other Causes of Maladies may also be referred to the Article of Food, tho' less grievous and less frequent, into a full Detail of which it is very difficult to enter: I shall therefore conclude that Article with this general Remark; that it is the Care which Peasants usually take in eating slowly, and in chewing very well, that very greatly lessens the Dangers from a bad Regimen: and I am convinced they constitute one of the greatest Causes of that Health they enjoy. We may further add indeed the Exercise which the Peasant uses, his long abiding in the open Air, where he passes three fourths of his Life; besides (which are also considerable Advantages) his happy Custom of going soon to Bed, and of rising very early. It were to be wished, that in these Respects, and perhaps on many other Accounts, the Inhabitants of the Country were effectually proposed as Models for reforming the Citizens. § 12. We should not omit, in enumerating the Causes of Maladies among Country People, the Construction of their Houses, a great many of which either lean, as it were, close to a higher Ground, or are sunk a little in the Earth. Each of these Situations subjects them to considerable Humidity; which is certain greatly to incommode the Inhabitants, and to spoil their Provisions, if they have any Quantity in Store; which, as we have observed, is another, and not the least important, Source of their Diseases. A hardy Labourer is not immediately sensible of the bad Influence of this moist and marshy Habitation; but they operate at the long Run, and I have abundantly observed their most evident bad Effects, especially on Women in Child-bed, on Children, and in Persons recovering of a preceding Disease. It would be easy to prevent this Inconvenience, by raising the Ground on which the House stood, some, or several, Inches above the Level of the adjacent Soil, by a Bed of Gravel, of small Flints, pounded Bricks, Coals, or such other Materials; and by avoiding to build immediately close to, or, as it were, under a much higher Soil. This Object, perhaps, may well deserve the Attention of the Publick; and I earnestly advise as many as do build, to observe the necessary Precautions on this Head. Another, which would cost still less Trouble, is to give the Front of their Houses an Exposure to the South-East. This Exposure, supposing all other Circumstances of the Building and its Situation to be alike, is both the most wholesome and advantageous. I have seen it, notwithstanding, very often neglected, without the least Reason being assigned for not preferring it. These Admonitions may possibly be thought of little Consequence by three fourths of the People. I take the Liberty of reminding them, however, that they are more important than they may be supposed; and so many Causes concur to the Destruction of Men, that none of the Means should be neglected, which may contribute to their Preservation. § 13. The Country People in _Swisserland_ drink, either 1, pure Water, 2, some Wine, 3, Perry, made from wild Pears, or sometimes Cyder from Apples, and, 4, a small Liquor which they call _Piquette_, that is Water, which has fermented with the Cake or Husks of the Grapes, after their Juice has been expressed. Water however is their most general Drink; Wine rarely falling in their Way, but when they are employed by rich Folks; or when they can spare Money enough for a Debauch. Fruit Wines and the [12] _Piquettes_ are not used in all Parts of the Country; they are not made in all Years; and keep but for some Months. [12] This Word's occurring in the plural Number will probably imply, the _Swiss_ make more than one Species of this small Drink, by pouring Water on the Cake or Remainder of their other Fruits, after they have been expressed; as our People in the Cyder, and perhaps in the Perry, Counties, make what they call _Cyderkin_, _Perkin_, _&c._ It should seem too from this Section, that the laborious Countrymen in _Swisserland_ drink no Malt Liquor, though the Ingredients may be supposed to grow in their Climate. Now Beer, of different Strength, making the greater Part of our most common Drink, it may be proper to observe here, that when it is not strong and heady, but a middling well-brewed Small-beer, neither too new, nor hard or sour, it is full as wholesome a Drink for laborious People in Health as any other, and perhaps generally preferable to Water for such; which may be too thin and light for those who are unaccustomed to it; and more dangerous too, when the labouring Man is very hot, as well as thirsty. The holding a Mouthful of any weak cold Liquor in the Mouth without swallowing 'till it becomes warm, there, and spurting it out before a Draught is taken down would be prudent; and in Case of great Heat, to take the requisite Quantity rather at two Draughts, with a little Interval between them, than to swallow the Whole precipitately at one, would be more safe, and equally refreshing, though perhaps less grateful. _K._ Our Waters in general, are pretty good; so that we have little Occasion to trouble ourselves about purifying them; and they are well known in those Provinces where they are chiefly and necessarily used. [13] The pernicious Methods taken to improve or meliorate, as it is falsely called, bad Wines, are not as yet sufficiently practiced among us, for me to treat of them here: and as our Wines are not hurtful, of themselves, they become hurtful only from their Quantity. The Consumption of made Wines and _Piquettes_ is but inconsiderable, and I have not hitherto known of any ill Effects from them, so that our Liquors cannot be considered as Causes of Distempers in our Country; but in Proportion to our Abuse of them by Excess. The Case is differently circumstanced in some [14] other Countries; and it is the Province of Physicians who reside in them, to point out to their Country-Men the Methods of preserving their Health; as well as the proper and necessary Remedies in their Sickness. [13] The bad Quality of Water is another common Cause of Country Diseases; either where the Waters are unwholesome, from the Soils in which they are found, as when they flow through, or settle, on Banks of Shells; or where they become such, from the Neighbourhood of, or Drainings from Dunghills and Marshes. When Water is unclear and turbid, it is generally sufficient to let it settle in order to clear itself, by dropping its Sediment. But if that is not effected, or if it be slimy or muddy, it need only be poured into a large Vessel, half filled with fine Sand, or, for want of that, with Chalk; and then to shake and stir it about heartily for some Minutes. When this Agitation is over, the Sand, in falling to the Bottom of the Vessel, will attract some of the Foulness suspended in the Water. Or, which is still better, and very easy to do, two large Vessels may be set near together, one of which should be placed considerably higher than the other. The highest should be half filled with Sand. Into this the turbid, or slimy muddy Water is to be poured; whence it will filter itself through the Body of Sand, and pass off clear by an Opening or Orifice made at the Bottom of the Vessel; and fall from thence into the lower one, which serves as a Reservoir. When the Water is impregnated with Particles from the Beds of Selenites, or of any Spar (which Water we call hard, because Soap will not easily dissolve in it, and Puls and other farinaceous Substances grow hard instead of soft, after boiling in it) such Water should be exposed to the Sun, or boiled with the Addition of some Puls, or leguminous Vegetables, or Bread toasted, or untoasted. When Water is in its putrid State, it may be kept till it recovers its natural sweet one: but if this cannot be waited for, a little Sea Salt should be dissolved in it, or some Vinegar may be added, in which some grateful aromatic Plant has been infused. It frequently happens, that the publick Wells are corrupted by foul Mud at the Bottom, and by different Animals which tumble in and putrify there. Drinking Snow-water should be avoided, when the Snow is but lately fallen, as it seems to be the Cause of those swelling wenny Throats in the Inhabitants of some Mountains; and of endemic Cholics in many Persons. As Water is so continually used, great Care should be taken to have what is good. Bad Water, like bad Air, is one of the most general Causes of Diseases; that which produces the greater Number of them, the most grieveous ones; and often introduces such as are epidemical. _E. L. i.e._ the Editor of Lyons. [14] Many Persons, With a Design to preserve their Wines, add Shot to them, or Preparations of Lead, Alum, &c. The Government should forbid, under the most severe Penalties, all such Adulterations, as tend to introduce the most painful Cholics, Obstruction, and a long Train of Evils, which it sometimes proves difficult to trace to this peculiar Cause; while they shorten the lives of, or cruelly torment, such over credulous Purchasers, as lay in a Stock of bad Wines, or drink of them, without distinction, from every Wine Merchant or Tavern. _E. L._ _This Note, from the Editor at_ Lyons, _we have sufficient Reason for retaining here. K._ __Chapter II.__ _Of the Causes which aggravate the Diseases of the People. General Considerations._ __Sect.__ 14. The Causes already enumerated in the first Chapter occasion Diseases; and the bad Regimen, or Conduct of the People, on the Invasion of them, render them still more perplexing, and very often mortal. There is a prevailing Prejudice among them, which is every Year attended with the Death of some Hundreds in this Country, and it is this--That all Distempers are cured by Sweat; and that to procure Sweat, they must take Abundance of hot and heating things, and keep themselves very hot. This is a Mistake in both Respects, very fatal to the Population of the State; and it cannot be too much inculcated into Country People; that by thus endeavouring to force Sweating, at the very Beginning of a Disease, they are with great Probability, taking Pains to kill themselves. I have seen some Cases, in which the continual Care to provoke this Sweating, has as manifestly killed the Patient, as if a Ball had been shot through his Brains; as such a precipitate and untimely Discharge carries off the thinner Part of the Blood, leaving the Mass more dry, more viscid and inflamed. Now as in all acute Diseases (if we except a very few, and those too much less frequent) the Blood is already too thick; such a Discharge must evidently increase the Disorder, by co-operating with its Cause. Instead of forcing out the watery, the thinner Part of the Blood, we should rather endeavour to increase it. There is not a single Peasant perhaps, who does not say, when he has a Pleurisy, or an Inflammation of his Breast, that his Blood is too thick, and that it cannot circulate. On seeing it in the Bason after Bleeding, he finds it _black, dry, burnt_; these are his very Words. How strange is it then, that common Sense should not assure him, that, far from forcing out the _Serum_, the watery Part, of such a Blood by sweating, there is a Necessity to increase it? § 15. But supposing it were as certain, as it is erroneous, that Sweating was beneficial at the Beginning of Diseases, the Means which they use to excite it would not prove the less fatal. The first Endeavour is, to stifle the Patient with the Heat of a close Apartment, and a Load of Covering. Extraordinary Care is taken to prevent a Breath of fresh Air's squeezing into the Room; from which Circumstance, the Air already in it is speedily and extremely corrupted: and such a Degree of Heat is procured by the Weight of the Patient's Bed-cloaths, that these two Causes alone are sufficient to excite a most ardent Fever, and an Inflammation of the Breast, even in a healthy Man. More than once have I found myself seized with a Difficulty of breathing, on entering such Chambers, from which I have been immediately relieved, on obliging them to open all the Windows. Persons of Education must find a Pleasure, I conceive, in making People understand, on these Occasions, which are so frequent, that the Air being more indispensably necessary to us, if possible, than Water is to a Fish, our Health must immediately suffer, whenever that ceases to be pure; in assuring them also, that nothing corrupts it sooner than those Vapours, which continually steam from the Bodies of many Persons inclosed within a little Chamber, from which the Air is excluded. The Absurdity of such Conduct is a self-evident Certainty. Let in a little fresh Air on these miserable Patients, and lessen the oppressing Burthen of their Coverings, and you generally see upon the Spot, their Fever and Oppression, their Anguish and Raving, to abate. § 16. The second Method taken to raise a Sweat in these Patients is, to give them nothing but hot things, especially Venice Treacle, Wine, or some [15] _Faltranc_, the greater Part of the Ingredients of which are dangerous, whenever there is an evident Fever; besides Saffron, which is still more pernicious. In all feverish Disorders we should gently cool, and keep the Belly moderately open; while the Medicines just mentioned both heat and bind; and hence we may easily judge of their inevitable ill Consequences. A healthy Person would certainly be seized with an inflammatory Fever, on taking the same Quantity of Wine, of Venice Treacle, or of _Faltranc_, which the Peasant takes now and then, when he is attacked by one of these Disorders. How then should a sick Person escape dying by them? Die indeed he _generally_ does, and sometimes with astonishing Speed. I have published some dreadful Instances of such Fatality some Years since, in another Treatise. In fact they still daily occur, and unhappily every Person may observe some of them in his own Neighbourhood. [15] This Word, which must be of German, not of French Extraction, strictly signifies, _Drink for a Fall_, as we say _Pulvis ad Casum_, &c. Powder for a Fall, or a supposed inward Bruise. Dr. _Tissot_ informs me, it is otherwise called the vulnerary Herbs, or the Swiss Tea; and that it is an injudicious _Farrago_ or Medley of Herbs and Flowers, blended with Bitters, with stimulating, harsh and astringent Ingredients, being employed indiscriminately in all their Distempers by the Country People in _Swisserland_. _K._ § 17. But I shall be told perhaps, that Diseases are often carried off by Sweat, and that we ought to be guided by Experience. To this I answer, it is very true, that Sweating cures some particular Disorders, as it were, at their very Onset, for Instance, those Stitches that are called spurious or false Pleurisies, some rheumatic Pains, and some Colds or Defluxions. But this only happens when the Disorders depend solely and simply on stopt or abated Perspiration, to which such Pain instantly succeeds; where immediately, before the Fever has thickened the Blood, and inflamed the Humours; and where before any internal Infarction, any Load, is formed, some warm Drinks are given, such as _Faltranc_ and Honey; which, by restoring Transpiration, remove the very Cause of the Disorder. Nevertheless, even in such a Case, great Care should be had not to raise too violent a Commotion in the Blood, which would rather restrain, than promote, Sweat, to effect which Elder-flowers are in my Opinion preferable to _Faltranc_. Sweating is also of Service in Diseases, when their Causes are extinguished, as it were, by plentiful Dilution: then indeed it relieves, by drawing off, with itself, some Part of the distempered Humours; after which their grosser Parts have passed off by Stool and by Urine: besides which, the Sweat has also served to carry off that extraordinary Quantity of Water, we were obliged to convey into the Blood, and which was become superfluous there. Under such Circumstances, and at such a Juncture, it is of the utmost Importance indeed, not to check the Sweat, whether by Choice, or for Want of Care. There might often be as much Danger in doing this, as there would have been in endeavouring to force a Sweat, immediately upon the Invasion of the Disorder; since the arresting of this Discharge, under the preceding Circumstances, might frequently occasion a more dangerous Distemper, by repelling the Humour on some inward vital Part. As much Care therefore should be taken not to check, imprudently, that Evacuation by the Skin, which naturally occurs towards the Conclusion of Diseases, as not to force it at their Beginning; the former being almost constantly beneficial, the latter as constantly pernicious. Besides, were it even necessary, it might be very dangerous to force it violently; since by heating the Patients greatly, a vehement Fever is excited; they become scorched up in a Manner, and the Skin proves extremely dry. Warm Water, in short, is the best of Sudorifics. If the Sick are sweated very plentifully for a Day or two, which may make them easier for some Hours; these Sweats soon terminate, and cannot be excited again by the same Medicines. The Dose thence is doubled, the Inflammation is increased, and the Patient expires in terrible Anguish, with all the Marks of a general Inflammation. His Death is ascribed to his Want of Sweating; when it really was the Consequence of his Sweating too much at first; and of his taking Wine and hot Sudorifics. An able Swiss Physician had long since assured his Countrymen, that Wine was fatal to them in Fevers; I take leave to repeat it again and again, and wish it may not be with as little Success. Our Country Folks, who in Health, naturally dislike red Wine, prefer it when Sick; which is wrong, as it binds them up more than white Wine. It does not promote Urine as well; but increases the Force of the circulating Arteries, and the Thickness of the Blood, which were already too considerable. § 18. Their Diseases are also further aggravated by the Food that is generally given them. They must undoubtedly prove weak, in Consequence of their being sick; and the ridiculous Fear of the Patients' dying of Weakness, disposes their Friends to force them to eat; which, increasing their Disorder, renders the Fever mortal. This Fear is absolutely chimerical; never yet did a Person in a Fever die merely from Weakness. They may be supported, even for some Weeks, by Water only; and are stronger at the End of that Time, than if they had taken more solid Nourishment; since, far from strengthening them, their Food increases their Disease, and thence increases their Weakness. § 19. From the first Invasion of a Fever, Digestion ceases. Whatever solid Food is taken corrupts, and proves a Source of Putridity, which adds nothing to the Strength of the Sick, but greatly to that of the Distemper. There are in fact a thousand Examples to prove, that it becomes a real Poison: and we may sensibly perceive these poor Creatures, who are thus compelled to eat, lose their Strength, and fall into Anxiety and Ravings, in Proportion as they swallow. § 20. They are also further injured by the Quality, as well as the Quantity, of their Food. They are forced to sup strong Gravey Soups, Eggs, Biscuits, and even Flesh, if they have but just Strength and Resolution to chew it. It seems absolutely impossible for them to survive all this Trash. Should a Man in perfect Health be compelled to eat stinking Meat, rotten Eggs, stale sour Broth, he is attacked with as violent Symptoms, as if he had taken real Poison, which, in Effect, he has. He is seized with Vomiting, Anguish, a violent Purging, and a Fever, with Raving, and eruptive Spots, which we call the Purple Fever. Now when the very same Articles of Food, in their soundest State, are given to a Person in a Fever, the Heat, and the morbid Matter already in his Stomach, quickly putrify them; and after a few Hours produce all the abovementioned Effects. Let any Man judge then, if the least Service can be expected from them. § 21. It is a Truth established by the first of Physicians, above two thousand Years past, and still further ratified by his Successors, that as long as a sick Person has a bad Humour or Ferment in his Stomach, his Weakness increases, in Proportion to the Food he receives. For this being corrupted by the infected Matter it meets there, proves incapable of nourishing, and becomes a conjunct or additional Cause of the Distemper. The most observing Persons constantly remark, that whenever a feverish Patient sups, what is commonly called some good Broth, the Fever gathers Strength and the Patient Weakness. The giving such a Soup or Broth, though of the freshest soundest Meat, to a Man who has a high Fever, or putrid Humours in his Stomach, is to do him exactly the same service, as if you had given him, two or three Hours later, stale putrid Soup. § 22. I must also affirm, that this fatal Prejudice, of keeping up the Patients' Strength by Food, is still too much propagated, even among those very Persons, whose Talents and whose Education might be expected to exempt them from any such gross Error. It were happy for Mankind, and the Duration of their Lives would generally be more extended, if they could be thoroughly persuaded of this medical, and so very demonstrable, Truth;--That the only things which can strengthen sick Persons are those, which are able to weaken their Disease; but their Obstinacy in this Respect is inconceivable: it is another Evil superadded to that of the Disease, and sometimes the more grievous one. Out of twenty sick Persons, who are lost in the Country, more than two Thirds might often have been cured, if being only lodged in a Place defended from the Injuries of the Air, they were supplied with Abundance of good Water. But that most mistaken Care and Regimen I have been treating of, scarcely suffers one of the twenty to survive them. § 23. What further increases our Horror at this enormous Propensity to heat, dry up, and cram the sick is, that it is totally opposite to what Nature herself indicates in such Circumstances. The burning Heat of which they complain; the Dryness of the Lips, Tongue and Throat; the flaming high Colour of their Urine; the great Longing they have for cooling things; the Pleasure and sensible Benefit they enjoy from fresh Air, are so many Signs, or rather Proofs, which cry out with a loud Voice, that we ought to attemperate and cool them moderately, by all means. Their foul Tongues, which shew the Stomach to be in the like Condition; their Loathing, their Propensity to vomit, their utter Aversion to all solid Food, and especially to Flesh; the disagreeable Stench of their Breath; their Discharge of fetid Wind upwards and downwards, and frequently the extraordinary Offensiveness of their Excrements, demonstrate, that their Bowels are full of putrid Contents, which must corrupt all the Aliments superadded to them; and that the only thing, which can prudently be done, is to dilute and attemper them by plentiful Draughts of refreshing cooling Drinks, which may promote an easy Discharge of them. I affirm it again, and I heartily wish it may be thoroughly attended to, that as long as there is any Taste of Bitterness, or of Putrescence; as long as there is a _Nausea_ or Loathing, a bad Breath, Heat and Feverishness with fetid Stools, and little and high-coloured Urine; so long all flesh, and Flesh-Soup, Eggs, and all kind of Food composed of them, or of any of them, and all Venice Treacle, Wine, and all heating things are so many absolute Poisons. § 24. I may possibly be censured as extravagant and excessive on these Heads by the Publick, and even by some Physicians: but the true and enlightened Physicians, those who attend to the Effects of every Particular, will find on the contrary, that far from exceeding in this Respect, I have rather feebly expressed their own Judgment, in which they agree with that of all the good ones, who have existed within more than two thousand Years; that very Judgment which Reason approves, and continual Experience confirms. The Prejudices I have been contending against have cost _Europe_ some Millions of Lives. § 25. Neither should it be omitted, that even when a Patient has very fortunately escaped Death, notwithstanding all this Care to obtain it, the Mischief is not ended; the Consequences of the high Aliments and heating Medicines being, to leave behind the Seed, the Principle, of some low and chronical Disease; which increasing insensibly, bursts out at length, and finally procures him the Death he has even wished for, to put an End to his tedious Sufferings. § 26. I must also take Notice of another dangerous common Practice; which is that of purging, or vomiting a Patient, at the very Beginning of a Distemper. Infinite Mischiefs are occasioned by it. There are some Cases indeed, in which evacuating Medicines, at the Beginning of a Disease, are convenient and even necessary. Such Cases shall be particularly mentioned in some other Chapters: but as long as we are unacquainted with them, it should be considered as a general Rule, that they are hurtful at the Beginning; this being true very often; and always, when the Diseases are strictly inflammatory. § 27. It is hoped by their Assistance, at that Time, to remove the Load and Oppression of the Stomach, the Cause of a Disposition to vomit, of a dry Mouth, of Thirst, and of much Uneasiness; and to lessen the Leaven or Ferment of the Fever. But in this Hope they are very often deceived; since the Causes of these Symptoms are seldom of a Nature to yield to these Evacuations. By the extraordinary Viscidity or Thickness of the Humours, that foul the Tongue, we should form our Notions of those, which line the Stomach and the Bowels. It may be washed, gargled and even scraped to very little good Purpose. It does not happen, until the Patient has drank for many Days, and the Heat, the Fever and the great Siziness of the Humours are abated, that this Filth can he thoroughly removed, which by Degrees separates of itself. The State of the Stomach being conformable to that of the Tongue, no Method can effectually scour and clean it at the Beginning: but by giving refreshing and diluting Remedies plentifully, it gradually frees itself; and the Propensity to vomit, with its other Effects and Uneasinesses, go off naturally, and without Purges. § 28. Neither are these Evacuations only negatively wrong, merely from doing no Good; for considerable Evil positively ensues from the Application of those acrid irritating Medicines, which increase the Pain and Inflammation; drawing the Humours upon those Parts that were already overloaded with them; which by no means expel the Cause of the Disease, that not being at this time fitted for Expulsion, as not sufficiently concocted or ripe: and yet which, at the same Time, discharge the thinnest Part of the Blood, whence the Remainder becomes more thick; in short which carry off the useful, and leave the hurtful Humours behind. § 29. The Vomit especially, being given in an inflammatory Disease, and even without any Distinction in all acute ones, before the Humours have been diminished by Bleeding, and diluted by plentiful small Drinks, is productive of the greatest Evils; of Inflammations of the Stomach, of the Lungs and Liver, of Suffocations and Frenzies. Purges sometimes occasion a general Inflammation of the Guts, which [16] terminates in Death. Some Instances of each of these terrible Consequences have I seen, from blundering Temerity, Imprudence and Ignorance. The Effect of such Medicines, in these Circumstances, are much the same with those we might reasonably expect, from the Application of Salt and Pepper to a dry, inflamed and foul Tongue, in Order to moisten and clean it. [16] It is pretty common to _hear_ of Persons recovering from Inflammations of the Bowels, or Guts, which our Author more justly and ingenuously considers as general Passports to Death: for it is difficult to conceive, that a real and _considerable_ Inflammation of such thin, membranous, irritable Parts, lined with such putrescent Humours and Contents, and in so hot and close a Situation, could be restored to a sound and healthy State _so often_ as Rumour affirms it. This makes it so important a Point, to avert every Tendency to an Inflammation of these feculent Parts, as to justify a Bleeding directed, solely, from this Precaution, and which might have been no otherwise indicated by a Disease, attended with any Symptom, that threatened such an Inflammation. But when a Person recovers, there can be no anatomical Search for such Inflammations, or its Effects, the real or imaginary Cure of which may well amaze the Patient, and must greatly redound to the Honour of his Prescriber; so that there may be Policy sometimes in giving a moderate Disease a very bad Name. _K._ § 30. Every Person of sound plain Sense is capable of perceiving the Truth of whatever I have advanced in this Chapter: and there would be some Degree of Prudence, even in those who do not perceive the real good Tendency of my Advice, not to defy nor oppose it too hardily. The Question relates to a very important Object; and in a Matter quite foreign to themselves, they undoubtedly owe some Deference to the Judgment of Persons, who have made it the Study and Business of their whole Lives. It is not to myself that I hope for their Attention, but to the greatest Physicians, whose feeble Instrument and Eccho I am. What Interest have any of us in forbidding sick People to eat, to be stifled, or to drink such heating things as heighten their Fever? What Advantage can accrue to us from opposing the fatal Torrent, which sweeps them off? What Arguments can persuade People, that some thousand Men of Genius, of Knowledge, and of Experience, who pass their Lives among a Croud and Succession of Patients; who are entirely employed to take Care of them, and to observe all that passes, have been only amusing and deceiving themselves, on the Effects of Food, of Regimen and of Remedies? Can it enter into any sensible Head, that a Nurse, who advises Soup, an Egg, or a Biscuit, deserves a Patient's Confidence, better than a Physician who forbids them? Nothing can be more disagreeable to the latter, than his being obliged to dispute continually in Behalf of the poor Patients; and to be in constant Terror, lest this mortally officious Attendance, by giving such Food as augments all the Causes of the Disease, should defeat the Efficacy of all the Remedies he administers to remove it; and should fester and aggravate the Wound, in Proportion to the Pains he takes to dress it. The more such absurd People love a Patient, the more they urge him to eat, which, in Effect, verifies the Proverb of _killing one with Kindness_. __Chapter III.__ _Of the Means that ought to be used, at the Beginning of Diseases; and of the Diet in acute Diseases._ __Sect.__ 31. I have clearly shewn the great Dangers of the Regimen, or Diet, and of the principal Medicines too generally made Use of by the Bulk of the People, on these Occasions. I must now point out the actual Method they may pursue, without any Risque, on the Invasion of some acute Diseases, and the general Diet which agrees with them all. As many as are desirous of reaping any Benefit from this Treatise, should attend particularly to this Chapter; since, throughout the other Parts of it, in Order to avoid Repetitions, I shall say nothing of the Diet, except the particular Distemper shall require a different one, from that of which I am now to give an exact Detail. And whenever I shall say in general, that a Patient is to be put upon a Regimen, it will signify, that he is to be treated according to the Method prescribed in this Chapter; and all such Directions are to be observed, with Regard to Air, Food, Drink and Glysters; except when I expressly order something else, as different Ptisans, Glysters, &c. § 32. The greater Part of Diseases (by which I always understand acute and feverish ones) often give some Notice of their Approach a few Weeks, and, very commonly, some Days before their actual Invasion; such as a light Lassitude, or Weariness, Stiffness or Numbness; less Activity than usual, less Appetite, a small Load or Heaviness at Stomach; some Complaint in the Head; a profounder Degree of Sleep, yet less composed, and less refreshing than usual; less Gayety and Liveliness; sometimes a light Oppression of the Breast, a less regular Pulse; a Propensity to be Cold; an Aptness to sweat; and sometimes a Suppression of a former Disposition to sweat. At such a Term it may be practicable to prevent, or at least considerably to mitigate, the most perplexing Disorders, by carefully observing the four following Points. 1. To omit all violent Work or Labour, but yet not so, as to discontinue a gentle easy Degree of Exercise. 2. To bring the Complainant to content himself without any, or with very little, solid Food; and especially to renounce all Flesh, Flesh-broth, Eggs and Wine. 3. To drink plentifully, that is to say, at least three Pints, or even four Pints daily, by small Glasses at a Time, from half hour to half hour, of the Ptisans Nº. 1 and 2, or even of warm Water, to each Quart of which may be added half a Glass of Vinegar. No Person can be destitute of this very attainable Assistance. But should there be a Want even of Vinegar, a few Grains of common [17] Salt may be added to a Quart of warm Water for Drink. Those who have Honey will do well to add two or three Spoonfuls of it to the Water. A light Infusion of Elder Flowers, or of those of the Linden, the Lime-tree, may also be advantageously used, and even well settled and clear sweet Whey. [17] This Direction of our Author's, which may surprize some, probably arises from his preferring a small Quantity of the marine Acid to no Acid at all: For though a great Proportion of Salt, in saving and seasoning Flesh and other Food, generally excites Thirst, yet a little of it seems to have rather a different Effect, by gently stimulating the salivary Glands: And we find that Nature very seldom leaves the great diluting Element wholly void of this quickening, antiputrescent Principle. _K._ 4. Let the Person, affected with such previous Complaints, receive Glysters of warm Water, or the Glyster Nº. 5. By pursuing these Precautions some grievous Disorders have often been happily rooted out: and although they should not prove so thoroughly efficacious, as to prevent their Appearance, they may at least be rendered more gentle, and much less dangerous. § 33. Very unhappily People have taken the directly contrary Method. From the Moment these previous, these forerunning Complaints are perceived, they allow themselves to eat nothing but gross Meat, Eggs, or strong Meat-Soups. They leave off Garden-Stuff and Fruits, which would be so proper for them; and they drink heartily (under a Notion of strengthening the Stomach and expelling Wind) of Wine and other Liquors, which strengthen nothing but the Fever, and expel what Degree of Health might still remain. Hence all the Evacuations are restrained; the Humours causing and nourishing the Diseases are not at all attempered, diluted, nor rendered proper for Evacuation. Nay, on the very contrary, they become more sharp, and more difficult to be discharged: while a sufficient Quantity of diluting refreshing Liquor, asswages and separates all Matters foreign to the Blood, which it purifies; and, at the Expiration of some Days, all that was noxious in it is carried off by Stool, by Urine, or by Sweat. § 34. When the Distemper is further advanced, and the Patient is already seized with that Coldness or Shuddering, in a greater or less Degree, which ushers in all Disease; and which is commonly attended with an universal Oppression, and Pains over all the Surface of the Body; the Patient, thus circumstanced, should be put to Bed, if he cannot keep up; or should sit down as quietly as possible, with a little more Covering than usual: he should drink every Quarter of an Hour a small Glass of the Ptisan, Nº. 1 or 2, warm; or, if that is not at Hand, of some one of those Liquids I have recommended § 32. § 35. These Patients earnestly covet a great Load of covering, during the Cold or Shivering; but we should be very careful to lighten them as soon as it abates; so that when the succeeding Heat begins, they may have no more than their usual Weight of Covering. It were to be wished _perhaps_, they had rather less. The Country People lie upon a Feather-bed, and under a downy Coverlet, or Quilt, that is commonly extremely heavy; and the Heat which is heightened and retained by Feathers, is particularly troublesome to Persons in a Fever. Nevertheless, as it is what they are accustomed to, this Custom may be complied with for one Season of the Year: but during our Heats, or whenever the Fever is very violent, they should lie on a Pallet (which will be infinitely better for them) and should throw away their Coverings of Down, so as to remain covered only with Sheets, or something else, less injurious than Feather-Coverings. A Person could scarcely believe, who had not been, as I have, a Witness of it, how much Comfort a Patient is sensible of, in being eased of his former Coverings. The Distemper immediately puts on a different Appearance. § 36. As soon as the Heat after the _Rigor_, or Coldness and Shuddering, approaches, and the Fever is manifestly advanced, we should provide for the Patient's _Regimen_. And 1, Care should be taken that the Air, in the Room where he lies, should not be too hot, the mildest Degree of Warmth being very sufficient; that there be as little Noise as possible, and that no Person speak to the Sick, without a Necessity for it. No external Circumstance heightens the Fever more, nor inclines the Patient more to a _Delirium_ or Raving, than the Persons in the Chamber, and especially about the Bed. They lessen the Spring, the elastic and refreshing Power, of the Air; they prevent a Succession of fresh Air; and the Variety of Objects occupies the Brain too much. Whenever the Patient has been at Stool, or has made Urine, these Excrements should be removed immediately. The Windows should certainly be opened Night and Morning, at least for a Quarter of an Hour each Time; when also a Door should be opened, to promote an entire Renovation or Change of the Air in the Room. Nevertheless, as the Patient should not be exposed at any Time to a Stream or Current of Air, the Curtains of his Bed should be drawn on such Occasions; and, if he lay without any, Chairs, with Blankets or Cloaths hung upon them, should be substituted in the Place of Curtains, and surround the Bed; while the Windows continued open, in Order to defend the Patient from the Force of the rushing Air. If the Season, however, be rigidly cold, it will be sufficient to keep the Windows open, but for a few Minutes, each Time. In Summer, at least one Window should be set open Day and Night. The pouring a little Vinegar upon a red-hot Shovel also greatly conduces to restore the Spring, and correct the Putridity, of the Air. In our greatest Heats, when that in the Room seems nearly scorching, and the sick Person is sensibly and greatly incommoded by it, the Floor may be sprinkled now and then; and Branches of Willow or Ash-trees dipt a little in Pails of Water may be placed within the Room. § 37. 2. With Respect to the Patient's Nourishment, he must entirely abstain from all Food; but he may always be allowed, and have daily prepared, the following Sustenance, which is one of the wholesomest, and indisputably the simplest one. Take half a Pound of Bread, a Morsel of the freshest Butter about the Size only of a Hazel Nut (which may even be omitted too) three Pints and one quarter of a Pint of Water. Boil them 'till the Bread be entirely reduced to a thin Consistence. Then strain it, and give the Patient one eighth Part of it every three, or every four, Hours; but still more rarely, if the Fever be vehemently high. Those who have Groats, Barley, Oatmeal, or Rice, may boil and prepare them in the same Manner, with some Grains of Salt. § 38. The Sick may also be sometimes indulged, in lieu of these different Spoon-Meats, with raw Fruits in Summer, or in Winter with Apples baked or boiled, or Plumbs and Cherries dried and boiled. Persons of Knowledge and Experience will be very little, or rather not at all, surprized to see various Kinds of Fruit directed in acute Diseases; the Benefit of which they may here have frequently seen. Such Advice can only disgust those, who remain still obstinately attached to old Prejudices. But could they prevail on themselves to reflect a little, they must perceive, that these Fruits which allay Thirst; which cool and abate the Fever; which correct and attemper the putrid and heated Bile; which gently dispose the Belly to be rather open, and promote the Secretion and Discharge of the Urine, must prove the properest Nourishment for Persons in acute Fevers. Hence we see, as it were by a strong Admonition from Nature herself, they express an ardent Longing for them; and I have known several, who would not have recovered, but for their eating secretly large Quantities of those Fruits they so passionately desired, and were refused. As many however, as are not convinced by my Reasoning in this Respect, may at least make a Tryal of my Advice, on my Affirmation and Experience; when I have no doubt but their own will speedily convince them of the real Benefit received from this Sort of Nourishment. It will then be evident, that we may safely and boldly allow, in all continual Fevers, Cherries red and black, Strawberries, the best cured Raisins, Raspberries, and Mulberries; provided that all of them be perfectly ripe. Apples, Pears and Plumbs are less melting and diluting, less succulent, and rather less proper. Some kinds of Pears however are extremely juicy, and even watery almost, such as the Dean or Valentia Pear, different Kinds of the Buree Pear; the St. Germain, the Virgoleuse; the green sugary Pear, and the Summer Royal, which may all be allowed; as well as a little Juice of very ripe Plumbs, with the Addition of Water to it. This last I have known to asswage Thirst in a Fever, beyond any other Liquor. Care should be taken, at the same Time, that the Sick should never be indulged in a great Quantity of any of them at once, which would overload the Stomach, and be injurious to them; but if they are given a little at a Time and often, nothing can be more salutary. Those whose Circumstances will afford them China Oranges, or Lemons, may be regaled with the Pulp and Juice as successfully; but without eating any of their Peel, which is hot and inflaming. § 39. 3. Their Drink should be such as allays Thirst, and abates the Fever; such as dilutes, relaxes, and promotes the Evacuations by Stool, Urine and Perspiration. All these which I have recommended in the preceding Chapters, jointly and severally possess these Qualities. A Glass or a Glass and a half of the Juice of such Fruits as I have just mentioned, may also be added to three full Pints of Water. § 40. The Sick should drink at least twice or thrice that Quantity daily, often, and a little at once, between three or four Ounces, every Quarter of an Hour. The Coldness of the Drink should just be taken off. § 41. 4. If the Patient has not two Motions in the 24 Hours; if the Urine be in small Quantity and high coloured; if he rave, the Fever rage, the Pain of the Head and of the Loins be considerable, with a Pain in the Belly, and a Propensity to vomit, the Glyster Nº. 5 should be given at least once a Day. The People have generally an Aversion to this kind of Remedy; notwithstanding there is not any more useful in feverish Disorders, especially in those I have just recounted; and one Glyster commonly gives more Relief, than if the Patient had drank four or five Times the Quantity of his Drinks. The Use of Glysters, in different Diseases, will be properly ascertained in the different Chapters, which treat of them. But it may be observed in this Place, that they are never to be given at the very Time the Patient is in a Sweat, which seems to relieve him. § 42. 5. As long as the Patient has sufficient Strength for it, he should sit up out of Bed one Hour daily, and longer if he can bear it; but at least half an Hour. It has a Tendency to lessen the Fever, the Head-ach, and a Light-headiness, or Raving. But he should not be raised, while he has a hopeful Sweating; though such Sweats hardly ever occur, but at the Conclusion of Diseases, and after the Sick has had several other Evacuations. § 43. 6. His Bed should be made daily while he sits up; and the Sheets of the Bed, as well as the Patient's Linen, should be changed every two Days, if it can be done with Safety. An unhappy Prejudice has established a contrary, and a really dangerous, Practice. The People about the Patient dread the very Thought of his rising out of Bed; they let him continue there in nasty Linen loaden with putrid Steams and Humours; which contribute, not only to keep up the Distemper, but even to heighten it into some Degree of Malignity. I do again repeat it here, that nothing conduces more to continue the Fever and Raving, than confining the Sick constantly to Bed, and witholding him from changing his foul Linen: by relieving him from both of which Circumstances I have, without the Assistance of any other Remedy, put a Stop to a continual Delirium of twelve Days uninterrupted Duration. It is usually said, the Patient is too weak, but this is a very weak Reason. He must be in very nearly a dying Condition, not to be able to bear these small Commotions, which, in the very Moment when he permits them, increase his Strength, and immediately after abate his Complaints. One Advantage the Sick gain by sitting up a little out of Bed, is the increased Quantity of their Urine, with greater Facility in passing it. Some have been observed to make none at all, if they did not rise out of Bed. A very considerable Number of acute Diseases have been radically, effectually, cured by this Method, which mitigates them all. Where it is not used, as an Assistance at least, Medicines are very often of no Advantage. It were to be wished the Patient and his Friends were made to understand, that Distempers were not to be expelled at once with rough and precipitate Usage; that they must have their certain Career or Course; and that the Use of the violent Methods and Medicines they chuse to employ, might indeed abridge the Course of them, by killing the Patient; yet never otherwise shortened the Disease; but, on the contrary, rendered it more perplexing, tedious and obstinate; and often entailed such unhappy Consequences on the Sufferer, as left him feeble and languid for the rest of his Life. § 44. But it is not sufficient to treat, and, as it were, to conduct the Distemper properly. The Term of Recovery from a Disease requires considerable Vigilance and Attention, as it is always a State of Feebleness, and, thence, of Depression and Faintness. The same Kind of Prejudice which destroys the Sick, by compelling them to eat, during the Violence of the Disease, is extended also into the Stage of Convalescence, or Recovery; and either renders it troublesome and tedious; or produces fatal Relapses, and often chronical Distempers. In Proportion to the Abatement, and in the Decline, of the Fever, the Quantity of Nourishment may be gradually increased: but as long as there are any Remains of it, their Qualities should be those I have already recommended. Whenever the Fever is compleatly terminated, some different Foods may be entered upon; so that the Patient may venture upon a little white Meat, provided it be tender; some [18] Fish; a little Flesh-Soup, a few Eggs at times, with Wine property diluted. It must be observed at the same Time, that those very proper Aliments which restore the Strength, when taken moderately, delay the perfect Cure, if they exceed in Quantity, tho' but a little; because the Action of the Stomach being extremely weakened by the Disease and the Remedies, is capable only, as yet, of a small Degree of Digestion; and if the Quantity of its Extents exceed its Powers, they do not digest, but become putrid. Frequent Returns of the Fever supervene; a continual Faintishness; Head-achs; a heavy Drowsiness without a Power of Sleeping comfortably; flying Pains and Heats in the Arms and Legs; Inquietude; Peevishness; Propensity to Vomit; Looseness; Obstructions, and sometimes a slow Fever, with a Collection of Humours, that comes to Suppuration. All these bad Consequences are prevented, by the recovering Sick contenting themselves, for some Time, with a very moderate Share of proper Food. We are not nourished in Proportion to the Quantity we swallow, but to that we digest. A Person on the mending Hand, who eats moderately, digests it and grows strong from it. He who swallows abundantly does not digest it, and instead of being nourished and strengthened, he withers insensibly away. [18] The most allowable of these are Whitings, Flounders, Plaice, Dabbs, or Gudgeons; especially such of the last as are taken out of clear current Streams with gravelly Bottoms. Salmon, Eels, Carp, all the Skate kind, Haddock, and the like, should not be permitted, before the Sick return to their usual Diet when in Health. _K._ § 45. We may reduce, within the few following Rules, all that is most especially to be observed, in Order to procure a compleat, a perfect Termination of acute Diseases; and to prevent their leaving behind them any Impediments to Health. 1. Let these who are recovering, as well as those who are actually sick, take very little Nourishment at a time, and take it often. 2. Let them take but one sort of Food at each Meal, and not change their Food too often. 3. Let them chew whatever solid Victuals they eat, very carefully. 4. Let them diminish their Quantity of Drink. The best for them in general is Water, [19] with a fourth or third Part of white Wine. Too great a Quantity of Liquids at this time prevents the Stomach from recovering its Tone and Strength; impairs Digestion; keeps up Weakness; increases the Tendency to a Swelling of the Legs; sometimes even occasions a slow Fever; and throws back the Person recovering into a languid State. [19] We have known many who had an Aversion to Water, and with whom, on that very Account, it might probably agree less, find Water very grateful, in which a thoroughly baked and hot, not burnt, Slice of Bread had been infused, untill it attained the Colour of fine clear Small-beer, or light Amber coloured Beer, and we never saw any Inconvenience result from it. Doubtless pure, untoasted elemental Water may be preferable for those who like, and have been accustomed to it. _K._ 5. Let them go abroad as often as they are able, whether on Foot, in a Carriage, or on Horseback. This last Exercise is the healthiest of all, and three fourths of the labouring People in this Country, who have it in their Power to procure it without Expense, are in the wrong to neglect it. They, who would practice it, should mount before their principal Meal, which should be about Noon, and never ride after it. Exercise taken before a Meal strengthens the Organs of Digestion, which is promoted by it. If the Exercise is taken soon after the Meal, it impairs it. 6. As People in this State are seldom quite as well towards Night, in the Evening they should take very little Food. Their Sleep will be the less disturbed for this, and repair them the more, and sooner. 7. They should not remain in Bed above seven, or eight Hours. 8. The Swelling of the Legs and Ancles, which happens to most Persons at this time, is not dangerous, and generally disappears of itself; if they live soberly and regularly, and take moderate Exercise. 9. It is not necessary, in this State, that they should go constantly every Day to Stool; though they should not be without one above two or three. If their Costiveness exceeds this Term, they should receive a Glyster the third Day, and even sooner, if they are heated by it, if they feel puffed up, are restless, and have any Pains in the Head. 10. Should they, after some time, still continue very weak; if their Stomach is disordered; if they have, from time to time, a little irregular Fever, they should take three Doses daily of the Prescription Nº. 14. which fortifies the Digestions, recovers the strength, and drives away the Fever. 11. They must by no means return to their Labour too soon. This erroneous Habit daily prevents many Peasants from ever getting perfectly well, and recovering their former Strength. From not having been able to confine themselves to Repose and Indolence for some Days, they never become as hearty hardy Workmen as they had been: and this premature hasty Labour makes them lose in the Consequence, every following Week of their Lives, more time than they ever gained, by their over-early resuming of their Labour. I see every Day weakly Labourers, Vineroons, and other Workmen, who date the Commencement of their Weakness from that of some acute Disease, which, for want of proper Management through the Term of their Recovery, was never perfectly cured. A Repose of seven or eight Days, more than they allowed themselves, would have prevented all these Infirmities; notwithstanding it is very difficult to make them sensible of this. The Bulk, the Body of the People, in this and in many other Cases, look no further than the present Day; and never extend their Views to the following one. They are for making no Sacrifice to Futurity; which nevertheless must be done, to render it favourable to us. __Chapter IV.__ _Of an Inflammation of the Breast._ __Sect.__ 46. The Inflammation of the Breast, or Peripneumony, or a Fluxion upon the Breast, is an Inflammation of the Lungs, and most commonly of one only, and consequently on one Side. The Signs by which it is evident, are a Shivering, of more or less Duration, during which the Person affected is sometimes very restless and in great Anguish, an essential and inseparable symptom; and which has helped me more than once to distinguish this Disease certainly, at the very Instant of its Invasion. Besides this, a considerable Degree of Heat succeeds the Shivering, which Heat, for a few ensuing Hours, is often blended as it were, with some Returns of Chilliness. The Pulse is quick, pretty strong, moderately full, hard and regular, when the Distemper is not very violent; but small, soft and irregular, when it is very dangerous. There is also a Sensation of Pain, but rather light and tolerable, in one Side of the Breast; sometimes a kind of straitning or Pressure on the Heart; at other times Pains through the whole Body, especially along the Reins; and some Degree of Oppression, at least very often; for sometimes it is but very inconsiderable. The Patient finds a Necessity of lying almost continually upon his Back, being able to lie but very rarely upon either of his Sides. Sometimes his Cough is dry, and then attended with the most Pain; at other times it is accompanied with a Spitting or Hawking up, blended with more or less Blood, and sometimes with pure sheer Blood. There is also some Pain, or at least a Sensation of Weight and Heaviness in the Head: and frequently a Propensity to rave. The Face is almost continually flushed and red: though sometimes there is a Degree of Paleness and an Air of Astonishment, at the Beginning of the Disease, which portend no little Danger. The Lips, the Tongue, the Palate, the Skin are all dry; the Breath hot; the Urine little and high coloured in the first Stage: but more plentiful, less flaming, and letting fall much Sediment afterwards. There is a frequent Thirst, and sometimes an Inclination to vomit; which imposing on the ignorant Assistants, have often inclined them to give the Patient a Vomit, which is mortal, especially at this Juncture. The Heat becomes universal. The Symptoms are heightened almost every Night, during which the Cough is more exasperated, and the Spitting or Expectoration in less Quantity. The best Expectoration is of a middling Consistence, neither too thin, nor too hard and tough, like those which are brought up at the Termination of a Cold; but rather more yellow, and mixed with a little Blood, which gradually becomes still less, and commonly disappears entirely, before the seventh Day. Sometimes the Inflammation ascends along the Wind-pipe, and in some Measure suffocates the Patient, paining him considerably in Swallowing, which makes him think he has a sore Throat. § 47. Whenever the Disease is very violent at first, or increases to be such, the Patient cannot draw his Breath, but when he sits up. The Pulse becomes very small and very quick; the Countenance livid, the Tongue black; the Eyes stare wildly; and he suffers inexpressible Anguish, attended with incessant Restlessness and Agitation in his Bed. One of his Arms is sometimes affected with a sort of Palsy; he raves without Intermission; can neither thoroughly wake nor sleep. The Skin of his Breast and of his Neck is covered (especially in close sultry Weather, and when the Distemper is extremely violent) with livid Spots, more or less remarkable, which should be called _petechial_ ones, but are improperly termed the _pourpre_, or purple. The natural Strength becomes exhausted; the Difficulty of breathing increases every Moment; he sinks into a Lethargy, and soon dies a terrible Death in Country Places, by the very Effects of the inflaming Medicines they employ on such Occasions. It has been known in Fact, that the Use of them has raised the Distemper to such a Height, that the very Heart has been rent open, which the Dissection of the Body has demonstrated. § 48. If the Disease rushes on at once, with a sudden and violent Attack; if the Horror, the Cold and Shivering last many Hours, and are followed with a nearly scorching Degree of Heat; if the Brain is affected from the very Onset; if the Patient has a small Purging, attended with a _Tenesinus_, or straining to Stool, often termed a _Needy_; if he abhors the Bed; if he either sweat excessively, or if his Skin be extremely dry; if his natural Manner and Look are considerably changed; and if he spits up with much Difficulty, the Disease is extremely dangerous. § 49. He must directly, from the first Seizure in this State, be put upon a Regimen, and his Drink must never be given cold. It should either be the Barley Water Nº. 2, the Almond Emulsion Nº. 4, or that of Nº. 7. The Juices of the Plants, which enter into the last of these Drinks, are excellent Remedies in this Case; as they powerfully attenuate, or melt down, the viscid thick Blood, which causes the Inflammation. The Advantage of Bleeding: As long as the Fever keeps up extremely violent; while the Patient does not expectorate sufficiently; continues raving; has a violent Head-ach, or raises up pure Blood, the Glyster Nº. 5 must be given thrice, or at least twice, in twenty four Hours. However the principal Remedy is Bleeding. As soon as ever the preceding cold Assault is over, twelve Ounces of Blood must be taken away at once; and, if the Patient be young and strong, fourteen or even sixteen. This plentiful Bleeding gives him more Ease, than if twenty four Ounces had been drawn, at three different Times. § 50. When the Disease is circumstanced as described (§ 46) that first Bleeding makes the Patient easy for some Hours; but the Complaint returns; and to obviate its Violence, as much as possible, we must, except things promise extremely well, repeat the Bleeding four Hours after the first, taking again twelve Ounces of Blood, which pretty often proves sufficient. But if, about the Expiration of eight or ten Hours, it appears to kindle up again, it must be repeated a third, or even a fourth Time. Yet, with the Assistance of other proper Remedies, I have seldom been obliged to bleed a fourth Time, and have sometimes found the two first Bleedings sufficient. If the Disease has been of several Days Duration, when I have first been called; if the Fever is still very high; if there be a Difficulty of Breathing; if the Patient does not expectorate at all, or brings up too much Blood; without being too solicitous about the Day of the Disease, the Patient should be bled, though it were on the tenth. [20] § 51. In this, and in all other inflammatory Diseases, the Blood is in a very thick viscid State: and almost immediately on its being drawn, a white tough Skin, somewhat like Leather, is formed on its Top, which most People have seen, and which is called the _pleuritic Crust_. It is thought a promising Appearance, when at each Bleeding it seems less hard, and less thick, than it was at the preceding ones: and this is very generally true, if the Sick feels himself, at the same Time, sensibly better: but whoever shall attend _solely_ to the Appearance of the Blood, will find himself often deceived. It will happen, even in the most violent Inflammation of the Breast, that this Crust is not formed, which is supposed to be a very unpromising Sign. There are also, in this Respect, many odd Appearances, which arise from the smallest Circumstances; so that we must not regulate the Repetitions of our bleeding, solely by this Crust: and in general we must not be over credulous in supposing, that the Appearances in the Blood, received into the Bason, can enable us to determine, with Certainty, of its real State in the Body. [20] We should however, with the greater Circumspection (of how much the longer standing the Disease has been, and by how much the more difficult the viscous Humours are to be melted down and dislodged) attend to the Coction of the Matter of Expectoration; which Nature does not often easily effect, and which she effects the more imperfectly and slowly, the weaker he is. Her last Efforts have often been attended with such high Paroxysms, as have imposed even upon very competent Physicians, and have made them open a Vein a few Hours before the Patients' Death, from their Pulses being strong, hard and frequent. Excessive Weakness is the Sign, by which we may discover such unavailing Efforts to be the last. _E. L._ § 52. When the sick Person is in the Condition described (§ 47) the Bleeding is not only unattended with Ease; but sometimes it is also pernicious, by the sudden Weakness to which it reduces him. Generally in such a Case all Medicines and Means are insignificant: and it is a very bad Sign in this Disease, when this Discharge is not attended with Ease and Benefit to the Sick; or when there are some Circumstances, which oblige us to be sparing of it. § 53. The Patient's Legs should every Day, for one half Hour, be put into a Bath of warm Water, wrapping him up closely; that the Cold may not check that Perspiration, which the Bath promotes. § 54. Every two Hours he should take two Spoonfuls of the Mixture Nº. 8, which promotes all the Discharges, and chiefly that of Expectoration. § 55. When the Oppression and Straitness are considerable, and the Cough dry, the Patient may receive the Vapour of boiling Water, to which a little Vinegar has been added. There are two ways of effecting this; either by placing below his Face, after setting him up, a Vessel filled with such boiling hot Water, and covering the Patient's Head and the Vessel with a Linen Cloth, that may inclose the Steam; or else by holding before his Mouth a Spunge dipped in the same boiling Liquor. This last Method is the least effectual, but it fatigues the Patient considerably less. When this bad Symptom is extremely pressing, Vinegar alone should be used without Water; and the Vapour of it has often saved Patients, who seemed to have one Foot in the Grave: but it should be continued for several Hours. § 56. The outward Remedies directed in Nº. 9. are also applied with Success to the Breast, and to the Throat. § 57. When the Fever is extremely high, the Sick should take every Hour, a Spoonful of the Mixture Nº. 10. in a Cup of the Ptisan [21] but without diminishing on this Account the usual Quantity of his other Drinks, which may be taken immediately after it. [21] The Use of Acids, in Inflammations of the Breast, requires no little Consideration. Whenever the sick Person has an Aversion to them; when the Tongue is moist, the Stomach is heavy and disordered, and the Habit and Temperament of the Patient is mild and soft; when the Cough is very sharp without great Thirst, we ought to abstain from them. But when the Inflammation is joined to a dry Tongue, to great Thirst, Heat and Fever, they are of great Service. Slices of China Oranges sprinkled with Sugar may be given first; a light Limonade may be allowed afterwards; and at last small Doses of the Mixture, Nº. 10. if it becomes necessary. _E. L._--I have chosen to retain this Note of the Editor of _Lyons_, from having frequently seen the Inefficacy, and sometimes, I have even thought, the ill Effects of Acids in Peripneumonies and Pleurisies, in a Country far South of _Swisserland_; and where these Diseases are very frequent, acute and fatal. On the other hand I shall add the Substance of what Dr. _Tissot_ says on this Head in a Note to his Table of Remedies, wherein he affirms, that he has given in this Disease very large Doses of them, rising gradually from small ones, and always with great Success; intreating other Physicians to order this Acid (the Spirit of Sulphur) in the same large Doses which he directs in this Chapter, and assuring himself of their thanks, for its good Consequences--Now the only ill Effect I can surmize here, from shewing this Diversity of Opinion in these two learned Physicians, and my own Doubts, is, that the Subjects of this Disease in Country Places may prove somewhat confused and irresolute by it, in their Conduct in such Cases. But as all of us certainly concur in the great Intention of doing all possible Good, by the extensive Publication of this Treatise, I shall take leave to observe that in this Disease, and in Pleurisies, more solid Benefit has been received in _Carolina_, _Virginia_, &c. from the Use of the _Seneka_ Rattle-snake Root, than from any other Medicine whatever. Bleeding indeed is necessarily premised to it; but it has often saved the Necessity of many repeated Bleedings. This Medicine, which is termed in Latin, the _Polygala Virginiana_, is certainly rather of a saponaceous attenuating Quality, and betrays not any Marks of Acidity, being rather moderately acrid. There will be Occasion to mention it more particularly in the subsequent Chapter, as such a Liberty can need no Apology to any philosophical Physician. _K._ § 58. As long as the Patient shall grow worse, or only continue equally bad, the same Medicines are to be repeated. But if on the third Day (tho' it rarely happens so soon) or fourth, or fifth, the Disease takes a more favourable Turn; if the Exasperation returns with less Violence; the Cough be less severe; the Matter coughed up less bloody: if Respiration becomes easier; the Head be less affected; the Tongue not quite so dry; if the high Colour of the Urine abates, and its Quantity be increased, it may be sufficient then to keep the Patient carefully to his Regimen, and to give him a Glyster every Evening. The Exasperation that occurs the fourth Day is often the highest. § 59. This Distemper is most commonly terminated and carried off by Expectoration, and often by Urine, which on the seventh, the ninth, or the eleventh Day, and sometimes on the Days between them, begins to let fall a plentiful Sediment, or Settling, of a pale red Colour, and sometimes real _Pus_ or ripe Matter. These Discharges are succeeded by Sweats, which are as serviceable then, as they were injurious at the Beginning of the Disease. § 60. Some Hours before these Evacuations appear, there come on, and not seldom, some very alarming Symptoms, such as great Anguish; Palpitations, some Irregularity in the Pulse; an increased Oppression; convulsive Motions (this being what is called the _Crisis_, the Height, or Turn of the Distemper) but they are no ways dangerous, provided they do not occasion any improper Treatment. These Symptoms depend on the morbid and purulent Matter, which, being dislodged, circulates with the Humours, and irritates different Parts, until the Discharge of it has fairly begun; after which all such Symptoms disappear, and Sleep generally ensues. However I cannot too strongly insist on the Necessity of great Prudence in such Circumstances. Sometimes it is the Weakness of the Patient, and at other times Convulsions, or some other Symptoms, that terrify the By-standers. If, which is most generally the Case, the absurd Practice of directing particular Remedies for such Accidents takes place, such as spirituous Cordials, Venice Treacle, Confections, Castor and Rue; the Consequence is, that Nature being disturbed in her Operations, the _Crisis_ or Turn is not effected; the Matter which should be discharged by Stool, by Urine, or by Sweat, is not discharged out of the Body; but is thrown upon some internal or external part of it. Should it be on some inward part, the Patient either dies at once; or another Distemper succeeds, more troublesome and incurable than the first. Should it be expelled to some outward part, the Danger indeed is less; and as soon as ever such a Tumour appears, ripening Pultices should be apply'd to bring it to a Head, after which it should immediately be opened. § 61. In order to prevent such unhappy Consequences, great Care must be taken, whenever such terrifying Symptoms come on, [about the Time of the _Crisis_] to make no Change in the Diet, nor in the Treatment of the Patient; except in giving him the loosening Glyster Nº. 5; and applying every two Hours a Flannel, squeezed out of warm Water, which may cover all the Belly, and in a Manner go round the Body behind the Reins. The Quantity of his Drink may also be increased a little; and that of his Nourishment lessened, as long as this high and violent State continues. § 62. I have not spoken of Vomits or Purges, as being directly contrary to the Nature of this Disease. Anodynes, or Opiates, to procure Sleep are also, in general, very improper. In a few Cases, however, they may possibly be useful; but these Cases are so very difficult to be sufficiently distinguished, that Opiates should never be admitted in this Disease, without the Presence and Advice of a Physician. I have seen many Patients, who have been thrown into an incurable Hectic, by taking them improperly. When the Disease is not received in a mortal Degree, nor has been injudiciously treated, and proceeds in a benign regular Manner, the Patient may be called very well and safe by the fourteenth Day; when he may, if he has an Appetite, be put upon the Diet of People who are recovering. But if he still retains an Aversion to Food; if his Mouth is foul and furred, and he is sensible of some Heaviness in his Head, he should take the purging Potion Nº. 11. § 63. Bleedings from the Nose occur sometimes naturally in this Disease, even after repeated Bleedings by Art; these are very benign and favourable, and are commonly attended with more Ease and Relief than artificial Bleedings. Such voluntary Discharges may sometimes be expected, when the Patient is sensibly mended in many Respects after the Use of the Lancet; and yet complains of a great Pain in his Head, accompanied with quick sparkling Eyes, and a Redness of the Nose. Nothing should be done to stop these voluntary Bleedings, since it would be very dangerous: For when Nature has fulfilled her Intention by them, they cease of themselves. At other times, but more rarely, the Distemper is carried off by a natural Purging, attended with moderate Pain, and the Discharge of bilious Matter. § 64. If the Expectoration, or hawking up of Matter, stops very suddenly, and is not speedily attended with some other Evacuation; the Oppression and Anguish of the Patient immediately return, and the Danger is great and pressing. If the Distemper, at this Juncture, is not of many Days standing; if the Patient is a strong Person; if he has not as yet been plentifully bled; if there be still some Blood mixed with the Humour he expectorates; or if the Pulse be strong and hard, he should be bled immediately in the Arm; and constantly receive the Steam of hot Water and Vinegar by the Mouth, and drink plentifully of the Ptisan Nº. 2, something hotter than ordinary. But if his Circumstances, after this Suppression, are different from these just mentioned; instead of bleeding him, two Blisters should be applied to the Legs; and he should drink plentifully of the Ptisan Nº. 12. The Causes which oftenest produce this Suppression of his Expectoration are, 1, a sharp and sudden cold Air. 2, too hot a one. 3, over hot Medicines. 4, excessive Sweating. 5, a Purge prematurely and injudiciously timed. and 6, some immoderate Passion of the Mind. § 65. When the Sick has not been sufficiently bled, or not soon enough; and even sometimes, which I have seen, when he has been greatly weakened by excessive Bleeding; so that the Discharges by Stool, Urine, Expectoration and Perspiration, have not been sufficiently made; when these Discharges have been confused by some other Cause; or the Disease has been injudiciously treated; then the Vessels that have been inflamed, do not unload themselves of the Humours, which stuff up and oppress them: but there happens in the Substance of the affected Lung, the same Circumstance we see daily occur on the Surface of the Body. If an inflammatory Tumour or Swelling does not disperse itself, and disappears insensibly, it forms an Imposthume or Abscess. Thus exactly also in the inflamed Lung, if the Inflammation is not dissipated, it forms an Abscess, which, in that part, is called a _Vomica:_ and the Matter of that Abscess, like the external ones, remains often long inclosed in its Sac or Bag, without bursting open its Membrane or Case, and discharging the Matter it contains. § 66. If the Inflammation was not very deeply seated in the inward Substance of the diseased Lung; but was extended to its Surface, that is, very near the Ribs, the Sac will burst on the Surface of the Lung; and the Matter contained in it must be discharged into the Cavity, or Hollowness of the Breast, between the Lung, the Ribs, and the Diaphragm or Midriff, which is the Membrane that divides the Breast and the Belly. But when the Inflammation is considerably deeper, the Imposthume bursts withinside of the Lung itself. If its Orifice, or Opening is so small, that but little can get out at once; if the Quantity of all the Matter be inconsiderable, and the Patient is at the same Time pretty strong, he coughs up the Matter, and is very sensibly relieved. But if this _Vomica_ be large, or if its Orifice is wide, and it throws out a great Quantity of Matter at once; or if the Patient is very weak, he dies the Moment it bursts, and that sometimes when it is least expected. I have seen one Patient so circumstanced expire, as he was conveying a Spoonful of Soup to his Mouth; and another, while he was wiping his Nose. There was no present Symptom in either of these Cases, whence a Physician might suppose them likelier to die at that Instant, than for some Hours before. The _Pus_, or Matter, is commonly discharged through the Mouth after Death, and the Bodies very soon become putrified. § 67. We call that _Vomica_ which is not burst, an _occult_ or hidden, and that which is, an evident or open one. It is of considerable Importance to treat exactly and clearly of this Topic; as a great Number of Country People die of these Imposthumes, even without a Suspicion of the Cause of their Death. I had an Instance of it some Days since, in the School-master of a Village. He had an occult and very considerable _Vomica_ in the left Lung, which was the Consequence of an Inflammation of the Breast, that had been treated improperly at the Beginning. He seemed to me not likely to live twenty four Hours; and really died in the Night, after inexpressible Anguish. § 68. Whatever Distemper is included within the Breast of a living Patient, is neither an Object of the Sight or Touch whence these _Vomicas_, these inward Tumours, are so often unknown, and indeed unsuspected. The Evacuations that were necessary for the Cure, or sometimes for the Prevention, of them, have not taken place, during the first fourteen Days. At the End of this Term, the Patient, far from being cured, is not very considerably relieved; but, on the contrary, the Fever continues to be pretty high, with a Pulse continually quick; in general soft and weak; though sometimes pretty hard, and often fluctuating, or, as it were, waving. His Breathing is still difficult and oppressed; with small cold Shudderings from Time to Time; an Exasperation of the Fever; flushed Cheeks, dry Lips, and Thirst. The Increase of these Symptoms declare, that _Pus_ or Matter is thoroughly formed: the Cough then becomes more continual; being exasperated with the least Motion; or as soon as ever the Patient has taken any Nourishment. He can repose only on the Side affected. It often happens indeed, that he cannot lie down at all; but is obliged to be set up all Day; sometimes even without daring to lean a little upon his Loins, for fear of increasing the Cough and Oppression. He is unable to sleep; has a continual Fever, and his Pulse frequently intermits. The Fever is not only heightened every Evening; but the smallest Quantity of Food, the gentlest Motion, a little Coughing, the lightest Agitation of the Mind, a little more than usual Heat in the Chamber, Soup either a little too strong, or a little too salt, increase the Quickness of his Pulse the Moment they occur, or are given. He is quite restless, has some short Attacks of the most terrible Anguish, accompanied and succeeded by Sweatings on his Breast, and from his whole Countenance. He sweats sometimes the whole Night; his Urine is reddish, now frothy, and at other times oily, as it were. Sudden Flushings, hot as Flames, rise into his whole Visage. The greater Number of the Sick are commonly sensible of a most disagreeable Taste in their Mouth; some of old strong Cheese; others of rotten Eggs; and others again of stinking Meat, and fall greatly away. The Thirst of some is unquenchable; their Mouths and Lips are parched; their Voice weak and hoarse; their Eyes hollow, with a kind of Wildness in their Looks. They have a general Disgust to all Food; and if they should ask for some particular Nourishment without seeing it, they reject it the Moment it is brought them; and their Strength at length seems wholly exhausted. Besides these Symptoms, a little Inflation, or _Bloatedness_, as it were, is sometimes observed on the Breast, towards the Side affected; with an almost insensible Change of Colour. If the _Vomica_ be situated at the Bottom of the affected Lobe of the Lungs, and in its internal Part, that is, nearly in the Middle of the Breast, some _Puffiness_ or light Swelling may be perceived in some Bodies, by gently pressing the Pit of the Stomach; especially when the Patient coughs. In short, according to the Observations of a German Physician, if one strike the open Hand on the Breast, covered only with a Shirt, it retains in the Spot, which is directly opposite to the _Vomica_, a flat heavy Sound, as if one struck a Piece of Flesh; while in striking on the other Side it gives a clear loud Sound, as from a Drum. I still doubt however, whether this Observation will generally hold true; and it would be hazardous to affirm there is no Abscess in a Breast, which does not return this heavy Sound. § 69. When a _Vomica_ is formed, as long as it is not emptied, all the Symptoms I have already enumerated increase, and the _Vomica_ grows in Size: the whole Side of the Lung affected sometimes becomes a Bag or Sac of Matter. The sound Side is compressed; and the Patient dies after dreadful Anguish, with the Lung full of _Pus_, and without having ever brought up any. To avoid such fatal Consequences, it is necessary to procure the Rupture and Discharge of this inward Abscess, as soon as we are certain of its Existence: And as it is safer it should break within the Lobe affected, from whence it may be discharged by hawking up; than that it should burst and void itself into the Cavity of the Breast, for Reasons I shall give hereafter, we must endeavour, that this Rupture may be effected within the internal Substance of the Lungs. § 70. The most effectual Methods to procure this are, 1. To make the Patient continually receive, by his Mouth, the Vapour of warm Water. 2. When by this Means that part of the Sac or Abscess is softened, where we could wish the Rupture of it to happen, the Patient is to swallow a large Quantity of the most emollient Liquid; such as Barley Water, Almond Milk, light Veal Broth, or Milk and Water. By this Means the Stomach is kept always full: so that the Resistance to the Lungs being considerable on that Side, the Abscess and its Contents will naturally be pressed towards the Side of the Wind-pipe, as it will meet with less Resistance there. This fulness of the Stomach will also incline the Patient to cough, which may concur to produce a good Event. Hence, 3, we should endeavour to make the Patient cough, by making him smell to some Vinegar, or even snuff up a little; or by injecting into his Throat, by the Means of a small Syringe or Pipe, such as Children make out of short Pieces of Elder-Boughs, a little Water or Vinegar. 4. He should be advised to bawl out aloud, to read loud, or to laugh heartily; all which Means contribute to burst open the Abscess, as well as those two following ones. 5. Let him take every two Hours a Soup-Ladle of the Potion Nº. 8. 6. He should be put into a Cart, or some other Carriage; but not before he has drank plentifully of such Liquors as I have just mentioned: after which the Shaking and Jolting in the Carriage have sometimes immediately procured that Rupture, or breaking of the Bag or Abscess, we wished for. § 71. Some Years since I saw a Country Maid Servant, who was left in a languishing Condition after an Inflammation of the Breast; without any Person's suspecting her Ailment. This Woman being put into a Cart, that was sent for a Load of Hay; one of the Wheels run violently against a Tree: she swooned away, and at the same Time brought up a great Quantity of digested Matter. She continued to bring up more; during which I was informed of her Case, and of the Accident, which effectually cured her. A _Swiss_ Officer, who served in _Piedmont_, had been in a languid State of Health for some Months; and returned home to set himself down as easily as he could, without conceiving any considerable Hopes of Recovery. Upon entering into his own Country, by the Way of _Mount Bernard_; and being obliged to go some Paces on Foot, he fell down; and remained in a Swoon above a Quarter of an Hour: during which Time he threw up a large Quantity of Matter, and found himself that very Moment very greatly relieved. I ordered him a proper Diet, and suitable Medicines: his Health became perfectly established; and the Preservation of his Life was principally owing to this lucky Fall. Many Persons afflicted with a _Vomica_, faint away the very Instant it breaks. Some sharp Vinegar should be directly held to their Nose. This small Assistance is generally sufficient, where the bursting of it is not attended with such Appearances as shew it to be mortal, in which Case every Application is insignificant. § 72. If the sick Person was not extremely weak before the Bursting of the Abscess; if the Matter was white, and well conditioned; if the Fever abates after it; if the Anguish, Oppression and Sweats terminate; if the Cough is less violent; if the Patient is sensibly easier in his Situation or Posture; if he recovers his Sleep and Appetite; if his usual Strength returns; if the Quantity he expectorates, or brings up, becomes daily and gradually less; and if his Urine is apparently better, we may have Room to hope, that by the Assistance of these Remedies I shall immediately direct, he may be radically, compleatly cured. § 73. But if on the contrary; when his Strength is exhausted before the bursting of the Abscess; when the Matter is too thin and transparent, brown, green, yellow, bloody and of an Offensive Smell; if the Pulse continues quick and weak; if the Patient's Appetite, Strength and Sleep do not improve, there remains no hope of a Cure, and the best Medicines are ineffectual: Nevertheless we ought to make some Tryal of them. § 74. They consist of the following Medicines and Regulations. 1. Give every four Hours a little Barley or Rice Cream. 2. If the Matter brought up is thick and glewy, so that it is very difficult to be loosened and discharged, give every two Hours a Soup-ladle of the Potion Nº. 8; and between the giving these two, let the Patient take every half Hour a Cup of the Drink Nº. 13. 3. When the Consistence of the Matter is such, that there is no Occasion for these Medicines to promote the Discharge of it, they must be omitted; tho' the same Sort and Quantity of Food are to be continued; but with the Addition of an equal Quantity of Milk; or, which would be still more beneficial, instead of this Mixture, we should give an equal Quantity of sweet Milk, taken from a good Cow, which, in such a Case, may compose the whole Nourishment of the Patient. 4. He should take four Times a Day, beginning early in the Morning, and at the Distance of two Hours, a Dose of the Powder Nº. 14, diluted in a little Water, or made into a _Bolus_, or Morsel, with a little Syrup or Honey. His common Drink should be Almond Emulsion, commonly called Almond Milk, or Barley Water, or fresh Water with a fourth part Milk. 5. He should air and exercise every Day on Horseback, or in a Carriage, according as his Strength and his Circumstances will allow him. But of all Sorts of Exercise, that upon a trotting Horse is, beyond all Comparison, the very best, and the easiest to be procured by every Body; provided the Disease be not too far advanced; since in such a Situation, any Exercise, that was only a little violent, might prove pernicious. § 75. The Multitude, who are generally illiterate, seldom consider any thing as a Remedy, except they swallow it. They have but little Confidence in _Regimen_, or any Assistance in the Way of Diet, and consider Riding on Horseback as wholly useless to them. This is a dangerous Mistake, of which I should be glad to undeceive them: since this Assistance, which appears so insignificant to them, is probably the most effectual of any: it is that in Fact, without which they can scarcely expect a Cure, in the highest Degrees of this Disease: it is that, which perhaps alone may recover them, provided they take no improper Food. In brief it is considered, and with Reason, as the real Specific for this Disease. § 76. The Influence of the Air is of more Importance in this Disorder, than in any others; for which Reason great Care should be taken to procure the best, in the Patient's Chamber. For this Purpose it should often be ventilated, or have an Admission of fresh Air, and be sweetened from Time to Time, tho' very lightly, with a little good Vinegar; and in the Season it should be plentifully supplied with agreeable Herbs, Flowers and Fruits. Should the Sick be unfortunately situated, and confined in an unwholsome Air, there can be but little Prospect of curing him, without altering it. § 77. Out of many Persons affected with these Disorders, some have been cured by taking nothing whatsoever but Butter-milk; others by Melons and Cucumbers only; and others again by Summer Fruits of every Sort. Nevertheless, as such Cases are singular, and have been but few, I advise the Patient to observe the Method I have directed here, as the surest. § 78. It is sufficient if he have a Stool once in two, or even in three, Days. Hence, there is no Reason for him, in this Case, to accustom himself to Glysters: they might excite a Looseness, which may be very dangerous. § 79. When the Discharge of the Matter from the Breast diminishes, and the Patient is perceivably mended in every Respect, it is a Proof that the Wound in the Abscess is deterged, or clean, and that it is disposed to heal up gradually. If the Suppuration, or Discharge, continues in great Quantity; if it seems but of an indifferent Consistence; if the Fever returns every Evening, it may be apprehended, that the Wound, instead of healing, may degenerate into an Ulcer, which must prove a most embarrassing Consequence. Under such a Circumstance, the Patient would fall into a confirmed Hectic, and die after some Months Sickness. § 80. I am not acquainted with any better Remedy, in such a dangerous Case, than a Perseverance in these already directed, and especially in moderate Exercise on Horseback. In some of them indeed Recourse may be had to the sweet Vapours of some vulnerary Herbs in hot Water, with a little Oil of Turpentine, as directed Nº. 15. I have seen them succeed; but the safest Way is to consult a Physician, who may examine and consider, if there is not some particular Circumstance combined with the Disease, that proves an Obstacle to the Cure of it. If the Cough prevents the Patient from Sleeping, he may take in the Evening two or three Table Spoonfuls of the Prescription Nº. 16, in a Glass of Almond Milk or Barley Water. § 81. The very same Causes which suddenly suppress the Expectoration, in an Inflammation of the Breast, may also check the Expectoration from a _Vomica_ already begun: in which Circumstance the Patient is speedily afflicted with an Oppression and Anguish, a Fever and evident Feebleness. We should immediately endeavour to remove this Stoppage, by the Vapour of hot Water; by giving a Spoonful of the Mixture Nº. 3 every Hour; by a large Quantity of the Ptisan Nº. 12, and by a proper Degree of Motion or Exercise. As soon as ever the Expectoration returns, the Fever and the other Symptoms disappear. I have seen this Suppression in strong Habits quickly followed with an Inflammation about the Seat of the _Vomica_, which has obliged me to bleed, after which the Expectoration immediately returned. § 82. It happens sometimes, that the _Vomica_ is entirely cleansed; the Expectoration is entirely finished, or drained off, the Patient seems well, and thinks himself compleatly cured: but soon after, the Uneasiness, Oppression, Cough and Fever are renewed, because the Membrane or Bag of the _Vomica_ fills again: again it empties itself, the Patient expectorates for some Days, and seems to recover. After some Time however, the same Scene is repeated; and this Vicissitude, or Succession, of moderate and of bad Health, often continues for some Months and even some Years. This happens when the _Vomica_ is emptied, and is gradually deterged; so that its Membranes, or Sides touch or approach each other; but without cicatrizing or healing firmly; and then there drops or leaks in very gradually fresh Matter. For a few Days this seems no ways to incommode the Patient; but as soon as a certain Quantity is accumulated, he is visited again with some of the former Symptoms, 'till another Evacuation ensues. People thus circumstanced, in this Disease, sometimes appear to enjoy a tolerable Share of Health. It may be considered as a kind of internal Issue, which empties and cleanses itself from Time to Time; pretty frequently in some Constitutions, more slowly in others; and under which some may attain a good middling Age. When it arrives however at a very considerable Duration, it proves incurable. In its earliest State, it gives way sometimes to a Milk-diet, to riding on Horseback; and to the Medicine Nº. 14. § 83. Some may be surprized, that in treating of an Abscess of the Lungs, and of the Hectic, which is a Consequence of it, I say nothing of those Remedies, commonly termed _Balsamics_, and so frequently employed in them, for Instance, Turpentines, Balsam of Peru, of Mecca, Frankincense, Mastich, Myrrh, Storax and Balsam of Sulphur. I shall however say briefly here (because it is equally my Design to destroy the Prejudice of the People, in favour of improper Medicines, and to establish the Reputation of good ones) that I never in such Cases made use of these Medicines; because I am convinced, that their Operation is generally hurtful in such Cases; because I see them daily productive of real Mischief; that they protract the Cure, and often change a slight Disorder into an incurable Disease. They are incapable of perfect Digestion, they obstruct the finest Vessels of the Lungs, whose Obstructions we should endeavour to remove; and evidently occasion, except their Dose be extremely small, Heat and Oppression. I have very often seen to a Demonstration, that Pills compounded of Myrrh, Turpentine and Balsam of Peru, have, an Hour after they were swallowed, occasioned a Tumult and Agitation in the Pulse, high Flushings, Thirst and Oppression. In short it is demonstrable to every unprejudiced Person, that these Remedies, as they have been called, are truly prejudicial in this Case; and I heartily wish People may be disabused with Respect to them, and that they may lose that Reputation so unhappily ascribed to them. I know that many Persons, very capable in other Respects, daily make use of them in these Distempers: such however cannot fail of disusing them, as soon as they shall have observed their Effects, abstracted from the Virtues of the other Medicines to which they add them, and which mitigate the Danger of them. I saw a Patient, whom a foreign Surgeon, who lived at _Orbe_, attempted to cure of a Hectic with melted Bacon, which aggravated the Disease. This Advice seemed, and certainly was, absurd; nevertheless the Balsamics ordered in such Cases are probably not more digestible than fat Bacon. The Powder Nº. 14 possesses whatever these Balsamics pretend to: it is attended with none of the Inconveniencies they produce; and has all the good Qualities ascribed to them. Notwithstanding which, it must not be given while the Inflammation exists; nor when it may revive again; and no other Aliment should be mixed with the Milk. The famous Medicine called the _Antihectic_, (_Antihecticum Poterii_) has not, any more than these Balsamics, the Virtues ascribed to it in such Cases. I very often give it in some obstinate Coughs to Infants with their Milk, and then it is very useful: but I have seldom seen it attended with considerable Effects in grown Persons; and in the present Cases I should be fearful of its doing Mischief. § 84. If the _Vomica_, instead of breaking within the Substance of the Lungs affected, should break without it, the Pus must be received into the Cavity of the Breast. We know when that has happened, by the Sensation or Feeling of the Patient; who perceives an uncommon, a singular kind of Movement, pretty generally accompanied with a Fainting. The Oppression and Anguish cease at once; the Fever abates; the Cough however commonly continues, tho' with less Violence, and without any Expectoration. But this seeming Amendment is of a short Duration, since from the daily Augmentation of the Matter, and its becoming more acrid or sharp, the Lungs become oppressed, irritated and eroded. The Difficulty of Breathing, Heat, Thirst, Wakefulness, Distaste, and Deafness, return, with many other Symptoms unnecessary to be enumerated, and especially with frequent Sinkings and Weakness. The Patient should be confined to his _Regimen_, to retard the Increase of the Disease as much as possible; notwithstanding no other effectual Remedy remains, except that of opening the Breast between two of the Ribs, to discharge the Matter, and to stop the Disorder it occasions. This is called the Operation for the _Empyema_. I shall not describe it here, as it should not be undertaken but by Persons of Capacity and Experience, for whom this Treatise was not intended. I would only observe, it is less painful than terrifying; and that if it is delayed too long, it proves useless, and the Patient dies miserably. § 85. We may daily see external Inflammations turn gangrenous, or mortify. The same Thing occurs in the Lungs, when the Fever is excessive, the Inflammation either in its own Nature, extremely violent, or raised to such a Height by hot Medicines. Intolerable Anguish, extreme Weakness, frequent Faintings, Coldness of the Extremities, a livid and foetid thin Humour brought up instead of concocted Spitting, and sometimes blackish Stripes on the Breast, sufficiently distinguish this miserable State. I have smelt in one Case of this Kind, where the Patient had been attacked with this Disease (after a forced March on Foot, having taken some Wine with Spices to force a Sweat) his Breath so horribly stinking, that his Wife had many Sinkings from attending him. When I saw him, I could discern neither Pulse nor Intellect, and ordered him nothing. He died an Hour afterwards, about the Beginning of the third Hour. § 86. An Inflammation may also become hard, when it forms what we call a _Scirrhus_, which is a very hard Tumour, indolent, or unpainful. This is known to occur, when the disease has not terminated in any of those Manners I have represented; and where, tho' the Fever and the other Symptoms disappear, the Respiration, or Breathing, remains always a little oppressed; the Patient still retains a troublesome Sensation in one Side of his Breast; and has from Time to Time a dry Cough, which increases after Exercise, and after eating. This Malady is but seldom cured; though some Persons attacked with it last many Years, without any other considerable Complaint. They should avoid all Occasions of over-heating themselves; which might readily produce a new Inflammation about this Tumour, the Consequences of which would be highly dangerous. § 87. The best Remedies against this Disorder, and from which I have seen some good Effects, are the medicated Whey Nº. 17, and the Pills Nº. 18. The Patient may take twenty Pills, and a Pint and a half of the Whey every Morning for a long Continuance; and receive inwardly, now and then, the Vapour of hot Water. § 88. Each Lung, in a perfect State of Health, touches the _Pleura_, the Membrane, that lines the Inside of the Breast; though it is not connected to it. But it often happens, after an Inflammation of the Breast, after the Pleurisy, and in some other Cases, that these two Parts adhere closely to each other, and are never afterwards separated. However this is scarcely to be considered as a Disease; and remains commonly unknown, as the Health is not impaired by it, and nothing is ever prescribed to remove it. Nevertheless I have seen a few Cases, in which this Adhesion was manifestly prejudicial. __Chapter V.__ _Of the Pleurisy._ __Sect.__ 89. The Pleurisy, which is chiefly known by these four Symptoms, a strong Fever, a Difficulty of Breathing, a Cough, and an acute Pain about the Breast; the Pleurisy, I say, is not a different Malady from the Peripneumony, or Inflammation of the Breast, the Subject of the preceding Chapter; so that I have very little to say of it, particularly, or apart. § 90. The Cause of this Disease then is exactly the same with that of the former, that is, an Inflammation of the Lungs; but an Inflammation, that seems rather a little more external. The only considerable Difference in the Symptoms is, that the Pleurisy is accompanied with a most acute Pain under the Ribs, and which is commonly termed a _Stitch_. This Pain is felt indifferently over every Part of the Breast; though more commonly about the Sides, under the more fleshy Parts of the Breast, and oftenest on the right Side. The Pain is greatly increased whenever the Patient coughs or draws in the Air in breathing; and hence a Fear of increasing it, by making some Patients forbear to cough or respire, as much as they possibly can; and that aggravates the Disease, by stopping the Course of the Blood in the Lungs, which are soon overcharged with it. Hence the Inflammation of this Bowel becomes general; the Blood mounts up to the Head; the Countenance looks deeply red, or as it were livid; the Patient becomes nearly suffocated, and falls into the State described § 47. Sometimes the Pain is so extremely violent, that if the Cough is very urgent at the same Time, and the Sick cannot suppress or restrain it, they are seized with Convulsions, of which I have seen many Instances, but these occur almost always to Women; though they are much less subject than Men to this Disease, and indeed to all inflammatory ones. It may be proper however to observe here, that if Women should be attacked with it, during their monthly Discharges, that Circumstance should not prevent the repeated and necessary Bleedings, nor occasion any Alteration in the Treatment of the Disease. And hence it appears, that the Pleurisy is really an Inflammation of the Lungs, accompanied with acute Pain. § 91. I am sensible that sometimes an Inflammation of the Lungs is communicated also to that Membrane, which lines the Inside of the Breast; and which is called the _Pleura_; and from thence to the Muscles, the fleshy Parts, over and between the Ribs. This however is not very frequently the Case. § 92. Spring is commonly the Season most productive of Pleurisies: in general there are few in Summer: notwithstanding that in the Year 1762, there were a great many during the hottest Season, which then was excessively so. The Disease usually begins with a violent Shivering, succeeded by considerable Heat, with a Cough, an Oppression, and sometimes with a sensible Straitning, or Contraction, as it were, all over the Breast; and also with a Head-ach, a Redness of the Cheeks, and with Reachings to vomit. The Stitch does not always happen at the very first Onset; often not 'till after several Hours from the first Complaint; sometimes not before the second, or even the third Day. Sometimes the Patient feels two Stitches, in different Parts of the Side; though it seldom happens that they are equally sharp, and the lightest soon ceases. Sometimes also the Stitch shifts its Place, which promises well, if the Part first attacked by it continues perfectly free from Pain: but it has a bad Appearance, if, while the first is present, another also supervenes, and both continue. The Pulse is usually very hard in this Distemper; but in the dreadful Cases described § 47 and 90, it becomes soft and small. There often occur at, or very quickly after, the Invasion, such an Expectoration, or hawking up, as happens in an Inflammation of the Breast; at other Times there is not the least Appearance of it, whence such are named dry Pleurisies, which happen pretty often. Sometimes the Sick cough but little, or not at all. They often lie more at Ease upon the Side affected, than on the sound one. The Progress of this Disease advances exactly like that described in the preceding Chapter: for how can they differ considerably? and the Treatment of both is the same. Large Hæmorrhages, or Bleedings from the Nose, frequently happen, to the great Relief of the Patient; but sometimes such Discharges consist of a kind of corrupted Blood, when the Patient is very ill, and these portend Death. § 93. This Distemper is often produced by drinking cold Water, while a Person is hot; from which Cause it is sometimes so violent, as to kill the Patient in three Hours. A young Man was found dead at the Side of the Spring, from which he had quenched his Thirst: neither indeed is it uncommon for Pleurisies to prove mortal within three Days. Sometimes the Stitch disappears, whence the Patient complains less; but at the same Time his Countenance changes; he grows pale and sad; his Eyes look dull and heavy, and his Pulse grows feeble. This signifies a Translation of the Disease to the Brain, a Case which is almost constantly fatal. There is no Disease in which the critical Symptoms are more violent, and more strongly marked, than in this. It is proper this should be known, as it may prevent or lessen our excessive Terror. A perfect Cure supervenes sometimes, at the very Moment when Death was expected. § 94. This Malady is one of the most common and the most destroying kind, as well from its own violent Nature, as through the pernicious Treatment of it in Country Places. That Prejudice, which insists on curing all Diseases by Sweating, entirely regulates their Conduct in treating a Pleurisy; and as soon as a Person is afflicted with a Stitch, all the hot Medicines are immediately set to Work. This mortal Error destroys more People than Gunpowder; and it is by so much the more hurtful, as the Distemper is of the most violent kind; and because, as there is commonly not a Moment to be lost, the whole depends on the Method immediately recurred to. § 95. The proper Manner of treating this Disease, is exactly the same in all Respects, with that of the Peripneumony; because, I again affirm, it is the very same Disease. Hence the Bleedings, the softening and diluting Drinks, the Steams, the Glysters, the Potion Nº. 8, and the emollient Poultices are the real Remedies. These last perhaps are still more effectual in the Pleurisy; and therefore they should be continually applied over the very Stitch. The first Bleeding, especially if there has been a considerable Discharge, almost constantly abates the Stitch, and often entirely removes it: though it more commonly returns, after an Intermission of some Hours, either in the same Spot, or sometimes in another. This shifting of it is rather favourable, especially if the Pain, that was first felt under the Breast, shifts into the Shoulders, to the Back, the Shoulder-blade, or the Nape of the Neck. When the Stitch is not at all abated, or only a little; or if, after having abated, it returns as violently as at first, and especially if it returns in the same Spot, and the Height of the other Symptoms continue, Bleeding must be repeated. But if a sensible Abatement of the Stitch continues; and if, though it returns, it should be in a smaller Degree, and by Intervals, or in these Places I have mentioned above; if the Quickness, or the Hardness of the Pulse, and all the other Symptoms are sensibly diminished, this repeated Bleeding may sometimes be omitted. Nevertheless, in a very strong Subject, it seems rather prudent not to omit it, since in such Circumstances it can do no Mischief; and a considerable Hazard may sometimes be incurred by the Omission. In very high and dangerous Pleurisies a frequent Repetition of bleeding is necessary; except some Impediment to it should arise from the particular Constitution of the Patient, or from his Age, or some other Circumstances. If, from the Beginning of the Disease, the Pulse is but a little quicker and harder than in a healthy State; if it is not manifestly strong; if the Head-ach and the Stitch are so moderate as to prove supportable; if the Cough is not too violent; if there is no sensible Oppression or Straitness, and the Patient expectorate, or cough up, Bleeding may be omitted. With Respect to the administering of other Remedies, the same Directions are to be exactly followed, which have been already given in the preceding Chapter, to which the Reader is referred from § 53 to 66. § 96. When the Disease is not very acute and pressing, I have often cured it in a very few Days by a single Bleeding, and a large Quantity of a Tea or Infusion of Elder-flowers, sweetened with Honey. It is in some Cases of this kind, that we often find the Water _Faltranc_ succeed, with the Addition of some Honey, and even of Oil: though the Drink I have just directed is considerably preferable. That Drink which is compounded of equal Quantities of Wine and Water, with the Addition of much Venice Treacle, annually destroys a great Number of People in the Country. § 97. In those dry Pleurisies, in which the Stitch, the Fever, and the Head-ach are strong and violent; and where the Pulse is very hard and very full, with an excessive Dryness of the Skin and of the Tongue, Bleeding should be frequently repeated, and at small Intervals from each other. This Method frequently cures the Disease effectually, without using any other Evacuation. § 98. The Pleurisy terminates, like any other inward Inflammation, either by some Evacuation; by an Abscess; in a Mortification; or in a Scirrhosity or hard Tumour; and it often leaves Adhesions in the Breast. The Gangrene or Mortification sometimes appears on the third Day, without having been preceded by very vehement Pains. In such Cases the dead Body often looks very black, especially in the Parts near the Seat of the Disease: and in such the more superstitious ascribe it to some supernatural Cause; or draw some unhappy Presage from it, with Respect to those who are yet unattacked by it. This Appearance however is purely a natural Consequence, quite simple, and cannot be otherwise; and the hot Regimen and Medicines are the most prevailing Causes of it. I have seen it thus circumstanced in a Man in the Flower of his Age, who had taken Venice Treacle in Cherry Water, and the Ingredients of _Faltranc_ infused in Wine. § 99. _Vomicas_ are sometimes the Consequences of Pleurisies; but their particular Situation disposes them more to break [22] outwardly; which is the most frequent Cause of an _Empyema_ § 84. "To prevent this, it is highly proper to apply, at the first Invasion of the Disease, to the Spot where the Pain chiefly rages, a small Plaister, which may exactly fit it; since if the Pleurisy should terminate in an Abscess or Imposthume, the purulent Matter will be determined to that Side. [22] That is, into the Cavity of the Breast, rather than within the Substance of the Lungs. "As soon then as it is foreseen that an Abscess is forming (see § 68) we should erode, by a light Caustic, the Place where it is expected; and as soon as it is removed, Care should be taken to promote Suppuration there. By this Means we may entertain a reasonable Hope, that the Mass of Matter will incline its Course to that Spot, where it will meet with the least Resistance, and be discharged from thence. For this Heap of Matter is often accumulated between the _Pleura_, and the Parts which adhere to it." This is the Advice of a very [23] great Physician; but I must inform the Reader, there are many Cases, in which it can be of no Service; neither ought it to be attempted, but by Persons of undoubted Abilities. [23] This is, undoubtedly, Baron _Van Swieten_, with whom he had premised, he agreed considerably, in all the Diseases they had both treated of. _K._ With Regard to the Scirrhosity, or Hardness, and to the Circumstances of Adhesions, I can add nothing to what I have said in § 86 and 87. § 100. It has been observed that some Persons, who have been once attacked by this Disease, are often liable to Relapses of it, especially such as drink hard. I knew one Man, who reckoned up his Pleurisies by Dozens. A few Bleedings, at certain proper Intervals, might prevent these frequent Returns of it; which, joined to their excessive Drinking, make them languid and stupid, in the very Flower of their Age. They generally fall into some Species of an Asthma, and from that into a Dropsy, which proves the melancholy, though not an improper, Conclusion of their Lives. Such as can confine themselves to some proper Precautions, may also prevent these frequent Returns of this Disease, even without bleeding; by a temperate Regimen; by abstaining from Time to Time, from eating Flesh and drinking Wine; at which Times they should drink Whey, or some of those Diet-Drinks Nº. 1, 2, 4; and by bathing their Legs sometimes in warm Water; especially in those Seasons, when this Disease is the most likely to return. § 101. Two Medicines greatly esteemed in this Disease among the Peasantry, and even extolled by some Physicians, are the Blood of a wild He Goat, and the [24] Soot in an Egg. I do not contest the Cure or Recovery of many Persons, who have taken these Remedies; notwithstanding it is not less true, that both of them, as well as the Egg in which the Soot is taken, are dangerous: For which Reason it is prudent, at least, never to make use of them; as there is great Probability, they may do a little Mischief; and a Certainty that they can do no Good. The _Genipi_, or [25] Wormwood of the Alps, has also acquired great Reputation in this Disease, and occasioned many Disputes between some very zealous Ecclesiastics, and a justly celebrated Physician. It seems not difficult however to ascertain the proper Use of it. This Plant is a powerful Bitter; it heats and excites Sweat: it seems clear, that, from such Consequences, it should never be employed in a Pleurisy, while the Vessels are full, the Pulse hard, the Fever high, and the Blood inflamed. In all such Circumstances it must aggravate the Disease; but towards the Conclusion of it, when the Vessels are considerably emptied, the Blood is diluted, and the Fever abated, it may then be recurred to; but with a constant Recollection that it is hot, and not to be employed without Reflection and Prudence. [26] [24] This, with great Probability, means that small black Substance often visible in a rotten Egg, which is undoubtedly of a violent, or even poisonous Quality. Dr. _Tissot_ terms it expressly--_la suie dans un Oeuf_. K. [25] Dr. _Lewis_, who has not taken Notice of this Species of Wormwood in his Improvement of _Quincy's_ Dispensatory, has mentioned it in his late _Materia Medica_. K. [26] This being a proper Place for directing the Seneka Rattle Snake Root, I shall observe, that the best Way of exhibiting it is in Decoction, by gradually simmering and boiling two Ounces of it in gross Powder, in two Pints and a half of Water, to a Pint and a quarter; and then giving three Spoonfuls of it to a grown Person, every six Hours. If the Stitch should continue, or return, after taking it, Bleeding, which should be premised to it, must be occasionally repeated; though it seldom proves necessary, after a few Doses of it. It greatly promotes Expectoration, keeps the Body gently open, and sometimes operates by Urine and by Sweat; very seldom proving at all emetic in Decoction. The Regimen of Drinks directed here in Pleurisies are to be given as usual. Dr. _Tennant_, the Introducer of this valuable Medicine, confided solely in it, in Bastard Peripneumonies, without Bleeding, Blistering, or any other Medicines. _K._ __Chapter VI.__ _Of the Diseases of the Throat._ __Sect.__ 102. The Throat is subject to many Diseases: One of the most frequent and the most dangerous, is that Inflammation of it, commonly termed a Quinsey. This in Effect is a Distemper of the same Nature with an Inflammation of the Breast; but as it occurs in a different Part, the Symptoms, of Course, are very different. They also vary, not a very little, according to the different Parts of the Throat which are inflamed. § 103. The general Symptoms of an Inflammation of the Throat are, the Shivering, the subsequent Heat, the Fever, the Head-ach, red high-coloured Urine, a considerable Difficulty, and sometimes even an Impossibility, of swallowing any thing whatever. But if the nearer Parts to the _Glottis_, that is, of the Entrance into the Windpipe, or Conduit through which we breathe, are attacked, Breathing becomes excessively difficult; the Patient is sensible of extreme Anguish, and great Approaches to Suffocation; the Disease is then extended to the _Glottis_, to the Body of the Wind-pipe, and even to the Substance of the Lungs, whence it becomes speedily fatal. The Inflammation of the other Parts is attended with less Danger; and this Danger becomes still less, as the Disease is more extended to the outward and superficial Parts. When the Inflammation is general, and seizes all the internal Parts of the Throat, and particularly the Tonsils or Almonds, as they are called, the _Uvula_, or Process of the Palate, and the _Basis_, or remotest deepest Part of the Tongue, it is one of the most dangerous and dreadful Maladies. The Face is then swelled up and inflamed; the whole Inside of the Throat is in the same Condition; the Patient can get nothing down; he breathes with a Pain and Anguish, which concur, with a Stuffing or Obstruction in his Brains, to throw him into a kind of furious _Delirium_, or Raving. His Tongue is bloated up, and is extended out of his Mouth; his Nostrils are dilated, as tho' it were to assist him in his Breathing; the whole Neck, even to the Beginning of the Breast, is excessively tumified or swelled up; the Pulse is very quick, very weak, and often intermits; the miserable Patient is deprived of all his Strength, and commonly dies the second or third Day. Very fortunately this Kind, or Degree of it, which I have often seen in _Languedoc_, happens very rarely in _Swisserland_, where the Disease is less violent; and where I have only seen People die of it, in Consequence of its being perniciously treated; or by Reason of some accidental Circumstances, which were foreign to the Disease itself. Of the Multitude of Patients I have attended in this Disorder, I have known but one to fail under it, whose Case I shall mention towards the Close of this Chapter. § 104. Sometimes the Disease shifts from the internal to the external Parts: the Skin of the Neck and Breast grows very red, and becomes painful, but the Patient finds himself better. At other Times the Disorder quits the Throat; but is transferred to the Brain, or upon the Lungs. Both these Translations of it are mortal, when the best Advice and Assistance cannot be immediately procured; and it must be acknowledged, that even the best are often ineffectual. § 105. The most usual kind of this Disease is that which affects only the Tonsils (the Almonds) and the Palate; or rather its Process, _commonly called_ the Palate. It generally first invades one of the Tonsils, which becomes enlarged, red and painful, and does not allow the afflicted to swallow, but with great Pain. Sometimes the Disorder is confined to one Side; but most commonly it is extended to the _Uvula_, (the Palate) from whence it is extended to the other Tonsil. If it be of a mild kind, the Tonsil first affected is generally better, when the second is attacked. Whenever they are both affected at once, the Pain and the Anguish of the Patient are very considerable; he cannot swallow, but with great Difficulty and Complaint; and the Torment of this is so vehement, that I have seen Women affected with Convulsions, as often as they endeavoured to swallow their Spittle, or any other Liquid. They continue, even for several Hours sometimes, unable to take any thing whatever; all the upper inward Part of the Mouth, the Bottom of the Palate, and the descending Part of the Tongue become lightly red, or inflamed. A considerable Proportion of Persons under this Disease swallow Liquids more difficultly than Solids; by Reason that Liquids require a greater Action of some Part of the Muscles, in order to their being properly directed into their Conduit or Chanel. The Deglutition (the Swallowing) of the Spittle is attended with still more Uneasiness than that of other Liquids, because it is a little more thick and viscid, and flows down with less Ease. This Difficulty of swallowing, joined to the Quantity thence accumulated, produces that almost continual hawking up, which oppresses some Patients so much the more, as the Inside of their Cheeks, their whole Tongue, and their Lips are often galled, and even flead as it were. This also prevents their Sleeping, which however seems no considerable Evil; Sleep being _sometimes_ but of little Service in Diseases attended with a Fever; and I have often seen those, who thought their Throats almost entirely well in the Evening, and yet found them very bad after some Hours Sleep. The Fever, in this Species of the Disease, is sometimes, very high; and the Shivering often endures for many Hours. It is succeeded by considerable Heat, and a violent Head-ach, which yet is sometimes attended with a Drowsiness. The Fever is commonly pretty high in the Evening, though sometimes but inconsiderable, and by the Morning perhaps there is none at all. A light Invasion of this Disease of the Throat often precedes the Shivering; though most commonly it does not become manifest 'till after it, and at the same Time when the Heat comes on. The Neck is sometimes a little inflated, or puffed up; and many of the Sick complain of a pretty smart Pain in the Ear of that Side, which is most affected. I have but very seldom observed that they had it in both. § 106. The Inflammation either disappears by Degrees, or an Abscess is formed in the Part which was chiefly affected. It has never happened, at least within my Knowledge, that this Sort of the Disease, prudently treated, has ever terminated either in a Mortification, or a Scirrhus: but I have been a Witness to either of these supervening, when Sweating was extorted in the Beginning of it, by hot Medicines. It is also very rare to meet with those highly dangerous Translations of this Disease upon the Lungs, such as are described in that Species of it from § 103, 104. It is true indeed it does not occur more frequently, even in that Species, whenever the Disease is thrown out upon the more external Parts. § 107. The Treatment of the Quinsey, as well as of all other inflammatory Diseases, is the same with that of an Inflammation of the Breast. The Sick is immediately to be put upon a Regimen; and in that Sort described § 103, Bleeding must be repeated four or five Times within a few Hours; and sometimes there is a Necessity to recur still oftner to it. When it assaults the Patient in the most vehement Degree, all Medicines, all Means, are very generally ineffectual; they should be tried however. We should give as much as can be taken of the Drinks Nº. 2 and 4. But as the Quantity they are able to swallow is often very inconsiderable; the Glyster Nº. 5 should be repeated every three Hours; and their Legs should be put into a Bath of warm Water, thrice a Day. § 108. Cupping Glasses, with Scarification, applied about the Neck, after bleeding twice or thrice, have often been experienced to be highly useful. In the most desperate Cases, when the Neck is excessively swelled, one or two deep Incisions made with a Razor, on this external Tumour, have sometimes saved a Patient's Life. § 109. In that kind, and those Circumstances, of this Disease described § 105 we must have very frequent Recourse to Bleeding; and it should never be omitted, when the Pulse is very perceivably hard and full. It is of the utmost Consequence to do it instantaneously; since it is the only Means to prevent the Abscess, which forms very readily, if Bleeding has been neglected, only for a few Hours. Sometimes it is necessary to repeat it a second Time, but very rarely a third. This Disease is frequently so gentle and mild, as to be cured without Bleeding, by the Means of much good Management. But as many as are not Masters of their own Time, nor in such an easy Situation, as to be properly attended, ought, without the least Hesitation, to be bled directly, which is sometimes sufficient to remove the Complaint; especially if, after Bleeding, the Patient drinks plentifully of the Ptisan Nº. 2. In this light Degree of the Disease, it may suffice to bathe the Legs, and to receive a Glyster, once a Day each; the first to be used in the Morning, and the last in the Evening. Besides the general Remedies against Inflammations, a few particular ones, calculated precisely for this Disease, may be applied in each kind or Degree of it. The best are, first the emollient Poultices, Nº. 9, laid over the whole Neck. [27] Some have highly extolled the Application of Swallows Nests in this Disease; and though I make no Objection to it, I think it certainly less efficacious than any of those which I direct. [27] The _English_ avail themselves considerably, in this Disease, of a Mixture of equal Parts of Sallad Oil, and Spirit of Sal Ammoniac; or of Oil and Spirit of Hartshorn, as a Liniment and Application round the Neck. This Remedy corresponds with many Indications; and deserves, perhaps, the first Place amongst local Applications against the inflammatory Quinsey. _E. L._ 2. Of the Gargarisms (Nº. 19) a great Variety may be prepared, of pretty much the same Properties, and of equal Efficacy. Those I direct here are what have succeeded best with me and they are very simple. [28] [28] Dr. _Pringle_ is apprehensive of some ill Effects from Acids in Gargarisms [_which is probably from their supposed repelling Property_] and prefers a Decoction of Figs in Milk and Water, to which he adds a small Quantity of Spirit of Sal Ammoniac. _E. L._ 3. The Steam of hot Water, as directed § 55, should be repeated five or six Times a Day; a Poultice should be constantly kept on, and often renewed; and the Patient should often gargle. There are some Persons, besides Children, who cannot gargle themselves: and in fact the Pain occasioned by it makes it the more difficult. In such a Case, instead of gargling, the same Gargarism (Nº. 19) may be injected with a small Syringe. The Injection reaches further than Gargling, and often causes the Patient to hawk up a considerable Quantity of glarey Matter (which has grown still thicker towards the Bottom of the Throat) to his sensible Relief. This Injection should be often repeated. The little hollowed Pipes of Elder Wood, which all the Children in the Country can make, may be conveniently employed for this Purpose. The Patient should breathe out, rather than inspire, during the Injection. § 110. Whenever the Disease terminates without Suppuration, the Fever, the Head-ach, the Heat in the Throat, and the Pain in swallowing, begin to abate from the fourth Day, some times from the third, often only from the fifth; and from such Period that Abatement increases at a great Rate; so that at the End of two, three, or four Days, on the sixth, seventh, or eighth, the Patient is entirely well. Some few however continue to feel a light Degree of Pain, and that only on one Side, four or five Days longer, but without a Fever, or any considerable Uneasiness. § 111. Sometimes the Fever and the other Symptoms abate, after the Bleeding and other Remedies; without any subsequent Amendment in the Throat, or any Signs of Suppuration. In such Cases we must chiefly persist in the Gargarisms and the Steams; and where an experienced and dexterous Surgeon can be procured, it were proper he should scarify the inflamed Tonsils. These discharge, in such Cases, a moderate Quantity of Blood; and this Evacuation relieves, very readily, as many as make use of it. § 112. If the Inflammation is no ways disposed to disperse, so that an Abscess is forming, which almost ever happens, if it has not been obviated at the Invasion of the Disease; then the Symptoms attending the Fever continue, though raging a little less after the fourth Day: the Throat continues red, but of a less florid and lively Redness: a Pain also continues, though less acute, accompanied sometimes with Pulsations, and at other Times intirely without any; of which it is proper to take Notice: the Pulse commonly grows a little softer; and on the fifth or sixth Day, and sometimes sooner, the Abscess is ready to break. This may be discovered by the Appearance of a small white and soft Tumour, when the Mouth is open, which commonly appears about the Centre or Middle of the Inflammation. It bursts of itself; or, should it not, it must be opened. This is effected by strongly securing a Lancet to one End of a small Stick or Handle, and enveloping, or wrapping up the whole Blade of it, except the Point and the Length of one fourth or a third of an Inch, in some Folds of soft Linnen; after which the Abscess is pierced with the Point of this Lancet. The Instant it is opened, the Mouth is filled with the Discharge of a Quantity of _Pus_, of the most intolerable Savour and Smell. The Patient should gargle himself after the Discharge of it with the detersive, or cleansing Gargarism Nº. 19. It is surprising sometimes to see the Quantity of Matter discharged from this Imposthumation. In general there is but one; though sometimes I have seen two of them. § 113. It happens, and not seldom, that the Matter is not collected exactly in the Place, where the Inflammation appeared, but in some less exposed and less visible Place: whence a Facility of swallowing is almost entirely restored; the Fever abates; the Patient sleeps; he imagines he is cured, and that no Inconvenience remains, but such as ordinarily occurs in the earliest Stage of Recovery. A Person who is neither a Physician, nor a Surgeon, may easily deceive himself, when in this State. But the following Signs may enable him to discover that there is an Abscess, viz. A certain Inquietude and general Uneasiness; a Pain throughout the Mouth; some Shiverings from Time to Time; frequently sharp, but short and transient, Heat: a Pulse moderately soft, but not in a natural State; a Sensation of Thickness and Heaviness in the Tongue; small white Eruptions on the Gums, on the Inside of the Cheek, on the Inside and Outside of the Lips, and a disagreeable Taste and Odour. § 114. In such Cases Milk or warm Water should frequently be retained in the Mouth; the Vapour of hot Water should be conveyed into it; and emollient Cataplasms may be applied about the Neck. All these Means concur to the softening and breaking of the Abscess. The Finger may also be introduced to feel for its Situation; and when discovered, the Surgeon may easily open it. I happened once to break one under my Finger, without having made the least Effort to do it. Warm Water may be injected pretty forcibly, either by the Mouth or the Nostrils: this sometimes occasions a kind of Cough, or certain Efforts which tend to break it. I have seen this happen even from laughing. As to the rest, the Patient should not be too anxious or uneasy about the Event. I never saw a single Instance of a Person's dying of a Quinsey of this kind, after the Suppuration is truly effected; neither has it happened perhaps after the Time it is forming for Suppuration. § 115. The glairy Matter with which the Throat is over-charged, and the very Inflammation of that Part, which, from its Irritation, produces the same Effect, as the Introduction of a Finger into it, occasions some Patients to complain of incessant Propensities to vomit. We must be upon our Guard here, and not suppose that this Heart-Sickness, as some have called it, results from a Disorder of, or a Load within, the Stomach, and that it requires a Vomit for its Removal. The giving one here would often prove a very unfortunate Mistake. It might, in a high Inflammation, further aggravate it; or we might be obliged (even during the Operation of the Vomit) to bleed, in order to lessen the Violence of the Inflammation. Such Imprudence with its bad Consequences, often leaves the Patient, even after the Disease is cured, in a State of Languor and Weakness for a considerable Time. Nevertheless, there are some particular Disorders of the Throat, attended with a Fever, in which a Vomit may be prudently given. But this can only be, when there is no Inflammation, or after it is dispersed; and there still remains some putrid Matter in the first Passages. Of such Cases I shall speak hereafter. [29] [29] In Diseases of the Throat, which have been preceded by such Excesses in Food or strong Drink, as occur too often in many Countries, when the Patient has very strong Reachings to vomit, and the Tongue is moist at the same Time; we should not hesitate, after appeasing the first Symptoms of the Inflammation [by sufficient Bleedings, &c.] to assist the Efforts of Nature, and to give a small Dose of Tartar emetic, dissolved in some Spoonfuls of Water. This Remedy in this Case, promotes the Dispersion of the Inflammation, beyond any other. _E. L._ § 116. We often see in _Swisserland_ a Disorder different from these of the Throat, of which we have just treated; though, like these, attended with a Difficulty of swallowing. It is termed in French the _Oreillons_, and often the _Ourles_, or swelled Ears. It is an Overfulness and Obstruction of those Glands and their Tubes, which are to furnish the _Saliva_ or Spittle; and particularly of the two large Glands which lie between the Ear and the Jaw; which are called the _Parotides_; and of two under the Jaw, called the _Maxillares_. All these being considerably swelled in this Disease, do not only produce a great Difficulty of swallowing; but also prevent the Mouth from opening; as an Attempt to do it is attended with violent Pain. Young Children are much more liable to this Disease than grown Persons. Being seldom attended with a Fever, there is no Occasion for Medicines: It is sufficient to defend the Parts affected from the external Air; to apply some proper Poultice over them; to lessen the Quantity of their Food considerably, denying them Flesh and Wine; but indulging them plentifully in some light warm Liquid, to dilute their Humours and restore Perspiration. I cured myself of this Disorder in 1754, by drinking nothing, for four Days, but Balm Tea, to which I added one fourth part Milk, and a little Bread. The same _Regimen_ has often cured me of other light Complaints of the Throat. § 117. In the Spring of 1761, there were an astonishing Number of Persons attacked with Disorders of the Throat, of two different Kinds. Some of them were seized with that common Sort which I have already described. Without adding any thing more particularly, in Respect to this Species, it happened frequently to grown Persons, who were perfectly cured by the Method already recited. The other Species, on which I shall be more particular in this Place (because I know they have abounded in some Villages, and were very fatal) invaded Adults, or grown Persons also, but especially Children, from the Age of one Year, and even under that, to the Age of twelve or thirteen. The first Symptoms were the same with those of the common Quinsey, such as the Shivering, the ensuing Heat or Fever, Dejection, and a Complaint of the Throat: but the following Symptoms distinguished these from the common inflammatory Quinseys. 1. The Sick had often something of a Cough, and a little Oppression. 2. The Pulse was quicker, but less hard, and less strong, than generally happens in Diseases of the Throat. 3. The Patients were afflicted with a sharp, stinging and dry Heat, and with great Restlessness. 4. They spat less than is usual in a common Quinsey; and their Tongues were extremely dry. 5. Though they had some Pain in swallowing, this was not their principal Complaint, and they could drink sufficiently. 6. The Swelling and Redness of the Tonsils, of the Palate, and of its Process were not considerable; but the parotid and maxillary Glands, and especially the former, being extremely swelled and inflamed, the Pain they chiefly complained of, was this outward one. 7. When the Disease proved considerably dangerous, the whole Neck swelled; and sometimes even the Veins, which return the Blood from the Brain, being overladen, as it were, the Sick had some Degree of Drowsiness, and of a _Delirium_, or Raving. 8. The Paroxysms, or Returns, of the Fever were considerably irregular. 9. The Urine appeared to be less inflamed, than in other Diseases of the Throat. 10. Bleeding and other Medicines did not relieve them, as soon as in the other kind; and the Disease itself continued a longer Time. 11. It did not terminate in a Suppuration like other Quinsies, but sometimes the Tonsils were ulcerated. 12. [30] Almost every Child, and indeed a great many of the grown Persons assaulted with this Disease, threw out, either on the first Day, or on some succeeding one, within the first six Days, a certain Efflorescence, or Eruptions, resembling the Measles considerably in some, but of a less lively Colour, and without any Elevation, or rising above the Skin. It appeared first in the Face, next in the Arms, and descended to the Legs, Thighs and Trunk; disappearing gradually at the End of two or three Days, in the same Order it had observed in breaking out. A few others (I have seen but five Instances of it) suffered the most grievous Symptoms before the Eruption; and threw out the genuine _purpura_, or white miliary Eruption. [30] This seems to have been the same kind of Quinsey, of which Drs. _Huxham_, _Fothergil_, _Cotton_ and others wrote, though under different Appellations. _K._ 13. As soon as these Efflorescences or Eruptions appeared, the Sick generally found themselves better. That, last mentioned, continued four, five, or six Days, and frequently went off by Sweats. Such as had not these Ebullitions, which was the Case of many Adults, were not cured without very plentiful Sweats towards the Termination of the Disease: those which occurred at the Invasion of it being certainly unprofitable, and always hurtful. 14. I have seen some Patients, in whom the Complaint of the Throat disappeared entirely, without either Eruptions or Sweats: but such still remained in very great Inquietude and Anguish, with a quick and small Pulse. I ordered them a sudorific Drink, which being succeeded by the Eruption, or by Sweating, they found themselves sensibly relieved. 15. But whether the Sick had, or had not, these external Rednesses or Eruptions, every one of them parted with their Cuticle or Scarf Skin, which fell off, in large Scales, from the whole Surface of the Body: so great was the Acrimony or Sharpness of that Matter, which was to be discharged through the Skin. 16. A great Number suffered a singular Alteration in their Voice, different from that which occurs in common Quinsies, the Inside of their Nostrils being extremely dry. 17. The Sick recovered with more Difficulty after this, than after the common Quinsies: and if they were negligent or irregular, during their Recovery; particularly, if they exposed themselves too soon to the Cold, a Relapse ensued, or some different Symptoms; such as a Stuffing with Oppression, a Swelling of the Belly, windy Swellings in different Parts; Weakness, Loathings, Ulcerations behind the Ears, and something of a Cough and Hoarseness. 18. I have been sent for to Children, and also to some young Folks, who, at the End of several Weeks, had been taken with a general Inflammation of the whole Body, attended with great Oppression, and a considerable Abatement of their Urine, which was also high-coloured and turbid, or without Separation. They seemed also in a very singular State of Indifference, or Disregard, with Respect to any Object, or Circumstance. I recovered every one of them entirely by Blisters, and the Powder Nº. 25. The first Operation of this Medicine was to vomit them: to this succeeded a Discharge by Urine, and at last very plentiful Sweating, which compleated the Cure. Two Patients only, of a bad Constitution, who were a little ricketty, and disposed to glandular Scirrhosity or Knottiness, relapsed and died, after being recovered of the Disease itself for some Days. § 118. I have bled some adult Persons, and made Use of the cooling Regimen, as long as there was an evident Inflammation: it was necessary after this to unload the first Passages; and at last to excite moderate Sweats. The same Powders Nº. 25 have often effected both these Discharges, and with entire Success. In other Cases I have made Use of Ipecacuanha, as directed Nº. 35. In some Subjects there did not appear any inflammatory Symptom; and the Distemper resulted solely from a Load of putrid Matter in the first Passages. Some Patients also discharged Worms. In such Cases I never bled; but the Vomit had an excellent Effect, at the very Onset of the Disease; it produced a perceivable Abatement of all the Symptoms; Sweating ensued very kindly and naturally, and the Patient recovered entirely a few Hours after. § 119. There were some Places, in which no Symptom or Character of Inflammation appeared; and in which it was necessary to omit Bleeding, which was attended with bad Consequences. I never directed Infants to be bled. After opening the first Passages, Blisters and diluting Drinks proved their only Remedies. A simple Infusion of Elder Flowers, and those of the Lime Tree, has done great Service to those who drank plentifully of it. § 120. I am sensible that in many Villages a great Number of Persons have died, with a prodigious Inflation or Swelling of the Neck. Some have also died in the City, and among others a young Woman of twenty Years of Age, who had taken nothing but hot sweating Medicines and red Wine, and died the fourth Day, with violent Suffocations, and a large Discharge of Blood from the Nose. Of the great Number I have seen in Person, only two died. One was a little Girl of ten Months old. She had an Efflorescence which very suddenly disappeared: at this Time I was called in; but the Humour had retreated to the Breast, and rendered her Death inevitable. The other was a strong Youth from sixteen to seventeen Years old, whose sudden Attack from the Disease manifested, from the very Beginning, a violent Degree of it. Nevertheless, the Symptoms subsiding, and the Fever nearly terminating, the Sweats which approached would probably have saved him. But he would not suffer them to have their Course, continually stripping himself quite naked. The Inflammation was immediately repelled upon the Lungs, and destroyed him within the Space of thirty Hours. I never saw a Person die with so very dry a Skin. The Vomit affected him very little upwards, and brought on a purging. His own bad Conduct seems to have been the Occasion of his Death; and may this serve as one Example of it. § 121. I chose to expatiate on this Disease, as it may happen to reach other Places, where it may be useful to have been apprized of its Marks, and of its Treatment, which agrees as much with that of putrid Fevers, of which I shall speak hereafter, as with that of the inflammatory Diseases I have already considered: since in some Subjects the Complaint of the Throat has evidently been a Symptom of a putrid Fever, rather than of the chiefly apparent Disease, a Quinsey. [31] § 122. Disorders of the Throat are, with Respect to particular Persons, an habitual Disease returning every Year, and sometimes oftner than once a Year. They may be prevented by the same Means, which I have directed for the Preservation from habitual Pleurisies § 100; and by defending the Head and the Neck from the Cold; especially after being heated by Hunting, or any violent Exercise, or even by singing long and loud, which may be considered as an extraordinary Exercise of some of the Parts affected in this Disease. [31] I reserve some other interesting Reflections on this Disease, for the second Edition of my Treatise on Fevers; and the Editor at _Paris_ has very well observed, that it has some Relation to the gangrenous sore Throat, which has been epidemical these twenty Years past, in many Parts of _Europe_.----This Note is from Dr. _Tissot_ himself. __Chapter VII.__ _Of Colds._ __Sect.__ 123. There are many erroneous Prejudices, with Regard to Colds, all of which may be attended with pernicious Consequences. The first is, that a Cold is never dangerous; an Error which daily destroys the Lives of many. I have already complained of it for many Years past; and I have since beheld a Multitude of such Examples of it, as have but too sufficiently warranted my Complaints. No Person however, it is certain, dies merely of a Cold, as long as it is nothing but a Cold simply; but when, from Inattention and Neglect, it is thrown upon, and occasions Distempers of the Breast, it may, and often does, prove mortal. _Colds destroy more than Plagues_, was the Answer of a very sagacious and experienced Physician to one of his Friends, who, being asked, how he was in Health, replied, Very well, I have nothing but a Cold. A second erroneous Prejudice is, that Colds require no Means, no Medicines, and that they last the longer for being nursed, or tampered with. The last Article may be true indeed, with Respect to the Method, in which the Person affected with them treats them; but the Principle itself is false. Colds, like other Disorders, have their proper Remedies; and are removed with more or less Facility, as they are conducted better or worse. § 124. A third Mistake is, that they are not only considered as not dangerous, but are even supposed wholesome too. Doubtless a Man had better have a Cold than a more grievous Disease; though it must be still better to have neither of them. The most that can reasonably be said and admitted on this Point, is, that when a checked, or an obstructed Perspiration becomes the Cause of a Distemper, it is fortunate that it produces rather a Cold, than any very dreadful Disease, which it frequently does: though it were to be wished, that neither the Cause, nor its Effect existed. A Cold constantly produces some Disorder or Defect in the Functions of some Part or Parts of the Body, and thus becomes the Cause of a Disease. It is indeed a real Disorder itself, and which, when in a violent Degree, makes a very perceivable Assault upon our whole Machine. Colds, with their Defluxions, considerably weaken the Breast, and sooner or later considerably impair the Health. Persons subject to frequent Colds are never robust or strong; they often sink into languid Disorders; and a frequent Aptitude to take Cold is a Proof, that their Perspiration may be easily checked and restrained; whence the Lungs become oppressed and obstructed, which must always be attended with considerable Danger. § 125. We may be convinced of the Weakness and Fallacy of these Prejudices, by considering attentively the Nature of Colds; which are nothing else than the very Diseases already described in the three preceding Chapters, though in their greatest Degree only. A Cold in Truth is almost constantly an inflammatory Disease; a light Inflammation of the Lungs, or of the Throat; of the Membrane or very thin Skin, which lines the Nostrills, and the Inside of certain Cavities in the Bones of the Cheeks and Forehead. These Cavities communicate with the Nose, in such a Manner, that when one Part of this Membrane is affected with an Inflammation, it is easily communicated to the other Parts. § 126. It is scarcely necessary to describe the Symptoms of a Cold, and it may be sufficient to remark, 1. That their chief Cause is the same with that, which most commonly produces the Diseases already treated of, that is, an obstructed Perspiration, and a Blood somewhat inflamed. 2. That whenever these Diseases affect great Numbers, many Colds prevail at the same Time. 3. That the Symptoms which manifest a violent Cold, greatly resemble those which precede or usher in these Diseases. People are rarely attacked by great Colds, without a shivering and Fever; which last sometimes continues for many Days. There is a Cough, a dry Cough, for some Time; after which some Expectoration ensues; which allays the Cough, and lightens the Oppression; at which Time the Cold may be said to be maturated, or ripe. There are pretty often slight Stitches, but unfixed or flying about, with a little Complaint of the Throat. When the Nostrills happen to be the Seat of the Disorder, which is then very improperly termed a Cold of the Brain, it is often attended with a vehement Head-ach; which sometimes depends on an Irritation of the Membrane, that lines the Cavities in the Bone of the Forehead, or the maxillary Sinusses, that is, the Cavities in the Jaws: At first the Running from the Nose is very clear; thin and sharp; afterwards, in Proportion to the Abatement of the Inflammation, it becomes thicker; and the Consistence and Colour of it resemble those of what others cough up. The Smell, the Taste and the Appetite are commonly impaired by it. § 127. Colds seem to be of no certain Duration or Continuance. Those of the Head or Brain generally last but a few Days; of the Breast longer. Some Colds nevertheless terminate in four or five Days. If they extend beyond this Term they prove really hurtful. 1. Because the Violence of the Cough disorders the whole Machine; and particularly, by forcing up the Blood to the Head. 2. By depriving the Person afflicted of his usual Sleep, which is almost constantly diminished by it. 3. By impairing the Appetite, and confusing the Digestion, which is unavoidably lessened by it. 4. By weakening the very Lungs, by the continual Agitations from Coughing; whence all the Humours being gradually determined towards them, as the weakest Part, a continual Cough subsists. Hence also they become overcharged with Humours, which grow viscid there; the Respiration is overloaded and oppressed; a slow Fever appears; Nutrition almost ceases; the Patient becomes very weak; sinks into a Wasting; an obstinate Wakefulness and Anguish, and often dies in a short Time. 5. By Reason that the Fever, which almost constantly accompanies great Cold, concurs to wear the body down. § 128. Wherefore, since a Cold is a Disease of the same kind with Quinsies, Peripneumonies and Inflammations of the Breast, it ought to be treated in the same Manner. If it is a violent one, Blood should be taken from the Arm, which may considerably shorten its Duration: and this becomes most essentially necessary, whenever the Patient is of a sanguineous ruddy Complexion, abounds with Blood, and has a strong Cough, and great Head-ach. The Drinks Nº. 1, 2, 3, 4, should be very plentifully used. It is advantagious to bathe the Feet in warm Water every Night at going to Bed. [32] In a Word, if the Patient is put into a Regimen, the Cure is very speedily effected. [32] It frequently happens, that the Bathings alone remove the Head-ach, and the Cough too, by relaxing the lower Parts, and the entire Surface of the Body. If the Patient is costive, he should receive Glysters of warm Water, in which some Bran has been boiled, with the Addition of a little common Soap or Butter. _E. L._ § 129. The Disorder indeed, however, is often so very slight, that it may be thought to require very little, if any, medical Treatment, and may be easily cured without Physick, by abstaining from Flesh, Eggs, Broth, and Wine; from all Food that is sharp, fat and heavy; and by dieting upon Bread, Pulse, Fruit, and Water; particularly by eating little or no Supper; and drinking, if thirsty, a simple Ptisan of Barley, or an Infusion of Elder Flowers, with the Addition of a third or fourth Part of Milk. Bathing the Feet, and the Powder Nº. 20 contribute to dispose the Patient to sleep. Five Tea-Cups of an Infusion of the Red, or wild Poppy Leaves may also be ventured on safely. § 130. When the Fever, Heat and Inflammation wholly disappear; when the Patient has kept to his Regimen for some Days, and his Blood is well diluted, if the Cough and Want of Sleep still continues, he may take in the Evening a Dose of Storax [33] Pill, or of Venice Treacle with Elder Flower Tea, after bathing his Feet. These Remedies by stilling the Cough, and restoring Perspiration, frequently cure the Cold in the Space of one Night. I confess at the same Time, I have seen bad Consequences from such Opiates, when given too early in the Complaint. It is also necessary, when they are given, that the Patient should have supt but very moderately, and that his Supper should be digested. [33] Under these Circumstances of a tickling Cough from a Cold, without a Fever, and with very little Inflammation, I have known great and very frequent Success, from a Dose of _Elixir paregoricum_, taken at Bed-time, after a very light thin Supper. If the Patient be sanguine, strong and costive, Bleeding in a suitable Quantity, and a gently opening Potion, or purging Glyster, may be prudently premised to it. Grown Persons may take from 30 to 80, or even 100 Drops of it, in Barley Water, or any other pectoral Drink; and Children in the Chincough from five to twenty Drops; half an Ounce of it by Measure containing about one Grain of Opium, which is the Quantity contained in less than quite six Grains of the Storax Pill; this last being a very available pectoral Opiate too in Coughs from a Distillation, in more adult Bodies, who may also prefer a Medicine in that small Size, and Form. _K._ § 131. An immense Number of Remedies are cried up for the Cure of Colds; such as Ptisans of Apples or Pippins, of Liquorice, of dry Raisins, of Figs, of Borage, of Ground-Ivy, of _Veronica_ or Speedwell, of Hysop, of Nettles, _&c. &c._ I have no Design to depreciate them; as all of them may possibly be useful: But unfortunately, those who have seen any particular one of them succeed in one Case, readily conclude it to be the most excellent of them all; which is a dangerous Error, because no one Case is a sufficient Foundation to decide upon: which besides none are qualified to do, who have not often seen a great Number of such Cases; and who do not so attentively observe the Effects of different Medicines, as to determine on those which most frequently agree with the Disorder; and which, in my Judgment, are those I have just enumerated. I have known a Tea or Infusion of Cherry Stalks, which is not a disagreeable Drink, to cure a very inveterate Cold. § 132. In Colds of the Head or Brain, the Steam of warm Water alone, or that in which Elder Flowers, or some other mild aromatic Herbs, have been boiled, commonly afford a pretty speedy Relief. These are also serviceable in Colds fallen on the Breast. See § 55. It has been a Practice, though of no very long standing, to give the Fat of a Whale in these Cases; but this is a very crude indigestible kind of Fat, and greasy oily Medicines seldom agree with Colds. Besides, this Whales' Fat is very disagreeable and rancid, that is rank; so that it were better to forbear using it: I have sometimes seen ill Effects from it, and rarely any good ones. [34] [34] This seems but too applicable to the very popular Use of _Spermaceti_, &c. in such Cases, which can only grease the Passage to the Stomach; must impair its digestive Faculty, and cannot operate against the Cause of a Cold; though that Cure of it, which is effected by the Oeconomy of Nature in due Time, is often ascribed to such Medicines, as may rather have retarded it. _K._ § 133. Such Persons as abate nothing of the usual Quantity of their Food, when seized with a Cold, and who swallow down large Quantities of hot Water, ruin their Health. Their Digestion ceases; the Cough begins to affect the Stomach, without ceasing to afflict the Breast; and they incur a Chance of sinking into the Condition described § 127, Nº. 4. Burnt Brandy and spiced Wine are very pernicious in the Beginning of Colds, and the Omission of them must be a very prudent Omission. If any good Effects have ever been known to attend the Use of them, it has been towards the going off of the Cold; when the Disorder maintained its Ground, solely from the Weakness of the Patient. Whenever this is the Case, there is not the least Room for farther Relaxation; but the Powders Nº. 14, should be taken every Day in a little Wine; and should the Humours seem likely to be thrown upon the Lungs, Blisters ought to be applied to the fleshy Part of the Legs. § 134. Drams, or _Liqueurs_, as they are called in _French_, agree so very little in this last State, that frequently a very small Quantity of them revives a Cold that was just expiring. There really are some Persons who never drink them without taking Cold, which is not to be wondered at, as they occasion a light Inflammation in the Breast, which is equivalent to a Cold or Distillation. Nevertheless, People in this Disorder should not expose themselves to violent cold Weather, if there is a Possibility of avoiding it: though they should equally guard too against excessive Heat. Those, who inclose themselves in very hot Rooms, never get quite cured; and how is it possible they should be cured in such a Situation? Such Rooms, abstracted from the Danger of coming out of them, produce Colds in the same Manner that Drams do, by producing a light inflammation in the Breast. § 135. Persons subject to frequent Colds, which Habits are sometimes termed _fluxionary_, or liable to Distillations, imagine, they ought to keep themselves very hot. This is an Error which thoroughly destroys their Health. Such a Disposition to take Cold arises from two Causes; either because their Perspiration is easily impaired; or sometimes from the Weakness of the Stomach or the Lungs, which require particular Remedies. When the Complaint arises from the Perspiration's being easily disturbed and lessened, the hotter they keep themselves, the more they sweat, and increase their Complaint the more. This incessantly warm Air lets down and weakens the whole Machine, and more particularly the Lungs; where the Humours finding less Resistance, are continually derived, and are accumulated there. The Skin, being constantly bathed in a small Sweat, becomes relaxed, soft, and incapable of compleating its Functions: from which Failure the slightest Cause produces a total Obstruction of Perspiration; and a Multitude of languid Disorders ensue. These Patients thus circumstanced, redouble their Precautions against the Cold, or even the Coolness of the Air, while their utmost Cautions are but so many effectual Means to lower their Health; and this the more certainly, as their Dread of the free Air necessarily subjects them to a sedentary Life, which increases all their Symptoms; while the hot Drinks they indulge in, compleat their Severity. There is but one Method to cure People thus situated; that is, by accustoming them gradually to the Air; to keep them out of hot Chambers; to lessen their Cloathing by Degrees; to make them sleep cool; and to let them eat or drink nothing but what is cold, Ice itself being wholesome in their Drink: to make them use much Exercise; and finally, if the Disorder be inveterate, to give them for a considerable Time the Powder Nº. 14, and make them use the cold Bath. This Method succeeds equally too with those, in whom the Disease originally depended on a Weakness of the Stomach, or of the Lungs: and in fact, at the End of a certain Period, these three Causes are always combined. Some Persons who have been subject, for many Years, to catch Colds throughout the Winter; and who, during that Season, never went out, and drank every thing warm, have been evidently the better, during the Winter of 1761, and 1762, for the Direction I have given here. They now walk out every Day; drink their Liquids cold; and by this Means entirely escape Colds, and enjoy perfect Health. § 136. It is more customary indeed in Town, than in the Country, to have different Troches, and Compositions in the Mouth. I am not for excluding this Habit; though I think nothing is so efficacious as Juice of Liquorice; and provided a sufficient Dose be taken, it affords certain Relief. I have taken an Ounce and a half in one Day, and have felt the good Consequences of it very remarkably. __Chapter VIII.__ _Of Diseases of the Teeth._ __Sect.__ 137. The Diseases of the Teeth, which are sometimes so tedious and so violent, as to cause obstinate Wakefulness, a considerable Degree of Fever, Raving, Inflammations, Abscesses, Rottenness of the Bones, Convulsions and Faintings, depend on three principal Causes. 1. On a _Caries_ or Rottenness of the Teeth. 2. On an Inflammation of the Nerves of the Teeth, or of the Membrane which invests and covers them; and which affects the Membrane of the Gums. 3. A cold Humour or Defluxion that is determined to the Teeth, and to their Nerves and Membrane. § 138. In the first of these Cases, the _Caries_ having eat down to, and exposed the naked Nerve, the Air, Food and Drink irritate, or, as it were sting it; and this irritation is attended with Pain more or less violent. Every thing that increases the Motion or Action of the affected Part, as Exercise, Heat or Food, will be attended with the same Consequence. When the Tooth is greatly decayed, there is no other Cure besides that by extracting it, without which the Pain continues; the Breath becomes very offensive; the Gum is eat down; the other Teeth, and sometimes even the Jaw-bone, are infected with the Rottenness: besides, that it prevents the Use of the other Teeth, which are infected with a kind of tartarous Matter, and decay. But when the Disorder is less considerable, the Progress of it may sometimes be restrained, by burning the Tooth with a hot Iron, or by filling it with Lead, if it is fitted to receive and to retain it. Different corroding Liquids are sometimes used on these Occasions, _Aqua fortis_ itself, and Spirit of Vitriol: but such Applications are highly dangerous, and ought to be excluded. When the Patients, from Dread, reject the Operations just mentioned, a little Oyl of Cloves may be applied, by introducing a small Pellet of Cotton, dipt in it, to the rotten hollow Tooth; which often affords considerable Ease, and Respite. Some make use of a Tincture of Opium, or Laudanum, after the same Manner; and indeed these two Medicines may be used together in equal Quantities. I have often succeeded with _Hoffman's_ mineral anodyne Liquor; which seemed indeed, for a few Moments, to increase the Pain; but Ease generally ensues after spitting a little Time. A Gargarism made of the Herb _Argentina_; that is Silver-weed or wild Tansey, in Water, frequently appeases the Pain that results from a _Caries_ of the Teeth: and in such Cases many People have found themselves at Ease, under a constant Use of it. It certainly is an Application that cannot hurt, and is even beneficial to the Gums. Others have been relieved by rubbing their Faces over with Honey. § 139. The second Cause is the Inflammation of the Nerve within the Substance, or of the Membrane on the Outside, of the Tooth. This is discovered by the Patient's Temperament, Age and Manner of living. They who are young, sanguine, who heat themselves much, whether by Labour, by their Food, their Drink, by sitting up late, or by any other Excess: they who have been accustomed to any Discharges or Eruptions of Blood, whether natural or artificial, and who cease to have them as usual, are much exposed to the Tooth-ach, from this Cause. This Pain, or rather Torment, if in an acute Degree, commonly happens very suddenly, and often after some heating Cause. The Pulse is strong and full; the Countenance considerably red; the Mouth extremely hot: there is often a pretty high Fever, and a violent Head-ach. The Gums, or some Part of them, become inflamed, swelled, and sometimes an Abscess appears. At other times the Humours throw themselves upon the more external Parts; the Cheek swells, and the Pain abates. When the Cheek swells, but without any Diminution of the Pain, it then becomes an Augmentation, but no essential Change, of the Disorder. § 140. In this Species of the Disease, we must have Recourse to the general Method of treating inflammatory Disorders, and direct Bleeding, which often produces immediate Ease, if performed early. After Bleeding, the Patient should gargle with Barley Water, or Milk and Water; and apply an emollient Cataplasm to the Cheek. If an Abscess or little Imposthume appears, the Suppuration or ripening of it is to be promoted, by holding continually in the Mouth some hot Milk, or Figs boiled in some Milk: and as soon as ever it seems ripe, it should be opened, which may be done easily, and without any Pain. The Disorder, when depending on this Cause, is sometimes not so violent, but of a longer Duration, and returns whenever the Patient heats himself; when he goes to Bed; when he eats any heating Food, or Drink, Wine or Coffee. In this Case he should be bled, without which his other Medicines will have little Effect; and he should bathe his Feet in warm Water for some Evenings successively, taking one Dose of the Powder Nº. 20. Entire Abstinence from Wine and Meat, especially at Night, has cured several Persons of inveterate and obstinate Maladies of the Teeth. In this Species of Tooth-ach, all hot Remedies are pernicious; and it often happens that Opium, Venice Treacle, and Storax Pills, are so far from producing the Relief expected from them, that they have aggravated the Pain. § 141. When the Disease arises from a cold Distillation, or Humour, tending to these Parts, it is commonly (though equally painful) attended with less violent Symptoms. The Pulse is neither strong, full nor quick; the Mouth is less heated, and less swelled. In such Cases, the afflicted should be purged with the Powder Nº. 21, which has sometimes perfectly cured very obstinate Complaints of this Sort. After purging they should make Use of the Diet Drink of the Woods Nº. 22. This has cured Tooth-achs, which have baffled other Attempts for many Years; but it must be added, this Drink would be hurtful in the Disease from a different Cause. Blisters to the Nape of the Neck, or [35] elsewhere, it matters not greatly where, have often extraordinary good Effects, by diverting the Humour, and restoring a compleat Perspiration. In short in this Species, we may employ, not only with Safety, but with Success (especially after due purging) Pills of Storax, Opium and Venice Treacle. Acrid sharp Remedies, such as hard spun [35] Tobacco, Root of Pellitory of _Spain_, &c. by exciting much Spitting, discharge part of the Humour which causes the Disease, and hence diminish the Pain. The Smoke of Tobacco also succeeds now and then in this Disorder, whether this happens from the Discharge of the Rheum or Spittle it occasions; or whether it is owing to any anodyne Efficacy of this Plant, in which it resembles Opium. [35] A small Blister behind the Ear of the affected Side, or both Ears, has very often removed the Pain, when from a Defluxion. It is pretty common for the Subjects of this Disease to be very costive, during the Exacerbations of it, which I have sometimes experienced to be pretty regularly and severely quotidian, for a Week or two. The Custom of smoking Tobacco very often, which the Violence of this Pain has sometimes introduced, often disposes to a Blackened and premature Decay of the Teeth, to which the Chewers of it are less obnoxious: and this Difference may result from some particles of its chemical Oil rising by Fumigation, and being retained in the Teeth, which Particles are not extracted by Mastication. But with Regard to the habitual Use of this very acrid and internally violent Herb, for, but chiefly after, this Disease, it should be considered well, whether in some Constitutions it may not pave the Way to a more dangerous one, than it was introduced to remove. _K._ § 142. As this last Cause is often the Consequence of a Weakness in the Stomach, it daily happens that we see some People, whose Disorder from this Cause is augmented, in Proportion as they indulge in a cooling, refreshing Way of living. The Increase of the Disorder disposes them to increase the Dose of what they mistake for its Remedy, in Proportion to which their Pain only increases. There is a Necessity that such Persons should alter this Method; and make use of such Medicines as are proper to strengthen the Stomach, and to restore Perspiration. The Powder Nº. 14. has often produced the best Consequences, when I have ordered it in these Cases; and it never fails to dissipate the Tooth-ach very speedily, which returns periodically at stated Days and Hours. I have also cured some Persons who never drank Wine, by advising them to the Use of it. § 143. But besides the Diseases of the Teeth, that are owing to these three principal Causes, which are the most common ones; there are some very tedious and most tormenting Disorders of them, that are occasioned by a general Acrimony, or great Sharpness, of the Mass of Blood, and which are never cured by any other Medicines but such, as are proper to correct that Acrimony. When it is of a scorbutic Nature, the wild Horse-radish (Pepperwort) Water Cresses, Brooklime, Sorrel, and Wood-sorrell correct and cure it. If it is of a different Nature, it requires different Remedies. But very particular Details do not come within the Plan of this Work. As the Malady is of the chronical or tedious kind, it allows Time to consider and consult more particularly about it. The Gout and the Rheumatism are sometimes transferred to the Teeth, and give Rise to the most excruciating Pains; which must be treated like the Diseases from which they arise. § 144. From what has been said on this Disorder, the Reader will discern, in what that imaginary Oddness may consist, which has been ascribed to it, from the same Application's relieving one Person in it, and not affording the least Relief to another. Now the plain Reason of this is, that these Applications are always directed, without an exact Knowledge of the particular Cause of the Disease, in different Subjects and Circumstances; whence the Pain from a rotten Tooth, is treated like that from an Inflammation; that from an Inflammation, like the Pain from a cold Humour or Fluxion; and this last like a Pain caused by a scorbutic Acrimony: so that the Disappointment is not in the least surprizing. Perhaps Physicians themselves do not always attend distinctly enough to the Nature of each particular Disorder: and even when they do, they content themselves with directing some of the less potent Medicines, which may be inadequate to accomplish the necessary Effect. If the Distemper truly be of an inflammatory Disposition, Bleeding is indispensible to the Cure. It happens in Fact, with Regard to the Diseases of the Teeth, as well as to all other Diseases, that they arise from different Causes; and if these Causes are not opposed by Medicines suited to them, the Disease, far from being cured, is aggravated. I have cured violent Tooth-achs, of the lower Jaw, by applying a Plaister of Meal, the White of an Egg, Brandy and Mastich, at the Corner of that Jaw, over the Spot where the Pulsation of the Artery may be perceived: and I have also mitigated the most excruciating Pains of the Head, by applying the same Plaister upon the temporal Artery. __Chapter IX.__ _Of the Apoplexy._ __Sect.__ 145. Every Person has some Idea of the Disease termed an Apoplexy, which is a sudden Privation or Loss of all Sense, and of all voluntary Motion; the Pulse at the same Time being kept up, but Respiration or Breathing, being oppressed. I shall treat of this Disease only in a brief Manner, as it is not common in our Country Villages; and as I have expatiated on it in a different Manner in a Letter to Dr. _Haller_, published in 1761. § 146. This Disease is generally distinguished into two Kinds, the sanguineous and serous Apoplexy. Each of them results from an Overfulness of the Blood Vessels of the Brain, which presses upon, and prevents or impairs the Functions of the Nerves. The whole Difference between these two Species consists in this, that the sanguineous Apoplexy prevails among strong robust Persons, who have a rich, heavy, thick and inflammable Blood, and that in a large Quantity; in which Circumstance it becomes a genuine inflammatory Distemper. The serous, or humoral Apoplexy invades Persons of a less robust Constitution; whose Blood is more dilute or watery; and rather viscid, or lightly gelatinous, than heavy or rich; whole Vessels are in a more relaxed State; and who abound more in other Humours than in red Blood. § 147. When the first kind of this Disease exists in its most violent Degree, it is then sometimes termed, an apoplectic Stroke, or thundering Apoplexy, which kills in a Moment or instantaneously, and admits of no Remedies. When the Assault is less violent, and we find the Patient with a strong, full and raised Pulse, his Visage red and bloated, and his Neck swelled up; with an oppressed and loud hoarse Respiration; being sensible of nothing, and capable of no other Motions, except some Efforts to vomit, the Case is not always equally desperate. We must therefore immediately, 1. Entirely uncover the Patient's Head, covering the rest of his Body but very lightly; procure him instantly very fresh free Air, and leave his Neck quite unbound and open. 2. His Head should be placed as high as may be, with his Feet hanging down. 3. He must lose from twelve to fifteen Ounces of Blood, from a free open Orifice in the Arm: the Strength or Violence with which the Blood sallies out, should determine the Surgeon to take a few Ounces more or less. It should be repeated to the third or fourth Time, within the Space of three or four Hours; if the Symptoms seem to require it, either in the Arm, or in the Foot. 4. A Glyster should be given of a Decoction of the first emollient opening Herbs that can be got, with four Spoonfuls of Oil, one Spoonful of Salt: and this should be repeated every three Hours. 5. If it is possible, he should be made to swallow Water plentifully, in each Pot of which three Drams of Nitre are to be dissolved. 6. As soon as the Height and Violence of the Pulse abates; when his Breathing becomes less oppressed and difficult, and his Countenance less inflamed, he should take the Decoction Nº. 23; or, if it cannot be got ready in Time, he should take three Quarters of an Ounce of Cream of Tartar, and drink Whey plentifully after it. This Medicine succeeded extremely well with me in a Case, where I could not readily procure any other. 7. He should avoid all strong Liquor, Wine, distilled Spirit, whether inwardly or by outward Application, and should even be prevented from [36] smelling them. [36] I have been very authentically assured of the Death of a hale Man, which happened in the very Act of pouring out a large Quantity of distilled Spirits, by Gallons or Bucketfulls, from one Vessel into another. _K._ 8. The Patient should be stirred, moved, or even touched, as little as it is possible: in a Word every Thing must be avoided that can give him the least Agitation. This Advice, I am sensible, is directly contrary to the common Practice; notwithstanding which it is founded in Reason, approved by Experience, and absolutely necessary. In Fact, the whole Evil results from the Blood being forced up with too much Force, and in too great a Quantity, to the Brain; which being thence in a State of Compression, prevents every Movement and every Influence of the Nerves. In Order, therefore, to re-establish these Movements, the Brain must be unloaded, by diminishing the Force of the Blood. But strong Liquors, Wines, Spirits, volatile Salts, all Agitation and Frictions augment it, and by that very Means increase the Load, the Embarrassment of the Brain, and thus heighten the Disease itself. On the contrary, every Thing that calms the Circulation, contributes to recall Sensation and voluntary Motion the sooner. 9. Strong Ligatures should be made about the Thighs under the Ham: By this Means the Blood is prevented in its Ascent from the Legs, and less is carried up to the Head. If the Patient seems gradually, and in Proportion as he takes proper Medicines, to advance into a less violent State, there may be some Hopes. But if he rather grows worse after his earliest Evacuations, the Case is desperate. § 148. When Nature and Art effect his Recovery, his Senses return: though there frequently remains a little _Delirium_ or Wandering for some Time; and almost always a paralytic Defect, more or less, of the Tongue, the Arm, the Leg, and the Muscles of the same Side of the Face. This Palsy sometimes goes off gradually, by the Help of cooling Purges from Time to Time, and a Diet that is but very moderately and lightly nourishing. All hot Medicines are extremely hurtful in this Case, and may pave the Way to a repeated Attack. A Vomit might be even fatal, and has been more than once so. It should be absolutely forbidden; nor should we even promote, by Draughts of warm Water, the Efforts of the Patient to vomit. They do not any ways depend on any Humour or Mass in the Stomach; but on the Oppression and Embarrassment of the Brain: and the more considerable such Efforts are, the more such Oppression is increased: by Reason that as long as they continue, the Blood cannot return from the Head, by which Means the Brain remains overcharged. § 149. The other Species of Apoplexy is attended with the like Symptoms, excepting the Pulse not being so high nor strong; the Countenance being also less red, sometimes even pale; the Breathing seems less oppressed; and sometimes the Sick have a greater Facility to vomit, and discharge more upwards. As this Kind of the Disease attacks Persons who abound less in Blood; who are less strong, and less heated or inflamed, Bleeding is not often at all necessary: at least the Repetition of it is scarcely ever so: and should the Pulse have but a small Fulness, and not the least unnatural Hardness, Bleeding might even be pernicious. 1. The Patient however should be placed as was directed in the former Mode of this Disease; though it seems not equally necessary here. 2. He should receive a Glyster, but without Oil, with double the Quantity of Salt, and a Bit of Soap of the Size of a small Egg; or with four or five Sprigs of Hedge Hyssop. It may be repeated twice a Day. 3. He should be purged with the Powder Nº. 4. [37] [37] Vomits which are so pernicious in the sanguineous Apoplexy, where the Patient's Countenance and Eyes are inflamed; and which are also dangerous or useless, when a Person has been very moderate in his Meals, or is weakened by Age or other Circumstances, and whole Stomach is far from being overloaded with Aliment, are nevertheless very proper for gross Feeders, who are accustomed to exceed at Table, who have Indigestions, and have a Mass of viscid glairy Humours in their Stomachs; more especially, if such a one has a little while before indulged himself excessively, whence he has vomited without any other evident Cause, or at least had very Strong _Nauseas_, or Loathings. In brief, Vomits are the true Specific for Apoplexies, occasioned by any narcotic or stupifying Poisons, the pernicious Effects of which cease, the Moment the Persons so poisoned vomit them up. An attentive Consideration of what has occurred to the Patient before his Seizure; his small natural Propensity to this Disease, and great and incessant Loathings, render it manifest, whether it has been caused by such Poisons, or such poisonous Excesses. In these two Last Cases a double Dose of Tartar emetic should be dissolved in a Goblet or Cup of Water, of which the Patient should immediately take a large Spoonful; which should be repeated every Quarter of an Hour, till it operates. _E. L._ 4. His common Drink may be a Strong Infusion of Leaves of Balm. 5. The Purge should be repeated the third Day. 6. Blisters should immediately be applied to the fleshy Part of the Legs, or between the Shoulder Blades. [38] [38] These Blisters may be preceded by Cupping with Scarification on the Nape of the Neck. This Remedy, often used by the ancient Physicians, but too little practiced in France, is one of the most speedy, and not the least efficacious, Applications in both sanguine and serous Apoplexies. _E. L._ 7. Should Nature seem disposed to relieve herself by Sweatings, it should be encouraged; and I have often known an Infusion of the _Carduus benedictus_, or blessed Thistle, produce this Effect very successfully. If this Method be entered upon, the Sweat ought to be kept up (without stirring if possible) for many Days. It has then sometimes happened, that at the End of nine Days, the Patient has been totally freed from the Palsy, which commonly succeeds this Species of the Apoplexy, just as it does the other. § 150. Persons who have been attacked with either kinds of this Disease are liable to subsequent ones; each of which is more dangerous than that preceding: whence an Endeavour to obviate or prevent such Relapses becomes of the utmost Importance. This is to be effected in each Sort by a very exact, and rather severe Diet, even to diminishing the usual Quantity of the Patient's Food; the most essential Precaution, to be observed by any who have been once assaulted with it, being entirely to leave off Suppers. Indeed those, who have been once attacked with the _first_, the _sanguineous Apoplexies_, should be still more exact, more upon their Guard, than the others. They should deny themselves whatever is rich and juicy, hot or aromatic, sharp, Wine, distilled Liquors and Coffee. They should chiefly confine themselves to Garden-Stuff, Fruits and Acids; such should eat but little Flesh, and only those called white; taking every Week two or three Doses of the Powder Nº. 24, in a Morning fasting, in a Glass of Water. They should be purged twice or thrice a Year with the Draught Nº. 23; use daily Exercise; avoid very hot Rooms, and the violent Heat of the Sun. They should go to Bed betimes, rise early, never lie in Bed above eight Hours: and if it is observed that their Blood increases considerably, and has a Tendency towards the Head, they should be bled without Hesitation: and for some Days restrain themselves entirely to a thin and low Regimen, without taking any solid Food. In these Circumstances warm Bathings are hurtful. In the other, the serous, Apoplexy, instead of purging with Nº. 23, the Patient should take the Purge Nº. 21. § 151. The same Means, that are proper to prevent a Relapse, might also obviate or keep off a primary or first Assault, if employed in Time: for notwithstanding it may happen very suddenly, yet this Disease foreshews itself many Weeks, sometimes many Months, nay even Years beforehand, by Vertigos, Heaviness of the Head; small Defects of the Tongue or Speech; short and momentary Palsies, sometimes of one, sometimes of another, Part: sometimes by Loathings and Reachings to vomit; without supposing any Obstruction or Load in the first Passages, or any other Cause in the Stomach, or the adjoining Parts. There happens also some particular Change in the Looks and Visage not easy to be described: sharp and short Pains about the Region of the Heart; an Abatement of the Strength, without any discernible Cause of it. Besides there are still some other Signs, which signify the Ascent of the Humours too much to the Head, and shew, that the Functions of the Brain are embarrassed. Some Persons are liable to certain Symptoms and Appearances, which arise from the same Cause as an Apoplexy; and which indeed may be considered as very light benign Apoplexies, of which they sustain many Attacks, and yet without any considerable Annoyance of their Health. The Blood, all at once as it were, flushes up to their Heads: they appear heedless or blundering; and have sometimes Disgusts and _Nauseas_, and yet without any Abatement of their Understanding, their Senses, or Motion of any Sort. Tranquillity of Mind and Body, once Bleeding, and a few Glysters usually carry it off soon after its Invasion. The Returns of it may be prevented by the Regimen directed § 150; and especially by a frequent Use of the Powder Nº. 24. At the long Run however, one of these Attacks commonly degenerates into a mortal Apoplexy: though this may be retarded for a very long Time by an exact Regimen, and by avoiding all strong Commotions of the Mind, but especially that of Anger or violent Rage. __Chapter X.__ _Of the violent Influence, or Strokes, of the Sun._ __Sect.__ 152. This Appellation is applied to those Disorders, which arise from too violent an Influence of the Heat of the Sun, immediately upon the Head; and which in one Word may be termed _Insolation_. If we consider that Wood, Stone and Metals, when long exposed to the Sun, become very hot, and that even in temperate Climates, to such a Degree, that they can scarcely be touched without some Sensation of burning, we may easily conceive the Risk a Person undergoes, in having his Head exposed to the same Degree of Heat. The Blood-Vessels grow dry, the Blood itself becomes condensed or thickened, and a real Inflammation is formed, which has proved mortal in a very little Time. It was this Distemper, a Stroke of the Sun, which killed _Manasses_ the Husband of _Judith_. 'For as he was among the Labourers who bound up the Sheafs in the Fields, the Heat struck upon his Head, and he was taken ill; he went to Bed and he died.' The Signs which precede and attend this Disease are, being exposed in a Place where the Sun shines forth with great Force and Ardour; a violent Head-ach, attended with a very hot and extremely dry Skin: the Eyes are also dry and red, being neither able to remain open, nor yet to bear the Light; and sometimes there is a kind of continual and involuntary Motion in the Eyelid; while some Degree of Relief is perceivable from the Application of any cooling Liquor. It often happens that some cannot possibly sleep; and at other times they have a great Drowsiness, but attended with outrageous Wakenings: there is a very strong Fever; a great Faintness, and a total Disrelish and Loathing. Sometimes the Patient is very thirsty, and at other times not at all: and the Skin of his Face often looks as though it were burnt. § 153. People may be affected with the Disease from this Cause, at two different Seasons of the Year; that is, either in the Spring, or during the very raging Heats; but their Events are very different. Country People and Labourers are but little liable to the former. They chiefly affect the Inhabitants of Cities, and delicate Persons, who have used very little Exercise in the Winter, and abound with superfluous Humours. If thus circumstanced they expose themselves to the Sun, as even in the Spring he attains a considerable Force; and, by the Course of Life they have led, their Humours are already much disposed to mount to the Head; while the Coolness of the Soil, especially when it has rained, prevents their Feet from being so easily warmed; the Power of the Sun acts upon their Head like a Blister, attracting a great Quantity of Humours to it. This produces excruciating Pains of the Head, frequently accompanied with quick and violent Shootings, and with Pain in the Eyes; notwithstanding this Degree of the Malady is seldom dangerous. Country People, and even such Inhabitants of Cities and Towns, as have not forbore to exercise themselves in Winter, have no Sort of Dread of these Strokes of the Sun, in the Spring of the Year. Its Summer Strokes are much more vehement and troublesome, and assault Labourers and Travellers, who are for a long Time exposed to the Fervour of it. Then it is that the Disease is aggravated to its highest Pitch, those who are thus struck often dying upon the Spot. In the hot Climates this Cause destroys many in the very Streets, and makes dreadful Havock among Armies on the March, and at Sieges. Some tragical Effects of it, on such Occasions, are seen even in the temperate Countries. After having marched a whole Day in the Sun, a Man shall fall into a Lethargy, and die within some Hours, with the Symptoms of raving Madness. I have seen a Tyler in a very hot Day, complaining to his Comrade of a violent Pain in his Head, which increased every Moment almost; and at the very Instant when he purposed to retire out of the Sun, he sunk down dead, and fell down from the House he was slating. This same Cause produces very often in the Country some most dangerous Phrenzies, which are called there hot or burning Fevers. Every Year furnishes but too many of them. § 154. The Vehemence of the Sun is still more dangerous to those, who venture to sleep exposed to it. Two Mowers who fell asleep on a Haycock, being wakened by some others, immediately on waking, staggered, and pronouncing a few incoherent unmeaning Words, died. When the Violence of Wine and that of the Sun are combined, they kill very suddenly: nor is there a single Year in which Peasants are not found dead on the Highroads; who being drunk endeavoured to lie down in some Corner, where they perished by an Apoplexy, from the Heat of the Sun and of strong Drink. Those of them who escape so speedy and premature a Death, are subject for the Remainder of their Lives, to chronical, or tedious Head-achs; and to suffer some little Disorder and Confusion in their Ideas. I have seen some Cases, when after violent Head-achs of some Days Continuance, the Disease has been transferred to the Eyelids, which continued a long Time red and distended, so that they could not be kept asunder or open. It has also been known, that some Persons have been struck by the Sun into a _Delirium_ or Raving, without a Fever, and without complaining of a Head-ach. Sometimes a _Gutta Serena_ has been its Consequence; and it is very common to see People, whose long Continuance under the strong Light and Influence of the Sun, has made such an Impression upon the Eyes, as presents them with different Bodies flying about in the Air, which distract and confuse their Sight. A Man of forty two Years of Age, having been exposed for several Hours to the violent Heat of the Sun, with a very small Cap or Bonnet; and having past the following Night in the open Air, was attacked the next Day with a most severe Head-ach, a burning Fever, Reachings to vomit, great Anguish, and red and sparkling Eyes. Notwithstanding the best Assistance of several Physicians, he became phrenitic on the fifth Day, and died on the ninth. Suppurated Matter was discharged from his Mouth, one of his Nostrils, and his right Ear, a few Hours before his Death; upon Dissection a small Abscess was found within the Skull; and the whole Brain, as well as all the Membranes inclosing it, were entirely corrupted. § 155. In very young Children, who are not, or never should be, exposed for any long Time to such excessive Heat (and whom a slight Cause will often affect) this Malady discovers itself by a heavy deep Drowsiness, which lasts for several Days; also by incessant Ravings mingled with Rage and Terror, much the same as when they are affected with violent Fear: and sometimes by convulsive Twitchings; by Head-achs which returned at certain Periods, and continual Vomitings. I have seen Children, who, after a Stroke of the Sun, have been harrassed a long Time with a little Cough. § 156. Old Men who often expose themselves imprudently to the Sun, are little apprized of all the Danger they incur by it. A certain Person, who purposely sunned himself for a considerable Time, in the clear Day of an intermitting tertian Fever, underwent the Assault of an Apoplexy, which carried him off the following Day. And even when the Disease may not be so speedy and violent, yet this Custom (of sunning in hot Weather) certainly disposes to an Apoplexy, and to Disorders of the Head. One of the slightest Effects of much solar Heat upon the Head is, to cause a Defluxion from the Brain, a Swelling of the Glands of the Neck, and a Dryness of the Eyes, which sometimes continues for a considerable Term after it. § 157. The effect of too much culinary, or common Fire, is of the same Quality with that of the Sun. A Man who fell asleep with his Head directly opposite, and probably, very near to the Fire, went off in an Apoplexy, during his Nap. § 158. The Action of too violent a Sun is not only pernicious, when it falls upon the Head; but it is also hurtful to other Parts; and those who continue long exposed to it, though their Heads should not be affected, experience violent Pains, a disagreeable Sensation of Heat, and a considerable Stiffness in the Parts that have been, in some Manner, parched by it; as in the Legs, the Knees, the Thighs, Reins and Arms; and sometimes they prove feverish. § 159. In contemplating the Case of a Patient, _Sun-struck_, as we may term it, we must endeavour to distinguish, whether there may not be also some other joint Causes concurring to the Effect. A Traveller, a labouring Man, is often as much affected by the Fatigue of his Journey, or of his Labour, as he is by the Influence of solar Heat. § 160. It is necessary to set about the Cure of this Disease, as soon as ever we are satisfied of its Existence: for such as might have been easily preserved by an early Application, are considerably endangered by a Neglect of it. The Method of treating this is very much the same, with that of the inflammatory Diseases already mentioned; that is, by Bleeding, and cooling Medicines of various Kinds in their Drinks, by Bathings, and by Glysters. And 1. If the Disease be very high and urgent, a large Quantity of Blood should be taken away, and occasionally repeated. _Lewis_ the XIV. was bled nine Times to prevent the Fatality of a Stroke of the Sun, which he received in Hunting in 1658. 2. After Bleeding, the Patient's Legs should be plunged into warm Water. This is one of the Applications that affords the most speedy Relief; and I have seen the Head-ach go off and return again, in Proportion to the Repetition, and the Duration, of these Bathings of the Legs. When the Disorder is highly dangerous, it will be necessary to treat the Patient with _Semicupia_, or warm Baths, in which he may sit up to his Hips; and in the most dangerous Degrees of it, even to bathe the whole Body: but the Water in this Case, as well as in Bathings of the Feet, should be only sensibly warm: the Use of hot would be highly pernicious. 3. Glysters made from a Decoction of any of the emollient Herbs are also very effectual. 4. The Patient should drink plentifully of Almond Emulsion Nº. 4; of Limonade, which is a Mixture of the Juice of Lemons and Water, (and is the best Drink in this Disease) of Water and Vinegar, which is a very good Substitute for Limonade; and of, what is still more efficacious, very clear Whey, with the Addition of a little Vinegar. These various Drinks may all be taken cold; Linen Cloths dipt in cold Water and Vinegar of Roses may be applied to the Forehead, the Temples, or all over the Head, which is equivalent to every other Application used upon such Occasions. Those which are the most cried up, are the Juice of Purslain, of Lettuce, of Houseleek, and of Vervain. The Drink Nº. 32 is also serviceable, taken every Morning fasting. § 161. Cold Baths have sometimes recovered Persons out of such violent Symptoms, from this Cause, as have been almost quite despaired of. A Man twenty Years of Age, having been a very long Time exposed to the scorching Sun, became violently delirious, without a Fever, and proved really mad. After repeated Bleedings, he was thrown into a cold Bath, which was also frequently repeated; pouring cold Water, at the same Time, upon his Head. With such Assistance he recovered, though very gradually. An Officer who had rode Post for several Days successively, in very hot Weather, swooned away, immediately on dismounting; from which he could not be recovered by the ordinary Assistance in such Cases. He was saved however, in Consequence of being plunged into a Bath of freezing Water. It should be observed however, that in these Cases the cold Bath should never be recurred to, without previous Bleeding. § 162. It is past Doubt, that if a Person stands still in the violent Heat of the Sun, he is more liable to be struck with it, than if he walks about; and the Use of white Hats, or of some Folds of clean white Paper under a black one, may sensibly contribute to prevent any Injury from the considerable Heat of the Sun; though it is a very incompetent Defence against a violent Degree of it. The natural Constitution, or even that Constitution, which has been formed from long Custom and Habit, make a very great Difference between the Effects of solar Heat on different Persons. People insensibly accustom themselves to the Impressions of it, as they do to those of all the other Bodies and Elements, which are continually acting upon us; and by Degrees we arrive at a Power of sustaining his violent Heat with Impunity: just as others arrive at the Hardiness of bearing the most rigid Colds, with very little Complaint or Inconvenience. The human Body is capable of supporting many more Violences and Extremes, than it commonly does. Its natural Force is scarcely ever ascertained among civilized Nations; because their Education generally tends to impair and lessen it, and always succeeds in this Respect. If we were inclined to consider a purely natural, a simply physical Man, we must look for him among savage Nations; where only we can discover what we are able to be, and to bear. We certainly could not fail of being Gainers, by adopting their corporal Education; neither does it seem as yet to have been infallibly demonstrated, that we should be great Losers in commuting our moral Education for theirs. [39] [39] As some may think an Apology necessary for a Translation of this Chapter on a Disease, which never, or very seldom, exists in this or the adjacent Island, I shall observe here, that, abstracted from the Immorality of a narrow and local Solicitude only for ourselves, we are politically interested as a Nation always in Trade, and often at War (and whose Subjects are extended into very distant and different Climates) to provide against a sudden and acute Distemper, to which our Armies, our Sailors and Colonies are certainly often exposed. A Fatality from this Cause is not restrained to our Islands within the Tropic, where several Instances of it have occurred during the late War: but it has also been known to prevail as far Northward as _Pensylvania_, in their Summers, and even in their Harvests. I once received a sensible Scald on the Back of my Thumb, from the Sun suddenly darting out through a clear Hole, as it were, in a Cloud, after a short and impetuous Shower in Summer; which Scald manifestly blistered within some Minutes after. Had this concentrated Ray been darted on my bare Head, the Consequence might have been more dangerous; or perhaps as fatal as some of the Cases recorded by Dr. _Tissot_, in this Chapter. _K._ __Chapter XI.__ _Of the Rheumatism._ __Sect.__ 163. The Rheumatism may exist either with or without a Fever. The first of these may be classed among the Diseases, of which I have already treated; being an Inflammation which is manifested by a violent Fever, preceded by Shivering, a subsequent Heat, hard Pulse, and a Head-ach. Sometimes indeed an extraordinary Coldness, with general Uneasiness and Inquietude, exists several Days before the Fever is perceived. On the second or third Day, and sometimes even on the first, the Patient is seized with a violent Pain in some Part of his Body, but especially about the Joints, which entirely prevents their Motion, and which is often accompanied with Heat, Redness and a Swelling of the Part. The Knee is often the first Part attacked, and sometimes both the Knees at once. When the Pain is fixed, an Abatement of the Fever frequently happens; though in some other Persons it continues for several Days, and increases every Evening. The Pain diminishes in one Part after a Duration of some Days, and then invades some other. From the Knee it descends to the Foot, or mounts to the Hip, to the Loins, the Shoulder-blades, Elbow, Wrist, the Nape of the Neck, and frequently is felt in the intermediate Parts. Sometimes one Part is quite free from Pain, when another is attacked; at other Times many Parts are seized nearly at the same Instant; and I have sometimes seen every Joint afflicted at once. In this Case the Patient is in a very terrible Situation, being incapable of any Motion, and even dreading the Assistance of his Attendants, as he can scarcely admit of touching, without a sensible Aggravation of his Pains. He is unable to bear even the Weight of the Bed-clothes, which must be, as it were, arched over his Limbs by a proper Contrivance, to prevent their Pressure: and the very walking across the Chamber increases his Torments. The Parts in which they are the most excruciating, and obstinate, are the Region of the Loins, the Hips, and the Nape or hinder Part of the Neck. § 164. This Disease is also often extended over the Scalp and the Surface of the Head; and there the Pains are excessive. I have seen them affect the Eyelids and the Teeth with inexpressible Torment. As long as the Distemper is situated in the more external Parts, the Patient, however painful his Situation may prove, is in no great Danger, if he be properly treated: but if by some Accident, some Error, or by any latent Cause, the Disease be repelled upon an internal Part or Organ, his Case is extremely dangerous. If the Brain is attacked, a frantic raging _Delirium_ is the Consequence; if it falls upon the Lungs, the Patient is suffocated: and if it attacks the Stomach or the Bowels, it is attended with the most astonishing Pains, which are caused by the Inflammation of those Parts, and which Inflammation, if violent, is [40] speedily fatal. About two Years since I was called to a robust Man, whose Guts were already in a gangrenous State, which was the Consequence of a Rheumatism, that first attacked one Arm and one Knee; the Cure of which had been attempted by sweating the Patient with some hot Remedies. These indeed brought on a plentiful Sweat; but the inflammatory Humour seized the Intestines, whose Inflammation degenerated into a Gangrene, after a Duration of the most acute Pain for thirty-six Hours; his Torments terminating in Death two Hours after I saw him. [40] See Note [16] to Page 59. § 165. This Malady however is often in a less violent Degree; the Fever is but moderate, and ceases entirely when the Pain begins; which is also confined to one, or not more than two Parts. § 166. If the Disease continues fixed, for a considerable Time, in one Joint, the Motion of it is impaired for Life. I have seen a Person, who has now a wry Neck, of twenty Years standing, in Consequence of a Rheumatism in the Nape of the Neck; and I also saw a poor young Man from _Jurat_, who was Bed-ridden, and who had lost the Motion of one Hip and both Knees. He could neither stand nor sit, and there were but a few Postures in which he could even lie in Bed. § 167. An obstructed Perspiration, an inflammatory Thickness of the Blood, constitute the most general Cause of the Rheumatism. This last concurring Cause is that we must immediately encounter; since, as long as that subsists, Perspiration cannot be perfectly re-established, which follows of Course, when the Inflammation is cured. For which Reason this Distemper must be conducted like the other inflammatory ones, of which I have already treated. § 168. As soon as it is sufficiently manifest, the Glyster Nº. 5, should be injected; and twelve Ounces of Blood be taken from the Arm an Hour after. The Patient is to enter upon a Regimen, and drink plentifully of the Ptisan Nº. 2, and of Almond Milk or Emulsion Nº. 4. As this last Medicine may be too costly in Country Places for the poor Peasantry; they may drink, in Lieu of it, very clear Whey, sweetened with a little Honey. I have known a very severe Rheumatism cured, after twice bleeding, without any other Food or Medicine, for the Space of thirteen Days. The Whey also may be happily used by Way of Glyster. § 169. If the Distemper is not considerably asswaged by the first Bleeding, it should be repeated some Hours after. I have ordered it four Times within the first two Days; and some Days after I have even directed a fifth Bleeding. But in general the Hardness of the Pulse becomes less after the second: and notwithstanding the Pains may continue as severe as before, yet the Patient is sensible of less Inquietude. The Glyster must be repeated every Day, and even twice a Day, if each of them is attended only with a small Discharge; and particularly if there be a violent Head-ach. In such Cases as are excessively painful, the Patient can scarcely dispose himself into a proper Attitude or Posture to receive Glysters: and in such Circumstances his Drinks should be made as opening as possible; and a Dose of the Cream of Tartar Nº. 24 should be given Night and Morning. This very Medicine, with the Assistance of Whey, cured two Persons I advised it to, of rheumatic Pains, of which they had been infested with frequent Returns for many Years, and which were attended with a small Fever. Apples coddled, Prunes stewed, and well ripened Summer Fruits are the properest Nourishment in this Disease. We may save the Sick a good deal of Pain, by putting one strong Towel always under their Back, and another under their Thighs, in order to move them the more easily. When their Hands are without Pain, a third Towel hung upon a Cord, which is fastened across the Bed, must considerably assist them in moving themselves. § 170. When the Fever entirely disappears, and the Hardness of the Pulse is removed, I have ordered the Purge Nº. 23 with a very good Effect; and if it is attended with five or six Motions, the Patient is very sensibly relieved. The Day but one after it may be repeated successfully, and a third Time, after an Interval of a greater Number of Days. § 171. When the Pains are extremely violent, they admit of no Application: Vapour-Baths however may be employed, and provided they are often used, and for a considerable Time, they prove very efficacious. The Purpose of these Baths is only to convey the Steam of boiling Water to the Parts affected; which may always easily be effected, by a Variety of simple and easy Contrivances; the Choice of which must depend on the different Circumstances and Situation of the Sick. Whenever it is possible, some of the emollient Applications Nº. 9, should be continually employed. A half Bath, or an entire Bath of warm Water, in which the Patient should remain an Hour, after sufficient Bleedings and many Glysters, affords the greatest Relief. I have seen a Patient, under the most acute Pains of the Loins, of the Hips, and of one Knee, put into one. He continued still under extreme Torment in the Bath, and on being taken out of it: but an Hour after he had been put to Bed, he sweated, to an incredible Quantity, for thirty six Hours, and was cured. The Bath should never be made use of, until after repeated Bleedings, or at least other equivalent Evacuations: for otherwise timed, it would aggravate the Disease. § 172. The Pains are generally most severe in the Night; whence it has been usual to give composing soporific Medicines. This however has been very erroneous, as Opiates really augment the Cause of the Disease, and destroy the Efficacy of the proper Remedies: and, even not seldom, far from asswaging the Pains, they increase them. Indeed they agree so little in this Disease, that even the Patient's natural Sleep at the Invasion of this Complaint, is rather to his Detriment. They feel, the very Moment they are dropping asleep, such violent Jirks as awaken them with great Pain: or if they do sleep a few Minutes, the Pains are stronger when they awake. § 173. The Rheumatism goes off either by Stool, by turbid thick Urine which drops a great Proportion of a yellowish Sediment, or by Sweats: and it generally happens that this last Discharge prevails towards the Conclusion of the Disease. It may be kept up by drinking an Infusion of Elder Flowers. At the Beginning however Sweating is pernicious. § 174. It happens also, though but very seldom, that Rheumatisms determine by depositing a sharp Humour upon the Legs; where it forms Vesications, or a kind of Blisterings; which burst open and form Ulcers, that ought not to be healed and dried up too hastily; as this would occasion a speedy Return of the rheumatic Pains. They are disposed to heal naturally of themselves, by the Assistance of a temperate regular Diet, and a few gentle Purges. § 175. Sometimes again, an Abscess is formed either in the affected Part, or in some neighbouring one. I have seen a Vineyard Dresser, who after violent Pains of the Loins, had an Abscess in the upper Part of the Thigh, which he neglected for a long Time. When I saw him, it was of a monstrous Size. I ordered it to be opened, when at once above three Pots of [41] Matter rushed out of it: but the Patient, being exhausted, died some Time after it. [41] This, according to our Author's Estimation of the Pot-Measure at _Berne_, which is that he always means, and which he says contains exactly (of Water we suppose) fifty one Ounces and a Quarter (though without a material Error it may be computed at three Pounds and a Quarter) will amount at least to nine Pounds and three Quarters of Matter, supposing this no heavier than Water. By Measure it will want but little of five of our Quarts: a very extraordinary Discharge indeed of _Pus_ at once, and not unlikely to be attended by the Event which soon followed. _K._ Another Crisis of the Rheumatism has happened by a kind of Itch, which breaks out upon all the Parts adjacent to the Seat of this Disease. Immediately after this Eruption the Pains vanish; but the Pustules sometimes continue for several Weeks. § 176. I have never observed the Pains to last, with considerable Violence, above fourteen Days, in this Species of the Rheumatism; though there remains a Weakness, Numbness, and some Inflation, or Puffing, of the adjoining Parts: and it will also be many Weeks, and sometimes even Months; especially if the Distemper attacked them in the Fall, before the Sick recover their usual Strength. I have known some Persons, who, after a very painful Rheumatism, have been troubled with a very disagreeable Sensation of Lassitude; which did not go off till after a great Eruption, all over the Body, of little Vesications or Blisterings, full of a watery Humour; many of them burst open, and others withered and dried up without bursting. § 177. The Return of Strength into the Parts affected may be promoted by Frictions Night and Morning, with Flannel or any other woollen Stuff; by using Exercise; and by conforming exactly to the Directions given in the Chapter on Convalescence, or Recovery from acute Diseases. The Rheumatism may also be prevented by the Means I have pointed out, in treating of Pleurisies and Quinsies. § 178. Sometimes the Rheumatism, with a Fever, invades Persons who are not so sanguine, or abounding in Blood; or whose Blood is not so much disposed to Inflammation; those whose Flesh and Fibres are softer; and in whose Humours there is more Thinness and Sharpness, than Viscidity and Thickness. Bleeding proves less necessary for Persons so constituted, notwithstanding the Fever should be very strong. Some Constitutions require more Discharges by Stool; and after they are properly evacuated, some Blisters should be applied, which often afford them a sensible Relief as soon as ever they begin to operate. Nevertheless they should never be used where the Pulse is hard. The Powder Nº. 25 answers very well in these Cases. § 179. There is another Kind of Rheumatism, called chronical, or lasting. It is known by the following Characters or Marks. 1. It is commonly unattended with a Fever. 2. It continues a very long Time. 3. It seldom attacks so many Parts at once as the former. 4. Frequently no visible Alteration appears in the affected Part, which is neither more hot, red, or swelled than in its healthy State; though sometimes one or other of these Symptoms is evident. 5. The former, the inflammatory, Rheumatism assaults strong, vigorous, robust Persons: but this rather invades People arrived at a certain Period of Life, or such as are weak and languishing. § 180. The Pain of the chronical Rheumatism, when left to itself, or injudiciously treated, lasts sometimes many Months, and even Years. It is particularly and extremely obstinate, when it is exerted on the Head, the Loins, or on the Hip, and along the Thighs, when it is called the _Sciatica_. There is no Part indeed which this Pain may not invade; sometimes it fixes itself in a small Spot, as in one Corner of the Head; the Angle of the Jaw; the Extremity of a Finger; in one Knee; on one Rib, or on the Breast, where it often excites Pains, which make the Patient apprehensive of a Cancer. It penetrates also to the internal Parts. When it affects the Lungs, a most obstinate Cough is the Consequence; which degenerates at length into very dangerous Disorders of the Breast. In the Stomach and Bowels it excites most violent Pains like a Cholic; and in the Bladder, Symptoms so greatly resembling those of the Stone, that Persons, who are neither deficient in Knowlege nor Experience, have been more than once deceived by them. § 181. The Treatment of this chronical Rheumatism does not vary considerably from that of the former. Nevertheless, in the first Place, if the Pain is very acute, and the Patient robust, a single Bleeding at the Onset is very proper and efficacious. 2. The Humours ought to be diluted, and their Acrimony or Sharpness should be diminished, by a very plentiful Use of a Ptisan of [42] Burdock Roots Nº. 26. 3. Four or five Days after drinking abundantly of this, the purging [43] Powder Nº. 21 may be taken with Success. In this Species of the Rheumatism, a certain Medicine is sometimes found serviceable. This has acquired some Reputation, particularly in the Country, where they bring it from, _Geneva_; under the Title of the Opiate for the Rheumatism, tho' I cannot say for what Reason; as it is indeed neither more nor less than the Electuary _Caryocostinum_, which may be procured at our Apothecaries. I shall observe however, that this Medicine has done Mischief in the inflammatory Rheumatism, and even in this, as often as the Persons afflicted with it are feeble, thin and of a hot Temperament; and either when they have not previously taken diluting Drinks, or when it has been used too long. For, in such a Circumstance, it is apt to throw the Patient into an irrecoverable Weakness. The Composition consists of the hottest Spices, and of very sharp Purgatives. [42] Half a Pint of a pretty strong Infusion of the Leaves of Buckbean, which grows wild here, taken once a Day rather before Noon, has also been found very serviceable in that Species of a chronical Rheumatism, which considerably results from a scorbutic State of the Constitution. _K._ [43] Another very good Purge, in this Kind of Rheumatism, may also be compounded of the best Gum Guiacum in Powder from 30 to 40 Grains; dissolved in a little Yolk of a fresh Egg; adding from 6 to 10 Grains of Jallap powdered, and from 3 to 5 Grains of powdered Ginger, with as much plain or sorrel Water, as will make a purging Draught for a stronger or weaker grown Patient. Should the Pains frequently infest the Stomach, while the Patient continues costive, and there is no other Fever than such a small symptomatic one, as may arise solely from Pain, he may safely take, if grown up, from 30 to 45 Drops of the volatile Tincture of Gum Guiacum, in any diluting Infusion, that may not coagulate or separate the Gum. It generally disposes at first to a gentle _Diaphoresis_ or Sweat, and several Hours after to one, and sometimes to a second Stool, with little or no Griping. _K._ § 182. When general Remedies have been used, and the Disorder still continues, Recourse should be had to such Medicines, as are available to restore Perspiration; and these should be persisted in for a considerable Time. The Pills Nº. 18, with a strong Infusion of Elder Flowers, have often succeeded in this Respect: and then after a long Continuance of diluting Drinks, if the Fever is entirely subdued; if the Stomach exerts its Functions well; the Patient is no ways costive; if he is not of a dry Habit of Body; and the Part affected remains without Inflammation, the Patient may safely take the Powder Nº. 29, at Night going to Bed, with a Cup or two of an Infusion of _Carduus benedictus_, or the blessed Thistle, and a Morsel of Venice Treacle of the Size of a Hazel Nut, or a Filberd. This Remedy brings on a very copious Sweating, which often expells the [44] Disease. These Sweats may be rendered full more effectual, by wrapping up the affected Part in a Flanel dipt in the Decoction Nº. 27. [44] Gum Guaiacum, given from six to ten Grains Morning and Night, is often very successful in these Cases. It may be made into Pills or Bolusses with the Rob of Elder, or with the Extract of Juniper. _E. L._ § 183. But of all these Pains, the Sciatica is one of the most tedious and obstinate. Nevertheless I have seen the greatest Success, from the Application of seven or eight Cupping-Glasses on the tormented Part; by which, without the Assistance of any other Remedy, I have cured, in a few Hours, Sciaticas of many Years standing, which had baffled other Remedies. Blisters, or any such stimulating Plaisters, as bring on a Suppuration and Discharge from the afflicted Part, contribute also frequently to the Cure; tho' less effectually than Cupping, which should be repeated several Times. Green Cere-cloth, commonly called Oil-cloth, (whether the Ingredients be spread on Taffety or on Linen) being applied to the diseased Part, disposes it to sweat abundantly, and thus to discharge the sharp Humour which occasions the Pain. Sometimes both these Applications, but especially that spread on Silk (which may be applied more exactly and closely to the Part, and which is also spread with a different Composition) raise a little Vesication on the Part as Blisters do. A Plaister of Quicklime and Honey blended together has cured inveterate Sciaticas. Oil of Eggs has sometimes succeeded in such Cases. A Seton has also been successfully made in the lower Part of the Thigh. Finally some Pains, which have not yielded to any of these Applications, have been cured by actual burning, inflicted on the very Spot, where the most violent Pain has been felt; except some particular Reason, drawn from an anatomical Knowlege of the Part, should determine the Surgeon not to apply it there. The Scull or Head should never be cauterized with a burning Iron. § 184. The hot Baths of _Bourbon_, _Plombiers_, _Aix-la-Chapelle_ and many others are often very efficacious in these chronical Pains: notwithstanding I really think, there is no rheumatic Pain that may not be cured without them. The common People substitute to these a Bath made of the Husk of Grapes, after their Juice is expressed, which cures some by making them sweat abundantly. Cold Baths however are the best to keep off this Disease; but then they cannot always be safely ventured on. Many Circumstances render the Use of them impracticable to particular Persons. Such as are subject to this chronical Rheumatism, would do very well to rub their whole Bodies every Morning, if they could, but especially the afflicted Parts, with Flanel. This Habit keeps up Perspiration beyond any other Assistance; and indeed sometimes even increases it too much. It would be serviceable too, if such Subjects of this cruel Disease wore Flanel all over their Skin, during the Winter. After a violent Rheumatism, People should long be careful to avoid that cold and moist Air, which disposes them to relapse. § 185. Rheumatic People have too frequent a Recourse to very improper and hurtful Medicines, in this Distemper, which daily produce very bad Consequences. Such are spirituous Medicines, Brandy, and Arquebusade Water. They either render the Pain more obstinate and fixed, by hardening the Skin; or they repell the Humour to some inward Part. And Instances are not wanting of Persons who have died suddenly, from the Application of Spirit of Wine upon the Parts, that were violently afflicted with the Rheumatism. It also happens sometimes that the Humour, having no Outlet through the Skin, is thrown internally on the Bone and affects it. A very singular Fact occurred in this Respect, an Account of which may be serviceable to some Persons afflicted with the Disease. A Woman at Night was chaffing the Arm of her Husband, who had the Rheumatism there, with Spirit of Wine; when a very lucky Accident prevented the Mischief she might have occasioned by it. The Spirit of Wine took Fire from the Flame of the Candle she made use of, and burned the diseased Part. It was drest of Course, and the Suppuration that attended it, entirely cured the Rheumatism. Sharp and greasy Unctions or Ointments produce very bad Effects, and are equally dangerous. A _Caries_, a Rottenness of the Bones, has ensued upon the Use of a Medicine called, The Balsam of Sulphur with Turpentine. I was consulted in 1750, three Days before her Decease, about a Woman, who had long endured acute rheumatic Pains. She had taken various Medicines, and, among the rest, a considerable Quantity of a Ptisan, in which Antimony was blended with some purging Medicines, and a greasy spirituous Balsam had been rubbed into the Part. The Fever, the Pains, and the Dryness of the Skin soon increased; the Bones of the Thighs and Arms became carious: and in moving the Patient no more than was necessary for her Relief and Convenience, without taking her out of her Bed, both Thighs and one Arm broke. So dreadful an Example should make People cautious of giving or applying Medicines inconsiderately, even in such Diseases, as appear but trifling in themselves. I must also inform the Readers, there are some rheumatic Pains, which admit of no Application; and that almost every Medicine aggravates them. In such Cases the afflicted must content themselves with keeping the Parts affected from the Impressions of the Air, by a Flanel, or the Skin of some Animal with the Fur on. It is also more advisable sometimes to leave a sufferable and inveterate Pain to itself, especially in old or weakly People, than to employ too many Medicines, or such violent ones, as should affect them more importantly than the Pains did. § 186. If the Duration of the Pains fixed in the same Place, should cause some Degree of Stiffness in the Joint affected, it should be exposed twice a Day to the Vapour of warm Water, and dried well afterwards with hot Linen: then it should be well chaffed, and lastly touched over with Ointment of Marsh-mallows. Pumping, if superadded to this Vapour, considerably increases its Efficacy. I directed, for a Case of this Sort, a very simple Machine of white Tin, or Lattin, which combined the Application of the Steam and the Pump. § 187. Very young Children are sometimes subject to such violent and extended Pains, that they cannot bear touching in any Part, without excessive Crying. We must be careful to avoid mistaking these Cases, and not to treat them like Rheumatisms. They sometimes are owing to Worms, and go off when these have been discharged. __Chapter XII.__ _Of the Bite of a mad Dog._ __Sect.__ 188. Men may contract the particular and raging Symptom, which is very generally peculiar to this Disease from this Cause, and even without any Bite; but this happens very rarely indeed. It is properly a Distemper belonging to the canine _Genus_, consisting of the three Species of Dogs, Wolves, and Foxes, to whom only it seems inherent and natural; scarcely ever arising in other Animals, without its being inflicted by them. Whenever there occurs one of them who breeds it, he bites others, and thus the Poison, the Cause of this terrible Disease, is diffused. Other Animals besides the canine Species, and Men themselves being exposed to this Accident, do sometimes contract the Disease in all its Rage and Horror: though it is not to be supposed, that this is always an unfailing Consequence. § 189. If a Dog who used to be lively and active, becomes all at once moapish and morose; if he has an Aversion to eat; a particular and unusual Look about his Eyes; a Restlessness, which appears from his continually running to and fro, we may be apprehensive he is likely to prove mad; at which very Instant he ought to be tied up securely, that it may be in our Power to destroy him as soon as the Distemper is evident. Perhaps it might be even still safer to kill him at once. Whenever the Malady is certain, the Symptoms heighten pretty soon. His Aversion to Food, but especially to Drink, grows stronger. He no longer seems to know his Master, the Sound of his Voice changes; he suffers no Person to handle or approach him; and bites those who attempt it. He quits his ordinary Habitation, marching on with his Head and his Tail hanging downwards; his Tongue lolling half out, and covered with Foam or Slaver, which indeed not seldom happens indifferently to all Dogs. Other Dogs scent him, not seldom at a considerable Distance, and fly him with an Air of Horror, which is a certain Indication of his Disease. Sometimes he contents himself with biting only those who happen to be near him: while at other Times becoming more enraged, he springs to the right and left on all Men and Animals about him. He hurries away with manifest Dread from whatever Waters occur to him: at length he falls down as spent and exhausted; sometimes he rises up again, and drags himself on for a little Time, commonly dying the third, or, at the latest, on the fourth Day after the manifest Appearance of the Disease, and sometimes even sooner. § 190. When a Person is bit by such a Dog, the Wound commonly heals up as readily, as if it was not in the least poisonous: but after the Expiration of a longer or shorter Term, from three Weeks to three Months; but most commonly in about six Weeks, the Person bitten begins to perceive, in the Spot that was bit, a certain dull obtuse Pain. The Scar of it swells, inflames, bursts open, and weeps out a sharp, foetid, and sanious, or somewhat bloody Humour. At the same Time the Patient becomes sad and melancholy: he feels a kind of Indifference, Insensibility, and general Numbness; an almost incessant Coldness; a Difficulty of breathing; a continual Anguish, and Pains in his Bowels. His Pulse is weak and irregular, his sleep restless, turbid, and confused with Ravings; with starting up in Surprize, and with terrible Frights. His Discharges by Stool are often much altered and irregular, and small cold Sweats appear at very short Intervals. Sometimes there is also a slight Pain or Uneasiness in the Throat. Such is the first Degree of this Disease, and it is called by some Physicians the dumb Rage, or Madness. § 191. Its second Degree, the confirmed or downright Madness, is attended with the following Symptoms. The Patient is afflicted with a violent Thirst, and a Pain in drinking. Soon after this he avoids all Drink, but particularly Water, and within some Hours after, he even abhors it. This Horror becomes so violent, that the bringing Water near his Lips, or into his Sight, the very Name of it, or of any other Drink; the Sight of Objects, which, from their Transparence, have any Resemblance of Water, as a Looking Glass, _&c._ afflicts him with extreme Anguish, and sometimes even with Convulsions. They continue however still to swallow (though not without violent Difficulty) a little Meat or Bread, and sometimes a little Soup. Some even get down the liquid Medicines that are prescribed them, provided there be no Appearance of Water in them; or that Water is not mentioned to them, at the same Time. Their Urine becomes thick and high-coloured, and sometimes there is a Suppression or Stoppage of it. The Voice either grows hoarse, or is almost entirely abolished: but the Reports of the bitten barking like Dogs are ridiculous and superstitious Fictions, void of any Foundation; as well as many other Fable, that have been blended with the History of this Distemper. The Barking of Dogs however is very disagreeable to them. They are troubled with short _Deliriums_ or Ravings, which are sometimes mixed with Fury. It is at such times that they spit all around them; that they attempt also to bite, and sometimes unhappily effect it. Their Looks are fixed, as it were, and somewhat furious, and their Visage frequently red. It is pretty common for these miserable Patients to be sensible of the Approach of their raging Fit, and to conjure the Bystanders to be upon their Guard. Many of them never have an Inclination to bite. The increasing Anguish and Pain they feel become inexpressible: they earnestly wish for Death; and some of them have even destroyed themselves, when they had the Means of effecting it. § 192. It is with the Spittle, and the Spittle only, that this dreadful Poison unites itself. And here it may be observed, 1, That if the Wounds have been made through any of the Patient's Cloaths, they are less dangerous than those inflicted immediately on the naked Skin. 2, That Animals who abound in Wool, or have very thick Hair, are often preserved from the mortal Impression of the Poison; because in these various Circumstances, the Cloaths, the Hair, or the Wool have wiped, or even dried up, the Slaver of their Teeth. 3, The Bites inflicted by an infected Animal, very soon after he has bitten many others, are less dangerous than the former Bites, because their Slaver is lessened or exhausted. 4, If the Bite happens in the Face, or in the Neck, the Danger is greater, and the Operation of the Venom is quicker too; by Reason the Spittle of the Person so bit is sooner infected. 5, The higher the Degree of the Disease is advanced, the Bites become proportionably more dangerous. From what I have just mentioned here it may be discerned, why, of many who have been bitten by the same Sufferer, some have been infected with this dreadful Disease, and others not. § 193. A great Number of Remedies have been highly cried up, as famous in the Cure of this Disease; and, in _Swisserland_ particularly, the Root of the Eglantine or wild Rose, gathered at some particular times, under the favorable Aspects of the Moon, and dried with some extraordinary Precautions. There is also the Powder of _Palmarius_ of calcined Egg Shells, that of the _Lichen terrestris_, or Ground Liverwort, with one third Part of Pepper, a Remedy long celebrated in _England_; Powder of Oyster-Shells; of Vervain; bathing in Salt Water; St. Hubert's Key, _&c. &c._ But the Death of a Multitude of those who have been bitten, notwithstanding their taking the greatest Part of all these boasted Antidotes; and the Certainty of no one's escaping, who had been attacked with the high raging Symptom, the _Hydrophobia_, have demonstrated the Inefficacy of them all, to all _Europe_. It is incontestable that to the Year 1730, not a single Patient escaped, in whom the Disease was indisputably manifest; and that every Medicine then employed against it was useless. When Medicines had been given before the great Symptom appeared, in some of those who took them, it afterwards appeared, in others not. The same different Events occurred also to others who were bitten, and who took not the least Medicine; so that upon the whole, before that Date, no Medicine seemed to be of any Consequence. Since that Time, we have had the Happiness to be informed of a certain Remedy, which is Mercury, joined to a few others. § 194. In short there is a Necessity for destroying or expelling the Poison itself, which Mercury effects, and is consequently the Counter-poison of it. That poison produces a general Irritation of the Nerves; this is to be removed or asswaged by Antispasmodics: so that in Mercury, or Quicksilver, joined to Antispasmodics, consists the whole that is indicated in the Cure of this Disease. There really have been many Instances of Persons cured by these Medicines, in whom the Distemper had been manifest in its Rage and Violence; and as many as have unfortunately received the Cause of it in a Bite, should be firmly persuaded, that in taking these Medicines, and using all other proper Precautions, they shall be entirely secured from all its ill Consequences. Those also in whom the Rage and Fury of this Distemper is manifest, ought to use the same Medicines, with entire [45] Hope and Confidence, which may justly be founded on the many Cures effected by them. It is acknowledged however, that they have proved ineffectual in a few Cases; but what Disease is there, which does not sometimes prove incurable? [45] This Advice is truly prudent and judicious; Hope, as I have observed on a different Occasion, being a powerful, though impalpable, Cordial: and in such perilous Situations, we should excite the most agreeable Expectations we possibly can in the Patient; that Nature, being undepressed by any desponding melancholy ones, may exert her Functions the more firmly, and co-operate effectually with the Medicines, against her internal Enemy. _K._ § 195. The very Moment after receiving the Bite, is it happens to be in the Flesh, and if it can safely be effected, all the Part affected should be cut [46] away. The Ancients directed it to be cauterized, or burnt with a red hot Iron (meer Scarification being of very little Effect) and this Method would very probably prove effectual. It requires more Resolution, however, than every Patient is endued with. The Wound should be washed and cleansed a considerable Time with warm Water, with a little Sea-Salt dissolved in it. After this into the Lips and Edges of the Wound, and into the Surface of the Part all about it, should be rubbed a Quarter of an Ounce of the Ointment Nº. 28; and the Wound should be dressed twice daily, with the soft lenient Ointment Nº. 29, to promote Suppuration; but that of Nº. 28 is to be used only once a Day. [46] I knew a brave worthy Gentleman abroad, who above forty Years past thus preserved his Life, after receiving the Bite of a large Rattle-Snake, by resolutely cutting it and the Flesh surrounding it out, with a sharp pointed Penknife.--Perhaps those who would not suffer the Application of the actual Cautery, that is, of a red hot Iron (which certainly promises well for a Cure) might be persuaded to admit of a potential Cautery, where the Bite was inflicted on a fleshy Part. Though even this is far from being unpainful, yet the Pain coming on more gradually, is less terrifying and horrid. And when it had been applied quickly after, and upon the Bite, and kept on for 3 or 4 Hours, the Discharge, after cutting the _Eschar_, would sooner ensue, and in more Abundance, than that from the actual Cautery; the only Preference of which seems to consist in its being capable perhaps of absorbing, or otherwise consuming, all the poisonous _Saliva_ at once. This Issue should be dressed afterwards according to our Author's Direction; and in the gradual healing of the Ulcer, it may be properly deterged by adding a little Præcipitate to the Digestive. Neither would this interfere with the Exhibition of the _Tonquin_ Powder Nº. 30, nor the antispasmodic _Bolus_ Nº. 31, if they should be judged necessary. And these perhaps might prove the most certain Means of preventing the mortal Effects of this singular animal Poison, which it is so impossible to analyze, and so extremely difficult to form any material Idea of; but which is not the Case of some other Poisons. _K._ In point of Regimen, the Quantity of Nourishment should be less than usual, particularly in the Article of [47] Flesh: he should abstain from Wine, spirituous Liquors, all Sorts of Spices and hot inflaming Food. He should drink only Barley-Water, or an Infusion of the Flowers of the Lime-tree. He should be guarded against Costiveness by a soft relaxing Diet, or by Glysters, and bathe his Legs once a Day in warm Water. Every third Day one Dose of the Medicine Nº. 30 should be taken; which is compounded of Mercury, that counterworks the Poison, and of Musk which prevents the Spasms, or convulsive Motions. I confess at the same Time that I have less Dependance on the Mercury given in this Form, and think the rubbing in of its Ointment considerably more efficacious, which I should hope may always prevent the Fatality of this dreadful, surprizing Disease. [48] [47] It seems not amiss to try the Effects of a solely vegetable Diet (and that perhaps consisting more of the acescent than alcalescent Herbs and Roots) in this Disease, commencing immediately from the Bite of a known mad Dog. These carnivorous Animals, who naturally reject all vegetable Food, are the only primary Harbingers or Breeders of it; though they are capable of transmitting it by a Bite to graminivorous and granivorous ones. The Virtue of Vinegar in this Disease, said to have been accidentally discovered on the Continent, seems not to have been hitherto experienced amongst us; yet in Case of such a morbid Accident it may require a Tryal; tho' not so far, as to occasion the Omission of more certainly experienced Remedies, with some of which it might be improper. _K._ [48] The great Usefulness of mercurial Frictions, we may even say, the certain Security which they procure for the Patients, in these Cases, provided they are applied very soon after the Bite, have been demonstrated by their Success in _Provence_, at _Lyons_, at _Montpellier_, at _Pondacherry_, and in many other Places. Neither have these happy Events been invalidated by any Observations or Instances to the contrary. It cannot therefore be too strongly inculcated to those who have been bitten by venomous Animals, to comply with the Use of them. They ought to be used in such a Quantity, and after such a Manner, as to excite a moderate Salivation, for fifteen, twenty, or even thirty Days. _E. L._ Though this Practice may justly be pursued from great Caution, when no Cautery had been speedily applied to, and no such Discharge had been obtained from, the bitten Part; yet wherever it had, this long and depressing Salivation, I conceive, would be very seldom necessary; and might be hurtful to weak Constitutions. _K._ § 196. If the raging Symptom, the Dread of Water, has already appeared, and the Patient is strong, and abounds with Blood, he should, 1, be bled to a considerable Quantity, and this may be repeated twice, thrice, or even a fourth Time, if Circumstances require it. 2, The Patient should be put, if possible, into a warm Bath; and this should be used twice daily. 3, He should every Day receive two, or even three of the emollient Glysters Nº. 5. 4, The Wound and the Parts adjoining to it should be rubbed with the Ointment Nº. 28, twice a Day. 5, The whole Limb which contains the Wound should be rubbed with Oil, and be wrapped up in an oily Flanel. 6, Every three Hours a Dose of the Powder Nº. 30, should be taken in a Cup of the Infusion of Lime-tree and Elder Flowers. 7, The Prescription Nº. 31, is to be given every Night, and to be repeated in the Morning, if the Patient is not easy, washing it down with the same Infusion. 8, If there be a great Nauseousness at Stomach, with a Bitterness in the Mouth, give the Powder Nº. 35, which brings up a copious Discharge of glewy and bilious Humours. 9, There is very little Occasion to say any thing relating to the Patient's Food, in such a Situation. Should he ask for any, he may be allowed Panada, light Soup, Bread, Soups made of farinaceous or mealy Vegetables, or a little Milk. § 197. By the Use of these Remedies the Symptoms will be observed to lessen, and to disappear by Degrees; and finally Health will be re-established. But if the Patient should long continue weak, and subject to Terrors, he may take a Dose of the Powder Nº. 14, thrice a Day. § 198. It is certain that a Boy, in whom the raging Symptom of This Disease had just appeared, was perfectly cured, by bathing all about the wounded Part with Sallad-Oil, in which some Camphire and Opium were dissolved; with the Addition of repeated Frictions of the Ointment Nº. 28, and making him take some _Eau de luce_ with a little Wine. This Medicine, a Coffee-Cup of which may be given every four Hours, allayed the great Inquietude and Agitation of the Patient; and brought on a very plentiful Sweat, on which all the Symptoms vanished. § 199. Dogs may be cured by rubbing in a triple Quantity of the same Ointment directed for Men, and by giving them the Bolus Nº. 33. But both these Means should be used as soon as ever they are bit. When the great Symptom is manifest, there would be too much Danger in attempting to apply one, or to give the other; and they should be immediately killed. It might be well however to try if they would swallow down the Bolus, on its being thrown to them. As soon as ever Dogs are bit, they should be safely tied up, and not let loose again, before the Expiration of three or four Months. § 200. A false and dangerous Prejudice has prevailed with Regard to the Bites from Dogs, and it is this--That if a Dog who had bit any Person, without being mad at the Time of his biting, should become mad afterwards, the Person so formerly bitten, would prove mad too at the same Time. Such a Notion is full as absurd, as it would be to affirm, that if two Persons had slept in the same Bed, and that one of them should take the Itch, the Small-Pocks, or any other contagious Disease, ten or twelve Years afterwards, that the other should also be infected with that he took, and at the same Time too. Of two Circumstances, whenever a Person is bit, one must certainly be. Either the Dog which gives the Bite, is about to be mad himself, in which Case this would be evident in a few Days; and then it must be said the Person was bitten by a mad Dog: Or else, that the Dog was absolutely sound, having neither conceived, or bred in himself, nor received from without the Cause, the Principle, of Madness: in which last Case I ask any Man in his Senses, if he could communicate it. No Person, no Thing imparts what it has not. This false and crude Notion excites those who are possessed with it to a dangerous Action: they exercise that Liberty the Laws unhappily allow them of killing the Dog; by which Means they are left uncertain of his State, and of their own Chance. This is a dreadful Uncertainty, and may be attended with embarrassing and troublesome Consequences, independant of the Poison itself. The reasonable Conduct would be to secure and observe the Dog very closely, in Order to know certainly whether he is, or is not, mad. § 201. It is no longer necessary to represent the Horror, the Barbarity and Guilt of that cruel Practice, which prevailed, not very long since, of suffocating Persons in the Height of this Disease, with the Bed-cloaths, or between Matrasses. It is now prohibited in most Countries; and doubtless will be punished, or, at least ought to be, even in those where as yet it is not. Another Cruelty, of which we hope to see no repeated Instance, is that of abandoning those miserable Patients to themselves, without the least Resource or Assistance: a most detestable Custom even in those Times, when there was not the least Hope of saving them; and still more criminal in our Days, when they may be recovered effectually. I do again affirm, that it is not very often these afflicted Patients are disposed to bite; and that even when they are, they are afraid of doing it; and request the Bystanders to keep out of their Reach: So that no Danger is incurred; or where there is any, it may easily be avoided by a few Precautions. __Chapter XIII.__ _Of the Small-Pocks._ __Sect.__ 202. The Small-Pocks is the most frequent, the most extensive of all Diseases; since out of a hundred Persons there are not more than [49] four or five exempted from it. It is equally true however, that if it attacks almost every Person, it attacks them but once, so that having escaped through it, they are always secure from [50] it. It must be acknowleged, at the same Time, to be one of the most destructive Diseases; for if in some Years or Seasons, it proves to be of a very mild and gentle Sort, in others it is almost as fatal as the Plague: it being demonstrated, by calculating the Consequences of its most raging, and its gentlest Prevalence, that it kills one seventh of the Number it attacks. [49] As far as the Number of inoculated Persons, who remained entirely uninfected (some very few after a second Inoculation) has enabled me, I have calculated the Proportion naturally exempted from this Disease, though residing within the Influence of it, to be full 25 in 1000. See Analysis of Inoculation, Ed. 2d. P. 157. Note *. _K._ [50] It has sometimes been observed (and the Observation has been such, as not to be doubted) that a very mild distinct Small-Pocks has sometimes invaded the same Person twice: But such Instances are so very rare, that we may very generally affirm, those who have once had it, will never have it again. _E. L._----In Deference to a few particular Authorities, I have also supposed such a repeated Infection. (Analysis of Inoculation, Ed. 2d. P. 43.) though I have really never seen any such myself; nor ever heard more than two Physicians affirm it, one at _Versailles_, and another in _London_; the last of whom declared, he took it upon the Credit of a Country Physician, thoroughly acquainted with this Disease, and a Witness to the Repetition of it. Hence we imagine the Editor of this Work at _Lyons_ might have justly termed this Re-infection _extremely_ rare, which would have a Tendency to reconcile the Subjects of the Small-Pocks, more generally, to the most salutary Practice of Inoculation. Doubtless some other eruptive Fevers, particularly, the Chicken Pocks, Crystals, _&c._ have been often mistaken for the real Small-Pocks by incompetent Judges, and sometimes even by Persons better qualified, yet who were less attentive to the Symptoms and Progress of the former. But whoever will be at the Pains to read Dr. _Paux' Paralléle de la petite verole naturalle avec l'artificielle_, or a practical Abstract of Part of it in the Monthly Review. Vol. XXV. P. 307 to 311, will find such a just, clear and useful Distinction of them, as may prevent many future Deceptions on this frequently interesting Subject. _K._ § 203. People generally take the Small-Pocks in their Infancy, or in their Childhood. It is very seldom known to attack only one Person in one Place: its Invasions being very generally epidemical, and seizing a large Proportion of those who have not suffered it. It commonly ceases at the End of some Weeks, or of some Months, and rarely ever appears again in the same Place, until four, five or six Years after. § 204. This Malady often gives some Intimation of its Approach, three or four Days before the Appearance of the Fever, by a little Dejection; less Vivacity and Gaiety than usual; a great Propensity to sweat; less Appetite; a slight Alteration of the Countenance, and a kind of pale livid Colour about the Eyes: Notwithstanding which, in Children of a lax and phlegmatic Constitution, I have known a moderate Agitation of their Blood, (before their Shivering approached) give them a [51] Vivacity, Gaiety, and a rosy Improvement of their Complexion, beyond what Nature had given them. [51] The same Appearances very often occur in such Subjects by Inoculation, before actual Sickening, as I have observed and instanced, Ed. 1st. P. 62, Ed. 2. P. 75, 76. _K._ Certain short Vicissitudes of Heat or Coldness succeed the former introductory Appearances, and at length a considerable Shivering, of the Duration of one, two, three or four Hours: This is succeeded by violent Heat, accompanied with Pains of the Head, Loins, Vomiting, or at least with a frequent Propensity to vomit. This State continues for some Hours, at the Expiration of which the Fever abates a little in a Sweat, which is sometimes a very large one: the Patient then finds himself better, but is notwithstanding cast down, torpid or heavy, very squeamish, with a Head-ach and Pain in the Back, and a Disposition to be drowsy. The last Symptom indeed is not very common, except in Children, less than seven or eight Years of Age. The Abatement of the Fever is of small Duration; and some Hours after, commonly towards the Evening, it returns with all its Attendants, and terminates again by Sweats, as before. This State of the Disease lasts three or four Days; at the End of which Term, and seldom later, the first Eruptions appear among the Sweat, which terminates the Paroxysm or Return of the Fever. I have generally observed the earliest Eruption to appear in the Face, next to that on the Hands, on the fore Part of the Arms; on the Neck, and on the upper Part of the Breast. As soon as this Eruption appears, if the Distemper is of a gentle Kind and Disposition, the Fever almost entirely vanishes: the Patient continues to sweat a little, or transpire; the Number of Eruptions increases, others coming out on the Back, the Sides, the Belly, the Thighs, the Legs, and the Feet. Sometimes they are pushed out very numerously even to the Soles of the Feet; where, as they increase in Size, they often excite very sharp Pain, by Reason of the great Thickness and Hardness of the Skin in these Parts. Frequently on the first and second Day of Eruption (speaking hitherto always of the mild Kind and Degree of the Disease) there returns again a very gentle Revival of the Fever about the Evening, which, about the Termination of it, is attended with a considerable and final Eruption: though as often as the Fever terminates perfectly after the earliest Eruption, a very distinct and very small one is a pretty certain Consequence. For though the Eruption is already, or should prove only moderate, the Fever, as I have before said, does not totally disappear; a small Degree of it still remaining, and heightening a little every Evening. These Pustules, or Efflorescences, on their first Appearance, are only so many very little red Spots, considerably resembling a Flea-bite; but distinguishable by a small white Point in the Middle, a little raised above the rest, which gradually increases in Size, with the Redness extended about it. They become whiter, in Proportion as they grow larger; and generally upon the sixth Day, including that of their first Eruption, they attain their utmost Magnitude, and are full of _Pus_ or Matter. Some of them grow to the Size of a Pea, and some still a little larger; but this never happens to the greatest Number of them. From this Time they begin to look yellowish, they gradually become dry, and fall off in brown Scales, in ten or eleven Days from their first Appearance. As their Eruption occurred on different Days, they also wither and fall off successively. The Face is sometimes clear of them, while Pustules still are seen upon the Legs, not fully ripe, or suppurated: and those in the Soles of the Feet often remain much longer. § 205. The Skin is of Course extended or stretched out by the Pustules; and after the Appearance of a certain Quantity, all the Interstices, or Parts between the Pustules, are red and bright, as it were, with a proportionable Inflation or Swelling of the Skin. The Face is the first Part that appears bloated, from the Pustules there first attaining their utmost Size: and this inflation is sometimes so considerable, as to look monstrous; the like happens also to the Neck, and the Eyes are entirely closed up by it. The Swelling of the Face abates in Proportion to the scabbing and drying up of the Pustules; and then the Hands are puffed up prodigiously. This happens successively to the Legs, the Tumour or Swelling, being the Consequence of the Pustules attaining their utmost Size, which happens by Succession, in these different Parts. § 206. Whenever there is a very considerable Eruption, the Fever is heightened at the Time of Suppuration, which is not to be wondered at; one single Boil excites a Fever: How is it possible then that some hundred, nay some thousand of these little Abscesses should not excite one? This Fever is the most dangerous Period, or Time of the Disease, and occurs between the ninth and the thirteenth Days; as many Circumstances vary the Term of Suppuration, two or three Days. At this painful and perilous Season then, the Patient becomes very hot, and thirsty: he is harrassed with Pain; and finds it very difficult to discover a favourable easy Posture. If the Malady runs very high, he has no Sleep; he raves, becomes greatly oppressed, is seized with a heavy Drowsiness; and when he dies, he dies either suffocated or lethargic, and sometimes in a State compounded of both these Symptoms. The Pulse, during this Fever of Suppuration, is sometimes of an astonishing Quickness, while the Swelling of the Wrists makes it seem, in some Subjects, to be very small. The most critical and dangerous Time is, when the Swellings of the Face, Head and Neck are in their highest Degree. Whenever the Swelling begins to fall, the Scabs on the Face to dry [_supposing neither of these to be too sudden and premature, for the visible Quantity of the Pustules_] and the Skin to shrivel, as it were, the Quickness of the Pulse abates a little, and the Danger diminishes. When the Pustules are very few, this second Fever is so moderate, that it requires some Attention to discern it, so that the Danger is next to none. § 207. Besides those Symptoms, there are some others, which require considerable Attention and Vigilance. One of these is the Soreness of the Throat, with which many Persons in the Small-Pocks are afflicted, as soon as the Fever grows pretty strong. It continues for two or three Days; feels very strait and troublesome in the Action of Swallowing; and whenever the Disease is extremely acute, it entirely prevents Swallowing. It is commonly ascribed to the Eruption of Pustules in the Throat; but this is a Mistake, such Pustules being almost constantly [52] imaginary. It begins, most frequently, before the Eruption appears; if this Complaint is in a light Degree, it terminates upon the Eruption; and whenever it revives again in the Course of the Disease, it is always in Proportion to the Degree of the Fever. Hence we may infer it does not arise from the Pustules, but is owing to the Inflammation; and as often as it is of any considerable Duration, it is almost ever attended with another Symptom, the Salivation, or a Discharge of a great Quantity of Spittle. This Salivation rarely exists, where the Disease is very gentle, or the Patient very young; and is full as rarely absent, where it is severe, and the Patient is past seven or eight Years old: but when the Eruption is very confluent, and the Patient adult, or grown up, the Discharge is surprizing. Under these Circumstances it flows out incessantly, allowing the afflicted Patient no Rest or Respite; and often incommodes him more than any other Symptom of the Distemper; and so much the more, as after its Continuance for some Days, the Lips, the Inside of the Cheeks, the Tongue, and the Roof of the Mouth are entirely peeled or flead, as it were. Nevertheless, however painful and embarrassing this Discharge may prove, it is very important and salutary. Meer Infants are less subject to it, some of them having a Looseness, in Lieu of it: and yet I have observed even this last Discharge to be considerably less frequent in them, than a Salivation is in grown People. [52] As Pustules are, and not very seldom, visible on the Tongue, and sometimes on the Roof, even to its Process called the Palate, which I have plainly seen; it seems not very easy to assign any insuperable Obstacle to the Existence of a few within the Throat; though this scarcely ever occurs, in the distinct Small-Pocks. Doubtless however, a considerable Inflammation of that Part will be as likely to produce the great Difficulty of Swallowing, as the Existence of Pustules there; which our learned Author does not absolutely reject, and consequently will forgive this Supposition of them; especially if he credits the ocular Testimony of Dr. _Violante_, cited in the Analysis, Ed. 2d. p 71. _K._ § 208. Children, to the Age of five or six Years, are liable to Convulsions, before Eruption: these however are not dangerous, if they are not accompanied with other grievous and violent Symptoms. But such Convulsions as supervene, either when Eruption having already occurred, suddenly retreats, or _strikes in_, according to the common Phrase; or during the Course of the Fever of Suppuration, are greatly more terrifying. Involuntary Discharges of Blood from the Nose often occur, in the first Stage of this Distemper, which are extremely serviceable, and commonly lessen, or carry off, the Head-ach. Meer Infants are less subject to this Discharge; though they have sometimes a little of it: and I have known a considerable _Stupor_ or Drowsiness, vanish immediately after this Bleeding. § 209. The Small-Pocks is commonly distinguished into two Kinds, the confluent and the distinct, such a Distinction really existing in Nature: but as the Treatment of each of them is the same; and as the Quantity or Dose of the Medicines is only to be varied, in Proportion to the Danger of the Patient (not to enter here into very tedious Details, and such as might exceed the Comprehension of many of our Readers; as well as whatever might relate particularly to the malignant Small-Pocks) I shall limit myself within the Description I have premised, which includes all the Symptoms common to both these Kinds of the Small-Pocks. I content myself with adding here, that we may expect a very confluent and dangerous Pock, is, at the very Time of seizure, the Patient is immediately attacked with many violent Symptoms; more especially if his Eyes are extremely quick, lively, and even glistening, as it were; if he vomits almost continually; if the Pain of his Loins be violent; and if he suffers at the same Time great Anguish and Inquietude: If in Infants there is great _Stupor_ or Heaviness; if Eruption appears on the third Day, and sometimes even on the second: as the hastier Eruptions in this Disease signify the most dangerous Kind and Degree of it; and on the contrary, the slower Eruption is, it is the safer too; supposing this Slowness of the Eruption not to have been the Consequence of great Weakness, or of some violent inward Pain. § 210. The Disorder is sometimes so very mild and slight, that Eruption appears with scarcely any Suspicion of the Child's having the least Ailment, and the Event is as favourable as the Invasion. The Pustules appear, grow large, suppurate and attain their Maturity, without confining the Patient to his Bed, or lessening either his Sleep, or Appetite. It is very common to see Children in the Country (and they are seldom more than Children who have it so very gently) run about in the open Air, through the whole Course of this Disease, and feeding just as they do in Health. Even those who take it in a somewhat higher Degree, commonly go out when Eruption is finished, and give themselves up, without Reserve, to the Voracity of their Hunger. Notwithstanding all this Neglect, many get perfectly cured; though such a Conduct should never be proposed for Imitation, since Numbers have experienced its pernicious Consequences, and several of these Children have been brought to me, especially from _Jurat_, who after such Neglect, in the Course of the mild and kindly Sort of this Distemper, have contracted Complaints and Infirmities of different Kinds, which have been found very difficult to subdue. § 211. This still continues to be one of these Distempers, whose Danger has long been increased by its improper Treatment, and especially by forcing the Patients into Sweats; and it still continues to be increased, particularly among Country People. They have seen Eruption appear, where the Patient sweats, and observed he found himself better after its Appearance: and hence they conclude that, by quickening and forcing out this Eruption, they contribute to his Relief; and suppose, that by increasing the Quantity of his Sweats, and the Number of his Eruptions, the Blood is the better cleared and purified from the Poison. These are mortal Errors, which daily Experience has demonstrated, by their tragical Consequences. When the Contagion or Poison, which generates this Disease, has been admitted into the Blood, it requires a certain Term to produce its usual Effects: at which Time the Blood being tainted by the Venom it has received, and by that which such Venom has formed or assimilated from it, Nature makes an Effort to free herself of it, and to expell it by the Skin, precisely at the Time when every Thing is predisposed for that Purpose. This Effort pretty generally succeeds, being very often rather too rapid and violent, and very seldom too weak. Hence it is evident, that whenever this Effort is deficient, it ought not to be heightened by hot Medicines or Means, which make it too violent and dangerous: for when it already exceeds in this Respect, a further Increase of such Violence must render it mortal. There are but few Cases in which the Efforts of Nature, on this Occasion, are too languid and feeble, especially in the Country; and whenever such rare Cases do occur, it is very difficult to form a just and proper Estimation of them: for which Reason we should be very reserved and cautious in the Use of heating Medicines, which are so mortally pernicious in this Disease. Wine, Venice Treacle, cordial Confections, hot Air, and Loads of Bed-cloths, annually sweep off Thousands of Children, who might have recovered, if they had taken nothing but warm Water: and every Person who is interested in the Recovery of Patients in this Distemper, ought carefully to prevent the smallest Use of such Drugs; which, if they should not immediately aggravate it to a fatal Degree, yet will certainly increase the Severity and Torment of it, and annex the most unhappy and tragical Consequences to it. The Prejudice in this Point is so strongly rooted, that a total Eradication of it must be very difficult: but I only desire People would be convinced by their own Eyes, of the different Success of the hot Regimen, and of that I shall propose. And here indeed I must confess, I found more Attention and Docility, on this Point, among the Inhabitants of the City, and especially in the last epidemical spreading of the Small-Pocks, than I presumed to hope for. Not only as many as consulted me on the Invasion of it, complied exactly with the cooling Regimen I advised them; but their Neighbours also had Recourse to it, when their Children sickened: and being often called in when it had been many Days advanced, I observed with great Pleasure, that in many Houses, not one heating Medicine had been given; and great Care had been taken to keep the Air of the Patient's Chamber refreshingly cool and temperate. This encourages me to expect, that this Method hereafter will become general here. What certainly ought most essentially to conduce to this is, that notwithstanding the Diffusion or spreading of this Disease was as numerous and extensive as any of the former, the Mortality, in Consequence of it, was evidently less. § 212. At the very Beginning of the Small-Pocks (which may be reasonably suspected, from the Presence of the Symptoms I have already described; supposing the Person complaining never to have had it, and the Disease to prevail near his Residence) the Patient is immediately to be put on a strict Regimen, and to have his Legs bathed Night and Morning in warm Water. This is the most proper and promising Method to lessen the Quantity of Eruption in the Face and Head, and to facilitate it every where else on the Surface. Glysters also greatly contribute to abate the Head-ach, and to diminish the Reachings to vomit, and the actual Vomitings, which greatly distress the Patient; but which however it is highly absurd and pernicious to stop by any stomachic cordial Confection, or by Venice Treacle; and still more dangerous to attempt removing the Cause of them, by a Vomit or Purge, which are hurtful in the beginning of the Small-Pocks. If the Fever be moderate, the Bathings of the Legs on the first Day of sickening, and one Glyster may suffice then. The Patient must be restrained to his Regimen; and instead of the Ptisan Nº. 1, 2, 4, a very young Child should drink nothing but Milk diluted with two thirds of Elder Flower or Lime-tree Tea, or with Balm Tea, if there be no perceivable Fever; and in short, if they have an Aversion to the Taste of them all, with only the same Quantity of good clear [53] Water. An Apple coddled or baked may be added to it; and if they complain of Hunger, a little Bread may be allowed; but they must be denied any Meat, or Meat Broth, Eggs and strong Drink; since it has appeared from Observations frequently repeated, that Children who had been indulged with such Diet proved the worse for it, and recovered more slowly than others. In this early Stage too, clear Whey alone may serve them instead of every other Drink, the good Effects of which I have frequently been a Witness to; or some Buttermilk may be allowed. When the Distemper is of a mild Species, a perfect Cure ensues, without any other Assistance or Medicine: but we should not neglect to purge the Patient as soon as the Pustules are perfectly scabbed on the greater Part of his Face, with the Prescription Nº. 11, which must be repeated six Days after. He should not be allowed Flesh 'till after this second Purge; though after the first he may he allowed some well-boiled Pulse, or Garden-stuff and Bread, and in such a Quantity, as not to be pinched with Hunger, while he recovers from the Disease. [53] A Negro Girl, about five or six Years old, under a coherent Pock, stole by Night out of the Garret where she lay, into a Kitchen out of Doors, where she drank plentifully of cold Water. How often she repeated these nightly cooling Potions I never could certainly learn, though they occurred in my own House in _South-Carolina_ in Summer. But it is certain the Child recovered as speedily as others, whose Eruption was more distinct, and who drank Barley-Water, very thin Rice or Indian Corn Gruel, Balm Tea, or the like. In fact, throughout the Course of this Visitation from the Small Pocks in _Carolina_ in 1738, we had but too many Demonstrations of the fatal Co-operation of violent Heat with their Contagion; and not a very few surprizing Instances of the salutary Effects of being necessarily and involuntarily exposed to same very cooling Accidents after Infection, and in some Cases after Eruption too: which I then more particularly mentioned is a small controversial Tract printed there. _K._ § 213. But if the Fever should be strong, the Pulse hard, and the Pain of the Head and Loins should be violent, he must, 1. immediately lose Blood from the Arm; receive a Glyster two Hours after; and, if the Fever continues, the Bleeding must be repeated. I have directed a Repetition of it even to the fourth Time, within the two first Days, to young People under the Age of eighteen; and it is more especially necessary in such Persons as, with a hard and full Pulse, are also affected with a heavy Drowsiness and a _Delirium_, or Raving. 2. As long as the Fever continues violently, two, three, and even four Glysters should be given in the 24 Hours; and the Legs should be bathed twice. 3. The Patient is to be taken out of Bed, and supported in a Chair as long as he can tolerably bear it. 4. The Air of his Chamber should frequently be renewed, and if it be too hot, which it often is in Summer, in Order to refresh it, and the Patient, the Means must be employed which are directed § 36. 5. He is to be restrained to the Ptisans Nº. 2 or 4; and if that does not sufficiently moderate the Fever, he should take every Hour, or every two Hours, according to the Urgency of the Case, a Spoonful of the Mixture Nº. 10; mixed with a Cup of Ptisan. After the Eruption, the Fever being then abated, there is less Occasion for Medicine; and should it even entirely disappear, the Patient may be regulated, as directed, § 212. § 214. When, after a Calm, a Remission or Intermission of some Days, the Process of Suppuration revives the Fever, we ought first, and especially, to keep the [54] Body very open. For this Purpose, _a_ an Ounce of _Catholicon_ should be added to the Glysters; or they might be simply made of Whey, with Honey, Oil and Salt. _b_ Give the Patient three times every Morning, at the Interval of two Hours between each, three Glasses of the Ptisan Nº. 32. _c_ Purge him _after_ two Days, with the Potion Nº. 23, but on that Day he must not take the Ptisan Nº. 32. [54] We must remember that Dr. _Tissot_ is treating _here_ of the higher or confluent Degrees of this Disease; for in the distinct Small-Pocks, it is common to find Persons for several Days without a Stool, and without the least perceiveable Disorder for Want of one (their whole Nourishment being very light and liquid) in which Cases, while Matters proceeded well in all other Respects, there seems little Occasion for a great Solicitude about Stools: But if one should be judged necessary after four or five Days Costiveness, accompanied with a Tightness or Hardness of the Belly, doubtless the Glyster should be of the lenient Kind (as those directed by our Author are) and not calculated to produce more than a second Stool at the very most. Indeed, where there is Reason to apprehend a strong secondary Fever, from the Quantity of Eruption, and a previously high Inflammation, it is more prudent to provide for a Mitigation of it, by a moderately open Belly, than to suffer a long Costiveness; yet so as to incur very little Hazard of abating the Salivation, or retarding the Growth or Suppuration of the Pustules, by a Superpurgation, which it may be too easy to excite in some Habits. If the Discharge by spitting, and the Brightness and Quantity of Suppuration, have been in Proportion to the Number of Eruptions; though the Conflict from the secondary Fever, where these have been numerous, is often acute and high; and the Patient, who is in great Anguish, is far from being out of Danger, yet Nature pretty generally proves stronger than the Disease, in such Circumstances. As the _Elect. Catholicon_, is little used, or made here, the lenitive Electuary of our Dispensatory may be substituted for it, or that of the _Edinburgh_ Dispensatory, which was calculated particularly for Glysters. _K._ 2. He must, if the Distemper be very violent, take a double Dose of the Mixture Nº. 10. 3. The Patient should be taken out of Bed, and kept up in a Room well aired Day and Night, until the Fever has abated. Many Persons will probably be surprized at this Advice; nevertheless it is that which I have often experienced to be the most efficacious, and without which the others are ineffectual. They will say, how shall the Patient sleep at this Rate? To which it may be answered, Sleep is not necessary, nay, it is hurtful in this State and Stage of the Disease. Besides, he is really unable to sleep: the continual Salivation prevents it, and it is very necessary to keep up the Salivation; which is facilitated by often injecting warm Water and Honey into his Throat. It is also of considerable Service to throw some up his Nostrils, and often thus to cleanse the Scabs which form within them. A due Regard to these Circumstances not only contributes to lessen the Patient's Uneasiness, but very effectually also to his Cure. 4. If the Face and Neck are greatly swelled, emollient Cataplasms are to be applied to the Soles of the Feet; and if these should have very little Effect, Sinapisms should be applied. These are a kind of Plaister or Application composed of Yeast, Mustard-flower, and some Vinegar. They sometimes occasion sharp and almost burning Pain, but in Proportion to the Sharpness and Increase of these Pains, the Head and Neck are remarkably relieved. § 215. The Eyelids are puffed up and swelled when the Disease runs high, so as to conceal the Eyes, which are closed up fast for several Days. Nothing further should be attempted, with Respect to this Circumstance, but the frequent moistening of them with a little warm Milk and Water. The Precautions which some take to stroke them with Saffron, a gold Ducat, or Rose-water are equally childish and insignificant. What chiefly conduces to prevent the Redness or Inflammation of the Eyes after the Disease, and in general all its other bad Consequences, is to be content for a considerable Time, with a very moderate Quantity of Food, and particularly to abstain from Flesh and Wine. In the very bad Small Pocks, and in little Children, the Eyes are closed up from the Beginning of the Eruption. § 216. One extremely serviceable Assistance, and which has not been made use of for a long Time past, except as a Means to preserve the Smoothness and Beauty of the Face; but yet which has the greatest Tendency to preserve Life itself, is the Opening of the Pustules, not only upon the Face, but all over the Body. In the first Place, by opening them, the Lodgment or Retention of _Pus_ is prevented, which may be supposed to prevent any Erosion, or eating down, from it; whence Scars, deep Pitts and other Deformities are obviated. Secondly, in giving a Vent to the Poison, the Retreat of it into the Blood is cut off, which removes a principal Cause of the Danger of the Small-Pocks. Thirdly, the Skin is relaxed; the Tumour of the Face and Neck diminish in Proportion to that Relaxation; and thence the Return of the Blood from the Brain is facilitated, which must prove a great Advantage. The Pustules should be opened every where, successively as they ripen. The precise Time of doing it is when they are entirely white; when they just begin to turn but a very little yellowish; and when the red Circle surrounding them is quite pale. They should be opened with very fine sharp-pointed Scissars; this does not give the Patient the least Pain; and when a certain Number of them are opened, a Spunge dipt in a little warm Water is to be repeatedly applied to suck up and remove that _Pus_, which would soon be dried up into Scabs. But as the Pustules, when emptied thus, soon fill again, a Discharge of this fresh Matter must be obtained in the same Manner some Hours after; and this must sometimes be repeated five or even six Times successively. Such extraordinary Attention in this Point may probably be considered as minute, and even trivial, by some; and is very unlikely to become a [55] general Practice: but I do again affirm it to be of much more Importance than many may imagine; and that as often as the Fever attending Suppuration is violent and menacing, a very general, exact and repeated opening, emptying, and absorbing of the ripened Pustules, is a Remedy of the utmost Importance and Efficacy; as it removes two very considerable Causes of the Danger of this Disease, which are the Matter itself, and the great Tension and Stiffness of the Skin. [55] This Practice which I had heard of, and even suggested to myself, but never seen actually enterprized, seems so very rational as highly to deserve a fair Trial in the confluent Degrees of the Small-Pocks [for in the distinct it can scarcely be necessary] wherein every probable Assistance should be employed, and in which the most potent Medicines are very often unsuccessful. We have but too many Opportunities of trying it sufficiently; and it certainly has a more promising Aspect than a Practice so highly recommended many Years ago, of covering all the Pustules (which is sometimes the whole Surface of the Patient) in Melilot, or suppose any other suppurating, Plaister; which will effectually prevent all Perspiration, and greatly increase the Soreness, Pain and Embarrassment of the Patient, at the Height of the Disease. I can conceive but one bad Consequence that might possibly sometimes result from the former; but this (besides the Means that may be used to avert it) is rather remote, and so uncertain, until the Trial is repeatedly made, that I think it ought not to be named, in Competition with the Benefits that may arise from it in such Cases, as seem, otherwise, too generally irrecoverable. _K._ § 217. In the Treatment of this Disease, I have said nothing with Respect to Anodynes, or such Medicines as procure Sleep, which I am sensible are pretty generally employed in it, but which I scarcely ever direct in this violent Degree of the Disease, and the Dangers of which Medicine in it I have demonstrated in the Letter to Baron _Haller_, which I have already mentioned. For which Reason, wherever the Patient is not under the Care and Direction of a Physician, they should very carefully abstain from the Use of Venice Treacle, Laudanum, _Diacodium_, that is the Syrup of white Poppies, or even of the wild red Poppy; Syrup of Amber, Pills of Storax, of _Cynoglossum_ or Hounds-tongue, and, in one Word, of every Medicine which produces Sleep. But still more especially should their Use be entirely banished, throughout the Duration of the secondary Fever, when even natural Sleep itself is dangerous. One Circumstance in which their Use may sometimes be permitted, is in the Case of weakly Children, or such as are liable to Convulsions, where Eruption is effected not without Difficulty. But I must again inculcate the greatest Circumspection, in the Use of such Medicines, whose Effects are fatal, [56] when the Blood-vessels are turgid or full; whenever there is Inflammation, Fever, a great Distension of the Skin; whenever the Patient raves, or complains of Heaviness and Oppression; and when it is necessary that the Belly should be open; the Urine plentifully discharged; and the Salivation be freely promoted. [56] The Use of Opiates in this Disease undoubtedly requires no Small Consideration, the great _Sydenham_ himself not seeming always sufficiently guarded in the Exhibition of them; as far as Experience since his Day has enabled Physicians to judge of this Matter. In general our Author's Limitations of them seem very just; though we have seen a few clear Instances, in which a light Raving, which evidently arose from Want of Sleep (joined to some Dread of the Event of the Disease by Inoculation) was happily removed, with every other considerable Complaint, by a moderate Opiate. In sore and fretful Children too, under a large or middling Eruption, as the Time gained to Rest is taken from Pain, and from wasting their Spirits in Crying and Clamour, I have seen Suppuration very benignly promoted by _Diacodium_. But in the _Crisis_ of the secondary Fever in the confluent or coherent Pock, when there is a morbid Fulness, and Nature is struggling to unload herself by some other Outlets than those of the Skin, which now are totally obstructed (and which seems the only Evacuation, that is not restrained by Opiates) the giving and repeating them then, as has too often been practised, seems importantly erroneous; for I think Dr. _Swan_ has taken a judicious Liberty of dissenting from the great Author he translates, in forbidding an Opiate, if the Spitting abates, or grows so tough and ropy, as to endanger Suffocation. As the Difference of our Oeconomy in the Administration of Physic from that in _Swisserland_, and Dr. _Tissot's_ just Reputation may dispose many Country Practitioners to peruse this Treatise, I take the Liberty of referring such Readers, for a Recollection of some of my Sentiments of Opiates, long before the Appearance of this Work in French, to the second Edition of the Analysis from P. 94 to 97, _&c._ _K._ § 218. If Eruption should suddenly retreat, or strike in, heating, soporific, spirituous and volatile Remedies should carefully be avoided: but the Patient may drink plentifully of the Infusion Nº. 12 pretty hot, and should be blistered on the fleshy Part of the Legs. This is a very embarrassing and difficult Case, and the different Circumstances attending it may require different Means and Applications, the Detail and Discussion of which are beyond my Plan here. Sometimes a single Bleeding has effectually recalled Eruption at once. § 219. The only certain Method of surmounting all the Danger of this Malady, is to inoculate. But this most salutary Method, which ought to be regarded as a particular and gracious Dispensation of Providence, can scarcely be attainable by, or serviceable to, the Bulk of the People, except in those Countries, where Hospitals [57] are destined particularly for Inoculation. In these where as yet there are none, the only Resource that is left for Children who cannot be inoculated at home, is to dispose them happily for the Distemper, by a simple easy Preparation. [57] That I have long since had the Honour of agreeing with our learned Author, in this Consideration for the Benefit of the Body of the People, which is the Benefit of the State, will appear from p. 288 of Analys. Ed. 1st. and from p. 371, 372 of the Second. _K._ § 220. This Preparation consists, upon the whole, in removing all Want of, and all Obstructions to, the Health of the Person subject to this Disease, if he have any such; and in bringing him into a mild and healthy, but not into a very robust and vigorous, State; as this Distemper is often exceedingly violent in this last. It is evident, that since the Defects of Health are very different in different Bodies, the Preparations of them must as often vary; and that a Child subject to some habitual Disorder, cannot be prepared in the same Method with another who has a very opposite one. The Detail and Distinctions which are necessary on this important Head, would be improper here, whether it might be owing to their unavoidable Length; or to the Impossibility of giving Persons, who are not Physicians, sufficient Knowlege and Information to qualify them for determining on, and preferring, the most proper Preparation in various Cases. Nevertheless I will point out some such as may be very likely to agree, pretty generally, with Respect to strong and healthy Children. [58] [58] The Substance of this Section flows from the Combination of an excellent Understanding with great Experience, mature Reflection, and real Probity; and fundamentally exposes both the Absurdity of such as universally decry any Preparation of any Subject previous to Inoculation, (which is said to be the Practice of a present very popular Inoculator in _Paris_) and the opposite Absurdity of giving one and the very same Preparation to all Subjects, without Distinction; though this was avowed to have been successfully fully practised in _Pensylvania_, some Years since; which the Reader may see Analys. Ed. 2d, from p. 329 to 331 and the Note there. _K._ The first Step then is an Abatement of their usual Quantity of Food. Children commonly eat too much. Their Limitation should be in Proportion to their Size and Growth, where we could exactly ascertain them: but with Regard to all, or to much the greater Number of them, we may be allowed to make their Supper very light, and very small. Their second Advantage will consist in the Choice of their Food. This Circumstance is less within the Attainment of, and indeed less necessary for, the common People, who are of Course limited to a very few, than to the Rich, who have Room to make great Retrenchments on this Account. The Diet of Country People being of the simplest Kind, and almost solely consisting of Vegetables and of Milk-meats, is the most proper Diet towards preparing for this Disease. For this Reason, such Persons have little more to attend to in this Respect, but that such Aliments be sound and good in their Kind; that their Bread be well baked; their Pulse dressed without Bacon, or rancid strong Fat of any sort; that their Fruits should be well ripened; that their Children should have no Cakes or Tarts, [But see Note [11], P. 40, 41.] and but little Cheese. These simple Regulations may be sufficient, with Regard to this Article of their Preparation. Some Judgment may be formed of the good Consequences of their Care on these two Points, concerning the Quantity and Quality of the Childrens Diet, by the moderate Shrinking of their Bellies; as they will be rendered more lively and active by this Alteration in their living; and yet, notwithstanding a little less Ruddiness in their Complexion, and some Abatement of their common Plight of Body, their Countenances, upon the whole, will seem improved. The third Article I would recommend, is to bathe their Legs now and then in warm Water, before they go to Bed. This promotes Perspiration, cools, dilutes the Blood, and allays the Sharpness of it, as often as it is properly timed. The fourth Precaution, is the frequent Use of very clear Whey. This agreeable Remedy, which consists of the Juices of Herbs filtred through, and concocted, or as it were, sweetened by the Organs of a healthy Animal, answers every visible Indication (I am still speaking here of sound and hearty Children). It imparts a Flexibility, or Soupleness to the Vessels; it abates the Density, the heavy Consistence and Thickness of the Blood; which being augmented by the Action of the poisonous Cause of the Small-Pocks, would degenerate into a most dangerous inflammatory [59] Viscidity or Thickness. It removes all Obstructions in the _Viscera_, or Bowels of the lower Cavity, the Belly. It opens the Passages which strain off the Bile; sheaths, or blunts, its Sharpness, gives it a proper Fluidity, prevents its Putridity, and sweetens whatever excessive Acrimony may reside throughout the Mass of Humours. It likewise promotes Stools, Urine and Perspiration; and, in a Word, it communicates the most favourable Disposition to the Body, not to be too violently impressed and agitated by the Operation of an inflammatory Poison: And with Regard to such Children as I have mentioned, for those who are either sanguine or bilious, it is beyond all Contradiction, the most effectual preparatory Drink, and the most proper to make them amends for the Want of Inoculation. [59] There may certainly be an inflammatory Acrimony or Thinness, as well as Thickness of the Blood; and many medical Readers may think a morbid Fusion of the red Globules to be a more frequent Effect of this Contagion, than an increased Viscidity of them. See Analys. Ed. 2d. p. 75 to 83. But this Translation, conforming to the Spirit of its Original, admits very little Theory, and still less Controversy, into its Plan. _K._ I have already observed, that it may also be used to great Advantage, during the Course of the Disease: but I must also observe, that however salutary it is, in the Cases for which I have directed it, there are many others in which it would be hurtful. It would be extremely pernicious to order it to weak, languishing, scirrhous, pale Children, subject to Vomitings, Purgings, Acidities, and to all Diseases which prove their Bowels to be weak, their Humours to be sharp: so that People must be very cautious not to regard it as an universal and infallible Remedy, towards preparing for the Small-Pocks. Those to whom it is advised, may take a few Glasses every Morning, and even drink it daily, for their common Drink; they may also sup it with Bread for Breakfast, for Supper, and indeed at any Time. If Country People will pursue these Directions, which are very easy to observe and to comprehend, whenever the Small-Pocks rages, I am persuaded it must lessen the Mortality attending it. Some will certainly experience the Benefit of them; such I mean as are very sensible and discreet, and strongly influenced by the truest Love of their Children. Others there are Alas! who are too stupid to discern the Advantage of them, and too unnatural to take any just Care of their Families. __Chapter XIV.__ _Of the Measles._ __Sect.__ 221. The Measles, to which the human Species are as generally liable, as to the Small-Pocks, is a Distemper considerably related to it; though, generally speaking, it is less fatal; notwithstanding which, it is not a little destructive in some Countries. In _Swisserland_ we lose much fewer, immediately in the Disease, than from the Consequences of it. It happens now and then that the Small-Pocks and the Measles rage at the same Time, and in the same Place; though I have more frequently observed, that each of them was epidemical in different Years. Sometimes it also happens that both these Diseases are combined at once in the same Person; and that one supervenes before the other has finished its Course, which makes the Case very perilous. § 222. In some Constitutions the Measles gives Notice of its Approach many Days before its evident Invasion, by a small, frequent and dry Cough, without any other sensible Complaint: though more frequently by a general Uneasiness; by Successions of Shivering and of Heat; by a severe Head-ach in grown Persons; a Heaviness in Children; a considerable Complaint of the Throat; and, by what particularly characterizes this Distemper, an Inflammation and a considerable Heat in the Eyes, attended with a Swelling of the Eye-lids, with a Defluxion of sharp Tears, and so acute a Sensation, or Feeling of the Eyes, that they cannot bear the Light; by very frequent Sneezings, and a Dripping from the Nose of the same Humour with that, which trickles from the Eyes. The Heat and the Fever increases with Rapidity; the Patient is afflicted with a Cough, a Stuffing, with Anguish, and continual Reachings to vomit; with violent Pains in the Loins; and sometimes with a Looseness, under which Circumstance he is less persecuted with Vomiting. At other times, and in other Subjects, Sweating chiefly prevails, though in less Abundance than in the Small-Pocks. The Tongue is foul and white; the Thirst is often very high; and the Symptoms are generally more violent than in the mild Small-Pocks. At length, on the fourth or fifth Day, and sometimes about the End of the third, a sudden Eruption appears and in a very great Quantity, especially about the Face; which in a few Hours is covered with Spots, each of which resembles a Flea-bite; many of them soon joining form red Streaks or Suffusions larger or smaller, which inflame the Skin, and produce a very perceivable Swelling of the Face; whence the very Eyes are sometimes closed. Each small Spot or Suffusion is raised a little above the Surface, especially in the Face, where they are manifest both to the Sight and the Touch. In the other Parts of the Body, this Elevation or Rising is scarcely perceivable by any Circumstance, but the Roughness of the Skin. The Eruption, having first appeared in the Face, is afterwards extended to the Breast, the Back, the Arms, the Thighs and Legs. It generally spreads very plentifully over the Breast and the Back, and sometimes red Suffusions are found upon the Breast, before any Eruption has appeared in the Face. The Patient is often relieved, as in the Small-Pocks, by plentiful Discharges of Blood from the Nose, which carry off the Complaints of the Head, of the Eyes, and of the Throat. Whenever this Distemper appears in its mildest Character, almost every Symptom abates after Eruption, as it happens in the Small-Pocks; though, in general, the Change for the better is not as thoroughly perceivable, as it is in the Small-Pocks. It is certain the Reachings and Vomitings cease almost entirely; but the Fever, the Cough, the Head-ach continue; and I have sometimes observed that a bilious Vomiting, a Day or two after the Eruption, proved a more considerable Relief to the Patient than the Eruption had. On the third or fourth Day of the Eruption, the Redness diminishes; the Spots, or very small Pustules, dry up and fall off in very little branny Scales; the Cuticle, or superficial Skin also shrivels off; and is replaced by one succeeding beneath it. On the ninth Day, when the Progress of the Malady has been speedy, and on the eleventh, when it has been very slow, no Trace of the Redness is to be found; and the Surface immediately resumes its usual Appearance. § 223. Notwithstanding all which the Patient is not safe, except, during the Course of the Distemper, or immediately after it, he has had some considerable Evacuation; such as the Vomiting I have just mentioned; or a bilious Looseness; or considerable Discharges by Urine; or very plentiful Sweating. For when any of these Evacuations supervene, the Fever vanishes; the Patient resumes his Strength, and perfectly recovers. It happens sometimes too, and even without any of these perceivable Discharges, that insensible Perspiration expels the Relics of the poisonous Cause of this Disease, and the Patient recovers his Health. Yet it occurs too often, that this Venom not having been entirely expelled (or its internal Effects not having been thoroughly effaced) it is repelled upon the Lungs, where it produces a slight Inflammation. In Consequence of this the Oppression, the Cough, the Anguish, and Fever return, and the Patient's Situation becomes very dangerous. This Outrage is frequently less vehement, but it proves tedious and chronical, leaving a very obstinate Cough behind it, with many Resemblances of the Whooping-Cough. In 1758 there was an epidemic State of the Measles here extremely numerous, which affected great Numbers: Almost all who had it, and who were not very carefully and judiciously attended, were seized in Consequence of it with that Cough, which proved very violent and obstinate. § 224. However, notwithstanding this be the frequent Progress and Consequence of this Disease, when left entirely to itself, or erroneously treated, and more particularly when treated with a hot Regimen; yet when proper Care was taken to moderate the Fever at the Beginning, to dilute, and to keep up the Evacuations, such unhappy Consequences have been very rare. § 225. The proper Method of conducting this Distemper is much the same with that of the Small-Pocks. 1, If the Fever be high, the Pulse hard, the Load and Oppression heavy, and all the Symptoms violent, the Patient must be bled once or twice. 2, His Legs must be bathed, and he must take some Glysters: the Vehemence of the Symptoms must regulate the Number of each. 3, The Ptisans Nº. 3 or 4 must be taken, or a Tea of Elder and Lime-tree Flowers, to which a fifth Part Milk may be added. 4, The Vapour, the Steam of warm Water should also be employed, as very conducive to asswage the Cough; the Soreness of the Throat, and the Oppression the Patient labours under. 5, As soon as the Efflorescence, the Redness becomes pale, the Patient is to be purged with the Draught Nº. 23. 6, He is still to be kept strictly to his Regimen, for two Days after this Purge; after which he is to be put upon the Diet of those who are in a State of Recovery. 7, If during the Eruption such Symptoms supervene as occur [at the same Term] in the Small-Pocks, they are to be treated in the Manner already directed there. § 226. Whenever this Method has not been observed, and the Accidents described § 223 supervene, the Distemper must be treated like an Inflammation in its first State, and all must be done as directed § 225. If the Disease is not vehement, [60] Bleeding may be omitted. If it is of some standing in gross Children, loaded with Humours, inactive, and pale, we must add to the Medicines already prescribed the Potion Nº. 8, and Blisters to the Legs. [60] Our Author very prudently limits this Discharge, and the Repetition of it, in this Disease (§ 225) as an erroneous Excess of it has sometimes prevailed. I have seen a very epidemical Season of the Measles, where Bleeding was not indicated in one third of the infected. And yet I have known such an Abuse of Bleeding in it, that being repeated more than once in a Case before Eruption (the Measles probably not being suspected) the Eruption was retarded several Days; and the Patient, a young Lady of Condition, remained exceeding low, faint and sickish; 'till after recruiting a very little, the Measles appeared, and she recovered. In a Youth of a lax Fibre, where the Measles had appeared, a seventh or eighth Bleeding was ordered on a Stitch in the Side, supervening from their too early Disappearance, and the Case seemed very doubtful. But Nature continued very obstinately favourable in this Youth, who at length, but very slowly, recovered. His Circulation remained so languid, his Strength, with his Juices, so exhausted, that he was many Weeks before he could sit upright in a Chair, being obliged to make Use of a Cord depending from the Ceiling, to raise himself erectly in his Seat. _K._ § 227. It often happens from the Distance of proper Advice, that the Relics, the Dregs as it were, of the Disease have been too little regarded, especially the Cough; in which Circumstance it forms a real Suppuration in the Lungs, attended with a slow Fever. I have seen many Children in Country Villages destroyed by this Neglect. Their Case is then of the same Nature with that described § 68 and 82, and terminates in the same Manner in a Looseness, (attended with very little Pain) and sometimes a very foetid one, which carries off the Patient. In such Cases we must recur to the Remedies prescribed § 74, Article 3, 4, 5; to the Powder Nº. 14; and to Milk and Exercise. But it is so very difficult to make Children take the Powder, that it may be sometimes necessary to trust to the Milk without it, which I have often seen in such Situations accomplish a very difficult Cure. I must advise the Reader at the same Time, that it has not so compleat an Effect, as when it is taken solely unjoined by any other Aliment; and that it is of the last Importance not to join it with any, which has the least Acidity or Sharpness. Persons in easy Circumstances may successfully take, at the same Time, _Pfeffer_, [61] _Seltzer_, _Peterstal_, or some other light Waters, which are but moderately loaded with mineral Ingredients. These are also successfully employed in all the Cases, in which the Cure I have mentioned is necessary. [61] Bristol Water will be no bad Substitute for any of these, in such Cases. _K._ § 228. Sometimes there remains, after the Course of the Measles, a strong dry Cough, with great Heat in the Breast, and throughout the whole Body, with Thirst, an excessive Dryness of the Tongue, and of the whole Surface of the Body. I have cured Persons thus indisposed after this Distemper, by making them breathe in the Vapour of warm Water; by the repeated Use of warm Baths; and by allowing them to take nothing for several Days but Water and Milk. Before I take leave of this Subject, I assure the Reader again, that the contagious Cause of the Measles is of an extremely sharp and acrid Nature. It appears to have some Resemblance to the bilious Humour, which produces the _Erisipelas_, or St. Anthony's Fire; and thence it demands our particular Attention and Vigilance; without which very troublesome and dangerous Consequences may be apprehended. I have seen, not very long since, a young Girl, who was in a very languid State after the Measles, which she had Undergone three Years before: It was at length attended with an Ulceration in her Neck, which was cured, and her Health finally restored by _Sarsaparilla_ with Milk and Water. § 229. The Measles have been communicated by [62] Inoculation in some Countries, where it is of a very malignant Disposition; and that Method might also be very advantageous in this. But what we have already observed, with Respect to the Inoculation of the Small-Pocks, _viz._ That it cannot be extended to the general Benefit of the People, without the Foundation of Hospitals for that very Purpose, is equally applicable to the Inoculation of the Measles. [62] The only Account I have read of this Practice, is in the learned Dr. _Home's_ _Medical Facts and Experiments_, published in 1759, which admits, that but nine out of fifteen of the Subjects of this Practice took. Cotton dipt in the Blood of a Patient in the Measles was inserted into the Arms of twelve; and three received the Cotton into their Nostrils, after the Chinese Manner of infusing the Small-Pocks; but of these last not one took, and one of those who had taken, had the Measles again two Months after. We think the sharp hot Lymph distilling from the inflamed Eyes of Persons in this Disease, a likelier Vehicle to communicate it than the Blood, especially the dry Blood, which was sometimes tried; since the human _Serum_ seems the Fluid more particularly affected by it; and this must have been evaporated when the Blood grew dry. A few practical Strictures on this Work, and particularly on this Practice described in it, appeared in the Monthly Review Vol. XXI. P. 68 to 75. _K._ __Chapter XV.__ _Of the ardent or burning Fever._ __Sect.__ 230. The much greater Number of the Diseases I have hitherto considered, result from an Inflammation of the Blood, combined with the particular Inflammation of some Part, or occasioned by some Contagion or Poison, which must be evacuated. But when the Blood is solely and strongly inflamed, without an Attack on any particular Part, this Fever, which we term hot or burning, is the Consequence. § 231. The Signs which make it evident are, a Hardness and Fulness of the Pulse in a higher Degree than happens in any other Malady; an excessive Heat; great Thirst; with an extraordinary Dryness of the Eyes, Nostrils, Lips, of the Tongue, and of the Throat; a violent Head-ach; and sometimes a Raving at the Height of the Paroxysm, or Increase of the Fever, which rises considerably every Evening. The Respiration is also somewhat oppressed, but especially at the Return of this Paroxysm, with a Cough now and then; though without any Pain in the Breast, and without any Expectoration, or coughing up. The Body is costive; the Urine very high coloured, hot, and in a small Quantity. The Sick are also liable to start sometimes, but especially when they seem to sleep; for they have little sound refreshing Sleep, but rather a kind of Drowsiness, that makes them very little attentive to, or sensible of, whatever happens about them, or even of their own Condition. They have sometimes a little Sweat or Moisture; though commonly a very dry Skin; they are manifestly weak, and have either little or no Smell or Taste. § 232. This Disease, like all other inflammatory ones, is produced by the Causes which thicken the Blood, and increase its Motion; such as excessive Labour, violent Heat, Want of Sleep, the Abuse of Wine or other strong Liquors; the long Continuance of a dry Constitution of the Air, Excess of every kind, and heating inflaming Food. § 233. The Patient, under these Circumstances, ought, 1, immediately to be put upon a Regimen; to have the Food allowed him given only every eight Hours, and, in some Cases, only twice a Day: and indeed, when the Attack is extremely violent, Nourishment may be wholly omitted. 2, Bleeding should be performed and repeated, 'till the Hardness of the Pulse is sensibly abated. The first Discharge should be considerable, the second should be made four Hours after. If the Pulse is softened by the first, the second may be suspended, and not repeated before it becomes sufficiently hard again, to make us apprehensive of Danger: but should it continue strong and hard, the Bleeding may be repeated on the same Day to a third Time, which often happens to be all the Repetitions that are necessary. 3, The Glyster Nº. 5 should be given twice, or even thrice, daily. 4, His Legs are to be bathed twice a Day in warm Water: his Hands may be bathed in the same Water. Linen or Flanel Cloths dipt in warm Water may be applied over the Breast, and upon the Belly; and he should regularly drink the Almond Milk Nº. 4 and the Ptisan Nº. 7. The poorest Patients may content themselves with the last, but should drink very plentifully of it; and after the Bleeding properly repeated, fresh Air and the plentiful Continuance of small diluting Liquors generally establish the Health of the Patient. 5, If notwithstanding the repeated Bleedings, the Fever still rages highly, it may be lessened by giving a Spoonful of the Potion Nº. 10 every Hour, till it abates; and afterwards every three Hours, until it becomes very moderate. § 234. Hæmorrhages, or Bleedings, from the Nose frequently occur in this Fever, greatly to the Relief and Security of the Patient. The first Appearances of Amendment are a softening of the Pulse, (which however does not wholly lose all its Hardness, before the Disease entirely terminates) a sensible Abatement of the Head-ach; a greater Quantity of Urine, and that less high coloured; and a manifestly approaching Moisture of the Tongue. These favourable Signs keep increasing in their Degree, and there frequently ensue between the ninth and the fourteenth Day, and often after a Flurry of some Hours Continuance, very large Evacuations by Stool; a great Quantity of Urine, which lets fall a palely reddish Sediment; the Urine above it being very clear, and of a natural Colour; and these accompanied with Sweats in a less or greater Quantity. At the same Time the Nostrils and the Mouth grow moist: the brown and dry Crust which covered the Tongue, and which was hitherto inseparable from it, peels off of itself; the Thirst is diminished; the Clearness of the Faculties rises; the Drowsiness goes off, it is succeeded by comfortable Sleep, and the natural Strength is restored. When Things are evidently in this Way, the Patient should take the Potion Nº. 23, and be put upon the Regimen of those who are in a State of Recovery. It should be repeated at the End of eight or ten Days. Some Patients have perfectly recovered from this Fever, without the least Sediment in their Urine. § 235. The augmenting Danger of this Fever may be discerned, from the continued Hardness of the Pulse, though with an Abatement of its Strength; if the Brain becomes more confused; the Breathing more difficult; if the Eyes, Nose, Lips and Tongue become still more dry, and the Voice more altered. If to these Symptoms there be also added a Swelling of the Belly; a Diminution of the Quantity of Urine; a constant Raving; great Anxiety, and a certain Wildness of the Eyes, the Case is in a manner desperate; and the Patient cannot survive many Hours. The Hands and Fingers at this Period are incessantly in Motion, as if feeling for something upon the Bed-Cloths, which is commonly termed, their hunting for Flies. __Chapter XVI.__ _Of putrid Fevers._ __Sect.__ 236. Having treated of such feverish Distempers, as arise from an Inflammation of the Blood, I shall here treat of those produced by corrupt Humours, which stagnate in the Stomach, the Guts, or other Bowels of the lower Cavity, the Belly; or which have already passed from them into the Blood. These are called putrid Fevers, or sometimes bilious Fevers, when a certain Degeneracy or Corruption of the Bile seems chiefly to prevail in the Disease. § 237. This Distemper frequently gives Notice of its Approach, several Days before its manifest Attack; by a great Dejection, a Heaviness of the Head; Pains of the Loins and Knees; a Foulness of the Mouth in the Morning; little Appetite; broken Slumber; and sometimes by an excessive Head-ach for many Days, without any other Symptom. After this, or these Disorders, a Shivering comes on, followed by a sharp and dry Heat: the Pulse, which was small and quick during the Shivering, is raised during the Heat, and is often very strong, though it is not attended with the same Hardness, as in the preceding Fever; except the putrid Fever be combined with an inflammatory one, which it sometimes is. During this Time, that is the Duration of the Heat, the Head-ach is commonly extremely violent; the Patient is almost constantly affected with Loathings, and sometimes even with Vomiting; with Thirst, disagreeable Risings, a Bitterness in the Mouth; and very little Urine. This Heat continues for many Hours, frequently the whole Night; it abates a little in the Morning, and the Pulse, though always feverish, is then something less so, while the Patient suffers less, though still greatly dejected. The Tongue is white and furred, the Teeth are foul, and the Breath smells very disagreeably. The Colour, Quantity and Consistence of the Urine, are very various and changeable. Some Patients are costive, others frequently have small Stools, without the least Relief accruing from them. The Skin is sometimes dry, and at other Times there is some sensible Perspiration, but without any Benefit attending it. The Fever augments every Day, and frequently at unexpected irregular Periods. Besides that _great_ Paroxysm or Increase, which is perceivable in all the Subjects of this Fever, some have also other _less_ intervening ones. § 238. When the Disease is left to itself, or injudiciously treated; or when it proves more powerful than the Remedies against it, which is by no Means seldom the Case, the Aggravations of it become longer, more frequent and irregular. There is scarcely an Interval of Ease. The Patient's Belly is swell'd out like a Foot-ball; a _Delirium_ or Raving comes on; he proves insensible of his own Evacuations, which come away involuntarily; he rejects Assistance, and keeps muttering continually, with a quick, small, irregular Pulse. Sometimes little Spots of a brown, or of a livid Colour appear on the Surface, but particularly about the Neck, Back and Breast. All the Discharges from his Body have a most foetid Smell: convulsive Motions also supervene, especially in the Face; he lies down only on his Back, sinks down insensibly towards the Foot of the Bed, and picks about, as if catching Flies; his Pulse becomes so quick and so small, that it cannot be perceived without Difficulty, and cannot be counted. His Anguish seems inexpressible: his Sweats stream down from Agony: his Breast swells out as if distended by Fullness, and he dies miserably. § 239. When this Distemper is less violent, or more judiciously treated, and the Medicines succeed well, it continues for some Days in the State described § 237, without growing worse, though without abating. None of these Symptoms however appear, described § 238; but, on the contrary, all the Symptoms become milder, the Paroxysms, or Aggravations, are shorter and less violent, the Head-ach more supportable; the Discharges by Stool are less frequent, but more at once, and attended with Relief to the Patient. The Quantity of Urine is very considerable, though it varies at different Times in Colour and Consistence, as before. The Patient soon begins to get a little Sleep, and grows more composed and easy. The Tongue disengages itself from its Filth and Furriness, and Health gradually, yet daily, advances. § 240. This Fever seems to have no critical Time, either for its Termination in Recovery, or in Death. When it is very violent, or very badly conducted, it proves sometimes fatal on the ninth Day. Persons often die of it from the eighteenth to the twentieth; sometimes only about the fortieth; after having been alternately better and worse. When it happens but in a light Degree, it is sometimes cured within a few Days, after the earliest Evacuations. When it is of a very different Character, some Patients are not out of Danger before the End of six Weeks, and even still later. Nevertheless it is certain, that these Fevers, extended to this Length of Duration, often depend in a great Measure on the Manner of treating them; and that in general their Course must be determined, some time from the fourteenth to the thirtieth Day. § 241. The Treatment of this Species of Fevers is comprized in the following Method and Medicines. 1, The Patient must be put into a _Regimen_; and notwithstanding he is far from costive, and sometimes has even a small Purging, he should receive one Glyster daily. His common Drink should be Lemonade, (which is made of the Juice of Lemons, Sugar and Water) or the Ptisan Nº. 3. Instead of Juice of Lemons, Vinegar may be occasionally substituted, which, with Sugar and Water, makes an agreeable and very wholesome Drink in these Fevers. 2, If there be an Inflammation also, which may be discovered by the Strength and the Hardness of the Pulse, and by the Temperament and Complexion of the Patient; if he is naturally robust, and has heated himself by any of the Causes described, § 232, he should be bled once, and even a second Time, if necessary, some Hours after. I must observe however, that very frequently there is no such Inflammation, and that in such a Case, Bleeding would be hurtful. 3, When the Patient has drank very plentifully for two Days of these Liquids, if his Mouth still continues in a very foul State, and he has violent Reachings to vomit, he must take the Powder Nº. 34, dissolved in half a [63] Pot of warm Water, a [64] Glass of it being to be drank every half Quarter of an Hour. But as this Medicine vomits, it must not be taken, except we are certain the Patient is not under any Circumstance, which forbids the Use of a Vomit: all which Circumstances shall be particularly mentioned in the Chapter, respecting the Use of such Medicines, as are taken by way of Precaution, or Prevention. If the first Glasses excite a plentiful Vomiting, we must forbear giving another, and be content with obliging the Patient to drink a considerable Quantity of warm Water. But if the former Glasses do not occasion Vomiting, they must be repeated, as already directed until they do. Those who are afraid of taking this Medicine, which is usually called, the Emetic, may take that of Nº. 35, also drinking warm Water plentifully during its Operation; but the former is preferable, as more prevalent, in dangerous Cases. We must caution our Readers at the same Time, that wherever there is an Inflammation of any Part, neither of these Medicines must be given, which might prove a real Poison in such a Circumstance; and even if the Fever is extremely violent, though there should be no particular Inflammation, they should not be given. [63] That is about two Ounces more than a Pint and a half of our Measure. [64] About three Ounces. The Time of giving them is soon after the End of the Paroxysm, when the Fever is at the lowest. The Medicine Nº. 34 generally purges, after it ceases to make the Patient vomit: But Nº. 35 is seldom attended with the same Effect. When the Operation of the Vomit is entirely over, the Sick should return to the Use of the Ptisan; and great Care must be taken to prohibit them from the Use of Flesh Broth, under the Pretext of working off a Purging with it. The same Method is to be continued on the following Days as on the first; but as it is of Importance to keep the Body open, he should take every Morning some of the Ptisan Nº. 32. Such, as this would be too expensive for, may substitute, in the room of it, a fourth Part of the Powder Nº. 34 in five or six Glasses of Water, of which they are to take a Cup every two Hours, beginning early in the Morning. Nevertheless, if the Fever be very high, Nº. 32 should be preferred to it. 4, After the Operation of the Vomit, if the Fever still continue, if the Stools are remarkably foetid, and if the Belly is tense and distended as it were, and the Quantity of Urine is small, a Spoonful of the Potion Nº. 10 should be given every two Hours, which checks the Putridity and abates the Fever. Should the Distemper become violent, and very pressing, it ought to be taken every Hour. 5, Whenever, notwithstanding the giving all these Medicines as directed, the Fever continues obstinate; the Brain is manifestly disordered; there is a violent Head-ach, or very great Restlessness, two blistering Plaisters Nº. 36 must be applied to the inside and fleshy Part of the Legs, and their Suppuration and Discharge should be continued as long as possible. 6, If the Fever is extremely violent indeed, there is a Necessity absolutely to prohibit the Patient from receiving the least Nourishment. 7, When it is thought improper, or unsafe, to give the Vomit, the Patient should take in the Morning, for two successive Days, three Doses of the Powder Nº. 24, at the Interval of one Hour between each: This Medicine produces some bilious Stools, which greatly abate the Fever, and considerably lessen the Violence of all the other Symptoms of the Disease. This may be done with Success, when the excessive Height of the Fever prevents us from giving the Vomit: and we should limit ourselves to this Medicine, as often as we are uncertain, what ever the Circumstances of the Disease and the Patient will admit of the Vomiting; which may thus be dispensed with, in many Cases. 8, When the Distemper has manifestly and considerably declined; the Paroxysms are more slight; and the Patient continues without any Fever for several Hours, the daily use of the purging opening Drinks should be discontinued. The common Ptisans however should be still made use of; and it will be proper to give every other Day two Doses of the Powder Nº. 24, which sufficiently obviates every ill Consequence from this Disease. 9, If the Fever has been clearly off for a long Part of the Day; if the Tongue appears in a good healthy State; if the Patient has been well purged; and yet one moderate Paroxysm of the Fever returns every Day, he should take four Doses of the Powder Nº. 14 between the End of one Return and the Beginning of the next, and continue this Repetition some Days. People who cannot easily procure this Medicine, may substitute, instead of it, the bitter Decoction Nº. 37. four Glasses of which may be taken at equal Intervals, between the two Paroxysms or Returns of the Fever. 10, As the Organs of Digestion have been considerably weakened through the Course of this Fever, there is a Necessity for the Patient's conducting himself very prudently and regularly long after it, with Regard both to the Quantity and Quality of his Food. He should also use due Exercise as soon as his Strength will permit, without which he may be liable to fall into some chronical and languishing Disorder, productive of considerable Languor and Weakness. * [*] As our Jail, Hospital, and Camp Fevers may often be ranged in this Class, as of the most putrid Kind, and not seldom occasioned by bad Food, bad Air, unclean, unwholesome Lodging, _&c._ a judicious Use may certainly be made of a small Quantity of genuine, and not ungenerous, Wine in such of them, as are not blended with an inflammatory Cause, or inflammable Constitution, or which do not greatly result from a bilious Cause; though in these last, where there is manifest Lowness and Dejection, perhaps a little Rhenish might be properly interposed between the Lemonade and other Drinks directed § 241. Doubtless Dr. _Tissot_ was perfectly apprized of this salutary Use of it in some low Fevers; but the Necessity of its being regulated by the Presence of a Physician has probably disposed him rather to omit mentioning it, than to leave the Allowance of it to the Discretion of a simple Country Patient, or his ignorant Assistants. _K._ __Chapter XVII.__ _Of malignant Fevers._ __Sect.__ 242. Those Fevers are termed malignant, in which the Danger is more than the Symptoms would make us apprehensive of: they have frequently a fatal Event without appearing so very perilous; on which Account it has been well said of this Fever, that it is a Dog which bites without barking. § 243. The distinguishing _Criterion_ or Mark of malignant Fevers is a total Loss of the Patient's Strength, immediately on their first Attack. They arise from a Corruption of the Humours, which is noxious to the very Source and Principle of Strength, the Impairing or Destruction of which is the Cause of the Feebleness of the Symptoms; by Reason none of the Organs are strong enough to exert an Opposition sufficiently vigorous, to subdue the Cause of the Distemper. If, for Instance or Illustration, we were to suppose, that when two Armies were on the Point of engaging, one of them should be nearly deprived of all their Weapons, the Contest would not appear very violent, nor attended with great Noise or Tumult, though with a horrible Massacre. The Spectator, who, from being ignorant of one of the Armies being disarmed, would not be able to calculate the Carnage of the Battle, but in Proportion to its Noise and Tumult, must be extremely deceived in his Conception of it. The Number of the Slain would be astonishing, which might have been much less (though the Noise and Clangor of it had been greater) if each Army had been equally provided for the Combat. § 244. The Causes of this Disease are a long Use of animal Food or Flesh alone, without Pulse, Fruits or Acids; the continued Use of other bad Provisions, such as Bread made of damaged Corn or Grain, or very stale Meat. Eight Persons, who dined together on corrupt Fish, were all seized with a malignant Fever, which killed five of them, notwithstanding the Endeavours of the most able Physicians. These Fevers are also frequently the Consequence of a great Dearth or Famine; of too hot and moist an Air, or an Air, which highly partakes of these two Qualities; so that they happen to spread most in hot Years, in Places abounding with Marshes and standing Waters. They are also the Effect of a very close and stagnant Air, especially if many Persons are crouded together in it, this being a Cause that particularly tends to corrupt the Air. Tedious Grief and Vexation also contribute to generate these Fevers. § 245. The Symptoms of malignant Fevers are, as I have already observed, a total and sudden Loss of Strength, without any evident preceding Cause, sufficient to produce such a Privation of Strength: at the same Time there is also an utter Dejection of the Mind, which becomes almost insensible and inattentive to every Thing, and even to the Disease itself; a sudden Alteration in the Countenance, especially in the Eyes: some small Shiverings, which are varied throughout the Space of twenty-four Hours, with little Paroxysms or Vicissitudes of Heat; sometimes there is a great Head-ach and a Pain in the Loins; at other Times there is no perceivable Pain in any Part; a kind of Sinkings or Faintings, immediately from the Invasion of the Disease, which is always very unpromising; not the least refreshing Sleep; frequently a kind of half Sleep, or Drowsiness; a light and silent or inward Raving, which discovers itself in the unusual and astonished Look of the Patient, who seems profoundly employed in meditating on something, but really thinks of nothing, or not at all: Some Patients have, however, violent Ravings; most have a Sensation of Weight or Oppression, and at other Times of a Binding or Tightness about, or around, the Pit of the Stomach. The sick Person seems to labour under great Anguish: he has sometimes slight convulsive Motions and Twitchings in his Face and his Hands, as well as in his Arms and Legs. His Senses seem torpid, or as it were benumbed. I have seen many who had lost, to all Appearance, the whole five, and yet some of them recover. It is not uncommon to meet with some, who neither see, understand, nor speak. Their Voices change, become weak, and are sometimes quite lost. Some of them have a fixed Pain in some Part of the Belly: this arises from a Stuffing or Obstruction, and often ends in a Gangrene, whence this Symptom is highly dangerous and perplexing. The Tongue is sometimes very little altered from its Appearance in Health; at other Times covered over with a yellowish brown Humour; but it is more rarely dry in this Fever than in the others; and yet it sometimes does resemble a Tongue that has been long smoaked. The Belly is sometimes very soft, and at other Times tense and hard. The Pulse is weak, sometimes pretty regular, but always more quick than in a natural State, and at some Times even very quick; and such I have always found it, when the Belly has been distended. The Skin is often neither hot, dry, nor moist: it is frequently overspread with petechial or eruptive Spots (which are little Spots of a reddish livid Colour) especially on the Neck, about the Shoulders, and upon the Back. At other Times the Spots are larger and brown, like the Colour of Wheals from the Strokes of a Stick. The Urine of the Sick is almost constantly crude, that is of a lighter Colour than ordinary. I have seen some, which could not be distinguished, merely by the Eye, from Milk. A black and stinking Purging sometimes attends this Fever, which is mortal, except the Sick be evidently relieved by the Discharge. Some of the Patients are infested with livid Ulcers on the Inside of the Mouth, and on the Palate. At other Times Abscesses are formed in the Glands of the Groin, of the Arm-pit, in those between the Ears and the Jaw; or a Gangrene may appear in some Part, as on the Feet, the Hands, or the Back. The Strength proves entirely spent, the Brain is wholly confused: the miserable Patient stretched out on his Back, frequently expires under Convulsions, an enormous Sweat, and an oppressed Breast and Respiration. Hæmorrhages also happen sometimes and are mortal, being almost unexceptionably such in this Fever. There is also in this, as in all other Fevers, an Aggravation of the Fever in the Evening. § 246. The Duration and _Crisis_ of these malignant, as well as those of putrid Fevers, are very irregular. Sometimes the Sick die on the seventh or eighth Day, more commonly between the twelfth and the fifteenth, and not infrequently at the End of five or six Weeks. These different Durations result from the different Degree and Strength of the Disease. Some of these Fevers at their first Invasion are very slow; and during a few of the first Days, the Patient, though very weak, and with a very different Look and Manner, scarcely thinks himself sick. The Term or Period of the Cure or the Recovery, is as uncertain as that of Death in this Distemper. Some are out of Danger at the End of fifteen Days, and even sooner; others not before the Expiration of several Weeks. The Signs which portend a Recovery are, a little more Strength in the Pulse; a more concocted Urine; less Dejection and Discouragement; a less confused Brain; an equal kindly Heat; a pretty warm or hot Sweat in a moderate Quantity, without Inquietude or Anguish; the Revival of the different Senses that were extinguished, or greatly suspended in the Progress of the Disease; though the Deafness is not a very threatening Symptom, if the others amend while it endures. This Malady commonly leaves the Patient in a very weak Condition; and a long Interval will ensue between the End of it, and their recovering their full Strength. § 247. It is, in the first place, of greater Importance in this Distemper than in any other, both for the Benefit of the Patients, and those who attend them, that the Air should be renewed and purified. Vinegar should often be evaporated from a hot Tile or Iron in the Chamber, and one Window kept almost constantly open. 2, The Diet should be light; and the Juice of Sorrel may be mixed with their Water; the Juice of Lemons may be added to Soups prepared from different Grains and Pulse; the Patient may eat sharp acid Fruits, such as tart juicy [65] Cherries, Gooseberries, small black Cherries; and those who can afford them, may be allowed Lemons, Oranges and Pomgranates. [65] The French Word is _Griettes_, which _Beyer_ englishes, _the Agriot, the red or sour Cherry_; and _Chambaud, the sweeter large black Cherry or Mazzard_--But as Dr. _Tissot_ was recommending the Use of Acids, it is more probably the first of these: so that our Morellas, which make a pleasant Preserve, may be a good Substitute to them, supposing them not to be the same. Our Berbery Jam, and Jelly of Red Currants, may be also employed to answer the same Indication. _K._ 3, The Patient's Linen should be changed every two Days. 4, Bleeding is very rarely necessary, or even proper, in this Fever; the Exceptions to which are very few, and cannot be thoroughly ascertained, as fit and proper Exceptions to the Omission of Bleeding, without a Physician, or some other very skilful Person's seeing the Patient. 5, There is often very little Occasion for Glysters, which are sometimes dangerous in this Fever. 6, The Patient's common Drink should be Barley Water made acid with the Spirit Nº. 10, at the Rate of one Quarter of an Ounce to at least full three Pints of the Water, or acidulated agreeably to his Taste. He may also drink Lemonade. 7, It is necessary to open and evacuate the Bowels, where a great Quantity of corrupt Humours is generally lodged. The Powder Nº. 35 may be given for this Purpose, after the Operation of which the Patient generally finds himself better, at least for some Hours. It is of Importance not to omit this at the Beginning of the Disease; though if it has been omitted at first, it were best to give it even later, provided no particular Inflammation has supervened, and the Patient has still some Strength. I have given it, and with remarkable Success, on the twentieth Day. 8, Having by this Medicine expelled a considerable Portion of the bad Humours, which contribute to feed and keep up the Fever, the Patient should take every other Day, during the Continuance of the Disease, and sometimes even every Day, one Dose of the Cream of Tartar and Rhubarb Nº. 38. This Remedy evacuates the corrupt Humours, prevents the Corruption of the others; expells the Worms that are very common in these Fevers, which the Patient sometimes discharges upwards and downwards; and which frequently conduce to many of the odd and extraordinary Symptoms, that are observed in malignant Fevers. In short it strengthens the Bowels, and, without checking the necessary Evacuations, it moderates the Looseness, when it is hurtful. 9, If the Skin be dry, with a Looseness, and that by checking it, we design to increase Perspiration, instead of the Rhubarb, the Cream of Tartar may be blended with the Ipecacuana, Nº. 39, which, being given in small and frequent Doses, restrains the Purging, and promotes Perspiration. This Medicine, as the former, is to be taken in the Morning; two Hours after, the Sick must begin with the Potion Nº. 40, and repeat it regularly every three Hours; until it be interrupted by giving one of the Medicines Nº. 38 or 39: After which the Potion is to be repeated again, as already directed, till the Patient grows considerably better. 10, If the Strength of the Sick be very considerably depressed, and he is in great Dejection and Anguish, he should take, with every Draught of the Potion, the Bolus, or Morsel Nº. 41. If the _Diarrhoea_, the Purging is violent, there should be added, once or twice a Day to the Bolus, the Weight of twenty Grains, or the Size of a very small Bean, of _Diascordium_; or if that is not readily to be got, as much Venice Treacle. 11, Whenever, notwithstanding all this Assistance, the Patient continues in a State of Weakness and Insensibility, two large Blisters should be applied to the fleshy Insides of the Legs, or a large one to the Nape of the Neck: and sometimes, if there be a great Drowsiness, with a manifest Embarrassment of the Brain, they may be applied with great Success over the whole Head. Their Suppuration and Discharge is to be promoted abundantly; and, if they dry up within a few Days, others are to be applied, and their Evacuation is to be kept up for a considerable Time. 12, As soon as the Distemper is sufficiently abated, for the Patient to remain some Hours with very little or no Fever, we must avail ourselves of this Interval, to give him six, or at least five Doses of the Medicine Nº. 14, and repeat the same the next Day, which may prevent the Return of the Fever: [66] after which it may be sufficient to give daily only two Doses for a few Days. [66] Observation and Experience have demonstrated the Advantage of the Bark, to obviate a Gangrene, and prevent the Putrefaction of animal Substances. We therefore conclude it may be usefully employed in malignant Fevers, as soon as the previous and necessary Evacuations shall have taken Place. _E. L._--Provided there be very clear and regular Remissions at least. _K._ 13, When the Sick continue entirely clear of a Fever, or any Return, they are to be put into the _Regimen_ of Persons in a State of Recovery. But if his Strength returns very slowly, or not at all; in Order to the speedier Establishment and Confirmation of it, he may take three Doses a Day of the _Theriaca Pauperum_, or poor Man's Treacle Nº. 42, the first of them fasting, and the other twelve Hours after. It were to be wished indeed, this Medicine was introduced into all the Apothecaries Shops, as an excellent Stomachic, in which Respect it is much preferable to Venice Treacle, which is an absurd Composition, dear and often dangerous. It is true it does not dispose the Patients to Sleep; but when we would procure them Sleep, there are better Medicines than the Treacle to answer that Purpose. Such as may not think the Expence of the Medicine Nº. 14, too much, may take three Doses of it daily for some Weeks, instead of the Medicine Nº. 42, already directed. § 248. It is necessary to eradicate a Prejudice that prevails among Country People, with Regard to the Treatment of these Fevers; not only because it is false and ridiculous, but even dangerous too. They imagine that the Application of Animals can draw out the Poison of the Disease; in Consequence of which they apply Poultry, or Pigeons, Cats or sucking Pigs to the Feet, or upon the Head of the Patient, having first split the living Animals open. Some Hours after they remove their strange Applications, corrupted, and stinking very offensively; and then ascribe such Corruption and horrid Stink to the Poison they suppose their Application to be charged with; and which they suppose to be the Cause of this Fever. But in this supposed Extraction of Poison, they are grosly mistaken, since the Flesh does not stink in Consequence of any such Extraction, but from its being corrupted through Moisture and Heat: and they contract no other Smell but what they would have got, if they had been put in any other Place, as well as on the Patient's Body, that was equally hot and moist. Very far from drawing out the Poison, they augment the Corruption of the Disease; and it would be sufficient to communicate it to a sound Person, if he was to suffer many of these animal Bodies, thus absurdly and uselessly butchered, to be applied to various Parts of his Body in Bed; and to lie still a long Time with their putrified Carcases fastened about him, and corrupting whatever Air he breathed there. With the same Intention they fasten a living Sheep to the Bed's-foot for several Hours; which, though not equally dangerous, is in some Measure hurtful, since the more Animals there are in a Chamber, the Air of it is proportionably corrupted, or altered at least from its natural Simplicity, by their Respiration and Exhalations: but admitting this to be less pernicious, it is equally absurd. It is certain indeed, the Animals who are kept very near the sick Person breathe in the poisonous, or noxious Vapours which exhale from his Body, and may be incommoded with them, as well as his Attendants: But it is ridiculous to suppose their being kept near the Sick causes such Poison to come out of their Bodies. On the very contrary, in contributing still further to the Corruption of the Air, they increase the Disease. They draw a false Consequence, and no Wonder, from a false Principle; saying, if the Sheep dies, the Sick will recover. Now, most frequently the Sheep does not die; notwithstanding which the Sick sometimes recover; and sometimes they both die. § 249. The Cause of Malignant Fevers is, not infrequently, combined with other Diseases, whose Danger it extremely increases. It is blended for Instance, with the Poison of the Small-Pocks, or of the Measles. This may be known by the Union of those Symptoms, which carry the Marks of Malignity, with the Symptoms of the other Diseases. Such combined Cases are extremely dangerous; they demand the utmost Attention of the Physician; nor is it possible to prescribe their exact Treatment here; since it consists in general of a Mixture of the Treatment of each Disease; though the Malignity commonly demands the greatest Attention. __Chapter XVIII.__ _Of intermitting Fevers._ __Sect.__ 250. Intermitting Fevers, commonly called here, Fevers and Agues, are those, which after an Invasion and Continuance for some Hours, abate very perceivably, as well as all the Symptoms attending them, and then entirely cease; nevertheless, not without some periodical or stated Return of them. They were very frequent with us some Years since; and indeed might even be called epidemical: but for the five or six last Years, they have been much less frequent throughout the greater Part of _Swisserland_: notwithstanding they still continue in no small Number in all Places, where the Inhabitants breathe the Air that prevails in all the marshy Borders of the _Rhone_, and in some other Situations that are exposed to much the same humid Air and Exhalations. § 251. There are several Kinds of intermitting Fevers, which take their different Names from the Interval or different Space of Time, in which the Fits return. If the Paroxysm or Fit returns every Day, it is either a true Quotidian, or a double Tertian Fever: The first of these may be distinguished from the last by this Circumstance, that in the Quotidian, or one Day Fever, the Fits are long; and correspond pretty regularly to each other in Degree and Duration. This however is less frequent in _Swisserland_. In the double Tertian, the Fits are shorter, and one is alternately light, and the other more severe. In the simple Tertian, or third Day's Fever, the Fits return every other Day; so that three Days include one Paroxysm, and the Return of another. In a Quartan, the Fit returns every fourth Day, including the Day of the first and that of the second Attack: so that the Patient enjoys two clear Days between the two sick ones. The other kinds of Intermittents are much rarer. I have seen however one true Quintan, or fifth Day Ague, the Patient having three clear Days between two Fits; and one regularly weekly Ague, as it may be called, the Visitation of every Return happening every Sunday. § 252. The first Attack of an intermittent Fever often happens, when the Patient thought himself in perfect Health. Sometimes however it is preceded by a Sensation of Cold and a kind of Numbness, which continue some Days before the manifest Invasion of the Fit. It begins with frequent Yawnings, a Lassitude, or Sensation of Weariness, with a general Weakness, with Coldness, Shivering and Shaking: There is also a Paleness of the extreme Parts of the Body, attended with Loathings, and sometimes an actual Vomiting. The Pulse is quick, weak, and small, and there is a considerable Degree of Thirst. At the End of an Hour or two, and but seldom so long as three or four Hours, a Heat succeeds, which increases insensibly, and becomes violent at its Height. At this Period the whole Body grows red, the Anxiety of the Patient abates; the Pulse is very strong and large, and his Thirst proves excessive. He complains of a violent Head-ach, and of a Pain in all his Limbs, but of a different sort of Pain from that he was sensible of, while his Coldness continued. Finally, having endured this hot State, four, five or six Hours, he falls into a general Sweat for a few more: upon which all the Symptoms already mentioned abate, and sometimes Sleep supervenes. At the Conclusion of this Nap the Patient often wakes without any sensible Fever; complaining only of Lassitude and Weakness. Sometimes his Pulse returns entirely to its natural State between the two Fits; though it often continues a little quicker than in perfect Health; and does not recover its first Distinctness and Slowness, till some Days after the last Fit. One Symptom, which most particularly characterises these several Species of intermitting Fevers, is the Quality of the Urines which the Sick pass after the Fit. They are of a reddish Colour, and let fall a Sediment, or Settling, which exactly resembles Brick-dust. They are sometimes frothy too, and a Pellicle, or thin filmy Skin, appears on the Top, and adheres to the Sides of the Glass that contains them. § 253. The Duration of each Fit is of no fixed Time or Extent, being various according to the particular sort of Intermittents, and through many other Circumstances. Sometimes they return precisely at the very same Hour; at other Times they come one, two, or three Hours sooner, and in other Instances as much later than the former. It has been imagined that those Fevers, whose Paroxysms returned sooner than usual, were sooner finally terminated: but there seems to be no general Rule in this Case. § 254. Intermitting Fevers are distinguished into those of Spring and Autumn. The former generally prevail from February to June: the latter are those which reign from July to January. Their essential Nature and Characters are the very same, as they are not different Distempers; though the various Circumstances attending them deserve our Consideration. These Circumstances depend on the Season itself, and the Constitution of the Patients, during such Seasons. The Spring Intermittents are sometimes blended with an inflammatory Disposition, as that is the Disposition of Bodies in that Season; but as the Weather then advances daily into an improving State, the Spring Fevers are commonly of a shorter Duration. The autumnal Fevers are frequently combined and aggravated with a Principle of Putrefaction; and as the Air of that Season rather degenerates, they are more tedious and obstinate. § 255. The autumnal Fevers seldom begin quite so early as July, but much oftner in August: and the Duration to which they are often extended, has increased the Terror which the People entertain of Fevers that begin in that Month. But that Prejudice which ascribes their Danger to the Influence of August, is a very absurd Error; since it is better they should set in then than in the following Months; because they are obstinate in Proportion to the Tardiness, the Slowness of their Approach. They sometimes appear at first considerably in the Form of putrid Fevers, not assuming that of Intermittents till some Days after their Appearance: but very happily there is little or no Danger in mistaking them for putrid Fevers, or in treating them like such. The Brick-coloured Sediment, and particularly the Pellicle or Film on the Surface of the Urine, are very common in autumnal Intermittents, and are often wanting in the Urine of putrid Fevers. In these latter, it is generally less high coloured, and leaning rather to a yellow, a kind of Cloudiness is suspended in the Middle of it. These also deposite a white Sediment, which affords no bad Prognostic. § 256. Generally speaking, intermitting Fevers are not mortal; often terminating in Health of their own Accord (without the Use of any Medicine) after some Fits. In this last Respect Intermittents in the Spring differ considerably from those in the Fall, which continue a long Time, and sometimes even until Spring, if they are not removed by Art, or if they have been improperly treated. Quartan Fevers are always more obstinate and inveterate than Tertians; the former sometimes persevering in certain Constitutions for whole Years. When these Sorts of Fevers occur in boggy marshy Countries, they are not only very chronical or tedious, but Persons infested with them are liable to frequent Relapses. § 257. A few Fits of an Intermittent are not very injurious, and it happens sometimes, that they are attended with a favourable Alteration of the Habit in Point of Health; by their exterminating the Cause or Principle of some languid and tedious Disorder; though it is erroneous to consider them as salutary. If they prove tedious and obstinate, and the Fits are long and violent, they weaken the whole Body, impairing all its Functions, and particularly the Digestions: They make the Humours sharp and unbalmy, and introduce several other Maladies, such as the Jaundice, Dropsy, Asthma and slow wasting Fevers. Nay sometimes old Persons, and those who are very weak, expire in the Fit; though such an Event never happens but in the cold Fit. § 258. Very happily Nature has afforded us a Medicine, that infallibly cures these Fevers: this is the _Kinkina_, or Jesuits Bark; and as we are possessed of this certain Remedy, the only remaining Difficulty is to discover, if there be not some other Disease combined with these Fevers, which Disease might be aggravated by the Bark. Should any such exist, it must be removed by Medicines adapted to it, before the Bark is given. [67] [67] This admirable Medicine was unknown in Europe, till about one hundred and twenty Years past; we are obliged to the Spaniards for it, who found it in the Province of Quito in Peru; the Countess of Chinchon being the first European who used it in America, whence it was brought to Spain, under the Name of the Countesses Powder. The Jesuits having soon dispensed and distributed it abroad, it became still more publick by the Name of the Jesuits Powder: and since it has been known by that of _Kinkina_ or the Peruvian Bark. It met with great Opposition at first; some deeming it a Poison, while others considered it as a divine Remedy: so that the Prejudices of many being heightened by their Animosity, it was nearly a full Century, before its true Virtue and its Use were agreed to: and about twenty Years since the most unfavourable Prejudices against it pretty generally subsided. The Insufficience of other Medicines in several Cases; its great Efficaciousness; and the many and surprizing Cures which it did, and daily does effect; the Number of Distempers; the different kinds of Fevers, in which it proves the sovereign Remedy; its Effects in the most difficult chirurgical Cases; the Comfort, the Strength and Sprits it gives those who need and take it, have at length opened every Persons Eyes; so that it has almost unanimously obtained the first Reputation, among the most efficacious Medicines. The World is no longer amused with Apprehensions of its injuring the Stomach; of its fixing, or _shutting up_ the Fever (as the Phrase has been) without curing it; that it shuts up the Wolf in the Sheepfold; that it throws those who take it into the Scurvy, the Asthma, the Dropsy, the Jaundice. On the contrary they are persuaded it prevents there very Diseases; and, that if it is ever hurtful, it is only when it is either adulterated, as most great Remedies have been; or has been wrongly prescribed, or improperly taken: or lastly when it meets with some latent, some unknown Particularities in a Constitution, which Physicians term an _Idiosyncrasy_, and which prevent or pervert its very general Effects. _Tissot._ § 259. In the vernal, or Spring-Fevers, if the Fits are not very severe; if the Patient is evidently well in their Intervals; if his Appetite, his Strength, and his Sleep continue as in Health, no Medicine should be given, nor any other Method be taken, but that of putting the Person, under such a gentle Intermittent, upon the Regimen directed for Persons in a State of Recovery. This is such a Regimen as pretty generally agrees with all the Subjects of these Fevers: for if they should be reduced to the Regimen proper in acute Diseases, they would be weakened to no Purpose, and perhaps be the worse for it. But at the same Time if we were not to retrench from the Quantity, nor somewhat to vary the Quality of their usual Food in a State of Health; as there is not the least Digestion made in the Stomach, during the whole Term of the Fit; and as the Stomach is always weakened a little by the Disease, crude and indigested Humours would be produced, which might afford a Fuel to the Disease. Not the least solid Food should be allowed, for at least two Hours before the usual Approach of the Fit. § 260. If the Fever extends beyond the sixth, or the seventh Fit; and the Patient seems to have no Occasion for a Purge; which may be learned by attending to the Chapter, which treats of Remedies to be taken by Way of Precaution; [68] he may take the Bark, that is the Powder Nº. 14. If it is a Quotidian, a daily Fever, or a double Tertian, six Doses, containing three Quarters of an Ounce, should be taken between the two Fits; and as these Intermissions commonly consist of but ten or twelve, or at the most of fourteen or fifteen Hours, there should be an Interval of only one Hour and a half between each Dose. During this Interval the Sick may take two of his usual Refreshments or Suppings. [68] It happens very seldom that intermitting Fevers require [69] no Purge towards their Cure, especially in Places, which are disposed to generate Putridity. There is always some material Cause essential to these Fevers, of which Nature disembarrasses herself more easily by Stools, than by any other Discharge: And as there is not the least Danger to be apprehended from a gentle Purge, such at those of Nº. 11 or 23, we think it would be prudent always to premise a Dose or two of either to the Bark. _E. L._ [69] Yet I have known many in whom no Purge was necessary, and have seen some rendered more obstinate and chronical by erroneous Purging. But a Vomit is very generally necessary before the Bark is given. _K._ When the Fever is a Tertian, an Ounce should be given between the two Fits: which makes eight Doses, one of which is to be taken every three Hours. In a Quartan I direct one Ounce and a half, to be taken in the same Manner. It is meer trifling to attempt preventing the Returns with smaller Doses. The frequent Failures of the Bark are owing to over small Doses. On such Occasions the Medicine is cried down, and censured as useless, when the Disappointment is solely the Fault of those who do not employ it properly. The last Dose is to be given two Hours before the usual Return of the Fit. The Doses, just mentioned, frequently prevent the Return of the Fit; but whether it returns or not, after the Time of its usual Duration is past, repeat the same Quantity, in the same Number of Doses, and Intervals, which certainly keeps off another. For six Days following, half the same Quantity must be continued, in the Intervals that would have occurred between the Fits, if they had returned: and during all this Time the Patient should inure himself to as much Exercise, as he can well bear. § 261. Should the Fits be very strong, the Pain of the Head violent, the Visage red, the Pulse full and hard; if there is any Cough; if, even after the Fit is over, the Pulse still is perceivably hard; if the Urine is inflamed, hot and high-coloured, and the Tongue very dry, the Patient must be bled, and drink plentifully of Barley Water Nº. 3. These two Remedies generally bring the Patient into the State described § 259: in which State he may take on a Day, when the Fever is entirely off, three or four Doses of the Powder Nº. 24, and then leave the Fever to pursue its own Course for the Space of a few Fits. But should it not then terminate of itself, the Bark must be recurred to. If the Patient, even in the Interval of the Returns, has a foetid, furred Mouth, a Loathing, Pains in the Loins, or in the Knees, much Anxiety, and bad Nights, he should be purged with the Powder Nº. 21 or the Potion Nº. 23, before he takes the Bark. § 262. If Fevers in Autumn appear to be of the continual kind, and very like putrid Fevers, the Patients should drink abundantly of Barley Water; and if at the Expiration of two or three Days, there still appears to be a Load or Oppression at the Stomach, the Powder Nº. 34 or that of 35 is to be given (but see § 241): and if, after the Operation of this, the Signs of Putridity continue, the Body is to be opened with repeated Doses of the Powder Nº. 24; or, where the Patients are very robust, with Nº. 21; and when the Fever becomes quite regular, with distinct _Remissions_ at least, the Bark is to be given as directed § 260. But as autumnal Fevers are more obstinate; after having discontinued the Bark for eight Days; and notwithstanding there has been no Return of the Fever, it is proper to resume the Bark, and to give three Doses of it daily for the succeeding eight Days, more especially if it was a Quartan; in which Species I have ordered it to be repeated, every other eight Days, for six Times. Many People may find it difficult to comply with this Method of Cure, which is unavoidably expensive, through the Price of the Bark. I thought however this ought not to prevent me from averring it to be the only certain one; since nothing can be an equivalent _Succedaneum_ or Substitute to this Remedy, which is the only sure and safe one in all these Cases. The World had long been prepossessed with Prejudices to the contrary: it was supposed to be hurtful to the Stomach; to prevent which it has been usual to make the Sick eat something an Hour after it. Nevertheless, very far from injuring the Stomach, it is the best Medicine in the Universe to strengthen it; and it is a pernicious Custom, when a Patient is obliged to take it often, to eat an Hour after it. It had also been imagined to cause Obstructions, and that it subjected Patients to a Dropsy: but at present we are convinced, it is the obstinate and inveterate Duration of the Intermittent, that causes Obstructions, and paves the Way to a Dropsy. The Bark, in Consequence of its speedily curing the Fever, does not only prevent the former Disease; but when it continues, through an injudicious Omission of the Bark, a proper Use of it is serviceable in the Dropsy. In a Word, if there is any other Malady combined with the Fever, sometimes that indeed prevents the Success of the Bark, yet without rendering it hurtful. But whenever the intermitting Fever is simple and uncombined, it ever has, and ever will render the Patient all possible Service. In another Place I shall mention such Means and Methods as may in some Degree, though but imperfectly, be substituted instead of it. After the Patient has begun with the Bark, he must take no purging Medicine, as that Evacuation would, with the greatest Probability, occasion a Return of the Fever. § 263. Bleeding is never, or extremely seldom indeed necessary in a Quartan Ague, which occurs in the Fall oftner than in the Spring; and with the Symptoms of Putridity rather than of Inflammation. § 264. The Patient ought, two Hours before the Invasion of the Fit, to drink a small Glass of warm Elder Flower Tea, sweetened with Honey, every Quarter of an Hour, and to walk about moderately; this disposes him to a very gentle Sweat, and thence renders the ensuing Coldness and the whole Fit milder. He is to continue the same Drink throughout the Duration of the cold Fit; and when the hot one approaches, he may either continue the same, or substitute that of Nº. 2, which is more cooling. It is not necessary however, in this State, to drink it warm, it is sufficient that it be not over cold. When the Sweat, at the Termination of the hot Fit, is concluded, the Patient should be well wiped and dried, and may get up. If the Fit was very long, he may be allowed a little Gruel, or some other such Nourishment during the Sweat. § 265. Sometimes the first, and a few successive Doses of the Bark purge the Patient. This is no otherwise an ill Consequence, than by its retarding the Cure; since, when it purges, it does not commonly prevent the Return of the Fever; so that these Doses may be considered as to no Purpose, and others should be repeated, which, ceasing to purge, do prevent it. Should the Looseness notwithstanding continue, the Bark must be discontinued for one entire Day, in order to give the Patient half a Quarter of an Ounce of Rhubarb: after which the Bark is to be resumed again, and if the Looseness still perseveres, fifteen Grains of Venice Treacle should be added to each Dose, but not otherwise. All other Medicines which are superadded, very generally serve only to increase the Bulk of the Dose, while they lessen its Virtue. § 266. Before our thorough Experience of the Bark, other bitter Medicines were used for the same Purpose: these indeed were not destitute of Virtue in such Cases, though they were considerably less available than the Bark. Under Nº. 43, some valuable Prescriptions of that kind may be seen, whose Efficacy I have often experienced: though at other Times I have been obliged to leave them off, and recur to the Bark more successfully. Filings of Iron, which enter into the third Prescription, are an excellent Febrifuge in particular Cases and Circumstances. In the Middle of the Winter 1753, I cured a Patient of a Quartan Ague with it, who would not be prevailed on to take the Bark. It must be confessed he was perfectly regular in observing the _Regimen_ directed for him; and that, during the most rigid Severity of the Winter, he got every Day on Horseback, and took such a Degree of other Exercise in the open Air, as disposed him to perspire abundantly. § 267. Another very practicable easy Method, of which I have often availed my Patients, under tertian Fevers (but which succeeded with me only twice in Quartans) was to procure the Sufferer a very plentiful Sweat, at the very Time when the Fit was to return, in its usual Course. To effect this he is to drink, three or four Hours before it is expected, an Infusion of Elder Flowers sweetened with Honey, which I have already recommended § 264; and one Hour before the usual Invasion of the Shivering, he is to go into Bed, and take, as hot as he can drink it, the Prescription Nº. 44. I have also cured some Tertians and even Quartans, in 1751 and 1752, by giving them, every four Hours between the Fits, the Powder Nº. 45. But I must acknowledge that, besides its having often failed me, and its never succeeding so speedily as the Bark, I have found it weaken some Patients; it disorders, or disagrees with, their Stomachs: and in two Cases, where it had removed the Fever, I was obliged to call in the Bark for a thorough Establishment of the Patient's Health. Nevertheless, as these Medicines are very cheap and attainable, and often do succeed, I thought I could not properly omit them. § 268. A Multitude of other Remedies are cried up for the Cure of Fevers: though none of them are equally efficacious with those I have directed: and as many of them are even dangerous, it is prudent to abstain from them. Some Years since certain Powders were sold here, under the Name of the _Berlin_ Powders; these are nothing but the Bark masqued or disguised (which has sometimes been publickly discovered) and have always been sold very dear: though the Bark well chosen, and freshly powdered when wanted, is greatly preferable. § 269. I have often known Peasants, who had laboured for several Months under intermitting Fevers; having made Use of many bad Medicines and Mixtures for them, and observed no Manner of Regimen. Such I have happily treated by giving them the Remedies Nº. 34, or 35; and afterwards, for some Days, that of Nº. 38; at the End of which Time, I have ordered them the Bark (See § 260) or other Febrifuges, as at § 266, 267; and then finally ordered them for some Days, to take Morsels of the poor Man's Treacle (See § 247, _Art._ 13) to strengthen and confirm their Digestions, which I have found very weak and irregular. § 270. Some Intermittents are distinguished as pernicious or malignant, from every Fit's being attended with the most violent Symptoms. The Pulse is small and irregular, the Patient exceedingly dejected, and frequently swooning; afflicted with inexpressible Anguish, Convulsions, a deep Drowsiness, and continual Efforts to go to Stool, or make Urine, but ineffectually. This Disease is highly pressing and dangerous; the Patient may die in the third Fit, and rarely survives the sixth, if he is not very judiciously treated. Not a Moment should be lost, and there is no other Step to be taken, but that of giving the Bark continually, as directed § 260, to prevent the succeeding Fits. These worst Kinds of Intermittents are often combined with a great Load of putrid Humours in the first Passages: and as often as such an aggravating Combination is very evident, we should immediately after the End of one Fit, give a Dose of Ipecacuana Nº. 35, and, when its Operation is finished, give the Bark. But I chuse to enter into very few Details on this Species of Intermittents, both as they occur but seldom, and as the Treatment of them is too difficult and important, to be submitted to the Conduct of any one but a Physician. My Intention has only been to represent them sufficiently, that they may be so distinguished when they do occur, as to apprize the People of their great Danger. § 271. The same Cause which produces these intermitting Fevers, frequently also occasions Disorders, which return periodically at the same Hour, without Shivering, without Heat, and often without any Quickness of the Pulse. Such Disorders generally preserve the Intermissons of quotidian or tertian Fevers, but much seldomer those of Quartans. I have seen violent Vomittings, and Reachings to vomit, with inexpressible Anxiety; the severest Oppressions, the most racking Cholics; dreadful Palpitations and excessive Tooth-achs: Pains in the Head, and very often an unaccountable Pain over one Eye, the Eyelid, Eyebrow and Temple, on the same Side of the Face; with a Redness of that Eye, and a continual, involuntary trickling of Tears. I have also seen such a prodigious Swelling of the affected Part, that the Eye projected, or stood out, above an Inch from the Head, covered by the Eyelid, which was also extremely inflated or puffed up. All these Maladies begin precisely at a certain Hour; last about the usual Time of a Fit; and terminating without any sensible Evacuation, return exactly at the same Hour, the next Day, or the next but one. There is but one known Medicine that can effectually oppose this Sort, which is the Bark, given as directed § 260. Nothing affords Relief in the Fit, and no other Medicine ever suspends or puts it off. But I have cured some of these Disorders with the Bark, and especially those affecting the Eyes, which happen oftner than the other Symptoms, after their Duration for many Weeks, and after the ineffectual Use of Bleeding, Purging, Baths, Waters, Blisters, and a great Number of other Medicines. If a sufficient Dose of it be given, the next Fit is very mild; the second is prevented; and I never saw a Relapse in these Cases, which sometimes happens after the Fits of common Intermittents seemed cured. § 272. In Situations where the Constitution of the Air renders these Fevers very common, the Inhabitants should frequently burn in their Rooms, at least in their lodging Rooms, some aromatic Wood or Herbs. They should daily chew some Juniper Berries, and drink a fermented Infusion of them. These two Remedies are very effectual to fortify the weakest Stomachs, to prevent Obstructions, and to promote Perspiration. And as these are the Causes which prolong these Fevers the most obstinately; nothing is a more certain Preservation from them than these cheap and obvious Assistances. [70] [70] I have seen several Cases in very marshy maritime Countries, with little good drinking Water, and far South of _Swisserland_, where intermitting Fevers, with Agues at different Intervals, are annually endemic, very popular, and often so obstinate as to return repeatedly, whenever the weekly precautionary Doses of the Bark have been omitted (through the Patient's nauseating the frequent Swallowing of it) so that the Disease has sometimes been extended beyond the Term of a full Year, and even far into a second, including the temporary Removals of it by the Bark. Nevertheless, in some such obstinate Intermittents, and particularly Quartans there, wherein the Bark alone has had but a short and imperfect Effect, I have known the following Composition, after a good Vomit, attended with speedy and final Success, _viz._ Take of fresh Sassafras Bark, of Virginia Snake-root, of Roch-Allom, of Nutmeg, of diaphoretic Antimony, and of Salt of Wormwood of each one Drachm. To these well rubbed together into fine Powder, add the Weight of the whole, of the best and freshest Bark; then drop in three Drops of the chemical Oil of Mint, and with Syrup of Cloves make it into the Consistence of an Electuary or Bolus, for 12 Doses for a grown Person, to be taken at the Distance of three or four Hours from each other, while the Patient is awake, according to the longer or shorter Intermission of the Fever. I have also known, particularly in obstinate autumnal Agues there, an Infusion of two Ounces of the best Bark in fine Powder, or two Ounces and a half in gross Powder, in a Quart of the best Brandy, for three or four Days (a small Wine Glass to be taken by grown Persons at the Distance of from four to six Hours) effectually and speedily terminate such intermittent Agues, as had given but little Way to the Bark in Substance. This was certainly more suitable for those who were not of a light delicate Habit and Temperament, and who had not been remarkable for their Abstinence from strong Liquors: the inebriating Force of the Brandy being remarkably lessened, by the Addition and long Infusion of the Bark. These Facts which I saw, are the less to be wondered at, as in such inveterate, but perfectly clear and distinct Intermittents, both the State of the Fluids and Solids seem very opposite to their State in an acutely inflammatory Disease. _K._ __Chapter XIX.__ _Of the Erisipelas, and the Bites of Animals._ __Sect.__ 273. The Erisipelas, commonly called in English, St. Anthony's Fire, and in Swisserland _the Violet_, is sometimes but a very slight Indisposition which appears on the Skin, without the Person's being sensible of any other Disorder; and it most commonly breaks out either in the Face, or on the Legs. The Skin becomes tense, or stiff, rough and red; but this Redness disappears on pressing the Spot with a Finger, and returns on removing it. The Patient feels in the Part affected a burning Heat, which makes him uneasy, and sometimes hinders him from sleeping. The Disorder increases for the Space of two or three Days; continues at its Height one or two, and then abates. Soon after this, that Part of the Skin that was affected, falls off in pretty large Scales, and the Disorder entirely terminates. § 274. But sometimes this Malady is considerably more severe, beginning with a violent Shivering, which is succeeded by a burning Heat, a vehement Head-ach, a Sickness at Heart, as it is commonly termed, or Reachings to vomit, which continue till the _Erisipelas_ appears, which sometimes does not happen before the second, or even the third Day. The Fever then abates, and the Sickness goes off, though frequently a less Degree of Fever, and of Sickness or Loathing remain, during the whole Time, in which the Disease is in its increasing State. When the Eruption and Inflammation happen in the Face, the Head-ach continues, until the Decline, or going off, of the Disease. The Eyelid swells, the Eye is closed, and the Patient has not the least Ease or Tranquillity. It often passes from one Cheek to the other, and extends successively over the Forehead, the Neck, and the Nape of the Neck; under which Circumstance the Disease is of a more than ordinary Duration. Sometimes also when it exists in a very high Degree, the Fever continues, the Brain is obstructed and oppressed; the Patient raves; his Case becomes extremely dangerous; whence sometimes, if he is not very judiciously assisted, he dies, especially if of an advanced Age. A violent _Erisipelas_ on the Neck brings on a Quinsey, which may prove very grievous, or even fatal. When it attacks the Leg, the whole Leg swells up; and the Heat and Irritation from it is extended up to the Thigh. Whenever this Tumour is considerable, the Part it seizes is covered with small Pustules filled with a clear watery Humour, resembling those which appear after a Burn, and drying afterwards and scaling off. I have sometimes observed, especially when this Distemper affected the Face, that the Humour, which issued from these little Pustules, was extremely thick or glewy, and formed a thick Scurf, or Scabs nearly resembling those of sucking Children: they have continued fast on the Face many Days before they fell off. When the Disease may be termed violent, it sometimes continues eight, ten, twelve Days at the same Height; and is at last terminated by a very plentiful Sweat, that may sometimes be predicted by a Restlessness attended with Shiverings, and a little Anxiety of some Hours Duration. Throughout the Progress of the Disease, the whole Skin is very dry, and even the Inside of the Mouth. § 275. An _Erisipelas_ rarely comes to Suppuration, and when it does, the Suppuration is always unkindly, and much disposed to degenerate into an Ulcer. Sometimes a malignant kind of _Erisipelas_ is epidemical, seizing a great Number of Persons, and frequently terminating in Gangrenes. § 276. This Distemper often shifts its Situation; it sometimes retires suddenly; but the Patient is uneasy and disordered; he has a Propensity to vomit, with a sensible Anxiety and Heat: the _Erisipelas_ appears again in a different Part, and he feels himself quite relieved from the preceding Symptoms. But if instead of re-appearing on some other Part of the Surface, the Humour is thrown upon the Brain, or the Breast, he dies within a few Hours; and these fatal Changes and Translations sometimes occur, without the least Reason or Colour for ascribing them either to any Error of the Patient, or of his Physician. If the Humour has been transferred to the Brain, the Patient immediately becomes delirious, with a highly flushed Visage, and very quick sparkling Eyes: very soon after he proves downright frantic, and goes off in a Lethargy. If the Lungs are attacked, the Oppression, Anxiety, and Heat are inexpressible. § 277. There are some Constitutions subject to a very frequent, and, as it were, to an habitual _Erisipelas_. If it often affects the Face, it is generally repeated on the same Side of it, and that Eye is, at length, considerably weakened by it. § 278. This Distemper results from two Causes; the one, an acrid sharp Humour, which is commonly bilious, diffused through the Mass of Blood; the other consists in that Humour's not being sufficiently discharged by Perspiration. § 279. When this Disease is of a gentle Nature, such as it is described § 273, it will be sufficient to keep up a very free Perspiration, but without heating the Patient; and the best Method to answer this Purpose is putting him upon the Regimen so often already referred to, with a plentiful Use of Nitre in Elder Tea. Flesh, Eggs and Wine are prohibited of Course, allowing the Patient a little Pulse and ripe Fruits. He should drink Elder Flower Tea abundantly, and take half a Drachm of Nitre every three Hours; or, which amounts to the same Thing, let three Drachms of Nitre be dissolved in as much Infusion of Elder Flowers, as he can drink in twenty-four Hours. Nitre may be given too in a Bolus with Conserve of Elder-berries. These Medicines keep the Body open, and increase Urine and Perspiration. § 280. When the Distemper prevails in a severer Degree, if the Fever is very high, and the Pulse, at the same Time, strong or hard, it may be necessary to bleed once: but this should never be permitted in a large Quantity at a Time in this Disease; it being more adviseable, if a sufficient Quantity has not been taken at once, to bleed a second Time, and even a third, if the Fever should prove very high, as it often does, and that sometimes in so violent a Degree, as to render it extremely dangerous: and in some such Cases Nature has sometimes saved the Patients by effecting a large Hemorrhage, or Bleeding, to the Quantity of four or five Pounds. This Conduct a very intelligent and prudent Physician may presume to imitate; but I dare not advise the same Conduct to that Class of Physicians, for which only I write: it being safer for them to use repeated Bleedings in such Cases, than one in an excessive Quantity. These erisipelatous Fevers are often excited by a Person's being too long over-heated. After Bleeding the Patient is to be restrained to his Regimen; Glysters are to be given until there is a sensible Abatement of the Fever; and he should drink the Barley Water freely, Nº. 3. When the Fever is somewhat diminished, either the Purge Nº. 23 should be given, or a few Doses every Morning of Cream of Tartar Nº. 24. Purging is absolutely necessary to carry off the stagnant Bile, which is generally the first Cause of the violent Degrees of this Distemper. It may sometimes be really necessary too, if the Disease is very tedious; if the Loathing and Sickness at Stomach is obstinate; the Mouth ill-favoured, and the Tongue foul, (provided there be only a slight Fever, and no Fear of an Inflammation) to give the Medicines Nº. 34 or 35, which, in Consequence of the Agitation, the Shaking they occasion, remove these Impediments still better than Purges. It commonly happens that this Disease is more favourable after these Evacuations; nevertheless it is sometimes necessary to repeat them the next Day, or the next but one; especially if the Malady affects the Head. Purging is the true Evacuation for curing it, whenever it attacks this Part. By carrying off the Cause of the Disease, they diminish it, and prevent its worst Effects. Whenever, even after these Evacuations, the Fever still continues to be very severe, the Patient should take every two Hours, or occasionally, oftner, two Spoonfuls of the Prescription Nº. 10, added to a Glass of Ptisan. It will be very useful, when this Disease is seated in the Head or Face, to bathe the Legs frequently in warm Water; and where it is violent there, also to apply Sinapisms to the Soles of the Feet. I have seen this Application, in about four Hours attract, or draw down an _Erisipelas_ to the Legs, which had spread over the Nose, and both the Eyes. When the Distemper once begins to go off by Sweating, this should be promoted by Elder-flower Tea and Nitre (See § 279) and the Sweating may be encouraged to Advantage for some Hours. § 281. The best Applications that can be made to the affected Part are 1st, The Herb Robert, a Kind of _Geranium_, or Crane's-Bill; or Chervil, or Parsley, or Elder Flowers: and if the Complaint be of a very mild Disposition, it may be sufficient to apply a very soft smooth Linen over it, which some People dust over with a little dry Meal. 2, If there is a very considerable Inflammation, and the Patient is so circumstanced as to be very tractable and regularly attended, Flanels wrung out of a strong Decoction of Elder-flowers and applied warm, afford him the speediest Ease and Relief. By this simple Application I have appeased the most violent Pains of a St. Anthony's Fire, which is the most cruel Species of an Erisipelas, and has some peculiar Marks or Symptoms extraordinary. 3, The Plaister of Smalt, and Smalt itself Nº. 46, are also very successfully employed in this Disease. This Powder, the farinaceous, or mealy ones, or others cried up for it, agree best when a thin watery Humour distills or weeps from the little Vesications attending it, which it is convenient to absorb by such Applications; without which Precaution it might gall, or even ulcerate the Part. All other Plaisters, which are partly compounded of greasy, or of resinous Substances, are very dangerous: they often repel, or strike in the _Erisipelas_, occasioning it to ulcerate, or even to gangrene. If People who are naturally subject to this Disease should apply any such Plaister to their Skin, even in its soundest State, an _Erisipelas_ is the speedy Consequence. § 282. Whenever the Humour occasioning the Distemper is repelled, and thrown upon the Brain, the Throat, the Lungs, or any internal Part, the Patient should be bled; Blisters must be applied to the Legs; and Elder Tea, with Nitre dissolved in it, should be plentifully drank. § 283. People who are liable to frequent Returns of an Erisipelas, should very carefully avoid using Milk, Cream, and all fat and viscid, or clammy Food, Pies, brown Meat, Spices, thick and heady Liquors, a sedentary Life, the more active Passions, especially Rage, and, if possible, all Chagrin too. Their Food should chiefly consist of Herbage, Fruits, of Substances inclining to Acidity, and which tend to keep the Body open; they should drink Water, and some of the light white Wines; by no Means omitting the frequent Use of Cream of Tartar. A careful Conformity to these Regulations is of real Importance, as, besides the Danger of the frequent Visitations of this Disease, they denote some slight Indispositions of the Liver and the Gall-bladder; which, if too little attended to, might in Time prove very troublesome and pernicious. Such mineral Waters as are gently opening are very proper for these Constitutions, as well as the Juice of Succory, and clarified Whey, of which they should take about three Pints every Morning, during the five or six Summer Months. This becomes still more efficacious, if a little Cream of Tartar and Honey be added to it. _Of the Stings, or little Wounds, by Animals._ § 284. The Stings or little Bites of Animals, frequently producing a kind of _Erisipelas_, I shall add a very few Words concerning them in this Place. Of the Serpents in this Country none but the Vipers are poisonous; and none of these are found except at _Baume_, where there is a _Viperary_, if we may be allowed that Word. We have no Scorpions, which are somewhat poisonous; our Toads are not in the least so: whence the only Stings we are exposed to, are those of Bees, Wasps, Hornets, Muskitos or Gnats, and Dragon [71] Flies: all of which are sometimes attended with severe Pain, a Swelling, and a very considerable erisipelatous Redness; which, if it happens in the Face, sometimes entirely closes the Eyes up; occasioning also a Fever, Pains of the Head, Restlessness, and Sickness at Heart; and, when the Pains are in a violent Degree, Faintings and Convulsions, though always without any mortal Consequence. These Symptoms go off naturally within a few Days, without any Assistance: Nevertheless they may either be prevented, diminished in Degree, or shortned in Duration. [71] These, in some Parts of America, are called Muskito Hawks; but we do not recollect their biting there. _K._ 1, By extracting the Sting of the Animal, if it is left behind. 2, By a continual Application of one of the Remedies directed § 281, Article 1 and 2, particularly the Infusion of Elder-flowers, to which a little Venice Treacle is added; or by covering the Part affected with a Pultice, made of Crum of Bread, Milk, Honey, and a little Venice Treacle. [72] [72] Pounded Parsley is one of the most availing Applications in such Accidents. _E.L._ 3, By bathing the Legs of the Person stung repeatedly in warm Water. 4, By retrenching a little of their customary Food, especially at Night, and by making them drink an Infusion of Elder-flowers, with the Addition of a little Nitre. Oil, if applied very quickly after the Sting, sometimes prevents the Appearance of any Swelling, and from thence the Pains that attend it. __Chapter XX.__ _Of spurious, or false Inflammations of the Breast, and of spurious, bilious, Pleurisies._ __Sect.__ 285. The Inflammation of the Breast and that Pleurisy, which is called _bilious_, are the same Disease. It is properly a putrid Fever, attended with an Infarction or Stuffing of the Lungs, though without Pain; in which Circumstance it is called a putrid or bilious Peripneumony: but when attended with a Pain of the Side, a Stitch, it is called a spurious or bastard Pleurisy. § 286. The Signs which distinguish these Diseases from the inflammatory ones of the same Name, described Chap. IV and V, are a less hard and less strong, but a quicker Pulse, though unaccompanied with the same Symptoms which constitute the inflammatory ones (See § 47 and 90). The Mouth is foul, and has a Sensation of Bitterness; the Patient is infested with a sharp and dry Heat; he has a Feeling of Heaviness and Anxiety all about his Stomach, with Loathings: he is less flushed and red in these, than in the inflammatory Diseases, but rather a little yellow. He has a dejected wan Look; his Urine resembles that in putrid Fevers, and not that of inflammatory ones; and he has very often a small bilious Looseness, which is extremely offensive. The Skin is commonly very dry in this Disease; the Humour spit up is less thick, less reddish, and rather more yellow than in the inflammatory Diseases of the same Names. § 287. They must be treated after the manner of putrid Fevers, as in § 241. Supposing some little Degree of Inflammation to be combined with the Disease, it may be removed by a single Bleeding. After this the Patient is to drink Barley Water Nº. 3, to make Use of Glysters; and as soon as all Symptoms of any Inflammation wholly disappear, he is to take the vomiting and purging Draught Nº. 34. But the utmost Caution must be taken not to give it, before every Appearance of any Inflammation is totally removed; as giving it sooner would be certain Death to the Sick: and it is dreadful but to think of agitating, by a Vomit, Lungs that are inflamed, and overloaded with Blood, whose Vessels burst and discharge themselves, only from the Force of Expectoration. After an Interval of some Days, he may be purged again with the Medicine Nº. 23. The Prescription Nº. 25 succeeds also very well as a Vomit. If the Fever is violent, he must drink plentifully of the Potion Nº. 10. Blisters to the Legs are very serviceable, when the Load and Oppression are not considerably abated after general Evacuations. § 288. The false Inflammation of the Breast is an Overfulness or Obstruction in the Lungs, accompanied with a Fever; and it is caused by extremely thick and tenacious Humours; and not by a really inflammatory Blood, or by any putrid or bilious Humour. § 289. This Distemper happens more frequently in the Spring, than in any other Season. Old Men, puny, ill-constitutioned Children, languid Women, feeble young Men, and particularly such as have worn their Constitutions out by drinking, are the Subjects most frequently attacked by it; especially if they have used but little Exercise throughout the Winter: if they have fed on viscid, mealy and fat Aliments, as Pastry, Chesnuts, thick Milk or Pap, and Cheese. All their Humours have contracted a thick glutinous Quality; they are circulated with Difficulty, and when Heat or Exercise in the Spring increases their Motion at once, the Humours, already stuffing up the Lungs, still more augment that Plenitude, whence these vital Organs are fatally extended, and the Patient dies. § 290. This Distemper is known to exist, 1, By the previous Existence of the Causes already mentioned. 2, By the Symptoms which precede and usher it in. For Example, the Patient many Days before-hand has a slight Cough; a small Oppression when he moves about; a little Restlessness, and is sometimes a little choleric or fretful. His Countenance is higher coloured than in Health; he has a Propensity to sleep, but attended with Confusion and without Refreshment, and has sometimes an extraordinary Appetite. 3, When this State has continued for some Days, there comes on a cold Shivering, though more considerable for its Duration than its Violence; it is succeeded by a moderate Degree of Heat, but that attended with much Inquietude and Oppression. The sick Person cannot confine himself to the Bed; but walks to and fro in his Chamber, and is greatly dejected. The Pulse is weak and pretty quick; the Urine is sometimes but little changed from that in Health; at other Times it is discharged but in a small Quantity, and is higher coloured: he coughs but moderately, and does not expectorate, or cough up, but with Difficulty. The Visage becomes very red, and even almost livid; he can neither keep awake, nor sleep well; he raves for some Moments, and then his Head grows clear again. Sometimes it happens, especially to Persons of advanced Age, that this State suddenly terminates in a mortal Swoon or Fainting: at other Times and in other Cases, the Oppression and Anguish increase; the Patient cannot breathe but when sitting up, and that with great Difficulty and Agony: the Brain is utterly disturbed and embarrassed; this State lasts for some Hours, and then terminates of a sudden. § 291. This is a very dangerous Distemper; because, in the first Place, it chiefly attacks those Persons whose Temperament and Constitution are deprived of the ordinary Resources for Health and Recovery: in the second Place, because it is of a precipitate Nature, the Patient sometimes dying on the third Day, and but seldom surviving the seventh; while the Cause of it requires a more considerable Term for its Removal or Mitigation. Besides which, if some Indications present for the Employment of a Remedy, there are frequently others which forbid it; and all that seems to be done is, as follows; 1, If the Patient has still a pretty good Share of Health; if he is not of too advanced an Age; if the Pulse has a perceivable Hardness, and yet at the same Time some Strength; if the Weather is dry, and the Wind blows from the North, he should be bled once, to a moderate Quantity. But if the greater Part of these Circumstances are wanting, Bleeding would be very prejudicial. Were we obliged to establish some general and positive Rule in this Case, it were better to exclude Bleeding, than to admit it. 2, The Stomach and the Bowels should be unloaded from their viscid glutinous Contents; and the Medicines which succeed the best in this Respect are Nº. 35, when the Symptoms shew there is a great Necessity for vomiting, and there is no Inflammation; or the Prescription Nº. 25, which after vomiting, purges by Stool, promotes Urine, breaks down and divides the viscid Humours that occasion the Disease, and increase Perspiration. When we are afraid of hazarding the Agitation of a Vomit and its Consequences, the Potion, Nº. 11 may be given; but we must be very cautious, in Regard to old Men, even with this; as such may expire during the Operation of it. 3, They should, from the Beginning of the Disease, drink plentifully of the Ptisan Nº. 26, which is the best Drink in this Disease; or that of Nº. 12, adding half a Dram of Nitre to every Pint of it. 4, A Cup of the Mixture Nº. 8 must be taken every two Hours. 5. Blisters are to be applied to the Insides of the Legs. When the Case is very doubtful and perplexing, it were best to confine ourselves to the three last-mentioned Remedies, which have often been successful in severe Degrees of this Disease; and which can occasion no ill Consequence. § 292. When this Malady invades old People, though they partly recover, they never recover perfectly, entirely, from it: and if due Precaution is not taken, they are very liable to fall into a Dropsy of the Breast after it. § 293. The spurious or false Pleurisy is a Distemper that does not affect the Lungs, but only the Teguments, the Skin, and the Muscles which cover the Ribs. It is the Effect of a rheumatic Humour thrown upon these Parts, in which, as it produces very sharp Pains resembling that which is called a _Stitch_, it has from this Circumstance, been termed a Pleurisy. It is generally supposed by the meer Multitude, and even by some of a different Rank, that a false Pleurisy is more dangerous than a genuine, a true one; but this is a Mistake. It is often ushered in by a Shivering, and almost ever attended with a little Fever, a small Cough, and a slight Difficulty of breathing; which, as well as the Cough, is occasioned from the Circumstance of a Patient's (who feels Pain in Respiration, or Breathing) checking Breathing as much as he can; this accumulates a little too much Blood in the Lungs; but yet he has no Anguish, nor the other Symptoms of acute true Pleurisies. In some Patients this Pain is extended, almost over the whole Breast, and to the Nape of the Neck. The sick Person cannot repose himself on the Side affected. This Disorder is not more dangerous than a Rheumatism, except in two Cases; 1, When the Pain is so very severe, that the Patient strongly endeavours not to breathe at all, which brings on a great Infarction or Stoppage in the Lungs. 2, When this Humour, like any other rheumatic one, is transferred to some internal Part. § 294. It must be treated exactly like a Rheumatism. See § 168 and 169. After bleeding once or more, a Blister applied to the affected Part is often attended with a very good Effect: This being indeed the Kind of [73] Pleurisy, in which it particularly agrees. [73] The Seneka Rattle-Snake root, already recommended in true Pleurisies, will, with the greatest Probability, be found not less effectual in these false ones, in which the Inflammation of the Blood is less. The Method of giving it may be seen P. 118, N. ([26].) By Dr. _Tissot's_ having never mentioned this valuable Simple throughout his Work, it may be presumed, that when he wrote it, this Remedy had not been admitted into the Apothecaries Shops in _Swisserland_. _K._ § 295. This Malady sometimes gives Way to the first Bleeding; often terminating on the third, fourth or fifth Day, by a very plentiful Sweat, and rarely lasting beyond the seventh. Sometimes it attacks a Person very suddenly, after a Stoppage of Perspiration; and then, if at once before the Fever commences, and has had Time to inflame the Blood, the Patient takes some _Faltrank_, it effects a speedy Cure by restoring Perspiration. They are such Cases as these, or that mentioned § 96, which have given this Composition the Reputation it has obtained in this Disease: a Reputation nevertheless, which has every Year proved tragical in its Consequences to many Peasants, who being deceived by some misleading Resemblances in this Distemper, have rashly and ignorantly made Use of it in true inflammatory Pleurisies. __Chapter XXI.__ _Of the Cholic and its different Kinds._ __Sect.__ 296. The Appellation of a Cholic is commonly given to all Pains of the Belly indiscriminately; but I apply it in this Place only to such as attack the Stomach, or the Intestines, the Guts. Cholics may and do result from very many Causes; and the greater Number of Cholics are chronical or tedious Complaints, being more common among the inactive Inhabitants of Cities, and Workmen in sedentary Trades, than among Country People. Hence I shall treat here only of the small Variety of Cholics, which happen the most usually in Villages. I have already proved that the fatal Events of some Distempers were occasioned by endeavouring to force the Patients into Sweats; and the same unhappy Consequences have attended Cholics, from accustoming the Subjects of this Disease to Drams, and hot inflaming spirituous Liquors, with an Intention to expel the Wind. _Of the inflammatory Cholic._ § 297. The most violent and dangerous kind of Cholic is that, which arises from an Inflammation of the Stomach, or of the Intestines. It begins most commonly without any Shivering, by a vehement Pain in the Belly, which gradually becomes still more so. The Pulse grows quick and hard; a burning Pain is felt through the whole Region of the Belly; sometimes there is a watery _Diarrhoea_, or Purging; at other Times the Belly is rather costive, which is attended with Vomiting, a very embarrassing and dangerous Symptom: the Countenance becomes highly flushed; the Belly tense and hard; neither can it be touched scarcely without a cruel Augmentation of the Patient's Pain, who is also afflicted with extreme Restlessness; his Thirst is very great, being unquenchable by Drink; the Pain often extends to the Loins, where it proves very sharp, and severe; little Urine is made, and that very red, and with a kind of burning Heat. The tormented Patient has not a Moment's Rest, and now and then raves a little. If the Disease is not removed or moderated, before the Pains rise to their utmost Height and Violence, the Patient begins at length to complain less; the Pulse becomes less strong and less hard than before, but quicker: his Face first abates of its Flush and Redness, and soon after looks pale; the Parts under the Eyes become livid; the Patient sinks into a low stupid Kind of _Delirium_, or Raving; his Strength entirely deserts him; the Face, Hands, Feet, and the whole Body, the Belly only excepted, become cold: the Surface of the Belly appears bluish; extreme Weakness follows, and the Patient dies. There frequently occurs, just a Moment before he expires, an abundant Discharge of excessively foetid Matter by Stool; and during this Evacuation he dies with his Intestines quite gangrened, or mortified. When the Distemper assaults the Stomach, the Symptoms are the very same, but the Pain is felt higher up, at the Pit of the Stomach. Almost every thing that is swallowed is cast up again; the Anguish of the tortured Patient is terrible, and the Raving comes on very speedily. This Disease proves mortal in a few Hours. § 298. The only Method of succeeding in the Cure of it is as follows: 1, Take a very large Quantity of Blood from the Arm; this almost immediately diminishes the Violence of the Pains, and allays the Vomiting: besides its contributing to the greater Success of the other Remedies. It is often necessary to repeat this Bleeding within the Space of two Hours. 2, Whether the Patient has a Looseness, or has not, a Glyster of a Decoction of Mallows, or of Barley Water and Oil, should be given every two Hours. 3, The Patient should drink very plentifully of Almond Milk Nº. 4; or a Ptisan of Mallow Flowers, or of Barley, all which should be warm. 4, Flanels dipt in hot, or very warm Water should be continually applied over the Belly, shifting them every Hour, or rather oftner; for in this Case they very quickly grow dry. 5, If the Disease, notwithstanding all this, continues very obstinate and violent, the Patient should be put into a warm Water Bath, the extraordinary Success of which I have observed. When the Distemper is over, that is to say, when the Pains have terminated, and the Fever has ceased, so that the Patient recovers a little Strength, and gets a little Sleep, it will be proper to give him a Purge, but a very gentle one. Two Ounces of Manna, and a Quarter of an Ounce of Sedlitz [74] Salt dissolved in a Glass of clear Whey is generally sufficient, at this Period, to purge the most robust and hardy Bodies. Manna alone may suffice for more delicate Constitutions: as all acrid sharp Purges would be highly dangerous, with Regard to the great Sensibility and tender Condition of the Stomach, and of the Intestines after this Disease. [74] Glauber or Epsom Salt may be substituted, where the other is not to be readily procured. _K._ § 299. It is sometimes the Effect of a general Inflammation of the Blood; and is produced, like other inflammatory Diseases, by extraordinary Labour, very great Heat, heating Meats or Drinks, _&c._ It is often the Consequence of other Cholics which have been injudiciously treated, and which otherwise would not have degenerated into inflammatory ones; as I have many Times seen these Cholics introduced after the Use of heating Medicines; one Instance of which may be seen § 164. § 300. Ten Days after I had recovered a Woman out of a severe Cholic, the Pains returned violently in the Night. She, supposing them to arise only from Wind, hoped to appease them by drinking a deal of distilled Walnut Water; which, far from producing any such Effect, rendered them more outrageous. They soon were heightened to a surprising Degree, which might reasonably be expected. Being sent for very early in the Morning, I found her Pulse hard, quick, short; her Belly was tense and hard; she complained greatly of her Loins: her Urine was almost entirely stopt. She past but a few Drops, which felt as it were scalding hot, and these with excessive Pain. She went very frequently to the Close-stool, with scarcely any Effect; her Anguish, Heat, Thirst, and the Dryness of her Tongue were even terrifying: and her wretched State, the Effect of the strong hot Liquor she had taken, made me very apprehensive for her. One Bleeding, to the Quantity of fourteen Ounces, somewhat abated all the Pains; she took several Glysters, and drank off a few Pots of _Orgeat_ in a few Hours. By these Means the Disease was a little mitigated; by continuing the same Drink and the Glysters the Looseness abated; the Pain of the Loins went off, and she passed a considerable Quantity of Urine, which proved turbid, and then let fall a Sediment, and the Patient recovered. Nevertheless I verily believe, if the Bleeding had been delayed two Hours longer, this spirituous Walnut Water would have been the Death of her. During the Progress of this violent Disease, no Food is to be allowed; and we should never be too inattentive to such Degrees of Pain, as sometimes remain after their Severity is over; lest a _Scirrhus_, an inward hard Tumour, should be generated, which may occasion the most inveterate and tedious Maladies. § 301. An Inflammation of the Intestines, and one of the Stomach, may also terminate in an Abscess, like an Inflammation of any other Part; and it may be apprehended that one is forming, when, though the Violence of the Pains abates, there still remains a slow, obtuse, heavy Pain, with general Inquietude, little Appetite, frequent Shiverings; the Patient at the same Time not recovering any Strength. In such Cases the Patient should be allowed no other Drinks, but what are already directed in this Chapter, and some Soops made of Pulse, or other farinaceous Food. The Breaking of the Abscess may sometimes be discovered by a slight Swoon or fainting Fit; attended with a perceivable Cessation of a Weight or Heaviness in the Part, where it was lately felt: and when the _Pus_, or ripe Matter, is effused into the Gut, the Patient sometimes has Reachings to vomit, a _Vertigo_, or Swimming in the Head, and the Matter appears in the next Stools. In this Case there remains an Ulcer within the Gut, which, if either neglected, or improperly treated, may pave the Way to a slow wasting Fever, and even to Death. Yet this I have cured by making the Patient live solely upon skimmed Milk, diluted with one third Part Water, and by giving every other Day a Glyster, consisting of equal Parts of Milk and Water, with the Addition of a little Honey. When the Abscess breaks on the Outside of the Gut, and discharges its Contents into the Cavity of the Belly, it becomes a very miserable Case, and demands such further Assistance as cannot be particularized here. _Of the bilious Cholic._ § 302. The bilious Cholic discovers itself by very acute Pains, but is seldom accompanied with a Fever; at least not until it has lasted a Day or two. And even if there should be some Degree of a Fever, yet the Pulse, though quick, is neither strong nor hard: the Belly is neither tense or stretched as it were, nor burning hot, as in the former Cholic: the Urine comes away with more Ease, and is less high-coloured: Nevertheless the inward Heat and Thirst are considerable; the Mouth is bitter; the Vomiting or Purging, when either of them attend it, discharge a yellowish Humour or Excrement; and the Patient's Head is often vertiginous or dizzy. § 303. The Method of curing this is, 1, By injecting Glysters of Whey and Honey; or, if Whey is not readily procurable, by repeating the Glyster, Nº. 5. 2, By making the Sick drink considerably of the same Whey, or of a Ptisan made of the Root of Dog's-Grass (the common Grass) and a little Juice of Lemon, for want of which, a little Vinegar and Honey may be substituted instead of it. [75] [75] Pullet, or rather Chicken Water, but very weak, may often do instead of Ptisan, or serve for a little Variety of Drink to some Patients. _E. L._--K. 3, By giving every Hour one Cup of the Medicine Nº. 32; or where this is not to be had, half a Drachm of Cream of Tartar at the same short Intervals. 4, Fomentations of warm Water and Half-baths are also very proper. 5, If the Pains are sharp and violent, in a robust strong Person, and the Pulse is strong and tense, Bleeding should be used to prevent an Inflammation. 6, No other Nourishment should be given, except some maigre Soops, made from Vegetables, and particularly of Sorrel. 7, After plentiful Dilution with the proper Drink, if no Fever supervenes; if the Pains still continue, and the Patient discharges but little by Stool, he should take a moderate Purge. That directed Nº. 47 is a very proper one. § 304. This bilious Cholic is habitual to many Persons; and may be prevented or greatly mitigated by an habitual Use of the Powder Nº. 24; by submitting to a moderate Retrenchment in the Article of Flesh-meat; and by avoiding heating and greasy Food, and the Use of Milk. _Of Cholics from Indigestions, and of Indigestion._ § 305. Under this Appellation I comprehend all those Cholics, which are either owing to any overloading Quantity of Food taken at once; or to a Mass or Accumulation of Aliments formed by Degrees in such Stomachs, as digest but very imperfectly; or which result from noxious Mixtures of Aliment in the Stomach, such as that of Milk and Acids; or from Food either not wholesome in its self, or degenerated into an unwholesome Condition. This kind of Cholic may be known from any of these Causes having preceded it; by its Pains, which are accompanied with great Restlessness, and come on by Degrees, being less fixed than in the Cholics before treated of. These Cholics are also without any Fever, Heat or Thirst, but accompanied with a Giddiness of the Head, and Efforts to vomit, and rather with a pale, than a high-coloured Visage. § 306. These Disorders, from these last Causes, are scarcely ever dangerous in themselves; but may be made such by injudicious Management, and doing more than is necessary or proper: as the only Thing to be done is to promote the Discharges by warm Drinks. There are a considerable Variety of them, which seem equally good, such as warm Water, or even cold Water with a Toast, with the Addition either of a little Sugar, or a little Salt: a light Infusion of Chamomile, or of Elder-flowers, common Tea, or Baum, it imports little which, provided the Patient drink plentifully of them: in Consequence of which the offending Matter is discharged, either by vomiting, or a considerable purging; and the speedier and more in Quantity these Discharges are, the sooner the Patient is relieved. If the Belly is remarkably full and costive, Glysters of warm Water and Salt should be injected. The Expulsion of the obstructing Matter is also facilitated, by rubbing the Belly heartily with hot Cloths. Sometimes the Humours, or other retained Contents of the Belly, are more pernicious from their Quality, than their Quantity; and then the Malady may be dissipated without the former Discharges, by the irritating sharp Humour being diluted, or even drowned, as it were, in the Abundance of small watery Drinks. When the Pains invade first in the Stomach, they become less sharp, and the Patient feels less Inquietude, as soon as the Cause of the Pain has descended out of the Stomach into the Intestines, whose Sensations are something less acute than, or somewhat different from, those of the Stomach. It is often found that after these plentiful Discharges, and when the Pains are over, there remains a very disagreeable Taste in the Mouth, resembling the Savour of rotten Eggs. This may be removed by giving some Doses of the Powder Nº. 24, and drinking largely of good Water: It is an essential Point in these Cases, to take no Food before a perfect Recovery. § 307. Some have been absurd enough in them, to fly at once to some heating Cordial Confection, to Venice Treacle, Aniseed Water, Geneva, or red Wine to stop these Evacuations; but there cannot be a more fatal Practice: since these Evacuations are the only Thing which can cure the Complaint, and to stop them is to deprive the Person, who was in Danger of drowning, of the Plank which might save him. Nay should this Endeavour of stopping them unhappily succeed, the Patient is either thrown into a putrid Fever, or some chronical tedious Malady; unless Nature, much wiser than such a miserable Assistant, should prevail over the Obstacles opposed to her Recovery, and restore the obstructed Evacuations by her own Oeconomy, in the Space of a few Days. § 308. Sometimes an Indigestion happens, with very little Pain or Cholic, but with violent Reachings to vomit, inexpressible Anguish, Faintings, and cold Sweats: and not seldom also the Malady begins, only with a very sudden and unexpected Fainting: the Patient immediately loses all his Senses, his Face is pale and wan: he has some Hickups rather than Reachings to vomit, which joined to the Smallness of his Pulse, to the Easiness of his respiring, or breathing, and to the Circumstance of his being attacked immediately, or very soon, after a Meal, makes this Disorder distinguishable from a real Apoplexy. Nevertheless, when it rises to this Height, with these terrible Symptoms, it sometimes kills in a few Hours. The first thing to be done is to throw up a sharp Glyster, in which Salt and Soap are to be dissolved; next to get down as much Salt and Water as he can swallow; and if that is ineffectual, the Powder Nº. 34 is to be dissolved in three Cups of Water; one half of which is to be given directly; and, if it does not operate in a Quarter of an Hour, the other half. Generally speaking the Patient's Sense begins to return, as soon as he begins to vomit. _Of the flatulent or windy Cholic._ § 309. Every Particular which constitutes our Food, whether solid or liquid, contains much Air, but some of them more than others. If they do not digest soon enough, or but badly, which occasions a sensible Escape of such Air; if they are such as contain an extraordinary Quantity of Air; or if the Guts being straitened or compressed any where in the Course of their Extent, prevent that Air from being equally diffused (which must occasion a greater Proportion of it in some Places) then the Stomach and the Guts are distended by this Wind; and this Distention occasions these Pains, which are called flatulent, or windy. This Sort of Cholic rarely appears alone and simple; but is often complicated with, or added, as it were, to the other Sorts, of which it is a Consequence; and is more especially joined with the Cholic from Indigestions, whose Symptoms it multiplies and heightens. It may be known, like that, by the Causes which have preceded it, by its not being accompanied either with Fever, Heat, or Thirst; the Belly's being large and full, though without Hardness, being unequal in its Largeness, which prevails more in one Part of it than in another, forming something like Pockets of Wind, sometimes in one Part, sometimes in another; and by the Patient's feeling some Ease merely from the rubbing of his Belly, as it moves the Wind about; which escaping either upwards or downwards affords him still a greater Relief. § 310. When it is combined with any different Species of the Cholic, it requires no distinct Treatment from that Species; and it is removed or dissipated by the Medicines which cure the principal Disease. Sometimes however it does happen to exist alone, and then it depends on the Windiness of the solid and liquid Food of the Person affected with it, such as the _Must_ or new Wine, Beer, especially very new Beer, certain Fruits and Garden-stuff. It may be cured by a Glyster; by chaffing the Belly with hot Cloths; by the Use of Drink moderately spiced; and especially by Camomile Tea, to which a little cordial Confection, or even Venice Treacle, may be added. When the Pains are almost entirely vanished, and there is no Fever, nor any unhealthy Degree of Heat; and if the Patient is sensible of a Weakness at Stomach, he may take a little aromatic, or spiced Wine, or even a small cordial stomachic Dram. It should be observed, that these are not to be allowed in any other Kind of Cholic. § 311. When any Person is frequently subject to cholic-like Pains, it is a Proof that the digestive Faculty is impaired; the restoring of which should be carefully attended to; without which the Health of the Patient must suffer considerably, and he must be very likely to contract many tedious and troublesome Disorders. _Of Cholics from Cold._ § 312. When any Person has been very cold, and especially in his Feet, it is not uncommon for him to be attacked, within a few Hours after it, with violent Cholic Pains, in which heating and spirituous Medicines are very pernicious: but which are easily cured by rubbing the Legs well with hot Cloths; and keeping them afterwards for a considerable Time in warm Water; advising them at the same Time to drink freely of a light Infusion of Chamomile or Elder-flowers. The Cure will be effected the sooner, if the Patient is put to Bed and sweats a little, especially in the Legs and Feet. A Woman who had put her Legs into a pretty cool Spring, after travelling in the Height of Summer, was very quickly after attacked with a most violent Cholic. She took different hot Medicines; she became still worse; she was purged, but the Distemper was still further aggravated. I was called in on the third Day, a few Hours before her Decease. In such Cases, if the Pain be excessive, it may be necessary to bleed; [76] to give a Glyster of warm Water; to keep the Legs several Hours over the Steam of hot Water, and afterwards in the Water; to drink plentifully of an Infusion of the Flowers of the Lime-tree, with a little Milk; and if the Distemper is not subdued by these Means, Blisters should be applied to the Legs, which I have known to be highly efficacious. [76] Bleeding should not be determined on too hastily in this Sort of Cholic, but rather be omitted, or deferred at least, till there be an evident Tendency to an Inflammation. _E. L._ The Propriety or Impropriety of Bleeding in a Cholic from this Cause should be determined, I think, from the State of the Person it happens to: So that Bleeding a strong Person with a firm Fibre, and a hard Pulse, may be very prudent and precautionary: But if it be a weakly lax Subject with a soft and low Pulse, there may be Room either for omitting, or for suspending it. _K._ § 313. It appears, through the Course of this Chapter, that it is necessary to be extremely on our Guard, against permitting the Use of heating and spirituous Medicines in Cholics, as they may not only aggravate, but even render them mortal. In short they should never be given, and when it is difficult to discover the real Cause of the Cholic, I advise Country People to confine themselves to the three following Remedies, which cannot be hurtful in any Sort of Cholic, and may remove as many as are not of a violent Nature. First then, let Glysters be frequently repeated. 2, Let the Patient drink warm Water plentifully, or Elder Tea. 3, Let the Belly be often fomented in pretty warm Water, which is the most preferable Fomentation of any. § 314 I have said nothing here of the Use of any Oils in this Disease, as they agree but in very few Species of Cholics, and not at all in those of which I have been treating. For this Reason I advise a total Disuse of them, since they may be of bad Consequence in many Respects. § 315. Chronical Diseases not coming within the Plan of this Work, I purposely forbear treating of any Kind of those tedious Cholics, which afflict some People for many Years: but I think it my Duty to admonish such, that their Torments being very generally occasioned by Obstructions in the _Viscera_, or different Bowels of the Belly, or by some other Fault, and more particularly in those Organs, which are intended to prepare the Bile, they should, 1, avoid with the greatest Care, the Use of sharp, hot, violent Medicines, Vomits, strong Purges, Elixirs, _&c._ 2, They should be thoroughly on their Guard against all those, who promise them a very speedy Cure, by the Assistance of some specific Remedy; and ought to look upon them as Mountebanks, into whose Hands it is highly dangerous to trust themselves. 3, They should be persuaded, or rather convinced, that they can entertain no reasonable Hope of being cured, without an exact Conformity to a proper and judicious Regimen, and a long Perseverance in a Course of mild and safe Remedies. 4, They should continually reflect with themselves, that there is little Difficulty in doing them great Mischief; and that their Complaints are of that Sort, which require the greatest Knowledge and Prudence in those Persons, to whom the Treatment and Cure of them are confided. __Chapter XXII.__ _Of the Iliac Passion, and of the Cholera-morbus._ __Sect.__ 316. These violent Diseases are fatal to many Country People, while their Neighbours are frequently so ignorant of the Cause of their Death, that Superstition has ascribed it to Poison, or to Witchcraft. § 317. The first of these, the _Miserere_, or Iliac Passion, is one of the most excruciating Distempers. If any Part of the Intestines, the Cavity of the Guts is closed up, whatever may have occasioned it, the Course or Descent of the Food they contain is necessarily stopped; in which Case it frequently happens, that that continual Motion observed in the Guts of a living Animal dissected, and which was intended to detrude, or force their Contents downwards, is propagated in a directly contrary Manner, from the Guts towards the Mouth. This Disease sometimes begins after a Constipation, or Costiveness, of some Days; at other Times without that Costiveness having been preceded by Pains in any Part of the Belly, especially around the Navel; but which Pains, gradually increasing after their Commencement, at length become extremely violent, and throw the Patient into excessive Anguish. In some of these Cases a hard Tumour may be felt, which surrounds the Belly like a Cord. The Flatulences within become very audible, some of them are discharged upwards; in a little Time after, Vomitings come on, which increase till the Patient has thrown up all he had taken in, with a still further Augmentation of the excessive Pain. With the first of his Vomitings he only brings up the last Food he had taken, with his Drink and some yellowish Humour: but what comes up afterwards proves stinking; and when the Disease is greatly heightened, they have what is called the Smell of Excrement or Dung; but which rather resembles that of a putrid dead Body. It happens too sometimes, that if the Sick have taken Glysters composed of Materials of a strong Smell, the same Smell is discernible in the Matter they vomit up. I confess however I never saw either real Excrements, or the Substance of their Glysters, brought up, much less the Suppositories that were introduced into the Fundament: and were it credible that Instances of this Kind had occurred, they must be allowed very difficult to account for. Throughout this whole Term of the Disease, the Patient has not a single Discharge by Stool; the Belly is greatly distended; the Urine not seldom suppressed, and at other Times thick and foetid. The Pulse, which at first was pretty hard, becomes quick and small; the Strength entirely vanishes; a Raving comes on; a Hiccup almost constantly supervenes, and sometimes general Convulsions; the Extremities grow cold, the Pulse scarcely perceivable; the Pain and the Vomiting cease, and the Patient dies very quickly after. § 318. As this Disease is highly dangerous, the Moment it is strongly apprehended, it is necessary to oppose it by proper Means and Remedies: the smallest Error may be of fatal Consequence, and hot inflaming Liquids have been known to kill the Patient in a few Hours. I was called in the second Day of the Disease to a young Person, who had taken a good deal of Venice Treacle: Nothing could afford her any Relief, and she died early on the third Day. This Disease should be treated precisely in the same Manner as an inflammatory Cholic; the principal Difference being, that in the former there are no Stools, but continual Vomitings. 1, First of all then the Patient should be plentifully bled, if the Physician has been called in early enough, and before the Sick has lost his Strength. 2, He should receive opening Glysters made of a Decoction of Barley Water, with five or six Ounces of Oil in each. 3, We should endeavour to allay the violent Efforts to vomit, by giving every two Hours a Spoonful of the Mixture Nº. 48. 4, The Sick should drink plentifully, in very small Quantities, very often repeated, of an appeasing, diluting, refreshing Drink, which tends at the same Time to promote both Stools and Urine. Nothing is preferable to the Whey Nº. 49, if it can be had immediately: if not, give simple clear Whey sweetened with Honey, and the Drinks prescribed § 298, Art. 3. 5, The Patient is to be put into a warm Bath, and kept as long as he can bear it, repeating it as often daily too, as his Strength will permit. 6, After Bleeding, warm Bathing, repeated Glysters and Fomentations, if each and all of these have availed nothing; the Fume or Smoak of Tobacco may be introduced in the Manner of a Glyster, of which I shall speak further, in the Chapter on Persons drowned. I cured a Person of this Disease, by conveying him into a Bath, immediately after bleeding him, and giving him a Purge on his going into the Bath. § 319. If the Pain abates before the Patient has quite lost his Strength; if the Pulse improves at the same Time; if the Vomitings are less in Number, and in the Quantity of the Matter brought up; if that Matter seems in a less putrid offensive State; if he feels some Commotion and Rumbling in his Bowels; if he has some little Discharge by Stool; and if at the same Time he feels himself a little stronger than before, his Cure may reasonably be expected; but if he is otherwise circumstanced he will soon depart. It frequently happens, a single Hour before Death, that the Pain seems to vanish, and a surprising Quantity of extremely foetid Matter is discharged by Stool: the Patient is suddenly seized with a great Weakness and Sinking, falls into a cold Sweat, and immediately expires. § 320. This is the Disease which the common People attribute to, and term, the _Twisting of the Guts_; and in which they make the Patients swallow Bullets, or large Quantities of Quick-silver. This twisting, tangling, or Knoting of the Guts is an utter, an impossible Chimera; for how can they admit of such a Circumstance, as one of their Extremities, their Ends, is connected to the Stomach, and the other irremoveably fastened to the Skin of the Fork or Cleft of the Buttocks? In Fact this Disease results from a Variety of Causes, which have been discovered on a Dissection of those who have died of it. It were to be wished indeed this prudent Custom, so extremely conducive to enrich, and to perfect, the Art of Physick, were to prevail more generally; and which we ought rather to consider as a Duty to comply with, than a Difficulty to submit to; as it is our Duty to contribute to the Perfection of a Science, on which the Happiness of Mankind so considerably depends. I shall not enter into a Detail of these Causes; but whatever they are, the Practice of swallowing Bullets in the Disease is always pernicious, and the like Use of Mercury must be often so. Each of these pretended Remedies may aggravate the Disease, and contribute an insurmountable Obstacle to the Cure--Of that Iliac Passion, which is sometimes a Consequence of Ruptures, I shall treat in another Place. _Of the Cholera-morbus._ § 321. This Disease is a sudden, abundant, and painful Evacuation by vomiting and by Stool. It begins with much Flatulence, or Wind, with Swelling and slight Pains in the Belly, accompanied with great Dejection; and followed with large Evacuations either by Stool or by Vomit at first, but whenever either of them has begun, the other quickly follows. The Matter evacuated is either yellowish, green, brown, whitish, or black; the Pains in the Belly violent; the Pulse, almost constantly feverish, is sometimes strong at first, but soon sinks into Weakness, in Consequence of the prodigious Discharge. Some Patients purge a hundred Times in the Compass of a few Hours: they may even be seen to fall away; and if the Disease exists in a violent Degree, they are scarcely to be known within three or four Hours from the Commencement of these Discharges. After a great Number of them they are afflicted with Spasms, or Cramps, in their Legs, Thighs, and Arms, which torment them as much as the Pains in the Belly. When the Disease rages too highly to be asswaged, Hiccups, Convulsions and a Coldness of the Extremities approach; there is a scarcely intermitting Succession of fainting, or swooning Fits, the Patient dying either in one of them, or in Convulsions. § 322. This Disease, which constantly depends on a Bile raised to the highest Acrimony, commonly prevails towards the End of July and in August: especially if the Heats have been very violent, and there have been little or no Summer Fruits, which greatly conduce to attempt: and allay the putrescent Acrimony of the Bile. § 323. Nevertheless, however violent this Distemper may be, it is less dangerous, and also less tormenting than the former, many Persons recovering from it. 1, Our first Endeavour should be to dilute, or even to drown this acrid Bile, by Draughts, by Deluges, of the most mitigating Drinks; the irritation being so very great, that every Thing having the least Sharpness is injurious. Wherefore the patient should continually take in, by Drink, and by Way of Glyster, either Barley-Water, Almond-Milk, or pure Water, with one eighth Part Milk, which has succeeded very well in my Practice. Or he may use a very light Decoction, or Ptisan, as it were, of Bread, which is made by gently boiling a Pound of toasted Bread, in three or four Pots of Water for half an Hour. In _Swisserland_ we prefer Oat bread. We also successfully use pounded Rye, making a light Ptisan of it. A very light thin Soup made of a Pullet, a Chicken, or of one Pound of lean Veal, in three Pots of Water, is very proper too in this Disease. Whey is also employed to good Purpose; and in those Places, where it can easily be had, Butter-milk is the best Drink of any. But, whichever of these Drinks shall be thought preferable, it is a necessary Point to drink very plentifully of it; and the Glysters should be given every two Hours. 2, If the Patient is of a robust Constitution, and sanguine Complexion, with a strong Pulse at the Time of the Attack, and the Pains are very severe, a first, and in some Cases, a second Bleeding, very early in the Invasion, asswages the Violence of the Malady, and allows more Leisure for the Assistance of other Remedies. I have seen the Vomiting cease almost entirely, after the first Bleeding. The Rage of this Disease abates a little after a Duration of five or six Hours: we must not however, during this Remission or Abatement, forbear to throw in proper Remedies; since it returns soon after with great Force, which Return however indicates no Alteration of the Method already entered upon. 3, In general the warm Bath refreshes the Patient while he continues in it; but the Pains frequently return soon after he is taken out, which, however, is no Reason for omitting it, since it has frequently been found to give a more durable Relief. The Patient should continue in it a considerable Time, and, during that Time, he should take six or seven Glasses of the Potion Nº. 32, which has been very efficacious in this Disease. By these Means the Vomiting has been stopt; and the Patient, upon going out of the Bath, has had several large Stools, which very considerably diminished the Violence of the Disease. 4, If the Patient's Attendants are terrified by these great Evacuations, and determine to check them (however prematurely) by Venice Treacle, Mint Water, Syrup of white Poppies, called Diacodium, by Opium or Mithridate, it either happens, that the Disease and all its Symptoms are heightened, to which I have been a Witness; or, if the Evacuations should actually be stopt, the Patient, in Consequence of it, is thrown into a more dangerous Condition. I have been obliged to give a Purge, in order to renew the Discharges, to a Man, who had been thrown into a violent Fever, attended with a raging _Delirium_, by a Medicine composed of Venice Treacle, Mithridate and Oil. Such Medicines ought not to be employed, until the Smallness of the Pulse, great Weakness, violent and almost continual Cramps, and even the Insufficience of the Patient's Efforts to vomit, make us apprehensive of his sinking irrecoverably. In such Circumstances indeed he should take, every Quarter or half Quarter of an Hour, a Spoonful of the Mixture Nº. 50, still continuing the diluting Drinks. After the first Hour, they should only be given every Hour, and that only to the Extent of eight Doses. But I desire to insist upon it here, that this Medicine should not be given too early in this Distemper. § 324. If the Patient is likely to recover, the Pains and the Evacuations gradually abate; the Thirst is less; the Pulse continues very quick, but it becomes regular. There have been Instances of their Propensity to a heavy kind of Drowsiness at this Time; for perfect refreshing Sleep advances but slowly after this Disease. It will still be proper to persevere in the Medicines already directed, though somewhat less frequently. And now we may begin to allow the Patient a few Soups from farinaceous mealy Substances; and as soon as the Evacuations accompanying this Disease are evidently ceased, and the Pains are vanished; though an acute Sensibility and great Weakness continues, beside such Soups, he may be allowed some new-laid Eggs, very lightly boiled, or even raw, for some Days. After this he must be referred to the Regimen so frequently recommended to Persons in a State of Recovery: when the concurring Use of the Powder Nº. 24, taken twice a Day, will greatly assist to hasten and to establish his Health. __Chapter XXIII.__ _Of a Diarrhoea, or Looseness._ __Sect.__ 325. Every one knows what is meant by a Looseness or Purging, which the Populace frequently call a Flux, and sometimes a Cholic. There are certain very chronical, or tedious and obstinate ones, which arise from some essential Fault in the Constitution. Of such, as foreign to my Plan, I shall say nothing. Those which come on suddenly, without any preceding Disorder, except sometimes a slight Qualm or short Loathing, and a Pain in the Loins and Knees; which are not attended with smart Pains nor a Fever (and frequently without any Pain, or any other Complaint) are oftener of Service than prejudicial. They carry off a Heap of Matter that may have been long amassed and corrupted in the Body; which, if not discharged, might have produced some Distemper; and, far from weakening the Body, such Purgings as these render it more strong, light and active. § 326. Such therefore ought by no Means to be stopped, nor even speedily checked: they generally cease of themselves, as soon as all the noxious Matter is discharged; and as they require no Medicine, it is only necessary to retrench considerably from the ordinary Quantity of Nourishment; to abstain from Flesh, Eggs and Wine or other strong Drink; to live only on some Soups, on Pulse, or on a little Fruit, whether raw or baked, and to drink rather less than usual. A simple Ptisan with a little Syrup of _Capillaire_, or Maiden-hair, is sufficient in these Purgings, which require no Venice Treacle, Confection, nor any Drug whatever. § 327. But should it continue more than five or six Days, and manifestly weaken the Patient; if the Pain attending it grows a little severe; and especially if the Irritation, the urging to Stool, proves more frequent, it becomes seasonable to check, or to stop, it. For this Purpose the Patient is to be put into a Regimen; and if the Looseness has been accompanied with a great Loathing, with Risings or Wamblings at Stomach, with a foul furred Tongue, and a bad Taste in the Mouth, he must take the Powder Nº. 35. But if these Symptoms do not appear, give him that of Nº. 51: and during the three following Hours, let him take, every half Hour, a Cup of weak light Broth, without any Fat on it. If the Purging, after being restrained by this Medicine, should return within a few Days, it would strongly infer, there was still some tough viscid Matter within, that required Evacuation. To effect this he should take the Medicines Nº. 21, 25 or 27; and afterwards take fasting, for two successive Mornings, half the Powder, Nº. 51. On the Evening of that Day when the Patient took Nº. 35, or Nº. 51, or any other Purge, he may take a small Dose of Venice Treacle. § 328. A Purging is often neglected for a long Time, without observing the least Regimen, from which Neglect they degenerate into tedious and as it were habitual, perpetual ones, and entirely weaken the Patient. In such Cases, the Medicine Nº. 35 should be given first; then, every other Day for four Times successively, he should take Nº. 51: during all which Time he should live on nothing but Panada (See § 57) or on Rice boiled in weak Chicken-broth. A strengthing stomachic Plaister has sometimes been successfully applied, which may be often moistened in a Decoction of Herbs boiled in Wine. Cold and Moisture should be carefully avoided in these Cases, which frequently occasion immediate Relapses, even after the Looseness had ceased for many Days. __Chapter XXIV.__ _Of the Dysentery, or Bloody-flux._ __Sect.__ 329. The Dysentery is a Flux or Looseness of the Belly, attended with great Restlessness and Anguish, with severe Gripings, and frequent Propensities to go to Stool. There is generally a little Blood in the Stools, though this is not a constant Symptom, and is not essential to the Existence of a Dysentery; notwithstanding it may not be much less dangerous, for the Absence of this Symptom. § 330. The Dysentery is often epidemical; beginning sometimes at the End of July, though oftner in August, and going off when the Frosts set in. The great preceding Heats render the Blood and the Bile acrid or sharp; and though, during the Continuance of the Heat, Perspiration is kept up (See Introduct. P. 28) yet as soon as the Heat abates, especially in the Mornings and Evenings, that Discharge is diminished; and by how much the more Viscidity or Thickness the Humours have acquired, in Consequence of the violent Heats, the Discharge of the sharp Humour by Perspiration being now checked, it is thrown upon the Bowels which it irritates, producing Pains in, and Evacuations from them. This Kind of Dysentery may happen at all Times, and in all Countries; but if other Causes, capable of producing a Putridity of the Humours, be complicated with it; such as the crouding up a great Number of People into very little Room, and very close Quarters, as in Hospitals, Camps, or Prisons, this introduces a malignant Principle into the Humours, which, co-operating with the simpler Cause of the Dysentery, renders it the more difficult and dangerous. § 331. This Disease begins with a general Coldness rather than a Shivering, which lasts some Hours; the Patient's Strength soon abates, and he feels sharp Pains in his Belly, which sometimes continue for several Hours, before the Flux begins. He is affected with _Vertigos_, or Swimmings in the Head, with Reachings to vomit, and grows pale; his Pulse at the same Time being very little, if at all, feverish, but commonly small, and at length the Purging begins. The first Stools are often thin, and yellowish; but in a little Time they are mixt with a viscid ropy Matter, which is often tinged with Blood. Their Colour and Consistence are various too, being either brown, greenish or black, thinner or thicker, and foetid: The Pains increase before each of the Discharges, which grow very frequent, to the Number of eight, ten, twelve or fifteen in an Hour: then the Fundament becomes considerably irritated, and the _Tenesmus_ (which is a great Urgency to go to Stool, though without any Effect) is joined to the Dysentery or Flux, and often brings on a Protrusion or falling down of the Fundament, the Patient being now most severely afflicted. Worms are sometimes voided, and glairy hairy Humours, resembling Pieces or Peelings of Guts, and sometimes Clots of Blood. If the Distemper rises to a violent Height, the Guts become inflamed, which terminates either in Suppuration or in Mortification; the miserable Patient discharges _Pus_, or black and foetid watery Stools: the Hiccup supervenes; he grows delirious; his Pulse sinks; and he falls into cold Sweats and Faintings which terminate in Death. A kind of Phrenzy, or raging _Delirium_, sometimes comes on before the Minute of Expiration. I have seen a very unusual Symptom accompany this Disease in two Persons, which was an Impossibility of swallowing, for three Days before Death. But in general this Distemper is not so extremely violent; the Discharges are less frequent, being from twenty-five to forty within a Day and Night. Their Contents are less various and uncommon, and mixed with very little Blood; the Patient retains more Strength; the Number of Stools gradually decrease; the Blood disappears; the Consistence of the Discharges improves; Sleep and Appetite return, and the Sick recovers. Many of the Sick have not the least Degree of Fever, nor of Thirst, which perhaps is less common in this Disease, than in a simple Purging or Looseness. Their Urine sometimes is but in a small Quantity; and many Patients have ineffectual Endeavours to pass it, to their no small Affliction and Restlessness. § 332. The most efficacious Remedy for this Disease is a Vomit. That of Nº. 34, (when there is no present Circumstance that forbids the giving a Vomit) if taken immediately on the first Invasion of it, often removes it at once; and always shortens its Duration. That of Nº. 35 is not less effectual; it has been considered for a long Time, even as a certain Specific, which it is not, though a very useful Medicine. If the Stools prove less frequent after the Operation of either of them, it is a good Sign; if they are no Ways diminished, we may apprehend the Disease is like to be tedious and obstinate. The Patient is to be ordered to a Regimen, abstaining from all Flesh-meat with the strictest Attention, until the perfect Cure of the Disease. The Ptisan Nº. 3 is the best Drink for him. The Day after the Vomit, he must take the Powder Nº. 51 divided into two Doses: the next Day he should take no other Medicine but his Ptisan; on the fourth the Rhubarb must be repeated; after which the Violence of the Disease commonly abates: His Diet during the Disease is nevertheless to be continued exactly for some Days; after which he may be allowed to enter upon that of Persons in a State of Recovery. § 333. The Dysentery sometimes commences with an inflammatory Fever; a feverish, hard, full Pulse, with a violent Pain in the Head and Loins, and a stiff distended Belly. In such a Case the Patient must be bled once; and daily receive three or even four of the Glysters Nº. 6, drinking plentifully of the Drink Nº. 3. When all Dread of an Inflammation is entirely over, the Patient is to be treated in the Manner just related; though often there is no Necessity for the Vomit: and if the inflammatory Symptoms have run high, his first Purge should be that of Nº. 11, and the Use of the Rhubarb may be postponed, till about the manifest Conclusion of the Disease. I have cured many Dysenteries, by ordering the Sick no other Remedy, but a Cup of warm Water every Quarter of an Hour; and it were better to rely only on this simple Remedy, which must be of some Utility, than to employ those, of whose Effects Country People are ignorant, and which are often productive of very dangerous ones. § 334. It sometimes happens that the Dysentery is combined with a putrid Fever, which makes it necessary, after the Vomit, to give the Purges Nº. 23 or 47, and several Doses of Nº. 24, before the Rhubarb is given. Nº. 32 is excellent in this combined Case. There was in _Swisserland_ in the Autumn of 1755, after a very numerous Prevalence of epidemical putrid Fevers had ceased, a Multitude of Dysenteries, which had no small Affinity with, or Relation to, such Fevers. I treated them first, with the Prescription Nº. 34, giving afterwards Nº. 32; and I directed the Rhubarb only to very few, and that towards the Conclusion of the Disease. By much the greater Number of them were cured at the End of four or five Days. A small Proportion of them, to whom I could not give the Vomit, or whose Cases were more complicated, remained languid a considerable Time, though without Fatality or Danger. § 335. When the Dysentery is blended with Symptoms of Malignity (See § 245) after premising the Prescription Nº. 35, those of Nº. 38 and 39 may be called in successfully. § 336. When the Disease has already been of many Days standing, without the Patient's having taken any Medicines, or only such as were injurious to him, he must be treated as if the Distemper had but just commenced; unless some Symptoms, foreign to the Nature of the Dysentery, had supervened upon it. § 337. Relapses sometimes occur in Dysenteries, some few Days after the Patients appeared well; much the greater Number of which are occasioned either by some Error in Diet, by cold Air, or by being considerably over-heated. They are to be prevented by avoiding these Causes of them; and may be removed by putting the Patient on his Regimen, and giving him one Dose of the Prescription Nº. 51. Should it return even without any such discoverable Causes, and if it manifests itself to be the same Distemper renewed, it must be treated as such. § 338. This Disease is sometimes combined too with an intermitting Fever; in which Case the Dysentery must be removed first, and the intermittent afterwards. Nevertheless if the Access, the Fits of the Fever have been very strong, the Bark must be given as directed § 259. § 339. One pernicious Prejudice, which still generally prevails is, that Fruits are noxious in a Dysentery, that they even give it, and aggravate it; and this perhaps is an extremely ill-grounded one. In truth bad Fruits, and such as have not ripened well, in unseasonable Years, may really occasion Cholics, a Looseness (though oftner a Costiveness) and Disorders of the Nerves, and of the Skin; but never can occasion an epidemical Dysentery or Flux. Ripe Fruits, of whatever Species, and especially Summer Fruits, are the real Preservatives from this Disease. The greatest Mischief they can effect, must result from their thinning and washing down the Humours, especially the thick glutinous Bile, if they are in such a State; good ripe Fruits being the true Dissolvents of such; by which indeed they may bring on a Purging, but such a one, as is rather a Guard against a Dysentery. We had a great, an extraordinary Abundance of Fruit in 1759 and 1760, but scarcely any Dysenteries. It has been even observed to be more rare, and less dangerous than formerly; and if the Fact is certain, it cannot be attributed to any thing more probably, than to the very numerous Plantations of Trees, which have rendered Fruit very plenty, cheap and common. Whenever I have observed Dysenteries to prevail, I made it a Rule to eat less Flesh, and Plenty of Fruit; I have never had the slightest Attack of one; and several Physicians use the same Caution with the same Success. I have seen eleven Patients in a Dysentery in one House, of whom nine were very tractable; they eat Fruit and recovered. The Grandmother and one Child, whom she loved more than the rest, were carried off. She managed the Child after her own Fashion, with burnt Wine, Oil, and some Spices, but no Fruit. She conducted herself in the very same Manner, and both died. In a Country Seat near _Berne_, in the Year 1751, when these Fluxes made great Havock, and People were severely warned against the Use of Fruits, out of eleven Persons in the Family, ten eat plentifully of Prunes, and not one of them was seized with it: The poor Coachman alone rigidly observed that Abstinence from Fruit injoined by this Prejudice, and took a terrible Dysentery. This same Distemper had nearly destroyed a Swiss Regiment in Garrison in the South of _France_; the Captains purchased the whole Crop of several Acres of Vineyard; there they carried the sick Soldiers, and gathered the Grapes for such as could not bear being carried into the Vineyard; those who were well eating nothing else: after this not one more died, nor were any more even attacked with the Dysentery. A Clergyman was seized with a Dysentery, which was not in the least mitigated by any Medicines he had taken. By meer Chance he saw some red Currans; he longed for them, and eat three Pounds of them between seven and nine o'Clock in the Morning; that very Day he became better, and was entirely well on the next. I could greatly enlarge the Number of such Instances; but these may suffice to convince the most incredulous, whom I thought it might be of some Importance to convince. Far from forbidding good Fruit, when Dysenteries rage, the Patients should be encouraged to eat them freely; and the Directors of the Police, instead of prohibiting them, ought to see the Markets well provided with them. It is a Fact of which Persons, who have carefully informed themselves, do not in the least doubt. Experience demonstrates it, and it is founded in Reason, as good Fruit counter-operates all the Causes of Dysenteries. [77] [77] The Experience of all Countries and Times so strongly confirms these important Truths, that they cannot be too often repeated, too generally published, whenever and wherever this Disease rages. The Succession of cold Showers to violent Heats; too moist a Constitution of the Air; an Excess of animal Food; Uncleanliness and Contagion, are the frequent Causes of epidemical Fluxes. _E. L._ I have retained the preceding Note, abridged from this Gentleman, as it contains the Suffrage of another experienced Physician, against that Prejudice of ripe Fruits occasioning Fluxes, which is too popular among ourselves, and probably more so in the Country than in _London_. I have been also very credibly assured, that the Son of a learned Physician was perfectly cured of a very obstinate Purging, of a Year's Continuance (in Spite of all the usual officinal Remedies) by his devouring large Quantities of ripe Mulberries, for which he ardently longed, and drinking very freely of their expressed Juice. The Fact occurred after his Father's Decease, and was affirmed to me by a Gentleman intimately acquainted with them both. _K._ § 340. It is important and even necessary, that each Subject of this Disease should have a Close-stool or Convenience apart to himself, as the Matter discharged is extremely infectious: and if they make Use of Bed-pans, they should be carried immediately out of the Chamber, the Air of which should be continually renewed, burning Vinegar frequently in it. It is also very necessary to change the Patient's Linen frequently; without all which Precautions the Distemper becomes more violent, and attacks others who live in the same House. Hence it is greatly to be wished the People in general were convinced of these Truths. It was _Boerhaave's_ Opinion, that all the Water which was drank, while Dysenteries were epidemical, should be _stummed_, as we term it, or sulphurized. [78] [78] Our learned Author, or his medical Editor at _Lyons_, observes here, 'that in the Edition of this Treatise at _Paris_, there was an essential Mistake, by making _Boerhaave_ recommend the Addition of Brandy, _Eau de vie_, instead of stumming or sulphurizing it,' for which this Note, and the Text too use the Verb _branter_, which Word we do not find in any Dictionary. We are told however, it means to impregnate the Casks in which the Water is reserved, with the Vapour of Sulphur, and then stopping them; in the same Manner that Vessels are in some Countries, for the keeping of Wine. He observes the Purpose of this is to oppose Corruption by the acid Steams of the Sulphur. _K._ § 341. It has happened, by some unaccountable Fatality, that there is no Disease, for which a greater Number of Remedies are advised, than for the Dysentery. There is scarcely any Person but what boasts of his own Prescription, in Preference to all the rest, and who does not boldly engage to cure, and that within a few Hours, a tedious severe Disease, of which he has formed no just Notion, with some Medicine or Composition, of whose Operation he is totally ignorant: while the poor Sufferer, restless and impatient, swallows every Body's Recommendation, and gets poisoned either through Fear, downright Disgust or Weariness, or through entire Complaisance. Of these many boasted Compositions, some are only indifferent, but others pernicious. I shall not pretend to detail all I know myself, but after repeatedly affirming, that the only true Method of Cure is that I have advised here, the Purpose of which is evacuating the offending Matter; I also affirm that all those Methods, which have a different Scope or Drift, are pernicious; but shall particularly observe, that the Method most generally followed, which is that of stopping the Stools by Astringents, or by Opiates, is the worst of all, and even so mortal a one, as to destroy a Multitude of People annually, and which throws others into incurable Diseases. By preventing the Discharge of these Stools, and inclosing the Wolf in the Fold, it either follows, 1, that this [79] retained Matter irritates and inflames the Bowels from which Inflammation excruciating Pains arise, an acute inflammatory Cholic, and finally a Mortification and Death; or a _Schirrhus_, which degenerates into a _Cancer_, (of which I have seen a dreadful Instance) or else an Abscess, Suppuration and Ulcer. Or 2, this arrested Humour is repelled elsewhere, producing a _Scirrhus_ in the Liver, or Asthmas, Apoplexy, Epilepsy, or Falling Sickness; horrible rheumatic Pains, or incurable Disorders of the Eyes, or of the Teguments, the Skin and Surface. [79] A first or second Dose of Glauber Salt has been known to succeed in the epidemical Summer Fluxes of the hotter Climates, when repeated Doses of Rhubarb and Opiates had failed. Such Instances seems a collateral Confirmation of Dr. _Tissot's_ rational and successful Use of cooling opening Fruits in them. _K._ Such are the Consequences of all the astringent Medicines, and of those which are given to procure Sleep in this Disease, as Venice Treacle, Mithridate and Diascordium, when given too early in Dysenteries. I have been consulted on Account of a terrible Rheumatism, which ensued immediately after taking a Mixture of Venice Treacle and Plantain, on the second Day of a Dysentery. As those who advise such Medicines, are certainly unaware of their Consequences, I hope this Account of them will be sufficient, to prevent their Repetition. § 342. Neither are Purges without their Abuse and Danger; they determine the Course of all the Humours more violently to the tender afflicted Parts; the Body becomes exhausted; the Digestions fail; the Bowels are weakened, and sometimes even lightly ulcerated, whence incurable _Diarrhoeas_ or Purgings ensue, and prove fatal after many Years Affliction. § 343. If the Evacuations prove excessive, and the Distemper tedious, the Patient is likely to fall into a Dropsy; but if this is immediately opposed, it may be removed by a regular and drying Diet, by Strengthners, by Friction and proper Exercise. __Chapter XXV.__ _Of the Itch._ __Sect.__ 344. The Itch is an infectious Disorder contracted by touching infected Persons or Cloaths, but not imbibed from the Air: So that by carefully avoiding the _Medium_, or Means of Contagion, the Disorder may be certainly escaped. Though any Part of the Body may be infested with the Itch, it commonly shews itself on the Hands, and chiefly between the Fingers. At first one or two little Pimples or Pustules appear, filled with a kind of clear Water, and excite a very disagreeable Itching. If these Pustules are broke by scratching them, the Water oozing from them infects the neighbouring Parts. At the Beginning of this Infection it can scarcely be distinguished, if a Person is not well apprized of its Nature; but in the Progress of it, the little Pustules increase both in Number and Size; and when they are opened by scratching, a loathsome kind of Scab is formed, and the Malady extends over the whole Surface. Where they continue long, they produce small Ulcers, and are at that Time highly contagious. § 345. Bad Diet, particularly the Use of Salt Meat, bad unripe Fruit, and Uncleanliness occasion this Disease; though it is oftnest taken by Contagion. Some very good Physicians suppose it is never contracted otherwise; but I must take Leave to dissent, as I have certainly seen it exist without Contagion. When it happens to a Person, who cannot suspect he has received it by Contact, his Cure should commence with a total Abstinence from all Salt, sour, fat and spicy Food. He should drink a Ptisan of wild and bitter Succory, or that of Nº. 26, five or six Glasses of which may be daily taken; at the End of four or five Days, he may be purged with Nº. 21, or with an Ounce of _Sedlitz_ [or _Epsom_] Salt. His Abstinence, his Regimen is to be continued; the Purge to be repeated after six or seven Days; and then all the Parts affected, and those very near them, are to be rubbed in the Morning fasting, with a fourth Part of the Ointment Nº. 52. The three following Days the same Friction is to be repeated, after which the same Quantity of Ointment is to be procured, and used in the same Proportion; but only every other Day. It happens but seldom that this Method fails to remove this disagreeable Malady; sometimes however it will return, in which Case, the Patient must be purged again, and then recur to the Ointment, whose good Effects I have experienced, and continually do. If the Disease has been very lately contracted, and most certainly by Contact, the Ointment may be fearlessly employed, as soon as it is discovered, without taking any Purge before it. But if, on the contrary, the Disease has been long neglected, and has rose to a high Degree, it will be necessary to restrain the Patient a long Time to the Regimen I have directed; he must be repeatedly purged, and then drink plentifully of the Ptisan Nº. 26, before the Ointment is rubbed in. When the Malady is thus circumstanced, I have always begun with the Ointment Nº. 28, half a Quarter of which is to be used every Morning. I have also frequently omitted the Use of that Nº. 52, having always found the former as certain, but a little slower in its Effects. § 346. While these Medicines are employed, the Patient must avoid all Cold and Wet, especially if he makes Use of Nº. 28, [80] in which there is Quick-silver; which, if such Precautions were neglected, might bring on a Swelling of the Throat and Gums, and even rise to a Salivation. Yet this Ointment has one Advantage in its having no Smell, and being susceptible of an agreeable one; while it is very difficult to disguise the disagreeable Odour of the other. The Linen of a Person in this Disease ought to be often changed; but his upper Cloaths must not be changed: because these having been infected, might, when worn again, communicate the Itch to the Wearer again, after he had been cured. Shirts, Breeches and Stockings may be fumigated with Sulphur, before they are put on; and this Fumigation should be made in the open Air. [80] I have seen a pretty singular Consequence from the Abuse of mercurial Unction for the Itch; whether it happened from the Strength or Quantity of the Ointment, or from taking Cold after applying it, as this Subject, a healthy Youth of about sixteen, probably did, by riding three or four Miles through the Rain. But without any other previous Complaint, he awoke quite blind one Morning, wondering, as he said, when it would be Day. His Eyes were very clear, and free from Inflammation, but the Pupil was wholly immoveable, as in a _Gutta serena_. I effected the Cure by some moderate Purges repeated a few Times; by disposing him to sweat by lying pretty much in Bed (it being towards Winter) and by promoting his Perspiration, chiefly with Sulphur: after which the shaved Scalp was embrocated with a warm nervous Mixture, in which Balsam of _Peru_ was a considerable Ingredient. In something less than three Weeks he could discern a glowing Fire, or the bright Flame of a Candle. As his Sight increased, he discerned other Objects, which appeared for some Days inverted to him, with their Colours confused; but Red was most distinguishable. He discovered the Aces sooner than other Cards; and in about six or seven Weeks recovered his full Sight in all its natural Strength, which he now enjoys. _K._ § 347. If this Disorder becomes very inveterate and tedious, it exhausts the Patient, in Consequence of its not suffering him to sleep at Nights, as well as by his restless Irritation; and sometimes even brings on a Fever, so that he falls away in Flesh, and his Strength abates. In such a Case he must take, 1, a gentle Purge. 2, Make Use frequently of warm Baths. 3, He must be put on the Regimen of Persons in a State of Recovery. 4, He must take Morning and Evening, fifteen Days successively, the Powder Nº. 53, with the Ptisan Nº. 26. This Malady is often very obstinate, and then the Medicines must be varied according to the Circumstances, the Detail of which I avoid here. § 348. After giving repeated Purges in such obstinate Cases, mineral Waters abounding with Sulphur, such as [81] those of _Yverdun_, &c. often effect a Cure; and simple cold Bathings in Rivers or Lakes have sometimes succeeded in very inveterate Cases of this Disorder. [81] Sea water, and those of _Dulwich_, _Harrigate_, _Shadwell_, &c. will be full as effectual. _K._ Nothing conduces more to the long Continuance of this Malady, than the Abuse of hot Waters, such as infusions of Tea, &c. § 349. I shall conclude this Chapter, with a repeated Injunction not to be too free or rash in the Use of the Ointment Nº. 52, and other outward Remedies for extinguishing the Itch. There is hardly any Complaint, but what has been found to be the Consequence of too sudden a Removal of this Disorder by outward Applications, before due Evacuations have been made, and a moderate Abatement of the Sharpness of the Humours has been effected. __Chapter XXVI.__ _The Treatment of Diseases peculiar to Women._ __Sect.__ 350. Besides all the preceding Diseases, to which Women are liable in common with Men, their Sex also exposes them to others peculiar to it, and which depend upon four principal Sources; which are their monthly Discharges, their Pregnancy, their Labours in Child-birth, and the Consequences of their Labours. It is not my present Design to treat professedly on each of the Diseases arising from these Causes, which would require a larger Volume than I have proposed; but I shall confine myself to certain general Directions on these four Heads. § 351. Nature, who intended Women for the Increase, and the Nourishment of the human Race at the Breast, has subjected them to a periodical Efflux, or Discharge, of Blood: which Circumstance constitutes the Source, from whence the Infant is afterwards to receive his Nutrition and Growth. This Discharge generally commences, with us, between the Age of sixteen and eighteen. Young Maidens, before the Appearance of this Discharge, are frequently, and many for a long Time, in a State of Weakness, attended with various Complaints, which is termed the _Chlorosis_, or Green Sickness, and Obstructions: and when their Appearance is extremely slow and backward, it occasions very grievous, and sometimes even mortal Diseases. Nevertheless it is too usual, though very improper, to ascribe all the Evils, to which they are subject at this Term of Life, solely to this Cause; while they really often result from a different Cause, of which the Obstructions themselves are sometimes only the Effect; and this is the natural, and, in some Degree, even necessary Feebleness of the Sex. The Fibres of Women which are intended to be relaxed, and to give Way, when they are unavoidably extended by the Growth of the Child, and its inclosing Membranes (which frequently arise to a very considerable Size) should necessarily be less stiff and rigid, less strong, and more lax and yielding than the Fibres of Men. Hence the Circulation of their Blood is more slow and languid than in Males; their Blood is less compact and dense, and more watery; their Fluids are more liable to stagnate in their different Bowels, and to form Infarctions and Obstructions. § 352. The Disorders to which such a Constitution subjects them might, in some Measure, be prevented, by assisting that Languor or Feebleness of their natural Movements, by such an Increase of their Force, as Exercise might contribute to: But this Assistance, which in some Manner is more necessary for Females than Males, they are partly deprived of, by the general Education and Habitude of the Sex; as they are usually employed in managing Household Business, and such light sedentary Work, as afford them less Exercise and Motion, than the more active Occupations of Men. They stir about but little, whence their natural Tendency to Weakness increases from Habit, and thence becomes morbid and sickly. Their Blood circulates imperfectly; its Qualities become impaired; the Humours tend to a pretty general Stagnation; and none of the vital Functions are completely discharged. From such Causes and Circumstances they begin to sink into a State of Weakness, sometimes while they are very young, and many Years before this periodical Discharge could be expected. This State of Languor disposes them to be inactive; a little Exercise soon fatigues them, whence they take none at all. It might prove a Remedy, and even effect a Cure, at the Beginning of their Complaint; but as it is a Remedy, that is painful and disagreeable to them, they reject it, and thus increase their Disorders. Their Appetite declines with the other vital Functions, and gradually becomes still less; the usual salutary Kinds of Food never exciting it; instead of which they indulge themselves in whimsical Cravings, and often of the oddest and most improper Substances for Nutrition, which entirely impair the Stomach with its digestive Functions, and consequently Health itself. But sometimes after the Duration of this State for a few Years, the ordinary Time of their monthly Evacuations approaches, which however make not the least Appearance, for two Reasons. The first is, that their Health is too much impaired to accomplish this new Function, at a Time when all the others are so languid: and the second is, that under such Circumstances, the Evacuations themselves are unnecessary; since their final Purpose is to discharge (when the Sex are not pregnant) that superfluous Blood, which they were intended to produce, and whose Retention would be unhealthy, when not applied to the Growth of the Foetus, or Nourishment of the Child: and this Superfluity of Blood does not exist in Women, who have been long in a very low and languishing State. § 353. Their Disorder however continues to increase, as every one daily must, which does not terminate. This Increase of it is attributed to the Suppression or Non-appearance of their monthly Efflux, which is often erroneous; since the Disorder is not always owing to that Suppression, which is often the Effect of their Distemperature. This is so true, that even when the Efflux happens, if their Weakness still continues, the Patients are far from being the better for it, but the reverse. Neither is it unusual to see young Lads, who have received from Nature, and from their Parents, a sort of feminine Constitution, Education and Habitude, infested with much the same Symptoms, as obstructed young Women. Country Girls, who are generally more accustomed to such hardy Work and Exercise as Country Men, are less subject to these Complaints, than Women who live in Cities. § 354. Let People then be careful not to deceive themselves on this important Account; since all the Complaints of young Maidens are not owing to the Want of their Customs. Nevertheless it is certain there are some of them, who are really afflicted from this Cause. For Instance, when a strong young Virgin in full Health, who is nearly arrived to her full Growth, and who manifestly abounds with Blood, does not obtain this Discharge at the usual Time of Life, then indeed this superfluous Blood is the Fountain of very many Disorders, and greatly more violent ones than those, which result from the contrary Causes already mentioned. If the lazy inactive City Girls are more subject to the Obstructions, which either arise from the Weakness and Languor I have formerly taken Notice of, or which accompany it; Country Girls are more subject to Complaints from this latter Cause (too great a Retention of superfluous Blood) than Women who live in Cities: and it is this last Cause that excites those singular Disorders, which appear so supernatural to the common People, that they ascribe them to Sorcery. § 355. And even after these periodical Discharges have appeared, it is known that they have often been suppressed, without the least unhealthy Consequence resulting from that Suppression. They are often suppressed, in the Circumstances mentioned § 351, by a Continuance of the Disease, which was first an Obstacle or Retardment to their Appearance; and in other Cases, they have been suppressed by other Causes, such as Cold, Moisture, violent Fear, any very strong Passion; by too chilly a Course of Diet, with Indigestion; or too hot and irritating Diet; by Drinks cooled with Ice, by Exercise too long continued, and by unusual Watching. The Symptoms, occasioned by such Suppressions, are sometimes more violent than those, which preceded the first Appearance of the Discharge. § 356. The great Facility with which this Evacuation may be suppressed, diminished, or disordered, by the Causes already assigned; the terrible Evils which are the Consequences of such Interruptions and Irregularities of them, seem to me very cogent Reasons to engage the Sex to use all possible Care, in every Respect, to preserve the Regularity of them; by avoiding, during their Approach and Continuance, every Cause that may prevent or lessen them. Would they be thoroughly persuaded, not solely by my Advice, but by that of their Mothers, their Relations, their Friends, and by their own Experience, of what great Importance it is to be very attentive to themselves, at those critical Times, I think there is not one Woman, who from the first, to the very last Appearance of them, would not conduct herself with the most scrupulous Regularity. Their Demeanour, in these Circumstances, very fundamentally interests their own Health, as well as that of their Children; and consequently their own Happiness, as well as that of their Husbands and Families. The younger and more delicate they are, Caution becomes the more necessary for them. I am very sensible a strong Country Girl is too negligent in regulating herself at those critical Seasons, and sometimes without any ill Consequence; but at another Time she may suffer severely for it: and I could produce a long List of many, who, by their Imprudence on such Occasions, have thrown themselves into the most terrible Condition. Besides the Caution with which Females should avoid these general Causes, just mentioned in the preceding Section, every Person ought to remember what has most particularly disagreed with her during that Term, and for ever constantly to reject it. § 357. There are many Women whose Customs visit them without the slightest Impeachment of their Health: others are sensibly disordered on every Return of them; and to others again they are very tormenting, by the violent Cholics, of a longer or a shorter Duration, which precede or accompany them. I have known some of these violent Attacks last but some Minutes, and others which continued a few Hours. Nay some indeed have persisted for many Days, attended with Vomiting, Fainting, with Convulsions from excessive Pain, with Vomiting of Blood, Bleedings from the Nose, _&c._ which, in short, have brought them to the very Jaws of Death. So very dangerous a Situation requires the closest Attention; though, as it results from several and frequently very opposite Causes, it is impossible within the present Plan, to direct the Treatment that may be proper for each Individual. Some Women have the Unhappiness to be subject to these Symptoms every Month, from the first Appearance, to the final Termination, of these Discharges; except proper Remedies and Regimen, and sometimes a happy Child-birth, remove them. Others complain but now and then, every second, third, or fourth Month; and there are some again, who having suffered very severely during the first Months, or Years, after their first Eruptions, suffer no more afterwards. A fourth Number, after having had their Customs for a long Time, without the least Complaint, find themselves afflicted with cruel Pains, at every Return of them; if by Imprudence, or some inevitable Fatality, they have incurred any Cause, that has suppressed, diminished, or delayed them. This Consideration ought to suggest a proper Caution even to such, as generally undergo these Discharges, without Pain or Complaint: since all may be assured, that though they suffer no sensible Disorder at that Time, they are nevertheless more delicate, more impressible by extraneous Substances, more easily affected by the Passions of the Mind, and have also weaker Stomachs at these particular Periods. § 358. These Discharges may also be sometimes too profuse in Quantity, in which Case the Patients become obnoxious to very grievous Maladies; into the Discussion of which however I shall not enter here, as they are much less frequent than those, arising from a Suppression of them. Besides which, in such Cases, Recourse may be had to the Directions I shall give hereafter, when I treat of that Loss of Blood, which may be expedient, during the Course of Gravidation or Pregnancy. See § 365. § 359. Finally, even when they are the most regular, after their Continuance for a pretty certain Number of Years (rarely exceeding thirty-five) they go off of their own Accord, and necessarily, between the Age of forty-five and fifty; sometimes even sooner, but seldom continuing longer: and this _Crisis_ of their ceasing is generally a very troublesome, and often a very dangerous, one for the Sex. § 360. The Evils mentioned § 352 may be prevented, by avoiding the Causes producing them; and, 1, by obliging young Maidens to use considerable Exercise; especially as soon as there is the least Reason to suspect the Approach of this Disorder, the _Chlorosis_, or Green Sickness. 2, By watching them carefully, that they eat nothing unwholesome or improper; as there are scarcely any natural Substances, even among such as are most improper for them, and the most distasteful, which have not sometimes been the Objects of their sickly, their unaccountable Cravings. Fat Aliments, Pastry, farinaceous or mealy, and sour and watery Foods are pernicious to them. Herb-Teas, which are frequently directed as a Medicine for them, are sufficient to throw them into the Disorder, by increasing that Relaxation of their Fibres, which is a principal Cause of it. If they must drink any such Infusions, as medicated Drinks, let them be taken cold: but the best Drink for them is Water, in which red hot Iron has been extinguished. 3, They must avoid hot sharp Medicines, and such as are solely intended to force down their Terms, which are frequently attended with very pernicious Consequences, and never do any good: and they are still the more hurtful, as the Patient is the younger. 4, If the Malady increases, it will be necessary to give them some Remedies; but these should not be Purges, nor consist of Diluters, and Decoctions of Herbs, of Salts, and a Heap of other useless and noxious Ingredients; but they should take Filings of Iron, which is the most certain Remedy in such Cases. These Filings Should be of true simple Iron, and not from Steel; and Care should be taken that it be not rusty, in which State it has very little Effect. At the Beginning of this Distemper, and to young Girls, it is sufficient to give twenty Grains daily, enjoining due Exercise and a suitable Diet. When it prevails in a severer Degree, and the Patient is not so young, a Quarter of an Ounce may be safely ventured on: Certain Bitters or Aromatics may be advantageously joined to the Filings, which are numbered in the Appendix, 54, 55, 56, and constitute the most effectual Remedies in this Distemper, to be taken in the Form of Powder, of vinous Infusion, or of Electary. [82] When there is a just Indication to bring down the Discharge, the vinous Infusion Nº. 55 must be given, and generally succeeds: but I must again repeat it (as it should carefully be considered) that the Stoppage or Obstruction of this Discharge is frequently the Effect, not the Cause, of this Disease; and that there should be no Attempt to force it down, which in such a Case, may sometimes prove more hurtful than beneficial; since it would naturally return of its own Accord, on the Recovery, and with the Strength, of the Patient: as their Return should follow that of perfect Health, and neither can precede Health, nor introduce it. There are some Cases particularly, in which it would be highly dangerous to use hot and active Medicines, such Cases for Instance, as are attended with some Degree of Fever, a frequent Coughing, a Hæmorrhage, or Bleeding, with great Leanness and considerable Thirst: all which Complaints should be removed, before any hot Medicines are given to force this Evacuation, which many very ignorantly imagine cures all other female Disorders; an Error, that has prematurely occasioned the Loss of many Womens' Lives. [82] The _French_ Word here, _Opiat_, is sometimes used by them for a compound Medicine of the Consistence of an Electary; and cannot be supposed, in this Place, to mean any Preparation, into which _Opium_ enters. _K._ § 361. While the Patient is under a Course of these Medicines, she should not take any of those I have forbidden in the preceding Sections; and the Efficacy of these should also be furthered with proper Exercise. That in a Carriage is very healthy; Dancing is so too, provided it be not extended to an Excess. In Case of a Relapse in these Disorders, the Patient is to be treated, as if it were an original Attack. § 362. The other Sort of Obstructions described § 354 requires a very different Treatment. Bleeding, which is hurtful in the former Sort, and the Use, or rather Abuse, of which has thrown several young Women into irrecoverable Weaknesses, has often removed this latter Species, as it were, in a Moment. Bathing of the Feet, the Powders Nº. 20, and Whey have frequently succeeded: but at other Times it is necessary to accommodate the Remedies and the Method to each particular Case, and to judge of it from its own peculiar Circumstances and Appearances. § 363. When these Evacuations naturally cease through Age (See § 359) if they stop suddenly and all at once, and had formerly flowed very largely, Bleeding must, 1, necessarily be directed, and repeated every six, every four, or even every three Months. 2, The usual Quantity of Food should be somewhat diminished, especially of Flesh, of Eggs and of strong Drink. 3, Exercise should be increased. 4, The Patient should frequently take, in a Morning fasting, the Powder Nº. 24, which is very beneficial in such Cases; as it moderately increases the natural Excretions by Stool, Urine and Perspiration; and thence lessens that Quantity of Blood, which would otherwise superabound. Nevertheless, should this total Cessation of the monthly Discharge be preceded by, or attended with, any extraordinary Loss of Blood, which is frequently the Case, Bleeding is not so necessary; but the Regimen and Powder just directed are very much so; to which the Purge Nº. 23 should now and then be joined, at moderate Intervals. The Use of astringent Medicines at this critical Time might dispose the Patient to a Cancer of the Womb. Many Women die about this Age, as it is but too easy a Matter to injure them then; a Circumstance that should make them very cautious and prudent in the Medicines they recur to. On the other Hand it also frequently happens, that their Constitutions alter for the better, after this critical Time of Life; their Fibres grow stronger; they find themselves sensibly more hearty and hardy; many former slight Infirmities disappear, and they enjoy a healthy and happy old Age. I have known several who threw away their Spectacles at the Age of fifty-two, or fifty-three, which they had used five or six Years before. The Regimen I have just directed, the Powder Nº. 24, and the Potion Nº. 32, agree very well in almost all inveterate Discharges (I speak of the female Peasantry) at whatever Time of Life. _Of Disorders attending Gravidation, or the Term of going with Child._ § 364. Gravidation is generally a less ailing or unhealthy State in the Country, than in very populous Towns. Nevertheless Country Women are subject, as well as Citizens, to Pains of the Stomach, to vomiting in a Morning, to Head-ach and Tooth-ach; but these Complaints very commonly yield to Bleeding, which is almost the only Remedy necessary [83] for pregnant Women. [83] Too great a Fulness of Blood is undoubtedly the Cause of all these Complaints; but as there are different Methods of opposing this Cause, the gentlest should always be preferred; nor should the Constitution become habituated to such Remedies, as might either impair the Strength of the Mother, or of her Fruit. Some Expedients therefore should be thought of, that may compensate for the Want of Bleeding, by enjoining proper Exercise in a clear Air, with a less nourishing, and a less juicy Diet. _E. L._ This Note might have its Use sometimes, in the Cases of such delicate and hysterical, yet pregnant Women, as are apt to suffer from Bleeding, or any other Evacuation, though no ways immoderate. But it should have been considered, that Dr. _Tissot_ was professedly writing here to hearty active Country Wives, who are very rarely thus constituted; and whom he might be unwilling to confuse with such multiplied Distinctions and Directions, as would very seldom be necessary, and might sometimes prevent them from doing what was so. Besides which, this Editor might have seen, our Author has hinted at such Cases very soon after. _K._ § 365. Sometimes after carrying too heavy Burthens; after too much or too violent Work; after receiving excessive Jolts, or having had a Fall, they are subject to violent Pains of the Loins, which extend down to their Thighs, and terminate quite at the Bottom of the Belly; and which commonly import, that they are in Danger of an Abortion, or Miscarrying. To prevent this Consequence, which is always dangerous, they should, 1, immediately go to Bed; and if they have not a Mattrass, they should lie upon a Bed stuffed with Straw, a Feather-bed being very improper in such Cases. They should repose, or keep themselves quite still in this Situation for several Days, not stirring, and speaking as little as possible. 2, They should directly lose eight or nine Ounces of Blood from the Arm. 3, They should not eat Flesh, Flesh-broth, nor Eggs; but live solely on Soups made of farinaceous or mealy Substances. 4, They should take every two Hours half a Paper of the Powder Nº. 20; and should drink nothing but the Ptisan Nº. 2. Some sanguine robust Women are very liable to miscarry at a certain Time, or Stage, of their Pregnancy. This may be obviated by their bleeding some Days before that Time approaches, and by their observing the Regimen I have advised. But this Method would avail very little for delicate Citizens, who miscarry from a very different Cause; and whose Abortions are to be prevented by a very different Treatment. _Of Delivery, or Child-birth._ § 366. It has been observed that a greater Proportion of Women die in the Country in, or very speedily after, their Delivery, and that from the Scarcity of good Assistance, and the great Plenty of what is bad; and that a greater Proportion of those in Cities die after their Labours are effected, by a Continuance of their former bad Health. The Necessity there is for better instructed, better qualified Midwives, through a great Part of _Swisserland_, is but too manifest an Unhappiness, which is attended with the most fatal Consequences, and which merits the utmost Attention of the Government. The Errors which are incurred, during actual Labour, are numberless, and too often indeed are also irremediable. It would require a whole Book, expressly for that Purpose (and in some Countries there are such) to give all the Directions that are necessary, to prevent so many Fatalities: and it would be as necessary to form a sufficient Number of well-qualified Midwives to comprehend, and to observe them; which exceeds the Plan of the Work I have proposed. I shall only mark out one of the Causes, and the most injurious one on this Occasion: This is the Custom of giving hot irritating Things, whenever the Labour is very painful, or is slow; such as Castor, or its Tincture, Saffron, Sage, Rue, Savin, Oil of Amber, Wine, Venice Treacle, Wine burnt with Spices, Coffee, Brandy, Aniseed-Water, Walnut-Water, Fennel-Water, and other Drams or strong Liquors. All these Things are so many Poisons in this Respect, which, very far from promoting the Woman's Delivery, render it more difficult by inflaming the Womb (which cannot then so well contract itself) and the Parts, through which the Birth is to pass, in Consequence of which they swell, become more straitened, and cannot yield or be dilated. Sometimes these stimulating hot Medicines also bring on Hæmorrhages, which prove mortal in a few Hours. § 367. A considerable Number, both of Mothers and Infants, might be preserved by the directly opposite Method. As soon as a Woman who was in very good Health, just before the Approach of her Labour, being robust and well made, finds her Travail come on, and that it is painful and difficult; far from encouraging those premature Efforts, which are always destructive; and from furthering them by the pernicious Medicines I have just enumerated, the Patient should be bled in the Arm, which will prevent the Swelling and Inflammation; asswage the Pains; relax the Parts, and dispose every thing to a favourable Issue. During actual Labour no other Nourishment should be allowed, except a little Panada every three Hours, and as much Toast and Water, as the Woman chuses. Every fourth Hour a Glyster should be given, consisting of a Decoction of Mallows and a little Oil. In the Intervals between these Glysters she should be set over a kind of Stove, or in a pierced easy Chair, containing a Vessel in which there is some hot Water: the Passage should be gently rubbed with a little Butter; and Stapes wrung out of a Fomentation of simple hot Water, which is the most efficacious of any, should be applied over the Belly. The Midwives, by taking this Method, are not only certain of doing no Mischief, but they also allow Nature an Opportunity of doing Good: as a great many Labours, which seem difficult at time, terminate happily; and this safe and unprecipitate Manner of proceeding at least affords Time to call in further Assistance. Besides, the Consequences of such Deliveries are healthy and happy; when by pursuing the heating oppressing Practice, even though the Delivery be effected, both Mother and Infant have been so cruelly, though undesignedly, tormented, that both of them frequently perish. § 368. I acknowledge these Means are insufficient, when the Child is unhappily situated in the Womb; or when there is an embarrassing Conformation in the Mother: though at least they prevent the Case from proving worse, and leave Time for calling in Men-Midwives, or other female ones, who may be better qualified. I beg leave again to remind the Midwives, that they should be very cautious of urging their Women to make any forced Efforts to forward the Birth, which are extremely injurious to them, and which may render a Delivery very dangerous and embarrassing, that might otherwise have been happily effected: and I insist the more freely on the Danger attending these unreasonable Efforts, and on the very great Importance of Patience, as the other very pernicious Practice is become next to universal amongst us. The Weakness, in which the labouring Woman appears, makes the By-standers fearful that she will not have Strength enough to be delivered; which they think abundantly justifies them in giving her Cordials; but this Way of Reasoning is very weak and chimerical. Their Strength, on such Occasions, is not so very speedily dissipated: the small light Pains sink them, but in Proportion as the Pains become stronger, their Strength arises; being never deficient, when there is no extraordinary and uncommon Symptom; and we may reasonably be assured, that in a healthy, well formed Woman, meer Weakness never prevents a Delivery. _Of the Consequences of Labour, or Childbirth._ § 369. The most usual Consequences of Childbirth in the Country are, 1, An excessive Hæmorrhage. 2, An Inflammation of the Womb. 3, A sudden Suppression of the _Lochia_, or usual Discharges after Delivery. And, 4, the Fever and other Accidents, resulting from the Milk. Excessive Bleedings or Floodings, should be treated according to the Manner directed § 365: and if they are very excessive, Folds of Linen, which have been wrung out of a Mixture of equal Parts of Water and Vinegar, should be applied to the Belly, the Loins, and the Thighs: these should be changed for fresh moist ones, as they dry; and should be omitted, as soon as the Bleeding abates. § 370. The Inflammation of the Womb is discoverable by Pains in all the lower Parts of the Belly; by a Tension or Tightness of the whole; by a sensible Increase of Pain upon touching it; a kind of red Stain or Spot, that mounts to the Middle of the Belly, as high as the Navel; which Spot, as the Disease increases, turns black, and then is always a mortal Symptom; by a very extraordinary Degree of Weakness; an astonishing Change of Countenance; a light _Delirium_ or Raving; a continual Fever with a weak and hard Pulse; sometimes incessant Vomitings; a frequent Hiccup; a moderate Discharge of a reddish, stinking, sharp Water; frequent Urgings to go to Stool; a burning kind of Heat of Urine; and sometimes an entire Suppression of it. § 371. This most dangerous and frequently mortal Disease should be treated like inflammatory ones. After Bleeding, frequent Glysters of warm Water must by no Means be omitted; some should also be injected into the Womb, and applied continually over the Belly. The Patient may also drink continually, either of simple Barley-Water, with a Quarter of an Ounce of Nitre in every Pot of it, or of Almond Milk Nº. 4. § 372. The total Suppression of the _Lochia_, the Discharges after Labour, which proves a Cause of the most violent Disorders, should be treated exactly in the same Manner: but if unhappily hot Medicines have been given, in order to force them down, the Case will very generally prove a most hopeless one. § 373. If the Milk-fever run very high, the Barley Ptisan directed § 371, and Glysters, with a very light Diet, consisting only of Panada, or made of some other farinaceous Substances, and very thin, very generally remove it. § 374. Delicate infirm Women, who have not all the requisite and necessary Attendance they want; and such as from Indigence are obliged to work too soon, are exposed to many Accidents, which frequently arise from a Want of due Perspiration, and an insufficient Discharge of the _Lochia_; and hence, the Separation of the Milk in their Breasts being disturbed, there are milky Congestions, or Knots as it were, which are always very painful and troublesome, and especially when they are formed more inwardly. They often happen on the Thighs, in which Case the Ptisan Nº. 58 is to be drank, and the Pultices Nº. 59 must be applied. These two Remedies gradually dissipate and remove the Tumour, if that may be effected without Suppuration. But if that proves impossible, and _Pus_, or Matter, is actually formed, a Surgeon must open the Abscess, and treat it like any other. § 375. Should the Milk coagulate, or curdle as it were, in the Breast, it is of the utmost Importance immediately to attenuate or dissolve that Thickness, which would otherwise degenerate into a Hardness and prove a _Scirrhus_; and from a _Scirrhus_ in Process of Time a Cancer, that most tormenting and cruel Distemper. This horrible Evil however may be prevented by an Application to these small Tumours, as soon as ever they appear, For this Purpose nothing is more effectual than the Prescriptions Nº. 57 and 60; but under such menacing Circumstances, it is always prudent to take the best Advice, as early as possible. From the Moment these hard Tumours become excessively and obstinately so, and yet without any Pain, we should abstain from every Application, all are injurious; and greasy, sharp, resinous and spirituous ones speedily change the _Scirrhus_ into a Cancer. Whenever it becomes manifestly such, all Applications are also equally pernicious, except that of Nº. 60. Cancers have long been thought and found incurable; but within a few Years past some have been cured by the Remedy Nº. 57; which nevertheless is not infallible, though it should always be tried. [84] [84] The Use of Hemlock, which has been tried at _Lyons_, by all who have had cancerous Patients, having been given in very large Doses, has been attended with no Effect there, that merited the serious Attention of Practitioners. Many were careful to obtain the Extract from _Vienna_, and even to procure it from Dr. _Storck_ himself. But now it appears to have had so little Success, as to become entirely neglected. _E. L._ Having exactly translated in this Place, and in the Table of Remedies, our learned Author's considerable Recommendation of the Extract of Hemlock in Cancers, we think it but fair, on the other Hand, to publish this Note of his Editor's against it; that the real Efficacy or Inefficacy of this Medicine may at length be ascertained, on the most extensive Evidence and Experience. As far as my own Opportunities and Reflections, and the Experience of many others, have instructed me on this Subject, it appears clear to myself, that though the Consequences of it have not been constantly unsuccessful with us, yet its Successes have come very short of its Failures. Nevertheless, as in all such Cancers, every other internal Medicine almost universally fails, we think with Dr. _Tissot_ it should always be tried (from the meer Possibility of its succeeding in some particular Habit and Circumstances) at least till longer Experience shall finally determine against it. _K._ § 376. The Nipples of Women, who give Milk, are often fretted or excoriated, which proves very severely painful to them. One of the best Applications is the most simple Ointment, being a Mixture of Oil and Wax melted together; or the Ointment Nº. 66. Should the Complaint prove very obstinate, the Nurse ought to be purged, which generally removes it. __Chapter XXVII.__ _Medical Directions concerning Children._ __Sect.__ 377. The Diseases of Children, and every Thing relating to their Health, are Objects which generally seem to have been too much neglected by Physicians; and have been too long confided to the Conduct of the most improper Persons for such a Charge. At the same Time it must be admitted their Health is of no little Importance; their Preservation is as necessary as the Continuance of the human Race; and the Application of the Practice of Physick to their Disorders is susceptible of nearer Approaches to Perfection, than is generally conceived. It seems to have even some Advantage over that Practice which regards grown Persons; and it consists in this, that the Diseases of Children are more simple, and less frequently complicated than those of Adults. It may be said indeed, they cannot make themselves so well understood, and meer Infants certainly not at all. This is true in Fact to a certain Degree, but not rigidly true; for though they do not speak our Language, they have one which we should contrive to understand. Nay every Distemper may be said, in some Sense, to have a Language of its own, which an attentive Physician will learn. He should therefore use his utmost Care to understand that of Infants, and avail himself of it, to increase the Means of rendering them healthy and vigorous, and to cure them of the different Distempers to which they are liable. I do not propose actually to compleat this Task myself, in all that Extent it may justly demand; but I shall set forth the principal Causes of their Distempers, and the general Method of treating them. By this Means I shall at least preserve them from some of the Mischiefs which are too frequently done them; and the lessening such Evils as Ignorance, or erroneous Practice, occasions, is one of the most important Purposes of the present Work. § 378. Nearly all the Children who die before they are one Year, and even two Years, old, die _with_ Convulsions: People say they died _of_ them, which is partly true, as it is in Effect, the Convulsions that have destroyed them. But then these very Convulsions are the Consequences, the Effects, of other Diseases, which require the utmost Attention of those, who are entrusted with the Care and Health of the little Innocents: as an effectual Opposition to these Diseases, these morbid Causes, is the only Means of removing the Convulsions. The four principal known Causes are, the _Meconium_; the Excrements contained in the Body of the Infant, at the Birth; _Acidities_, or sharp and sour Humours; the Cutting of the Teeth, and Worms. I shall treat briefly of each. _Of the Meconium._ §379. The Stomach and Guts of the Infant, at its Entrance into the World, are filled with a black Sort of Matter, of a middling Consistence, and very viscid or glutinous, which is called the _Meconium_. It is necessary this Matter should be discharged before the Infant sucks, since it would otherwise corrupt the Milk, and, becoming extremely sharp itself, there would result from their Mixture a double Source of Evils, to the Destruction of the Infant. The Evacuation of this Excrement is procured, 1, By giving them no Milk at all for the first twenty-four Hours of their Lives. 2, By making them drink during that Time some Water, to which a little Sugar or Honey must be added, which will dilute this _Meconium_, and promote the Discharge of it by Stool, and sometimes by vomiting. To be the more certain of expelling all this Matter, they should take one Ounce of Compound Syrup [85] of Succory, which should be diluted with a little Water, drinking up this Quantity within the Space of four or five Hours. This Practice is a very beneficial one, and it is to be wished it were to become general. This Syrup is greatly preferable to all others, given in such Cases, and especially to Oil of Almonds. [85] This Method (says the Editor and Annotator of _Lyons_) is useful, whenever the Mother does not suckle her Child. Art is then obliged to prove a Kind of Substitute to Nature, though always a very imperfect one. But when a Mother, attentive to her own true Interest, as well as her Infant's, and, listening to the Voice of Nature and her Duty, suckles it herself, these Remedies [he adds] seem hurtful, or at least, useless. The Mother should give her Child the Breast as soon as she can. The first Milk, the _Colostrum_, or _Strippings_, as it is called in Quadrupeds, which is very serous or watery, will be serviceable as a Purgative; it will forward the Expulsion of the _Meconium_, prove gradually nourishing, and is better than Biscuits, or Panada, which (he thinks) are dangerous in the first Days after the Birth. _E. L._ This Syrup of Succory being scarcely ever prepared with us, though sufficiently proper for the Use assigned it here, I have retained the preceding Note, as the Author of it directs these _Strippings_, for the same Purpose, with an Air of certain Experience; and as this Effect of them seems no Ways repugnant to the physical Wisdom and Oeconomy of Nature, on such important Points. Should it in fact be their very general Operation, it cannot be unknown to any Male or Female Practitioner in Midwifery, and may save poor People a little Expence, which was one Object of our humane Author's Plan. The Oil Of _Ricinus_, corruptly called _Castor_ Oil (being expressed from the Berries of the _Palma Christi_) is particularly recommended by some late medical Writers from _Jamaica_, _&c._ for this Purpose of expelling the _Meconium_, to the Quantity of a small Spoonful. These Gentlemen also consider it as the most proper, and almost specific Opener, in the dry Belly-ach of that torrid Climate, which tormenting Disease has the closest Affinity to the _Miserere_, or Iliac Passion, of any I have seen. The Annotator's Objection to our Author's very _thin light_ Panada, seems to be of little Weight. _K._ Should the great Weakness of the Child seem to call for some Nourishment, there would be no Inconvenience in allowing a little Biscuit well boiled in Water, which is pretty commonly done, or a little very thin light Panada. _Of Acidities, or sharp Humours._ § 380. Notwithstanding the Bodies of Children have been properly emptied speedily after their Birth, yet the Milk very often turns sour in their Stomachs, producing Vomitings, violent Cholics, Convulsions, a Looseness, and even terminating in Death. There are but two Purposes to be pursued in such Cases, which are to carry off the sour or sharp Humours, and to prevent the Generation of more. The first of these Intentions is best effected by the Syrup of Succory [86] just mentioned. [86] Or, for Want of it, the solutive Syrup of Roses. _K._ The Generation of further Acidities is prevented, by giving three Doses daily, if the Symptoms are violent, and but two, or even one only, if they are very moderate, of the Powder Nº. 61, drinking after it Bawm Tea, or a Tea of Lime-tree Leaves. § 381. It has been a Custom to load Children with Oil of Almonds, [87] as soon as ever they are infested with Gripes: but it is a pernicious Custom, and attended with very dangerous Consequences. It it very true that this Oil sometimes immediately allays the Gripes, by involving, or sheathing up, as it were, the acid Humours, and somewhat blunting the Sensibility of the Nerves. But it proves only a palliative Remedy, or asswaging for a Time, which, far from removing, increases the Cause, since it becomes sharp and rancid itself; whence the Disorder speedily returns, and the more Oil the Infant takes, it is griped the more. I have cured some Children of such Disorders, without any other Remedy, except abstaining from Oil, which weakens their Stomachs, whence their Milk is less perfectly, and more slowly digested, and becomes more easily soured. Besides this Weakness of the Stomach, which thus commences at that very early Age, has sometimes an unhealthy Influence on the Constitution of the Child, throughout the Remainder of his Life. [87] The _Magnesia_ is an excellent Substitute in Children, for these Oils Dr. _Tissot_ so justly condemns here. _K._ A free and open Belly is beneficial to Children; now it is certain that the Oil very often binds them, in Consequence of its diminishing the Force and Action of the Bowels. There is scarcely any Person, who cannot observe this Inconvenience attending it; notwithstanding they all continue to advise and to give it, to obtain a very different Purpose: But such is the Power of Prejudice in this Case, and in so many others; People are so strongly pre-possessed with a Notion, that such a Medicine must produce such an Effect; that its never having produced it avails nothing with them, their Prejudice still prevails; they ascribe its Want of Efficacy to the Smallness of the Doses; these are doubled then, and notwithstanding its bad Effects are augmented, their obstinate Blindness continues. This Abuse of the Oil also disposes their Child to knotty hard Tumours, and at length often proves the first Cause of some Diseases of the Skin, whose Cure is extremely difficult. Hence it is evident, this Oil should be used on such Occasions but very seldom; and that it is always very injudicious to give it in Cholics, which arise from sharp and sour Humours in the Stomach, or in the Bowels. § 382. Infants are commonly most subject to such Cholics during their earliest Months; after which they abate, in Proportion as their Stomachs grow stronger. They may be relieved in the Fit by Glysters of a Decoction of Chamomile Flowers, in which a Bit of Soap of the Size of a Hazel Nut is dissolved. A Piece of Flanel wrung out of a Decoction of Chamomile Flowers, with the Addition of some Venice Treacle, and applied hot over the Stomach and on the Belly, is also very beneficial, and relieving. Children cannot always take Glysters, the Continuance of which Circumstance might be dangerous to them; and every one is acquainted with the common Method of substituting Suppositories to them, whether they are formed of the smooth and supple Stalks of Vines, _&c._ of Soap, or of Honey boiled up to a proper Consistence. But one of the most certain Means to prevent these Cholics, which are owing to Children's not digesting their Milk, is to move and exercise them as much as possible; having a due Regard however to their tender Time of Life. § 383. Before I proceed to the third Cause of the Diseases of Children, which is, the Cutting of their Teeth, I must take Notice of the first Cares their Birth immediately requires, that is the Washing of them the first Time, meerly to cleanse, and afterwards, to strengthen them. _Of washing Children._ § 384. The whole Body of an Infant just born is covered with a gross Humour, which is occasioned by the Fluids, in which it was suspended in the Womb. There is a Necessity to cleanse it directly from this, for which nothing is so proper as a Mixture of one third Wine, and two thirds Water; Wine alone would be dangerous. This Washing may be repeated some Days successively; but it is a bad Custom to continue to wash them thus warm, the Danger of which is augmented by adding some Butter to the Wine and Water, which is done too often. If this gross Humour, that covers the Child, seems more thick and glutinous than ordinary, a Decoction of Chamomile Flowers, with a little Bit of Soap, may be used to remove it. The Regularity of Perspiration is the great Foundation of Health; to procure this Regularity the Teguments, the Skin, must be strengthened; but warm Washing tends to weaken it. When it is of a proper Strength it always performs its Functions; nor is Perspiration disordered sensibly by the Alteration of the Weather. For this Reason nothing should be omitted, that may fix it in this State; and to attain so important an Advantage, Children should be washed, some few Days after their Birth, with cold Water, in the State it is brought from the Spring. For this Purpose a Spunge is employed, with which they begin, by washing first the Face, the Ears, the back Part of the Head (carefully avoiding the [88] _Fontanelle_, or Mould of the Head) the Neck, the Loins, the Trunck of the Body, the Thighs, Legs and Arms, and in short every Spot. This Method which has obtained for so many Ages, and which is practised at present by many People, who prove very healthy, will appear shocking to several Mothers; they would be afraid of killing their Children by it; and would particularly fail of Courage enough to endure the Cries, which Children often make, the first Time they are washed. Yet if their Mothers truly love them, they cannot give a more substantial Mark of their Tenderness to them, than by subduing their Fears and their Repugnance, on this important Head. [88] That Part of the Head where a Pulsation may be very plainly felt, where the Bones are less hard, and not as yet firmly joined with those about them. Weakly Infants [89] are those who have the greatest Need of being washed: such as are remarkably strong may be excused from it; and it seems scarcely credible (before a Person has frequently seen the Consequences of it) how greatly this Method conduces to give, and to hasten on, their Strength. I have had the Pleasure to observe, since I first endeavoured to introduce the Custom among us, that several of the most affectionate and most sensible Mothers, have used it with the greatest Success. The Midwives, who have been Witnesses of it; the Nurses and the Servants of the Children, whom they have washed, publish it abroad; and should the Custom become as general, as every thing seems to promise it will, I am fully persuaded, that by preserving the Lives of a great Number of Children, it will certainly contribute to check the Progress of Depopulation. [89] There is however a certain Degree of Weakness, which may very reasonably deter us from this Washing; as when the Infant manifestly wants Heat, and needs some Cordial and frequent Frictions, to prevent its expiring from downright Feebleness; in which Circumstances Washing must be hurtful to it. _Tissot._ They should be washed very regularly every Day, in every Season, and every Sort of Weather; and in the fine warm Season they should be plunged into a large Pail of Water, into the Basins around Fountains, in a Brook, a River, or a Lake. After a few Days crying, they grow so well accustomed to this Exercise, that it becomes one of their Pleasures; so that they laugh all the Time of their going through it. The first Benefit of this Practice is, as I have already said, the keeping up their Perspiration, and rendering them less obnoxious to the Impressions of the Air and Weather: and it is also in Consequence of this first Benefit, that they are preserved from a great Number of Maladies, especially from knotty Tumours, often called Kernels; from Obstructions; from Diseases of the Skin, and from Convulsions, its general Consequence being to insure them firm, and even robust Health. § 385. But Care should be taken not to prevent, or, as it were to undo, the Benefit this Washing procures them, by the bad Custom of keeping them too hot. There is not a more pernicious one than this, nor one that destroys more Children. They should be accustomed to light Cloathing by Day, and light Covering by Night, to go with their Heads very thinly covered, and not at all in the Day-time, after their attaining the Age of two Years. They should avoid sleeping in Chambers that are too hot, and should live in the open Air, both in Summer and Winter, as much as possible. Children who have been kept too hot in such Respects, are very often liable to Colds; they are weakly, pale, languishing, bloated and melancholy. They are subject to hard knotty Swellings, a Consumption, all Sorts of languid Disorders, and either die in their Infancy, or only grow up into a miserable valetudinary Life; while those who are washed or plunged into cold Water, and habitually exposed to the open Air, are just in the opposite Circumstances. § 386. I must further add here, that Infancy is not the only Stage of Life, in which cold Bathing is advantagious. I have advised it with remarkable Success to Persons of every Age, even to that of seventy: and there are two Kinds of Diseases, more frequent indeed in Cities than in the Country, in which cold Baths succeed very greatly; that is, in Debility, or Weakness of the Nerves; and when Perspiration is disordered, when Persons are fearful of every Breath of Air, liable to Defluxions or Colds, feeble and languishing, the cold Bath re-establishes Perspiration; restores Strength to the Nerves; and by that Means dispels all the Disorders, which arise from these two Causes, in the animal Oeconomy. They should be used before Dinner. But in the same Proportion that cold Bathing is beneficial, the habitual Use, or rather Abuse, of warm Bathing is pernicious; they dispose the Persons addicted to them to the Apoplexy; to the Dropsy; to Vapours, and to the hypochondriacal Disease: and Cities, in which they are too frequently used, become, in some Measure, desolate from such Distempers. _Of the Cutting of the Teeth._ § 387. Cutting of the Teeth is often very tormenting to Children, some dying under the severe Symptoms attending it. If it proves very painful, we should during that Period, 1, Keep their Bellies open by Glysters consisting only of a simple Decoction of Mallows: but Glysters are not necessary, if the Child, as it sometimes happens then, has a Purging. 2, Their ordinary Quantity of Food should be lessened for two Reasons; first, because the Stomach is then weaker than usual; and next, because a small Fever sometimes accompanies the Cutting. 3, Their usual Quantity of Drink should be increased a little; the best for them certainly is an Infusion of the Leaves or Flowers, of the Lime or Linden-tree, to which a little Milk may be added. 4, Their Gums should frequently be rubbed with a Mixture of equal Parts of Honey, and Mucilage of Quince-seeds; and a Root of March-Mallows, or of Liquorice, may be given them to chew. It frequently happens, that during Dentition, or the Time of their toothing, Children prove subject to Knots or Kernels. _Of Worms._ § 388. The _Meconium_, the Acidity of the Milk, and Cutting of the Teeth are the three great Causes of the Diseases of Children. There is also a fourth, Worms, which is likewise very often pernicious to them; but which, nevertheless, is not, at least not near so much, a general Cause of their Disorders, as it is generally supposed, when a Child exceeding two Years of Age proves sick. There are a great Variety of Symptoms, which dispose People to think a Child has Worms; though there is but one that demonstrates it, which is discharging them upwards or downwards. There is great Difference among Children too in this Respect, some remaining healthy, though having several Worms, and others being really sick with a few. They prove hurtful, 1, by obstructing the Guts, and compressing the neighbouring Bowels by their Size. 2, By sucking up the Chyle intended to nourish the Patient, and thus depriving him of his very Substance as well as Subsistence: and, 3, by irritating the Guts and even [90] gnawing them. [90] I have seen a Child about three Years old, whose Navel, after swelling and inflaming, suppurated, and through a small Orifice (which must have communicated with the Cavity of the Gut or the Belly) discharged one of these Worms we call _teretes_, about three Inches long. He had voided several by Stool, after taking some vermifuge Medicines. The Fact I perfectly remember; and to the best of my Recollection, the Ulcer healed some Time after, and the Orifice closed: but the Child died the following Year of a putrid Fever, which might be caused, or was aggravated, by Worms. _K._ § 389. The Symptoms which make it probable they are infested with Worms, are slight, frequent and irregular Cholics; a great Quantity of Spittle running off while they are fasting; a disagreeable Smell of their Breath, of a particular Kind, especially in the Morning; a frequent Itchiness of their Noses which makes them scratch or rub them often; a very irregular Appetite, being sometimes voracious, and at other Times having none at all: Pains at Stomach and Vomitings: sometimes a costive Belly; but more frequently loose Stools of indigested Matter; the Belly rather larger than ordinary, the rest of the Body meagre; a Thirst which no Drink allays; often great Weakness, and some Degree of Melancholy. The Countenance has generally an odd unhealthy Look, and varies every Quarter of an Hour; the Eyes often look dull, and are surrounded with a Kind of livid Circle: the White of the Eye is sometimes visible while they sleep, their Sleep being often attended with terrifying Dreams or _Deliriums_, and with continual Startings, and Grindings of their Teeth. Some Children find it impossible to be at Rest for a single Moment. Their Urine is often whitish, I have seen it from some as white as Milk. They are afflicted with Palpitations, Swoonings, Convulsions, long and profound Drowsiness; cold Sweats which come on suddenly; Fevers which have the Appearances of Malignity; Obscurities and even Loss of Sight and of Speech, which continue for a considerable Time; Palsies either of their Hands, their Arms, or their Legs, and Numbnesses. Their Gums are in a bad State, and as though they had been gnawed or corroded: they have often the Hickup, a small and irregular Pulse, Ravings, and, what is one of the least doubtful Symptoms, frequently a small dry Cough; and not seldom a Mucosity or Sliminess in their Stools: sometimes very long and violent Cholics, which terminate in an Abscess on the Outside of the Belly, from whence Worms issue. (See Note [90] p. 388.) § 390. There are a great Multitude of Medicines against Worms. The [91] _Grenette_ or Worm-seed, which is one of the commonest, is a very good one. The Prescription Nº. 62, is also a very successful one; and the Powder Nº. 14 is one of the best. Flower of Brimstone, the Juice of _Nasturtium_, or Cresses, Acids and Honey Water have often been very serviceable; but the first three I have mentioned, succeeded by a Purge, are the best. Nº. 63 is a purging Medicine, that the most averse and difficult Children may easily take. But when, notwithstanding these Medicines, the Worms are not expelled, it is necessary to take Advice of some Person qualified to prescribe more efficacious ones. This is of considerable Importance, because, notwithstanding a great Proportion of Children may probably have Worms, and yet many of them continue in good Health, there are, nevertheless, some who are really killed by Worms, after having been cruelly tormented by them for several Years. [91] This Word occurs in none of the common Dictionaries; but suspecting it for the _Semen Santonici_ of the Shops, I find the learned Dr. _Bikker_ has rendered it so, in his very well received Translation of this valuable Work into _Low Dutch_. _K._ A Disposition to breed Worms always shews the Digestions are weak and imperfect; for which Reason Children liable to Worms should not be nourished with Food difficult to digest. We should be particularly careful not to stuff them with Oils, which, admitting such Oils should immediately kill some of their Worms, do yet increase that Cause, which disposes them to generate others. A long continued Use of Filings of Iron is the Remedy, that most effectually destroys this Disposition to generate Worms. _Of Convulsions._ § 391. I have already said, § 378, that the Convulsions of Children are almost constantly the Effect of some other Disease, and especially of some of the four I have mentioned. Some other, though less frequent Causes, sometimes occasion them, and these may be reduced to the following. The first of them is the corrupted Humours, that often abound in their Stomachs and Intestines; and which, by their Irritation, produce irregular Motions throughout the whole System of the Nerves, or at least through some Parts of them; whence those Convulsions arise, which are merely involuntary Motions of the Muscles. These putrid Humours are the Consequence of too great a Load of Aliments, of unsound ones, or of such, as the Stomachs of Children are incapable of digesting. These Humours are also sometimes the Effect of a Mixture and Confusion of different Aliments, and of a bad Distribution of their Nourishment. It may be known that the Convulsions of a Child are owing to this Cause, by the Circumstances that have preceded them, by a disgusted loathing Stomach; by a certain Heaviness and Load at it; by a foul Tongue; a great Belly; by its bad Complexion, and its disturbed unrefreshing Sleep. The Child's proper Diet, that is, a certain Diminution of the Quantity of its Food; some Glysters of warm Water, and one Purge of Nº. 63, very generally remove such Convulsions. § 392. The second Cause is the bad Quality of their Milk. Whether it be that the Nurse has fallen into a violent Passion, some considerable Disgust, great Fright or frequent Fear: whether she has eat unwholesome Food, drank too much Wine, spirituous Liquors, or any strong Drink: whether she is seized with a Descent of her monthly Discharges, and that has greatly disordered her Health; or finally whether she prove really sick: In all these Cases the Milk is vitiated, and exposes the Infant to violent Symptoms, which sometimes speedily destroy it. The Remedies for Convulsions, from this Cause, consist, 1, In letting the Child abstain from this corrupted Milk, until the Nurse shall have recovered her State of Health and Tranquillity, the speedy Attainment of which may be forwarded by a few Glysters; by gentle pacific Medicines; by an entire Absence of whatever caused or conduced to her bad Health; and by drawing off all the Milk that had been so vitiated. 2, In giving the Child itself some Glysters: in making it drink plentifully of a light Infusion of the Lime-tree Flowers, in giving it no other Nourishment for a Day or two, except Panada and other light Spoon-meat, without Milk. 3, In purging the Child (supposing what has been just directed to have been unavailable) with an Ounce, or an Ounce and a Half, of compound Syrup of Succory, or as much Manna. These lenient gentle Purges carry off the Remainder of the corrupted Milk, and remove the Disorders occasioned by it. § 393. A third Cause which also produces Convulsions, is the feverish Distempers which attack Children, especially the Small-pocks and the Measles; but in general such Convulsions require no other Treatment, but that proper for the Disease, which has introduced them. § 394. It is evident from what has been said in the Course of this Chapter, and it deserves to be attended to, that Convulsions are commonly a Symptom attending some other Disease, rather than an original Disease themselves: that they depend on many different Causes; that from this Consideration there can be no general Remedy for removing or checking them; and that the only Means and Medicines which are suitable in each Case, are those, which are proper to oppose the particular Cause producing them, and which I have already pointed out in treating of each Cause. The greater Part of the pretended Specifics, which are indiscriminately and ignorantly employed in all Sorts of Convulsions, are often useless, and still oftner prejudicial. Of this last Sort and Character are, 1, All sharp and hot Medicines, spirituous Liquors, Oil of Amber,--other hot Oils and Essences, volatile Salts, and such other Medicines, as, by the Violence of their Action on the irritable Organs of Children, are likelier to produce Convulsions, than to allay them. 2, Astringent Medicines, which are highly pernicious, whenever the Convulsions are caused by any sharp Humour, that ought to be discharged from the Body by Stool; or when such Convulsions are the Consequences of an [92] Effort of Nature, in Order to effect a _Crisis_: And as they almost ever depend on one or the other of these Causes, it follows that Astringents can very rarely, if ever, be beneficial. Besides that there is always some Danger in giving them to Children without a mature, a thorough Consideration of their particular Case and Situation, as they often dispose them to Obstructions. [92] This very important Consideration, on which I have treated pretty largely, in the _Analysis_, seems not to be attended to in Practice, as frequently as it ought. _K._ 3, The over early, and too considerable Use of Opiates, either not properly indicated, or continued too long, such as Venice Treacle, Mithridate, Syrup of Poppies (and it is very easy to run upon some of these Sholes) are also attended with the most embarrassing Events, in Regard to Convulsions; and it may be affirmed they are improper, for nine Tenths of those they are advised to. It is true they often produce an apparent Ease and Tranquillity for some Minutes, and sometimes for some Hours too; but the Disorder returns even with greater Violence for this Suspension, by Reason they have augmented all the Causes producing it; they impair the Stomach; they bind up the Belly; they lessen the usual Quantity of Urine; and besides, by their abating the Sensibility of the Nerves, which ought to be considered as one of the chief Centinels appointed by Nature, for the Discovery of any approaching Danger, they dispose the Patient insensibly to such Infarctions and Obstructions, as tend speedily to produce some violent and mortal Event, or which generate a Disposition to languid and tedious Diseases: and I do again repeat it, that notwithstanding there are some Cases, in which they are absolutely necessary, they ought in general to be employed with great Precaution and and Prudence. To mention the principal Indications for them in convulsive Cases, they are proper, 1, When the Convulsions still continue, after the original Cause of them is removed. 2, When they are so extremely violent, as to threaten a great and very speedy Danger of Life; and when they prove an Obstacle to the taking Remedies calculated to extinguish their Cause; and, 3, When the Cause producing them is of such a Nature, as is apt to yield to the Force of Anodynes; as when, for Instance, they have been the immediate Consequence of a Fright. § 395. There is a very great Difference in different Children, in Respect to their being more or less liable to Convulsions. There are some, in whom very strong and irritating Causes cannot excite them; not even excruciating Gripes and Cholics; the most painful Cutting of their Teeth; violent Fevers; the Small Pocks; Measles; and though they are, as it were, continually corroded by Worms, they have not the slightest Tendency to be convulsed. On the other Hand, some are so very obnoxious to Convulsions, or so easily _convulsible_, if that Expression may be allowed, that they are very often seized with them from such very slight Causes, that the most attentive Consideration cannot investigate them. This Sort of Constitution, which is extremely dangerous, and exposes the unhappy Subject of it, either to a very speedy Death, or to a very low and languid State of Life, requires some peculiar Considerations; the Detail of which would be the more foreign to the Design of this Treatise, as they are pretty common in Cities, but much less so in Country Places. In general cold Bathing and the Powder Nº. 14 are serviceable in such Circumstances. _General Directions, with Respect to Children._ § 396. I shall conclude this Chapter by such farther Advice, as may contribute to give Children a more vigorous Constitution and Temperament, and to preserve them from many Disorders. First then, we should be careful not to cram them too much, and to regulate both the Quantity and the set Time of their Meals, which is a very practicable Thing, even in the very earliest Days of their Life; when the Woman who nurses them, will be careful to do it regularly. Perhaps indeed this is the very Age, when such a Regulation may be the most easily attempted and effected; because it is that Stage, when the constant Uniformity of their Way of living should incline us to suppose, that what they have Occasion for is most constantly very much the same. A Child who has already attained to a few Years, and who is surrendered up more to his own Exercise and Vivacity, feels other Calls; his Way of Life is become a little more various and irregular, whence his Appetite must prove so too. Hence it would be inconvenient to subject him over exactly to one certain Rule, in the Quantity of his Nourishment, or the Distance of his Meals. The Dissipation or passing off of his Nutrition being unequal, the Occasions he has for repairing it cannot be precisely dated and regular. But with Respect to very little Children in Arms, or on the Lap, a Uniformity in the first of these Respects, the Quantity of their Food, very consistently conduces to a useful Regularity with Respect to the second, the Times of feeding them. Sickness is probably the only Circumstance, that can warrant any Alteration in the Order and Intervals of their Meals; and then this Change should consist in a Diminution of their usual Quantity, notwithstanding a general and fatal Conduct seems to establish the very Reverse; and this pernicious Fashion authorizes the Nurses to cram these poor little Creatures the more, in Proportion as they have real Need of less feeding. They conclude of Course, that all their Cries are the Effects of Hunger, and the Moment an Infant begins, then they immediately stop his Mouth with his Food; without once suspecting, that these Wailings may be occasioned by the Uneasiness an over-loaded Stomach may have introduced; or by Pains whose Cause is neither removed nor mitigated, by making the Children eat; though the meer Action of eating may render them insensible to slight Pains, for a very few Minutes; in the first Place, by calling off their Attention; and secondly, by hushing them to sleep, a common Effect of feeding in Children, being in fact, a very general and constant one, and depending on the same Causes, which dispose so many grown Persons to sleep after Meals. A Detail of the many Evils Children are exposed to, by thus forcing too much Food upon them, at the very Time when their Complaints are owing to Causes, very different from Hunger, might appear incredible. They are however so numerous and certain, that I seriously wish sensible Mothers would open their Eyes to the Consideration of this Abuse, and agree to put an End to it. Those who overload them with Victuals, in Hopes of strengthening them, are extremely deceived; there being no one Prejudice equally fatal to such a Number of them. Whatever unnecessary Aliment a Child receives, weakens, instead of strengthening him. The Stomach, when over-distended, suffers in its Force and Functions, and becomes less able to digest thoroughly. The Excess of the Food last received impairs the Concoction of the Quantity, that was really necessary: which, being badly digested, is so far from yielding any Nourishment to the Infant, that it weakens it, and proves a Source of Diseases, and concurs to produce Obstructions, Rickets, the Evil, slow Fevers, a Consumption and Death. Another unhappy Custom prevails, with Regard to the Diet of Children, when they begin to receive any other Food besides their Nurse's Milk, and that is, to give them such as exceeds the digestive Power of their Stomachs; and to indulge them in a Mixture of such Things in their Meals, as are hurtful in themselves, and more particularly so, with Regard to their feeble and delicate Organs. To justify this pernicious Indulgence, they affirm it is necessary to accustom their Stomachs to every Kind of Food; but this Notion is highly absurd, since their Stomachs should first be strengthened, in Order to make them capable of digesting every Food; and crouding indigestible, or very difficultly digestible Materials into it, is not the Way to strengthen it. To make a Foal sufficiently strong for future Labour, he is exempted from any, till he is four Years old; which enables him to submit to considerable Work, without being the worse for it. But if, to inure him to Fatigue, he should be accustomed, immediately from his Birth, to submit to Burthens above his Strength, he could never prove any Thing but an utter Jade, incapable of real Service. The Application of this to the Stomach of a Child is very obvious. I shall add another very important Remark, and it is this, that the too early Work to which the Children of Peasants are forced, becomes of real Prejudice to the Publick. Hence Families themselves are less numerous, and the more Children that are removed from their Parents, while they are very young, those who are left are the more obliged to Work, and very often even at hard Labour, at an Age when they should exercise themselves in the usual Diversions and Sports of Children. Hence they wear out in a Manner, before they attain the ordinary Term of Manhood; they never arrive at their utmost Strength, nor reach their full Stature; and it is too common to see a Countenance with the Look of twenty Years, joined to a Stature of twelve or thirteen. In fact, they often sink under the Weight of such hard involuntary Labour, and fall into a mortal Degree of Wasting and Exhaustion. § 397. Secondly, which indeed is but a Repetition of the Advice I have already given, and upon which I cannot insist too much, they must be frequently washed or bathed in cold Water. § 398. Thirdly, they should be moved about and exercised as much as they can bear, after they are some Weeks old: the earlier Days of their tender Life seeming consecrated, by Nature herself, to a nearly total Repose, and to sleeping, which seems not to determine, until they have Need of Nourishment: so that, during this very tender Term of Life, too much Agitation or Exercise might be attended with mortal Consequences. But as soon as their Organs have attained a little more Solidity and Firmness, the more they are danced about (provided it is not done about their usual Time of Repose, which ought still to be very considerable) they are so much the better for it; and by increasing it gradually, they may be accustomed to a very quick Movement, and at length very safely to such, as may be called hard and hearty Exercise. That Sort of Motion they receive in Go-Carts, or other Vehicles, particularly contrived for their Use, is more beneficial to them, than what they have from their Nurses Arms, because they are in a better Attitude in the former; and it heats them less in Summer, which is a Circumstance of no small Importance to them; considerable Heat and Sweat disposing them to be ricketty. § 399. Fourthly, they should be accustomed to breathe in the free open Air as much as possible. If Children have unhappily been less attended to than they ought, whence they are evidently feeble, thin, languid, obstructed, and liable to Scirrhosities (which constitute what is termed a ricketty or consumptive State) these four Directions duly observed retrieve them from that unhappy State; provided the Execution of them has not been too long delayed. § 400. Fifthly, If they have any natural Discharge of a Humour by the Skin, which is very common with them, or any Eruption, such as Tetters, white Scurf, a Rashe, or the like, Care must be taken not to check or repel them, by any greasy or restringent Applications. Not a Year passes without Numbers of Children having been destroyed by Imprudence in this Respect; while others have been reduced to a deplorable and weakly Habit. I have been a Witness to the most unhappy Consequences of external Medicines applied for the Rashe and white Scurf; which, however frightful they may appear, are never dangerous; provided nothing at all is applied to them, without the Advice and Consideration of a truly skilful Person. When such external Disorders prove very obstinate, it is reasonable to suspect some Fault or Disagreement in the Milk the Child sucks; in which Case it should immediately be discontinued, corrected, or changed. But I cannot enter here into a particular Detail of all the Treatment necessary in such Cases. __Chapter XXVIII.__ _Directions with Respect to drowned Persons._ [93] [93] The Misfortune of a young Man drowned in bathing himself, at the Beginning of the Season, occasioned the Publication of this Chapter by itself in _June_, 1761. A few Days after, the like Misfortune happened to a labouring Man; but he was happily taken out of the water sooner than the first (who had remained about half an Hour under it) and he was recovered by observing Part of the Advice this Chapter contains; of which Chapter several Bystanders had Copies.--This Note seems to be from the Author himself. __Sect.__ 401. Whenever a Person who has been drowned, has remained a Quarter of an Hour under Water, there can be no considerable Hopes of his Recovery: the Space of two or three Minutes in such a Situation being often sufficient to kill a Man irrecoverably. Nevertheless, as several Circumstances may happen to have continued Life, in such an unfortunate Situation, beyond the ordinary Term, we should always endeavour to afford them the most effectual Relief, and not give them up as irrecoverable too soon: since it has often been known, that until the Expiration of two, and sometimes even of three Hours, such Bodies have exhibited some apparent Tokens of Life. Water has sometimes been found in the Stomach of drowned Persons; at other times none at all. Besides, the greatest Quantity which has ever been found in it has not exceeded that, which may be drank without any Inconvenience; whence we may conclude, the meer Quantity was not mortal; neither is it very easy to conceive how drowned Persons can swallow Water. What really kills them is meer Suffocation, or the Interception of Air, of the Action of breathing; and the Water which descends into the Lungs, and which is determined there, by the Efforts they necessarily, though involuntarily make, to draw Breath, after they are under Water: for there absolutely does not any Water descend, either into the Stomach or the Lungs of Bodies plunged into Water, after they are dead; a Circumstance, which serves to establish a legal Sentence and Judgment in some criminal Cases, and Trials: This Water intimately blending itself with the Air in the Lungs, forms a viscid inactive Kind of Froth, which entirely destroys the Functions of the Lungs; whence the miserable Sufferer is not only suffocated, but the Return of the Blood from the Head being also intercepted, the Blood Vessels of the Brain are overcharged, and an Apoplexy is combined with the Suffocation. This second Cause, that is, the Descent of the Water into the Lungs, is far from being general, it having been evident from the Dissection of several drowned Bodies, that it really never had existed in them. § 402. The Intention that should be pursued, is that of unloading the Lungs and the Brain, and of reviving the extinguished Circulation. For which Purpose we should, 1, immediately strip the Sufferer of all his wet Cloaths; rub him strongly with dry coarse Linnen; put him, as soon as possible, into a well heated Bed, and continue to rub him well a very considerable Time together. 2, A strong and healthy Person should force his own warm Breath into the Patient's Lungs; and the Smoke of Tobacco, if some was at Hand, by Means of some Pipe, Chanel, Funnel or the like, that may be introduced into the Mouth. This Air or Fume, being forcibly blown in, by stopping the Sufferer's Nostrils close at the same Time, penetrates into the Lungs, and there rarifies by its Heat that Air, which blended with the Water, composed the viscid Spume or Froth. Hence that Air becomes disengaged from the Water, recovers its Spring, dilates the Lungs; and, if there still remains within any Principle of Life, the Circulation is renewed again that Instant. 3, If a moderately expert Surgeon is at Hand, he must open the jugular Vein, or any large Vein in the Neck, and let out ten or twelve Ounces of Blood. Such a Bleeding is serviceable on many Accounts. First, merely as Bleeding, it renews the Circulation, which is the constant Effect of Bleeding in such Swoonings, as arise from an intercepted or suffocated Circulation. Secondly, it is that particular Bleeding, which most suddenly removes, in such Cases, the Infarction or Obstruction of the Head and Lungs; and, thirdly, it is sometimes the only Vessel, whence Blood will issue under such Circumstances. The Veins of the Feet then afford none; and those of the Arms seldom; but the Jugulars almost constantly furnish it. Fourthly, the Fume of Tobacco should be thrown up, as speedily and plentifully as possible, into the Intestines by the Fundament. There are very commodious Contrivances devised for this Purpose; but as they are not common, it may be effected by many speedy Means. One, by which a Woman's Life was preserved, consisted only in introducing the small Tube of a Tobacco Pipe well lighted up: the Head or Bowl of it was wrapped up in a Paper, in which several Holes were pricked, and through these the Breath was strongly forced. At the fifth Blast a considerable Rumbling was heard in the Woman's Belly; she threw up a little Water, and a Moment afterwards came to her Senses. Two Pipes may be thus lighted and applied, with their Bowls covered over; the Extremity of one is to be introduced into the Fundament; and the other may be blown through into the Lungs. Any other Vapour may also be conveyed up, by introducing a _Canula_, or any other Pipe, with a Bladder firmly fixed to it. This Bladder is fastened at its other End to a large Tin Funnel, under which Tobacco is to be lighted. This Contrivance has succeeded with me upon other Occasions, in which Necessity compelled me to invent and apply it. Fifthly, the strongest Volatiles should be applied to the Patient's Nostrils. The Powder of some strong dry Herb should be blown up his Nose, such as Sage, Rosemary, Rue, Mint, and especially Marjoram, or very well dried Tobacco; or even the Fume, the Smoke of these Herbs. But all these Means are most properly employed after Bleeding, when they are most efficacious and certain. Sixthly, as long as the Patient shews no Signs of Life, he will be unable to swallow, and it is then useless, and even dangerous, to pour much Liquid of any kind into his Mouth, which could do nothing but keep up, or increase Suffocation. It is sufficient, in such Circumstances, to instil a few Drops of some irritating Liquor, which might also be cordial and reviving. But as soon as ever he discovers any Motion, he should take, within the Space of one Hour, five or six common Spoonfuls of Oxymel of Squills diluted with warm Water: or if that Medicine was not to be had very speedily, a strong Infusion of the blessed Thistle, or _Carduus benedictus_, of Sage, or of Chamomile Flowers sweetened with Honey, might do instead of it: and supposing nothing else to be had, some warm Water, with the Addition of a little common Salt, should be given. Some Persons are bold enough to recommend Vomits in such Cases; but they are not without their Inconvenience; and it is not as a Vomit that I recommend the Oxymel of Squills in them. Seventhly, Notwithstanding the Sick discover some Tokens of Life, we should not cease to continue our Assistance; since they sometimes irrecoverably expire, after these first Appearances of recovering. And lastly, though they should be manifestly re-animated, there sometimes remains an Oppression, a Coughing and Feverishness, which effectually constitute a Disease: and then it becomes necessary sometimes to bleed them in the Arms; to give them Barley Water plentifully, or Elder-flower Tea. § 403. Having thus pointed out such Means as are necessary, and truly effectual, in such unfortunate Accidents, I shall very briefly mention some others, which it is the general Custom to use and apply in the first Hurry. 1, These unhappy People are sometimes wrapped up in a Sheep's, or a Calf's, or a Dog's Skin, immediately flead from the Animal: these Applications have sometimes indeed revived the Heat of the Drowned; but their Operations are more slow, and less efficacious, than the Heat of a well-warmed Bed; with the additional Vapour of burnt Sugar, and long continued Frictions with hot Flanels. 2, The Method of rolling them in an empty Hogshead is dangerous, and mispends a deal of important Time. 3, That also of hanging them up by the Feet is attended with Danger, and ought to be wholly discontinued. The Froth or Foam, which is one of the Causes of their Death, is too thick and tough to discharge itself, in Consequence of its own Weight. Nevertheless, this is the only Effect that can be expected, from this Custom of suspending them by the Feet; which must also be hurtful, by its tending to increase the Overfulness of the Head and of the Lungs. § 404. It is some Years since a Girl of eighteen Years old was recovered [though it is unknown whether she remained under Water only a little Time or some Hours] who was motionless, frozen as it were, insensible, with her Eyes closed, her Mouth wide open, a livid Colour, a swoln Visage, a Tumour or bloating of the whole Body, which was overladen as it were, or Water-soaked. This miserable Object was extended on a Kind of Bed, of hot or very warm Ashes, quickly heated in great Kettles; and by laying her quite naked on these Ashes; by covering her with others equally hot; by putting a Bonnet round her Head, with a Stocking round her Neck stuffed with the same, and heaping Coverings over all this, at the End of half an Hour her Pulse returned, she recovered her Speech, and cried out, _I freeze, I freeze_: A little Cherry-Brandy was given her, and then she remained buried, as it were, eight Hours under the Ashes; being taken out of them afterwards without any other Complaint, except that of great Lassitude or Weariness, which went entirely off the third Day. This Method was undoubtedly so effectual, that it well deserves Imitation; but it should not make us inattentive to the others. Heated Gravel or Sand mixed with Salt, or hot Salt alone, would have been equally efficacious, and they have been found so. At the very Time of writing this, two young Ducks, who were drowned, have been revived by a dry Bath of hot Ashes. The Heat of a Dung-heap may also be beneficial; and I have just been informed, by a very creditable and sensible Spectator of it, that it effectually contributed to restore Life to a Man, who had certainly remained six Hours under Water. § 405. I shall conclude these Directions with an Article printed in a little Work at _Paris_, about twenty Years since, by Order of the King, to which there is not the least Doubt, but that any other Sovereign will readily accede. "Notwithstanding the common People are very generally disposed to be compassionate, and may wish to give all Assistance to drowned Persons, it frequently happens they do not, only because they dare not; imagining they expose themselves by it to Prosecutions. It is therefore necessary, that they should know, and it cannot be too often repeated, in order to eradicate such a pernicious Prejudice, that the Magistrates have never interposed to prevent People from trying every possible Means to recover such unfortunate Persons, as shall be drowned and taken out of the Water. It is only in those Cases, when the Persons are known to be absolutely and irrecoverably dead, that Justice renders it necessary to seize their Bodies." __Chapter XXIX.__ _Of Substances stopt between the Mouth and the Stomach._ __Sect.__ 406. The Food we take in descends from the Mouth through a very strait Passage or Chanel, called the _Oesophagus_, the Gullet, which, going parallel with the Spine or Backbone, joins to, or terminates at, the Stomach. It happens sometimes that different Bodies are stopt in this Chanel, without being able either to descend or to return up again; whether this Difficulty arises from their being too large; or whether it be owing to their having such Angles or Points, as by penetrating into, and adhering to the Sides of this membranous Canal, absolutely prevent the usual Action and Motion of it. § 407. Very dangerous Symptoms arise from this Stoppage, which are frequently attended with a most acute Pain in the Part; and at other Times, with a very incommodious, rather than painful, Sensation; sometimes a very ineffectual Commotion at, or rising of, the Stomach, attended with great Anguish; and if the Stoppage be so circumstanced, that the _Glottis_ is closed, or the Wind-pipe compressed, a dreadful Suffocation is the Consequence: the Patient cannot breathe, the Lungs are quite distended; and the Blood being unable to return from the Head, the Countenance becomes red, then livid; the Neck swells; the Oppression increases, and the poor Sufferer speedily dies. When the Patient's Breathing is not stopt, nor greatly oppressed; if the Passage is not entirely blocked up, and he can swallow something, he lives very easily for a few Days, and then his Case becomes a particular Disorder of the _Oesophagus_, or Gullet. But if the Passage is absolutely closed, and the Obstruction cannot be removed for many Days, a terrible Death is the Consequence. § 408. The Danger of such Cases does not depend so much on the Nature of the obstructing Substance, as on its Size, with Regard to that of the Passage of the Part where it stops, and of the Manner in which it forms the Obstruction; and frequently the very Food may occasion Death; while Substances less adapted to be swallowed are not attended with any violent Consequences, though swallowed. A Child of six Days old swallowed a Comfit or Sugar Plumb, which stuck in the Passage, and instantly killed it. A grown Person perceived that a Bit of Mutton had stopt in the Passage; not to alarm any Body he arose from Table; a Moment afterwards, on looking where he might be gone, he was found dead. Another was choaked by a Bit of Cake; a third by a Piece of the Skin of a Ham; and a fourth by an Egg, which he swallowed whole in a Bravo. A Child was killed by a Chesnut swallowed whole. Another died suddenly, choaked (which is always the Circumstance, when they die instantly after such Accidents) by a Pear which he had tossed up, and catched in his Mouth. A Woman was choaked with another Pear. A Piece of a Sinew continued eight Days in the Passage, so that it prevented the Patient from getting down any Thing else; at the Expiration of that Time it fell into the Stomach, being loosened by its Putridity: The Patient notwithstanding died soon after, being killed by the Inflammation, Gangrene and Weakness it had occasioned. Unhappily there occur but too many Instances of this Sort, of which it is unnecessary to cite more. § 409. Whenever any Substance is thus detained in the Gullet, there are two Ways of removing it; that is either by extracting it, or pushing it down. The safest and most certain Way is always to extract or draw it out, but this is not always the easiest: and as the Efforts made for this Purpose greatly fatigue the Patient, and are sometimes attended with grievous Consequences; and yet if the Occasion is extremely urging, it may be eligible to thrust it down, if that is easier; and if there is no Danger from the obstructing Bodies Reception into the Stomach. The Substances which may be pushed down without Danger, are all common nourishing ones, as Bread, Meat, Cakes, Fruits, Pulse, Morsels of Tripe, and even Skin of Bacon. It is only very large Morsels of particular Aliments, that prove very difficult to digest; yet even such are rarely attended with any Fatality. § 410. The Substances we should endeavour to extract or draw out, though it be more painful and less easy than to push them down, are all those, whose Consequences might be highly dangerous, or even mortal, if swallowed. Such are all totally indigestible Bodies, as Cork, Linen-Rags, large Fruit Stones, Bones, Wood, Glass, Stones, Metals; and more especially if any further Danger may be superadded to that of its Indigestibility, from the Shape, whether rough, sharp, pointed, or angular, of the Substance swallowed. Wherefore we should chiefly endeavour to extract Pins, Needles, Fish-bones, other pointed Fragments of Bones, Bits of Glass, Scissars, Rings, or Buckles. Nevertheless it has happened, that every one of these Substances have at one Time or another been swallowed, and the most usual Consequences of them are violent Pains of the Stomach, and in the Guts; Inflammations, Suppurations, Abscesses, a slow Fever, Gangrene, the _Miserere_ or Iliac Passion; external Abscesses, through which the Bodies swallowed down have been discharged; and frequently, after a long Train of Maladies, a dreadful Death. § 411. When such Substances have not passed in too deep, we should endeavour to extract them with our Fingers, which often succeeds. If they are lower, we should make use of Nippers or a small _Forceps_; of which Surgeons are provided with different Sorts. Those which some Smoakers carry about them might be very convenient for such Purposes; and in Case of Necessity they might be made very readily out of two Bits of Wood. But this Attempt to extract rarely succeeds, if the Substance has descended far into the _Oesophagus_, and if the Substance be of a flexible Nature, which exactly applies itself to, and fills up the Cavity or Chanel of it. § 412. If the Fingers and the Nippers fail, or cannot be duly applied, Crotchets, a Kind of Hooks, must be employed. These may be made at once with a pretty strong iron Wire, crooked at the End. It must be introduced in the flat Way, and for the better conducting of it, there should be another Curve or Hook at the End it is held by, to serve as a Kind of Handle to it, which has this further Use, that it may be secured by a String tied to it; a Circumstance not to be omitted in any Instrument employed on such Occasions, to avoid such ill Accidents as have sometimes ensued, from these Instruments slipping out of the Operators Hold. After the Crotchet has passed beyond and below the Substance, that obstructs the Passage, it is drawn up again, and hooks up with it and extracts that Impediment to swallowing. This Crotchet is also very convenient, whenever a Substance somewhat flexible, as a Pin or a Fishbone stick, as it were, across the Gullet: the Crotchet in such Cases seizing them about their middle Part, crooks and thus disengages them. If they are very brittle Substances, it serves to break them; and if any Fragments still stick within, some other Means must be used to extract them. § 413. When the obstructing Bodies are small, and only stop up Part of the Passage; and which may either easily elude the Hook, or straiten it by their Resistance, a Kind of Rings may be used, and made either solid or flexible. The solid ones are made of iron Wire, or of a String of very fine brass Wire. For this Purpose the Wire is bent into a Circle about the middle Part of its Length, the Sides of which Circle do not touch each other, but leave a Ring, or hollow Cavity, of about an Inch Diameter. Then the long unbent Sides of the Wire are brought near each other; the circular Part or Ring is introduced into the Gullet, in order to be conducted about the obstructing Body, and so to extract it. Very flexible Rings may be made of Wool, Thread, Silk, or small Packthread, which may be waxed, for their greater Strength and Consistence. Then they are to be tied fast to a Handle of Iron-Wire, of Whale-bone, or of any flexible Wood; after which the Ring is to be introduced to surround the obstructing Substance, and to draw it out. Several of these Rings passed through one another are often made use of, the more certainly to lay hold of the obstructing Body, which may be involved by one, if another should miss it. This Sort of Rings has one Advantage, which is, that when the Substance to be extracted is once laid hold of, it may then, by turning the Handle, be retained so strongly in the Ring thus twisted, as to be moved every Way; which must be a considerable Advantage in many such Cases. § 414. A fourth Material employed on these unhappy Occasions is the Sponge. Its Property of swelling considerably, on being wet, is the Foundation of its Usefulness here. If any Substance is stopt in the Gullet, but without filling up the whole Passage, a Bit of Sponge is introduced, into that Part that is unstopt, and beyond the Substance. The Sponge soon dilates, and grows larger in this moist Situation, and indeed the Enlargement of it may be forwarded, by making the Patient swallow a few Drops of Water; and then drawing back the Sponge by the Handle it is fastened to, as it is now too large to return through the small Cavity, by which it was conveyed in, it draws out the obstructing Body with it, and thus unplugs, as it were, and opens the Gullet. As dry Sponge may shrink or be contracted, this Circumstance has proved the Means of squeezing a pretty large Piece of it into a very small Space. It becomes greatly compressed by winding a String or Tape very closely about it, which Tape may be easily unwound and withdrawn, after the Sponge has been introduced. It may also be inclosed in a Piece of Whalebone, split into four Sticks at one End, and which, being endued with a considerable Spring, contracts upon the Sponge. The Whalebone is so smoothed and accommodated, as not to wound; and the Sponge is also to be safely tied to a strong Thread; that after having disengaged the Whalebone from it, the Surgeon may also draw out the Sponge at Pleasure. Sponge is also applied on these Occasions in another Manner. When there is no Room to convey it into the Gullet, because the obstructing Substance ingrosses its whole Cavity; and supposing it not hooked into the Part, but solely detained by the Straitness of the Passage, a pretty large Bit of Sponge is to be introduced towards the Gullet, and close to the obstructing Subtance: Thus applied, the Sponge swells, and thence dilates that Part of the Passage that is above this Substance. The Sponge is then withdrawn a little, and but a very little, and this Substance being less pressed upon above than below, it sometimes happens, that the greater Staitness and Contraction of the lower Part of the Passage, than of its upper Part, causes that Substance to ascend; and as soon as this first Loosening or Disengagement of it has happened, the total Disengagement of it easily follows. § 415. Finally, when all these Methods prove unavailable, there remains one more, which is to make the Patient vomit; but this can scarcely be of any Service, but when such obstructing Bodies are simply engaged in, and not hooked or stuck into the Sides of the _Oesophagus_; since under this latter Circumstance vomiting might occasion further Mischief. If the Patient can swallow, a Vomiting may be excited with the Prescription Nº. 8, or with Nº. 34, or 35. By this Operation a Bone was thrown out, which had stopt in the Passage four and twenty Hours. When the Patient cannot swallow, an Attempt should be made to excite him to vomit by introducing into, and twirling about the feathery End of a Quill in, the Bottom of the Throat, which the Feather however will not effect, if the obstructing Body strongly compresses the whole Circumference of the Gullet; and then no other Resource is left, but giving a Glyster of Tobacco. A certain Person swallowed a large Morsel of Calf's Lights, which stopt in the Middle of the Gullet, and exactly filled up the Passage. A Surgeon unsuccessfully attempted various Methods to extract it; but another seeing how unavailable all of them were; and the Patient's Visage becoming black and swelled; his Eyes ready to start, as it were, out of his Head; and falling into frequent Swoonings, attended with Convulsions too, he caused a Glyster of an Ounce of Tobacco boiled to be thrown up; the Consequence of which was a violent Vomiting, which threw up the Substance that was so very near killing him. § 416. A sixth Method, which I believe has never hitherto been attempted, but which may prove very useful in many Cases, when the Substances in the Passage are not too hard, and are very large, would be to fix a Worm (used for withdrawing the Charge of Guns that have been loaded) fast to a flexible Handle, with a waxed Thread fastened to the Handle, in Order to withdraw it, if the Handle slipt from the Worm; and by this Contrivance it might be very practicable, if the obstructing Substance was not too deep in the Passage of the Gullet, to extract it--It has been known that a Thorn fastened in the Throat, has been thrown out by laughing. § 417. In the Circumstances mentioned § 409, when it is more easy and convenient to push the obstructing Body downwards, it has been usual to make Use of Leeks, which may generally be had any where (but which indeed are very subject to break) or of a Wax-candle oiled, and but a very little heated, so as to make it flexible; or of a Piece of Whale-bone; or of Iron-Wire; one Extremity of which may be thickened and blunted in a Minute with a little melted Lead. Small Sticks of some flexible Wood may be as convenient for the same Use, such as the Birch-tree, the Hazel, the Ash, the Willow, a flexible Plummet, or a leaden Ring. All these Substances should be very smooth, that they may not give the least Irritation; for which Reason they are sometimes covered over with a thin Bit of Sheep's Gut. Sometimes a Sponge is fastened to one End of them, which, completely filling up the whole Passage, pushes down whatever Obstacle it meets with. In such Cases too, the Patient may be prompted to attempt swallowing down large Morsels of some unhurtful Substance, such as a Crust of Bread, a small Turnep, a Lettuce Stalk, or a Bullet, in Hopes of their carrying down the obstructing Cause with them. It must be acknowledged, however, that these afford but a feeble Assistance; and if they are swallowed without being well secured to a Thread, it may be apprehended they may even increase the Obstruction, by their own Stoppage. It has sometimes very happily, though rarely, occurred, that those Substances attempted to be detruded or thrust downwards, have stuck in the Wax-Candle, or the Leek, and sprung up and out with them: but this can never happen except in the Case of pointed Substances. § 418. Should it be impossible to extract the Bodies mentioned § 410, and all such as it must be dangerous to admit into the Stomach, we must then prefer the least of two Evils, and rather run the Hazard of pushing them down, than suffer the Patient to perish dreadfully in a few Moments. And we ought to scruple this Resolution the less, as a great many Instances have demonstrated, that notwithstanding several bad Consequences, and even a tormenting Death, have often followed the swallowing of such hurtful or indigestible Substances; yet at other times they have been attended with little or no Disorder. § 419. One of these four Events is always the Case, after swallowing such Things. They either, 1, go off by Stool; or, 2, they are not discharged and kill the Patient. Or else, 3, they are discharged by Urine; or, 4, are visibly extruded to the Skin. I shall give some Instances of each of these Events. § 420. When they are voided by Stool, they are either voided soon after they have been swallowed, and that without having occasional scarce any troublesome Symptom; or the voiding of them has not happened till a long Time after swallowing, and is preceded with very considerable Pain. It has been seen that a Bone of the Leg of a Fowl, a Peach-stone, the Cover of a small Box of Venice Treacle, Pins, Needles, and Coins of different Sorts, have been voided within a few Days after they had slipt down into the Stomach; and that with little or no Complaint. A small Flute, or Pipe also, four Inches long, which occasioned acute Pains for three Days, has been voided happily afterwards, besides, Knives, Razors, and one Shoe-buckle. I have seen but a few Days since a Child between two and three Years old, who swallowed a Nail above an Inch long, the Head of which was more than three Tenths of an Inch broad: it stopt a few Moments about the Neck, but descended while its Friends were looking for me; and was voided with a Stool that Night, without any bad Consequence. And still more lately I have known the entire Bone of a Chicken's Wing thus swallowed, which only occasioned a slight Pain in the Stomach for three or four Days. Sometimes such Substances are retained within for a long Time, not being voided till after several Months, and even Years, without the least ill Effect: and some of them have never either appeared, nor been complained of. § 421. But the Event is not always so happy; and sometimes though they are discharged through the natural Passages, the Discharges have been preceded by very acute Pains in the Stomach, and in the Bowels. A Girl swallowed down some Pins, which afflicted her with violent Pains for the Space of six Years; at the Expiration of which Term she voided them and recovered. Three Needles being swallowed brought on Cholics, Swoonings and Convulsions for a Year after: and then being voided by Stool, the Patient recovered. Another Person who swallowed two, was much happier in suffering but six Hours from them; when they were voided by Stool, and he did well. It sometimes happens that such indigestible Substances, after having past all the Meanders, the whole Course of the Intestines, have been stopt in the Fundament, and brought on very troublesome Symptoms; but such however, as an expert Surgeon may very generally remove. If it is practicable to cut them, as it is when they happen to be thin Bones, the Jaw-bones of Fish, or Pins, they are then very easily extracted. § 422. The second Event is, when these fatal Substances are never voided, but cause very embarrassing Symptoms which finally kill the Patient; and of these Cases there have been but too many Examples. A young Girl having swallowed some Pins, which she held in her Mouth, some of them were voided by Stool; but others of them pricked and pierced into her Guts, and even into the Muscles of her Belly, with the severest Pain; and killed her at the End of three Weeks. A Man swallowed a Needle, which pierced through his Stomach, and into his Liver, [94] and ended in a mortal Consumption. [94] I saw a very similar Instance and Event in a Lady's little favourite Bitch, whole Body she desired to be opened, from suspecting her to have been poisoned. But it appeared that a small Needle with fine Thread, which she had swallowed, had passed out of the Stomach into the _Duodenum_ (one of the Guts) through which the Point had pierced and pricked and corroded the concave Part of the Liver, which was all rough and putrid. The whole Carcase was greatly bloated and extremely offensive, very soon after the poor Animal's Death, which happened two or three Months after the Accident, and was preceded by a great Wheezing, Restlessness and Loss of Appetite. The Needle was rusty, but the Thread entire, and very little altered. _K._ A Plummet which slipt down, while the Throat of a Patient was searching, killed him at the End of two Years. It is very common for different Coins, and of different Metals, to be swallowed without any fatal or troublesome Effects. Even a hundred Luidores [95] have been swallowed, and all voided. Nevertheless these fortunate Escapes ought not to make People too secure and incautious on such Occasions, since such melancholy Consequences have happened, as may very justly alarm them. One single Piece of Money that was swallowed, entirely obstructed the Communication between the Stomach and the Intestines, and killed the Patient. Whole Nuts have often been inadvertently swallowed; but there have been some Instances of Persons in whom a Heap [96] of them has been formed, which proved the Cause of Death, after producing much Pain and Inquietude. [95] I knew a Man of the Name of _Poole_, who being taken in the same Ship with me, 1717 or 18, by Pirates, had swallowed four Ginueas, and a gold Ring, all which he voided some Days after without any Injury or Complaint, and saved them. I forget the exact Number of Days he retained them, but the Pirates staid with us from Saturday Night to Thursday Noon. _K._ [96] Many fatal Examples of this Kind may be seen in the _Philosophical Transactions_; and they should caution People against swallowing Cherry-stones, and still more against those of Prunes, or such as are pointed, though not very acutely. _K._ § 423. The third Issue or Event is, when these Substances, thus swallowed down, have been discharged by Urine: but these Cases are very rare. A Pin of a middling Size has been discharged by Urine, three Days after it slipt down; and a little Bone has been expelled the same Way, besides Cherry-stones, Plumb-stones, and even one Peach-stone. § 424. Finally, the fourth Consequence or Event is, when the indigestible Substances thus swallowed, have pierced through the Stomach or Intestines, and even to the Skin itself; and occasioning an Abscess, have made an Outlet for themselves, or have been taken out of the Abscess. A long Time is often required to effect this extraordinary Trajection and Appearance of them; sometimes the Pains they occasion are continual; in other Cases the Patient complains for a Time, after which the Pain ceases, and then returns again. The Imposthume, or Gathering, is formed in the Stomach, or in some other Part of the Belly: and sometimes these very Substances, after having pierced through the Guts, make very singular Routs, and are discharged very remotely from the Belly. One Needle that had been swallowed found its Way out, at the End of four Years, through the Leg; another at the Shoulder. § 425. All these Examples, and many others of cruel Deaths, from swallowing noxious Substances, demonstrate the great Necessity of an habitual Caution in this Respect; and give in their Testimony against the horrid, I had almost said, the criminal Imprudence, of People's amusing themselves with such Tricks as may lead to such terrible Accidents; or even holding any such Substance in their Mouths, as by slipping down through Imprudence or Accident, may prove the Occasion of their Death. Is it possible that any one, without shuddering, can hold Pins or Needles in their Mouths, after reflecting on the dreadful Accidents, and cruel Deaths, that have thus been caused by them. § 426. It has been shewn already, that Substances obstructing the Passage of the Gullet sometimes suffocate the Patient; that at other Times they can neither be extracted nor thrust down; but that they stop in the Passage, without killing the Patient, at least not immediately and at once. This is the Case when they are so circumstanced, as not to compress the _Trachæa_, the Wind-pipe, and not totally to prevent the swallowing of Food; which last Circumstance can scarcely happen, except the Obstruction has been formed by angular or pointed Bodies. The Stoppage of such Bodies is sometimes attended, and that without much Violence, with a small Suppuration, which loosens them; and then they are either returned upwards through the Mouth, or descend into the Stomach. But at other Times an extraordinary Inflammation is produced, which kills the Patient. Or if the Contents of the Abscess attending the Inflammation tend outwardly, a Tumour is formed on the external Part of the Neck, which is to be opened, and through whose Orifice the obstructing Body is discharged. In other Instances again they take a different Course, attended with little or no Pain, and are at length discharged by a Gathering behind the Neck, on the Breast, the Shoulder, or various other Parts. § 427. Some Persons, astonished at the extraordinary Course and Progression of such Substances, which, from their Size, and especially from their Shape, seem to them incapable of being introduced into, and in some Sort, circulating through the human Body, without destroying it, are very desirous of having the Rout and Progression of such intruding Substances explained to them. To gratify such Inquirers, I may be indulged in a short Digression, which perhaps is the less foreign to my Plan; as in dissipating what seems marvelous, and has been thought supernatural in such Cases, I may demolish that superstitious Prejudice, which has often ascribed Effects of this Sort to Witchcraft; but which admit of an easy Explanation. This very Reason is the Motive that has determined me to give a further Extent to this Chapter. Wherever an Incision is made through the Skin, a certain Membrane appears, which consists of two Coats or _Laminæ_, separated from each other by small Cells or Cavities, which all communicate together; and which are furnished, more or less, with Fat. There is not any Fat throughout the human Body, which is not inclosed in, or enveloped with, this Coat, which is called the adipose, fatty, or cellular Membrane. This Membrane is not only found under the Skin, but further plying and insinuating itself in various Manners, it is extended throughout the whole Body. It distinguishes and separates all the Muscles; it constitutes a Part of the Stomach, of the Guts, of the Bladder, and of all the _Viscera_ or Bowels. It is this which forms what is called the Cawl, and which also furnishes a Sheath or Envelopement to the Veins, Arteries, and Nerves. In some Parts it is very thick, and is abundantly replenished with Fat; in others it is very thin and unprovided with any; but wherever it extends, it is wholly insensible, or void of all Sensation, all Feeling. It may be compared to a quilted Coverlet, the Cotton, or other Stuffing of which, is unequally distributed; greatly abounding in some Places, with none at all in others, so that in these the Stuff above and below touch each other. Within this Membrane, or Coverlet, as it were, such extraneous or foreign Substances are moved about; and as there is a general Communication throughout the whole Extent of the Membrane, it is no ways surprizing, that they are moved from one Part to another very distant, in a long Course and Duration of Movement. Officers and Soldiers very often experience, that Bullets which do not pass through the Parts where they have entered, are transferred to very different and remote ones. The general Communication throughout this Membrane is daily demonstrated by Facts, which the Law prohibits; this is the Butchers inflating, or blowing up, the cellular Membrane throughout the whole Carcase of a Calf, by a small Incision in the Skin, into which they introduce a Pipe or the Nozzle of a small Bellows; and then, blowing forcibly, the Air evidently puffs up the whole Body of the Calf into this artificial Tumour or Swelling. Some very criminal Impostors have availed themselves of this wicked Contrivance, thus to bloat up Children into a Kind of Monsters, which they afterwards expose to View for Money. In this cellular Membrane the extravasated Waters of hydropic Patients are commonly diffused; and here they give Way to that Motion, to which their own Weight disposes them. But here I may be asked--As this Membrane is crossed and intersected in different Parts of it, by Nerves, Veins, Arteries, _&c._ the wounding of which unavoidably occasions grievous Symptoms, how comes it, that such do not ensue upon the Intrusion of such noxious Substances? To this I answer, 1, that such Symptoms do sometimes really ensue; and 2, that nevertheless they must happen but seldom, by Reason that all the aforesaid Parts, which traverse and intersect this Membrane, being harder than the Fat it contains; such foreign Substances must almost necessarily, whenever they rencounter those Parts, be turned aside towards the Fat which surrounds them, whose Resistance is very considerably less; and this the more certainly so, as these Nerves, _&c._ are always of a cylindrical Form.----But to return from this necessary Digression. § 428. To all these Methods and Expedients I have already recommended on the important Subject of this Chapter, I shall further add some general Directions. 1. It is often useful, and even necessary, to take a considerable Quantity of Blood from the Arm; but especially if the Patient's Respiration, or Breathing, is extremely oppressed; or when we cannot speedily succeed in our Efforts to remove the obstructing Substance; as the Bleeding is adapted to prevent the Inflammation, which the frequent Irritations from such Substances occasion; and as by its disposing the whole Body into a State of Relaxation, it might possibly procure an immediate Discharge of the offending Substance. 2. Whenever it is manifest that all Endeavours, either to extract, or to push down the Substance stopt in the Passage, are ineffectual, they should be discontinued; because the Inflammation occasioned by persisting in them, would be as dangerous as the Obstruction itself; as there have been Instances of People's dying in Consequence of the Inflammation; notwithstanding the Body, which caused the Obstruction, had been entirely removed. 3. While the Means already advised are making Use of, the Patient should often swallow, or if he cannot, he should frequently receive by Injection through a crooked Tube or Pipe, that may reach lower down than the _Glottis_, some very emollient Liquor, as warm Water, either alone or mixed with Milk, or a Decoction of Barley, of Mallows, or of Bran. A two-fold Advantage may arise from this; the first is, that these softening Liquors smooth and sooth the irritated Parts; and secondly, an Injection, strongly thrown in, has often been more successful in loosening the obstructing Body, than all Attempts with Instruments. 4. When after all we are obliged to leave this in the Part, the Patient must be treated as if he had an inflammatory Disease; he must be bled, ordered to a Regimen, and have his whole Neck surrounded with emollient Pultices. The like Treatment must also be used, though the obstructing Substance be removed; if there is Room to suppose any Inflammation left in the Passage. 5. A proper Degree of Agitation has sometimes loosened the inhering Body, more effectually than Instruments. It has been experienced that a Blow with the Fist on the Spine, the Middle of the Back, has often disengaged such obstructed and obstructing Bodies; and I have known two Instances of Patients who had Pins stopt in the Passage; and who getting on Horseback to ride out in Search of Relief at a neighbouring Village, found each of them the Pin disengaged after an Hour's riding: One spat it out, and the other swallowed it, without any ill Consequence. 6. When there is an immediate Apprehension of the Patient's being suffocated; when bleeding him has been of no Service; when all Hope of freeing the Passage in time is vanished, and Death seems at Hand, if Respiration be not restored; the Operation of _Bronchotomy_, or opening of the Wind-pipe, must be directly performed; an Operation neither difficult to a tolerably knowing and expert Surgeon, nor very painful to the Patient. 7. When the Substance that was stopt passes into the Stomach, the Patient must immediately be put into a very mild and smooth Regimen. He should avoid all sharp, irritating, inflaming Food; Wine, spirituous Liquors, all strong Drink, and Coffee; taking but little Nourishment at once, and no Solids, without their having been thoroughly well chewed. The best Diet would be that of farinaceous mealy Soups, made of various leguminous Grains, and of Milk and Water, which is much better than the usual Custom of swallowing different Oils. § 429. The Author of Nature has provided, that in eating, nothing should pass by the _Glottis_ into the Wind-pipe. This Misfortune nevertheless does sometimes happen; at which very Instant there ensues an incessant and violent Cough, an acute Pain, with Suffocation; all the Blood being forced up into the Head, the Patient is in extreme Anguish, being agitated with violent and involuntary Motions, and sometimes dying on the Spot. A _Hungarian_ Grenadier, by Trade a Shoemaker, was eating and working at the same time. He tumbled at once from his Seat, without uttering a single Word. His Comrades called out for Assistance; some Surgeons speedily arrived, but after all their Endeavours he discovered no Token of Life. On opening the Body, they found a Lump, or large Morsel, of Beef, weighing two Ounces, forced into the Windpipe, which it plugged up so exactly, that not the least Air could pass through it into the Lungs. § 430. In a Case so circumstanced, the Patient should be struck often on the Middle of the Back; some Efforts to vomit should be excited; he should be prompted to sneeze with Powder of Lilly of the Valley, Sage, or any cephalic Snuffs, which should be blown strongly up his Nose. A Pea, pitched into the Mouth in playing, entered into the Wind-pipe, and sprung out again by vomiting the Patient with Oil. A little Bone was brought up by making another sneeze, with powdered Lilly of the Valley. In short, if all these Means of assisting, or saving the Patient are evidently ineffectual, _Bronchotomy_ must be speedily performed (See Nº. 6, of the preceding Section.) By this Operation, some Bones, a Bean, and a Fish-bone have been extracted, and the Patient has been delivered from approaching Death. § 431. Nothing should be left untried, when the Preservation of human Life is the Object. In those Cases, when an obstructing Body can neither be disengaged from the Throat, the Passage to the Stomach, nor be suffered to remain there without speedily killing the Patient, it has been proposed to make an Incision into this Passage, the _Oesophagus_, through which such a Body is to be extracted; and to employ the like Means, when a Substance which had slipt even into the Stomach itself, was of a Nature to excite such Symptoms, as must speedily destroy the Patient. When the _Oesophagus_ is so fully and strongly closed, that the Patient can receive no Food by the Mouth, he is to be nourished by Glysters of Soup, Gelly, and the like. __Chapter XXX.__ _Of external Disorders, and such as require chirurgical Application. Of Burns, Wounds, Contusions or Bruises: Of Sprains, Ulcers, frostbitten Limbs, Chilblains, Ruptures, Boils. Of Fellons, Thorns or Splinters in the Fingers or Flesh; of Warts, and of Corns._ __Sect.__ 432. Labouring Countrymen are exposed in the Course of their daily Work, to many outward Accidents, such as Cuts, Contusions, _&c_. which, however considerable in themselves, very generally end happily; and that chiefly in Consequence of the pure and simple Nature of their Blood, which is generally much less acrimonious, or sharp, in the Country, than in great Towns or Cities. Nevertheless, the very improper Treatment of such Accidents, in the Country, frequently renders them, however light in themselves, very troublesome; and indeed, I have seen so many Instances of this, that I have thought it necessary to mark out here the proper Treatment of such Accidents, as may not necessarily require the Hand or Attendance of a Surgeon. I shall also add something very briefly, concerning some external Disorders, which at the same Time result from an inward Cause. _Of Burns._ § 433. When a Burn is very trifling and superficial, and occasions no Vesication or Blister, it is sufficient to clap a Compress of several Folds of soft Linen upon it, dipt in cold Water, and to renew it every Quarter of an Hour, till the Pain is entirely removed. But when the Burn has blistered, a Compress of very fine Linen, spread over with the Pomatum, Nº. 64, should be applied over it, and changed twice a Day. If the true Skin is burnt, and even the Muscles, the Flesh under it, be injured, the same Pomatum may be applied; but instead of a Compress, it should be spread upon a Pledget of soft Lint, to be applied very exactly over it, and over the Pledget again, a Slip of the simple Plaister Nº. 65, which every Body may easily prepare; or, if they should prefer it, the Plaister Nº. 66. But, independently of these external Applications, which are the most effectual ones, when they are directly to be had; whenever the Burn has been very violent, is highly inflamed, and we are apprehensive of the Progress and the Consequences of the Inflammation, the same Means and Remedies must be recurred to, which are used in violent Inflammations: the Patient should be bled, and, if it is necessary, it should be repeated more than once, and he should be put into a Regimen; drink nothing but the Ptisans Nº. 2 and 4, and receive daily two simple Glysters. If the Ingredients for the Ointment, called _Nutritum_, are not at Hand to make the Pomatum Nº. 64; one Part of Wax should be melted in eight such Parts of Oil, to two Ounces of which Mixture the Yolk of an Egg should be added. A still more simple and sooner prepared Application, is that of one Egg, both the Yolk and the White, beat up with two common Spoonfuls of the sweetest Oil, without any Rankness. When the Pain of the Burn, and all its other Symptoms have very nearly disappeared, it is sufficient to apply the Sparadrap, or Oil-cloth Nº. 66. _Of Wounds._ § 434. If a Wound has penetrated into any of the Cavities, and has wounded any Part contained in the Breast, or in the Belly: Or if, without having entered into one of the Cavities, it has opened some great Blood-vessel; or if it has wounded a considerable Nerve, which occasions Symptoms much more violent, than would otherwise have happened; if it has penetrated even to and injured the Bone: in short, if any great and severe Symptom supervenes, there is an absolute Necessity for calling in a Surgeon. But whenever the Wound is not attended with any of these Circumstances; when it affects only the Skin, the fat Membrane beneath it, the fleshy Parts and the small Vessels, it may be easily and simply dressed without such Assistance; since, in general, all that is truly necessary in such Cases is, to defend the Wound from the Impressions of the Air; and yet not so, as to give any material Obstruction to the Discharge of the Matter, that is to issue from the Wound. § 435. If the Blood does not particularly flow out of any considerable Vessel, but trickles almost equally from every Spot of the Wound, it may very safely be permitted to bleed, while some Lint is speedily preparing. As soon as the Lint is ready, so much of it may be introduced into the Wound as will nearly fill it, without being forced in; which is highly improper, and would be attended with the same Inconveniences as Tents and Dossils. It should be covered over with a Compress dipt in sweet Oil, or with the Cerecloth Nº. 65; though I prefer the Compress for the earliest Dressings: and the whole Dressing should be kept on, with a Bandage of two Fingers Breadth, and of a Length proportioned to the Size of the Part it is to surround: This should be rolled on tight enough to secure the Dressings, and yet so moderately, as to bring on no Inflammation. This Bandage with these Dressings are to remain on twenty-four or forty-eight Hours; Wounds being healed the sooner, for being less frequently drest. At the second Dressing all the Lint must be removed, which can be done with Ease, and with reasonable Speed, to the Wounded; and if any of it should stick close, in Consequence of the clogged and dried Blood, it should be left behind, adding a little fresh Lint to it; this Dressing in other Respects exactly resembling the first. When, from the Continuance of this simple Dressing, the Wound is become very superficial, it is sufficient to apply the Cerecloth, or Plaister, without any Lint. Such as have conceived an extraordinary Opinion of any medical Oils, impregnated with the Virtues of particular Plants, may, if that will increase their Satisfaction, make use of the common Oil of Yarrow, of Trefoil, of Lilies, of Chamomile, of Balsamines, or of red Roses; only being very careful, that such Oils are not become stale and rank. § 436. When the Wound is considerable, it must be expected to inflame before Suppuration (which, in such a Case, advances more slowly) can ensue; which Inflammation will necessarily be attended with Pain, with a Fever, and sometimes with a Raving, or Wandering, too. In such a Situation, a Pultice of Bread and Milk, with the Addition of a little Oil, that it may not stick too close, must be applied instead of the Compress or the Plaister: which Pultice is to be changed, but without uncovering the Wound, thrice and even four times every Day. § 437. Should some pretty considerable Blood-vessel be opened by the Wound, there must be applied over it, a Piece of Agaric of the Oak, Nº. 67, with which no Country place ought to be unprovided. It is to be kept on, by applying a good deal of Lint over it; covering the whole with a thick Compress, and then with a Bandage a little tighter than usual. If this should not be sufficient to prevent the Bleeding from the large Vessel, and the Wound be in the Leg or Arm, a strong Ligature must be made above the Wound with a _Turniquet_, which is made in a Moment with a Skain of Thread, or of Hemp, that is passed round the Arm circularly, into the Middle of which is inserted a Piece of Wood or Stick of an Inch Thickness, and four or five Inches long; so that by turning round this Piece of Wood, any Tightness or Compression may be effected at Pleasure; exactly as a Country-man secures a Hogshead, or a Piece of Timber on his Cart, with a Chain and Ring. But Care must be taken, 1, to dispose the Skain in such a Manner, that it must always be two Inches wider than the Part it surrounds: and, 2, not to strain it so tight as to bring on an Inflammation, which might terminate in a Gangrene. § 438. All the boasted Virtues of a Multitude of Ointments are downright Nonsense or Quackery. Art, strictly considered, does not in the least contribute to the healing of Wounds; the utmost we can do amounting only to our removing those Accidents, which are so many Obstacles to their Re-union. On this Account, if there is any extraneous Body in the Wound, such as Iron, Lead, Wood, Glass, Bits of Cloth or Linen, they must be extracted, if that can be very easily done; but if not, Application must be made to a good Surgeon, who considers what Measures are to be taken, and then dresses the Wound, as I have already advised. Very far from being useful, there are many Ointments that are pernicious on these Occasions; and the only Cases in which they should be used, are those in which the Wounds are distinguished with some particular Appearances, which ought to be removed by particular Applications: But a simple recent Wound, in a healthy Man, requires no other Treatment but what I have already directed, besides that of the general Regimen. Spirituous Applications are commonly hurtful, and can be suitable and proper but in a few Cases, which Physicians and Surgeons only can distinguish. When Wounds occur in the Head, instead of the Compress dipt in Oil, or of the Cerecloth, the Wound should be covered with a Betony Plaister; or, when none is to be had in time, with a Compress squeezed out of hot Wine. § 439. As the following Symptoms, of which we should be most apprehensive, are such as attend on Inflammations, the Means we ought to have Recourse to are those which are most likely to prevent them; such as Bleeding, the usual Regimen, moderate Coolers and Glysters. Should the Wound be very inconsiderable in its Degree, and in its Situation, it may be sufficient to avoid taking any Thing heating; and above all Things to retrench the Use of any strong Drink, and of Flesh-meat. But when it is considerable, and an Inflammation must be expected, there is a Necessity for Bleeding; the Patient should be kept in the most quiet and easy Situation; he should be ordered immediately to a Regimen; and sometimes the Bleeding also must be repeated. Now all these Means are the more indispensably necessary, when the Wound has penetrated to some internal Part; in which Situation, no Remedy is more certain than that of an extremely light Diet. Such wounded Persons as have been supposed incapable of living many Hours, after Wounds in the Breast, in the Belly, or in the Kidnies, have been completely recovered, by living for the Course of several Weeks, on nothing but a Barley, or other farinaceous mealy, Ptisans, without Salt, without Soup, without any Medicine; and especially without the Use of any Ointments. § 440. In the same Proportion that Bleeding, moderately and judiciously employed, is serviceable, in that very same an Excess of it becomes pernicious. Great Wounds are generally attended with a considerable Loss of Blood, which has already exhausted the wounded Person; and the Fever is often a Consequence of this copious Loss of Blood. Now if under such a Circumstance, Bleeding should be ordered and performed, the Patient's Strength is totally sunk; the Humours stagnate and corrupt; a Gangrene supervenes, and he dies miserably, at the End of two or three Days, of a _Series_ of repeated Bleedings, but not of the Wound. Notwithstanding the Certainty of this, the Surgeon frequently boasts of his ten, twelve, or even his fifteen Bleedings; assuring his Hearers of the insuperable Mortality of the Wound, since the letting out such a Quantity of Blood could not recover the Patient; when it really was that excessive artificial Profusion of it, that downright dispatched him.------The Pleasures of Love are very mortal ones to the Wounded. § 441. The Balsams and vulnerary Plants, which have often been so highly celebrated for the Cure of Wounds, are very noxious, when taken inwardly; because the Introduction of them gives or heightens the Fever, which ought to have been abated. _Of Contusions, or Bruises._ § 442. A Contusion, which is commonly called a Bruise, is the Effect of the forcible Impression or Stroke of a Substance not sharp or cutting, on the Body of a Man, or any Animal; whether such an Impression be violently made on the Man, as when he is struck by a Stick, or by a Stone thrown at him; or whether the Man be involuntarily forced against a Post, a Stone, or any hard Substance by a Fall; or whether, in short, he is squeezed and oppressed betwixt two hard Bodies, as when his Finger is squeezed betwixt the Door and the Door-Post, or the whole Body jammed in betwixt any Carriage and the Wall. These Bruises, however, are still more frequent in the Country than Wounds, and commonly more dangerous too; and indeed the more so, as we cannot judge so exactly, and so soon, of the whole Injury that has been incurred; and because all that is immediately visible of it is often but a small Part of the real Damage attending it: since it frequently happens that no Hurt appears for a few successive Days; nor does it become manifest, until it is too late to admit of an effectual Cure. § 443. It is but a few Weeks since a Cooper came to ask my Advice. His Manner of breathing, his Aspect, the Quickness, Smallness, and Irregularity of his Pulse, made me apprehensive at once, that some Matter was formed within his Breast. Nevertheless he still kept up, and went about, working also at some Part of his Trade. He had fallen in removing some Casks or Hogsheads; and the whole Weight of his Body had been violently impressed upon the right Side of his Breast. Notwithstanding this, he was sensible of no Hurt at first; but some Days afterwards he began to feel a dull heavy Pain in that Part, which continued and brought on a Difficulty of Breathing, Weakness, broken Sleep and Loss of Appetite. I ordered him immediately to Stillness and Repose, and I advised him to drink a Ptisan of Barley sweetened with Honey, in a plentiful Quantity. He regularly obeyed only the latter Part of my Directions: yet on meeting him a few Days after, he told me he was better. The very same Week, however, I was informed he had been found dead in his Bed. The Imposthume had undoubtedly broke, and suffocated him. § 444. A young Man, run away with by his Horse, was forced with Violence against a Stable-Door, without being sensible of any Damage at the Time. But at the Expiration of twelve Days, he found himself attacked by some such Complaints, as generally occur at the Beginning of a Fever. This Fever was mistaken for a putrid one, and he was very improperly treated, for the Fever it really was, above a Month. In short, it was agreed at a Consultation, that Matter was collected in the Breast. In Consequence of this, he was more properly attended, and at length happily cured by the Operation for an _Empyema_, after languishing a whole Year. I have published these two Instances, to demonstrate the great Danger of neglecting violent Strokes or Bruises; since the first of these Patients might have escaped Death; and the second a tedious and afflicting Disorder, if they had taken, immediately after each Accident, the necessary Precautions against its Consequences. § 445. Whenever any Part is bruised, one of two Things always ensues, and commonly both happen together; especially if the Contusion is pretty considerable: Either the small Blood-vessels of the contused Part are broken, and the Blood they contained is spread about in the adjoining Parts; or else, without such an Effusion of it, these Vessels have lost their Tone, their active Force, and no longer contributing to the Circulation, their Contents stagnate. In each of these Cases, if Nature, either without or with the Assistance of Art, does not remove the Impediment, an Inflammation comes on, attended with an imperfect, unkindly Suppuration, with Putrefaction and a Gangrene; without mentioning the Symptoms that arise from the Contusion of some particular Substance, as a Nerve, a large Vessel, a Bone, _&c._ Hence we may also conceive the Danger of a Contusion, happening to any inward Part, from which the Blood is either internally effused, or the Circulation wholly obstructed in some vital Organ. This is the Cause of the sudden Death of Persons after a violent Fall; or of those who have received the violent Force of heavy descending Bodies on their Heads; or of some violent Strokes, without any evident external Hurt or Mark. There have been many Instances of sudden Deaths after one Blow on the Pit of the Stomach, which has occasioned a Rupture of the Spleen. It is in Consequence of Falls occasioning a general slight Contusion, as well internal as external, that they are sometimes attended with such grievous Consequences, especially in old Men, where Nature, already enfeebled, is less able to redress such Disorders. And thus in Fact has it been, that many such, who had before enjoyed a firm State of Health, have immediately lost it after a Fall (which seemed at first to have affected them little or not at all) and languished soon after to the Moment of their Death, which such Accidents very generally accelerate. § 446. Different external and internal Remedies are applicable in Contusions. When the Accident has occurred in a slight Degree, and there has been no great nor general Shock, which might produce an internal Soreness or Contusion, external Applications may be sufficient. They should consist of such Things as are adapted, first, to attenuate and resolve the effused and stagnant Blood, which shews itself so apparently; and which, from its manifest Blackness very soon after the Contusion, becomes successively brown, yellow, and greyish, in Proportions as the Magnitude of the Suffusion or Sealing decreases, till at last it disappears entirely, and the Skin recovers its Colour, without the Blood's having been discharged through the external Surface, as it has been insensibly and gradually dissolved, and been taken in again by the Vessels: And secondly, the Medicines should be such as are qualified to restore the Tone, and to recover the Strength of the affected Vessels. The best Application is Vinegar, diluted, if very sharp, with twice as much warm Water; in which Mixture Folds of Linnen are to be dipt, within which the contused Parts are to be involved; and these Folds are to be remoistened and re-applied every two Hours on the first Day. Parsley, Chervil, and Houseleek Leaves, lightly pounded, have also been successfully employed; and these Applications are preferable to Vinegar, when a Wound is joined to the Bruise. The Pultices, Nº. 68, may also be used with Advantage. § 447. It has been a common Practice immediately to apply spirituous Liquors, such as Brandy, Arquebussade and [97] Alibour Water, and the like; but a long Abuse ought not to be established by Prescription. These Liquids which coagulate the Blood, instead of resolving it, are truly pernicious; notwithstanding they are sometimes employed without any visible Disadvantage on very slight Occasions. Frequently by determining the settled Blood towards the Insterstices of the Muscles, the fleshy Parts; or sometimes even by preventing the Effusion, or visible Settling of the Blood, and fixing it, as it were, within the bruised Vessels, they seem to be well; though this only arises from their concentring and concealing the Evil, which, at the End of a few Months, breaks forth again in a very troublesome Shape. Of this I have seen some miserable Examples, whence it has been abundantly evinced, that Applications of this Sort should never be admitted; and that Vinegar should be used instead of them. At the utmost it should only be allowed, (after there is Reason to suppose all the stagnant Blood resolved and resorbed into the Circulation) to add a third Part of Arquebusade Water to the Vinegar; with an Intention to restore some Strength to the relaxed and weakened Parts. [97] This, Dr. _Tissot_ informs me, is a Solution of white Vitriol and some other Drugs in Spirit of Wine, and is never used in regular Practice now. It has its Name from the Author of the Solution. _K._ § 448. It is still a more pernicious Practice to apply, in Bruises, Plaisters composed of greasy Substances, Rosins, Gums, Earths, _&c._ The most boasted of these is always hurtful, and there have been many Instances of very slight Contusions being aggravated into Gangrenes by such Plaisters ignorantly applied; which Bruises would have been entirely subdued by the Oeconomy of Nature, if left to herself, in the Space of four Days. Those Sacs or Suffusions of coagulated Blood, which are visible under the Skin, should never be opened, except for some urgent Reason; since however large they may be, they insensibly disappear and dissipate; instead of which Termination, by opening them, they sometimes terminate in a dangerous Ulceration. § 449. The internal Treatment of Contusions is exactly the same with that of Wounds; only that in these Cases the best Drink is the Prescription, Nº. 1, to each Pot of which a Drachm of Nitre must be added. When any Person has got a violent Fall; has lost his Senses, or is become very stupid; when the Blood starts out of his Nostrils, or his Ears; when he is greatly oppressed, or his Belly feels very tight and tense, which import an Effusion of Blood either into the Head, the Breast or the Belly, he must, first of all, be bled upon the Spot, and all the Means must be recurred to, which have been mentioned § 439, giving the wretched Patient the least possible Disturbance or Motion; and by all means avoiding to jog or shake him, with a Design to bring him to his Senses; which would be directly and effectually killing him, by causing a further Effusion of Blood. Instead of this the whole Body should be fomented, with some one of the Decoctions already mentioned: and when the Violence has been chiefly impressed on the Head, Wine and Water should be prefered to Vinegar. Falls attended with Wounds, and even a Fracture of the Skull, and with the most alarming Symptoms, have been cured by these internal Remedies, and without any other external Assistance, except the Use of the aromatic Fomentation, Nº. 68. A Man from _Pully-petit_ came to consult me some Months ago, concerning his Father, who had a high Fall out of a Tree. He had been twenty-four Hours without Feeling or Sense, and without any other Motion than frequent Efforts to vomit; and Blood had issued both from his Nose and Ears. He had no visible outward Hurt neither on his Head, nor any other Part; and, very fortunately for him, they had not as yet exerted the least Effort to relieve him. I immediately directed a plentiful Bleeding in the Arm; and a large Quantity of Whey sweetened with Honey to be drank, and to be also injected by Way of Glyster. This Advice was very punctually observed; and fifteen Days after the Father came to _Lausanne_, which is four Leagues from _Pully-petit_, and told me he was very well. It is proper, in all considerable Bruises, to open the Patient's Belly with a mild cooling Purge, such as Nº. 11, 23, 32, 49. The Prescription Nº. 24, and the honyed Whey are excellent Remedies, from the same Reason. § 450. In these Circumstances, Wine, distiled Spirits, and whatever has been supposed to revive and to rouse, is mortal. For this Reason People should not be too impatient, because the Patients remain some Time without Sense or Feeling. The giving of Turpentine is more likely to do Mischief than Good; and if it has been sometimes serviceable, it must have been in Consequence of its purging the Patient, who probably then needed to be purged. The Fat of a Whale, (_Sperma cæti_) Dragons Blood, Crabs-Eyes, and Ointments of whatsoever Sort are at least useless and dangerous Medicine, if the Case be very hazardous; either by the Mischief they do, or the Good they prevent from being done. The proper Indication is to dilute the Blood, to render it more fluid and disposed to circulate; and the Medicines just mentioned produce a very contrary Effect. § 451. When an aged Person gets a Fall, which is the more dangerous in Proportion to his Age and Grossness; notwithstanding he should not seem in the least incommoded by it, if he is sanguine and still somewhat vigorous, he should part with three or four Ounces of Blood. He should take immediately a few successive Cups of a lightly aromatic Drink, which should be given him hot; such, for Instance, as an Infusion of Tea sweetened with Honey, and he should be advised to move gently about. He must retrench a little from the usual Quantity of his Food, and accustom himself to very gentle, but very frequent, Exercise. § 452. Sprains or Wrenches, which very often happen, produce a Kind of Contusion, in the Parts adjoining to the sprained Joint. This Contusion is caused by the violent Friction of the Bone against the neighbouring Parts; and as soon as the Bones are immediately returned into their proper Situation, the Disorder should be treated as a Contusion. Indeed if the Bones should not of themselves return into their proper natural Position, Recourse must be had to the Hand of a Surgeon. The best Remedy in this Case is absolute Rest and Repose, after applying a Compress moistened in Vinegar and Water, which is to be renewed and continued, till the Marks of the Contusion entirely disappear; and there remains not the smallest Apprehension of an Inflammation. Then indeed, and not before, a little Brandy or Arquebusade Water may be added to the Vinegar; and the Part (which is almost constantly the Foot) should be strengthened and secured for a considerable Time with a Bandage; as it might otherwise be liable to fresh Sprains, which would daily more and more enfeeble it: and if this Evil is overlooked too much in its Infancy, the Part never recovers its full Strength; and a small Swelling often remains to the End of the Patient's Life. If the Sprain is very slight and moderate, a Plunging of the Part into cold Water is excellent; but if this is not done at once immediately after the Sprain, or if the Contusion is violent, it is even hurtful. The Custom of rolling the naked Foot upon some round Body is insufficient, when the Bones are not perfectly replaced; and hurtful, when the Sprain is accompanied with a Contusion. It happens continually almost that Country People, who encounter such Accidents, apply themselves either to ignorant or knavish Imposters, who find, or are determined to find, a Disorder or Dislocation of the Bones, where there is none; and who, by their violent Manner of handling the Parts, or by the Plaisters they surround them with, bring on a dangerous Inflammation, and change the Patient's Dread of a small Disorder, into a very grievous Malady. These are the very Persons who have created, or indeed rather imagined, some impossible Diseases, such as the Opening, the Splitting of the Stomach, and of the Kidnies. But these big Words terrify the poor Country People, and dispose them to be more easily and effectually duped. _Of Ulcers._ § 453. Whenever Ulcers arise from a general Fault of the Blood, it is impossible to cure them, without destroying the Cause and Fuel of them. It is in Fact imprudent to attempt to heal them up by outward Remedies; and a real Misfortune to the Patient, if his Assistant effectually heals and closes them. But, for the greater Part, Ulcers in the Country are the Consequence of some Wound, Bruise, or Tumour improperly treated; and especially of such as have been dressed with too sharp, or too spirituous Applications. Rancid Oils are also one of the Causes, which change the most simple Wounds into obstinate Ulcers, for which Reason they should be avoided; and Apothecaries should be careful, when they compound greasy Ointments, to make but little at a Time, and the oftner, as a very considerable Quantity of any of them becomes rank before it is all sold; notwithstanding sweet fresh Oil may have been employed in preparing them. § 454. What serves to distinguish Ulcers from Wounds, is the Dryness and Hardness of the Sides or Borders of Ulcers, and the Quality of the Humour discharged from them; which, instead of being ripe consistent Matter, is a Liquid more thin, less white, sometimes yielding a disagreable Scent, and so very sharp, that if it touch the adjoining Skin, it produces Redness, Inflammation, or Pustules there; sometimes a serpiginous, or Ring-worm like Eruption, and even a further Ulceration. § 455. Such Ulcers as are of a long Duration, which spread wide, and discharge much, prey upon the Patient, and throw him into a slow Fever, which melts and consumes him. Besides, when an Ulcer is of a long Standing, it is dangerous to dry it up; and indeed this never should be done, but by substituting in the Place of one Discharge that is become almost natural, some other Evacuation, such as Purging from Time to Time. We may daily see sudden Deaths, or very tormenting Diseases, ensue the sudden drying up such Humours and Drains as have been of a long Continuance: and whenever any Quack (and as many as promise the speedy Cure of such, deserve that Title) assures the Patient of his curing an inveterate Ulcer in a few Days, he demonstrates himself to be a very dangerous and ignorant Intermeddler, who must kill the Patient, if he keeps his Word. Some of these impudent Impostors make use of the most corrosive Applications, and even arsenical ones; notwithstanding the most violent Death is generally the Consequence of them. § 456. The utmost that Art can effect, with Regard to Ulcers, which do not arise from any Fault in the Humours, is to change them into Wounds. To this End, the Hardness and Dryness of the Edges of the Ulcer, and indeed of the whole Ulcer, must be diminished, and its Inflammation removed. But sometimes the Hardness is so obstinate, that this cannot be mollified any other Way, than by scarifying the Edges with a Lancet. But when it may be effected by other Means, let a Pledget spread with the Ointment, Nº. 69, be applied all over the Ulcer; and this Pledget be covered again with a Compress of several Folds, moistened in the Liquid, Nº. 70, which should be renewed three times daily; though it is sufficient to apply a fresh Pledget only twice. As I have already affirmed that Ulcers were often the Consequence of sharp and spirituous Dressings, it is evident such should be abstained from, without which Abstinence they will prove incurable. To forward the Cure, salted Food, Spices, and strong Drink should be avoided; the Quantity of Flesh-meat should be lessened; and the Body be kept open by a Regimen of Pulse, of Vegetables, and by the habitual Use of Whey sweetened with Honey. If the Ulcers are in the Legs, a very common Situation of them, it is of great Importance, as well as in Wounds of the same Parts, that the Patient should walk about but little; and yet never stand up without walking. This indeed is one of these Cases, in which those, who have some Credit and Influence in the Estimation of the People, should omit nothing to make them thoroughly comprehend the Necessity of confining themselves, some Days, to undisturbed Tranquillity and Rest; and they should also convince them, that this Term of Rest is so far from being lost Time, that it is likely to prove their most profitable Time of Life. Negligence, in this material Point, changes the slightest Wounds into Ulcers, and the most trifling Ulcers into obstinate and incurable ones: insomuch that there is scarcely any Man, who may not observe some Family in his Neighbourhood, reduced to the Hospital, [98] from their having been too inattentive to the due Care of some Complaint of this Sort. [98] This seems just the same as _coming on the Parish_, or being received into an Alms house here; in Consequence of such an incurable Disability happening to the poor working Father of a Family. _K._ I conclude this Article on Ulcers with repeating, that those which are owing to some internal Cause; or even such as happen from an external one, in Persons of a bad Habit of Body, frequently require a more particular Treatment. _Of Frozen Limbs._ § 457. It is but too common, in very rigorous Winters, for some Persons to be pierced with so violent a Degree of Cold, that their Hands or Feet, or sometimes both together are frozen at once, just like a Piece of Flesh-meat exposed to the Air. If a Person thus pierced with the Cold, dispose himself to walk about, which seems so natural and obvious a Means to get warm; and especially, if he attempts to [99] warm the Parts that have been frozen, his Case proves irrecoverable. Intolerable Pains are the Consequence, which Pains are speedily attended with an incurable Gangrene; and there is no Means left to save the Patient's Life, but by cutting off the gangrened Limbs. [99] The Reason of the Fatality of Heat, in these Cases, and of the Success of an opposite Application, (See § 459) seems strictly and even beautifully analogous to what _Hippocrates_ has observed of the Danger, and even Fatality, of all great and sudden Changes in the human Body, whether from the Weather or otherwise. Whence this truly great Founder of Physick, when he observes elsewhere, that Diseases are to be cured by something contrary to their Causes, very consistently advises, not a direct and violent Contrariety, but a gradual and regulated one, a _Sub-contrariety_. _K._ There was a very late and terrible Example of this, in the Case of an Inhabitant at _Cossonay_, who had both his Hands frozen. Some greasy Ointments were applied hot to them, the Consequence of which was, the Necessity of cutting off six of his Fingers. § 458. In short, there is but one certain Remedy in such Cases, and this is to convey the Person affected into some Place where it does not freeze, but where, however, it is but very moderately hot, and there continually to apply, to the frozen Parts, Snow, if it be at hand; and if not, to keep washing them incessantly, but very gently (since all Friction would at this Juncture prove dangerous) in Ice-water, as the Ice thaws in the Chamber. By this Application the Patients will be sensible of their Feeling's returning very gradually to the Part, and that they begin to recover their Motion. In this State they may Safely be moved into a Place a little warmer, and drink some Cups of the Potion Nº. 13, or of another of the like Quality. § 459. Every Person may be a competent judge of the manifest Danger of attempting to relieve such Parts by heating them, and of the Use of Ice-water, by a common, a daily Experience. Frozen Pears, Apples, and Radishes, being put into Water just about to freeze, recover their former State, and prove quickly eatable. But if they are put into warm Water, or into a hot Place, Rottenness, which is one Sort of Gangrene, is the immediate Effect. The following Case will make this right Method of treating them still more intelligible, and demonstrate its Efficacy. A Man was travelling to the Distance of six Leagues in very cold Weather; the Road being covered with Snow and Ice. His Shoes, not being very good, failed him on his March, so that he walked the three last Leagues bare-footed; and felt, immediately after the first Half League, sharp Pains in his Legs and Feet, which increased as he proceeded. He arrived at his Journey's End in a Manner nearly deprived of his lower Extremities. They set him before a great Fire, heated a Bed well, and put him into it. His Pains immediately became intolerable: he was incessantly in the most violent Agitations, and cried out in the most piercing and affecting Manner. A Physician, being sent for in the Night, found his Toes of a blackish Colour, and beginning to lose their Feeling. His Legs and the upper Part of his Feet, which were excessively swelled, of a purplish Red, and varied with Spots of a violet Colour, were still sensible of the most excruciating Pains. The Physician ordered in a Pail of Water from the adjoining River, adding more to it, and some Ice withal. In this he obliged the Patient to plunge his Legs; they were kept in near an Hour, and within that Time, the Pains became less violent. After another Hour he ordered a second cold Bath, from which the Patient perceiving still further Relief, prolonged it to the Extent of two Hours. During that Time, some Water was taken out of the Pail, and some Ice and Snow were put into it. Now his Toes, which had been black, grew red; the violet Spots in his Legs disappeared; the Swelling abated; the Pains became moderate, and intermitted. The Bath was nevertheless repeated six times; after which there remained no other Complaint, but that of a great Tenderness or extraordinary Sensibility in the Soles of his Feet, which hindered him from walking. The Parts were afterwards bathed with some aromatic Fomentations; and he drank a Ptisan of Sarsaparilla [one of Elder Flowers would have answered the same Purpose, and have been less expensive.] On the eighth Day from his Seizure he was perfectly recovered, and returned home on Foot on the fifteenth. § 460. When cold Weather is extremely severe, and a Person is exposed to it for a long Time at once, it proves mortal, in Consequence of its congealing the Blood, and because it forces too great a Proportion of Blood up to the Brain; so that the Patient dies of a Kind of Apoplexy, which is preceded by a Sleepiness. In this Circumstance the Traveller, who finds himself drowsy, should redouble his Efforts to extricate himself from the eminent Danger he is exposed to. This Sleep, which he might consider as some Alleviation of his Sufferings, if indulged, would prove his last. § 461. The Remedies in such Cases are the same with those directed in frozen Limbs. The Patient must be conducted to an Apartment rather cold than hot, and be rubbed with Snow or with Ice-water. There have been many well attested Instances of this Method; and as such Cases are still more frequent in more northern Climates, a Bath of the very coldest Water has been found the surest Remedy. Since it is known that many People have been revived, who had remained in the Snow, or had been exposed to the freezing Air during five, or even six successive Days, and who had discovered no one Mark of Life for several Hours, the utmost Endeavours should be used for the Recovery of Persons in the like Circumstances and Situation. _Of Kibes, or Chilblains._ § 462. These troublesome and smarting Complaints attack the Hands, Feet, Heels, Ears, Nose and Lips, those of Children especially, and mostly in Winter; when these Extremities are exposed to the sudden Changes from hot to cold, and from cold to hot Weather. They begin with an Inflation or kind of Swelling, which, at first, occasions but little Heat, Pain or Itching. Sometimes they do not exceed this first State, and go off spontaneously without any Application: But at other Times (which may be termed the second Degree of the Disorder, whether it happens from their being neglected, or improperly treated) their Heat, Redness, Itching and Pain increase considerably; so that the Patient is often deprived of the free Use of his Fingers by the Pain, Swelling and Numbness: in which Case the Malady is still aggravated, if effectual Means are not used. Whenever the Inflammation mounts to a still higher Degree, small Vesications or Blisters are formed, which are not long without bursting; when they leave a slight Excoriation, or Rawness, as it were, which speedily ulcerates, and frequently proves a very deep and obstinate Ulcer, discharging a sharp and ill-conditioned Matter. The last and most virulent Degree of Chilblains, which is not infrequent in the very coldest Countries, though very rare in the temperate ones, is, when the Inflammation degenerates into a Gangrene. § 463. These Tumours are owing to a Fulness and Obstruction of the Vessels of the Skin, which occurs from this Circumstance, that the Veins, which are more superficial than the Arteries, being proportionably more affected and straitened by the Cold, do not carry off all the Blood communicated to them by the Arteries; and perhaps also the Particles or Atoms of Cold, which are admitted through the Pores of the Skin, may act upon our Fluids, as it does upon Water, and occasion a Congelation of them, or a considerable Approach towards it. If these Complaints are chiefly felt, which in Fact is the Case, rather on the extreme Parts than on others, it arises from two Causes, the principal one being, that the Circulation's being weaker at the Extremities than elsewhere, the Effect of those Causes, that may impair it, must be more considerably felt there. The second Reason is, because these Parts are more exposed to the Impressions from without than the others. They occur most frequently to Children, from their Weakness and the greater Tenderness and Sensibility of their Organs, which necessarily increases the Effect of external Impressions. It is the frequent and strong Alteration from Heat to Cold, that seems to contribute the most powerfully to the Production of Chilblains; and this Effect of it is most considerable, when the Heat of the Air is at the same Time blended with Moisture; whence the extreme and superficial Parts pass suddenly as it were, out of a hot, into a cold, Bath. A Man sixty Years of Age, who never before was troubled with Kibes, having worn, for some Hours on a Journey, a Pair of furred Gloves, in which his Hands sweated, felt them very tender, and found them swelled up with Blood: as the common Effect of the warm Bath is to soften and relax, and to draw Blood abundantly to the bathed Parts, whence it renders them more sensible. This Man, I say, thus circumstanced, was at that Age first attacked with Chilblains, which proved extremely troublesome; and he was every succeeding Winter as certainly infested with them, within Half an Hour after he left off his Gloves, and was exposed to a very cold Air. It is for this Reason, that several Persons are never infested with Chilblains, but when they use themselves to Muffs, which are scarcely known in hot Countries; nor are they very common among the more northern ones, in which the extraordinary Changes from Cold to Heat are very rare and unusual. Some People are subject to this troublesome Complaint in the Fall; while others have it only in the Spring. The Child of a labouring Peasant, who has a hard Skin, and one inured to all the Impressions of the Seasons and of the Elements, is, and indeed necessarily must be, less liable to Kibes, than the Child of a rich Citizen, whose Skin is often cherished, at the Expence of his Constitution. But even among Children of the same Rank in Life and Circumstances, who seem pretty much of the same Complexion, and live much in the same Manner; whence they might of Course be supposed equally liable to the same Impressions, and to the like Effects of them, there is, nevertheless, a very great Difference with Respect to their constitutional Propensity to contract Chilblains. Some are very cruelly tormented with them, from the setting in of Autumn, to the very End of the Spring: others have either none at all, or have them but very slightly, and for a very short Time. This Difference undoubtedly arises from the different Quality of their Humours, and the Texture of their whole Surface, but particularly from that of the Skin of their Hands; though we readily confess it is by no Means easy to determine, with Certainty and Precision, in what this Difference essentially consists. Children of a sanguine Complexion and delicate Skin are pretty generally subject to this Disorder, which is often regarded much too slightly, though it is really severe enough to engage our Attention more; since, even abstracted from the sharp Pains which smart these unhappy Children for several Months; it sometimes gives them a Fever, hinders them from sleeping, and yet confines them to their Bed, which is very prejudicial to their Constitutions. It also breaks in upon the Order of their different Duties and Employments; it interrupts their innocent salutary Pleasures; and sometimes, when they are obliged to earn their daily Bread by doing some Work or other, it sinks them down to Misery. I knew a young Man, who from being rendered incapable by Chilblains, of serving out his Apprenticeship to a Watch-maker, is become a lazy Beggar. Chilblains which attack the Nose, often leave a Mark that alters the Physiognomy, the Aspect of the Patient, for the Remainder of his Life: and the Hands of such as have suffered from very obstinate ones, are commonly ever sensible of their Consequences. § 464. With Respect, therefore, to these afflicting Tumours and Ulcerations, we should, in the first Place, do our utmost to prevent them; and next exert our best Endeavours to cure such as we could not prevent. § 465. Since they manifestly depend on the Sensibility of the Skin, the Nature of the Humours, and the Changes of the Weather from Heat to Cold, in Order to prevent them, in the first Place, the Skin must be rendered firmer or less tender. 2, That vicious Quality of the Temperament, which contributes to their Existence, must be corrected; and, 3, the Persons so liable must guard themselves as well as possible, against these Changes of the Weather. Now the Skin of the Hands, as well as that of the whole Body, may be strengthened by that Habit of washing or bathing in cold Water, which I have described at large, § 384; and in Fact I have never seen Children, who had been early accustomed and inured to this Habit, as much afflicted with Chilblains as others. But still a more particular Regard should be had to fortify the Skin of the Hands, which are more obnoxious to this Disorder than the Feet, by making Children dip them in cold Water, and keep them for some Moments together in it every Morning, and every Evening too before Supper, from the very Beginning of the Fall. It will give the Children no Sort of Pain, during that Season, to contract this Habit; and when it is once contracted, it will give them no Trouble to continue it throughout the Winter, even when the Water is ready to freeze every where. They may also be habituated to plunge their Feet into cold Water twice or thrice a Week: and this Method, which might be less adapted for grown Persons, who had not been accustomed to it, must be without Objection with Respect to such Children, as have been accustomed to it; to whom all its Consequences must be useful and salutary. At the same Time Care must be taken not to defeat or lessen the Effect of the cold bathing, by suffering the Bather or Washer, to grow too warm between two Baths or Dippings; which is also avoiding the too speedy Successions of Heat and Cold. For this Purpose, 1, the Children must be taught never to warm their Hands before the Fire at such Times, and still less before the Stoves, which very probably are one of the principal Causes of Chilblains, that are less usual in Countries which use no such Stoves, and among those Individuals who make the least Use of them, where they are. Above all, the Use of _Cavettes_ (that is, of Seats or little Stairs, as it were, contrived between the Stove and the Wall) is prejudicial to Children, and even to grown People, upon several Accounts. 2, They should never accustom themselves to wear Muffs. 3, It would be also proper they should never use Gloves, unless some particular Circumstances require it; and I recommend this Abstinence from Gloves, especially to young Boys: but if any should be allowed them, let the Gloves be thin and smooth. § 466. When Chilblains seem to be nourished by some Fault in the Temperament or Humours, the Consideration of a Physician becomes necessary, to direct a proper Method of removing or altering it. I have seen Children from the Age of three, to that of twelve or thirteen Years, in whom their Chilblains, raw and flead, as it were, for eight Months of the Year, seemed to be a particular Kind of Issue, by which Nature freed herself of an inconvenient Superfluity of Humours, when the Perspiration was diminished by the Abatement of the violent Heats. In such Cases I have been obliged to carry them through a pretty long Course of Regimen and Remedies; which, however, being necessarily various from a Variety of Circumstances, cannot be detailed here. The milder Preparations of Antimony are often necessary in such Cases; and some Purges conduce in particular ones to allay and to abridge the Disorder. § 467. The first Degree of this Complaint goes off, as I have already said, without the Aid of Medicine; or should it prove somewhat more obstinate, it may easily be dissipated by some of the following Remedies. But when they rise to the second Degree, they must be treated like other Complaints from Congelation, or Frost-biting (of which they are the first Degree) with cold Water, Ice-water and Snow. No other Method or Medicine is nearly as efficacious as very cold Water, so as to be ready to freeze, in which the Hands are to be dipt and retained for some Minutes together, and several Times daily. In short it is the only Remedy which ought to be applied, when the Hands are the Parts affected; when the Patient has the Courage to bear this Degree of Cold; and when he is under no Circumstance which may render it prejudicial. It is the only Application I have used for myself, after having been attacked with Chilblains for some Years past, from having accustomed myself to too warm a Muff. There ensues a slight Degree of Pain for some Moments after plunging the Hand into Water, but it diminishes gradually. On taking the Hand out, the Fingers are numbed with the Cold, but they presently grow warm again; and within a Quarter of an Hour, it is entirely over. The Hands, on being taken out of the Water, are to be well dried, and put into Skin Gloves; after bathing three or four Times, their Swelling subsides, so that the Skin wrinkles: but by continuing the cold Bathing, it grows tight and smooth again; the Cure is compleated after using it three or four Days; and, in general, the Disorder never returns again the same Winter. The most troublesome raging Itching is certainly assuaged by plunging the Hands into cold Water. The Effect of Snow is, perhaps, still more speedy: the Hands are to be gently and often rubbed with it for a considerable Time; they grow hot, and are of a very high Red for some Moments, but entire Ease very quickly succeeds. Nevertheless, a very small Number of Persons, who must have extremely delicate and sensible Skins, do not experience the Efficacy of this Application. It seems too active for them; it affects the Skin much like a common blistering Plaister; and by bringing on a large flow of Humours there, it increases, instead of lessening the Complaint. § 468. When this last Reason indeed, or some other Circumstance exists; such as the Child's Want of Courage, or its Affliction; the monthly Discharges in a Woman; a violent Cough; habitual Colics; and some other Maladies, which have been observed to be renewed or aggravated by the Influence of Cold at the Extremities, do really forbid this very cold Application, some others must be substituted. One of the best is to wear Day and Night, without ever putting it off, a Glove made of some smooth Skin, such as that of a Dog; which seldom fails to extinguish the Disorder in some Days time. When the Feet are affected with Chilblains, Socks of the same Skin should be worn; and the Patient keep close to his Bed for some Days. § 469. When the Disorder is violent, the Use of cold Water prohibited, and the Gloves just recommended have but a slow Effect, the diseased Parts should be gently fomented or moistened several times a Day, with some Decoction, rather more than warm; which at the same time should be dissolving and emollient. Such is that celebrated Decoction of the Scrapings, the Peel of Radishes, whose Efficacy is still further increased, by adding one sixth Part of Vinegar to the Decoction. Another Decoction, of whose great Efficacy I have been a Witness, but which dies the Hands yellow for a few Days, is the Prescription Nº. 71. Many others may be made, of nearly the same Virtues, with all the vulnerary Herbs, and even with the _Faltranc_. Urine, which some boast of in these Cases, from their having used it with Success; and the Mixture of Urine and Lime-water have the like Virtues with the former Decoctions. [100] �[100] Chilblains may also be advantageously washed with Water and Flower of Mustard, which will concur, in a certain and easy Manner, both to cleanse and to cure them. _E. L._ As soon as the Hands affected are taken out of these Decoctions, they must be defended from the Air by Gloves. § 470. Vapours or Steams are often more efficacious than Decoctions; whence instead of dipping the Hands into these already mentioned, we may expose them to their Vapours, with still more Success. That of hot Vinegar is one of the most powerful Remedies; those of [101] _Asphalt_, or of Turpentine have frequently succeeded too. It may be needless to add that the affected Parts must be defended from the Air, as well after the Steams as the Decoctions; since it is from this Cause of keeping off the Air, that the Cerecloths are of Service; and hence also the Application of Suet has sometimes answered. �[101] This is or should be, the same with the _Bitumen Judaicum_, formerly kept in the Shops; but which is never directed, except in that strange Medley the _Venice_ Treacle, according to the old Prescription. The best is found in _Egypt_, and on the _Red Sea_: but a different Sort, from _Germany_, _France_, and _Swisserland_, is now generally substituted here. _K._ When the Distemper is subdued by the Use of Bathings or Steams, which make the Skin supple and soft, then it should be strengthened by washing the Parts with a little camphorated Brandy, diluted with an equal Quantity of Water. § 471. When the Nose is affected with a Chilblain, the Steam of Vinegar, and an artificial Nose, or Covering for it, made of Dog-skin, are the most effectual Applications. The same Treatment is equally proper for the Ears and the Chin, when infested with them. Frequently washing these Parts in cold Water is a good Preservative from their being attacked. § 472. Whenever the Inflammation rises very high, and brings on some Degree of a Fever, the Patient's usual Quantity of strong Drink and of Flesh-meat must be lessened; his Body should be kept open by a few Glysters; he should take every Evening a Dose of Nitre as prescribed, Nº. 20; and if the Fever proved strong, he should lose some Blood too. As many as are troubled with obstinate Chilblains, should always be denied the Use of strong Liquor and Flesh. § 473. When this Distemper prevails in its third Degree, and the Parts are ulcerated; besides keeping the Patients strictly to the Regimen of Persons in a Way of Recovery, and giving them a Purge of Manna, the swelled Parts should be exposed to the Steams of Vinegar; the Ulcerations should be covered with a Diapalma Plaister; and the whole Part should be enveloped in a smooth soft Skin, or in thin Cerecloths. § 474. The fourth Degree of this Disease, in which the Parts become gangrenous, must be prevented by the Method and Medicines which remove an Inflammation; but if unhappily a Gangrene has already appeared, the Assistance of a Surgeon proves indispensably necessary. _Of Ruptures._ § 475. _Hernias_ or Ruptures, which Country-People term _being bursten_, are a Disorder which sometimes occurs at the very Birth; though more frequently they are the Effects of violent crying, of a strong forcing Cough, or of repeated Efforts to vomit, in the first Months of Infancy. They may happen afterwards indiscriminately at every Age, either as Consequences of particular Maladies, or Accidents, or from Peoples' violent Exertions of their Strength. They happen much oftner to Men than Women; and the most common Sort, indeed the only one of which I propose to treat, and that but briefly, is that which consists in the Descent of a Part of the Guts, or of the Cawl, into the Bag or Cod-piece. It is not difficult to distinguish this Rupture. When it occurs in little Children, it is almost ever cured by making them constantly wear a Bandage which should be made only of Fustian, with a little Pillow or Pincushion, stuffed with Linen Rags, Hair or Bran. There should be at least two of these Bandages, to change them alternately; nor should it ever be applied, but when the Child is laid down on its Back, and after being well assured that the Gut or Cawl, which had fallen down, has been safely returned into the Cavity of the Belly; since without this Precaution it might occasion the worst Consequences. The good Effect of the Bandage may be still further promoted, by applying upon the Skin, and within the Plait or Fold of the Groin (under which Place the Rings, or Passage out of the Belly into the Bag lie) some pretty astringent or strengthening Plaister, such as that commonly used for Fractures, or that I have already mentioned, § 144. Here we may observe by the Way, that ruptured Children should never be set on a Horse, nor be carried by any Person on Horseback, before the Rupture is perfectly cured. § 476. In a more advanced Age, a Bandage only of Fustian is not sufficient; one must be procured with a Plate of Steel, even so as to constrain and incommode the Wearer a little at first: nevertheless it soon becomes habitual, and is then no longer inconvenient to them. § 477. Ruptures sometimes attain a monstrous Size; and a great Part of the Guts fall down in to the _Scrotum_ or Bag, without any Symptom of an actual Disease. This Circumstance, nevertheless, is accompanied with very great Inconvenience, which disables Persons affected with it to work; and whenever the Malady is so considerable, and of a long Standing too, there are commonly some Obstacles that prevent a compleat Return of the Guts into the Belly. In this State indeed, the Application of the Bandage or Truss is impracticable, and the miserable Patients are condemned to carry their grievous Burthen for the Remainder of their Lives; which may however, be palliated a little by the Use of a Suspensory and Bag, adapted to the Size of the Rupture. This Dread of its increasing Magnitude is a strong Motive for checking the Progress of it, when it first appears. But there is another still stronger, which is, that Ruptures expose the Patient to a Symptom frequently mortal. This occurs when that Part of the Intestines fallen into the _Scrotum_ inflames; when still increasing in its Bulk, and being extremely compressed, acute Pains come on: for now from the Increase of the Rupture's Extent, the Passage which gave Way to its Descent, cannot admit of its Return or Ascent; the Blood-vessels themselves being oppressed, the Inflammation increases every Moment; the Communication between the Stomach and the Fundament is often entirely cut off; so that nothing passes through, but incessant Vomitings come on [this being the Kind of _Miserere_, or Iliac Passion I have mentioned, § 320] which are succeeded by the Hickup, Raving, Swooning, cold Sweats, and Death. § 478. This Symptom supervenes in Ruptures, when the Excrements become hard in that Part of the Guts fallen into the _Scrotum_; when the Patient is overheated with Wine, Drams, an inflammatory Diet, _&c._ or when he has received a Stroke on the ailing Part, or had a Fall. § 479. The best Means and Remedies are, 1, as soon as ever this Symptom or Accident is manifest, to bleed the Patient very plentifully, as he lies down in his Bed and upon his Back, with his Head a little raised, and his Legs somewhat bent, so that his Knees may be erect. This is the Attitude or Posture they should always preserve as much as possible. When the Malady is not too far advanced, the first Bleeding often makes a compleat Cure; and the Guts return up as soon as it is over. At other Times this Bleeding is less successful, and leaves a Necessity for its Repetition. 2, A Glyster must be thrown up consisting of a strong Decoction of the large white Beet Leaves, with a small Spoonful or Pinch of common Salt, and a Bit of fresh Butter of the Size of an Egg. 3, Folds of Linen dipt in Ice-water must be applied all over the Tumour, and constantly renewed every Quarter of an Hour. This Remedy, when immediately applied, has produced the most happy Effects; but if the Symptom has endured violently more than ten or twelve Hours, it is often too late to apply it; and then it is better to make Use of Flanels dipt in a warm Decoction of Mallow and Elder Flowers, shifting them frequently. It has been known however, that Ice-water, or Ice itself has succeeded as late as the third Day. [102] �[102] Pieces of Ice applied between two Pieces of Linen, directly upon the Rupture, as soon as possible after its first Appearance, is one of those extraordinary Remedies, which we should never hesitate to make immediate Use of. We may be certain by this Application, if the Rupture is simple, and not complicated from some aggravating Cause, to remove speedily, and with very little Pain, a Disorder, that might be attended with the most dreadful Consequences. But the Continuance of this Application must be proportioned to the Strength of the Person ruptured, which may be sufficiently estimated by the Pulse. _E. L._ 4, When these Endeavours are insufficient, Glysters of Tobacco Smoke must be tried, which has often redressed and returned Ruptures, when every Thing else had failed. 5, And lastly, if all these Attempts are fruitless, the Operation must be resolved on, without losing a Moment's Time; as this local Disease proves sometimes mortal in the Space of two Days; but for this Operation an excellent Surgeon is indispensably necessary. The happy Consequence with which I have ordered it, in a most desperate Case since the first Edition of this Work, on the sixth Day after a Labour, has convinced me, still more than any former Observation I had made, that the Trial of it ought never to be omitted, when other Attempts have been unavailing. It cannot even hasten the Patient's Death, which must be inevitable without it, but it rather renders that more gentle, where it might fail to prevent it. When it is performed as Mr. _Levade_ effected it, in the Case I have just referred to, the Pain attending it is very tolerable and soon over. I shall not attempt to describe the Operation, as I could not explain myself sufficiently to instruct an ignorant Surgeon in it; and an excellent and experienced one must be sufficiently apprized of all I could say concerning it. A certain Woman in this Place, but now dead, had the great and impudent Temerity to attempt this Operation, and killed her Patients after the most excruciating Torments, and an Extirpation, or cutting away of the Testicle; which Quacks and ignorant Surgeons always do, but which a good Surgeon never does in this Operation. This is often the Custom too (in Country Places) of those Caitiffs, who perform this Operation without the least Necessity; and mercilessly emasculate a Multitude of Infants; whom Nature, if left to her own Conduct, or assisted only by a simple Bandage, would have perfectly cured; instead of which, they absolutely kill a great many, and deprive those of their Virility, who survive their Robbery and Violence. It were religiously to be wished such Caitiffs were to be duly, that is, severely punished; and it cannot be too much inculcated into the People, that this Operation (termed the _Bubonocele_) in the Manner it is performed by the best Surgeons, is not necessary; except in the Symptoms and Circumstances I have mentioned, and that the cutting off the Testicle never is so. _Of Phlegmons or Boils._ § 480. Every Person knows what Boils are at Sight, which are considerably painful when large, highly inflamed, or so situated as to incommode the Motions, or different Positions of the Body. Whenever their Inflammation is very considerable; when there are a great many of them at once, and they prevent the Patients from sleeping, it becomes necessary to enter them into a cooling Regimen; to throw up some opening Glysters; and to make them drink plentifully of the Ptisan, Nº. 2. Sometimes it is also necessary to bleed the Patient. Should the Inflammation be very high indeed, a Pultice of Bread and Milk, or of Sorrel a little boiled and bruised, must be applied to it. But if the Inflammation is only moderate, a Mucilage Plaister, or one of the simple Diachylon, may be sufficient. Diachylon with the Gums is more active and efficacious; but it so greatly augments the Pain of some Persons afflicted with Boils, that they cannot bear it. Boils, which often return, signify some Fault in the Temperament, and frequently one so considerable, that might dispose a Physician to be so far apprehensive of its Consequences, as to enquire into the Cause, and to attempt the Extinction of it. But the Detail of this is no Part nor Purpose of the present Work. § 481. The Phlegmon, or Boil, commonly terminates in Suppuration, but a Suppuration of a singular Kind. It breaks open at first on its Top, or the most pointed Part, when some Drops of a _Pus_ like that of an Abscess comes out, after which the Germ, or what is called the Core of it may be discerned. This is a purulent Matter or Substance, but so thick and tenacious, that it appears like a solid Body; which may be drawn out entirely in the Shape of a small Cylinder, like the Pith of Elder, to the Length of some Lines of an Inch; sometimes to the Length of a full Inch, and even more. The Emission of this Core is commonly followed by the Discharge of a certain Quantity, according to the Size of the Tumour, of liquid Matter, spread throughout the Bottom of it. As soon as ever this Discharge is made, the Pain goes entirely off; and the Swelling disappears at the End of a few Days, by continuing to apply the simple Diachylon, or the Ointment Nº. 66. _Of Fellons or Whitlows._ § 482. The Danger of these small Tumours is much greater than is generally supposed. It is an Inflammation at the Extremity or End of a Finger, which is often the Effect of a small Quantity of Humour extravasated, or stagnant, in that Part; whether this has happened in Consequence of a Bruise, a Sting, or a Bite. At other times it is evident that it has resulted from no external Cause, but is the Effect of some inward one. It is distinguished into many Kinds, according to the Place in which the Inflammation begins; but the essential Nature of the Malady is always the same, and requires the same Sort of Remedies. Hence such as are neither Physicians nor Surgeons, may spare themselves the Trouble of enquiring into the Divisions of this Distemper; which, though they vary the Danger of it, and diversify the Manner of the Surgeons Operation, yet have no Relation to the general Treatment of it; the Power and Activity of which must be regulated by the Violence of the Symptoms. § 483. This Disorder begins with a slow heavy Pain, attended by a slight Pulsation, without Swelling, without Redness, and without Heat; but in a little Time the Pain, Heat, and Pulsation or Throbbing becomes intolerable. The Part grows very large and red; the adjoining Fingers and the whole Hand swelling up. In some Cases a Kind of red and inflated Fuse or Streak may be observed, which, beginning at the affected Part, is continued almost to the Elbow; neither is it unusual for the Patients to complain of a very sharp Pain under the Shoulder; and sometimes the whole Arm is excessively inflamed and swelled. The Sick have not a Wink of Sleep, the Fever and other Symptoms quickly increasing. If the Distemper rises to a violent Degree indeed, a _Delirium_ and Convulsions supervene. This Inflammation of the Finger determines, either in Suppuration, or in a Gangrene. When the last of these occurs, the Patient is in very great Danger, if he is not very speedily relieved; and it has proved necessary more than once to cut off the Arm, for the Preservation of his Life. When Suppuration is effected, if the Matter lies very deep and sharp, or if the Assistance of a Surgeon has arrived too late, the Bone of the last _Phalanx_, or Row of Bones of the Finger, is generally carious and lost. But how gentle soever the Complaint has been, the Nail is very generally separated and falls off. § 484. The internal Treatment in Whitlows, is the same with that in other inflammatory Distempers. The Patient must enter upon a Regimen more or less strict, in Proportion to the Degree of the Fever; and if this runs very high, and the Inflammation be very considerable, there may be a Necessity for several Bleedings. The external Treatment consists in allaying the Inflammation; in softening the Skin; and in procuring a Discharge of the Matter, as soon as it is formed. For this Purpose, 1, The Finger affected is to be plunged, as soon as the Disorder is manifest, in Water a little more than warm: the Steam of boiling Water may also by admitted into it; and by doing these Things almost constantly for the first Day, a total Dissipation of the Malady has often been obtained. But unhappily it has been generally supposed, that such slight Attacks could have but very slight Consequences, whence they have been neglected until the Disorder has greatly advanced; in which State Suppuration becomes absolutely necessary. 2, This Suppuration therefore may be forwarded, by continually involving the Finger, as it were, in a Decoction of Mallow Flowers boiled in Milk, or with a Cataplasm of Bread and Milk. This may be rendered still more active and ripening, by adding a few white Lilly Roots, or a little Honey. But this last must not be applied before the Inflammation is somewhat abated, and Suppuration begins; before which Term, all sharp Applications are very dangerous. At this Time, Yeast or Leaven may be advantagiously used, which powerfully promotes Suppuration. The Sorrel Pultice, mentioned § 480, is also a very efficacious one. § 485. A speedy Discharge of the ripe Matter is of considerable Importance, but this particularly requires the Attention of the Surgeon; as it is not proper to wait till the Tumour breaks and discharges of itself; and this the rather, as from the Skin's proving sometimes extremely hard, the Matter might be inwardly effused between the Muscles, and upon their Membranes, before it could penetrate through the Skin. For this Reason, as soon as Matter is suspected to be formed, a Surgeon should be called in, to determine exactly on the Time, when an Opening should be made; which had better be performed a little too soon than too late; and a little too deep, than not deep enough. When the Orifice has been made, and the Discharge is effected, it is to be dressed up with the Plaister Nº. 66, spread upon Linen, or with the Cerecloth; and these Dressings are to be repeated daily. § 486. When the Whitlow is caused by a Humour extravasated very near the Nail, an expert Surgeon speedily checks its Progress, and cures it effectually by an Incision which lets out the Humour. Yet, notwithstanding this Operation is in no wise difficult, all Surgeons are not qualified to perform it, and but too many have no Idea at all of it. § 487. Fungous, or, as it is commonly called, proud Flesh sometimes appears during the incarning or healing of the Incision. Such may be kept down with sprinkling a little _Minium_ (red Lead) or burnt Alum over it. § 488. If a _Caries_, a Rottenness of the Bone, should be a Consequence, there is a Necessity for a Surgeon's Attendance, as much as if there was a Gangrene; for which Reason, I shall add nothing with Respect to either of these Symptoms; only observing, there are three very essential Remedies against the last; _viz._ the Bark, Nº. 14, a Drachm of which must be taken every two Hours; Scarifications throughout the whole gangrened Part; and Fomentations with a Decoction of the Bark, and the Addition of Spirit of Sulphur. This Medicine is certainly no cheap one; but a Decoction of other bitter Plants, with the Addition of Spirit of Salt, may sometimes do instead of it. And here I take leave to insist again upon it, that in most Cases of gangrened Limbs, it is judicious not to proceed to an Amputation of the mortified Part, till the Gangrene stops, which may be known by a very perceivable Circle, (and easily distinguished by the most ignorant Persons) that marks the Bounds of the Gangrene, and separates the living from the mortified Parts. _Of Thorns, Splinters, or other pointed Substances piercing into the Skin, or Flesh._ § 489. It is very common for the Hands, Feet or Legs, to be pierced by the forcible Intrusion of small pointed Substances, such as Thorns or Prickles, whether of Roses, Thistles or Chestnuts, or little Splinters of Wood, Bone, _&c._ If such Substances are immediately and entirely extracted, the Accident is generally attended with no bad Consequences; though more certainly to obviate any such, Compresses of Linen dipt in warm Water may be applied to the Part, or it may be kept a little while in a warm Bath. But if any such pointed penetrating Body cannot be directly extracted, or if a Part of it be left within, it causes an Inflammation, which, in its Progress, soon produces the same Symptoms as a Whitlow: or if it happens in the Leg, it inflames and forms a considerable Abscess there. § 490. To prevent such Consequences, if the penetrating Substance is still near the Surface, and an expert Surgeon is at Hand, he must immediately make a small Incision, and thence extract it. But if the Inflammation were already formed, this would be useless, and even dangerous. When the Incision, therefore, is improper; there should be applied to the affected Part, (after conveying the Steam of some hot Water into it) either some very emollient Pultices of the Crumb of Bread, Milk and Oil, or some very emollient unctuous Matter alone, the Fat of a [103] Hare being generally employed in such Cases, and being indeed very effectual to relax and supple the Skin; and, by thus diminishing its Resistance, to afford the offensive penetrating Body an Opportunity of springing forth. Nothing however, but the grossest Prejudice, could make any one imagine, that this Fat attracted the Splinter, Thorn, or any other intruded Substance by any sympathetic Virtue; no other Sympathy in Nature being clearly demonstrated, except that very common one between wrong Heads, and absurd extravagant Opinions. �[103] These Creatures perhaps are fatter in _Swisserland_, than we often see them here. _K._ It is absolutely necessary that the injured Part should be kept in the easiest Posture, and as immoveable as possible. If Suppuration has not been prevented by an immediate Extraction of the offending Substance, the Abscess should be opened as soon as ever Matter is formed. I have known very troublesome Events from its being too long delayed. § 491. Sometimes the Thorn, after having very painfully penetrated through the Teguments, the Skin, enters directly into the Fat; upon which the Pain ceases, and the Patient begins to conclude no sharp prickling Substance had ever been introduced into the Part; and of Course supposes none can remain there. Nevertheless some Days after, or, in other Instances, some Weeks, fresh Pains are excited, to which an Inflammation and Abscess succeed, which are to be treated as usual, with Emollients, and seasonably opened. A Patient has been reduced to lose his Hand, in Consequence of a sharp Thorn's piercing into his Finger; from its having been neglected at first, and improperly treated afterwards. _Of Warts._ § 492. Warts are sometimes the Effects of a particular Fault in the Blood, which feeds and extrudes a surprizing Quantity of them. This happens to some Children, from four to ten Years old, and especially to those who feed most plentifully on Milk or Milk-meats. They may be removed by a moderate Change of their Diet, and the Pills prescribed Nº. 18. But they are more frequently an accidental Disorder of the Skin, arising from some external Cause. In this last Case, if they are very troublesome in Consequence of their great Size, their Situation or their long Standing, they may be destroyed, 1, by tying them closely with a Silk Thread, or with a strong flaxen one waxed. 2, By cutting them off with a sharp Scissars or a Bistory, and applying a Plaister of Diachylon, with the Gums, over the cut Wart, which brings on a small Suppuration that may destroy or dissolve the Root of the Wart: and, 3, By drying, or, as it were, withering them up by some moderately corroding Application, such as that of the milky Juice of [104] Purslain, of Fig-leaves, of _Chelidonium_ (Swallow-wort) or of Spurge. But besides these corroding vegetable Milks being procurable only in Summer, People who have very delicate thin Skins should not make Use of them, as they may occasion a considerable and painful Swelling. Strong Vinegar, charged with as much common Salt as it will dissolve, is a very proper Application to them. A Plaister may also be composed from Sal Ammoniac and some Galbanum, which being kneaded up well together and applied, seldom fails of destroying them. �[104] Our Garden Purslain, though a very juicy Herb, cannot strictly be termed milky. In the hotter Climates where it is wild, and grows very rankly, they sometimes boil the Leaves and Stalks (besides eating them as a cooling Salad) and find the whole an insipid mucilaginous Pot-herb. But Dr. _Tissot_ observes to me, that its Juice will inflame the Skin; and that some Writers on Diet, who disapprove it internally, affirm they have known it productive of bad Effects. Yet none such have ever happened to myself, nor to many others, who have frequently eaten of it. Its Seeds have sometimes been directed in cooling Emulsions. The Wart Spurge is a very milky and common Herb, which flowers in Summer here. _K._ The most powerful Corrosives should never be used, without the Direction of a Surgeon; and even then it is full as prudent not to meddle with them, any more than with actual Cauteries. I have lately seen some very tedious and troublesome Disorders and Ulcerations of the Kidnies, ensue the Application of a corrosive Water, by the Advice of a Quack. Cutting them away is a more certain, a less painful, and a less dangerous Way of removing them. Wens, if of a pretty considerable Size, and Duration, are incurable by any other Remedy, except Amputation. _Of Corns._ § 493. The very general or only Causes of Corns, are Shoes either too hard and stiff, or too small. The whole Cure consists in softening the Corns by repeated Washings and Soakings of the Feet in pretty hot Water; then in cutting them, when softened, with a Penknife or Scissars, without wounding the sound Parts (which are the more sensible, in Proportion as they are more extended than usual) and next in applying a Leaf of House-leek, of Ground-ivy, or of Purslain dipt in Vinegar, upon the Part. Instead of these Leaves, if any Person will give himself the little Trouble of dressing them every Day, he may apply a Plaister of simple Diachylon, or of Gum Ammoniacum softened in Vinegar. The Increase or Return of Corns can only be prevented, by avoiding the Causes that produce them. __Chapter XXXI.__ _Of some Cases which require immediate Assistance; such as Swoonings; Hæmorrhages, or involuntary Loss of Blood; Convulsion Fitts, and Suffocations; the sudden Effects of great Fear; of Disorders caused by noxious Vapours; of Poisons, and of acute Pains._ _Of Swoonings._ __Sect.__ 494. There are many Degrees of Swooning, or fainting away: the slightest is that in which the Patient constantly perceives and understands, yet without the Power of speaking. This is called a Fainting, which happens very often to vapourish Persons, and without any remarkable Alteration of the Pulse. If the Patient entirely loses Sensation, or Feeling, and Understanding, with a very considerable Sinking of the Pulse, this is called a _Syncopè_, and is the second Degree of Swooning. But if this _Syncopè_ is so violent, that the Pulse seems totally extinguished; without any discernible Breathing; with a manifest Coldness of the whole Body; and a wanly livid Countenance, it constitutes a third and last Degree, which is the true Image of Death, that in Effect sometimes attends it, and it is called an _Asphixy_, which may signify a total Resolution. Swoonings result from many different Causes, of which I shall only enumerate the principal; and these are, 1, Too large a Quantity of Blood. 2, A Defect or insufficient Proportion of it, and a general Weakness. 3, A Load at and violent Disorders of the Stomach. 4, Nervous Maladies. 5, The Passions; and, 6, some Kinds of Diseases. _Of Swoonings occasioned by Excess of Blood._ § 495. An excessive Quantity of Blood is frequently a Cause of Swooning; and it may be inferred that it is owing to this Cause, when it attacks sanguine, hearty and robust Persons; and more especially when it attacks them, after being combined with any additional or supervening Cause, that suddenly increased the Motion of the Blood; such as heating Meats or Drinks, Wine, spirituous Liquors: smaller Drinks, if taken very hot and plentifully, such as Coffee, Indian Tea, Bawm Tea and the like; a long Exposure to the hot Sun, or being detained in a very hot Place; much and violent Exercise; an over intense and assiduous Study or Application, or some excessive Passion. In such Cases, first of all the Patient should be made to smell to, or even to snuff up, some Vinegar; and his Forehead, his Temples and his Wrists should be bathed with it; adding an equal Quantity of warm Water, if at Hand. Bathing them with distilled or spirituous Liquids would be prejudicial in this Kind of Swooning. 2, The Patient should be made, if possible, to swallow two or three Spoonfuls of Vinegar, with four or five Times as much Water. 3, The Patient's Garters should be tied very tightly above his Knees; as by this Means a greater Quantity of Blood is retained in the Legs, whence the Heart may be less overladen with it. 4, If the Fainting proves obstinate, that is, if it continues longer than a Quarter of an Hour, or degenerates into a _Syncopè_, an Abolition of Feeling and Understanding, he must be bled in the Arm, which quickly revives him. 5, After the Bleeding, the Injection of a Glyster will be highly proper; and then the Patient should be kept still and calm, only letting him drink, every half Hour, some Cups of Elder Flower Tea, with the Addition of a little Sugar and Vinegar. When Swoonings which result from this Cause occur frequently in the same Person, he should, in Order to escape them, pursue the Directions I shall hereafter mention, § 544, when treating of Persons who superabound with Blood. The very same Cause, or Causes, which occasion these Swoonings, also frequently produce violent Palpitations, under the same Circumstances; the Palpitation often preceding or following the _Deliquium_, or Swooning. _Of Swoonings occasioned by Weakness._ § 496. If too great a Quantity of Blood, which may be considered as some Excess of Health, is sometimes the Cause of Swooning, this last is oftener the Effect of a very contrary Cause, that is, of a Want of Blood, or an Exhaustion of too much. This Sort of Swooning happens after great Hæmorrhages, or Discharges of Blood; after sudden or excessive Evacuations, such as one of some Hours Continuance in a _Cholera Morbus_ (§ 321) or such as are more slow, but of longer Duration, as for Instance, after an inveterate _Diarrhoea_, or Purging; excessive Sweats; a Flood of Urine; such Excesses as tend to exhaust Nature; obstinate Wakefulness; a long Inappetency, which, by depriving the Body of its necessary Sustenance, is attended with the same Consequence as profuse Evacuations. These different Causes of Swooning should be opposed by the Means and Remedies adapted to each of them. A Detail of all these would be improper here; but the Assistances that are necessary at the Time of Swooning, are nearly the same for all Cases of this Class; excepting for that attending a great Loss of Blood, of which I shall treat hereafter: first of all, the Patients should be laid down on a Bed, and being covered, should have their Legs and Thighs, their Arms, and their whole Bodies rubbed pretty strongly with hot Flanels; and no Ligature should remain on any Part of them. 2, They should have very spirituous Things to smell or snuff up, such as the Carmelite Water, Hungary Water, the [105] _English_ Salt, Spirit of Sal Ammoniac, strong smelling Herbs, such as Rue, Sage, Rosemary, Mint, Wormwood, and the like. �[105] Dr. _Tissot_ informs me, that in _Swisserland_, they call a volatile Salt of Vipers, or the volatile Salt of raw Silk, _Sel. d'Angleterre_, of which one _Goddard_ made a Secret, and which he brought into Vogue the latter End of the last Century. But he justly observes at the same Time, that on the present Occasion every other volatile Alkali will equally answer the Purpose; and indeed the Smell of some of them, as the Spirit of Sal Ammoniac with Quicklime, _Eau de Luce_, _&c._ seem more penetrating. _K._ 3, These should be conveyed into their Mouths; and they should be forced, if possible, to swallow some Drops of Carmelite Water, or of Brandy, or of some other potable Liquor, mixed with a little Water; while some hot Wine mixed with Sugar and Cinnamon, which makes one of the best Cordials, is getting ready. 4, A Compress of Flanel, or of some other woollen Stuff, dipt in hot Wine, in which some aromatic Herb has been steeped, must be applied to the Pit of the Stomach. 5, If the Swooning seems likely to continue, the Patient must be put into a well heated Bed, which has before been perfumed with burning Sugar and Cinnamon; the Frictions of the whole Body with hot Flanels being still continued. 6, As soon as the Patient can swallow, he should take some Soup or Broth, with the Yolk of an Egg; or a little Bread or Biscuit; soaked in the hot spiced Wine. 7, Lastly, during the whole Time that all other Precautions are taken to oppose the Cause of the Swooning, Care must be had for some Days to prevent any _Deliquium_ or Fainting, by giving them often, and but little at a time, some light yet strengthening Nourishment, such as Panada made with Soup instead of Water, new laid Eggs very lightly poached, light roast Meats with sweet Sauce, Chocolate, Soups of the most nourishing Meats, Jellies, Milk, _&c._ § 497. Those Swoonings, which are the Effect of Bleeding, or of the violent Operation of some Purge, are to be ranged in this Class. Such as happen after artificial Bleeding, are generally very moderate, commonly terminating as soon as the Patient is laid upon the Bed: and Persons subject to this Kind, should be bled lying down, in Order to prevent it. But should the Fainting continue longer than usual, some Vinegar smelt to, and a little swallowed with some Water, is a very good Remedy. The Treatment of such Faintings or Swoonings, as are the Consequences of too violent Vomits or Purges, may be seen hereafter § 552. _Of Faintings occasioned by a Load, or Uneasiness, at Stomach._ § 498. It has been already observed, § 308, that Indigestions were sometimes attended with Swoonings, and indeed such vehement ones, as required speedy and very active Succour too, such as that of a Vomit. The Indigestion is sometimes less the Effect of the Quantity, than of the Quality, or the Corruption of the Food, contained in the Stomach. Thus we see there are some Persons, who are disordered by eating Eggs, Fish, Craw Fish, or any fat Meat; being thrown by them into inexpressible Anguish attended with Swooning too. It may be supposed to depend on this Cause, when these very Aliments have been lately eaten; and when it evidently neither depends on the other Causes I have mentioned; nor on such as I shall soon proceed to enumerate. We should in Cases of this Sort, excite and revive the Patients as in the former, by making them receive some very strong Smell, of whatever Kind is at hand; but the most essential Point is to make them swallow down a large Quantity of light warm Fluid; which may serve to drown, as it were, the indigested Matter; which may soften its Acrimony; and either effect the Discharge of it by vomiting, or force it down into the Chanel of the Intestines. A light Infusion of Chamomile Flowers, of Tea, of Sage, of Elder Flowers, or of _Carduus Benedictus_, operate with much the same Efficacy; though the Chamomile and Carduus promote the Operation of vomiting rather more powerfully; which warm Water alone will sometimes sufficiently do. The Swooning ceases, or at least, considerably abates in these Cases, as soon as ever the Vomiting commences. It frequently happens too, that, during the Swooning, Nature herself brings on certain _Nausea_, a Wambling and sickish Commotion of the Stomach, that revives or rouses the Patient for a Moment; but yet not being sufficient to excite an actual Vomiting, lets him soon sink down again into this temporary Dissolution, which often continues a pretty considerable Time; leaving behind it a Sickness at Stomach, Vertigos, and a Depression and Anxiety, which do not occur in the former Species of this Malady. Whenever these Swoonings from this Cause are entirely terminated, the Patient must be kept for some Days to a very light Diet, and take, at the same Time, every Morning fasting, a Dose of the Powder, Nº. 38, which relieves and exonerates the Stomach of whatever noxious Contents might remain in it; and then restores its natural Strength and Functions. § 499. There is another Kind of Swooning, which also results from a Cause in the Stomach; but which is, nevertheless, very different from this we have just been treating of; and which requires a very different Kind of Assistance. It arises from an extraordinary Sensibility of this important Organ, and from a general Weakness of the Patient. Those subject to this Malady are valetudinary weakly Persons, who are disordered from many slight Causes, and whose Stomachs are at once very feeble and extremely sensible. They have almost continually a little Uneasiness after a Meal, though they should indulge but a little more than usual; or if they eat of any Food not quite so easy of Digestion, they have some Qualm or Commotion after it: Nay, should the Weather only be unfavourable, and sometimes without any perceivable assignable Cause, their Uneasiness terminates in a Swoon. Patients swooning, from these Causes, have a greater Necessity for great Tranquillity and Repose, than for any other Remedy; and it might be sufficient to lay them down on the Bed: But as the Bystanders in such Cases find it difficult to remain inactive Spectators of Persons in a Swoon, some spirituous Liquid may be held to their Nose, while their Temples and Wrists are rubbed with it; and at the same Time a little Wine should be given them. Frictions are also useful in these Cases. This Species of Swooning is oftener attended with a little Feverishness than the others. _Of those Swoonings, which arise from nervous Disorders._ § 500. This Species of Swooning is almost wholely unknown to those Persons, for whom this Treatise is chiefly intended. Yet as there are some Citizens who pass a Part of their Lives in the Country; and some Country People who are unhappily afflicted with the Ailments of the Inhabitants of large Towns and Cities, it seemed necessary to treat briefly of them. By Disorders of the Nerves, I understand in this Place, only that Fault or Defect in them, which is the Cause of their exciting in the Body, either irregular Motions, that is, Motions without any external Cause, at least any perceivable one; and without our Will's consenting to the Production of them: or such Motions, as are greatly more considerable than they should be, if they had been proportioned to the Force of the Impression from without. This is very exactly that State, or Affection termed the _Vapours_; and by the common People, the _Mother_: And as there is no Organ unprovided with Nerves; and none, or hardly any Function, in which the Nerves have not their Influence; it may be easily comprehended, that the Vapours being a State or Condition, which arises from the Nerves exerting irregular involuntary Motions, without any evident Cause, and all the Functions of the Body depending partly on the Nerves; there is no one Symptom of other Diseases which the Vapours may not produce or imitate; and that these Symptoms, for the same Reason, must vary infinitely, according to those Branches of the Nerves which are disordered. It may also hence be conceived, why the Vapours of one Person have frequently no Resemblance to those of another: and why the Vapours of the very same Person, in one Day, are so very different from those in the next. It is also very conceivable that the Vapours are a certain, a real Malady; and that Oddity of the Symptoms, which cannot be accounted for, by People unacquainted with the animal Oeconomy, has been the Cause of their being considered rather as the Effect of a depraved Imagination, than as a real Disease. It is very conceiveable, I say, that this surprizing Oddity of the Symptoms is a necessary Effect of the Cause of the Vapours; and that no Person can any more prevent his being invaded by the Vapours, than he can prevent the Attack of a Fever, or of the Tooth-ach. § 501. A few plain Instances will furnish out a more compleat Notion of the Mechanism, or Nature, of Vapours. An Emetic, a vomiting Medicine, excites the Act, or rather the Passion, the Convulsion of Vomiting, chiefly by the Irritation it gives to the Nerves of the Stomach; which Irritation produces a Spasm, a Contraction of this Organ. Now if in Consequence of this morbid or defective Texture of the Nerves, which constitutes the Vapours, those of the Stomach are excited to act with the same Violence, as in Consequence of taking a Vomit, the Patient will be agitated and worked by violent Efforts to vomit, as much as if he had really taken one. If an involuntary unusual Motion in the Nerves, that are distributed through the Lungs, should constrain and straiten the very little Vesicles, or Bladders, as it were, which admit the fresh Air at every Respiration, the Patient will feel a Degree of Suffocation; just as if that Straitening or Contraction of the Vesicles were occasioned by some noxious Steam or Vapour. Should the Nerves which are distributed throughout the whole Skin, by a Succession of these irregular morbid Motions, contract themselves, as they may from external Cold, or by some stimulating Application, Perspiration by the Pores will be prevented or checked; whence the Humours, which should be evacuated through the Pores of the Skin, will be thrown upon the Kidnies, and the Patient will make a great Quantity of thin clear Urine, a Symptom very common to vapourish People; or it may be diverted to the Glands of the Intestines, the Guts, and terminate in a watery _Diarrhoea_, or Looseness, which frequently proves a very obstinate one. § 502. Neither are Swoonings the least usual Symptoms attending the Vapours: and we may be certain they spring from this Source, when they happen to a Person subject to the Vapours; and none of the other Causes producing them are evident, or have lately preceded them. Such Swoonings, however, are indeed very rarely dangerous, and scarcely require any medical Assistance. The Patient should be laid upon a Bed; the fresh Air should be very freely admitted to him; and he should be made to smell rather to some disagreeable and fetid, than to any fragrant, Substance. It is in such Faintings as these that the Smell of burnt Leather, of Feathers, or of Paper, have often proved of great Service. § 503. Patients also frequently faint away, in Consequence of fasting too long; or from having eat a little too much; from being confined in too hot a Chamber; from having seen too much Company; from smelling too over-powering a Scent; from being too costive; from being too forcibly affected with some Discourse or Sentiments; and, in a Word, from a great Variety of Causes, which might not make the least Impression on Persons in perfect Health; but which violently operate upon those vapourish People, because, as I have said, the Fault of their Nerves consists in their being too vividly, too acutely affected; the Force of their Sensation being nowise proportioned to the external Cause of it. As soon as that particular Cause is distinguished from all the rest, which has occasioned the present Swooning; it is manifest that this Swooning is to be remedied by removing that particular Cause of it. _Of Swoonings occasioned by the Passions._ § 504. There have been some Instances of Persons dying within a Moment, through excessive Joy. But such Instances are so very rare and sudden, that Assistance has seldom been sought for on this Occasion. The Case is otherwise with Respect to those produced from Rage, Vexation, and Dread or Horror. I shall treat in a separate Article of those resulting from great Fear; and shall briefly consider here such as ensue from Rage, and vehement Grief or Disappointment. § 505. Excessive Rage and violent Affliction are sometimes fatal in the Twinkling of an Eye; though they oftener terminate in fainting only. Excessive Grief or Chagrine is especially accompanied with this Consequence; and it is very common to see Persons thus affected, sink into successive Faintings for several Hours. It is plainly obvious that very little Assistance can be given in such Cases: it is proper, however, they should smell to strong Vinegar; and frequently take a few Cups of some hot and temperately cordial Drink, such as Bawm Tea, or Lemonade with a little Orange or Lemon-peel. The calming asswaging Cordial, that has seemed the most efficacious to me, is one small Coffee Spoonful of a Mixture of three Parts of the Mineral Anodyne Liquor of _Hoffman_, [106] and one Part of the spirituous Tincture of Amber, which should be swallowed in a Spoonful of Water; taking after it a few Cups of such Drinks as I shall presently direct. �[106] Our sweet Spirit of Vitriol is a similar, and as effectual a Medicine. _K._ It is not to be supposed that Swoonings or Faintings, from excessive Passions, can be cured by Nourishment. The physical State or Condition, into which vehement Grief throws the Body, is that, of all others, in which Nourishment would be most injurious to it: and as long as the Vehemence of the Affliction endures, the Sufferer should take nothing but some Spoonfuls of Soup or Broth, or a few Morsels of some light Meat roasted. § 506. When Wrath or Rage has risen to so high a Pitch, that the human Machine, the Body, entirely exhausted, as it were, by that violent Effort, sinks down at once into excessive Relaxation, a Fainting sometimes succeeds, and even the most perilous Degree of it, a _Syncopè_. It is sufficient, or rather the most that can be done here, to let the Patient be perfectly still a while in this State; only making him smell to some Vinegar. But when he is come to himself, he should drink plentifully of hot Lemonade, and take one or more of the Glysters Nº. 5. Sometimes there remain in these Cases Sicknesses at Stomach, Reachings to vomit, a Bitterness in the Mouth, and some vertiginous Symptoms which seem to require a Vomit. But such a Medicine must be very carefully avoided, since it may be attended with the most fatal Consequence; and Lemonade with Glysters generally and gradually remove these Swoonings. If the _Nausea_ and Sickness at Stomach continue, the utmost Medicine we should allow besides, would be that of Nº. 23, or a few Doses of Nº. 24. _Of symptomatical Swoonings, or such, as happen in the Progress of other Diseases._ § 507. Swoonings, which supervene in the Course of other Diseases, never afford a favourable Prognostic; as they denote Weakness, and Weakness is an Obstacle to Recovery. In the Beginning of putrid Diseases, they also denote an Oppression at Stomach, or a Mass of corrupt Humours; and they cease as soon as an Evacuation supervenes, whether by Vomit or Stool. When they occur at the Beginning of malignant Fevers, they declare the high Degree of their Malignancy, and the great Diminution of the Patient's natural Strength. In each of these Cases Vinegar, used externally and internally, is the best Remedy during the Exacerbation or Height of the Paroxysm; and Plenty of Lemon Juice and Water after it. § 508. Swoonings which supervene in Diseases, accompanied with great Evacuations, are cured like those which are owing to Weakness; and Endeavours should be used to restrain or moderate the Evacuations. § 509. Those who have any inward Abscess or Imposthume are apt to swoon frequently. They may sometimes be revived a little by Vinegar, but they prove too frequently mortal. § 510. Many Persons have a slighter or a deeper Swooning, at the End of a violent Fit of an intermitting Fever, or at that of each Exacerbation of a continual Fever; this constantly shews the Fever has run very high, the Swooning having been the Consequence of that great Relaxation, which has succeeded to a very high Tension. A Spoonful or two of light white Wine, with an equal Quantity of Water, affords all the Succour proper in such a Case. § 511. Persons subject to frequent Swoonings, should neglect nothing that may enable them to remove them when known; since the Consequences of them are always detrimental, except in some Fevers, in which they seem to mark the _Crisis_. Every swooning Fit leaves the Patient in Dejection and Weakness; the Secretions from the Blood are suspended; the Humours disposed to Stagnation; Grumosities, or Coagulations, and Obstructions are formed; and if the Motion of the Blood is totally intercepted, or considerably checked, _Polypus's_, and these often incurable, are formed in the Heart, or in the larger Vessels; the Consequences of which are dreadful, and sometimes give Rise to internal Aneurisms, which always prove mortal, after long Anxiety and Oppression. Swoonings which attack old People, without any manifest Cause, always afford an unfavourable Prognostic. _Of Hæmorrhages, or an involuntary Loss of Blood._ § 512. Hæmorrhages of the Nose, supervening in inflammatory Fevers, commonly prove a favourable _Crisis_; which Bleeding we should carefully avoid stopping; except it becomes excessive, and seems to threaten the Patient's Life. As they scarcely ever happen in very healthy Subjects, but from a superfluous Abundance of Blood, it is very improper to check them too soon; lest some internal Stuffings and Obstructions should prove the Consequence. A Swooning sometimes ensues after the Loss of only a moderate Quantity of Blood. This Swooning stops the Hæmorrhage, and goes off without any further Assistance, except the smelling to Vinegar. But in other Cases there is a Succession of fainting Fits, without the Blood's stopping; while at the same time slight convulsive Motions and Twitchings ensue, attended with a Raving, when it becomes really necessary to stop the Bleeding: and indeed, without waiting till these violent Symptoms appear, the following Signs will sufficiently direct us, when it is right to stop the Flux of Blood, or to permit its Continuance--As long as the Pulse is still pretty full; while the Heat of the Body is equally extended to the very Extremities; and the Countenance and Lips preserve their natural Redness, no ill Consequence is to be apprehended from the Hæmorrhage, though it has been very copious, and even somewhat profuse. But whenever the Pulse begins to faulter and tremble; when the Countenance and the Lips grow pale, and the Patient complains of a Sickness at Stomach, it is absolutely necessary to stop the Discharge of Blood. And considering that the Operation of Remedies does not immediately follow the Exhibition or Application of them, it is safer to begin a little too early with them, than to delay them, though ever so little too long. § 513. First of all then, tight Bandages, or Ligatures, should be applied round both Arms, on the Part they are applied over in order to Bleeding; and round the lower Part of both Thighs, on the gartering Place; and all these are to be drawn very tight, with an Intention to detain and accumulate the Blood in the Extremities. 2, In Order to increase this Effect, the Legs are to be plunged in warm Water up to the Knees; for by relaxing the Blood-vessels of the Legs and Feet, they are dilated at the same time, and thence receive, and, in Consequence of the Ligatures above the Knees, retain the more Blood. If the Water were cold, it would repel the Blood to the Head; if hot, it would increase the Motion of it; and, by giving a greater Quickness to the Pulse, would even contribute to increase the Hæmorrhage. As soon however, as the Hæmorrhage is stopt, these Ligatures [on the Thighs] may be relaxed a little, or one of them be entirely removed; allowing the others to continue on an Hour or two longer without touching them: but great Precaution should be taken not to slacken them entirely, nor all at once. 3, Seven or eight Grains of Nitre, and a Spoonful of Vinegar, in half a Glass of cool Water, should be given the Patient every half Hour. 4, One Drachm of white Vitriol must be dissolved in two common Spoonfuls of Spring Water; and a Tent of Lint, or Bits of soft fine Linen dipt in this Solution, are to be introduced into the Nostrils, horizontally at first, but afterwards to be intruded upwards, and as high as may be, by the Assistance of a flexible Bit of Wood or Whale-bone. But should this Application be ineffectual, the Mineral Anodyne Liquor of _Hoffman_ is certain to succeed: and in the Country, where it often happens that neither of these Applications are to be had speedily, Brandy, and even Spirit of Wine, mixt with a third Part Vinegar, have answered entirely well, of which I have been a Witness. The Prescription Nº. 67, which I have already referred to, on the Article of Wounds, may also be serviceable on this Occasion. It must be reduced to Powder, and conveyed up the Nostrils as high as may be, on the Point or Extremity of a Tent of Lint, which may easily be covered with it. Or a Quill, well charged with the Powder, may be introduced high into the Nostrils, and its Countents be strongly blown up from its other Extremity: though after all the former Method is preferable. 5, When the Flux of Blood is totally stopt, the Patient is to be kept as still and quiet as possible; taking great Care not to extract the Tent which remains in the Nose; nor to remove the Clots of coagulated Blood which fill up the Passage. The loosening and removing of these should be effected very gradually and cautiously; and frequently the Tent does not spring out spontaneously, till after many Days. § 514. I have not, hitherto, said any thing of artificial Bleeding in these Cases, as I think it at best unserviceable; since, though it may sometimes have stopt the morbid Loss of Blood, it has at other times increased it. Neither have I mentioned Anodynes here, whose constant Effect is to determine a larger Quantity of Blood to the Head. Applications of cold Water to the Nape of the Neck ought to be wholly disused, having sometimes been attended with the most embarrassing Consequences. In all Hæmorrhages, all Fluxes of Blood, great Tranquillity, Ligatures, and the Use of the Drinks Nº. 2 or 4, are very useful. § 515. People who are very liable to frequent Hæmorrhages, ought to manage themselves conformably to the Directions contained in the next Chapter, § 544. They should take very little Supper; avoid all sharp and spirituous Liquors; Apartments that are over hot, and cover their Heads but very lightly. When a Patient has for a long time been subject to Hæmorrhages, if they cease, he should retrench from his usual Quantity of Food; accustom himself to artificial Bleedings at proper Intervals; and take some gentle opening Purges, especially that of Nº. 24, and frequently a little Nitre in an Evening. _Of Convulsion Fits._ § 516. Convulsions are, in general, more terrifying than dangerous; they result from many and various Causes; and on the Removal or Extirpation of these, their Cure depends. In the very Fit itself very little is to be done or attempted. As nothing does shorten the Duration, nor even lessen the Violence, of an epileptic Fit, so nothing at all should be attempted in it; and the rather, because Means and Medicines often aggravate the Disease. We should confine our Endeavours solely to the Security of the Patient, by preventing him from giving himself any violent Strokes; by getting something, if possible, between his Teeth, such as a small Roller of Linen to prevent his Tongue from being hurt, or very dangerously squeezed and bruised, in a strong Convulsion. The only Case which requires immediate Assistance in the Fit, is, when it is so extremely violent, the Neck so swelled, and the Face so very red, that there is Room to be apprehensive of an Apoplexy, which we should endeavour to obviate, by drawing eight or ten Ounces of Blood from the Arm. As this terrible Disease is common in the Country, it is doing a real Service to the unfortunate Victims of it, to inform them how very dangerous it is to give themselves blindly up to take all the Medicines, which are cried up to them in such Cases. If there be any one Disease, which requires a more attentive, delicate, and exquisite Kind of Treatment, it is this very Disease. Some Species of it are wholly incurable: and such as may be susceptible of a Cure, require the utmost Care and Consideration of the most enlightned and most experienced Physicians: while those who pretend to cure all epileptic Patients, with one invariable Medicine, are either Ignorants, or Impostors, and sometimes both in one. § 517. Simple Convulsion Fits, which are not epileptic, are frequently of a long Continuance, persevering, with very few and short Intervals, for Days and even for Weeks. The true genuine Cause should be investigated as strictly as possible, though nothing should be attempted in the Fit. The Nerves are, during that Term, in so high a Degree of Tension and Sensibility, that the very Medicines, supposed to be strongly indicated, often redouble the Storm they were intended to appease. Thin watery Liquors, moderately imbued with Aromatics, are the least hurtful, the most innocent Things that can be given; such as Bawm, Lime-tree, and Elder Flower Tea. A Ptisan of Liquorice Root only has sometimes answered better than any other. _Of suffocating, or strangling Fits._ § 518. These Fits (by whatever other Name they may be called) whenever they very suddenly attack a Person, whose Breathing was easy and natural just before, depend almost constantly on a Spasm or Contraction of the Nerves, in the Vesicles of the Lungs; or upon an Infarction, a Stuffing of the same Parts, produced by viscid clammy Humours. That Suffocation which arises from a Spasm is not dangerous, it goes off of itself, or it may be treated like Swoonings owing to the same Cause. See § 502. § 519. That Suffocation, which is the Effect of a sanguineous Fulness and Obstruction, may be distinguished by its attacking strong, vigorous, sanguine Persons, who are great Eaters, using much juicy nutritious Food, and strong Wine and Liquors, and who frequently eat and inflame themselves; and when the Fit has come on after any inflaming Cause; when the Pulse is full and strong, and the Countenance red. Such are cured, 1, by a very plentiful Discharge of Blood from the Arm, which is to be repeated, if necessary. 2, By the Use of Glysters. 3, By drinking plentifully of the Ptisan Nº. 1; to each Pot of which, a Drachm of Nitre is to be added; and, 4, By the Vapour of hot Vinegar, continually received by Respiration or Breathing. See § 55. § 520. There is Reason to think that one of these Fits is owing to a Quantity of tough viscid Humours in the Lungs, when it attacks Persons, whose Temperament, and whose Manner of living are opposite to those I have just described; such as valetudinary, weakly, phlegmatic, pituitous, inactive, and squeamish Persons, who feed badly, or on fat, viscid, and insipid Diet, and who drink much hot Water, either alone, or in Tea-like Infusions. And these Signs of Suffocation, resulting from such Causes, are still more probable, if the Fit came on in rainy Weather, and during a southerly Wind; and when the Pulse is soft and small, the Visage pale and hollow. The most efficacious Treatment we can advise, is, 1, To give every half Hour half a Cup of the Potion, Nº. 8, if it can be readily had. 2, To make the Patient drink very plentifully of the Drink Nº. 12; and, 3, to apply two strong Blisters to the fleshy Parts of his Legs. If he was strong and hearty before the Fit, and the Pulse still continues vigorous, and feels somewhat full withall, the Loss of seven or eight Ounces of Blood is sometimes indispensably necessary. A Glyster has also frequently been attended with extraordinary good Effects. Those afflicted with this oppressing Malady are commonly relieved, as soon as they expectorate, and sometimes even by vomiting a little. The Medicine Nº. 25, a Dose of which may be taken every two Hours, with a Cup of the Ptisan Nº. 12, often succeeds very well. But if neither this Medicine, nor the Prescription of Nº. 8 are at Hand, which may be the Case in Country Places; an Onion of a moderate Size should be pounded in an Iron or Marble Mortar; upon this, a Glass of Vinegar is to be poured, and then strongly squeezed out again through a Piece of Linen. An equal Quantity of Honey is then to be added to it. A Spoonful of this Mixture, whose remarkable Efficacy I have been a Witness of, is to be given every half Hour. _Of the violent Effects of Fear._ § 521. Here I shall insert some Directions to prevent the ill Consequences of great Fear or Terror, which are very prejudicial at every Term of Life, but chiefly during Infancy. The general Effects of Terror, are a great Straitening or Contraction of all the small Vessels, and a Repulsion of the Blood into the large and internal ones. Hence follows the Suppression of Perspiration, the general Seizure or Oppression, the Trembling, the Palpitations and Anguish, from the Heart and the Lungs being overcharged with Blood; and sometimes attended with Swoonings, irremediable Disorders of the Heart, and Death itself. A heavy Drowsiness, Raving, and a Kind of furious or raging _Delirium_ happen in other Cases, which I have frequently observed in Children, when the Blood-vessels of the Neck were swelled and stuffed up; and Convulsions, and even the Epilepsy have come on, all which have proved the horrible Consequence of a most senseless and wicked Foolery or Sporting. One half of those Epilepsies which do not depend on such Causes, as might exist before the Child's Birth, are owing to this detestable Custom; and it cannot be too much inculcated into Children, never to frighten one another; a Point which Persons intrusted with their Education, ought to have the strictest Regard to. When the Humours that should have passed off by Perspiration, are repelled to the Intestines, a tedious and very obstinate Looseness is the frequent Consequence. § 522. Our Endeavours should be directed, to re-establish the disordered Circulation; to restore the obstructed Perspiration; and to allay the Agitation of the Nerves. The popular Custom in these Cases has been to give the terrified Patient some cold Water directly; but when the Fright has been considerable, this is a very pernicious custom, and I have seen some terrible Consequences from it. They should, on the contrary, be conveyed into some very quiet Situation, leaving there but very few Persons, and such only as they are thoroughly familiar with. They should take a few Cups of pretty warm Drink, particularly of an Infusion of Lime-tree Flowers and Bawm. Their Legs should be put into warm Water, and remain there an Hour, if they will patiently permit it, rubbing them gently now and then, and giving them every half-quarter of an Hour, a small Cup of the said Drink. When their Composure and Tranquillity are returned a little, and their Skin seems to have recovered its wonted and general Warmth, Care should be taken to dispose them to sleep, and to perspire plentifully. For this Purpose they may be allowed a few Spoonfuls of Wine, on putting them into Bed, with one Cup of the former Infusion; or, which is more certain and effectual, a few Drops of _Sydenham's_ Liquid Laudanum, Nº. 44; but should that not be near at Hand, a small Dose of _Venice_ Treacle. § 523. It sometimes happens that Children do not seem at first extremely terrified; but the Fright is renewed while they sleep, and with no small Violence. The Directions I have just given must then be observed, for some successive Evenings, before they are put to Bed. Their Fright frequently returns about the latter End of the Night, and agitates them violently every Day. The same Treatment should be continued in such Cases; and we should endeavour to dispose them to be a-sleep at the usual Hour of its Return. By this very Method, I have dissipated the dismal Consequences of Fear of Women in Child-bed, which is so commonly, and often speedily, mortal. If a Suffocation from this Cause is violent, there is sometimes a Necessity for opening a Vein in the Arm. These Patients should gradually be inured to an almost continual, but gentle, Kind of Exercise. All violent Medicines render those Diseases, which are the Consequences of great Fear, incurable. A pretty common one is that of an Obstruction of the Liver, which has been productive of a Jaundice. [107] �[107] I have seen this actually verified by great and disagreeable Surprize, attended indeed with much Concern, in a Person of exquisite Sensations. _K._ _Of Accidents or Symptoms produced by the Vapours of Coal, and of Wine._ § 524. Not a single Year passes over here, without the Destruction of many People by the Vapour of Charcoal, or of small Coal, and by the Steam or Vapour of Wine. The Symptoms by Coal occur, when [108] small Coal, and especially when [109] Charcoal is burnt in a Chamber close shut, which is direct Poison to a Person shut up in it. The sulphureous Oil, which is set at Liberty and diffused by the Action of Fire, expands itself through the Chamber; while those who are in it perceive a Disorder and Confusion in their Heads; contract Vertigos, Sickness at Stomach, a Weakness, and very unusual Kind of Numbness; become raving, convulsed and trembling; and if they fail of Presence of Mind, or of Strength, to get out of the Chamber, they die within a short Time. �[108] _La Braise._ �[109] _Charbon._ Dr. _Tissot_ informs me, their Difference consists in this, that the Charcoal is prepared from Wood burnt in a close or stifled Fire; and that the small Coal is made of Wood (and of smaller Wood) burnt in an open Fire, and extinguished before it is reduced to the State of a Cinder. He says the latter is smaller, softer, less durable in the Fire, and the Vapour of it less dangerous than that of Charcoal. I have seen a Woman who had vertiginous Commotions in her Head for two Days, and almost continual Vomitings, from her having been confined less than six Minutes in a Chamber (and that notwithstanding, both one Window and one Door were open) in which there was a Chafing-dish with some burning Coals. Had the Room been quite close, she must have perished by it. This Vapour is narcotic or stupefying, and proves mortal in Consequence of its producing a sleepy or apoplectic Disorder, though blended, at the same time, with something convulsive; which sufficiently appears from the Closure of the Mouth, and the strict Contraction or Locking of the Jaws. The Condition of the Brain, in the dissected Bodies of Persons thus destroyed, proves that they die of an Apoplexy: notwithstanding it is very probable that Suffocation is also partly the Cause of their Deaths; as the Lungs have been found stuffed up with Blood and livid. It has also been observed in some other such Bodies, that Patients killed by the Vapour of burning Coals, have commonly their whole Body swelled out to one third more than their Magnitude, when living. The Face, Neck, and Arms are swelled out, as if they had been blown up; and the whole human Machine appears in such a State, as the dead Body of a Person would, who had been violently strangled; and who had made all possible Resistance for a long time, before he was overpowered. § 525. Such as are sensible of the great Danger they are in, and retreat seasonably from it, are generally relieved as soon as they get into the open Air; or if they have any remaining Uneasiness, a little Water and Vinegar, or Lemonade, drank hot, affords them speedy Relief. But when they are so far poisoned, as to have lost their Feeling and Understanding, if there be any Means of reviving them, such Means consist, 1, In exposing them to a very pure, fresh and open Air. 2, In making them smell to some very penetrating Odour, which is somewhat stimulating and reviving, such as the volatile Spirit of Sal Ammoniac, the [110] _English_ Salt; and afterwards to surround them, as it were, with the Steam of Vinegar. �[110] See Note [105] Page 495. 3, In taking some Blood from their Arm. 4, In putting their Legs into warm or hot Water, and chafing them well. 5, In making them swallow, if practicable, much Lemonade, or Water and Vinegar, with the Addition of Nitre: and, 6, In throwing up some sharp Glysters. As it is manifest there is something spasmodic in these Cases, it were proper to be provided with some antispasmodic Remedies, such as the Mineral Anodyne Liquid of _Hoffman_. Even Opium has sometimes been successfully given here, but it should be allowed to Physicians only to direct it in such Cases. A Vomit would be hurtful; and the Reachings to vomit arise only from the Oppression on the Brain. It is a common but erroneous Opinion, that if the Coal be suffered to burn for a Minute or so in the open Air, or in a Chimney, it is sufficient to prevent any Danger from the Vapour of it. Hence it amounts even to a criminal Degree of Imprudence, to sleep in a Chamber while Charcoal or small Coal is burning in it; and the Number of such imprudent Persons, as have never awaked after it, is so considerable, and so generally known too, that the Continuance of this unhappy Custom is astonishing. § 526. The Bakers, who make Use of much small Coal, often keep great Quantities of it in their Cellars, which frequently abound so much with the Vapour of it, that it seizes them violently the Moment they enter into the Cellar. They sink down at once deprived of all Sensation, and die if they are not drawn out of it soon enough to be assisted, according to the Directions I have just given. One certain Means of preventing such fatal Accidents is, upon going into the Cellar to throw some flaming Paper or Straw into it, and if these continue to flame out and consume, there is no Reason for dreading the Vapour: but if they should be extinguished, no Person should venture in. But after opening the Vent-hole, a Bundle of flaming Straw must be set at the Door, which serves to attract the external Air strongly. Soon after the Experiment of the flaming Paper must be repeated, and if it goes out, more Straw is to be set on Fire before the Cellar Door. § 527. Small Coal, burnt in an open Fire, is not near so dangerous as _Charcoal_, properly so called, the Danger of which arises from this, that in extinguishing it by the usual Methods, all those sulphureous Particles of it, in which its Danger consists, are concentred. Nevertheless, small Coal is not entirely deprived of all its noxious Quality, without some of which it could not strictly be Coal. The common Method of throwing some Salt on live Coals, before they are conveyed into a Chamber; or of casting a Piece of Iron among them to imbibe some Part of their deadly narcotic Sulphur, is not without its Utility; though by no means sufficient to prevent all Danger from them. § 528. When the most dangerous Symptoms from this Cause disappear, and there remains only some Degree of Weakness, of Numbness, and a little Inappetency, or Loathing at Stomach, nothing is better than Lemonade with one fourth Part Wine, half a Cup of which should frequently be taken, with a small Crust of Bread. § 529. The Vapour which exhales from Wine, and in general from all fermenting Liquors, such as Beer, Cyder, _&c._ contains something poisonous, which kills in the like Manner with the Vapour of Coal; and there is always some Danger in going into a Cellar, where there is much Wine in the State of Fermentation; if it has been shut up close for several Hours. There have been many Examples of Persons struck dead on entering one, and of others who have escaped out of it with Difficulty. When such unhappy Accidents occur, Men should not be successively exposed, one after another, to perish, by endeavouring to fetch out the first who sunk down upon his Entrance; but the Air should immediately be purified by the Method already directed, or by discharging some Guns into the Cellar; after which People may venture in with Precaution. And when the Persons unfortunately affected are brought out, they are to be treated like those, who were affected with the Coal-Vapour. I saw a Man, about eight Years since, who was not sensible of the Application of Spirit of Sal Ammoniac, till about an Hour after he was struck down, and who was entirely freed at last by a plentiful Bleeding; though he had been so insensible, that it was several Hours before he discovered a very great Wound he had, which extended from the Middle of his Arm to his Armpit, and which was made by a Hook intended to be used, in Case of a House catching Fire, to assist Persons in escaping from the Flames. § 530. When subterraneous Caves that have been very long shut are opened; or when deep Wells are cleaned, that have not been emptied for several Years, the Vapours arising from them produce the same Symptoms I have mentioned, and require the same Assistance. They are to be cleansed and purified by burning Sulphur and Salt Petre in them, or Gunpowder, as compounded of both. § 531. The offensive Stink of Lamps and of Candles, especially when their Flames are extinguished, operate like other Vapours, though with less Violence, and less suddenly. Nevertheless there have been Instances of People killed by the Fumes of Lamps fed with Nut Oil, which had been extinguished in a close Room. These last Smells or Fumes prove noxious also, in Consequence of their Greasiness, which being conveyed, together with the Air, into the Lungs, prevent their Respiration: And hence we may observe, that Persons of weak delicate Breasts find themselves quickly oppressed in Chambers or Apartments, illuminated with many Candles. The proper Remedies have been already directed, § 525. The Steam of Vinegar is very serviceable in such Cases. _Of Poisons._ § 532. There are a great Number of Poisons, whose Manner of acting is not alike; and whose ill Effects are to be opposed by different Remedies: But Arsenic, or Ratsbane, and some particular Plants are the Poisons which are the most frequently productive of Mischief, in Country Places. § 533. It is in Consequence of its excessive Acrimony, or violent Heat and Sharpness, which corrodes or gnaws, that Arsenic destroys by an excessive Inflammation, with a burning Fire as it were, most torturing Pains in the Mouth, Throat, Stomach, Guts; with rending and often bloody Vomitings, and Stools, Convulsions, Faintings, _&c._ The best Remedy of all is pouring down whole Torrents of Milk, or, where there is not Milk, of warm Water. Nothing but a prodigious Quantity of such weak Liquids can avail such a miserable Patient. If the Cause of the Disorder is immediately known, after having very speedily taken down a large Quantity of warm Water, Vomiting may be excited with Oil, or with melted Butter, and by tickling the Inside of the Throat with a Feather. But when the Poison has already inflamed the Stomach and the Guts, we must not expect to discharge it by vomiting. Whatever is healing or emollient, Decoctions of mealy Pulse, of Barley, of Oatmeal, of Marsh-mallows, and Butter and Oil are the most suitable. As soon as ever the tormenting Pains are felt in the Belly, and the Intestines seem attacked, Glysters of Milk must be very frequently thrown up. If at the very Beginning of the Attack, the Patient has a strong Pulse, a very large Bleeding may be considerably serviceable by its delaying the Progress, and diminishing the Degree of Inflammation. And even though it should happen that a Patient overcomes the first Violence of this dreadful Accident, it is too common for him to continue in a languid State for a long Time, and sometimes for all the Remainder of his Life. The most certain Method of preventing this Misery, is to live for some Months solely upon Milk, and some very new laid Eggs, just received from the Hen, and dissolved or blended in the Milk, without boiling them. § 534. The Plants which chiefly produce these unhappy Accidents are some Kinds of Hemlock, whether it be the Leaf or the Root, the Berries of the _Bella Donna_, or deadly Nightshade, which Children eat by mistake for Cherries; some Kind of Mushrooms, the Seed of the _Datura_, or the stinking Thorn-Apple. All the Poisons of this Class prove mortal rather from a narcotic, or stupefying, than from an acrid, or very sharp Quality. Vertigos, Faintings, Reachings to vomit, and actual Vomitings are the first Symptoms produced by them. The Patient should immediately swallow down a large Quantity of Water, moderately seasoned with Salt or with Sugar; and then a Vomiting should be excited as soon as possible by the Prescription Nº. 34 or 35: or, if neither of these is very readily procurable, with Radish-seed pounded, to the Quantity of a Coffee Spoonful, swallowed in warm Water, soon after forcing a Feather or a Finger into the Patient's Throat, to expedite the Vomiting. After the Operation of the Vomit, he must continue to take a large Quantity of Water, sweetened with Honey or Sugar, together with a considerable Quantity of Vinegar, which is the true Specific, or Antidote, as it were, against those Poisons: the Intestines must also be emptied by a few Glysters. Thirty-seven Soldiers having unhappily eaten, instead of Carrots, of the Roots of the _Oenanthè_; or Water-hemlock, became all extremely sick; when the Emetic, Nº. 34, with the Assistance of Glysters, and very plentiful drinking of warm Water, saved all but one of them, who died before he could be assisted. § 535. If a Person has taken too much Opium; or any Medicine into which it enters, as _Venice_ Treacle, Mithridate, Diascordium, _&c._ whether by Imprudence, Mistake, Ignorance, or through any bad Design, he must be bled upon the Spot, and treated as if he had a sanguine Apoplexy, (See § 147) by Reason that Opium in Effect produces such a one. He should snuff up and inhale the Vapour of Vinegar plentifully, adding it also liberally to the Water he is to drink. _Of acute Pains._ § 536. It is not my Intention to treat here of those Pains, that accompany any evident known Disease, and which should be conducted as relating to such Diseases; nor of such Pains as infirm valetudinary Persons are habitually subject to; since Experience has informed such of the most effectual Relief for them: But when a Person sound and hale, finds himself suddenly attacked with some excessive Pain, in whatever Part it occurs, without knowing either the Nature, or the Cause of it, they may, till proper Advice can be procured, 1, Part with some Blood, which, by abating the Fulness and Tension, almost constantly asswages the Pains, at least for some Time: and it may even be repeated, if, without weakening the Patient much, it has lessened the Violence of the Pain. 2, The Patient should drink abundantly of some very mild temperate Drink, such as the Ptisan Nº. 2, the Almond Emulsion Nº. 4, or warm Water with a fourth or fifth Part Milk. 3, Several emollient Glysters should be given. 4, The whole Part that is affected, and the adjoining Parts should be covered with Cataplasms, or soothed with the emollient Fomentation, Nº. 9. 5, The warm Bath may also be advantagiously used. 6, If notwithstanding all these Assistances, the Pain should still continue violent, and the Pulse is neither full nor hard, the grown Patient may take an Ounce of Syrup of Diacodium, or sixteen Drops of liquid Laudanum; and when neither of these are to be had, [111] an _English_ Pint of boiling Water must be poured upon three or four Poppy-heads with their Seeds, but without the Leaves, and this Decoction is to be drank like Tea. �[111] _Une Quartette._ § 537. Persons very subject to frequent Pains, and especially to violent Head-achs, should abstain from all strong Drink; such Abstinence being often the only Means of curing them: And People are very often mistaken in supposing Wine necessary for as many as seem to have a weak Stomach. __Chapter XXXII.__ _Of Medicines taken by Way of Precaution, or Prevention._ __Sect.__ 538. I Have pointed out, in some Parts of this Work, the Means of preventing the bad Effects of several Causes of Diseases; and of prohibiting the Return of some habitual Disorders. In the present Chapter I shall adjoin some Observations, on the Use of the principal Remedies, which are employed as general Preservatives; pretty regularly too at certain stated Times, and almost always from meer Custom only, without knowing, and often with very little Consideration, whether they are right or wrong. Nevertheless, the Use, the Habit of taking Medicines, is certainly no indifferent Matter: it is ridiculous, dangerous, and even criminal to omit them, when they are necessary, but not less so to take them when they are not wanted. A good Medicine taken seasonably, when there is some Disorder, some _Disarrangement_ in the Body, which would in a short time occasion a Distemper, has often prevented it. But yet the very same Medicine, if given to a Person in perfect Health, if it does not directly make him sick, leaves him at the best in a greater Propensity to the Impressions of Diseases: and there are but too many Examples of People, who having very unhappily contracted a Habit, a Disposition to take Physick, have really injured their Health, and impaired their Constitution, however naturally strong, by an Abuse of those Materials which Providence has given for the Recovery and Re-establishment of it; an Abuse which, though it should not injure the Health of the Person, would occasion those Remedies, when he should be really sick, to be less efficacious and serviceable to him, from their having been familiar to his Constitution; and thus he becomes deprived of the Assistance he would have received from them, if taken only in those Times and Circumstances, in which they were necessary for him. _Of Bleeding._ § 539. Bleeding is necessary only in these four Cases. 1, When there is too great a Quantity of Blood in the Body. 2, When there is any Inflammation, or an inflammatory Disease. 3, When some Cause supervenes, or is about to supervene, in the Constitution, which would speedily produce an Inflammation, or some other dangerous Symptom, if the Vessels were not relaxed by Bleeding. It is upon this Principle that Patients are bled after Wounds, and after Bruises; that Bleeding is directed for a pregnant Woman, if she has a violent Cough; and that Bleeding is performed, by Way of Precaution, in several other Cases. 4, We also advise Bleeding sometimes to asswage an excessive Pain, though such Pain is not owing to Excess of Blood, nor arises from an inflamed Blood; but in Order to appease and moderate the Pain by Bleeding; and thereby to obtain Time for destroying the Cause of it by other Remedies. But as these two last Reasons are in Effect involved or implied in the two first; it may be very generally concluded, that an Excess of Blood, and an inflamed State of it, are the only two necessary Motives for Bleeding. § 540. An Inflammation of the Blood is known by the Symptoms accompanying those Diseases, which that Cause produces. Of these I have already spoken, and I have at the same time regulated the Practice of Bleeding in such Cases. Here I shall point out those Symptoms and Circumstances, which manifest an Excess of Blood. The first, then, is the general Course and Manner of the Patient's living, while in Health. If he is a great Eater, and indulges in juicy nutritious Food, and especially on much Flesh-meat; if he drinks rich and nourishing Wine, or other strong Drink, and at the same time enjoys a good Digestion; if he takes but little Exercise, sleeps much, and has not been subject to any very considerable Evacuation, he may well be supposed to abound in Blood. It is very obvious that all these Causes rarely occur in Country People; if we except only the Abatement of their Exercise, during some Weeks in Winter, which indeed may contribute to their generating more Blood than they commonly do. The labouring Country-man, for much the greater part of his Time, lives only on Bread, Water and Vegetables; Materials but very moderately nourishing, as one Pound of Bread probably does not make, in the same Body, more Blood than one Ounce of Flesh; though a general Prejudice seems to have established a contrary Opinion. 2, The total Stopping or long Interruption of some involuntary Bleeding or Hæmorrhage, to which he had been accustomed. 3, A full and strong Pulse, and Veins visibly filled with Blood, in a Body that is not lean and thin, and when he is not heated. 4, A florid lively Ruddiness. 5, A considerable and unusual Numbness; Sleep more profound, of more Duration, and yet less tranquil and calm, than at other times; a greater Propensity than ordinary to be fatigued after moderate Exercise or Work; and a little Oppression and Heaviness from walking. 6, Palpitations, accompanied sometimes with very great Dejection, and even with a slight fainting Fit; especially on being in any hot Place, or after moving about considerably. 7, Vertigos, or Swimmings of the Head, especially on bowing down and raising it up at once, and after sleeping. 8, Frequent Pains of the Head, to which the Person was not formerly subject; and which seem not to arise from any Defect in the Digestions. 9, An evident Sensation of Heat, pretty generally diffused over the whole Body. 10, A smarting Sort of Itching all over, from a very little more Heat than usual. And lastly, frequent Hæmorrhages, and these attended with manifest Relief, and more Vivacity. People should, notwithstanding, be cautious of supposing an unhealthy Excess of Blood, from any one of these Symptoms only. Many of them must concur; and they should endeavour to be certain that even such a Concurrence of them does not result from a very different Cause, and wholly opposite in Effect to that of an Excess of Blood. But when it is certain, from the whole Appearance, that such an Excess doth really exist, then a single, or even a second Bleeding is attended with very good Effects. Nor is it material, in such Cases, from what Part the Blood is taken. § 541. On the other Hand, when these Circumstances do not exist, Bleeding is in no wise necessary: nor should it ever be practised in these following Conditions and Circumstances; except for some particular and very strong Reasons; of the due Force of which none but Physicians can judge. First, when the Person is in a very advanced Age, or in very early Infancy. 2, When he is either naturally of a weakly Constitution, or it has been rendered such by Sickness, or by some other Accident. 3, When the Pulse is small, soft, feeble, and intermits, and the Skin is manifestly pale. 4, When the Limbs, the Extremities of the Body, are often cold, puffed up and soft. 5, When their Appetite has been very small for a long time; their Food but little nourishing, and their Perspiration too plentiful, from great Exercise. 6, When the Stomach has long been disordered, and the Digestion bad, whence very little Blood could be generated. 7, When the Patient has been considerably emptied, whether by Hæmorrhages, a Looseness, profuse Urine or Sweat: or when the _Crisis_ of some Distemper has been effected by any one of these Evacuations. 8, When the Patient has long been afflicted with some depressing Disease; and troubled with many such Obstructions as prevent the Formation of Blood. 9, Whenever a Person is exhausted, from whatever Cause. 10, When the Blood is in a thin, pale, and dissolved State. § 542, In all these Cases, and in some others less frequent, a single Bleeding often precipitates the Patient into an absolutely incurable State, an irreparable Train of Evils. Many dismal Examples of it are but too obvious. Whatever, therefore, be the Situation of the Patient, and however naturally robust, that Bleeding, which is unnecessary, is noxious. Repeated, re-iterated Bleedings, weaken and enervate, hasten old Age, diminish the Force of the Circulation, thence fatten and puff up the Body; and next by weakening, and lastly by destroying, the Digestions, they lead to a fatal Dropsy. They disorder the Perspiration by the Skin, and leave the Patient liable to Colds and Defluxions: They weaken the nervous System, and render them subject to Vapours, to the hypochondriac Disorders, and to all nervous Maladies. The ill Consequence of a single, though erroneous Bleeding is not immediately discernible: on the contrary, when it was not performed in such a Quantity, as to weaken the Patient perceivably, it appears to have been rather beneficial. Yet I still here insist upon it, that it is not the less true that, when unnecessary, it is prejudicial; and that People should never bleed, as sometimes has been done, for meer Whim, or, as it were, for Diversion. It avails nothing to affirm, that within a few Days after it, they have got more Blood than they had before it, that is, that they weigh more than at first, whence they infer the Loss of Blood very speedily repaired. The Fact of their augmented Weight is admitted; but this very Fact testifies against the real Benefit of that Bleeding; hence it is a Proof, that the natural Evacuations of the Body are less compleatly made; and that Humours, which ought to be expelled, are retained in it. There remains the same Quantity of Blood, and perhaps a little more; but it is not a Blood so well made, so perfectly elaborated; and this is so very true, that if the thing were otherwise; if some Days after the Bleeding they had a greater Quantity of the same Kind of Blood, it would amount to a Demonstration, that more re-iterated Bleedings must necessarily have brought on an inflammatory Disease, in a Man of a robust Habit of Body. § 543. The Quantity of Blood, which a grown Man may Part with, by Way of Precaution, is about ten Ounces. § 544. Persons so constituted as to breed much Blood, should carefully avoid all those Causes which tend to augment it, (See § 540, Nº. 1) and when they are sensible of the Quantity augmented, they should confine themselves to a light frugal Diet, on Pulse, Fruits, Bread and Water; they should often bathe their Feet in warm Water, taking Night and Morning the Powder Nº. 20; drink of the Ptisan Nº. 1; sleep but very moderately, and take much Exercise. By using these Precautions they may either prevent any Occasion for Bleeding, or should they really be obliged to admit of it, they would increase and prolong its good Effects. These are also the very Means, which may remove all the Danger that might ensue from a Person's omitting to bleed, at the usual Season or Interval, when the Habit, the Fashion of Bleeding had been inveterately established in him. § 545. We learn with Horror and Astonishment, that some have been bled eighteen, twenty and even twenty-four times in two Days; and some others, some [112] hundred times, in the Course of some Months. Such Instances irrefragably demonstrate the continual Ignorance of their Physician or Surgeon; and should the Patient escape, we ought to admire the inexhaustible Resources of Nature, that survived so many murderous Incisions. �[112] How shocking is this! and yet how true in some Countries! I have been most certainly assured, that Bleeding has been inflicted and repeated in the last sinking and totally relaxing Stage of a Sea-Scurvy, whose fatal Termination it doubtless accelerated. This did not happen in our own Fleet; yet we are not as yet Wholly exempt on Shore, from some Abuse of Bleeding, which a few raw unthinking Operators are apt to consider as a meer Matter of Course. I have in some other Place stigmatized the Madness of Bleeding in Convulsions, from manifest Exhaustion and Emptiness, with the Abhorrence it deserves. _K._ § 546. The People entertain a common Notion, which is, that the first Time of bleeding certainly saves the Life of the Patient; but to convince them of the Falsity of this silly Notion, they need only open their Eyes, and see the very contrary Fact to this occur but too unhappily every Day; many People dying soon after their first Bleeding. Were their Opinion right, it would be impossible that any Person should die of the first Disease that seized him, which yet daily happens. Now the Extirpation of this absurd Opinion is really become important, as the Continuance of it is attended with some unhappy Consequences: their Faith in, their great Dependance on, the extraordinary Virtue of this first Bleeding makes them willing to omit it, that is, to treasure it up against a Distemper, from which they shall be in the greatest Danger; and thus it is deferred as long as the Patient is not extremely bad, in Hopes that if they can do without it then, they shall keep it for another and more pressing Occasion. Their present Disease in the mean time rises to a violent Height; and then they bleed, but when it is too late, and I have seen Instances of many Patients, who were permitted to die, that the first Bleeding might be reserved for a more important Occasion. The only Difference between the first Bleeding, and any subsequent one is, that the first commonly gives the Patient an Emotion, that is rather hurtful than salutary. _Of Purges._ § 547. The Stomach and Bowels are emptied either by Vomiting, or by Stools, the latter Discharge being much more natural than the first, which is not effected without a violent Motion, and one indeed to which Nature is repugnant. Nevertheless, there are some Cases, which really require this artificial Vomiting; but these excepted (some of which I have already pointed out) we should rather prefer those Remedies, which empty the Belly by Stool. § 548. The Signs, which indicate a Necessity for Purging, are, 1, a disagreeable Tast or Savour of the Mouth in a Morning, and especially a bitter Tast; a foul, furred Tongue and Teeth, disagreable Eructations or Belchings, Windiness and Distension. 2, A Want of Appetite which increases very gradually, without any Fever, which degenerates into a Disgust or total Aversion to Food; and sometimes communicates a bad Tast to the very little such Persons do eat. 3, Reachings to vomit in a Morning fasting, and sometimes throughout the Day; supposing such not to depend on a Woman's Pregnancy, or some other Disorder, in which Purges would be either useless or hurtful. 4, A vomiting up of bitter, or corrupted, Humours. 5, A manifest Sensation of a Weight, or Heaviness in the Stomach, the Loins, or the Knees. 6, A Want of Strength sometimes attended with Restlessness, ill Humour, or Peevishness, and Melancholy. 7, Pains of the Stomach, frequent Pains of the Head, or Vertigos; sometimes a Drowsiness, which increases after Meals. 8, Some Species of Cholics; irregular Stools which are sometimes very great in Quantity, and too liquid for many Days together; after which an obstinate Costiveness ensues. 9, A Pulse less regular, and less strong, than what is natural to the Patient, and which sometimes intermits. § 549. When these Symptoms, or some of them, ascertain the Necessity of purging a Person, not then attacked by any manifest Disease (for I am not speaking here of Purges in such Cases) a proper purging Medicine may be given him. The bad Tast in his Mouth; the continual Belchings; the frequent Reachings to vomit; the actual Vomitings and Melancholy discover, that the Cause of his Disorder resides in the Stomach, and shew that a Vomit will be of Service to him. But when such Signs or Symptoms are not evident, the Patient should take such purging or opening Remedies, as are particularly indicated by the Pains, whether of the Loins; from the Cholic; or by a Sensation of Weight or Heaviness in the Knees. § 550. But we should abstain from either vomiting or purging, 1, Whenever the Complaints of the Patients are founded in their Weakness, and their being already exhausted, 2, When there is a general Dryness of the Habit, a very considerable Degree of Heat, some Inflammation, or a strong Fever. 3, Whenever Nature is exerting herself in some other salutary Evacuation; whence purging must never be attempted in critical Sweats, during the monthly Discharges, nor during a Fit of the Gout. 4, Nor in such inveterate Obstructions as Purges cannot remove, and really do augment. 5, Neither when the nervous System is considerably weakened. § 551. There are other Cases again, in which it may be proper to purge, but not to give a Vomit. These Cases are, 1, When the Patient abounds too much with Blood, (See § 540) since the Efforts which attend vomiting, greatly augment the Force of the Circulation; whence the Blood-vessels of the Head and of the Breast, being extremely distended with Blood, might burst, which must prove fatal on the Spot, and has repeatedly proved so. 2, For the same Reason they should not be given to Persons, who are subject to frequent Bleeding from the Nose, or to coughing up or vomiting of Blood; to Women who are subject to excessive or unseasonable Discharges of Blood, _&c._ from the _Vagina_, the Neck of the Womb; nor to those who are with Child. 3, Vomits are improper for ruptured Persons. § 552. When any Person has taken too acrid, too sharp, a Vomit, or a Purge, which operates with excessive Violence; whether this consists in the most vehement Efforts and Agitations, the Pains, Convulsions, or Swoonings, which are their frequent Consequences; or whether that prodigious Evacuation and Emptiness their Operation causes, (which is commonly termed a _Super-purgation_) and which may hurry the Patient off; Instances of which are but too common among the lower Class of the People, who much too frequently confide themselves to the Conduct of ignorant Men-slayers: In all such unhappy Accidents, I say, we should treat these unfortunate Persons, as if they had been actually poisoned, by violent corroding Poisons, (See § 533) that is, we should fill them, as it were, with Draughts of warm Water, Milk, Oil, Barley-water, Almond Milk, emollient Glysters with Milk, and the Yolks of Eggs; and also bleed them plentifully, if their Pains are excessive, and their Pulses strong and feverish. The Super-purgation, the excessive Discharge, is to be stopt, after having plied the Patient plentifully with diluting Drinks, by giving the calming Anodyne Medicines directed in the Removal of acute Pains, § 536, Nº. 6. Flanels dipt in hot Water, in which some _Venice_ Treacle is dissolved, are very serviceable: and should the Evacuations by Stool be excessive, and the Patient has not a high Fever, and a parching Kind of Heat, a Morsel of the same Treacle, as large as a Nutmeg, may be dissolved in his Glyster. But should the Vomiting solely be excessive, without any Purging, the Number of the emollient Glysters with Oil and the Yolk of an Egg must be increased; and the Patient should be placed in a warm Bath. § 553. Purges frequently repeated, without just and necessary Indications, are attended with much the same ill Effects as frequent Bleedings. They destroy the Digestions; the Stomach no longer, or very languidly, exerts its Functions; the Intestines prove inactive; the Patient becomes liable to very severe Cholics; the Plight of the Body, deprived of its salutary Nutrition, falls off; Perspiration is disordered; Defluxions ensue; nervous Maladies come on, with a general Languor; and the Patient proves old, long before the Number of his Years have made him so. Much irreparable Mischief has been done to the Health of Children, by Purges injudiciously given and repeated. They prevent them from attaining their utmost natural Strength, and frequently contract their due Growth. They ruin their Teeth; dispose young Girls to future Obstructions; and when they have been already affected by them, they render them still more obstinate. It is a Prejudice too generally received, that Persons who have little or no Appetite need purging; since this is often very false, and most of those Causes, which lessen or destroy the Appetite, cannot be removed by purging; though many of them may be increased by it. Persons whose Stomachs contain much glairy viscid Matter suppose, they may be cured by Purges, which seem indeed at first to relieve them: but this proves a very slight and deceitful Relief. These Humours are owing to that Weakness and Laxity of the Stomach, which Purges augment; since notwithstanding they carry off Part of these viscid Humours generated in it, at the Expiration of a few Days there is a greater Accumulation of them than before; and thus, by a Re-iteration of purging Medicines, the Malady soon becomes incurable, and Health irrecoverably lost. The real Cure of such Cases is effected by directly opposite Medicines. Those referred to, or mentioned, § 272, are highly conducive to it. § 554. The Custom of taking stomachic Medicines infused in Brandy, Spirit of Wine, Cherry Water, _&c._ is always dangerous; for notwithstanding the present immediate Relief such Infusions afford in some Disorders of the Stomach, they really by slow Degrees impair and ruin that Organ; and it may be observed, that as many as accustom themselves to Drams, go off, just like excessive Drinkers, in Consequence of their having no Digestion; whence they sink into a State of Depression and Languor, and die dropsical. § 555. Either Vomits or Purges may be often beneficially omitted, even when they have some Appearance of seeming necessary, by abating one Meal a Day for some time; by abstaining from the most nourishing Sorts of Food; and especially from those which are fat; by drinking freely of cool Water, and taking extraordinary Exercise. The same Regimen also serves to subdue, without the Use of Purges, the various Complaints which often invade those, who omit taking purging Medicines, at those Seasons and Intervals, in which they have made it a Custom to take them. § 556. The Medicines, Nº. 34 and 35, are the most certain Vomits. The Powder, Nº. 21, is a good Purge, when the Patient is in no wise feverish. The Doses recommended in the Table of Remedies are those, which are proper for a grown Man, of a vigorous Constitution. Nevertheless there are some few, for whom they may be too weak: in such Circumstances they may be increased by the Addition of a third or fourth Part of the Dose prescribed. But should they not operate in that Quantity, we must be careful not to double the Dose, much less to give a three-fold Quantity, which has sometimes been done, and that even without its Operation, and at the Risque of killing the Patient, which has not seldom been the Consequence. In Case of such purging not ensuing, we should rather give large Draughts of Whey sweetened with Honey, or of warm Water, in a Pot of which an Ounce, or an Ounce and a half of common Salt must be dissolved; and this Quantity is to be taken from time to time in small Cups, moving about with it. The Fibres of Country People who inhabit the Mountains, and live almost solely on Milk, are so little susceptible of Sensation, that they must take such large Doses to purge them, as would kill all the Peasantry in the Vallies. In the Mountains of _Valais_ there are Men who take twenty, and even twenty-four Grains of Glass of Antimony for a single Dose; a Grain or two of which were sufficient to poison ordinary Men. § 557. Notwithstanding our Cautions on this important Head, whenever an urgent Necessity commands it, Purging must be recurred to at all Times and Seasons: but when the Season may be safely selected, it were right to decline Purging in the Extremities of either Heat or Cold; and to take the Purge early in the Morning, that the Medicines may find less Obstruction or Embarrassment from the Contents of the Stomach. Every other Consideration, with Relation to the Stars and the Moon, is ridiculous, and void of any Foundation. The People are particularly averse to purging in the Dog-days; and if this were only on Account of the great Heat, it would be very pardonable: but it is from an astrological Prejudice, which is so much the more absurd, as the real Dog-days are at thirty-six Days Distance from those commonly reckoned such; and it is a melancholy Reflection, that the Ignorance of the People should be so gross, in this Respect, in our enlightened Age; and that they should still imagine the Virtue and Efficacy of Medicines to depend on what Sign of the Zodiac the Sun is in, or in any particular Quarter of the Moon. Yet it is certain in this Point, they are so inveterately attached to this Prejudice, that it is but too common to see Country-People die, in waiting for the Sign or Quarter most favourable to the Operation and Effect of a Medicine, which was truly necessary five or six Days before either of them. Sometimes too that particular Medicine is given, to which a certain Day is supposed to be auspicious and favourable, in Preference to that which is most prevalent against the Disease. And thus it is, than an ignorant Almanack Maker determines on the Lives of the human Race; and contracts the Duration of them with Impunity. § 558. When a Vomit or a Purge is to be taken, the Patient's Body should be prepared for the Reception of it twenty-four Hours beforehand; by taking very little Food, and drinking some Glasses of warm Water, or of a light Tea of some Herbs. He should not drink after a Vomit, until it begins to work; but then he should drink very plentifully of warm Water, or a light Infusion of Chamomile Flowers, which is preferable. It is usual, after Purges, to take some thin Broth or Soup during their Operation; but warm Water sweetened with Sugar or Honey, or an Infusion of Succory Flowers, would sometimes be more suitable. § 559. As the Stomach suffers, in some Degree, as often as either a Vomit, or a Purge, is taken, the Patient should be careful how he lives and orders himself for some Days after taking them, as well in Regard to the Quantity as Quality of his Food. § 560. I shall say nothing of other Articles taken by Way of Precaution, such as Soups, Whey, Waters, _&c._ which are but little used among the People; but confine myself to this general Remark, that when they take any of these precautionary Things, they should enter on a Regimen or Way of living, that may co-operate with them, and contribute to the same Purpose. Whey is commonly taken to refresh and cool the Body; and while they drink it, they deny themselves Pulse, Fruits, and Sallads. They eat nothing then, but the best and heartiest Flesh-meats they can come at; such Vegetables as are used in good Soups, Eggs, and good Wine; notwithstanding this is to destroy, by high and heating Aliments, all the attemperating cooling Effects expected from the Whey. Some Persons propose to cool and attemperate their Blood by Soups and a thin Diet, into which they cram Craw-fish, that heat considerably, or _Nasturtium_, Cresses which also heat, and thus defeat their own Purpose. Happily, in such a Case, the Error in one Respect often cures that in the other; and these Kinds of Soup, which are in no wise cooling, prove very serviceable, in Consequence of the Cause of the Symptoms, which they were intended to remove, not requiring any Coolers at all. The general physical Practice of the Community, which unhappily is but too much in Fashion, abounds with similar Errors. I will just cite one, because I have seen its dismal Effects. Many People suppose Pepper cooling, though their Smell, Taste, and common Sense concur to inform them of the contrary. It is the very hottest of Spices. § 561. The most certain Preservative, and the most attainable too by every Man, is to avoid all Excess, and especially Excess in eating and in drinking. People generally eat more than thoroughly consists with Health, or permits them to attain the utmost Vigour, of which their natural Constitutions are capable. The Custom is established, and it is difficult to eradicate it: notwithstanding we should at least resolve not to eat, but through Hunger, and always under a Subjection to Reason; because, except in a very few Cases, Reason constantly suggests to us not to eat, when the Stomach has an Aversion to Food. A sober moderate Person is capable of Labour, I may say, even of excessive Labour of some Kinds; of which greater Eaters are absolutely incapable. Sobriety of itself cures such Maladies as are otherwise incurable, and may recover the most shattered and unhealthy Persons. __Chapter XXXIII.__ _Of Mountebanks, Quacks, and Conjurers._ __Sect.__ 562. One dreadful Scourge still remains to be treated of, which occasions a greater Mortality, than all the Distempers I have hitherto described; and which, as long as it continues, will defeat our utmost Precautions to preserve the Healths and Lives of the common People. This, or rather, these Scourges, for they are very numerous, are Quacks; of which there are two Species: The Mountebanks or travelling Quacks, and those pretended Physicians in Villages and Country-Places, both male and female, known in _Swisserland_ by the Name of Conjurers, and who very effectually unpeople it. The first of these, the Mountebanks, without visiting the Sick, or thinking of their Distempers, sell different Medicines, some of which are for external Use, and these often do little or no Mischief; but their internal ones are much oftener pernicious. I have been a Witness of their dreadful Effects, and we are not visited by one of these wandering Caitiffs, whose Admission into our Country is not mortally fatal to some of its Inhabitants. They are injurious also in another Respect, as they carry off great Sums of Money with them, and levy annually some thousands of Livres, amongst that Order of the People, who have the least to spare. I have seen, and with a very painful Concern, the poor Labourer and the Artisan, who have scarcely possessed the common Necessaries of Life, borrow wherewithal to purchase, and at a dear Price, the Poison that was to compleat their Misery, by increasing their Maladies; and which, where they escaped with their Lives, has left them in such a languid and inactive State, as has reduced their whole Family to Beggary. § 563. An ignorant, knavish, lying and impudent Fellow will always seduce the gross and credulous Mass of People, incapable to judge of and estimate any thing rightly; and adapted to be the eternal Dupes of such, as are base enough to endeavour to dazzle their weak Understandings; by which Method these vile Quacks will certainly defraud them, as long as they are tolerated. But ought not the Magistrates, the Guardians, the Protectors, the political Fathers of the People interpose, and defend them from this Danger, by severely prohibiting the Entrance of such pernicious Fellows into a Country, where Mens' Lives are very estimable, and where Money is scarce; since they extinguish the first, and carry off the last, without the least Possibility of their being in anywise useful to it. Can such forcible Motives as these suffer our Magistrates to delay _their_ Expulsion any longer, _whom_ there never was the least Reason for admitting? § 564. It is acknowledged the Conjurers, the residing Conjurers, do not carry out the current Money of the Country, like the itinerant Quacks; but the Havock they make among their Fellow Subjects is without Intermission, whence it must be very great, as every Day in the Year is marked with many of their Victims. Without the least Knowledge or Experience, and offensively armed with three or four Medicines, whose Nature they are as thoroughly ignorant of, as of their unhappy Patients Diseases; and which Medicines, being almost all violent ones, are very certainly so many Swords in the Hands of raging Madmen. Thus armed and qualified, I say, they aggravate the slightest Disorders, and make those that are a little more considerable, mortal; but from which the Patients would have recovered, if left solely to the Conduct of Nature; and, for a still stronger Reason, if they had confided to the Guidance of her experienced Observers and Assistants. § 565. The Robber who assassinates on the High-way, leaves the Traveller the Resource of defending himself, and the Chance of being aided by the Arrival of other Travellers: But the Poisoner, who forces himself into the Confidence of a sick Person, is a hundred times more dangerous, and as just an Object of Punishment. The Bands of Highwaymen, and their Individuals, that enter into any Country or District, are described as particularly as possible to the Publick. It were equally to be wished, we had also a List of these physical Impostors and Ignorants male and female; and that a most exact Description of them, with the Number, and a brief Summary of their murderous Exploits, were faithfully published. By this Means the Populace might probably be inspired with such a wholesome Dread of them, that they would no longer expose their Lives to the Mercy of such Executioners. § 566. But their Blindness, with Respect to these two Sorts of maleficent Beings, is inconceivable. That indeed in Favour of the Mountebank is somewhat less gross, because as they are not personally acquainted with him, they may the more easily credit him with some Part of the Talents and the Knowledge he arrogates. I shall therefore inform them, and it cannot be repeated too often, that whatever ostentatious Dress and Figure some of these Impostors make, they are constantly vile Wretches, who, incapable of earning a Livelyhood in any honest Way, have laid the Foundation of their Subsistence on their own amazing Stock of Impudence, and that of the weak Credulity of the People; that they have no scientific Knowledge; that their Titles and Patents are so many Impositions, and inauthentic; since by a shameful Abuse, such Patents and Titles are become Articles of Commerce, which are to be obtained at very low Prices; just like the second-hand laced Cloaks which they purchase at the Brokers. That their Certificates of Cures are so many Chimeras or Forgeries; and that in short, if among the prodigious Multitudes of People who take their Medicines, some of them should recover, which it is almost physically impossible must not sometimes be the Case, yet it would not be the less certain, that they are a pernicious destructive Set of Men. A Thrust of a Rapier into the Breast has saved a Man's Life by seasonably opening an Imposthume in it, which might otherwise have killed him: and yet internal penetrating Wounds, with a small Sword, are not the less mortal for one such extraordinary Consequence. Nor is it even surprizing that these Mountebanks, which is equally applicable to Conjurers, who kill thousands of People, whom Nature alone, or assisted by a Physician, would have saved, should now and then cure a Patient, who had been treated before by the ablest Physicians. Frequently Patients of that Class, who apply to these Mountebanks and Conjurers (whether it has been, that they would not submit to the Treatment proper for their Distempers; or whether the real Physician tired of the intractable Creatures has discontinued his Advice and Attendance) look out for such Doctors, as assure them of a speedy Cure, and venture to give them such Medicines as kill many, and cure one (who has had Constitution enough to overcome them) a little sooner than a justly reputable Physician would have done. It is but too easy to procure, in every Parish, such Lists of their Patients, and of their Feats, as would clearly evince the Truth of whatever has been said here relating to them. § 567. The Credit of this Market, this Fair-hunting Doctor, surrounded by five or six hundred Peasants, staring and gaping at him, and counting themselves happy in his condescending to cheat them of their very scarce and necessary Cash, by selling them, for twenty times more than its real Worth, a Medicine whose best Quality were to be only a useless one; the Credit, I say, of this vile yet tolerated Cheat, would quickly vanish, could each of his Auditors be persuaded, of what is strictly true, that except a little more Tenderness and Agility of Hand, he knows full as much as his Doctor; and that if he could assume as much Impudence, he would immediately have as much Ability, would equally deserve the same Reputation, and to have the same Confidence reposed in him. § 568. Were the Populace capable of reasoning, it were easy to disabuse them in these Respects; but as it is, their Guardians and Conductors should reason for them. I have already proved the Absurdity of reposing any Confidence in Mountebanks, properly so called; and that Reliance some have on the Conjurers is still more stupid and ridiculous. The very meanest Trade requires some Instruction: A Man does not commence even a Cobler, a Botcher of old Leather, without serving an Apprenticeship to it; and yet no Time has been served, no Instruction has been attended to, by these Pretenders to the most necessary, useful and elegant Profession. We do not confide the mending, the cleaning of a Watch to any, who have not spent several Years in considering how a Watch is made; what are the Requisites and Causes of its going right; and the Defects or Impediments that make it go wrong: and yet the preserving and rectifying the Movements of the most complex, the most delicate and exquisite, and the most estimable Machine upon Earth, is entrusted to People who have not the least Notion of its Structure; of the Causes of its Motions; nor of the Instruments proper to rectify their Deviations. Let a Soldier discarded from his Regiment for his roguish Tricks, or who is a Deserter from it, a Bankrupt, a disreputable Ecclesiastic, a drunken Barber, or a Multitude of such other worthless People, advertize that they mount, set and fit up all Kinds of Jewels and Trinkets in Perfection; if any of these are not known; if no Person in the Place has ever seen any of their Work; or if they cannot produce authentic Testimonials of their Honesty, and their Ability in their Business, not a single Individual will trust them with two Pennyworth of false Stones to work upon; in short they must be famished. But if instead of professing themselves Jewellers, they post themselves up as Physicians, the Croud purchase, at a high Rate, the Pleasure of trusting them with the Care of their Lives, the remaining Part of which they rarely fail to empoison. § 569. The most genuine and excellent Physicians, these extraordinary Men, who, born with the happiest Talents, have began to inform their Understandings from their earliest Youth; who have afterwards carefully qualified themselves by cultivating every Branch of Physic; who have sacrificed the best and most pleasurable Days of their Lives, to a regular and assiduous Investigation of the human Body; of its various Functions; of the Causes that may impair or embarrass them, and informed themselves of the Qualities and Virtues of every simple and compound Medicine; who have surmounted the Difficulty and Loathsomness of living in Hospitals among thousands of Patients; and who have added the medical Observations of all Ages and Places to their own; these few and extraordinary Men, I say, still consider themselves as short of that perfect Ability and consummate Knowledge, which they contemplate and wish for, as necessary to guarding the precious _Depositum_ of human Life and Health, confided to their Charge. Nevertheless we see the same inestimable Treasures, intrusted to gross and stupid Men, born without Talents; brought up without Education or Culture; who frequently can scarcely read; who are as profoundly ignorant of every Subject that has any Relation to Physic, as the Savages of _Asia_; who awake only to drink away; who often exercise their horrid Trade merely to find themselves in strong Liquor, and execute it chiefly when they are drunk: who, in short, became Physicians, only from their Incapacity to arrive at any Trade or Attainment! Certainly such a Conduct in Creatures of the human Species must appear very astonishing, and even melancholy, to every sensible thinking Man; and constitute the highest Degree of Absurdity and Extravagance. Should any Person duly qualified enter into an Examination of the Medicines they use, and compare them with the Situation and Symptoms of the Patients to whom they give them, he must be struck with Horror; and heartily deplore the Fate of that unfortunate Part of the human Race, whose Lives, so important to the Community, are committed to the Charge of the most murderous Set of Beings. § 570. Some of these Caitiffs however, apprehending the Force and Danger of that Objection, founded on their Want of Study and Education, have endeavoured to elude it, by infusing and spreading a false, and indeed, an impudent impious Prejudice among the People, which prevails too much at present; and this is, that their Talents for Physic are a supernatural Gift, and, of Course, greatly superior to all human Knowledge. It were going out of my Province to expatiate on the Indecency, the Sin, and the Irreligion of such Knavery, and incroaching upon the Rights and perhaps the Duty of the Clergy; but I intreat the Liberty of observing to this respectable Order of Men, that this Superstition, which is attended with dreadful Consequences, seems to call for their utmost Attention: and in general the Expulsion of Superstition is the more to be wished, as a Mind, imbued with false Prejudices, is less adapted to imbibe a true and valuable Doctrine. There are some very callous hardened Villains among this murdering Band, who, with a View to establish their Influence and Revenue as well upon Fear as upon Hope, have horridly ventured so far as to incline the Populace to doubt, whether they received their boasted Gift and Power from Heaven or from Hell! And yet these are the Men who are trusted with the Health and the Lives of many others. § 571. One Fact which I have already mentioned, and which it seems impossible to account for is, that great Earnestness of the Peasant to procure the best Assistance he can for his sick Cattle. At whatever Distance the Farrier lives, or some Person who is supposed qualified to be one (for unfortunately there is not one in _Swisserland_) if he has considerable Reputation in this Way, the Country-man goes to consult him, or purchases his Visit at any Price. However expensive the Medicines are, which the Horse-doctor directs, if they are accounted the best, he procures them for his poor Beast. But if himself, his Wife or Children fall sick, he either calls in no Assistance nor Medicines; or contents himself with such as are next at Hand, however pernicious they may be, though nothing the cheaper on that account: for certainly the Money, extorted by some of these physical Conjurers from their Patients, but oftner from their Heirs, is a very shameful Injustice, and calls loudly for Reformation. § 572. In an excellent Memoir or Tract, which will shortly be published, on the Population of _Swisserland_, we shall find an important and very affecting Remark, which strictly demonstrates the Havock made by these immedical Magicians or Conjurers; and which is this: That in the common Course of Years, the Proportion between the Numbers and Deaths of the Inhabitants of any one Place, is not extremely different in City and Country: but when the very same epidemical Disease attacks the City and the Villages, the Difference is enormous; and the Number of Deaths of the former compared with that of the Inhabitants of the Villages, where the Conjurer exercises his bloody Dominion, is infinitely more than the Deaths in the City. I find in the second Volume of the Memoirs of the oeconomical Society of _Berne_, for the Year 1762, another Fact equally interesting, which is related by one of the most intelligent and sagacious Observers, concerned in that Work. "Pleurisies and Peripneumonies (he says) prevailed at _Cottens a la Côte_; and some Peasants died under them, who had consulted the Conjurers and taken their heating Medicines; while of those, who pursued a directly opposite Method, almost every one recovered." § 573. But I shall employ myself no longer on this Topic, on which the Love of my Species alone has prompted me to say thus much; though it deserves to be considered more in Detail, and is, in Reality, of the greatest Consequence. None methinks could make themselves easy with Respect to it so much as Physicians, if they were conducted only by lucrative Views; since these Conjurers diminish the Number of those poor People, who sometimes consult the real Physicians, and with some Care and Trouble, but without the least Profit, to those Gentlemen. But what good Physician is mean and vile enough to purchase a few Hours of Ease and Tranquillity at so high, so very odious a Price? § 574. Having thus clearly shewn the Evils attending this crying Nusance, I wish I were able to prescribe an effectual Remedy against it, which I acknowledge is far from being easy to do. The first necessary Point probably was to have demonstrated the great and public Danger, and to dispose the State to employ their Attention on this fatal, this mortal Abuse; which, joined to the other Causes of Depopulation, has a manifest Tendency to render _Swisserland_ a Desert. § 575. The second, and doubtless the most effectual Means, which I had already mentioned is, not to admit any travelling Mountebank to enter this Country; and to set a Mark on all the Conjurers: It may probably also be found convenient, to inflict corporal Punishment on them; as it has been already adjudged in different Countries by sovereign Edicts. At the very least they should be marked with public Infamy, according to the following Custom practised in a great City in _France_. "When any Mountebanks appeared in _Montpellier_, the Magistrates had a Power to mount each of them upon a meagre miserable Ass, with his Head to the Ass's Tail. In this Condition they were led throughout the whole City, attended with the Shouts and Hooting of the Children and the Mob, beating them, throwing Filth and Ordure at them, reviling them, and dragging them all about." § 576. A third conducive Means would be the Instructions and Admonition of the Clergy on this Subject, to the Peasants in their several Parishes. For this Conduct of the common People amounting, in Effect, to Suicide, to Self-murder, it must be important to convince them of it. But the little Efficacy of the strongest and repeated Exhortations on so many other Articles, may cause us to entertain a very reasonable Doubt of their Success on this. Custom seems to have determined, that there is nothing in our Day, which excludes a Person from the Title and Appellation of an honest or honourable Man, except it be meer and convicted Theft; and that for this simple and obvious Reason, that we attach ourselves more strongly to our Property, than to any Thing else. Even Homicide is esteemed and reputed honourable in many Cases. Can we reasonably then expect to convince the Multitude, that it is criminal to confide the Care of their Health to these Poisoners, in Hopes of a Cure of their Disorders? A much likelier Method of succeding on this Point would certainly be, to convince the deluded People, that it will cost them less to be honestly and judiciously treated, than to suffer under the Hands of these Executioners. The Expectation of a good and cheap Health-market will be apt to influence them more, than their Dread of a Crime would. § 577. A fourth Means of removing or restraining this Nusance would be to expunge, from the Almanacs, all the astrological Rules relating to Physick; as they continually conduce to preserve and increase some dangerous Prejudices and Notions in a Science, the smallest Errors in which are sometimes fatal. I had already reflected on the Multitude of Peasants that have been lost, from postponing, or mistiming a Bleeding, only because the sovereign Decision of an Almanac had directed it at some other Time. May it not also be dreaded, to mention it by the Way, that the same Cause, the Almanacs, may prove injurious to their rural Oeconomy and Management; and that by advising with the Moon, who has no Influence, and is of no Consequence in Vegetation or other Country Business, they may be wanting in a due Attention to such other Circumstances and Regulations, as are of real Importance in them? § 578. A fifth concurring Remedy against this popular Evil would be the Establishment of Hospitals, for the Reception of poor Patients, in the different Cities and Towns of _Swisserland_. There may be a great many easy and concurring Means of erecting and endowing such, with very little new Expence; and immense Advantages might result from them: besides, however considerable the Expenses might prove, is not the Object of them of the most interesting, the most important Nature? It is incontestably our serious Duty; and it would soon be manifest, that the Performance of it would be attended with more essential intrinsic Benefit to the Community, than any other Application of Money could produce. We must either admit, that the Multitude, the Body of the People is useless to the State, or agree, that Care should be taken to preserve and continue them. A very respectable _English_ Man, who, after a previous and thorough Consideration of this Subject, had applied himself very assiduously and usefully on the Means of increasing the Riches and the Happiness of his Country-men, complains that in _England_, the very Country in which there are the most Hospitals, the Poor who are sick are not sufficiently assisted. What a deplorable Deficience of the necessary Assistance for such must then be in a Country, that is not provided with a single Hospital? That Aid from Surgery and Physic, which abounds in Cities, is not sufficiently diffused into Country-places: and the Peasants are liable to some simple and moderate Diseases, which, for Want of proper Care, degenerate into a State of Infirmity, that sinks them into premature Death. § 579. In fine, if it be found impossible to extinguish these Abuses (for those arising from Quacks are not the only ones, nor is that Title applied to as many as really deserve it) beyond all Doubt it would be for the Benefit and Safety of the Public, upon the whole, entirely to prohibit the Art, the Practice of Physic itself. When real and good Physicians cannot effect as much Good, as ignorant ones and Impostors can do Mischief, some real Advantage must accrue to the State, and to the whole Species, from employing none of either. I affirm it, after much Reflection, and from thorough Conviction, that Anarchy in Medicine is the most dangerous Anarchy. For this Profession, when loosed from every Restraint, and subjected to no Regulations, no Laws, is the more cruel Scourge and Affliction, from the incessant Exercise of it; and should its Anarchy, its Disorders prove irremediable, the Practice of an Art, become so very noxious, should be prohibited under the severest Penalties: Or, if the Constitution of any Government was inconsistent with the Application of so violent a Remedy, they should order public Prayers against the Mortality of it, to be offered up in all the Churches; as the Custom has been in other great and general Calamities. § 580. Another Abuse, less fatal indeed than those already mentioned (but which, however, has real ill Consequences, and at the best, carries out a great deal of Money from us, though less at the Expense of the common People, than of those of easy Circumstances) is that Blindness and Facility, with which many suffer themselves to be imposed upon, by the pompous Advertisements of some _Catholicon_, some universal Remedy, which they purchase at a high Rate, from some foreign Pretender to a mighty Secret or _Nostrum_. Persons of a Class or two above the Populace do not care to run after a Mountebank, from supposing they should depretiate themselves by mixing with the Herd. Yet if that very Quack, instead of coming among us, were to reside in some foreign City; if, instead of posting up his lying Puffs and Pretentions at the Corners of the Streets, he would get them inserted in the Gazettes, and News-papers; if, instead of selling his boasted Remedies in Person, he should establish Shops or Offices for that Purpose in every City; and finally, if instead of selling them twenty times above their real Value, he would still double that Price; instead of having the common People for his Customers, he would take in the wealthy Citizen, Persons of all Ranks, and from almost every Country. For strange as it seems, it is certain, that a Person of such a Condition, who is sensible in every other Respect; and who will scruple to confide his Health to the Conduct of such Physicians as would be the justest Subjects of his Confidence, will venture to take, through a very unaccountable Infatuation, the most dangerous Medicine, upon the Credit of an imposing Advertisement, published by as worthless and ignorant a Fellow as the Mountebank whom he despises, because the latter blows a Horn under his Window; and yet who differs from the former in no other Respects except those I have just pointed out. § 581. Scarcely a Year passes, without one or another such advertized and vaunted Medicine's getting into high Credit; the Ravages of which are more or less, in Proportion to its being more or less in Vogue. Fortunately, for the human Species, but few of these _Nostrums_ have attained an equal Reputation with _Ailbaud_'s Powders, an Inhabitant of _Aix_ in _Provence_, and unworthy the Name of a Physician; who has over-run _Europe_ for some Years, with a violent Purge, the Remembrance of which will not be effaced before the Extinction of all its Victims. I attend now, and for a long time past, several Patients, whose Disorders I palliate without Hopes of ever curing them; and who owe their present melancholy State of Body to nothing but the manifest Consequences of these Powders; and I have actually seen, very lately, two Persons who have been cruelly poisoned by this boasted Remedy of his. A French Physician, as eminent for his Talents and his Science, as estimable from his personal Character in other Respects, has published some of the unhappy and tragical Consequences which the Use of them has occasioned; and were a Collection published of the same Events from them, in every Place where they have been introduced, the Size and the Contents of the Volume would make a very terrible one. § 582. It is some Comfort however, that all the other Medicines thus puffed and vended have not been altogether so fashionable, nor yet quite so dangerous: but all posted and advertized Medicines should be judged of upon this Principle (and I do not know a more infallible one in Physics, nor in the Practice of Physic), that whoever advertises any Medicine, as a universal Remedy for all Diseases, is an absolute Impostor, such a Remedy being impossible and contradictory. I shall not here offer to detail such Proofs as may be given of the Verity of this Proposition: but I freely appeal for it to every sensible Man, who will reflect a little on the different Causes of Diseases; on the Opposition of these Causes; and on the Absurdity of attempting to oppose such various Diseases, and their Causes, by one and the same Remedy. As many as shall settle their Judgments properly on this Principle, will never be imposed upon by the superficial Gloss of these Sophisms contrived to prove, that all Diseases proceed from one Cause; and that this Cause is so very tractable, as to yield to one boasted Remedy. They will perceive at once, that such an Assertion must be founded in the utmost Knavery or Ignorance; and they will readily discover where the Fallacy lies. Can any one expect to cure a Dropsy, which arises from too great a Laxity of the Fibres, and too great an Attenuation or Thinness of the Blood, by the same Medicines that are used to cure an inflammatory Disease, in which the Fibres are too stiff and tense, and the Blood too thick and dense? Yet consult the News-papers and the Posts, and you will see published in and on all of them, Virtues just as contradictory; and certainly the Authors of such poisonous Contradictions ought to be legally punished for them. § 583. I heartily wish the Publick would attend here to a very natural and obvious Reflection. I have treated in this Book, but of a small Number of Diseases, most of them acute ones; and I am positive that no competent well qualified Physician has ever employed fewer Medicines, in the Treatment of the Diseases themselves. Nevertheless I have prescribed seventy-one, and I do not see which of them I could retrench, or dispense with the Want of, if I were obliged to use one less. Can it be supposed then, that any one single Medicine, compound or simple, shall cure thirty times as many Diseases as those I have treated of? § 584. I shall add another very important Observation, which doubtless may have occurred to many of my Readers; and it is this, that the different Causes of Diseases, their different Characters; the Differences which arise from the necessary Alterations that happen throughout their Progress and Duration; the Complications of which they are susceptible; the Varieties which result from the State of different Epidemics, of Seasons, of Sexes, and of many other Circumstances; that these Diversities, I say, oblige us very often to vary and change the Medicines; which proves how very ticklish and dangerous it is to have them directed by Persons, who have such an imperfect Knowledge of them, as those who are not Physicians must be supposed to have. And the Circumspection to be used in such Cases ought to be proportioned to the Interest the Assistant takes in the Preservation of the Patient; and that Love of his Neighbour with which he is animated. § 585. Must not the same Arguments and Reflections unavoidably suggest the Necessity of an entire Tractability on the Part of the Patient, and his Friends and Assistants? The History of Diseases which have their stated Times of Beginning, of manifesting and displaying themselves; of arriving at, and continuing in their Height, and of decreasing; do not all these demonstrate the Necessity of continuing the same Medicines, as long as the Character of the Distemper is the same; and the Danger of changing them often, only because what has been given has not afforded immediate Relief? Nothing can injure the Patient more than this Instability and Caprice. After the Indication which his Distemper suggests, appears to be well deduced, the Medicine must be chosen that is likeliest to resist the Cause of it; and it must be continued as long as no new Symptom or Circumstance supervenes, which requires an Alteration of it; except it should be evident, that an Error had been incurred in giving it. But to conclude that a Medicine is useless or insignificant, because it does not remove or abate the Distemper as speedily, as the Impatience of the Sick would naturally desire it; and to change it for another, is as unreasonable, as it would be for a Man to break his Watch, because the Hand takes twelve Hours, to make a Revolution round the Dial-plate. § 586. Physicians have some Regard to the State of the Urine of sick Persons, especially in inflammatory Fevers; as the Alterations occurring in it help them to judge of the Changes that may have been made in the Character and Consistence of the Humours in the Mass of Blood; and thence may conduce to determine the Time, in which it will be proper to dispose them to some Evacuation. But it is gross Ignorance to imagine, and utter Knavery and Imposture to persuade the Sick, that the meer Inspection of their Urine solely, sufficiently enables others to judge of the Symptoms and Cause of the Disease, and to direct the best Remedies for it. This Inspection of the Urine can only be of Use when it is duly inspected; when we consider at the same time the exact State and the very Looks of the Patient; when these are compared with the Degree of the Symptoms of the Malady; with the other Evacuations; and when the Physician is strictly informed of all external Circumstances, which may be considered as foreign to the Malady; which may alter or affect the Evacuations, such as particular Articles of Food, particular Drinks, different Medicines, or the very Quantity of Drink. Where a Person is not furnished with an exact Account of these Circumstances, the meer Inspection of the Urine is of no Service, it suggests no Indication, nor any Expedient; and meer common Sense sufficiently proves, and it may be boldly affirmed, that whoever orders any Medicine, without any other Knowledge of the Disease, than what an Inspection of the Urine affords, is a rank Knave, and the Patient who takes them is a Dupe. § 587. And here now any Reader may very naturally ask, whence can such a ridiculous Credulity proceed, upon a Subject so essentially interesting to us as our own Health? In Answer to this it should be observed, that some Sources, some Causes of it seem appropriated merely to the People, the Multitude. The first of these is, the mechanical Impression of Parade and Shew upon the Senses. 2, The Prejudice they have conceived, as I said before, of the Conjurers curing by a supernatural Gift. 3, The Notion the Country People entertain, that their Distemper and Disorders are of a Character and Species peculiar to themselves, and that the Physicians, attending the Rich, know nothing concerning them. 4, The general Mistake that their employing the Conjurer is much cheaper. 5, Perhaps a sheepish shame-faced Timidity may be one Motive, at least with some of them. 6, A Kind of Fear too, that Physicians will consider their Cases with less Care and Concern, and be likely to treat them more cavalierly; a Fear which increases that Confidence which the Peasant, and which indeed every Man has in his Equal, being sounded in Equality itself. And 7, the Discourse and Conversation of such illiterate Empirics being more to their Tast, and more adapted to their Apprehension. But it is less easy to account for this blind Confidence, which Persons of a superior Class (whole Education being considered as much better are regarded as better Reasoners) repose in these boasted Remedies; and even for some Conjurer in Vogue. Nevertheless even some of their Motives may be probably assigned. The first is that great Principle of _Seïty_, or _Selfness_, as it may be called, innate to Man, which attaching him to the Prolongation of his own Existence more than to any other thing in the Universe, keeps his Eyes, his utmost Attention, continually fixed upon this Object; and compels him to make it the very Point, the Purpose of all his Advances and Proceedings; notwithstanding it does not permit him to distinguish the safest Paths to it from the dangerous ones. This is the surest and shortest Way says some Collector at the Turnpike, he pays, passes, and perishes from the Precipices that occur in his Route. This very Principle is the Source of another Error, which consists in reposing, involuntarily, a greater Degree of Confidence in those, who flatter and fall in the most with us in our favourite Opinions. The well apprised Physician, who foresees the Length and the Danger of a Disease; and who is a Man of too much Integrity to affirm what he does not think, must, from a necessary Construction of the human Frame and Mind, be listened to less favourably, than he who flatters us by saying what we wish. We endeavour to elongate, to absent ourselves, from the Sentiments, the Judgment of the first; we smile, from Self-complacency, at those of the last, which in a very little time are sure of obtaining our Preference. A third Cause, which results from the same Principle is, that we give ourselves up the most readily to his Conduct, whose Method seems the least disagreeable, and flatters our Inclinations the most. The Physician who enjoins a strict Regimen; who insists upon some Restraints and Self-denials; who intimates the Necessity of Time and Patience for the Accomplishment of the Cure, and who expects a thorough Regularity through the Course of it, disgusts a Patient who has been accustomed to indulge his own Tast and Humour; the Quack, who never hesitates at complying with it, charms him. The Idea of a long and somewhat distant Cure, to be obtained at the End of an unpleasant and unrelaxing Regimen, supposes a very perilous Disease; this Idea disposes the Patient to Disgust and Melancholy, he cannot submit to it without Pain; and he embraces, almost unconsciously, merely to avoid this, an opposite System which presents him only with the Idea of such a Distemper, as will give Way to a few Doses of Simples. That Propensity to the New and Marvellous, which tyrannizes over so large a Proportion of our Species, and which has advanced so many absurd Persons and Things into Reputation, is a fourth and a very powerful Motive. An irksome Satiety, and a Tiresomeness, as it were, from the same Objects, is what our Nature is apt to be very apprehensive of; though we are incessantly conducted towards it, by a Perception of some Void, some Emptiness in ourselves, and even in Society too: But new and extraordinary Sensations rousing us from this disagreeable State, more effectually than any Thing else, we unthinkingly abandon ourselves to them, without foreseeing their Consequences. A fifth Cause arises from seven Eighths of Mankind being managed by, or following, the other Eighth; and, generally speaking, the Eighth that is so very forward to manage them, are the least fit and worthy to do it; whence all must go amiss, and absurd and embarrassing Consequences ensue from the Condition of Society. A Man of excellent Sense frequently sees only through the Eyes of a Fool, of an intriguing Fellow, or of a Cheat; in this he judges wrong, and his Conduct must be so too. A man of real Merit cannot connect himself with those who are addicted to caballing; and yet such are the Persons, who frequently conduct others. Some other Causes might be annexed to these, but I shall mention only one of them, which I have already hinted, and the Truth of which I am confirmed in from several Years Experience; which is, that we generally love those who reason more absurdly than ourselves, better than those who convince us of our own weak Reasoning. I hope the Reflexions every Reader will make on these Causes of our ill Conduct on this important Head, may contribute to correct or diminish it; and to destroy those Prejudices whose fatal Effects we may continually observe. [N. B. _The Multitude of_ all _the Objects of this excellent Chapter in this Metropolis, and doubtless throughout_ England, _were strong Inducements to have taken a little wholesome Notice of the Impostures of a few of the most pernicious. But on a second Perusal of this Part of the Original and its Translation, I thought it impossible (without descending to personal, nominal Anecdotes about the Vermin) to add any Thing material upon a Subject, which the Author has with such Energy exhausted. He even seems, by some of his Descriptions, to have taken Cognizance of a few of our most self-dignified itinerant Empirics; as these Genius's find it necessary sometimes to treat themselves with a little Transportation. In reality Dr._ _Tissot_ _has, in a very masterly Way, thoroughly dissected and displayed the whole_ Genus, _every Species of Quacks. And when he comes to account for that Facility, with which Persons of very different Principles from them, and of better Intellects, first listen to, and finally countenance such Caitiffs, he penetrates into some of the most latent Weaknesses of the human Mind; even such as are often Secrets to their Owners. It is difficult, throughout this Disquisition, not to admire the Writer; but impossible not to love the Man, the ardent Philanthropist. His Sentiment that--"A Man of real Merit cannot connect himself with those who are addicted to caballing,"--is exquisitely just, and so liberal, that it never entered into the Mind of any disingenuous Man, however dignified, in any Profession. Persons of the simplest Hearts and purest Reflections must shrink at every Consciousness of Artifice; and secretly reproach themselves for each Success, that has redounded to them at the Expence of Truth._] K. __Chapter XXXIV.__ _Containing Questions absolutely necessary to be answered exactly by the Patient, who consults a Physician._ __Sect.__ 588. Great Consideration and Experience are necessary to form a right Judgment of the State of a Patient, whom the Physician has not personally seen; even though he should receive the best Information it is possible to give him, at a Distance from the Patient. But this Difficulty is greatly augmented, or rather changed into an Impossibility, when his Information is not exact and sufficient. It has frequently happened to myself, that after having examined Peasants who came to get Advice for others, I did not venture to prescribe, because they were not able to give me a sufficient Information, in order to my being certain of the Distemper. To prevent this great Inconvenience, I subjoin a List of such Questions, as indispensably require clear and direct Answers. _General Questions._ What is the Patient's Age? Is he generally a healthy Person? What is his general Course of Life? How long has he been sick? In what Manner did his present Sickness begin, or appear? Has he any Fever? Is his Pulse hard or soft? Has he still tolerable Strength, or is he weak? Does he keep his Bed in the Day Time, or quit it? Is he in the same Condition throughout the whole Day? Is he still, or restless? Is he hot, or cold? Has he Pains in the Head, the Throat, the Breast, the Stomach, the Belly, the Loins, or in the Limbs, the Extremities of the Body? Is his Tongue dry? does he complain of Thirst? of an ill Tast in his Mouth? of Reachings to vomit, or of an Aversion to Food? Does he go to stool often or seldom? What Appearance have his Stools, and what is their usual quantity? Does he make much Urine? What Appearance has his Urine, as to Colour and Contents? Are they generally much alike, or do they change often? Does he sweat? Does he expectorate, or cough up? Does he get Sleep? Does he draw his Breath easily? What Regimen does he observe in his Sickness? What Medicines has he taken? What Effects have they produced? Has he never had the same Distemper before? § 589. The Diseases of Women and Children are attended with peculiar Circumstances; so that when Advice is asked for them, Answers must be given, not only to the preceding Questions, which relate to sick Persons in general; but also to the following, which regard these particularly. _Questions with Respect to Women._ Have they arrived at their monthly Discharges, and are these regular? Are they pregnant? Is so, how long since? Are they in Child-bed? Has their Delivery been happily accomplished? Has the Mother cleansed sufficiently? Has her Milk come in due Time and Quantity? Does she suckle the Infant herself? Is she subject to the Whites? _Questions relating to Children._ What is the Child's exact Age? How many Teeth has he cut? Does he cut them painfully? Is he any-wise ricketty, or subject to Knots or Kernels? Has he had the Small Pocks? Does the Child void Worms, upwards or downwards? Is his Belly large, swelled, or hard? Is his Sleep quiet, or otherwise? § 590. Besides these general Questions, common in all the Diseases of the different Sexes and Ages, the Person consulting must also answer to those, which have a close and direct Relation to the Disease, at that very Time affecting the Sick. For Example, in the Quinsey, the Condition of the Throat must be exactly inquired into. In Diseases of the Breast, an Account must be given of the Patient's Pains; of his Cough; of the Oppression, and of his Breathing, and Expectoration. I shall not enter upon a more particular Detail; common Sense will sufficiently extend this Plan or Specimen to other Diseases; and though these Questions may seem numerous, it will always be easy to write down their Answers in as little Room, as the Questions take up here. It were even to be wished that Persons of every Rank, who occasionally write for medical Advice and Directions, would observe such a Plan or Succession, in the Body of their Letters. By this Means they would frequently procure the most satisfactory Answers; and save themselves the Trouble of writing second Letters, to give a necessary Explanation of the first. The Success of Remedies depends, in a very great Measure, on a very exact Knowledge of the Disease; and that Knowledge on the precise Information of it, which is laid before the Physician. __FINIS.__ _TABLE_ _Of the Prescriptions and Medicines, referred to in the foregoing Treatise: Which, with the Notes beneath them, are to be read before the taking, or Application, of any of the said Medicines._ As in Order to ascertain the Doses of Medicines, I have generally done it by Pounds, Ounces, Half-Ounces, _&c. &c._ and as this Method, especially to the common People, might prove a little too obscure and embarrassing, I have specified here the exact Weight of Water, contained in such Vessels or liquid Measures, as are most commonly used in the Country. The Pound which I mean, throughout all these Prescriptions, is that consisting of sixteen Ounces. These Ounces contain eight Drachms, each Drachm consisting of three Scruples, and each Scruple of twenty Grains; the medical Scruple of _Paris_ solely containing twenty-four Grains. The liquid Measure, the _Pot_ used at _Berne_, being that I always speak of, may be estimated, without any material Error, to contain three Pounds and a Quarter, which is equal to three Pints, and eight common Spoonfuls English Measure. But the exact Weight of the Water, contained in the Pot of _Berne_, being fifty-one Ounces and a Quarter only, it is strictly equal but to three Pints and six common Spoonfuls _English_. This however is a Difference of no Importance, in the usual Drinks or Aliments of the Sick. The small drinking Glass we talk of, filled so as not to run over, contains three Ounces and three Quarters. But filled, as we propose it should for the Sick, it is to be estimated only at three Ounces. The common middle sized Cup, though rather large than little, contains three Ounces and a Quarter. But as dealt out to the Sick, it should not be estimated, at the utmost, above three Ounces. The small Glass contains seven common Spoonfuls; so that a Spoonful is supposed to contain half an Ounce. The small Spoon, or Coffee Spoon, when of its usual Size and Cavity, may contain thirty Drops, or a few more; but, in the Exhibition of Medicines, it may be reckoned at thirty Drops. Five or six of these are deemed equal in Measure, to a common Soup-Spoon. The Bason or Porrenger, mentioned in the present Treatise, holds, without running over, the Quantity of five Glasses, which is equivalent to eighteen Ounces and three Quarters. It may be estimated however, without a Fraction, at eighteen Ounces: and a sick Person should never be allowed to take more than a third Part of this Quantity of Nourishment, at any one Time. The Doses in all the following Prescriptions are adjusted to the Age of an Adult or grown Man, from the Age of eighteen to that of sixty Years. From the Age of twelve to eighteen, two thirds of that Dose will generally be sufficient: and from twelve down to seven Years one half, diminishing this still lower, in Proportion to the greater Youth of the Patient: so that not more than one eighth of the Dose prescribed should be given to an infant of some Months old, or under one Year. But it must also be considered, that their different Constitutions will make a considerable Difference in adjusting their different Doses. It were to be wished, on this Account, that every Person would carefully observe whether a strong Dose is necessary to purge him, or if a small one is sufficient; as Exactness is most important in adjusting the Doses of such Medicines, as are intended to purge, or to evacuate in any other Manner. Nº. 1. Take a Pugil or large Pinch between the Thumb and Fingers of Elder Flowers; put them into an earthen-ware Mug or Porrenger, with two Ounces of Honey, and an Ounce and a half of good Vinegar. Pour upon them three Pints and one Quarter of boiling Water. Stir it about a little with a Spoon to mix and dissolve the Honey; then cover up the Mug; and, when the Liquor is cold, strain it through a Linen Cloth. Nº. 2. Take two Ounces of whole Barley, cleanse and wash it well in hot Water, throwing away this Water afterwards. Then boil it in five Chopins or _English_ Pints of Water, till the Barley bursts and opens. Towards the End of the boiling, throw in one Drachm and a half of Nitre [Salt Petre] strain it through a Linen Cloth, and then add to it one Ounce and a half of Honey, and one Ounce of Vinegar. [113] �[113] This makes an agreeable Drink; and the Notion of its being windy is idle; since it is so only to those, with whom Barley does not agree. It may, where Barley is not procurable, be made from Oats. Nº. 3. Take the same Quantity of Barley as before, and instead of Nitre, boil in it, as soon as the Barley is put in to boil, a Quarter of an Ounce of Cream of Tartar. Strain it, and add nothing else [114] to it. �[114] In those Cases mentioned § 241, 262, 280, instead of the Barley, four Ounces of Grass Roots may be boiled in the same Quantity of Water for half an Hour, with the Cream of Tartar. Nº. 4. Take three Ounces of the freshest sweet Almonds, and one Ounce of Gourd or Melon Seed; bruise them in a Mortar, adding to them by a little at a time, one Pint of Water, then strain it through Linen. Bruise what remains again, adding gradually to it another Pint of Water, then straining; and adding Water to the Residue, till full three Pints at least of Water are thus used: after which it may again be poured upon the bruised Mass, stirred well about, and then be finally strained off. Half an Ounce of Sugar may safely be bruised with the Almonds and Seeds at first, though some weakly imagine it too heating; and delicate Persons may be allowed a little Orange Flower Water with it. Nº. 5. Take two Pugils of Mallow Leaves and Flowers, cut them small, and pour a Pint of boiling Water upon them. After standing some time strain it, adding one Ounce of Honey to it. For Want of Mallows, which is preferable, a similar Glyster may be made of the Leaves of Mercury, Pellitory of the Wall, the Marsh-Mallows, the greater Mallows, from Lettuce, or from Spinage. A few very particular Consititutions are not to be purged by any Glyster but warm Water alone; such should receive no other, and the Water should not be very hot. Nº. 6. Boil a Pugil of Mallow Flowers, in a Pint of Barley Water for a Glyster. Nº. 7. Take three Pints of simple Barley Water, add to it three Ounces of the Juice of Sow-thistle, or of Groundsel, or of the greater Houseleek, or of Borage. [115] �[115] These Juices are to be procured from the Herbs when fresh and very young, if possible, by beating them in a Marble Mortar, or for Want of such [or a wooden Mortar] in an Iron one, and then squeezing out the Juice through a Linen Bag. It must be left to settle a little in an earthen Vessel, after which the clear Juice must be decanted gently off, and the Sediment be left behind. Nº. 8. To one Ounce of Oxymel of Squills, add five Ounces of a strong Infusion of Elder Flowers. Nº. 9. There are many different emollient Applications, which have very nearly the same Virtues. The following are the most efficacious. 1, Flanels wrung out of a hot Decoction of Mallow Flowers. 2, Small Bags filled with Mallow Flowers, or with those of Mullein, of Elder, of Camomile, of wild Corn Poppy, and boiled either in Milk or Water. 3, Pultices of the same Flowers boiled in Milk and Water. 4, Bladders half filled with hot Milk and Water, or with some emollient Decoction. 5, A Pultice of boiled Bread and Milk, or of Barley or Rice boiled till thoroughly soft and tender. 6, In the Pleurisy (See § 89) the affected Part may be rubbed sometimes with Ointment of Marsh-mallows. Nº. 10. To one Ounce of Spirit of Sulphur, add six Ounces of Syrup of Violets, or for want of the latter, as much Barley Water, of a thicker Consistence than ordinary. [116] �[116] Some Friends, says Dr. _Tissot_, whose judgment I greatly respect, have thought the Doses of acid Spirit which I direct extremely strong; and doubtless they are so, if compared with the Doses generally prescribed, and to which I should have limited myself, if I had not frequently seen their Insufficience. Experience has taught me to increase them considerably; and, augmenting the Dose gradually, I now venture to give larger Doses of them than have ever been done before, and always with much Success; the same Doses which I have advised in this Work not being so large as those I frequently prescribe. For this Reason I intreat those Physicians, who have thought them excessive, to try the acid Spirits in larger Doses than those commonly ordered; and I am persuaded they will see Reason to congratulate themselves upon the Effect. [117] �[117] Our Author's _French_ Annotator has a Note against this Acid, which I have omitted; for though I have given his Note Page 84 [with the Substance of the immediately preceding one] to which I have also added some Doubts of my own, from Facts, concerning the Benefit of Acids in inflammatory Disorders of the Breast; yet with Regard to the ardent, the putrid, the malignant Fever, and _Erisipelas_, in which Dr. _Tissot_ directs this, I have no Doubt of its Propriety (supposing no insuperable Disagreement to Acids in the Constitution) and with Respect to their Doses, I think we may safely rely on our honest Author's Veracity. Dr. _Fuller_ assures us, a Gentleman's Coachman was recovered from the Bleeding Small Pocks, by large and repeated Doses of the Oil of Vitriol, in considerable Draughts of cold Water. _K._ Nº. 11. Take two Ounces of Manna, and half an Ounce of Sedlitz Salt, or for want of it, as much Epsom Salt; dissolving them in four Ounces of hot Water, and straining them. Nº. 12. Take of Elder Flowers one Pugil, of Hyssop Leaves half as much. Pour three Pints of boiling Water upon them. After infusing some time, strain, and dissolve three Ounces of Honey in the Infusion. Nº. 13. Is only the same Kind of Drink made by omitting the Hyssop, and adding instead of it as much more Elder Flowers. Nº. 14. Let one Ounce of the best Jesuits Bark in fine Powder be divided into sixteen equal Portions. Nº. 15. Take of the Flowers of St. _John's_ Wort, of Elder, and of Melilot, of each a few Pinches; put them into the Bottom of an Ewer or Vessel containing five or six _English_ Pints, with half an Ounce of Oil of Turpentine, and fill it up with boiling Water. Nº. 16. Is only the Syrup of the Flowers of the wild red Corn Poppy. Nº. 17. Is only very clear sweet Whey, in every Pint of which one Ounce of Honey is to be dissolved. Nº. 18. Take of Castile or hard white Soap six Drachms; of Extract of Dandelion one Drachm and a half; of Gum Ammoniacum half a Drachm, and with Syrup of Maidenhair make a Mass of Pills, to be formed into Pills, weighing three Grains each. Nº. 19. Gargarisms may be prepared from a Decoction, or rather an Infusion, of the Leaves of Periwinkle, or of Red Rose-Leaves, or of Mallows. Two Ounces of Vinegar and as much Honey must be added to every Pint of it, and the Patient should gargle with it pretty hot. The deterging, cleansing Gargarisin referred to § 112, is a light Infusion of the Tops of Sage, adding two Ounces of Honey to each Pint of it. Nº. 20. Is only one Ounce of powdered Nitre, divided into sixteen equal Doses. Nº. 21. Take of Jalap, of Senna, and of Cream of Tartar of each thirty Grains finely powdered; and let them be very well mixed. [118] �[118] This, our Author observes, will work a strong Country-man very well: by which however he does not seem to mean an Inhabitant of the Mountains in _Valais_. See P. 547. Nº. 22. Take of _China_ Root, and of Sarsaparilla of each one Ounce and a half, of Sassafras Root, and of the Shavings of Guiacum, otherwise called _Lignum vitæ_, of each one Ounce. Let the whole be cut very fine. Then put them into a glazed earthen Vessel; pouring upon them about five pints of boiling Water. Let them boil gently for an Hour; then take it from the Fire, and strain it off through Linen. This is called the Decoction of the Woods, and is often of different Proportions of these Ingredients, or with the Addition of a few others. More Water may, after the first boiling, be poured on the same Ingredients, and be boiled up into a small Decoction for common Drink. Nº. 23. Take one Ounce of the Pulp of Tamarinds, half a Drachm of Nitre, and four Ounces of Water; let them boil not more than one Minute, then add two Ounces of Manna, and when dissolved strain the Mixture off. Nº. 24. Is only an Ounce of Cream of Tartar, divided into eight equal Parts. Nº. 25. This Prescription is only the Preparation of Kermes mineral, otherwise called the Chartreusian Powder. Dr. _Tissot_ orders but one Grain for a Dose. It has been directed from one to three. Nº. 26. Take three Ounces of the common Burdock Root; boil it for half an Hour, with half a Drachm of Nitre, in three full Pints of Water. Nº. 27. Take half a Pinch of the Herbs prescribed Nº. 9, Article 2, and half an Ounce of hard white Soap shaved thin. Pour on these one Pint and a half of boiling Water, and one Glass of Wine. Strain the Liquor and squeeze it strongly out. Nº. 28. Take of the purest Quicksilver one Ounce; of Venice Turpentine half a Drachm, of the freshest Hog's Lard two Ounces, and let the whole be very well rubbed together into an Ointment. [119] �[119] This Ointment should be prepared at the Apothecaries; the Receipt of it being given here, only because the Proportions of the Quicksilver and the Lard are not always the same in different Places. Nº. 29. This Prescription is nothing but the yellow Basilicon. Nº. 30. Take of natural and factitious, or artificial Cinnabar, twenty-four Grains each; of Musk sixteen Grains, and let the whole be reduced into fine Powder, and very well mixed. [120] �[120] This Medicine is known by the Name of _Cob's_ Powder; and as its Reputation is very considerable, I did not chuse to omit it; though I must repeat here what I have said § 195--That the Cinnabar is probably of little or no Efficacy; and there are other Medicines that have also much more than the Musk; which besides is extremely dear for poor People, as the requisite Doses of it, in very dangerous Cases, would cost ten or twelve Shillings daily. The Prescription, Nº. 31, is more effectual than the Musk; and instead of the useless Cinnabar, the powerful Quicksilver may be given to the Quantity of forty-five Grains. I have said nothing hitherto in this Work of the red blossomed Mulberry Tree, which passes for a real Specific, among some Persons, in this dreadful Malady. An Account of it may be seen in the first Volume of the Oeconomical Journal of _Berne_. It is my Opinion however, that none of the Instances related there are satisfactory and decisive; its Efficacy still appearing to me very doubtful. Nº. 31. Take one Drachm of _Virginia_ Snake Root in Powder; of Camphor and of Assa-foetida ten Grains each; of Opium one Grain, and with a sufficient Quantity of Conserve, or Rob of Elder, make a Bolus. [121] �[121] When this is preferred to Nº. 30, of which Musk is an Ingredient, the Grain of Opium should be omitted, except once or at most twice in the twenty-four Hours. Two Doses of Quicksilver, of fifteen Grains each, should be given daily in the Morning, in the Interval between the other Bolus's. Nº. 32. Take three Ounces of Tamarinds. Pour on them one Pint of boiling Water, and after letting them boil a Minute or two, strain the Liquor through a Linen Cloth. Nº. 33. Take seven Grains of Turbith Mineral; and make it into a Pill or Bolus with a little Crumb of Bread. [122] �[122] This Medicine makes the Dogs vomit and slaver abundantly. It has effected many Cures after the _Hydrophobia_, the Dread of Water, was manifest. It must be given three Days successively, and afterwards twice a Week, for fifteen Days. Nº. 34. This is nothing but a Prescription of six Grains of Tartar [123] emetic. �[123] When People are ignorant of the Strength of the Tartar emetic (which is often various) or of the Patient's being easy or hard to vomit, a Dose and a half may be dissolved in a Quart of warm Water, of which he may take a Glass every Quarter of an Hour, whence the Operation may be forwarded, or otherwise regulated, according to the Number of Vomits or Stools. This Method, much used in _Paris_, seems a safe and eligible one. Nº. 35. Take thirty-five Grains of Ipecacuanna, which, in the very strongest Constitutions, may be augmented to forty-five, or even to fifty Grains. Nº. 36. Prescribes only the common blistering Plaister; and the Note observes that very young Infants who have delicate Skins may have Sinapisms applied instead of Blisters; and made of a little old Leaven, kneaded up with a few Drops of sharp Vinegar. Nº. 37. Take of the Tops of _Chamaedrys_ or Ground Oak, of the lesser Centaury, of Wormwood and of Camomile, of each one Pugil. Pour on them three Pints of boiling Water; and suffering them to infuse until it is cold, strain the Liquor through a Linen Cloth, pressing it out strongly. Nº. 38. Take forty Grains of Rhubarb, and as much Cream of Tartar in Powder, mixing them well together. Nº. 39. Take three Drachms of Cream of Tartar, and one Drachm of Ipecacuanna finely powdered. Rub them well together, and divide them into six equal Parts. Nº. 40. Take of the simple Mixture one Ounce, of Spirit of Vitriol half an Ounce, and mix them. The Dose is one or two Tea Spoonfuls in a Cup of the Patient's common Drink. The simple Mixture is composed of five Ounces of Treacle Water camphorated, of three Ounces of Spirit of Tartar rectified, and one Ounce of Spirit of Vitriol. If the Patient has an insuperable Aversion to the Camphor, it must be omitted, though the Medicine is less efficacious without it. And if his Thirst is not very considerable, the simple Mixture may be given alone, without any further Addition of Spirit of Vitriol. Nº. 41. Take half a Drachm of _Virginia_ Snake-root, ten Grains of Camphor, and make them into a Bolus with Rob of Elder-Berries. If the Patient's Stomach cannot bear so large a Dose of Camphor, he may take it in smaller Doses and oftner, _viz._ three Grains, every two Hours. If there is a violent Looseness, Diascordium must be substituted instead of the Rob of Elder-berries. Nº. 42. Prescribes only the _Theriaca pauperum_, or poor Man's Treacle, in the Dose of a Quarter of an Ounce. The following Composition of it is that chiefly preferred by our Author. Take equal Parts of round Birthwort Roots, of Elecampane, of Myrrh, and of Rob or Conserve of Juniper-berries, and make them into an Electuary of a rather thin, than very stiff Consistence, with Syrup of Orange-peel. Nº. 43. The first of the three Medicines referred to in this Number, is that already directed, Nº. 37. The second is as follows. Take equal Parts of the lesser Centaury, of Wormwood, of Myrrh, all powdered, and of Conserve of Juniper-berries, making them up into a pretty thick Consistence with Syrup of Wormwood. The Dose is a Quarter of an Ounce; to be taken at the same Intervals as the Bark. For the third Composition--Take of the Roots of Calamus Aromaticus and Elecampane well bruised, two Ounces; of the Tops of the lesser Centaury cut small, a Pugil; of Filings of unrusted Iron two Ounces, of old white Wine, three Pints. Put them all into a wide necked Bottle, and set it upon Embers, or on a Stove, or by the Chimney, that it may be always kept hot. Let them infuse twenty-four Hours, shaking them well five or six Times; then let the Infusion settle, and strain it. The Dose is a common Cup every four Hours, four Times daily, and timing it one Hour before Dinner. Nº. 44. Take a Quarter of an Ounce of Cream of Tartar, a Pugil of common Camomile; boil them in twelve Ounces of Water for half an Hour, and strain it off. Nº. 45. Directs only the common Sal Ammoniac, from two Scruples to one Drachm for a Dose. The Note to it adds, that it may be made into a Bolus with Rob of Elder; and observes, that those feverish Patients, who have a weak delicate Stomach, do not well admit of this Salt; no more than of several others, which affect them with great Disorder and Anxiety. Nº. 46. The Powder. Take one Pugil of Camomile Flowers, and as much Elder Flowers, bruising them well; of fine Flour or Starch three Ounces; of Ceruss and of blue Smalt each half an Ounce. Rub the whole, and mix them well. This Powder may be applied immediately to the Part. The Plaister. Take of the Ointment called _Nutritum_, made with the newest sweet Oil, two Ounces; of white Wax three Quarters of an Ounce, and one Quarter of an Ounce of blue Smalt. Melt the Wax, then add the _Nutritum_ to it, after the Smalt finely powdered has been exactly incorporated with it; stirring it about with an Iron Spatula or Rod, till the whole is well mixed and cold. This is to be smoothly spread on Linen Cloth. A Quarter of an Ounce of Smalt may also be mixed exactly with two Ounces of Butter or Ointment of Lead, to be used occasionally instead of the Plaister. Nº. 47. Take one Ounce of Sedlitz, or for want of that, as much Epsom Salt, and two Ounces of Tamarinds: pour upon them eight Ounces of boiling Water, stirring them about to dissolve the Tamarinds. Strain it off; and divide it into two equal Draughts, to be given at the Interval of Half an Hour between the first and last. Nº. 48. Take of _Sydenham_'s Liquid Laudanum eighty Drops; of Bawm Water two Ounces and a half. If the first, or the second, Dose stops or considerably lessens the Vomiting, this [124] Medicine should not be further repeated. �[124] The medical Editor at _Lyons_ justly notes here, that these eighty Drops are a very strong Dose of liquid Laudanum; adding that it is scarcely ever given at _Lyons_ in a greater Dose than thirty Drops; and recommending a Spoonful of Syrup of Lemon-peel to be given with it--But we must observe here in answer to this Note, that when Dr. _Tissot_ directs this Mixture in the Iliac Passion § 318, to appease the Vomitings, Art. 3, he orders but one spoonful of this Mixture to be taken at once, and an Interval of two Hours to be observed between the first and second Repetition, which reduces each Dose to sixteen Drops, and which is not to be repeated without Necessity. Nº. 49. Dissolve three Ounces of Manna and twenty Grains of Nitre in twenty Ounces, or six Glasses, of sweet Whey. Nº. 50. To two Ounces of Syrup of Diacodium, or white Poppy Heads, add an equal Weight of Elder Flower Water, or, for want of it, of Spring Water. Nº. 51. Directs nothing but a Drachm of Rhubarb in Powder. Nº. 52. Take of _Sulphur vivum_, or of Flower of Brimstone, one Ounce; of Sal Ammoniac, one Drachm; of fresh Hogs Lard, two Ounces; and mix the whole very well in a Mortar. Nº. 53. Take two Drachms of crude Antimony and as much Nitre, both finely powdered and very well mixed; dividing the whole into eight equal Doses. [125] �[125] This Medicine, which often occasions Cholics in some Persons of a weakly Stomach, is attended with no such Inconvenience in strong Country People; and has been effectual in some Disorders of the Skin, which have baffled other Medicines--The Remainder of this Note observes the great Efficacy of Antimony in promoting Perspiration, and the extraordinary Benefit it is of to Horses in different Cases. Nº. 54. Take of Filings of Iron, not the least rusty, and of Sugar, each one Ounce; of Aniseeds Powdered, half an Ounce. After rubbing then very well together, divide the Powder into twenty-four equal Portions; one of which is to be taken three times a Day an Hour before eating. [126] �[126] The Prescriptions Nº. 54, 55, 56, are calculated against Distempers which arise from Obstructions, and a Stoppage of the monthly Discharges; which Nº. 55 is more particularly intended to remove; those of 54 and 56 are most convenient, either when the Suppression does not exist, or is not to be much regarded, if it does. This Medicine may be rendered less unpalatable for Persons in easy Circumstances, by adding as much Cinamon instead of Aniseeds; and though the Quantity of Iron be small, it may be sufficient, if given early in the Complaint; one, or at the most, two of these Doses daily, being sufficient for a very young Maiden. Nº. 55. Take of Filings of sound Iron two Ounces; of Leaves of Rue, and of white Hoar-hound one Pugil each; of black Hellebore Root, one Quarter of an Ounce, and infuse the whole in three Pints of Wine in the Manner already directed, Nº. 43. The Dose of this is one small Cup three times a Day, an Hour before eating. [127] �[127] I chuse to repeat here, the more strongly to inculcate so important a Point, that in Women who have long been ill and languid, our Endeavours must be directed towards the restoring of the Patient's Health and Strength, and not to forcing down the monthly Discharges, which is a very pernicious Practice. These will return of Course, if the Patient is of a proper Age, as she grows better. Their Return succeeds the Return of her Health, and should not, very often cannot, precede it. Nº. 56. Take two Ounces of Filings of Iron; of Rue Leaves and Aniseed powdered, each half an Ounce. Add to them a sufficient Quantity of Honey to make an Electuary of a good Consistence. The Dose is a Quarter of an Ounce three times daily. Nº. 57. Take of the Extract of the stinking Hemlock, with the purple spotted Stalk, one Ounce. Form it into Pills weighing two Grains each; adding as much of the Powder of dry Hemlock Leaves, as the Pills will easily take up. Begin the Use of this Medicine by giving one Pill Night and Morning. Some Patients have been so familiarized to it, as to take at length Half an Ounce daily. [128] �[128] Our learned and candid Author has a very long Note in this Place, strongly in Favour of _Storck's_ Extract of Hemlock, in which it is evident he credits the greater Part of the Cures affirmed by Dr. _Storck_ to have been effected by it. He says he made some himself, but not of the right Hemlock, which we think it very difficult to mistake, from its peculiar rank fetid Smell, and its purple spotted Stalk. After first taking this himself, he found it mitigated the Pain of Cancers, but did not cure them. But then addressing himself to Dr. _Storck_, and exactly following his Directions in making it, he took of Dr. _Storck's_ Extract, and of his own, which exactly resembled each other, to the Quantity of a Drachm and a half daily; and finding his Health not in the least impaired by it, he then gave it to several Patients, curing many scrophulous and cancerous Cases, and mitigating others, which he supposes were incurable. So that he seems fully persuaded Dr. _Storck's_ Extract is always innocent [which in Fact, except in a very few Instances, none of which were fatal, it has been] and he thinks it a Specific in many Cases, to which nothing can be substituted as an equivalent Remedy; that it should be taken with entire Confidence, and that it would be absurd to neglect its Continuance. The Translator of this Work of Dr. _Tissot's_ has thought it but fair to give all the Force of this Note here, which must be his own, as his Editor at _Lyons_ seems to entertain a very different Opinion of the Efficacy of this Medicine; for which Opinion we refer back to his Note, § 375, of this Treatise, which the Reader may compare with this of our Author's. _K._ Nº. 58. Take of the Roots of Grass and of Succory well washed, each one Ounce. Boil them a Quarter of an Hour in a Pint of Water. Then dissolve in it Half an Ounce of Sedlitz, or of _Epsom_ Salt, and two Ounces of Manna; and strain it off to drink one Glass of it from Half Hour, to Half Hour, till its Effects are sufficient. It is to be repeated at the Interval of two or three Days. Nº. 59. Is a Cataplasm or Pultice made of Crumb of Bread, with Camomile Flowers boiled in Milk, with the Addition of some Soap, so that each Pultice may contain half a Quarter of an Ounce of this last Ingredient. And when the Circumstances of female Patients have not afforded them that regular Attendance, which the Repetition of the Pultice requires, as it should be renewed every three Hours, I have successfully directed the Hemlock Plaister of the Shops. Nº. 60. Take a sufficient Quantity of dry Hemlock Leaves. Secure them properly between two Pieces of thin Linen Cloth, so as to make a very flexible Sort of small Matrass, letting it boil a few Moments in Water, then squeeze it out and apply it to the affected Part. It must thus be moistened and heated afresh, and re-applied every two Hours. Nº. 61. Take of the Eyes of the Craw-fish, or of the true white Magnesia, two Drachms; of Cinnamon powdered four Grains. Rub them very well together, and divide the whole into eight Doses. One of these is to be given in a Spoonful of Milk, or of Water, before the Infant sucks. Nº. 62. Take of an Extract of Walnuts, made in Water, two Drachms; and dissolve it in half an Ounce of Cinnamon Water. Fifty Drops a Day of this Solution is to be given to a Child of two Years old; and after the whole has been taken, the Child should be purged. This Extract is to be made of the unripe Nuts, when they are of a proper Growth and Consistence for pickling. Nº. 63. Take of Rezin of Jalap two Grains. Rub it a considerable time with twelve or fifteen Grains of Sugar, and afterwards with three or four sweet Almonds; adding, very gradually, two common Spoonfuls of Water. Then strain it through clear thin Linen, as the Emulsion of Almonds was ordered to be. Lastly, add a Tea Spoonful of Syrup of Capillaire to it. This is no disagreable Draught, and may be given to a Child of two Years old: and if they are older, a Grain or two more of the Rezin may be allowed. But under two Years old, it is prudent to purge Children rather with Syrup of Succory, or with Manna. Nº. 64. Take of the Ointment called _Nutritum_ one Ounce; the entire Yolk of one small Egg, or the Half of a large one, and mix them well together. This _Nutritum_ may be readily made by rubbing very well together, and for some time, two Drachms of Ceruss [white Lead] half an Ounce of Vinegar, and three Ounces of common Oil. Nº. 65. Melt four Ounces of white Wax; add to it, if made in Winter two Spoonfuls of Oil; if in Summer none at all, or at most, not above a Spoonful. Dip in this Slips of Linen Cloth not worn too thin, and let them dry: or spread it thin and evenly over them. Nº. 66. Take of Oil of Roses one Pound; of red Lead half a Pound; of Vinegar four Ounces. Boil them together nearly to the Consistence of a Plaister; then dissolve in the liquid Mass an Ounce and a Half of yellow Wax, and two Drachms of Camphor, stirring the whole about well. Remove it then from the Fire, and spread it on Sheets or Slips of Paper, of what Size you think most convenient. The Ointment of _Chambauderie_, so famous in many Families on the Continent, is made of a Quarter of a Pound of yellow Wax, of the Plaister of three Ingredients (very nearly the same with Nº. 66) of compound Diachylon and of common Oil, of each the same Quantity, all melted together, and then stirred about well, after it is removed from the Fire, till it grows cold. To make a Sparadrap, or Oil Cloth, which is Linen, covered with, or dipt in an emplastic Substance or Ointment, it must be melted over again with the Addition of a little Oil, and applied to the Linen as directed at Nº. 65. Nº. 67. Gather in Autumn, while the fine Weather lasts, the Agaric of the Oak, which is a Kind of _Fungus_ or Excrescence, issuing from the Wood of that Tree. It consists at first of four Parts, which present themselves successively, 1, The outward Rind or Skin, which may be thrown away. 2, That Part immediately under this Rind, which is the best of all. This is to be beat well with a Hammer, till it becomes soft and very pliable. This is the only Preparation it requires, and a Slice of it of a proper Size is to be applied directly over the bursting, open Blood-vessels. It constringes and brings them close together; stops the Bleedings; and generally falls off at the End of two Days. 3, The third Part, adhering to the second may serve to stop the Bleeding from the smaller Vessels; and the fourth and last Part may be reduced to Powder, as conducing to the same Purpose. [129] �[129] Our Author attests his seeing the happiest Consequences from this Application, which M. _Brossard_, a very eminent _French_ Surgeon, first published; and declared his Preference of that Agaric which sprung from those Parts of the Tree, from whence large Boughs had been lopped. Nº. 68. Take four Ounces of Crumbs of Bread, a Pugil of Elder Flowers, and the same Quantity of those of Camomile, and of St. _John's_ Wort. Boil them into a Pultice in equal Quantities of Vinegar and Water. If Fomentations should be thought preferable, take the same Herbs, or some Pugils of the Ingredients for _Faltrank_: throw them into a Pint and a Half of boiling Water: and let them infuse some Minutes. Then a Pint of Vinegar is to be added, and Flanels or other woollen Cloths dipt in the Fomentation, and wrung out, are to be applied to the Part affected. For the aromatic Fomentations recommended § 449, take Leaves of Betony and of Rue, Flowers of Rosemary or Lavender, and red Roses, of each a Pugil and a Half. Boil them for a Quarter of an Hour in a Pot with a Cover, with three Pints of old white Wine. Then strain off, squeezing the Liquor strongly from the Herbs, and apply it as already directed. Nº. 69. Directs only the Plaister of Diapalma. [130] �[130] To spread this upon Lint as directed, § 456, it must be melted down again with a little Oil. Nº. 70. Directs only a Mixture of two Parts Water, and one Part of Vinegar of Litharge. Nº. 71. Take of the Leaves of Sow-bread, and of Camomile Tops, of each one Pugil. Put them into an earthen Vessel with half an Ounce of Soap, and as much Sal Ammoniac, and pour upon them three Pints of boiling Water. _N. B._ I conceive all the Notes to this Table, in which I have not mentioned the Editor at _Lyons_, nor subscribed with my initial Letter _K_, to come from the Author, having omitted nothing of them, but the Prices. ERRATA. Page 4, Line 6, for _os_ read _of_. p. 16, l. 16, for _be_ read _me_. p. 29, l. 12, after _it_ add . p. 49, l. 12, dele _and_ at the End of it. p. 51, in the running Title, for _Causss_ read _Causes_. ib. l. 2, dele _and_. ib. l. 7, dele _and_. p. 57, last line, for _hurtsul_ read _hurtful_. p. 67, l. 17, after _Water_, add, _may be placed within the Room_. p. 74, line last but two, after _never_, dele , p. 96, l. 11, for _Aiiment_ read _Ailment_. p. 106, l. 23, for the second _is_ read _has_. p. 126, l. 21, for _breath_ read _breathe_. p. 137, l. 13, for _Efflorescene_ read _Efflorescence_, p. 145, l. 1, for _Water_ read _Tea_. p. 148, l. 19, for _beomes_ read _becomes_. p. 163, l. 30. in the Note, for _occured_ read _occurred_; p. 171, l. 20, dele _and_. p. 189, l. 28, dele _of_. p. 199, l. 6, for _Paulmier_ read _Palmarius_, being the _Latinized_ Name of that _Physician_; as we say for _Fernel Fernelius, Holler Hollerius, &c._ _N. B._ His Powder for the Bite of a mad Dog consisted of equal Parts of Rue, Vervain, Plantain, Polypody, common Wormwood, Mugwort, Bastard Baum, Betony, St. _John's_ Wort, and lesser Centaury Tops, to which _Default_ adds Coraline.----p. 237, l. 2, for _Streakes_ read _Streaks_. p. 256, first line of the Note * _dele_ the first _often_. p. 261, l. 15, for _happens_ read _happen_. p. 270, l. 12, dele _t_ in _Switsserland_. p. 282, l. 23, for _enters_ read _enter_. p. 283, l. 23, for _Stomach_ read _Stomachs_. p. 284, l. 12, for _it_ read _them_. p. 287, Note * l. 25, for _here_ read _there_. p. 303, l. 14, for _doubtsul_ read _doubtful_. p. 311, l. 18, for _abate_ read _abates_. p. 337, l. 7, for _glary_ read _glairy_. N. B. In the first Page that is folio'd 445 read 345. p. 346, l. 19, for _two_ read _too_. p. 351, l. 25, after Waters add, _such as Infusions of Tea, &c._ p. 375, l. 7, for _two_ read _too_. p. 392, last line, for _Leaves_ read _Flowers_. p. 393, l. 26, after _them_, insert _and_. p. 397, l. 1 and 2, for Temparrament read _Temperament_. p. 422, l. 6, between _several_ and _Consequences_ insert _bad_. p. 454, l. 5, for _Diflocation_ read _Dislocation_. p. 459, l. 17, in _Ice-thaws_ dele - p. 466, l. 16, to _Constitution_ add _s_. p. 486, l. 29, after _or_ add _if_. p. 487, l. 12, for _Parts_ read _Part_. p. 511, l. 12, for _not_ read _nor_. p. 533, l. 12, for _arrives_ read _arises_. p. 542, l. 22, for _Patient_ read _Patients_. p. 562, l. 14, for _fays_ read _says_. p. 573, l. 10, after _Cause_, dele _Comma_. _Table_ _of the several Chapters, and their principal Contents._ Introduction ---- Page 1 The first Cause of Depopulation, Emigrations ---- _ib._ The second Cause, Luxury ---- 6 Third Cause, Decay of Agriculture ---- 10 Fourth Cause, the pernicious Treatment of Diseases ---- 12 Means for rendering this Treatise useful ---- 15 Explanation of certain physical Terms, and Phrases ---- 26 _Chapter I._ _The most common Causes of popular Sickness_ ---- 31 First Cause, excessive Labour ---- _ib._ Second Cause, the Effect of cold Air, when a Person is hot ---- 33 Third Cause, taking cold Drink, when in a Heat ---- _ib._ _&_ 34 Fourth Cause, the Inconstancy and sudden Change of the Weather ---- 35 Fifth Cause, the Situation of Dunghills, and Marshes, near inhabited Houses, and the bad confined Air in the Houses ---- 37 Sixth Cause, Drunkenness ---- 38 Seventh Cause, the Food of Country People ---- 39 Eighth Cause, the Situation, or Exposure of Houses ---- 42 Concerning the Drink of Country People ---- 43 _Chap. II._ _Of Causes which increase the Diseases of the People, with general Considerations_ ---- 47 First Cause, the great Care employed to force the Sick to sweat, and the Methods taken for that Purpose ---- _ib._ _&_ 48 The Danger of hot Chambers ---- 49 The Danger of hot Drinks and heating Medicines ---- 50 Second Cause, the Quantity and Quality of the Food given sick Persons ---- 53 Third Cause, the giving Vomits and Purges at the Beginning of the Disease ---- 57 _Chap. III._ _Concerning what should be done in the Beginning of Diseases, and the Diet in acute Diseases_ ---- 61 Signs which indicate approaching Diseases; with Means to prevent them ---- 62 The common Regimen, or Regulations, for the Sick ---- 64 The Benefits of ripe sound Fruits ---- 68 Cautions and Means to be used, on Recovery ---- 73, 74 _Chap. IV._ _Of the Inflammation of the Breast_ ---- 77 The Signs of this Disease ---- _ib._ _&_ 78 The Advantage of Bleeding ---- 81 Signs of Recovery ---- 85 Of _Crises_, and the Symptoms that precede them ---- 86 The Danger of Vomits, of Purges, and of Anodynes ---- 88 Of the Suppression of Expectoration, and the Means to restore it. ---- 89 Of the Formation of _Vomicas_, or Imposthumes in the Lungs, and the Treatment of them ---- 90 Of the Danger of Remedies, termed Balsamics ---- 103 The Inefficacy of the Antihectic of _Poterius_ ---- 104 Of an _Empyema_ ---- 105 Of a Gangrene of the Lungs ---- 106 Of a _Scirrhus_ of the Lungs ---- _ib._ _Chap. V._ _Of the Pleurisy_ ---- 108 The Danger of heating Remedies ---- 112 to 115 Of frequent, or habitual, Pleurisies ---- 116 Of Goats Blood; the Soot of a stale Egg, and of the Wormwood of the Alps, in Pleurisies ---- 117, 118 _Chap. VI._ _Of Diseases of the Throat_ ---- 119 Of their proper Treatment ---- 124 Of the Formation of an Abscess there ---- 127 Of swelled Ears, from the Obstruction of the parotid and maxillary Glands ---- 131 Of the epidemic and putrid Diseases of the Throat, which prevailed in 1761 at _Lausanne_ ---- 132 _Chap. VII._ _Of Colds_ ---- 139 Different Prejudices concerning Colds ---- _ib._ _&_ 140 The Danger of drinking much hot Water, and of strong spirituous Liquors, _&c._ ---- 146 Means for strengthening and curing Persons very subject to Colds ---- 148 _Chap. VIII._ _Of Diseases of the Teeth_ ---- 150 _Chap. IX._ _Of the Apoplexy_ ---- 158 Of sanguine Apoplexy ---- _ib._ _&_ 159 Of a serous, or watery, Apoplexy ---- 162 Means to prevent relapsing into them ---- 164 _& seq._ _Chap. X._ _Of morbid Strokes of the Sun_ ---- 167 _Chap. XI._ _Of the Rheumatism_ ---- 177 Of the acute Rheumatism, attended with a Fever ---- _ib._ Of the flow, or chronical, without a Fever ---- 186 The Danger of spirituous and greasy Remedies ---- 191, 192 _Chap. XII._ _Of the Bite of a mad Dog_ ---- 194 _Chap. XIII._ _Of the Small Pocks._ ---- 207 Of the preceding Symptoms of this Disease ---- 209 --The Danger of sweating Medicines ---- 217 --The Treatment of the benign distinct Small Pocks ---- 220 --The Use of Bleeding ---- 222 --The Fever of Suppuration ---- 223 --The Necessity of opening the ripe Pustules ---- 226 --The Danger of Anodynes ---- 228 Of the striking in of the Eruptions ---- 229 Preparations for receiving it favorably ---- 230 _Chap. XIV._ _Of the Measles_ ---- 235 Of their Treatment and the Means to prevent any of their bad Consequences, to ---- 243 _Chap. XV._ _Of the hot, or burning, Fever_ ---- 244 _Chap. XVI._ _Of putrid Fevers_ ---- 248 _Chap. XVII._ _Of malignant Fevers_ ---- 257 The Danger of applying living Animals in them ---- 267 _Chap. XVIII._ _Of intermitting Fevers_ ---- 269 --Spring and Autumn Intermittents ---- 272 Method of Cure by the Bark ---- 275 Method of treating the Patient in the Fit ---- 277 Of other Febrifuges, besides the Bark ---- 278 The Treatment of long and obstinate Intermittents ---- 279 Of some very dangerous Intermittents ---- 284 Of some periodical Disorders, which may be termed, Fevers disguised ---- 285 Of Preservatives from unwholesome Air ---- 286 _Chap. XIX._ _Of an_ Erisipelas, _or St._ Anthony's _Fire._ ---- 288 Of a frequent or habitual _Erisipelas_ ---- 295 Of the Stings or Bites of Animals ---- 296 _Chap. XX._ _Of Inflammations of the Breast, and of Bastard and bilious Pleurisies_ ---- 298 --Of the false Inflammation of the Breast ---- 300 --The false Pleurisy ---- 303 _Chap. XXI._ _Of Cholics_ ---- 306 Of the inflammatory Cholic ---- 307 --the bilious Cholic ---- 312 --the Cholic from Indigestion, and of Indigestions ---- 314 --the flatulent, or windy, Cholic ---- 317 --the Cholic, from taking Cold ---- 319 _Chap. XXII._ _Of the_ Miserere, _or Iliac Passion, and of the_ Cholera Morbus ---- 322 The _Miserere_ ---- _ib._ _&_ 323 The _Cholera Morbus_ ---- 327 _Chap. XXIII._ _Of a_ Diarrhoea, _or Looseness_ ---- 332 _Chap. XXIV._ _Of a Dysentery, or Bloody-Flux_ ---- 335 The Symptoms of the Disease ---- 336 The Remedies against it ---- 338 Of the beneficial Use of ripe Fruits ---- 341 Of the Danger of taking a great Number of popular Remedies in it ---- 345 _Chap. XXV._ _Of the Itch_ ---- 347 _Chap. XXVI._ _Directions peculiar to the Sex_ ---- 352 Of the monthly Customs ---- 353 Of Gravidation, or going with Child ---- 365 Of Labours or Deliveries, ---- 367 Of their Consequences ---- 371 Of a Cancer ---- 373 _Chap. XXVII._ _Directions with Regard to Children_ ---- 375 Of the first Cause of their Disorders, the _Meconium_ ---- 377 --the second, the souring of their Milk ---- 379 --the Danger of giving them Oil ---- _ib._ --Disorders from their Want of Perspiration, the Means of keeping it up, and of washing them in cold Water ---- 381 _&_ 382 --the third Cause, the cutting of their Teeth ---- 386 --the fourth Cause, Worms ---- 387 Of Convulsions ---- 391 Methods necessary to make them strong and hardy, with general Directions about them ---- 396 _& seq._ _Chap. XXVIII._ _Of Assistances for drowned Persons_ ---- 403 _Chap. XXIX._ _Of Substances stopt between the Mouth and the Stomach_ ---- 411 _Chap. XXX._ _Of Disorders requiring the Assistance of a Surgeon_ ---- 435 Of Burns ---- 436 Of Wounds ---- 437 Of Bruises, and of Falls ---- 444 Of Ulcers ---- 454 Of frozen Limbs, or Joints ---- 458 Of Chilblains ---- 462 Of Ruptures ---- 474 Of Phlegmons, or Boils ---- 480 Of Fellons, or Whitlows ---- 481 Of Thorns, Splinters, _&c._ in the Skin or Flesh ---- 486 Of Warts ---- 488 Of Corns ---- 490 _Chap. XXXI._ _Of some Cases which require immediate Assistance_ ---- 491 Of Swoonings, from Excess of Blood ---- 492 Of Swoonings, from great Weakness ---- 494 Of Swoonings, occasioned by a Load on the Stomach ---- 497 Of Swoonings, resulting from Disorders of the Nerves 500 Of Swoonings, occasioned by the Passions ---- 504 Of the Swoonings, which occur in Diseases ---- 506 Of Hæmorrhages, or Fluxes of Blood ---- 508 Of Convulsion Fits ---- 512 Of suffocating, or strangling Fits ---- 514 Of the violent Effects of great Fear ---- 516 Of Accidents produced by the Vapours of Charcoal, and of Wine ---- 519 Of Poisons ---- 526 Of acute and violent Pains ---- 529 _Chap. XXXII._ _Of giving Remedies by Way of Precaution_ ---- 531 Of Bleeding ---- 532 Of Purges ---- 540 Remedies to be used after excessive Purging ---- 544 Reflections on some other Remedies ---- 546, _&c._ _Chap. XXXIII._ _Of Quacks, Mountebanks, and Conjurers_ ---- 551 _Chap. XXXIV._ _Questions necessary to be answered by any Person, who goes to consult a Physician_ ---- 579 The Table of Remedies ---- 584 Transcription note Old and variant spellings, like _surprising_ / _surprizing_, Buttermilk / _Butter-milk_, _Blood-vessels_ / _Blood-Vessels_, _Faltranc_ / _Faltrank_, _wholesome_ / _wholsome_, _fetid_ / _foetid_, _public_ / _publick_, _Physic_ / _Physick_, etc. have been preserved in the present transcription. In some cases of doubt, the present edition has been compared with scans of the 1766 edition printed by Donaldson, which differs slightly in setting, for instance having all names not capitalized, and corrects many typographic mistakes. Corrections listed in the Errata at the end of the book have been carried into this transcription (excepting those which are not relevant for the transcription, like those in running titles). Typographic errors, occurring at the following pages and lines in the original, have been corrected (negative numbers indicate lines from the bottom of the page): - *p. 23, note *, l. -6* their Druggs --> their Drugs - *p. 29, l. 12* thorough Attentention --> thorough Attention - *p. 39, l. 2* btutal Souls --> brutal Souls - *p. 48, l. 12-13* thick, and and that --> thick, and that - *p. 55, l. -5* increases our Horrour --> increases our Horror - *p. 61, l. 3-4* deserves a Patients Confidence --> deserves a Patient's Confidence - *p. 62, l. 16* Drink and Glisters --> Drink and Glysters - *p. 87, l. -8* the loosening Glyster No. 5 --> the loosening Glyster Nº. 5 - *p. 106, l. 1* Inflammamations --> Inflammations - *p. 148, l. 21-22* Perspiraration --> Perspiration - *p. 182, l. 19* Applications N. 9 --> Applications Nº. 9 - *p. 189, l. 1* the Powder No. 29 --> the Powder Nº. 29 - *p. 223, note *, l. 4* without the least peceiveable --> without the least perceiveable - *p. 226, l. 17-18* Relax-tion --> Relaxation - *p. 244, l. 4-5* Dis-seases --> Diseases - *p. 261, l. 15* Hæmmorrhages --> Hæmorrhages - *p. 283, l. 14-15* Pre-Precription --> Prescription - *p. 344, note +, l. -2* _missing closing quote conjecturally inserted after_ instead of stumming or sulphurizing it,' - *p. 353, l. 1* stance constitutes --> Circumstance constitutes - *p. 355, l. 18* not pregant --> not pregnant - *p. 383, l. 6* the back Bart of the Head --> the back Part of the Head - *p. 485, l. 13* checks it Progress --> checks its Progress - *p. 495, l. 19* strong swelling Herbs --> strong smelling Herbs - *p. 506, l. 15* Weakness is an Obstable --> Weakness is an Obstacle - *p. 506, l. 19* an Evacution supervenes --> an Evacuation supervenes - *p. 525, l. -2,-1* Never-vertheless --> Nevertheless - *p. 560, l. -7* Villians --> Villains - *p. 573, l. 6* some Evacution --> some Evacuation - *p. 608. l. -7* Temparrament --> Temperrament - *p. 611, col. 2, l. 4* _Of a_ Diarrhæa --> _Of a_ Diarrhoea So has been corrected the punctuation: - *p. xxii, last line, note* published at _Lyons_. [missing period] - *p. xxix, l. 10* _Infusion_ Nº. 1; [missing dot] - *p. xxix, l. 13-14* Numbers 1. 2, and 4 --> Numbers 1, 2, and 4 - *p. 63, l. 15* of the Ptisans Nº. 1 [missing dot] - *p. 84, l. -7, note* the Mixture, Nº. 10 [missing dot] - *p. 88, l. 21* the purging Potion Nº. 11 [missing dot] - *p. 89, l. 12* and drink plentifully of the Ptisan Nº. 2 [missing dot] - *p. 89, l. -7* should drink plentifully of the Ptisan Nº. 12 [missing dot] - *p. 117, l. 12-13* or some of those Diet-Drinks Nº. 1, 2, 4; [dots instead of commas] - *p. 118, note *, l. 3* it in his late _Materia Medica._ K. [missing period] - *p. 173, l. -8* in Hunting in 1658. [additional comma] - *p. 198, l. 16* 3. The Bites --> 3, The Bites - *p. 203, note, l. 5* in many other Places. [missing period] - *p. 231, note, l- 1* and the Note there. [comma instead of period] - *p. 233, l. 10* sound and hearty Children). [missing period] - *p. 265, l. -6* 12, As soon as the Distemper [period instead of comma] - *p. 320, last line of the note* or for suspending it. _K._ [missing dot] - *p. 371, l. 7* 2, An Inflammation [period instead of comma] - *p. 531, l. -6* or wrong. [missing period] - *p. 538, l. -9* Powder Nº. 20 [missing dot] - *p. 601, first line of the note* The Prescriptions Nº. 54, 55, 56 [missing dot after Nº and periods instead of commas] The footnotes, marked in the text mostly by asterisks, symbols and alphabetic letters on a page by page basis, have been renumbered progressively throughout the book. The footnote * on page 256 does not appear to be referenced at any specific point on the printed page, and has been treated as footnote to the last word of the paragraph. Italics markup of abbreviations like _&c._, _K._, which was not always consistent in the original, has been retained as printed. The Greek letters _{alpha}_, _{beta}_, _{gamma}_ enumerating the prescriptions of § 214 have been replaced by the Latin letters _a_, _b_, _c_ for better character set portability. 
38117	----	The Book _of_ Life UPTON SINCLAIR THE BOOK OF LIFE _The_ Book of Life _By_ UPTON SINCLAIR VOLUME ONE: MIND AND BODY VOLUME TWO: LOVE AND SOCIETY UPTON SINCLAIR PASADENA, CALIFORNIA WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTORS _THE PAINE BOOK COMPANY_ CHICAGO COPYRIGHT, 1921, 1922 BY UPTON SINCLAIR _All Rights Reserved._ _To_ Kate Crane Gartz in acknowledgment of her unceasing efforts for a better world, and her fidelity to those who struggle to achieve it. INTRODUCTORY The writer of this book has been in this world some forty-two years. That may not seem long to some, but it is long enough to have made many painful mistakes, and to have learned much from them. Looking about him, he sees others making these same mistakes, suffering for lack of that same knowledge which he has so painfully acquired. This being the case, it seems a friendly act to offer his knowledge, minus the blunders and the pain. There come to the writer literally thousands of letters every year, asking him questions, some of them of the strangest. A man is dying of cancer, and do I think it can be cured by a fast? A man is unable to make his wife happy, and can I tell him what is the matter with women? A man has invested his savings in mining stock, and can I tell him what to do about it? A man works in a sweatshop, and has only a little time for self-improvement, and will I tell him what books he ought to read? Many such questions every day make one aware of a vast mass of people, earnest, hungry for happiness, and groping as if in a fog. The things they most need to know they are not taught in the schools, nor in the newspapers they read, nor in the church they attend. Of these agencies, the first is not entirely competent, the second is not entirely honest, and the third is not entirely up to date. Nor is there anywhere a book in which the effort has been made to give to everyday human beings the everyday information they need for the successful living of their lives. For the present book the following claims may be made. First, it is a modern book; its writer watches hour by hour the new achievements of the human mind, he reaches out for information about them, he seeks to adjust his own thoughts to them and to test them in his own living. Second, it is, or tries hard to be, a wise book; its writer is not among those too-ardent young radicals who leap to the conclusion that because many old things are stupid and tiresome, therefore everything that is old is to be spurned with contempt, and everything that proclaims itself new is to be taken at its own valuation. Third, it is an honest book; its writer will not pretend to know what he only guesses, and where it is necessary to guess, he will say so frankly. Finally, it is a kind book; it is not written for its author's glory, nor for his enrichment, but to tell you things that may be useful to you in the brief span of your life. It will attempt to tell you how to live, how to find health and happiness and success, how to work and how to play, how to eat and how to sleep, how to love and to marry and to care for your children, how to deal with your fellow men in business and politics and social life, how to act and how to think, what religion to believe, what art to enjoy, what books to read. A large order, as the boys phrase it! There are several ways for such a book to begin. It might begin with the child, because we all begin that way; it might begin with love, because that precedes the child; it might begin with the care of the body, explaining that sound physical health is the basis of all right living, and even of right thinking; it might begin as most philosophies do, by defining life, discussing its origin and fundamental nature. The trouble with this last plan is that there are a lot of people who have their ideas on life made up in tabloid form; they have creeds and catechisms which they know by heart, and if you suggest to them anything different, they give you a startled look and get out of your way. And then there is another, and in our modern world a still larger class, who say, "Oh, shucks! I don't go in for religion and that kind of thing." You offer them something that looks like a sermon, and they turn to the baseball page. Who will read this Book of Life? There will be, among others, the great American tired business man. He wrestles with problems and cares all day, and when he sits down to read in the evening, he says: "Make it short and snappy." There is the wife of the tired business man, the American perfect lady. She does most of the reading for the family; but she has never got down to anything fundamental in her life, and mostly she likes to read about exciting love affairs, which she distinguishes from the unexciting kind she knows by the word "romance." Then there is the still more tired American workingman, who has been "speeded up" all day under the bonus system or the piece-work system, and is apt to fall asleep in his chair before he finishes supper. Then there is the workingman's wife, who has slaved all day in the kitchen, and has a chance for a few minutes' intimacy with her husband before he falls asleep. She would like to have somebody tell her what to do for croup, but she is not sure that she has time to discuss the question whether life is worth living. Yet, I wonder; is there a single one among all these tired people, or even among the cynical people, who has not had some moment of awe when the thought came stabbing into his mind like a knife: "What a strange thing this life is! What am I anyhow? Where do I come from, and what is going to become of me? What do I mean, what am I here for?" I have sat chatting with three hoboes by a railroad track, cooking themselves a mulligan in an old can, and heard one of them say: "By God, it's a queer thing, ain't it, mate?" I have sat on the deck of a ship, looking out over the midnight ocean and talking with a sailor, and heard him use almost the identical words. It is not only in the class-room and the schools that the minds of men are grappling with the fundamental problems; in fact, it was not from the schools that the new religions and the great moral impulses of humanity took their origin. It was from lonely shepherds sitting on the hillsides, and from fishermen casting their nets, and from carpenters and tailors and shoemakers at their benches. Stop and think a bit, and you will realize it does make a difference what you believe about life, how it comes to be, where it is going, and what is your place in it. Is there a heaven with a God, who watches you day and night, and knows every thought you think, and will some day take you to eternal bliss if you obey his laws? If you really believe that, you will try to find out about his laws, and you will be comparatively little concerned about the success or failure of your business. Perhaps, on the other hand, you have knocked about in the world and lost your "faith"; you have been cheated and exploited, and have set out to "get yours," as the phrase is; to "feather your own nest." But some gust of passion seizes you, and you waste your substance, you wreck your life; then you wonder, "Who set that trap and baited it? Am I a creature of blind instincts, jealousies and greeds and hates beyond my own control entirely? Am I a poor, feeble insect, blown about in a storm and smashed? Or do I make the storm, and can I in any part control it?" No matter how busy you may be, no matter how tired you may be, it will pay you to get such things straight: to know a little of what the wise men of the past have thought about them, and more especially what science with its new tools of knowledge may have discovered. The writer of this book spent nine years of his life in colleges and universities; also he was brought up in a church. So he knows the orthodox teachings, he can say that he has given to the recognized wise men of the world every opportunity to tell him what they know. Then, being dissatisfied, he went to the unrecognized teachers, the enthusiasts and the "cranks" of a hundred schools. Finally, he thought for himself; he was even willing to try experiments upon himself. As a result, he has not found what he claims is ultimate or final truth; but he has what he might describe as a rough working draft, a practical outline, good for everyday purposes. He is going to have confidence enough in you, the reader, to give you the hardest part first; that is, to begin with the great fundamental questions. What is life, and how does it come to be? What does it mean, and what have we to do with it? Are we its masters or its slaves? What does it owe us, and what do we owe to it? Why is it so hard, and do we have to stand its hardness? And can we really know about all these matters, or will we be only guessing? Can we trust ourselves to think about them, or shall we be safer if we believe what we are told? Shall we be punished if we think wrong, and how shall we be punished? Shall we be rewarded if we think right, and will the pay be worth the trouble? Such questions as these I am going to try to answer in the simplest language possible. I would avoid long words altogether, if I could; but some of these long words mean certain definite things, and there are no other words to serve the purpose. You do not refuse to engage in the automobile business because the carburetor and the differential are words of four syllables. Neither should you refuse to get yourself straight with the universe because it is too much trouble to go to the dictionary and learn that the word "phenomenon" means something else than a little boy who can play the piano or do long division in his head. CONTENTS PART ONE: THE BOOK OF THE MIND PAGE CHAPTER I. THE NATURE OF LIFE 3 Attempts to show what we know about life; to set the bounds of real truth as distinguished from phrases and self-deception. CHAPTER II. THE NATURE OF FAITH 8 Attempts to show what we can prove by our reason, and what we know intuitively; what is implied in the process of thinking, and without which no thought could be. CHAPTER III. THE USE OF REASON 12 Attempts to show that in the field to which reason applies we are compelled to use it, and are justified in trusting it. CHAPTER IV. THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 17 Compares the ways of Nature with human morality, and tries to show how the latter came to be. CHAPTER V. NATURE AND MAN 21 Attempts to show how man has taken control of Nature, and is carrying on her processes and improving upon them. CHAPTER VI. MAN THE REBEL 27 Shows the transition stage between instinct and reason, in which man finds himself, and how he can advance to a securer condition. CHAPTER VII. MAKING OUR MORALS 31 Attempts to show that human morality must change to fit human facts, and there can be no judge of it save human reason. CHAPTER VIII. THE VIRTUE OF MODERATION 37 Attempts to show that wise conduct is an adjustment of means to ends, and depends upon the understanding of a particular set of circumstances. CHAPTER IX. THE CHOOSING OF LIFE 42 Discusses the standards by which we may judge what is best in life, and decide what we wish to make of it. CHAPTER X. MYSELF AND MY NEIGHBOR 50 Compares the new morality with the old, and discusses the relative importance of our various duties. CHAPTER XI. THE MIND AND THE BODY 53 Discusses the interaction between physical and mental things, and the possibility of freedom in a world of fixed causes. CHAPTER XII. THE MIND OF THE BODY 61 Discusses the subconscious mind, what it is, what it does to the body, and how it can be controlled and made use of by the intelligence. CHAPTER XIII. EXPLORING THE SUBCONSCIOUS 67 Discusses automatic writing, the analysis of dreams, and other methods by which a new universe of life has been brought to human knowledge. CHAPTER XIV. THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY 74 Discusses the survival of personality from the moral point of view: that is, have we any claim upon life, entitling us to live forever? CHAPTER XV. THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL 81 Discusses the data of psychic research, and the proofs of spiritism thus put before us. CHAPTER XVI. THE POWERS OF THE MIND 91 Sets forth the fact that knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery, and what science means to the people. CHAPTER XVII. THE CONDUCT OF THE MIND 98 Concludes the Book of the Mind with a study of how to preserve and develop its powers for the protection of our lives and the lives of all men. PART TWO: THE BOOK OF THE BODY CHAPTER XVIII. THE UNITY OF THE BODY 105 Discusses the body as a whole, and shows that health is not a matter of many different organs and functions, but is one problem of one organism. CHAPTER XIX. EXPERIMENTS IN DIET 115 Narrates the author's adventures in search of health, and his conclusions as to what to eat. CHAPTER XX. ERRORS IN DIET 123 Discusses the different kinds of foods, and the part they play in the making of health and disease. CHAPTER XXI. DIET STANDARDS 134 Discusses various foods and their food values, the quantities we need, and their money cost. CHAPTER XXII. FOODS AND POISONS 145 Concludes the subject of diet, and discusses the effect upon the system of stimulants and narcotics. CHAPTER XXIII. MORE ABOUT HEALTH 156 Discusses the subjects of breathing and ventilation, clothing, bathing and sleep. CHAPTER XXIV. WORK AND PLAY 163 Deals with the question of exercise, both for the idle and the overworked. CHAPTER XXV. THE FASTING CURE 169 Deals with Nature's own remedy for disease, and how to make use of it. CHAPTER XXVI. BREAKING THE FAST 177 Discusses various methods of building up the body after a fast, especially the milk diet. CHAPTER XXVII. DISEASES AND CURES 182 Discusses some of the commoner human ailments, and what is known about their cause and cure. PART ONE THE BOOK OF THE MIND CHAPTER I THE NATURE OF LIFE (Attempts to show what we know about life; to set the bounds of real truth as distinguished from phrases and self-deception.) If I could, I would begin this book by telling you what Life is. But unfortunately I do not know what Life is. The only consolation I can find is in the fact that nobody else knows either. We ask the churches, and they tell us that male and female created He them, and put them in the Garden of Eden, and they would have been happy had not Satan tempted them. But then you ask, who made Satan, and the explanation grows vague. You ask, if God made Satan, and knew what Satan was going to do, is it not the same as if God did it himself? So this explanation of the origin of evil gets you no further than the Hindoo picture of the world resting on the back of a tortoise, and the tortoise on the head of a snake--and nothing said as to what the snake rests on. Let us go to the scientist. I know a certain physiologist, perhaps the greatest in the world, and his eager face rises before me, and I hear his quick, impetuous voice declaring that he knows what Life is; he has told it in several big volumes, and all I have to do is to read them. Life is a tropism, caused by the presence of certain combinations of chemicals; my friend knows this, because he has produced the thing in his test-tubes. He is an exponent of a way of thought called Monism, which finds the ultimate source of being in forms of energy manifesting themselves as matter; he shows how all living things arise from that and sink back into it. But question this scientist more closely. What is this "matter" that you are so sure of? How do you know it? Obviously, through sensations. You never know matter itself, you only know its effects upon you, and you assume that the matter must be there to cause the sensation. In other words, "matter," which seems so real, turns out to be merely "a permanent possibility of sensation." And suppose there were to be sensations, caused, for example, by a sportive demon who liked to make fun of eminent physiologists--then there might be the appearance of matter and nothing else; in other words, there might be mind, and various states of mind. So we discover that the materialist, in the philosophic sense, is making just as large an act of faith, is pronouncing just as bold a dogma as any priest of any religion. This is an old-time topic of disputation. Before Mother Eddy there was Bishop Berkeley, and before Berkeley, there was Plato, and they and the materialists disputed until their hearers cried in despair, "What is Mind? No matter! What is Matter? Never mind!" But a century or two ago in a town of Prussia there lived a little, dried-up professor of philosophy, who sat himself down in his room and fixed his eyes on a church steeple outside the window, and for years on end devoted himself to examining the tools of thought with which the human mind is provided, and deciding just what work and how much of it they are fitted to do. So came the proof that our minds are incapable of reaching to or dealing with any ultimate reality whatever, but can comprehend only phenomena--that is to say, appearances--and their relations one with another. The Koenigsberg professor proved this once for all time, setting forth four propositions about ultimate reality, and proving them by exact and irrefutable logic, and then proving by equally exact and irrefutable logic their precise opposites and contraries. Anybody who has read and comprehended the four "antinomies" of Immanuel Kant[A] knows that metaphysics is as dead a subject as astrology, and that all the complicated theories which the philosophers from Heraclitus to Arthur Balfour have spun like spiders out of their inner consciousness, have no more relation to reality than the intricacies of the game of chess. [A] See Paulsen: "Life of Kant." The writer is sorry to make this statement, because he spent a lot of time reading these philosophers and acquainting himself with their subtle theories. He learned a whole language of long words, and even the special meanings which each philosopher or school of philosophers give to them. When he had got through, he had learned, so far as metaphysics is concerned, absolutely nothing, and had merely the job of clearing out of his mind great masses of verbal cobwebs. It was not even good intellectual training; the metaphysical method of thought is a _trap_. The person who thinks in absolutes and ultimates is led to believe that he has come to conclusions about reality, when as a matter of fact he has merely proved what he wants to believe; if he had wanted to believe the opposite, he could have proven that exactly as well--as his opponents will at once demonstrate. If you multiply two feet by two feet, the result represents a plain surface, or figure of two dimensions. If you multiply two feet by two feet by two feet, you have a solid, or figure of three dimensions--such as the world in which we live and move. But now, suppose you multiply two feet by two feet by two feet by two feet, what does that represent? For ages the minds of mathematicians and philosophers have been tempted by this fascinating problem of the "fourth dimension." They have worked out by analogy what such a world would be like. If you went into this "fourth dimension," you could turn yourself inside out, and come back to our present world in that condition, and no one of your three-dimension friends would be able to imagine how you had managed it, or to put you back again the way you belonged. And in this, it seems to me, we have the perfect analogy of metaphysical thinking. It is the "fourth dimension" of the mind, and plays as much havoc with sound thinking as a physical "fourth dimension" would play with--say, the prison system. A man who takes up an absolute--God, immortality, the origin of being, a first cause, free will, absolute right or wrong, infinite time or space, final truth, original substance, the "thing in itself"--that man disappears into a fourth dimension, and turns himself inside out or upside down or hindside foremost, and comes back and exhibits himself in triumph; then, when he is ready, he effects another disappearance, and another change, and is back on earth an ordinary human being. The world is full of schools of thought, theologians and metaphysicians and professors of academic philosophy, transcendentalists and theosophists and Christian Scientists, who perform such mental monkey-shines continuously before our eyes. They prove what they please, and the fact that no two of them prove the same thing makes clear to us in the end that none of them has proved anything. The Christian Scientist asserts that there is no such thing as matter, but that pain is merely a delusion of mortal mind; he continues serene in this faith until he runs into an automobile and sustains a compound fracture of the femur--whereupon he does exactly what any of the rest of us do, goes to a competent surgeon and has the bone set. On the other hand, some devoted young Socialists of my acquaintance have read Haeckel and Dietzgen, and adopted the dogma that matter is the first cause, and that all things have grown out of it and return to it; they have seen that the brain decays after death, they declare that the soul is a function of the brain--and because of such theories they deliberately reject the most powerful modes of appeal whereby men can be swayed to faith in human solidarity. The best books I know for the sweeping out of metaphysical cobwebs are "The Philosophy of Common Sense" and "The Creed of a Layman," by Frederic Harrison, leader of the English Positivists, a school of thought established by Auguste Comte. But even as I recommend these books, I recall the dissatisfaction with which I left them; for it appears that the Positivists have their dogmas like all the rest. Mr. Harrison is not content to say that mankind has not the mental tools for dealing with ultimate realities; he must needs prove that mankind never will and never can have these tools, I look back upon the long process of evolution and ask myself, What would an oyster think about Positivism? What would be the opinion of, let us say, a young turnip on the subject of Mr. Frederic Harrison's thesis? It may well be that the difference between a turnip and Mr. Harrison is not so great as will be the difference between Mr. Harrison and that super-race which some day takes possession of the earth and of all the universe. It does not seem to me good science or good sense to dogmatize about what this race will know, or what will be its tools of thought. What does seem to me good science and good sense is to take the tools which we now possess and use them to their utmost capacity. What is it that we know about life? We know a seemingly endless stream of sensations which manifest themselves in certain ways, and seem to inhere in what we call things and beings. We observe incessant change in all these phenomena, and we examine these changes and discover their ways. The ways seem to be invariable; so completely so that for practical purposes we assume them to be invariable, and base all our calculations and actions upon this assumption. Manifestly, we could not live otherwise, and the spread of scientific knowledge is the further tracing out of such "laws"--that is to say, the ways of behaving of existence--and the extending of our belief in their invariability to wider and wider fields. Once upon a time we were told that "the wind bloweth where it listeth." But now we are quite certain that there are causes for the blowing of the wind, and when our researches have been carried far enough, we shall be able to account for and to predict every smallest breath of air. Once we were told that dreams came from a supernatural world; but now we are beginning to analyze dreams, and to explain what they come from and what they mean. Perhaps we still find human nature a bewildering and unaccountable thing; but some day we shall know enough of man's body and his mind, his past and his present, to be able to explain human nature and to produce it at will, precisely as today we produce certain reactions in our test-tubes, and do it so invariably that the most cautious financier will invest tens of millions of dollars in a process, and never once reflect that he is putting too much trust in the permanence of nature. In many departments of thought great specialists are now working, experimenting and observing by the methods of science. If in the course of this book we speak of "certainty," we mean, of course, not the "absolute" certainty of any metaphysical dogma, but the practical certainty of everyday common sense; the certainty we feel that eating food will satisfy our hunger, and that tomorrow, as today, two and two will continue to make four. CHAPTER II THE NATURE OF FAITH (Attempts to show what we can prove by our reason, and what we know intuitively; what is implied in the process of thinking, and without which no thought could be.) The primary fact that we know about life is growth. Herbert Spencer has defined this growth, or evolution, in a string of long words which may be summed up to mean: the process whereby a number of things which are simple and like one another become different parts of one thing which is complex. If we observe this process in ourselves, and the symptoms of it in others, we discover that when it is proceeding successfully, it is accompanied by a sensation of satisfaction which we call happiness or pleasure; also that when it is thwarted or repressed, it is accompanied by a different sensation which we call pain. Subtle metaphysicians, both inside the churches and out, have set themselves to the task of proving that there must be some other object of life than the continuance of these sensations of pleasure which accompany successful growth. They have proven to their own satisfaction that morality will collapse and human progress come to an end unless we can find some other motive, something more permanent and more stimulating, something "higher," as they phrase it. All I can say is that I gave reverent attention to the arguments of these moralists and theologians, and that for many years I believed their doctrines; but I believe them no longer. I interpret the purpose of life to be the continuous unfoldment of its powers, its growth into higher forms--that is to say, forms more complex and subtly contrived, capable of more intense and enduring kinds of that satisfaction which is nature's warrant of life. If you wish to take up this statement and argue about it, please wait until you have read the chapter "Nature and Man," and noted my distinction between instinctive life and rational life. For men, the word "growth" does not mean _any_ growth, _all_ growth, blind and indiscriminate growth. It does not mean growth for the tubercle bacillus, nor growth for the anopheles mosquito, nor growth for the house-fly, the spider and the louse. Neither do we mean that the purpose of man's own life is _any_ pleasure, _all_ pleasure, blind and indiscriminate pleasure; the pleasure of alcohol, the pleasure of cannibalism, the pleasure of the modern form of cannibalism which we call "making money." We have survived in the struggle for existence by the cooperative and social use of our powers of judgment; and our judgment is that which selects among forms of growth, which gives preference to wheat and corn over weeds, and to self-control and honesty over treachery and greed. So when we say that the purpose of life is happiness, we do not mean to turn mankind loose at a hog-trough; we mean that our duty as thinkers is to watch life, to test it, to pick and choose among the many forms it offers, and to say: This kind of growth is more permanent and full of promise, it is more fertile, more deeply satisfactory; therefore, we choose this, and sanction the kind of pleasure which it brings. Other kinds we decide are temporary and delusive; therefore we put in jail anyone who sells alcoholic drink, and we refuse to invite to our home people who are lewd, and some day we shall not permit our children to attend moving picture shows in which the modern form of cannibalism is glorified. The reader, no doubt, has been taught a distinction between "science" and "faith." He is saying now, "You believe that everything is to be determined by human reason? You reject all faith?" I answer, No; I am not rejecting faith; I am merely refusing to apply it to objects with which it has nothing to do. You do not take it as a matter of faith that a package of sugar weighs a pound; you put it on the scales and find out--in other words, you make it a matter of experiment. But all the creeds of all the religious sects are full of pronouncements which are no more matters of faith than the question of the weighing of sugar. Is pork a wholesome article of food or is it not? All Christians will readily acknowledge that this is a matter to be determined by the microscope and other devices of experimental science; but then some Jew rises in the meeting and puts the question: Is dancing injurious to the character? And immediately all members of the Methodist Episcopal Church vote to close the discussion. What is faith? Faith is the instinct which underlies all being, assuring us that life is worth while and honest, a thing to be trusted; in other words, it is the certainty that successful growth always is and always will be accompanied by pleasure. The most skeptical scientist in the world, even my friend the physiologist who proves that life is nothing but a tropism, and can be produced by mixing chemicals in test-tubes--this eager friend is one of the most faithful men I know. He is burning up with the faith that knowledge is worth possessing, and also that it is possible of attainment. With what boundless scorn would he receive any suggestion to the contrary--for example, the idea that life might be a series of sensations which some sportive demon is producing for the torment of man! More than that, this friend is burning up with the certainty that knowledge can be spread, that his fellow men will receive it and apply it, and that it will make them happy when they do. Why else does he write his learned books in defense of the materialist philosophy? And that same faith which animates the great monist animates likewise every child who toddles off to school, and every chicken which emerges from an egg, and every blade of grass which thrusts its head above the ground. Not every chicken survives, of course, and all the blades of grass wither in the fall; nevertheless, the seeds of grass are spread, and chickens make food for philosophers, and the great process of life continues to manifest its faith. In the end the life process produces man, who, as we shall presently see, takes it up, and judges it, and makes it over to suit himself. You will note from this that I am what is called an optimist; whereas some of the great philosophers of the world have called themselves pessimists. But I notice with a smile that these are often the men who work hardest of all to spread their ideas, and thus testify to the worthwhileness of truth and the perfectibility of mankind. There has come to be a saying among settlement workers and physicians, who are familiar with poverty and its effects upon life, that there are no bad babies and good babies, there are only sick babies and well babies. In the same way, I would say there are no pessimists and optimists, there are only mentally sick people and mentally well people. Everywhere throughout life, both animal and vegetable, health means happiness, and gives abundant evidence of that fact. All healthy life is satisfactory to itself; when it develops reason, it tries to find out why, and this is yet another testimony to the fact that having power and using it is pleasant. When I was in college the professor would propound the old question: "Would you rather be a happy pig or an unhappy philosopher?" My answer always was: "I would rather be a happy philosopher." The professor replied: "Perhaps that is not possible." But I said: "I will prove that it is!" CHAPTER III THE USE OF REASON (Attempts to show that in the field to which reason applies we are compelled to use it, and are justified in trusting it.) The great majority of people are brought up to believe that some particular set of dogmas are objects of faith, and that there are penalties more or less severe for the application of reason to these dogmas. What particular set it happens to be is a matter of geography; in a crowded modern city like New York, it is a matter of the particular block on which the child is born. A child born on Hester Street will be taught that his welfare depends upon his never eating meat and butter from the same dish. A child born on Tenth Avenue will be taught that it is a matter of his not eating meat on Fridays. A child born on Madison Avenue will be taught that it is a question of the precise metaphysical process by which bread is changed into human body and wine into human blood. Each of these children will be assured that his human reason is fallible, that it is extremely dangerous to apply it to this "sacred" subject, and that the proper thing to do is to accept the authority of some ancient tradition, or some institution, or some official, or some book for which a special sanction is claimed. Has there ever been in the world any revelation, outside of or above human reason? Could there ever be such a thing? In order to test this possibility, select for yourself the most convincing way by which a special revelation could be handed down to mankind. Take any of the ancient orthodox ways, the finding of graven tablets on a mountain-top, or a voice speaking from a burning bush, or an angel appearing before a great concourse of people and handing out a written scroll. Suppose that were to happen, let us say, at the next Yale-Harvard football game; suppose the news were to be flashed to the ends of the earth that God had thus presented to mankind an entirely new religion. What would be the process by which the people of London or Calcutta would decide upon that revelation? First, they would have to consider the question whether it was an American newspaper fake--by no means an easy question. Second, they would have to consider the chances of its being an optical delusion. Then, assuming they accepted the sworn testimony of ten thousand mature and competent witnesses, they would have to consider the possibility of someone having invented a new kind of invisible aeroplane. Assuming they were convinced that it was really a supernatural being, they would next have to decide the chances of its being a visitor from Mars, or from the fourth dimension of space, or from the devil. In considering all this, they would necessarily have to examine the alleged revelation. What was the literary quality of it? What was the moral quality of it? What would be the effect upon mankind if the alleged revelation were to be universally adopted and applied? Manifestly, all these are questions for the human reason, the human judgment; there is no other method of determining them, there would be nothing for any individual person, or for men as a whole to do, except to apply their best powers, and, as the phrase is, "make up their minds" about the matter. Reason would be the judge, and the new revelation would be the prisoner at the bar. Humanity might say, this is a real inspiration, we will submit ourselves to it and follow it, and allow no one from now on to question it. But inevitably there would be some who would say, "Tommyrot!" There would be others who would say, "This new revelation isn't working, it is repressing progress, it is stifling the mind." These people would stand up for their conviction, they would become martyrs, and all the world would have to discuss them. And who would decide between them and the great mass of men? Reason, the judge, would decide. It is perfectly true that human reason is fallible. Infallibility is an absolute, a concept of the mind, and not a reality. Life has not given us infallibility, any more than it has given us omniscience, or omnipotence, or any other of those attributes which we call divine. Life has given us powers, more or less weak, more or less strong, but all capable of improvement and development. Reason is the tool whereby mankind has won supremacy over the rest of the animal kingdom, and is gradually taking control of the forces of nature. It is the best tool we have, and because it is the best, we are driven irresistibly to use it. And how strange that some of us can find no better use for it than to destroy its own self! Visit one of the Jesuit fathers and hear him seek to persuade you that reason is powerless against faith and must abdicate to faith. You answer, "Yes, father, you have persuaded me. I admit the fallibility of my mortal powers; and I begin by applying my doubts of them to the arguments by which you have just convinced me. I was convinced, but of course I cannot be sure of a conviction, attained by fallible reason. Therefore I am just where I was before--except that I am no longer in position to be certain of anything." You answer in good faith, and take up your hat and depart, closing the door of the good father's study behind you. But stop a moment, why do you close the door? You close the door because your reason tells you that otherwise the cold air outside will blow in and make the good father uncomfortable. You put your hat on, because your reason has not yet been applied to the problem of the cause of baldness. You step out onto the street, and when you hear a sudden noise, you step back onto the curbstone, because your reason tells you that an automobile is coming, and that on the sidewalk you are safe from it. So you go on, using your reason in a million acts of your life whereby your life is preserved and developed. And if anybody suggested that the fallibility of your reason should cause you to delay in front of an automobile, you would apply your reason to the problem of that person and decide that he was insane. And I say that just as there is insanity in everyday judgments and relationships, so there is insanity in philosophy, metaphysics and religion; the seed and source of all this kind of insanity being the notion that it is the duty of anybody to believe anything which cannot completely justify itself as reasonable. Nowadays, as ideas are spreading, the champions of dogma are hard put to it, and you will find their minds a muddle of two points of view. The Jewish rabbi will strive desperately to think of some hygienic objection to the presence of meat and butter on the same plate; the Catholic priest will tell you that fish is a very wholesome article of food, and that anyhow we all eat too much; the Methodist and the Baptist and the Presbyterian will tell you that if men did not rest one day in seven their health would break down. Thus they justify faith by reason, and reconcile the conflict between science and theology. Accepting this method, I experiment and learn that it improves my digestion and adds to my working power if I play tennis on Sunday. I follow this indisputably rational form of conduct--and find myself in conflict with the "faith" of the ancient State of Delaware, which obliges me to serve a term in its state's prison for having innocently and unwittingly desecrated its day of holiness! If you read Professor Bury's little book, "A History of Freedom of Thought," you will discover that there has been a long conflict over the right of men to use their minds--and the victory is not yet. The term "free thinker," which ought to be the highest badge a man could wear, is still almost everywhere throughout America a term of vague terror. In the State of California today there is a Criminal Syndicalism Act, which provides a maximum of fourteen years in jail for any person who shall write or publish or speak any words expressive of the idea that the United States government should be overthrown in the same way that it was established--that is, by force; only a few months ago the writer of this book was on the witness stand for two days, and had the painful, almost incredible experience of being battered and knocked about by an inquisitive district attorney, who cross-examined him as to every detail of his beliefs, and read garbled extracts from his published writings, in the effort to make it appear that he held some belief which might possibly prejudice the jury against him. The defendant in this case, a returned soldier who had spent three years as a volunteer in the trenches, and had been twice wounded and once gassed, was accused, not merely of approving the Soviet form of government, but also of having printed uncomplimentary references to priests and religious institutions. Nowadays it is the propertied class which has taken possession of the powers of government, and which presumes to censor the thinking of mankind in its own interest. But whether it be priestcraft or whether it be capitalism which seeks to bind the human mind, it comes to the same thing, and the effort must be met by the assertion that, in spite of errors and blunders, and the serious harm these may do, there is no way for men to advance save by using the best powers of thinking they possess, and proclaiming their conclusions to others. Speaking theologically for the moment, God has given us our reasoning powers, and also the impulse to use them, and it is inconceivable that He should seek to restrict their use, or should give to anyone the power to forbid their use. It is His truth which we seek, and His which we proclaim. In so doing we perform our highest act of faith, and we refuse to be troubled by the idea that for this service He will reward us by an eternity of sulphur and brimstone. Throughout the remainder of this book it will be assumed that the reader accepts this point of view, or, at any rate, that he is willing for purposes of experiment to give it a trial and see where it leads him. We shall proceed to consider the problems of human life in the light of reason, to determine how they come to be, and how they can be solved. CHAPTER IV THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY (Compares the ways of nature with human morality, and tries to show how the latter came to be.) Seventy years ago Charles Darwin published his book, "The Origin of Species," in which he defied the theological dogma of his time by the shocking idea that life had evolved by many stages of progress from the diatom to man. This of course did not conform to the story of the Garden of Eden, and so "Darwinism" was fought as an invention of the devil, and in the interior of America there are numerous sectarian colleges where the dread term "evolution" is spoken in awed whispers. Only the other day I read in my newspaper the triumphant proclamation of some clergyman that "Darwinism" had been overthrown. This reverend gentleman had got mixed up because some biologists were disputing some detail of the method by which the evolution of species had been brought about. Do species change by the gradual elimination of the unfit, or do they change by sudden leaps, the "mutation" theory of de Vries? Are acquired powers transmitted to posterity, or is the germ plasm unaffected by its environment? Concerning such questions the scientists debate. But the fact that life has evolved in an ordered series from the lower forms to the higher, and that each individual reproduces in embryo and in infancy the history of this long process--these facts are now the basis of all modern thinking, and as generally accepted as the rotation of the earth. You may study this process of evolution from the outside, in the multitude of forms which it has assumed and in their reactions one to another; or you may study it from the inside in your own soul, the emotions which accompany it, the impulse or craving which impels it, the _élan vital_, as it is called by the French philosopher Bergson. The Christians call it love, and Nietzsche, who hated Christianity, called it "the will to power," and persuaded himself that it was the opposite of love. You will find in the essays of Professor Huxley, one entitled "Evolution and Ethics," in which he sets forth the complete unmorality of nature, and declares that there is no way by which what mankind knows as morality can have originated in the process of nature or can be reconciled to natural law. This statement, coming from a leading agnostic, was welcome to the theologians. But when I first read the essay, as a student of sixteen, it seemed to me narrow; I thought I saw a standpoint from which the contradiction disappeared. The difference between the morality of Christ and the morality of nature is merely the difference between a lower and a higher stage of mental development. The animal loves and seeks by instinct to preserve the life which it knows--that is to say, its own life and the life of its young. The wolf knows nothing about the feelings of a deer; but man in his savage state develops reasoning powers enough to realize that there are others like himself, the members of his own tribe, and he makes for himself taboos which forbid him to kill and eat the members of that tribe. At the present time humanity has developed its reason and imaginative sympathy to include in the "tribe" one or two hundred million people; while to those outside the tribe it still preserves the attitude of the wolf. How came it that a mind so acute as Huxley's went so far astray on the question of the evolution of morality? The answer is that this was the factory age in England, and the great scientist, a rebel in theological matters, was in economics a child of his time. We find him using the formulas of bourgeois biology to ridicule Henry George and his plea for the freeing of the land. "Competition is the life of trade," ran the nineteenth century slogan; and competition was the god of nineteenth century biology. Tennyson summed it up in the phrase: "Nature red in tooth and claw with ravin;" and this was found convenient by Manchester manufacturers who wished to shut little children up for fourteen hours a day in cotton mills, and to harness women to drag cars in the coal mines, and to be told by the learned men of their colleges and the holy men of their churches that this was "the survival of the fittest," it was nature's way of securing the advancement of the race. But now we are preparing for an era of cooperation, and it occurs to our men of science to go back to nature and find out what really are her ways. If you will read Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution," you will find a complete refutation of the old bourgeois biology, and a view of nature which reveals in it the germs of human morality. Kropotkin points out that everywhere throughout nature it is the social and not the solitary animals which are most numerous and most successful. There are many millions of ants and bees for every hawk or eagle, and certainly in the state of nature there were thousands of deer for every lion or tiger that preyed upon them. And all these social creatures have their ways of being, which it requires no stress of the imagination to compare with the tribal customs and the moral codes of mankind. The different animals prey upon one another, but they do not prey upon their own species, except in a few rare cases. The only beast that makes a regular practice of exploiting his own kind is man. By hundreds of interesting illustrations Kropotkin shows that mutual aid and mutual self-protection are the means whereby the higher forms of being have been evolved. Insects and birds and fish, nearly all the herbivorous mammals, and even a great many of the carnivores, help one another and protect one another. The chattering monkeys in the treetops drove out the saber-tooth tiger from the grove because there were so many of them, and when they saw him they all set up a shriek and clamor which deafened and confused him. And when by and by these monkeys developed an opposed thumb, and broke off a branch of a tree for a club, and fastened a sharp stone on the end of it for an axe, and fell upon the saber-toothed tiger and exterminated him, they did it because they had learned solidarity--even as the workers of the world are today learning solidarity in the face of the beast of capitalism. Man has survived by the cunning of his brain, we are told, and that is true. But first among the products of that cunning brain has been the knowledge that by himself he is the most helpless and pitiful of creatures, while standing together and forming societies and developing moralities, he is master of the world. He has not yet learned that lesson entirely; he has learned it only for his own nation. Therefore he takes the highest skill of his hand and the subtlest wit of his brain, and uses them to manufacture poison gases. At the present hour he is painfully realizing that his poison formulas all become known to the tribes whom he calls his enemies, and so it is his own destruction he is engaged in contriving. In other words, man has come to a time when his mechanical skill, his mastery over the forces of nature, has developed more rapidly than his moral sense and his imaginative sympathy. His ability to destroy life has become dangerously greater than his desire to preserve it. So he confronts the fair face of nature as an insane creature, wrecking not merely everything that he himself has built up, but everything that nature has built in the ages before him. He is striving now with infinite agony to make this fact real to himself, and to mend his evil ways; and the first step in that process is to root out from his mind the devil's doctrine which in his blindness and greed he has himself implanted, that there is any way for him to find real happiness, or to make any worth while progress on this earth, by the method of inflicting misery and torment upon his fellow men. CHAPTER V NATURE AND MAN (Attempts to show how man has taken control of nature, and is carrying on her processes and improving upon them.) If the argument of the preceding chapter is sound, human morality is not a fixed and eternal set of laws, but is, like everything else in the world, a product of natural evolution. We can trace the history of it, just as we trace the story of the rocks. It is not a mysterious or supernatural thing, it is simply the reaction of man to his environment, and more especially to his fellow men. The source of it is that same inner impulse, that love of life, that joy in growing, that faith which appears to be the soul of all being. Man is a part of nature and a product of nature; in many fundamental respects his ways are still nature's ways and his laws still nature's laws. But there are other and even more significant ways in which man has separated himself from nature and made himself something quite different. In order to reveal this clearly, we draw a distinction between nature and man. This is a proper thing to do, provided we bear in mind that our classification is not permanent or final. We distinguish frogs from tadpoles, in spite of the fact that at one stage the creature is half tadpole and half frog. We distinguish the animal from the vegetable kingdom, despite the fact that in their lower forms they cannot be distinguished. What, precisely, is the difference between nature and man? The difference lies in the fact that nature is apparently blind in her processes; she produces a million eggs in order to give life to one salmon, she produces countless millions of salmon to be devoured by other fish apparently no better than salmon. Poets may take up the doctrine of evolution and dress it out in theological garments, talking about the "one far off divine event towards which the whole creation moves," but for all we can see, nature, apart from man, is just as well satisfied to move in circles, and to come back exactly where she started. Nature made a whole world of complicated creatures in the steamy, luke-warm swamps of the Mesozoic era, and then, as if deciding that the pattern of a large body and a small brain was not a success, she froze them all to death with a glacial epoch, and we have nothing but the bones to tell us about them. No one understands anything about evolution until he has realized that the phrase "the survival of the fittest" does not mean the survival of the best from any human point of view. It merely means the survival of those capable of surviving in some particular environment. We consider our present civilization as "fit"; but if astronomical changes should cause another ice age, we should discover that our "fitness" depended upon our ability to live on lichens, or on something we could grow by artificial light in the bowels of the earth. So much for our ancient mother, nature. But now--whether we say with the theologians that it was divine providence, or with the materialist philosophers that it was an accidental mixing of atoms--at any rate it has come about that nature has recently produced creatures who are conscious of her process, who are able to observe and criticize it, to take up her work and carry it on in their own way, for better or for worse. Whether by accident or design, there has been on parts of our planet such a combination of climate and soil as has brought into being a new product of nature, a heightened form of life which we call "intelligence." Creation opens its eyes, and beholds the work of the creator, and decides that it is good--yet not so good as it might be! Creation takes up the work of the creator, and continues it, in many respects annulling it, in other respects revising it entirely. Whether a sonnet is a better or a higher product than a spider is a question it would be futile to discuss; but this, at least, should be clear--nature has produced an infinity of spiders, but nature never produced a sonnet, nor anything resembling it. Man, the creature of God, takes over the functions of God. This fact may shock us, or it may inspire us; to the metaphysically minded it offers a great variety of fascinating problems. Can it be that God is in process of becoming, that there is no God until he has become, in us and through us? H. G. Wells sets forth this curious idea; and then, of course, the bishops and the clergy rise up in indignation and denounce Mr. Wells as an upstart and trespasser upon their field. They have been worshipping their God for some three or four thousand years, and know that He has been from eternity; He created the world at His will, and how shall impious man presume to rise up and criticize His product, and imagine that he can improve upon it? Man, with his cheap and silly little toys, his sonnets and scientific systems, his symphony concerts and such pale imitations of celestial harmonies! Mr. Wells, in his character of God in the making, has created a bishop of his own, and no doubt would maintain the thesis that he is a far better bishop than any created by the God of the Anglican churches. We will leave Mr. Wells' bishop to argue these problems with God's bishops, and will merely remind the reader of our warning about these metaphysical matters. You can prove anything and everything, whichever and however, all or both; and discussions of the subject are merely your enunciation of the fact that you have your private truth as you want it. It may be that there is an Infinite Consciousness, which carries the whole process of creation in itself, and that all the seeming wastes and blunders of nature can be explained from some point of view at present beyond the reach of our minds. On the other hand it may be that consciousness is now dawning in the universe for the first time. It may be that it is an accident, a fleeting product like the morning mist on the mountain top. On the other hand, it may be that it is destined to grow and expand and take control of the entire universe, as a farmer takes control of a field for his own purposes. It may be that just as our individual fragments of intelligence communicate and merge into a family, a club, a nation, a world culture, so we shall some day grope our way toward the consciousness of other planets, or of other states of being subsisting on this planet unknown to us, or perhaps even toward the cosmic soul, the universal consciousness which we call God. But meantime, all we can say with positiveness is this: man, the created, is becoming the creator. He is taking up the world purpose, he is imposing upon it new purposes of his own, he is attempting to impose upon it a moral code, to test it and discipline it by a new standard which he calls economy. To the present writer this seems the most significant fact about life, the most fascinating point of view from which life can be regarded. The reader who wishes to follow it into greater detail is referred to a little book by Professor E. Ray Lankester, "The Kingdom of Man"; especially the opening essay, with its fascinating title, "Nature's Insurgent Son." In what ways have the reasoned and deliberate purposes of man revised and even supplanted the processes of nature? The ways are so many that it would be easier to mention those in which he has not done so. A modern civilized man is hardly content with anything that nature does, nor willing to accept any of nature's products. He will not eat nature's fruits, he prefers the kinds that he himself has brought into being. He is not content with the skin that nature has given him; he has made himself an infinite variety of complicated coverings. He objects to nature's habit of pouring cold water upon him, and so he has built himself houses in which he makes his own climate; he has recently taken to creating for himself houses which roll along the ground, or which fly through the air, or which swim under the surface of the sea; so he carries his private climate with him to all these places. It was nature's custom to remove her blunders and her experiments quickly from her sight. But man has decided that he loves life so well that he will preserve even the imbeciles, the lame and the halt and the blind. In a state of nature, if a man's eyes were not properly focused, he blundered into the lair of a tiger and was eaten. But civilized man despises such a method of maintaining the standard of human eyes; he creates for himself a transparent product, ground to such a curve that it corrects the focus of his eyes, and makes them as good as any other eyes. In ten thousand such ways we might name, man has rebelled against the harshness of his ancient mother, and has freed himself from her control. But still he is the child of his mother, and so it is his way to act first, and then to realize what he has done. So it comes about that very few, even of the most highly educated men, are aware how completely the ancient ways of nature have been suppressed by her "insurgent son." It is a good deal as in the various trades and professions which have developed with such amazing rapidity in modern civilization; the paper man knows how to make paper, the shoe man knows how to make shoes, the optician knows about grinding glasses, but none of these knows very much about the others' specialties, and has no realization of how far the other has gone. So it comes about that in our colleges we are still teaching ancient and immutable "laws of nature," which in the actual practice of men at work are as extinct and forgotten as the dodo. In all colleges, except a few which have been tainted by Socialist thought, the students are solemnly learning the so-called "Malthusian law," that population presses continually upon the limits of subsistence, there are always a few more people in every part of the world than that part of the world is able to maintain. At any time we increase the world's productive powers, population will increase correspondingly, so there can never be an end to human misery, and abortion, war and famine are simply nature's eternal methods of adjusting man to his environment. Thus solemnly we are taught in the colleges. And yet, nine out of ten of the students come from homes where the parents have discovered the modern practice of birth control; all the students are themselves finding out about it in one way or another, and will proceed when they marry to restrict themselves to two or three children. In vain will the ghost of their favorite statesman and hero, Theodore Roosevelt, be traveling up and down the land, denouncing them for the dreadful crime of "race suicide"--that is to say, their presuming to use their reason to put an end to the ghastly situation revealed by the Malthusian law, over-population eternally recurring and checked by abortion, war and famine! In vain will the ghost of their favorite saint and moralist, Anthony Comstock, be traveling up and down the land, putting people in jail for daring to teach to poor women what every rich woman knows, and for attempting to change the entirely man-made state of affairs whereby an intelligent and self-governing Anglo-Saxon land is being in two or three generations turned over to a slum population of Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Portuguese, French-Canadians, Mexicans and Japanese! Likewise in every orthodox college the student is taught what his professors are pleased to call "the law of diminishing returns of agriculture." That is to say, additional labor expended upon a plot of land does not result in an equal increase of produce, and the increase grows less, until finally you come to a time when no matter how much labor you expend, you can get no more produce from that plot of land. All professors teach this, because fifty years ago it was true, and since that time it has not occurred to any professor of political science to visit a farm. And all the while, out in the suburbs of the city where the college is located, market gardeners are practicing on an enormous scale a new system of intensive agriculture which makes the "law of diminishing returns" a foolish joke. As Kropotkin shows in his book, "Fields, Factories and Workshops," the modern intensive gardener, by use of glass and the chemical test-tube, has developed an entirely new science of plant raising. He is independent of climate, he makes his own climate; he is independent of the defects of the soil, he would just as soon start from nothing and make his soil upon an asphalt pavement. By doubling his capital investment he raises, not twice as much produce, but ten times as much. If his methods were applied to the British Isles, he could raise sufficient produce on this small surface to feed the population of the entire globe. So we see that by simple and entirely harmless devices man is in position to restrict or to increase population as he sees fit. Also he is in position to raise food and produce the necessities of life for a hundred or thousand times as many people as are now on the earth. But superstition ordains involuntary parenthood, and capitalism ordains that land shall be held out of use for speculation, or shall be exploited for rent! And this is done in the name of "nature"--that old nature of the "tooth and claw," whose ancient plan it is "that they shall take who have the power, and they shall keep who can"; that ancient nature which has been so entirely suppressed and supplanted by civilized man, and which survives only as a ghost, a skeleton to be resurrected from the tomb, for the purpose of frightening the enslaved. When a predatory financier wishes a fur overcoat to protect himself from the cold, or when he hires a masseur to keep up the circulation of his blood, you do not find him troubling himself about the laws of "nature"; never will he mention this old scarecrow, except when he is trying to persuade the workers of the world to go on paying him tribute for the use of the natural resources of the earth! CHAPTER VI MAN THE REBEL (Shows the transition stage between instinct and reason, in which man finds himself, and how he can advance to a securer condition.) In the state of nature you find every creature living a precarious existence, incessantly beset by enemies; and the creature survives only so long as it keeps itself at the top of its form. The result is the maintenance of the type in its full perfection, and, under the competitive pressure, a gradual increase of its powers. Excepting when sudden eruptions of natural forces occur, every creature is perfectly provided with a set of instincts for all emergencies; it is in harmonious relationship to its environment, it knows how to do what it has to do, and even its fears and its pains serve for its protection. But now comes man and overthrows this state of nature, abolishes the competitive struggle, and changes at his own insolent will both his environment and his reaction thereto. Man's changes are, in the beginning, all along one line; they are for his own greater comfort, the avoidance of the inconveniences of nature and the stresses of the competitive struggle. In a state of nature there are no fat animals, but in civilization there are not merely fat animals, but fat men to eat the fat animals. In a state of nature no animal loafs very long; it has to go out and hunt its food again. But man, by his superior cunning, compels the animals to work for him, and also his fellow men. So he produces unlimited wealth for himself; not merely can he eat and drink and sleep all he wants, but he builds a whole elaborate set of laws and moral customs and religious codes about this power, he invents manners and customs and literatures and arts, expressive of his superiority to nature and to his fellow men, and of his ability to enslave and exploit them. So he destroys for his imperious self the beneficent guardianship which nature had maintained over him; he develops a thousand complicated diseases, a thousand monstrous abnormalities of body and mind and spirit. And each one of these diseases and abnormalities is a new life of its own; it develops a body of knowledge, a science, and perhaps an art; it becomes the means of life, the environment and the determining destiny of thousands, perhaps millions, of human beings. So continues the growth of the colossal structure which we call civilization--in part still healthy and progressive, but in part as foul and deadly as a gigantic cancer. What is to be done about this cancer? First of all, it must be diagnosed, the extent of it precisely mapped out and the causes of it determined. Man, the rebel, has rejected his mother nature, and has lost and for the most part forgotten the instincts with which she provided him. He has destroyed the environment which, however harsh to the individual, was beneficent to the race, and has set up in the place of it a gigantic pleasure-house, with talking machines and moving pictures and soda fountains and manicure parlors and "gents' furnishing establishments." Shall we say that man is to go back to a state of nature, that he shall no longer make asylums for the insane and homes for the defective, eye-glasses for the astigmatic and malted milk for the dyspeptic? There are some who preach that. Among the multitude of strange books and pamphlets which come in my mail, I found the other day a volume from England, "Social Chaos and the Way Out," by Alfred Baker Read, a learned and imposing tome of 364 pages, wherein with all the paraphernalia of learning it is gravely maintained that the solution for the ills of civilization is a return to the ancient Greek practice of infanticide. Every child at birth is to be examined by a committee of physicians, and if it is found to possess any defect, or if the census has established that there are enough babies in the world for the present, this baby shall be mercifully and painlessly asphyxiated. You might think that this is a joke, after the fashion of Swift's proposal for eating the children of famine-stricken Ireland. I have spent some time examining this book before I risk committing myself to the statement that it is the work of a sober scientist, with no idea whatever of fun. If we are going to think clearly on this subject, the first point we have to understand is that nature has nothing to do with it. We cannot appeal to nature, because we are many thousands of years beyond her sway. We left her when the first ape came down from the treetop and fastened a sharp stone in the end of his club; we bade irrevocable good-bye to her when the first man kept himself from freezing and altered his diet by means of fire. Therefore, it is no argument to say that this, that, or the other remedy is "unnatural." Our choice will lie among a thousand different courses, but the one thing we may be sure of is that none of them will be "natural." Bairnsfather, in one of his war cartoons, portrays a British officer on leave, who got homesick for the trenches and went out into the garden and dug himself a hole in the mud and sat shivering in the rain all night. And this amuses us vastly; but we should be even more amused if any kind of reformer, physician, moralist, clergyman or legislator should suggest to us any remedy for our ills that was really "according to nature." Civilized man, creature of art and of knowledge, has no love for nature except as an object for the play of his fancy and his wit. He means to live his own life, he means to hold himself above nature with all his powers. Yet, obviously, he cannot go on accumulating diseases, he cannot give his life-blood to the making of a cancer while his own proper tissues starve. He must somehow divert the flow of his energies, his social blood-stream, so to speak, from the cancer to the healthy growth. To abandon the metaphor, man will determine by the use of his reason what he wishes life to be; he will choose the highest forms of it to which he can attain. He will then, by the deliberate act of his own will, devote his energies to those tasks; he will make for himself new laws, new moral codes, new customs and ways of thought, calculated to bring to reality the ideal which he has formed. So only can man justify himself as a creator, so can he realize the benefit and escape the penalties of his revolt from his ancient mother. And then, perhaps, we shall make the discovery that we have come back to nature, only in a new form. Nature, harsh and cruel, wasteful and blind as we call her, yet had her deep wisdom; she cared for the species, she protected and preserved the type. Man, in his new pride of power, has invented a philosophy which he dignifies by the name of "individualism." He lives and works for himself; he chooses to wear silk shirts, and to break the speed limit, and to pin ribbons and crosses on his chest. Now what he must do with his new morality, if he wishes to save himself from degeneration, is to manifest the wisdom and far vision of the old mother whom he spurned, and to say to himself, deliberately, as an act of high daring: I will protect the species, I will preserve the type! I will deny myself the raptures of alcoholic intoxication, because it damages the health of my offspring; I will deny myself the amusement of sexual promiscuity for the same reason. I will devise imitations of the chase and of battle in order that I may keep my physical body up to the best standard of nature. Because I understand that all civilized life is based upon intelligence, I will acquire knowledge and spread it among my fellow men. Because I perceive that civilization is impossible without sympathy, and because sympathy makes it impossible for me to be happy while my fellow men are ignorant and degraded, therefore I dedicate my energies to the extermination of poverty, war, parasitism and all forms of exploitation of man by his fellows. Professor William James is the author of an excellent essay entitled "A Moral Equivalent for War." He sets forth the idea that men have loved war through the ages because it has called forth their highest efforts, has made them more fully aware of the powers of their being. He asks, May it not be possible for man, of his own free impulse, born of his love of life and the wonderful potentialities which it unfolds, to invent for himself a discipline, a code based, not upon the destruction of other men and their enslavement, but upon cooperative emulation in the unfoldment of the powers of the mind? That this can be done by men, I have never doubted. That it will be done, and done quickly, has been made certain by the late world conflict, which has demonstrated to all thinking people that the progress of the mechanical arts has been such that man is now able to inflict upon his own civilization more damage than it is able to endure. CHAPTER VII MAKING OUR MORALS (Attempts to show that human morality must change to fit human facts, and there can be no judge of it save human reason.) Assuming the argument of the preceding chapters to be accepted, it appears that human life is in part at least a product of human will, guided by human intelligence. Man finds himself in the position of the crew of a ship in the middle of the ocean; he does not know exactly how the ship was made, or how it came to be in its present position, but he has discovered how the engines are run, and how the ship is steered, and the meaning of the compass. So now he takes charge of the ship, and keeps it afloat amid many perils; and meantime, on the bridge of the vessel, there goes on a furious argument over the question what port the ship shall be steered to and what chart shall be used. It is not well as a rule to trust to similes, but this simile is useful because it helps us to realize how fluid and changeable are the conditions of man's life, and how incessant and urgent the problems with which he finds himself confronted. The moral and legal codes of mankind may be compared to the steering orders which are given to the helmsman of the vessel. Northeast by north, he is told; and if during the night a heavy wind arises, and pushes the bow of the vessel off to starboard, then the helmsman has to push the wheel in the opposite direction. If he does not do so, he may find that his vessel has swung around and is going to some other part of the world. Next morning the passengers may wake up and find the ship on the rocks--because the helmsman persisted in following certain steering directions which were laid down in an ancient Hebrew book two or three thousand years ago! If life is a continually changing product, then the laws which govern conduct must also be continually changing, and morality is a problem of continuous adjustment to new circumstances and new needs. If man is free to work upon this changing environment, he must be free to make new tools and devise new processes. If it is the task of reason to choose among many possible courses and many possible varieties of life, then clearly it is man's duty to examine and revise every detail of his laws and customs and moral codes. This is, of course, in flat contradiction to the teachings of all religions. So far as I know there is no religion which does not teach that the conduct of man in certain matters has been eternally fixed by some higher power, and that it is man's duty to conform to these rules. It is considered to be wicked even to suggest any other idea; in fact, to do so is the most wicked thing in the world, far more dangerous than any actual infraction of the code, whatever it may be. Let us see how this works out in practice. Let us take, for a test, the Ten Commandments. These commandments were graven upon stone tablets some four thousand years ago, and are supposed to have been valid ever since. "Thou shalt not kill," is one; others phrase it, "Thou shall do no murder"; and in this double version we see at once the beginnings of controversy. If you are a Quaker, you accept the former version, while if you are a member of the military general staff of your country you accept the latter. You maintain the right to kill your fellow men, provided that those who do the killing have been previously clad in a special uniform, indicating their distinctive function as killers of their fellow men. You maintain, in other words, the right of making war; and presently, when you get into making war, you find yourself maintaining the right to kill, not merely by the old established method of the sword and the bullet, but by means of poison gases which destroy the lives of women and children, perhaps a whole city full at a time. And also, of course, you maintain the right to kill, provided the killing has been formally ordered and sanctioned by a man who sits upon a raised bench and wears a black robe, and perhaps a powdered wig. You consider that by the simple device of putting this man into a black robe and a powdered wig, you endow him with authority to judge and revise the divine law. In other words, you subject this divine law to human reason; and if some religious fanatic refuses to be so subjected, you call him by the dread name "pacifist," and if he attempts to preach his idea, you send him to prison for ten or twenty years, which means in actual practice that you kill him by the slow effects of malnutrition and tubercular infection. If he is ordered to put on the special costume of killing, and refuses to do so, you call him a "C. O.," and you bully and beat him, and perhaps administer to him the "water cure" in your dungeons. Or take the commandment that we shall not commit adultery. Surely this is a law about which we can agree! But presently we discover that unhappily married couples desire to part, and that if we do not allow them to part, we actually cause the commission of a great deal more adultery than otherwise. Therefore, our wise men meet together, and revise this divine law, and decide that it is not adultery if a man takes another wife, provided he has received from a judge an engraved piece of paper permitting him to do so. But some of the followers of religion refuse to admit this right of mere mortal man. The Catholic Church attempts to enforce its own laws, and declares that people who divorce and remarry are really living in adultery and committing mortal sin. The Episcopal Church does not go quite so far as that; it allows the innocent party in the divorce to remarry. Other churches are content to accept the state law as it stands. Is it not manifest that all these groups are applying human reason, and nothing but human reason, to the interpreting and revising of their divine commandments? Or take the law, "Thou shalt not steal." Surely we can all agree upon that! Let us do so; but our agreement gets us nowhere, because we have to set up a human court to decide what is "stealing." Is it stealing to seize upon land, and kill the occupants of it, and take the land for your own, and hand it down to your children forever? Yes, of course, that is stealing, you say; but at once you have to revise your statement. It is not stealing if it was done a sufficient number of years ago; in that case the results of it are sanctified by law, and held unchangeable forever. Also, we run up against the fact that it is not stealing, if it is done by the State, by men who have been dressed up in the costume of killers before they commit the act. Again, is it stealing to hold land out of use for speculation, while other men are starving and dying for lack of land to labor upon? Some of us call this stealing, but we are impolitely referred to as "radicals," and if we venture to suggest that anyone should resist this kind of stealing, we are sentenced to slow death from malnutrition and tubercular infection. Again, is it stealing for a victim of our system of land monopoly to take a loaf of bread in order to save the life of his starving child? The law says that this is stealing, and sends the man to jail for this act; yet the common sense of mankind protests, and I have heard a great many respectable Americans venture so far in "radicalism" as to say that they themselves would steal under such circumstances. One could pile up illustrations without limit; but this is enough to make clear the point, that it is perfectly futile to attempt to talk about "divine" rules for human conduct. Regardless of any ideas you may hold, or any wishes, you are forced at every hour of your life to apply your reason to the problems of your life, and you have no escape from the task of judging and deciding. All that you do is to judge right or to judge wrong; and if you judge wrong, you inflict misery upon yourself and upon all who come into contact with you. How much more sensible, therefore, to recognize the fact of moral and intellectual responsibility; to investigate the data of life with which you have to deal, the environment by which you are surrounded, and to train your judgment so that you will be able to fit yourself to it with quickness and certainty! "But," the believer in religion will say, "this leaves mankind without any guide or authority. How can human beings act, how can they deal with one another, if there are no laws, no permanent moral codes?" The answer is that to accept the idea of the evolution of morality does not mean at all that there will be no permanent laws and working principles. Many of the facts of life are fixed for all practical purposes--the purposes not merely of your life and my life, but the life of many generations. We are not likely to see in our time the end of the ancient Hebrew announcement that "the sins of the father are visited upon the children"; therefore it is possible for us to study out a course of action based upon the duty of every father to hand down to his children the gift of a sound mind in a sound body. The Catholic Church has had for a thousand years or more the "mortal sin" of gluttony upon its list; and today comes experimental science with its new weapons of research, and discovers autointoxication and the hardening of the arteries, and makes it very unlikely that the moral codes of men will ever fail to list gluttony as a mortal sin. Indeed, science has added to gluttony, not merely drunkenness, but all use of alcoholic liquor for beverage purposes; we have done this in spite of the manifest fact that the drinking of wine was not merely an Old Testament virtue, but a New Testament religious rite. To say that human life changes, and that new discoveries and new powers make necessary new laws and moral customs, is to say something so obvious that it might seem a waste of paper and ink. Man has invented the automobile and has crowded himself into cities, and so has to adopt a rigid set of traffic regulations. So far as I know, it has never occurred to any religious enthusiast to seek in the book of Revelation for information as to the advisability of the "left hand turn" at Broadway and Forty-second Street, New York, at five o'clock in the afternoon. But modern science has created new economic facts, just as unprecedented as the automobile; it has created new possibilities of spending and new possibilities of starving for mankind; it has made new cravings and new satisfactions, new crimes and new virtues; and yet the great mass of our people are still seeking to guide themselves in their readjustments to these new facts by ancient codes which have no more relationship to these facts than they have to the affairs of Mars! I am acquainted with a certain lady, one of the kindest and most devoted souls alive, who seeks to solve the problems of her life, and of her large family of children and grand-children, according to sentences which she picks out, more or less at random, from certain more or less random chapters of ancient Hebrew literature. This lady will find some words which she imagines apply to the matter, and will shut her devout eyes to the fact that there are other "texts," bearing on the matter, which say exactly the opposite. She will place the strangest and most unimaginable interpretations upon the words, and yet will be absolutely certain that her interpretation is the voice of God speaking directly to her. If you try to tell her about Socialism, she will say, "The poor ye have always with you"; which means that it is interfering with Divine Providence to try to remedy poverty on any large scale. This lady is ready instantly to relieve any single case of want; she regards it as her duty to do this; in fact, she considers that the purpose of some people's poverty is to provide her with a chance to do the noble action of relieving it. You would think that the meaning of the sentence, "Spare the rod and spoil the child," would be so plain that no one could mistake it; but this good lady understood it to mean that God forbade the physical chastisement of children, and preferred them "spoiled." She held this idea for half a lifetime--until it was pointed out to her that the sentence was not in the Bible, but in "Hudibras," an old English poem! CHAPTER VIII THE VIRTUE OF MODERATION (Attempts to show that wise conduct is an adjustment of means to ends, and depends upon the understanding of a particular set of circumstances.) Some years ago I used to know an ardent single tax propagandist who found my way of arguing intensely irritating, because, as he phrased it, I had "no principles." We would be discussing, for example, a protective tariff, and I would wish to collect statistics, but discovered to my bewilderment that to my single tax friend a customs duty was "stealing" on the part of the government. The government had a right to tax land, because that was the gift of nature, but it had no right to tax the products of human labor, and when it took a portion of the goods which anyone brought into a country, the government was playing the part of a robber. Of course such a man was annoyed by the suggestion that in the early stages of a country's development it might possibly be a good thing for the country to make itself independent and self-sufficient by encouraging the development of its manufactures; that, on the other hand, when these manufactures had grown to such a size that they controlled the government, it might be an excellent thing for the country to subject them to the pressure of foreign competition, in order to lower their value as a preliminary to socializing them. The reader who comes to this book looking for hard and fast rules of life will be disappointed. It would be convenient if someone could lay down for us a moral code, and lift from our shoulders the inconvenient responsibility of deciding about our own lives. There may be persons so weak that they have to have the conditions of their lives thus determined for them; but I am not writing for such persons. I am writing for adult and responsible individuals, and I bear in mind that every individual is a separate problem, with separate needs and separate duties. There are, of course, a good many rules that apply to everybody in almost all emergencies, but I cannot think of a single rule that I would be willing to say I would apply in my life without a single exception. "Thou shalt not kill" is a rule that I have followed, so far without exception; but as soon as I turn my imagination loose, I can think of many circumstances under which I should kill. I remember discussing the matter with a pacifist friend of mine, an out-and-out religious non-resistant. I pointed out to him that people sometimes went insane, and in that condition they sometimes seized hatchets and killed anyone in sight. What would my pacifist friend do if he saw a maniac attacking his children with a hatchet? It did not help him to say that he would use all possible means short of killing the maniac; he had finally to admit that if he were quite sure it was a question of the life of the maniac or the life of his child, he would kill. And this is not mere verbal quibbling, because such things do happen in the world, and people are confronted with such emergencies, and they have to decide, and no rule is a general rule if it has a single exception. There is a saying that "the exception proves the rule," but this is very silly; it is a mistranslation of the Latin word "probat," which means, not proves, but tests. No exception can prove a rule. What the exception does is to test the rule by showing that the result does not follow in the exceptional case. The only kind of rule which can be laid down for human conduct is a rule in such general terms that it escapes exceptions by leaving the matter open for every man's difference of opinion. Any kind of rule which is specific will sooner or later pass out of date. Take, by way of illustration, the ancient and well-established virtue of frugality. Obviously, under a state of nature, or of economic competition, it is necessary for every man to lay by a store "for a rainy day." But suppose we could set up a condition of economic security, under which society guaranteed to every man the full product of his labor, and the old and the sick were fully taken care of--then how foolish a man would seem who troubled to acquire a surplus of goods! It would be as if we saw him riding on horseback through the main street of our town in a full suit of armor! I devote a good deal of space to this question of a fixed and unchangeable morality, because it is one of the heaviest burdens that mankind carries upon its back. The record of human history is sickening, not so much because of blood and slaughter, but because of fanaticism; because wherever the mind of man attempts to assert itself, to escape from the blind rule of animal greed, it adopts a set of formulas, and proceeds to enforce them, regardless of consequences, upon the whole of life. Consider, for example, the rule of the Puritans in England. The Puritans glorified conscience, and it is perfectly proper to glorify conscience, but not to the entire suppression of the beauty-making faculties in man. Macaulay summed up the Puritan point of view in the sentence that they objected to bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. As a result of applying that principle, and lacing mankind in a straight-jacket by legislation, England swung back into a reaction under the Cavaliers, in which debauchery held more complete sway than ever before or since in English life. This is a hard lesson, but it must be learned: there is no virtue that does not become a vice if it is carried to extremes; there is no virtue that does not become a vice if it is applied at the wrong time, or under the wrong circumstances, or at the wrong stage of human development. In fact, we may say that most vices are virtues misapplied. The so-called natural vices are simply natural impulses carried to excess, while the unnatural vices result from the suppression and distortion of natural impulses. The Greeks had as their supreme virtue what they called "sophrosuné." It is a beautiful word, worth remembering; it means a beautiful quality called moderation. We shall find, as we come to investigate, that life is a series of compromises among many different needs, many different desires, many different duties; and reason sits as a wise and patient judge, and appoints to each its proper portion, and denies to it an excess which would starve the others. Such is true morality, and it is incompatible with the existence of any fixed code, whether of human origin or divine. The fixed morality is a survival of a far-off past, of the days of instinct and servitude. Human reason has developed but slowly, and perhaps only a few people are as yet entirely capable of taking control of their own destiny; perhaps it is really dangerous to think for oneself! But if we investigate carefully, we may decide that the danger is not so much to ourselves as it is to others. The most evil of all the habits that man has inherited from his far-off past is the habit of exploiting his fellows, and in order to exploit them more safely the ruling castes of priests and kings and nobles and property owners have taken possession of the moralities of the world and shaped them for their own convenience. They have taught the slave virtues of credulity and submission; they have surrounded their teachings with all the terrors of the supernatural; they have placed upon rebellion the penalties, not merely of this world, but of the next, not merely of the dungeon and the rack, but of hellfire and brimstone. I do not wish to go to extremes and say that the moral codes now taught in the world are made wholly in this evil way. As a matter of fact they are a queer jumble of the two elements, the slave terrors of the past and the common sense of the present. There is not one moral code in the world today, there are many. There is one for the rich, and an entirely different one for the poor, and the rich have had a great deal more to do with shaping the code of the poor than the poor have had to do with shaping the code of the rich. There is one code for governments, and an entirely different one for the victims of governments. There is one code for business, and an entirely different one, a far more human and decent one, for friendship. Above all, there is one code for Sunday and another code for the other six days of the week. Most of our idealisms and our sentimental fine phrases we reserve for our Sunday code, while for our every-day code we go back to the rule of the jungle: "Dog eat dog," or "Do unto others as they would do unto you, but do it first." When you attempt to suggest a new moral code to our present day moral authorities, it is the fine phrases of the Sunday code they bring out for exhibition purposes; and perhaps you are impressed by their arguments--until Monday morning, when you attempt to apply this code at the office, and they stare at you in bewilderment, or burst out laughing in your face. What I am trying to do here is to outline a code that will not be a matter of phrases but a matter of practice. It will apply to all men, rich as well as poor, and to all seven days of the week. I am not so much suggesting a code, as pointing out to you how you can work out your own code for yourself. I am suggesting that you should adopt it, not because I tell you to, but because you yourself have taken it and tested it, precisely as you would test any other of the practical affairs of your life--potatoes as an article of diet, or some particular sack of potatoes that a peddler was trying to sell to you. It is not yet possible for you to be as sure about everything in your life as you can be about a sack of potatoes; human knowledge has not got that far; but at least you can know what is to be known, and if anything is a matter of uncertainty, you can know that. Such knowledge is often the most important of all--just as the driver of an automobile wants to know if a bridge is not to be depended on. So I say to you that if you want to find happiness in this life, look with distrust upon all absolutes and ultimates, all hard and fast rules, all formulas and dogmas and "general principles." Bear in mind that there are many factors in every case, there are many complications in every human being, there are many sides to every question. Try to keep an open mind and an even temper. Try to take an interest in learning something new every day, and in trying some new experiment. This is the scientific attitude toward life; this is the way of growth and of true success. It is inconvenient, because it involves working your brains, and most people have not been taught to do this, and find it the hardest kind of work there is. But how much better it is to think for yourself, and to protect yourself, than to trust your thinking to some group of people whose only interest may be to exploit you for their advantage! CHAPTER IX THE CHOOSING OF LIFE (Discusses the standards by which we may judge what is best in life, and decide what we wish to make of it.) We have made the point about evolution, that it may go forward or it may go backward. There is no guarantee in nature that because a thing changes, it must necessarily become better than it was. On the contrary, degeneration is as definitely established a fact as growth, and it is of the utmost importance, in studying the problem of human happiness and how to make it, to get clear the fact that nature has produced, and continues to produce, all kinds of monstrosities and parasites and failures and abortions. And all these blunders of our great mother struggle just as hard, desire life just as ardently as normal creatures, and suffer just as cruelly when they fail. Blind optimism about life is just as fatuous and just as dangerous as blind pessimism, and if we propose to take charge of life, and to make it over, we shall find that we have to get quickly to the task of deciding what our purpose is. "Choose well, your choice is brief and yet endless," says Carlyle. You are driven in your choice by two facts--first, that you have to choose, regardless of whether you want to or not; and second, that upon your choice depend infinite possibilities of happiness or of misery. The interdependence of life is such that you are choosing not merely for the present, but for the future; you are choosing for your posterity forever, and to some extent you are choosing for all mankind. Matthew Arnold has said that "Conduct is three-fourths of life"; but I, for my part, have never been able to see where he got his figures. It seems to me that conduct is practically everything in life that really counts. Conduct is not merely marriage and birth and premature death; it is not merely eating and drinking and sleeping: it is thinking and aspiring; it is religion and science, music and literature and art. It is not yet the lightning and the cyclone, but with the spread of knowledge it is coming to be these things, and I suspect that some day it may be even the comet and the rising of the sun. We are now going to apply our reason to this enormous problem of human conduct; we are going to ask ourselves the question: What kind of life do we want? What kind of life are we going to make? What are the standards by which we may know excellence in life, and distinguish it from failure and waste and blunder in life? Obviously, when we have done this, we shall have solved the moral problem; all we shall have to say is, act so that your actions help to bring the desirable things into being, and do not act so as to hinder or weaken them. We shall not be able to go to nature to settle this question for us. This is our problem, not nature's. But we shall find, as usual, that we can pick up precious hints from her; we shall be wise to study her ways, and learn from her successes and her failures. We are proud of her latest product, ourselves. Let us see how she made us; what were the stages on the way to man? First in the scale of evolution, it appears, came inert matter. We call it inert, because it looks that way, though we know, of course, that it consists of infinite numbers of molecules vibrating with speed which we can measure even though we cannot imagine it. This "matter" is enormously fascinating, and a wise man will hesitate to speak patronizingly about it. Nevertheless, considering matter apart from the mind which studies it, we decide that it represents a low stage of being. We speak contemptuously of stones and clods and lumps of clay. We award more respect to things like mountains and tempest-tossed oceans, because they are big; in the early days of our race we used to worship these things, but now we think of them merely as the raw material of life, and we should not be in the least interested in becoming a mountain or an ocean. Almost everyone would agree, therefore, that what we call "life" is a higher and more important achievement of nature. And if we wish to grade this life, we do so according to its sentience--that is to say, the amount and intensity of the consciousness which grows in it. We are interested in the one-celled organisms which swarm everywhere throughout nature, and we study the mysterious processes by which they nourish and beget themselves; we suspect that they have a germ of consciousness in them; but we are surer of the meaning and importance of the consciousness we detect in some complex organism like a fish or bird. We learn to know the signs of consciousness, of dawning intelligence, and we esteem the various kinds of creatures according to the amount of it they possess. We reject mere physical bigness and mere strength. Joyce Kilmer may write: "Poems are made by men like me, But only God can make a tree"-- And that seems to us a charming bit of fancy; but the common sense of the thing is voiced to us much better in the lines of old Ben Jonson: "It is not growing like a tree In bulk doth make man better be." If we take two animals of equal bulk, the hippopotamus and the elephant, we shall be far more interested in the elephant, because of the intelligence and what we call "character" which he displays. There are good elephants and bad elephants, kind ones and treacherous ones. We love the dog because we can make a companion of him; that is, because we can teach him to react to human stimuli. Of all animals we are fascinated most by the monkey, because he is nearest to man, and displays the keenest intelligence. Someone may say that this is all mere human egotism, and that we have no way of really being sure that the life of elephants and hippopotami is not more interesting and significant than the life of men. Never having been either of these animals, I cannot say with assurance; but I know that I have the power to exterminate these creatures, or to pen them in cages, and they are helpless to protect themselves, or even to understand what is happening to them. So I am irresistibly driven to conclude that intelligence is more safe and more worth while than unintelligence; in short, that intelligence is nature's highest product up to date, and that to foster and develop it is the best guess I can make as to the path of wisdom--that is, of intelligence! When we come to deal with human values, we find that we can trace much the same kind of evolution. Back in the days of the cave man, it was physical strength which dominated the horde; but nowadays, except in the imagination of the small boy, the "strong man" does not cut much of a figure. We go once, perhaps, to see him lift his heavy weights and break his iron bars, but then we are tired of him. Mere strength had to yield in the struggle for life to quickness of eye and hand, to energy which for lack of a better name we may call "nervous." The pugilist who has nothing but muscle goes down before his lighter antagonist who can keep out of his reach, and the crowd loves the football hero who can duck and dodge and make the long runs. One might cite a thousand illustrations, such as the British bowmen breaking down the heavily armored knights, or the quick-moving, light vessels of Britain overcoming the huge galleons of Spain. And as society develops and becomes more complex, the fighting man becomes less and less a man of muscle, and more and more a man of "nerve." Alexander, Cæsar and Napoleon would have stood a poor chance in personal combat against many of their followers. They led, because they were men of energy and cunning, able to maintain the subtle thing we call prestige. Now the world has moved into an industrial era, and who are the great men of our time, the men whose lightest words are heeded, whose doings are spread upon the front pages of our newspapers? Obviously, they are the men of money. We may pretend to ourselves that we do not really stand in awe of a Morgan or a Rockefeller, but that we admire, let us say, an Edison or a Roosevelt. But Edison himself is a man of money, and will tell you that he had to be a man of money in order to be free to conduct his experiments. As for our politicians and statesmen, they either serve the men of money, or the men of money suppress them, as they did Roosevelt. The Morgans and the Rockefellers do not do much talking; they do not have to. They content themselves with being obeyed, and the shaping of our society is in their hands. And yet, some of us really believe that there are higher faculties in man than the ability to manipulate the stock market. We consider that the great inventor, the great poet, the great moralist, contributes more to human happiness than the man who, by cunning and persistence, succeeds in monopolizing some material necessity of human life. "Poets," says Shelley, "are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind." If this strange statement is anywhere near to truth, it is surely of importance that we should decide what are the higher powers in men, and how they may be recognized, and how fostered and developed. What is, in its essence, the process of evolution from the lower to the higher forms of mental life? It is a process of expanding consciousness; the developing of ability to apprehend a wider and wider circle of existence, to share it, to struggle for it as we do for the life we call our "own." The test of the higher mental forms is therefore a test of universality, of sympathetic inclusiveness; or, to use commoner words, it is a test of enlightened unselfishness. Every human individual has the will to life, the instinct of self-preservation, which persuades him that he is of importance; but the test of his development is his ability to realize that, important though he may be, he is but a small part of the universe, and his highest interests are not in himself alone, his highest duties are not owed to himself alone. And as the life becomes more of the intellect, this fact becomes more and more obvious, more and more dominating. Men who monopolize the material things of the world and their control are necessarily self-seeking; but in the realm of the higher faculties this element, in the very nature of the case, is forced into the background. It is evident that truth is not truth for the Standard Oil Company, nor for J. P. Morgan and Company, nor yet for the government of the United States; it is truth for the whole of mankind, and one who sincerely labors for the truth does so for the universal benefit. There may be, of course, an element of selfishness in the activities of poets and inventors. They may be seeking for fame; they may be hoping to make money out of their discoveries; but the greatest men we know have been dominated by an overwhelming impulse of creation, and when we read their lives, and discover in them signs of petty vanity or jealousy or greed, we are pained and shocked. What touches us most deeply is some mark of self-consecration and humility; as, for example, when Newton tells us that after all his life's labors he felt himself as a little child gathering sea-shells on the shore of the great ocean of truth; or when Alfred Russel Wallace, discovering that Darwin had been working longer than himself over the theory of the origin of species, generously withdrew and permitted the theory to go to the world in Darwin's name. There are three faculties in man, usually described as intellect, feeling and will. According as one or the other faculty predominates, we have a great scientist, a great poet, or a great moralist. We might choose a representative of each type--let us say Newton, Shakespeare and Jesus--and spend much time in controversy as to which of the three types is the greatest, which makes the greatest contribution to human happiness. But it will suffice here to point out that the three faculties do not exclude one another; every man must have all three, and a perfectly rounded man should seek to develop all three. Jesus was considerable of a poet, and we should pay far less heed to Shakespeare if he had not been a moralist. Also there have been instances of great poets and painters who were scientists--for example, Leonardo and Goethe. The fundamental difference between the scientist and the poet is that one is exploring nature and discovering things which actually exist, whereas the other is creating new life out of his own spirit. But the poet will find that his creations take but little hold upon life, if they are not guided and shaped by a deep understanding of life's fundamental nature and needs--in other words, if the poet is not something of a scientist. And in the same way, the very greatest discoveries of science seem to us like leaps of creative imagination; as if the mind had completed nature, through some intuitive and sympathetic understanding of what nature wished to be. The point about these higher forms of human activity is that they renew and multiply life. We may say that if Jesus had never lived, others would have embodied and set forth with equal poignancy the revolutionary idea of the equality of all men as children of one common father. And perhaps this is true; but we have no way of being sure that it is true, and as we look back upon the last nineteen hundred years of human history, we are unable to imagine just what the life of mankind during those centuries would have been if Jesus had died when he was a baby. We do not know what modern thought might have been without Kant, or what modern music might have been without Beethoven. We are forced to admit that if it had not been for the patient wisdom and persuasive kindness of Lincoln, the Slave Power might have won its independence, and America today might have been a military camp like Europe, and the lives and thoughts of every one of us would have been different. Or take the activities of the poet. Many years ago the writer was asked to name the men who had exercised the greatest influence upon him, and after much thought he named three: Jesus, Hamlet and Shelley. And now consider the significance of this reply. One of these people, Shelley, was what we call a "real" person; that is, a man who actually lived and walked upon the earth. Concerning Hamlet, it is believed there was once a Prince of Denmark by that name, but the character who is known to us as Hamlet is the creation of a poet's brain. As to the third figure, Jesus, the authorities dispute. Some say that he was a man who actually lived; others believe that he was God on earth; yet others, very learned, maintain that he is a legendary name around which a number of traditions have gathered. To me it does not make a particle of difference which of the three possibilities happens to be true about Jesus. If he was God on earth, he was God in human form, under human limitations, and in that sense we are all gods on earth. And whether he really lived, or whether some poet invented him, matters not a particle so far as concerns his effect upon others. The emotions which moved him, the loves, the griefs, the high resolves, existed in the soul of someone, whether his name were Jesus or John; and these emotions have been recorded in such form that they communicate themselves to us, they become a part of our souls, they make us something different from what we were before we encountered them. In other words, the poet makes in his own soul a new life, and then projects it into the world, and it becomes a force which makes over the lives of millions of other people. If you read the vast mass of criticism which has grown up about the figure of Hamlet, you learn that Hamlet is the type of the "modern man." Shakespeare was able to divine what the modern man would be; or perhaps we can go farther and say that Shakespeare helped to make the modern man what he is; the modern man is more of Hamlet, because he has taken Hamlet to his heart and pondered over Hamlet's problem. Or take Don Quixote. No doubt the follies of the "age of chivalry" would have died out of men's hearts in the end; but how much sooner they died because of the laughter of Cervantes! Or take "Les Miserables." Our prison system is not ideal by any means, but it is far less cruel than it was half a century ago, and we owe this in part to Victor Hugo. Every convict in the world is to some degree a happier man because of this vision which was projected upon the world from the soul of one great poet. No one can estimate the part which the writings of Tolstoi have played in the present revolution in Russia, but this we may say with certainty: there is not one man, woman or child in Russia at the present moment who is quite the same as he would have been if "Resurrection" had never been written. In discussing the highest faculties of man we have so far refrained from using the word "genius." It is a word which has been cheapened by misuse, but we are now in position to use it. The things which we have just been considering are the phenomena of genius--and we can say this, even though we may not know exactly what genius is. Perhaps it is, as Frederic Myers asserts, a "subliminal uprush," the welling up into the consciousness of some part of the content of the subconscious mind. Or perhaps it is something of what man calls "divine." Or perhaps it is the first dawning, the first hint of that super-race which will some day replace mankind. Perhaps we are witnessing the same thing that happened on the earth when glimmerings of reason first broke upon the mind of some poor, bewildered ape. We cannot be sure; but this much we can say: the man of genius represents the highest activity of the mind of which we as yet have knowledge. He represents the spirit of man, fully emancipated, fully conscious, and taking up the task of creation; taking human life as raw material, and making it over into something more subtle, more intense, more significant, more universal than it ever was before, or ever would have been without the intervention of this new God-man. CHAPTER X MYSELF AND MY NEIGHBOR (Compares the new morality with the old, and discusses the relative importance of our various duties.) So now we may say that we know what are the great and important things in life. Slowly and patiently, with infinite distress and waste and failure, but yet inevitably, the life of man is being made over and multiplied to infinity, by the power of the thinking mind, impelled by the joy and thrill of the creative action, and guided by the sense of responsibility, the instinct to serve, which we call conscience. To develop these higher faculties is the task we have before us, and the supreme act to which we dedicate ourselves. So now we are in position to define the word moral. Assuming that our argument be accepted, that action is moral which tends to foster the best and highest forms of life we know, and to aid them in developing their highest powers; that is immoral which tends to destroy the best life we know, or to hinder its rapid development. Let us now proceed to apply these tests to the practices of man; first as an individual, and then as a social being. What are my duties to myself, and what are my duties to the world about me? You will note that these questions differ somewhat from those of the old morality. Jesus told us, first, that we should love the Lord our God, and, second, that we should love our neighbor as ourself. Some would say that modern thought has dismissed God from consideration; but I would prefer to say that modern thought has decided that the place where we encounter God most immediately is in our own miraculously expanding consciousness. Our duty toward God is our duty to make of ourselves the most perfect product of the Divine Incarnation that we can become. Our duty to our neighbor is to help him to do the same. Of course, as we come to apply these formulas, we find that they overlap and mingle inextricably; the two duties are really one duty looked at from different points of view. We decide that we owe it to ourselves to develop our best powers of thinking, and we discover that in so doing we make ourselves better fitted to live as citizens, better equipped to help our fellow men. We go out into our city to serve others by making the city clean and decent, and we find that we have helped to save ourselves from a pestilence. The most commonly accepted, or at any rate the most commonly preached, of all formulas is the "golden rule," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This formula is good so far as it goes, but you note that it leaves undetermined the all-important question, what _ought_ we to want others to do unto us. If I am an untrained child, what I would have others do unto me is to give me plenty of candy; therefore, under the golden rule, my highest duty becomes to distribute free candy to the world. The "golden rule" is obviously consistent with all forms of self-indulgence, and with all forms of stagnation; it might result in a civilization more static than China. Or let us take the formula which the German philosopher Kant worked out as the final product of his thinking: "Act so that you would be willing for your action to become a general rule of conduct." Here again is the same problem. There are many possible general rules of conduct. Some would prefer one, some others; and there is no possible way of escape from the fact that before men can agree what to do, they must decide what they wish to make of their lives. To the formula of Jesus, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," the answer is obvious enough: "Suppose my neighbor is not worthy of as much love as myself?" To be sure, it is a perilous thing for me to have to decide this question; nevertheless, it may be a fact that I am a great inventor, and that my neighbor is a sexual pervert. There is, of course, a sense in which I may love him, even so; I may love the deeper possibilities of his nature, which religious ecstasy can appeal to and arouse. But in spite of all ecstasies and all efforts, it may be that his disease--physical, mental and moral--has progressed to such a point that it is necessary to confine him, or to castrate him, or even to asphyxiate him painlessly. To say that I must love such a man as myself is, to say the least, to be vague. We can see how the indiscriminate preaching of such a formula would open the flood-gates of sentimentality and fraud. Modern thinking says: Thou shalt love the highest possibilities of life, and thou shalt labor diligently to foster them; moreover, because life is always growing, and new possibilities are forever dawning in the human spirit, thou shalt keep an open mind and an inquiring temper, and be ready at any time to begin life afresh. Such is the formula. It is not simple; and when we come to apply it, we find that it constantly grows more complex. When we attempt to decide our duty to ourselves, we find that we have in us a number of different beings, each with separate and sometimes conflicting duties and needs. We have in us the physical man and the economic man, and these clamor for their rights, and must have at least a part of their rights, before we can go on to be the intellectual man, the moral man, or the artistic man. So our life becomes a series of compromises and adjustments between a thousand conflicting desires and duties; between the different beings which we might be, but can be only to a certain extent, and at certain times. We shall see, as we come to investigate one field after another of human activity, that we never have an absolute certainty, never an absolute right, never an absolute duty; never can we shut our eyes, and go blindly ahead upon one course of action, to the exclusion of every other consideration! On the contrary, we sit in the seat of self-determination as a highly trained and skillful engineer. We keep our eyes upon a dozen different gauges; we press a lever here and touch a regulator there; we decide that now is a time for speed, and now for caution; and knowing all the time that the safety, not merely of ourselves, but of many passengers, depends upon the decisions of each moment. CHAPTER XI THE MIND AND THE BODY (Discusses the interaction between physical and mental things, and the possibility of freedom in a world of fixed causes.) It is our plan, so far as possible, to discuss the problems of the mind in one section of this book, and the problems of the body in another; but just as we found that we could not separate our duties to ourself from our duties to our neighbors, so we find that the mind and the body are inextricably interwoven, and that whenever we probe deeply into one, we discover the other. The interaction of the mind and the body is a fascinating problem into which we must look for a moment, not because we expect to solve it, but because it illuminates the whole subject. The human body is a machine. It takes in carbon and oxygen, and burns them, and gives out carbon dioxide and other waste products, and develops energy in proportion to the amount of carbon it consumes. This machine has its elaborate apparatus of action and reaction, its sensory organs where outside stimuli are received, its nerves like telegraph wires to carry these impressions, its brain cells to store them and to transform them into reactions. We know to some extent how these brain cells work. We know what portions of the brain are devoted to this or that activity. We know that if we stick a pin into a certain spot we shall paralyze the left forefinger. We know that by injecting a certain drug, or by breathing a certain gas, we can cause this or that sensation or reaction, such as laughing or weeping or mania. We know what poisons are generated in the system by anger, and what chemical changes take place in a muscle that is tired. All this is part of a vast new science which is called bio-chemistry, or the chemistry of life. Our bodies, therefore, are part of the material universe, and subject to the laws or ways of being of this universe. The first of these laws that we know is the law of causation. Every change in the universe has its cause, and that in turn had another cause; this chain is never broken, no matter how far we go, and the same causes universally produce the same effects. If you see a ball move on a billiard table, you know that the ball did not move itself; you know that something struck the ball or tilted the table. You discover that the motion of the ball moves the air around it, and the waves of that motion are spread through the room. They strike the walls, and the motion is carried on through the walls, and if we had instruments sensitive enough, we could feel the motion of that billiard ball at the other side of the world, and a few million years from now at the most remote of the stars. This is what is called the law of the conservation of energy, and when we discover something like radium which seems to violate that law by giving out unlimited quantities of energy, we investigate and discover a new form of energy locked up in the atom. In the disintegration of the atom we have a source of power which, when we have learned to use it, will multiply perhaps millions of times the powers we are now able to use on this earth. But energy, no matter how many times it is transformed, and in what strange ways it reappears, always remains, and is never destroyed, and never created out of nothing. My friend the great physiologist once took me into his laboratory and showed me a little aquarium in which some minute creatures were wiggling about--young sea-urchins, if I remember. The physiologist took a bottle containing some chemical, and dropped a single drop into the water, and instantly all these little black creatures, which had been darting aimlessly in every direction through the water, turned and swam all in one direction, toward the light. They swam until they touched the walls of the aquarium, and there they stuck, trying their best to swim farther. "And now," said my friend, "that is what we call a 'tropism,' and all life is a tropism. What you see in that aquarium means that some day we shall know just what combination of chemicals causes a human being to move this way or that, to do this thing or that. When bio-chemistry has progressed sufficiently, we shall be able to make human qualities, perhaps in the sperm, perhaps in the embryo, perhaps day by day by means of diet or injection." Said I: "Some day, when bio-chemistry has progressed far enough, you will know what combination of chemicals causes a man to vote the Democratic or Republican ticket." "Why not?" answered my friend. (He has a sense of humor about all things except this sacred bio-chemistry.) Said I: "When you have got to that stage, keep the secret carefully, and we will fix up a scheme, and a few days before election we will release some gas in our big cities, and sweep the country for the Socialist ticket." But jesting aside: if the human body is a material thing, existing in the material world and subject to causation, there must be material reasons for the actions of human bodies, just the same as for the moving of billiard balls. We hear the sound of a billiard ball striking the cushion, and we are prepared to accept the idea that the thing we call hearing in us is caused by the impinging of sound waves upon our eardrums. And if we investigate human beings in the mass, we find every reason to believe that they act according to laws, and that there are material causes for their acts. If you get up and shout fire in a theater, you know how the audience will behave. If you study statistics, you can say that in any large city a certain fixed number of human beings are going to commit suicide every month; you can even say that more are going to commit suicide in the month of June than in any other month. You can say that more people are going to die at two o'clock in the morning than at any other hour. You know that certain changes in the weather will cause all human beings to behave in the same way. You know that an increase of prices or an increase of unemployment will cause a certain additional number of men to commit crimes, and a certain additional number of women to become prostitutes. You know that if a man overeats, his thoughts will change their color; he will have what he calls "the blues." I might cite a thousand other illustrations to prove that human minds are subject to material laws, and therefore to investigation by the bio-chemists. But now, stop a moment. Here you sit reading a book. Something in the book pleases you, and you say, "Good!" Perhaps you slap your knee or clench your fist. Now here is a motion of your hand, which stirs the air about you, and which, according to the laws of energy, will spread its effects to the other side of the world, and even to the farthest of the stars. Or perhaps the book makes you angry, and you throw it down in disgust; an entirely different motion, which will affect the other side of the world and the farthest of the stars in an entirely different way. The machine of the universe will be forever altered because of that slapping of your knee or that throwing down of your book. And what was the cause of these things? So far as we can see, the material cause was exactly the same in each case--the reading of certain letters. Two human beings, sitting side by side and reading exactly the same letters, might be affected in exactly opposite ways. It seems hardly rational to maintain that the material difference of two pairs of eyes, moving over exactly the same set of letters, could have resulted in two such different motions of the hands. As a matter of fact, the very same letters may affect the same person in different ways. The composer, Edward MacDowell, once told me how on his birthday his pupils sent him a gift, with a card containing some lines from the opera "Rheingold," beginning, "O singe fort"--that is, "Oh, sing on." But the composer happened, when glancing at the card, to think French instead of German, and got the message, "Oh, powerful monkey!" This, of course, was disconcerting to a famous piano performer, and his pupils, if they had been watching his face, would have seen an unexpected reaction. It seems manifest, does it not, that the cause of this difference of reaction was not any difference of the letters, but purely a difference of _thought_? So it appears that thoughts may change the material universe; they may break the chain of causation, and interfere with material events. Compare the two things, a state of consciousness and say, a steam shovel. They are entirely different, and so far as we can see, entirely incompatible and unrelated. Can anyone imagine how a thought can turn into a steam shovel, or a steam shovel into a thought? We can understand how a steam shovel lifts a mass of earth out of the ground, and we can understand how a human hand moves a lever which causes the shovel to act; but we are unable to conceive how a state of mind--whether it be a desire for pay, or an ideal of service, or a vision of the Panama Canal--can so affect a steam shovel as to cause it to move. We can sit and think motion at a billiard ball for a thousand years, and it does not move; but when we think motion at our hand, it moves instantly, and passes on the motion to the billiard ball or the steam shovel. When fire touches our hand it sends some kind of vibration to the brain, and in some inconceivable way that vibration is turned into a state of consciousness called pain, and that is turned, "as quick as thought," into another kind of motion, the jerking back of our hand. So it seems certain that consciousness really does "butt in" on the chain of natural causation. And yet, just see in what position this leaves the scientist who is investigating life! Imagine if you can, the plight of a doctor who wanted to prescribe a diet for a sick person, if he knew that every piece of chicken and every piece of fish were free to decide of its own impulse whether or not it would be digested in the human stomach. But the plight of this doctor would be nothing to the plight of the chemist or the biologist or the engineer who was asked to do his thinking and his planning in a world containing a billion and a quarter human beings, each one a lawless agent, each one a source of new and unforeseeable energies, each one acting as a "first cause," and starting new chains of activity, tearing the universe to pieces according to his own whims. What kind of a universe would that be? It would simply be a chaos; there could be no thinking, there could be no life in it; there could be no two things the same in it, and no laws of any sort. So then we fall back into the hands of the "determinists," who assert one unbreakable chain of natural causation, and regard the human body as an automaton. We go back to the bio-chemist, who purposes some day to ascertain for us just exactly what molecules of matter in just what positions and combinations in the brain cells of William Shakespeare caused him to perpetrate a mixed metaphor. We go back to the belief that human beings act as they must act, because the clock of life, wound up and started, must move in such and such a fashion. But now, let us see what are the implications of that theory! Here am I writing a book, appealing to men to act in certain ways. Of course, I know that not all will follow my advice. Some will be foolish--or what seems to me foolish. Others will be weak, and will resolve to act in certain ways, and then go and act in other ways. But some will be just; some will be free; some will use their brains--because, you see, I am convinced that they _can_ use their brains! I am convinced that ideas will affect and stir them, in complete defiance of the bio-chemist, who tells me that they act that way because of certain chemicals in their brain cells, and that I write my book because of other chemicals, and that my idea that I am writing the book because I want to write it is a delusion, and that the whole thing is happening just so because the universe was wound up that way. Now, this an unsolved problem, and I have no solution to offer. What I have set forth is in substance one of the four "antinomies" of Kant, and you can see for yourself how it is possible to prove either side, and impossible to be sure of either. Perhaps there is really a duality in life. Perhaps there are two aspects of the universe, the material and the spiritual, and perhaps they do not really interact as they seem to, but both are guided and determined by some higher reality of life of which we know nothing. In that case there would really be a chemical equivalent for every thought, and there would be a trace of consciousness for every material atom in the universe. Maybe the theologians are right, and in the universal consciousness of God the whole future exists predetermined. Maybe to God there is no such thing as time; the past, the present, and the future are all alike to Him. There is nothing more painful to the human mind than to have to confess its own impotence. Yet I can see no escape from the dilemma we are here facing. There is not a man alive who does not assume the freedom of the will, who does not show in all his acts that he agrees with old Dr. Samuel Johnson: "We know we are free and there's an end on't." Without a belief in freedom we cannot get beyond the animal, we cannot become the masters of our own souls. And yet, the man who swallows that idea whole, and goes out into the world and preaches personal morality to the neglect of the fundamental economic facts, the facts of the body in its relationship to all other bodies--we know what happens to that man; he becomes a shouting fool. Unless he is literally a fool, or a knave, he quickly discovers his own futility, and proceeds to use his common sense, in spite of all his theories. "Come to Jesus!" cried William Booth, and he went out in the streets of London to save souls with a bass drum; but presently, in day by day contact with the degradation of the London slums, he realized that he could not save souls so long as those souls were dwelling in starved and lousy bodies. So William Booth with his Salvation Army took to starting night shelters and cast-off clothing bureaus! And of exactly the same sort is the bewilderment which falls to the lot of the scientist who is honest and willing to face the facts. The bio-chemist with his test tubes and his microscopes and his complex apparatus of research sits himself down and accumulates a mass of information about the human body. He investigates the diseases of the body and learns in detail just how these diseases spread and sometimes how they are caused; he can present you with a diagnosis, showing the exact stage to which the degeneration of a certain organ has proceeded, and perhaps he can suggest to you a change of diet or some drug which will, for a time at least, check the process of the breakdown. But in other cases he will be perfectly helpless; he will be, as it were, buried under the mass of detail which he has accumulated; he will find the vital energy depressed, and he will not know any way to renew it. But along will come some mental specialist, who in a half hour's talk with the patient, by a simple change in the patient's _ideas_, will completely make over the patient's life, and set going a new vital process which will restore the body to its former health. A religious enthusiast may do this, a psychotherapist may do it, a moral genius may do it; and the physician with all his learning will find himself like a man on the outside of a house, peering in through the windows and trying in vain to find out something about the life of the family and its guests. This is humiliating to the chemist and the medical man, but they have to face it, because it is a fact. In the seat of authority over the human body there sits a higher being which, without any religious implications, we may call the soul; or, if it is impossible to get away from the religious implication of that word, we will call it the consciousness, or the personality. This master of the house of life is in many ways dependent upon the house. If the furnace goes out he freezes, and if the house takes fire and burns up--well, he disappears and leaves no address. But in other ways the master of the house is really master, and is a worker of miracles. He does things which we do not at all understand, and cannot yet even foresee, but which often completely make the house over. William James, a scientist of real authority, has a wonderful essay, "The Powers of Men," in which he sets forth the fact that human beings as a general rule make use of only a small portion of the energies which dwell in their beings, and that one of our problems is to find the ways by which we can draw upon stores of hidden energy which we have within us. Also, in a fascinating book, "Varieties of the Religious Experience," James has endeavored to study and analyze the phenomena which hitherto the physician and the biologist have been disposed to ridicule and neglect. But unless I am mistaken, every scientist in the end will be forced to come back to the central fact, that life is a unity, and that the heart of it is the spirit; that what we call the will is not an accident, not a delusion, not some by-product of nature, but is the very secret of life; and that behind it is a vast ocean of power, which now and then sweeps away all dykes, and floods into the human consciousness. The writer of this book is now a patient and plodding teacher of a certain economic doctrine, a preacher of what he might call anti-parasitism. He has come to the conclusion that the habit of men to enslave their fellows and exploit them and draw their substance from them without return--that this habit is destructive to all civilization, and is incompatible with any of the higher forms of life, intellectual, moral or artistic. He has come to the conclusion that there is no use attempting to build a structure of social life until there is a sound foundation; in other words, until the capitalist system has been replaced by cooperation. But in his youth he was, or thought he was, a poet, and touched upon that strange and wonderful thing which we call genius. He saw his own consciousness, as it were a leaf driven before a mighty tempest of spiritual energy. And he believes that this experience was no delusion, but was a revelation of the hidden mysteries of being. He still has memories of this startling experience, still hints of it in his consciousness; something still leaps in his memory, like a race-horse, or like the war-horse of Revelations, which "scenteth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting." Because of these things he can never accept any philosophy which shackles the human spirit, he will never in his thought attempt to set bounds to the possibilities of human life. The very heart of life beats in us, the wonder of it and the glory of it swells like a tide behind us. New universes are born in us, or, if you prefer, they are made by us; and the process is one of endless joy, of rapture beyond anything that the average man can at present imagine, or that any instruments invented by science can weigh or measure. CHAPTER XII THE MIND OF THE BODY (Discusses the subconscious mind, what it is, what it does to the body, and how it can be controlled and made use of by the intelligence.) The importance of the mind in matters of health becomes clearer when we understand that what we commonly call our minds--the mental states which confront us day by day in our consciousness--are really but a small portion of our total mind. In addition to this conscious mind there is an enormous mass of our personality which is like a storehouse attached to our dwelling, a place to which we do not often go, but to which we can go in case of need. This storehouse is our memory, the things we know and can recall at will. And then there is another, still vaster storehouse--no one has ever measured or guessed the size of it--which apparently contains everything that we have ever known, perhaps also everything that our ancestors have known. A common simile for the human mind is that of an iceberg; a certain portion of it appears above the surface of the sea, but there is seven times as much of it floating out of sight under the water. This subconscious mind seems to be the portion most closely united with the body. It has its seat in the back parts of the brain, in the spinal cord and the greater nervous ganglia, such as the solar plexus. It is the portion of our mind which controls the activities of our body, all those miraculous things which went on before we first opened our eyes to the light, and which go on while we sleep, and never cease until we die. When we cut our finger and admit foreign germs to our blood, some mysterious power causes millions of our blood corpuscles to be rushed to this spot, to destroy and devour the invading enemy. We do not know how this is done, but it is an intelligent act, measured and precisely regulated, as much so as a railroad time-table. When the supply of nourishment in the body becomes low, something issues a notice by way of our stomach, which we call hunger; when we take food into the stomach, something pours out the gastric juice to digest it; when this digested food is prepared and taken up in the blood stream, something decides what portion of it shall be turned into muscle, what into brain cells, what into hair, what into finger nails. Sometimes, of course, mistakes are made and we have diseases. But for the most part all this infinitely intricate process goes on day and night without a hitch, and it is all the work of what we might call "the mind of the body." And just as our material bodies are the product of an age-long process of development repeated in embryo by every individual, so is this mental life a product of long development, and carries memories of this far-off process. In our instincts there dwells all the past, not merely of the human race, but of all life, and if we should ever succeed in completely probing the subconscious mind and bringing it into our consciousness, it would be the same as if we were free to ramble about in all the past. Huxley set forth the fact that all the history of evolution is told in a piece of chalk; and we probably do not exaggerate in saying that all the history of the universe is in the subconscious mind of every human being. When the partridge which has just come out of the egg sees the shadow of the hawk flit by and crouches motionless as a leaf, the partridge is not acting upon any knowledge which it has acquired in the few minutes since it was hatched. It is acting upon a knowledge impressed upon its subconscious mind by the experience of millions of partridges, perhaps for tens of thousands of years. When the physician lifts the newly born infant by its ankle and spanks it to make it cry, the physician is using his conscious reason, because he has learned from previous experience, or has been taught in the schools that it is necessary for the child's breathing apparatus to be instantly cleared. But when the child responds to the spanking with a yell, it is not moved by reasoned indignation at an undeserved injury; it is following an automatic reaction, as a result of the experience of infants in the stone age, experience which in some obscure way has been registered and stored in the infant cerebellum. Science is now groping its way through this underworld of thought. Obviously we should have here a most powerful means of influencing the body, if by any chance we could control it. We are continually seeking in medical and surgical ways to stimulate or to retard activities of the body, which are controlled entirely by this subconscious mind. If we are suffering intense pain in a joint, we put on a mustard plaster, what we call a counter-irritant, to trouble the skin and draw the congested blood away from the place of the pain. On the other hand, we may stimulate the functions of the intestines by the application of hot fomentations, to bring the blood more actively to that region. But if by any means we could make clear our wishes to the subconscious mind, we should be dealing with headquarters, and should get quicker and more permanent results. Can we by any possibility do this? To begin with, let me tell you of a simple experiment that I have witnessed. I once knew a man who had learned to control the circulation of his blood by his conscious will. I have seen him lay his two hands on the table, both of the same color, and without moving the hands, cause one hand to turn red and the other to turn pale. And, obviously, so far as this man is concerned, the problem of counter-irritants has been solved. He is a mental mustard plaster. And what was done by this man's own will can be done to others in many ways. The most obvious is a device which we call hypnotism. This is a kind of sleep which affects only the conscious control of the body, but leaves all the senses awake. In this hypnotic sleep or "trance" we discover that the subconscious mind is a good deal like the Henry Dubb of the Socialist cartoons; it is faithful and persistent, very strong in its own limited field, but comically credulous, willing to believe anything that is told it, and to take orders from any one who climbs into the seat of authority. You have perhaps attended one of the exhibitions which traveling hypnotists are accustomed to give in country villages. You have seen some bumpkin brought upon the stage and hypnotized, and told that he is in the water and must swim for his life, or that he is in the midst of a hornets' nest, or that his trousers are torn in the seat--any comical thing that will cause an audience to howl with laughter. These facts were first discovered nearly a hundred and fifty years ago by a French doctor named Mesmer. He was a good deal of a charlatan, and would not reveal his secrets, and probably the scientific men of that time were glad to despise him, because what he did was so new and strange. There is a certain type of scientific mind which sits aloft on a throne with a framed diploma above its head, and says that what it knows is science and what it does not know is nonsense. And so "mesmerism" was left for the quacks and traveling showmen. But half a century later a French physician named Liébault took up this method of hypnotism, without all the fakery that had been attached to it. He experimented and discovered that he could cure not merely phobias and manias, fixed ideas, hysterias and melancholias; he could cure definite physical diseases of the physical body, such as headache, rheumatism, and hemorrhage. Later on two other physicians, Janet and Charcot, developed definite schools of "psychotherapy." They rejected hypnotism as in most cases too dangerous, but used a milder form which is known as "hypnoidization." You would be surprised to know how many ailments which baffle the skill of medical men and surgeons yield completely to a single brief treatment by such a mental specialist. All that is necessary is some method to tap the subconscious mind. In many cases the subconsciousness knows what is the matter, and will tell at once--a secret that is completely hidden from the consciousness. For example, a man's hands shake; they have been shaking for years, and he has no idea why, but his subconscious mind explains that they first began to shake with grief over the death of his wife; also, the subconscious mind meekly and instantly accepts the suggestion that the time for grief is past, and that the hands will never shake again. Or here is a woman who has become convinced that worms are crawling all over her. Everything that touches her becomes a worm, even the wrinkles in her dress are worms, and she is wild with nervousness, and of course is on the way to the lunatic asylum. She is hypnotized and sees the operator catching these worms one by one and killing them. She is told that he has killed the last, but she insists, "No, there is one more." The operator clutches that one, and she is perfectly satisfied, and completely cured. Her husband writes, expressing his relief that he no longer has to "sleep every night in a fish pond." This instance with many others is told by Professor Quackenbos in his book, "Hypnotic Therapeutics." Among the most powerful means to influence the subconscious personality is religious excitement. Religion has come down to us from ancient times, and its fears and ecstasies are a part of our instinctive endowment. Those who can sway religious emotions can cure disease, not merely fixed ideas, but many diseases which appear to be entirely physical, but which psycho-analysis reveals to be hysterical in nature. Of course these religious persons who heal by laying on of hands or by purely mental means deny indignantly that they are using hypnotism or anything like it. I am aware that I shall bring upon myself a flood of letters from Christian Scientists if I identify their methods of curing with "animal magnetism" and "manipulation," and other devices of the devil which they repudiate. All I can say is that their miracles are brought about by affecting the subconscious mind; there is no other way to bring them about, and for my part I cannot see that it makes a great difference whether the subconscious mind is affected by a hand laid on the forehead, or by a hand waved in the air, or by an incantation pronounced, or by a prayer thought in silence. If you can persuade the subconscious mind that God is operating upon it, that God is omnipotent and is directing this particular healing, that is the most powerful suggestion imaginable, and is the basis of many cures. But if in order to achieve this, it is necessary for me to persuade myself that I can find some meaning in the metaphysical moonshine of Mother Eddy--why, then, I am very sorry, but I really prefer to remain sick. But such is not the case. You do not have to believe anything that is not true; you simply have to understand the machinery of the subconscious, and how to operate it. We are only beginning to acquire that knowledge, and we need an open mind, free both from the dogmatism of the medical men and the fanaticism of the "faith curists." A few years ago in London I met a number of people who were experimenting in an entirely open-minded way with mental healing, and I was interested in their ideas. I happened to be traveling on the Continent, and on the train my wife was seized by a very dreadful headache. She was lying with her head in my lap, suffering acutely, and I thought I would try an experiment, so I put my hand upon her forehead, without telling her what I was doing, and concentrated my attention with the greatest possible intensity upon her headache. I had an idea of the cause of it; I understood that headaches are caused by the irritation of the sensory nerves of the brain by fatigue poisons, or other waste matter which the blood has not been able to eliminate. I formed in my mind a vivid picture of what the blood would have to do to relieve that headache, and I concentrated my mental energies upon the command to her subconscious mind that it should perform these particular functions. In a few minutes my wife sat up with a look of great surprise on her face and said, "Why, my headache is gone! It went all at once!" That, of course, might have been a coincidence; but I tried the experiment many times, and it happened over and over. On another occasion I was able to cure the pain of an ulcerated tooth; I was able to cure it half a dozen times, but never permanently, it always returned, and finally the tooth had to come out. My wife experimented with me in the same way, and found that she was able to cure an attack of dyspepsia; but, curiously enough, she at once gave herself a case of dyspepsia--something she had never known in her life before. So now I will not allow her to experiment with me, and she will not allow me to experiment with her! But we are quite sure that people with psychic gifts can definitely affect the subconscious mind of others by purely mental means. We are prepared to believe in the miracles of the New Testament, and in the wonders of Lourdes, as well as in the healings of the Christian Scientists and the New Thoughters, which cannot be disputed by any one who is willing to take the trouble to investigate. We can face these facts without losing our reason, without ceasing to believe that everything in life has a cause, and that we can find out this cause if we investigate thoroughly. CHAPTER XIII EXPLORING THE SUBCONSCIOUS (Discusses automatic writing, the analysis of dreams, and other methods by which a whole new universe of life has been brought to human knowledge.) One of the most common methods of exploring the subconscious mind is the method of automatic writing. I have never tried this myself, but tens of thousands of people are sitting every night with a "ouija" in front of them, holding a pencil on a piece of paper and letting their subconscious minds write what they please. Most of them are hoping to get messages from the dead--a problem which we shall discuss in the next chapter. Suffice it for the moment to say that automatic writing and table rapping and other devices of mediumship have opened up to us a vast mass of subconscious mentality. A part of the scientific world still takes a contemptuous attitude and calls this all humbug, but many of our greatest scientists have been persuaded to investigate, and have become convinced that in this mass of subconsciousness there is mingled, not merely the mind of the medium, but the minds of all those present, and possibly other minds as well. For my part, I do not see how any one can study disinterestedly the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research and not become convinced that telepathy at least is one of the powers of the subconscious mind. Telepathy is what is popularly known as "thought transmission." Every one must know people who are what is called "psychic," and will know what is happening to some friend in another part of the world, or will go upstairs because they "sense" that some one wants them, or will go to the door because they "have a hunch" that some one is coming. And maybe these things are only chance, but you will be unscientific if you do not take the trouble to read and learn what modern investigators have brought out on such subjects. This much is certain, and is denied by no competent investigator: whatever has been in your mind is there still, and it is possible to find a way of tapping the buried memory. An old woman, delirious with fever, begins to babble in a strange language, and it is discovered that she is talking ancient Hebrew. The woman is entirely illiterate, and her conscious memory knows no language but her own, her conscious mind has no ideas beyond those of her domestic life and the gossip of the village. But investigation is made, and it is discovered that when this woman was a girl, she worked in the home of a Hebrew scholar, and heard him reading aloud. She did not understand a word of what she heard, and was not consciously listening to it; nevertheless, every syllable of it had been stored away forever by her subconscious mind. Innumerable cases of this sort have been established; and, as a matter of fact, we might have been prepared for such discoveries by the memory-feats of the conscious mind. It is well known that Mozart, when a child, could listen to a new opera, and go home and play it over note for note. At present there is a child in America, giving exhibitions in public, carrying on thirty games of chess at the same time. There have been others who do sums of mental arithmetic, such as multiplying thirty-two figures by thirty-two figures, or reciting the Bible backwards. All this seems incredible; and yet there is something still more incredible. Suppose that these same powers, which are stored in our subconscious minds, were stored also in the minds of animals! A few years ago Maurice Maeterlinck published a book, "The Unknown Guest," in the course of which he tells about his experiments with the so-called Elberfeld horses: two animals which had been trained for years by their owner to give signals by moving their forefeet, and which apparently could count and divide and multiply large sums, and extract square and cube root, and spell out names, and recognize sounds, scents and colors, and read time from the face of a watch. Of course, it is easy to say that this is absurd, that the horses must have got some signals from their trainer; but, as it happened, they would do their work in the absence of their trainer; they would do it in the dark, or with a sack over their heads, and the best scientific minds of Germany were unable to suggest any test conditions which could not be met. There have been many gigantic frauds in the world, and this may have been one of them; on the other hand, there have been many new discoveries, and for my part I will finish exploring the miracles of the subconscious mind of man, before I presume to say that anything is impossible in the subconscious mind of a horse or a dog. Also I will wait for some learned person to explain to me how the subconscious minds of horses and dogs know enough to build and repair their bones and teeth, so cleverly that modern architectural and engineering science could teach them nothing. I ask, also, if it is possible to find a region in the subconsciousness which is common to two people, why is it absurd to suggest that there might be a region common to a man and a horse? Why is this any more absurd than that they should eat the same food and breathe the same air and feel the same affection and be frightened at the same dangers? The only persons who will be dogmatic about such subjects are the persons who are ignorant. Those who take the trouble to investigate, discover more wonderful things every day, and they realize that we have here a whole universe of knowledge, to which we have as yet barely opened the doors. Consider, for example, the facts which we are acquiring on the subject of personality and what it means. You would say, perhaps, that if there is anything you know positively, it is that you are one person, and have never been anybody else, and that your body belongs to you, and that nobody else ever has used or ever can use it. But what would you say if I told you that tomorrow "you" might cease to be, and somebody else might be in possession of your body, walking it around and wearing its clothes and spending its money? What if I were to tell you that there might be in "you," or in your body, half a dozen different personalities which you have never known or dreamed of, and that tomorrow there might break out a war between them and "you," as to which of the half dozen people should hear with your ears and speak with your tongue and walk about with your clothes on? Unless you are familiar with the literature of multiple personality, you would surely say that this was unbelievable--quite as much so as a mathematical horse! Let us begin with the case of the Reverend Ansel Bourne, who was many years ago a perfectly respectable clergyman in a Rhode Island town. One day he disappeared, and his family did not hear of him. A year or two later there was a store-keeper in a town in Pennsylvania, who suddenly came to himself as the Reverend Ansel Bourne, not knowing what he had been in the meantime, or how he came to be keeping a store. Under hypnotism it developed that he had in him two personalities, and his trance personality recollected all that had been happening in the meantime and told about it freely. Or take the still more fascinating case of the young lady who is known in the literature of psychotherapy as Miss Beauchamp. Her story is told in a book, "The Dissociation of a Personality," by Dr. Morton Prince of Boston. Some thirty years ago Miss Beauchamp, a very conscientious and dignified young lady, became nervous and ill, and took to doing strange things, which were a source of shame and humiliation to her. Under hypnotism it was discovered to be a case of multiple personality. The other personality, who finally gave herself the name of Sally, was entirely different in character from Miss Beauchamp, being mischievous, vain, and primitive as a child. She conceived an intense dislike for Miss Beauchamp, whom she called by abusive names; at times when she could get possession of Miss Beauchamp's body, she delighted in playing humiliating tricks upon her enemy, spending her money, running her into debt, breaking her engagements, disgracing her before her friends. Sally was always well and Miss Beauchamp was always ill, and Sally would take the body, for which they fought for possession, and take it for long and exhausting walks, and leave it cold and miserable, lost and penniless, in the possession of Miss Beauchamp! And of course this made Miss Beauchamp more and more a wreck, and Sally took possession of more and more of her time. Sally knew everything that Miss Beauchamp did and thought, but Miss Beauchamp did not know about Sally. She only knew that there were gaps in her life, during which she did things she could not explain. And because she did not want her friends to think her insane, she would try to hide this dreadful condition of affairs; but Sally would spoil her plans by writing letters to her friends, and also by writing insulting letters for Miss Beauchamp to find when she took possession again. Then one day, after several years of treatment, there appeared yet another personality, who knew nothing about Miss Beauchamp or Sally either, and only knew what Miss Beauchamp had known up to some years before. Miss Beauchamp had a college education, and wrote and spoke French; Sally knew no French, and tried in vain to learn it; the new personality did not have a college education at all. Nevertheless, after long experiment, the story of which is as fascinating as any novel you ever read, Dr. Prince discovered that this was the real Miss Beauchamp; the others were "split off" personalities. He traced the cause to a severe mental shock, and succeeded in the end in combining the first Miss Beauchamp with the last, and in suppressing the obstinate and wanton Sally. As you read this story, you watch him mentally murdering a human being; "Sally" clamors pitifully for life, but he condemns her to death, and relentlessly executes his sentence. It is a "movie" thriller with a happy ending, and I should think it would make disconcerting reading to persons who believe that each of us is one immortal soul, or "has" one immortal soul, and is responsible for it to a personal God. There is never any end to the problems of these multiple personalities, and each case is a test of the judgment and ingenuity of the specialist. He will try to make one personality "stick," and will fail, and will have to accept another, or a combination of two. In one case, he found that he could not get the right personality to "stick" except under hypnosis, so he decided to leave the man in a mild state of trance, and the new personality lived all the rest of its life in that condition. If you wish to know more about this subject you can find books in any well-equipped library. I mention one, "The Riddle of Personality," by H. Addington Bruce, because it contains in the appendix an excellent list of the literature of the subconscious in all its many aspects. There is another, and most fascinating method of exploring this underworld of the mind, and that is the study of dreams. Some fifteen years ago a psychotherapist in New York told me about the discoveries of a physician in Vienna, and gave me some pamphlets, written in very difficult and technical German. Since then this Professor Freud has been translated, and has become a fad, and the absurdities of his followers make one a little apologetic for him. But we do not give up Jesus because of the torturers and bigots who call themselves Christians, and in the same way we have no right to blame Freud for all the absurdities of the psychoanalysts. Probably there never was a time in human history when there were not people who interpreted dreams, and you can still buy "dream books" for twenty-five cents, and learn that a white horse means that you are going to get a letter from your sweetheart tomorrow; then you can buy another dream book, telling you that a white horse means there is going to be a death in your family within the year. Naturally this prejudices thinking people against dream analysis; yet, dreams are facts, and every fact has its cause, and if you dream about a white horse, there must assuredly be some reason for your dreaming this particular thing. Of course we know that if you eat mince-pie and welsh-rabbit at midnight, you will dream about something terrible; but will it be snakes, or will it be a railroad wreck, or will it be white horses trampling over you? Obviously, it may be a million different unpleasant things; and what is it that picks out this or that from the infinite store of your memory, and brings it into the region of half-consciousness which we call the dream? Professor Freud's discovery is in brief that the dream is a wish-fulfillment. Our instincts present to our consciousness a great mass of impulses and desires, and among these the consciousness selects what it pleases, and represses and refuses to recognize or to act upon the others. But maybe these decisions are not altogether satisfactory to the subconsciousness. The mind of the body is in rebellion against the mind--shall we say of reason, or shall we say of society? The mind of society, otherwise known as the moral law, says that you shall be a good little boy, and shall go to school and learn what you are told, and on Sunday go to church and sit very still through a long sermon; whereas, the body of a boy would rather be a savage, hunting birds' nests and scalping enemies and exploring magic caves full of precious jewels. So the subconsciousness of the boy, balked and miserable, awaits its time, and finds its satisfaction when the boy is asleep and his moral censor has relaxed its control. This dream mind is not a logical and orderly thing like the conscious mind; it is not business-like and civilized, it does not deal in abstractions. It is far more interested in things than in words; it does not present us with formulas, but with pictures, and with stories of weird and wonderful happenings. It is like the mind of the race, which we study in legends and religions. It does not tell us that the sun is a mass of incandescent hydrogen gas, so and so many miles in diameter; it tells us that the sun is a cosmic hero who slays the black dragon of night. So the mind of our body presents us with innumerable pictures and symbols, exactly such as we find in poetry. There may be, and frequently is, dispute as to just what a poet meant by this or that particular image, but if we read all the work of any particular poet, we get a certain impression of that poet's individuality. If he is always talking about the perfume of women's hair and the gleam of the white flesh of nymphs in the thickets, we are not left in doubt as to what is wrong with this poet. And just so, when the expert sets to work to examine all the dreams that any one person can remember, day after day, sooner or later the expert observes that these dreams hover continually about one particular subject; and by questioning the person, he can find out what is the secret which is troubling the person, perhaps without the person himself being aware of it. Of course there are many people who like nothing so much as to talk about themselves; and many are spending their time and their money on the latest fad of being "psyched," who would, in any properly organized world, be put to work at hoeing weeds or washing their own clothes. Nevertheless, it is a fact that there are real mental disorders in the world, and innumerable honest and earnest people who have something the matter with them which they do not understand. Here is one way by which the conscientious investigator can find out what the trouble is, and make it clear to them, and by establishing harmony between their conscious and their subconscious minds, can many times put them in the way of health and happiness. Through psychoanalysis we are enabled to understand the "split" personality and its cause. We discover that almost everyone has more or less rudimentary forms of multiple personality hidden within him; made out of desires and traits which he does not like, or which the world forces him to drive into the deeps of his being. These may be evil impulses, of sex or violence; they may be the most noble altruisms, or artistic yearnings, ridiculous things in a world of "hustle." A quite normal man or woman may keep a separate self, apart from the world, living a Jekyll life of business propriety and a Hyde life of religious or musical ecstasy. Or again, the repressed impulses may integrate themselves in the unconscious, and you may have genius or lunacy or both--"great wits to madness near allied." The modern knowledge on such dark mysteries you may find in Hart's "The Psychology of Insanity." CHAPTER XIV THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY (Discusses the survival of personality from the moral point of view: that is, have we any claim upon life, entitling us to live forever?) As we explore the deeps of the subconsciousness, our own and other people's, we find ourselves confronting the strange question: Is it all our own mind, and that of other living people, or are we by any chance dealing with the minds of those who are dead? A great many earnest people, and some very learned people, are fully convinced that the latter is the case, and we have now to consider their arguments. When I was a little boy I used to read and hear ghost stories, and would shudder over them; but I was given to understand that all this was just imagination, I must not take ghosts seriously, any more than fairies or dragons or nymphs or satyrs. For an educated person to take ghosts seriously--well, such a person would be almost as comical as that supremely comical person, the flying-machine man. Would you believe it, in those days there actually were people who believed they could learn to fly in the air, and spent their time manufacturing machines for this purpose! There was a scientist in Washington who had this "bug," and built himself a machine and started to fly, and fell into the Potomac river. We all laughed at him--we laughed so long and so loud that we killed the poor man; and then, a few years later, somebody took that machine of Professor Langley's and actually did fly with it! But that was after I had grown up a bit more, and was not quite so ready to laugh at an idea because it was new. I remember vividly my first meeting with a man who believed in ghosts. He was a Unitarian clergyman, the Reverend Minot J. Savage of New York. I was sixteen years old, and just breaking out of my theological shell, and Doctor Savage helped to pry me loose. He was a grave and kindly man, of great learning and intelligence, and I remember vividly my consternation when one day he told me--oh, yes, he had seen many ghosts, he was accustomed to talk with ghosts every now and then. There was no doubt whatever that ghosts existed! He told me many stories. I remember one so well that I do not have to go back to his books to look up the details. It was in the days before the Atlantic cable, and he had a friend who took a steamer to England. One night Doctor Savage was awakened and found the ghost of his friend standing by his bedside. The ship had gone down off the Irish coast, so the ghost declared, but the friend did not want Doctor Savage to think that he had suffered from the pangs of drowning; he had been struck on the left side of the head by a beam of the ship and had been killed instantly. Doctor Savage wrote down these circumstances and had them witnessed by a number of people, and two or three weeks later he received word that the body of his friend had been found on the Irish coast, with the left side of the head crushed in. So then, of course, I studied the subject of ghosts. I have studied it off and on ever since, and have read most of the important new discoveries and arguments of the psychic researchers. To begin with, I will mention the contents of two large volumes, Gurney's "Phantasms of the Living." In this book are narrated many hundreds of cases, of which Doctor Savage's story is a type. It appears that persons at the moment of death, or in times of great mental stress, do somehow have the power to communicate with other people, even at the other side of the world. A few such cases might be attributed to coincidence or to fraud, but when you have so many cases, attested in minute detail by so many hundreds of otherwise honest people, you are not being scientific but simply stupid if you dismiss the whole subject with contempt. Gurney discusses the phenomenon and its probable causes. We know, of course, that hallucinations are among the most common of psychic phenomenon. Your subconscious mind can be caused to see and hear and feel anything; likewise it has power to cause you to see and hear and feel anything. In practically all cases of multiple personality some of the split-off personalities can cause the others to see and hear and feel. And the consciousness, you must understand, takes these things to be just as real as real things; there is no way you can tell an hallucination from reality--except to ask other people about it. And if we admit the idea of telepathy, we may say that phantasms are hallucinations caused by this means; that is, the subconscious mind of your wife or your mother or your friend who is ill or dying, transmits to your subconscious mind some vivid impression, which causes your own subconscious mind to present to your consciousness a perfect image of that person, walking and talking with you, and your consciousness has no way of telling but that the image is real. So much for phantasms of the living. But are there any phantasms of the dead? Are there any cases in which the time of the appearance can be proven to be subsequent to the time of death? Even this would not prove survival, of course; it is perfectly possible that the telepathic impulse might be delayed in our own minds, it might not flash into consciousness until our own state of mind made it possible. Can we say that there are cases in which the facts communicated are such as to convince us that the person was already dead, and was telling us something as a dead person and not as a living one? Before we go into this question, let us clear the ground for the subject by discussing the survival of personality from a more general standpoint. What is it that we want to prove? What are the probabilities of its being true? What would be the consequences of its not being true? Have we any grounds, other than those of psychic research, for thinking that it is true, or that it may be true, or that it ought to be true? What, so to speak, are the morals of the doctrine of immortality? Well, to begin with, the survival of the soul after death and forever is one of the principal doctrines of the Christian religion. Many devout Christians will read this book, and I will seem to them blasphemous when I say that this argument does not concern me. I count myself one of the lovers and friends of Jesus, I am presumptuous enough to believe that if he were on earth, I would understand him and get along with him excellently; but I do not know any reason why I should believe this, that, or the other doctrine about life because any religious sect, founded upon the name of Jesus, commands me so to believe. I see no more reason for adopting the idea of heaven because it is a Christian idea than I see for adopting the idea of reincarnation because it is a precious and holy idea to hundreds of millions of Buddhists. I have some very good friends who are Theosophists, and are quite convinced of this idea of reincarnation; that is, that the soul comes back into life over and over again in many different bodies, thus completing itself and renewing itself and expiating its sins. My Theosophist friends have a most elaborate and complicated body of what they consider to be knowledge on this subject; yet I have to take the liberty of saying that I cannot see that it has any relation to reality. It seems to me as completely unproven as any other fairy story, or myth, or legend--for example, the seven infernos of Dante, and the elaborate and complicated torments that are suffered there. But, it will be argued, Jesus rose from the dead, and thus proved the immortality of the soul. Now, in the first place, there are many learned investigators who consider there is insufficient evidence for believing that Jesus ever lived; and certainly if this be so, it will be difficult to prove that he rose from the dead. Again, it was a common occurrence for crucified men not to die; sometimes it happened that their guards allowed them to be spirited away--even nowadays we have known of prison guards being bribed to allow a prisoner to escape. Again, the events of the return of Jesus may have been just such psychic phenomena as we are trying in this chapter to explain. Or, once more, they may have been purely legends. A very brief study will convince a thinking person that the people of that time were ready to believe anything, and to accept facts upon such authority, and to make them the basis for a scientific conclusion, is simply to be childish. I shall be told, of course, that it is in the Bible, and therefore it must be true. The Bible is inspired, you say; and perhaps this is so. But then, a great deal of other literature is inspired, and that does not relieve me of the task of comparing these various inspirations, and judging them, and picking out what is of use to me. The Bible is the literature of the ancient Hebrews for a couple of thousand years. It represents what the race mind of a great people for one generation after another judged worth recording and preserving. You may get an idea what this means, if you will picture to yourself a large volume of English literature, containing some Teutonic myths, and the Saxon chronicles, and the "Morte d'Arthur," and several of Chaucer's stories, and some Irish fairy tales, and some of Bacon's essays, and Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," and the English prayer book, and the architect's specifications for Westminster Abbey, and a good part of "Burke's Peerage"; also Blackstone's "Commentaries," a number of Wesley's hymns, and Pope's "Essay on Man," and some chapters of Carlyle's "Past and Present," and Gladstone's speeches, and Blake's poems, and Captain Cook's story of his voyage around the world, and Southey's "Life of Nelson," and Morris's "News from Nowhere," and Blatchford's "Merrie England," and scores of pages from Hansard, which is the equivalent of our Congressional Record. You may find this description irreverent, but do not think it is meant so. Do me the honor to get out your Bible and look it over from this point of view! But, you say, if we die altogether when we finish this earthly life, what becomes of moral responsibility and the punishment of sins? What shall we say to the wicked man to make him be good, if we cannot reward him with a heaven and frighten him with a hell? Well, my first answer is that we have been trying this process for a couple of thousand years, and the results seem to indicate that we might better seek out some other method of inducing men to behave themselves. They do not believe so completely in heaven and hell these days, but there were times in history when they did believe completely, and not merely were the believers just as cruel, they were just as treacherous and just as gluttonous and just as drunken. If you want to satisfy yourself on this point, I refer you to my book "The Profits of Religion," page 129. Now, as a matter of fact, I think I can discern the outlines of a system of rewards and punishments automatically working in the life of men. I am not sure that I can prove that the wicked always get punished and the virtuous always rewarded; yet, when I stop and think, I am sure that I would not care to change places with any of the wicked people that I know in this world. Life may not always be "getting" them, but it has a way of "getting" their descendants, and I could not be entirely happy if I knew that my son and his sons were going to share the fate which I now observe befalling, for example, the grand dukes of Russia and their children. Life is one thing, and it does not exist for the individual, but for the race; its causes and effects do not always manifest themselves in one individual, but in a line of descendants. "Why are they called dynasties?" asked one of my professors of history; and a student brought the session to an end by answering: "Because that is what they always seem to do!" But this is not perfect justice, you will argue. It is not perfect, from the point of view of you or me; but then, I ask, what else is there in the world that is perfect from that point of view? Why should our justice be any more perfect than, for example, our health or our thinking or our climate or our government? And, may it not very well be that our justice is up to us, in precisely the same way that some of these other things are up to us? Maybe what we have to do is to set to work to see to it that virtue does always get rewarded and vice does always get punished, right here and now, instead of waiting for an omnipotent God to attend to it in some hypothetical heaven. I find this life of mine very wonderful, and enormously interesting. I am willing to take it on the terms that it is given, and to try to make the best of it; and I do not see that I have any right to dictate what shall be given me in some future life. If my father gives me a Christmas present, I am happy and grateful; and, of course, if I know that he is going to give me another present next Christmas, I am still more happy; but I do not see that I have any right to argue that because he gives me one Christmas present, he must give me an unlimited number of them, and I think it would be very ungrateful of me to refuse to thank him for a Christmas present until I had made sure that I was to get one next time! Neither do I find myself such a wonderful person that I can assert that the morality of the universe absolutely depends upon the fact that I am immortal. Of course, I should like to live forever, and to know all the wonderful things that are going to happen in the world, and if it is true that I am so to live, I shall be immensely delighted. But I cannot say that it _must_ be true, and all I can do is to investigate the probabilities. On this point my view is stated in a sentence of Spinoza's: "He who would love God rightly must not desire that God love him in return." To sum up, the question of immortality is purely a question of fact. It is one to be approached in a spirit of open-minded inquiry, entirely unaffected by hopes or fears or dogmas or moral claims. It is worth while to get clear that we may be immortal, even though we do not now know it and cannot now prove it; it is possible that all psychic research might end in telepathy, and still, when we die, we might wake up and find ourselves alive. It might possibly be that some of us are immortal and not all of us. It might be that some parts of us are immortal and not the rest. It might be that our subconsciousness is immortal and not our consciousness. It might be that all of us, or some part of us, survive for a time, but not forever. This last is something which I myself am inclined to think may be the case. Also, it seems worthwhile to mention that it is no argument against immortality that we cannot imagine it, that we cannot picture a universe consisting of uncountable billions of living souls, or what these souls would do to pass the time. It may very well be that among these souls there is no such thing as time. It may be that they are thoroughly occupied in ways beyond our imagining, or again, that they are not occupied, and under no necessity of being occupied. Let the person who presents such arguments begin by picturing to you how the brain cells manage to store up the uncounted millions of memories which you have, the thousands of words and combinations of words, and the thoughts which go with them, musical notes and tunes, colors and odors and visual impressions, memories of the past and hopes of the future and dreams that never were. Where are all those hundreds of millions of things, and what are they like when they are not in our consciousness, and how do they pass the time, and where were they in the hundreds of millions of years before we were born, and where will they be in the hundreds of millions of years of the future? When our wise men can answer these questions completely, it will be time enough for them to tell us about the impossibility of immortality. CHAPTER XV THE EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL (Discusses the data of psychic research, and the proofs of spiritism thus put before us.) Let us now take up the question of survival of personality after death from the strictly scientific point of view; let us consider what facts we have, and the indications they seem to give. First, we know that to all appearances the consciousness and the subconsciousness are bound up with the body. They grow with the body, they decline with the body, they seem to die with the body. We can irretrievably damage the consciousness by drawing a whiff of cyanogen gas into the lungs, or by sticking a pin into the brain, or by clogging one of its tiny blood vessels with waste matter. It is terrible to us to think that the mind of a great poet or prophet or statesman may be snuffed out of existence in such a way; but then, it is no argument against a fact to say that it is terrible. Insanity is terrible, war is terrible, pestilence is terrible, so also are tigers and poisonous snakes; but all these things exist, and all these things have power over the wisest and greatest mind, to put an end to its work on this earth at least. And now we come with the new instrument of psychic research, to probe the question: What becomes of this consciousness when it disappears? Can we prove that it is still in existence, and is able by any method to communicate with us? Those who answer "Yes" argue that the mind of the dead person, unable to use its own bodily machinery any longer, manages in the hypnotic trance to use the bodily machinery of another person, called a "medium," and by it to make some kind of record to identify itself. This, of course, is a strange idea, and requires a good deal of proof. The law of probability requires us not to accept an unlikely explanation, if there is any more simple one which can account for the facts. When we examine the product of automatic writing, table-tipping, and other psychic phenomena, we have first to ask ourselves, Is there anything in all this which cannot be explained by what we already know? Then, second, we have to ask, Is there any other supposition which will explain the facts, and which is easier to believe than the spirit theory? These "spirits" apparently desire to convince us of their reality, and they tell us many things which are expected to convince us; they tell us things which we ourselves do not know, and which spirits might know. But here again we run up against the problem of the subconsciousness, with its infinite mass of "forgotten" knowledge. It is not so easy for the "spirits" to tell us things which we can be sure our subconscious mind could not possibly contain. Also, there comes the additional element of telepathy. It appears to be a fact that under trance conditions, or under any especially exciting conditions of the consciousness, one mind can reach out and take something out of another mind, or one mind can cause something to be passed over to another mind; and so information can be communicated to the mind of a medium, and can appear in automatic writing, or in clairvoyance, or in crystal gazing. One of the most conscientious and earnest of all the investigators of this subject was the late Professor Hyslop, who many years ago sought to teach me "practical morality" (from the bourgeois point of view) in Columbia University. Professor Hyslop worked for fifteen years with a medium by the name of Mrs. Piper, who was apparently sincere and was never exposed in any kind of fraud. In Professor Hyslop's books you will find innumerable instances of amazing facts brought out in Mrs. Piper's trances. You will find Professor Hyslop arguing that the only way telepathy can account for these facts is by the supposition that there is a universal subconscious mind, or that the subconscious mind of the medium possesses the power to reach into the subconscious mind of every other living person and take out anything from it. But for my part, I cannot see that the case is quite so difficult. Professor Hyslop recites, for example, how Mrs. Piper would tell him facts about some long dead relative--facts which he did not know, but was later able to verify. But that proves simply nothing at all, because there could be no possible way for Professor Hyslop to be sure that he had never known these facts about his relatives. The facts might have been in his subconscious mind without having ever been in his conscious mind at all; he might have heard people talking about these matters while he was reading a book, or playing as a boy, paying no attention to what was said. And then came Sir Oliver Lodge with his investigations. I will say this for his work--he was the first person who was able to make real to my mind the startling idea that perhaps after all the dead might be alive and able to communicate with us. You will find what he has to say in his book, "The Survival of Man," and it seems fair that a great scientist and a great man should have a chance to convince you of what seem to him the most important facts in the world. Sir Oliver's son Raymond was killed in the war, and it is claimed that he began at once to communicate with his family. Among other things, he told them of the existence of a picture, which none of them had ever seen or heard of, a group photograph which he described in detail. But, of course, other people in this group knew of the existence of the photograph, and so we have again the possibility that some member of Sir Oliver's family may have taken into his subconscious mind without knowing it an impression or description of that picture. If you care to experiment, you will find that you can frequently play a part in the dreams of a child by talking to it in its sleep; and that is only one of a thousand different ways by which some member of a family might acquire, without knowing it, information of the existence of a photograph. There is another possibility to be considered--that a portion of the consciousness may survive, and not necessarily forever. We are accustomed when death takes place to see the body before us, and we know that we can preserve the body for thousands of years if we wish. Why is it not possible that when conscious life is brought to a sudden end, there may remain some portion of the consciousness, or of the subconsciousness, cut off from the body, and slowly fading back into the universal mind energy, whatever we please to call it? There is a hard part of the body, the skeleton, which survives for some time; why might there not be a central core of the mind which is similarly tough and enduring? Of course, if consciousness is a function of the brain, it must decay as the brain decays; but how would it be if the brain were a function of the consciousness--which is, so far as I can see, quite as likely a guess. I find many facts which seem to indicate the plausibility of this idea. I notice that in trance phenomena it is the spirits of those recently dead which seem to manifest the most vitality. Of course, you can go to any seance in the "white light" district of your city and receive communications from the souls of Cæsar and Napoleon and Alexander the Great and Pocahontas, and if the medium does not happen to be literary, you can communicate with Hamlet and Don Quixote and Siegfried and Achilles; but you will not find much reality about any of these people, they will not tell you very much about the everyday details of their lives. This fact that so much of what the "spirits" tell us is of our own time tends to cast doubt on the idea that the dead survive forever. How simple it would be to convince us, if the spirit of Sophocles would come back to earth and tell us where to dig in order to find copies of his lost tragedies! You would think that the soul of Sophocles, seeing our great need of beauty and wisdom, would be interested to give us his works! From genius, operating under the guidance of the conscious mind, we get sublimity, majesty and power; but what the trance mediums give us suggests, both in its moral and intellectual quality, the operation of the subconscious. It is exactly like what we get, for example, from dissociated personalities. There are, to be sure, the books of Patience Worth, produced by the automatic writing of a lady in St. Louis, who tells us in evident good faith that her conscious personality is entirely innocent of Patience, and all her thought and doings. Patience writes long novels and dramas in a quaint kind of old English, and the lady in St. Louis knows nothing about this language. But does she positively know that when she was a child, she never happened to be in the room with someone who was reading old English aloud? Nothing seems more likely than that her subconscious mind heard some quaint, strange language, and took possession of it, and built up a personality around it, and even made a new language and a new literature from that starting point. That is precisely the kind of thing in which the subconscious revels. It creates new characters, with an imagination infinite and inexhaustible. Who has not waked up and been astounded at the variety and reality of a dream? Who has not told his dreams and laughed over them? The subconscious will play at games, it will act and rehearse elaborate rôles; it will put on costumes, and delight in being Cæsar and Napoleon and Alexander the Great and Pocahontas and Hamlet and Don Quixote and Siegfried and Achilles. Yes, it will even play at being "spirits"! It will be mischievous and impish; it will be swallowed up with a sense of its own importance, taking an insolent delight in convincing the world's most learned scientists of the fact that its play-acting is reality. It will call itself "Raymond" to move and thrill a grief-stricken family; it will call itself "Phinuit" and "Dr. Hodgson," and cause an earnest professor of "practical morality" to give up a respectable position in Columbia University and write books to convince the world that the dead are sending him messages. Consider, for example, the multiple personality of Miss Beauchamp. Remember that here we are not dealing with any guess work about "spirits"; here we have half a dozen different "controls," none of them the least bit dead, but all of them a part of the consciousness of one entirely alive young lady. A specialist has spent some six years investigating the case, day after day, week after week, writing down the minute details of what happens. And now consider the miscreant known as "Sally." Sally is just as real as any child whom you ever held in your arms. Sally has love and hate, fear and hope, pain and delight--and Sally is a little demon, created entirely out of the subconsciousness of a highly refined and conscientious young college graduate of Boston. Sally spends Miss Beauchamp's money on candy, and eats it; Sally pawns Miss Beauchamp's watch and deliberately loses the ticket; Sally uses Miss Beauchamp's lips and tongue to tell lies about Miss Beauchamp; Sally strikes Miss Beauchamp dumb, or makes her hear exactly the opposite of what is spoken to her. Yes, and Sally pleads and fights frantically for her life; Sally enters into intrigues with other parts of Miss Beauchamp, and for years deliberately fools Doctor Prince, who is her Recording Angel and Heavenly Judge! And can anybody doubt that Sally could have fooled a grieving mother, and made that mother think she was talking to the ghost of a long lost child? Can anybody doubt that Sally could and would play the part of any person she had ever known, or of any historic character she had ever read about? And don't overlook the all-important fact that the conscious Miss Beauchamp was absolutely innocent of all this, and was horrified when she was told about it. So here you have the following situation, no matter of guesswork, but definitely established: your dearest friend may act as a medium, and in all good faith may bring to the surface some part of his or her subconsciousness, which masquerades before you in a hundred different rôles, and plays upon you with deliberate malice the most subtle and elaborate and cruel tricks. And how much worse the situation becomes when to this there is added the possibility of conscious fraud! When the medium is a person who is taking your money, and thrives by making you believe in the "spirits" she produces! You may go to Lily Dale, in New York state, the home of the Spiritualists, where they have a convention every summer, and in row after row of tents you may hear, and even see, every kind of spirit you ever dreamed of, ringing bells and shaking tambourines and dancing jigs. And you may see poor farmers' wives, with tears streaming down their cheeks, listening to the endearments of their dead children, and to wisdom from the lips of Oliver Wendell Holmes speaking with a Bowery accent. This kind of thing was exposed many years ago by Will Irwin in a book called "The Medium Game"; and then--after traveling from one kind of medium to another, and studying all their frauds, Irwin tells how he went into a "parlor" on Sixth Avenue, and there by a fat old woman who had never seen him before, was suddenly told the most intimate secrets of his life! It has recently been announced that Thomas A. Edison is at work upon a device to enable spirits to communicate with the living, if there really are spirits seeking to do this. It is Edison's idea that spirits may inhabit some kind of infinitely rarefied astral body, and he proposes to manufacture an instrument which is sensitive to an impression many millions of times fainter than anything the human body can feel. This should make it easier for the spirits, and should constitute a fairer test, possibly a decisive one. When that machine is perfected and put to work by scientific men, I wish to suggest a few tests which will convince me that there really are spirits, and that the results are not to be explained by telepathy. First, assuming that the spirits live forever, there are some useful things which were known to the people of ancient time, and are not known to anyone living now. For example, let one of the Egyptian craftsmen come forward and tell us the secret of their glass-staining, which I understand is now a lost art. And then Sophocles, as I have already suggested, will tell us where we can find his lost dramas; or if he doesn't know where any copies are buried, let him find in the spirit world some scribe or librarian or book-lover who can give us this priceless information. All over the ancient lands are buried and forgotten cities, and in those cities are papyrus scrolls and graven tablets and bricks. Infinite stores of knowledge are thus concealed from us; and how simple for the ancient ones who possess this information to make it known to us, and so to convince us of their reality! Or, again, supposing that spirits are not immortal, but that they slowly fade from life as do their bodies. Suppose that a Raymond Lodge or other recently dead soldier wishes to communicate with his father and to convince his father that it is really an independent being, and not simply a part of the father's subconscious mind--let him try something like this. Let the father write six brief notes, and put them in six envelopes all alike, and shuffle them up and put them in a hat and draw out one of them. Now, assuming that the experimenter is honest, there is no living human being who knows the contents of that envelope, and if the medium is dipping into the subconscious mind of the experimenter, the chances are one in six of the right note being hit upon. Assuming that spirits may not be able to get inside an envelope and read a folded letter, there is no objection to the experimenter, provided he is honest, and provided there are no mirrors or other tricks, holding the envelope behind his back, and tearing it open, and spreading it out for the convenience of the spirit. And now, if the spirit can read that letter correctly every time, we shall be fairly certain that whatever force we are dealing with, it is not the subconscious mind of the experimenter. Or, let us take another test. Let us have a roulette wheel in a covered box, or hidden away so that no one but the spirit can see it. We spin the wheel, and any one of the habitues of Monte Carlo can figure out the chance of the little ball dropping into any particular number. If now the spirit can tell us each time where we shall find the ball, we shall know that we are dealing with knowledge which does not exist either in the conscious or the subconscious mind of any living human being. Among the things that "spirits" have been accustomed to do, since the days when they first made their appearance with the Fox sisters in America, are the lifting of tables and the ringing of bells and the assuming of visible forms. These are what is known as "materializations," and when I was a boy, and used to hear people talking about these things, there was always one test required: let the materializations manifest themselves upon recording instruments scientifically devised; let photographs be taken of them, let them be weighed and measured, and so on. Well, time has moved forward, and these tests have been met, and it appears that "materializations" are facts--although it is still as uncertain as ever what they are materializations of. An English scientist, Professor Crawford, has published a book entitled "The Reality of Psychic Phenomena," in which he tells the results of many years of testing materializations by the strictest scientific methods. When the medium "levitates" a table--that is, causes it to go up in the air without physical contact--it appears that her own weight increases by exactly the weight of the table. When she exerts any force, which apparently she can do at a distance, the recording instruments show the exact counter-force in her own body. The results of these investigations are calculated at first to take your breath away. It begins to appear that the theosophists may be right, and that we may have one or more "astral" bodies within or coincident with the physical body; and that under the trance conditions we mold and make over this "astral" body in accordance with our imaginations, precisely as a sculptor molds the clay. At any rate, our subconsciousness has the power to project from it masses of substance, and to cause these to take all kinds of forms, for example, human faces, which have been photographed innumerable times. Or the body can shoot out long rods or snaky projections, which lift tables, and exert force which has been recorded upon pressure instruments and weighed by scales. As I write, a friend lends me a fifteen-dollar volume, a translation just published of an elaborate work by Baron von Schrenck-Notzing, a physician of Munich, giving minute details of four years' experiments in this field. So rigid was this investigator in his efforts to exclude fraud, that not merely was the medium stripped and sewed up in black tights, but the "cabinet" in which she sat was a big sack of black cloth, everywhere sewed tight by machine. Every crevice of the medium's body was searched before and after the tests, and every inch of the "cabinet" gone over. The investigators sat within a couple of feet of the medium, and would draw back the curtains, and while holding her hands and her feet, would watch great masses of filmy gray and white stuff exude from the medium's mouth, from her armpits and breasts and sides. This would happen in red light of a hundred candle power, by which print could be easily read; and the medium would herself illuminate the phenomena with a red electric torch. The investigators would be privileged to examine these "phantom" forms, to touch them gently, and be touched by them--soft and slimy, like the tongue of an animal; but sometimes the things would misbehave, and strike them in the eye, hurting them. The medium, a young French girl living in the home of the wife of a well-known French playwright, had begun with spiritualist ideas, but came to take a matter-of-fact attitude to what happened, and in her trances would labor to mold these emanations into hands or faces, as requested by those present. She finally succeeded in allowing them to separate the soft mucous stuff from her body, and keep it for chemical and bacteriological examination. All this time she would be surrounded by a battery of cameras, nine at once, some of them inside the cabinet; and when the desired emanation was in sight, all these cameras would be set off by flashlight, and in the book you have over two hundred such photographs, showing faces and hands from every point of view. There are even moving-pictures, showing the material coming out of her mouth and going back! It is evident that we have here a whole universe of unexplored phenomena; and it seems that many of the old-time superstitions which were dumped overboard have now to be dragged back into the boat and examined in the light of new knowledge. What could smack more of magic and fraud than crystal-gazing? Yet it appears that the subconsciousness has power to project an image of its hidden memories into a crystal ball, where it may be plainly seen. We find so well-recognized an authority as Dr. Morton Prince using this method to enable one of the many Miss Beauchamps to recall incidents in her previous life which were otherwise entirely lost to her. Likewise this exploration of the disintegration of personality enables us to watch in the making all the phenomena of trance and ecstasy which have had so much to do with the making of religions. We know now how Joan of Arc heard the "voices," and we can make her hear more voices or make her stop hearing voices, as we prefer. Also we know all about demons and "demoniac possession." We can cast out demons--and without having to cause them to enter a herd of swine! We may some day be prepared to investigate the wonder stories which the Yogis tell us, about their ability to leave their physical bodies in a trance, and to appear in England at a few moments' notice for the transaction of their spiritual business! But we want things proven to us, and we don't want the people with whom we work to be animated either by religious fanaticism or by money greed. We are ready to unlimber our minds, and prepare for long journeys into strange regions, but we want to move cautiously, and choose our route carefully, and be sure we do not lose our way! We want to deal rationally with life; we don't want to make wild guesses, or to choose a complicated and unlikely solution when a simple one will suffice. But, on the other hand, we must be alive to the danger of settling down on our little pile of knowledge, and refusing to take the trouble to investigate any more. That is a habit of learned men, I am sorry to say; the law of inertia applies to the scientist, as well as to the objects he studies. The scientists of our time have had to be prodded into considering each new discovery about the subconscious mind, precisely as the scientists of Galileo's time had to be prodded to watch him drop weights from the tower of Pisa. When he told them that the earth moved round the sun instead of the sun round the earth, they tortured him in a dungeon to make him take it back, and he did so, but whispered to himself, "And yet it moves." And it did move, of course, and continued to move. And in exactly the same way, if it be true that we have these hidden forces in us, they will continue to manifest themselves, and masses of people will continue to flock to Lily Dale, and to pay out their hard-earned money, until such a time as our learned men set to work to find out the facts and tell us how we can utilize these forces without the aid of either superstition or charlatanry. CHAPTER XVI THE POWERS OF THE MIND (Sets forth the fact that knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery, and what science means to the people.) We have now completed a brief survey of the mind and its powers. Whatever we may have proved or failed to prove, this much we may say with assurance: the reader who has followed our brief sketch attentively has been disabused of any idea he may have held that he knows it all; and this is always the first step towards knowledge. The mind is the instrument whereby our race has lifted itself out of beasthood. It is the instrument whereby we hold ourselves above the forces which seek to drag us down, and whereby we shall lift ourselves higher, if higher we are to go. How shall we protect this precious instrument? How shall we complete our mastery of it? What are the laws of the conduct of the mind? The process of the mind is one of groping outward after new facts, and digesting and assimilating them, as the body gropes after and digests and assimilates food. The senses bring us new impressions, and we take these and analyze them, tear them into the parts which compose them, compare them with previous sensations, recognize difference in things which seem to be alike, and resemblances in things which seem to be different; we classify them, and provide them with names, which are, as it were, handles for the mind to grasp. Above all, we seek for causes; those chains of events which make what we know as order in the world of phenomena. And when the mind has what seems to be a cause, it proceeds to test it according to methods it has worked out, the rules and principles of experimental science. It is a comparatively small number of sensations which the body brings to the mind of itself; it is a narrow world in which we should live if our minds adopted a passive attitude toward life. But some minds possess what we call curiosity; they set out upon their own impulse to explore life; they discover new laws and make new experiences and new sensations for themselves. The mind forms an idea, and at first, after the fashion of the ancient Greek philosophers, it glorifies that idea and sets it in the seat of divinity. But presently comes the empirical method, which refuses authority to any idea unless it can stand the test of experiment, and prove that it corresponds with reality. Nowadays the thinker amasses his facts, and forms a theory to explain them, and then proceeds to try out this theory by the most rigid method that he or his critics can devise. If the theory doesn't "work"--that is, if it doesn't explain all the facts and stand all the tests--it is thrown away like a worn-out shoe. So little by little a body of knowledge is built up which is real knowledge; which will serve us in our daily lives, which we can use as foundation-stones in the structure of our civilization. By this method of research man is expanding his universe beyond anything that could have been conceived in the pre-scientific days. Hour by hour, while we work and play and sleep, the mind of our race is discovering new worlds in which our posterity will dwell. For uncounted ages man walked upon the earth, surrounded by infinite swarms of bacterial life of whose existence he never dreamed. The invisible rays of the spectrum beat upon him, and he knew nothing of what they did to him, whether good or evil. He lifted his head and saw vast universes of suns, in comparison with which his world was a mere speck of dust; yet to him these universes were globes or lanterns which some divinity had hung in the sky. One of the most fascinating illustrations of how the mind runs ahead of the senses is the story of the planet Uranus, which, less than two hundred years ago, had never been beheld by the eye of man. A mathematician seated in his study, working over the observations of other planets, their motions in relation to their mass and distance, discovered that their behavior was not as it should be. At certain times none of them were in quite the right place, and he decided that this variation must be due to the existence of an unknown body. He worked out the problem of what must be the mass and the exact orbit of this body, in order for it to be responsible for the variations observed; and when he had completed these calculations, he announced to the astronomical world, "Turn your telescopes to a certain spot in the heavens at a certain minute of a certain night, and you will find a new planet of a certain size." And so for the first time the human senses became aware of a fact, which by themselves they might not have discovered in all eternity. Now, the importance of exact knowledge concerning a new planet may not be apparent to the ordinary man; but if the thing which is discovered is, for example, an unknown ray which will move an engine or destroy a cancer, then we realize the worthwhileness of research, and the masters of the world's commerce are willing to give here and there a pittance for the increase of such knowledge. But men of science, who have by this time come to a sense of their own dignity and importance, understand that there is no knowledge about reality which is useless, no research into nature which is wasted. You might say that to describe and classify the fleas which inhabit the bodies of rats and ground-squirrels, and to study under the microscope the bacteria which live in the blood of these fleas--that this would be an occupation hardly worthy of the divinity that is in man. But presently, as a result of this knowledge about fleas and flea diseases being in existence and available, a bacteriologist discovers the secret of the dread bubonic plague, which hundreds of times in past history has wiped out a great part of the population of Europe and Asia. Mark Twain tells in his "Connecticut Yankee" how his hero was able to overcome the wizard Merlin, because he knew in advance of an eclipse of the sun. And this was fiction, of course; but if you prefer fact, you may read in the memoirs of Houdin, the French conjurer, how he was able to bring the Arab tribes into subjection to the French government by depriving the great chieftains of their strength. He gathered them into a theatre, and invited their mighty men upon the stage, and there was an iron weight, and they were able to lift it when Houdin permitted, and not to lift it when he forbade. These noble barbarians had never heard of the electro-magnet, and could not conceive of a force that could operate through a solid wooden floor beneath their feet. Such things, trivial as they are, serve to illustrate the difference between ignorance and knowledge, and the power which knowledge gives. The man who knows is godlike to those who do not know; he may enslave them, he may do what he pleases with their lives, and they are powerless to help themselves. Anyone who would help them must begin by giving them knowledge, real knowledge. There is no such thing as freedom without knowledge, and it must be the best knowledge, it must be new knowledge; he who goes against new knowledge armed with old knowledge is like the Chinese who went out to meet machine-guns with bows and arrows, and with umbrellas over their heads. Once upon a time knowledge was the prerogative of kings and priests and ruling castes; but this supreme power has been wrested from them, and this is the greatest step in human progress so far taken. "Seek and ye shall find," is the law concerning knowledge today. "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." In this, my Book of the Mind, I say to you that knowledge is your priceless birthright, and that you should repudiate all men and all institutions and all creeds and all formulas which seek to keep this heritage from you. Beware of men who bid you believe something because it is told you, or because your fathers believed it, or because it is written in some ancient book, or embodied in some ancient ceremonial. Break the chains of these venerable spells; and at the same time beware of the modern spells which have been contrived to replace them! Beware of party cries and shibboleths, the idols of the forum, as Plato called them, the prejudices which are set as snares for your feet. Beware of cant--that paraphernalia of noble sentiments, artificially manufactured by politicians and newspapers for the purpose of blinding you to their knaveries. Remember that you live in a world of class conflicts; at every moment of your life your mind is besieged by secret enemies, it is exposed to poison gas-clouds deliberately released by people who seek to make use of you for purposes which are theirs and not yours. In the fairy-tales we used to love, the hero was provided with magic protection against the perils of those times; but what hero and what magic will guard the modern man against the propaganda of militarism, nationalism, and capitalist imperialism? The mind is like the body in that it can be trained, it can be taught sound habits, its powers can be enormously increased. There are many books on mind and memory training, some of which are useful, and some of which are trash. There is an English system widely advertised, called "Pelmanism," of which I have personally made no test, but it has won endorsements of a great many people who do not give their endorsements lightly. This is the subject of applied psychology, and just as in medicine, or in law, or in any of the arts, there is a vast amount of charlatanry, but there is also genuine knowledge being patiently accumulated and standardized. When the United States government had to have an army in a hurry it did not make its millions of young men into teamsters or aviators at random. It used the new methods of determining reaction times, and testing the coordination of mind and body. Recently I visited the Whittier Reform School in California, where delinquent boys are educated by the state. A boy had been set to work in the tailor shop, and it had been found that he was unable to make the buttons and the buttonholes of a coat come in the right place. For nine years the state of California, and before it the state of Georgia, had been laboring to teach this boy to make buttons and buttonholes meet; the effort had cost some five thousand dollars, to say nothing of all the coats which were spoiled, and all the mental suffering of the victim and his teachers. Finally someone persuaded the state of California to spend a few thousand dollars and install a psychological bureau for the purpose of testing all the inmates of the institution; so by a half hour's examination the fact was developed that this boy was mentally defective. Although he was eighteen years old in body, his mind was only eight years old, and so he would never be able to achieve the feat of making buttons and buttonholes meet. This is a new science which you may read about in Terman's "The Measurement of Intelligence." By testing normal children, it is established that certain tasks can be performed at certain ages. A child of three can point to his eyes, his nose and his mouth; he can repeat a sentence of six syllables, and repeat two digits, and give his family name. Older children are asked to look at a picture and then tell what they saw; to note omissions in a picture, to arrange blocks according to their weight, to arrange words into sentences, to note absurdities in statements, to count backwards, and to make change. Children of fifteen are asked to interpret fables, to reverse the hands of a clock, and so on. Of course there are always variations; every child will be better at some kinds of tests than at others. But by having a wide variety, and taking the average, you establish a "mental age" for the child--which may be widely different from its physical age. You may find some whose minds have stopped growing altogether, and can only be made to grow by special methods of education. Enlightened communities are now conducting separate schools for defective children--replacing the old-fashioned schoolmaster who wore out birch-rods trying to force poor little wretches to learn what was beyond their power. In the same way psychology can be applied in industry, and in the detection of crime. Here, too, there is a vast amount of "fake," but also the beginning of a science. Our laws do not as yet permit the use of automatic writing and the hypnotic trance in the investigation of crime, but they have sometimes permitted some of the simpler tests, for example, those of memory association. The examiner prepares a list of a hundred names of objects, and reads those names one after another, and asks the person he is investigating to name the first thing which is suggested to him by each word in turn. "Engine" will suggest "steam," or perhaps it will suggest "train"; "coat" will suggest "trousers," or perhaps it will suggest "pocket," and so on. The examiner holds a stop-watch, and notes what fraction of a second each one of these reactions takes. The ordinary man, who is not trying to conceal anything, will give all his associations promptly, and the reaction times will be approximately alike. But suppose the man has just murdered somebody with an axe, and buried the body in a cellar with a fire shovel, and taken a pocketbook, and a watch, and a locket, and a number of various objects, and climbed out of the cellar window by breaking the glass; and now suppose that in his list of a hundred objects the psychologist introduces unexpectedly a number of these things. In each case the first memory association of the criminal will be one which he does not wish to give. He will have to find another, and that inevitably takes time. One or two such delays might be accidental; but if every time there is any suggestion of the murder, or the method or scene of the murder, there is noticed confusion and delay, you may be sure that the conscious mind is interfering with the subconscious mind. The difference between the conscious and the subconscious mind is always possible to detect, and if you are permitted to be thorough in your experiments, you can make certain what is in the subconscious mind that the conscious mind is trying to conceal. Here, as everywhere in life, knowledge is power, and expert knowledge confers mastery over the shrewdest untrained mind. The only trouble is that under our present social system the trained mind is very apt to be working in the interest of class privilege. The psychologist who is employed by a great corporation, or by a police department, may be as little worthy of trust as a chemist who is engaged in making poison gases to be used by capitalist imperialism for the extermination of its rebellious slaves. But what this proves is not that scientific knowledge is untrustworthy, but merely that the workers must acquire it, they must have their own organizations and their own experiments in every field. To give knowledge to the masses of mankind, slow and painful as the process seems, is now the most important task confronting the enlightened thinker. The method of psychoanalysis gives us also much insight into the phenomena of genius, and the hope that we may ultimately come to understand it. At present we are embarrassed because genius is so often closely allied to eccentricity; the supernormal appears in connection with the subnormal--and it is often hard to tell them apart. Great poets and painters in revolt against a world of smug commercialism, adopt irresponsibility as their religion; they live in a world of their own, they dress like freaks, they refuse to pay their debts, or to be true to their wives. They are followed by a host of disciples, who adopt the defects of the master as a substitute for his qualities. And so there grows up a perverted notion of what genius is, and wholly false standards of artistic quality. There is nothing mankind needs more than sure and exact tests of mental superiority; not merely the ability to acquire languages and to solve mathematical equations, but the ability to carry in the mind intense emotions, while at the same time shaping and organizing them by the logical faculty, selecting masses of facts and weaving them into a pattern calculated to awaken the emotion in others. This is the last and greatest work of the human spirit, and to select the men who can do it, and foster their activity, is the ultimate purpose of all true science. CHAPTER XVII THE CONDUCT OF THE MIND (Concludes the Book of the Mind with a study of how to preserve and develop its powers for the protection of our lives and the lives of all men.) Someone wrote me the other day, asking, "When is the best time to acquire knowledge?" I answer, "The time is now." It is easier to learn things when you are young, but you cannot be young when you want to be, and if you are old, the best time to acquire knowledge is when you are old. It is true that the brain-cells seem to harden like the body, and it is less easy for them to take on new impressions; but it can be done, and just as Seneca began to learn Greek at eighty, I know several old men whom the recent war has shaken out of their grooves of thought and compelled to deal with modern ideas. But if you are young, then so much the better! Then the divine thrill of curiosity is keenest; then your memory is fresh, and can be trained; your mind is plastic, and you can form sound habits. You can teach yourself to respect truth and to seek it, you can teach yourself accuracy, open-mindedness, flexibility, persistence in the search for understanding. First of all, I think, is accuracy. Learn to think straight! Let your mind be as a sharp scalpel, penetrating unrealities and falsehoods, cutting its way to the facts. When you set out to deal with a certain subject, acquire mastery of it, so that you can say, "I know." And yet, never be too sure that you know! Never be so sure, that you are not willing to consider new facts, and to change your way of thinking if it should be necessary. I look about me at the world, and see tigers and serpents, dynamite and poison gas and forty-two centimeter shells--yet I see nothing in the world so deadly to men as an error of the mind. Look at the mental follies about you! Look at the prejudices, the delusions, the lies deliberately maintained--and realize the waste of it all, the pity of it all! Every man, it seems, has his pet delusions, which he hugs to his bosom and loves because they are his own. If you try to deprive him of those delusions, it is as though you tore from a woman's arms the child she has borne. I have written a book called "The Profits of Religion," and never a week passes that there do not come to me letters from people who tell me they have read this book with pleasure and profit, they are grateful to me for teaching them so much about the follies and delusions of mankind, and it is all right and all true, save for two or three pages, in which I deal with the special hobby which happens to be their hobby! What I say about all the other creeds is correct--but I fail to understand that the Mormon religion is a dignified and inspired religion, a gift from on high, and if only I would carefully study the "Book of Mormon," I would realize my error! Or it is all right, except what I say about the Christian Scientists, or the Theosophists, or perhaps one particular sect of the Theosophists, who are different from the others. Today there lies upon my desk a letter from a man who has read many of my books, and now is grief-stricken because he must part company from me; he discovers that I permit myself to speak disrespectfully about the Seventh Day Adventist religion, whereas he is prepared to show the marvels of biblical prophecy now achieving themselves in the world. How could any save a divinely revealed religion have foreseen the present movement to establish the Sabbath by law? Yes, and presently I shall see the last atom of the prophecy fulfilled--there will be a death penalty for failure to obey the Sabbath law! Cultivate the great and precious virtue of open-mindedness. Keep your thinking free, not merely from outer compulsions, but from the more deadly compulsions of its own making--from prejudices and superstitions. The prejudices and superstitions of mankind are like those diseased mental states which are discovered by the psychoanalyst; what he calls a "complex" in the subconscious mind, a tangle or knot which is a center of disturbance, and keeps the whole being in a state of confusion. Each group of men, each sect or class, have their precious dogmas, their shibboleths, their sacred words and stock phrases which set their whole beings aflame with fanaticism. They have also their phobias, their words of terror, which cannot be spoken in their presence without causing a brain-storm. At present the dread word of our time is "Communist." You can scarcely say the word without someone telephoning for the police. And yet, when you meet a Communist, what is he? A worn and fragile student, who has thought out a way to make the world a better place to live in, and whose crime is that he tells others about his idea! Or perhaps you belong to the other side, and then your word of terror is the word "Capitalist." You meet a Capitalist, and what do you find? Very likely you find a man who is kindly, generous in his personal impulses, but bewildered, possibly a little frightened, still more irritated and made stubborn. So you realize that nearly all men are better than the institutions and systems under which they live; you realize the urgent need of applying your reasoning powers to the problem of social reorganization. Cultivate also, in the affairs of your mind, the ancient virtue of humility. There is an oldtime poem, which perhaps was in your school readers, "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" My answer is, for innumerable reasons. The spirit of mortal should be proud and must be proud because life throbs in it, and because life is a marvelous thing, and the excitement of life is perpetual. Yesterday I met a young mother; and of what avail is all the pessimism of poets against the pride of a young mother? "Oh!" she cried, and her face lighted up with delight. "He said 'Goo'!" Yes, he said "Goo!"--and never since the world began had there been a baby which had achieved that marvel. Presently it will be, "Look, look, he is trying to walk!" Then he will be getting marks at school, and presently he will be displaying signs of genius. Always it will take an effort of the mind of that young mother to realize that there are other children in the world as wonderful as her own; and perhaps it will take many generations of mental effort before there will be young mothers capable of realizing that some other child is more wonderful than her child. In other words, it is by a definite process of broadening our minds that we come to realize the lives of others, to transfer to them the interest we naturally take in our own lives, and to admit them to a state of equality with ourselves. This is one of the services the mind must render for us; it is the process of civilizing us. And there is another, and yet more important task, which is to make clear to us the fact that we do not altogether make this life of ours, that there is a universe of power and wisdom which is not ours, but on which we draw. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," said the Psalmist. We know now that fear is an ugly emotion, destructive to life; but it may be purified and made into a true humility, which every thinking man must feel towards life and its miracles. Also the man will have joy, because it is given him to share the high, marvelous adventure of being. To the pleasures of the body there is a limit, and it comes quickly; but the pleasures of the mind are infinite, and no one who truly understands them can have a moment of boredom in life. To a man who possesses the key to modern thought, who knows what knowledge is and where to look for it, the life of the mind is a panorama of delight perpetually unrolled before him. To the minds of our ancestors there was one universe; but to our minds there are many universes, and new ones continually discovered. The only question is, which one will you choose? Will you choose the universe of outer space, the material world of infinity? Consider the smallest insect that you can see, crawling upon the surface of the earth; small as that insect is in relation to the earth, it is not so small, by millions of times, as is the earth in relation to the universe made visible to our eyes by the high-power telescope, plus the photographic camera, plus the microscope. If you want to know the miracles of this world of space, read Arrhenius' "The Life of the Universe," or Simon Newcomb's "Sidelights on Astronomy." Suffice it here to say that we have a chemistry of the stars, by means of the spectroscope; that we can measure the speed and direction of stars by the same means; that we have learned to measure the size of the stars, and are studying stars which we cannot even see! And then along comes Einstein, with his theories of "relativity," and makes it seem that we have to revise a great part of this knowledge to allow for the fact that not merely everything we look at, but also we ourselves, are flying every which way through space! Or will you choose the universe of the atom, the infinity of the material world followed the other way, so to speak? Big as is the universe in relation to our world, and big as is our world in relation to the insect that crawls on it, the insect is bigger yet in relation to the molecules which compose its body; and these in turn are millions of millions of times bigger than the atoms which compose them; and then, behold, in the atom there are millions of millions of electrons--tiny particles of electric energy! We cannot see these infinitely minute things, any more than we can see the electricity which runs our trolley cars; but we can see their effects, and we can count and measure them, and deal with them in complicated mathematical formulas, and be just as certain of their existence as we are of the dust under our feet. If you wish to explore this wonderland, read Duncan's "The New Knowledge," or Dr. Henry Smith Williams' "Miracles of Science." Or will you choose the universe of the subconscious, our racial past locked up in the secret chambers of our mind? Or will you choose the universe of the superconscious, the infinity of genius manifested in the arts? By the device of art man not merely creates new life, he tests it, he weighs it and measures it, he tries experiments with it, as the physicist with the molecule and the astronomer with light. He finds out what works, and what does not work, and so develops his moral and spiritual muscles, training himself for his task as maker of life. Written words can give but a feeble idea of the wonders that are found in these enchanted regions of the mind. Here are palaces of splendor beyond imagining, here are temples with sacred shrines, and treasure-chambers full of gold and priceless jewels. Into these places we enter as Aladdin in the ancient tale; we are the masters here, and all that we see is ours. He who has once got access to it--he possesses not merely the magic lamp, he possesses all the wonderful fairy properties of all the tales of our childhood. His is the Tarnhelm and the magic ring which gives him power over his foes; his is the sword Excalibur which none can break, and the silver bullet which brings down all game, and the flying carpet upon which to travel over the earth, and the house made of ginger-bread, and the three wishes which always come true, and the philter of love, and the elixir of youth, and the music of the spheres, and--who knows, some day he may come upon heaven, with St. Peter and his golden key, and the seraphim singing, and the happy blest conversing! PART TWO THE BOOK OF THE BODY CHAPTER XVIII THE UNITY OF THE BODY (Discusses the body as a whole, and shows that health is not a matter of many different organs and functions, but is one problem of one organism.) The reader who has followed our argument this far will understand that we are seldom willing to think of the body as separate from the mind. The body is a machine, to be sure, but it is a machine that has a driver, and while it is possible for a sound machine to have a drunken and irresponsible driver, such a machine is not apt to remain sound very long. Frequently, when there is trouble with the machine, we find the fault to be with the driver; in other words, we find that what is needed for the body is a change in the mind. If you wish to have a sound body, and to keep it sound as long as possible, the first problem for you to settle is what you want to make of your life; you must have a purpose, and confront the tasks of life with energy and interest. What is the use of talking about health to a man who has no moral purpose? He may answer--indeed, I have heard victims of alcoholism answer--"Let me alone. I have a right to go to hell in my own way." I am aware, of course, that the opposite of the proposition is equally true. A man cannot enjoy much mental health while he has a sick body. It is a good deal like the old question, Which comes first, the hen or the egg? The mind and the body are bound up together, and you may try to deal with each by turn, but always you find yourself having to deal with both. Most physicians have a tendency to overlook the mind, and Christian Scientists make a religion of overlooking the body, and each pays the penalty in greatly reduced effectiveness. My first criticism of medical science, as it exists today, is that it has a tendency to concentrate upon organs and functions, and to overlook the central unity of the system. You will find a doctor who specializes in the stomach and its diseases, and is apt to talk as if the stomach were a thing that went around in the world all by itself. He will discuss the question of what goes into your stomach, and overlook to point out to you that your stomach is nourished by your blood-stream, which is controlled by your nervous system, which in turn is controlled by hope, by ambition, by love, by all the spiritual elements of your being. A single pulse of anger or of fear may make more trouble with the contents of your stomach than the doctor's pepsins and digestive ferments can remedy in a week. Of course, you may do yourself some purely local injury, and so for a time have a purely local problem. You may smash your finger, and that is a problem of a finger; but neglect it for a few days, and let blood poison set in, and you will be made aware that the human body is one organism, and also that, in spite of any metaphysical theories you may hold, your body does sometimes dominate and control your mind. Some one has said that the blood is the life; and certainly the blood is both the symbol and the instrument of the body's unity. The blood penetrates to all parts of the body and maintains and renews them. If the blood is normal, the work of renewal does not often fail. If there is a failure of renewal--that is, a disease--we shall generally find an abnormal condition of the blood. The distribution of the blood is controlled by the heart, a great four-chambered pump. One chamber drives the blood to the lungs, a mass of fine porous membranes, where it comes into contact with the air, and gives off the poisons which it has accumulated in its course through the body, and takes up a fresh supply of oxygen. By another chamber of the heart the blood is then sucked out of the lungs, and by the next chamber it is driven to every corner of the body. It takes to every cell of the body the protein materials which are necessary for the body's renewal, and also the fuel materials which are to be burned to supply the body's energy; also it takes some thirty million millions of microscopic red corpuscles which are the carriers of oxygen, and an even greater number of the white corpuscles, which are the body's scavengers, its defenders from invasion by outside germs. There are certain outer portions of the body, such as nails and the scales of the skin, which are dead matter, produced by the body and pushed out from it and no longer nourished by the blood. But all the still living parts of the body are fed at every instant by the stream of life. Each cell in the body takes the fuel which it needs for its activities, and combines it with the oxygen brought by the red corpuscles; and when the task of power-production has been achieved, the cell puts back into the blood-stream, not merely the carbon dioxide, but many complex chemical products--ammonia, uric acid, and the "fatigue poisons," indol, phenol and skatol. The blood-stream bears these along, and delivers some to the sweat glands to be thrown out, and some to the kidneys, and the rest to the lungs. All of this complicated mass of activities is in normal health perfectly regulated and timed by the nervous system. You lie down to sleep, and your muscles rest, and the vital activities slow up, your heart beats only faintly; but let something frighten you, and you sit up, and these faculties leap into activity, your heart begins to pound, driving a fresh supply of blood and vital energy. You jump up and run, and these organs all set to work at top speed. If they did not do so, your muscles would have no fresh energy; they would become paralyzed by the fatigue poisons, and you would be, as we say, exhausted. All the rest of the body might be described as a shelter and accessory to the life-giving blood-stream; all the rest is the blood-stream's means of protecting itself and renewing itself. The stomach is to digest and prepare new blood material, the teeth are to crush it and grind it, the hands are to seize it, the eyes are to see it, the brain is to figure out its whereabouts. Man, in his egotism, imagines his little world as the center of the universe; but the wise old fellow who lives somewhere deep in our subconsciousness and looks after the welfare of our blood-stream--he has far better reason for believing that all our consciousness and our personality exist for him! Now, disease is some failure of this blood-stream properly to renew itself or properly to protect itself and its various subsidiary organs. When you find yourself with a disease, you call in a doctor; and unless this doctor is a modern and progressive man, he makes the mistake of assuming that the disease is in the particular organ where it shows itself. You have, let us say, "follicular tonsilitis." (These medical men have a love for long names, which have the effect of awing you, and convincing you that you are in desperate need of attention.) Your throat is sore, your tonsils are swollen and covered with white spots; so the doctor hauls out his little black bag, and makes a swab of cotton and dips it, say in lysol, and paints your tonsils. He knows by means of the microscope that your tonsils are covered and filled with a mass of foreign germs which are feeding upon them; also he knows that lysol kills these germs, and he gives you a gargle for the same purpose, puts you to bed, and gradually the swelling goes down, and he tells you that he has cured you, and sends you a bill for services rendered. But maybe the swelling does not go down; maybe it gets worse and you die. Then he tells your family that nature was to blame. Nature is to blame for your death, but it never occurs to anyone to ask what nature may have had to do with your recovery. I do not know how many thousands of diseases medical science has now classified. And for each separate disease there are complex formulas, and your system is pumped full of various mineral and vegetable substances which have been found to affect it in certain ways. Perhaps you have a fever; then we give you a substance which reduces the temperature of your blood-stream. It never occurs to us to reflect that maybe nature has some purpose of her own in raising the temperature of the blood; that this might be, so to speak, the heat of conflict, a struggle she is waging to drive out invading germs; and that possibly it would be better for the temperature to stay up until the battle is over. Or maybe the heart is failing; then our medical man is so eager to get something into the system that he cannot wait for the slow process of the mouth and the stomach, he shoots some strychnine directly into the blood-stream. It does not occur to him to reflect that maybe the heart is slowing up because it is overloaded with fatigue poisons, of which it cannot rid itself, and that the effect of stimulating it into fresh activity will be to leave it more dangerously poisoned than before. We are dealing here with processes which our ancient mother nature has been carrying on for a long time, and which she very thoroughly understands. We ought, therefore, to be sure that we know what is the final effect of our actions; more especially we ought to be sure that we understand the cause of the evil, so that we may remove it, and not simply waste our time treating symptoms, putting plasters on a cancer. This is the fundamental problem of health; and in order to make clear what I mean, I am going to begin by telling a personal experience, a test which I made of medical science some twelve or fourteen years ago, in connection with one of the simplest and most external of the body's problems--the hair. First I will tell you what medical science was able to do for my hair, and second what I myself was able to do, when I put my own wits to work on the problem. I had been overworking, and was in a badly run down condition. I was having headaches, insomnia, ulcerated teeth, many symptoms of a general breakdown; among these I noticed that my hair was coming out. I decided that it was foolish to become bald before I was thirty, and that I would take a little time off, and spend a little money and have my hair attended to. I did not know where to go, but I wanted the best authority available, so I wrote to the superintendent of the largest hospital in New York, asking him for the name of a reliable specialist in diseases of the scalp. The superintendent replied by referring me to a certain physician, who was the hospital's "consulting dermatologist," and I went to see this physician, whose home and office were just off Fifth Avenue. He examined my scalp, and told me that I had dandruff in my hair, and that he would give me a prescription which would remove this dandruff and cause my hair to stop falling out. He charged me ten dollars for the visit, which in those days was more money than it is at present. Being of an inquiring turn of mind, I tried to get my money's worth by learning what there was to learn about the human hair. I questioned this gentleman, and he told me that the hair is a dead substance, and that its only life is in the root. He explained that barbers often persuade people to have their hair singed, to keep it from falling out, and that this was an utterly futile procedure, and likewise all shampooing and massage, which only caused the hair to fall out more quickly. It was better even not to wash the hair too often. All that was needed was a mixture of chemicals to kill the dandruff germs; and so I had the prescription put up at a drug store, and for a couple of years I religiously used it according to order, and it had upon my hair absolutely no effect whatever. So here was the best that medical science could do. But still, I did not want to be bald, so I went among the health cranks--people who experiment without license from the medical schools. Also, I experimented upon myself, and now I know something about the human hair, something entirely different from what the rich and successful "consulting dermatologist" taught me, but which has kept me from becoming entirely bald: First, the human hair is made by the body, and it is made, like everything else in the body, out of the blood-stream. It is perfectly true that the dandruff germ gets into the roots, and makes trouble, and that the process of killing this germ can be helped by chemicals; but it does not take a ten-dollar prescription, it only takes ten cents' worth of borax and salt from the corner grocery. (Put a little into a saucer, moisten it, rub it into the scalp, and wash it out again.) But infinitely more important than this is the fact that healthy hair roots are a product of healthy blood, and that unhealthy blood produces sick hair roots, which cannot hold in the hair. Most important of all is the fact that in order to make healthy hair roots the blood must flow fully and freely to these hair roots; whereas I had been accustomed for many hours every day of my life to clap around my scalp a tight band which almost entirely stopped the circulation of the life-giving blood to my sick hair roots. In other words, by wearing civilized hats, I was literally starving my hair to death. As soon as I realized this I took off my civilized hat, and have never worn one since. As a rule, I don't wear anything. On the few occasions when I go into the city, I wear a soft cap. Now and then I experience inconvenience from this--the elevator boy in some apartment house tells me to come in by the delivery entrance, or the porter of a sleeping-car will not let me in at all. I remember discussing these embarrassments with Jack London, who went even further in his defiance of civilization, and wore a soft shirt. It was his custom, he said, to knock down the elevator boys and sleeping-car porters. I answered that that might be all right for him, because he could do it; whereas I was reduced to the painful expedient of explaining politely why I went about without the customary symbols of my economic superiority. The "consulting dermatologist" had very solemnly and elaborately warned me concerning the danger of moving my hair too violently, and thus causing it to come out; but now my investigations brought out the fact that moving the hair, that is, massaging the scalp, increases the flow of blood to the hair roots, and further increases resistance to disease. As for causing the hair to fall out, I discovered that the more quickly you cause a hair to fall out, the greater is the chance of your getting another hair. If a hair is allowed to die in the root, it kills that root forever, but if it is pulled out before it dies, the root will make a new hair. Every "beauty parlor" specialist knows this; she knows that if a hair is pulled, it grows back bigger and stronger than ever, and so to pull out hair is the last thing you must do if you want to get rid of hairs! I know a certain poet, who happens to have been well-endowed with physical graces by our mother nature. He finds it worth while to preserve them--they being accessory to those amorous experiences which form so large a part of the theme of poetry. Anyhow, this poet values his beautiful hair, and you will see him sitting in front of his fireplace, reading a book, and meanwhile his fingers run here and there over his head, and he grabs a bunch of hair and pulls and twists it. He has cultivated this habit for many years, and as a result his hair is as thick and heavy as the "fuzzy-wuzzies" of Kipling's poem. It is a favorite sport of this poet to lure some rival poet into a contest. He will mildly suggest that they take hold of each other's hair and have a tug of war. The rival poet, all unsuspecting, will accept the challenge, and my friend will proceed to haul him all over the place, to the accompaniment of howls of anguish from the victim, and howls of glee from the victor, who has, of course, a scalp as tough as a rhinoceros hide. I am not a poet, and it is not important that I should be beautiful, and I have been too busy to remember to pull my hair; but by giving up tight hats, and by limiting the amount of my overworking, I have managed to keep what hair I had left when the hair specialist had got through with me. I tell this anecdote at the beginning of my discussion of health, because it illustrates so well the factors which appear in every case of disease, and which you must understand in seeking to remedy the trouble. We have a phrase which has come down to us from the ancient Latins, "vis medicatrix naturae," which means the healing power of nature. So long ago men realized that it is our ancient mother who heals our wounds, and not the physician. Out of this have grown the cults of "nature cure" enthusiasts; and according to the fashion of men, they fly to extremes just as unreasonable and as dangerous as those of the "pill doctors" they are opposing. I have in mind a man who taught me probably more than any other writer on health questions, and with whom I once discussed the subject of typhoid, how it seemed to affect able-bodied men in the prime of their physical being. This, of course, was contrary to the theories of nature cure, and my friend had a simple way of meeting the argument--he refused to believe it. He insisted that, as with all other germ infections, it must be a question of bodily tone; no germ could secure lodgment in the human body unless the body's condition was reduced. "But how can you be sure of that?" I argued. "You know that if you go into the jungle, you are not immune against the scorpion or the cobra or the tiger. There is nothing in all nature that is safe against every enemy. What possible right have you to assert that you are immune against every enemy which can attack your blood-stream?" We shall find here, as we find nearly always, that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes of two warring schools. Our race has been existing for a long time in a certain environment, and its very existence implies superiority to that environment. The weaklings, for whom its hardships were too severe, were weeded out; hostile parasites invaded their blood-stream and conquered and devoured them. But those who survived were able to make in their blood-stream the substances known as anti-bodies, the "opsonins," to help the white blood corpuscles devour the germs. As the result of their victory, we carry those anti-bodies in our system, which gives us immunity to those particular diseases, or at any rate gives us the ability to have the diseases without dying. Every time we go into a street car, we take into our throat and lungs the germs of tuberculosis. Examination proves that we carry around with us in our mouths the germs of all the common throat and nose diseases, colds, bronchitis, tonsilitis. No matter what precautions we might take, no matter if we were to gargle our throats every few minutes, we could never get rid of such germs. And they wage continual war upon the body's defenses; they batter in vain upon the gates of our sound health. But take us to some new environment to which we are not accustomed; take us to Panama in the old days of yellow fever, or take us to Africa, and let the tsetse fly bite us, and infect us with "sleeping sickness." Here are germs to which our systems are not accustomed; and before them we are as helpless as the ancient knights-at-arms, who had conquered everything in sight, and ruled the continent of Europe for many hundreds of years, but were wiped off the earth by a chemist mixing gunpowder. In the Marquesas Islands, in the South Seas, there lived a beautiful and happy race of savages, believed to have been descended, long ages ago, from Aryan stock. From the point of view of physical perfection, they were an ideal race, living a blissful outdoor life, which you may read about in Melville's "Typee," and in O'Brien's "White Shadows in the South Seas." This race conformed to all the requirements of the nature enthusiast. They went practically naked, their houses were open all the time, they lived on the abundant fruits of the earth. To be sure, they were cannibals, but this was more a matter of religious ceremony than of diet. They ate their war captives, but this was only after battle, and not often enough to count, one way or the other, in matters of health. They had lived for uncounted ages in perfect harmony with their environment; they were happy and free; and certainly, if such a thing were possible to human beings, they should have been proof against germs. But a ship came to one of these islands, and put ashore a sailor dying of tuberculosis, and in a few years four-fifths of the population of this island had been wiped out by the disease. What tuberculosis left were finished by syphilis and smallpox, and today the Marquesans are an almost extinct race. But there is another side to the argument--and one more favorable to the nature cure enthusiast. We civilized men, by soft living, by self-indulgence and lack of exercise, may reduce the tone of our body too far below the standard which our ancestors set for us; and then the common disease germs get us, then we have colds, sore throats, tuberculosis. The nature cure advocate is perfectly right in saying that there is no use treating such diseases; the thing is to restore the body to its former tone, so that we may be superior to our normal environment and its strains. You know the poem of the "One Hoss Shay," which was so perfectly built in every part that it ran for fifty years and then collapsed all at once in a heap. But the human body is not built that way. It always has one or more places which are weaker than the others, and which first show the effects of strain. In one person it will take the form of dyspepsia, in another it will be headaches, in another colds, in another decaying teeth, in another hardening of the arteries or stiffening of the joints. But whatever the symptoms may be, the fundamental cause is always the same, an abnormal condition of the blood-stream, and a consequent lowering of the body's tone. Therefore, studying any disease and its cure, you have first the emergency question, are there any germs lodged in the body, and if so, how can you destroy them? As part of the problem, you have to ask whether your blood-stream is normal, and if not, what are the methods by which you can make it normal and keep it so? Also you have to ask, what are the reasons why your trouble manifests itself in this or that particular organ? Is there some weakness or defect there, and can the defect be remedied, or can your habits be changed so as to reduce the strain on that organ? Are there any measures you can take to increase the flow of blood to that organ, and to promote its activity? In the study of your health, you will find that circumstances differ, and the importance of one factor or the other will vary; but you will seldom find any problem in which all these factors do not enter, and you will seldom find an adequate remedy unless you take all the factors into consideration. CHAPTER XIX EXPERIMENTS IN DIET (Narrates the author's adventures in search of health, and his conclusions as to what to eat.) Students of the body assure us that every particle of matter which composes it is changed in the course of seven years. It is obvious that everything that is a part of the body has at some time to be taken in as food; so the problem of our diet today is the problem of what our body shall consist of seven years from now, and probably a great deal sooner. I begin this discussion by telling my own personal experiences with food. I am not going to recommend my diet for anyone else; because one of the first things I have to say about the subject is that every human individual is a separate diet problem. But I am going to try to establish a few principles for your guidance, and more especially to point out the commonest mistakes. I tell about my own mistakes, because it happens that I know them more intimately. I was brought up in the South, where it is the custom of people to give a great deal of time and thought to the subject of eating. Among the people I knew it was always taken for granted that there should be at least one person in the kitchen devoting all her time to the preparing of delicious things for the family to eat. This person was generally a negress, and, needless to say, she knew nothing about the chemistry of foods, nothing about their constituents or nutritive qualities. All she knew was about their taste; she had been trained to prepare them in ways that tasted best, and was continually being advised and exhorted and sometimes scolded by the ladies of the family on this subject. At the table the family and the guests never failed to talk about the food and its taste, and not infrequently the cook would be behind the door listening to their comments; or else she would wait until after the meal, for the report which somebody would bring her. In addition to this, the ladies of the family were skilled in what is called "fancy cooking." They did not bother with the meats and vegetables, but they mixed batter cakes, and made all kinds of elaborate desserts, and exchanged these treasures and the recipes for them with other ladies in the neighborhood. In addition to this, there were certain periods of the week and of the year especially devoted to the preparing and consuming of great quantities of foods. Once every seven days the members of the family expressed their worship of their Creator by eating twice as much as usual; and at another time they celebrated the birth of their Redeemer by overeating systematically for a period of two or three weeks. Needless to say, of course, the children brought up in such an environment all had large appetites and large stomachs, and their susceptibility to illness was recognized by the setting apart for them of a whole classification of troubles--"children's diseases," they were called. In addition to children's diseases, there were coughs and colds and sore throats and pains in the stomach and constipation and diarrhea, which the children shared with their adults. I had a little more than my share of all these troubles. Always a doctor would be sent for, and always he was wise and impressive, and always I was impressed. He gave me some pills or a bottle of liquid, a teaspoonful every two hours, or something like that--I can hear the teaspoon rattle in the glass as I write. I had a profound respect for each and every one of those doctors. He was wisdom walking about in trousers, and whenever he came, I knew that I was going to get well; and I did, which proved the case completely. Then I grew up, and at the age of eighteen or nineteen became possessed of a desire for knowledge, and took to reading and studying literally every minute of the day and a good part of the night. I seldom let myself go to sleep before two o'clock in the morning, and was always up by seven and ready for work again. I did this for ten years or so, until nature brought me to a complete stop. During these ten years I was a regular experiment station in health; that is, I had every kind of common ailment, and had it over and over again, so that I could try all the ways of curing it, or failing to cure it, and keep on trying until I was sure, one way or the other. I came recently upon a wonderful saying by John Burroughs, which will be appreciated by every author. "This writing is an unnatural business. It makes your head hot and your feet cold, and it stops the digesting of your food." This trouble with my digestion began when I was writing my second novel, camping out on a lonely island at the foot of Lake Ontario. I went to see a doctor in a nearby town, and he talked learnedly about dyspepsia. The cause of it, he said, was failure of the stomach to secrete enough pepsin, and the remedy was to take artificial pepsin, obtained from the stomach of a pig. He gave me this pig-pepsin in a bottle of red liquid, and I religiously took some after each meal. It helped for a time; but then I noticed that it helped less and less. I got so that a simple meal of cold meat and boiled potatoes would stay in my stomach for hours, in spite of any amount of the pig-pepsin; I would lie about in misery, because I wanted to work, and my accursed stomach would not let me. All the time, of course, I was using my mind on this problem, groping for causes. I found that the trouble was worse if I worked immediately after eating. I found also that it was worse when I was writing books. When I got sufficiently desperate, I would stop writing books and go off on a hunting trip. I would tramp twenty miles a day over the mountains, looking for deer, and I would come back at night too tired to think, and in a week or two every trace of my trouble would be gone. So my life regimen came to be--first the writing of a book, and then a hunting trip to get over the effects of it. But as time went on, alas, I noticed that the recuperation was more slow and less certain. The working times grew shorter, and the hunting times grew longer, until finally I had got to a point where I couldn't work at all; I would go to pieces in a few days if I tried it. It was apparently the end of my stomach, and the end of my sleeping, and the end of my writing books. My teeth were decaying, not merely outside but inside; I would have abscesses, and most frightful agonies to endure. I would lie awake all night, and it would seem to me that I could feel my body going to pieces--an extremely depressing sensation! I had been trying experiments all this time. I had been going to one doctor after another, and had got to realize that the doctors only treated symptoms; they treated the "diseases" when they appeared--but nobody ever told you how to keep the "diseases" from appearing. Why could there not be a doctor who would look you over thoroughly, and tell you everything that was wrong with you, and how to set it right? A doctor who would tell you exactly how to live, so that you might keep well all the time! I was studying economics, and becoming suspicious of my fellow man; it occurred to me that possibly it might be embarrassing to a doctor, if he cured all his patients, and taught them how to live, so that none of them would ever have to come to him again. It occurred to me that possibly this might be the reason why "preventive medicine," constructive health work, was getting so little attention from the medical fraternity. Two things that plagued me were headache and constipation, and they were obviously related. For constipation, the world had one simple remedy; you "took something" every night or every morning, and thought no more about it. My stout and amiable grandmother had drunk a glass of Hunyadi water every morning for the last thirty or forty years, and that she finally died of "fatty degeneration of the heart" was not connected with this in the mind of anyone who knew her. As for the headaches, people would tell you this, that, and the other remedy, and I would try them--that is, unless they happened to be drugs. I was getting more and more shy of drugs. I had some blessed instinct which saved me from stimulants and narcotics. I had never used tea, coffee, alcohol or tobacco, and in my worst periods of suffering I never took to putting myself to sleep with chloral, or to stopping my headaches with phenacetin. At the end of six or eight years of purgatory, I came upon a prospectus of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. This seemed to me exactly what I wanted; this was constructive, it dealt with the body as a whole. So I spent a couple of months at the "San," and paid them something like a thousand dollars to tell me all they could about myself. The first thing they told me was that meat-eating was killing me. It was perfectly obvious, was it not, that meat is a horrible feeding place for germs, that rotten meat is dreadfully offensive, and likewise digested meat--consider the excreta of cats, for example! I listened solemnly while Doctor Kellogg read off the numbers of billions of bacteria per gram in the contents of the colon of a carnivorous person. It certainly seemed proper that the author of "The Jungle" should be a vegetarian, so I became one, and did my best to persuade myself that I enjoyed the taste of the patent meat-substitutes which are served in hundred calory portions in the big Sanitarium dining-room. There also I met Horace Fletcher, and learned to chew every particle of food thirty-two times, and often more. I exercised in the Sanitarium gymnasium, and watched the sterilized dancing--the men with the men and the women with the women. I was patiently polite with the Seventh Day Adventist religion, and laid in a supply of postage stamps on Friday evening. Finally, and most important of all, I went once a day to the "treatment rooms," and had my abdomen doctored alternately with hot cloths and ice. By this means I kept up a flow of blood in the intestinal tract, and stimulated these organs to activity; so my constipation was relieved, and my headaches were less severe--so long as I stayed at the Sanitarium, and was boiled and frozen once every day. But when I left the Sanitarium, and abandoned the treatments, the troubles began to return. Meantime, however, I had written a book in praise of vegetarianism--a book which has got into the libraries, and cannot be got out again! I went on to a new variety of health crank, the real "nature cure" practitioners. Vegetarianism was not enough, they insisted; the evil had begun long before, when man first ruined his food and destroyed its nutritive value by means of fire. There was only one certain road to health, and that was by the raw food route, the monkey and squirrel diet. I had gone out to California for a winter's rest, and decided I would give this plan a thorough trial. For five months I lived by myself, and the only cooked food I ate was shredded wheat biscuit. For the rest I lived on nuts and salads and fresh and dried fruits; and during this period I enjoyed such health as I had never known in my life before. I had literally not a single ailment. I was not merely well, but bubbling over with health. I had a friend who said it cheered him up just to see me walk down the street. I thought that it was entirely the raw food, and that I had solved the problem forever; but I overlooked the fact that during those five months I had done no hard brain work, no writing. I went back to writing again, and things began to go wrong; my wonderful raw foods took to making trouble in my stomach--and I assure you that until you try, you have no idea the amount of trouble that can be made in your stomach by a load of bananas and soaked prunes which has gone wrong! For a year or two I agonized; I could not give up my wonderful raw food diet, because I had always before me the vision of those months in California, and could not understand why it was not that way again. But the time came when I would eat a meal of raw food, and for hours afterwards my stomach would feel like a blown-up football. Then somebody gave me a book by Dr. Salisbury on the subject of the meat diet. Of all the horrible things in the world, a meat diet sounded to me the worst; I had been a vegetable enthusiast for three years, and thought of eating meat as you would think of cannibalism. But there has never been a time in my life when I would not hear something new, and give it a trial if it sounded well; so I read the books of Doctor Salisbury, which have long been out of print, and have been curiously neglected by the medical profession. Salisbury was a real pioneer, an experimenter. He wrote in the days before the germ theory, and so missed his guess regarding tuberculosis, but he perceived that most of the common diseases are caused by dietetic errors, and he set to work to prove it. He showed that hog cholera and army diarrhea are the same disease, and come from the same cause. He took a squad of men and fed them on army biscuit for two or three weeks, until they were nearly dead, and then he put them on a diet of lean beef and completely cured them in a few days. He did this same thing with one kind of food after another, and in each case he would bring his men as near to death as he dared, and then he would cure them. He showed that meat is the only food which contains all the elements of nutrition, the only food upon which a person can live for an unlimited period. As Salisbury said, "Beef is first, mutton is second, and the rest nowhere." It was his idea that tuberculosis of the lungs is caused by spores of fermenting starch clogging the minute blood vessels. He claimed that there is an early stage of tuberculosis, in which the spores are floating in the blood stream; he put large numbers of patients upon a diet of lean beef, ground and cooked, and he cured them of tuberculosis, and if one of them would break the diet and yield to a craving for starch or sugar, Salisbury claimed that he could find it out an hour or two later by examining a drop of their blood under the microscope. In his books he described vividly the effects of an excess of starch and sugar in the diet. He called it "making a yeast-pot of your stomach"; and you can imagine how that hit my stomach, full of half digested bananas and prunes! I tried the Salisbury diet, and satisfied myself of this one fact, that lean meat is for brain-workers the most easily assimilated of all foods. Salisbury claimed that you could not overeat on meat, but I do not believe there is any food you cannot overeat on, nor do I believe that anyone should try to live on one kind of food. We are by nature omnivorous animals. Our digestive tracts are similar to those of hogs and monkeys, which eat all varieties of food they can get. One of the common errors of the nature cure enthusiast is to cite the monkey and the squirrel as fruit and nut-eating animals, when the fact is that monkeys and squirrels eat meat when they can get it, and the ardor with which they go bird-nesting is evidence enough that they crave it. If there is any race of man which is vegetarian, you will find that it is from necessity alone. The beautiful South Sea Islanders, who are the theme of the raw fooders' ecstasy, spend a lot of their time catching fish, and sometimes they kill a pig, and celebrate the event precisely as Christians celebrate the birth of their Redeemer. From this you may be able to guess my conclusions, as the result of much painful blundering and experimenting. So far as diet is concerned, I belong to no school; I have learned something from each one, and what I have learned from a trial of them all is to be shy of extreme statements and of hard and fast rules. To my vegetarian friends who argue that it is morally wrong to take sentient life, I answer that they cannot go for a walk in the country without committing that offense, for they walk on innumerable bugs and worms. We cannot live without asserting our right to subject the lower forms of life to our purposes; we kill innumerable germs when we swallow a glass of grape juice, or for that matter a glass of plain water. I shall be much surprised if the advance of science does not some day prove to us that there are rudimentary forms of consciousness in all vegetable life; so we shall justify the argument of Mr. Dooley, who said, in reviewing "The Jungle," that he could not see how it was any less a crime to cut off a young tomato in its prime, or to murder a whole cradleful of baby peas in the pod! There is no question that meat-eating is inconvenient, expensive, and dirty. I have no doubt that some day we shall know enough to be able to find for every individual a diet which will keep him at the top of his power, without the maintenance of the slaughter-house. But we do not possess that knowledge at present; at least, I personally do not possess it. I happen to be one of those individuals--there are many of them--with whom milk does not agree; and if you rule out milk and meat, you find yourself compelled to get a great deal of your protein from vegetable sources, such as peas, beans and nuts. All these contain a great deal of starch, and thus there is no way you can arrange your diet to escape an excess of starch. Excess of starch, so my experience has convinced me, is the deadliest of all dietetic errors. It is also the commonest of errors, the cause, not merely of the common throat and nose infections, but of constipation, and likewise of diarrhea, of anemia, and thus, through the weakening of the blood stream, of all disorders that spring from this source--decaying teeth and rheumatism, boils, bad complexion, and tuberculosis. Starch foods are the cheapest, therefore they form the common diet of the poor, and are responsible for the diseases of undernourishment to which the poor are liable. On the other hand, of course, there are perfectly definite diseases of overnourishment; high blood pressure, which culminates in apoplexy; kidney troubles, which result from the inability of these organs to eliminate all the waste matter that is delivered to them; fatty degeneration of the heart, or of the liver, or any of the vital organs. You may cause a headache by clogging the blood stream through overeating, or you may cause it by eating small quantities of food, if those foods are unbalanced, and do not contain the mineral elements necessary to the making of normal blood. Whatever the trouble with your health, it is my judgment that in two cases out of three you will find it dates back to errors in diet. I do not think I exaggerate in saying that a knowledge of what to eat and how much to eat is two-thirds of the knowledge of how to keep yourself in permanent health. CHAPTER XX ERRORS IN DIET (Discusses the different kinds of foods, and the part they play in the making of health and disease.) It is my purpose in this chapter to lay down a few general principles to aid you in the practical problem of selecting the best diet for yourself. But it must be made clear at the outset that there can be no hard and fast rule. All human bodies are more or less alike, but on the other hand all are more or less different. Modern civilization has given very few bodies the chance to be perfect; nearly all have some weakness, some abnormality, and need some special modification in diet to fit their particular problem. The ideal in each case would be a complete study of the individual system. Some day, no doubt, medical science will analyze the digestive juices and the gland secretions and the blood-stream of every human being, and say, you need a certain percentage of starch and a certain percentage of protein; you need such and such proportion of phosphorus and iron; you should avoid certain acids--and so on. But at present we are devoting our science to the task of killing and maiming other people, instead of enabling ourselves to live in health and happiness; so it is that most of those who read this book will be too poor to command the advice of a diet specialist. The best you can do is to get a few general ideas and try them out, watching your own body and learning its peculiarities. Human food contains three elements: proteins, fats and carbohydrates. The proteins are the body-building material, and the foods which are rich in proteins are lean meat, the white of eggs, milk and cheese, nuts, peas and beans. A certain amount of this kind of food is needed by the body. If it is missing, the body will gradually waste away. If too much of it is taken, the body can turn it into energy-making material, but this is a wasteful process, and the best evidence appears to be that it is a strain upon the system. Experiments conducted by Professor Chittenden of Yale have proven conclusively that men can live and maintain body weight upon much less protein food than previous dietetic standards had indicated. The fats are found in fat meats and dairy products, and in nuts, olives, and vegetable oils. The body is prepared to digest and assimilate a certain amount of fat, no one knows how much. I have found in my own case that I require a great deal less than people ordinarily eat. I have for many years maintained good health upon a diet containing no more fat than one gets with lean meat once or twice a day. I never use butter or olive oil, nor any fat in cooking. My reason for this is that fats are the most highly concentrated form of food, and the easiest upon which to overeat. Excess of fat is a cause, not merely of obesity, but also of boils and pimples and "pasty" complexion, and other signs of a clogged blood-stream. The third variety of food is the carbohydrates, and of these there are two kinds, starches and sugars. Starch is the white material of the grains and tubers; the principal food element of bread and cereals, rice, potatoes, bananas, and many prepared substances such as corn-starch, tapioca, farina and macaroni. Starchy foods compose probably half the diet of the average human being. In my own case, they compose about one-sixth, so you see to what extent my beliefs differ from the common. Starch is not really necessary in the diet at all. I have a friend who is subject to headaches, and finds relief from them by a diet of meat, salads, and fresh fruits exclusively. The first thing that excess of starch or sugar does is to ferment in the system, and cause flatulence and gas. But strange as it may seem, if the excess of starch is perfectly digested and assimilated into the system, the condition may be worse yet, because you may have a great quantity of energy-producing material, without the necessary mineral elements which the body requires in the handling of it. If you cremate a human body and study the ashes chemically, you find a score or more of mineral salts. You find these in the blood, and no blood is normal and no body can be kept normal which does not contain the right percentage of these elements. It is not merely that they are needed to build bones and teeth; they are needed at every instant for the chemistry of the cells. Every time you move a muscle, you fill the cells of that muscle with a certain amount of waste matter. You may prove how deadly this matter is by binding a tight cord about your arm, and then trying to use the arm. We are only at the beginning of understanding the subtle chemistry of the body; but this much we know, the cells transform the waste products, and they are thrown out of the system as ammonia, uric acid, etc.; and for this process the blood must have a continual supply of many mineral salts. So vital are they, and so fatal to health is their absence, that it is far better for you to eat nothing at all than to eat improperly balanced foods, or foods which are deficient in the organic salts. You may prove this to yourself by a simple experiment. Put two chickens in separate pens, where nobody can feed them but yourself. Feed one of them on water and white bread, or corn starch, or sugar, or any energy-making substance which contains little of the mineral elements. Feed the other chicken on plain water. You will find that the one which has the food will quickly become droopy and sickly; its feathers will fall out, it will have what in human beings would be known as headaches, colds, sore throats, decaying teeth and boils. At the end of a couple of weeks it will be a dead chicken. The one which you feed on water alone will not be a happy chicken, neither will it be a fat chicken, but it will be a live chicken, and a chicken without disease. I am going later on to discuss the subject of fasting. For the present I will merely say that a chicken which has nothing but water is living upon its own flesh, and therefore has a meat diet, containing the mineral elements necessary to the elimination of the fatigue poisons. I am going to try not to be dogmatic in this book, and not to say things that I do not know. I confess to innumerable uncertainties about the subject of diet; but one thing I think I do know, and that is that human beings should eliminate absolutely from their food those modern artificial products, which look so nice, and are so easy to handle, and are put up in packages with pretty labels, and have been in some way artificially treated to remove the wastes and impurities--including the vital mineral salts. Among such food substances I include lard and its imitations made from cottonseed oil, white flour, all the prepared and refined cereals, polished rice, tapioca, farina, corn starch, and granulated and powdered sugar. Any of these substances will kill a chicken in a couple of weeks, and the only reason they take a longer time to kill you is because you mix them with other kinds of foods. But to the extent that you eat them, your diet is deficient; and do not console yourself with the idea that the mineral elements will be made up from other foods, because you don't know that, and nobody else knows it. Nobody knows just how much of any particular organic salt the body needs. All we know is that the primitive races, which ate natural foods, enjoyed vigorous health, while the American people, who consume the greatest proportion of the so-called "refined" foods, have the very best dentists and the very worst teeth in the world. There are many kinds of sugar, found in the sugar-cane and the beet, and in all fruits. Sugar may also be made from any form of starch; this is glucose, which is put up in cans and sold as an imitation of maple syrup. The ordinary granulated and powdered sugar is made by taking from the natural syrup every trace of mineral elements; so I have no hesitation in saying that the ordinary cane sugar and beet sugar of our breakfast tables and our confectionery stores is not a food, but a slow poison. The causes of the wonderful progress of American dentistry, which is the marvel of the civilized world, are cane sugar, white flour, and the frying-pan, each of which dietetic crimes I shall take up in turn. We have the richest country in the world; we eat more food, probably by 50 per cent, and we waste more food, probably by 500 per cent, than any other people in the world; and yet, go to any small farming community in America, and what do you find? You find the teeth of the young children rotting in their heads, and having to be pulled out before their second teeth come. You find these second teeth rotting often before the age of twenty. A friend of mine, who knows the American farmer, sums it up this way: "He has two things that he requires if he is to be really respectable and happy. First, he wants to get all the fireplaces in his home boarded up, and all the windows nailed tight; and second, he wants to get all his teeth out, and an artificial set installed. Out of the farmers' wives in my neighborhood, not one in ten keeps her own teeth until she is thirty." If you go to the Balkans, where the peasants live on sour milk, with grains which they grind at home; or to southern Italy and Sicily, where they live on cheese and black bread and olives; or among savage people, where they hunt and fish and gather the natural fruits, you find old men without a single decayed tooth. There must be some reason for this, and the reason is found in our denatured grocery-store foods. The farmer's wife will gather up her eggs and her butter and cheeses, and take them to the store and bring back cans of lard and packages of sugar. The farmer will sell his perfectly good wheat and corn meal, and bring back in his wagon cases of "refined" cereal foods, for which he has paid ten times the price of the grain! Dentists will tell you that the way candy injures the teeth is by sticking to them and fermenting, forming acids, which destroy the tooth structure. And that may be a part of the reason. But the principal reason why the teeth decay is because the blood-stream is abnormal, and is unable to keep up the repairs of the body. Your teeth are living structures, just as much as any other part of you, and they will resist decay if you supply them with the proper nourishment. You need sugar; you need a considerable quantity of it every day. Nature provides this sugar in combination with the organic salts, and also with the precious vitamines, whose function in the body we are only beginning to investigate. All the mineral substances which give the color and flavor to oranges, apples, peaches, grapes, figs, prunes, raisins--all these you take out when you make sugar. Or perhaps you put in some imitations of them, made from coal tar chemicals, and drink them at your soda fountains! So little appreciation has the American farmer's wife of natural fruits, that when she preserves them, she considers it necessary to fill them full of cane sugar; in fact, she has a notion that they won't keep unless she cooks them up with sugar! So snobbish are we Americans about our eating, that we make the best of our foods into bywords. We make jokes in our comic papers about the "boarding-house prune"; and yet prunes and raisins are among the wholesomest foods we have, and if we fed them to our children instead of cakes and candy and coal-tar flavorings, our dental industry would rapidly decline. And the same thing is true of bread. When I was a boy, I thought I had to have hot bread at least twice a day, and if I were called upon to eat bread that was more than a day old, I felt that I was being badly abused by life. I used to read fairy stories, in which something called "black bread" was mentioned, something obscure and terrible; the symbol of human misery was Cinderella sitting in the ashes and eating a crust of dry "black bread." But now since I have studied diet, I have taken my place with Cinderella. I can afford to buy whatever kind of bread I want; I can have the best white bread, piping hot, three times a day, if I want it; but what I eat three times a day is a crust of hard dry "black bread." "Black bread" is the fairy story name for bread made of the whole grain. It is eaten that way by the peasant because he has no patent milling machinery at his disposal, to fan away the life-giving elements of his food. Nearly all the mineral elements of the grain are contained in the outer, dark-colored portion. The white part is almost pure starch; and when you use white flour, you are not merely starving your blood-stream, your bones, and your teeth, you are also depriving the digestive tract of the rough material which it is accustomed to handle, and which it needs to stimulate it to action. I am aware that whole grain products are a trifle less easy of digestion, but we should not pamper and weaken our digestive tract any more than we let our muscles get flabby for lack of action. We should require our stomachs to handle the ordinary natural foods, precisely as we accustom our body to react from cold water, and to stand honest hard work. For ages the Japanese peasants have lived on rice, with a little dried fish. Quite recently there began to spread throughout Japan a mysterious disease known as beri-beri. It was especially prevalent in the army, and so the scientists of Japan set out to discover the cause, and it proved to be the modern practice of polishing rice, which takes off the outer coating of the grain. Rice is one of the most wholesome of foods, if it is eaten in the natural state; but in order to get it in that state in this country, you have to find a special food store of the health cranks, and have to pay a special price for it. You have to pay a higher price for whole wheat bread--because ninety-nine people out of a hundred are ignorant, and insist upon having their foodstuffs pretty to look at! Probably you have read sea stories, and know of the horrors of scurvy. Scurvy and beri-beri are similar diseases, with a similar cause. The men on the old sailing ships used to have to live on white biscuit and salt meat, and they always knew that to recover from their gnawing illness, they must get to port and get fresh vegetables and fruits, especially onions and lemons, which contain the vitamines as well as the salts. But you will see the modern housewife going into the grocery store, and surveying the shelves of "package" goods, and in her ignorance picking out the scurvy-making products, and frequently paying for them a much higher price than for the health-making ones! Then, when she has got her white flour, and her cane sugar, and her lard, she will take it home, and mix it up, and put it in the frying pan, and serve it hot to her husband and children. Nature has so constituted her husband and children that they digest starch before they digest fat; that is to say, the starch is digested mainly in the stomach, while the fat is digested mainly after the food has been passed on into the small intestine. But by frying the starch before it is eaten, the housewife carefully takes each grain of the starch and protects it with a little covering of fat. Thus the digestive juices of the stomach cannot get at the starch, and the starch goes down into the small intestine a good part undigested. If some evil spirit, wishing to make trouble for the human organism, had charge of the laying out of our diet, he could hardly devise anything worse than that. And yet it would be no exaggeration to say that the average American, especially the average farmer, eats out of a frying-pan. If his potatoes have to be warmed over, they go into the frying-pan; his precious batter-cakes and doughnuts are cooked in a frying-pan, and all his precious hot breads are mixed with lard. If it were not for the fact that you cannot broil a beefsteak over a modern gas range, I would tell you that the first step toward health for the average American would be to throw the frying-pan out of the window, and to throw the cook-book after it. The whole modern art of cooking is largely a perversion; a product of idleness, vanity, and sensuality. It is one of the monstrous growths consequent upon our system of class exploitation. We have a number of idle people with nothing to do but eat, and who demonstrate their superiority to the rest of us by their knowledge of superior foods, and superior ways of preparing them. They have the wealth of the world at their disposal, also the services of their fellow man without limit, and they set their fellow man to work to enable them to give elaborate banquets, and to sit in solemn state and gorge themselves, and to have a full account of their behavior published in the next morning's newspapers. A great part of this perverse art we owe to what is called the "ancient régime" in France--a régime which starved the French peasantry until they were black skinned beasts hiding in caves and hollow trees. So it comes about that our modern food depravity parades itself in French names, and American snobbery requires of its devotees a course in the French language sufficient to read a menu card. Needless to say, this elaborate gastronomic art has been developed without any relation to health, or any thought of the true needs of the body. It is one of the products of the predatory system which we can say is absolute waste. Having done my own cooking for the past twenty-five years, I make bold to say that I can teach anybody all he needs to know about cooking in one lesson of half an hour, and that the total amount of cooking required for a large family can be done by one person in twenty minutes a day. In the first place, a great many foods do not have to be cooked at all, and are made less fit by cooking. In the next place, the only cooking that is ever required is a little boiling, or in the case of meat, roasting or broiling. In the next place, the art of combining foods in cooking is a waste art, because no foods should be combined in cooking. Every food has its own natural flavor, which is lost in combination, and if anybody is unable to enjoy the natural flavors of simply cooked foods, there is one thing to say to that person, and that is to wait until he is hungry. Let him take a ten-mile walk in the open air, and he will have more interest in his next meal. I am not a fanatic, and have no desire to destroy the pleasures of life; I am recommending to people that they should seek the higher pleasures of the intellect, and those pleasures are not found in standing over a cook stove, nor in compelling others to stand over a cook stove. Moreover, I know that the artificial mixing of foods to tempt peoples' palates is one of the principal causes of overeating, and therefore of ill health, and therefore of the ultimate destruction of the pleasures of life. I went out from the world of cooks before I was twenty. I wanted to write a book, and to be let alone while I was doing it. I lived by myself, and found out about cooking by practical experience. On a few occasions since then, I have lived in a house with a servant, and had some cooking done for me, but it was always because somebody else wanted it, and against my protest. In the last ten years we have had no servant in our home, and because I want my wife to give her energy to more important things than feeding me, I do my share of getting every meal. We have worked out a system of housekeeping by which we get a meal in five minutes, and when we finish it, it takes three minutes to clear things away. If I tell you what I eat, please do not get the impression that I am advising you to eat these same things. My diet consists of the foods which I have found by long experience agree with me. There are many other foods which are just as wholesome, but which I do not eat, either because they don't happen to agree with me, or because I don't care for them so much. I am fond of fruit, and eat more of that than of anything else. It is not a cheap article of diet, but you can save a good deal if you buy it in quantities, as I do. A little later I am going to discuss the prices of foods. For breakfast I eat a slice of whole wheat bread, three good-sized apples, stewed, and eight or ten dates. It takes practically no time to prepare this breakfast. The bread has to be baked, of course, but this is done wholesale; we buy four loaves at a time, and it is just as good at the end of a couple of weeks as when we buy it. When I lived in the world of cooks, I would call for apple sauce; which meant that somebody had to pare apples, cut them up, stew them, mix them with sugar, grate a little nutmeg over them, set them on ice, and serve them to me on a glass dish, with a little pitcher of cream. But now what happens is that I put a dozen apples in a big sauce-pan and let them simmer while I am eating. We have a rule in our family that we do not do any cooking except while we are eating, because if we try it at any other time of the day, we get buried in a book or in a manuscript, and forget about it until the smoke causes somebody in the street to summon the fire department. So the apples for my breakfast were cooked during last night's supper; and during the breakfast there will be some vegetable cooking for lunch. At this lunch, which is my "square meal," I eat a large slice of beefsteak, say a third of a pound. Jack London used to say that the only man who could cook a beefsteak was the fireman of a railway locomotive, because he had a hot, clean shovel. The best imitation you can get is a hot, clean frying-pan; and when you are sure that it is hot, let it get hotter. The whole secret of cooking meat is to keep the juices inside, and to do that you must cook it quickly. When you slap it down on a hot frying-pan, the meat is seared, and the juices stay inside, and if you do not turn it over until it is almost ready to burn, you don't need to cook it very long on the other side. That is the one secret of cooking worth knowing; it doesn't cost anything, and saves time instead of wasting it. As I have never found anybody else capable of learning it, I reserve the cooking of the beefsteak as one of my family duties. To continue the lunch, a slice of whole wheat bread, and a large quantity of some fresh salad, such as celery, or lettuce and tomatoes, without dressing. For a part of this may be substituted a vegetable, one or two beets or turnips, cooked during a previous meal, and warmed up in a couple of minutes; and we do not throw away the tops of the turnips and beets and celery, we put them on and cook them, and they serve for the next day's meal. If you would eat a large quantity of such "greens" once a day, you would escape many of the ills that your flesh is at present heir to. Finally, for dessert, an orange and a small handful of raisins, or one or two figs. The evening meal will be the same as the breakfast; except once in a while when I am especially hungry, and want some meat. I am writing in the winter season, so the fruits suggested are those available in winter. The menu will be varied with every kind of fruit at the season when it is cheapest and most easily obtained. The beefsteak will appear at about three meals out of four; occasionally it will be replaced by the lean meat of pork or mutton, or by fish. The bread may be replaced by rice, or boiled potatoes, either white or sweet, and occasionally by graham crackers. I know that these contain a little fat and sugar, but I try not to be fanatical about my diet, and the rules I suggest do not carry the death penalty. There was a time when I used to allow my friends to make themselves miserable by trying to provide me with special foods when they invited me to a meal, but now I tell them to "forget it," and I politely nibble a little of everything, and eat most of what I find wholesome; if there is nothing wholesome, I content myself with the pretense of a meal. If I find myself in a restaurant, I quite shamelessly get a piece of apple or pumpkin pie, omitting most of the crust. As I don't go away from home more than once or twice a month, I do not have to worry about such indulgence. The main thing is to arrange one's home diet on sound lines, and learn to enjoy the simple and wholesome foods, of which there is a great variety obtainable, and at prices possible to all but the wretchedly poor. In conclusion, since everybody likes to have a feast now and then, I specify that my diet regimen allows for holidays. Assuming that I am your guest for a day, and that you wish to "blow" me, regardless of expense, here will be the menu. Breakfast, some graham crackers, a bunch of raisins, a can of sliced pineapple in winter, or a big chunk of watermelon in summer. Dinner, or lunch, roast pork, a baked apple, a baked sweet potato and some spinach. Supper, lettuce, dates, and a dish of popcorn flavored with peanut butter. Try this next Christmas! P. S. After this book had been put into type, I chanced to be looking over Herbert Quick's illuminating book, "On Board the Good Ship Earth." Discussing the importance of certain organic salts to the body, Dr. Quick states: "Animals have been fed, as an experiment, on foods deficient in phosphorus. For a while they seemed to do well. Then they collapsed. It takes only three months of a ration without phosphorus to wreck an animal. Individual creatures were killed after a month of this diet, and it was found that the flesh was taking the phosphate--for the phosphorus exists in the body in that form--from the bones to supply its need. In other words, the body was eating its own bones! When this process had robbed the bones to the limit, the collapse came, and the animal could never recover." CHAPTER XXI DIET STANDARDS (Discusses various foods and their food values, the quantities we need, and their money cost.) I think there is no more important single question about health than the question of how much food we should eat. It is one about which there is a great deal of controversy, even among the best authorities. We shall try here for a common-sense solution. At the outset we have to remind ourselves of the distinction we tried to draw between nature and man. To what extent can civilized man rely upon his instincts to keep him in perfect health? Let us begin by considering the animals. How is their diet problem solved? Horses and cattle in a wild state are adjusted to certain foods which they find in nature, and so long as they can find it, they have no diet problem. Man comes, and takes these animals and domesticates them; he observes their habits, and gives to them a diet closely approaching the natural one, and they get along fairly well. But suppose the man, with his superior skill in agriculture, taking wild grain and planting it, reaping and threshing it by machinery, puts before his horse an unlimited quantity of a concentrated food such as oats, which the horse can never get in a natural state--will that horse's instincts guide it? Not at all. Any horse will kill itself by overeating on grain. I have read somewhere a clever saying, that a farm is a good place for an author to live, provided he can be persuaded not to farm it. But once upon a time I had not heard that wise remark, and I owned and tried to run a farm. I had two beautiful cows of which I was very proud, and one morning I woke up and discovered that the cows had got into the pear orchard and had been feeding on pears all night. In a few hours they both lay with bloated stomachs, dying. A farmer told me afterwards that I might have saved their lives, if I had stuck a knife into their stomachs to let out the gas. I do not know whether this is true or not. But my two dead cows afford a perfect illustration of the reason why civilized man cannot rely upon his instincts and his appetites to tell him when he has had enough to eat. He can only do this, provided he rigidly restricts himself to the foods which he ate in the days when his teeth and stomach and bowels were being shaped by the process of natural selection. If he is going to eat any other than such strictly natural foods, he will need to apply his reason to his diet schedule. In a state of nature man has to hunt his food, and the amount that he finds is generally limited, and requires a lot of exercise to get. Explorers in Africa give us a picture of man's life in the savage state, guided by his instincts and very little interfered with by reason. The savages will starve for long periods, then they will succeed in killing a hippopotamus or a buffalo, and they will gorge themselves, and nearly all of them will be ill, and several of them will die. So you see, even in a state of nature, and with natural foods, restraint is needed, and reason and moral sense have a part to play. What do reason and moral sense have to tell us about diet? Our bodily processes go on continuously, and we need at regular intervals a certain quantity of a number of different foods. The most elementary experiment will convince us that we can get along, maintain our body weight and our working efficiency upon a much smaller quantity of food than we naturally crave. Civilized custom puts before us a great variety of delicate and appetizing foods, upon which we are disposed to overeat; and we are slow observers indeed if we do not note the connection between this overeating and ill health. So we are forced to the conclusion that if we wish to stay well, we need to establish a censorship over our habits; we need a different diet regimen from the haphazard one which has been established for us by a combination of our instincts with the perversions of civilization. Up to a few years ago, it was commonly taken for granted by authorities on diet that what the average man actually eats must be the normal thing for him to eat. Governments which were employing men in armies, and at road building, and had to feed them and keep them in health, made large scale observations as to what the men ate, and thus were established the old fashioned "diet standards." They are expressed in calories, which is a heat unit representing the quantity of fuel required to heat a certain small quantity of water a certain number of degrees. In order that you may know what I am talking about, I will give a rough idea of the quantity of the more common foods which it takes to make 100 calories: one medium sized slice of bread, a piece of lean cooked steak the size of two fingers, one large apple, three medium tablespoonfuls of cooked rice or potatoes, one large banana, a tablespoonful of raisins, five dates, one large fig, a teaspoonful of sugar, a ball of butter the size of your thumbnail, a very large head of lettuce, three medium sized tomatoes, two-thirds of a glass of milk, a tablespoonful of oil. You observe, if you compare these various items, how little guidance concerning food is given by its bulk. You may eat a whole head of lettuce, weighing nearly a pound, and get no more food value than from a half ounce of olive oil which you pour over it. You may eat enough lean beefsteak to cover your plate, and you will not have eaten so much as a generous helping of butter. A big bowl of strawberries will not count half so much as the cream and sugar you put over them. So you may realize that when you eat olive oil, butter, cream, and sugar, you are in the same danger as the horse eating oats, or as my two cows in the pear orchard; and if some day a surgeon has to come and stick a knife into you, it may be for the same reason. The old-fashioned diet standards are as follows: Swedish laborers at hard work, over 4,700 calories; Russian workmen at moderate work, German soldiers in active service, Italian laborers at moderate work, between 3,500 and 3,700 calories; English weavers, nearly 3,500 calories; Austrian farm laborers, over 5,000 calories. Some twenty years ago the United States government made observations of over 15,000 persons, and established the following, known as the "Atwater standards": men at very hard muscular work, 5,500 calories; men at moderately active muscular work, 3,400 calories; men at light to moderate muscular work, 3,050 calories; men at sedentary, or women at moderately active work, 2,700 calories. In the last ten or fifteen years there has arisen a new school of dietetic experts, headed by Professors Chittenden and Fisher of Yale University. Professor Chittenden has published an elaborate book, "The Nutrition of Man," in which he tells of long-continued experiment upon a squad of soldiers and a group of athletes at Yale University, also upon average students and professors. He has proved conclusively that all these various groups have been able to maintain full body weight and full working efficiency upon less than half the quantity of protein food hitherto specified, and upon anywhere from one-half to two-thirds the calory value set forth in the former standards. When I first read this book, I set to work to try its theories upon myself. During the five or six months that I lived on raw food, I took the trouble to weigh everything that I ate, and to keep a record. It is, of course, very easy to weigh raw foods exactly, and I found that I lived an active life and kept physical health upon slightly less than 2,500 calories a day. I have set this as my standard, and have accustomed myself to follow it instinctively, and without wasting any thought upon it. Sometimes I fall from grace; for I still crave the delightful cakes and candies and ice cream upon which I was brought up. I always pay the penalty, and know that I will not get back to my former state of health until I skip a meal or two, and give my system a chance to clean house. The average man will find the regimen set forth in this book austere and awe-inspiring; I do not wish to pose as a paragon of virtue, so perhaps I should quote a sarcastic girl cousin, who remarked when I was a boy that the way to my heart was with a bag of ginger-snaps. I live in the presence of candy stores and never think of their existence, but if someone brings candy into the house and puts it in front of me, I have to waste a lot of moral energy in letting it alone. A few years ago I had a young man as secretary who discovered this failing of mine, and used to afford himself immense glee by buying a box of chocolates and leaving it on top of my desk. I would give him back the box--with some of the chocolates missing--but he would persist in "forgetting it" on my desk; he would hide and laugh hilariously behind the door, until my wife discovered his nefarious doings, and warned me of them. Professor Chittenden states quite simply the common sense procedure in the matter of food quantity. Find out by practical experiment what is the very least food upon which you can do your work without losing weight. That is the correct quantity for you, and if you are eating more, you certainly cannot be doing your body any good, and all the evidence indicates that you are doing it harm. You need not have the least fear in making this experiment that you will starve yourself. Later on, in a chapter on fasting, I shall prove to you that you carry around with you in your body sufficient reserve of food to keep you alive for eighty or ninety days; and if you draw on a small quantity of this you do not do yourself the slightest harm. Cut down the amount of your food; eat the bulky foods, which contain less calory value, and weigh yourself every day, and you will be surprised to discover how much less you need to eat than you have been accustomed to. One of the things you will find out is that your stomach is easily fooled; it is largely guided by bulk. If you eat a meal consisting of a moderate quantity of lean meat, a very little bread, a heaping dish of turnip greens, and a big slice of watermelon, you will feel fully satisfied, yet you will not have taken in one-third the calory value that you would at an ordinary meal with gravies and dressings and dessert. The bulky kind of food is that for which your system was adapted in the days when it was shaped by nature. You have a large stomach, many times as large as you would have had if you had lived on refined and concentrated foods such as butter, sugar, olive oil, cheese and eggs. You have a long intestinal tract, adapted to slowly digesting foods, and to the work of extracting nutrition from a mass of roughage. You have a very large lower bowel, which Metchnikoff, the Russian scientist, one of the greatest minds who ever examined the problems of health, declares a survival, the relic of a previous stage of evolution, and a source of much disease. The best thing you can do with that lower bowel is to give it lots of hay, as it requires; in other words, to eat the salads and greens which contain cellulose material. This contains no food value, and does not ferment, but fills the lower bowel and stimulates it to activity. If you eat too much food, three things may happen. First, it may not be digested, and in that case it will fill your system with poisons. Second, it may be assimilated, but not burned up by the body. In that case it has to be thrown out by the kidneys or the sweat glands, and this puts upon these organs an extra strain, to which in the long run they may be unequal. Or third, the surplus material may be stored up as fat. This is an old-time trick which nature invented to tide you over the times when food was scarce. If you were a bear, you would naturally want to eat all you could, and be as fat as possible in November, so that you might be able to hunt your prey when you came out from your winter's sleep in April. But you are not a bear, and you expect to eat your regular meals all winter; you have established a system of civilization which makes you certain of your food, and the place where you keep your surplus is in the bank, or sewed up in the mattress, or hidden in your stocking. In other words, a civilized man saves money, and the habit of storing globules of grease in the cells of his body is a survival of an old instinct, and a needless strain upon his health. Not merely does the fat man have to carry all the extra weight around with him, but his body has to keep it and tend it; and what are the effects of this is fully shown by life insurance tables. People who are five or ten per cent over weight have five or ten per cent more chance of dying all the time, while people who are five or ten per cent under weight have five or ten per cent more than the average of life expectation. There is no answer to these figures, which are the result of the tabulation of many hundreds of thousands of cases. The meaning of them to the fat person is to put himself on a diet of lean meat, green vegetables and fresh fruits, until he has brought himself down, not merely to the normal fatness of the civilized man, but to the normal leanness of the athlete, the soldier on campaign, and the student who has more important things to think about than stuffing his stomach. There is, of course, a certain kind of leanness which is the result of ill health. There are wasting diseases; tuberculosis, for example, and anemia. There are people who worry themselves thin, and there are a few rare "spiritual" people, so-called, who fade away from lack of sufficient interest in their bodies. That is not the kind of leanness that I mean, but the active, wiry leanness, which sometimes lives a hundred years. Nearly always you will find that such people are spare eaters; and you will find that our ideal of rosy plumpness, both for adults and children, is a wholly false notion. We once had in our home as servant an Irish girl, who was what is popularly called "a picture of health," with those beautiful flaming cheeks that Irish and English women so often have. She was in her early twenties, and nobody who knew her had any idea but that her health was perfect. But one morning she was discovered in bed with one side paralyzed, and in a couple of weeks she was dead with erysipelas. The color in her cheeks had been nothing but diseased blood vessels, overloaded with food material; and with the blood in that condition, one of the tiny vessels in the brain had become clogged. In the same way I have seen children, two or three years old, plump and rosy, and considered to be everything that children should be; but pneumonia would hit them, and in two or three days they would be at death's door. I do not mean that children should be kept hungry; on the contrary, they should have four or five meals a day, so that they do not have a chance to become too hungry. But at those meals they should eat in great part the bulky foods, which contain the natural salts needed for building the body. If a child asks for food, you may give it an apple, or you may give it a slice of bread and butter with sugar on it. The child will be equally well content in either case; but it is for you, with your knowledge of food values, to realize that the bread with butter and sugar contains two or three times as much nutriment as the apple, but contains practically none of the precious organic salts which will make the child's bones and teeth. So far I have discussed this subject as if all foods grew on bushes outside your kitchen door, and all you had to do was to go and pick off what you wanted. But as a matter of fact, foods cost money, and under our present system of wage slavery, the amount of money the average person can spend for food is strictly limited. In a later book I am going to discuss the problem of poverty, its causes and remedies. All that I can do here is to tell you what foods you ought to have, and if society does not pay you enough for your work to enable you to buy such foods, you may know that society, is starving you, and you may get busy to demand your rights as human beings. Meantime, however, such money as you do have, you want to spend wisely, and the vast majority of you spend it very unwisely indeed. In the first place, a great many of the simplest and most wholesome foods are cheap--often because people do not know enough to value them. We insist upon having the choice cuts of meats, because they are more tender to the teeth, but the cheaper cuts are exactly as nutritious. We insist upon having our meats loaded with fat, although fatness is an abnormal condition in an animal, and excess of fat is a grave error in diet. I live in a country where jack rabbits are a pest, and in the market they sell for perhaps one-fourth the cost of beef, and yet I can hardly ever get them, because people value them so little as food; they prefer the meat of a hog which has been wallowing in a filthy pen, and has been deliberately made so fat that it could hardly walk! I have already spoken of prunes, a much despised and invaluable food. All the dried fruits are rich in food values, and if we could get them untreated by chemicals, they would be worth their cost. I was brought up to despise the cheaper vegetables, such as cabbage and turnips; I never tasted boiled cabbage until I was forty, and then to my great surprise I made the discovery that it is good. Raw cabbage is as valuable as any other salad; it is a trifle harder to digest for some people, but I do not believe in pampering the stomach. Both potatoes and rice are cheap and wholesome, if only we would get unpolished rice, and if we would leave the skins on the potatoes until after they are cooked. Nearly all the mineral salts of the potato are just under the outer skin, and are removed by the foolish habit of peeling them. The prices of food differ so widely at different seasons and in different parts of the world, that there is not much profit in trying to figure how cheaply a person can live. I have found that I spend for the diet I have indicated here, from sixty to eighty cents a day. I do not buy any fancy foods, but on the other hand, I do not especially try to economize; I buy what I want of the simple everyday foods in their season. Most everyone will find that it is a good business proposition to buy the foods which he needs to keep in health. If the average workingman would add up the money he spends, not merely in the restaurants, but in the candy stores, the drug stores, the tobacco stores, and the offices of doctors and dentists, he would find, I think, that he could afford to buy himself the necessary quantity of wholesome natural foods. For a family of three, in the place where I live, enough of these foods can be purchased for a dollar a day, and this is about one-fourth what common labor is being paid, and one-eighth of what skilled labor is being paid. I will specify the foods: a pound and a half of shoulder steak, a loaf of whole wheat bread or a box of shredded wheat biscuit, a head of cabbage, a pound of prunes, and four or five pounds of apples. There are many ways of saving in the purchase of food if you put your mind upon it. If you are buying prunes, you may pay as high as fifty cents or a dollar a pound for the big ones, and they are not a bit better than the tiny ones, which you can buy for as low as eight cents a pound in bulk. When bread is stale, the bakers sell it for half price, despite the fact that only then has it become fit to eat. If you buy canned peaches, you will pay a fancy price for them, and they will be heavy with cane sugar; but if you inquire, you find what are known as "pie peaches," put up in gallon tins without sugar, and at about half the price. The butcher will sell you what he calls "hamburg steak" at a very low price, and if you let him prepare it out of your sight, he will fill it with fat and gristle; but let him make some while you watch, and then you have a very good food. One of my diet rules is that I do not trust the capitalist system to fix me up any kind of mixed or ground or prepared foods. I have not eaten sausage since I saw it made in Chicago. Also there is something to know about the cooking of foods, since it is possible to take perfectly good foods and spoil them by bad cooking. Once upon a time our family discovered a fireless cooker, and thought that was a wonderful invention for an absent-minded author and a wife who is given to revising manuscripts. But recent investigations which have been made into the nature of the "vitamines," food ferments which are only partly understood, suggest that prolonged cooking of food may be a great mistake. The starch has to be cooked in order to break the cell walls by the expansion of the material inside. Twenty minutes will be enough in the case of everything except beans, which need to be cooked four or five hours. Meat should be eaten rare, except in the case of pork, which harbors a parasite dangerous to the human body; therefore pork should always be thoroughly cooked. The white of eggs is made less digestible by boiling hard or frying. Eggs should never be allowed to boil; put them on in cold water, and take them off as soon as the water begins to boil. It is not necessary to cook either fresh fruit or dried. The dried fruits may be soaked and eaten raw, but I find that several fruits, especially apples and pears, do not agree with me well if they are eaten raw, so I stew them for fifteen or twenty minutes. I have no objection to canned fruits and vegetables, provided one takes the trouble in opening them to make sure there is no sign of spoiling. If you put up your own fruits, do not put in any sugar. All you have to do is to let them boil for a few minutes, and to seal them tightly while they are boiling hot. The whole secret of preserving is to exclude the air with its bacteria. If you live on a farm, you will have no trouble in following the diet here outlined, for you can produce for yourselves all the foods that I have recommended; only do not make the mistake of shipping out your best foods, and taking back the products of a factory, just because you have read lying advertisements about them. Take your own wheat and oats and corn to the mill, and have it ground whole, and make your own breads and cereals. Try the experiment of mixing whole corn meal with water and a little salt, and baking it into hard, crisp "corn dodgers." I do not eat these--but only because I cannot buy them, and have no time to make them. Another common article of food which I do not recommend is salted and smoked meats. I do not pretend to know the effects of large quantities of salt and saltpetre and wood smoke upon the human system, but I know that Dr. Wiley's "poison squad" proved definitely that a number of these inorganic minerals are injurious to health, and I prefer to take fresh meat when I can get it. I use a moderate quantity of common salt on meat and potatoes, because there seems to be a natural craving for this. I know that many health enthusiasts insist that I am thus putting a strain on my kidneys, but I will wait until these health enthusiasts make clear to me why deer and cattle and horses in a wild state will travel many miles to a salt-lick. I have learned that it is easy to make plausible statements about health, but not so easy to prove them. For example, I was told that it is injurious to drink water at meals, and for years I religiously avoided the habit; but it occurred to some college professor to find out if this was really true, and he carried on a series of experiments which proved that the stomach works better when its contents are diluted. The only point about drinking at meals is that you should not use the liquid to wash down your food without chewing it. I can suggest two other ways by which you may save money on food. One is by not eating too much, and another is by eating all that you buy. The amount of food that is wasted by the people of America would feed the people of any European nation. The amount of food that is thrown out from any one of our big American leisure class hotels would feed the children of a European town. I think it may fairly be described as a crime to throw into the garbage pail food which might nourish human life. In our family we have no garbage pail. What little waste there is, we burn in the stove, and my wife turns it into roses. It consists of the fat which we cannot help getting at the butcher's, and the bones of meat, and the skins of some fruits and vegetables. It would never enter into our minds to throw out a particle of bread, or meat, or other wholesome food. If we have something that we fear may spoil, we do not throw it out, but put it into a saucepan and cook it for a few minutes. If you will make the same rule in your home, you will stop at least that much of the waste of American life; and as to the big leisure class hotels, and the banquet tables of the rich--just wait a few years, and I think the social revolution will attend to them! CHAPTER XXII FOODS AND POISONS (Concludes the subject of diet, and discusses the effect upon the system of stimulants and narcotics.) A few years ago there died an old gentleman who had devoted some twenty years of his life to teaching people to chew their food. Horace Fletcher was his name, and his ideas became a fad, and some people carried them to comical extremes. But Fletcher made a real discovery; what he called "the food filter." This is the automatic action of the swallowing apparatus, whereby nature selects the food which has been sufficiently prepared for digestion. If you chew a mouthful of food without ever performing the act of swallowing, you will find that the food gradually disappears. What happens is that all of it which has been reduced to a thin paste will slip unnoticed down your throat, and you may go on putting more food into your mouth, and chewing, and can eat a whole meal without ever performing the act of swallowing. Fletcher claimed that this is the proper way to eat, and that you can train yourself to follow this method. I have tried his idea and adopted it. One of my diet rules, to which there is no exception, is that if I haven't the time to chew my food properly, I haven't the time to eat; I skip that meal. The habit of bolting food is a source of disease. To be sure, the carnivorous animals bolt their food, but they are tougher than we are, and do not carry the burden of a large brain and a complex nervous system. If you swallow your meals half chewed, and wash them down with liquids, you may get away with it for a while, but some day you will pay for it with dyspepsia and nervous troubles. And the same thing applies to your habit of jumping up from meals and rushing away to work, whether it be work of the muscles, or of brain and nerves. Proper digestion requires the presence of a quantity of blood in the walls of the stomach and digestive tract. It requires the attention of your subconscious mind, and this means rest of muscles and brain centers. If you cannot rest for an hour after meals, omit that meal, or make it a light one, of fruit juices, which are almost immediately absorbed by the stomach, and of salads, which do not ferment. You may rest assured that it will not hurt you to skip a meal, and make up for it when you have time to be quiet. I have been many times in my life under very intense and long continued nervous strain; for example, during the Colorado coal strike, I led a public demonstration which kept me in a state of excitement all the day and a good part of the night several weeks. During this period I ate almost nothing; a baked apple and a cup of custard would be as near as I would go to a meal, and as a result I came through the experience without any injury whatever to my health. I lost perhaps ten pounds in weight, but that was quickly made up when I settled back to a normal way of life. I have been on camping trips when I had a great deal of hard work to do, carrying a canoe long distances on my back, or paddling it forty miles a day. On the mornings of such a trip I have seen a guide cook himself an elaborate breakfast of freshly baked bread, bacon, and even beans, and make a hearty meal and then go straight to work. My meal, on the contrary, would consist of a small dish of stewed prunes, or perhaps some huckleberries or raspberries, if they could be found. I will not say that I could do as much as the guide, because he was used to it, and I was not. But I can say this--if I had eaten his breakfast at the start of the day, I would have been dead before night; and I mean the word "dead" quite literally. I know a man who started to climb Whiteface mountain in the Adirondacks. He climbed half way, and then ate lunch, which consisted of nine hard boiled eggs. Then he started to climb the rest of the mountain, and dropped dead of acute indigestion. There are few poisons which can affect the system more quickly, or more dangerously, than a mass of food which is not digested. The stomach is an ideal forcing-house for the breeding of bacteria. It provides warmth and moisture, and you, in your meal, provide the bacteria and the material upon which they thrive. Under normal conditions, the stomach pours out a gastric juice which kills the bacteria; but let this gastric juice for any reason be lacking--because your nervous energy has gone somewhere else, or because your blood-stream, from which the gastric juice must be made, has been drawn away to the muscles by hard labor; then you have a yeast-pot, with great quantities of gases and poisons. In acute cases the results are evident enough: violent pains and convulsions, followed by coma and the turning black of the body. But what you should understand is that you may produce a milder case of such poisoning, and may do it day after day habitually, and little by little your vital organs will be weakened by the strain. It does not make any difference at what hour of the twenty-four you take the great bulk of your food. It is one of the commonest delusions that you get some strengthening effect from your food immediately, and must have this strength in order to do hard work. To be sure, there are substances, such as grape-sugar, which require practically no digesting; you can hold them in the mouth, and they will be digested by the saliva, and absorbed at once into the blood-stream. But unless you have been starved for a long period you do not need to get your strength in this rush fashion. If you ate your normal meals on the previous day, your blood-stream is fully supplied with nutriment which has been put through a long process of preparation, and you can get up in the morning and work all day, if necessary, upon what is already in your system. To be sure, you may feel hungry, and even faint, but that is merely a matter of habit; your system is accustomed to taking food and expects it. But if you are a laborer doing hard work, you can easily train yourself to eat a light meal in the morning, and another light meal at noon, and to eat a hearty meal when your work is done and you can rest. Two light meals and a hearty meal are all that any system needs, and you can prove it to yourself by trying it, and watching your weight once a week. I have tried many experiments, and the conclusion to which I have come is that there is no virtue in any particular meal-hours or any particular number of meals. For several years I tried the experiment of two meals a day. I was living a retired life, and had little contact with the world, and I would make a hearty meal at ten o'clock in the morning, and another at five in the afternoon. But later on I found that inconvenient, and now I take a light breakfast, and two moderate-sized meals at the conventional hours of lunch and dinner. I can arrange my own time, so after meal times is when I get my reading done. Sometimes, when I am tired, I feel sleepy after meals, but I have learned not to yield to this impulse. I do not know how to explain this; I have observed that animals sleep after eating, and it appears to be a natural thing to do; but I know that if I go to sleep after a meal, nature makes clear to me that I have made a mistake, and I do not repeat it. I never eat at night, and always go to bed on an empty stomach, so I am always hungry when I open my eyes in the morning. I never know what it is not to be hungry at meal times, and my habits are so regular that I could set my watch by my stomach. Another common habit which is harmful is eating between meals. I have known people who are accustomed to nibble at food nearly all the time. Shelley records that he tried it as an experiment, thinking it might be a convenient way to get digestion done--but he found that it did not work. The stomach is apparently meant to work in pulses; to do a job of digesting, and then to rest and accumulate the juices for another job. It will accustom itself to a certain régime, and will work accordingly, but if, when it has half digested a load of food, you pile more food in on top, you make as much trouble as you would make in your kitchen if you required your cook to prepare another meal before she has cleaned up after the last one. Three times a day is enough for any adult to eat. Children require to eat oftener, because their bodies are more active, and they not merely have to keep up weight, but to add to it. The simplest way to arrange matters with children is to give them three good meals at the hours when adults eat, and then to give them a couple of pieces of fruit between breakfast and lunch, and again between lunch and supper. I have never seen a child who would not be satisfied with this, when once the habit was established. I have already spoken of the cooking and serving of food. I consider that the "gastronomic art," as it is pompously called, is ninety-nine per cent plain rubbish. To be sure, if foods are appetizingly prepared, and look good and smell good and taste good, they will cause the gastric juices to flow abundantly, as the Russian scientist Pavlov has demonstrated by practical experiment with the stomach-pump. But I know without any stomach-pump that the best thing to make my gastric juices flow is hard work and a spare diet. When I come home from five sets of tennis, and have a cold shower and a rub-down, my gastric juices will flow for a piece of cold beefsteak and a cold sweet potato, quite as well as for anything that is served by a leisure class "chef." Needless to say, I want food to be fresh, and I want it to be clean, but I have other things to do with my time and money than to pamper my appetites and encourage food whims. If you have a grandmother, or ever had one, you know what grandmothers tell you about "hot nourishing food"; but I have tried the experiment, and satisfied myself that there is absolutely no difference in nourishing qualities between hot food and cold food. If you chew your food sufficiently, it will all be ninety-eight and six-tenths degree food when it gets to your stomach, and that is the way your stomach wants it. Of course, if you have been out in a blizzard, and are chilled, and want to restore the body temperature, a hot drink will be one of the quickest ways, and if the emergency is extreme, you may even add a stimulant. On the other hand, if you are suffering from heat, it is sensible to cool your body by a cold drink. But you should use as much judgment with yourself as you would with a horse, which you do not permit to drink a lot of cold water when he is heated up, and is going into his stall to stand still. I have mentioned the word "stimulants," and this opens a large subject. There are drugs which affect the body in two different ways: some excite the nerves, and through the nerves the heart and blood-stream, to more intense activity; others have the effect of deadening the nerves, and dulling the sense of exhaustion and pain. One of these groups is called stimulants, and the other is called narcotics; but as a matter of fact the stimulants are really narcotics, because they operate by dulling the nerves whose function it is to prevent the over-accumulation of fatigue poisons; in other words, they keep the nerves and muscles from knowing that they are tired, and so they go on working. It is possible, of course, to conceive of an emergency in which that is necessary. Once upon a time, on a hunting trip, I had been traveling all day, and was caught in a rain storm, and exhausted and chilled to the bone; I had to make camp without a fire, so when I got the tent up I wrapped myself in blankets and drank a couple of tablespoons full of whiskey. That is the only time I have ever taken whiskey in my life, and it warmed me almost instantly, and did me no harm. In the same way there were two or three occasions when I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and could not sleep, and let the doctor give me a sleeping powder. But in each case I knew that I was fooling with a dangerous habit, and I did no more fooling than necessary. No one should make use of either stimulants or narcotics except in extreme emergency, and never but a few times in a lifetime. What you should do is to change your habits so that you will not need to over-strain. All these drugs are habit forming; that is to say, they leave the body no better, and with a craving for a repetition of the relief. When you are tired, it is because your muscles and nerves are storing up fatigue poisons more rapidly than your blood-stream can get rid of them. You need to know about this condition, and exhaustion and pain are nature's protective warning. If you put a stop to the warning, you are as unintelligent as the Eastern despots who used to cut off the head of the messenger who brought bad tidings. If, when you have a headache, you go into a drug store and let the druggist mix you one of those white fizzy drinks, what you are doing is not to get rid of the poisons in your blood-stream, but merely to reduce the action of your heart, so as to keep the blood from pressing so fast into the aching blood vessels and nerves. You may try that trick with your heart a number of times, but sooner or later you will try it once too often--your heart will stop a little bit quicker than you meant it to! Drugs are poisons, and their action depends upon their poisoning some particular portion of the body, and temporarily paralyzing it. And bear this in mind, they are none the less poisonous because they are "natural" products. You can kill yourself by cyanide of potassium, which comes out of a chemist's retort; but you can kill yourself just as dead with laudanum, which comes out of a plant, or with the contents of the venom sac of a snake. You are poisoning yourself none the less certainly if you use alcohol, which is made from the juices of beautiful fruits, and has had hosts of famous poets writing songs about it; or you can poison yourself with the caffein which you get in a lovely brown bean which comes from Brazil, fragrant to the nostrils and delicious to the taste. You may drink wine and tea and coffee for a hundred years, and have your picture published in the newspapers as a proof that these habits conduce to health; but nothing will be said about the large number of people who practiced these habits, and didn't live so long, and about how long they might have lived if they hadn't practiced these habits. I was brought up in the South, and my "elders" belonged to a generation which had grown up in war time. For this reason many of the men both drank and smoked to excess, and in my boyhood I lived among them and watched them, and with the help of advice from a wise mother, I conceived a horror of every kind of stimulant. The alcoholic poets could not fool me; I had been in the alcoholic wards of the hospitals. I had seen one man after another, beautiful and kindly and gracious men, dragged down into a pit of torment and shame. Alcohol is, I think, the greatest trap that nature ever set for the feet of the human race. It is responsible for more degradation and misery than any other evil in the world; and I say this, knowing well that my Socialist friends will cry, "What about Capitalism?" My answer is that I doubt if there ever would have been any Capitalism in the world, if it had not been for alcohol. If the workers had not been systematically poisoned, and all their savings taken from them by the gin-mill, they would never have submitted to the capitalist system, they would have built the co-operative commonwealth at the time they were building the first factories. I listen to the arguments of my radical friends about "personal liberty," but I note that in Russia, when it was a question of making a practical revolution and keeping it alive, the first thing the leaders did was to drag out the contents of the wine-cellars of the palaces, and smash them in the gutters. Tea and coffee are, of course, much milder in their effects than alcohol; you can play with them longer, and the punishment will be less severe. But if you make habitual use of them, you will pay the penalty which all drugs exact from the system. Your brain and your nerve centers will be less sensitive, less capable of working except under the influence of drugs; their reacting power will be dulled, and they will wear out more quickly. I have watched the slaves of the "morning cup of coffee," and know how they suffer when they do not get it. Likewise, I have watched the tea drinkers. It is comical to live in England, and see all the able-bodied men obliged to leave their work at four o'clock in the afternoon, and seek the regular stimulus for their tired nerves. If you are to meet anybody, it is always for "tea" that the ceremony is set, and if you refuse to drink tea, your hostess will be uncomfortable, unable to talk about anything but the strange, incredible notion that one can live without tea. I discovered after a while the solution of this problem; I would say that I preferred a little hot water, if you please, and so my hostess would pour me a cup of hot water, and I would sit and gravely sip it, and everybody would be perfectly content: I was conforming to the outward appearance of normality, which is what the British conventions require. I have never drunk a cup of coffee, so I do not know what its effect on me would be. But some fifteen years ago I drank a glass of very weak iced tea at eight o'clock in the evening, and did not get to sleep until four or five the next morning. So I know that there is really a drug in tea. I know also that I might accustom my system to it, just as I might learn to poison my lungs with nicotine without being made immediately and suddenly ill; but why should I wish to do this? Life is so interesting to me that I do not need to stimulate my brain centers in order to appreciate the thrill of it. And when I am tired, I can rest myself by listening to music, or by reading a worth-while novel--things which I have found do not leave the after effects of nicotine. I remember the first time I met Jack London. Our meeting consisted in good part of his "kidding" me, because I was lacking in the congenial vices of the café. He told me how much I had missed, because I had never been drunk; One ought to try the great adventure, at least once! Poor Jack is gone, because his kidneys gave out at forty; and nothing could seem more ungracious than to point out that I am still alive, and finding life enjoyable. Yet, in this book we are trying to find out how to live, and if there are habits which wreck and destroy a magnificent physique, and bring a great genius to death at the age of forty--surely the rest of us want to know about it, and to be warned in time. I mention Jack London in this connection, because he has said the last word on the subject of alcohol. Read "John Barleycorn," and especially read between the lines of it, and you will not need my argument to persuade you to be glad that the Eighteenth Amendment has been written into the Constitution, and that it is your duty as a Socialist, not merely to obey it, but to vote for its enforcement. I am proceeding on the assumption that your life is of importance to you; that you have a job to do which you know to be worth while, and to which you desire to apply your powers. You agree with me that the workers of the world are suffering, and that it is necessary for them to find their freedom, and that this takes hard work and hard thinking. You may say that I exaggerate the amount of harm that is done to the system by tea and coffee, alcohol and tobacco. Well, let us assume that in moderate quantities they do no harm at all: even so, I have the right to ask you to show that they do some good; otherwise, surely, it is a mistake for the workers to spend their savings upon them. Consider, for example, the amount of money which the wage slaves of the world spend upon tobacco. Suppose they could be persuaded for two or three years to spend this amount upon good reading matter--do you not think there would be an improvement in their condition? Surely you cannot maintain that the use of tobacco is necessary to the activities of the brain! Surely you do not think that a man has to have a cigarette in order to stimulate his thoughts, or to smoke a pipe to rest himself after his work is done! I offer myself as evidence in such a controversy; I have written as many books as any man in the radical movement, and the sum total of my lifetime smoking amounts to one-half of one cigarette. I tried that when I was eight years old, and somebody told me a policeman would arrest me if he caught me, and I threw away the cigarette, and ran and hid in an alley, and have not yet got over my scare. In the "Journal for Industrial Hygiene" for October, 1920, is an article entitled "Fatigue and Efficiency of Smokers in a Strenuous Mental Occupation." Experiments were conducted among telegraph operators, and the result showed that "the heavy smokers of the group show a higher output rate at the beginning of the day than the light smokers, but their rate falls off more markedly in the late hours, and their production for the whole day is definitely less than that of the light smokers. The heavy smokers also show less ability than the light smokers to respond to increasing pressure of work in the late hours of the day by handling their full share of the work presented." One point upon which every medical authority agrees is--that the use of nicotine is of deadly effect upon the immature organism. Half-grown youths who smoke cigarettes will never be full-sized men; they will never have normal lungs or a normal heart. And likewise, all authorities agree about the effect of smoking upon the organism of women. I gave what little help I could to the task of helping to set women free, and to make them the equals of men; but I was always pained when I discovered that some of my feminist friends understood by woman's emancipation no more than her right to adopt men's vices. I would say to these ardent young female radicals, who cultivate the art of dangling a cigarette from their lower lip, and sip cocktails out of coffee-cups in Greenwich Village cafés, that they will never be able to bear sound children; but I know that this would not interest them--they don't want to bear any children at all. So I say that they will never be able to think straight thoughts, and will be nervous invalids when they are thirty. We went to war to make the world safe for democracy, and we put several millions of our young men into armies, and if there were any of them who did not already know how to smoke cigarettes, they learned it under official sanction. So now we have a national tobacco bill that runs up to two billions, and will insure us a new generation of "Class C" rating. Speaking to the young radicals who are reading my books, I say: We want to make the world over, to make it a place of freedom and kindness, instead of the hell of greed and hate that it is today. For that purpose we need a new moral code, and we can never win our victory without it. I have attended radical conventions, sitting in unventilated halls amid clouds of tobacco smoke, and listening to men wrangle all through the day and a great part of the night; I have watched the fatal dissensions in the movement, the quarrelings of the right wingers and the left wingers and all stages and degrees in between, and I have wondered--not jestingly, but in pitying earnest--how much of all those personalities and factional misunderstanding had their origin in carbon dioxide and nicotine. There is no use suggesting such ideas to the older men, whose habits are fixed; but a new generation is coming on, with a new vision of the enormous task before it; and is it too much to expect of these young men and women, that they shall realize in advance the grim tasks they have to do, and shall learn to run the machine of their body so as to get out of it the maximum amount of service? Is it too much to hope for, that some day we shall have a race of young fighters for truth and justice, who are willing to live abstemious lives, and consecrate themselves to the task of delivering mankind from wage slavery and war? CHAPTER XXIII MORE ABOUT HEALTH (Discusses the subjects of breathing and ventilation, clothing, bathing and sleep.) In discussing the question of health, we have given the greater part of the space to the subject of diet, for the reason that experience has convinced us that diet is two-thirds of health, and that nearly always in disease you find errors of diet playing a part. There are, however, other important factors of health, now to be discussed. Everything of which the body makes use is taken in the form of food and drink, with the exception of one substance, the oxygen we get out of the air. Every time we draw a breath we take in a certain amount of oxygen, and every time we expel a breath, we drive out a certain amount of a gas called carbon dioxide, which is what the body makes of the fuel it burns. The body can get along for several days without water, and for two or three months without food, but it can only get along for two or three minutes without oxygen. It should be obvious that when the body expels carbon dioxide, with a slight mixture of other more poisonous gases, and sucks back what it expects will be a fresh supply of oxygen, it wants to get oxygen, and not the same gases it has just expelled, nor gases which have been expelled from the lungs of other people. In the days when primitive man lived outdoors, he did not have to think about this problem. When he breathed poison from his lungs, the moving air of nature blew it away, and the infinite vegetation of nature took the carbon dioxide and turned it back into oxygen. And even when man built himself shelters, he was not cunning enough to make them air-tight; he had to leave a big hole for the smoke to get out, and smaller holes through which to get light. But now our wonderful civilization has solved these problems; we make our walls of air-tight plaster, and we have invented a substance which will admit light without admitting air. So we have the "white plague" of tuberculosis, and so we have innumerable minor plagues of coughs and colds and sore throats. In the summer time the solution of the problem is easy. Have as many doors and windows in your home as possible, and keep them open, and have nothing in your home to make dust or to retain dust. But then comes stormy and cold weather, and you have to close your doors and windows, and keep your home at a higher temperature than the air outside. How shall you do this, and at the same time get a continual supply of fresh air? I will take the various methods of heating one by one. The problem in each case is simple and can be made clear in a sentence or two. First, the open fireplace. This is a perfect solution, if you have enough fuel, and do not have to worry about the waste of heat. An open fireplace draws out all the air in the room in a short time, and you do not have to bother about opening doors or windows; you may be sure that the air is getting in through some cracks, or else the fire would not burn. Second, a wood or coal or gas stove in the room, provided with a proper vent, so that all the gases of combustion are drawn up the chimney. This changes the air more slowly than an open fireplace, but it does the work fairly well. All that you have to be careful about is that your vent is sufficiently large and is working properly. If your fire does not "draw," you will have smoke or coal-gas in the house, and this is bad for the lungs; but worse for the lungs is a gas that you can neither see nor smell nor taste, the deadly carbon monoxide. This gas is produced by incomplete combustion, and whenever you see yellow flames from gas or coal, you are apt to have this poisonous substance. Small quantities of it are sufficient to cause violent headaches, and repeated doses of it are fatal. Men who work in garages which are not properly ventilated run this risk all the time, because carbon monoxide is one of the products of imperfect combustion in the gas engine. Next, the furnace. A furnace sends fresh warm air into your house; the only trouble is that it takes out all the moisture, and some authorities say that this is bad for the lungs and throat. I do not know whether this is true, but all furnaces are supposed to have a water chamber to supply moisture to the air, and you should keep a pan of water on every stove or radiator in your house. Next, steam heat, which includes hot-water heating. This is one of the abominations of our civilization, and one of the methods by which our race is committing suicide. There is nothing wrong about steam heat in itself; the room is warmed in a harmless way; but the trouble is it stays warm only so long as the doors and windows are kept shut. You are in an air-tight box, and can be warm provided you do not mind being suffocated. The moment you open a door or window, you have a cold draft on your feet, and if you wish to change the air entirely you have to let out all the heat; so, of course, you never do change it entirely, but go on breathing the same air over and over, and every time you breathe it the condition of your body is a little more reduced. The solution of this problem is not to heat the air in the room, but to use your steam coils to heat fresh air, and then drive this air, already warmed, into the room, at the same time providing a vent through which the old air can be pushed out. This is the hot air system of heating, and it requires some kind of engine or dynamo, and therefore is expensive. It has been installed in a few office buildings and theaters. One of the most perfect systems I ever inspected is in the building of the New York Stock Exchange, where the air is warmed in winter, and cooled in summer, and freed from dust, and exactly the right quantity is supplied. It is a humorous commentary upon our civilization that we take perfect care of the breathing apparatus of our stock-gamblers, but pay no attention to the breathing apparatus of our senators and congressmen, whose one business in life is to use their lungs. The stately old building with its white marble domes looks impressive in moving pictures and on illustrated postcards, but it has no system of ventilation whatever, and is a death-trap to the poor wretches who are compelled to spend their days, and sometimes their nights, within its walls. This contrast is one symptom of the rise of industrial capitalism and the collapse of political democracy. We have reserved to the last a method of heating which is the worst, and can only be described as a crime against health: the use of gas and oil stoves set out in the middle of the room, without a vent, and discharging their fumes into the room. These stoves are simply instruments of slow death, and their manufacture should be prohibited by law. In the meantime, what you have to do is to refuse to live in a room or to work in an office where such stoves are used. I have heard dealers insist that this or the other kind of gas or oil stove was so contrived as to consume all the fumes. Do not let anybody fool you with such nonsense. There has never been any form of combustion devised which consumes all the fumes. No such thing can be, because the products of combustion are not combustible. The so-called "wickless blue flame" stoves do burn all the oil, and a properly regulated gas stove will burn all the gas, but that simply means that it turns the oil and gas into carbon dioxide, the very substance which your lungs are working day and night to get out of your body. Moreover, there is no oil or gas stove which ever burns perfectly all the time, either because there is too much gas or insufficient air. Oil and gas stoves sometimes give a partly yellow flame. You can cause them to give a yellow flame at any time by blowing air against them, and that yellow flame means imperfect combustion, and a probability of the deadly carbon monoxide. These facts are known to every chemist and to every student of hygiene, and the fact that civilized people continue to burn such oil and gas stoves in their homes and offices is simply one more proof that our civilization values human welfare and health at nothing whatever in comparison with profits. Not merely should you see that you have a continuous supply of fresh air in your home, but you should try to keep down dust in your home, and especially fine particles of lint. Once upon a time our ancestors were unable to make houses and floors tight, and so they put rugs on the floors and hung tapestries on the walls to keep out the wind. We civilized people are able to make both floors and walls absolutely tight, and yet we continue to use rugs and curtains, it being the first principle of our education that propriety requires us to continue to do the things which our ancestors did. I am unable to think of a more silly or stupid thing in the world than a rug or a curtain, but I have lived in the house with them all my life, because, alas, the ladies cannot be happy otherwise. They want their homes to be "pretty," and so they continue to set dust traps, and to set themselves futile jobs of house cleaning and shopping. Not all of us are able to be out of doors as much as we ought to be, but all of us spend seven or eight hours out of every twenty-four in sleep, and this time at least we ought to spend out of doors. I understand that this is futile advice to give to the very poor. I was poor myself for many years, and had to put all my clothes on at night in order to keep warm, and even then I could not always do it. Nevertheless, from the time I first realized the importance of ventilation I never slept in a room with a closed window. I say, sleep outdoors if you possibly can. You do not have to be afraid of exposure, for cold will not hurt you if you keep your body in proper condition. I have slept out in a rubber blanket, with the rain beating on my head and face; I have spread a rubber blanket on a hummock in the midst of a swamp, and waked up in the morning with my hair and face soaked in cold, white fog, but I never caught cold from such things; there is no harm whatever in dampness or in "night air," if you are in proper condition. Of course, you may get your ears frostbitten in the middle of winter, but you can have a sleeping hood to remove that danger. The "nature cure" enthusiasts, who lay so much stress upon an outdoor life, also insist that the wearing of clothes is a harmful civilized custom. They urge us to take "sun baths" and to "ventilate the skin." Now, as a matter of fact, the skin does not breathe, it merely gives out moisture, and it does not give out any less because we have clothing on us, provided the clothing is dry and clean, and will absorb moisture. But bye and bye the clothing becomes loaded with the waste substances given out by the skin, and then it will absorb no more, and if you do not change your clothing, no doubt it may have some effect upon health. But the principal evil of civilized clothing is that it binds the body and prevents the free play of the muscles, and, more important yet, stops the free circulation of the blood. I have already discussed hats, which are the principal cause of baldness. I will go to the other extremity of the body, and mention tight shoes, which, strange as it may seem, cause headaches and colds. You will be able to find a few civilized men with normal feet, but you will hardly ever find a woman whose toes are not crowded together and misshapen. I have said that the human body is one organism, and that it is fed and its health maintained by the blood-stream; I say now that the circulation of the blood is one thing, and if you block it at any one place, you block it everywhere. Of course, not all the blood-stream goes down into the feet, but some of it does, and if it is clogged in the feet, and the blood vessels cramped and crowded, there is a certain amount of poison kept in the system, which the system should have got rid of. Why do women wear tight shoes? Because the leisure class members of their sex have been kept in harems and used as the playthings of men. To be fragile and delicate was the thing admired by the masters of wealth, and to have small hands and feet was a sign that women belonged to this parasite class. Therefore at all hazards women's feet must be kept small, even at the expense of their health and happiness; and so they put themselves up on several inches of heels, which cause them to toddle around like marionettes on a stage, with all their toes crowded down into a lump. Why do men wear tight bands around their scalps, which cause their hair to drop out, and tight, stiff columns around their necks, which stop the circulation of the blood into their heads, and cause them to have headaches instead of ideas? The reason is that for ages the rulers of the tribe have wished to demonstrate publicly their superiority to the common herd, which does the menial tasks. In England all gentlemen wear tall black silk band-boxes on their heads, and in America they have a choice among several varieties of round tight boxes. All men who work in offices wear stiffly starched collars and cuffs, as a means of demonstrating their superiority to the common workers, who have to sweat at their necks. I think it is not too much to hope that when class exploitation is done away with, we shall also get rid of these class symbols, and choose our clothing because it is warm and comfortable, and not according to the perverted imbecilities of "style." The skin gives out perspiration which is greasy; also the skin is constantly growing, putting out layers of cells which dry up and are worn off. We need to bathe with soap to remove the grease, and we need to rub with a towel to brush away the dead cells of the skin, so that the pores may be kept open. No one is taking care of his body who does not wash and rub it once every twenty-four hours, and once or twice a week with warm water and soap. It is often stated that hot baths are weakening, but I have never found it so; however, I think it is a bad practice to pamper the body, which should be accustomed to the shock of cold water. The rule as to bathing, both as to temperature and time, is simple. If, after the bath and rub-down, your body has reacted and you feel vigorous and fresh, that bath has done you good. If, on the other hand, you feel chilled and depressed, then you have been too long in the water, or its temperature was too low. Every person has to find his own rules in such matters. The only general rule is that as one grows older the body reacts less quickly. All day, as we work and think, we store up more poisons in our cells than the body can get rid of, and the time comes when the cells are so loaded with poisons that we have to stop for a while, and let our blood-stream clean house. The quantity of sleep one needs is a problem like that of cold water; each person has to find his own rule. In general, one needs less and less sleep as one grows older. Infants sleep the greater part of the time; growing children should sleep ten or eleven hours, adults seven or eight, and old people, unless they have let themselves get fat, generally do not want to sleep more than six, and part of this in short naps. When you sleep, your bodily energies relax, and you make less heat, therefore you need extra clothing; but this clothing should never cover the mouth and nose, nor should it be so heavy as to make breathing a burden. If you are in good condition, it will do you no harm to be chilly when you sleep, except that you do not sleep so soundly. Sleeping too much is just as harmful as sleeping too little. Nature will tell you that. The important thing, as in all other problems of health, is to have something interesting to think about, some exciting work to do in the world, and then you will sleep as little as you have too. CHAPTER XXIV WORK AND PLAY (Deals with the question of exercise, both for the idle and the overworked.) In discussing the important question of exercise, there is one fundamental fact to begin with: that our present civilization divides men sharply into two classes, those who do not get enough exercise, and those who get too much. Obviously it would be folly to make the same recommendations to the two classes. I begin with those who get too much exercise. They include a great number, probably the majority of those who do the manual work of the world. They include the farmers and the farm-hands, who work from dawn to sunset, and sometimes by lantern light. They include also the farmers' wives, the kitchen slaves of whom the old couplet tells: "Man's work ends from sun to sun, But woman's work is never done." I am aware that men have worked that way for countless ages, and yet the race is still surviving; but I am aware also that men wither up with rheumatism, and contract chronic diseases of the kidneys and the blood vessels, consequent upon the creation of greater quantities of fatigue poisons than the body can regularly eliminate. I have very little interest in the past, and none whatever in finding fault with it. My purpose is to criticize the present for the benefit of the future, and therefore I say that modern machinery and the whole development of modern large-scale production make it absolutely unnecessary that women should slave all their waking hours in kitchens, or that men should slave all day. I say it is monstrous folly that men should work for twelve-hour stretches in steel mills, and for ten and eleven hours in factories and mines. Organized labor has adopted the slogan, "Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for play"; but my slogan is "Four hours for work, four hours for study, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for play." I know, and am prepared to demonstrate to any thinking man, that modern civilization can produce, not merely all the necessities, but all the comforts of life for every man, woman and child in the community, by the expenditure of four hours a day work of the adult, able-bodied men and women. So to all the wage slaves of the factories and mines, the fields and the kitchens, I say that too much exercise is what is the matter with you, and what you need is to get off in a quiet nook in the woods and read a good novel, not merely for a few hours, but for a few months, until you get over the effects of capitalist civilization. I know that not many of you can get away as yet, but I urge you to insist upon getting away, to fight for the chance to get away; and I will here suggest a few of the novels for you to read when finally you do get away. I choose the easy ones, which the dullest and most tired of you will love; I say, make up your mind to read these thirty-two books before you die, and do not let the world cheat you out of your chance! Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Charles D. Stewart: The Fugitive Blacksmith. W. Clark Russell: The Wreck of the Grosvenor. R. L. Stevenson: Treasure Island, Kidnapped. Jack London: The Sea Wolf, The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden. Joseph Conrad: Youth. H. G. Wells: The War of the Worlds, When the Sleeper Wakes, The Sea Lady, The History of Mr. Polly, The Food of the Gods, The Island of Dr. Moreau. Upton Sinclair: The Jungle, King Coal, Jimmie Higgins, 100 Per Cent. Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie. George Moore: Esther Waters. Frank Norris: The Octopus. Brand Whitlock: The Turn of the Balance. De Foe: Robinson Crusoe. Fielding: Tom Jones, Jonathan Wild the Great. Thackeray: The Adventures of Barry Lyndon. Marmaduke Pickthall: The Adventures of Hadji Baba. Blasco Ibanez: The Fruit of the Vine. Frank Harris: Montes the Matador. Frederik van Eeden: The Quest. Tolstoi: Resurrection. And now for the people who do not get enough exercise. In the armies of King Cyrus it was the law that every man was required to sweat once every twenty-four hours, and that is still the law for every business man and office-worker and writer of books. There is no substitute for it, and there is no health without it. I have heard Dr. Kellogg say that the modern woman sends out her health with her washing, and I have heard the leisure class ladies at the Sanitarium discuss this cryptic utterance and wonder what he meant by it. I know that there is use telling leisure class ladies what exercise at the wash-tub would do for their abdomens and backs. I will only tell them that unless they can find some kind of vigorous activity which keeps them in a free perspiration for an hour or two each day, they will never be really well, and will never bear children without agony and abortion. For myself, I have found that the minimum is three or four times a week. Unless I get that much hard exercise I am soon in trouble. So my advice to the business man is to take off his coat and collar and turn out and help his truck-man; my advice to the white collar slave is to get a part-time job, and dig ditches the rest of the time. To the man who has cares which pursue him, and likewise to the ardent student and brain-worker, I say that they should find, not merely exercise, but play. The distinction between the two things is important. There can be play that is not exercise, for example cards and chess; and, of course, there can be exercise that is not play. What you must have is something that is both play and exercise; something that not merely causes your heart to beat fast, and your lungs to pump fast, and your sweat glands to throw out poisons from your body, but something that fully occupies your mind and gives your higher brain centers a chance to relax. Our civilization has very largely destroyed the possibility of play and the spirit of play. We civilized people no longer know what play is, and regard the desire to play as something abnormal--a form of vice. We allow children to play after school hours, and on Saturdays; but for grown-up, serious-minded men and women to want to play would be almost as disreputable as for them to want to get drunk. What could foe more pitiful than the spectacle of tens of thousands of men crowding into our baseball parks and amusement fields to watch other men play for them! Imagine, if you can, a crowd of people gathering in a restaurant or theater to watch other people _eat_ for them! Imagine yourself a man from Mars, coming down to a world with so many people in want, and finding whole classes of men forbidden to do any work, under penalty of disgrace, and compelled, in order to exercise their muscles, to pull on rubber straps and lift weights and wave dumb-bells and Indian clubs in the air--methods of expending their muscular energy which are respectable because they accomplish nothing! When I was a boy, I was fond of all kinds of games. I was a good tennis player, and in the country an incessant hunter and fisherman. When on the city streets we boys could not find any other game to play, we would get up on the roofs of the houses and throw clothes-pins and snow-balls at the "Dagoes" working in the nearby excavations; so we had the fine game of being chased by the "Dagoes," with the chance, real or imaginary, of having a knife stuck into us. But then, as I grew older, and became aware of the pain and misery of the world, I lost my interest in games, and for ten years or so I never played; I did nothing but study and write. So my health gave way, and I had the problem of restoring it, and I spent some twenty years wrestling with this problem, before I thoroughly convinced myself on the point that there can be no such thing as sound and permanent health without a certain amount of play. I don't think there is any kind of hard physical work I failed to try, in the course of my experiments. I rode horseback, and took long walks, and climbed mountains, and swam, and dug gardens, and chopped down whole groves of trees and cut them up and carried them to the fireplace. I have done this latter work for a whole winter in the country, several hours every day, and it has done my health no good to speak of; I have been ready for a breakdown at the end of it. The reason is that all the time I was doing these things with my body, I was going right on working my brain. While I was swimming or climbing a mountain or galloping on horseback, I was absorbed in the next chapter of the book I was writing, so that I literally did not know where I was. I would make up my mind that I would not think about my work, and would make desperate efforts not to do so; but it was like walking along the edge of a slippery ditch--sooner or later I was bound to fall in, and go floundering along, unable to get out again! And the same thing applies to all gymnastic work. I have experimented with a dozen different systems of exercises, and with all kinds of water treatments; I have used dumb-bells and Indian clubs and Swedish gymnastics, MacFadden's exercises in bed, and the Yogi breathing exercises, and more kinds of queer things than I can remember now; but for me there is only one solution of the problem, which is to have an antagonist. It may be a deer I am trying to shoot, or some trout I am trying to lure out of their holes; it may be some boys I am trying to beat at football or hockey, or it may be the game I know best and find most convenient, which is tennis. If it is tennis, then it has to be someone who can make me work as hard as I know how; for if it is someone I can beat easily, why, before I have been playing ten minutes, I am busily working out the next chapter of a book, or answering letters I have just got in the mail. Recently I came upon a book, "The Psychology of Relaxation," by Dr. Patrick, in which the theory of this is set forth. Civilized man is working his higher brain centers more than his body can stand; his brain is running away with him, absorbing a constantly increasing share of his energies. True relaxation is only possible where the higher brain centers are lulled, and the back lobes of the brain brought into activity. One of the means of doing this is alcohol, and that is why through the ages all races of men have craved to get drunk. There is a method which is harmless, and does not break down the system, and that is play. When we become really interested in play, we are as children, or as primitive man; we do all the things that our race used to do many ages ago; we hunt and fight, we pit our wits against the wits of our enemies, and struggle with desperation to get the better of them. If our play is physical play, if we are absorbed in a game or bodily contest, then we are exerting and developing all those portions of us which civilization tends to atrophy and deaden. There are people who will dispute with you about Socialism, and ask, how we are going to provide incentives if we do away with wage slavery. When you tell them that activity is natural to human beings, and that if there were no work, men and women would have to make some, they shake their heads mournfully and tell you about the problem of "human nature." But consider games and sports: men do not have to work their bodies, yet they go out and deliberately hunt for trouble! They invent themselves subtle and complicated games, and are not content until they find people who can beat them at it, or at any rate can make them work to the limit of their strength, until they are in a dripping perspiration and thoroughly exhausted! I may be too optimistic about "human nature," but I believe that this is the attitude every normal human being takes toward the powers, both mental and physical, which he possesses; he wants to use them, and for all they are worth. If you don't believe it, just take any group of youngsters, give them a baseball and bat, turn them loose in a vacant lot, and watch them "choose up sides" and fall to work, screaming and shouting in wild excitement! There are some races of the earth which do not yet know baseball, but the Filipinos and the Japanese have learned it, and even the war-worn "Poilus" and the supercilious "Tommies" condescended to experiment with it. And if you think it is only physical competition that young human animals enjoy, try them at putting on a play, or printing a magazine, or conducting a debate, or building a house--anything whatever that involves healthy competition, and is related to the big things of life, but without being for the profit of some exploiter! Get clear the plain and simple distinction between work and play: play is what you want to do, while work is what the profit system makes you do! CHAPTER XXV THE FASTING CURE (Deals with nature's own remedy for disease, and how to make use of it.) We have next to consider the various human ailments, what causes them, and how they can be remedied. As it happens, I know of a cure that comes pretty near being that impossible thing, a "cure-all." At any rate, it is so far ahead of all other cures, that a discussion of it will cover three-fourths of the subject. When I was a boy living in New York, there was a man by the name of Dr. Tanner, who took a forty-day fast. He was on public exhibition at the time, and was supposed to be watched day and night; the newspapers gave a great deal of attention to the story, and crowds used to come to gaze at him. I remember very well the conversations I heard about the matter. People were quite sure that it couldn't be true. The man must be getting something to eat on the sly; he must have some nourishment in the water he drank; no human being could fast more than five or six days without starving to death. In the year 1910 I published in the United States and England a magazine article telling how on several occasions I had fasted ten or twelve days, and what I had accomplished by it. I found that I had the same difficulty to confront as old Dr. Tanner; I received scores of letters from people who called me a "faker," and I read scores of newspaper editorials to the same effect. The New York Times published a dispatch about three young ladies on Long Island who were trying a three-day fast, and the Times commented editorially to the effect that these young ladies were "the victims of a shallow and unscrupulous sensationalist." The notion that human beings can perish for lack of food in a few days is deeply rooted in people's minds. Recently a group of eleven Irishmen in jail set to work to starve themselves to death, as a protest against British rule in their country. Day after day the newspapers reported the news from Cork prison, and at about the twentieth day they began to state that the prisoners were dying, that the priest had been sent for, that their relatives were gathered on the prison steps. Day after day such reports continued, through the thirties, and the forties, and the fifties, and the sixties, and the seventies. One man died on the eighty-eighth day, and MacSwiney died on the seventy-fourth. The other nine gave up after ninety-four days and were all restored to health. I watched carefully the newspaper and magazine comment on this incident, yet I did not see a single remark on the medical aspects of it; I could not discover that scientific men had learned anything whatever about the ability of the body to go without food for long periods. Get this clear at the outset: Nobody ever "starved to death" in less than two months, and it is possible for a fat person to go without food for as long as three or four months. People who "starve to death" in shorter times do not die of starvation, but of fright. The first time I fasted happened to be at the time of the Messina earthquake. I was walking about, perfectly serene and happy, having been without food for three days, and I read in my newspaper how the rescue ships had reached Messina, and found the population ravenous, in the agonies of starvation, some of the people having been without food for seventy-two hours! (It sounds so much worse, you see, when you state it in hours.) The second point to get clear is that the fast is a physiological process; that is to say, it is something which nature understands and carries through in her own serene and efficient way. When you take a fast, you are not carrying out a freak notion of your own, or of mine; you are discovering a lost instinct. Every cat and dog knows enough not to take food when it is ill; it is only in hospitals conducted by modern medical science that the custom prevails of serving elaborate "trays" to invalids. I remember a story about a man who made himself a reputation and a fortune by curing the pet dogs of the rich. These beautiful little creatures, which sleep between silken covers, and have several servants to wait upon them, and are fed from gold and silver dishes upon rich and elaborately cooked foods, fall victim to as many diseases as their mistresses, and they would be brought to this specialist, who conducted his dog hospital in an old brickyard. In each one of the compartments of the brick kiln he would shut up a dog with a supply of fresh water, a crust of stale bread, a piece of bacon rind, and the sole of an old shoe; and after a few days he would go back and find that the dog had eaten the crust of bread, and then he would write to the owner that the dog was on the high road to recovery. He would go back a few days later and find that the dog had eaten the piece of bacon rind, and then he would write that the dog was very nearly cured. He would wait until the dog had eaten the piece of shoe leather, and then he would write that the dog was completely cured, and the owner might come and take it away. Just what is the process of the fast cure? I do not pretend to know positively. I can only make guesses, and wait for science to investigate. I believe that the main source of the diseases of civilized man is improper nutrition, and the clogging of the system with food poisons in various stages. And when you fast you do two things: first, you stop entirely the fresh supply of those food poisons, and second, you allow the whole of the body's digestive and assimilative tract to rest--to go to sleep, as it were--so that all the body's energy may go to other organs. The body carries with it at all times a surplus store of nutriment, which can be taken up and used by the blood stream, apparently with much less trouble than is required to convert fresh food to the body's uses. In other words, the body can feed on its own tissues more easily than it can feed from the stomach. In the fast you may lose anywhere from half a pound to two pounds in weight per day, and this will be taken, first from your store of fat, and then from your muscular tissues. Every part of your muscular tissue will be taken, before anything is taken from your vital organs, your nerves or your blood-stream. So long as there is a particle of muscular material left, so long as you can make even the slightest movement of one finger, you are still fasting, and it is only when your muscular tissue is all gone that you begin at last to starve. So far as I know, the cases of MacSwiney and the other Irishman are the only cases on record where fasters have died of starvation. What the body does during the fast is quite plain, and can be told by many symptoms. It begins a thorough house-cleaning, throwing out poisonous material by every channel. The perspiration and the breath become offensive, the tongue becomes heavily coated, so that you can scrape the material off with a knife. I have heard vegetarians explain this by saying that when the body is living off its own tissues, it is following a cannibal diet; but that is all nonsense, because you can live on meat exclusively, and quickly satisfy yourself that none of these symptoms occurs. It is evident that the body is taking advantage of the opportunity to get rid of waste products; and this will go on for ten days, for twenty days, in some cases for as long as forty or fifty days; and then suddenly occurs a strange thing: in spite of the "cannibal diet" the symptoms all come to a sudden end. The tongue clears, the breath becomes sweet, the appetite suddenly awakens. During the period of a normal fast you lose all interest in food. You almost forget that there is such a thing as eating; you can look at food without any more desire for it than you have to swallow marbles and carpet tacks. But then suddenly appetite returns, as I have explained, and you find that you can think of nothing but food. This is what students of the subject describe as a "complete fast," and while I do not want to go to extremes and say that the "complete fast" will cure every case of every disease, I can certainly say this: in the letters which have come to me from people who tried the fast at my suggestion, there are cases of every kind of common disease. In my book, "The Fasting Cure," I give the results in cases reported to me after the publication of my first magazine article. I quote two paragraphs: "The total number of fasts taken was 277, and the average number of days was six. There were 90 of five days or over, 51 of ten days or over, and six of 30 days or over. Out of the 119 person who wrote to me, 100 reported benefit, and 17 no benefit. Of these 17 about half give wrong breaking of the fast as the reason for the failure. In cases where the cure had not proved permanent, about half mentioned that the recurrence of the trouble was caused by wrong eating, and about half of the rest made this quite evident by what they said. Also it is to be noted that in the cases of the 17 who got no benefit, nearly all were fasts of only three or four days. "Following is the complete list of diseases benefited--45 of the cases having been diagnosed by physicians: indigestion (usually associated with nervousness), 27; rheumatism, 5; colds, 8; tuberculosis, 4; constipation, 14; poor circulation, 3; headaches, 5; anaemia, 3; scrofula, 1; bronchial trouble, 5; syphilis, 1; liver trouble, 5; general debility, 5; chills and fever, 1; blood poisoning, 1; ulcerated leg, 1; neurasthenia, 6; locomotor ataxia, 1; sciatica, 1; asthma, 2; excess of uric acid, 1; epilepsy, 1; pleurisy, 1; impaction of bowels, 1; eczema, 2; catarrh, 6; appendicitis, 3; valvular disease of heart, 1; insomnia, 1; gas poisoning, 1; grippe, 1; cancer, 1." There are many diseases with many causes, and some yield more quickly than others to the fast. In the first group I put the diseases of the digestive and alimentary tract. Stomach and bowel troubles, and the nervous disorders occasioned by these, stop almost immediately when you fast. Next come disorders of the blood-stream, which are generally a second stage of digestive troubles. Everything immediately due to impurities of the blood, pimples, boils, and ulcers, inflammation, badly healing wounds, etc., respond to a few days of fasting as to the magic touch of the old-time legends. When it comes to diseases caused by germ infections, you have a double aspect of the problem, and must have a double method of attack. I would not like to say that fasting could cure such a disease as sleeping sickness, to the germs of which our systems are not accustomed, and against which they may well be helpless. On the other hand, in the case of common infections, such as colds and sore throats, the fast is again the touch of magic. Having been plagued a great deal by these ailments in past times, I am accustomed to say that I would not trade my knowledge of fasting for everything else that I know about health. The first thing you must do if you want to take a fast is to read the literature on the subject and make up your mind that the experiment will do you no injury. You should also try to get your relatives to make up their minds, because you are nervous when you are fasting, and cannot withstand the attacks of the people around you, who will go into a panic and throw you into a panic. As I said before, it is quite possible for people to die of panic, but I do not believe that anybody ever died of a fast. I have known of two or three cases of people dying while they were fasting, but I feel quite certain that the fast did not cause their death; they would have died anyhow. You must bear in mind that among the people who try the fast, a great many are in a desperate condition; some have been given up by the doctors, and if now and then one of these should die, we may surely say that they died in spite of the fast, and not because of it. There is no physician who can save every patient, and it would be absurd to expect this. I have read scores of letters from people who were at the point of death from such "fatal" diseases as Bright's disease, sclerosis of the liver, and fatty degeneration of the heart, and were literally snatched out of the jaws of death by beginning a fast. I would not like to guess just what percentage of dying people in our hospitals might be saved if the doctors would withdraw all food from them, but I await with interest the time when medical science will have the intelligence to try that simple experiment and report the results. Just the other day in the Los Angeles county jail, a chiropractor went on hunger strike, as a protest against imprisonment, and he fasted 41 days. Then he broke his fast, the reason being given that his pulse was down to 54, and he was afraid of dying. I smiled to myself. The normal pulse is 70. I have taken my pulse many times at the end of a ten-day fast, and it has been as low as 32, and I am not dead yet, and if I wait to die from the symptoms of a fast, I expect to live a long time indeed! The first time I fasted, I felt very weak, and lay around and hardly cared to lift my head; if I walked from my bed to the lawn, I was tired in the legs. But since then I have grown used to fasting. I have fasted for a week probably twenty or thirty times, and on such occasions I have gone about my business as if nothing were happening. Of course I would not try to play tennis, or to climb a mountain, but it is a fact that on the seventh day of a fast in New York, I climbed the five or six flights of stairs to the top of the Metropolitan Opera House, and felt no ill effects from doing this. I climbed slowly, and was careful not to tire myself. The simple rule is not to have anything that you must do on the fast, and then do what you feel like doing. Lie down and rest, and read a book, and take as much exercise as you find you enjoy. Keep your mind quiet and free from worries, and lock out of the house everybody who tells you that your heart is going to stop beating in the next few minutes, and that you must have an injection of strychnine to start it, and some beefsteak and fried onions to "restore your strength." Give yourself up to the care of your wise old mother nature, who will attend to your heart just as securely and serenely as she attended to it in the days before you were born. By fasting I mean that you take no food whatever. I know some nature cure teachers who practice what they call a "fruit fast." All I know is that if I eat nothing but fruit, I soon have my stomach boiling with fermentation, and also I suffer with hunger; whereas, if I take a complete fast, I promptly forget all about food. You must drink all the water you can on the fast. This helps nature with her house-cleaning; it is well to drink a glass of water every half hour at least. Do not try to go without water, and then write me that the fasting cure is a failure. Also please do not write and ask me if it will be fasting if you take just a little crackers and milk, or some soup, or something else that you think doesn't count! I recommend a dose of laxative to clean out the system at the beginning of a fast, because the bowels are apt to become sluggish at once, and the quicker you get the system cleansed, the better. It does no good to take laxatives if you are going to pile in more food, but if you are going to fast, that is a different matter. You should take a full warm enema every day during the fast, so long as it brings any results. There are some people whose bowels are so frightfully clogged that I have known the enema to bring results even in the second and third weeks. On the other hand, if there is no solid matter to be removed, a small enema every day will suffice. Take a warm bath every day; and needless to say, you should get all the fresh air you can, and should sleep as much as you can. You may have difficulty in sleeping, because the fast is apt to make you nervous and wakeful. I have known people who could not fast because they could not sleep, and I have taught them a little trick, to put a hot water bottle at the feet, and another on the abdomen, to draw the blood away from the head. So they would quickly fall asleep, and they got great benefit from their fasts. You should supply yourself with good music if you can, and with plenty of good reading matter. You will be amazed to find how active your mind becomes; perhaps you had never known before what a mind you had. Your blood has always been so clogged with food poisons that you didn't know you could think. My three act play, "The Nature Woman," was conceived and written in two days and a half on a fast; but I do not recommend this kind of thing--on the contrary, I strongly urge against it, because if you work your brain on a fast, you do not get the good from your fast, and do not recover so quickly. Put off all your problems until you have got your health back, and seek only to divert your mind while fasting. CHAPTER XXVI BREAKING THE FAST (Discusses various methods of building up the body after a fast, especially the milk diet.) There remains the question of how to break the fast, and this is the most important part of the problem. You may undo all the good of your fast by breaking it wrong, and you are a thousand times as apt to kill yourself then, as while you are fasting. When your hunger comes back, it comes back with a rush, and some people have not the will power to control it. I do not advocate a complete fast in any case except of serious chronic disease, and then only under the advice of someone with experience; but I advocate a short fast of a week or ten days for almost every common ailment, and I know that such a fast will help, even where it may not completely cure. You may go on fasting so long as you are quiet and happy; but when you find you are becoming too weak for comfort, or for the peace of mind of your family physician and your friends, you may break your fast, and show them that it is possible to restore your strength and body weight, and then they won't bother so much when you try it again! Take nothing but liquid foods in the breaking of a fast; I recommend the juices of fruits and tomatoes, also meat broths. If you have fasted a week or two, take a quarter of a glass; if you have fasted a month, take a tablespoonful, and wait and see what the results are. Remember that your whole alimentary tract is out of action, and give it a chance to start up slowly. Take small quantities of liquid food every two hours for the first day. Then you can begin taking larger quantities, and on the next day you can try some milk, or a soft poached egg, or the pulp of cooked apples or prunes. Do not take any solid food until you are quite sure you can digest it, and then take only a very little. Do not take any starchy food until the third day. I have known people to break these rules. I knew a man who broke his fast on hamburg steak, and had to be helped out with a stomach pump. Once I broke a week's fast with a plate of rich soup, because I was at a friend's house and there was nothing else, and I yielded to the claims of hospitality, and made myself ill and had to fast for several days longer. The easiest way to break a fast is upon a milk diet. I have seen hundreds of people take this diet, and very few who did not get benefit. The first time I fasted, which was twelve days, I lost 17 pounds, and I took the milk diet for 24 days thereafter, and gained 32 pounds. I took it at MacFadden's Sanitarium, where I had every attention. Since then, I have many times tried to take a milk diet by myself, but have never been able to get it to agree with me. I do not know how to explain this fact; I state it, to show how hard it is to lay down general rules. On the milk diet you take into your system two or three times as much food as you can assimilate, and this is a violation of all my diet rules; but it appears that the bacteria which thrive in milk produce lactic acid, which is not harmful to the system, and if you do not take other foods you may safely keep the system flooded with milk. After a fast you should begin with small quantities of milk, and by the third day you may be taking a full glass of warm milk every half hour or every twenty minutes, until you have taken seven or eight quarts per day. It is better to take it warm, but sometimes people take it just as well without warming. Dr. Porter, who has a book on the milk diet, insists upon complete rest, and makes his patients stay in bed. MacFadden, on the other hand, recommends gymnastics in the morning before the milk, and during the afternoon he recommends a rest from the milk for a couple of hours, followed by abdominal exercises to keep the bowels open. This is very important during a fast, because you are taking great quantities of material into your system and it must not be permitted to clog. Therefore take an enema daily, if necessary to a free movement. Also take a warm bath daily. Take the juice of oranges and lemons if you crave them. Upon one thing everyone who has had experience with the milk diet agrees, and that is the necessity of absolute mental rest. If you become excited, or nervous, or angry on a milk diet, you may turn all the contents of your stomach into hard curds, and may put yourself into convulsions. The wonderful thing about the milk diet is the state of physical and mental bliss it makes possible. It is the ideal way of breaking a fast, because it leaves you no chance to get hungry; you have all the food you want, and your system is bathed in happiness, a sense of peace and well-being which is truly marvelous and not to be described. You gain anywhere from half a pound to two pounds a day, and you feel that you have never before in your life known what perfect health could be. The fast sets you a new standard, you discover how nature meant you to enjoy life, and never again are you content with that kind of half existence with which you managed to worry along before you discovered this remedy. But let me hasten to add that I do not recommend the fast as a regular habit of life. The fast is an emergency measure, to enable the body to cleanse itself and to cure disease. When you have got your body clean and free from disease, it is your business to keep it that way, and you should apply your reason to the problem of how to live so that you will not have to fast. If you find that you continue to have ailments, then you must be eating wrongly, or overworking, or committing some other offense against nature; either that, or else you must have some organic trouble--a bone in your spine out of place, as the osteopaths tell you, or your eyes out of focus, or your appendix twisted and infected. I do not claim that the fasting cure will supplant the surgeons and the oculists and the dentists. It will not mend your bones if you break them, and it will not repair your teeth that are already decayed; but it will help to keep your teeth from decaying in the future, and it will help you to prepare for a surgical operation, and to recover from it more quickly. I had to undergo an operation for rupture a couple of years ago, and I fasted for two days before the operation, and for three days after it, and I had no particle of nausea from the ether, and was able to tend to my mail the day after the operation. There is one disease for which I hesitate to recommend the fast, and that is tuberculosis, because I have been told of cases in which the patient lost weight and did not recover it. However, in my tabulation of 277 cases, you will note four cases of tuberculosis, and in my book is given a letter from a patient who claimed great benefit. If I had the misfortune to contract tuberculosis, I would take a three or four day fast, followed by a milk diet for a long period. The milk diet is pleasant to take, and it cannot possibly do any harm. If it did not effect a cure, I would try the Salisbury treatment--that is, lean meat ground up and medium cooked, and nothing else, except an abundance of hot water between meals. Prof. Irving Fisher wrote me that there is urgent need of experiment to determine proper diet in tuberculosis; and until these experiments have been made, we can only grope. I am quite sure that the "stuffing system," ordinarily used by doctors, is a tragic mistake. In the case of any other disease whatever, even though I might take medical or surgical treatment, I would supplement this by a fast, because there is no kind of treatment which does not succeed better with the blood in good condition. In the case of emergencies, accidents, wounds, etc., I would rest assured that recovery would be more prompt if I were fasting. When David Graham Phillips was shot, I wrote a letter to the New York Call, saying that his doctors had killed him, because they had fed him while he was lying in a critical condition in the hospital. To take nutriment into the body under such circumstances is the greatest of blunders. The fast will help children, just as it helps adults, only they do not need to fast so long. It will help the aged and make them feel young. (You need not be afraid to fast, no matter how old you are.) It is, of course, an immediate cure for fatness, and strange as it may seem, it is also a cure for unnatural thinness. People with ravenous appetites are just as apt to be thin as to be fat, because it is not what you eat that builds up your body, but only what you assimilate, and if you eat too much, you can make it impossible to assimilate anything properly. If you take a fast and break it carefully, your body will come to its normal weight, and all your functions to their normal activity. A physician wrote me, taking me to task for listing among the cures reported in my tabulation a case of locomotor ataxia. This disease, he explained, is caused because a portion of a nerve has been entirely destroyed, and it is a disease that is absolutely and positively and forever incurable. I answered that I knew this to be the teaching of present day medical science, but I invited him to consider for a moment what happens in nature. When a crab loses a claw, we do not take it as a matter of course that the crab must go about with one claw for the balance of its life; nature will make that crab another claw. Man has lost the power of replacing a lost leg, but he stills retains the power of replacing tissue which has been cut away by a surgeon's knife, and medical science takes this as a matter of course. How shall anybody say that nature has forever lost the power of rebuilding a bit of nervous tissue? How shall anyone say that if the blood-stream is cleansed of poisons, and the energy of the whole body restored, one of the results may not be the repairing of a broken nerve connection? I invite my readers who have ailments, and especially I invite all medical men among my readers, to make a fair test of the fasting cure. The results will surprise them, and they will quickly be forced to revise their methods of treating illness. XXVII DISEASES AND CURES (Discusses some of the commoner human ailments, and what is known about their cause and cure.) I begin with the commonest of all troubles, known as a "cold." This name implies that the cause of the trouble lies in exposure or chill. All the grandmothers of the world are agreed about this. They have a phrase--or at least they had it when I was a boy: "You will catch your death." Every time I went out in the rain, every time I played with wet feet, or sat in a draft, or got under a cold shower, I would hear the formula, "You will catch your death." And, on the other hand, there are the "health cranks," who declare vehemently that the name "cold" is a misnomer and a trap for people's thoughts. Cold has nothing to do with it, they say, and point to arctic explorers who frequently get frozen to death, but do not "catch cold" until they get back into the warm rooms of civilization. As for drafts, the "health cranks" aver that a draft is merely "fresh air moving"; which is supposed to settle the matter. However, when you come to think about it, you realize that a cyclone is likewise merely "fresh air moving," so you have not decided the question by a phrase. While I was writing these chapters on health I contracted a severe cold--which was a joke on me. The history of this cold is as clear in my mind as anything human can be, and it will serve for an illustration, showing how much truth the grandmothers have on their side, and how much the "health cranks" have. To begin with, I had been overworking. All sorts of appeals come to me; hundreds of people write me letters, and I cannot bear to leave them unanswered. I accepted calls to speak, and invitations where I had to eat a lot of stuff of which my reason disapproves; so one morning I woke up with a slight sore throat. I fasted all day, and by evening felt all right. But there came another call, and I consented to take a long automobile ride on a cold and rainy night, and when I got back home, after five or six hours, I was thoroughly chilled, and my "cold" came on during the night. This explanation will, I imagine, be satisfactory to all the grandmothers of the world. All the dear, good grandmothers know that an automobile ride on a cold, rainy night is enough to give any man "his death." But listen, grandmothers! I have lain out watching for deer all night in the late fall, with only a thin blanket to cover me, and gotten up so stiff with cold that I could hardly move; yet I did not "catch cold." When I was a youth, I have ridden a bicycle twenty miles to the beach in April, with snow on the ground, and plunged into the surf and swam, and then ridden home again. I have bathed in the sea when I had to run a quarter of a mile in a bathing suit along a frost-covered pier, and with an icy wind blowing through my bones; yet I never took cold from that, and never got anything but a feeling of exhilaration. So it must be that there is some reason why exposure causes colds at one time and not at another. The explanation takes you over to the "health cranks." They understand that your blood-stream must be clogged, your bodily tone reduced by bad air and lack of exercise, and more especially by over-eating, or by an improperly balanced diet. But then most of them go to extremes, and insist that the automobile ride and the chilled condition of my body had nothing to do with my cold. But I know otherwise--I have watched the thing happen so often. In times when I was run down, the slightest exposure would cause me a cold, literally in a few minutes. I have got myself a sore throat going out to the wood-pile on a winter day with nothing on my head. I have got a cold by sitting still with wet feet, or by sitting in a draft on a warm summer day, when I had been perspiring a little. How to explain this I am not sure, but my guess is that you drive the blood away from the surface of the body at a time when it is weakened and exposed to infection, and you drive away the army of the white corpuscles, and give the battlefield of your body to the germs. I know there are nature curists who argue that germs have nothing to do with disease; but they have never been able to convince me--germs are too real, and too many, and too easy to watch. If you leave a piece of meat exposed to the air in warm temperature, the germs in the air will settle upon it and begin to feed upon it and to multiply; the meat, being dead, is powerless to protect itself. But your nose and throat are also meat, and just as good food for the germs. The only difference is that this meat is alive, there is a living blood-stream circulating through it, and several score billions of the body's own kind of germs, the blood corpuscles. If these blood corpuscles are sound and properly nourished, and are brought to the place of infection, they are able to destroy all the common germs; so it is that you do not have diseases, but instead have health. But your health always implies a struggle of your organism against other organisms, and it is the business of your reason to watch your body and give all the help you can in protecting it. Coughs and colds, sore throats and headaches, are the first warnings that your defenses are being weakened. As a rule these ailments are not serious in themselves, but they are signs of a wrong condition, and if you neglect this condition, pretty soon you will find that you have to deal with something deadly. My cure for a cold is to take an enema and a laxative, eat nothing for twenty-four hours, and drink plenty of water. If you have a severe cold or sore throat, you will be wise to lie in bed for a day or two, by an open window. You may also use sprays and gargles if you wish, but you will find them of little use, because the germs are deep in your mucous membranes, and cannot all be reached from the outside. In the old sad days of my ignorance I would get a cold, and go to the doctor, and have my throat and nose pumped full of black and green and yellow and purple liquids, which did me absolutely no good whatever; the cold would stay on for two or three weeks, sometimes for eight or ten weeks, and I would be miserable, utterly desperate. I was dying by inches, and not one of the doctors could tell me why. The next most common ailment is a headache, and this means poisons in your blood-stream. It may be from improper diet, from alcohol, or drugs, or bad air, or nervous excitement. If it is none of these things, then you should begin to look for some organic difficulty, eye-strain, for example, or perhaps defects in the spine. The osteopaths and the chiropractors specialize on the spine, and have made important discoveries. Their doctrine is, in brief, that the nervous force which directs the blood-stream is carried to the organs of the body by nerves which leave the spinal cord through openings between the vertebrae. If any of these openings are pinched, you have a diminished nerve supply, which means ill-health in that part of the body to which the nerve leads. That such trouble can be corrected by straightening the bones of the spine, seems perfectly reasonable; but like most people with a new idea, the discoverers proceed to carry it to absurd extremes. I have before me an official chiropractic pamphlet which states that vertebral displacement is "the physical and perpetuating cause of ninety-five per cent of all cases of disease; the remaining five per cent being due to subluxations of other skeletal segments." Naturally people who believe this will devote nearly all their study to the bones and the nervous system. But surely, there are other parts of your body which are necessary besides bones and nerves! And what if some of these parts happen to be malformed or defective? What if your eyes do not focus properly, and you are continually wearing out the optic nerve, thus giving yourself headaches and neurasthenia? What if you have an appendix that has been twisted and malformed from birth, and is a center of infection so long as it remains in the body? Several years ago I had an experience with the appendix, from which I learned something about one of the commonest of human ailments, constipation, or sluggishness of the bowels. This is a cause of innumerable chronic ailments grouped under the head of auto-intoxication, or the poisoning of the body by the absorption into the system of the products of fermentation and decay in the bowels. The bowels should move freely two or three times every day, and the movements should be soft. I suffered from constipation for some twenty years, and tried, I think, every remedy known both to science and to crankdom. In the beginning the doctors gave me drugs which by irritating the intestinal walls cause them to pour out quantities of water, and hurry the irritating substances down the intestinal tract. That is all right for an emergency; if you have swallowed a poison, or food which is spoiled, or if you have overeaten and are ill, get your system cleaned out by any and every device. But if you habitually swallow mild poisons, which is what all laxatives are, you weaken the intestinal tract, and you have to take more and more of these poisons, and you get less results. We may set down as positive the statement that drugs are not a remedy for constipation. Next comes diet. Eat the rough and bulky foods, say the nature curists, and stimulate the intestinal walls to activity. I tried that. I listened to the extreme enthusiasts, and boiled whole wheat and ate it, and consumed quantities of bran biscuit, and of a Japanese seaweed which Dr. Kellogg prepares, and of petroleum oil, and even the skins of oranges, which are most uncomfortable eating, I assure you. I would eat things like this until I got myself a case of diarrhea--and so was cured of constipation for a time! Strange as it may seem to you, there are even people who tell you to eat sand. I listened to them, and ate many quarts. Then there is exercise. MacFadden taught me a whole series of exercises for developing the muscles of the abdominal walls and the back, which are greatly neglected by civilized man. The fundamental cause of constipation is a sluggish life, and to exercise our bodies is a duty; but to me it was always an agony of boredom to lie on a bed and wiggle my abdomen for a quarter of an hour. The same thing applies to hot water treatments, which are effective, but a nuisance and a waste of time. I never could keep them up except when I was in trouble. Three or four years ago I began to notice a continual irritating pain in my right side, which I quickly realized must lie in the appendix. I tried massage, and hot and cold water treatments, and my favorite remedy, a week's fast. The pain disappeared, but it returned, so finally I decided, to the dismay of my physical culture friends, to have the appendix out. For years I had been reading the statements of nature curists, that the appendix is an important and vital part of the body, which pours an oil or something into the intestinal tract, and so helps to prevent constipation. Well, evidently my appendix wasn't doing its job, so I took it to a good surgeon. What I found was that it had been twisted and malformed from birth, so that it was a center of continuous infection. From the time I had that operation, I have never had to think about the subject of constipation. This experience suggests to me how easy it is for people to make statements about health which have no relationship to facts. I do not recommend promiscuous surgery, and I perfectly well realize that if human beings would take proper care of their health, the great proportion of surgical operations would be unnecessary. I realize, also, that surgeons get paid by the job, and therefore have a money interest in operating, and it is perfectly futile to expect that none of them will ever be influenced by the profit motive. Nevertheless, it is true that sometimes surgical operations are necessary, and that by standing a little temporary inconvenience you can save yourself a life-time of discomfort. Take, for example, rupture. The human body has here a natural weakness, from which there results a dangerous and uncomfortable affliction. Hundreds of thousands of men are going around all their lives wearing elaborate and expensive trusses which are almost, if not entirely useless, and trying advertised "cures" which are entirely fakes. An operation takes an hour or two, and two or three weeks in bed, and when our government drafted its young men into the army and found that fourteen in every thousand of them had rupture, it shipped them into the hospitals wholesale and sewed them up. It happens that rupture affords one case where scar tissue is stronger than natural tissue, and there were practically no returns from the great number of army cases. Likewise you find extreme statements repeated concerning the evils of vaccination; but if you will read Parkman's "History of the Jesuits in North America," you will see the horrible conditions under which the Indians lived in the United States--noble savages, you understand, entirely uncontaminated by civilized white men, and whole populations regularly wiped out every few years by epidemics of smallpox. That these epidemics ceased was due to the discovery that by infecting the body with a mild form of the disease, it could be made to develop substances which render it immune to the deadly form. Here in California we have a law which makes vaccination for school children optional, and so we may some day have another epidemic to test the theories of the anti-vaccinationists. I know, of course, the dreadful stories of people who have been given syphilis and other diseases by impure vaccines. I don't know whether such stories are true; but I do know that people who live in houses are sometimes killed by earthquakes and by lightning, yet we do not cease to live in houses because of this chance. It seems to me that the remedy for such vaccination evils is not to abolish vaccination, but to take more care in the manufacture of our vaccines. This danger is removed by using vaccines which are sterile, and are made especially for each person. Germs are taken from the sick person, and injected into an animal. The body of the animal develops with great rapidity the "anti-bodies" necessary to resistance to the germs; and as these "anti-bodies" are chemical products, not affected by heat, we can take a serum from the animal, sterilize it, and then inject it into the system of the patient, thus increasing resistance to the disease. I admit that the best way to increase such resistance is to take care of your health; but sometimes we confront an emergency, and must use emergency remedies. We have serums that really cure diphtheria and meningitis, and one that will prevent lock-jaw; anyone who has ever seen with his own eyes how the deadly membranes of diphtheria melt away as a result of an injection, will be less dogmatic about the efforts of science to combat disease. Of course it is much pleasanter if you can destroy the source of the disease, and keep it from getting into the human body. Every few years the southern part of our country used to be devastated by yellow fever epidemics. Every kind of weird and fantastic remedy was tried; people would go around with sponges full of vinegar hung under their noses; they would burn the clothing and bedding of those who died of the disease; they would wear gloves when they went shopping, so as not to touch the money with their hands. But at last medical experimenters traced the disease to a certain kind of mosquito, and now, if we drain the swamps and screen our houses and stay in doors after sundown, we do not get yellow fever, nor malaria either. In the same way, if we keep our bodies clean with soap and hot water, we do not get bitten by lice, and so do not die of typhus. If we take pains with our drains and water supply, so that human excrement does not get into it, and if we destroy the filth-carrying housefly, we do not have epidemics of typhoid. But under conditions of battle it is not possible for men to take these precautions, and so when they go into the army they get a dose of typhoid serum. And this illustrates the difference between a true or hygienic remedy for disease, and a temporary or emergency remedy. If you say that you want to abolish war, and with it the need for typhoid vaccination, I cheerfully agree with you in this. All that I am trying to do is to point out the folly of flying to extremes, and rejecting any remedy which may help. What is the use of making the flat statement that vaccinations and serums never aid in the cure of disease, when any man can see with his own eyes the proof that they do? In the Spanish war, before typhoid vaccination, many times more soldiers died of this disease than died of bullets; but in the late war there was practically no typhoid at all in the army camps. On the other hand, it was noticed that the men who had just come in, and who therefore had just been vaccinated, were considerably more susceptible to influenza; which shows that vaccination does reduce the body condition for a time. The reader may say that in this case I am trying to sit on both sides of the fence; but the truth is that I am trying to keep an open mind, and to consider all the facts, and to avoid making rash statements. One of the statements you hear most frequently is that drugs can never remedy disease, or help in remedying it. Now, I abhor the drugging system of the orthodox medical men; I have talked with them, and heard them talk with one another, and I know that they will mix up half a dozen different substances, in the vague hope that some one of them will have some effect. Even when they know definitely the effects they are producing, they are in many cases merely suppressing symptoms. On the other hand, however, it is a fact that medical science has had for a generation or two a specific which destroys the germs of one disease in the blood, without at the same time injuring the blood itself. That disease is malaria, and the drug is quinine. Of course, the way to avoid malaria is to drain the swamps; but you cannot do that all at once, nor can you always screen your house and stay in at sundown. When you first go into a country, you have no house to screen, and some emergency will certainly arise that exposes you to mosquito bites. So you will need quinine, and will be foolish not to use it, and know how to use it. Recently medical chemists discovered another remedy, this time for syphilis. It is called salvarsan, and while it does not always cure, it frequently does. In laboratories today men are working over the problem of constructing a combination of molecules which will destroy the germ of sleeping sickness, without at the same time injuring the blood. If they find it, they will save hundreds of millions of lives. I do not see why we cannot recognize such a possibility, while at the same time making use of physical culture, of diet and fasting. When the manuscript of this book was sent to the printer, there appeared in this place a paragraph telling of the work of Dr. Albert Abrams of San Francisco, in the diagnosis and cure of disease by means of radio-active vibrations. As the book is going to press, the writer finds himself in San Francisco, attending Dr. Abrams' clinics; and so he finds it possible to give a more extended account of some fascinating discoveries, which seem destined to revolutionize medical science. If I were to tell all that I have seen with my own eyes in the last twelve days, I fear the reader would find his powers of credulity overstretched, so I shall content myself with trying to tell, in very sober and cautious language, the theory upon which Abrams is working, and the technic which he has evolved. Modern science has demonstrated that all matter is simply the activity of electrons, minute particles of electric force. This is a statement which no present-day physicist would dispute. The best evidence appears to indicate that a molecule of matter is a minute reproduction of the universe, a system of electrons whirling about a central nucleus. No eye has ever beheld an electron, for it is billions of times smaller than anything the microscope makes visible; but we can see the effects of electronic activity, and all modern books of physics give photographs of such. It is possible to determine the vibration rates of electrons, and to Dr. Abrams occurred the idea of determining the vibration rates of diseased tissue and disease germs. He discovered that it was invariably the same; not merely does all cancerous material, for example, yield the same rate, but the blood of a person suffering from cancer yields that rate, at all times and under all circumstances. The vibration of cancer, of tuberculosis, of syphilis--each is different, uniform and invariable. Likewise in the blood are other vibrations, uniform and dependable, which reveal the sex and age of the patient, the virulence of the disease and the period of its duration--yes, and even the location in the body, if there be some definite infected area. So here is a modern miracle, an infallible device for the diagnosis of disease. Dr. Abrams does not have to see the patient; all he has to have is a drop of blood on a piece of white blotting paper, and he sits in his laboratory and tells all about it, and somewhere several thousand miles away--in Toronto or Boston or New Orleans--a surgeon operates and finds what he has been told is there! And that is only the beginning of the wonder; because, says Abrams, if you know the vibration rate of the electrons of germs, you can destroy those germs. It used to be a favorite trick of Caruso to tap a glass and determine its musical note, and then sing that note at the glass and shatter it to bits. It is well known that horses, trotting swiftly on a bridge, have sometimes coincided in their step with the vibration of the bridge and thus have broken it down. On that same principle this wizard of the electron introduces into your body radio-activity of a certain rate--and shall I say that he cures cancer and syphilis and tuberculosis of many years standing in a few treatments? I will not say that, because you would not and could not believe me. I will content myself with telling what my wife and I have been watching, twice a day for the past twelve days. The scene is a laboratory, with rows of raised seats at one side for the physicians who attend the clinic. There is a table, with the instruments of measurement, and Dr. Abrams sits beside it, and before him stands a young man stripped to the waist. The doctor is tapping upon the abdomen of this man, and listening to the sounds. You will find this the weirdest part of the whole procedure, for you will naturally assume that this young man is being examined, and will be dazed when some one explains that the patient is in Toronto or Boston or New Orleans, and that this young man's body is the instrument which the doctor uses in the determining of the vibration rates of the patient's blood. Dr. Abrams tried numerous instruments, but has been able to find nothing so sensitive to electronic activity as a human body. He explains to his classes that the spinal cord is composed of millions of nerve fibres of different vibration rates; hence a certain rate communicated to the body, is automatically sorted out, and appears on a certain precise spot of the body in the form of increased activity, increased blood pressure in the cells, and hence what all physicians know as a "dull area," which can be discovered by what is known as "percussion," a tapping with a finger. To map out these areas is merely a matter of long and patient experiment; and Abrams has been studying this subject for some twenty years--he is author of a text-book on what is known as the "reactions of Abrams." So now he provides the world with a series of maps of the human body; and he sits in front of his "subject," and his assistant places a specimen of blood in a little electrically connected box, and sets the rheostat at some vibration number--say fifty--and Dr. Abrams taps on a certain square inch of the abdomen of his "subject," and announces the dread word "cancer." Then he places the electrode on another part of the "subject's" body, and taps some more, and announces that it is cancer of the small intestine, left side; some more tapping, and he announces that its intensity is twelve ohms, which is severe; and pretty soon there is speeding a telegram to the physician who has sent this blood specimen, telling him these facts, and prescribing a certain vibration rate upon the "oscilloclast," the instrument of radio-activity which Dr. Abrams has devised. Now, you watch this thing for an hour or two, and you say to yourself: "Here is either the greatest magician in the history of mankind, or else the greatest maniac." You may have come prepared for some kind of fraud, but you soon dismiss that, for you realize that this man is desperately in earnest about what he is doing, and so are all the physicians who watch him. So you seek refuge in the thought that he must be deluding himself and them, perhaps unconsciously. But you talk with these men, and discover that they have come from all over the country, and always for one reason--they had sent blood specimens to Abrams, and had found that he never made a mistake; he told them more from a few drops of the patient's blood than they themselves had been able to find out from the whole patient. And then into the clinic come the doctor's own patients--I must have heard sixty or eighty of them tell their story and many of them have been lifted from the grave. People ten years blind from syphilis who can see; people operated on several times for cancer and given up for dying; people with tumors on the brain, or with one lung gone from tuberculosis. It is literally a fact that when you have sat in Abrams' clinic for a week, all disease loses its terrors. This, you see, is really the mastery of life. If we can measure and control the minute universe of the electron and the atom, we have touched the ultimate source of our bodily life. I might take chapters of this book to tell you of the strange experiments I have seen in this clinic--showing you, for instance, how these vibrations respond to thought, how by denying to himself the disease the patient can for a few moments cancel in his body the activity of the harmful germs; showing how the reactions differ in the different sexes and at different ages, and how they respond to different colors and different drugs. Abrams' method has revealed the secret of such efficacy as drugs possess--their work is done by their radio-activity, and not by their chemical properties. Also the problem of vaccination has been solved--for Abrams has discovered a dread new disease, which is bovine syphilis, originally caused in cattle by human inoculation, and now reintroduced in the human being by vaccination, and becoming the agent which prepares the soil of the body for such disorders as tuberculosis and cancer. And it appears that we can all be rendered immune to these diseases, by a few electronic vibrations, introduced into our bodies in childhood; so is opened up to our eyes a wonderful vision of a new race, purified and made fit for life. So here at last is science justified of her optimism, and our faith in human destiny forever vindicated. Take my advice, whoever you may be that are suffering, and find out about this new work and help to make it known to the world. There are many romances of medical science, some of them fascinating as murder mysteries and big game hunting. Turn to McMasters' "History of the People of the United States" and read his account of the terrible epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia a hundred years ago; I have already referred to the weird and incredible things the people did in their effort to ward off this plague--sponges of vinegar under their noses and "fever fires" burning in the streets; and then a mosquito would fly up and bite them, and in a few hours they would be dead! Or what could be stranger than the tracing of the bubonic plague, which has cost literally billions of human lives, to a parasite in the blood of fleas which live on the bodies of rats! Or what could be more unexpected than the tracing of our rheumatic aches and twinges to the root canals of the teeth! One of the common ailments which afflict poor humanity is rheumatism, a cause of endless suffering. It was supposed to be due to damp climate and exposure, and this is true to a certain extent, in the same way that colds are due to exposure. But the investigators realized that there must be some bodily condition rendering one susceptible, and they set to work to trace this condition down. The pains of rheumatism are caused by uric acid settling in the joints of the body. What causes the uric acid? Well, there is uric acid in red meat, so let us forbid rheumatic people to eat it! But this is overlooking the fact that the human body itself is a uric acid factory; and also the fact that uric acid taken into the stomach may not remain uric acid by the time it gets to the blood-stream. We know that you may eat a great deal of fruit acid without necessarily making acid blood. On the other hand, you can make acid blood by eating a lot of sugar! So you see it isn't as simple as it sounds. Rheumatism has been traced to its lair, which is found to be the roots of the teeth. Here is a part of the body difficult to get at, and as a consequence of bad diet and unwholesome ways of living, infections will start there, and pus sacs be formed, and the poisons absorbed into the blood-stream and distributed through the body. The first thought is to draw the infected teeth; but that is a serious matter, because you need your teeth to chew your food. So the dentist has to go through a complicated process of opening up the tooth and cleaning out the root canals, and treating the infected spots at the roots. Then he has to fill the tooth all the way down to the roots, leaving no place for infection to gather. This, of course, takes time and costs money, and is one more illustration of the fact that there is one health law for the rich and another health law for the poor. All the time that I write these chapters about health I feel guilty. I know that the wholesome food I recommend costs money, and I know that surgery and dentistry cost money--yes, even sunlight and fresh air and recreation; even a fast, because you have to rest while you take it, and you have to have a roof over your head, and warmth in winter time, and somebody to wait upon you when you are weak. I know that for a great many of the people who read what I write, all these things are impossible of attainment; I know that for the great majority of the common people the benefits of science do not exist. Science discovers how to prevent disease, but the discoveries are not applied, because the profit system controls the world, and the profit system wants the labor of the poor, regardless of what happens to their health. If the people fall ill, they are thrown upon the scrap heap, and the profit system finds others to take their place. Take, for example, tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a germ infection, but it practically never gets hold upon a human body except when the body is reduced by undernourishment and lack of fresh air. Tuberculosis, therefore, is a disease of slums and jails. It is definitely and indisputably a disease of poverty. It could be wiped off the face of the earth in a single generation; and the same is true of typhus and typhoid. There is another whole host of ailments which could be wiped out by measures of public hygiene, plus education. This includes all the infant diseases, and the deadly venereal diseases. But the profit system stands in the way; and so, in these closing paragraphs of this Book of the Body, I say that there is one disease which is the deadliest of all, and the source of all others, and that disease is poverty. I know a certain physician to the rich, who is an honest and conscientious man. He said, "I loath my work. I am wasting my time. I am called in by these fat, over-fed rich people in their leisure class hotels, and what am I to say to them? Shall I say to them, 'You are living an abnormal life, and you can never be well until you cut out root and branch all your habits of self indulgence which are destroying you?' But no, I can't say that--not one time in a thousand. I am expected to be polite and serious, and to listen to them while they tell the long tiresome story of their symptoms, and I have to encourage them, and give them some temporary device that will remove some of the symptoms of their trouble." And what should one say to this honest physician? Should one tell him to go and be a physician to the poor? Would he be any happier there? He could tell the poor the causes of their diseases, and they would listen patiently--they are trained to listen, and to accept what they are told. Here is a girl living in an inside bedroom in a tenement, and working ten or eleven hours a day in an unventilated factory, and she is ill with tuberculosis. The physician tells her that she needs plenty of fresh air and rest, and a lot of eggs and milk in her diet. He tells her that, and he knows that she has as much chance of carrying out his orders as of flying to the moon. Or maybe he comes upon a typhoid epidemic, and discovers, as happened to a friend of mine in Chicago, that there is defective plumbing in some houses owned by the political leader of the district. Or maybe it is a case of venereal disease, in a young man who was drafted into the army and turned loose amid the joys of Paris. Maybe it is just a commonplace, every-day story of a room full of school children, 22 per cent of them undernourished, as is the case in New York City, and the parents out of work a part of the time, and with no possibility in their lives of ever earning enough to feed the children properly. When you confront these universal facts of our present social order, you realize that the problem of disease is not merely a problem of the body, but is a problem of the mind as well; a problem of politics and religion and philosophy, of the whole way of thinking of the so-called civilized world. A book of health which did not point out these facts would be, not a book of health, but a book of sham. But meantime, while we are trying to change the world's ideas, we have to live, and we can do our work better if we keep as well as possible. I have tried to point out the way; it is, as you can see, a matter in part of the body and in part of the mind. All the bodily régime here laid out has its basis in mental habits; all wise and wholesome ways of life can, at the age when our minds are plastic, be made into "second nature"--things which we do automatically, without effort or temptation to do otherwise. This is the real secret of true happiness in the conduct of our personal lives; to acquire self-control, to rule our desires and our passions, not harshly and spasmodically, but serenely, as one drives a car which he thoroughly understands. It is in vain that we preach freedom to men who have not this self-mastery; as the poet tell us: "The sensual and the dark rebel in vain, slaves of their own compulsion." And of all the personal possessions which man can attain on this earth, the most precious is the one of a sound mind controlling a sound body. I close this book by quoting some verses written by Sir Henry Wotton three hundred years ago, which I have all my life considered one of the noblest pieces of poetry in our heritage: THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE How happy is he born and taught That serveth not another's will; Whose armour is his honest thought And simple truth his utmost skill! Whose passions not his masters are, Whose soul is still prepared for death, Not tied unto the world with care Of public fame, or private breath. Who envies none that chance doth raise Or vice; who never understood How deepest wounds are given by praise; Nor rules of state, but rules of good: Who hath his life from rumours freed, Whose conscience is his strong retreat; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make accusers great: Who God doth late and early pray More of His grace than gifts to lend; And entertains the harmless day With a well-chosen book or friend; --This man is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise, or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all. INDEX Abrams, Dr., 190 Adultery, 33 Adventist, 99 Agriculture, 25 Alcohol, 151 Anti-bodies, 188 Antinomies, 58 Appendix, 186 Arnold, 42 Arrhenius, 101 Automatic writing, 67 Bairnsfather, 29 Bathing, 162 Battle Creek Sanitarium, 118 Beauchamp, 70, 85, 89 Beethoven, 47 Bergson, 17 Beri-beri, 128 Bible, 77 Bio-chemist, 59 Black bread, 128 Blood, 106 Body, 53, 105 Booth, 58 Bourne, 69 Bruce, 71 Bury, 15 Caffein, 150 Calories, 135 Candy, 137 Capitalist, 100 Carbohydrates, 124 Carbon monoxide, 157 Children, 140, 180 Chiropractors, 174, 184 Chittenden, 136 Christian Scientists, 5, 65, 105 Clothing, 160 Coffee, 151 Colds, 183 Commandments, 32 Communist, 99 Complete fast, 172 Comstock, 25 Conduct, 42 Consciousness, 56 Constipation, 185 Cooking, 129, 142 Crawford, 88 Cyrus, 164 Dandruff, 109 Dante, 77 Darwin, 17, 46 Dentistry, 126, 190 Determinists, 57 Diet, 131 Diet Standards, 135 Digestion, 145 Diphtheria, 188 Diseases, 107, 117 Dogs, 17 Draft, 182 Drugs, 118, 150, 185, 189 Dubb, 63 Duncan, 102 Dyspepsia, 117 Eddy, 65 Edison, 45, 86 Einstein, 101 Elberfeld horses, 68 Evolution, 8, 17 Exercise, 163 Faith, 9 Faith curists, 65 Fast cure, 171 Fatness, 139 Fats, 124 Fever, 108 Fireless cooker, 142 Fireplace, 157 Fisher, 136 Fletcher, 119, 145 Food filter, 145 Fourth dimension, 5 Free thinker, 15 Freud, 71 Fruit fast, 175 Frugality, 38 Frying-pan, 129 Furnace, 157 Gargles, 184 Gastronomic art, 148 Genius, 49, 60 George, 18 Germs, 183 God, 22, 50 Goethe, 47 Golden rule, 51 Greens, 132 Gymnastic work, 166 Hair, 109 Hallucinations, 75 Hamlet, 48 Happiness, 9 Harrison, 6 Hats, 110 Headache, 122, 150, 184 Health cranks, 182 Heart, 108 Houdin, 93 Hugo, 48 Huxley, 17, 62 Hyslop, 82 Iceberg, 61 Infanticide, 28 Instincts, 134 Intelligence, 22 Immortality, 79 Irwin, Will, 86 James, 30, 59, 60 Jesus, 47, 48, 50, 51, 76 John Barleycorn, 152 Johnson, 58 Jonson, 44 Kant, Immanuel, 4, 47, 51, 58 Kellogg, Doctor, 118, 164, 186 Kilmer, Joyce, 44 Knowledge, 94 Kropotkin, 18, 26 Langley, 74 Lankester, Prof. E. Ray, 23 Laxatives, 175, 185 Leanness, 139 Leonardo, 47 Liébault, 64 Life, 3 Lily Dale, 86, 90 Lincoln, 47 Locomotor ataxia, 180 Lodge, Sir Oliver, 83 Lodge, Raymond, 87 London, Jack, 152 Macaulay, 39 MacDowell, Edward, 56 MacFadden, 178, 186 MacSwiney, 170 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 68 Malaria, 189 Malthusian law, 25 Marquesans, 113 Materializations, 88 Matter, 3 Meal-hour, 147 Measurement of Intelligence, Terman's, 95 Meat, 121 Medical science, 105 Mesmer, 63 Messina earthquake, 170 Metaphysics, 4 Metchnikoff, 138 Milk diet, 128 Moderation, 39 Monism, 3 Morality, 21, 31, 34, 50 Morgan, 45 Mormon, 99 Mozart, 68 Multiple personality, 69 Mutation, 17 Myers, 49 Nature, 21, 24, 29 Nature cure, 160 Nature Woman, 176 Neighbor, 50 Newcomb, Simon, 101 Newton, 47 New York Times, 169 Nicotine, 154 Nietzsche, 17 Novels, 164 Nutrition of Man, 136 Oil stoves, 158 Opsonins, 112 Optimism, 42 Osteopaths, 184 Ouija, 67 Overeating, 134 Oxygen, 156 Patrick, Dr., 167 Pavlov, 148 Phantasms, 75 Phillips, David Graham, 180 Piper, Mrs., 68 Play, 165 Poisons, 146 Pork, 142 Porter, Dr., 178 Positivists, 6 Poverty, 194 Prices of food, 141 Prince, Dr. Morton, 70, 89 Profits of Religion, 78, 99 Proteins, 123 Prunes, 127 Psychology, 96 Psychotherapy, 64 Puritans, 39 Quackenbos, 64 Quinine, 188 Quixote, 48 Raisins, 127 Raw food, 119 Read, Alfred Baker, 28 Reason, 13 Refined foods, 126 Relaxation, 167 Religion, 32 Reincarnation, 76 Rest, 146 Revelation, 12 Rheumatism, 193 Rice, 128 Rockefeller, 45 Roosevelt, Theodore, 25, 45 Rugs, 159 Rupture, 187 Sabbath, 99 Salisbury, 120 Sally, 70, 85 Salt, 143 Meats, salted, 143 Salts, 124 Salvarsan, 189 Savages, 135 Savage, Rev. Minot J., 74 Schrenck-Notzing, 88 Scurvy, 128 Seneca, 98 Shakespeare, 47 Shelley, 45, 48 Sleep, 162 Sleeping sickness, 113, 173 Smokers, 153 Socialism, 167 Sophocles, 87 Sore throat, 183 Spencer, 8 Spinoza, 79 Spirits, 82 Spiritualists, 86 Starch, 122, 124 Stealing, 33 Steam heat, 158 Stimulant, 149 Stock Exchange, 158 Stomach, 105, 138, 148 Style, 161 Subconscious mind, 61 Sunday code, 40 Sugar, 126 Surgery, 186 Survival, 81 Survival of the fittest, 22 Syndicalism, 15 Syphilis, 189 Tanner, Dr., 169 Tariff, 37 Tea, 151 Teeth, 127, 193 Telepathy, 67, 75 Theosophists, 76 Tight shoes, 161 Tobacco, 153 Tolstoi, 49 Tonsilitis, 107 Trance, 63 Tropism, 54 Tuberculosis, 112, 120, 179, 194, 195 Twain, Mark, 93 Typhoid, 112, 188, 192 Uranus, 92 Uric acid, 193 Vaccination, 187, 189 Vaccines, 188 Vegetarian, 121 Vitamines, 127, 142 Wallace, 46 Wells, H. G., 22 Williams, Dr. Henry Smith, 102 Worth, Patience, 84 Yellow fever, 188 Yogis, 90 THE BOOK OF LIFE VOLUME TWO: LOVE AND SOCIETY _To_ Kate Crane Gartz in acknowledgment of her unceasing efforts for a better world, and her fidelity to those who struggle to achieve it. CONTENTS PART THREE: THE BOOK OF LOVE PAGE CHAPTER XXVIII. THE REALITY OF MARRIAGE 3 Discusses the sex-customs now existing in the world, and their relation to the ideal of monogamous love. CHAPTER XXIX. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARRIAGE 8 Deals with the sex-relationship, its meaning and its history, the stages of its development in human society. CHAPTER XXX. SEX AND YOUNG AMERICA 15 Discusses present-day sex arrangements, as they affect the future generation. CHAPTER XXXI. SEX AND THE "SMART SET" 23 Portrays the moral customs of those who set the fashion in our present-day world. CHAPTER XXXII. SEX AND THE POOR 29 Discusses prostitution, the extent of its prevalence, and the diseases which result from it. CHAPTER XXXIII. SEX AND NATURE 33 Maintains that our sex disorders are not the result of natural or physical disharmony. CHAPTER XXXIV. LOVE AND ECONOMICS 36 Maintains that our sex disorders are of social origin, due to the displacing of love by money as a motive in mating. CHAPTER XXXV. MARRIAGE AND MONEY 40 Discusses the causes of prostitution, and that higher form of prostitution known as the "marriage of convenience." CHAPTER XXXVI. LOVE VERSUS LUST 46 Discusses the sex impulse, its use and misuse; when it should be followed and when repressed. CHAPTER XXXVII. CELIBACY VERSUS CHASTITY 51 The ideal of the repression of the sex-impulse, as against the ideal of its guidance and cultivation. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE DEFENSE OF LOVE 55 Discusses passionate love, its sanction, its place in life, and its preservation in marriage. CHAPTER XXXIX. BIRTH CONTROL 60 Deals with the prevention of conception as one of the greatest of man's discoveries, releasing him from nature's enslavement, and placing the keys of life in his hands. CHAPTER XL. EARLY MARRIAGE 66 Discusses love marriages, how they can be made, and the duty of parents in respect to them. CHAPTER XLI. THE MARRIAGE CLUB 71 Discusses how parents and elders may help the young to avoid unhappy marriages. CHAPTER XLII. EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE 75 Maintains that the art of love can be taught, and that we have the right and the duty to teach it. CHAPTER XLIII. THE MONEY SIDE OF MARRIAGE 79 Deals with the practical side of the life partnership of matrimony. CHAPTER XLIV. THE DEFENSE OF MONOGAMY 83 Discusses the permanence of love, and why we should endeavor to preserve it. CHAPTER XLV. THE PROBLEM OF JEALOUSY 89 Discusses the question, to what extent one person may hold another to the pledge of love. CHAPTER XLVI. THE PROBLEM OF DIVORCE 93 Defends divorce as a protection to monogamous love, and one of the means of preventing infidelity and prostitution. CHAPTER XLVII. THE RESTRICTION OF DIVORCE 97 Discusses the circumstances under which society has the right to forbid divorce, or to impose limitations upon it. PART FOUR: THE BOOK OF SOCIETY CHAPTER XLVIII. THE EGO AND THE WORLD 103 Discusses the beginning of consciousness, in the infant and in primitive man, and the problem of its adjustment to life. CHAPTER XLVIX. COMPETITION AND CO-OPERATION 107 Discusses the relation of the adult to society, and the part which selfishness and unselfishness play in the development of social life. CHAPTER L. ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY 115 Discusses the idea of superior classes and races, and whether there is a natural basis for such a doctrine. CHAPTER LI. RULING CLASSES 119 Deals with authority in human society, how it is obtained, and what sanction it can claim. CHAPTER LII. THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 122 Discusses the series of changes through which human society has passed. CHAPTER LIII. INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 126 Examines the process of evolution in industry and the stage which it has so far reached. CHAPTER LIV. THE CLASS STRUGGLE 132 Discusses history as a battle-ground between ruling and subject classes, and the method and outcome of this struggle. CHAPTER LV. THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM 136 Shows how wealth is produced in modern society, and the effect of this system upon the minds of the workers. CHAPTER LVI. THE CAPITALIST PROCESS 142 How profits are made under the present industrial system and what becomes of them. CHAPTER LVII. HARD TIMES 145 Explains why capitalist prosperity is a spasmodic thing, and why abundant production brings distress instead of plenty. CHAPTER LVIII. THE IRON RING 148 Analyzes further the profit system, which strangles production, and makes true prosperity impossible. CHAPTER LIX. FOREIGN MARKETS 151 Considers the efforts of capitalism to save itself by marketing its surplus products abroad, and what results from these efforts. CHAPTER LX. CAPITALIST WAR 155 Shows how the competition for foreign markets leads nations automatically into war. CHAPTER LXI. THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRODUCTION 158 Shows how much wealth we could produce if we tried and how we proved it when we had to. CHAPTER LXII. THE COST OF COMPETITION 162 Discusses the losses of friction in our productive machine, those which are obvious and those which are hidden. CHAPTER LXIII. SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM 166 Discusses the idea of the management of industry by the state, and the idea of its management by the trade unions. CHAPTER LXIV. COMMUNISM AND ANARCHISM 170 Considers the idea of goods owned in common, and the idea of a society without compulsion, and how these ideas have fared in Russia. CHAPTER LXV. SOCIAL REVOLUTION 175 How the great change is coming in different industries, and how we may prepare to meet it. CHAPTER LXVI. CONFISCATION OR COMPENSATION 179 Shall the workers buy out the capitalists? Can they afford to do it, and what will be the price? CHAPTER LXVII. EXPROPRIATING THE EXPROPRIATORS 183 Discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, and its chances for success in the United States. CHAPTER LXVIII. THE PROBLEM OF THE LAND 188 Discusses the land values tax as a means of social readjustment, and compares it with other programs. CHAPTER LXIX. THE CONTROL OF CREDIT 192 Deals with money, the part it plays in the restriction of industry, and may play in the freeing of industry. CHAPTER LXX. THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 198 Discusses various programs for the change from industrial autocracy to industrial democracy. CHAPTER LXXI. THE NEW WORLD 202 Describes the co-operative commonwealth, beginning with its money aspects; the standard wage and its variations. CHAPTER LXXII. AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 206 Discusses the land in the new world, and how we foster co-operative farming and co-operative homes. CHAPTER LXXIII. INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION 210 Discusses scientific, artistic, and religious activities, as a superstructure built upon the foundation of the standard wage. CHAPTER LXXIV. MANKIND REMADE 215 Discusses human nature and its weaknesses, and what happens to these in the new world. PART THREE THE BOOK OF LOVE CHAPTER XXVIII THE REALITY OF MARRIAGE (Discusses the sex-customs now existing in the world, and their relation to the ideal of monogamous love.) Just as human beings through wrong religious beliefs torture one another, and wreck their lives and happiness; just as through wrong eating and other physical habits they make disease and misery for themselves; just so they suffer and perish for lack of the most elementary knowledge concerning the sex relationship. The difference is that in the field of religious ideas it is now permissible to impart the truth one possesses. If I tell you there is no devil, and that believing this will not cause you to suffer in an eternity of sulphur and brimstone, no one will be able to burn me at the stake, even though he might like to do so. If I advise you that it is not harmful to eat beefsteak on Friday, or to eat thoroughly cooked pork any day of the week, neither the archbishops nor the rabbis nor the vegetarians will be able to lock me in a dungeon. But if I should impart to you the simplest and most necessary bit of knowledge concerning the facts of your sex life--things which every man and woman must know if we are to stop breeding imbecility and degeneracy in the world--then I should be liable, under federal statutes, to pay a fine of $5,000, and to serve a term of five years in a federal penitentiary. Scarcely a week passes that I do not receive a letter from someone asking for information about such matters; but I dare not answer the letters, because I know there are agencies, maintained and paid by religious superstition, employing spies to trap people into the breaking of this law. I shall tell you here as much as I am permitted to tell, in the simplest language and the most honest spirit. I believe that human beings are meant to be happy on this earth, and to avoid misery and disease. I believe that they are given the powers of intelligence in order to seek the ways of happiness, and I believe that it is a worthy work to give them the knowledge they need in order to find happiness. At the outset of this Book of Love we are going to examine the existing facts of the sex relationships of men and women in present-day society. We shall discover that amid all the false and dishonest thinking of mankind, there is nowhere more falsity and dishonesty than here. The whole world is a gigantic conspiracy of "hush," and the orthodox and respectable of the world are like worshippers of some god, who spend their day-time burning incense before the altar, and in the night-time steal the sacred jewels and devour the consecrated offerings. These worshippers confront you with the question, do you believe in marriage; and they make the assumption that the institution of marriage exists, or at some time has existed in the world. But if you wish to do any sound thinking about this subject, you must get one thing clear at the outset; the institution of marriage is an ideal which has been preached and taught, but which has never anywhere, in any society, at any stage of human progress, actually existed as the general practice of mankind. What has existed and still exists is a very different institution, which I shall here describe as marriage-plus-prostitution. By this statement I do not mean to deny that there are many women, and a few men, who have been monogamous all their lives; nor that there are many couples living together happily in monogamous marriage. What I mean is that, considering society as a whole, wherever you find the institution of marriage, you also find, co-existent therewith and complementary thereto, the institution of prostitution. Of this double arrangement one part is recognized, and written into the law; the other part is hidden, and prohibited by law; but those who have to do with enforcing the law all know that it exists, and practically all of them consider it inevitable, and a great many derive income from it. So I say: if you believe in marriage-plus-prostitution, that is your right; but if marriage is what you believe in, then your task is to consider such questions as these: Is marriage a possible thing? Can it ever become the sex arrangement of any society? What are the forces which have so far prevented it from prevailing, and how can these forces be counteracted? It is my belief that monogamous love is the most desirable of human sex relationships, the most fruitful in happiness and spiritual development. The laws and institutions of civilized society pretend to defend this relationship, but the briefest study of the facts will convince anyone that these laws and institutions are not really meant to protect monogamous love. What they are is a device of the property-holding male to secure his property rights to women, and more especially to secure himself as to the paternity of his heirs. In primitive society, where land and other sources of wealth were held in common, and sex monogamy was unknown, there was no way to determine paternity, and no reason for doing so. But under the system of private property and class privilege, it is necessary for some one man to support a child, if it is to be supported; and when a man has fought hard, and robbed hard, and traded hard, and acquired wealth, he does not want to spend it in maintaining another man's child. That he should let himself be fooled into doing so is one of the greatest humiliations his fellowmen can imagine. If you read Shakespeare's plays, and look up the meaning of old words, so as to understand old witticisms and allusions, you will discover that this was the stock jest of Shakespeare's time. In order to protect himself from such ridicule, the man maintained in ancient times his right to kill the faithless woman with cruel tortures. He maintains today the right to deprive her of her children, and of all share in his property, even though she may have helped to earn it. But until quite recent times, the beginning of the revolt of women, there was never any corresponding penalty for faithlessness in husbands. Under the English law today, the husband may divorce his wife for infidelity, but the wife must prove infidelity plus cruelty, and the courts have held that the cruelty must consist in knocking her down. While I was in England, the highest court rendered a decision that a man who brought his mistress to his home and compelled his wife to wait upon her was not committing "cruelty" in the meaning of the English law. This is what is known as the "double standard," and the double standard prevails everywhere under the system of marriage-plus-prostitution, and proves that capitalist "monogamy" is not a spiritual ideal, but a matter of class privilege. It is a breach of honor for the ruling class male to tamper with the wife of his friend; it is frequently dangerous for him to tamper with the young females of his own class; but it is in general practice taken for granted that the young females of lower classes are his legitimate prey. In England a man may have a marriage annulled, if he can prove that the woman he married had what is called a "past"; but everybody takes it for granted that the man has had a "past"; it is covered by the polite phrase, "sowing his wild oats." Wherever among the ruling class you find men bold enough to discuss the facts of the sex order they have set up, you find the idea, expressed or implied, that this "wild oats" is a necessary and inevitable part of this order, and that without it the order would break down. The English philosopher, Lecky, making an elaborate study of morals through the ages, speaks of the prostitute in the following frank language: "Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair. On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people." I invite you to study these sentences and understand them fully. Remember that they are the opinion of the most learned historian of sex customs who has ever written in English; a man whose authority is recognized in our schools, whose books are in every college library. William Edward Hartpole Lecky is not in any sense a revolutionist; he is a conventional English scholar, an upholder of English law and order and patriotism. He is not of my school of thought, but of those who now own the world and run it. I quote him, because he tells in plain language what kind of world they have made; I invite you to study his words, and then judge my statement that the sex arrangement under which we live in modern society is not monogamous love, but marriage-plus-prostitution. It is my hope to point the way to a higher system. I should like to call it marriage; but perhaps it would be more precise to call it marriage-minus-prostitution. In working it out, we shall have to think for ourselves, and discard all formulas. It is obvious that our present-day religious creeds, ethical ideals, legal codes, and social rewards and punishments have been powerless to protect marriage, or to make it the rule in sex relationships. So we shall have to begin at the beginning and find new reasons for monogamous love, a new basis of marriage other than the protection of private property. We shall have to inform ourselves as to the fundamental purposes of sex; we shall have to ask ourselves: What are the factors which determine rightness and wrongness in the sex relationship? What is love, and what ought it to be? These questions we shall try to approach without any fixed ideas whatever. We shall decide them by the same tests that we have used in our thinking about God and immortality, health and disease. We shall ask, not what our ancestors believed, not what God teaches us, not what the law ordains, not what is "respectable," nor yet what is "advanced," according to the claim of modern sex revolutionists and "free lovers." We shall ask ourselves, what are the facts. We shall ask, what can be made to work in practice, what can justify itself by the tests of reason and common sense. CHAPTER XXIX THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARRIAGE (Deals with the sex-relationship, its meaning and its history, the stages of its development in human society.) What, in the most elemental form, is sex? It is a difference of function which makes it necessary for two organisms to take part in the reproduction of the species. The purpose, or at any rate the effect, of this sex difference is the mixing of characteristics and qualities. If the sex relationship were unnecessary to reproduction, variations might begin, and be propagated and carried to extremes in one line of inheritance, without ever affecting the rest of the species. Very soon there would be no species, or rather an infinity of them; each line of descent would fly apart, and become a group all by itself. You have perhaps heard people comment on the fact that blondes so frequently prefer brunettes, and that tall men are apt to marry short women, and vice versa. This is perhaps nature's way of keeping the type uniform, of spreading qualities widely and testing them thoroughly. Nature is continually trying out the powers of every individual in every species, and by the process of sexual selection she chooses, for the reproduction of the species, the individuals which are best fitted for survival. This, of course, refers to nature, considered apart from man. In human society, as I shall presently show, sexual selection has been distorted, and partly suppressed. Sex differentiation and sexual selection exist almost universally throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms, everywhere save in the lowest forms of being. They take strange and startling forms, and like everything else in nature manifest amazing ingenuity. People who wish to prove this or that about human sex relations will advance arguments from nature; but as a matter of fact we can learn nothing whatever from nature, except her determination to preserve the products of her activity and to keep them up to standard. Sometimes nature will give the precedence in power, speed and beauty to the male, and sometimes to the female. She is perfectly ruthless, and willing in the accomplishment of her purpose to destroy the individuals of either sex. She will content the most rabid feminist by causing the female spider to devour her mate when his purpose has been accomplished; or by causing the male bee to fall from his mating in the air, a disemboweled shell. As for man, he has won his supremacy over nature by his greater power to combine in groups; by his more intense gregarious, or herd instincts, which enabled him to fight and destroy creatures which would have exterminated him if he had fought them alone. So in primitive society everywhere, we find that the individual is subordinated to the group, and the "folkways" give but little heed to personal rights. Very thorough investigations have been made into the life of primitive man in many parts of the world, and the anthropologists are now arguing over the exact meaning of the data. We shall not here attempt to decide among them, but rest content with the statement that communism and tribal ownership is a widespread social form among primitive man, so much so as to suggest that it is an early stage in social evolution. And this communism includes, not merely property, but sex. In the very earliest days there was often no barrier whatever to the sex relationship; not even between brothers and sisters, nor between parents and children. In fact, we find savages who do not know that the sex relationship has anything to do with procreation. But as knowledge increases, sex "tabus" develop, some wise, and some foolish. From causes not entirely clear, but which we discuss in Chapter XLVIII, there gradually evolves a widespread form of sex relationship of primitive man, the system of the "gens," as it is called. This is the Latin word for family, but it does not mean family in the narrow sense of mother and father and children, but in the broad sense of all those who have blood relationship, however far removed--uncles and aunts and cousins, as far as memory can trace. In primitive communism a man is not permitted to enter into the sex relationship with a woman of the same gens, but with all the women of some other gens. It is difficult for us to imagine a society in which all the men named Jones would be married to all the women named Smith; but that was the way whole races of mankind lived for many thousands of years. In that primitive communist society, the woman was generally the equal of the man. It is true that she did the drudgery of the camp, but the man, on the other hand, faced the hardships of battle and the chase on land and sea. The woman was as big as the man, and except when handicapped by pregnancy, as strong as the man; she was as much respected, if not more so. Her children bore her name, and were under her control, and she was accustomed to assert herself in all affairs of the tribe. In Frederick O'Brien's "White Shadows in the South Seas," you may read a comical story of a journey this traveler made into the interior of one of the cannibal islands. Everywhere he was treated with courtesy and hospitality, but was embarrassed by continual offers from would-be wives. In one case a powerful cannibal lady, whose advances he rejected, picked him up and proceeded to carry him off, and he was quite helpless in her grasp; he might have been a cannibal husband today, if it had not been for the intervention of his fellow travelers. The basis of this sex equality under primitive communism is easy to understand. All goods belonged to the tribe, and were shared alike according to need. Children were the tribe's most precious possession; therefore the woman suffered little handicap from having a child to bear and feed. Primitive woman would bear her child by the roadside, and pick it up in her arms, and continue her journey; and when she needed food, she did not have to beg for it--if there was food for anyone, there was food for her and her child. She did her share of the gathering and preparing of food, because that was the habit and law of her being; she had energies, and had never heard of the idea of not using them. This primitive communism generally disappears as the tribe progresses. We cannot be sure of all the stages of its disappearance, or of the causes, but in a general way we can say that it gives way before the spread of slavery. In the beginning primitive man does not have any slaves, he does not have sufficient foresight or self-restraint for that. When he kills his enemies in battle, he builds a fire and roasts their flesh and eats them; and those whom he captures alive, he binds fast and takes with him, to be sacrificed to his voodoo gods. But as he comes to more settled ways of living, and as the tribe grows larger, it occurs to the chiefs in battle that the captives would be glad to give their labor in return for their lives, and that it would be convenient to have some people to do the hard and dirty work. So gradually there comes to be a class at the bottom of society, and another class at the top. Those who capture the slaves and keep them at work lay claim to the products of their labor--at first better weapons and personal adornments, then separate homes for the chiefs and priests, separate gardens, separate flocks and herds, and--what more natural?--separate women. This process becomes complete when the tribe settles down to agriculture, and the ruling classes take possession of the land. When once the land is privately owned, classes are fixed, and class distinctions become the most prominent fact in society. And step by step as this happens, we see women beaten down, from the position of the cannibal lady, who could ask for the man she wanted and carry him off by force if necessary, to the position of the modern woman, who is physically weak, emotionally unstable, economically dependent, and socially repressed. You may resent such phrases, but all you have to do is to read the laws of civilized countries, written into the statute books by men to define the rights and duties of women; you will see that everywhere, before the recent feminist revolt, women were classified under the law with children and imbeciles. Maternity imposes on woman a heavy burden, and before the discovery of birth control, a burden that is continuous. For nine months she carries the child in her body, and then for a year or two she carries it in her arms, or on her back; and by that time there is another child, and this continues until she is broken down. Having this burden, she cannot possibly compete with the unburdened male for the possession of property. So wherever there is economic competition; wherever certain individuals or classes in the tribe or group are allowed to seize and hold the land; wherever the products of labor cease to be the community property, and become private property, the objects of economic strife; then inevitably and by natural process, woman comes to be placed among those who cannot protect themselves--that is, among the children and the imbeciles and the slaves. Of course, some children are well cared for, and so are some imbeciles, and some slaves, and some women. But they are cared for as a matter of favor, not as a matter of their own power. They proceed no longer as the cannibal lady, but by adopting and cultivating the slave virtues, by making themselves agreeable to their masters, by flattering their masters' vanity and sensuality--in other words by exercising what we are accustomed to call "feminine charm." From early barbaric society up to the present day, we observe that there are classes of women, just as there are classes of men. The position of these classes changes within certain limits, but in broad outline the conditions are fixed, and may be easily defined. There is, first of all, the ruling class woman. She must have birth; she may or may not have wealth, according as to whether the laws of that society or tribe permit her to have possessions of her own, or to inherit anything from her parents. If she has no wealth, then she will need beauty. She is the woman who is selected by the ruling class man to bear his name and his children, and to have charge of the household where these children are reared, and trained for the inheriting of their father's wealth and the carrying on of his position. This confers upon the ruling class woman great dignity, and makes her a person of responsibility. She rules, not merely over the slaves of the household, but over men of inferior social classes, and in a few cases an exceptionally able woman has become a queen, and ruled over men of her own class. This ruling class woman has been known through all the ages by a special name, and the ways and customs regarding her have been studied in an entertaining book, "The Lady," by Emily James Putnam. Next in privilege and position to the "lady" is the mistress, the woman who is selected by the ruling class man, not primarily to bear his children, but to entertain and divert him. She may, of course, bear children also. In barbaric societies, and up to quite recent times, the importance of the ruling class man was indicated by the number of concubines he had, and the position of these women was hardly inferior to that of the wife or queen. In the days of the French monarchy, the king's mistress was frequently more important than the queen; she was a woman of ability, maintaining her supremacy in the intrigues of the court. In ancient Greek society, the "hetairae" were a recognized class, and Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, was the most brilliant and most conspicuous woman in Athens. In modern France, the position of the mistress is recognized by the phrase "demi-monde," or half-world. The American plutocracy has developed upon a superstructure of Puritanism, and therefore, in America, hypocrisy is necessary. But in the great cities of America, the vast majority of the ruling class men keep mistresses before marriage, and a great many keep them afterwards; and these mistresses are coming to be more and more openly flaunted, and to acquire more and more of what is called "social position." It is possible now in the "smart set" for a lady to accept the status of mistress, delicately veiled, without losing caste thereby, and actresses and other free lance women who got their start in life by taking the position of mistress, are coming more and more to be recognized as "ladies," and to be received into what are called the "best circles." There remains to be considered the position of the lower class women. In barbarous society these women were very little different from slaves. They had no rights of their own, except such rights as their master man chose to allow them for his own convenience. They were sold in marriage by their parents, and they went where they were sold, and obeyed their new master. They became his household drudges, and reserved their affections for him; if they failed to do this, he stoned them to death, or strangled them with a cord and tied them in a sack and threw them into the river. And, of course, the rights of the master man yielded to the rights of men of higher classes. The king or nobleman could take any woman he wished at any time, and he made laws to this effect and enforced them. In feudal society the lord of the manor claimed the right of the first night with the wives of his serfs; this was one of the ruling class privileges which was abolished in the French revolution. Wherever the French revolution did not succeed in affecting land tenure, the right of the land owner to prey upon his tenant girls continues as a custom, even though it is not written in the law, and would be denied by the hypocritical. It prevails in Poland, as you may discover by reading Sienkiewicz's "Whirlpools"; it prevails in England, as you may discover from Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles." You will find that it prevails in every part of the world where women have poverty and men have wealth and prestige, dress suits and automobiles. You will find it wherever there are leisure class hotels, or colleges, or other gatherings of ruling class young males. You will find it in the theatrical and moving picture worlds. It is well understood in the theatrical world of Broadway that the woman "star" in the profession gets her start in life by becoming the mistress of a manager or "angel." In the moving picture world of Southern California it is a recognized convention, known to everyone familiar with the business, that a young girl parts with her virtue in exchange for an important job. CHAPTER XXX SEX AND YOUNG AMERICA (Discusses present-day sex arrangements, as they affect the future generation.) Our first task is to consider how people actually behave in the matter of sex--as distinguished from the way they pretend to behave. The first and most necessary step in the cure of any disease is a correct diagnosis, and in this case we have not merely to make the diagnosis, but to prove it; because the most conspicuous fact about our present sex-arrangements is a mass of organized concealment. Not merely do teachers and preachers for the most part suppress all mention of these subjects; but the defenders of our present economic disorder are accustomed to acclaim the private property régime as the only basis of family life. So long as people hold such an idea, there is no use trying to teach them anything on the subject. There is no use talking to them about monogamous love, because all they understand is hypocrisy. In this chapter, therefore, we shall proceed to hold up the mirror in front of capitalist morality. I pause and consider: Where shall I begin? At the top of society, or at the bottom? With the city or the country? With the old or the young? I think you care most of all about your boys and girls, so I am going to tell you what is happening to the youth of America in these days of triumphant reaction. I have a son, about whom naturally I think a great deal; just now he is a student at one of our state universities, and he wrote me the other day: "I went to a dance, and believe me, father, if you knew what these modern dances mean, you would write something about them." I know what they mean. They have come to us straight from the brothels of the Argentine, among the vilest haunts of vice in the world. Others have come from the jungle, where they were natural. The poor creature of the jungle has his sex-desire and nothing else; he is not troubled with brains, he does not have a complicated social organism to build up and protect, consequently he does not need what are called "morals." But we civilized people need morals, and we are losing them, and our society is disintegrating, going back to the howling and fighting and cannibalism of the jungle. Prof. William James, America's greatest psychologist, tells us that going through the motions appropriate to an emotion automatically causes that emotion to be felt. If you watch an actor preparing to rush on the stage in an emotional scene, you will see him walking about, clenching his fists, stamping his feet, making ferocious faces, "working himself up." And now, what do you think is going on in the minds of young men and women, while with their bodies they are going through procedures which are nothing and can be nothing but imitations of sexual contact? The parents, it appears, are ignorant and unsophisticated, and have left it for the children to find out what these dances mean. In Rhode Island, one of our oldest states, is Brown College, chosen by New England's aristocracy for the education of its sons; and these boys go to social affairs in the best homes in Providence, and they call them "petting-parties." And here is what they write in their college paper: "The modern social bud drinks, not too much, often, but enough. She smokes unguardedly, swears considerably, and tells 'dirty' stories. All in all, she is a most frivolous, passionate, sensation-seeking little thing." This statement, published in a college paper, causes a scandal, and a newspaper reporter goes to interview the college boy who edits the paper, and this boy talks. He tells how he met a lovely girl at a dance, and his heart was thrilled with the rapture of young love. "Frankly, between you and me, I was pretty smitten with this particular little lady. Felt about her, don't you know, like a real guy feels about the girl he could imagine himself married to. Thought she was too nice to touch, almost; you know the grave sort of love affair a man always has once in a lifetime. Well, we walked a bit, and I guess I didn't say much, for a while. I felt plenty--respectfully--just the same. And as we turned the corner of one of the buildings here, she grasped my hand. Hers was trembling. 'Love and let love is my motto, dearie,' said this seraph of my dreams; 'come, we're losing a lot of time getting started.' That girl thought I was dead slow. She didn't know that just then I imagined the great love of my life was just entering the door. It was cruel the way she got down from the pedestal I had built for her." Suppose I should ask you to name the influence that is having most to do with shaping the thoughts of young America--what would you answer? Undoubtedly, the moving pictures. It is from the "movies" that your children learn what life is; if I can show you that a certain thing is in the "movies," you can surely not deny that it is passing every day and night into the hearts and minds of millions of our boys and girls. Take a vote among the girls, what would they consider the most delightful destiny in life; surely nine out of ten would answer, to become a screen star, and pose before a world of admirers, and be paid a million dollars a year. Make a test and see; and put that fact together with the one I have already stated, that in order to get an important job in the "movies," a girl must regularly and as a matter of course part with her virtue. You will be told, no doubt, that this is a slanderous statement, so let me give you a little evidence. I happened within the past year to be in the private office of a well known moving picture producer, a man who is married, and takes care to tell you that he loves his wife. He was producing a play, the heroine of which was supposed to be a daughter of Puritan New England. To play this part he had engaged a chaste girl, and as a result was in the midst of a queer trouble, which he poured out to me. His "leading man" had refused to act with this girl, insisting that no girl could act a part of love unless she had had passionate experience; no such thing had ever been heard of in moving pictures before. Likewise, the director agreed that no girl who is chaste could act for the screen, and the producer asked my advice about it. Mr. William Allen White, of Kansas, was present in the office, and authorizes me to state that he substantiates this anecdote. We both advised the producer to stand by the girl, and he did so; and the picture went out, and proved to be what in trade parlance is termed a "frost"; that is to say, your children didn't care for it, and it cost the producer something like a hundred thousand dollars to make this attempt to defy the conventions of the moving picture world. I will tell you another story. I have a friend, a prominent man in Los Angeles, who was appealed to by a young lady who wished to act in the "movies." My friend introduced this young lady to a very prominent screen actor, who in turn introduced her to one of the biggest producers in America, one of the men whose "million dollar feature pictures" are regularly exploited. The producer examined the young lady's figure, and told her that she would "do"; he added, quite casually, and as a matter of course, that she would be expected to "pay the price." The young lady took exception to this proposition, and gave up the chance. She told my friend about it, and he, being a man of the world, accustomed to dealing with the foibles of his fellowmen, wrote a note to the actor, explaining that inasmuch as this young lady had been socially introduced to him, and by him socially introduced to the manager, she should not have been expected to "pay the price." To this the actor answered that my friend was correct, and he would see the manager about it. The manager conceded the point, and the young lady got her chance in the "movies" and made good without "paying the price." This story tells you all you need to know about the difference in sex ethics that society applies to the "lady" and to the daughter of the common people. You know, of course, what is the stock theme of all moving pictures--the virtuous daughter of the people, who resists all temptations, and is finally rescued from her would-be seducer by the strong and sturdy arm of a male doll. Could one ask a more perfect illustration of capitalist hypocrisy than the fact that the girl who plays this role is required to pay with her virtue for the privilege of playing it! And if you know anything about young girls, you can watch her playing it on the screen, and see from her every gesture that what I am telling you is true. My wife knows young girls, and I took her, the other day, to see a moving picture. She said: "I have solved a problem. When I come home on the street-cars, it happens that I ride with a lot of young girls from the high school. I have been watching them, and I couldn't imagine what was the matter with them. All simple, girlish straightforwardness is gone out of them; they are making eyes, in the strangest manner--and at nobody; just practicing, apparently. They wear yearning facial expressions; when they start to walk, they do not walk, but writhe and wiggle. I thought there must be some nervous eye and lip disease got abroad in the school. But now, when I go to a moving picture, I discover what it means. They are imitating the 'stars' on the screen!" In these pictures, you know, there are "ingenues," young girls engaged in making a happy ending to the story by capturing a rich lover; and then there are "vamps," engaged in seducing young men, or breaking up some happy home. In old-style melodrama it was possible to tell the "ingenue" from the "vamps"; the former would trip lightly, and glance coyly out of the corners of her eyes, while the "vamp" moved with slow, languished writhing, blinking heavy-lidded, sinister eyes. But now-a-days the "vamps" have learned to pose as "ingenues," and the "ingenues" are as vicious as the "vamps"; they both make the same glances, and culminate in the same sensual swoon. It is all sex, and nothing else--except revolvers and fighting, and wild rushing about. And then, too, there are the musical comedies, made wholly out of sex, being known as "girl shows," or more frankly still, "leg shows." A row of half naked women, prancing and gyrating on the stage, and in front of them rows of bald-headed old men, gazing at them greedily; also college boys, or boys too imbecile to get through college, sending in their cards with boxes of costly flowers. You will be shocked as you read my plain statements of fact, but if you are the average American, you will take your family to a musical show which has come straight from the brothels of Paris, every allusion of which is obscene. I remember once being in a small town in the South, when one of these "road shows" arrived from New York, and I realized that this institution was simply a traveling house of ill fame; the whole male portion of the town was a-quiver with excitement, a mixture of lust and fear. I live in Southern California, one of many places in America where the idle rich gather for their diversion. The country is dotted with palatial hotels, and a golden flood of pleasure-seekers come in every winter. I have talked with some of the college boys in this part of the country, and also with teachers who try to save the boys; they report these "swell" hotels as hot-beds of vice, haunted by married women with automobiles, and nothing to do, who wish to go into the canyons for sexual riots. Even elderly women, white-haired women, old enough to be your grandmother! I have had them pointed out to me in these hotels, their cheeks and lips covered with rouge, with pink silk tights on their calves, and nothing else almost up to their knees and nothing at all half way down their backs. These old women seek to prey on boys, wanting their youth, and being willing to lavish money upon them. They are preying on your boys--you prosperous business men, who have preached the gospel of "each for himself," and are proud of your skill to prey upon society. You heap up your fortunes, and call it success, and are secure and happy. You have made your children safe against want, you think; but how are you going to make them safe against the "vamps" who prey upon the overwhelming excitements of youth, and betray your sons before your very eyes--teaching them lust in their youth, so that love may never be born in their stunted hearts? All the haunts of "gilded vice" are thriving, and somebody's boy is paying the interest on the capital, to say nothing of paying the police. Many years ago I paid a call upon Anthony Comstock, head of the Society for the Prevention of Vice. Comstock was an old-style Puritan, and many insist that he was likewise an old-style grafter. However that may be, he had a collection of the literature of pornography which would cause any man to hesitate in condemning his activities. There is a vast traffic in this kind of thing; it is sold by pack-peddlers all over the country, and it is sold in little shops in the neighborhood of public schools. You may be sure that in your school there are some boys who know where to get it, even though they will not tell what they know. I will describe just one piece that a school boy brought to me, a catalogue of obscene literature, for sale in Spain, and to be ordered wholesale. You know how men with wares to sell will expend their imaginations and exhaust their vocabulary in describing to you the charms of each particular article for sale. Here was a catalogue of one or two hundred pages, listing thousands of items, pictures, pamphlets and books, and various implements of vice, all set forth in that imitation ecstasy of department stores and seed catalogues: here was "something neat," here was a "fancy one," this one was "a peach," and that one was "a winner." When I was a lad, I was tramping in the Adirondack mountains and was picked up by an itinerant photographer. We rode all day together, and he became friendly, and showed me some obscene pictures. Presently he discovered that he was dealing with a young moralist, and apparently it was the first time he had ever had that experience; he talked honestly, and we became friends on a different basis. This man had a wife and children at home, but he traveled all over the mountains, and was like the sailor with a girl in every port. Also he was thoroughly familiar with all forms of unnatural vice, and took this also as a matter of course, and spread it on his journeys. The other day I read a statement by a prominent physician in New York; he had been talking with a police captain, and had asked him to state what in his opinion was the most significant development in the social life of New York. The answer was, "The spread of male prostitution." Here is a subject to which I have to admit my courage is unequal. I cannot repeat the jokes which I have heard young men tell about these matters, and about the attitude of the police to them. Suffice it to say that these hideous forms of vice are now the commonplace of the under-world of all our great cities. The other day a friend of mine was talking with a prostitute who had left a high-class resort, where the price charged was ten dollars, and gone to live in a "fifty-cent house," frequented by sailors. She was asked the reason, and her explanation was, "The sailors are natural." Dr. William J. Robinson has written in his magazine an account of the haunts in Berlin which are frequented by the victims of unnatural vice, there allowed to meet openly and to solicit. Frank Harris, in his "Life of Oscar Wilde," tells how when that scandal was at its height, and further exposure threatened, swarms of the most prominent men in England suddenly discovered that it was advisable for them to travel on the Continent. The great public schools of England are rotten with these practices; the younger boys learn them from the older ones, and are victims all the rest of their lives. And the corruption is creeping through our own social body--and you think that all you have to do is not to know about it! My friend Floyd Dell, reading this manuscript, insists that this chapter and the one following are too severe. In case others should agree with him, I quote two newspaper items which appear while I am reading the proofs. The first is from an interview with H. Gordon Selfridge, the London merchant, telling his impressions of America. He tells about the "flappers," and then about the "shifters." "The other is the newly exploited 'shifters.' The 'shifters' are an organization of mushroom growth among high school girls and boys which is spreading through the eastern States and winning converts among youngsters. It is described as the 'flapper Ku Klux,' and its emblem, if worn by a girl, according to high school teachers and children's society leaders who oppose it, to be nothing more nor less than an invitation to be kissed. "To call it an organization even is exaggeration, for the 'shifters' are better described as a secret understanding without any responsible head. "From being a seemingly harmless group whose emblem was originally a brass paper clip fastened in the coat lapel it has developed by rapid strides. Manufacturers of emblems are coining money by the sale of hands, palm outstretched. The significance is take what you want or, as the motto of the order says, 'be a good fellow; get something for nothing.' One of the principles is to 'do' one's parents, referred to as 'they.'" The second item is an Associated Press despatch: "ST. LOUIS, March 10.--In reiterating his statement that a girls' and a boys' secret organization requiring that all applicants must have violated the moral code before admission was granted, existed in a local high school, Victor J. Miller, president of the Board of Police Commissioners, tonight named the Soldan High School as the one in which the alleged immoral conditions exist. The school is attended largely by children of the wealthy West End citizens. CHAPTER XXXI SEX AND THE "SMART SET" (Portrays the moral customs of those who set the fashion in our present-day world.) We have discussed what is happening to our young people; let us next consider what our mature people are doing. Having mentioned conditions in England, I will give a glimpse of London "high life" two years before the war. As a visiting writer, I was invited to luncheon at the home of a woman novelist, whose books at that time were widely read both in her country and here. Present at the luncheon was a prominent publisher, who I afterwards learned was the lady's lover; also the lady's grown and married son. The publisher looked like a buxom hunting squire, but the lady told me that he was very unhappy, because his wife would not divorce him. The lady had just come from a week-end party at the home of an earl, who at this moment occupies one of the highest posts in the gift of the British Empire. Things had gone comically wrong at this country house party, she said, because the hostess had failed to remember that Lord So-and-so was at present living with Lady Somebody-else. One of the duties of hostesses at house parties, it appears, is to know who is living with whom, in order that they may be put in connecting rooms. In this case his Lordship had been grouchy, and everybody's pleasure had been spoiled. This produced a discussion of the subject of marriage, and the son remarked that marriage was like an old slipper; you wore it, because you had got used to it, but you did not talk about it, because it was unimportant and stupid. I went away, and happened to mention these matters to a friend, who had met this woman novelist in Nice. The novelist had there, in a group of people, been introduced to a young girl who was suffering from neurasthenia. "My dear," said the novelist, affectionately, "what you need is to have an illegitimate baby." This, you will say, is the "old world," and you always knew that it was corrupt. If so, let me tell you a few things that I have seen among the "upper circles" of our own great and virtuous democracy. My first acquaintance with New York "society" came after the publication of "The Jungle." As the author of that book I was a sensation, almost as much so as if I had won the heavy-weight championship of the world. Out of curiosity I accepted an invitation for a weekend amid what is called the "hunting set" of Long Island. Here was a gorgeous palace with many tapestries, and soft-footed servants, and decanters and cocktails at every stage of one's journey about the place, like coaling stations on the trade routes of the British Empire. One of the first sights that caught my young eye was a large and stately lady in semi-undress, smoking a big black cigar. If I were to mention her name, every newspaper reader in America would know her; and before I had been introduced to her, I heard two young men in evening dress make an obscene remark about her, and what she was waiting for that evening. I discovered quickly that, while there was a great deal of sex among these people, there was very little love. There was principally a wish to score cleverly and subtly at the expense of another person's feelings. It is called the "smart set," you understand, and I will give you an idea of how "smart" it is. I was walking down a passage with a lady, and on a couch sat another lady, side by side with a certain very famous lawyer, whose golden eloquence you have probably listened to from platforms, and whom for the purpose of this anecdote I will name Jones. Mr. Jones and the lady on the sofa were sitting very close together, and my companion, with a bright smile over her shoulder, called out: "Be careful, Mary; you'll be scattering a lot of little Joneses around here if you don't watch out!" Quite "continental," you perceive; and a long way from the Puritanism of our ancestors! From there I went to the billiard-room, and observed a young man of fashion trying to play billiards when he was half drunk. It was a funny spectacle, and they took away his cigarette by force, for fear he would drop it on the cloth of the billiard table. Pretty soon he was telling about a racing meet, and an orgy with negro women in a stable. Therefore I returned to where the ladies were gathered, and one middle-aged matron, who had read widely, including some of my books, engaged me in serious conversation. I came later on to know her rather well, and she told me her views of love; the source of all the sex troubles of humanity was that they took the relationship seriously. Modern discoveries made it unnecessary to attach importance to it. She herself, acting upon this theory, probably had had relations with--my friends, reading the proofs of this book, beg me to omit the number of men, because you would not believe me! You may argue that this is not typical; say that I fell into the clutches of some particular group of degenerates. All I can tell you is that these people are as "socially prominent" as any in New York City. I will say furthermore that I have sat in the home of the best known corporation lawyer in America, who was paid a million dollars to organize the steel trust--the late James B. Dill, at that time a member of the Court of Appeals of New Jersey--and have heard him "muck-rake" his business friends by the hour with stories of that sort. I have heard him tell of the "steel crowd" hiring a trolley car and a load of prostitutes and champagne, and taking an all-night trip from one city to another, smashing up both the car and the prostitutes. I have heard him tell of sitting on the deck of a Sound steamer, and overhearing two of his Wall Street associates and their wives arranging to trade partners for the night. I have mentioned a lady who had a great many lovers. Once in the dining-room of a club on Fifth Avenue, commonly known as "the Millionaires'," a companion pointed out various people, many of whom I had read about in the newspapers, and told me funny stories about them. "See that old boy with a note-book," said my host. "That is Jacob So-and-so, and he is entering up the cost of his lunch. He keeps accounts of everything, even of his women. He told me he had had over a thousand, and they had cost him over a million." It is impossible to say what is the most terrible thing in capitalist society, but among the most terrible are assuredly the old men. The richest and most powerful banker in America was in his sex habits the merry jest of New York society. He took toward women the same attitude as King Edward VII; if he wanted one, he went up and asked for her, and it made no difference who she was, or where she was. This man's personal living expenses were five thousand dollars a day, and all women understood that they might have anything within reason. When I was a boy, living in New York, there was a certain aged money-lender about whom one read something in the newspapers almost every day. He was a prominent figure, because he was worth eighty millions, yet wore an old, rusty black suit, and saved every penny. Every now and then you would read in the paper how some woman had been arrested for attempting to blackmail him in his office. It seemed puzzling, because you wouldn't think of him as a likely subject for blackmail. Some years later I met Dorothy Richardson, author of "The Long Day," a very fine book which has been undeservedly forgotten. Miss Richardson had been a reporter for the New York _Herald_, and had been sent to interview this old money-lender. She was ushered into his private office, and as soon as the attendant had gone out and closed the door, the old man came up, and without a word of preliminaries grabbed her in his arms like a gorilla. She fought and scratched, and got out, and was wise enough to say nothing about it; therefore there was nothing published about another attempt to blackmail the aged money-lender! What this means is that men of unlimited means live lives of unbridled lust, and then in their old age they are helpless victims of their own impulses. There was a certain enormously wealthy United States Senator from West Virginia, who came very near being Vice President of the United States. This doddering old man would go about the streets of Washington with a couple of very decorous and carefully trained attendants; and whenever an attractive young woman would pass on the street, or when one would approach the Senator, these two attendants would quietly slip their arms into his and hold him fast. They would do this so that the ordinary person would not suspect what was going on, but would think the old man was being supported. You do not have to take these things on my word; the newspapers are full of them all the time, and they are proven in court. Just now as I write, the president of the most powerful bank in America is claiming in court that his children are not his own, but that their father is an Indian guide. His wife, on the other hand, is accusing the banker of having played the role of husband to several other women. He would take these women traveling on his yacht, which, quaintly enough, was termed the "Modesty." Also the papers have been full of the "Hamon case." Here is a wealthy man, Republican National Committeeman from Oklahoma, who is about to go to Washington to advise our new President whom to appoint to office from that state. Before he goes, he casts off his mistress, and she shoots him. She was his secretary, it appears, and helped him to make his fortune; she has made many friends, and a million dollars is spent to save her life. The prosecuting attorney calls her a "painted snake," and accuses her of having sat week after week "displaying to the jury twenty-four inches of silk stockinged shin-bone." The jury, apparently unable to withstand this allurement, acquits the woman, and she announces that she intends to bring suit under the man's will to get his money! Also, she is going into the "movies," and tells us that it is to be "for educational purposes." Everything in our capitalist society must be "educational," you understand. It was P. T. Barnum who discovered that the American people would flock to look at a five-legged calf, if it was presented as "educational." The moving pictures and the theatres are the honey-pots which gather the feminine beauty and youthful charm of our country for the convenience of rich men's lust. These girls swarm in the theatrical agencies, and in the artists' studios; they starve for a while, and finally they yield. In every great city there are thousands of men of wealth, whose only occupation is to prey upon such girls. I know a certain theatrical manager, the most famous in the United States, a sensual, stout little Jew. He is a man of culture and subtle insight, and in the course of his conversation he described to me, quite casually and as a matter of course, the charm of deflowering a virgin. Nothing could equal that sensation; the first time was the last. Many years ago there was a horrible scandal in New York. The most famous architect in America was murdered, and the newspapers probed into his life, and it was revealed to us that many of the most famous artists and men about town in New York maintained elaborate studios, equipped with every luxury, all the paraphernalia of all the vices of the ages; and through these places there flowed an endless stream of beautiful young girls. In every large city in America you will find an "athletic club," and if you go there and listen to the gossip, you discover that there are scores of idle rich men with automobiles and private apartments, and a staff of procurers used in preying, not merely upon young girls, but also upon young boys. And these are not merely the children of the poor, they are the children of all but the rich and powerful. In the "movies" you see pictures of girls lured into automobiles, and carried out into the country, or seduced by means of "knock-out drops," and you think this is just "melodrama"; but it is happening all the time. In every big city of our country the police know that hundreds of young girls disappear every year. At a recent convention of police chiefs in Washington, it was stated, from police records, that sixty thousand girls disappear every year in the United States, leaving no trace. Unless the parents happen to be in position to make a fuss, not even the names of the girls are published in the newspapers. I do not ask you to believe such things on my word; believe District Attorney Sims of Chicago, who made the most thorough study of this subject ever made in America, and wrote: "When a white slave is sold and landed in a house or dive she becomes a prisoner.... In each of these places is a room having but one door, to which the keeper holds the key. Here are locked all the street clothes, shoes and ordinary apparel.... The finery provided for the girls is of a nature to make their appearance on the street impossible. Then in addition to this handicap, the girl is placed at once in debt to the keeper for a wardrobe.... She cannot escape while she is in debt, and she can never get out of debt. Not many of the women in this class expect to live more than ten years--perhaps the average is less. Many die painful deaths by disease, many by consumption, but it is hardly beyond the truth to say that suicide is their general expectation." CHAPTER XXXII SEX AND THE POOR (Discusses prostitution, the extent of its prevalence, and the diseases which result from it.) It is manifest that the rich cannot indulge in vices, without drawing the poor after them; and in addition to this, the poor have their own evil instincts, which fester in neglect. There were several hundred thousand dark rooms, that is rooms without light or ventilation, in New York City before the war. Now the country is reported to be short a million homes, and in New York City working girls are sleeping six or eight in a room. In the homes of the poor in the slums, parents and children and boarders all sleep in one room indiscriminately, and the world moves back to that primitive communism, in which incest is an everyday affair, and little children learn all the vices there are. I have in my hand a pamphlet by a physician, in charge of a hospital in New York, who in fifteen years has examined nine hundred children who have been raped, and the age of the youngest was eight months! I have another pamphlet by a settlement worker, who discusses the problem of the thousands of deserted wives, most of them with children, many with children yet unborn. As I write, there are millions of men out of work in our country, and these men are desperate, and they quit and take to the road. They join the army of the casual workers, the "blanket stiffs"; and, of course, the more there are of these men, the more prostitutes there have to be, and the more homosexuality there will inevitably be. Also the girls are out of work, and are on the streets. Many years ago I visited the mill towns of New England, "she-towns" they are called, and one of the young fellows said to me that you could buy a girl there for the price of a sandwich. Read "The Long Day," to which I have previously referred, and see how our working girls live. Dorothy Richardson describes her room-mate, who read cheap novels which she found in the gutter weeklies. She read them over and over; when she had got to the bottom of the pile, she began again, because her mind was so weak that she had forgotten everything. And then one day Miss Richardson happened to be groping in a corner of a closet, and came upon a great pile of bottles, and examined them, and was made sick with horror--abortion mixtures. Dr. William J. Robinson, an authority on the subject, estimates that there are one million abortions in the United States every year. Some of these are accidental, caused by venereal disease, but the vast majority are deliberate acts, crimes under the law, murder of human life. Dr. Robinson also estimates, from the many thousands of cases which come to him, that ninety-five per cent of all men have at some time practiced self-abuse. He is a strenuous opponent of what he calls "hysteria" on the subject of venereal disease, and insists that its prevalence is exaggerated; that instead of one person in ten being syphilitic, as is commonly stated, the proportion is only one in twenty. He insists that the percentage of persons having had gonorrhea is only twenty-five per cent, instead of seventy-five or eighty-five. I find that other authorities generally agree in the statement that fifty per cent of young men become infected with some venereal disease before they reach the age of thirty. The Committee of Seven in New York estimated in 1903 that there were two hundred thousand cases of syphilis in the city, and eight hundred thousand of gonorrhea. There were villages in France before the war in which twenty-five per cent of the inhabitants were syphilitic, and in Russia there were towns in which it was said that every person was syphilitic. We may safely say that these latter are the only towns in Europe in which there was not an enormous increase of this disease during and since the war. What are the consequences of these diseases? The consequences are frightful suffering, not merely to persons guilty of immorality, but to innocent persons. Dr. Morrow, generally recognized as the leading authority on this subject, estimates that ten per cent of all wives are infected with venereal disease by their husbands; he estimates that thirty per cent of all the infected women in New York were wives who had got the disease from their husbands. It is estimated that thirty per cent of all the births, where either parent has syphilis, result in abortions. It is estimated that fifty per cent of childlessness in marriage is caused by gonorrhea, and twenty-five per cent of all existing blindness. In Germany, before the war, there were thirty thousand persons born blind from this cause. It is estimated that ninety-five per cent of all abdominal operations performed upon women are due to gonorrhea. And any of these horrors may fall upon persons who lead lives of the strictest chastity. There was a case reported in Germany of 236 children who contracted venereal disease from swimming in a public bath. All these things are products of our system of marriage-plus-prostitution. They are all part of that system, and no study of the system is complete without them. Everywhere throughout modern civilization prostitution is an enormous and lucrative industry. In New York it is estimated to give employment to two hundred thousand women, to say nothing of the managers, and the runners, and the men who live off the women. There are thousands of resorts, large and small, high-priced and cheap, and the police know all about it, and derive a handsome income from it. And you find it the same in every great city of the world; in every port where sailors land, or every place where crowds of men are expected. If there is to be a football game, or a political convention, the managers of the industry know about it, and while they may never have heard the libel that Socialism preaches sexual license, they all know that capitalism practices it, and they provide the necessary means. In the United States there are estimated to be a half a million prostitutes, counting the inmates of houses alone. During the late war, at the army bases in France, the British government maintained official brothels; but if you published anything about this in England, you ran a chance of having your paper suppressed. During the occupation of the Rhine country, the French sent in negro troops, savages from the heart of Africa, whose custom it is to cut off the ears of their enemies in battle; and the French army compelled the German population to supply white women for these troops. I have quoted in "The Brass Check" a pious editorial from the Los Angeles _Times_, bidding the mothers of America be happy, because "our boys in France" were safe in the protecting arms of the Y. M. C. A. and the Knights of Columbus. I dared not publish at this time a passage which I had clipped from the London _Clarion_, in which A. M. Thompson told how he watched the "doughboys" in the cafés of Paris, with a girl on each knee, and a glass of wine in each hand. I will add one little anecdote, giving you a glimpse of the sex conventions of war. The American army made desperate efforts to keep down venereal disease, and required all men to report to their regimental surgeon immediately after having had sex relations. Our army moved into Coblentz, and the regulations strictly forbade any fraternizing with the inhabitants. But immediately it was discovered that there was an increase of disease, and investigation was made, and revealed that men had been ceasing to report to the surgeons, because they were afraid of being punished for having "fraternized with the enemy." So a new order was issued, providing that having sexual intercourse would not be considered as "fraternizing." I do not know any better way to distinguish my ideal of morality from the military ideal, than to say that according to my understanding of it, the sex relationship should always and everywhere imply and include "fraternizing." Finally, in concluding this picture of our present-day sex arrangements, there is a brief word to be said about divorce. In the year 1916, the last statistics available as I write, there were just over a million marriages in the United States, and there were over one hundred and twelve thousand divorces. This would indicate that one marriage in every nine resulted in shipwreck. But as a matter of fact the proportion is greater, because the marriages necessarily precede the divorces, and the proportion of divorces in 1916 should be calculated upon the number of marriages which took place some five or ten years previously. Of the one million marriages in 1916, we may say that one in seven or one in eight will end in the divorce courts. Let this suffice for a glimpse of the system of marriage-plus-prostitution--a field of weeds which we have somehow to plow up and prepare for a harvest of rational and honest love! CHAPTER XXXIII SEX AND NATURE (Maintains that our sex disorders are not the result of natural or physical disharmony.) Elie Metchnikoff, one of the greatest of scientists, wrote a book entitled "The Nature of Man," in which he studied the human organism from the point of view of biology, demonstrating that in our bodies are a number of relics of past stages of evolution, no longer useful, but rather a source of danger and harm. We have, for example, in the inner corner of the eye a relic of that third eyelid whereby the eagle is enabled to look at the sun. This is a harmless relic. But we have also an appendix, a degenerate organ of digestion, or gland of secretion, which now serves as a center of infection and source of danger. We have likewise a lower bowel, a survival of our hay-eating days, and a cause of autointoxication and premature death. Among the sources of trouble, Metchnikoff names the fact that the human male possesses a far greater quantity of sexual energy than is required for purposes of procreation. This becomes a cause of disharmony and excess, it causes man to wreck his health and destroy himself. Manifestly, this is a serious matter; for if it is true, our efforts to find health and happiness in love are doomed to failure, and Lecky is right when he describes the prostitute as the "guardian of virtue," the eternal and necessary scapegoat of humanity. But I do not believe it is true; I think that here is one more case of the endless blundering of scientists and philosophers who attempt to teach physiology, politics, religion and law, without having made a study of economics. I do not believe that the sex troubles of mankind are physiological in their nature, but have their origin in our present system of class privilege. I believe they are caused, not by the blunders of nature, but by the blunders of man as a social animal. Let us take a glimpse at primitive man. I choose the Marquesas Islands, because we have complete reports about them from numerous observers. Here was a race of people, not interfered with by civilization, who manifested all that overplus of sexual energy to which Metchnikoff calls attention. They placed no restraint whatever upon sex activity, they had no conception of such an idea. Their games and dances were sex play, and so also, in great part, was their religion. Yet we do not find that they wrecked themselves. Physically speaking, they were one of the most perfect races of which we have record. Both the men and women were beautiful; they were active and strong from childhood to old age, and--here is the significant thing--they were happy. They were a laughing, dancing, singing race. They hardly knew grief or fear at all. They knew how to live, and they enjoyed every process and aspect of their lives, just as children do, naively and simply. This included their sex life; and I think it assures us that there can be no such fundamental physical disharmony in the human organism as the great Russian scientist thought he had discovered. Is it not a fact that throughout nature a superfluity of any kind of energy or product may be a source of happiness, rather than of distress? Consider the singing of the birds! Or consider nature's impulse to cover a field with useless plants, and how by a little cunning, we are able to turn it into a harvest for our own use! In the life of our bodies one may show the same thing again and again. We have within us the possibility of and the impulse toward more muscular activity than our survival makes necessary; but we do not regard this additional energy as a curse of nature, and a peril to our lives--we turn out and play baseball. We have an impulse to see more than is necessary, so we climb mountains, or go traveling. We have an impulse to hear more, so we go to a concert. We have an impulse to think more, so we play chess, or whist, or write books and accumulate libraries. Never do we think of these activities as signs of an irrevocable blunder on the part of nature. But about the activities of love we feel differently; and why is this? If I say that it is because we have an unwholesome and degraded attitude toward love, because, as a result of religious superstition we fear it, and dare not deal with it honestly, the reader may suspect that I am preparing to hint at some self-indulgence, some form of sex orgy such as the "turkey trot" and the "bunny hug" and the "grizzly bear," the "shimmy" and the "toddle" and the "cuddle." I hasten to explain that I do not mean any of the abnormalities and monstrosities of present-day fashionable life. Neither do I mean that we should set out to emulate the happy cannibals in the South Seas. In the Book of the Mind I set forth as carefully as I knew how, the difference between nature and man, the life of instinct and the life of reason. It is my conviction that if civilized life is to go on, there must be a far wider extension of judgment and self-control in human affairs; our lost happiness will be found, not by going "back to nature," but by going forward to a new and higher state, planned by reason and impelled by moral idealism. But we find ourselves face to face with horrible sex disorders, and a great scientist tells us they are nature's tragic blunder, of which we are the helpless victims. Manifestly, the way to decide this question is to go to nature, and see if primitive people, having the same physical organism as ours, had the same troubles and spent their lives in the same misery. If they did, then it may be that we are doomed; but if they did not, then we can say with certainty that it is not nature, but ourselves, who have blundered. Our task then becomes to apply reason to the problem; to take our present sex arrangements, our field of bad-smelling weeds, and plow it thoroughly, and sow it with good seed, and raise a harvest of happiness in love. It is my belief that, admitting true love--honest and dignified and rational love--it is possible to pour into it any amount of sex energy, to invent a whole new system of beautiful and happy love play. CHAPTER XXXIV LOVE AND ECONOMICS (Maintains that our sex disorders are of social origin, due to the displacing of love by money as a motive in mating.) If the cause of our sex disorders is not physiological, what is it? Everything in nature must have a cause, and this includes human nature, the actions and feelings of men, both as individuals and as groups. We hear the saying: "You can't change human nature"; but the fact is that human nature is one of the most changeable things in the world. We can watch it changing from age to age, for better or for worse, and if we had the intelligence to use the forces now at our command, we could mold human nature, as precisely as a brewer converts a carload of hops into a certain brand of beer. Voltaire was author of the saying, "Vice and virtue are products like vinegar." Our civilization is based upon industrial exploitation and class privilege, the monopoly of the means of production and the natural sources of wealth by a group. This enables the privileged group to live in idleness upon the labor of the rest of society; it confers unlimited power with practically no responsibility--a strain which not one human being in a thousand has the moral strength to endure. History for the past five thousand years is one demonstration after another that the conferring upon a class of power without responsibility means the collapse of that class and the downfall of its civilization. So far as concerns the ruling class male, what the system of privilege does is to give him unlimited ability to indulge his sex desires. What it does for the female is to submit her to the male desires, and to abolish that mutuality in sex, that interaction between male and female influence, which is the very essence of its purpose. Woman, in a predatory society, is subject to a double enslavement, that of class as well as of sex, and the result is the perverting of sexual selection, and a constantly increasing tendency towards the survival of the unfit. In a state of nature the males compete among themselves for the favor of the female. The female is not raped, nor is she kidnapped; on the contrary, she exercises her prerogative, she inspects the various male charms which are set before her, and selects those which please her, according to her deeply planted instincts. The result is that the weak and unfit males seldom have a chance to reproduce themselves, and the procreating is done by the highest specimens of the type. But now we have a world which is ruled by money, in which opportunity, and indeed survival, depend upon money, and the whole tendency of society is to make money standards supreme. We do not like to admit this, of course; our instincts revolt against it, and our higher faculties reinforce the revolt, so we carefully veil our money motives, and invent polite phrases to conceal them. You will hear people deny it is money which determines admission into what is called "society," the intimate life of the ruling class. They will tell you that it is not money, it is "good taste," "refinement," "charm of personality," and so on. But if you analyze all these things, you speedily discover that they are made out of money; they are symbols of the possession of money, devised by those who possess it, as a means of keeping themselves apart from those who do not possess it. I would safely defy a member of the ruling class to name a single element in what he calls "refinement," or "good taste," that is not in its ultimate analysis a symbol of the possession of money. Let it be the pronunciation of a word, or the cut of a coat, or the method of handling a fork--whatever it may be, it is part of a code, revealing that the person, or more important yet, the ancestors of the person, have belonged to the leisure class, and have had time and opportunity to learn to do things in a certain precise conventional way. I say "conventional," for very frequently these tests have no relationship whatever to reality. Considered as a matter of common sense and convenience, it is a great deal better to eat peas with a spoon than with a fork, and to use both a knife and fork in eating lettuce; but if you eat peas with a spoon, or use a knife on lettuce, every member of the ruling class will instantly know that you are an interloper, as much so as if you took to throwing the china at your hostess. Our culture is a money culture, our standards are money standards, and our sex decisions are based upon money, not upon love. Any man can have money in our society, provided the accident of birth favors him, and it is everywhere known that any man who has money can get a wife. It is certainly not true that any man with _no_ money can get a wife, and it is true that most men who have little money have to take wives who have less--that is, who belong to a lower class, according to the world's standards. The average young girl of the propertied classes is trained for marriage as for any other business. She is taught to be sexually cold, but to imitate sexual excitement deliberately, so as to arouse it in the male, and to keep herself surrounded with a swarm of males; this being the basis of her prestige, the factor which will cause the "eligible" man, the "catch," to desire her. In polite society this proceeding is known as "coquetry," or "charm," and it would be no exaggeration to say that seventy-five per cent of all the novels so far written in the world are expositions of this activity; also that when we go to the theater, we go in order to watch and sympathize with these manifestations of pecuniary sexuality. As a rule the young girl knows what she is doing, but she is taught to camouflage it, to preserve her "innocence." She would not dream of marrying for money; she wants to marry something "distinguished"--that is to say, something which has received the stamp of approval from a world which approves money. She wants to marry somebody who is "elegant," who is in "good form"; she wants to marry without having to think about the horrid subject of money at all, and so she is carefully chaperoned, and confined to a world where nothing but money is to be met. In Tennyson's poem, "The Northern Farmer," the old fellow is coaching his son on the subject of marriage, and they are driving along a road, and the farmer listens to his horses' hoofs, and they are saying, "Proputty, proputty, proputty!" The farmer sums up in one sentence the doctrine of pecuniary marriage as it is taught to the ruling class virgin: "Doän't thee marry for money, but goä wheer money is." In this process, of course, the ruling class virgin must spend a great deal of money in order to keep up her own prestige; and when she is married, she must spend it to keep up the prestige of her unmarried sisters, and then of her children. As a result of this, the only ruling class males who can afford to marry are the rich ones. There are always some who are richer, and these are the most desirable; so the tendency with each generation is to put the period of marriage further off; the man has to wait until he has accumulated enough "proputty" to satisfy the girl of his desires--a girl whom he admires because of her pecuniary prestige. He delays, and meantime he satisfies his passions with the daughters of the poor. As a result of this, when he does finally come to marry, he is apt to be unlovely and unlovable. The woman frequently does not love him at all, but takes him cold-bloodedly because he is "eligible"; in that case she is a cold and "sexless" wife. Or else, after she has married him she discovers his unloveliness, and either decides that all men are selfish brutes, and reconciles herself to a celibate life, or else she goes out and preys upon the domestic happiness of other women. CHAPTER XXXV MARRIAGE AND MONEY (Discusses the causes of prostitution, and that higher form of prostitution known as the "marriage of convenience.") I realize that all these sex problems are complicated. Every case is individual, and in no two cases can you give exactly the same explanation. But it is my thesis that whatever the cause, if you trace down the causes of the cause, you will find economic inequality and class privilege. It is evident in the lives of the rich, and it is even more evident in the lives of the poor, who are not permitted the luxury of pretense. The poor live in a world dominated by forces which they seldom understand, subjected to enormous pressure which crushes and destroys them, without their being able to see it or touch it. In the world of the poor there is first of all poverty; there is insecurity of employment and insufficiency of wage, and the daily and hourly terror of starvation and ruin. Above this is a world of power and luxury, a wonderland of marvels and thrills, seen through a colored mist of romance. The working-class girl, born to drudgery and perpetual child-bearing, has a brief hour in which her cheeks are red and her beauty is ripe; and out of the heaven above her steps a male creature panoplied in the armor of ruling class prestige--that is to say, a dress suit--and scattering about him a shower of automobile rides, jewelry and candy and flowers. She opens her arms to him; and then, when her brief hour of rapture is past, she becomes the domestic drudge of some workingman, or else the inmate of a brothel. It is a custom of social workers and church people, seeking data about these painful subjects, to interview numbers of prostitutes, and question them as to the causes of their "fall"; so you read statistics to the effect that seventeen per cent of prostitution has an economic cause, that twenty-six per cent is caused by love of finery, etc. These pious people, employed by the ruling class to maintain ruling class prestige by demonstrating that wage slavery has nothing to do with white slavery, attain their purpose by restricting the word "economic" to food and shelter; forgetting that young girls do not live by bread alone, but also by ribbons, and silk stockings, and moving picture shows, and trips to Coney Island, and everything else that gives a momentary escape from drudgery into joy. We all understand, of course, that the daughters of the rich are entitled to joy, and we provide them with it as a matter of course; but the daughters of the poor are supposed to work in a cotton mill ten or eleven hours a day from earliest childhood, and the joy we provide for them is vicarious. As a woman poet sets it forth: "The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play." Some years ago my wife and I were invited to meet Mrs. Mary J. Goode, a keeper of brothels in the "Tenderloin," who had revolted against the system of police graft, and had exposed it in the newspapers. My wife questioned her closely as to the psychology of people in her business, and she insisted that the majority of prostitutes were not oversexed, nor were they feeble minded; they were women who had loved and trusted, and had been "thrown down." As Mrs. Goode phrased it, they said to themselves: "Never again! After this, they'll pay!" As a matter of fact, the causes of prostitution are so largely economic that the other factors are hardly worth mentioning. The sale of sex is unknown in savage society, and would be unknown in a Socialist society. If here and there some degenerate individual would rather sell her sex than do her share of honest labor in a free and just world, such an individual would become a patient in the psychopathic ward of a public hospital. Economic forces drive women to prostitution, first, by direct starvation, and second, by teaching them money standards of prestige, the ideal of living without working, which is the heaven achieved by the rich and longed for by the poor. Contributory to the process are policemen, politicians, and judges who protect the property of the rich, and prey upon the disinherited; also newspaper editors, college professors, priests of God and preachers of Jesus, who attribute the social evil to "original sin," or the "weakness of human nature." So far as men are concerned, economic forces operate by three main channels; late marriage, loveless marriage, and drudgery in wives. You will find patronizing and maintaining the brothels the following kinds of males; first, young boys who have been taught that it is "manly" to gratify their sex impulses; second, young men who take it for granted that they cannot afford to marry; third, old bachelors who have looked at marriage and decided that it is not a paying proposition; fourth, married men who have been picked out for their money, and have come to the conclusion that "good women" are necessarily sexless; and finally, married men whose wives have lost the power to charm them by continuous childbearing, and the physical and nervous strain of domestic slavery. This latter applies not merely to the wives of the poor. It applies to members of the middle classes, and even of the richer classes, because the job of managing many servants is often as trying as the doing of one's own work. To explain how domestic drudgery is caused by economic pressure would require a little essay in itself. The home is the place where the man keeps his sex property apart under lock and key, and it is, therefore, the portion of our civilization least influenced by modern ideas. Women still drudge in separate kitchens and nurseries, as they have drudged for thousands of years. They cook their dinners over separate fires, and have each their own little group of children, generally ill cared for, because the work is done by an untrained amateur. Moreover, the prestige of this home has to be kept up, because the social position and future prosperity of the man depend upon it. The children must be dressed in frilled and starched clothing, which makes them miserable, and wears out the tempers and pocketbooks of the mothers. Costly entertainments must be given, and twice a day a meal must be prepared for the father of the family--all good wives have learned the ancient formula for the retention of masculine affections: "Feed the brute!" Living in a world of pecuniary prestige, every particle of the woman's surplus energy must go into some form of ostentation, into buying or making things which are futile and meaningless. In such a blind world, dazed by such a struggle, women become irritable, they lose their sex charm, they forget all about love; so the husband gives up hoping for the impossible, accepts the common idea that love and marriage are incompatible, and adopts the formula that what his wife doesn't know will not hurt her. And step by step, as economic evolution progresses, as vested wealth becomes more firmly established and claims for itself a larger and larger share of the total product of society--so step by step you find the pecuniary ideals becoming more firmly established, you find marriage becoming more and more a matter of property, and less and less a matter of love. In European countries there may still be some love marriages among the poor, but in the upper classes there is no longer any pretense of such a thing, and if you spoke of it you would be considered absurd. In countries of fresh and naive commercialism, like America, the women select the men because of their money prestige; but in Germany, the process has gone a step further--the men are so firmly established in their class positions that they insist upon being bought with a fortune. The same is true when titled foreigners condescend to visit our "land of the dollar." They will stoop to a vulgar American wife only in case her parents will make a direct settlement of a fortune upon the husband, and then they take her back home, and find their escape from boredom in the highly cultivated mistresses of their own land. Everywhere on the Continent, and in Great Britain also, it is accepted that marriages are matters of business, and only incidentally and very slightly of affection. The initiative is commonly taken, not by the young people, but by the heads of the families. Preliminary protocols are exchanged, and then the family solicitors sit down and bargain over the matter. If they were making a deal for a carload of hams, they would be governed by the market price of hams at the moment, also by the reputation of that particular brand of ham; and similarly, in the case of marriage, they are governed by the prestige of the family names, and the market price of husbands prevailing. Always the man exacts a cash settlement, and in Catholic countries he becomes the outright owner of all the property of his wife, thus reducing her completely to the status of a chattel. If any young couple dares to break through these laws of their class, the whole class unites to trample them down. One of the greatest of English novelists, George Meredith, wrote his greatest novel, "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," to show how, under the most favorable circumstances, the union of a ruling class youth with a farmer's daughter could result in nothing but shipwreck. The country in which the property marriage is most firmly established is probably France; and in France the rights of nature are recognized in a kind of supplementary union, which constitutes what is known as the "domestic triangle," or in the French language, "_la vie trois_." The young girl of the French ruling classes is guarded every moment of her life like a prisoner in jail. She is sold in marriage, and is expected to bear her husband an heir, possibly two or three children. After that, she is considered, not under the law or by the church, but by the general common sense of the community, to be free to seek satisfaction of her love needs. Her husband has mistresses, and she has a lover, and to that lover she is faithful, and in her dealings with him she is guided by an elaborate and subtle code. Practically all French fiction and drama deal with this "life in threes," and the complications and tragedies which result from it. I name one novel, simply because it happens to be the last that I myself have read, "The Red Lily," by Anatole France. Of course, every human being knows in his heart that this is a monstrous arrangement, and there are periods of revolt when real feeling surges up in the hearts of men, and we have stories of true love, young and unselfish love, such for example as Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea," or St. Pierre's "Paul and Virginia," or Halévy's "L'Abbe Constantin." Everybody reads these stories and weeps over them, but everybody knows that they are like the romantic shepherds and shepherdesses of the ancient régime; they never had any existence in reality, and are not meant to be taken seriously. If anybody attempts to carry them into action, or to preach them seriously to the young, then we know that we are dealing with a disturber of the foundations of the social order, a dangerous and incendiary villain, and we give him a name which sends a shudder down the spine of every friend of law and order--we call him a "free-lover." I see before my eyes the wretch cowering upon the witness stand, and the virtuous district attorney, who has perhaps spent the previous night in a brothel, pointing a finger of accusing wrath into his face, and thundering, "Do you believe in free love?" The wretch, if he is wise, will not hesitate or parley; he will not ask what the district attorney means by love, or what he means by freedom. Here in very truth is a case where "he who hesitates is lost!" Let the wretch instantly answer, No, he does not believe in free love, he believes in love that pays cash as it goes; he believes in love that investigates carefully the prevailing market conditions, decides upon a reasonable price, has the contract in writing, and lives up to the bargain--"till death do us part." If the witness be a woman, let the answer be that she believes in slave love; that she expects to be sold for the benefit of her parents, the prestige of her family and the social position of her future offspring. Let her say that she will be a loyal and devoted servant, and will never do anything at any time to invalidate the contract which is signed for her by her parents or guardians. CHAPTER XXXVI LOVE VERSUS LUST (Discusses the sex impulse, its use and misuse; when it should be followed and when repressed.) We have considered the sex disorders of our age and their causes. We have now to grope our way towards a basis of sanity and health in these vital matters. Consider man, as Metchnikoff describes him, with his overplus of sex energy. From early youth he is besieged by impulses and desires, and as a rule is left entirely uninstructed on the subject, having to pick up his ideas from the conversation of older lads, who have nothing but misinformation and perversions to give him. Nearly all these older lads declare and believe that it is necessary to gratify the sex impulse, that physically it is harmful not to do so. I have even heard physicians and trainers maintain that idea. Opposed to them are the official moralists and preachers of religion, who declare that to follow the sex impulse, except when officially sanctioned by the church, is to commit sin. At different times in my life I have talked with all kinds of people, young and old, men and women, doctors and clergymen, teachers and trainers of athletes, and a few wise and loving mothers who have talked with their own boys and other boys. As a result I have come to agree with neither side in the debate. I believe that there is a distinction which must be drawn, and I ask you to consider it carefully, and bear it in mind in all that I say on the problem of happiness and health in sex. I believe that a normal man is one being, manifesting himself in various aspects, physical, emotional, intellectual. I believe that all these aspects of human activity go normally together, and cannot normally be separated, and that the separation of them is a perversion and source of harm. I believe that the sex impulse, as it normally manifests itself, and would manifest itself in a man if he were living a normal life, is an impulse which includes every aspect of the man's being. It is not merely physical desire and emotional excitement; it is intellectual curiosity, a deep and intense interest, not merely in the body, but in the mind and heart and personality of the woman. I appreciate that there is opportunity for controversy here. As a matter of psychology, it is not easy to separate instinct from experience, to state whether a certain impulse is innate or acquired. Some may argue that savages know nothing about idealism in sex, neither do those modern savages whom we breed in city slums; some may make the same assertion concerning a great mass of loutish and sensual youths. We have got so far from health and soundness that it is hard to be sure what is "normal" and what is "ideal." But without going into metaphysics, I think we can reasonably make the following statement concerning the sex impulse at its first appearance in the average healthy youth in civilized societies; that this impulse, going to the roots of the being, affecting every atom of energy and every faculty, is accompanied, not merely by happiness, but by sympathetic delight in the happiness of the woman, by interest in the woman, by desire to be with her, to stay with her and share her life and protect her from harm. In what I have to say about the subject from now on, I shall describe this condition of being and feeling by the word "love." But now suppose that men should, for some reason or other, evolve a set of religious ideas which denied love, and repudiated love, and called it a sin and a humiliation; or suppose there should be an economic condition which made love a peril, so that the young couple which yielded to love would be in danger of starvation, or of seeing their children starve. Suppose there should be evolved classes of men and women, held by society in a condition of permanent semi-starvation; then, under such conditions, the impulse to love would become a trap and a source of terror. Then the energies of a great many men would be devoted to suppressing love and strangling it in themselves; then the intellectual and spiritual sanctions of love would be withdrawn, the beauty and charm and joy would go out of it, and it would become a starving beggar at the gates, or a thief skulking in the night-time, or an assassin with a dagger and club. In other words, sex would become all the horror that it is today, in the form of purchased vice, and more highly purchased marriage, and secret shame, and obscure innuendo. So we should have what is, in a civilized man, a perversion, the possibility of love which is physical alone; a purely animal thing in a being who is not purely animal, but is body, mind and spirit all together. So it would be possible for pitiful, unhappy man, driven by the blind urge of nature, to conceive of desiring a woman only in the body, and with no care about what she felt, or what she thought, or what became of her afterwards. That purely physical sex desire I will indicate in our future discussions by the only convenient word that I can find, which is lust. The word has religious implications, so I explain that I use it in my own meaning, as above. There is a great deal of what the churches call lust, which I call true and honest love; on the other hand, in Christian churches today, there are celebrated innumerable marriages between innocent young girls and mature men of property, which I describe as legalized and consecrated lust. We are now in position to make a fundamental distinction. I assert the proposition that there does not exist, in any man, at any time of his life, or in any condition of his health, a necessity for yielding to the impulses of lust; and I say that no man can yield to them without degrading his nature and injuring himself, not merely morally, but mentally, and in the long run physically. I assert that it is the duty of every man, at all times and under all circumstances, to resist the impulses of lust, to suppress and destroy them in his nature, by whatever expenditure of will power and moral effort may be required. I know physicians who maintain the unpopular thesis that serious damage may be done to the physical organism of both man and woman by the long continued suppression of the sex-life. Let me make plain that I am not disagreeing with such men. I do not deny that repression of the sex-life may do harm. What I do deny is that it does any harm to repress a physical desire which is unaccompanied by the higher elements of sex; that is to say, by affection, admiration, and unselfish concern for the sex-partner and her welfare. When I advise a man to resist and suppress and destroy the impulse toward lust in his nature, I am not telling him to live a sexless life. I am telling him that if he represses lust, then love will come; whereas, if he yields to lust, then love may never come, he may make himself incapable of love, incapable of feeling it or of trusting it, or of inspiring it in a woman. And I say that if, on the other hand, he resists lust, he will pour all the energies of his being into the channels of affection and idealism. Instead of having his thoughts diverted by every passing female form, his energies will become concentrated upon the search for one woman who appeals to him in permanent and useful ways. We may be sure that nature has not made men and women incompatible, but on the contrary, has provided for fulfillment of the desires of both. The man will find some woman who is looking for the thing which he has to offer--that is, love. And now, what about the suppression of love? Here I am willing to go as far as any physician could desire, and possibly farther. Speaking generally, and concerning normal adult human beings, I say that the suppression of love is a crime against nature and life. I say that long continued and systematic suppression of love exercises a devastating effect, not merely upon the body, but upon the mind and all the energies of the being. I say that the doctrine of the suppression of love, no matter by whom it is preached, is an affront to nature and to life, and an insult to the creator of life. I say that it is the duty of all men and women, not merely to assert their own right to love, but to devote their energies to a war upon whatever ideas and conventions and laws in society deny the love-right. The belief that long continued suppression of love does grave harm has been strongly reinforced in the last few years by the discovery of psycho-analysis, a science which enables us to explore our unconscious minds, and lay bare the secrets of nature's psychic workshop. These revelations have made plain that sex plays an even more important part in our mental lives than we realized. Sex feeling manifests itself, not merely in grown people, but in the tiniest infants; in these latter it has of course no object in the opposite sex, but the physical sensations are there, and some of their outward manifestations; and as the infant grows, and realizes the outside world, the feelings come to center upon others, the parents first of all. These manifestations must be guided, and sometimes repressed; but if this is done violently, by means of terror, the consequences may be very harmful--the wrong impulses or the terrors may survive as a "complex" in the unconscious mind, and cause a long chain of nervous disorders and physical weaknesses in the adult. These things are no matter of guesswork, they have been proven as thoroughly as any scientific discovery, and are used in a new technic of healing. Of course, as with every new theory, there are unbalanced people who carry it to extremes. There are fanatics of Freudianism who talk as if everything in the human unconsciousness were sex; but that need not blind us to the importance of these new discoveries, and the confirmation they bring to the thesis that sane and normal love, wisely guided by common sense and reasoned knowledge, is at a certain period of life a vital necessity to every sound human being. CHAPTER XXXVII CELIBACY VERSUS CHASTITY (The ideal of the repression of the sex impulse, as against the ideal of its guidance and cultivation.) There are two words which we need in this discussion, and as they are generally used loosely, they must now be defined precisely. The two words are celibacy and chastity. We define celibacy as the permanent and systematic suppression of love. We define chastity, on the other hand, as the permanent and systematic suppression of lust. Chastity, as the word is here used, is not a denial of love, but a preparing for it; it is the practice and the ideal, necessary especially in the young, of consecrating their beings to the search for love, and to becoming worthy for love. In that sense we regard chastity as one of the most essential of virtues in the young. It is widely taught today, but ineffectively, because unintelligently and without discrimination; because, in other words, it is confused with celibacy, which is a perversion of life, and one of humanity's intellectual and moral diseases. The origin of the ideal of celibacy is easy to understand. At a certain stage in human development the eyes of the mind are opened, and to some man comes a revelation of the life of altruism and sympathetic imagination. To use the common phrase, the man discovers his spiritual nature. But under the conditions then prevailing, all the world outside him is in a conspiracy to strangle that nature, to drag it down and trample it into the mire. One of the most powerful of these destructive agencies, as it seems to the man, is sex. By means of sex he is laid hold upon by strange and terrible creatures who do not understand his higher vision, but seek only to prey upon him, and use him for their convenience. At the worst they rob him of everything, money, health, time and reputation; at best, they saddle him and bridle him, they put him in harness and set him to dragging a heavy load. In the words of a wise old man of the world, Francis Bacon, "He who marries and has children gives hostages to fortune." In a world wherein war, pestilence, and famine held sway, the man of family had but slight chance of surviving as a philosopher or prophet or saint. Discovering in himself a deep-rooted and overwhelming impulse to fall into this snare, he imagined a devil working in his heart; so he fled away to the desert, and hid in a cave, and starved himself, and lashed himself with whips, and allowed worms and lice to devour his body, in the effort to destroy in himself the impulse of sex. So the world had monasteries, and a religious culture, not of much use, but better than nothing; and so we still have in the world celibate priesthoods, and what is more dangerous to our social health, we have the old, degraded notions of the essential vileness of the sex relationship--notions permeating all our thought, our literature, our social conventions and laws, making it impossible for us to attain true wisdom and health and happiness in love. I say the ideal of celibacy is an intellectual and moral disease; it is a violation of nature, and nature devotes all her energies to breaking it down, and she always succeeds. There never has been a celibate religious order, no matter how noble its origin and how strict its discipline, which has not sooner or later become a breeding place of loathsome unnatural vices. And sooner or later the ideal begins to weaken, and common sense to take its place, and so we read in history about popes who had sons, and we see about us priests who have "nieces" and attractive servant girls. Make the acquaintance of any police sergeant in any big city of America, and get him to chatting on friendly terms, and you will discover that it is a common experience for the police in their raids upon brothels to catch the representatives of celibate religious orders. As one old-timer in the "Tenderloin" of New York said to me, "Of course, we don't make any trouble for the good fathers." Nor was this merely because the old sergeant was an Irishman and a Catholic; it was because deep down in his heart he knew, as every man knows, that the craving of a man for the society and companionship of a woman is an overwhelming craving, which will break down every barrier that society may set against it. There is another form of celibacy which is not based upon religious ideas, but is economic in its origin, and purely selfish in its nature. It is unorganized and unreasoned, and is known as "bachelorhood"; it has as its complements the institutions of old maidenhood and of prostitution. Both forms of celibacy, the religious and the economic, are entirely incompatible with chastity, which is only possible where love is recognized and honored. Chastity is a preparation for love; and if you forbid love, whether by law, or by social convention, or by economic strangling, you at once make chastity a Utopian dream. You may preach it from your pulpits until you are black in the face; you may call out your Billy Sundays to rave, and dance, and go into convulsions; you may threaten hell-fire and brimstone until you throw whole audiences into spasms--but you will never make them chaste. On the contrary, strange and horrible as it may seem, those very excitements will turn into sexual excitements before your eyes! So subtle is our ancient mother nature, and so determined to have her own way! The abominable old ideal of celibacy, with its hatred of womanhood, its distrust of happiness, its terror of devils, is not yet dead in the world. It is in our very bones, and is forever appearing in new and supposed to be modern forms. Take a man like Tolstoi, who gained enormous influence, not merely in Russia, but throughout the world among people who think themselves liberal--humanitarians, pacifists, philosophic anarchists. Tolstoi's notions about sex, his teachings and writings and likewise his behavior toward it, were one continuous manifestation of disease. All through his youth and middle years, as an army officer, popular novelist, and darling of the aristocracy, his life was one of license, and the attitude toward women he thus acquired, he never got out of his thoughts to his last day. Gorky, meeting him in his old age, reports his conversation as unpleasantly obscene, and his whole attitude toward women one of furtive and unwholesome slyness. But Tolstoi was in other ways a great soul, one of the great moral consciences of humanity. He looked about him at a world gone mad with greed and hate, and he made convulsive efforts to reform his own spirit and escape the power of evil. As regards sex, his thought took the form of ancient Christian celibacy. Man must repudiate the physical side of sex, he must learn to feel toward women a "pure" affection, the relationship of brother and sister. In his novel, "Resurrection," Tolstoi portrays a young aristocrat who meets a beautiful peasant girl and conceives for her such a noble and generous emotion; but gradually the poison of physical sex-desire steals into his mind, he seduces her, and she becomes a prostitute. Later in life, when he discovers the crime he has committed, he humbles himself and follows her into exile, and wins her to God and goodness by the unselfish and unsexual love which he should have maintained from the beginning. It was Tolstoi's teaching that all men should aspire toward this kind of love, and when it was pointed out to him that if this doctrine were to be applied universally, the human race would become extinct, his answer was that there was no reason to fear that, because only a few people would be good enough and strong enough to follow the right ideal! Here you see the reincarnation of the old Christian notion that we are "conceived in sin and born in iniquity." We may be pure and good, and cease to exist; or we may sin, and let life continue. Some choose to sin, and these sinners hand down their sinful qualities to the future; and so virtue and goodness remain what they have always been, a futile crying out in the wilderness by a few religious prophets, whom God has sent to call down destruction upon a world which He had made--through some mistake never satisfactorily explained! It is easy nowadays to persuade intelligent people to laugh at such a perverted view of life; but the truth is that this attitude toward sex is written, not merely into our religious creeds and formulas, but into most of our laws and social conventions. It is this, which for convenience I will call the "monkish" view of love, which prevents our dealing frankly and honestly with its problems, distinguishing between what is wrong and what is right, and doing anything effective to remedy the evils of marriage-plus-prostitution. That is why I have tried so carefully to draw the distinction between what I call love and what I call lust; between the ideal of celibacy, which is a perversion, and the idea of chastity, which must form an essential part of any regimen of true and enduring love. CHAPTER XXXVIII THE DEFENSE OF LOVE (Discusses passionate love, its sanction, its place in life, and its preservation in marriage.) I have before me as I write a newspaper article by Robert Blatchford, a great writer and great man. He is dealing with the subject of "Love and Marriage," and his doctrine is summed up in the following sentences: "There is a difference between loving a woman and falling in love with her. The love one falls into is a sweet illusion. But that fragrant dream does not last. In marriage there are no fairies." This expresses one of the commonest ideas in the world. Passionate love is one thing, and marriage is another and different thing, and it is no more possible to reconcile them than to mix oil and water. Our notions of "romantic" love took their rise in the Middle Ages, from the songs and narratives of the troubadours, and this whole tradition was based upon the glorification of illegitimate and extra-marital love. That tradition has ruled the world of art ever since, and rules it today. I do not exaggerate when I say that it is the conventional view of grand opera and the drama, of moving pictures and novels, that impassioned and thrilling love is found before marriage, and is found in adultery and in temptations to adultery, but is never found in marriage. I have a pretty varied acquaintance with the literature of the world, and I have sat and thought for quite a while, without being able to recall a single portrait of life which contradicts this thesis; and certainly anyone familiar with literature could name ten thousand novels and dramas and grand operas which support the thesis. English and American Puritanism have beaten the tradition down to this extent: the novelist portrays the glories and thrills of young love, and carries it as far as the altar and the orange blossoms and white ribbons and showers of rice--and stops. He leaves you to assume that this delightful rapture continues forever after; but he does not attempt to show it to you--he would not dare attempt to show it, because the general experience of men and women in marriage would make him ridiculous. So he runs away from the issue; if he tells you a story of married life, it is a story of a "triangle"--the thrills of love imperiling marriage, and either crushed out, or else wrecking the lives of the victims. Such is the unanimous testimony of all our arts today, and I submit it as evidence of the fact that there must be something vitally wrong with our marriage system. Personally, I am prepared to go as far as the extreme sex-radical in the defense of love and the right to love. I believe that love is the most precious of all the gifts of life. I accept its sanctions and its authority. I believe that it is to be cherished and obeyed, and not to be run away from or strangled in the heart. I believe that it is the voice of nature speaking in the depths of us, and speaking from a wisdom deeper than we have yet attained, or may attain for many centuries to come. And when I say love, I do not mean merely affection. I do not mean merely the habit of living in the same home, which is the basis of marriage as Blatchford describes it. What I mean is the love of the poets and the dreamers, the "young love" which is thrill and ecstasy, a glorification and a transfiguration of the whole of life. I say that, far from giving up this love for marriage, it is the true purpose of marriage to preserve this love and perpetuate it. To save repetition and waste of words, let us agree that from now on when I use the word love, I mean the passionate love of those who are "in love." I believe that it is the right of men and women to be "in love," and that there is no true marriage unless they are "in love," and stay "in love." I believe that it is possible to apply reason to love, to learn to understand love and the ways of love, to protect it and keep it alive in marriage. Blatchford writes the sentence, "Matrimony cannot be all honeymoon." I answer that assuredly it can be, and if you ask me how I know, I tell you that I know in the only way we really know anything--because I have proven it in my own life. I say that if men and women would recognize the perpetuation of the honeymoon as the purpose of marriage, and would devote to that end one-hundredth part of the intelligence and energy they now devote to the killing of their fellow human beings in war, we might have an end to the wretched "romantic tradition" which makes the most sacred emotion of the human heart into a sneak-thief skulking in the darkness, entering our lives by back alleys and secret stairways--while greed and worldly pomp, dullness and boredom, parade in by the front entrance. In the first place, what is love--young love, passionate love, the love of those who "fall in"? I know a certain lady, well versed in worldly affairs, who says that it is at once the greatest nonsense and the deadliest snare in the world. This lady was trained as a "coquette"; she, and all the young ladies she knew, made it their business to cause men to fall in love with them, and their prestige was based upon their skill in that art. So to them "love" was a joke, and men "in love" were victims, whether ridiculous or pitiable. To this I answer that I know nothing in life that cannot be "faked"; but an imitation has value only as it resembles something that is real, and that has real value. I am aware that it is possible for a society to be so corrupted, so given up to the admiration of imitations, of the paint and powder and silk-stocking-clad-ankle kind of love, that true and genuine love interest, with its impulse to self-sacrifice and self-consecration, is no longer felt or understood. I am aware that in such a society it is possible for even the very young to be so sophisticated that what they take to be love is merely vanity, the worship of money, and the grace and charm which the possession of money confers. I have known girls who were "head over heels" in love, and thought it was with a man, when quite clearly they were in love with a dress suit or a social position. In such a society it is hard to talk about natural emotions, and deep and abiding and disinterested affections. Nevertheless, amid all the false conventions, the sham glories and cowardices of our civilization, there abides in the heart the craving for true love, and the idea of it leaps continually into flame in the young. In spite of the ridicule of the elders, in spite of blunders and tragic failures, in spite of dishonesties and deceptions--nevertheless, it continues to happen that out of a thousand maidens the youth finds one whose presence thrills him with a new and terrible emotion, whose lightest touch makes him shiver, almost makes his knees give way. If you will recall what I have written about instinct and reason, you will know that I am not a blind worshipper of our ancient mother nature. I am not humble in my attitude toward her, but perfectly willing to say when I know more than she does. On the other hand, when I know nothing or next to nothing, I am shy of contradicting my ancient mother, and disposed to give respectful heed to her promptings. One of the things about which we know almost nothing at present is the subject of eugenics. We are only at the beginning of trying to find out what matings produce the best offspring. Meantime, we ought to consider those indications which nature gives us, just as we consider her advice about what food to eat and what rest to take. It is not my idea that science will ever take men and women and marry them in cold blood, as today we breed our cattle. What I think will happen is that young men and women will meet one another, as they do at present, and will find the love impulse awakening; they will then submit their love to investigation, as to whether they should follow that impulse, or should wait. In other words, I do not believe that science will ever do away with the raptures of love, but will make itself the servant of these raptures, finding out what they mean, and how their precious essence may be preserved. I perfectly understand that the begetting of children is not the only purpose of love. The children have to be reared and trained, which means that a home has to be founded, and the parents have to learn to co-operate. They have to have common aims in life, and temperaments sufficiently harmonious so that they can live in the house together without tearing each other's eyes out. This means that in any civilized society all impulses of love have to be subjected to severe criticism. I intend, before long, to show just how I think parents and guardians should co-operate with young people in love; to help them to understand in advance what they are doing, and how it may be possible for them to make their love permanent and successful. For the moment I merely state, to avoid any possible misunderstanding, that I am the last person in the world to favor what is called "blind" love, the unthinking abandonment to an impulse of sex passion. What I am trying to show is that the passionate impulse, the passionate excitement of the young couple, is the material out of which love and marriage are made. Passion is a part of us, and a fundamental part. If we do not find a place for it in marriage, it will seek satisfaction outside of marriage, and that means lying, or the wrecking of the marriage, or both. Passion is what gives to love and marriage its vitality, its energy, its drive; in fact, it gives these qualities to the whole character. It is a vivifying force, transfiguring the personality, and if it is crushed and repressed, the whole life of that person is distorted. Yet it is a fact which every physician knows, that millions of women marry and live their whole lives without ever knowing what passionate gratification is. As a consequence of this, millions of men take it for granted that there are "good" women and "bad" women, and that only the latter are interesting. This, of course, is simply one of the abnormalities caused by the supplanting of love by money as a motive in marriage. Love becomes a superfluity and a danger, and all the forces of society, including institutionalized religion, combine to outlaw it and drive it underground. Or we might say that they lock it in a dungeon--and that the supreme delight of all the painters, poets, musicians, dramatists and novelists of all climes and all periods of history, is to portray the escape of the "young god" from these imprisonments. The story is told in six words of an old English ballad: "Love will find out the way!" Is it not obvious that there must be something vitally wrong with our institutions and conventions in matters of sex, when here exists this eternal war between our moralists and our artists? Why not make up our minds what we really believe; whether it is true that poets are, as Shelley said, "the unacknowledged legislators of mankind," or whether they are, as Plato declared, false teachers and seducers of the young. If they are the latter, let us have done with them, let us drive them from the state, together with lovers and all other impassioned persons. But if, on the other hand, it is truth the poets tell about life, then let us take the young god out of his dungeon, and bring him into our homes by the front door, and cast out the false gods of vanity and greed and worldly prestige which now sit in his place. CHAPTER XXXIX BIRTH CONTROL (Deals with the prevention of conception as one of the greatest of man's discoveries, releasing him from nature's enslavement, and placing the keys of life in his hands.) I assume that you have followed my argument, and are prepared to consider seriously whether it may be possible to establish love in marriage as the sex institution of civilized society. If you really wish to bring such an institution into existence, the first thing you have to do is to accomplish the social revolution; that is, you must wipe out class control of society, and prestige based upon money exploitation. But that is a vast change, and will take time, and meanwhile we have to live, and wish to live with as little misery as possible. So the practical question becomes this: Suppose that you, as an individual, wish to find as much happiness in love as may now be possible, what counsel have I to offer? If you are young, you wish this advice for yourself; while if you are mature, you wish it for your children. I will put my advice under four heads: First, marriage for love; second, birth control; third, early marriage; fourth, education for marriage. The first of these we have considered at some length. A part of the process of social revolution is personal conversion; the giving up by every individual of the worldly ideal, the surrender of luxury and self-indulgence, the consecrating of one's life to self education and the cause of social justice. And do not think that that is an easy thing, or an unimportant thing, a thing to be taken for granted. On the contrary, it is something that most of us have to struggle with at every hour of our lives, because respect for property and worldly conventions has become one of our deepest instincts; our whole society is poisoned with it, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the people I have known in my life who have completely escaped from it. It is not merely a question of refusing to marry except for love, it is a question of refusing to love except for honest and worthy qualities. It is a question of saving our children from the damnable forces of snobbery, which lay siege to their young minds and destroy the best impulses of their hearts, while we in our blindness are still thinking of them as babies. Of the other three topics that I have suggested, I begin with birth control, because it is the most fundamental and most important. Without birth control there can be no freedom, no happiness, no permanence in love, and there can be no mastery of life. Birth control is one of the great fundamental achievements of the human reason, as important to the life of mankind as the discovery of fire or the invention of printing. Birth control is the deliverance of womankind, and therefore of mankind also, from the blind and insane fecundity of nature, which created us animals, and would keep us animals forever if we did not rebel. Ever since the dawn of history, and probably for long ages before that, our race has been struggling against this blind insanity of nature. Poor, bewildered Theodore Roosevelt stormed at what he called "race suicide," thinking it was some brand new and terrible modern corruption; but nowhere do we find a primitive tribe, nowhere in history do we find a race which did not seek to save itself from overgrowth and consequent starvation. They did not know enough to prevent conception, but they did the best they could by means of abortion and infanticide. And because today superstition keeps the priceless knowledge of contraception from the vast majority of women, these crude, savage methods still prevail, and we have our million abortions a year in the United States. Assuming that something near one-fourth our population consists of women capable of bearing children, we have one woman in twenty-five going through this agonizing and health-wrecking experience every year. They go through with it, you understand, regardless of everything--all the moralists and preachers and priests with their hell fire and brimstone. They go through with it because we have both marriage without love, and love without marriage; also because we permit some ten or twenty per cent of our total population to suffer the pangs of perpetual starvation, because more than half our farms are mortgaged or occupied by tenants, and some ten or twenty per cent of our workers are out of jobs all the time. Some of our women know about birth control. They are the rich women, who get what they want in this world. They object to the humiliations and inconveniences of child bearing, and some of them raise one or two children, and others of them raise poodle dogs. Also, our middle classes have found out; our doctors and lawyers and college professors, and people of that sort. But we deliberately keep the knowledge from our foreign populations, by the terrors which the church has at its command. And what is the practical consequence of this procedure? It is that while all our Anglo-Saxon stock, those who founded our country and established its institutions, are gradually removing themselves from the face of the earth, our ignorant and helpless populations, whether in city slums or on tenant farms, are multiplying like rabbits. Read Jack London's "The Valley of the Moon" and see what is happening in California. You will find the same thing happening in any portion of the United States where you take the trouble to use your own eyes. Now, I try to repress such impulses toward race prejudice as I find in myself. I am willing to admit for the sake of this argument that in the course of time all the races that are now swarming in America, Portuguese and Japanese and Mexican and French-Canadian and Polish and Hungarian and Slovakian, are capable of just as high intellectual development as our ancestors who wrote the Declaration of Independence. But no one who sees the conditions under which they now live can deny that it will take a good deal of labor, teaching them and training them, as well as scrubbing them, to accomplish that result. And what a waste of energy, what a farce it makes of culture, to take the people who have already been scrubbed and taught and trained for self-government, and exterminate them, and raise up others in their place! It seems time that we gave thought to the fundamental question, whether or not there is something self-destroying in the very process of culture. Unless we can answer this we might as well give up our visions and our efforts to lift the race. Theodore Roosevelt stormed at birth control for something like ten years, and it would be interesting if we could know how many Anglo-Saxon babies he succeeded in bringing into the world by his preachments. If what he wanted was to correct the balance between native and foreign births, how much more sensible to have taught birth control to those poor, pathetic, half-starved and overworked foreign mothers of our slums and tenant farms! I can wager that for every Anglo-Saxon baby that Theodore Roosevelt brought into the world by his preachings, he could have kept out ten thousand foreign slum babies, if only he had lent his aid to Margaret Sanger! Ah, but he wanted all the babies to be born, you say! I see before me the face of a certain devout old Christian lady, known to me, who settles the question by the Bible quotation, "Be fruitful and multiply." But what avails it to follow this biblical advice, if we allow one out of five of the new-born infants to perish from lack of scientific care before they are two years old? What avails it if we send them to school hungry, as we do twenty-two per cent of the public school children of New York City? What avails it if we allow venereal disease to spread, so that a large percentage of the babies are deformed and miserable? What avails it if, when they are fully grown, we can think of nothing better to do with them than to take them by millions at a time and dress them up in uniforms and send them out to be destroyed by poison gases? Would it not be the part of common sense to establish universal birth control for at least a year or two--until we have learned to take care of our newly born babies, and to feed our school children, and to protect our youths from vice, and to abolish poverty and war from the earth? These are the social aspects of birth control. There are also to be considered what I might call the personal aspects of it. Because young people do not know about it, and have no way to find out about it, they dare not marry, and so the amount of vice in the world is increased. Because married women do not know about it, love is turned to terror, and marital happiness is wrecked. Because the harmless and proper methods are not sensibly taught, people use harmful methods, which cause nervous disorders, and wreck marital happiness, and break up homes. Thorough and sound knowledge about birth control is just as essential to happiness in marriage as knowledge of diet is necessary to health, or as knowledge of economics is necessary to intelligent action as a voter and citizen. The suppression by law of knowledge of birth control is just as grave a crime against human life as ever was committed by religious bigotry in the blackest days of the Spanish Inquisition. Now this law stands on the statute books of our country, and if I should so much as hint to you in this book what you need to know, or even where you can find out about it, I should be liable to five years in jail and a fine of $5,000, and every person who mailed a copy of this book, or any advertisement of this book, would be in the same plight. But there is not yet a law to prohibit agitation against the law, so the first thing I say to every reader of this book is that they should obtain a copy of the _Birth Control Review_, published at 104 Fifth Avenue, New York, and also should join the Voluntary Parenthood League, 206 Broadway, New York. Get the literature of these organizations and circulate them and help spread the light! As to the knowledge which you need, the only advice I am allowed to give is that you should seek it. Seek it, and persist in seeking, until you find it. Ask everyone you know; and ask particularly among enlightened people, those who are willing to face the facts of human life and trust in reason and common sense. I do not know if I am violating the law in thus telling you how to find out about birth control. One of the charming features of this law, and others against the spreading of knowledge, is that they will never tell you in advance what you may say, but leave you to say it and take your chances! I believe that I am not violating any law when I tell you that there are half a dozen simple, inexpensive, and entirely harmless methods of preventing undesired parenthood without the destruction of the marital relationship. I am one of those who for many years believed that the destruction of the marital relationship was the only proper and moral method. I was brought up to take the monkish view of love. I thought it was an animal thing which required some outside justification. I had been taught nothing else; but now I have had personal experience of other justifications of love, and I believe that love is a beautiful and joyful relationship, which not merely requires no other justification, but confers justification upon many other things in life. I used to believe in that old ideal of celibacy, thinking it a fine spiritual exercise. But since then I have looked out on life, and have found so many interesting things to do, so much important work calling for attention, that I do not have to invent any artificial exercises for my spirit. I have looked at humanity, and brought myself to recognize the plain common sense fact--that whatever superfluous energy I may have to waste upon artificial spirituality, the great mass of the people have no such energy to spare. They need all their energies to get a living for themselves and for their wives and little ones. They have their sex impulses, and will follow them, and the only question is, shall they follow them wisely or unwisely? The religious people decide that sexual indulgence is wrong, and they impose a penalty--and what is that penalty? A poor, unwanted little waif of a soul, which never sinned, and had nothing to do with the matter, is brought into a hostile world, to suffer neglect, and perhaps starvation--in order to punish parents who did not happen to be sufficiently strong willed to practice continence in marriage! I used to believe that there was benefit to health and increase of power, whether physical or mental, in the celibate life. I have tried both ways of life, and as a result I know that that old idea is nonsense. I know now that love is a natural function. Of course, like any other function it can be abused; just as hunger may become gluttony, sleeping may become sluggishness, getting the money to pay one's way through life may become ferocious avarice. But we do not on this account refuse ever to eat or sleep or get money to pay our debts. I do not say that I believe, I say I know, that free and happy love, guided by wisdom and sound knowledge, is not merely conducive to health, but is in the long run necessary to health. People who condemn birth control always argue as if one wished to teach this knowledge indiscriminately to the young. Perhaps it is natural that those who oppose the use of reason should assume that others are as irrational as themselves. All I can say is that I no more believe in teaching birth control to the young than I believe in feeding beefsteak to nursing infants. There is a period in life for beefsteaks--or, if my vegetarian friends prefer, for lentil hash and peanut butter sandwiches; in exactly the same way there is a time for teaching the fundamentals of sex, and another time for teaching the art of happiness in marriage, which includes birth control. That brings me, by a very pleasant transition, to the other two subjects which I have promised to discuss: early marriage and education for marriage. CHAPTER XL EARLY MARRIAGE (Discusses love marriages, how they can be made, and the duty of parents in respect to them.) I have shown how economic forces in our society make for later and later marriage; and at the present time economic forces are so overwhelming that all other forces are hardly worth mentioning in comparison. You are, let us say, the mother of a boy of eighteen, and you have what you call "common sense"--meaning thereby a grasp of the money facts of life. If your darling boy of eighteen should come to you with a grave face and announce, "Mother dear, I have met the girl I love, and we have decided that we want to get married"--you would consider that the most absurd thing you had ever heard in all your born days, and you would tell the lad that he was a baby, and to run along and play. If he persisted in his crazy notion, you and your husband and all the brothers and sisters and relatives and friends both of the boy and the girl would set to work, by scolding and ridiculing, to make life a misery for them, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred you would break down the young couple's marital intention. But now, let us try another supposition. Let us suppose that your darling boy of eighteen should come to you again and say, "Mother dear, some of the boys are going to spend this evening in a brothel, and I have decided to go along." Would you think that was the most absurd thing you had ever heard in all your born days? Or would you answer, "Yes, of course, my boy; that is what I had in mind when I made you give up the girl you loved"? No, you would not answer that. But here is the vital fact--it doesn't matter what you would answer, for you would never have a chance to answer. When a mother's darling wants to get married, he comes and asks his mother's blessing; but never does a mother's darling ask a blessing before he goes with the other boys to a brothel. He just goes. Maybe he borrows the money from some other fellow, and next day tells you he went to a theater. Or maybe he picks up some poor man's daughter on the street, and takes her into the park, or up on the roof of a tenement. Some such thing he does, to find satisfaction for an instinct which you in your worldly wisdom or your heavenly piety spurn and ridicule. I do not wish to exaggerate. If you are an exceptionally wise and tactful mother, you may keep the confidence of your boy, and guide him day by day through his temptations and miseries, and keep him chaste. But the more you try that, the more apt you will be to come to my conclusion, that late marriage is a crime against the race; the more aware you will be of the danger, either that his boy friends may break him down, or that some lewd woman may come to his bedroom in the night-time. Never will you be able to be quite sure that he is not lying to you, because of his shame, and the pain he cannot bear to inflict upon you. Never will you be quite sure that he is not hiding some cruel disease, sneaking off to some quack who takes his money and leaves him worse than before--until finally he shoots off his head, as happened to a nephew of an old and dear friend of mine. Such is the problem of the mother of a son; and now, what about the mother of a daughter? This seems much simpler; because your daughter is not generally troubled with sex cravings, and if you teach her the proprieties, and see that she is carefully chaperoned, you may reasonably hope that she will be chaste. But some day you expect that she will marry; and then comes your problem. If you are the usual mother, you are looking for some one who can maintain her in the state of life to which she is accustomed. If a fairy prince would come along, or a plaster saint, you would be pleased; but failing that, you will take a successful business man, one who has made his way in the world and secured himself a position. But turn back to the figures I gave you a while ago. If this man is thirty years of age, there is at least a fifty-fifty chance that he has had some venereal disease; and while the doctors claim to cure these diseases absolutely, we must bear in mind that doctors are human, and sometimes claim more than they perform. Every doctor will admit, if you pin him down, that these diseases burrow deeply into the tissues, and many times are supposed to be cured when they are only hidden. Here is, in a nutshell, the problem of the mother of a daughter. If you marry your daughter at seventeen to a lad of her own age, you have a very good chance of marrying her to a person who is chaste. If you marry her to a man of twenty-five, you have perhaps one chance in a hundred. If you marry her to a man of thirty-five, you have perhaps one chance in ten thousand. You may not like these facts; I do not like them myself; but I have learned that facts are none the less facts on that account. You know the average society bud of eighteen, and her attitude to a boy of the same age. She regards him as a child; and you think, perhaps, that it is natural for a girl to be interested in men of thirty-five and even forty-five. But I tell you that it is not natural, it is simply one of the perversions of pecuniary sex. The girl is interested in such men, because all her young life she has been carefully coached for the marriage market; because she is dressed for it, and solemnly brought out, and introduced to other players of this exciting game of marriage for money, with its incredible prizes of automobiles and jewels and palaces full of servants, and magic check-books that never grow empty. But suppose that, instead of regarding her as a prize in a lottery, you let her grow up naturally, and taught her the truth about herself, both body and mind; suppose that, instead of dressing her in ways deliberately contrived to emphasize her sex, you put her in a simple uniform, and taught her to be honest and straightforward, instead of mincing and coy; suppose she played athletic games with boys of her own age, and invited them to her home, not for "jazz" dancing and stuffing cake and candy, but for the sharing of good music and literature and art--don't you think that maybe this girl might become interested in a lad of her own age, and choose him with some understanding of his real self? You take it for granted that young people should not marry until they can "afford it." But stop and consider, is not this a relic of old days? Always it takes time, and deliberate effort of the reason, to adjust our conventions to new facts; so face this fact--marriage today does not necessarily mean children, it may just mean love. It involves little more expense, because the young people need cost no more together than they cost in the separate homes of their parents. If they are children of the poor, they are already taking care of themselves. If they are children of the moderately well off, their parents expect to support them while they are getting an education; and why can they not just as well live together, and the parents of each contribute their share? Let the parents of the boy give him, not merely what it costs to keep him at home, but also the sums which otherwise the boy would pay to the brothels. By this argument I do not mean that I favor keeping young people financially dependent upon their parents. My own son is working his own way through college, and I should be glad to see every young man doing the same. All that I am saying is that if parents are going to support their children while they are getting an education, they might just as well support them married as single, instead of penalizing matrimony by making all allowances cease at that point. I know a certain ardent feminist, who is all for late marriage for women, and abhors my ideas on this subject. She wants women to get a chance to develop their personalities; whereas I want to sacrifice them to the frantic exigencies of the male animal! Young things of seventeen and eighteen have no idea what they are, or what they want from life; the mating impulse is a blind frenzy in them, and they must be taught to control it, just as they are taught not to kill when they are angry! In the first place, I point out that young ladies in colleges and in ballrooms give a lot of time and thought to sex, even though they do not call it by that inelegant term. I very much question whether, if we should apply our wisdom to the task of getting our young people happily mated before we sent them off to college, we should not get a lot more serious study out of them than we now do, with all their "fussing" and flirting and dancing. Second, I am willing to make heroic moral efforts, where I see any chance of adequate results, but I have examined the facts, and definitely made up my mind that it is not worth while, in our present stage of culture, to preach to the mass of men the doctrine that they should abstain from sex experience until they are twenty-five or thirty years of age. You may storm at them, but they only laugh at you; you may pass laws, and try to put them in jail, but you only provide a harvest for blackmailers and grafters. As to sacrificing the girl, my answer is simply that I believe in love; and in this I think the girl will agree with me, if you will let her! I have never heard any qualified person maintain that it hurts a girl to respond to love at the age of seventeen or eighteen; nor do I think that it hurts a boy, provided that he is taught the virtues of moderation and self-restraint. Without these, it will hurt him to eat; but that is no argument for starving him. As for the question of his maturity and power to judge, we are able at present to keep him from marrying anybody, so I think we might reasonably hope to keep him from marrying a wanton or a slut. Certainly we might find somebody better than the peroxide blonde he now picks up in front of the moving picture palace. The question, at what ages we shall advise our young couple to have children, is a separate one, depending upon many circumstances. First, of course, they should not have any until they are able financially to maintain them. As to the age at which it is physically advisable, that is a question to be settled by physicians and physiologists. I myself had the idea that the proper age would be when the woman had attained her full stature; but my friend Dr. William J. Robinson sends me some statistics from the Johns Hopkins Hospital _Bulletin_, which startle me. This publication for January, 1922, gives the results in five hundred childbirths, in which the mother's age was from twelve to sixteen years inclusive. It appears that pregnancy and labor at these ages are no more dangerous than in older women; but on the other hand, the duration of the labor is actually shorter, and the size of the children is not inferior. These facts are so contrary to the general impression that I content myself with calling attention to them, and leave the commenting to be done by feminists and others who oppose themselves to the idea of early marriage. CHAPTER XLI THE MARRIAGE CLUB (Discusses how parents and elders may help the young to avoid unhappy marriages.) I will make the assumption that you would like to have a trial of my cure for prostitution. You would like to do something right here and now, without waiting for the social revolution. Very well: I propose that you shall find a few other parents of boys and girls who are in revolt against our system of hidden vice, and that you will meet and form a modern marriage club. Only you won't call it that, of course; you will tactfully describe it as a literary society, or a social circle, or an Epworth League. The parents who run it will know what it is for, just as they do today; the only difference being that it will exist to promote love matches instead of money matches. It happens that I am myself a tactless sort of a person, not skillful at avoiding saying what I mean. So, in this chapter, I shall content myself with setting forth exactly what this marriage club will do, and leaving it to more clever people to supply the necessary camouflage. This club will begin by correcting the most stupid of all our educational blunders, the assumption of the necessary immaturity of the young. Our young people nowadays have ten times as much chance to learn and ten times as much stimulus to learn as we had; and it is a generally safe assumption that they know much more than we think they do, and are ready to learn every sensible and interesting thing. I am carrying on an epistolary acquaintance with a little miss of twelve, who has read half a dozen of my books--among the "worst" of them--and writes me letters of grave appreciation. I have talked on Socialism to a thousand school children, and had them question me for an hour, and heard just as worth while questions as I have heard from an audience of bankers. Never in my life have I talked about real things with children that I did not find them proud to be treated seriously, and eager to show that they were worthy of that honor. A great part of our foolishness with children is due to the emptiness of our own heads. These parents will delegate one man and one woman to make a thorough study of the sex education of the young. Of course, there is knowledge about sex which has to be given to the very youngest child, and more and more must be given as they grow older and ask more questions. But what I have in mind here is that detailed and precise knowledge which must be given to the young when they approach the period of puberty. At this age of fourteen or fifteen the man will take each of the boys apart, and the woman will take each of the girls, and will explain to them what they need to know. This duty will not be trusted to parents, for parents have an imbecile fear of talking straight to their children, and try to get by with rubbish about bees and flowers. Let every child know that the days of the hole-and-corner sex business is forever past, and that here is an instructed person, who talks real American, and knows what he is talking about, and will deal with facts, instead of with evasions. This club will help to educate the youngsters, and also to give them a good time, developing both their minds and bodies, and learning to know them thoroughly. When they are sixteen each one will have another talk, this time about marriage and what it means; learning that it is not merely flirtations and delicious thrills, but a business partnership, and the deepest and best of all friendships. So when John finds that he likes Mary best of all the girls he knows, this won't be a subject for "kidding" and sly innuendo, and blushes and simpering on Mary's part, but an occasion for decent and sensible talk about what each of them really is, and what each thinks the other to be. If they think they are in love, then there will be a council of the elder statesmen, to consider that case, and what are the chances of happiness in that love. This may sound forbidding, but it is exactly what is done at present--only it is not done honestly and frankly, and therefore does not carry proper weight with the young people. I am an opponent of long engagements, but I am also an opponent of no engagements at all; I know no truer proverb than "Marry in haste and repent at leisure." It would be my idea that a very young couple should announce their engagement, and then wait six months, and be consulted again about the matter, and have a chance to withdraw with no hard feelings, if either party thought best. If they wished to go on, they might be asked to wait another six months, if their elders felt very certain there were reasons to doubt the wisdom of the match. There are, of course, people who, because of disease or physical defect, should never be allowed to marry; and others who might marry, but should not be allowed to have children. There should be laws providing for such cases, requiring physical examination before marriage, and in extreme cases providing for a simple and harmless surgical operation to prevent the hopelessly unfit from passing on their defects to the future. But dealing for the moment with normal young persons, members of our modern marriage club, I should say that if, after they have listened to the warning of their elders, and have waited for a decent interval to think things over, they still remain of the opinion that they can make a successful marriage, then it is up to the elders to wish them luck. I have known of young couples who have refused to heed warnings, and regretted it; but I have known of others who went ahead and had their own way and proved they were right. There is a form of wisdom called experience and there is another form called love. I hear the worldly and cynical rail at the blindness of "young love," and I can see the truth in what they say; but also I can see the deeper truth in the magic dreams of the young soul. Here is a youth who adores a girl, and you know the girl, and it is comical to you, because you know she is not any of the things the youth imagines. But who are you that claim to know the last thing about a human soul? Look into your own, and see how many different things you are! Look back, if you can, to the time when you were young, and remember the visions and the hopes. They have lost all reality to you now; but who can say how many of them you might have made real if there had been one other person who believed in them, and loved them, and would not give them up? I write this; and then I think of the other side--the fools that I have known in love! The trusting women, marrying rotten men to reform them! The pitiful people who think that fine phrases and sentimentality can take the place of facts! I implore my young couples to sit down and face the realities of their own natures, to decide what they are, and what they want to be--and if there is going to be any change, let it be made and tried out before marriage! I implore them to begin now to control their desires by their reason and judgment; to begin, each of them at the very outset, to carry their share of the burdens and do their share of the hard work. I implore them to value independence and self-reliance in the other, and never above all things to marry from pity, which is a worthy emotion in its place, but has nothing to do with sex, which should be an affair between equals, a matter of partnership and not of parasitism. I think that, on the whole, the most dreadful thing in love is the use of it for preying, for the securing of favors and advantages of any sort, whether by men or by women. CHAPTER XLII EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE (Maintains that the art of love can be taught, and that we have the right and the duty to teach it.) I assume now that our young couple have definitely made up their minds, and that the wedding day is near. They are therefore, both the man and the woman, in position to receive information as to the physical aspects of their future experience. This information is now for the most part possessed only by pathologists--who impart it too late, after people have blundered and wrecked their lives. The opponents of birth control ask in horror if you would teach it to the young; I am now able to answer just when I would teach it; I would teach it to these young couples about to marry. I would make it by law compulsory for every young couple to attend a school of marriage, and to learn, not merely the regulation of conception, but the whole art of health and happiness in sex. Perhaps the words, "a school of marriage," strike you as funny. When I was young I remember that Pulitzer founded a school of journalism, and all newspaper editors made merry--they knew that journalism could only be learned in practice. But nowadays every city editor gives preference to an applicant who has taken a college course in reporting; they have learned that journalism can be taught, just like engineering and accounting. In the same way I assert that marriage can be taught, and the art of love, physical, mental, moral, and even financial; I think that the day will come when enlightened parents would no more dream of trusting their tender young daughter to a man who had not taken a course in sex, than they would go up in an aeroplane with a pilot who knew nothing about an engine. The knowledge which I possess upon the art of love I would be glad to give you in this book; but unfortunately, if I were to do so, my book would be suppressed, and I should be sent to jail. Some ten or twelve years ago I received a pitiful letter from a man who was in state's prison in Delaware, charged with having imparted information as to birth control. Under our amiable legal system, a perfectly innocent man may be thrown into jail, and kept there for a year or two before he is tried, and if he is without money or friends, he might as well be buried alive. I went to Wilmington to call on the United States attorney who had caused the indictment in this case, and had an illuminating conversation with him. The official was anxious to justify what he had done. He assured me that he was no bigot, but on the contrary an extremely liberal man, a Unitarian, a Progressive, etc. "But Mr. Sinclair," he said, "I assure you this prisoner is not a reformer or humanitarian or anything like that. He is a depraved person. Look, here is something we found in his trunk when we arrested him; a pamphlet, explaining about sex relations. See this paragraph--it says that the pleasure of intercourse is increased if it is prolonged." I looked at the pamphlet, and then I looked at the attorney. "Do you think you have stated the matter quite fairly?" I asked. "Apparently the purpose is to explain that the emotions of women are more slow to be aroused than those of men, and that husbands failing to realize this, often do not gratify their wives." "Well," said the other, "do you consider that a subject to be discussed?" "Pardon me if I discuss it just a moment," I replied. "Do you happen to know whether the statement is a fact?" "No, I don't. It may be, I suppose." "You have never investigated the matter?" The legal representative of our government was evidently annoyed by my persistence. "I have not," he answered. "But then, suppose I were to tell you that thousands of homes have been broken up for lack of just that bit of knowledge; that tens of thousands of marriages are miserable for lack of it." "Surely, Mr. Sinclair, you exaggerate!" "Not at all. I could prove to you by one medical authority after another, that if the desire of a woman in marriage is roused, and then left ungratified, the result is nervous strain, and in the long run it may be nervous breakdown." The above covers only one detail of the pamphlet in question. I read some pages of it, and argued them out with the attorney. It was a perfectly simple, straightforward exposition of facts about the physiology of sex; and one of the reasons a man was to be sent to jail for several years was--not that he had circulated such a pamphlet, not that he had showed it to young people, but merely that he had it in his trunk! There is an honest and very useful book, written by an English physician, Dr. Marie C. Stopes, entitled "Married Love," published by Dr. Wm. J. Robinson of New York, a specialist of authority and integrity. The book deals with just such vital facts in a perfectly dignified and straightforward manner; yet Dr. Robinson has been hounded by the postoffice department because of it; he was convicted and forced to pay a fine of $250, and the book was barred from the mails! I have so much else of importance to say in this Book of Love that it would not be sensible to jeopardize it by causing a controversy with our official censors of knowledge. Therefore I will merely say in general terms that men and women differ, not merely as a sex, but as individuals, and every marriage is a separate problem. Every couple has to solve it in the intimacy of their love life, and for this there are needed, first of all, gentleness on the part of the man, especially in the first days of the honeymoon; and on the part of both at all times consideration for the other's welfare and enjoyment, and above all, frankness and honesty in talking out the subject. Reticence and shyness may be virtues elsewhere, but they have no place in the intimacies of the sex life; if men and women will only ask and answer frankly, they can find out by experience what makes the other happy, and what causes pain. We are dealing here with the most sacred intimacy of life, and one of the most vital of life's problems. It is here, in the marriage bed, that the divorce problem is to be settled, and likewise the problem of prostitution; for it is when men and women fail to understand each other, and to gratify each other, that one or the other turns cold and indifferent, perhaps angry and hateful--and then we have passions unsatisfied, and ranging the world, breaking up other homes and spreading disease. So I would say to every young couple, seek knowledge on this subject. Seek it without shame from others who have had a chance to acquire it. Seek it also from nature, our wise old mother, who knows so much about her children! Be natural; be simple and straightforward; and beware of fool notions about sex. If you will look in the code of Hammurabi, which is over four thousand years old, you will see the provision that a man who has intercourse with a menstruating woman shall be killed. In Leviticus you will read that both the man and the woman are to be cast out from their people. You will find that most people still have some such notion, which is without any basis whatever in health. And this is only one illustration of many I might give of ignorance and superstition in the sex life. I would give this as one very good rule to bear in mind; your love life exists for the happiness and health of yourself and your partner, and not for Hammurabi, nor Moses, nor Jehovah, nor your mother-in-law, nor anybody else on the earth or above it. Great numbers of people believe that women are naturally less passionate than men, and that marital happiness depends upon men's recognizing this. Of course, there are defective individuals, both men and women; but the normal woman is every bit as passionate as a man, if once she has been taught; and if love is given its proper place in life, and monkish notions not allowed to interfere, she will remain so all through life, in spite of child-bearing or anything else. I say to married couples that they should devote themselves to making and preserving passionate gratification in love; because this is the bright jewel in the crown of marriage, and if lovers solve this problem, they will find other problems comparatively simple. CHAPTER XLIII THE MONEY SIDE OF MARRIAGE (Deals with the practical side of the life partnership of matrimony.) So far we have discussed marriage as if it consisted only of love. But it is manifest that this is not the case. Marriage is every-day companionship, and also it is partnership in a complicated business. In our school of marriage therefore we shall teach the rights and duties of both partners to the contract, and shall face frankly the money side of the enterprise. One of the first facts we must get clear is that the economics of marriage are in most parts of the world still based upon the subjection of woman, and are therefore incompatible with the claims of woman as a partner and comrade. They will never be right until the social revolution has abolished privilege, and the state has granted to every woman a maternity endowment, with a mother's pension for every child during the entire period of the rearing and education of that child. Until this is done, the average woman must look to some man for the support of her child, and that, by the automatic operation of economic force, makes her subject to the whims of the man. What women have to do is to agitate for a revision of the property laws of marriage; and meantime to see that in every marriage there is an extra-legal understanding, which grants to the woman the equality which laws and conventions deny her. When I was a boy my mother had a woman friend who, if she wanted to go downtown, would borrow a quarter from my mother. This woman's husband was earning a generous salary, enough to enable him to buy the best cigars by the box, and to keep a supply of liquors always on hand; but he gave his wife no allowance, and if she wanted pocket money she had to ask him for it, each time a separate favor. Yet this woman was keeping a home, she was doing just as hard work and just as necessary work as the man. Manifestly, this was a preposterous arrangement. If a woman is going to be a home-maker for a husband, it is a simple, common-sense proposition that the salary of the husband shall be divided into three parts--first, the part which goes to the home, the benefit of which is shared in common; second, the part which the husband has for his own use; and third, the part which the wife has for hers. The second and third parts should be equal, and the wife should have hers, not as a favor, but as a right. If the two are making a homestead, or running a farm, or building up a business, then half the proceeds should be the woman's; and it should be legally in her name, and this as a matter of course, as any other business contract. If the woman does not make a home, but merely displays fine clothes at tea parties, that is of course another matter. Just what she is to do is something that had better be determined before marriage; and if a man wants a life-partner, to take an interest in his work, or to have a useful work of her own, he had better choose that kind of woman, and not merely one that has a pretty face and a trim ankle. The business side of marriage is something that has to be talked out from time to time; there have to be meetings of the board of directors, and at these meetings there ought to be courtesy and kindness, but also plain facts and common sense, and no shirking of issues. Love is such a very precious thing that any man or woman ought to be willing to make money sacrifices to preserve it. But on the other hand, it is a fact that there are some people with whom you cannot be generous; the more you give them, the more they take, and with such people the only safe rule is exact justice. Let married couples decide exactly what contribution each makes to the family life, and what share of money and authority each is entitled to. I might spend several chapters discussing the various rocks on which I have seen marriages go to wreck. For example, extravagance and worldly show; clothes for women. In Paris is a "demi-monde," a world of brutal lust combined with riotous luxury. The women of this "half-world" are in touch with the world of art and fashion, and when the rich costumers and woman-decorators want what they call ideas, it is to these lust-women they go. The fashions they design are always depraved, of course; always for the flaunting of sex, never for the suggestion of dignity and grave intelligence. At several seasons of the year these lust-women are decked out and paraded at the race-courses and other gathering places of the rich, and their pictures are published in the papers and spread over all the world. So forthwith it becomes necessary for your wife in Oshkosh or Kalamazoo to throw away all the perfectly good clothes she owns, and get a complete new outfit--because "they" are wearing something different. Of course the costume-makers have seen that it is extremely different, so as to make it impossible for your wife and children to be happy in their last season's clothes. I have a winter overcoat which I bought fourteen years ago, and as it is still as good as new I expect to use it another fourteen years, which will mean that it has cost me a dollar and a half per year. But think what it would have cost me if I had considered it necessary each year to have an overcoat cut as the keepers of French mistresses were cutting theirs! But then, suppose you put it up to your wife and daughters to wear sensible clothes, and they do so, and then they observe that on the street your eyes turn to follow the ladies in the latest disappearing skirt? The point is, you perceive, that you yourself are partly to blame for the fashions. They appeal to a dirty little imp you have in your own heart, and when the decent women discover that, it makes them blazing hot, and that is one of the ways you may wreck your domestic happiness if you want to. Unless I am greatly mistaken, when the class war is all over we are going to see in our world a sex war; but it is not going to be between the men and the women, it is going to be between the mother women and the mistress women, and the mistress women are going to have their hides stripped off. Men wreck marriage because they are promiscuous; and women wreck it because they are parasites. Woman has been for long centuries an economic inferior, and she has the vices of the subject peoples and tribes. Now there are some who want to keep these vices, while at the same time claiming the new privileges which go with equality. Such a woman picks out a man who is sensitive and chivalrous; who knows that women suffer handicaps, pains of childbirth, physical weakness, and who therefore feels impelled to bear more than his share of the burdens. She makes him her slave; and by and by she gets a child, and then she has him, because he is bowed down with awe and worship, he thinks that such a miracle has never happened in the world before, and he spends the rest of his life waiting on her whims and nursing her vanities. I note that at the recent convention of the Woman's Party they demanded their rights and agreed to surrender their privileges. There you have the final test by which you may know that women really want to be free, and are prepared to take the responsibilities of freedom. CHAPTER XLIV THE DEFENSE OF MONOGAMY (Discusses the permanence of love, and why we should endeavor to preserve it.) So far in this discussion we have assumed that love means monogamous love. We did so, for the reason that we could not consider every question at once. But we have promised to deal with all the problems of sex in the light of reason; and so we have now to take up the question, what are the sanctions of monogamy, and why do we refuse sanction to other kinds of love? First, let us set aside several reasons with which we have nothing to do. For example, the reason of tradition. It is a fact that Anglo-Saxon civilization has always refused legal recognition to non-monogamous marriage. But then, Anglo-Saxon civilization has recognized war, and slavery, and speculation, and private property in land, and many other things which we presume to describe as crimes. If tradition cannot justify itself to our reason, we shall choose martyrdom. Second, the religious reason. This is the one that most people give. It is convenient, because it saves the need of thinking. Suffice it here to say that we prefer to think. If we cannot justify monogamy by the facts of life, we shall declare ourselves for polygamy. What are the scientific and rational reasons for monogamy? First among them is venereal disease. This may seem like a vulgar reason, but no one can deny that it is real. There was a time, apparently, when mankind did not suffer from these plagues, and we hope there may be such a time again. I shall not attempt to prescribe the marital customs for the people of that happy age; I suspect that they will be able to take care of themselves. Confining myself to my lifetime and yours, I say that the aim of every sensible man and woman must be to confine sex relations to the smallest possible limits. I know, of course, that there are prophylactics, and the army and navy present statistics to show that they succeed in a great proportion of cases. But if you are one of those persons in whose case they don't succeed, you will find the statistics a cold source of comfort to you. John and Mary go to the altar, or to the justice of the peace, and John says: "With all my worldly goods I thee endow." But the formula is incomplete; it ought to read: "And likewise with the fruits of my wild oats." Marriage is a contract wherein each of the contracting parties agrees to share whatever pathogenic bacteria the other party may have or acquire; surely, therefore, the contract involves a right of each party to have a say as to how many chances of infection the other shall incur. John goes off on a business trip, and is lonesome, and meets an agreeable widow, and figures to himself that there is very little chance that so charming a person can be dangerous. But maybe Mary wouldn't agree with his calculations; maybe Mary would not consider it a part of the marriage bargain that she should take the diseases of the agreeable widow. What commonly happens is that Mary is not consulted; John revises the contract in secret, making it read that Mary shall take a chance at the diseases of the widow. How can any thinking person deny that John has thus committed an act of treason to Mary? I know that there are people who don't mind running such chances; that is one reason why there are venereal diseases. All I can say is that the sex-code set forth in this book is based upon the idea that to deliver mankind from the venereal plague, we wish to confine the sex relationship within the narrowest limits consistent with health, happiness and spiritual development; and that to this end we take the young and teach them chastity, and we marry them early while they are clean, and then we call upon them to make the utmost effort to make a success of that union, and to make it a matter of honor to keep the marital faith. We do this with some hope of effectiveness, because we have made our program consistent with the requirements of nature, the genuine needs of love both physical and spiritual. The second argument for monogamy is the economic one. We have dreamed a social order where every child will be guaranteed maintenance by the state, and where women will be free from dependence on men. What will be the love arrangements of men and women under this new order is another problem which we leave for them to decide, in the certainty that they will know more about it than we do. Meantime, we are for the present under the private property régime, and have to love and marry and raise our children accordingly. The children must have homes, and if they are to be normal children, they must have both the male and female influence in their lives; which means that their parents must be friends and partners, not quarreling in secret. This argument, I know, is one of expediency. I have adopted it, after watching a great number of people try other than monogamous sex arrangements, and seeing their chances of happiness and success wrecked by the pressure of economic forces. To rebel against social compulsion may be heroism, and again it may be merely bad judgment. For my part, the world's greatest evil is poverty, the cause of crime, prostitution and war. I concentrate my energies upon the abolishing of that evil, and I let other problems wait. The third reason is that monogamy is economical of human time and thought. The business of finding and wooing a mate takes a lot of energy, and adjustment after marriage takes more. To throw away the results of this labor and do it all over again is certainly not common sense. Of course, if you bake a cake and burn it, you have to get more material and make another try; but that is a different matter from baking a cake with the deliberate intention of throwing it away after a bite or two. The advocates of varietism in love will here declare that we are begging the question. We are assuming that love and the love chase are not worthy in themselves, but merely means to some other end. Can it be that love delights are the keenest and most intense that humans can experience, and that all other purposes of life are contributory to them? Certainly a great deal of art lends support to this idea, and many poets have backed up their words by their deeds. As Coleridge phrased it: "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love And feed his sacred flame." This is a question not to be played with. Experimenting in love is costly, and millions have wrecked their lives by it. The sex urge in us is imperious and cruel; it wants nothing less than the whole of us, body, mind and spirit, and ofttimes it behaves like the genii in the bottle--it gets out, and not all the powers in the universe can get it back. I have talked with many men about sex and heard them say that it presents itself to them as an unmitigated torment, something they would give everything they own to be free of. And these, mind you, not men living in monasteries, trying to repress their natural impulses, but men of the world, who have lived freely, seeking pleasure and taking it as it came. The primrose path of dalliance did not lead them to peace, and the pursuit of variety in love brought them only monotony. I stop and think of one after another of these sex-ridden people, and I cannot think of one whom I would envy. I know one who in a frenzy of unhappiness seized a razor and castrated himself. I think of another, a certain classmate in college whom I once stopped in a conversation, remarking: "Did you ever realize what a state you have got your mind into? Everything means sex to you. Every phrase you hear, every idea that is suggested--you try to make some sort of pun, to connect it somehow or other with sex." The man thought and said, "I guess that's true." The idea had never occurred to him before; he had just gone on letting his instincts have their way with him, without ever putting his reason upon the matter. That was a crude kind of sex; but I think of another man, an idealist and champion of human liberty. One of the forms of liberty he maintained was the right to love as many women as he pleased, and although he was a married man, one hardly ever saw him that he was not courting some young girl. As a result, his mental powers declined, and he did little but talk about ideas. I do not know anyone today who respects him--except a few people who live the same sort of life. The thought of him brings to my mind a sentence of Nietzsche--a man who surely stood for freedom of personality: "I pity the lovers who have nothing higher than their love." A question like this can be decided only by the experience of the race. Some will make love the end and aim of life, and others will make it the means to other ends, and we shall see which kind of people achieve the best results, which kind are the most useful, the most dignified, the most original and vital. I have seen a great many young people try the experiment of "free love," and I have seen some get enough of it and quit; I could name among these half a dozen of our younger novelists. I know others who are still in it--and I watch their lives and find them to be restless, jealous, egotistical and idle. My defense of monogamy is based upon the fact that I have never known any happy or successful "free lovers." Of course, I know some noble and sincere people who do not believe in the marriage contract, and refuse to be bound by law; but these people are as monogamous as I am, even more tightly bound by honor than if they were duly married. It seems to be in the very nature of true and sincere love to imagine permanence, to desire it and to pledge it. If you aren't that much in love, you aren't really in love at all, and you had better content yourself with strolling together and chatting together and dining together and playing music together. So many pleasant ways there are in which men and women can enjoy each other's company without entering upon the sacred intimacy of sex! You can learn to take sex lightly, of course, but if you do so, you reduce by so much the chances that true and deep love will ever come to you; for true and deep love requires some patience, some reverence, some tending at a shrine. The animals mate quickly and get it over with; but the great discoveries about love, and the possibilities of the human soul in love, have come because men and women have been willing to make sacrifices for it, to take it seriously--and more especially to take seriously the beloved person, the rights and needs and virtues of that person. From the lives of such we learn that love is nature's device for taking us out of ourselves, and making us truly social creatures. Early in my life as a writer I undertook to answer Gertrude Atherton, in her glorification of the sex-corruptions of capitalist society. She indicted American literature for its "bourgeois" qualities--among these the fact that American authors had a prejudice in favor of living with their own wives. Mrs. Atherton set forth the joys of sex promiscuity as they are understood by European artists, and I ventured in replying to remark that "one woman can be more to a man than a dozen can possibly be." That sounds like a paradox, but it is really a profound truth, and the person who does not understand it has missed the best there is in the sex relation. There is a limit to the things of the body, but to those of the mind and spirit there is no limit, and so there is no reason why true love should ever fall prey to boredom and satiety. CHAPTER XLV THE PROBLEM OF JEALOUSY (Discusses the question, to what extent one person may hold another to the pledge of love.) Once upon a time I knew an Anarchist shoemaker, the same who had me sent to jail for playing tennis on Sunday, as I have narrated in "The Brass Check." I remember arguing with him concerning his ideas of sex, which were of the freest. I can hear the very tones of his voice as he put the great unanswerable question: "What are you going to do about the problem of jealousy?" And I had no response at hand; for jealousy is truly a most cruel and devastating and unlovely emotion; and yet, how can you escape it, if you are going to preserve monogamy? The Anarchist shoemaker's solution was to break down all the prejudices against sexual promiscuity. Free and unlimited license was every person's right, and for any other person to interfere was enslavement, for any other person to criticize was superstition. But the power of superstition is strong in the world, and the shoemaker found men resentful of his teachings, and disposed to confiscate the rights of their wives and daughters. Hence the shoemaker's disapproval of jealousy. Other men, less purely physiological in their attitude to sex, have wrestled with this same problem of jealousy. H. G. Wells has a novel, "In the Days of the Comet," in which he portrays two men, both nobly and truly in love with the same woman. One in a passion of jealousy is about to murder the other, when a great social transformation is magically brought about, and the would-be murderer wakes up to universal love, and the two men nobly and lovingly share the same woman. Shelley also dreamed this dream, inviting two women to share him. I have known others who tried it, but never permanently. I do not say that it never has succeeded, or that it never can succeed. In this book I am renouncing the future--I am trying to give practical advice to people, for the conduct of their lives here and now, and my advice on this point is that polygamous and polyandrous experiments in modern capitalist society cost more than they are worth. I once knew a certain high school teacher, who believed religiously in every kind of freedom. When she married, she and her husband, an artist, made a vow against jealousy; but as it worked out, this vow meant that the wife had a steady job and took care of the husband, while he loafed and loved other women. When finally she grew tired of it, he accused her of being jealous; also, she had brought it down to the matter of money! I know another woman, an Anarchist, widely known as a lecturer on sex freedom. She laid down the general principle of unlimited personal freedom for all, and she tried to live up to her faith. She entered into a "free union" with a certain man, and when she discovered that he was making love to another woman, in the presence of a friend of mine she threw a vase of flowers at his head. You see, her general principles had clashed with another general principle, to the effect that a person who feels deep and strong love inevitably desires that love to endure, and cannot but suffer to see it preyed upon and destroyed. Let us first consider the question, just what are the true and proper implications of monogamous love? The Roman Catholic church advocates "monogamy," and understands thereby that a man and woman pledge themselves "till death do us part," and if either of them cancels this arrangement it is adultery and mortal sin. I hope that none of my readers understands by "monogamy" any such system of spiritual strangulation. My own idea is rather what some churchman has sarcastically described by the term "progressive polygamy." I believe that a man and woman should pledge their faith in love, and should keep that faith, and endeavor with all their best energies to make a success of it; they should strive each to understand the other's needs, and unselfishly to fulfill them, within the limits of fair play. But if, after such an effort has been truly made, it becomes clear that the union does not mean health and happiness for one of the parties, that party has a right to withdraw from it, and for any government or church or other power to deny that right is both folly and cruelty. Now, on the basis of this definition of monogamy--or, if you prefer, of progressive polygamy--we are in position to say what we think about jealousy. If two people pledge their faith, and one breaks it, and the other complains, we do not call that jealousy, but just common decency. Neither do we call it jealousy if one expects the other to avoid the appearance of guilt; for love is a serious thing, not to be played with, and I think that a person who truly loves will do everything possible to make clear to the beloved that he is keeping and means to keep the plighted faith. You may say that I am using words arbitrarily, in endeavoring thus to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable jealousy, and calling the former by some other name. It does not make much difference about words, provided I make clear my meaning. I could point out a whole string of words which have good meanings and bad meanings, and cannot be discussed without preliminary explanations and distinctions; religion, for example, and morality, and aristocracy, and justice, to name only a few. Most people's thinking about marriage and love has been made like soup in a cheap restaurant, by dumping in all kinds of scraps and notions from such opposite poles of human thought as Christian monkery and Renaissance license, absurdly called "romance." So before you can do any thinking about a problem like jealousy, you have to agree to use the word to mean something definite, whether good or bad. We shall take jealousy as a "bad" word, and use it to mean the setting up, by a man or woman, of some claim to the love of another person, which claim cannot be justified in the court of reason and fair play. This includes, in the first place, all claims based upon a courtship, not ratified by marriage. It is to the interest of society and the race that men and women should be free to investigate persons of the other sex, and to experiment with the affections before pledges of marriage are made. If sensible customs of love and just laws of marriage were made, there would be no excuse for a woman's giving herself to a man before marriage; she should be taught not to do it, and then if she does it, the risk is her own, and the disgusting perversion of venality and greed known as the "breach of promise suit" should be unknown in our law. The young should be taught that it is the other person's right to change his mind and withdraw at any time before marriage; whatever pains and pangs this may cause must be borne in silence. The second kind of jealousy is that which seeks to keep in the marriage bond a person who is not happy in it and has asked to be released. The law sanctions this kind of cowardly selfishness, which manifests itself every day on the front pages of our newspapers--a spectacle of monstrous and loathsome passions unleashed and even glorified. Husbands set the bloodhounds of the law after wives who have fled with some other man, and send the man to a cell, and drag the woman back to a loveless home. Wives engage private detectives, and trail their husbands to some "love nest," and then ensue long public wrangles, with washing of filthy linen, and the matter is settled by a "separation." The virtuous wife, who may have driven the man away by neglect or vanity or stupidity, is granted a share of his earnings for the balance of her life; and two more people are added to the millions who are denied sexual happiness under the law, and are thereby impelled to live as law violators. For this there is only one remedy conceivable. We have banned cannibalism and slavery and piracy and duelling, and we must ban one more ancient and cruel form of human oppression, the effort to hold people in the bonds of sex by any other power save that of love. I am aware that the reactionaries who read this book will take this sentence out of its context and quote it to prove that I am a "free lover." I shall be sorry to have that done, but even so, I was not willing to live in slavery myself, and I am not willing to advocate it for others. I am aware that there are degenerate and defective individuals, and that we have to make special provision for them, as I shall presently set forth; but the average, normal human being must be free to decide what is love for him, and what is happiness for him. Every person in the world will have to deny himself the right to demand love where love is not freely given, and all lovers in the world will have to hold themselves ready to let the loved one go if and when the loved one demands it. I am aware that this is a hard saying, and a hard duty, but it is one that life lays upon us, and one that there is no escaping. CHAPTER XLVI THE PROBLEM OF DIVORCE (Defends divorce as a protection to monogamous love, and one of the means of preventing infidelity and prostitution.) You will hear sermons and read newspaper editorials about the "divorce evil," and you will find that to the preacher or editor this "evil" consists of the fact that more and more people are refusing to stay unhappily married. It does not interest these moralizers if the statistics show that it is women who are getting most of the divorces, and that the meaning of the phenomenon is that women are refusing to continue living with drunken and dissolute men. To the clergy, the breaking of a marriage is an evil _per se_, and regardless of circumstances. They know this because God has told them so, and in the name of God they seek to keep people tied in sex unions which have come to mean loathing instead of love. Now, I will assert it as a mathematical certainty that a considerable percentage of marriages must fail. It is essential to progress that human beings should grow, both mentally and spiritually, and manifestly they cannot all grow in the same way. If they grow differently, must they not sometimes lose the power to make each other happy in the marital bonds? Who does not know the man who masters life and becomes a vital force, while his wife remains dull and empty? If such a man changes wives, the world in general denounces him as a selfish beast; but the world does not know nor does it care about those thousands of men who, not caring to be branded as selfish beasts, fulfill the needs of their lives by keeping mistresses in secret. I knew a certain country school teacher, one of the most narrowly conventional young women imaginable, who was engaged to a middle-aged business man. He went to New York on a business trip, and stayed a couple of months, and wrote her that he had met some Anarchists, and had discovered that all he had read about them in the newspapers was false, and that they were the true and pure idealists to whom the rest of his life must be devoted. The young lady was horrified; nor was she any happier when she came to New York and met her fiancé's new friends. She ought in common sense to have broken the engagement; but she was in love, and she married, as many another fool woman does, with the idea of "reforming" the man. She failed, and was utterly and unspeakably wretched. I know another man, a conservative capitalist of narrow and aggressive temper, whose wife turned into an ardent Bolshevik. The man thinks that all Bolsheviks should be shut up in jail for life, while the wife is equally certain that all jails should be razed to the ground and all Bolsheviks placed in control of the government. These two people have got to a point where they cannot sit down to the breakfast table without flying into a quarrel. I know another case of a modern scientist, an agnostic, whose wife, a half-educated, sentimental woman, took to dabbling in mysticism, and drove him wild by setting up an image of Buddha in her bedroom, and consorting with "swamis" in long yellow robes. I know another whose wife turned into an ultra-pious Catholic, and turned over the care of his domestic life to a priest. Is it not obvious that the only possible solution of such problems lies in divorce? Unless, indeed, we are all of us going to turn over the care of our domestic lives to the priests! Our grandfathers and grandmothers believed one thing, and believed the same thing when they were seventy as when they were twenty; so it was possible for them to dwell in domestic security and permanence till death did them part. But we are learning to change our minds; and whether what we believe is better or worse than what our ancestors believed, at least it is different. Also we are coming to take what we believe with more seriousness; the intellectual life means more and more to us, and it becomes harder and harder for us to find sexual and domestic happiness with a partner who does not share our convictions, but, on the contrary, may be contributing to the campaign funds of the opposition party. I do not mean by this that people should get a divorce as soon as they find they differ about some intellectual idea; on the contrary, I have advocated that they should do everything possible to understand and to tolerate each other. But it is a fact that intellectual convictions are the raw material out of which characters and lives are made, and it is inevitable that some characters and lives that fit quite well at twenty should fit very badly at thirty or forty. When we refuse divorce under such circumstances we are not fostering marriage, as we fondly imagine; we are really fostering adultery. It is a fact that not one person in ten who is held by legal or social force in an unhappy sex union will refrain from seeking satisfaction outside; and because these outside satisfactions are disgraceful, and in some cases criminal, they seldom have any permanence. Therefore it follows that "strict" divorce laws, such as the clerical propaganda urges upon us, are in reality laws for the promotion of fornication and prostitution. There is a short story by Edith Wharton, in which the "divorce evil" is exhibited to us in its naked horror; the story called "The Other Two," in the volume "The Descent of Man." A society woman has been divorced twice and married three times, and by an ingenious set of circumstances the woman and all three of the men are brought into the same drawing-room at the same time. Just imagine, if you can, such an excruciating situation: a woman, her husband, and two men who used to be her husbands, all compelled to meet together and think of something to say! I cite this story because it is a perfect illustration of the extent to which the "divorce problem" is a problem of our lack of sense. Mrs. Wharton will, I fear, consider me a very vulgar person if I assert that there is absolutely no reason whatever why any of those four people in her story should have had a moment's discomfort of mind, except that they thought there was. There is absolutely nothing to prevent a man and woman who used to be married from meeting socially and being decent to each other, or to prevent two men from being decent to each other under such circumstances. I would not say that they should choose to be intimate friends--though even that may be possible occasionally. I know, because I have seen it happen. In Holland I met a certain eminent novelist and poet, a great and lovable man. I visited his home, and met his wife and two little children, and saw a man and woman living in domestic happiness. The man had also two grown sons, and after a few days he remarked that he would like me to meet the mother of these young men. We went for a walk of a mile or so, and met a lady who lived in a small house by herself, and who received us with a friendly welcome and talked with us for a couple of hours about music and books and art. This lady had been the writer's wife for ten years or so, and there had been a terrible uproar when they voluntarily parted. But they had refused to pay attention to this uproar; they understood why they did not wish to remain husband and wife any longer, but they did not consider it necessary to quarrel about it, nor even to break off the friendship which their common interests made possible. The two women in the case were not intimate, I gathered, but they frequently met at the homes of others, and found no difficulty in being friendly. I suggest to Mrs. Wharton that this story is at least as interesting as the one she has told; but I fear she will not care to write it, because apparently she considers it necessary that people who are well bred and refined should be the helpless victims of destructive manias. CHAPTER XLVII THE RESTRICTION OF DIVORCE (Discusses the circumstances under which society has the right to forbid divorce, or to impose limitations upon it.) We have quoted the old maxim, "Marry in haste and repent at leisure," and we suggested that parents and guardians should have the right to ask the young to wait before marriage, and make certain of the state of their hearts. We have now the same advice to give concerning divorce; the same claim to enter on behalf of society--that it has and should assert the right to ask people to delay and think carefully before breaking up a marriage. What interest has society in the restriction of divorce? What affair is it of any other person if I choose to get a divorce and marry a new wife once a month? There are many reasons, not in any way based upon religious superstition or conventional prejudice. In the first place, there are or may be children, and society should try to preserve for every child a home with a father and a mother in it. Second, there are property rights, of which every marriage is a tangle, and the settlement of which the law should always oversee. Third, there is the question of venereal disease, which society has an unquestionable right to keep down, by every reasonable restriction upon sexual promiscuity. And finally, there is the respect which all men and women owe to love. It seems to me that society has the same right to protect love against extreme outrage, as it has to forbid indecent exposure of the person on the street. There is in successful operation in Switzerland a wise and sane divorce law, based upon common sense and not upon superstition. A couple wish to break their marriage, and they go before a judge, and in private session, as to a friendly adviser, they tell their troubles. He gives them advice about their disagreement, and sends them away for three months to think it over. At the end of three months, if they still desire a divorce, they meet with him again. If he still thinks there is a chance of reconciliation, he has the right to require them to wait another three months. But if at the end of this second period they are still convinced that the case is hopeless, and that they should part, the judge is required to grant the divorce. You may note that this is exactly what I have suggested concerning young couples who become engaged. In both cases, the parties directly interested have the right to decide their own fate, but the rest of the world requires them to think carefully about it, and to listen to counsel. Except for grave offenses, such as adultery, insanity, crime or venereal disease, I do not think that anyone should receive a divorce in less than six months, nor do I think that any personal right is contravened by the imposing of such a delay. Next, what are we going to say to the right, or the claim to the right, on the part of a man or woman, to be married once a year throughout a lifetime? In order to illustrate this problem, I will tell you about a certain man known to me. In his early life he spent a couple of years in a lunatic asylum. He lays claim to extraordinary spiritual gifts, and uses the language of the highest idealism known. He is a man of culture and good family, and thus exerts a peculiar charm upon young women of refinement and sensitiveness. To my knowledge he was three times married in six years, and each time he deserted the woman, and forced her to divorce him, and to take care of herself, and in one case of a child. In addition, he had begotten one child out of marriage, and left the mother and child to starve. For ten years or so I used to see him about once in six months, and invariably he had a new woman, a young girl of fine character, who had been ensnared by him, and was in the agonizing process of discovering his moral and mental derangement. Yet there was absolutely nothing in the law to place restraint upon this man; he could wander from state to state, or to the other side of the world, preying upon lovely young girls wherever he went. This particular man happens to call himself a "radical"; but I could tell you of similar men in the highest social circles, or in the political world, the theatrical world, the "sporting" world; they are in every rank of life, and are just as definitely and certainly menaces to human welfare and progress as pirates on the high seas or highwaymen on the road. Nor are they confined to the males; the world is full of women who use their sex charms for predatory purposes, and some of them are far too clever for any law that you or I can contrive at present. But I think we might begin by refusing to let any man or woman have more than two divorces in one lifetime, in any state or part of the world. If any man or woman tries three times to find happiness in love, and fails each time, we have a right to assume that the fault must lie with that person, and not with the three partners. I think we may go further yet; having made wise laws of love and marriage, taking into consideration all human needs, we have a right to require that men and women shall obey the laws. At present the great mass of the public has sympathy for the law-breaker; just as, in old days, the peasants could not help admiring the outlaw who resisted unjust land laws and robbed the rich, or as today, under the capitalist régime, we can not withhold our sympathy from political prisoners, even though they have committed acts of violence which we deplore. But when we have made sex laws that we know are just and sensible--then we shall consider that we have the right to restrain sex criminals, and in extreme cases we shall avail ourselves of the skill of science to perform a surgical operation which will render him unable in future to prey upon the love needs of people who are placed at his mercy by their best qualities, their unselfishness and lack of suspicion. We clear out foul-smelling weeds from our garden, because we wish to raise beautiful flowers and useful herbs therein. There lives in California a student of plant life, who has shown us what we can do, not by magic or by superhuman efforts, but simply by loving plants, by watching them ceaselessly, understanding their ways, and guiding their sex-life to our own purposes. We can perform what to our ignorant ancestors would have seemed to be miracles; we can actually make all sorts of new plants, which will continue to breed their own kind, and survive forever if we give them proper care. In other words, Luther Burbank has shown us that we can "change plant nature." There flash back upon my memory all those dull, weary, sick human creatures, who have repeated to me that dull, weary, sick old formula, "You cannot change human nature." I do not think I am indulging either in religious superstition or in blind optimism, but am speaking precisely, in saying that whenever human beings get ready to apply experimental science to themselves, they can change human nature just as they now change plant nature. By putting human bodies together in love, we make new bodies of children more beautiful than any who have yet romped on the earth; and in the same way, by putting minds and souls together, we can make new kinds of minds and souls, different from those we have previously known, and greater than either the man-soul or the woman-soul alone. Also, by that magic which is the law of mind and soul life, each new creation can be multiplied to infinity, and shared by all other minds and souls that live in the present or may live in the future. We have shown elsewhere how genius multiplies to infinity the joy and power of life by means of the arts; and one of the greatest of the arts is the art of love. Consider the great lovers, the true lovers, of history--how they have enriched the lives of us all. It does not make any difference whether these men and women lived in the flesh, or in the brain of a poet--we learn alike from Dante and Beatrice, from Abélard and Héloïse, from Robert and Elizabeth Browning, from Tristan and Isolde, from Romeo and Juliet, what is the depth and the splendor of this passion which lies hidden within us, and how it may enrich and vivify and glorify all life. PART FOUR THE BOOK OF SOCIETY CHAPTER XLVIII THE EGO AND THE WORLD (Discusses the beginning of consciousness, in the infant and in primitive man, and the problem of its adjustment to life.) We have now to consider the relationship of man to his fellows, with whom he lives in social groups. Upon this problem floods of light have been thrown by the new science of psycho-analysis. I will try to give, briefly and in simple language, an idea of these discoveries. One of the laws of biology is that every individual, in his development, reproduces the history of the race; so that impulses and mental states of a child reveal to us what our far-off ancestors loved and feared. The same thing is discovered to be true of neurotics, people who have failed in adjusting themselves to civilized life, and have gone back, in some or all of their mental traits, to infantile states. If we analyze the unconscious minds of "nervous patients," and compare them with what we find in the minds of infants, and in savages, we discover the same dreams, the same longings and the same fears. The mental life of man begins in the womb. We cannot observe that life directly, but we know that it is there, because there cannot be organic life without mind to direct it, and just as there is an unconscious mind that regulates the bodily processes in adults, so in the embryo there must be an unconscious mind to direct the flow of blood, the building of bones, muscle, eyes and brain. The mental life of that unborn creature is of course purely egotistical; it knows nothing outside itself, and it finds this universe an agreeable place--everything being supplied to it, promptly and perfectly, without effort of its own. But suddenly it gets its first shock; pain begins, and severe discomfort, and the creature is shoved out into a cold world, yelling in protest against the unsought change. And from that moment on, the new-born infant labors to adjust itself to an entirely new set of conditions. Discomforts trouble it, and it cries. Quickly it learns that these cries are answered, and satisfaction of its needs is furnished. Somehow, magically, things appear; warm and dry covering, a trickle of delicious hot milk into its mouth. At first the infant mind has no idea how all this happens; but gradually it comes to realize objects outside itself, and it forms the idea that these objects exist to serve its wants. Later on it learns that there are particular sounds which attach to particular objects, and cause them to function. The sound "Mama," for example, produces a goddess clothed in beauty and power, performing miracles. So the infant mind arrives at the "period of magic gestures" and the "period of magic words"; corresponding to a certain type of myth and belief which we find in every race and tribe of human being that now exists or ever has existed on earth. All these stories about magic wishes and magic rings and magic spells of a thousand sorts; and nowhere on earth a child which does not listen greedily to such fancies! The reason is simply that the child has passed through this stage of mental life, and so recently that the feelings are close to the surface of his consciousness. But gradually the infant makes the painful discovery that not everything in existence can be got to serve him; there are forces which are proof against his magic spells; there are some which are hostile, and these the infant learns to regard with hatred and fear. Sometimes hatred and fear are strangely mixed with admiration and love. For example, there is a powerful being known as "father," who is sometimes good and useful, but at other times takes the attention of the supremely useful "mother," the source of food and warmth and life. So "father" is hated, and in fancy he is wished out of the way--which to the infant is the same thing as killing. Out of this grows a whole universe of fascinating mental life, which Freud calls by the name "the [OE]dipus complex"--after the legend of the Greek hero who murdered his father and committed incest with his mother, and then, when he discovered what he had done, put out his own eyes. There is a mass of legends, old as human thought, repeating this story; we cannot be sure whether they have grown out of the greeds and jealousies of this early wish-life of the infant, or whether they had their base in the fact that there was a stage in human progress in which the father really was killed off by the sons. This latter idea is discussed by Freud, in his book, "Totem and Taboo." It appears that primitive man lived in hordes, which were dominated by one old male, who kept all the women to himself, and either killed the young males, or drove them out to shift for themselves; so the young men would combine and murder their father. The forming of human society, of marriage and the family, depended upon one factor, the decision of the young victors to live and let live. The only way they could do this was to agree not to quarrel over the women of their own group, but to seek other women from other groups. This may account for what is known as "exogamy," an almost universal marriage custom of primitive man, whereby a man named Jones is barred by frightful taboos from the women named Jones, but is permitted relations with all the women named Smith. To return to our infant: he is in the midst of a painful process of adjusting himself to the outside world; discovering that sometimes all his magic words and gestures fail, his wishes no longer come true. There are beings outside him, with wills of their own, and power to enforce them; he has to learn to get along with these beings, and give up his pleasures to theirs. These processes which go on in the infant soul, the hopes and the terrors, the griefs and the angers, are of the profoundest significance for the later adult life. For nothing gets out of the mind that has once got into it; the infantile cravings which are repressed and forgotten stay in the unconscious, and work there, and strive still for expression. The conscious mind will not tolerate them, but they escape in the form of fairy-tales and stories, of dreams and delusions, slips of the tongue, and many other mental events which it is fascinating to examine. Also, if we are weakened by ill health or nervous strain, these infantile wishes may take the form of "neuroses," and fully grown people may take to stammering, or become impotent, or hysterical, or even insane, because of failures of adjustment to life that happened when they were a year or two old. These things are known, not merely as a matter of theory, but because, as soon as by analysis these infant secrets are brought into consciousness and adjusted there, the trouble instantly ceases. So it appears that the whole process of human life, from the very hour of birth, consists of the correct adjustment of men and women in relation to their fellows. Not merely is man a social being, but all the prehuman ancestors of men, for ages upon geologic ages, have been social beings; they have lived in groups, and their survival has depended upon their success in fitting themselves snugly into group relationships. Failure to make correct adjustments means punishment by the group, or by enemies outside the group; if the failure is serious enough, it means death. We may assert that the task of understanding one's fellow men, and making one's self understood by them, is the most important task that confronts every individual. And if we look about the world at present, the most superficial of us cannot fail to realize that the task is far from being correctly performed. So many people unhappy, so many striving for what they cannot get! So many having to be locked behind bars, like savage beasts, because they demand something which the world is resolved not to let them have! So many having to be killed, by rifles and machine-guns, by high explosive shells and poison gas--because they misunderstood the social facts about them, and thought they could fulfill some wishes which the rest of mankind wanted them to repress! As I read the psycho-analyst's picture of the newly born infant with its primitive ego, its magic cries and magic gestures, I cannot be sure how much of it is sober science and how much is mordant irony--a sketch of the mental states of the men and women I see about me--whole classes of men and women, yes, even whole nations! The effort of the following chapters will be to interpret to men and women the world which they have made, and to which they are trying to adjust themselves. More especially we shall try to show how, by better adjustments, men may change both themselves and the world, and make both into something less cruel and less painful, more serene and more certain and more free. CHAPTER XLVIX COMPETITION AND CO-OPERATION (Discusses the relation of the adult to society, and the part which selfishness and unselfishness play in the development of social life.) Pondering the subject of this chapter, I went for a stroll in the country, and seating myself in a lonely place, became lost in thought; when suddenly my eye was caught by something moving. On the bare, hot, gray sand lay a creature that I could see when it moved and could not see when it was still, for it was exactly the color of the ground, and fitted the ground tightly, being flat, and having its edges scalloped so that they mingled with the dust. It was a lizard, covered with heavy scales, and with sharp horns to make it unattractive eating. At the slightest motion from me it vanished into a heap of stones, so quickly that my eye could scarcely follow it. This creature, you perceive, is in its actions and its very form an expression of terror; terror of devouring enemies, of jackals that pounce and hawks that swoop, and also of the hot desert air that seeks to dry out its few precious drops of moisture. Practically all the energies of this creature are concentrated upon the securing of its own individual survival. To be sure, it will mate, but the process will be quick, and the eggs will be left for the sun to hatch out, and the baby lizards will shift for themselves--that is to say, they will be incarnations of terror from the moment they open their eyes to the light. The jackal seeks to pounce upon the lizard, and so inspires terror in the lizard; but when you watch the jackal you find that it exhibits terror toward more powerful foes. You find that the hawk, which swoops upon the lizard, is equally quick to swoop away when it comes upon a man with a gun. This preying and being preyed upon, this mixture of cruelty and terror, is a conspicuous fact of nature; if you go into any orthodox school or college in America today, you will be taught that it is nature's most fundamental law, and governs all living things. If you should take a course in political economy under a respectable professor, you would find him explaining that such cruelty-terror applies equally in human affairs; it is the basis of all economic science, and the effort to escape from it is like the effort to lift yourself by your boot-straps. The professor calls this cruelty-terror by the name "competition"; and he creates for his own purposes an abstract being whom he names "the economic man," a creature who acts according to this law, and exists under these conditions. One of the professor's formulas is the so-called "Malthusian law," that population presses always upon the limits of subsistence. Another is "the law of diminishing returns of agriculture," that you can get only so much product out of a certain piece of land, no matter how much labor and capital you put into it. Another is Ricardo's "iron law of wages," that wages cannot rise above the cost of living. Another is embodied in the formula of Adam Smith, that "Competition is the life of trade." The professor enunciates these "laws," coldly and impersonally, as becomes the scientist; but if you go into the world of business, you find them set forth cynically, in scores of maxims and witticisms: "Dog eat dog," "the devil take the hindmost," "business is business," "do others or they will do you." Evidently, however, there is something in man which rebels against these "natural" laws. In our present society man has set aside six days in the week in which to live under them, and one day in the week in which to preach an entirely different and contradictory code--that of Christian ethics, which bids you "love your neighbor," and "do unto others as you would they should do unto you." Between these Sunday teachings and the week-day teachings there is eternal conflict, and one who takes pleasure in ridiculing his fellow men can find endless opportunity here. The Sunday preachers are forbidden to interfere with the affairs of the other six days; that is called "dragging politics into the pulpit." On the other hand, incredible as it may seem, there are professors of the week-day doctrine who call themselves Christians, and believe in the Sunday doctrine, too. They manage this by putting the Sunday doctrine off into a future world; that is, we are to pounce upon one another and devour one another under the "iron laws" of economics so long as we live on earth, but in the next world we shall play on golden harps and have nothing to do but love one another. If anybody is so foolish as to apply the Sermon on the Mount to present-day affairs, we regard him as a harmless crank; if he persists, and sets out to teach others, we call him a Communist or a Pacifist, and put him in jail for ten or twenty years. In the Book of the Mind, I have referred to Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution," which I regard as one of the epoch-making books of our time. Kropotkin clearly proves that competition is not the only law of nature, it is everywhere modified by co-operation, and in the great majority of cases co-operation plays a larger part in the relations of living creatures than competition. There is no creature in existence which is entirely selfish; in the nature of the case such a creature could not exist--save in the imaginations of teachers of special privilege. If a species is to survive, some portion of the energies of the individual must go into reproduction; and steadily, as life advances, we find the amount of this sacrifice increasing. The higher the type of the creature, the longer is the period of infancy, and the greater the sacrifice of the parent for the young. Likewise, most creatures make the discovery that by staying together in herds or groups, and learning to co-operate instead of competing among themselves, they increase their chances of survival. You find birds that live in flocks, and other birds, like hawks and owls and eagles, that are solitary; and you find the co-operating birds a thousand times as numerous--that is to say, a thousand times as successful in the struggle for survival. You find that all man's brain power has been a social product; the supremacy he has won over nature has depended upon one thing and one alone--the fact that he has managed to become different from the "economic man," that product of the imagination of the defenders of privilege. It is evident that both competition and co-operation are necessary to every individual, and the health of the individual and of the race lies in the proper combination of the two. If a creature were wholly unselfish--if it made no effort to look after its own individual welfare--it would be exterminated before it had a chance to reproduce. If, on the other hand, it cannot learn to co-operate, its progeny stand less chance of survival against creatures which have learned this important lesson. We have a nation of a 110,000,000 people, who have learned to co-operate to a certain limited extent. Some of us realize how vastly the happiness of these millions might be increased by a further extension of co-operation; but we find ourselves opposed by the professors of privilege--and we wish that these gentlemen would go out and join the lizards of the desert sands or the sharks of the sea, creatures which really practice the system of "laissez faire" which the professors teach. The plain truth is that we cannot make a formula out of either competition or co-operation. We cannot settle any problem of economics, of business or legislation, by proclaiming, for example, that "Competition is the life of trade." Competition may just as well turn out to be the death of trade; it depends entirely upon the kind of competition, and the stage of trade development to which it is applied. In the early eighteenth century, when that formula of Adam Smith was written, competition was observed to keep down prices and provide stimulus to enterprise, and so to further abundant production. But the time came when the machinery for producing goods was in excess, not merely of the needs of the country, but of the available foreign markets, and then suddenly the large-scale manufacturers made the discovery that competition was the death of trade to them. They proceeded, as a matter of practical common sense, and without consulting their college professors, to abolish competition by forming trusts. We passed laws forbidding them to do this, but they simply refused to obey the laws. In the United States they have made good their refusal for thirty-five years, and in the end have secured the blessing of the Supreme Court upon their course. So now we have co-operation in large-scale production and marketing. It is known by various names, "pools," "syndicates," "price-fixing," "gentlemen's agreements." It is a blessing for those who co-operate, but it proves to be the death of those who labor, and also of those who consume, and we see these also compelled to combine, forming labor unions and consumers' societies. Each side to the quarrel insists that the other side is committing a crime in refusing to compete, and our whole social life is rent with dissensions over this issue. Manifestly, we need to clear our minds of dead doctrines; to think out clearly just what we mean by competition, and what by co-operation, and what is the proper balance between the two. I have been at pains in this book to provide a basis for the deciding of such questions. It is a practical problem, the fostering of human life and the furthering of its development. We cannot lay down any fixed rule; we have to study the facts of each case separately. We shall say, this kind of competition is right, because it helps to protect human life and to develop its powers. We shall say, this other kind of competition is wrong because it has the opposite effect. We shall say, perhaps, that some kind was right fifty years ago, or even ten years ago, because it then had certain effects; but meantime some factor has changed, and it is now having a different effect, and therefore ought to be abolished. There has never been any kind of human competition which men did not judge and modify in that way; there is no field of human activity in which ethical codes do not condemn certain practices as unfair. The average Englishman considers it proper that two men who get into a dispute shall pull off their coats, and settle the question at issue by pummeling each other's noses. But let one of these men strike his opponent in the groin, or let him kick his shins, and instantly there will be a howl of execration. Likewise, an Anglo-Saxon man who fights with the fists has a loathing for a Sicilian or Greek or other Mediterranean man who will pull a knife. That kind of competition is barred among our breeds; and also the kind which consists of using poisons, or of starting slanders against your opponent. If you look back through history, you find many forms of competition which were once eminently respectable, but now have been outlawed. There was a time, for example, when the distinction we draw between piracy and sea-war was wholly unknown. The ships of the Vikings would go out and raid the ships and seaports of other peoples, and carry off booty and captives, and the men who did that were sung as heroes of the nation. The British sea-captains of the time of Queen Elizabeth--Drake, Frobisher, and the rest of them--are portrayed in our school books as valiant and hardy men, and the British colonies were built on the basis of their activities; yet, according to the sea laws in force today, they were pirates. We regard a cannibal race with abhorrence; yet there was a time when all the vigorous races of men were cannibals, and the habit of eating your enemies in battle may well have given an advantage to the races which practiced it. On the other hand, you find sentimental people who reject all competition on principle, and would like to abolish every trace of it from society, and especially from education. But stop and consider for a moment what that would mean. Would you abolish, for example, the competition of love, the right of a man to win the girl he wants? You could not do it, of course; but if you could, you would abolish one of the principal methods by which our race has been improved. Of course, what you really want is, not to abolish competition in love, but to raise it to a higher form. There is an old saying, "All's fair in love and war," but no one ever meant that. You would not admit that a man might compete in love by threatening to kill the girl if she preferred a rival. You would not admit that he might compete by poisoning the other man. You would not admit that he might compete by telling falsehoods about the other man. On the other hand, if you are sensible, you admit that he has a right to compete by making his character known to the girl, and if the other man is a rascal, by telling the girl that. Would you abolish the competition of art, the effort of men to produce work more beautiful and inspiring than has ever been known before? Would you abolish the effort of scientists to overthrow theories which have hitherto been accepted? Obviously not. You make these forms of competition seem better by calling them "emulation," but you do not in the least modify the fact that they involve the right of one person to outdo other persons, to supplant them and take away something from them, whether it be property or position or love or fame or power. In that sense, competition is indeed the law of life, and you might as well reconcile yourself to it, and learn to play your part with spirit and good humor. Also, you might as well train your children to it. You will find you cannot develop their powers to the fullest without competition; in fact, you will be forced to go back and utilize forms of competition which are now out of date among adults. I have told in the Book of the Body how I myself tried for ten years or more to live without physical competition, and discovered that I could not; I have had to take up some form of sport, and hundreds of thousands of other men have had the same experience. What is sport? It is a deliberate going back, under carefully devised rules, to the savage struggles of our ancestors. The very essence of real sport is that the contestants shall, within the rules laid down, compete with each other to the limit of their powers. With what contempt would a player of tennis or baseball or whist regard the proposition that his opponent should be merciful to him, and let him win now and then! Obviously, these things have no place in the game, and to be a "good sport" is to conform to the rules, and take with enjoyment whatever issue of the struggle may come. But then again, suppose you are competing with a child; obviously, the conditions are different. You no longer play the best you can, you let the child win a part of the time; but you do not let the child know this, or it would spoil the fun for the child. You pretend to try as hard as you know how, and you cry out in grief when you are beaten, and the child crows with delight. And yet, that does not keep you from loving the child, or the child from loving you. The purpose of this elaborate exposition is to make clear the very vital point that a certain set of social acts may be right under some conditions, and desperately wrong under other conditions. They may be right in play, and not in serious things; they may be right in youth, and not in maturity; they may be right at one period of the world's development, while at another period they are destructive of social existence. If, therefore, we wish to know what are right and wrong actions in the affairs of men, if we wish to judge any particular law or political platform or program of business readjustment, the first thing we have to do is to acquire a mass of facts concerning the society to which the law or platform or program, is to be applied. We need to ask ourselves, exactly what will be the effect of that change, applied in that particular way at that particular time. In order to decide accurately, we need to know the previous stages through which that society has passed, the forces which have been operating in it, and the ways in which they have worked. But also we must realize that the lessons of history cannot ever be accepted blindly. The "principles of the founders" apply to us only in modified form; for the world in which we live today is different from any world which has ever been before, and the world tomorrow will be different yet. We are the makers of it, and the masters of it, and what it will be depends to some extent upon our choice. In fact, that is the most important lesson of all for us to learn; the final purpose of all our thought about the world is to enable us to make it a happier and a better world for ourselves and our posterity to live in. CHAPTER L ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY (Discusses the idea of superior classes and races, and whether there is a natural basis for such a doctrine.) In the letters of Thomas Jefferson is found the following passage: "All eyes are open or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God." This, which Jefferson, over a hundred years ago, described as a "palpable truth," is still a long way from prevailing in the world. We are trying in this book not to take anything for granted, so we do not assume this truth, but investigate it; and we begin by admitting that there are many facts which seem to contradict it, and which make it more difficult of proof than Jefferson realized. It is not enough to point out the lack of saddles on the backs, and of boots and spurs on the feet of newly born infants; for the fact is that men are not exploited because of saddles, nor is the exploiting accomplished by means of boots and spurs. It is done by means of gold and steel, banks and credit systems, railroads, machine-guns and battleships. And while it is not true that certain races and classes are born with these things on them, they are born to the possession of them, and the vast majority of mankind are without them all their lives, and without the ability to use them even if they had them. The doctrine that "all men are created equal," or that they ought to be equal, we shall describe for convenience as the democratic doctrine. It first came to general attention through Christianity, which proclaimed the brotherhood of all mankind in a common fatherhood of God. But even as taught by the Christians, the doctrine had startling limitations. It was several centuries before a church council summoned the courage to decide that women were human beings, and had souls; and today many devout Christians are still uncertain whether Japanese and Chinese and Filipinos and Negroes are human beings, and have souls. I have heard old gentlemen in the South gravely maintain that the Negro is not a human being at all, but a different species of animal. I have heard learned men in the South set forth that the sutures in the Negro skull close at some very early age, and thus make moral responsibility impossible for the black race. And you will find the same ideas maintained, not merely as to differences of race and color, but as to differences of economic condition. You will find the average aristocratic Englishman quite convinced that the "lower orders" are permanently inferior to himself, and this though they are of the same Anglo-Saxon stock. For convenience I will refer to the doctrine that there is some natural and irremovable inferiority of certain races or classes, as the aristocratic doctrine. I will probably startle some of my readers by making the admission that if there is any such natural or irremovable inferiority, then a belief in political or economic equality is a blunder. If there are certain classes or races which cannot think, or cannot learn to think as well as other classes and races, those mentally inferior classes and races will obey, and they will be made to obey, and neither you nor I, nor all the preachers and agitators in the world, will ever be able to arrange it otherwise. Suppose we could do it, we should be committing a crime against life; we should be holding down the race and aborting its best development. Is there any such natural and irremovable inferiority in human beings? When we come to study the question we find it complicated by a different phenomenon, that of racial immaturity, which we have to face frankly and get clear in our minds. One of the most obvious facts of nature is that of infancy and childhood. We have just pointed out that if you are competing with a child, you do it in an entirely different way and under an entirely different set of rules, and if you fail to do this, you are unfair and even cruel to the child. And it is a fact of our world that there are some races more backward in the scale of development than other races. You may not like this fact, but it is silly to try to evade it. People who live in savage huts and beat on tom-toms and fight with bows and arrows and cannot count beyond a dozen--such people are not the mental or moral equals of our highly civilized races, and to treat them as equals, and compete with them on that basis, means simply to exterminate them. And we should either exterminate them at once and be done with it, or else make up our minds that they are in a childhood stage of our race, and that we have to guide them and teach them as we do our children. There is no more useful person than the wise and kind teacher. But suppose we saw some one pretending to be a teacher to our children, while in reality enslaving and exploiting them, or secretly robbing and corrupting them--what would we say about that kind of teacher? The name of that teacher is capitalist commercialism, and his profession is known as "the white man's burden"; his abuse of power is the cause of our present racial wars and revolts of subject peoples. A fair-minded man, desirous of facing all the facts of life, hardly knows what stand to take in such a controversy; that is, hardly knows from which cause the colored races suffer more--the white man's exploitation, or their own native immaturity. To say that certain races are in a childhood stage, and need instruction and discipline, is an entirely different thing from saying they are permanently inferior and incapable of self-government. Whether they are permanently inferior is a problem for the man of science, to be determined by psychological tests, continued possibly over more than one generation. We have not as yet made a beginning; in fact, we have not even acquired the scientific impartiality necessary to such an inquiry. In the meantime, all that we can do is to look about us and pick up hints where we can. In places like Massachusetts, where Negroes are allowed to go to college and are given a chance to show what they can do, they have not ousted the white man, but many of them have certainly won his respect, and one finds charming and cultured men among them, who show no signs of prematurely closed up skulls. And one after another we see the races which have been held down as being inferior, developing leadership and organization and power of moral resistance. The Irish are showing themselves today one of the most vigorous and high-spirited of all races. The Hindus are developing a movement which in the long run may prove more powerful than the white man's gold and steel. The Egyptians, the Persians, the Filipinos, the Koreans, are all devising ways to break the power of capitalist newspaper censorship. How sad that the subject races of the world have to get their education through hatred of their teachers, instead of through love! Of course, these rebel leaders are men who have absorbed the white man's culture, at least in part; practically always they are of the younger generation, which has been to the white man's schools. But this is the very answer we have been seeking--as to whether the race is permanently inferior, or merely immature and in need of training. It is not only among the brown and black and yellow races that progress depends upon the young generations; that is a universal fact of life. In the course of this argument we shall assume that the Christian or democratic theory has the weight of probability on its side, and that nature has not created any permanently and necessarily inferior race or class. We shall assume that the heritage of culture is a common heritage, open to all our species. We shall not go so far as the statement which Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created free and equal"; but we shall assert that they are created "with certain inalienable rights," and that among these is the right to maintain their lives and to strive for liberty and happiness. Also, we shall say that there will never be peace or order in the world until they have found liberty, and recognition of their right to happiness. CHAPTER LI RULING CLASSES (Deals with authority in human society, how it is obtained, and what sanction it can claim.) It is possible to conceive an order of nature in which all individuals were born and developed exactly alike and with exactly equal powers. Such is apparently the case with lower animals, for example the ants and the bees. But among human beings there are great differences; some are born idiots and some are born geniuses. Even supposing that we are able to do away with blindness and idiocy, it is not likely that we can ever make a race of uniform genius. There will always be some more capable minds, who will discover new powers of life, and will compel the others to learn from them. It is to the interest of the race that this learning should be done as quickly as possible. In other words, the great problem of society is how to recognize superior minds and put them in authority. We look back over history, and discover a few wise men, and many rulers; but very, very rarely does it happen that the ruler is a wise man, or a friend of wise men. Far more often we find the ruler occupied in suppressing the wise man and his wisdom. There was a ruler who allowed the mob to crucify Jesus, and another who ordered Socrates to drink the hemlock, and another who tortured Galileo, and another who chopped off the head of Sir Walter Raleigh--and so on through a long and tragic chronicle. And even when the accident of a wise ruler occurs he is apt to be surrounded by a class of parasites and corrupt officials who are busy to thwart his will. The general run of history is this: some group seizes power by force, and holds it by the same means, and seeks to augment and perpetuate it. Those who win the power are frequently men of energy and practical sense, and do fairly well as governors; but they are never able to hand on their virtues, and their line becomes corrupted by sensuality and self-indulgence, and the subject classes are plundered and driven to revolt. Often the revolt fails, but in the course of time it succeeds, and there is a new dynasty, or a new ruling class, sometimes a little better than the old, sometimes worse. How shall one judge whether the new régime is better or worse? Obviously, this is a most important question; it has to do, not merely with history, but with our daily affairs, our voting. As one who has read some tens of thousands of pages of history, and has pondered its lessons with heart-sickness and despair, I lay down this general law by which revolts and changes of power may be judged: If the change results in the holding of power by a smaller number of people, it is a reaction; but if the change results in distributing the power among a larger group of the community, then that community has made a step in advance. I have seen a sketch of the history of some Central American country--Guatemala, I think--which showed 130 revolutions in less than a hundred years. Some rascal gets together a gang, and seizes the government and plunders its revenue. When he has plundered too much, some other rascal stirs up the people, and gets together another gang. Such "revolutions" we regard as subjects for comic opera, and for the Richard Harding Davis type of fiction; but we do not consider them as having any relationship to progress. We describe them as "palace" revolutions. But compare with this the various English revolutions. We write learned histories about them, and describe England as "the Mother of Parliaments." The reason for this is that when there was political discontent in England, the protesting persons proceeded to organize themselves, and to understand their trouble and to remedy it. They had the brain power to do this; they maintained their right to do it, and when by violence or threats of violence they forced the ruling class to give way, they brought about a wider extension of liberty, a wider distribution of power. Tennyson has pictured England as a state "where freedom slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent." We today, reading its history, are inclined to put a sarcastic emphasis on the word "slowly"; but Tennyson would answer that it is better for a community to move forward slowly than to move forward rapidly and then move backward nearly as far. We have pointed out several times the important fact of biology that change does not necessarily mean progress from any rational or moral point of view. Degeneration is just as real a fact as progress, and it does not at all follow that because things change they are changing for the better. It is worth while to repeat this in discussing human society, for it is just as true of governments and morals as of living species. A nation may pile up wealth, and multiply a hundredfold the machinery of wealth production, and only be increasing luxury and wantonness and graft. A nation may change its governmental forms, its laws and social conventions, and boast noisily of these changes in the name of progress, while as a matter of fact it is following swiftly the road to ruin which all the empires of history have traced. So far as I can discover, there is one test, and only one, by which you can judge, and that is the test already indicated: Is the actual, effective power of the state wielded by a larger or a smaller percentage of the population than before the change took place? You will note the words "actual, effective power." Nothing is more familiar in human life than for forms to survive after the spirit which created them is dead; and nothing is more familiar than the use of these forms as masks to deceive the populace. There have been many times in history when people have gone on voting, long after their votes ceased to count for anything; there have been many times when people have gone through the motions of freedom long after they have been slaves. Mexico under Diaz had one of the most perfect of constitutions, and was in reality one of the most perfect of despotisms; and we Americans are sadly familiar with political democracies which do not work. Shall we, therefore, join the pessimists and say that history is a blind struggle for useless power, and that the notion of progress is a delusion? I do not think so; on the contrary, I think it is easily to be demonstrated that there has been a steady increase in the amount of knowledge possessed by the race, and in the spread of this knowledge among the whole population. I think that through most of the period of written history we can trace a real development in human society. I think we can analyze the laws of this development, and explain its methods; and I think this knowledge is precious to us, because it enables us to accelerate the process and to make the end more certain. This task, the analysis of social evolution, is the task we have next to undertake. CHAPTER LII THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION (Discusses the series of changes through which human society has passed.) We have now to consider, briefly, the history of man as a social being, the groups he has formed, and the changes in his group systems. Everything in life grows, and human societies are no exception to the rule. They have undergone a long process of evolution, which we can trace in detail, and which we find conforms exactly to the law laid down by Herbert Spencer; a process whereby a number of single and similar things become different parts of one complex thing. In the case of human societies the units are men and women, and social evolution is a process whereby a small and simple group, in which the individuals are practically alike, grows into a large and complex group, in which the individuals are widely different, and their relations one to another are complicated and subtle. There are two powerful forces pressing upon human beings, and compelling them to struggle and grow. The first of these forces is fear, the need of protection against enemies; the second is hunger, the need of food and the means of producing and storing food. The first causes the individual to combine with his fellows and establish some form of government, and this is the origin of political evolution. The second causes him to accumulate wealth, and to combine industrially, and this is the origin of economic evolution. Because the first force is a little more urgent, we observe in the history of human society that evolution in government precedes evolution in industry. I made this statement some twenty years ago, in an article in "Collier's Weekly." I wrote to the effect that man's first care was to secure himself against his enemies, and that when he had done this he set out to secure his food supply. "Collier's" called upon the late Professor Sumner of Yale University, a prize reactionary and Tory of the old school, to answer me; and Professor Sumner made merry over my statement, declaring that man sought for food long before he was safe from his enemies. Some years later, when Sumner died, one of his admirers wrote in the New York "Evening Post" that he had completely overwhelmed me, and I had acknowledged my defeat by failing to reply--something which struck me as very funny. It was, of course, possible that Sumner had overwhelmed me, but to say that I had considered myself overwhelmed was to attribute to me a degree of modesty of which I was wholly incapable. As a matter of fact, I had had my usual experience with capitalist magazines; "Collier's Weekly" had promised to publish my rejoinder to Sumner, but failed to keep the promise, and finally, when I worried them, they tucked the answer away in the back part of the paper, among the advertisements of cigars and toilet soaps. Professor Sumner is gone, but he has left behind him an army of pupils, and I will protect myself against them by phrasing my statement with extreme care. I do not mean to say that man first secures himself completely against his enemies, and then goes out to hunt for a meal. Of course he has to eat while he is countering the moves of his enemies; he has to eat while he is on the march to battle, or in flight from it. But ask yourself this question: which would you choose, if you had to choose--to go a couple of days with nothing to eat, or to have your throat cut by bandits and your wife and children carried away into slavery? Certainly you would do your fighting first, and meantime you would scratch together any food you could. While you were devoting your energies to putting down civil war, or to making a treaty with other tribes, or to preparing for a military campaign, you would continue to get food in the way your ancestors had got it; in other words, your economic evolution would wait, while your political evolution proceeded. But when you had succeeded in putting down your enemies, and had a long period of peace before you, then you would plant some fields, and domesticate some animals, or perhaps discover some new way of weaving cloth--and so your industrial life would make progress. It is easy to see why Professor Sumner wished to confuse this issue. He could not deny political evolution, because it had happened. He despised and feared political democracy, but it was here, and he had to speak politely to it, as to a tiger that had got into his house. But industrial democracy was a thing that had not yet happened in the world; it was only a hope and a prophecy, and therefore a prize old Tory was free to ridicule it. I remember reading somewhere his statement--the notion that democracy had anything to do with industry, or could in any way be applied to industry, was a piece of silliness. So, of course, he sought to demolish my idea that there was a process of evolution in economic affairs, paralleling the process of political evolution which had already culminated in democracy. Let us consider the process of political evolution, briefly and in its broad outlines. Take any savage tribe; you find it composed of individuals who are very much alike. Some are a little stronger than others, a little more clever, more powerful in battle; but the difference is slight, and when the tribe chooses someone to lead them, they might as well choose one man as another. They all have a say in the tribe councils, both men and women; their "rights" in the tribe are the same. They are, of course, slaves to ignorance, to degrading superstition and absurd taboos; but these things apply to everyone alike, there is no privileged caste, no hereditary inequality. But little by little, as the tribe grows in numbers, and in power and intelligence, as it comes to capture slaves in battle, and to unite with other tribes, there comes to be an hereditary chieftain and a group of his leading supporters, his courtiers and henchmen. When the society has evolved into the stage which we call barbarism, there is a permanent superior caste; there are hereditary priests, who have in their keeping the favor of the gods; and there is a subject population of slaves. The society moves on into the feudal stage, in which the various grades and classes are precisely marked off, each with its different functions, its different privileges and rights and duties. The feudal principalities and duchies war and struggle among themselves; they are united by marriage or by conquest, and presently some stronger ruler brings a great territory under his power, and we have what is called a kingdom; a society still larger, still more complex in its organization, and still more rigid in its class distinctions. Take France, under the ancient régime, and compare a courtier or noble gentleman with a serf; they are not only different before the law, they are different in the language they use, in the clothes they wear, in the ideas they hold; they are different even in their bodies, so that the gentleman regards the serf as an inferior species of creature. The kings warred among themselves and emperors arose. The ultimate ideal in Europe was a political society which should include the whole continent, and this ideal was several times almost attained. But it is the rule of history that wherever a large society is built upon the basis of privilege and enslavement, the ruling classes prove morally and intellectually unequal to the burden put upon them; they become corrupted, and their rule becomes intolerable. This happened in Europe, and there came political revolutions--first in England, which accomplished it by gradual stages, and then in the French monarchy, and quite recently in a dozen monarchies and empires, large and small. What precisely is this political revolution? Let us consider the case of France, where the change was sudden, and the issues precisely drawn. King Louis XIV had said, "I am the state." To a person of our time that might seem like boasting, but it was merely an assertion of the existing political fact. King Louis was the state by universal consent, and by divine authority, as all men believed. The army was his army, the navy was his navy, and wars, when he made them, were his wars. Everyone in the state was his subject, and all the property of the state was his personal, private property, to dispose of as he pleased. The government officials carried out his will, and members of the nobility held the land and ruled in his name. But now suddenly the people of France overthrew the king, and put him to death, and drove the nobles into exile; they seized the power of the French state, and proclaimed themselves equal citizens in the state, with equal voices in its government and equal rights before the law. So we call France a republic, and describe this form of society as political democracy. It is the completion of the process of political evolution, and you will see that it moves in a sort of spiral; having completed a circle and got back where it was before, but upon a higher plane. The citizens of a modern republic are equal before the law, just as were the members of the savage tribe; but the political organization is vastly larger, and infinitely more complicated, and every individual lives his life upon a higher level, because he shares in the benefits of this more highly organized and more powerful state. CHAPTER LIII INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION (Examines the process of evolution in industry and the stage which it has so far reached.) And now let us consider the process of industrial evolution. We shall find it to be exactly the same thing, reproducing the changes in another field of activity. You may picture two gigantic waves sweeping over the ocean. In some places the waves are far apart, and in other places they are closer together; for a time they may mingle, and perhaps their bases always mingle. It would be easy for a critic to point out how political affairs play a leading part in industrial evolution, and vice versa; it would be easy to argue that property rules the political state, or again, that the main function of the political state is to protect property. As I have said, man has to fight his enemies, and he has to seek food, and often he has to do the two things at the same time; but nevertheless, broadly speaking, we observe two great waves, sweeping over human society, and most of the time these waves are clearly separated and easily distinguished. Industry in a savage tribe is, like government, simple and uniform; all the members of the tribe get their living in the same way. One may be a little more expert as a fisherman, another as a gatherer of cocoanuts, but the fisherman gathers cocoanuts and the cocoanut-gatherer fishes. In the days of primitive communism there is little economic strife and little change; but as slavery comes in, and the private property system, there begins industrial war--the members of the tribe trade with one another, and argue over prices, and gradually some get the better of others, they accumulate slaves and goods, and later on they appropriate the land to their private use. Of course, the men who do this are often the rulers of the tribe, and so politics and industry are mixed; but even assuming that the state never interfered, assuming that the government allowed business affairs to work themselves out in their own way, the tendency of competition is always to end in monopoly. The big fish eat the little fish, the strong gain advantage over the weak, the rich grow richer, and the poor grow relatively poorer. As the amount of trading increases, and men specialize in the arts of bargaining, we see again and again how money concentrates in the hands of a few. It does this, even when the political state tries to prevent it; as, for example, when the princes and dukes of the Middle Ages would torture the Jewish money-lenders and take away their treasure, but the Jews never failed to grow rich again. It is when political evolution has completed itself, and a republic has been set up, that a free field is given to economic forces to work themselves out to their logical end. We have seen this in the United States, where we all started pretty much on the same economic level, and where political tyranny has had little hold. Our civilization is a civilization of the trader--the business man, as we call him; and we see how big business absorbs little business, and grows constantly larger and more powerful. We are familiar with what we call "graft," the use by business men of the powers of government to get trade advantage for themselves, and we have a school of old-time thinkers, calling themselves "Jeffersonian Democrats," who insist that if only there had never been any government favors, economic equality and democracy would have endured forever in our country. But it is my opinion that government has done far more to prevent monopoly and special privilege in business than to favor it; and nevertheless, monopoly has grown. In other words, the tendency toward concentration in business, the absorption of the small business by the big business, is an irresistible natural process, which neither can be nor should be hindered. The condition of competition, whether in politics or in industry, is never a permanent one, and can never be made permanent; it is a struggle which automatically brings itself to an end. Large-scale production and distribution is more economical than small-scale, and big business has irresistible advantages of credit and permanence over little business. As we shall presently show, the blind and indiscriminate production of goods under the competitive system leads to the glutting of markets and to industrial crises. At such times the weaker concerns are weeded out and the strong ones take their trade; and as a result, we have the modern great corporation, the most powerful machine of production yet devised by man, and which corresponds in every aspect to the monarchy in political society. We are accustomed to speak of our "captains of industry," our "coal kings," and "beef barons" and "lords of steel," and we think we are using metaphors; but the universality of these metaphors points to a fundamental truth in them. As a matter of fact, our modern captain of industry fills in the economic world exactly the same functions as were filled in ancient days by the head of a feudal state. He has won his power in a similar struggle, and he holds it by similar methods. He rules over an organization of human beings, arranged, economically speaking, in grades and classes, with their authorities and privileges and duties precisely determined, as under the "ancient régime." And just as King Louis said, "I am the state," so Mr. Armour considers that he is Armour & Co., and Mr. Morgan considers that he is the house of Morgan, and that the business exists for him and is controlled by him under divine authority. If I am correct in my analysis of the situation, this process of industrial evolution is destined to complete itself, as in the case of the political state. The subject populations of industry are becoming more and more discontented with their servitude, more and more resentful of that authority which compels them to labor while others reap the benefit. They are organizing themselves, and preparing for a social transformation which will parallel in every detail the revolution by which our ancestors overthrew the authority of King George III over the American colonies, and made inhabitants of those colonies no longer subjects of a king, but free and equal citizens of a republic. I expect to see a change throughout the world, which will take the great instruments of production which we call corporations and trusts, out of the hands of their present private owners, and make them the property, either of the entire community, or of those who do the work in them. This change is the "social revolution," and when it has completed itself, we shall have in that society an Industrial Republic, a form of business management which constitutes economic democracy. The history of the world's political revolutions has been written almost exclusively by aristocratic or bourgeois historians; that is to say, by men who, whatever their attitude toward political democracy, have no conception of industrial democracy, and believe that industrial strife and enslavement are the normal conditions of life. If, however, you will read Kropotkin's "Great French Revolution," you will be interested to discover how important a part was played in this revolution by economic forces. Underneath the political discontent of the merchants and middle classes lay a vast mass of social discontent of the peasants and workers. It was the masses of the people who made the revolution, but it was the middle classes who seized it and turned it to their own ends, putting down attempts toward economic equality, and confining the changes, so far as possible, to the political field. And everywhere throughout history, if you study revolutions, you find that same thing happening. You find, for example, Martin Luther fighting for the right to preach the word of God without consulting the Pope; but when the peasants of Germany rose and sought to set themselves free from feudal landlords, Luther turned against them, and called upon the princes to shoot them down. "The ass needs to be beaten, and the populace needs to be controlled with a strong hand." The landlords and propertied classes of England were willing to restrict the power of the king, and to give the vote to the educated and well-to-do; but from the time of Jack Cade to our own they shoot down the poor. But meantime, the industrial process continues; the modern factory system brings the workers together in larger and larger groups, and teaches them the lesson of class consciousness. So the time of the workers draws near. The first attempt in modern times to accomplish the social revolution and set up industrial democracy was in the Paris Commune. When the French empire collapsed, after the war with Germany in 1871, the workers of Paris seized control. They were massacred, some 50,000 of them, and the propertied classes of France established the present bourgeois republic, which has now become the bulwark of reaction throughout the Continent of Europe. Next came the Russian revolution of 1905, and this was an interesting illustration of the relation between the two waves of social progress. Russia was a backward country industrially, and according to theory not at all prepared for the social revolution. But nowadays the thoughts of men circulate all over the world, and the exiles from Russia had absorbed Marxian ideas, and were not prepared to accept a purely political freedom. So in 1905, after the Japanese war, when the people rose and forced the Czar to grant a parliament, the extremists made an effort to accomplish the social revolution at the same time. The peasants began to demand the land, and the workers the factories; whereupon the capitalists and middle classes, who wanted a parliament, but did not want Socialism, went over to the side of reaction, and both the political and social revolutions were crushed. But then came the great war, for which Russia with her incompetent government and her undeveloped industry was unprepared. The strain of it broke her down long before the other Allies, and in the universal suffering and ruin the Russian people were again forced to rise. The political revolution was accomplished, the Czar was imprisoned, and the Douma reigned supreme. Middle class liberalism throughout the world gave its blessings to this revolution, and hastened to welcome a new political democracy to the society of nations. But then occurred what to orthodox democratic opinion has been the most terrifying spectacle in human history. The Russian people had been driven too far towards starvation and despair; the masses had been too embittered, and they rose again, overthrowing not only their Czar and their grand dukes, but their capitalists and land-owners. For the first time in history the social revolution established itself, and the workers were in control of a great state. Ever since then we have seen exactly what we saw in Europe from 1789 onward, when the first political republic was established, and all the monarchies and empires of the world banded themselves together to stamp it out. We have witnessed a campaign of war, blockade, intrigue and propaganda against the Soviet government of Russia, all pretending to be carried on in the name of the Russian people, and for the purpose of saving them from suffering--but all obviously based upon one consideration and one alone, the fear that an effort at industrial self-government might possibly prove to be a success. Whether or not the Soviets will prove permanent, no one can say. But this much is certain; just as the French revolution sent a thrill around the world, and planted in the hearts of the common people the wonderful dream of freedom from kings and ruling classes, just so the Russian revolution has brought to the working masses the dream of freedom from masters and landlords. Everywhere in capitalist society this ferment is working, and in one country after another we see the first pangs of the new birth. Also we see capitalists and landlords, who once found "democracy," "free speech" and "equality before the law" useful formulas to break down the power of kings and aristocrats, now repudiating their old-time beliefs, and going back to the frankest reaction. We see, in our own "land of the free," the government refusing to reprint the Declaration of Independence during the war, and arresting men for quoting from it and circulating it; we even see the Department of Justice refusing to allow people to reprint the Sermon on the Mount! CHAPTER LIV THE CLASS STRUGGLE (Discusses history as a battle-ground between ruling and subject classes, and the method and outcome of this struggle.) There is a theory of social development, sometimes called the materialistic interpretation of history, and sometimes the economic interpretation of history. It is one of the contributions to our thought which we owe to Karl Marx, and like all the rest of Marxian theory, it is a subject of embittered controversy, not merely between Socialists and orthodox economists, but between various schools of revolutionary doctrine. For my part, I have never been a great hand for doctrine, whether ancient or modern; I am not much more concerned with what Marx taught than I am with what St. Paul taught, or what Martin Luther taught. My advice is to look at life with your own eyes, and to state in simple language the conclusions of your own thinking. Man is an eating animal; he has also been described as a tool-making animal, and might be described as an ideal-making animal. There is a tendency on the part of those who specialize in the making of ideals to repudiate the eating and the tool-making sides of man; which accounts for the quarrel between the Marxians and the moralists. All through history you find new efforts of man to develop his emotional and spiritual nature, and to escape from the humiliating limitations of the flesh. These efforts have many of them been animated by desperate sincerity, but none of them have changed the fundamental fact that man is an eating animal, an animal insufficiently provided by nature against cold, and with an intense repugnance to having streams of cold water run down back of his neck. The religious teachers go out with empty purse, and "take no thought for the morrow"; but the forces of nature press insistently upon them, and little by little they make compromises, they take to shelter while they are preaching, they consent to live in houses, and even to own houses, and to keep a bank account. So they make terms with the powers of this world, and the powers of this world, which are subtle, and awake to their own interests, find ways to twist the new doctrine to their ends. So the new religion becomes simply another form of the old hypocrisy; and it comes to us as a breath of fresh air in a room full of corruption when some one says, "Let us have done with aged shams and false idealisms. Let us face the facts of life, and admit that man is a physical animal, and cannot do any sane and constructive thinking until he has food and shelter provided. Let us look at history with unblinking eyes, and realize that food and shelter, the material means of life, are what men have been seeking all through history, and will continue to seek, until we put production and distribution upon a basis of justice, instead of a basis of force." Such is, as simply as I can phrase it, the materialistic interpretation of history. Put into its dress of scientific language it reads: the dominant method of production and exchange in any society determines the institutions and forms of that society. I do not think I exaggerate in saying that this formula, applied with judgment and discrimination, is a key to the understanding of human societies. Wherever man has moved into the stage of slavery and private property there has been some group which has held power and sought to maintain and increase it. This group has set the standards of behavior and belief for the community, and if you wish to understand the government and religion, the manners and morals, the philosophy and literature and art of that community, the first thing you have to do is to understand the dominant group and its methods of keeping itself on top. This statement applies, not merely to those cultural forms which are established and ordained by the ruling class; it applies equally well to the revolutionary forms, the behavior and beliefs of those who oppose the ruling class. For men do not revolt in a vacuum, they revolt against certain conditions, and the form of their revolt is determined by the conditions. Take, for example, primitive Christianity, which was certainly an effort to be unworldly, if ever such an effort was made by man. But you cannot understand anything about primitive Christianity unless you see it as a new form of slave revolt against Roman imperialism and capitalism. The theory of the class struggle is the master key to the bewilderments and confusions of history. Always there is a dominant class, holding the power of the state, and always there are subject classes; and sooner or later the subject classes begin protesting and struggling for wider rights. When they think they are strong enough, they attempt a revolt, and sometimes they succeed. If they do, they write the histories of the revolt, and their leaders become heroes and statesmen. If they fail, the histories are written by their oppressors, and the rebels are portrayed as criminals. One of the commonest of popular assumptions is that if the rebels have justice on their side, they are bound to succeed in the long run; but this is merely the sentimental nonsense that is made out of history. It is perfectly possible for a just revolt to be crushed, and to be crushed again and again; just as it is possible for a child which is ready to be born to fail to be born, and to perish miserably. The fact that the Huguenots had most of the virtue and industry and intelligence of France did not keep them from being slaughtered by Catholic bigots, and reaction riveted upon the French people for a couple of hundred years. The fact that the Moors had most of the industry of Spain did not keep them from being driven into exile by the Inquisition, and the intellectual life of the Spanish people strangled for three hundred or four hundred years. Some eight hundred years ago our ancestors in England brought a cruel and despotic king to battle, and conquered him, and on the field of Runnymede forced him to sign a grant of rights to Englishmen. That document is known as Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, and everyone who writes political history today recognizes it as one of the greatest of man's achievements, the beginning of a process which we hope will bring freedom and equality before the law to every human being on earth. And now we have come to the stage in our industrial affairs, when the organized workers seek to bring the monarchs of industry into the council chamber, and force them to sign a similar Great Charter, which will grant freedom and self-government to the workers. Just as King John was forced to admit that the power to tax and spend the public revenue belonged to the people of England, and not to the ruler; just so the workers will establish the principle that the finances of industry are a public concern, that the books are to be opened, and prices fixed and wages paid by the democratic vote of the citizens of industry. If that change is accomplished, the historian of the future will recognize it as another momentous step in progress; and he will heed the protests of the lords of industry, that they are being deprived of their freedom to do business, and of their sacred legal rights to their profits, as little as he heeded the protests of King John against the "treason" and "usurpation" and infringement of "divine right" by the rebellious barons. CHAPTER LV THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM (Shows how wealth is produced in modern society, and the effect of this system upon the minds of the workers.) In the beginning man got his living by hunting and fishing. Then he took to keeping flocks and herds, and later by slow stages he settled down to agriculture. With the introduction of slavery and the ownership of the land by ruling classes, there came to be a subject class of workers, who toiled on the land from dawn to dark, year in and year out, and got, if they were fortunate, an existence for themselves and their families. Whether these workers were called slaves or serfs or peasants, whether their product was taken from them in the form of taxes by the king, or of rent by the landlord, made no difference; the workers were bound to the soil, like the beasts with which they lived in intimate contact. They were drafted into armies, and made to fight for their lords and masters; they suffered pestilence and famine, fire and slaughter; but with infinite patience they would rebuild their huts, and dig and plant again, whether for the old master or for a new one. In the early days these workers made their own crude tools and weapons; but very early there must have been some who specialized in such arts, and with the growth of towns and communications came a new kind of labor, based upon a new system. Some enterprising man would buy slaves, or hire labor, and obtain a supply of raw material, and manufacture goods to be bartered or sold. He would pay his workers enough to draw them from the land, and would sell the product for what he could get, and the difference would be his profit. That was capitalism, and at first it was a thing of no importance, and the men who engaged in it had no social standing. But princes and lords needed weapons and supplies for their armies, and the men who could furnish these things became more and more necessary, and the states which encouraged them were the ones which rose to power. Merchants and sea-traders became the intimates of kings, and by the time of the Roman empire, capitalism was a great world power, dominating the state, using the armies of the state for its purposes. It went down with the rest of Roman civilization, but in the Middle Ages it began once more to revive, and by the end of the eighteenth century the merchants and money lenders of France, with their retainers, the lawyers and journalists, were powerful enough to take the control of society. Then, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, came the invention of machinery and of the power process. Capitalism began to grow like a young giant among pygmies. In the course of a century it has ousted all other methods of production, and all other forms of social activity. A hundred years ago the British House of Commons was a parliament of landlords; today it is a Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association. Out of the 707 members of the British House of Commons, 361 are members of the "Federation of British Industries," the labor-smashing organization of British "big business." And the same is true of every other parliament and congress in the modern capitalist state. Practically all the wealth of the world today is produced by the capitalist method, and distributed under capitalist supervision, and therefore capitalist ideas prevail in our society, to the practical exclusion of all other ideas. I have shown in "The Profits of Religion" how these ideas dominate the modern church, and in "The Brass Check" how they dominate the modern press. I plan to write two books, to show how they dominate education and literature. A hundred years ago an industry consisted of a half a dozen or a dozen men, working under the personal supervision of an owner, and using crude hand tools. Today it consists of a gigantic trust, owning and managing scores and perhaps hundreds of mills and factories, each employing thousands of workers. A corporation like the Steel Trust owns enough of the sources of its raw material to give it practical monopoly; it owns a fleet of vessels especially designed for ore-carrying; it owns its private railroads, to deliver the ore to the mills. Through its system of dummy directorates it has practical control of the main railroads over which it distributes its products; also of banks and trust companies and insurance companies, to gather the money of the public to finance its undertakings. It owns huge office buildings, and vast tracts of land upon which the homes of its workers are built. It has a private army for the defense of its property--a complete army of cavalry, infantry and artillery, including a large and highly efficient secret service department, with a host of informers and spies. It has newspapers for the purpose of propaganda, and it controls the government of every village, town and city in which it has important interests. If you will take the trouble to visit a "steel town," and make inquiries among public officials, newspaper men, and others who are "on the inside," you will discover that those in authority consider it necessary and proper that "steel" should control, and are unable to conceive any other condition of affairs. If you go to other parts of the country, where other great industries are located, you find it taken for granted that "copper" should control, or "lumber," or "coal," or "oil," or whatever it may be. Under the system of large scale capitalism, labor is a commodity, bought and sold in the market like any other commodity. Some years ago Congress was requested to pass a law contradicting this fundamental fact of world capitalism. Congress passed a law, very carefully worded so that no one could be sure what it meant, and a few years later the Supreme Court nullified the law. But all through this political and legal controversy the status of labor remained exactly the same; there was a "labor market," consisting of those members of the community who, in the formula of Marx, had nothing but their labor power to sell. These competed for recognition at the factory gates, and highly skilled foremen selected those who offered the largest quantity of labor power for the stated wage. So entirely impersonal is this process that there are great industries in America in which ninety per cent of the common labor force is hired and fired all over again in the course of a year. These men are put to work in gangs, under a system which enables one picked man to set the pace, and compel all the others to keep up with him, under penalty of being discharged. This process is known as "speeding up," and its purpose is to obtain from each worker the greatest quantity of energy in exchange for his daily wage. In the steel industry men work twelve hours a day for six days in the week, and then finish with a twenty-four-hour day. If they do not work so long in other industries, it is because experience has proven that the greatest quantity of energy can be obtained from them in a shorter time. There are very few men who can stand this pace for long. Those who are not crippled or killed in accidents are broken down at forty, and all the great corporations recognize this fact. Their foremen pick out the younger men, and practically all concerns have an age rule, and never hire men above forty or forty-five. I shall not in this book go into details concerning the fate of the worker under the profit system. I have written two novels, "The Jungle" and "King Coal," in which the facts are portrayed in detail, and it seems the part of common sense to refer the reader to these text-books. It will suffice here to set forth the main outlines of the situation. In every capitalist country of the world the masses of the people are herded into industries, in whose profits they have no share, and in whose welfare they have no interest. They do not know the people for whom they work; they have no human relationship, either with their work or with their employers. They see the surplus of their product drawn off to maintain a class of idlers, whose activities they know only through the scandals of the divorce courts and the luxury-love of the moving picture screen. They compete with one another for jobs, and bid down one another's wages; and if they attempt to organize and end this competition, their efforts are broken by newspaper propaganda and policemen's clubs. At the same time they know that monopoly, open or secret, prevails in the fixing of prices, and so they find the struggle to "get ahead" a losing one. In America it used to be possible for the young and energetic to "go West"; but now the wave of capitalism has reached the Pacific coast and been thrown back, and there is no more frontier. The man who works on the land has been through all the ages a solitary man. He is better friends with his horse and his cow than with his fellow humans. He is brutalized by incessant toil, he lives amid dirt and the filth of animals, he is, in the words of Edwin Markham: "A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stunted and stunned, a brother to the ox." He is a victim of natural forces which he does not understand, and inevitably therefore he is superstitious. Being alone, he is helpless against his masters, and only utter desperation drives him to revolt. But consider the capitalist system--how different the conditions of its workers! Here they are gathered into city slums, and their wits are sharpened by continual contact with their fellows. The printing press makes cheap the spread of information, and the soap-box makes it even cheaper. Any man with a grievance can shout aloud, and be sure of an audience to listen, and he can get a great deal said before the company watchman or the policeman can throttle him. Moreover, the modern worker is not struggling with drought and tempest and hail; he does not see his labors wiped out by volcanic eruption or lightning stroke; he is dealing with machinery, something that he himself has made, and that he fully understands. If a machine gets out of order, he does not fall down upon his knees and pray to God to fix it. All the training of his life teaches him the relationship of cause and effect, the adjustment of means to ends. So the modern worker, as a necessary consequence of his daily work, is practical, skeptical, and unsentimental in his psychology. And what is more, he is making all the rest of society of the same temperament. He is building roads out into the country, and building machines to roll over them; he is running telephone lines and sending newspapers and magazines and moving picture shows to the peasant and the farmer; so the young peasants and farmers hunger for the city, and they learn to fix machinery instead of praying to God. Such is the psychology of the modern working class; and the supreme achievement of their sharpened wits is an understanding of the capitalist process. As a matter of fact they did not make this discovery for themselves; it was made for them by middle-class men, lawyers and teachers and writers--Fourier, Owen, Marx, Lassalle. The modern doctrine is called by various names: Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, Bolshevism, Syndicalism, Collectivism. Later on I shall define these various terms, and point out the distinctions between them. For the moment I emphasize the factor they all have in common, and which is fundamental: they wish to break the power of class ownership and control of the instruments and means of production; they wish to replace private capitalism by some system under which the instruments and means of production are collectively owned and operated; and they look to the non-owning class, the proletarian, as the motive power by which this change is to be compelled. I shall in future refer to this as the "social revolutionary" doctrine; taking pains to explain that the word "revolutionary" is to be divested of its popular meaning of physical violence. It is perfectly conceivable that the change may be brought about peaceably, and I shall try to show before long that in modern capitalist states the decision as to whether it is brought about peaceably or by violence rests with the present masters of industry. CHAPTER LVI THE CAPITALIST PROCESS (How profits are made under the present industrial system and what becomes of them.) We have next to examine the structure of the capitalist order, basing our argument on facts which are admitted by everyone, including the most ardent defenders of the present system. All men have to have certain material things which we describe as goods. As these goods do not produce themselves, it is necessary that some should work. The workers must have tools; also they must have access to the land and the sources of raw materials. These means of production are owned by some individuals in the community, and this ownership gives them power to direct the work of the rest. Those who own the land and the natural sources of wealth we call capitalists, or business men, and those who do not own these things, or whose share in them is insignificant, are the proletariat, or working class. If you state to the average American that there is a capitalist class and a proletariat in this country, he will point out that many who are now members of the capitalist class were originally members of the proletariat; they have worked hard and saved, and accumulated property. But this is merely confusing the issue. The fact that some proletarians turn into capitalists and some capitalists into proletarians is important to the individuals concerned, but it does not alter the fact that there are two classes, capitalist and proletarian. Consider, by way of illustrating, a field with trees growing on it; we have earth, and we have trees, and the distinction between them is unmistakable. The roots of the trees go down into the earth, and take up portions of the earth and turn it into tree. The leaves and the dead branches fall, and in the course of time are turned once more to earth. There are all sorts of stages between earth and tree, and between tree and earth; but you would not therefore say that the word "earth" and the word "tree" are misnomers. The working men go to the business man and apply for work. The business man gives them work, and takes their product, and offers it in the market at a price which allows him a profit above cost. If he can sell at a profit, he repeats the process, and the worker has a job. If he cannot sell at a profit, the worker is out of a job. Here and there may be a benevolent business man who, rather than turn his workers out of a job, will sell his goods at cost, or even for a short time at a loss; but if he keeps the factory going simply for the benefit of his workers, and with no expectation of ever making a profit, that is a form of charity, and not the common system under which our business is now carried on. So it appears that the worker is dependent for his wages upon the ability of the business man to make a profit. The worker's life is inextricably bound up with the profit of the capitalist--no profit for the capitalist, no life for the worker. The capitalist, going out to look for markets for his goods, is seeking, not merely profit for himself, but life for his workers. Now, the business man pays a certain percentage of his total receipts for labor, another percentage for raw materials, another percentage for his overhead charges, and the rest is profit in various forms, rent to the landlord, interest to the bondholder, dividends to the stockholder. All this total sum goes to human individuals, and each has thus a certain amount of money to spend. They pay it over to other individuals for goods or services, and so the money keeps circulating, and business keeps going. That is as deep as the average mind probes into the process. But let us probe a little deeper. It is evident that, in the course of all this exchanging of goods, some individuals get a larger share than other individuals. Our government collects an income tax, and thus we have statistics representing what people are willing to admit about the share they get. In 1917 it appeared that, speaking roughly, one family out of six had an income of over $1,000 a year, and one family out of twelve had an income of over $2,000. But there were 19,000 families which admitted incomes of over $50,000 a year, and 300 with over $1,000,000 a year. Now the families that get less than a thousand dollars a year obviously have to spend the greater part of their income upon their immediate living expenses. But the families that get $50,000 a year do not need to spend everything, and most of them take the greater part of their income and reinvest it--that is, they spend it upon the creating of new machinery of production, railroads, mills, factories, office buildings, the whole elaborate structure of capitalist industry. Exactly what proportion of the total product of industry is thus taken and reinvested no one can say; but this we know, our cities are growing at an enormous rate, our manufacturing power is increasing by leaps and bounds, we are perfecting processes which enable one man to do the work of a hundred men, which increase the product of one man's labor a hundredfold. All this goes on blindly, automatically; a Niagara of goods of all sorts is poured out, and we call it "prosperity." But then suddenly a strange and bewildering thing happens. All at once, and without warning, orders fall off, values begin to drop, business collapses, factories are shut down, and millions of men are thrown out of jobs. Merchants look at one another with blanched faces; each one has been counting on paying his bills with the profits he was going to make, and now his profits are gone, and he can't pay. The newspapers and magazines keep insisting that it can't be true, that business is going to revive next week, that prosperity is just ahead. But the factories stay shut, and the millions of men stay idle. This is the condition in which we find ourselves as I write this book. It has been happening regularly in our history every ten years or so, ever since America started; we have had a hundred years to reflect upon it and to probe into the causes of it, and such is business intelligence in the most enlightened country in the world, you may search the pages of our newspapers from the first column of millionaire divorce suits to the last column of "situations wanted," and nowhere can you find one word to explain this mysterious calamity of "hard times"--how it comes to happen to our social system, or what could be done to prevent it! To supply this deficiency in present day thinking is our next task. CHAPTER LVII HARD TIMES (Explains why capitalist prosperity is a spasmodic thing, and why abundant production brings distress instead of plenty.) Let us picture a small island inhabited by six men. One of these men fishes, another hunts, another gathers cocoanuts, another raises goats for clothing, and so on. The six men among them produce by their labor all the necessities of their lives, and they exchange their products with one another. The island is productive, and each of the men is free, and makes his exchanges on equal terms; on that basis the industry of the island can continue indefinitely, and there will never be any trouble. There may sometimes be over-production, but it will not cause anyone to starve. If the fisherman is unusually lucky one day, he will be able to take a vacation for a few days, living on his fish and the products he exchanges for his fish. For the sake of convenience in future reference, I will describe this happy island as a "free" society; meaning that each of the members of this society has access on equal terms to the sources of wealth, and each owns the product of his own labor, without paying tribute to any one else for the right to labor, or to exchange his products. But now let us suppose that one of the men on the island is strong and aggressive; he takes a club and knocks down the other five men, and compels them to sign a piece of paper agreeing that hereafter he is the president of the land development company of the island, the chief stockholder in the goat-raising company, and owner of the fishing concession and the cocoanut grove; also, that hereafter goods shall not be bartered in kind, but shall be exchanged for money, and that he is the banker, and also the government, with the right to issue money. In this society you will find that the real work, the actually productive work, is done by five men, instead of by six, and these five do not get the full value of their labor. The fisherman will fish, but his product will no longer belong to himself; he will get part of it as wages, while the "business man" takes charge of the balance. So when there is a lucky day, there will be prosperity in the fishing industry, but this prosperity will not benefit the fisherman; he will have only his wage, and when he has caught too many fish, he will not have a few days' vacation, but will be out of a job. And exactly the same thing will happen to the goat-herd. He will probably have work all the year round, because goats have to be tended, but he will get barely enough to keep him alive, and the surplus skins and milk will go to the owner of the no-longer-happy island. Perhaps it will occur to the owner that the man who raises cocoanuts might also keep an eye on the goats, and so the goat-herd will be permanently out of a job, and will turn into what is called a tramp, or vagrant. Inasmuch as everything to eat on the island belongs to the owner, the ex-goat-herd will be tempted to become a criminal, and so it will be necessary for the owner to arm the cocoanut man with a club and make him into a policeman; or perhaps he will organize the fisherman and the hunter into a militia for the preservation of law and order. They will be glad to serve him, because, owing to the extreme productivity of the island, they will be out of jobs a great part of the time, and but for the generosity of the business man, would have no way of earning a living. But suppose that the cocoanut man should invent a machine for gathering a year's supply of nuts in a week; suppose the fisherman should devise a scheme to fill his boat with fish in a few minutes; and suppose that as a result of these inventions the business man got so rich that he moved to Paris, and no longer saw his workers, or even knew their names. Under these conditions you can see that overproduction and unemployment might increase on the island; and also the business man might seem less human and lovable to his wage slaves, and might need a larger police force. It might even happen that he would discover the need of a propaganda department, in order to keep his police force loyal, and a secret service to make sure that agitators did not get into the schools. The five islanders, having filled all the barns and storehouses, would be turned out to starve; and when they asked the reason, they would be told it was because they had produced a surplus of food. This may sound grotesque, but it is what is being said to 5,000,000 men in America as I write. There are clothing-workers who are going about in rags, and they are told it is because they have produced too much clothing. There are shoe-workers whose shoes are falling off their feet, and they are told it is because they have produced too many shoes. There are carpenters who have no homes, and they are told that a great many homes are needed, but unfortunately it doesn't pay the builders to go ahead just now. This may sound like a caricature, but it happens to be the most prominent single fact in the consciousness of 5,000,000 Americans at the close of the year 1921. No wonder they are discontented with the present order. The solution of the mystery is so simple that the 5,000,000 unemployed cannot be kept permanently from understanding it. The reason the five men on the island are starving is because one man owns the island and the others own nothing. If the island were community property, the five men would each own a share of the contents of the barns and storehouses, and would not be starving. If the 100,000,000 people of America owned the productive machinery of America, then instantly the unemployment crisis would pass like an evil dream. The farm-workers who need shoes would exchange their food with the starving shoe-workers, and the starving shoe-workers would have jobs. They would want clothing, and so the clothing-makers would start to work; and so on all the way down the line. There is only one thing necessary to make this possible, and that is the thing which we have agreed to call the social revolution. CHAPTER LVIII THE IRON RING (Analyzes further the profit system, which strangles production, and makes true prosperity impossible.) We have seen that in an exploiting society there is a surplus which is taken by the exploiter; and that under the modern system this surplus must be sold at a profit before production can continue. The vital fact in such a society is that the worker has not the money to buy back all that he produces; therefore it is inevitable that a surplus product should accumulate. When this happens, production must be cut down, and during that period the worker is without a job, and without means of living. The fact that he needs the product does not help him; the point is that he has not the money to buy it. In such a society the productive machinery is never used to the full. The machinery is controlled by a profit-seeking interest, seeking an opportunity to make sales, and restricting production according to the prospect of sales. So the actual product bears no relationship to the possible product, and people who live in an exploiting society can form no conception of true prosperity. For, you see, the market is limited by the competitive wage system. We have seen that in our own rich, prosperous country only one family out of six has more than $1,000 a year income; only one family out of twelve has $2,000 a year. It does not make any difference that the warehouses are bursting with goods; a family constitutes a market of so many dollars a year, and then, so far as the profit system is concerned, that family is non-existent; that family stops consuming, and the productive machinery is halted to that extent. I have been accustomed to portray the profit system under the simile of an iron ring riveted about the body of a baby. That ring would cause the baby some discomfort at the beginning, but it would not be serious, and the baby would get used to it. But as the baby grew the trouble caused by the ring would increase, and finally there would come a time when the baby would be suffering from a whole complication of troubles, and for each of these troubles there would be but one remedy--break the ring. Does the baby cry all the time? Break the ring! Is its digestion defective? Break the ring! Is it threatened with convulsions or with blood poisoning? Break the ring! Here is our industrial society, growing at a rate never equalled by any human baby; and here is this iron ring riveted about its middle. Here is poverty, here is unemployment, here is graft, here is crime, here is war and plague and famine; and for all these evils there is but one cause, and but one remedy. Break the ring! Set production free from the strangulation of the profit system. I will admit that there may have been a time in the history of the social infant when this ring was necessary. I admit that if the great industrial machine was to be constructed, it was necessary that the mass of the people should consume only part of what they produced, and should allow the balance to be reinvested as capital. But now it has been done, and the process is complete. We have a machine capable of producing many times more than we can consume; shall we still go on building that machine? Shall we go on starving ourselves, to save the money, to multiply over and over again the products, in order that we may be thrown out of work, and be starved even more completely? A few generations ago we had in colonial America a society that in part at least was "free." In that society everybody got the necessities of life. They did not have the modern Sunday supplement and the moving picture show, but they had bread and meat and good substantial clothing, and furniture so well made that we still preserve it. The children in those days grew up to be strong and sturdy men and women, who would have seen nothing to envy in the bodies or minds of the slum population of New York and Chicago. In short, they had all the true necessities of life; and yet their work was done by hand, the power process was unknown and undreamed of. Now comes modern machinery, and multiplies the productive power of the hand laborer by five, by ten, sometimes by a hundred. Here, for example, is the "Appeal to Reason" selling millions of cheap books for ten cents apiece, and making a profit on it; installing a gigantic press which takes paper, sheet after sheet, prints 128 pages of a book at one impression, and folds and stitches and binds the books, all in one process, and turns them out complete at the rate of 10,000 copies per hour. Here is a factory which turns out 100,000 automobiles a month. Here is a mill which turns out many millions of yards of cloth a month. If our colonial ancestors had been told about these marvels, they would have said instantly: "Then, of course, everybody in that society will have all the books they want, and all the clothing they want, and all the automobiles. Everybody in that society will have five or ten or one hundred times as much goods as we have." Imagine the bewilderment of our colonial ancestor if he had been told: "The majority of the people in that society will not have so much of the real necessities of life as you have. They will have a few cheap trinkets, designed to tickle their senses; they will have cheap newspapers, carefully contrived to keep their minds vacant and to keep them contented with their lot; they will have moving picture shows constructed for the same purpose; but all their material things will be flimsy, put together for show and not for permanence; their food will be adulterated, their clothing will be shoddy, everything they have will be made, not for their service, but for the profit of some one who lives by selling to them. The average wage earned by those who do the work of this new machine civilization will be less than half the amount necessary to purchase the necessities of a decent life, and one-tenth of the total population will be living in such poverty that they are unable to maintain physical fitness, or to rear their children into full sized men and women." CHAPTER LIX FOREIGN MARKETS (Considers the efforts of capitalism to save itself by marketing its surplus products abroad, and what results from these efforts.) If our analysis of present-day society is correct, we have the enormous populations of the modern industrial countries, living always on the verge of starvation, their chance for survival depending at all times upon the ability of their employers to find a profitable market for a surplus of goods. At first the employer seeks that market at home; but when the home markets are glutted, he goes abroad; and so develops the phenomenon of foreign trade and rivalry for foreign trade, as the basic fact of capitalism, and the fundamental cause of modern war. Let us get clear a simple distinction concerning foreign trade. There is a kind of trade which is normal, and would thrive in a "free" society. In the United States we can produce nearly all the necessities of life, but there are a few which we cannot produce--rubber, for example, and bananas, and good music. These things we wish to import. We buy them from other countries, and incur a debt, which we pay with products which the other countries need from us; wheat, for example, and copper, and moving pictures with cowboys in them. This is equal exchange, and a natural phenomenon. A "free" society would produce such surplus goods as were necessary to procure the foreign products that it desired. When it had produced that much, the workers would stop and take a vacation until they wanted more foreign products. But under capitalism we have an entirely different condition--we produce a surplus of goods which we _have_ to sell in order to keep our factories running, and to keep our working population from starving. And note that it does not help us to get back an equal quantity of foreign goods in exchange. We must have what we call "a favorable balance"; that is, we must have other people going into debt to us, so that we can be continually shipping out more goods than we take back; continually piling up credits which we can "negotiate," or turn into cash, so that we can go on and repeat the process of making more goods, selling them for more profits, and putting the surplus into the form of more machinery, to make still more goods and still more profits. And then, after a while, we come upon this embarrassing phenomenon; nations which buy and do not sell must either do it by sending us gold, or by our giving them credit. The sending of gold cannot go on indefinitely, because then we should have all the gold, and if other nations had none that would destroy their credit. On the other hand, business cannot be done by credit indefinitely; for the very essence of credit is a promise to pay, and payment can only be made in goods, and how can we take the goods without ruining our own industry? Fifteen years ago I pointed this out in a book. The argument was irrefutable, and the conclusion inescapable, but the few critics who noted it repeated their usual formula about "dreamers and theorists." Now, however, the business mills have ground on, and what was theory has become fact before our eyes. We have trusted the nations of Europe for some $10,000,000,000 worth of goods, and they are powerless to pay, and if they did pay, they would bankrupt American industry. France wishes to collect an enormous indemnity from Germany, but nobody can figure out how this indemnity can be paid without ruining French industry. The French have demanded coal from Germany, and have got more than they can use, and are "dumping" it in Belgium and Holland, with the result that the British coal industry is ruined. The French clamor that the Germans must pay for the destruction they wrought in Northern France, and the Germans offer to send German workmen to rebuild the ruined towns; but the French denounce this as an insult--it would deprive French workingmen of their jobs! So I might continue for pages, pointing out the manifold absurdities which result from a system of industry for the profit of a few, instead of for the use of all. Ever since I first began to read the newspapers, some twenty-five or thirty years ago, all our political life has been nothing but the convulsions of a social body tortured by the constricting ring of the profit system. Everywhere one group struggling for advantage over another group, and politicians engaged in playing one interest against another interest! My boyhood recollections of public life consist of campaign slogans having to do with the tariff: "production and prosperity," "reciprocity," "the full dinner pail," "the foreigner pays the tax," etc. The workingman, under the profit system, is like a man pounding away at a pump. He can get a thin trickle of water from the spout of the pump if he works hard enough, but in order to get it he has to supply ten times as much to some one who has tapped the pipe. But the tapping has been done underground, where the workingman cannot see it. All the workingman knows is that there is no job for him if the products of "cheap foreign labor" are allowed to be "dumped" on the American market. That is obvious, and so he votes for a tax on foreign imports, high enough to enable his own employer to market at a profit. He does not realize that he is thus raising the price of everything that he buys, and so leaving himself worse off than he was before. All governments are delighted with this tariff device, because they are thus enabled to get money from the public without the public's knowing it. "The foreigner pays the tax," we are told, and as a result of this arrangement the steel trust just before the war was selling its product at a high price to the American people, and taking its surplus abroad and selling it to the foreigner at half the domestic price. And we see this same thing in every line of manufacture, and all over the world. We see one nation after another withdrawing itself as a market for manufactured products, and entering the lists as a marketer. One more nation now able to fill all its own needs, and going out hungrily to look for foreign customers, adding to the glut of the world's manufactured products and the ferocity of international competition! At the close of the Civil War the total exports of the United States averaged approximately $300,000,000, and the total imports were about the same. In 1892 the exports first touched $1,000,000,000, while the imports were about nine-tenths of that sum. In the year 1913 the exports were nearly $2,500,000,000, while the imports were $600,000,000 less; and in the year 1920 our exports were over $8,000,000,000 and our imports a little over $5,000,000,000! So we have a "favorable balance" of almost $3,000,000,000 a year--and as a result we are on the verge of ruin! This "iron ring" of overproduction and lack of market exercises upon our industrial body a steady pressure, a slow strangling. But because the body is in convulsions, struggling to break the ring, the pressure of the ring is worse at some times than at others. We have periods of what we call "prosperity," followed by periods of panic and hard times. You must understand that only a small part of our business is done by means of cash payments, whether in gold or silver or paper money. Close to 99% of our business is done by means of credit, and this introduces into the process a psychological factor. The business man expects certain profits, and he capitalizes these expectations. Business booms, because everybody believes everybody else's promises; credit expands like a huge balloon, with the breath of everybody's enthusiasm. But meantime real business, the real market, remains just what it was before; it cannot increase, because of the iron ring which restricts the buying power of the mass of the people by the competitive wage. So presently the time comes when somebody realizes that he has over-capitalized his hopes; he curtails his orders, he calls in his money, and the impulse thus started precipitates a crash in the whole business world. We had such a crash in 1907, and I remember a Wall Street man explaining it in a magazine article entitled, "Somebody Asked for a Dollar." We learned one lesson by that panic; at least, the big financial men learned it, and had Congress pass what is called the "Federal Reserve Act," a provision whereby in time of need the government issues practically unlimited credit to banks. This, of course, is fine for the banks; it puts the credit of everybody else behind them, and all they have to do is to stop lending money--except to the big insiders--and sit back and wait, while the little men go to the wall, and the mass of us live on our savings or starve. We saw this happen in the year 1920, and for the first time we had "hard times" without having a financial panic. But instead we see prices staying high--because the banks have issued so much paper money and bank credits. CHAPTER LX CAPITALIST WAR (Shows how the competition for foreign markets leads nations automatically into war.) In a discussion of the world's economic situation, published in 1906, the writer portrayed the ruling class of Germany as sitting in front of a thermometer, watching the mercury rising, and knowing that when it reached the top, the thermometer would break. This thermometer was the German class system of government, and the mercury was the Socialist vote. In 1870 the vote was 30,000, in 1884 it was 549,000, in 1893 it was 1,876,000, in 1903 it was 3,008,000, in 1907 it was 3,250,000, in 1911 it was 4,250,000. Writing between 1906 and 1913, I again and again pointed out that this increase was the symptom of social discontent in Germany, caused by the overproduction of invested capital throughout the world, and the intensification of the competition for world markets. I pointed out that a slight increase in the vote would be sufficient to transfer to the working class of Germany the political power of the German state; and I said that the ruling class of Germany would never permit that to happen--when it was ready to happen Germany would go to war, to seize the trade privileges of some other nation. There was a time when wars were caused by national and racial hatreds. There are still enough of these venerable prejudices left in the world, but no student of the subject would deny that the main source of modern wars is commercial rivalry. In 1917 we sent Eugene V. Debs to prison for declaring that the late world war was a war of capitalist greed. But two years later President Wilson, who had waged the war, declared in a public speech that everybody knew it had been a war of commercial rivalries. The aims of modern war-makers are two. First, capitalism must have raw materials, including coal and oil, the sources of power, and gold and silver, the bases of credit. Parts of the world which are so unfortunate as to be rich in these substances become the bone of contention between rival financial groups, organized as nations. Some sarcastic writer has defined a "backward" nation as one which has gold mines and no navy. We are horrified to read of the wars of the French monarchs, caused by the jealous quarrels of mistresses; but in 1905 we saw Russia and Japan go to war and waste a million lives because certain Russian grand dukes had bribed certain Chinese mandarins and obtained concessions of timber on the Yalu River. We now observe France and Germany vowed to undying hate because of iron mines in Lorraine, and the efforts of France to take the coal mines of Silesia from Germany, and give them to Poland, which is another name for French capitalism. The other end sought by the war-makers is markets for manufactured products, and control of trade routes, coaling stations and cables necessary to the building up of foreign trade. England has been "mistress of the seas" for some 300 years, which meant that her traders had obtained most of these advantages. But then came Germany, with her newly developed commercialism, shoving her rival out of the way. The Englishman was easy-going; he liked to play cricket, and stop and drink tea every afternoon. But the German worked all day and part of the night; he trained himself as a specialist, he studied the needs of his customers--all of which to the Englishman was "unfair" competition. But here were the populations of the crowded slums, dependent for their weekly wage and their daily bread upon the ability of the factories to go on turning out products! Here was the ever-blackening shadow of unemployment, the mutterings of social discontent, the agitators on the soap-boxes, the workers listening to them with more and more eager attention, and the journalists and politicians and bankers watching this phenomenon with a ghastly fear. So came the great war. Social discontent was forgotten over night, and England and France plunged in to down their hated rival, once and for all time. Now they have succeeded: Germany's ships have been taken from her, and likewise her cables and coaling stations; the Berlin-Bagdad Railroad is a forgotten dream; the British sit in Constantinople, and the traffic goes by sea. American capitalism wakes up, and rubs its eyes after a debauch of Presbyterian idealism, and discovers that it has paid out some $20,000,000,000, in order to confer all these privileges and advantages upon its rivals! Ever since I can remember the world, there have been peace societies; I look back in history and discover that ever since there have been wars, there have been prophets declaiming against them in the name of humanity and God. As I write, there is a great world conference on disarmament in session in Washington, and all good Americans hope that war is to be ended and permanent peace made safe. All that I can do at this juncture is to point out the fundamental and all-controlling fact of present-day economics: that for the ruling class of any country to agree to disarmament and the abolition of war, is for that class to sign its own death warrant and cut its own throat. American capitalism can survive on this earth only by strangling and destroying Japanese capitalism and British capitalism, and doing it before long. The far-sighted capitalists on both sides know that, and are making their preparations accordingly. What the members of the peace societies and the diplomats of the disarmament conferences do is to cut off the branches of the tree of war. They leave the roots untouched, and then, when the tree continues to thrive, they are astounded. I conclude this chapter with a concrete illustration, cut from my morning newspaper. We went to war against German militarism, and to make the world safe for democracy--meaning thereby capitalist commercialism. We commanded the German people to "beat their swords into plough-shares"; that is, to set their Krupp factories to making tools of peace; and they did so. We saddled them with an enormous indemnity, making them our serfs for a generation or two, and compelling them to hasten out into the world markets, to sell their goods and raise gold to pay us. And now, how does their behavior strike us? Do we praise their industry, and fidelity to their obligations? Here are the headlines of a news despatch, published by the Los Angeles Times on December 10, 1921, at the top of the front page, right hand column, the most conspicuous position in the paper. Read it, and understand the sources of modern war! _NEW ATTACK BY BERLIN_ * * * * * DUMPING GOODS BY WHOLESALE * * * * * Cheap German Trash Puts Thousands of Americans Out of Employment * * * * * Glove Plants Shut Down and Potash Industry Killed by Teuton Intrigue CHAPTER LXI THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRODUCTION (Shows how much wealth we could produce if we tried, and how we proved it when we had to.) One of the commonest arguments in defense of the present business system runs as follows: The amount of money which is paid to labor is greatly in excess of the amount which is paid to capital. Suppose that tomorrow you were to abolish all dividends and profits, and divide the money up among the wage workers, how much would each one get? The sum is figured for some big industry, and it is shown that each worker would get one or two hundred dollars additional per year. Obviously, this would not bring the millennium; it would hardly be worth while to take the risk of reducing production in order to gain so small a result. But now we are in position to realize the fallacy of such an argument. The tax which capital levies upon labor is not the amount which capital takes for itself, but the amount which it prevents labor from producing. The real injury of the profit system is not that it pays so large a reward to a ruling class; it is the "iron ring" which it fastens about industry, barring the workers from access to the machinery of production except when the product can be sold for a profit. Labor pays an enormous reward to the business man for his management of industry, but it would pay labor to reward the business man even more highly, if only he would take his goods in kind, and would permit labor, after this tax is paid, to go on making those things which labor itself so desperately needs. But, you see, the business man does not take his goods in kind. The owner of a great automobile factory may make for himself one automobile or a score of automobiles, but he quickly comes to a limit where he has no use for any more, and what he wants is to sell automobiles and "make money." He does not permit his workers to make automobiles for themselves, or for any one else. He reserves the product of the factory for himself, and when he can no longer sell automobiles at a profit, he shuts the workers out and automobile-making comes to an end in that community. Thus it appears that the "iron ring" which strangles the income of labor, strangles equally the income of capital. It paralyzes the whole social body, and so limits production that we can form no conception of what prosperity might and ought to be. Consider the situation before the war. We were all of us at work under the competitive system, and with the exception of a few parasites, everybody was occupied pretty close to the limit of his energy. If any one had said that it would be possible for our community to pitch in and double or treble our output, you would have laughed at him. But suddenly we found ourselves at war, and in need of a great increase in output, and we resolved one and all to achieve this end. We did not waste any time in theoretical discussions about the rights of private capital, or the dangers of bureaucracy and the destruction of initiative. Our government stepped in and took control; it took the railroads and systematized them, it took the big factories and told them exactly what to make, it took the raw materials and allotted them, where they were needed, it fixed the prices of labor, and ordered millions of men to this or that place, to this or that occupation. It even seized the foodstuffs and directed what people should eat. In a thousand ways it suppressed competition and replaced it by order and system. And what was the result? We took five million of our young men, the very cream of our industrial force, and withdrew them from all productive activities; we put them into uniforms, and put them through a training which meant that they were eating more food and wearing more clothing and consuming more goods than nine-tenths of them had ever done in their lives before. We built camps for them, and supplied them with all kinds of costly products of labor, such as guns and cartridges, automobiles and airplanes. We treated two million of them to an expensive trip to Europe, and there we set them to work burning up and destroying the products of industry, to the value of many billions of dollars. And not only did we supply our own armies, we supplied the armies of all our allies. We built millions of dollars worth of ships, and we sent over to Europe, whether by private business or by government loans, some $10,000,000,000 worth of goods--more than ten years of our exports before the war. All the labor necessary to produce all this wealth had to be withdrawn from industry, so far as concerned our domestic uses and needs. It would not be too much to say that from domestic industry we withdrew a total of ten million of our most capable labor force. I think it would be reasonable to say that two-thirds of our productive energies went to war purposes, and only one-third was available for home use. And yet, we did it without a particle of real suffering. Many of us worked hard, but few of us worked harder than usual. Most of us got along with less wheat and sugar, but nobody starved, nobody really suffered ill health, and our poor made higher wages and had better food than ever in their lives before. If this argument is sound, it proves that our productive machinery is capable, when properly organized and directed, of producing three times the common necessities of our population. Assuming that our average working day is nine hours, we could produce what we at present consume by three hours of intelligently directed work per day. Let us look at the matter from another angle. Just at present the hero of the American business man is Herbert Hoover; and Mr. Hoover recently appointed a committee, not of Socialists and "Utopians," but of engineering experts, to make a study of American productive methods. The report showed that American industry was only thirty-five or forty per cent efficient. Incidentally, this "Committee on Waste" assessed, in the case of the building industry, sixty-five per cent of the blame against management and only twenty-one per cent against labor; in six fundamental industries it assessed fifty per cent of the blame against management and less than twenty-five per cent against labor. Fifteen years ago a professor of engineering, Sidney A. Reeve by name, made an elaborate study of the wastes involved in our haphazard and planless industrial methods, and embodied his findings in a book, "The Cost of Competition." His conclusion was that of the total amount of energy expended in America, more than seventy per cent was wasted. We were doing one hundred per cent of work and getting thirty per cent of results. If we would get one hundred per cent of results, we should produce three and one-third times as much wealth, and the income of our workers would be increased one or two thousand dollars a year. Robert Blatchford in his book, "Merrie England," has a saying to the effect that it makes all the difference, when half a dozen men go out to catch a horse, whether they spend their time catching the horse or keeping one another from catching the horse. Our next task will be to point out a few of the ways in which good, honest American business men and workingmen, laboring as intelligently and conscientiously as they know how, waste their energies in keeping one another from producing goods. CHAPTER LXII THE COST OF COMPETITION (Discusses the losses of friction in our productive machine, those which are obvious and those which are hidden.) The United States government is by far the largest single business enterprise in the United States; and a study of congressional appropriations in 1920, made by the United States Bureau of Standards, reveals the fact that ninety-three per cent of the total income of the government went to paying for past wars or preparing for future wars. We have shown that modern war is a product of the profit system, and if civilized nations would put their industry upon a co-operative basis, they could forget the very idea of war, and we should then receive fourteen times as much benefit from our government as we receive at present; we should have fourteen times as good roads, fourteen times as many schools, fourteen times as prompt a postoffice and fourteen times as efficient a Congress. What it would mean to industry to abolish war is something wholly beyond the power of our imagination to conceive; for along with ninety-three per cent of our government money there goes into military preparation the vast bulk of our intellectual energy and inventive genius, our moral and emotional equipment. Next, strikes and the losses incidental to strikes, and the costs of preparing against strikes. This includes, not merely the actual loss of working time, it includes police and militia, private armies of gunmen, and great secret service agencies, whose total income runs up into hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Industrial warfare is simply the method by which capitalists and workers determine the division of the product of industry; as if two men should co-operate in raising poultry, and then fall to quarrelling over the ownership of the eggs, and settle the matter by throwing the eggs at each other's heads. Next, bankruptcy. Statistics show that regularly some ten per cent of our business enterprises fail every year. Take any block occupied by little business men, grocers and haberdashers and "notions," and you will see that they are always changing. Each change represents a human tragedy, and the total is a frightful waste of human energy; it happens because we can think of no better way to distribute goods than to go through the work of setting up a business, and then discover that it cannot succeed because the neighborhood is already overstocked with that kind of goods. Next, fires which are a result of bankruptcy. You may laugh, perhaps, thinking that I am making a joke; but every little man who fails in business knows that he has a choice of going down in the social scale, or of setting fire to his stock some night, and having a big insurance company set him on his feet again. The result is that a certain percentage of bankrupts do regularly set fire to their stores. Some fifteen years ago there was published in "Collier's Weekly" a study of the costs to society of incendiary fires. The Fire Underwriters' Association estimated the amount as a quarter of a billion dollars a year; and all this cost, you understand, is paid out of the pockets of those who insure their homes and their stores, and do not burn them down. From this follows the costs of insurance, and the whole insurance industry, which is inevitable under the profit system, but is entire waste so far as true production is concerned. Big enterprises like the Steel Trust do not carry insurance, and neither does the United States Postoffice. They are wealthy enough to stand their own losses. A national co-operative enterprise would be in the same position, and the whole business of collecting money for insurance and keeping records and carrying on lawsuits would be forgotten. Next, advertising. It would be no exaggeration to say that seventy per cent of the material published in American newspapers and magazines today is pure waste; and therefore seventy per cent of the labor of all the people who cut down forests and manufacture and transport paper and set up type and print and distribute publications is wasted. There is, of course, a small percentage of advertising that is useful, but most of it is boasting and falsehood, and even where it tells the truth it simply represents the effort of a merchant to persuade you to buy in his store instead of in a rival store--an achievement which is profitable to the merchant, but utterly useless to society as a whole. This same statement applies to all traveling salesmen, and to a great percentage of middlemen. It applies also to a great part of delivery service. If you live in a crowded part of any city, you see a dozen milk wagons pass your door every morning, doing the work which could be done exactly as well by one. That is only one case out of a thousand I might name. Next, crime. I have already discussed the crime of arson, and I might discuss the crimes of pocket-picking, burglary, forgery, and a hundred others in the same way. I am aware of the fact that there may be a few born criminals; there may be a few congenital cheats, whom we should have to put in hospitals. But we have only to consult the crime records, during the war and after the war, in order to see that when jobs are hunting men there are few criminals, and when men are hunting jobs there are many criminals. I have no figures as to the cost of administering justice in the United States--policemen, courts and jails--but it must be hundreds of millions of dollars every year. I have discussed at great length the suppression of the productive power of society. I should not fail to mention the suppression of the inventive power of society, a factor less obvious, but probably in the long run even greater. Every one familiar with the inside of a big industry knows that hundreds and even thousands of useful processes are entirely suppressed, because it would not pay one particular concern to stand the expense of the changes involved. You know how, during the war, our government brought all the makers of engines together and perfected in triumph a "Liberty motor." But now we have gone back to private interest and competition, and each concern is jealously engaged in guarding its own secrets, and depriving industry as a whole of the benefit of everything that it learns. Each is spying upon the others, stealing the secrets of the others, stealing likewise from those who invent new ideas--and thus discouraging them from inventing any more. I use this word "discourage," and I might write a chapter upon it. What human imagination can conceive the amount of social energy that is lost because of the factor of discouragement, directly caused by the competitive method? Who can figure what it means to human society that a great percentage of the people in it should be haunted by fear of one sort or another--the poor in fear of unemployment, sickness and starvation, the little business man in fear of bankruptcy and suicide, the big business man in fear of hard times and treachery of his competitors, the idle rich in fear of robbery and blackmail, and the whole community in fear of foreign war and domestic tumult! Anyone might go on and elaborate these factors that I have named, and think of scores of others. Anyone familiar with business life or with industrial processes would be able to put his finger on this or that enormous saving which he would be able to make if he and all his rivals could combine and come to an agreement. This has been proven over and over again in large-scale industry; it is the fact which has made of large-scale industry an overwhelming power, sucking all the profits to itself, reaching out and taking in new fields of human activity, and setting at naught all popular clamor and even legal terrors. How can anyone, seeing these facts, bring himself to deny that if we did systematize production and make it one enterprise, precisely adapted to one end, we should enormously increase the results of human labor, and the benefit to all who do the world's work? A good deal of this waste we can stop when we get ready, and other parts of it our bountiful mother nature will replace. When in a world war we kill some ten or twenty millions of the flower of our young manhood, we have only to wait several generations, and our race will be as good as ever. But, on the other hand, there is some waste that can never be repaired, and this is the thing truly frightful to contemplate. When we dig the iron ore out of the bowels of the earth and rust it away in wars, we are doing something our race can never undo. And the same is true of many of our precious substances: phosphorus, sulphur, potash. When we cut down the forests from our mountain slopes, and lay bare the earth, we not merely cause floods and washouts, and silt up our harbors, we take away from the surface of our land the precious life-giving soil, and make a habitable land into a desert, which no irrigating and reforesting can ever completely restore. The Chinese have done that for many centuries, and we are following in their footsteps; more than six hundred million wagon-loads of our best soil are washed down to the sea every year! If you wish to know about these matters, I send you to a book, "On Board the Good Ship Earth," by Herbert Quick. It is one of the most heart-breaking books you ever read, yet it is merely a quiet statement of the facts about our present commercial anarchy. CHAPTER LXIII SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM (Discusses the idea of the management of industry by the state, and the idea of its management by the trade unions.) Let us now assume that we desire to abolish the wastes of the competitive method, and to put our industry on a basis of co-operation. How should we effect the change, and how should we run our industry after it was done? Let us take the United States Steel Corporation. What change would be necessary to the socializing of this concern? United States Steel is owned by a group of stockholders, and governed by a board of directors elected by them. The owners are now to be bought out with government bonds, and the board of directors retired. It may also be necessary to replace a certain number of the higher executive officials, who are imbued entirely with the point of view of this board, and have to do with finance, rather than with production. Of course, some other governing authority would have to be put in control. What would this authority be? There are several plans before the world, several different schools of thought, which we shall consider one by one. First, the Socialist program. The Socialist says, "Consider the postoffice, how that is run. It is run by the President, who appoints a Postmaster-General as his executive. Let us therefore turn the steel industry over to the government, and let the President appoint another member of his cabinet, a Director of Steel; or let there be a commission, similar to the Interstate Commerce Commission, or the various war industry boards." Any form of management of the steel industry which provides for its control and operation by our United States government is Socialism of one sort or another. There has been, of late, a great deal of dissatisfaction with government, on the part of the general public, and also of labor. The postoffice clerks, for example, complain that they are inadequately paid and autocratically managed, deprived of their rights not merely as workers but as citizens. The steel workers complain that when they go on strike against their masters, the government sends in troops and crushes their strike, regardless of the rights or wrongs of it. In order to meet such tactics, labor goes into politics, and elects here and there its own representatives; but these representatives become mysteriously affected by the bureaucratic point of view, and even where they try hard, they do not accomplish much for labor. Therefore, labor becomes disgusted with the political process, and labor men do not welcome the prospect of being managed by government. If you ask such men, they will say: "No; the politicians don't know anything about industry, and can't learn. The people who know about industry are those who work in it. The true way to run an industry is through an organization of the workers, both of hand and brain. The true way to run the Steel Trust is for all the workers in it, men and women, high and low, to be recognized by law as citizens of that industry; each shop must elect its own delegates to run that shop, and elect a delegate to a central parliament of the industry, and this industry in turn must elect delegates to a great parliament or convention of all the delegates of all the industries. In such a central gathering every one would be represented, because every person would be a producer of some sort, and whether he was a steel worker or a street sweeper or a newsboy, he would have a vote at the place where he earns his living, and would have a say in the management of his job. The great central parliament would elect an executive committee and a president, and so we should have a government of the workers, by the workers, for the workers." This idea is known as Syndicalism, derived from the French word "syndicat," meaning a labor union. Since the Russian revolution it has come to be known as soviet government, "soviet" being the Russian word for trade council. Now, taking these two ideas of Socialism and Syndicalism, it is evident that they may be combined in various ways, and applied in varying degrees. It is perfectly conceivable, for example, that the people of the United States might elect a president pledged to call a parliament of industry, and to delegate the control of industry to this parliament. He might delegate the control to a certain extent, and provide for its extension, step by step; so our society might move into Syndicalism by the way of Socialism. You have only to put your mind on the possibilities of the situation to realize that one method shades into the other with a great variety of stages. Consider next the stages between capitalism and Socialism. We have in the United States some industries which are purely capitalistic; for example, the Steel Trust, which is privately owned, and has been powerful enough, not merely to suppress every effort of its workers to organize, but every effort of the government to regulate it. On the other hand, the United States Postoffice represents State Socialism; although the workers have been forbidden to organize, and the management of the industry is so arbitrary that I have always preferred to call it State Capitalism. Likewise the United States army and navy represent State Socialism. When we had the job of putting the Kaiser out of business, we did not hire Mr. Rockefeller to do it; it never once occurred to our advocates of "individualism," of "capitalist enterprise and initiative," to suggest that we should hire out our army and navy, or employ the Steel Trust or the Powder Trust to organize its own army and navy to do the fighting for us. Likewise, for the most part, we run the job of educating our children by the method of municipal Socialism. We run our libraries in the same way, and likewise our job of fire protection. It is interesting to note how in every country the line between capitalism and Socialism is drawn in a different place. In America we run practically all our libraries for ourselves, but it would seem to us preposterous to think of running our theatres. In Europe, however, they have state-owned theatres, which set a far higher standard of art than anything we know at home. Also, they have state-owned orchestras and opera-houses, something we Americans leave to the subscriptions of millionaires. In Europe it seems perfectly natural to the people that the state should handle their telegrams in connection with the postoffice; but if you urge government ownership of the telegraphs in the United States, they tell you that the proposition is "socialistic," and that saves the need of thinking about it. We take it for granted that our cities could run the libraries--even though we were glad when Carnegie came along and saved us the need of appropriating money for buildings. Just why a city should be able to run a library, and should not be able to run an opera-house, or a newspaper, is something which has never been made clear to me. Let us next examine the stages between capitalism and Syndicalism. A great many large corporations are making experiments in what they call "shop management," allowing the workers membership in the boards of directors and a voice in the conditions of their labor. This is Syndicalism so far as it goes. Likewise it is Syndicalism when the clothing workers and the clothing manufacturers meet together and agree to the setting up of a permanent committee to work out a set of rules for the conduct of the industry, and to fix wages from time to time. Obviously, these things are capable of indefinite extension, and in Europe they are being developed far more rapidly. For example, in Italy the agricultural workers are organized, and are gradually taking possession of the great estates, which are owned by absentee landlords. They wage war upon these estates by means of sabotage and strikes, and then they buy up the estates at bargain prices and develop them by co-operative labor. This has been going on in Italy for ten years, and has become the most significant movement in the country. It is a triumph of pure Syndicalism; and such is the power of pure capitalism in the United States that the American people have not been allowed to know anything about this change. Next, what are the stages between Socialism and Syndicalism? These also are infinite in number and variety. As a matter of fact, there are very few Socialists who advocate State Socialism without any admixture of Syndicalism. The regular formula of the Socialist party is "the social ownership and democratic control of the instruments and means of production;" and what the phrase "democratic control" means is simply that you introduce into your Socialist mixture a certain flavoring of Syndicalism, greater or less, according to your temperament. In the same way there are many Syndicalists who are inclined toward Socialism. In every convention of radical trade unionists, such as, for example, the I. W. W., you find some who favor political action, and these will have the same point of view as the more radical members of the Socialist party, who urge a program of industrial as well as political action. CHAPTER LXIV COMMUNISM AND ANARCHISM (Considers the idea of goods owned in common, and the idea of a society without compulsion, and how these ideas have fared in Russia.) The Russian revolution has familiarized us with the word Communism. In the beginning of the revolutionary movement Communism denoted what we now call Socialism; for example, the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels became the platform of the Social-democratic parties. But because most of these parties supported their governments during the war, the more radical elements have now rejected the word Socialism, and taken up the old word Communism. In the Russian revolution the Communists went so far as to seize all the property of the rich, and so the word Communism has come to bear something of its early Christian significance. It is obvious that here, too, it is a question of degree, and Socialism will shade into Communism by an infinite variety of stages, depending upon what forms of property it is decided to socialize. The Socialist formula commonly accepted is that "goods socially used shall be socially owned, and goods privately used shall be privately owned." If you own a factory, it will be taken by the state, or by the workers, and made social property like the postoffice; but no Socialist wants to socialize your clothing, or your books, any more than he wants to socialize your toothbrush. But when you come to apply this formula, you run quickly into difficulties. Suppose you are a millionaire, and own a palace with one or two hundred rooms, and a hundred servants. Do you use that socially, or do you use it privately? And suppose there is a scarcity of houses, and thousands of children are dying of tuberculosis in crowded tenement rooms? You own a dozen automobiles, and do you use them all privately? I point out to you that in time of emergency the capitalist state does not hesitate over such a problem; it seizes your palace and turns it into a hospital, it takes all your cars and uses them to carry troops. It should be obvious that a proletarian state would be tempted by this precedent. The Communists also have a formula, which reads: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his necessity." I do not see how any sensitive person can deny that this is an extremely fine statement of an ideal in social life. We take it quite for granted in family life; if you knew a family in which that rule did not apply, you would consider it an unloving and uncivilized family. I believe that when once industry has been socialized, and we have a chance to see what production can become, we shall find ourselves quickly adopting that family custom as our law, for all except a few congenital criminals and cheats. We shall find that we can produce so much wealth that it is not worth while keeping count of unimportant items. If today you meet someone on the street and ask him for a match or a pin, you do not think of offering to pay him. This is an automatic consequence of the cheapness of matches and pins. Once upon a time you were stopped on the road every few miles and made to pay a few cents toll. I remember seeing toll-gates when I was a boy, but I don't think I have seen one for twenty years. In exactly the same way, under socialized industry, we shall probably make street-car traffic free, and then railroad traffic; we shall abolish water meters and gas meters and electric light meters, also telephone charges, except perhaps for long distances, and telegraph tolls for personal messages. Then, presently, we shall find ourselves with such a large wheat crop that we shall make bread free; and then music and theatres and clothing and books. At present we use furniture and clothing as a means of manifesting our economic superiority to our fellowmen. One of the most charming books in our language is Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class," in which these processes are studied. We shall, of course, have to raise up a new generation, unaccustomed to the idea of class and of class distinction, before we could undertake to supply people with all the clothing they wanted free of charge. The Russian theorists made haste to carry out these ideas all at once; they tried to leap several centuries in the evolution of Russian society. They ordained complete Communism in land; but the peasants would have nothing to do with such notions--each wanted his own land, and what he produced on it. The Soviets have now been forced to give way, not merely to the peasants, but to the traders; and so we see once again that it is better to take one step forward than to take several steps forward and then several steps backward. The Russian revolution is not yet completed, so no one can say how many steps backward it will be forced to take. This revolution was an interesting combination of the ideas of Socialism and Syndicalism. The trade unionists seized the factories, and made an effort at democratic control of industry. At the same time the state was overthrown by a political party, the Bolsheviks, who set up a dictatorship of the proletariat. Because of civil war and outside invasion, the democratic elements in the experiment have been more and more driven into the background, and the authority of the state has correspondingly increased. This causes us to think of the Soviet system as necessarily opposed to democracy, but this is not in any way a necessary thing. There is no inevitable connection between industrial control by the workers and a dictatorship over the state. In Germany the state is proceeding to organize a national parliament of industry, and to provide for management of the factories by the labor unions. The Italian government has promised to do the same thing. These, of course, are capitalist governments, and they will keep their promises only as they are made to; but it is a perfectly possible thing that in either of these countries a vote of the people might change the government, and put in authority men who would really proceed to turn industry over to the control of the workers. That would be the Soviet or Syndicalist system, brought about by democratic means, without dictatorship or civil war. Another group of revolutionary thinkers whose theories must be mentioned are the Anarchists. The word Anarchy is commonly used as a synonym for chaos and disorder, which it does not mean at all. It means the absence of authority; and it is characteristic of people's view of life that they are unable to conceive of there being such a thing as order, unless it is maintained by force. The theory of the Anarchist is that order is a necessity of the human spirit, and that people would conform to the requirements of a just order by their own free will and without external compulsion. The Anarchist believes that the state is an instrument of class oppression, and has no other reason for being. He wishes the industries to be organized by free associations of the people who work in them. Some of the greatest of the world's moral teachers have been Anarchists: Jesus, for example, and Shelley and Thoreau and Tolstoi, and in our time Kropotkin. These men voiced the highest aspirations of the human spirit, and the form of society which they dreamed is the one we set before us as our final goal. But the world does not leap into perfection all at once, and meantime here we have the capitalist system and the capitalist state, and what attitude shall we take to them? There are impassioned idealists who refuse to make any terms with injustice, or to submit to compulsion, and these preach the immediate destruction of capitalist government, and capitalist government responds with prison and torture, and so we have some Anarchists who throw bombs. There are those who call themselves "philosophic" Anarchists, wishing to indicate thereby that they preach this doctrine, but do not attempt to carry it into action as yet. Some among these verge toward the Communist point of view, and call themselves Communist-anarchists; such was Kropotkin, whose theories of social organization you will find in his book "The Conquest of Bread." There are others who call themselves Syndicalist-anarchists, finding their centers of free association in the radical labor unions. After the Russian revolution, the Anarchists found themselves in a dilemma, and their groups were torn apart like every other party and class in Russia. Here was a new form of state set up in society, a workers' state, and what attitude should the Anarchists take toward that? Many of them stood out for their principles, and resisted the Bolshevik state, and put the Bolsheviks under the embarrassing necessity of throwing them into jail. We good orthodox Americans, who are accustomed to dump Socialists and Communists and Syndicalists and Anarchists all together into one common kettle, took Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and shipped them over to Russia, where we thought they belonged. Now our capitalist newspapers find it strange that these Anarchists do not like the Russian government any better than they like the American government! On the other hand, a great many Anarchists have suddenly found themselves compelled by the Russian situation to face the facts of life. They have decided that a government is not such a bad thing after all--when it is your own government! Robert Minor, for example, has recanted his Anarchist position, and joined the Communists in advocating the dropping of all differences among the workers, all theories as to the future, and concentrating upon the immediate task of overthrowing capitalist government and keeping it overthrown. In every civilized nation the Russian revolution has had this effect upon the extreme revolutionists. It has given them a definite aim and a definite program upon which they can unite; it has presented to capitalist government the answer of force to force; it has shown the masters of industry in precise and definite form what they have to face--unless they set themselves immediately and in good faith to the task of establishing real democracy in industry. CHAPTER LXV SOCIAL REVOLUTION (How the great change is coming in different industries, and how we may prepare to meet it.) From a study of the world's political revolutions we observe that a variety of governmental forms develop, and that different circumstances in each country produce different institutions. Suppose that back in the days of the French monarchy some one asked you how France was going to be governed as a political republic; how would elections be held, what would be the powers of the deputies, who would choose the premier, who would choose the president, what would be the duties of each? Who can explain why in France and England the executive is responsible to the parliament and must answer its questions, while in the United States the executive is an autocrat, responsible to no one for four years? Who could have foreseen that in England, supposed to remain a monarchy, the constitution would be fluid; while in America, supposed to be a democracy, the constitution would be rigid, and the supreme power of rejecting changes in the laws would be vested in a group of reactionary lawyers appointed for life? There will be similar surprises in the social revolution, and similar differences between what things pretend to be and what they are. I used to compare the social revolution to the hatching of an egg. You examine it, and apparently it is all egg; but then suddenly something begins to happen, and in a few minutes it is all chicken. If, however, you investigate, you discover that the chicken had been forming inside the egg for some time. I know that there is a chicken now forming inside our social egg; but having realized the complexity of social phenomena, I no longer venture to predict the exact time of the hatching, or the size and color of the chicken. Perhaps it is more useful to compare the social revolution to a child-birth. A good surgeon knows what is due to happen, but he knows also that there are a thousand uncertainties, a thousand dangerous possibilities, and all he can do is to watch the process and be prepared to meet each emergency as it arises. The birth process consists of one pang after another, but no one can say which pang will complete the birth, or whether it will be completed at all. Karl Marx is author of the saying that "force is the midwife of progress," so you may see that I am not the inventor of this simile of child-birth. There are three factors in the social revolution, each of which will vary in each country, and in different parts of the country, and at different periods. First, there is the industrial condition of the country, a complex set of economic factors. The industrial life of England depends primarily on shipping and coal. In the United States shipping is of less importance, and railroads take the place. In the United States the eastern portion lives mainly by manufacture, the western by agriculture, while the south is held a generation behind by a race problem. In France the great estates were broken up, and agriculture fell into the hands of peasant proprietors, who are the main support of French capitalism. In Prussia the great estates were held intact, and remained the basis of a feudal aristocracy. In America land changes hands freely, and therefore one-third of our farms are mortgaged, and another third are worked by tenants. In Russia there was practically no middle class, while in the United States there is practically nothing but middle class; the rich have been rich for such a short while that they still look middle class and act middle class, in spite of all their efforts, while the working class hopes to be middle class and is persuaded that it can become middle class. Such varying factors produce in each country a different problem, and make inevitable a different process of change. The second factor is the condition of organization and education of the workers. This likewise varies in every country, and in every part of every country. There is a continual struggle on the part of the workers to organize and educate themselves, and a continual effort on the part of the ruling class to prevent this. In some industries in America you find the workers one hundred per cent organized, and in other industries you find them not organized at all. It is obvious that in the former case the social change, when it comes, will be comparatively simple, involving little bloodshed and waste; in the latter case there will be social convulsions, rioting and destruction of property, disorganization of industry and widespread distress. The third factor is the state of mind of the propertied classes, the amount of resistance they are willing to make to social change. I have done a great deal of pleading with the masters of industry in my country; I have written appeals to Vincent Astor and John D. Rockefeller, to capitalist newspapers and judges and congressmen and presidents. I have been told that this is a waste of my time; that these people cannot learn and will not learn, and that it is foolish to appeal either to their hearts or their understanding. But I perceive that the class struggle is like a fraction; it has a numerator and a denominator, and you can increase the fraction just as well by decreasing the denominator as by increasing the numerator. To vary the simile, here are two groups of men engaged in a tug of war, and you can affect the result just as decisively by persuading one group to pull less hard, as by persuading the other group to pull harder. Picture to yourself two factories. In factory number one the owner is a hard-driving business man, an active spirit in the so-called "open-shop" campaign. He believes in his divine right to manage industry, and he believes also in the gospel of "all that the traffic will bear." He prevents his men from organizing, and employs spies to weed out the radicals and to sow dissensions. When a strike comes, he calls in the police and the strike-breaking agencies, and in every possible way he makes himself hated and feared by his workers. Then some day comes the unemployment crisis, and a wave of revolt sweeping over the country. The workers seize that factory and set up a dictatorship of the proletariat and a "red terror." If the owner resists, they kill him; in any case, they wipe out his interest in the business, and do everything possible to destroy his power over it, even to his very name. They run the business by a shop committee, and you have for that particular factory a Syndicalist, or even Anarchist form of social reconstruction. Now for factory number two, whose owner is a humane and enlightened man, studying social questions and realizing his responsibility, and the temporary nature of his stewardship. He gives his people the best possible working conditions, he keeps open books and discusses wages and profits with them, he educates the young workers, he meets with their union committees on a basis of free discussion. When the unemployment crisis comes and the wave of revolt sweeps the country, this man and his workers understand one another. He says: "I can no longer pay profits, and so I can no longer keep going under the profit system; but if you are ready to run the plant, I am ready to help you the best I can." Manifestly, this man will continue the president of the corporation, and if he trains his sons wisely, they will keep his place; so, instead of having in that factory a dictatorship and a terror, you will have a constitutional monarchy, gradually evolving into a democratic republic. CHAPTER LXVI CONFISCATION OR COMPENSATION (Shall the workers buy out the capitalists? Can they afford to do it, and what will be the price?) The problem of whether the social revolution shall be violent or peaceable depends in great part upon our answer to the question of confiscation versus compensation. We are now going to consider, first, the abstract rights and wrongs of the question, and, second, the practical aspects of it. There is a story very popular among single taxers and other advocates of freedom of the land. An English land-owner met a stranger walking on his estate, and rebuked him for trespassing. Said the stranger, "You own this land?" Said the other, "I do." "And how did you get it?" "I inherited it from my father." "And how did your father get it?" "He inherited it from his father." So on for half a dozen more ancestors, until at last the Englishman answered, "He fought for it." Whereupon the stranger took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and said, "I'll fight you for it." This is all there is to say on the subject of the abstract rights of land titles. There is no title to land which is valid on a historical basis. Everything rests upon fraud and force, continued through endless ages of human history. We in the United States took most of our land from the Indians, and in the process our guiding rule was that the only good Injun was a dead Injun. We first helped the English kings to take large sections of our country from the French and Spanish, and then we took them from the English king by a violent revolution. We purchased our Southwestern states from Mexico, but not until we had taken the precaution of killing some thousands of Mexicans in war, which had the effect of keeping down the purchase price. It would be a simple matter to show that all public franchises are similarly tainted with fraud. Proudhon laid down the principle that "property is theft," and from this principle it is an obvious conclusion that society has the right to scrap all paper titles to wealth, and to start the world's industries over again on the basis of share and share alike. But stop and consider for a moment. "Property is theft," you say. But go to your corner grocery, and tell the grocer that you deny his title to the sack of prunes which he exhibits in front of his counter. He will tell you that he has paid for them; but you answer that the prunes were raised on stolen land, and shipped to him over a railroad whose franchise was obtained by bribery. Will that convince the grocer? It will not. Neither will it convince the policeman or the judge, nor will it convince the voters of the country. Most people have a deeply rooted conviction that there are rights to property now definitely established and made valid by law. If you have paid taxes on land for a certain period, the land "belongs" to you; and I am sure you might agitate from now to kingdom come without persuading the American people that New Mexico ought to be returned to Mexico, or the western prairies to the Indian tribes. Such are the facts; now let us apply them to the right of exploitation, embodied in the ownership of a certain number of bonds or shares of stock in the United States Steel Corporation. "Pass a law," says the Socialist, "providing for the taking over of United States Steel by the government." At once to every owner comes one single thought--are you going to buy this stock, or are you going to confiscate it? If you attempt confiscation, the courts will declare the law unconstitutional; and you either have to defy the courts, which is revolutionary action, or to amend the constitution. If you adopt the latter course, you have before you a long period of agitation; you have to carry both houses of Congress by a two-thirds majority, and the legislatures of three-fourths of the States. You have to do this in the face of the most bitter and infuriated opposition of those who are defending what they regard as their rights. You have to meet the arguments of the entire capitalist press of the country, and you have the certainty of widespread bribery of your elected officials. The prospect of doing all this under the forms of law seems extremely discouraging; so come the Syndicalists, saying, "Let us seize the factories, and stop the exploitation at the point of production." So come the Communists, saying, "Let us overthrow capitalist government, and break the net of bourgeois legality, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, which will put an end to privilege and class domination all at once." What are we to say to these different programs? Suppose we buy out the stockholders of United States Steel, and issue to them government bonds, what have we accomplished? Nothing, say the advocates of confiscation; we have changed the form of exploitation, but the substance of it remains the same. The stockholders get their money from the United States government, instead of from the United States Steel Corporation; but they get their money just the same--the product, not of their labor, but of the labor of the steel workers. Suppose we carried out the same procedure all along the line; suppose the government took over all industries, and paid for their securities with government bonds. Then we should have capitalism administered by a capitalist government, instead of by our present masters of industry; we should have a state capitalism, instead of a private capitalism; we should have the government buying and selling products, and exploiting labor, and paying over the profits to an hereditary privileged class. The capitalist system would go on just the same, except that labor would have one all-powerful tyrant, instead of many lesser tyrants, as at present. So argue the advocates of confiscation. And the advocates of purchase reply that in buying the securities of United States Steel, we should fix the purchase price at the present market value of the property, and that price, once fixed, would be permanent; all future unearned increment of the steel industry would belong to the government instead of to private owners. Consider, for example, what happened during the world war. When I was a boy, soon after the Steel Trust was launched, its stock was down to something like six dollars, and I knew small investors who lost every dollar they had put in. But during the war, steel stock soared to a hundred and thirty-six dollars per share; it paid dividends of some thirty per cent per year, and accumulated enormous surpluses besides. The same thing was true of practically all the big corporations. According to Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo, there were coal companies which paid as high as eight hundred per cent per year; that is to say, the profits in one year were eight times the total investment. Assuming that our government bonds paid five per cent, it appears that the owners of these coal companies got one hundred and sixty times as much under our present private property system as they would have got under a system of state purchase. Even completely dominated by capitalism as our courts are today, they would not dare require us to pay for industries more than six per cent on the market value of the investment; and from what I know of the inside graft of American big business that would be restricting the private owners to less than one-fourth of what they are getting at present. We have already pointed out the economies that can be made by putting industry under a uniform system. But all these, important as they are, amount to little in comparison with the one great consideration, which is that by purchasing large scale industry, we should break the "iron ring"; we should thenceforth be able to do our manufacturing for use instead of for profit, and so we should put an end to unemployment. Our cheerful workers would throng into the factories, to produce for themselves instead of for masters; and in one year of that we should so change the face of our country that a return to the system of private ownership would be unthinkable. In one year we could raise production to such a point that the interest on the bonds we had issued would be like the crumbs left over from a feast. CHAPTER LXVII EXPROPRIATING THE EXPROPRIATORS (Discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, and its chances for success in the United States.) I am aware that the suggestion of paying for the industries we socialize will sound tame and uninspiring to a lot of ardent young radicals of my acquaintance. They will shake their heads sadly and say that I am getting middle-aged and tired. We have seen in Russia and Hungary and other places, so many illustrations of the quick and easy way to expropriate the expropriators that now there is in every country a considerable group of radicals who will hear to no program less picturesque than barricades and councils of action. In considering this question, I set aside all considerations of abstract right or wrong, the justification for violence in the overthrow of capitalist society. I put the question on the basis of cash, pure and simple. It will cost a certain amount of money to buy out the owners, and that money will have to be paid, as it is paid at present, out of the labor of the useful workers. The workers don't want to pay any more than they have to; the question they must consider is, which way will they have to pay most. The advocates of the dictatorship of the proletariat are lured by the delightful prospect of not having to pay anything; and if that were really possible it would undoubtedly be the better way. But we have to consider this question: Is the program of not having to pay anything a reality, or is it only a dream? Suppose it should turn out that we have to pay anyhow, and that in the case of violent revolution we pay much more, and in addition run serious risk of not getting what we pay for? Here are enormous industries, running at full blast, and it is proposed that some morning the workers shall rise up and seize them, and turn out the owners and managers, and run the industries themselves. Will anybody maintain that this can be done without stopping production in those factories for a single day? Certainly production must stop during the time you are fighting for possession; and the cruel experience of Russia proves that it will stop during the further time you are fighting to keep possession, and to put down counter-revolutionary conspiracies. Also, alas, it will stop during the time you are looking for somebody who knows how to run that industry; it will stop during the time you are organizing your new administrative staff. You may discover to your consternation that it stops during the time you are arranging to get other industries to give you credit, and to ship you raw materials; also during the time you are finding the workers in other industries who want your product, and are able to pay for it with something that you can use, or that you can sell in a badly disorganized market. And all the time that you are arranging these things, you are going to have the workers at your back, not getting any pay, or being paid with your paper money which they distrust, and growling and grumbling at you because you are not running things as you promised. You see, the mass of the workers are not going to understand, because you haven't made them understand; you have brought about the great change by your program of a dictatorship, of action by an "enlightened minority"; and now you have the terror that the unenlightened majority may be won back by their capitalist masters, and may kick you out of control, or even stand you up against a wall and shoot you by a firing squad. And all the time you are worrying over these problems, who can estimate the total amount the factory might have been producing if it had been running at full blast? Whatever that difference is, remember, it is paid by the workers; and might that sum not just as well have been used to buy out the owners? If we were back in the old days of hand labor and crude, unorganized production, I admit that the only way to benefit the slaves might be to turn out the masters by force. But here we have a social system of infinite complexity, a delicate and sensitive machine, which no one person in the world, and no group of persons understands thoroughly. In the running of such a machine a slight blunder may cost a fortune; and certainly all the skill, all the training, all the loyal services of our expert engineers and managers is needed if we are to remodel that machine while keeping it running. The amount of wealth which we could save by the achieving of that feat would be sufficient to maintain a class of owners in idleness and luxury for a generation; and so I say, with all the energy and conviction I possess, _pay them_! Pay them anything that is necessary, in order to avoid civil war and social disorganization! Pay them so much that they can have no possible cause of complaint, that the most hide-bound capitalistic-minded judge in the country cannot find a legal flaw in the bargain! Pay them so that every engineer and efficiency expert and manager and foreman and stenographer and office-boy will stay on the job and work double time to put the enterprise through! Pay them such a price that even Judge Gary and John D. Rockefeller will be willing to help us do the job of social readjustment! "Ah, yes," my young radical friends will say, "that sounds all very beautiful, but it's the old Utopian dream of brotherhood and class co-operation. That will never happen on this earth, until you have first abolished capitalism." My answer is, it could happen tomorrow if we had sufficient intelligence to make it happen. That it does not happen is simply absence of intelligence. And will anyone maintain that it is the part of an intelligent man to advocate a less intelligent course than he knows? What is the use of our intelligence, if we abdicate its authority, and give ourselves up to programs of action which we know are blind and destructive and wasteful? We may see a great vessel going on the rocks; we may feel certain that it is going, in spite of everything we can do; but shall we fail to do what we can to make those in the vessel realize how they might get safely into the harbor? We have had the Russian revolution before us for four years. Mankind will spend the next hundred years in studying it, and still have much to learn, but the broad outlines of the great experiment are now plain before our eyes. Russia was a backward country, and she tried to fight a modern war, and it broke her down. She had practically no middle class, and her ruling class was rotten, and so the revolutionists had their chance, and they seized it. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that they came to the rescue of Russia, saving her from the hands of those who were trying to force her to fight, when she was utterly exhausted and incapable of fighting. Anyhow, here was your dictatorship of the proletariat. It turned out all the executive experts, or nearly all of them, because they were tainted with the capitalist psychology; and then straightway it had to call them back and make terms with them, because industry could not be run without them. And of course these engineers and managers sabotaged the revolution--every non-proletarian sabotaged it, both inside Russia and outside. You denounced this, and protested against this, but all the same it happened; it was human nature that it should happen, and it is one of the things you have to count on, in any and every country where you attempt the social revolution by minority action. They have got power in Russia, and they dream of getting power in America in the same way. But there is no such disorganization in our country as there was in Russia, and it would take a generation of civil strife to bring us to such a condition. We have a middle class, powerful, thoroughly organized, and thoroughly conscious. Moreover, this class has ideals of majority rule, which are bred in its very bones; and while they have never realized these ideals, they think they have, and they are prepared to fight to the last gasp in that belief. All that the leaders of Moscow have to do is to bring about an attempt at forcible revolution, and they will discover in American society sufficient power of organization and of brutal action to put their movement out of business for a generation. A hundred years ago we had chattel slavery firmly fixed as the industrial system of one-half of these United States. To far-seeing statesmen it was manifest that chattel slavery was a wasteful system, and that it could not exist in competition with free labor. There was a great American, Henry Clay, who came forward with a proposition that the people of the United States, through their government, should raise the money, about a billion dollars, and compensate the owners of all the slaves and set them free. For most of his lifetime Henry Clay pleaded for that plan. But the masters of the South were making money fast; they knew how to handle the negro as a slave, they could not imagine handling him as a free laborer, and they would not hear to the plan. On the other side of Mason and Dixon's line were fanatical men of "principle," who said that slavery was wrong, and that was the end of it. There is a stanza by Emerson discussing this question of confiscation versus compensation: Pay ransom to the owner And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner? The slave is owner, And ever was. Pay him. This, you see, is magnificent utterance, but as economic philosophy it is reckless and unsound. The abolitionists of the North took up this poem, and the slave power of the South answered with a battle-song: War to the hilt, Theirs be the guilt, Who fetter the freeman to ransom the slave! And so the issue had to be fought out. It cost a million human lives and five billions of treasure, and it set American civilization back a generation. And now we confront exactly the same kind of emergency, and are coming to exactly the same method of solution. We have white wage-slaves clamoring for their freedom, and we have business men making money out of them, and exercising power over them, and finding it convenient and pleasant. They are going to fight it out in a civil war, and which side is going to win I am not sure. But when the historians come to write about it a couple of generations from now, let them be able to record that there were a few men in the country who pleaded for a sane and orderly and human solution of the problem, and who continued to voice their convictions even in the midst of the cruel and wasteful strife! CHAPTER LXVIII THE PROBLEM OF THE LAND (Discusses the land values tax as a means of social readjustment, and compares it with other programs.) The writer of this book has been watching the social process for twenty years, trying to figure out one thing--how the change from competition to co-operation can be brought about with the minimum of human waste. He has come to realize that the first step is a mental one; to get the people to want the change. That means that the program must be simple, so that the masses can understand it. As a social engineer you might work out a perfect plan, but find yourself helpless, because it was hard to explain. As illustration of what I mean, I cite the single tax, a theory which has a considerable hold in America, but which politically has been utterly ineffective. A few years ago a devoted enthusiast in Southern California, Luke North, started what he called the "Great Adventure" to set free the idle land. In the campaign of 1918 I gave my help to this movement, and when it failed I went back and took stock, and revised my conclusions concerning the single tax. Theoretically the movement has a considerable percentage of right on its side. Land, in the sense that single taxers use it, meaning all the natural sources of wealth, is certainly an important basis of exploitation, and if you were to tax land values to the full extent, you would abolish a large portion of privilege--just how large would be hard to figure. I was perfectly willing to begin with that portion, so I helped with the "Great Adventure." But a practical test convinced me that it could never persuade a majority of the people. The single tax proposal is to abolish all taxes except the tax on land values. Then come the associations of the bankers and merchants and real estate speculators, crying in outraged horror, "What? You propose to let the rich man's stocks and bonds go free? You propose to put no tax on his cash in the vaults and on his wife's jewels? You propose to abolish the income tax and the inheritance tax, and put all the costs of government on the poor man's lot?" Now, of course, I know perfectly well that the rich man dodges most of his income tax and most of his inheritance tax. I know that he pays a nominal pittance on his cash in the bank and on his wife's jewels, and likewise on his stocks and bonds. I know that the corporations issuing these stocks and bonds would be far more heavily hit by a tax on the natural resources they own; they could not evade this tax, and they know it, and that is why they are moved to such deep concern for the fate of the poor man and his lot. I know that the tax on the poor man's lot would be infinitesimal in comparison with the tax on the great corporation. But how can I explain all this to the poor man? To understand it requires a knowledge of the complexities of our economic system which the voters simply have not got. How much easier to take the bankers and speculators at their word! To answer, "All right, gentlemen, since you like the income and inheritance taxes, the taxes on stocks and bonds and money and jewels, we will leave these taxes standing. Likewise, we assent to your proposition that the poor man should not pay taxes on his lot, while there are rich men and corporations in our state holding twenty million acres of land out of use for purposes of speculation. We will therefore arrange a land values tax on a graduated basis, after the plan of the income tax; we will allow one or two thousand dollars' worth of land exempt from all taxation, provided it is used by the owner; and we will put a graduated tax on all individuals and corporations owning a greater quantity of land, so that in the case of individuals and corporations owning more than ten thousand dollars' worth of land, we will take the full rental value, and thus force all idle land into the market." Now, the provision above outlined would have spiked every single argument used by the opposition to the "Great Adventure" in California in 1918; it would have made the real intent of the measure so plain as to win automatically the additional votes needed to carry the election. But I tried for three years, without being able to persuade a single one of the "Great Adventure" leaders to recognize this plain fact. The single taxer has his formula, the land values tax and no other tax, and all else is heresy. Actually, the president of a big single tax organization in the East declared that by the advocacy of my idea I had "betrayed the single tax!" We may take this as an illustration of the difference between dogmatism and science in the strategy of the class struggle. I first suggested my program immediately after the war, with the provision that the land thrown on the market should be purchased by the state, and used to establish co-operative agricultural colonies for the benefit of returned soldiers. But we have preferred to have our returned soldiers stay without work, or to displace the men and women who had been gallantly "doing their bit." By this means we soon had five million men out of work, and many other millions bitterly discontented with their wages. Again I took up the proposition for a graduated land tax, with the suggestion that the money should be used to provide a pension, first for every dependent man or woman over sixty years of age in the country, and second for every child in the country whose parents were unable properly to support it, whether because they were dead or sick or unemployed. You may note that in advocating this program, you would not have to convert anybody to any foreign theories, nor would you have to use any long words; you would not have to say anything against the constitution, nor to break any law, nor to give occasion for patriotic mobs to tar and feather you. To every poor man in your state you could say, "If you own your own house and lot, this bill will lift the taxes from both, and therefore it will mean fifty or a hundred dollars a year in your pocket. If you do not own a home, it will take millions of idle acres out of the hands of the speculators, and break the price of real estate, so that you can have either a lot in the city or a farm in the country with ease." Furthermore, you could say, "This measure will have the effect of drawing the unemployed from the cities at once, and so stopping the downward course of wages. At the same time that wages hold firm, the cost of food will go down, because there will be millions more men working on the land. In addition to that, the state will have an enormous income, many millions of dollars a year, taken exclusively from those who are owning and not producing. This money will be expended in saving from suffering and humiliation the old people of the country, who have worked hard all their lives and have been thrown on the scrap-heap; also in making certain that every child in the country has food enough and care enough to make him into a normal and healthy human being, so that he can do his share of work in the world and pay his own way through life." I submit the above measure to those who believe that the road to social freedom lies by some sort of land tax. But before you take it up I invite you to consider whether there may not be some other way, even easier. There is a homely old saying to the effect that "molasses catches more flies than vinegar"; and I am always looking for some way that will get the poor what they want, without frightening the rich any more than necessary. I know a certain type of radical whom this question always exasperates. He answers that the opposition will be equally strong to any plan; the rich will do anything for the poor except get off their backs--and so on. In reply I mention that among the most ardent radicals I know are half a dozen millionaires; I know one woman who is worth a million, who pleads day and night for social revolution, while the people who work for her are devoted and respectful wage slaves. Herbert Spencer said that his idea of a tragedy was a generalization killed by a fact. I shall not say that the existence of millionaire Socialists and parlor Bolsheviks kills the theory of the class struggle, but I certainly say it compels us to take thought of the rich as well as of the poor in planning the strategy of our campaign. And manifestly, if we want to consider the rich, the very last device we shall use is that of a tax. Nobody likes to pay taxes; everybody agrees in classifying taxes with death. Each feels that he is paying more than his share already; each knows that the government which collects the tax is incompetent or worse. Stop and recall what we have proven about the "iron ring"; the possibilities of production latent in our society. Realize the bearings of this all-important fact, that we can offer to mankind a social revolution which will make everybody richer, instead of making some people poorer! Exactly how to do this is the next thing we have to inquire. CHAPTER LXIX THE CONTROL OF CREDIT (Deals with money, the part it plays in the restriction of industry, and may play in the freeing of industry.) How is it that the rich are becoming richer? The single taxer answers that it is by monopoly of the land, the natural sources of wealth; the Socialist answers that it is by the control of the machinery of production. But if you go among the rich and make inquiry, you speedily learn that these factors, large as they are, amount to little in comparison with another factor, the control of credit. There are hosts of little capitalists and business men who deal in land and produce goods with machinery, but the men who make the real fortunes and dominate the modern world are those who control credit, and whose business is, not the production of anything, but speculation and the manipulation of markets. "Money makes the mare go," our ancestors used to say; and money today determines the destiny of empires. What is money? We think of it as gold and silver coins, and pieces of engraved paper promising to pay gold and silver coins. But the report of the U. S. Comptroller of the Currency for 1919 shows that the business of the country was done, 5% by such means and 95 % by checks; so, for practical purposes, we may say that money consists of men's willingness to trust other men, or groups or organizations of men, when they make written promise to pay. In other words, money is credit; and the control of credit means the control of industry. The problem of social readjustment is mainly but the problem of taking the control of credit out of the hands of private individuals, and making it a public or social function. Who controls credit today? The bankers. And how do they control it? We give it to them; we, the masses of the people, who take them our money and leave it with them. A very little real money in hand becomes, under our banking system, the basis of a great amount of imaginary money. The Federal Reserve law requires that banks shall hold in reserve from seven to thirteen per cent of demand deposits; which means, in substance, that when you leave a dollar with a banker, the banker is allowed, under the law, to turn that dollar into anywhere from seven to thirteen dollars, and lend those dollars out. In addition, he deposits his reserves with the Federal Reserve bank, and that bank keeps only thirty-five per cent in reserve--in other words, the seven to thirteen imaginary dollars are multiplied again by three. Under the stress of war, this process of credit inflation has been growing like the genii let out of the bottle. Under the law, the Federal Reserve banks are supposed to hold a gold reserve of 40% to secure our currency. But in December, 1919, these banks held a trifle over a billion dollars' worth of gold, while our paper money was over four billion. In addition, our banks have over thirty-three billions of deposits, and all these are supposed to be secured by gold; in addition, there are twenty-five billions of government bonds, and uncounted billions of private notes, bonds and accounts, all supposed to be payable in gold. So it appears that about one per cent of our outstanding money is real, and the rest is imaginary--that is, it is credit. The point for you to get clear is this: The great mass of this imaginary money is created by law, and we have the power to abolish it or to change the ownership of it at any time we develop the necessary intelligence. Let us consider the ordinary paper money, the one and two and five and ten dollar "bills," with which we plain people do most of our business. These are Federal Reserve notes, and there are about three billions of them; how do they come to be? Why, we grant to the national banks by law the right to make this money; the government prints it for them, and they put it into circulation. And what does it cost them? They pay one per cent for the use of the money; in some cases they pay only one-half of one per cent; and then they lend it to us, the people--and what do they charge us? The answer is available in a recent report of the U. S. Comptroller of the Currency, as follows: "I have the record of the loans made by one Texas national bank to a hard-working woman who owned a little farm a few miles from town. She borrowed, in the aggregate, $2,375, making about thirty loans during the year. Listen to the details of the robbery: $162.50 for 30 days at 36 per cent; $377. for 34 days at 44 per cent; $620.25 for 23 days at 77 per cent; $11. for 30 days at 120 per cent; $21.50 for 30 days at 90 per cent; $33. for 2 days at 93 per cent; $27. for 15 days at 195 per cent; $110. for 30 days at 120 per cent--that was to buy a horse for her plowing; $20 for 48 days at 187 per cent; $6 for 10 days at 720 per cent; $7 for 3 days at 2,000 per cent, and so on; every cent paid off by what sweat and struggle only God knows." In Oklahoma, where the legal rate of interest is six per cent, with ten per cent as the maximum under special contract, harassed farmers paid all the way from 12 to 2400 per cent, with 40 per cent as the average. In the case of one bank, the Comptroller proved that not a single solitary loan had been made under fifteen per cent. He cited one particular case that he asked to be regarded as typical. In the spring the farmer went to the bank and arranged for a loan of $200. Out of his necessity he was compelled to pay 55 per cent interest charge. Unable to meet the note at maturity, he had to agree to 100 per cent interest in order to get the renewal. The next renewal forced him up to 125 per cent. For four years the thing went on, and all the drudgery of the father and the mother and the six children could never keep down the terrible interest or wipe out the principal. As a finish the bank swooped down and sold him out; the wretched man, barefoot and hungry, went to work clearing a swamp, caught pneumonia and died; the county buried him, and neighbors raised a purse to send the widow and children back to friends in Arkansas. This is the thing called the Money Trust in action, and this is the power we have to take out of private control. It is our first job, and all other jobs are in comparison hardly worth mentioning. How are we going to do it? The farmers of North Dakota have shown one way. They took the control of their state government into their own hands, and the most important and significant thing they did was to start a public bank. The interests fought them tooth and nail; not merely the interests of North Dakota, not merely of the Northwest, but of the entire United States. They fought them in the law courts, up to the United States Supreme Court, which decided in favor of the people of North Dakota. Therefore, make note of this vital fact--the most important single fact in the strategy of the class struggle--every state can, under the constitution, have a public bank; every city and town can have one, and no court can ever forbid it! Therefore, I say to all Socialists, labor men and social reformers of every shade and variety, nail at the top of your program of action the demand for a public bank in your community, to take the control of credit out of the hands of speculators and use it for the welfare of the people. Make it your first provision that every dollar of public money shall be deposited in this bank and every detail of public financing handled by this bank; make it your second provision that the purpose of this bank shall be to put all private banks out of business, and take over their power for the people. At present, you understand, it is taken for granted that the first purpose of the government is to foster the private credit system. Take, for example, the postal savings bank. The private banks fought this for a generation, and finally they allowed us to have it, on condition that it should be turned into a device for collecting money for them. Our postal bank turns over all its money to the private banks, at the grotesque rate of two per cent interest; and recently I read of the director of the postal bank appearing before a convention of bankers, asking for some small favor, and humbly explaining that it was not his idea to make the postal bank a rival of the private savings banks. Why should he not do so? Let us nail it to our radical program that the postal savings bank is to fight for business, just as do the private banks, and lend its funds direct to the people on good security. Let our Federal banking system also become the servant of the public welfare, and let its energy be devoted to breaking the strangle-hold of predatory finance on our industry. Let the government issue all money, and use it for the transfer of industry from private into public hands. Do we want to socialize our railroads, our coal mines, our telegraphs and telephones? Do we want to buy them, in order to avoid the wastes of civil war and insurrection? We have agreed that we do; and here we have the way of doing it. If the bankers can create, out of our willingness to trust them, billions upon billions of imaginary money, then so can we, the people of the United States, create money out of our willingness to trust ourselves. And do not let anybody fool you for a single second by talking about "fiat money" and "inflation of the currency." If you are paying twice as much for everything as you did before the war, you are paying it because the bankers have doubled the amount of money in circulation--for that reason and that alone. That double money the bankers own; the only question now to be decided is, who is to own the double money that will be created tomorrow? Make note of the fact that it costs nothing to start a public bank. If you want to put the steel trust out of business by competition, you have several hundred thousand dollars worth of rolling mills and ore land to buy; but the banks can be put out of business by nothing but a law. The material parts of a bank, the white marble columns and bronze railings and mahogany trimmings, are as nothing compared with the inner soul of a bank, its control of the life-blood of your business and mine; and this we can have for the taking. We can keep our own "credit"; instead of sending it to Wall Street, where speculators use it to bleed us white, we can set it to building up our own community, under the direction of officials whom we select. Also, we can have our gigantic national bank, controlling all our thirty-three billions of dollars of deposits, and likewise the hundreds of billions of credit built upon them. The first time you suggest this plan to a banker or business man, you will be told that increase of money by the government does not benefit labor or the general consumer; "inflation of the currency" causes prices to go up correspondingly. To this I will furnish an effective reply: that at the same time the government issues new money, the government will also fix prices; and then watch the face of your banker or business man! If he is a man who can really think, and is not just repeating like a parrot the formulas he has learned from others, he will perceive that the combination of currency inflation and price-fixing would catch him as the two parts of a nut-cracker catch a nut; and he will know that you can take the meat out of him any time you please. He may argue that it is not fair; but point out to him that it is exactly what the big banks and the trusts have been doing to us right along--increasing the amount of money in circulation, and at the same time raising the prices we pay for goods, and so taking out the meat from us nuts! We have agreed that we do not mean to be unfair either to the banker or the manufacturer; we are simply going to stop their being unfair to us. We are going to convince them that their power to catch us in a nut-cracker is forever at an end. We allow them six per cent on their investments, and guarantee them this by turning over to them some of our new money--that is, government bonds. When we have thoroughly convinced them that they can't get any more, they will take these bonds and quit; and thus simply, without violence or destruction of property, we shall slide from our present system of commercial cannibalism into the new co-operative commonwealth. We have had "cheap money" campaigns in the United States many times, and as this book is written, it becomes evident that we are to have another. Henry Ford is advocating the idea, and so is Thomas A. Edison. The present writer would like to make plain that in supporting such a program, he does it for one purpose, and one only--the taking over of the industries by the community. The creation of state credit for that purpose is the next step in the progress of human society; whereas the creation of state credit for the continuance of the profit system is a piece of futility amounting to imbecility. This distinction is fundamental, and is the test by which to judge the usefulness of any new program, and the intelligence of those who advocate it. CHAPTER LXX THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY (Discusses various programs for the change from industrial autocracy to industrial democracy.) The program of the railway workers for the democratic management of their industry is embodied in the Plumb plan. You may learn about it by addressing the weekly paper of the railway brotherhoods, which is called "Labor," and is published in Washington, D. C. It appears that our transportation industry can be at once socialized, because of a clause in the constitution which gives the national government power over "roads and communications." Through decades of mismanagement under the system of private greed, the railroads have been brought to such a financial condition that they will be forced into nationalization, whenever we stop them from dipping their fingers into the public treasury. Under the Plumb plan the government is to purchase the roads from their present owners, paying with government bonds. The management is to be under the control of a board consisting in part of representatives of the government, and in part of the workers--this being a combination of the methods of Socialism and Syndicalism. The same program can be applied constitutionally to telegraphs and telephones, to interstate trolley systems, express companies, oil pipe lines, and all other means of interstate communication and distribution. The Plumb plan also deals with coal and steel and other great industries. These could not be nationalized without a constitutional amendment, but it appears that in the majority of the constitutions of the states are provisions that all corporate charters are held subject to the power of the legislature to amend, modify, or revoke the same. That gives us a right to take over these corporations through state action. The only preliminary is to elect state administrations which will represent us, instead of representing the corporations. Also, most state constitutions contain the provision that "no corporation shall issue its stocks or bonds, except for money, labor, or property actually received." The word "labor" gives the opening wedge for the Plumb plan. The state can purchase these industries, giving bonds in exchange, and can issue to the workers labor stock, which stock will carry part control of the industry. Also, the railroad brotherhoods have started their own bank, in Cleveland, Ohio, and it is proving an enormous success. Make note of this point; every large labor union can have its own bank, to finance its industries and its propaganda. Stop and consider how preposterous it is that the five million organized workers of the United States should deposit their hundreds of millions of savings in capitalist banks, to be used to finance private undertakings which crush unions and hold labor in bondage. Let every big labor union have its own building, its own banking and insurance business, its own vacation camp in the country, its own school for training its future leaders. Also, let every labor council in every big city start a labor daily, to tell the workers the truth and point the way to freedom. Let every farmers' organization follow suit; and let these groups get together, to exchange their products upon a co-operative basis. Already the railway men are arranging with the farmers, to buy the farm products and distribute them co-operatively; they are getting together with the clothing workers, to have the latter make clothing for them, and with the shoe-workers to make shoes. This is the co-operative movement, which has become the largest single industry in Great Britain, and is the backbone of industrial democracy and sound radicalism. It is spreading rapidly in America now. It is taking the money of the people out of the control of the profit system, and diverting it into channels of public service. It is training men to believe in brotherhood instead of in greed. It is giving them business experience, so that when the time comes the taking over of our industrial machine will not have to be done by amateurs, but by men who know what co-operation is, and how to make a success of it. This work will go on more rapidly yet when the workers have united politically, and brought into power a government which will assist them instead of assisting the bankers. A most interesting program for the development of working-class financial credit is known as the "Douglas plan," which is advocated by a London weekly, the "New Age," and is explained in two books, called "Economic Democracy" and "Credit Power and Democracy," by Douglas and Orage. This program is in brief that the furnishing of credit shall become a function of organized labor, based upon the fact that the true and ultimate basis of all credit is the power of hand and brain labor to produce wealth. The labor unions, or "guilds," shall pay the management of industry and pay capital for the use of the industrial plant, and shall finance production and new industrial development out of their "credit power," their ability to promise production and to keep their promises. This "Douglas plan" seeks to break the Money Trust by the method of Syndicalism. Another method of breaking it, through state regulation of bank loans, you will find most completely set forth in an extremely able book, "The Strangle Hold," by H. C. Cutting, an American business man, whom you may address at San Lorenzo, California. Another method, utilizing the third factor in industry, the consumer, is the method of banking by consumers' unions. Such are the Raffeisen banks, widely known in Germany, and a specimen of which exists in the single tax colony at Arden, Delaware. Those who wish to know about the co-operative bank, or other forms of co-operation, may apply to the Co-operative League of America, 2 West 13th Street, New York, whose president is Dr. James P. Warbasse. Information concerning public ownership may be had from the Public Ownership League, 127 N. Dearborn Street, Chicago; also from the Socialist party, 220 South Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, and from the Bureau of Social Research of the Rand School of Social Science, New York. Also, I ought to mention the very interesting plan for social reconstruction set forth by Mr. King C. Gillette, inventor of the safety razor. This plan you may find in your public library in two encyclopedic volumes, "Gillette's Social Redemption," and "Gillette's World Solution." The politician seeks to solve the industrial problem by means of the state, and the labor leader seeks to solve it by the unions; it is to be expected that Mr. Gillette, a capitalist, should seek to solve it by means of the corporation. He points out that the modern "trust" is the greatest instrument of production yet invented by man; and he asks why the people should not form their own "trust," to handle their own affairs, and to purchase and take over the industries from their present private masters. It is interesting to note that Mr. Gillette's solution is fully as radical and thorough-going as those of the State Socialists or the Syndicalists. The "People's Corporation" which he projects and plans some day to launch upon the world would be a gigantic "consumers' union," whose "credit power" would speedily dominate and absorb all other powers in modern society; it would make us all stockholders, and give us our share of the benefits of social productivity. CHAPTER LXXI THE NEW WORLD (Describes the co-operative commonwealth, beginning with its money aspects; the standard wage and its variations.) It has been indicated that the new society will be different in different countries and in different parts of the same country, in different industries and at different times. No one can predict exactly what it will be, and anyone who tries to predict is unscientific. But every man can work out his own ideas of the most economical and sensible arrangements for a co-operative society, and in these final chapters I set forth my ideas. One of the first things people ask is, "Will there be money in the new society, or how will labor be rewarded and goods paid for?" I answer that there will be money, and the business methods of the new society will be so nearly the same as at present that in this respect you would hardly realize there had been any change. The only difference will be that in the new society you will be paid several times as much for your labor; or, if you prefer to put it the other way, you will be able to buy several times as much with your money. Why should we waste our time working out systems of "credit-cards," when we already have a system in the form of gold and silver coins and paper currency? Why should we bother with "labor checks," when we have a banking and clearing-house system, understood by everyone but the illiterate? The only difference we shall make is that nobody can get gold and silver coins or paper currency, except by performing labor to pay for them; nobody can have money in the bank and draw checks against it, until he has rendered to society an equivalent amount of service. When you have earned your money in the new world, you will spend it wherever you please, and for whatever you please; the only difference being that the price you pay will be the exact labor-cost of producing that article, with no deduction for any form of exploitation. As I wrote sixteen years ago in "The Industrial Republic," you will be able to get, if you insist upon it, a seven-legged spider made of diamonds, and the only question society will ask is, Have you performed services equivalent to the material and labor necessary to the creating of that unusual article of commerce? Of course, society won't put it to you in that complicated formula; it will simply ask, "Have you got the price?" Which, you observe, is exactly the question society asks you at present. The next thing that everybody wants to know is, "Shall we all be paid the same wages?" I answer, yes and no, because there will be three systems of payment. There will be a basic wage, which everybody will get for every kind of useful service necessary to production; this will be, as it were, the foundation of our economic structure. On top of this will be built a system of special payments for special services, which are of an intellectual nature, and cannot be standardized and dealt with wholesale. In addition, there will be for a time a third arrangement, applying to agricultural work, which is in a different stage of development, and to which different conditions apply. Let us take, first, our standard wage. The census of our Utopian commonwealth reveals that we have ten million able-bodied workers engaged in mining, manufacturing, and transportation; this including, of course, office-work and management--everything that enters into these industries. By scientific management, the best machinery, and the elimination of all possible waste, we find that they produce eighty million dollars worth of goods an hour. A portion of this we have to set aside to pay for the raw materials which they do not produce, and for the upkeep of the plant, and for margin of error--what our great corporations call a surplus. We find that we have fifty million dollars per hour left, and that means that we can pay for labor five dollars per hour, or twenty dollars for the regular four-hour day. This is our standard wage, received by all able-bodied workers. But quickly we find that our industries are not properly balanced. A great many men want to work at the jobs which are clean and pleasant, such as delivering mail, and very few want to work at washing dishes in restaurants and cleaning the sewers. There is no way we can adjust this, except by paying a higher wage, or by reducing the number of hours in the working day, which is the same thing. The only other method would be to have the state assign men to their work, and that would be bureaucracy and slavery, the essence of everything we wish to get away from in our co-operative commonwealth. What we shall have, so far as concerns our basic industries, is a government department, registering with mathematical accuracy the condition of supply and demand in all the industries of the country. Our demand for shoes is increasing, for some reason or other; a thousand more shoe-workers are needed, therefore the price of labor in the shoe industry is increased five cents per day--or whatever amount will draw that number of workers from other occupations. On the other hand, there are too many people applying for the job of driving trucks, therefore we reduce slightly the compensation for this work. There are more men who want jobs in Southern California than in Alaska, therefore the payment for the same grade of work in Alaska has to be higher. All this is not merely speculation, it is not a matter of anybody's choice; it is an automatic, self-adjusting system, subject to precise calculations. The only change from our present system is from guesswork to exact measurement. At present we do not know how many shoes our country will require next season, neither do we know how many shoes are going to be made, neither do we know how many people can make shoes, nor how many would like to learn, nor how many would like to quit that job and take to farming. It would be the simplest matter in the world to find out these things--far simpler that it was to register all our possible soldiers, and examine them physically and mentally, and train them and feed them and ship them overseas to "can the Kaiser." Of course, we drafted the men for this war job; but in the new world nobody is drafted for anything. It is any man's privilege to starve if he feels like it; it is his privilege to go out into the mountains and live on nuts and berries if he can find them. Nobody makes him go anywhere, or makes him work at anything--unless, of course, he is a convicted criminal. To the free citizen all that society has to say is, if he buys any products, he must pay for those products with his own labor, and not with some other man's labor. Of course, he may steal, or cheat, as under capitalism; our new world has laws against stealing and cheating, and does its best to enforce them. The difference between the capitalist world and our world is merely that we make it impossible for any man to get money _legally_ without working. Under these conditions the average man wishes to work, and the only question remaining is, how shall he work? If he wants to work by himself, and in his own way, nobody objects to it. He is able to buy anything he pleases, whether raw materials or finished products. If he wants to buy leather and make shoes after his own pattern, no one stops him, and if he can find anyone to buy these shoes, he can earn his living in that way. He is able to get land for as long a time as he wants it, by paying to the state the full rental value of that land, and if he wants to farm the land, he can do so, and sell his products. As a matter of theory, he is perfectly free to hire others to farm the land for him, or with him. There is no law to prevent it, neither is there any law to prevent his renting a factory and buying machinery, and hiring labor to make shoes. But, as a matter of practical fact, it is impossible for him to do this, because the community is in the business of making shoes, and on an enormous scale, with great factories run democratically by the workers, and there is very small chance of any private business man being able to draw the workers away from these factories. The community factories have all the latest machinery; they apply the latest methods of scientific management, and they turn out standard shoes at such a rate that private competition is unthinkable. Of course, there may be some special kind of shoes, involving an intellectual element, in which there can be private competition. This kind of manufacture is covered in our second method of payment; but before we discuss it, let us settle the problem of our most important basic industry, which is agriculture. CHAPTER LXXII AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION (Discusses the land in the new world, and how we foster co-operative farming and co-operative homes.) Farming the land is a very ancient industry, and while its tools have been improved, its social forms have been the same for a long time. The worker on the land is conservative, and the Russian Bolsheviks, who tried to rush their peasants into Communism, found that they had only succeeded in stopping the production of food. We make no such blunder in our new society. We have found a way to abolish speculation in land, and exploitation based on land-ownership, while leaving the farmer free to run his business in the old way if he wants to. In our new society we take the full rental value of all land which is not occupied and used by the state. The farmer and the city dweller alike "own" their land, in the sense that they have the use of it for as long as they please, but they pay to the state the rental value of the land, minus the improvements. So they cannot speculate in the land or rent it out to others; they can only use it, and they only pay for what they actually use. They may put improvements on the land, with full assurance of having the use and benefit thereof, and they may sell the improvements, and the new owner enters into possession, with no obligation but to pay the rental value of the unimproved land to the state. The farmer goes on raising his products, and if he wants to drive to town and deliver them to his customers, he may do so; but he finds it cheaper to market them through the great labor co-operatives and state markets. As there is no longer any private interest involved in these activities, no one has any interest in cheating him, and he gets the full value of the products, less the cost of marketing. If the farmer wishes to continue all his life in his old style individualistic method of working the land, he is free to do so. But here is what he sees going on within a few miles of his place: The state has bought a square mile of land, and has taken down the fences and established an agricultural co-operative for purposes of experiment and demonstration. The farm is run under the direction of experts; the soils are treated with exactly the right fertilizers for each crop, the best paying crops are raised, the best seed is used, and the best machinery. The workers of this new agricultural co-operative receive the standard wage, and they live in homes specially built for them, with all the conveniences made possible by wholesale production. Also, these co-operators live in a democratic community; they determine their own conditions of labor, being represented on the governing board, along with the experts appointed by the state. The farmer watches this experiment, at first with suspicion; but he finds that his sons have less suspicion than he has, and his sons keep pointing out to him that their little farm is not making the standard wage or anything like it; and, moreover, the standard wage is constantly increasing, whereas, the price of farm-products is dropping. And here is the state, ready to direct new co-operative ventures, inviting a score of farmers in the community to combine and buy out the unwilling ones, and establish a new co-operative. Sooner or later the old farmer gives way; or he dies, and his sons belong to the new world. So ultimately we have our national agricultural system, in which all the requirements of our people are studied, and all the possibilities of our soil and climate, and the job of raising the exact quantities of food that we need, both for our own use and for export, is worked out as one problem. We know how much lumber we need, and we raise it on all our hillsides and mountain slopes, and so protect ourselves from floods and the denuding of our continent. We know where best to raise our wheat, and where best to raise our potatoes and our cabbages, and we do not do this by crude hand-labor, nor by the labor of women and children from daybreak till dark. We have special machines that plant each crop, and other machines that reap it or dig it out of the ground and prepare it for market. A few days ago I read a discussion in the Chamber of Commerce of Calcutta. Some one called attention to the wastes involved in the current method of handling rubber. One consignment of rubber had been sold more than three hundred separate times, and the cost of these transactions amounted to three times the value of the rubber. This is only one illustration, and I might quote a thousand. If you doubt my figures as to the possibility of production in the new society, remind yourself that a large percentage of the things you use have been bought and sold many scores of times before you get them. Consider the cabbage, for which you pay six or eight cents a pound in the grocery store, and for which the farmer gets, say, half a cent a pound. In this new world the state has an enormous income, derived from its tax on land values. It no longer has to send around men once a year to ask you how many diamond rings your wife has, and to tax you on your honesty, if you have any. It no longer has to make its money by such lying devices as a tariff, therefore its moral being is no longer poisoned by a tariff-lobby. It taxes every citizen for the right to use that which nature created, and leaves free from taxation that which the citizens' own labor created; this kind of taxation is honest, and fair to all, because no one can evade it. The state uses the proceeds of this land tax in the public services, the libraries and research laboratories and information bureaus; in free insurance against fire and flood and tempest; and in a pension to every member of society above the working age of fifty-five, or below the working age of eighteen. Of course, the state might leave it to every man to save up for his old age, but not all men are this wise, and the state cannot afford to let the unwise ones starve. It is more convenient for the state to figure that all men, or nearly all, are going to be old, and to hold back some of their money while they are young and strong, in the certainty that when they are old, they will appreciate this service. Also the state takes care of the sick and incapacitated, and the mentally or physically defective. But we do not leave these latter loose in the world to reproduce their defects; we have in our new world some sense of responsibility to the future, and there is nothing to which we devote more effort than making certain that nothing unsound or abnormal is allowed entrance into life. The problem of the care of children is a complicated one, and our new society is in process of solving it. We look back on the old world in which the having of children was heavily taxed, in the form of an obligation to care for these children until they were old enough to work. Then the parents were allowed to exploit the labor of the children, so that among the very poor the raising of children was a business speculation, like the raising of slaves or poultry. But in our new world we consider the interest of the child, and of the society in which that child is to be a citizen. We decide that this society must have citizens, and that the raising of the future citizens is a work just exactly as necessary and useful as the raising of a crop of cabbages. Therefore, we pay a pension to all mothers while they are raising and caring for children. At the same time we assert the right to see that this money is wisely spent, and that the child is really cared for. If it is neglected, we are quick to take it away from its parents, and put it in one of our twenty-four-hour-a-day schools. We realize that the home is an ancient industry, even more ancient than agriculture, and we do not try to socialize it all at once. But just as we demonstrate to farmers that the individual farm does not pay, so we demonstrate to mothers the wastefulness of the single laundry, the single kitchen, the single nursery. We establish community laundries, community kitchens, community nurseries, and invite our women to help in these activities, and to learn there, under expert guidance, the advantages of domestic co-operation. We convince them by showing better results in the health and happiness of the children, and in the time and strength of the mothers. So, little by little, we widen the field of co-operative endeavor, and increase the total product of human labor and the total enjoyment of human life. CHAPTER LXXIII INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION (Discusses scientific, artistic and religious activities, as a superstructure built upon the foundation of the standard wage.) Karl Kautsky, intellectual leader of the German Social-democracy, gives in his book, "The Social Revolution," a useful formula as to the organization of the future society. This formula is: "Communism in material production, Anarchism in intellectual production." It will repay us to study this statement, and see exactly what it means. Material production depends directly upon things; and as there is only a limited quantity of things in the world, if any one person has more than his share, he deprives some other person to that extent. So there have to be strict laws concerning the distribution of material products. But with intellectual things exactly the opposite is the case. There is no limit in quantity, and any one person can have all he wants without interfering with anybody else. Everybody in the world can perform a play by Shakespeare, or play a sonata by Beethoven, and everybody can enjoy it as much as he pleases without keeping other people from enjoying it all they please. Also, material production can be standardized; we can have great factories to turn out millions of boxes of matches, each match like every other match, and the more alike they are the better. But in intellectual affairs we want everyone to be different, or at least we want everyone to be free to be different, and if some one can become much better than the others, this is the most important kind of production in the world, for he may make over our whole intellectual and moral life. For the production of material things our new society has great factories owned in common, and run by majority vote of the workers, and we place the products of that factory at the disposal of all members of society upon equal terms. That is our "Communism in material production." On the other hand, in our intellectual production we leave everybody free to live his own life, and to associate himself with others of like aims, and we place as few restrictions as possible upon their activities. This is the method of free association, or "Anarchism in intellectual production." Our problem would be simple if material and intellectual production never had to mingle. But, as it happens, every kind of intellectual production requires a certain amount of material, and every kind of material production involves an intellectual element. Therefore, our two methods have to be combined, and we have a complex problem which we have to solve in a variety of different ways, and upon which we must experiment with open minds and scientific temper. First, let us take the intellectual elements involved in the production of purely material things, such as matches and shoes and soap. Let us take invention. Naturally, we do not want to go on making matches and shoes and soap in the same old way forever. On the contrary, we want to stimulate all the workers in these industries to use their wits and improve the processes in every possible way. The whole of society has an interest in this, and the soap workers have an especial interest. Our soap industry has an invention department, with a group of experts appointed by the executive committee of the national council of soap workers. All soap workers are taxed, say five cents a day, for the support of this activity. Likewise the state contributes a generous sum out of its income toward the work of soap research. In addition to this, the soap industry offers prizes and scholarships for suggestions as to the improvement of every detail of the work, and at meetings of every local of soap workers somebody makes new suggestions as to methods of stimulating their intellectual life--not merely as regards soap, but as regards citizenship, and art and literature, and human life in general. Our soap workers, you must understand, are no longer wage-slaves, brutalized by toil and poverty; they are free citizens of a free society. Our soap workers' local in every city has its own theatre and concert hall and lecture bureau, and publishes its own magazine. Every industry has its immediate intellectual problems, its trade journals in which these are discussed, and its research boards in which they are worked out. The ambitions of the young workers in that industry are concentrated upon getting into this intellectual part of their trade. Examinations are held and tests are made to discover the most competent men, and written suggestions are considered by boards of control. It is, of course, of great importance to every worker that the channels of promotion should be kept open, and that the man who really has inventive talent shall get, not merely distinction and promotion, but financial reward, so that he may have time and materials to continue his experiments. This research department, you perceive, is a sort of superstructure, built upon the foundation of our standard wage; and this same simile applies to numerous other forms of intellectual production. For example, our community paper mills turn out paper, and our community printers are prepared to turn out millions of books. How shall we determine what is to be the intellectual content of these material books? There are many different methods. First, there is the method of individualism. A man has something to say, and he writes a book; he works in the soap factory, and saves a part of his standard wage, and when he has money enough he orders the community printers to print his book, and the community booksellers to handle it for him, and the community postoffice to deliver it for him. Again, a group of men organize themselves into an association, or club, or scientific society, and publish books. The Authors' League takes up the work of publishing the writings of its members, and the Poetry Society does the same. This is the method of Anarchism, or free association. But there is no reason why we should not have along side it the method of Socialism; there is no reason why we should not have state publishing houses, just as we have state universities and state libraries. The state should certainly publish standard works of all sorts, bibles and dictionaries and directories, and cheap editions of the classics. In this new world our school boards are not chosen by business men for purposes of graft, they are chosen by the people to educate our children; so it seems to us perfectly natural that the National Educational Association should conduct a publication department, and order the printing of the school books which the children use. In the same way, anyone is free to write a play, or to put on a play, and invite people to come and see it. But, like the individual farmers and the individual mothers of families, the play-producer in our society is in competition with great community enterprises, which set a high standard and make competition difficult. The same thing applies to the opera, and to concerts, and to all the arts and sciences. You can start a private hospital if you wish, but you will be in competition with public institutions, and you can only succeed if you are a man of genius--that is, if you have something to teach, too new and startling for the public boards of control to recognize. You try your new method, and it works, and that becomes a criticism of the public boards of control, and before long the people by their votes turn out the old board of control and put you in. That is politics, you say; but we in our new world do not use the word politics as one of contempt. We really believe that public sentiment is in the long run the best authority, and the appeal to public sentiment is at once a social privilege and a social service. What we strive to do is to clear the channels of appeal, and avoid favoritism and stagnation. To that end we maintain, in every art and every science and every department of human thought, endless numbers of centers of free, independent, co-operative activity, so that every man who has an inspiration, or a new idea, can find some group to support him or can form a new group of his own. This is our "Anarchism in intellectual production," and it is the method under which in capitalist society men organize all their clubs and societies and churches. Devout members of the Roman Catholic Church will be startled to be told that theirs is an Anarchist organization; but nevertheless, such is the case. The Catholic Church owns a great deal of property, and speculates in real estate, and to that extent it is a capitalist institution. It holds a great many people by fear, and to that extent it is a feudal institution. But in so far as members of the church believe in it and love it and contribute of their free will to its support, they are organizing by the method which all Anarchists recommend and desire to apply to the whole of society. Anarchist clubs and Christian churches are both free associations for the advocacy of certain ideas, the only difference being in the ideas they advocate. In our new world such organizations have been multiplied many fold, and form a vast superstructure of intellectual activity, built upon the foundation of the standard wage. In this new world all the people are free. They are free, not merely from oppression, but from the fear of oppression; they have leisure and plenty, and they take part naturally and simply in the intellectual life. The old, of course, have not got over the dullness which a lifetime of drudgery impressed upon them, but the young are growing up in a world without classes, and in which it seems natural that everyone should be educated and everyone should have ideas. They earn their standard wage, and devote their spare time to some form of intellectual or artistic endeavor, and spend their spare money in paying writers and artists and musicians and actors to stimulate and entertain them. These latter are the ways of distinction in our new society; these are the paths to power. The only rich men in our world are the men who produce intellectual goods; the great artists, orators, musicians, actors and writers, who are free to serve or not to serve, as they see fit, and can therefore hold up the public for any price they care to charge. Just now there is eager discussion going on in our world as to whether it is proper for an opera singer, or a moving picture star, or a novelist, to make a million dollars. Our newspapers are full of discussions of the question whether anyone can make a million dollars honestly, and whether men of genius should exploit their public. Some point out that our most eminent opera singer spends his millions in endowing a conservatory of art; but others maintain that it would be better if he lowered his prices of admission, and let the public use its money in its own way. The extremists are busy founding what they call the Ten-cent Society, whose members agree to boycott all singers and actors who charge more than ten cents admission, and all moving picture stars who receive more than a hundred thousand dollars a year for their service. These "Ten-centers" do not object to paying the money, but they object to the commercializing of art, and declare especially that the moral effect of riches is such that no rich person should ever, under any circumstances, be allowed to influence the youth of the nation. In this some of the greatest writers join them, and renounce their copyrights, and agree to accept a laureateship from some union of workers, who pay them a generous stipend for the joy and honor of being associated with their names. The greatest poet of our time began life as a newsboy, and so the National Newsvenders' Society has adopted him, and taken his name, and pays him ten thousand dollars a year for the privilege of publishing his works. CHAPTER LXXIV MANKIND REMADE (Discusses human nature and its weaknesses, and what happens to these in the new world.) We have briefly sketched the economic arrangements of the co-operative commonwealth. Let us now consider what are the effects of these arrangements upon the principal social diseases of capitalism. The first and most dreadful of capitalism's diseases is war, and the economic changes here outlined have placed war, along with piracy and slavery, among the half-forgotten nightmares of history. We have broken the "iron ring," and are no longer dependent upon foreign concessions and foreign markets for the preservation of our social system and the aggrandizement of a ruling class. We can stay quietly at home and do our own work, and as we produce nearly everything we need, we no longer have to threaten our neighbors. Our neighbors know this, and therefore they do not arm against us, and we have no pretext to arm against them. We take toward all other civilized nations the attitude which we have taken toward Canada for the past hundred years. We have a small and highly trained army, a few regiments of which are located at strategic points over the country. This army we regard and use as we do our fire department. When there is widespread damage by fire or flood or storm or earthquake, we rush the army to the spot to attend to the work of rescue and rebuilding. Also, we have a small navy in international service; for, of course, we are no longer an independent and self-centered nation; we have come to realize that we are part of the world community, and have taken our place as one state in the International Socialist Federation. We send our delegates to the world parliament, and we place our resources at the disposal of the world government. However, it now takes but a small army and navy to preserve order in the world. We govern the backward nations, but the economic arrangements of the world are such that we are no longer driven to exploit and oppress them. We send them teachers instead of soldiers, and as there are really very few people in the world who fight for the love of fighting, we have little difficulty in preserving peace. We pay the backward peoples a fair price for their products which we need. Our world government takes no money out of these countries, but spends it for the benefit of those who live in the countries, to teach them and train their young generations for self-government. Next, what are the effects of our new arrangements upon political corruption and graft? The social revolution has broken the prestige of wealth. Money will buy things, but it no longer buys power, the right to rule other men; it no longer buys men's admiration. Everybody now has money, and nobody is any longer afraid of starvation. It is no longer the fashion to save money--any more than it is the fashion to carry revolvers in drawing-rooms or to wear chain mail in place of underclothing. So our political life is cleansed of the money influence. People now get power by persuading their fellows, not by buying them or threatening them. The world is no longer full of men ravenous for jobs, and ready to sell their soul for a "position." So it is no longer possible to build up a "machine" based on desire for office. The changes have resulted in an enormous intensification of our political activities. We have endless meetings and debates; we have so many propaganda societies that we cannot keep track of them. And some of these societies, like the Catholic Church, have a large membership, and large sums of money at their disposal. But a few experiments at carrying elections by a "campaign-chest" have convinced everybody that to have the facts on your side is the only permanent way to political power. Our new society is jealous of attempts to establish any sort of ruling class, and the surest way to discredit yourself is to advocate any form of barrier against freedom of discussion, or the right of the people's will to prevail. Next, what is the status of crime? We have too recently escaped from capitalism to have been able to civilize entirely our slum population, and we still have occasional crimes of violence, especially crimes of passion. But we have almost entirely eliminated those classes of crime which had to do with property, and we have discovered that this was ninety-five per cent of all crime. We have eliminated them by the simple device of making them no longer profitable. Anybody can go into our community factories, and under clean and attractive working conditions, and without any loss of prestige or social position, can earn the means of satisfying his reasonable wants by three hours work a day. Almost everybody finds this easier than stealing or cheating. But more important yet, as a factor in abolishing crime, is the abolition of class domination and the prestige of wealth. We no longer have in our community a ruling class which lives without working, and which offers to the weak-minded and viciously inclined the perpetual example of luxury. We no longer set much store on jewels and fine raiment; we do not make costly things, except for public purposes, where all may enjoy them; and nobody stores great quantities of money, because everyone has a guarantee of security from the state. So we are gradually putting our policemen and jailers and judges and lawyers to constructive work. Next, what about disease? The diseases of poverty are entirely done away with. We are now able to apply the knowledge of science to the whole community, and so we no longer have to do with tuberculosis and typhoid, or with rickets and anæmia in children, or with heavy infant mortality. We have sterilized our unfit, the degenerates and the defectives, and so do not have to reckon with millions of children from these wretched stocks. We now give to the question of public health that prominence which in the old days we used to give to war and the suppression of crime and social protest. Our public health officers now replace our generals and admirals, and we really obey their orders. Next, as to prostitution. Just as in the case of crime, we are still too close to capitalism not to have among us the victims of social depravity, both men and women. We still have a great deal of vice which springs from untrained animal impulse, and we have some cultivated and highly sophisticated pornography. But we have entirely done away with commercial vice, and we have done it by cutting the root which nourished it. Women in our communities are really free; and by that we do not mean the empty political freedom which existed in the days of wage slavery--we mean that women are permanently delivered from economic inferiority, by the recognition on the part of the state of the money value of their special kind of work, the bearing and training of children. This kind of work not merely receives the standard wage, it also receives the best surgical and nursing treatment free. Housework and home-making are legally recognized services; and the woman before marriage and after her children have been nursed is free to go into the community factories and earn for herself the standard wage, with no loss of social position. Consequently, no woman sells her sex, and no man buys it. This does not mean, of course, that we have solved the sex problem in our new society. There are two great social problems with which we have to deal, the first of these being the sex problem, and the second the race problem. Our scientists are occupied with eugenics, and we are finding out how to guide our young people in marriage, so that our race may be built up, and the ravages of capitalism remedied as quickly as possible. Also we are trying to find out the laws of happiness and health in love. We are founding societies for the purpose of protecting love, and, as hinted in the Book of Love, we have a determined social struggle between two groups of women--the mother-women and the mistress-women--those who take love gravely, as a means of improving the race, and those who take it as a decoration, a form of play. Our men are embarrassed by having to choose between these groups, and occupy themselves with trying to keep the struggle from turning into civil war. Second, the race problem. Our economic changes have, of course, done away with some of the bitterest phases of this strife. White workingmen in the North no longer mob and murder negro workingmen for taking their jobs, and in the South our land values tax prevents the landlord from exploiting either white or negro labor. But our white race is still irresistibly bent upon preserving its integrity of blood, and the more far-seeing among the negroes have come to realize that there can never be any real happiness for them in a society where they are denied the higher social privileges. There is a movement for the development of a genuine Negro Republic in Africa, and for mass emigration. Also there is a proposition, soon to be settled at an election, for the dividing of the United States into three districts upon racial lines. First, there are to be, in the Far South, three or four states which are inhabited and governed solely by negroes, and to which white men may come only as temporary visitors; a large group of states in the North which are white states, and to which negroes may come only as visitors; and finally, a middle group of states, in which both whites and black are allowed to live, as at present, but with the proviso that no one may live there who takes part in any form of racial strife or agitation. This program gives to race-conscious negroes their own land, their own civilization, their own chance of self-realization; it gives to race-conscious white men the same opportunity; and it leaves to those who are not troubled by the problem, a country where black and white may dwell in quiet good fellowship. Finally, what has been the effect of our economic changes upon the purely personal vices which gave us so much trouble and unhappiness in the old days? What, for example, has been the effect upon vanity? You should see our new crop of children in our high schools! There are no longer any social classes among them; the rich ones do not arrive in private automobiles, to make the poor ones envious, and they do not isolate themselves in little snobbish cliques. They arrive in community automobiles, and all wear uniforms--one of the simple devices by which we repress the impulse of the young toward display of personal egotism. They are all full of health and happy play, and their heads are busily occupied with interesting ideas. Our girls are trained to thinking, instead of to personal adornment; they are developing their minds, instead of catching a rich husband by sexual charms. So we have been able, in a single generation of training, to make a real and appreciable difference in the amount of vanity and self-consciousness to be found among our young people. And the same thing applies to a score of other undesirable qualities, which, under the system of competitive commercialism, were overstimulated in human beings. In those old days everyone was seeking his own survival, and certain qualities which had survival value became the principal characteristics of our race. Those qualities were greed and persistence in acquisitiveness, cunning and subtlety, also bragging and self-assertiveness. In that old world people destroyed their fellows in order to make their own safety and power; they wasted goods in order to be esteemed, to preserve what they called their "social position." But now we have cut the roots of all these vile weeds. We have so adjusted the business relationships of men that we do not have to have hysterical religious revivals in order to keep the human factors alive in their hearts. We have established it as a money fact, which everyone quickly realizes, that it pays better to co-operate; there is more profit and less bother in being of service to others. So we have prepared a soil in which virtues grow instead of vices, and we find that people become decent and kindly and helpful without exhortation, and with no more moral effort than the average man can comfortably make. Of course, we have still personal vices to combat, and new virtues to discover and to propagate; but this has to do with the future, whereas we are here confining ourselves to those things which have been demonstrated in our new society. INDEX Abortion, 61 Abortions, 30 Advertising, 163 Agricultural co-operative, 206 Anarchism, 210 Anarchist, 89, 90 Anarchy, 172 Anglo-Saxon, 62, 111 "Appeal to Reason", 149 Aristocratic doctrine, 116 Armour, 128 Atherton, Gertrude, 87 Babies, 63 Bachelorhood, 52 Bacon, Francis, 51 Banking system, 192 Bankruptcy, 162 Barbarism, 124 Barnum, P. T., 27 Berkman, Alexander, 173 Biology, 103 Birth control, 61, 76 Birth Control Review, 64 Blatchford, Robert, 55, 161 "Blind" love, 58 Bolsheviks, 172 Breach of promise suit, 91 Brothel, 66 Brothels, 31 Burbank, Luther, 99 Business man, 143 Capital, 158 Capitalism, 136, 168 Capitalists, 142 Carnegie, 168 Catholic Church, 213, 216 Celibacy, 51, 52, 64 Chastity, 51 Chattel slavery, 186 Childbirths, 70 Children, 70, 72, 85, 208 Christianity, 115, 133 "Clarion", 31 Class struggle, 133, 177 Clay, Henry, 186 Coleridge, 85 "Collier's Weekly", 122, 163 Committee on Waste, 160 Commune, 129 Communism, 10, 170, 210 Compensation, 179 Competition, 108, 127 Competitive wage system, 148 "Complex", 49 Comstock, Anthony, 20 Confiscation, 179 Congress, 138 Contraception, 61 Co-operation, 109, 199, 200 Coquetry, 38 Corporation, 127 Courtship, 91 Credit, 152, 154, 192, 200 Credit-cards, 202 Crime, 164, 216 Culture, 62 Cutting, H. C., 200 Dances, 15 Debs, Eugene V., 155 Degeneration, 121 "Demi-monde", 80 Democratic doctrine, 115 Dictatorship, 180, 183, 185 Dill, James B., 25 Disarmament, 157 Discouragement, 164 Disease, 217 Divorce, 32, 93, 97 Double standard, 5 "Douglas plan", 199 "Dumping", 152 Economic evolution, 123 Economic man, 108 Emerson, 186 Emulation, 112 Engagements, 72 England, 120, 156, 175 Eugenics, 58 Evolution, 122 Exogamy, 105 Exploitation, 181 Exploiting, 148 Exports, 153 Factory system, 129 Farming, 206 "Favorable balance", 151 Fear, 122, 164 Federal Reserve Act, 154 Feminist, 69 Feudal stage, 124 Fires, 163 Foreign trade, 151 "Free love", 44, 87 "Free lover", 92 France, 175 France, Anatole, 44 Freud, 104 Gens, 9 Germany, 155, 156 Gillette, King C., 200 Goldman, Emma, 173 Gonorrhea, 30 Goode, Mary J., 41 Government, 166 "Graft", 127, 216 "Great Adventure", 188 Hammurabi, 78 "Hamon case", 26 "Hard times", 144 Hardy, 13 Harris, Frank, 21 "High life", 23 Home, 42, 209 Honeymoon, 56 Hoover, Herbert, 160 House of Commons, 137 Huguenots, 134 Human nature, 99 Hunger, 122 Ideals, 132 Imports, 153 Income tax, 143, 188 Industrial evolution, 126 Infant, 103 Infanticide, 61 Inflation, 196 Inheritance tax, 188 "Ingenues", 19 Instinct, 57 Insurance, 163 Intellectual production, 211 "Iron ring", 158 Island, 145 I. W. W., 169 James, William, 16 Jealousy, 89 Jews, 127 Kautsky, Karl, 210 "King Coal", 139 Kropotkin, 109, 129, 173 Labor, 158 Labor checks, 202 Labor union, 199 Laissez faire, 110 Land tax, 190 Land titles, 179 Land values, 208 Late marriage, 67 Lecky, 6, 33 Leviticus, 78 Liberty motor, 164 London, Jack, 62 Los Angeles Times, 157 Love, 34, 47, 100, 112, 218 Lust, 48 Luther, Martin, 129 Luxury, 60 Machinery, 149 "Magic gestures", 104 Magna Carta, 134 Malthusian law, 108 Markham, Edwin, 139 Marquesas Islands, 33 Marriage, 4 Marriage club, 71 Marriage market, 68 Marx, Karl, 132, 138, 176 Materialistic interpretation, 132 Material production 210 Maternity endowment 79 Meredith, George 43 "Merrie England" 161 Metchnikoff, Elie 33, 46 Mexico 121 Middle class 176, 186 Minor, Robert 173 Mistress 12 Money 37, 192, 202 Money Trust 194 Monogamy 5, 83, 90 Moors 134 Moralists 59 Morgan 128 Mother's pension 79 Moving pictures 17 Negro 218 Negroes 116 Neuroses 105 Neurotics 103 North Dakota 194 North, Luke 188 O'Brien, Frederick 10 Oedipus complex 104 "Open-shop" 177 Panic 154 Parasitism 74 Passion 58 Permanence 87 Piracy 111 Pity 74 Plumb plan 198 Political evolution 123 Political revolution 125 Politics 213 Pornography 20 Postal savings bank 195 Poverty 40 Primitive man 9 Privilege 36 Professor Sumner 122 Profit system 148, 158 "Progressive polygamy" 90 Proletariat 142 Promiscuity 87 Property marriage 44 Prosperity 144 Prostitute 6 Prostitution 4, 31, 41, 217 Proudhon 179 Psycho-analysis 49, 103 Public bank 194 Publishing 212 Quick, Herbert 165 Race prejudice 62 Race problem 218 Racial immaturity 116 Raffeisen bank 200 Reeve, Sidney A. 160 Republic 125 Research 212 "Resurrection" 53 Revolt 134 Ricardo 108 Richardson, Dorothy 26 Ring 148 Robinson, Dr. William, J, 21, 30, 70, 77 Roman Catholic church 90 "Romance" 91 "Romantic" love 55 Roosevelt 61 Rulers 119 Russia 129, 185 Sanger, Margaret 63 School of marriage 75 Selection 8 Sex 8 Sex education 72 Sex impulse 46 Sex problem 218 Sex urge 86 Sex war 81 Shelley 59, 89 "She-towns" 29 Shop management 168 Sienkiewicz 13 Sims, District Attorney 28 Single tax 188 Slavery 10, 126, 136 "Smart set" 24 Smith, Adam 108 Snobbery 61 Socialism, 166 Social revolution, 128, 147, 175 Soviets, 130, 171 "Speeding up", 138 Spencer, Herbert, 122 Spirituality, 64 Sport, 113 Standard wage, 203 Steel Trust, 137 Stopes, Dr. Marie C., 77 Strikes, 162 Syndicalism, 167 Syphilis, 30 Tabu, 9 Tariff, 153 Taxes, 191 Tennyson, 38, 120 "The Brass Check", 31, 137 "The Conquest of Bread", 173 "The Cost of Competition", 160 "The Industrial Republic", 202 "The Jungle", 139 "The Lady", 12 "The Long Day", 26, 29 "The Nature of Man", 33 "The Profits of Religion", 137 "The Social Revolution", 210 "The Strangle Hold", 200 Thompson, A. M., 31 Tolstoi, 53 "Totem and Taboo", 104 "Triangle", 56 Unconscious, 105 Unemployment, 147 "Vamps", 19 Vanity, 219 Varietism, 85 Venereal disease, 30, 67, 83 Voltaire, 36 Voluntary Parenthood League, 64 War, 162 Wars, 155 Waste, 165 Wells, H. G., 89 Wharton, Edith, 95 "Wild oats", 6 White man's burden, 117 White, William Allen, 17 Worker, 140 Workers, 176 Working class, 140 Woman, 12 "Young love", 56, 73 * * * * * BOOKS BY UPTON SINCLAIR Published by the Author, Pasadena, California Trade Distributors: The Paine Book Co., Chicago, [I]. The Brass Check A Study of American Journalism Who owns the press and why? When you read your daily paper, are you reading facts or propaganda? And whose propaganda? Who furnishes the raw material for your thoughts about life? Is it honest material? No man can ask more important questions than these; and here for the first time the questions are answered in a book. The first edition of this book, 23,000 copies, was sold out two weeks after publication. Paper could not be obtained for printing, and a carload of brown wrapping paper was used. The printings to date amount to 144,000 copies. The book is being published in Great Britain and colonies, and in translations in Germany, France, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Hungary and Japan. HERMANN BESSEMER, _in the "Neues Journal," Vienna_: "Upton Sinclair deals with names, only with names, with balances, with figures, with documents, a truly stunning, gigantic fact-material. His book is an armored military train which with rushing pistons roars through the jungle of American monsterlies, whistling, roaring, shooting, chopping off with Berserker rage the obscene heads of these evils. A breath-taking, clutching, frightful book is 'The Brass Check.'" (=Prices of all books, unless otherwise stated, cloth $1.20, 3 copies $3, 10 copies $9; paper 60c, 3 copies $1.50, 10 copies $4.50. All prices postpaid.=) THE BOOK OF LIFE A book of practical counsel. Volume One--Mind and Body. Discusses truth and its standards, and the basis of health, both mental and physical. Tells people how to live, in order to avoid waste and pain, and to find happiness and achieve progress. Volume Two--Love and Society. Discusses health in sex; love and marriage, chastity, monogamy, birth control, divorce. Explains modern economic problems, Socialism, revolution, industrial democracy, and the future society. Prices of volumes one and two bound in one, cloth $1.50, paper $1.00. Either of the two volumes separately, cloth $1.20, paper 60c. THE JUNGLE This novel, first published in 1906, caused an international sensation. It was the best selling book in the United States for a year; also in Great Britain and its colonies. It was translated into seventeen languages, and caused an investigation by President Roosevelt, and action by Congress. The book has been out of print for ten years, and is now reprinted by the author at a lower price than when first published, although the cost of manufacture has since more than doubled. "Not since Byron awoke one morning to find himself famous has there been such an example of world-wide celebrity won in a day by a book as has come to Upton Sinclair."--_New York Evening World._ "It is a book that does for modern industrial slavery what 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did for black slavery. But the work is done far better and more accurately in 'The Jungle' than in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'"--ARTHUR BRISBANE, _in the New York Evening Journal_. KING COAL A novel of the Colorado coal country. "Clear, convincing, complete."--LINCOLN STEFFENS. "I wish that every word of it could be burned deep into the heart of every American."--ADOLPH GERMER. DEBS AND THE POETS: Edited by Ruth Le Prade, with an introduction by Upton Sinclair. A collection of poetry about Debs. SYLVIA: A novel of the South. SYLVIA'S MARRIAGE: A sequel. (Both in cloth only.) 100% A STORY OF A PATRIOT Would you like to go behind the scenes and see the "invisible government" of your country saving you from the Bolsheviks and the Reds? Would you like to meet the secret agents and provocateurs of "Big Business," to know what they look like, how they talk and what they are doing to make the world safe for democracy? Several of these gentlemen have been haunting the home of Upton Sinclair during the past three years and he has had the idea of turning the tables and investigating the investigators. He has put one of them, Peter Gudge by name, into a book, together with Peter's ladyloves, and his wife, and his boss, and a whole group of his fellow-agents and their employers. _From_ LOUIS UNTERMEYER, _Author of "Challenge," etc._: "Upton Sinclair has done it again. He has loaded his Maxim (no Silencer attached), taken careful aim, and--bang!--hit the bell plump in the center. "First of all, '100%' is a story; a story full of suspense, drama, 'heart interest,' plots, counterplots, high life, low life, humor, hate and other passions--as thrilling as a W. S. Hart movie, as interest-crammed as (and a darned sight more truthful than) your daily newspaper." THEY CALL ME CARPENTER: A TALE OF THE SECOND COMING Narrates how Jesus came to Los Angeles in the year 1921, and what happened to Him. To be published in September, 1922. THE CRY FOR JUSTICE An anthology of the literature of social protest, with an introduction by Jack London, who calls it "this humanist Holy-book." Thirty-two illustrations, 891 pages. Cloth, $1.50; paper, $1.00. "It should rank with the very noblest works of all time. You could scarcely have improved on its contents--it is remarkable in variety and scope. Buoyant, but never blatant, powerful and passionate, it has the spirit of a challenge and a battle cry."--LOUIS UNTERMEYER. "You have marvelously covered the whole ground. The result is a book that radicals of every shade have long been waiting for. You have made one that every student of the world's thought--economic, philosophic, artistic--has to have."--REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN. THE PROFITS OF RELIGION A study of supernaturalism as a source of income and a shield to privilege. The first investigation of this subject ever made in any language. "You have put a lot of work into it and you have marshalled your facts in, masterly fashion."--WILLIAM MARION REEDY. * * * * * The following typographical errors have been corrected by the text transcriber: worshiping=>worshipping changes takes place=>changes take place is an impuse=>is an impulse center of continous=>center of continuous a starvling beggar at the gates=>a starving beggar at the gates of fool nations about sex=>of fool notions about sex any personal right in contravened=>any personal right is contravened industrial evoluton=>industrial evolution to the poeple=>to the people Social revoluton=>Social revolution her hands and and feet=>her hands and her feet Liebault=>Liébault Sienkewicz's "Whirlpools"=>Sienkiewicz's "Whirlpools" Magna Charta, 134=>Magna Carta, 134 
6986	----	[Illustration] PATHFINDER PHYSIOLOGY No. 3 HYGIENIC PHYSIOLOGY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE USE OF ALCOHOLIC DRINKS AND NARCOTICS BEING A REVISED EDITION OF THE FOURTEEN WEEKS IN HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY BY JOEL DORMAN STEELE, PH.D. ENLARGED EDITION WITH SELECTED READINGS _Edited for the use of Schools, in accordance with the recent Legislation upon Temperance Instruction_ INDORSEMENT. BOSTON, _June_ 20, 1889. The Pathfinder Series of Text-books on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene consists of the following volumes: I. Child's Health Primer (for Primary Grades). II. Hygiene for Young People or, Young People's Physiology. (for Intermediate Classes) III. Hygienic Physiology (for Advanced Pupils). The above are the series originally prepared (as their general title indicates) to supply the demand created by the laws for temperance instruction in public schools in the United States. They were written by experts under the supervision of the Scientific Department of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, published by the instigation of the same, and have been carefully revised from time to time, under the same supervision, to keep them abreast with the latest teachings of science. Being both teachable and well adapted to grade, their educational value, as proven by schoolroom tests, is of the highest order. We therefore cordially indorse and highly recommend the Pathfinder Series for use in schools. MARY H. HUNT, _National and International Superintendent of the Scientific Dep't of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union; Life Director of the National Educational Association._ ADVISORY BOARD: JOSEPH COOK, WILLIAM E. SHELDON, ALBERT H. PLUMB, D.D., DANIEL DORCHESTER, D.D. PREFACE The term Physiology, or the science of the functions of the body, has come to include Anatomy, or the science of its structure, and Hygiene, or the laws of health; the one being essential to the proper understanding of physiology, and the other being its practical application to life. The three are intimately blended, and in treating of the different subjects the author has drawn no line of distinction where nature has made none. This work is not prepared for the use of medical students, but for the instruction of youth in the principles which underlie the preservation of health and the formation of correct physical habits. All else is made subservient to this practical knowledge. A simple scientific dress is used which, while conducing to clearness, also gratifies that general desire of children to know something of the nomenclature of any study they pursue. To the description of each organ is appended an account of its most common diseases, accidents, etc., and, when practicable, their mode of treatment. A pupil may thus learn, for example, the cause and cure of "a cold," the management of a wound, or the nature of an inflammation. The Practical Questions, which have been a prominent feature in other books of the series, will be found, it is hoped, equally useful in this work. Directions for preparing simple microscopic objects, and illustrations of the different organs, are given under each subject. The Readings, which represent the ideas but not always the exact phraseology of the author quoted, have, in general, been selected with direct reference to Practical Hygiene, a subject which now largely occupies the public mind. The dangers that lurk in foul air and contaminated water, in bad drainage, leaky gas pipes, and defective plumbing, in reckless appetites, and in careless dissemination of contagious diseases, are here portrayed in such a manner as, it is trusted, will assist the pupil to avoid these treacherous quicksands, and to provide for himself a solid path of health. Under the heading of Health and Disease will be found Hints about the sick room, Directions for the use of Disinfectants, Suggestions as to what to do "Till the Doctor comes," and a list of antidotes for Poisons. Questions for Class Use, a full Glossary, and an ample Index complete the book. Believing in a Divine Architect of the human form, the author can not refrain from occasionally pointing out His inimitable workmanship, and impressing the lesson of a Great Final Cause. The author has gleaned from every field, at home and abroad, to secure that which would interest and profit his pupils. In general, Flint's great work on the "Physiology of Man," an undisputed authority on both sides of the Atlantic, has been adopted as the standard in digestion, respiration, circulation, and the nervous system. Leidy's "Human Anatomy," and Sappey's "Traité d'Anatomie" have been followed on all anatomical questions, and have furnished many beautiful drawings. Huxley's "Physiology" has afforded exceedingly valuable aid. Foster's "Text-Book of Physiology," Hinton's "Health and its Conditions," Black's "Ten Laws of Health," Williams's practical essay on "Our Eyes and How to Use them," Le Pileur's charming treatise on "The Wonders of the Human Body," and that quaint volume, "Odd Hours of a Physician," have aided the author with facts and fancies. The writings of Draper, Dalton, Carpenter, Yalentin, Mapother, Watson, Lankester, Letheby, Hall, Hamilton, Bell, Wilson, Bower, Cutter, Hutchison, Wood, Bigelow, Stille, Holmes, Beigel, and others have been freely consulted. PUBLISHERS' NOTE. An ABRIDGED EDITION of this work is published, to afford a cheaper manual --adapted to Junior Classes and Common Schools. The abridgment contains the essence of this text, nearly all its illustrations, and the whole of the Temperance matter as here presented. ORDER "HYGIENIC PHYSIOLOGY, ABRIDGED." READING REFERENCES. Foster's "Text-Book of Physiology"; Leidy's "Human Anatomy"; Draper's "Human Physiology"; Dalton's "Physiology and Hygiene"; Cutter's "Physiology"; Johnston and Church's "Chemistry of Common Life"; Letheby's "Food"; Tyndall "On Light," and "On Sound"; Mint's "Physiology of Man "; Rosenthal's "Physiology of the Muscles and Nerves"; Bernstein's "Five Senses of Man"; Huxley and Youmans's "Physiology and Hygiene"; Sappey's "Traité d'Anatomie "; Luys's "Brain and its Functions"; Smith's "Foods"; Bain's "Mind and Body"; Pettigrew's "Animal Locomotion"; Carpenter's "Human Physiology," and "Mental Physiology"; Wilder and Gage's "Anatomy"; Jarvis's "Physiology and Laws of Health." Hargreaves's "Alcohol and Science"; Richardson's "Ten Lectures on Alcohol," and "Diseases of Modern Life"; Brown's "Alcohol"; Davis's "Intemperance and Crime"; Pitman's "Alcohol and the State"; "Anti- Tobacco"; Howie's "Stimulants and Narcotics"; Hunt's "Alcohol as Food or Medicine"; Schützenberger's "Fermentation"; Hubbard's "Opium Habit and Alcoholism"; Trouessart's "Microbes, Ferments, and Molds." CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I.--THE SKELETON THE HEAD THE TRUNK THE LIMBS II.--THE MUSCLES III.--THE SKIN THE HAIR AND THE NAILS THE TEETH IV.--RESPIRATION AND THE VOICE V.--THE CIRCULATION THE BLOOD THE HEART THE ARTERIES THE VEINS VI.--DIGESTION AND FOOD VII.--THE NERVOUS SYSTEM THE BRAIN THE SPINAL CORD AND THE NERVES THE SYMPATHETIC SYSTEM VIII.--THE SPECIAL SENSES TOUCH TASTE SMELL HEARING SIGHT IX.--HEALTH AND DISEASE.--DEATH AND DECAY 1. HINTS ABOUT THE SICK ROOM 2. DISINFECTANTS 3. WHAT TO DO "TILL THE DOCTOR COMES" 4. ANTIDOTES TO POISONS X.--SELECTED READINGS XI.--APPENDIX QUESTIONS FOR CLASS USE GLOSSARY INDEX SUGGESTIONS To Teachers Seeing is believing--more than that, it is often knowing and remembering. The mere reading of a statement is of little value compared with the observation of a fact. Every opportunity should therefore be taken of exhibiting to the pupil the phenomena described, and thus making them real. A microscope is so essential to the understanding of many subjects, that it is indispensable to the proper teaching of Physiology. A suitable instrument and carefully prepared specimens, showing the structure of the bones, the skin, and the blood of various animals, the pigment cells of the eye, etc., may be obtained at a small cost from any good optician. On naming the subject of a paragraph, the pupil should be prepared to tell all he knows about it. No failure should discourage the teacher in establishing this mode of study and recitation. A little practice will produce the most satisfactory results. The unexpected question and the apt reply develop a certain sharpness and readiness which are worthy of cultivation. The questions for review, or any others that the wit of the teacher may suggest, can be effectively used to break the monotony of a topical recitation, thereby securing the benefits of both systems. The pupil should expect to be questioned each day upon any subject passed over during the term, and thus the entire knowledge gained will be within his grasp for instant use. While some are reciting to the teacher, let others write on slates or on the blackboard. At the close of the recitation, let all criticise the ideas, the spelling, the use of capitals, the pronunciation, the grammar, and the mode of expression. Greater accuracy and much collateral drill may thus be secured at little expense of valuable school time. The Introduction is designed merely to furnish suggestive material for the first lesson, preparatory to beginning the study. Other subjects for consideration may be found in the section on Health and Disease, in the Selected Readings, and among the questions given in the Appendix. Where time will allow, the Selected Readings may profitably be used in connection with the topics to which they relate. Questions upon them are so incorporated with those upon the text proper that they may be employed or not, according to the judgment of the teacher. NOTE.--Interest in the study of Physiology will be much increased by the use of the microscope and prepared slides. These may be obtained from any good optician. INTRODUCTION. Physiological study in youth is of inestimable value. Precious lives are frequently lost through ignorance. Thousands squander in early years the strength which should have been kept for the work of real life. Habits are often formed in youth which entail weakness and poverty upon manhood, and are a cause of lifelong regret. The use of a strained limb may permanently damage it. Some silly feat of strength may produce an irreparable injury. A thoughtless hour of reading by twilight may impair the sight for life. A terrible accident may happen, and a dear friend perish before our eyes, while we stand by powerless to render the assistance we could so easily give did we "only know what to do." The thousand little hints which may save or lengthen life, may repel or abate disease, and the simple laws which regulate our bodily vigor, should be so familiar that we may be quick to apply them in an emergency. The preservation of health is easier than the cure of disease. Childhood can not afford to wait for the lesson of experience which is learned only when the penalty of violated law has been already incurred, and health irrevocably lost. NATURE'S LAWS INVIOLABLE.--In infancy, we learn how terribly Nature punishes a violation of certain laws, and how promptly she applies the penalty. We soon find out the peril of fire, falls, edged tools, and the like. We fail, however, to notice the equally sharp and certain punishments which bad habits entail. We are quick to feel the need of food, but not so ready to perceive the danger of an excess. A lack of air drives us at once to secure a supply; foul air is as fatal, but it gives us no warning. Nature provides a little training for us at the outset of life, but leaves the most for us to learn by bitter experience. So in youth we throw away our strength as if it were a burden of which we desire to be rid. We eat anything, and at any time; do anything we please, and sit up any number of nights with little or no sleep. Because we feel only a momentary discomfort from these physical sins, we fondly imagine when that is gone we are all right again. Our drafts upon our constitution are promptly paid, and we expect this will always be the case; but some day they will come back to us, protested; Nature will refuse to meet our demands, and we shall find ourselves physical bankrupts. We are furnished in the beginning with a certain vital force upon which we may draw. We can be spendthrifts and waste it in youth, or be wise and so husband it till manhood. Our shortcomings are all charged against this stock. Nature's memory never fails; she keeps her account with perfect exactness. Every physical sin subtracts from the sum and strength of our years. We may cure a disease, but it never leaves us as it found us. We may heal a wound, but the scar still shows. We reap as we sow, and we may either gather in the thorns, one by one, to torment and destroy, or we may rejoice in the happy harvest of a hale old age. I. THE SKELETON. "Not in the World of Light alone, Where God has built His blazing throne, Nor yet alone on earth below, With belted seas that come and go, And endless isles of sunlit green Is all thy Maker's glory seen-- Look in upon thy wondrous frame, Eternal wisdom still the same!" HOLMES. ANALYSIS OF THE SKELETON. NOTE.--The following Table of 206 bones is exclusive of the 8 sesamoid bones which occur in pairs at the roots of the thumb and great toe, making 214 as given by Leidy and Draper. Gray omits the bones of the ear, and names 200 as the total number. THE SKELETON. _ | I. THE HEAD (_28 bones._) | _ | | Frontal Bone (forehead). | _ | Two Parietal Bones. | | 1. CRANIUM..............| Two Temporal (temple) Bones. | | (_8 bones._) | Sphenoid Bone. | | | Ethmoid (sieve-like bone at root of nose). | | |_Occipital Bone (back and base of skull). | | _ | | | Two Superior Maxillary (upper jaw) Bones. | | | Inferior Maxillary (lower jaw) Bone. | | | Two Malar (cheek) Bones. | | 2. FACE.................| Two Lachrymal Bones. | | (_14 bones._) | Two Turbinated (scroll like) Bones, each | | | side of nose. | | | Two Nasal Bones (Bridge of nose). | | | Vomer (the bone between the nostrils). | | |_Two Palate Bones. | | _ | | | Hammer. | | 3. EARS.................| Anvil. | |_ (_6 bones._) |_Stirrup. | | II. THE TRUNK (_54 bones._) | _ | | Cervical Vertebræ (seven vertebræ of the | _ | neck). | | 1. SPINAL COLUMN........| Dorsal Vertebræ (twelve vertebræ of the | | | back). | | | Lumbar Vertebræ (five vertebræ of the | | |_ loins). | | _ | | | True Ribs. | | 2. RIBS.................|_False Ribs. | | | | 3. STERNUM (breastbone). | | | | 4. OS HYOIDES (bone at the root of tongue). | | _ | | | Two Innominata. | |_5. PELVIS...............| Sacrum. | |_Coccyx. | | III. THE LIMBS (_124 bones._) | _ | _ | _Clavicle._ | | Shoulder...|__Scapula._ | _ | _ | | 1. UPPER LIMBS..........| | _Humerus._ | | (_64 bones._) | Arm........|__Ulna and Radius._ | | | _ | | | | _Eight Wrist or Carpal | | | | Bones._ | | |_Hand.......| _Five Metacarpal Bones._ | | |__Phalanges (14 bones)._ | | _ | | _ | _Femur._ | | | Leg........| _Patella._ | | | |__Tibia and Fibula._ | | 2. LOWER LIMBS..........| _ | |_ (_60 bones._) | | _Seven Tarsal Bones._ |_ | Foot.......| _Five Metatarsal Bones._ |_ |__Phalanges (14 bones)._ _ | 1. Uses. _ | 2. Composition. | 1. FORM, STRUCTURE, | 3. Structure. | ETC., OF THE BONES | 4. Growth. | | 5. Repair. THE SKELETON | |_6. The Joints. | _ | 2. CLASSIFICATION OF | 1. The Head. |_ THE BONES. | 2. The Trunk. |_3. The Limbs. THE SKELETON. I. FORM, STRUCTURE, ETC., OF THE BONES. (_See page 269_.) THE SKELETON, or framework of the "House we live in," is composed of about 200 bones. [Footnote: The precise number varies in different periods of life. Several which are separated in youth become united in old age. Thus five of the "false vertebræ" at the base of the spine early join in one great bone--the sacrum; while four tiny ones below it often run into a bony mass--the coccyx (Fig. 6); in the child, the sternum is composed of eight pieces, while in the adult it consists of only three. While, however, the number of the bones is uncertain, their relative length is so exact that the length of the entire skeleton, and thence the height of the man, can be obtained by measuring a single one of the principal bones. Fossil bones and those found at Pompeii have the same proportion as our own.] USES AND FORMS OF THE BONES.--They have three principal uses: 1. To protect the delicate organs; [Footnote: An organ is a portion of the body designed for a particular use, called its _function_. Thus the heart circulates the blood; the liver produces the bile.] 2. To serve as levers on which the muscles may act to produce motion; and 3. To preserve the shape of the body. Bones differ in form according to the uses they subserve. For convenience in walking, some are long; for strength and compactness, some are short and thick; for covering a cavity, some are flat; and for special purposes, some are irregular. The general form is such as to combine strength and lightness. For example, all the long bones of the limbs are round and hollow, thus giving with the same weight a greater strength, [Footnote: Cut a sheet of foolscap in two pieces. Roll one half into a compact cylinder, and fold the other into a close, flat strip; support the ends of each and hang weights in the middle until they bend. The superior strength of the roll will astonish one unfamiliar with this mechanical principle. In a rod, the particles break in succession, first those on the outside, and later those in the center. In a tube, the particles are all arranged where they resist the first strain. Iron pillars are therefore cast hollow. Stalks of grass and grain are so light as to bend before a breath of wind, yet are stiff enough to sustain their load of seed. Bone has been found by experiment to possess twice the resisting property of solid oak.] and also a larger surface for the attachment of the muscles. The Composition of the Bones at maturity is about one part animal to two parts mineral matter. The proportion varies with the age. In youth it is nearly half and half, while in old age the mineral is greatly in excess. By soaking a bone in weak muriatic acid, and thus dissolving the mineral matter, its shape will not change, but its stiffness will disappear, leaving a tough, gristly substance [Footnote: Mix a wineglass of muriatic acid with a pint of water, and place in it a sheep's rib. In a day or two, the bone will become so soft that it can be tied into a knot. In the same way, an egg may be made so pliable that it can be crowded into a narrow- necked bottle, within which it will expand, and become an object of great curiosity to the uninitiated. By boiling bones at a high temperature, the animal matter separates in the form of gelatine. Dogs and cats extract the animal matter from the bones they eat. Fossil bones deposited in the ground during the Geologic period, were found by Cuvier to contain considerable animal matter. Gelatine was actually extracted from the Cambridge mastodon, and made into glue. A tolerably nutritious food might thus be manufactured from bones older than man himself.] (cartilage) which can be bent like rubber. If the bone be burned in the fire, thus consuming the animal matter, the shape will still be the same, but it will have lost its tenacity, and the beautiful, pure-white residue [Footnote: From bones thus calcined, the phosphorus of the chemist is made. See Steele's "Popular Chemistry," page 114. If the animal matter be not consumed, but only charred, the bone will be black and brittle. In this way, the "boneblack" of commerce is manufactured.] may be crumbled into powder with the fingers. FIG. 2. [Illustration: _The Thigh Bone, or Femur, sawed lengthwise._] We thus see that a bone receives hardness and rigidity from its mineral, and tenacity and elasticity from its animal matter. The entire bone is at first composed of cartilage, which gradually _ossifies_ or turns to bone. [Footnote: The ossification of the bones on the sides and upper part of the skull, for example, begins by a rounded spot in the middle of each one. From this spot the ossification extends outward in every direction, thus gradually approaching the edges of the bone. When two adjacent bones meet, there will be a line where their edges are in contact with each other, but have not yet united; but when more than two bones meet in this way, there will be an empty space between them at their point of junction. Thus, if you lay down three coins upon the table with their edges touching one another, there will be a three-sided space in the middle between them; if you lay down four coins in the same manner, the space between them will be four-sided. Now at the back part of the head there is a spot where three bones come together in this way, leaving a small, three-sided opening between them: this is called the "posterior fontanelle." On the top of the head, four bones come together, leaving between them a large, four-sided opening: this is called the "anterior fontanelle." These openings are termed the _fontanelles_, because we can feel the pulsations of the brain through them, like the bubbling of water in a fountain. They gradually diminish in size, owing to the growth of the bony parts around them, and are completely closed at the age of four years after birth.--DALTON.] Certain portions near the joints are long delayed in this process, and by their elasticity assist in breaking the shock of a fall. [Footnote: Frogs and toads, which move by jumping, and consequently receive so many jars, retain these unossified portions (epiphyses) nearly through, life, while alligators and turtles whose position is sprawling, and whose motions are measured do not have them at all--LEIDY] Hence the bones of children are tough, are not readily fractured, and when broken easily heal again; [Footnote: This is only one of the many illustrations of the Infinite care that watches over helpless infancy, until knowledge and ability are acquired to meet the perils of life.] while those of elderly people are liable to fracture, and do not quickly unite. FIG. 3. [Illustration: _A thin slice of Bone, highly magnified showing the lacunæ, the tiny tubes (canaliculi) radiating from them, and four Haversian canals, three seen crosswise and one lengthwise._] THE STRUCTURE OF THE BONES--When a bone is sawed lengthwise, it is found to be a compact shell filled with a spongy substance This filling increases in quantity, and becomes more porous at the ends of the bone, thus giving greater size to form a strong joint, while the solid portion increases near the middle, where strength alone is needed. Each fiber of this bulky material diminishes the shock of a sudden blow, and also acts as a beam to brace the exterior wall. The recumbent position of the alligator protects him from falls, and therefore his bones contain very little spongy substance. In the body, bones are not the dry, dead, blanched things they commonly seem to be, but are moist, living, pinkish structures, covered with a tough membrane, called the per-i-os'-te-um [Footnote: The relations of the periosteum to the bone are very interesting. Instances are on record where the bone has been removed, leaving the periosteum, from which the entire bone was afterward renewed.] (_peri_, around, and _osteon_, a bone), while the hollow is filled with marrow, rich in fat, and full of blood vessels. If we examine a thin slice with the microscope, we shall see black spots with lines running in all directions, and looking very like minute insects. These are really little cavities, called la-cu'-næ [Footnote: When the bone is dry, the lacunæ are filled with air, which refracts the light, so that none of it reaches the eye, and hence the cavities appear black.] from which radiate tiny tubes. The lacunæ are arranged in circles around larger tubes, termed from their discoverer, _Haversian canals_, which serve as passages for the blood vessels that nourish the bone. GROWTH OF THE BONES.--By means of this system of canals, the blood circulates as freely through the bones as through any part of the body, The whole structure is constantly but slowly changing, [Footnote: Bone is sometimes produced with surprising rapidity. The great Irish Elk is calculated by Prof. Owen to have cast off and renewed, annually in its antlers eighty pounds of bone.] old material being taken out and new put in. A curious illustration is seen in the fact that if madder be mixed with the food of pigs, it will tinge their bones red. REPAIR OF THE BONES.--When a bone is broken, the blood at once oozes out of the fractured ends. This soon gives place to a watery fluid, which in a fortnight thickens to a gristly substance, strong enough to hold them in place. Bone matter is then slowly deposited, which in five or six weeks will unite the broken parts. Nature, at first, apparently endeavors to remedy the weakness of the material by excess in the quantity, and so the new portion is larger than the old. But the extra matter will be gradually absorbed, sometimes so perfectly as to leave no trace of the injury. (See p. 271.) A broken limb should be held in place by splints, or a plaster cast, to enable this process to go on uninterruptedly, and also lest a sudden jar might rupture the partially mended break. For a long time, the new portion consists largely of animal matter, and so is tender and pliable. The utmost care is therefore necessary to prevent a malformation. THE JOINTS are packed with a soft, smooth cartilage, or gristle, which fits so perfectly as to be airtight. Upon convex surfaces, it is thickest at the middle, and upon concave surfaces, it is thickest at the edge, or where the wear is greatest. In addition, the ends of the bones are covered with a thin membrane, the _synovial_ (_sun_, with; _ovum_, an egg), which secretes a viscid fluid, not unlike the white of an egg. This lubricates the joints, and prevents the noise and wear of friction. The body is the only machine that oils itself. The bones which form the joint are tied with stout ligaments (_ligo_, I bind), or bands, of a smooth, silvery white tissue, [Footnote: The general term _tissue_ is applied to the various textures of which the organs are composed. For example, the osseous tissue forms the bones; the fibrous tissue, the skin, tendons, and ligaments.] so strong that the bones are sometimes broken without injuring the fastenings. II. CLASSIFICATION OF THE BONES. For convenience, the bones of the skeleton are considered in three divisions: the _head_, the _trunk_, and the _limbs_. 1. THE HEAD. THE BONES OF THE SKULL AND THE FACE form a cavity for the protection of the brain and the four organs of sense, viz.: sight, smell, taste, and hearing. All these bones are immovable except the lower jaw, which is hinged [Footnote: A ring of cartilage is inserted in its joints, something after the manner of a washer in machinery. This follows the movements of the jaw, and admits of freer motion, while it guards against dislocation.] at the back so as to allow for the opening and shutting of the mouth. THE SKULL is composed, in general, of two compact plates, with a spongy layer between. These are in several pieces, the outer ones being joined by notched edges, sutures (su'tyurs,), in the way carpenters term dovetailing. (See Fig. 4.) FIG. 4. [Illustration: _The Skull._--1. _frontal bone;_ 2, _parietal bone;_ 3, _temporal bone;_ 4, _the sphenoid bone;_ 5, _ethmoid bone;_ 6, _superior maxillary (upper jaw) bone;_ 7, _malar bone;_ 8, _lachrymal bone;_ 9, _nasal bone;_ 10, _inferior maxillary (lower jaw) bone._] The peculiar structure and form of the skull afford a perfect shelter for the brain--an organ so delicate that, if unprotected, an ordinary blow would destroy it. Its oval or egg shape adapts it to resist pressure. The smaller and stronger end is in front, where the danger is greatest. Projections before and behind shield the less protected parts. The hard plates are not easy to penetrate. [Footnote: Instances have been known where bullets, striking against the skull, have glanced off, been flattened, or even split into halves. In the Peninsular Campaign, the author saw a man who had been struck in the forehead by a bullet which, instead of penetrating the brain, had followed the skull around to the back of the head, and there passed out.] The spongy packing deadens every blow. [Footnote: An experiment resembling the familiar one of the balls in Natural Philosophy ("Steele's Popular Physics," Fig. 6, p. 26), beautifully illustrates this point. Several balls of ivory are suspended by cords, as in Fig. 5. If A be raised and then let fall, it will transmit the force to B, and that to C, and so on until F is reached, which will fly off with the impulse. If now a ball of spongy bone be substituted for an ivory one anywhere in the line, the force will be checked, and the last ball will not stir.] The separate pieces with their curious joinings disperse any jar which one may receive, and also prevent fractures from spreading. FIG. 5. [Illustration] The frequent openings in this strong bone box afford safe avenues for the passage of numerous nerves and vessels which communicate between the brain and the rest of the body. FIG. 6. [Illustration: _The Spine; the seven vertebræ of the neck, cervical; the twelve of the back, dorsal; the five of the loins, lumbar;_ a, _the sacrum, and_ b, _the coccyx, coming the nine "false vertebræ."_ (p. 3).] 2 THE TRUNK. THE TRUNK has two important cavities. The upper part, or _chest_, contains the heart and the lungs, and the lower part, or _abdomen_, holds the stomach, liver, kidneys, and other organs (Fig. 31). The principal bones are those of the _spine_, the _ribs_, and the _hips_. THE SPINE consists of twenty-four bones, between which are placed pads of cartilage. [Footnote: These pads vary in thickness from one fourth to one half an inch. They become condensed by the weight they bear during the day, so that we are somewhat shorter at evening than in the morning. Their elasticity causes them to resume their usual size during the night, or when we lie down for a time.] A canal is hollowed out of the column for the safe passage of the spinal cord. (See Fig. 50.) Projections (processes) at the back and on either side are abundant for the attachment of the muscles. The packing acts as a cushion to prevent any jar from reaching the brain when we jump or run, while the double curve of the spine also tends to disperse the force of a fall. Thus on every side the utmost caution is taken to guard that precious gem in its casket. THE PERFECTION OF THE SPINE surpasses all human contrivances. Its various uses seem a bundle of contradictions. A chain of twenty-four bones is made so stiff that it will bear a heavy burden, and so flexible that it will bend like rubber; yet, all the while, it transmits no shock, and even hides a delicate nerve within that would thrill with the slightest touch. Resting upon it, the brain is borne without a tremor; and, clinging to it, the vital organs are carried without fear of harm. FIG. 7. [Illustration: B, _the first cervical vertebra, the atlas;_ A, _the atlas, and the second cervical vertebra, the axis;_ e, _the odontoid process;_ c, _the foramen._] THE SKULL ARTICULATES with (is jointed to) the spine in a peculiar manner. On the top of the upper vertebra (atlas [Footnote: Thus called because, as, in ancient fable, the god Atlas supported the world on his shoulders, so in the body this bone bears the head.]) are two little hollows (_a_, _b_, Fig. 7), nicely packed and lined with the synovial membrane, into which fit the corresponding projections on the lower part of the skull, and thus the head can rock to and fro. The second vertebra (axis) has a peg, _e_, which projects through a hole, _c_, in the first. FIG. 8. [Illustration: _The Thorax or Chest._ a, _the sternum;_ b _to_ c, _the true ribs;_ d _to_ h, _the false ribs;_ g, h, _the floating ribs;_ i, k, _the dorsal vertebræ._] The surfaces of both vertebræ are so smooth that they easily glide on each other, and thus, when we move the head side wise, the atlas turns around the peg, _e_, of the axis. THE RIBS, also twenty-four in number, are arranged in pairs on each side of the chest. At the back, they are all attached to the spine. In front, the upper seven pairs are tied by cartilages to the breastbone (sternum); three are fastened to each other and to the cartilage above, and two, the floating ribs, are loose. The natural form of the chest is that of a cone diminishing upward. But, owing to the tightness of the clothing commonly worn, the reverse is often the case. The long, slender ribs give lightness, [Footnote: If the chest wall were in one bone thick enough to resist a blow, it would be unwieldy and heavy As it is, the separate bones bound by cartilages yield gradually, and diffuse the force among them all, and so are rarely broken.] the arched form confers strength, and the cartilages impart elasticity,--properties essential to the protection of the delicate organs within, and to freedom of motion in respiration. (See note, p. 80.) FIG. 9. [Illustration: _The Pelvis._ a, _the sacrum;_ b, b, _the right and the left innominatum._] THE HIP BONES, called by anatomists the innominata, or nameless bones, form an irregular basin styled the _pelvis_ (_pelvis_, a basin). In the upper part, is the foot of the spinal column--a wedge-shaped bone termed the _sacrum_ [Footnote: So called because it was anciently offered in sacrifice.] (sacred), firmly planted here between the widespreading and solid bones of the pelvis, like the keystone to an arch, and giving a steady support to the heavy burden above. 3. THE LIMBS. TWO SETS OF LIMBS branch from the trunk, viz.: the upper, and the lower. They closely resemble each other. The arm corresponds to the thigh; the forearm, to the leg; the wrist, to the ankle; the fingers, to the toes. The fingers and the toes are so much alike that they receive the same name, _digits_, while the several bones of both have also the common appellation, _phalanges_. The differences which exist grow out of their varying uses. The foot is characterized by strength; the hand, by mobility. FIG. 10. [Illustration: _The Shoulder Joint._ a, _the clavicle;_ b, _the scapula._] 1. THE UPPER LIMBS.--THE SHOULDER.--The bones of the shoulder are the collar bone (clavicle), and the shoulder blade (scapula). The _clavicle_ (_clavis_, a key) is a long, slender bone, shaped like the Italic _f_. It is fastened at one end to the breastbone and the first rib, and, at the other, to the shoulder blade. (See Fig. 1.) It thus holds the shoulder joint out from the chest, and gives the arm greater play. If it be removed or broken, the head of the arm bone will fall, and the motions of the arm be greatly restricted. [Footnote: Animals which use the forelegs only for support (as the horse, ox, etc.), do not possess this bone. "It is found in those that dig, fly, climb and seize."] THE SHOULDER BLADE is a thin, flat, triangular bone, fitted to the top and back of the chest, and designed to give a foundation for the muscles of the shoulder. THE SHOULDER JOINT.--The arm bone, or _humerus_, articulates with the shoulder blade by a ball-and-socket joint. This consists of a cup-like cavity in the latter bone, and a rounded head in the former, to fit it,-- thus affording a free rotary motion. The shallowness of the socket accounts for the frequent dislocation of this joint, but a deeper one would diminish the easy swing of the arm. FIG. 11. [Illustration: _Bones of the right Forearm._ H, _the humerus;_ R, _the radius; and_ U, _the ulna._] THE ELBOW.--At the elbow, the humerus articulates with the _ulna_--a slender bone on the inner side of the forearm--by a hinge joint which admits of motion in only two directions, _i. e._, backward and forward. The ulna is small at its lower end; the _radius_, or large bone of the forearm, on the contrary, is small at its upper end, while it is large at its lower end, where it forms the wrist joint. At the elbow, the head of the radius is convex and fits into a shallow cavity in the ulna, while at the wrist the ulna plays in a similar socket in the radius. Thus the radius may roll over and even cross the ulna. THE WRIST, or _carpus_, consists of two rows of very irregular bones, one of which articulates with the forearm; the other, with the hand. They are placed side to side, and so firmly fastened as to admit of only a gliding motion. This gives little play, but great strength, elasticity, and power of resisting shocks. THE HAND.--The _metacarpal_ (_meta_, beyond; _karpos_, wrist), or bones of the palm, support each a thumb or a finger. Each finger has three bones, while the thumb has only two. The first bone of the thumb, standing apart from the rest, enjoys a special freedom of motion, and adds greatly to the usefulness of the hand. FIG. 12. [Illustration: _Bones of the Hand and the Wrist._] The first bone (Figs. 11, 12) of each finger is so attached to the corresponding metacarpal bone as to move in several directions upon it, but the other phalanges form hinge joints. The fingers are named in order: the thumb, the index, the middle, the ring, and the little finger. Their different lengths cause them to fit the hollow of the hand when it is closed, and probably enable us more easily to grasp objects of varying size. If the hand clasps a ball, the tips of the fingers will be in a straight line. The hand in its perfection belongs only to man. Its elegance of outline, delicacy of mold, and beauty of color have made it the study of artists; while its exquisite mobility and adaptation as a perfect instrument have led many philosophers to attribute man's superiority even more to the hand than to the mind. [Footnote: How constantly the hand aids us in explaining or enforcing a thought! We affirm a fact by placing the hand as if we would rest it firmly on a body; we deny by a gesture putting the false or erroneous proposition away from us; we express doubt by holding the hand suspended, as if hesitating whether to take or reject. When we part from dear friends, or greet them again after long absence, the hand extends toward them as if to retain, or to bring them sooner to us. If a recital or a proposition is revolting, we reject it energetically in gesture as in thought. In a friendly adieu we wave our good wishes to him who is their object; but when it expresses enmity, by a brusque movement we sever every tie. The open hand is carried backward to express fear or horror, as well as to avoid contact; it goes forward to meet the hand of friendship; it is raised suppliantly in prayer toward Him from whom we hope for help; it caresses lovingly the downy cheek of the infant, and rests on its head invoking the blessing of Heaven,--_Wonders of the Human Body_.] FIG. 13. [Illustration: _The Mechanism of the Hip Joint._] 2. THE LOWER LIMBS.--THE HIP--The thigh bone, or _femur_, is the largest and necessarily the strongest in the skeleton, since at every step it has to bear the weight of the whole body. It articulates with the hip bone by a ball-and-socket joint. Unlike the shoulder joint, the cup here is deep, thus affording less play, but greater strength. It fits so tightly that the pressure of the air largely aids in keeping the bones in place. [Footnote: In order to test this, a hole was bored through a hip bone, so as to admit air into the socket, the thigh bone at once fell out as far as the ligaments would permit. An experiment was also devised whereby a suitably prepared hip joint was placed under the receiver of an air pump. On exhausting the air, the weight of the femur caused it to drop out of the socket, while the readmission of the air raised it to its place. Without this arrangement, the adjacent muscles would have been compelled to bear the additional weight of the thighbone every time it was raised. Now the pressure of the air rids them of this unnecessary burden, and hence they are less easily fatigued--WEBER] Indeed, when the muscles are cut away, great force is required to detach the limbs. THE KNEE is strengthened by the patella_, or kneepan (_patella_, little dish), a chestnut-shaped bone firmly fastened over the joint. The shin bone, or _tibia_, the large, triangular bone on the inner side of the leg, articulates both with the femur and the foot by hinge joints. The kneejoint is so made, however, as to admit of a slight rotary motion when the limb is not extended. The _fibula_ (_fibula_, a clasp), the small, outside bone of the leg, is firmly bound at each end to the tibia. (See Fig. 1.) It is immovable, and, as the tibia bears the principal weight of the body, the chief use of this second bone seems to be to give more surface to which the muscles may be attached. [Footnote: A young man in the hospital at Limoges had lost the middle part of his tibia. The lost bone was not reproduced, but the fibula, the naturally weak and slender part of the leg, became thick and strong enough to support the whole body.--STANLEY'S _Lectures_.] THE FOOT.--The general arrangement of the foot is strikingly like that of the hand (Fig. 1). The several parts are the _tarsus_, the _metatarsus_, and the _phalanges_. The graceful arch of the foot, and the numerous bones joined by cartilages, give an elasticity to the step that could never be attained by a single, flat bone. [Footnote: The foot consists of an arch, the base of which is more extended in front than behind, and the whole weight of the body is made to fall on this arch by means of a variety of joints. These joints further enable the foot to be applied, without inconvenience, to rough and uneven surfaces.--HINTON.] The toes naturally lie straight forward in the line of the foot. Few persons in civilized nations, however, have naturally formed feet. The big toe is crowded upon the others, while crossed toes, nails grown-in, enormous joints, corns, and bunions abound. THE CAUSE OF THESE DEFORMITIES is found in the shape and size of fashionable boots and shoes. The sole ought to be large enough for full play of motion, the uppers should not crowd the toes, and the heels should be low, flat, and broad. As it is, there is a constant warfare between Nature and our shoemakers, [Footnote: When we are measured for boots or shoes, we should stand on a sheet of paper, and have the shoemaker mark with a pencil the exact outline of our feet as they bear our whole weight. When the shoe is made, the sole should exactly cover this outline.] and we are the victims. The narrow point in front pinches our toes, and compels them to override one another; the narrow sole compresses the arch; while the high heel, by throwing all the weight forward on the toes, strains the ankle, and, by sending the pressure where Nature did not design it to fall, causes that joint to become enlarged. The body bends forward to meet the demand of this new motion, and thus loses its uprightness and beauty, making our gait stiff and ungraceful. (See p. 271.) DISEASES, ETC.--l. _Rickets_, a disease of early life, is caused by a lack of mineral matter in the bones, rendering them soft and pliable, so that they bend under the weight of the body. They thus become permanently distorted, and of course are weaker than if they were straight, [Footnote: Just here appears an exceedingly beautiful provision. As soon as the disproportion of animal matter ceases, a larger supply of mineral is sent to the weak points, and the bones actually become thicker, denser, harder, and consequently stronger at the very concave part where the stress of pressure is greatest.--WATSON'S _Lectures_. We shall often have occasion to refer to similar wise and providential arrangements whereby the body is enabled to remedy defects, and to prepare for accidents.] Rickets is most common among children who have inherited a feeble constitution and who are ill fed, or who live in damp, ill-ventilated houses. "Rickety" children should have plenty of fresh air and sunlight, nourishing food, comfortable clothing, and, in short, the best of hygienic care. 2. _A Felon_ is a swelling of the finger or thumb, usually of the last joint. It is marked by an accumulation beneath the periosteum and next the bone. The physician will merely cut through the periosteum, and let out the effete matter. 3. _Bowlegs_ are caused by children standing on their feet before the bones of the lower limbs are strong enough to bear their weight. The custom of encouraging young children to stand by means of a chair or the support of the hand, while the bones are yet soft and pliable, is a cruel one, and liable to produce permanent deformity. Nature will set the child on its feet when the proper time comes. 4. _Curvature of the Spine_.--When the spine is bent, the packing between the vertebræ becomes compressed on one side into a wedge-like shape. After a time, it will lose its elasticity, and the spine will become distorted. This often occurs in the case of students who bend forward to bring their eyes nearer their books, instead of lifting their books nearer their eyes, or who raise their right shoulder above their left when writing at a desk which is too high. Round shoulders, small, weak lungs, and, frequently, diseases of the spine are the consequences. An erect posture in reading or writing conduces not alone to beauty of form, but also to health of body. We shall learn hereafter that the action of the muscles bears an important part in preserving the symmetry of the spine. Muscular strength comes from bodily activity; hence, one of the best preventives of spinal curvature is daily exercise in the open air. 5. _Sprains_ are produced when the ligaments which bind the bones of a joint are strained, twisted, or torn from their attachments. They are quite as serious as a broken bone, and require careful attention lest they lead to a crippling for life. By premature use a sprained limb may be permanently impaired. Hence, the joint should be kept quiet, even after the immediate pain is gone. 6. _A Dislocation_ is the forcible displacement of a bone from its socket. It is, generally, the result of a fall or a violent blow. The tissues of the joint are often ruptured, while the contraction of the muscles prevents the easy return of the bone to its place. A dislocation should be reduced as soon as possible after the injury, before inflammation supervenes. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS. 1. Why does not a fall hurt a child as much as it does a grown person? 2. Should a young child ever be urged to stand or walk? 3. What is meant by "breaking one's neck"? 4. Should chairs or benches have straight backs? 5. Should a child's feet be allowed to dangle from a high seat? 6. Why can we tell whether a fowl is young by pressing on the point of the breastbone? 7. What is the use of the marrow in the bones? 8. Why is the shoulder so often put out of joint? 9. How can you tie a knot in a bone? 10. Why are high pillows injurious? 11. Is a stooping posture a healthful position? 12. Should a boot have a heel piece? 13. Why should one always sit and walk erect? 14. Why does a young child creep rather than walk? 15. What is the natural direction of the big toe? 16. What is the difference between a sprain and a fracture? A dislocation? 17. Does the general health of the system affect the strength of the bones? 18. Is living bone sensitive? _Ans_.--Scrape a bone, and its vessels bleed; cut or bore a bone, and its granulations sprout up; break a bone, and it will heal; cut a piece away, and more bone will readily be produced; hurt it in any way, and it inflames; burn it, and it dies. Take any proof of sensibility but the mere feeling of pain, and it will answer to the proof.--BELL'S _Anatomy_. Animal sensibility would be inconvenient; it is therefore not to be found except in diseased bone, where it sometimes exhibits itself too acutely.--TODD'S _Cyclopedia of Anatomy_. 19. Is the constitution of bone the same in animals as in man? _Ans_.--The bones of quadrupeds do not differ much from those of man. In general they are of a coarser texture, and in some, as in those of the elephant's head, we find extensive air cells.--TODD'S _Anatomy_. II. THE MUSCLES. "Behold the outward moving frame, Its living marbles jointed strong With glistening band and silvery thong, And link'd to reason's guiding reins By myriad rings in trembling chains, Each graven with the threaded zone Which claims it as the Master's own." HOLMES. ANALYSIS OF THE MUSCLES. _ | 1. The Use of the Muscles. | 2. Contractility of the Muscles. _ | 3. Arrangement of the Muscles. | 1. THE USE, STRUCTURE | 4. The two Kinds of Muscles. | AND ACTION OF THE | 5. The Structure of the Muscles. | MUSCLES. | 6. The Tendons for Fastening Muscles. | | 7. The Muscles and Bones as Levers. | | 8. The Effect of Big Joints. | | 9. Action of the Muscles in Walking. | |_10. Action of the Muscles in Walking. | | 2. THE MUSCULAR SENSE. | _ | 3. HYGIENE OF THE | 1. Necessity of Exercise. | MUSCLES. | 2. Time for Exercise. | |_ 3. Kinds of Exercise. | | 4. WONDERS OF THE MUSCLES. | _ | | 1. St. Vitus's Dance. | | 2. Convulstions. | | 3. Locked-jaw. |_5. DISEASES. | 4. Gout. | 5. Rheumatism. | 6. Lumbago. |_ 7. A Ganglion. FIG. 14. [Illustration] THE MUSCLES. THE USE OF THE MUSCLES.--The skeleton is the image of death. Its unsightly appearance instinctively repels us. We have seen, however, what uses it subserves in the body, and how the ugly-looking bones abound in nice contrivances and ingenious workmanship. In life, the framework is hidden by the flesh. This covering is a mass of muscles, which by their arrangement and their properties not only give form and symmetry to the body, but also produce its varied movements. In Fig. 14, we see the large exterior muscles. Beneath these are many others; while deeply hidden within are tiny, delicate ones, too small to be seen with the naked eye. There are, in all, about five hundred, each having its special use, and all working in exquisite harmony and perfection. CONTRACTILITY.--The peculiar property of the muscles is their power of contraction, whereby they decrease in length and increase in thickness. [Footnote: The maximum force of this contraction has been estimated as high as from eighty-five to one hundred and fourteen pounds per square inch.] This may be caused by an effort of the will, by cold, by a sharp blow, etc. It does not cease at death, but, in certain cold-blooded animals, a contraction of the muscles is often noticed long after the head has been cut off. ARRANGEMENT OF THE MUSCLES. [Footnote: "Could we behold properly the muscular fibers in operation, nothing, as a mere mechanical exhibition, can be conceived more superb than the intricate and combined actions that must take place during our most common movements. Look at a person running or leaping, or watch the motions of the eye. How rapid, how delicate, how complicated, and yet how accurate, are the motions required! Think of the endurance of such a muscle as the heart, that can contract, with a force equal to sixty pounds, seventy-five times every minute, for eighty years together, without being weary."]--The muscles are nearly all arranged in pairs, each with its antagonist, so that, as they contract and expand alternately, the bone to which they are attached is moved to and fro. (See p. 275.) If you grasp the arm tightly with your hand just above the elbow joint, and bend the forearm, you will feel the muscle on the inside (biceps, _a_, Fig. 14) swell, and become hard and prominent, while the outside muscle (triceps, _f_) will be relaxed. Now straighten the arm, and the swelling and hardness of the inside muscle will vanish, while the outside one will, in turn, become rigid. So, also, if you clasp the arm just below the elbow, and then open and shut the fingers, you can feel the alternate expanding and relaxing of the muscles on opposite sides of the arms. If the muscles on one side of the face become palsied, those on the other side will draw the mouth that way. Squinting is caused by one of the straight muscles of the eye (Fig. 17) contracting more strongly than its antagonist. KINDS OF MUSCLES.--There are two kinds of muscles, the _voluntary_, which are under the control of our will, and the _involuntary_, which are not. Thus our limbs stiffen or relax as we please, but the heart beats on by day and by night. The eyelid, however, is both voluntary and involuntary, so that while we wink constantly without effort, we can, to a certain extent, restrain or control the motion. STRUCTURE OF THE MUSCLES.--If we take a piece of lean beef and wash out the red color, we can easily detect the fine fibers of which the meat is composed. In boiling corned beef for the table, the fibers often separate, owing to the dissolving of the delicate tissue which bound them together. By means of the microscope, we find that these fibers are made up of minute filaments (_fibrils_), and that each fibril is composed of a row of small cells arranged like a string of beads. This gives the muscles a peculiar striped (striated) appearance. [Footnote: The involuntary muscles consist generally of smooth, fibrous tissue, and form sheets or membranes in the walls of hollow organs. By their contraction they change the size of cavities which they inclose. Some functions, however, like the action of the heart, or the movements of deglutition (swallowing), require the rapid, vigorous contraction, characteristic of the voluntary muscular tissue--FLINT.] (See p. 276.) The cells are filled with a fluid or semifluid mass of living (protoplasmic) matter. FIG. 15. [Illustration: _Microscopic view of a Muscle, showing, at one end, the fibrillæ; and, at the other, the disks, or cells, of the fiber._] The binding of so many threads into one bundle [Footnote: We shall learn hereafter how these fibers are firmly tied together by a mesh of fine connective tissue which dissolves in boiling, as just described] confers great strength, according to a mechanical principle that we see exemplified in suspension bridges, where the weight is sustained, not by bars of iron, but by small wires twisted into massive ropes. FIG. 16. [Illustration: _Tendons of the Hand._] THE TENDONS.--The ends of the muscles are generally attached to the bone by strong, flexible, but inelastic tendons. [Footnote: The tendons may be easily seen in the leg of a turkey as it comes on our table; so we may study Physiology while we pick the bones.] The muscular fibers spring from the sides of the tendon, so that more of them can act upon the bone than if they went directly to it. Besides, the small, insensible tendon can better bear the exposure of passing over a joint, and be more easily lodged in some protecting groove, than the broad, sensitive muscle. This mode of attachment gives to the limbs strength, and elegance of form. Thus, for example, if the large muscles of the arm extended to the hand, they would make it bulky and clumsy. The tendons, however, reach only to the wrist, whence fine cords pass to the fingers (Fig. 16). Here we notice two other admirable arrangements. 1. If the long tendons at the wrist on contracting should rise, projections would be made and thus the beauty of the slender joint be marred. To prevent this, a stout band or bracelet of ligament holds them down to their place. 2. In order to allow the tendon which moves the last joint of the finger to pass through, the tendon which moves the second joint divides at its attachment to the bone (Fig. 16). This is the most economical mode of packing the muscles, as any other practicable arrangement would increase the bulk of the slender finger. FIG. 17. [Illustration: _Muscles of the Right Eye:_ A, _superior straight,_ B, _superior oblique passing through a pulley,_ D; G, _inferior oblique,_ H, _external straight, and, back of it, the internal straight muscle._] Since the tendon can not always pull in the direction of the desired motion, some contrivance is necessary to meet the want. The tendon (B) belonging to one of the muscles of the eye, for example, passes through a ring of cartilage, and thus a rotary motion is secured. FIG. 18. [Illustration: _The three classes of Levers, and also the foot as a Lever._] THE LEVERS OF THE BODY. [Footnote: A _lever_ is a stiff bar resting on a point of support, called the _fulcrum_ (_F_), and having connected with it a _weight_ (_W_) to be lifted, and a _power_ (_P_) to move it. There are three classes of levers according to the arrangement of the power, weight, and fulcrum. In the first class, the _F_ is between the _P_ and _W_; in the second, the _W_ is between the _P_ and _F_; and in the third, the _P_ is between the _W_ and _F_ (Fig. 18). A pump handle is an example of the first; a lemon squeezer, of the second; and a pair of fire tongs, of the third. See "Popular Physics," pp. 81-83, for a full description of this subject, and for many illustrations.]--In producing the motions of the body, the muscles use the bones as levers. We see an illustration of the _first class_ of levers in the movements of the head. The back or front of the head is the weight to be lifted, the backbone is the fulcrum on which the lever turns, and the muscles at the back or front of the neck exert the power by which we toss or bow the head. FIG. 19. [Illustration: _The hand as a Lever of the third class._] When we raise the body on tiptoe, we have an instance of the _second class_. Here, our toes resting on the ground form the fulcrum the muscles of the calf (gas-troc-ne'-mi-us, _j_ and so-le'-us, Fig. 14), acting through the tendon of the heel, [Footnote: This is called the Tendon of Achilles (_k_, Fig. 14) and is so named because, as the fable runs, when Achilles was an infant his mother held him by the heel while she dipped him in the River Styx, whose water had the power of rendering one invulnerable to any weapon. His heel, not being wet, was his weak point, to which Paris directed the fatal arrow--"This tendon," says Mapother, "will bear one thousand pounds weight before it will break." The horse is said to be "hamstrung," and is rendered useless, when the Tendon of Achilles is cut. (see p. 284.)] are the power and the weight is borne by the ankle joint. An illustration of the _third class_ is found in lifting the hand from the elbow. The hand is the weight, the elbow the fulcrum, and the power is applied by the biceps muscle at its attachment to the radius (A, Fig. 19.) In this form of the lever there is great loss of force, because it is applied at such a distance from the weight, but there is a gain of velocity, since the hand moves so far by such a slight contraction of the muscle. The hand is required to perform quick motions, and therefore this mode of attachment is desirable. The nearer the power is applied to the resistance, the more easily the work is done. In the lower jaw, for example, the jaw is the weight, the fulcrum is the hinge joint at the back, and the muscles (temporal, _d_, and the mas'-se'ter, _e_, Fig. 14) on each side are the power. [Footnote: We may feel the contraction of the masseter by placing our hand on the face when we work the jaw, while the temporal can be readily detected by putting the fingers on the temple while we are chewing. The tendon of the muscle (digastric)--one of those which open the jaw--passes through a pulley (_c_, Fig. 14) somewhat like the one in the eye.] They act much closer to the resistance than those in the hand, since here we desire force, and there, speed. FIG. 20. [Illustration: _The Kneejoint;_ k, _the patella;_ f, _the tendon._] THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE BONES AT THE JOINTS not only affords greater surface for the attachment of the muscles, as we have seen, but also enables them to work to better advantage. Thus, in Fig. 20 it is evident that a muscle acting in the line _f b_ would not bend the lower limb so easily as if it were acting in the line _f k_, since in the former case its force would be about all spent in drawing the bones more closely together, while in the latter it would pull more nearly at a right angle. Thus the tendon _f_, by passing over the patella, which is itself pushed out by the protuberance _b_ of the thigh bone, pulls at a larger angle, [Footnote: The chief use of the processes of the spine (Fig. 6) and other bones is, in the same way, to throw out the point on which the power acts as far from the fulcrum as possible. The projections of the ulna ("funny bone") behind the elbow, and that of the heel bone to which the Tendon of Achilles is attached, are excellent illustrations (Fig. 1).] and so the leg is thrown forward with ease in walking and with great force in kicking. HOW WE STAND ERECT.--The joints play so easily, and the center of gravity in the body is so far above the foot, that the skeleton can not of itself hold our bodies upright. Thus it requires the action of many muscles to maintain this position. The head so rests upon the spine as to tend to fall in front, but the muscles of the neck steady it in its place. [Footnote: In animals the jaws are so heavy, and the place where the head and spine join is so far back, that there can be no balance as there is in man. There are therefore large muscles in their necks. We readily find that we have none if we get on "all fours" and try to hold up the head. On the other hand, gorillas and apes can not stand erect like man, for the reason that their head, trunk, legs, etc., are not balanced by muscles, so as to be in line with one another.] The hips incline forward, but are held erect by the strong muscles of the back. The trunk is nicely balanced on the head of the thigh bones. The great muscles of the thigh acting over the kneepan tend to bend the body forward, but the muscles of the calf neutralize this action. The ankle, the knee, and the hip lie in nearly the same line, and thus the weight of the body rests directly on the keystone of the arch of the foot. So perfectly do these muscles act that we never think of them until science calls our attention to the subject, and yet to acquire the necessary skill to use them in our infancy needed patient lessons, much time, and many hard knocks. FIG. 21. [Illustration: _Action of the Muscles which keep the body erect._] HOW WE WALK.--Walking is as complex an act as standing. It is really a perilous performance, which has become safe only because of constant practice. We see how violent it is when we run against a post in the dark, and find with what headlong force we were hurling ourselves forward. Holmes has well defined walking as a perpetual falling with a constant self-recovery. Standing on one foot, we let the body fall forward, while we swing the other leg ahead like a pendulum. Planting that foot on the ground, to save the body from falling farther, we then swing the first foot forward again to repeat the same operation. [Footnote: It is a curious fact that one side of the body tends to outwalk the other; and so, when a man is lost in the woods, he often goes in a circle, and at last comes round to the spot whence he started.] The shorter the pendulum, the more rapidly it vibrates; and so short- legged people take quicker and shorter steps than long-legged ones. [Footnote: In this respect, Tom Thumb was to Magrath, whose skeleton, eight and one half feet high, is now in the Dublin Museum, what a little fast-ticking, French mantel clock is to a big, old-fashioned, upright, corner timepiece.] We are shorter when walking than when standing still, because of this falling forward to take a step in advance. [Footnote: Women find that a gown that will swing clear of the ground when they are standing still, will drag the street when they are walking. The length of the step may be increased by muscular effort, as when a line of soldiers keep step in spite of their having legs of different lengths. Such a mode of walking is necessarily fatiguing. (See p. 280.)] In running, we incline the body more, and so, as it were, fall faster. When we walk, one foot is on the ground all the time, and there is an instant when both feet are planted upon it; but in running there is an interval of time in each step when both feet are off the ground, and the body is wholly unsupported. As we step alternately with the feet, we are inclined to turn the body first to one side and then to the other. This movement is sometimes counterbalanced by swinging the hand on the opposite side. [Footnote: In ordinary walking the speed is nearly four miles an hour, and can be kept up for a long period. But exercise and a special aptitude for it enable some men to walk great distances in a relatively short space of time. Trained walkers have gone seventy-five miles in twenty hours, and walked the distance of thirty-seven miles at the rate of five miles an hour. The mountaineers of the Alps are generally good walkers, and some of them are not less remarkable for endurance than for speed. Jacques Balmat, who was the first to reach the summit of Mont Blanc, at sixteen years of age could walk from the hamlet of the Pélerins to the mountain of La Côte in two hours,--a distance which the best- trained travelers required from five to six hours to get over. At the time of his last attempt to reach the top of Mont Blanc, this same guide, then twenty years old, passed six days and four nights without sleeping or reposing a single moment. One of his sons, Édouard Balmat, left Paris to join his regiment at Genoa; he reached Chamouni the fifth day at evening, having walked three hundred and forty miles. After resting two days, he set off again for Genoa, where he arrived in two days. Several years afterward, this same man left the baths at Louèche at two o'clock in the morning, and reached Chamouni at nine in the evening, having walked a distance equal to about seventy-five miles in nineteen hours. In 1844, an old guide of De Saussure, eighty years old, left the hamlet of Prats, in the valley of Chamouni, in the afternoon, and reached the Grand-Mulets at ten in the evening; then, after resting some hours, he climbed the glacier to the vicinity of the Grand Plateau, which has an altitude of about thirteen thousand feet, and then returned to his village without stopping.--_Wonders of the Body_.] THE MUSCULAR SENSE.--When we lift an object, we feel a sensation of weight, which we can compare with that experienced in lifting another body. [Footnote: If a small ivory ball be allowed to roll down the cheek toward the lips, it will appear to increase in weight. In general, the more sensitive parts of the body recognize smaller differences in weight, and the right hand is more accurate than the left. We are very apt, however, to judge of the weight of a body from previous conceptions. Thus, shortly after Sir Humphrey Davy discovered the metal potassium, he placed a piece of it in the hand of Dr. Pierson, who exclaimed: "Bless me! How heavy it is!" Really, however, potassium is so light that it will float on water like cork.] By balancing it in the hand. The muscular sense is useful to us in many ways. It guides us in standing or moving. We gratify it when we walk erect and with an elastic step, and by dancing, jumping, skating, and gymnastic exercises. NECESSITY OF EXERCISE.--The effect of exercise upon a muscle is very marked. [Footnote: The greater size of the breast (pectoral muscle) of a pigeon, as compared with that of a duck, shows how muscle increases with use. The breast of a chicken is white because it is not used for flight, and therefore gets little blood.] By use it grows larger, and becomes hard, compact, and darker-colored; by disuse it decreases in size, and becomes soft, flabby, and pale. Violent exercise, however, is injurious, since we then tear down faster than nature can build up. Feats of strength are not only hurtful, but dangerous. Often the muscles are strained or ruptured, and blood vessels burst in the effort to outdo one's companions. [Footnote: Instances have been known of children falling dead from having carried to excess so pleasant and healthful an amusement as jumping the rope, and of persons rupturing the Tendon of Achilles in dancing. The competitive lifting of heavy weights is unwise, sometimes fatal.] (See p. 278.) Two thousand years ago, Isocrates, the Greek rhetorician, said: "Exercise for health, not for strength." The cultivation of muscle for its own sake is a return to barbarism, while it enfeebles the mind, and ultimately the body. The ancient gymnasts are said to have become prematurely old, and the trained performers of our own day soon suffer from the strain they put upon their muscular system. Few men have sufficient vigor to become both athletes and scholars. Exercise should, therefore, merely supplement the deficiency of our usual employment. _A sedentary life needs daily, moderate exercise, which always stops short of fatigue_. This is a law of health. (See p. 280.) No education is complete which fails to provide for the development of the muscles. Recesses should be as strictly devoted to play as study hours are to work. Were gymnastics or calisthenics as regular an exercise as grammar or arithmetic, fewer pupils would be compelled to leave school on account of ill health; while spinal curvatures, weak backs, and ungraceful gaits would no longer characterize so many of our best institutions. TIME FOR EXERCISE.--We should not exercise after long abstinence from food, nor immediately after a meal, unless the meal or the exercise be very light. There is an old-fashioned prejudice in favor of exercise before breakfast--an hour suited to the strong and healthy, but entirely unfitted to the weak and delicate. On first rising in the morning, the pulse is low, the skin relaxed, and the system susceptible to cold. Feeble persons, therefore, need to be braced with food before they brave the outdoor air. WHAT KIND OF EXCERCISE TO TAKE.--For children, games are unequaled. Walking, the universal exercise, [Footnote: The custom of walking, so prevalent in England, has doubtless much to do with the superior physique of its people. It is considered nothing for a woman to take a walk of eight or ten miles, and long pedestrian excursions are made to all parts of the country. The benefits which accrue from such an open-air life are sadly needed by the women of our own land. A walk of half a dozen miles should be a pleasant recreation for any healthy person.] is beneficial, as it takes one into the open air and sunlight. Running is better, since it employs more muscles, but it must not be pushed to excess, as it taxes the heart, and may lead to disease of that organ. Rowing is more effectual in its general development of the system. Swimming employs the muscles of the whole body, and is a valuable acquirement, as it may be the means of saving life. Horseback riding is a fine accomplishment, and refreshes both mind and body. Gymnastic or calisthenic exercises bring into play all the muscles of the body, and when carefully selected, and not immoderately employed, are preferable to any other mode of indoor exercise. [Footnote: The employment of the muscles in exercise not only benefits their especial structure, but it acts on the whole system. When the muscles are put in action, the capillary blood vessels with which they are supplied become more rapidly charged with blood, and active changes take place, not only in the muscles, but in all the surrounding tissues. The heart is required to supply more blood, and accordingly beats more rapidly in order to meet the demand. A larger quantity of blood is sent through the lungs, and larger supplies of oxygen are taken in and carried to the various tissues. The oxygen, by combining with the carbon of the blood and the tissues, engenders a larger quantity of heat, which produces an action on the skin, in order that the superfluous warmth may be disposed of. The skin is thus exercised, as it were, and the sudoriparous and sebaceous glands are set at work. The lungs and skin are brought into operation, and the lungs throw off large quantities of carbonic acid, and the skin large quantities of water, containing in solution matters which, if retained, would produce disease in the body. Wherever the blood is sent, changes of a healthful character occur. The brain and the rest of the nervous system are invigorated, the stomach has its powers of digestion improved, and the liver, pancreas, and other organs perform their functions with more vigor. By want of exercise, the constituents of the food which pass into the blood are not oxidized, and products which produce disease are engendered. The introduction of fresh supplies of oxygen induced by exercise oxidizes these products, and renders them harmless. As a rule, those who exercise most in the open air will live the longest.--LANKESTER.] (See p. 280.) THE WONDERS OF THE MUSCLES.--The grace, ease, and rapidity with which the muscles contract are astonishing. By practice, they acquire a facility which we call mechanical. The voice may utter one thousand five hundred letters in a minute, yet each requires a distinct position of the vocal organs. We train the muscles of the fingers till they glide over the keys of the piano, executing the most exquisite and difficult harmony. In writing, each letter is formed by its peculiar motions, yet we make them so unconsciously that a skillful penman will describe beautiful curves while thinking only of the idea that the sentence is to express. The mind of the violinist is upon the music which his right hand is executing, while his left determines the length of the string and the character of each note so carefully that not a false sound is heard, although the variation of a hair's breadth would cause a discord. In the arm of a blacksmith, the biceps muscle may grow into the solidity almost of a club; the hand of a prize fighter will strike a blow like a sledge hammer; while the engraver traces lines invisible to the naked eye, and the fingers of the blind acquire a delicacy that almost supplies the place of the missing sense. DISEASES, ETC.--l. _St. Vitus's Dance_ is a disease of the voluntary muscles, whereby they are in frequent, irregular, and spasmodic motion beyond the control of the will. All causes of excitement, and especially of fear, should be avoided, and the general health of the patient invigorated, as this disease is closely connected with a derangement of the nervous system. 2. _Convulsions_ are an involuntary contraction of the muscles. Consciousness is wanting, while the limbs may be stiff or in spasmodic action. (See p. 261.) 3. _Locked-jaw_ is a disease in which there are spasms and a contraction of the muscles, usually beginning in the lower jaw. It is serious, often fatal, yet it sometimes follows as trivial an injury as the stroke of a whip lash, the lodgment of a bone in the throat, a fishhook in the finger, or a tack in the sole of the foot. 4. _Gout_ is characterized by an acute pain located chiefly in the small joints of the foot, especially those of the great toe, which become swollen and extremely sensitive. It is generally accompanied by an excess of uric acid in the blood, and a deposit of urate of soda about the affected joint. Gout is often the result of high living, and of too much animal food. It is frequently inherited. 5. _Rheumatism_ affects mainly the connective, white, fibrous tissue of the larger joints. While gout is the punishment of the rich who live luxuriously, rheumatism afflicts alike the poor and the rich. There are two common forms of rheumatism--the inflammatory or acute, and the chronic. The latter is of long continuance; the former terminates more speedily. The acute form is probably a disease of the blood, which carries with it some poisonous matter that is deposited where the fibrous tissue is most abundant. The disease flies capriciously from one joint to another, and the pain caused by even the slightest motion deprives the sufferer of the use of the disabled part and its muscles. Its chief danger lies in the possibility of its affecting the vital organs. Chronic rheumatism--the result of repeated attacks of the acute--leads to great suffering, and oftentimes to disorganization of the joints and an interference with the movements of the heart. 6. _Lumbago_ is an inflammation of the lumbar muscles and fascia. [Footnote: Lumbago is really a form of myalgia, a disease which, has its seat in the muscles, and may thus affect any part of the body. Doubtless much of what is commonly called "liver" or "kidney complaint" is only, in one case, myalgia of the chest or abdominal walls near the liver, or, in the other, of the back and loins near the kidneys. Chronic liver disease is comparatively rare in the Northern States, and pain in the side is not a prominent symptom; while certain diseases of the kidneys, which are as surely fatal as pulmonary consumption, are not attended by pain in the back opposite these organs.--WEY.] It may be so moderate as to produce only a "lame back," or so severe as to disable, as in the case of what is popularly termed a "crick in the back." Strong swimmers who sometimes drown without apparent cause are supposed to be seized in this way. 7. _A Ganglion_, or what is vulgarly called a "weak" or "weeping" sinew, is the swelling of a bursa. [Footnote: A bursa is a small sack containing a lubricating fluid to prevent friction where tendons play over hard surfaces. There is one shaped like an hourglass on the wrist, just at the edge of the palm. By pressing back the liquid it contains, this bursa may be clearly seen.] It sometimes becomes so distended by fluid as to be mistaken for bone. If on binding something hard upon it for a few days it does not disappear, a physician will remove the liquid by means of a hypodermic syringe, or perhaps cause it to be absorbed by an external application of iodine. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS. 1. What class of lever is the foot when we lift a weight on the toes? 2. Explain the movement of the body backward and forward, when resting upon the thigh bone as a fulcrum. 3. What class of lever do we use when we lift the foot while sitting down? 4. Explain the swing of the arm from the shoulder. 5. What class of lever is used in bending our fingers? 6. What class of lever is our foot when we tap the ground with our toes? 7. What class of lever do we use when we raise ourselves from a stooping position? 8. What class of lever is the foot when we walk? 9. Why can we raise a heavier weight with our hand when lifting from the elbow than from the shoulder? 10. What class of lever do we employ when we are hopping, the thigh bone being bent up toward the body and not used? 11. Describe the motions of the bones when we are using a gimlet. 12. Why do we tire when we stand erect? 13. Why does it rest us to change our work? 14. Why and when is dancing a beneficial exercise? 15. Why can we exert greater force with the back teeth than with the front ones? 16. Why do we lean forward when we wish to rise from a chair? 17. Why does the projection of the heel bone make walking easier? 18. Does a horse travel with less fatigue over a flat than a hilly country? 19. Can you move your upper jaw? 20. Are people naturally right or left-handed? 21. Why can so few persons move their ears by the muscles? 22. Is the blacksmith's right arm healthier than the left? 23. Boys often, though foolishly, thrust a pin into the flesh just above the knee. Why is it not painful? 24. Will ten minutes' practice in a gymnasium answer for a day's exercise? 25. Why would an elastic tendon be unfitted to transmit the motion of a muscle? 26. When one is struck violently on the head, why does he instantly fall? 27. What is the cause of the difference between light and dark meat in a fowl? III. THE SKIN. A protection from the outer world, it is our only means of communicating with it. Insensible itself, it is the organ of touch. It feels the pressure of a hair, yet bears the weight of the body. It yields to every motion of that which it wraps and holds in place. It hides from view the delicate organs within, yet the faintest tint of a thought shines through, while the soul paints upon it, as on a canvas, the richest and rarest of colors. ANALYSIS OF THE SKIN. _ _ | 1. The Cutis; its Composition and Character. | 1. THE STRUCTURE | 2. The Cuticle; its Composition and Character. | OF THE SKIN. | 3. The Value of the Cuticle. | |_4. The Complexion. | _ | | a. _Description._ | _ | b. _Method of Growth._ | | 1. The Hair.....| c. _As an Instrument of | | | Feeling._ | 2. THE HAIR AND | | d. _Indestructibility of | THE NAILS. | |_ the Hair._ | | _ | |_2. The Nails....| a. _Uses._ | |_b. _Method of Growth._ | _ | 3. THE MUCOUS | 1. The Structure. | MEMBRANE | 2. Connective Tissue. | |_3. Fat. | _ | | 1. Number and Kinds of Teeth. | | _ | | 1. The Two Sets.| 1. _The Milk Teeth._ | | |_2. _The Permanent Teeth._ | | | 4. THE TEETH. | 2. Structure of the Teeth. | | 3. The Setting of the Tooth in the Jaw. | | 4. The Decay of the Teeth. | |_5. The Preservation of the Teeth. | _ _ | | 1. The Two Kinds.| 1. _Oil Glands._ | | |_2. _Perpiratory Glands._ | | | 5. THE GLANDS | 2. The Perspiration. | | 3. The Absorbing Power of the Skin. (See | |_ Lymphatics.) | _ | | 1. About Washing and Bathing. | | 2. The Reaction. | | 3. Sea Bathing. _ | 6. HYGIENE | | a. _General Principles._ | | | b. _Linen._ | | | c. _Cotton._ | |_4. Clothing.......| d. _Woolen._ | | e. _Flannel._ | | f. _Color of Clothing._ | | g. _Structure of | | Clothing._ | | h. _Insufficient | _ |_ Clothing._ | | 1. Erysipelas. | | 2. Salt Rheum. |_7. DISEASES. | 3. Corns. | 4. Ingrowing Nails. | 5. Warts. |_6. Chilblains. THE SKIN. THE SKIN is a tough, thin, close-fitting garment for the protection of the tender flesh. Its perfect elasticity beautifully adapts it to every motion of the body. We shall learn hereafter that it is more than a mere covering, being an active organ, which does its part in the work of keeping in order the house in which we live. It oils itself to preserve its smoothness and delicacy, replaces itself as fast as it wears out, and is at once the perfection of use and beauty. 1. STRUCTURE OF THE SKIN. CUTIS AND CUTICLE.--What we commonly call the skin--viz., the part raised by a blister--is only the cuticle [Footnote: _Cuticula_, little skin. It is often styled the scarfskin, and also the epidermis (_epi_, upon; and _derma_, skin).] or covering of the cutis or true skin. The latter is full of nerves and blood vessels, while the former neither bleeds [Footnote: We notice this in shaving; for if a razor goes below the cuticle, it is followed by pain and blood. So insensible is this outer layer that we can run a pin through the thick mass at the roots of the nails without discomfort.] nor gives rise to pain, neither suffers from heat nor feels the cold. The cuticle is composed of small, flat cells or scales. These are constantly shed from the surface in the form of scurf, dandruff, etc., but are as constantly renewed from the cutis [Footnote: We see how rapidly this change goes on by noticing how soon a stain of any kind disappears from the skin. A snake throws off its cuticle entire, and at regular intervals.] below. Under the microscope, we can see the round cells of the cuticle, and how they are flattened and hardened as they are forced to the surface. The immense number of these cells surpasses comprehension. In one square inch of the cuticle, counting only those in a single layer, there are over a billion horny scales, each complete in itself.--HARTING. FIG. 22. [Illustration: A _represents a vertical section of the Cuticle._ B, _lateral view of the cells._ C, _flat side of scales like_ d, _magnified 250 diameters, showing the nucleated cells transformed into broad scales._] VALUE OF THE CUTICLE.--In the palm of the hand, the sole of the foot, and other parts especially liable to injury, the cuticle is very thick. This is a most admirable provision for their protection. [Footnote: We can hold the hand in strong brine with impunity, but the smart will quickly tell us when there is even a scratch in the skin. Vaccine matter must be inserted beneath the cuticle to take effect. This membrane doubtless prevents many poisonous substances from entering the system.] By use, it becomes callous and horny. The boy who goes out barefoot for the first time, "treading as if on eggs," can soon run where he pleases among thistles and over stones. The blacksmith handles hot iron without pain, while the mason lays stones and works in lime, without scratching or corroding his flesh. THE COMPLEXION.--In the freshly made cells on the lower side of the cuticle, is a pigment composed of tiny grains. [Footnote: These grains are about 1/2000 of an inch in diameter, and, curiously enough, do not appear opaque, but transparent and nearly colorless.--MARSHALL.] In the varying tint of this coloring matter, lies the difference of hue between the blonde and the brunette, the European and the African. In the purest complexion, there is some of this pigment, which, however, disappears as the fresh, round, soft cells next the cutis change into the old, flat, horny scales at the surface. Scars are white, because this part of the cuticle is not restored. The sun has a powerful effect upon the coloring matter, and so we readily "tan" on exposure to its rays. If the color gathers in spots, it forms freckles. [Footnote: This action of the sun on the pigment of the skin is very marked. Even among the Africans, the skin is observed to lose its intense black color in those who live for many months in the shades of the forest. It is said that Asiatic and African women confined within the walls of the harem, and thus secluded from the sun, are as fair as Europeans. Among the Jews who have settled in Northern Europe, are many of light complexion, while those who live in India are as dark as the Hindoos. Intense heat also increases this coloring matter, and thus a furnace-man's skin, even where protected by clothing, becomes completely bronzed. The black pigment has been known to disappear during severe illness, and a lighter color to be developed in its place. Among the negroes, are sometimes found people who have no complexion, _i. e._, there is no coloring matter in their skin, hair, or the iris of their eyes. These persons are called Albinos.] II. HAIR AND NAILS. The Hair and the Nails are modified forms of the cuticle. FIG. 23. [Illustration: A _Hair, magnified 600 diameters._ S, _the sac (follicle);_ P, _the papilla, showing the cells and the blood vessels:_ V.] THE HAIR is a protection from heat and cold, and shields the head from blows. It is found on nearly all parts of the body, except the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. The outside of a hair is hard and compact, and consists of a layer of colorless scales, which overlie one another like the shingles of a house; the interior is porous, [Footnote: In order to examine a hair, it should be put on the slide of the microscope, and covered with a thin glass, while a few drops of alcohol are allowed to flow between the cover and the slide. This causes the air, which fills the hair and prevents our seeing its structure, to escape.] and probably conveys the liquids by which it is nourished. Each hair grows from a tiny bulb (papilla), which is an elevation of the cutis at the bottom of a little hollow in the skin. From the surface of this bulb, the hair is produced, like the cuticle, by the constant formation of new cells at the bottom. When the hair is pulled out, this bulb, if uninjured, will produce a new one; but, when once destroyed, it will never grow again. [Footnote: Hair grows at the rate of about five to seven inches in a year. It is said to grow after death. This appearance is due to the fact that by the shrinking of the skin the part below the surface is caused to project, which is especially noticeable in the beard.] The hair has been known to whiten in a single night by fear, fright, or nervous excitement. When the color has once changed, it can not be restored. [Footnote: Hair dyes, or so-called "hair restorers," are almost invariably deleterious substances, depending for their coloring properties upon the action of lead or lunar caustic. Frequent instances of hair poisoning have occurred, owing to the common use of such dangerous articles. If the growth of the hair be impaired, the general constitution or the skin needs treatment. This is the work of a skillful physician, and not of a patent remedy. Dame Fashion has her repentant freaks as well as her ruinous follies, and it is a healthful sign that the era of universal hair dyeing has been blotted out from her present calendar, and the gray hairs of age are now honored with the highest place in "style" as well as in good sense and cleanliness.] (See p. 285.) Wherever hair exists, tiny muscles are found, interlaced among the fibers of the skin. These, when contracting under the influence of cold or electricity, pucker up the skin, and cause the hair to stand on end. [Footnote: In horses and other animals which are able to shake the whole skin, this muscular tissue is much more fully developed than in man.] The hairs themselves are destitute of feeling. Nerves, however, are found in the hollows in which the hair is rooted, and so one feels pain when it is pulled. [Footnote: These nerves are especially abundant in the whiskers of the cat, which are used as feelers.] Thus the insensible hairs become wonderfully delicate instruments to convey an impression of even the slightest touch. FIG. 24. [Illustration: A, _a perspiratory tube with its gland;_ B, _a hair with a muscle and two oil glands;_ C, _cuticle;_ D, _the papillæ;_ and E, _fat cells._] Next to the teeth and bones, the hair is the least destructible part of the body, and its color is often preserved for many years after the other portions have gone to decay. [Footnote: Fine downy hairs, such as are general upon the body, have been detected in the little fragments of skin found beneath the heads of the nails by which, centuries ago, certain robbers were fastened to the church doors, as a punishment for their sacrilege.] THE NAILS protect the ends of the tender finger, and toe, and give us power more firmly to grasp and easily to pick up any object we may desire. They enable us to perform a hundred little, mechanical acts which else were impossible. At the same time, their delicate color and beautiful outline give a finish of ornament to that exquisite instrument, the hand. The nail is firmly set in a groove (matrix) in the cuticle, from which it grows at the root in length [Footnote: By making a little mark on the nail near the root we can see, week by week, how rapidly this process goes on, and so form some idea of what a multitude of cells must be transformed into the horny matter of the nail.] and from beneath in thickness. So long as the matrix at the root is uninjured, the nail will be replaced after any accident. (See p. 288.) III. THE MUCOUS MEMBRANE. STRUCTURE.--At the edges of the openings into the body, the skin seems to stop and give place to a tissue which is redder, more sensitive, more liable to bleed, and is moistened by a fluid, or mucus, as it is called. Really, however, the skin does not cease, but passes into a more delicate covering of the same general structure, viz., an outer, hard, bloodless, insensible layer, and an inner, soft, sanguine, nervous one. [Footnote: With a dull knife, we can scrape from the mucous membrane which lines the mouth some of the cuticle for examination under the microscope. In a similar way, we can obtain cuticle from the surface of the body for study and comparison.] Thus every part of the body is wrapped in a kind of double bag, made of tough skin on the outside, and tender mucous membrane on the inside. CONNECTIVE TISSUE.--The cutis and the corresponding layer of the mucous membrane consist chiefly of a fibrous substance interlaced, like felt. It is called connective tissue, because it connects all the different parts of the body. It spreads from the cutis, invests muscles, bones, and cartilages, and thence passes into the mucous membrane. So thoroughly does it permeate the body, that, if the other tissues were destroyed, it would give a perfect model of every organ. [Footnote: It is curious to notice how our body is wrapped in membrane. On the outside, is the skin protecting from exterior injury, and, on the inside, is the mucous membrane reaching from the lips to the innermost air cell of the lungs. Every organ is enveloped in its membrane. Every bone has its sheath. Every socket is lined. Even the separate fibers of muscles have their covering tissue. The brain and the spinal cord are triply wrapped, while the eye is only a membranous globe filled with fluid. These membranes protect and support the organs they enfold, but, with that wise economy so characteristic of nature everywhere, they have also an important function to perform. They are the _filters_ of the body. Through their pores pass alike the elements of growth, and the returning products of waste. On one side, bathed by the blood, they choose from it suitable food for the organ they envelop, and many of them in their tiny cells, by some mysterious process, form new products,--put the finishing touches, as it were, upon the material ere it is deposited in the body.] It can be seen in a piece of meat as a delicate substance lying between the layers of muscle, where it serves to bind together the numerous fibers of which they are composed. Connective tissue yields gelatine on boiling, and is the part which tans when hides are manufactured into leather. It is very elastic, so that when you remove your finger after pressing upon the skin, no indentation is left. [Footnote: In dropsy, this elasticity is lost by distension, and there is a kind of "pitting," as it is called, produced by pressure.] It varies greatly in character,--from the mucous membrane, where it is soft and tender, to the ligaments and tendons which it largely composes, where it is strong and dense. [Footnote: The leather made from this tissue varies as greatly, from the tough, thick oxhide, to the soft, pliable kid and chamois skin.] FAT is deposited as an oil in the cells [Footnote: So tiny are these cells, that there are over sixty-five million in a cubic inch of fat. As they are kept moist, the liquid does not ooze out, but, on drying, it comes to the surface, and thus a piece of fat feels oily when exposed to the air. The quantity of fat varies with the state of nutrition. In corpulent persons, the masses of fat beneath the skin, in the mesentery, on the surface of the heart and great vessels, between the muscles, and in the neighborhood of the nerves, are considerably increased. Conversely, in the emaciated we sometimes find beneath the skin nucleated cells, which contain only one oil drop. Many masses of fat which have an important relation to muscular actions--such as the fat of the orbit or the cheek-- do not disappear in the most emaciated object. Even in starvation, the fatty substances of the brain and spinal cord are retained.--VALENTIN.] of this tissue, just beneath the skin (Fig. 24), giving roundness and plumpness to the body, and acting as an excellent nonconductor for the retention of heat. It collects as pads in the hollows of the bones, around the joints, and between the muscles, causing them to glide more easily upon each other. As marrow, it nourishes the skeleton, and also distributes the shock of any jar the limb may sustain. It is noticeable, however, that fat does not gather within the cranium, the lungs, or the eyelids, where its accumulation would clog the organs. IV. THE TEETH. THE TEETH [Footnote: Although the teeth are always found in connection with the skeleton, and are, therefore, figured as a part of it (Fig. 1), yet they do not properly belong to the bones of the body, and are merely set in the solid jaw to insure solidity. They are hard, and resemble bony matter, yet they are neither true bone nor are they formed in the same manner. "They are properly appendages of the mucous membrane, and are developed from it."--LEIDY. "They belong to the Tegumentary System, which, speaking generally of animals, includes teeth, nails, horns, scales, and hairs."--MARSHALL. They are therefore classed with the mucous membrane, as are the nails and hair with the skin.] are thirty-two in all,--there being eight in each half jaw, similarly shaped and arranged. In each set of eight, the two nearest the middle of the jaw have wide, sharp, chisel-like edges, fit for cutting, and hence are called _incisors_. The next one corresponds to the great tearing or holding tooth of the dog, and is styled the _canine_, or eye-tooth. The next two have broader crowns, with two points, or cusps, and are hence termed the _bicuspids_. The remaining three are much broader, and, as they are used to crush the food, are called the _grinders_, or _molars_. The incisors and eyeteeth have one fang, or root; the others have two or three fangs. THE MILK TEETH.--We are provided with two sets of teeth. The first, or milk teeth, are small and only twenty in number. In each half jaw there are two incisors, one canine, and two molars. The middle incisors are usually cut about the age of seven months, the others at nine months, the first molars at twelve months, the canines at eighteen months, and the remaining molars at two or three years of age. The lower teeth precede the corresponding upper ones. The time often varies, but the order seldom. THE PERMANENT TEETH.--At six years, when the first set is usually still perfect, the jaws contain the crowns of all the second, except the wisdom teeth. About this age, to meet the wants of the growing body, the crowns of the permanent set begin to press against the roots of the milk teeth, which, becoming absorbed, leave the loosened teeth to drop out, while the new ones rise and occupy their places. [Footnote: If the milk teeth, do not promptly loosen on the appearance of the second set, the former should be at once removed to permit the permanent teeth to assume their natural places. If any fail to come in regularly, or if they crowd the others, a competent dentist should be consulted.] FIG. 25. [Illustration: _The teeth at the age of six and one half years._ I, _the incisors;_ O, _the canine;_ M, _the molars; the last molar is the first of the permanent teeth;_ F, _sacs of the permanent incisors;_ C, _of the canine;_ B, _of the bicuspids;_ N, _of the second molar; the sac of the third molar is empty._-- MARSHALL.] The central incisors appear at about seven years of age; the others at eight; the first bicuspids at nine, the second at ten; the canines at eleven or twelve; the second [Footnote: The first molar appears much earlier. (See Fig. 25.)] molars at twelve or thirteen, and the last, or wisdom teeth, are sometimes delayed until the twenty-second year, or even later. STRUCTURE OF THE TEETH.--The interior of the tooth consists principally of _dentine_, a dense substance resembling bone. [Footnote: In the tusk of the elephant this is known as ivory.] The crown of the tooth, which is exposed to wear, is protected by a sheath of _enamel_. This is a hard, glistening, white substance, containing only two and a half per cent of animal matter. The fang is covered by a thin layer of true bone (cement). FIG. 26. [Illustration: _Vertical section of a Molar Tooth, moderately magnified._ a, _enamel of the crown, the lines of which indicate the arrangement of its columns;_ b, _dentine;_ c, _cement;_ d, _pulp cavity._] At the center of the tooth is a cavity filled with a soft, reddish-white, pulpy substance full of blood vessels and nerves. This pulp is very sensitive, and toothache is caused by its irritation. THE FITTING OF THE TOOTH INTO THE JAW is a most admirable contrivance. It is not set like a nail in wood, having the fang in contact with the bone; but the socket is lined with a membrane which forms a soft cushion. While this is in a healthy state, it deadens the force of any shock, but, when inflamed, it becomes the seat of excruciating pain. THE DECAY OF THE TEETH [Footnote: Unlike the other portions of the body, there is no provision made for any change in the permanent teeth. That part, however, which is thus during life most liable to change, after death resists it the longest. In deep-sea dredgings teeth are found when all traces of the frame to which they belonged have disappeared. Yet hard and incorruptible as they seem, their permanence is only relative. Exposed to injury and disease, they break or decay. Even if they escape accident, they yet wear at the crown, are absorbed at the fang, and, in time, drop out, thus affording another of the many signs of the limitations Providence has fixed to the endurance of our bodies and the length of our lives.] is commonly caused (1) by portions of the food which become entangled between them, and, on account of the heat and moisture, quickly decompose; and (2) by the saliva, as it evaporates, leaving on the teeth a sediment, which we call tartar. This collects organic matter that rapidly changes, and also affords a soil in which a sort of fungus speedily springs up. From both these causes, the breath becomes offensive, and the teeth are injured. PRESERVATION OF THE TEETH.--Children should early be taught to brush their teeth at least every morning with tepid water, and twice a week with white castile soap and powdered orris root, or with some dentifrice recommended by a responsible dentist. They should also be instructed to remove the particles of food from between the teeth, after each meal, by means of a quill or wooden toothpick. The enamel once injured is never restored, and the whole interior of the tooth is exposed to decay. We should not, therefore, crack hard nuts, bite thread, or use metal toothpicks, gritty tooth powders, or any acid which "sets the teeth on edge," _i. e._. that acts upon the enamel. It is well also to have the teeth examined yearly by a dentist, that any small orifice may be filled, and further decay prevented. V. THE GLANDS OF THE SKIN. 1. THE OIL GLANDS are clusters of tiny sacs which secrete an oil that flows along the duct to the root of the hair, and thence oozes out on the cuticle (Fig. 24). [Footnote: This secretion is said to vary in different persons, and on that account the dog is enabled to trace his master by the scent.] This is nature's efficient hair-dressing, and also keeps the skin soft and flexible. These glands are not usually found where there is no hair, as on the palm of the hand, and hence at those points only can water readily soak through the skin into the body. They are of considerable size on the face, especially about the nose. When obstructed, their contents become hard and dark-colored, and are vulgarly called "worms." [Footnote: Though they are not alive, yet, under the microscope, they are sometimes found to contain a curious parasite, called the pimple mite, which is supposed to consume the superabundant secretion.] II. THE PERSPIRATORY GLANDS are fine tubes about 1/300 of an inch in diameter, and a quarter of an inch in length, which run through the cutis, and then coil up in little balls (Fig. 24). They are found in all parts of the body, and in almost incredible numbers. In the palm of the hand, there are about two thousand eight hundred in a single square inch. On the back of the neck and trunk, where they are fewest, there are yet four hundred to the square inch. The total number on the body of an adult is estimated at about two and a half million. If they were laid end to end, they would extend nearly ten miles. [Footnote: The current statement, that they would extend twenty-eight miles, is undoubtedly an exaggeration. Krause estimates the total number at 2,381,248, and the length of each coil, when unraveled, at 1/10 of an inch, which would make the total length much less than even the statement in the text. Seguin states that the proportion of impurities thrown off by the skin and the lungs, is eleven to seven.] The mouths of these glands--"pores," as we commonly call them--may be seen with a pocket lens along the fine ridges which cover the palm of the hand. THE PERSPIRATION.--From these openings, there constantly passes a vapor, forming what we call the insensible perspiration. Exercise or heat causes it to flow more freely, when it condenses on the surface in drops. The perspiration consists of about ninety-nine parts water, and one part solid matter. The amount varies greatly, but on the average is, for an adult, not far from two pounds per day. Any suppression of this constant drainage will lead to disagreeable and even dangerous results. If it be entirely and permanently checked, death will inevitably ensue. [Footnote: Once, on an occasion of great solemnity at Rome, a child was, it is said, completely covered with gold leaf, closely applied to the skin, so as to represent, according to the idea of that age, the golden glory of an angel or seraph. In a few hours, after contributing to this pageant, the child died; the cause being suffocation, from stopping the exhalation of the skin; although, in the ignorance of the common people of those days, the death was attributed to the anger of the Deity, and looked upon as a circumstance of evil omen.] THE ABSORBING POWER OF THE SKIN.--We have already described two uses of the skin: (1) Its _protective_, (2) its _exhaling_, and now we come to (3) its _absorbing_ power. This is not so noticeable as the others, and yet it can be illustrated. Persons frequently poison their hands with the common wood ivy. Contagious diseases are taken by touching a patient, or even his clothing, especially if there be a crack in the cuticle. [Footnote: If one is called upon to handle a dead body, it is well, especially if the person has died of a contagious disease, to rub the hand with lard or olive oil. Poisonous matter has been fatally absorbed through the breaking of the cuticle by a hangnail, or a simple scratch. There is a story that Bonaparte, when a lieutenant of artillery, in the heat of battle, seized the rammer and worked the gun of an artilleryman who had fallen. From the wood which the soldier had used, Bonaparte absorbed a poison that gave him a skin disease, by which he was annoyed the remainder of his life.] Painters absorb so much lead through the pores of their hands that they are attacked with colic. [Footnote: Cosmetics, hair dyes, etc., are exceedingly injurious, not only because they tend to fill the pores of the skin, but because they often contain poisonous matters that may be absorbed into the system, especially if they are in a solution.] Snuff and lard are frequently rubbed on the chest of a child suffering with the croup, to produce vomiting. It is said that seamen in want of water drench their clothing in salt spray, when the skin will absorb enough moisture to quench thirst (see Lymphatic System). By carefully conducted experiments, it has been found that the skin acts in the same way as the lungs (see Respiration) in absorbing oxygen from the air, and giving off carbonic acid to a small but appreciable amount. Indeed, the skin has not inaptly been styled the third lung. Hence, the importance of absolute cleanliness and a frequent ablution of the entire body. VI. HYGIENE. HINTS ABOUT WASHING AND BATHING.--The moment of rising from bed is the proper time for the full wash or bath with which one should commence the day. The body is then warm, and can endure moderately cold water better than at any other time; it is relaxed, and needs bracing; and the nerves, deadened by the night's repose, require a gentle stimulus. If the system be strong enough to resist the shock, cold water is the most invigorating; if not, a tepid bath will answer. [Footnote: Many persons have not the conveniences for a bath. To them, the following plan, which the author has daily employed for years, is commended. The necessities are: a basin full of soft water, a mild soap, a large sponge or a piece of flannel, and two towels--one soft, the other rough. The temperature of the water should vary with the season of the year--cold in summer and tepid in winter. Rub quickly the entire body with the wet sponge or flannel. (If more agreeable, wash and wipe only a part at a time, protecting the rest in cold weather with portions of clothing.) Dry the skin gently with a soft towel, and when quite dry, with the rough towel or flesh brush rub the body briskly four or five minutes till the skin is all aglow. The chest and abdomen need the principal rubbing. The roughness of the towel should be accommodated to the condition of the skin. Enough friction, however, must be given to produce at least a gentle warmth, indicative of the reaction necessary to prevent subsequent chill or languor. An invalid will find it exceedingly beneficial if a stout, vigorous person produce the reaction by rubbing with the hands.] Before dressing, the whole body should be thoroughly rubbed with a coarse towel or flesh brush. At first, the friction may be unpleasant, but this sensitiveness will soon be overcome, and the keenest pleasure be felt in the lively glow which follows. A bath should not be taken just before nor immediately after a meal, as it will interfere with the digestion of the food. Soap should be employed occasionally, but its frequent use tends to make the skin dry and hard. REACTION.--After taking a cold bath, there should be a prompt reaction. When the surface is chilled by cold water, the blood sets to the heart and other vital organs, exciting them to more vigorous action, and then, being thrown back to the surface, it reddens, warms, and stimulates the skin to an unwonted degree. This is called the reaction, and in it lies the invigorating influence of the cold bath. When, on the contrary, the skin is heated by a hot bath, the blood is drawn to the surface, less blood goes to the heart, the circulation decreases, and languor ensues. A dash of cold water is both necessary and refreshing at the close of a hot bath. [Footnote: The Russians are very fond of vapor baths, taken in the following manner. A large room is heated by stoves. Red-hot stones being brought in, water is thrown upon them, filling the room with steam. The bathers sit on benches until they perspire profusely, when they are rubbed with soapsuds and dashed with cold water. Sometimes, while in this state of excessive perspiration, they run out of doors and leap into snow banks.] If, after a cold bath, there be felt no glow of warmth, but only a chilliness and depression, we are thereby warned that either proper means were not taken to bring on this reaction, or that the circulation is not vigorous enough to make such a bath beneficial. The general effect of a cool bath is exhilarating, and that of a warm one depressing. [Footnote: The sudden plunge into a cold bath is good for the strong and healthy, but too severe for the delicate. One should always wet first the face, neck, and chest. It is extremely injurious to stand in a bath with only the feet and the lower limbs covered by the water, for the blood is thus sent from the extremities to the heart and internal organs, and they become so burdened that reaction may be out of their power. A brisk walk, or a thorough rubbing of the skin, before a cold bath or swim, adds greatly to its value and pleasure.] Hence the latter should not ordinarily be taken oftener than once a week, while the former may be enjoyed daily. (See p. 289.) SEA BATHING is exceedingly stimulating, on account of the action of the salt and the exciting surroundings. Twenty minutes is the utmost limit for bathing or swimming in salt or fresh water. A chilly sensation should be the signal for instant removal. It is better to leave while the glow and buoyancy which follow the first plunge are still felt. Gentle exercise after a bath is beneficial. CLOTHING in winter, to keep us warm, should repel the external cold and retain the heat of the body. In summer, to keep us cool, it should not absorb the rays of the sun, and should permit the passage of the heat of the body. At all seasons, it should be porous, to give ready escape to the perspiration, and a free admission of air to the skin. We can readily apply these essential conditions to the different kinds of clothing. _Linen_ is soft to the touch, and is a good conductor of heat. Hence it is pleasant for summer wear, but, being apt to chill the surface too rapidly, it should not be worn next the skin. _Cotton_ is a poorer conductor of heat and absorber of moisture, and is therefore warmer than linen. It is sufficiently cool for summer wear, and affords better protection against sudden changes. _Woolen_ absorbs moisture slowly, and contains much air in its pores. It is therefore a poor conductor of heat, and guards the wearer against the vicissitudes of our climate. The outer clothing may be adapted largely to ornament, and may be varied to suit our fancy and the requirements of society. The underclothing should always be sufficient to keep us warm. Woolen should be worn next the skin at all times; light gossamer garments in the heat of summer, and warm, porous flannels in midwinter. Light-colored clothing is not only cooler in summer, but warmer in winter. As the warmth of clothing depends greatly on the amount of air contained in its fibers, fine, loose, porous cloth with a plenty of nap is best for winter wear. Firm and heavy goods are not necessarily the warmest. Furs are the perfection of winter clothing, since they combine warmth with lightness. Two light woolen garments are warmer than one heavy one, as there is between them a layer of nonconducting air. All the body except the head should be equally protected by clothing. Whatever fashion may dictate, no part covered to-day can be uncovered tonight or to-morrow, except at the peril of health. It is a most barbarous and cruel custom to leave the limbs of little children unprotected, when adults would shiver at the very thought of exposure. Equally so is it for children to be thinly clad for the purpose of hardening them. To go shivering with cold is not the way to increase one's power of endurance. The system is made more vigorous by exercise and food; not by exposure. In winter, we should wear warm shoes with thick soles, and rubbers when it is damp. At night, and after exercise, we require extra clothing. (See p. 295.) DISEASES, ETC.--l. _Erysipelas_ is an inflammation (see Inflammation) of the skin, and often begins in a spot not larger than a pin head, which spreads with great rapidity. It is very commonly checked by the application of a solution of iodine. The burning and contracting sensation may be relieved by cloths wrung out of hot water. 2. _Eczema_ (Salt Rheum, etc.) is of constitutional origin. It is characterized by an itching, burning, reddened eruption, in which a serous discharge exudes and dries into crusts or scales. The skin thickens in patches, and painful fissures are formed, which are irritated by exposure to air or water. Eczema denotes debility. It occurs in various forms, and, like erysipelas, should be treated by a physician. 3. _Corns_ are thickened cuticle, caused by pressure or friction. They most frequently occur on the feet; but are produced on the shoemaker's knee by constant hammering, and on the soldier's shoulder by the rubbing of his musket. This hard portion irritates the sensitive cutis beneath, and so causes pain. A corn will soften in hot water, when it may be pared with a sharp knife. If the cause be removed, the corn will not return. 4. _Ingrowing Nails_ are caused by pressure, which forces the edge of the toe nail into the flesh. They may be cured by carefully cutting away the part which has mal-grown, and then scraping the back of the nail till it is thin, making a small incision in the center, at the top. The two portions, uniting, will draw away the nail from the flesh at the edge. Ingrowing nails may be prevented by wearing broad-toed shoes. 5. _Warts_ are overgrown papillæ (Fig. 24). They may generally be removed by the application of glacial acetic acid, or a drop of nitric acid, repeated until the entire structure is softened. Care must be taken to keep the acid from touching the neighboring skin. The capricious character of warts has given rise to the popular delusion concerning the influence of charms upon them. 6. _Chilblain_ is a local inflammation affecting generally the feet, the hands, or the lobes of the ear. Liability to it usually passes away with manhood. It is not caused by "freezing the feet," as many suppose, though attacks are brought on, or aggravated, by exposure to cold, followed by sudden warming. Chilblain is subject to daily congestion (see Congestion), manifested by itching, soreness, etc., commonly occurring at night. The best preventive is a uniform temperature, and careful protection against the cold by warm clothing, especially for the feet. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS. 1. If a hair be plucked out, will another grow in its place? 2. What causes the hair to "stand on end" when we are frightened? 3. Why is the skin roughened by riding in the cold? 4. Why is the back of a washerwoman's hand less water-soaked than the palm? 5. What would be the length of the perspiratory tubes in a single square inch of the palm, if placed end to end? 6. What colored clothing is best adapted to all seasons? 7. What is the effect of paint and powder on the skin? 8. Is waterproof clothing healthful for constant wear? 9. Why are rubbers cold to the feet? 10. Why does the heat seem oppressive when the air is moist? 11. Why is friction of the skin invigorating after a cold bath? 12. Why does the hair of domestic animals become roughened in winter? 13. Why do fowls spread their feathers before they perch for the night? 14. How can an extensive burn produce congestion of the lungs? 15. Why do we perspire so profusely after drinking cold water? 16. How can we best prevent skin diseases, colds, and rheumatism? 17. What causes the difference between the hard hand of a blacksmith and the soft hand of a woman? 18. Why should a painter avoid getting paint on the palm of his hand? 19. Why should we not use the soap or the soiled towel at a hotel? 20. Which teeth cut like a pair of scissors? 21. Which teeth cut like a chisel? 22. Which should be clothed the warmer, a merchant or a farmer? 23. Why should we not crack nuts with our teeth? 24. Do the edges of the upper and the lower teeth meet? 25. When fatigued, would you take a cold bath? 26. Why is the outer surface of a kid glove finer than the inner? 27. Why will a brunette endure the sun's rays better than a blonde? 28. Does patent leather form a healthful covering for the feet? 29. Why are men more frequently bald than women? 30. On what part of the head does baldness commonly occur? Why? 31. What does the combination in our teeth of canines and grinders suggest as to the character of our food? 32. Is a staid, formal promenade suitable exercise? 33. Is there any danger in changing the warm clothing of our daily wear for the thin one of a party? 34. Should we retain our overcoat, shawl, or furs when we come into a warm room? 35. Which should bathe the oftener, students or outdoor laborers? 36. Is abundant perspiration injurious? 37. How often should the ablution of the entire body be performed? 38. Why is cold water better than warm, for our daily ablution? 39. Why should our clothing always fit loosely? 40. Why should we take special pains to avoid clothing that is colored by poisonous dyestuffs? (See p. 296.) 41. What general principles should guide us as to the length and frequency of baths In salt or fresh water? 42. What is the beneficial effect of exercise upon the functions of the skin? 43. How can we best show our admiration and respect for the human body? 44. Why is the scar of a severe wound upon a negro sometimes white? IV. RESPIRATION AND THE VOICE. "The smooth soft air with pulse-like waves Flows murmuring through its hidden caves, Whose streams of brightening purple rush, Fired with a new and livelier blush; While all their burden of decay The ebbing current steals away." ANALYSIS OF RESPIRATION AND THE VOICE. _ | 1. The Larnyx. _ | 2. The Vocal Cords. | 1. ORGANS OF VOICE.....| 3. Different Tones of Voice. | | 4. Speech. | |_5. Formation of Vocal Sounds. | _ | | 1. The Trachea. | | 2. The Bronchial Tubes. | 2. ORGANS OF RESPIRA- | 3. The Cells. | TION.........| 4. The Lung Wrapping. | |_5. The Cilia. | _ | | 1. Inspiration. | 3. HOW WE BREATHE......|_2. Expiration. | _ | | 1. Sighing. | | 2. Coughing. | | 3. Sneezing. | 4. MODIFICATIONS OF | 4. Snoring. | THE BREATH.......| 5. Laughing, and Crying. | | 6. Hiccough. | |_7. Yawning. | | 5. CAPACITY OF THE LUNGS. | _ | | 1. The Need of Air. | | 2. Action of Air in the Lungs. | | 3. Tests of the Breath. | | 4. Analysis of Expired Air. | | 5. Effect of Rebreathed Air. | | _ | 6. HYGIENE.............| | a. _The Sources of | | | Impurity._ | | | b. _The Sick Room._ | | 6. Concerning | c. _The Sitting Room._ | | the Need of | d. _The Bedroom._ | |_ Ventilation.| e. _The Church._ | | f. _The Schoolroom._ | | g. _How we should | |_ Ventilate._ | | 7. THE WONDERS OF RESPIRATION. | _ | | 1. Constriction of the Lungs. | | 2. Bronchitis. | | 3. Pleurisy. | | 4. Pneumonia. |_8. DISEASES............| 5. Consumption | 6. Asphyxia. | 7. Diptheria. | 8. Croup. |_9. Stammering. RESPIRATION AND THE VOICE. The Organs of Respiration and the Voice are the _larynx_, the _trachea_, and the _lungs_. DESCRIPTION OF THE ORGANS OF THE VOICE.--l. _The Larynx_.--In the neck, is a prominence sometimes called Adam's apple. It is the front of the _larynx_. This is a small triangular, cartilaginous box, placed just below the root of the tongue, and at the top of the windpipe. The opening into it from the throat is called the _glottis_; and the cover, the _epiglottis_ (_epi_, upon; _glotta_, the tongue). The latter is a spoon-shaped lid, which opens when we breathe, but, by a nice arrangement, shuts when we try to swallow, and so lets our food slip over it into the _œsophagus_ (e-sof'-a-gus), the tube leading from the pharynx to the stomach (Fig. 27). If we laugh or talk when we swallow, our food is apt to "go the wrong way," _i. e._, little particles pass into the larynx, and the tickling sensation which they produce forces us to cough in order to expel the intruders. 2. _The Vocal Cords_.--On each side of the _glottis_ are the so- called _vocal cords_. They are not really cords, but merely elastic membranes projecting from the sides of the box across the opening. [Footnote: The cartilages and vocal cords may be readily seen in the larynx of an ox or sheep. If the flesh be cut off, the cartilages will dry, and will keep for years.] When not in use, they spread apart and leave a V-shaped orifice (Fig. 28), through which the air passes to and from the lungs. If the cords are tightened, the edges approach sometimes within 1/100 of an inch of each other, and, being thrown into vibration, cause corresponding vibrations in the current of air. Thus sound is produced in the same manner as by the vibrations of the tongues of an accordion, or the strings of a violin, only in this case the strings are scarcely an inch long. FIG. 27. [Illustration: _Passage to the Œsophagus and Windpipe._ c, _the tongue;_ d, _the soft palate, ending in_ g, _the uvula;_ h, _the epiglottis;_ i, _the glottis;_ I, _the œsophagus;_ f, _the pharynx._] DIFFERENT TONES OF THE VOICE.--The higher tones of the voice are produced when the cords are short, tight, and closely in contact; the lower, by the opposite conditions. Loudness is regulated by the quantity of air and force of expulsion. A falsetto voice is thought to be the result of a peculiarity in the pharynx (Fig. 27) at the back part of the nose; it is more probably produced by some muscular maneuver not yet fully understood. When boys are about fourteen years of age, the larynx enlarges, and the cords grow proportionately longer and coarser; hence, the voice becomes deeper, or, as we say, "changes." The peculiar harshness of the voice at this time seems to be due to a congestion of the mucous membrane of the cords. The change may occur very suddenly, the voice breaking in a single night. FIG. 28. [Illustration: e, e, _the vocal cords;_ d, _the epiglottis._] Speech is voice modulated by the lips, tongue, [Footnote: The tongue is styled the "unruly member," and held responsible for all the tattling of the world; but when the tongue is removed, the adjacent organs in some way largely supply the deficiency, so that speech is still possible. Huxley describes the conversation of a man who had two and one half inches of his tongue preserved in spirits, and yet could converse intelligibly. Only the two letters _t_ and _d_ were beyond his power; the articulation of these involves the employment of the tip of the tongue; hence, "tin" he converted into "fin," and "dog" into "thog."] palate, and teeth. [Footnote: An artificial larynx may be made by using elastic bands to represent the vocal cords, and by placing above them chambers which by their resonance will produce the same effect as the cavities lying above the larynx. An artificial speaking machine was constructed by Kempelen, which could pronounce such sentences as, "I love you with all my heart," in different languages, by simply touching the proper keys.] Speech and voice are commonly associated, but speech may exist without the voice, for when we whisper we articulate the words, although there is no vocalization, _i. e._, no action of the larynx. [Footnote: We can observe this by placing the hand on the throat, and noticing the absence of vibrations when we whisper, and their presence when we talk. The difference between vocalization and non-vocalization is seen in a sigh and a groan, the latter being the former vocalized. Whistling is a pure mouth sound, and does not depend on the voice. Laughter is vocal, being the aspirated vowels, a, e, or o, convulsively repeated.] (See p. 297.) FIG. 29. [Illustration: _The Lungs, showing the Larynx._ A, _the windpipe;_ B, _the bronchial tubes._] FORMATION OF VOCAL SOUNDS.--The method of modulating voice into speech may be seen by producing the pure vowel sounds _a, e_, etc., from one expiration, the mouth being kept open while the form of the aperture is changed for each vowel by the tongue and the lips. _H_ is only an explosion, or forcible throwing of a vowel sound from the mouth. [Footnote: When, in sounding a vowel, the sound coincides with a sudden change in the position of the vocal cords from one of divergence to one of approximation, the vowel is pronounced with the _spiritus asper_. When the vocal cords are brought together before the blast of air begins, the vowel is pronounced with the _spiritus lenis._--FOSTER.] The consonants, or short sounds, may also be made without interrupting the current of air, by various modifications of the vocal organs. In sounding singly any one of the letters, we can detect its peculiar requirements. Thus _m_ and _n_ can be made only by blocking the air in the mouth and sending it through the nose; _l_ lets the air escape at the sides of the tongue; _r_ needs a vibratory movement of the tongue; _b_ and _p_ stop the breath at the lips; _k_ and _g_ (hard), at the back of the palate. Consonants like _b_ and _d_ are abrupt, or, like _l_ and _s_, continuous. Those made by the lips are termed _labials_; those by pressing the tongue against the teeth, _dentals_; those by the tongue, _linguals_. The child gains speech slowly, first learning to pronounce the vowel _a_, the consonants _b, m_, and _p_, and then their unions --_ba, ma, pa_. DESCRIPTION OF THE ORGANS OF RESPIRATION.--Beneath the larynx is the windpipe, or _trachea_ (see Fig. 29), so called because of its roughness. It is strengthened by C-shaped cartilages with the openings behind, where they are attached to the œsophagus. At the lower end, the trachea divides into two branches, called the right and left _bronchi_. These subdivide in the small bronchial tubes, which ramify through the lungs like the branches of a tree, the tiny twigs of which at last end in clusters of cells so small that there are six hundred million in all. This cellular structure renders the lungs exceedingly soft, elastic, and sponge-like. [Footnote: The lungs of slaughtered animals are vulgarly called "lights," probably on account of their lightness. They are similar in structure to those of man. They will float on water, and if a small piece be forcibly squeezed between the fingers (notice the creaking sound it gives), it will retain sufficient air to make it buoyant.] FIG. 30. [Illustration: _Bronchial Tubes, with clusters of cells._] The stiff, cartilaginous rings, so noticeable in the rough surface of the trachea and the bronchi, disappear as we reach the smaller bronchial tubes, so that while the former are kept constantly open for the free admission of air, the latter are provided with elastic fibers by which they may be almost closed. WRAPPING OF THE LUNGS.--The lungs are invested with a double covering--the _pleura_--one layer being attached to the lungs and the other to the walls of the chest. It secretes a fluid which lubricates it, so that the layers glide upon each other with perfect ease. [Footnote: These pleural sacs are distinct and closed; hence, when the ribs are raised, a partial vacuum being formed in the sacs, air rushes in, and distends the pulmonary lobules.] The lungs are lined with mucous membrane, exceedingly delicate and sensitive to the presence of anything except pure air. We have all noticed this when we have breathed any thing offensive. FIG. 31. [Illustration: A, _the heart;_ B, _the lungs drawn aside to show the internal organs;_ C, _the diaphragm;_ D, _the liver;_ E, _the gall cyst;_ F, _the stomach;_ G,_ the small intestines;_ H, _the transverse colon._] THE CILIA.--Along the air passages are minute filaments (_cilia_, Fig. 32), which are in constant motion, like a field of grain stirred by a gentle breeze. They serve to fan the air in the lungs, and produce an outward current, which is useful in catching dust and fine particles swept inward with the breath. HOW WE BREATHE.--Respiration consists of two acts--taking in the air, or _inspiration_, and expelling the air, or _expiration_. FIG. 32. [Illustration: B, _a section of the mucous membrane, showing the cilia rising from the peculiar epithelial cells on the outside of the mucous membrane lining the tubes;_ A, _a single cell more highly magnified._] 1. _Inspiration_.--When we draw in a full breath, we straighten the spine and throw the head and shoulders back, so as to give the greatest advantage to the muscles. [Footnote: If we examine the bony cage of the thorax or chest in Fig. 8, we shall see that the position of the ribs may alter its capacity in two ways. 1. As they run obliquely downward from the spine, if the sternum or breastbone be lifted in front, the diameter of the chest will be increased. 2. The ribs are fastened by elastic cartilages, which stretch as the muscles that lift the ribs contract, and so increase the breadth of the chest.] At the same time, the diaphragm [Footnote: The diaphragm is the muscular partition between the chest and the abdomen. It is always convex toward the former, and concave toward the latter (Fig. 31). Long muscular fibers extend from its center toward the ribs in front and the spine at the back. When these contract, they depress and flatten the diaphragm; when they relax, it becomes convex again. In the former case, the bowels are pressed downward and the abdomen pushed outward; in the latter, the bowels spring upward, and the abdomen is drawn inward.] descends and presses the walls of the abdomen outward. Both these processes increase the size of the chest. Thereupon, the elastic lungs expand to occupy the extra space, while the air, rushing in through the windpipe, pours along the bronchial tubes and crowds into every cell. [Footnote: It is said that in drawing a full breath, the muscles exert a force equal to raising a weight of seven hundred and fifty pounds. When we are about to make a great effort, as in striking a heavy blow, we naturally take a deep inspiration, and shut the glottis. The confined air makes the chest tense and firm, and enables us to exert a greater force. As we let slip the blow, the glottis opens and the air escapes, often with a curious aspirated sound as is noticeable in workmen. To make a good shot with a rifle, we should take aim with a full chest and tight breath, since then the arms will have a steadier support.] 2. _Expiration_.--When we forcibly expel the air from our lungs, the operation is reversed. We bend forward, draw in the walls of the abdomen, and press the diaphragm upward, while the ribs are pulled downward,--all together diminishing the size of the chest, and forcing the air outward. Ordinary, quiet breathing is performed mainly by the diaphragm,--one breath to every four beats of the heart, or eighteen per minute. (See p. 299.) MODIFICATIONS OF THE BREATH.--_Sighing_ is merely a prolonged inspiration followed by an audible expiration. _Coughing_ is a violent expiration in which the air is driven through the mouth. _Sneezing_ differs from coughing, the air being forced through the nose. _Snoring_ is produced by the passage of the breath through the pharynx when the tongue and soft palate are in certain positions. [Footnote: The soft palate must have fallen back in such a manner as nearly or quite to close the entrance to the nasal cavity from the throat, and the tongue must also be thrown back so far as to leave only a narrow opening between it and the soft palate. The noise is produced by the air being forced either inward or outward through this opening. A snore results also when, with a closed mouth, the air is forced between the soft palate and the back wall of the pharynx into the nasal cavity. With deep breathing, perhaps accompanied by a variation in the position of the soft palate, a rattling noise may be heard in addition to the snoring, which is due to a vibration of the soft palate.--F. A. FERNALD, in "How we Sneeze, Laugh, Stammer, and Sigh."--_Popular Science Monthly_, Feb., 1884.] _Laughing_ and _crying_ are very much alike. The expression of the face is necessary to distinguish between them. The sounds are produced by short, rapid contractions of the diaphragm. _Hiccough_ is confined to inspiration. It is caused by a contraction of the diaphragm and a constriction of the glottis; the current of air just entering, as it strikes the closed glottis, gives rise to the well-known sound. _Yawning_, or _gaping_, is like sighing. [Footnote: The usefulness of a yawn lies in bringing up the arrears, as it were, of respiration, when it has fallen behindhand, either through fatigue or close attention to other occupation. The stretching of the jaws and limbs may also serve to equalize the nervous influence, certain muscles having become uneasy on account of being stretched or contracted for a long time.] It is distinguished by a wide opening of the mouth and a deep, profound inspiration. Both processes furnish additional air, and therefore probably meet a demand of the system for more oxygen. Frequently, however, they are like laughing, sobbing, etc., merely a sort of contagion, which runs through an audience, and seems almost irresistible. THE CAPACITY OF THE LUNGS.--If we take a deep inspiration, and then forcibly exhale all the air we can expel from the lungs, this amount, which is termed the _breathing capacity_, will bear a very close correspondence to our stature. For a man of medium height (five feet eight inches) it will be about two hundred and thirty cubic inches, [Footnote: Of this amount, one hundred cubic inches can be forced in only by an extra effort, and is available for emergencies, or for purposes of training, as in singing, climbing, etc. It is of great importance, since, if the capacity of the lungs only equaled our daily wants, the least obstruction would prove fatal.] or a gallon, and for each inch of height between five and six feet there will be an increase of eight cubic inches. In addition, it is found that the lungs contain about one hundred cubic inches which can not be expelled, thus making their entire contents about three hundred and thirty cubic inches, or eleven pints. The extra amount always on hand in the lungs is of great value, since thereby the action of the air goes on continuously, even during a violent expiration. In ordinary breathing, only about twenty or thirty cubic inches (less than a pint) of air pass in and out. THE NEED OF AIR.--The body needs food, clothing, sunshine, bathing, and. drink; but none of these wants is so pressing as that for air. The other demands may be met by occasional supplies, but air must be furnished every moment or we die. Now the vital element of the atmosphere is oxygen gas. [Footnote: See "Steele's Popular Chemistry," p. 30. The atmosphere consists of one fifth oxygen and four fifths nitrogen. The former is the active element; and the latter, the passive. Oxygen alone would be too stimulating, and must be restrained by the neutral nitrogen. Separately, either element of the air would kill us.] This is a stimulating, life- giving principle. No tonic will so invigorate as a few full, deep breaths of cold, pure air. Every organ will glow with the energy of the fiery oxygen. ACTION OF THE AIR IN THE LUNGS.--In the delicate cells of the lungs, the air gives up its oxygen to the blood, and receives in turn carbonic-acid [Footnote: More properly _Carbon dioxide_.] gas and water, foul with waste matter which the blood has picked up in its circulation through the body. The blood, thus purified and laden with the inspiring oxygen, goes bounding through the system, while the air we exhale carries off the impurities. In this process, the blood changes from purple to red. If we examine our breath, we can readily see what it has removed from the blood. TESTS OF THE BREATH.--1. Breathe into a jar, and on lowering into it a lighted candle, the flame will be instantly extinguished; thus indicating the presence of carbonic-acid gas. 2. Breathe upon a mirror, and a film of moisture will show the vapor. [Footnote: There is a close relation between the functions of the skin, the lungs, and the kidneys--the scavengers of the body. They all carry off water from the blood, and when the function of one of the three is, in this respect, interfered with, the others are called upon to perform its functions. When the function of perspiration is deranged, the lungs and kidneys are required to perform heavier duty, and this may lead to disease (see p. 62).] 3. If breath be confined in a bottle, the animal matter will decompose and give off an offensive odor. ANALYSIS OF THE EXPIRED AIR shows that it has lost about twenty-five per cent of its oxygen, and gained an equal amount of carbonic-acid gas, besides moisture, and organic impurities. Our breath, then, is air robbed of its vitality, and containing in its place a gas as fatal to life [Footnote: Carbonic-acid gas can not be breathed when undiluted, as the glottis closes and forbids its passage into the lungs. Air containing only three or four per cent acts as a narcotic poison (MILLER), and a much smaller proportion will have an injurious effect. The great danger, however, lies in the organic particles constantly exhaled from the lungs and the skin, which, it is believed, are often direct and active poisons.] as it is to a flame, and effete matter which is disagreeable to the smell, injurious to the health, and which may contain the germs of serious disease. THE EVIL EFFECT OF REBREATHING the air can not be overestimated. We take back into our bodies that which has just been rejected. The blood thereupon leaves the lungs, bearing, not the invigorating oxygen, but refuse matter to obstruct the whole system. We soon feel the effect. The muscles become inactive. The blood stagnates. The heart acts slowly. The food is undigested. The brain is clogged. The head aches. Instances of fatal results are only too frequent. [Footnote: During the English war in India, in the eighteenth century, one hundred and forty-six prisoners were shut up in a room scarcely large enough to hold them. The air could enter only by two narrow windows. At the end of eight hours, but twenty-three persons remained alive, and these were in a most deplorable condition. This prison is well called "The Black Hole of Calcutta."--Percy relates that after the battle of Austerlitz, three hundred Russian prisoners were confined in a cavern, where two hundred and sixty of them perished in a few hours.--The stupid captain of the ship _Londonderry_, during a storm at sea, shut the hatches. There were only seven cubic feet of space left for each person, and in six hours ninety of the passengers were dead.] The constant breathing of even the slightly impure air of our houses can not but tend to undermine the health. The blood is not purified, and is thus in a condition to receive the seeds of disease at any time. The system uninspired by the energizing oxygen is sensitive to cold. The pale cheek, the lusterless eye, the languid step, speak but too plainly of oxygen starvation. In such a soil, catarrh, scrofula, and kindred diseases run riot. [Footnote: One not very strong, or unable powerfully to resist conditions unfavorable to health, and with a predisposition to lung disease, will be sure, sooner or later, by partial lung starvation and blood poisoning, to develop pulmonary consumption. _The lack of what is so abundant and so cheap--good, pure air--is unquestionably the one great cause of this terrible disease_.--BLACK'S _Ten Laws of Health_.] CONCERNING THE NEED FOR VENTILATION.--The foul air which passes off from the lungs and through the pores of the skin does not fall to the floor, but diffuses itself through the surrounding atmosphere. A single breath will to a trifling but certain extent taint the air of a whole room. [Footnote: This grows out of a well-known philosophical principle called the Diffusion of Gases, whereby two gases tend to mix in exact proportions, no matter what may be the quantity of each.--STEELE'S _Popular Chemistry,_ p. 86, and _Popular Physics,_ p. 52.] A light will vitiate as much air as a dozen persons. Many breaths and lights therefore rapidly unfit the air for our use. The perfection of ventilation is reached when the air of a room is as pure as that out of doors. To accomplish this result, it is necessary to allow for each person six hundred cubic feet of space, while ventilation is still going on in the best manner known. In spite of these well-known facts, scarcely any pains are taken to supply fresh air, while the doors and windows where the life-giving oxygen might creep in are hermetically stopped. How often is this true of the sick room. Yet here the danger of bad air is intensified. The expired breath of the patient is peculiarly threatening to himself as well as to others. Nature is seeking to throw off the poison of the disease. The scavengers of the body are all at work. The breath and the insensible perspiration are loaded with impurities. [Footnote: The floating dust in the air, revealed to us by the sunbeam shining through a crack in the blinds, shows the abundance of these impurities, and also the presence of germs which, lodging in the lungs, may implant disease, unless thrown off by a vigorous constitution. "On uncovering a scarlet fever patient, a cloud of fine dust is seen to rise from the body--contagious dust, that for days will retain its poisonous properties."--YOUMANS. (See p. 300.)] The odor is oftentimes exceedingly offensive. Sick and well alike need an abundance of fresh air. But, too often, it is the only want not supplied. Our sitting rooms, heated by furnaces or red-hot stoves, generally have no means of ventilation, or, if provided, they are seldom used. A window is occasionally dropped to give a little relief, as if pure air were a rarity, and must be doled out to the suffering lungs in morsels, instead of full and constant draughts. The inmates are starved by scanty lung food, and stupefied by foul air. The process goes on year by year. The weakened and poisoned body at last succumbs to disease, while we, in our blindness and ignorance, talk of the mysterious Providence which thus untimely cuts down the brightest intellects. The truth is, death is often simply the penalty for violating nature's laws. Bad air begets disease; disease begets death. In our churches, the foul air left by the congregation on Sunday is shut up during the week, and heated for the next Lord's day, when the people assemble to rebreathe the polluted atmosphere. They are thus forced, with every breath they take, to violate the physical laws of Him whom they meet to worship,--laws written not three thousand years ago upon Mount Sinai on tables of stone, but to-day engraved in the constitution of their own living, breathing bodies. On brains benumbed and starving for oxygen, the purest truth and the highest eloquence fall with little force. We sleep in a small bedroom from which every breath of fresh air is excluded, because we believe night air to be unhealthy, [Footnote: There is a singular prejudice against the night air. Yet, as Florence Nightingale aptly says, what other air can we breathe at night? We then have the choice between foul air within and pure air without. For, in large cities especially, the night air is far more wholesome than that of the daytime. To secure fresh air at night, we must open the windows of our bedroom.] and so we breathe its dozen hogsheads of air over and over again, and then wonder why we awaken in the morning so dull and unrefreshed! Return to our room after inhaling the fresh, morning air, and the fetid odor we meet on opening the door, is convincing proof how we have poisoned our lungs during the night. Each room should be supplied with two thousand feet of fresh air per hour for every person it contains. Our ingenuity ought to find some way of doing this advantageously and pleasantly. A moiety of the care we devote to delicate articles of food, drink, and dress would abundantly meet this prime necessity of our bodies. Open the windows a little at the top and the bottom. Put on plenty of clothing to keep warm by day and by night, and then let the inspiring oxygen come in as freely as God has given it. Pure air is the cheapest necessity and luxury of life. Let it not be the rarest! SCHOOLROOM VENTILATION.--Who, on going from the open air of a clear, bracing winter's day, into a crowded schoolroom, late in the session, has not noticed the disagreeable odor, and been for a moment nauseated and half stifled by the oppressive atmosphere! It is not strange. See how many causes here combine to pollute the air. If the room is heated by a stove, quantities of carbonic-oxide and carbonic-acid gases, as well as other products of combustion, driven by downward drafts in the flue, escape through seams and cracks and the occasionally opened door of the stove. In the case of a furnace, the same effect is too often experienced, and the odor of coal gas is a common one, especially when the fire is replenished. The insensible perspiration is more active in children than in adults; they, moreover, rush in with their clothing saturated with the perspiration induced by their sports; so that, on the average, each pupil, during school hours, loads the air with about half a pint of aqueous vapor. The children come, oftentimes, from homes that are close, ill- ventilated, and uncleanly; and frequently from sick rooms, bringing in their clothing the germs of disease. (See p. 304.) Some of the pupils may even bear traces of illness, or have unsound organs, and so their breath and exhalations be poisonous. In addition to all this, the air is filled with dust brought in and kept astir by many busy feet; with ashes floating from the stove or furnace; and especially with chalk dust. The modern method of teaching requires a large amount of blackboard work, and the air of the schoolroom is thus loaded with chalk particles. These collect in the nasal passages, and the upper part of the larynx, and irritate the membrane, perhaps laying the foundation of catarrh. The usual schoolroom atmosphere bears in the pupils the natural fruit of frequent headaches, inattention, weariness, and stupor; but in the teacher its frightful influence is most apparent. His labor is severe, his worry of mind is constant, and, when he finishes his day's work, he is generally too tired to take proper physical exercise. He consequently labors on with impaired health, or is forced to abandon his profession. Instead of six hundred feet of space being allowed for each pupil, as perfect ventilation demands--the lowest estimate being two hundred and fifty feet--often not over one hundred feet are afforded. Instead of two thousand cubic feet of fresh air being supplied every hour for each person, and as much foul air removed, which, all physiologists assert, is needed for perfect health, perhaps no means of ventilation at all are provided, and none is secured except what an occasionally opened door, or the benevolent cracks and chinks in the building furnish the suffering lungs. [Footnote: Imagine fifty pupils put into a class room thirty feet long, twenty-five feet wide, and ten feet high. This would generally be considered a very liberal provision. Such a room contains seven thousand five hundred cubic feet of air. But it furnishes only one hundred and fifty feet of space for each pupil. Allowing ten cubic feet of air per pupil each minute, in fifteen minutes after assembling, the entire atmosphere of the room is tainted, and unfit to be rebreathed. The demand of health is that at least one thousand five hundred cubic feet of pure air should be admitted into this room every minute, and as much be removed.] HOW SHALL WE VENTILATE?--The usual method of ventilation depends upon the fact that hot air is lighter than cold air, and so the cold air tends, by the force of gravity, to fall and compel the warm air to rise. Thus, if we open the door of a heated room, and hold a lighted candle first at the top, and then at the bottom, we can see, by the deflection of the flame, that there is a current of air setting outward at the top, and another setting inward at the bottom of the opening. A handkerchief held loosely, or the smoke of a smoldering match, in front of a fireplace will show a current of air passing up the chimney; this is caused by the difference of temperature between the air in the room and the outside atmosphere. _Upon this difference of temperature, all ordinary ventilation is based_. [Footnote: Public buildings are sometimes ventilated by mechanical means, _i. e._, immense fans which are turned by machinery, and thus set the air in motion. Such methods are, however, expensive, and rarely adopted, except where power is also used for other purposes.] A proper treatment of this subject and its practical applications, would require a book by itself. There is room here for only a few general statements and suggestions. 1. Two openings are always necessary to produce a thorough change of air. (See "Popular Chemistry," p. 70.) Put a lighted candle in a bottle. The flame will soon be extinguished. The oxygen of the little air in the bottle is burned out, and carbonic acid has taken its place. Now place over the mouth of the bottle a lamp chimney, and insert in the chimney a strip of cardboard, thus dividing the passage. On relighting the candle, it will burn freely. The smoke of a bit of smoldering paper will show that two opposite currents of air are established, one setting into the bottle, the other outward. 2. In the winter, when our schoolrooms, churches, public halls, etc., are heated artificially, ventilation is comparatively easy if properly arranged. [Footnote: For the escape of bad air, Dr. Bell suggests that an efficient foul-air shaft may be fitted to the commonest of stoves by simply inclosing the stovepipe in a jacket--that is, in a pipe two or three inches greater in diameter. This should be braced round the stovepipe and left open at the end next the stove. At its entrance into the chimney, a perforated collar should separate it from the stovepipe.] The required difference of temperature is kept up with little difficulty. The fresh air admitted to the room should then be heated [Footnote: Ventilation is change of air, and, unless scientifically arranged, and especially unless the incoming volume of air be warmed in cold weather, such change of atmosphere means cold currents, with their attendant train of catarrhs, bronchitis, neuralgia, rheumatism, and all the evils that spring from these diseases. The raw, damp, frosty air of our ever-changing winter temperature ought not to have uncontrolled and constant ingress to our dwellings. Air out of doors is suited to out of door habits. It is healthy and bracing when the body is coated and wrapped, and prepared to meet it, and when exercise can be taken to keep up the circulation; but to live under cover is to live artificially, and such essential conditions must be observed as suit an abnormal state. All the evils attaching to ventilation, as it is generally effected, spring from the neglect of this consistency.--_Westminster Review_.] either by a furnace, or by passing over a stove, or through a coil of steam pipes. This cold air should always be taken directly from out of doors, and not from a cellar, or from under a piazza, where contamination is possible. 3. In order to remove the impure air, there should be ventilators provided at or near the floor, opening into air shafts, or pipes leading upward through the roof, with proper orifices at the top. These ventilating pipes should be heated artificially so as to produce a draught. They may form one of the flues of a chimney in which there is a constant fire; or be carried upward in a large flue through the center of which runs the smoke pipe of the furnace or stove; [Footnote: This plan has been adopted in the newer school buildings of Elmira, N. Y. The older buildings were provided with ventilating pipes, not heated artificially, and hence of no service. These pipes are rendered effective, however, by conducting them into a small room in the garret, heated by a coal stove. From this room, a large exit pipe leads to the roof, where it terminates in an Emerson's ventilator. So strong a draught is thus established that throughout the building air is taken from the floors, and consequently the cooler portion of the rooms, at a velocity of three to five feet per second or one hundred and eighty to three hundred cubic feet per minute for each square foot of flue opening. In perpendicular flues, heated throughout with a smoke flue from the furnace, ten feet per second is attained.] or the ventilating pipe be itself conveyed through the center of the larger chimney flue. If the register for hot air be on the floor at one side of the room, two or more ventilators may be placed near the floor on the opposite side. The warm air will thus make the complete circuit of the room, and thoroughly warm it before passing out. If the ventilating shaft be not heated artificially; the ventilator must be placed at the top of the room in order that the hot air may escape through it, thus producing an upward draught. But the objection to this method is that it allows the warmer air to escape, while economy requires that the cooler air at the bottom of the room should be removed and the warm air be made to descend, thus securing uniformity of temperature. 4. In the summer, ventilation may be commonly provided for by opening windows _at the top and the bottom_, on the sheltered side of the building, so as to avoid draughts of air injurious to the occupants. On a dull, still, hot day, when there is little difference of temperature between the inner and the outer air, ventilation can be secured only by having a fire provided in the ventilating shaft; this, by exhausting the air from the room, will cause a fresh current to pour in through the open windows. At recess, all the children should, if the weather permit, be sent out of doors, to allow their clothing to be exposed to the purifying influence of the open air; meantime, the windows should be thrown wide open, that the room may be thoroughly ventilated during their absence. In bad weather, rapid marching or calisthenic exercises will furnish exercise, and also permit the airing of the room. 5. The school and the church are the centers for spreading contagious diseases. The former offers especially dangerous facilities for scattering disease germs. Great pains, therefore, should be taken to exclude pupils attacked by or recovering from diphtheria, scarlet fever, whooping cough, etc., and even those who live in houses where such sickness exists. 6. In our houses [Footnote: The air of our homes is often contaminated by decaying vegetables and other filth in the cellar; by bad air drawn up from the soil into the cellar, by the powerful draughts that our fires create; by defective gas and waste pipes that let the foul air from cesspool or sewer spread through the house; and by piles of refuse, or puddles of slops emptied at the back door. Too often, also, the water in our wells, or in the streams that supply our towns and cities, receives the drainage from outhouses and barnyards, and so introduces into our systems, in the liquid--and thus easily assimilated--form, the most dangerous poisons. The question of sanitary precautions is one that presses upon every observant mind, and demands constant and thoughtful attention. (See p. 305.)] open fireplaces are efficient ventilators, and they should never be closed for any cause. Fresh air admitted by a hot-air register and impure air passed out by a chimney, form a simple and thorough system. Our sleeping apartments demand especial care. As soon as the occupants leave the room, the bedclothes should be removed, and laid on the backs of chairs to air; the bed be shaken up; and the windows thrown open. In the summer, the windows may be closed before the sun is high; the house is then left filled with the cool morning air. In damp and cold weather, a fire should be lighted in sleeping apartments, particularly if used by children [Footnote: In winter, children should always be given a moderately warm, well-ventilated bedroom, with light, fleecy bed coverings. Says a recent English writer: "The loving care which prescribes for children a cold bedroom and a hot, sweltering bed is of the nature that kills. Buried in blankets, their delicate skins become overheated and relaxed, while they are irritated by perspiration; at the same time, the most delicate tissues of all, in the lungs, are dealing with air abnormally frigid. The poor little victims of combined ignorance and kindness thus toss and dream, feverish and troubled, under a mass of bedclothes, while the well-meaning mother, soothed by a bedroom fire, slumbers peacefully through this working out of the sad process of the 'survival of the fittest.'"] or delicate persons, to dry the bedclothing, and also to prevent a chill on the part of the occupants. It is not necessary to go shivering to bed in order to harden one's constitution. WONDERS OF RESPIRATION.--The perfection of the organs of respiration challenges our admiration. So delicate are they that the least pressure would cause exquisite pain, yet tons of air surge to and fro through their intricate passages, and bathe their innermost cells. We yearly perform at least seven million acts of breathing, inhaling one hundred thousand cubic feet of air, and purifying over three thousand five hundred tons of blood. This gigantic process goes on constantly, never wearies or worries us, and we wonder at it only when science reveals to us its magnitude. In addition, by a wise economy, the process of respiration is made to subserve a second use no less important, and the air we exhale, passing through the organs of voice, is transformed into prayers of faith, songs of hope, and words of social cheer. FIG. 33. [Illustration: A, _the natural position of the internal organs._ B _when deformed by tight lacing Marshall says that the liver and the stomach have, in this way, been forced downward almost as low as the pelvis._] DISEASES, ETC.--1. _Constriction of the Lungs_ is produced by tight clothing. The ribs are thus forced inward, the size of the chest is diminished, and the amount of inhaled air decreased. Stiff clothing, and especially a garment that will not admit of a full breath without inconvenience, will prevent that free movement of the ribs so essential to health. Any infraction of the laws of respiration, even though it be fashionable, will result in diminished vitality and vigor, and will be fearfully punished by sickness and weakness through the whole life. 2. _Bronchitis_ (bron-ki'-tis) is an inflammation (see Inflammation) of the mucous membrane of the bronchial tubes. It is accompanied by an increased secretion of mucus, and consequent coughing. 3. _Pleurisy_ is an inflammation of the pleura. It is sometimes caused by an injury to the ribs, and results in a secretion of water within the membrane. 4. _Pneumonia_ (_pneuma_, breath) is an inflammation of the lungs, affecting chiefly the air cells. 5. _Consumption_ is a disease which destroys the substance of the lungs. Like other lung difficulties, it is caused largely by a want of pure air, a liberal supply of which is the best treatment that can be prescribed for it. [Footnote: If I were seriously ill of consumption, I would live outdoors day and night, except in rainy weather or midwinter; then I would sleep in an unplastered log house. Physic has no nutriment, gaspings for air can not cure you, monkey capers in a gymnasium can not cure you, stimulants can not cure you. What consumptives want is pure air, not physic, plenty of meat and plenty of bread.--DR. MARSHALL HALL.] 6. _Asphyxia_ (as-fix'-i-a).--When a person is drowned, strangled, or choked in any way, what is called asphyxia occurs. The face turns black; the veins become turgid; insensibility and often convulsions ensue. If relief is not secured within a few minutes, death will be inevitable. [Footnote: The lack of oxygen, and the presence of carbonic-acid gas, are the combined causes. Oxygen starvation and carbonic-acid poisoning, each fatal in itself, work together to destroy life.] (See p. 264.) 7. _Diphtheria_ (_diphthera_, a membrane) is characterized by fever, debility, and a peculiar sore throat, in which exuding fibrinous matter forms a grayish white membrane, which afterward decomposes with a fetid odor. Its sudden and insidious approach, contagious character, and frequent fatality, render it an exceedingly dreaded disease. A diphtheritic patient should be quarantined, and everything connected with the sick room thoroughly disinfected. 8. _Croup_, which often attacks young children, is an inflammation of the mucous membrane of the larynx and trachea. It is commonly preceded by a cold. The child sneezes, coughs, and is hoarse, but the attack frequently comes on suddenly, and usually in the night. It is accompanied by a peculiar "brassy," ringing cough, which, once heard, can never be mistaken. It may prove fatal within a few hours. (See p. 260.) 9. _Stammering_ depends, not on defects of the muscles, but on a want of due control of the mind. When a stammerer is not too conscious of his lack, and tries to form his words slowly, he speaks plainly, and may sing well, for then his words must follow one another in rhythmic time. Many persons who stammer in common conversation can talk with fluency when making a speech. The stammerer should seek to discover the cause of his difficulty, and to overcome it by vocal and respiratory exercise, especially by speaking only after a full inspiration, and during a long, slow expiration. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS. 1. What is the philosophy of "the change of voice" in a boy? 2. Why can we see our breath on a frosty morning? 3. When a law of health and a law of fashion conflict, which should we obey? 4. If we use a "bunk" bed, should we pack away the clothes when we first rise in the morning? 5. Why should a clothespress be well ventilated? 6. Should the weight of our clothing hang from the waist, or the shoulder? 7. Describe the effects of living in an overheated room. 8. What habits impair the power of the lungs? 9. For full, easy breathing in singing, should we use the diaphragm and lower ribs, or the upper ribs alone? 10. Why is it better to breathe through the nose than the mouth? 11. Why should not a speaker talk while returning home on a cold night after a lecture? 12. What part of the body needs the loosest clothing? 13. What part needs the warmest? 14. Why is a "spare bed" generally unhealthful? 15. Is there any good in sighing? 16. Should a hat be thoroughly ventilated? How? 17. Why do the lungs of people who live in cities become of a gray color? 18. How would you convince a person that a bedroom should be aired? [Footnote: "If the condensed breath collected on the cool windowpanes of a room where a number of persons have been assembled, be burned, a smell as of singed hair will show the presence of organic matter; and if the condensed breath be allowed to remain on the windows for a few days, it will be found, on examination by the microscope, that it is alive with animalculæ."] 19. What persons are most liable to catarrhs, consumption, etc.? 20. If a person is plunged under water, will it enter his lungs? 21. Are bed curtains healthful? 22. Why do some people take "short breaths" after a meal? 23 What is the special value of public parks? 24. Can a person become used to bad air, so that it will not injure him? 25. Why do we gape when we are sleepy? 26. Is a fashionable waist a model of art in sculpture or painting? 27. Should a fireplace be closed? [Footnote: Thousands of lives would be saved if all fireplaces were kept open. If you are so fortunate as to have a fireplace in your room, paint it when not in use, put a bouquet of fresh flowers in it every morning, if you please, or do anything to make it attractive, but never _close it_; better use the fireboards for kindling wood. It would be scarcely more absurd to take a piece of elegantly-tinted court-plaster and stop up the nose, trusting to the accidental opening and shutting of the mouth for fresh air, because you thought it spoiled the looks of your face to have two such great, ugly holes in it, than to stop your fireplace with elegantly-tinted paper, or a Japanese fan, because it looks better.--Leeds.] 28. Why does embarrassment or fright cause a stammerer to stutter still more painfully? 29. In the organs of voice, what parts have somewhat the same effect as the case of a violin and the sounding-board of a piano? 30. Why should we be careful not to "take the breath of a sick person"? 31. What special care should be taken with regard to keeping a cellar clean? 32. How is the air strained as it passes into the lungs? 33. Can one really "draw the air into his lungs"? 34. How often do we breathe? 35. Describe some approved method of ventilation. 36. What is at once the floor of the chest and the roof of the abdomen? 37. What would you do in a case of apparent death by drowning, or by coal gas? (See p. 264.) 38. What would you do in a case of croup, while the doctor was coming? (See p. 260.) 39. How would you treat a severe burn? (See p. 257.) 40. Describe the various ways in which the water in a well is liable to become unwholesome. FIG. 34. [Illustration] V. THE CIRCULATION. "No rest this throbbing slave may ask, Forever quivering o'er his task, While far and wide a crimson jet Leaps forth to fill the woven net, Which in unnumber'd crossing tides The flood of burning life divides, Then, kindling each decaying part, Creeps back to find the throbbing heart." HOLMES. ANALYSIS OF THE CIRCULATION _ _ | 1. Its Composition. | 1. THE BLOOD | 2. Its Uses. | | 3. Transfusion. | |_4. Coagulation | _ | | 1. _Description._ | | 2. _Movements._ | | 3. _Auricles and Ventricles._ | _ | _ | | 1. The | | a. Need of. | | Heart.| | b. Tricuspid and | | | | Bicuspid. | | | 4. _The | c. The Strengthen- | | | Valves._ | ing of the | | | | Valves. | | | | d. Semilunar | | |_ |_ Valves. | | _ | 2. ORGANS OF THE | 2. The | 1. _Description._ | CIRCULATION | Arteries | 2. _The Arterial System._ | | |_3. _The Pulse._ | | _ | | 3. The | 1. _General Description._ | | Veins |_2. _Valves._ | | _ | | 4. The | 1. _Description._ | | Capilla-| 2. _Use._ | |_ ries |_3. _Under the Microscope._ | _ | | 1. The Lesser. | 3. THE CIRCULATION.| 2. The Greater. | |_3. The Velocity of the Blood. | _ | 4. THE HEAT OF THE | 1. Distribution. | BODY. |_2. Regulation. | | 5. LIFE BY DEATH. | | 6. CHANGE OF OUR BODIES. | | 7. THE THREE VITAL ORGANS. | | 8. WONDERS OF THE HEART. | _ | | 1. Description | 9. THE LYMPHATIC | 2. The Glands. | CIRCULATION. | 3. The Lymph. | |_4. The Office of the Lymphatics. | _ | | 1. Congestion. | | 2. Inflammation. | | 3. Bleeding. | 10. DISEASES. | 4. Scrofula. | | 5. A Cold. | |_6. Catarrh. | _ | | 1. Effect of Alcohol upon the Circulation. | 11. ALCOHOLIC | 2. Effect of Alcohol upon the Heart. | DRINKS AND | 3. Effect of Alcohol upon the Membrane. |_ NARCOTICS. | 4. Effect of Alcohol upon the Blood. |_5. Effect of Alcohol upon the Lungs. THE CIRCULATION. THE ORGANS OF THE CIRCULATION are the _heart_, the _arteries_, the _veins_, and the _capillaries_. FIG. 35. [Illustration: A, _corpuscles of human blood, highly magnified;_ B, _corpuscles in the blood of an animal (a non mammal)._] THE BLOOD is the liquid by means of which the circulation is effected. It permeates every part of the body, except the cuticle, nails, hair, etc. The average quantity in each person is about eighteen pounds. [Footnote: It is difficult to estimate the exact amount, and therefore authorities disagree. Foster places it at about one thirteenth of the body weight.] It is composed of a thin, colorless liquid, the _plasma_, filled with red disks or cells, [Footnote: There is also one white globular cell to every three or four hundred red ones. The blood is no more red than the water of a stream would be if you were to fill it with little red fishes. Suppose the fishes to be very, very small--as small as a grain of sand-- and closely crowded together through the whole depth of the stream; the water would look quite red, would it not? And this is the way in which, blood looks red--only observe one thing; a grain of sand is a mountain in comparison with the little red fishes in the blood. If I were to tell you they measured about 1/3500 of an inch in diameter, you would not be much wiser; so I prefer saying (by way of giving you a more perfect idea of their minuteness) that there would be about a million in such a drop of blood as would hang on the point of a needle. I say so on the authority of a scientific microscopist--M. Bouillet. Not that he has ever counted them, as you may suppose, any more than I have done; but this is as near an approach as can be made by calculation to the size of 1/3500 part of an inch in diameter.--JEAN MACE.] so small that about three thousand five hundred placed side by side would measure only an inch, and it would take sixteen thousand laid flatwise upon one another to make a column of that height. Under the microscope, they are found to be rounded at the edge and concave on both sides. [Footnote: By pricking the end of the finger with a needle, we can obtain a drop for examination. Place it on the slide, cover with a glass, and put it at once under the microscope. The red disks will be seen to group themselves in rows, while the white disks will seem to draw apart, and to be constantly changing their form. After a gradual evaporation, the crystals (Fig. 36) may be seen. In animals, they have various, though distinctive forms.] They have a tendency to collect in piles like rolls of coin. The size and shape vary in the blood of different animals. [Footnote: Authorities differ greatly in their estimate of the size of the disks (corpuscles) in human blood. The fact is that the size varies in different persons, probably also in the same individual. Many of the best microscopists therefore hesitate to state whether a particular specimen of blood belonged to a human being or to an animal. Others claim that they can distinguish with accuracy. Evidently, the question is one of great uncertainty. The following statement of the size of the cells in different animals is taken from Gulliver's tables: Cat, 1/4404 of an inch in diameter; whale, 1/3100; mouse, 1/3614; hog, 1/4230; camel, 1/3123; sheep, 1/3352; horse, 1/4800; Virginia deer, 1/5038; dog- faced baboon, 1/4861; brown baboon, 1/3493; red monkey, 1/3396; black monkey, 1/3530.] Disks are continually forming in the blood, and are constantly dying--twenty million at every breath.--DRAPER. The plasma also contains fibrin, [Footnote: it is usual to say that fibrin is contained in the blood. It probably does not exist as such, but there are present in the blood certain substances known as _paraglobulin_ and _fibrinogen_, which by the action of a third substance, _fibrin ferment_ under certain circumstances, form fibrin and so cause coagulation. The exact nature of the process by which fibrin is produced by these three factors is not understood--See Foster's _Text Book of Physiology_, p 22.] albumin--which is found nearly pure in the white of an egg--and various mineral substances, as iron, [Footnote: Enough iron has been found in the ashes of a burned body to form a mourning ring.] lime, magnesia, phosphorus, potash, etc. FIG. 36. [Illustration: _Blood Crystals_] USES OF THE BLOOD.--The blood has been called "liquid flesh"; but it is more than that, since it contains the materials for making every organ. The plasma is rich in mineral matter for the bones, and in albumen for the muscles. The red disks are the air cells of the blood. They contain the oxygen so essential to every operation of life. Wherever there is work to be done or repairs to be made, there the oxygen is needed. It stimulates to action, and tears down all that is worn out. In this process, it combines with and actually burns out parts of the muscles and other tissues, as wood is burned in the stove. [Footnote: For the sake of simplicity, perhaps to conceal our own ignorance, we call this process "burning." The simile of a fire is good so far as it goes. But as to the real nature of the change which the physiologist briefly terms "oxidation," we know nothing. This much only can be asserted positively. A stream of oxygen is carried by the blood to the muscles (in fact to every tissue in the body), while, from the muscles the blood carries away a stream of carbonic acid and water. But what takes place in the muscles, when and what chemical change occurs, no one can tell. We see the first and the last stage. We know that contraction of the muscles somehow comes about, oxygen disappears, carbonic acid appears, energy is released, and force is exhibited as motion, heat, and electricity. But the intermediate step is hidden. There are certain theories advanced, however, that are worth considering. Some physiologists hold that the muscle has the power of taking up the oxygen from the _hemoglobin_ (a body that comprises ninety per cent of the red corpuscles when dried, and is the oxygen carrier of the blood), and fixing it, as well as the raw material (food) furnished by the blood, thus forming a true contractile substance. The breaking down or decomposition of this contractile substance in the muscle, sets free its potential energy. The process is gentle so long as the muscle is at rest, but becomes excessive and violent when contraction occurs. (See "Foster's Physiology," p. 118.) It is also believed by some that the chemical change in the muscle partakes of a fermentive character; that, under the influence of the proper ferments, the substances break up into other and simpler products, thus setting free heat and force; and that this chemical change is followed by a secondary oxidation by the oxygen in the arterial blood, thereby forming carbonic acid and water, as in all putrefactive processes. But these and other views are not as yet fully understood; while they utterly fail to tell us how a collection of simple cells, filled merely with a semifluid mass of matter, can contract and set free muscular power. The commonness of this act hides from us its wonderful nature. But here, hidden in the cell--Nature's tiny laboratory--lies the mystery of life. Before its closed door we ponder in vain, confessing the unskillfulness of our labor, and fearing all the while lest the _Secret of the Cell_ will always elude our search.] The blood, now foul with the burned matter, the refuse of this fire, is caught up by the circulation, and whirled back to the lungs, where it is purified, and again sent bounding on its way. There are then two different kinds of the blood in the body: the red or arterial, and the dark or venous. TRANSFUSION.--As the blood is really the "vital fluid" it would seem that feeble persons might be restored to vigor by infusing healthy blood into their veins. This hypothesis, so valuable in its possible results in prolonging human life, has been carefully tested. Animals which have ceased to breathe have thus had their vitality recalled. In the seventeenth century the theory became a subject of special investigation. A maniac was restored to reason by the blood of a calf, and the most extravagant hopes were entertained. But many fatal accidents occurring, experiments upon human beings were forbidden by law, and transfusion soon fell into disuse. It has, however, been successfully practiced in several cases within the last few years, and is a method still in repute for saving lives. COAGULATION.--When blood is exposed to the air, it coagulates. This is caused by the solidifying of the fibrin, which entangling the disks, forms the "clot." The remaining clear, yellow liquid is the _serum_. The value of this peculiar property of the blood can hardly be overestimated. The coagulation soon checks all ordinary cases of bleeding. [Footnote: In the case of the lower animals, which have no means of stopping hemorrhages as we have, the coagulation is generally still more rapid. In some species of birds it takes place almost instantaneously.] When a wound is made, and bleeding commences, the fibrin forms a temporary plug, as it were, which is absorbed when the healing process is finished. Thus we see how a Divine foresight has provided not only for the ordinary wants of the body, but also for the accidents to which it is liable. [Footnote: The fibrin is not an essential ingredient of the blood. All the functions of life are regularly performed in people whose blood lacks fibrin; and, in cases of transfusion, where blood deprived of its fibrin was used, the vivifying influence seemed to be the same. Its office, therefore, must mainly be to stanch any hemorrhage which may occur.--FLINT.] FIG. 37. [Illustration: _The Heart._ A, _the right ventricle;_ B, _the left ventricle;_ C, _the right auricle;_ D, _the left auricle._] THE HEART is the engine which propels the blood. It is a hollow, pear- shaped muscle, about the size of the fist. It hangs, point downward, just to the left of the center of the chest. (See Fig. 31.) It is inclosed in a loose sac of serous membrane, [Footnote: The mucous membrane lines the open cavities of the body; the serous, the closed. The pericardium is a sac composed of two layers--a fibrous membrane on the outside, and a serous one on the inside. The latter covers the external surface of the heart, and is reflected back upon itself in order to form, like all the membranes of this nature, a sac without an opening. The heart is thus covered by the pericardial sac, but not contained inside its cavity. A correct idea may be formed of the disposition of the pericardium around the heart by recalling a very common and very convenient, though now discarded headdress, the cotton nightcap. The pericardium incloses the heart exactly as this cap covered the heads of our forefathers.-- _Wonders of the Human Body_.] called the pericardium (_peri_, about; and _kardia_, the heart). This secretes a lubricating fluid, and is smooth as satin. THE MOVEMENTS OF THE HEART consist of an alternate contraction and expansion. The former is called the _sys'-to-le_, and the latter the _di-as'-to-le_. During the diastole, the blood flows into the heart, to be expelled by the systole. The alternation of these movements constitutes the beating of the heart which we hear so distinctly between the fifth and sixth ribs. [Footnote: Two sounds are heard if we put our ear over the heart,--the first and longer as the blood is leading the organ, the second as it falls into the pockets of the two arteries, and the valves then striking together cause it. The first sound is mainly the noise made by the muscular tissue. During the first, the two ventricles contract; during the second the two auricles do so. The hand may feel the heart striking the ribs as it contracts,--a feeling called the impulse, or, if quicker and stronger than usual, palpitation. This is not always a sign of disease, but in hypochondriacs is often an effect of the mind on the nerves of the heart.--MAPOTHER] FIG. 38. [Illustration: _Chambers of the Heart_ A, _right ventricle;_ B, _left ventricle,_ C, _right auricle,_ D, _left auricle,_ E, _tricuspid valve,_ F, _bicuspid valve;_ G, _semilunar valves,_ H, _valve of the aorta;_ I, _inferior vena cava,_ K, _superior vena cava,_ L, L, _pulmonary veins._] THE AURICLES AND VENTRICLES--The heart is divided into four chambers. In an adult, each holds about a wineglassful. The upper ones, from appendages on the outside resembling the ears of a dog, are called _auricles (aures_, ears). are termed _ventricles_. The auricle and ventricle on each side communicate with each other, but the right and left halves of the heart are entirely distinct, and perform different offices. The left side propels the red blood; and the right, the dark. The auricles are merely reservoirs to receive the blood (the left auricle, as it filters in bright and pure from the lungs; the right, as it returns dark and foul from the tour of the body), and to furnish it to the ventricles as they need. Their work being so light, their walls are comparatively thin and weak. On the other hand, the ventricles force the blood (the left, to all parts of the body; the right, to the lungs), and are, therefore, made very strong. As the left ventricle drives the blood so much farther than the right, it is correspondingly thicker and stronger. NEED OF VALVES IN THE HEART.--As the auricles do not need to contract with much force simply to empty their contents into the ventricles below them, there is no demand for any special contrivance to prevent the blood from setting back the wrong way. Indeed, it would naturally run down into the ventricle, which is at that moment open to receive it. But, when the strong ventricles contract, especially the left one, which must drive the blood to the extremities, some arrangement is necessary to prevent it from returning into the auricle. Besides, when they expand, the "suction power" would tend to draw back again from the arteries all the blood just forced out. This difficulty is obviated by means of little doors, or valves, which will not let it go the wrong way. [Footnote: The heart of an ox or a sheep may be used to show the chambers and valves. The aorta should be cut as far as possible from the heart, and then by pumping in water the perfection of these valves will be finely exhibited. Cutting the heart across near the middle will show the greater thickness of the left ventricle.] THE TRICUSPID AND BICUSPID VALVES.--At the opening into the right ventricle, is a valve consisting of three folds or flaps of membrane, whence it is called the _tricuspid_ valve (_tri_, three; and _cuspides_, points), and in the left ventricle, one containing two flaps, and named the _bicuspid_ valve. These hang so loosely as to oppose no resistance to the passage of the blood into the ventricles; but, if any attempts to go the other way, it gets between the flaps and the walls of the heart, and, driving them outward, closes the orifice. FIG. 39. [Illustration: _Diagram showing the peculiar Fibrous Structure of the Heart and the Shape of the Valves._ A, _tricuspid valve,_ B, _bicuspid valve;_ C, _semilunar valves of the aorta;_ D, _semilunar valves of the pulmonary artery._] THESE FLAPS ARE STRENGTHENED like sails by slender cords, which prevent their being pressed back through the opening. If the cords were attached directly to the walls of the heart, they would be loosened in the systole, and so become useless when most needed. They are, therefore, fastened to little muscular pillars projecting from the sides of the ventricle; when that contracts, the pillars contract also, and thus the cords are held tight. THE SEMILUNAR VALVES.--In the passages outward from the ventricles, are valves, called from their peculiar half-moon shape _semilunar_ valves (_semi_, half; _Luna_, Moon). Each consists of three little pocket-shaped folds of membrane, with their openings in the direction which the blood is to take. When it sets back, they fill, and, swelling out, close the passage (Fig. 40). THE ARTERIES [Footnote: _Aer,_ air; and _tereo,_ I contain--so named because after death they contain air only, and hence the ancients supposed them to be air tubes leading through the body.] are the tube-like canals which convey the blood _from_ the heart. They carry the red blood (see note, p. 119). They are composed of an elastic tissue, which yields at every throb of the heart, and then slowly contracting again, keeps up the motion of the blood until the next systole. The elasticity of the arteries acts like the air chamber of a fire engine, which converts the intermittent jerks of the brakes or pump into the steady stream of the hose nozzle. The arteries sometimes communicate by means of branches or by meshes of loops, so that if the blood be blocked in one, it can pass round through another, and so get by the obstacle. [Footnote: This occurs especially about the joints, where it serves to maintain the circulation during the bending of a limb, or when the main artery is obstructed by disease or injury, or has been tied by the surgeon. In the last case, the small adjacent arteries gradually enlarge, and form what is called a collateral circulation.] When an artery penetrates a muscle, it is often protected by a sheath or by fibrous rings, which prevent its being pulled out of place or compressed by the play of the muscles. The arteries are generally located as far as possible beneath the surface, out of harm's way, and hence are found closely hugging the bones or creeping through safe passages provided for them. They are generally nearly straight, and take the shortest routes to the parts which they are to supply with blood. THE ARTERIAL SYSTEM starts from the left ventricle by a single trunk--the _aorta_--which, after giving off branches to the head, sweeps back of the chest with a bold curve--the _arch of the aorta_ (_c_, Fig. 34)--and thence runs downward (_f_), dividing and subdividing, like a tree, into numberless branches, which, at last, penetrate every nook and corner of the body. THE PULSE.--At the wrist (_k_, radial artery) and on the temple (temporal artery) we can feel the expansion of the artery by each little wave of blood set in motion by the contraction of the heart. In health, there are about seventy-two [Footnote: This number varies much with age, sex, and individuals. Napoleon's pulse is said to have been only forty, while it is not infrequent to find a healthy pulse at one hundred or over. In general, the pulse is quicker in children and in old people than in the middle-aged; in short persons than in tall; in women than in men. Shame makes the heart send more blood to the blushing cheek, and fear almost stops it. The will can not check the heart. There is said, however, to have been a notable exception to this in the case of one Colonel Townsend, of Dublin, who, after having succeeded several times in stopping the pulsation, at last lost his life in the act.] pulsations per minute. They increase with excitement or inflammation, weaken with loss of vigor, and are modified by nearly every disease. The physician, therefore, finds the pulse a good index of the state of the system and the character of the disorder. (See p. 314.) THE VEINS are the tube-like canals which convey the blood _to_ the heart. [Footnote: There is one exception to the general course of the veins. The _portal_ vein carries the blood from the digestive organs to the liver, where it is acted upon, thence poured into the ascending vena cava, and goes back to the heart.] They carry the dark or venous blood (note, p. 119). As they do not receive the direct impulse of the heart, their walls are made much thinner and less elastic than those of the arteries. At first small, they increase in size and diminish in number as they gradually pour into one another, like tiny rills collecting to form two rivers, the vena cava ascending and the vena cava descending (_l, m_, Fig. 34), which empty into the right auricle. Some of the veins creep along under the skin, where they can be seen, as in the back of the hand; while others accompany the arteries, some of which have two or more of these companions. VALVES similar in construction to those already described (the semilunar valves of the heart, page 114) are placed at convenient intervals, in order to guide the blood in its course, and prevent its setting backward. [Footnote: Too much standing, or tight elastics, often cause the veins in the leg to swell, so that the valves can not work; the veins then become _varicose_, or permanently enlarged, and, if they burst, the bleeding may be profuse and even dangerous. Raising the leg and pressing the finger on the bleeding spot will stay it. Walking does not encourage this disease, for the active muscles force on the venous blood. Clerks who are subject to varicose veins should have seats behind the counters where they may rest when not actually employed. A deep breath helps the flow in the veins, and a wound may suck in air with fatal effect. A maimed horse is most mercifully killed by blowing a bubble of air into the veins of his neck. As the deep-sea pressure would burst valves, the whale has none; hence a small wound by the harpoon causes him to bleed to death.-- MAPOTHER.] We can easily examine the working of these valves. On baring the arm, blue veins may be seen running along the arm toward the hand. Their diameter is tolerably even, and they gradually decrease in size. If now the finger be pressed on the upper part of one of these veins, and then passed downward so as to drive its blood backward, swellings like little knots will make their appearance. Each of these marks the location of a valve, which is closed by the blood we push before our finger. Remove the pressure, and the valve will swing open, the blood set forward, and the vein collapse to its former size. FIG. 40. [Illustration: _Valves of the Veins._] THE CAPILLARIES (_capillus,_ a hair) form a fine network of tubes, connecting the ends of the arteries with the veins. They blend, however, with the extremities of these two systems, so that it is not easy to tell just where an artery ends and a vein begins. So closely are they placed, that we can not prick the flesh with a needle without injuring, perhaps, hundreds of them. The air cells of the blood deposit there their oxygen, and receive carbonic acid, while in the delicate capillaries of the lungs [Footnote: The capillary tubes are there so fine that the disks of the blood have to go one by one, and are sadly squeezed at that. However, their elasticity enables them to resume their old shape as soon as they have escaped from this labyrinth.] they give up their load of carbonic acid in exchange for oxygen. FIG. 41. [Illustration: _Circulation of the Blood in the Web of a Frog's Foot, highly magnified._ A, _an artery;_ B, _capillaries crowded with disks, owing to a rupture just above, where the disks are jammed into an adjacent mesh;_ C, _a deeper vein; the black spots are pigment cells._] If, by means of a microscope, we examine the transparent web of a frog's foot, we can trace the route of the blood. [Footnote: With small splints and twine, a frog's foot can be easily stretched and tied so that the transparent web can be placed on the table of the microscope.] It is an experiment of wonderful interest. The crimson stream, propelled by the heart, rushes through the arteries, until it reaches the intricate meshes of the capillaries. Here it breaks into a thousand tiny rills. We can see the disks winding in single file through the devious passages, darting hither and thither, now pausing, swaying to and fro with an uncertain motion, and anon dashing ahead, until, at last, gathered in the veins, the blood sets steadily back on its return to the heart. THE CIRCULATION [Footnote: The circulation of the blood was discovered by Harvey in 1619. For several years, he did not dare to publish his belief. When it became known, he was bitterly persecuted, and his practice as a physician greatly decreased in consequence. He lived, however, to see his theory universally adopted, and his name honored. Harvey is said to have declared that no man over forty years of age accepted his views.] consists of two parts--the _lesser_, and the _greater_. FIG. 42. [Illustration: _Diagram illustrating the Circulation of the Blood._-- MARSHALL. A, _vena cava descending (superior);_ Z, _vena cava ascending (inferior);_ C, _right auricle;_ D, _right ventricle;_ E, _pulmonary artery;_ F P, _lungs and pulmonary veins;_ G, _left auricle;_ H, _left ventricle;_ I, K, _aorta._] 1. _The Lesser Circulation_.--The dark blood from the veins collects in the right auricle, and, going through the tricuspid valve, empties into the right ventricle. Thence it is driven past the semilunar valves, through the pulmonary artery, to the lungs. After circulating through the fine capillaries of the air cells contained in the lungs, it is returned, bright and red, through the four pulmonary veins, [Footnote: It is noticeable that the pulmonary set of veins circulates red blood, and the pulmonary set of arteries circulates dark blood. Both are connected with the lungs.] to the left auricle. 2. _The Greater Circulation_.--From the left auricle, the blood is forced past the bicuspid valve to the left ventricle; thence it is driven through the semilunar valves into the great aorta, the main trunk of the arterial system. Passing through the arteries, capillaries, and veins, it returns through the venæ cavæ, ascending and descending, gathers again in the right auricle, and so completes the "grand round" of the body. Both these circulations are going on constantly, as the two auricles contract, and the two ventricles expand simultaneously, and _vice versa_. THE VELOCITY OF THE BLOOD varies so much in different parts of the body, and is influenced by so many circumstances, that it can not be calculated with any degree of accuracy. It has been estimated that a portion of the blood will make the tour of the body in about twenty-three seconds (FLINT), and that the entire mass passes through the heart in from one to two minutes. [Footnote: The total amount of blood in an adult of average weight is about eighteen pounds. Dividing this by five ounces, the quantity discharged by the left ventricle at each systole, gives fifty- eight pulsations as the number necessary to transmit all the blood in the body. This, however, is an extremely unreliable basis of calculation, as the rapidity of the blood is itself so variable. Chauvreau has shown by experiments with his instrument that, corresponding to the first dilation of the vessels, the blood moves with immense rapidity; following this, the current suddenly becomes nearly arrested; this is succeeded by a second acceleration in the current, not quite so rapid as the first; and after this there is a gradual decline in the rapidity to the time of the next pulsation.] (See p. 314.) DISTRIBUTION AND REGULATION OF THE HEAT OF THE BODY.--1. _Distribution_.--The natural temperature is not far from 98°. [Footnote: The average temperature is, however, easily departed from. Through some trivial cause the cooling agencies may be interfered with, and then, the heating processes getting the superiority, a high temperature or fever comes on. Or the reverse may ensue. In Asiatic cholera, the constitution of the blood is so changed that its disks can no longer carry oxygen into the system, the heat-making processes are put a stop to, and, the temperature declining, the body becomes of a marble coldness, characteristic of that terrible disease.--DRAPER.] This is maintained, as we have already seen, by the action of the oxygen within us. Each capillary tube is a tiny stove, where oxygen is combining with the tissues of the body (see note, p. 107). Every contraction of a muscle develops heat, the latent heat being set free by the breaking up of the tissue. The warmth so produced is distributed by the circulation of the blood. Thus the arteries, veins, and capillaries form a series of hot- water pipes, through which the heated liquid is forced by a pump--the heart--while the heat is kept up, not by a central furnace and boiler, but by a multitude of little fires placed here and there along its course. 2. _Regulation_.--The temperature of the body is regulated by means of the pores of the skin and the mucous membrane in the air passages. When the system becomes too warm, the blood vessels on the surface expand, the blood fills them, the fluid exudes into the perspiratory glands, pours out upon the exterior, and by evaporation cools the body. [Footnote: Just as water sprinkled on the floor cools a room.--_Popular Physics_, p. 255.] When the temperature of the body is too low, the vessels contract, less blood goes to the surface, the perspiration decreases, and the loss of heat by evaporation diminishes. [Footnote: Thus one is enabled to go into an oven where bread is baking, or into the arctic regions where the mountains are snow and the rivers ice. Even by these extremes the temperature of the blood will be but slightly affected. In the one case, the flood gates of perspiration will be opened and the superfluous heat expended in turning the water to vapor; and, in the other, they will be tightly closed and all the heat retained.] LIFE BY DEATH.--The body is being incessantly corroded, and portions borne away by the tireless oxygen. The scales of the epidermis are constantly falling off and being replaced by secretion from the cutis. The disks of the blood die, and new ones spring into being. On the continuance of this interchange depend our health and vigor. Every act is a destructive one. Not a bend of the finger, not a wink of the eye, not a thought of the brain but is at some expense of the machine itself. Every process of life is thus a process of death. The more rapidly this change goes on, and fresh, vigorous tissue takes the place of the old, the more elasticity and strength we possess. CHANGE OF OUR BODIES.--There is a belief that our bodies change once in seven years. From the nature of the case, the rate must vary with the labor we perform; the organs most used altering oftenest. Probably the parts of the body in incessant employment are entirely reorganized many times within a single year. [Footnote: To use a homely simile, our bodies are like the Irishman's knife, which, after having had several new blades, and at least one new handle, was yet the same old knife.] THE THREE VITAL ORGANS.--Death is produced by the stoppage of the action of any one of the three organs--the heart, the lungs, or the brain. They have, therefore, been termed the "Tripod of Life." Really, however, as Huxley has remarked, "Life has but two legs to stand upon." If respiration and circulation be kept up artificially, the removal of the brain will not produce death. [Footnote: When death really does take place, _i. e._, when the vital organs are stopped, it is noticeable that the tissues do not die for some time thereafter. If suitable stimulants be applied, as the galvanic battery, transfusion of blood, etc., the muscles may be made to contract, and many of the phenomena of life be exhibited. Dr. Brown- Sequard thus produced muscular action in the hand of a criminal, fourteen hours after his execution.] WONDERS OF THE HEART.--The ancients thought the heart to be the seat of love. There were located the purity and goodness as well as the evil passions of the soul. [Footnote: Our common words, hearty, large-hearted, courage (_cor_, the heart), are remains of this fanciful theory.] Modern science has found the seat of the mental powers to be in the brain. But while it has thus robbed the heart of its romance, it has revealed wonders which eclipse all the mysteries of the past. This marvelous little engine throbs on continually at the rate of one hundred thousand beats per day, forty millions per year, often three billions without a single stop. It is the most powerful of machines. "Its daily work is equal to one third that of all the muscles. If it should expend its entire force in lifting its own weight vertically, it would rise twenty thousand feet in an hour." [Footnote: "The greatest exploit ever accomplished by a locomotive, was to lift itself through less than one eighth of that distance." Vast and constant as is this process, so perfect is the machinery, that there are persons who do not even know where the heart lies until disease or accident reveals its location.] Its vitality is amazing. The most tireless of organs while life exists, it is one of the last to yield when life expires. So long as a flutter lingers at the heart, we know the spark of being is not quite extinguished, and there is hope of restoration. During a life such as we sometimes see, it has propelled half a million tons of blood, yet repaired itself as it has wasted, during its patient, unfaltering labor. The play of its valves and the rhythm of its throb have never failed until, at the command of the great Master Workman, the "wheels of life have stood still." [Footnote: Our brains are seventy-five- year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection. Ticktack! Ticktack! go the wheels of thought; our will can not stop them, they can not stop themselves; sleep can not stop them; madness only makes them go faster; death alone can break into the case, and, seizing the ever-swinging pendulum which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.--HOLMES.] FIG. 43. [Illustration: _Lymphatics of the Head and Neck, showing the Glands, and,_ B, _the thoracic duct as it empties into the left innominate vein at the junction of the left jugular and subclavian veins._] THE LYMPHATIC CIRCULATION is intimately connected with that of the blood. It is, however, more delicate in its organization, and less thoroughly understood. Nearly every part of the body is permeated by a second series of capillaries, closely interlaced with the blood capillaries already described, and termed the Lymphatic system. The larger number converge into the thoracic duct--a small tube, about the size of a goose quill, which empties into the great veins of the neck (Fig. 43). Along their course the lymphatics frequently pass through _glands_,--hard, pinkish bodies of all sizes, from that of a hemp seed to an almond. These glands are often enlarged by disease, and then are easily felt. _The Lymph_, which circulates through the lymphatics like blood through the veins, is a thin, colorless liquid, very like the serum. This fluid, probably in great measure an overflow from the blood vessels, is gathered up by the lymphatics, undergoes in the glands some process of preparation not well understood, and is then returned to the circulation. FIG. 44. [Illustration: _Lymphatics in the Leg, with Glands at the Hip_.] OFFICE OF THE LYMPHATICS.--It is thought that portions of the waste matter of the body capable of further use are thus, by a wise economy, retained and elaborated in the system. The _lacteals_, a class of lymphatics which will be described under Digestion (p. 166), aid in taking up the food; after a meal they become milk white. In the lungs, the lymphatics are abundant; sometimes absorbing the poison of disease, and diffusing it through the system. [Footnote: Persons have thus been poisoned by tiny particles of arsenic which evaporate from green wall paper, and float in the air.] The lymphatics of the skin we have already spoken of as producing the phenomena of absorption, [Footnote: Pain is often relieved by injecting under the cuticle a solution of morphine, which is taken up by the absorbents, and so carried through the system.] Nature in her effort to heal a cut deposits an excess of matter to fill up the breach. Soon, the lymphatics go to work and remove the surplus material to other parts of the body. Animals that hibernate are supported during the winter by the fat which their absorbents carry into the circulation from the extra supply they have laid up during the summer. In famine or in sickness, a man unconsciously consumes his own flesh. DISEASES, ETC.--l. _Congestion_ is an unnatural accumulation of blood in any part of the body. The excess is indicated by the redness. If we put our feet in hot water, the capillaries will expand by the heat, and the blood will set that way to fill them. The red nose and purplish face of the drunkard show a congestion of the capillaries. Those vessels have lost their power of contraction, and so are permanently increased in size and filled with blood. Blushing is a temporary congestion. The capillaries being expanded only for an instant by the nervous excitement, contract again and expel the blood. [Footnote: Blushing is a purely local modification of the circulation of this kind, and it will be instructive to consider how a blush is brought about. An emotion--sometimes pleasurable, sometimes painful--takes possession of the mind; thereupon a hot flush is felt, the skin grows red, and according to the intensity of the emotion these changes are confined to the cheeks only, or extend to the "roots of the hair," or "all over." What is the cause of these changes? The blood is a red and a hot fluid; the skin reddens and grows hot, because its vessels contain an increased quantity of this red and hot fluid; and its vessels contain more, because the small arteries suddenly dilate, the natural moderate contraction of their muscles being superseded by a state of relaxation. In other words, the action of the nerves which cause this muscular contraction is suspended. On the other hand, in many people, extreme terror causes the skin to grow cold, and the face to appear pale and pinched. Under these circumstances, in fact, the supply of blood to the skin is greatly diminished, in consequence of an excessive stimulation of the nerves of the small arteries, which causes them to contract and so to cut off the supply of blood more or less completely.-- Huxley's _Physiology_.] 2. _Inflammation_ means simply a burning. If there is irritation or an injury at any spot, the blood sets thither and reddens it. This extra supply, both by its presence and the friction of the swiftly moving currents, produces heat. The pressure of the distended vessels upon the nerves frets them, and produces pain. The swelling stretches the walls of the blood vessels, and the serum or lymph oozes through. The four characteristics of an inflammation are redness, heat, pain, and swelling. 3. _Bleeding_, if from an artery, will be of red blood, and will come in jets; [Footnote: The elasticity of the arteries (p. 114) is a physical property, as may easily be shown by removing one from a dead body. If they were rigid and unyielding, a considerable portion of the heart's force would be uselessly expended against their walls. Their expansion is a passive state, and depends on the pressure of the blood within them; but their vital contractility is an active property.--The intermittent movement of the blood through the arteries is strikingly shown in the manner in which they bleed when wounded. When an artery is cut across, the blood spurts out with great force to a distance of several feet, but the flow is not continuous. It escapes in a series of jets, the long, slender scarlet stream rising and falling with each beat of the heart, and this pulsation of the blood stream tells at once that it comes from a wounded artery. But as the blood traverses these elastic tubes, the abruptness of the heart's stroke becomes gradually broken and the current equalized, so that the greater the distance from the heart the less obvious is the pulsation, until at length in the capillaries the rate of the stream becomes uniform.] if from the veins, it will be of dark blood, and will flow in a steady stream. If only a small vessel be severed, it may be checked by a piece of cloth held or bound firmly upon the wound. If a large trunk be cut, especially in a limb, make a knot in a handkerchief and tie it loosely about the limb; then, placing the knot on the limb, with a short stick twist the handkerchief tightly enough to stop the flow. If you have a piece of cloth to use as a pad, the knot will be unnecessary. If it be an artery that is cut, the pressure should be applied between the wound and the heart; if a vein, beyond the wound. If you are alone, and are severely wounded, or in an emergency, like a railroad accident, use the remedy which has saved many a life upon the battlefield--bind or hold a handful of dry earth upon the wound, elevate the part, and await surgical assistance. 4. _Scrofula_ is generally inherited. It is a disease affecting the lymphatic glands, most commonly those of the neck, forming "kernels," as they are called. It is, however, liable to attack any organ. Persons inheriting this disease can hope to ward off its insidious approaches only by the utmost care in diet and exercise; by the use of pure air and warm clothing, and by avoiding late hours and undue stimulus of all kinds. Probably the most fatal and common excitants of the latent seeds of scrofula are insufficient or improper food, and want of ventilation. 5. _A COLD_.--We put on a thinner dress than usual, or, when heated, sit in a cool place. The skin is chilled, and the perspiration checked. The blood, no longer cleansed and reduced in volume by the drainage through the pores, sets to the lungs for purification. That organ is oppressed, breathing becomes difficult, and the extra mucus secreted by the irritated surface of the membrane is thrown off by coughing. The mucous membrane of the nasal chamber sympathizes with the difficulty, and we have "a cold in the head," or a catarrh. In general, the excess of blood seeks the weakest point, and develops there any latent disease [Footnote: A party go out for a walk and are caught in a rain, or, coming home heated from some close assembly, throw off their coats to enjoy the deliciously cool breeze. The next day, one has a fever, another a slight headache, another pleurisy, another pneumonia, another rheumatism, while some of the number escape without any ill feeling whatever. The last had vital force sufficient to withstand the disturbance, but in the others there were various weak points, and to these the excess of blood has gone, producing congestion.] Where one person has been killed in battle, thousands have died of colds. To restore the equipoise must be the object of all treatment. We put the feet in hot water and they soon become red and gorged with the blood which is thus called from the congested organs. Hot footbaths have saved multitudes of lives. It is well in case of a sudden cold to go immediately to bed, and with hot drinks and extra clothing open the pores, and induce free perspiration. This calls the blood to the surface, and, by equalizing and diminishing the volume of the circulation, affords relief. [Footnote: Severe colds may often be relieved in their first stages by using lemons freely during the day, and taking at night fifteen or twenty grains of sodium bromide. Great care, however, should be observed in employing the latter remedy, except under the advice of a physician.] 6. _Catarrh_ commonly manifests itself by the symptoms known as those of a "cold in the head," and is produced by the same causes. It is an inflammation of the mucous membrane lining the nasal and bronchial passages. One going out from the hot dry air of a furnace-heated room into the cold damp atmosphere of our climate can hardly avoid irritating and inflaming this tender membrane. If our rooms were heated less intensely, and ventilated more thoroughly, so that we had not the present hothouse sensitiveness to cold air, this disease would be far less universal, and perhaps would disappear entirely. [Footnote: Dr. Gray gives the following table: ===================================================================== Rooms Occupied by Letter-press Printers. | Number | Subject to | per cent | Catarrh | Spitting | | Blood. | ------------------------------------------+------------+------------- 104 men having less than 500 cubic feet | | of air to breathe | 12.50 | 12.50 | | 115 men having from 500 to 600 cubic feet | | of air to breathe | 4.35 | 3.58 | | 101 men having more than 600 cubic feet | | of air to breathe | 3.96 | 1.98 ---------------------------------------------------------------------] (See p. 315.) ALCOHOLIC DRINKS AND NARCOTICS. 1. ALCOHOL. That we may understand fully the effect of alcohol upon the human system, let us first consider its nature and the process by which harmless fruits and grains are made to produce a substance so unlike themselves in its deleterious effects. HOW ALCOHOL IS MADE.--When any substance containing sugar, as fruit juice, is caused to ferment, the elements of which the sugar is composed, viz., hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, so rearrange themselves as to form carbon dioxide (carbonic acid), alcohol, and certain volatile oils and ethers. [Footnote: The precise relation between chemical phenomena and the physiological functions of the organic ferment is still to be discovered; and all that has been said, written, and brought forward to decide the question, need experimental proof.--SCHÜTZENBERGER.] The carbonic acid partly evaporates and partly remains in the liquor; the alcohol is the poisonous or intoxicating principle, while the oils and ethers impart the peculiar flavor and odor. Thus wine is fermented grape juice, and cider is fermented apple juice, each having its distinctive taste and smell, and each containing, as one product of fermentation, more or less of the inebriating alcohol. Wines are also made from other fruits and vegetables, such as oranges, currants, tomatoes, and rhubarb, but the alcohol which they contain is of the same nature in all cases, whether the fermented liquor has been manufactured in great quantities, by large presses, or by a simple domestic process for home consumption. It is important to remember this fact, as many people do not associate alcohol with such beverages as domestic wines and home-brewed ales, whereas it is always present with the same treacherous qualities which attach to it everywhere. An apple is a wholesome and useful fruit, and its simple juice, fragrant and refreshing, is a delight to the palate; but apple juice converted into cider and allowed to enter upon alcoholic fermentation, loses its innocence, and becomes a dangerous drink, because it is the nature of the alcohol it now contains to create an appetite for more alcohol. (See p. 185.) WHAT IS A FERMENT?--Ferments, of which there are many varieties in nature, are minute living organisms analogous to the microscopic objects called bacteria or microbes, [Footnote: There is no well-defined limit between ferments and bacteria, any more than between ferments and fungi, or again, between fungi and bacteria. Their smaller size is the principal difference which separates bacteria from ferments, although there are bacteria of large size, such as are so frequently found in the mouth of even a healthy man, and which much resemble in their mode of growth some of the lower fungi.--Trouessart.] of which we have heard much in late years, especially in connection with the famous researches and experiments of the great French investigator, M. Pasteur. He tells us that "Every fermentation has its specific ferment. This minute being produces the transformation which constitutes fermentation by breathing the oxygen of the substance to be fermented, or by appropriating for an instant the whole substance, then destroying it by what may be termed the secretion of the fermented products." [Footnote: What we call spontaneous fermentation often occurs, as when apple juice turns to hard cider by simple exposure to the air. Science teaches us, however, that this change is always effected by the action of the busy little ferments which, wandering about, drop into the liquid, begin their rapid propagation, and, in the act of growing, evolve the products of the fermentation. "If the above liquids be left only in contact with air which has been passed through a red-hot platinum tube, and thus the living sporules destroyed; or if the air be simply filtered by passing through cotton wool, and the sporules prevented from coming into the liquid, it is found that these fermentable liquids may be preserved for any length of time without undergoing the slightest change."--Roscoe.] The effect, therefore, of fermentation is to change entirely the character of the substance upon which it acts; hence it is an error to assume that fermented liquors, as beer, wine, and cider, are safe drinks because the grains or fruits from which they are produced are healthful foods. YEAST is a ferment which causes alcoholic fermentation. It consists of microscopic plants, which increase by the formation of multitudes of tiny cells not more than 1/2400 of an inch in diameter. In the brewing of beer they grow in great abundance, making common brewer's yeast. Ferments or their spores float in the air ready to enter any fermentable liquid, and under favorable conditions they multiply with great activity and energy. The favorable conditions include the presence of oxygen or sugar; [Footnote: Yeast, like ordinary plants, buds and multiplies even in the absence of fermentable sugar, when it is furnished with free oxygen. This multiplication, however, is favored by the presence of sugar, which is a more appropriate element than non-fermentable hydrocarbon compounds. Yeast is also able to bud and multiply in the absence of free oxygen, but in this case a fermentable substance is indispensable.--SCHÜTZENBERGER'S _Fermentation_.] oxygen being, as we know, necessary for the development and the reproduction of all cell life (p. 107), and ferments having the power to resolve sugar, which penetrates by endosmose into the interior of the cell, into alcohol, carbonic acid, glycerine, succinic acid, and oxygen. BEER.--The barley used for making beer is first malted, _i. e._, sprouted, to turn a part of its starch into sugar. When this process has gone far enough, it is checked by heating the grain in a kiln until the germ is destroyed. The malt is then crushed, steeped, and fermented with hops and yeast. The sugar gradually disappears, alcohol is formed, and carbonic acid escapes into the air. The beer is then put into casks, where it undergoes a second, slower fermentation, and the carbonic acid gathers; when the liquor is drawn, this gas bubbles to the surface, giving to the beer its sparkling, foamy look. WINE is generally made from the juice of the grape. The juice, or _must_, as it is called, is placed in vats in the cellar, where the low temperature favors a slow fermentation. If all the sugar be converted into alcohol and carbonic-acid gas, a dry wine will remain; if the fermentation be checked, a sweet wine will result; and if the wine be bottled while the change is still going on, a brisk effervescing liquor like champagne, will be formed. All these are dangerous beverages because of the alcohol they contain. DISTILLATION.--Alcohol is so volatile that, by the application of heat, it can be driven off as a vapor from the fermented liquid in which it has been produced. Steam and various fragrant substances will accompany it, and, if they are collected and condensed in a cool receiver, a new and stronger liquor will be formed, having a distinctive odor. In this way whiskey is distilled from fermented corn, rye, barley, or potatoes; the alcohol of commerce is distilled from whiskey; brandy, from wine; rum, from fermented molasses; and gin, from fermented barley and rye, afterward distilled with juniper berries. VARIETIES AND PROPERTIES OF ALCOHOL.--There are several varieties of alcohol produced from distillation of various substances. Thus Methyl Alcohol is obtained from the decomposition of hard wood when exposed to intense heat with little or no oxygen present. It is a light, volatile liquid, which closely resembles ordinary alcohol in all its properties. It is used in the manufacture of aniline dyes, in making varnishes, and for burning in spirit lamps. Amyl Alcohol [Footnote: The odor of amylic alcohol is sweet, nauseous, and heavy. The sensation of its presence remains long. In taste it is burning and acrid, and it is itself practically insoluble in water. When it is diluted with common alcohol it dissolves freely in water, and gives a soft and rather unctuous flavor, I may call it a fruity flavor, something like that of ripe pears. Amyl alcohol, introduced as an adulterant, is an extremely dangerous addition to ordinary alcohol, in whatever form it is presented. From the quantities of it imported into this country, it is believed to be employed largely in the adulteration of wines and spirits.--RICHARDSON.] is the chief constituent of "fusel oil," found in whiskey distilled from potatoes. It is often present in common alcohol, giving a slightly unpleasant odor when it evaporates from the hand. Fusel oil is extremely poisonous and lasting in its effects, so that when contained in liquors it greatly increases their destructive and intoxicating properties. Ethyl Alcohol, which is that which we have described as obtained from fermentation of fruits and grains, is the ordinary alcohol of commerce. We have spoken of its volatility. This property permits it to pass into vapor at 56° Fahr. It boils at 173° Fahr. (Water boils at 212°.) Like Methyl Alcohol, it burns without smoke and with great heat, [Footnote: Pour a little alcohol into a saucer and apply an ignited match. The liquid will suddenly take fire, burning with intense heat, but feeble light. In this process, alcohol takes up oxygen from the air, forming carbonic-acid gas, and water.--Hold a red-hot coil of platinum wire in a goblet containing a few drops of alcohol, and a peculiar odor will be noticed. It denotes the formation of _aldehyde_--a substance produced in the slow oxidation of alcohol. Still further oxidized, the alcohol would be changed into _acetic acid_--the sour principle of vinegar.--Put the white of an egg--nearly pure albumen--into a cup, and pour upon it some alcohol, or even strong brandy; the fluid albumen will coagulate, becoming hard and solid. In this connection, it is well to remember that albumen is contained in our food, while the brain is largely an albuminous substance.] and is therefore of much value in the arts. Its great solvent power over fats and mixed oils renders it a useful agent in many industrial operations. It is also a powerful antiseptic, and no one who visits a museum of natural history will be likely to forget the rows of bottles within which float reptilian and batrachian specimens, preserved in alcohol. To alcohol, also, we are indebted for various anæsthetic agents, which, when not abused (p. 340), are of inestimable value. Thus, if certain proportions of alcohol and nitric acid be mixed together and heated, nitrite of amyl, so serviceable in relieving the agonizing spasms peculiar to that dread disease, angina pectoris, will be obtained. If, instead of nitric, we use sulphuric acid, we shall get ether; if chlorine be passed through alcohol, hydrate of chloral is the result; and, if chloride of lime and alcohol be treated together, the outcome is chloroform. One of the most striking properties of alcohol, and one which we shall hereafter consider in its disastrous effects upon the tissues of our body, is its affinity for water. [Footnote: Suppose, then, a certain measure of alcohol be taken into the stomach, it will be absorbed there, but, previous to absorption, it will have to undergo a proper degree of dilution with water; for there is this peculiarity respecting alcohol when it is separated by an animal membrane from a watery fluid like the blood, that it will not pass through the membrane until it has become charged, to a given point of dilution, with water. Alcohol is itself, in fact, so greedy for water that it will pick it up from watery textures, and deprive them of it until, by its saturation, its power of reception is exhausted, after which it will diffuse into the current of circulating fluid. To illustrate this fact of dilution I perform a simple experiment. Into a bladder is placed a mixture consisting of equal parts of alcohol and distilled water. Into the neck of the bladder a long glass tube is inserted and firmly tied. Then the bladder is immersed in a saline fluid representing an artificial serum of blood. The result is, that the alcohol in the bladder absorbs water from the surrounding saline solution, and thereby a column of fluid passes up into the glass tube. A second mixture of alcohol and water, in the proportion this time of one part of alcohol to two of water, is put into another bladder immersed in like manner in an artificial serum. In this instance a little fluid also passes from the outside into the bladder, so that there is a rise of water in the tube, but less than in the previous instance. A third mixture, consisting of one part of alcohol with three parts of water, is placed in another little bladder, and is also suspended in the artificial serum. In this case there is, for a time, a small rise of fluid in the tube connected with the bladder; but after a while, owing to the dilution which took place, a current from within outward sets in, and the tube becomes empty. Thus each bladder charged originally with the same quantity of fluid contains at last a different quantity. The first contains more than it did originally, the second only a little more, the third a little less. From the third, absorption takes place, and if I keep changing and replacing the outer fluid which surrounds the bladder with fresh serum, I can in time, owing to the double current of water into the bladder through its coats, and of water and alcohol out of the bladder into the serum, remove all the alcohol. In this way it is removed from the stomach into the circulating blood after it has been swallowed. When we dilute alcohol with water before drinking it, we quicken its absorption. If we do not dilute it sufficiently, it is diluted in the stomach by transudation of water in the stomach, until the required reduction for its absorption; the current then sets in toward the blood, and passes into the circulating canals by the veins.--RICHARDSON.] When strong alcohol is exposed to the air, it absorbs moisture and becomes diluted; at the same time, the spirit itself evaporates. The commercial or proof spirit is about one half water; the strongest holds five per cent; and to obtain absolute or waterless alcohol, requires careful distillation in connection with some substance, as lime, that has a still greater affinity for water, and so can despoil the alcohol. ALCOHOL IN ITS DESTRUCTIVE RELATION TO PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE.--If we pour a little quantity of strong spirits upon a growing plant in our garden or conservatory, we shall soon see it shrivel and die. If we apply it to insects or small reptiles which we may have captured for specimens in our cabinet, the same potent poison will procure for them a speedy death. If we force one of our domestic animals to take habitual doses of it, the animal will not only strongly protest against the unnatural and nauseous potion, but it will gradually sicken and lose all power for usefulness. "If I wished," says a distinguished English physician, "by scientific experiment to spoil for work the most perfect specimen of a working animal, say a horse, without inflicting mechanical injury, I could choose no better agent for the purpose of the experiment than alcohol." [Footnote: "The effects produced by alcohol are common, so far as I can discover, to every animal. Alcohol is a universal intoxicant, and in the higher orders of animals is capable of inducing the most systematic phenomena of disease. But it is reserved for man himself to exhibit these phenomena in their purest form, and to present, through them, in the morbid conditions belonging to his age, a distinct pathology. Bad as this is, it might be worse; for if the evils of alcohol were made to extend equally to animals lower than man, we should soon have none that were tamable, none that were workable, and none that were eatable."] ALCOHOL IN WINE, BEER, AND CIDER IDENTICAL WITH ALCOHOL IN ARDENT SPIRITS.--In all liquors the active principle is alcohol. It comprises from six to eight per cent of ale and porter, seven to seventeen per cent of wine, and forty to fifty per cent of brandy and whiskey. All these may therefore be considered as alcohol more or less diluted with water and flavored with various aromatics. The taste of different liquors--as brandy, gin, beer, cider, etc.--may vary greatly, but they all produce certain physiological effects, due to their common ingredient--alcohol. "In whatever form it enters," says Dr. Richardson, "whether as spirit, wine, or ale, matters little when its specific influence is kept steadily in view. To say this man only drinks ale, that man only drinks wine, while a third drinks spirits, is merely to say, when the apology is unclothed, that all drink the same danger." In other words, the poisonous nature of alcohol, and the effects which result when it is taken into the stomach, are definite and immutable facts, which are not dependent upon any particular name or disguise under which the poison finds entrance. We shall learn, as we study the influence of alcohol upon the human system, that one of its most subtle characteristics is the progressive appetite for itself (p. 185) which it induces, an appetite which, in many cases, is formed long before its unhappy subject is aware of his danger. The intelligent pupil, who knows how to reason from cause to effect, needs hardly to be told, in view of this physical truth, of the peril that lies in the first draught of _any_ fermented liquor, even though it be so seemingly harmless as a glass of home-brewed beer or "slightly-beaded" cider. Few of us really understand our own inherent weakness or the hereditary proclivities (p. 186) that may be lurking in our blood, ready to master us when opportunity invites; but we may be tolerably certain that if we resolutely refuse to tamper with cider, beer, or wine, we shall not fall into temptation before rum, gin, or brandy. Since we know that in all fermented beverages there is present the same treacherous element, alcohol, we are truly wise only when we decline to measure arms in any way with an enemy so seductive in its advances, so insidious in its influence, and so terrible in its triumph. [Footnote: Aside from all considerations of physical, mental, and moral injury wrought by the use of alcoholic drinks, every young man may well take into account the damaging effect of such a dangerous habit upon his business prospects. Careful business men are becoming more and more unwilling to take into their employ any person addicted to liquor drinking. Within the past few years the officers of several railroads, having found that a considerable portion of their losses could be directly traced to the drinking habits of some one or more of their employés, have ordered the dismissal of all persons in their service who were known to use intoxicants, with the additional provision that persons thus discharged should never be reinstated. Many Eastern manufactories have adopted similar rules. All mercantile agencies now report the habits of business men in this respect, and some life insurance companies refuse to insure habitual drinkers, regarding such risks as "extra-hazardous."] Let us now consider the physiological effects of alcohol upon the organs immediately connected with the circulation of the blood. GENERAL EFFECT OF ALCOHOL UPON THE CIRCULATION.--During the experiment described on page 118, the influence of alcohol upon the blood may be beautifully tested. Place on the web of the frog's foot a drop of dilute spirit. The blood vessels immediately expand--an effect known as "_Vascular enlargement_." Channels before unseen open, and the blood disks fly along at a brisker rate. Next, touch the membrane with a drop of pure spirit. The blood channels quickly contract; the cells slacken their speed; and, finally, all motion ceases. The flesh shrivels up and dies. The circulation thus stopped is stopped forever. The part affected will in time slough off. Alcohol has killed it. The influence of alcohol upon the human system is very similar. When strong, as in spirits, it acts as an irritant, narcotic poison (p. 142, note). Diluted, as in fermented liquors, it dilates the blood vessels, quickens the circulation, hastens the heart throbs, and accelerates the respiration. THE EFFECT OF ALCOHOL UPON THE HEART.--What means this rapid flow of the blood? It shows that the heart is overworking. The nerves that lead to the minute capillaries and regulate the passage of the vital current through the extreme parts of the body, are paralyzed by this active narcotic. The tiny blood vessels at once expand. This "Vascular enlargement" removes the resistance to the passage of the blood, and a rapid beating of the heart results. [Footnote: Dr. B. W. Richardson's experiments tend to prove that this apparently stimulating action of alcohol upon the heart is due to the paralysis of the nerves that control the capillaries (Note, p. 208), which ordinarily check the flow of the blood (p. 117). The heart, like other muscles under the influence of alcohol, really loses power, and contracts less vigorously (p. 183). Dr. Palmer, of the University of Michigan, also claimed that alcohol, in fact, diminishes the strength of the heart. Prof. Martin, of Johns Hopkins University, from a series of carefully conducted experiments upon dogs, concluded that blood containing one fourth per cent of alcohol almost invariably diminishes within a minute the work done by the heart; blood containing one half per cent always diminishes it, and may reduce the amount pumped out by the left ventricle so that it is not sufficient to supply the coronary arteries. One hundred years ago, alcohol was always spoken of as a stimulant. Modern experiment and investigation challenged that definition, and it is now classified as a narcotic. There are, however, able physicians who maintain that, taken in small doses, and under certain physical conditions, it has the effect of a stimulant. All agree that, when taken in any amount, it tends to create an appetite for more.] Careful experiments show that two ounces of alcohol--an amount contained in the daily potations of a very moderate ale or whiskey drinker--increase the heart beats six thousand in twenty-four hours;--a degree of work represented by that of lifting up a weight of seven tons to a height of one foot. Reducing this sum to ounces and dividing, we find that the heart is driven to do extra work equivalent to lifting seven ounces one foot high one thousand four hundred and ninety-three times each hour! No wonder that the drinker feels a reaction, a physical languor, after the earliest effects of his indulgence have passed away. The heart flags, the brain and the muscles feel exhausted, and rest and sleep are imperatively demanded. During this time of excitement, the machinery of life has really been "running down." "It is hard work," says Richardson, "to fight against alcohol; harder than rowing, walking, wrestling, coal heaving, or the treadmill itself." All this is only the first effect of alcohol upon the heart. Long- continued use of this disturbing agent causes a "Degeneration of the muscular fiber," [Footnote: This "Degeneration" of the various tissues of the body, we shall find, as we proceed, is one of the most marked effects of alcoholized blood. The change consists in an excess of liquid, or, more commonly, in a deposit of fat. This fatty matter is not an increase of the organ, but it takes the place of a part of its fiber, thus weakening the structure, and reducing the power of the tissue to perform its function. Almost everywhere in the body we thus find cells--muscle cells, liver cells, nerve cells, as the case may be--changing one by one, under the influence of this potent disorganizer, into unhealthy fat cells. "Alcohol has been well termed," says the _London Lancet_, "the 'Genius of Degeneration.'" The cause of this degeneration can be easily explained. The increased activity of the circulation compels a correspondingly increased activity of the cell changes: but the essential condition of healthful change--the presence of additional oxygen--is wanting (see p. 143), and the operation is imperfectly performed.--BRODIE.] so that the heart loses its old power to drive the blood, and, after a time, fails to respond even to the spur of the excitant that has urged it to ruin. INFLUENCE UPON THE MEMBRANES.--The flush of the face and the bloodshot eye, that are such noticeable effects of even a small quantity of liquor, indicate the condition of all the internal organs. The delicate linings of the stomach, heart, brain, liver, and lungs are reddened, and every tiny vein is inflamed, like the blushing nose itself. If the use of liquor is habitual, this "Vascular enlargement," that at first slowly passed away after each indulgence, becomes permanent, and now the discolored, blotched skin reveals the state of the entire mucous membrane. We learned on page 55 what a peculiar office the membrane fills in nourishing the organs it enwraps. Anything that disturbs its delicate structure must mar its efficiency. Alcohol has a wonderful affinity for water. To satisfy this greed, it will absorb moisture from the tissues with which it comes in contact, as well as from their lubricating juices. The enlargement of the blood vessels and their permanent congestion must interfere with the filtering action of the membrane. In time, all the membranes become dry, thickened, and hardened; they then shrink upon the sensitive nerve, or stiffen the joint, or enfeeble the muscle. The function of these membranes being deranged, they will not furnish the organs with perfected material, and the clogged pores will no longer filter their natural fluids. Every organ in the body will feel this change. EFFECT UPON THE BLOOD. [Footnote: Alcohol acts upon the oxygen carrier, the coloring matter of the red corpuscles, causing it to settle in one part of the globule, or even to leave the corpuscle, and deposit itself in other elements of the blood. Thus the red corpuscle may become colorless, distorted, shrunken, and even entirely broken up--Dr. G. B. HARRIMAN.]-- From the stomach, alcohol passes directly into the circulation, and so, in a few minutes, is swept through the entire system. If it be present in sufficient amount and strength, its eager desire for water will lead it to absorb moisture from the red corpuscles, causing them to shrink, change their form, harden, and lose some of their ability to carry oxygen; it may even make them adhere in masses, and so hinder their passage through the tiny capillaries.--RICHARDSON. With most persons who indulge freely in alcoholic drinks, the blood is thin, the avidity of alcohol for water causing the burning thirst so familiar to all drinkers, and hence the use of enormous quantities of water, oftener of beer, which unnaturally dilutes the blood. The blood then easily flows from a wound, and renders an accident or surgical operation very dangerous. When the blood tends, as in other cases of an excessive use of spirits, to coagulate in the capillaries, [Footnote: The blood is rendered unduly thin, or is coagulated, according to the amount of alcohol that is carried into the circulatory system. "The spirit may fix the water with the fibrin, and thus destroy the power of coagulation; or it may extract the water so determinately as to produce coagulation. This explains why, in acute cases of poisoning by alcohol, the blood is sometimes found quite fluid, at other times firmly coagulated in the vessels."--B. W. RICHARDSON.] Reckless persons have sometimes drunk a large quantity of liquor for a wager, and, as the result of their folly, have died instantly. The whole of the blood in the heart having coagulated, the circulation was stopped, and death inevitably ensued.] there is a liability of an obstruction to the flow of the vital current through the heart, liver, lungs, etc., that may cause disease, and in the brain may lay the foundation of paralysis, or, in extreme cases, of apoplexy. Wherever the alcoholized blood goes through the body, it bathes the delicate cells with an irritating narcotic poison, instead of a bland, nutritious substance. EFFECT UPON THE LUNGS.--Here we can see how certainly the presence of alcohol interferes with the red corpuscles in their task of carrying oxygen. "Even so small a quantity as one part of alcohol to five hundred of the blood will materially check the absorption of oxygen in the lungs." The cells, unable to take up oxygen, retain their carbonic-acid gas, and so return from the lungs, carrying back, to poison the system, the refuse matter the body has sought to throw off. Thus the lungs no longer furnish properly oxygenized blood. The rapid stroke of the heart, already spoken of, is followed by a corresponding quickening of the respiration. The flush of the cheek is repeated in the reddened mucous membrane lining the lungs. When this "Vascular enlargement" becomes permanent, and the highly albuminous membrane of the air cells is hardened and thickened as well as congested, the Osmose of the gases to and fro through its pores can no longer be prompt and free as before. Even when the effect passes off in a few days after the occasional indulgence, there has been, during that time, a diminished supply of the life-giving oxygen furnished to the system; weakness follows, and, in the case of hard drinkers, there is a marked liability to epidemics. [Footnote: There is no doubt that alcohol alters and impairs tissues so that they are more prone to disease.--DR. G. K. SABINE. A volume of statistics could be filled with quotations like the following: "Mr. Huber, who saw in one town in Russia two thousand one hundred and sixty persons perish with the cholera in twenty days, said: 'It is a most remarkable circumstance that persons given to drink have been swept away like flies. In Tiflis, with twenty thousand inhabitants, every drunkard has fallen,--all are dead, not one remaining.'"] Physicians tell us, also, that there is a peculiar form of consumption known as Alcoholic Phthisis caused by long-continued and excessive use of liquor. It generally attacks those whose splendid physique has enabled them to "drink deep" with apparent impunity. This type of consumption appears late in life and is considered incurable. Severe cases of pneumonia are also generally fatal with inebriates. [Footnote: The Influence of Alcohol is continued in the chapter on Digestion.] PRACTICAL QUESTIONS. 1. Why does a dry, cold atmosphere favorably affect catarrh? 2. Why should we put on extra covering when we lie down to sleep? 3. Is it well to throw off our coats or shawls when we come in heated from a long walk? 4. Why are close-fitting collars or neckties injurious? 5. Which side of the heart is the more liable to inflammation? 6. What gives the toper his red nose? 7. Why does not the arm die when the surgeon ties the principal artery leading to it? 8. When a fowl is angry, why does its comb redden? 9. Why does a fat man endure cold better than a lean one? 10. Why does one become thin, during a long sickness? 11. What would you do if you should come home "wet to the skin"? 12. When the cold air strikes the face, why does it first blanch and then flush? 13. What must be the effect of tight lacing upon the circulation of the blood? 14. Do you know the position of the large arteries in the limbs, so that in case of accident you could stop the flow of blood? 15. When a person is said to be good-hearted, is it a physical truth? 16. Why does a hot footbath relieve the headache? 17. Why does the body of a drowned or strangled person turn blue? 18. What are the little "kernels" in the armpits? 19. When we are excessively warm, would the thermometer show any rise of temperature in the body? 20. What forces besides that of the heart aid in propelling the blood? 21. Why can the pulse be best felt in the wrist? 22. Why are starving people exceedingly sensitive to any jar? 23. Why will friction, an application of horse-radish leaves, or a blister relieve internal congestion? 24. Why are students very liable to cold feet? 25. Is the proverb that "blood is thicker than water" literally true? 26. What is the effect upon the circulation of "holding the breath"? 27. Which side of the heart is the stronger? 28. How is the heart itself nourished? [Footnote: The coronary artery, springing from the aorta just after its origin, carries blood to the muscular walls of the heart; the venous blood comes back through the coronary veins, and empties directly into the right auricle.] 29. Does any venous blood reach the heart without coming through the venæ cavæ? 30. What would you do, in the absence of a surgeon, in the case of a severe wound? (See p. 258.) 31. What would you do in the case of a fever? (See p. 263.) 32. What is the most injurious effect of alcohol upon the blood? 33. Are our bodies the same from day to day? 34. Show how life comes by death. 35. Is not the truth just stated as applicable to moral and intellectual, as to physical life? 36. What vein begins and ends with capillaries? _Ans_. The portal vein commences with capillaries in the digestive organs, and ends with the same kind of vessels in the liver. (See p. 166.) 37. By what process is alcohol always formed? Does it exist in nature? 38. What percentage of alcohol is contained in the different kinds of liquor? 39. Does cider possess the same intoxicating principle as brandy? 40. Describe the general properties of alcohol. 41. Show that alcohol is a narcotic poison. 42. If alcohol is not a stimulant, how does it cause the heart to overwork? 43. Why is the skin of a drunkard always red and blotched? 44. What danger is there in occasionally using alcoholic drinks? 45. What is meant by a fatty degeneration of the heart? 46. What keeps the blood in circulation between the beats of the heart? 47. What is the office of the capillaries? (See note, p. 373.) 48. Does alcohol interfere with this function? 49. How does alcohol interfere with the regular office of the membranes? 50. How does it check the process of oxidation? VI. DIGESTION AND FOOD. "A man puts some ashes in a hill of corn and thereby doubles its yield. Then he says, 'My ashes have I turned into corn.' Weak from his labor, he eats of his corn, and new life comes to him. Again, he says, 'I have changed my corn into a man.' This also he feels to be the truth. "It is the problem of the body, remember, that we are discussing. A man is more than the body; to confound the body and the man is worse than confounding the body and the clothing."--JOHN DARBY. ANALYSIS OF DIGESTION AND FOOD _ | 1. WHY WE NEED FOOD. | | 2. WHAT FOOD DOES. | _ _ | | 1. Nitrogenous. |_a. _The Sugars._ | 3. KINDS OF FOOD....| 2. Carbonaceous....|_b. _The Fats._ | |_3. Minerals | | 4. ONE KIND is INSUFFICIENT. | | 5. OBJECT OF DIGESTION. | _ | | --General Description | | _ | | 1. Mastication and | a. _The Saliva._ | | Insalvation......| b. _Process of | | |_ Swallowing._ | | _ | | | a. _The Stomach._ | | 2. Gastric | b. _The Gastric | | Digestion........| Juice._ | | |_c. _The Chyme_ | 6. PROCESSES OF | _ | DIGESTION........| | --Description | | | a. _The Bile_ | | 3. Intestional | b. _The Pancreatic | | Digestion........| Juice._ | | | c. _The Small | | |_ Intestine._ | | _ | | | a. _By the Veins._ | | 4. Absorption.......| b. _By the | |_ |_ Lacteals._ | | 7. COMPLEXITY OF THE PROCESS OF DIGESTION. | _ | | 1. Length of Time required. | | _ | | | a. _Beef._ | | | b. _Mutton._ | | | c. _Lamb._ | | 2. Value of dif- | d. _Pork._ | | ferent kinds | e. _Fish._ | | of food.........| f. _Milk._ | | | g. _Cheese._ | | |_h. _Eggs, etc._ | | _ | 8. HYGIENE..........| | a. _Coffee._ | | 3. The Stimulants...| b. _Tea._ | | |_C. _Chocolate._ | | 4. Cooking of Food. | | 5. Rapid Eating. | | 6. Quantity and Quality of Food. | | 7. When Food should be taken. | | 8. How Food should be taken. | |_9. Need of a Variety | | 9. THE WONDERS OF DIGESTION. | _ | | 1. Dyspepsia. | 10. DISEASES........|_2. The Mumps. | _ | | 1. Is Alcohol a Food? | | 2. Effect upon the Digestion. | | 3. Effect upon the Liver. | 11. ALCOHOLIC | 4. Effect upon the Kidneys. | DRINKS AND | 5. Does Alcohol impart heat? | NARCOTICS.......| 6. Does Alcohol impart strength? |_ | 7. The Effect upon the Waste of the Body. | 8. Alcohol creates a progressive appetite | for itself. |_9. Law of Heredity. DIGESTION AND FOOD. WHY WE NEED FOOD.--We have learned that our bodies are constantly giving off waste matter--the products of the fire, or oxidation, as the chemist terms the change going on within us (Note, p. 107). A man without food will starve to death in a few days, _i. e._, the oxygen will have consumed all the available flesh of his body. [Footnote: The stories current in the newspapers of persons who live for years without food, are, of course, untrue. The case of the Welsh Fasting Girl, which excited general interest throughout Great Britain, and was extensively copied in our own press, is in point. She had succeeded in deceiving not only the public, but, as some claim, her own parents. At last a strict watch was set by day and night, precluding the possibility of her receiving any food except at the hands of the committee, from whom she steadily refused it. In a few days she died from actual starvation. The youth of the girl, the apparent honesty of the parents, and the tragical sequel, make it one of the most remarkable cases of the kind on record.] To replace the daily outgo, we need about two and a quarter pounds of food, and three pints of drink. [Footnote: Every cell in the tissues is full of matter ready to set free at call its stored-up energy--derived from the meat, bread, and vegetables we have eaten. This energy will pass off quietly when the organs are in comparative rest, but violently when the muscles contract with force. When we send an order through a nerve to any part of the body, a series of tiny explosions run the entire length of the nerve, just as fire runs through a train of gunpowder. The muscle receives the stimulus, and, contracting, liberates its energy. The cells of nerve or muscle, whose contents have thus exploded, as it were, are useless, and must be carried off by the blood, just as ashes must be swept from the hearth, and new fuel be supplied to keep up a fire.] Including the eight hundred pounds of oxygen taken from the air, a man uses in a year about a ton and a half of material. [Footnote: The following is the daily ration of a United States soldier. It is said to be the most generous in the world: Bread or flour . . . . . . . . . 22 ounces. Fresh or salt beef (or pork or bacon, 12 oz.) . 20 " Potatoes (three times per week) . . . . . 16 " Rice . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 " Coffee (or tea, 0.24 oz.) . . . . . . 1.6 " Sugar . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 " Beans . . . . . . . . . . . 0.64 gill. Vinegar . . . . . . . . . . 0.32 " Salt . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.16 "] Yet during this entire time his weight may have been nearly uniform. [Footnote: If, however, he were kept on the scale pan of a sensitive balance, he would find that his weight is constantly changing, increasing with each meal, and then gradually decreasing.] Our bodies are but molds, in which a certain quantity of matter, checked for a time on its ceaseless round, receives a definite form. They may be likened, says Huxley, to an eddy in the river, which retains its shape for a while, yet every instant each particle of water is changing. WHAT FOOD DOES.--We make no force ourselves. We can only use that which nature provides for us. [Footnote: We draw from Nature at once our substance, and the force by which we operate upon her; being, so far, parts of her great system, immersed in it for a short time and to a small extent. Enfolding us, as it were, within her arms, Nature lends us her forces to expend; we receive them, and pass them on, giving them the impress of our will, and bending them to our designs, for a little while; and then--Yes; then it is all one. The great procession pauses not, nor flags a moment, for our fall. The powers which Nature lent to us she resumes to herself, or lends, it may be, to another; the use which we have made of them, or might have made and did not, is written in her book forever.--_Health and its Conditions_.] All our strength comes from the food we eat. Food is force--that is, it contains a latent power which it gives up when it is decomposed. [Footnote: This force is chemical affinity. It binds together the molecules which compose the food we eat. When oxygen tears the molecules to pieces and makes them up into smaller ones, the force is set free. As we shall learn in Physics, it can be turned, into heat, muscular motion, electricity, etc. The principle that the different kinds of force can be changed into one another without loss, is called the Conservation of Energy, and is one of the grandest discoveries of modern science.--_Popular Physics_, pages 35, 39, 278.] Oxygen is the magic key which unlocks for our use this hidden store. [Footnote: We have spoken of the mystery that envelops the process of the conversion of food force into muscular force (note, p. 107). All physiologists agree that muscular power has its source in the chemical decomposition of certain substances whereby their potential energy is released. Probably some of the food undergoes this chemical change before it passes out of the alimentary canal; possibly some is broken up by the oxygen while it is being swept along by the blood; but, probably by far the largest part is converted into the various tissues of the body, and finally becomes a waste product only after there takes place in the tissue itself that chemical disorganization that sets free its stored-up power.-- FOSTER'S _Physiology_.] Putting food into our bodies is like placing a tense spring within a watch; every motion of the body is only a new direction given to this food force, as every movement of the hand on the dial is but the manifestation of the power of the bent spring in the watch. We use the pent-up energies of meat, bread, and vegetables which are placed at our service, and transfer them to a higher theater of action. [Footnote: It is a grand thought that we can thus transform what is common and gross into the refined and spiritual; that out of waving wheat, wasting flesh, running water, and dead minerals, we can realize the glorious possibilities of human life.] KINDS OF FOOD NEEDED.--From what has been said it is clear that, in order to produce heat and force, we need something that will burn, _i. e._, with which oxygen can combine. Experiment has proved that to build up every organ, and keep the body in the best condition, we require three kinds of food. 1. _Nitrogenous Food_.--As nitrogen is a prominent constituent of the tissues of the body, food which contains it is therefore necessary to their growth and repair. [Footnote: Since this kind of food closely resembles albumen, it is sometimes called _Albuminous_. The term Proteid is also used.] The most common forms are whites of eggs--which are nearly pure albumen; casein--the chief constituent of cheese; lean meat; and gluten--the viscid substance which gives tenacity to dough. Bodies having a great deal of nitrogen readily oxidize. Hence the peculiar character of the quick-changing, force-exciting muscle. 2. _Carbonaceous Food_--_i. e._, food containing much carbon-- consists of two kinds, viz., the _sugars_, and the _fats_. (1) The _sugars_ contain hydrogen and oxygen in the proportion to form water, and about the same amount of carbon. They may, therefore, be considered as water, with carbon diffused through it. In digestion, starch and gum are changed to sugar, and so are ranked with this class. (2) The _fats_ are like the sugars in composition, but contain less oxygen, and not in the proportion to form water. They combine with more oxygen in burning, and so give off more heat. The non-nitrogenous elements of the food have, however, other uses than to develop heat. [Footnote: The heat they produce in burning may be turned into motion of the muscles, according to the principle of the Conservation of Energy (p. 153, note); while all the structures of the body in their oxidation develop heat.] Fat is essential to the assimilation of the food, while sugar and starch aid in digestion and may be converted into fat. [Footnote: In Turkey, the ladies of the harem are fed on honey and thick gruel, to make flesh, which is considered to enhance their beauty. The negroes on the sugar plantations of the South always grow fat during the sugar-making season.] Fat and carbonaceous material both enter into the composition of the various tissues, and when, by the breaking up of the contractile substance of the muscle, their latent energy is set free, they become the source of muscular force, as well as heat. While the tendency of the albuminous food is to excite chemical action, and hence the release of energy, the fats and carbonaceous food may be laid up in the body to serve as a storehouse of energy to supply future needs. 3. _Mineral Matters_.--Food should contain water, and certain common minerals, such as iron, [Footnote: While the body can build up a solid from liquid materials on the one hand, on the other it can pour iron through its veins and reduce the hardest textures to blood.--HINTON.] sulphur, magnesia, phosphorus, salt, and potash. About three pints of water are needed daily to dissolve the food and carry it through the circulation, to float off waste matter, to lubricate the tissues, and by evaporation to cool the system (see p. 317). It also enters largely into the composition of the body. A man weighing one hundred and fifty-four pounds contains one hundred pounds of water, about twelve gallons--enough, if rightly arranged, to drown him. [Footnote: It is said that Blumenbach had a perfect mummy of an adult Teneriffian, which with the viscera weighed only seven and a half pounds.] Iron goes to the blood disks; lime combines with phosphoric and carbonic acids to give solidity to the bones and teeth; phosphorus is essential to the activity of the brain. Salt is necessary to the secretion of some of the digestive fluids, and also to aid in working off from the system its waste products. These various minerals, except iron--sometimes given as a medicine, and salt--universally used as a condiment, [Footnote: Animals will travel long distances to obtain salt. Men will barter gold for it; indeed, among the Gallas and on the coast of Sierra Leone, brothers will sell their sisters, husbands their wives, and parents their children for salt. In the district of Accra, on the gold coast of Africa, a handful of salt is the most valuable thing upon earth after gold, and will purchase a slave. Mungo Park tells us that with the Mandingoes and Bambaras the use of salt is such a luxury that to say of a man "he flavors his food with salt," it is to imply that he is rich; and children will suck a piece of rock salt as if it were sugar. No stronger mark of respect or affection can be shown in Muscovy, than the sending of salt from the tables of the rich to their poorer friends. In the book of Leviticus it is expressly commanded as one of the ordinances of Moses, that every oblation of meat upon the altar shall be seasoned with salt, without lacking; and hence it is called the Salt of the Covenant of God. The Greeks and Romans also used salt in their sacrificial cakes; and it is still used in the services of the Latin church--the "_parva mica_" or pinch of salt, being in the ceremony of baptism, put into the child's mouth, while the priest says, "Receive the salt of wisdom, and may it be a propitiation to thee for eternal life." Everywhere and almost always, indeed, it has been regarded as emblematical of wisdom, wit, and immortality. To taste a man's salt, was to be bound by the rites of hospitality; and no oath was more solemn than that which was sworn upon bread and salt. To sprinkle the meat with salt was to drive away the devil, and to this day, nothing is more unlucky than to spill the salt.--LETHEBY, _On Food_.] are contained in small, but sufficient quantities in meat, bread, and vegetables. ONE KIND OF FOOD IS INSUFFICIENT.--A person fed on starch alone, would die. It would be a clear case of nitrogen starvation. On the other hand, as nitrogenous food contains carbon, the elements of water, and various mineral matters, life could be supported on that alone. But such a prodigious quantity of lean meat, for example, would be required to furnish the other elements, that not only would it be very expensive, but it is likely that after a time the labor of digestion would be too onerous, and the system would give up the task in despair. The need of a diet containing both nitrogenous and carbonaceous elements is shown in the fact that even in the tropical regions oil is relished as a dressing upon salad. Instinct everywhere suggests the blending. Butter is used with bread; rice is boiled with milk; cheese is eaten with macaroni, and beans are baked with pork. FIG. 45. [Illustration: _The Stomach and Intestines._ 1, _stomach;_ 2, _duodenum;_ 3, _small intestine;_ 4, _termination of the ileum;_ 5, _cœcum;_ 6, _vermiforn appendix;_ 7, _ascending colon;_ 8, _transverse colon;_ 9, _descending colon;_ 10, _sigmoid flexure of the colon;_ 11, _rectum;_ 12, _spleen--a gland whose action is not understood._--LEIDY'S _Anatomy._] THE OBJECT OF DIGESTION.--If our food were cast directly into the blood, it could not be used. For example, although the chemist can not see wherein the albumen of the egg differs from the albumen of the blood, yet if it be injected into the veins it is unavailable for the purposes required, and is thrown out again. In the course of digestion the food is modified in various ways whereby it is fitted for the use of the body, into which it is finally incorporated. We call this change of food into flesh _assimilation_, a name for a work done solely by the vital organs, and so mysterious in its nature that the wisest physiologist gets only glimpses here and there of its operations. THE GENERAL PLAN OF DIGESTION.--Nature has provided for this purpose an entire laboratory, furnished with a chemist's outfit of knives, mortars, baths, chemicals, filters, etc. The food is (1) chewed, mixed with the saliva in the mouth, and swallowed; (2) it is acted upon by the gastric juice in the stomach; (3) it is passed into the intestines, where it receives the bile, pancreatic juice, and other liquids which completely dissolve it; [Footnote: Digestion, says Berzelius, is a process of rinsing. The digestive apparatus secretes, and again absorbs with the food which it has dissolved, not less than three gallons of liquid per day.-- BARNARD, BIDDER, SCHMIDT, and others.] (4) the nourishing part is absorbed in the stomach and intestines, and thence thrown into the blood vessels, whence it is whirled through the body by the torrent of the circulation. These processes take place within the _alimentary canal_, a narrow tortuous tube which commences at the mouth, and is about thirty feet long. [Footnote: The digestive apparatus is lined with mucous membrane that possesses functions similar to those of the outer skin. It absorbs certain substances and rejects waste matter. On account of this close connection between the inner and the outer skin, it is not surprising to find that in the lowest animals digestion is performed by means of the external skin. The amœba, which is merely a gelatinous mass, when it takes its food, extemporizes a stomach for the occasion. It simply wraps itself around the morsel, and, like an animated apple dumpling with the apple for food and the crust for animal, goes on with the process until the operation is completed, when it unrolls itself again and lets the indigestible residue escape. The common hydra of our brooks can live when turned inside out, like a glove; either side serving for skin or stomach, as necessity requires.] FIG. 46. [Illustration: _The Parotid--one of the salivary glands._] I. MASTICATION AND INSALIVATION.--l. _The Saliva_.--The food while being cut and ground by the teeth is mixed with the saliva. This is a thin, colorless, frothy, slightly alkaline liquid, secreted [Footnote: By secretion is meant merely a separation or picking out from the blood.] by the mucous membrane lining the mouth, and by three pairs of salivary glands (parotid, submaxillary, and sublingual) opening into the mouth through ducts, or tubes. The amount varies, but on the average is about three pounds per day, and in health is always sufficient to keep the mouth moist. [Footnote: The presence and often the thought of food will "make one's mouth water." Fear checks the flow of saliva, and hence the East Indians sometimes attempt to detect theft by making those who are suspected chew rice. The person from whom it comes out driest is adjudged the thief.] It softens and dissolves the food, and thus enables us to get the flavor or taste of what we eat. It contains a peculiar organic principle called _ptyalin_, [Footnote: One part of ptyalin will convert eight thousand parts of starch into sugar.--MIALEE. The saliva has no chemical action on the fats or the albuminous bodies. Its frothiness enables it to carry oxygen into the stomach, and this is thought to be of service. The action of the ptyalin commences with great promptness, and sugar has been detected, it is said, within half a minute after the starch was placed in the mouth. The process, however, is not finished there, but continues after reaching the stomach.--VALENTIN. The saliva thus prepares a small portion of food for absorption at once, and so insures at the very beginning of the operation of digestion a supply of force-producing material for the immediate use of the system.] which, acting upon the starch of the food, changes it into glucose or grape sugar. 2. _The Process of Swallowing._--The food thus finely pulverized, softened, and so lubricated by the viscid saliva as to prevent friction as it passes over the delicate membranes, is conveyed by the tongue and cheek to the back of the mouth. The soft palate lifts to close the nasal opening; the epiglottis shuts down, and along this bridge the food is borne, without danger of falling into the windpipe or escaping into the nose. The muscular bands of the throat now seize it and take it beyond our control. The fibers of the œsophagus contract above, while they are lax below, and convey the food by a worm-like motion into the stomach. [Footnote: We can observe the peculiar motion of the œsophagus by watching a horse's neck when he is drinking.] II. GASTRIC DIGESTION.--1. _The Stomach_ is an irregular expansion of the digestive tube. Its shape has been compared to that of a bagpipe. It holds about three pints, though it is susceptible of some distension. It is composed of an inner, mucous membrane, which secretes the digestive fluids; an outer, smooth, well-lubricated serous one, which prevents friction, and between them a stout, muscular coat. The last consists of two principal layers of longitudinal and circular fibers. When these contract, they produce a peculiar churning motion, called the _peristaltic_ (_peri_, round; _stallein_, to arrange) movement, which thoroughly mixes the contents of the stomach. At the farther end, the muscular fibers contract and form a gateway, the _pylorus_ (a gate), as it is called, which carefully guards the exit, and allows no food to pass from the stomach until properly prepared. [Footnote: With a wise discretion, however, it opens for buttons, coins, etc., swallowed by accident; and when we overload the stomach, it seems to become weary of constantly denying egress, and, finally, giving up in despair, lets everything through.] FIG. 47. [Illustration: _Diagram of the Digestion of the Food. Notice how the food is submitted to the action of alkaline, acid, and then alkaline fluids. (See note, p._ 165.)] 2. _The Gastric Juice_.--The lining of the stomach is soft, velvety, and of a pinkish hue; but, as soon as food is admitted, the blood vessels fill, the surface becomes of a bright red, and soon there exudes from the gastric glands a thin, colorless fluid--the gastric juice. (See p. 319.) This is secreted to the amount of twelve pounds per day. [Footnote: The amount secreted by a healthy adult is variously estimated from five to thirty-seven pounds. As it is reabsorbed by the blood, there is no loss.] Its acidity is probably due to muriatic or lactic acid--the acid of sour milk. It contains a peculiar organic principle called _pepsin_ [Footnote: Pepsin is prepared and sold as an article of commerce. The best is said to be made from the stomachs of young, healthy pigs, which, just before being killed, are excited with savory food that they are not allowed to eat. One grain is sufficient to dissolve eight hundred grains of coagulated white of egg. A temperature of 130° renders pepsin inert.] (_peptein_, to digest), which acts as a ferment to produce changes in the food, without being itself modified. The flow of gastric juice is influenced by various circumstances. Cold water checks it for a time, and ice for a longer period. Anger, fatigue, and anxiety delay and even suspend the secretion. The gastric juice has no effect on the fats or the sugars of the food; its influence being mainly confined to the albuminous bodies, which it so changes that they become soluble in water. [Footnote: The question is often asked why the stomach itself is not digested by the gastric juice, since it belongs to the albuminous substances. Some have assigned as the probable reason that life protects that organ, and assert that living tissues can not be digested; but the fallacy of this has been clearly shown by experiments that have been made with living tissues in the course of scientific research. The latest opinion is that the blood which circulates so freely through the vessels of the lining of the stomach, being alkaline, protects the tissue against the acidity of the gastric juice.] The food, reduced by the action of the gastric juice to a grayish, soupy mass, called _chyme_ (kime), escapes through that jealously guarded door, the pylorus. Fig. 48. [Illustration: _A vertical Section of the Duodenum, highly magnified._ 1, _a fold-like villus;_ 2, epithelium, or cuticle;_ 3, _orifices of intestinal glands;_ 5, _orifice of duodenal glands;_ 4, 7, _more highly magnified sections of the cells of a duodenal gland._] III. INTESTINAL DIGESTION--The structure of the intestines is like that of the stomach. There is the same outer, smooth, serous membrane (peritoneum) to prevent friction, the lining of mucous membrane to secrete the digestive fluids, and the muscular coating to push the food forward. The intestines are divided into the _small_ and the _large_. The first part of the former opens out of the stomach, and is called the _du-o-de'-num_, as its length is equal to the breadth of twelve fingers. Here the chyme is acted upon by the _bile_, and the _pancreatic juice_. FIG. 49. [Illustration: _The Mucous Membrane of the Ilium, highly magnified._ 1, _cellular structure of the epithelium, or outer layer;_ 2, _a vein;_ 3, _fibrous layer;_ 4, _villi covered with epithelium;_ 5, _a villus in section, showing its lining of epithelium, with its blood vessels and lymphatics;_ 6, _a villus partially uncovered;_ 7, _a villus stripped of its epithelium;_ 8, _lymphatics or lacteals;_ 9, _orifices of the glands opening between the villi;_ 10, 11, 12, _glands;_ 13, _capillaries surrounding the orifices of the gland._] 1. _The Bile_ is secreted by the liver. This gland weighs about four pounds, and is the largest in the body. It is located on the right side, below the diaphragm. The bile is of a dark, golden color, and bitter taste. About three pounds are secreted per day. When not needed for digestion, it is stored in the gall cyst. [Footnote: A gall bladder can be obtained from a butcher, and the contents kept in a bottle for examination.] Its action on the food, though not fully understood, is necessary to life. [Footnote: The bile is produced, unlike all the other animal secretions, from venous blood; that is, the already contaminated blood of the portal vein. Its complete suppression produces symptoms of poisoning analogous to those which follow the stoppage of respiration, and the patient dies, usually in a comatose condition, at the end of ten or twelve days.--DALTON. The alkaline bile neutralizes the acid contents of the stomach as they flow into the duodenum, and thus prepares the way for the pancreatic juice. It has also a slight emulsifying power (note, p. 167).] 2. _The Pancreatic Juice_ is a secretion of the pancreas, or "sweetbread"--a gland nearly as large as the hand, lying behind the stomach. It is alkaline, and contains a ferment called _trypsin_. This juice has the power of changing starch to sugar. Its main work, however, is in breaking up the globules of fat into myriads of minute particles, that mix freely with water, and remain suspended in it like butter in new milk. The whole mass now assumes a milky look, whence it is termed _chyle_ (kile) and passes on to the small intestine. [Footnote: It is curious to observe that while the gastric juice is decidedly acid, the fluids with which the food next comes into contact are alkaline. It is thus submitted to the operation alternately of alkaline, acid, and again of alkaline secretions. In the herbivora there is also a second acid juice. The reason of these alternations is not known, but it can hardly be doubted that they serve to make the digestion of the food more perfect. And although the solvent power of the gastric juice is placed in abeyance when its acidity is neutralized by the alkaline fluids, yet it appears to be the case here, as in respect to the saliva, that effects are produced by the mixture of the various secretions which are poured together into the digestive tube, that would not result from either alone.--HINTON.] 3. _The Small Intestine_ is an intricately folded tube, about twenty feet long, and from an inch to an inch and one half in diameter. As the chyle passes through this tortuous channel, it receives along the entire route secretions which seem to combine the action of all the previous ones--starch, fat, and albumen being equally affected. IV. ABSORPTION is performed in two ways, by the _veins_, and the _lacteals_. (1.) The veins in the stomach [Footnote: The veins and the lacteals are separated from the food by a thin, moist membrane, through the pores of which the fluid food rapidly passes, in accordance with a beautiful law ("Popular Physics," p. 53) called the _Osmose_ of liquids. If two liquids of different densities are separated by an animal membrane, they will mix with considerable force. There is a similar law regulating the interchange of gases through a porous partition, in obedience to which the carbonic acid of the blood, and the oxygen of the lungs, are exchanged through the thin membrane of the air cells.] immediately begin to take up the water, salt, grape sugar, and other substances that need no special preparation. The starch and the albuminous bodies are also absorbed as they are properly digested, and this process continues along the whole length of the alimentary canal. In the small intestine, there is a multitude of tiny projections (_villi_) from the folds of the mucous membrane, more than seven thousand to the square inch, giving it a soft, velvety look. These little rootlets, reaching out into the milky fluid, drink into their minute blood vessels the nutritious part of every sort of food. (2.)The lacteals [Footnote: From _lac_, milk, because of the milky look given to their contents by the chyle.] (p. 126), a set of vessels starting in the villi side by side with the veins, absorb the principal part of the fat. They convey the chyle through the lymphatics and the thoracic duct (Fig. 43) to the veins, and so within the sweep of the circulation. The Portal Vein [Footnote: So named because it enters the liver by a sort of gateway.] carries to the liver the food absorbed by the veins of the stomach and the villi of the intestines. On the way, it is greatly modified by the action of the blood itself. In the cells of the liver, it undergoes as mysterious a process as that performed by the lymphatic glands, and is then cast into the circulation. [Footnote: In these cells, the sugar is changed into a kind of starch called _glycogen_. This is insoluble, and so is stored up in the liver, and even in the substance of the muscles, until it is needed by the body, when it is once more converted into soluble sugar and taken up by the circulation. The liver also changes the waste and surplus albuminous matter into bile, and into urea and uric acid--the forms in which nitrogenized waste is excreted by the kidneys.] The food, potent with force, is now buried in that river of life from which the body springs momentarily afresh. THE COMPLEXITY of the process of digestion, as compared with the simplicity of respiration and circulation, is very marked. The mechanical operation of mastication; the lubrication of the food by mucus; the provision for the security of the respiratory organs; the grasping by the muscles of the throat; the churning movement of the stomach; the guardianship of the pylorus; the timely introduction by safe and protected channels of the saliva, the gastric juice, the bile, the pancreatic juice, and the intestinal fluids, each with its special adaptation; the curious peristaltic motion of the intestines; the twofold absorption by the veins and the lacteals; the final transformation in the lymphatics, the portal vein, and the liver,--all these present a complexity of detail, the necessity of which can be explained only when we reflect upon the variety of the substances we use for food, and the importance of its thorough preparation before it is allowed to enter the blood. THE LENGTH OF TIME REQUIRED for digesting a full meal is from two to four hours. It varies with the kind of food, state of the system, perfection of mastication, etc. In the celebrated observations made upon Alexis St. Martin [Footnote: In 1822, Alexis St. Martin, a Canadian in the employ of the American Fur Company, was accidentally shot in the left side. Two years after, the wound was entirely healed, leaving, however, an opening about two and a half inches in circumference into the stomach. Through this the mucous membrane protruded, forming a kind of valve which prevented the discharge of food, but could be readily depressed by the finger, thus exposing the interior. For several years he was under the care of Dr. Beaumont, a skillful physician, who experimented upon him by giving various kinds of food, and watching their digestion through this opening. By means of these observations, and others performed on Katherine Kutt, a woman who had a similar aperture in the stomach, we have very important information as to the digestibility of different kinds of food.] by Dr. Beaumont, his stomach was found empty in two and a half hours after a meal of roast turkey, potatoes, and bread. Pigs' feet and boiled rice were disposed of in an hour. Fresh, sweet apples took one and a half hours; boiled milk, two hours; and unboiled, a quarter of an hour longer. In eggs, which occupied the same time, the case was reversed,--raw ones being digested sooner than cooked. Roast beef and mutton required three and three and a quarter hours respectively; veal, salt beef, and broiled chicken remained for four hours; and roast pork enjoyed the bad preeminence of needing five and a quarter hours. VALUE OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF FOOD.--_Beef_ and _Mutton_ possess the greatest nutritive value of any of the meats. _Lamb_ is less strengthening, but more delicate. Like the young of all animals, it should be thoroughly cooked, and at a high temperature, properly to develop its delicious flavor. _Pork_ has much carbon. It sometimes contains a parasite called trichina, which may be transferred to the human system, producing disease and often death. The only preventive is thorough cooking. _Fish_ is more watery than flesh, and many find it difficult of digestion. Like meat, it loses its mineral constituents and natural juices when salted, and is much less nourishing. Oysters are highly nutritious, but are more easily assimilated when raw than when cooked. _Milk_ is a model food, as it contains albumen, starch, fat, and mineral matter. No other single substance can sustain life for so long a time. _Cheese_ is very nourishing--one pound being equal in value to two of meat, but it is not adapted to a weak stomach. (See p. 322.) _Eggs_ are most easily digested when the white is barely coagulated and the yolk is unchanged. _Bread_ [Footnote: Very fresh bread, warm biscuit, etc., are condensed by mastication into a pasty mass that is not easily penetrated by the gastric juice, and hence they are not healthful. In Germany bread is not allowed to be sold at the baker's till it is twenty-four hours old--a wise provision for those who have not strength to resist temptation. This rule of eating may well be adopted by every one who cares more for his health than for a gratification of his appetite.] should be made of unbolted flour. The bran of wheat furnishes the mineral matter we need in our bones and teeth, gives the bulk so essential to the proper distension of the organs, and by its roughness gently stimulates them to action. _Corn_ is rich in fat. It contains, however, more indigestible matter than any other grain, except oats, and is less nutritious than wheat. [Footnote: Persons unaccustomed to the use of corn find it liable to produce derangement of the digestive organs. This was made fearfully apparent in the prisons of Andersonville during the late civil war. The vegetable food of the Federal prisoners had hitherto been chiefly wheat bread and potatoes--the corn bread so extensively used at the South being quite new to most of them as a constant article of diet. It soon became not only loathsome, but productive of serious diseases. On the other hand, it was the principal article in the rations of the Confederate soldiers, to whom habit made it a nutritious and wholesome form of food, as was shown by their endurance.--FLINT, _Physiology of Man_, Vol. II, page 41.] The _Potato_ is two thirds water,--the rest being mainly starch. _Ripe Fruits_, and those vegetables usually eaten raw, dilute the more concentrated food, and also supply the blood with acids, which are cooling in summer, and useful, perhaps, in assimilation. THE STIMULANTS.--_Coffee_ is about half nitrogen, and the rest fatty, saccharine, and mineral substances. It is, therefore, of much nutritive value, especially when taken with milk and sugar. Its peculiar stimulating property is due to a principle called _caffeine_. Its aroma is developed by browning, but destroyed by burning. No other substance so soon relieves the sense of fatigue. [Footnote: In the late civil war, the first desire of the soldiers upon halting after a wearisome march, was to make a cup of coffee. This was taken without milk, and often without sugar, yet was always welcome.] Taken in moderation, it clears the intellect, tranquilizes the nerves, and usually leaves no unpleasant reaction. It serves also as a kind of negative food, since it retards the process of waste. In some cases, however, it produces a rush of blood to the head, and should be at once discarded. At the close of a full meal it hinders digestion, and at night produces wakefulness. In youth, when the vital powers are strong, and the functions of nature prompt in rallying from fatigue, it is not needed, and may be injurious in stimulating a sensitive organization. _Tea_ possesses an active principle called _theine_. When used moderately, its effects are similar to those of coffee, except that it exerts an astringent action. It contains tannin, which, if the tea is strong, coagulates the albumen of the food--_tans_ it--and thus delays digestion. In excess, tea causes nervous tremor, disturbed sleep, palpitation of the heart, and indigestion. [Footnote: Tea and coffee should be made with, boiling water, but should not be boiled afterward. During the "steeping" process, so customary in this country, the volatile aroma is lost and a bitter principle extracted. In both England and China it is usual to infuse tea directly in the urn from which it is to be drawn. The tannin in tea is shown when a drop falls on a knife blade. The black spot is a tannate of iron--a compound of the acid in the tea and the metal.] (See p. 322.) _Chocolate_ contains much fat, and also nitrogenous matter resembling albumen. Its active principle, _theobromine_, [Footnote: It is said that Linnæus, the great botanist, was so fond of chocolate that he named the cocoa tree "Theobroma," the food of the gods.] has some of the properties of caffeine and theine. THE COOKING OF FOOD breaks the little cells, and softens the fibers of which it is composed. In broiling or roasting meat, it should be exposed to a strong heat at once, in order to coagulate the albumen upon the outside, and thus prevent the escape of the nutritious juices. The cooking may then be finished at a lower temperature. The same principle applies to boiling meat. In making soups, on the contrary, the heat should be applied slowly, and should reach the boiling point for only a few moments at the close. This prevents the coagulation of the albumen. Frying is an unhealthful mode of cooking food, as thereby the fat becomes partially disorganized. RAPID EATING produces many evil results. 1. There is not enough saliva mixed with the food; 2. The coarse pieces resist the action of the digestive fluids; 3. The food is washed down with drinks that dilute the gastric juice, and hinder its work; 4. We do not appreciate the quantity we eat until the stomach is overloaded; 5. Failing to get the taste of our food, we think it insipid, and hence use condiments that overstimulate the digestive organs. In these various ways the appetite becomes depraved, the stomach vexed, the system overworked, and the foundation of dyspepsia is laid. [Footnote: When one is compelled to eat in a hurry, as at a railway station, he would do well to confine himself principally to meat; and to dilute this concentrated food with fruit, crackers, etc., taken afterward more leisurely.] (See p. 324.) THE QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF FOOD required vary with the age and habits of each individual. The diet of a child [Footnote: In youth, repair exceeds waste; hence the body grows rapidly, and the form is plump. In middle life, repair and waste equal each other, and growth ceases. In old age, waste exceeds repair; hence the powers are enfeebled and the skin lies in wrinkles on the shrunken form.] should be largely vegetable, and more abundant than that of an aged person. A sedentary occupation necessitates less food than an outdoor life. One accustomed to manual labor, on entering school, should practice self-denial until his system becomes fitted to the new order of things. He should not, however, fall into the opposite error. We read of great men who have lived on bread and water, and the conscientious student sometimes thinks that, to be great, he, too, must starve himself. [Footnote: As Dr. Holland well remarks, the dispensation of sawdust has passed away. If we desire a horse to win the race, we must give him plenty of oats.] On the contrary, many of the greatest workers are the greatest eaters. A powerful engine needs a corresponding furnace. Only, we should be careful not to use more fuel than is needed to run the machine. (See p. 325.) The season should modify our diet. In winter, we need highly carbonaceous food, plenty of meat, fat, etc.; but in summer we should temper the heat in our corporeal stoves with fruits and vegetables. The climate also has its necessities. The inhabitants of the frigid north have an almost insatiable longing for fat. [Footnote: Dr. Hayes, the arctic explorer, says, that the daily ration of the Esquimaux was from twelve to fifteen pounds of meat, one third being fat. On one occasion, he saw a man eat ten pounds of walrus flesh and blubber at a single meal. The low temperature had a remarkable effect on the members of his own party, and some of them were in the habit of drinking the contents of the oil kettle with evident relish. Other travelers narrate the most incredible stories of the voracity of the inhabitants of arctic regions. Saritcheff, a Russian admiral, tells of a man who in his presence ate, at a meal, a mess of twenty-eight pounds of boiled rice and butter, although he had already partaken of his breakfast. Captain Cochrane further adds, in narrating this statement, that he has himself seen three of the savages consume a reindeer at a sitting.] Thus, in 1812, when the Allies entered Paris, the Cossacks drank all the oil from the lamps, and left the streets in darkness. In tropical regions, a low, unstimulating diet of fruits forms the chief dependence. [Footnote: A natural appetite for a particular kind of food is an expression not only of desire, but of fitness. Thus the craving of childhood for sugar indicates a need of the system. It is questionable how far it is proper to force or persuade one to eat that which he disrelishes, or his stomach loathes. Life within is linked with life without. Each organ requires its peculiar nutriment, and there is often a peculiar influence demanded of which we can have no notice except by natural instinct. Yet, as we are creatures of habit and impulse, we need common sense and good judgment to correct the too often wayward promptings of an artificial craving.] WHEN FOOD SHOULD BE TAKEN.--On taking food, the blood sets at once to the alimentary canal, and the energies are fixed upon the proper performance of this work. We should not, therefore, undertake hard study, labor, or exercise directly after a hearty meal. We should give the stomach at least half an hour. He who toils with brain or muscle, and thus centers the blood in any particular organ, before eating should allow time for the circulation to become equalized. There should be an interval of four to five hours between our regular meals, and there should be no lunching between times. With young children, where the vital processes are more rapid, less time may intervene. As a general rule, nothing should be eaten within two or three hours of retiring. (See p 336.) HOW FOOD SHOULD BE TAKEN.--A good laugh is the best of sauces. The mealtime should be the happiest hour of the day. Care and grief are the bitter foes of digestion. A cheerful face and a light heart are friends to long life, and nowhere do they serve us better than at the table. God designed that we should enjoy eating, and that, having stopped before satiety was reached, we should have the satisfaction always attendant on a good work well done. NEED OF VARIETY.--Careful investigations have shown that any one kind of food, however nutritious in itself, fails after a time to preserve the highest working power of the body. Our appetite palls when we confine our diet to a regular routine. Nature demands variety, and she has furnished the means of gratifying it. [Footnote: She opens her hand, and pours forth to man the treasures of every land and every sea, because she would give to him a wide and vigorous life, participant of all variety. For him the cornfields wave their golden grain--wheat, rye, oats, maize, or rice, each different, but alike sufficing. Freely for him the palm, the date, the banana, the breadfruit tree, the pine, spread out a harvest on the air; and pleasant apple, plum, or peach solicit his ready hand. Beneath his foot lie stored the starch of the potato, the gluten of the turnip, the sugar of the beet; while all the intermediate space is rich with juicy herbs. Nature bids him eat and be merry; adding to his feast the solid flesh of bird, and beast, and fish, prepared as victims for the sacrifice: firm muscle to make strong the arm of toil, in the industrious temperate zone; and massive ribs of fat to kindle inward fires for the sad dwellers under arctic skies.--_Health and its Conditions_.--HINTON.] THE WONDERS OF DIGESTION.--We can understand much of the process of digestion. We can look into the stomach and trace its various steps. Indeed, the chemist can reproduce in his laboratory many of the operations; "a step further," as Fontenelle has said, "and he would surprise nature in the very act." Just here, when he seems so successful, he is compelled to pause. At the threshold of life the wisest physiologist reverently admires, wonders, and worships. How strange is this transformation of food to flesh! We make a meal of meat, vegetables, and drink. Ground by the teeth, mixed by the stomach, dissolved by the digestive fluids, it is swept through the body. Each organ, as it passes, snatches its particular food. Within the cells of the tissues [Footnote: As the body is composed of individual organs, and each organ of separate tissues, so each tissue is made up of minute cells. Each cell is a little world by itself, too small to be seen by the naked eye, but open to the microscope. It has its own form and constitution as much as a special organ in the body. It absorbs from the blood such food as suits its purposes. Moreover, the number of cells in an organ is as constant as the number of organs. As the organs expand with the growth of the body, so the cells of each tissue enlarge, but shrink again with age and the decline of life. Life begins and ends in a cell.--See _Appletons' Cyclopedia_, Art. "Absorption."] it is transformed into the soft, sensitive brain, or the hard, callous bone; into briny tears, or bland saliva, or acrid perspiration; bile for digestion, oil for the hair, nails for the fingers, and flesh for the cheek. Within us is an Almighty Architect, who superintends a thousand builders, which make in a way past all human comprehension, here a fiber of a muscle, there a filament of a nerve; here constructing a bone, there uniting a tendon,--fashioning each with scrupulous care and unerring nicety. [Footnote: See COOKE'S _Religion and Chemistry_, page 236.] So, without sound of builder or stroke of hammer, goes up, day by day, the body--the glorious temple of the soul. DISEASES ETC.--1. _Dyspepsia_, or indigestion of food, is generally caused by an overtaxing of the digestive organs. Too much food is used, and the entire system is burdened by the excess. Meals are taken at irregular hours, when the fluids are not ready. A hearty supper is eaten when the body, wearied with the day's labor, demands rest. The appetite craves no food when the digestion is enfeebled, but stimulants and condiments excite it, and the unwilling organs are oppressed by that which they can not properly manage. Strong tea, alcoholic drinks, and tobacco derange the alimentary function. Too great variety of dishes, rich food, tempting flavors,--all lead to an overloading of the stomach. This patient, long-suffering member at last wears out. Pain, discomfort, diseases of the digestive organs, and insufficient nutrition are the penalties of violated laws. (See p. 328.) 2. _The Mumps_ are an inflammation of the parotid and submaxillary glands (see p. 159). The disease is generally epidemic, and is believed to be contagious; the patient should therefore be carefully secluded for the sake of others as well as himself. The swelling may be allowed to take its course. Relief from pain is often experienced by applying flannels wrung out of hot water. Great care should be used not to check the inflammation, and, on first going out after recovery, not to take cold. ALCOHOLIC DRINKS AND NARCOTICS. 1. ALCOHOL (Continued from p. 147). RELATION OF ALCOHOL TO THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS.--_Is Alcohol a Food?_ To answer this question, let us make a comparison. If you receive into your stomach a piece of bread or beef, Nature welcomes its presence. The juices of the system at once take hold of it, dissolve it, and transform it for the uses of the body. A million tiny fingers (lacteals and veins) reach out to grasp it, work it over, and carry it into the circulation. The blood bears it onward wherever it is needed to mend or to build "The house you live in." Soon, it is no longer bread or beef; it is flesh on your arm; its chemical energy is imparted to you, and it becomes your strength. If, on the other hand, you take into your stomach a little alcohol, it receives no such welcome. Nature treats it as a poison, and seeks to rid herself of the intruder as soon as possible. [Footnote: Food is digested, alcohol is not. Food warms the blood, directly or indirectly; alcohol lowers the temperature. Food nourishes the body, in the sense of assimilating itself to the tissues; alcohol does not. Food makes blood; alcohol never does anything more innocent than mixing with it. Food feeds the blood cells; alcohol destroys them. Food excites, in health, to normal action only; alcohol tends to inflammation and disease. Food gives force to the body; alcohol excites reaction and wastes force, in the first place, and in the second, as a true narcotic, represses vital action and corresponding nutrition.--If alcohol does not act like food, neither does it behave like water. Water is the subtle but innocent vehicle of circulation, which dissolves the solid food, holds in play the chemical and vital reactions of the tissues, conveys the nutritive solutions from cell to cell, from tube to tube, and carries off and expels the effete matter. Water neither irritates tissue, wastes force, nor suppresses vital action: whereas alcohol does all three. Alcohol hardens solid tissue, thickens the blood, narcotizes the nerves, and in every conceivable direction antagonizes the operation and function of water--LEES.] The juices of the system will flow from every pore to dilute and weaken it, and to prevent its shriveling up the delicate membranes with which it comes in contact. The veins will take it up and bear it rapidly through the system. Every organ of elimination, all the scavengers of the body-- the lungs, the kidneys, the perspiration glands, at once set to work to throw off the enemy. So surely is this the case, that the breath of a person who has drunk only a single glass of the lightest beer will betray the fact. The alcohol thus eliminated is entirely unchanged. Nature apparently makes no effort to appropriate it. [Footnote: It was formerly a question considerably discussed, whether alcohol exists in the brain, or in the fluid found in the ventricles, in intoxicated persons. This was settled by Percy, who found alcohol in the brain and liver of dogs poisoned with alcohol, and of men who had died after excessive drinking. In these experiments, the presence of alcohol was determined by distillation, and the distilled substance burned with a blue flame, and dissolved camphor.-- FLINT'S _Physiology of Man_.] It courses everywhere through the circulation, and into the great organs, with all its properties unmodified. Alcohol, then, is not, like bread or beef, taken hold of, broken up by the mysterious process of digestion, and used by the body. [Footnote: Because of the difficulties of such an experiment, we have not yet been able to account satisfactorily by the excretions for all the alcohol taken into the stomach. This remains as yet one of the unsolved problems of physiological chemistry. To collect the whole of the insensible perspiration, for example, is well-nigh impossible. It was supposed at one time that a part of the alcohol is oxidized--_i. e._, burned, in the system. But such a process would impart heat, and it is now proved that alcohol cools, instead of warms, the blood. Moreover, the closest analysis fails to detect in the circulation any trace of the products of alcoholic combustion, such as aldehyde and acetic acid. "The fact," says Flint, "that alcohol is always eliminated, even when drunk in minute quantity, and that its elimination continues for a considerable time, gradually diminishing, renders it probable that all that is taken into the body is removed."] "It can not therefore be regarded as an aliment," or food.-- FLINT. "Beer, wine, and spirits," says Liebig, "contain no element capable of entering into the composition of the blood or the muscular fiber." [Footnote: The small amount of nutritive substance, chiefly sugar derived from the grain or fruit used in the manufacture of beer or wine, can not, of course, be compared with that contained in bread or beef at the same cost. Liebig says, in his Letters on Chemistry, "We can prove, with mathematical certainty, that as much flour as can lie on the point of a table knife is more nutritious than eight quarts of the best Bavarian beer."] "That alcohol is incapable of forming any part of the body," remarks Cameron, "is admitted by all physiologists. It can not be converted into brain, nerve, muscle, or blood." EFFECT UPON THE DIGESTION. [Footnote: The medical value of alcohol in its relations to digestion is not discussed in this book. The experiments of Dr. Henry Munroe, of Hull, published in the London _Medical Journal_, are here summarized as showing that the tendency to retard digestion is common to all forms of alcoholic drinks. _______________________________________________________________________ Finely Minced | | | | Beef | 2d Hour | 4th Hour | 6th Hour | _______________________________________________________________________ I. | | Digesting | | Gastric Juice | Beef | and | Beef much | and _water_. | opaque. | separating. | loosened. | _______________________________________________________________________ | | Slightly | Slight | II. | No alteration | opaque, but | coating on | Gastric Juice | perceptible. | beef | beef. | with _alcohol_. | | unchanged. | | _______________________________________________________________________ III. | | Cloudy, | beef | Gastric Juice | No change. | with fur | partly | and _pale ale_. | | on beef. | loosened. | _______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ Finely Minced | | | Beef | 8th Hour | 10th Hour | ______________________________________________________ I. | | | Gastric Juice | Beef | Broken up | and _water_. | opaque. | into shreds. | ______________________________________________________ | | Solid on | II. | No visible | cooling | Gastric Juice | change. | _Pepsin_ | with _alcohol_. | | precipitated. | ______________________________________________________ III. | | No digestion | Gastric Juice | No further | _Pepsin_ | and _pale ale_. | change. | precipitated. | ______________________________________________________] --Experiments tend to prove that alcohol coagulates and precipitates the pepsin from the gastric juice, and so puts a stop to its great work in the process of digestion. The greed of alcohol for water causes it to imbibe moisture from the tissues and juices, and to inflame the delicate mucous membrane. It shows the power of Nature to adapt herself to circumstances, that the soft, velvety lining of the throat and stomach should come at length to endure the presence of a fiery liquid which, undiluted, would soon shrivel and destroy it. In self-defense, the juices pour in to weaken the alcohol, and it is soon hurried into the circulation. Before this can be done, "it must absorb about three times its bulk of water"; hence, very strong liquor may be retained in the stomach long enough to interfere seriously with the digestion, and to injure the lining coat. Habitual use of alcohol permanently dilates the blood vessels; thickens and hardens the membranes; in some cases, ulcerates the surface; and, finally, "so weakens the assimilation that the proper supply of food can not be appropriated." --FLINT. [Footnote: The case of St. Martin (p. 168) gave an excellent opportunity to watch the action of alcohol upon the stomach. Dr. Beaumont summarized his experiments thus: "The free, ordinary use of any intoxicating liquor, when continued for some days, invariably produced inflammation, ulcerous patches, and, finally, a discharge of morbid matter tinged with blood." Yet St. Martin never complained of pain in his stomach, the narcotic influence of the alcohol preventing the signal of danger that Nature ordinarily gives.] EFFECT UPON THE LIVER.--Alcohol is carried by the portal vein directly to the liver. This organ, after the brain, holds the largest share. The influence of the poison is here easily traced. "The color of the bile is soon changed from yellow to green, and even to black;" the connective tissue between the lobules becomes inflamed; and, in the case of a confirmed drunkard, hardened and shrunk, the surface often assuming a nodulated appearance known as the "hobnailed liver." Morbid matter is sometimes deposited, causing what is called "Fatty degeneration," so that the liver is increased to twice or thrice its natural size. EFFECT UPON THE KIDNEYS.--The kidneys, like the liver, are liable in time to undergo, through the influence of alcohol, a "Fatty degeneration," in which the cells become filled with particles of fat; [Footnote: Disabled by the fatty deposits, the kidneys are unable to separate the waste matter coming to them for elimination from the system. The poisonous material is poured back into the circulation, and often delirium ensues.--HUBBARD. Richardson states that his experience "is to the effect that seven out of every eight instances of kidney disease are attributable to alcohol."] the vessels lose their contractility; and, worst of all, the membranes may be so modified as to allow the albuminous part of the blood to filter through them, and so to rob the body of one of its most valuable constituents. [Footnote: This deterioration of structure frequently gives rise to what is known as "Bright's Disease."--RICHARDSON.] DOES ALCOHOL IMPART HEAT?--During the first flush after drinking wine, for example, a sense of warmth is felt. This is due to the tides of warm blood that are being sent to the surface of the body, owing to the vascular enlargement and to the rapid pumping of the heart. There is, however, no fresh heat developed. On the contrary, the bringing the blood to the surface causes it to cool faster, reaction sets in, a chilliness is experienced as one becomes sober, and a delicate thermometer placed under the tongue of the inebriate may show a fall of even two degrees below the standard temperature of the body. Several hours are required to restore the usual heat. As early as 1850, Dr. N. S. Davis, of Chicago, ex-President of the American Medical Association, instituted an extensive series of experiments to determine the effect of the different articles of food and drinks on the temperature of the system. He conclusively proved that, during the digestion of all kinds of food, the temperature of the body is increased, but when alcohol is taken, either in the form of fermented or distilled beverages, the temperature begins to fall within a half hour, and continues to decrease for two or three hours, and that the reduction of temperature, in extent as well as in duration, is in exact proportion to the amount of alcohol taken. It naturally follows that, contrary to the accepted opinion, liquor does not fortify against cold. The experience of travelers at the North coincides with that of Dr. Hayes, the Arctic explorer, who says: "While fat is absolutely essential to the inhabitants and travelers in arctic countries, alcohol is, in almost any shape, not only completely useless, but positively injurious. I have known strong, able-bodied men to become utterly incapable of resisting cold in consequence of the long-continued use of alcoholic drink." DOES ALCOHOL IMPART STRENGTH?--Experience shows that alcohol weakens the power of undergoing severe bodily exertion. [Footnote: Dr. McRae, in speaking of Arctic exploration, at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Montreal in 1856, said: "The moment that a man had swallowed a drink of spirits, it was certain that his day's work was nearly at an end. It was absolutely necessary that the rule of total abstinence be rigidly enforced, if we would accomplish our day's task. The use of liquor as a beverage when we had work on hand, in that terrific cold, was out of the question."] Men who are in training for running, rowing, and other contests where great strength is required, deny themselves all liquors, even when they are ordinarily accustomed to their use. Dr. Richardson made some interesting experiments to show the influence of alcohol upon muscular contraction. He carefully weighted the hind leg of a frog, and, by means of electricity, stimulating the muscle to its utmost power of contraction, he found out how much the frog could lift. Then administering alcohol, he discovered that the response of the muscle to the electrical current became feebler and feebler, as the narcotic began to take effect, until, at last, the animal could raise less than half the amount it lifted by the natural contraction when uninfluenced by alcohol. EFFECT UPON THE WASTE OF THE BODY.--The tendency of alcohol is to cause a formation of an unstable substance resembling fat, [Footnote: The molecular deposits equalizing the waste of the system do not go on regularly under the influence of alcohol; the tissues are not kept up to their standard; and, in time, their composition is changed by a deposit of an amorphous matter resembling fat. This is an unstable substance, and the functions of animal life all retrograde.--HUBBARD, _The Opium Habit and Alcoholism_.] and so the use of liquor for even a short time will increase the weight. But a more marked influence is to check the ordinary waste of the system, so that "the amount of carbonic acid exhaled from the lungs may be reduced as much as thirty to fifty per cent."--HINTON. The life process is one of incessant change. Its rapidity is essential to vigor and strength. When the functions are in full play, each organ is being constantly torn down, and as constantly rebuilt with the materials furnished from our food. Anything that checks this oxidation of the tissues, or hinders the deposition of new matter, disturbs the vital functions. Both these results are the inevitable effects of alcohol; for, since the blood contains less oxygen and more carbonic acid, and the power of assimilating the food is decreased, it follows that every process of waste and repair must be correspondingly weakened. The person using liquor consequently needs less bread and beef, and so alcohol seems to him a food--a radical error, as we have shown. ALCOHOL CREATES A PROGRESSIVE APPETITE FOR ITSELF.--When liquor is taken, even in the most moderate quantity, it soon becomes necessary, and then arises a craving demand for an increased amount to produce the original effect. No food creates this constantly augmenting want. A cup of milk drank at dinner does not lead one to go on, day by day, drinking more and more milk, until to get milk becomes the one great longing of the whole being. Yet this is the almost universal effect of alcohol. Hunger is satisfied by any nutritious food: the dram-drinker's thirst demands alcohol. The common experience of mankind teaches us the imminent peril that attends the formation of this progressive poison habit. A single glass taken as a tonic may lead to the drunkard's grave. Worse than this, the alcoholic craving may be transmitted from father to son, and young persons often find themselves cursed with a terrible disease known as alcoholism--a keen, morbid appetite for liquor that demands gratification at any cost--stamped upon their very being through the reckless indulgence of this habit on the part of some one of their ancestors. [Footnote: The American Medical Association, at their meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota (1883), restated in a series of resolutions their conviction, that "alcohol should be classed with other powerful drugs; that when prescribed medically, it should be done with conscientious caution and a sense of great responsibility; that used as a beverage it is productive of a large amount of physical and mental disease; that it _entails diseased and enfeebled constitutions upon offspring_, and that it is the cause of a large percentage of the crime and pauperism of our large cities and country."] THE LAW OF HEREDITY is, in this connection, well worth consideration. "The world is beginning to perceive," says Francis Galton, "that the life of each individual is, in some real sense, a continuation of the lives of his ancestors." "Each of us is the footing up of a double column of figures that goes back to the first pair." "We are omnibuses," remarks Holmes, "in which all our ancestors ride." We inherit from our parents our features, our physical vigor, our mental faculties, and even much of our moral character. Often, when one generation is skipped, the qualities will reappear in the following one. The virtues, as well as the vices, of our forefathers, have added to, or subtracted from, the strength of our brain and muscle. The evil tendencies of our natures, which it is the struggle of our lives to resist, constitute a part of our heirlooms from the past. Our descendants, in turn, will have reason to bless us only if we hand down to them a pure healthy physical, mental, and moral being. "There is a marked tendency in nature to transmit all diseased conditions. Thus, the children of consumptive parents are apt to be consumptives. But of all agents, alcohol is the most potent in establishing a heredity that exhibits itself in the destruction of mind and body. [Footnote: Nearly all the diseases springing from indulgence in distilled and fermented liquors are liable to become hereditary, and to descend to at least three or four generations, unless starved out by uncompromising abstinence. But the distressing aspect of the heredity of alcohol is the transmitted drink- crave. This is no dream of an enthusiast, but the result of a natural law. Men and women upon whom this dread inheritance has been forced are everywhere around us, bravely struggling to lead a sober life.--DR. NORMAN KERR.] Its malign influence was observed by the ancients long before the production of whiskey or brandy, or other distilled liquors, and when fermented liquors or wines only were known. Aristotle says, 'Drunken women have children like unto themselves,' and Plutarch remarks, 'One drunkard is the father of another.' The drunkard by inheritance is a more helpless slave than his progenitor, and his children are more helpless still, unless on the mother's side there is an untainted blood. For there is not only a propensity transmitted, but an actual disease of the nervous system."--DR. WILLARD PARKER. [Footnote: The subject of alcohol is continued in the chapter on the Nervous System.] PRACTICAL QUESTIONS. 1. How do clothing and shelter economize food? 2. Is it well to take a long walk before breakfast? 3. Why is warm food easier to digest than cold? 4. Why is salt beef less nutritious than fresh? [Footnote: The French Academicians found that flesh soaked in water so as to deprive it of its mineral matter and juices, lost its nutritive value, and that animals fed on it soon died. Indeed, for all purposes of nutrition, Liebig said it was no better than stones, and the utmost torments of hunger were hardly sufficient to induce them to continue the diet. There was plenty of nutritive food, but there was no medium for its solution and absorption, and hence it was useless.] 5. What should be the food of a man recovering from a fever? 6. Is a cup of black coffee a healthful close to a hearty dinner? 7. Should iced water be used at a meal? 8. Why is strong tea or coffee injurious? 9. Should food or drink be taken hot? 10. Are fruitcakes, rich pastry, and puddings wholesome? 11. Why are warm biscuit and bread hard of digestion? 12. Should any stimulants be used in youth? 13. Why should bread be made spongy? 14. Which should remain longer in the mouth, bread or meat? 15. Why should cold water be used in making soup, and hot water in boiling meat? 16. Name the injurious effects of overeating. 17. Why do not buckwheat cakes, with syrup and butter, taste as well in July as in January? 18. Why is a late supper injurious? 19. What makes a man "bilious"? 20. What is the best remedy? _Ans_. Diet to give the organs rest, and active exercise to arouse the secretions and the circulation. 21. What is the practical use of hunger? 22. How can jugglers drink when standing on their heads? 23. Why do we relish butter on bread? 24. What would you do if you had taken arsenic by mistake? (See Appendix.) 25. Why should ham and sausage be thoroughly cooked? 26. Why do we wish butter on fish, eggs with tapioca, oil on salad, and milk with rice? 27. Explain the relation of food to exercise. 28. How do you explain the difference in the manner of eating between carnivorous and herbivorous animals? 29. Why is a child's face plump and an old man's wrinkled? 30. Show how life depends on repair and waste. 31. What is the difference between the decay of the teeth and the constant decay of the body? 32. Should biscuit and cake containing yellow spots of soda be eaten? 33. Tell how the body is composed of organs, how organs are made up of tissues, and how tissues consist of cells. 34. Why do we not need to drink three pints of water per day? 35. Why, during a pestilence, are those who use liquors as a beverage the first, and often the only victims? 36. What two secretions seem to have the same general use? 37. How may the digestive organs be strengthened? 38. Is the old rule, "after dinner sit awhile," a good one? 39. What would you do if you had taken laudanum by mistake? Paris Green? Sugar of lead? Oxalic acid? Phosphorus from matches? Ammonia? Corrosive sublimate? (See p. 265.) 40. What is the simplest way to produce vomiting, so essential in case of accidental poisoning? 41. In what way does alcohol interfere with the digestion? 42. Is alcohol assimilated? 43. What is the effect of alcohol on the albuminous substances? 44. Is there any nourishment in beer? 45. Show how the excessive use of alcohol may first increase, and, afterward, decrease, the size of the liver. 46. Will liquor help one to endure cold and exposure? 47. What is a fatty degeneration of the kidneys? 48. Contrast the action of alcohol and water in the body. 49. Is alcohol, in any proper sense of the term, a food? 50. Does liquor strengthen the muscles of a working man? 51. Is liquor a wholesome "tonic"? 52. Is it a good plan to take a glass of liquor before dinner? VII. THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. "Mark then the cloven sphere that holds All thoughts in its mysterious folds, That feels sensation's faintest thrill, And flashes forth the sovereign will; Think on the stormy world that dwells Lock'd in its dim and clustering cells; The lightning gleams of power it sheds Along its hollow, glassy threads!" "As a king sits high above his subjects upon his throne, and from it speaks behests that all obey, so from the throne of the brain cells is all the kingdom of a man directed, controlled, and influenced. For this occupant, the eyes watch, the ears hear, the tongue tastes, the nostrils smell, the skin feels. For it, language is exhausted of its treasures, and life of its experience; locomotion is accomplished, and quiet insured. When it wills, body and spirit are goaded like overdriven horses. When it allows, rest and sleep may come for recuperation. In short, the slightest penetration may not fail to perceive that all other parts obey this part, and are but ministers to its necessities."--Odd Hours of a Physician. ANALYSIS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. _ | 1. THE STRUCTURE | _ | _ | 1. _Description._ | | 1. The Brain........| 2. _The Cerebrum._ | | |_3. _The Cerebellum._ | | _ | | 2. The Spinal Cord..| 1. _Its Composition._ | | |_2. _Medulla Oblongata._ | | _ | 2. ORGANS OF | | 1. _Description._ | THE NERV- | | 2. _Motory and Sensory._ | OUS SYSTEM..| | 3. _Transfer of Pain._ | | | 4. _The Spinal Nerves-- | | | 31 Pairs._ | |_3. The Nerves.......| 5. _The Cranial Nerves-- | | 12 Pairs._ | | 6. _Sympathetic System._ | | 7. _Crossing of Cords._ | | 8. _Reflex Action._ | | 9. _Uses of Reflex | |_ Action_ | _ | | 1. Brain Exercise. | | 2. Connection between Brain Growth and Body Growth. | 3. HYGIENE.....| 3. Sleep. | | 4. Effect of Sleeping Draughts. | |_5. Sunlight. | | 4. WONDERS OF THE BRAIN. | _ | | 1. Alcohol (Con'd.) | | _ | 1. _Stage of Excitement._ | || | 2. _Stage of Muscular | || | Weakness._ | || 1. Effect of Alco- | 3. _Stage of Mental | || hol upon the | Weakness._ | || Nervous System | 4. _Stage of Unconscious- | || |_ ness._ | || | || 2. Effect upon the Brain | ||_3. Effect upon the Mental and Moral Powers. | | | | 2. Tobacco. | | _ | || 1. Constituents of Tobacco. | 5. ALCOHOLIC || 2. Physiological Effects. | DRINKS AND|| 3. Possible Disturbances produced by Smoking. |_ NARCOTICS.|| 4. Influence upon the Nervous System. || 5. Is Tobacco a Food? ||_6. Influence of Tobacco on Youth. | _ | | 1. _Description._ | 3. Opium............| 2. _Physiological | |_ Effects._ | 4. Chloral Hydrate. | 5. Chloroform. |_6. Cocaine. THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. [Footnote: The organs of circulation, respiration, and digestion, of which we have already spoken, are often called the vegetative functions, because they belong also to the vegetable kingdom. Plants have a circulation of sap through their cells corresponding to that of the blood through the capillaries. They breathe the air through their leaves, which act the part of lungs, and they take in food which they change into their own structure by a process which answers to that of digestion. The plant, however, is a mere collection of parts incapable of any combined action. On the other hand, the animal has a nervous system which binds all the organs together.] STRUCTURE.--The nervous system includes the _brain_, the _spinal cord_, and the _nerves_. It is composed of two kinds of matter-- the _white_, and the _gray_. The former consists of minute, milk-white, glistening fibers, sometimes as small as 1/25000 of an inch in diameter; the latter is made up of small, ashen-colored cells, forming a pulp-like substance of the consistency of blancmange. [Footnote: In addition to the cells, the gray substance contains also nerve fibers continuous with the white fibers, but generally much smaller. These form half the bulk of the gray substance of the spinal cord, and a large part of the deeper layer of the gray matter in the brain.--LEIDY'S _Anatomy_, p. 507.] This is often gathered in little masses, termed ganglions (_ganglion_, a knot), because, when a nerve passes through a group of the cells, they give it the appearance of a knot. The nerve fibers are conductors, while the gray cells are generators, of nervous force. [Footnote: What this force is we do not know. In some respects it is like electricity, but, in others, it differs materially. Its velocity is about thirty three meters per second.--_Popular Physics_, p. 244, Note.] The ganglia, or nervous centers, answer to the stations along a telegraphic line, where messages are received and transmitted, and the fibers correspond to the wires that communicate between different parts. FIG. 50. [Illustration: _The Nervous System._ A, _cerebrum_; B, _cerebellum._] The BRAIN is the seat of the mind. [Footnote: In proportion to the rest of the nervous matter in the body, it is larger in man than in any of the lower animals. It is the function which the brain performs that distinguishes man from all other animals, and it is by the action of his brain that he becomes a conscious, intelligent, and responsible being. The brain is the seat of that knowledge which we express when we say _I_. I know it, I feel it, I saw it, are expressions of our individual consciousness, the seat of which is the brain. It is when the brain is at rest in sleep that there is least consciousness. The brain may be put under the influence of poisons, such as alcohol and chloroform, and then the body is without consciousness. From these and other facts the brain is regarded as the seat of _consciousness_.--LANKESTER.] Its average weight is about fifty ounces. [Footnote: Cuvier's brain weighed 64 1/2 ounces; Webster's, 53 1/2 ounces; James Fisk's, 58 ounces; Ruloff's, 59 ounces; an idiot's, 19 ounces. See Table in FLINT'S _Nervous System_.] It is egg-shaped, and, soft and yielding, fills closely the cavity of the skull. It reposes securely on a water bed, being surrounded by a double membrane _(arachnoid)_, delicate as a spider's web, which forms a closed sac filled, like the spaces in the brain itself, with a liquid resembling water. Within this, and closely investing the brain, is a fine tissue (_pia mater_), with a mesh of blood vessels which dips down into the hollows, and bathes them so copiously that it uses one fifth of the entire circulation of the body. Around the whole is wrapped a tough membrane (_dura mater_), which lines the bony box of the skull, and separates the various parts of the organ by strong partitions. The brain consists of two parts--the _cerebrum_, and the _cerebellum_. The CEREBRUM fills the front and upper part of the skull, and comprises about seven eighths of the entire weight of the brain. As animals rise in the scale of life, this higher part makes its appearance. It is a mass of white fibers, with cells of gray matter sprinkled on the outside, or lodged here and there in ganglia. It is so curiously wrinkled and folded as strikingly to resemble the meat of an English walnut. This structure gives a large surface for the gray matter,--sometimes as much as six hundred and seventy square inches. The convolutions are not noticeable in an infant, but increase with the growth of the mind, their depth and intricacy being characteristic of high mental power. FIG. 51. [Illustration: _Surface of the Cerebrum._] The cerebrum is divided into two hemispheres, connected beneath by fibers of white matter. Thus we have two brains, [Footnote: This doubleness has given rise to some curious speculations. In the case of the hand, eye, etc, we know that the sensation is made more sure. Thus we can see with one eye, but not so well as with both. It is perhaps the same with the brain. We may sometimes carry on a train of thought, "build an air castle" with one half of our brain, while the other half looks on and watches the operation; or, we may read and at the same time think of something else. So in delirium, a patient often imagines himself two persons, thus showing a want of harmony between the two halves.--DRAPER, _Human Physiology_, p. 320.] as well as two hands and two eyes. This provides us with a surplus of brains, as it were, which can be drawn upon in an emergency. A large part of one hemisphere has been destroyed without particularly injuring the mental powers, [Footnote: A pointed iron bar, three and a half feet long and one inch and a quarter in diameter, was driven by the premature blasting of a rock completely through the side of the head of a man who was present. It entered below the temple, and made its exit at the top of the forehead, just about the middle line. The man was at first stunned, and lay in a delirious, semistupefied state for about three weeks. At the end of sixteen months, however, he was in perfect health, with wounds healed and mental and bodily functions unimpaired, except that sight was lost in the eye of the injured side.-- DALTON. It is noticeable, however, that the man became changed in disposition, fickle, impatient of restraint, and profane, which he was not before. He died epileptic, nearly thirteen years after the injury. The tamping iron and the skull are preserved in the Warren Anatomical Museum, Boston.]--just as a person has been blind in one eye for a long time without having discovered his loss. The cerebrum is the center of intelligence and thought. [Footnote: In man, the cerebrum presents an immense preponderance in weight over other portions of the brain; in some of the lower animals, the cerebrum is even less in weight than the cerebellum. Another interesting point is the development of cerebral convolutions in certain animals, by which the relative amount of gray matter is increased. In fishes, reptiles, and birds, the surface of the hemispheres is smooth; but, in many mammalia, especially in those remarkable for intelligence, the cerebrum presents a greater or less number of convolutions, as it does in the human subject.--FLINT. The average weight of the human brain in proportion to the entire body is about 1 to 36. The average of mammalia is 1 to 186; of birds, 1 to 212; of reptiles, 1 to 1,321; and of fishes, 1 to 5,668. There are some animals in which the weight of the brain bears a higher proportion to the body than it does in man; thus in the blue-headed tit, the proportion is as 1 to 12; in the goldfinch, as 1 to 24; and in the field mouse, as 1 to 31. "It does not hence follow, however, that the _cerebrum_ is larger in proportion; in fact, it is probably not nearly so large; for in birds and rodent animals the sensory ganglia form a very considerable portion of the entire brain. M. Baillarger has shown that the _surface_ and the _bulk_ of the cerebral hemispheres are so far from bearing any constant proportion to each other in different animals that, notwithstanding the depth of the convolutions in the human cerebrum, its bulk is two and a half times as great in proportion to its surface as it is in the rabbit, the surface of whose cerebrum is smooth. The _size_ of the cerebrum, considered alone, is not, however, a fair test of its intellectual power. This depends upon the quantity of _vesicular matter_ which it contains, as evinced not only by superficial area, but by the number and depth of the convolutions and by the thickness of the cortical layer."--CARPENTER.] Persons in whom it is seriously injured or diseased often become unable to converse intelligently, both from inability to remember words and from loss of power to articulate them. THE CEREBELLUM lies below the cerebrum, and in the back part of the head (Fig. 50). It is about the size of a small fist. Its structure is similar to that of the brain proper, but instead of convolutions it has parallel ridges, which, letting the gray matter down deeply into the white matter within, give it a peculiar appearance, called the _arbor vitæ_, or tree of life (Fig. 55). This part of the brain is the center for the control of the voluntary muscles, [Footnote: The exact nature of the functions of the cerebellum is one of those problems concerning which there is no unanimity of opinion amongst physiologists. It may be premised, however, that the knowledge we at present possess does enable us to come to one very important conclusion with respect to the functions of the cerebellum,--it enables us to say that this organ has no independent function either in the province of mind or in the province of motility. And we may perhaps safely affirm still further, that the cerebellum is much more intimately concerned with the production of bodily movements than with the evolution of mental phenomena. The anatomical distinctness of the cerebellum from the larger brain and other parts of the nervous system is more apparent than real....That there is an habitual community of action between the cerebellum and the spinal cord is, I believe, doubted by none, and the fact that an intimate functional relationship exists between the cerebrum and the cerebellum is shown by the circumstance that atrophy of one cerebral hemisphere entails a corresponding atrophy of the opposite half of the cerebellum. The subordinate or supplementary nature of the cerebellar function, however, in this latter relation seems equally well shown by the fact that atrophy of one side of the cerebellum (when it occurs as the primary event) does not entail any appreciable wasting in the opposite half of the cerebrum. What other conclusion can be drawn? If the cutting off of certain cerebral stimuli leads to a wasting of the opposite half of the cerebellum, this would seem to show that each half of the cerebellum is naturally called into activity in response to, or conjointly with, the opposite cerebral hemisphere. Whilst conversely, if atrophy of one half of the cerebellum does not entail a relative diminution in the opposite cerebral hemisphere, this would go to show that the cerebral hemispheres do not act in response to cerebellar stimuli, since their nutrition does not suffer when such stimuli are certainly absent. The action of the cerebrum is therefore shown to be primary, whilst that of the cerebellum is secondary or subordinate in the performance of those functions in which they are both concerned.--H. CHARLTON BASTIAN, _Paralysis from Brain Disease_.] particularly those of locomotion. Persons in whom it is injured or diseased walk with tottering and uncertain movements as if intoxicated, and can not perform any orderly work. THE SPINAL CORD occupies the cavity of the backbone. It is protected by the same membranes as the brain, but, unlike it, the white matter is on the outside, and the gray matter is within. Deep fissures separate it into halves (Fig. 50), which are, however, joined by a bridge of the same substance. Just as it starts from the brain, there is an expansion called the _medulla oblongata_ (Fig. 55). THE NERVES are glistening, silvery threads, composed, like the spinal cord, of white matter without and gray within. They ramify to all parts of the body. Often they are very near each other, yet are perfectly distinct, each conveying its own impression. [Footnote: Press two fingers together, and, closing the eyes, let some one pass the point of a pin lightly from one to the other; you will be able to tell which is touched, yet if the nerves came in contact with each other anywhere in their long route to the brain, you could not thus distinguish.] Those which carry the orders of the mind to the different organs are called the _motory_ nerves; while those which bring back impressions which they receive are styled _sensory_ nerves. If the sensory nerve leading to any part be cut, all sensation in that spot will be lost, while motion will remain; if the motory nerve be cut, all motion will be destroyed, while sensation will exist as before. TRANSFER OF PAIN.--Strictly speaking, pain is not in any organ, but in the mind, since only that can feel. When any nerve brings news to the brain of an injury, the mind refers the pain to the end of the nerve. A familiar illustration is seen in the "funny bone" behind the elbow. Here the nerve (_ulnar_) gives sensation to the third and fourth fingers, in which, if this bone be struck, the pain will seem to be. Long after a limb has been amputated, pain will be felt in it, as if it still formed a part of the body--any injury in the stump being referred to the point to which the nerve formerly led. [Footnote: Only about five per cent. of those who suffer amputation lose the feeling of the part taken away. There is something tragical, almost ghastly, in the idea of a spirit limb haunting a man through his life, and betraying him in unguarded moments into some effort, the failure of which suddenly reminds him of his loss. A gallant fellow, who had left an arm at Shiloh, once, when riding, attempted to use his lost hand to grasp the reins while with the other he struck his horse. A terrible fall was the result of his mistake. When the current of a battery is applied to the nerves of an arm stump, the irritation is carried to the brain, and referred to all the regions of the lost limb. On one occasion a man's shoulder was thus electrized three inches above the point where the limb was cut off. For two years he had ceased to be conscious of his limb. As the electric current passed through, the man, who had been profoundly ignorant of its possible effects, started up, crying, "Oh, the hand! the hand!" and tried to seize it with the living grasp of the sound fingers. No resurrection of the dead could have been more startling.--DR. MITCHELL _on "Phantom Limbs" in Lippincott's Magazine_.] The nerves are divided into three general classes--the _spinal_, the _cranial_, and the _sympathetic_. FIG. 54. [Illustration: P, _posterior root of a spinal nerve;_ G, _ganglion;_ A, _anterior root;_ S, _spinal nerve. The white portions of the figure represent the white fibers; and the dark, the gray._] THE SPINAL NERVES, of which there are thirty-one pairs, issue from the spinal cord through apertures provided for them in the backbone. Each nerve arises by two roots; the anterior is the motory, and the posterior the sensory one. The posterior alone connects directly with the gray matter of the cord, and has a small ganglion of gray matter of its own at a little distance from its origin. These roots soon unite, _i. e_., are bound up in one sheath, though they preserve their special functions. When the posterior root of a nerve is cut, the animal loses the power of feeling, and when the anterior root is cut, that of motion. THE CRANIAL NERVES, twelve pairs in number, spring from the lower part of the brain and the medulla oblongata. 1. The _olfactory_, or first pair of nerves, ramify through the nostrils, and are the nerves of smell. 2. The _optic_, or second pair of nerves, pass to the eyeballs, and are the nerves of vision. 3, 4, 6. The _motores oculi_ (eye movers) are three pairs of nerves used to move the eyes. 5. The _trifacial_, or fifth pair of nerves, divide each into three branches--hence the name--the first to the upper part of the face, eyes, and nose; the second to the upper jaw and teeth; the third to the lower jaw and the mouth, where it forms the nerve of taste. These nerves are implicated when we have the toothache or neuralgia. 7. The _facial_, or seventh pair of nerves, are distributed over the face, and give it expression. [Footnote: If it is palsied, on one side there will be a blank, while the other side will laugh or cry, and the whole face will look funny indeed. There were some cruel people in the middle ages who used to cut the nerve and deform children's faces in this way, for the purpose of making money of them at shows. When this nerve was wrongly supposed to be the seat of neuralgia, or tic douloureux, it was often cut by surgeons. The patient suffered many dangers, and no relief of pain was gained.--MAPOTHER.] FIG. 55. [Illustration: _The Brain and the origin of the twelve pairs of Cranial Nerves._ F, E, _the cerebrum;_ D, _the cerebellum, showing the arbor vitæ;_ G, _the eye;_ H, _the medulla oblongata;_ A, _the spinal cord;_ C and B, _the first two pairs of spinal nerves._] 8. The _auditory_, or eighth pair of nerves, go to the ears, and are the nerves of hearing. 9. The _glos-so-pha-ryn'-ge-al_, or ninth pair of nerves, are distributed over the mucous membrane of the pharynx, tonsils, etc. 10. The _pneu-mo-gas'-tric_, or tenth pair of nerves, preside over the larynx, lungs, liver, stomach, and one branch extends to the heart. This is the only nerve which goes so far from the head. 11. The _accessory_, or eleventh pair of nerves, rise from the spinal cord, run up to the medulla oblongata, and thence leave the skull at the same opening with the ninth and tenth pairs. They regulate the vocal movements of the larynx. 12. The _hyp-o-glos'-sal_, or twelfth pair of nerves, give motion to the tongue. FIG. 56. [Illustration: _Spinal Nerve, Sympathetic Cord, and the Network of Sympathetic Nerves around the Internal Organs_. K, _aorta;_ A, _œophagus;_ B, _diaphragm;_ C, _stomach._] THE SYMPATHETIC SYSTEM contains the nerves of organic life. It consists of a double chain of ganglia on either side of the backbone, extending into the chest and abdomen. From, these, delicate nerves, generally soft and of a grayish color, run to the organs on which life depends--the heart, lungs, stomach, etc.--to the blood vessels, and to the spinal and cranial nerves over the body. Thus the entire system is bound together with cords of sympathy, so that, "if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it." Here lies the secret of the control exercised by the brain over all the vital operations. Every organ responds to its changing moods, especially those of respiration, circulation, digestion, and secretion,--processes intimately linked with this system, and controlled by it. (See p. 330.) CROSSING OF CORDS.--Each half of the body is presided over, not by its own half of the brain, but that of the opposite side. The motory nerves, as they descend from the brain, in the medulla oblongata, cross each other to the opposite side of the spinal cord. So the motor nerves of the right side of the body are connected with the left side of the brain, and _vice versa_. Thus a derangement in one half of the brain may paralyze the opposite half of the body. The nerves going to the face do not thus cross, and therefore the face may be motionless on one side, and the limbs on the other. Each of the sensory fibers of the spinal nerves crosses over to the opposite side of the spinal cord, and so ascends to the brain; an injury to the spinal cord may, therefore, cause a loss of motion in one leg and of feeling in the other. REFLEX ACTION.--Since the gray matter generates the nervous force, a ganglion is capable of receiving an impression, and of sending back or _reflecting_ it so as to excite the muscles to action. This is done without the consciousness of the mind. [Footnote: Instances of an unconscious working of the mind are abundant. An illustration, often quoted, is given, as follows, by Dr. Abercrombie, in his _Intellectual Powers_: "A lawyer had been excessively perplexed about a very complicated question. An opinion was required from him, but the question was one of such difficulty that he felt very uncertain how he should render it. The decision had to be given at a certain time, and he awoke in the morning of that day with a feeling of great distress. He said to his wife, 'I had a dream, and the whole thing was clearly arranged before my mind, and I would give anything to recover the train of thought.' His wife said to him, 'Go and look on your table.' She had seen him get up in the night and go to his table and sit down and write. He did so, and found there the opinion which he had been most earnestly endeavoring to recover, lying in his own handwriting. There was no doubt about it whatever." In this case the action of the brain was clearly automatic, _i. e._, reflex. The lawyer had worried his brain by his anxiety, and thus prevented his mind from doing its best. But it had received an impulse in a certain direction, and when left to itself, worked out the result. (See Appendix for other illustrations.)] Thus we wink involuntarily at a flash of light or a threatened blow. [Footnote: A very eminent chemist a few years ago was making an experiment upon some extremely explosive compound which he had discovered. He had a small quantity of this compound in a bottle, and was holding it up to the light, looking at it intently; and whether it was a shake of the bottle or the warmth of his hand, I do not know, but it exploded in his hand, and the bottle was shivered into a million of minute fragments, which were driven in every direction. His first impression was that they had penetrated his eyes, but to his intense relief he found presently that they had only struck the outside of his eyelids. You may conceive how infinitesimally short the interval was between the explosion of the bottle and the particles reaching his eyes; and yet in that interval the impression had been made upon his sight, the mandate of the reflex action, so to speak, had gone forth, the muscles of his eyelids had been called into action, and he had closed his eyelids before the particles had reached them, and in this manner his eyes were saved. You see what a wonderful proof this is of the way in which the automatic action of our nervous apparatus enters into the sustenance of our lives, and the protection of our most important organs from injury.-- DR. CARPENTER.] We start at a sudden sound. We jump back from a precipice before the mind has time to reason upon the danger. The spinal cord conducts certain impressions to the brain, but responds to others without troubling that organ. [Footnote: There is a story told of a man, who, having injured his spinal cord, had lost feeling and motion in his lower extremities. Dr. John Hunter experimented upon him. Tickling his feet, he asked him if he felt it; the man, pointing to his limbs, which were kicking vigorously about, answered, "No, but you see my legs do." Illustrations of this independent action of the spinal cord are common in animals. A headless wasp will ply its sting energetically. A fowl, after its head is cut off, will flap its wings and jump about as if in pain, although, of course, all sensation has ceased. "A water beetle, having had its head removed, remained motionless as long as it rested on a dry surface, but when cast into water, it executed the usual swimming motions with great energy and rapidity, striking all its comrades to one side by its violence, and persisting in these for more than half an hour."] The medulla oblongata carries on the process of respiration. The great sympathetic system binds together all the organs of the body. USES OF REFLEX ACTION.--We breathe eighteen times every minute; we stand erect without a consciousness of effort; [Footnote: In this way we account for the perilous feats performed by the somnambulist. He is not conscious, as his operations are not directed by the cerebrum, but by the other nervous centers. Were he to attempt their repetition when awake, the emotion of fear might render it impossible.] we walk, eat, digest, and at the same time carry on a train of thought. Our brain is thus emancipated from the petty detail of life. If we were obliged to attend to every breath, every pulsation of the heart, every wink of the eye, our time would be wasted in keeping alive. Mere standing would require our entire attention. Besides, an act which at first demands all our thought soon requires less, and at last becomes mechanical, [Footnote: "As every one knows," says Huxley, "it takes a soldier a long time to learn his drill-- for instance, to put himself into the attitude of 'attention' at the instant the word of command is heard. But, after a time, the sound of the word gives rise to the act, whether the soldier be thinking of it or not. There is a story, which is credible enough, though it may not be true, of a practical joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out 'Attention!' whereupon the man instantly brought his hands down and lost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter. The drill had been thorough, and its effects had become embodied in the man's nervous structure."] as we say, _i. e._, reflex. Thus we play a familiar tune upon an instrument and carry on a conversation at the same time. All the possibilities of an education and the power of forming habits are based upon this principle. No act we perform ends with itself. It leaves behind it in the nervous centers a tendency to do the same thing again. Our physical being thus conspires to fix upon us the habits of a good or an evil life. Our very thoughts are written in our muscles, so that the expression of our face and even our features grow into harmony with the life we live. BRAIN EXERCISE.--The nervous system demands its life and activity. The mind grows by what it feeds on. One who reads mainly light literature, who lolls on the sofa or worries through the platitudes of an idle or fashionable life, decays mentally; his system loses tone, and physical weakness follows mental poverty. On the other hand, an excessive use of the mind withdraws force from the body, whose weakness, reacting on the brain, produces gradual decay and serious diseases. (See p. 331.) The brain grows by the growth of the body. The body grows through good food, fresh air, and work and rest in suitable proportion. For the full development and perfect use of a strong mind, a strong body is essential. Hence, in seeking to expand and store the intellect, we should be equally thoughtful of the growth and health of the body. SLEEP [Footnote: Sleep procured by medicine is rarely as beneficial as that secured naturally. The disturbance to the nervous system is often sufficient to counterbalance all the good results. The habit of seeking sleep in this way, without the advice of a physician, is to be most earnestly deprecated. The dose must be constantly increased to produce the effect, and thus great injury may be caused. Often, too, where laudanum or morphine is used, the person unconsciously comes into a terrible and fatal bondage. (See p. 342.) Especially should infants never be dosed with cordials, as is a common family practice. The damage done to helpless childhood by the ignorant and reckless use of soothing syrups is frightful to contemplate. All the ordinary sleeping draughts have life-destroying properties, as is proved by the fatal effects of an overdose. At the best, they paralyze the nerve centers, disorder the digestion, and poison the blood. Their promiscuous use is therefore full of danger.] is as essential as food. During the day, the process of tearing down goes on; during the night, the work of building up should make good the loss. In youth more sleep is needed than in old age, when nature makes few permanent repairs, and is content with temporary expedients. The number of hours required for sleep must be decided by each person. Napoleon took only five hours, but most people need from six to eight hours,--brain workers even more. In general, one should sleep until he naturally wakes. If one's rest be broken, it should be made up as soon as possible. (See p. 334.) SUNLIGHT.--The influence of the sun's rays upon the nervous system is very marked. [Footnote: The necessity of light for young children is not half appreciated. Many of their diseases, and nearly all the cadaverous looks of those brought up in great cities, are ascribable to the deficiency of light and air. When we see the glass room of the photographers in every street, in the topmost story, we grudge them their application to what is often a mere personal vanity. Why should not a nursery be constructed in the same manner? If parents knew the value of light to the skin, especially to children of a scrofulous tendency, we should have plenty of these glass house nurseries, where children might run about in a proper temperature, free from much of that clothing which at present seals up the skin--that great supplementary lung--against sunlight and oxygen. They would save many a weakly child who now perishes from lack of these necessaries of infant life.--DR. WINTER.] It is said also to have the effect of developing red disks in the blood. All vigor and activity come from the sun. Vegetables grown in subdued light have a bleached and faded look. An infant kept in absolute darkness would grow into a shapeless idiot. That room is the healthiest to which the sun has the freest access. Epidemics frequently attack the inhabitants of the shady side of a street, and exempt those on the sunny side. If, on a slight indisposition, we should go out into the open air and bright sunlight, instead of shutting ourselves up in a close, dark chamber, we might often avoid a serious illness. The sun bath is doubtless a most efficient remedy for many diseases. Our window blinds and curtains should be thrown back and open, and we should let the blessed air and sun stream in to invigorate and cheer. No house buried in shade, and no room with darkened windows, is fit for human habitation. In damp and darkness, lies in wait almost every disease to which flesh is heir. The sun is their only successful foe. (See p. 336.) WONDERS OF THE BRAIN.--After having seen the beautiful contrivances and the exquisite delicacy of the lower organs, it is natural to suppose that when we come to the brain we should find the most elaborate machinery. How surprising, then, it is to have revealed to us only cells and fibers! The brain is the least solid and most unsubstantial looking organ in the body. Eighty per cent of water, seven of albumen, some fat, and a few minor substances constitute the instrument which rules the world. Strangest of all, the brain, which is the seat of sensation, is itself without sensation. Every nerve, every part of the spinal cord, is keenly alive to the slightest touch, yet "the brain may be cut, burned, or electrified without producing pain." ALCOHOLIC DRINKS AND NARCOTICS. ALCOHOL (Continued from p. 187). EFFECT UPON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.--In the progressive influence of alcohol upon the nervous system, there are, according to the researches of Dr. Richardson, four successive stages. 1. THE STAGE OF EXCITEMENT. [Footnote: The pupil should be careful to note here that alcohol does not act upon the heart directly, and cause it to contract with more force. The idea that alcohol gives energy and activity to the muscles is entirely false. It really, as we have seen (p. 183), weakens muscular contraction. The enfeeblement begins in the first stage, and continues in the other stages with increased effect. The heart beats quickly merely because the resistance of the minute controlling vessels is taken off, and it works without being under proper regulation. _What is called a stimulation or excitement is, in absolute fact, a relaxation, a partial paralysis_ of one of the most important mechanisms in the animal body. Alcohol should be ranked among the narcotics.--RICHARDSON.]-- The first effect of alcohol, as we have already described on page 144, is to paralyze the nerves that lead to the extreme and minute blood vessels, and so regulate the passage of the blood through the capillary system. The vital force, thus drawn into the nervous centers, drives the machinery of life with tremendous energy. The heart jumps like the mainspring of a watch when the resistance of the wheels is removed. The blood surges through the body with increased force. Every capillary tube in the system is swollen and flushed, like the reddened nose and cheek. In all this there is exhilaration, but no nourishment; there is animation, but no permanent power conferred on brain or muscle. Alcohol may cheer for the moment. It may set the sluggish blood in motion, start the flow of thought, and excite a temporary gayety. "It may enable a wearied or feeble organism to do brisk work for a short time. It may make the brain briefly brilliant. It may excite muscle to quick action, but it does nothing at its own cost, fills up nothing it has destroyed, and itself leads to destruction." Even the mental activity it has excited is an unsafe state of mind, for that just poise of the faculties so essential to good judgment is disturbed by the presence of the intruder. Johnson well remarked, "Wine improves conversation by taking the edge off the understanding." 2. THE STAGE OF MUSCULAR WEAKNESS.--If the action of the alcohol be still continued, the spinal cord is next affected by this powerful narcotic. The control of some of the muscles is lost. Those of the lower lip usually fail first, then those of the lower limbs, and the staggering, uncertain steps betray the result. The muscles themselves, also, become feebler as the power of contraction diminishes. The temperature, which, for a time, was slightly increased, soon begins to fall as the heat is radiated; the body is cooled, and the well-known "alcoholic chill" is felt. 3. THE STAGE OF MENTAL WEAKNESS.--The cerebrum is now implicated. The ideal and emotional faculties are quickened, while the will is weakened. The center of thought being overpowered, the mind is a chaos. Ideas flock in thick and fast. The tongue is loosened. The judgment loses its hold on the acts. The reason giving way, the animal instincts generally assume the mastery of the man. The hidden nature comes to the surface. All the gloss of education and social restraint falls off, and the lower nature stands revealed. The coward shows himself more craven, the braggart more boastful, the bold more daring, and the cruel more brutal. The inebriate is liable to become the perpetrator of any outrage that the slightest provocation may suggest. 4. THE STAGE OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS.--At last, prostration ensues, and the wild, mad revel of the drunkard ends with utter senselessness. In common speech, the man is "dead drunk." Brain and spinal cord are both benumbed. Fortunately, the two nervous centers which supply the heart and the diaphragm are the slowest to be influenced. So, even in this final stage, the breathing and the circulation still go on, though the other organs have stopped. Were it not for this, every person thoroughly intoxicated would die. [Footnote: Cold has a wonderful influence in hastening this stage, so that a person, previously only in the first stage of excitement, on going outdoors on a winter night, may rapidly sink into a lethargy (become _comatose_), fall, and die. He is then commonly said to have perished with cold. The signs of this coma are of great practical importance, since so many persons die in police stations and elsewhere who are really comatose, when they are supposed to be only sound asleep. The pulse is slow, and almost imperceptible. The face is pale, and the skin cold. "If the arm be pinched, it is not moved; if the eyeballs are touched, the lids will not sink." The respiration becomes slower and slower, and, if the person dies, it is because liquid collects in the bronchial tubes, and stops the passage of the air. The man then actually drowns in his own secretions.] EFFECT UPON THE BRAIN.--Alcohol seems to have a special affinity for the brain. This organ absorbs more than any other, and its delicate structure is correspondingly affected. The "Vascular enlargement" here reaches its height. The tiny vessels become clogged with blood that is unfitted to nourish, because loaded with carbonic acid, and deprived of the usual quantity of the life-giving oxygen.--HINTON. The brain is, in the language of the physiologist, malfunctioned. The mind but slowly rallies from the stupor of the fourth stage, and a sense of dullness and depression remains to show with what difficulty the fatigued organ recovers its normal condition. So marked is the effect of the narcotic poison, that some authorities hold that "a once thoroughly intoxicated brain never fully becomes what it was before." In time, the free use of liquor hardens and thickens the membrane enveloping the nervous matter; the nerve corpuscles undergo a "Fatty degeneration"; the blood vessels lose their elasticity; and the vital fluid, flowing less freely through the obstructed channels, fails to afford the old-time nourishment. The consequent deterioration of the nervous substance--the organ of thought--shows itself in the weakened mind [Footnote: The habitual use of fermented liquors, even to an extent far short of what is necessary to produce intoxication, injures the body, and diminishes the mental power.--Sir Henry Thompson.] that we so often notice in a person accustomed to drink, and at last lays the foundation of various nervous disorders--epilepsy, paralysis, and insanity. [Footnote: Casper, the great statistician of Berlin, says: "So far as that city is concerned, one third of the insane coming from the poorer classes, were made so by spirit drinking."] The law of heredity here again asserts itself, and the inebriate's children often inherit the disease which he has escaped. Chief among the consequences of this perverted and imperfect nutrition of the brain is that intermediate state between intoxication and insanity, well known as Delirium Tremens. "It is characterized by a low, restless activity of the cerebrum, manifesting itself in muttering delirium, with occasional paroxysms of greater violence. The victim almost always apprehends some direful calamity; he imagines his bed to be covered with loathsome reptiles; he sees the walls of his apartment crowded with foul specters; and he imagines his friends and attendants to be fiends come to drag him down to a fiery abyss beneath."--CARPENTER. (See p. 287.) INFLUENCE UPON THE MENTAL AND MORAL POWERS.--So intimate is the relation between the body and the mind, that an injury to one harms the other. The effect of alcoholized blood is to weaken the will. The one habitually under its influence often shocks us by his indecision and his readiness to break a promise to reform. The truth is, he has lost, in a measure, his power of self-control. At last, he becomes physically unable to resist the craving demand of his morbid appetite. Other faculties share in this mental wreck. The intellectual vision becomes less penetrating, the decisions of the mind less reliable, and the grasp of thought less vigorous. The logic grows muddy. A thriftless, reckless feeling is developed. Ere long, self-respect is lost, and then ambition ceases to allure, and the high spirit sinks. Along with this mental deterioration comes also a failure of the moral sense. The fine fiber of character undergoes a "degeneration" as certain as that of the muscles themselves. Broken promises tell of a lowered standard of veracity, and a dulled sense of honor, quite as much as of an impaired will. Under the subtle influence of the ever-present poison, signs of spiritual weakness multiply fast. Conscience is lulled to rest. Reason is enfeebled. Customary restraints are easily thrown off. The sensibilities are blunted. There is less ability to appreciate nice shades of right and wrong. Great moral principles and motives lose their power to influence. The judgment fools with duty. The future no longer reaches back its hand to guide the present. The better nature has lost its supremacy. The wretched victim of appetite will now gratify his tyrannical passion for drink at any expense of deceit or crime. He becomes the blind instrument of his insane impulses, and commits acts from which he would once have shrunk with horror. [Footnote: Richardson sums up the various diseases caused by alcohol, as follows: "(_a_). Diseases of the brain and nervous system, indicated by such names as apoplexy, epilepsy, paralysis, vertigo, softening of the brain, delirium tremens, dipsomania or inordinate craving for drink, loss of memory, and that general failure of the mental power, called dementia. (_b_). Diseases of the lungs: one form of consumption, congestion, and subsequent bronchitis. (_c_). Diseases of the heart: irregular beat, feebleness of the muscular walls, dilatation, disease of the valves. (_d_). Diseases of the blood: scurvy, excess of water or dropsy, separation of fibrin. (_e_). Diseases of the stomach: feebleness of the stomach, indigestion, flatulency, irritation, and sometimes inflammation. (_f_). Diseases of the bowels: relaxation or purging, irritation. (_g_). Diseases of the liver: congestion, hardening and shrinking, cirrhosis. (_h_). Diseases of the kidneys: change of structure into fatty or waxy-like condition and other results leading to dropsy, or sometimes to fatal sleep. (_i_). Diseases of the muscles: fatty change in the muscles, by which they lose their power for proper active contraction. (_j_). Diseases of the membranes of the body: thickening and loss of elasticity, by which the parts wrapped up in the membrane are impaired for use, and premature decay is induced."] Sometimes he even takes a malignant pleasure in injuring those whom Nature has ordained he should protect. [Footnote: It has been argued that a man should not be punished for any crime he may commit during intoxication, but rather for knowingly giving up the reins of reason and conscience, and thus subjecting himself to the rule of his evil passions. Voluntarily to stimulate the mind and put it into a condition where it may drive one to ruin, is very like the act of an engineer who should get up steam in his engine, and then, having opened the valves, desert his post, and let the monster go thundering down the track to sure destruction. Certain persons are thrown into the stage of mental weakness by a single glass of liquor. How can they be excused when the fact of their peculiar liability lends additional force to the argument of abstemiousness, and they know that their only safety lies in total abstinence?--CARPENTER'S _Physiology._] 2. TOBACCO. The Constituents of Tobacco Smoke are numerous, but the prominent ones are carbonic-acid, carbonic-oxide, and ammonia gases; carbon, or soot; and nicotine. The proportion of these substances varies with different kinds of tobacco, the pipe used, and the rapidity of the combustion. Carbonic acid tends to produce sleepiness and headache. Carbonic oxide, in addition, causes a tremulous movement of the muscles, and so of the heart. Ammonia bites the tongue of the smoker, excites the salivary glands, and causes dryness of the mouth and throat. Nicotine is a powerful poison. The amount contained in one or two strong cigars, if thrown directly into the blood, would cause death. Nicotine itself is complex, yielding a volatile substance that gives the odor to the breath and clothing; and also a bitter extract which produces the sickening taste of an old pipe. In smoking, some of the nicotine is decomposed, forming pyridine, picoline, and other poisonous alkaloids. [Footnote: The analysis of tobacco as given by different authorities varies greatly. The one stated in the text suffices for the purposes of this chapter. Von Eulenberg names several other products of the combustion. One hundred pounds of the dry leaf may yield as high as seven pounds of nicotine. Havana tobacco contains about two per cent, and Virginia about six per cent.--See JOHNSTON & CHURCH'S _Chemistry of Common Life_, and MILLER'S _Organic Chemistry_.] PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS.--The poison of tobacco, set free by the process either of chewing or smoking, when for the first time it is swept through the system by the blood, powerfully affects the body. Nausea is felt, and the stomach seeks to throw off the offending substance. The brain is inflamed, and headache follows. The motor nerves becoming irritated, giddiness ensues. Thus Nature earnestly protests against the formation of this habit. But, after repeated trials, the system adjusts itself to the new conditions. A "tolerance" of the poison is finally established, and smoking causes none of the former symptoms. Such powerful substances can not, however, be constantly inhaled without producing marked changes. The three great eliminating organs--the lungs, the skin, and the kidneys-- throw off a large part of the products, but much remains in the system. When the presence of the poison is constant, and especially when the smoking or chewing is excessive, the disturbance that at first is merely functional, must necessarily, in many cases at least, lead to a chronic derangement. Probably in this, as in the case of other deleterious articles of diet, the strong and healthy will seem to escape entirely, while the weak and those predisposed to disease will be injured in direct proportion to the extent of the indulgence. Those whose employment leads to active, outdoor work, will show no sign of nicotine poisoning, while the man of sedentary habits will sooner or later be the victim of dyspepsia, sleeplessness, nervousness, paralysis, or other organic difficulties. Even where the user of tobacco himself escapes harm, the law of heredity asserts itself, and the innocent offspring only too often inherit an impaired constitution, and a tendency to nervous complaints. THE VARIOUS DISTURBANCES produced in different individuals and constitutions by smoking have been summed up by Dr. Richardson as follows: "(_a_) In the blood, it causes undue fluidity, and change in the red corpuscles; (_b_) in the stomach, it gives rise to debility, nausea, and vomiting; (_c_) in the mucous membrane of the mouth, it produces enlargement and soreness of the tonsils--smoker's sore throat--redness, dryness, and occasional peeling of the membrane, and either unnatural firmness and contraction, or sponginess of the gums; and, where the pipe rests on the lips, oftentimes 'epithelial cancer'; (_d_) in the heart, it causes debility of the organ, and irregular action; (_e_) in the bronchial surface of the lungs, when that is already irritable, it sustains irritation, and increases the cough; (_f_) in the organs of sense, it produces dilation of the pupils of the eye, confusion of vision, bright lines, luminous or cobweb specks, and long retention of images on the retina, with analogous symptoms affecting the ear, viz., inability to define sounds clearly, and the occurrence of a sharp, ringing noise like a whistle; (_g_) in the brain, it impairs the activity of the organ, oppressing it if it be nourished, but soothing it if it be exhausted; (_h_) it leads to paralysis in the motor and sympathetic nerves, and to over-secretion from the glands which the sympathetic nerves control." IS TOBACCO A FOOD?--Here, as in the case of alcohol, the reply is a negative one. Tobacco manifests no characteristic of a food. It can not impart to the blood an atom of nutritive matter for building up the body. It does not add to, but rather subtracts from, the total vital force. It confers no potential power upon muscle or brain. It stimulates by cutting off the nervous supply from the extremities and concentrating it upon the centers. But stimulation is not nourishment; it is only a rapid spending of the capital stock. There is no greater error than to mistake the exciting of an organ for its strengthening. THE INFLUENCE UPON YOUTH.--Here, too, science utters no doubtful voice. Experience asserts only one conviction. _Tobacco retards the development of mind and body._ [Footnote: Cigarettes are especially injurious from the irritating smoke of the paper covering, taken into the lungs, and also because the poison fumes of the tobacco are more directly inhaled. In case of the cheap cigarettes often smoked by boys the ingredients used are harmful, while one revolts at the thought of the filthy materials, refuse cigar stumps, etc., employed in their manufacture.] The law of nature is that of steady growth. It can not admit of a daily, even though it be merely a functional, disturbance that weakens the digestion, that causes the heart to labor excessively, that prevents the perfect oxidation of the blood, that interferes with the assimilation, and that deranges the nervous system. [Footnote: There is one influence of tobacco that every young man should understand. In many cases, like alcohol, it seems to blunt the sensibilities, and to make its user careless of the rights and feelings of others. This is often noticed in common life. We meet everywhere "devotees of the weed," who, ignoring the fact that tobacco is disagreeable to many persons, think only of the gratification of their selfish appetite. They smoke or chew in any place or company. They permit the cigar fumes to blow into the faces of passers-by. They sit where the wind carries the smoke of their pipes so that others must inhale it. They expectorate upon the floor of cars, hotels, and even private homes. They take no pains to remove the odor that lingers about their person and clothing. They force all who happen to be near, their companions, their fellow-travelers, to inhale the nauseating odor of tobacco. Everything must be sacrificed to the one primal necessity of such persons--a smoke. Now, a young man just beginning life, with his fortune to make, and his success to achieve, can not afford to burden himself with a habit that is costly, that will make his presence offensive to many persons, and that may perhaps render him less sensitive to the best influences and perceptions of manhood.] No one has a right thus to check and disturb continually the regular processes of his physical and mental progress. Hence, the young man (especially if he be of a nervous, sensitive organization) who uses tobacco deliberately diminishes the possible energy with which he might commence the work of life; [Footnote: In the Polytechnic School at Paris, the pupils were divided into two classes--the smokers, and the non-smokers. The latter not only excelled on the entrance examinations, but during the entire course of study. Dr. Decaisne examined thirty-eight boys who smoked, and found twenty-seven of them diseased from nicotine poisoning. So long ago as 1868, in consequence of these results, the Minister of Public Instruction forbade the use of tobacco by the pupils. Dr. Gihon, medical director of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, in his report for 1881, says: "The most important matter in the health history of the students is that relating to tobacco, and its interdiction is absolutely essential to their future health and usefulness. In this view I have been sustained by my colleagues, and by all sanitarians in civil and military life whose views I have been able to obtain."] while he comes under the bondage of a habit that may become stronger than his will, and under the influence of a narcotic that may beguile his faculties and palsy his strength at the very moment when every power should be awake. Another peril still lies in the wake of this masterful poison habit. Tobacco causes thirst and depression that only too often and naturally lead to the use of liquor. (See p. 338.) 3. OPIUM. Opium is the dried juice of the poppy. In Eastern countries, this flower is cultivated in immense fields for the sake of this product. When a cut is made in the poppy head, a tiny tear of milky juice exudes, and hardens. These little drops are gathered and prepared for the market, an acre yielding, it is said, about twenty-five pounds. Throughout the East, opium is generally smoked; but in Western countries laudanum and paregoric (tinctures of opium), and morphine--a powerful alkaloid contained in opium, are generally used. The drug itself is also eaten. PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT.--Opium, in its various forms, acts directly upon the nerves, a small dose quieting pain, and a larger one soothing to sleep. It arouses the brain, and fires the imagination to a wonderful pitch. [Footnote: So far as its effects are concerned, it matters little in what form opium is taken, whether solid as in pills, liquid as in laudanum, or vaporized, as when inhaled from a pipe. The opium slave is characterized by trembling steps, a curved spine, sunken glassy eyes, sallow withered features, and often by contraction of the muscles of the neck and fingers. In the East, when the drug ceases its influence, the opium eater renews it with corrosive sublimate till, finally, this also fails of effect, and he gradually sinks into the grave.] The reaction from this unnatural excitant is correspondingly depressing; and the melancholy, the "overwhelming horror" that ensues, calls for a renewal of the stimulus. The dose must be gradually increased to produce the original exhilaration. [Footnote: The victim of opium is bound to a drug from which he derives no benefits, but which slowly deprives him of health and happiness, finally to end in idiocy or premature death. Whatever the victim's condition or surroundings may be, the opium must be taken at certain times with inexorable regularity. The liquor or tobacco user can, for a time, go without the use of these agents, and no regular hours are necessary. During sickness, and more especially during the eruptive fevers, he does not desire tobacco or liquor. The opium eater has no such reprieves; his dose must be taken, and, in painful complications affecting the stomach, a large increase is demanded to sustain the system. If, in forming the habit, two doses are taken each day, the victim is obliged to maintain that number. It is the unceasing, everlasting slavery of regularity that humiliates opium eaters by a sense of their own weakness.--HUBBARD _on The Opium Habit and Alcoholism._] The seductive nature of the drug leads the unfortunate victim on step by step until he finds himself fast bound in the fetters of one of the most tyrannical habits known to man. To go on is to wreck all one's powers--physical and mental. To throw off the habit, requires a determination that but few possess. Yet even when the custom is broken, the system is long in recovering from the shock. There seems to be a failure of every organ. The digestion is weakened, food is no longer relished, the muscles waste, the skin shrivels, the nervous centers are paralyzed, and a premature old age comes on apace. De Quincey, four months after he had cast away the opium bonds, wrote, "Think of me as one still agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered." No person can be too careful in the use of laudanum, paregoric, and morphine. They may be taken on a physician's prescription as a sedative from racking pain, [Footnote: Many persons learn to inject morphine beneath the skin by means of a "hypodermic syringe." The operation is painless, and seems an innocent one. It throws the narcotic directly into the circulation, and relief from pain is often almost instantaneous. But the danger of forming the opium habit is not lessened, and the effect of using the drug in this form for a long time is just as injurious as opium smoking itself. Opium in one of its forms enters largely into the composition of many of the painkillers and patent medicines so freely advertised for domestic use in the present day, and for this reason the greatest care is needed in having recourse to any of them. Taken, perhaps, in the first instance, to alleviate the torments of neuralgia or toothache, what proves to be a remedy soon becomes a source of gratification, which the wretchedness that follows on abstinence renders increasingly difficult to lay aside. The same must be said of bromide of potassium and hydrate of chloral, frequently resorted to as a remedy for sleeplessness: the system quickly becomes habituated to their use, and they can then be relinquished only at the cost of much suffering. Indeed, the last mentioned of these two drugs obtains over the mind a power which may be compared to that of opium, and is, moreover, liable to occasion the disease known as chloralism, by which the system ultimately becomes a complete wreck. Looking at the whole question of the medicinal use of narcotics, it is perhaps not too much to say that they should never be employed except with the authority of a competent medical adviser.-- _Chambers's Journal_.] but if followed up for any length of time, the powerful habit may be formed ere one is aware. Then comes the opium eater's grave, or the opium eater's struggle for life! 4. CHLORAL HYDRATE. CHLORAL HYDRATE is a drug frequently used to cause sleep. It leaves behind no headache or lassitude, as is often the case with morphine. It is, however, a treacherous remedy. It is cumulative in its effects, _i. e._, even a small and harmless dose, persisted in for a long period, may produce a gradual accumulation of evil results that in the end will prove fatal. THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT of its prolonged use is very marked. The appetite becomes capricious. The secretions are unnatural. Nausea and flatulency often ensue. Then the nervous system is involved. The heart is affected. Sleep, instead of responding to the drug, as at first, is broken and disturbed. The eyesight fails. The circulation is enfeebled, and the pulse becomes weak, rapid, and irregular. There is a tendency to fainting and to difficult respiration. Sometimes the impoverished blood induces a disease resembling scurvy, the ends of the fingers ulcerate, and the face is disfigured by blotches. An excessive dose may result in death. Prolonged habitual use of chloral hydrate tends to debase the mind and morals of the subject in the same manner as indulgence in alcohol, ether, or chloroform. 5. CHLOROFORM. CHLOROFORM is an artificial product generally obtained, by distillation, from a mixture of chloride of lime, water, and alcohol. It was discovered in 1831 by Samuel Guthrie, of Sackett's Harbor, New York. It is a colorless, transparent volatile liquid, with a strong ethereal odor. PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT.--Chloroform is a powerful anæsthetic, which, when inhaled, causes a temporary paralysis of the nervous system, and thus a complete insensibility to pain. There is great peril attending its use, even in the hands of the most skillful and experienced practitioners. It is sometimes prescribed by a physician, and afterward (as in the case of laudanum, morphine, and chloral) the sufferer, charmed with the release from pain and the peaceful slumber secured, buys the Lethean liquid for himself. Its use soon becomes an apparent necessity. The craving for the narcotic at a stated time is almost irresistible. The patient, compelled to give up the use of chloroform, will demand, entreat, pray for another dose, in a heartrending manner, never to be forgotten. Paleness and debility, the earliest symptoms, are followed by mental prostration. Familiarity with this dangerous drug begets carelessness, and its victims are frequently found dead in their beds, with the handkerchief from which they inhaled the volatile poison clutched in their lifeless hands. 6. COCAINE. Cocaine is an alkaloid prepared from the erythroxylon coca, a shrub, five or six feet high, found wild in the mountainous regions of Ecuador and Peru, where it is also cultivated by the natives. The South American Indians, for centuries, have chewed coca leaves as a stimulant, but the highly poisonous principle, now called cocaine, to which the plant owes its peculiar effects, was not discovered till 1859. Within a few years this drug has come into favor as an agent to produce local anæsthesia, and has proved exceedingly valuable in surgical operations upon the eye and other sensitive organs. It has already, however, been diverted from its legitimate use as a benefaction, and to the other evils of the day is now added the "cocaine habit," which is, perhaps, even more dangerous and difficult to abandon than either the alcohol or the opium habit. PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT.--Applied locally, cocaine greatly lessens and even annihilates pain. Taken internally, it acts as a powerful stimulant to the nervous system, its physiological action being similar to that of theine (p. 170), caffeine, and theobromine. Used hypodermically, its immediate effect, says one to whom it was thus administered, is to cause "great pallor of countenance, profuse frontal perspiration, sunken eyes, enlarged pupils, lessened sensitiveness of the cornea and conjunctiva, lowered arterial tension, and a feeble pulse and heart beat. Under its influence I could not reason. Everything seemed to run through my brain, and in vain I summoned all my will power to overcome an overwhelming sleepiness." A few doses of this drug will in some persons produce temporary insanity. Used to excess, it leads to permanent madness or idiocy. "Cocaine," says a writer in the _Medical Review_, "is a dangerous therapeutic toy not to be used as a sensational plaything. If it should come into as general use as the other intoxicants of its class, it will help to fill the asylums, inebriate and insane." PRACTICAL QUESTIONS. 1. Why is the pain of incipient hip disease frequently felt in the knee? 2. Why does a child require more sleep than an aged person? 3. When you put your finger in the palm of a sleeping child, why will he grasp it? 4. How may we strengthen the brain? 5. What is the object of pain? 6. Why will a blow on the stomach sometimes stop the heart? 7. How long will it take for the brain of a man six feet high to receive news of an injury to his foot, and to reply? 8. How can we grow beautiful? 9. Why do intestinal worms sometimes affect a child's sight? 10. Is there any indication of character in physiognomy? 11. When one's finger is burned, where is the ache? 12. Is a generally closed parlor a healthful room? 13. Why can an idle scholar read his lesson and at the same time count the marbles in his pocket? 14. In amputating a limb, what part, when divided, will cause the keenest pain? 15. What is the effect of bad air on nervous people? 16. Is there any truth in the proverb that "he who sleeps dines"? 17. What does a high, wide forehead indicate? 18. How does indigestion frequently cause a headache? 19. What is the cause of one's foot being "asleep"? [Footnote: Here the nervous force is prevented from passing by compression. Just how this is done, or what is kept from passing, we can not tell. If a current of electricity were moving through a rubber tube full of mercury, a slight squeeze would interrupt it. These cases may depend on the same general principle, but we can not assert it.--HUXLEY. The tingling sensation caused by the compression is transferred to the foot, whence the nerve starts.] 20. When an injury to the nose has been remedied by transplanting skin from the forehead, why is a touch to the former felt in the latter? 21. Are closely curtained windows healthful? 22. Why, in falling from a height, do the limbs instinctively take a position to defend the important organs? 23. What causes the pylorus to open and close at the right time? 24. Why is pleasant exercise most beneficial? 25. Why does grief cause one to lose his appetite? 26. Why should we never study directly after dinner? 27. What produces the peristaltic movement of the stomach? 28. Why is a healthy child so restless and full of mischief? 29. Why is a slight blow on the back of a rabbit's neck fatal? 30. Why can one walk and carry on a conversation at the same time? 31. What are the dangers of overstudy? 32. What is the influence of idleness upon the brain? 33. State the close relation which exists between physical and mental health and disease. 34. In what consists the value of the power of habit? 35. How many pairs of nerves supply the eye? 36. Describe the reflex actions in reading aloud. 37. Under what circumstances does paralysis occur? 38. If the eyelids of a profound sleeper were raised, and a candle brought near, would the iris contract? 39. How does one cough in his sleep? 40. Give illustrations of the unconscious action of the brain. 41. Is chewing tobacco more injurious than smoking? 42. Ought a man to retire from business while his faculties are still unimpaired? 43. Which is the more exhaustive to the brain, worry or severe mental application? 44. Is it a blessing to be placed beyond the necessity for work? 45. Show how anger, hate, and the other degrading passions are destructive to the brain. [Footnote: "One of the surest means for keeping the body and mind in perfect health consists in learning to hold the passions in subservience to the reasoning faculties. This rule applies to every passion. Man, distinguished from all other animals by the peculiarity that his reason is placed above his passions to be the director of his will, can protect himself from every mere animal degradation resulting from passionate excitement. The education of the man should be directed not to suppress such passions as are ennobling, but to bring all under governance, and specially to subdue those most destructive passions, anger, hate, and fear."] 46. Are not amusements, to repair the waste of the nervous energy, especially needed by persons whose life is one of care and toil? 47. Is not severe mental labor incompatible with a rapidly growing body? 48. How shall we induce the system to perform all its functions regularly 49. How does alcohol interfere with the action of the nerves? 50. What is the general effect of alcohol upon the character? 51. Does alcohol tend to produce clearness and vigor of thought? 52. What is the general effect of alcohol on the muscles? 53. Does alcohol have any effect on the bones? The skin? 54. What is the cause of the "alcoholic chill"? 55. Show how alcohol tends to develop man's lower, rather than his higher, nature. 56. When we wish really to strengthen the brain, should we use alcohol? 57. Why is alcohol used to preserve anatomical specimens? 58. What is meant by an inherited taste for liquor? 59. Ought a person to be punished for a crime committed during intoxication? 60. Should a boy ever smoke? 61. To what extent are we responsible for the health of our body? 62. Why does alcohol tend to collect in the brain? 63. Does the use of alcohol tend to increase crime and poverty? VIII. THE SPECIAL SENSES. "See how yon beam of seeming white Is braided, out of seven-hued light; Yet in those lucid globes no ray By any chance shall break astray. Hark, how the rolling surge of sound, Arches and spirals circling round, Wakes the hush'd spirit through thine ear With music it is heaven to hear." HOLMES. "Let us remember that if we get a glimpse of the details of natural phenomena, and of those movements which constitute life, it is not in considering them as a whole, but in analyzing them as far as our limited means will permit. In the vibrations of the globe of air which surrounds our planet, as in the undulations of the ether which fills the immensity of space, it is always by molecules which are intangible for us, put in motion by nature, always by the infinitely little, that she acts in exciting the organs of sense, and she has modeled these organs in a proportion which enables them to partake in the movement which she impresses upon the universe. She can paint with equal facility on a fraction of a line of space on the retina, the grandest landscape or the nervelets of a rose leaf; the celestial vault on which Sirius is but a luminous point, or the sparkling dust of a butterfly's wing; the roar of the tempest, the roll of thunder, the echo of an avalanche, find equal place in the labyrinth whose almost imperceptible cavities seem destined to receive only the most delicate sounds." _ _ | 1. THE TOUCH...| 1. Description of the Organ. | |_2. Its Uses. | _ | 2. THE TASTE...| 1. Description of the Organ. | |_2. Its Uses. | _ | 3. THE SMELL...| 1. Description of the Organ. | |_2. Its Uses. | _ _ | | 1. Description of the | a. _External Ear._ | | Organ...............| b. _Middle Ear._ | 4. THE HEARING.| |_c. _Internal Ear._ | | 2. How we Hear | |_3. Hygiene of the Ear. | _ | | 1. Description of the Organ. | | 2. Eyelids, and Tears. | | 3. Structure of the Retina. |_5. THE SIGHT...| 4. How we see. | 5. The Use of the Crystalline Lens. | 6. Near and Far Sight. | 7. Color Blindness. |_8. Hygiene of the Eyes. THE SPECIAL SENSES 1. TOUCH. DESCRIPTION.--Touch is sometimes called the "common sense," since its nerves are spread over the whole body. It is most delicate, however, in the point of the tongue and the tips of the fingers. The surface of the cutis is covered with minute, conical projections called _papillæ_ (Fig. 24). [Footnote: In the palm of the hand, where there are at least twelve thousand in a square inch, we can see the fine ridges along which they are arranged.] Each one of these papillæ contains its tiny nerve twigs, which receive the impression and transmit it to the brain, where the perception is produced. USES.--Touch is the first of the senses used by a child. By it we obtain our idea of solidity, and throughout life rectify all other sensations. Thus, when we see anything curious, our first desire is to handle it. The sensation of touch is generally relied upon, yet, if we hold a marble in the manner shown in Fig. 57, it will seem like two marbles; and if we touch the fingers thus crossed to our tongue, we shall seem to feel two tongues. Again, if we close our eyes and let another person move one of our fingers over a plane surface, first lightly, then with greater pressure, and then lightly again, we shall think the surface concave. FIG. 57. [Illustration:] This organ is capable of wonderful cultivation. The physician acquires by practice the _tactus eruditus_, or learned touch, which is often of great service, while the delicacy of touch possessed by the blind almost compensates the loss of the absent sense. [Footnote: The sympathy between the different organs shows how they all combine to make a home for the mind. When one sense fails, the others endeavor to remedy the defect. It is touching to see how the blind man gets along without eyes, and the deaf without ears. Cuthbert, though blind, was the most efficient polisher of telescopic mirrors in London. Saunderson, the successor of Newton as professor of mathematics at Cambridge, could distinguish between real and spurious medals. There is an instance recorded of a blind man who could recognize colors. The author knew one who could tell when he was approaching a tree, by what he described as the "different feeling of the air."] (See p. 346.) 2. TASTE. DESCRIPTION.--This sense is located in the papillæ of the tongue and palate. These papillaæ start up when tasting, as you can see by placing a drop of vinegar on another person's tongue, or your own before a mirror. The velvety look of this organ is given by hair-like projections of the cuticle upon some of the papillæ. They absorb the liquid to be tasted, and convey it to the nerves. [Footnote: An insoluble substance is therefore tasteless.] The back of the tongue is most sensitive to salt and bitter substances, and, as this part is supplied by the ninth pair of nerves (Fig. 56), in sympathy with the stomach, such flavors, by sympathy, often produce vomiting. The edges of the tongue are most sensitive to sweet and sour substances, and as this part is supplied by the fifth pair of nerves, which also goes to the face, an acid, by sympathy, distorts the countenance. FIG. 58. [Illustration: _The Tongue, showing the several kinds of Papillæ--the conical_ (D) _the whip like_ (K, I), _the circumvallate or entrenched_ (H, L); E, F, G, _nerves;_ C, _glottis._--LANKESTER.] THE USE OF THE TASTE was originally to guide in the selection of food; but this sense has become so depraved by condiments and the force of habit that it would be a difficult task to tell what are one's natural tastes. 3. SMELL. [Footnote: The sense of smell is so intimately connected with that of taste that we often fail to distinguish between them. Garlic, vanilla, coffee and various spices, which seem to have such distinct taste, have really a powerful odor, but a feeble flavor.] DESCRIPTION.--The nose, the seat of the sense of smell, is composed of cartilage covered with muscles and skin, and joined to the skull by small bones. The nostrils open at the back into the pharynx, and are lined by a continuation of the mucous membrane of the throat. The olfactory nerves (first pair, Fig. 55) enter through a sieve-like, bony plate at the roof of the nose, and are distributed over the inner surface of the two olfactory chambers. (See p. 346.) The object to be smelled need not touch the nose, but tiny particles borne on the air enter the nasal passages. [Footnote: Three quarters of a grain of musk placed in a room will cause a powerful smell for a considerable length of time without any sensible diminution in weight, and the box in which musk has been placed retains the perfume for almost an indefinite period. Haller relates that some papers which had been perfumed by a grain of ambergris, were still very odoriferous after a lapse of forty years. Odors are transported by the air to a considerable distance. A dog recognizes his master's approach by smell even when he is far away; and we are assured by navigators that the winds bring the delicious odors of the balmy forests of Ceylon to a distance of ten leagues from the coast. Even after making due allowance for the effects of the imagination, it is certain that odors act as an excitant on the brain, which may be dangerous when long continued. They are especially dreaded by the Roman women. It is well known that in ancient times the women of Rome indulged in a most immoderate use of baths and perfumes; but those of our times have nothing in common with them in this respect; and the words of a lady are quoted, who said on admiring an artificial rose, "It is all the more beautiful that it has no smell." We are warned by the proverb not to discuss colors or tastes, and we may add odors also. Men and nations differ singularly in this respect. The Laplander and the Esquimaux find the smell of fish oil delicious. Wrangel says his compatriots, the Russians, are very fond of the odor of pickled cabbage, which forms an important part of their food; and asafœtida, it is said, is used as a condiment in Persia, and, in spite of its name, there are persons who do not find its odor disagreeable any more than that of valerian.--_Wonders of the Human body_.] FIG. 59. [Illustration: A, b, c, d, _interior of the nose, which is lined by a mucous membrane;_ n, _the nose;_ e, _the wing of the nose;_ q, _the nose bones;_ o, _the upper lip;_ g, _section of the upper jaw-bone;_ h, _the upper part of the mouth, or hard palate;_ m, _frontal bone of the skull;_ k, _the ganglion or bulb of the olfactory nerve in the skull, from which are seen the branches of the nerve passing in all directions._] THE USES of the sense of smell are to guide us in the choice of our food, and to warn us against bad air, and unhealthy localities. (See p. 348.) 4. HEARING. DESCRIPTION.--The ear is divided into the _external_, _middle_, and _internal_ ear. 1. _The External Ear_ is a sheet of cartilage curiously folded for catching sound. The auditory canal, _B_, or tube of this ear trumpet, is about an inch long. Across the lower end is stretched _the membrane of the tympanum_ or drum, which is kept soft by a fluid wax. FIG. 60. [Illustration: _The Ear._] 2. _The Middle Ear_ is a cavity, at the bottom of which is the Eustachian tube, _G_, leading to the mouth. Across this chamber hangs a chain of three singular little bones, _C_, named from their shape the _hammer_, the _anvil_, and the _stirrup_. All together these tiny bones weigh only a few grains, yet they are covered by a periosteum, are supplied with blood vessels, and they articulate with perfect joints (one a ball-and-socket, the other a hinge), having synovial membranes, cartilages, ligaments, and muscles. 3. _The Internal Ear_, or labyrinth, as it is sometimes called from its complex character, is hollowed out of the solid bone. In front, is the vestibule or antechamber, _A_, about as large as a grain of wheat; from it open three _semicircular canals_, _D_, and the winding stair of the _cochlea_, or snail shell, _E_. Here expand the delicate fibrils of the auditory nerve. Floating in the liquid which fills the labyrinth is a little bag containing hair-like bristles, fine sand, and two ear stones (_otoliths_). All these knocking against the ends of the nerves, serve to increase any impulse given to the liquid in which they lie. Finally, to complete this delicate apparatus, in the cochlea are minute tendrils, named the fibers of Corti, from their discoverer. These are regularly arranged,--the longest at the bottom, and the shortest at the top. Could this spiral plate, which coils two and a half times around, be unrolled and made to stand upright, it would form a beautiful microscopic harp of three thousand strings. If it were possible to strike these cords as one can the keyboard of a piano, he could produce in the mind of the person experimented upon every variety of tone which the ear can distinguish. HOW WE HEAR.--Whenever one body strikes another in the air, waves are produced, just as when we throw a stone into the water a series of concentric circles surrounds the spot where it sinks. These waves of air strike upon the membrane. This vibrates, and sends the motion along the chain of bones in the middle ear to the fluids of the labyrinth. Here bristles, sand, and stones pound away, and the wondrous harp of the cochlea, catching up the pulsations, [Footnote: The original motion is constantly modified by the medium through which it passes. The bristles, otoliths, and Cortian fibers of the ear, and the rods and cones of the eye (p. 239) serve to convert the vibrations into pulsations which act as stimuli of the appropriate nerve. The molecular change thus produced in the nerve fibers is propagated to the brain.--See _Popluar Physics_, p. 182.] carries them to the fibers of the auditory nerve, which conveys them to the brain, and gives to the mind the idea of sound. CARE OF THE EAR.--The delicacy of the ear is such that it needs the greatest care. Cold water should not be allowed to enter the auditory canal. If the wax accumulate, never remove it with a hard instrument, lest the delicate membrane be injured, but with a little warm water, after which turn the head to let the water run out, and wipe the ear dry. The hair around the ears should never be left wet, as it may chill this sensitive organ. If an insect get in the external ear, pour in a little oil to kill it, and then remove with tepid water. The object of the Eustachian tube is to admit air into the ear, and thus equalize the pressure on the membrane. If it become closed by a cold, or if, from any cause, the pressure be made unequal, so as to produce an unpleasant feeling in the ear, relief may often be obtained by grasping the nose and forcibly swallowing. (See p. 350.) 5. SIGHT. FIG. 61. [Illustration: _The Eye._] DESCRIPTION.--The eye is lodged in a bony cavity, protected by the overhanging brow. It is a globe, about an inch in diameter. The ball is covered by three coats--(l) the _sclerotic_, _d_, a tough, horny casing, which gives shape to the eye, the convex, transparent part in front forming a window, the _cornea_, _d_; (2) the _choroid_, _e_, a black lining, to absorb the superfluous light [Footnote: Neither white rabbits nor albinos have this black lining, and hence their sight is confused.] and (3) the _retina_, _b_, a membrane in which expand fibers of the _optic nerve_, _o_. The _crystalline lens_, _a_, brings the rays of light to a focus on the retina. The lens is kept in place by the ciliary processes, _g_, arranged like the rays in the disk of a passion flower. Between the cornea and the crystalline lens is a limpid fluid termed the _aqueous humor_; while the _vitreous humor_--a transparent, jelly-like liquid fills the space (_h_) back of the crystalline lens. The pupil, _k_, is a hole in the colored, muscular curtain, _i_, the _iris_ (rainbow). (See p. 352.) FIG. 62. [Illustration: _The Eyelashes and the Tear Glands._] EYELIDS AND TEARS.--The eyelids are close-fitting shutters to screen the eye. The inner side is lined with a mucous membrane that is exceedingly sensitive, and thus aids in protecting the eye from any irritating substance. The looseness of the skin favors swelling from inflammation or the effusion of blood, as in a "black eye." The eyelashes serve as a kind of sieve to exclude the dust, and, with the lids, to shield against a blinding light. Just within the lashes are oil glands, which lubricate the edges of the lids, and prevent them from adhering to each other. The tear or _lachrymal_ gland, _G_, is an oblong body lodged in the bony wall of the orbit. It empties by several ducts upon the inner surface, at the outer edge of the upper eyelid. Thence the tears, washing the eye, run into the _lachrymal lake_, _D_, a little basin with a rounded border fitted for their reception. On each side of this lake two canals, _C_, _C_, drain off the overplus through the duct, _B_, into the nose. In old age and in disease, these canals fail to conduct the tears away, and hence the lachrymal lake overflows upon the face. FIG. 63. [Illustration: _Structure of the Retina._] STRUCTURE OF THE RETINA.--In Fig. 63 is shown a section of the retina, greatly magnified, since this membrane never exceeds 1/80 an inch in thickness. On the inner surface next to the vitreous humor, is a lining membrane not shown in the cut. Next to the choroid and comprising about 1/4 the entire thickness of the retina, is a multitude of transparent, colorless, microscopic rods, _a_, evenly arranged and packed side by side, like the seeds on the disk of a sunflower. Among them, at regular intervals, are interspersed the cones, _b_. Delicate nerve fibers pass from the ends of the rods and cones, each expanding into a granular body, _c_, thence weaving a mesh, _d_, and again expanding into the granules, _f_. Last is a layer of fine nerve fibers, _g_, and gray, ganglionic cells, _h_, like the gray matter of the brain, whence filaments extend into _i_, the fibers of the optic nerve. (See p. 354.) The layer of rods and cones is to the eye what the bristles, otoliths, and Cortian fibers are to the ear. Indeed, the nerve itself is insensible to light. At the point where it enters the eye, there are no rods and cones, and this is called the _blind spot_. A simple experiment will illustrate the fact. Hold this book directly before the face, and, closing the left eye, look steadily with the right at the left-hand circle in Fig. 64. Move the book back and forth, and a point will be found where the right-hand circle vanishes from sight. At that moment its light falls upon the spot where the rods and cones are lacking. FIG. 64. [Illustration:] HOW WE SEE.--There is believed to be a kind of universal atmosphere, termed _ether_, filling all space. This substance is infinitely more subtle than the air, and occupies its pores, as well as those of all other substances. As sound is caused by waves in the atmosphere, so light is produced by waves in the ether. A lamplight, for example, sets in motion waves of ether, which pass in through the pupil of the eye, to the retina, where the rods and cones transmit the vibration through the optic nerve to the brain, and then the mind perceives the light. (Note, p. 236.) THE USE OF THE CRYSTALLINE LENS. [Footnote: The uses of the eye and ear are dependent upon the principles of Optics and Acoustics. They are therefore best treated in Physics.]--A convex lens, as a common burning glass, bends the rays of light which pass through it, so that they meet at a point called the _focus_. The crystalline lens converges the rays of light which enter the eye, and brings them to a focus on the retina. [Footnote: The cornea and the humors of the eye act in the same manner as the crystalline lens, but not so powerfully.] The healthy lens has a power of changing its convexity so as to adapt [Footnote: The simplest way of experimenting on the "adjustment of the eye" is to stick two stout needles upright into a straight piece of wood,--not exactly, but nearly in the same straight line, so that, on applying the eye to one end of the piece of wood, one needle (A) shall be seen about six inches off, and the other (B) just on one side of it, at twelve inches distance. If the observer looks at the needle B he will find that he sees it very distinctly, and without the least sense of effort; but the image of A is blurred, and more or less double. Now, let him try to make this blurred image of the needle A distinct. He will find he can do so readily enough, but that the act is accompanied by a sense of fatigue. And in proportion as A becomes distinct, B will become blurred. Nor will any effort enable him to see A and B distinctly at the same time.--HUXLEY.] itself to near and to distant objects. (See Fig. 66.) FIG. 65. [Illustration: _Diagram showing how an image of an object is formed upon the Retina by the Crystalline Lens._] NEAR AND FAR SIGHT.--If the lens be too convex, it will bring the rays to a focus before they reach the retina; if too flat, they will reach the retina before coming to a focus. In either case, the sight will be indistinct. A more common defect, however, is in the shape of the globe of the eye, which is either flattened or elongated. In the former case (see _G_, Fig. 67), objects at a distance can be seen most distinctly-- hence that is called farsightedness. [Footnote: This should not be confounded with the long sight of old people, which is caused by the stiffness of the ciliary muscles, whereby the lens can not adapt itself to the varying distances of objects.] In the latter, objects near by are clearer, and hence this is termed nearsightedness. Farsightedness is remedied by convex glasses; nearsightedness, by concave. When glasses will improve the sight they should be worn; [Footnote: Dr. Henry W. Williams, the celebrated ophthalmologist, says that, in some cases, glasses are more necessary at six or eight years of age than to the majority of healthy eyes at sixty. Sometimes children find accidentally that they can see better through grandmother's spectacles. They should then be supplied with their own.] any delay will be liable to injure the eyes, by straining their already impaired power. Cataract is a disease in which there is an opacity of the crystalline lens or its capsules, which obscures the vision. The lens may be caused to be absorbed, or may be removed by a skillful surgeon and the defect remedied by wearing convex glasses. FIG. 66. [Illustration: _Adjustment of the Crystalline Lens._--A, _for far objects, and_ B, _for near._] FIG. 67. [Illustration: _Diagram illustrating the position of the Retina._--B, _in natural sight;_ G, _in far sight; and_ C, _in near sight._] COLOR-BLIND PERSONS receive only two of the three elementary color sensations (green, red, violet). The spectrum appears to them to consist of two decidedly different colors, with a band of neutral tint between. The extreme red end is invisible, and a bright scarlet and a deep green appear alike. They are unable to distinguish between the leaves of a cherry tree and its fruit by the color of the two, and see no difference between blue and yellow cloth. Whittier, the poet, it is said, could not tell red from green unless in direct sunlight. Once he patched some damaged wall paper in his library by matching a green vine in the pattern with one of a bright autumnal crimson. This defect in the eye is often unnoticed, and many railway accidents have doubtless happened through an inability to detect the color of signal lights. CARE OF THE EYES.--The shape of the eye can not be changed by rubbing and pressing it, as many suppose, but the sight may thus be fatally injured. Children troubled by nearsightedness should not lean forward at their work, as thereby the vessels of the eye become overcharged with blood. They should avoid fine print, and try, in every possible way, to spare their eyes. If middle age be reached without especial difficulty of sight, the person is comparatively safe. Most cases of squinting are caused by longsightedness, the muscles being strained in the effort to obtain distinct vision. In childhood, it may be cured by a competent surgeon, who will generally cut the muscle that draws the eye out of place. After any severe illness, especially after measles, scarlatina, or typhoid fever, the eyes should be used with extreme caution, since they share in the general debility of the body, and recover their strength slowly. Healthy eyes even should never be used to read fine print or by a dim light. Serious injury may be caused by an imprudence of this kind. Reading upon the cars is also a fruitful source of harm. The lens, striving to adapt itself to the incessantly varying distance of the page, soon becomes wearied. Whenever the eyes begin to ache, it is a warning that they are being overtaxed and need rest. Objects that get into the eye should be removed before they cause inflammation; rubbing in the meantime only irritates and increases the sensitiveness. If the eye be shut for a few moments, so as to let the tears accumulate, and the upper lid be then lifted by taking hold of it at the center, the cinder or dust is often washed away at once. Trifling objects can be removed by simply drawing the upper lid as far as possible over the lower one; when the lid flies back to its place, the friction will detach any light substance. If it becomes necessary, turn the upper lid over a pencil, and the intruder may then be wiped off with a handkerchief. "Eye-stones" are a popular delusion. When they seem to take out a cinder, it is only because they raise the eyelid, and allow the tears to wash it out. No one should ever use an eyewash, except by medical advice. The eye is too delicate an organ to be trifled with, and when any disease is suspected, a reliable physician should be consulted. This is especially necessary, since, when one eye is injured, the other, by sympathy, is liable to become inflamed, and perhaps be destroyed. When reading or working, the _light should be at the left side, or at the rear; never in front_. The constant increase of defective eyesight among the pupils in our schools is an alarming fact. Dr. Agnew considers that our schoolrooms are fast making us a spectacle-using people. Nearsightedness seems to increase from class to class, until in the upper departments, there are sometimes as high as fifty per cent of the pupils thus afflicted. The causes are (1), desks so placed as to make the light from the windows shine directly into the eyes of the scholars; (2), cross lights from opposite windows; (3), insufficient light; (4), small type that strains the eyes; and (5), the position of the pupil as he bends over his desk or slate, causing the blood to settle in his eyes. All these causes can be remedied; the position of the desks can be changed; windows can be shaded, or new ones inserted; books and newspapers that try the eyes can be rejected; and every pupil can be taught how to sit at study. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS. 1. Why does a laundress test the temperature of her flatiron by holding it near her cheek? 2. When we are cold, why do we spread the palms of our hands before the fire? 3. What is meant by a "furred tongue"? 4. Why has sand or sulphur no taste? 5. What was the origin of the word palatable? 6. Why does a cold in the head injure the flavor of our coffee? 7. Name some so-called flavors that are really sensations of touch. 8. What is the object of the hairs in the nostrils? 9. What use does the nose subserve in the process of respiration? 10. Why do we sometimes hold the nose when we take unpleasant medicine? 11. Why was the nose placed over the mouth? 12. Describe how the hand is adapted to be the instrument of touch. 13. Besides being the organ of taste, what use does the tongue subserve? 14. Why is not the act of tasting complete until we swallow? 15. Why do all things have the same flavor when one's tongue is "furred" by fever? 16. Which sense is the more useful--hearing or sight? 17. Which coat is the white of the eye? 18. What makes the difference in the color of eyes? 19. Why do we snuff the air when we wish to obtain a distinct smell? 20. Why do red-hot iron and frozen mercury (-40°) produce the same sensation? 21. Why can an elderly person drink tea which to a child would be unbearably hot? 22. Why does an old man hold his paper so far from his eyes? 23. Would you rather be punished on the tips of your fingers than on the palm of your hand? 24. What is the object of the eyelashes? Are the hairs straight? 25. What is the use of winking? 26. When you wink, do the eyelids touch at once along their whole length? Why? 27. How many rows of hairs are there in the eyelashes? 28. Do all nations have eyes of the same shape? 29. Why does snuff taking cause a flow of tears? 30. Why does a fall cause one to "see stars"? 31. Why can we not see with the nose, or smell with the eyes? 32. What causes the roughness of a cat's tongue? 33. Is the cuticle essential to touch? 34. Can one tickle himself? 35. Why does a bitter taste often produce vomiting? 36. Is there any danger in looking "crosseyed" for fun? 37. Should schoolroom desks face a window? 38. Why do we look at a person to whom we are listening attentively? 39. Do we really feel with our fingers? 40. Is the eye a perfect sphere? (See Fig. 61.) 41. How often do we wink? 42. Why is the interior of a telescope or microscope often painted black? 43. What is "the apple of the eye"? 44. What form of glasses do old people require? 45. Should we ever wash our ears with cold water? 46. What is the object of the winding passages in the nose? 47. Can a smoker tell in the dark, whether or not his cigar is lighted? 48. Will a nerve reunite after it has been cut? 49. Will the sight give us an idea of solidity? [Footnote: A case occurred a few years ago, in London, where a friend of my own performed an operation upon a young woman who had been born blind, and, though an attempt had been made in early years to cure her, it had failed. She was able just to distinguish large objects, the general shadow, as it were, without any distinct perception of form, and to distinguish light from darkness. She could work well with her needle by the touch, and could use her scissors and bodkin and other implements by the training of her hand, so to speak, alone Well, my friend happened to see her, and he examined her eyes, and told her that he thought he could get her sight restored; at any rate, it was worth a trial. The operation succeeded; and, being a man of intelligence and quite aware of the interest of such a case, he carefully studied and observed it; and he completely confirmed all that had been previously laid down by the experience of similar cases. There was one little incident which will give you an idea of the education which is required for what you would suppose is a thing perfectly simple and obvious. She could not distinguish by sight the things that she was perfectly familiar with by the touch, at least when they were first presented to her eyes. She could not recognize even a pair of scissors. Now, you would have supposed that a pair of scissors, of all things in the world, having been continually used by her, and their form having become perfectly familiar to her hands, would have been most readily recognized by her sight; and yet she did not know what they were; she had not an idea until she was told, and then she laughed, as she said, at her own stupidity. No stupidity at all; she had never learned it, and it was one of those things which she could not know without learning. One of the earliest cases of this kind was related by the celebrated Cheselden, a surgeon of the early part of last century. Cheselden relates how a youth just in this condition had been accustomed to play with a cat and a dog; but for some time after he attained his sight he never could tell which was which, and used to be continually making mistakes. One day, being rather ashamed of himself for having called the cat the dog, he took up the cat in his arms and looked at her very attentively for some time stroking her all the while; and in this way he associated the impression derived from the touch, and made himself master (so to speak) of the whole idea of the animal. He then put the cat down, saying: "Now, puss, I shall know you another time."--CARPENTER.] 50. Why can a skillful surgeon determinate the condition of the brain and other internal organs by examining the interior of the eye? [Footnote: This is done by means of an instrument called the ophthalmoscope. Light is thrown into the eye with a concave mirror, and the interior of the organ examined with a lens.] 51. Is there any truth in the idea that the image of the murderer can be seen in the eye of the dead victim? 52. What is the length of the optic nerve? _Ans_. About three fourths of an inch. 53. Why does an injury to one eye generally affect the other eye? _Ans_. The optic nerves give off no branches in passing from their origin in two ganglia situated between the cerebrum and the cerebellum, and their termination in the eyeballs; but, in the middle of their course, they _decussate_, or unite in one mass. The fibers of the two nerves here pass from side to side, and intermingle. The two ganglia are also united directly by fibers. Thus the eyes are not really separate organs of sight, but a kind of double organ to perform, a single function. IX. HEALTH AND DISEASE.--DEATH AND DECAY. "Health is the vital principle of bliss." THOMSON. "There are three wicks to the lamp of a man's life: brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute, and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centers of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness." O. W. HOLMES. "Calmly he looked on either Life, and here Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear; From Nature's temp'rate feast rose satisfy'd, Thank'd Heaven that he had lived, and that he died." POPE. HEALTH AND DISEASE.--DEATH AND DECAY. VALUE OF HEALTH.--The body is the instrument which the mind uses. If it be dulled or nicked, the effect of the best labor will be impaired. The grandest gifts of mind or fortune are comparatively valueless unless there be a healthy body to use and enjoy them. The beggar, sturdy and brave with his outdoor life, is really happier than the rich man in his palace with the gout to twinge him amid his pleasures. The day has gone by when delicacy is considered an element of beauty. Weakness is timid and irresolute; strength is full of force and energy. Weakness walks or creeps; strength speeds the race, wins the goal, and rejoices in the victory. FALSE IDEAS OF DISEASE.--It was formerly supposed that diseases were caused by evil spirits, who entered the body, and deranged its action. Incantations, spells, etc., were resorted to in order to drive them out. By others, disease was thought to come arbitrarily, or as a special visitation of an overruling power. Hence, it was to be removed by fasting and prayer. Modern science teaches us that disease is not a thing, but a state. When our food is properly assimilated, the waste matter promptly excreted, and all the organs work in harmony, we are well; when any derangement of these functions occurs, we are sick. Sickness is discord, as health is concord. If we abuse or misuse any instrument, we impair its ability to produce a perfect harmony. A suffering body is simply the penalty of violated law. PREVENTION OF DISEASE.--Doubtless a large proportion of the ills which now afflict and rob us of so much time and pleasure might easily be avoided. A proper knowledge and observance of hygienic laws would greatly lessen the number of such diseases as consumption, catarrh, gout, rheumatism, dyspepsia, etc. There are parts of England where one half the children die before they are five years old. Every physiologist knows that at least nine tenths of these lives could be saved by an observance of the simple laws of health. Professor Bennet, in a lecture at Edinburgh, estimated that one hundred thousand persons die annually in Great Britain from causes easily preventable. With the advance of science, the causes of many diseases have been determined. Vaccination has been found to prevent or mitigate the ravages of smallpox. Scurvy, formerly so fatal among sailors that it was deemed "a mysterious infliction of Divine Justice against which man strives in vain," is now entirely avoided by the use of vegetables or lime juice. Cholera, whose approach still strikes dread, and for which there is no known specific, is but the penalty for filthy streets, bad drainage, and overcrowded tenements, and may be controlled, if not prevented, by suitable sanitary measures. It was, no doubt, the intention that we should wear out by the general decay of all the organs, [Footnote: So long as the phenomena of waste and repair are in harmony--so long, in other words, as the builder follows the scavenger--so long man exists in integrity and repair--just, indeed, as houses exist. Derange nutrition, and at once degeneration, or rather let us say, alteration begins. Alas! that we are so ignorant that there are many things about our house, which, seeing them, weaken, we know not how to strengthen. About the brick and the mortar, the frame and the rafters, we are not unlearned; but within are many complexities, many chinks and crannies, full in themselves of secondary chinks and crannies, and these so small, so deep, so recessed, that it happens every day that the destroyer settles himself in some place so obscure, that, while he kills, he laughs at defiance. You or I meet with an accident in our watch. We consult the watchmaker, and he repairs the injury. If we were all that watchmakers, like ourselves, should be, a man could be made to keep time until he died from old age or annihilating accident. This I firmly and fully believe.--_Odd Hours of a Physician_.] rather than by the giving out of any single part, and that all should work together harmoniously until the vital force is exhausted. CURE OF DISEASE.--The first step in the cure of any disease is to obey the law of health which has been violated. If medicine be taken, it is not to destroy the disease, since that is not a thing to be destroyed, but to hold the deranged action in check while nature repairs the injury, and again brings the system into harmonious movement. This tendency of nature is our chief reliance. The best physicians are coming to have diminished confidence in medicine itself, and to place greater dependence upon sanitary and hygienic measures, and upon the efforts which nature always makes to repair injuries and soothe disordered action. They endeavor only to give to nature a fair chance, and sometimes to assist her by the intelligent employment of proper medicines. The indiscriminate use of patent nostrums and sovereign remedies of whose constituents we know nothing, and by which powerful drugs are imbibed at haphazard, can not be too greatly deprecated. When one needs medicine, he needs also a competent physician to advise its use. DEATH AND DECAY.--By a mystery we can not understand, life is linked with death, and out of the decay of our bodies they, day by day, spring afresh. At last the vital force which has held death and decay in bondage, and compelled them to minister to our growth, and to serve the needs of our life, faints and yields the struggle. These powers which have so long time been our servants, gather about our dying couch, and their last offices usher us into the new life and the grander possibilities of the world to come. This last birth, we who see the fading, not the dawning, life, call death. "O Father! grant Thy love divine, To make these mystic temples Thine, When wasting age and wearying strife Have sapp'd the leaning walls of life; When darkness gathers over all, And the last tottering pillars fall, Take the poor dust Thy mercy warms, And mold it into heavenly forms." HOLMES. HINTS ABOUT THE SICK ROOM A SICK ROOM should be the lightest and cheeriest in the house. A small, close, dark bedroom or a recess is bad enough for one in health, but unendurable for a sick person. In a case of fever, and in many acute diseases, it should be remote from the noise of the family; but when one is recovering from an accident, and in all attacks where quiet is not needed, the patient may be where he can amuse himself by watching the movements of the household, or looking out upon the street. _The ventilation must be thorough._ Bad air will poison both the sick and the well. A fireplace is, therefore, desirable. Windows should open easily. By carefully protecting the patient with extra blankets, the room may be frequently aired. If there be no direct draught, much may be done to change the air, by simply swinging an outer door to and fro many times. A bare floor, with strips of carpet here and there to deaden noise, is cleanest, and keeps the air freest from dust. Cane-bottomed chairs are preferable to upholstered ones. All unnecessary furniture should be removed out of the way. A straw bed or a mattress is better than feathers. The bed hangings, lace curtains, etc., should be taken down. Creaking hinges should be oiled. Sperm candles are better than kerosene lamps. _Never whisper in a sick room._ All necessary conversation should be carried on in the usual tone of voice. Do not call a physician unnecessarily, but if one be employed, _obey his directions implicitly_. Never give nostrums overofficious friends may suggest. Do not allow visitors to see the patient, except it be necessary. Never bustle about the room, nor go on tiptoe, but move in a quiet, ordinary way. Do not keep the bottles in the continued sight of the sick person. Never let drinking water stand in the room. Do not raise the patient's head to drink, but have a cup with a long spout, or use a bent tube, or even a straw. Do not tempt the appetite when it craves no food. Bathe frequently, but let the physician prescribe the method. Give written directions to the watchers. Have all medicines carefully marked. Remove all soiled clothing, etc., at once from the room. Change the linen much oftener than in health. When you wish to change the sheets, and the patient is unable to rise, roll the under sheet tightly lengthwise to the middle of the bed; put on the clean sheet, with half its width folded up, closely to the other roll; lift the patient on to the newly-made part, remove the soiled sheet, and then spread oat the clean one. DISINFECTANTS. Remember, first, that deodorizers and disinfectants are not the same. A bad smell, for instance, may be smothered by some more powerful odor, while its cause remains uninfluenced. Bear also in mind the fact that no deodorizer and no disinfectant can take the place of perfect cleanliness and thorough ventilation. No purifyer can rival the oxygen contained in strong and continued currents of fresh, cold air, and every disinfectant finds an indispensable ally in floods of scalding water. An excellent disinfectant may be made by dissolving in a pail of water either of the following: (1), a quarter of a pound of sulphate of zinc and two ounces of common salt for each gallon of water; (2), a pound and a half of copperas, for each gallon of water. Towels, bed linen, handkerchiefs, etc., should be soaked at least an hour, in a solution of the first kind, and then be boiled, before washing. [Footnote: It is _best_ to burn all articles which have been in contact with persons sick with contagious or infectious diseases. In using the zinc solution, place the articles in it as soon as they are removed from the patient, and before they are taken from the room; if practicable, have the solution boiling hot at the time. In fumigating apartments, all the openings should be made as nearly air-tight as possible. The articles to be included in the fumigation should be so exposed and spread out that the sulphurous vapor may penetrate every portion of them. For a room about ten feet square, at least two pounds of sulphur should be used; for larger rooms, proportionally increased quantities. Put the sulphur in iron pans supported upon bricks placed in washtubs containing a little water, set it on fire by hot coals or with the aid of a spoonful of alcohol, or by a long fuse set on train as the last opening to the room is closed. Allow the apartment to remain sealed for twenty-four hours. Great care should be taken not to inhale the poisonous fumes in firing the sulphur. After the fumigation, allow free currents of air to pass through the apartment; expose all movable articles for as long time as may be to the sun and the wind out of doors; beat and shake the carpets, hangings, pillows, etc. The disinfectants and the instructions for using them, as given above, are mainly those recommended by the National Board of Health.] Vaults, drains, vessels used in the sick room, etc., should be disinfected by a solution of the second kind; chloride of lime may also be used for the same purpose. Rooms, furniture, and articles that can not be treated with the solution of the first kind, should be thoroughly fumigated with burning sulphur. Where walls are unpapered, re-whitewash with pure, freshly slacked quicklime, adding one pint of the best fluid carbolic acid to every gallon of the fluid whitewash. Powdered stone lime sprinkled on foul, wet places, or placed in pans in damp rooms, will absorb the moisture; and dry, fresh charcoal powder may be combined with it to absorb noxious gases. WHAT TO DO TILL THE DOCTOR COMES. The following instructions are intended simply to aid in an emergency. When accidents or a sudden severe illness occur, there is necessarily, in most cases, a longer or shorter interval before a physician can arrive. These moments are often very precious, and life may depend upon a little knowledge and much self-possession. The instructions are therefore given as briefly as possible, that they may be easily carried in the memory. A few suggestions in regard to common ailments are included. BURNS.--When a person's clothes catch fire, quickly lay him on the ground, wrap him in a coat, mat, shawl, carpet, or in his own garments, as best you can to extinguish the flame. Pour on plenty of water till the half- burned clothing is cooled. Then carry the sufferer to a warm room, lay him on a table or a carpeted floor, and with a sharp knife or scissors remove his clothing. The treatment of a burn consists in protecting from the air. [Footnote: It is a great mistake to suppose that salves will "draw out the fire" of a burn, or heal a bruise or cut. The vital force must unite the divided tissue by the deposit of material and the formation of new cells.] An excellent remedy is to apply soft cloths kept wet with sweet oil, or with tepid water _which contains all the "cooking soda" that it will dissolve_. Afterward dress the wound with carbolic acid salve. Wrap a dry bandage upon the outside. Then remove the patient to a bed and cover warmly. [Footnote: In case of a large burn, lose no delay in bringing a physician. If a burn be near a joint or on the face, even if small, let a doctor see it, and do not be in any hurry about having it healed. Remember that with all the care and skill which can be used, contractions will sometimes take place. The danger to life from a burn or scald is not in proportion to its severity, but to its extent--that is, a small part, such as a hand or a foot, may be burned so deeply as to cripple it for life, and yet not much endanger the general health; but a slight amount of burning, a mere scorching, over two thirds of the body, may prove fatal.-- HOPE.] Apply cool water to a small burn till the smart ceases, and then cover with ointment. Do not remove the dressings until they become stiff and irritating; then take them from a part at a time; dress and cover again quickly. CUTS, WOUNDS, ETC.--The method of stopping the bleeding has been described on page 128. If an artery is severed, a physician should be called at once. If the bleeding is not profuse, apply cold water until it ceases, dry the skin, draw the edges of the wound together, and secure them by strips of adhesive plaster. Protect with an outer bandage. This dressing should remain for several days. In the meantime wet it frequently with cool water to subdue inflammation. When suppuration begins, wash occasionally with tepid water and Castile soap. Dr. Woodbridge, of New York, in a recent address, gave the following directions as to "What to do in case of a sudden wound when the surgeon is not at hand." "An experienced person would naturally close the lips of the wound as quickly as possible, and apply a bandage. If the wound is bleeding freely, but no artery is spouting blood, the first thing to be done is to wash it with water at an ordinary temperature. To every pint of water add either five grains of corrosive sublimate, or two and a half teaspoonfuls of carbolic acid. If the acid is used, add two tablespoonfuls of glycerine, to prevent its irritating the wound. If there is neither of these articles in the house, add four tablespoonfuls of borax to the water. Wash the wound, close it, and apply a compress of a folded square of cotton or linen. Wet it in the solution used for washing the wound and bandage quickly and firmly. If the bleeding is profuse, a sponge dipped in very hot water and wrung out in a dry cloth should be applied as quickly as possible. If this is not available, use ice, or cloths wrung out in ice water. If a large vein or artery is spouting, it must be stopped at once by compression. This may be done by a rubber tube wound around the arm tightly above the elbow or above the knee, where the pulse is felt to beat; or an improvised 'tourniquet' may be used. A hard apple or a stone is placed in a folded handkerchief, and rolled firmly in place. This bandage is applied so that the hard object rests on the point where the artery beats, and is then tied loosely around the arm. A stick is thrust through the loose bandage and turned till the flow of blood ceases." BLEEDING FROM THE NOSE is rarely dangerous, and often beneficial. When it becomes necessary to stop it, sit upright and compress the nostrils between the thumb and forefinger, or with the thumb press upward upon the upper lip. A piece of ice, a snowball, or a compress wet with cold water may be applied to the back of the neck. A SPRAIN [Footnote: "A sprain," says Dr. Hope, in that admirable little book entitled _Till the Doctor comes and How to help Him_, "is a very painful and very serious thing. When you consider that from the tips of the fingers to the wrist, or from the ends of the toes to the leg, there are not less than thirty separate bones, all tied together with straps, cords, and elastic bands, and about twenty hinges, all to be kept in good working order, you will not wonder at sprains being frequent and sometimes serious."] is often more painful and dangerous than a dislocation. Wrap the injured part in flannels wrung out of hot water, and cover with a dry bandage, or, better, with oiled silk. Liniments and stimulating applications are injurious in the first stages, but useful when the inflammation is subdued. _Do not let the limb hang down, keep the joint still_. Without attention to these points, no remedies are likely to be of much service. A sprained limb must be kept quiet, even after all pain has ceased. If used too soon, dangerous consequences may ensue. Many instances have been known in which, from premature use of an injured limb, the inflammation has been renewed and made chronic, the bones at the joint have become permanently diseased, and amputation has been necessitated. DIARRHEA, CHOLERA MORBUS, ETC., are often caused by eating indigestible or tainted food, such as unripe or decaying fruit, or stale vegetables; or by drinking impure water or poisoned milk (see p. 321). Sometimes the disturbance may be traced to a checking of the perspiration; but more frequently to peculiar conditions of the atmosphere, especially in large cities. Such diseases are most prevalent in humid weather, when the days are hot and the nights cold and moist. Especial attention should at such times be paid to the diet. If an attack comes on, ascertain, if possible, its cause. You can thereby aid your physician, and, if the cause be removable, can protect the rest of the household. If the limbs are cold, take a hot bath, followed by a thorough rubbing. Then go to bed and lie quietly on the back. In ordinary cases, rest is better than medicine. If there be pain, have flannels wrung out of hot water applied to the abdomen. [Footnote: If it be difficult to manage the foments, lay a hot plate over the flannels and cover with some protection. By having a change of hot plates, the foments can be kept at a uniform high temperature. This plan will be found useful in all cases where foments are needed.] A mustard poultice will serve the same purpose if more convenient. Eat no fruit, vegetables, pastry, or pork. Use water sparingly. If much thirst exist, give small pieces of ice, or limited quantities of cold tea or toast water. Take particular pains with the diet for some days after the bowel irritation has ceased. CROUP.--There are two kinds of croup--true and false. True croup comes on gradually, and is less likely to excite alarm than false croup, which comes on suddenly. True croup is attended with fever and false membrane in the throat; false croup is not attended with fever or false membrane. True croup is almost always fatal in four or five days; false croup recovers, but is liable to come on again. The great majority of cases of the so- called croup are simply cases of spasm of the glottis. "Croupy children" are those who are liable to these attacks of false croup, which are most frequent during the period of teething.--DR. GEO. M. BEARD. Croup occurs commonly in children between the ages of two and seven years. At this period, if a child has a hollow cough, with more or less fever, flushed face, red watery eyes, and especially _if it have a hoarse voice, and show signs of uneasiness about the throat_, send at once for a doctor. Induce mild vomiting by doses of syrup of ipecac. Put the feet in a hot mustard-and-water bath. Apply hot fomentations, rapidly renewed, to the chest and throat. A "croupy" child should be carefully shielded from all physical excitation, sudden waking from sleep, and any punishment that tends to awaken intense fear or terror. Irritation of the air passages through faulty swallowing in drinking hastily, should be guarded against. Good pure air, warm clothing, and a nourishing diet are indispensable. COMMON SORE THROAT.--Wrap the neck in a wet bandage, and cover with flannel or a clean woolen stocking. Gargle the throat frequently with a solution of a teaspoonful of salt in a pint of water, or thirty grains of chlorate of potash in a wineglass of water. FITS, APOPLEXY, EPILEPSY, ETC.--These call for immediate action and prompt medical attendance. Children who are teething, or troubled with intestinal worms, or from various causes, are sometimes suddenly seized with convulsions. Apply cloths wet in cold water--or, better still, ice wrapped in oiled silk--to the head, and _especially to the back of the neck_, taking care, however, that the ice or wet cloths do not remain too long. Apply mustard plasters to the stomach and legs. A full hot bath is excellent if the cold applications fail. Endeavor to induce vomiting. Seek to determine the cause, and consult with your physician for further guidance. Apoplexy may be distinguished from a fainting fit by the red face, hot skin, and labored breathing; whereas, in a faint, the face and lips lose color, and the skin becomes cold. In many cases, death follows so quickly upon an apoplectic seizure, that little effectual service can be given. Call the nearest physician, loosen the clothing, and raise the head and shoulders, taking care not to bend the head forward on the neck. Keep the head cool. Do not move the patient unnecessarily. In a common fainting fit, give the patient as much air as possible. Lay him flat upon the floor or ground, and keep the crowd away. All that can be done in a fit of epilepsy is to prevent the patient from injuring himself; especially put something in his mouth to keep him from biting his tongue. A cork, a piece of India rubber, or even a tightly- rolled handkerchief, placed between the teeth will answer this purpose. Give the sufferer fresh air; loosen his clothing, and place him in a comfortable position. Epilepsy may be due to various causes,--improper diet, overexcitement, etc. Consult with a physician, and study to avoid the occasion. CONCUSSION OF THE BRAIN generally arises from some contusion of the head, from violent blows, or from a shock received by the whole body in consequence of falling from a height. In any case of injury to the head where insensibility ensues, a doctor should be called at once. Remove the patient to a quiet room; loosen his clothing; strive to restore circulation by gentle friction, using the hand or a cloth for this purpose; apply cold water to the head, and, if the patient's body be cold and his skin clammy, put hot bottles at his feet. Ammonia may be cautiously held to the nose. Beyond this, it is not safe for a non- professional to go, in case of a severe injury to the head. Concussion is more or less serious, according to the injury which the brain has sustained; but even in slight cases, when a temporary dizziness appears to be the only result, careful treatment should be observed both at the time of the injury and afterward. Cases of head injury are often more grave in their consequences than in their immediate symptoms. Sometimes the patient appears to be getting better when really he is worse. Rest and quiet should be observed for several weeks after an accident which has in any way affected the brain. TOOTHACHE AND EARACHE.--Insert in the hollow tooth cotton wet with laudanum, spirits of camphor, or chloroform. When the nerve is exposed, wet it with creosote or carbolic acid. Hot cloths or a hot brick wrapped in cloth and held to the face will often relieve the toothache. In a similar manner treat the ear, wetting the cloth in hot water, and letting the vapor pass into the ear. CHOKING.--Ordinarily a smart blow between the shoulders, causing a compression of the chest and a sudden expulsion of the air from the lungs, will throw out the offending substance. If the person can swallow, and the object be small, give plenty of bread or potato, and water to wash it down. Press upon the tongue with a spoon, when, perhaps, you may see the object, and draw it out with your thumb and finger, or a blunt pair of scissors. If neither of these remedies avail, give an emetic of syrup of ipecac or mustard and warm water. FROSTBITES are frequently so sudden that one is not aware when they occur. In Canada it is not uncommon for persons meeting in the street to say, "Mind, sir, your nose looks whitish." The blood cools and runs slowly, and the blood vessels become choked and swollen. _Keep from the heat_. Rub the part quickly with snow, if necessary for hours, till the natural color is restored. If one is benumbed with cold, take him into a cold room, remove the wet clothes, rub the body dry, cover with blankets, and give a little warm tea or other suitable drink. On recovering, let him be brought to a fire gradually. [Footnote: If you are caught in a snowstorm, look for a snow bank in the lee of a hill, or a wood out of the wind, or a hollow in the plain filled with snow. Scrape out a hole big enough to creep into, and the drifting snow will keep you warm. Men and animals have been preserved after days of such imprisonment. Remember that if you give way to sleep in the open field, you will never awake.] FEVERS, and many acute diseases, are often preceded by a loss of appetite, headache, shivering, "pains in the bones," indisposition to work, etc. In such cases, sponge with tepid water, and rub the body till all aglow. Go to bed, place hot bricks to the feet, take nothing but a little gruel or beef tea, and drink moderately of warm, cream-of-tartar water. If you do not feel better the next morning, call a physician. If that be impossible, take a dose of castor oil or Epsom salts. SUNSTROKE is a sudden prostration caused by intense heat. The same effect is produced by the burning rays of the sun and the fierce fire of a furnace. When a person falls under such circumstance, place your hand on his chest. If the skin be cool and moist, it is not a sunstroke; but if it be dry and "biting hot," there can be no mistake. Time is now precious. At once carry the sufferer to the nearest pump or hydrant, and dash cold water on the head and chest until consciousness is restored.--DR. H. C. WOOD. To prevent sunstroke, wear a porous hat, and in the top of it place a wet handkerchief; also drink freely of water, not ice cold, to induce abundant perspiration. ASPHYXIA, or apparent death, whether produced by drowning, suffocation, bad air, or coal gas, requires very similar treatment. Send immediately for blankets, dry clothing, and a physician. Treat upon the spot, if the weather be not too unfavorable. 1. Loosen the clothing about the neck and chest, separate the jaws, and place between them a cork or bit of wood. 2. Turn the patient on his face, place his arm under his forehead to raise the head, and press heavily with both hands upon the ribs to squeeze out the water. 3. Place the patient on his back, wipe out the mouth and nostrils, and secure the tongue from falling backward over the throat. Kneel at his head, grasp his arms firmly above the elbows, and pull them gently upward until they meet over the head, in order to draw air into the lungs; reverse this movement to expel the air. Repeat the process about fifteen times per minute. Alternate pressure upon the chest, and blowing air into the mouth through a quill or with a pair of bellows, may aid your efforts. Use snuff or smelling salts, or pass hartshorn under the nose. Do not lose hope quickly. Life has been restored after five hours of suspended animation. [Footnote: Another simple method of artificial respiration is described in the _British Medical Journal_. The body of the patient is laid on the back, with clothes loosened, and the mouth and nose wiped; two bystanders pass their right hands under the body at the level of the waist, and grasp each other's hand, then raise the body until the tips of the fingers and the toes of the subject alone touch the ground; count fifteen rapidly; then lower the body flat to the ground, and press the elbows to the side hard; count fifteen again; then raise the body again for the same length of time; and so on, alternately raising and lowering. The head, arms, and legs are to be allowed to dangle down freely when the body is raised.] 4. When respiration is established, wrap the patient in dry, warm clothes, and rub the limbs under the blankets or over the dry clothing energetically _toward the heart_. Apply heated flannels, bottles of hot water, etc., to the limbs, and mustard plasters [Footnote: The best mustard poultice is the paper plaster now sold by every druggist. It is always ready, and can be carried by a traveler. It has only to be dipped in water, and applied at once.] to the chest. FOREIGN BODIES IN THE EAR.--Insects may be killed by dropping a little sweet oil into the ear. Beans peas, etc., may generally be removed by so holding the head that the affected ear will be toward the ground, and then _cautiously_ syringing tepid water into it from below. Do not use much force lest the tympanum be injured. If this fail, dry the ear, stick the end of a little linen swab into thick glue, let the patient lie on one side, put this into the ear until it touches the substance, keep it there three quarters of an hour while it hardens, and then draw them all out together. Be careful that the glue does not touch the skin at any point, and that you are at work upon the right ear. Children often deceive one as to the ear which is affected. FOREIGN BODIES IN THE NOSE, such as beans, cherry pits, etc., may frequently be removed by closing the opposite nostril, and then blowing into the child's mouth forcibly. The air, unable to escape except through the affected nostril, will sweep the obstruction before it. ANTIDOTES TO POISONS. ACIDS: _Nitric_ (aqua fortis), _hydrochloric_ (muriatic), _sulphuric_ (oil of vitriol), _oxalic_, etc.--Drink a little water to weaken the acid, or, still better, take strong soapsuds. Stir some magnesia in water, and drink freely. If the magnesia be not at hand, use chalk, soda, lime, whiting, soap, or even knock a piece of plaster from the wall, and scraping off the white outside coat pound it fine, mix with milk or water, and drink at once. Follow with warm water, or flaxseed tea. ALKALIES: _Potash, soda, lye, ammonia_ (hartshorn).--Drink weak vinegar or lemon juice. Follow with castor or linseed oil, or thick cream. ANTIMONY: _Antimonial wine, tartar emetic_, etc.--Drink strong, green tea, and in the meantime chew the dry leaves. The direct antidote is a solution of nutgall or oak bark. ARSENIC: _Cobalt, Scheele's green, fly powder, ratsbane_, etc.--Give _plenty of milk, whites of eggs_, or induce vomiting by mustard and warm water; [Footnote: See that the mustard is well mixed with the water, in the proportion of about half an ounce of the former to a pint of the latter.] or even soapsuds. BITE OF A SNAKE OR A MAD DOG.--Tie a bandage above the wound, if on a limb. Wash the bite thoroughly, and, if possible, let the person suck it strongly. Rub some lunar caustic or potash in the wound, or heat the point of a small poker or a steel sharpener white hot, and press it into the bite for a moment. It will scarcely cause pain, and will be effectual in arresting the absorption of the poison, unless a vein has been struck. COPPER: _Sulphate of copper_ (blue vitriol), _acetate of copper_ (verdigris).--Take whites of eggs or soda. Use milk freely. LAUDANUM: _Opium, paregoric, soothing cordial, soothing syrup_, etc. --Give an emetic at once of syrup of ipecac, or mustard and warm water, etc. After vomiting, use strong coffee freely. _Keep the patient awake_ by pinching, pulling the hair, walking about, dashing water in the face, and any expedient possible. LEAD: _White lead, acetate of lead_ (sugar of lead), _red lead_.--Give an emetic of syrup of ipecac, or mustard and warm water, or salt and water. Follow with a dose of Epsom salts. MATCHES: _Phosphorus_.--Give magnesia, chalk, whiting, or even flour in water, and follow with mucilaginous drinks. MERCURY: _Calomel, chloride of mercury_ (corrosive sublimate, bug poison), _red precipitate_.--Drink milk copiously. Take the whites of eggs, or stir flour in water, and use freely. NITRATE OF SILVER (lunar caustic).--Give salt and water, and follow with castor oil. NITRATE OF POTASH (saltpeter, niter).--Give mustard and warm water, or syrup of ipecac. Follow with flour and water, and cream or sweet oil. PRUSSIC ACID (oil of bitter almonds), _cyanide of potassium_.--Take a teaspoonful of hartshorn in a pint of water. Apply smelling salts to the nose, and dash cold water in the face. STING OF AN INSECT.--Apply a little hartshorn or spirits of camphor, or soda moistened with water, or a paste of clean earth and saliva. SULPHATE OF IRON (green vitriol).--Give syrup of ipecac, or mustard and warm water, or any convenient emetic; then magnesia and water. X. SELECTED READINGS TO ILLUSTRATE AND SUPPLEMENT THE TEXT. _Arranged in order of the subjects to which they refer_. "Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh, and consider." LORD BACON. "He who learns the rules of wisdom without conforming to them in his life, is like a man who labored in his fields but did not sow." SAADI. SELECTED READINGS. _The figures indicate the pages in the text upon which the corresponding subjects will be found_. THE SKELETON. MAN, AS COMPARED WITH OTHER VERTEBRATE ANIMALS (p. 3).--Man, the lord of the animal kingdom, is constructed after the same type as the cat that purrs at his feet, the ox that he eats, the horse that bears his burden, the bird that sings in his cage, the snake that crawls across his pathway, the toad that hides in his garden, and the fish that swims in his aquarium. All these are but modifications of one creative thought, showing how the Almighty Worker delights in repeating the same chord, with infinite variations. There are marked physical peculiarities, however, which distinguish man from the other mammals. Thus, the position of the spinal opening in the middle third of the base of the skull, thereby balancing the head and admitting an upright posture; the sigmoid S-curve of the vertebral column; the ability of opposing the well-developed thumb to the fingers; the shortened foot, the sole resting flat on the ground; the size and position of the great toe; the length of the arms, reaching halfway from the hip to the knees; the relatively great development of the brain; the freedom of the anterior extremities from use in locomotion, and the consequent erect and biped position. In addition, man is the only mammal that truly walks; that is endowed with the power of speech; and that is cosmopolitan, readily adapting himself to extremes of heat and cold, and making his home in all parts of the globe.--STEELE'S _Popular Zoology_. FIG. 68. [Illustration: _Skeleton of Orang, Chimpanzee, and Man._] UNION OF FRACTURES (p. 8).--In the course of a week after a fracture, there is a soft yet firm substance, something between ligament and cartilage in consistence, which surrounds the broken extremities of the bone, and adheres to it above and below. The neighboring muscles and tendons are closely attached to its surface, and the fractured extremities of the bone lie, as it were, loose in a cavity in the center, with a small quantity of vascular albumen, resembling a semitransparent jelly. Here, then, is a kind of splint which nature contrives, and which is nearly completed within a week from the date of the accident. We call this new formation the _callus_. This process goes on, the surrounding substance becoming thicker and of still firmer consistence. In the course of a few days more, the thin jelly which lay in contact with the broken ends of the bone has disappeared, and its place is supplied by a callus continuous with that which formed the original capsule. This is the termination of the first stage of curative progress. The broken ends of the bones are now completely imbedded in a mass of vascular organized substance or callus, something between gristle and cartilage in consistence; and as yet there are no traces of bony matter in it. At this time, if you remove the adventitious substance, you will find the broken ends of bone retaining exactly their original figure and presenting the same appearance as immediately after the fracture took place. At the end of about three weeks, if you make a section of the callus, minute specks of earthy matter are visible, deposited in it here and there, and at the same time some of the callus, appears to disappear on the outside, so that the neighboring muscles and tendons no longer adhere to it. The specks of bone become larger and more numerous until they extend into each other; and thus by degrees the whole of the callus is converted into bone. Even at this period, however, there is not absolute bony union, for although the whole of the callus has become bone, it is not yet identified with the old bone, and you might still pick it off with a penknife, leaving the broken extremities not materially altered from what they were immediately after the injury. This may be regarded as the end of the second stage of the process by which a fracture is repaired. Now a third series of changes begins to take place. The broken extremities of the bones become intimately united by bony matter passing from one to the other. The mass of new bone on the outside, formed by the ossification of the callus, being no longer wanted, is absorbed; by degrees the whole of it disappears, and the bone is left having the same dimensions which it had before the occurrence of the accident. The process of union is completed in young persons sooner than in those advanced in life; in the upper extremities sooner than in the lower; and in smaller animals more speedily than in man. In human subjects a broken arm or forearm will be healed in from six to eight weeks, while a leg or thigh will occupy nine or ten weeks.--SIR B. C. BRODIE. FIG. 69. [Illustration: FIG. 69. a. _Monkey's Hand and Foot._ b. _Human Hand and Foot._] THE HAND AND THE FOOT (p. 2l).--_Man Compared with the_ _Ape_.-- The peculiar prehensible power possessed by the hand of man is chiefly dependent upon the size and power of the thumb, which is more developed in him than it is in the highest apes. The thumb of the human hand can be brought into exact opposition to the extremities of all the fingers, whether singly or in combination; while in those quadrumana which most nearly approach man, the thumb is so short, and the fingers so much elongated, that their tips can scarcely be brought into opposition; and the thumb and the fingers are so weak that they can never be opposed to each other with any degree of force. Hence, though well suited to cling round bodies of a certain size, such as the small branches of trees, the anterior extremities of the quadrumana can neither seize very minute objects with such precision nor support large ones with such firmness as are essential to the dexterous performance of a variety of operations for which the hand of man is admirably adapted. The human foot is, in proportion to the size of the whole body, larger, broader, and stronger than that of any other mammal, save the kangaroo. The surface of the astragalus (ankle bone) which articulates with the tibia, looks almost vertically upward, and hardly at all inward, when the sole is flat upon the ground; and the lateral facets are more nearly at right angles to this surface than in any ape. The plane of the foot is directed at right angles to that of the leg; and its sole is concave, so that the weight of the body falls on the summit of an arch, of which the os calcis (heel bone) and the metatarsal bones form the two points of support. This arched form of the foot, and the contact of the whole plantar surface with the ground, are particularly noticeable in man, most of the apes having the os calcis small, straight, and more or less raised from the ground, while they touch, when standing erect, with the outer side only of the foot. The function of the _hallux_, or great toe, moreover, is strikingly contrasted in man and the ape; for, while in the latter it is nearly as opposable as the thumb, and can be used to almost the same extent as an instrument of prehension, it chiefly serves in the former to extend the basis of support, and to advance the body in progression.--DR. W. B. CARPENTER. FIG. 70. [Illustration: _The Leg in standing._] _The Natural Flexibility of the Toes, and How it is Destroyed_.--We often admire the suppleness of the fingers by means of which we can perform such a variety of acts with swiftness and delicacy. Did it ever occur to you that the toes, which in most feet seem incapable of a free and graceful motion, even when they are not stiffened and absolutely deformed by the compression of the modern shoe, are also provided by Nature with a considerable degree of flexibility? The phalanges of the toes, though more feebly developed, have really the same movements among themselves as those of the fingers, and, in case of necessity, their powers can be strengthened and educated to a surprising degree. There are well-known instances of persons who, born without hands, or having lost them by accident, have successfully supplied the deficiency by a cultivated use of their feet. Some of these have distinguished themselves in the world of art. Who that has been so fortunate as to visit the Picture Gallery in Antwerp on some fine morning when the armless artist, M. Felu, was working at his easel, can forget the wonderful dexterity with which he wielded his brushes, mixed the oils on his palette, and shaded the colors on his canvas, all with his agile feet? The writer well remembers the ease and grace with which, at the close of a pleasant interview, this cultured man put the tip of his foot into his coat pocket, drew out a visiting card, wrote his name and address upon it, and presented it to her between his toes! Contrast this intelligent adaptation of a delicate physical mechanism with the barbarous treatment it too commonly receives. The Chinese are at least consistent. They cripple and distort the feet of their highborn daughters until they crush out all the power and gracefulness of nature in the artificial formation of what they term a "golden lily"; but they never expect these golden-lilied women to make their withered feet useful. With us, on the contrary, every girl would like to walk well, to display in her general movements something of the "poetry of motion"; yet the absurd and arbitrary fashion of our foot gear not only makes an elastic step one of the rarest of accomplishments, but renders oftentimes the simple act of walking a painful burden. The calluses, corns, bunions, ingrowing nails, and repulsive deformities that are caused by and hidden under the narrow- toed, high-heeled instruments of torture we often wear for fashion's sake are uncomfortable suggestions that our practices are not greatly in advance of those of our Celestial sisters. Dowie, a sensible Scotch shoemaker, satirizes the shape of a fashionable boot as suited only to "the foot of a goose with the great toe in the middle." The error which may have led to the adoption of this conventional shape appears to lie in a misconception of the natural formation of the foot, and of the relation of the two feet to each other. It is true, that when the toes are covered with their soft parts, the second toe appears a little longer than the first, and this appearance, emphasized and exaggerated, is perhaps responsible for a practical assumption that Nature intended an even-sided, tapering foot. On the contrary, the natural foot gradually expands in breadth from the instep to the toes and, in the skeleton itself, the great toe is the longest. "There is no law of beauty," says Dr. Ellis, "which makes it necessary to reduce the foot to even-sided symmetry. An architect required to provide more space on one than on the other side of a building would not seek to conceal or even to minimize the difference; he would seek rather to accentuate it, and give the two sides of the structure distinctive features....Moreover, the sense of symmetry is, or ought to be, satisfied by the exact correspondence of the two feet, which, taken jointly, may be described as the two halves of an unequally expanded dome."--E. B. S. THE MUSCLES. ATTACHMENT OF THE MUSCLES TO THE BONES (p. 30).--One of the two bones to which a muscle is attached is usually less mobile than the other, so that when the muscle shortens, the latter is drawn down against the former. In such a case, the point of attachment of the muscle to the less mobile bone is called its origin, while the point to which it is fixed on the more mobile bone is called its attachment....A muscle is not always extended between two contiguous bones. Occasionally, passing over one bone it attaches itself to the next. This is the case with several muscles which, originating from the pelvic bone, pass across the upper thigh bone, and attach themselves to the lower thigh bone. In such cases the muscle is capable of two different movements: it can either stretch the knee, previously bent, so that the upper and the lower thigh bones are in a straight line; or it can raise the whole extended leg yet higher, and bring it nearer to the pelvis. But the points of origin and of attachment of muscles may exchange offices. When both legs stand firmly on the ground, the above-mentioned muscles are unable to raise the thigh; instead, on shortening, they draw down the pelvis, which now presents the more mobile point, and thus bend forward the whole upper part of the body. One important consequence of the attachment of the muscles to the bones is the extension thus effected. If the limb of a dead body is placed in the position which it ordinarily occupied during life, and if one end of a muscle is then separated from its point of attachment, it draws itself back, and becomes shorter. The same thing happens during life, as is observable in the operation of cutting the tendons, as practiced by surgeons to cure curvatures. The result being the same during life and after death this phenomenon is evidently due to the action of elasticity. It thus appears that the muscles are stretched by reason of their attachment to the skeleton, and that, on account of their elasticity, they are continually striving to shorten. Now, when several muscles are attached to one bone in such a way that they pull in opposite directions, the bone must assume a position in which the tension of all the muscles is balanced, and all these tensions must combine to press together the socketed parts with a certain force, thus evidently contributing to the strength of the socket connection....This balanced position of all the limbs, which thus depends on the elasticity of the muscles, may be observed during sleep, for then all active muscular action ceases. It will be observed that the limbs are then generally slightly bent, so that they form very obtuse angles to each other. Not all muscles are, however, extended between bones. The tendons of some pass into soft structures, such as the muscles of the face. In this case, also, the different muscles exercise a mutual power of extension, though it is but slight, and they thus effect a definite balanced position of the soft parts, as may be observed in the position of the mouth opening in the face.--ROSENTHAL, _Muscles and Nerves_. MUSCULAR FIBERS (p. 3l).--The anatomical composition of flesh is very similar in every kind of creature, whether it be the muscle of the ox or of the fly; that is to say, there are certain tubes which are filled with minute parts or elements, and the adhesion of the tubes together makes up the substance of the flesh. These tubes may be represented grossly by imagining the finger of a glove, to be called the sarcolemma, or muscle- fiber pouch, and this to be so small as not to be apparent to the naked eye, but filled with nuclei and the juices peculiar to each animal. Hundreds of such fingers attached together would represent a bundle of muscular fibers. The tubes are of fine tissue, but are tolerably permanent; whilst the contents are in direct communication with the circulating blood and pursue an incessant course of chemical change and physical renewal.--EDWARD SMITH, _Foods_. FIG. 71. [Illustration: _Smooth Muscle Fibers (300 times enlarged)._] THE SMOOTH MUSCLE FIBERS consist of long, spindle-shaped cells, the ends of which are frequently spirally twisted, and in the center of which exists a long, rod-shaped kernel or nucleus. Unlike striated muscle, they do not form separate muscular masses, but occur scattered, or arranged in more or less dense layers or strata, in almost all organs. [Footnote: An instance of a considerable accumulation of smooth, muscle fibers is afforded by the muscle pouch of birds, which, with the exception of the outer and inner skin coverings, consists solely of these fibers collected in extensive layers.] Arranged in regular order, they very frequently form widely extending membranes, especially in such tube-shaped structures as the blood vessels, the intestine, etc., the walls of which are composed of these smooth muscle fibers. In such cases they are usually arranged in two layers, one of which consists of ring-shaped fibers surrounding the tube, while the other consists of fibers arranged parallel to the tube. When, therefore, these muscle fibers contract, they are able both to reduce the circumference and to shorten the length of the walls of the tube in which they occur. This is of great importance in the case of the smaller arteries, in which the smooth muscle fibers, arranged in the form of a ring, are able greatly to contract, or even entirely to close the vessels, thus regulating the current of blood through the capillaries. In other cases, as in the intestine, they serve to set the contents of the tubes in motion. In the latter cases the contraction does not take place simultaneously throughout the length of the tube; but, commencing at one point, it continually propagates itself along fresh lengths of the tube, so that the contents are slowly driven forward. As a rule, such parts as are provided only with smooth muscle fibers are not voluntarily movable, while striated muscle fibers are subject to the will. The latter have, therefore, been also distinguished as voluntary, the former as involuntary muscles. The heart, however, exhibits an exception, for, though it is provided with striated muscle fibers, the will has no direct influence upon it, its motions being exerted and regulated independently of the will. Moreover, the muscle fibers of the heart are peculiar in that they are destitute of sarcolemma, the naked muscle fibers directly touching each other. This is so far interesting that direct irritations, if applied to some point of the heart, are transferred to all the other muscle fibers. In addition to this, the muscle fibers of the heart are branched, but such branched fibers occur also in other places; for example, in the tongue of the frog, where they are branched like a tree. Smooth muscle fibers being, therefore, not subject to the will, are caused to contract, either by local irritation, such as the pressure of the matter contained within the tubes, or by the nervous system. The contractions of striated muscle fibers are effected, in the natural course of organic life, only by the influence of the nerves.--ROSENTHAL. OVEREXERTION AND PERSONAL IMPRUDENCE (p. 40).--Among children there is little danger of overexertion. When a little child reaches the point of healthy fatigue, he usually collapses into rest and sleep. But with youth comes the spirit of ambition and emulation. A lad, for instance, is determined to win a race, to throw his opponent in a football scramble, to lift a heavier weight than his strength will warrant; or a girl is stimulated by the passion she may possess for piano playing, painting, dancing, or tennis. The moment of exhaustion comes, but the end is not accomplished, and the will goads on the weary muscles, perhaps to one supreme effort which terminates in a sharp and sudden illness, perhaps to days and weeks of continued and incessant application, during which the whole system is undermined. Thus is laid the foundation for a feeble and suffering maturity. To elderly people, overexertion has peculiar dangers, dependent largely upon the changes which gradually take place in the tissues of the body. The walls of the blood vessels become less and less elastic, and more and more brittle, as life advances, until at last they are ready to give way from any severe or unusual pressure. We constantly see old people hastening their death by personal imprudence. An old gentleman running to catch the morning train; an old farmer hastening to turn the strayed sheep out of a cornfield; the old sportsman having a last run with the hounds; the last pull at the oars; the last attempt of old age to play at vigorous manhood. A prominent American physician has said that between the ages of forty and fifty every wise man will have ceased to run to "catch" trains or street cars; and that between fifty and sixty he will have permanently discarded haste of all kinds. Equal precautions should be observed by both young and old, but especially by those advanced in life, in regard to extremes of heat, cold, or storm. William Cullen Bryant, by exposing himself to a scorching sun and refusing to permit a friend to protect him with an umbrella while delivering an address in Central Park, received injuries to his system that carried him to his grave. Ralph Waldo Emerson, by standing in a chilling wind, contracted a cold and died. George Dawson, by going thoughtlessly into a freezing atmosphere from the sweltering rooms of a crowded reception, took cold which resulted in pneumonia and death. Matthew Arnold, for years a sufferer from heart difficulty, in a single instance neglected the advice of his physician not to indulge in any violent exercise, made repeated attempts and finally succeeded in jumping a fence, and in a few hours was a dead man. Roscoe Conkling braved the most terrible blizzard ever known in the east and sacrificed his life. And yet, these were all men of exceptional prudence. Probably no other five persons in the world of like surroundings and vocations were more careful of their health. In an unguarded moment their prudence left them, and they paid the terrible penalty.--_Compiled_. EFFECTS OF INSUFFICIENT OUTDOOR EXERCISE UPON THE YOUNG (p. 41).--Children deprived of adequate outdoor exercise are always delicate, pale, and tender; or, in a figurative sense, they are like the sprig of vegetation in a dark, dank hole,--bleached and spindling....An inactive indoor life is one of the most effectual ways of weakening the young body. It renders the growth unnaturally soft and tender, and thus susceptible to harm from the slightest causes. It hinders the garnering of strength necessary for a long life, and gives to the germs of disease a resistless power over an organization so weak and deficient....Measles, scarlet fever, and diphtheria find among such a congenial soil, and run riot among the elements of the body held together by so frail a thread....Such children are always at the mercy of the weather. Colds and coughs are standard disorders in winter, headaches and habitual languor in summer....The scapegoat for this result is the climate: if that was only better, mothers are sure their children's health would also be better. No, it would not be better: no earthly climate is good enough to preserve health and strength under such unnatural training....Children of the laboring classes, often dirty and imperfectly clad, seldom have colds, simply for the reason that, for the greater part of the day, they have the freedom of the streets. It is not the dirt, it is not the rags, _but the life-giving force of an active outdoor life_ that renders such children so strong and healthy. --BLACK, _Ten Laws of Health_. POPULAR MODES OF OUTDOOR EXERCISE (p. 42).--_Walking_.--Every person has his own particular step, caused by the conformity, shape, and length of his bones, and the height of his body. Such a thing, then, as a regulation step is unnatural, and any attempt at equalizing the step of individuals of different heights must result in a loss of power. The moment, also, that walking comes to be _uphill_, fatigue is sensibly increased. The center of gravity of the body is changed, and the muscular force necessary to provide for the change causes the fixing of the diaphragm, and a rigid condition of many muscles. Respiration is interfered with, owing to the fixing of the diaphragm, and the heart becomes affected thereby. A person with a sensitive or diseased heart can, during a walk, tell when the slightest rise in the ground occurs. We make climbing more exhausting from the habit we have of suspending the breath. Let the reader _hold his breath_ and run up twenty-four steps of a stair, and then perform the same act _breathing freely_ and deeply. It will be found that by the first act marked breathlessness will be induced, whereas by the latter the effect is much less. This management of the breath constitutes the difference between the beginner and the experienced athlete. The enormous increase of the quantity of air consumed during exercise will at once bring home a number of lessons. One is, that exercise is best taken in the open air, and not in gymnasia; another, that free play to act for the regions of the chest and abdomen must be given. On no account must a tight belt be worn around the soft-walled abdomen. If a belt is preferred to braces, let it be applied below the top of the haunch bone, where the bones can resist the pressure. Whatever may be the pastimes indulged in by young men, walking should never be neglected. The oarsman will become "stale" unless the method of exercise is varied; the gymnast will develop the upper part of his body, while his lower extremities will remain spindleshanks. So with all other forms of exercise; success, in any form of game, sport, or gymnastic training, can not be attained unless walking be freely taken. _Skating_ is simply an exaggerated swinging walk, with this difference, that the foot on which one rests is not stationary, but moves along at a rapid rate. The benefit to the circulation, respiration, and digestion is even greater in skating than in walking. The dangers from skating are: 1. The giving way of the ice. Great caution should be used in regard to the safety of a frozen pond or river. 2. Taking cold from becoming overheated, and from subsequent inactive exposure. Physiological knowledge will teach people that, when they begin to skate, outer wraps should be laid aside, and again put on when skating is finished. 3. Sprains, especially of the ankle, and other minor accidents arising from falls. Ankle boots with strong uppers should be worn during skating. Those who have weak ankles ought to wear skates with ankle straps and buckles, acme skates being relegated to those who are not afraid of going "over their foot." _Rowing_.--The muscles employed in rowing may be summed up under two heads--those that are used in the forward swing, and those used in the backward. In the _forward_ swing all the joints of the lower extremity, the hip, knee, and ankle, are flexed; the shoulder is brought forward; the elbow is straightened; and the wrist is first extended and then flexed, in feathering the oar. The body is bent forward by the muscles in front of the abdomen and spinal column. In the _backward_ movement the reverse takes place; the lower extremity, the hip, knee, and ankle are straightened; the shoulder is pulled back; the elbow is flexed; and the wrist is held straight. The body is bent backward by the muscles at the lower part of the back, and by those of the spine in general. It will be seen that the enormous number of joints put into use, and the varying positions employed, call into play nearly every muscle of the limbs and trunk. Rowing gives more work to the muscles of the back than any other kind of exercise. This is of the first importance to both men and women, but especially to women. The chief work of the muscles of the back is to support the body in the erect position, and the better they are developed the better will the carriage be, and the less likelihood of stooping shoulders, contracted chests, and the like. Now, the work of the muscles in supporting the body is largely relegated in women to the stays, and, in consequence, the muscles undergo wasting and fatty degeneration, in fact, atrophy; so that when the stays are left off, the muscles are unfit to support the body. Rowing exercises these muscles condemned to waste, and imparts a natural carriage to the girl's frame. In rowing, as in horseback riding, the clothing should be loose, stays left off, and flannels worn next the skin. The dress itself should be of woolen, and there should always be in the boat a large wrap to use when one stops rowing. The following practical rules should be observed by rowers: 1. Never row after a full meal. 2. Stop when fatigue comes on. 3. _Allow the breath to escape while the oar is in the water_. A novice usually holds his breath at each stroke, and pulls so rapidly that in a few minutes he becomes breathless, and is forced to stop. Not only is this uncomfortable, but it is dangerous. In the case of both young and old, it may give rise to an abdominal rupture (hernia), dilation of the cavities of the heart, rupture of a heart valve, varicose veins, etc. Instead of fixing the diaphragm and holding the breath during the time of pulling, as novices are apt to do, _do exactly the opposite_. Let the diaphragm go loose, and allow the breath to escape. 4. Change the clothing from the skin outward as soon as the day's rowing is finished. 5. Before retiring for the night, have a warm bath, temperature 92° Fahr. This is a specific against the aches and muscular stiffness which often follow a long pull on the water. _Swimming_.--A word of warning is necessary in regard to those learning to swim in rivers. Boys at school, when they take to river bathing, often carry it to a dangerous extent. They get into the water, and now in, now out on the bank, sometimes remain for hours. This may take place day after day, and if the weather continues warm and the holidays last long enough, the boy may reduce himself to the lowest ebb of feebleness, and possibly develop the seeds of latent disease. He may even die from the effects of this prolonged immersion and madcap exposure. The muscular exertion undergone during swimming, especially by those who swim only occasionally, is very great. The experienced swimmer conserves his strength, as do proficients at all feats, but the occasional swimmer, like the occasional rower, puts forth treble the energy required, and soon becomes exhausted. In the first place, it is a new act for the muscles to perform; they are taken off from the beaten tracks, and are grouped together in new associations; hence they lack adjustment and adaptation. Again, as in other feats for which one is untrained, the heart and lungs do not work in time. Ease and speed in swimming depend upon the attainment of harmony in the working of the muscles, heart, and lungs. Diving is an accomplishment attached to swimming, which involves many dangers, and is well-nigh useless. The customary dive off a springboard into the shallow water of a swimming bath is dangerous in the extreme. The only place where diving should be attempted is into deep water, at least fifteen or twenty feet, where there is no danger of striking the bottom. _Lawn Tennis_.--Of all modern inventions in the way of games, lawn tennis is the best. The dangers attendant on lawn tennis are:-- 1. Overexertion, causing rupture and deranged circulation, especially in the case of those with weak hearts, or those who, being out of condition, or too fat, suddenly engage in the game too long or too violently. 2. Rupture of the _tendon of Achilles_, from taking a sudden bound. In such an accident the subject falls down, with a sensation as if struck with a club on the leg. 3. Rupture of one of the heads of the biceps in the arm. Here the arm drops helplessly, and a muscular knob rises up on the inner and upper part of the arm. 4. The tennis arm. This trouble arises from the method of manipulating the bat. The pain is felt over the upper end of the radius. Many of the strains, ruptured tendons, and torn muscles in tennis players are caused by the want of heels to tennis shoes. As, ordinarily, we walk on heels which vary from half an inch to an inch, there must be a considerable extra strain thrown on the muscles of the calf of the leg, when the heels are left off. Especially during a sudden spring is this apparent, when to rise from off the heels on to the toes requires a greatly increased force. Tennis shoes should therefore have fairly deep, broad heels. _Horseback Riding_ is a mixed exercise, partly active and partly passive, the lower parts of the body being in some measure employed, while the upper parts in easy cantering are almost wholly relaxed. It is peculiarly suited to dyspeptics, from its direct action upon the abdominal viscera, the contents of which are stimulated by the continued agitation and succussion, consequent on the motion in riding. _Bicycling and Tricycling_.--While strongly recommending bicycling and tricycling to both men and women in health, those suffering from heart or lung affections, ruptures, scrofula, joint disease, or like maladies, should not indulge in them without medical sanction. For abdominal complaints, such as dyspepsia, congestion of the liver, constipation, and the like, the exercise is excellent. _Baseball_ is an essentially American game, which brings into play nearly all the muscles of the body. Its chief danger lies in being hit by the hard, forcibly pitched ball, and, for weak persons, in the violence of the exercise. _Football_ is a rough-and-tumble game, suited only to that class of boys and men, who, brimming over with animal life, take small heed of the accidents liable to occur. _Light and Heavy Gymnastics_.--For wet weather, and when outdoor exercise is not practicable, gymnastics are most advisable. Boys and girls, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, often shoot up and become tall and lanky; they want filling out, and are troubled with growing pains. Even men, when tall and thin, are seldom very erect, their muscles are too weak; and there is only one way of overcoming this weakness--by exercising them. Nothing more is wanted than a pair of very light Indian clubs, a pair of light wooden dumb bells, a long wooden rod, and a pair of wooden rings,--the last for combined exercises. Indeed, a systematic motion of the body itself, without any extra artificial resistance, is quite sufficient for the purposes of physical education. In nearly all our large cities are found gymnasia, provided with competent instructors, and every facility for both light and heavy gymnastics. Exercise in a gymnasium is open to the objection of being too brief and too severe, and of simply causing an increase of muscular development. Besides, it is generally unequal in its results, being better adapted to the cultivation of strength in the upper extremities and portion of the body than in the lower. Nevertheless, during inclement weather, or with persons in whom the muscles of the arms and chest are defective, moderate gymnastic exercise is far better than no exercise.--_Compiled_. (_Mostly from "The Influence of Exercise" in The Book of Health_.) THE SKIN. THE HAIR (p. 52).--_Baldness, and its Causes_.--Various reasons are assigned for the baldness which is so prevalent among comparatively young men in our country. One writer says: "The premature baldness and grayness of the Americans as a people is in great measure owing to the nonobservance of hygienic rules, and to excess of mental and physical labor in a climate foreign to the race." Others attribute it to the close unventilated hats commonly worn by men. Dr. Nichols, in the _Popular Science News_, gives his opinion thus: "In our view, it is largely due to modern methods of treatment of the hair and scalp. The erroneous idea prevails, that the skin which holds the hair follicles and the delicate secretory organs of the scalp must be kept as 'clean,' so to speak, as the face or hands; consequently young men patronize barbers or hairdressers, and once or twice a week they have what is called a 'shampoo' operation performed. This consists in a thorough scouring of the hair and scalp with dilute ammonia, water, and soap, so that a heavy 'lather' is produced, and the glandular secretions, which are the natural protection of the hair, and promotive of its growth, are saponified and removed. No act could be more directly destructive of a healthy growth of hair than this....Women do not shampoo or wash the hair as often as the other sex, and consequently they are in a large degree exempt from baldness in middle life. It is true, however, that many women in cities make frequent visits to the hairdressers, and subject their tresses to the 'scouring' process. If this becomes common, it will not be long before baldness will overtake the young mothers as well as the fathers, and the time will be hastened when even children will have no hair to destroy with ammonia or other caustic cosmetics. "The advice we have to offer to young men and maidens is,--let your hair alone; keep at a safe distance from hair-dressing rooms and drug shops, where are sold oils, alkaline substances, alcoholic mixtures, etc., for use upon the hair. They are all pernicious, and will do you harm. The head and hair may be washed occasionally with soft, tepid water, without soap of any kind. As a rule, the only appliances needed in the care of the hair are good combs and brushes: and they should not be used harshly, so as to wound the scalp. Avoid all 'electric' and wire-made brushes. No electricity can be stored in a hairbrush: if it could be, it is not needed." _Sudden Blanching of the Hair from Violent Emotions_.--The color of the hair depends mainly upon the presence of pigment granules, which range in tint from a light yellow to an intense black. A recent investigator has succeeded in extracting the coloring matter of the hair, and has found that all the different shades are produced by the mixture of three primary colors--red, yellow, and black. "In the pure golden yellow hair there is only the yellow pigment; in red hair the red pigment is mixed with more or less yellow, producing the various shades of red and orange; in dark hair the black is always mixed with yellow and red, but the latter are overpowered by the black; and it seems that even the blackest hair, such as that of the negro, contains as much red pigment as the very reddest hair." Hence, "if in the negro the black pigment had not been developed, the hair of all negroes would be a fiery red."--DR. C. H. LEONARD. _The Hair: Its Diseases and Treatment_. The gradual disappearance of this pigment causes the gray or white hair of old age. This natural change in color does not necessarily denote loss of vitality in the hair, as it often continues to grow as vigorously as before it began to whiten. Cases of sudden blanching of the hair from extreme grief or terror are often quoted,--those of Sir Thomas More and of Marie Antoinette being well-known instances in point. An interesting circumstance has been discovered with regard to such cases, namely, that the change of color is not dependent upon the disappearance of the pigment of the hair, which always takes place slowly, but upon the sudden development in its interior of a number of air bubbles, that hide and destroy the effect of the pigment, which itself remains unaltered. Dr. Landois mentions the case of a German printer whom he attended, at a hospital, in the summer of 1865. This man had long been intemperate in his habits, in consequence of which he was seized with delirium tremens. The delirium, as is usual in such cases, was of an extremely terrifying nature, and lasted four days. On the evening of the fourth day the hair was unaltered, but on the morning of the fifth the delirium had disappeared, and his hair, which previously was fair, had become gray. It was examined with the microscope, when it was found that the pigment was still present, but that the central streak of each was filled with air bubbles. How this superabundance of air finds its way into the hair in these cases of sudden blanching, physiologists have not yet been able satisfactorily to explain.--In this connection, however, it may be observed that air bubbles exist, more or less, in all hair, mingled with the pigment granules. The feathers of birds owe their bright colors to an oily secretion corresponding to the pigment in hair, and microscopical observation has revealed the fact that when these colors fade the oily secretion disappears, and is replaced by air. That extreme terror may blanch feathers as well as hair is shown in the case of a poor little starling, which upon being rescued from the claws of a cat became suddenly white. THE NAILS (p. 54).--The nails are mere modifications of the scarfskin, their horny appearance and feeling being due to the fact that the scales or plates of which they are composed are much harder and more closely packed. The root of the nail lies embedded, to the extent of about the twelfth part of an inch, in a fold of the sensitive skin, and, as may be observed from an inspection of the part, the scarfskin is not exactly continuous with the nail, but projects a little above it, forming a narrow margin. The nail, like the scarfskin, rests upon, and is intimately connected with, a structure almost identical with the sensitive skin; this is, however, thrown into ridges, which run parallel to one another, except at the back part, where they radiate from the center of the root. On examining the surface of the nail, a semicircular whitish portion is detected near its root; its color is dependent upon the fact that the ridges there contain fewer blood vessels, and therefore less blood, and on account of its half-moon shape it is called the _lunula_. The nail is constantly increasing in length, owing to the formation of new cells at the root, which push it forward, while the increase in its thickness is due to the secretion of new cells from the sensitive layer beneath, so that the farther the nail grows from the root, the thicker it becomes. Its nutrition, and consequently its growth, suffers in disease, the portion growing during disease being thinner than that growing in health; and accordingly a transverse groove is seen upon the nail, corresponding to the time of an illness. It will thus be seen that by a mere examination of the nail we can astonish our friends by telling them when they have been ill; and it has been estimated that the nail of the thumb grows from its root to its free extremity in five months, that of the great toe in twenty months, so that a transverse groove in the middle of the former indicates an illness about two and a half months before, and in the middle of the latter, about ten months. The culture of the nails, which when perfect constitute so great a beauty, is of much importance; but the tendency is to injure them by too much attention. The scissors should never be used except to pare the free edges when they have become ragged or too long, and the folds of scarfskin which overlap the roots should not, as a rule, be touched, unless they be frayed, when the torn edges may be snipped off, so as to prevent their being torn further, which may cause much pain, and even inflammation. The upper surfaces of the nails should on no account be touched with the knife, as is so often done, the nailbrush being amply sufficient to keep them clean, without impairing their smooth and polished surfaces.--HINTON. BATHS AND BATHING (p. 65).--_Physical Cleanliness Promotes Moral Purity_.--The old adage that cleanliness is next to godliness, must have had its origin in the feeling of moral elevation which generally accompanies scrupulous bodily purity. Frequent bathing promotes purity of mind and morals. The man who is accustomed to be physically clean shrinks instinctively from contact with all uncleanliness. Personal neatness, when grown into a habit, draws after it so many excellences, that it may well be called a social virtue. Without it, refined intercourse would be impossible; for its neglect not only indicates a want of proper self- respect, but a disrespect of the feelings of others which argues a low tone of the moral sense. All nations, as they advance in civilization and refinement of manners, pay increased attention to the purity of the person. What, then, shall we say of people who, after all that has been said and written upon the subject, seldom or never bathe, who allow the pores of the skin to get blocked up with a combination of dust and perspired matter, which is as effectual in its way as plaster to the walls of a building? Could they but once be tempted to taste the delights which arise from a perfectly clean and well-acting skin: the cheerfulness, nay, the feeling of moral as well as physical elevation, which accompanies the sense of that cleanliness, they would soon esteem the little time and trouble spent in the bath, and in the proper care of the surface of the body, as time and labor very well spent--DR. STRANGE. The feet, particularly, should receive daily attention, if it be no more than a vigorous rubbing with a wet cloth, followed by a dry one. After a long walk, also, nothing is more refreshing, especially in summer, than a generous footbath in cool or tepid water, followed by an entire change in shoes and stockings. This is really a necessary precaution, if the feet have become wet from the dampness of the ground; and if the walk has heated the body so that the stockings are moist with perspiration, it is not only an act of prudence, but an instinct of personal neatness. _Ancient Greek and Roman Baths_.--From the earliest historic times the necessity for frequent and thorough ablution has been recognized by artificial provisions for this purpose. The Greeks had "steaming baths" and "fragrant anointing oils," as far back as Homer's time, a thousand years before Christ, but the Romans surpassed all preceding and subsequent nations by their magnificent and luxuriously equipped Thermæ, in which a bath cost less than a cent, and was often free. A full Roman bath included hot air, dry rubbing, hot, tepid, and cold water immersions, scraping with bronze instruments, and anointing with precious perfumes. _The Modern Russian_ and _Turkish baths_ are the nearest approaches we have to the Roman bath. These are found in nearly all our larger cities. _The Turkish Bath_ is conducted in a modified form in this country, generally with hot air instead of steam. Its frequent use not only tends to keep the body in a state of perfect cleanliness, but it imparts a clear, fresh color to the complexion which is hardly attained by other means. "Its most important effect," says a writer in the _Popular Science Monthly_, "is the stimulation of the emunctory action of the skin. By this means we are enabled to wash as it were the solid and fluid tissues, and especially the blood and skin, by passing water through them from within outward to the surface of the body. Hence, in practice, one of the most essential requisites is copious draughts of water during the sweating." During the operation of a Turkish bath, the novice is often astonished at the amount of effete matter eliminated from the pores of the skin. "A surprising quantity of scarfskin, which no washing could remove, peels off, especially if a glove of camel's-hair or goat's-hair be used, as they are in the East, where also the soles of the feet are scraped with pumice. The deposit of this skin of only a week's date, when collected, is often as large as one's fist. Much more solid matter is contained in the perspiration of those who take the bath for the first time, or after a long interval. Nothing escapes through the skin, save what is noxious if retained. This bath should never be used in case of advanced lung diseases, great debility, acute inflammations, or persons who labor under any form of heart disease; but I think its influence is directly curative in rheumatic, gouty, and scrofulous affections, some skin diseases, and the earlier stages of feverish colds and ague. It is said to have calming effects in the treatment of insanity, and the use of it was suggested from the heavy smell the skin of persons thus afflicted often has."--MAPOTHER'S _Lectures on Public Health_. A somewhat heroic bath, used in Siberia to drive away a threatened fever, consists of a thorough parboiling, within an inch or two of a steaming furnace, after which the subject is "drubbed and flogged for about half an hour with a bundle of birch twigs, leaf and all." A douche of cold water is then dashed over the exhausted bather, when he is ready to be put into bed. _Sea Bathing_.--Before the age of seven years, and after fifty-five, sea baths should be used with the greatest caution. All persons unaccustomed to sea bathing should begin with a warm or tepid bath, in doors, proceeding by degrees to the cold indoor bath, and then to the open sea. The sea bath should be taken, if possible, when the sun is shining, when the water has been warmed by contact with the heated sands, and never during the digestion of the principal meal, or late in the evening. Immediately on plunging into the water, which need not, except in persons of full habit, cover the head, brisk motion of some kind should be used. Those who can swim should do so; those who can not, should make as much exertion of the limbs as possible, or rub the body with their hands. The delicate, and particularly those who are recovering from illness, should remove from the bath _as soon as the glow arrives;_ or, if that be not felt at all, then after _one_ plunge. _Danger in Bathing when Overheated_.--It is unwise to bathe when copious perspiration has continued for an hour or more, unless the heat of the weather be excessive, or the sweating has been induced by loading with clothes, rather than by exertion. When much perspiration has been produced by muscular exercise, it is unsafe to bathe, because the body is so fatigued and exhausted, that the reaction can not be insured, and the effect may be to congest the internal organs, and notably the nerve centers. The latter gives cramp. If the weather be chilly, or there be a cold wind, so that the body may be rapidly cooled at the surface while undressing, it is not safe to bathe. Under such conditions, the further chill of immersion in cold water will take place at the precise moment at which the reaction consequent upon the chill of exposure by undressing ought to take place, and this second chill will not only delay or altogether prevent the reaction, but will convert the bath from a mere stimulant to a depressant, ending in the abstraction of a large amount of animal heat and congestion of the internal organs and nerve centers. The aim must be to avoid two chills, and to make sure that the body is in such a condition as to secure a quick reaction on emerging from the water, without relying too much on the possible effect of friction by rubbing. The actual temperature of the water does not affect the question so much as its relative temperature in comparison with that of the surrounding air. It ought to be much lower than that of the air. These maxims receive a striking reenforcement from the case of a young soldier who a few days ago plunged into the river near Manchester, England, after having heated himself by rowing. He was immediately taken with cramps, and was drowned. When taken out, his body was found "twisted," and the vessels of his head showed every evidence of congestion.--_Popular Science Monthly, September, 1883_. _Bather's Cramp_.--Cramp is a painful and tonic muscular spasm. It may occur in any part of the body, but it is especially apt to take place in the lower extremities, and in its milder forms it is limited to a single muscle. The pain is severe, and the contracted muscles are hard and exquisitely tender. In a few minutes the spasm and pain cease, leaving a local sensation of fatigue and soreness. When cramp affects only one extremity, no swimmer or bather endowed with average presence of mind need drown; but when cramp seizes the whole of the voluntary muscular system, as it probably does in the worst cases, nothing in the absence of prompt and efficient extraneous assistance can save the individual from drowning. [Footnote: Even this is often unavailable, as in the case of the Cornell University postgraduate drowned in Hall Creek, Ithaca, June 10, 1888. In this instance the day was hot and oppressive, and the victim sank soon after entering the water. "His companions at once hastened to his relief, and recovered his body in a few minutes. Professor Wilder, of the University, was hurriedly summoned, and every possible method was resorted to in order to induce respiration, but the vital spark had fled. An attack of cramps is supposed to have been the cause of drowning."] Prolongation of muscular exertion, as in continued swimming, and forcible and sudden muscular exertion, as in swimming with very vigorous and rapid strokes, are efficient and frequent causes of cramp. These muscular conditions, however, usually give rise only to the slighter and more localized forms. Serious cramp is a peril which menaces most persons with highly developed muscles. Its most powerful and most avoidable cause is the sudden immersion of the body, when its surface is highly heated, in water of a relatively low temperature.--_Popular Science News._ _Protection of the Ear in Sea Bathing_.--Special attention should be paid by bathers to the exclusion of salt water from the mouth and ears. Many cases of inflammation of the ear, followed by severe and lasting trouble, even to deafness, are chargeable to the neglect of this precaution. Incoming waves should never be received in the face or the ears, and the sea water which enters the ears when floating or diving should be wiped out by soft cotton; indeed, the best plan is to plug the openings of the ears with cotton, which is to be kept there during the bath.--_Science_. _How one who Knows not how to Swim can Escape Drowning_.--It is well for every one to learn the art of swimming, yet it is a knowledge possessed by comparatively few people. Mr. Henry MacCormac, a writer in _Nature_, gives some common sense instructions that, if heeded, may be of great service to those persons who, not knowing how to swim, may find themselves accidentally precipitated into the water. We condense from his article, adding some directions, as follows: In order to escape drowning, it is necessary only to do as the brute does, namely, to walk or tread the water. The brute has no advantage over man in regard to his relative weight, and yet the man perishes while the brute survives. The ignorance of so simple a possibility as that of treading water strikes me as one of the most singular things in the history of man. Perhaps something is to be ascribed to the vague meaning which is attached to the word _Swim_. The dog is wholly incapable of _swimming_ as a man swims, but nothing is more certain than that a man, without previous training or instruction, can swim just as a dog swims, and that by so doing without fear or hesitancy, he will be just as safe as is the dog. The brute thus circumstanced continues to go on all fours, as if he were on land, _keeping his head well out of the water_. So with the man who wishes to save his life and can not otherwise swim. He must strike alternately, with hand and foot,--_one, two, one, two,_--without hurry or precipitation, exactly as the brute does. Whether he be provided with paw or hoof, the beast swims with perfect ease and buoyancy. So, too, can the human being, if he will, with the further immense advantage of having a paddle-formed hand, and of being able, when tired, to rest himself by floating, an act of which the animal has no conception. The printed direction should be pasted up in all boathouses, on every boat, at every bathing place, and in every school: _Tread water when you find yourself out of your depth_. This is all that need be said, unless, indeed, we add: _Float when you are tired_. To float, one needs only to turn upon his back, keeping--as always when in the water--the mouth and chin well up and the lungs full of air.--Every one of us, of whatever age and however encumbered with clothing, may tread water, even in a breaking sea, with as much facility as a fourfooted animal. The position of the water treader is, really, very much safer and better than the sprawling attitude of the ordinary swimmer. But the chief advantage lies in the fact that we can tread water without preliminary teaching, whereas, though we recommend all to learn how to swim, it involves time and pains, entails considerable fatigue, and is, after all, very seldom adequately acquired. HINTS ON CLOTHING (p. 67).--_Advantages of Woolen Fabrics_.--Wool is more irritating than cotton, on account of the stiffness of the hairs with which it bristles; but the excitation it produces becomes a therapeutic means whenever the skin needs a stimulant. The use of wool is particularly desirable in some countries and under some conditions of life. Professor Brocchi, a writer well known for his investigations in malaria, attributes the good health and vigor of the ancient Romans to their habit of wearing coarse woolen clothes; when they began to disuse them, and to wear lighter goods and silks, they became less vigorous and less able to resist the morbid influence of bad air. It was at about the time the women began to dress in notably fine tissues that the insalubrity of the Roman air began first to be complained of. "In the English army and navy," says Dr. Balestra, "the soldiers of garrisons in unhealthy places are obliged constantly to wear wool next to the skin, and to cover themselves with sufficient clothing, for protection against paludine fevers, dysentery, cholera, and other diseases." According to Patissier, similar measures have been found effectual in preserving the health of workmen employed on dikes, canals, and ditches, in marshy lands; while, previous to the employment of these precautions, mortality from fevers was considerable among them. Dr. Balestra has proved by direct experiments in marshy regions that thick and hairy woolen garments arrest in their down a portion of the germs borne in by the air, which thus reaches the skin filtered and purified. The ancient Romans wore ample over-garments over their tunics, and never put them away. It is no less important to be well covered during the night; and precautions of this kind should be recommended to all who live in a swampy country. We are sometimes astonished when we see the natives of particularly warm countries enveloped in woolen, as the Arab in his burnoose, or the Spanish peasant in his tobacco-colored cloak. Such materials protect both against the rays of the sun and against the coolness of the night, and are excellent regulators of heat. It is dangerously imprudent to travel in southern countries without provision of warm clothing.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_. _Weight is not Warmth_.--While speaking of the warmth of clothing for inclement weather, it would be incorrect not to speak of weight in relation to warmth. Many persons mistake weight for warmth, and thus feeble people are actually borne down and weakened by the excess of heavy clothing which is piled on them. Good woolen or fur fabrics retain the heat, and yet are light. When fabrics intended for sustaining warmth are made up of cotton, the mistake of accepting weight for warmth is made. The same errors are often made in respect to bed coverings, and with the same results. _Poisonously Dyed Clothing_.--The introduction of wearing apparel, socks, stockings, and flannels which have been made, by new processes of dyeing, to assume a rich red or yellow color, has led to a local disease of the skin, attended, in rare cases, with slight constitutional symptoms. This disease is due to the dyestuffs. The chief poisonous dyes are the red and yellow coralline, substances derived from that series of chemical bodies which have been obtained of late years from coal tar, and commonly known as the aniline series. The coloring principle is extremely active as a local poison. It induces on the skin a reddish, slightly raised eruption of minute round pimples which stud the reddened surface, and which, if the irritation be severe and long-continued, pass into vesicles discharging a thin watery ichor and producing a superficial sore. The disease is readily curable if the cause of it be removed, and, as a general rule, it is purely local in character. I have, however, once seen it pass beyond the local stage. A young gentleman consulted me for what he considered was a rapidly developed attack of erysipelas on the chest and back. He was, indeed, covered with an intensely red rash, and he was affected with nervous symptoms, with faintness and depression of pulse, of a singular and severe kind. I traced both the local eruption and the general malady to the effect of the organic dye in a red woolen chest and back "comforter." On removing the "comforter" all the symptoms ceased. Similar and even fatal cases have been known from the wearing of highly colored hose. _Uncleanliness of Dress_.--Uncleanly attire creates conditions favorable to disease. Clothing worn too long at a time becomes saturated with the excretions and exhalations of the body, and, by preventing the free transpiration from the surface of the skin, induces oppression of the physical powers and mental inactivity. This observation will be accepted by most persons as true in respect to underclothing; it is equally true in regard to those outer garments which are often worn, unremittingly, until the linings, torn and soiled, are unfit altogether for contact with the cleaner garments beneath them. Health will not be clothed in dirty raiment. They who wear such raiment suffer from trains of minor complaints; from oppression, dullness, headache, nausea, which, though trifling in themselves, taken one by one, when put together greatly reduce that standard of perfect health by which the value of life is correctly and effectively maintained.--RICHARDSON. RESPIRATION. THE VOCAL ORGANS.--_Musical Tones in Speaking_ (p. 76).--Voice is divided into singing and speaking voice. One differs from the other almost as much as noises do from musical sounds. In speaking, the sounds are too short to be easily appreciable, and are not separated by fixed and regular intervals, like those of singing; they are linked together, generally by insensible transitions; they are not united by the fixed relations of the gamut, and can only be noted with difficulty. That it is the short duration of speaking sounds which distinguished them from those of singing, is proved by this, that if we prolong the intonation of a syllable, or utter it like a note, the musical sound becomes evident. So, if we pronounce all the syllables of a phrase in the same tone, the speaking voice closely resembles psalm singing. Every one must have noticed this in hearing schoolboys recite or read in a monotone, and the analogy is complete when the last two or three syllables are pronounced in a different tone. Spoken voice is, moreover, always a chant more or less marked, according to the individual and the sentiment which the words express....It is related of Gretry, that he amused himself by noting as exactly as possible the "Bonjour, monsieur!" (Good day, sir!) of the persons who visited him; and these words expressed by their intonation, in fact, the most opposite sentiments, in spite of the constant identity of the literal sense. _Speech without a Tongue_.--De Jussieu relates that he saw a girl fifteen years old, in Lisbon, who was born without a tongue, and yet who spoke so distinctly as not to excite in the minds of those who listened to her the least suspicion of the absence of that organ. The Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1742) contain an account of a woman who had not the slightest vestige of a tongue, but who could, notwithstanding, drink, eat, and speak as well and as distinctly as any one, and even articulate the words in singing. Other instances have been known where individuals, after losing a portion of the tongue by accident or disease, have again been able to speak after a longer or shorter period.--LE PILEUR. _Stimulants and the Voice_.--"The Drinker's Throat" is a recognized pathological condition, and the Germans have a popular phrase, "He drinks his throat away." Isambert has pointed out the directly local irritant effect of both alcohol and tobacco on the throat, and also the mode by which these agents, on absorption into the system, re-manifest their presence by predisposing to local pharyngeal inflammations. Dr. Krishaber affirms: "It is generally admitted that alcoholic beverages and tobacco irritate the mucous membrane of the throat, directly affect the voice, and leave on it ineffaceable traces. We hold with equal certainty that tea and coffee, although not directly affecting the voice, do so indirectly by acting on the nervous system, and through it the vocal organs, as well as by, some general nervous derangement not very pronounced, but great enough to deprive the singer of the full powers and capabilities of his voice." Dr. Mackenzie says: "The influence of the general health upon the voice is very marked. Alcohol and tobacco should never be used. The hoarse tones of the confirmed votary of Bacchus are due to chronic inflammation of the lining membrane of the larynx; the originally smooth surface being roughened and thickened by the irritation of alcohol, the vocal cords have less freedom of movement, and their vibrations are blurred, or rather muffled, by the unevenness of their contiguous edges." A young American lady of marked musical gifts once asked Adelina Patti's advice upon preparing for the stage. She found the great singer wrapped in furs, although the weather was not severe. After hearing her visitor, Patti replied: "Are you willing to give up _everything_ for your art? If you wish to succeed, you must learn to eat moderately, take no stimulants--not even tea or coffee--keep as regular hours as possible consistent with your public appearance, and even deny yourself the luxury of friends. When you hear of a great vocalist giving extravagant wine suppers, you may be sure that the singer herself takes nothing. To be a successful _artiste_ you must be married, soul and body, to your art." Like the young man to whom Christ spake, the young woman "went away sorrowful," and, balancing the terms, concluded to forego the contest. ABDOMINAL RESPIRATION (p. 8l).--It has often been stated that the respiration of woman differs from that of man, in being limited almost entirely to the chest. In order to investigate this subject scientifically, Dr. Mays, of Philadelphia, devised an ingenious instrument for examining the respiration of the native Indian girls in the Lincoln Institution. The girls had not yet been subjected to the restrictions of civilized dress. He says: "In all, I examined the movements of eighty-two chests, and in each case took an abdominal and a costal tracing. The girls were partly pure and partly mixed with white blood, and their ages ranged from between ten and twenty years. Thus there were thirty-three full-blooded Indians, five one fourth, thirty-five one half, and two three fourths white. _Seventy- five_ showed a _decided abdominal_ type of breathing, three a costal type, and three in which both were about even. _Those who showed the costal type, or a divergence from the abdominal type, came from the more civilized tribes_, like the Mohawks and Chippewas, and were either _one half_ or _three fourths white_; while in _no single instance_ did a full-blooded Indian girl possess this type of breathing. "From these observations it obviously follows that, so far as the Indian is concerned, the abdominal is the original type of respiration in both male and female, and that the costal type in the civilized female is developed through the constricting influence of dress around the abdomen. While these tracings were taken an incident occurred which demonstrated that abdominal constriction could modify the movements of the thorax during respiration. At my first visit to the institution I obtained an exceptional costal type of respiration from a full-blooded Indian girl. At my next visit I concluded to repeat this observation, and found that, contrary to my instructions concerning loose clothing, etc., this girl at my first visit had worn three tight belts around her abdomen. After these were removed she gave the abdominal type of breathing, which is characteristic of nearly all the Indian girls." To us these facts are invaluable. It shows the faulty construction of modern female dress, which restricts the motion of abdominal respiration. It explains why, as experience has taught us, it is necessary to restore this abdominal rhythm, by proper movements, in order permanently to cure the affections of the lower portion of the trunk. It demonstrates conclusively that woman's dress, to be injurious, needs only to interfere with the proper motion of respiration, even though it exercises not the slightest compression.--_Health Record_. THE GERM THEORY OF DISEASE (p. 86).--_What are Disease Germs?_-- Microscopical investigation has revealed throughout Nature, in the air, in water--especially when it contains organic matter, and even within the bodies of persons and animals, myriads of infinitesimal active organisms which live, multiply, and die in endless succession. These have been named _bacteria_ (bacterium, a rod, so called from the general rod shape first observed), and also _microbes_ (microbe, a small living object). Some investigators apply the latter term as a general one, limiting the former to such microbes as are believed to be special disease producers. The "Germ Theory" teaches that the seeds or _spores_ of bacteria, floating in the air we breathe or in the water we drink, are taken into our bodies where, under conditions favorable to their growth, they develop, multiply, and, each after its own species, produce distinctive evil results.--Thus, according to this theory, there are special varieties of microbes that cause, respectively, diphtheria, erysipelas, scarlatina, cholera, etc.--One of the most common microbes in nature is the bacterium of putrefaction, found everywhere in decaying organic matter. [Footnote: This is the microbe found in impure water. If we take half a glass of spring or river water, and leave it uncovered for a few days, we shall observe upon it a thin coating of what appears to be a fine dust. Place, now, a drop of this dusty water under a cover glass, and examine it under a microscope with a magnifying power of about five hundred diameters. The revelation is astonishing. "The whole field of the microscope is in motion; hundreds of bacteria, resembling minute transparent worms, are swimming in every direction with an undulatory motion like that of an eel or snake. Some are detached, others united in pairs, others in chains or chaplets or cylindrical rods....All these forms represent the different transformations of _Bacterium termo_, or the microbe of putrefaction. Those which are dead appear as small, rigid, and immovable rods."--TROUESSART.] By the species of microbes called ferments all fermented liquors are artificially produced (see p. 132); these also cause the "rising" of bread.--These wonderful little existences are thus made to perform an important part in the economy of Nature. "Nourished at the expense of putrefying organic matter, they reduce its complex constituents into soluble mineral substances, which they return to the soil to serve afresh for the nourishment of similar plants. Thus they clear the surface of the earth from dead bodies and fecal matter, and from all the useless substances which are the refuse of life; and thus they unite animals and plants in an endless chain."--TROUESSART. _How Disease Germs Grow_.--Experiments having shown that no life is known to spring from inanimate matter, we may reasonably suppose that just as wheat does not grow except from seed, so no disease occurs without some disease germ to produce it. Then, again, we may logically assume that each disease is due to the development of a particular kind of germ. If we plant smallpox germs, we do not reap a crop of scarlatina or measles; but, just as wheat springs from wheat, each disease has its own distinctive germs. Each comes from a parent stock, and has existed somewhere previously....Under ordinary circumstances, these germs, though nearly always present, are comparatively few in number, and in an extremely dry and indurated state. Hence, they may frequently enter our bodies without meeting with the conditions essential to their growth; for experiments have shown that it is very difficult to moisten them, and till they are moistened, they do not begin to develop. In a healthy system they remain inactive. But anything tending to weaken or impair the bodily organs, furnishes favorable conditions, and thus epidemics almost always originate and are most fatal in those quarters of our great cities where dirt, squalor, and foul air render sound health almost an impossibility.... Having once got a beginning, epidemics rapidly spread. The germs are then sent into the air in great numbers, and in a moist state; and the probabilities of their entering, and of their establishing themselves even in healthy bodies, are vastly increased....Climate and the weather have also much influence on the vitality of these germs. Cold is a preventive against some diseases, heat against others. Tyndall found that sunlight greatly retarded and sometimes entirely prevented putrefaction; while dirt is always favorable to the growth and development of germs. _Sunshine and cleanliness are undoubtedly the best and cheapest preventives against disease.--"Disease Germs" Chambers's Journal_. You know the exquisitely truthful figures employed in the New Testament regarding leaven. A particle hid in three measures of meal leavens it all. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. In a similar manner a particle of contagium spreads through the human body, and may be so multiplied as to strike down whole populations. Consider the effect produced upon the system by a microscopic quantity of the virus of smallpox. That virus is to all intents and purposes a seed. It is sown as leaven is sown, it grows and multiplies as leaven grows and multiplies, and it always reproduces itself....Contagia are living things, which demand certain elements of life, just as inexorably as trees, or wheat, or barley; and it is not difficult to see that a crop of a given parasite may so far use up a constituent existing in small quantities in the body, but essential in the growth of the parasite, as to render the body unfit for the production of a second crop. The soil is exhausted; and until the lost constituent is restored, the body is protected from any further attack from the same disorder. To exhaust a soil, however, a parasite less vigorous and destructive than the really virulent one may suffice; and if, after having, by means of a feebler organism, exhausted the soil without fatal result, the most highly virulent parasite be introduced into the system, it will prove powerless. This, in the language of the germ theory, is the whole secret of vaccination.--TYNDALL. _Disease Germs Contained in Atmospheric Dust_.--Take the extracted juice of beef or mutton, so prepared as to be perfectly transparent, and entirely free from the living germs of bacteria. Into the clear liquid let fall the tiniest drop of an infusion charged with the bacteria of putrefaction. Twenty-four hours subsequently, the clear extract will be found muddy throughout, the turbidity being due to swarms of bacteria generated by the drop with which the infusion was inoculated. At the same time the infusion will have passed from a state of sweetness to a state of putridity. Let a drop similar to that which has produced this effect fall into an open wound: the juices of the living body nourish the bacteria as the beef or mutton juice nourished them, and you have putrefaction produced within the system. The air, as I have said, is laden with floating matter which, when it falls upon the wound, acts substantially like the drop....A few years ago I was bathing in an Alpine stream, and, returning to my clothes from the cascade which had been my shower bath, I slipped upon a block of granite, the sharp crystals of which stamped themselves into my naked shin. The wound was an awkward one, but, being in vigorous health at the time, I hoped for a speedy recovery. Dipping a clean pocket handkerchief into the stream, I wrapped it round the wound, limped home, and remained for four or five days quietly in bed. There was no pain, and at the end of this time I thought myself quite fit to quit my room. The wound, when uncovered, was found perfectly clean, uninflamed, and entirely free from pus. Placing over it a bit of gold beater's skin, I walked about all day. Toward evening, itching and heat were felt; a large accumulation of pus followed, and I was forced to go to bed again. The water bandage was restored, but it was powerless to check the action now set up; arnica was applied, but it made matters worse. The inflammation increased alarmingly, until finally I was ignobly carried on men's shoulders down the mountain, and transported to Geneva, where, thanks to the kindness of friends, I was immediately placed in the best medical hands. On the morning after my arrival in Geneva, Dr. Gautier discovered an abscess in my instep, at a distance of five inches from the wound. The two were connected by a channel, or _sinus_, as it is technically called, through which he was able to empty the abscess without the application of the lance. By what agency was that channel formed--what was it that thus tore asunder the sound tissue of my instep, and kept me for six weeks a prisoner in bed? In the very room where the water dressing had been removed from my wound and the gold beater's skin applied to it, I opened this year a number of tubes, containing perfectly clear and sweet infusions of fish, flesh, and vegetable. These hermetically sealed infusions had been exposed for weeks, both to the sun of the Alps and to the warmth of a kitchen, without showing the slightest turbidity or signs of life. But two days after they were opened, the greater number of them swarmed with the bacteria of putrefaction, the germs of which had been contracted from the dust-laden air of the room. And, had the pus from my abscess been examined, my memory of its appearance leads me to infer that it would have been found equally swarming with these bacteria--that it was their germs which got into my incautiously opened wound. They were the subtile workers that burrowed down my shin, dug the abscess in my instep, and produced effects which might well have proved fatal to me.--TYNDALL. _Disease Germs Carried in Soiled Clothing_ (p. 89).--The conveyance of cholera germs by bodies of men moving along the lines of human communication, without necessarily affecting the individuals who transport them, is now easy to understand; for it is well established that clothes or linen soiled by cholera patients may not only impart the germs with which they are contaminated to those who handle them when fresh, but that, after having been dried and packed, they may infect persons at any distance who incautiously unfold them. Thus, while the nurses of cholera patients may, with proper precautions, enjoy an absolute immunity from attack, the disease germs may be introduced into new localities without any ostensible indication of their presence. It is obvious that the only security against such introduction consists in the destruction or thorough disinfection of every scrap of clothing or linen which has been about the person of a cholera patient.--DR. CARPENTER. I have known scarlet fever to be carried by the clothing of a nurse into a healthy family, and communicate the disease to every member of the family. I have known cholera to be communicated by the clothes of the affected person to the women engaged in washing the clothes. I have known smallpox conveyed by clothes that had been made in a room where the tailor had by his side sufferers from the terrible malady. I have seen the new cloth, out of which was to come the riding habit for some innocent child to rejoice in as she first wore it, undergo the preliminary duty of forming part of the bed clothing of another child stricken down with fever. Lastly, I have known scarlet fever, smallpox, typhus, and cholera, communicated by clothing contaminated in the laundry.--DR. RICHARDSON. THE SANITARY HOME (see p. 94).--1. _The Site_.--First and foremost of all the things you are to consider, is the healthfulness of a situation. The brightest house and cheeriest outlook in nature will be made somber by the constant presence of a doctor, and the wandering around of an unseen, but ever felt, specter in the shape of miasm....Malaria-malus, bad; aria, air--means, in its common definition, simply bad air. Miasma is its synonym,--infecting effluvia floating in the air. Because, as everybody knows, certain places have always chills and fever associated with them, and other places have not, it follows that between such places there is some fact of difference; this fact is the presence of miasm, a cause of disease, having a signification associative with the locality.... Vegetation, heat, and moisture: these are the three active agents in the production of miasma, to which a fourth is to be added, in the influence of non-drainage, either by the way of the atmosphere or running water. The strongest example of a malarious locality one might make would be in suggesting a marshy valley in a tropical climate, so overrun with fixed water as to destroy a prolific vegetation, yet not covering it enough to protect the garbage from the putrefying influences of the sun; this valley, in turn, so environed with hills as to shut off a circulation of air....Ground newly broken is not unapt to generate miasm. This results from the sudden exposure of long-buried vegetable matter to the influences of moisture and heat....It may readily be conceived that malarious situations exist where the miasm is not sufficient in quantity to produce the effects of intermittent or bilious fever, yet where there is quite enough of it to keep a man feeling good for nothing,--he is not sick, but he is never well. I know of one country seat of this kind, where forty thousand dollars would not pay for the improvements put upon it, and where, I am free to declare, I would not think of living, even if, as an inducement, a free gift were made to me of the place....Besides miasm, there are other atmospheric associations to be considered. I recall this moment a distillery, where attempt was made to get clear of the mash by throwing it into a running stream, with the anticipation of its being carried to the river, but where, on the contrary, it became a stagnant putrescent mass, impregnating the air for miles with its unendurable odor, and inducing such a typhoid tendency that half the countryside were down with fever....There are, again, situations where the filth and debris of sewage exercise a poisoning influence on the surrounding atmosphere. This has its principal application to the neighborhood of cities and towns drained into adjoining streams. London and the Thames furnish a notable illustration. A cove, attractive as it is, may prove a receptacle for the accumulation of dead fish and other offal, which shall make untenable the charming cottage upon the bank. A deep cove has rarely healthy surroundings, the circulation of its water being too sluggish to insure freshness and vitality. Water, like blood, to be healthy, must be in a state of continuous movement. A nonobservant man, purchasing a beautiful stream, may be completely disappointed by finding that the opacity of its water depends upon a factory, of which he had never so much as heard; he may not let his children bathe in it, for he may well fear for them the fate of the fish he so plentifully finds lying dead upon the shore. A poisoned rural stream is as sad a sight as it has grown to be a common one. Always, before buying water, know what there is up stream, or what there is likely to be. Never buy a country house without seeing to it that the foundation stands upon a higher level than some channel which may drain it, and this, by the way, is not to consider alone the dry summer day on which you go first to visit the place; you are to think of the winter and spring. Look to it that no excess of water shall be able to drown you out; some places, which in dry weather are glorious, are, in winter and spring, ankle deep in slush and mire, and everything about them is as wet as a soaked board. Open the front door of such a house, and a chill strikes you instantly. A fire must be kept the year round, or otherwise you live in the moisture of a vault. Places there are of this class where the question of the water from the kitchen pump comes to absorb the attention of the whole household. No shade is an abomination. A bilious fever fattens in the sun as does miasm in a marshy valley. Too much shade, on the contrary, and too near the house, is equally of ill import; it keeps things damp, and dampness is a breeder of pestilence. An atmosphere confined about a house by too dense foliage is, like the air of an unventilated room, not fit for practical purposes. The sporadic poisons have an intimate relationship with dampness; miasm lives in it as does a snail in his shell. Besides this, it shuts out the cool breath of the summer nights, and makes restless swelterers where even a blanket might be enjoyed.--DR. JOHN DARBY, _Odd Hours of a Physician_. 2. _The House_.--So construct the dwelling from foundation to roof that no dampness can result. Give to the cellar dry walls, a cement floor, and windows enough to insure constant currents of air. Insist upon such a system of immediate and perfect sewerage as shall render contamination impossible. If "modern improvements" are afforded, see that the plumbing embraces the latest and most scientific sanitary inventions. Do not economize on this point; health, perhaps life, depends upon the perfect working of the various traps. Having employed the most skilled and intelligent plumbers, overlook their work so that you may fully understand the principle applied. Provide for ample ventilation in every apartment, above and below. Let the sleeping rooms be above stairs, and furnished with appliances for moderate warmth in winter. Treat yourself and your family to as many fireplaces as possible. Indulge in a spacious piazza, so placed that it will not cut off the light from the family sitting room, and, if you can, include a balcony or two, large enough to hold a chair and a table, or a workbasket. Remember that a house is for convenience and protection _only when you can not be in the open air_. 3. _The kitchen and the Dust Heap.--Removal of Household Refuse_.--It has to be assumed, especially where servants are not carefully overlooked, that the dust heap of most houses will contain more or less decomposing organic matter, such as bits of meat, scales and refuse of fish, tea and coffee grounds, and the peelings of vegetables, which, though quite out of place in the ash heap, are apt surreptitiously to be thrown upon it. Such matter soon becomes offensive and even dangerous, and a few days' retention of it in warm weather constitutes a legal nuisance. Household refuse should be carted away as often as once in two days; in extreme hot weather, daily. Where it is inexpedient to remove it frequently, it should be kept covered to the depth of two or three inches with a layer of powdered charcoal, or freshly burnt lime, or, at least, of clear dry earth. All soil which has become foul by the soakage of decaying or vegetable matter should be similarly treated. The refuse heap should be protected from rain, and liquids should never be thrown upon it. Where obnoxious matter has been allowed to accumulate, its disturbance for removal should be conducted with special precaution, both on account of its temporary offensiveness of odor and the more serious results which may follow. It can not be too distinctly understood that cleanliness, ventilation, and dryness are the best of all deodorizers. One of the first of household regulations should be to see that no unsanitary rubbish remains in or about the dwelling. Keep the dust heap itself at the farthest practicable remove from the house. Sow grass seed plentifully upon the back premises, and induce tidiness in the domestics by having the kitchen door open upon a well-kept lawn. _Burning of Garbage_.--The easiest, quickest, and most sanitary method of disposing of household garbage is to burn it This plan has been officially recommended by the Boards of Health in various cities. Many housekeepers have adopted it, and find it so practicable that in New York City there has become a marked decrease in the amount of household refuse collected by the scavengers. If, after every meal, the draughts of the range be opened, and all waste matter be deposited within, a few moments, or at most, a half hour, will effectually dispose of it, and prevent all the dangers that arise from its retention and accumulation. In the country, where there is plenty of ground, nearly all rubbish can be destroyed in this way and by outside fires, with the additional advantage that the--E. R. S. 4. _The Sewers and Drains.--How to Keep out Sewer Air_.--The most perfectly flushed sewers that are made, under the latest and fullest sanitary light, must, owing to the constant entrance of greasy and other adhesive material, contain more or less of particles that "stick," and also more or less of fungi and mold; so that here, shut away from light and air, goes on the peculiar fermentation that fits it for the soil or habitat of the malarial germ. These germs, the soil once ready, take possession and multiply, whether that soil be a sewer or the blood of a person who sits calmly unconscious in a gorgeous chamber above, with a small continuation of the sewer extending untrapped up to his washbowl.-- DR. DERBY. Keep constant watch of your traps and drains. Cultivate the faculty of detecting sewer gas in the house. Always fear a smell; trace it to its source and provide a remedy. At the same time, bear in mind that it is not always the foul smell that is most dangerous. There is a close, sweet odor often present in bathrooms, and about drains, that is deadly as the Upas tree. Bad air from neglected drains causes not only fevers, dysentery, and diphtheria, but asthma and other chronic disorders. Illuminating gas, escaping from pipes and prevented from exuding by frozen earth, has been known to pass sidewise for some distance into houses. Thus also the air from cesspools and porous or broken drains finds its way, when an examination of the household entrance to the drain fails to reveal the cause of an existing effluvia. But, however bad the drain may be outside the house, there is little to fear provided the gas can escape externally. Every main drain should have a ventilating pipe carried from it directly outside the house to the top of the highest chimney. The soil pipe inside the house should be carried up through the roof and be open at the top. Digging for drains or other purposes should not be allowed when the mercury stands above 60°; but if, as in repairs of pipes, it becomes necessary to dig about the house in hot weather, let it be done in the middle of the day, and replace the turf as speedily as possible. If the soil be damp, or the district malarious, sprinkle quicklime upon the earth as fast as it is turned. _How to Clear Waste Pipes_.--The "sewer gas," about which so much has been written, and which is so justly dreaded, is not, as many suppose, the exclusive product of the sewer. Indeed, the foul and dangerous gases are not only found in the sewers themselves, but in the unventilated waste pipes, and those which are in process of being clogged by the foul matter passing through them. Any obstruction in the soil or waste pipes is therefore doubly dangerous, because it may produce an inflow of foul gas into the pipe, even though the entrance to the sewer itself has been entirely cut off. In pipes leading from the house to the cesspool, there is a constant accumulation of grease. This enters as a liquid, but hardens as the water cools, and is deposited on the bottom and sides of the pipes. As these accumulations increase, the water way is gradually contracted, till the pipe is closed. When the pipe is entirely stopped, or allows the water to fall away by drops only, proceed thus: Empty the pipe down to the trap, as far as practicable, by "mopping up" with a cloth. If the water flows very slowly, begin when the pipe has at last emptied itself. Fill the pipe up with potash, crowding it with a stick. Then allow hot water to trickle upon the potash, or pour the hot water upon it in a small stream, stopping as soon as the pipe appears to be filled. As the potash dissolves and disappears, add more water. At night a little heap of potash may be placed over the hole, and water enough poured on so that a supply of strong lye will flow into the pipe during the night. Pipes that have been stopped for months may be cleaned out by this method, though it may call for three or four pounds of potash. The crudest kind, however, appears to act as well as the best. If the pipe is partially obstructed, a lump of crude potash should be placed where water will drip slowly upon it, and so reach the pipe. As water comes in contact with the potash, it becomes hot, thus aiding in dissolving the grease. Potash, in combination with grease, forms a "soft" or liquid soap, which easily flows away. It is also destructive to all animal and most mineral matters. Some of the most dangerous gases come from wash-basin pipes, being, perhaps, the result of the decay of the soap and the animal matter washed from the skin. When a pipe is once fairly cleaned out, the potash should be used from time to time, in order to dissolve the greasy deposits as they form, and carry them forward to the cesspool or sewer.--_Artisan_. _What Came from a Neighbor's Cesspool_.--Keep watch not only of your own premises, but stand on guard against those of your neighbors. Dr. Carpenter cites a case wherein "four members of a certain household were attacked with typhoid fever, one of whom narrowly escaped with her life. The circumstances left no doubt in the mind of the attending physician that the malady originated in the opening of an old cesspool belonging to a neighboring house, then in course of demolition. The house in which the outbreak took place is large and airy, and stands by itself in a most salubrious situation. The most careful examination failed to disclose any defect either in its drainage or its water supply; there was no typhoid in the neighborhood; and the milk supply was unexceptional. But the neighboring house being old, and having been occupied by a school, its removal had been determined on to make way for a house of higher class; and as the offensive odor emanating from the uncovered cesspool was at once perceived in the next garden, and the outbreak of typhoid followed at the usual interval, the case seems one which admits of no reasonable question." 5. _The Cellar_.--_A Typical Bad Cellar_.--Did the reader ever, when a child, see the cellar afloat at some old home in the country? You creep part way down the cellar stairs with only the light of a single tallow candle, and behold by its dim glimmer an expanse of dark water, boundless as the sea. On its surface, in dire confusion, float barrels and boxes, butter firkins and washtubs, boards, planks, hoops, and staves without number, interspersed with apples, turnips, and cabbages, while half-drowned rats and mice, scrambling up the stairway for dear life, drive you affrighted back to the kitchen....Now consider the case of one of these old farmhouse cellars that has been in use fifty years or more. In it have been stored all the potatoes, turnips, cabbages, onions, and other vegetables for family food. The milk and cream, the pork and beef, and cider and vinegar, have all met with various accidents, and from time to time have had their juices, in various stages of decay, absorbed by the soil of the cellar bottom. The cats have slept there to fight the rats and the mice, who have had their little homes behind the walls for half a century; and the sink spouts have for the same term poured into the soil close by, their fragrant fluids. The water rushes upward and sideways into the cellar, forming, with the savory ingredients at which we have delicately hinted, a sort of broth, quite thin and watery at first, but growing thicker as the water slowly subsides and leaves its grosser parts pervading the surface of the earth, walls, and partitions. All this time the air rushes in at the openings of the cellar, and presses constantly upward, often lifting the carpets from the floors, and is breathed day and night by all who dwell in the house. Does it require learned doctors or boards of health to inform any rational person that these conditions are unfavorable to health?--MRS. PLUNKETT, _Women, Plumbers, and Doctors_. _What Came from a Crack in a Cellar Wall_.--A few years ago a Boston gentleman inherited a house, situated on one of the most desirable streets of the city. Resolving to make a healthy as well as a beautiful home, he. spent a large sum, and gave personal supervision to all the details of an elaborate system of plumbing. He moved in. Imagine his grief and disappointment when member after member of his family succumbed to diphtheria, and an infant and a grown daughter died. Though so deeply smitten, he did not lose his belief in the connection between cause and effect. He ordered a minute investigation of the premises by experts. A slight crack, so small as to have escaped ordinary observation, was found in the cellar wall. Investigation of the premises next door--the inmates of which were also suffering from diphtheria--showed a choked-up drain, which ought to have connected with the sewer, but did not. The filthy ooze from this was pouring out, just where its effluvium and its disease germs could pass without any hindrance through the crack. Now that it is shown that gases pass through bricks and many kinds of stone, it is easy to see that the sanitary welfare of one is the sanitary welfare of all.--MRS. PLUNKETT. 6. _The Bedroom_.--_The Bed a Night Garment_.--There is still one of our garments to be considered, which generally is not regarded as such. I mean the bed--that piece of clothing in which we spend such a great part of our time. The bed is not only a place of rest; it is especially our sleeping garment, and has often to make up for privations endured during the day and the day's work, and to give us strength for to-morrow. Like our day garments, the bed covering must be airy and warm at the same time. We warm the bed by our body, just as we warm our clothes, and the bed warms the air which is continually flowing through it from below, upward. The regulating strata must be more powerful in their action than in our day clothes, because during rest and sleep the metamorphosis of our tissues and the resulting heat become less; and because in a horizontal position we lose more heat by an ascending current of air than in a vertical position, where the warm ascending current is in more complete and longer contact with our upright body. The warmth of the bed sustains the circulation in our surface to a certain degree for the benefit of our internal organs at a time when our production of heat is at its lowest ebb. Hence the importance of the bed for our heat and blood economy. Several days without rest in a bed not only make us sensible of a deficiency in the recruiting of our strength, but very often produce quite noticeable perturbations in our bodily economy, from which the bed would have protected us.--DR. MAX VON PETTENKOFFER. _Bed Ventilation_.--It often happens that the desire of the energetic housekeeper to have her work done at an early hour in the morning, causes her to leave one of the most important items of neatness undone. The most effectual purifying of bed and bedclothes can not take place, if the proper time is not allowed, for the free circulation of pure air, to remove all human impurities which have collected during the hours of slumber. At least two or three hours should be allowed for the complete removal of atoms of insensible perspiration which are absorbed by the bed. Every day the airing should be done; and, occasionally, bedding constantly used should be carried into the open air, and left exposed to the sun and wind for half a day.--_Home and Health_. CIRCULATION. THE PULSE (p. 116).--The pulse which is felt by the finger does not correspond precisely with the beat of the heart, but takes place a little after it, and the interval is longer, the greater the distance of the artery from the heart. The beat of the artery on the inner side of the ankle, for example, is a little later than the beat of the artery in the temple.--HUXLEY. The pulse is increased by exertion, and thus is more rapid in a standing than in a sitting, and in a sitting than in a lying posture. It is quickened by meals, and while varying thus from time to time during the day, is on the whole quicker in the evening than in early morning. It is said to be quicker in summer than in winter. Even independently of muscular exertion, it seems to be quickened by great altitude. Its rate is also profoundly influenced by mental conditions.--FOSTER. CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD IN THE BRAIN (p. l20).--Signer Mosso, who has been engaged on the subject for six years, has published some new observations on the different conditions of the circulation of the blood in the brain. He has had the privilege of observing three patients who had holes in their skulls, permitting the examination of the encephalic movements and circulation. No part of the body exhibits a pulsation so varied in its form as the brain. The pulsation may be described as tricuspid; that is, it consists of a strong beat, preceded and followed by lesser beats. It gathers strength when the brain is at work, corresponding with the more rapid flow of blood to the organ. The increase in the volume of the brain does not depend upon any change in the respiratory rhythm; for, if we take the pulse of the forearm simultaneously with that of the brain, we can not perceive that the cerebral labor exercises any influence upon the forearm, although the pulsation in the brain may be considerably modified. The emotions have a similar effect upon the circulation of the brain to that of cerebral labor. Signor Mosso has also observed and registered graphically the variations of the cerebral pulse during sleep. Generally the pulses of the wrist and the brain vary oppositely. At the moment of waking, the pulse of the wrist diminishes, while that of the brain increases. The cerebral pulsations diminish as sleep grows deeper, and at last become very weak. Outward excitations determine the same modifications during sleep as in the waking state, without waking the sleeper. A deep inspiration always produces a diminution in the volume of the brain, in consequence, probably, of the increased flow of blood into the veins of the thoracic cavity; the increase of volume in the brain, when it takes place, is, on the contrary, due to a more abundant flow of arterial blood to the encephalus.--_Popular Science Monthly, March, 1882_. CATARRHAL COLDS (p. l30).--I maintain that it can be proved, with as absolute certainty as any physiological fact admits of being proved, that warm, vitiated indoor air is the cause, and cold outdoor air the best cure, of catarrh....Fresh cold air is a tonic that invigorates the respiratory organs when all other stimulants fail, and, combined with arm exercise and certain dietetic alternatives, it is the best remedy for all disorders of the lungs and upper air passages....A combination of the three specifics,--exercise, abstinence, and fresh air,--will cure the most obstinate cold....Frost is such a powerful disinfectant, that in very cold nights the lung-poisoning atmosphere of few houses can resist its purifying influence; in spite of padded doors, in spite of "weatherstrips" and double windows, it reduces the indoor temperature enough to paralyze the floating disease germs. The penetrative force of a polar night frost exercises that function with such resistless vigor that it defies the preventive measures of human skill; and all Arctic travelers agree that among the natives of Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador pulmonary diseases are actually unknown. Protracted cold weather thus prevents epidemic catarrhs, but during the first thaw Nature succumbs to art: smoldering stove fires add their fumes to the effluvia of the dormitory, tight- fitting doors and windows exclude the means of salvation; superstition triumphs; the lung poison operates, and the next morning a snuffling, coughing, and red-nosed family discuss the cause of their affliction....It is a mistake to suppose that "colds" can be propagated only by direct transmission or the breathing of recently Vitiated air. Catarrh germs, floating in the atmosphere of an ill-ventilated bedroom, may preserve their vitality for weeks after the house has been abandoned; and the next renter of such a place should not move in till wide-open windows and doors and a thorough draught of several days have removed every trace of a "musty" smell.--DR. FELIX L. OSWALD, _Remedies of Nature, Popular Science Monthly, March, 1884_. CATCHING COLD.--The phrase "to catch cold," so often in the mouths of physicians and patients, is a curious solecism. It implies that the term "cold" denotes something positive--a sort of demon which does not catch, but is caught by the unfortunate victims....If most persons outside of the medical profession were to be asked what they consider as chiefly to be avoided in the management of sick people, the answer would probably be "catching cold." I suspect that this question would be answered in the same way by not a few physicians. Hence it is that sick rooms are poorly ventilated, and patients are oppressed by a superabundance of garments and bedclothes. The air which patients are made to breathe, having been already breathed and rebreathed, is loaded with pulmonary exhalations. Cutaneous emanations are allowed to remain in contact with the body, as well as to pervade the atmosphere. Patients not confined to the bed, especially those affected with pulmonary disease, are overloaded with clothing, which becomes saturated with perspiration, and is seldom changed, for fear of the dreaded "cold."... A reform is greatly needed in respect to "catching cold." Few diseases are referable to the agency of cold, and even the affection commonly called a cold is generally caused by other agencies, or, perhaps, by a special agent, which may prove to be a microbe. Let the axiom, _A fever patient never catches cold_, be reiterated until it becomes a household phrase. Let the restorative influence of cool, fresh, pure atmosphere be inculcated. Let it be understood that in therapeutics, as in hygiene, the single word _comfort_ embodies the principles which should regulate coverings and clothing.--AUSTIN FLINT, M.D., _in a Lecture printed in The New York Medical Journal_. DIGESTION AND FOOD. THE WATER WE DRINK (p. l55).--_Qualities of Pure Water_.--"A good drinking water," says Dr. Simpson (in _The Water We Drink_), "should possess the following physical characters: it should be entirely free from color, taste, or odor; it should, moreover, be cool, well aerated, soft, bright, and entirely free from all deposit. But it should be remembered that a water having all these characteristics may yet be more or less polluted by organic matter, owing to the proximity of drains and sewers....Disease has frequently been traced to the use of perfectly bright and clear water, where there was no sediment, and where the animal organic matter was held in a state of solution." In the case of diseases, such as typhoid, which attack the stomach, disease germs are removed along with the excreta; and if, as is often the case, the drainage of an infected town flows into a river, and that river is used in some after portion of its course as a water supply, there is great danger of such diseases being communicated. For, however well the water may be purified and filtered, we have no guarantee that it will not contain some of these disease germs, which are so small that they pass through the finest filters. It is in this way that almost all the great cholera and typhoid epidemics have spread.--_Chambers's Journal_. _Well Water Often Dangerous_.--A densely crowded population soon impregnates the soil to some depth with filth, which drains into the water course below, especially if such water is near the surface. This surface water easily penetrates a loosely walled well. Every well, therefore, should not only be widely separated from barnyards, cesspools, pens, sinks, and similar places, but should be made water-tight with cement, so that nothing can reach its interior except water that has been filtered through dense beds of unpolluted ground below. If these precautions are neglected, the best and deepest well may become continually contaminated by infiltration from the surrounding surface. This impure water, even when not used for family drinking, is sometimes supplied to cows, or used for washing dairy pans, or employed in diluting milk for the market, and there are many known cases in which disease has thus been disseminated. Thus, an epidemic of typhoid fever in Cambridge, Mass., was definitely traced to a dairy which supplied the victims with milk. Upon investigation it was found that a short time before there had been a typhoid patient in the farmhouse, and that the well from which water was taken to wash the milk pans had become contaminated with the specific poison brought into it from the surrounding drainage. All suspected water should be thoroughly boiled before using it to drink. Some physicians insist that the boiling should continue for one or two hours in order entirely to destroy the bacterial germs. The heaviness and insipidity incident to boiled water may be somewhat relieved by afterward filtering it. Filtering, of itself, however, will do little toward ridding the water of microbes, which are much too minute to be arrested by the ordinary apparatus.--When journeying, where one must often take a hasty meal at a railway station, drink hot water in preference to cold. A convenient portable filter may be arranged with a bottle of powdered charcoal, and a piece of filtering paper. A traveler by briskly stirring a tablespoonful of the charcoal into a pint of water, allowing it to stand five or ten minutes, and then filtering it through the paper, may venture to relieve his thirst in almost any part of the country. _Water an Absorbent of Foul Gases_.--If a pitcher of water be left uncovered in an occupied apartment for only a few hours, it will become foul from the absorption of the respired and perspired gases in the room. The colder the water, the greater the capacity to contain these gases. Water kept in a room over night is therefore unfit for drinking, and should not be used even to brush the teeth or to gargle in the throat. _Impure Ice, a Breeder of Disease_.--We generally take the purity of our ice for granted, and, like the alligator in the bayou, close our mouths and swallow it. In the country, I have seen during the ice- harvesting season, wagon after wagon passing me on the road, laden with ice that had been collected from canals, rivers, and streams receiving sewerage, and from ponds that are in the summer time reeking with slime, and often offensive from the quantity of decomposed vegetable and animal matter brought in by the washing from the meadow. These streams would be shunned as a source of water supply. Should you interview a native regarding the slimy mud puddle before you, called Mr. So-and-so's private "ice pond," he would say that "in winter it is much better, and when frozen, you know, it makes fine ice," presenting that popular though ignorant belief that while in the act of crystallizing, water rids itself of all its injurious qualities, however offensive it may be in its liquid state. Unfortunately, there is enough truth in the current idea of the elimination of noxious and foreign matter during the process of freezing to give color to the popular belief, but not enough to make it a safe reliance; therefore all means should be used to enlighten the public regarding this subject. Experiment has shown that freezing produces little change or effect in overcoming the poisonous influences, and ice has often served as a vehicle to convey the germs of typhoid and other low forms of fever. Pure ice can be procured only from water free from impurities, and ice for domestic or surgical purposes should never be collected from ponds or streams which contain animal or vegetable refuse, or stagnant and muddy material.--_Journal of Reconstructives, Oct., 1887_. THE GLANDULAR COAT OF THE STOMACH, AND HOW IT WEEPS (p. l62).--While the food is thus being continually moved about, it is at the same time subjected to the action of the chemical sac. This is, as we have said, a glandular sac. It is of some thickness, and is made of little glands bound up together with that stringy fibrous packing material which anatomists call _connective tissue_. If we were to imagine many gross of small India-rubber vials all placed side by side, and bound together with hay or straw into a great mat, and the mat rolled up into a sac, with all the mouths of the vials turned inward, we should have a large and coarse, but tolerably fair image of the glandular coat of the stomach. Each vial would then represent one of the glands of this coat, one of the gastric or peptic glands, as they are called. Each gland, however, is not always a simple tube, but is often branched at the bottom end, and all of them are lined, except just at their mouths, with large rounded bodies, which not unfrequently almost choke up their cavity. FIG. 72. [Illustration: BRANCHED GASTRIC GLAND a. _The peptic cells._ b. _The inert cells._] The rounded masses, or cells, as they are called, in the interior of each gland, form the really active part of the apparatus. Each cell is a little laboratory, which concocts out of the material brought to it or near it by the blood a certain potent, biting fluid, and is hence called a peptic or digestive cell. Each cell is born at the bottom of the tube, and in process of time travels upward toward the mouth. When it reaches the mouth, it bursts, and pours into the stomach the fluid it has elaborated, or perhaps may give it out without bursting, while it is still within its tube. In those cases in which it has been possible to look in upon the stomach while at work (as in the famous case of Alexis St. Martin), and where the orifices of the tiny glands (for though we have compared them to bottles, they are exceedingly small) appear like little dots, tears were seen to start at the mouths of the glands, gather into drops, and finally trickle down into the lowest part of the stomach. The stomach, as it were, weeps, and indeed the weeping of tears is just such another effect of glandular activity--only ordinary tears form a mild and, chemically speaking, impotent fluid; while the fluid which the tears of the stomach weep--the _gastric juice_--is a sharp, piercing water of excessive chemical power.--Hinton. POISONOUS MILK, CHEESE, AND ICE CREAM (p. l69).--In late years there have been many cases of poisoning by ice cream, cheese, and milk. The poisonous principle sometimes developed in these articles of food has been made a subject of special investigation, and it has been found to be due to natural causes. Dr. Vaughan, of Michigan, after spending several months in experimenting upon samples of twelve different cheeses, which had caused three hundred cases of poisoning, finally succeeded in isolating certain poison crystals, which he calls _Tyrotoxicon_. He says: "A few drops of an aqueous solution of these crystals placed upon the tongue produces all the symptoms observed in those who had been made sick by eating of the cheese. This was tried repeatedly upon myself, and upon some of my students who kindly offered themselves for experimentation." Dr. Vaughan afterward procured the poison crystals from milk which had stood some months in a closed bottle, and also from a sample of ice cream by which eighteen persons had been made ill. It was learned in the latter case that the custard, of which the ice cream was made, had been allowed to stand in a foul atmosphere for two hours before it was frozen. By placing small bits of this poisonous cream in good milk, and allowing it to stand twenty-four hours, the whole became vitiated. This proved that the poison is due to the growth of some ferment. In the autumn of 1886, many persons in different hotels at Long Branch were poisoned by milk obtained from a certain milkman. In this case it was found that the cows were milked at noon, the warm milk being immediately placed in cans and carted eight miles during the warmest part of the day, in a very hot month. In June, 1887, nineteen persons in New York city were similarly poisoned by milk which also came from one dairy. Many of these persons had narrow escapes from death. These, and many other like instances, teach us the importance of the greatest care in every detail of milk handling. A little dried milk formed along the seam of a tin pail, or any similar lodging place, may be the starting point of poison generation. A month after his first experiments with the ice cream mentioned above, Dr. Vaughan put small pieces of the dried custard in pans of milk, and afterward made custard from this milk. This yielded tyrotoxicon as before, showing the tenacious vitality of the poison, and also explaining the fact that the precise cause of poisoning is in many cases so difficult to trace. FISH AS FOOD (p. 169).--It is not desirable that fish should be the sole kind of nitrogenous food eaten by any nation; and even if milk and eggs be added thereto, the vigor of such a people will not be equal to that of flesh-eating nations. At the same time, the value of fish as a part of a dietary is indicated by the larger proportion of phosphorus which it contains, and which renders it especially fitted for the use of those who perform much brain work, or who are the victims of much anxiety and distress.--EDWARD SMITH, _in "Foods_." For the mentally exhausted, the worried, the "nervous," and the distressed in mind, fish is not simply a food; it acts as physic. The brain is nourished by it, the "nerves"--to use the term in its popular sense--are "quieted"; the mind grows stronger, the temper less irritable, and the whole being healthier and happier when fish is substituted for butcher's meat....I find persons who are greatly excited, even to the extent of seeking to do violence to themselves or to those around them, who can not sleep, and who are in an agony of irritability, become composed and contented when fed almost exclusively on fish. In such cases I have withdrawn butter, milk, eggs, and all the varieties of warm-blooded animal food; and, carefully noting the weight and strength, I find no diminution of either, while fish is supplied in such quantities as fully to satisfy the appetite.--J. MORTIMER GRANVILLE, M.D., "_Fish as Food and Physic_." COFFEE AND TEA (p. 170).--Besides the alkaloid _Caffeine_ which coffee contains, it also develops, in roasting, a volatile oil called Caffeone, to which is due its characteristic aroma. The main effects of coffee are due to both the caffeine and the caffeone, which are antagonistic, though not contemporaneous, in action. The volatile oil reduces arterial tension, allows a brisker flow of blood, and so increases the rapidity of the heart's action. It also acts upon the brain, and intellectual faculties in general; keeps one awake, and his mind clear. Caffeine, on the other hand, like digitalis, produces a high arterial tension, and slows the heart beat. It exerts its chief effect upon the spinal cord, to which, like strychnia, it is an excitant. The shaking hand of the inveterate coffee drinker is caused by caffeine. Thus a cup of coffee produces on the drinker a double effect,--of the oil and the alkaloid; the former sooner and transient, the latter later and lasting....Coffee is not in itself nutritious to any marked degree; but it saves food, and also maintains life, by its exhilarating effect upon the nervous system. It is an excellent antidote to opium, producing the wakefulness that antagonizes the narcotic sleep of the drug; is now and then curative of sick headache, and is one of the standard remedies for certain forms of nausea. To the chemist, _Tea_ is much the same thing as coffee. It contains considerably more tannin, a volatile oil, and an alkaloid (theine) indistinguishable from caffeine. That the injurious effects of overdoses are due as much to the volatile oil as to the alkaloid, is shown by the fact that tea packers are made ill by long breathing of air filled with it, and that tea tasters in China, who avoid swallowing the infusion, can endure their trade but a few years, and leave the country with shattered nerves. Probably every one numbers among his friends women who are actual slaves of the tea habit, and who would find tea as hard to forsake as men find tobacco. It is not unlikely that the functional cardiac disorder, often spoken of as the "tobacco heart," due to nervous derangement, and accompanied by palpitation and pain in the cardiac region, is more often due to tea than tobacco. In fact, the disorders induced by excessive tea drinking have been grasped as a special disease, to which has been given the name of _Theism_. This includes a train of symptoms, usually progressive, loss of appetite, pain after meals, headache, constipation, palpitation, cardiac distress, hysterical manifestations, dizziness, and paresis.--DR. MAURICE D. CLARKE, _Popular Science News_. Tea drinkers, as a rule, express doubts as regards the correctness of alleged poisonous properties of tea. Numerous instances of individuals of this class have been noticed who were themselves suffering from tea poisoning. Their nerves were in a deplorably abnormal condition, the heart and brain were functionally disturbed, and the sleep less in quantity and less refreshing than it should be....One's opinion of the physical disturbances which may be caused by rum, tobacco, or tea, are not worth much, when the opinion comes from a victim of the excessive use of these agents. The tannin found in tea does not differ from that found in oak and other barks which the tanners use to convert the raw hides of animals into leather. It is a powerful astringent, which accounts for some of the peculiar physical evils to which confirmed tea drinkers are subject. _Theine_ does not differ essentially from _Cocaine_ (see p. 223). They both produce exaltation of the nervous system and increased powers of physical endurance. The brain is largely influenced in its functions, and long periods of wakefulness are induced. Continued use of strong infusions of either coca or tea result in great disturbance of nervous centers and functional offices, and either will produce fatal results by persistent use of inordinate quantities. A cup of tea as served at tea tables contains usually only a trace of the alkaloidal principle, but infinitesimal quantities are capable of exerting baneful effects upon some tea drinkers....Poisons act in a variety of ways, some slowly, and without producing pain; others act violently, and with speedy, fatal results. Inasmuch as we do not observe a very large number of clearly proved cases of acute poisoning by tea, we must conclude that it is characteristically a slow poison, and also that its influence is unlike in different individuals....Four or six cups of tea, however, taken during each twenty-four hours, will in time produce tea poisoning, and greater or less evil effects. Tea is well enough, when its use is kept under absolute, intelligent control; but if it becomes master in any case, then it must be promptly abandoned, for danger attends the intemperate tea drinker every hour of his life. Those advanced in life crave its stimulating effects, and it is well for them to use it in moderation; but the young should abstain from it entirely.--_Abridged from "Tea Poisoning," by_ DR. NICHOLS, _in Popular Science News, December, 1887_. CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF INDIGESTION (p. l72).--When a light breakfast is eaten, a solid meal is requisite in the middle of the day. If the digestive organs are left too long unemployed, they secrete an excess of mucus, which greatly interferes with their normal functions. One meal has a direct influence on the next; and a poor breakfast leaves the stomach over-active for dinner. This is the secret of much excess in eating. The point to bear in mind is that not to eat a sufficiency at one meal makes you too hungry for the next; and that when you are too hungry, you are apt to overload the stomach, and to give the gastric juices more to do than they have the power to perform. To eat too often, and to eat irregularly, are other sources of indigestion. People who dine at uncertain hours, and eat one meal too quickly on the last, must expect the stomach to retaliate in the long run. A very fruitful cause of dyspepsia is imperfect mastication. We remember one old gentleman who used always to warn young people on this point by saying: "Remember you have no teeth in your stomach." Nervous people nearly always eat fast, and as nearly always are the victims of nervous irritability, produced by dyspepsia....To sit much in a stooping posture interferes with the stomach's action. Well-marked dyspepsia has been traced to sitting immediately after dinner in a low armchair, so that the body was curved forward, and the stomach compressed.... The skin, core, and kernels of fruit should be avoided. Some people are not able to digest raw apples; and dyspepsia has been sometimes greatly aggravated by eating pears. The latter fruit, in its ripest state, contains an abundance of gritty material, which, as it can not be separated in the mouth, on being swallowed irritates the mucous membrane.... Of food itself, bear in mind that hot meat is more digestible than cold; the flesh of full-grown animals than that of young ones; that land birds are more digestible than waterfowl; wild animals than domestic ones; and that in game, newly killed birds are easier of digestion than those which have been kept a long time.--_Hints to Dyspeptics, Chambers's Journal_. HOW FOOD DEVELOPS ENERGY (p. 173).--It may appear strange that the small amount of food we eat should suffice to carry our large and bulky bodies through all the varied movement of the day. But this difficulty disappears at once, when we recollect how large an amount of dormant energy can be laid by in a very small piece of matter. A lump of coal no bigger than one's fist, if judiciously employed, will suffice to keep a small toy engine at work for a considerable time. Now, our food is matter containing large amounts of dormant energy, and our bodies are engines so constructed as to utilize all the energy to the best advantage. A single gramme of beef fat if completely burned (that is, if every atom unites with oxygen), is capable of developing more than 9,000 heat units; and each heat unit, if employed to perform mechanical work, is capable of lifting a weight of one gramme to a height of 424 meters; or, what comes to the same thing, 424 grammes to a height of one meter. Accordingly, the energy contained in one gramme of beef, and the oxygen with which it unites, would be sufficient to raise the little bit of fat itself to a height of 3,816 kilometers, or almost as high as the distance from London to New York.-- GRANT ALLEN _in "Why do we Eat our Dinner_?" _Danger of Too High Pressure_.--A prudent fire engineer, when his water hose is old and weak, would not try to force as much water as he could into it. No; to prevent a rupture he would work it at a low pressure. But men seldom think of carrying out the same simple mechanical principle when there is reason to believe that the vessels of the brain are getting weak and brittle. They eat and drink just as much as they feel inclined to, and sometimes a little more. With a good digestion, nearly all they consume is converted into blood, to the yet further distention of vessels already over-distended. This high-pressure style of living produces high-pressure results. Its effects were painfully illustrated by the death of Charles Dickens. The brain work he performed was immense; he lived generously, taking his wine as he did his meat, with a liberal hand. He disregarded the signs of structural decay, forcing his reluctant brain to do what it had once done with spontaneous ease, until all at once, under a greater tension than ordinary, a weak vessel gave way, flooding the brain with blood.--J. R. BLACK, M.D., _in "Apoplexy," Popular Science Monthly, April, 1875_. _Evils of Gluttony_.--"Is it not strange," says Dr. Hunt, "how people, even the most considerate, will trifle with their stomachs? Many a person seems to prefer taking medicine to avoiding it by a proper regulation of the appetite. You may stuff the stomach to the full, year after year, but as sure as effects follow causes, so sure will you reap the accumulating penalty." A physician of extensive practice declares that he has never lived through a Christmas or Thanksgiving without frequently being consulted for ailments produced by excessive eating. He says: "It would seem as if multitudes thought they had a gluttonous license once a year, and that the most appropriate method of expressing gratitude, was by stuffing the stomach. Excessive eating produces scrofula. Surfeiting among children results in mental stupidity and unmanageable temper....I am acquainted with a family, in which about the average amount of stuffing is indulged. To my expostulations, the mother has replied: "I may not be able to give my children as much education as some folks, and I may not be able to give them any property, but as long as we can get it, they shall have what they want to eat. I have spoken of their black teeth, bad breath, eruptions, and frequent sickness. "Yes," she has replied, "I know all that, but would you have me stop them before their appetites are half satisfied, and tell them, 'there, that is all you can have'? No; as long as I can get it, my children shall have enough to eat; it never shall be said that I have starved them." This indulgence of children to the full extent of their undiscriminating appetites is extreme folly and genuine unkindness. Pampered with a variety of dishes, they eat enormously, which engenders a craving for another large meal, and so on--their youthful and elastic constitutions enabling them to bear the excess without immediate serious injury. Let them be confined to one or two plain dishes at a meal, and the quantity be determined for them; it will then be found that a growing child does not need to be stuffed, and that his appetite will soon become reasonable; and if the food be plain, and mostly or entirely vegetable, it will soon be observed that the child's teeth are whiter, its breath sweeter, its skin clearer, its tongue cleaner, its eyes brighter, its sleep quieter, its brains sharper, and its temper more amiable. There are few changes in the management of children which would prove so beneficial as that from the present mode of cramming with a multitude of rich foods, to a plain vegetable diet, eaten in regular and moderate quantities.--DIO LEWIS, _in Weak Lungs, and How to Make them Strong_. REGULAR PHYSICAL HABITS (p. 177).--Constipation lies at the root of a host of chronic ailments, which seem especially to beset American women. Impaired blood, nervous excitability, sick headaches, mental depression, sleeplessness, and a long train of untold sufferings may be directly traced to this physical sin. We say _sin_, for in the large majority of instances this habit may be prevented; or, if already formed, may, by proper attention, be cured. The principal causes which lead to this deplorable state of the system are: 1. Errors in Food. 2. Errors in Exercise. 3. Inattention to Nature's laws. _Errors in Food_ have much to do with the evil in question. Our diet is, in general, too concentrated. We indulge ourselves with animal food two or three times a day, accompanying it with spices, condiments, greasy gravies, fine wheat bread, and a sparse amount of vegetables. We wind up our dinners with rich and heavy pastry, and our luncheons or our suppers with sugared sweetmeats and that indigestible compound often offered under the name of cake. A few cups of strong tea intensify the error. Coffee has a less astringent effect, and therefore can not be so severely arraigned for this particular consequence. When we think what delicious meals can be enjoyed from any of the cereals, well cooked, and taken with milk or cream, bread from unbolted flour, plenty of unsugared fruit, and pure rain or spring water, filtered and cooled or taken hot, with or without milk, we wonder that so many people consent day after day to use greasy pork, fried steaks, fried potatoes, hot biscuit, and in many cases poorly made coffee and tea. These are the people who make up the grand army of sallow- faced sufferers upon which the venders of patent pills and nauseous compounds thrive. A wise mother will not allow mere culinary convenience to take precedence of the requirements of health. She will study the peculiar physical needs of each one of her children, that she may provide for each the food best suited to his or her constitution. This is not a difficult matter. "Water, not only by itself, but in some of its combinations," says Dr. Oswald, "is an effective aperient; in watermelons, and whey, for instance, but still more in conjunction with a dish of peas, or beans. No constipation can long withstand the suasion of a dose of pea soup, or baked beans, flavored with a modicum of brown butter, and glorified with a cup of cold spring water. Moreover, the aperient effect thus produced is not followed by an astringent reaction, as in the case of drugs,--the cure, once effected, is permanent." _Errors in Exercise_ may lie in two directions, and overexertion, viz., exercise carried to the point of nervous exhaustion, is as mischievous in its effect as is the other extreme. A too long walk, for instance, may cause the very evil it is intended to cure. As a rule, however, sedentary habits are chargeable with the greater share of influence in this unhappy state of the system. Light gymnastics within doors, a brisk walk or horseback ride without, both taken in garments suspended from the shoulders, and devoid of all constriction so that the abdominal viscera can partake in the general movement of the body, are advisable. For invalids or those incapacitated for active exercise, friction or massage treatment daily, including a vigorous kneading of the abdomen, or a relaxation of the entire muscles of the body with especial thought directed to the desired result, are often of great service. _Inattention to Physical Laws_ is perhaps the prime culprit. Nature always inclines to regularity, and when we do not respect her dictates, we invite the retribution which, sooner or later, she invariably inflicts. The elimination of waste from the system is an imperative necessity, and whenever it is thwarted, evil must and will follow. Aside from the avoidance of positive discomforts, suffering, and disease, there is the not unimportant consideration of bodily elasticity and a fine complexion. Let every young woman who would possess and retain a fair, delicate complexion, remember that the most important factor in its formation and retention is a clean system. Proper diet, plenty of fruits, plenty of wholesome drink, enough exercise to send the blood pleasurably bounding through the veins, followed up and enforced by prompt recognition of the immutable laws of Health in this as well as all other organic functions, will soon work a reform that could not be so successfully effected by all the drugs in Christendom.--E. B. S. THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. EFFECT OF VIOLENT PASSIONS UPON HEALTH (p. 202).--The man who is given to outbursts of anger is sure to experience a rapid change of the physical organs, in case he does not die in a fit of rage. Death under such circumstances is of frequent occurrence. Sylla, Valentinian, Nerva, Wenceslas, and Isabeau of Bavaria, all died in consequence of an access of passion. The medical annals of our own time recount many instances of fatal effects following the violent brain disturbance caused by anger. The symptoms usually are pulmonary and cerebral congestions. Still such fatal accidents as these are exceptional; as a rule, the passions of hate and anger deteriorate the constitution by slow, but sure degrees. How, then, do we explain those morbid phenomena which have their origin in misplaced affection, in disappointed ambition, in hatred, or in anger, and which culminate either in serious chronic maladies, or in death or suicide? They all seem to start from an impairment of the cerebro-spinal centers. The continual excitation of these by ever-present emotions determines a paralysis of the central nerve substance, and thus affects its connections with the nerves extending out to the various organs. These nerves next degenerate by degrees, and soon the great functions are compromised. The heart and the lungs cease to act with their normal rhythm, the circulation grows irregular and languishing. Appetite disappears, the amount of carbonic acid exhaled decreases, and the hair grows white, owing to the interruption of the pigmentary secretion. This general disturbance in nutrition and secretion is attended with a fall of the body's temperature and anæmia. The flesh dries up and the organism becomes less and less capable of resisting morbific influences. At the same time, in consequence of the reaction of all these disturbances on the brain, the psychic faculties become dull or perverted, and the patient falls into a decline more or less complicated and aggravated by grave symptoms. Under these conditions he dies or makes away with himself. Two organs, the stomach and the liver, are often affected in a peculiar and characteristic way in the course of this pathological evolution. The modifications produced in the innervation, under the influence of cephalic excitement, cause a disturbance of the blood circulation in the liver. This disturbance is of such a nature that the bile, now secreted in larger quantity, is resorbed into the blood instead of passing into the biliary vesicle. Then appears what we call jaundice. The skin becomes pale, then yellow, owing to the presence in the blood of the coloring matter of the bile. This change in the liver is usually developed slowly: sometimes, however, jaundice makes its appearance suddenly. Villeneuve mentions the case of two youths who brought a discussion to an end by grasping their swords; suddenly one of them turned yellow, and the other, alarmed at this transformation, dropped his weapon. The same author speaks of a priest who became jaundiced on seeing a mad dog jump at him. Whatever may be said of these cases, we must reckon painful affections of the soul among the efficient causes of chronic diseases of the liver. The digestion, says the author of a work published some years ago, is completely subjected to the influence of the moral and intellectual state. When the brain is wearied by the passions, appetite and digestion are almost gone....There is nowhere perfect health, save when the passions are well regulated, harmonized, and equipoised. Moral temperance is as indispensable to a calm and tranquil life as physiological temperance....If it is your desire that your circulatory, respiratory, and digestive functions should be discharged properly, normally, if you want your appetite to be good, your sleep sound, your humor equable, avoid all emotions that are overstrong, all pleasures that are too intense, and meet the inevitable sorrows and the cruel agonies of life with a firm and resigned soul. Ever have some occupation to employ and divert your mind, and to make it proof against the temptations of want or of desire. Thus will you attain the term of life without overmuch disquiet and affliction.--FERNAND PAPILLON, _in the Revue des Deux Mondes_. BRAIN WORK, OVERWORK, AND WORRY (p. 205).--_Overstimulation of the Brain in Childhood_.--Most civilized communities have enacted laws against the employment of children in severe physical labor. This is well enough, for the muscles of young persons are tender and weak, and not, therefore, adapted to the work to which cupidity or ignorance would otherwise subject them. But no such fostering care does the State take of the brains of the young. There are no laws to prevent the undeveloped nervous system being overtasked and brought to disease, or even absolute destruction. Every physician sees cases of the kind, and wonders how parents of intelligence can be so blind to the welfare of their offspring as to force, or even to allow, their brains to be worked to a degree that, in many cases, results in idiocy or death. Only a few months ago I saw for the first time a boy of five years of age, with a large head, a prominent forehead, and all the other signs of mental precocity. He had read the first volume of Bryant's "History of the United States," and was preparing to tackle the other volumes! He read the magazines of the day with as much interest as did his father, and conversed with equal facility on the politics of the period. But a few weeks before I saw him he had begun to walk in his sleep, then chorea had made its appearance, and on the day before he was brought to me he had had a well-marked epileptic paroxysm. Already his mind is weakened --perhaps permanently so. Such cases are not isolated ones. They are continually occurring. The period of early childhood--say up to seven or eight years of age--is that during which the brain and other parts of the nervous system are most actively developing, in order to fit them for the great work before them. It is safe to say that the only instruction given during this time should be that which consists in teaching children how to observe. The perceptive faculties alone should be made the subjects of systematic attempts at development. The child should be taught how to use his senses, and especially how to see, hear, and touch. In this manner, knowledge would be acquired in the way that is preeminently the natural way, and ample food would be furnished for the child's reflective powers.--DK. WM. A. HAMMOND, _Popular Science Monthly, November, 1884_. _Reserve Force_.--The part which "a stock of energy" plays in brain work can scarcely be exaggerated. Reserves are of high moment everywhere in the animal economy, and the reserve of mental force is in a practical sense more important than any other....Without this reserve, healthy brain work is impossible. Pain, hunger, anxiety, and a sense of mind weariness, are warning tokens of exhaustion. When the laborious worker, overcome with fatigue, "rouses" himself with alcohol, coffee, tea, or any other agent which may chance to suit him, he does not add a unit of force to his stock of energy; he simply narcotizes the sense of weariness, and, the guard being drugged, he appropriates the reserve....Meanwhile, the effort to work becomes daily more laborious, the task of fixing the attention grows increasingly difficult, thoughts wander, memory fails, the reasoning power is enfeebled; physical nerve or brain disturbance may supervene, and the crash will then come suddenly, unexpected by on-lookers, perhaps unperceived by the sufferer himself. _Overwork and Worry_.--The miseries of "overwork," pure and simple, are few and comparatively insignificant....The natural safeguards are so well fitted for their task that neither body nor mind is exposed to the peril of serious exhaustion so long as their functions are duly performed. Overwork is _impossible_ so long as the effort made is natural....There is then no excuse for idleness in the pretense of possible injury. If insane asylums were searched for the victims of "overwork," they would nearly all be found to have fallen a prey to "worry," or to the degeneracy which results from lack of purpose in life, and of steady employment ....The cause or condition which most commonly exposes the reserve of mental energy to loss and injury is worry. When a strong and active mind breaks down suddenly in the midst of business, it is usually worn out by this cause rather than by the other....Work in the teeth of worry is fraught with peril. The unhappy victim is ever on the verge of a catastrophe; if he escape, the marvel is not at his strength of intellect so much as at his good fortune. Worry is disorder, however induced, and disorderly work is abhorred by the laws of nature, which leave it wholly without remedy. The pernicious system of _Cram_ slays its thousands, because uneducated, undeveloped, inelastic intellects are burdened and strained with information adroitly deposited in the memory,--as an expert valet packs a portmanteau, with the articles likely to be first wanted on the top. _Desultory occupation_, mere play with objects of which the true interest is not appreciated, ruins a still larger number. But _worry_, that bane of brain work and mental energy, counts its victims by tens of thousands.--DR. J. MORTIMER GRANVILLE, _in "Worry," Nineteenth Century_. SLEEP (p. 206).--_Some Curiosities of Sleep_.--One of the most refined and exquisite methods of torture is long continued deprivation of sleep. The demand for unconscious rest is so imperious that nature will accommodate itself to the most unfavorable surrounding conditions. Thus, in forced marches, regiments have been known to sleep while walking; men have slept soundly in the saddle; and persons will sometimes sleep during the din of battle. It is remarkable how noises to which we have been accustomed will fail to disturb our natural rest. Those who have been long habituated to the endless noise of a crowded city frequently find difficulty in sleeping in the oppressive stillness of the country. Prolonged exposure to intense cold induces excessive somnolence, and if this be induced, the sleep passes into stupor, the power of resistance to cold becomes rapidly diminished, and death is the inevitable result. Intense heat often produces drowsiness, but, as is well known, is not favorable to natural sleep....It is difficult to determine with exactness the phenomena of sleep that are absolutely physiological, and to separate those that are slightly abnormal. We can not assert, for example, that a dreamless sleep is the only normal condition of repose of the system; nor can we determine what dreams are due to previous trains of thought, or to such impressions from the external world received during sleep as are purely physiological, and what are due to abnormal nervous influence, disordered digestion, etc. The most remarkable experiments upon the production of dreams of a definite character, by subjecting a person during sleep to peculiar influences, are those of Maury. The hallucinations produced in this way are called hypnagogic (from its derivation this term is properly applied only to phenomena observed at the instant when we fall asleep, or when we are imperfectly awakened, and not to the period of most perfect repose), and they occur when the subject is not in a condition favorable to sound sleep. The experiments made by Maury upon himself are so curious and interesting that we quote the most striking of them in full. _First Observation_.--I am tickled with a feather successively on the lips and inside of the nostrils. I dream that I am subjected to a horrible punishment, that a mask of pitch is applied to my face, and then roughly torn off, tearing the skin of the lip, the nose, and the face. _Second Observation_.--A pair of pincers is held at a little distance from my ear, and rubbed with steel scissors. I dream that I hear the ringing of bells; this soon becomes a tocsin, and I imagine myself in the days of June, 1848. (The time of the French Revolution.) _Third Observation_.--I am caused to inhale Cologne water. I dream I am in a perfumer's shop; the idea of perfumes doubtless awakens the idea of the East; I am in Cairo, in the shop of Jean Farina.... _Fifth Observation_.--I am slightly pinched on the nape of the neck. I dream that a blister is applied, which recalls to my mind a physician who had treated me in infancy. _Seventh Observation_....The words Azar, Castor, Leonore, were pronounced in my ear; on awaking I recollected that I had heard the last two words, which I attributed to one of the persons who had conversed with me in my dream.--FLINT'S _Physiology of Man_. The transition stage between the dream simple and the dream acted is witnessed in the spasmodic movements which a vivid dream produces in the limbs or person of the sleeper. The dreamer engages in a fierce struggle, and twitchings of his legs and arms indicate the feeble response of body to the promptings of mind removed from its wonted power over the frame. Even the dog, as he sleeps, apparently dreams of the chase, and gives vent to his sensations by the short, sharp bark, or sniffs the air, and starts in his slumber as if in response to the activity with which, in his dreaming, he is hurrying along after the object of pursuit....Persons have been known to swim for a considerable time in the somnambulistic state without waking at the termination of their journey; others have safely descended the shaft of a mine, while some have ascended steep cliffs, and have returned home in safety during a prolonged sleep vigil. (See p. 204.)--DR. ANDREW WILSON, F.R.S.E., _What Dreams are Made of_. _Sleep and Conscience_.--Edward Everett Hale says: Never go to bed in any danger of being hungry. People are kept awake by hunger quite as much as by a bad conscience. Remembering that sleep is the essential force which starts the whole system, decline tea or coffee within the last six hours before going to bed. Avoid all mathematics or intricate study of any sort in the last six hours. This is the stuff dreams are made of, and hot heads, and the nuisances of waking hours. Keep your conscience clear. Remember that because the work of life is infinite, you can not do the whole of it in any limited period of time, and that therefore you may just as well leave off in one place as another. _The Art of Rising Early_.--The proper time to rise is when sleep ends. Dozing should not be allowed. True sleep is the aggregate of sleeps, or is a state consisting in the sleeping or rest of all the several parts of the organism. Sometimes one and at other times another part of the body, as a whole, may be the least fatigued, and so the first to awake; or the most exhausted, and therefore the most difficult to arouse. The secret of good sleep is, the physiological conditions of rest being established, so to work and weary the several parts of the organism as to give them a proportionately equal need of rest at the same moment. To wake early, and feel ready to rise, a fair and equal start of the sleepers should be secured; and the wise self-manager should not allow a drowsy feeling of unconsciousness, or weary senses, or an exhausted muscular system, to beguile him into the folly of going to sleep again when once he has been aroused. After a few days of self-discipline, the man who resolves not to doze, that is, not to allow some sleepy part of his body to keep him in bed after his brain has once awakened, will find himself, without knowing why, an early riser. INFLUENCE OF SUNLIGHT (p. 207).--Light is an essential element in producing the grand phenomena of life, though its action is ill understood. Where there is light there is life, and any deprivation of this principle is rapidly followed by disease of the animal frame, and the destruction of the mental faculties. We have proof of this in the squalor of those whose necessities compel them to labor in places to which the blessings of sunshine never penetrate, as in our coal mines, where men having everything necessary for health, except light, exhibit a singularly unhealthy appearance. The state of fatuity and wretchedness to which those individuals have been reduced, who have been subjected for years to incarceration in dark dungeons, may be referred to the same deprivation.-- ROBERT HUNT, _Poetry of Science_. _Effect of Dungeon Life_.--"You can not imagine, Mr. Kennan," said a condemned revolutionist to me in Siberia, "the misery of prolonged confinement in a casemate of the fortress under what are known as dungeon conditions. My casemate was sometimes cold, generally damp, and always gloomy. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I lay there in solitude, hearing no sound save that of the high-pitched, melancholy bells of the fortress cathedral, which slowly chimed the quarter hours, and which always seemed to say: 'Here thou liest--lie here still.' I had absolutely nothing to do except to pace my cell from corner to corner, and think. For a long time I used to talk to myself in a whisper; to repeat softly everything in the shape of literature that I could remember, and to compose speeches which, under certain imagined conditions, I would deliver; but I finally ceased to have energy enough to do even this, and used to sit for hours in a sort of stupor, in which, so far as I can now remember, I was not conscious of thinking at all. Before the end of the first year, I grew so weak, mentally and physically, that I began to forget words. I knew what ideas I desired to express, but some of the words that I needed had gone from me, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I could recover them. It seemed sometimes as if my own language were a strange one to me, or one which, from long disuse, I had forgotten. I greatly feared insanity, and my apprehension was increased by the fact that two or three of my comrades in cells on the same corridor were either insane or subject to hallucinations; and I was often roused at night and thrown into a violent chill of nervous excitement by their hysterical weeping, their cries to the guard to come and take away somebody, or something which they imagined they saw, or their groans and entreaties when, in cases of violent delirium, they were strapped to their beds by the _gendarmes_."--GEORGE KENNAN, _in Russian State Prisoners, The Century, March, 1888_. THE GROWTH AND POWER OF POISON HABITS (p. 218).--In order to distinguish a poison stimulant from a harmless and nutritive substance, Nature has furnished us three infallible tests: 1. The first taste of every poison is either insipid or repulsive. 2. The persistent obtrusion of the noxious substance changes that aversion into a specific craving. 3. The more or less pleasurable excitement produced by a gratification of that craving is always followed by a depressing reaction.... One radical fallacy identifies the stimulant habit in all its disguises: its victims mistake a process of irritation for one of invigoration.... Sooner or later the tonic is sure to pall while the morbid craving remains, and forces its victims either to increase the quantity of the wonted stimulant, or else to resort to a stronger poison. A boy begins with ginger beer and ends in ginger rum; the medical "tonic" delusion progresses from malt extract to Mumford's Elixir; and the nicotine habit once introduced, the alcohol habit often follows. The tendency of every stimulant habit is toward a stronger tonic....We have found that the road to the rum shop is paved with "mild stimulants," and that every bottle of medical bitters is apt to get the vender a permanent customer. We have found that cider and mild ale lead to strong ale, to lager beer, and finally to rum, and the truth at last dawns upon us that the only safe, consistent, and effective plan is Total Abstinence from all Poisons. ...More than the hunger after bread, more than the frenzy of love or hatred, the poison hunger overpowers every other instinct, even the fear of death. Dr. Isaac Jennings has illustrated this by the following example: A clergyman of his acquaintance attempted to dissuade a young man of great promise from habits of intemperance. "Hear me first a few words," said the young man, "and then you may proceed. I am sensible that an indulgence in this habit will lead to the loss of property, the loss of reputation and domestic happiness, to premature death, and to the irretrievable loss of my immortal soul; and now, with all this conviction resting firmly on my mind and flashing over my conscience like lightning, if I still continue to drink, do you suppose anything you can say will deter me from the practice?" ...Ignorance is a chief cause of intemperance. The seductions of vice would not mislead so many of our young men if they could realize the significance of their mistake. There is still a lingering belief that, with due precaution against excess and adulteration, a dram drinker might "get ahead" of Nature, and, as it were, trick her out of some extra enjoyment. There is no hope of a radical reform till intelligent people have realized the fact that this "trick" is in every instance a losing game, entailing penalties which far outweigh the pleasures that the novice may mistake for enjoyments. For the depression of the vital energy increases with every repetition of the stimulating process, and in a year after the first dose all the "grateful and exhilarating tonics" of our professional poison venders can not restore the vigor, the courage, and the cheerfulness which the mere consciousness of perfect health imparts to the total abstainer. A great plurality of all beginners underrate the difficulty of controlling the cravings of a morbid appetite. They remember that their natural inclinations at first opposed, rather than encouraged, the indulgence; and they feel that at the present stage of its development they could abjure the passion without difficulty. But they overlook the fact that the moral power of resistance decreases with each repetition of the dose, and that the time will come when only the practical impossibility of procuring their wonted tipple will enable them to keep their pledge of total abstinence. It is true that, by the exercise of a constant self-restraint, a person of great will force may resist the progressive tendency of the poison habit and confine himself for years to a single cigar or a single bottle of wine per day....But the attempt to resist that bias will overtask the strength of most individuals. According to the allegory of the Grecian myth, the car of Bacchus was drawn by tigers; and it is a significant circumstance that war, famine, and pestilence have so often been the forerunners of veritable alcohol epidemics....The explanation is that, after the stimulant habit has once been initiated, every unusual depression of mental or physical vigor calls for an increased application of the accustomed method of relief....Nations who are addicted to the worship of a poison god will use his temple as a place of refuge from every calamity; and children whose petty ailments have been palliated with narcotics, wine, and cordials, will afterward be tempted to drown their greater sorrows in deeper draughts of the same nepenthe.--FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D., _Remedies of Nature, Popular Science Monthly, October and November, 1883_. DANGERS FROM THE USE OF NARCOTICS.--It may seem a paradox, it is a truism, to say that in the value of narcotics lies their peril. Because they have such power for good, because the suffering which they alleviate is in its lighter forms so common, because neuralgia and sleeplessness are ailments as familiar to the present generation as gout, rheumatism, and catarrh were to our grandfathers, therefore the medicines which immediately relieve sleeplessness and neuralgic pain are among the most dangerous possessions, the most subtle temptations of civilized life. Every one of these drugs has, besides its instant and beneficial effect, other and injurious tendencies. The relief which it gives is purchased at a certain price; for, at each repetition of the dose, the immediate relief is lessened or rendered uncertain, while the mischievous influence is enhanced and aggravated; till, when the drug has become a necessity of life it has lost the greater part, if not the whole, of its value, and serves only to satisfy the need which itself alone has created....We read weekly of men and women poisoned by an overdose of some favorite sedative, burned to death or otherwise fatally injured, while insensible from self- administered ether or chloroform....The narcotist keeps chloroform or chloral always at hand, forgetful or ignorant that one sure effect of the first dose is to produce a semistupor more dangerous than actual somnolence. In that semistupor the patient is aware, or fancies, that the dose has failed. The pain that has induced a lady to hold a chloroformed handkerchief under her nostrils returns while her will and her judgment are half paralyzed. She takes the bottle from the table beside her bed, intending to pour an additional supply upon her handkerchief. The unsteady hand perhaps spills a quantity on the sheet, perhaps sinks with the unstoppered bottle under her nostrils, and in a few moments she has inhaled enough utterly to stupefy, if not to kill. The sleepless brain worker also feels that his usual dose of chloral has failed to bring sleep; he is not aware how completely it has stupefied the brain, to which it has not given rest. His judgment is gone, so is his steadiness of hand; and he pours out a second and too often a fatal dose....But the cases that end in a death terrible to the family, though probably involving little or no suffering to the victim himself, are by no means the worst. A life poisoned, paralyzed, rendered worthless for all the uses of intellectual, rational, we might almost say of human existence, is worse for the sufferer himself and for all around him than a quick and painless death; and for one such death there must be twenty, if not a hundred, instances of this worst death in life....The demoralization of the narcotist is not, like that of the drunkard, rapid, violent, and palpable; but gradual, insidious, perceptible at first only to close observers and intimate friends. Here and there we find a constitution upon which opium exerts few or none of its characteristic effects. Such cases are, of course, wholly exceptional; but their very existence is a danger to others, misleading them into the idea that they may dally with the tempter without falling under its yoke, or may fall under that yoke and find it a light one. I doubt, however, whether the most fortunate of its victims would encourage the latter idea; whether there be an opium eater who would not give a limb never to have known what opium slavery means....Besides, no one can be sure, or indeed reasonably hope, that the mischief will be confined to the individual victim. That the children of drunkards are often predisposed to insanity is notorious; that the children of habitual opium eaters inherit an unmistakable taint, whether in a diseased brain, in morbid cravings, or simply in a will too weak to resist temptation, is less notorious, but equally certain.--PERCY GREG, _Narcotics and Stimulants, Contemporary Review_. Thus also in America scarcely a week passes but we see announced in the public prints deaths or suicides resulting from the use of narcotics. Now, it is from tobacco: A Yale College student dies from excessive smoking; another student in the same college, and as a result of the same habit, commits suicide; a third young man is found dead in his bed in New York, from heart disease induced by cigarettes; and so, month by month, and year by year, grows in rapid increase the list of tobacco deaths.--Or, again, it is from opium. A Harvard student with two of his college companions in search of a new sensation, tries opium smoking one fatal night and dies before morning; a woman in Ohio, belonging to a prominent family, dies at the age of thirty-three years, from an overdose of morphine, her body covered with hypodermic scars; another, once the respected wife of a Baptist clergyman, becomes a morphine drunkard, drifts, step by step, into a Central New York Almshouse, and there hangs herself; a third, young, accomplished, and wealthy, falls first a victim to the morphine habit, then to opium smoking, finally becomes the frequenter of a New York opium joint, and so is lost forever to home, friends, and respectability.-- Occasionally it is cocaine, as in the case of the Chicago physician, who, for the purposes of investigation, experiments with this new drug upon himself, his wife, and finally upon his innocent children; the entire family being found unconscious from the effects of the subtle narcotic. These are but solitary instances in an appallingly long list of similar cases, most of which have occurred within the last two years (1887-'88). _Cigarette Smoking_ is chargeable with a growing demoralization and mortality among boys and young men. It is no uncommon sight to see lads of ten years old and under, with the irresponsibility of ignorant childhood, puffing the dangerous cigarette, and thus undermining health and intellect at the very outset of useful existence. Even when told of the near and remote perils thus incurred, they scarcely listen, for do not they see their elders smoke and prosper?--Most of them do not understand that there is more danger to the young than to the old in the tobacco habit, more danger to some constitutions than to others, and more danger in the cigarette than even in the pipe or the cigar. Pause a moment to consider it, boys, when you are tempted to light the clean-looking, paper-covered roll and place it in your mouth. Think of the heated smoke irritating the delicate membrane in your throat, dulling your brain, and vitiating the blood which should be bounding fresh and pure through your veins. Think of the many filthy and diseased mouths from which have been cast away the tobacco refuse, picked up in streets and public places to reappear in the "Cheap and Popular Brand" which looks to you so innocent and so attractive. It is astonishing, indeed, how an otherwise cleanly boy will consent to defile himself with these vile abominations. And yet, I have known lads who--not always with perfect politeness--would fastidiously refuse "hash" at their mother's breakfast table, but who would shortly afterward serenely place one of these unknowable compounds between their lips and walk away with the air of superior manhood! _Of Chloral Hydrate_, Dr. Fothergill remarks: "When this was announced with a flourish of trumpets as a perfectly innocuous narcotic, the sleepless folk hailed its advent with eager acclamation. But a little experience soon demonstrated that the innocuous, harmless drug was far from the boon it was proclaimed. In fact, the impression of its harmlessness was the outcome of ignorance of its properties. Death after death, even among medical men themselves, as well as nonprofessional persons, have already resulted from the use, or rather misuse, of this narcotic agent." _The Bromides_ (of Soda or Potash), also, should be used with caution, and only on the prescription of a conscientious physician. "The bromide of potash," says Percy Greg, "is claimed not to produce sleep by stupefaction, like chloral or opium, but, at least in small doses, to allay the nervous irritability which is often the sole cause of sleeplessness. But in larger quantities and in its ultimate effects, it is scarcely less to be dreaded than chloral." Overdoses of the bromides will produce among other evil effects a peculiar eruption upon the face, which, though generally temporary, is liable to reappear from time to time under certain conditions of the system, and especially upon a subsequent dose, however dilute. _Absinthe_ is a compound of absinthium (the essence of wormwood), various aromatic oils, and alcohol. Absinthium, taken in small doses, induces trembling, stupor, and insensibility; in larger doses, epilepsy. When, therefore, this dangerous essence is added to alcohol, it strengthens its influence to specific disease. Absinthe drinking is recognized in France as such a serious vice that it has been officially prohibited in the army and navy. _Hasheesh_ is a syrup prepared from the leaves and flowers of Indian Hemp. Though its use in this country is comparatively small, instances are not unknown in which reckless or curious persons have fatally experimented with it. As a medicine, it is in limited use, and with results not always satisfactory. It acts in a peculiar manner upon the nervous centers, occasioning that strange condition of the nervous system called catalepsy, in which the limbs of the unconscious patient remain stationary in whatever position they may be placed. After an average dose of hasheesh, the subject becomes the helpless victim of rapidly shifting ideas, a prominent characteristic of which is an entire loss of judgment as to time and place. A larger dose produces hallucinations and delirium, with that distressing sensation of falling through endless space which is induced in some people by opium. [Footnote: In an article entitled "An Overdose of Hasheesh" (_Popular Science Monthly_, February, 1884), Miss MARY A. HUNGERFORD gives a vivid description of a painful experience with this drug, some portion of which is as follows: "Being one of the grand army of sufferers from headache, I took, last summer, by order of my physician, three small daily doses of hasheesh in the hope of holding my intimate enemy in check....I grew to regard the drug as a harmless medicine, and one day, when I was assured by some familiar symptoms that my headache was about to assume an aggravated form, I took a larger quantity than had been prescribed. Twenty minutes later I was seized with a strange sinking or faintness which gave my family so much alarm that they telephoned at once for the doctor. "...One terrible reality--I can hardly term it a fancy even now--that came to me again and again, was so painful that it must, I fear, always be a vividly remembered agony....I died, as I believed, although by a strange double consciousness I knew that I should again reanimate the body I had left. In leaving it I did not soar away, as one delights to think of the freed spirits soaring....I sank, an intangible, impalpable shape, through the bed, the floors, the cellar, the earth, down, down, down! Like a fragment of glass dropping through the ocean, I dropped uninterruptedly through the earth and its atmosphere, and then fell on and on forever....As time went on, and my dropping through space continued, I became filled with the most profound loneliness, and a desperate fear took hold of me that I should be thus alone for evermore, and fall and fall eternally....There was, it seemed to me, a forgotten text which, if remembered, would be the spell to stop my fatal falling. I sought in my memory for it, I prayed to recall it, I fought for it madly, wrestling against the terrible fate which seemed to withhold it. Single words of it came to me in disconnected mockery, but erased themselves instantaneously. Mentally, I writhed in such hopeless agony that, in thinking of it, I wonder I could have borne such excess of emotion and lived....I began, then, without having reached any goal, to ascend. As I rose, a great and terrible voice from a vast distance pronounced my doom: 'Fall, fall, fall, to rise again in hopeless misery, and sink again in lonely agony forever.' ...Then ensued a wild and terrible commingling of unsyllabled sounds, so unearthly that it is not in the power of language to fitly describe them. It was something like a mighty Niagara of shrieks and groans, combined with the fearful din and crash of thousands of battles and the thunderous roar of a stormy sea....I fought my upward way in an agony which resembled nothing so much as the terrible moment when, from strangling or suffocation, all the forces of life struggle against death, and wrestle madly for another breath. In place of the woeful sounds now reigned a deadly stillness, broken only at long but regular intervals by a loud report, as if a cannon, louder than any I ever heard on earth, were discharged at my side, almost shot into me, I might say, for the sound appeared to rend me from head to foot, and then to die away into the dark chaos about me in strange, shuddering reverberations. Even in the misery of my ascending I was filled with a dread expectancy of the cruel sound. It gave me a feeling of acute physical torture, with a lingering intensity that bodily suffering could not have. It was repeated an incredible number of times, and always with the same suffering and shock to me. At last the sound came oftener, but with less force, and I seemed again nearing the shores of time. Dimly in the far distance I saw the room I had left, myself lying still and deathlike upon the bed, and the friends watching me....Then, silently and invisibly I floated into the room, and was one with myself again. "...'She is conscious now,' I heard one of the doctors say, and he gently lifted the lids of my eyes and looked into them. I tried my best to throw all the intelligence I could into them, and returned his look with one of recognition. But, even with my eyes fixed on his, I felt myself going again in spite of my craving to stay. I longed to implore the doctor to save me, to keep me from the unutterable anguish of falling into the vastness and vagueness of that shadowy sea of nothingness again. I clasped my hands in wild entreaty; I was shaken by horrible convulsions--so, at least, it seemed to me at the time--but, beyond a slight quivering of the fingers, no movement was discernible by the others....For five hours I remained in the same condition--short intervals of half-consciousness and then long lapses into the agonizing experiences I have described....Coming out of the last trance, I discovered that the measured rending report like the discharge of a cannon, which attended my upward way, was the throbbing of my own heart."] Concerning all these and other narcotics, it should never be forgotten that they are true poisons, sold with the mark of skull and crossbones, useful, like strychnine and henbane, in the hands of a skillful physician, but fraught with deadly danger when otherwise employed. Their private use is never safe. The weak and nervous invalid, who can not by hygienic means build up new strength, need never hope to gain it by surreptitiously indulging in popular narcotics. Instead, he will soon discover that he has but added to his list of ills a new and fatal one.--E. B. S. THE SPECIAL SENSES. AN EDUCATED SENSE OF TOUCH (p. 230).--Laura Dewey Bridgman, teacher in the Perkins Institute for the Blind, South Boston, lost her sight, hearing, and sense of smell, when she was two years of age. At the age of eight years she was taken to the institution where she yet remains. At this time, by following her mother around the house she had become familiar with home appointments, and by feeling her mother's hands and arms had also learned to sew and knit. When she first became an inmate of the Perkins Institute, she was bewildered by her strange surroundings, but after she had become used to place and people, through her one and only sense, her education was carefully begun. Through indomitable effort on the part of her preceptor, she was taught to write, read, and spell, by means of her fingers, and thus to exchange sentiments with her teachers and with others skilled in the mysterious language of the blind and the mute. She is now as proficient in the ordinary branches of learning as is the average person, possessed of all the senses. Her studies include geography, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, history, and philosophy. She makes her own clothing, can run a sewing machine, and observes great neatness in her dress and the arrangements of her room. Her character is religious, and she has great success as a teacher. Not long since, she celebrated, on the same day, her fifty-eighth birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of her entrance to the Perkins Institute. During her earlier years, it was her practice to keep a journal, and she now has about forty manuscript books of her own making. She has also written three autobiographical sketches, several poems, and is an accomplished correspondent. When Miss Bridgman expresses pleasure, she clasps her hands and smiles. So keen and refined are her sensibilities, that it is said she can, in a small way, appreciate the beauty of music by means of the sound vibrations on the floor.--MRS. GEORGE ARCHIBALD. (Laura D. Bridgman died in 1889.) THE NOSE (p. 232).--_The Anatomy of the Nose_.--Probably most of us look upon the nose as a double hole in the head, by which we get, with more or less acuteness, a sense of smell, and through which we occasionally breathe. The intricate mechanism, and the skillful adaptation of means to end, which, in common with the other organs of special sense, it exhibits, naturally do not reveal themselves to any but the students of anatomy and physiology. Its fourteen bones are probably better hidden than any other fourteen bones of the body, and assist in converting what would otherwise be a mere channel of communication, into a series of cavities designed and adapted for particular purposes. The arch of four bones which forms the bridge of the nose, and which is of such strength as to enable the gymnast of the circus to perform the feat of supporting with it a man on a ladder, is pieced on with cartilage to form the nostrils, through which the nose communicates with the outer air. Similar openings behind connect it with the upper and posterior parts of the mouth. The space between these anterior and posterior openings makes a large chamber, divided by a vertical wall into halves, each of which is still further separated into three irregular cavities by three bones, called spongy, from the porosity and delicacy of their texture. The ceiling of these chambers is formed by a bone of the thinness of paper, upon which lies the front part of the brain,--a fact the Egyptians made use of in embalming their corpses, easily crushing this bone, and extracting the brain through the nostrils. This bone is called cribriform (sieve-like), because it is perforated by many minute holes, through which, from the olfactory bulbs (specialized parts of the brain in which is resident the capacity of smell) that rest on its upper surface, issue the delicate filaments of the olfactory nerves, to spread themselves over the lining membrane of the two upper spongy bones. It is in the upper chambers of the nose, therefore, that the function of smell is performed; the nerves that supply the lower spongy bone being entirely unconnected with the organs of smell. Over these latter, however, sweep in and out the currents of air when the act of respiration is properly carried out, and it is these that are especially concerned in its abnormal performance. Usually but a very little of the volume of air that traverses the lower chamber of the nose has any influence upon its upper regions; and therefore, when our attention is attracted by an odor, we sniff, in order to bring a larger quantity of air into contact with the higher parts of the nose, or olfactory cavities, where odors are perceived. But the half has not been told of the anatomical and physiological arrangements of the nose. By minute openings its chambers have communication with many other parts of the head,--with the hollow that forms the greater part of the cheek bone; with the eye by a minute spout that carries off the lachrymal secretion, unless the tears are so abundant as to roll down the cheeks; with the front of the roof of the mouth; with the abundant cells of the bone that makes the forehead, and the congestion of whose lining membrane probably accounts for the severe headache that so often accompanies and aggravates a "cold in the head." The gateway to the inner air passages, its abundant surfaces raise the air inspired to the temperature of the body, supply it with the moisture it lacks, and sift from it more or less of the mechanical impurities with which the atmosphere of our houses and shops is laden.--MAURICE D. CLARKE, M.D., _Popular Science News, April, 1888_. _Smell Necessary to Taste_.--What we are in the habit of calling a "taste," is in most cases a compound of smell, taste, temperature, and touch--these four sensations ranking in gastronomic importance in the order in which they are here named....Amusing experiments may be made, showing that without the sense of smell it is commonly quite impossible to distinguish between different articles of food and drink. Blindfold a person and make him clasp his nose tightly, then put successively into his mouth small pieces of beef, mutton, veal, and pork, and it is safe to predict that he will not be able to tell one morsel from another. The same result will be obtained with chicken, turkey, and duck; with pieces of almond, walnut, and hazel-nut; with slices of apple, peach, and pear; or with different kinds of cheese, if care be taken that such kinds are chosen as do not, by their peculiar composition, betray their identity through the nerves of touch in the mouth. To hold an article of food under the nose at table would be justly considered a breach of etiquette. But there is a second way of smelling, of which most people are quite unconscious, viz., by _exhaling through the nose_ while eating and drinking....It is well known that only a small portion of the mucous membrane which lines the nostrils is the seat of the endings of the nerves of smell. In ordinary expiration, the air does not touch this olfactory region, but by a special effort it can be turned into that direction....Instinct teaches most persons while eating to guide the air, impregnated with the fragrance of the food, to a part of the nostrils different from that used during ordinary exhalation; but, being unaccustomed to psychologic analysis of their sensations, they remain quite unconscious of this proceeding, and are, indeed, in the habit of confusing their sensations of taste, smell, touch, and temperature in a most absurd manner.... In trying to ascertain by experiment how far smell, touch, and temperature enter into this compound sensation, popularly known as "taste," it is best to make use of the pungent condiments. Mustard and horse-radish, for example, have little or no taste, but reserve their pungent effect for the mucous membrane of the nose during expiration. It is an advantage to know this, for if care is taken to breathe only through the mouth, we need no longer prepare to shed tears every time we help ourselves to the mustard. The pungent quality of mustard, the fiery quality of ginger, and the cool sensation in the mouth after eating peppermint, are due to the nerves of touch and temperature, which are commonly classed as one sense, though they are quite as distinct sensations as sight and hearing, or taste and smell.... There are two ways in which the effort to extract all its fragrance from a morsel of food confers a benefit. (1.) It is necessary to keep the morsel in the mouth as long as possible. Now the habit thus formed of eating very slowly is of the utmost importance, for if farinaceous articles of food are swallowed before the saliva has had time to act on them, they are little better than so much waste material taken into the system; and if meat is not thoroughly masticated, the stomach is overloaded with work which should have been done by the teeth; the result, in either case, is dyspepsia. It has been suggested that Mr. Gladstone owes his remarkable physical vigor to certain rules for chewing food, which he adopted in 1848, and to which he has adhered ever since. "He had always," we are told, "paid great attention to the requirements of Nature, but he then laid down as a rule for his children that thirty-two bites should be given to each mouthful of meat, and a somewhat lesser number to bread, fish, etc." (2.) Besides this indirect advantage resulting from the effort to get at the fragrant odors of food, there is a still more remarkable direct advantage. It is one of the most curious psychologic facts that odors exert a strong influence on our system, either exhilarating or depressing. While an unpleasant odor may cause a person to faint, the fumes of the smelling bottle will restore him to consciousness. The magic and value of gastronomic odors lies in this, that they stimulate the flow of saliva and other alimentary juices, thus making sure that the food eaten will be thoroughly utilized in renovating the system.--HENRY T. FINCK, _in "The Gastronomic Value of Odors_." HYGIENE OF THE EAR (p. 236).--_Never Box a Child's Ear_.--Children and grown persons alike may be entirely deafened by falls or heavy blows upon the head. Boxing the ears produces a similar effect, though more slowly and in less degree, and tends to dull the sensibility of the nerve, even if it does not hurt the membrane. I knew a youth who died from a terrible disease of the ear. There had been a discharge from it since he was a child. Of course his hearing had been dull; and _his father had often boxed his ear for inattention!_ Most likely that boxing on the ear, diseased as it was, had much to do with his death. And this brings me to the second point. Children should never be blamed for being inattentive, until it has been found out whether they are not a little deaf. This is easily done by placing them at a few yards' distance, and trying whether they can understand what is said to them in a rather low tone of voice. Each ear should be tried, while the other is stopped by the finger. Three things should be remembered here: 1. That slight degrees of deafness, often lasting only for a time, are very common among children, especially during or after colds. 2. That a slight deafness, which does not prevent a person from hearing when he is expecting to be spoken to, will make him very dull to what he is not expecting. 3. That there is a kind of deafness in which a person can hear pretty well while listening, but is really very hard of hearing when not listening. _Avoid Direct Draughts in the Ear_.--There are some exposures especially to be guarded against. One is sitting or driving with the ear exposed to a side wind. Deafness has also been known to come from letting rain or sleet drive into the ear. _Do not Remove the Earwax_.--It ought to be understood that the passage of the ear does not require cleaning by us. Nature undertakes that task, and, in the healthy state, fulfills it perfectly. Her means for cleansing the ear is _the wax_. Perhaps the reader has never wondered what becomes of the earwax. I will tell him. It dries up into thin fine scales, and these peel off, one by one, from the surface of the passage, and fall out imperceptibly, leaving behind them a perfectly clean, smooth surface. In health the passage of the ear is never dirty; but, if we attempt to clean it, we infallibly make it so. Washing the ear out frequently with soap and water keeps the wax moist when it ought to become dry and scaly, increases its quantity unduly, and makes it absorb the dust with which the air always abounds. But the most hurtful thing is introducing the corner of the towel, screwed up, and twisting it round. This does more harm to ears than all other mistakes together. It drives down the wax upon the membrane, much more than it gets it out. But this plan does much more mischief than merely pressing down the wax. It irritates the passage, and makes it cast off small flakes of skin, which dry up, and become extremely hard, and these also are pressed down upon the membrane. Often it is not only deafness which ensues, but pain and inflammation, and then matter is formed which the hard mass prevents from escaping, and the membrane becomes permanently diseased. _The Eustachian Tube_.--The use of this tube is twofold. First, it supplies the drum with air, and keeps the membrane exactly balanced, and free to move, with equal air pressure on each side; and, secondly, it carries off any fluid which may be in the drum, and prevents it from being choked by its own moisture. It is not always open, however, but is opened during the act of swallowing, by a little muscle which is attached to it just as it reaches the throat. Most persons can distinctly feel that this is the case, by gently closing the nose and swallowing, when a distinct sensation is felt in the ears. This sensation is due to a little air being drawn out of the ears through the open tube during swallowing; and it lasts for a few minutes, unless the air is again restored by swallowing with the nose unclosed, which allows for the moment a free communication between the ear and the throat. We thus see a reason for the tube being closed. If it were always open, all the sounds produced in the throat would pass directly into the drum of the ear, and totally confuse us. We should hear every breath, and live in a constant bewilderment of internal sounds. At the same time the closure, being but a light contact of the walls of the tube, easily allows a slight escape of air _from_ the drum, and thus not only facilitates and regulates the oscillations of the air before the vibrating membrane, but provides a safety valve, to a certain extent, against the injurious influence of loud sounds. The chief use of the Eustachian tube is to allow a free interchange of air between the ear and the throat, and it is very important that its use in this respect should be understood. Persons who go down in diving bells soon begin to feel a great pressure in the ears, and, if the depth is great, the feeling becomes extremely painful. This arises from the fact that in the diving bell the pressure of the air is very much increased, in order to balance the weight of the water above; and thus it presses with great force upon the membrane of the drum, which, if the Eustachian tube has been kept closed, has only the ordinary uncompressed air on the inner side to sustain it. It is therefore forced inward and put upon the stretch, and might be even broken. Many cases, indeed, have occurred of injury to the ear, producing permanent deafness, from descents in diving bells, undertaken by persons ignorant of the way in which the ear is made; though the simple precaution of frequent swallowing suffices to ward off all mischief. For, if the Eustachian tube is thus opened, again and again, as the pressure of the outside air increases, the same compressed air that exists outside passes also into the inside of the drum, and the membrane is equally pressed upon from both sides by the air, and so is free from strain. The same precaution is necessary in ascending lofty mountains.-- DR. JAMES HINTON. THE COLORED CURTAIN IN THE EYE (p. 238).--This ring-like curtain in the eye, of gray, green, bluish-green, brown, and other colors, is one among the very many remarkable contrivances of the organic world. The eye can not bear the entrance of too much light, and the colored curtain so regulates its own movements as to serve this requirement. The dark circular aperture in the center, known as the pupil, is consequently forever altering in size; on a bright, sunshiny day, out in the open, it may be only the size of a pin's head, but at night, when there is no light stronger than starlight, it is even bigger than a pea. The eye curtain is fixed at its outer edge, leaving the inner edge to contract or expand, which it does automatically and quite independent of the will, ever preserving its circular outline. Its movements may be watched in a variety of ways, some of which we shall describe. The common way of watching the movements of the iris is to regard it closely in a looking-glass while the amount of light entering the eyes is varied. Place yourself before a looking-glass and with your face to the window. Probably the iris will be expanded, and there will only be a very small opening or pupil in the center. Now shut one eye suddenly, while narrowly watching the other in the glass all the time. At the moment the light is cut off from one eye, the iris of the other contracts or is drawn up so as to enlarge the pupil. This shows that there is a remarkable interdependence between the curtains of the two eyes, as well as that they are affected by variations in the quantity of light falling on them. Perhaps one of the most interesting ways of watching the movements of these sympathetic eye curtains is one which may be followed while you are out walking on the street some dark winter night. A gas lamp seen at a distance is, comparatively speaking, a point of light, with bars of light emanating from it in many directions. These bars, which give the peculiar spoked appearance to a star, are probably formed by optical defects of the lens within the eye, or by the tear fluid on the exterior surface of the eye, or by a combination of all these causes. Be that as it may, the lengths of the spokes of light are limited by the inner margin of the eye curtain; if the curtain be drawn up, then the spokes are long; if the curtain be let down, or, in other words, if the pupil be very small and contracted, then one can not see any spokes at all. Hence, as I look at a distant gaslight, with its radiating golden spokes, I am looking at something which will give me a sure indication of any movements of the eye curtains. I strike a match and allow its light to fall into the eyes; the spokes of the distant gas lamp have retreated into the point of flame as if by magic; as I take the burning match away from before my eyes, the spokes of the gas-lamp venture forth again. The experiment may be utilized to see how much light is required to move the window curtains of the eyes. Suppose you are walking toward two gas lamps, A and B; B about fifty yards behind A. If you steadfastly look at B and at the golden spokes apparently issuing from it, you may make these spokes a test of how soon the light of A will move your iris. As you gradually approach A, you come at last to a position where its light is strong enough to make the spokes of B begin to shorten; a little nearer still and they vanish altogether. I have found that about a third of the light which is competent to contract the pupil very markedly will serve to commence its movement.--WILLIAM ACKROYD. PURKINJE'S FIGURES (p. 222).--Stand in a dark room with a lighted candle in hand. Shutting the left, hold the candle very near the right eye, within three or four inches, obliquely outward and forward, so that the light shall strongly illuminate the retina. Now move the light about gently, upward, downward, back and forth, while you gaze intently on the wall opposite. Presently the field of view becomes dark from the intense impression of the light, and then, as you move the light about, there appears projected on the wall and covering its whole surface, a shadowy, ghost-like image, like a branching, leafless tree, or like a great bodiless spider with many branching legs. What is it? It is an exact but enlarged image of the _blood vessels of the retina_. These come in at the entrance of the optic nerve, ramify in the middle layer, and therefore in the strong light cast their shadows on the bacillary layer of the retina. The impression of these shadows is projected outward into the field of view, and seen there as an enlarged shadowy image. These have been called Purkinje's Figures, from the discoverer.--PROF. JOSEPH LE CONTE, _in Sight_. XI. APPENDIX. QUESTIONS FOR CLASS USE. _The questions include the Notes and the Selected Readings. The figures refer to the pages_. INTRODUCTION. Illustrate the value of physiological knowledge. Why should physiology be studied in youth? When are our habits formed? How do habits help us? Why should children prize the lessons of experience? How does Nature punish a violation of her laws? Name some of Nature's laws. What is the penalty of their violation? Name some bad habits and their punishments. Some good habits and their rewards. How do the young ruin their health? Compare one's constitution with a deposit in the bank. Can one in youth lay up health as he can money for middle or old age? Is not the preservation of one's health a moral duty? What is suicide? THE SKELETON. 3. How many bones are there in the body? Is the number fixed? Is the length of the different bones proportional? What is an organ? A function? Name the three uses of the bones. Why do the bones have such different shapes? 4. Why are certain bones hollow? Round? Illustrate. Compare the resisting property of bone with that of solid oak. What is the composition of bone? How does it vary? How can you remove the mineral matter? The animal matter? Why is a burned bone white and porous? What food do dogs find in bones? 5. What is the use of each of the constituents of a bone? What is "boneblack"? What is ossification? Why are not the bones of children as easily broken as those of aged persons? Why do they unite so much quicker? What are the fontanelles? 6. Describe the structure of a bone. What is the object of the filling? Why does the amount vary in different parts of a bone? What is the appearance of a bone seen through a microscope? 7. What is the periosteum? Is a bone once removed ever restored? What are the lacunæ? The Haversian canals? Why so called? _Ans_. From their discoverer, Havers. Define a bone. [Footnote: Bone structure may be summarized as follows: A bone is a collection of _Haversian elements_, or rods. An Haversian element consists of a tube surrounded by _lamellæ_, which contain _lacunæ_, connected by _canaliculi_.--DR. T. B. STOWELL.] What occupies the lacunæ? _Ans_. The bone cells (osteoblasts). How do bones grow? 8. Illustrate. How does a broken bone heal? How rapidly is bone produced? Illustrate. Objects of "splints"? Describe how a joint is packed. Lubricated. 9. How are the bones tied together? What is a tissue? Illustrate. Name the three general divisions of the bones. What is the object of the skull? Which bone is movable? How is the lower jaw hinged? Describe the construction of the skull. What is a suture? 10. Tell how the peculiar form and structure of the skull adapt it for its use. Illustrate the impenetrability of the skull. 11. Describe the experiment of the balls. What does it show? What two cavities are in the trunk? Name its principal bones. Describe the spine. 12. What is the object of the processes? Of the pads? Why is a man shorter at night than in the morning? Describe the perfection of the spine. 13. Describe the articulation of the skull with the spine. Why is the atlas so called? 14. Describe the ribs. What is the natural form of the chest? Why is it made in separate pieces? How does the oblique position of the ribs aid in respiration? (See note, p. 80.) 15. How do the hipbones give solidity? What two sets of limbs branch from the trunk? State their mutual resemblance. Name the bones of the shoulder. Describe the collar bone. 16. Describe the shoulder blade. Can you describe the indirect articulation of the shoulder blade with the trunk? Name the bones of the arm. Describe the shoulder joint. The elbow-joint. 17. Describe the wrist. Name the bones of the hand. How many bones in the fingers? The thumb? What gives the thumb its freedom of motion? 18, 19. Name and describe the fingers. In what lies the perfection of the hand? How do the gestures of the hand enforce our ideas and feelings? Describe the hip joint. What gives the upper limbs more freedom of motion than the lower? How does the pressure of the air aid us in walking? Illustrate. 20. Name the bones of the lower limbs. Describe the knee joint. The patella. What is the use of the fibula? Can you show how the lower extremity of the fibula, below its juncture with the tibia, is prolonged to form a part of the ankle joint? Name the bones of the foot. What is the use of the arch of the foot? What makes the step elastic? Describe the action of the foot as we step. 21. In graceful walking, should the toes or the heel touch the ground first? What are the causes of deformed feet? What is the natural position of the big toe? Did you ever see a big toe lying in a straight line with the foot, as shown in statuary and paintings? How should we have our boots and shoes made? What are the effects of high heels? Of narrow heels? Of narrow toes? Of tight-laced boots? Of thin soles? What are the rickets? Cause of this disease? Cure? Is there any provision for remedying defects in the body? Name one. 22, 23. What is a felon? Cure? Cause of bowlegs? How can they be prevented? Causes of spinal curvature? Cure? What is the correct position in sitting at one's desk? Is there any necessity for walking and sitting erect? Any advantage aside from health? Describe the bad effects of a stooping position. What is a sprain? Why does it need special care? What is a dislocation? How is it generally caused? How soon should it be treated? 269. What relation does man, in his general structure, bear to other vertebrates? Mention some marked physical peculiarities which distinguish him from the lower mammals. 270, 271. Describe the state of a fracture a week after its occurrence. What is this new formation called? What marks the termination of the first stage of curative progress? How do the broken ends of the bone now appear? What is the state of the fracture at the end of the second stage? What is the condition of the callus at this time? Describe the third and last series of changes. Is the process of union completed sooner in old people or in young? In the upper or lower extremities? In smaller animals or man? What length of time is required to heal a broken arm? A broken leg? 272. What gives the human hand its peculiar prehensile power? What advantage has the human thumb over that of the ape? Compare the foot of man with that of the ape. What peculiarity of the foot is particularly noticeable in man? Contrast the function of the great toe in man and in the ape. 273. Are the toes naturally flexible? How are their powers crippled? Give an instance in which the toes were trained to do the work of the fingers. 274. Why are an elastic step and a graceful carriage such rare accomplishments? What is the natural shape of the foot? Which is the longer, the great toe or the second toe? Is an even-sided symmetry necessary to the beauty of a boot? THE MUSCLES. 29. What relations do the skeleton and the muscles bear to each other? How is the skeleton concealed? Why is it the image of death? What are the muscles? How many are there? What peculiar property have they? Name other properties of muscles. _Ans_. Tonicity, elasticity. 30. How are they arranged? Where is the biceps? The triceps? How do the muscles move the limbs? Illustrate. What is the cause of squinting? Cure? (See p. 244.) 31. Name and define the two kinds of muscles. Illustrate each. What is the structure of a muscle? Of what is a fibril itself composed? How does the peculiar construction of the muscle confer strength? 32. Describe the tendons. What is their use? Illustrate the advantages of this mode of attachment. 33. What two special arrangements of the tendons in the hand? Their use? How is the rotary motion of the eye obtained? 34, 35. What is a lever? Describe the three classes of levers. Illustrate each. Describe the head as a lever. What parts of the body illustrate the three kinds of levers? Give an illustration of the second class of levers. The third class. Why is the Tendon of Achilles so named? What is the advantage of the third class of levers? Why desirable in the hand? What class of lever is the lower jaw? 36. What advantages are gained by the enlargement of the bones at the joints? Illustrate. How do we stand erect? Is it an involuntary act? 37. Why can not a child walk at once, as many young animals do? Why can we not hold up the head easily when we walk on "all fours"? Why can not an animal stand erect as man does? 38. Describe the process of walking. Show that walking is a process of falling. Describe the process of running. What causes the swinging of the hand in walking? Why are we shorter when walking? [Footnote: Stand a boy erect against a wall. Mark his height with a stick. Now have him step off a part of a pace, and then several whole paces. Next, let him close his eyes, and walk to the wall again. He will be perceptibly lower than the stick, until he straightens up once more from a walking position.] Why does a person when lost often go in a circle? In which direction does one always turn in that case? [Footnote: Take several boys into a smooth grass lot. Set up a stick at a distance for them to walk toward. Test the boys, to find which are left-handed, or right-handed; which left-legged or right-legged. Then blindfold the boys and let them walk, as they think, toward the mark. See who varies toward the right, and who turns to the left.] 39. What is the muscular sense? Value of educating it? How do we gratify it? 40. What effect has exercise upon a muscle? Is there any danger in violent exercise? For what purpose should we exercise? Should exercise be in the open air? What is the rule for exercise? Is a young person excusable, who leads a sedentary life, and yet takes no daily outdoor exercise? What will be Nature's penalty for such a violation of her law? Will a postponement of the penalty show that we have escaped it? 41. Ought a scholar to study during the time of recess? Will a promenade in the vitiated air of the schoolroom furnish suitable exercise? What is the best time for taking exercise? What class of persons can safely exercise before breakfast? 42. What are the advantages of the different kinds of exercise? Should we not walk more? What is the general influence upon the body of vigorous exercise? 43. State some of the wonders of the muscles. What is the St. Vitus's Dance? Cure? 44. What are convulsions? What is the locked-jaw? Causes? The gout? Cause? Cure? The rheumatism? Its two forms? Peculiarity of the acute? 45. Danger in acute rheumatism? In what does chronic rheumatism often result? What is lumbago? Give instances. What is a ganglion? Its cure? A bursa? 275. What is meant by the origin of a muscle? The attachment? Is a muscle always extended between two contiguous bones? Give an illustration. Can the points of origin and of attachment change offices? Illustrate. What is an important consequence of the attachment of the muscles to the bones? If, in the limb of a dead body, one end of a muscle is separated from its point of attachment, what occurs? Would the result be the same during life? To what is this phenomenon due? 276. Why are the muscles continually striving to shorten? Describe the effect when several opposing muscles are attached to one bone. When is the balanced position of the limbs best observed? Are the muscles always attached to bones? Give example. How does the flesh of man differ from that of an ox? How may the structure of muscular fibers be rudely illustrated? Describe smooth muscle fibers. How do they differ from striated muscle fibers? 277. In what form do smooth muscle fibers frequently occur? In such cases, how are they usually arranged? What is the effect of their contraction? Of what especial use is this power in case of the smaller arteries? In case of the intestine? 278. In the latter instance, how does the contraction take place? Are the striated muscle fibers voluntary or involuntary? Name an exception to this rule. Give other peculiarities of the muscle fibers of the heart. What causes the contraction of smooth muscle fibers? Of striated muscle fibers? Why do little children seldom injure themselves by overexertion? How is the danger increased in youth? 279. What class of people are in most peril from violent or excessive exercise? Why? At what age should one cease from haste of all kinds? Give instances of valuable lives lost from personal imprudence. 280. What are the effects of insufficient exercise upon the young? How does it predispose to disease? What makes the children of the laboring classes so hardy? Is a regulation step desirable in walking? Why not? Why is it more fatiguing to walk uphill than on level ground? 281. How does the management of the breath affect this fatigue? How should a belt be worn, if used during exercise? Can other forms of exercise be successfully substituted for walking? Why not? What is the difference in movement between walking and skating? Which is the better exercise? What are the dangers from skating? What precaution should be used by those who have weak ankles? 282. Name the different action of the muscles in the forward and backward movements in rowing. What is the comparative value of rowing as an exercise? Why is it especially desirable for women? How should women dress when rowing, horseback riding, tennis playing, etc.? What rules should be observed by rowers? Why should the breath be allowed to escape while the oar is in the water? 283. What sanitary measures should be observed after a row? What effect has too frequent and too prolonged immersion on young swimmers? Does swimming require much muscular exertion? Why? Why does an occasional swimmer become exhausted sooner than an experienced one? On what do ease and speed in swimming depend? Is the habit of diving desirable? Should diving ever be practiced in shallow water? 284. Why is lawn tennis the most desirable of outdoor games? _Ans_. Not only because nearly every muscle of the body is brought into exercise, but because it is one of the few field sports in which women can gracefully join. In this it shares the honor with croquet. What are the dangers attendant on lawn tennis? From what do many of them arise? Why should tennis shoes have heels? To what class of people is horseback riding particularly suited? What class of invalids should not indulge in bicycling and tricycling? To what class is it peculiarly beneficial? 285. What are the dangers attendant on baseball games? Football? When may light and heavy gymnastics be profitably employed? Name a sufficient apparatus. What are the objections to gymnasium exercise? Its advantages? THE SKIN. 49. What are the uses of the skin? Describe its adaptation to its place. What is its function as an organ? Describe the structure of the skin. The sensitiveness of the cutis. The insensitiveness of the cuticle. 50. How is the skin constantly changing? The shape and number of the cells? Value of the cuticle? How is the cuticle formed? _Ans_. By secretion from the cutis. 51. What is the complexion? Its cause? Why is a scar white? What is the cause of "tanning"? What are freckles? Albinos? Describe the action of the sun on the skin. 52. Why are the hairs and the nails spoken of under the title of the skin? Uses of the hair? Its structure? How can it be examined? What is the hair bulb? What is it called? How does a hair grow? At what rate? When can it be restored, if destroyed? Does hair grow after death? 53. When hair has become gray, can its original color be naturally restored? What is the danger of hair dyes? Are they of any real value? How can the hair stand on end? How do horses move their skin? Is there any feeling in a hair? 54. Illustrate the indestructibility of the hair. What are the uses of the nails? How do the nails grow? What is the mucous membrane? 55. Its composition? The connective tissue? Why so called? What uses does it subserve? 56. What is its character? How does the fat exist in the body? Its uses? State the various uses of membrane in the body. Where is there no fat? Where is there always fat? 57. Why are the teeth spoken of in connection with the mucous membrane? Name and describe the four kinds of teeth. What are the milk teeth? Describe them. What teeth appear first? 58. Give the order and age at which they appear. When do the permanent teeth appear? Describe their growth. Which one comes first? Last? 59. Describe the structure of the teeth. How are the teeth fitted in the jaw? 60. Why do the teeth decay? What care should be taken of the teeth? What caution should be observed? What are the oil glands? 61. Use of this secretion? What are the perspiratory glands? State their number. Their total length. What are the "pores" of the skin? 62, 63. What is the perspiration? What is the constitution of the perspiration? Illustrate its value. Name the three uses of the skin. Illustrate the absorbing power of the skin. What precaution should be observed in handling a dead body? Why are cosmetics and hair dyes injurious? What relation exists between the skin and the lungs? What lesson does this teach? When is the best time for a bath? Why? 64, 65. What is the value of friction? Why should not a bath be taken just before or after a meal? Is an excess of soap beneficial? What is the "reaction"? Explain its invigorating influence. How is it secured? General effect of a cold bath? Of a warm bath? If we feel chilly and depressed after a bath, what is the teaching? Describe the Russian vapor bath. Why is the sea bath so stimulating? 66. How long should one remain in any bath? How does clothing keep us warm? Explain the use of linen as an article of clothing. Cotton. Wool. Flannel. How can we best protect ourselves against the changes of our climate? 67. What colored clothing is best adapted for all seasons? Value of the nap? Furs? Thick _vs_. thin clothing? Should we wear thick clothing during the day, and in the evening put on thin clothing? Can children endure exposure better than grown persons? What is the erysipelas? How relieved? 68, 69. Eczema? What do its various forms denote? Corns? Cause? Cure? Ingrowing nails? Cure? Warts? Cure? Chilblain? Cause? Preventive? 286. Name some causes of baldness. Give Dr. Nichols's opinion. Why is frequent shampooing inadvisable? One probable reason why women are less frequently bald than men? What is the best general treatment for the hair and scalp? Upon what does the color of the hair mainly depend? 287. In cases of sudden blanching of the hair what is the effect upon the pigment? Give an illustration. How do the extra air bubbles find their way into the hair? Does air naturally exist in the hair? What relation do the nails bear to the scarfskin? 288. What causes the horny appearance of the nails? Describe the root of the nail in its relation to the sensitive and the scarfskin. Upon what does the nail rest? What is its appearance? What is the lunula? Why is it lighter than the rest of the nail? How does the nail increase in length? In thickness? Where is the greatest thickness? How does the growth of the nail during disease compare with its growth in health? 289. How long does it take the thumb nail to grow from its root to its free extremity? The great toe? Give general rules for the care of the nails. How does physical cleanliness promote moral purity? What does its neglect indicate? 290. What especial care should be taken in regard to the feet? Why? Are baths a modern refinement? What can you say about the ancient Greek and Roman baths? What constitutes the value of the Turkish bath? 291. What class of people should never use this bath? To what class of invalids is it particularly beneficial? Is sea bathing advisable for persons of all ages? How should an inexperienced sea bather begin? When should the sea bath be taken? 292. How long should a delicate person remain in the water? State the danger of bathing when overheated. Under what conditions of body and of temperature should sea or river bathing be avoided? Why? Give illustration of the English soldier. How should the temperature of the water, in bathing, compare with that of the air? Of the body? 293. Describe the bathers' cramp. What are its causes? What precaution should be used by bathers in regard to the mouth and ears? Why? 294. How can a person who does not know how to swim, save himself from drowning? 295. What are the advantages of woolen clothing? Why is it particularly desirable in malarial countries? What double purpose does woolen clothing serve in semitropical climates? 296. Does the warmth of clothing depend on its weight? What errors are often made and with what effect? State what is said in regard to poisonous dyes in wearing apparel. Give illustration. 297. What effect has uncleanly attire on the health? Does this apply to outer as well as under garments? RESPIRATION AND THE VOICE. 73. Name the organs of respiration and the voice. Describe the larynx. The epiglottis. The œsophagus. What is meant by food "going the wrong way"? 74. Describe the vocal cords. Their use. How is sound produced? 75. How are the higher tones of the voice produced? The lower? Upon what does loudness depend? A falsetto voice? What is the cause of the voice "changing"? What is speech? Is the tongue necessary to speech? Illustrate. (See also page 298.) 76. What is vocalization? How are talking machines made? 77. How is _a_ formed by the voice? What is _h_? Difference between a sigh and a groan? What vowel sounds are made in laughing? Does whistling depend on the voice? Tell how the various consonants are formed. What are the labials? The dentals? The linguals? What vowels does a child pronounce first? 78. Describe the windpipe. The bronchi. The bronchial tubes. Why is the trachea so called? Describe the structure of the lungs. What are the lungs of slaughtered animals called? Why will a piece of the lungs float on water? 79. Name the wrappings of the lungs. Describe the pleura. How is friction prevented? What are the cilia? Their use? 80. What two acts constitute respiration? In what two ways may the position of the ribs change the capacity of the chest? Describe the process of inspiration. Describe the diaphragm. 81. What is the process of expiration? How often do we breathe? What is sighing? Coughing? Sneezing? Snoring? Laughing? Crying? 82. Describe hiccough. Yawning. Its value? What is meant by the breathing capacity? How does it vary? How much, in addition, can the lungs expel forcibly? How much of the breathing capacity is available only through practice? Value of this extra supply? Can we expel all the air from our lungs? Value of this constant supply? 83. How constant is the need of air? What is the vital element of the air? Describe the action of the oxygen in our lungs. What does the blood give up? Gain? What are the constituents of the air? What are the peculiar properties and uses of each? 84. How can we test the air we exhale? What does its analysis reveal? Which is the most dangerous constituent? What occurs when we rebreathe exhaled air? 85. Describe its evil effects. What is denoted by the "Black Hole of Calcutta"? Give other illustrations of the dangers of bad air. Describe the need of ventilation. Will a single breath pollute the air? 86-95. How can we detect the floating impurities in the air? What is the influence of a fire or a light? Of a hot stove? When is the ventilation perfect? What diseases are largely owing to bad air? Should the windows and doors be tightly closed, if we have no other means of ventilation? Is not a draught of air dangerous? How can we prevent this, and yet secure fresh air? What is the general principle of ventilation? Must pure air necessarily be cold air? Are schoolrooms always properly ventilated? What is the effect? Are churches? Are our bedrooms? Should children or delicate people sleep in cold rooms? Can we, at night, breathe anything but night air? Is the night air out of doors ever injurious? _Ans_. In times and places of malaria, and also in very damp weather, it should be avoided, even at the risk of bad air in doors. Describe some of the wonders of respiration. 96. How is constriction of the lungs produced? When may clothing be considered tight? What are the dangers of tight lacing? Which would make the stronger, more vigorous, and longer-lived person, the form shown in _A_ or _B_, Fig. 33? Is it safe to run any risk in this dangerous direction? 97. What is Bronchitis? Pleurisy? Pneumonia? Consumption? What is one great cause of Consumption? How may a constitutional tendency to this disease be warded off in youth? _Ans_. Besides plenty of fresh air and exercise, care should be taken in the diet. Rich pastry, unripe fruit, salted meat, and acid drinks should be avoided, and a certain quantity of fat should be eaten at each meal.--BENNETT. What is asphyxia? Describe the process for restoring such a person. (See p. 264.) 98. What is diphtheria? Its peculiarities? Danger? The croup? Its characteristics? Remedy? (See p. 260.) Causes of stammering? How cured? 297. How does the singing voice differ from the speaking voice? How can you prove the effect of duration of sound in speaking and singing? How do the intonations of the voice affect the meaning of words? 298. Give illustrations of speech in persons without a tongue. What is the effect of alcohol and tobacco on the throat? Do they have an influence on the voice? Does the excessive use of tea and coffee ever affect the voice? How? To what is the hoarse tone of an inebriate due? 299, 300. What was Adelina Patti's advice with regard to stimulants and late hours? Does the respiration of woman differ from that of man? Give experiments with Indian women. What lessons do we draw from these facts? What rule should be observed in regard to the size of a bodice? What are bacteria or microbes? How is their existence revealed? What does the Germ Theory of Disease teach in regard to microbes? 301. What can you say about the microbe of putrefaction? How can you obtain it for examination? What office in Nature do bacteria seem to serve? Give the theory in regard to propagation of special disease germs. Do they always cause disease when taken into the body? [Footnote: Of the immense number and variety of microorganisms found in Nature, only very few are disease producing. Dr. Austin Flint says in _The Forum_, for December, 1888: "It is probable that future investigations into the physiology of digestion, will show that bacteria play an important part in this function. Pasteur has recently isolated no less than seventeen different microorganisms in the mouth, which were not destroyed by the gastric juice. Some of these dissolved albumen, gluten, and caseine, and some transformed starch into sugar. Bacteria normally exist in great number and variety in the intestines, although the part which they take in intestinal digestion has not been accurately determined."--The number of spores introduced into the human system by respiration, when the health is perfectly sound, has been estimated at three hundred thousand a day.] 302. State some conditions which favor the growth of disease germs. Which prevent or retard their growth. Relate the effect of vaccination, according to the germ theory. 303. 304. If a drop of an infusion charged with bacteria be put in the extract of beef or mutton, what is the result? What would be the effect upon an open wound? Give Dr. Tyndall's personal experience. Name some efficient antidote against the bacteria of putrefaction. _Ans_. Carbolic acid solution is extensively used for this purpose. How are disease germs often disseminated? State the necessity of disinfection in regard to soiled clothing. 305. Illustrate how disease has been communicated by clothing. What is the first necessary condition to a sanitary home? What is the meaning of the word malaria? What are three active agents in the production of malaria? A fourth? Describe a typical malarious locality. How does newly broken ground induce malaria? 306. State the different ways in which running water can be contaminated. What care should be taken in regard to the level of building site? 307. Give some of the results of a wet foundation. What rules should be observed in regard to shade? What is the effect of too dense foliage about a dwelling? In building a house, what precautions should be taken against dampness? What about the cellar? Sewerage? Plumbing? Ventilation? Fireplaces? Piazzas and balconies? Sleeping rooms? 308. What general purpose does a house serve? What care should be taken in regard to the dust or ash heap? What is the effect if liquids or table refuse be thrown upon it? Where should it be situated? How often should refuse be carted away? If its frequent removal be inexpedient, what precaution should be used? What are the best of all deodorizers? How should the back premises be cared for? What is the best way to dispose of household garbage? 309. How can this be done? With what additional advantage? Give Dr. Derby's remarks in regard to sewers, their condition, and the results. How should traps and drains be cared for? How should bad smells be treated? Is a foul smell always the most dangerous? How do poisonous gases often find entrance to a house? What rule should be observed in regard to ventilating and soil pipes? 310. What precautions should be observed in digging about a dwelling? How do waste pipes often become closed? How may they be cleared? What dangers arise from unventilated waste pipes? How are washbasin pipes contaminated? Tell what came from a neighbor's cesspool. Can you name similar instances which have come under your own observation? 311, 312. Describe the condition and effects of a neglected cellar. Tell what came from a crack in a cellar wall. 313. What effect have brick and mortar in keeping out gases? How do bed coverings take the place of day garments? What kind of bed covering is desirable? Is a comfortable bed necessary to perfect health? How often and for how long time should a bed be ventilated? THE CIRCULATION. 105. Name the organs of the circulation. Does the blood permeate all parts of the body? What is the average amount in each person? Its composition? The plasma? The red corpuscles? The white? 106. What is the size of a red cell? Are the shape and size uniform? Value of this? Illustrate. Are the disks permanent? What substances are contained in the plasma? What is fibrin? 107. In what sense is the blood "liquid flesh"? What is the use of the red disks? What is the office of the oxygen in the body? Where is the blood purified? 108. What is transfusion? Is it of value? 109. Give some illustrations. What is the cause of coagulation of the blood? Value of this property? Has the fibrin any other use? 110. What organ propels the blood? What is the location of the heart? How large is it? Put your hand over it. What is the pericardium? Describe the systole. 111. The diastole. How many chambers in the heart? What is their average size? What is meant by the right and left heart? What are the auricles? Why so called? The ventricles? 112. What is the use of the auricles? The ventricles? Which are made the stronger? Show the need of valves in the ventricles. Why are there no valves in the auricles? Draw on the board the form of the valves. Name them. 113. Describe the tricuspid valve. The bicuspid. How are these valves strengthened? 114. What peculiarity in the attachment of these cords? Describe the semilunar valves. What are the arteries? Why so named? What is their use? Their structure? How does their elasticity act? What is meant by a "collateral circulation"? 115. How are the arteries protected? Where are they located? Give a general description of the arterial system. What is the aorta? What is the pulse? On which arteries can we best feel it? What is the average number of beats per minute? How and why does this vary? 116. Why does a physician feel a patient's pulse? What are the veins? What blood do they carry? Describe the venous system. What vein does not lead toward the heart? Describe the valves of the veins. What valves of the heart do they resemble? What are varicose veins? 117. Where and how can we see the operation of these valves? What are the capillaries? What is the function of the capillaries? [Footnote: The distinctive function of the capillaries is to offer peripheral resistance to the circulation of the blood. This insures "blood pressure," a condition indispensable to the "heart beat," and also causes leakage (transudation). This leakage brings the nutriment in contact with the tissue cells, whereby they are renewed. In the same way the air passes from the blood to the cells.] What changes take place in this system? 118. Describe the circulation of the blood as seen in the web of a frog's foot. 119. Who discovered the circulation of the blood? How was the discovery received? What remark did Harvey make? What does that show? Name the two divisions of the circulation. Describe the route of the blood by the diagram. 1. The lesser circulation. 2. The greater circulation. 120. What is the velocity of the blood? How long does it require for all the blood to pass through the heart? How long does it take the blood to make the tour of the body? What is the average temperature of the body? How much does this vary in health? _Ans_. Not more than 2°, even in the greatest extremes of temperature.--FLINT. 121. How and where is the heat of the body generated? How is it distributed? In what diseases is the variation of temperature marked? How is the temperature of the body regulated? 122. In what way does life exist through death? Is not this as true in the moral as in the physical world? What does it teach? How rapidly do our bodies change? What are the three vital organs? 123. Name some of the wonders of the heart. 124-126. What is the lymphatic circulation? What is the thoracic duct? The lymph? The glands? What is the office of the lymphatics? What are the lacteals? Give some illustrations of the action of the lymphatics of the different organs. Should we use care in selecting wall paper? What is meant by the subcutaneous insertion of morphine? How do hibernating animals live during the winter? What is a congestion? Its cause? 127. What is blushing? Why does terror cause one to grow cold and pale? How is an inflammation caused? Name its four characteristics. 128. How may severe bleeding be stopped? How can you tell whether the blood comes from an artery or a vein? Why should you know this? What is the scrofula? What are "kernels"? 129, 130. How may a scrofulous tendency of the system be counteracted? What kinds of food stimulate this disease? What is the cause of a "cold"? Why does exposure sometimes cause a cold in the head, sometimes on the lungs, and at others bring on a rheumatic attack? Why is a cold dangerous? _Ans_. It weakens the system and paves the way for other diseases. What is the theory of treating a cold? Describe the method. What is catarrh? Cause? 131, 132. How is alcohol produced? Is alcohol present in domestic wines and home-brewed ales? Are they, then, harmless drinks? What is a ferment? (See also pp. 300, 301.) What is the difference between ferments, bacteria, microbes, and fungi? _Ans_. A few investigators still look upon the microorganisms known as bacteria and microbes as animal existences, but the larger part now concede them to be vegetable. 133. What is the effect of fermentation? What can you say concerning yeast? 134. Explain the process of making beer. Wine. What is distillation? 135, 136. Is there more than one kind of alcohol? What can you say of methyl alcohol? Amyl? Ethyl? Which is the ordinary alcohol of commerce? What is the peculiar effect of fusel oil? Is it often found in wines and spirits? Has alcohol any beneficial properties? 137, 138. Describe one of the striking effects of alcohol. What is the effect of alcohol on plant and animal life? 139, 140. What is the difference between the alcohol present in beer and cider, and that in gin and whiskey? Name another dangerous effect of alcoholic drinks. What business consideration should deter young men from liquor drinking? 141-143. Illustrate the general effect of alcohol upon the circulation. Upon the heart. Is alcohol a stimulant or a narcotic? Describe how alcohol becomes the "Genius of Degeneration." Explain what is meant by "Vascular Enlargement." 144, 145. Describe the effect of alcohol upon the membranes. Upon the blood. Does it render the blood thin or heavy? What is the difference between pure and alcoholized blood? 145-147. Describe the effect of alcohol upon the lungs. What form of consumption does it induce? Are liquor drinkers more or less liable to epidemic diseases? 314. How does the pulse felt by the finger correspond with the beat of the heart? Name some agencies that influence the pulse beat? Which part of the body has the most varied form of pulsation? 315. Compare the pulses of the wrist and brain in the sleeping and the waking states. How do catarrhal colds generally arise? How are they best cured? 316. What is said of the vitality of catarrh germs? What is a popular fallacy with regard to the care of sick rooms? Give Dr. Austin Flint's remarks in this connection. DIGESTION AND FOOD. 151. Why do we need food? Why will a person starve without food? Are the current stories of people who live without food to be relied upon? How much food is needed per day by an adult in active exercise? 152. How much in a year? How does this amount vary? Describe the body as a mold. As an eddy. What does food do for us? What does food contain? 153. How is this force set free? What force is this? How can it be turned into muscular motion, mental vigor, etc.? Do we then draw all our power from nature? What becomes of these forces when we are done with them? Do we destroy the force we use? _Ans_. No matter has been destroyed, so far as we know, since the creation, and force is equally indestructible. Compare our food to a tense spring. 154. What three kinds of food do we need? What is nitrogenous food? Name the common forms. What is the characteristic of nitrogenous food? Why called albuminous? What is carbonaceous food? Its two kinds? Constituents of sugar? Where are starch and gum ranked? Why? Use of carbonaceous food? What becomes of this heat? Composition of fat? How does fat compare with sugar in producing heat? 155. Name the other uses of carbonaceous food. From what kind of food does the body derive the greatest strength? Name the mineral matters which should be contained in our food. What can you say of the abundance and necessity of water? Ought we not to exercise great care in selecting the water we drink? [Footnote: Water which has passed through lead pipes is apt to contain salts of that metal, and is therefore open to suspicion. Metallic lined ice pitchers, galvanized-iron reservoirs, and many soda- water fountains, are liable to the same objection. (See pp. 317, 318.)] Does the character of our food influence the quantity of water we need? 156. What are the uses of the different minerals contained in food? Illustrate the importance of salt. Could a person live on one kind of food alone? Illustrate. 157. Describe the effect of living on lean meat. Show the necessity of a mixed diet. Illustrate. Show the need of digestion. Illustrate. 158. What is assimilation? Describe the general plan of digestion. What did Berzelius call digestion? Why? What amount of liquid is daily secreted by the alimentary canal? What is the alimentary canal? How is it lined? How does the amœba digest its food? 159. The hydra? Define secretion. Describe the saliva. How is it secreted? What is the amount? Its organic principle? Its use? How soon does it act? How long? What tends to check or increase the flow of saliva? 160. Describe the process of swallowing. The stomach. Its size. Its construction. What is the peristaltic movement? 162. What is the pylorus? For what does this open? What is the gastric juice? How abundant is it? To what is its acidity due? What organic principle does it contain? How is pepsin prepared? How is the flow of gastric juice influenced? 163. What is its use? Appearance of the food as it passes through the pylorus? Why is not the stomach itself digested? What is the construction of the intestines? How are the intestines divided? What is the duodenum? Why so called? What juices are secreted here? 164. What is the bile? Describe the liver. What is its weight? Its construction? _Ans_. It consists of a mass of polyhedral cells only 1/100 to 1/2000 of an inch in diameter, filling a mesh of capillaries. The capillaries carry the blood to and fro, and the cells secrete the bile. What is the cyst? What does the liver secrete from the blood besides the bile? Is the bile necessary to life? Illustrate. What is its use? 165. What is the pancreatic juice? Its organic principle? Its use? Appearance of the food when it leaves the duodenum? Describe the small intestine. What is absorption? In what two ways is the food absorbed? 166. Where does the process commence? How long does it last? Describe the lacteals. Of what general system do they form a part? What do the veins absorb? Where do they carry the food? How is it modified? 167. What is glycogen? Describe the complexity of the process of digestion. What length of time is required for digestion in the stomach? 168. May not food which requires little time in the stomach need more in the other organs, and _vice versa_? Tell the story of Alexis St. Martin. What time was required to digest an ordinary meal? Apples? Eggs, raw and cooked? Roast beef? Pork? Which is the king of the meats? What is the nutritive value of mutton? Lamb? How should it be cooked? Objection to pork? What is the trichina? 169. Should ham ever be eaten raw? Value of fish? Oysters? Milk? Cheese? Eggs? Bread? Brown bread? Are warm biscuit and bread healthful? Nutritive value of corn? 170. Of the potato? Of ripe fruits? Of coffee? To what is its stimulating property due? Its influence on the system? When should it be discarded? Should children use any stimulants? 171. Effects of tea? Influence of strong tea? What is the active principle of tea? Nutritive value of chocolate? What is its active principle? Story of Linnæus? How should tea be made? What is the effect of cooking food? What precaution in boiling meat? In roasting? Object of this high temperature? What precaution in making soup? Why is frying an unhealthful mode of cooking? 172. State the five evil results of rapid eating. What disease grows out of it? If one is compelled to eat a meal rapidly, as at a railroad station, what should he take? Why? Why does a child need more food proportionately than an old person? State the relation of waste to repair in youth, in middle, and in old age. What kind and quantity of food does a sedentary occupation require? What caution should students who have been accustomed to manual labor observe? Must a student starve himself? 173. Is there not danger of overeating? Would not an occasional abstinence from a meal be beneficial? Do not most people eat more than is for their good? How should the season regulate our diet? The climate? Illustrate. What does a natural appetite indicate? How are we to judge between a natural and an artificial longing? What does the craving of childhood for sugar indicate? [Footnote: It does not follow from this, however, that the free use of sugar in its separate form is desirable. The ordinary articles of vegetable food contain sugar (or starch, which in the body is converted into sugar), in large proportion; and there is good reason to believe that in its naturally combined form it is both more easily digested, and more available for the purposes of nutrition, than when crystallized. The ordinary sugar of commerce, moreover, derived from the sugar cane, is not capable of being directly applied to physiological purposes. Cane sugar is converted within the body into another kind of sugar, identical with that derived from the grape, before it can enter into the circuit of the vital changes.] 174. What is the effect upon the circulation of taking food? Should we labor or study just before or after a meal? Why not? What time should intervene between our meals? Is "lunching" a healthful practice? Eating heartily just before retiring? Is it never wise to eat at this time? (See p. 337.) Why should care be banished from the table? Will a regular routine of food be beneficial? 175, 176. Describe some of the wonders of digestion. What are the principal causes of dyspepsia? How may we avoid that disease? 177. What are the mumps? What care should be taken? Is alcohol a food? Illustrate. 178-187. Compare the action of alcohol with that of water. Is the alcohol taken into the stomach eliminated unchanged? Does alcohol contain any element needed by the body? What is the effect of alcohol upon the digestion? Will pepsin act in the presence of alcohol? What is the effect of alcohol upon the liver? What is "Fatty Degeneration"? What is the effect of alcohol upon the kidneys? Does alcohol impart heat to the body? Does it confer strength? What does Dr. Kane say? Describe Richardson's experiments. Tell what peculiar influence alcohol exerts. What is alcoholism? What is heredity? 317. What characteristics should good drinking water possess? Are these always proof of its purity? Will filters remove all danger of contamination? How may a river infect the entire population of a town? State how well water may become a dangerous drink. 318. Relate how cases of fever have been caused by carelessness in dairies. How should suspected water be treated? Describe a convenient portable filter. Tell how water is affected by foul air. 319. Tell how ice may breed disease. What caution should be observed in engaging ice for our summer supply? Illustrate the structure of the glandular coat of the stomach. 320. What is the office of the cells? Describe the life history of a cell. How does the stomach weep, and what is the character of its tears? 321. What is tyrotoxicon? Give Dr. Vaughan's experiments with cheese, milk, and ice cream. Tell how milk may be poisoned. 322. Compare the vigor of exclusively fish-eating with flesh-eating people. What is the peculiar value of fish as a diet? To what class of people is it best suited? Name examples. Describe the principles contained in coffee. What is the effect of caffeone? Of caffeine? Give some of the specific effects of coffee. How does tea differ from coffee? Describe the injurious effects of excessive tea drinking. 324. Compare theine and cocaine. Should children drink tea and coffee? 325. Give some causes of indigestion. Why are nervous people prone to dyspepsia? Give the comparative digestibility of various meats. 326. Describe how our food sustains our bodies. Illustrate the energy contained in one gramme of beef fat. Why is there danger in a "high- pressure" style of living? Illustrate. 327. State the effects of gluttony. Why is it unkindness to indulge inordinate appetites in children? What should be the rule in regard to their food? What effects would follow its observance? THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 191. What are the organs of the nervous system? What is the general use of this system? How does it distinguish animals from plants? What are the vegetative functions? What is the gray matter? Its use? The white matter? Its use? 193. Describe the brain. What is its office? Its size? How does it vary? Illustrate. Name its two divisions. 194, 195. Describe the cerebrum. The convolutions. The membranes which bind the brain together. What can you say of the quantity of blood which goes to the brain? What does it show? What do the convolutions indicate? What is the use of the two halves of the brain? What theories have been advanced concerning it? Is every injury to the brain fatal? Illustrate. Compare the human brain with the brains of some animals. 196. What is the effect of removing the cerebrum? Describe the cerebellum. What is the arbor vitæ? What does this part of the brain control? What are the peculiar functions of the cerebellum? Give Dr. Bastian's remarks. 197. What is the effect of an injury to the cerebellum? Describe the spinal cord. What is the medulla oblongata? Describe the nerves. Is each part of the body supplied with its own nerve? Prove it. 198. What are the motory nerves? The sensory? When will motion be lost and feeling remain, and _vice versa?_ What is meant by a transfer of pain? Illustrate. 199. Name the three classes of nerves. What are the spinal nerves? Describe the origin of the spinal nerve. 199-201. What are the cranial nerves? How many pairs are there? Describe them. 201, 202. Describe the sympathetic system. What is its use? How does the brain control all the vital processes? What is meant by the crossing of the cords? What is the effect? What exception in the seventh pair of cranial nerves? 203, 204. What is reflex action? Give illustrations. Give instances of the unconscious action of the brain. [Footnote: The cerebellum has its unconscious action in the processes of respiration and in the involuntary movements which are made in response to the senses, as in winking, starting back at a sound, etc. The cerebrum acts automatically in oases familiar to all. A large part of our mental activity consists of this unconscious brain work. There are many cases in which the mind has obviously reasoned more clearly and more successfully in this automatic condition, when left entirely to itself, than when we have been cudgeling our brains, so to speak, to get the solution. Oliver Wendell Holmes has aptly expressed this fact. "We wish," he says, "to remember something in the course of conversation. No effort of the will can reach it; but we say, 'Wait a minute, and it will come to me,' and we go on talking. Some minutes later, the idea we are in search of comes all at once into the mind, delivered like a prepaid parcel, or like a foundling in a basket, laid at the door of consciousness. How it came there, we know not. The mind must have been at work, groping and feeling for it in the dark; it can not have come of itself. Yet, all the while, our consciousness, _so far as we are conscious of our consciousness_, was busy with other thoughts." Some interesting personal experiences upon this point are given in an article entitled "The Antechamber of Consciousness," by Francis Speir, Jr., in the _Popular Science Monthly_ for March, 1888.] Can there be feeling or motion in the lower limbs when the spinal cord is destroyed? What does the story told by Dr. John Hunter show? Give illustrations of the independent action of the spinal cord in animals. What are the uses of reflex action? 205. State its value in the formation of habits. How does the brain grow? What laws govern it? What must be the effect of constant light reading? Of overstudy or mental labor? 206. State the relation of sleep to repair and waste. How many hours does each person need? What kind of work requires most sleep? 206-208. What is the influence of sunlight on the body? Illustrate. Name some of the wonders of the brain. 208-213. What four stages are there in the effect of alcohol on the nervous system? Describe each. Does alcohol confer any permanent strength? What is the physiological effect of alcohol on the brain? On the mental and moral powers? What is the Delirium Tremens? Should a man be punished for a crime he commits while drunk? 214-218. What are the principal constituents of tobacco? What are its physiological effects? Who are most likely to escape injury? Is tobacco a food? What is its influence upon youth? Why are cigarettes specially injurious? What effect does tobacco have on the sensibilities? Name illustrations of the injurious effect of tobacco on young men. 219-221. How is opium obtained? What is its physiological effect? Which form of using it is most injurious? Can one give up the use of opium when he pleases? How do people sometimes take opium without knowing it? 221. What is the harmful influence of chloral hydrate? Describe its different physiological effects. 222. Compare its influence with that of alcohol. How is chloroform obtained? Does its use require great caution? Illustrate its effects. 223, 224. What is cocaine? What is its value? Its physiological effect? Its dangers? 331-333. What is the effect of extreme anger? Give the physiological explanation of this deterioration. What two organs particularly suffer? Illustrate. To what cause are many suicides referable? How can one secure a calm and tranquil life? What is the effect of forcing the brain in childhood? 334. Illustrate. How should a child be taught? 334, 335. Why should we not exhaust our energies to the last degree? What warnings does Nature give us? Do stimulants supply force? What is the effect of mental exhaustion? Which is the most common, overwork or worry? Most dangerous? What is worry? Its effect? What other causes often induce insanity? 336-338. State some curiosities of sleep. Some conditions necessary to sound and healthful slumber. How may we acquire the habit of early rising? 338, 339. Give some of the results of dungeon life. 339-347. What can you say of the growth and power of poison habits? Illustrate. How does physiological ignorance often cause intemperance? What is the usual result of a stimulant habit? In what virtue lies the peril of narcotics? Balance the good and the evil in their use. Illustrate how death often results from chloroform and chloral. What common result is worse than death? Compare the demoralization in the cases of the opium user and the alcohol drinker. What principle of heredity attaches to the use of opium? Give instances of deaths from tobacco, opium, etc. What can you say of cigarette smoking? Chloral hydrate? The bromides? Absinthe? Hasheesh? THE SPECIAL SENSES. 229, 230. What is a sense? Name the five senses. To what organ do all the senses minister? If the nerve leading to any organ of sense be cut, what would be the effect? [Footnote: Each, organ is adapted to receive a peculiar kind of impression. Hence we can not smell with, the eyes nor see with the nose. Thus, if the nerve communicating between the brain and any organ be destroyed, that means of knowledge is cut off.] Sometimes persons lose feeling in a limb, but retain motion; why is this? What is the sense of touch sometimes called? Describe the organ of touch. What are the papillæ? Where are they most abundant? [Footnote: If we apply the points of a compass blunted with cork to different parts of the body, we can distinguish the two points at one twenty-fourth of an inch apart on the tongue, one sixteenth, of an inch on the lips, one twelfth of an inch on the tips of the fingers, and one half inch on the great toe; while, if they are one inch on the cheek, and two inches on the back, they will scarcely produce a separate sensation.--HUXLEY.] What are the uses of this sense? What special knowledge do we obtain by it? Why do we always desire to handle any curious object? Can the sense of touch always be relied upon? Illustrate. What is the _tactus eruditus_? Tell how one sense can take the place of another. Give illustrations of the delicacy of touch possessed by the blind. 230-232. Describe the sense of taste. How can you see the papillæ of taste? What causes the velvety look of the tongue? Why do salt and bitter flavors induce vomiting? Why does an acid "pucker" the face? What substances are tasteless? Illustrate. Has sulphur any taste? Chalk? Sand? What is the use of this sense? Does it not also add to the pleasures of life? Why are the acts of eating, drinking, etc., thus made sources of happiness? 232, 233. Describe the organ of smell. State the intimate relation which exists between the senses of smell and taste. Name some common mistakes which occur in consequence. Must the object to be smelled touch the nose? What is the theory of smell? How do you account for the statement made in the note concerning musk and ambergris? What are the uses of this sense? Are agreeable odors healthful, and disagreeable ones unhealthful? 234-236. Describe the organ of hearing. Describe the external ear. What is the tympanum or drum of the ear? Describe the middle ear. Name the bones of the ear. Describe their structure. Describe the internal ear. By what other name is it known? What substances float in the liquid which fills the labyrinth? What is their use? Describe the fibers of Corti. What do they form? Use of this microscopic harp? Give the theory of sound. Where is the sound, in the external object or in the mind? Can there be any sound, then, where there is no mind? What advice is given concerning the care of the ear? How can insects be removed? Which sense would you rather lose, hearing or sight? Does not a blind person always excite more sympathy than a deaf one? How does the sight assist the hearing? [Footnote: In _hearing_, the attention is more or less characteristic. If we wish to distinguish a distant noise, or perceive a sound, the head inclines and turns in such a manner as to present the external ear in the direction of the sound, at the same time the eyes are fixed and partially closed. The movement of the lips of his interlocutor is the usual means by which the deaf man supplies the want of hearing; the eyes and the entire head, from its position, having a peculiar and painful expression of attention. In looking at the portrait of La Condamine, it was easily recognized as that of a deaf person. Even when hearing is perfect, the eyes act sometimes as auxiliaries to it. In order to understand an orator perfectly, it seems necessary to see him--the gestures and the expression of the face seeming to add to the clearness of the words. The lesson of a teacher can not be well understood if any obstacle is interposed between him and the eyes of the listening pupil. So that if a pupil's eyes wander, we know that he is not attentive.-- _Wonders of the Human Body_.] 236, 237. Describe the eye. Name the three coats of which it is composed. Is it a perfect sphere? _Ans_. The cornea projects in front, and the optic nerve at the back sticks out like a handle, while the ball itself has its longest diameter from side to side. How is the interior divided? Object of the crystalline lens? How is the crystalline lens kept in place? Describe the liquids which fill the eye. 238. What is the pupil? Describe the eyelids. Why is the inner side of the eyelid so sensitive? What is the cause of a black eye? Use of the eyelashes? Where are the oil glands located? What is their use? Describe the lachrymal gland. The lachrymal lake. What causes the overflow in old age? 239. Explain the structure of the retina. Use of the rods and cones. What is the blind spot? 240. Illustrate. What is the theory of sight? Illustrate. 241, 242. State the action of the crystalline lens. Its power of adaptation. Do children ever need spectacles? 243. What is the cataract? How cured? What is color blindness? Illustrate. What care should be taken of the eyes? Should one constantly lean forward over his book or work? What special care should nearsighted children take? By what carelessness may we impair our sight? 244. How is squinting caused? Cured? What care should be used after an illness? Should we ever read or write at twilight? Danger of reading upon the ears? What course should we take when objects get into the eye? How may they be removed? 245. Are "eyestones" useful? Why should we never use eyewashes except upon the advice of a competent physician? What rule should be observed with regard to the direction of the light when we are at work? Name some causes of near-sightedness. Remedies. 346. Give the account of Laura Bridgman. 347-350. Describe the anatomy of the nose. In what part of the nose is the function of smell performed? Why do we "sniff" when our attention is attracted by an odor? Give some experiments which illustrate the connection between smell, taste, and touch. Why should we retain our food in the mouth as long as possible? Of what use are gastronomic odors? 350. Why should a child's ear never be boxed? Illustrate. How can we detect inattention from deafness in a child? What should we consider in this respect? 351. Why should we avoid direct draughts in the ear? Explain the use of earwax. What common habit is very injurious? Why? 352, 353. What is the office of the Eustachian tube? Illustrate. 353, 354. Describe the action of the "eye curtain." Give experiments. What are "Purkinje's Figures"? Describe experiment. HEALTH AND DISEASE. 251-254. State some of the benefits of health. Contrast it with sickness. How were diseases formerly supposed to be caused? What remedies were used? What does modern science teach us to be the nature of disease? Give some illustrations showing how diseases may be prevented. Is it probable that the body was intended to give out in any one of its organs? What is the first step to be taken in the cure of a disease? What should be the object of medicine? What is now the chief dependence of the best physicians? What do you think concerning the common use of patent nostrums? Ought we not to use the greatest care in the selection of our physician? GLOSSARY. Ab do' men (_abdo_, I conceal). The largest cavity in the body, in which are hidden the intestines, stomach, etc. Ab sorb' ent (_ab_, from _sorbeo_, I suck up). Ac' e tab' u lum (_acetum_, vinegar). The socket for holding the head of the thigh bone, shaped like an ancient vinegar vessel. A ce' tic (_acetum_, vinegar). Ad' i pose. Fatty. Al bu' men (_albus_, white). A substance resembling the white of egg. Al bu' mi nous substances contain much albumen. Al' i men' ta ry. Pertaining to food. Al' ka line (-lin) substances neutralize acids. An' æs thet' ic. A substance that destroys the feeling of pain. A or' ta. The largest artery of the body. Ap' o plex y (pleks y). A disease marked by loss of sensation and voluntary motion. A' que ous (a'-kwe-us). Watery. A rach' noid (_arachne_, a spider; _eidos_, form). A membrane like a spider's web covering the brain. Ar' bor vi'tæ means "the tree of life." Ar' tery (_aer_, air; _tereo_, I contain). So named because after death the arteries contain air only, and hence the ancients supposed them to be air tubes leading through the body. Ar tic' u late (_articulo_, I form a joint). Ar tic' u la tion. A joint. As phyx' ia (-fix-i-a). Literally, no pulse; apparent death. As sim' i la' tion is the process of changing food into flesh, etc. At' las. So called because, as in ancient fable the god Atlas supported the globe on his shoulders, so in the body this bone bears the head. Au' di to ry Nerve. The nerve of hearing. Au' ri cle (-kl) (_auris_, ear) of the heart. So named from its shape. Bi' ceps. A muscle with two heads, or origins. Bi cus' pid. Tooth with two points; also a valve of the heart. Bron' chi (-ki). The two branches of the windpipe. Bron' chi al Tubes. Subdivisions of bronchi. Bur sa (a purse). Small sac containing fluid near a joint. Ca nine' (_canis_, a dog) teeth are like dog's teeth. Cap' il la ries (_capillus_, a hair). A system of tiny blood vessels. Car' bon. Pure charcoal. Car bon' ic Acid. A deadly gas given off by the lungs and by fires. Ca rot' ids (_karos_, lethargy). Arteries of the neck, so named because the ancients supposed them to be the seat of sleep. Car' pus. The wrist. Car' ti lage. Gristle. Cell. A minute sac, usually with soft walls and fluid contents. Cel' lu lar (_cellula_, a little cell). Full of cells. Cer' e bel' lum. The little brain. Cer' e brum. A Latin word meaning brain. Cer' vi cal. Relating to the neck. Chlo' ral (klo) Hy' drate. A drug used to induce sleep. Cho' roid. The second coat of the eye. Chyle (kile). A milky juice formed in digestion. Chyme (kime). From _chumos_, juice. Cir' cu la' tion. The course of the blood through the body. Cil' i a (the plural of _cilium_, an eyelash). Hair-like projections in the air passages. Clav' i cle (klav'-i-kl). From _clavis_, a key. Co ag' u la'tion. A clotting of blood. Coc' cyx (a cuckoo). A bony mass below the sacrum. Coch' le a. A Latin word meaning snail shell. See Ear Com' pound. A substance composed of two or more elements. Con ta' gious diseases are those caught by contact, the breath, etc. Con' trac til' i ty (_con_, together; _traho_, I draw). Con' vo lu' tion (_con_, together; _volvo_, I roll). Cor' ne a (_cornu_, a horn). A transparent, horn-like window in the eye. Cor' pus cle (kor'-pus-l). From a Latin word meaning a little body. It is applied to the disks of the blood. Cra' ni al. Relating to the skull. Crys'tal line (_crystallum_, a crystal). Cu ta' ne ous (_cutis_, skin). Pertaining to the skin. Cu' ti cle (ku'-ti-kl). From a Latin word meaning little skin. Cu' tis, the true skin. Den' tal (_dens, dentis_, a tooth). Di' a phragm (-fram). The muscle dividing the abdomen from the chest. Di as' to le (_diastello_, I put asunder). Dilation of the heart. Dis' lo ca' tion. A putting out of joint. Dor' sal (_dorsum_, the back). Duct. A small tube. Du o de' num (_duodeni_, twelve each). Du' ra Ma' ter (_durus_, hard; _mater_, mother). The outer membrane of the brain. Dys pep' si a is a difficulty of digestion E lim' i nate. To expel. Ep' idem' ic. A disease affecting a great number of persons at once. Ep' i der' mis. The cuticle. Ep' i glot' tis (_epi_, upon; _glottis_, the tongue). The lid of the windpipe. Ep' i the' li um. The outer surface of mucous or serous membranes. Eu sta' chi an (u-sta'-ki-an) Tube. So named from its discoverer, an Italian physician. Ex cre' tion. Waste particles thrown off by the excretory organs. Fer' men ta' tion. The process by which sugar is turned into alcohol. Fi' brin (_fibra_, a fiber). Fil' a ment (_filum_, a thread). Func' tion. See Organ. Gan' gli on (gang'-gli-on). From _ganglion_, a knot; plu. ganglia. Gas' tric (_gaster_, stomach). Glands (_glandz_). From _glans_, a Latin word meaning acorn. Their object, is to secrete in their cells some liquid from the blood. Glot' tis. The opening at the top of the larynx. Hu' me rus. The arm bone. Hu' mor. A Latin word meaning moisture. Hy' dro gen. The lightest gas known, and one of the elements of water. Hy' gi ene. From a Greek word meaning health. Hyp' o glos' sal. Literally "under the tongue"; a nerve of the tongue. In ci' sor (_incido_, I cut) teeth are cutting teeth. In' spi ra' tion (_in_ and _spiro_, I breathe in). In tes' tine (-tin). From _intus_, within. Lach' ry mal (_lachryma_, a tear). Pertaining to tears. Lac' te al (_lac_, _lactis_, milk). So called from the milky look of the chyle during digestion. La cu' na, plu. lacunæ (_lakos_, a hole). Cavities in the bone structure. Lar' ynx (lar'-inx). The upper part of the windpipe. Lig' a ments (_ligo_, I bind) tie bones together. Lu' bri cate. To oil in order to prevent friction. Lum' bar (_lumbus_, a loin). Pertaining to the loins. Lymph (limf). From _lympha_, pure water. Lym phat' ic (lim-fat-ik). Mas' ti ca' tion. The act of chewing. Me dul' la Ob lon ga' ta. The upper part of the spinal cord. Mam' brane. A thin skin, or tissue. Mes' en tery. The membrane by which the intestines are fastened to the spine. Met' a car' pal (_meta_, after; _karpos_, wrist). Met' a tar' sal (_meta_, after; _tarsos_, the instep). Mi' cro scope (_mikros_, small; _skopeo_, I see). Mo'lar (_mola_, a mill) teeth are the grinders. Morp' hine (_Morpheus_, the Greek god of sleep). Mo' tor. Giving motion. Mu' cous (-kus) Membrane. A thin tissue, or skin, covering the open cavities of the body. See Serous. Mu' cous. A fluid secreted by a membrane and serving to lubricate it. Mus' cle (mus-l). A bundle of fibers covered by a membrane. My o' pi a (_muo_, I contract; _ops_, the eye). Nar cot' ic. A drug producing sleep. Na' sal (na'-zal). From _nasus_, the nose. Nerve (neuron, a cord). Ni' tro gen Gas is the passive element of the air. Ni trog' e nous. Containing nitrogen. Nu tri' tion. The process by which the body is nourished. Œ soph' agus (e-sof'-a-gus). The gullet; literally, a "food-carrier." Ol fac' to ry. Pertaining to the smell. Or' gan. An organ is a portion of the body designed for a particular use, which is called its _function_; thus the heart circulates the blood. Os' se ous. Bone-like. Os' si fy (_ossa_, bones; _facio_, I make). Ox i da' tion. The process of combining with oxygen. Ox' y gen. The active element of the air. Pal' ate (_palatum_, the palate). Roof of the mouth. Pan' cre as (_pas_, all; _kreas_, flesh). An organ of digestion. Pa pil' la, plu. papillæ. Tiny cone-like projections. Pa ral' y sis. A disease in which one loses sensation, or the power of motion, or both. Pa rot' id (_para_, near; _ous_, _otos_, ear). One of the salivary glands. Pa tel' la (a little dish). The kneepan. Pec' to ral. Pertaining to the chest. Pep' sin (_pepto_, I digest). The chief constituent of the gastric juice. Per' i car' di um (_peri_, around; _kardia_, the heart). The membrane wrapping the heart. Per' i os' te um (_peri_, around; _osteon_, bone). The membrane around the bone. Per' i stal' tic (_peri_, round; _stallein_, to arrange). Applied to the worm-like movement of the alimentary canal. Phar' ynx (far'-inx). From _pharugx_, the throat. Pi' a Ma' ter (tender mother). See Brain. Pig' ment. A paint. Plas' ma (plaz'-ma). The nutritious fluid of the blood. Pleu' ra (plu'-ra). From _pleuar_, a rib. The membrane that lines the chest and wraps the lungs. Pres by o' pi a (_presbus_, old; _ops_, the eye). A defect in the eye common to old age. Proc' ess. A projection. Sometimes it retains its ordinary meaning of "operation." Py lo' rus (a gate). The doorway through which the food passes from the stomach. Pul' mo na ry (_pulmo_, the lungs). Pertaining to the lungs. Ra' di us. A Latin word meaning the spoke of a wheel, a ray, etc. Ram' i fy. To spread like the branches of a tree. Res' pi ra´ tion (_re_, again; _spiro_, I breathe). Act of breathing. Ret' i na (_rete_, a net). The expansion of the optic nerve in the eye. Sa' crum (sacred). So named, it is said, because this bone of the pelvis was anciently offered in sacrifice. Sa li' va. A Latin word meaning spittle; the fluid secreted by the salivary glands. Scap' u la. The shoulder blade. Scav' en ger. A street sweeper. Sele rot' ic (skie-rot'-ic). The outer coat of the eye. Se cre' tion (_secretum_, to separate). Sed' en ta ry persons are those who sit much. Sen' so ry Nerves. The nerves of feeling. Se' rous Membrane. A thin tissue, or skin, covering the cavities of the body that are not open to the external air. Se' rum. The thin part of the blood. Sub cla' vi an. Located under the clavicle. Sub lin' gual (_sub_, under: _lingua_, the tongue). The salivary gland located under the tongue. Sub max' il la ry (_sub_, under; _maxilla_, jawbone). The salivary gland located under the jaw. Syn o' vi a (_sun_, with; _oon_, egg). A fluid that lubricates the joints. Syn o' vi al Membrane packs the joints. Sys' to le (_sustello_, I contract). Contraction of the heart. Tem' po ral. An artery on the temple (_tempus_, time), so called because, as is said, the hair whitens first at that point. Ten' dons (_tendo_, I stretch). The cords conveying motion from the muscle to the bone. Tho' rax (a breastplate). The cavity containing the lungs, etc. Tib' ia. The shin-bone. Tis' sue. A general term applied to the textures of which the different organs are composed; osseous tissue forms bones. Tra' che a (tra'-ke-a). Means rough, alluding to the roughened surface of the windpipe. Tri' ceps. A muscle with three heads, or origins. Tri' cus' pid (_tres_, three; _cuspis_, point). A valve of the heart. Tym' pa num (a drum) of the ear. Vas' cu lar (_vasculum_, little vessel). Full of small blood vessels. Ven' tri cle (-kl). A cavity of the heart. Ver' te bra, plu. vertebræ (_verto_, I turn). A term applied to each one of the bones of the spine. Vil' lus (_villus_, tuft of hair), plu. villi. Vi' ti ate. To taint. To spoil. Vit' re ous (_vitrium_, glass). Glassy. Vo' mer (plowshare). A bone of the nose. 
8521	----	Dailey, David Garcia, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team MAINTAINING HEALTH (FORMERLY HEALTH AND EFFICIENCY) By R. L. ALSAKER, M. D. AUTHOR OF "EATING FOR HEALTH AND EFFICIENCY" _"When you arise in the morning, think what a precious privilege it is to live, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love."_ --MARCUS AURELIUS. _"Nature Cures"_ --HIPPOCRATES TO ISAAC T. COOK WHOSE CRITICISMS, ASSISTANCE AND ENCOURAGEMENT HAVE LIGHTENED THE LABOR AND ADDED TO THE PLEASURE OF PRODUCING THIS VOLUME. CHAPTER CONTENTS I PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS Humanity, Health and Healers II MENTAL ATTITUDE Correct and Incorrect--Results III FOOD General Consideration IV OVEREATING V DAILY FOOD INTAKE VI WHAT TO EAT VII WHEN TO EAT VIII HOW TO EAT IX CLASSIFICATION OF FOODS X FLESH FOODS Composition--Utility--Preparation--Combinations XI NUTS Composition--Utility--Preparation--Combinations XII LEGUMES Composition--Utility--Preparation--Combinations XIII SUCCULENT VEGETABLES Composition--Utility--Preparation--Combinations--Salads XIV CEREAL FOODS Composition--Utility--Preparation--Combinations XV TUBERS Composition--Utility--Preparation--Combinations XVI FRUITS Composition--Utility--Preparation--Combinations--Salads XVII OILS AND FATS XVIII MILK AND OTHER DAIRY PRODUCTS Composition--Utility--Preparation--Combinations XIX MENUS Food Combination in General XX DRINK Water--Tea--Coffee--Alcohol--Enslaving Drugs XXI CARE OF THE SKIN Baths--Friction--Clothing XXII EXERCISE XXIII BREATHING AND VENTILATION XXIV SLEEP XXV FASTING Our Most Important Remedy--Symptoms--When and How to Fast--Cases XXVI ATTITUDE OF PARENT TOWARD CHILD XXVII CHILDREN Prenatal Care--Infancy--Childhood--Mental Training XXVIII DURATION OF LIFE Advanced Years--Living to Old Age in Health and Comfort XXIX EVOLVING INTO HEALTH How it is Often Done--A Case XXX RETROSPECT A Summing-up of the Subject CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. Writings on hygiene and health have been accessible for centuries, but never before have books and magazines on these subjects been as numerous as they are today. Most of the information is so general, vague and indefinite that only a few have the time and patience to read the thousands of pages necessary to learn what to do to keep well. The truth is to be found in the archives of medicine, in writings covering a period of over thirty centuries, but it is rather difficult to find the grains of truth. Health is the most valuable of all possessions, for with health one can attain anything else within reason. A few of the great people of the world have been sickly, but it takes men and women sound in body and mind to do the important work. Healthy men and women are a nation's most valuable asset. It is natural to be healthy, but we have wandered so far astray that disease is the rule and good health the exception. Of course, most people are well enough to attend to their work, but nearly all are suffering from some ill, mental or physical, acute or chronic, which deprives them of a part of their power. The average individual is of less value to himself, to his family and to society than he could be. His bad habits, of which he is often not aware, have brought weakness and disease upon him. These conditions prevent him from doing his best mentally and physically. This abnormal condition has a bad effect upon his descendants, who may not be born with any special defects, but they have less resistance at birth than is their due, and consequently fall prey to disease very easily. This state of impaired resistance has been passed on from generation to generation, and we of today are passing it on as a heritage to our children. About 280,000 babies under the age of one year die annually in the United States. The average lifetime is only a little more than forty years. It should be at least one hundred years. This is a very conservative statement, for many live to be considerably older, and it is within the power of each individual to prolong his life beyond what is now considered old age. Under favorable conditions people should live in comfort and health to the age of one hundred years or more, useful and in full possession of their faculties. Barring accidents, which should be less numerous when people fully realize that unreasonable haste and speed are wasteful and that life is more valuable than accumulated wealth, human life could and should be a certainty. There should be no sudden deaths resulting from the popular diseases of today. In fact, pneumonia, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, cancer and various other ills that are fatal to the vast majority of the race, should and could be abolished. This may sound idealistic, but though such results are not probable in the near future, they are possible. All civilized nations of which we have record, except the Chinese, have decayed after growing and flourishing a few centuries, usually about a thousand years or less. Many reasons are given for the decline and fall of nations. Rome especially furnishes food for much thought. However, look into the history of each known nation that has risen to prominence, glory and power, and you will find that so long as they kept in close contact with the soil they flourished. With the advance of civilization the peoples change their mode of life from simplicity to luxuriousness and complexity. Thus individuals decay and in the end there is enough individual decay to result in national degeneration. When this process has advanced far enough these people are unable to hold their own. In the severe competition of nations the strain is too great and they perish. There is a point of refinement beyond which people can not go and survive. From luxury nations are plunged into hardship. Then their renewed contact with the soil gradually causes their regeneration, if they have enough vitality left to rise again. Such is the history of the Italians. Many others, like the once great Egyptians, whose civilization was very far advanced and who became so dissolute that a virtuous woman was a curiosity, have been unable to recover, even after a lapse of many centuries. The degenerated nations are like diseased individuals: Some have gone so far on the road to ruin that they are doomed to die. Others can slowly regain their health by mending their ways. Nations, like individuals, generally do better in moderate circumstances than in opulence. Nearly all can stand poverty, but only the exceptional individual or nation can bear up under riches. Nature demands of us that we exercise both body and mind. Civilization is not inimical to health and long life. In fact, the contrary is true, for as the people advance they learn to master the forces of nature and with these forces under control they are able to lead better, healthier lives, but if they become too soft and luxurious there is decay of moral and physical fibre, and in the end the nation must fall, for its individual units are unworthy of survival in a world which requires an admixture of brain and brawn. Civilization is favorable to long life so long as the people are moderate and live simply, but when it degenerates to sensuous softness, individual and racial deterioration ensue. Among savages the infant mortality is very great, but such ills as cancer, tuberculosis, smallpox and Bright's disease are rare. These are luxuries which are generally introduced with civilization. Close housing, too generous supply of food, too little exercise and alcohol are some of the fatal blessings which civilized man introduces among savages. A part of the price we must pay for being civilized is the exercise of considerable self-control and self-denial, otherwise we must suffer. The state of the individual health is not satisfactory. There is too much illness, too much suffering and too many premature deaths. It is estimated that in our country about three millions of people are ill each day, on the average. The monetary loss is tremendous and the anguish and suffering are beyond estimate. The race is losing every year a vast army of individuals who are in their productive prime. When a part of a great city is destroyed men give careful consideration to the material loss and plan to prevent a recurrence. But that is nothing compared to the loss we suffer from the annual death of a host of experienced men and women. Destroyed business blocks can be replaced, but it is impossible to replace men and women. We look upon this unnecessary waste of life complacently because we are used to it and consequently think that it is natural. It is neither necessary nor natural. If we would read and heed nature's writings it would cease. Then people would live until their time came to fade away peacefully and beautifully, as do the golden leaves of autumn or the blades of grass. Many dread old age because they think of it in connection with decrepitude, helplessness and the childish querulousness popularly associated with advancing years. This is not a natural old age; it is disease. Natural old age is sweet, tolerant and cheerful. There are few things in life more precious than the memory of parents and grandparents grown old gracefully, after having weathered the storms of appetites and passions, the mind firmly enthroned and filled with the calm toleration and wisdom that come with the passing years of a well spent life. A busy mind in a healthy body does not degenerate. The brain, though apparently unstable, is one of the most stable parts of the body. We should desire and acquire health because when healthy we are at our maximum efficiency. We are able to enjoy life. We have greater capacity for getting and giving. We live more fully. Being normal, we are in harmony with ourselves and with our associates. We are of greater value all around. We are better citizens. Every individual owes something to the race. It is our duty to contribute our part so that the result of our lives is not a tendency toward degeneration, but toward upbuilding, of the race. The part played by each individual is small, but the aggregate is great. If our children are better born and better brought up than we were, and there is generally room for improvement, we have at least helped. Health is within the grasp of all who are not afflicted with organic disease, and the vast majority have no organic ills. All that is necessary is to lead natural lives and learn how to use the mind properly. Those who are not in sympathy with the views on racial duty can enhance their personal worth through better living without giving the race any thought. Every individual who leads a natural life and thinks to advantage helps to bring about better public health. The national health is the aggregate of individual health and is improved as the individuals evolve into better health. National or racial improvement come through evolution, not through revolution. The improvement is due to small contributions from many sources. The greatest power for human uplift is knowledge. Reformers often believe that they can improve the world by legislation. Lasting reform comes through education. If the laws are very repressive the reaction is both great and unpleasant. It takes about six months to learn stenography. It requires a long apprenticeship to become a first-class blacksmith or horseshoer. To obtain the rudiments of a physician's art it is necessary to spend four to six years in college. To learn a language takes an apt pupil at least a year. A lawyer must study from two to four years to become a novice. A businessman must work many years before he is an expert in his line. Not one of these attainments is worth as much as good health, yet an individual of average intelligence can obtain enough knowledge about right living during his spare time in from two to six months to assure him of good health, if he lives as well as he knows how. Is it worth while? It certainly is, for it is one of the essentials of life. Health will increase one's earning capacity and productivity and more than double both the pleasure and the duration of life. Disease is a very expensive luxury. Health is one of the cheapest, though one of the rarest, things on earth. There is no royal road to health. If there is any law of health it is this: Only those will retain it permanently who are deserving of it. Many prefer to live in that state of uncertainty, which may be called tolerable health, a state in which they do not suffer, yet are not quite well. In this condition they have their little ups and downs and occasionally a serious illness, which too often proves fatal. Even such people ought to acquire health knowledge, for the time may come when they will desire to enjoy life to the fullest, which they can do only when they have health. Those who have this knowledge are often able to help themselves quickly and effectively when no one else can. I am acquainted with many who have been educated out of disease into health. Many of them are indiscreet, but they have learned to know the signs of approaching trouble and they ease up before anything serious overtakes them. In this way they save themselves and their families from much suffering, much anxiety and much expense. Every adult should know enough to remain well. Every one should know the signs of approaching illness and how to abort it. The mental comfort and ease that come from the possession of such knowledge are priceless. Everything that is worth while must be paid for in some way and the price of continued good health is some basic knowledge and self-control. There are no hardships connected with rational living. It means to live moderately and somewhat more simply than is customary. Simplicity reduces the amount of work and friction and adds to the enjoyment of life. The cheerfulness, the buoyancy and the tingling with the joy of life that come to those who have perfect health more than compensate for the pet bad habits which must be given up. Many of the popular teachings regarding disease and its prevention are false. The germ theory is a delusion. The fact will some day be generally recognized, as it is today by a few, that the so-called pathogenic bacteria or germs have no power to injure a healthy body, that there is bodily degeneration first and then the system becomes a favorable culture medium for germs: In other words, disease comes first and the pathogenic bacteria multiply afterwards. This view may seem very ridiculous to the majority, for it is a strong tenet of popular medical belief today that micro-organisms are the cause of most diseases. To most people, medical and lay, the various diseases stand out clear and individual. Typhoid fever is one disease. Pneumonia is an entirely different one. Surely this is so, they say, for is not typhoid fever due to the bacillus typhosus and pneumonia to the pneumococcus? But it is not so. Outside of mechanical injuries there is but one disease, and the various conditions that we dignify with individual names are but manifestations of this disease. The parent disease is filthiness, and its manifestations vary according to circumstances and individuals. This filthiness is not of the skin, but of the interior of the body. The blood stream becomes unclean, principally because of indigestion and constipation, which are chiefly due to improper eating habits. Some of the contributory causes are wrong thinking, too little exercise, lack of fresh air, and ingestion of sedatives and stimulants which upset the assimilative and excretory functions of the body. In all cases the blood is unclean. The patient is suffering from autointoxication or autotoxemia. If this is true, it would follow that the treatment of all diseases is about the same. For instance, it would be necessary to give about the same treatment for eczema as for pneumonia. Basically, that is exactly what has to be done to obtain the best results, though the variation in location and manifestation requires that special relief measures, of lesser importance, be used in special cases, to get the quickest and best results. In both eczema and pneumonia the essential thing is to get the body clean. The practice of medicine is not a science. We have drugs that are reputed to be excellent healers, yet these very drugs sometimes produce death within a few hours of being taken. The practice of medicine is an art, and the outcome in various cases depends more on the personality of the artist than on the drugs he gives, for roughly speaking, all medicines are either sedative or stimulant, and if the dosage is kept below the danger line, the patient generally recovers. It seems to make very little difference whether the medicine is given in the tiny homeopathic doses, so small that they have only a suggestive effect, or if they are given in doses several hundred times as large by allopaths and eclectics. It is true that we have drugs with which we can diminish or increase the number of heart beats per minute, dilate or contract the pupils of the eye, check or stimulate the secretion of mucus, sedate or irritate the nervous system, etc., but all that is accomplished is temporary stimulation or sedation, and such juggling does not cure. The practice of medicine is today what it has been in the past, largely experiment and guess-work. On the other hand, natural healers who have drunk deep of the cup of knowledge need not guess. They know that withholding of food and cleaning out the alimentary tract will reduce a fever. They know that the same measures will clean up foul wounds and stop the discharge of pus in a short time. They know that the same measures in connection with hot baths will terminate headaches and remove pain. They further know that if the patient will take the proper care of himself after the acute manifestations have disappeared there will be no more disease. After a little experience, an intelligent natural healer can tell his patients, in the majority of cases, what to expect if instructions are followed. He can say positively that there will be no relapses and no complications. How different is this from the unsatisfactory practice of conventional medicine! However, most physicians refuse to accept the valuable teachings which are offered to them freely, and one of the reasons is that the natural healers do not present their knowledge in scientific form. The knowledge is scientific but it is simple. Such objection does not come with good grace from a profession practicing an art. Life is but a tiny part science, mixed with much art. The true scientist in the healing art is he who can take an invalid and by the use of the means at his command bring him back to health, not in an accidental manner, but in such a knowing way that he can predict the outcome. In serious cases the natural healer of intelligence and experience can do this twenty times where the man who relies on drugs does it once. The physicians who prescribe drugs are ever on the look-out for complications and relapses, and they have many of them. The natural healers know that under proper treatment neither complications nor relapses can occur, unless the disease has already advanced so far that the vital powers are exhausted before treatment is begun, and this is generally not the case. In this book many of the medical fallacies of today, both professional and lay, will be touched upon in a kindly spirit of helpfulness and ideas that contain more truth will be offered in their place. The truth is the best knowledge we have today, according to our understanding. It is not fixed, for it may be replaced by something better tomorrow. However, one fundamental truth regarding health will never change, namely, that it is necessary to conform to the laws of nature, or in other words, the laws of our being, in order to retain it. No one can cover the field of health completely, for though it is very simple, it is as big as life. The most helpful parts of this book will be those which point the way for each individual to understand his relation to what we call nature, and hence help to enable him to gain a better understanding of himself. By natural living is not meant the discarding of the graces of civilization and roaming about in adamic costume, living on the foods as they are found in forest and field, without preparation. What is meant is the adjustment of each person to his environment, or the environment to the person, until harmony or balance is established, which means health. One of the most difficult things about teaching health is that it is so very simple. People look for something mysterious. When told that good old mother nature is the only healer, they are incredulous, for they have been taught that doctors cure. When informed that they do not need medicine and that outside treatment is unnecessary, they find it difficult to believe, for disease has always called for treatment of some kind in the hands of the medical profession. When further told that they have to help themselves by living so that they will not put any obstacles in the way of normal functioning of their bodies, they think that the physician who thinks and talks that way must be a crank, and many seek help where they are told that they can obtain health from pills, powders and potions or from various inoculations and injections. To live in health is so simple that any intelligent person can master the art and furthermore regain lost health in the average case, without any help from professional healers. There is plenty knowledge and all that is needed is a discriminating mind to find the truth and then exercise enough will power to live it. If a good healer is at hand, it is cheaper to pay his fee for personal advice than to try to evolve into health without aid, but if it is a burden to pay the price, get the knowledge and practice it and health will return in most cases. The vast majority of people suffering from chronic ills which are considered incurable can get well by living properly. The more capable and frank the healer is, the less treatment will be administered. Minute examinations and frequent treatment serve to make the patient believe that he is getting a great deal for his money. Advice is what the healer has to sell, and if it is correct, it is precious. The patient should not object to paying a reasonable fee, for what he learns is good for life. People gladly pay for prescriptions or drugs. The latter are injurious if taken in sufficient quantity to have great effect. So why object to paying for health education, which is more valuable than all the drugs in the world? Because of their attitude on this subject, the people force many a doctor to use drugs, who would gladly practice in a more reasonable way if it would bring the necessities of life to him and his family. The public has to enlighten itself before it will get good health advice. The medical men will continue in the future, as they have done in the past, to furnish the kind of service that is popular. A good natural healer teaches his patients to get along without him and other doctors. A doctor of the conventional school teaches his patrons to depend upon him. The former is consequently deserving of far greater reward than the latter. The law of compensation may apply elsewhere, thinks the patient, but surely it is nonsense to teach that it applies in matters of health, for does not everybody know that most of our diseases are due to causes over which we have no control? That the chief cause is germs and that we can not control the air well enough to prevent one of these horrible monsters (about 1/25,000 of an inch long) from settling in the body and multiplying, at last producing disease and maybe death? This is untrue, but it is a very comforting theory, for it removes the element of personal responsibility. People do not like to be told that if they are ill it is their own fault, that they are only reaping as they have sowed, yet such is the truth. Patients often dislike to give up one or more of their bad habits. "Mr. Blank has done this very thing for sixty or seventy years and now at the age of eighty or ninety he is strong and active," they reply to warnings. This is sophistry, for although an individual occasionally lives to old age in spite of broken health laws, the average person who attempts it perishes young. Those who do not conform to the rules are not allowed to sit in the game to the end. Another false feeling, or rather hope, deeply implanted in the human breast is: "Perhaps others can not do this, but I can. I have done it before and can do it again; it will not hurt me for I am strong and possessed of a good constitution." The wish is father to the thought, which is not founded on facts. The most common and the most destructive form of dishonesty is self-deception. Those who are honest with themselves find it easy to deal fairly and squarely with others. The doctors of the dominant school are very distrustful of the natural healers, in spite of the fact that the latter obtain the best results. Many of the conditions which the regular physicians treat without satisfactory results, the natural healers are able to remove in a few months. When members of the dominant school of medicine find men leading patients suffering from various skin diseases, Bright's disease, chronic digestive troubles, rheumatism and other ills which they themselves make little or no impression upon back to health, they are unwilling to believe that such results can be accomplished by means of hygiene and proper feeding. They think there is some fakery about it, for their professors, books and experience have taught them otherwise. They consider the views of the natural healer unworthy of serious attention and often call him a quack, which epithet closes the discussion. They are ethical and do not wish to be mired by contact with quacks. The distrust of medical men for healers of the natural school is not hard to explain. Many of the natural healers are men of education and experience, but others lack both, and no matter how good the latter may be at heart, they make very serious blunders. For instance: They get out circulars, listing all prominent diseases known, stating that they cure them. They either are so enthusiastic that they are carried away or they are so ignorant that they do not know that there is a stage of degeneration which will not allow of regeneration, and that when such a stage is reached in any chronic disease the end is death. Another handicap is that intelligent natural healers have such excellent success that they lose their heads. They educate patients by the hundred into health who have been given up as incurable by the conventional physicians. In their success they forget that modesty is very becoming to the successful and begin to boast. This hurts the cause. Let the natural healer ever remember that he does not cure, that he is but the interpreter and that nature is the restorer of health. The natural healers must be more careful about their statements if they would have the respect of intelligent people, and they must labor diligently to be well informed. For their own good regular physicians will have to be more open-minded, and recognize the fact that it is not necessary to have a M. D. degree to accept the truth regarding healing. Medical men are losing their hold on the public largely because they have cultivated the class spirit. It is a well known fact among natural healers that most cases of Bright's disease are curable, even after they have become chronic. However, a physician who voices this truth will probably be classed among irresponsible dreamers by other doctors. Antagonism of this kind breeds extremists and is therefore harmful to the public, which pays for all the mistakes made. It is very easy to lose one's mental balance and to begin to play on a harp with but one string. We have a large army of Christian Scientists. If it were not for the way in which physicians of the past mistreated the body and neglected the mind, this sect would not exist. The doctors, with their awful doses of nauseous and destructive drugs, went to one extreme. The reaction was the formation of a sect that has gone to the other extreme. The Christian Scientists are incomprehensible in spots to us mortals who believe in a body as well as a mind, but they have a cheerful and helpful philosophy which brings enjoyment on earth and they have done an immense amount of good by teaching people to cease thinking and talking so much about themselves and their ills. Among other demonstrations, they have shown the uselessness of drugs. Of late so many varieties of drugless healers have sprung into existence that it is difficult to remember even their names. There are many pathies. These have a tendency to take one part of the human being, or one procedure of treatment, and to play this up to the elimination of all the rest. Some do everything with the mind. Others pay no attention to the mind. Bathing, massage, manipulating the spine, washing out the colon, baths in mud, sunshine or water, suggestion and many other things are separately given credit for being cure-alls. Many of these are excellent as a part of regenerative treatment, but they are not sufficient of themselves to give permanent results. Most healers have too narrow vision. People come to them because they have faith. The faith alone will produce temporary improvement, but as soon as the interest is gone and the procedure grows old the patient becomes worse again unless the treatment possesses genuine merit. Osteopathy is most excellent, as a part of a healing system, but it is not sufficient. The osteopaths find their patients relapsing over and over again, or taking some other disease. However, they are learning, in increasing numbers, that if they would keep their patrons well, they have to give them education along the line of hygiene and dietetics, with a little mental training thrown in. Many chiropractors are learning the same thing. In some chiropractic schools there are professors wise enough to teach their students to be broad-minded. The true natural healer makes use of air, water, food, exercise, mental training--in fact, all the means nature has put at his disposal. He realizes that the best treatment is education of the patient. In many cases a cure can be greatly hastened by proper local treatment. It is unfortunate that the nature healers are so divided and that many operate upon such a narrow basis. If the vast majority of them were well informed, broad enough to make use of all helpful natural means, and were designated by the same name, it would not take them long to gain more public confidence and respect than they now possess. So long as the nature healers segregate themselves and allow themselves to be narrow, so long will they have to struggle at a disadvantage against the more united wielders of scalpels and prescribers of drugs. The question of choosing a health guide is sometimes perplexing. The patient should select one in whom he has confidence, for confidence is a great aid in restoring health. It often happens that there is no one in the town in whom the patient has confidence, for many communities have no competent natural healers. Then the question is whether or not to seek advice by correspondence. In acute diseases this is generally a bad plan, for the family often lacks the poise and equanimity necessary to carry out directions. In chronic cases it is usually all right. Here all that is required is correct knowledge put into practice and errors are not as dangerous as in acute diseases. Curable cases will get well by following the advice given by correspondence. A medical man who educates people by correspondence is considered unethical and is severely censured by the ethical brethren. To prescribe medicine by mail is without doubt reprehensible, but to educate people into health is a work of merit, whether it is done face to face or by correspondence. It is advantageous to meet the physician, talk things over and be examined, but it is not necessary. I know of some cases of acute disease treated satisfactorily by letter and telegram, but the patients' families were in sympathy with natural methods, of which they had a fair knowledge, and they had unlimited confidence in the healer. I am personally acquainted with many people who have been educated out of chronic disease and into health by correspondence, after the local physicians had vainly exhausted all their skill. It is simply a matter of applied knowledge and it works just as well in curable cases if given by telephone, telegraph or letter as if imparted by word of mouth. However, it seems to me that it is most satisfactory for all concerned when the healer and the sufferer can meet. My words are not inspired by any ill feeling toward the members of the medical profession. I have found medical men to measure well up in every way. They are better educated than the average and they are as kind and considerate as are other men. As men we can expect no more of them under present conditions, but because they are better equipped than the average, we have a right to ask for an improvement in their practice, even if they have inherited a great many handicaps from their predecessors and it is not easy to throw off the past, which acts as a dead weight ever tending to check progress. The tendency of the times is for fuller, freer and more sincere service in every line, for evolving out of the useless into the greatest helpfulness. It is not asking too much when we demand of the doctors that they rid themselves of the injurious drug superstition and become health teachers, that instead of being in the rear they come to the front and make progress easier. What I say about drugs is founded on intimate observation. I was educated medically in two of the colleges where medication is strongly advocated and well taught, and am a regular M. D. I have watched people who were treated by means of drugs and the biologic products, such as serums, vaccines and bacterines, which are now so popular, and I have watched many who have been treated by natural methods. Anyone with my experience and capable of thinking would come to the conclusions given in this book, that it is a mistake to administer drugs and serums and that the natural methods give results so much superior to the conventional methods that there is no comparison. Others who have discarded drugs know from experience that this is true. The physicians who are on intimate terms with nature will neither desire nor require drugs. Sound advice, that is, teaching, is the most valuable service a physician can render. Right living and right thinking always result in health if no serious organic degeneration has taken place. If the public could only be made to realize that they need a great deal of knowledge and very little treatment, and that knowledge is very valuable and treatment often worthless the day would soon dawn when health matters will be placed on a sound, natural basis. Surgery is occasionally necessary, but today from ten to twenty operations are performed where but one is needed. "There is nothing new beneath the sun," is a popular quotation. It seems to hold true in the healing art, for the best modern practice was the best ancient practice. Naturally, people like to make new discoveries and get credit therefore. Our valuable new discoveries in healing are very ancient. Though much that appears in these pages may seem strange and new to many, I claim no originality. My aim is to present workable, helpful facts in such a way that any person of average intelligence and will power can apply them, and to get the essentials of health within such a compass that no unreasonable amount of time need be employed in finding them. According to late discoveries, the ancient Egyptians were more advanced in the art of living than any other people on earth, including the moderns. They taught that overeating is the chief causative factor of disease, and so it is. They taught cleanliness, the priests going to the extreme of shaving the entire body daily. It would naturally follow that they prescribed moderation in eating, which leads to internal cleanliness. Cleanliness of body, in conjunction with cleanliness of mind, will put disease to rout. The ancient Greek writers commented on the good state of health among the Egyptians, and modern medical writers marvel that they made so little use of drugs. Evidently they found drugs of little value, for they were taught hygienic living. The admirable health laws laid down by Moses were derived from Egyptian sources. The ancient nations were as much influenced by the Egyptians as we are today by the Greeks who lived before the Christian era. The Greeks built combination temples and sanitaria, to which the afflicted resorted. The priests were in charge and these ancient heathens were great rogues. By fooling the people they got big fees out of them. Their oracular sayings and miracles were adroitly presented. They did not teach that overeating is the chief cause of disease, for this did not suit the mystic times. The people liked oracular prescriptions, and they got them. The law of supply and demand worked as well then as it does now. The heathen priests waxed fat and the medical art degenerated. About five centuries B. C., Pythagoras taught that health can be preserved by means of proper diet, exercise and the right use of the mind. He also taught many other truths and some fallacies. In spite of much superstition mixed with his philosophy, it was too pure for the times and he perished. Hippocrates, born about 470 years B. C., is one of the bright lights of the medical world. He was so far ahead of his time that he still lives. He was the founder of medical art as we know it. He used many drugs, but he also relied on natural means. He was the first medical man on record to pay serious attention to dietetics. The following quotations will show how well his mind grasped the essentials of the healing art: "Old persons need less fuel (food) than the young." "In winter abundant nourishment is wholesome; in summer a more frugal diet." "Follow nature." "Complete abstinence often acts very well, if the strength of the patient can in any way maintain it." In acute disease he withheld nourishment at first and then he prescribed a liquid diet. He also made use of the "milk cure," which is considered modern, in conjunction with baths and exercise; this is very efficacious in some chronic diseases. He further spoke the oft-forgotten truth that physicians do not heal. "Natural powers are the healers of disease." "Nature suffices for everything under all conditions." The next great physician was Galen, who lived in the second and third centuries of our era. He added greatly to medical knowledge, made extensive use of dietetics, and then in a self-satisfied manner informed his readers that they need look no further for enlightenment, for he had given them all that was of any value. Perhaps he meant this as a joke, but those who followed him took it seriously, with the result that medical advance stopped for several centuries. The physicians of the dark ages had some light, as evidenced by this popular quotation taken from a poem that the faculty of the medical college of Salerno gave to Robert, son of William the Conqueror, in the year 1101: "Salerno's school in conclave high unites To counsel England's king and thus indites: If thou to health and vigor wouldst attain, Shun mighty cares, all anger deem profane; From heavy suppers and much wine abstain; Nor trivial count it after pompous fare To rise from table and to take the air. Shun idle noonday slumbers, nor delay The urgent calls of nature to obey. These rules if thou wilt follow to the end, Thy life to greater length thou may'st extend." During recent times but two important discoveries have been made concerning matters of health: First, the advantage of cleanliness; second, the approximate chemical composition of various foods. All the other important new discoveries are old. Cleanliness, moderation in all things, right thinking and a realization of the fact that nature cures are some of the most important stones upon which to build a healing practice. The most important single therapeutic factor is to abstain from food during pain and active disease processes. Cleanliness of mind and body has been taught for thousands of years, yet cleanliness of body is a new discovery, for which we are greatly indebted to the great bacteriologist, Pasteur. It has been found that germs thrive best in filth; this has been taught so thoroughly that the public is somewhat afraid of the germs and as a measure of self-protection they are cleaning up. Of old, cleanliness meant a clean skin, but this is the least important part. It is far more necessary to have a clean alimentary tract and clean blood, with a resultant sweet, healthy body, and this is what cleanliness is beginning to mean. Internal cleanliness necessitates moderation, for an overworked alimentary tract becomes foul and some of the poisons are taken into the blood. Asepsis and antisepsis simply mean cleanliness. The benefits of moderation have been known for thousands of years. Louis Cornaro, who died in 1566, wrote a delightful book on the subject. People know that it is necessary to be moderate, but they do not seem to realize the meaning of moderation nor is its value well enough implanted in the human mind to produce satisfactory results. Right thinking seemed as important to the thinkers of old as it does to the New Thought people today. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." For the better knowledge of the composition of food we have to thank the chemists. Laymen are referred to frequently in this book because their work has been so helpful and important. Herbert Spencer and Alfred Russel Wallace had very clear conceptions regarding health. See their opinions regarding vaccination. There is no difference in the mental processes of physicians and laymen. Anyone can know about health, though it takes considerable experience and observation to get acquainted with the less important subject of disease. One indictment against medical men is that they have dwelled almost entirely on disease and paid no attention to health. A group of modern men deserve great credit for popularizing health knowledge, which generally results in the loss of professional standing of the teacher. R. H. Trall, M. D., insisted that drugs are useless and harmful, that the only rational and safe way of healing ordinary ills is to use nature's means. "Strictly speaking, fever and food are antagonistic ideas," he wrote. In his Hydropathic Encyclopedia, copyrighted in 1851, he puts great stress on natural remedies, such as food and water. He met with much opposition, but he has left a deep impression on the minds of men who are now having some influence in shaping public opinion on health and healing. Dr. Charles Page of Boston has been writing in advocacy of natural healing for over thirty years. He also has emphasized the harmfulness of drugs, the necessity of withholding food from fever patients, and simple living, remaining in touch with nature. Another important point which the doctor has been trying to impress upon the public is that it is necessary to retain the natural salts of the foods, instead of ruining them or throwing them away, as is generally done, especially in the preparation of vegetables and many cereal products. Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey began to present his ideas to the public a few years after the Civil War. His little book entitled "The No-Breakfast Plan and the Fasting Cure," has had a great influence among rational healers. The doctor emphasized the importance of going without food in acute diseases so that no one who has read the book can forget it. He pointed out some of the errors of conventional healing as they had never been shown before, and I believe he was the first one to give the correct rules to guide people in the consumption of food. For fourteen years Dr. J. H. Tilden of Denver has been a voluminous writer on health. He teaches that the law of compensation applies to health; that all disease is one and the same fundamentally; that "Autotoxemia is the fundamental basic cause of all diseases." Like all others who have investigated the subject impartially he believes that one of the most important factors of health is correct feeding. He allows all foods, in compatible combinations. Of course, he gives no drugs. Dr. Harry Brook of Los Angeles is unique among the health educators of today. He is a brainy journalist with a good stock of fundamental health knowledge and is endowed with the ability to place his convictions before the public in a striking manner. He has been carrying on his educational work for many years. Elbert Hubbard has also had a great deal of influence on the thought of today. At intervals he publishes an article on health which gets wide distribution. He has the faculty of making people think, and those who allow themselves to think independently generally evolve into serviceable knowledge. Bernarr Macfadden has a large following. He is a strong advocate of physical culture and favors vegetarianism and other changes from conventional life. He educates his readers away from drugs. He has written much that is helpful and his influence is widely felt. Like all others who have struggled against the fetters of convention, he has aroused much opposition. There are a few good health magazines, and there are many people living who deserve credit for their labor to improve the mental and physical condition of humanity. Some of these will be mentioned and quoted. Some of the teachers have dwelled upon but one idea and some have advocated fallacies, but there is good to be found in all of them. No knowledge assays one hundred per cent. pure. No helpful healing knowledge should be kept away from the public; it should be as free as possible. The public, when it understands, willingly pays a fair price for it, which is all that should be asked. To take advantage of the sick and helpless is contemptible. The old-time idea, still prevalent, that medical knowledge is for the doctor only is a mistake. The best patients are the intelligent ones. The office of the physician should be to educate his clients; his best knowledge and his best qualities will be developed in dealing honestly with intelligent people. The practice of medical secrecy began in ancient times when the healers and the priests believed in fooling the public. Unfortunately, this professional attitude still survives. No one who has not practiced the healing art can know how tempted a doctor is to fake and humbug a little to retain and gain patronage. Emerson wrote: "He is the rich man who can avail himself of other men's faculties. He is the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit from the labors of the greatest number of men--of men in distant countries and past times." Those who wish to be healthy and efficient are compelled to advance by taking advantage of other men's faculties. He who attempts to learn all by experience does not live long enough to travel far. Everyone should try to get a knowledge of the few most fundamental facts of nature governing life. Then it would not be so easy to go astray. Health literature should be read with an open mind. Read in conjunction with your knowledge of the laws of nature, and then it will be seen that health and disease are according to law, and that by eliminating the mistakes disease will disappear. All disease is one. It is the manifestation of disobeyed natural law, and whether the mistakes are made knowingly or ignorantly matters but little so far as the results are concerned. It is generally considered a disgrace to be imprisoned for transgressing man-made law, which is faulty and complex. How about being in the fetters of disease for disregarding nature's law, which is just and simple? It is my aim to use as simple language as possible. If physicians read these pages, they will understand them without technicalities, and so will laymen. This book contains much knowledge that physicians should have, knowledge that will help them when that which they have acquired from conventional sources fails, but in many respects it is so opposed to popular customs and beliefs that many physicians will doubtless condemn it on first reading. Doctors are taught otherwise at medical colleges, and most of them have such high regard for authority that it is very difficult for them to see matters in a different light. I appeal to both laymen and healers with open minds. These rambling thoughts will serve to show the reader whether it is worth while to go any further. The following chapters are devoted to an exposition of a workable knowledge of how to retain health, and how to regain lost health in ordinary cases. They will teach how to get dependable health, how to remain well in spite of climatic conditions, bacteria and other factors that are given as causes of disease, and how to more than double the ordinary span of life. Good health and long life result in better work, increased earning capacity and efficiency of body and mind, greater understanding, and more enjoyment of life. It gives time to cultivate wisdom. CHAPTER II. MENTAL ATTITUDE. On mental questions there is a wide divergence of opinion. At one extreme some say that all is mind, at the other, that life is entirely physical, that the mind is but a refined part of the body. Most of us recognize both body and mind, and realize that life has a physical basis. If some are pleased to be known as mental phenomena, no harm is done. All desire to make a success of life. What would be a success for one would be a failure for another. It all depends on the point of view. Broadly speaking, all are successful who are helpful, whether it be in furnishing pleasure or necessities to others. The humble may be as successful as the great, yes even more so. Wealth and success are not synonymous, as many think. Among the failures must be counted many of the wealthy. Financial success is not real success unless it has been gained in return for valuable service. The men of initiative deserve greater rewards than the plodders and these rewards are cheerfully given. A little genuine love and affection can bring more beauty and happiness into life than wealth, and neither can be bought with money. The best and most satisfying form of success comes to him who helps himself by helping others. "It is more blessed to give than to receive," has passed into common currency; but the more we give the more we receive. He who loves attracts love. He who hates is repaid in kind. "He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword." The enjoyment of the fruits of one's labor is a part of success. Some make a fetish of success and thus lose out. Others are so ambitious that in their striving they forget to live. A little ambition is good; too much sows the seed of struggle, strife and discontent and defeats its own ends. Those who do evil because the end justifies the means have already buried some of the best that is in them. To enjoy life, health of body and mind is necessary. The mind can not come to full fruitage without a good body. Those who strive so hard to reach a certain goal that they neglect the physical become wrecks and after a few years of discomfort and disease are consigned to premature graves. Through proper living and thinking the body and mind are built up, not only enough to meet ordinary demands upon them, but extraordinary ones. In other words, it is within our power to have a large margin, balance or reserve of physical and mental force. To make the meaning clearer let us illustrate financially: Prudent people lay aside a few dollars from time to time, in a savings bank, for instance. All goes well and the savings grow. At last there are one thousand dollars. Now an emergency arises, and if the saver can not furnish nine hundred dollars he will lose his home. In this case he must either borrow or use his reserve, so he takes nine hundred dollars from the savings bank and keeps his home. The improvident man loses his home under similar circumstances, for his credit is not good and he has no balance to draw upon. And it is the same with physical and mental powers, except that we can not borrow these, no matter how much good will or credit we may have. He who lives well is accumulating a reserve. He has a wide margin. If trouble comes he can draw upon his reserve energy or surplus resistance and bridge it over. He may be tired out, but he escapes with body and mind intact. The imprudent liver generally has such a narrow margin that any extraordinary demand made upon him breaks him down. It is very common for men to die after a financial failure. Disease, insanity and death often follow family trouble or the loss of a dear one. The reason is that such people live up to their limit every day. They have no margin to work on. They either overdo or underdo and fail to become balanced. Then a little physical or mental exertion beyond the ordinary often means a breakage or extinction. Equanimity and moderation will help to build up the reserve and give the resistance that is necessary to cope successfully with the unforeseen difficulties that we sometimes have to surmount. The physical state depends largely on the mental state and vice versa. Body and mind react upon each other. Bad blood does not only cause abnormal functioning of such organs as the heart, liver, kidneys and lungs, but it interferes with the normal functioning of the brain. It diminishes the mental output and causes a deterioration of the quality. An engorged liver makes a man cranky. Indigestion causes pessimism. Physical pain is so disturbing that the sufferer thinks mostly of himself and is unable to perform his work well. We never do our best when self-conscious. If there is severe pain the mind can perform no useful labor. On the other hand, anger stops digestion and poisons the secretions of the body. Worry does the same. It takes the mind from constructive thoughts and deeds and centers it upon ourselves. An effective mind must be tranquil, otherwise it upsets the body and fails to give proper direction to our activities. For a real life success we need a proper perspective. We need to be balanced, poised, adjusted. Most of us are too circumscribed mentally. We live so much by and for ourselves that we consider ourselves, individually, of greater importance than the facts warrant. Others do not agree with us on this point, and this is a source of disturbance. I am personally acquainted with two surgeons and several physicians who think they are the greatest in the world, and one considers himself the best physician of all time. The rest of the world does not appraise them so highly, and some of these professional men are very much annoyed because of this lack of appreciation. Selfishness and self-esteem to a certain point are virtues. Beyond that point they become vices. Certainly we should think well of ourselves, and then act so that this good opinion is merited. Self-interest and selfishness are the main-springs of progress. Most of us need some inducement to do good work. It is well that it is so. The ones who deserve the great rewards generally get them, whether they are mental or physical. To obtain a proper perspective of ourselves we must learn to think independently and honestly. It is too common to be conventionally honest, but dishonest with ourselves. It is too common to pass unnoticed in ourselves the faults we condemn in others. We should be lenient in our judgment because often the mistakes that others make would have been ours had we but had the opportunity to make them. As physical ills are principally caused by bad physical habits, so are mental ills and inefficiency chiefly due to various bad mental habits, which are allowed to fasten themselves upon us. These will be briefly discussed so as to focus attention upon them, for the first thing necessary for the correction of a bad habit is to recognize its presence. It is as important to think right as it is to give the body proper care. A good body with a mind working in the wrong direction is of no use. If we allow our minds to be disturbed and distressed by every little unfavorable happening, we shall never have enough tranquility to think well. The proper time to quit our bad habits is now. Why wait until the first of the month or the first of the year? Every day that we harbor a bad habit it grows greater and strikes deeper and stronger roots. A child one year old can often be broken of a bad habit in a week; a child of three, within a month; a child of six, within a few months; but let the habit grow until the age of twenty, and it may take a year or more to break the bonds. Let it continue until the age of thirty, and the victim will say, "I can quit any time," but the chances are that the habit will remain for life. After the individual is fifty or sixty years old, he is rarely capable of changing. If he is the victim of a very bad habit, it has generally so sapped his strength of body and mind that he is unable to break away. The right time to stop bad habits is now. Some people have many pet bad habits. It is often the best policy to attack them one at a time. Those who try to conquer all at once often fail. They backslide, lose self-confidence, become discouraged, tell themselves that it is no use, for it can not be done. Begin with the habit that is least formidable. After this is conquered, overcome another one, and in time most of the bad habits will be subdued. The first conquest builds confidence, and with confidence and determination it is possible to gain self-mastery in time. The greatest evil about bad habits is that they conquer us. They become masters, we slaves. Let us be free. "He who conquers himself is greater than he who taketh a city." The mind grows strong by overcoming obstacles, as the body gains in strength through work and exercise. Giving up bad habits is very disagreeable at first. Those who have conquered the prevalent habit of overeating know that they have been in a fight. The smokers who quit suffer. Those who break away from liquor have a much greater struggle. Those who attempt to overcome drug addictions suffer the tortures of the damned. Those who overcome their bad mental habits have a hard time of it at first, but though it is difficult it is possible. It is no easy matter to curb a fiery disposition or to quit worrying. It requires time, persistence and perseverance. Fretting, envy, spite, jealousy and hatred are tenacious tenants of the mind they occupy. These harmful emotions are enemies which sap our strength and we must thrust them from our lives if we would live well. This is not all narrow selfishness, for when we have gained mental calm for ourselves we are in position to impart peace of mind to others and to be more useful than previously. A calm mind is not a stagnant one. It is a mind that is in the best possible condition to work, to think clearly and effectively. _Self-pity_ is a very common mental ill. Those who suffer much from this affliction usually have very good imagination. They think they are slighted and abused. They know that they do not get their dues. They envy others and are sure that others prosper at their expense. They minimize their blessings and magnify their misfortunes. This state of mind leads to spite and malice. These people become very nervous and irritable and are a nuisance, not only to themselves, but to those who are unfortunate enough to have to associate with them. _Self-consciousness_ and _self-centeredness_ are twin evils. The sufferers lack perspective. They magnify their own importance. They believe they are the targets of many other minds and eyes. The youth refuses to take a dip in the ocean because he knows that the rest of the people on the beach are watching his spindle shanks or perhaps the bathing suit would reveal his narrow, undeveloped chest. The young man is afraid to go onto the dance floor because everybody is sure to see his ungainly gyrations. He stammers and stutters when he speaks because others are paying particular attention to his words, when in truth he is attracting little or no attention. Whether working or playing, those whose good opinions are worth having are too busy to spend much time in finding fault with others and discovering flaws that do not concern them. More enjoyment is to be had in looking at fine physiques and graceful movements than in watching the less favored. We always do our best when we are natural. When we become self-conscious we become artificial and awkward. We can not even breathe properly. Those who are ever thinking about themselves fail to do things well enough to hold sustained attention, even if they are able to gain it for a while. Those who do their work well will in time gain the attention and appreciation they require. No one can long occupy a high place in the public heart without adding to the profit or pleasure of the world. Here is a good line of thought for those who are too self-centered and self-important: "There are millions of solar systems in the universe, some of them much greater than ours. There are uncounted planets in space, beside some of which our little earth is a mere toy. Some of these planets are doubtless inhabited. Even on this small earth there are over a billion people. I am one in a number so great that my mind can not grasp such a multitude. Countless billions have gone before and they got along very well before I was born. Countless billions will live and die after I have passed on, and if they hear of me it will probably be by accident. And so it will be for ages and ages, so extensive that my brain can not grasp the stretch of time, which is without beginning and without end. How much do I, individually, amount to?" And an honest answer _must_ be, "Personally I am of very small importance." An individual can not live of himself, for himself and by himself. Only as he adds his efforts to those of others does his work count. When we realize that we are but atoms in this vast universe, we get down to a business basis. Then it is easy to get adjusted. In order to count at all we must be in harmony with some of the rest of the atoms and when we discover this we are in a mental state to be of some real use. Building for individual glory is vanity. Sometimes an individual builds so well that he is picked out for special attention and honor, but this is comparatively seldom. As a rule, we can only help a little in shaping the ends of the race by adding our mite, as privates in the ranks. The time we spend in nursing our conceit is wasted. This does not mean that we are worms in the dust. A human being is a paradox. He is so little, yet he has great possibilities. Our bodies are kept close to the earth, but our minds can be free and unfettered, soaring through time and space, exploring innumerable worlds of thought. But it will not do to be too self-centered or consider one's self of too great importance, for this lessens one's chances of meriting the esteem of others. The well balanced man is not greatly affected by too great praise or excessive censure, for he realizes that though the public may be hasty and unjust at times, in the end it renders a fairly just verdict. _Fear_ is one of the harmful negative or depressing emotions. Fear, like all other depressing emotions, poisons the body. This is not said in a figurative sense. It is an actual scientific fact; it has been demonstrated chemically. Were it not for the fact that the lungs, skin, kidneys and the bowels are constantly removing poisons from the body, an acute attack of fear would prove fatal. Fear or fright is largely a habit. The parents are often responsible for this affliction. It is far too common for them to scare their children. They people the darkness with all kinds of danger and with horrible shapes, and the children, with their vivid imaginations, magnify these. Children should be taught to meet all conditions in life courageously and fear should not be instilled into their minds. There is a great deal of difference between fear and the caution which all must learn or perish early. The caution that is implanted in the human breast is our heritage from the ages and works for our preservation. It was necessary during the infancy of the race when man had to struggle with the animals for supremacy. Beyond this point fear is a health-destroyer. There are people who cultivate fear until they imagine they are ever in danger. They fear that they may lose their health, their mind, their good name. Some are afraid of many things. Others have one pet fear. Today the fear of the unseen is strong in the public mind. I refer to the fear of germs, those tiny plants which are so small that the unaided eye can not see them. Children are shown moving pictures of these tiny beings, enormously enlarged and very formidable in appearance. They are told to beware, for these germs are in our food, in our drink, on the earth, in the air, in fact everywhere that man lives. It is very harmful to scare the young thus, for it inhibits physical action and stunts the mind. How much better it would be to teach the children these truths about the germs: "Yes, there are germs in our foods and beverages. They are on the earth, in the water and in the air. They are necessary for our existence. If we take good care of our bodies and direct our minds in proper channels, these germs will not, in fact, can not harm us. If we do not take care of ourselves, but allow our bodies to fill with debris, the germs try to clean this away; they multiply and grow into great armies while doing it, for they thrive on waste. It is our fault, not the fault of the germs, that we allow our bodies to degenerate. The germs are our good friends and if we treat ourselves properly they will do all they can to help keep the water, the earth and the air in fit condition for our use." Such teachings have the advantage of being true. They are helpful and healthful. The popular teachings are disease-producing. The mental depression and bodily inhibition caused by fear are injurious. Those who fear a certain kind of disease often bring this ill upon themselves, so powerful is suggestion. The fear is more dangerous than the thing feared. In fear there is loss of both physical and mental power. Not only the voluntary muscles become impotent, but the involuntary ones lose in effectiveness. Digestion is partly or wholly suspended. "Scared stiff" is a popular and truthful expression. The bodily rhythm is lost, the breathing becomes jerky and the heart beats out of tune. Keep fear out of the lives of babes. If children are taught the truth, there will be little fear in adult minds. Children should not be taught prayers in which there is an element of fear. It is much better to bring children up to love other people and God than to fear. Those who have cultivated fear should try suggestion. Positive suggestion is always best. Let them analyze matters thus: "I have feared daily and nightly. Nothing has happened. I have brought much unnecessary discomfort upon myself. There is nothing to fear and I shall be brave hereafter." Those who fear God have a low conception of Him. Let them remember the beautiful saying that "God is love." Through repeating them often enough, such positive suggestions sink so deeply into the mind that they replace doubts and fears. About 2500 years ago Pythagoras wrote: "Hate and fear breed a poison in the blood, which, if continued, affect eyes, ears, nose and the organs of digestion. Therefore, it is not wise to hear and remember the unkind things that others may say of us." Pythagoras was an ancient philosopher, but his words express modern scientific truths. _Worry_: Worrying is perhaps the most common and the worst of our mental sins. Worry is like a cancer: It eats in and in. It is destructive of both body and mind. It is due largely to lack of self-control and is a symptom of cowardice. Much worry is also indicative of great selfishness, which most of those afflicted will deny. Those who worry much are always in poor health, which grows progressively worse. The form of indigestion accompanied by great acidity and gas formation is a prolific source of worry, as well as of other mental and physical troubles. The acidity irritates the nervous system and the irritation in time causes mental depression. Confirmed worriers will worry about the weather, the past, the present, the future, about work and about play, about food, clothing and drink, about those who are present and those who are absent. Nothing escapes them and they bring sadness and woe in their wake. Worrying is slow suicide. Elbert Hubbard says that our most serious troubles are those that never happen. Worrying is a very futile employment, for it never does any good, and it reacts evilly upon the one who indulges in it, and those with whom he associates. It is a waste of time and energy. The energy thus used could be directed into useful channels. Let those who are afflicted with this bad and annoying habit get into good physical condition. Then many of the worries will take wing. If they persist, it would be well to face the matter frankly and honestly, setting down the advantages of worrying on one side and the disadvantages on the other. Then take into consideration that not one thing in a thousand worried about happens, and if something disagreeable does occur, worrying can not prevent it. Besides a disagreeable happening now and then will not cause half of the discomfort and trouble that a disturbed mind does. "And this too shall pass away," is an ancient saying which it would be well to remember in conjunction with, "And this will probably never happen." _Anger_ is a form of temporary insanity. It is an emotion that is unbecoming in strong men, for it is a sign of weakness, and the women who indulge in it frequently can not long keep the respect of others. Those who become angry lay themselves open to wounds of all kinds, for they partly lose their mental and physical faculties temporarily. An angry man is easily vanquished in any contest where ready wit is necessary. As the saying is, he makes a fool of himself. To be high strung and quick to lose one's temper may sound fine in romantic rubbish, but in real life it is folly, for much more can be accomplished by being calm. Like hatred, anger produces poisons in the system. An angry mother's milk has been known to kill the nursing child. A fit of anger is so serious that the evil effects can be felt for several days, and those who indulge in daily or even weekly loss of temper can not enjoy the best of health, for the anger produces enough toxins to poison all the fluids of the body. Fortunately, anger is one of the emotions that can be conquered in a reasonable time, if there is a real desire to do so. It should not take an adult more than one or two years to get himself under control. During anger there is a tensing of various muscles, those of the face and hands for instance. If this tensing is not allowed the anger will not last long. If there is a tendency to become angry, relax and the mind will ease up. A perfectly relaxed individual can not harbor anger, for this emotion requires tensing of body and mind. A determination to control the temper and a whole-hearted apology after each display of anger will prove very effective in reducing the frequency and force of the attacks. Mental suggestion is not as powerful as some say, but it is such a great force for good or evil, depending on its use, that those who are wise will not neglect it as a means of self-conquest. People who are easily offended and "stand on their dignity," have a very poor footing. Those who find it necessary to inform others that they are ladies or gentlemen, are very apt to be prejudiced in their own favor. Gentlefolks do not need to advertise, nor do they do so. Others recognize their worth intuitively. _Fretting_ is anger on a small scale. It is a habit that is easily formed. The fretter and those about him are made uncomfortable. Those who respect themselves and others do not indulge. _Hatred_ is one of the most harmful and poisonous of emotions. Fortunately, violent hatred can last but a short time, otherwise it would prove fatal. Some are chronic haters. He who hates harms himself. The thoughts weave themselves into one's personality and form the character. _Jealousy_ is one of the most disagreeable of emotions. The jealous person insists on suffering. A jealous woman can convert a home into an inferno. Jealousy is sure to kill love in time. The jealous individual often excuses himself on the ground that he loves. That is not true. There is more fear than love at the base of jealousy. Jealous people are selfish and too indolent mentally to give their thoughts a positive direction. Those who are violently jealous are suffering from mental aberration. The jealous person loses, for he drives away the object of his affection. There are many jealous men, but women suffer most. Bad health and idleness are two prolific causes of jealousy. It has probably broken up more homes than any other one thing. It is blighting to all it touches. Men and women may feel flattered for a time by producing jealousy, but it is a satisfaction of very short duration. They soon grow weary of the questions, doubts and reproaches. Those who are sensible enough to give freely to others the liberty they crave for themselves do not suffer much from this emotion. It would help greatly if man and wife would look upon the marriage relation more as a partnership and less as a form of bondage. One of the partners can not force the other one to be "good." People do the best by others when full confidence is given, and even if the confidence should be misplaced, it would be better than to suffer from this corroding emotion at all times. It is not an easy task to overcome jealousy, but it can be done within a reasonable time if there is a real desire. First get physical health. Then get busy with interesting, useful work. Get something worth while to occupy the mind and the hands. Determine to be master of yourself and not a slave to what is often but figments of the imagination. Unfortunately, jealousy so dwarfs the judgment at times that the sufferers seek only to rule or ruin. Love and hate are so closely akin that it is hard to find the dividing line. _Sorrow_: Some dedicate their lives to a sorrow. They make martyrs of themselves. They have suffered a loss and they dwell upon it during all of their waking hours. It may be that it was a very ordinary or worthless husband or child. After death the poor real is converted into a glorious ideal. With the passing years the virtues of the departed grow. All the love and tenderness are lavished upon the dead and the living are neglected. It is generally women who suffer from this peculiar form of mild insanity, but men are not exempt. It is natural to feel the loss of a dear one, but so long as we are mortal we must accept these things as matters of course. Related to this form of sorrow is the regretting or brooding over past actions, especially in connection with the dead. Perhaps something that should have been done was neglected, or something was done that should have been left undone. Over this the sufferer broods by the hour, leading to a form of sad resignation that is rather irritating to normal people. For such people a change of interest and a change of scene will often prove very beneficial. _Envy_ and _spite_ are closely akin to jealousy and anger. They have the same effect in lesser degree. _Vacillation of mind_ is a common fault. Many small questions have to be settled and a few important ones. Some are in the habit of deferring their decisions from time to time, or making and revoking their decisions. Then they decide over again, after which there is another revocation. This is repeated until it is absolutely necessary to make a final decision. By this time the mind is so muddled that the chances are that the last decision will be inferior to the first one. No one who leads an active life can be right all the time. He who is right six times out of ten does pretty well, and he who can make a correct decision three times out of four can command a fine salary as an executive or build up a flourishing business of his own, if his mind is active. The doubt and uncertainty which result from unsettled questions, which should be promptly decided, are more harmful than an occasional error. The untroubled mind works most quickly and truly. Related to this in minor key is the doubtful condition of mind where the individual has to do things several times before he is sure they are properly done. For instance, there is the man who must try the office door several times to be sure that it is locked and after being satisfied on this point he is obliged to unlock it and investigate the condition of the safe door. Then it is necessary to attend to the office door two or three times again. This kind of doubtfulness takes many forms. It does no special harm except that it leads to much waste of time. Such people should teach themselves concentration, thinking about one thing only at a time, until they learn that when a thing is done it is properly done. _Judging_: Many insist on passing judgment on everything and everybody that come to their notice. Every individual has to be placed with the sheep or the goats. This is a great waste of time. Each one of us can know so little about the majority of individuals we meet and of the vast volume of knowledge that is to be had that if we try to judge everyone and everything, our opinions become worthless. Wise people are never afraid to say, "I don't know." If it is necessary to judge, let there be kindness. _Volunteering advice_: This is another annoying habit. It is very well to give advice if it is desired and asked for, otherwise it is a waste of time. Take a person with a cold, for example: If he meets twenty people he may be told of fifteen different cures for it, ranging from goose grease on a red rag to suggestive therapeutics. If he were to act upon all the advice received there would probably be a funeral. It is best to be sparing with advice. Those who have any that is worth while will be asked for it and paid for their trouble. Free advice is generally worth what it costs. _Cranks_: Many allow themselves to get into a mental rut with their thoughts running almost entirely to one subject. This is a mild form of insanity, for normal people have many interests. These people are the cranks. They can talk volumes about their favorite topic, often of no importance. It may be some peculiar religion or ethics; or that Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare; or some health fad, or almost any subject. Of all the cranks the diet crank is one of the most annoying, for he has three good opportunities to air his views each day. With the best meaning in the world he does more harm to the cause of food reform than do the advocates of living in the good old way, eating, drinking and being merry and dying young. When people become possessed of too much zeal and enthusiasm regarding a subject, they are sure that their knowledge is the truth and they insist upon trying to enforce their way upon others, resent having their old habits interfered with forcibly. Those who are too persistent and insistent produce antagonism and prejudice in the minds of others, and then it is almost impossible to impart the truth to them, for they will neither see nor hear. To be able to influence others for better is a grand and glorious thing, but it is well to remember that we can not force knowledge which is contrary to popular thought upon others suddenly. Those who change a well rooted opinion generally do so gradually. When they first hear the truth, they say it is ridiculous. After a while they think there may be something in it. At last they see its superiority over their former opinions and accept it. It requires infinite patience on the part of the educators to impart unpopular knowledge to other adults, no matter how much truth it contains. The truth about physical well-being is so simple and so self-evident that it is exceptionally hard to get an unprejudiced audience. From the time when the ancient heathen priests were the healers until today the impression has been that health and healing are beyond the understanding of the common mind, and therefore people are willing to be mystified. The mysterious has such a strong appeal in this world of uncertainties that it is more attractive than the simple truth. Mystery simply demands faith. The truth compels thinking and thoughts are often painful. By all means, avoid being overinsistent in trying to impart health knowledge to others. All who have a little knowledge of the fundamentals of health and growth know that useful men and women are going into degeneration and premature death constantly, because of violated health laws. If these people on the brink, who can yet be saved by natural means, are told how it can be done, they generally either refuse to believe it, or they have led such self-indulgent lives that it is beyond their power to change. The knowledge often comes too late. Those who are anxious to do good in the spreading of health knowledge among their friends can serve best by getting health themselves. If a physical wreck evolves into good health there will be considerable comment and inquiry. This is the opportunity to tell what nature will do and inform others where to obtain a good interpretation of nature's workings. A little practicing is worth more than a great deal of preaching. The truth is the truth, no matter what the source, but it is more effective if it comes from one who lives it. I have gone into the subject of health cranks so deeply because there are so many of them. They get a little knowledge and then they believe they are masters of the subject. The right attitude toward proper living, and especially toward proper eating is: "I shall try to conduct myself so as to be healthy and efficient. If others desire my help, I shall try to indicate the way to them. Right living is no sign of superior goodness or merit, being a matter of higher selfishness, so I deserve no credit for it. Although health is very important, I shall refrain from attempting to force my will on others." After conquering ourselves it is time to begin making foreign conquests, but by that time the realization comes that in the end it is best to leave others free to work out their own salvation. The desire is strong to mould others according to our pattern, but those who size themselves up honestly soon come to the conclusion that they are so imperfect that perchance some other pattern is fully as good. _Postponing happiness_: One peculiar state of mind is to refuse to be happy at present. The romantic girl and boy think they can not be happy until they are married. After marriage they find that they have to gain a certain amount of wealth before happiness comes. Then they have to postpone it for social position. They continue postponing happiness from time to time and the result is that they never attain it. Happiness is not a great entity that bursts upon us, transforming us into radiant beings. It is a comfortable feeling that brings peace and places us in harmony with our surroundings. It can best be gained by doing well each day the work that is to be done, cheerfully giving in return for what is received. Happiness is largely a habit. It is as easy to be bright and cheerful as it is to be sad and doleful, and much more comfortable. If we look for the best we will find beauty even in the most unpromising places. If we are looking for tears and woe, we can easily find them. We can get along without happiness, but it adds so much color and beauty to life, it makes us so much better, it helps us so much to be useful that it is folly to do without it. It is not gained by narrow selfishness. Those who forget themselves most and are kind and considerate find it. By giving it to others we get it for ourselves. Ecstasy and rapture are emotions of short duration. They are so exhilarating that they soon wear out. We all have our little troubles and annoyances. These we should accept as inevitable, and neither think nor talk much about them. They help to wear away the rough edges. We are stupid at times and so are others and then mistakes are made. These should also be accepted as inevitable, and we should not be more annoyed by those that others make than by our own. Those who go into a rage when their subordinates err waste much time and energy, erring gravely themselves. It is not necessary to notice every unimportant detail that is not pleasing. Fault-finding, carping and nagging destroy harmony. Disagreements about trifles often lead to broken friendship and enmity. Most quarrels are about trifles. If mistakes are made, learn the lesson they teach and then forget about them. All live, active beings make mistakes. Sometimes we make serious ones and afterwards regrets come, but these must soon be thrust aside. Brooding has put many into the insane asylums. _Introspection_: It is not well to allow the mind to dwell upon one's self very much. Give yourself enough thought to guide yourself through life, and then for the rest apply the mind to work and play. Many of those who are too self-centered end up in believing they are something or somebody else and then they are shut away from the public. Introspection is a very useless employment. Individually we are so small, and the mind has such great possibilities, that if we center it upon our tiny physical being, things become unbalanced and the mind ceases to work to good advantage. It is useless to go deeply into self-analysis, for we are very poor judges of ourselves. One of my neighbors delved so deeply into his heart and tried so hard to find out if he was fit to dwell in heaven that he lost his mind and had to be confined for a long time. He allowed his vision to narrow down to one subject. There are many subjects that lead to insanity if they are allowed exclusive possession of the mind. After we have given ourselves proper care, we should think no more about ourselves. The best way is to get busy in work and play and forget ourselves. It is much better to love others than to center our love upon ourselves. If we conduct ourselves well we shall have all the love from others that we need. If there is a tendency to be introspective, cure it by becoming active mentally and physically. Those who have acquired the bad habit of thinking and talking ill of others should break themselves of it. First cease talking ill. Then begin to look for the good points and mention them. By and by the thoughts will be good. Those who lack a virtue can often cultivate it by assuming it. One of the most helpful things is a sense of humor. Laughter brings about relaxation and relaxation gives ease of body and mind. He who can see his own weaknesses and smile at them is surely safe and sane. If the mind is too austere, cultivate a sense of humor. Train yourself to appreciate the ridiculous appearance you make and instead of being chagrined, smile. When others laugh at you, join them. Whatever the mental ill may be, one-half of its cure will be brought about by getting physical health. Be charitable, tolerant and kind, and the good things in life will come to you. Be slow to judge and slower still to condemn others. Those who give love attract it. Hypatia said: "Express beauty in your lives and beauty flows to you and through you. To love means to be loved, and to put hate behind is the sum of all loving that is of any avail." The best "New Thought" is the best old thought. If we only would put some of the beautiful knowledge into common use, what an agreeable dwelling place this world would be. Marcus Aurelius gave us this pearl of wisdom: "When you arise in the morning, think what a precious privilege it is to live, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love! God's spirit is close to us when we love. Therefore it is better not to resent, not to hate, not to fear. Equanimity and moderation are the secrets of power and peace." CHAPTER III. FOOD. The human body is so wonderfully made that as yet we have only a poor understanding of it, but we are learning a little each decade, and perhaps in time we shall have a fair knowledge both of the body and of the mind. Body and mind can not be considered as two separate entities, for neither one is of any use without the other. The body is not a machine. Those who look upon it as such make the mistake of feeding it as they would an engine, thinking that it takes so much fuel to keep going. The human organism is perhaps never quite alike on any two consecutive days, for the body changes with our thoughts, actions and environment, and the conditions never quite repeat themselves and therefore we have to readjust ourselves. The most important single item for gaining and retaining physical health is proper feeding, yet the medical men of this country pay so little attention to this subject that in some of our best equipped medical colleges dietetics are not taught. A total of from sixteen to thirty hours is considered sufficient to fit the future physicians to guide their patients in the selection, combination and preparation of food. Dietetics should be the principal subject of study. It should be approached both from the scientific and from the empirical side. It is not a rigid subject, but one which can be treated in a very elastic way. The scientific part is important, but the practical part, which is the art, is vastly more important. A part of the art of feeding and fasting is scientific, for we get the same results every time, under given conditions. When we consider the fact that the body is made up of various tissues, such as connective tissue, blood, nerves and muscles; that these in turn are made up of billions of cells, as are the various glandular organs and membranes; that these cells are constantly bathed in blood and lymph, from which they select the food they need and throw the refuse away, we must marvel that an organism so complex is so resistant, stable and strong. All articles of good quality are made by first-class workmen from fine materials. However, many people fail to realize that in order to have quality bodies they must take quality food, properly cooked or prepared, in the right proportions and combinations. If we feed the body properly, nature is kind enough to do good constructive work without any thought on our part. You will find no rigid rules in these talks on diet, but you will find information that will enable you to select foods that will agree with you. People may well disagree on what to eat, for there are so many foods that a person could do without nine-tenths of them and still be well nourished. In fact, we consume too great a variety of food for our physical well-being. Great variety leads to overeating. A healthy human body is composed of the following compounds, in about the proportions given: Water, 60 to 65 per cent. Mineral matter, 5 to 6 per cent. Protein, 18 to 20 per cent. Carbohydrates, 1 per cent. Fat, 10 per cent. This is perhaps excessive. These substances are very complex and well distributed throughout the body. They are composed of about sixteen or seventeen elements, but a pure element is very rarely found in the body, unless it be a foreign substance, such as mercury or lead. About 70 per cent of the body is oxygen, which is also the most abundant element of the earth. Then in order of their weight come carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, sulphur, sodium, chlorine, fluorine, potassium, iron, magnesium and silicon. Because it will be helpful in giving a better idea of the necessity for proper feeding, I shall devote a few words to each of these elements. _Oxygen_ is a colorless, tasteless, odorless gas, forming a large part of the atmospheric air, of water, of the earth's crust and of our foods. It is absolutely essential to life, for without oxygen there can be no combustion in the animal tissues, and without combustion there can be no life. The union of oxygen with fats, carbohydrates and proteins in the body results in slow combustion, which produces heat and energy. Our chief supply of oxygen comes directly from the air, but this is supplemented by the intake in food and water. _Carbon_ is the chief producer of energy within the body, being the principal constituent of starches, sugars and fats. It is what we rely on for internal heat, as well as for heating our dwellings, for the essential part of coal is carbon. The carbonaceous substances are needed in greater quantity than any other, but if they are taken pure, they cause starvation more quickly than if no food were eaten. This has been proved through experiments in feeding nothing but refined sugar, which is practically pure carbon. Salts and nitrogenous foods are essential to life. _Hydrogen_ is a very light gas, without odor, taste or color. It is a necessary constituent of all growing, living things. It is plentifully supplied in water. All acids contain hydrogen and so does the protoplasm of the body. _Nitrogen_ is also a colorless, tasteless, odorless gas. It is an essential constituent of the body, being present in all compounds of protein. It is abundant in the atmospheric air, from which it is taken by plants. We get our supply either directly from vegetable foods or from animal products, such as milk, eggs and meat. _Calcium_ is needed principally for the bones and for the teeth, but it is also necessary in the blood, where it assists in coagulation. We get sufficient calcium salts in fruits, grains and vegetables, provided they are properly prepared. The conventional preparation of the food often results in the loss of the various salts, which causes tissue degeneration. If the supply of calcium in the food is too small, the bones and the teeth suffer, for the blood removes the calcium from these structures. Growing children need more calcium proportionately than do adults. This is without doubt the reason pregnant women suffer so much from softening of the teeth. They are fed on foods robbed of their calcium, such as white bread and vegetables that have been drained. _Phosphorus_ in some forms is a poison whether taken in solid compounds or inhaled in fumes, producing phossy jaw. In other forms it is indispensable for bodily development. The compounds of phosphorus are present in fats, bones and protein. In natural foods they are abundantly present, but when these foods are unduly refined, or are soaked in water which is thrown away, much of the phosphorus is lost. We get phosphorus from milk, eggs, cereals, legumes and other foods. Of course, there is phosphorus in fish, but those who eat sea food to make themselves brainy will probably be disappointed. Phosphates are necessary for brain development, but those who eat natural foods never need to go to the trouble of taking special foods for the brain. If the rest of the body is well nourished, the brain will have sufficient food, and if the body is poorly nourished the brain will suffer. _Sulphur_ is present in protein and we get a sufficient supply from milk, meat and legumes. The element sulphur is quite inert and harmless, but some of its acids and salts are very poisonous. Sulphur dioxide is freely used in the process of drying fruits, as a bleacher. In this form it is poisonous, and for that reason it would be well to avoid bleached dried fruits. We need some sulphur, but not in the form of sulphur dioxide or concentrated sulphurous acid, both of which are used in the manufacture of food. _Sodium_, in its elementary state, which is not found in nature, is a white, silvery metal. It is found in great abundance in the succulent vegetables, and is present in practically all foods. As sodium chloride, or common table salt, it is taken in great quantities by most people. Those who have no salt get along well without it, which shows that it is not needed in large amounts. If but a little is added to the food, it does no perceptible harm, but when sprinkled on everything that is eaten, from watermelons to meat, it is without doubt harmful. By soaking foods, they are deprived of much of their soda: The two sodium salts that are very abundant are sodium chloride, or common salt, and sodium carbonate, generally called soda. _Chlorine_ is ordinarily combined in our foods with sodium or potash, forming the chlorides. It is essential to life. He who gets enough sodium also gets enough chlorine. In its elementary form it is an irritating gas, used for bleaching purposes. _Fluorine_ is present in small quantities in the body, appearing as fluorides in the bones and teeth. It is supplied by the various foods. In its elementary form it is a poisonous gas. _Potassium_ is found in the body in very small quantities, but it is very important. It is mostly in the form of potassium phosphate in the muscles and in the blood. It is necessary for muscular activity. It is found in most foods in greater abundance than is sodium, which indicates that it plays an important part in development. Like sodium, it is easily dissolved out of foods which are soaked in water, and this is one of the reasons that vegetables should not be soaked and the water thrown away. It is very peculiar in its metallic state, being a silvery metal, very light in weight, which burns when thrown upon water. That is, it decomposes both itself and the water with the liberation of so much heat that it fires the escaping hydrogen, which burns with a violet flame. Pure potassium is not found in nature. _Iron_ is found in very small quantities in the human body, but it is absolutely essential to life. Animals deprived of iron die in a few weeks, and people will do the same under similar circumstances. Iron is obtained principally from fruits and vegetables, but it is also present in other foods. Man can not make use of inorganic iron. He has to get his supply from the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The giving of inorganic iron is folly and helps to ruin the teeth and the stomach of the one who takes it. In the form of hemoglobin this element is the chief agent in carrying oxygen from the lungs to the tissues of the body. In the manufacture of foods, much of the iron is lost. For instance, whole wheat flour contains about ten times as much iron as does the white flour. Too little iron causes, among other ills, anemia, and if the iron is very low, chlorosis or the green sickness may ensue. _Magnesium_ is found principally as phosphate in the bones. It is present both in animal and vegetable foods. Its function in the body is not well understood, but it appears to assist the phosphorus. _Silicon_ is found in traces in the human body. It is supplied in small quantities in nearly all of our foods, and therefore we must take it for granted that it is necessary, although we are in the dark as to its uses. It is very abundant in various rocks. The cereals are especially rich in silicon. In wheat it is found in the bran and is removed from the white flour. The elements mentioned are the most important in the body, though others are found in traces. We do not find the elements present as elements, but in the form of very complex compounds. Under our present conditions of living, we generally partake of too much carbonaceous and nitrogenous food, and get too little of the salts, except sodium chloride, which is taken in too great quantity. Salt, to most people, means but one thing, sodium chloride or table salt. However, there are thousands of salts, and when salts are mentioned in this book, all those necessary for the processes of life are meant, whether they be compounds of fluorine, sulphur, phosphorus, calcium, iron or magnesium or other metals and minerals. Salts are not usually classified as foods, but they are essential to life. Supply the body with all the protein, sugar, starch and fat that it requires, but withhold the salts, and it is but a question of a few weeks before life ceases. This is why it is so important to improve our methods of cooking. A potato that is peeled, soaked in cold water and boiled, may lose as much as one-half of its salts, according to one of the bulletins sent out by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Other vegetables not only lose their salts by such treatment, but as high as 30 per cent of their nutritive value. The lesson we should learn from this is that ordinarily if it is necessary to soak foods, such as beans, they should be cooked in the water in which they have been soaked. Furthermore, where possible, as it is with nearly all succulent vegetables, we should take the fluid in which the vegetables have been cooked as a part of the meal. If the vegetables are properly cooked, there will not be much fluid to take. To pour away the water in which vegetables have been cooked means that perhaps one-third of the food value and one-third to one-half of the valuable salts are lost. Why continue impoverishing foods in this way? Dr. Charles Page deserves much credit for calling our attention to this fact when most healers neither thought nor talked about it. Now all up-to-date healers with a knowledge of dietetics realize how important it is to give good food. For those who wish more detailed information on the composition of the salts, I insert a table which was compiled by Otto Carque and published in "Brain and Brawn," February, 1913. Those who wish still more detailed knowledge can find it in volumes on food analysis and in some government reports. MINERAL MATTER IN 1000 PARTS OF WATER-FREE FOOD PRODUCTS. ========================================================================== P P M h o a o C t C g s S S h a S a n p u i l s o l e h l l o s d c s I o p i r i i i i r r h c i u u u u o u u o n m m m m n s r n e Total| | | | | | | | | Salts| K2O |Na2O | CaO | MgO |Fe2O3|P2O5 | SO2 |SiO2 | Cl -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Human milk 34.70|11.73| 3.16| 5.80| 0.75| 0.07| 7.84| 0.33| 0.07| 6.38 Cow's milk 55.30|13.70| 5.34|12.24| 1.69| 0.30|15.79| 0.17| 0.02| 8.04 Meat (avge) 40.00|16.52| 1.44| 1.12| 1.28| 0.28|17.00| 0.64| 0.44| 1.56 Eggs 41.80| 6.27| 9.56| 4.56| 0.46| 0.17|15.72| 0.13| 0.13| 3.72 Seafish 84.20|18.35|12.55|12.80| 3.28| ....|32.13| ....| ....| 9.60 Cottage Cheese 64.30| 8.50| 0.90|22.50| 1.50| 0.50|24.35| 0.10| ....|11.20 | | | | | | | | | Apples 33.00|11.78| 8.61| 1.35| 2.89| 0.46| 4.52| 2.01| 1.42| .... Strawberries 65.00|13.72|18.53| 9.23| ....| 3.73| 7.97| 2.05| 7.82| 1.10 Gooseberries 29.00|11.22| 2.87| 3.54| 1.70| 1.32| 5.71| 1.71| 0.75| 0.22 Prunes 37.75|18.28| 3.41| 4.34| 1.36| 0.94| 6.03| 1.21| 1.19| 0.15 Peaches 17.60| 9.63| 1.50| 1.41| 0.92| 0.18| 2.67| 1.00| 0.26| .... Cherries 34.60|17.94| 0.76| 2.60| 1.90| 0.69| 5.54| 1.76| 3.11| 0.46 Grapes 25.20|14.16| 0.35| 2.72| 1.06| 0.45| 3.93| 1.41| 0.70| 0.38 Figs 41.00|11.63|10.77| 7.75| 3.78| 0.60| 0.53| 2.77| 2.43| 1.10 Olives 33.40|27.02| 2.52| 2.49| 0.06| 0.31| 0.46| 0.36| 0.22| 0.06 Apricots 33.60|19.68| 3.76| 1.08| 2.89| 0.46| 4.52| 2.01| 1.42| .... Pears 25.60|14.00| 2.17| 2.05| 1.52| 0.25| 3.90| 1.45| 0.38| .... Watermelons 40.00|18.00| 3.75| 4.00| 2.10| 1.75| 5.60| 2.10| 7.60| 1.10 Bananas 32.40|16.20| 0.80| 0.25| 0.32| 0.10| 2.03| 0.21| ....| 2.47 Oranges 38.15|18.62| 0.95| 8.65| 2.03| 0.38| 4.70| 2.00| 0.25| 0.29 | | | | | | | | | Spinach 191.00|21.71|57.42|22.73|12.22| 6.40|19.58|13.18| 8.60|12.03 Onions 48.40|12.10| 1.55|10.65| 2.55| 2.20| 7.25| 2.65| 8.10| 1.35 Carrots 69.00|25.46|14.63| 7.80| 3.04| 0.70| 8.83| 4.45| 1.66| 3.18 Asparagus 86.40|20.74|14.77| 9.33| 3.72| 2.94|16.07| 5.36| 9.50| 5.10 Radishes 110.40|35.33|23.37|15.45| 3.42| 3.09|12.03| 7.18| 1.00|10.10 Cauliflower 91.20|40.46| 5.38| 5.10| 3.37| 0.91|18.42|11.86| 3.37| 3.10 Cucumbers 100.00|41.20|10.00| 7.30| 4.15| 1.40|20.20| 6.90| 8.00| 6.60 Lettuce 180.70|67.94|13.55|26.56|11.20| 9.40|16.62| 6.87|14.64|13.82 Potatoes 44.20|26.56| 1.33| 1.15| 2.18| 0.48| 7.47| 2.89| 0.88| 1.55 Cabbage 123.00|45.33|11.68|21.65| 4.90| 0.86|11.07|17.10| 1.10|10.45 Tomatoes 176.00|82.50|32.90|11.35|13.55| 1.00|10.75| 5.00| 7.75|18.00 Red Beets 41.65| 8.45|21.60| 2.50| 0.10| 1.00| 2.55| 0.50| 2.00| 2.95 Celery 180.00|48.60|65.25|14.70| 6.75| 1.60|14.50| 6.50| 4.30|17.80 | | | | | | | | | Walnuts 17.40| 2.20| 0.17| 0.97| 2.88| 0.61|10.10| 0.22| 0.12| 0.12 Almonds 21.00| 2.31| 0.38| 3.04| 3.95| 0.23|10.10| 0.96| 0.04| 0.06 Cocoanuts 18.70| 8.21| 1.57| 8.60| 1.76| ....| 2.18| 0.95| 0.09| 2.50 | | | | | | | | | Lentils 34.70|12.08| 4.62| 2.18| 0.87| 0.69|12.60| ....| ....| 1.61 Peas 30.03|13.06| 0.30| 1.45| 2.42| 0.24|10.87| 1.03| 0.27| 0.53 Beans 38.20|15.85| 0.42| 1.91| 2.73| 0.19|14.86| 1.30| 0.25| 0.69 Peanuts 24.30| 9.27| 0.21| 0.95| 2.29| 0.27|10.60| 0.45| 0.05| 0.23 | | | | | | | | | Whole Wheat 23.10| 7.20| 0.50| 0.75| 2.80| 0.30|10.90| 0.09| 0.46| 0.07 White flour 5.70| 1.82| 0.08| 0.43| 0.44| 0.03| 2.80| ....| ....| .... Rye 21.30| 6.84| 0.31| 0.61| 2.39| 0.25|10.16| 0.28| 0.30| 0.01 Barley 31.30| 5.10| 1.28| 0.02| 3.92| 0.53|10.27| 0.93| 8.98| .... Oats 34.50| 6.18| 0.59| 1.24| 2.45| 0.41| 8.83| 0.62|13.52| 0.03 Corn 18.50| 5.50| 0.02| 0.04| 2.87| 0.15| 8.44| 0.15| 0.39| 0.35 Whole Rice 16.00| 3.60| 0.67| 0.59| 1.78| 0.22| 8.60| 0.08| 0.42| 0.02 Rice, polished 4.00| 0.87| 0.22| 0.13| 0.45| 0.05| 2.15| 0.03| 0.11| 0.01 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please remember that most of the salts must be worked into organic form for us by vegetation, and that we are able to take but few elements that have not been thus elaborated. We need a moderate amount of food to maintain the body in health, but we should be careful not to overindulge. Perhaps the most injurious errors are made by people who eat because they wish to gain in weight. They consider themselves below weight and they try to force a gain by overeating. This is a serious mistake and leads to much suffering. There is no weight that can be called ideal for all people. To get a basis, I copy a table from the literature of an insurance company. This is for people twenty years old: Height Weight 5--0........114 1........117 2........121 3........124 4........128 5........132 6........136 7........140 8........144 9........149 10........153 11........158 6--0........162 1........167 2........172 3........177 If the weight is much above this, it is a sure sign that the individual is building disease. It may be Bright's disease, fatty heart, arteriosclerosis, cancer or any other ill. The muscles can not be increased in size very much by eating and there is a limit to the amount of fluid that can be stored away. Stout people generally carry about a great amount of fat. Excess of fat is a burden. It replaces other tissues and weakens the muscles. It overcrowds the abdominal and thoracic cavities, thus making the breath short and the working of the heart more difficult, also producing a tendency to prolapsus of the various abdominal organs. People make the mistake of thinking that stoutness indicates health. It indicates disease. Going into weight is going into degeneration. Women like to be plump for various reasons, some of which are not the most creditable to either men or women. Fat people are not good looking. There is not a statue in the world sculptured on corpulent lines that is considered beautiful. It is natural for some people to be slender and for others to be rather plump, but fatness is abnormal. Rolling double chins and protruding abdomens are signs of self-abuse in eating and drinking. As a rule women are at their right weight at twenty and men at twenty-two or twenty-three. This weight they should retain. If twenty or thirty pounds are added to it life will be materially shortened. Perfect health is impossible for obese people, but it is within the reach of lean ones. In getting well, it is often necessary to become quite slender, but after the system has cleansed itself, it gains in weight again. It may take from several months to several years to obtain a normal weight after the ravages of disease. A healthy body is self-regulating and will be as heavy as it ought to be. Those who eat too much in order to gain weight sometimes wreck their digestive and assimilative powers to such an extent that they lose a great deal of weight, and the more they eat the more they lose. Then it is necessary to reduce the food intake until digestion and assimilation catch up with supply. Then if the eating is right the individual goes to the proper weight and retains it. The slender people are in the safest physical condition. The vast amount of statistics gathered by the life insurance companies bears this out. Remember that fat is a low grade tissue, which sometimes crowds out high grade tissue, that an excess indicates degeneration and that obesity is a disease. All fat people eat too much, even though they consider themselves small eaters. They should regulate their eating and drinking so that they will return to a normal weight. This is the only safe way to reduce. Pay no attention to underweight. Eat what the body requires and is able to digest and assimilate, without causing any inconvenience. The organism will take care of the rest. To attempt to force weight onto a body at the expense of discomfort, disease, reduced efficiency and premature death shows poor judgment. Losing weight does not matter at all if there is no discomfort or disease. It is all right to be a little lighter during summer than in winter. In discussing food and its use, two words are frequently employed, digestion and fermentation. Strictly speaking, digestion is largely a process of fermentation, consisting of the breaking down of complex substances into simple ones, by means of ferments. However, in the popular mind digestion and fermentation are not synonymous, and will not be so considered in this book. To make my meaning clear, in this book the words will have the following meaning: Digestion--the normal breaking down of food and formation into substances that can be used by the blood for building, repairing and producing heat and energy. Fermentation--the abnormal breaking down of food in the digestive tract, producing discomfort and health impaired. This process manifests in various ways, such as the production of much gas in the digestive tract or hyperacidity of the body. We will consider digestion as a process conducive to health, but fermentation, as one that leads to disease, being an early stage of digestive derangement. CHAPTER IV. OVEREATING. All agree that excessive indulgence in alcoholics is harmful physically, mentally and morally. We condemn the too free use of tea and coffee and nearly all other excesses. However, intemperate eating is considered respectable. A large part of our social life consists in partaking of too much food. Medical text-books say that we must eat great quantities of food to maintain strength and health. Humanity views the subject of eating from the wrong angle, and it will perhaps be many years before the majority gets the right point of view. We should eat to live, but most of us eat to die. Benjamin Franklin said that we dig our graves with our teeth. Men and women band themselves into societies and associations for the purpose of decreasing or doing away with the use of tobacco and alcoholic drinks. They advocate temperance and even abstinence in the use of those things which do not appeal to their own senses; but most of them are far from temperate in their eating. They have very keen vision when searching for weaknesses and faults in others, but are quite near-sighted regarding their own. Is excessive indulgence in liquor any worse than overeating? Not according to nature's answer. The inebriate deteriorates and so does the glutton. Both cause race deterioration. Gluttony is more common than inebriety and is responsible for more ills. Gluttony is often the cause of the tea, coffee, alcohol and drug habits. Overeating often causes so much irritation that food does not satisfy the cravings, and then drugs are used. Improper eating, chiefly overeating, causes most of the ills to which man is heir. If people would learn to be moderate in all things disease and early death would be very rare. It is quite important to combine foods properly, but the worst combinations of food eaten in moderation are harmless, as compared to the damage done by overeating of the best foods. Overeating is with us from the cradle to the grave. It shortens our days and fills them with woe. There is a hoary belief that a pregnant woman must eat for two. The mothers have generally obeyed this dictum. The result is that women suffer greatly during pregnancy and at childbirth. The morning sickness, the aching back, the headache, the swollen legs and all of the discomforts and diseases from which civilized woman suffers during this period are mostly due to improper eating. Pregnancy and childbirth are physiologic and are devoid of any great amount of discomfort, pain or danger when women lead normal lives. The overeating affects both mother and child. The mothers are often injured or lose their lives during childbirth. Sometimes labor is so protracted that the child dies and at other times the baby is so large that it can not be born naturally. The mother's suffering is frequently very great. In fact, it is at times so great that it is like a threatening storm cloud to many women, and some of them refuse to become mothers for this reason. Babies born of normal mothers, who have lived moderately on a non-stimulating diet during gestation, are small. They rarely weigh more than six pounds. Their bones are flexible. The skull can easily be moulded because the bones are very cartilaginous. The result is that childbirth is rapid and practically devoid of pain. However, there are very few normal mothers, and consequently normal babies are also rare. A heavy baby is never healthy. Its growth has been forced by excessive maternal feeding. It is no hardier than other growing things which result from hot-house methods. Such babies show early signs of catarrhal afflictions, indigestion or skin disease. Their bodies are filled with poisons before they are born. Mothers who overeat invariably overfeed their babies. And why should they do otherwise? Family, friends and physicians give the same advice: The mother must eat much to be able to feed the child, and the child must be fed frequently in order to grow. It sounds very plausible, but it does not work well in practice. Why are babies cross? Why do they soon show catarrhal symptoms? Why do they vomit so much? Why are they so subject to stomach and intestinal disorders? Why do they have skin eruptions? Because they are overfed. The diseases of babies are almost entirely of digestive origin, and in nearly every instance overfeeding is the cause. Statistics show that about one-fifth of the babies born die before they are one year old. In nearly every instance the parents are to blame. One's intentions may be good, but good intentions coupled with wrong actions are deadly to infants. Oscar Wilde wrote, "We kill the thing we love." Parental love too often takes the form of indulging them and so it happens that hundreds of thousands of little ones are placed in their coffins annually through love. Each year about 280,000 babies under one year of age perish in the United States, according to estimates based on census figures. Outside of accidental deaths, which are but a small per cent., the mortality should be practically nil. It is natural for children to be well, and healthy children do not die. If an army of about 280,000 of our men and women were to perish in a spectacular manner each year it would cause such sorrow and indignation that a remedy would soon be found. But we are so accustomed to the procession of little caskets to the grave that it hardly arouses comment. It costs too much in every way to produce life to waste it so lavishly. Why do little children suffer so much from eruptive diseases, whooping cough, tonsilitis, adenoids, diphtheria and numerous other diseases? Because they are overfed. The younger the child the greater is the per cent. of disease due to wrong feeding. In adult life overeating and eating improperly otherwise are still the principal causes of disease. But during adult life the causation of disease is more complex than in childhood, for the senses have been more fully developed and instead of confining our physical sins to overeating we fall prey to the abuse of various appetites and passions. Vigorous adults are often the victims of pneumonia, typhoid fever and tuberculosis. Overeating is chiefly to blame, not the bacteria which are given as the principal cause. Rheumatism, kidney disease and diseases that manifest in hardening of the various tissues, all being forms of degeneration, are quite common. Again, the principal cause is overeating. There are a great number of people who live many years without any special disease, but who are always on the brink of being ill. They are full-blooded and too corpulent. Although they are often considered successful, they are never fully efficient either physically or mentally. They do not know what good health is, but they are so accustomed to their state of toleration that they consider themselves healthy. They are rather proud of their stoutness and their friends mistake their precarious condition for health. These people often die suddenly, and friends and acquaintances are very much surprised. No healthy man dies suddenly and unexpectedly except by accident. Instead of growing old gracefully, in possession of our senses and faculties, we die prematurely or go into physical and mental decay. Bleary eyes, pettiness, childishness and lost mental faculties are no part of nature's plan for advanced years. Those manifestations result from man's improvement on nature! From birth to death we are victims of this terrible ogre of overeating. It deprives us of friends and relatives. It takes away our strength and health. It makes us mentally inefficient and cowardly. At last it deprives us of life when our work is not half done and our days should not be half run. How is it possible, you may ask, that this is true? Of course, overeating is not the only cause, but it is the overwhelming one. It is the basic cause. Aided by other bad habits it conquers us. We are what we are because of our parentage, plus what we eat, drink, breathe and think, and the eating largely influences the other factors of life. Cholera infantum causes the death of many babies. It never occurs in babies who are fed moderately on natural, clean food, not to exceed three or four times a day. The child is cross. The mother thinks that it is cross because it is hungry and accordingly feeds. The real cause of the irritability is the overfeeding that has already taken place. The baby has had so much milk that it is unable to digest all of it. A part of the milk spoils in the digestive tract. This fermented material is partly absorbed and irritates the whole system. A part of it remains in the alimentary tract where it acts as a direct local irritant to the intestines. When these are irritated, the blood-vessels begin to pour out their serum to soothe the bowels and the result is diarrhea. The sick child is fed often. Digestive power is practically absent. The additional food given ferments and more serum has to be thrown out to protect the intestinal walls. Soon there is a well established case of cholera infantum. If only enough food had been given to satisfy bodily requirements, none of the milk would have spoiled in the alimentary tract. If all feeding had been stopped as soon as the child became irritable and pinched looking about the mouth and nose, and all the water desired had been given and the child kept warm, there would have been no serious disease. In these cases, the less food given the quicker the recoveries and the fewer the fatalities. Another common disease of childhood is adenoids. To talk of these maladies as diseases is rather misleading, for they are merely symptoms of perverted nutrition, but we are compelled to make the best of our medical language. Adenoids are due to indigestion. The indigestion is due to overeating. This is how it comes about: A child eats more than can be digested, generally bolting the food, which is often of a mushy character. The excessive amount of food can not be digested, and as the intestines and the stomach are moist and have a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, fermentation soon takes place. Some of the results of fermentation in the alimentary tract are acids, gases and bacterial poisons. These deleterious substances are absorbed into the blood stream and go to all parts of the body, acting as irritants. We do not know why they cause adenoids in one child and catarrh in another. It is easy enough to say that children are predisposed that way, which is no information at all. It seems that all of us have some weak point, and here disease has a tendency to localize. What part the sympathetic nervous system plays, we do not know. Glandular tissue is rather unstable and therefore it becomes diseased easily and adenoids are therefore quite frequent. A coated tongue, or an irritated tongue, both due to indigestion, is a concomitant of adenoids. Such diseases do not merely happen. There are good reasons for their appearance. They are not reflections on the child, but they are on the parents who should have the right knowledge and should take time and pains enough to educate and train the child into health. Tuberculosis is one of the results of ruined nutrition. First there is overeating. This causes indigestion. The irritating products of food fermenting in the alimentary tract are taken up by the blood. The blood goes to the lungs where it irritates the delicate mucous membrane. In self-protection it begins to secrete an excess of mucus and if the irritation is great enough, pus. The various bacteria are incidental. The tubercular bacillus is never able to gain a foothold in healthy lungs, but after degeneration of lung-tissue has taken place the lungs furnish a splendid home for this bacillus. The tubercular bacillus is a scavenger and therefore does not thrive in healthy bodies. It is the result of disease, not the cause. Tubercular subjects never have healthy digestive organs. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are persuaded to eat many times more food than they can digest, and thus they have no opportunity to recover, for the overfeeding ruins the digestive and assimilative powers beyond recuperative ability. A large per cent. of the human race perish miserably from this disease, which results principally from the ingestion of too much food. The liberal use of such devitalized foods as sterilized milk, refined sugar and finely bolted wheat flour is doubtless a great factor in so reducing bodily resistance that the system falls an easy prey to disease. Too little breathing and poor, devitalized air are also important factors. There are many causes of rheumatism, but overeating is the chief and it is very doubtful if a case of rheumatism can develop without this main cause. Exposure is often given as the cause, but a healthy man with a clean body does not become rheumatic. Rheumatism is due to internal filth. A filthy alimentary tract makes filthy blood. Some say that the poison in rheumatism is uric acid, and perhaps it is, but there are no uric acid deposits in the body of a prudent eater. The elimination in this disease is imperfect. The skin, the kidneys, the bowels and the lungs do not throw out the debris as they should. Perhaps only one or two of these organs are acting inadequately. The debris is stored up in the system. Why do the organs of elimination fail to act? Because so much work is thrust upon them that they grow weary and worn; also, a part of the material furnished them is the product of decay in the alimentary tract, and they can not thrive on poor material. Too much food is eaten. An excess of nutritive material, poorly digested, is absorbed. And so we come back to the principal cause, overeating. When the eliminative organs fail to perform their function, the waste is deposited in those parts of the body which are weakened. The irritation from these foreign substances causes inflammation and the result is pain. The extent to which this depositing of material will go is well illustrated in some cases of multiple articular rheumatism, or arthritis deformans, where the deposits are so great that many of the joints become fixed (anchylosed). We could review all the diseases, and nearly every time we would come back to disturbed nutrition as the principal factor, and this is true of not only physical ills, but the mental ones as well. Various foods do not combine well, still if they are eaten in moderation they do but little harm. If we overeat, the evil results are bound to manifest, no matter how good the food, though it sometimes takes years before they are perceptible. The effects are cumulative. Each day there is a little fermentation with absorption of the poisonous products. Each day the body degenerates a little. The time always comes when the body can continue its work no longer, and then the individual must choose between reform on one hand and suffering or death on the other. It is very difficult to convince people that they eat too much. Indeed, the average person is a small eater, in his own estimation. We have been educated into consuming such vast quantities of food that we hardly know what moderation is. In the past, physiologists and observers have watched the amount of food that people could coax down and this they have called the normal amount of food. This is far from the truth. The average American eats at least two times as much as he can digest, assimilate and use to advantage. Many eat three and four times too much. However, nature is very tolerant for a while. Most of us start out with a fair amount of resistance and are thus enabled to live to the age of forty or fifty in spite of abuses. If we could only dispense with our excesses, we could double or treble our life span, live better, get more enjoyment out of life and give the world more and better work than we can under present conditions. There is much talk of food shortage. The amount of food consumed and wasted annually in the United States is enough to feed 200,000,000 people. Even with our present knowledge we can easily produce twice as much per acre as we are averaging, and we are tilling only about one-fourth of the land that could be made productive. If we use our brains there is little danger of starving. What is needed now is not more food, but intelligent distribution and consumption of what we produce. We hear of cases of undernourishment. This doubtless occurs at times in the congested parts of great centers of populations. But there are not so many cases suffering from want of the proper quantity of food as from want of quality of food. Bread of finely bolted white flour is starvation food, no matter how great the quantity, unless other food rich in organic salts is also eaten. The overeating habit is so common and comes on so insidiously that the sufferers do not realize that they are eating to excess. The resultant discomforts are blamed on other things. Babies are fed every two hours or oftener. They should be fed but three or at most four times a day, and never at night. When able to eat solid foods they get three meals a day and generally two or more lunches. Some children seem to be lunching at all times. They have fruit or bread and butter with jelly or jam in the hand almost all the time. They are encouraged to eat much and often to produce growth and strength. This kind of feeding often does produce large children, heavy in weight, but they are not healthy. Sad to relate, the excess causes disease and death. Such frequent feeding allows the digestive organs no rest. The overwork imposed upon them and the fermentation cause irritation. This irritation manifests in a constant and almost irresistible desire for food, as does the consumption of much alcohol cause a desire for more alcohol, as the use of morphine or cocaine produces a dominating and ruinous appetite for more of these drugs. These appetites grow by what they feed upon. Man ceases to be master and becomes the abject slave of his abnormal cravings. Slaves of alcohol and the various habit-forming drugs generally lack the strength of body and mind to assert themselves and to regain mastery of themselves. Coffee and tea have their victims, though they are generally not very firmly enslaved. No one realizes how he is bound by his cravings for an excessive amount of food until he tries to break the bonds. Such people may eat moderately for days, perhaps for weeks, and then the old appetite reasserts itself in all its strength and unless the sufferer has a very strong will a food debauch follows. I have seen men go from one restaurant to another, consuming enormous quantities of food to efface the awful craving, just as men go from one saloon to another to satisfy their desire for alcohol. The gluttons often look with the greatest contempt upon the slaves of liquor. But what is the difference? No matter what appetite, what habit, what passion has gained the mastery, we are slaves. The important thing is to keep out of slavery, or break the bonds and regain freedom. Those who eat to excess often eat more than three times a day. They take a little candy now, a little fruit then, or they go to the drug store for a glass of malted milk or buttermilk, which they call drinks, or they take a dish of ice cream. The housewife nibbles at cake or bread. If a person is in fair health and wishes to evolve into self-mastery and good health, he should make up his mind never to eat more than three times a day. Nothing but plain water should enter his mouth except at meal times. Next he should limit the number of articles eaten at a meal. The breakfast and lunch should each consist of no more than two or three varieties of food. The dinner should not exceed five or six varieties, and if that many are eaten, they should be compatible. Less would be better. The less variety we have, the better the food digests. Also, eating ten or twelve or more kinds of food, as many people do, always leads to overeating. A little of this added to a little of that soon makes a too great total. It is easy to eat all one should of a certain article of food and feel satisfied, and then change off to something else and before one is through one has eaten three or four times as much as necessary. If the meal is to consist of starch there is no great objection to a small amount of bread, potatoes, rice, macaroni and chestnuts. However, a normal person does not need to coax food down by using great variety. Those who mix their foods this way invariably overeat. Besides, the various starches require different periods for digestion. Rice is more easily disposed of than bread. Each new item stimulates the desire for more food. It is best, when having potatoes, to have no other starchy food in that meal; or when bread is eaten, to have no potatoes or other starchy food. The habit of eating meat, potatoes and bread in the same meal is very common and causes much disease. Next the searcher for health should teach himself to eat foods that are natural, cooked simply, and with a minimum amount of seasoning and dressing. The various spices and sauces irritate the digestive organs and create a craving for an excessive amount of food. The food should be changed as little as possible because such denatured foods as white flour, polished rice, pasteurized milk, and many of the canned fruits and vegetables are so lacking in the natural salts that they do not satisfy one's desire for organic salts. Overeating results. Preserves, jellies and jams are open to the same objection. They cause an abnormal desire for food. Therefore, they should be used seldom and very sparingly. So long as apples, oranges, figs, dates, raisins, sweet prunes and various other fruits can be had, there is no excuse for the consumption of great quantities of the heavily sugared concoctions which are now so popular. Simplicity and naturalness are great aids in breaking away from food slavery. They are discussed more fully elsewhere. In the next chapter will be found hints on the solution of the normal amount of food to be eaten. CHAPTER V. DAILY FOOD INTAKE. It is generally believed that the more we eat the better. Physicians say that it is necessary to eat heartily when well to retain health and strength. When ill it is necessary to consume much food to regain lost health and strength. "Eat all you can of nourishing food," is a common free prescription, and it sounds very reasonable. The physicians of today are not to blame for this belief in overeating, for they were taught thus at college, and very few men in any line do original thinking. It has been a racial belief for centuries and no one now living is responsible. When a physician advocates what he honestly believes he is doing his best, "and angels can do no more." When a child loses its appetite, the parents worry, for they think that it is very harmful for young people to go without food for a few meals. A lost appetite is nature's signal to quit eating, and it should always be heeded. If it is, it will prevent much disease and suffering and will save many lives. The present-day mode of preparing food leads to overeating. The sense of taste is ruined by the stimulants put into the food. Dishes are so numerous and so temptingly made that more is eaten than can be digested and assimilated. Refined sugar, salt, the various spices, pickles, sauces and preserves all lead to overeating because of stimulation. The same is true of alcohol taken immediately before meals. If we only give nature a chance, and are perfectly frank and honest with ourselves, she will guard us against the overconsumption of food. Those who eat but few varieties of plain food at a meal are not sorely tempted to overeat. But when one savory dish is served after another it takes much will power to be moderate. People generally have had more than sufficient before the last course is served. However, the various dishes have different flavors and for this reason the palate is overwhelmed and accepts more food than is good for us. Men who like to call their work scientific, figure on the amount of food we need to furnish a certain number of heat units--calories. Heat, of course, is a form of energy. Basing the body's food requirements on heat units expended does not solve the problem. The more food that is ingested, the more heat units must be manufactured, and often so much food is taken that the body is compelled to go into the heating business. Then we have fevers. A large part of the heat is given off by the skin. Those who overeat are compelled to do a great deal of radiating. This excessive amount of fuel taken into the system in the form of food, wears out the body. As figured by the experts, it gives a result of food need that is at least twice as great as necessary. Experience is the only correct guide to food requirements, and each individual has to settle the matter for himself. The human body is not exactly a chemical laboratory, nor is it an engine which can be fed so much fuel with the resultant production of such and such an amount of heat and energy. Some bodies are more efficient than others. It is among human beings as among the lower animals, some require more food than others. We need enough food to repair the waste, to perform our work and to furnish heat. Every muscle contraction uses up a little energy. Every breath deprives us of heat and carries away carbon dioxide, the latter being formed by oxidation of tissues in the body. Every minute we lose heat by radiation from the skin. Every thought requires a small amount of food. If we worry, the leak of nervous energy is tremendous, but at the same time we put ourselves in position where we are unable to replenish our stock, for worry ruins digestion. All this expenditure of energy and loss of heat must be made up for by the food intake. Only a small amount of surplus food can be stored in the body. Some fat can be stored as fat. Some starch and sugar can be put aside as either glycogen--animal sugar--or be changed into fat. This storing of excess food is very limited, except in cases of obesity, which is a disease. Overeating invariably causes disease. It may take two or three years, yes even twenty or thirty years, before the overeating results in serious illness, but the results are certain, and in the meanwhile the individual is never up to par. He can use neither body nor mind to the best advantage. To emphasize and illustrate these remarks, I shall copy a few diet lists, which their authors consider reasonable and correct for the average person for one day, and I shall give my comments. The first is taken from Kirke's Physiology, which has been used extensively as a text-book in medical colleges: 340 grams lean uncooked meat, 600 " bread, 90 " butter, 28 " cheese, 225 " potatoes, 225 " carrots. An ounce contains 28.3 grams; a pound, 453 grams. It is easy to figure these quantities of food in ounces or pounds, which give a better idea to the average person. It is self-evident that this is too much food. Over twelve ounces of lean, uncooked meat, over twenty-one ounces of bread, almost one-half of a pound each of potatoes and carrots, about an ounce of cheese and over three ounces of butter make enough food for two days, even for a big eater. He who tries to live up to a diet of this kind is sure to suffer disease and early death. The average loaf of bread weighs about fourteen ounces. Here we are told to devour one-half of a pound of carrots (for which other vegetables such as turnips, parsnips, beets or cabbage may be substituted), one-half of a pound of potatoes, three-fourths of a pound of lean raw meat, which loses some weight in cooking, a loaf and one-half of bread, besides butter and cheese. The vast majority of people can not eat more than one-third of this amount and retain efficiency and health, but many eat even more. The next table is taken from Dr. I. Burney Yeo's book on diet, and is given as the food required daily by a "well nourished worker": 151.3 grams meat, 48.1 " white of egg, 450.0 " bread, 500.0 " milk, 1065.9 " beer, 60.2 " suet, 30.0 " butter, 70.0 " starch, 17.0 " sugar, 4.9 " salt. This worker is too well fed. Often those who are so well fed are poorly nourished, for the excessive amount of food ruins the nutrition, after which the food is poorly digested and assimilated. This worker eats so much that he will be compelled to do manual labor all his days, for such feeding prevents effective thinking. The following daily average diet is taken from the book, "Diet and Dietetics," by A. Gauthier, a well known authority on the subject of the nutritive needs of the body. Mr. Gauthier averaged the daily food intake of the inhabitants of Paris for the ten years from 1890 to 1899, inclusive. He takes it for granted that this is the average daily food requirement for a person: 420.0 grams bread and cakes, 216.0 " boned meat, 24.1 " eggs (weighed with shell), 8.1 " cheese (dry or cream), 28.0 " butter, oil, etc., 70.0 " fresh fruit, 250.0 " green vegetables, 40.0 " dried vegetables, 100.0 " potatoes, rice, 40.0 " sugar, 20.0 " salt, 213.0 C. C. milk, 557.0 C. C. of various alcoholics, containing 9.5 C. C. of pure alcohol. So long as the Parisians consume such quantities of food they will continue to suffer and die before they reach one-half of the age that should be theirs. The French eat no more than do other people, in fact, they seem moderate in their food intake as compared with some of the Germans, English and Americans, but they eat too much for their physical and mental good. The lists given above are from sources that command the respect of the medical profession. They are the orthodox and popular opinions. It would be an easy matter to give many more tables, but they agree so closely that it would be a waste of time and space. Quantitative tables from vegetarian sources are not so common. The vegetarians say that meat eating is wrong, being contrary to nature. Whether they are right or wrong, they make the same mistakes that the orthodox prescribers do, that is, they advocate overeating. Medical textbooks prescribe a too abundant supply of starch and meat in particular. The vegetarians prescribe a superabundance of starch. Read the magazines advocating vegetarianism and note their menus, giving numerous cereals, tubers, peas, beans, lentils, as well as other vegetables, for the same meal. It is as easy to overeat of nuts and protein in leguminous vegetables as it is to overeat of meat. Starch poisoning is as bad as meat poisoning and the results are equally fatal. The following are suggestions offered by a fruitarian. They give the food intake for two days: 120 grams shelled peanuts, raw, 1000 " apples, 500 " unfermented whole wheat bread. 120 grams shelled filberts, 450 " raisins, 800 " bananas. In the first day's menu it will be noted that over two pounds of apples and over one pound of whole wheat bread are recommended, also over four ounces of raw peanuts. The writer says that this food should preferably be taken in two meals. There are very few people with enough digestive and assimilative power to care for more than one-half of a pound of whole wheat bread twice a day, especially when taken with raw peanuts, which are rather hard to digest. The trouble is made worse by the addition of more than one pound of apples to each meal, for when apples in large quantities are eaten with liberal amounts of starch, the tendency for the food to ferment is so strong that only a very few escape. Gas is produced in great quantities, which is both unnatural and unpleasant. Neither stomach nor bowels manufacture any perceptible amount of gas if they are in good condition and a moderate amount of food is taken. Whole wheat bread digests easily enough when eaten in moderation, but it is very difficult to digest when as much as eight ounces are taken at a meal. One can accustom the body to accept this amount of food, but it is never required under ordinary conditions and the results in the long run are bad. The food prescribed for the second day is more easily digested, but it is too much. Raisins are a splendid force food, but no ordinary individual needs a pound of raisins in one day, in addition to about one and three-fourths pounds of bananas, which are also a force food and are about as nourishing as the same amount of Irish potatoes. In all my reading it has not been my good fortune to find a diet table for healthy people, giving moderate quantities of food. Diet lists seem scientific, so they appeal to the mind that has not learned to think of the subject from the correct point of view. Quantitative diet tables are worthless, for one person may need more than another. Some are short and some are tall. Some are naturally slender and others of stocky build. There is as much difference in people's food needs as there is in their appearance. To try to fit the same quantity and even kind of food to all is as senseless as it would be to dress all in garments of identical size and cut. If we eat in moderation it does not make much difference what we eat, provided our diet contains either raw fruits or raw vegetables enough to furnish the various mineral salts and the food is fairly well prepared. There are combinations that are not ideal, but they do very little harm if there is no overeating. People who are moderate in their eating generally relish simple foods. Unfortunately, there is but little moderation in eating. From childhood on the suggestion that it is necessary to eat liberally is ever before us. Medical men, grandparents, parents and neighbors think and talk alike. If the parents believe in moderation, the neighbors kindly give lunches to the children. It is really difficult to raise children right, especially in towns and cities. After such training we learn to believe in overeating and we pass the belief on to the next generation, as it has in the past been handed down from generation to generation. Finally we die, many of us martyrs to overconsumption of food. Ask any healer of intelligence who has thrown off the blinders put on at college and who has allowed himself to think without fear, and he will tell you that at least nine-tenths of our ills come from improper eating habits. It is not difficult to make up menus of compatible foods. No one knows how much another should eat, and he who prepares quantitative diet tables for the multitude must fail. However, every individual of ordinary intelligence can quickly learn his own food requirements and the key thereto is given by nature. It is not well to think of one's self much or often. It is not well to be introspective, but everyone should get acquainted with himself, learning to know himself well enough to treat himself with due consideration. We are taught kindness to others. We need to be taught kindness to ourselves. The average person ought to be able to learn his normal food requirements within three or four months, and a shorter time will often suffice. The following observations will prove helpful to the careful reader: Food should have a pleasant taste while it is being eaten, but should not taste afterwards. If it does it is a sign of indigestion following overeating, or else it indicates improper combinations or very poor cooking. Perhaps food was taken when there was no desire for it, which is always a mistake. Perhaps too many foods were combined in the meal. Or it may be that there was not enough mouth preparation. It is generally due to overeating. Cabbage, onions, cucumbers and various other foods which often repeat, will not do so when properly prepared and eaten in moderation, if other conditions are right. Eructation of gas and gas in the bowels are indications of overeating. More food is taken than can be digested. A part of it ferments and gas is a product of fermentation. A very small amount of gas in the alimentary tract is natural, but when there is belching or rumbling of gas in the intestines it is a sign of indigestion, which may be so mild that the individual is not aware of it, or it may be so bad that he can think of little else. When there is formation of much gas it is always necessary to reduce the food intake, and to give special attention to the mastication of all starch-containing aliments. Also, if starches and sour fruits have been combined habitually, this combination should be given up. Starch digests in an alkaline medium, and if it is taken with much acid by those whose digestive powers are weak, the result is fermentation instead of digestion. People should never eat enough to experience a feeling of languor. They should quit eating before they feel full. If there is a desire to sleep after meals, too much food has been ingested. When drowsiness possesses us after meals we have eaten so much that the digestive organs require so much blood that there is not enough left for the brain. This is a hint that if we have work or study that requires exceptional clearness of mind, we should eat very moderately or not at all immediately before. The digestive organs appropriate the needed amount of blood and the brain refuses to do its best when deprived of its normal supply of oxygen and nourishment. Serpents, some beasts of prey and savages devour such large quantities of food at times that they go into a stupor. There is no excuse for our patterning after them now that a supply of food is easily obtained at all times. A bad taste in the mouth is usually a sign of overeating. It comes from the decomposition following a too liberal food intake. If water has a bad taste in the morning or at any other time, it indicates overeating. It may be due to a filthy mouth or the use of alcohol. Heartburn is also due to overeating, and so is hiccough; both come from fermentation of food in the alimentary tract. A heavily coated tongue in the morning indicates excessive food intake. If the tongue is what is known as a dirty gray color it shows that the owner has been overeating for years. The normal mucous membrane is clean and pink. The mucous membrane of the mouth, stomach and the first part of the bowels should not be compelled to act as an organ of excretion, for the normal function is secretory and absorptive. However, when so much food is eaten that the skin, lungs, kidneys and lower bowel can not throw off all the waste and excess, the mucous membrane in the upper part of the alimentary tract must assist. The result is a coated tongue, but the tongue is in no worse condition than the mucous membrane of the stomach. A coated tongue indicates overcrowded nutrition and is nature's request to reduce the food intake. How much? Enough to clean the tongue. If the coating is chronic it may take several months before the tongue becomes clean. A muddy skin, perhaps pimply, is another sign of overeating. It shows that the food intake is so great that the body tries to eliminate too many of the solids through the skin, which becomes irritated from this cause and the too acid state of the system and then there is inflammation. Many forms of eczema and a great many other skin diseases are caused by stomach disorders and an overcrowded nutrition. There is a limit to the skin's excretory ability, and when this is exceeded skin diseases ensue. Some of the so-called incurable skin diseases get well in a short time on a proper diet without any local treatment. Dull eyes and a greenish tinge of the whites of the eyes point toward digestive disturbances due to an oversupply of food. The green color comes from bile thrown into the blood when the liver is overworked. The liver is never overtaxed unless the consumption of food is excessive. Another very common sign of too generous feeding is catarrh, and it does not matter where the catarrh is located. It is true that there are other causes of catarrh, in fact, anything that irritates the mucous membrane any length of time will cause it, but an overcrowded nutrition causes the ordinary cases. It is the same old story: The mucous membrane is forced to take on the function of eliminating superfluous matter, which has been taken into the system in the form of food. Many people dedicate their lives to the act of turning a superabundance of food into waste, and as a result they overwork their bodies so that they are never well physically and seldom efficient mentally. Many people, especially women, say that if they miss a meal or get it later than usual, they suffer from headache. This indicates that the feeding is wrong, generally too generous and often too stimulating. A normal person can miss a dozen meals without a sign of a headache. To repeat: No one can tell how much another should eat, but everyone can learn for himself what the proper amount of food is. Enough is given above to help solve the problem. The interpretations presented are not the popular ones, but they are true for they give good results when acted upon. If bad results follow a meal there has been overeating, either at the last meal or previously. Undermasticating usually accompanies overeating and causes further trouble. Those who masticate thoroughly are generally quite moderate in their food intake. Many say that they eat so much because they enjoy their food so. He who eats too rapidly or in excess does not know what true enjoyment of food is. Excessive eating causes food poisoning, and food poisoning blunts all the special senses. To have normal smell, taste, hearing and vision one must be clean through and through, and those who are surfeited with food are not clean internally. The average individual does not know the natural taste of most foods. He seasons them so highly that the normal taste is hidden or destroyed. Those who wish to know the exquisite flavor of such common foods as onions, carrots, cabbage, apples and oranges must eat them without seasoning or dressing for a while. To get real enjoyment from food it is necessary to eat slowly and in moderation. I know both from personal experience and from the experience of others that seasoning is not necessary. Instead of giving the foods better flavor, they taste inferior. A little salt will harm no one, but the constant use of much seasoning leads to irritation of the digestive organs and to overeating. Salt taken in excess also helps to bring on premature aging. It is splendid for pickling and preserving, but health and life in abundance are the only preservatives needed for the body. Refined sugar should be classed among the condiments. People who live normally lose the desire for it. Grapefruit, for instance, tastes better when eaten plain than when sugar is added. People who sleep seven or eight hours and wake up feeling unrefreshed are suffering from the ingestion of too much food. A food poisoned individual can not be properly rested. To get sweet sleep and feel restored it is necessary to have clean blood and a sweet alimentary tract. Much has been said about overeating. Once in a while a person will habitually undereat, but such cases are exceedingly rare. To undereat is foolish. At all times we must use good sense. It is a subject upon which no fixed rules can be promulgated. Be guided by the feelings, for perfect health is impossible to those who lack balance. Those who think they need scientific direction may take one of the orthodox diet tables. If it contains alcoholics, remove them from the list. Then partake of about one-third of the starch recommended, and about one-third of the protein. Use more fresh fruit and fresh vegetables than listed. Instead of eating bread made from white flour, use whole wheat bread. Do not try to eat everything given on the scientific diet list each day. For instance, rice, potatoes and bread are given in many of these tables. Select one of these starches one day, another the next day, etc. If one-third of the amount recommended is too much, and it sometimes is, reduce still further. Please bear in mind that the orthodox way, the so-called scientific way, has been tried over a long period of time and it has given very poor results. Moderation has always given good results and always will. CHAPTER VI. WHAT TO EAT. It is very important to eat the right kind of food, but it is even more important to be balanced and use common sense. Those who are moderate in their habits and cheerful can eat almost anything with good results. Of course, people who live almost entirely on such denatured foods as polished rice, finely bolted wheat flour products, sterilized milk and meat spoiled in the cooking, refined sugar and potatoes deprived of most of their salts through being soaked and cooked will suffer. There are many different diet systems, and some of them are very good. If their advocates say that their way is the only way, they are wrong. Many try to force their ideas upon others. They find their happiness in making others miserable. They are afflicted with the proselyting zeal that makes fools of people. This is the wrong way to solve the food problem. Let each individual choose his own way and allow those who differ to continue in the old way. Many have changed their dietary habits to their own great benefit. After this they become so enthused and anxious for others to do likewise that they wear themselves and others out exhorting them to share in the new discovery. This does no good, but it often does harm, for it leads the zealot to think too much of and about himself, and it annoys others. Many are like my friend who lunched daily on zwieback and raw carrots. "I think everybody ought to eat some raw carrots every day; don't you?" she said. We can not mold everybody to our liking, and we should not try. If we conquer ourselves, we have about all we can do. If we succeed in this great work, we will evolve enough tolerance to be willing to allow others to shape their own ends. To volunteer undesired information does no good, for it creates opposition in the mind of the hearers. If the information is sought, the chances are that it may in time do good. It is well enough to indicate how and where better knowledge may be obtained. We should at all times attempt to conserve our energy and use it only when and where it is helpful. Such conduct leads to peace of mind, effectiveness, happiness and health. The tendency to become too enthusiastic about a dietary regime that has brought personal benefit is to be avoided, for it brings unnecessary odium upon the important subject of food reform. People do not like to change old habits, even if the change would be for the better, and when an enthusiast tries to force the change his actions are resented. He makes no real converts, but as pay for his efforts he gains the reputation of being a crank. Those who wish to be helpful in an educational way should be patient. The race has been in the making for ages. Its good habits, as well as its bad ones, have been acquired gradually. If we ever get rid of our bad habits it will be through gradual evolution, not through a hasty revolution. We need a change in dietary habits, but those who become food cranks, insisting that others be as they, retard this movement. Only a few will change physical and mental habits suddenly. If those who know are content to show the benefits more in results than in words, their influence for good will be great. What shall we eat? How are we to know the truth among so many conflicting ideas? We can know the truth because it leads to health. Error leads to suffering, degeneration and premature death. As the homely saying goes, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." Let us look into some of the diet theories before the public and give them thoughtful consideration. The late Dr. J. H. Salisbury advocated the use of water to drink and meat to eat, and nothing else. The water was to be taken warm and in copious quantities, but not at or near meal time. The meat, preferably beef, was to be scraped or minced, made into cakes and cooked in a very warm skillet until the cakes turned gray within. These meat cakes were to be eaten three times a day, seasoned with salt and a little pepper. The doctor had a very successful practice, which is attested by many who were benefited when ordinary medical skill failed. His diet was not well balanced. In meats there is a lack of the cell salts and force food. Especially are the cell salts lacking when the flesh is drained of its blood. The animals of prey drink the blood and crunch many of the bones of their victims, thus getting nearly all the salts. But in spite of his giving such an unbalanced diet, the doctor had a satisfactory practice and good success. Why? Because his patients had to quit using narcotics and stimulants and they were compelled to consume such simple food that they ceased overeating. It is a well known fact that a mono-diet forces moderation, for there is no desire to overeat, as there is when living on a very varied diet. Another fact that the Salisbury plan brings to mind is that starch and sugar are not necessary for the feeding of adults, although they are convenient and cheap foods and ordinarily consumed in large quantities. The fat in the meat takes the place of the starch and sugar. Atomically, starch, sugar and fat are almost identical, and they can be substituted one for the other. Nature makes broad provisions. Dr. Salisbury's career also serves to remind us that a mixed diet is not necessary for the physical welfare of those who eat to live. Vegetarians dwell upon the toxicity of meat. But Dr. Salisbury fed his patients on nothing but meat and water, and the percentage of recoveries in chronic diseases was considered remarkable. Meat is very easy to digest and when prepared in the simple manner prescribed by the doctor and eaten by itself it will agree with nearly everybody. But when eaten with soup, bread, potatoes, vegetables, cooked and raw, fish, pudding, fruit, coffee, crackers and cheese, there will be overeating followed by indigestion and its consequent train of ills. However, it is not fair to blame the meat entirely, for the whole mixture goes into decomposition and poisons the body. The cures resulting from Dr. Salisbury's plan also help to disprove the much heralded theory of Dr. Haig, that uric acid from meat eating is the cause of rheumatism. Overeating of meat is often a contributory cause. We are told that the rheumatics who followed Dr. Salisbury's plan got well. They regained physical tone. They lost their gout and rheumatism. They parted company with their pimples and blotches. All of which would indicate that the blood became clean. The chief lesson derived from Dr. Salisbury's plan and experience is the helpfulness of simple living and moderation. An exclusive diet of meat is not well balanced. Energy produced from flesh food is too expensive. The good results came from substituting habits of simplicity and moderation for the habit of overeating of too great variety of food. The same results may be obtained by putting a patient on bread and milk. Dr. Salisbury's patients had unsatisfied longings, doubtless for various tissue salts. The addition of fresh raw fruits or vegetables would improve his diet, for apples, peaches, pears, lettuce, celery and cabbage are rich in the salts in which meats are deficient. Dr. Emmet Densmore recommended omitting the starches entirely, that is, to avoid such foods as cereals, tubers and legumes. He believed that it is best to live on fruits and nuts. He recommended the sweet fruits--figs, dates, raisins, prunes--instead of the starchy foods. The doctor did much good, as everyone does who gets his patients to simplify. He also had good results before discovering that starch is a harmful food, when he fed his patients bread and milk. Starch must be converted into sugar before it can be used by the body. The sugar is what is known as dextrose, not the refined sugar of commerce. The sweet fruits contain this sugar in the form of fruit sugar, which needs but little preparation to be absorbed by the blood. Dr. Densmore reasons thus: Only birds are furnished with mills (gizzards); hence the grains are fit food for them only. Other starches should be avoided because they are difficult to digest, the doctor wrote. Raw starches are difficult to digest, but when they are properly cooked they are digested in a reasonable time without overburdening the system, provided they are well masticated and the amount eaten is not too great and the combining is correct. Rice, which contains much starch, digests in a short time. We can do very nicely without starch. We can also thrive on it if we do not abuse it. The two chief starch-bearing staples, rice and wheat, contain considerable protein and salts in their natural state. In fact, the natural wheat will sustain life for a long time. Man has improved on nature by polishing the rice and making finely bolted, bleached wheat flour, deprived of nearly all the salts in the wheat berry. The result is that both of them have become very poor foods. The more we eat of these refined products the worse off we are, unless we partake freely of other foods rich in mineral salts. Not long ago a lady died in England who was a prominent advocate of a "brainy diet." Her brainy diet consisted largely of excessive quantities of meat, pork being a favorite. She died comparatively young, her friends say from overwork. Such a diet doubtless had a large part in wearing her out. To overeat of meat is dangerous. A gentleman is now advocating a diet of nothing but cocoanuts. This is a fad, for they are not a balanced food. He has published a book on the subject. Perhaps his advocacy is influenced by his interest in the sale of cocoanuts. The vegetarians condemn the use of meat. Some of them are called fruitarians. It is very difficult to decide who are the most representative of them. Some advocate the use of nothing but fruit and nuts. Others add cereals to this. Others use vegetables in addition. Some even allow the use of dairy products and eggs, that is, all foods except flesh. They say that meat is an unnatural food for man and condemn its use on moral grounds. It is difficult to decide what is natural, for we find that man is very adaptable, being able to live on fruits in the tropics and almost exclusively on flesh food, largely fat, in the arctic regions. In nature the strong live on the weak and the intelligent on the dull. There is no sentiment in nature. In her domain might, physical or mental, makes right. Sentiments of right and justice are not highly developed except among human beings, and even there they are so weakly implanted that it takes but little provocation for civilized man to bare his teeth in a wolfish snarl. With some vegetarianism is largely a matter of esthetics, ethics and morality. Morality is based on expediency, so it really is a question whether meat is an advantageous food or not. Another vegetarian argument is that man's anatomy proves that he was not intended by nature to eat meat. Good arguments have been used on both sides, but they are not very convincing nor are they conclusive. It is hard to draw any lines fairly. Another objection to meat is that it is unclean and full of poisons, that these poisons produce various diseases, such as cancer. We are also informed that refined sugar causes cancer, and the belief in tomatoes as a causative factor is not dead. Cancer is without doubt caused principally by dietary indiscretions but it is impossible to single out any one food. No matter what foods we eat, we are compelled to be careful or they will be unclean. Those who wish clean meat can obtain it. The amount of poison or waste in a proper portion of meat is so small that we need give it no thought. Those who eat in moderation can take meat once a day during cold weather and enjoy splendid health. During warm weather it should be eaten more seldom. On the other hand, meat is not necessary. We need a certain amount of protein, which we can obtain from nuts, eggs, milk, cheese, peanuts, peas, beans, lentils, cereals and from other food in smaller amounts. The amount of protein needed is small--about one-fifth of what the physiologists used to recommend. Those who think meat eating is wrong should not partake of it. They can get along very well without it. We are consuming entirely too much meat in America. The organism can stand it if the life is active in the fresh air, but it will not do for people who are housed. Much meat eating causes physical degeneration. The body loses tone. Experiments have shown that vegetarians have more resistance and endurance than the meat eaters, but the meat eaters get so much stimulation from their food that they can speed up in spurts. The excretions of meat eaters are more poisonous than those of vegetarians. Eggs produced by hens fed largely on meat scraps do not keep as well as those laid by hens feeding more on grains. In short, meat eating leads to instability or degeneration, if carried to excess. Young children should have none of it and it would be a very easy matter for the rising generation to develop without using meat, and I believe this would be better than our present plan of eating. However, let us give flesh food the credit due it. When meat eaters are debilitated no other food seems to act as kindly as meat, given with fruits or vegetables. When properly prepared and taken in moderation meat digests easily and is quite completely assimilated. Many make the mistake of living too exclusively on starch and taking it in excess. The result is fermentation and an acid state of the alimentary tract. Dr. Daniel S. Sager says that, "About all that we have to fear in eating is excessive use of proteids." Experience and observation do not bear out this statement, for it is as easy to find people injured by starch as by protein. One form of poisoning is as bad as the other. The doctor also warns against nearly all the succulent vegetables, saying that on account of the indigestible fibre, most of them are unfit for human consumption. Dr. E. H. Dewey condemned the apple as a disease-producer, and inferentially, other fruits. Dr. Charles E. Page objects to the use of milk by adults, on the ground that it is fit food only for the calves for whom nature intended it. Many writers have repeated this opinion. Most of the regular physicians have a very vague idea of dietetics and proper feeding. When asked what to eat they commonly say, "Eat plenty nourishing food of the kinds that agree with you." They do not point out the fundamentals to their patients. Sometimes they advise avoiding combinations of milk and fruits. Sometimes they say that all starches should be avoided and in the next breath prescribe toast, one of the starchiest of foods. At times they proscribe pork and pickles but they are seldom able to give a good diet prescription. What people need is a fair knowledge of what to do and the don'ts will take care of themselves. All foods have been condemned as unfit for human consumption by people who should know. However, those who look at these matters with open eyes and open minds will come to the conclusion that man is a very adaptable animal; that if necessary he can get along without almost all foods, being able to subsist on a very small variety; that he can live for a long period on animal food entirely; that he can live all his life without tasting flesh; that he can live on a mixed diet; that he can adopt a great many plans of eating and live in health and comfort on nearly all of them, provided he does not deprive himself of the natural salts and gets some protein; and finally and most important, that moderation is the chief factor in keeping well, for the best foods produce disease in time if taken in excess. Those who object to flesh, dairy products, cereals, tubers, legumes, refined sugars, fruits or vegetables, should do without the class which they find objectionable, for it is easy to substitute from other classes. Eggs, milk or legumes may be taken in place of flesh foods. The salts contained in fruits may be obtained from vegetables. The starch, which is the chief ingredient of cereals, is easily obtained from tubers and legumes; fats and sugars will take its place. Commercial sugar is not a necessity. The force and heat derived from it can be obtained from starches and fats. Outside of milk in infancy, there is not a single indispensable food. Some people have peculiarities which prevent them from eating certain foods, such as pork, eggs, milk and strawberries, but with these exceptions a healthy person can eat any food he pleases, provided he is moderate. We eat too much flesh, sugar and starch and we suffer for it. This does not prove that these foods are harmful, but that overeating is. Sometimes the food question becomes a very trying one in the home. One individual has learned the fact that good results are obtained by using good sense and judgment in combining and consuming food, and he tries to force others to do as he does. This is unfortunate, for most people object to such actions, and though the intention is good, it accomplishes nothing, but prejudices others against sensible living. The best way is to do right yourself and let others sin against themselves and suffer until they are weary. Then, seeing how you got out of your trouble, perhaps they will come to you and accept what you have to offer. The attempt to force people to be good or to be healthy is merely wasted effort. The chapter devoted to Menus gives definite information regarding the proper manner in which to combine foods and arrange meals. Such information is also given in treating of the different classes of food. CHAPTER VII. WHEN TO EAT. Three meals a day is the common plan. This is a matter of habit. Three meals a day are sufficient and should not be exceeded by man, woman or child. Lunching or "piecing" should never be indulged in. Children who are fed on plain, nutritious foods that contain the necessary food elements do not need lunches. Lunching is also a matter of habit, and we can safely say that it is a bad habit. If three meals a day are taken, two should be light. He who wishes to work efficiently can not eat three hearty meals a day. If it is brain work, the digestive organs will take so much of the blood supply that an insufficient amount of blood will be left to nourish the brain. The worker feels the lack of energy. He is not inclined to do thorough work, that is, to go to the root of matters, and he therefore does indifferent work. One rule to which there is no exception is that the brain can not do its best when the digestive organs are working hard. If there is a piece of work to be done or a problem to be solved that requires all of one's powers it is best to tackle it with an empty stomach, or after a very light meal. If the work is physical, it is not necessary to draw the line so fine. But it is well to remember that hard physical work prevents digestion. All experiments prove this. So if the labor is very trying, the eating should be light. Those who eat much because they work hard will soon wear themselves out, for hard work retards digestion, and with weakened digestion the more that is eaten, the less nourishment is extracted from it. Those who labor hard should take a light breakfast and the same kind of a noon meal. After the day's work is done, take a hearty meal. Those who perform hard physical labor, as well as those who work chiefly with their brains, should relax a while after the noon meal. A nap lasting ten to twenty minutes is very beneficial, but not necessary if relaxation is taken. During sleep the activities of the body slow down. Most people who take a heavy meal and retire immediately thereafter feel uncomfortable when they wake in the morning. The reason is that the food did not digest well. It is always well to remain up at least two hours after eating a hearty meal. Most people would be better off if they took but two meals a day. Those who have sedentary occupations need less fuel than manual laborers, and could get along very well on two meals a day. However, if moderation is practiced, no harm will come from eating three times a day. In olden times many people lived on one meal a day. Some do so today and get along very well. It is easy to get plenty of nourishment from one meal, and it has the advantage of not taking so much time. Most of us spend too much time preparing for meals and eating. Once when it was rather inconvenient to get more meals, I lived for ten months on one meal a day. I enjoyed my food very much and was well nourished. For twelve years I have lived on two meals a day, one of them often consisting of nothing but some juicy fruit. Many others do likewise, not because they are prejudiced against three meals per day, but they find the two meal plan more convenient and very satisfactory. Meat, potatoes and bread, with other foods, three times a day is a common combination. No ordinary mortal can live in health on such a diet. Such feeding results in discomfort and disease, and unless it is changed, in premature aging and death. The body needs only a certain amount of material. Sufficient can be taken in two meals. If three meals is the custom less food at a meal should be eaten. However, the general rule is that those who eat three meals per day eat fully as large ones as those who take only two. As a rule, the meal times should be regular. We need a certain amount of nourishment, and it is well to take it regularly. This reduces friction, and is conducive to health, for the body is easily taught to fall into habits of regularity and works best when these are observed. There should be a period of at least four and one-half to five hours between meals. It takes that long for the body to get a meal out of the way. Stomach digestion is but the beginning of the process, and this alone requires from two to five hours. On the two-meal plan it makes very little difference whether the breakfast or the lunch is omitted. After going without breakfast for a week or two, one does not miss it. Miss the meal that it is the most troublesome to get. Dr. Dewey revived interest in the no-breakfast plan in this country. He considered it very beneficial. The doctor did not give credit where credit is due, for he insisted on going without breakfast. Omitting lunch or dinner accomplishes the same thing. He got his beneficial results from reducing the number of meals, and consequently the amount of food taken, but it is immaterial which meal is omitted. Heavy breakfasts are very common in England and in our country. On the European continent they do not eat so much for breakfast, a cup of coffee and one roll being a favorite morning meal there. To eat nothing in the morning is better than to take coffee and rolls. To eat enough to steal one's brain away is a poor way to begin the day. Much better work could be done on some fruit or a glass of milk, or some cereal and butter than on eggs, steak potatoes, hot bread and coffee, which is not an uncommon breakfast. When we consider the best time to eat, we come back to our old friend, moderation, and find that it is the best solution of the question, for if the meals are moderate we may with benefit take three meals a day, but no more, for there is not time enough during the day to digest more than three meals. However, it is not necessary to eat three times a day. CHAPTER VIII. HOW TO EAT. It seems that all of us ought to know how to eat, for we have much practice; yet the individuals who know the true principles of nourishing the body are comparatively few. Very few healers are able to give full and explicit directions on this important subject. Some can give partial instructions, but we need a full working knowledge. In one period of our racial history there were times when it was difficult to obtain food, as it is now among some savage people. Then it was without doubt customary to gorge, as it is among some savages now when they get a plenteous supply of food, especially of flesh food. Even among so-called civilized people, the distribution of food is so uneven that some are in want somewhere, nearly all the time. In parts of Russia, we are informed, the peasants go into a state of semi-hibernation during part of the winter, living on very small quantities of inferior food. With rapid transportation and the extensive use of power-propelled machinery, famine should be unheard of in civilized countries. In our land there is a sufficient quantity of food and people seldom suffer because they have not enough, but considerable suffering is due to excessive intake and to poor quality of food. Weight for weight, white bread is not as valuable as whole wheat bread, though it contains as much starch. Measure for measure, boiled milk is inferior as a food to untreated milk, either fresh or clabbered. Such facts make it necessary for us to know how to eat. The correct principles of taking nourishment to the best advantage have been fairly well known for a long time, and perhaps they have been fully discussed years ago by some author, but so far as I know Dr. E. H. Dewey is the first one who grouped them and gave them the prominence they deserve. He employed many pages in explaining clearly and forcibly these principles, which can be briefly stated as follows: First, Be guided by the appetite in eating. Eat only when there is hunger. Second, During acute illness fast, that is, live on water. Third, Be moderate in eating. Fourth, Masticate your food thoroughly. Dr. J. H. Tilden teaches his patients the same in these words: "Never eat when you feel badly. "Never eat when you have no desire. "Do not overeat. "Thoroughly masticate and insalivate all your food." Because these true dietetic principles are so important, probably being the most valuable information given in this book, let us give them enough consideration to fix them in the mind. They should be a part of every child's education. They should be so thoroughly learned that they become second nature, for if they are observed disease is practically impossible. Accidents may happen, but no serious disease can develop and certainly none of a chronic nature if these rules are observed, provided the individual gives himself half a chance in other ways. When the eating is correct, it is difficult to fall into bad habits mentally. Correct eating is a powerful aid to health. Health tends to produce proper thinking, which in turn leads the individual to proper acting. _First, Eat only when there is hunger_: Hunger is of two kinds, normal and abnormal. The real or normal hunger was given us by nature to make us active enough to get food. If it were not for hunger, there would be no special incentive for the young to partake of nourishment and consequently many would die comfortably of starvation, perhaps enough to endanger the life of the race. Normal hunger asks for food, but no special kind of food. It is satisfied with anything that is clean and nourishing. It is strong enough to make a decided demand for food, but if there is no food to be had it will be satisfied for the time being with a glass of water and will cause no great inconvenience. Abnormal hunger is entirely different. It is a very insistent craving and if it is not satisfied it produces bodily discomfort, perhaps headache. The gnawing remains and gives the victim no rest. Very often it must be pampered. It calls for beefsteak, or toast and tea, or sweets, or some other special food. If not satisfied the results may be nervousness, weakness or headache or some other disagreeable symptom. When missing a meal or two brings discomfort, it is always a sign of a degenerating or degenerated body. A healthy person can go a day without food without any inconvenience. He feels a keen desire for food at meal times, but as soon as he has made up his mind that he is unable to get it or that he is not going to take any the hunger leaves. Normal hunger is a servant. Abnormal hunger is a hard master. A person in good condition does not get weak from missing a few meals. One in poor physical condition does, although this is more apparent than real. In the abnormal person a part of the food is used as nourishment, but on account of the poor working of the digestive organs, a part decomposes and this acts as an irritant or a stimulant. The greater the irritation the more food is demanded. The temporary stimulation is followed by depression and then the sufferer is wretched. This depression is relieved by more food. Please note that it is relieved, not cured. The relief is only temporary. All food stimulates, but only slightly. It is when the food decomposes that it becomes stimulating enough to cause trouble. It is well to remember that considerable alcoholic fermentation can take place in an abused alimentary tract. The stimulation obtained from too much food is very much like the stimulation derived from alcohol, tobacco or morphine. At first there is a feeling of well-being, which is followed by a miserable feeling of depression that demands food, alcohol, tobacco or morphine for relief, as the case may be, and no matter which habit is obtaining mastery, to indulge it is courting disaster. When a habit begins to assert itself strongly, break it, for later on it will be very difficult, so difficult that most people lack the will power to overcome it. If there is abnormal hunger, reduce the food intake. Instead of eating five or six times a day, reduce the meals to two or three. It is quite common for such people to take lunches, which may consist of candies, ice cream, cakes, milk or buttermilk and various other things which most people do not look upon as real food. Take two or three meals a day, and let a large part of them be fresh vegetables and fresh fruits. Eat in moderation and the troublesome abnormal hunger will soon leave. By indulging it you increase it. Many people get into trouble because they believe that they have to have protein, starch and fat at every meal. This is not necessary, for the blood takes up enough nourishment to last for quite a while. A supply of the various food elements once a day is sufficient, which means that protein needs be taken but once a day, starch once a day and fat once a day. Starch and fat serve the same purpose and one can be replaced by the other. Cultivate a normal hunger, then fix two or three periods in which to take nourishment, and partake of nothing but water outside of these periods. If there is no desire for food when meal time comes, eat nothing, but drink all the water desired and wait until next meal time. _Second, During acute illness fast_: This is so obviously correct that we should expect every normal individual to be guided by it. Even the lower animals know this and act accordingly. According to this rule we should go without food when ill, but to do so is contrary to the teachings of medical men. They teach that when people are ill there is much waste, which is true, and that for this reason it is necessary to partake of a generous amount of nourishing food, so they give milk, broth, meat, toast and other foods, together with stimulants. Feeding during illness would be all right if the body could take care of the food, which it can not. In all severe diseases digestion is almost or quite at a standstill and the food given under the circumstances decomposes in the alimentary tract and furnishes additional poison for the system to excrete. Food under the circumstances is a detriment and a burden to the body. In fevers, the temperature goes up after feeding. This shows that more poison has entered the blood. In fevers little or none of the digestive fluids is secreted, but the alimentary tract is so warm that the food decomposes quickly. Feeding during acute attacks of disease is one of the most serious and fatal of errors. There is an aversion to food, which is nature's request that none be taken. When an animal becomes seriously ill, it wants to fast, and does so unless man interferes. Here we could with advantage do as the animals do. Nature made no mistake when she took hunger away in acute diseases, and if we disregard her desires, we invariably suffer for it. We should make it a rule to take no food, either liquid or solid, during acute disease. Those who have had no opportunity to watch the rapidity with which people recover from serious illness may take the ground that sick people would starve to death if they were to be treated thus, for some of these acute diseases last a long time. Typhoid fever, for instance, occasionally lasts two or three months. It never lasts that long when treated by natural means, and it is very mild, as a rule. The fever will be gone in from seven to fourteen days in the vast majority of cases, and then feeding can be resumed. Chronic disease is often due to neglected acute disease, at other times to the building of abnormality through errors of life which have not resulted in acute troubles. While acquiring chronic disease, the individual may be fairly comfortable, but he is never up to par. Most chronic diseases can be cured quickly by taking a fast, but usually it is not necessary to take a complete fast. The desire for food is not generally absent and there is usually fair power to digest. One of the most satisfactory methods, if not the most satisfactory one, of treating chronic disease is to reduce the food intake, and instead of giving so much of the concentrated staples, feed more of the succulent vegetables and the fresh fruits, cooked and raw, using but small quantities of flesh, bread, potatoes and sugar. This gives the body a chance to throw off impurities. There are always many impurities in a deranged body. _Third, Be moderate in your eating_: This is often very difficult, for most people do not know what moderation is. In infancy the too frequent feeding and the overfeeding begin. The common belief that infants must be fed every two hours, or oftener, is acted upon. The result is that the child soon loses its normal hunger, which is replaced by abnormal hunger. When food is long withheld it begins to fret. The mother again feeds and there is peace for an hour or so. When mothers learn to feed their children three times a day and no more there will be a great decrease in infant ills and a falling off in the infant mortality. The healthiest children I have seen are fed but three times a day. They become used to it and expect no more. Another thing that makes it difficult to be moderate is impoverishing the food through refinement and poor cooking. These processes take away a great part of the mineral salts which are present in foods in organic form. These salts can not be replaced by table salt, for sodium chloride is but one of many salts that the body needs and an excess of table salt does not make up for a deficiency in the others. Children fed on refined, impoverished foods are not satisfied with a reasonable amount. There is something lacking and this makes itself known in cravings, which demand more food than is needed to nourish. I have noticed many times that children are satisfied with less of whole wheat bread than of white bread, and that the brown unpolished rice satisfies them more quickly and completely than the polished rice. In other words, depriving the foods of their salts is one of the factors that leads to overeating. Simplicity is a great aid to moderation. It is also necessary to exercise the conservative measure, self-control. Some writers suggest to eat all that is desired and then fast at various intervals to overcome the effects of overeating. In other words, they advise to eat enough to become diseased and then fast to cure the trouble. This is better than to continue the eating when the evil results of an excessive food intake make themselves known, but it does not bring the best results. Such people have their spells of sickness, which are unnecessary. If they stop eating as soon as the disease makes itself known, it does not last long. By exercising self-control sickness will be warded off. By using will power daily it grows stronger and those who force themselves to be moderate at first, are in time rewarded by having moderation become second nature. People should always stop eating before they are full. Those who eat until they are uncomfortable are gluttons. They should be classed with drunkards and drug addicts. If discomfort follows a meal it is a sign of overeating. It would be well to read this in connection with the chapter that treats of overeating. _Fourth, Thoroughly masticate all food_: Horace Fletcher has written a very enthusiastic book on this subject. Enthusiasm is apt to lead one astray, and even if thorough mastication will not do all that Mr. Fletcher believed, it is very important, and we owe Mr. Fletcher thanks for calling our attention to the subject forcibly. Thorough mastication partially checks overeating. Our foods have to be finely divided and subdivided or they can not be thoroughly acted upon by the digestive juices. The stomach is well muscled and churns the food about, helping to comminute it, but it can not take the place of the teeth. All foods should be thoroughly masticated. While the mastication is going on the saliva becomes mixed with the food. In the saliva is the ptyalin, which begins to digest the starch. Starch that is well masticated is not so liable to ferment as that which gets scant attention in the mouth. Starches and nuts need the most thorough mastication. If thorough mastication were the rule, meat gluttons would be fewer, for when flesh is well chewed large quantities cause nausea. Milk digests best when it is rolled around in the mouth long enough to be mixed with saliva. To treat milk as a drink is a mistake, for it is a very nourishing food. All kinds of nuts must be well masticated. If they are not they can not be well digested, for the digestive organs are unable to break down big pieces of the hard nut meats. The succulent vegetables contain considerable starch. If mastication is slighted they often ferment enough to produce considerable gas. Fruits are generally eaten too rapidly, and therefore often produce bad results. Even green fruits can be eaten with impunity if they are very thoroughly masticated. Those who are fond enough of liquors to take an excess should sip their alcoholic beverages very slowly, tasting every drop before swallowing. This would decrease their consumption of liquor greatly. Even water should not be gulped down. It should be taken rather slowly, especially on hot days. During hot weather many drink too much water. This tendency can usually be overcome by avoiding iced water and by drinking slowly. These four rules should be a part of your vital knowledge. If you forget everything else in this book, please remember them and try to put them into practice: _Eat only when hungry. During acute illness fast. Be moderate in your eating. Thoroughly masticate all food._ CHAPTER IX. CLASSIFICATION OF FOODS. Food is anything which, when taken into the body under proper conditions, is broken down and taken into the blood and utilized for building, repairing or the production of heat or energy. There are various forms of foods, which can be divided into two classes: First, nitrogenous foods or proteins. Second, carbonaceous, foods, under which caption come the sugars, starches and fats. Salts and water are not usually classified as foods, though they should be, for life is impossible without either. The chief proteins are: First, the albuminoids, which are represented by the albumin in eggs, the casein in milk and cheese, the myosin of muscle and the gluten of wheat. Second, the gelatinoids, which are represented by the ossein of bones, which can be made into glue, and the collogen of tendons. Third, nitrogen extractives, which are the chief ingredients in beef tea. They are easily removed from flesh by soaking it while raw in cold water. They are rich in flavor and are stimulating. They have absolutely no food value. Beef tea, and other related extracts, are not foods. They are stimulants. In truth they are of no value, and those who purchase such preparations pay a high price and get nothing in return. The sugars and starches are grouped under the name of carbohydrates, which means that they are a combination of water and carbon. There are various forms of sugar. About 4 per cent of milk is milk sugar, which agrees better with the young than any other kind of sugar. It is not so soluble in water as the refined cane sugar, and therefore not so sweet, but it is fully as nourishing. Honey is a mixture of various kinds of sugars. Cane sugar is taken principally from sugar beets and sugar cane. There is no chemical difference between the products of canes and beets. Sugars can not be utilized by the blood until it has changed them into other forms of sugar. The use of sugar is rapidly increasing. Several centuries ago it was used as a drug. It was doubtless as effective as a curing agent as our drugs are today. Until within the last sixty or seventy years it has not been used as a staple food. Now it is one of our chief foods. Not so very long ago but ten pounds of sugar per capita were used annually, but now we are consuming about ninety pounds each annually, that is, about four ounces per day. Many people look upon sugar as a flavoring, which it is in a measure, but it is also one of our most concentrated foods. That this great consumption of sugar is harmful there is no doubt. Physicians who practiced when the use of sugar was increasing very rapidly called attention to the increasing decay of teeth. Sugar, as it appears upon the table is an unsatisfied compound. It does not appear in concentrated form in nature, but mixed with vegetable and mineral matters, and when the pure sugar is put into solution it seeks these matters. It is especially hungry for calcium and will therefore rob the bones, the teeth and the blood of this important salt, if it can not be had otherwise. The most noticeable effect is the decay of the teeth. I have read considerable literature of late blaming sugar for producing many diseases, among them tuberculosis and cancer. Improper feeding is the chief cause of these diseases, but to blame sugar for all ills of that kind is far from arriving at the truth. Cancer and tuberculosis killed vast numbers of people before sugar was used as a staple. If we wish to get at the root of any trouble, it is necessary for us to bury our prejudices and be broad minded. People who eat much sugar should also partake liberally of fresh raw fruits and vegetables, in order to supply the salts in which sugar is deficient. Lump sugar is practically pure, and therefore a poorer article of diet than any other form of sugar, for man can not live on carbon without salts. Grape sugar and fruit sugar are the same chemically. Another name for them is dextrose, and in the form of dextrose sugar is ready to be taken up by the blood. Children like sweets, but it is just as easy to give them the sweet fruits, such as good figs, dates and raisins, as it is to give them commercial sugar and candy, and it is much better for their health. Children who get used to the sweet fruits do not care very much for candies. The sugar in these fruits is not concentrated enough to be an irritant and it contains the salts needed by the body. Hence it does not rob the body of any of its necessary constituents. Because the fruit sugar, taken in fruit form, is not so concentrated and irritating as the common sugar, the child is satisfied with less. Sugar is an irritant of the mucous membrane and therefore stimulates the appetite. This is true only when it is taken in excess in its artificial form, and it does not matter whether it is sugar, jelly or jam. For this reason jellies and jams should be used sparingly, because it is not necessary to stimulate the appetite. Those who resort to stimulation overeat. When much sugar is taken, it not only irritates the stomach, but it even inflames this organ. Sugar is a preservative, and like all other preservatives it delays digestion, if taken in great quantities, and four ounces per day make a great quantity. The digestive organs rebel if they are given as much of sugar as they will tolerate of starch. When taken in excess sugar ferments easily, producing much gas, which is followed by serious results. Sugar is changed into forms less sweet by acids and heat. The ferment invertin also acts upon sugars. Sugar is a valuable food, but we are abusing it, and therefore it is doing us physical harm. The quantity should be reduced, and families who are using four ounces per person per day, as statistics indicate that most are doing, should reduce the intake to about one-third of this amount. It would be well to take as much of the sugar as possible in the form of sweet fruits. It is a fact that sugar is easy to digest and that one can soon get energy from it, but feeding is not merely a question of giving digestible aliments, but a question of using foods that are beneficial in the long run. The moderate use of this food is all right, but excess is always bad. Starches need more change than sugars before they can be absorbed by the blood, but they give better results. Chemically there is but small difference between starch and sugar. The starch must be changed into dextrose, a form of sugar, before it can be utilized by the body. The human body contains a small amount of a substance called glycogen, which is an animal starch or sugar. This glycogen is burned. Sugar is a force food. It combines with oxygen and gives heat and energy. The waste product is carbonic acid gas, which is carried by the blood to the lungs and then exhaled. Honey and maple sugar are good foods, but overconsumption is harmful. Sugar eating is largely a habit. Because the sugar has so much of the life and so many of the necessary salts removed in its refinement it is a good food only when taken in small quantities. Nature demands of us that we do not get too refined in our habits, for excessive refinement is followed by decay. It is easy to overcome the tendency to overeat of sugar. Some spoil the most delicious watermelon by heaping sugar or salt, or both, upon it. In this way the flavor is lost. There is not a raw fruit on the market which is as finely flavored after it has been sugared as it was before. True, those who have ruined their sense of taste object to the tartness and natural acidity of various foods, but they are not judges and can not be until they have regained a normal taste, which can only be done by living on natural foods for a while. Fats are obtained most plentifully from nuts, legumes, dairy products and animal foods. They are the most concentrated of all foods, yielding over twice the amount of heat or energy that we can obtain from the same weight of pure sugar, starch or protein. Many who think they are moderate eaters consume enough butter to put them in the glutton class. Salts are present in all natural foods of which we partake. Water is indispensable, for the body has to have fluids in order to perform its functions. Foods are burned in the body. They are valuable in proportion to the completeness with which they are digested and assimilated and the ease with which this process is accomplished. It takes energy to digest food and if the food is very indigestible it takes too much energy. The following remarks on digestibility are according to the best knowledge we have on the subject: As a general rule, the protein of meat and fish is more completely and more quickly digested than the protein in vegetable foods. The reason is that the vegetable protein is found in cells which are protected by the indigestible cellulose which covers each cell. This covering is not always broken and then the digestive juices are practically powerless. The legumes, which are rich in protein, are comparatively hard to digest. If properly prepared and eaten, they give little or no trouble, but they are generally cooked soft and the mastication is slighted. The result is fermentation. Beans, peas and lentils should be very well chewed, and eaten in moderation, for they are rich both in starch and protein. Nuts are as a rule not as completely digested as meats and animal fats, and the principal reason is that they are eaten too rapidly and masticated too little. Nuts properly masticated, taken in correct combinations and amounts agree very well. It is not necessary, as many believe, to salt them in order to prevent indigestion. In the following pages will be found a number of diet tables, giving compositions and fuel values of various foods which have been grouped for the sake of convenience, for the foods in each group are quite similar. These tables are not complete, for to list every food would take too much space. I have simply selected a representative list from the various classes of foods. Under flesh are given fish, meats and eggs. Under succulent vegetables are given both root and top vegetables, because of their similarity. Nuts, cereals, legumes, tubers and fruits are each grouped because it is easy to gain an understanding of them in this way. Milk is given a rather long chapter of its own because of its great importance in the morning of life. Allow me to repeat that it is impossible to figure out the calories in a given amount of food and then give enough food to furnish so many calories and thus obtain good results. I have already given the key to the amount of food to eat, and it is the only kind of key that works well. However, it is very helpful to have a knowledge of food values. The calorie is the unit of heat, and heat is convertible into energy. A calorie is the heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree C. To translate into common terms, it is the heat required to raise one pound of water four degrees F. One pound of protein produces 1,860 calories. One pound of sugar produces 1,860 calories. One pound of starch produces 1,860 calories. One pound of oil or fat produces 4,220 calories. For the scientific facts regarding foods I have consulted various works, especially the following: Diet and Dietetics, by Gauthier; Foods, by Tibbles; Food Inspection and Analyses, by Leach; Foods and their Adulteration, by Wiley; Commercial Organic Analysis, by Allan. However, I am most indebted to the numerous bulletins issued by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. All who make a study of foods and their value owe a great debt to W. O. Atwater and Chas. D. Wood, who have worked so long and faithfully to increase our knowledge regarding foods. As we consider the various groups of foods, directions are given for the best way of cooking, but no fancy cooking is considered. Those who wish fancy, indigestible dishes should consult the popular cook books. The women have it in their power to raise the health standard fifty to one hundred per cent by cooking for health instead of catering to spoiled palates, and by learning to combine foods more sensibly than they have in the past. The art of cooking has made its appeal almost entirely to the palate. This art is not on as high level as the science of cooking, which gives foods that build healthy bodies. The right way of cooking is simpler, quicker and easier than the conventional method, and gives food that is superior in flavor. After the normal taste has been ruined, it takes a few months to acquire a natural taste again so that good foods will be enjoyed. CHAPTER X. FLESH FOODS. ==================================================================== Pro- Carbohy- Calories Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Beef, average 72.03 21.42 5.41 .... 1.14 .... Veal, lean 78.84 19.86 .82 .... .50 .... Mutton, average 75.99 17.11 5.77 .... 1.33 .... Pork, average fat 47.40 14.54 37.34 .... .72 .... Pork, average lean 72.57 20.25 6.81 .... 1.10 .... Rabbit 66.80 22.22 9.76 .... 1.17 .... Chicken, fat 70.06 19.59 9.34 .... .91 .... Turkey 65.60 24.70 8.50 .... 1.20 .... Goose 38.02 15.91 45.59 .... .49 .... Pigeon 75.10 22.90 1.00 .... 1.00 .... Duck, wild 69.89 25.49 3.69 .... .93 .... Black bass 76.7 20.4 1.7 .... 1.2 450 Sea bass 79.3 18.8 .5 .... 1.4 370 Cod, steaks 82.5 16.3 .3 .... .9 315 Halibut, steaks 75.4 18.3 5.2 .... 1.1 560 Herring 74.67 14.55 9.03 .... 1.78 .... Mackerel 73.4 18.2 7.1 .... 1.3 640 Perch, white 75.7 19.1 4.0 .... 1.2 525 Pickerel 79.8 18.6 .5 .... 1.1 365 Salmon 71.4 19.9 7.4 .... 1.3 680 Salmon trout 69.1 18.2 11.4 .... 1.3 820 Shad 70.6 18.6 9.5 .... 1.3 745 Sturgeon 78.7 18.0 1.9 .... 1.4 415 Trout, brook 77.8 18.9 2.1 .... 1.2 440 Clams, long 85.8 8.6 1.0 2.00 2.6 240 Clams, round 86.2 6.5 .4 4.20 2.7 215 Lobster 79.2 16.4 1.8 .40 2.2 390 Oyster in shell 86.9 6.2 1.2 3.70 2.0 230 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The food value of meat depends on the amount of fat and protein it contains. Lean meat may contain less than four hundred calories per pound, while very fat meat may contain more than one thousand five hundred calories. These foods are eaten because they are rich in protein. Protein is the great builder and repairer of the body. It forms the framework for both bone and muscle. We can get along very well without starch or sugar or fat, but it is absolutely necessary to have proteid foods. They are the only ones that contain nitrogen, which is essential to animal life. Nitrogenous foods are used not only to build and repair, but in the end they are burned, supplying as much heat as the same weight of sugar or starch. Proteid foods are generally taken to excess. To most people they are very palatable, and they are generally prepared in a manner that renders rapid eating easy. Besides, meats contain flavoring and stimulating principles, called extractives, which increase the desire for them. The consequence is that those who eat meat often have a tendency to eat too much. Excessive meat eating often leads to consumption of large quantities of liquor. Stimulants crave company. As will be noted, most fish and meat contain about 20 per cent. of protein, while about 75 per cent. is water. The fatter the meat, the less water it contains, and the more fuel value it has. The leaner the meat, the more watery the animal, and the more easily is the flesh digested. Beef is fatter than veal and harder to digest. Also, the flesh of old animals is more highly flavored than that of the young ones, because it contains more salts. For this reason people who have a tendency to the formation of foreign deposits, as is the case with those who have rheumatism and gout or hardening of the arteries, should take the flesh of young animals when it is obtainable. In the past we have been taught to partake of excessive amounts of protein. The prescribed amount for the average adult has been about five ounces. If we were to obtain all the protein from meat, this would necessitate eating about twenty-five ounces of meat daily. However, inasmuch as there is considerable protein in the cereals and milk, and a little in most fruits and vegetables, a pound of meat would probably suffice under the old plan. A few physicians have known that such an intake of protein is excessive, and now the physiologists are learning the same. It has lately been determined experimentally that the body needs only about an ounce of protein daily, which will be supplied by about five ounces of flesh. Three or four ounces of flesh daily make a liberal allowance, for it is supplemented by protein in other foods. Workers eat large quantities of flesh because they think they need a great deal. The fact is that very little more protein is needed by those who do hard physical labor than by brain workers. The extra energy needed calls for more carbohydrates, not for protein. When the organism is supplied with sugar, starch and fat, or one of these, the protein of the body is saved, only a very small amount being used to replace the waste through wear and tear. Though protein can be burned in the body, it is not an economical fuel, either from a physiological or financial standpoint. The energy obtained from flesh costs much more than the same amount of energy obtained from carbonaceous foods. Ten acres of ground well cultivated can raise enough cereals and vegetables to support a number of people, but if this amount of land is used for raising animals, it will support but a few. The protein obtained from peas, beans and lentils is cheap, but these foods do not appeal to the popular palate as much as flesh. Meat immediately after being killed is soft. After a while it goes into a state of rigidity known as rigor mortis. Then it begins to soften again. This third stage is really a form of decay, called ripening. It is believed that the lactic acid formed is one of the principal agents producing this softening. Some people enjoy their meats, especially that of fowls and game, ripe enough to deserve the name of rotten. The ripening produces many chemical changes in the meat, which give the flesh more flavor. Consequently those who indulge are very apt to overeat. It is a fact that those who eat much flesh go into degeneration more quickly than those who are moderate flesh eaters and depend largely on the vegetable kingdom for food. If an excess of good meat causes degeneration, there is no reason to doubt that partaking of overripe foods is even worse. All meat contains waste. If the flesh comes from healthy animals and is eaten in moderation this waste is so small that it will cause no inconvenience, for a healthy body is able to take care of it. If too much is eaten, the results are serious. Overeating of flesh is followed by excessive production of urea and uric acid products. Some of these may be deposited in various parts of the body, while the urea is mostly excreted by the kidneys. The kidneys do not thrive under overwork any more than other organs. The vast majority of cases of diabetes and Bright's disease are caused by overworking the digestive organs. Too much food is absorbed into the blood and the excretory organs have to work overtime to get rid of the excess. Meats are easily spoiled. They should be kept in a cold place and not very long. Fresh meat and fish are more easily digested than those which are salted, or preserved in any other way. Pickled meats should be used rarely The same is true of fish. Ptomaines, or animal poisons, form easily in flesh foods. These are very dangerous, and it is not safe to eat tainted flesh, even after it is cooked. Fish decomposes quickly and fish poisoning is probably even more severe than meat poisoning. Fish should be killed immediately after it is caught, for experiments have shown that the flesh of fish kept captive after the manner of fishers degenerates very rapidly. Fish should be eaten while fresh. Even when the best precautions have been taken, it is somewhat risky to partake of fish that has been shipped from afar. Flesh foods are more easily and completely digested than the protein derived from the vegetable kingdom. From the table it will be noted that some fish is fat and some is lean. The ones containing more than 5 per cent of fat should be considered fat fish. These are somewhat harder to digest than the lean ones, but they are more nutritious. Shell fish is generally low in food value and if taken as nourishment is very expensive. However, most people eat this food for its flavor. COOKING. Cooking is an art that should be learned according to correct principles. Every physician should be a good cook. He should be able to go into the kitchen and show the housewife how to prepare foods properly. Medical men who are well versed in food preparation and able to make good food prescriptions have no need of drugs. The flesh of animals is composed of fibres. These fibres are surrounded by connective tissue which is tough. The cooking softens and breaks down these tissues, thus rendering it easier for the digestive juices to penetrate and dissolve them. That is, proper cooking does this. Poor cooking generally renders the meats indigestible. The simpler the cooking, the more digestible will be the food. Flavors are developed in the process, but these are hidden if the meats are highly seasoned. _Boiling_: When meats are boiled they lose muscle sugar, flavoring extracts, organic acids, gelatin, mineral matters and soluble albumin. That is, they lose both flavor and nourishment. Therefore the liquid in which they are cooked should be used. The proper way to boil meat is to plunge it into plain boiling water. Allow the water to boil hard for ten or fifteen minutes. This coagulates the outer part of the piece of meat. Then lower the temperature of the water to about 180 degrees F. and cook until it suits the taste. If it is allowed to boil at a high temperature a long time, it becomes tough, for the albumin will coagulate throughout. Salt extracts the water from meat. Therefore none of it should be used in boiling. The meat should be cooked in plain water with no addition. No vegetables and no cereals are to be added. All meats contain some fat, and this comes into the water and acts upon the vegetables and starches, making them indigestible. Season the meat after it is cooked, or better still, let everyone season it to suit the taste after serving. Meats that are to be boiled should never be soaked, for the cold water dissolves out some of the salts and some of the flavoring extracts, as well as a part of the nutritive substances. It is better to simply wash the meat if it does not look fresh and clean enough to appeal to the eye, which it always should be. _Stewing_: If meat is to be stewed, cut into small pieces and stew or simmer at a temperature of about 180 degrees F. until it is tender. It is to be stewed in plain water. If a meat and vegetable stew is desired, stew the vegetables in one dish, and the meat in another. When both are done, mix. By cooking thus a stew is made that will not "repeat" if it is properly eaten. Foods should taste while being eaten, not afterwards. _Broths_: If a broth is desired, select lean meat. Either grind it or chop it up fine. There is no objection to soaking the meat in cold water, provided this water is used in making the broth. Use no seasoning. Let it stew or simmer at about 180 degrees F. until the strength of the meat is largely in the water. When the broth is done, set it aside to cool. Then skim off all the fat and warm it up and use. One pound of lean meat will produce a quart of quite strong broth. _Broiling_: Cut the meat into desired thickness. Place near intense fire, turning occasionally, until done. Be careful not to burn the flesh. An ordinary steak should be broiled in about ten minutes. Of course, the time depends on the thickness of the cut and whether it is desired rare, medium or well done, and in this let the individual suit himself, for he will digest the meat best the way he enjoys it most. Beefsteak smothered in onions is a favorite dish. It is not a good way to prepare either the onions or the steak. A better way is to broil both the steak and the onions, or broil the steak, cut the onions in slices about one-half to three-fourths of an inch thick, add a little water and bake them. Beefsteak and onions prepared in this way are both palatable and easy to digest. _Roasting_ is just like broiling, that is, cooking a piece of meat before an open fire. Here we use a larger piece of meat and it therefore takes longer. Of old roasting was quite common, but now we seldom roast meat in this country. _Baking_: Here we place the meat in an enclosed oven. Most of our so-called roast meats are baked. The oven for the first ten or fifteen minutes should be very hot, about 400 degrees F. This heat seals the outside of the meat up quite well. Then let the heat be reduced to about 260 degrees F. If it is kept at a high temperature it will produce a tough piece of meat. The time the meat should be in the oven depends upon the size of the piece of meat and how well done it is desired. While baking, some of the juices and a part of the fat escape. About every fifteen minutes, baste the meat with its own juice. A few minutes before the meat is to be removed from the oven it may be sprinkled with a small amount of salt, and so may broiled and roasted meats a little while before they are done. However, many prefer to season their own foods or eat them without seasoning and they should be allowed to do so. _Steaming_: This is an excellent way of cooking. None of the food value is lost. Put the meat in the steamer and allow it to remain until done. The cheapest and toughest cuts of meat, which are fully as good as the more expensive ones and often better flavored, can be rendered very tender by steaming. Tough birds can be treated in the same way. An excellent way to cook an old hen or an old turkey is to steam until tender and then put into a hot oven for a few minutes to brown. Some birds are so tough that they can not be made eatable by either boiling or baking, but steaming makes them tender. It is best to avoid starchy dressings, in fact dressings of all kinds. A well cooked bird needs none, and dressing does not save a poorly cooked one. Most dressings are very difficult to digest. _Fireless cooking_: Every household should have either a good steamer or a fireless cooker. Both are savers of time and fuel and food. They emancipate the women. Those who have fireless cookers and plan their meals properly do not need to spend much time in the kitchen. Place the meat in the fireless cooker, following the directions which accompany it. However, if they tell you to season the meat, omit this part. _Smothering_ is a modification of baking. Any kind of meat may be smothered, but it is especially fine for chickens. Take a young bird, separate it into joints, place into a pan, add a pint of boiling water. If chicken is lean put in a little butter, but if fat use no butter. Cover the pan tightly and place in oven and let it bake. A chicken weighing two and one-half pounds when dressed will require baking for one hour and fifteen minutes. Keep the cover on the baking pan until the chicken is done, not raising it even once. Gravy will be found in the pan. Pressed chicken is very good. Get a hen about a year old. Place it into steamer or fireless cooker until so tender that the flesh readily falls from the bones. Remove the bones, but keep the skin with the meat. Chop it up. Place in dish or jar, salting very lightly. Over the chopped-up meat place a plate and on this a weight, and allow it to press over night. Then it is ready to slice and serve. This is very convenient for outings. Fish should preferably be baked or broiled. It may also be boiled, but it boils to pieces rather easily and loses a part of its food value. It must be handled with great care. No seasoning is to be used. When served a little salt and drawn butter or oil may be added as dressing. _Frying_ is an objectionable method of cooking. It is generally held, and with good reason, that when grease at a high temperature is forced into flesh, it becomes very indigestible. In fact the crust formed on the outside of the flesh can not be digested. It is folly to prepare food so that it proves injurious. However, there is a way of using the frying pan so that practically no harm is done. Grease the pan very lightly, just enough to prevent the flesh from sticking. Make the pan very hot and place the meat in it. Turn the meat frequently. Fries (young chickens) may be cooked in this way with good results. The same is true of steaks and chops. Avoid greasy cooking. It is an abomination that helps to kill thousands of people annually. _Paper bag cooking_ is all right if it is convenient. Those who have good steamers or fireless cookers will not find it of special advantage. Brown flour gravies are not fit to eat. If there is any gravy serve it as it comes from the pan without mixing it with flour or other starches. It may be put over the meat or used as dressing for the vegetables. Milk gravies are also to be avoided. Use only the natural gravies. Oysters may be eaten raw or stewed. Stew the oysters in a little water. Heat the milk and mix. Eat with cooked succulent vegetables and with raw salad vegetables. It is best to leave the crackers out. The oysters themselves contain very little nourishment, but when made into a milk stew the result is very nutritious. Eggs should be fresh. Some bakers buy spoiled eggs and use them for their fancy cakes and cookies. This is a very objectionable practice and may be one of the reasons that bakers' cookies never taste like those "mother used to make." Eggs take the place of fish, meat or nuts, for they are rich in protein. They may be taken raw, rare or well done. Eggs may be boiled, poached, steamed or baked. Soft boiled eggs require about three and one-half minutes. Hard boiled ones require from fifteen to twenty minutes. The albumin of an egg boiled six or seven minutes is tough. When boiled longer it becomes mellow. Eggs may be made into omelettes or scrambled, but the pan should be lightly greased and quite hot so that the cooking will be quickly done. Eggs are variously treated for an omelette. Some cooks add nothing but water and this makes a delicate dish. Others use milk, cream or butter, and beat. Bacon is a relish and may be taken occasionally with any other food. It should be well done, fried or broiled until quite crisp. This is one place where frying is not objectionable. Pork should rarely be used. It is too fat and rich and requires too long to digest. When eaten it should be taken in the simplest of combinations, such as pork and succulent vegetables or juicy fruits, either cooked or raw, and nothing else. Flesh may be eaten more freely in winter than in summer. Meat especially should be eaten very sparingly during hot weather, for it is too stimulating and heating. Nuts, eggs and fish are then better forms in which to take protein. COMBINATIONS. Flesh foods combine best with the succulent vegetables and the salad vegetables or with juicy fruits. It is more usual to take vegetables with flesh than to take fruit, but those who prefer fruit may take it with equally as good results. Both fruits and vegetables are rich in tissue salts, in which flesh foods are rather deficient. The succulent vegetables contain some starch and the juicy fruits some sugar, but not enough to do any harm. They both act as fillers. Flesh is quite concentrated and it is customary to take it with other concentrated foods, such as bread and potatoes. As a result too much food is ingested. It would be a splendid rule to make to avoid bread and potatoes when flesh food is taken, but if this seems too rigid, make it a rule never to eat all three at the same meal. It is best to eat the flesh foods without bread or potatoes, but if starch is desired, take only one kind at a time. Most people crave a certain amount of food as filler, and they have fallen into the habit of using bread and potatoes for this purpose. This is a mistake. Use the juicy fruits and the succulent vegetables for filling purposes and thus get sufficient salts and avoid the many ills that come from eating great quantities of concentrated foods. When possible, have a raw salad vegetable or two with the meat or fish meal. Eat only one concentrated albuminous food at a meal. If you have meat, take no fish, eggs, nuts or cheese. CHAPTER XI. NUTS. ==================================================================== Pro- Carbohy- Calories Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Acorns 4.1 8.1 37.4 48.0 2.4 2718 Almonds 4.8 21.0 54.9 17.3 2.0 3030 Brazil nuts 5.3 17.0 66.8 7.0 3.9 3329 Filberts 3.7 15.6 65.3 13.0 2.4 3432 Hickory nuts 3.7 15.4 67.4 11.4 2.1 3495 Pecans 3.0 11.0 71.2 13.3 1.5 3633 English walnuts 2.8 16.7 64.4 14.8 1.3 3305 Chestnuts, dried 5.9 10.7 7.0 74.2 2.2 1875 Butternuts 4.5 27.9 61.2 3.4 3.0 3371 Cocoanuts 14.1 5.7 50.6 27.9 1.7 2986 Pistachio nuts 4.2 22.6 54.5 15.6 3.1 3010 Peanuts, roasted 1.6 30.5 49.2 16.2 2.5 3177 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Nuts vary a great deal in composition. They are generally the seeds of trees, enclosed in shells, but other substances are also called nuts. The representative nuts are rich in fat and protein, containing some carbohydrate (sugar or starch.) A few nuts, such as the acorn, cocoanut and chestnut, are very rich in starch, and these should be classified as starchy foods. Very few foods contain as high per cent of starch as the dry chestnut. In southern Europe chestnuts are made into flour, and this is made into bread or cakes. An inferior bread is also made of acorn flour. Chestnuts may be boiled or roasted. They are very nutritious. The more representative nuts are pecans, filberts, Brazil nuts and walnuts. These may be used in place of flesh foods, for they furnish both protein and fats. If the kernel is surrounded by a tough membrane, as is the case in walnuts and almonds, it should be blanched, which consists in putting the kernel in very hot water for a little while and then removing this membrane. The pecan, though it does not contain very much protein, is one of the best nuts, one which can be eaten often without producing dislike. Nuts have the reputation of being hard to digest. If they are not well masticated they are very hard to digest indeed, but when they are well masticated they digest almost as completely as do flesh foods and they produce no digestive troubles. One reason that nuts have obtained a bad reputation is that they are often eaten at the end of a heavy meal, when perhaps two or three times too much food has already been ingested. The result is indigestion and the sufferer swears off on nuts. If he had sense enough to reduce his intake of bread, potatoes, meat, pudding and coffee, the benefit would be very great. The tendency is for the sufferer from indigestion to pick out a certain food and blame all the trouble on that, when in truth the combinations and the quantity of food are to blame. Some vegetarians make nuts one of their principal foods. We can easily get along without flesh, for we can obtain all the protein needed from milk, eggs, nuts and legumes. However, people who are used to flesh are able to digest it when they can take hardly anything else. The foods which we prefer are taken largely because we have become accustomed to them and have formed a liking for them, not because they are the very best from which to select. COOKING. _Nut butter_: Take the nut meats, clean away all the skins and grind fine in a nut mill. Then form into a pasty substance with or without the addition of oil or water, to suit the individual taste. Most nut butters are very agreeable in flavor. Sometimes the nuts are roasted and sometimes they are not. Almond butter is very good. The nut butters soon spoil if left exposed to the air, for the oils they contain turn rancid. Peanut butter can be made by taking clean kernels of freshly roasted peanuts and grinding fine. Some are very fond of this butter. Cocoanut and cocoa butters are not made in this way. They are purified fats, the former from cocoanuts, the latter from the cocoa bean. _Nut milk_: Take nut butter and mix with water until it is of the desired consistency. Cocoanuts contain a sweet liquid which is called cocoanut milk. However, the artificial cocoanut milk is made by pouring a pint of boiling water over the flesh of a freshly grated cocoanut. Let it stand until cold and strain. If it is allowed to stand some hours the fat will rise to the top and form cream. This milk is used by some who object to the use of animal products. Various meals are made from nuts and made into food for the sick. This does no harm, nor does it do any special good. These meals contain more or less starch and the action of starches is much the same, no matter what the source. Please remember that there are no health foods. COMBINATIONS. Nuts are especially fine in combination with fruits. Fresh pecan meats and mild apples make a meal fit for the gods. Nuts may be used in any combination in which flesh is used, that is, they take the place of flesh foods. The starchy nuts take the place of starchy foods. A good meal is made of a fruit salad, consisting of two or three kinds of fresh fruits and nuts. Nuts or nut butter with toast also make a good meal. Nuts have such fine flavor that cooks should think twice before spoiling them. It is very difficult to use them in cookery and get a product that is as finely flavored as the original nuts. The vegetarians use them in compounding what they call roasts, cutlets, steaks, etc. My experience with these imitation products has not been of the best, for though my digestive organs are strong, they do not take kindly to these mixtures. Some of my friends report the same results, in spite of thorough mastication and moderation. These imitation roasts and cutlets usually contain much starch and there is no reason to believe that it is better to cook nut oils into starchy foods than it is to use any other form of fat for this purpose. Those who like starch and nuts can make a splendid meal of nut meats and whole wheat biscuits or zwieback. In eating nuts, always remember that the mastication must be thorough. It takes grinding to break up the solid nut meats and the stomach and bowels have no teeth. Those who can not chew well should use the nuts in the form of butter. Ordinarily two ounces of nut meats, or less, are sufficient for a meal. At present prices, nuts are not expensive, as compared with meat. Meat is mostly water. Lean meat produces from five to seven hundred calories to the pound. Nut meats produce from twenty-seven to thirty-three hundred calories per pound. In other words, a pound of nut meats has the same fuel value as about five pounds of lean meat, but not as great protein value. Those who are not used to nuts have a tendency to overeat, but this is largely overcome as soon as people become accustomed to them. CHAPTER XII. LEGUMES. ==================================================================== Pro- Carbohy- Calories Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb. -------------------------------------------------------------------- _Fresh Legumes_: String beans ......... 89.2 2.3 0.3 7.4 0.8 195 Shelled limas ........ 68.5 7.1 0.7 22.0 1.7 570 Shelled peas ......... 74.6 7.0 0.5 16.9 1.0 465 _Dried Legumes_: Lima beans ........... 10.4 18.1 1.5 65.9 4.1 1625 Navy beans ........... 12.6 22.5 1.8 59.6 3.5 1605 Lentils .............. 8.4 25.7 1.0 59.2 5.7 1620 Dried peas ........... 9.5 24.6 1.0 62.0 2.9 1655 Soy beans ............ 10.8 34.0 16.8 33.7 4.7 1970 Peanuts .............. 9.2 25.8 38.6 24.4 2.0 2560 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Analyses of all foods are approximate. The food value varies with the conditions under which the foods are grown and is not always even approximately the same. The fresh young legumes may be classed with the succulent vegetables. The matured, dried legumes are to be classed both as starchy and proteid foods. They are very easily raised and consequently cheap. They are the cheapest source of protein that we have. Peas and beans are very important foods in Europe. In this country we consume enormous quantities of beans. In Mexico they use a great deal of frijoles, the poor people having this bean at nearly every meal. In China they make the soy beans into various dishes. The lentil is much used in Europe and is gaining favor here, as it should, for it is splendid food, with a flavor of its own. Peanuts, which are really not nuts, but leguminous plants growing their seeds under the ground, are used extensively as food for man and beast. These foods are much alike in composition, the soy bean being exceptionally rich in protein. These foods have the undeserved reputation of being indigestible and of producing flatulence. They are a little more difficult to digest than some other foods, but they cause no trouble if they are taken in simple combinations and in moderation, provided they have been properly prepared. It is necessary to masticate these foods very well, and avoid overeating. They are generally so soft that they are swallowed without proper mouth preparation. The result is that too much is taken of these rich foods, after which there is indigestion accompanied by gas production. One rather peculiar food belonging to the legumes is the locust bean or St. John's bread, which we can sometimes obtain at the candy stores. It grows near the Mediterranean and is used in places for cattle feed. It is so sweet that it is eaten as a confection. Its name is due to the fact that they say St. John lived on this bean and wild honey. If he did he must have had a sweet tooth. Others say that the saint really devoured grasshoppers. It is not easy to decide, but I prefer to believe that he was a vegetarian. COOKING. The fresh young legumes are to be considered in the same class as succulent vegetables, which are dealt with in the next chapter. Ripe peas, beans and lentils may be cooked alike. In cooking ripe legumes, try to get as soft water as possible. Hard water contains salts of lime and magnesia and these prevent the softening of the legumes. _Bean soup_: Clean the beans and wash them. Let them soak over night. Cook them in the same water in which they have been soaked, until tender. They are to be cooked in plain water without any seasoning and with the addition of neither fats, starches nor other vegetables. When the beans are done, meat stock and other vegetables may be added, if desired. Pea soup is made in the same way. The reason for not draining away the water in which the beans are soaked is that it takes up some of the valuable salts, the phosphates for instance. The addition of seasoning or fat while they are cooking makes the beans indigestible. _Baked beans_: Clean and wash well. Soak them over night. Let them boil about three and one-half to four hours, using the water in which they were soaked. Then put them into the oven to bake. They are to be cooked plain and no fat or seasoning is to be added while they are baking. After they are done you may add some form of fatty dressing, such as bacon, which has been stewed in a separate dish, or you may dress them with butter and salt when they are served. Cooked this way they digest much more easily than when cooked in the ordinary way with tomatoes and grease. Some prefer to add either sugar or molasses to the beans when they are put into the oven. Avoid too much sweetening. Lentils may be baked in the same way. _Boiled beans_: The same as bean soup, except that less water is used. Dressing may be the same as for baked beans. Lentils and peas may be treated in the same way. Beans and corn may be cooked together. COMBINATIONS. The legumes are so very rich that they should be eaten in very simple combinations. It is best to take them with some of the raw salad vegetables and nothing else, or with the raw salad vegetables and one of the stewed succulent vegetables. The legumes contain all the protein and all the force food the body needs, so it is useless to add meat, bread and potatoes. Tomatoes and other acid foods should not be used in the same meal, yet beans and tomatoes or beans and catsup are very common combinations. A plate of bean soup makes a good lunch. Bean soup or baked or boiled beans with succulent vegetables, raw and cooked, give all the nourishment needed in a dinner. Pea and bean flours can be purchased on the market. These flours can not be made into dough, but they may be used for thickening. They contain more protein than ordinary flour. Both peas and beans may be roasted, but they are rather difficult to masticate. Roasted peas have a fine flavor. Roasted peanuts are a nutritious food, and may be taken in place of peas or beans. More legumes and less flesh foods will help to reduce the cost of living. Taken in moderation and well masticated, the legumes are excellent foods. CHAPTER XIII. SUCCULENT VEGETABLES. ==================================================================== Pro- Carbohy- Calories Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Asparagus........ 93.96 1.83 2.55 2.55 .67 ..... Beet............. 87.5 1.6 .01 8.8 1.10 215 Cabbage.......... 90.52 2.39 .37 3.85 1.40 ..... Carrot........... 88.2 1.1 .4 8.2 1.00 219 Cauliflower...... 90.82 1.62 .79 4.94 .81 ..... Cucumber......... 95.4 .8 .2 3.1 .5 80 Egg plant........ 92.93 1.15 .31 4.34 .5 ..... Pumpkin.......... 93.39 .91 .12 3.93 .67 ..... Lettuce.......... 94.17 1.2 .3 2.9 .9 90 Okra............. 87.41 1.99 .4 6.04 .74 ..... Onion............ 87.6 1.6 .3 9.9 .6 225 Parsnip.......... 83.0 1.6 .5 13.5 1.4 300 Radish........... 91.8 1.3 .3 8.3 1.0 135 Squash........... 88.3 1.4 .5 9.0 .8 215 Tomato........... 94.3 .9 .4 3.9 .5 105 Spinach.......... 90.6 2.50 .5 3.8 1.7 ..... Kohlrabi......... 87.1 2.6 .2 7.1 1.7 ..... -------------------------------------------------------------------- Lima beans and shelled peas are generally included in this list, though the young lima beans contain about 20 per cent. starch. Look at the cabbage analysis for kale and Brussels sprouts. They are much alike. Most of the vegetables contain from one-half of one per cent. to two per cent. of indigestible fibre, which is not listed above. This is but a partial list of the succulent vegetables. In addition may be mentioned artichokes of the green or cone variety, chard, string beans, celery, corn on the cob, turnips, turnip tops, lotus, endive, dandelion and garlic. These vegetables produce but little energy, for most of them are not rich in protein, fat and carbohydrates, but they have considerable salts, which are given in the tables as ash. Their juices help to keep the blood alkaline, and it would be well for people to get into the habit of eating these foods, not only cooked, but some of them raw. The salts are very easily disturbed and in cooking they are somewhat changed. The best salts we get when we consume natural foods, such as raw fruits and raw vegetables and milk. Another function of the succulent vegetables is to take up space in the stomach. Many like to eat until they feel comfortably full, but if they indulge in concentrated foods to this extent they overeat. The succulent vegetables have the merit of taking up much space without furnishing very much nourishment and they should, therefore, be used as space-fillers. However, they contain enough nourishment to be well worth eating, and most of them are excellent in flavor. This flavor is not appreciated by those who eat much meat and drink much alcohol. The liberal use of these cooked vegetables has a tendency to prevent constipation, and some of them are called laxative foods, such as stewed onions and spinach. PREPARATION. These vegetables may be either steamed or prepared in a fireless cooker. The usual way is to cook them in water. Clean the vegetables. Then put them on to cook in enough water to keep from burning, but use no seasoning. When the vegetables are tender there should be only a little fluid left and those who eat of the vegetables should take their share of this fluid, for it may contain as high as one-half to two-thirds of the salts. When served, let each one season to taste. Avoid the use of vinegar and all other products of fermentation as much as possible. Lemon juice will furnish all the acid needed for dressing. The vegetables may be dressed with salt, or salt and butter, or salt and olive oil, and at times with cream, or with the natural gravy from meats, but avoid the use of flour and milk dressings, usually called cream gravy. These vegetables may also be eaten without any dressing. The water is drained off from corn on the cob, asparagus, artichokes and unpeeled beets. Vegetables should not be soaked in water, for they lose a part of their value if this is done. Cucumbers may be soaked in water to remove a part of the rank flavor, before being peeled. _Spinach_ is prepared as follows: Wash thoroughly. Put about two tablespoonfuls of water in the bottom of the kettle. Put over the fire and let the spinach wilt. Its juice will then begin to pour out and the spinach will cook in its own juice. Let it cook slowly until tender. Serve the spinach with its proportion of the juice. At first this will taste rather strong, but after a while a person will not want the dry, tasteless mess that is drained, usually served in hotels and restaurants. If some of the roots are left on the spinach, it tastes milder. The roots contain sugar. Some of these vegetables, such as summer squash, onions and parsnips may be baked. Onions are very good sliced and broiled, but they should never be fried. Beets are good baked, and especially is this true of sugar beets. Radishes are very delicate and delicious when peeled and boiled, but their preparation is tedious. Egg plant is to be stewed, but not fried. As usually served, dipped in egg, rolled in crumbs and fried it is very indigestible. Beet greens are excellent. They are best if the beets are pulled very young and both the roots and the leaves are used. Turnip tops, dandelion, mustard and Swiss chard are other greens that are good. All of them are prepared like spinach, except that more water is necessary. However, do not use much water. Those who say that the various vegetables are unfit to eat and act accordingly are missing some good food. The vegetables all contain crude fibre, but they hurt the stomach and intestinal walls no more than they hurt the mucous membrane of the tongue. They furnish some bulk for the intestines to act upon, which is good and proper. All animals need some bulky food, otherwise they become constipated. Tomatoes are best raw. If they are stewed they are to be cooked plain. Adding crackers and bread crumbs is a mistake. They taste all right without sugar, but a little may be used as dressing. _Vegetable soup_: Take equal parts of about four vegetables, any that you like. Slice and cook in plain water until tender. When done add enough water or hot milk to make it of the right consistency. Season to taste. One of the constituents may be starchy, such as potatoes, barley or rice, but the rest should be succulent vegetables. COMBINATIONS. The succulent vegetables may be combined with all other foods. They go well with flesh or milk or nuts or starchy foods. With flesh or nuts they make a very satisfying meal. They may be taken with fruit. The tomato grows as a vegetable, but for practical purposes it is a fruit. The tomato combines well with protein, but not so well with the starchy foods. SALAD VEGETABLES. If possible, salads should be made entirely of raw vegetables and raw fruits. The chief salad vegetables are celery, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, onions and garlic, the two last mentioned being used for flavoring. Dr. Tilden, who has done much to popularize raw vegetable salads, has a favorite, which he calls by his own name. It is equal parts of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers, with a small piece of onion. Chop up coarse and dress with salt and olive oil and lemon juice. This is all right for those who like it, but many do not care for such a complex salad with such dressing. Some of the combination salads that are served are wonderful mixtures, containing as many as seven or eight vegetables and a complex dressing. Raw onions are too irritating to use in large quantities, and the same is true of garlic. The best salads contain but two or three ingredients. Take any two of the vegetables mentioned, such as lettuce and tomatoes; lettuce and cucumbers; cabbage and celery; celery and tomatoes, or eat simply one of these green vegetables raw. It is a good thing to eat some of those salad vegetables daily. If your digestion is excellent, you may occasionally take raw carrots or turnips, and a few raw spinach leaves are tasty for a change. Never mind if people tease you about eating grass, for it helps you to keep well. Dress the raw vegetables as your taste allows. Most people want some salt, or salt and lemon juice, or a little sugar, or cream, or salt and olive oil, or salt, olive oil and lemon juice, or mayonnaise on their salad vegetables. Some eat them without any dressing and the flavor is excellent. Tasty salad can be made of fruit and vegetables, using no dressing, but strewing some nuts over the dish. On warm days, such a salad makes a satisfactory lunch. It is all right to make a fruit and vegetable salad. Instead of using tomatoes, take strawberries, apples, grapes, or any other acid fruit. These fruits may be combined with cabbage, lettuce, celery or cucumbers. Do not mix too many foods in a meal, for to do so is indicative of poor taste. Those with refined palates like simple meals, and there is no reason for making salads so complex, when simplicity is a requirement for building health. However, a complex salad made of raw vegetables and raw juicy fruits does not play so much havoc as a mixture of concentrated foods. Lettuce and celery are the most satisfactory salad vegetables to mix with fruits. People who eat raw fruits do not need to eat the raw salad vegetables, for fruits and vegetables supply the same salts. Those who avoid both raw fruits and raw vegetables are not treating their bodies fairly. The vegetable salads are most satisfactory when taken in combination with flesh, nuts or eggs, together with cooked succulent vegetables. They may be eaten with starchy foods, but then they should contain little or no acid. CHAPTER XIV. CEREAL FOODS. ==================================================================== Carbohy- Water Protein Fat drates Ash -------------------------------------------------------------------- Barley. 10.9 12.4 1.8 72.5 2.4 Buckwheat. 12.6 10.0 2.2 73.2 2.0 Corn. 9.3 9.9 2.8 76.3 1.5 Kafir corn. 16.8 6.6 3.8 70.6 2.2 Oats. 11.0 11.8 5.0 69.2 3.0 Rice. 12.4 7.4 .4 79.4 .4 Rye. 11.6 10.6 1.0 73.7 1.9 Wheat, spring. 10.4 12.5 2.2 73.0 1.9 Wheat, winter. 10.5 11.8 2.1 73.8 1.8 First patent flour. 10.55 11.08 1.15 76.85 0.37 Whole wheat flour. 10.81 12.26 2.24 73.67 1.02 Graham flour. 8.61 12.65 2.44 74.58 1.72 Bread, ordinary white. 37.65 10.13 .64 51.14 .44 Bread, whole wheat. 41.31 10.60 1.04 46.11 .94 Bread, Graham. 42.20 10.65 1.12 44.58 1.45 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The cereal foods are important because of their wide distribution and the ease with which they can be prepared and utilized as food. They are very productive and need but little care and hence are a cheap food. The body can digest and absorb sugar and starch more completely than any other kind of food. All civilized people have a favorite cereal. The Chinese and Japanese use rice very extensively, and this grain is growing in favor with us. White people generally prefer wheat, which is an excellent grain that has been used by man for thousands of years. It has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, and it is so retentive of life that it has started to grow after lying dormant for several thousand years. Truly it is a worthy food for man. The table of cereals should be carefully studied. It will be seen that the grains contain much starch, a little fat, and considerable protein. They also carry sufficient of salts, but only a small amount of water. Please note further that patent flour loses nearly all of its salts. Patent flour is the product that is left after all the bran and practically all of the germ have been removed from the wheat. Whole wheat flour, or entire wheat flour, is the name given to the flour that has had a great part of the outer covering of the wheat kernel removed. It is a misnomer. Graham flour, named after Dr. Graham, is the product of the whole wheat kernel, and it will be noted that it is richer in salts and protein than the white flour and the whole wheat flour. The whole wheat flour and Graham flour we find on the market are often the result of blending, which is also true of the patent flour. As we would expect, the various breads are rich or poor in salts according to the flours from which they are made. All the cereals are good foods, but inasmuch as wheat and rice are used most extensively, they will receive more attention than the rest. Wheat is perhaps the best and most balanced of all our cereals. The whole wheat with the addition of a little milk is sufficient to support life indefinitely. It is one of the foods of which people never seem to tire. Tiring of food is often an indication of excess. It is with food as with amusement, if we get too much we become blase. Those who eat in moderation are content with simple foods, but those who eat too much want a great variety, as a rule. There are beef gluttons, who are satisfied with their flesh and liquor, but this is because the meats are so stimulating. Inasmuch as we use so much wheat, it is important that we use it properly. Today people want refined foods, and in refining they spoil many of our best food products. Sugar is too refined for health, rice suffers through refinement, and so does wheat. The wheat kernel contains all the elements needed to support life. In making fine white flour of it, at least three-fourths of the essential salts are removed. This robs the wheat of a large part of its life-imparting elements, and makes of it starvation food. If much white bread is consumed it is necessary to supplement it by taking large quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables, not necessarily in the same meal, in order to get the salts that have been removed in the process of milling. The salts are found principally in the coats of the wheat, and in removing these coats and the germ, not only the salts, but considerable protein is lost. In other words, we remove most of the essential salts and a considerable part of the building material of the wheat, and then we eat the inferior product. The finer and whiter the flour, the poorer it is. White flour has a very high starch content. The products made from it are quite tasteless and lacking in flavor, unless flavoring is added. Those who are used to whole wheat products find the white bread flat. It is possible to consume large quantities of white bread, and yet not be satisfied. There is something lacking. Whole wheat bread is more satisfying and therefore the danger of overeating of it is not so great. The advocates of white flour say that the bran is too irritating for the bowels and for this reason it should be rejected. There is no danger in eating the entire kernel, after it is ground up. The particles of bran are so fine that they do no harm. The intestines were evidently intended for a little roughage, and it might as well come partly from wheat as from other sources. The gentle stimulation produced by the bran helps to keep the intestines active. It is noticeable that consumption of very refined foods leads to constipation. Bran bread and bran biscuits are prescribed for constipation. This is just as bad as removing the bran entirely. Man has never been able to improve on the composition of the wheat berry. When an excess of bran is eaten, it causes too great irritation and in the end the individual is worse off than before. The after effect of irritation is always depression and sluggishness. Recent experiments seem to show that it is not the coarseness of the bran that causes activity of the bowels, but that some of the contained salts are laxative, for the same results have been obtained by soaking the bran in water and drinking the liquid. The products of refined flour are more completely and easily digested than the whole wheat products. However, by eating in moderation and masticating well every normal person is able to take good care of whole wheat products, and the benefit of using the entire grain is so great that we should hesitate about continuing the use of the refined flours and white breads. In the French army it has been found that when the soldiers are fed on refined flour products they are not so well nourished as when they have whole wheat products, and that they must have more of other foods to supplement the impoverished breadstuffs. It is difficult to get people to realize how important it is to give the tissue salts with the foods. Salts are absolutely essential to vital activity, and a lack of salts always results in mental and physical depression and even in disease. No matter what adults are given, children should not be fed on white flour products. They need all the salts in the wheat. Depriving them of salts retards their development and results in decaying teeth and poor bone formation, among other things. They do not feel satisfied with their white flour foods. Therefore they overeat and get indigestion, catarrh, adenoids and various other ills. It is not difficult for people with observing eyes to note the difference in satisfaction of children after they get impoverished foods and the natural foods. Anemia is very common among children, especially among the girls. The chief reason is impoverished foods. Salts can be used by the animal organism only after they have been elaborated by the vegetable kingdom. To remove all the iron from wheat and then give inorganic iron, which can not be assimilated, in its stead, is the height of folly. By all means, use less of the white flour and more of the entire wheat flour. If the white flour habit can not be given up, take enough raw fruit and vegetables to make up for the loss of salts in milling. When rice is properly prepared it digests very easily. It is a little poor in protein, but this can be remedied by taking some milk in the same meal. The rice we ordinarily get is inferior to the natural product. First they remove the bran. Then the flour is taken off. Then it is coated with a mixture of glucose and talcum and polished. All this trouble is taken to make it appeal to the eye. This impoverished rice is lacking in salts. It will not support people in health. In the countries where polished rice is fed in great quantities, they suffer a great deal from degenerative diseases. One of these is beri-beri, in which there are muscular weakness and degeneration, indigestion, disturbances of the heart and often times anasarca. When people suffering from this disease are given those parts of the rice grain lost in making polished rice, they recover. This is proof enough that the cause of the disease is the impoverished food. The rice that should be used is brown and unpolished. When it is cooked it looks quite white. It is very satisfying. Rye is extensively used in some lands. The bread is very good. Oats are largely devoured in Scotland. Corn bread is a favorite food in the southern part of our country. The negroes are fond of corn and pork with molasses, which is far from an ideal combination in warm climates. PREPARATIONS. Wheat makes the best bread because it contains gluten. Among proteins gluten is unique, because it is so elastic and after it has stretched it has a tendency to retain its place. This is what makes bread so porous. There are various meals or flours that can not be made into bread, or even dough, because they lack compounds which will act as frame work. Bread can be made in many ways. The chief question for the housewife to decide is whether to make the bread from entire wheat flour or from patent flour. They are so different in value that a decision should not be difficult. It is also necessary to decide whether to use yeast bread or some other kind. Yeast bread is made essentially from flour, water and yeast in the presence of heat. There are so many ways of making bread of this kind that a recipe is not necessary. The amount of salt to be added depends upon individual taste. Some like to set their yeast working in part potato, part flour. Others use milk instead of water. Some add shortening. And nearly all women believe that their own bread is the best. Yeast is made up of myriads of little plants or fungi, which thrive on the sugary part of the flour. They convert this into alcohol and carbonic acid gas. The alcohol is practically all gone before the bread is brought to the table. The gas raises the bread, assisted by the expansion of the water in the dough when it is placed in a hot oven. The yeast consumes a great deal of the nutritive part of the flour. This may amount to from 5 to 8 per cent. of the food value, and I have read that sometimes it is as high as 20 per cent. Liebig said that the fermentation destroyed enough food material daily in Germany to supply 400,000 people with bread. However, yeast bread is very agreeable to the taste and therefore is probably worth more than the unfermented product. One objection to yeast bread is that all the yeast is not killed in baking, and the alcoholic fermentation may start again in the stomach. If the bread is turned into zwieback this is remedied. Fresh bread is not fit to eat, for it is very rarely properly masticated and if it is merely moistened and converted into a soggy mass in the mouth it is hard to digest. Unleavened bread is made by making the flour into a paste, rolling out thin and baking well. Any kind of flour may be used. This is the passover bread of the Jews. Dr. Graham's bread was made by mixing Graham flour with water, without any leavening, mixing the dough thoroughly, putting this aside several hours and baking. Macaroni and spaghetti are made by mixing durum wheat flour with water, without any leavening. With the addition of eggs we get commercial noodles. The paste is moulded as desired. All bread stuffs should be well baked.. The baking turns part of the starch into dextrine, which is easy to digest. Biscuits should be placed into a hot oven, but bread should be put into an oven moderately heated, otherwise the crust forms too quickly. Whenever a light product is desired, whether it is bread, biscuit or cake, sift the flour over and over again to get it well impregnated with air. The more air it contains the more porous will be the finished product. Five or six siftings will suffice. Unleavened breads of excellent flavor can be made by using either cream or butter as shortening, rolling the bread very thin, like crackers, and baking thoroughly. Shredded wheat biscuits, puffed wheat and puffed rice, flaked wheat and flaked corn are some of the good foods we can purchase ready made. Most of them should be placed in a warm oven long enough to crisp. Masticate thoroughly and take them with either butter or milk, or both. It is best to take the milk either before or after eating the cereal. Sugar should not be added to these foods. Those who are not hungry enough to eat them without sugar should fast until normal hunger returns. _Baking powder bread_ is very good. The essentials are well sifted flour, liquid, good baking powder, quick mixing and a hot oven. The following recipe, recommended by Dr. Tilden, is good: To a quart of very best flour, which has been sifted two or three times, add a little salt and a heaping teaspoonful of baking powder. Sift again three times. Then add one or two tablespoonfuls of soft butter. Mix rapidly into a rather stiff dough with unskimmed milk. The dough should be rolled thin, and cut into small biscuits or strips. Put into a pan and bake in a hot oven until there is a crisp crust on bottom and top, which will take about twenty minutes. The more thoroughly and quickly the dough is mixed, the better the result. These biscuits or bread sticks are good, always best when made rather thin, not to exceed an inch in thickness after being baked. When an attempt is made to bake in the form of a fairly thick loaf it is generally a failure. Use the proportions of white and whole wheat flours desired. If more butter or some cream is added and it is rolled out thin, it serves very well for the bread part of shortcake. _Toast_: Slice any kind of bread fairly thin, preferably stale bread. Place the slices into a moderately hot oven and let them remain there until they are crisp through and through. The scorched bread that is generally served as toast is no better than untoasted bread. _Whole wheat muffins_: One cup whole wheat flour; one cup white flour; one-fourth cup sugar; one teaspoonful salt; one cup milk; one egg; two tablespoonfuls melted butter; four teaspoonfuls baking powder. Mix dry ingredients; add milk gradually, then eggs and melted butter. Put into gem pans and bake in hot oven for twenty-five minutes. _Ginger bread_: One cup molasses; one and three-fourths teaspoons soda; one-half cup sour milk; two cups flour; one-half teaspoon salt; one-third cup butter; two eggs; two teaspoonfuls ginger. Put butter and molasses in sauce pan and heat until boiling point is reached. Remove from fire, add soda and beat vigorously. Then add milk, egg well beaten, and remaining ingredients mixed and sifted. Bake twenty-five minutes in buttered, shallow pan in moderate oven. _Custard_: Three cups milk; three eggs; one-half cup sugar; one-half teaspoonful vanilla; pinch of salt. Beat eggs, add sugar and salt; then add scalded milk and vanilla; mix well. Pour into cups, place them in a pan of hot water in oven and bake twenty to twenty-five minutes. Serve cold. Custard may also be cooked in double boiler or baked in a large pan. This is not a cereal dish, but the next one is. _Rice custard_: To well cooked rice add a few raisins and a small amount of sugar. The raisins can be cooked with the rice or separately. Place the rice and raisins in a baking dish, pour over an equal amount of raw custard and bake as directed for custard. Bake in either individual cups or pan. When done the layer of custard is on top and the rice and raisins on the bottom. _Macaroni and cheese_: Three-fourths cup macaroni broken in pieces; two quarts boiling water; one-half table-spoonful salt. Cook macaroni in salted water twenty minutes, or longer if necessary to make it tender; drain. Put layer of macaroni in buttered baking dish; sprinkle with cheese, and repeat, making the last or top layer of cheese. Pour in milk to almost cover. Put into oven and bake until the top layer of cheese is brown. _Corn bread_: Two cups corn meal; one-half cup wheat flour; one tablespoonful sugar; one-half teaspoonful salt; two teaspoonfuls baking powder; two eggs; one and three-fourths cups milk. Sift corn meal, flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together four or five times; add eggs and milk; stir well, pour into a hot buttered pan; smooth the top with a little melted butter to crisp the crust. Bake a good brown in hot oven. Another recipe for corn bread is: To one cup of wheat flour, add two cups of corn flour; two eggs; one heaping teaspoonful butter or cottolene; one heaping teaspoonful baking powder; one pinch soda, a scant fourth teaspoonful; one-half teaspoonful salt. Prepare and make into batter with milk and bake as directed in first recipe. _Corn mush_: Cook corn meal in plain water until it is done. It may be cooked over the fire, in a fireless cooker or in a double boiler. Serve with rich milk; add a little salt if desired. _Oatmeal_: Put into a double boiler and let it cook until it is very tender. It can also be cooked in a fireless cooker over night. It requires several hours cooking before it is fit to eat. All foods of this nature should be thoroughly cooked, and they may all be made into porridge, which is better. The objection to all mushy foods is that they are hardly ever properly masticated. The result is that they ferment in the alimentary tract, especially when they are eaten with sugar, as they generally are. It is best to take the mushy foods with milk and a little salt or with butter. Eaten in this way there is not such tendency to overeat as when sugar is used. Children especially eat more of these foods than is good for them if they are allowed to take them with sweets. Porridge is more diluted than the mushes and hence the danger of overeating is not so great. _Boiled rice_: The best way to cook it is in a double boiler or a fireless cooker. Every grain should be tender. Cook it in plan water. It is not necessary to stir, but if the rice becomes dry add some more water. If rice and milk are desired, warm the milk and add when the rice is done. Serve like oatmeal. Putting sugar on cereals is nonsense. They are very rich in starch and sugar is about the same as starch. Sugar stimulates the appetite, and consequently people who use it on cereals overeat of this concentrated food. _Rice and raisins_: This is prepared the same as boiled rice, except that raisins are added to the rice and water when first put on to cook. With milk this makes a good breakfast or lunch. COMBINATIONS. Starches of the cereal order may be eaten in combination with fats, such as cream, butter, olive oil and other vegetable oils. They combine well with all the dairy products, such as milk and cheese. Starches combine well with nuts. Take a piece of whole wheat zwieback and some pecans, chew both the bread and the nuts well and you will find this an excellent meal. There is nothing incompatible about eating cereals with flesh, but it generally leads to trouble, for people eat enough meat for a meal, and then they eat enough starch for a full meal. This overeating is injurious. Besides, starch digestion and meat digestion are different and carried on in different parts of the alimentary tract, so it is best to eat starchy foods and meats at different meals. Those who eat in moderation may eat starch and flesh in the same meal without getting into trouble. In winter it is all right to take starch with the sweet fruits. It is best to avoid mixing acid fruits and cereals. Even healthy people find that a breakfast of oranges and bread does not agree as well as one of milk and bread. The saliva, which contains ptyalin, is secreted in the mouth. The ptyalin starts starch digestion, but it does not work in the presence of acid. Eating acid fruits makes the mouth acid temporarily, and consequently the starch does not receive the benefit it should from mouth digestion. The result is an increased liability to fermentation in the alimentary tract. To get the best results it is absolutely necessary to masticate all starchy foods well. If this is not done it is merely a question of time until there is indigestion, generally accompanied by much acidity and gas production. This condition is a builder of many ills. Recipes for pies and cakes are not given in this book. The less these compounds are used the better. They are very popular and can be made according to directions in conventional cook books. Pies should be made with thin crusts, which should be baked crisp both on bottom and top. The best cakes are the plain ones. When desserts are eaten, less should be taken of other foods. Most people make the mistake of eating more than enough of staple foods and then they add insult to injury by partaking of dessert. CHAPTER XV. TUBERS. ==================================================================== Pro- Carbohy- Calories Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Potato............ 78.3 2.2 0.1 18.0 1.0 375 Sweet potato...... 51.9 3.0 2.1 42.1 .9 925 Jerusalem artichoke. 78.7 2.5 0.2 17.5 1.1 The two tubers that are of chief interest are the Irish potato and the sweet potato. The former is easily and cheaply grown on vast areas of land and therefore forms a large part of the food of many people. Properly prepared it is easily digested and very nourishing. The sweet potato is a richer food than the Irish potato, but on account of its high sugar contents people soon weary of it. The southern negroes are very fond of this food. Like all other starches, potatoes must be thoroughly masticated, or they will disagree in time. Potatoes are of such consistency that they are easily bolted without proper mouth preparation. In time the digestive organs object. A new tuber is receiving considerable attention. It is the dasheen. It is said to be of very agreeable flavor, mealy after cooking, and produces tops that can be used in the same manner as asparagus. The dasheen requires a rather warm climate for its growth. PREPARATION. _Baking_: All the tubers may be baked. Clean and place in the oven; bake until tender. A medium sized potato will bake in about an hour. If the potatoes are soggy after being baked they are not well flavored. To remedy this, run a fork into them after they have been in the oven for a while; this allows some of the steam to escape and the potatoes become mealy. When a fork can easily be run into the potato, it is well enough done. If the potatoes are well cleaned, there is no objection to eating a part of the jacket after they are baked. The finest flavoring is right under the jacket. This part contains a large portion of the salts. _Boiling_: All tubers may be boiled. It is best to keep the jacket on, otherwise a great deal of both the salts and the nourishment is lost. If the potatoes boiled in the jacket seem too highly flavored, cut off one of the ends before placing them in the water. It takes about thirty or forty minutes to boil a medium sized Irish potato. Test with a fork, the same as baked potato, to find if done. Potatoes should never be peeled and soaked. If they are to be boiled without the jacket, they should be cooked immediately after being peeled. Steamed potatoes are good. There is no objection to mashing potatoes and adding milk, cream or butter, provided they are thoroughly masticated when eaten. If the potatoes are mashed, this should be so thoroughly done that not a lump is to be found. Potatoes cooked in grease are an abomination. The grease ruins a part of the potato and makes the rest more difficult to digest. Potato chips, French fried potatoes and German fried potatoes are too hard to digest for people who live mostly indoors. They should be used very seldom. COMBINATIONS. Potatoes are best eaten in combinations such as given for cereals. They are commonly taken with meat and bread. This combination is one of the causes of overeating. Occasionally they may be eaten with flesh, but this should not be a habit. Take them as the main part of the meal. Baked potatoes and butter with a glass of milk make a very satisfying meal. A good dinner can be made of potatoes with cooked succulent vegetables and one or two of the raw salad vegetables, with the usual dressings. It is best not to eat potatoes and acid fruits in the same meal. In selecting food it is well to remember that as a general rule but one heavy, concentrated food should be eaten at a meal, for when two, three or even four concentrated foods are partaken of, the appetite is so tempted and stimulated by each new dish that before one is aware of it an excessive amount of food has been ingested. CHAPTER XVI. FRUITS. ==================================================================== Pro- Etherial Carbohy- Calories Water tein Extracts drates Ash per lb. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Apples........... 84.6 0.4 0.5 14.2 0.3 290 Bananas.......... 75.3 1.3 0.6 22.0 0.8 460 Figs, fresh...... 79.1 1.5 ... 18.8 0.6 380 Lemons........... 89.3 1.0 0.7 8.5 0.5 205 Muskmelons....... 89.5 0.6 ... 9.3 0.6 185 Oranges.......... 86.9 0.8 0.2 11.6 0.5 240 Peaches.......... 89.4 0.7 0.1 9.4 0.4 190 Pears............ 80.9 1.0 0.5 17.2 0.4 ... Persimmons....... 66.1 0.8 0.7 31.5 0.9 630 Rhubarb, stalk... 94.4 0.6 0.7 3.6 0.7 105 Strawberries..... 90.4 1.0 0.6 7.4 0.6 180 Watermelon....... 92.4 0.4 0.2 6.7 0.3 140 _Dried Fruits_: Apples........... 26.1 1.6 2.2 68.1 2.0 1350 Apricots......... 29.4 4.7 1.0 62.5 2.4 1290 Citrons.......... 19.0 0.5 1.5 78.1 0.9 1525 Dates............ 15.4 2.1 2.8 78.4 1.3 1615 Figs............. 18.8 4.3 0.3 74.2 2.4 1475 Prunes........... 22.3 2.1 ... 73.3 2.3 1400 Raisins.......... 14.6 2.6 3.3 76.1 3.4 1605 Currants......... 17.2 2.4 1.7 74.2 4.5 1495 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Apricots, avocados, blackberries, cherries, cranberries, currants, gooseberries, grapes, huckleberries, mulberries, nectarines, olives, pineapples, plums, raspberries and whortleberries are some of the other juicy fruits. They are much like the apple in composition, containing much water and generally from 6 to 15 per cent of carbohydrates (sugar). Olives and avocados are rich in oil. You may classify rhubarb, watermelons and muskmelons as vegetables, if you wish. On the table they seem more like fruit, which is the reason they are given here. Melons are fine hot weather food. They are mostly water, which is pure. During hot weather it is all right to make a meal of melons and nothing else, at any time. The melons are so watery that they dilute the gastric juice very much. The result is that when eaten with concentrated foods they are liable to repeat, which indicates indigestion. Fruits are not generally eaten for the great amount of nourishment to be obtained from them. They are very pleasant in flavor and contain salts and acids which are needed by the body. The various fluids of the body are alkaline, and the fruits furnish the salts that help to keep them so. A few secretions and excretions are naturally acid. Sometimes the body gets into a too acid state, but that is very rarely due to overeating of fruit. It is generally caused by pathological fermentation of food in the alimentary tract. The salts and acids of fruits are broken up in the stomach and help to form alkaline substances. The water of the fruit is very pure, distilled by nature. The acid fruits are refreshing and helpful to those who have a tendency to be bilious. Fruits are cleansers, both of the alimentary tract and of the blood. Fruits grow most abundantly in warm climates and that is where they should be used most. In temperate climates they should be eaten most freely during warm weather. Young, vigorous people can eat all the fruit they wish at all seasons, within reason. Thin, nervous people, and those who are well advanced in years should do most of their fruit eating in summer. In winter there is a tendency to be chilly after a meal of acid fruit. In summer such meals do not add to the burden of life by making the partaker unduly warm. The apple is perhaps the best all-round fruit of all. It is grown in many lands and climates. It is possible to get apples of various kinds, from those that are very tart to those that are so mild that the acid is hardly perceptible to the taste. Stout people can eat sour apples with benefit. Thin, fidgety ones should use the milder varieties. The juice from apples, sweet cider, freshly expressed, is a very pleasant drink, and may be taken with fruit meals. The avocado is a good salad fruit. It is quite oily. A combination of avocado and lettuce makes a good salad. Thanks to rapid transportation, the banana has become a staple. It is quite commonly believed that bananas are very starchy and rather indigestible. This may be true when they are green, but not when they are ripe. Green bananas are no more fit for food than are green apples. Ripe bananas are neither starchy nor indigestible. When the banana is ripe it contains a trace of starch, all the rest having been changed to sugar. A ripe banana is mellow and sweet, but firm. The skin is either entirely black, or black in spots, but the flesh is unspotted. The best bananas can often be purchased for one-half of the price of those that are not yet fit to eat. Bananas are a rich food. Weight for weight they contain more nourishment than Irish potatoes. A few nuts or a glass of milk and bananas make a good meal. Bananas contain so much sugar that it is not necessary to eat bread or other starches with them. Those with normal taste will not spoil good bananas by adding sugar and cream. When well masticated the flavor is excellent and can not be improved by using dressings. Be sure that the children have learned to masticate well before giving bananas, and then give only ripe ones. The flesh of the banana is so smooth and slippery that children often swallow it in big lumps, and then they frequently suffer. Lemonade may be taken with fruit or flesh meals. As usually made it is quite nourishing, for it contains considerable sugar. Those who are troubled with sluggish liver may take it with benefit, but the less sugar used the better. Other fruit juices may be used likewise, but they should be fresh. If they are bottled, be sure that no fermentation is taking place in them. These juices may be served with the same kind of meals as lemonade. Most of them require dilution. Grape juice is very rich and a large glassful of the pure juice makes a good summer lunch. It should be sipped slowly. Those who like the combination may make a meal of fruit juice mixed with milk, half and half. Grapes and strawberries, which are relished by most, disagree with some people. The skin of the Concord grape should be rejected, for it irritates many. If they are relished, the skins of most fruits may be eaten. When peeled apples lose a part of their flavor. Olives are generally eaten pickled. The fruit in its natural state tastes very disagreeable to most people. The ripe olive is superior in flavor to the green, which is not usually relished at first. The sweet fruits, by which we mean dried currants, raisins, figs and dates, and bananas should be classed with them, serve the body in the same way as do the breadstuffs, and may be substituted for starches at any time. They may be eaten at all seasons of the year, but are used most during cold weather. A moderate amount of them may be eaten with breadstuffs, or they may be taken alone, or with milk, or with nuts, or with acid fruit. They are very nourishing so it does not take much of them to make a meal. To get the full benefit, masticate thoroughly. They contain sugar in its best form, sugar that not impoverished by being deprived of its salts. Grape sugar needs very little preparation before it enters the blood. Starch and sugar are of equal value as nourishment. It seems that the sugar is available for energy sooner than the starch. Americans generally weary quickly of sweet foods, though they consume enormous quantities of refined sugar, but in tropical countries figs and dates are staple in many places and the inhabitants relish them day in and day out as we relish some of out staples. It is a matter of habit. Those who do not surfeit themselves do not weary quickly of any particular article of diet. PREPARATION Most fruits are best raw. Then their acids and salts are in their most available form. Those who become uncomfortable after eating acid fruit may know that they have abused their digestive organs and they should take it as an indication to reduce their food intake, simplify their diet, masticate better and eat more raw food. Those who overeat of starch or partake of much alcohol cultivate irritable stomachs, which object to the bracing fruit juices. For the sake of a change fruits may be cooked. The more plainly they are cooked the better. Always use sugar in moderation, no matter whether the fruit is to be stewed or baked. To stew fruit, clean and if necessary peel. Stew in sufficient water until tender. When almost done add what sugar is needed. When stewed thus less sugar is required than if the sweetening is done at the start. Stewed fruit can be sweetened by adding raisins, figs or dates. This is relished by many. Figs and dates stewed by themselves are too sweet for many tastes. This can be remedied by making a sauce of figs or dates with tart apples or any other acid fruit that appeals in such combinations. _Baked apple_: Place whole apples in large, deep pan; add about one-third cup of water and one and one-half teaspoonfuls sugar to each apple. Put into oven and bake until skins burst and the apples are well done. Serve with all the juice. _Boiled apple_: Place whole apples in a stewing pan; add two teaspoonfuls sugar and one cup or more of water to each apple; use less sugar if desired. Cover the vessel tightly and boil moderately until the skins burst and the apples are well done. All stewed fruits should be well done. Avoid making the fruit sauces too sweet. _Stewed prunes_: A good prune needs no sweetening. Stew until tender. It is a good plan to let the prunes soak a few hours before stewing them. Raisins may be treated in the same way. Prunes may be washed and put into a dish; then add hot water enough to about half cover them; cover the dish very tightly and put aside over night. The prunes need no further preparation before being eaten. If the covering is not tight it will be necessary to use more water. Raisins and sundried figs may be treated in the same way. Unfortunately, most of our dried fruit is sulphured. Sulphurous acid fumes are employed, and you may be sure that this does the fruit no good. If you can get unsulphured fruit, do so. The sulphuring process is popular because it acts as a preservative and it is profitable because it allows the fruit to retain more water without spoiling than would be possible otherwise. _Canning fruit_: It is very easy to can fruit, but it requires care. Select fruit that is not overripe. The work room should be clean and so should the cans and covers. It is not sufficient to rinse the cans in clean water. Both the jars and the covers should be taken from boiling water immediately before being used. Use only sound fruit, cook it sufficiently, adding the sugar when the fruit is almost done. If you cook the fruit in syrup, do not have a heavy syrup. Put into jar while piping hot, filling the jar as full as possible, put on the cover immediately, turning until it fits snugly; turn jar upside down for a few hours to see if it leaks; tighten again and put in cool place. An even better way, especially for berries, is to fill the jar with fruit, pour syrup over them, put the jars into a receptacle containing water and let this water boil until the berries are done; then fill the jars properly and seal. Some berries that lose their color when cooked in syrup retain it when treated this way. Canned fruits are not as good as the fresh ones, but better than none. Be sure that they are not fermenting when opened. When proper care is exercised a spoiled jar is a rarity. If there is any doubt about the fruit, scald and cool before using. This destroys the ferments. Fresh fruit is the best. Next comes fruit recently stewed or baked. If other fruit can not be obtained, get good dried fruit and stew it. COMBINATIONS. Fruits may be combined with almost any food, except that which is rich in starch, and even that combination may be used occasionally, although it is not the best. I have seen people who were supposed to be incurable get well when their breakfasts were mostly apple sauce and toast. However, sick people should avoid such combining entirely and healthy ones most of the time. Breakfasting on cereals and fruit is a mistake. Those who eat thus may say that they feel no bad results, but time will tell. Nowhere in our manner of feeding does nature demand of a healthy human being that he walk the chalk line. All she asks is that he be reasonable. So if you feel fine and want a shortcake for dinner take it. But the shortcake should be the meal, not the end of one that has already furnished too much food. Fruit combines well with both milk and cheese. The impression to the contrary that has been gained from both medical and lay writers is due to false deductions based on premises not founded on facts. Milk and fruit, and nothing else, make very good meals in summer. _Fruit salads_: A great variety of these salads can be made. Take two or three of the juicy fruits, slice and mix. Dress with a little sugar, or salt and olive oil, or simply olive oil, or no dressing. Some like a dressing of sour cream or of cottage cheese rather well thinned out. Raisins and other sweet fruits may also be used. Ripe banana may be one of the ingredients. Such a salad may be eaten with a flesh or nut meal, or it may be used as a meal by itself. Fruit and cottage cheese make a meal that is both delicious and nourishing. A fruit salad strewed with nuts does the same. Strawberries and sliced tomatoes dressed with cottage cheese make a good meal. Lettuce, celery and tomatoes may be used in fruit salads. A few fruit salads to serve as examples are: Apples, grapes and lettuce; peaches, strawberries and celery; bananas, pineapples and nuts; strawberries, tomatoes and lettuce. Combine to suit taste and dress likewise, but avoid large quantities of cream and sugar, not only on your salads, but on all fruits. No acid should be necessary, but if it is desired, use lemon juice or incorporate oranges as a part of the salad. CHAPTER XVII. OILS AND FATS. Oils and fats are the most concentrated foods we have. Weight for weight, they contain more than twice as much fuel or energy value as any other food. Taken in moderation they are easily digested, but if taken in excess they become a burden to the system. About 7 or 8 per cent of the weight of a normal body is fat, and this fat is formed chiefly from the fatty foods taken into the system, supplemented by the sugar and starch. When the body becomes very fat, it is a disease, called obesity. Fat people are never healthy. The fat usurps the place that should be occupied by normal tissues and organs. It crowds the heart and the lungs, and even replaces the muscle cells in the heart. The result is that the heart and lungs are overcrowded and overworked and the blood gets insufficient oxygen. Not only the lungs pant for breath after a little exercise, but the entire body. Much fat is as destructive of health as it is of beauty. Those who find themselves growing corpulent should decrease their intake of concentrated foods and increase their physical activity. Our chief sources of fat supply are cream and butter, vegetable oils, nuts and the flesh of animals. Most meats, especially when mature, contain considerable fat. When the fat is mixed in with the meat, it is more difficult to digest than the lean flesh. Fresh fish, most of which contains very little fat, is digested very easily, while the fattest of all flesh, pork, is tedious of digestion. There is an instinctive craving for fat with foods that contain little or none of it. That is why we use butter with cereals and lean fish, and oil dressings on vegetables. In moderation this is all right. Fats are not very rich in salts, which must be supplied by other foods. Because of their great fuel value, more fats are naturally consumed in cold than in hot climates. The Esquimeaux thrive when a large part of their rations is fat. Such a diet would soon nauseate people in milder climes. Fats and oils are used too much in cooking. Fried foods and those cooked in oil are made indigestible. Sometimes we read directions not to use animal fats, but to use olive oil or cotton seed oil for frying. It is poor cooking, no matter whether the grease is of animal or vegetable origin. So far as food value and digestibility are concerned, there is no difference between animal and vegetable fats. Fresh butter is very good, and so is olive oil. Some vegetable oils contain indigestible substances. Cotton seed oil and peanut oil are much used. Sometimes they are sold in bottles under fancy lables as olive oil. The olive oils from California are fully as good as those imported from Spain, Italy and France and are more likely to be what is claimed for them than the foreign articles. In the past, much of our cotton seed oil has been bought by firms in southern Europe and sent back to us as fine olive oil! Such imposture is probably more difficult under our present laws than it was in the past. Most oils become rancid easily and then are unfit for consumption. If taken in excess as food they have a splendid opportunity to spoil in the digestive tract, and then they help to poison the system. Taken in moderate quantities they are digested in the intestines and taken into the blood by way of the lymphatics. They may be stored in the body for a while, but finally they are burned, giving up much heat and energy. Taking oils between meals as medicine or for fattening purposes is folly. People get all they need to eat in their three daily meals. Lunching is to be condemned. CHAPTER XVIII. MILK AND OTHER DAIRY PRODUCTS. ==================================================================== Pro- Carbohy- Calories Water tein Fat drates Ash per lb. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Whole milk 87.00 3.3 4.0 5.0 0.7 325 Cream 74.00 2.5 18.5 4.5 0.5 910 Buttermilk 91.00 3.0 0.5 4.8 0.7 165 Butter ..... ... 82.4 ... ... 3475 Cheese, whole milk 33.70 26.0 34.2 2.3 3.8 1965 " skimmed milk 45.70 31.5 16.4 2.2 4.2 1320 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The dairy products vary greatly. Some cows give richer milk than others. Butter may be almost pure fat, or it may contain much water and salt. The cheeses are rich or poor in protein and fats according to method of making. Cottage cheese may be well drained or quite watery. Therefore, this table gives only approximate contents. Milk is not a beverage. It is a food. A quart of milk contains as much food and fuel value as eight eggs or twelve ounces of lean beef. That is, a cupful (one-half of a pint) is equal to two eggs or three ounces of lean beef. This shows that milk should not be taken to quench thirst, but to supply nourishment. Milk is one of our most satisfactory and economical albuminous foods, even at the present high prices. In many foods from 5 to 10 per cent of the protein goes to waste. In milk the waste does not ordinarily amount to more than about 1 per cent. This fluid generally leaves the stomach within one or one and one-half hours after being ingested. In spite of its merits as a food some writers on dietetics advocate that adults stop using it, giving it only to the young. Milk is an excellent food when properly used. When abused it tends to cause discomfort, disease and death, and so does every other food known to man. Milk is given in fevers and in other diseases, when the digestive and assimilative processes are suspended. This is a serious mistake and has caused untold numbers of deaths. When the digestion has gone on a strike all feeding is destructive. Milk and meat broths, which are generally given, are about the worst foods that could be selected under the circumstances, for they decay very easily, and are excellent food for the numerous bacteria that thrive in the digestive tract during disease. These foods must decay when they are not digested, for the internal temperature of the body during fevers is over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. When bacteria are present in excess they give off considerable poison, which makes the patient worse. If circumstances are such that it is necessary to feed during acute disease, which is always injurious to the patient, let the food be the least harmful obtainable, such as fruit juices. Even they do harm. In our country cow's milk is used almost exclusively, and that is the variety that will be discussed in this chapter. In other lands the milk of the mare, the ass, the sheep, the goat and of other animals is used. Human milk is discussed in detail in the chapter on Infancy. The objection voiced against cow's milk is that it is an unnatural food for man, only fit for the calf, which is equipped with several stomachs and is therefore able to digest the curds which are larger and tougher than the curds formed from human milk. It is said that the curds of cow's milk are so indigestible that the human stomach can not prepare them for entry into the blood. This is probably true, but it is also true of other protein-bearing foods. The digestion and assimilation of proteins are begun in the stomach and completed in the intestines, and the protein in milk is one of the most completely utilized of all proteins. To call a food unnatural means nothing, for we can call nearly all foods unnatural and defend our position. A natural food is presumably a nutritious and digestible aliment that is produced in the locality where it is consumed, one that can be utilized without preparation or preservation. So we may say that a resident of New York should not use figs, dates, bananas and other products of tropical and semi-tropical climates, for they are not natural in the latitude of New York. We can take the position that it is unnatural for people to eat grains, which need much grinding, for the birds are the only living beings supplied with mills (gizzards). We can further say that it is unnatural to eat all cooked and baked foods. But such talk is not helpful. The more a person uses his brain the less power he has left for digestion and therefore it is necessary to prepare some of the foods so that they will be easy to digest. Man is such an adaptable creature that we are not sure what he subsisted on before he became civilized and are therefore unable to say what his natural food is. We know that in the tropics fruits play an important part in nourishing savages, while in the frozen north fat flesh is the chief food. Perhaps there is no natural food for man. Some of those who advocate the disuse of milk have a substitute or imitation to take its place, nut milk made from finely ground nuts and water. Like all other imitations, it is inferior to the original. It is more difficult to digest than real milk and the flavor is quite different. The objection that milk is indigestible is not borne out by the experience of those who give it under proper conditions. It is true that milk disagrees with a few, but so do such excellent foods as eggs, strawberries and Concord grapes, and many other aliments which are not difficult to digest. This is a matter of individual peculiarity. Some can take boiled milk, but are unable to take it fresh, and vice versa. Outside of the few exceptions, milk digests in a reasonable time and quite completely. It is easier to digest than the legumes (peas, beans, lentils) which are rich in protein. It is also easier to digest than nuts, which contain much protein. The milk sugar causes no trouble and cream is one of the easiest forms of fat to digest, if taken in moderation. The protein in milk will cause no inconvenience if the milk is eaten slowly, in proper combinations and not to excess. The rennet in the stomach curdles the casein. The hydrochloric acid and the pepsin in the gastric juice then begin to break down and dissolve the clots, and the process of digestion is completed in the small intestines. Those who overeat of milk in combination with other foods will derive benefit from omitting the milk. They will also be benefitted if they continue using milk and omit either the starch or the meat. When foods disagree, in nearly every instance it is due to the fact that too much has been eaten and too many varieties partaken of at a meal. Some may single out the milk or the meat as the offenders. Others may point to the starches, and still others to the vegetables with their large amount of indigestible residue. They are all right and all wrong, for all the foods help to cause the trouble. However, such reasoning does not solve the problem. If the meals cause discomfort and disease, reduce the amount eaten, take fewer varieties at a meal and simplify the cooking. Those who eat simple meals and are moderate are not troubled with indigestion. Those who eat such mushy foods as oatmeal and cream of wheat usually take milk or cream and sugar with them. This should not be done, for such dressing stimulates the appetite and leads to undermastication. Neither children nor adults chew these soft starchy foods enough. The result is that the breakfast ferments in the alimentary tract. After a few months or years of such breakfasts, some kind of disease is sure to develop. Mushy starches dressed with rich milk and sugar are responsible for a large per cent. of the so-called diseases of children, which are primarily digestive disturbances. Colds, catarrhs and adenoids are, of course, due to improper eating extending over a long period of time. Nothing should be eaten with mushy starches except a little butter and salt. After enough starch has been taken, a glass of milk may be eaten. If parents would only realize that they are jeopardizing the health and lives of their dear ones when they feed them habitually on these soft messes, which ferment easily, there would be a remarkable decrease in the diseases of childhood and in the disgraceful infant and childhood mortality, for several hundred thousand children perish annually in this country. Milk is often referred to as a perfect food, and it is the perfect food for infants. The young thrive best on the healthy milk given by a female of their own species. Every baby should be fed at the breast. The milk contains the elements needed by the body. The table at the head of this chapter shows that milk contains all essential aliments. The ash is composed of the various salts necessary for health, containing potassium, chlorine, calcium, magnesium, iron, silicon and other elements. For the nourishment of the body we need water, protein, fat, carbohydrates and salts, so it will be seen that milk is really a complete food. However, as the body grows the nutritive requirements change and milk is therefore not a balanced food for adults. It may be interesting to note that there is no starch in milk and that infants fed at the breast exclusively obtain no starchy food. Many babies get no starch for nine, ten or even twelve months, and this is well, for they do not need it. They grow and flourish best without it. Milk is an emulsion. It is made up of numerous tiny globules floating in serum. The size of the globules varies, but the average is said to be about 1/10,000 of an inch in diameter. These globules are fatty bodies. There are other small bodies, containing protein and fat, which have independent molecular movement. The milk is a living fluid. When it is tampered with it immediately deteriorates. Without doubt, nature intended that the milk should go directly from the mammary gland into the mouth of the consumer, but this is not practicable when we take it away from the calf. However, if we are to use sweet milk it is best to consume it as nearly like it is in its natural state as possible. It is quite common to drink milk rapidly. This should not be done. Take a sip or a spoonful at a time and move it about in the mouth until it is mixed with saliva. It is not necessary to give it as much mouth preparation as is given to starchy food. If it is drunk rapidly like water large curds from in the stomach. If it is insalivated it coagulates in smaller curds and is more easily digested, for the digestive juices can tear down small soft curds more easily than the large tough ones. Milk should not form a part of any meal when other food rich in protein is eaten. Our protein needs are small, and it is easy to get too much. Whole wheat bread and milk contain all the nourishment needed. On such a diet we can thrive indefinitely. This is information, not a recommendation. The bread should be eaten either before or after partaking of the milk. Do not break the bread into the milk. If this is done, mastication will be slighted. Bread needs much mastication and insalivation. When liquid is taken with the bread, the saliva does not flow so freely as when it is eaten dry. Fruit and milk make a good combination, but no starchy foods are to be taken in this meal. Take a glass of milk, either sweet or sour, and what fruit is desired, insalivating both the fruit and the milk thoroughly. If you have read that the combination of fruit and milk has proved fatal, rest assured that those who made such reports only looked at the surface, for other foods and other influences were having their effects on the system. Many people die of food-poisoning and apoplexy. These bad results are due to wrong eating covering a long period and it is folly to blame the last meal. It would be queer if fruit and milk were not occasionally a part of the last meal. In winter, figs, dates or raisins with milk make an excellent lunch or breakfast. These fruits take the place of bread, for though they are not starchy, they contain an abundance of fruit sugar, which is more easily digested than the starch. Starch must be converted into sugar before the system can use it. On hot days milk and acid fruit make a satisfying meal. Many believe that milk and acid fruit should not be taken in the same meal, because the acid curdles the milk. As we have already seen, the milk must be curdled before it can be digested. If this step in digestion is performed by the acid in the fruit no more harm is done than when it is performed by the lactic acid bacteria. Fruit juices and milk do not combine to form deadly poisons. If fruit and milk are eaten in moderation and no other food is taken at that meal the results are good. However, if fruit, milk, bread, meat, cake and pickles make up the meal, the results may be bad. Such eating is very common. But do not blame the fruit and the milk when the whole meal is wrong. Likewise, if a hearty meal has been eaten and before this has had time to digest a lunch is made of fruit and milk, trouble may ensue. All the foods may be good, but a time must come when the body will object to being overfed. In summertime much less food is needed than during the cold months. Nevertheless, barring the Christmas holidays and Thanksgiving, people overeat more in summer than at any other time of the year. Picnics often degenerate into stuffing matches. We should expect many cases of serious illness to follow them, and such is the case. Sometimes the milk is so carelessly handled that it becomes poisonous and at other times the fruit is tainted, but generally bad combinations and overeating are the factors that cause trouble when the fruit and milk combination is blamed. Buttermilk and clabbered milk are more easily digested by many than is the fresh milk. In Europe sour milk is a more common food than in this country. Here many do not know how excellent it is. Two glasses of milk, or less, make a good warm-weather lunch. Those who have a tendency to be bilious should use cream very sparingly. Bilious people always overeat, otherwise their livers would not be in rebellion. The fat, in the form of cream, arouses decided protest on the part of overburdened livers. A theory has found its way into dietetic literature, sometimes disguised as a truth, to the effect that boiled or hot milk is absorbed directly into the blood stream without being digested. This is contrary to everything we know about digestion and assimilation, and although it is a fine enough theory it does not work out in practice. I have seen bad results when nothing but a small amount of the hot milk was fed to patients with weak digestive power. Perhaps others have had better results. When the system demands a rest from food, nothing but water should be given. Boiled or natural milk is then as bad as any other food, and worse than most, for in the absence of digestive power it soon becomes a foul mass, swarming with billions of bacteria. The system is compelled to absorb some of the poisons given off by the micro-organisms and the results are disastrous. Every food we take must be modified by our bodies before entering the circulation, and milk is no exception. When milk is allowed to stand for a while the sugar ferments, through the action of the lactic acid bacteria. The sugar is turned into lactic acid, which combines with the casein and when this process has continued for a certain length of time the result is clabbered milk or sour milk. The length of time varies with the temperature and the care given the milk. If milk remains sweet for a long time during warm weather, discharge the milkman and patronize one whose product sours more quickly, for milk that remains sweet has been subjected to treatment. All kinds of preservative treatment cause deterioration. If extraordinary care is taken with the milk and it is kept at a temperature of about forty-two degrees Fahrenheit, it may remain sweet five or six weeks, provided it is not exposed to the air, but such care is at present not practicable in commercial dairies. The milk contains unorganized ferments which spoil it in time without exposure to bacterial influences. These ferments cause digestion or decay of the milk. Fresh butter is a palatable form of fat, which digests easily. Like all other milk products, it must be kept clean and cold, or it will soon spoil. Butter absorbs other flavors quickly and should therefore not be placed near odorous substances. It is best unsalted and in Europe it is very commonly served thus. When people learn to demand unsalted butter they will get good butter, for no one can palm off oleomargarine or other imitations under the guise of fresh unsalted butter. Unsalted butter must be fresh or it will be refused by the nose and the palate. Salt and other preservatives often conceal age and corruption of foods. Butter combines well with starches and vegetables, in fact, it can be used in moderation with any other food, when the body needs fat. Butter should not be used to cook starches or proteins in. Greasy cooking should be banished from our kitchens. Milk is a complex food, highly organized, and therefore is easily injured or spoiled. The general rule is that the more complex a food is, the more easily it spoils. It is rather difficult at present to get wholesome milk enough to supply the people of our large cities. When it is boiled, the milk keeps longer, but boiled milk is spoiled milk. The fine flavor is lost, the casein, which is the principal protein of milk, is toughened, the milk, which is normally a living liquid, is killed, the chemical balance is lost, the organic salts being rendered partly inorganic. Milk that is unfit to eat without being boiled is not fit to eat afterwards, for the poisonous end products of bacterial life remain. The milk is soured by the bacteria it contains. The lactic acid bacteria are harmless. When there is a lack of care and cleanliness, other bacteria get into the milk, and these are also harmless to people in good health, and most of them are not injurious to sick people. The bacteria (germs) do not cause disease, but when disease has been established, they offer their kindly offices as scavengers. Bacteria thrive in sick people, especially when they are fed when digestive power is lacking. Boiling retards the souring of milk, but when fat and protein are boiled together the protein becomes hard to digest. Milk is rich in both fat and protein. Excessive heat turns the milk brown, the milk sugar being carameled. Babies do not thrive on boiled milk. They may look fat, but instead of having the desirable firmness of normal children, they are puffy. Children fed on denatured milk fall victims to diseases very easily, especially to diseases which are due to lack of organic salts, such as rickets and malnutrition. Pasteurization of milk is very popular. This is objectionable for the same reasons that boiling is condemned, though not to the same extent. Pasteurization is heating the milk to about 140 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit. This kills many of the bacteria, but many escape and when the milk is cooled off they begin to multiply and flourish again. It is estimated that pasteurized milk contains one-fourth as many bacteria as natural milk. So nothing is gained, and the milk is partly devitalized. The advocates of pasteurization give statistics showing that milk so treated has been instrumental in decreasing infant mortality. But please bear in mind that previously a great deal of milk unfit for consumption was fed to the babies. Those who pasteurize milk generally are careful enough to see that they get a good product in the first place. If we can't get good milk we can do without it, for it is not a necessary food, but we can get good milk if we make the effort. If the milk is filthy, boiling or pasteurizing does not remove the dirt. Gauthier says of pasteurization: "Sometimes it is heated up to 70 degrees (Centigrade) with pressure of carbonic acid. But even in this case pasteurization does not destroy all germs, particularly those of tuberculosis, peptonizing bacteria of cowdung, and the dust of houses and streets, etc." Even boiling does not kill the spores of bacteria unless it is continued until the milk is rendered entirely unfit for food. To kill these spores it is necessary to boil the milk several times. The spores are small round or oval bodies which form within the bacterial envelope when these micro-organisms are subjected to unfavorable conditions. The spores resist heat and cold that would kill almost any other form of life. When conditions are favorable they develop into bacteria again. After heating, the cream does not rise so quickly nor does it separate so completely as it does in natural milk. This is due to the toughening of the casein in the milk. Heating partly disorganizes the delicately balanced salts contained in the milk. The result is that they can not be utilized so easily and completely by the body, for the human organism demands its food in an organic state, that is, in the condition built up by vegetation or by animals. We may consume iron filings and remain anemic, in fact, the effect the iron medication has is to ruin the teeth, digestive organs and other parts of the body as a consequence. But if we partake of such foods as apples, cabbage, lettuce and spinach, the necessary salt is taken into the blood. Heating milk also makes it constipating. True, normal people can take boiled milk without becoming constipated, but how many normal people are there? We are sorely enough afflicted in this way now. Let us have a supply of natural milk or go without it. It is not my desire to convey the impression that it does any harm to scald or boil milk occasionally, but if done daily it does harm, especially to the young. Scalded milk has its proper place in dietetics. Occasionally we find a person who has persistent chronic diarrhea. If he is in condition to eat anything, this annoying affliction is usually overcome in a reasonable time if the patient will take boiled or scalded milk in moderation three times a day, and nothing else except water. How are we to obtain good milk? We can do it by using common sense, care and cleanliness. It is well to remember that there are bacteria in all ordinary milk, and that if the milk is from healthy cows and is kept clean and cold these bacteria are harmless. Most of them are the lactic acid bacteria, which change the milk sugar into acid. When the milk has attained a certain degree of acidity, the lactic acid bacteria are unable to thrive and the souring process is slowed up and finally stopped. Most of the other bacteria in milk perish when lactic acid is formed. This is why stale sweet milk is often harmful, when the same kind of milk allowed to sour can be taken with impunity. If the milk is kept in a cold place the bacteria multiply slowly. If it is kept in a warm place they increase in numbers at a rate that is marvelous, and consequently the milk sours much sooner. Even if the milk is kept cold, bacterial growth will soon take place, but it will perhaps not be lactic acid bacteria. It may be a form that causes the milk to become ropy and slimy or one that gives it a bad odor. Bacteria are like other forms of vegetation, such as grass, weeds, flowers and trees, in that some flourish best under one condition and others under dissimilar conditions, and they struggle one against the other for subsistence and existence. Like flowers there are thousands of different forms of bacteria and they vary according to their food and environment. Peculiar odors in milk generally come from certain kinds of food given to the cows, such as turnips; from bacterial action; or from flavors absorbed from other foods or from odors in the air. Milk should not be exposed to odorous substances, for it becomes tainted very quickly. Sometimes yeast finds its way into milk and causes decomposition of the sugar with the formation of carbon dioxide and alcohol. A count of the bacteria in milk often serves a good purpose, for it shows whether it is good and has had proper care. The consumers have a right to demand milk low in bacteria, for if no preservatives have been used, that means clean milk. If we could live in our pristine state of beatific bliss, if such it was, we would not have to use milk after childhood is past, but our present condition demands the use of easily digested foods and to many milk is almost a necessity. The milk in the udder of a healthy cow is almost surely free from bacteria, but the moment it is exposed to the air these little beings start to drop into the fluid. The bacterial standards given by various city health departments vary. Those who are mathematically inclined may find the following figures interesting: In some great cities they allow 500,000 bacteria to the cubic centimeter of milk. A cubic centimeter contains about twenty-five drops. In other words, they allow 20,000 bacteria per drop. This may seem very lively milk, but these bacteria are so small that about 25,000 of them laid end to end measure only about an inch, and it would take 17,000,000,000,000 of them to weigh an ounce, according to estimates. These are the tiny vegetables we hear and read so much about, that we are warned against and fear so much. Truly the pygmies are having their innings and making cowards of men. The bacteria multiply by the simple process of growing longer and splitting into two, fission, as it is called, and the process is so rapid that within an hour or two after being formed a bacterium may be raising a family of its own. Some of the milk brought to the cities contains as many as 15,000,000 bacteria per cubic centimeter, that is, about 600,000 per drop. This milk is either very filthy or it has been poorly cared for and should not be given to babies and young children. The filthiest milk may contain several billion bacteria to the cubic centimeter. By using care milk containing but 100, or even fewer, bacteria per drop can be produced. From the standpoint of cleanliness this is excellent milk. Of course, the dairyman who takes pride enough in his work to produce such milk will sell nothing but what is first-class, and if he has business acumen he can always get more than the market price for his product. The talk about germs has been overdone, but no one can deny that the study of bacteriology has made people more careful about foods. The filthy dairies that were the rule a few years ago are slowly being replaced by dairies that are comfortable, well lighted and clean. Do not allow the germs to scare you, for if ordinary precautions are taken no more of them will be present than are necessary, and they are necessary. They thrive best in filth, and they are dangerous only to those who live so that they have no resistance. Wholesome milk can be produced only by healthy animals. Bovine health can be secured by the same means as human health. The cows must be properly fed and housed. They must have both ventilation and light. They must not be unduly worried. If a nursing of an angry mother's milk is at times poisonous enough to kill a baby, you may be sure that the milk from an abused, irritated and angry cow is also injurious. If the animals are kept comfortable and happy they will do the best producing, both in quality and quantity. It may sound far-fetched to some to advocate keeping animals happy in order to get them to produce much and give quality products, but it is good science and good sense. Happy cows give more and better milk than the mistreated ones. The singing hens are the best layers. Cows should have fresh green food all the year, and this can be obtained in winter time by using silage. It is a mistake to give cows too much of concentrated foods, such as oil meals and grains. Cattle can not long remain well on exclusive rations of too heating and stimulating foods. When fed improperly they soon fall prey to various diseases, such as rheumatism and tuberculosis. It is the same with other domestic animals. The horse when overfed on grain develops stiff joints. The hogs that are compelled to live exclusively on concentrated, heating rations are liable to die of cholera. Young turkeys that have nothing but corn and wheat to eat die in great numbers from the disease known as blackhead. It is the same law running all through nature, applying to the high and to the low, that improper nourishment brings disease and death. When cattle roam wild, the green grasses (sundried in winter) are their principal source of food. Man should be careful not to deviate too much, for forced feeding is as harmful to animals as it is to man. The following excellent recommendations for the care of milk are given by Dr. Charles E. North of the New York City Milk Commission: "No coolers, aerators, straining cloths or strainers should be used. "The hot milk should be taken to the creamery as soon as possible. "The night's milk should be placed in spring or iced water higher than the milk on the inside of the can. It should not be stirred, and the top of the can should be open a little way to permit ventilation. "The milking pails and cans will be sterilized and dried at the creamery, and should be carefully protected until they are used. "Brush the udder and wipe with a clean cloth; wash with clean water and dry with a clean towel. "Whitewash the cow stable at least twice yearly. "Feed no dusty feed until after milking. "Remove all manure from cow stable twice daily. "Keep barnyard clean and have manure pile at least 100 feet from the stable. "Have all stable floors of cement, properly drained. "Have abundant windows in cowstables to permit sunlight to reach the floor. "Arrange a proper system of ventilation. "Do not use milk from any cows suspected of gargot or of any udder inflammation. Such milk contains enormous numbers of bacteria. "Brush and groom cows from head to foot as horses are groomed. "Use no dusty bedding; wood shavings or sawdust give least dust. "Use an abundance of ice in water tank for cooling milk." Perhaps some will take issue with the doctor on the first paragraph of his recommendation. If straining cloths are used they should be well rinsed in tepid water, washed and then boiled. However, if his recommendations are carried out in letter and spirit no straining is necessary. Herr Klingelhofer near Dusseldorf, Germany., runs a model dairy. The cows, stables, milkers, containers, in fact, all things connected with the dairy are scrupulously clean. The milkers do not even touch the milk stools, carrying them strapped to their backs. The milk is strained through sterilized cotton and cooled. The cows are six and seven years old and are milked for ten or twelve months and they are not bred during this time. The first part of the milk drawn from each teat is not used, for that part is not clean, containing dirt and bacteria. This milk is practically free from bacteria, for without adding preservatives it will remain sweet, for as long as thirteen days. If ordinary milk fails to sour in two or three days it shows that it has been treated. According to the Country Gentleman, it will cost from one cent and a quarter to one cent and three-quarters extra per quart to produce clean milk. Healthy adults can take milk teeming with bacteria without harm, but for babies it is best to have very few or none in the milk. At Dusseldorf the babies used to die as they do here when fed unclean milk. Herr Klingelhofer says that when fed on his product "sterben keine." (None die.) This is submitted to those who advocate pasteurizing the milk. Denatured milk makes sickly babies. Clean natural milk makes healthy babies. The extra cost of less than two cents a quart is not prohibitive. Most fathers, no matter how poor, waste more than that daily on tobacco and alcoholics. The extra cost would be more than saved in lessened doctor bills, to say nothing of funeral expenses. The recompense that comes from the satisfaction of having thriving, sturdy, healthy children can not be figured in dollars and cents. Dr. Robert Mond, of London, after investigating for years, has come to the conclusion that sterilized milk predisposes to tuberculosis, instead of preventing it. He believes that milk so treated is so inferior that he would not personally use it. That sterilized milk predisposes to tuberculosis, as well as to other diseases which can attack the body only when it is run down, is natural. Any food that has been rendered inferior can not build the robust health that comes to those who live on natural food. Adults who use sterilized milk should counteract its bad effects by partaking liberally of fresh fruits and vegetables. If the milk is clean, put into clean containers by careful milkers and is then kept cold until delivered, it will reach the consumers in good condition. Do not let the fact that when you consume a glass of milk you are also engulfing some millions of bacteria bother you, for bacteria are necessary to our existence. If all the bacteria on earth should perish, it would also mean the end of the human race. Today the progressive farmer is coming to the fore. He is a man who is justly proud of his work, so it will probably not be long before all city people who desire clean milk can get it. The milk cure consists in feeding sick people on nothing but milk for varying periods. Generally the patient is told to either take great quantities three or four times a day, or to take smaller quantities perhaps every half hour. The milk cure has no special virtue, except that it is a monotonous diet. The body soon rebels if forced to subsist on an excessive amount of but one kind of food. The individual loses his desire for food and even becomes nauseated. If the advocates of the milk cure would prescribe milk in moderation, instead of in excess, they would have better success. (It is fully as harmful to partake of too much milk as it is to eat excessively of other foods.) The benefit derived from the milk cure comes from the simplicity, not from the milk. A grape cure, an orange cure or a bread and milk cure would be as beneficial. The milk cure is ancient. It was employed twenty-five centuries ago. _Clabbered milk_: Clabbered milk or sour milk needs no special preparation. Put the milk into an earthen or china dish. Do not use metal dishes, for the lactic acid acts upon various metals. Cover the dish so as to keep particles of matter in the air away, but the covering is not to be airtight. Put the dish in a warm place, but not in the sun. Milk that sours in the sun or in an air-tight bottle is generally of poor flavor. Clabbered milk is a good food. It does not form big, tough curds in the stomach, it is easy to digest, and the lactic acid helps to keep the alimentary tract sweet. The various forms of milk may be used in similar combinations. _Buttermilk_: The real buttermilk is what remains of the cream after the fat has been removed by churning. It is slightly acid and has a characteristic taste, to most people very agreeable. The flavor is different from that of artificially made buttermilk. In composition it is almost like whole milk, except that it contains very little fat. Many people make buttermilk by beating the clabbered milk thoroughly, until it becomes light. The buttermilk made from sweet milk and the various brands of bacterial ferments obtainable at the drug stores is all right. These ferments have as their basis the lactic acid bacteria, and if the manufacturers wish to call their germs by other names, such as Bacillus Bulgaricus, no harm is done. It is unnecessary to add any of these ferments, for the milk clabbers about as quickly without them. Buttermilk is an excellent food. The casein can be seen in fine flakes in the real buttermilk. Adults usually digest buttermilk and clabbered milk more easily than the sweet milk. The lactic acid seems to be quite beneficial. Metchnikoff thought for a while that he had discovered how to ward off decay and old age by means of the lactic acid bacteria in milk. Milk can be clabbered quickly by adding lemon juice to sweet milk. _Junket_: Add rennet to milk and let it stand until it thickens. The milk is not to be disturbed while coagulation takes place, for agitation will cause a separation of the whey. The rennet can be bought at the drug stores. _Whey_ contains milk sugar, some salts, and a little albumin. It is easily digested, but not very nourishing. It is what is left of the milk after the fat and almost all of the protein are removed. _Cottage cheese_: This is sometimes called Dutch cheese or white cheese. It is a delicious and nutritious dairy product that is easy to digest. Put the clabbered milk in a muslin bag, hang the bag up and allow the milk to lose its whey through drainage. In summer this bag must be kept in a cool place. After draining, beat the curds. Then add enough clabbered milk to make the curds soft when well beaten. A small amount of cream may also be added. Cottage cheese made in this way is superior in flavor and digestibility to that which has been scalded. No seasoning is needed. A little salt is allowable, but sugar and pepper should not be used. Fruit and cottage cheese make a satisfying as well as nutritious meal. Delicious cottage cheese is also made by using the whole clabbered milk. Hang it up to drain in a bag until it has lost a part of its whey. Then beat it until the curds are rather small, but not fine. No milk or cream is to be added to this, for it contains all the fat that is in the whole milk. Do not drain this cheese so long that it becomes dry. _Other cheeses_: The various cheeses on the market are made principally from ripened curds, with which more or less fat has been mixed. The ripening is a form of decay, and it is no exaggeration to say that some of the very ripe cheeses on the market are rotten. The flavors are due to ferments, molds and bacteria, which split up the proteins and the fats. The mild cheeses are generally good and may be eaten with fruits or vegetables or with bread. Two or three ounces are sufficient for the protein part of the meal, taking the place of flesh. Use less if less is desired. When cheese becomes very odorous and ripe, no one with normal nose and palate will eat it. People who partake of excessive amounts of meats or alcoholic beverages are often fond of these foul cheeses. One perversion leads to another. Cheese of good quality, eaten in moderation, is a nutritious food, easily digested. Gauthier says of cheese: "Indeed, this casein, which has the composition of muscular tissue, scarcely produces during digestion either residue or toxins." Because good cheese is concentrated and of agreeable flavor, it is necessary to guard against overeating. An excess of rich cheese soon causes trouble with the liver or constipation or both. Cheese should not be eaten in the same meal with fish, meat, eggs, nuts or legumes, for such combining makes the protein intake too great. There is nothing incompatible about such combinations, but it is safest not to make them. The course dinners, ending up with a savory cheese, crackers and coffee, are abominations. They are health-destroyers. They lead to overeating. As nearly everybody overeats, and because overeating is the greatest single factor in producing disease and premature death, it is advisable not to eat cheese and other foods rich in protein in the same meal. The greater the variety of food, the more surely the diner will overeat. The term, "full cream cheese" is misleading, for cheeses are not made of whole cream. The cream does not contain enough protein (casein) for the manufacture of cheese. Some cheeses are made of skimmed milk. Others are made of milk which contains part, or even all, of the cream. Some have cream added. The cheeses containing but a moderate amount of fat are the best. The popular Roquefort cheese is made of a mixture of goat's milk and sheep's milk. The savor is due to bacterial action and fat saponification, which result in ammonia, glycerine, alcohol, fatty acids and other chemicals in very small quantities. The peculiar colorings which run in streaks through some cheeses that are well ripened are due to molds, bacteria and yeasts. Gentlemen who would discharge the cook if a moldy piece of bread appeared on the table, eat decaying, moldy cheese with relish. The best cheese of all is cottage cheese. People of normal taste will soon weary of the frequent consumption of strong cheese, but they can take cottage cheese every other day with relish. Occasionally put a few caraway seeds in it if this flavor is agreeable. Cottage cheese may be eaten plain or with bread, or with fruit or vegetables. It may be used as dressing both on fruit and vegetable salads. Cheese should play no part in the alimentation of the sick, with the exception of cottage cheese, which may be given to almost anyone who is in condition to eat anything. The other cheeses are too concentrated for sick people. In acute disease nothing is to be fed. _Skimmed milk_ is about the same in composition as buttermilk. It is inferior in flavor, but a good food. It is used a great deal in cooking. Milk should not be used very much in cooking. When cooked it does not digest very readily and it has a tendency to make other foods indigestible. _Sour cream_ or clabbered cream is best when it is taken from clabbered milk. It may be used as dressing on fruits and salads. Sweet cream will clabber, but it is not as delicious as when it clabbers on the milk. _Clotted cream_ is made by putting the milk aside in pans in a cool place until the cream rises. Then, without disturbing the cream, scald the milk. Put the pan aside until the contents are cold and remove the cream, which has a rich, agreeable flavor. This may be used as a dressing. Whipped cream and ice cream are so familiar that they hardly need comment. Cream is such a rich food that it must be eaten in moderation. Otherwise it will cause discomfort and disease. Ice cream is made of milk and cream, in varying proportions, flavored to taste and frozen. It is not necessary to add eggs and cornstarch. If eaten slowly it is a good food, but taken in too large quantities and too rapidly it may cause digestive troubles. It is not best to chill the stomach. Those with weak digestion should be very careful not to do so. Buttermilk is sometimes flavored and frozen. This ice is easy to digest. Some doctors recommend this dish to their convalescents. It is an agreeable change, and can be eaten by many who are unable to take care of the rich ice cream. CHAPTER XIX. MENUS. For a balanced dietary we need some building food, protein; some force food, starch, sugar and fat; some of the mineral salts in organic form, best obtained from raw fruits and vegetables; and a medium in which the foods can be dissolved, water. We need a replenishment of these food stuffs at intervals, but it is not necessary to take all of them at the same meal, or even during the same day. Those who believe that all alimentary principles must enter into every meal must necessarily injure themselves through too complex eating. In talking of these alimentary principles, reference is made to them only when they are present in appreciable quantities. To have the subject better in hand, let us again classify the most important foods: Flesh foods, which are rich in protein. Nuts, which contain considerable protein and fat. Milk and cheese, which contain much protein. Eggs, taken principally for their protein. Cereals, the most important contents being starches. Tubers, containing much starch. Legumes, rich in protein and starch. Fresh fruits, well flavored and high in salt contents. Sweet fruits, containing much fruit sugar. Succulent vegetables, chiefly valuable because of salts and juices. Fats and oils, no matter what their source, are concentrated foods which furnish heat and energy when burned in the body. When people are free and active in the fresh air they can eat in a way that would soon ruin the digestive powers of those who lead more artificial lives. It is a well known fact that we can go hunting, fishing, tramping or picnicking and eat mixtures and quantities of foods that would ordinarily give us discomfort. The freedom and activity, the change and the better state of mind give greater digestive power. Those who wish to live their best must pay some attention to the combination of food. It is true that very moderate people, those who take no more food than the body demands, can combine about as they please. These moderate people do not care to mix their foods much. They are satisfied with very plain fare. Much as we dislike to acknowledge the fact, nearly all of us take too much food, even those who most strongly preach moderation. By combining properly much of the harmful effect of overeating can be overcome. FRUITARIANS. I class as fruitarians those who eat only cereals, fruits and nuts. This may not be a correct definition, but after reading much literature on dietetics it is the best I can do. Their combinations should present no difficulties. They should take cereals once or twice a day; nuts once or twice a day; fruit once a day in winter and once or twice a day in summer. The winter fruit should be sweet part of the time. In summer it can be the juicy fruit and berries at all times. The fruitarians should be careful to avoid the habitual combination of acid fruits with their cereals. One meal a day can be made of one or two varieties of fruit and nothing else. Nuts may be added to the fruit at times. Another meal may be made of some cereal product with nut butter or some kind of vegetable oil. A third meal may be some form of sweet fruit, with which may be eaten either bread or nuts, or better still, combine one sweet fruit with an acid one. Most people would consider such a diet very limited, but it is easy to thrive on it, and it is not a tiresome one. There are so many varieties of fruits, nuts and cereals that it is easy to get variety. These foods do not become monotonous when taken in proper amounts. On such a diet it does not make much difference which meal is breakfast, lunch or dinner. The rule should be to take the heartiest meal after the heavy work is done, for hearty meals do not digest well if either mind or body is hard at work. It is not difficult to get all the food necessary in two meals, but inasmuch as the three meal a day plan is prevalent the menus here given include that number of meals. Breakfast: Apples, baked or raw. Lunch: Brown rice and raisins. Dinner: Whole wheat zwieback with nut butter. Breakfast: Oranges or grapefruit. Lunch: Pecans and figs. Dinner: Bread made of rye or whole wheat flour, with nut butter or olive oil. Breakfast: Any kind of berries. Lunch: Dates. Dinner: Whole wheat bread, with or without oil, Brazil nuts. These combinations are indeed simple, but these foods are very nourishing and most of them concentrated, so it is best not to mix too much. They are natural foods, which digest easily when taken in moderation, but if eaten to excess they soon produce trouble. It is no hardship to live on simple combinations. We have so much food that we have fallen into the bad habit of partaking of too great variety at a meal. The fact is that those who combine simply enjoy their foods more than those who coax their appetite with too great variety. There is no physical hardship connected with simple eating, and as soon as the mind is made up to it, neither is there any mental hardship. VEGETARIANS. It is difficult to give an acceptable definition for vegetarianism. For a working basis we shall take it for granted that those are vegetarians who reject flesh foods. Those who wish can also reject dairy products and eggs. It is largely a matter of satisfying the mind. The chief trouble with the vegetarians is that they believe that the fact that they abstain from flesh will bring them health. So they combine all kinds of foods and take several kinds of starches and fruits at the same meal. The consequence is that they soon get an acid condition of the digestive organs and a great deal of fermentation. Among vegetarians, prolapsus of the stomach and bowels is quite common, and this is due to gas pressure displacing the organs. Their foods are all right, but their combinations, as a rule, are bad. The various vegetarian roasts, composed of nuts, cereals, legumes and succulent vegetables are hard to digest. It would be much better for them not to make such dishes. A few suggestions for vegetarian combining follow: Breakfast: Berries and a glass of milk. Lunch: Baked potatoes and lettuce with oil. Dinner: Nuts, cooked succulent vegetables, one or two varieties, sliced tomatoes. Breakfast: Cottage cheese and oranges. Lunch: Nuts and raisins. Dinner: Whole wheat bread, stewed onions, butter, salad of lettuce and celery. Breakfast: Cantaloupe. Lunch: Buttermilk, bread and butter. Dinner: Nuts, stewed succulent vegetables, lettuce and sliced tomatoes, with or without oil. Breakfast: Boiled brown rice with raisins and milk. Lunch: Grapes. Dinner: Cooked lentils or baked beans, lettuce and celery. OMNIVOROUS PEOPLE. In this country, most people are omnivorous. The food is plentiful and people believe in generous living. They put upon their tables at each meal enough variety for a whole day and the custom is to eat some of each. Some breakfasts are heavy enough for dinners. Three heavy meals a day are common. Some can eat this way for years and be in condition to work most of the time, but they are never 100 per cent. efficient. They are never as able as they could be. Besides, they have their times of illness and grow old while they should be young. They generally die while they should be in their prime, leaving their friends and families to mourn them when they ought to be at their best. They are worn out by their food supply, plus other conventional bad habits. One of the best plans that has been proposed for omnivorous people is that which has been worked out by Dr. J. H. Tilden. Its skeleton is, fruit once a day, starchy food once a day, flesh or other protein with succulent vegetables once a day. I shall make up menus for a few days based on this plan: Breakfast: Baked apples, a glass of milk. Lunch: Boiled rice with butter. Dinner: Roast mutton, spinach and carrots, salad of raw vegetables. Breakfast: Cantaloupe. Lunch: Biscuits or toast with butter, buttermilk. Dinner: Pecans, two stewed succulent vegetables, salad of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers, dressing. Breakfast: Peaches, cottage cheese. Lunch: Baked potatoes, butter, lettuce. Dinner: Fresh fish baked, liberal helping of one, two or three of the raw salad vegetables. Breakfast: Shredded wheat or puffed wheat sprinkled with melted butter, glass of milk. Lunch: Watermelon. Dinner: Roast beef, boiled cabbage, stewed onions, butter dressing, sliced tomatoes with salt and oil. The doctor allows considerable dessert. That generally goes with the dinner. It is nonsense to write, "So and so shalt thou eat and not otherwise." The menus here given simply serve as suggestions. Where one succulent vegetable is mentioned another may be substituted. One cereal may be substituted for another. One juicy fruit for another. One sweet fruit for another. One legume for another. One food rich in protein for another. In combining food the principal things to remember are: Use only a few foods at a meal; use only one hearty, concentrated food in a meal, as a rule, with the exception that various fats and oils in moderation are allowable as dressings for fruits, vegetables and starches; that much fat or oil retards the digestion of the rest of the food; that the habitual combining of acid food with foods heavy in starch is a trouble-maker; that concentrated starchy foods should be taken not to exceed twice a day; that the heating, stimulating foods rich in protein, which include nearly all meats, should be taken only once a day in winter, and less in summer; that either raw fruit or raw vegetables should be a part of the daily food intake, because the salts they contain are essential to health; that fats should be used sparingly in summer, but more freely in winter; that juicy fruits are to be used liberally in summer and sparingly in winter, when the sweet fruits are to take their place a part of the time. The dried sweet fruits are quite different from the fresh juicy ones. The former serve more the purpose of the starches than that of fruits. They are rich in sugar, which produces heat and energy. The same is true of the banana, which is about one-fifth sugar. It is not as sweet as would be expected from this fact. Some sugars are sweeter than others. This you can easily verify by tasting some milk sugar and then taking the same amount of commercial sugar made of cane or beets. The food need in summer is surprisingly small, so small that the average person will scarcely believe it. Some writers on dietetics advise eating as much in summer as in winter. How they can do so it is difficult to understand, for reason tells us that in summertime practically no food is needed for heating purposes, and that is how most of the food is used. A little experience and experiment show that reason is right. Nature herself confirms this fact, for at the tropics she has made it easy for man to subsist on fruits, while in the polar regions she furnishes him the most heating of all foods, fats. Because fats are so concentrated it is very easy to take too much of them. An ounce of butter contains as much nourishment as about twenty-five ounces of watermelon. Those who simplify their cooking and their combining and partake of food in moderation are repaid many times over in improved health. It is necessary to supply good building material in proper form if we would have health. CHAPTER XX. DRINK. There is but one real beverage and that is water. The other so-called beverages are foods, stimulants or sedatives. Milk is a rich food, one glass having as much food value as two eggs. Coffee, tea, chocolate and cocoa are stimulants, with sedative after-effects. Their food value depends largely on the amount of milk, cream and sugar put into them. Chocolate and cocoa are both drugs and foods. Alcohol is a stimulant at first, afterwards a sedative, and at all times an anesthetic. When we think of drinking for the sake of supplying the bodily need of fluid, we should think of water and nothing else. If other liquids are taken, they should be taken as foods or drugs. Water is the best solvent known. The alchemists of old spent much time and energy trying to find the universal solvent, believing that thereafter it would be easy to discover a method of making base metals noble. But they never found anything better than water. Water is the compound that in its various forms does most to change the earth upon which we live, and it is more necessary for the continuation of life than anything else except air. Pure water does not exist in nature, that is, we have never found a compound of the composition H2O. Water always contains other matter. The various salts are dissolved in it and it absorbs gases. The nearest we come to pure water is distilled. Pure water is an unsatisfied compound, and as soon as it is exposed it begins to absorb gases and take up salts and organic matter. Pure water differs from clean water. Clean or potable water is a compound which contains a moderate amount of salts, but very little of organic matter. Bacteria should be practically absent. Water that contains much of nitrogenous substances is unfit to use. If the water is very hard, heavily loaded with salts, it should not be used extensively as a drink, for if too much of earthy and mineral matter is taken into the system, the body is unable to get rid of all of them. The result is a tendency for deposits to form in the body. In places where the water is excessively charged with lime it has been noticed that the bones harden too early, which prevents full development of the body. If the bones of the skull are involved, it means that there will not be room enough for the brain. Such diseases are rare in this country, but in parts of Europe they are not uncommon. If the water is very hard, a good plan is to distill it and then add a little of the hard water to the distilled water. People who partake of an excessive amount of various salts can perhaps drink distilled water to advantage, but those who take but a normal amount of the salts in their foods should have natural water. Water forms three-fourths of the human body, more or less. It is needed in every process that goes on within the body. "To be dry is to die." Water keeps the various vital fluids in solution so that they can perform their function. Without water there would be no sense of taste, no digestion, no absorption of food, no excretion of debris, and hence no life. The water is the vehicle through which the nutritive elements are distributed to the billions of cells of the body, and it is also the vehicle which carries the waste to the various excretory organs. We can live several weeks without food, but only a few days without water. Hot water and ice-cold water are both irritants. Water may be taken either warm or cool. It is best to avoid the extremes. The amount of water needed each twenty-four hours varies according to circumstances. Two quarts is a favorite prescription. Those who eat freely of succulent fruits and vegetables do not need as much as those who live more on dry foods. Salt in excess calls for an abnormal amount of water, for salt is a diuretic, robbing the tissues of their fluids and consequently more water has to be taken to keep up the equilibrium. Naturally, more water is required when the weather is hot than when it is cool. On hot days warm water is more satisfying and quenches thirst more quickly than ice water. Warm water also stimulates kidney action, which is often sluggish in summer. Ice water is the least satisfactory of all, for the more one drinks the more he wants. A normal body calls for what water it needs, and no more. An abnormal body is no guide for either the amount of food or drink necessary. Many people do not like the taste of water, especially in the morning. This means that the body is diseased. To a normal person cool water is always agreeable when it is needed, and it is needed in the morning. People with natural taste do not care for ice water, but other water is relished. The common habit of drinking with meals is a mistake. Man is the only animal that does this, and he has to pay dearly for such errors. Taking a bite of food and washing it down with fluid lead to undermastication and overeating, and then the body suffers from autointoxication. A mouthful of food followed by a swallow of liquid forces the contents of the mouth into the stomach before the saliva has the opportunity to act. The best way is to drink one or two glasses of water in the morning before breakfast. Partake of the breakfast, and all other meals, without taking any liquid. Sometimes there is a desire for a drink immediately after the meal is finished. If so, take some water slowly. If it is taken slowly a little will satisfy. If it is gulped down it may be necessary to take one or two glasses of water before being satisfied. Those who have a tendency to drink too much during warm weather will find very slow drinking helpful in correcting it. If there is any digestive weakness, the liquid taken immediately after a meal should be warm and should not exceed a cupful. Those with robust digestion may take cool water. Cold water chills the stomach. Digestion will not take place until the stomach has reached the temperature of about one hundred degrees Fahrenheit again, and if the stomach contents are chilled repeatedly the tendency is strong for the food to ferment pathologically, instead of being properly digested. For this reason it is not well to drink while there is anything left in the stomach to digest. As stomach digestion generally takes two or three hours at least, it is well to wait this long before taking water after finishing a meal, and then drink all that is desired until within thirty minutes of taking the next meal. If the thirst should become very insistent before two or three hours have elapsed since eating, take warm water. Those who eat food simply prepared and moderately seasoned are not troubled much with excessive thirst. Two quarts of water daily should be sufficient for the adults under ordinary conditions. Here, as in eating, no exact amount will fit everybody. Make a habit of drinking at least a glass of water before breakfast, cleaning the teeth and rinsing the mouth before swallowing any, and then take what water the body asks for during the rest of the day. Taking too much water is not as injurious as overeating, but waterlogging the body has a weakening effect. To drink with the meals is customary, not because it is necessary, but because we have a number of drinks which appeal to many people. Water is the drink par excellence. A food-beverage that is used by many is cambric tea, which is made of hot water, one-third or one-fourth of milk and a little sweetening. Children generally like this on account of the sweetness. It may be taken with any meal, when fluid is needed, but the amount should be limited to a cupful. It is not well to dilute the digestive juices too much. The water taken in the morning helps to start the body to cleanse itself. Water drinking is a great aid in overcoming constipation. Constipated people generally overeat. Less food and more water will prove helpful in overcoming the condition. Unfortunately for the race, we have accustomed ourselves to partake of beverages containing injurious, poisonous substances. Inasmuch as this is the place to discuss the drugs contained in coffee and tea, I shall take the liberty of dwelling upon other habit-forming substances in the same chapter. They are all a part of the drug addictions of the race. For scientific discussion of these various substances I refer you to technical works. In this chapter will be found only a discussion of their relation to people's welfare, that is, to health and efficiency. Coffee, tea and chocolate contain a poisonous alkaloid which is generally called caffeine. The theine in tea and the theobromine in cocoa are so similar to caffeine that chemists can not differentiate them. These drinks when first taken cause a gentle stimulation under which more work can be done than ordinarily, but this is followed by a reaction, and then the powers of body and mind wane so much that the average output of work is less than when the body is not stimulated. The temporary apparently beneficial effect is more than offset by the reaction and therefore partaking of these beverages makes people inefficient. Coffee is very hard on the nerves, causing irritation, which is always followed by premature physical degeneration. Experiments of late indicate that children who use coffee do not come up to the physical and mental standard of those who abstain. The effect on the adults is not so marked because adults are more stable than children. Those who are not used to coffee will be unable to sleep for several hours after partaking of a cup. Some people drink so much of it that they become accustomed to it. Coffee is not generally looked upon as one of the habit-forming drugs, but it is. However, of all the drugs which create a craving in the system for a repetition of the dose, coffee makes the lightest fetters. It is surprising how often health-seekers inform the adviser that they "can not get along without coffee." If they would take a cup a few times a year, it would do no harm, but the daily use is harmful to all, even if they feel no bad effects and make it "very weak," which is a favorite statement of the women. Smoking, drinking beer and drinking coffee have a tendency to overcome constipation in those who are not accustomed to these things, but their action can not be depended upon for any length of time and the cure is worse than the disease. Tea drinking has much the same effect as coffee drinking, except that it is decidedly constipating. Perhaps this is because there is considerable of the astringent tannin in the tea leaves. Chocolate is a valuable food. Those who eat of other aliments in moderation may partake of chocolate without harm, but if chocolate is used in addition to an excess of other food, the results are bad. The chocolate is so rich that it soon overburdens some of the organs of digestion, especially the liver. The Swiss consume much of this food and it is valuable in cases where it is necessary to carry concentrated rations. Alcohol in some form seems to have been consumed by even very primitive people as far back as history goes. The Bible records an early case of intoxication from wine, and beer was brewed by the ancient Egyptians. So much has been consumed that some people have a subconscious craving for it. There are cases on record where the very first drink caused an uncontrollable demand for the drug. Fortunately these cases are very rare. Alcohol is really not a stimulant, though it gives a feeling of glow, warmth and well-being at first, but this is followed by a great lowering of physical power, which gives rise to disagreeable sensations. Then the drinker needs more alcohol to stimulate him again. Then there is another depression with renewed demand: There is no end to the craving for the drug once it has mastered the individual. The lungs, heart, digestive organs, muscles, in fact, every structure in the body loses working capacity. Alcohol seems to have a special affinity for nervous tissue. A glass of beer or wine taken daily is no more harmful than a cup of coffee per day, but the coffee drinker does not make of himself such a public nuisance and menace as the man often does who drinks alcohol to excess. Formerly it was respectable to drink. Some of our most noted public men were drunkards. Now a drunkard could not maintain himself in a prominent public position very long. To drink like a gentleman was no disgrace. Now real gentlemen do not get drunk. In backward Russia they are becoming alarmed about the inroads of vodka, and are trying to decrease its consumption. France is trying to teach total abstinence to its young men because it disqualifies so many of them from military service to drink. Scandinavia is temperance territory. The German Kaiser has recently given a warning against drinking. The United States discourages drinking in the army and navy. Field armies are not supplied with alcoholics. Drinking is becoming disreputable. It is very difficult to prove the harm done by excessive drinking of tea and coffee, also by the use of much tobacco, even if we do know that it is so. Everyone knows something about the deleterious effect of alcohol upon the consumer. Solomon wrote: "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes?" Alcohol permanently impairs both body and mind. Depending on how much is taken, it may cause various ills, ranging from inflammation of the stomach to insanity. It reduces the power of the mind to concentrate and it diminishes the ability of the muscles to work. It reduces the resistance of the body and shortens life. Its first effect is to lull the higher faculties to sleep. Most drunkards do not recover from their disease, for drunkenness is a disease. The various drugs given to cure the afflictions are delusions. Strengthening the body, mind and the will and instilling higher ideals are the best methods of cure. Suggestive therapeutics, and the awakening of a strong resolve for a better life are powerful aids. Proper feeding should not be overlooked, for bad habits do not flourish in a healthy body. Civilization necessitates self-control and considerable self-denial. Those who go in the line of least resistance are on the road to destruction. It is often necessary to overcome habits which produce temporary gratification of the senses. According to Warden Tynan of the Colorado Penitentiary, 96 per cent. of the prisoners are brought there because they use alcohol. It is also well known that moral lapses are most common when the will is weakened through the use of liquor. Those who have the welfare of the race at heart are therefore compelled to give considerable thought to this subject. According to past experience, it will not help to try to legislate sobriety into the people. Education and industrialism are the factors which it seems to me will be most potent in solving the alcohol problem. Morality, which in the last analysis is a form of selfishness, will teach many that it is poor policy to reduce one's efficiency and thereby reduce the earning capacity and enjoyment of life. More and more the employers of labor will realize that the use of alcohol decreases the reliability and worth of the worker. Many will take steps like the following: "In formal recognition of the fact, established beyond dispute by the tests of the new psychology, that industrial efficiency decreases with indulgence in alcohol and is increased by abstinence from it, the managers of a manufacturing establishment in Chester, Penn., have attacked the temperance problem from a new angle. "Unlike many railways and some other corporations, they do not forbid their employees to drink, but they offer 10 per cent. advance in wages to all who will take and keep--the teetotaler's pledge. Incidentally, a breaking of the promise will mean a permanent severance of relations, but there is no emphasizing of that point, it being confidently expected that the advantage of perfect sobriety will be as well realized on one side as on the other." Business has during the past two centuries been the great civilizer, the great moral teacher. It has found that honesty and righteousness pay and that injustice is folly. Business has led the way to the acceptance of a new ethics, and new morals. What has been said about alcohol applies to tobacco in a much smaller degree. The use of tobacco seems to lead to the use of alcohol. It retards the development of children. It is surely one of the causes of various diseases. Tobacco heart, sore throat and indigestion are well known to physicians. Tobacco contains one of the deadliest of poisons known. One-sixteenth of a grain of nicotine may prove fatal. The reason there are so few deaths from acute tobacco poisoning is that but very little of the nicotine is absorbed. Men who chew tobacco make themselves disagreeable to others. Smoking of cigarettes is to be condemned not only because it poisons the body, but causes inattention and inability to concentrate on the part of the smoker, as well. Every little while he feels the desire to take a smoke, and if smoking is forbidden he devises means of getting away. He robs his employer of time for which he is paid and injures himself. The ability to work is decreased by indulgence in smoking. Recent experiments show that for a short time there is increased activity after a smoke, but the following depression is greater than the stimulation, so there is an actual loss. A few years ago, according to Mr. Wilson, who was then Secretary of Agriculture, there were about 4,000,000 drug addicts or "dope fiends" in the United States. Without doubt this estimate was too high, for the proportion of addicts in the country is not as great as in the large cities. The drugs chiefly used are cocaine, opium, laudanum, morphine and heroin. These drugs are much more destructive than alcohol. Cocaine and heroin are the worst. It is very difficult to stop using any of them once the habit has been formed. Nearly every "fiend" dies directly or indirectly from the effect of his particular drug. Every one weakens the body so that there is not much resistance to offer to acute diseases. Every one destroys the will power so that a cure is exceedingly difficult. It is well to bear in mind that all are not possessed of strong enough will power to resist their cravings and that some take to cocaine when they can not get liquor. Cocaine is far worse than alcohol. People should be very careful about taking patent medicines. There is no excuse for taking them. The most popular ones have as their basis one of the habit-forming drugs. Most of the soothing syrups contain opium in some form. To give babies opiates is a grave error, to speak mildly. It weakens the child, may lay the foundation for a deadly habit later in life, and often an overdose kills outright. Well informed mothers avoid such drugs and keep their children reasonably quiet by means of proper care. Many of the remedies for nasal catarrh and hay fever contain much cocaine. Cocaine is an astringent and a painkiller and people mistake the temporary lessening of discharge from the nose and disappearance of pain for curative effects. But there is nothing curative about it. In a short time the mucous membrane relaxes again and then the discharge is re-established. The nerves which were put out of commission resume their function and then the pain reappears. Opium or one of its derivatives is generally present in the patent medicines given for coughs. Opium is also an astringent and will suppress secretions, but this is not a cure. Excessive secretions are an indication that the body is surcharged with poison and food. Let them escape and then live so that there will be internal cleanliness and then there will be no more coughs and colds. The unfortunate people who get into the habit of using these drugs degenerate physically, mentally and morally. They need more and more of their drug to produce the desired effect until they at last take enough daily to kill several normal men. Sometimes they are able to keep everybody in ignorance of what they are doing for years. They develop slyness and secretiveness. They become very suspicious. They are nearly always untruthful, and those who deal with them are surprised and wonder why those who used to be open and above-board now are furtive and dishonest. They often lie when there is not the slightest excuse for it. The moral disintegration is often the first sign noticed. After habitually using any of these drugs for a while the body demands the continuation and if the victim is deprived of his accustomed portion there will be a collapse with intense suffering. Every tortured nerve in the body seems to call out for the drug. The victim will do anything to get his drug. He will lie, steal, and he may even attack those who are caring for him. For the time being he is insane. Many professional men use cocaine. It is a favorite with writers. It often shows in their work. Those who write under the inspiration of this drug often do some good work, but they are unable to keep to their subject. Their writings lack order. We have enough of such writings to have them classified as "cocaine literature." If there are 4,000,000, or even fewer, of these people in our land, it is a serious problem, for every one is a degenerate, to a certain degree. If the medical profession and the druggists would co-operate it would be easy enough to prevent the growth of a new crop of dope fiends. Of course, people would have to stop taking patent medicines, which often start the victims on the road to degeneration. Then the physicians should stop prescribing habit-forming drugs, as well as all other drugs, and teach the people that physical, mental and moral salvation come through right living and right thinking. Unfortunately the medical profession is careless and is responsible for the existence of many of the drug addicts. A patient has a severe pain. What is the easiest way to satisfy him? To give a hypodermic injection of some opiate. The patient, not realizing the danger, demands a pain-killer every time he suffers. He soon learns what he is getting and then he goes to the drug store and outfits himself with a hypodermic outfit and drugs, and the first thing he knows he is a slave, in bondage for life. This is no exaggeration. There are hundreds of thousands of victims to the drug habit who trace their downfall to the treatment received at the hands of reputable physicians, who do not look upon their practice with the horror it should inspire because it is so common. Doctors do not always bury their mistakes. Some of them walk about for years. In spite of laws against the sale of various drugs, they can be obtained. There are doctors and druggists of easy conscience who are very accommodating, for a price. There is no legitimate need for the use of one-hundredth of the amount of these drugs that is now consumed. A local injection of cocaine for a minor operation is justifiable, but none of the habit-forming drugs should be used in ordinary practice to kill pain, for the proper application of water in conjunction with right living will do it better and there are no evil after effects. Massage is often sufficient. To show a little more clearly how some people become addicted to drugs, let us consider one of the latest, heroin: A few years ago this drug, which is an opium derivative, was practically unknown. It is much stronger than morphine and consequently the effect can be obtained more quickly by means of a smaller dose. Physicians thought at first that it was not a habit-forming drug, for they could use it over a longer period of time than they could employ morphine, without establishing the craving and the habit. So they began to prescribe heroin instead of morphine, and many a morphine addict was advised to substitute heroin. All went well for a short while, until the victims found that they were enslaved by a drug that was even worse than morphine. Now, thanks chiefly to the medical profession, it is estimated that we have in our land several hundred thousand heroin addicts. Sallow of face, gaunt of figure, looking upon the world through pin-point pupils, with all of life's beauty, hope and joy gone, they are marching to premature death. The medical profession furnishes more than its proportion of drug addicts. They know the danger of the drugs, but familiarity breeds contempt. If the public but knew how many of their medical advisers, who should always be clear-minded, are befuddled by drugs, there would be a great awakening. One eminent physician who has now been in practice about forty-five years and has had much experience with drug addicts, has said that according to his observations, about one physician in four contracts the drug habit. I believe this is exaggerated, but I am acquainted with a number of physicians who are addicts. Physicians who smoke do not condemn the practice. Those who drink are likely to prescribe beer and wine for their patients. Those who are addicted to drugs use them too liberally in their practice. Those who have watched the effects of the various drugs, from coffee to heroin, must condemn their use. It is true that an occasional cup of coffee or tea, a glass of wine or beer does no harm. A cigarette a week would not hurt a boy, nor would on occasional cigar harm a man. But how many people are willing to indulge occasionally? The rule is that they indulge not only daily, but several times a day, and the results are bad. One bad habit leads to another, and the time always comes when it is a choice between disease and early death on one hand, and the giving up of the bad habits on the other, and when this time comes the bonds of habits are often so strong that the victim is unable to break them. I realize that knowledge will not always keep people out of temptation and that some individuals will take the broad way that leads to destruction in spite of anything that may be said. Youth is impatient of restraint and ever anxious for new experiences. Regarding this serious matter of destructive drug use, much could be done by teaching people their place in society: That is, what they owe to themselves, their families and the public in general. In other words, teach the young people the higher selfishness, part of which consists of considerable self-control, self-denial and self-respect. Drugs are too easy to obtain today. Some day people will be so enlightened that they will not allow themselves to be medicated. This is the trend of the times. Until such a time comes, society should protect itself by making it very difficult to get any of the habit-forming drugs. If necessary, the free hand of the physician should be stayed. Much of the confidence blindly given him is misplaced. CHAPTER XXI. CARE OF THE SKIN. The skin is neglected and abused. Very few realize how important it is to give this organ the necessary attention. If we were living today as our ancestors doubtless lived, we could neglect the skin, as they did. They wore little or no clothing. The skin, which formerly was very hairy, served as protection. It was exposed to the elements, which toughened it and kept it active. Today most people give the skin too great protection, and thus weaken it. The result is that it degenerates and partly loses its function with consequent detriment to the individual's health. A normal skin has a very soft feel, imparting to the fingers a pleasant, vital sensation. It either has color or suggests color. An abnormal skin pleases neither the sense of seeing nor feeling. It may feel inert or it may be inflamed. The skin is a beautiful and complex structure. It is made up of an outer layer called the epidermis and an inner layer, the true skin or corium, which rests upon a subcutaneous layer, composed principally of fat and connective tissue. The epidermis is divided into four layers. It has no blood-vessels and no nerves, but is nourished by lymph which escapes from the vessels deeper in the skin. It is simply protective in nature. The true skin is made up of two indistinct layers, which harbor a vast multitude of nerves, blood-vessels and lymph-vessels. In the skin there are two kinds of glands, the sebaceous and the sweat glands. The sebaceous glands are, as a general rule, to be found in greatest numbers on the hairiest parts of the body and are absent from the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. They throw off a secretion known as sebum, which is made up principally of dead cells that have undergone fatty degeneration and of other debris. The sebum serves as lubricant. It is generally discharged near or at the shaft of a hair. The sweat glands discharge on the average from one and one-half to two pounds of perspiration per day, more in hot weather and much less when it is cool. They are distributed over the whole external surface of the body. According to Krause there are almost 2,400,000 of them. They carry off water and carbonic acid gas chiefly. The functions of the skin are: To protect the underlying structures; to regulate the heat; to serve as an organ of respiration; to serve as an organ of touch and thermal sensation; to secrete and eliminate various substances from the body; to absorb. The heat regulation is quite automatic. When the external temperature is high there is a relaxation of the skin. The pores open, the perspiration goes to the surface and evaporates, thus cooling the body. When the surface is cool the skin contracts, closing the pores and conserving the heat. Radiation always takes place, except when the temperature is very high. The sensation of touch and the ability to feel heat and cold protect us from untold numbers of dangers. They are a part of the equipment which enables us to adjust our selves to our environment. The secretions and excretions are perspiration and sebum. These contain water, carbonic acid, urea, buturic acid, formic acid, acetic acid, salts, the chief being sodium chloride, and many other substances. The respiratory function consists in the absorption of a small amount of oxygen and the giving off of some carbonic acid. A small amount of water can be absorbed by the skin. Oils can also be absorbed. In case of malnutrition in children, olive-oil rubs are often helpful. This absorptive function is taken advantage of by physicians who rub various medicaments into the skin. Mercury enough to produce salivation can be absorbed in this way. From the above it will be seen that the skin is not only complex in structure, but has many functions. It is impossible to have perfect health without a good skin. Under civilized conditions a healthy skin can not be had without giving it some care. The average person has a skin that shows lack of care. Fortunately, but little care is needed. A bath should be taken often enough to ensure cleanliness. Warm water and soap need not be used more than once or twice a week under ordinary conditions. If the soap causes itching, it is well to use a small amount of olive oil on the body afterwards, rubbing it in thoroughly, and going over the body with a soft cloth after the oil rub, thus removing the oil which would otherwise soil the clothes. If the skin is not kept clean, the millions of pores are liable to be partly stopped up, which results in the retention of a part of the excretory matter within the skin, where it may cause enough irritation to produce some form of cutaneous disorder, or the skin may through disuse become so inactive that too much work is thrown upon the other excretory organs, which may also become diseased from overwork and excessive irritation. Soaps are irritants. Tallow soaps and olive oil soaps are less irritating than other varieties. Whatever kind of soap is used, it should be rinsed off thoroughly, for if some of it is left in the pores of the skin roughness or even mild inflammation may ensue. Be especially careful about the soap used for babies, avoiding all highly colored and cheap perfumed soaps. Whether to take a daily sponge bath or not is a matter of no great importance, and each individual can safely suit himself. If there is quick reaction and a feeling of warmth and well-being following a cold sponge, it is all right. If the skin remains blue and refuses to react for a long time, the cold sponge bath is harmful. The cold plunge is always a shock, and no matter how strong a person may be, frequent repetition is not to be recommended. People who take cold plunges say that they do no harm, but it is well to remember that life is not merely a matter of today and tomorrow, but of next year, or perhaps forty, fifty or sixty years from today. A daily shock may cause heart disease in the course of twenty or thirty years. A good way to take a cold bath is to get under a warm shower and gradually turn off the warm water. Then stand under the cold shower long enough to rinse well the entire surface of the body. Those who take cold sponge baths in winter and find them severe, should precede the sponging in cold water with a quick sponging off with tepid water, and they should always take these baths in a warm room. After all baths give the body a good dry rubbing, using brisk movements. Bath towels, flesh brushes or the open hands may be used for the dry rubbing. The sponge bath has practically no value as a cleanser. Its chief virtue consists in stimulating the circulation of the blood and the lymph in the skin. In summer it is cooling. It is important to have good surface circulation, but this can be attained as well by means of dry rubbing. The rubbing is more important than wetting the skin. A skin that is rubbed enough becomes so active that it practically cleans itself, and it protects against colds and other diseases. Some advocate dispensing with the bath entirely, but that is going to extremes. Cleanliness is worth while for the self-respect it gives the individual. Hot baths are weakening and relaxing, hence weak people should not stay long in the hot bath. Cold baths are stimulating to strong people and depressing to those who do not react well from them. Swimming is far different from taking a cold bath. A person who can swim with benefit and comfort for twenty minutes would have a chill, perhaps, if he remained for five minutes in the bath tub in water of the same temperature. Swimming is such an active exercise that it aids the circulation, keeping the blood pretty well to the surface in spite of the chilling effect of the water. If a very warm bath is taken, there should be plenty of fresh air in the bath room and it is well to sip cold water while in the bath and keep a cloth wrung out of cold water on the forehead. People who are threatened with a severe cold or pneumonia can give themselves no better treatment than to take a hot bath, as hot as they can stand it, lasting for one-half hour to an hour, drinking as much warm water as can be taken with comfort both before and after getting into the tub. This bath must be taken in very warm water, otherwise it will do no good. It is weakening and relaxing, but through its relaxing influence it equalizes the circulation of the blood, bringing much to the surface that was crowding the lungs and other internal organs, thus causing the dangerous congestion that so often ends in pneumonia. After the bath wrap up well so that the perspiration will continue for some time. When the sweating is over, get into dry clothes and remain in bed for six to eight hours. To make assurance doubly sure, give the bowels a good cleaning out with either enemas or cathartics, or both. Then eat nothing until you are comfortable. Such treatment would prevent much pneumonia and many deaths. The best preventive is to live so that sudden chilling does not produce pneumonia or other diseases, which it will not do in good health. People with serious diseases of the heart, arteries or of the kidneys should not take protracted or severe baths. To sum up the use of water on the skin: Use enough to be clean. No more is necessary. The application of water should be followed by thorough drying and dry rubbing. If the reaction is poor, do not remain in cold water long enough to produce chilling. As a rule thin people should use but little cold water, and they should never remain long in cold water. Water intelligently applied to the skin in disease is a splendid aid in cleansing the system. It is surprising what a great amount of impurity can be drawn from the body by means of wet packs. However, this is a treatise on health, so we shall not go into details here regarding hydrotherapy. No matter what one's ideas may be on the subject of bathing, there can hardly be more than one opinion regarding the application of dry friction to the skin. Those who have noted its excellent results feel that it should be a daily routine. It should be practiced either morning or evening, or both. From five to ten minutes spent thus daily will pay high dividends in health. A vigorous rubbing is exercise not only for the skin, but for nearly every muscle in the body. The dry rubbing keeps the surface circulation vigorous. The surface circulation, and especially the circulation in the hands and the feet, is the first part that begins to stagnate. Blood stagnation means the beginning of the process which results in old age. In other words, dry friction to the skin helps to preserve health and youth. Skin that is not exercised often becomes very hard and scales off particles of mineral matter. If women would put less dependence on artificial beautifiers and more on scientific massage, they would get much better results. They would avoid many a wrinkle and save their complexions. The neck and the face should never be massaged downwards. The strokes should be either upwards or from side to side, the side strokes generally being toward the median line. Such massaging will prevent the sagging of the face muscles for years and help to keep the face free from wrinkles and young in appearance. The massaging should be rather gentle, for if it is too vigorous the tendency is to remove the normal amount of fat that pads and rounds out the face. Men can do the same thing, but most men have no objection to wrinkles. However, most men do object to baldness, which can be prevented in nearly every case. To produce hair on a polished pate is a different proposition. It is indeed difficult. If you will look at a picture of the circulation of the blood in the scalp, you will notice that the arteries supplying it come from above the eye sockets in front, from before and behind the ears on the sides, and from the nape of the neck in the rear. They spread out and become smaller and smaller as they travel toward the top of the head, and especially toward the back. The scalp is well supplied with blood, but it is not given much exercise. The tendency is for the blood stream to become sluggish, deposits gradually forming in the walls of the blood-vessels, which make them less elastic and decrease the size of the lumen. The result is less food for the hair roots and food of inferior quality. This process of cutting off the circulation in the scalp is largely aided by the tight hats and caps worn by men, which compress the blood-vessels. It is quite noticeable that people with round heads have a greater tendency to become bald than those with more irregular heads. The reason is probably that the hats fit more snugly on the round-headed people. There are many exceptions. Women are not so prone to baldness as men, because they wear hats that do not exclude the air from the hair nor do they compress the blood-vessels. Let those men who dislike to lose their hair massage the scalp for a short while daily, beginning above the eyes, in front of the ears and at the nape of the neck and going to the top of the head. Then let them wear as sensible hats as possible, avoiding those that exert great pressure on the blood-vessels that feed the scalp. Thus they will not only be able to retain their hair much longer than otherwise, but the hair that is well fed does not fade as early as that which lives on half rations. In the case of preserving the hair, an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure. The man who can produce a satisfactory hair restorer that will give results without any effort on the part of the men can become a millionaire in a short time. The hair is a modified form of skin. Each hair is supplied with blood, and the reason that the hair stands up during intense fear is that to the lower part of the shaft is attached a little muscle. During fear this contracts, as do other involuntary muscles, and then the hair stands up straight instead of being oblique. As a rule people protect the skin too much. The best protection they have against cold is a good circulation. With a poor circulation it is difficult to keep warm in spite of much clothing. Coldness is also largely a state of mind. People get the idea of cold into the head and then it is almost impossible for them to keep warm. On the same winter day we may see a man in a thick overcoat trying to shrink into himself, shivering, while a lady passes blithely by, with her bosom bared to the wind. The face tolerates the cold, because it is used to it, the neck and the upper part of the chest likewise, and so it would be with the skin of the entire body if we accustomed it to be exposed. We use too heavy clothes. It is a mistake to hump the back and draw in the shoulders during cold weather, for this reduces the lung capacity, thus depriving the body of its proper amount of oxygen. The result is that there is not enough combustion to produce the necessary amount of heat. Wool is warm covering, the best we have. However, it is very irritating to the skin and has a tendency to make the wearer too warm. It does not dry out readily. Consequently the wearer remains damp a long time after perspiring. The result is a moist, clammy skin. A skin thus pampered in damp warmth becomes delicate, and like other hot-house products unable to hold its own when exposed to inclement weather. A good way to take cold easily is to wear wool next to the skin. The best recipe for getting cold feet is to wear woolen stockings. Wear cotton or linen or silk next to the skin. Cotton is satisfactory and cheap. Linen is excellent, but a good suit of linen underwear is too costly for the average purse. Remie, said to be the linen of the Bible, is highly recommended by some. Those working indoors should wear the same kind of underwear summer and winter, and it should be very light. If people use heavy underwear in heated rooms, they become too warm. The consequence is that when they go out doors they are chilled, and if they are not in good physical condition colds and other diseases generally result. By wearing outer garments according to climatic conditions one can easily get all the protection necessary. Those who take the proper food and enough exercise and dry friction of the skin will not require or desire an excessive amount of clothing. The feel of the wintry blast on the skin is not disagreeable. If we would only give the skin more exercise, through rubbing, and more fresh air, we would soon discard much of our clothing, and wear but enough to make a proper and modest appearance in public, with extra covering on cold days. Nothing can be much more ridiculous and uncomfortable than a man in conventional attire on a hot summer's day. Of course, thin, nervous people should not expose themselves too much to the cold. Most of the diseases known by the name of skin diseases, are digestive troubles and blood disorders manifesting in the skin. As soon as the systemic disease upon which they depend disappears, these so-called skin diseases get well. Erysipelas is one of the so-called germ diseases, but it is controlled very quickly by a proper diet. It can not occur in people until they have ruined their health by improper living. Pure blood will not allow the development of the streptococcus erysipelatis in sufficient numbers to cause trouble. First the disease develops and then the germ comes along and multiplies in great numbers, giving it type. Acne, which is very common for a few years after puberty, shows a bad condition of the blood. Even during the changes that occur at puberty no disease will manifest in healthy boys and girls. About this time the young people eat excessively, the result being indigestion and impure blood. The changes that occur in the skin make it a favorable place for irritations to manifest. Let the boys and girls eat so that they have bright eyes and clean tongues and there will be very little trouble from disfiguring pimples. Eczema is generally curable by means of proper diet and the same is true of nearly all skin diseases that afflict infants. There are diseases of the skin due to local irritants, such as the various forms of trade eczema, scabies (itch), and pediculosis (lousiness), but the fact remains that nearly all skin diseases fail to develop if the individual eats properly, and most of them can be cured, after they have developed, by proper diet and attention to hygiene generally. If the diet is such that irritants are manufactured in the alimentary tract and absorbed into the blood, and then excreted through the skin, where enough irritation is produced to cause disease, it is useless to treat with powders and salves. Correct the dietetic errors and the skin will cure itself. Specialists in skin diseases often fail because they treat this organ as an independent entity, instead of considering it as a part of the body whose health depends mostly upon the general health. CHAPTER XXII. EXERCISE. Nature demands of us that we use our mental and physical powers in order to get the best results. Man was made to be active. In former times he had to earn his bread in the sweat of his face or starve. Now we have evolved, or is it a partial degeneration, into a state where a sharp mind commands much more of the means of sustenance than does physical exertion. The consequence is that many of those equipped with the keenest minds fail to keep their bodies active. This helps to lessen their resistance and produces early death. Some exercise is needed and the question is, how much is necessary and how is it to be taken so that it will not degenerate into drudgery? There are very few with enough persistence to continue certain exercises, no matter how beneficial, if they become a grind. The amount required depends upon the circumstances. Ordinarily, a few minutes of exercise each day, supplemented with some walking and deep breathing will suffice. About five minutes of vigorous exercise night and morning are generally enough to keep a person in good physical condition, if he is prudent otherwise. Many strive to build up a great musculature. This is a mistake, unless the intention is to become an exhibit for the sake of earning one's living. Big muscles do not spell health, efficiency and endurance. Even a dyspeptic may be able to build big muscles. What is needed for the work of life is not a burst of strength that lasts for a few moments and then leaves the individual exhausted for the day, but the endurance which enables one to forge ahead day after day. It is generally dangerous to build up great muscles, for if the exercises that brought them into being are stopped, they begin to degenerate so fast that the system with difficulty gets rid of the poisons. Then look out for one of the diseases of degeneration, such as inflammation of the kidneys or typhoid fever. The great muscles exhibited from time to time upon the variety stage and in circuses are not normal. Man is the only animal that develops them, and they are not brought about by ordinary circumstances. Once acquired, they prove a burden, for they demand much daily work to be kept in condition. Good muscles are more serviceable than extraordinary ones. Vigorous exercise is better than violent exercise. It is well known that many of our picked athletes, men with great original physical endowment, die young. The reason is that they have either been overdeveloped, or at some time they have overtaxed their bodies so in a supreme effort at vanquishing their opponents that a part of the vital mechanism has been seriously affected. Then when they settle down to business life they fail to take good care of themselves and they degenerate rapidly. Exercising should not be a task, for then it is work. It should be of a kind that interests and pleases the individual, for then it is accompanied by that agreeable mental state from which great good will come to the body. It is necessary for us to think enough of our bodies to supply them with the activity needed for their welfare and we should do this with good grace. Exercise enough to bring the various muscles into play and the heart into vigorous action. Office workers should take exercises for the part of the body above the waist, plus some walking each day. All should take enough exercise to keep the spine straight and pliable. Bending exercises are good for this purpose, keeping the knees straight and touching the floor with the fingers. Then bend backward as far as possible. Then with hands on the hips rotate the body from the waist. It is very desirable to keep the body erect, for this gives the greatest amount of lung space, and gives the individual a noble, courageous appearance and feeling. The forward slouch is the position of the ape. It is not necessary to pay any attention to the shoulders, if the spine is kept in proper position, for the shoulders will then fall into the right place. Being straight is a matter of habit. No one can maintain this position without some effort. At least, one has to make the effort to get and retain the habit. Most round-shouldered people could school themselves in two or three months to be straight. Those who are moderate in eating need less exercise than others. Too great food intake requires much labor to work it off. When the food is but enough to supply materials for repair, heat and energy, there is no need of great effort to burn up the excess. To exercise much and long, then eat enough to compel more exercise, is a waste of good food, time and energy. Be moderate in all things if you would have the best that life can give you. Always make deep breathing a part of the exercise. No matter what one's physical troubles may be, deep breathing will help to overcome them. It will help to cure cold feet by bringing more oxygen into the blood. It will help to drive away constipation by giving internal massage to the bowels. It will help to overcome torpid liver by the exercise given that organ. It will help to cure rheumatism by producing enough oxygen to burn up some of the foreign deposits in various parts of the body. As an eye-opener deep breathing has alcohol distanced. It costs nothing and has only good after effects. Moreover, deep breathing takes no time. A dozen or more deep breaths can be taken morning and night, and every time one steps into the fresh air, without taking one second from one's working time. To have health good blood is necessary, and this can not be had without taking sufficient fresh air into the lungs. Proper clothing must also be taken into consideration in connection with breathing and exercise. The clothes must be loose enough to allow free play to limbs, chest and abdomen. Men and women were not shaped to wear two and three inch heels. Those who persist in this folly must pay the price in discomfort and an unbalanced body. The time to take exercise depends upon circumstances. It is best not to indulge for at least one or two hours after a hearty meal, for exercise interferes with digestion. A very good plan is to take from five to twenty-five minutes of exercise, according to one's requirement, before dressing in the morning and after undressing at night. Those who take exercises in a gymnasium or have time for out door games will have no difficulty in selecting proper time. Dumbbells, Indian clubs, weights, patent exercisers and gymnasium stunts are all right for those who enjoy them. One thing to bear in mind is that short, choppy movements are not as good as the larger movements that bring the big muscles into play. It is well to exercise until there is a comfortable feeling of fatigue. If this is done the heart works vigorously, sending the blood rapidly to all parts of the body, and the lungs also come into full play to supply the needed oxygen. This acts as a tonic to the entire system. The body must be used to keep it from degenerating. A healthy body gives courage and an optimistic outlook upon life. A sluggish liver can hide the most beautiful sunrise, but a healthy body gives the eye power to see beauty on the most dreary day. Those who are not accustomed to exercise will be very, sore at first, if they begin too vigorously. The soreness can be avoided by taking but two or three minutes at a time at first, and increasing until the desired amount is taken daily. If the muscles get a little sore and stiff at first, do not quit, for by continuing the exercises, the soreness soon leaves. Many begin with great enthusiasm, which soon burns itself out. Excessive enthusiasm is like the burning love of those who "can't live" without the object of their affection. It burns so brightly that it soon consumes itself. Go to work at a rate that can be kept up. To exercise hard for a few weeks or a few months and then give it up will do no good in the end. However, a person may occasionally let a day or two pass by without taking exercise with benefit. Avoid getting into a monotonous grind. I believe that the very best exercises are those which are taken in the spirit of play. No matter who it is, if he or she will make the effort, time enough can be found occasionally to spend at least one-half of a day in the open, and this is very important. We can not long flourish without getting into touch with mother nature, and we need a few hours each week without care and worry in her company. Many immediately say, "I can't." Get rid of that negative attitude and say, "I can and I will." See how quickly the obstacles melt away. There are many who are slaves to duty. They believe that they must grind away. They think they are indispensable. The world got along very well before they were born and it will roll on in the same old way after they are gathered to their fathers. The thing to do is to break the bonds of the wrong mental attitude and then both time and opportunity will be forthcoming. I shall comment on only a few of the outdoor exercises that are excellent. Swimming is one of the finest. There is a great deal of difference between swimming and taking a bath in a tub. Some people cannot remain in the water long, but if they have any resistance at all and are active, there will be no bad results. In swimming it is well to take various strokes, swimming on the back, on the side, and on the face. This brings nearly every muscle in the body into play and if the swimmer does not stay in too long it makes him feel fine. If a feeling of chilliness or weariness is experienced, it is time to quit the water, dry off well and take a vigorous dry rub. Swims should always be followed with considerable rubbing. The use of a little olive oil on the body, and especially on the feet, is very grateful. No special rule can be laid down for the duration of a swim, but very thin people should generally not remain in the water more than fifteen minutes, and stout, vigorous ones not over an hour. It is best not to go swimming until two hours have elapsed since the last meal. Every boy and every girl should be taught to swim, for it may be the means of preserving their lives. It is not difficult. For the benefit of those who start the beginners with the rather tedious and tiresome breast stroke, will say that the easiest way to teach swimming is to get the learner to float on his back. I have taught boys to float in as little as three minutes, and after that everything else is easy. When the beginner can float, he can easily start to paddle a little and make some progress. Then he can turn on his side and learn the side stroke, which is one of the best. Then he can turn on the face and learn various strokes. This is not the approved way of learning to swim, but it is the easiest and quickest way. To float simply means to get into balance in the water. It is necessary to arch the body, making the spine concave posteriorly, and bending the neck well backward at first. In the beginning it is a great aid to fill the lungs well and breathe rather shallow. This makes the body light in the water. Tell the beginner that it does not make any difference whether the feet sink or stay up. It is only necessary to keep the face above water while floating. If there is the slightest tendency to sink, bend the neck a little more, putting the head, farther back in the water, instead of raising it, as most of the learners want to do. Remember that the trunk and neck must be kept well arched, the head well back in the water. The moment the beginner doubles up at waist or hips or bends the neck forward, raising the head, he sinks. For speed and fancy swimming professional instruction should be obtained. Swimming is one of the best all-round developers, as well as one of the most pleasant of exercises. Golf is no longer a rich man's game. The large cities have public links. For an office man it is a splendid game. Women can play it with equal benefit. The full vigorous strokes, followed with a walk after the ball, then more strokes, exercise the entire body. It is good for young and old, and for people in all walks of life. Tennis is splendid for some people. Those who are very nervous and excitable should play at something else, for they are apt to play too hard and use up too much energy. Overexercising is just as harmful as excesses in other lines. Tennis requires quickness and is a good game for those who are inclined to be sluggish, for it wakes them up. Horseback riding is also a fine exercise. The companionship with an intelligent animal, the freedom, the fresh air, the scenery, all give enjoyment of life, and the constant movement acts as a most delicious tonic. There is only one correct way to ride for both sexes, and that is astride. The side saddle position keeps the spine twisted so that it takes away much of the benefit to be derived from riding. Out west the approved manner of riding for women is astride. The women of the west make a fine appearance on horseback. Tramping is possible for all. If there are hills to be climbed, or mountains, so much the better. Put on old clothes and old shoes and have an enjoyable time. Fine apparel under the circumstances spoils more than half of the pleasure. Playing ball or bicycle riding may be indulged in with benefit. It is not fashionable to ride on bicycles today, yet it is a pleasant mode of covering ground, and if the trunk is kept erect it is a good exercise. Jumping rope, playing handball, tossing the medicine ball and sawing wood are good forms of exercise and great fun. The spirit of play and good will easily double the value of any exercise that is taken. Dancing is also good if the ventilation is adequate and the hours are reasonable. Under various conditions vicarious exercises are valuable, and by that I mean such forms of exercise as massage, osteopathic treatment or vibratory treatment. If anything is wrong with the spine, get an osteopath or a chiropractor. They can help to remedy such defects more quickly than anyone else. They are experts in adjustments and thrusts. Some people take exercises while lying in bed or on the floor. One good exercise to take while lying on the back is to go through the motions of riding a bicycle. Another is to lie down, then bend the body at the hips, getting into a sitting position; repeat a few times. Another is to face the floor, holding the body rigid, supported on the toes and the palms of the hands; slowly raise the body until the arms are straight and slowly lower it again until the abdomen touches the floor; repeat several times. It is impossible to go into detail regarding various exercises here. Those who wish to take care of themselves can easily devise a number of good ones, or they can employ a physical culture teacher to give them pointers. Here as elsewhere, good sense wins out. It is not necessary to give much time to exercise, but a little is valuable. Those who labor with their hands often use but few muscles, and it would be well for them to take corrective exercises so that the body will remain in good condition. There is no excuse for round shoulders and sunken chests. A few weeks, or at most a few months, will correct this in young people. The older the individual, the longer it takes. If the vertebrae have grown together in bony union no correction is possible. It is as necessary to relax as it is to exercise. When weary, take a few minutes off and let go physically and mentally. A little training will enable you to drop everything, and even if it is for but five minutes, the ease gives renewed vigor. It does not matter what position is assumed, if it is comfortable and allows the muscles to lose all tension. At such times it is well to let the eyelids gently close, giving the eyes a rest. Eye strain is very exhausting to the whole body and often results in serious discomfort. Many do not know how to relax. They think they are relaxed, yet their bodies are in a state of tension. When relaxed any part of the body that may be raised falls down again as though it were dead. People who do much mental work are at times so aroused by ideas that refuse to release their hold until they have been worked out or given expression that they can not sleep for the time being. A few minutes of relaxation then gives rest. When the problem has been solved, the worker is rewarded with sweet slumbers. An occasional night of this kind of wakefulness does no harm, provided no such drugs as coffee, alcohol, strychnine and morphine are used. We are undoubtedly intended to be useful. Normal men and women are not content unless they are helpful. Hence we have our work or vocation. However, people who get into a rut, and they are liable to if they work all the time at one thing, lose efficiency. Therefore it is well to have an avocation or a hobby to sharpen mind and body. It does not make much difference what the hobby is, provided it is interesting. We waste much time that could give us more pleasure if it were intelligently employed. An hour a day given to a subject for a few years in the spirit of play will give a vast fund of information and may in time be of inestimable benefit. Those who labor much with the hands would do well to take some time each day for mental recreation, and those who work in mental channels should get joy and benefit from physical efforts. A few hobbies, depending upon circumstances, may be: Photography, music, a foreign language, the drama, literature, history, philosophy, painting, gardening, raising chickens, dogs or bees, floriculture, and botany. Some people have become famous through their hobbies. They are excellent for keeping the mind fluid, which helps to retain physical youth. There is something peculiarly beneficial about tending and watching growing and unfolding things. It is well known that women remain young longer than men. We have good reason to believe that one of the causes is their intimate relation with children. Growing flowers, vegetables, chickens and pups have the same influence in lesser degree. Tender, helpless things bring out the best qualities in our natures. We can not be on too intimate terms with nature, so, if possible, select a hobby that brings you closely in contact with her and her products. CHAPTER XXIII. BREATHING AND VENTILATION. The respiratory apparatus is truly marvelous in beauty and efficiency. Medical men complain about nature's way of constructing the alimentary canal, saying that it is partly superfluous, but no such complaint is lodged against the lungs and their accessories. The respiratory system may be likened in form to a well branched tree, with hollow trunk, limbs and leaves: The trachea is the trunk; the two bronchi, one going to the right side and the other to the left side, are the main branches; the bronchioles and their subdivisions are the smaller branches and twigs; the air cells are the leaves. The trachea and bronchi are tubes, furnished with cartilaginous rings to keep them from collapsing. They are lined with mucous membrane. The bronchi give off branches, which in turn divide and subdivide, until they become very fine. Upon the last subdivisions are clustered many cells or vesicles. These are the air cells and here the exchange takes place, the blood giving up carbonic acid gas and receiving from the inspired air a supply of oxygen. This exchange takes place through a very thin layer of mucous membrane, the air being on one side and the blood capillaries on the other side. The whole respiratory tract is lined with mucous membrane. This membrane is ciliated, that is, it is studded with tiny hairlike projections, extending into the air passages. These are constantly in motion, much like the grain in a field when the wind is gently blowing. Their function is to prevent the entry of foreign particles into the air cells, for their propulsive motion is away from the lungs, toward the external air passages. In some of the large cities where the atmospheric conditions are unfavorable and the air is laden with dust and smoke, the cilia are unable to prevent the entrance of all the fine foreign particles in the air. Then these particles irritate the mucous membrane, which secretes enough mucus to imprison the intruders. Consequently there is occasionally expulsion of gray or black mucus, which should alarm no one under the circumstances, if feeling well. Normally the mucous membrane secretes only enough mucus to lubricate itself, and when there is much expulsion of mucus it means that either the respiratory or the digestive system, or both, are being abused. At such times the sufferer should take an inventory of his habits and correct them. The air cells are made up of very thin membrane. So great is their surface that if they could be flattened out they would form a sheet of about 2,000 square feet. We can not explain satisfactorily why it is that through their walls there is an exchange of gases, nor how the respiratory system can act so effectively both as an exhaust of harmful matter and a supply of necessary elements. The distribution of the blood capillaries, so tiny that the naked eye can not make them out, is wonderful. Under the microscope they look like patterns of delicate, complex, beautiful lace. The lungs are supplied with more blood than any other, part of the body. A small part of it is for the nourishment of the lung structure, but most of it comes to be purified. After the blood has traveled to various parts of the body to perform its work as a carrier of food, and oxygen and gatherer of waste, it returns to the heart and from the heart it is sent to the lungs. There it gives up its carbonic acid gas and receives a supply of oxygen. Then it returns to the heart again and once more it is sent to all parts of the body to distribute the vital element, oxygen. The lungs give off watery vapor, a little animal matter and considerable heat, but their chief function is to exchange the carbonic acid gas of the blood for the oxygen of the air. When the fats, sugars and starches, in their modified form, are burned in the body to produce heat and energy, carbonic acid gas and water are formed. The gas is taken up by the blood stream, which is being deprived of its oxygen at the same time. This exchange turns the blood from red into a bluish tinge. The red color is due to the union of oxygen with the iron in the blood corpuscles, forming rust, roughly speaking. The fine adjustment that exists in nature can be seen by taking into consideration that animals give off carbon dioxide and breathe in oxygen, while vegetation exhales oxygen and inhales carbon dioxide. In other words, animal life makes conditions favorable for plant growth, and vegetation makes possible the existence of animals. An animal of the higher class can live several days without water, several weeks without food, but only a very few minutes without oxygen. When the blood becomes surcharged with carbonic acid gas, and oxygen is refused admittance to the lungs, life ceases in about five or six minutes. From this it can easily be seen how important it is to have a proper supply of oxygen. Acute deprivation of this element is immediately fatal, and chronic deprivation of a good supply helps to produce early deterioration and premature death. The lungs can easily be kept in good condition, and when we ponder on the beautiful and effective way in which nature has equipped us with a respiratory apparatus and an inexhaustible store of oxygen, surely we must understand the folly of not helping ourselves to what is so vital, yet absolutely free. Wrong eating and impure air are largely responsible for all kinds of respiratory troubles, from a simple cold to the most aggravated form of pulmonary tuberculosis. Exercise and deep breathing will to a great extent antidote overeating, but there is a limit beyond which the lungs refuse to tolerate this form of abuse. Experiments have shown that if the carbonic acid gas thrown off daily by an adult male were solidified, it would amount to about seven ounces of solid carbon, which comes from fats, sugars and starches that are burned in the body. It is well to remember that there are various forms of burning or combustion. Rapid combustion is exemplified in stoves and furnaces, where the carbon of coal or wood rapidly and violently unites with oxygen. Slow combustion takes place in the rotting of wood, the rusting of iron and steel and the union of oxygen with organic matter in animal bodies. Both processes are the same, varying only in rapidity and intensity. People who daily give off seven ounces of carbon are overworking their bodies. They take in too much food and consequently force too great combustion. This forcing has evil effects on the system, for under forced combustion the body is not able to clean itself thoroughly. Some of the soot remains in the flues (the blood-vessels) and is deposited in the various parts of the engine (the body). Result: Hardening, which means loss of elasticity and aging of the body. Aging of the body results in deterioration of the mind. Proper breathing is fine, but unless it is also accompanied by proper eating it does not bring the best results. The atmospheric air contains about four parts of carbonic acid gas to 10,000 parts of air. The exhaled air becomes quite heavily charged with this gas, about 400 to 500 parts in 10,000. It does not take long before the air in a closed, occupied room is so heavily charged with this gas and so poor in oxygen that its constant rebreathing is detrimental. The blood stream becomes poisoned, which immediately depresses the physical and mental powers. Warning is often given by a feeling of languor and perhaps a slight headache. People accustom themselves to impure air so that they apparently feel no bad effects, but this is always at the expense of health. The senses may be blunted, but the evil results always follow. To keep a house sealed up as tightly as possible in order to keep it warm saves fuel bills, but the resultant bodily deterioration and disease cause enough discomfort and result in doctor bills which more than offset this saving. It is poor economy. A constant supply of the purest air obtainable must be furnished to the lungs; otherwise the blood becomes so laden with poison that health, in its best and truest sense, is impossible. The air should be inhaled through the nose. It does not matter much how it is exhaled. The nose is so constructed that it fits the air for the lungs. The inspired air is often too dry, dusty and cold. The normal nose remedies all these defects. The mucous membrane in the nasal passages contains cilia, which catch the dust. The nasal passages are very tortuous so that during its journey through them the air is warmed and takes up moisture. Habitual mouth breathing is one of the causes of the hardening and toughening of the mucous membrane of the respiratory passages, for the mouth does not arrest the irritating substances floating in the air, nor does it sufficiently warm and moisten the inspired air. Irritation produces inflammation and this in turn causes thickening of the membranes. Then it is very easy to acquire some troublesome affliction such as asthma. Very cold air is irritating, but the passage through the nose warms it sufficiently. The evil results of mouth breathing are well seen in children, in whom it raises the roof of the mouth and brings the lateral teeth too close together. Then the dentists have to correct the deformity and the children are forced to suffer protracted inconvenience. This mouth breathing is mostly due to wrong feeding, especially overfeeding, which causes swelling of the mucous membrane, thus impeding the intake of the air through the nose and forcing it through the mouth. The chief curative measure is obvious. Cut down the child's food supply and give food of better quality. Remember that children should not be fat. Normal breathing is rhythmical, with a slight rise of the abdomen and chest during inspiration and a slight falling during expiration. Watch a sleeping baby, and you will understand what is meant. The ratio of breathing to the beating of the heart is about one to four or five. Whatever accelerates the heart causes more rapid breathing and vice versa. Breathing is practically automatic, and were we living under natural conditions we should need to pay no attention to it, but inasmuch as our mode of life prevents the full use of the lungs a little intelligent consideration is necessary to attain full efficiency. The body should be left as free as possible by the clothes and especially is this true of the chest and waist line. Women sin much against themselves in this respect. Most of them find it absolutely necessary for their mental welfare to constrict the lower part of the chest and the waist line a great part of the time, for really it would not do to be out of fashion. The statue of Venus de Milo is generally considered to represent the highest form of female beauty and perfection in sculptural art. If living women would consent to remain beautiful, instead of being slaves to fashion, it would be much better for themselves and for the race. A corseted woman can not breathe properly, even if she can introduce her hand between the body and her corset to prove that she is not constricted. The natural curves of women are more graceful than those produced by the corset. It would be an easy matter to give the breasts sufficient support, if they need support, without constricting the body, and then take enough exercise to keep the waist and abdomen firm and in shape to accord with a normal sense of what is beautiful and proper. Woman does right in being as good looking as possible, and it would do man no harm to imitate her in this, for truly, "Beauty is its own excuse for being." But beauty and fashion seldom go hand in hand. Look at the modes which were the fashion, and you will be compelled to say that many of them are offensive to people of good taste. American women should cease imitating the caprice of the women of the underworld of Paris. There are indications that women are liberating themselves somewhat from the chains of fashions, as well as from other ridiculous things, so let us hope that they will soon be brave enough to look as beautiful as nature allows them to be, both in face and figure. The lungs, like every other part of the body, become weakened when not used. The chest cavity enlarges during inspiration, but this enlargement is prevented if there is constriction of the lower ribs and the waist. The normal breathing is abdominal. Such breathing is health-imparting. It massages the liver gently with each breath and is mildly tonic to the stomach and the bowels. It truly gives internal exercise. It helps to prevent constipation. Shallow breathing causes degeneration of lung tissue, and indirectly degeneration of every tissue in the body, for it deprives the blood of enough oxygen to maintain health. It also prevents the internal exercise of the abdominal organs, which is a necessary activity of the normal organism. Shallow breathers only use the upper parts of the lungs. It is not to be wondered at that the lower parts easily degenerate. In pneumonia, for instance, the lower part is usually first affected, and in tuberculosis one often can get the physical indications in the lower part of the lungs posteriorly before they can be found any other place. The upper parts have to be used and consequently they get more exercise and more blood and hence become more resistant. It is well known that when the upper part of the lungs become affected the disease is very grave. Men, as well as women, are guilty of shallow breathing. Many men are very inactive and their breathing becomes sluggish. This can be remedied by taking vigorous exercise and a few breathing exercises. Because abdominal breathing is the correct way, some physical culturists, who mix the so-called New Thought with their system, advocate exercising and concentrating the mind on the abdomen at the same time. This is unnecessary, for the proper exercises and the right attitude will cause abdominal breathing without giving the abdomen special thought. Man was evidently intended to earn his food through physical exertion and exercise, and so long as he did this the lungs were compelled to expand. A few running exercises or hill or mountain climbs will suffice to prove the truth of this statement. However, now that man can ride on a street car and earn, or at least get, his daily bread by sitting in an office, it is necessary to exercise a little in order to get good results. The farmer who sits crouched up on a plow, mower or binder also fails to use his lungs, but if he gets out and pitches hay or bundles of grain, he is sure to get what oxygen he needs. Everyone should get into the habit of breathing deeply several times a day. Upon rising in the morning, go to the open window or out of doors and take at least a dozen slow, deep breaths, inhaling slowly, holding the air in the lungs a few moments and exhaling slowly. This should be repeated noon and night. Every time when one is in the fresh air, it is well to take a few full breaths. By and by the proper breathing will become a habit, to the great benefit of one's health. There are many breathing exercises, but every intelligent being can make his own exercises, so I shall describe but one. Have the hands hanging at the sides, palms facing each other. Inhale slowly and at the same time bring the arms, which are to be held straight, forward and upward, or outward and upward, carrying them as far up and back over the head as possible. The arm motion is also to be slow. About the time the arms are in the last position a full inspiration has been taken. Hold the position of the arms and the breath a few seconds and then slowly exhale and slowly bring the arms back to the first position. Repeat ten or twelve times. If while one is inhaling and raising the arms, one also slowly rises on the toes and slowly resumes a natural foot position while exhaling, the exercise will be even better. Hollow-chested young people can attain a good lung capacity and good chest contour in a very reasonable time. Persistence in proper breathing and proper exercise will have remarkable results in even two or three months, and at the same time nature will be painting roses on pallid cheeks. It is easy to increase the chest expansion several inches. Those who expand less than three and one-half inches should not be satisfied until they have gone beyond this mark. Elderly people can also increase their chest expansion and breathing capacity, but it takes more time, for with the years the chest cartilages have a tendency to harden and even to ossify. The less breathing the sooner the ossification comes. Many people are afraid of night air, for which there is no reason. The absence of sunshine at night does no more harm than it does on cloudy days. During the night, of all times, fresh air is needed, for less is used, and what little is breathed should be of as good quality as circumstances permit. Open the windows wide enough to have the air constantly changing in the bedroom. During the winter it will be necessary to put additional clothes on the bed, for no one can obtain the best of slumbers while chilled. Some may find it a better plan to use artificial heat in the foot of the bed. At any rate, during cold weather better covering is required for the legs and for the feet than for any other part of the body. People with good resistance can sleep in a draught without the least harm, but ordinary people should not sleep in a draught. It is easy to use screens so that the wind does not blow upon the face. If the air is kept stirring in the chamber the sleeper gets enough without being in a current. Some are in the habit of closing their bedroom windows and doors at night and opening them for a thorough airing during the day. If the bedrooms must be closed, close them during the day and open them wide at night, for that is when the pure air is needed. It does not make much difference whether they are open or closed while being unoccupied. It is actually sickening to enter some bedrooms and be compelled to breathe the foul air. When people are ill the rooms should have fresh air entering at all times. Sick people give off more poisons than do those in good health and they need the oxygen to burn up the deposits in the system. An early morning stroll while most people are in bed is very instructive. It will be found that some houses are shut up as tightly as possible and that only a few are properly ventilated. A person who insists on keeping his window open in winter is often looked upon as a freak. What is the result of this close housing? The first result is that the blood is unable to obtain the required amount of oxygen and is poisoned by the rebreathing of the air in the room. In the morning the sleeper wakes feeling only half rested, and it takes a cup of coffee or something else to produce complete awakening. The evil results are cumulative, and after a while the bad habit of breathing impure air at night will be a great factor in building disease of some kind. One reason why some are so afraid of fresh air, especially at night, is that they become so autotoxemic through bad habits, especially improper eating habits, that a slight draught causes them to sneeze and often catch cold and they believe that the fresh air causes the irritation. This is not so. The irritability comes from within, not from without. After becoming accustomed to good ventilation at night it is almost impossible to enter into restful slumbers in a stuffy room. Savages are singularly free from respiratory diseases, and the reason is without doubt that they do not house themselves closely. In some parts of the world they fear to let civilized men enter their abodes, for they may bring respiratory diseases. Not only the homes, but public places, such as street cars, theaters, schools and churches are too often poorly ventilated. Sleeping, or rather dozing in church is so common that it is a matter of jest. My experience has been that drowsiness comes not from the dullness of sermons, but from the impossibility of getting a breath of good air in many churches. Please remember that exhaled air is excretory matter, and that it is both unclean and unwholesome to consume it over and over again. Draughts do not cause colds. Cold air does not cause colds. Wet clothes do not cause colds: These things may be minor contributory factors, but the body must be in poor condition before one can catch cold. Colds are generally caught at the table. Lack of fresh air also helps to produce colds, as well as other diseases. The tendency in our country is to heat buildings too much. Europeans are both surprised and uncomfortable when they first enter our dwellings or public meeting places. The temperature in a dwelling should not be forced above seventy degrees Fahrenheit by means of artificial heating. The temperature required depends very much upon one's mental attitude and habits. Those who take enough exercise have good circulation of the blood in the extremities, and therefore do not need so much artificial heat. The best heating is from within. CHAPTER XXIV. SLEEP. A young baby should sleep almost all the time, and it will if intelligently cared for. Overfeeding is the bane of the baby's life and is the cause of most of its restlessness. The first few months the baby should be awake enough to take its food, and then go to sleep again. As it grows older it sleeps less and less. There is no fixed time for an adult to sleep. The amount varies with different individuals. The idea is quite prevalent that eight hours nightly are necessary. This may be true for some. Many do very well on seven hours' sleep, and even less. The great inventor, Thomas Edison, is said to have had but very little sleep for many years, and it is reported that when interested in some problem he would miss a night or two. Yet he has lived longer than the average individual and is now in good health. Very few have done as much constructive work as he. Many other prominent people have been light sleepers. As people grow older they require less sleep than they did in youth. It is not uncommon for septuagenarians to sleep but five hours nightly. Although we can not say how much sleep any individual may require, each person can find out for himself, and this is much better than to try to live by rules, which are often erroneous. Those who live as they should otherwise and select a definite hour for retiring and adhere to it, except on special occasions, get all the sleep that is necessary. They awake in the morning refreshed, ready to do a good day's work. During sound sleep all conscious endeavors cease. The vital organs do only enough work to keep the body alive. The breathing is lighter, the circulation is slower and in sound sleep there is no thinking. This letting up in the great activity of body and mind gives an opportunity for the millions of cells, of which the body is composed, to take from the blood what is needed to restore them to normal. During the day many of these cells become worn and weary. At night they recuperate. Hence undisturbed sleep is very important. Many believe that "early to bed and early to rise" is the proper way, that the hours of sleep before midnight are more refreshing and invigorating than those after. This is merely a belief, perhaps a good one. Early retiring leads to regularity, which is very desirable. Late retiring often means loose mental and physical habits. Those who are regular about their time of retiring and live well otherwise feel refreshed whether they go to bed early or late. Children should always retire early, otherwise they do not get enough sleep. The night is the natural sleeping time for most creatures, as well as for man. This is a heritage of ages. There was no artificial illumination during the stone age. Man could do nothing during the darkness, so he rested. However, those who must work at night find no trouble in sleeping during the day. The tendency among men is the same as among animals, to sleep more in winter than in summer, not that more sleep is required, but because the winter nights are longer. Children should go to bed early. They require more sleep than adults because of the greater cell activity. Also, children who stay up late generally become irritable and nervous. It is not well to eat immediately before retiring. The sleep following a late meal is generally interrupted, and there is not that feeling of brightness and clearness of mind, with which one should awake, next morning. Lunching before going to bed is a bad habit. Some believe they must have an apple, or perhaps a glass of milk, before retiring, for they think that this will bring sleep. The body should not be burdened with extra food to digest during the sleeping hours. This time should be dedicated to the restoring of the body, and the blood contains ample material. Dreaming is largely a bad habit. A normal individual rarely dreams, and then generally following some imprudence. Dreams begin in childhood and are then due principally to excessive food intake. As a producer of nightmares overfeeding has no equal. During adult life dreaming is caused by bad physical and mental conduct, plus the habit which was formed in childhood. Fear, anger, worry, stimulants, too much food, impure air and too warm clothes are some of the causes that produce dreams. Like other bad habits, dreaming is difficult to overcome once it is firmly established. The cure consists in righting one's other bad habits and in not thinking about the dreams. A sleep that is disturbed by dreams is not as sound as it should be and consequently not as refreshing as normal sleep. The conscious mind is not completely at rest and, the subconscious mind is running riot. Normal sleep is complete unconsciousness. This is the sleep of the just and must be earned. Before retiring all the clothes worn during the day should be removed. The night apparel should be light--cotton, linen or silk. The bed should be comfortable, but not too soft. There should be enough covering to keep the sleeper comfortably warm, but not hot. Those who cover themselves with so many quilts or blankets that they perspire during the night are not properly refreshed. It prevents sound sleep and makes the skin too sensitive. It reduces a person's resistance to climatic changes. The feet should be kept warm, even if necessary to put artificial heat in the foot of the bed. During cold weather the feet and the legs should have more covering than the rest of the body. From the waist up the covering should be rather light. Sound sleep is dependent on relaxation of mind and body. Those who live the day over after going to bed do not go to sleep quickly or easily. This habit should be overcome. Do business at the business place, during business hours, if you would have the mind fresh. There are days so full of cares that the night does not bring mental relaxation, but those who have begun early in life to practice self-control find these days growing fewer as the years roll by. When they learn their true relationship to the rest of humanity, to the universe and to eternity, they are generally willing and able to let the earth rotate and revolve for a few hours without their personal attention. They realize that worry and anxiety waste time and energy. Many complain that they can not sleep. This they repeat to themselves and to others many times a day. At night they ask themselves why they can not sleep. They do it so often that it becomes a powerful negative suggestion frequently strong enough to prevent their going to sleep. It is an obsession. Real insomnia exists only in the mind of the sufferer. Every physician, sooner or later, has experience with people who say that they can not sleep. The doctors who give such patients sleeping powders or potions make a grave mistake. These drugs are taken at the expense of some of the physical structures, and the day of settlement always comes. Perhaps it will find the patient with bankrupted nerves or a failing heart. To be effective, the size of the dose must be increased from time to time. At last the result will be some disease, either physical or mental. Those who insist that they "do not sleep at all," or that they sleep "but a few minutes" each night, sleep a few hours, but they make themselves believe that they do not sleep. We are compelled to sleep, and even those who "do not sleep at all" can not remain awake indefinitely. Those who are troubled with the no-sleep obsession will soon realize that they sleep as well as others if they cease thinking and talking so much about the subject. I have seen people suffering from this bad habit recover in one week. Those who have been taking drugs to induce sleep generally have a few bad nights when they give them up, after which the nervous storm subsides and sleep becomes normal. All drugs should be discarded. The physician who understands more about the working of nature than about the giving of drugs will have the best success in these cases. Soothing sleep always comes to people possessed of a controlled mind in a healthy body. If the day has been exhausting and the nerves are so alive and wrought up that sleep will not come, do not allow the mind to delve into worry about it. Do not say to yourself: "I wish I could sleep. Why can't I sleep?" Such fretful thinking produces mental tension, which drives sleep away. Instead, say to yourself: "I am very comfortable. I am having a refreshing rest. It does not matter whether I sleep or not." By all means relax the body. Choose a comfortable position and remain quiet, having the muscles relaxed. It is remarkable how soon a relaxed body brings tranquility to a disturbed mind. Let a man in pugnacious mood relax his face and his fists and in a very short time his anger vanishes. It makes no difference whether a person sleeps eight hours on a certain night. If he is fairly regular about going to bed he will get enough sleep. Those who realize this truth do not complain of insomnia. Most people who think much have an occasional night when an idea takes such strong possession of the brain and demands so forcibly to be put into proper shape, that they can not sleep. Under such circumstances it is as well to to get up and work out the idea. Three or four nights like that in the course of a year will do no harm. People rarely sleep well when lying on the back. If the theory of evolution is correct, we were not intended to lie on our backs during sleep. A good position is to lie on the right side, the right leg being anterior to the left, both being flexed. Another position that is restful to many is to lie on the abdomen, the arms extended away from the body. The breathing should be entirely nasal. It will not be nasal if there is obstruction in the nose. A healthy person who breathes through his mouth at night must use autosuggestion to overcome the habit. He should suggest to himself, "I will breathe through the nose; I will keep my lips together." If he persists in this, closes the mouth when he goes to sleep, in time the mouth-breathing will cease, and with it the disagreeable habit of snoring. The harmfulness of mouth-breathing is explained in another chapter. At all times the bedroom should be well ventilated. Some people are in the habit of sleeping in unventilated bedrooms, but upon rising in the morning they throw the windows open and give the room a good airing. The ventilation does not do much good except when there is someone in the room. During the day the bedroom could be closed with very little harm ensuing, though it is best to have it sunned and aired as much as possible. The sleeping porch is excellent. Outdoor sleeping is all right and it is not a modern fad. Where Benjamin Franklin got his information I do not know, but he has this to say about outdoor sleeping: "It is recorded that Methusaleh, who, being the longest liver, may be supposed to have best preserved his health, that he slept always in the open air; for when he had lived five hundred years an angel said to him: 'Arise, Methusaleh, and build thee an house, for thou shalt live five hundred years longer.' But Methusaleh answered, and said: 'If I am to live but five hundred years longer, it is not worth while to build me an house; I will sleep in the air as I have been used to do.'" This may partly account for some of his many years. His alleged conversation with the angel indicates that he was a man of equanimity. Under ordinary circumstances those who sleep indoors should have one sash of window fully open for each person in the chamber, or more. It is well to have plenty of fresh air, but it is not best to sleep in a draught. When the wind is blowing through the windows it is not necessary to have them wide open, for an aperture of four inches will then give as much fresh air as a sash opening in calmer weather. It is best to get up promptly upon awakening in the morning. Remaining in bed half asleep is productive of slothfulness. Too much sleeping and dozing make one dull. Those who overeat require more sleep than moderate people. The sluggishness and sleepiness following a too heavy meal are familiar to all. Animals that do not get food regularly, but are dependent on the vicissitudes of preying for their nourishment, often gorge themselves so that they can not stay awake, but fall into a stupor, which may last for days. Man, who is generally assured of three meals a day, has no excuse for this form of self-abuse, but unfortunately he practices it too often. It is a gross habit, one in which people of refinement will not continue to indulge. Young children should take a nap each day. They are so active that they need this rest. Adults can with profit take a short nap, not to exceed thirty minutes, after lunch. Those who are nervous owe it to themselves to take a nap. Those who use the brain a great deal will find the midday nap a great restorer. If sleep will not come, they should at least close their eyes and remain relaxed for a short time. A long nap makes one feel stupid. Those unfortunate people who are addicted to various enslaving drugs, such as cocaine and morphine, often are very light sleepers. They are deteriorating physically, mentally and morally. Such people are ill and are no guides to the needs of healthy people. Coffee drinking is a destroyer of sound sleep. At first the coffee seems to soothe the nerves, but in a few hours it has the opposite effect. The habitual use of coffee helps to bring on premature nervous instability and physical degeneration. Sleep is self-regulating. If we are normal otherwise we need give the subject no thought except to select a regular time to go to bed and get up promptly in the morning upon awaking. It is easy to drive away sleep. Those who wish to enjoy this sweet restorer at its best must be regular. CHAPTER XXV. FASTING. Fasting is one of the oldest of remedial measures known to man, not only for the ills of the body, but for those of the soul. Oriental lore and literature make frequent reference to fasts. From the Bible we learn that Moses, Elijah and Christ each fasted forty days, and no bad effects are recorded. Addison knew the value of fasting and temperance. He wrote that, "Abstinence well-timed often kills a sickness in embryo and destroys the seeds of a disease." Unfortunately, he did not live as well as he knew how. Hence his brilliant mind had but a short time in which to work and the world is the loser. Our own great philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, had the same knowledge, for he wrote, "Against disease known, the strongest fence is the defensive virtue, abstinence." There is much prejudice against fasting, because people do not understand what fasting is and what it accomplishes. Fasting is not starving. To fast is to go without food when the body is in such condition that food can not be properly digested and assimilated. To starve is to go without food when the body is in condition to digest and assimilate food and needs nourishment. It is quite generally believed that if food is withheld for six or seven days the result will be fatal. Under proper conditions one can go without food for two or three months. Perhaps most people could not do without food for the latter period, but fasts of that duration are on record. Fat people can live on their tissues for a long time before they are reduced to normal weight, and slender ones can live on water for an extended period. Prolonged fasts should not be taken unless necessary, and then they should be taken under the guidance of someone who has had experience and is possessed of common sense. If a person is fearful or surrounded by others who instill fear into him, he should not take a prolonged fast. The gravest danger during the fast is fear. It takes many weeks to die from lack of food, but fear is capable of killing in a few days, or even in a few hours. The healer who undertakes to direct fasts against the wishes of the patient's friends and relatives, who have more influence than he has, injures himself professionally and throws doubt upon the valuable therapeutic measure he advocates. The indications that a fast is needed are pain and fever and acute attacks of all kinds of diseases. Some of the more common diseases that call for a complete cessation of eating are: The acute stage of pneumonia, appendicitis, typhoid fever, neuralgia, sciatica, peritonitis, cold, tonsilitis, whooping cough, croup, scarlet fever, smallpox and all other eruptive diseases; colics of kidneys, liver or bowels; all acute alimentary tract disturbances, whether of the stomach or of the bowels. Sometimes it is necessary to fast in chronic diseases, especially when there is pain, but as a rule chronic diseases yield to proper hygienic and dietetic treatment without a fast, provided they are curable. Here is where many people who advocate fasting go to extremes. A fast is the quickest way out of the trouble, but it is at times very unpleasant. By taking longer time the result can be obtained by proper living and the patient is being educated while he is recovering. In chronic cases it is especially important to eat properly. The only disease of which I know that seems to be unfavorably influenced by fasting is pulmonary tuberculosis in well advanced stages. Such patients quickly lose weight and strength on a fast, and they have great difficulty in regaining either. Perhaps others have had different experiences and have made observations that do not agree with this, for cases of tuberculosis have been reported cured through fasting. It is well to bear in mind that every case that is diagnosed pulmonary tuberculosis is not tuberculosis. Many supposed-to-be cases of tuberculosis, some of them so diagnosed by most reputable specialists, are nothing more than lung irritation due to the absorption of gas and acid from the digestive tract. When the indigestion is cured, the so-called tuberculosis disappears. These are the only tubercular cases that I have seen benefited by fasts, and the improvement is both quick and sure. Doubtless tuberculosis in the first stages could be cured by fasting, followed by proper hygienic and dietetic care, for at first tuberculosis is a localized symptom of disordered nutrition. In this stage the disease is no more dangerous than many other maladies that are not considered fatal. The subjects brought to the dissecting table show plainly that a large proportion of them have at some time had pulmonary tuberculosis, the lesions of which were healed, and they afterwards died of some other affliction. However, if a patient is received after the manifestation of profuse night sweats, great flushing of the cheeks, high fever daily, emaciation, expulsion of much mucus from the lungs, and the presence of great lassitude and weakness, the rule is that the nutrition is so badly impaired that nothing will bring the patient back to normal. Under such circumstances fasting hastens death. The family and friends are not reticent about placing the blame on the healer. Moderate feeding will prolong life and add to the comfort of the sufferer. The customary overfeeding hastens the end. Cancer is said to be cured by fasting, but this is very, very doubtful. It is often difficult to differentiate between cancer and benignant tumors at first. Benignant tumors frequently disappear on a limited diet. I have seen many tumors disappear under rational treatment, without resorting to the knife, but I have never seen an undoubted case of cancer do so, though some of the tumors in question had been diagnosed cancer. Cancers, in the advanced stages, end in the death of the patient in spite of any kind of treatment. By being very careful about the diet, cancer patients can escape nearly all the pain and discomfort that generally accompany this disease. Moderation would prevent nearly every case of cancer, and especially moderation in meat eating. It is a disease that should be prevented, for its cure is very doubtful. Colds leave in a few days, with no bad after effects, if no food is taken. Typhoid fever treated rationally from the start generally disappears in from one week to twelve days if nothing but water is given, and fails to develop the severity that it attains under the giving of foods and drugs. There are no complications. Appendicitis is of longer duration, if it is a severe attack, lasting from two to four weeks, but after the first few days the patient is comfortable, under a no-food, let-alone treatment. Operation is not necessary. In cases of gall-stones, accompanied by jaundice and colic, it is not necessary to operate. Fasting and bathing will bring the body back to normal in a short time. In such cases it is necessary to give the baths as hot as they can be borne, and prolong them until the body is relaxed. It would be easy to enumerate many diseases, telling the benefits to be derived from fasting, but these point the way and are sufficient. The one unfailing symptom of a fast is the loss of weight. This loss is natural and there is nothing alarming about it. As soon as eating is resumed the loss of weight stops. For a while the weight may then remain stationary, but the gain is generally prompt. In time the weight will become normal again. According to Chosat, the loss sustained by the various tissues in starvation is as follows: Fat..................... 93 per cent. Blood................... 75 " Spleen.................. 71 " Pancreas................ 64 " Liver................... 52 " Muscles................. 43 " Nervous tissues.......... 2 " This table was made from animal experimentation, but agrees very well with other observations, except in the loss of blood, which others have found to be less than 20 per cent. It will be noticed that the highest tissue, nervous tissue, is hardly affected, but the lowest tissue, fat, almost disappears. When an individual needs to fast, his body is suffering from the ingestion of too much food and poor elimination. He overworks his nutrition and overdraws on his nervous energies so much in other lines that the body is unable to throw off the debris which should leave by way of the kidneys, the bowels, the skin and the lungs. He is poisoned by his retained excretions, suffering from what is called autointoxication or self-poisoning. He is filthy internally and needs a cleaning. If he has abused himself so that he lacks the power to assimilate food and throw off waste at the same time, obviously it is proper to stop eating until the lost power is regained. In cases of fever it is a physical crime to eat, for the glands cease secreting the normal juices. The mouth becomes parched for lack of saliva, and the gastric and intestinal juices are not secreted in proper amount or quality. Food eaten under such circumstances is not digested. The internal temperature in fever is above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and it does not take long for food to decay in such temperature, especially such aliments as milk and broth, which are the favorite foods for fever patients. These alimentary substances are excellent for growing nearly all the germs that are found in the body in disease. When in pain, it is harmful to eat, for the secretions are then perverted and digestion is interfered with. All violent emotions, such as hatred, jealousy, and anger, mean that no food should be taken until the body has had the opportunity to relax and regain some of its tone. Such emotions do not thrive so well in healthy individuals as among the sick, but then perfect health is a rarity. When going without food people are subject to various symptoms, which depend as much on the temperament as on the physical conditions. A hysterical woman can scare inexperienced attendants into doing her will by her antics. She may make them believe that she is dying. On the other hand, well balanced, fearless people can fast for weeks with very little annoyance. Fasting is not always pleasant and there are a number of symptoms that are often present. The faster loses weight, at first often as much as two pounds a day. This is mostly water. After the first ten days the loss may be but one-half of a pound, or less, per day. The loss of weight is greatest in heavy people and in those who have high fevers. The tongue becomes badly coated, and the breath foul, showing that the mucous membrane is busy throwing out waste. The tongue remains coated until the system is clean, and then it clears off. Most people feel weak when they attempt to walk or work, but they feel strong when resting. Others, who are badly food-poisoned, gain strength as the system eliminates the harmful substances from the body. For a day or two the craving for food may be quite insistent and persistent. Then hunger generally leaves and does not return until the tongue is clean. The mind becomes clearer as the body becomes cleaner. This benefit to the spirit, or the soul, has been recognized by religious organizations for centuries. A little discharge of blood from the bowels at first should cause no alarm. In some cases a great deal of yellow mucus is thrown into the lower bowel. The liver at times throws off so much bile that it makes the patient alarmed. This should cause no uneasiness. When the bile is forced upward into the stomach it is very disagreeable. The discharges from the bowels are often very dark. There is a tendency toward chilliness, especially to have cold hands and feet. Skin eruptions and heart palpitations are occasional symptoms. Nervous, irritable and fearful people have symptoms too numerous to mention. The more they are sympathized with the worse they become. Many medical men have misinterpreted the symptoms of the fast, and hence they have condemned the procedure. They see the foul coating on the tongue, the loss of weight and at times peculiar mental manifestations. They can smell the foul breath and the disagreeable odor from the skin and from the bowel discharges. These they interpret as signs of physical deterioration and degeneration. These manifestations indicate that the entire body is cleansing itself, throwing out impurities that have accumulated, because the system has had so much work to do that it has lacked the power to be self-cleansing. Nothing is needed to prove this fact except to continue the fast until the odors disappear and the tongue becomes clean. The bad odors given off by the body resemble the odors in severe fevers with much wasting, and hence they alarm those who have had little or no experience with protracted fasts. These odors are often bad at the end of about one week of fasting, though there is no fixed period for their appearance. They should cause no alarm for they simply indicate that the body is cleansing itself, and that is exactly what is desired. Under proper conditions I have neither seen nor heard of a fatality coming from a short fast. Those who are in such physical shape that they will die if fasted from five to ten days would die if they were fed. Another symptom that may alarm the attendant is the lowered blood pressure. This is natural and should cause no anxiety. Eating and drinking keep the blood pressure up. When the food intake is decreased, the blood pressure is reduced. When the food intake is stopped, the blood pressure is still further reduced. This fact should give the intelligent healer the hint to reduce the food intake in such abnormal conditions as arteriosclerosis and apoplexy. During prolonged fasts the blood pressure generally becomes quite low. Some fasting people can continue with light work, and when they are able to do this, it is best, for it keeps them from thinking about themselves all the time. If there is a lack of energy, dispense with work and vigorous exercise. In acute diseases there is no choice. One is compelled to cease laboring. In chronic diseases it depends on the patient and the adviser. Dismiss fear from the mind and do not discuss the fast or any of the symptoms with anyone except the adviser. It is best not to tell any outsiders about the fast, for the public has some queer ideas on the subject. If you are afraid, or if you have to fight with neighbors, friends, relatives, or perhaps with the health authorities, as sometimes happens, it is better not to take the fast. Drink all the water desired. At first the more one drinks the more quickly the system cleanses itself. A glass of water every hour during the day, or even every half hour is all right. The water may be warm or cold, but it should not be ice-cold nor should it be hot. Both extremes produce irritation. In acute inflammation of the stomach, nothing should be given by mouth. Small quantities of water may be given by rectum every two or three hours. In appendicitis only very small quantities of water are to be given by mouth at first, until the acute symptoms have subsided. Large quantities of fluid may excite violent peristalsis with resulting pain. In all eases of nausea, give nothing by mouth, not even water, until the nausea is gone. Symptoms are nature's sign language, and when properly interpreted they tell us what to do and what not to do. Even though there be no thirst or desire for water, some should be taken. If it can be taken by mouth give at least a glassful every two hours, not necessarily all at once. Some are so sensitive that one-half of a glass of water is all they can tolerate. If the stomach objects to water, give it by rectum. Always do this in cases of much nausea. After a few days the water intake may be reduced. Take a quick sponge bath every day and if there is any inclination toward chilliness, the water should be tepid or warm. Follow with a few minutes of dry towel friction. People who are overweight, with good heart and kidney action, can take prolonged hot baths, if they wish. An olive oil rub immediately after the bath, about twice a week, is grateful. However, this is not necessary. The colon is to be washed out every day. No definite amount of water can be prescribed. Occasionally enemas are taken under difficulties, for some cramp when water is introduced into the bowel. Those who are not accustomed to enemas should use water about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. One quart is a small enema. Two quarts make a fairly large one. Introduce the water, lie still for a few minutes and then allow it to pass out. If the bowels are very foul, use two or three washings. If there is much fermentation, use some soda in the water. Salt, about a tablespoonful to two quarts of water, stimulates the bowels, but its disadvantage is that it draws water from the intestinal walls, thus robbing the blood of a part of its fluid. The same is true of glycerin. Perhaps the least harmful ingredient that can be put into the water to stimulate action is enough pure castile soap to render the water opaque. The soap, however, has a tendency to wash away too much of the mucus which lubricates the bowel. On the whole, nothing is better than plain water. If it gives good results use nothing else. Those who are very sensitive and weak often find that the expulsion of water from the bowel not only further weakens them, but causes pain. In such cases Dr. Hazzard recommends a rectal tube (not a colon tube), which is very good, for it allows the emptying of the bowel without any cramping. The tube is to be inserted about six inches. To take the enema, assume either the knee-chest position (kneeling with the shoulders close to the floor) or lie on the right side with the hips elevated. These positions allow water to flow into colon by aid of gravity. When it is necessary to supply liquid to the body by rectum, simply introduce a pint or less of plain water, moderately warm. Repeat as often as necessary to keep away thirst, which will rarely be more than every three hours. Keep the body warm at all times. If it is difficult to keep warm, go to bed and use enough covers, having the windows open enough to supply fresh air. At night use artificial heat in the foot of the bed. If hot-water bottles, warm bricks or stones are used, they should be quite large; otherwise they become cold by two or three o'clock in the morning, when heat is most needed. If a large receptacle, such as a jug, is used to keep the water in, the bed clothes are lifted off the patient's feet, and this is often a great relief. No special food is suited to break all fasts on. It is necessary to begin with plain food in moderation. Overeating or eating of indigestible food at this time may result in sickness and even in death. If the faster lacks self-control, the food should be brought to him in proper quantities by the attendant. If the fast has lasted but two or three days, no special precautions are necessary, except that the first few meals should be smaller than usual. As indiscretions in eating compel nearly all fasts it is necessary to do a little better than previously, or the fast must be repeated. It is best to live so that fasts are not necessary. If the fast has been prolonged it is best to begin feeding liquid foods. What shall we feed? That depends on the patient and circumstances. The juice of the concord grape is not good for it ferments too easily. Many of those who are compelled to fast or else die have been so food-poisoned, and their digestive organs have been in such horrible condition for years that they have been unable to eat acid fruits. This is especially true of those who consume large quantities of starch. Sometimes they are unable to eat fruit for a while after the fast. At other times the irritability of the digestive organs disappears while food is withheld. For such people broths and milk may be employed. The juice of oranges, pineapples, California grapes, cherries, blackberries or tomatoes may be given. The tomatoes may be made into broth and strained, but nothing is to be added to this broth except salt. Stout people should do well on fruit juices. They are not to be so highly recommended for very thin, nervous people, for fruit juices are both thinning and cooling. Milk is very useful, and may be given either sweet or clabbered or in the form of buttermilk. Thin, nervous people can safely be given broths, preferably of lamb, mutton or chicken. Trim away all the fat, grind up the lean meat, and allow it to simmer (not boil) until all the juices are extracted from the meat. Strain and put away to cool. When cold, skim off the fat. Then warm the broth and serve. This broth is not to be seasoned while it is being cooked, but a little salt may be added when it is ready to serve. To one pound of lean meat there should be about one quart of broth. A teacupful to begin with is enough for a meal, and it is often necessary to give less than this. The gravest mistake is to be in a hurry about returning to full meals. The remarks about moderate feeding also apply to milk and fruit juices. Ordinarily, fasts are not broken on starchy foods, but this may be done at times to advantage, especially in cases that have been accustomed to large quantities of starch and but little of the fresh raw foods. The starch must, however, be in an easily digestible state and should be in the form of a very thin gruel made of oatmeal or whole wheatmeal. It should be cooked four to six hours and dressed with nothing but a little salt. A few can break the fast on a full meal without any bad results, but most people can not do it without suffering and the results may be fatal. So it is a safe rule to break the fast on simple liquid food, taken in moderation. Four or five days after breaking the fast, one should be able to eat the ordinary foods. The following is a suggestion of the manner in which to feed immediately after a fast of about two weeks: First day: Tomato broth once; mutton broth twice. Second day: Breakfast, orange juice. Lunch, buttermilk. Dinner, sliced tomatoes. Third day: Breakfast, buttermilk. Lunch, salad of lettuce and tomatoes, dressed with salt. Dinner, poached egg, celery. Fourth day: Breakfast, baked apple and milk. Lunch, toasted bread and butter. Dinner, lamb chops, stewed green peas, celery. If a meal causes distress, omit the next one and continue omitting meals until comfort and ease have returned. If the digestion is very weak, or if the illness has been protracted, do not feed solids as soon as recommended above. In all cases it is necessary to exercise self-control, moderation and common sense. The meals must be moderate. Gradually increase until the amount of food taken is sufficient to do the necessary bodily rebuilding. The longer the fast, the more care should be exercised in the beginning. It is no time to experiment. If the fast is to be of permanent benefit it is necessary to learn how to eat properly afterwards, and to put this knowledge into practice. This is the most important part to emphasize, yet all the books I have read on the subject have failed to pay any attention to it. In nearly every case the fast is necessary because of repeated mistakes in eating and drinking. Those mistakes built bodily ills in the first place and if the faster goes back to them they will do it again. The disease does not always take on the same type as it did in the first place, but it is the same old disease. During a fast there is recuperation because the body has a chance to become clean, and a clean body can not long remain unbalanced, provided there are no organic faults. By making mistakes in eating after the fast is over, the body again becomes foul and full of debris and that means more disease. Perhaps it may not require more than one-third as much abuse to cause a second break-down as it did to bring about the first one. Some people fast repeatedly, and are somewhat proud of it. They should be ashamed of the fact that they must fast time after time, for it shows either ignorance or a weak, undeveloped will power. The fast should teach every intelligent being that it is an emergency measure, and emergencies are but seldom encountered in a well regulated life. Food debauches following fasts should be avoided. A little will power properly applied will prevent them. Gross eating may compel another fast. We must eat and it is better to eat so that we can take sustenance regularly than to be compelled to go without food at various intervals. He who is moderate in his eating, uses a fair degree of intelligence in the selection of his food, is temperate in other ways and considerate and kind in his dealings with others will not be ill. A fast is efficacious in clearing up a brain that is unable to work well because it is bathed in unclean blood. It is remarkable how well the brain works when the stomach is not overworked. Overfeeding the body causes underfeeding of the brain. On a correct diet the brain is efficient and clear and able to bear sustained burdens. There is no question but that a fast, followed by a light diet, containing less of the heavily starchy and proteid foods and more of the succulent vegetables and fresh fruits, with their cleansing juices and health-imparting salts, would result in the recovery of over one-half of the insane. Most of them are suffering functionally and here the outlook is very hopeful. Christ cured a lunatic "by prayer and fasting." Proper feeding would work wonders in prisons. It would also be very beneficial for wayward girls and young men who are passion's slaves. St. Peter recommended fasting as an aid to morality, which is another evidence of the profundity of his wisdom. How long should a fast last? Until its object has been accomplished. It is rarely necessary to fast a month, but sometimes it is advisable to continue the fast for forty days, or even longer. If the fast is taken on account of pain, continue until the pain is gone. If for fever, until there is no more fever. In chronic cases it is not always necessary to continue the fast until the tongue is clean. When the patient is free from pain and fever and comfortable in every way, start feeding lightly. People who are thin and have sluggish nutrition, one symptom of which is dirty-gray mucous membrane in mouth and throat, should not be fasted any longer than it is absolutely necessary, for they generally react slowly and poorly. If people would miss a meal or two or three as soon as they begin to feel bad, no long fasts would be necessary, because when the system first begins to be deranged it very quickly rights itself when food is withheld. It is impossible for a serious disease to develop in a fasting person, unless he is in an exceptionally bad physical condition at the beginning of the fast, for when food is withheld there is nothing for disease to feed upon. No new disease can originate during a fast. Fasts often bring people back to health, who can not recover through any other means known to man, unless it be eating almost nothing--a semi-fast. Occasionally a patient dies while on a long fast or immediately thereafter, but please remember that millions die prematurely on this earth every year who never missed their meals for one day. Also remember that those who go on prolonged fasts are generally "hopeless cases," who have been given up to die by medical men. People who fast generally become comfortable, so why envy a few men and women an easy departure when they are no longer able to live, and why heap undeserved censure on those who are doing their best to ease the sufferers by means of our most valuable therapeutic measure, fasting? There is much prejudice against fasting, but a calm study of the facts will remove this. Typhoid fever, conventionally treated, often proves fatal in 15 per cent. or more of the cases and those who survive have to undergo a long, uncomfortable illness which often leaves them so weakened and with such degenerated bodies that the end is frequently a matter of a few months or years. Pneumonia and tuberculosis find a favorable place to develop and in these cases prove very fatal. On the other hand, cases of typhoid treated by the fast, and the other hygienic measures necessary, recover in a short time, there are no evil sequels and the body is in better condition than it was before the onset of the disease. I have never seen a fatality in a properly treated case, and the mortality is conspicuous by its absence. It is the same in curable chronic diseases. Where feeding and medicating add to the ills, fasting with proper living afterwards brings health. It is also well to remember that where one individual dies while fasting (not from the effects of fasting, but from the disease for which the fast was begun), perhaps one hundred thousand starve because they have too much to eat. Silly as this may sound, it is the truth, and this is s the explanation: Overfeeding causes digestive troubles and a breakdown of the assimilative and excretory processes. The more food that is taken while this condition exists the less nourishment is extracted from it. The food ferments pathologically, instead of physiologically, and poisons the body. The more that is eaten under the circumstances, the worse is the poisoning and at last the tired body wearily gives up the fight for existence, perhaps after a long chronic ailment has been suffered, or perhaps during the attack of an acute disease. The chief cause of death is too much food. Avicena, the great Arabian physician, treated by means of prolonged fasts. For the benefit of those who fear the effects of fasts of a few days' duration a few quotations are given from various sources: "My next marked case is a wonderful illustration of the self-feeding power of the brain to meet an emergency, and a revelation, also, of the possible limitations of the starvation period. This was the case of a frail, spare boy of four years, whose stomach was so disorganized by a drink of solution of caustic potash that not even a swallow of water could be retained. He died on the seventy-fifth day of his fast, with the mind clear to the last hour, and with apparently nothing of the body left but bones, ligaments, and a thin skin; and yet the brain had lost neither weight nor functional clearness. "In another city a similar accident happened to a child of about the same age, in whom it took three months for the brain to exhaust entirely the available body-food."--Dr. E. H. Dewey. This shows the groundlessness of the fear parents have of allowing their children to fast when necessary. It is beneficial for even the babies who need it. In the cases quoted above the conditions were very unfavorable, for the children were suffering from the effects of lye burns, yet they lived without food seventy-five and ninety days, respectively. If necessary, deprive the children of food, and keep them warm. Then comfort yourself with the fact that they are being treated humanely and efficiently. Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard, in the latest edition of her book, Fasting for the Cure of Disease, states that she has treated almost two thousand five hundred people by this method, the fasts varying in duration from eight to seventy five days, many of them being over a month. Sixteen of her patients have died while fasting and two on a light diet. This is far from being a mortality of 1 per cent. When the fact is taken into consideration that the people she treated were of the class for whom the average medical man can do nothing the mortality is surprisingly small. However, she has lost a few, and as she is a fighter for her beliefs the prejudice against her and her method of treating disease have proved strong enough to cause her to be imprisoned. Dr. Hazzard has perhaps the widest experience with fasting of any mortal, living or dead. Her book is well worth reading. Upton Sinclair has also written a book on this subject, entitled the Fasting Cure. He writes from the viewpoint of an intelligent layman whose observations are not very extensive. The book contains many good ideas. This is from page fifty-seven: "The longest fast of which I had heard when my article was written was seventy eight days; but that record has since been broken, by a man named Richard Fausel. Mr. Fausel, who keeps a hotel somewhere in North Dakota, had presumably partaken too generously of the good cheer intended for his guests, for he found himself at the inconvenient weight of three hundred and eighty-five pounds. He went to a sanatorium in Battle Creek and there fasted for forty days (if my recollection serves me), and by dint of vigorous exercise meanwhile, he got rid of one hundred and thirty pounds. I think I never saw a funnier sight than Mr. Fausel at the conclusion of this fast, wearing the same pair of trousers that he had worn at the beginning of it. But the temptations of hotel-keepers are severe, and when he went back home, he found himself going up in weight again. This time he concluded to do the job thoroughly, and went to Macfadden's place in Chicago, and set out upon a fast of ninety days. That is a new record--though I sometimes wonder if it is quite fair to call it 'fasting' when a man is simply living upon an internal larder of fat." Bernarr Macfadden has also written considerable about fasting. C. C. Haskell is an advocate and director of such treatment. Many physicians employ this healing method. Some day the entire medical profession will realize the worth of fasting as a curative agent. As a reminder, please allow me to repeat: When reading and studying about the subject of fasting, do not think of it as a complete cure, for those who return to their improper mode of living will again build disease. After the fast, live right. The efficient body is clean internally. An unclean skin is bad. A foul alimentary tract is worse. But the worst of all is a foul condition of all the tissues, including the blood-stream, a condition in which much of the body's waste is stored up, instead of being excreted. If such a condition can not be remedied through moderation and simplicity in eating, the only thing that will prove of value is temporary abstinence. It would be an easy matter to enumerate many long fasts, such as that of Dr. Tanner, who proved to an astonished country that fasting for a month or more is not fatal, but on the contrary may be beneficial. Or we could cite cases like the fasts carried on by classes under the direction of Bernarr Macfadden. Or we could refer to the experiments of Professors Fisher and Chittenden of Yale. However, we will only look into one more case, that of Dr. I. J. Eales, whose fast created considerable interest several years ago. The doctor was too heavy, so he decided to take a fast to reduce his weight, also for scientific purposes. For thirty days he lived on nothing but water with an occasional glass of lemonade and one cup of coffee. At the end of thirty days he broke his fast on a glass of malted milk. The doctor worked hard during all this period, losing weight all the time, being thirty pounds lighter at the end of his fast than at the beginning. However, he did not lose strength, being able to do as much work and lift as heavy weights at the end of the fast as at the beginning. Anyone who is much over weight can with benefit do as the doctor did, for the body will use the stored up fat to produce heat and energy. This fast is fully detailed in Dr. Eales' book called Healthology. Fasting is the quickest way to produce internal cleanliness, which is health. When the system is clean the cravings, longings and appetites are not so strong as when the body is full of poisons. For this reason a fast is the best way to destroy the cravings for tobacco, coffee, tea, alcohol and other habit-forming drugs. If, after the fast is over, the individual lives moderately and simply, and is fully determined not to return to the use of these drugs, a permanent cure will be the reward. However, it is very easy to drift back into the old habits. A permanent cure requires that there be no compromise, no saying, "I shall do it this time, but never again." Once the old habit is resumed, it is almost certain to be continued. CHAPTER XXVI. ATTITUDE OF PARENT TOWARD CHILD. Healthy, happy children are the greatest of all rewards. All parents can have such children, and it is a duty they owe themselves, the children and the race. It is a most pleasant duty, for the returns are far greater than the cost. In order to have first-class children parents must be in good physical condition and be controlled mentally. Chaotic parents can not have orderly children. The young people learn quickly from their elders and they usually take after one of the parents. They intuitively learn what they can do and what they can not do and how to get their way while we consider them too young to have any understanding. Therefore it is important that their first impressions are correct. Begin to train the child in the way it should go from the day of birth. The first training will have to do with feeding and sleeping. These points are covered more fully in the next chapter. They are touched upon here to give them emphasis. Feed the child three times a day, but never wake it to be fed. If you give the three feeds, the child will soon become accustomed to them and wake when it is time. If the child squirms and frets, it may be uncomfortable from being overfed or it may be thirsty. Offer it water but not food. Let the child alone. Do not bounce it or carry it about. During the first few months the baby needs heat, nourishment and rest, and should have no excitement. It should not be treated as a plaything. After a few months it begins to take notice of things and then you can have much fun with it. The right kind of love consists in doing what is necessary for the infant and no more. Obedience to the reasonable requests of the parents is of the greatest importance in the successful raising of children. Parents should realize this even before the children are born. From the first, be firm, though gentle, with the little ones. Children should be so trained that when they are requested to do a thing, they do it immediately without any repetition. This will save both them and the parents many an unhappy hour. The lives of many parents and many children are made miserable from lack of a little parental firmness at the start. There are many little graces that are not vital, yet they are important, and these should be taught children early, for then they become second nature. Among these are good table manners. Ungainly table manners have no bearing on the health, but they give an unfavorable impression to others. We are partly judged by the presence or absence of such little graces. Training children is like training trees. A sapling can be made to grow in the desired way, but after a few years it will not respond to training. The period of infancy is plastic, and then is the time to plant the seeds in the child's mind and teach good habits. It is not difficult to train the children. If the parents are orderly and firm, instead of wavering, the children almost intuitively fall into line. Teach them to obey and they will later be able to command intelligently and considerately. The babies are helpless at first. This softens the hearts of the parents toward them until they become very indulgent. Indulging and pampering children are bad for them. Kindness consists in doing for them what is for their good, which is not always what they desire. If the children are properly trained at first, they need very little training later on. CHAPTER XXVII. CHILDREN. Statistics are generally very dry and uninteresting, but at times they take on a tragic interest, and the importance of the few submitted here is so great that they should command careful attention. The definite figures used are taken from the Mortality Statistics, United States Census, and they cover the year 1912, which is the last year for which we have definite information. Reliable mortality statistics are given only in a part of the country, which is not to our credit. The population is reported in the volume as 92,309,348. The registration area, which is the area giving mortality statistics, contains 53,843,896 people. In this area the total deaths are as follows: Under one year.............. 154,373 Under ten years............. 235,262 Taking it for granted that the infant and child mortality among the unregistered people is the same, we get the following number of deaths annually among children in the United States, in round numbers: Under one year.............. 280,000 Under ten years............. 425,000 This is a very conservative estimate and 300,000 is usually given as the number of deaths annually among babies under the age of one year. Even under ideal conditions a baby would occasionally die, but the deaths would be so rare that they would be the cause of surprised comment. Some become parents who have no right to be, and they bring children into the world who are not physically fit to survive, and these generally die within a few days or weeks of birth. However, these babies are but a small minority and at least ninety-nine out of a hundred should survive. Not one baby born physically fit would die if intelligently cared for, and the fact that each year we lose over one-fourth million infants under one year of age in the United States is an indictment of our lives and intelligence, and a challenge to better our ways. Every child that is brought into the world should be given an opportunity to live. This is far from the case today. Children are so handicapped that they are stunted in body and blunted in mind, if they survive. Suppose that every ten years an army of 4,250,000 men and women between the ages of twenty and thirty were destroyed at one time in this country! The indignation, sorrow and horror would be so great that a means would soon be found to end the periodic slaughter. But we allow this many children under ten to be destroyed every ten years. The slaughter of the innocents does not bring forth much protest, because we are so used to it, and the babies go one by one, all over the country. The procession to the grave gives rise to this thought: "The little one is better off. Now he will suffer no more. It is the will of Providence." This is a libel on Providence, for this enormous mortality is due to parental mistakes, mistakes made mostly through ignorance, but blamable all the same. It behooves parents to obtain knowledge that will prevent such costly and fatal errors. Nature's law is the same as man's rule in this that ignorance of the law excuses no one. The results are the same whether we err knowingly or ignorantly. It is difficult to teach people to treat their babies properly, because nearly all the information on the subject is so erroneous. When a teacher brings forth the truth but few accept it, for the vast majority are on the other side. Those parents who accept the truth find it difficult, to put it into practice, for every hand is against them. It takes more strength of character and moral courage than the average individual possesses to withstand the criticism of neighbors, friends, relatives and medical advisers. The few who have the courage of their convictions and the right knowledge reap a rich harvest. They have babies who are well. They see their children grow up with sound bodies and clear minds. They are saved much of the worry which is the lot of parents of children raised according to conventional standards. Last, but by no means least, they have the satisfaction of giving to the race individuals who are better than their parents or the grandparents. There is much opportunity for human improvement, and the improvement will take place automatically, if we do not prevent it by going contrary to nature. Healthy babies spring from normal, healthy parents. If they can have normal grandparents, so much the better, but inasmuch as we can not alter the past, let us give our attention to the present. If we take care of the present, the future will bring forth a population of healthy parents and grandparents, and then the babies will have full opportunity. The past has great influence, for the child of today is heir of the past, modified by the present. He who influences the present leaves his mark on the future. As individuals we do not usually accomplish much during a lifetime, but if we influence our time for the better it is hard to tell where the improvement will cease or what will be the aggregate result. A truth imparted to others acts much like a pebble cast into the water. Its influence is felt in ever widening circles. Infancy and youth are plastic. Both body and mind are susceptible to surrounding influences. If the heredity is unfavorable it can be largely modified by favorable environments. If a child is born of unhealthy parents, but without any serious defect, and is intelligently cared for after birth, it will grow up to be healthy. On the other hand, a child born of healthy parents that is improperly cared for will become ill and perhaps die young. In early years the habits are formed that will largely influence and control the years of maturity. Most children learn bad habits from birth. It is as easy to acquire good habits as bad ones, and as people are largely creatures of habits, every parent should aim to give his children a good start. Parents seldom do wrong intentionally, but they are careless and many of the parental habits of the race are bad, and for this the future generations must suffer. It is easier and more economical to have healthy babies than to have sickly ones. The healthy way is the simple way. It merely means self-control, common sense and constructive knowledge on the part of the parents. PRENATAL CARE. It is commonly believed that a pregnant woman must eat for two. The wise woman will not increase her food intake. If she is not up to par physically at the time of conception she will generally find it advantageous to decrease the food allowance. A healthy baby should not weigh to exceed six, or at most seven, pounds at birth. Five pounds would be better. It does not take much food to nourish an infant of that weight, and the baby does not weigh that much until shortly before birth. Most of the food is used for fuel but the amount of fuel required to heat a baby that is kept warm within the mother's body is almost negligible. One of the first and most important requisites for having healthy children is to avoid the eating-for-two fallacy. Most people overeat, anyway, and there should be no encouragement in this line. The results of overeating are many and serious. The mother grows too heavy or else she becomes dyspeptic. Overeating and partaking of food of poor quality are the chief causes of the ills of pregnancy. Prospective mothers can be comfortable. Pregnancy and childbirth are physiological. Normal women suffer very little inconvenience or pain. The suffering during pregnancy, the pain and accidents at childbirth are measures of the mother's abnormality. The greater the inconvenience the farther has the individual strayed from a natural life. The women who live normally from the time of conception, or before, until the birth of the baby will be surprised how little inconvenience there is. For ideal results the father must be kind, considerate and self-controlled. It is a disagreeable fact that many men are brutal and inconsiderate of wives and unborn children. The extent of this brutality can hardly be realized by those who have had no medical experience. Perhaps the women are partly to blame, for they do not teach their boys to be considerate and kind and they leave them in ignorance of subjects that are important and that can best be taught by parents. A pregnant woman should be mistress of her body. During this period the husband has morally no marital rights. If boys were educated by their parents on this subject they would be reasonable later on, and the average boy of fourteen or fifteen is old enough to receive such education. Gestation should be a period of calm. All excitement and passion are harmful. The mother should be as free from annoyance as possible. Cheerfulness should be the rule. Those who are not naturally cheerful should cultivate this desirable state of mind. Gruesome and horrible topics should not be discussed. The reading should not be along tragic lines. The study of nature and the philosophy of men who have found life sweet are among the helpful mental occupations. The mental attitude has its effect, not only on the mother, but on the unborn babe. That the seed for good or evil is often planted in the child's brain before birth, according to the mental and physical condition of the mother, can hardly be doubted. Mothers who live naturally can dismiss all worry on the subject of harm coming to themselves through maternity, for there will be none. The absence of worry has a good effect on both mother and child. The various ills from which mothers suffer are largely caused by eating for two. The overeating causes overweight in those whose nutrition is above par and indigestion in those who have but ordinary digestive capacity. Those who are overweight have too high blood pressure and those who have indigestion absorb some of the poisonous products of decomposition from the bowels. Headache is a common result. Palpitation of the heart comes from gas pressure. The abnormal blood pressure may result in albuminurea, swelling of the lower extremities and overweight of both mother and child. The morning sickness is nearly always due to excessive food intake. If this proves troublesome, reduce the amount of food and simplify the combinations. Instead of taking heavy, rich dishes, increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables. The birth of a large baby is fraught with danger to mother and child. Sometimes one or both are injured and sometimes one or both die. Many women are afraid to become mothers for this reason. It would be difficult to estimate how often this fear causes law breaking, for all large cities have their medical men who grow rich through illegal practices among these women. Sometimes these doctors are among the respected members of the profession, eminent enough to have a national reputation. The financial reward is great enough to tempt men to break the law and they will continue to do so, so long as present conditions exist. It is important for the prospective mother to be moderate in her eating. Three meals a day are sufficient. Between meals nothing but water should be swallowed. Lunching always leads to overeating. One meal each day can consist of starchy food, but not more than one meal. Any one of the starches may be selected, the cereal products, rice, potatoes, chestnuts. If the digestion is good, take matured beans, peas or lentils occasionally, but these are so heavy that they should not be eaten very frequently and always in moderation. With the starchy food selected, take either butter or milk, or a moderate quantity of both. Sometimes it is all right to take some fruit with the starchy food, but this should be the exception, not the rule. Fruit should generally be eaten by itself or taken with non-starchy foods. Starch eating should be limited to one meal a day because an excessive amount of this food causes hardening of the tissues. The baby's bones, which should be very soft, flexible and yielding at birth, will become too hard if much starch is eaten. Once a day some kind of proteid food may be taken, but this should also be eaten in moderation, for if it is not, degenerative changes will take place, which will manifest in some one of the disorders common to pregnancy. Eggs and the lighter kinds of meats, or nuts or fresh fish may be selected. Whatever kind of protein is taken, it should be as fresh as possible. Pork should not be used. With the protein, have either fruit or vegetables, and it does not make much difference which. No one could ask for a better meal than good apples and pecans. Be sure to eat enough of the raw salad vegetables and of raw fruits to supply the salts needed by the body. For the third meal have fruit. Cottage cheese, sweet or clabbered milk or buttermilk may be taken with the fruit. Do not take milk twice a day, for if it is taken twice and other proteid food once a day, too much protein is ingested. A glass or two of buttermilk will make a good meal at any time. Dr. Waugh, who has had over forty years of experience and is well and favorably known on both sides of the Atlantic, recommends buttermilk very highly during pregnancy. Buttermilk and clabbered milk are better than the sweet milk. The lactic acid seems to have a sweetening effect on the alimentary tract. Sweet milk is constipating for many people. The buttermilk and the clabbered milk are not constipating to the same degree. The use of fruit and vegetables has a tendency to prevent constipation. The only internal remedies for which there is any excuse are cathartics, and normal people do not need them. However, it is better to take a mild cathartic or an enema than to allow the colon to become loaded with waste. Constipation among eaters of much meat is rather a serious condition, for the waste in the colon of heavy meat eaters is very poisonous. The colonic waste in vegetarians is not so toxic. Desserts should be used sparingly and seldom. They are not a necessity, but a habit, and if they are consumed daily they are a bad habit. For the sake of the unborn child, avoid all stimulants and narcotics. Alcoholics and coffee should not be used. And it is best to avoid strong spices and rich gravies. A little self-denial and self-control in this line will pay great dividends in healthy, happy, contented babies, and there are no greater blessings. The mother should be active, but should not take any violent exercise. Light work is good, but no mother should Be asked to do house-cleaning or to stand over the wash-tub. She should have the opportunity of being in the open every day, and of this opportunity she should avail herself. Why some women are ashamed of pregnancy is hard for normal-minded people to understand, for the praise of motherhood has been sung by the greatest poets and its glory depicted by the greatest painters of the world. This sense of false modesty is responsible for much of the tight lacing during pregnancy. This is injurious to both the mother and the child, and is one of the reasons for various uncomfortable sensations. It helps to bring on the morning sickness. It is nature's intention that the young should be free and comfortable previous to birth, and for this reason a double bag is supplied between the walls of which there is fluid. The baby lies within the inner bag. The tight lacing prevents the intended freedom, besides weakening the mother's muscles. It also aggravates any tendency there may be toward constipation and swelling of the legs. It prolongs childbirth and makes it more painful. This is too high a price to pay for false modesty and vanity. If it is necessary to support the abdomen and the breasts for the sake of comfort, this can be done without compressing them and the support should come from the shoulders. The skin should be given good attention, for an active skin helps to keep the blood pure and the circulation normal. Take a vigorous dry rubbing at least once a day, and twice a day would be better. A quick sponging off with cool water followed with vigorous dry rubbing is good, but the rubbing is of greater importance than the sponging. An olive oil rub is often soothing and may be taken as frequently as desired. If there is a tendency to be ill and nervous, take a good hot bath, staying in the water until there is a feeling of ease, even if it should take more than thirty minutes, provided the heart and the kidneys are working well. Defective heart and kidney action contraindicate prolonged hot baths, but such ills will not appear if the mother lives properly. Under such conditions missing a few meals can only have good results. When eating is resumed, partake of only enough food to nourish the body, for anything beyond that builds discomfort and disease. These hints, simple as they are, contain enough information to rob gestation and childbirth of their horrors, if they are intelligently observed. If civilized woman desires to be as painfree as the savage, she must lead the simple life. INFANCY. If the baby lives to be one year old, its chances of surviving are fairly good, but during the first year the mortality is appalling. Complete statistics are not available, but in places one-fifth or even one-fourth of the babies born perish during this time. The mortality is chiefly due to overfeeding and giving food of poor quality. The average parent loves his baby. He loves the helpless little thing to death. In Oscar Wilde's words, "We kill the thing we love." The babies are killed by too much love, which takes the form of overindulgence. About thirty years ago the well known physician, Charles B. Page, wrote: "How many healthy-born infants die before their first year is reached--babies that for months are mistakenly regarded as pictures of health--'never knew a sick day until they were attacked' with cholera infantum, scarletina, or something else. They are crammed with food, made gross with fat, and for a time are active and cunning, the delight of parents and friends--and then, after a season of constipation, a season of chronic vomiting, and a season of cholera infantum, the little emaciated skeletons are buried in the ground away from the sight of those who have literally loved them to death. This is the fate of one-third of all the children born. As a rule, babies are fed as an ignorant servant feeds the cook-stove--filling the fire-box so full, often, that the covers are raised, the stove smokes and gases at every hole, and the fire is either put out altogether, or, if there is combustion of the whole body of coals, the stove is rapidly burned out and destroyed. With baby, overheating means the fever that consumes him, and, in putting out the fire, too often the fire of life goes out also." Fat babies are thought to be healthy babies. This is a mistake, for the fatter the baby, the more liable it is to fill an early grave. Thoughtful, knowing people realize that a child that weighs eight pounds or more at birth is an indication of maternal law breaking. Both the mother and the child will have to pay for this sooner or later. Overweight is a handicap. It prevents complete internal cleansing and combustion, without which health is impossible. Because of the false ideas prevalent regarding weight of infants, it is well to put a little emphasis on the subject. If the mother has lived right during pregnancy, the child is often light at birth, sometimes five pounds or less. The average doctor will shake his head and say that the baby's chance to live is very small. The friends, neighbors and relatives will say the same. They are wrong. Let the parents remember that light children are not encumbered with fat, and rarely with disease. A light baby is generally all healthy baby, and if properly cared for and not overfed will thrive. Parents of such babies should be thankful, instead of being alarmed. It is not natural for babies to weigh nine or ten pounds at birth, and when they do it is a sign of maternal wrong doing, whether she has been cognizant of it or not. Babies should not be fat, nor should they be fat when they grow older, if the best results are desired. In babies it is better to strive for quality than for quantity. Every mother who is capable of doing so should nurse her baby. There is no food to take the place of the mother's milk. The babies build greater strength and resistance when they are fed naturally than when they are brought up on the bottle. Babies thrive wonderfully in an atmosphere of love, and they draw love from the mother's breast with every swallow. From the information available, which is not as complete and definite as could be desired, it appears that from six to thirteen bottle-babies die during the first year where only one breast-fed child perishes. The bottle-baby does not get a fair start. If a mother is ill and worn out she should not be asked to nurse the baby. If the mother has fever she should not risk the baby's health through nursing. Some mothers do not have enough milk to feed the baby. Nearly all who live properly give enough milk to nourish their infants at first. If there is not enough milk, the child should be allowed to take what there is in the breasts and this should be supplemented with cow's milk. Dr. Thomas F. Harrington said recently: "From 80 to 90 per cent. of all deaths from gastrointestinal disease among infants takes place in the artificially fed; or ten bottle-babies die to one which is breast-fed. In institutions it has been found that the death rate is frequently from 90 to 100 per cent. when babies are separated from their mothers. During the siege of Paris (1870-71) the women were compelled to nurse their own babies on account of the absence of cow's milk. Infant mortality under one year fell from 33 to 7 per cent. During the cotton famine of 1860 women were not at work in the mills. They nursed their babies and one-half of the infant mortality disappeared." These are remarkable facts and bring home at least two truths. First, they confirm the superiority of natural feeding over that of artificial feeding. Second, they show that when the mother is not overfed the infants are healthier. During the siege of Paris food was scarce in that city. People of all classes had to live quite frugally. They could not overeat as in the untroubled time of peace and prosperity, and the result was that both the mothers and the babies were healthier. The infant mortality was only a little over one-fifth of what it was previously. If the French people had heeded the lesson the statesmen and philosophers of that nation would not today have to worry about its almost stationary population. It would be much better if fewer children were born and those few were healthier. What good does the birth of the army of 425,000 children which perishes annually accomplish? It leaves the nation poorer in every way. A mother tired and worn with wakeful vigils, and at last left with an aching heart through the loss of her child, is not worth as much as she who has a crooning infant to love, and through her mother-love radiates kindness and good cheer to others. The conditions that weed out so many of our infants tend to weaken the survivors. It costs too much to bring children into the world to waste them so lavishly. This may sound peculiar, but it is enlightened selfishness, which is the highest good, for it brings blessings upon all. Artificial feeding lays the foundation for many troubles which may not manifest for several years. The bottle-fed babies are often plump, even fat, but they are not as strong as those who are fed naturally. They take all kinds of children's diseases very quickly. The glandular system, which is so readily disturbed in children, is more easily affected in bottle-fed babies. And so it comes about that they often have swollen salivary glands, or swelling of the glands of the neck or of the tonsils. Do not be in a hurry to feed the baby after birth. Nature has so arranged that the infant does not require immediate feeding. It is a good plan to wait at least twenty-four hours after birth before placing the baby at the breast, for then all the tumult and excitement have had a chance to subside. Many give the baby a cathartic within a few hours after birth. This is a mistake. Cathartics are irritants and it is a very poor beginning to abuse the mucous membrane of the intestinal tract immediately. This mucous membrane is delicate and in children the digestive apparatus is easily upset. Before birth there was no stomach or bowel digestion, all the nutritive processes taking place in the tissues of the little body. Gentle treatment is necessary to bring the best results. Cathartics with their harsh action on the delicate membranes are contraindicated. The mother's first milk is cathartic enough to stimulate the bowels to act, but it is nature's cathartic and does no harm. As a rule the baby is fed too often and too much from the time of birth. If the child appears healthy the physician's recommendation will probably be to feed every two hours day and night, or every two hours during the day and every three hours at night. If the little one appears weakly these feedings are increased in number. From ten to twenty-four feedings in twenty-four hours are not uncommon and sometimes infants are nursed or given the bottle two and even three times an hour. The excuse for this is that the baby's stomach is small and cannot hold much food at a time and must for this reason be filled often, for the baby has to grow, and the more food it gets the faster it grows. The baby's stomach is small, because the little one needs very little food. The human being grows and develops for twenty to twenty-five years. This growth is slow and during babyhood the amount of nourishment needed is not great. The child, if properly taken care of, is kept warm. Hence it needs but little fuel. The ideas on food needs are so exaggerated that it is hard for parents to realize what moderate amount of food will keep a baby well nourished. An adult in the best of health would be unable to stand such frequent food intake. He would be ill in a short time. Babies stand it no better, and the only proof of this fact needed is that in the United States at least 280,000 babies under one year of age perish annually. During babyhood nearly all troubles are nutritive ones. With the stomach and bowels in excellent condition baby defies all kinds of diseases, provided it is given the simple, commonsense attentions needed otherwise, such as being kept warm and clean in a well ventilated room. With a healthy alimentary canal, which comes with proper feeding, the little one can withstand the attack of the vast horde of germs which so trouble adult minds, also adult bodies, when people fail to give themselves proper care. The results of too frequent feeding and overfeeding are appalling. The first ill effect is digestive disturbance. Then one or more of the ills of childhood make their appearance. These are called diseases, but they are only symptoms of perverted nutrition, though we insist on giving them names. A healthy baby is one that is absolutely normal and well in every way. However, babies today pass for healthy when they are fat and suffering from all kinds of troubles, provided these ills can be tolerated. We need a new standard of health. Perfect health is a gift that every normal parent can bestow upon his children, and we should be satisfied with nothing short of this. Babies can and should be raised without illness, but, sad to relate, babies, who are always healthy are so rare that they are curiosities. Many babies show signs of maternal overfeeding within a few hours or days of birth. One of the common signs is the discharge from the nose. This is aggravated by overfeeding the infant. And thus is laid the foundation, perhaps, for a lifelong catarrh. In due time various diseases such as rickets, swollen glands, formerly called scrofulous, mumps, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, pimples, eczema and cholera infantum, make their appearance. Parents have been taught to look for these diseases. They have been told that they belong to childhood. This is a libel on nature, for she tends in the direction of health. The prevalent idea at present is that various germs, which are found in water, food, air and earth, are responsible for these diseases, but they are not. The fact that infants properly cared for do not develop one of them is proof enough that germs per se are unable to cause these ills. The germs play their part in most of these diseases, but it is a kindly part. They are scavengers, and attempt to rid the body of its debris and poisons. Through false reasoning they are blamed for causing disease, when in fact their multiplication is an effect. They are a by-product of disease. The so-called pathogenic bacteria never thrive in the baby's body until the infant has been overfed or fed on improper food long enough to break down its resistance. The improper feeding not only kills an army of babies each year, but it handicaps the survivors very seriously. The degenerated condition of the system leaves every child with some kind of weakness. The foundation may be laid for indigestion, catarrhal troubles, which may or may not be accompanied with adenoids and impeded breathing, glandular troubles, often precursors of tuberculosis, in fact children may be acquiring any disease during infancy from chronic catarrh to rheumatism. Mental ills are also results of senseless feeding. A healthy baby is happy. A sick baby is cross. Crossness and anger are mental perversions. Anger is temporary insanity. Enough overfeeding often results in mental perversity, epilepsy and even in real insanity. A healthy body gives a healthy mind. If people would care for their bodies properly, especially in the line of eating, the asylums for the insane would not be needed for their present purposes. Another serious trouble that takes root from infant overfeeding is an abnormal craving for stimulants. This craving may later on be satisfied in many ways. Some use coffee, alcohol, habit-forming drugs. Others try to satisfy it by overeating. No matter how the sufferer proceeds to satisfy this craving, he does not cure it, for it grows upon what it is fed. Morphine calls for more morphine. Tobacco calls for more tobacco. An oversupply of food calls for more food or alcohol. The victim at last dies a martyr to his abnormal appetites. Comparatively few of those who see the error of their ways have the will power to thrust off the shackles of habit. Very few think clearly enough and go far enough back to realize that disease and early death are so largely due to the habits formed for the infant or unborn babe by the parents. And the parents received the same kind of undesirable legacy from their parents, and so it goes, the children suffering for the sins of the parents. The cheerful part of such a retrospect is that there is much room for improvement, that we need not continue this seemingly unending chain of physical bondage to the next generation, and that if the children are not born right or treated right during infancy, there is still time to make a change for the better. Nature is kind and with will and determination a change can be made at any time that will result in betterment, provided such grave diseases have not taken hold of the body that recuperation is impossible. This is no excuse for making delays, for the longer errors are permitted the harder they are to overcome. Three or four feedings a day are sufficient for any baby. The feedings should be arranged so that they are evenly distributed during the day, and nothing is to be given at night except water. Get a nursing bottle or two. Keep the bottles and the nipples scrupulously clean. These are to be used as water bottles. The water must also be clean. Heat it to 103 or 104 degrees Fahrenheit, so that it will be from 98 to 100 degrees warm when it enters the baby's mouth Let the baby have some water three or four times during the day, and perhaps it will want some once or twice during the night, but give it no milk at night. Overfed babies are irritable and cry often. The mothers interpret this as a sign of hunger. Most babies do not know what hunger is. Like adults they become thirsty, but instead of getting water to quench their thirst they are given milk. This satisfies for a little while, then the irritability due to milk spoiled, in the alimentary tract causes more restlessness and crying, and they are fed again. The comedy of errors continues until it is turned into a tragedy. How much should the baby be fed at a time? When the parents are healthy and the baby is born right and then fed but three times a day, the food intake will regulate itself. The child will not usually want more than it should have of milk, supplemented with water. The best way to begin is to let the infant take what it desires. That is, let the nursing continue while the infant manifests great pleasure and zest. When the child begins to fool with the breast or bottle, the source of nourishment should be removed immediately. The child will increase its intake gradually. Some of the babies will take too much. The evil results will soon be evident, and then the mother must not compromise, but reduce the intake at once. The signs of over-consumption of food by the infants are the same as those shown by adults. They are discomfort and disease. The former manifests in crossness and irritability. The disease may be of any kind, ranging from a rash to a high fever. The baby's stomach is sensitive and resents the excessive amount of food supplied. So the infant often vomits curdled milk, and some times vomits before the milk has time to curdle. This is a form of self-protection. If the mother would heed this sign by withdrawing all food until the stomach is settled, substituting water in the meanwhile, and then reduce the baby's food to within digestive capacity, there would be no more trouble. Vomiting is the infant's way of saying, "Please do not feed me until my stomach becomes normal again, and then don't give me more than I need, and that is less than I have been getting." Remember that it is nature's sign language, which never misleads, and it is so plain that any one with ordinary understanding should get its meaning, in spite of the erroneous popular teachings. After the child has vomited, feed moderately and increase its food supply as its digestive ability increases. If the vomiting is wrongly interpreted and overfeeding is continued, either the baby dies or the stomach establishes a toleration, passing the trouble on to other parts of the body. One organ never suffers long alone. The circulation passes the disease on to other parts, assisted by the sympathetic nerves, which are present in all parts of the body. When the stomach has established its toleration, several things may happen, only a few of which will be discussed, for the process is essentially the same, though the results appear so different. In infants whose digestive power is not very strong the excessive amount of milk curdles, as does the part that is digested. The water of the milk is absorbed, but the curds pass into the colon without being digested and they are discharged in the stool as curds. They are partly decomposed on the journey through the alimentary canal, producing poisons, a part of which is absorbed. A part remains in the colon, making the bowel discharges very offensive. The passage of curds in the stool is a danger signal indicating overfeeding and should be heeded immediately. If it is not, the chances for a ease of cholera infantum, especially in warm weather, are great. Cholera infantum is due to overfeeding, or the use of inferior milk, or both. It is a form of milk poisoning, in which the bowels are very irritable. As a matter of self-protection they throw out a large quantity of serum, which soon depletes the system of the poor little sufferer, and death too often claims another young life. If cholera infantum makes its appearance the baby is given its best chance to live if feeding is stopped immediately, warm water given whenever desired, but not too large quantities at a time. Give no cathartics, for they irritate an already seriously disturbed mucous membrane, but give a small enema of blood-warm water once or twice a day. Keep the baby comfortable, seeing that the feet and abdomen are kept warm, but give plenty of fresh air. Medicines only aggravate a malady that is already serious enough. This disease is produced by abuse so grave that in spite of the best nursing, the baby often dies. It is easily prevented. Strong babies with great digestive power are often able to digest and assimilate enormous quantities of milk, several quarts a day. They can not use all this food. If they could their size would be enormous within a short time. They do not find it so easy to excrete the excess as to assimilate it. The skin, kidneys, lungs and the bowels find themselves overtaxed. Often the mucous membrane of the nose and throat are called upon to assist in the elimination. These are the babies who are said to catch cold easily. Their colds are not caught. They are fed to them. This constant abuse of the mucous membrane results in inflammation, subacute in nature, or it may be so mild that it is but an irritation. The result in time may be chronic catarrh or thickening of the mucous membrane of nose and throat. While the catarrh is being firmly established adenoids are quite common. In other cases too much of the work of excretion is thrown upon the skin. The same thing happens to this structure as happens to the mucous membrane. It is made for a limited amount of excretion and when more foreign matter, much of it of a very irritating nature, is deposited for elimination through the skin, it becomes inflamed. It itches. In a little while there is an attack of eczema. The baby scratches, digging its little nails in with a will. The infant soon has its face covered with sores and the scalp is scaly. The proper thing to do is to reduce the feeding greatly. Then the acid-producing fermentation in stomach and bowels will cease, but enough food to nourish the body will be absorbed, the skin will have but its normal work to perform, the cause of the irritation is gone and the effects will disappear in a short time. Two weeks are often sufficient to bring back the smooth, soft skin that every baby should have. The sufferers from these troubles are almost invariably overweight, and the parents wonder why their babies, who are so healthy, should be troubled thus! Mothers owe it to their nursing babies to lead wholesome, simple lives. It is not always possible to live ideally, but every mother can eat simply and control her temper. Wholesome food and equanimity will go far toward producing healthful nourishment for the child. Stimulants and narcotics should be avoided. Meat should not be eaten more than once a day, and it would be better to use less meat and more eggs or nuts. Fresh fruits and vegetables should be partaken of daily. They are the rejuvenators and purifiers. The cereal foods should be as near natural as possible. The bread should be made of whole wheat flour mostly. If rice is eaten it should be unpolished. Refined sugar should be taken in moderation, if at all. The potatoes are best baked. Pure milk is as good for the mother as it is for the child. Highly seasoned foods or rich made dishes should be avoided. In short, the mother should live as near naturally as possible. The importance of cheerfulness can hardly be overestimated. A nervous mother who frets or worries, or becomes mastered by any of the negative, depressing passions, poisons her babe a little with each drop of milk the child takes. Some mothers are unable to nurse their babies. This is so because of lack of knowledge principally, for women who give themselves proper care are nearly always able to furnish nourishment for their infants. It may be that this function will be largely lost if the present preponderance of artificial feeding continues, and if various inoculations are not stopped. Some mothers find it a great pleasure to nurse their babies. Others refuse to do so for fear of ruining their figures. No matter what the reason is for depriving the infant of its natural food, the parents should realize that its chances for health and life are diminished by this act. If intelligence and care are used in raising the bottle-fed babies only a few will die, in fact none will die under the circumstances, provided they were born with a normal amount of resistance. So it behooves parents of such babies to be extremely careful. That there are difficulties in the way, or rather inconveniences, can not be denied, but there are no insurmountable obstacles. The best common substitute for mother's milk is cow's milk. If clean and given in moderation it will agree with the child and produce no untoward results. Instead of using the same bottle all the time, there should be a number, so that there will be plenty of time to clean them. If three feeds are given each day, there should be six bottles. If four feeds are given, eight bottles. Use a set every other day. The bottles should be rinsed out after being used. Then boil them in water containing soda or a little lye, rinse in several waters and set them aside. If it is sunny, let them stand in the sun. Before using, rinse again in sterile water. The nipples should have equally good care. In feeding babies cleanliness comes before godliness. Each bottle is to be used for but one feeding, and as many bottles are to be prepared as there are to be feedings for the day. If the people live in the country it is easy to get pure milk. If in the city one should make arrangements with a reliable milk man possessed of a conscience. It is well to get the milk from a certain cow, instead of taking a mixture coming from many cows. Select a healthy animal that does not give very rich milk, such as the Holstein. She should have what green food she wants every day, grass in summer, and hay of the best quality and silage in winter. The grain ration should be moderate, for cows that are forced undergo quick degeneration. They are burned out. The cow should not be worried or whipped. She should be allowed to be happy, and animals are happy if they are treated properly. The water supply should be clean, not from one of the filthy tubs or troughs which disgrace some farms. The barn should be light and well ventilated. It should be kept clean and free from the ammonia fumes which are found in filthy stables. The cow should be brushed and the udder washed before each milking. The milker should wash his hands and have on clothes from which no impurities will fall. The first part of the milk drawn should not be put in with that which is to supply the baby. The milk should be drawn into a clean receptacle and immediately strained through sterile surgeon's cotton into glass bottles. These are to be put aside to cool, the contents not exposed to the dust falling from the air. Or the milk may be put directly into the nursing bottles and put aside in a cold place until needed. Then warm milk to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Pardon a little repetition: If possible let the child nurse. If there is not enough milk, let the baby take what there is and give cow's milk in addition. If it is impossible to feed the baby at the breast, get the milk from a healthy cow that is kept clean, well fed and well treated. The cow's milk should be prepared as follows: Take equal parts of milk and water. Or take two parts of milk and one part of water. Mix, and to this may be added sugar of milk in the proportion of one level teaspoonful to the quart. Before feeding raise the temperature of the milk to about 104 degrees Fahrenheit, so that it will be about 100 degrees when fed. It is best to do the warming in a water bath. Milk should not be kept long before being used. Limit the age to thirty-six hours after being drawn from the cow. Twenty-four hours would be better. The evening milk can safely be given to the infant the next day, if proper precautions have been taken. Ordinary milk is quite filthy and upon this babies do not thrive. Make an effort to get clean milk for the baby. The composition of human milk and cow's milk is about as follows: ==================================================================== Water Albumin Fat Sugar Salts -------------------------------------------------------------------- Human .......... 87.58 2.01 3.74 6.37 .30 Cow's .......... 87.27 3.39 3.68 4.97 .72 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The albumin in human milk is largely of a kind which is not coagulated by souring, while nearly all the albumin in cow's milk coagulates. The uncoagulated albumin is digested and taken up more easily by the baby's nutritive system than that which is coagulated. This is one of the reasons that babies do not thrive so well on cow's milk as on their natural food. The sugar of milk is not like refined sugar. Although it is not so easily dissolved in water, and therefore does not taste as sweet as refined sugar, it is better for the child. If sugar is added to the milk, milk sugar should be used. The druggists have it in powder form. The addition of barley water and lime to the baby's milk is folly. The various forms of modified milk do not give as good results as the addition of water and a little milk sugar, as previously described. If you believe in such modifications as the top milk method and the addition of starchy substances and lime water, I refer you to your family physician or text-books on infant feeding. It is difficult to improve on good cow's milk. It is well to remember that the human organism is very adaptable, even in infancy. The principal factors in infant feeding are cleanliness and moderation. Bottle-fed babies should be given fruit or vegetable juices, or both, very early and it would be well to give a little of these juices to breast-fed babies too. The latter do not require as much as the former. Begin during the first month with a teaspoonful of orange juice put into the drinking bottle once a day. Increase gradually until at four or five months the amount may be from one to two tablespoonfuls. Do not be afraid to give the orange juice because it is acid, for it splits up quickly in the stomach and is rearranged, forming alkaline salts. It is the fruit that can be obtained at nearly all seasons. It is best to get mild oranges and strain the juice. The fruit is to be in prime condition. Instead of orange juice, the juice of raw celery, spinach, cabbage, apples, blackberries and other juicy fruits and vegetables may be employed, but these juices must all come from fruits or vegetables that are in prime condition. No sugar is to be added to either the fruit or the vegetable juices. The mother's milk coagulates in small flakes, easily acted upon by the digestive juices, after which they are readily absorbed. Cow's milk coagulates into rather large pieces of albumin which are tough and therefore rather difficult to digest. This happens when the milk is taken rapidly and undiluted. However, when diluted and taken slowly this tendency is overcome to a great degree. For this reason it is best to get nipples with small perforations. Either pasteurization or sterilization of milk is almost universally recommended by medical men. Even those who do not believe in such procedures generally fail to condemn them without qualifying statements. For a discussion of this fallacy I refer you to the chapter on milk. Do not give the little ones any kinds of medicines. They always do harm and never any good. If any exception is made to this, it is in the line of laxatives or mild cathartics, such as small doses of castor oil, cascara segrada or mineral waters, but there is no excuse for giving metallic remedies, such as calomel. If the babies are fed in moderation on good foods they will not become constipated. If they are imprudently handled and become constipated it is necessary to resort to either the enema or some mild cathartic. Bear in mind that such remedies do not cure. They only relieve. The cure will come when the errors of life are corrected so that the body is able to perform its work without being obstructed. Inoculations and vaccinations are serious blunders, often fatal. The animal products that are rubbed or injected into the little body are poisonous. They are the result of degenerative changes--diseases--in the bodies of rabbits, horses, cows and other animals. Nature's law is that health must be deserved or earned. Health means cleanliness, so it really is absurd to force into the body these products of animal decay. Statistics can be given, showing how beneficial these agents are, but they are misleading. In the days of public and official belief in witchcraft it was not difficult to prove the undoubted existence of witches. Whatever the public accepts as true can with the utmost ease be bolstered up with figures. The use of serums, bacterins, vaccines and other products of the biologic laboratory is almost an obsession today. Their curative and preventive values are taken for granted. Most of the time the children are strong enough to throw off the poisons without showing prolonged or pronounced effects, but every once in a while a child is so poisoned that it takes months for it to regain health and too often death is the end. Sometimes the death takes place a few minutes after the injection, but we are informed that the medication had nothing to do with it. To poison the baby's blood deliberately is criminal. Give the little one a fair chance to live in health. A properly cared for baby will not be ill for one single day. Knowledge and good care will prevent sickness. A baby that is able to remain well a month or a week or a day can remain well every day. At first a normal baby sleeps nearly all the time, from twenty to twenty-two hours a day. The infant should not be disturbed. All that should be done for it is to feed it three times a day, give it some water from the bottle three or four times a day, and keep it clean, dry and warm, but not hot. Most babies are bathed daily. This is all right, but the baths are to be given quickly. The water should be about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The soap should be of the mildest, such as a good grade of castile, and it should be well rinsed off, for soap permitted to remain in the pores acts as an irritant. Dry the skin so well with a soft cloth that there will be no chapping or roughness. Sores, eruptions and inflammations are signs of mismanagement. Use no powders that are metallic in character, such as zinc oxide. A dusting powder of finely ground talcum is good. If the child is kept dry and dean and moderately fed the skin will remain in good condition. Babies do not thrive without good air. Keep the room well ventilated at all times by admitting fresh air from a source that will produce no draughts. It is not necessary to have the baby's room warm. In fact a cool room is better. When the child is to be exposed to the air, take it into a warm room. Soft coverings will keep the infant warm. The limbs should be free so that exercise can be had through unrestricted movements. The baby should not be bothered unnecessarily. Young parents make the mistake of using the baby for show purposes. For the sake of politeness, others praise the "only baby in the world" unduly, though there are millions of others just as good. Let the child alone, thus giving it an opportunity to become as superior as the parents think it is. The showing off process creates excitement and lays the foundation for fretfulness, irritability and nervousness. The child thrives in a peaceful atmosphere. When it is awake it is well to talk to it quietly and soothingly, for thus the infant begins to learn its mother's tongue. Good language should be employed. Those who teach their children baby-talk are handicapping them, for they will soon have to unlearn this and learn real language. Baby-talk may be "cute" at eighteen months, but when children retain that mode of expression beyond the age of four or five it sounds silly. At about the age of nine or ten months the breast-fed babe should be weaned. Gradual weaning is perhaps the best. First give one feeding of cow's milk a day and two breast feeds; then two feedings of cow's milk and one at the breast, and at last cow's milk entirely. Between the ages of nine and twelve months begin giving starchy foods. At first the child will take very little, and gradually increase. Give bread so stale that the child has to soak it with its saliva before it can swallow the bread. Working away this way, sucking the stale bread, the child learns to go through the motions of chewing, and this is valuable training. Never give bread soaked in milk and never feed milk while bread is being eaten. If the meal is to be bread and milk, give the bread either before any milk is taken, or afterwards. Starches are not to be washed down with liquids. Instead of giving stale bread, zwieback may be used. Occasionally feed a few spoons of very thin and well cooked oatmeal or whole wheat gruel, but the less sloppy food given the better, for it does not get the proper mouth treatment. The wheat products fed the child should be made from whole wheat flour, or at least three-fourths whole wheat and only one-fourth of the white flour. The refined flour is lacking in the salts that the child needs for health and growth. Many mothers begin feeding starches when the baby is four or five months old. The child is given potatoes, bread or any other starchy food that may be on the table. This is a mistake, for the child is not prepared to digest starches at that early age. Some of the digestive ferments are practically absent during the first few months of life. Such feeding will invariably cause trouble. The baby should not be taken to the table. It is quite generally believed that a baby should cry to exercise its lungs. A healthy, comfortable baby will do little or no crying, and it is not necessary. It is not difficult to give the little ones some exercise to fill their lungs. Babies can hang on to a finger or a thin rod tenaciously. Elevate the infant that does not cry thus a few times above the bed and let it hang for a few seconds each time. This throws the chest forward and exercises the lungs. What is more, this small amount of gymnastic work is thoroughly enjoyed. It helps to build strength and good temper. The crying helps to make the baby ill-tempered and fretful. A little crying now and then is all right, but much indicates discomfort, disease or a spoiled child. It would surprise most mothers how good babies are when they have a chance to be good. After reading this, some are sure to ask how many ounces to feed the baby. I don't know. No one else knows. Different babies have different requirements. The key is given above. If the babies become ill it is nearly always due to overfeeding and poor food, so the proper thing to do is to reduce the food intake. A healthy baby is a source of unending joy, while a sick one saps the mother's vitality. It is too bad that the art of efficient child culture is so little known. CHILDHOOD. Children may roughly be divided into two types, the robust and the more delicate or nervous ones. The robust children can stand almost all kinds of abuse with no apparent harm resulting, but the immunity is only apparent. The growing child naturally throws off disease influences easily and quickly, but if the handicap is too great the child loses out in the race. The nervous type can not be abused with impunity, for the bodies of these delicately balanced children are easily disturbed. They must have more intelligent care than is usually bestowed upon the robust type. If the care is not forthcoming they become weak in body, with an unstable nervous system, or perish early. Some parents complain because other people's children can do what their own can not and they wonder why. No time should be wasted in making such comparisons, for no two children are exactly alike, as no two leaves and not even two such apparently similar objects as grains of wheat are exactly alike. Therefore the care necessary varies somewhat, though it is basically the same. If the nervous type is given proper care, good health will be the result. These children do not tolerate as much exposure or as much food as do the robust children. The important thing is to learn what they require and then see that there is no excess, and in this way allow the child to grow physically strong and mentally efficient. The delicate children are perhaps more fortunate than the stronger ones, for they learn early in life that they have limitations. If they commit excesses the results are so disagreeable that they soon learn to be prudent. This prudence serves as protection so long as life lasts. The robust children on the other hand soon learn that they are strong. They hear their parents boast about it. They get the idea that because they are strong they will always remain so, that nothing will do them any serious harm. By living up to this fallacy they undermine their constitutions. Parents should teach their children about the law of compensation as applied to health, that is, he has permanent health who deserves it, and no one else. The children will not always heed true teachings after they have left the parental influence, but the parents have at least done the best they could. The robust children have their troubles, such as chicken-pox, mumps, fevers and measles, but these are thrown off so quickly and with so little inconvenience that they are soon forgotten. As a rule the parents do not realize that these diseases are due to faulty nutrition, and that faulty nutrition is caused by improper feeding. It is generally believed that children must have all the so-called children's diseases. Some mothers expose their infants to all of these that may happen to be in the neighborhood, hoping that the children will take them and be through with them. Every time a child is sick it is a reflection on either the intelligence or the performance of the parents. It is natural for children to be perfectly well, and they will remain in that happy state if they are given the opportunity. If they are properly fed they will not take any of the children's diseases in spite of repeated exposure. There is not a disease germ known to medical science strong enough to establish itself in the system of an uninjured, healthy child and do damage. The child's health must first be impaired, through poor care, and then the so-called disease germs will find a hospitable dwelling place. If children are given natural food in normal quantities they are disease-proof. Feeding them on refined sugar and white flour products, pasteurized or sterilized milk, potatoes fried in grease pickled meats, and various other ruined foods breaks down their resistance and then they fall an easy prey to disease. Some parents make the mistake of believing that they can feed their children improperly and ward off disease by vaccinations or inoculations of the products of disease taken from various animals. This is contrary to reason, common sense and nature and it is impossible. Any individual who is continually abused in any way, be he infant or adult, will deteriorate. If the disease is not the one that has been feared, it will be some other one. The robust children generally develop into careless adults. That is why so many of them, in fact the vast majority, die before they are fifty years old, although they are equipped with constitutions that were intended to last over a century. They are shining marks for typhoid fever, Bright's disease, various forms of heart and liver troubles, rheumatism and pneumonia, all of which are largely caused by too hearty eating. These diseases often come without apparent warning. That is, the victims have thought themselves healthy. However, they have not known what real health is. They have been in a state of tolerable health, not suffering any very annoying aches or pains, but they have lacked the normal state of body which results in a clear, keen mind. As a rule there is enough indigestion present to cause gas in the bowels and a coated tongue. Enough food is generally eaten to produce excessive blood pressure. The foundation for such a state of affairs is laid in childhood, yes, often before the child is born. It can readily be seen how important it is for parents to impart a little sound health information to the children. At least, they should teach them what health really is, which many people do not know. When these strong people become sick it is often difficult, or even impossible, to do anything for them, for their habits are so gross and have gained such a mastery that the patients will not or can not change their ways. The weaklings have a better chance to survive to old age, because many of them learn to be careful early in life. In reading the lives of eminent men who have lived long it is common to find that they were never strong. At the age of one year the baby is generally weaned. The ordinary child needs the mother's milk no longer, for by this time the digestive power is great enough to cope with cow's milk and various starches. The most important problem now is how to feed the child. If no errors of importance are made it will enjoy uninterrupted growth and health. If the errors are many and serious there will surely be disease and too often the abuse is so great that death comes and ends the suffering. Until the child reaches the age of two years the best foods are milk, whole wheat products and fruits. No other foods are necessary. The simpler the baby's food, and the more naturally and plainly prepared, the better. Adults who overeat until they suffer from jaded appetites, may think that they need great variety of food, but it is never necessary for infants or normal adults. Milk, whole wheat and fruits contain all the elements needed for growth and strength and health. By all means feed simply. Children are perfectly satisfied with bread and milk or simply one kind of fruit at a meal, if they are properly trained. The craving for a great variety of foods at each meal is due to parental mismanagement. Children should not be fed more than three times a day. There should be no lunching. The children will get all that is good for them, all they need in three meals. Candy should not be given between meals, and fruit is to be looked upon as a food, not as a dainty to be consumed at all hours of the day. If they are not accustomed to lunching, there will be no craving for lunches. If children are used to four or five meals a day they want them and raise annoying objections when deprived of one or two of them. It is easy to get children into bad habits. We can not blame the average mother for giving her children lunches, for she knows no better and sees other mothers doing the same. The children who do not get lunches thrive better than those who always have candy, fruit or bread and jam at their command. It is the same with adults. In the Dakotas and Minnesota are many Scandinavians and Germans. During the haying and harvest these people, who are naturally very strong, eat four and five times a day. The heat, the excessive amount of food and the great quantities of coffee consumed cause much sickness during and after the season of hard work and heroic eating. The so-called Americans in these communities are generally satisfied with three meals a day, and they are as well nourished and capable of working as those who eat much more. Refined sugar made from cane and beets should be given to children sparingly. Refined sugar is the chemical which is largely responsible for the perversion of children's tastes. A normal taste is very desirable, for it protects the possessor. A perverted taste, on the contrary, leads him into trouble. Sugar is not a good food. It is an extract. It is easy to cultivate a desire for sugar, but to people who are not accustomed to it, concentrated sugar has an unpleasant taste. The perversion of the sense of taste, generally begun with sugar, is made worse by the use of much salt, pepper and various condiments and spices. If the child is fed on unnatural food, highly seasoned, at the age of a few years its taste is so perverted that it does not know how most of the common foods really taste, and refuses to eat the best of them when the health-destroying concoctions to which it has been accustomed can be had. It is natural for children to relish fruit, but some are so perverted in taste that they object to a meal of it if they can get pancakes or waffles with butter and syrup, mushes with sugar and cream, ham or bacon with fried potatoes, or fresh bread and meat with pickles. Many parents allow their children to live on this class of food to the exclusion of all natural foods. Children need a great deal of the natural salts, and when they live so largely on denatured foods there is always physical deterioration. It is true that to the average eye such children may appear healthy, but they are not in one-half as good physical condition as they could be. Tea and coffee should never be given to children. They are bad enough for adults. In children they retard bodily development. The stimulation and sedation are bad for the nervous system. Coffee is as harmful as tobacco for the growing child. To warn against alcohol may seem foolish, but some parents really give beer and whiskey to their infants. The beer is given as a beverage and the whiskey as medicine to kill pain and soothe the children. Those who have not seen children abused in this way may find it difficult to believe that there is such a profundity of ignorance. These children die easily. Others quiet their children with the various soothing syrups. The last analyses that came under my eyes showed that these remedies contained considerable opium, laudanum, morphine and other deadly poisons. Morphine and opium are not well borne by children and these "mother's friends" have soothed many a baby into the sleep from which there is no waking. Make it a rule to give the children no medicines, either patent or those prescribed by physicians. Please remember that any remedy that quiets a child is poisonous. Children who get proper care require no medical quieting. Condiments should not be used. Salt is not necessary despite the popular belief to the contrary, though a small amount does no harm. Salt eating is a habit and when carried to excess it is a bad one. Salt is a good preservative, but there is little excuse for our using preserved foods extensively. There are so many foods that can be had without being preserved in this country that it would not be difficult to exclude these inferior foods from the dietary. Children whose foods are not seasoned do not desire seasoning, provided they are fed on natural foods from the start. They want the seasoning because they are taught to eat their food that way. If they are given fresh fruit every day, such as apples, oranges, cherries, grapes and berries, they get all the seasoning they need and they get it in natural form. The objection is made that such feeding deprives children of many of the good things of life. This is not true. Natural foods taste better than the doctored ones every time. Nature imparts a flavor to food products which man has never been able to equal, to say nothing of surpassing it. Children are taught to like abnormal foods. What is better, to give children good foods upon which they thrive, or denatured foods which taste well to a perverted palate, but are injurious? Instead of giving sugar or candy, give raisins, figs, dates or sweet prunes. Small children may be given the strained juices of these fruits, obtained either by soaking the raw fruits several hours or by stewing them. Children who are given these fruits do not crave refined sugar. They like these natural sugars better than the artificial extract. These sweet fruits take the place of starchy food. Very few people know anything definite about food values. Those who have studied foods and their values in order to be able to feed children properly generally make the mistake of believing that they should have all the necessary elements at each meal in about the proper proportion. This is a grave mistake and leads to trouble. The child needs salts, protein, sugar and fat, and in the absence of sugar some starch. Milk contains all these substances except starch. Give one fruit meal and two meals of starch daily. Milk may be given with all the meals or it may be given but once or twice. Do not overfeed on milk, for it is a rich food. Until the child is two years old, confine it in its starch eating pretty much to the products of whole wheat. Give no white bread. White bread is an unsatisfying form of food. It is so tasteless and insipid and so deprived of the natural wheat salts that too much has to be eaten to satisfy. Children who would be satisfied with a reasonable amount of whole wheat bread eat more white bread and still do not feel satisfied. The same is true of rice, the natural brown rice being so superior to the polished article that there is no comparison. The bread should be toasted in the oven until it is crisp clear through, or else it should be stale. Let the bread for toast get stale, and then place it in the oven when this is cooling off. Make the slices moderately thin. This is an easy and satisfactory way of making toast. Scorched bread--what is usually called toast--is not fit food for young children. After the second year is completed gradually increase the variety of starch. Some of the better forms of starch that are easy to obtain are: Puffed rice or puffed wheat; brown, unpolished rice; triscuit or shredded wheat biscuit; the prepared corn and wheat flakes; baked potatoes; occasionally well cooked oatmeal or whole wheatmeal gruel. Mushes are to be given seldom or never. Children seldom chew them well, and they require thorough mastication. The rice is not to be sugared but after the child has had enough, milk may be given. A small amount of butter may be served with either rice or baked potato. The cereal foods should be eaten dry. Let the children masticate them, as they should, and as they will not if the starches are moistened with milk. When they have had sufficient of these starches, and but one kind is to be served at a meal, give milk, if milk is to be a part of the meal. To observe the suggestions here given for the manner of feeding starches to children may mean the difference between success and failure in raising them. It is the little things that are important in the care of children. The acid fruits should not be given in the meals containing starchy foods. Strong children who have plenty of opportunity to be in the fresh air and who are very active can stand this combination, but it is injurious to the nervous type. It is not a good thing to make such combinations habitually for robust children. A good meal can be made of fruit followed by milk. Do not slice the fruit, sprinkle it with sugar and cover it with cream. Give the child the fruit and nothing else. Neither oranges nor grapefruits are to be sugared. Their flavor is better without. If the children want sweets, give them a meal of sweet fruits. When the child is eighteen months old it should have learned to masticate well enough to eat various fruits. Apples, oranges, grapefruits, berries, cherries, grapes and melons are among the foods that may be given. If the child does not masticate well, either grind the fruit or scrape it very fine. The sweet fruits require so much mastication that only their juices should be fed until the child is old enough to masticate thoroughly. Bananas should also be withheld until there is no doubt about the mastication. They must be thoroughly ripe, the skin being dark in spots and the flesh firm and sweet. A green banana is very starchy, but a ripe one contains hardly any starch and digests easily. At first the meal is fruit, followed with milk. Buttermilk or clabbered milk may be substituted for sweet milk. A little later, begin giving cottage cheese occasionally in place of milk, if the child likes it. The succulent vegetables may be given quite early. At the age of two years stewed onions, green peas, cauliflower, egg plant and summer squash may be given. Gradually increase the variety until all the succulent vegetables are used. At first it may be necessary to mash these vegetables. The longer children go without meat the better, and if they never acquired the meat-eating habit it would be a blessing. If the parents believe in feeding their children meat, they should wait until the little ones are at least four years old before beginning. Meats are digestible enough, but too stimulating for young people. Chicken and other fowls may be used at first, and it is best to use young birds. Beef and pork should not be on the children's menu. At the age of seven or eight the variety may be increased. However, parents who wish to do the best by their children will give them little or no meat. Many of the sorrows that parents suffer through their wayward children would be done away with if the young people were fed on less stimulating foods. Eggs are better for children than meat. However, it is not necessary to give them. The children get enough milk to supply all the protein they need. Eggs may be given earlier than meat. At the age of two and one-half years an egg may be given occasionally. At three they may be given every other day, one egg at a meal. At five or six years of age, an egg may be given daily, but not more than one at a time. If they are soft boiled, three and one-half minutes will suffice. If hard boiled, cook them fifteen to twenty minutes. An egg boiled seven or eight minutes is not only hard but tough. Longer boiling makes the albumin mellow. Always prepare eggs simply without using grease. Eggs may be given in combination with either fruits or vegetables. Milk is not to be taken in the egg meal, for if such combinations are made the child gets more protein than necessary. Eggs are easy to digest and the chief objection to their free use in feeding children is that the protein intake will be too great, which causes disease. Nuts should not be given until the children are old enough to masticate them thoroughly. The best combination is the same as for eggs. Children under six years of age should not have much more than one-half of an ounce of nut meats at a meal. The pecans are the best. Children rarely chew nuts well enough, so they should seldom be used. They may be ground very fine and made into nut butter, which may be substituted for ordinary butter. Give no butter until the child has completed his second year. The whole milk contains all the fat necessary. Butter should always be used in moderation, for although it digests easily, it is a very concentrated food. Again the question will be asked: "How much shall I feed my child?" I do not know, but I do know that most children get at least three times as much food as is good for them. People can establish a toleration to a certain poison, and seemingly take it with impunity for a while. Some arsenic eaters and morphine addicts take enough of their respective drugs daily to kill a dozen normal men. However, the drugs, if not stopped, always ruin the user in the end. It is the same way with food. Children seem to establish a toleration for an excess for a shorter or longer period of time, but the overeating always produces discomfort and disease in the end, and if it is continued it will cause premature death. About one-third or one-fourth of what children eat is needed to nourish them. The rest makes trouble. Read the chapters in this book on overeating and on normal food intake. They give valuable pointers. Parents know their children best, and the mother can, or should be able to tell when there are signs of impending danger. If there is a decided change in the child's disposition it generally denotes illness. Some children become very sweet when they are about to be ill, but most of them are so cranky that they make life miserable for the family. A foul, feverish breath nearly always comes before the attack. A common danger signal is a white line around the mouth. Another one is a white, pinched appearance of the nose. A flushed face is quite common. The tongue never looks normal. Except the abnormal tongue, these symptoms are not all present before every attack, but one or more of them generally are. No matter what the signs of trouble may be, stop all feeding immediately. If this is done, the disease generally fails to develop, but if feeding is continued there is sure to be illness. These symptoms indicate that the digestion is seriously disturbed. It is folly to feed when there is an acute attack of indigestion. Besides, it is very cruel, for it causes much suffering. Such symptoms in children are caused by improper eating, and overeating is generally the chief fault. The remedy is very simple: Feed less. A coated tongue indicates too much food. A clean tongue shows that the digestive organs are working well. If the tongue is not smooth and a pretty pink in color, it means that the child has had too much food and the meals must be reduced in quantity until the tongue does become normal, which may take a few months in chronic cases. Peculiar little protruding spots when red and prominent on the tip and edges of the tongue indicate irritation of the alimentary tract and call for reduction of food intake. The parents can soon learn how much to feed the children if they will be guided by these hints. Poor health in the children indicates parental failure, and this is one place where they can not afford to fail. Parents must be honest with themselves and not put the blame where the doctors put it--on bacteria, draughts, the weather, etc. Sometimes the climate is very trying on the babies, but it never kills those who have intelligent care. If it is found that the child next door, of the same age, eats three or four times as much as your child, do not become alarmed about your little one, but give the neighbor's child a little silent sympathy because its parents are ignorant enough to punish the little one so cruelly. For those who desire more definite hints regarding feeding of children, an outline has been prepared for several days. This is very simple feeding, but it is the kind of feeding that will make a rose bloom in each cheek. The child will be happy and contented and bring joy to the hearts of the parents. Breakfast: Whole wheat toast, butter and a glass of milk. Lunch: A baked apple and a dish of cottage cheese. Supper: Steamed or boiled brown rice and milk. Breakfast: Puffed wheat and milk. Lunch: Oranges and milk. Supper: An egg, parsnips and onions, both stewed. Breakfast: Oatmeal or whole wheat porridge and milk. Lunch: Berries and milk. Supper: Baked potato, spinach and a plate of lettuce. Breakfast: Shredded wheat biscuit and milk. Lunch: Stewed prunes and milk or cottage cheese. Supper: Whole wheat toast and milk. These are merely hints. Where one juicy fruit is suggested, another may be substituted. In place of the succulent vegetables named, others may be used. Any of the starches may be selected in place of the ones given. However, no mistake will be made in using the whole wheat products as the starch mainstay. Desserts should not be fed to children often. Rich cakes and all kinds of pies should be omitted from the bill of fare. It is true that some children can take care of them, but what is the use of taking chances? A plain custard, lightly flavored, may be given with toast. If ice cream is above suspicion a moderate dish of this with some form of starch may be given, but milk is not to be taken in the same meal with either ice cream or custard. At the end of the third year it is time enough to begin to feed the salad vegetables, though they may be given earlier to children who masticate well. The dressing should be very plain, nothing more than a little salt and olive oil, or some clabbered cream. No dressing is necessary. The salad vegetables may be eaten with the meal containing eggs and the stewed succulent vegetables. At the age of about seven or eight the child may be put on the same diet as the parents, provided they live simply. Otherwise, continue in the old way a little longer. For the best results in raising children, simplicity is absolutely necessary. Children who are early put on a stimulating diet develop mental and sexual precocity, both of which are detrimental to physical welfare. The first desideratum is to give the children healthy bodies, and then there will be no trouble in giving them what knowledge they need. In overfed boys the sex urge is so strong that they acquire secret habits, and sometimes commit overt acts. Too much protein is especially to blame. These facts are not understood by many and the result is that the parents fail in their duty to their children. It is best not to bring young children to the table, if there is anything on it that they should not have, for it nearly always results in improper feeding. The children are curious and they beg for a little of this and a little of that. Unthinkingly the parents give them little tastes and bites and before the meal is over they have had from six to twelve different kinds of food, some of them not fit for adult consumption. If the child understands that it is not to ask for these things and abides by this rule, it is all right, but such children are rare. A child that fretfully begs for this and that at the table upsets itself and the parents. Make no sudden changes in the manner of feeding, unless the feeding is decidedly wrong. Active children get all the exercise they need. They should spend a large part of the day in the open, and this is even more important for the delicate ones. The bedroom should be well ventilated, but the children must be kept cozy and warm or they do not sleep well. After the child is old enough not to soil itself, one or two baths a week are sufficient. There is no virtue in soaking. Swimming is different, for here the child is active in the water and it does not weaken him so. Swimming should be a part of every child's education. Bed time should be early. The children should be tucked in and the light turned off by 8 o'clock, and 7 o'clock is better for children under five. If they want to get up early in the morning, let them, but put them to bed early at night. Infants should not be exposed long to the direct rays of the summer sun, for it is liable to cause illness. It upsets the stomach and then there is a feverish spell. If nothing is fed that will generally be all, but it is unnecessary to make babies ill in this way. They should not be chilled either. Husband and wife do not agree at all times, but they make a mistake when they disagree in the presence of their children. Young people are quick to take advantage of such a state of affairs and they begin to play the parents against each other. When a point comes up where there is a difference of opinion, the decision of the parent who speaks first should stand, at least for the time being. Then when they are by themselves, man and wife can discuss the matter if it is not satisfactory, and even quarrel about it, if that gives them pleasure. Parents who do not control themselves can not long retain the full respect of their children. Lost respect is not very far distant from lost love. People often object to a change in methods, for, they say, the new plan will cause too much trouble. The plan here outlined causes less trouble than the conventional method of caring for children. It is simpler and gives better results. If it were followed out the mortality of children under ten years of age in this country would be reduced from over 400,000 annually to less than 25,000. In spite of everything, a number of young people will get into fatal pranks. There are difficulties in the way of raising children properly, but a healthy child is such a great reward that the efforts are paid for a hundred times over. Nothing wears the parents out more quickly than a child who is always fretting and crying, always on the brink of disease or in its grasp. In raising children the best way is the easiest way. THE CHILD'S MENTAL TRAINING. A healthy body is the child's first requirement. However, if the mental training is poor, giving wrong views of life, a good physique is of but little service. It is quite generally agreed among observers that the first seven years of life leave the mental impressions which guide the whole life, and that after the age of fourteen the mental trend rarely changes. There are a few individuals with strength enough to make themselves over mentally after reaching adult life, but these are so few that they are almost negligible, and even they are largely influenced by their youth and infancy. It is as easy to form good mental habits as bad ones. It is within the power of all parents to give their children healthy bodies and healthy minds, and this is a duty, which should prove a pleasure. The reason such heritage is so rare is that it requires considerable self-control and most parents live chaotic lives. Upon the mentality depends the success in life. "It is the mind that makes the body rich." No matter how great an individual's success may seem in the eyes of the public, if the person lacks the proper perspective, the proper vision and the right understanding, his success is an empty thing. Wealth and success are considered synonymous, but I have found more misery in the homes of the rich than among the poor. Physical wants can be supplied and the suffering is over, but mental wants can only be satisfied through understanding, which should be cultivated in childhood. "All our problems go back to the child--corrupt politics, dishonesty and greed in commerce, war, anarchism, drunkenness, incompetence and criminality."--Moxom. Given a healthy body and a good mind, every individual is able to become a useful member of society, and that is all that can be expected of the average individual. All can not be eminent, and it is not necessary. Upon the child's mental impressions and the habits formed in infancy and youth depend the mental workings and the habits of later life. Therefore it is necessary to nurture the little people in the right kind of atmosphere. If the child is trained properly from infancy there will be no serious bad habits to overcome during later years, and, as all know, habits are the hardest of all bonds to break. To overcome the coffee and alcohol habits is hard, but to overcome bad mental habits is even more difficult. First of all, let the infant alone most of the time. Some mothers are so full of love and nonsense that they take their babies up to cuddle and love them at short intervals, and then there are the admiring relatives who like to flatter the parents by telling them that the baby is the finest one they have seen; it is an exceptional baby. So the relatives have to bother the infant and kiss it. This should not be. The child should be kept in a quiet room and should not be disturbed. There are no exceptional babies. They are all much alike, except that some are a little healthier than others. If they are let alone, they have the best opportunity to develop into exceptional men and women. Paying too much attention to babies makes them cross and irritable. They soon learn to like and then to demand attention. If they do not get it at once they become ill-tempered and cry until attention is given. Thus the foundation of bad temper is laid in the very cradle. They gain their ends in infancy by crying. Later on they develop the whining habit. When they grow older they fret and worry. Such dispositions are the faults of the parents. It does not take long for children to learn how to get their way, and if they can do it by being disagreeable, you may be sure that they will develop the worst side of their nature. Let the child understand that being disagreeable buys nothing, and there will soon be an end of it. Children who are well and well cared for are happy. They cause their elders almost no trouble. To lavish an excessive amount of care on a baby may be agreeable to the mother at first, but it is different when it comes to caring for an ill-tempered, spoiled child of eight or nine years. Many crimes are committed in the name of love. Many babies are killed by love. Unless love is tempered by understanding it is as lethal as poison. Many parents think they are showing love when they indulge their children, but instead they are putting them onto the road that leads to physical and mental decay. True love is helpful, kind and patient. The spurious kind is noisy, demonstrative and impatient. Do what is necessary for children, but do not allow them to cause unnecessary work. What they can do for themselves they should do. They can be taught to be helpful very early. They should be taught to be neat and tidy. They should learn to dress themselves and how to keep their rooms and personal effects in good order early in life, no matter how many servants there may be. These little things are reflected in their later lives. They help to form the individual's character. It is what we do that largely make us what we are, and every little act and every thought has a little influence in shaping our lives. An orderly body helps to make an orderly mind and vice versa. Many of the rich children are unfortunate indeed. Some times poor parents have so many children that each one gets scant attention, but the children of many of the rich get no parental attention. The parents are too busy accumulating or preserving a fortune and climbing a social ladder to bother with their children. Their raising is delegated to servants. At times the little ones are put on display for a few minutes and then the parents are as proud of them as they are of the expensive paintings that adorn the walls or the blooded dogs and horses in kennels and stables. No amount of paid service can compensate for the lack of parental love. The ideal today, especially for female children, seems to be to make ornaments of them, to train them to be useless. Girls, as well as boys, should be taught to be useful. They should be taught that those who do not labor are parasites. If some do not work, others have to work too hard. The story is told of Mark Twain that he dined with an English nobleman who boasted that he was an earl and did not labor. "In our country," said Mark Twain, "we do not call people of your class earls; we call them hoboes." It does not matter how wealthy parents are, they should teach their children how to earn a living, and they should instill into them the ideal of service, for a life of idleness is a failure. The shirkers and wasters are not happy. The greatest contentment in life comes from the performance of good work. Ecstatic love and riotous pleasure can not last. Work with love and pleasure is good. But love and pleasure without work are corroding. Children who are waited upon much become selfish. They soon become grafters, expecting and taking everything and giving nothing. This is immoral, for life is a matter of compensation, and consists in giving as well as in taking. Children should be taught consideration for others, and should not be allowed to order the servants around; not that it harms the servants, but it has a bad effect on the children. Because the child's period of development is so long, it is important to have a proper adjustment in the home between parents and the children. Lack of adjustment wears out the parents, especially the mother, and gives false impressions to the young people. To prevent friction and get good results, children should be taught obedience. Obedience is one of the stepping stones to ability to command. In those homes where the words of the parents are law there is but little friction. Obedience should be taught from the very start. As soon as the child realizes that the parents mean what they say and that it is useless to fret and complain about a command, that is the end of the matter. How different it is with disobedient children! The parents have to tell them what to do several times and then the bidding often remains undone. Begin to teach obedience and promptness as soon as the children understand, for it is more difficult later. The older the children the harder it is. Children know so little and are so conceited that they do not realize that because of lack of experience, observation and reflection they can not safely guide themselves at all times. When they are allowed to act so that they are a nuisance to others and harmful to themselves, they do not give up this license with good grace. There are times to be firm and then firmness should be used. It is necessary for the parents to cooperate. Various parents have different ways of correcting their children, and it is not difficult to make them realize that obedience is a part of the plan of early life. To illustrate: If the children are called for a meal, they should come promptly. If there is a tendency to lag, tell them that if they do not come when called they will get nothing to eat until next mealtime, and act accordingly. This is no cruelty, for no one is harmed by missing a meal. It generally proves very effective. At the table, serve the children what your experience has told you they can take with benefit, without saying anything about it. If they ask for anything else, give it if you think proper. If not, say no. If they start to beg and whine, tell them that such conduct will result in their being sent away from the table, and if they still continue, do as you have said, and let there be no weakening. This may cause a few very disagreeable experiences at first, but it is much better to have a few of them and be through, than to continue year after year to have such trouble. Some children can eat everything with apparent impunity and their parents usually pay no attention to what they eat. But there are others who become ill if they are improperly fed. Children who are often feverish and take all the diseases peculiar to the young, are maltreated. They are not properly fed. Those who are prone to convulsions must be fed with great care, or there is danger of their becoming epileptics. Firmness in such cases generally means the difference between health and disease or even death. By all means be firm in such matters. Indulging the children to excess is invariably harmful. When your children become ill and die, you can truly say, "Behold my handiwork." In the same way teach the children to do promptly whatever they are told to do. If they are told to go to bed, it should be done without delay or protest. All the little duties that fall to their lot should likewise be accomplished promptly. However, the parents should be reasonable and they should avoid bombarding their children with commands to do or not to do a thousand and one things that do not matter at all. Let the children alone except when it is really necessary to direct them. Unfortunately, most of the parents are blind to their own faults, but see very clearly those of others. The mistakes they make in their own families open their eyes to those of others, and then they are often very impatient. I know one gentleman who has excellent knowledge of the proper training of the young, but as a parent he is a total failure. He is so explosive and lacking in patience and firmness, perhaps also in love, that his knowledge has not helped him. It is not what we know, but what we apply, that makes or mars. Obedience reduces friction and trains the children into habits of efficiency. It is not only valuable in preserving the health of the parents, but in increasing the child's earning capacity when the time comes to labor in earnest. Plato said that democracies are governed as well as they deserve to be. Likewise, parents get as much obedience, respect, affection and love as they deserve, and the three latter are largely dependent upon the former. It would be difficult to overemphasize the importance of obedience. In nature we find that the animals teach their young how to live independently as soon as they have the strength to care for themselves. This is what parents should teach their children. This may cause the mother pain, for many mothers like to keep their children helpless, dependent and away from contact with the world as long as possible. Wise mothers do not handicap their children thus. The best parents are those who teach their children early how to make their own way. Doubtless the greatest happiness is to be found in a congenial family, where the parents understand and love each other and their children. Those parents who are so busy that they lack the time to become acquainted with their infants and keep up this intimacy, are losing a part of life that neither money nor social position can give them. Many wait until too late to get on intimate terms with their children. When young, the children are naturally loving and then the beautiful ties which neither time nor misfortune can sunder are formed. When the children are grown it is too late to establish such a relation. Then they look at their parents with as critical eyes as they use toward other people, and though they may become very good friends, the tender love is lacking. Love between man and woman is unstable, but the beautiful love that springs from companionship of children and parents lasts until the end. While some mothers neglect their children, many become too absorbed in them. The children become all of the mother's life. As the young people become older, their horizon naturally widens. During infancy the parents can fill the child's whole life, but soon other interests crave attention. There is always a tragedy in store for the mother who refuses to see that her children, as they grow older, will demand the human experience necessary for individual growth and development. If the mother has no other interest than her children she will one day be left with a heart as empty as the home from which the children are gone. There are so many interesting things in this world, and every mother should have her hobby. She should have at least one hour each day sacred to herself, in which she can relax and cultivate the mind. This will help to fill the coming years, which too often prove barren. Loving parents get all the reward they should expect from the beautiful intimacy that exists between them and their growing children. So-called ungrateful children have incompetent parents. Parents have no right to demand gratitude. They do no more for their children than was done for themselves in the morning of their lives. The right kind of parents never want for rewards. They are repaid every day so long as they live. Children grow under the care of their parents, but the parents also grow and expand in understanding, sympathy and love through association with their children. Today society does not treat the mothers with the proper consideration. The mothers deserve well, for they have to give many of their best years to the children. These are the productive years, and generally unfit the women to go into economic competition with the rest of the world afterwards. Society owes it to the mothers of the race to see that they are not made to suffer for fulfilling their destiny. Motherhood today is as dangerous as the soldier's life, though it ought not to be, and it is more difficult to raise children than to conduct a successful business. However, the financial rewards for motherhood are generally nil. The least society can do is to see that these women do not want for the necessities of life. Most children are interrogation points. This is well, for they learn through curiosity. The questions should be answered honestly, or not at all. It is common to give untrue answers. This is poor policy, for the answers are a part of the child's education and untruths make the young people ignorant and superstitious. It takes considerable patience to raise a child and he who is unwilling to exercise a little patience has no right to become a parent. Whether to use corporeal punishment or not is a question that the parents must decide for themselves. Many parents are in the habit of nagging their children. It is, "Don't do this," and "Don't do that," until the little ones feel as exasperated as the Americans in Berlin, where everything that one has an impulse to do is "Verboten." The children have not yet acquired caution, nor are they able to think of more than one or two things at a time. Consequently they forget what they are not to do, and then parental wrath descends upon them. Parents can well afford to be deaf and blind to many things that happen. Those mothers who are ever shouting prohibitions soon cultivate a fretful, irritable tone that is bad for all concerned, and which does not breed respect and obedience. Make it a rule not to interfere with the children except when it is necessary, and tell them to do but one thing at a time. If too many commands and prohibitions are issued, the children are prone to forget them all. If they are talked to less, what is said is more deeply impressed on their minds, and the chances are that they will remember. Boisterousness is not badness, but indicates a state of well-being, which results in bodily activity, including the use of the vocal cords. It is common to all young animals, and the human animal is the only one that is severely punished for manifesting happiness. If the parents decide that corporeal punishment is necessary, they should be sure that it has been deserved, for a child resents being punished unjustly, and undeserved punishment is always harmful. Many parents become so angry that they inflict physical punishment to relieve their own feelings, and this is very wrong. If a parent calmly decides that his child needs punishment, perhaps this is the case. The punishment should be given calmly. Nothing can be more cowardly and disgusting than the brutal assault of an angry parent upon a defenseless child, and such parents always regret their actions if they have any conscience, but they are generally of such poor moral fibre and so full of false pride that they fail to apologize to the children for the injustice done. These parents inflict suffering upon their children, but they punish themselves most of all, for they kill filial regard and love. Children have a very keen sense of fair play. If it is decided to administer corporeal punishment, it should have enough sting to it so that it will be remembered. Parents who temper their justice with patience and love are not compelled to resort to corporeal punishment often. Children should never be hit on the head. Pulling or boxing the ears should not be recognized as civilized warfare. Blows on the head may partly destroy the hearings and affect the brain. Another thing that may not come under the head of punishment in the strictest sense, is lifting children by one of the arms. Women are prone to do this. Often it partly dislocates the elbow joint. The children whine and no one knows exactly what is the matter. If one arm is occupied and the child has to be lifted from curb to street or over a puddle, stoop and pass the unoccupied arm about the child's body and no harm will be done. No one should suggest to the child that it is bad. It is better to dwell upon goodness. If a child is often told that it is bad, it will soon begin to live up to its name and reputation, just as adults often do. Many parents are in the habit of scaring their children. If the little ones cry or disobey, they are told that the boogy-man is coming after them, or they are threatened with being put out into the dark, or perhaps some animal or bad person is coming to get them. Fear is injurious to everybody, being ruinous to both the body and the mind, and it is especially bad for growing children. The fear instilled in them during childhood remains with some people to the end of life. It is not uncommon to find people who dare not go out alone after dark because they were scared in childhood. Children like exciting stories that would naturally inspire fear, but it is not difficult for the reader or story teller to inform the little ones that there are no big black bears or bold robbers in the neighborhood, and that now there is nothing to fear in the darkness. Many teach the children to be ashamed of their bodies. Every part of the body has its use and whatever is useful is good. Those who do not abuse their bodies have nothing of which to be ashamed. The education of children in the past has been along wrong lines. It has been the aim to cram them full of isolated facts, many of them untrue. We are slowly outgrowing this tendency, but too much remains. Thanks largely to Froebel and Doctor Montessori, our methods are growing more natural. The adult learns by doing and so does the child. Doctor Montessori teaches the children to use all their senses. She gives them fabrics of various textures and objects of different shapes and colors. Thus they learn colors, forms, smoothness, roughness, etc. She teaches them how to dress and undress and how to take their baths. She lets them go about the schoolroom instead of compelling them to sit still at their desks in cramped positions. In this way they get knowledge that they never forget. They learn to read and write and figure in playful ways through the proper direction of their curiosity. Little tots of four, or even younger, are often able to read, and there has been no forcing. All has come about through utilizing the child's curiosity. If children are delicate, they should not be put into a schoolroom with thirty or forty other children. Keep such children outdoors when the weather permits and allow them to become strong. The education will take care of itself later. There is nothing to be gained by overtaxing a delicate child in the schoolroom, which too often is poorly ventilated, and having a funeral a little later. Children should be taught the few simple fundamental rules of nutrition until they are second nature. A thorough knowledge of the fact that it is very injurious to eat when there is bodily or mental discomfort is worth ten thousand times as much to a child as the ability to extract cube root or glibly recite, "Arma virumque cano Trojae," etc. The realization that underchewing and overeating will cause mental and physical degeneration is much more valuable than the ability to demonstrate that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. This knowledge can be given so unobtrusively that the child does not realize that it is learning, for there are many opportunities. When a child gets sick and is old enough to understand, instead of sympathizing with it explain how the illness came about, and please remember that in explaining you can leave the germs out of the question, for diseases of childhood are almost entirely due to improper feeding. The value of education like that is beyond any price, for it is a form of health insurance. Reforming the race, means that we must begin with the children. In parts of Europe cultured people have a working knowledge of two or three languages. This is certainly convenient. Those who wish their children to know one or two tongues beside English should remember that in infancy two tongues are learned as readily as one, if they are spoken. Those who can use three languages when they are four years old are not infant prodigies. They have had the opportunity to learn, and languages are simply absorbed. The language teaching in the public schools is a joke. After taking several years of French or German the school children can not speak about the common things of life in those tongues, though they may know more about the grammar than the natives. In other words, they know the science of the language, but not the language itself. A time comes when the child wants to know about the origin of life. If the parents have been companions, they can impart this knowledge better than anyone else. If they are unable to explain, the family doctor should be able to impart the knowledge with delicacy. I do not believe that such knowledge should be imparted to mixed classes in the public schools, as advocated by some. If the parents do their duty, there will be no need of public education in sex hygiene. The doctor should be an educator, so he merits consideration here. Nearly all families have their medical advisers, and these professional people have it in their power to bring more sunshine into the homes than their fees will pay for. On the other hand, they can, and too often do, give both advice and remedies that are harmful They should sow seeds of truth. If the infant is properly cared for, it is never ill. Inasmuch as there are but few families with sufficient knowledge to keep their babies healthy at all times, there are many calls for the doctor. Parents are generally unduly alarmed about their infants. Nearly always the trouble is primarily in the alimentary tract, due to improper feeding, and the doctor with his wide experience can relieve the parental anxiety, and at the same time tell them where they have made their mistakes and how they have brought suffering upon their little ones. Of course, there should be no dosing with medicine and no injections of foreign matter into the blood stream. Rest, quiet, cleanliness and warmth are what the children need to restore them to health. The right kind of physician when acting as adviser to intelligent parents who wish to do the best by their children will see to it that there is little or no disease. If the parents do not know what to do, the most economical procedure is to consult a physician who has understanding of and confidence in nature. Pay no attention to the women of many words who give advice "because they have had many children and have buried them all." It is not as difficult to raise healthy children as sickly ones. It is so simple that it takes many pages to explain it. CHAPTER XXVIII. DURATION OF LIFE. Old age today brings to mind a picture of decrepitude and decay. This is because there is practically no natural old age. Those who live so that they are unhealthy during the early years of life will not be well if they reach advanced years. Old people can be well in body and sound in mind. In order to attain this desirable end, it is necessary to live properly during the first part of life. It is true that people may dissipate and reform and then live long in comfort, but usually those who spend too lavishly destroy their capital and go into physical or mental bankruptcy. There are many who during their prime say that they do not wish to grow old. Their desire for a short life can easily be satisfied. All that is necessary is to live in the conventional manner and the chance of dying before reaching the age of fifty or sixty is good. A few live to be seventy or more in spite of dissipation, but these are the exceptions. They were endowed with excellent constitutions to begin with, constitutions that were made to last over one hundred years. Where we find one who has lived long in spite of intemperance, thousands have died from it. Most people desire to remain on earth long and they can have their wish. They can advance in years healthy in body and with growing serenity of mind. Physical and mental well-being are necessary to attain one's life's expectancy. Old age should not be considered as apart from the rest of life. It is but one of the natural phases. Those who do not live to be old have failed to live completely. Those who express their desire to die young generally change their mind when they face death. Man clings to life. Old age is a desirable condition. The physical tempests have been subdued, if the life has been well spent. On the other hand, the faults and foibles of the self-indulgent are accentuated and in such cases old age is a misfortune. No one knows what man's natural length of life is. Anatomists and physiologists compare the human body with the bodies of various animals. In this they are justified, for we all develop according to the same laws. Most of the animals, when allowed to live as nature intended them to live, reach an age of from five to six times the length of the period of their growth. Human beings, with their ability to control their environment, should be able to do even better than that. Man reaches physical maturity between twenty and twenty-five years of age. This would make his natural age one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty years. There are cases on record that have lived longer and it may be that if man would cease going in the way of self-destruction and spend more thought and time on the welfare of the race, life would be prolonged beyond even one hundred and fifty years. R. T. Trall, M. D., thought that man should live to be two hundred years old. "What man has done man can do." If long life is worth while, doubtless a time will come when long life will be enjoyed. The worry, fretting and foolish haste of today will doubtless be partly done away with some time. Then men and women will have time to live, instead of merely existing, as most people do today. Men have lived long and found life good. Long life for its own sake is perhaps not to be desired, but the benefit that can be bestowed upon the race by those advanced in years is desirable. Occasionally a brilliant individual appears on the scene, doing superior work in life's morning, but most of the work that has been found worthy of the consideration of the ages has been done by men of mature years. Galen, the famous physician, is said to have lived to a great age. It is hard to tell exactly how old he was, but he was probably well past the century mark at his death. His long life gave him time to do work that is appreciated after the lapse of eighteen centuries. For many hundred years after his death he dominated the practice of medicine and he is today spoken of as often as any living medical man. Thomas Parr, an Englishman, died at the age of one hundred and fifty-two. He was hale and hearty to the very end. Unfortunately, his reputation traveled far. He was brought to the English court, where he was wined and dined, and as a consequence he died. Before this he had always led the simple life. An autopsy was performed and the physicians found his organs in excellent condition. The only reason they could give for his death was his departure from the simple life which he had led in his home. Henry Jenkins, also an Englishman, lived to the age of one hundred and sixty-nine years. He lived very frugally and was always on friendly terms with nature. His favorite drink was water, though he partook in moderation of "hop bitters." He was moderate in all things, and it is said that he was never really ill until near the end of life. He was not shriveled and shrunken, but a wholesome looking man. King Charles II. sent a carriage to bring Mr. Jenkins to London, when he was one hundred and sixty years old. The old gentleman declined to ride and walked the two hundred miles to the metropolis. The king questioned him regarding his life and desired to know the reason for his longevity. Mr. Jenkins replied that he had always been sober and temperate and that this was the reason for his many years. The Merry Monarch was neither sober nor temperate, and you may be sure that this reply did not please him. Mr. Jenkins was wiser than Mr. Parr had been, refusing to dissipate, even though he was old. Consequently he returned to his home to enjoy life nine years longer. These two cases are authentic. All are familiar with the records given in the Bible. Whether they are figurative or not it is hard to tell. However, so many cases of longevity are recorded that they in all probability have a basis in fact. The Hebrews of old must have been a long-lived people. One hundred and twenty years was not an extreme age. In Genesis is the record of many over five hundred years old, and a few over nine hundred years of age. At the time of the apostles the life span of the Hebrews had grown shorter and hence the dictum of three score years and ten. Between the time of Moses and that of the apostles the Hebrews had advanced--or shall we say degenerated?--from a semi-barbarous people to one that had the graces and also the vices of a higher civilization. The Hebrews of old were husbandmen, who lived simply and got their vigor from the soil. The cause of so much unnecessary suffering and of the premature deaths has been discussed elsewhere in this book. In short, it is wrong living and wrong thinking. Impure air and bad food kill no more surely than does worry. The bodies of children are composed largely of water. The structures are flexible and elastic. The bones are made up mostly of cartilaginous structure. As the children grow older more solids are deposited in the body and the proportion of solid matter to water grows greater. Lime is deposited in the bones. When they are limy throughout they are said to be ossified. After this process is complete no more growth can take place. Bone formation continues until about the age of twenty-five. At this age the body is efficient. The fluids circulate without obstruction. Could this condition be maintained, there would be no decay. During the early years of life the food intake in proportion to the weight of the body is great. The child is active and uses much fuel to produce power and to repair the waste. Considerable food is required for body building. At this time a broken bone mends quickly and cuts heal in a short time. With advancing years come slowness and sluggishness of the various vital activities. The slowing up can be retarded almost indefinitely by proper care of the body. If the circulation could be maintained and the purity of the blood stream guarded, old age would be warded off. A healthy body is able to cleanse itself under favorable conditions and so long as the body is clean through and through there is no opportunity for disease to take place and there can be no aging. By aging I mean not so much the number of years one has lived as the amount of hardening and degeneration of the body that take place. Some are as old at forty as others are at seventy. When people have reached physical maturity they should begin to reduce their food intake. There is no need for building material then. All that is necessary is enough to repair the waste and to keep up the temperature. The individual at twenty-seven should eat a little less than when he was twenty and by the age of thirty-five he should have reduced his food still more and made his meals very simple. Children enjoy the gratification of the sense of taste, but at the age of thirty-five a man has lived enough and experienced enough so that he should know that the overgratification of appetites is an evanescent and unprofitable pleasure, always costing more than it is worth. It is best to grow into good habits while young, for it is difficult to do so after one has grown old. The man who reforms after fifty is the exception. Children are fond of cereal foods and sugars. They can eat these foods two or three times a day and thrive. A man of thirty-five should make it a general rule to limit his starch eating to once a day. Various physiologists say that as much as sixteen ounces of dry starch (equivalent to about thirty ounces of ordinary bread) are necessary each day. This is entirely too much. Very few people can profitably eat more than four ounces of dry starch a day, and for many this is too much. Through eating as much as is popularly and professionally advocated, early decay and death result. The arteries are normally pliable and elastic. When too much food is taken, the system is unable to cleanse itself. Debris is left at various points. One of the favorite lodging places is in the coats of the arteries. After considerable deposits have been formed the arteries lose their elasticity. They become hard and unyielding. A normal radial artery can easily be compressed with one finger. Sometimes the radial artery becomes so hard that it is difficult to compress it with three fingers. As the arteries grow harder they become more brittle and sometimes they break, often a fatal accident. This hardness of the arteries impedes the circulation, for the tone and natural elasticity of the vessel walls is one of the aids to a normal circulation. So long as the arteries are normal all parts of the body are bathed in a constantly changing stream of blood. The muscles, the nerves, the bones, in fact all parts of the body, remove from the blood stream those elements that are necessary for repairing or building the various tissues. They also throw into the blood stream the refuse and waste due to the constant repair and combustion going on all over the body. The blood then leaves this refuse with the skin, lungs, kidneys and bowels, which throw it out of the body. So long as there are enough fuel and food, but not too much, and so long as all the debris is carried away, there is health. But let this process be thrown out of balance and there will be disease. The food intake is seldom too small, though the digestion is frequently so poor that not enough good food gets into the blood. Old age is largely due to overeating and eating the wrong kinds of food. This is how overeating causes premature aging, when it does not kill more quickly: When too much food is taken, too much is absorbed into the blood, provided the nutritive processes are active. Then all the food in the blood can not be used for repair and fuel. The balance must either be excreted or stored away in the body as deposits. If this storing takes place in the joints, the result may be rheumatism or gout and at times even a complete locking of the joints (anchylosis). If it is stored in the walls of the blood-vessels they become hard and unyielding. No matter where deposits take place, some of them will be found in the walls of the blood-vessels. When these vessels grow hard they decrease in caliber. The result is that the heart is compelled to work very hard, but even then enough blood is not forced through the vessels. The circulation becomes sluggish. The blood in the various parts becomes stagnant. Then insufficient good oxygen and first-class nourishment are brought to the parts and not enough waste is carried away. Now the billions of cells of which the body is composed are constantly bathed in poisonous blood. The result is lowering of physical tone, or degeneration, of the whole body. The hands and the feet suffer most at first from the poor blood supply and become cold easily. Those who suffer constantly from cold hands and feet should know that they are aging, although they may be but twenty years old. Such a condition as this often gives rise to varicose veins in the legs. The feet are so far away from the heart, and it is such a long upgrade return of the blood, that the circulation in the lower extremities easily becomes sluggish. The flabby, relaxed tissues and the hardened blood-vessels allow the blood to stagnate. This is why senile gangrene is so common in the feet and so often fatal. The brain gets a copious blood supply, yet the hardening of the arteries often deprives this organ of its necessary nourishment. Then the higher faculties begin to abdicate. If the hardening is extensive senile softening of the brain may take place. This is always due to a lack of pure blood. Sometimes the arteries are brittle enough to break. Baldness is another symptom of physical decay. The hair follicles are not properly nourished, for the arteries have become so contracted and the tissues of the scalp so hardened that there is not enough blood to feed the hair roots. Baldness begins on top of the head, generally the only part affected, because it is farthest away from the blood supply. Baldness is also partly due to man's headwear. Women are rarely bald. There is a saying that there are no bald men in the poorhouse. Even if this were true, it would not be very consoling, for the bald heads on the street cleaning forces are numerous. Overeating also causes premature aging because if results in fermentation in the alimentary tract. The acids produced cause degeneration of various tissues, having an especially bad effect on the nervous system, which reflects the evil to other parts of the body. It is well to bear in mind how this comes about: First there is overeating; too much food improperly prepared is taken into the blood stream; this makes the blood impure; deposits, causing hardening of the tissues and reduction of the lumen of the vessels, are formed; the blood grows more impure and the circulation sluggish; the tissues are constantly bathed in impure blood, causing further degeneration. When a certain point is reached nature can tolerate no more and life flits away. Those who wish to remain young must give some thought to the selection of their food, especially if they are hearty eaters. If only sufficient food is taken to keep the body well nourished it does not make much difference what is eaten, provided it contains sufficient of fresh foods, for when only enough food is taken to supply fuel and repairing material, the food will all be used and none is left to ferment in the digestive tract and form deposits in the body. The body will then keep itself clean, or at least the formation of deposits takes place so slowly that it is hardly perceptible. This can be compared with the process taking place in the flues of a boiler. Stoke properly and they remain clean. Choke the firebox with an excess of coal and the combustion is so incomplete that the flues are soon filled up and the grates are often burned out. Just so with the body: Feed too heavily and the digestive organs are burned by the abnormal amount of acid produced and the blood-vessels are filled with debris. As most people lack the self-control to eat a normal amount of food, they should select foods that are compatible and that are not too concentrated. Too much meat causes degeneration of all parts of the body and hardening. Too much starch causes acidity and hardening. The fruits and the light vegetables have a tendency to overcome these degenerating processes. Starch is surely the chief offender in aging people. It is such a concentrated food that overeating is easy, especially when it is taken in the soft forms, such as mushes, fresh bread, griddle cakes and mashed potatoes. If people would masticate their starchy foods thoroughly it would greatly reduce the danger of overeating. It is common to eat bread three times a day and in addition to take potatoes once or twice a day. Those who consume so much starch carry into the system more food than can be used and more of the mineral salts than can be excreted. The result is the formation of deposits, chiefly of lime carbonate and lime phosphate; fatty deposits are also common. In order to live long and comfortably it would be well to reduce the starch intake to once a day. The meats also are objectionable when taken in excess. To them can be attributed the chief blame for the formation of gelatinous deposits in the body. However, they do not carry so much earthy matter into the blood stream as do the starches. It is best to partake of meat but once a day, or even more seldom. Meat should certainly not be taken more than twice a day even by those who are advanced in years. People who care enough for starch to take it three times a day, or are compelled to live chiefly upon it, grow old and homely more quickly than do those who are able to partake more plentifully of the more expensive proteins. The flesh obtained from young animals and birds is not so heavily charged with earthy matters as is that which is obtained from old animals and birds. Fruits and nuts do not carry so much earthy matter as do the starches and meats. The sweet fruits could with profit partly take the place of the starchy foods. The sugar they contain, which has the same nutritive value as starches, needs very little preparation before entering the blood stream. Thus a large part of the energy required for starch digestion is saved. On the other hand, the use of too much refined sugar is even worse than an excessive intake of starch. Nuts are not difficult to digest if they are well masticated.. The objection to acid fruits during the latter years of life is that they thin the blood and cause chilliness. This is true if they are partaken of too liberally. It is not necessary to refrain from eating acid fruits, but they should be taken in moderation and the mild ones should be selected. Pears, mild apples and grapes are better than oranges, grapefruits and apricots. Those who have learned moderation can eat all the fruit desired, for they will not be harmed by what a normal appetite craves. Vegetables carry considerable earthy matter, but on account of their helpfulness in keeping the blood sweet they should be eaten several times a week. Those who think that overeating of starch is too harshly condemned are referred to the horse. When he is allowed to roam about and partake of his natural food, grass, he stays well and lives to be forty or more years old. When compelled to eat great quantities of corn and oats, which are very rich in starch, the horse becomes listless and slow at an early age. He is old at fifteen and before twenty he is generally dead. When horses suffer from stiffness in the joints a few weeks spent in pasture, where they have nothing but green grass and water, remove the stiffness and make them younger. This shows what partaking of nature's green salad does for them. Any good stock man will tell you that feeding too much grain "burns a cow out." It does exactly the same for a human being, burns him out and fills him with clinkers. Many people think that it is a hardship to be moderate in eating and drinking, but it is not. It brings such a feeling of well-being and comfort that it is unbelievable to those who have not experienced it. Many envy the rich, thinking that they can and do live riotously. Rich men must live as simply as though they were poor or else they soon lose the mental efficiency that brought them their fortunes, for when health is gone mental power is reduced. According to information in the Saturday Evening Post, the eating habits of many of our most influential business men are very simple and the amount of food partaken of small. John D. Rockefeller could hardly live more simply and plainly than he does. William Rockefeller, George F. Baker, James Stillman, Otto H. Kahn, Thomas Fortune Ryan, George W. Perkins, J. Ogden Armour, John H. Patterson, Jacob H. Schiff and Andrew Carnegie, all business giants with money enough to subsist on the most expensive delicacies, are said to live more plainly than does the average American who is complaining of the high cost of living. It is the price they have had to pay for success and it is the price that you and I will have to pay to live successfully, though our success may not take the form of financial power. The one conspicuous exception among the financially great to the rule of simplicity was J. P. Morgan. His eating habits were somewhat gross, but on account of his rugged constitution he lived to be more than seventy-five years old. If he had given himself just a little more care he would be alive today. They say that his strong black cigars did him no apparent harm, but those who read of his last illness understandingly cannot agree to that statement. Mr. Morgan started with enough vitality to live and work far beyond the century mark. John D. Rockefeller was not physically strong when young. He has been compelled to take good care of himself and to be moderate. Now he is past seventy and enjoying good health. John W. Gates died a martyr to excess, partly excess of food. He lacked balance. His son followed in his footsteps and died young. Frank A. Vanderlip, who is looming large on the financial horizon takes but two meals a day, from which he gets enough sustenance to do good work and he says that this plan makes for efficiency. Perhaps now that such men as Mr. Vanderlip live well on two meals a day, it is time to cease calling those who live thus faddists. Eating three meals a day is a habit and many can and do get along very well on two meals, and a few take only one meal daily. E. H. Harriman also lived simply. He illustrates the evil of a poorly controlled mind. He died when but little past sixty, probably because his frail body was too weak to harbor his great ambition. He took his business wherever he went. When ill and business was forbidden by his physician, Mr. Harriman had a telephone concealed in his bedroom and as soon as the doctor was gone, he was on the wire. Another cause of premature aging is the drinking of very hard water. The earthy matter is absorbed into the blood stream with the water, and a part of it is deposited in the various tissues. People beyond middle age should drink water containing only a small portion of salts. Those who partake of fresh fruits or fresh vegetables daily get all the salts that the system needs. Even the young should not drink water that is exceedingly hard. We can well illustrate the harm that comes from the excessively hard water by referring to the disease known as cretinism. This disease is quite prevalent in some parts of Europe. They say that the disease is hereditary, which is questionable. What is inherited is the environment and the habits of the parents. The chief cause is without doubt the superabundance of earthy matter in the drinking water. The cretins are ill-favored in face and figure. They do not reach normal mental or physical maturity. They are old long before the normal person has reached his prime. They die young, rarely living to be over thirty years old. The bones are completely ossified early, which is the cause of their small stature and their stupidity. The bones of the skull harden so early that the brain has no room to expand. There is no need of suffering, even in a mild degree, from the disease of cretinism. If the water is very hard it is easy to distill what is needed for drinking purposes. Such water should at least be boiled. It is much better to have a teakettle lined with earthy matters than to have such a lining in our arteries. The excessive use of table salt is another cause of early aging. It is a good preservative and pickles meat very well. People have long used salt as a preservative and perhaps they got the salt-eating habit in this way, first using it on the foods to be preserved, and then on nearly all foods. Salts to excess, especially table salt, help to mummify or pickle those who partake of them too liberally. The addition of sodium chloride to foods is unnecessary. We get all we need of this salt in our fruits, vegetables and cereals. Salt should be used in moderation. Alcohol, tobacco and coffee are harmful. However, it will be found that most of the old people have used one or more of these drugs for many years and this is often largely responsible for their reaching old age. Overeating causes more deaths than any other single factor. The use of tobacco, coffee or alcohol has a tendency to reduce the desire for food and thus these drugs at times prove to be conservers of individual lives, though they are undoubted racial evils. They never can or will take the place of self-control. The senses were given us to use for our protection, but most people abuse them for temporary gratification, and thus they go in the way of self-destruction. Other things being equal, a healthy child will live longer than a weakly one. But other things are not equal, so it often happens that a weakling has as much chance to survive as a healthy person. Strong people frequently squander their inheritance by the time they are forty or fifty years old. Healthy people are very imprudent. They are well so they think they will always remain well. What a surprise it is when after thirty they discover that they cannot do with impunity what they could do before with apparently no bad results! When warned about their eating habits they boast that they can "eat tacks". Smoking and drinking are harmless, they say! But the day of reckoning always comes and the account is often so great that under the conventional treatment of today they die. The weakling has been compelled to be careful. Habits of moderation grew upon him in youth, and his health has improved as he has advanced in years. He may never be strong, but great physical strength is not essential to health. Thus the strong often perish and the weak survive. If both classes lived with equal care the strong would outlive and outwork the weak every time. It is necessary to give the skin some care if continued good health is desired during the latter part of life. The skin has a tendency to grow hard, which should not be allowed. It will always remain soft if it is properly cared for. When our ancestors roved forests and plains with scarcely any attire, the skin exposed to the rain and the sunshine, there was no need to give it special care. It served its purpose of protecting their bodies and was exercised through its immediate contact with the elements in all kinds of weather. Now the skin has little opportunity to exercise its protective function and the result is that it is not as active as it should be. The skin must be active to rid itself of the waste that the blood-vessels leave with it. The best exercise for this important organ is rubbing. The whole body should be rubbed every day and it would be well to do this twice a day. An occasional olive oil rub is also good. The rubbings make the body hardier. They also help to keep the circulation active and the skin smooth and soft. The blood is brought near the surface. The tendency as we grow older is for the circulation to grow less and less near the surface and in the extremities. This is slow death. The daily rub is more important than the daily bath. If we have enough rubbing very little bathing is necessary, for an active skin cleans itself. There are many men who have lived in the conventional way until the age of forty, fifty or sixty. They have been healthy, which means that they have been able to work most of the time, but have had their share of ills, which have incapacitated them for work or business at various times. They find after reaching a certain age that they are surely going down hill physically and that they are not as active mentally as previously. The question is, can anything be done under the circumstances? Very few of these people are in such a bad physical state that death is inevitable within the next few years. If they seek the right advice and follow it, they can generally continue to live in improved health for thirty to sixty years more. A celebrated case in point is that of Louis Cornaro, an Italian, who died in the year 1566 at the age of one hundred and two years. In his youth he was very indiscreet and dissipated. He lived riotously until he was forty years old, and then he found himself in such poor physical condition that it was only a question of a few months until the end would come. He had everything to make life worth living, except health, so he decided to attempt to regain health and prolong his life. He quit his old life, began to live simply and instead of being a waster he became a useful citizen. We are unable to get much definite information about his habits from what he wrote but we learn that he reduced the quantity of food taken and used fewer varieties. Also, he drank sparingly of wine. He did not have any definite ideas regarding diet except that it is best to eat moderately and avoid the foods that disagree with one. In his own words: "Little by little I began to draw myself away from my disorderly life, and, little by little, to embrace the orderly one. In this manner I gave myself up to the temperate life, which has not since been wearisome to me; although, on account of the weakness of my constitution, I was compelled to be extremely careful with regard to the quality and quantity of my food and drink. However, those persons who are blessed with strong constitutions may make use of many other kinds and qualities of food and drink, and partake of them, in greater quantities, than I do; so that, even though the life they follow be the temperate one, it need not be as strict as mine, but much freer." These sentences were written fifty or sixty years after he changed his mode of life, and show how well Mr. Cornaro realized the important fact that all people need not be treated alike. They also show that after making the change, Mr. Cornaro did not find it difficult to live simply enough to enjoy health. In nearly every instance it is temporarily disagreeable to forsake the path that is leading to death and take the one that leads to life, but after one gets used to the new way, it appears more beautiful and is more pleasant than the old. If Cornaro had died at forty, as nearly every person situated as he was would have done, his life would have been a total loss. A few of those who were his boon companions and dissipated with him would have thought of him for a few years and regretted his early passing, for "he was a jolly good fellow." He lived a useful life, for over sixty years thereafter, and has left us in his debt for his beautiful exhortations to be temperate. Many of the physical wrecks we meet, who will probably live from a few months to a few years more, if they continue in the old way, are in the same boat as Mr. Cornaro was at forty. They have had enough experience to begin to do good work, to be of some benefit to humanity. Instead of living and giving the world their best, they die. The world has had to educate these people, and it is expensive. Instead of living on and doing their work, they leave us when they ought to begin to repay us for what we have done for them. They are quitters. Suppose Andrew Carnegie had died at the time he sold out his steel business. To most people he would have left an unsavory memory, for though we should have considered him successful from the business standpoint, many of us would say that the means were not justified by the end. However, Mr. Carnegie has spent many years since in furthering the cause of the spread of knowledge and in working for universal peace. Perhaps when Carnegie, the man of business, is well nigh forgotten, Carnegie, the educator, will be held in tender and thankful memory. He is now influencing the times for good and this influence will go down the ages. A man has no right to say that he is weary of life and that he wants to die. The race has a claim on him. We learn through our mistakes. The race in general has to pay and suffer for every individual's education. When a man has acquired a measure of wisdom through experience, we have a right to claim it as our own. Many men are wise in their own lines, but they have been so busy attending to the affairs that brought them success that they have omitted to learn how to have health. These people owe it to themselves and to humanity to take enough time to learn how to live so that they can work in health. The better the health the finer their product. Health and efficiency go hand in hand. What is a man to do when he has reached middle age and finds himself degenerating? A man ought to know how to live at forty, but if he does not he should immediately learn. It may be true that "a man is a fool or a physician at forty," yet there is time and if a man lacks wisdom at forty he should immediately acquire some. Such an individual should get the best health adviser possible, avoiding any man who would have him take drugs. What he needs is not medicine, but to learn how to live. I am confident that the careful reader will find enough knowledge in this book to give him the key to the situation. If the sufferer uses narcotics and stimulants, they must be stopped immediately. Even the least harmful of these, such as beer and light wine, should be avoided until good health has been won. These beverages need never be used. If they are taken rarely and in moderation they do no harm. In every case that has come under my observation it has been necessary to simplify the food intake, that is, to reduce the quantity and the number of articles of food taken at each meal, also to simplify the cooking. The result is that the individual gets less food, but it is of better quality, for the conventional cooking spoils much of the food. Most of these men neglect to exercise. It is necessary to be active and in the open, also to take good care of that important organ, the skin. Constipation is common, and it is a very annoying symptom, which disappears in time under proper living. The absorption of poisons from a constipated lower bowel is one of the factors that causes premature aging. When the constipation is overcome there are a feeling of physical well-being and a mental clearness which are impossible in the presence of constipation. The treatment of such a condition is very much the same as the treatment of catarrh or any other curable disease, that is, find the errors of living and correct them. It is really surprising how little food people need after they are fifty or sixty years old. If such people eat enough to be well nourished, but not enough to produce any bad feelings there will be no disease. People who die from disease are physical failures, for the natural end does not come in a physical upheaval. Those who live as they should will pass away without any pain. The organism simply grows weary and goes into the last sleep. There are people who say that there needs be no physical death. Harry Gaze wrote an entertaining book on the subject some years ago and gave lectures in this country. It will not convince the average student of nature that people can live forever, for in nature there is constant change. The order of life is birth, development, reproduction, decline and death. It is not likely that man is an exception. It is believed that in olden times men were larger and lived longer than they do today. There is not much foundation for such a belief to rest upon, except in a few cases. The last census shows that there are several thousand centennarians in the United States. In the Technical World for March, 1914, appeared an article by Byron C. Utecht, entitled, "When is Man Old?" This magazine is careful in gathering its facts. I shall quote a few paragraphs: "Abraham Wilcox, of Fort Worth, Texas, is one hundred and twelve years old, but he takes keen enjoyment in life. He walks two miles or more every day as a constitutional and, occasionally, he even takes a small glass of beer. He looks forward with all the enthusiasm of a boy to a visit to the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915. Mr. Wilcox reads the newspapers every day and is interested in everything about him, from the food being prepared for his dinner to the latest feats by aeroplanes. This aged man looks forty or fifty years younger than he really is. His skin is white but not deeply lined. His vision is excellent and he walks nearly erect. Thirty years ago he gave up smoking, as his doctors warned him he was near death from old age and that the use of tobacco would only hasten the end." "In the Ozark Mountains of Marion County, Arkansas, just across the Missouri line, lives Mrs. Elmyra Wagoner. She, too, is one hundred and twelve years old. There are a thousand wrinkles in her face and she looks her age, but in her actions she is sixty. Up until a very few years ago, when still past the hundred-year mark, Mrs. Wagoner kept a large garden and was able to work in the fields. While she has given up outdoor work, she is still active. On inclement days she sits by the fireplace in her mountain home and spins. On pleasant days she may be found walking about the yard. Recently her great-great-granddaughter was married at Protein, Missouri, six miles from the Wagoner home. This woman of one hundred and twelve years walked to the wedding, enjoyed it, and then walked back home, a distance that would tire many persons half that age. There are scores of persons at Protein who vouch for this and they tell of similar feats by Mrs. Wagoner showing remarkable physical power. "Asked to give the causes of her longevity, the aged woman smiled and said that she hated to admit she was getting old. 'Clean, honest living, plenty of work, plenty of good food, and a desire to help others when sick or in trouble, I think gave me my long lease of life. I was always so busy caring for others and thinking of them that I never had time to worry whether I was getting old or not.'" "Asa Goodwin, of Serrett, Alabama, is one hundred and six years old. His endurance powers are even more remarkable than those of Mrs. Wagoner or Abraham Wilcox. He walks five miles every day. He works several hours daily in his garden, eats anything he likes, and reads without glasses. His family is probably the largest in the United States. A reunion recently held in his honor was attended by eight hundred and fifty persons, three hundred and fifty being blood relatives. Goodwin has been a hunter all his life and he frequently takes down his rifle and proves that his aim is still good. He ascribes his length of life and vitality to his great interest in outdoor sport and hunting, when a young man, developing a rugged constitution that lasted him many years after he was forced to quit strenuous work because of 'old age.' He asserts that he was so busy living that he reached one hundred and six years before he realized it and wants to live fifty years more if possible. 'I feel as if I could do it, too,' he declares. 'I now can take my ease and comfort and the world looks good to me. I have always lived a temperate life, never drank, never kept late hours, and still have had as much or more fun than the average man, I think. It is only now when I have nothing to do that I get to worrying and when I find myself in that condition I take a walk or weed the garden and then feel better.'" These people are not in what some call the higher walks of life, but they have succeeded in living, where almost all fail. They have been useful members of society, satisfied to take life as it comes, and thus they have gathered much of the sweet. They have enjoyed life, and those who enjoy give enjoyment to others. It takes an audience to make even the best of plays. Mrs. Wagoner is not rich, but she has a philosophy that is riches enough. She knows that she receives through giving. She has lived this knowledge, which has brought blessings upon her. These people have all led simple lives and they have worked. There is no secret about growing old gracefully. It means self-control, simple living, work for body and mind, cleanliness of body and mind, and the most important part of physical cleanliness is a clean colon. It is necessary to have a tranquil mind most of the time, for anger and worry are injurious to health. The average span of life is lengthening. In the sixteenth century the average European did not live to be twenty years old. Now he lives to be about forty. The same increase has taken place in America. In India and China the average of life is still below twenty-four years. As civilization advances the tendency is for the average of life to lengthen, provided life does not grow so complex that knowledge is antidoted by too great artificiality. However, it is well to note that it is not the last part of life that is being lengthened. We are allowing less and less infants to die as the years roll on. The proportion of the adult population that reaches advanced age is no greater than in the past. Our mode of life is so wrong that tuberculosis, typhoid fever, cancer, kidney diseases, pneumonia and circulatory degeneration carry off immense numbers of those whom we call middle aged, but who are really young people. These are diseases of degeneration. It is to our interest to reduce these diseases. Proper living will do it. The life expectancy of people over fifty is even less than it was thirty years ago. Middle aged people die from diseases caused by bad habits, extended over a period of years. Therefore, these people should learn to live well if they would live longer. The diet of the old can be about the same as that of an adult in the prime of life, except that less should be eaten. Those who live correctly have no digestive disturbances. It will be noted by those who are normal that there is not a desire for as much food as earlier in life, and this should be a guide. Old people get all the nourishment they need in two moderate meals a day. If the three-meal-a-day plan is preferred, it is all right, but then less should be taken at each meal. White flour products are easier to digest than the whole wheat products, but normal people can digest the latter very well and it is a better food than white flour. I know one gentleman in his eighth decade of life who has grown stronger and younger by abandoning the conventional eating habits and living mostly on moderate meals of milk and whole wheat biscuits. As Cornaro said, some need more than others, but all should be moderate. One meal a day of milk and biscuits is all right. These biscuits should be well baked and well masticated. The milk should be taken slowly. Another meal can be meat or eggs or fish with some of the cooked and raw succulent vegetables. If a third meal is taken, it may consist of clabbered milk or buttermilk; or of one of the sweet fruits, and the sweet fruits may be used any time in place of bread or biscuits. Cottage cheese is a good food at any time, and may be taken with fruits, either acid or sweet. As often as desired, in summer, take fruit. Because the very acid, juicy fruits have a tendency to cause chilliness and to thin the blood, it is well to take them in moderation during advanced years, but that does not mean that those who like them should avoid them. In winter time the sweet fruit is best. Mild apples and bananas may be used as often as there is a desire for them. Oranges should be taken more rarely, as well as grapefruit, pineapples and other fruits that are heavily charged with acid. As a general rule, the starchy foods should be eaten but once a day, but those who are very moderate may take them twice a day without bad results. Vegetarians have eggs and milk to take the place of flesh foods. They also have lentils, peas, beans and the protein in the whole wheat and other cereals. Lentils, peas and beans must be taken in moderation, for they are rich in nutriment and if too much is eaten they soon cause disease. Nuts, if well masticated, are also all right. The general basis of feeding should be starch once a day and protein once a day in moderation. All kinds of starch and all kinds of protein may be used. Fruits more moderately than during the earlier years of life is best. All the succulent vegetables that are desired may be partaken of. By cooking the foods simply, as recommended in this book, they are rendered easier to digest than under the conventional manner of cooking. Simple cooking will help to preserve health and prolong life. Work is one of the greatest blessings of life. Those who would live long and be useful must exercise both body and mind. Like all other blessings, if it is carried to excess it is injurious. It is unfortunate that some people must work too hard because there is a class of people who do nothing useful, being content to be wasters. Work has been looked upon as a curse. This is a mistake. Those who live in the hope and expectation that they may some day cease working in order to enjoy life, will find when they reach the goal that life without work is not worth while. Those who can afford it can with benefit lessen the amount of productive work they do and evolve more into cultural lines, but it is dangerous to cease working. The human being is so constituted that without activity of body and mind there is degeneration. What is sadder than to see a capable individual who has won a competence and then has retired to enjoy it! He does not enjoy it. Either he has to get into some line of work, physical or mental, or he soon dies. We must have a lively interest in something or there is stagnation. There are many beautiful things in life, and we should cultivate them while we are young enough to be able to learn to enjoy them. The loftiest spirits of the ages have left their inspirations and their aspirations with us in poetry, prose, music, painting, statuary and in other forms. We should try to cultivate understanding of these subjects, not necessarily all of them, but of one or more, for with understanding come the elevation and broadening of mind that are always present when there is sympathy, and sympathy is closely related to understanding. Culture along one or more lines broadens the mind and makes a person more worth while not only to himself, but to others. We can not estimate the value of the beauty in life in dollars and cents, but he is poor indeed who is rich in worldly goods alone. It is necessary to be interested in the activities about us. Those who think of nothing or no one except themselves are almost dead to the world, even though they go through the same physical activities as other people. The tendency is to get into a rut with advancing years and remain there. It is easy to keep both a pliable mind and a pliable body in spite of age, and this can be done by intelligent use. A short time daily should be spent in becoming informed of what is happening throughout the world and thinking it over. A mental hobby is most excellent. A garden or a few birds can furnish an almost inexhaustible source of interest. Those who doubt this should read of the comedy and tragedy among such humble beings as the spider, the fly and the beetle. J. H. Fabre has written charmingly about these, investing them with an interest rarely to be found in good fiction. This naturalist is a good example of what can be accomplished when one has years to do it in and is content to labor along from day to day without giving too much thought for the morrow. At fifty Mr. Fabre was practically unknown. Now, at about ninety, he is one of the most admired and best loved of men. His recognition came late and he has done much of his best work during his later years. If Mr. Fabre had died at the average age of forty, the world would have been deprived of his beautiful insight. Another cause of old age is getting mentally old. An individual begins to grow old by dwelling on the subject. The girl of thirteen must cease romping and racing about because it is not lady-like. At twenty-five it is very, very undignified to run a little. At forty a woman must be rather sedate, for being natural would mean frivolity. People are continually growing too old to do this and that, not because they have lost the desire and the ability, but because it is unbecoming at their age. This is folly. Keep a young heart all through life. A heartfelt laugh is one of nature's best tonics. There is no more harm in dancing at fifty than at fifteen and not so much danger. The relaxation of muscles and sagging of the face are as much the result of mental attitude as of loss of tonicity. Thinking young and associating with children are helpful and healthful. People who are very stiff and dignified are mentally sterile. The charming people are the ones who are willing and able to understand and sympathize with the aims and aspirations of others, and in order to do so it is necessary to thaw out. The art of life is delightful if properly developed. Worry is such a detriment that its victims can neither live nor work as they should. It is necessary to overcome this bad habit. Most of the worry is due to narrow selfishness. Much of it is caused by the fact that others will not do as we do. To try to make others accept our standards and then worry and fret because they will not is folly. When force is employed to convert anyone the conversion is but superficial and lasts only so long as the converted individual's hypocrisy holds out. To get the best out of life we have to be broad, forbearing, patient and forgiving. A normal old age is beautiful. It is the privilege, nay more, the duty of every intelligent being to attain it. When we adjust ourselves we shall live longer. It is with old age as it is with health. We can have it if we wish it. Accidents alone can deprive us of either. Let us hope that the day will come when men and women will not be satisfied to die as life is but beginning, but that they will live as they should and could live, thus proving a blessing to the race. CHAPTER XXIX. EVOLVING INTO HEALTH. By the time most people are twenty years old they have some kind of disease. It may be only a slight catarrh, a touch of indigestion, trouble with the eyes, defective hearing, or some other ill. Very seldom do we meet a person of this age who is perfectly well. Most people are taught to believe that health is something mysterious which may come to them or may pass them by, but that they have little or nothing to do with it. If they are well, they are fortunate, but if they are ill they are not to blame. Most of them go to conventional physicians when they are ill, expecting to be cured. They take medicine or injections of serums or they are operated upon. When they are through with the doctors they are no wiser than they were before. A few have friends who tell them that they must change their mode of living if they would have health. They are interested enough to go to a healer who believes in nature. He tells them that they are well or ill according to their desserts, that they can be well at all times, if they wish, for if they live as they should health is a natural consequence. This sounds like nonsense at first. It is different from anything else they have heard. The sufferer often makes up his mind that the healer is a fool or a faker. He remembers that when he went to the conventional physicians they sounded and thumped him and examined all his excretions. They were very thorough and scientific. The natural healer does not generally go into so many details. He asks enough and examines enough to find the trouble and then he stops. This the patient charges against him, for he takes for granted that the healer is brief from lack of knowledge. So he goes back to his old physician. As his trouble is due to deranged nutrition, he does not get well. He thinks over what the natural healer said, and the more he thinks about it the more reasonable it sounds, and he returns again. This time he gets instructions, and he follows them enough to get benefit, but not faithfully enough to get well. He is convinced that the conventional physicians are wrong, but still believes that the natural healer can hardly be right. After a while he makes up his mind to get down to business and he goes to the healer for instructions and follows them. The results are surprising. The trouble he has had for years may disappear within a month or two, or it may become less and less apparent, but take considerable time before it leaves entirely. The healer gives instructions. The most important ones are those concerning the diet. A plan is given that brings good results. The healer fails to explain that this is but one correct method of feeding, that there are other good ones. The patient is enthused over the benefits derived, he makes up his mind that he is living the only correct life, and he too often becomes a food crank, trying to force his ideas upon all about him. Here the healer is at fault, for he should explain that some method is necessary, but that there is no one and only method of feeding. If the patient is fairly intelligent, in time he realizes that it is not so much what he eats as his manner of eating and moderation that are helpful, and that any plan in which moderation and simplicity are followed is better than the ordinary way of eating. As the patient evolves into health and gets a broader view of the art of living, he gets a better perspective of life. He learns that under like conditions like causes always produce like effects, that the law of compensation is always operative, and we therefore get what we deserve. He loses his fear of many things that caused him grave concern previously. He sees in sickness and death the working of natural law, not of chance. Some patients realize that healers who work in accordance with nature are right, at the very start, but most people are not so logically constructed. It often takes from one to three years before people make up their mind to order their lives so that they can have health at their command. In the old way, the doctor was supposed to cure, which was impossible. In the new way, the healer educates people and then if they live their knowledge they get health. The healer must instruct in the care of all parts of the body, weeding out bad habits and trying to instill good ones in their place. Eating according to correct principles is the most helpful and powerful aid in regaining health. The patient finds that as the years pass his tastes change, becoming more simple and more moderate. He is well nourished on one-half to one-third of what he used to consume and consider necessary. The following is the last half of a month's record of food intake for a man in the thirties. Some years ago he changed his manner of living in order to regain health, in which he succeeded. Now he takes only one or two meals a day, according to his desires, not that he has any objection to three meals a day, but he finds it best to eat more seldom. He is in good physical condition, as heavy as he ought to be, and he has not had any real physical trouble for a number of years. His work is mental, but he walks considerably and swims from three to six times a week, besides taking a few set exercises. It was taken in spring, the weather averaging cool. This is a little lighter than usual, because the record was taken during a period of exceptionally hard mental work. In cold weather heavier foods are taken. Lunch: Nothing. Dinner: Three slices of rye toast, very thin, celery, three slices broiled onion, dish of peas, glass of beer. Dinner at noon: Roast lamb, dish of spinach, one and one-half dishes summer squash, lettuce and tomato salad. Supper: Nothing. Lunch: Dish of baked lentils, vegetable soup, lettuce. Dinner: Two small oranges, cottage cheese. Lunch: Piece of gingerbread, cup of cocoa, two lumps of sugar. Dinner: Two small oranges, cottage cheese. Lunch: Dish of stewed prunes, tablespoonful cottage cheese. Dinner: Two eggs, two slices buttered toast. Lunch: Small grapefruit. Dinner: Vegetable soup, dish of stewed turnips, dish of peas. Lunch: Nothing. Dinner: Half a grapefruit, three stewed figs, glass of milk. Lunch: Dish of strawberries, large dish of rhubarb with grapefruit juice in it and cream on the side; half serving cream cheese. Dinner: Two small baked apples. Lunch: Small grapefruit. Dinner: Two eggs, dish of turnips, dish of spinach, sliced tomatoes. Lunch: One raw apple. Dinner: Two shredded wheat biscuits, glass of milk. Lunch: Dish of rhubarb. Dinner: Vegetable soup, one egg, a boiled potato. Lunch: Dish of rhubarb. Dinner: Sweet potato, dish of parsnips, stewed peas. Lunch: Dish of ice cream, piece of white cake. Dinner: Cheese cake, dish of fruit salad. Lunch: One hard boiled egg, about one and one-half slices white bread, two big radishes, one young onion, butter. Dinner: Nothing. The servings are the ordinary restaurant servings. No dressings were used except the ones mentioned. This man used to be very fond of sweets and employed salt freely. Now he finds his foods more agreeable when taken plain, for they have a better flavor. He rarely uses salt or pepper. He has simplified his food intake because he finds he feels better and stronger and is able to think to better advantage than he did when he partook of a greater variety and amount of food at each meal. Food scientists say that from two thousand, seven hundred to three thousand, three hundred calories are needed daily, but you will note that this man generally keeps below one-half of this, if you are able to figure food values. People who are trying to get well are often called fools and cranks when they treat themselves properly, but this does not matter, for such fools generally live to see their wise critics prematurely consigned to the earth. When taking health advice, try to keep your balance. Get thoroughly well before you try to guide others. CHAPTER XXX. RETROSPECT. Several hundred pages have been devoted to those matters which must receive attention in order to have good physical and mental health, so as to be able to get the most out of life and give the most, that is, in order to live fully. The basis of health is internal cleanliness, and to attain this it is necessary to exercise self-control and moderation, as well as to cultivate good will and kindliness towards others. Kindness and love lubricate life and make the running smooth. Envy, spite, hatred and the other negative emotions act like sand in the bearings, producing friction in the vital machinery, which they destroy in the end. Success in life means balance, poise, adjustment. We must adjust ourselves so as to be in harmony with others, and we must be in harmony with nature. Our minds will at times be in opposition to the laws of nature. Then we must exercise enough self-control to bring them into harmony again, for natural laws are no respecters of persons. It is said that we break these laws, but that is not true. If we disregard them often enough they break us. We must realize our unity with nature, our at-one-ment. We must realize that we are a part of nature, not above it, and hence that we are governed by the same fixed laws that govern the rest of nature. These laws are for our good. Attempts to escape from their workings indicate a lack of understanding. Discord produces disease and death. Harmony leads to health and long life. The adjustment must be both physical and mental. The physical part means to live or adjust ourselves so that all the functions of the body are carried on normally. The body is self-regulating and if we do nothing harmful health will be our portion. However, life under our present civilization is so complex that the demands upon our nervous systems are excessive. It is easy to live so that we can have health, but to do so is not conventional, and hence not very popular. In order to have good physical health under present conditions, it is necessary to make some effort. The effort is not great enough to be onerous and does not require much time. It is important to get health knowledge, which the majority lacks today. This knowledge is most excellent, but it does not benefit the individual unless it is applied. We all wish to have health, but this is not enough. We must will to have it. When we say that we cannot, it should generally be interpreted to mean that we will not. Some important subjects regarding which special knowledge should be secured are: Food, drink, exercise, care of the skin, sleep, work and play, breathing, clothing, and mental attitude. These subjects, as well as others, have been quite extensively discussed. It is impossible to give full information in tabloid form. It is also impossible to read a book of this character once and get all the information it contains. Those who are in earnest will study the subject, instead of merely reading it. Allow me to remind you that nearly all of our diseases are due to faulty dietary habits. So it was in the time of Hippocrates, according to that sage, and so it is today. It is a common statement that about 90 per cent. of our physical ills come from improper diet, and this is the truth. It follows from this that it is most important to know about correct feeding habits, and put them in practice. Improper diet results in faulty nutrition, after which physical and mental ills make their appearance. There are many systems of feeding, and nearly all of them will bring good results if the most important prescription is followed, namely, moderation. Simplicity leads to moderation. Those who are reasonable about their food intake often serve as targets for the shafts of ridicule launched at them by those who are ignorant of the subject or too self-indulgent to exercise a little self-control. Ridicule is one of the most deadly of weapons, but it never harms those who have the hardihood of getting down to basic facts and classifying things and ideas according to their true value. Why should we be guided by the wit and sarcasm of indolent voluptuaries who daily desecrate their bodies through ruinous indulgences? There is no need of becoming harsh and austere, nor is it necessary to fall into deadly habits of self-indulgence. Sometimes we can go with the current with benefit, but at times it is also necessary to paddle up-stream. Life demands a certain amount of hardihood from those who would live in health, and this comes not from self-indulgence, but from self-denial. It is necessary to do almost daily something that we are not inclined to do. It is well to remember that if the eating is correct, it is difficult to become physically deranged, and consequently to become mentally deranged. Allow me to repeat four short sentences which are helpful and most important guides, sentences which ought to form a part of every child's education: If ill, eat nothing, but live on water. Eat only when there is a desire for food. Masticate all foods thoroughly. Always be moderate in your food intake. These are the four golden rules regarding eating, and if they were adhered to, they would save us from an incalculable amount of sin and suffering. They would increase the duration of life and the joy of living. They would add to our physical and mental prosperity. Hence they are worthy of the emphasis given them. In brief: Physical health is based on internal cleanliness, which can be attained only through moderation, that is, by not habitually overburdening the system, especially with food. Our bodies thrive when used, but not when abused. It is necessary for our physical well-being to get air, sunshine, water, food, sleep, rest, exercise, work and play in proper proportion, and in addition cultivate a kindly, balanced spirit. Drugs, such as alcohol, coffee, morphine, bromine, and hundreds of others which could be named, are not only unnecessary, but harmful. The mental side is as important as the physical side. With a healthy body it is easy to have a happy outlook. Indigestion and biliousness can make a dreary waste out of the most beautiful landscape. The body and mind react and interact, one upon the other. When one is poised it is easy to get the other into balance. It requires a poised body to produce the best fruitage--a fine spirit. It is necessary to be honest with one's self. Face life courageously and honestly. If you do, you will soon realize that the physical and mental ills from which you suffer are mostly of your own making. Then you can choose whether to let them continue or to end them, but if you choose to remain ill, bear your cross uncomplainingly, for you have no right to afflict others with your self-imposed sufferings. On the other hand, try to see life from the view point of others, and you will often find that what you think is the highest good and most desirable in life does not seem worthy of great effort to them. Variety adds spice to life. To impose one's own views and ways on others has always seemed desirable to the majority of people, but it is the height of folly and stupidity. So long as the race exists there will be many men of many minds, and it is best so. We can not force any benefit, such as health or goodness, upon others. Instead of attracting, the process of forcing repels. What we can do mentally to benefit ourselves and others is to get adjusted, to cultivate kindness and charity, to be broad-minded and forgiving, to be slow to take and give offense, to accept the little buffetings that fate has in store for us all with good grace, and through it all to possess our souls in patience. Physically, be moderate. Mentally, cultivate equanimity.